"Look out!" Kakashi shouted to Michio as a kunai sailed past the blue-haired genin. Michio ducked and whirled around, slipping a kunai of his own out of the pack on his leg.
"Don't attack!" Kakashi barked, his ANBU instincts kicking in. "Stay low so we can assess the situation."
Katsu dropped to the ground as a shuriken flew past him, rolling to the side to come up behind a tree. Miyuki bounded over to drag Michio behind a bush nearby, pulling him into a crouch to stay hidden.
Kakashi stayed out in the field, waiting for the next attack. When there was none, he almost called everyone out into the open, but froze when he heard a twig snap somewhere behind him. His gaze slid sideways to makes sure none of the Genin had been the one to move.
They hadn't. They were staring at him with wide eyes, asking without words what—or who—had made that noise.
His answer?
He had no idea.
Kakashi slid around to stare at the trees, searching for any sign of whoever had cracked the twig. He saw just a glimpse of a masked shinobi before a mixture of kunai, shuriken and senbon came raining down on them, and he jumped high enough to latch onto a low hanging branch, swinging himself up to squat on top of it.
His gaze swept through the area he had seen the shinobi, carefully searching for the black material of their outfit—he hadn't seen whether it was a male or female.
Kakashi clenched his fist around the kunai in his hand, his knuckles turning white as he shifted quietly. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, making him restless as he fought to stay still and not make noise.
He threw the kunai when black moved into his line of view, and a grunt followed when the shinobi was hit.
The Jonin created a Shadow Clone, sending it down to distract the ninja while he assessed the situation.
Okay, so far there's only one. But he might have comrades, Kakashi thought. He's only thrown weapons with extreme accuracy, so we don't know his style of fighting really…
Miyuki yelped as a hand clamped over her mouth and an arm pinned her to a body behind her. Her scared green eyes flicked towards Kakashi's hiding place before moving to stare at Michio.
The blue-haired genin was struggling against the ropes binding him to the tree, too afraid to call out for help as a kunai settled against Miyuki's throat warningly.
Kakashi's clone jumped backward as the shinobi he had been attacking threw himself at him, stretching his arm out. They were forced out into the open, where several kunai were thrown from varying directions. The clone swore under his breath and launched himself into the air to avoid them, letting the kunai clang against each other and fall to the ground.
The real Kakashi watched as the fight went on until finally his clone was hit, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. The masked shinobi took off their mask, throwing their head back and laughing, long dark hair cascading down their back.
Laughter dying down, she tilted her head to stare up at Kakashi.
"Hey, puppy," she called, dropping her hand to rest on her hip. "How have you been doing the past few years?"
/\/\
Iruka barely stopped himself from strangling the little boy in front of him.
"Itachi," he muttered. "Daddy's busy. Go play with Hikaru."
"Hikaru's busy," Itachi said matter-of-factly. "I wanna play with Hana."
"Hana is busy, too," Iruka said, clenching his fist. "She can't play with you right now."
Itachi pouted and the brunette refused to look at him, knowing that if he did he would give into every demand the kid had.
"Itachi, go play with Sasuke."
The little boy pouted again and left the room to go find his younger brother.
Iruka sighed and dropped his head into his hands. The past two days Sasuke had kept him up all night, refusing to go to sleep without Kakashi there and Itachi was constantly asking to see Hana, even though she was staying at her mother's friend's house with Kiba while Tsume was on a mission.
Iruka hadn't realized how much Kakashi had affected the two Uchiha's lives until he was gone.
/\/\
Kakashi dropped to the ground in a crouch, glaring at the woman in front of him. Her golden eyes glimmered with malice in the fading light, and he shivered. The last time he had seen this woman, he had attacked the only thing she had left and abandoned her for dead.
He had thought she had died.
"Keiko," he said, straightening. "Long time, no see."
"Kakashi Hatake, I will kill you for what you did to me!" Keiko shrieked, her playful laughter disappearing in the light of her rage.
"What did I do to you exactly?" Kakashi asked, backing away for the safety of a tree. He never made it.
Another shinobi, this one a man, stepped out, blocking his way. Others appeared, guarding all of the ways he could take to leave.
Not that he would. He had three Genin that he had to protect; he wasn't going to leave them.
So the gray-haired ninja moved forward again, closer to Keiko and her venomous rage.
"You remember, you were there," she snarled. "You know what you did to me."
"Are you sure that was me?"
"Yes!" she hissed, taking a step closer to him. Kakashi could feel her poisonous anger seeping towards him as she got closer, and he stopped breathing as he remembered something about this dangerous kunoichi.
Poison was her specialty.
"You were the one who killed my lover on a mission, you were the one who killed my twin sister, and you were the one who killed my son! You took everything from me!" she screamed, her hair lifting as the wind picked up.
Oh, yeah. He had done that.
Aw, crap.
A/N: Okay, so this is the next chapter. I have the one after this planned out, but I've been kinda busy preparing for my best friend coming to visit this weekend, so I don't know when it'll be out. I do know that I will not update this weekend (see the above sentence), so I've been trying to get all of the writing out of my system so I won't have the urge to type and ruin Katie's visit.
Oh well. Please review!