Midsummer Chapter 2: The immanence of water balloons, a naruto fanfic

MIDSUMMER
ii: Breaking habits, and the immanence of water balloons

- no spoilers, if you know the basic characters and their basic background stories. Naruto and all characters from the Naruverse belong to Kishimoto Masashi, whose crazy mind I wish I owned, effectively making the characters mine. Sadly, nothing here but several pets and my laptop.

- this contains implied yaoi, which means two guys paired up with each other. While there isn't any overt action, the implications are clear, and are intended, to make the story work. Please do us both a favor and NOT read if you're squeamish with this.

.These were for luck, the way
you'd keep stray change in your pocket
jingle-jangling--
- Cathy Candano, "The Most Beautiful Boy I Touched Ran Away from Me"

It was late afternoon, and the lone child-figure was seated as still as the rock he perched on.

The view from the Niidaime's head at sunset played tricks on the eyes, if only for a few minutes before the sun dipped further below the peaks. At sunset, the village looked like it was on fire, as leaves and brightly-colored festive banners fluttered in the late afternoon breeze.

Below him, the village bustle slowed down in concert with the waning day. Genin teams began finishing up their assigned tasks, some sweeping the fairgrounds clean of litter, others erecting the final posts to new booths, testing props to see if they were indeed sturdy.

It had been three weeks since the recovery of the Wind Country's maps, maps which led to several hidden contingency bases scattered all over the country. It even revealed off-country bases, well-concealed safehouses in other regions and other countries, extending to as far North as Motawa Province in the Lighting Country, and as far East as Nagi Island near the Water Country.

The Kazekage certainly knew how to plan ahead.

Kakashi never really knew how extremely vital the scrolls he carried home were. Granted, every item to be recovered in a mission is extremely important, but on the whole, the acquisition of the Kinryouku Project's main blueprints allowed Konoha to take careful measures in dealing with the latent threat.

It had been almost four weeks since he had returned, all the worse for wear, and still he was disallowed from participating in active field missions. They did not quite understand him when he argued that it was all just a matter of fatigue and dehydration. The pleasant blonde jounin in particular, curse the man, gently but firmly refused his reentry to the team.

"Not yet, Hatake-kun," he would say, blue eyes acquiring an authoritative sheen despite the benevolent smile.

He was allowed to go home though, five days after he had been admitted to the hospital. He was thankful to have missed the service for his team; he hadn't known the three nin well enough to attend their last rites, and showing up would only make it more awkward, especially since he was the only one who had accomplished the mission, the only one who made it through alive.

When he thought about it, he never really knew any other nin long enough to want to attend their last rites. He had been assigned to so many teams since he had graduated from the Academy that he had begun to lose count. He had forgotten all the missions he had gone on, save the ones from whence he'd return home to a stern Sakumo-sama, silently sipping tea in the meditation room.

Now he sat, shaded by the looming head of the Sandaime jutting out from the rock wall beside him. Below him, street lanterns lit up like so many glowworms, and the fairgrounds emptied, ready for the Summer Solstice festival to be held in three days. He knew merely by smelling the air that the evening watch had taken its shift, felt it in his bones like the synchronous turn of cogs.

How many times had he been assigned guard watch? He did not keep track.

Yet here he sat, everyday since he was well enough to climb the steeping trail up the Niidaime, watching the far horizon for the gray messenger falcons his father liked using. Not being called for a mission made him restless, and he didn't know what else to do with his time. He certainly did not want to train with anyone else.

Everyday he counted a dozen or so of the carrier birds that flew into the village, but none of them belonged to the White Fang. Everyday he would stand up, right when dusk cast its velveteen glow over the mountainside, and retrace his steps slowly back to the village, vigil for the day ended.

He would return to a quiet house, dark and unoccupied, and he would fix himself a meager dinner. After dinner it would be tea in the meditation room, where the row of eerie ANBU masks stared down at him from the wall, the red-faced tenggu one conspicuously missing in its peg.

Sometimes he sat in the rooftop, swinging his legs unconsciously (the only indication of his young age) as he mentally analyzed the weather patterns for the night. He would listen for the sound of birdcall, imaging it shattering the warm buzz of summer evening.

This he did like clockwork, without fail and without interruption, in the way he was taught by his father.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He watched them as they played in the dusty yard of the Academy, screaming their childish joy for all the world to hear. The noontime sun was climbing the sky, and the children only had a few precious minutes left before recess was over.

