Sakura groaned miserably within the confines of her mind as she waded her way through a sea of tall grasses, her face a rigid mask of brave suffering.
The tall, thin stalks were surprisingly stiff and hard to push through, the shortest of them reaching up to just under her sweaty armpits. The air was thick with water and heat, laying heavily over her like a sopping wet blanket. Her lungs strained just to pull in oxygen. The sun beat unapologetically down on her, blistering into what was sure to be a very painful sunburn upon her shoulders, already raw from the rough straps of her pack. With every step her sexy calf-length, kick-ass boots sunk up to the ankle in a thick, paste-like quagmire that was the result of the River Country's subtropical climate and present dry season. Her slow progress was frustratingly choppy and halted, bouts of dizziness frequently assailed her and she kept losing her footing in the sludge. To make matters worse, an assortment of vapidly persistent insects buzzed in a loud, itchy swarm around her. Every few seconds one would zip angrily by, rough wings grazing her nose, or dive-bomb furiously into her hair.
Sakura groaned again, this time audibly. Her hair. Her hair was now no longer recognizable as such. The scraggly pink bangs slipping under her hitae-ate and plastering themselves stickily to her sweaty forehead bore no resemblance to her once lustrous candy-floss pink locks.
It wasn't that she was a prissy girl, she had left those days long behind her-along with an assortment of girly outfits, obnoxiously large hair scrunchies, and an unhealthy obsession for a certain Uchiha. But. There were just some things no woman, kunoichi or not, should ever have to endure. And slopping through miles of uninhabited, treacherous, half-dried bogs, that smelled slightly of animal feces, with her sweaty hair sticking to her forehead, was one of them.
The young medic sighed and trudged wearily on. In a desperate bid to distract herself from her misery, she entertained herself by wondering what her shishou could be doing far away in Konoha. Almost immediately the mental image of Tsunade leaning back in her office chair with her head thrown back in laughter, a cool glass of iced juice in one hand and a horde of shirtless young men all smiling beatifically in the other, came to mind.
Okay, not helping, Sakura pursed her lips and desperately thought about what her other friends could be doing. Images of Ino snoring loudly as she slept in her queen-sized bed past noon, a shirtless Kiba playfully splashing Akamaru as they cooled off in a crystal clear brook, and a giddily smiling Yamato skipping childishly down the street as he licked his ice cream flashed before her. Sakura blinked, slightly disturbed by the masochism of her subconscious mind, and decided that was enough musing over the glamorous lives of her friends back home.
And so, childishly, peevishly, and with a cruel kind of sadistic relish, Sakura soothed herself with the only idea that might possibly give her solace.
She wasn't alone in her suffering.
Sai, the blank-faced artist, was methodically peeling the tall, sticky fronds off of his bare stomach. The slight furrowing of his brows and subtle widening of his eyes gave him a somewhat distressed look. A perverse grin crept over Sakura's sunburned face, Sai must be feeling pretty troubled for any expression of discomfort to actually bubble up to the surface. The porcelain white skin of his exposed abdomen was razed with harsh red where a rash appeared to be forming from the serrated edges of the grass stalks brushing repeatedly over his fair, unprotected skin. The young medic mentally slapped herself for deriving such rotten, vindictive enjoyment from his discomfort.
But it was a weak slap.
She looked past Sai to Naruto, an expectant leer on her otherwise good-natured face. The boisterous Kyubi container, despite his unflappable eagerness and disproportionate energy levels, was not fairing all that much better. The pant-legs of his black and orange jumpsuit were drenched with mud all the way up to his bottom. The nylon fabric clung stickily to his legs in such a way that could only be described as uncomfortable. And, judging by the varying shades of sludge, it was slowly drying and forming a stiff, plaster-like layer. Another fifteen minutes, she mused gleefully, and the dried mud would begin to crack and form miniature fault lines along the backs of his knees, his hips, and around his buttocks. Sakura smirked quietly to herself.
