Author's Notes: Thanks to those who are reading. The feedback is very much appreciated. This chapter is a little shorter, but I really felt like it stood on its own. We meet a very familiar figure…

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and am making no profit from this fan fiction.

Turn of Blade, Twist of Fate

Chapter Three: Clandestine Meeting

By Nessie

Two years later, Yuugao saw herself to fifteen. There was little left to grow on her physical form – she had nearly reached her full height, her hair touched the unmarred slopes of her shoulders, and her eyes had not lightened in color or intensity.

Her circumstances, like those of many others in Konoha, had changed. She was no longer the orphan girl left to an unfortunate aunt and uncle. Aunt Eiko had died the previous winter. The cause, Yuugao had estimated, went no further than the absence of her uncle, Eiko's husband. The woman had lost energy more and more as her niece had grown, despite Konoha's increasing prosperity; the effect like that of an ice cube melting in the sun.

Yuugao had been sitting at the dining table, her entire arsenal of weapons spread before her to await polishing and sharpening. Eiko, with a cup of hot tea as her armament, had complained of a cold brought on by the ruthless weather and gone to bed early. Her niece had found her the following morning, seemingly asleep yet never to awake. The tea lay cold and spilled across the wooden floor beside Yuugao's guardian's bed.

Childless themselves, her aunt and uncle had left the house and everything in it to her. Yuugao had either donated the majority of the wares inside to the orphanage she had been spared from or sold them for new mission gear. She did not partake of unnecessary conveniences or pleasures. The kunoichi known as Uzuki lived her life in a far from pampered, need-based way.

Her aunt and uncle now lay in the ground in Konoha, near to her parents' resting places. All four of those names were inscribed on the sacred stone where many went to offer prayers each day.

Rin was no less of a friend than she ever had been, though she spent less time training with Yuugao and more at the hospital. It seemed she had finally parted ways with her former career, and was happily detached. Yuugao could not understand it; battle was the only thing that kept her blood surging and her mind still. Restlessness impeded her when she was doing something as simple as sitting for breakfast. Often she had to train until exhaustion overtook her if she hoped for any real night's sleep.

It was in the beginning of autumn, when night winds were still warm enough for her to wear only one layer of clothing, that Yuugao met Hatake Kakashi for the first time. He and Rin were still on speaking terms, and the older girl even took her meals with her former teammate as often as three times a week. Why Yuugao had never been introduced to the White Fang's son was the one question she had never asked Rin, and the one Rin had never freely invited her to ask.

In the end, it was not an introduction by Rin that brought Yuugao and Kakashi to acknowledgement of each other. The famous shinobi simply did was her was known to do: appear.

Yuugao worked with a fuuma shuriken, passed it spinning between her hands until she knew its dimensions and curves and lethal points as well as she knew her own body. She held no fear of the weapon, though she knew it posed as much danger for her as it would for anyone else. The possibility of injury that accompanied weapon use was something she felt a strange, sincere reverence for. It was an honest way of dying, in her opinion, more so than the chakra tricks of jutsu. To be cut and bled by a katana's arc or an arrow's piercing was open, undisguised. And while she did not think herself noble of character, Yuugao thought weapons use itself a noble art.

It was when she was lost in these musings, her hair blown back by the wind as she jumped to and fro between fence posts in the yard behind her own house, Yuugao felt a presence beside her own on the property. If it was a child playing pranks, she meant to give them a good jolt in advice of keeping clear of her place. Her left hand still manipulating the whirling fuuma shuriken, she faced the source of the presence and let fly a short, thick-handled kunai.

There was a swift repositioning of shadows, and a man unfolded himself seemingly from the air. One gloved hand reached up to catch the kunai by the flat of its blade. Yuugao exhaled in a huff, her eyes widening only slightly as they took in the moon-pale hair rising in spikes from a high-held head. Only a third of his face was visible, everything from the nose down covered by a simple yet effective mask. His left eye was covered by his Leaf hitai-ate, cast at a downward slant.

Yuugao, in her surprise, was moved to readjust her grip on the fuuma shuriken and drop to the center of her back yard, knee bending to steady her landing. "Hatake-san," she murmured politely by way of greeting, her voice remaining unshaken. Unsure, she hesitated. "I did not mean to attack. I merely thought—"

"You can't be expected to do anything but defend yourself." Her eyes rose to his as she straightened to full posture in front of him. "Even if it is only your privacy that has been infiltrated." As though to assure her of no hard feelings, he took the necessary steps forward and extended the hand that had caught the kunai.

She took it automatically and didn't react when her bare fingers lightly brushed the tips of his gloved ones. Kakashi, however, gave a slight pause before saying, "You don't speak much, do you?"

Yuugao was as close to entranced as she had ever been. She remembered the unwitting admiration she had held for this person in her younger days; it had been her original reason for that first visit to Rin's office. Up to now, she had only beheld Hatake Kakashi from a distance, and that was how he had seemed to her – insubstantial, like an idea or a story, not a real man so much as an impression. For her, he had been a goal, his strength something she had longed to achieve.

And while she was not as without identity as she had been in those days, her repertoire of missions and in-village assignments having caught the eye of a variety of cell recruiters, Yuugao still found herself lacking when compared to a shinobi of legend. She knew gender had nothing to do with it, not really, but now and then she caught herself wondering what stage of her career she would be at had she been born a son instead of a daughter.

