Kakashi begrudgingly reached up to grab the small bag of ridiculously expensive dog treats from the top shelf. A testy nip to the thin, sensitive skin of his ankle stopped him before his fingertips could even brush the glossy plastic wrapping.
"What." Kakashi muttered tiredly, casting an exasperated glance over his still poised arm towards the scowling pug at his feet.
"Not that one!"
He sighed, too exhausted to be annoyed, and dispassionately moved his gloved hand towards the bag next to it. Another tiny pinch of sharp teeth stung his ankle.
"No!" his small dog ordered him, "That one gives me gas!"
Kakashi blinked and shifted from one foot to the other distractedly, his arm sinking lethargically back to his side. He sighed miserably, shoulders shrugging with the dramatic exhale, and began to lift his arm again. Before his hand could even start to point listlessly towards a specific bag, his ankle was attacked again.
"No!" Pakkun growled.
Kakashi's head slumped forward and he blindly shifted his arm a smidgen to the right.
"No!" His ankle was punished again.
His arm veered dejectedly to the left.
"No!" Bite.
Kakashi's lips pursed together and he exhaled from his nose shakily, staring stonily ahead at the store shelves before him.
"No!" Bite.
His grey eye narrowed slightly.
"No!" Bite!
Two seconds passed.
No!" Bite!
"No-eep!" The little dog's cranky rebuke was interrupted by a startled squeak of horror, "Don't you dare!" Pakkun licked his lips nervously and stepped anxiously from paw to paw. He stared up apprehensively at the can of cat-food squeezed threateningly in the Copy-ninja's fist with slightly bulging pug eyes, "Hey now pup, let's not be too hasty there..."
Kakashi's dead-pan eye slid over to stare at the little dog blankly, considering the possible benefits of giving into temptation and forcing his pesky ninken to eat cat-food.
He was shocked out of his lethargic speculation when someone's hand patted his rear daintily.
"Boop."
Kakashi's spine stiffened and he froze. His unknown assailant repeated the action, adding a giggled "boop" to each friendly grope.
"Boop, boop, boop... boop, boop... booooop." His grey eye widened when his bottom was given a hearty shake-and-squeeze on the last, drawn-out word. Yup, Kakashi cringed, definitely should've stayed in bed this morning...
"Uhm..." Kakashi turned around slowly, the tips of his ears pinking, "Hello?" He ignored how his voice came out shaky and more questioning than he would have liked, and fixed his gaze on the girl before him.
Maybe if he glared she would feel intimidated and run away? Kakashi narrowed his eyes. But the worried tilt of his eyebrows and the subtle turning away of his head made him seem more apprehensive than angry. Shoot.
She wore a white ANBU mask, the thin red lines tracing the features of a buck-toothed rodent of sorts onto the smooth porcelain. Kakashi couldn't tell if it was a hamster or an orally challenged porpoise. Although, that might have been because of the uncomfortably awkward angle that he had to tilt his head down in order to see her face. She stood a couple of inches away from him, looking up unabashedly with her chin nearly touching his chest. He quickly jerked his hands back down to his sides when he realized that he had raised them up in a reflexively submissive gesture.
There was a strained silence where neither moved, Kakashi because he didn't know what to do, and the girl because she was... well he didn't know why she wouldn't move really. He imagined Guy bursting through the nearby window in a shower of sparkling glass and rainbow beams, smashing the awkward silence into a million shimmering pieces.
Pakkun broke the silence, loud and obnoxious and incredulous. "What the hell was that?" His little sausage body bounced up and down with the force of his barks, "He's trying to buy me doggie-treats here!"
That's my dog, Kakashi thought drily, the epitome of loyalty and selflessness, always looking out for my well-being...
"Huh?" the girl asked distractedly, head tilted suspiciously downwards. She stepped back compliantly enough though when Kakashi pushed her away, open hands lightly pressed to her shoulders, "Oh, it's morse code. Duh."
Kakashi frowned, "Morse code?" She nodded emphatically, stepping closer again.
"Yeah, they said you would know it since you used to be in ANBU." Kakashi stared at her, mentally staggered. What does ANBU have to do with my butt?...
