"Sensei!"
"Sensei!"
"Sensei!" Naruto's bright blue eyes widened with childish excitement as he searched the Copy-ninja's expressionless visage. He waited with bated breath for any indication that the man before him had heard him... or was even aware of his presence.
Three seconds passed.
"Sensei!" Naruto quickly leaned back in his seat, rigid with suspense. As if he fully expected Kakashi to lunge suddenly across the table, spring his lanky arms open wide, and squeal "Peek-a-boo!".
Naruto took a deep breath, grinning expectantly, ready to try again. "Sen-"
"Kakashi-sensei." Sakura smoothly tapped the wrist of the man beside her as she ducked under the table to retrieve her fallen napkin, quickly returning to the inhalation of her delicious meal without breaking stride. Naruto deflated. I wanted to say that...
Kakashi slowly tilted his head towards the young girl beside him but did not deign to fully turn his brooding gaze away from the far wall. It was a long, sluggish moment before he finally answered with a low, distracted, "Hmm?".
"Why is Izanami-san taking so long in the bathroom?" Naruto cut in. He stared hard into the man's visible heavy-lidded eye, trying to mentally will the Copy-ninja into answering him. Kakashi blinked.
Naruto squirmed impatiently in his seat, his former sensei's slow, lethargic attitude grating on him more than usual. Days of hiking through parched wetlands under a blistering sun and humid air had quite a peculiar effect on the young Jinchuriki. Rather than the complete lack of energy and willpower that is the expected reaction to such a grueling trek, Naruto felt twitchy and restless. He had so much energy he was practically splitting at the seams.
Unlike the rest of his only-human companions... who were slumped about him in varying degrees of exhaustion and starvation.
"Ah, yes." Kakashi slowly waved his hand in a flippant, unconcerned motion, "It seems that our dear benefactress is also in the femalian practice of taking a gratuitous amount of time in the restroom." He yawned deeply as he slouched forwards to rest his elbow on the table, languidly propping his head up with an open palm as he calmly slapped Sakura's stealthy hand away from his plate. Naruto's expression fell at this lackluster response, What does that even mean!
His blue eyes brightened when an appealing idea struck him.
"You can have some of my food, Sakura-chan!" he chirped hopefully, smiling widely as he considerately pushed his still-warm bowl of ramen across the table towards the hungry girl.
She did not even glance at his heart-felt offering.
"'Femalian' isn't a word, sensei..." Sakura pouted sulkily, ignoring Naruto's crushed expression as she rubbed the back of her stinging hand, "I think I'm going to write down a complaint about your sexist attitude on my mission report." She sniffed, looking away from the Copy-ninja's now-weary stare cooly.
A moment passed in which Sai offered to throw Naruto's ramen in the trash for him, Naruto howled in outrage at such a horrific suggestion, and Sakura fought to keep her expression hurt and unforgiving.
Kakashi sighed and slid his plate over.
Sakura brightened considerably. She perked up buoyantly in her seat, a wide triumphant grin breaking out over her face. Kakashi sighed but was unable to fully erase the quiet smile that grew on his face, bemused despite himself. Sakura let out a happy trill of excitement, rolling her chopsticks noisily against each other as she rubbed them quickly between her hands in anticipation.
"All you had to do was ask, Sakura." Kakashi chuckled good-naturedly as he shifted in his seat to cast a cursory glance around the restaurant, "There's nothing good that can be gained by threatening a-"
"-Oof!" Sakura sneakily caught him around the waist in a rib-crushing, heartfelt hug, pulling away quickly before he could voice any complaints.
"Phank yooh shenshai!" Sakura got out between large mouthfuls of white rice and vegetables. Naruto paused in the valiant rescue of his half-eaten bowl of ramen, sprawled halfway across the table, both hands wrapped tightly around Sai's defiant neck. He felt his expression pucker into a sour grimace. Sakura-chan would rather eat a stinky, old-man's food than my ramen! If Kaka-sensei doesn't back off I'm gonna burn his Icha Icha...
