Summary:The day starts as normal as any other morning, but it quickly turns into a disaster.
(or a newly formed team 7 manages to all have an awful day at the same time and it changes everything.
what do you MEAN it's been 2 years since I've posted anything. I don't know what you're talking about.
General Warnings: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, POV Alternating
so this fic, so far, stretches to before the chunin exams, though I may or may not write those as well. there are 3 core "parts" to the fic:
1. training
2. wave
3. pack
They're all different in length, both word and chapter-wise.
I have 14k of plot written and figured that was enough to guarantee I at least finish one part lol
calm before the storm
It starts off as a normal day. Kakashi wakes before dawn, tired eyes peeling open after having only closed fifteen minutes prior. His nightmares, always nipping at his heels, have grown worse recently. Obito and Rin feature heavily, blood and terror having washed over the memory of their deaths. He tries to sleep, truly he does, but he inevitably wakes sometime in the middle of the night, a cold sweat enveloping him as he tries to keep himself from trembling.
Usually, he would try to distract himself by goading Gai into a challenge or try and take a moment to tease Asuma or Kurenai about their mutual pining, but Gai has taken his genin team on a C-rank out of the village and has already been gone for 2 weeks. The lovebirds have their own teams now as well, and Kakashi is so good at suffering in silence that he can't bring himself to bother them while they try to iron out those dynamics. Kakashi hasn't slept more than 20 hours in the past two weeks, which isn't exactly optimal.
He lies in his bed for several minutes after his alarm goes off, simply staring blurrily up at his featureless ceiling, the muted sage color matching the dull feeling he wakes up with every morning. He must force himself to sit up and stay up, his head hung as he breathes in deeply several times, his lungs burning after he holds it for slightly too long. He finally exhales after a few beats, the burn washing away to be filled with dull numbness once more.
He follows his usual morning pattern by climbing out of bed and getting ready for the day. A cold shower, proficient and simple, meant to only get clean and not for basking. The usual uniform slipped on and adjusted to fit the same way it did the day before and then the one before that. His breakfast is the usual saury with miso soup and eggplant, the same thing he indulges in every morning. He takes his book in hand and proceeds to go about being late, wandering around the village both aimlessly and with purpose. Sometimes he takes the time to run errands and other times he spends the entirety of the hour or two before training to simply stand at the Memorial Stone and mourn all he's lost.
He feels particularly tired and lost this morning, so he heads straight to the Stone. He stands there, like usual, and occasionally talks to it like his teammates are standing there with him. Like he isn't the only one left. Like they can hear him.
After doing this for exactly two hours, he decides to give his team a little bit of a break and show up earlier than he usually would. Kakashi already feels dragged down and he just knows that if he stays, he won't even be able to do the minimal training he has planned for his genin.
It's a normal day for him until he arrives at their designated training ground and his team is already in the midst of imploding.
"—do you even know what you're talking about, you idiot?" Sasuke snarls at Naruto, his face twisted in a dark scowl.
"I'm not an idiot!" Naruto barks back, his hands curled into fists and his eyes narrowed. "I know what I'm talking about! I'm tired of D-rank missions. They're stupid and the pay is even stupider! We've been doing D-ranks for forever!"
"Stupider isn't a word, you moron! And don't talk to Sasuke-kun that way," Sakura butts in as she steps up to Naruto, her finger pointing at him threateningly.
In a complete turn of events, one Kakashi can't say he ever saw coming, Naruto turns to Sakura and yells at her. "Stupider is a word, I looked it up! If you ever took the time to do anything besides faint over Sasuke, you might have known that!"
Sakura's face flushes in outrage, her anger and embarrassment clear as her eyes dart to Sasuke and back to Naruto. Kakashi doesn't know if she's waiting for Sasuke to defend her (which, when has he ever done anything like that?), but Kakashi can see the devastation on her face when Sasuke snorts at Naruto's words.
"What, do you think that's funny?" Sakura snaps at him. Sasuke even startles slightly at the venom in her voice, but Sakura doesn't stop, doesn't seem to be able to hold back as she hisses, "We've been listening to him complain for two hours straight. Instead of doing something about it, all you've done is brood under a tree like some kind of melancholic loser. We could be warming up or training while we wait for Kakashi-sensei, but every time one of us asks you, you brush us off like you're better than us. News flash Sasuke: you're not!"
Sasuke's posture goes from leaning to straight at her words. Kakashi figures this is the best time to interfere, before this can devolve even further, so he makes as much noise as he can when he pops up next to them.
"Hello, my cute little genin! Having a bit of a tiff this morning, are we?" Kakashi asks, making sure to add his obnoxiously obvious eye smile.
"You're late!" Naruto shouts at him. Usually, this is followed by a grumpy Uzumaki frown, but the day continues to be not normal, and instead, Naruto follows up with a glower. It sits oddly on his face, the frustration and anger such a juxtaposition to Naruto's usual sunny disposition.
"Training? With either of you?" Sasuke completely ignores Kakashi (which, rude), responding heatedly to Sakura's harsh words. "Being stuck with you three has ruined any progress I could be making! You're a civilian playing at wanting to be a shinobi," Sasuke scoffs at Sakura before turning to Naruto and pointing at him, "Naruto doesn't have enough talent to amount to anything, let alone being the Hokage," and then he jabs his thumb in Kakashi's direction, finishing his rant, "and our sensei is so incompetent that if we ever do get a C-rank and leave the walls of this village, we'd probably all just die!"
