*Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of the characters in it. I simply borrow them for my own musings and fantasies and do not get paid for their use in said musings or fantasies. –Nira
Hey, everyone! I know it's literally been over a year since I've last updated. Life is crazy and extremely busy. Anyway, thank you all so much for sticking with me through this rewriting process! Thanks a million to Momochan77 for your continued support and PMs with your thoughts. I really do appreciate you, even if I don't always respond to your PMs. And a HUGE thanks to MidnightTheDreamer for pointing out my major flaws and giving me a push in the right direction. If it hadn't been for your extremely helpful constructive criticism, I probably would have given up on this story once I got stuck and never looked back which is, unfortunately more common than I'd like to admit.
To everyone else, how have you been enjoying this new story so far? Similar, but very different from the original, isn't it? This is what I was hoping for the story to be like originally, but I was really bad at how I was portraying the characters, especially Yuriko, so I changed it. I hope it's still interesting enough to keep you coming back for more. I'm definitely a lot more excited to see what happens, so I hope you are too. This is still a work in progress and I'm still not entirely sure where I'm going with it, but I'm looking forward to learning with you.
Please don't forget to review and let me know what you think of the changes if you've read the original, and if you're new to the series, please let me know what you think about the story in general since you'd have no way of knowing what the original was like anyway. Thanks a million, and please enjoy this latest and the newest (as in, I hadn't even finished the original chapter 12 yet) chapter. ^_^ - Nira
Chapter 12
"So, spill the beans, Kakashi," Genma grinned from across the table from Kakashi as they sat together at a bar-be-que restaurant. "What was going on with you and Yuriko?"
"Nothing," Kakashi stated flatly, bored and irritated with the conversation already and it had just started.
"Come on, don't give me that! She was wearing your clothes for crying out loud!"
"It was only because she couldn't get into her own apartment. They were fixing her door."
"What was wrong with her door?"
"It was broken…" The tone of his voice and the look in his eye as he gazed at Genma was snarky as if he'd added "duh" to the end of the statement.
"Well, obviously if they were fixing it, but why was it broken? Did something happen?"
Kakashi remained silent and turned to take a shot of the sake they'd ordered while they waited for their meat to cook. Genma pouted with a sigh, switching his senbon to the other side of his mouth and resting his chin on his fist while he flipped a few pieces of beef on the grill, realizing that he wasn't going to get anything out of his friend and that he wasn't in a very good mood.
"She's cute, but she's got a bad attitude. I wonder what happened to make her so bitter, especially toward men," Genma mused aloud and it struck Kakashi as something he hadn't even thought to question.
There was a long lull in the conversation as both men were absorbed in their own thoughts but it was Genma to break the silence again.
"Did you know that she hangs out with the kid a lot?"
Kakashi sighed, trying to forget about the accusations that Yuriko had thrown at him not even an hour earlier and the tense conversation it turned into, but his friend was making it really hard not to think about her. He was still on orders to watch her, but he really didn't want to after what had just happened between the two of them. Instead, maybe he could get some more intel from Genma who seemed to be more interested in his new teammate than he was, himself.
"Oh?" he inquired, playing coy.
"He calls her 'nee-chan.' He got himself into trouble again yesterday and ran behind her when Iruka came to scold him and she apologized on his behalf, scolding him, herself instead before telling him to go home. When he said he didn't have anyone at home waiting for him, she asked Iruka and me about his parents and left. Iruka said she'd gone and paid her respects at the memorial immediately after that."
"Why would she do that?" Kakashi inquired, genuinely curious and intrigued for the first time since he'd agreed to join Genma for lunch.
"Iruka said that when he asked, she spoke of death in a way he'd never heard anyone speak of it before. She was eloquent and melancholy and he says that the expression on her face as she explained it broke his heart… Kinda makes you wish you'd been there to see it for yourself, doesn't it?"
Something clicked for Kakashi then. He knew exactly what Iruka had seen in her expression. He'd seen the face of someone with nothing left to lose. As much as she tried to hide it behind her cynical mien, Kakashi had witnessed it a few times and it stole his breath every time. It was the same as his. She was just as broken as him. The only difference was that she tried so hard to hide it that it made itself more obvious. Suddenly he was ashamed of himself for not having had noticed it sooner.
It was another three hours before Yuriko could return home and she literally wandered around the city the entire time in a terrible mood and anyone who saw her could tell so they made sure to give her space. When she got home, she immediately changed into her training gear and made her way back out. Her irritation and anxiety had just been seething and amplifying within her as she ambled around the city and she was desperate to release it.