His grey eye widened in realization and horror-Is she talking about-she couldn't be talking about-could she? His cheeks flushed hotly. But how would she know? That's, Kakashi swallowed thickly, that's supposed to be strictly confidential information!
Years ago, when he had first joined ANBU, his team, being young and stupid, had developed something of a superstitious routine that they performed religiously before every single mission.
Raidou would take a bite out of their mission scroll, Yamato would stock up on soldier pills and white tic-tacs (which always led to dangerous and exhilarating mixups), Aoba would take a piss right outside of the village gates, Kakashi would steal one of his angry neighbors' plastic pink flamingos and take it with him, Hayate would sleep in his uniform the night before, and Genma would give Kakashi a hard smack on the ass for good luck. It was a foolproof, albeit sometimes childishly embarrassing, formula for success. If they ever skipped out on one part of the process, which rarely ever happened, it would usually result in a collection of painful burns and an embarrassing tendency to start laughing loudly in inappropriate situations for a number of days afterwards.
Upon his rejoining ANBU a few years back they had all picked up right where they had left off, with the exception of Yugao filling in for Hayate. She liked to spray them with febreeze... but that was always after the mission now that he came to think of it.
But, despite the change in membership, not too much had changed about his tightly-knit team. And that included the solemn oath that they would never, ever, under any circumstance, tell others about their pre-mission procedure. This was partly because Kakashi had managed to convince his slightly paranoid teammates that, if anyone else found out, their routine would be stolen and copied and all their prosperity and good-luck would be forever extinguished.
But it was mostly because he would die in a hot flame of shame if anyone were to find out that he couldn't complete an ANBU mission without his orally-fixated teammate giving him a solid spanking.
Now he was faced with the complicated dilemma of needing to find out if the girl was talking about what he thought she was talking about, without actually talking about what he thought she was talking about. Kakashi blinked, somewhat dizzied by the turn his thoughts had taken.
The muffled sound of heavy breathing snapped him back to the problem at hand.
The girl had shuffled forwards again back to her original position of uncomfortably too-close awkwardness, wringing her yellow scarf between her hands. Kakashi, starting to get a little annoyed, pointedly pushed her away again. She giggled.
"That was-" he coughed when his voice came out too high, "That was morse code?" She nodded, and he shifted his eyes away when he felt her intense gaze upon his blushing face. How in the world is coming up behind someone and invading their personal space a form of communication? He thought about her previous love-pats and their respective sound effects-Oh... Kakashi's eyes widened in mortification and understanding. Morse code.
"I'd be happy to repeat the message if you didn't get it the first-" Kakashi quickly batted her hands away from his hips, a small girly-sounding squeal spilling out before he could regain his unshakeable, blindly confident masculine composure. He flinched at the sound of it.
Not manly.
"Erm," Kakashi mentally nursed his bruised ego, "Why don't you just... tell me the message?" The sooner this is over, the better.
He noticed the subtle stiffening of her frame at the question and, in true Kakashi fashion, reflexively worried that maybe he had offended her somehow. That is, before he remembered that she was actually being quite offensive to him. He squinted warily at her, just now noticing that the red paint of her ANBU mask was flaking slightly and that she wasn't wearing an ANBU uniform, dressed in the regular jounin outfit. She seemed to notice his analytical stare because she started stepping backwards and stammering.
"Oh, uh-um-the Hokage wants to see you!" She nodded quickly, "Yeah, that's it! She asked that you get there immediately." And before he could begin to sternly reprimand her, like he had been planning to this entire time-she pivoted on her heel and swiftly sprinted out of the grocery store. He stared after her dumbly.
"They'll let anyone into ANBU these days." Pakkun grumbled irritably, his small folded ears flopping as he shook his head self-righteously, "Typical." He tsked before craning his neck to tug a bag of even-more-ridiculously-expensive doggie-treats off of the bottom shelf.
He left a mutinous and incredulous Kakashi behind him as he trotted off to the counter with the bag in his mouth, curled tail wagging in slow satisfied circles.