Kakashi recovered smoothly, his visible grey eye slipping from an expression of wide-eyed surprise to one of creased affection.
Yup, the porn is gonna burn, Naruto decided, Just as soon as I finish my ramen.
Said ramen suddenly fell to the floor with a loud clatter. Sai's eyes narrowed smugly over his blown-up, suffocating cheeks.
Naruto promptly screamed in agony.
His hands clenched and unclenched disbelievingly around Sai's neck for a few seconds before the utter shock of the travesty overcame him and he fell back and wilted slowly into his seat. His wide blue eyes were glassy and numb with grief. Sai crashed back into his seat as well, his arms flopping limply at his sides as he collapsed bodily upon the young medic beside him. In a croaking voice he raspily informed her, through high-pitched rattling wheezes, that he was in dire need of medical assistance. Sakura, completely absorbed in the consumption of her former sensei's delicious, not-ramen meal, was caught off guard. Her emerald eyes filled with tears and her face flushed darker than her hair as she choked on a particularly large piece of broccoli. She hunched over, gagging loudly into her plate as her hands patted desperately around the messy table-top in search for her conveniently elusive glass of water, flipping chopsticks and rice into the air.
The entire restaurant stared.
"And this is why I wear a mask." Kakashi divulged amiably to the elderly couple occupying the table beside him, his visible eye creasing into a happy curve at their scandalized expressions.
"Shut up!" Sakura tried to glare at him through red, puffy eyes as she coughed into her elbow, "You dumb-"
"No really, Sah-Sakura-chan!" Naruto tried to appease her, "You're pink eyes match you're hair! I-It looks nice! And-and all those blotchy patches on you're face... they... they..." He swallowed loudly, shrinking back into his seat, eyes widening in terror, "You're going to hurt me now, aren't you."
"Naruto..." Sakura growled, a million different ways to die written in the expression of her blotchy, pink face.
"Sakura." Kakashi's tone was sharp and urgent, cutting through their childish squabble with a seriousness that automatically jolted them into focus, "Go check on Izanami, get her out of the restroom." He slid smoothly out of the booth and rose slowly into a casual slouch that could easily be mistaken for lazy unawareness. But, Naruto knew better.
That was Kakashi's battle-stance.
He didn't have to ask twice. Sakura scooted quickly out of the seat, popping one last spear of broccoli into her mouth as she did, and quickly made her way across the wooden floor to the restroom.
"What's going on, sensei?" Naruto quickly glanced at Sai to see if the artist was in on whatever Kakashi was planning. Sai's face was blank and serious, giving away nothing, but his dark eyes were trained expectantly on their team leader's masked face. Kakashi sat back down.
"We're leaving." Kakashi murmured in a low whisper, going back to fiddling disinterestedly with his straw, "Act busy." Sai quickly fell into sorting through the spears of asparagus on his plate, munching idly.
But Naruto frowned, not taking the hint, "Why? What's wrong?"
A noncommittal shrug and a slight tilt of the head towards the rest of the restaurant was his only answer. The Jinchuriki raised his eyebrows looking about him in surprise. At some point during their dinner, all of the other customers seemed to have left. All except for a fairly large group of scruffy men whispering conspiratorially to the bartender, who glanced over towards their table and nodded.
Naruto gasped loudly, "Sensei! I think-"
"I bet you often feel like this," Sai commented, holding up a short spear of asparagus and lining it up next to a regular-sized one, "don't you, Naruto-kun?"
"Sai..." Naruto growled, his face glowing red, "If you make one more penis-related comment, I swear I'll-"
-All of the hanging lights suddenly flickered out with a crackling snap of electricity. Naruto, already bursting with restless energy, quickly sprang up out of his seat, kunai in hand. Half a minute of all-encompassing silence passed. Naruto fidgeted anxiously. What's going on? Shouldn't someone have attacked us by now? Where is Sakura-chan?