Turns out thatbouncing animatedly from foot to foot while playfully cajoling your exhausted teammates through one of River Country's squelchy bogs was not such a good idea after all.
Stumbling over a tree root, if such an ungainly and stubbly shrub could be deemed as such, Sakura finally moved her gaze to the front two members of their pathetic little procession. Immediately the young medic's sweaty and mud-streaked face fell into a series of peculiar convulsions, twitching between irrepressible amusement and cringing disgust.
She didn't know whether to snort in laughter or spit in distaste. She found herself compromising with a strange, nasty-sounding mixture between the two.
Sai blessed her. Sakura ignored him.
Leading the front of the pack, Kakashi was smoothly and sedately stepping through the tall grasses. He trudged doggedly through the muck with a good-natured sort of indifference, the wife of the River Country's daimyo perched contentedly in his arms. Sakura unconsciously grimaced at the was just something colossally unfair about having to endure a miserable situation while someone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.
As if the aristocratic woman had felt Sakura's eyes on her, Izanami's head swiveled imperiously on her pale, slender neck and she fixed a smug smile at the team medic over Kakashi's shoulder. Sakura glowered, her lips pursing in irritation, and glanced away in respectful distaste.
Having apparently won that battle, Izanami smirked to herself and returned to her previous attentions. Kakashi's unruly mop of Hatake hair.
Long, elegant fingers, dressed in dark red nail polish and a heavily jeweled wedding ring, threaded lightly through the thin, floppy strands. Sakura watched, her mouth twisting with uncomfortable distaste. They all knew that Izanami shouldn't be touching him like that, but they didn't know what to do about it. If they were to accuse her of acting inappropriately, she would just brush it off as an innocent, childish habit of hers. Sakura grimaced, knowing the River Country daimyo's wife, Izanami would probably turn the situation around and accuse them of being twisted for even thinking in that way. A complaint from the wife of the daimyo of one of Fire Country's neighboring nations was a slight deterrent to say the least.
But more than that, Sakura didn't want to speak out because she was afraid of how it would make Kakashi feel. Speaking out in his defense would make it seem like he needed the team's pink-haired, hundred-pound medic to stand up for him, like he was weak and couldn't take care of himself. And, she suspected, the copy-ninja's male-ego was probably already taking a hit because he couldn't use chakra and was forcing them to travel slowly. The last thing she wanted to do was make it worse. Sakura sighed to herself, but was unable to look away from her team leader, indecisive.
Izanami's touch softened. Her curious fingers slid slowly along the edge of Kakashi's hitae-ate, flicking the soft skin of his earlobe so lightly that it could have been an accident. A flirtatious smirk, that was somehow a strange mixture of condescension and mock-pity, budded on those pursed red lips as icy blue eyes stared expectantly up at his masked face. Waiting for some type of reaction.
Nothing.
Kakashi did not so much as bat an eyelash. He continued looking out at the unremarkable scenery around them with a sophisticated sort of disinterest. He completely ignored the married woman's less than socially acceptable antics with respectful patience and unshakable discipline. Sakura realized that he was smart not to say anything. He probably, like her, realized that any sort of verbal dissent would lead to another of the rich woman's conversational mind-fields.
Team Seven had soon found that interacting with Izanami was a dangerous game. A true politician, she would never fail to turn their words around and poison them. Any polite request could be twisted into an unreasonable demand, a childish whim. She belittled, talked over, and passively insulted them all-all except for Kakashi.
With Kakashi, her verbal spars were of a much more precarious nature. With every exchange of words, she sought to tangle him up in a carefully constructed web of shameless flirtation and playful teasing. And now, when all other attempts at capturing his interest had failed, Izanami had literally taken to trying to tickle him to attention.
Which brought Sakura to the more humorous aspect of her former sensei's situation.
Kakashi's hair, which was already regarded by the general population as an "intimidating", uncontrollable mess, seemed to be... reacting to the stifling humidity.