"You forgot to get your groceries." Pakkun reminded him around a mouthful of unfairly-expensive-doggie-treat.
Kakashi frowned slightly and tilted his head at his little companion, "I didn't want to carry them with me all the way to the Hokage's tower."
The pug halted his determined waddle and stared up at him incredulously, "You don't honestly believe that? She was obviously just looking for an excuse to-" But Kakashi's loose, long-legged stride had carried him out of hearing distance. The little dog rolled his slightly bulging eyes and muttered to himself, "They say that denial is the first stage..."
A small child tottered by the ninken then, stumbling against the leash attached to his backpack. The parent yanked irritably on the leash and the toddler fell solidly onto his bottom, eyes wide and brimming with tears. Pakkun cast a pitying look at the child, a feeling of profound sympathy welling up inside him. He knew what it was like, being a leash-child. And he noticed, pityingly, that the little pup didn't seem to have realized that the leash could, by running quickly in tight circles, tangle up and trip the master.
He thought fondly about his days as a pup when he would take a much smaller and much more clumsy Kakashi for walks with the rest of the pack, all of them leaping around and over the toddler in a whirlwind of slobber and leashes. He sighed fondly, for all their valiant efforts in trying to teach the kid how to walk properly, he had spent most of the time slipping and rolling around on the ground behind them. Daddy Fang hadn't been very happy with them, even though it was his own fault that he had never taught his own pup how to walk.
A despondent wail spilled from the small child before him and Pakkun tilted his head, thinking. After a moment's reluctant consideration he placed his slobbery, half-chewed, cruelly-expensive dog-treat between the kid's untied shoes. The toddler stopped mid-cry, his teary eyes brightening. Pakkun trotted off, his brown face wrinkling proudly.
He caught up to Kakashi just as the sounds of a woman's disgusted screams and a child's noisy shriek of anger filled the busy streets. The Copy-ninja looked over his shoulder at the ruckus and ended up running into a group of kunoichi, clustered together and giggling next to the alley behind the grocery store.
The short girl he had run into whipped around angrily, "Hey! Watch where you're going, jerk! You're just lucky I-" she seemed to recognize him because she promptly dropped the yellow scarf in her hands, stumbled backwards, and screamed. Her friends all quieted, staring at him with disbelieving wide eyes.
Kakashi flinched at the loud noise and tripped over Pakkun who had, loyally and in a most timely fashion, appeared between his legs. He shook himself free of his master's unstable appendages and stalked forwards, growling dangerously at the petrified girl. It was the same one from the store!
A strong feeling of righteous protectiveness surged up inside his little chest and he stomped towards her as menacingly as possible, his wrinkled face contorted into a frightening, demonic snarl. All this reminiscing about when Kakashi had been Baby-Fang, with those big watery human eyes, soft white peach-fuzz, and little grabby fingers, only intensified the feeling. He would show her to sneak up on his master! He would-
"Hey!" The Copy-ninja quickly righted the trashcan he'd almost knocked over and snapped his fingers warningly in front Pakkun's nose, "Don't be rude." He snatched the yellow scarf up off the sidewalk and stuffed it into the girl's limp hands, fixing her shocked face with an apologetic grimace, "Sorry." He mistakenly swiped up his loyal and, now bristling, dog under his arm like a football and quickly strode away into the crowd. Pakkun squirmed, enraged at being picked up like a piece of furniture when all he was trying to do was his job.
As Kakashi walked them away he heard a surge of loud squealing erupt behind him. Pakkun snapped and, his slavering jaws bared viscously, twisted around in Kakashi's gentle grip and started barking loudly at them.
"Stupid bitch!" He snarled, "Imma chew your face off and- mmph!" He frowned savagely when a gloved hand covered his mouth, silencing him. He glared, incredulous, up at his master as Kakashi ducked his head under the staring of random passerbyers. Like he was embarrassed! Pakkun positively boiled inside and it was a tremendous effort not to pee all over Kakashi in vindictive retaliation.
"That's it." The Copy-ninja growled under his breath, "Next time you're getting cat-food."