Naruto glanced out of the corner of his eye at his sensei. The Copy-ninja's face was briefly illuminated by the thin beams of light filtering through the openings in the boarded up windows. A sliver of dread sparked in Naruto's stomach. He frowned slightly at the bruise-like shadow under his sensei's hooded eye, at the paleness of his skin. He seems smaller...
"Get ready." Kakashi's low voice jolted him back to awareness, falling like hushed velvet upon the tense, silent atmosphere.
Smoke bombs went off all around them, filling the small enclosure with thick black clouds of roiling gas.
A small pained grunt sounded across from Naruto as the nebulous smoke tumbled over Kakashi's tensed form. It was the only warning he got before the swirling cloud of darkness swallowed him up as well. Sharp pinpricks peppered his blue eyes. He recoiled and squeezed them shut, gasping. Thick black vapor pooled into his lungs, leaving a blistering trail of searing heat in it's wake. Dropping his kunai, Naruto quickly slapped his hands over his mouth, trapping the building cough inside his smarting lungs. Shit!
The distinct sound of heavy, chakra-powered footsteps pounded speedily towards him through the darkness. Naruto ducked to pick up his kunai, but an overwhelming urge to cough shuddered through him, making his muscles spasm helplessly. A shurikan embedded itself with a splintering thunk in the wooden surface of the table next to his left foot.
What is this? Blind panic rushed to overtake him, fear's icy grip clenching around his thudding heart. I can't-His unexpected blindness and suffocation swept away his ability to move, leaving his hunched body rigid with terror. A jumbled cacophony of images flashed rapidly across the forefront of his mind, bright and painfully vivid.
The blazing dull orange light of the setting sun reflecting off the cold metal of the empty academy playground around him. The disgusted slant of cold, narrow dead-fish eyes looking down at him at every turn. Iruka-sensei's broad shoulders and straight back as the man stepped protectively between him and Mizuki-sensei. Gaara's slitted sleep-bruised eyes, bright glistening turquoise shining bitterly through feathered strands of deep crimson. The snapping ethereal-blue glow of Sasuke's chidori as it plunged through his shoulder in a spray of angry red. Tsunade's lips quirking, proud and a tad spiteful, as her apprentice's dainty fist sent giant chunks of shattered rock tumbling around the figure of Team Seven's former sensei, his slender frame rigid with shock. The sharp angle of Kakashi's elbow as he drew his hand level with his slanted eyes, flickering blue sparks reflecting off his steely gaze as he sprang cat-like through the air towards Hijame.
The sharp metallic clang of steel meeting steel sounded across from him. A muffled scream of agony. Kakashi...
Kakashi-sensei was already fighting-as if the chemical-laced smoke hadn't robbed him of his sight or breath as well. But, Naruto knew that wasn't the case, the Copy-ninja had to be holding his breath and fighting by sound alone. His former sensei wouldn't be able to cover for him long. He shouldn't have to at all. Naruto shuddered briefly but was unable to will his frozen muscles into action.
The snapshot image of his former sensei's bare face came to the fore-front of Naruto's mind, captured in the split-second when Kakashi's fist was plunging through Hijame's chest and he hadn't yet realized that his mask had been pulled down. For one brief second, one fleeting moment in time, Naruto had caught a glimpse of the face of the famed Copy-ninja as he killed. He hadn't known what he had expected to see...But it hadn't been the fiercely determined expression of a man who was consciously deciding to slaughter another human being for the sake of those that were precious to him.
Naruto slowly expelled the burning poisonous smoke from his lungs, letting his muscles loosen into a familiar battle-ready stance.
Kakashi hid himself behind masks, indifferent attitudes, and apathetic slouches. But Naruto had seen the man's real face, and, surprisingly, his true heart as well. Thinking about it made him realize...
The Jinchuriki felt his face twist into a strange expression, his lips pulling away from his teeth in a demonic grin. The approaching footsteps faltered.