The pale strands of silver, which occasionally gleamed white in the right lighting, practically glowed beneath the resplendent sun. And his signature tufty headed, just-climbed-out-of-bed look appeared to have reached new, uncharted heights of unmanageable downy fluffiness.
No wonder Izanami couldn't keep from playing with his hair. Sakura shook her head slowly, smiling quietly to herself. He looked a little like her neighbor's poodle that one time they had gotten bored and decided to blow-dry it after giving it a bath.
It was just a little bit adorable.
Heavy, bruised clouds hung low over the parched wetlands, swollen with moisture and the promise of future rain. A thin, steamy mist simmered lazily over the fevered plains, capturing the heat of the rising sun in a constellation of tiny dewy droplets.
A heavy silence saturated the damp air. The sounds of the local wildlife were hushed into an uneasy quiet. Only the distant rumbling of far-off thunder and the occasional sharp noise of splintering wood broke through the silence.
Kakashi squinted his eyes.
If he tilted his head just so, the rough knurls and grooves in the aged bark of the tree stump took on the likeness of Gai's heavy brow, beady eyes, and sturdy jaw.
Crack!
A large gash split the aged bark, creating a jagged line.
The wooden impostor grinned doltishly back at him. It's youthful exuberance remained intact, completely undaunted by the large gash denting the bark where a nose would be. Completely unperturbed by how ridiculously early in the day it's real-life counterpart had instructed Kakashi to begin his training.
The Copy-ninja knew that staying in shape was essential for this mission but, despite what Gai thought, he really had no desire to "Rise with the scintillating song of early morning crickets and birds to greet the start of a glorious day!"
Kakashi sprung backwards, raising his elbow in a sharp block as he ducked an imaginary blow. His sandaled feet ghosted through the tall, slowly swaying grasses as he danced away, a glinting kunai clenched tightly in each bandaged hand. He whirled and twisted viciously, feinting to the left, and then the right before landing a splintering strike upon the right side of the battered tree stump. A large, blotchy mushroom that had been growing where Gai's ear would be plopped to the ground amid a shower of wood chips.
If Gai was going to make him practice so early in the morning then, as Kakashi saw it, the Green Beast owed it to him to serve as an imaginary practice dummy.
That must surely be the explanation for why this creaky, old tree-stump seemed to hold a remarkable semblance to Gai. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Kakashi had slept less than two hours in the last three days or the fact that he was currently holding his breath.
The Copy-ninja jabbed towards stump-Gai's unprotected forehead with his left hand, distracting his wooden opponent for the hundredth of a second it took for him to slice open it's lower lip with his right hand. He dodged speedily backwards again, his lithe frame moving fluidly through the thin early morning fog, specter-like in it's grace and swiftness.
His clothes clung tightly to his muscled body, slick with sweat despite the accommodations to his wardrobe. The long-sleeved blue turtleneck shirt was tied tightly around his hips, fanning out behind him as he spun in an elegant round-house kick. The black ANBU tank and green jounin vest left his wiry arms bare, the pale skin glistening with sweat. Thick swathes of bandages had replaced the characteristic gloves. Spots of red seeped through the fabric tied over his bruised knuckles.
Kakashi's expression was stoic. Controlled. Focused.
So intense was his concentration, he appeared not to notice the pair of calculating, ice-blue eyes following him.
Izanami, dressed in thin silks that were better suited for a ballroom than for a trek through River Country's muddy terrain , watched Team Seven's leader from across the misty clearing.
She watched as he struck the tree stump powerfully and unflinchingly, even as the splotches of red staining his bandages darkened in color and a thin trickle of the crimson liquid dripped freely over his pale fingers. Her eyes narrowed in silent appraisal as Kakashi roughly flung himself into the air, curling his lithe body into a lightning-fast backflip. A split second passed as the tips of his fingers skimmed the ground, his back arching sensually for balance as he skidded backwards in a one-armed handstand. Before his feet even touched down there were three loud thumps, the noise ricocheting around the clearing .
