Hello again, friends!
Chapter note: There is a difference between story-writing and random rambles about things I find cool, and I feel like I might have done too much of the latter this time. I actually started this chapter last year (and picked it up again several months ago), and I think this installment may have turned a bit into Frankenstein's monster simply due to the sheer amount of time that has passed. [This is just my long-winded way of apologizing for the meandering nature of this update. I will try not to do this next time!]
Thank you all so much for continuing to support this story. I received some truly uplifting reviews after my last update and they mean a lot to me, especially during this rough time.
Chapter 14
The atmosphere of the eastern district is exactly as Sakura remembers: quiet, slightly older, faintly dusty, but imbued with an understated dignity that the years could not erase. The street layout, however, she cannot for the life of her recall.
Here, the roads all lack signposts and lie oblique to each other in a crooked patchwork of stores and apartments, alleyways and dead ends. It is by pure coincidence that she stumbles upon the tea shop from her memories after wandering through the neighborhood for half an hour; finding the street that Itachi had pointed out takes an additional twenty minutes, courtesy of a premature turn.
She's simply been so tired recently. Her nightmares have now become routine, and while visiting her father weekly has helped to calm her mind, it has done little in the way of recovering her energy. When she finally does come across the shop, she nearly traipses right past it.
Roughly rubbing the sticky sleep from her eyes, Sakura shakes out her limbs in an attempt to re-energize herself and considers the nondescript storefront before her. It melts seamlessly into the residential buildings beside it and is marked only by a wooden sandwich board pinned with a piece of paper stating "weaponry." Above the store are apartments, windows slightly open, rooms dark and still within.
Taking a deep breath of autumn air, Sakura slides open the shoji and steps inside.
The interior is much larger than it seemed from the outside. Shelves lined with kunai, shuriken, and sets of senbon fill the front space. Behind that are rows upon rows of smoke bombs, bladed fans, ninja wire, and a whole array of other weapons that Sakura cannot even name. A counter stretches across the back, the small curtained doorway behind it presumably leading into a storeroom. One wall is dedicated entirely to tantos, kodachi, wakizashi, katanas, and other swords; another is filled with a dizzying selection of inked paper. Seals.
Oddly enough, the store is empty. Unlike every other surface in the room, the counter is bare, and Sakura can detect no movement or sound behind the curtain.
'Perhaps the shopkeeper stepped out for lunch?' she thinks. Hesitantly, she wanders over to the wall covered with seals. Nothing is labeled. Several stylized kanji pop out at her from the forest of unfamiliar characters, but everything else appears illegible, and try as she might, Sakura cannot discern any system of organization amongst the stacks of papers: simple three- or four-stroke designs sit next to sheets almost completely black with ink, circular and hexagonal diagrams lie surrounded by seals composed entirely of chaotic brushstrokes and jagged lines.
None of the seals here approach the level of intricacy that her seal possesses, however, nor do any of them rival its elegance. Sakura cannot help but feel immensely grateful at the amount of work Itachi must have done to create the seal—and for the fact that the design which would soon bloom across her skin looks nothing like any of the ones currently before her.
Directly at eye level floats the kanji for "explode," written with a wild hand, and Sakura wonders if the seal it is embedded in is an exploding tag. Perhaps she could buy one of those as well, and figure out how they work once she gets home? Mind made up, she reaches out a hand to take one.
"May I help you?"
Sakura whirls around. The woman before her is only a head or so taller than Sakura herself, which is to say, very short. Glassy orbs surrounded by thin rings of dark blue shine out of a face mapped with wrinkles, and gray-white hair is pinned back in a simple bun fastened with a wooden hairstick.
"Sorry," Sakura blurts out automatically. The front door of the store is still closed; the curtain at the back is as motionless as before. "I, uhm, yes. Please. Are you the store owner?"
"I am." The woman's cloudy eyes continue to bore holes into Sakura's face, even though Sakura is almost positive that she is blind. Sakura fidgets slightly beneath the stare and pulls her shirtsleeves down to cover the backs of her hands.
"Ah, well, may I please have a set of your special chakra paper?"
Somehow, the woman's eyes manage to sharpen even further. "On behalf of which clan are you running this errand?"
Which clan? Itachi hadn't mentioned this.
"The...Haruno clan?" Sakura ventures.
