Chapter 23: Game for a Game

"No," corrected Kakashi, his tone sounding as worn as his patience. "Nine isn't divisible by six."

Obito scowled at his paper. "Why not?"

"What do you mean 'why not'?!"

"I mean 'why not'!"

"Because it isn't!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustration.

That was, quite possibly, the most animated Axel had ever seen the typically unemotional—or at least unemotive—young ninja. Assuming, of course, that one doesn't count any scenes from the anime. Which he certainly doesn't; adult-Kakashi and mini-Kakashi are clearly two very different people.

Which was a little odd, come to think of it. The two characters in question—the same person, just one young and one old—were incredibly different from one another, almost to the point that they might as well be polar opposites. Axel certainly couldn't picture mini-Kakashi showing up to a team meeting even five minutes late, let alone five hours.

Obito, yes: it was easy to imagine him running late to everything.

"But nine and six both have three in em', right?"

"I mean, yes—"

"So they should be divisible!"

One fist pressed to his forehead, as if to stave off an oncoming headache. Kakashi answered, "That's not how any of this works."

Before Obito could continue on with the completely unnecessary and unhelpful argument over basic math functions, Rin gently whapped him with a rolled up piece of paper. He gave her a pitiful glare for her trouble, but she was unbothered.

"You can only fit one six in nine, Obito," she tried to explain. "One six is just six. Two sixes is twelve, and that's already three more than nine."

He looked completely lost. "What do all those other numbers have to do with anything?"

Axel hadn't been planning on saying anything—largely content just sitting back and watching the kids work things out—but he decided this might need some simplification. "What is six plus six?"

"Uh, twelve?" Obito paused, processing, and then his eyes went wide as something clicked. "Oooh— 'two sixes', and… right. Okay, that kinda makes sense. But, like, eight is divisible by four, and they both have two in them so why doesn't that work?"

"What about eight and six?"

There were another few seconds of silence as Obito actually took the time to think that question through, then he groused, "Why must six cause so much trouble?"

"It's not six's fault you're such an idiot," Kakashi grumbled.

"Shut up, Baka-kashi!" He scowled. "It's not like you were any help."

This led to another bout of arguing, but this time it was even more unnecessary and unhelpful than earlier.

Sitting between her bickering teammates, Rin looked to be both amused and annoyed. She spoke up before things could get too heated, hands raised placatingly but with a hard edge that threatened a good smack if she was not listened to. "Guys, calm down. Calling each other names isn't going to get anything done!"

The two boys stopped squabbling, seeming to (reluctantly) agree that she had a point.

"What do you suggest we do, then?" asked Kakashi, somewhat testily.

She looked vaguely stunned: clearly she hadn't quite thought she'd get that far. "Take a break, maybe?"

"Yeah?" Obito liked the sound of that. "What should we do?"

For a moment, they all just stared at each other, no answers forthcoming. Then, unanimously—and for no reason he could think of—all three turned to Axel with expectant looks.

"What?"

=X=X=X=

In his defense, he had been put on the spot. It had been the first group activity he had thought of, and, for three young ninja-in-training looking for an activity with which to distract themselves, it had seemed perfectly suitable. If perhaps a little on the nose.

And so it was, once they added a few tweaks to the rules.

Now the ninja were playing… well, ninja.

It was pretty amusing to watch, truth be told, though quite a bit more dangerous to both participants and bystanders alike than the original version had been. Mainly seeing as the original didn't involve throwing knives and sneaky jutsu, just slapping at each other.

Axel was watching the whole thing play out from a relatively safe distance; the kids were in the middle of the yard while he was standing back by the forge entrance, leaning against his stack of firewood. He was still keeping an eye out for stray projectiles, of course, but nothing had come his way yet.

Though the allowable move-set had clearly changed for this more ninja-y version of the game, the goal was still the same: take turns trying to smack the hands of the other players for a few seconds, try not to be smacked yourself, and if both hands get hit then you're out of the game. At the moment, Kakashi was the only 'unharmed' player as neither of his teammates had managed to score a hit on him. Obito and Rin had apparently decided to partner up, seeing as they had both lost a hand—right and left, respectively—and now had to play as if that arm had been broken.

They were taking that particular part of the game very seriously: Rin had gone so far as to spend one of her attack turns in full retreat, binding her 'useless' arm with bandages so that it wouldn't get in her way. Once they had made a team, she had done the same for Obito.

To them, this simple game had become something like a turn-based simulation of a real fight.

It was… somewhere between cute and a little unnerving.

Still, at least they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

To get out of the way of a particularly reckless charge, Kakashi substituted himself with a bundle of thin pieces of firewood. The twine holding the sticks together snapped during the switch, and all the bits of wood ended up strewn across the ground.