Izanami blinked in shock at the three shurikan that were suddenly embedded deeply into the bark. Her full lips curled into an arrogant smirk.
It was the expression of one who's never been denied anything they've ever desired.
Kakashi finally stopped and fell to his knees with a raw gasp of agony. His bandaged, bloody fists tangled tightly in the tall grasses. His slender arms, slick with sweat, shook with exertion as he leaned forward, fighting collapse. Sweat-soaked silver strands spilled smoothly over his hitae-ate as he sat there, his head hanging forward, panting.
Izanami watched, her eyes narrowing in intrigue.
The outline of his mouth through the mask, slightly open and breathless, made him look young and vulnerable. Her eyes traced calculatingly over his slumped form, noting how his sweat-soaked clothes hung off of him. The thin frailness of his neck, ankles, and wrists that was normally hidden by a baggy blue turtleneck. She saw the bruise-like, purple shadow beneath his one visible eye. He stared, unseeingly and expressionlessly at the flattened grass stalks beneath him, as if he were looking upon another world. Another time.
A quiet smirk of smug satisfaction darkened her expression for a moment. And then, without saying a word, she turned on her heel and slinked silently back to her tent.
"Please sensei!" Sakura whined loudly as she tugged on the Copy-ninja's shirtsleeve, "We all just want to find somewhere to eat! Please, any old place will do!" she grabbed both sides of his face and forced his indifferent, half-lidded grey eye to face her slightly crazed, wide open green ones, "You assigned Naruto to pack the food, and now we're all paying for it!"
Kakashi stopped walking and gazed down at the medic's distraught expression with a slightly raised brow, amused. Sakura, seeing that she had finally captured her team leader's attention, launched into her rehearsed argument.
"Just look at Sai!" she cried dramatically, drawing a couple concerned glances from people passing by them along the dirt road leading into a small town, "Eating nothing but ramen has caused him to develop a rash! And look how pale he is!"
Sai glanced up from his perusal of a patch of colorful mushrooms at the side of the road, scratching the irritated skin of his stomach idly.
They had decided to rest at the side of the road, a couple miles from Kayanami Kanagawa, a little merchant town on the edge of River Country's largest river. The majority of the town rested on the actual surface of the river, held aloft by the sturdy, weather-beaten wood of an enormous pier that stretched along the river bank for miles. The endpoint of their journey, Izanami's lavish palace, lied directly across the enormous river. Normally they would simply run across the river's surface, flitting by merchant ships like water-gliders as their chakra carried them swiftly over the water, but because using chakra was such a struggle for Kakashi, they had to take the local ferry.
Kakashi had walked on ahead to buy their tickets for the ferry while the rest of them rested along the roadside.
So the group of them had relaxed underneath the shade of an ancient tree, the bark of it's low hanging branches peeling off as if the humidity was too much for it as well, and waited for his return. Everything had been pleasant, or as pleasant as possible when one was constantly bombarded by a horde of biting swamp bugs, until Sakura had rummaged through the food pack for a snack.
Now, as Kakashi looked down upon the distraught face of his team medic, he couldn't help but wonder if the discovery that Naruto had packed nothing but cup-ramen for the entirety of their journey had snapped the last, thin thread of sanity she had left. What would Tsunade say when he brought home her cherished apprentice lacking all of her mental facilities? What would Tsunade's fists say? There was no way that-
Sakura, sensing that her team leader was becoming side-tracked, quickly caught his face between both of her hands, squishing his cheeks, and forced him to look into her wide, slightly crazed green eyes.
"Sensei," she spoke slowly and quietly into his face, "the ramen." she paused and her eyes bored seriously into his own, "There's too much ramen in the world, sensei. Ramen... Ramen... Ra-"
"Okay!" Kakashi spoke loudly as he quickly broke her hold on his face and stepped away from her, his face expressionless even as the young girl crumpled weakly to the ground behind him, "Let's pick up and get going, we've rested long enough." His eye curved in an enthusiastically happy expression.