Konoha's Copy-ninja wasn't the only one with a will of fire.
Kakashi lunged forwards.
The attacking ninja's kunai clattered loudly to the floor and the man stumbled to his knees. There was the sound of choked gurgling as hot blood spattered thickly to the wooden floor. A loud thump resounded in font of him. He felt the minuscule vibrations ripple through the wooden floor in the pads of his sandaled feet. The rough sound of boots grazing speedily over the minuscule pebbles of grit that dusted the wooden floor came at him from both sides.
It really was unfortunate that their attackers had chosen to use smoke-bombs that made it impossible to either see or breathe.
Using the slumped man's shoulders before him as a step, Kakashi launched himself high above the heads of his assailants. In one fluid rowing motion he uncrossed his arms and swung them open wide, tucking his knees tightly into his chest as he cut through the air. There was a wet noise of splitting skin and a fine spray of hot liquid on his fingers as the kunai in each of his hands sliced neatly through the necks of the charging men on either side of him. A heartbeat later and his sandaled feet touched down on their destination, the two-and-a-half inch wide side of the heavy wooden table that he had mentally mapped out to be two-and-one-thirds meters away from their own booth. One powerful kick of his legs later, and the heavy wooden table spun wildly across the room. There was a loud, splintering crunch as it crashed through the shins of a ninja leaping through the darkness towards him.
After all, it's not like his enemies had any way of knowing that the only difference their smoke-bombs made was that it forced the Copy-ninja to kill them all within four and a half minutes.
He landed on his shoulders and rolled backwards, dragging the razor edge of his kunai along the floor as he moved. A harsh grunt above him on his right alerted Kakashi to the presence of a now five-toed attacker. He quickly kicked his legs out, using his momentum to flip off his back and into a low crouch, and his twin kunai returned to their position in front of his chest.
The extra resistance he had felt against his kunai when he had sliced through their necks made him think that they must be wearing some type of breathing apparatus, a gas-mask of sorts. Kakashi lobbed a kunai straight into the eye of an approaching ninja, hearing a distinct crack of splitting plastic lenses before the wet squelch of a bursting eye-ball. Hmm, looks like they're wearing goggles too...
The tiny hairs on the back of Kakashi's neck rose at the thin whistling of air above him. He jerked his head to the side. The razor-sharp steel of a katana grazed over the tip of his ear. A powerful rush of air followed the swinging blade, the force of the blow ruffling his silver hair.
He pivoted sharply on the tips of his toes towards the katana-wielder on his left, his body still folded in a cat-like crouch. He drew his left fist towards his right shoulder in a powerful wind-up, but the stutter in the approaching footsteps behind him sent a wave of goose-bumps rolling over him. Trusting in nothing more than his own gut instincts, a finely honed sixth sense, Kakashi halted the swing of his left arm and, his low crouch balanced on the tips of his toes, leaned as far back as he dared. His back arched in a deep sensual curve that had his pale feathered strands brushing against the grainy wood of the floor behind him, sticky with smeared blood. The rotating razor-sharp blades of a large shurikan ghosted over him, the whirring blades a hair's breadth above his lithe body-The kunai in Kakashi's left fist buried itself deeply in the vein-tangled meat of the katana-wielder's wrist. A searing spray of thick liquid blossomed out and spattered over Kakashi's chest as he caught the katana-weilder in the middle of a back-swing.
Kakashi's steady heart throbbed inside his taut chest. Every muscle burned. The man's katana clattered loudly to the floor and the shurikan buried itself in the far wall.
And then he was standing, the body of the katana-wielder having been flipped completely over his own. He held the body fixedly between himself and his rushing attackers with a kunai through the back and a firm grip on the dead-man's collar. He whirled around, ducking as he raised the dead katana-wielder protectively before his face. There was a gristly crunch as the honed edge of an axe buried up to the hilt in the dead man's ribcage. White spots popped lazily before his closed eyes.