Pakkun rolled his eyes and mumbled something sourly around his gloved muzzle. His snout was squeezed warningly and, seeing red, the pug started coating the inside of Kakashi's hand with a thick, slimy layer of his affection and saliva.
"I didn't send for you..." Tsunade stared at him like he had his pants on backwards. Which he knew for a fact that he did not because he had corrected the fumbled mistake after a cup of coffee this morning.
"Oh... Well then." He stared longingly at the chair in front of her desk, swaying slightly on his feet as a sudden weariness fell over him. Tsunade stared at him blankly for a moment before sighing and throwing her hands up.
"Fine, whatever." She turned back to her overflowing file cabinet, "Just sit down and stop looking so miserable, I'll be with you in a second. Shizune, could you reschedule that meeting for some time after dinner? I've got a feeling that I'm gonna need something in my system if I'm to make it through the whole three hours of it without scalping someone."
Shizune hurriedly wrote this down and closed her notebook with a snap. The heavy double doors fell silently shut behind her with the air of a vacuum-seal. Kakashi slid, visible eye curving happily, into the seat before the Hokage's desk. He leant forward, studiously, in his seat and clasped his hands together eagerly between his knees, following Tsunade's irritable movements with a childish fascination. He froze, realizing that his left hand was still coated in Pakkun slobber and that it had spread to his right hand. He scowled at the memory of his disastrous morning and quickly wiped his ninken's little gift off on his pants.
A cool breeze tumbled in through the open window and tousled his hair playfully. The papers on her desk fluttered about with the soft gust of wind. The pale white paper flipped gently under the dappled shadows of ruffling leaves on the desk, the tree outside of the window swaying airily in the bright morning light. It looked like the surface of a clear pool of water on a crisp, spring day. Kakashi stared, entranced.
"Thanks for closing the window." Tsunade snapped irritably, frowning at him as she picked up a few scattered papers from the floor.
Kakashi blinked. "Sorry."
He got up, feeling an uncomfortable numb prickling in his forearms and calves as he did so, and slowly shut the window. He leaned his shoulder tiredly against the shutter, his head nodding forwards and to the side to fall against the wooden window pane with a small thump. When he stood this close to the window he could still hear the wind brushing against the side of the building, rustling the leaves outside, and-
"When was the last time you slept?" Kakashi looked up and saw that Tsunade was staring at him suspiciously from her desk.
"Last night." Her amber eyes narrowed fractionally at his dismissive tone.
"And the last time you've eaten was..." she trailed off, raising a skeptical eyebrow at him as he ambled back to his seat before her desk with a careless shrug of his shoulders.
"This morning."
"What did you eat?"
Kakashi sighed, uncharacteristically tired and exasperated, "My mommy made me pancakes in the shape of cute little zoo animals with whipped cream and strawberries. I even took all my vitamins like a good little-"
"-Watch the sass." she growled, "Sakura tells me that you've missed your last two check-ups." She retaliated swiftly, "She says that your overall condition has improved, but that you're still drained and weak." She pretended to look at her nails, but he saw the way that she peered at him calculatingly through her lashes, "That you get dizzy and black out whenever you use chakra or your sharingan... It's been a month, Kakashi."
Kakashi sat still and silent, annoyed with the turn this conversation was taking.
"She says that you told her you were having trouble sleeping..." She paused, glancing at him meaningfully, trying to get him to fess up. He blinked innocently at her, sending her his best "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about" face.
"Kakashi," she sighed, and her hard face slipped into something more gentle, "you know that you can tell me anything." Her warm, concerned amber eyes stared at him. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze and stared at her fingernails, long and red. She waited for a moment, hoping that he would say something. He didn't.
Her long red fingernails rapped sharply against the desk, fed up.
"I won't let you back onto the field until you've been cleared." she threatened, painted lips setting in a terse line, "I can't have you being a liability to others." He felt a rush of hot shame at this but refused to say anything, lips pouting stubbornly in an unconscious effort to keep from biting them. Frowning fiercely at the wooden desk between them, he missed the furious look that passed over her face.