"Haruno?" The woman repeats in measured tones. Her expression does not change, but to Sakura, the room suddenly feels like winter. "I'm afraid Haruno is not one of the clans included on our list. Do you have identification, then?"
"A...shinobi identifier?" Sakura swallows. "I—I'm not ranked yet. I'm not on the roster."
"Ah. Then I am sorry to say that I cannot help you. We do not sell such items to individuals not included in either of those two categories." Turning, the woman begins to walk away, her movements somehow graceful in spite of her stoop.
"W-wait," Sakura calls in a last-ditch effort, "what about the Uchiha clan?"
She immediately regrets her words. The move feels dishonorable: even though Itachi had instructed her to buy the chakra paper, he hadn't authorized her to invoke his clan. She hopes he won't take issue with it later.
The name has a strong effect on the woman, however. She whips back around to face Sakura, her milky eyes cold and cutting. "The Uchiha clan? That...would be eligible, yes."
Well, that's good news, at least—
"May I see your proof?"
—Cold sweat trickles down Sakura's spine. "What do you mean?"
"If you were truly running an errand for the Uchiha clan, you would have been given an insignia of some sort, a token of proof from the clan."
"I...I don't think I'm running an official errand, then."
"Then I cannot sell to you. Please have a good day." And the woman waves one plain kimono sleeve at the door and all but dismisses her from the store.
Making her way back outside on wobbly legs, Sakura takes a moment to simply breathe. To put that disaster behind her. The street is still deserted, the quiet windows judging her as the sweat on her back slowly dries. She'd for Itachi to return. Sand in her throat and lead in her limbs, Sakura slowly begins the trek back home.
Twenty minutes later, she finds herself completely lost and exhausted to the bone. Threading a hand through her hair in a vain attempt to quell her pounding headache, she tries to retrace her steps back to the weapons store, but her brain now feels like a pile of overheated cotton, an angry reminder that she had only gotten several hours of fitful sleep the night before. Remembering anything is a struggle.
Giving up with a sigh, Sakura breaks out into a blind jog. Signposts would have been immensely helpful at this point, but the streets continue to lie stubbornly bare and identical to each other. Rounding a corner, she makes her way down a slightly wider road in the hopes of happening upon a store or neighborhood marketplace.
Instead, she hits a dead end.
Stamping down the panic welling within her, Sakura leans against the wooden barricade and forces her sluggish mind to think. The eastern district is known to be a relatively safe and quiet area, but she doesn't want to stir up potential trouble by calling for help. The buildings here are all several stories tall and situated close to each other, blocking out her view of the sun. And even if she could figure out the sun's trajectory by tracking the trends of shadows, it would be of little use since the paths twisted and sometimes completely doubled back around.
She needs to get to higher ground.
Eyeing the cement wall closest to her, Sakura checks that all the nearby windows are shuttered, and then summons chakra to her feet and swiftly darts up onto the shingled rooftop.
Almost immediately, one of her sandals catches on something and she nearly pitches head-first into a hole on the roof. Pinwheeling frantically, she rights herself and examines the building again with more care than she had before. It is clearly abandoned: many of its shingles are either broken or missing, and the parts of the room she can see through the opening in the roof are dark and damp, musty with neglect. Muscles and chakra tensed in preparation of the possibility of the roof completely caving in beneath her weight, Sakura picks her way over to the corner that looks the most stable and takes a look around to get her bearings.
Oh, she is far from home. After all that wandering, she has ended up near the center of the district. Between her and the edge of the zone stretches a swath of nondescript rooftops, but Sakura knows that below them lies a vast maze of apartments and crooked alleyways.
If only she could fly, Sakura thinks ruefully. The Hokage Tower mocks her in the distance, seemingly so close: only a mile or two away if she could travel in a straight line.
But maybe she could. Sakura recalls the time Itachi had lifted her onto his back after their genjutsu lesson, had whizzed across the rooftops so fast she could only scream mutely into the wind. Maybe...
She takes stock of her energy reserves. Physically she is heavy with fatigue, but her chakra supply, while still disappointingly small, is nearly full. Using chakra to travel would definitely be easier as well as faster than running blindly through the streets on her muscles alone—if she could pull it off.