Kakashi froze when a tremendous crash of splintering wood and crumbling cement shook the entire restaurant... Sakura?
The aged wood around them let out a low, creaky groan. A fine mist of dust and grit rained down upon them, hissing as it skittered over the grainy floor. A lurching, ominous crunch rang out over their heads. Kakashi shifted his weight nervously as the walls of the ancient restaurant shuddered under the strain of holding the ceiling up, sharp cracks and pops snapping in a foreboding crescendo around them.
He had just enough time to think to himself that four and a half minutes had passed some time ago, his lungs felt like they were swollen to the size of throbbing balloons inside his chest, and "Oh Shit" before the ceiling collapsed with an ear-splitting crash. Kakashi braced himself.
-All of the air he had been holding within his lungs whooshed out of him as a pair of thin wiry arms caught him solidly around the waist.
Before he could get his whirling head around what was happening, he was lying on his back next to Sai on the splintery wood of the crowded pier outside the restaurant, gasping for breath as Naruto's tear-stained face grinned cheekily down at him.
"What's happeniiiing? What's going o-on? Who did that? Why-"
"-Sai, get in the air." Kakashi brusquely shook the hysterical woman's clutching hands off his shoulder, "Catch up to Sakura, she might need aerial support. Naruto-"
"Are we in dan-ger? Why did that building explo-ode? Who are you? Can you save me?" the young woman wailed, railing her fists against the Copy-ninja's impervious chest.
"Get to the rooftops," Kakashi spoke tersely, his half-lidded gaze intent and focused despite the pair of arms wrapping around his head like boa-constrictors, "I'll catch up. We need to find Iznami and Sakura, and I have the feeling they're not that far from each other."
There was a collective gasp in the crowd of citizens that had gathered around them when Sai's flying ink-beast flapped out of his sketch-pad and Naruto sprang onto the roof of the nearest building and started sprinting down the row of buildings lining the pier. Sai's ink-beast rose high into the swiftly-darkening, cloudy sky and sailed off in the opposite direction, searching the other side of the pier for Sakura or any incoming enemies.
Kakashi, seemingly oblivious to the deranged squalling of the young woman hanging from his neck with her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, quickly jerked his mask down and sniffed the air.
He couldn't use chakra, so summoning his ninken wasn't an option. The girl's eyes widened to an impossible degree and she froze, her glazed brown eyes less than an inch from his mouth. Luckily, his own nose was just as keen, if not even more so, than most of his ninja-dogs. A strange frothy gurgle spilled out of the young woman's slack jaw. There! He caught wind of a faint trace of Sakura's shampoo. It seemed to trail further down the pier, in the direction that Naruto had gone. Kakashi replaced his mask and the girl's vice-like grip on him suddenly gave out. She fell with a crash to the wood below, her arms and legs still molded to the shape of him, twitching.
Kakashi frowned, seemingly just now noticing her, and tilted his head down at her concernedly, "Oh! Are you alright?" His visible eye crinkled into a smile.
"Move."
Kakashi had to bite his lip to keep a frustrated growl from spilling out. Curious, frightened faces crowded him on all sides, hands snatching frantically at his arms, his clothes. He tried to take a step forwards, tripped as someone clutched wildly at his ankle, and bumped his nose into the startled forehead of a doltish man standing ape-like before him.
"You need to let go." he told the pair of arms wrapped snugly around his hips.
It wasn't in the Copy-ninja's nature to be rude. A short man with glasses and fat lips grabbed his collar and started yammering a string of questions into his face, spittle flying. Kakashi yanked his arm out of the bruising grip behind him, placed the flat of his gloved palm over the man's be-speckled face, and shoved. It wasn't in his nature to let his teammates face the unknown without him either.
Worried, demanding whines erupted into a sea of startled, offended squawks around him as the man stumbled backwards. The crowd swayed about him, stepping back suspiciously. Kakashi whipped out a kunai.
