Wow, that was fast. But what can I say? – I was suddenly struck by inspiration.
Writing Kakashi was hard work, but rewarding.
BTW: There's a new link on my profile page for the fanart. Also, I made a tumblr. Not that I have any idea what I'm doing. It's mostly going to be a fic rec thing, but also occasional news and snippets about my stories.
This is one of the greatest shinobi Konoha has ever seen. This is Hatake Kakashi, son of the White Fang … - is what Hisana has been telling herself for nearly half an hour now. She's still hanging in the tree, forcing her chakra to keep her blood flowing properly so that she won't pass out, listening to the man sitting below jabbering on.
"A student all of my own – I couldn't be more proud and excited," he warbles, and she wants nothing more than to kick him in the head.
She presses down on the urge to flash her Sharingan at him in agitation, to just let out the negative emotion in a harmless way. She knows it would only serve to amuse him – her
puny second stage against Kakashi's mature three tomoe. He might only have a single one whereas she possesses two, and it might not even be his own, but it's still a Mangekyou, and even one of them is worth a hundred of hers.
"Would you stop it already?" she finally snaps. "If you wanted a student, you'd already have one. Now let me down, before I have to puke."
For a moment he only regards her with a sad, sad hang-dog eye, before he shrugs. She crashes down onto the floor head-first as the wire snaps, contorted into a painful pretzel.
"Maa … not very patient, are you? But your chakra control is pretty good, I guess. I'd have thought you'd pass out after ten minutes."
"It's the power of youth," she jeers.
He narrows his eye at her speculatively. Hisana really wants to be at least a little respectful. After all, she knows what sort of person Kakashi is – was still becoming even – and she holds a great deal of admiration for him. It's just so hard when he's such an asshole. Also, she ponders a little bemusedly, he doesn't look very impressive at all, so it's difficult to keep in mind that he's sort of the best elite shinobi Konoha currently has.
Of course canon manga Naruto commented often enough that he looks boring and ordinary, which, by all means, should be even more impressive, as every single jounin she's ever met looks like a jounin. Kakashi kind of slouches a little, just enough to look as if he probably has a desk job, and he plays stupid incredibly well. Even now that he's dropped the simpleton act, he still gives off the vibe of the weird but generally harmless neighbor.
"I'm late for training now," she informs him, trying to put her clothes into some semblance of order.
"Naah," he says, "you're not going there today. I already cleared it all with Haku-chan."
"'Haku-chan'," she repeats flatly."Of course. Because why not?"
"Glad to hear you're seeing it my way. Now, let's have a look at those peepers."
'A look' in this case means that his hands shoot out too fast to dodge, prying open her eyes before she can do as much as give a squawk of protest.
"On," he tells her, and she reluctantly activates her doujutsu. "Off."
It vaguely feels like a visit with the optometrist.
"On," he says again, this time uncovering his own Sharingan. "Off. On – off. On – off. On – off. On – off."
"Are you messing with me?" she snaps.
He gives her a stupid eye-crinkle.
"Eh – just a bit."
Whatever she might have expected from her lessons with Kakashi, what follows is not it. For several days they engage in what he calls 'Episodes of 'Looking at things with Kakashi'', which is literally looking at things with Kakashi. Hisana is sure the Hokage will forgive her if she can only stomach so many hours of her new Sensei saying, "Oh look – a bird!"
"Oh look – a stone!"
"Oh look – Anko … let's walk a little faster."
"What are we doing?" she finally asks. "I can't imagine you wasting so much time just to torture me. No, you know what? I can. But I'm pretty sure this is still not how it would go down."
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. How do you expect to use your superior vision if you don't know what you're seeing? The first thing you need to know is that you can trust your eyes. If things don't look the way they are supposed to, it's not because they're failing you. It's because you can't properly interpret what you're seeing."
She thinks back to Neji's purplish chakra glow and gives a slow nod.
"It goes against everything you have learned as a ninja," he says, "so I'll hammer it into your skull until it makes you sick. Oh look – a dog!"
And so she looks at the dog.
It's true after all; the first thing an Academy student learns is 'don't trust your eyes, they can be deceived'.
"If you learn how things look in an ordinary setting, you will realize when there's something off. Seeing it means nothing if you don't notice it. Oh look – a flower!"
