Okay. There are all these annoying page breaks scattered kind of randomly throughout this chapter… my page breaks didn't turn out last chapter, which was annoying, so this time I made sure they wouldn't go away. But then they turned into Mutant Page Breaks of Doom and they multiplied and put themselves in random places, and I couldn't get rid of them. So. Or maybe they won't turn out anyway.
Um. I pretty much left the last of the accurate Kakashi portrayal pretty far back. Be warned.
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Kakashi had never before sunk so low. He done some lowly things before—all manner of inexcusable, abhorrent things, in fact—but this? This was going to far.
Having decided to forego training his Genin for the day, he hid behind his book and shuffled off as subtly as possible to find Gai. He knew only too well that it was absolutely futile trying to be subtle in a village full of ninja, but he was willing to give it a try anyway—he couldn't afford being seen.
He found Gai training his team in a field way over on the other side of the village. Tenten worked with Neji, throwing and hitting for him to block, and Lee was doing his workout routine by himself a few feet away from them. Gai lounged under a nearby tree, no doubt basking in the glory of the fine day, and occasionally shouting encouragement to Lee, who seemed to be on his nine-hundredth-and-twenty-third push-up.
Kakashi approached stealthily, sidling up to Gai and tapping him on the shoulder.
"Ahh, Kakashi, how marvelous to see you!"
"You too," Kakashi said hurriedly. "Uh, do you think you could—"
"Come and sit, and enjoy the glorious day!" Gai exclaimed, patting the grass beside him.
Kakashi sat. "Yes, yes. Now, um, I have something to ask you…"
"An honor!"
"Ahh, okay." Kakashi floundered. "So, you see…"
"Yes?"
"I, um. Well. So. Uhhh…" Kakashi was deeply distressed. He decided to get it over with. "So, suppose, hypothetically, of course, there was this Chuunin sensei, and a hypothetical Jounin hypothetically attracted to the hypothetical Chuunin, and, well, he doesn't actually need to be a Jounin, he can be anything, I mean, maybe he's a Jounin and maybe he's not! What does it matter? And so, suppose the Jounin, ahh… dammit, um, likestheotherone and has no idea what to do about it, hypothetically, what would you suggest that he do?" Kakashi thought he might faint from the effort.
Gai looked contemplative.
Kakashi hyperventilated.
"Well, does the hypothetical Chuunin return your feelings?"
"MY feelings?" Kakashi yelped. "Oh, no, these aren't my feelings at all, very far from it, extremely far from it, ahh…" he fumbled for words. " This situation is entirely theoretical. Very, very speculative! No basis in fact whatsoever!"
Gai didn't seem to hear. "Hmm… what Chuunin's could you be referring to? Maybe Izumo?"
Kakashi stood up very fast. How could he have ever imagined this would be a good idea? "No, no, not at all. You know, I really must be going. Thank you for all your… help. Goodbye!"
He tried to sprint away, but Gai vanished from his spot under the tree and appeared right in his path, providing a fairly large obstruction. Kakashi crashed.
Gai hardly noticed. "No, he doesn't seem your type… Suzume! It's Suzume, isn't it? Oh, it's so wonderful to see you, my eternal rival, beginning to embrace the Flower of Youthful Romance…"
Kakashi was horrified. "Not…Suzume…" he managed to choke out.
"No? Well, no matter. I'll have this figured out soon enough." It took less that a minute. As it dawned on him, Gai broke into a huge grin. "Umino Iruka! I bet that's it."
If he only could have reached a weapon, Kakashi would have committed ritual suicide on the spot.
"Kakashi, my Eternal Rival, you have chosen a worthy goal in Iruka-sensei. A finer man I myself could not have—"
"Gai, please!"
"Oh, of course, you have come for advice! Have no fear, simply take my heed, and everything will—"
"I'm never, ever taking advice from you," Kakashi spat, jumping up and attempting to strangle the other Jounin. "I don't know why I thought—"
Gai tsked. "Calmly, calmly. You'll never get Iruka-sensei to return your love if you'll insist on behaving like a moron."
Gai was calling him a moron? Kakashi knew he had hit absolute rock bottom.
"Now, sit down, and we can discuss a Plan of Action."
"Get your Plans of Action away from me!" Kakashi hollered, feeling more than a little hysterical. "I'll take care of this myself!"
"If you insist, my esteemed rival. But don't hesitate to return if you need any assistance!" Gai shouted at Kakashi's fast retreating back.
Once back on the streets of Konoha, Gai slumped against a building and breathed heavily. That had been absolutely nightmarish. He needed something to take his mind off it, so he went to go find his team for training. They weren't at the bridge, they must have given up and gone home. So little faith, Kakashi said to himself, shaking his head.
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Asuma had no one to gossip with. Normally, his gossip came from Iruka, who, between manning the mission desk and spending most of his time around young children, was quite the source of the juiciest information.
Kakashi always knew everything about everyone, and even if he didn't broadcast the information, he would almost always comply if asked to share some news.
Genma and Raidou were the ones he spread gossip to, usually over coffee in the break room between shifts.
But as all four of his regular gossip buddies were the ones he intended to be gossiping about, he really had no one to talk to.
There was Gai—but really, no one with more than two brain cells ever told Gai anything remotely secret, because in a matter of hours it would spread all over the village. And Gai wasn't really a good gossip. The word itself implied sneakiness and underhandedness, two things absolutely never, ever associated with Gai-sensei.