"Clear a way! You are interfering with-"
-A collective shriek of horror erupted behind him, cutting him off. He whipped his head around at the sound, narrowed grey eye flitting over the scene, searching for the source of the discord. A clump of distressed civilians were all peering helplessly over the edge of the pier into the choppy waters of the river below.
"-an old woman!-"
"-pushed in! Someone pushed-"
"-needs help! She's drowning, she can't-"
Kakashi's shoulders slumped in an rueful sigh as all of the civilians ran over to the edge of the pier, clearing the path before him.
His team was probably at least a mile ahead of him by now, facing all sorts of dangerous ninja without him. A sharp pang of shame stabbed through him--I can't even keep up with them, Kakashi's hands clenched into fists as he stood there, frozen. I'm just dragging them down...
Thanks to his carelessness, they now had no idea where their client was and his team was charging blindly ahead into unknown danger without their leader. If he had any chance of catching up to them at all, chakra-less as he was, then this was it...Kakashi squared his shoulders and took off running.
The water was dark and cold as it swelled around him, immersing him in nebulous silence. The weight of his jounin vest was surprisingly heavy on his shoulders and back. Kakashi coughed harshly when his head broke the surface, his abused lungs contracting as a chill seeped through his thin body. He whipped his water-logged silver strands out of his eyes and twisted around, searching for any sign of an elderly woman in the grey waves splashing around him. The crowd on the edge of the pier yelled garbled instructions down to him, pointing every which way. Where is she? She can't have sunk that fa-
-Kakashi breathed in water when a pair of bony hands clawed viciously at his neck from behind him. He was dragged under for a brief second, squirming as he tried to twist around and get a good grip on the violently thrashing woman. Long nails raked frantically over his scalp and caught in his thick silvery strands, snarling into a fierce death-grip that had his neck snapping back at a painful angle. Her small foot jabbed deep into his back pocket, hiking his pants down a couple inches on his hips when she used it as leverage to push herself out of the water.
"Hey!" his shocked cry of protest went unheeded, and the frail old woman continued her upwards ascent, dunking his head under a few times for good measure.
Kakashi winced but allowed the elderly woman to climb over him, her creaky voice muttering darkly in his ear in a language that made about as much sense to him as the chattering of an ill-tempered ferret. She perched herself upon his shoulders in an impromptu squat, beating him sternly over the head with her small red handbag when the extra weight made him lurch forwards and flail his arms for balance.
This is not, Kakashi shuddered as the old woman's hairy legs wrapped tightly around his neck, This is not how I pictured this going...
He paddled quickly back to the edge of the pier, closing his eyes and desperately trying to imagine that his passenger was the beautiful femme fatale out of his favorite Icha Icha when the old woman's saggy breasts drooped over his face as she hunched over his head. The large group of civilians gathered concernedly at the drop-off reached out their hands eagerly to receive her as Kakashi gritted his teeth and pushed against the old woman's soggy diapered seat, lifting her up. They carefully pulled the sopping old bat onto the walkway. The jowls of her wrinkled face wobbled as she huffed, her stern mouth a thin line and her foggy marble eyes wide in outrage, yarn-like strands of grey hair plastered to her raised brow. A young man draped his coat over her hunched shoulders.
But when Kakashi tried to pull himself up onto the pier, his fingers were crushed under the stomping feet of the grumbling crowd. Ow! He quickly snatched back his left hand, his broken ring and pinkie fingers throbbing with searing pain. Assuming it to be an accident, he adjusted the grip of his right hand and started to pull himself up, one-handed. A clumsy kick to the chin and he was sent reeling back and falling into the cold water with a startled yelp.
He splashed to the surface of the water, gasping in confusion, "What-"
"-Ta mo eadie fliuch!" (my clothes are wet) The old lady shrieked angrily. Her affronted cry seemed to rally the crowd and, remembering the Copy-ninja's previous shoving and forgetting his more-recent valiant rescue, they all turned on him, hissing.