In her hurry down the stairs, she collided with someone on their way up and took a step back, bowing low without even looking to see who it was that she'd run into. She just knew that they were taller than her and very sturdy. They hadn't been swayed at all by her entire weight crashing into them.
"Excuse me," she muttered and took a step around them, still not looking to see who it was that she'd run into.
She guessed that they were a shinobi by their blue pants and leg pouches. As the realization dawned on her as to who it could have been, he called her name and her face paled and heart rate increased. It was Kakashi.
"About earlier," he started with a sigh.
"No," she interceded and quickened her pace down the stairs.
Flustered that she hadn't even let him finish and that her response didn't even answer what he was going to say, Kakashi followed, calling for her to wait and she walked even faster. Growing more and more frustrated, he sped up to catch up to her only to have her quicken her pace even more until he was literally chasing after her.
"Yuriko, wait!"
"No! Go away, senpai!"
"Not until you listen to what I have to say!"
"Can't we please just forget about it?!"
"I tried and it's not working! Just listen to me!"
"No! I don't want to listen to anything you have to say!"
"Why are you such a child?!" he growled in vexation.
Yuriko stopped in the middle of the field that they'd first fought at and screamed, her anxiety, irritation, frustration, melancholy, loneliness, everything pouring out of her voice box in a long, high pitched wail as she pulled her hair at the roots. A flock of birds from the surrounding area, startled from their roosts took flight, cawing and twittering in fear. When she'd finished, she slowly turned to face him, exhaustion on her face and turmoil in her eyes as her entire being had deflated and she looked tired and ragged.
"What, senpai?" she demanded in a heavy sigh. "There's something I have to do, so please make it quick."
"I just wanted to apologize. I spoke out of spite earlier and said some very unpleasant things."
Yuriko stared at him, her expression blank. "You mean to tell me that you chased me all the way out here just to apologize for an instance that you didn't even provoke?"
Kakashi was taken aback. When she put it that way, it did sound stupid. She pursed her lips and slowly nodded her head as if agreeing with him that he was being silly though he hadn't said anything at all.
"Is there anything else you'd like to say or ask, senpai?"
"Let's talk. You and I have gotten off on the wrong foot and I'd like to make amends. Perhaps we could start over?"
Yuriko was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. She had been pretty stand-offish from the beginning. Old habits were really hard to break and he really had been kind in general. He'd done nothing wrong to her, so she honestly had no right to be so cruel. Maybe she could learn to be more trusting of people starting with him.
"Fight me and then we'll talk," she stated all of a sudden, coming to a decision to take a chance.
"What? Why?"
"I'm anxious. I won't be able to sleep tonight or I'll scream again if I don't let it out. Fight me like you mean it and then we'll talk. Deal?"
"Why are you anxious?"
Yuriko shook her head. "Fight me and we'll talk later, or turn around and leave me alone, forgetting that anything ever happened earlier and that this encounter also never happened."
Kakashi sighed. He'd pursued her because he was concerned that she wasn't adapting well to her new life by how easily and often her mask cracked and exposed the emotional turbulence behind it, so it would be counter-productive to walk away now when she was willing to open up at least a little bit and explain why. He'd expected opposition, but he hadn't expected that she would literally want to fight him. He wondered passively if it was a common occurrence for her to get this wound up or if it was only since coming to Konoha and dealing with more people than she was used to that it had become a bigger problem.
Yuriko bit her lip. Of course he was going to walk away, she thought. He had no reason to help her. She hadn't even worded it to sound like she was asking for help at all, so how was he supposed to know that she desperately needed it? She'd been a royal bitch to him on multiple occasions. She really was still like a child, the way she pouted and threw fits and hollered if things didn't go the way she wanted them to. If he did decide to walk away, she had every intention of being highly destructive and tearing up the landscape, but if he stayed, she could be constructive in her violence and use it for training purposes rather than meaningless devastation.
She sighed and turned her back to Kakashi after a short pause, assuming that he was going to leave. She raised her hand to her hair and gently pulled a handful of it before she let her arm fall to her side and head loll back for a moment, her eyes closing. When she heard the sound of a kunai slicing through the air, her eyes shot open on high alert and she dodged to the side, watching it get lodged into the tree a few yards in front of her. In a flash, Kakashi had rounded and was attacking her head on and she drew her katana and blocked the kunai that he'd aimed at her stomach before they both jumped back.