Asuma had tried plying Kurenai for information—she definitely knew something! —But he must have looked a little too rabid to appear only politely curious, and so all he got for his troubles was a strong rap about the head and a scolding for being an insensitive wart with no sense of privacy.
Of course, then Kurenai had seen Shizune, and got up to go talk to her. From the squealing, Asuma deduced that they were comparing notes. Catty and hypocritical, all of them.
After a few minutes of solitary brooding, Kakashi came over and sat on the stool next to him, looking distinctly ashen faced.
"You don't look well," Asuma told him.
Kakashi shook his head miserably.
"What's up?" Asuma asked, looking concerned, when in fact, inner-Asuma was celebrating a victory. He was actually going to find something out! And he wouldn't tell Kurenai a single word. Ha!
Slowly, Kakashi told Asuma what had transpired.
"You told… GAI this?" Asuma whispered, genuinely horrified.
Kakashi buried his face in his arms. "What am I going to do?"
"How long ago was this?"
"Not so long. Just a half hour, I'd say."
"That gives you another thirty minutes at the most," Asuma said.
"Thirty minutes for what?"
"For you to escape the village!"
"Huh?"
"If there ever was a good reason to become a rouge ninja, this is it."
"I'm going to go talk to Kurenai," Kakashi snapped.
"No!" Asuma hurriedly grabbed his arm. "Don't tell Kurenai about this," Asuma said, hoping he wouldn't lose his only means of bartering.
Kakashi shook him off. "Kurenai!"
Kurenai saw who it was, and excused herself from her conversation with Shizune with what Asuma noted was a very "I'll tell you everything" look.
And so Kakashi told it again. He really appreciated Kurenai not finding the situation amusing, as he suspected Asuma did.
"So, what do I do?" he finished lamely.
"Tell Iruka before he hears it from Gai," she said simply.
"Well, there's an, um, fair chance he might already know."
Kurenai looked interested. Shizune had also casually sidled over and was eavesdropping on the conversation in a most conspicuous manner.
"Oooh! What happened?" Kurenai asked eagerly.
Before Kakashi could get another word out, his team entered the ramen shop, arguing loudly. The second Naruto saw Kakashi, he halted in his path, causing Sakura to crash into him and Sasuke to crash into her. His team goggled at him like they had never seen him before, and Naruto gave Sakura a very obvious nudge with his elbow.
They didn't even start shrieking at him about not showing up for training, which worried him the most.
"Kakashi–sensei!" Naruto squeaked. He squeaked.
Sasuke regarded him interestedly. Sakura was giving him one very weird look.
"…Yo," Kakashi said slowly, beginning to sense an impending cloud of doom.
"We have to go. No, Naruto, remember? We're meeting… Shikamaru! Yeah. Come on, you two," Sakura said, backpedaling out of the shop and dragging the boys with her.
Once they were gone, an extraordinarily uncomfortable silence pervaded the shop. Kakashi sat down heavily. "What has Gai been saying?" he asked faintly.
Asuma patted his shoulder. "It's not too late to become a missing nin. I'd cover for you until you got to, say, Wave Country, and then you could—"
"Kakashi isn't going to become a missing nin," Kurenai said, placing a supportive hand on his arm. "We'll get this worked out."
"I'm going to kill Gai. And then I'm going to kill myself. And then I'm going to kill Gai again."
Indeed, Asuma thought to himself, if Gai had appeared just then, for example swinging into the shop to exclaim on the beautiful sunshine, there would have been bloodshed.
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Iruka wasn't sure why people kept giving him weird looks. It was really getting annoying. Conversation stopped whenever he came within ten feet of a group of people, everyone kept turning their heads to look at him, and even his students seemed unusually quiet.
It had started during the lunch break. He'd gone into the break room, and immediately all conversation had ceased. Izumo, Iwashi, and Kotetsu had been having an animated discussion about—something or other, Iruka had no clue—but the moment Iruka stepped in to get his coffee, they'd fallen silent and gawked.
Iruka tried making some minimal polite conversation, but in the end simply had to escape the bizarre atmosphere, and fled the room.
He checked himself over—nothing on the back of his head, no STARE AT IRUKA sign taped to his back, he hadn't sat in gum, there was nothing on his face. He didn't get it.
When a group of girls he passed in the hall at the Academy giggled and stared wide-eyed, he began to be seriously worried.
Once lunch was over and he had his class in front of him once again, every single one of them eerily quiet, he decided he had to do something.
"Okay, what is it."
Silence.
"No, really, I have to know. Why is everyone staring at me?"
Konohamaru mumbled something. The only things Iruka caught were, "Kakashi-sensei" and "Gai-sensei said."
Iruka turned very white. "Gai said what?"
Konohamaru mumbled something inarticulate.
"Okay. Everyone out. Class dismissed. Go home. And if any of you see Gai sensei on the way, employ the shuriken training we did earlier today. Remember? It's all in the wrist. Throw from the wrist. Oh, and Konohamaru, stay afterwards for a few minutes, would you?" So I can interrogate you. But within a blink of an eye, his class had vanished out the door, and Konohamaru along with it. Iruka stuck his head into the hall to yell after him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Fine. He'd deal with this himself, then. Cursing, he went off to find Gai.
Evil mutant page breaks of doom. Actually, I think I might have fixed it, but let's see how it turns out when it's posted.
And I mixed up Genma and Raidou last chapter. Things like that annoy me so badly. Grrr…
I suppose we'll get to Genma and Raidou next chapter. I don't know. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Review, and I'll return the favor. (don't kill me if I don't. I really do intend to. Promise.) thankya.