The two of them stood outside of the Hokage's office as they waited for whoever she was in there with to finish up.
Karan was leaning against the wall focusing on ignoring the persistent throbbing coming from her mark. Someone was not too happy about missing so many consecutive days of training. That or he was trying to get away from whatever he was dealing with back in Kandrakar.
Suddenly the door opened and out came three familiar Jonin.
"Kakashi!" Guy shouted. It seemed like he only had one volume setting.
"Yo." Kakashi said not looking up from his book.
"I challenge you…" Guy started.
"I have to report to Lady Tsunade and do paperwork." He said quickly.
"He just got off a mission Guy." Asuma said.
"You're right! Oh hello Karan." Guy said.
"Hi." Karan said awkwardly.
"Is that… It is!" He shouted as he saw the headband around her neck. "You are Shinobi of Konoha! A comrade…!"
"Oh look it's our turn. Really shouldn't keep the Hokage waiting." Kakashi said.
"Yeah, wouldn't want to make her angry." Karan said shunshining out of Guy's way and following Kakashi in. "Nice see you."
With that they closed the door and stood in front of Tsunade's desk waiting for her to finish whatever she was working on before she looked at them.
"Karan, Kakashi. I received your preliminary report." Tsunade said. "Two Akatsuki roaming around the land of fire. Hunting bounties and performing ritual sacrifices. I'm planning on assembling all our forces and hunting them down. They won't get to Naruto. And in the meantime you need to focus on helping Naruto master his new jutsu."
"Hai." Kakashi said.
"There's also a few more things we need to go over. Karan you're dismissed." Tsunade said.
"Hai." Karan said before leaving and closing the door behind.
Once they were alone…
"How did the mission go with her? Any problems?" Tsunade said.
"None at all." Kakashi said.
"And her skills?" she inquired.
"She's… observant. Thinks fast. She can use space time ninjustsu." He said.
"Like the Fourth?" Tsunade asked.
"It's different. The shunshin no jutsu is second nature to her. I haven't seen anyone use it so easily since Uchiha Shisui." Kakashi said.
"And her Sharingan?" Tsunade asked.
"She didn't use it much. From what I saw from our first encounter with her and her brother it was fully developed." He said.
"How does she fit in with the rest of the team?" Tsunade asked.
"She hasn't really interacted much with Sakura or Sai. Yamato has been there when she helped train Naruto it was… cordial. And with Naruto she helped him or well her summons did." Kakashi said.
"Well keep an eye on her. Danzo's been a bit too quiet for my liking." Tsunade said.
"Hai." Kakashi said understanding what she meant.
Meanwhile…
Karan left the Hokage's office and made her way to her apartment. She was exhausted but it was still early in the day and didn't plan on wasting a minute of it. She got to her apartment and showered, ate a light meal, and cleaned up before heading to the library.
Once there she proceeded to pick up where she left off and looked up everything on stones but there was nothing.
'Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong.' She thought with a sigh. 'The first stone took us to Kandrakar… another world with dragons which are considered a myth. So are stones that send you to other worlds."
All myths and legends have a bit of truth in them whether it be the lesson or the story
'Well not like I have anything left to lose.' She thought. Karan got up and put away all of her books before deciding to start searching through the lithology section looking up anything on dragons and choosing to check out a very old leather bound text that stuck out from all of the other newer texts probably published for entertainment purposes.
It was around noon and Karan had an big craving for tea and dango so she took the book and went to read at the tea shop.
But it had been a long time since she had lived amongst so many people and she had forgotten how much people liked to gossip and in a village of ninja, a new shinobi from outside the village joining their ranks was something to be talked about. A lot.
So while she was enjoying her tea and dango, it was uncomfortable to feel everyone's eyes on her or their not so quiet comments pointing her out to others. Karan put down money for her food and headed out.
She had the map of Konoha and looked at all the training grounds marked. All of the ones that were close seemed to be pretty small. If she was going to bring out Sora it would be better if there was plenty of room and where hopefully no one would bother them. Then her eyes fell to the one next to an abandoned district.
'Good enough.' She thought putting the map away and shunshining to the training grounds on the far side of the village.
