Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 22 – Failure
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,383
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 22 of ? Unbeta'd.
Chakra has always smelled slightly like the air before a storm, sharp and full of ozone. Even before he'd developed his affinity for lightning, some part of him had sung with each crack of thunder.
Now, six attempts in, as the girls form their blades under his scrutiny once more, he smells the electricity of it, that vital spark that keeps people alive. That forms them as them and not just skin and bone and personality trained to get along.
He is not surprised when Sakura gets her chakra blade formed quicker than Ino. Both girls have excellent control over their chakra for their ages and ranks but Sakura's control is simply extraordinary. Kakashi is glad that Ino only seems to take it as a challenge, using the failure to drive herself to improve, rather than getting upset.
And it's a small thing, but it's good for Sakura to have a success here before I teach Ino something that she can't learn.
Eventually she'll grow out of her insecurities, but it will take time after the mess of her first year as a shinobi. Kakashi finds that he looks forward to seeing what she'll be like once she's confident in herself in a way that no one can shake. He wonders if he'll be around for it.
Kakashi inspects their latest attempts, then nods. "Dismiss your blades," he says, waiting until they've carefully done so before he says anything else. It takes them mere seconds and Kakashi uses that time to gauge their status. The chakra usage hasn't significantly tired Ino out, he notes with approval. Sakura's chakra is lower but then, she has less to work with.
And it is getting better. Her reserves are better than they were a month ago.
Like most things, fixing that neglect is just going to take time. Ino has been using her chakra more strenuously than Sakura for years. It makes a difference.
"Take five to stretch out," he orders. "You've been in the same position for a bit. Move."
"What about you, Hatake-sensei?" Ino says lightly, making no move to follow his order, though she grins at him. "You've been standing just as long!"
Sakura glances at Ino and then turns a slyly innocent face to him as she adds, "It would be good for you to move as well, Hatake-sensei."
Heh. On one hand, they're being ridiculous. On the other, he's glad to see it. Last night had been rough for them.
And they're not wrong. He rolls his shoulders out thoughtfully.
"Alright," he says amiably. "Though I hope you know that this means war."
The girls exchange amused but slightly trepidatious looks.
"What do you mean?" Sakura asks.
He smiles—this does not seem to particularly frighten or reassure them, which means he's hitting the right notes—and says, "You're right. It would be a good idea for me to move around more. Which, in that case… we're going to play follow the leader."
Sakura yelps. "That's a children's game!"
Ino is warier as she says, "I don't think he means the version we played back in the Academy, Sakura."
"Oh no," Sakura says, looking to him for confirmation.
Kakashi keeps smiling at them and, for the sake of giving an answer of some sort, he indulges them with a noncommittal noise. They both look slightly worried at this.
It's a very good sign, it really is, that they're comfortable with ragging on him and, yes, being a bit childish. He's glad to see it.
He's still going to take advantage of it. It'll be good training for them.
He allows the silence to stretch just a few seconds longer before he nods and says, with challenge edging his voice, "So. From now until I say so, you follow me. Do your best to keep up."
Ino's eyes narrow—she never fails to rise to an expectation; though she's aware enough of her own tendency to play that expectation against other people should the need arise—and Sakura nods, determination flaring in her eyes.
What follows next isn't very nice at all for anyone except him.
It starts slow. He really does make them do stretches, a handful of which they've not seen before, then once they're good and warmed up, he leads them on a run around the perimeter of the estate.
The one warning he gives for what will come after the game is: "Make sure you pay attention to your surroundings."
The girls exchange glances and he doesn't give them time to think or talk about it. He just sets out at a run.
They follow him.
And, for the first one hundred yards, that's all he makes them do. He sets a pace that's tough for them, but not unreasonable, and gives them the time to get used to it, letting them hit their strides.
Kakashi doesn't have eyes in the back of his head, and this is the first time he's trained Genin, but he's trained both Chuunin and Special Jounin in ANBU. He can keep track of two Genin without having to directly see them.