Axel was rather startled to find the white-haired boy suddenly standing beside him, still unaccustomed to some of the crazy-fast movement tricks ninja had available. He was extra startled when the stack of wood he was leaning against collapsed slightly due to the loss of one of its bundles.

As for Obito, he certainly hadn't been expecting the sudden face-full of wood; he tripped and nearly fell flat on his face. He still managed an awkward sort of roll, even with just one useable arm, and spared his nose the shame of being broken.

It was't enough to get him out of range though. He was completely open for a counterattack.

Or he would have been, if Kakashi had the next turn.

Instead, as she had done for the past few rounds, Rin took her chance to dart in and get her partner away from the danger zone.

It was a good strategy, and probably the only thing that had kept them in the game for so long. With Obito able to focus entirely on attacks, relying on her following turn to get himself out of trouble, they had actually come pretty close to scoring a hit several times.

Not quite, but close.

Kakashi threw a few kunai their direction, forcing them to split up or get hit, then he dashed after Obito. He had to be fast to actually get a shot in, since his substitution had taken him farther away from his opponents than was convenient.

But speed can lead to mistakes, and his swipe whiffed through empty air. His turn ended with him left perilously close to the enemy.

Obito took his chance. His hand darted out at top speed—trying to score at least one hit—and his fingers got close enough to almost snag on the forearm protectors Kakashi wore.

The other boy still dodged it, of course.

But when Kakashi jumped back, he landed very close to where Rin had ended up after avoiding his kunai. He really didn't seem to notice, too focused on Obito and that near-miss.

It was her turn next.

There was a smack.

Rin had hit both of his hands, and was looking pretty proud about it.

Her turn ended.

And her victory did not last long.

Less than a second later, the limbs entirely poofed away into white smoke and two arm-sized sticks of firewood dropped to the ground. Kakashi looked like he was probably smirking behind his mask, neither of his hands anywhere close to where they had appeared to be a second prior.

Axel knew very little about chakra and the tricks it can be used for, but it was fairly obvious that the boy had pulled some kind of ninja magic to make the sticks look like his arms. Whatever he had done—and however he had done it—there was no way that Rin would be able to get enough distance to make it through the next turn; she was basically screwed.

By her disgruntled-but-impressed expression, she had already realized that. "You've been under a henge since that substitution earlier, haven't you?"

He nodded and, before she could react further, smacked her remaining hand.

She sighed, already undoing the wraps she had put on her arm. "Guess I'm out, then."

"I'll revenge you!" Obito called dramatically, ignoring his partner's semi-exasperated correction of his word choice. He immediately began his own turn, running forward and throwing a pair of kunai to keep his target from being able to easily dodge to either side.

They weren't thrown very well, but it didn't even matter because with a few hand signs Kakashi had simply replaced himself with one of the numerous pieces of firewood still scattered across the yard.

Obito quickly spun around in order to keep his opponent in sight, skidding a little as he came to such an abrupt twisty stop, and his turn ended.

"Oh c'mon, again with the jutsu?" he complained. "We didn't use jutsu!"

"That's because we each lost a hand, and we don't really know any one-handed jutsu," Rin pointed out from the sidelines.

"You should learn them, then." To make his point, Kakashi flicked just his right hand through a few fast gestures and vanished.

He reappeared directly behind Obito, having substituted himself again with the same piece of wood he had used just seconds earlier. Before the other boy could even turn back around, a light smack to his left hand ended the game.

"Show-off." Obito grumbled for a bit, a little whiny, but it was in more of a good-natured way than truly genuine annoyance; he was smiling, so he couldn't be that bothered.

Based on the shape of his eyes, Kakashi was probably smiling under his mask. At least until he seemed to realize that he was smiling, and immediately stopped. Still, it was good to see the generally grouchy kid looking somewhat happy.

Axel absently wondered why he hadn't known anything about Kakashi's old genin teammates. Their names were somewhat familiar—courtesy of his sister's rants, no doubt—but they hadn't made an appearance in the first season of the show, as far as he knew. It just seemed a bit odd; especially since, as a jonin teacher, Kakashi had always made teamwork such a big deal.

Though they were ninja, and apparently there was a war going on. Maybe they just…

He didn't want to continue down that train of thought. Just his presence in the story—in the world, it's not just a story anymore—had probably already shaken up the future. Things could turn out completely different.

Right?

Before his thoughts could go any darker, an exuberant shout drew the attention of the whole group.

"FIGHT ME!"