They wander the training grounds like that, Kakashi whistling cheerfully, Hisana feeling vaguely idiotic. Once every plant and woodland creature is examined, they take to the streets of Konoha, Kakashi randomly pointing at things, Hisana following him like a duckling. Not a single ninja they pass gives the weird pair so much as a strange look. Hisana isn't sure what the base line for Kakashi's behavior is, but either they already know his methods, or they only know him as an easily distracted dork. Chances are that both options are equally true.
It's the civilians that are most disturbed by them, and she sees more than one mother hastily leading her child away from them. One fat older woman with a tiny dog even loudly complains about 'the crazy ninjas disturbing good citizens', and how they should basically all be locked away until the next war breaks out.
"Oh look – a bitch," Kakashi hums mildly, taking his time to point his finger at the dog. "Oh no; it's a boy. My bad."
Kakashi also takes over her kenjutsu training.
"D'aww," he croons, weighting her bokken, "that's so cute. A tiny bokken for a tiny student."
He pats her head patronizingly. She stares up at him with a wry sort of resignation. Kakashi is one of the tallest people she's ever seen in the village; compared to him everyone is tiny.
"I'll grow," she assures him. "After all, I'm still in the springtime of my youth."
The jounin twitches.
"No," he scolds, grabbing the scuff of her neck and shaking her, "bad puppy."
"The fire of my youthful soul cannot be contained," she wheezes, trying to breath around her own collar strangling her.
Kakashi tweaks her nose.
"I'll bring the spray bottle," he warns her. "I don't want to hear any dirty words from you, young lady."
She snorts.
Training with Kakashi is a challenge. While Kohaku-sensei prefers an authoritarian 'Do as I say' style, Kakashi's 'Look underneath the underneath' is pretty much the complete opposite of it that oftentimes sends her spinning into paranoia. Nothing is ever exactly what it seems like, and even if Hisana is supposed to do as she's told, it's never quite in the way she expects. And so she spends her time alternately getting her ass kicked and wandering around Konoha, randomly pointing at things. Of course it's only a matter of time until she runs into someone she knows.
"Oh look," she deadpans, "Shikano-kun."
"Indeed?" Kakashi says, eyeing the uncomfortable looking Nara boy with interest. "Look how his chakra is fluctuating."
The jounin leans down to her in a stage whisper.
"I think you weird him out."
I think we weird him out, she doesn't say. For a moment Shikano looks torn between running away and possible gossip.
"Ok, I bite," he finally sighs, "What in all the world are you doing? And who's that old man?"
They ignore Kakashi's mock wounded 'Oi!'.
"My new charge," Hisana says, "Now that he's retired he needs someone to take walks with him, so he doesn't feel so unwanted. Oh look, Kakashi-ojii – a cat."
To her horror Kakashi actually does produce a spray bottle and squirts it in her face.
"Down, girl."
Shikano's jaw nearly hits the floor.
"You know what?" he decides, "I'm going home. I don't want anything to do with this. At all. Shiki's due back in two weeks – don't miss it."
He power walks away.
"Pretty quick for a Nara," Kakashi remarks, spraying her in the face once more, maybe just for good measure. Needless to say, with Kakashi in her life things get immeasurably weirder.
The spray bottle stays, with the jounin's firm insistence that this is how he got his dogs housebroken. She even meets said dogs, which quickly makes her switch from leggings to pants, because they are more easily mended after a nin-dog rips out the seat of them. On the upside, she's gotten far more proficient with her needle work now, since she, on one memorable occasion, tried to pawn off fixing them to her new Sensei – "After all this is your fault anyway."
She quickly abandons that notion again after he returns them with a henohenomoheji sewn onto her butt.
The day Shiki is due to return Hisana and Shizuha picnic at the gate. Officially the genin and newly minted chuunin will come back around noon; but 'noon' can in this case mean anything between 11 am and 7 pm. So after excusing herself from team training she goes to collect Shizuha from T & I, and they make their way to the east gate, where Nara Sachiko is already sitting with a book.
"Oh lovely," the woman purrs, "please have a seat. I've been all alone all morning – Shikarou-kun and Shikano-chan are still busy. You must be Shizuha-chan!"
She croons over the bewildered Aburame girl for a second, before squishing Hisana's cheeks together.