The training ground was in a forest which reminded her of home where she used to train. She looked around and saw an obstacle course of sorts set up throughout the forest and then she stumbled onto a strange clearing among the trees. There was a huge rock right in the center and around the trees there were targets set up. She walked around the rock and noticed another target hidden behind it.
"Hm." Karan said looking around counting the targets. She jumped up on the rock.
'I can more or less see most of the targets.' She thought before deciding to activate her Sharingan remembering having seen Itachi do something similar once. 'I can see all of them except the one in the blind spot.'
Karan smirked before jumping up as high as she could and flipping over and starting to throw kunai deflecting a flew in mid air to hit the targets before flipping to land on her feet on the ground in front of the rock. She looked around and noticed that while she had hit most of the targets they weren't exactly at the center and she barely hit the target in her blindspot as it only stuck in the edge.
'I really have been slacking off.' Karan thought as she made her way around picking up the knives and tried again.
By the third try she was hitting them all exactly at the center. Just as she was about to go for a fourth try to make sure it wasn't just a fluke when her mark started throbbing.
"Ah." Karan sighed taking a bite out of thumb when she felt something coming her way. She quickly jumped out of the way landing on the rock as two Anbu appeared in front of her. "I'm training here but I'm sure there's another ground close by you can use."
"We're not here to train." One of them said.
"Message from the Hokage?" Karan asked keeping a close eye on them in case they made a move.
"No." The other said.
"All right then." She said activating her Sharingan. "You sure about this?"
They both drew their tantos and lunged at her. Karan quickly moved blocking their swords with her kunai as she tried to hold them back. She sped up sending the Anbu on the defensive before throwing a kunai with a flash bomb on it.
"What the… where'd she go?" One of them said.
"Give me a minute." One of them said trying to sense where was. "She's…"
"Earth style: Head Hunter." Karan said trapping the other one underground.
"Ah!" He yelped as he was trapped before Karan shunshined out of sight.
"Shit. Get me out…" The one that was trapped said.
"Wait." He said as he tried to sense where she was before she felt her right behind him. He turned swinging his sword to slash at her but her red eyes trapped him in a genjutsu just as Kakashi moved in to block his sword with a kunai.
"Stop." Karan said and the Anbu froze in his place, putting no more force against Kakashi.
"Run into trouble?" Kakashi asked finally stepping back when Karan did.
"More like trouble's been following me all day." Karan said as Kakashi looked around and then eyed her up and down trying to see if they had landed any hits.
"Danzo?" He asked already knowing the answer.
"Yeah." She said walking to the one that was trapped in the ground and crouching down. "Give him a message for me, Tell him to stay away and we won't have any problems."
With that she tapped the back of his head and knocked him out.
"I think it might be better if you train with us instead of alone for a while." Kakashi said.
"Starting to see that." Karan said as she picked up her things and started heading out walking past the Anbu still frozen in place.
"Aren't you going to…" Kakashi asked as he started at the man frozen in place.
"No… someone will come looking for them… eventually." Karan said as she kept walking. Kakashi was still looking at the man frozen in mid swing before looking at Karan. She didn't show an ounce of hesitation, even with the blade mere inches from slicing her head off. He left them there and followed after her as they made it to the training field where Naruto was making progress of cutting the leaf.
"Karan! About time you got here! Look I finally did it! Dattebayo." Naruto said showing her a half torn leaf.
"That's great Naruto." Karan said giving him a small smile and ruffling his hair affectionately.
"Are you okay?" Naruto said noticing the dirt on her clothes.
"Oh yeah, just got a bit carried away with my warm up." Karan said as her arm started pulsing. "I think someone's getting impatient."
She quickly bit her finger and summoned the white and blue scaled dragon.
"You're late." He said with his arms crossed.
"Sorry, lost track of time." Karan said.
"Look what I managed to do!" Naruto cheered.
"Huh… not bad for a pipsqueak." Sora with a smirk. "Karan let's pick up where we left off."
"Yeah." Karan said following after him knowing just by the tone of his voice he was going to make her pay for keeping him waiting. They went at it again going as fast as they could not pulling any of their punches.
They got so wrapped up in what they were doing they didn't even notice. The number of times Naruto almost lost control.
That is until Sora tried to surprise Karan attacking using his tail. Karan saw it coming but couldn't dodge it so she changed the position of her feet and instead got launched up in the air and landed in a crouch in front of one of Naruto's clones panting.