A second later, a green blur had landed in their midst. When the dust cleared—and that dust had to have been chakra enhanced for dramatic effect, the backyard wasn't a sandpit—it revealed a posing Maito Gai pointing directly at an unamused-but-probably-secretly-amused Kakashi.

Then Gai seemed to notice that, in addition to Kakashi, there were actually two additional kids his age present. He gasped. "Rival, have you gotten a team?"

"It's only tempor—"

That excuse-denial was swiftly cut off by Obito, though he probably hadn't done it on purpose. "Yeah!" he exclaimed, cottoning on to the other boy's energy. "I mean, I wasn't super sure about it at first since technically we haven't really graduated yet and, well, Kakashi—but still! Minato-sensei's cool."

Axel tried not to laugh at the incredulous heights Kakashi's eyebrows had just reached before dropping into a scowl. Then softening slightly at the complement to his teacher.

"They're playing a game," Axel said, before Kakashi could decide on which of those emotions to react. "It might be fun to have more people."

Of course, Gai was super down with the idea of joining in. They explained the gist of the game to the new player—what is or is not allowed, how long the turns are, the order of turns—before spacing themselves out across the yard.

Then the second game of ninja began.

It was hard to say if Obito and Rin actually benefited from the presence of a fourth player. On one hand, Gai was clearly way faster than them and probably wouldn't have any trouble knocking them out of the game. But on the other hand, he was focused solely on his rival.

As such, it was basically three against one; Kakashi had to be on defense almost constantly.

Instead of direct attacks, he had been trying to position the other players so that they would end up targeting each other while keeping himself out of the line of fire. It sort of worked, but Gai was really focused.

And really fast.

Kakashi dashed to the other side of the yard in order to keep both Obito and Rin between himself and Gai, who had the next turn. The green genin jumped after him, choosing to just go over the other two players rather than target them.

Obito had to duck or risk getting kicked in the head. Then, with a startled yelp, he jumped back up. His feet did a funny little hop-slide when he landed, as if he was trying to avoid stepping on something. After a brief stumble, he rounded warily on the offending patch of grass. "Snake!"

But there was nothing left but white smoke, and that vanished so quickly that Obito thought he might have just imagined it.

"Snake?" Rin asked, sounding alarmed. She took a step back and scanned the ground around her feet, but apparently did not spot any slithering creatures. "Where?"

The game was briefly put on hold as the four of them quickly became quite thoroughly distracted.

"There!" Obito said, pointing. "Well, I mean, it was just there…" With a slight frown, he peered around the grass a little more closely. "Where'd it go?"

Gai bounded over, keeping an eye on the ground. "What did this sneaky snake look like?"

"It was white and small." He held up his hands about ten centimeters apart. "Not any bigger than this, I think."

"That's a small snake."

"All the better for sneaking," Gai said, sagely.

Kakashi frowned, his nose was wrinkled slightly as if smelling something unpleasant. "Hey, Axel," he called out, "I think you might have a snake problem."

"Really?" Axel asked, coming over to join him. The other three kids had spread out, scanning the grass for any sign of the snake but apparently not finding much.

He shrugged. "I've seen a lot of snakes around your place recently."

That seemed… foreboding.

For some reason, his mind turned to the anime. There was definitely a character in the show associated with snakes, and he had been bad news. Axel frowned, running a concerned glance over his backyard as he tried to recall the name. He knew that it was a long name, and that it began with an 'O'.

Something like 'Orochi'. Or 'Orochimimi'—yeah no, definitely not that one. Or maybe…

"Orochimaru," he said to himself, quietly. That had the right ring to it.

Kakashi gave him a strange look, having apparently overheard the name. "The Snake Sannin?"

"But he's not with the village anymore, right?"

"I think you mean 'in the village'." He sounded genuinely confused at the direction the conversation had taken. "And actually, I don't think he's been out on a mission in a while."

Axel blinked, once more processing the fact that he was here, in this world, before any of the events of the show. Which naturally meant that some things simply hadn't happened yet.

"Oh," Axel replied.

That probably wasn't good news.

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Team activities!
Fun games!
Snakes!

So, out of curiosity, what are your speculations on the Orochimaru situation?

Updates on the 15th of every month.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thanks again for all the favorites and follows, as well as the great reviews! I read all of them, and they can really help if I find myself somewhat stuck.

SortaCore: My headcanon is less that seals are used to replicate electric devices, and more that seals are used instead of electricity as a power source (though some lights might just be seals, as giving off light would be easy). That explains the lack of power outlets, since each device that would use power has a basic seal built-in. Switches complete a seal-circuit and it starts giving off power using ambient chakra. It's just an idea, though, and could certainly use more thought!
I'm glad you've enjoyed the story!

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