A gentle breeze blew through the silent forest, rustling the fading leaves, burnished with the hues of autumn. There was no sound carried on that wind but the fairly mundane whisper of the leaves. A horrible stillness lay on the world. Then, so faint the average ear wouldn't, couldn't have detected it, the tinkling of a tiny silver bell. Three blurs of motion appeared almost out of thin air, diving for the upper branches of a huge gnarled oak.
"I'll surrouund her, you two get her!" Naruto cried. "Art of the Doppelganger!"
Sasuke smirked to himself. Foxboy used t hat one jutsu far too often. But it had its uses, especially in such a situation as this. She had gotten careless, and now every branch of every tree in a half-kilometre radius was festooned in Narutos – not insubstantial shadow clones, but flesh and blood opponents. Moving without prearranged signal, he and Sakura split up, moving around to circle her, with a few Narutos as back-up. They exploded onto one of the topmost branches, dead leaves puffing in clouds about them. She stood before the, her arms folded and an eyebrow raised almost in scorn. With a shout, Sasuke and Sakura began their attack, flinging shuriken as they launched themselves from chakra-enhanced feet.
With astonishing fluidity and rapidity, she performed a complex hand seal, calling out, "Art of Angel Flight!" With a blast of backdraft that scattered shuriken and a few white feathers, she launched herself on immense white wings effortlessly through the canopy. Sakura screamed and flung up her arms as Sasuke's shuriken, their flight now wonky and robbed of a target, whirled towards her. With an abrupt smack, the two genin collided, flying off the branch and plummeting, so suddenly they could barely think. Mid-air, Sasuke twisted like a cat, but still landing awkwardly and painfully on the litter below. Sakura's descent was halted by two strong hands grabbing her forearms, almost dislocating her shoulders in the process. Her breath jerked from her chest, she looked up, gasping, into the smiling faces of two Naruto clones. They carefully lowered her to the next branch and then vanished as Naruto ended the jutsu.
All three peered at the sky through the canopy, where she wheeled above them. Naruto squinted. "Since when does she have wings?" he grumbled, folding his arms and scowling.
Abruptly, she folded her wings and dove, flaring them again as abruptly to hover a few feet above the ground. "The exercise is over, girls," she drawled. "Good work. We'll head back towards Kakashi now."
Sullenly, the three genin trudged after her as she flapped lazily through the trees. When they reached the broad, flat meadow, she soared up, then came to rest crouched on the large rock beside everyone's favourite jounin, sprawled reading the ever-present Make-out Paradise, an alightment that would have been the very picture of grace and ease, if not for the fact that her foot slipped on the moss, making her scramble for a moment to remain upright. The wings glowed soft golden for a moment before disappearing, resolving themselves into two wing-shaped hair clips, caught up in the short blue hair.
Kakashi glanced up, his one visible eye indolent. "How did they do, Ginn?"
She shrugged, sunlight glinting off her glasses. "Fairly well, actually. Good reaction time on all their parts, good coördination and strategy. They managed to block off every escape route with a feasible amount of success – every route, of course, except the one I took."
Naruto harrumphed. "How were we supposed to know you could freakin' fly?"
Ginn stuck her tongue out at him and continued with her report. "A good shinobi could consider all possibilities. I'd like to see Sakura take more of a leadership role in the future, though." She touched her cheek, and they all noticed for the first time the thin line of red that marked it. "The Uchiha brat actually managed to nick me."
"You probably waited too long," Kakashi said, a slow smirk creeping across his face. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic."
Sasuke folded his arms and snorted and exasperation. "Master Kakashi, why are we doing this? This is the first test you gave us! Aren't we beyond this by now?"
"One question, Uchiha" Ginn replied instead. "Did you get the bell?"
Sasuke looked furious, and Naruto snickered. Kakashi smiled. "That's enough for one morning. Eat your lunches."
The genin gathered in a quiet, sullen group across the meadow, shooting occasional looks at the pair perched on the rock, talking quietly with each other. Naruto remembered perfectly the day the shinobi Ginn had shown up. It was during a training exercise seven days ago, and as he had been creeping towards Sasuke's entrenchment, that blue head had popped out of the leaves and nearly gave him heart failure. Kakashi had barely blinked when she had followed the freaking-out Naruto back to home base. Since then, she had taken over a good deal of the their training.
"That woman has it out for me," Sasuke growled. "It's like the very thought of my existence disgusts her."
"She's not that bad," Sakura piped up, swallowed her rice. "She's really been helping me out this past week." Naruto almost snorked his rice, and Sakura glared at him as Sasuke pounded him on the back, concealing a smile of his own. "Well excuuse me for finally having a female shinobi I can look up to!" she retorted huffily. Then a smile crossed her face. "Ya gotta admit, though, that angel jutsu was pretty cool."