"This is my jutsu! Kyaaa!"

They had drawn a line in sand across the yard, each claiming territory. Makeshift flags crudely whipped in the wind, cloth belts emblazoned in crayon with the crest of Konoha and the disproportionate picture of what looked to be an hourglass.

At first it had been a clean division. They all ducked behind shuriken posts and low training bars, throwing their weighty water balloons at their classmates from the other team who dared approach the marker.

But the thin line in the ground had since blown away with the wind, and the children, now "ronin", forgot their "posts" and pelted each and every one of their classmates as they could.

"You Mist ninja are no match for us! Take this!"

"Oi stop that! We're in the same team!"

"You're not a Mist ninja, you're a Sand ninja, can't you tell?"

He found such play annoying, loud, and pointless.

If they really wanted to be serious about it, they could have trained with actual blunt kunai instead, he thought. If indeed the point was to practice sniping, they should have kept their stealth, instead of screaming their attacks out loud. In the absence of a line marker, a good shinobi would have taken the initiative to divide his troops equally,

"so that one may hold the fort while the rest may press forward and conquer. Do you understand, Kakashi?"

They were very loud, in fact, that they had disrupted his solitary training. Their gleeful shouts reverberated in the grove where he sparred with his clone, attempting to be faster than the bunshin (it was, he discovered, like attempting to be faster than one's own reflection).

"GET HIM! Get him, Iruka!"

"This is my most powerful jutsu!"

He had followed their noise until he got to the edge of the yard, eyes narrowed in distaste as he surveyed the scene. This was a break from his schedule, this was a disturbance, this was the worst form of undisciplined behavior unbecoming of shinobi.

No wonder they all stay for such a long time in the Academy, he thought disdainfully.

What annoyed him most was that he had been standing in his place for the past five minutes, assessing them with eyes too used to assessing the environment for the best position to kill.

Surely he wasn't envious.

Kakashi frowned.

Stop that nonsense.

"Oi, Anko! Over here, over here! Throw these!"

Someone dashed off to the watery battlefield with an armful of balloons, leaving the garden faucet running. Cold water gushed freely from the spout, its puddle a dark splotch on the dusty ground.

Kakashi sniffed in annoyance. Such children, these were.

Playing around, wasting village resources when they could be training instead.

He walked over to the faucet, and turned the tap off. He watched as the flow lessened to a couple of drops slipping along the lip of the faucet, joining the puddle on the ground. A thin streak slowly seeped into the dusty footpath.

"OI!"

He felt, rather than saw, the chakra-guided missile aim straight for the back of his head, and without turning, instinctively brought up a hand over his shoulder to stop its course. The soft, water-heavy projectile landed squarely in the middle of his palm, and he felt the liquid inside splish against the stretched skin of the balloon.

"Woah."

Kakashi only snorted in response, and made to walk away. If one's assailant was amazed rather than furious at one's evasion of an attack, such an assailant was not worthy to be faced in combat.

"Hey, you Suna or Konoha?" his young attacker called out to him from behind. Kakashi smirked at the irony, paid it no heed, and continued on away from the grounds.

"Oi! That was a pretty cool catch though. What's your name?"

He turned, quite ready to let loose a scathing remark (chakra-propelled and more explosive than water) about wasting one's time and being a mediocre shinobi. The remark died in his tongue though, the moment he recognized the smiling, scarred little boy from the riverbank.

Who grinned all the wider at the perplexed look on his face. The boy drew closer, even as all Kakashi could do was stare at the beading water dripping from the other's damp ponytail.

"Hey, I don't remember seeing you around here. You must be in Daikoku-sensei's class. He teaches more than one, that I know of. Well, if you're not, at least be happy you're not in mine. Daikoku-sensei is nice and funny. Nara-sensei is one mean guy! He always calls me 'troublesome'. But I'm not troublesome!" The boy made a face, before breaking into laughter.

Kakashi could only blink in a speechless mix of confusion and surprise.

"Anyway," the boy continued, "you can't be Suna. You're too cool to be Suna! Definitely Konoha. Hey, you could be point man. Our point man's clumsy, and he keeps on getting hit. Oh! I almost forgot! Say do you—"

A gong sounded somewhere within the Academy building, signaling the end of recess. The wet playground fighters uttered a collective groan, tossing the last of their water balloons half-heartedly at each other.