Sakura stared uncomprehendingly up at him from the ground through tearful green eyes, her mouth hanging open in stinging disbelief as the rest of their group gathered their packs and started to head down the dirt-road. How could he ignore her like that? The ramen...
The Copy-ninja, apparently oblivious to her distress, just swiped up her pack from the ground and slung it over his own shoulder and turned to slouch after his teammates. A few steps later and he twisted back on his heel to look at her over his shoulder, his slanted brow raised questioningly.
"Sakura, are you coming? We don't want to be late for our restaurant reservation."
"I think I'll get the Tekkadon Donburi. No, no the Korokke!" All of the other occupants crammed inside the small booth groaned as Sakura pressed the menu even closer to her face, squealing, "Oh! They have anko dumplings! I'm ordering anko dumplings with umeboshi as a side and anmitsu for desert!"
She promptly set down the paper menu on the smudgy wooden table, smiling contentedly up at the rest of her teams' various expressions of exasperation. Two seconds passed.
"Wait!" Sakura's eyes widened and her hands jerked forwards to pick the menu up again, "Actually, I think I want the-" The fist that had been supporting Kakashi's chin as he stared with a half-lidded, weary gaze at the overly excited teen suddenly fell to the table, pinning the menu in place.
"Sakura, how would you like to pick a song from the juke-box over there?" Kakashi jerked his head towards the far corner of the restaurant. Sakura, who had been frowning down at her captive menu, perked up at this. "Here," he rummaged around in his pants pocket and spilled out a couple of coins onto the greasy tabletop, "I'll even pay for it."
Sakura smiled brightly, "Sure sensei." She scooped up the coins and slid out of the booth. She took three steps towards the juke-box before she stopped and turned around, opening her mouth to tell them that she really wanted to order the-
"Nothing too sappy." Kakashi cut her off before she could say anything.
"Okay, sensei," Sakura nodded dismissively, "But I was thinking, I actually want the-"
"Something upbeat!" Naruto, catching on to Kakashi's plan, straightened up in his seat.
"But nothing too mainstream," Kakashi drawled, twirling a thin strand of silver hair between his fingers as his half-lidded gaze stared into space absently, "I can't stand that new pop stuff."
"I-" Sakura began.
"Hurry! I think that old dude with the peg-leg is toddling towards the juke-box!" Naruto gasped in exaggerated horror, pointing his finger accusingly at the elderly man that had just caught himself from falling out of his chair in a drunken stupor. Sakura gasped and quickly spun on her heel, speed-walking off towards the juke-box, her former sensei's coins clutched tightly to her chest.
"Huhh..." a general sigh of exhaustion rose up from their booth and there was a muffled thump as both Kakashi's and Naruto's heads connected with the hard surface of the table.
"Thanks sensei." Naruto mumbled. Sai and Izanami nodded their heads in slow agreement.
"Yup."
The waitress came and, smacking her bubble-gum loudly as she glared boredly at them, jotted down everyone's order. Naruto inevitably fell into an argument with Sai, which eventually lead to loud exclamations of disgust and wild gesticulations across the table. Kakashi settled into a comfortable silence, slouching slightly in his seat as he alternated between periodically looking around the small interior of the restaurant and fiddling with his chopsticks. Izanami fell into the comfortable routine of checking her make-up in a small, hand-held mirror, ignoring their chatter. She snapped it shut when the waitress brought their drinks to the table and fixed her eyes on the jounin-sensei sitting across from her.
"How many missions have you been on, Kakashi?" She asked casually, glancing up at him through her lashes as she peeled the wrapper from her straw. The Copy-ninja slowly peeled his bored gaze from an overflowing ashtray on the restaurant's bar and looked at her, expression blank.