"Hisana-chan, you've lost weight! Have a sandwich; you need to get a bit more meat on those hips."
They are soon joined by a dainty blonde woman who introduces herself as Yamanaka Inokku – Inomaru's mother – and a portly woman with fiery red hair, whom the Nara woman calls 'Chocchi' and who is apparently Choumei's mother. As the blanket gets more crowded, Shizuha sinks against Hisana as if she's trying to disappear. Sachiko will have none of it.
"It's such a pity we haven't been introduced sooner," she says, squeezing Shizuha's hand and leaving a sweet bun behind. "Shiki-chan is so possessive of her friends – you'd think we'd try to eat you."
Sachiko's laugh is a dark 'hohoho', completely at odds with the dainty way she covers her mouth. Hisana suffers the hubbub with a patient smile. It takes almost until 2 pm that Shizuha realizes she doesn't need to talk, just listen and eat the food she's given. After that the last bit of tension vanishes. More parents have by now set up camp around the gate, much to the delight and consternation of the guards, who are being plied with tea but also distracted from their duties.
It's shortly after four when the tower guard yells, "Incoming! Group of twenty!"
When Hisana tries, she can feel team 6's chakra signatures in the distance.
"Oh," Shizuha says, "now I'm excited."
Sachiko throws the girl a fond look, before directing her attention to the gates. Soon the first ninjas arrive. Most of them wear only sheepish smiles, shrugging at their parents. Failed.
When the first new chuunin arrives, an older boy with a bandana, proudly showing off his chuunin vest, one of the women starts to squeal. He's pulled into an embrace by his mother, over whom he towers by almost two heads. When team 6 arrives, all three of them wearing the vests, the roar from their little picnic blanket is almost deafening.
While Choumei and Inomaru suffer their mothers' attention almost happily, Shiki is already complaining, trying to hide her grin against the collar of her vest.
"Calm down, woman – it's been two months, I just want my bed."
As soon as Sachiko releases her, Hisana and Shizuha are on her.
"Now that you're promoted the next cake is on you," Hisana chirps, peeling Shiki out of the vest while Shizuha holds their friend still.
"Hey," the Nara girl squawks from under Aburame's arm, "what's that supposed to mean?"
Hisana swings the chuunin vest around her shoulders like a cape.
"It means what it means. You're the biggest earner of us now – we'll be your leaching trophy girl friends."
There's a flash from somewhere, and Hisana has to blink bright white spots out of her vision.
"Aww," Sachiko croons, face half hidden behind a camera. "And now everyone smile for Sachi-oba!"
While team 6 still trains together more often than not, they have been officially dissolved now – due to the promotion of all its members.
Shiki's missions change too. Instead of the countless number of D-ranks that used to occupy most of her day, she now takes mostly C-rank ones that take longer to complete, but also give her more free time between missions. Hisana and Shizuha approve immensely, because now their friend is far more often available.
"About that apprenticeship …," Shizuha starts, almost two months after Shiki's promotion.
The Nara rolls her eyes.
"I'd hoped you'd have forgotten that by now."
Shizuha taps her own forehead.
"Never."
Hisana snorts. Making Shiki do anything is certainly a challenge. Making her do something that might mean another promotion – and therefore extra work – is nearly impossible. Still, she agrees with Shizuha. Letting their friend languish in some desk job or as a teacher would be a complete waste.
"Come on," she wheedles, "running errands is boring. At least do something to keep your big, fat brain occupied."
"Nooo …"
Yes.
In a matter of days they have at least convinced her to look into a few things, few of which garner even vague approval from Shiki. Predictably she eventually lands in Tactics. While certainly suited to the Nara girl's capacities, her choice is mostly influenced by the fact that, during peace times, Tactics has markedly little to do. Most of their work consists of drawing up contingency plans, in case their contingency plan for the contingency plan doesn't work.
"It's the worst," Shiki says dreamily. "Everything's already been done before. And now we have to find a way to do the same thing again – but different. I love it."
Hisana is happy for her friend. So of course she loses sight of what she's setting herself up for.
"T & I works closely with Tactics," Shizuha eventually remarks innocently. "It's nice to have Shiki-chan around. Hisana-chan – do you know who else works with us?"
"Yeah, Hisachi," Shiki croons, batting her eyelashes at Hisana, "do you?"