The mechanics of rooftop jumping shouldn't be that different from those of chakra-enhanced running, she reasons. After all, running is kind of like a series of quick, mini-jumps. As she had discovered the day she had run from Ami all those months ago, chakra-enhanced running could be accomplished by ejecting pulses of chakra from her heels at the moment of takeoff from the ground, which would help her to jump farther with each step than if she were to simply run without chakra.
So, in theory, rooftop jumping should be much the same.
Right?
The ground is a long way away. Gulping slightly, Sakura shuffles back a couple of feet and eyes the rooftop in front of her. Red shingle, similar to the roof she is currently crouching on, albeit in much better shape. A good ten meters away. She is going to need to release a lot more chakra than she is used to in order to cross that distance. Warily, she peeks over the ledge again.
'It's not that far down, is it?' she reasons to herself. Only two stories.
Of course, falling two stories would probably still lead to a couple of broken bones, but at least the chances of dying are slim. Someone would find her eventually, right?
She mentally slaps herself. Worrying and second-guessing would only decrease the odds of success.
Don't think. Just do.
And she leaps.
A loud crack echoes from behind her as she pitches headfirst toward the next roof, limbs akimbo and her heart fluttering at her throat. Landing in an awkward sprawl—though miraculously without injury—she turns her head back to survey the damage with a wince. Her chakra-powered jump had snapped the shingle she had been standing on clean in half, which in turn had shaken loose several of its neighbors. Taking a moment to be grateful at the fact that the building had already been long abandoned, Sakura pulls herself up on shaky legs and smiles slightly to herself.
That...hadn't been a bad first attempt. In fact, it had probably been a smart decision to try jumping between buildings first; she almost definitely would have fallen if she had tried that on a tree instead. Pushing more chakra to her feet to help maintain balance on the uneven roofing, Sakura quietly makes her way over to the other side of the building. The next house is slightly lower than the one she is currently perched on and has a flat, cement top.
Her last jump had lacked precision. A bit too much chakra, a bit too unfocused in expulsion, coupled with a slight mistiming—had resulted in a hole in the roof. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Sakura backtracks a few paces and lowers herself into a crouch. Drawing slightly less chakra to her legs this time, she mentally prepares herself to release the chakra at the exact moment her feet push off the ground.
Now. She springs forward and sails awkwardly through the air, her hair streaming behind her, the wind a song in her ears. Stumbling slightly as she lands, she sends more chakra to the soles of her feet to keep herself upright and allows herself a giggle of relief.
It seems that she had been right to believe rooftop jumping to be similar to chakra-powered running. Adrenaline pumping through her veins, she takes a running leap onto the next roof, and then the next, and the next. Landing on the slate roof of a squat, round building, Sakura takes a moment to catch her breath and wipe away the sweat beading along her brow. The next building is much taller than the one she is currently on: three-and-a-half or four stories high, with a sloping roof and wide windows. The one directly above her is open, curtains blowing gently in the breeze, and Sakura vaguely makes out the soft sound of running water from within, probably originating from another room deeper in the apartment.
It gives her pause. Partially because she doesn't want to potentially scare an unsuspecting villager by leaping past their window, but foremostly because knowing that someone is at home drastically raises the stakes of her next leap. What if she snaps another shingle upon landing?
Too far, a small voice whispers in her mind. Don't...
Don't think. Just do.
Backing up slightly, she aims for the roof above and gathers extra chakra in her legs to compensate for the higher jump. Mentally adjusts the angle of her trajectory and reminds herself that to be a shinobi, she must be able to perform under pressure. Bends her knees and leaps.
Of course, it all goes wrong.
She feels it the moment her feet leave the ground: she's not going fast enough—far enough—she's not going to make it.
Sakura screeches a variety of age-appropriate and age-inappropriate expletives in her mind as her ascent slows and then leisurely begins to reverse, her arms futilely pinwheeling through the air. Stretching her fingers as far as she can, she grits her teeth and makes a desperate swipe for the ledge of the roof.
She misses.
Luckily, the momentum from her jump is still pushing her forward, so rather than plummeting straight down to the road four stories below, she is instead propelled toward the hard brick wall of the building ahead. Arms scrabbling frantically, Sakura shoots chakra to her hands and feet and attempts to grab onto a ridge or even just stick to the wall—anything.
It's a long way down.
And then her fingers do meet a ledge and she clamps down onto it with a death grip, mind sparking with relief, feet kicking forward to brace herself against the wall.