"I know there's something else that's bothering you." she hissed, "And I also know that you're too much of a prideful ass to ask for help." His grey eye flashed up to meet hers, steely and hard, but she continued undeterred, "The last thing either of us want is for your problems to hurt or hinder someone else. But you need to understand. Keeping these things to yourself because you think that it will only affect you is wrong..."
"You of all people should know that... Kashi-kun."
For some reason he bristled at the motherly caress in her voice, at the childhood nickname. His face felt hot and the hand clenching his headband trembled. Who was she to try and coddle him? He was her soldier. He killed people for her.
Tsunade held his rebellious glare for a handful of tense seconds before he lowered his eyes, guilty and submissive. He felt tired, so very, very tired, and she was just trying to help him. She wasn't to know that he had already had more than his fair share of invaded privacy this morning. He took a deep breath in through his nose, feeling shaky and unnerved with how out of control his emotions were. She was his Hokage and he had absolutely no right to look at her like that. He wanted to apologize somehow but he couldn't look her in the face, ashamed. He felt her eyes on him, pitying and understanding, and he felt even worse. She seemed to pick up on this too because she stood up abruptly.
"If you want to get back in the game before your team's next mission, then you've got to have these," she slapped a folder filled with papers down on the desk, "filled out and signed by a verifiable medical ninja by next Tuesday." Kakashi was able to look at her now, the beginnings of a cheeky grin growing on his face.
She tried to hide her smile with a smirk, "That means no bullying chunin that have only a week's worth of emergency classes under their belts into giving you the okay." She chuckled fondly at Kakashi's wide-eyed who me? expression, "Yes, I know all about the little friendly chat you had with Iruka last fall. I won't take those papers if his name is on it... And don't try bribing Sakura either."
Kakashi smiled sheepishly at her, ducking his head to rety his hitae-ate.
"Don't smile at me, brat. " She snapped, turning back to her paperwork to hide her grin, "And get your lazy ass out of my office."
Really, it was remarkably innovative and youthful that he had stumbled upon this particular exercise. Gai smiled around a manly grimace, his face red and dripping with sweat, as he proceeded to cart-wheel backwards in slow-motion, a two-hundred-and-fifteen pound weight strapped to each limb.
"Goooo Gai-sensei!" Rock Lee cheered spiritedly beside him in the narrow stairway that zigzagged all the way up to the stony faces of their most esteemed and respectable Hokages. His student's encouragement strengthened him, and the valiant Green Beast of Konoha let out a cry of manly tenacity as he scaled the last flight of steps.
"Aha!" He crowed victoriously, his exuberance throwing him into a springy backflip at the top of the stairs, "Take note, my good apprentice! The application of-"
Gai paused, still in his dashing Good-Guy pose, his thumb still outstretched proudly before him, his admirable student Lee still yammering away reverently in a tearful passion beside him. His eyes tracked the progression of a small figure up the stairs that he had just traversed, his dapper grin twitching and his expression of magnificent pride slipping into one of disbelief.
Without bothering to remove his weights, he jogged down the steps, Lee's cries of "Oh my wonderful Guy-sensei, your youthful endurance is fresh and inspiring! To think, that you would go straight into another workout so soon! I must take notes on your unflappable enthusiasm in the hopes that one day I can be as magnificent a Green Beast as you!" fading behind him.
Gai made the stairs in record time, but he had to slow to a stop as he approached the figure, a stark pride and admiration filling his great chest at the sight.
Kakashi, his smaller and not-so-buff friend of man, was fearlessly and courteously following the Green Beast's example and slowly, albeit a little shakily, cart-wheeling backwards in slow-motion up the stairs with one-hundred pound weights strapped securely to each slender limb.
The Green Beast of Konoha felt his eyes fill up with tears of manly pride and fondness-how studious, how benevolent, how flattering of his long-term rival to mimic and partake in his own workout regiment! It was hip! It was cool! It was enough to make Gai start blubbering on the spot and yank the smaller man, mid-cart-wheel, into a crushing embrace of sweaty passion!