Once that one hundred yards is up, he keeps running at the same pace but begins using his arms to make shapes in the air. Some of them are actual signs-a signal to stop, turning signs, enemy ahead-and others are absolute nonsense, as he makes waves, forms letters, pinwheels (both arms at the same time, one arm at a time, to their sides, and up over their heads). For variety, he runs backwards now and then, which forces them to do so as well, something Ino mutters a curse about the first time he does, while Sakura just attempts to immolate him with the strength of her glare, saving her breath for keeping up.
He adds in skipping, too, because why wouldn't he, and then that's when it gets really exciting for them.
Because not all of the perimeter is clear and easy to run along. Now they must also do things like hop up the side of an out-building on one foot while their hands are making bird shapes.
If they were in ANBU he'd also be making them practice their bird calls (right now would be a great time for quacking like a duck) but they're not so he refrains. Besides, the ground ANBU would be running over would be a lot more difficult than this in the first place.
He makes them crab-walk through a set of bushes while doing the wave. They play hopscotch. While still running he forces them to hit their knees with their opposing elbows.
Kakashi is not much of a dancer, but he's been on enough missions where being in a bar or watching a show is part of it, if only to gather intelligence, and every shinobi has a sense of rhythm. He runs (literally) them through the moves of the most popular dances in Fire Country.
(At least, they were in his time. They're likely quite out of date by now.)
Either way, it means they learn to shimmy over a fallen tree trunk, swinging their hips from side-to-side, like they're at a club. They high kick their way past old greenhouses, the glass foggy with grime, as if they were cabaret dancers. They spin like tops up and over a gazebo like the street dancers do.
On the fourth loop around the perimeter (though he's not certain the girls are aware of that at this point; all of their focus is now on just keeping up, they have no energy for swearing, glares, or thinking of much of anything) he changes it again, this time in a very fundamental way.
They do this loop running on their hands. Now it's their legs that he forces them to do splits with, and spins and kicks. They go over the out-building sideways, on their hands, while their legs form diamonds. At the bushes he makes them do a push up and uses that momentum to leap over the bushes, landing on the other side, still on their hands.
They go past the greenhouse backwards, legs cycling furiously.
Each girl falls twice during this run, at different points, and he'd expected that (running on your hands like this is incredibly difficult, even if he's taken the pace down to what they can handle) and only makes note of where they went down and how long it takes them to get back in the rhythm of following him.
Every bit of this is ridiculous but he knows from experience that the fact he's doing it as well will take a lot of the sting out of what might otherwise be considered humiliating. It's hard to protest humiliation when their sensei is doing the exact same thing without a care in the world. There's also absolute privacy here, which for training is always preferred but rarely had in a village the size of Konoha.
Finally, finally, he leads them back to the training ground, doing one last leap into the air, spinning four times and landing, his arms forming a T.
Sakura's attempt only has two turns, as she didn't put enough force into her upward thrust to get enough air to do four, but her landing is cleaner than Ino's, though Ino did manage the four spins perfectly.
He smiles at them.
He's covered with a slight sheen of sweat, but the girls-well. Kakashi is terribly proud of them for keeping up as well as they did, but they're drenched in sweat and dirt and covered in grass stains and raw-looking scrapes. Sakura has a bloody knee; Ino, an elbow.
"Well done," he says, and they stay standing through sheer force of will. "Cooldown stretches now and then walk back to the guest house, shower, change, and get something to eat. Then come back here. You have two hours."
They collapse into their stretches wordlessly.
Kakashi also stretches, mostly because it's good form to do so, and keeps an eye on them to make sure neither of them is more hurt than they seemed at first glance.
They're not.
He gives them a wave as they trudge back to the guest house and isn't fussed when they both ignore it. They likely barely noticed it-he remembers the first time he'd had to play this style of follow the leader and it was tiring in a way normal training wasn't because you weren't just working your body, you were working your mind, in order to copy what someone else was doing.
He's not expecting much out of them for the second half of this game, once the break is over.
Kakashi eats a ration bar, not even paying attention to the taste, and mulls over what he's going to do for the next two hours.
I'll gather what I'll need for Sakura's lesson this afternoon and then... I think I'm going to do another look-through...
"Hatake-sensei is a sadist," Ino mutters to herself.