Except her feet meet nothing but air.
There is no time to act. Inertia swings her onward and she tumbles helplessly through the open window. Something crashes to the ground and shatters, sending broken shards of fear into Sakura's dizzy brain, and she immediately knows she's in heaps of trouble, if the electric hum suddenly buzzing through the air is any indication. A sharp pulse of chakra ripples noiselessly through the room.
And then chaos erupts.
"Shit!"
A shadow falls over her an instant before the cacophonous ring of metal against metal clashes through the air above her and Sakura screws her eyes closed with a shocked whimper, arms frozen around her head as she curls up into a little ball on the floor.
And then there is silence.
"What are you doing here?" comes an exasperated voice. A familiar one.
Sakura cautiously unfolds herself and peeks upward to meet the slightly puzzled, very disapproving eye of...of her tombstone companion.
"Oh. Um." she manages. "Kakashi-san."
It is odd to see the older boy in a simple long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants in lieu of his normal shinobi attire. He isn't even wearing any slippers, though a grey scarf wraps around the lower half of his face to block out the outside chill. The glare on his face sits in defiant opposition to his otherwise laid-back visage.
That, and the delicate tip of the kunai he holds loosely in his hand.
"Yep, that's me." He crinkles the eye not covered by his silver hair into a cheery smile. "Now why are you breaking into my house?"
"N-no!" she blurts. "No, that's not what I—I wasn't breaking in, no. It was an accident."
"An accident," he repeats flatly. "That you flew through my third-story window."
"I was aiming for your roof," she offers weakly, cringing at herself as the words leave her mouth.
But the statement seems to give him pause. Casually stowing away his kunai, Kakashi gives her an assessing look. "Rooftop jumping with chakra?"
Sakura hastily nods. "Yes. With chakra. Rooftop jumping," she parrots lamely. "I missed."
He narrows his eye at her. "You don't even live in this neighborhood. Why would you be practicing here?"
"I can explain!" Sakura yelps, her back now practically drenched in cold sweat. "I was visiting the weapons store and then I couldn't figure out how to leave, so I climbed onto a roof to get a better view but—"
"Hold it," Kakashi stops her. "You went to the weapons store? The one owned by Yuuko?"
Sakura hesitates. "I'm not—"
"Short, blind, kind of creepy?"
"...Yes. Yes, that one—"
"And what business do you have with Yuuko's wares?" The razor-sharp edge reappears in his voice. "Show me what you bought."
Sakura gapes mutely at him for a moment. "I...I didn't get anything."
Silence.
"No really, she—Yuuko—wouldn't let me buy it because...because I wasn't representing a clan. And I'm not a shinobi."
She watches as understanding lightens his eye and relaxes the set of his shoulders.
"I see," he says after a moment. And then his happy eye-crinkle returns with full force. "Well then let's go back together, Sakura-chan! I can vouch for you."
Sakura gapes some more. "Together?"
"Sure!" he chirps. "Why not? Would you rather shop alone?"
"No!" Sakura says hastily as the smile threatens to slip off his face again. "That—that would be wonderful. Thank you."
"Anytime," he drawls. "Just give me a second to get dressed." He promptly vanishes.
And Sakura quickly realizes that he hadn't been exaggerating his speed by much. She barely has time to unfreeze herself from the floor before he's back and fully garbed in his normal attire.
"Up you go!" He drags her to her feet. "I'd normally consider leading you to my front door and giving you a house tour and everything, but my apartment is a bit messy today," he says as he bodily lifts her onto the windowsill, "and you already came in this way, so this shouldn't be a problem!"
And before she can say a word, he shoves her out the window.
"KAAA—!" Sakura screams as she finds herself tumbling into empty space for the second time that day. Flooding her extremities with chakra, she tries to make contact with the wall again as she falls. Pink hair whips into her face and tangles around her arms, forcing her to close her eyes. It'll be fine—he let me get hurt—it'll be fine—, her mind loops frantically, It'll be fine—her left hand meets wall and—thankfully—sticks.
Quickly slapping her other limbs to the brick, she clings against the side of the building and takes a moment to regain her breath.
"Not bad…," comes Kakashi's voice from below. "You've still got a good five meters to the ground."
Sakura glares at him. "That was unnecessary."