Across the clearing, the jounin kept half an eye on their charges as they ate. Their speech was strangely formal, as it had been since Ginn had arrived, a stiffness both noticed but no one else, a stiffness both resented but could do nothing to change.
Kakashi swallowed and set down his chopsticks. "Impressive bit of ninjutsu there. A variation on the henge no jutsu?"
Ginn nodded. "A little trick I picked up in Lightning Country." One hand crept towards the angel clips. "They're not just for decoration."
"I, uh, noticed them," Kakashi said, glancing up at them and then down at her face before looking quickly away again. "Pretty."
"Me or the clips?" Ginn asked lightly, jokingly.
Kakashi didn't reply, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence. Ginn was about to open her mouth to crack an apologetic joke, when Kakshi muttered, "Both." Then he bounced to his feet and called across to the genin. "All right, slackers, on your feet!"
Ginn's grin was hidden in the clamour of groans and barely muffled protests that followed.
The sun was staining the western sky red that evening as the day's training ended. The two girls had disappeared into the woods for a short talk, leaving the boys alone in the clearing. Sasuke sat cross-legged on the ground, frowning as he concentrated on something, with Naruto sprawled beside him, quietly whingeing to himself as he massaged aching feet. Kakashi lounged in his normal indolent idiom, Make-out Paradise firmly clutched in one hand.
There was a faint rustling sound, and a moment later Sakura and Ginn reentered the clearing. Clearly exhausted, the genin flopped to the ground beside her cellmates, a study in contrasts to Ginn – taller, more flamboyant, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy and good cheer. She bounded over to Kakashi, landing in a frog-like crouch beside him, avoiding the slippery moss. With a swift dart of her arm, she yoinked the dirty novel, holding it above her head delicately in two fingers as if it smelt bad.
"Really, Kakashi-kun, you haven't grown out of these things yet?" she demanded, wrinkling her nose.
He smirked, not making a move to reclaim it. "You haven't called me that in a while."
Three jaws hit the turf in admirable synchronization. The genin stared. No one touched the book and lived. They didn't know any shinobi brave or stupid enough even to try.
"Did she . . ." Naruto asked.
"Yup." Sasuke replied.
"And he didn't . . ."
"Nope."
"Is she . . ."
"Probably."
Naruto shook his head in amazement. "Sakura, you grab the sackcloth and I'll get the ashes."
Grey twilight settled over Konoha some days later, bright stars twinkling above, some obscured by dark clouds passing before them. The gibbous moon hung, shrouded and cushioned in cloud, over the sleeping shinobi village, sending faint light down from the heavens.
Kakashi came awake suddenly, silently, as the door to his room was slid aside. Long habit and longer trained kept his breathing low and regular, his eyes still closed, appearing for all intents and purposes to be deep in slumber. A faint displacement of air told him the intruder was moving. The whisper of silk a moment later confirmed it and pinpointed their location for him. He tensed slowly to spring.
"I know you're awake, Kakashi-kun," Ginn's voice came lightly as a weight settled on the end of his futon.
Kakashi relaxed and opened his eyes as he sat up. Ginn knelt on the edge of the mattress, dressed unusually in a silk kimono, loosely tied at the back. The moonlight poured through the window, catching and highlighting her unusual silver eyes as she gazed at the other jounin, his hair more rumpled than usual and the sharingan eye swirling lazily just below the surface. Ginn had another witty remark lined up, but Kakashi's laconic gaze made her tongue stutter and fall silent.
"Ginn." Her name was little more that a low vibration in his throat. "I suppose there's a reason for disturbing my beauty rest, ne?" he murmured, smirking. The remark revived and ancient running injoke; the proper response at this juncture would be, 'Kami knows you need it,' but Ginn hadn't come to banter.
"Seems like you're getting plenty."
His eyebrow twitched skyward at the break in tradition. "You've gotten more than seems fair in Lightning Country."
Ginn huffed. "Kakashi-kun, what are we doing, dancing around each other like fools? Things weren't like this between us when I left."
"It has been seven years," Kakashi reminded her gently. "I was afraid things would change."
"Change?" she demanded. "What do you take me for, some flighty noblewoman?" Her expression fell abruptly. "Unless . . . things have changed in Konoha, and then I'm the only fool."
Kakashi shook his head quickly, straightening. "No. Never. I swear to you," he said, his voice low and emphatic.
Ginn grinned wolfishly. "Then where's the problem here?" Her hands went to the neck of her shift and Kakashi's eyes were drawn inexorably along with them. With a dramatic tug, the silk fell away, revealing absolutely nothing underneath. Ginn leaned forward, her silver eyes predatory and gleaming. Kakashi swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.
"Ginn . . ."
"Shut up and strip." FIN