As for Kakashi himself, his appearance alone proved to Yuugao that he was more than just a legend. The hair gleamed in the moonlight, which threw the bones of his face and the folds of his clothes into sharp relief. The fact that he was young – nineteen years only – was apparent even if his well-trained stance suggested otherwise. She saw the non-elaborate training ensemble he wore, briefly envying his Jounin vest – earned, she recalled suddenly, at only thirteen.

What had she done at thirteen? a part of her asked in bitter disappointment. Risen to Chuunin level, but only after being the useless plaything of a man who had never truly respected her ambition as a kunoichi.

"Are you alright?"

Blinking rapidly to clear the images that had settled in her mind's eye, Yuugao focused her vision on Kakashi's one visible eye – deep black in the shades of the night, peering at her with a degree of concern. "Yes," she answered at once, wondering at the obvious emotion in him. She had been told for years, had even though for a minute upon his arrival, that Hatake Kakashi had habits of hiding his true feelings not dissimilar from her own. That he would ask after her…

"You grew very pale for a second," he explained, his right eye angling downward in a bit as he supposedly smiled from behind the mask. "Perhaps you've been training too long, Yuugao?"

His voicing of her name brought her careening back to her initial question. "Please…I don't mean to be rude – but did you have some business at my home, Hatake-san?"

"Hey, hey!" Kakashi exclaimed. "There's no need for such a formality. Say 'san' if you must, but at least call me by my first name." He waited until the invitation/order sunk in, and then continued, "I am only here to get a look at you, Yuugao. Rin speaks so highly of you, and yet she did not want to interfere with our meeting. So I took the liberty of coming to you on my own."

She hardly knew what to say to that. That Rin had mentioned her in a positive light to Kakashi made Yuugao feel both defensive and rebellious at once. This man could defeat her in fewer blows than she had fingers on her left hand, and he had been trained by the Fourth Hokage himself. His parentage was renown throughout the village, which was more than could be said for Yuugao. The Uzuki name was still one of little repute, after all.

Something like the urge to fight him rose defiantly within her. Immediately shocked at herself, Yuugao spoke rashly, something she never did. "Do you intend to join ANBU?"

He stared then, and it was not humiliation she experienced so much as a fervid confusion she directed at herself. Not only was her way of breaching the subject utterly rude, a ninja's decision to join the special division known as ANBU was completely personal and not to be revealed to or influenced by an outside force unless it was the wish of the one considering enlisting.

Countless apologies were halfway to her tongue when the shinobi did something wholly unexpected – he laughed. And Yuugao stared at him as he had at her, mentally wishing she had a time-reverse jutsu so she could go back and erase that blunder. She had clearly just made enough of a fool of herself to inspire amusement, and that sort of weakness was exactly…her inner rebukes were cut off by Kakashi's reply.

"Actually, yes, I do have the intention." Still boggled, Yuugao could only pay attention and feel honored to be told such a private piece of information from one such as Kakashi. "But of course, there are the trials. We'll have to see if I will be accepted into—"

"You will." Twice in one night, now, had she spoken so unthinkingly! Yuugao was about ready to take the fuuma shuriken she still held and stab herself with it.

Another laugh, and he folded his shoulder hunched a few inches as he visibly relaxed. Tension, in turn, pervaded every muscle she had. "It's possible, I guess. Anyway, it's a kind thing to say, Yuugao." Kakashi merely watched her for a breath's time, and Yuugao recognized the expression even if most of his face was hidden from sight. It was the waiting look of one who anticipated a blush from the other. When not so much as a spot of color came to Yuugao's cheek, he took a step back. "I've bothered you enough. We both should really get some sleep, don't you agree?"

She had the thought to respond, to insist that he was not any kind of imposition. The kunoichi decided against saying anything, now that she knew she had the capacity for bumbling her words and not just failing to form them.

Kakashi headed for the shadows at the back row of fencing from which he had emerged. Pausing, he stood still and turned his face halfway back to her. "You know, it's strange, Yuugao. You aren't at all what I've heard people claim you are."

Knowing what "people" claimed, Yuugao's young mind could not resist the oddly pleasant puzzlement the mysterious shinobi's comment called forth. "Kakashi-san?"

"Not at all," he murmured. "Then again, I have no wish to judge you. You are what you are, and that should be good enough for me. For anyone, really – a capable kunoichi." Facing her fully once more, he said, "Perhaps you should think about joining ANBU too, Yuugao."

And then he was gone, a part of the shadows and the fog heralding impending daybreak. Yuugao stood alone, her training perspiration all cooled and the fuuma shuriken's weight aching her arm.

Her confusion dissipated like that fog would when the sun burned through it. It was replaced by an unprecedented satisfaction the likes of which she had not yet known.

She recalled, of her own free will, that night of two years ago when she had seemingly been torn apart, piece by piece, at the hands of a person she had been told by all to trust. Since that day, she had been constantly on her guard. Some of that impregnable defense now thinned.

More than that, Yuugao relived the notion she had had when she had been flying in the treetops under the moon, darkness around her unthreatening. She had felt intended for the night.

ANBU – those ninja who immersed themselves in the nighttime for business unimaginable by the rest of the reserves in Konoha – seemed not only a logical choice, but a clear one, as clear as a newly-wetted sword.

It had nothing to do with Kakashi, she Yuugao understood. With her perfect aim, she threw the fuuma shuriken at the reinforced iron rack protruding from the side of her house. The dangerous tool slid onto the line of metal with a wobble and then hung sturdily. Even if a clandestine meeting between a male prodigy and a determined female had inspired the idea, she inwardly vowed to make ANBU even if he did not.

The ambition lifted her to a new height. Elevated, Yuugao felt as though a few things, at least, were a little more visible.

To Be Continued