"On the contrary, it was very necessary," he cheerily responds. "I had to make sure you weren't lying, after all."
Which, Sakura begrudgingly concedes, is a valid point, even if the minor scrapes on her knuckles claim otherwise. Carefully climbing down to the ground, she shoots Kakashi a mildly sour look and opens her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, her earlier trepidation temporarily forgotten.
"Shhhhhhh," Kakashi orders, cutting her off before she can even begin. "No need for words, Sakura-chan, stop wasting time! I've got other things to do, you know." Suddenly grabbing her arm in a death-grip, he flips her onto his back and wraps her arms around his neck. "Okay, let's go. I'd advise you to keep your mouth closed." He graces her with another eye-crinkle, and leaps onto the rooftops.
Sakura tries not to strangle him as she clings on for dear life. Eyes squeezed shut against the wind, she buries her head in his shoulder and clenches her jaw lest she accidentally bite her tongue off. This is nothing like the ride she had gotten from Itachi: this is not gentle. It is not fun. It is just—
"And here we are," he says, stopping so suddenly she nearly gets whiplash. Crouching down, he unceremoniously dumps her back onto solid ground.
Sakura fights the urge to vomit. The world is spinning again, and her earlier headache is back in full force. Bracing her hands on her knees, she focuses on evening her breath.
"Yo, you alright?" Distantly, she becomes aware of a warm, stabilizing, weight on the back of her neck. Swallowing hard, she tilts her head up to meet his steady gaze.
"Yeah," she whispers. "Just, just a bit tired." She forces her spine to straighten, and is relieved to find the street as deserted as it had been earlier. "I'm ready."
He nods and takes his hand off her back, but doesn't move away. "You're still having nightmares?" he asks, though his tone is more statement-like than anything. He brushes a surprisingly gentle finger over the dark bags beneath her eyes, then shifts his eye towards the shop door. Slips his hand elegantly into his pocket.
"You should take it easy, you know. I'll...go slower next time." And then he is stepping away, sliding the shoji door open, ushering her inside without giving her time to think about it.
"Well, if it isn't Hatake-san," comes the cutting tone. "After all these months...I had just been starting to hope karma had finally caught up with you."
"Likewise," Kakashi pipes back lighty. "Whatever you're smoking must be illegal. They'll catch you one day. I have faith."
And the old woman throws her head back and laughs. "If only!" she cries. "It's good to see you again." Turning on her heel, she begins to meander through the aisles, pulling items off the shelves as she goes. "The usual?"
"Yup."
Sakura has little choice but to allow Kakashi to guide her along toward the back of the store.
"Alright," Yuuko declares as she dumps an armful of weaponry onto the counter. "Now for the non-Uchiha."
"The non-Uchiha?" Kakashi echoes.
Annoyance drifts across Yuuko's face. "You are a Haruno, correct?" she asks Sakura.
"Yes," Kakashi answers for her, "but why a non-Uchiha?"
"She said she was buying on behalf of the Uchiha—"
"No, no, it's for myself," Sakura cuts in hastily, avoiding Kakashi's eye. "For Haruno. One set of the special chakra paper, please."
"And I assume you'll vouch for her?"
For a moment, Kakashi is silent. Then he crinkles his eye into another smile. "Yeah. I guess I will."
"Alright," the woman sighs. She pulls out a small notepad and an inkbrush. "I'll just write the order under you, then." Stowing away the ledger once she finishes, she disappears momentarily into the darkness of the backroom, returning with a small envelope.
"Here," she says, opening the envelope to reveal a stack of five pieces of chakra paper. "The element of each is embossed on the corner." She uses her thumb to point out the kanji for 'water' on the topmost sheet. "Any questions?"
"No," Sakura responds. "Thank you." Pulling out the pouch Itachi had given her, she pours several coins into her palm. "I'm not sure of the price. Will this be enough?"
Yuuko scoffs. "That much? Not even close." She swipes the bag from Sakura's hands and dumps out most of its contents. "Do I look like I hand out supplies for free?"
"Wait," Sakura mutters, glancing at her companion for guidance. But Kakashi isn't even paying attention: he's slipping all of the countertop weapons into his pockets with lightning-swift fingers, a gleeful smile clearly visible through his mask.