It's a mark of how tired they are that neither of them complains about having to take a cold shower-because there's still no heat in the guest house, except for the camp stove they cook on. There is, at least, more than one shower, so they don't have wait for each other to be done.
Ino flees the shower only once the cold of the water finally penetrates the achy fog the morning had left her in. Wrapping the thickest towel she'd packed about her body (it wasn't very thick or very fluffy given that shinobi travelled light) she makes her way to the room they were sleeping in and quickly scrambles into clean clothes. Then, for good measure, she wraps a blanket around herself and moves onto tackling her hair.
"Sadist," Ino repeats, mostly because she feels Hatake-sensei deserves it, even if he can't hear it right now.
Once her hair is brushed out and put up in a short ponytail, she hesitates. It feels weird to wear it this way, though, as she still misses the long fall of hair she'd had before and Ino takes her hair down and decides she's just going to leave it down for the rest of the day.
Sakura slides open the door, looking as bone-deep tired and as cold as she'd been. Ino ignores her until she's dressed and under a blanket as well.
"We're never challenging Hatake-sensei like that again," she says, once she's decided that Sakura is human enough to want to talk.
"No argument there." Sakura gives her a look of utmost despair. "Do you think he's going to make us do that when we're back in the village?"
Ino shudders. "I hope not," she says fervently. "I really, really hope not."
They're both quiet for a moment, then, just contemplating that and all the horrors that would come with it. There's so much more he could make them go around or up or under in the village, in full view of everyone else.
"The only way to do that in the village would be to go all-out," Ino muses, inspecting her elbow. It's red and raw, but it's just a bad scrape, nothing more serious. As she digs out ointment for it and a roll of bandages (the better to keep from getting dirt in it) she continues with, "If he did that in the village it would be better if we dressed as his mini-mes."
Sakura snorts and looks at her like she's lost her mind. "Better how!? Did you hit your head at practice, Ino-pig?"
"I'm not the one that fell off the gazebo," Ino says loftily. "Don't compare me to you, Forehead. Anyway, yes, it would be better because then we could just blame the entire everything on Hatake-sensei and get commiseration and sympathy instead of ridicule. No one would believe we'd dress up like that on our own."
"We were going backwards on our hands up the stupid thing," Sakura mutters.
Since that's true, Ino leaves that be.
"Don't you think that would make the most sense? The only reason Rock Lee gets made fun of is because everyone knows he dresses and acts like that out of his own volition."
"He's actually really nice," Sakura says, making a face. "But you're right on all of it. When we get out of here, maybe we should make sure we've got mini-me costumes just in case."
"And not tell Hatake-sensei we've got them," Ino decides.
Sakura shakes her head in agreement. "No way, we're not giving him any ideas. He'd make us wear those things for real if he knew about them."
"On the bright side, that would just lend credence to the fact that we didn't choose that all on our own," Ino says. "But I'd really rather not have to wear that all the time, no matter how practical Hatake-sensei's outfit is."
"Do you think he'll eventually make us change what we wear?" Sakura wonders.
Ino finishes bandaging her elbow and passes both the ointment and the bandage roll over to Sakura so she can do her knee. The various scratches and bruises, while they're ugly and annoying, don't actually need any further care.
"Maybe," Ino allows. "Though he hasn't said anything so far, which means he thinks our stuff is good enough for training in. We're both pretty brightly coloured, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if when he starts taking us on real missions outside the village that he'd make us at least wear a more muted version of our stuff. He's that kind of serious, you know?"
Sakura grins at her, looking up from slathering her knee. Her grin is a tired grin, to be sure, but an honest one. "I guess we should get ahead of that and go shopping after this mission then, huh? Maybe he'll be impressed at our fore-thought."
"We need to buy underthings anyway," Ino says easily. "Sure, it's a date. Once you're done with your knee, we need to eat."
"It's going to be ration bars," Sakura says. "There's no time for actually cooking before we have to go back."
But at least he'd let them have a break. Ino stretches out, feeling the pull of their… run? Exercise? She's not really sure what to call it, honestly. Their game? "I call dibs on the blueberry cardboard."