"Oh, my dearest rival!" Gai closed his eyes profoundly, nuzzling his face, slicked with sweat and sporting a subtle five-o'clock shadow, against Kakashi's masked cheek, "I am so honored that you would come to join me on this most beautiful and youthful day! That you would willingly share in the vigorous exertion of straining manly muscles and spurting exuberance with me! I am so-"
"Gai," Kakashi gasped, no doubt overwhelmed with pangs of lively joy at their meeting, "Stop... Stop making it sound like we're having sex... And I can't... can't... breathe..."
"Rightly so, my classy rival!" Gai stepped back, large hands grasping Kakashi's thin shoulders as he threw his head back and chuckled mightily. A couple of birds, tweeting with animated excitement, burst speedily out of a nearby tree at the sound of his infectious laughter. Kakashi smiled lopsidedly up at him, his visible eye squinting. A rush of fondness barreled through Gai, his rival always looked at him like that, like he wasn't sure if he wanted to smile or burst into tears of merriment.
"Erm," Kakashi looked down, shifting his arms shyly in their smaller-not-as-manly-but-still-valiant hundred pound weights, "Listen, Guy, " He looked back up, and Gai thought that he suddenly seemed very young and small, looking up at him with one big grey eye that had a purplish, bruise-like shadow under it, "I'm gonna need you're help."
"Are you trying to bribe me, sensei?" Sakura asked in disbelief, her mint green eyes wide as they caught on the enormous basket of delicious fruit hoisted on Kakashi's shoulder. Gai sensei peered around it and grinned, nodding proudly over a characteristic thumbs-up sign.
"No, of course not." Kakashi stared at her blandly, oblivious to his companion's now confused, slow shaking of the head, "This is for me."
He made a great show of lowering it down from his shoulder and setting it onto her desk, grunting and bending his knees in a half-squat as if it was really heavy. He stepped back, brushing his gloved hands on the sides of his pants, which made him grimace curiously before he smiled at her again.
"I decided I'd take your advice and start eating more." Kakashi's eye curved, obviously proud of his alibi.
Sakura resisted the urge to smack herself in the face, "When I said 'eat more', sensei, I meant 'eat more' protein!" She made little quotation marks as she spoke, staring critically at his unabashed expression of complete surprise. She sighed dramatically, "You're impossible." Sakura shook her head, looking down to hide the small smile that was growing on her face.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the fruit basket, tugging on the wrappings with a serious air as he spoke, "Well anyway..." His fingers fumbled with the gauzy pink ribbon that was tied in a tight bow around the basket, "What was that saying? Something about an apple and a doctor?" he mumbled, frowning to himself briefly before whipping out a kunai.
"Hey!" Sakura caught his arm, just as he was about to hack away at the pretty pink ribbon. He tilted his head, his grey eye glinting mischievously, knowing that she had caught the bait. Sakura recovered quickly, pretending that she didn't see his knowing look, and snatched his kunai away from him fiercely.
"No weapons in my office..." She trailed off lamely, but hid his kunai in a cupboard anyway. With an air of someone reluctantly forced to indulge a whiny child, she sighed again and rolled her eyes before shooing him away from the fruit basket. She caught a barely audible chuckle and fist-bump as Kakashi moved behind her to stand beside Gai. She smirked slightly and carefully set about unwrapping the delicious assortment of sweet and sugary fruits from their sparkly wrappings.
Her lunch break had been three hours ago and she had been in the surgery room then, unable to leave for even a split second. Her stomach whooped happily as she finally freed the mouthwatering fruits from their elegant prison. Sakura picked up an apple and bit into it, swiveling on her heel as she turned around and faced the two grinning jounin-sensei's in her office.
The juicy bite of apple came off into her mouth with a crisp, sweet crunch. She raised an eyebrow at Kakashi, who was looking at her expectantly, and crossed her arms.
"Alright, I accept your bribe," she paused as Gai whooped loudly and leapt into the air in an exaggerated fist-pump, "What do you want?"
Kakashi's grey eye brightened, "Well you see, me and my good friend... erm, good rival," He paused, blinking vaguely, "Me and Gai here have come up with a plan for getting me in shape in time for our next mission."