"Wait, we're not—"
"Shhhh, Sakura-chan, we'll figure it out later, okay? Let's not bother Yuuko-obaasan, she's a busy woman." Grabbing the mostly-empty pouch back from the scowling woman, Kakashi wraps an arm around Sakura's shoulders and whisks her out the door.
Seconds later, Sakura finds herself sputtering on a nearby rooftop, money pouch once again settled in her palm, nausea creeping back up her throat at the rapid change in scenery.
"So tell me about the Uchiha."
His smile is sunnier than a summer day, and Sakura feels herself blanching. Could she tell him? She doesn't recall ever being told not to, and yet it had always seemed an unspoken rule: an understanding. She shouldn't.
"There is no Uchiha," she says without even blinking. Honestly, she's a bit surprised at how smoothly the lie slips out. "I just wanted the chakra paper."
She doesn't need the ability to decipher his expression to know that he is not convinced. His smile vanishes.
"Sakura, this is not a joke. Any other clan, but not this one. Now, what Uchiha?"
He moves no closer, and yet it feels as if he's grabbed her shoulders and shaken her. 'Any other clan?,' she wants to ask.
Instead, she bites her lip. "One of my classmates is an Uchiha."
She trusts Kakashi. But she is not a traitor.
Hei sighs. "Half-lies aren't going to work on me. Just—" He abruptly cuts himself off, eye narrowed. Sakura waits, but he does not continue, and she has just enough time to start sweating at the thought that he knows, he's deduced it, before he suddenly releases a much deeper, much heavier sigh than his previous one, and maybe this is what she really should be fearing, this sigh which announces that he's just come to a conclusion—
He rakes a hand through his hair. "Nevermind. You know what Sakura-chan, I don't even care enough to know." He pulls the stack of chakra paper out of his breast coat pocket—how did it even end up in his possession?—and offers it to her with a wry smile.
"Just...be careful with that name. The Uchiha clan is not your friend."
Accepting the papers with a mix of relief and bewildered unease, Sakura swallows and musters up the courage to ask, "Why?"
Kakashi only smiles, lopsidedly, behind his mask and shrugs. "I wonder," he says, giving her hair a rough ruffle before stepping away and stretching. "Anyway!" His earlier seriousness evaporates from his posture so quickly, Sakura half-expects his clothes to start steaming. "I trust you know how to get home safely, so why don't we just part ways here and we can—"
"Wait!" Sakura exclaims, hurriedly grabbing the helm of his flak jacket in case he tries to leave. "You still need to pay me back!"
He blinks down at her in the perfect picture of hurt surprise. "Pay? But I vouched for you! It's the least you could do in return for the big favor I just did you, don't you think?"
He is very good at being persuasive. Sakura bites back the guilt prickling the back of her neck.
"Thank you very much for your help," she responds formally. "But it cannot have been worth two weeks' worth of groceries! J—"
"No, no, my stuff only cost like a tenth of it. Chakra paper is extremely expensive, you know." He smiles down at her innocently. "You should just let it go. It's unbecoming of a young lady to keep tabs—"
"Kakashi-senpai," Sakura sighs. "Did the chakra paper really cost that much?"
"Definitely," he says, nodding seriously.
She closes her eyes and accepts the battle as lost.
"Alright," she accedes. She stares him dead in the eye. "But you could at least take me home."
He seems almost taken aback at the easy victory. "Sure, I can do that," he says as he starts to crouch down. "I'll even make sure to go slowly—"
"No, I don't want a ride," Sakura corrects him. "I want you to teach me."
This time, the look he gives her is definitely one of surprise, inexplicably mixed with wariness. The expression dissolves too fast for her to analyze.
"I could," he says carefully, but offers no follow up.
"Will you?" Sakura asks after a moment of silence.
He sighs. "The better question is whether you can handle it," he responds eventually, reluctance evident in his tone. "You don't seem to be in very good physical condition right now. Rooftop-jumping will only exacerbate your nausea. Not to mention that rooftop-jumping can be a pretty high-level technique, depending on how you do it."
"I'm ready," Sakura declares, again shaking away the dizziness dancing in the corners of her skull.
"Alright," he sighs, running a hand through his messy hair. His face grows serious. "Let's head to your place, then. I'll give you pointers on the way. Now show me your jump."