"She said someone pushed her!"
"She said you pushed her!"
"Yeah! That's right! You pushed her in!"
Kakashi shook his head, blinking incredulously up at the vengeful spittle raining down on him from the fat-lipped, be-speckled man. This was ridiculous! All of the exhaustion and stress that had been building up over the past month seemed to rise up inside him, and if he were anyone else he would have screamed... Or dissolved into frustrated tears. His team was unreasonably far ahead of him, facing any number of lethal dangers without any direction or support at all-and where was he!
Floundering uselessly in the cold water of the river, barred from the pier by the very people he had been trying to help, the stretched waistband of his pants stubbornly refusing to stay at his waist, and under doctor's orders not to use a spark of his chakra.
He closed his eyes, trying to find a sliver of inner calm in the midst of the shame and anxiety fluttering up inside his chest.
He shouldn't have gone on this mission. Tsunade was right, he was only a liability to everyone around him. Twelve pounds less than his normal weight, fatigued to the point where he ached all the time, and assaulted by vicious flashbacks that were vivid enough to make his head reel and his legs give out whenever he used what little chakra he could summon... Kakashi was in no way capable of completing a mission, much less protecting his teammates.
Ever since he had woken up after their infiltration of the rogue-ninja camp, in that dingy hospital on the outskirts of the Fire Nation, he'd been struggling. Sakura had, after careful scrutiny, dismissed all of his reluctantly admitted problems as "likely after-effects of chakra-poisoning". She had told him that she supposed it was normal for him to have a little trouble sleeping and eating, that his body probably just wasn't used to using chakra after being out of commission for so long. That, that was why he nearly passed out each time he tried. Her synopsis would have been right... if it weren't for the fact that he had never told her the one outlying factor that was really behind his sudden weight-loss, insomnia, and inability to use chakra.
Afterall, how would Sakura know that her former sensei couldn't fall asleep or summon chakra without the heart-wrenching sensation of seeing the faces of his long-dead friends and family confront him in vivid clarity?... Or that he was too scared, too shamed to even tell her so?
Kakashi bit his lip. He was useless. There really was nothing he could do to-
-A high, buzzing whine, stuttered and jolting, zipped by behind him in a spray of cold water. The crowd at the edge of the pier stopped their barrage of offended shouts at the noise. They gasped in surprised delight, cheering. Kakashi twisted around quickly, his grey eye widening as sudden hope dawned on him.
Coming down alongside the pier, zooming jerkily along the choppy surface of the river, a thin line of jet-skis raced towards them, heading for the unseen finish line farther along the pier. Kakashi's eyes narrowed with renewed resolve and his lips quirked in a grim smirk.
Looks like I may be of some use to my team yet...
Note: The language that the old woman used is Gaelic. It is a language native to Ireland and, therefore, not exactly the norm in a Japanese village. Meh, I thought sticking a foreigner in there would be funny :) There always seems to be some sort of miscommunication in those types of situations. Anyway, I am by no means well-versed or even the slightest bit knowledgeable about Gaelic. So, if you just so happen to be well-versed or even the slightest bit knowledgeable, then please excuse any mistakes I might have made. Lol. I used an online translator.
Looking back over the previous chapters to this story, I've realized that I need to mention a few things...
One. I kinda sorta didn't really ever put up a disclaimer did I?... DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, except for a few of my own.
Two. It has come to my attention that Hijame's name was originally Hajime. Honestly, I'm surprised no one called me out on that lol. Let's just pretend that it was all because the story that I am channeling got lost in the vast, intricate inner-workings of my spectacular mind, and be grateful that it came out on the other side with only a couple bumps and name-changes.
Three. There will be cell-phones and motor-vehicles in this story. My apologies to Masashi Kishimoto and anyone else who might care. :P
Thanks for reading! I hope that you enjoy this chapter and stick around for the next one! Please review and lemme know what you think!
~Flintyminty25