"Giving up already?" Sora taunted.
"Not even close." Karan said panting.
"Aghr…" One of the Naruto's groaned.
"You okay?" She asked cautiously before she saw the red chakra cloak and his eyes change.
"Karan!" Kakashi called out.
Karan activated her sharingan and put him in a genjutsu. Suddenly they weren't in the field anymore they were in a cave of some sort. The floor was wet. And there was a cage but a strange red bubbling mass shaped like a fox chuckled menacingly.
"Ah another Uchiha…" It muttered.
"Guessing you're the Kyubi." Karan said noticing the seal on the cage. "I'm not exactly sure how you and Naruto get along but he's in the middle of training so get back in your cage."
"And why would I listen you you?" The Kyubi said.
"I wasn't asking." Karan said before flicking her finger on his nose making the bubbling mass pop and then she was back in the field. The cloak around Naruto dissipated and he fell forward. "Woah." Karan said quickly holding him up. "I think it might be time for a break."
"Uhuh." Naruto mumbled as he knocked out.
"Is he all right?" Yamato asked coming over.
"He's okay." Karan said gently handing him over. "Tired, nothing nap can't fix."
Karan deactivated her Sharingan and started feeling a bit light headed but shaking it off.
"Where were we?" Karan asked Sora.
"How about we add ninjutsu to the mix?" He said.
"I'm going to feel this tomorrow." Karan said reactivating her Sharingan as they went back at it.
Hours Later…
"Okay… that's… enough…" Sora said panting.
"Yeah…" Karan said panting while she was on the ground, her sharingan deactivating because she was out of chakra to sustain it.
"Don't keep me waiting tomorrow." Sora said before disappearing.
"Not even going to help me up… that's nice." Karan said getting up with a groan as she felt pain in her ribs from one of the hits Sora managed to make. Using the remaining bits of her chakra to focus the energy on her hand and healed her ribs just enough so it wouldn't hurt when she walked home.
She stood up and checked on Naruto who was still knocked out.
"I'm heading out. See you tomorrow." Karan said waving at the two jonin.
"I'll go with you. I need to pick up dinner." Kakashi said.
Karan and Kakashi walked in silence. He kept reading while Karan made a mental checklist of things she needed to improve on based on her training that day.
While Kakashi was keeping a close eye on her, not completely sure she could make it home on her own and if she got ambushed again it would not end well. He also couldn't forget about how she managed to hold back the Kyubi from taking over Naruto.
"Think you over did it today." Kakashi lightly commented.
"I've been slacking off." She said. "I'm used to being on the battlefield, fighting almost constantly or training to prepare for battle because it could happen at any moment but the only thing I've done the past couple of months is run around chasing leads."
"Must've been a lot of running." Kakashi quipped.
"Hm…" Karan said with a shrug. "You think Danzo's going to try something again."
"Why do you think that?" Kakashi asked looking away from his book to her for the first time since they left the field.
"The two he sent… one was a sensor and the other a close range fighter. They weren't meant to take me out. It was a test. He wanted to see what I would do." Karan said.
"Sounds right." He said.
"Hm…" Karan said deep in thought. They were quiet the rest of the way back both deep in thought.
Kakashi was trying to figure out his newest team member… trying to look past the fact that she looked exactly like his deceased former teammate. She came to Konoha willingly knowing her life was in danger there. She had been nothing but honest from the beginning. She's helpful and logical. Extremely perceptive. She didn't hesitate to stand in front of Naruto as he started losing control and she didn't flinch when there was a sword inches away from hitting her. She never acted without a reason.
Karan was just thinking about what biding her time. She had no leads to go on and all she could do was wait. She could train. Do research and help make sure Madara didn't get to Naruto… and then there was her brother Kaien who would stop at nothing and would do whatever it took if he thought it would get him his son back. No matter what the cost.
"Guess I'll see you tomorrow." Karan said as they got to the street she lived on.
"Yeah." Kakashi said.
A Week Later…
Karan made her way up to her apartment ready to go to sleep right away but forcing herself into the shower to wash off the day. Then she ate a light dinner while she read whatever book she picked out from the library the day before.
And that's why the following morning she woke up in her bed still holding the book.