Sakura considers the flat rooftop before her and mentally runs through the motions. Summoning chakra to the soles of her feet, she takes a running leap across the gap, arms outstretched as she tries to orient her landing. She lands with only a mild stumble, hair swinging over her eyes.
"Not bad," Kakashi muses from her side. "Inelegant presentation, but your chakra manipulation is actually pretty nuanced. The only thing I would say, really, is to circulate chakra within your legs in addition to expelling it from your feet. It basically supplements your muscle strength while also allowing you to conserve chakra. That, and you should really fix your hair," lightning-swift fingers twist her hair into a long, pink braid down her back, "so you don't end up killing yourself. Alright, let's go."
"Wait, but—"
"Don't worry about the awkward flailing, it'll get smoother with practice," he cuts in, correctly anticipating her question. "Now go, go! I don't have all day, you know."
Sakura does not respond: she can barely breathe as it is, trying to keep up with Kakashi's brutal pace. How is it fair that he's casually hopping along while she's sprinting laboriously from roof to roof? She's too busy trying to ignore the stitch in her side to think about it.
"I can't!" she gasps out, stumbling to a stop on a bright green roof. Kakashi lands beside her and waits.
"You're expending too much physical energy," he observes critically. "You know you can eliminate the need to run if you just put a bit more chakra into each jump, right? It'll be difficult at first to gauge how much chakra you'll need each time, but that's just more reason to try it now. I can catch you if something goes wrong."
"I know," Sakura gasps between puffs of air. The light-headedness is returning, but she fights it away for just a bit longer. "But I don't have enough chakra." Her reserves are good for maybe three more jumps, max. She waits dismally for that reality to register.
"So what? Three tries is better than none. You were already low on chakra when you flew through my window."
"That was half of my capacity," she says, and that gives him pause. His right eyebrow disappears beneath his hitai-ate.
"Wow," he says. "Well...maybe you're a late bloomer? Also, you can always meditate to increase your capacity—it works pretty well, to an extent."
"I've been meditating for almost half a year," she bemoans. "No change. Absolutely zero."
Oddly enough, her plight actually causes Kakashi's good humor to return. She'll never be able to understand his strange mood swings. Shrugging at the news, he shoots her his now-signature eye-crinkle. "You know, it's going to be pretty hard, being a shinobi when you have the chakra capacity of a raccoon."
She could smack him.
"Can you help?" she asks instead.
He shrugs. "Maybe," he says. He's eyeing her warily again—another inexplicable mood swing.
"Try?"
"You should stop pushing on things you have no right to know."
Sakura flinches at the unexpected frustration in his voice, but in the next moment he is leaning down and whispering into her ear.
Her eyes widen at the information.
"You normally only learn this after being a genin for a year or two," he mutters as he steps away. "But your chakra control is pretty good, so." He shrugs. "Might take a while to get the hang of it though."
When Sakura does not immediately react, he slaps her on the back. "Well what are you waiting for? Go on." He gives her no further direction, as if condensing her chakra is something she should just figure out on her own.
Her first attempt blows a hole into the roof.
"Don't worry about it," he says as he pulls her away from the sad green house with the caved-in roof. Surprisingly enough (or not) given his previous mood, he doesn't sound upset about the damage at all—maybe even a little gleeful. "I know that guy. He's gone for the week."
But he does start giving her heaps of instructions and tips: first create a layer of chakra beneath your shoe no more than a millimeter thick, then continue injecting chakra without increasing the volume—not that much! You'll end up flying across the street—and release the pressure at exactly the same time you push off from the roof—release it up, not down! Else you'll blow up another building and I'm definitely not paying for it—what part of "up" means "in every direction except down"? You're wasting all that energy, you know—okay, that...that was pretty good.
Kakashi, Sakura decides, is not a very good teacher. Spontaneous and unstructured, he alternates between giving too much advice and none at all—nothing like Itachi, or even Shisui. But even his horrible coaching skills cannot hide his sheer brilliance, and Sakura soon finds herself hopping along clumsily at his heels, her chakra popping her across the rooftops in much the same way a can of pressurized gas behaves when the air is released.
It's awkward, difficult, and so, so worth it because the fact that her jumps are now being generated from changes within her chakra rather than the ejection of chakra into the ground means that she can now travel without losing any chakra at all.
Theoretically.