Sakura makes a face as she ties off the bandage around her knee and flexes it to make sure it's both tight and loose enough. "That one tastes like death anyway. You can have it. I'm taking peanut butter."
Ino shudders right back at her and they laugh.
A little bit later, they're in the kitchen, nibbling on their ration bars and eyeing the clock. They have to go back soon and maybe that's why Sakura's mood has soured a bit.
"Is there really any point to me showing up this afternoon?" Sakura wonders abruptly.
Ino, who had just taken another bite of her ration bar, just looks inquiringly at her.
"I mean, you're going to be covering your primary method of escape, right? The whole... being a fake Hatake-sensei thing. What am I going to be doing?" Sakura sounds a little bitter, though Ino isn't sure if she realizes that. "More practice with the chakra blades? I barely have any chakra left, especially after we had to use it during the run."
Grateful for the fact that chewing gives her time to think of an answer, Ino tries to decide what to say.
More practice with the chakra blades isn't make-work or unnecessary; they're both brand new to using their chakra that way. Sakura is also right, though, that her chakra levels are pretty low.
Besides, even if she'd had the chakra, Ino knows Sakura's moods and knows that she's determined to feel sorry for herself right now because she's not a sensor-type. There's no arguing with that and there's no way to change that simple fact either.
"Hatake-sensei will have a plan," Ino says confidently, instead. "He was mulling over where to find something for your lesson this afternoon when we left."
Ino hadn't been trying to read his mind then but, well, exhaustion sometimes made her control a little shaky and she was naturally more prone to 'hearing' any deliberate thoughts about those she cared about.
"He was?" Sakura asks hopefully. "That would mean he's thinking of teaching me something new, wouldn't it?"
With that comment comes the thought that it would be something Ino wouldn't be learning.
Sakura's need for something like this troubles Ino more than the idea of someone knowing how to do something she doesn't know or can't. That's the whole point of teamwork, to cover each other in both knowledge and skill.
"Probably," Ino says, shrugging a little. "No idea what it could be though. You want another bar or should we head over a bit early?"
"Let's split one," Sakura decides. "We're both going to need the energy and we've got the supplies to spare."
They wind up splitting one that's supposedly honey-nut flavoured, but really just tastes like dust and despair. After getting a drink of water and washing their hands they head back to the practice grounds.
Just in time, too, as Hatake-sensei arrives mere seconds after they begin stretching.
Or he was waiting for us to show up, Ino muses. I didn't think to look. I should remember to do that.
He looks them over carefully. "Good, keep stretching," he says. Hatake-sensei is carrying a pack on one shoulder. "How are you two feeling?"
They're both fine and they tell him so, which makes him smile. He doesn't look like he's done anything today, let alone something as ridiculous as their game.
Ino doesn't suggest he also stretch. Lesson learned.
"Alright," he says. "Pop quiz!"
What follows next is honestly far, far more humiliating than their run had been and the very, very worst part of it is that he had warned them ahead of time about this: the whole quiz is about the layout of the perimeter, the obstacles, the distances between buildings, how far they were at various points from the Main House, from the guest house, from the front gate.
To her horror, she remembers barely anything. Sakura remembers no more than she does, which is no consolation at all, because it's absolutely dreadful having to answer Hatake-sensei with repeated admittances that she doesn't know.
It makes her angry.
Not at Hatake-sensei, because he had warned them, but at herself for failure.
The churning, boiling thoughts that Sakura gives off in addition to her muted, resentful vocal responses, press against Ino's mind like a bristling cat. Sakura is near tears.
This is the first time they've flat-out failed anything he's told them to do.
Finally, it ends.
Hatake-sensei looks at them both for a long time, in a silence that makes her ache.
"You both know what you need to improve on," he says, finally. Ino is just glad he doesn't tell them 'well done' because she thinks she might throw something at him. "Once we're done here, walk the perimeter. Every morning and evening, do a lap around the estate."
He does not tell them what they're supposed to look for, nor does he rub it in further.
They already know. She has the impression that he'd expected this outcome.
"Alright," he says, moving on, and Ino can tell from his thoughts that he really is just moving on, re-adjusting plans, and has no interest in punishing them further for their lack of paying attention. He does not seem to be disappointed in them. "Sakura, I'll be with you in a bit. In the meantime, practice your taijutsu forms against the training dummies."