"Uh…" Karan groaned getting up and stretching. She started the kettle like she did every morning. She prepared breakfast and left to the training field.
It was a pretty uneventful walk and as far as she could tell no one was watching her anymore… or if they were really good at hiding their presence.
When Karan got there Naruto and ten of his clones were working on cutting the waterfall in half. With his large chakra reserves he could handle it.
Greeted everyone just as her mark started pulsing. She summoned Sora who crashed down on the ground exhausted.
"uh Midori is so annoying." Sora groaned.
"What happened?" Karan asked.
"Well Kaien hasn't summoned her no matter how much she calls him to try and talk some sense into him and since she can't rant to him she's ranting to everyone else." Sora said.
"She's probably better off not getting summoned." Karan said. "Means she won't be helping Kaien or Madara. And it's not like yelling at Kaien will do any good."
"So what are we going to do about him?" Sora asked.
"hm…" Karan said closing her eyes, ignoring his question and meditating.
"Karan." Sora asked but she was ignoring him completely making him sigh. He shrunk down and then jumped on his sister's shoulder and curling around her neck for a nap. They stayed like that for a while until…
"Dynamic entry!" Guy shouted as he crashed into the field. "Kakashi! I challenge you to a sparring match."
"Uh how about something else." Kakashi said. "My turn to choose isn't it?"
"You're right! So what shall it be? A race to the village and back?" Guy said.
"How about a quiet contest? See who can shut up the longest" Sora said and Karan reached up with her eyes still closed to flick Sora's ear to get him to behave. "Ow."
"Be nice." Karan said completely zoned out for the tree challenge that followed until…
"Karan, Yamato you should come too!" Guy cheered.
"Huh?" Karan said confused as to what she had missed out.
"We're all going out tonight for dinner and drinks! Kurenai, Asuma… some other jonin." Guy said.
"Oh, thank you for the invitation but I'm going to have to pass. I have research to do." Karan said.
"If Naruto's training so do I." Yamato said.
"But friends it is important in this springtime of youth to enjoy time with our comrades while we still have time…" Guy said.
"Another time." Karan said with a polite smile.
"Well if you three change your mind… we'll be at the barbecue place before we hit the bar." Guy said before leaving. As soon as he was out of earshot Sora smacked Karan on the back of her head with his tail.
"Ow what was that for?" Karan asked rubbing the back of her head.
"Would it kill you to have a bit of fun?" Sora said jumping off her shoulder and shifting to a bigger size.
"I have things to do." Karan said.
"When was the last time you did something that wasn't training, plan a mission, recon, fight, research or you know do something for you instead of someone else?" Sora said.
"Last night?" Karan said.
"Not counting sleeping." He said.
"Uh…Atherath?" Karan said thinking back.
"You mean when we survived the battle we were all sure we were going to die in and we got drunk because there wasn't any water and all we had was ale?" Sora asked. "That was eight years ago."
"We're kind of in the middle of something." Karan said. "You know, the worst person alive killing people to release a monster into the world, our missing nephew, our idiot brother siding with the enemy…"
"Not the first time, He's safe in the crystal since I doubt they know how to get him out, and he's got more than one person looking out for him." Sora said pushing the book in Karan's hands closed. "Karan you're not going to find the answers you want in a book."
"Do you have any better ideas?" Karan asked.
"Yeah, take the day. Relax. Maybe have some fun while you're at it." Sora said. "The world's not going to end because you take a day off."
With that he was gone.
"What about training!?' Karan said before groaning and falling back lying on the grass for a while watching the clouds pass by.
"He's not completely wrong." Kakashi said.
"I like staying busy." Karan said.
"You haven't stopped training in over a week. You'll hurt yourself if you overdo it." Kakashi said.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Karan asked.
"Find a hobby." He suggested.
"Like what?" She asked. "I'm pretty sure training counts as a hobby."
"I think Sora meant something easy… relaxing." He said.
"What do you do?" Karan asked and he waved the book in his hand. "Hm… Can I borrow one?"
Kakashi paused for a second before reaching into his back pocket and taking out a well used copy of one of his other books.
"It's the first in the series." He said and Yamato started coughing weirdly from where he was sitting.
"There's more than one?" Karan said.
"Four." He said.
"Hm.." Karan said flipping the book open.