In practice, she's still losing around fifty percent of her chakra each time because her control is not yet good enough to hang on to all of it when it expands so rapidly. 'But that's still fifty percent more than I had before,' she thinks, and that's enough for now.
"That's not bad," Kakashi muses from her side. The glare from the afternoon sun outlines the slight frown beneath his mask. "That's really not so bad." The frown deepens.
Sakura has just opened her mouth to ask him about his less-than-pleased expression when the light-headedness suddenly rushes back and supersaturates her vision with color. She's mid-jump and the sky bleeds pink and Kakashi's hair is falling out in clumps, silver strands blowing away like a dandelion puff in the breeze.
No!, a voice cuts through her mind, momentarily drowning out the chaos. No no no no!
She loses feeling in her limbs and falls.
"Fuck," comes the harried curse, and then steady hands shove themselves roughly beneath her arms, sweeping her to safety.
"What was that?! Your chakra completely unraveled for a second there."
Sakura blinks up at him and distantly notes that all of his hair is, once again, attached to his head.
'Oh,' she thinks. The sky is no longer neon. "I don't know," she says. "Headache?" It comes out slurred.
He sighs, and she finds herself slung across his back the next moment. "Everything has a trade-off, you know. Saving chakra requires higher concentration, and concentration is like a muscle, too. You probably overexerted your chakra control. How are you feeling?"
"Dizzy," she mumbles into his shoulder, eyes closed as Kakashi leisurely hops onto the next rooftop. How...how strange he is, to be able to switch so seamlessly between rudely mocking her and gently carrying her home.
"Stop pushing your limits," he chides, but it holds no real bite, just resignation.
It makes her feel a bit guilty. She wants to ask him if colorful visions are a normal part of control exhaustion, but she has a sneaking suspicion that it isn't, and she doesn't want to arouse his concern—or his curiosity, or whatever it is. In any case, she reasons to herself, the world once again looks as normal as can be, and her headache is quickly dissipating. She'll just ask Itachi when he comes back.
"Thanks for today," she murmurs when he finally lands on her rooftop, and loosens her arms from around his neck.
But he does not set her down.
"Kakashi-san?"
He releases another long-suffering sigh. "You had better test out those chakra papers now."
"Oh. But I was going to do it—"
"I insist," he cuts in. "I did vouch for you."
And he's right. So. She pulls out the envelope and wiggles off his back. This time, he lets her.
"You won't...mention it to other people, right?"
He gives her a flat look. "Who'd even be interested?"
Which is, also, a good point. Pulling out the topmost sheet from the stack, she carefully injects a small amount of chakra into it.
Nothing.
"Not a fire-type, then," Kakashi mutters. "Not surprising, though—you don't really seem to be a powerhouse. What's your main type?"
"I don't have one."
His eyebrow shoots up. "Hm," he offers, but nothing more. She picks up the lightning sheet.
Nothing.
"That's another powerhouse type. Real question is, are you a water-air or a water-earth?"
Not water-air, they soon find.
Not water-earth, either.
"I thought you had two elements," Kakashi says slowly into the silence.
"So did I," Sakura whispers, holding the last sheet of paper between her fingers. "But..it looks like I have none."
He says nothing.
"What does that mean?" she asks weakly. She didn't think this was even possible.
He shoots her his unreadable eye crinkle and ruffles her hair, ruining her braid. "It means you probably won't like ninjutsu."
"Kakashi-senpai…"
He sighs. "It means that you should stop doing things like rooftop jumping for now—or anything else that is atypical for an Academy student, really—because people might start to find you interesting. And that, for you, is going to be very bad." He pats her gently on the shoulder. "Just a heads up if I were you."
And then he gently ushers her inside.
"Stop overthinking it," he calls after her, one shoulder braced against a porch column. "And take a nap." He watches her until the front door closes and locks before finally turning away, the smile finally slipping off his face for good.
The Hokage would be interested.
Falling into a tired slouch, Kakashi slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a small orange book as he begins to walk. A child with at least chuunin-level chakra control but almost no chakra to speak of, a brilliant mind—which may already be starting to crack, judging by the ghastly bruises beneath her eyes—and a thirst for training but no elemental affinity, which Kakashi didn't even know was possible. Perhaps the Hokage would be interested.
But, maybe, he wouldn't.
Kakashi grits his teeth, flips the book open to a random page, and forces himself to read.