Sakura's eyes widened and her mouth fell open behind her apple. Gai nodded proudly, crinkling eyes brimming with tears, and looped a thick arm around Kakashi's slender neck. She quickly bit deeply into her apple to keep from laughing as a carefully neutral expression crossed over her former sensei's face.
He nodded weakly, his eye squinting slightly like he was in pain, "Mhhmm..." His hum of agreement was higher than usual and sounded a little like an unsure whimper. But Gai just laughed loudly and yanked the Copy-ninja's head under his armpit and proceeded to give Kakashi's mop of fluffy hair the noogie of a lifetime.
Sakura grinned evilly.
"Alright," She turned around swiftly, pretending to sift through some papers on her desk before either of them could see her smile, "So, since you can't use chakra or your sharingan you thought you'd brush up a little with Gai-sensei, the world-renowned taijutsu-master?"
A choked, "Yes." was her only answer.
"Well then," Sakura found her pad of post-its and quickly scribbled down a note to talk to Naruto and Sai ASAP, "I guess you'd better get started, our next mission is in a week."
When the two of them left her office, Kakashi laughing uncertainly and Gai cheering and bouncing on the balls of his feet behind him, Sakura grinned.
He had left the fruit-basket.
When Shikamaru pushed open the heavy doors to the Hokage's office he was greeted with an exasperated yell.
"God help me, Hatake Kakashi!" Tsunade slammed shut a file cabinet and stomped over to grab another file from her desk, "If you've come back here one more time-to make sad puppy eyes at me again-I swear! I swear, on the life of my-Oh! Shikamaru! What a pleasant surprise!" She laughed sweetly, smoothing down her hair as her robes, which had previously been fluttering in an invisible wind of palpable rage, and smiled at him.
He shivered. Scary...
"What brings you here?" She fell back into her chair and reached for the bottle of sake sitting on her desk, "Fourth surprise appointment I've had today..." she mumbled darkly around the lip of the bottle.
"I've been having some... speculations about the outcome of our last mission."
Tsunade frowned, her eyes snapping up to his face in a way that was fairly predatory. "What."
Shikamaru steeled himself, "I think that Hijame is still alive."
She didn't sputter or laugh in his face, but cast her piercing amber eyes on him, reading the sincerity in his gaze. "But you all sent the head back. It's-"
"I need to see it."
"His... amputated head?" Tsunade looked very tired all of a sudden, pressing her hand to her forehead, "Shikamaru..." He scowled slightly at her tone of voice, like she was being bothered by some needy child.
"Naruto told me that, in the camp, Hijame had an old man, Makoto, positioned under the guise that he was the leader in the camp. When our team was ambushed by the rogue Sand-ninja, they used a highly complicated multi-person genjutsu to catch Captain Yamato off-guard. I've listened to his description of the attack and it sounds to me like, in order to pull off something like that, they have to have had a couple masters in genjutsu. That's something that nobody was aware of before, and I think that it changes how we have to look at things. I saw when Kakashi killed Hijame. And the information that I had received about him prior to that incident just didn't match up with the way he was acting. Hokage-sama," he paused, looking up at her gravely, "I think that Hijame is still alive and that he's planning something."
She was silent for a long moment after that, just looking at him. He couldn't read her expression and he hoped that she believed him. Finally, she spoke.
"Alright," she reached into a cupboard in her desk and pulled out a card. She scribbled something down onto it before handing it to him, "Shikamaru Nara, you've been granted fully authorized access into the Konoha, Fire Country ANBU headquarters and morgue."
Yay! Long chappie!
I hope that this was a nice break from all of the intense drama that's been going on. I just felt like we all needed a little goofy break right here, and Kakashi needed a month of down time. Haha, it seems that Kakashi's fanclub has made their presence known to him... or rather not known, he's kind of oblivious. Which is probably a good thing, he has enough problems already. I thought Gai sensei was a nice twist, it was actually strangely easy to write his point of view. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not :) But all well, please tell me what you all think, getting a review makes my day. And makes me smile like Gai-sensei! Ooh that rhymed.
To youth!
~Flintyminty25