Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 56 – Reconfiguration
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 4,550
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 56 of ? Unbeta'd.
There are... three... girls at the training ground today.
Kakashi, still feeling the impact of having allowed himself to shatter into pieces and then put himself back together, feels a headache coming on. One where each movement and sound is akin to a pack of barking dogs rampaging down a flight of stairs.
He wishes his pack was accessible to him but-Kakashi looks at that thought, at the emotions of it, and then gently tucks it away. He's not ignoring it. It's just not useful for the situation he's in now.
It is not that Tenten is unwelcome-he knows that she's good friends with both Sakura and Ino and that she's, as Team Gai's kunoichi, a force of nature in her own right-it's just that...
I'm tired.
He's so tired. Better than he'd been yesterday but he's still tempted to just call it, proclaim sudden illness, and then run away from their expectant, hopeful faces.
...Actually, why are they looking at me like that?
"Hatake-sensei," Sakura says. "Good morning!"
He automatically raises one hand in a languid sort of 'yo', which is normal, so Sakura grins at him and Ino just gives him a bit of a shrug. Tenten looks a little anxious, though even as he watches, she seems to take heart from Ino's nonchalance and Sakura's lack of fretting.
"Hi, Hatake-sensei," Tenten says.
"Are you here for training?" he asks.
"We invited her," Ino says. "We tried to find you yesterday to ask but we couldn't track you down."
There's something about the jut of Ino's chin that suggests she's got an idea of where he was, the whole time, but she says nothing about it and Sakura and Tenten genuinely seem to not have any idea of where he'd been.
Kakashi feels a surge of gratefulness for Ino's discretion. With or without her bloodline, she picks up things others don't.
"That's fine," he says, which makes Ino smile at him.
Oddly, it makes Tenten look more uneasy, with Sakura following in her (emotional) wake.
"Actually," Tenten says, a bit diffidently. "I mean, yes, please, I would like to join you for training today, but..."
Tenten trails off there, floundering, and Kakashi feels the ghostly fingers of his incipient headache come back to haunt him. He doesn't have it in him to gently tease information out of a teen girl today.
"Tenten wants to join our team," Sakura blurts out. Her green eyes are alight with a certain cautious glee. "Not the same way as Ino did, Hatake-sensei, but there's another way, did you know?"
"We've already talked it out," Ino admits, and her expression is the carefully bland and controlled one that he recognizes all Clan children have after awhile. Whatever she thinks of this, she's determined not to let her own opinion show until he's made a choice.
"Here," Tenten says, offering him a batch of paperwork. "This... this will explain it better than we're doing."
Sakura looks hopefully at him.
He knows that, whatever else Sakura's done, whatever growth she's made, a part of her would love to have a real, complete team again.
"I'll read these," he says. "For now, you three get to stretching. Then-"
Kakashi rattles off a series of exercises for them, slightly different for each of the three girls, and he watches while they get to work without complaint-though a few whispered snatches of conversation that he doesn't try to overhear, not needing to, because lip-reading tells him it all boils down to: 'what do you think he'll say?' and 'I can't believe you just said it straight out like that!'
He finds a tree and leans against it. The bark of it rough and comforting and the sun's rays add enough warmth that, if he were to close his eye, he might be able to pretend it's enough to soothe him for real.
Join our team, but not like Ino...
Kakashi mulls over that as the girls stretch and, as they move on to their actual exercises, he begins to read through what's clearly official paperwork-all filled out neatly in a hand that he doesn't recognize, which means it must be Tenten's-to wrap his head around what on Earth the girls were talking about.
It doesn't take him long to see the differences.
Sakura was right. It's like Ino, but it's not like Ino at all, at the same time. It's basically permanent right of first refusal.
His lips quirk slightly.
Almost like a custody battle.
For a moment, his tired mind entertains that line of thought and he finds himself smiling ruefully at the strangeness of him, as a parent.
Being a sensei is hard enough, he decides. And I get to give them back to their families after training and missions.
He resolutely ignores that he spends more time being concerned about Sakura's home situation than is, strictly speaking, what is generally expected of a sensei.
Besides, I've got something else to think about...
And he hadn't wanted to have another thing dropped on his plate, he's not sure he can balance anything more, but reading through the paperwork and keeping an eye on the girls, Kakashi... isn't sure this would really be something else that would upset the delicate balance he's got going on.