Sakura nods and says, "Yes, Hatake-sensei," then walking dispiritedly over to the training dummies.
Ino watches her go and then looks at Hatake-sensei to find him watching her.
She straightens her shoulders with a grim sort of determination and raises her chin at him. She's mad, yeah, but being mad is a weapon she can use to make herself better.
"So," she says, "how is this going to work?"
He crooks one finger at her and leads her over to the shade of a palmate maple tree.
"Here's one of my bandages from last night," he says, handing over a thin bag made of folded canvas. "The bag is waterproof, so even if it rains, you can keep it on you without worry. If it's not on you, keep it within reach."
Ino nods, taking it and tucking it into the pouch that she holds her hard-cased senbon in. It will be safer there than in her kunai pouch. Canvas is tough but kunai cut through stronger all the time.
"Take a seat and make yourself comfortable," Hatake-sensei says, following his own words and sitting cross-legged on the ground.
Doing the same, she tucks herself against the tree trunk.
"I'm not a sensor type," Hatake-sensei says, after a moment. "And while I've worked with those who are, I can't be a guide the way I'd like to be in this matter. I'm going to be relying on both your determination to succeed and your Clan training for you to achieve this. In the long term, you will be given more direction and training, most likely from your father. For now, we make do."
Some of the ugly, hurt feelings from the quiz begin to unwind at that. Both that he admits he doesn't know how to do something—and that he thinks that she can.
"I'll get it done," she says, and it's a promise without saying the word.
"I know," he says simply. "Now, for most sensors, when they're sensing, they cannot otherwise participate in combat. The shift in their chakra use is too complex to flip between combat and sensory mode fast enough to be able to keep up with both aspects at the same time. From what I have observed, this is similar to when your Clan stops everything to fling your minds out of your bodies."
Ino mulls that over. She's never really noticed a shift in her chakra while doing so, but she sees what he's saying about, conceptually, they're alike enough to give her a frame of reference.
"I'll still need to be able to move, if I'm to open the wards and escape through them," she says thoughtfully. "So, it won't be like after I've left my body. But maybe something in the moments before…"
"And, rather than leaving, you'll be creating a shell of a different person around you. Not physically, like you would with a henge or genjutsu. This will be solely an internal change, and under it, you will still be you. But if anyone goes looking—they must find me. Your shell will have to feel like my chakra and my mind." He grimaces. "I'll be able to tell you when you feel like me, but I won't be able to help you get there."
It's very much not the way that Hatake-sensei prefers to operate, and she can feel his irritation at having to do so. Oddly enough, that makes Ino feel better.
"If I can't do it, I'll still have the chakra blade," Ino says pragmatically. "But theoretically, what you're talking about makes sense. If I can do this, I'll have three factors of recognition—chakra, blood, mind. Dad says those are the most important ones, other than the soul.
"And there's no way to truly mimic another soul," Hatake-sensei says. "That's right."
Ino tilts her head thoughtfully. "I think I've got a few ideas on where to start." She smiles faintly at him. "If I keel over or start turning blue, knock me out of my trance, okay, Hatake-sensei?"
"I'd rather you didn't do either of those things," he says frankly. "But of course."
Shifting a little—there's a pebble digging into her hip at just the wrong angle—Ino closes her eyes and begins the process of spinning down into the depths of her chakra, blind and deaf to the outside world and yet confident that she'd be fine.
Her sensei will make sure of it.
Now, to create a shell that feels like Hatake-sensei… where should I start?
Wham! Wham! Wham!
She pounds her fury out on the training dummies. Sakura doesn't know who she's angrier at—herself or Hatake-sensei.
Him for—
She doesn't even know. He'd told them. He'd warned them. Even Kakashi-sensei had been big on looking underneath the underneath and he'd even said that the most important part of them being able to escape was knowing, at all times, where the perimeter was and how far they were from it.
And then he'd taken them on an exercise that had required all of their attention and after it had demanded that they'd noticed more.
Except he hadn't because he'd said beforehand that they needed to pay attention to their surroundings.