"A lot." he said congenially enough.
"So, I guess you could say that you're very... experienced." The corner of her lips curved slightly in a smile as she sipped her glass of water, eyebrow quirking up expectantly as she stared at his face.
Kakashi blinked.
"So," she clapped her hands together and leaned forwards across the table, transitioning seamlessly into a professional business-woman, "You must have been to River Country before. Tell me, what did you think?" Her gaze bored into his own, innocence and sincere interest radiating from her wide ice-blue eyes.
Kakashi held her eyes for a second, wary of this sudden change in attitude, before looking away. He knew she was up to something, but he wasn't sure what she was planning, so he decided to play along.
"I've been to River Country a few times," he spoke in a low, mumbled voice, an unconscious response to her enraptured expression, "But I can't say that I've seen all there is to see." he trailed off vaguely as he resumed his absent fiddling of his chopsticks, trying to bore her out of conversing with him.
Izanami faltered for a second, her enthusiastic expression plastered onto her face, before launching into another question, "Did you ever get the chance to visit the palace? I think I would've remembered someone like you visiting..." her voice trailed off in a suggestive whisper.
"Once or twice." Kakashi answered curtly, "But you wouldn't remember me, I was part of an information retrieval squad that-" he broke off at the sudden feeling of a small, slippered foot caressing the curve of his calf beneath the table. Izanami, smiling lips still on her straw, blinked up at him innocently.
"An information retrieval squad?" she prompted, the picture of curiosity.
Why do I have the feeling that today isn't going to end well? Kakashi mentally sighed. Truth be told, Izanami's constant advances were starting to wear on him. At first, the Copy-ninja had found the situation amusing, simply because of the ridiculousness of it. Why would a happily married women, who clearly lived a rich, lavish life, feel it was necessary to flirt with the team leader of her hired escort team? Was it just the beautiful woman's deluded way of thanking him for escorting her home? By flirting and teasing him did she think, in some disillusioned way, that she was just rewarding another faithful male servant for his submissive obedience? The notion that she fancied herself superior to and coveted by everyone was just as humorous as her misguided assumption that he was just another compliant source of entertainment for her to twist and jerk around at her pleasure... Both assumptions couldn't be farther from the truth.
If it weren't for the fact that a certain degree of tolerance and politeness was expected from him by the Hokage, he would have treated her coldly. Besides, a positive attitude, forced or no, was essential to a team's cooperation. And so he endured her advances, acting oblivious to Izanami's disrespectful and sometimes downright humiliating acts of shameless flirting. But he was getting tired of it.
Kakashi slowly bent his knee and slid his foot in towards him till the back of his heel bumped against the wooden seat of the booth. Izanami's eyes narrowed slightly, but her smirk grew.
"Yes." he answered stiffly, annoyed, "We didn't stay long, I-" Kakashi gasped audibly as Izanami's foot slid smoothly between his legs and pressed roughly against him. Shit! He slammed his knees together, trembling.
Naruto, mid-accusation, glanced over at the uncharacteristic noise. Kakashi thought fast.
"I had the... pleasure." he ground out, flinching slightly, "of meeting your husband." The Copy-ninja's piercing steely grey orb locked warningly with her own, even as a pink blush colored the tips of his ears. But Izanami's smirk just grew. She tossed her long, ebony locks over her shoulder and grinned as she slowly rubbed her foot harder against him. His hands shook as he gripped the edge of the table, fighting the urge to splinter wood.
Kakashi found himself biting his lip in an effort to stop the vicious snarl building up inside his chest from spilling out.
Izanami felt him trembling against her and misunderstood his reaction. A superior, almost mocking, smile curled slowly over her full, rose-colored lips as she leaned forward. Her dark hair fell smoothly around her face in curtains, hiding her expression from the others.
"Feels good, huh." Her quiet, sensual purr was more of a statement than a question really, "You like that."
Something snapped inside him.