What do I know about Tenten? he wonders, and thinks about that for a bit.
She's a year older than Ino and Sakura. She's on Team Gai, which means she's had a great deal of training attention paid to her physical capabilities. From listening to her and the girls talk, he knows she prefers to specialize in weapons. From Sakura living with her, he knows that her family is close-knit and get along well with each other.
It would do Ino and Sakura good to have to bounce off of a third person, he admits, watching as they begin to tumble through their individual sets. And my impression of her is that she's steady. That could be good, especially for Sakura, who sometimes verges on being codependent on Ino. Ino would probably like having a little more space to breathe, too, though I know she and Sakura are best friends.
How would Gai take it, though?
But he's not back in the village yet. I know. I've asked again. He was supposed to be back a bit ago.
Which, so far, hasn't raised any alarms. Missions take longer than expected all the time and Tsunade-sama hasn't been particularly concerned but...
What's the status of Team Gai right now anyway? This is a pretty huge step for someone from a presumably healthy team.
"Tenten," he calls. "To me. Ino, Sakura, keep at it."
Sakura sighs, while Ino sticks her tongue out at him, then says something he can't hear to Sakura, that makes her laugh.
Kakashi waves that off.
Tenten's right by his side in any case, so he focuses on her.
"What's the current situation with your team?" he asks, without preambling around the matter.
"Complicated," she says promptly. "Hyuuga Neji and Rock Lee are both currently on medical leave. Lee's still in the hospital, while Neji's been released and is training under the supervision of his Clan. At the moment, Team Gai is officially on standby for further orders, and I haven't had anything to do but the odd mission in the village and training. I'm taking a first responders course at the hospital as well."
He...
He thinks of what he knows of Gai, which is quite a lot as they're, despite himself, eternal rivals (mostly on Gai's side, admittedly, but-oh, fine, they're friends), and what he thinks that would translate over to her team.
Hyuuga, if he's like most of them, is touchy and prideful.
Rock Lee, he's got no frame of reference for. The name doesn't ring a bell.
And Tenten, who watches him with calm brown eyes and a stabilizing readiness to her.
If I'd had to guess, I would say they're a confident team, he decides. Possibly too confident, given that Gai would encourage that, rather than rein it in, and given that two out of the three of them are currently on medical leave...
"What weapons do you specialize in?" he asks curiously.
Kunoichi are generally the frailest member of a Genin team. That evens out as they get older, and can be mitigated young with proper training-but I already know that, whatever else is going on in this timeline, something's rotten in the Academy's training of kunoichi.
"Right now," Tenten says, "I'm primarily a long range fighter. If it can be thrown, lobbed, tossed, or flung, I have some familiarity with it."
Long range...
"Long range?" he asks, on second thought, because that's not like Gai at all. "What's your taijutsu like?"
"It's good," Tenten says, with a self-assured confidence of someone who isn't bragging so much as stating a fact. "But Lee's is much, much better and Neji's a Hyuuga. Gai-sensei didn't want all three of us to be close-range fighters as he felt that would be placing an arbitrary limit on the missions we were, on paper, qualified to handle."
"Chuunin Exam status?" Kakashi asks. The information is somewhere in the sheets she's given him, it's got to be, but he'd rather ask her and see what she says.
She makes a face, but answers him readily enough.
"Only one attempt," Tenten says. "In the preliminary matches, I was put against a fan user from Sunagakure. It was a total loss."
It would be. Long range is exactly the wrong way to handle a fan user. If you can't counter the wind and force they generate, then the answer is to get close and either destroy the fan or incapacitate the user.
"And your teammates?"
"Lee lost against a sand user from the same Sunagakure team," Tenten says, though her frown this time is less at the way the memory stings and more... puzzled. "The sand user was seriously creepy, though, and Gai-sensei wasn't happy about them and, I think, mostly for reasons I'm not cleared to know about. Neji lost against Uzumaki Naruto in the finals. It was an ugly fight."
Now I have more questions. I wonder if Tsunade-sama would tell me what was up with the Genin from Sunagakure?
He doesn't ask Tenten though, as if she's not cleared for it, there's a reason for that.
"You're a year older than Ino and Sakura," he says, instead. "Gai held you back?"