Sakura grimly switches off, using her left hand instead of her right, and continues to try and work through her messy feelings about it.
He hadn't explicitly mentioned a quiz would be coming but he shouldn't have had to. They were genin of more than a year. Underneath the underneath in this case is so incredibly basic.
But she's still so angry.
At herself? It's the first time she's failed a lesson he's set her. It's the first time she's ever really felt like she's disappointed him, even though he hasn't said so, just given orders for them to correct the deficiency, which is smart of him, since it is important.
And they'd known that and then they hadn't remembered to think and then they'd—and it's an ugly cycle of impotent fury that's still easier than facing the fact that she wants to cry, really badly, and she couldn't even say what she'd be crying for.
"That's enough." Hatake-sensei's hand closes around her arm, stopping her mid-punch. It's only then that she even realizes he's approached—and that her arm is bleeding. She's managed to scrape it badly against the training dummy and hadn't even noticed.
With that realization comes the pain and Sakura jerks her arm away from him, embarrassed and even more furious. A couple of traitorous tears escape, and she hopes he'll mistake them for sweat, which also beads down her face.
I don't want him to think I'm a crybaby!
"You're finished with Ino already?" she asks, though she really has no idea how long she's been lost in her feelings. It comes out a bit like a snarl. She can't read Hatake-sensei's expression.
"I am," he says, his voice very neutral. "Care to tell me why you're busy injuring yourself instead of training?"
Before she even realizes what she's doing, Sakura takes a swing at him.
He catches her fist and sighs.
The weight of it hits her far worse than any words. Sakura lashes out, her kick aiming for a desperately rude place-
Which he avoids, naturally, and that only drives her emotions even more wild.
"Alright," Hatake-sensei says. "We'll do it this way. Come at me, Sakura."
She does.
There's no sense of time or thought or calculation brought into this fight. Sakura rails against him, not pulling her punches or her kicks. She only realizes he's taken her kunai pouches when she goes to fling one at him and finds they're gone, along with her shuriken.
She grabs a handful of dirt and flings it at his face, instead. She'd like to say it was a tactical choice but-
It isn't.
It is nothing thinking, just fury, and tears, and something at the bottom of it that tastes a lot like fear. She drives all from her mind until, like a faucet being turned off, she finds herself on her hands and knees breathing heavily and, to her horror, crying.
She is not an elegant crier. She is snotty and red and gross. The blood on her arms is drying into ugly red stains that colour the bruises blooming against her skin alarming shades of tangerine and blackcurrants. Her chest heaves and her shoulders shake and she is sure, so sure, that any time now he's going to throw up his hands and be done with her.
Ino's so much better than she is anyway. More useful. More—
"Sakura," he says, and she braces herself for the worst.
There's a long pause, agonizing against her nerves, and she still can't. stop. crying. She hates this, she hates this, because she's a proud shinobi of Konoha! She should be better than this! She shouldn't be this bad, she shouldn't have failed the stupid quiz, she should have done better at the game, she should have been able to keep Kakashi-sensei's interest, she should have been able to keep Sasuke in the village, she should have told Naruto that someone that puts their hand through you can't really love you, that it doesn't matter what sort of shit Sasuke's going through, she should have stopped them, stopped Shikamaru from taking that team of classmates and nearly dying, all of them, over a boy that didn't think they were good enough, because all of them are good enough—
All of them but her and now she's proven it and now she's just going to be tossed out again, unwanted, unteachable. Useless, stupid, ugly.
"Sakura," Hatake-sensei says, and she can see his feet, just to her side, and she tries not to. If he disappears maybe it will hurt less if she doesn't notice him now. When he touches her back, she flinches, but he leaves his hand there, warm and large. "Team Seven is lucky to have you."
She hadn't thought she'd had any dignity left to lose but now she bawls.
Hatake-sensei settles down next to her and wraps one arm around her in an awkward hug and says nothing else as she sobs and sobs and makes awful noises and finally, finally cries her heart out for every awful, terrible thing that's happened since she graduated.
In her heart of hearts, that's what she's wanted, needed, to hear the most.
Team Seven is lucky to have you.
That she matters.
Even at her worst.