"Awww cripes!" The scarred boy looked over his shoulder and grimaced. "That was barely what you could call recess!" He turned to Kakashi, eyes bright. "I have to go now. But I'll see you around, okay? Will I see you around? Good. Bye!"

And before Kakashi could even open his mouth to speak, the boy had run off to join the line of trudging, wet and bedraggled students, cutting himself off just as suddenly as he had spoken.

"Umino, did you start all of this, you troublesome kid?"

"I did not, Nara-sensei, Anko did!"

"Water balloons… it's got you written all over it!"

He watched them as they streamed into the hallway of the Academy, a buzzing, bustling lot, yelling uncontrollably about such trivial things as lousy homework and scraped knees and the amazing waterballoon-no-jutsu.

The last of them filed inside, leaving the practice yard like a long-forgotten battlefield: some ripped balloon skins strewn along the grass, the makeshift standards of both sides bereft of their crayon-smeared 'banners'. Soon their very annoyed Nara-sensei would make the class do clean-up after lessons.

The ground was still splotchy in some parts where a balloon burst its contents against an unsuspecting head. Soon it would evaporate in the summer heat, and there would be no trace of a water fight.

This part of the countryside would be quiet again; the world (his world) could resume its placid turning, and he could return to his waiting bunshin in the grove, and he would train, as he always did, until the early bell rang in the mid-afternoon. Then he would take the trail up the Hokage Monument, and he would start his four-hour vigil.

And yet Kakashi stood, at the edge of the field that was quickly drying in the sun, in the aftermath of a friendly battle he had never partaken of, outside of his missions, outside of his intense assassination trainings.

He was thinking of the summer-eyed boy, who had not too long ago run away from him by the mouth of Catfish Bend. In his hand, heavy as the words he wanted to say, was the water balloon.

Kakashi didn't understand the giddiness that started to seep and spread inside him, as surely and as slowly as puddles on the dry ground. He did not understand, but he thought he liked it, although he could not quite explain why.

It was a bad thing, he remembered, if one could not explain what was going on in one's self. His bunshin, still and waiting in front of him, stared back with owlish eyes to remind him of that fact.

Suddenly aggravated at the watchful intrusion, he flipped a dagger-kunai at the clone, too quickly for the latter to block. It disappeared with a bamph, leaving him alone in the grove, two hours before the early bell was supposed to ring.

Later, Kakashi ate a light dinner and spent the night outdoors, staring at the object in his hands as if, by doing so, it would explain something, as if it would speak in the scarred boy's bright voice.

After some time he reluctantly put it away, tucked carefully in the second level of his small scroll shelf, like a charm.

He did not have tea that night.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was the strangest, most vivid dream he'd cared to remember. Of course, he had flashbacks after particular missions, it was quite normal: strangling the Suna kid after Operation Kinryouku; catching the off-village thief in the second round of night watch; receiving summons from the Sandaime himself; his father's look of approval after he mastered a technique.

He never dreamt of things that didn't make sense. To an extent, his inborn discipline forbade him to. Didn't his father teach him to reason all things out?

Yet he stood, under the heat of the sun, guarding a training bar strung across with ripe water balloons. Not a cloud dotted the sky, and from time to time, bird-headed jounin would circle overhead, waiting for a chance to take one of the water-heavy things.

His clone stood at attention nearby, repeating the names of his father's falcons in a sharp monotone, doing nothing to fend off the jounin-birds.

Across the field, he thought he saw the scarred boy running from the Academy entrance, shouting excitedly and waving for him to come. Under one arm was a basket (in the impossible way dreams always had, he knew the boy was there to gather the ripening water balloons), and his scroll pouch bounced against his hip.

Kakashi strained to listen to what the boy said, but the cacophony of the birds screeching in the sky and his clone's dull, incessant recitation drowned out the words.

He opened his eyes and realized that it was morning, the sun was shining through the slats in his room, and that he had been asleep far longer than he should have.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He found himself standing inside the lobby of the Academy the same time the next day. He had been standing stiffly against the doorway, ignoring the nervous looks the chuunin receptionist cast his way.