"He wanted us to gain more experience first," Tenten says. "And... Lee needed the time. He's got... underdeveloped chakra coils, so Gai-sensei wanted to build him up into a viable shinobi before we faced off against the Chuunin Exams."
If this bothers her, having been held back for the sake of her teammate, he can't tell.
But I don't think it does. I get the impression that, so long as she could work as hard as she could too, that she is willing to help a teammate catch up.
Kakashi nods slowly.
Ino and Sakura are friends of hers. They already have the beginnings of decent synergy-though getting as in sync as Ino and Sakura are with each other is going to take some doing. Synergy like that is incredibly rare. But they get along with her. They both obviously want this, given the way they're trying to eavesdrop on the conversation right now.
"Why do you want this?" Kakashi asks. "From my understanding, you already have a team that wants you. A team you've grown bonds with and have strength in. From what I've observed of you, you're well-trained and skilled."
"Yes," she admits, her brown eyes meeting his graze frankly. "Which is why I thought long and hard about this before I made my choice. It's also why I'm not requesting a transfer, the way Ino did. I don't want to leave my team, but this way, I can still be an asset to the village and also help out my friends when my team isn't available. Gai-sensei's not in the village and with Neji and Lee on medical leave, I've been left to my own devices. I want more than that and Ino and Sakura's team... there's an empty spot."
Kakashi raises an eyebrow at her expressively and waits.
There's something else.
After a moment, she sighs, her gaze dropping to the grass, before she looks back up at him.
There's a fire to her expression, now.
"Because it's been thirty-four years since the last all-female Genin team," she says. "And I want that. People will talk about that, people will notice that. On my current team, no one talks about me. It's all about what Neji can do, what Lee can do. Then there's me, who lost in the preliminaries and somehow that matters when Lee did the same and no one cares about his loss, just that he's strong anyway. I want to be talked about."
That's the downside to steady. Dependable. Solid.
They're important, useful things. They'll serve her very well in the long run.
But they're not flashy and they're easily overlooked.
And with the state of the village's kunoichi... well. This is no first generation civilian girl I'm looking at, for all that she's not from a major Clan. She knows.
"Gai hasn't been in the village," he says. "Your team doesn't know?"
But he's already made up his mind, even as she confirms that that's the case.
"I wanted to see what Team Seven had to say first," Tenten says. "Because, if the answer is no, there's no point in me upsetting the status quo of Team Gai."
There's a slight quiver to her voice, there, despite herself.
She's more nervous than she seems about this.
Kakashi looks down at all the forms. They're in triplicate, like all good paperwork. They're also yellowing, like no one has done this for a long, long time.
Thirty-four years, huh?
But, no, that's just the all-female Genin team. He wonders how long it's been since this kind of half transfer.
I'm going to get yelled at again, he thinks, and finds it hard to care as he flips through the pages again.
"I sign here, right?" he asks.
And her smile is blinding.
It's kind of amazing, really, how Tsunade-sama makes him feel like he's a misbehaving child with just the raise of her eyebrows as she reads over Tenten's paperwork and then leans back in her chair.
"I thought I told you not to poach from other teams," she says, though she doesn't sound angry.
Kakashi doesn't shrug, but he does nod at the paperwork.
"I didn't," he says. "Tenten did all the legwork necessary and then blindsided me at practice with it. After getting getting both Sakura and Ino on board. I'd have had a mutiny on my hands if I said no."
He hadn't really considered saying no, mind, but that thought he doesn't share with his Hokage. She doesn't need to know that.
"And it's not a full transfer," he adds. "She will remain with Team Gai as her primary team. We'd just be... borrowing her, when available."
"And Maito Gai isn't around to have an opinion on this," Tsunade-sama mutters, though mostly to herself.
Kakashi shifts slightly. He knows Gai is supposed to be back from his mission any day now. They could put this off until then. It might be better to put it off until then.
He doesn't want to.
He thinks about the cheer Ino had given and the way Sakura had tackled Tenten with a hug. The way they'd left the training ground, all three of them, laughing and chattering at a million miles a second.
How he knows Tenten is going to be breaking the news to Team Gai soon, if she hasn't already.
There's no reason for it to be denied, this request. What they want, in this case, eclipses the need to wait for Gai.