He'd seen the pleading in her eyes before she turned around. It was fleeting and hardly noticeable, but he'd caught sight of it, sealing his decision. She was asking for help even if she hadn't outright said it. Kakashi had already uncovered his Sharingan and Yuriko couldn't help the grin that crept across her face at the sight of it. He acquiesced to her request for him to fight her like he meant it so she knew that this battle would definitely serve its purpose in helping her release her tension and she was excited. It had been a long time since she'd sparred with someone who would actually be a worthy opponent. She could go all out and know that he'd be able to hold his own and still be left standing by the end of it.
She turned her game face on and crouched lower, releasing a C-ranked water bb jutsu. The bb's were about the size of a pea each but pressurized to have an explosive impact when they came into contact with solid matter to create minor contusions. Kakashi avoided the majority of them but the few that did make contact left deep bruises where they hit, temporarily numbing the surrounding area as the impact overloaded the nerve endings on the surface. Though she could have easily made it more powerful and damaging, she was just beginning to warm up and didn't want to kill him, though she doubted that simple jutsu would be enough to do so.
While Kakashi was slightly stunned, she charged forward, encasing the blade of her katana with her wind chakra. When their blades clashed, Yuriko countered with a kick to his ribs that Kakashi just as easily blocked and countered by grabbing onto her leg and throwing her up into the air. While she flipped midair to continue her attack, she met with a barrage of kunai flung at her and when one nicked her arm, she realized that the slight wound spread like a red fungus consuming her arm and burning. She instantly recognized that it was a genjutsu and released it to find herself falling and rapidly approaching the ground with Kakashi nowhere in sight. She quickly weaved a series of signs and produced her favorite jutsu, Nimbus— a solid, tangible cloud—to catch her fall and get her out of harm's way and back into the air to relative safety.
A kick to the back knocked her off of her cloud and dispersed the jutsu. The wind knocked out of her, she gasped as she glared behind her at her assailant and threw smoke bombs to bide her a bit of time to regather and re-strategize her counter-attack. With his Sharingan activated, it wasn't much time before Kakashi found her again, but it was enough for her to gather her strategy and weave the hand signs for another of her petty jutsu, a mist screen infused with her chakra to confuse the Sharingan's chakra seeking ability and also create illusions. She created a few clones to continue to sneak up on Kakashi and continuously attack him while she sat back and watched how he reacted to the situation.
Kakashi had realized almost immediately that Yuriko had trapped him in a genjutstu and dispelled it with ease, but the mist remained along with Yuriko's clones so he made a couple, himself, and went to find the real Yuriko. She sat on a mid-level bough in a tree and just observed what was happening below her, apparently studying the situation. Kakashi watched her for a moment before he landed silently on a bough above her.
"Why are you studying me so intently?" he inquired and Yuriko jumped to her feet, slashing in his direction with her wind chakra blade.
"You have much more experience than I do on the battlefield, so I like to see what a seasoned vet would do in any given situation. Therefore, I create situations for you and watch how you react to them."
"You learn through observation?" he inquired as they continued their battle.
"And practical application. Because I've trained all around the ninja world, I've observed quite a bit and have been able to apply the majority of it in some way to my own style and abilities."
"You do an excellent job of it," Kakashi panted, on the defensive from the barrage of Yuriko's attacks that seemed random making it difficult for him to predict what would happen next in order to counter them. "You are indeed one of the most skilled kunoichi I've met thus far."
Yuriko stammered in her attack, her eyes widening and face flushing with the compliment and Kakashi pounced at the opportunity, kicking her feet from under her and pinning her to the ground with a kunai to her throat and his other hand clutching her hands above her head while he sat on her thighs and rendered her immobile. Yuriko stared into his eyes as they both sat there attempting to catch their breath, Kakashi's face only inches above hers. He was strong and smelled of sweat and his eyes were piercing, but at the moment, they'd lost their menace and had gained a warmth to them, Yuriko thought. When the realization that she could feel his breath against her clothed lips dawned on her, she felt her stomach tighten and had the creeping urge to lift her head to meet her lips to his.
"What would you like to know?" she asked, her gaze never wavering.
"Would you like to go out for dinner? It's gotten pretty late," he replied, still not moving, just as caught under her spell as she was of his. "My treat."
Yuriko feebly nodded and Kakashi smiled before slowly releasing her and helping her to her feet. The walk home was in awkward silence as the two shinobi were deep in thought about everything that had happened between the two of them and that perhaps this could be the start of a mutually beneficial… partnership..?