Above him, through the thin wooden floor panels, he could hear the faintest chorus of children's voices repeating the names of several very basic jutsu. He had listened intently, wondering if he could make out the scarred boy's voice, if the scarred boy was there. Perhaps he was in another classroom down the hall; perhaps they had gone out for the day, as outdoor sessions were common especially if the weather was good.

But then why was he listening for the scarred boy again?

He listened intently. Annoyance would flash through his face the moment something rustled, or trudging steps dragged through the floor, or when a passing teacher sneezed. He glared at several schoolchildren who ran down the hallway, recognizing several as his ex-classmates.

"Stop that nonsense," he growled under his breath.

He made the chuunin receptionist very, very nervous.

The blonde jounin knew this the moment he descended the stairs, and laughingly patted the poor man on the back before walking towards Kakashi.

"They're learning the properties of basic jutsu," he said softly, smiling amusedly as the boy started, and quickly, stiffly, bowed. "How 'henge' is different from 'kawarimi', for example. Daikoku-sensei is making them say it out loud."

There was a twinkle in the blue eyes that told Kakashi the older man probably knew what he was thinking. He quickly looked down, resenting the heat that surfaced in his face. "Indeed. They should spend more time doing the seals."

The blonde jounin hid a smile. "Of course, Hatake-kun. And thank you for coming, by the way." He carefully handed over a stuffed file folder with an apologetic look. "Unfinished paperwork regarding your mission. It's been processed by the Hunter Nin who found your team, the medic team examining their wounds, and the intelligence team who gave out the mission."

He looked up then, embarrassment forgotten. "So I, surviving member of the team, ought to finish the details." He nodded curtly, receiving the folder, and briefly looked through the pages.

"I must tell you, jounin-sensei, I only knew them in the context of the mission."

"Understood, Hatake-kun. But that is all in order."

Across the room, the chuunin receptionist watched in amazement as the child, younger than most graduates of the Academy, critically eyed the information sheet that only chuunin-level shinobi (like himself) handled. Most of the children his age waded through basic textbooks.

"When do you need it, jounin-sensei?" he asked, not looking up. He vaguely resented the other man for seemingly guessing right through him.

The blonde jounin didn't seem to mind. "Whenever you can, Hatake-kun, whenever you can."

"Tomorrow then, jounin-sensei," came the brusque response.

At that, the jounin laughed out loud. "Oh no, no Hatake-kun. There is no rush. How about…after the festival? After the Summer Solstice festival? How's that?"

For the life of him, he could not understand why the blonde jounin wanted to prolong such simple, tedious work. However something in the back of his head agreed to this, as if it were a foretelling, and he found himself nodding and saying yes.

"Good. Please just drop it over at the Mission Desk in the afternoons, Hatake-kun. Nara-sensei will receive them for me."

He didn't like the blonde jounin's amused, knowing look. So he tucked the folder under his arm, bowed formally as was fitting his rank, and turned to go.

Upstairs in the second floor, in the classroom down the hallway, the scarred little boy sitting in the front row sneezed violently several times, and his teacher took the opportunity to scold him for playing water games in the hottest time of the day, and not even bringing a spare shirt.

Author's Notes:

(1) Kinryouku literally means "reserve" as in animal reserve and such. I had the strange, crazy image of raccoons hiding in the hollows of a thick Konoha tree trunk. Rabid things. Homicidal rabid things.

(2) Cameo/ mention of Mitarashi Anko. This one will go a tad bit slow, but then I intend to dwell on the situations and let the plot move at its own pace. Screw it, Kishimoto-sensei, give Yondy a name already!

(3) Several people recommended I keep Midsummer a oneshot; several more suggested I continue it. I've found some sort of compromise, which works very well with me. I shall write each chapter as a oneshot; to that extent, one may read this, and the succeeding chapters (my muse be blessed ) as a series of oneshots dealing with the common theme of KakaIru and summer. Yet the fact that they are under the same title implies their being connectivity as chapters nonetheless, and I've made it so that each chapter more or less alludes to an event in a previous chapter. So it's a not-so-oneshot(s)-sort-of-chaptered story. I'll need Ebisu to make a chart out of this...

Inspired by the imagery of Cathy Candano's poem, "The Most Beautiful Boy...", published in the school folio, No.1 vol. 52, pgs 7-8. Once again, comments, suggestions, and thoughts are very welcome. Please leave a note if this was okay.