"I don't know this timeline's Gai," Kakashi says. "But I know Gai. He'll be proud of her for figuring out something that works for her. He'll shout at me for kidnapping one of his youthful students and then he'll probably demand that I help with his other two as well, while he puts Ino and Sakura through their paces in his style."
He does not bring up the whole way it reminds him of a custody battle.
Two adults, five children, and time spent with each needing to be haggled over. Kakashi doesn't think he'll need to have much to do with Neji and Lee, but that will depend on Gai, and he...
I don't know if I'd mind, really. At this point.
There's a lot that he's not sure how to tackle but, despite his own original reservations about training Genin, actually doing so has granted him the one strand of stability he's found in this timeline.
And that's not something I would have predicted, given how I never wanted to teach-especially not teaching Genin-but I like the girls. I like teaching them. I like the way that, even when I've got nothing else, I've got them and their progress.
"She's been a Genin for nearly two years at this point," Tsunade-sama says. "And, given the status of the rest of her team, I cannot deny this. Know that if Maito Gai kicks up a fuss, though, this will be revisited. It really should be discussed with her sensei prior to it going into effect, no matter how restless she might be getting."
Kakashi keeps his mouth shut on that.
Restless is a word for it, and from someone who hasn't spoken with her, Kakashi can see how it would look, but he doesn't think that restless quite encompasses Tenten, with her clear-eyed gaze and her quiet fire and her need to be seen by someone, anyone.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama," he says, instead. "I assure you, if Gai has any problems with this matter, that we'll work them out."
It'll probably be a stupid challenge or five and... Kakashi would rather die than admit it but that small bit of grasping normalcy would also be appreciated, on his end.
I wonder how Gai does as a sensei. If Tenten's anything to go by, he's a much better one than either this timeline's me or Asuma.
He knows that Ino and Sakura's other friend, the little Hyuuga girl, has Yuuhi Kurenai as a sensei, but he knows very little about her.
Genjutsu, I seem to recall?
Either way, Hyuuga Hinata is, to all and sundry, happy with her sensei. He's not really bothered to pay attention to more than that.
Though maybe I should, he thinks, as Tsunade-sama signs off on Tenten's paperwork. She's a Jounin and a woman. In a time where the kunoichi seem to be behind their peers.
"Here," Tsunade-sama says. "Go file these or something."
Kakashi takes Tenten's paperwork, all signed off by him, her, and the Hokage now, and takes comfort in the fact that while everything else he's dealing with is messy and uncomfortable, he thinks that his team is getting stronger.
He uses that to bolster himself because-
"Actually," he says, "I was hoping to make two requests of you."
Tsunade-sama's eyes are sharp under the warmth of their colour. He never forgets this, the way some people must. She's beautiful but, in kunoichi, beauty is just another weapon.
"What is it?"
"I was wondering if I could be granted access to the Academy curriculum records," he says. "You know that I graduated very, very early. I'm unfamiliar with what I can expect Genin to have learned and I feel reviewing this information would help me in training my Genin more efficiently."
He leaves his doubts and concerns and worries about the curriculum as things unsaid. He doesn't have any proof, yet, and sometimes it's better to hold back than dive in-especially when you're convinced the footing hidden will be uncertain.
"That's easy enough," she says, looking relieved that it's something that simple. "And the other thing?"
Kakashi shifts slightly. He knows that his first request had been the easier one. There would be no good reason, ever, to deny a sensei a chance to review the Academy's curriculum. Even if it's likely most never bother with it.
But it's also true that he'd graduated younger than most and never went through most of it in the first place.
Now, though...
"I would like permission to access the sealed records about summoning," he says. "I cannot access my contracted dogs in this timeline and I'd like to see if there's an explanation for why."
She looks troubled.
Kakashi keeps his mouth shut, holding back the urge to ramble about his dogs, and waits. Tsunade-sama is a summoner herself. That and his request will have to be enough. Desperation would work against him.
"I'll grant you access," she says, and she sounds so reluctant that Kakashi ruthlessly stamps down on his elation so that it doesn't show on his face. "You will not be permitted to remove anything from the premises nor will you be allowed access to anything other than the scrolls on summoning."
Kakashi bows, properly, as that's the only way he knows how to express his thankfulness without giving away his hope for-
My dogs, he thinks, and then shoves that thought down.
"Thank you, Hokage-sama," he says.