Kakshi's visible eye seemed to darken until it was just a glint of hard, angry obsidian. His thick lashes cast shadows over the hollows beneath his eyes, already dark and bruised with sleep deprivation. Thin slivers of silvery-white hair spilled, glossy and smooth, over his hitae-ate and fell softly over his shining eye. Izanami's eyes widened and she found herself leaning back slightly, shocked by the striking beauty of the livid creature before her.
She opened her mouth to say something but Kakashi cut her off.
The heavy wooden table between them was knocked roughly into Izanami's chest. All of the breath was knocked out of her in a startled gasp. The tall glass of water that she had been sipping so amorously splashed over her in a cold wave of sparkling ice and tinkling glass.
Naruto yelped in surprise as his own drink was tossed roughly towards him, ducking out of the way just in time. Sai, characteristically oblivious to the upheaval of emotion that had just erupted beside him, stubbornly delivered the few final words of his argument to the Jinchuriki before sparing a glance at his team leader. The few inhabitants of the restaurant all seemed to be staring. Sakura continued grunting and muttering darkly in frustration as she repeatedly poked the jammed buttons of the aged juke-box, completely unaware of the conflict going on behind her.
"I suggest that you go clean yourself off in the ladies room." Kakashi commented offhandedly, looking blankly somewhere over Izanami's left shoulder with a stony, half-lidded gaze as he tossed her a handful of napkins.
The thin brown paper napkins fluttered gently over her but were unable to break the focus in her narrowed eyes as she glared icily at him from across the table. Naruto, his blue eyes wide and startled, glanced back and forth between them in confusion. There was a tension in the air between them, and it seemed to grow in intensity the longer Kakashi avoided her eyes and the longer she glared at him. Sai blinked.
Finally, when it seemed as if one of them was sure to snap and spring viciously at the other, Izanami stood up. She rose slowly from her seat, standing tall and dignified even as rivulets of cool water dripped from her hair, her clothes and fell loudly to the slick, wooden floor. One smooth turn on her heel, and she was walking away from them, her steps reserved and stately.
Just as she swung open the door to the women's restroom, she cast a final glance over her shoulder at the Copy-ninja.
Light blue eyes, glowing with self-righteous anger and resentment, narrowed at the sight of the jounin, lounging calmly back in his seat with his arm resting on the top of the booth behind him. His indifferent gaze, hard and imperious despite his attempt at casualty, slid evenly over his surroundings. Sakura came bouncing back to her teammates, who soon engaged her in energetic conversation around their unresponsive former sensei. The rest of the restaurant's occupants slowly went back to their own conversations, a dull chatter rising up in place of the sharp silence before.
A bitter glare twisted Izanami's fair features, obscured by the dark sopping tendrils of long hair the hung limply in front of her face.
Kakashi's gaze flickered up briefly to meet hers. But it was enough time for her to see the steely resolve hardening his dark eye.
"Yes, I'm sure!" Izanami huffed with annoyance into her phone as she leaned closer to the restroom mirror and dabbed at her running make-up with a wadded up paper towel. Seeing that she was only blotching the dark liquid even more she gave up, throwing the ball of paper to the floor in a small fit of bad temper.
The person on the other line must have said something to annoy her, because Izanami stomped her foot and turned away from the mirror.
"Ugh!" her eyes rolled and her hand fisted on her hip, "Yori! I don't care what he says! I'm the one calling the shots here, you do what I say!"
A triumphant smirk broke over Izanami's make-up stained face.
Wow. I finally did it.
It was hard getting back into writing, but I'm glad I did it. I told you guys I wasn't giving up on this story! So, I do plan on updating, but it'll most likely be in a week or two. Sorry that this chapter was a little slow moving, a lot of it was necessary for the plot. I hope that I didn't disappoint anyone, I know it's been a really long time :( But please, if you read, please take the time to write me a review and tell me what you think. You have no idea what it would do for me right now.
Thanks
~Flintyminty25