"I'll have Shizune do up the permits," Tsunade-sama says. "For both the curriculum and the scrolls. Come back tomorrow and they'll be ready for you. Now get out of here so I can go back to bed."
He does not point out that it's not nearly late enough for that-or early enough for 'back to bed' to make any sense. He bows again and gets out while the going is good. He'll drop the paperwork off with the desk Chuunin on his way out of the building.
Kakashi stops by a ramen shop on his way home, picking up something to eat that he hasn't cooked-there are other shinobi eating there and, he spies as he pays, the mark on the lintel that says the owner is a former shinobi themselves.
The ramen isn't the best he's had, but it's hot and filling, and he's able to relax slightly, considering how the day has gone.
He still feels a little raw on the inside but that, he knows, will linger for a few days more. Otherwise, he... the day hadn't gone as he'd expected it, but now he's got three students instead of two, and he's so close to having access to the materials he wants to research.
And one of them, I can do openly. I really do have almost no familiarity with the actual ins and outs of the Academy.
Kakashi considers going and finding a teacher to speak with about the matter but-
I'm tired. I'll wait until I've had a chance to look over the curriculum myself before I go and ask someone who'd have an up close and personal point of view on what's really going on in the Academy.
Tenten finishes her explanation of her new status and then falls silent, waiting for the boys to mull it over. She is not particularly nervous about this, though both Ino and Sakura had been a bit antsy on her behalf before she'd taken her leave of them, claiming this was something she had to do on her own.
That just makes sense, though-Sakura is an anxious person and Ino is still dealing with the fallout from her leaving Team Ten. Tenten doesn't hold their nervousness against her or take it as a slight against her teammates.
Neji is frowning slightly, while Lee is staring at his lap.
It's quiet, in Lee's hospital room, but it's not an awkward silence.
Why would it be?
She's not leaving them, after all. She's just making sure she keeps her hand in for missions and training while they're all doing their own thing.
All my cards on the table , she thinks. But they're not going to play out like fools in a fable. These ones make sense.
"I had no idea there even was such an option," Lee says, and when she looks up his grin is blinding and genuine. "That's marvellous, Tenten!"
Neji gives a bit of a shrug, when the two of them look his way.
"Training under another teacher will only broaden your utility," he says. "Well thought out."
Tenten smirks at them and they smirk back.
Team Gai isn't perfect, no team is, but they get each other, even when they can also get on each other's nerves.
"Gai-sensei should be back in the village soon," she adds. "Hatake-sensei inquired about it with Hokage-sama. You know my status now-what are your updates?"
They settle in for a discussion about their various training schedules and what they're working on-Lee earnestly telling them that he's so close he can taste it to getting out of the hospital for real this time and that he's also signed up for the next medical first responder course, because Tenten's classwork there seems so interesting; Neji is more closemouthed but that's normal.
I'm grateful that I didn't have the wrong read on the situation here, Tenten decides, even as she and Lee fall into their pattern of picking apart Neji's training and listening to him scoff and explain like they're blithering idiots why his Clan trains him the way they do.
All three of them learn something from this, so it's never a waste of time. It's also funny to watch Neji get irked at them, then realize they're getting under his skin, and turning that back around on them.
And since they've got the story, what other people say won't bother them. Not that it usually does-both get talked about behind their backs often enough already.
But she thinks Lee, at least, would get riled up if he hadn't known what she was doing and someone started making comments about it. Neji's always been harder to read but, in his own way, is just as volatile.
It doesn't matter, Tenten gloats to herself. I did it. I got what I wanted and no one is mad at me. Life is good.
She will, perhaps, not gloat too obviously around Sakura and Ino though. The on-going disaster that is the remnants of Team Ten is a whole different thing and it would be unkind to rub it in Ino's face that her team took it better.
Especially when, really, they're two different situations. I'm on-call, but still on my own team. Ino completely left hers behind.
From what she's seen, though, Tenten can't blame Ino for doing so. Maybe, if she'd been in Ino's shoes, she'd have done the same thing. It's complicated, the business of judging other peoples' choices by her own metric.
Maybe I'll just gloat a little around Hinata. Hinata will smile faintly and roll her eyes indulgently at me.
That sounds like fun.
For now, though, she settles into bickering with her team of idiot boys and feels nothing but desperately, wonderfully fond of them.
Team Gai is strong. They always have been.