The day starts as normal as any other morning, but it quickly turns into a disaster.
Kakashi has heard worse. About himself, his father, his friends. Far worse. Yet he hears Sasuke's words, that they'd all die because Kakashi is their sensei, because he isn't teaching them, he's holding them back, and something long ignored surfaces in his mind. Kakashi hasn't been completely incompetent with his team. He's tried the usual genin drills and teamwork exercises, the ones specifically recommended to new senseis by the academy, but they're all so resistant. If Sasuke wants to do it, Sakura is too focused on him to concentrate, and Naruto almost always wants to argue. Sasuke displays zero interest in working with either of them, which sends Sakura spiraling and Naruto into indignant rants. Sakura would rather punch Naruto into a wall than help him when he struggles, which causes him to pout and shout, completely derailing any lesson plans he may have had.
Kakashi is exhausted and he's pretty sure he's started hallucinating from lack of sleep, so he closes his eyes for a second as he breathes in. He counts to three, ignoring the three genin who are still arguing in front of him, and when Kakashi opens his eyes, Hound is the one staring out at them. The shift is quick and familiar, the numbness that plagues Kakashi sharpening into something animal and calculating.
"You want me to train you?" Kakashi asks. The three genin cease their arguing, all looking up at him with slight trepidation. Kakashi doesn't raise his voice, and doesn't jovially enquire if they're ready to train. He asks the question with a growl, something that comes from deep within him. Hound embraces a lot of the Hatake traits Kakashi often keeps locked up, and he brings part of his heritage forward as he regards his students. "Fine, I'll train you. We start now."
"—"
Naruto blinks and he flinches as another rock is thrown at his head, wincing when it slices across his cheek lightly. The cut stings, adding to the other aches across his small body. He can see the light from lanterns in the distance, the faint sounds from the festival rising and falling in the distance. Naruto tries to keep himself from crying, eyeing the three men standing in the opening of the alley.
Their words are slurring as they taunt him, drunkenly tossing rocks and garbage in his direction. If he doesn't move, doesn't make a sound, he knows they'll eventually get bored. If he covers his ears and keeps his pleas in his head, they'll leave, and Naruto can go back to being ignored—back to wanting attention and only receiving scorn in return—
—Sakura blinks and her ears ring as her mother shakes her violently. She can't help but let out a cry at the violent motion. Her mother hates when she talks back, hates when she won't take a punishment quietly like a good girl, and her ears ring from the blow she receives to the side of her head.
Sakura feels dizzy, and she can only faintly hear her father lecturing her about whatever she has done wrong. Because Sakura can never do anything right. She knows this down to her bones; she is powerless against the harsh words from her parents, weaker than her academy classmates, and on the fast track to being the failure her parents tell her she is destined to be.
Sakura blinks—wait.
She remembers this day. Sakura is sure she's been through this exact scenario before. She remembers being thrown into her room and threatened with even more punishments if she didn't shape up, before her parents went back to ignoring her.
She had accidentally broken a teacup when doing the dishes.
Sakura knows this has happened. She also knows she's not an academy student. She graduated, she knows she did, remembers hoping that her parents would be proud, that they would smile at her, but they hadn't shown up at the ceremony and they hadn't even celebrated with her—
This is a memory. This isn't real, she realizes.
"Genjutsu," she whispers, ignoring the illusion of her parents as their words start to fade into the background. "Kai."
The genjutsu seemingly fades around her, only she doesn't appear back at the training ground, but rather in a dimly lit alley. She glances around and is surprised to see a younger Naruto, his form curled up next to some trash cans. Sakura opens her mouth to ask him what was going on, only a rock rushes past her and thunks heavily next to Naruto's form. The smaller boy flinches at the sound, a faint whimper leaving him. He's trembling, she realizes, and her stomach sinks as she turns to look at his assailants.
"Civilians?" Sakura asks out loud, confused. She knows a lot of people find Naruto annoying, herself included, but she never imagined anyone would go out of their way to assault him.
"S-Sakura?"
Sakura whips back around and meets watery blue eyes, his skin red and puffy. "Naruto!"
"What are you doing here?" Naruto whispers, glancing past her at the drunken men. They've ceased throwing rocks, instead turning towards words.
"Little monster!" a man shouts, laughing as he leans heavily against one of his friends.
"Should've just killed you instead of letting you walk around," another man grumbles, following his statement with a loud burp.
Sakura wrinkles her nose at their words and behavior, utterly baffled. Naruto was annoying, but he wasn't a monster.
"Sakura, you should go. Your parents might get upset if they see you with me," Naruto tells her, his voice nervous.
Realizing he's right, Sakura turns towards the men, trying to judge if they'll let her get past them without any issues when she freezes. She has to shake off the hazy feeling that clouds her brain, focus sharpening as she forces herself to remember—
"This is a genjutsu," she blurts out.
"What?" Naruto asks.
"This isn't real," Sakura says and she turns back to him, urgency in her voice.
"Yes it is," Naruto disagrees. "This happens every year."
"Naruto," Sakura says, choosing to ignore this new information. She'll think about it later. "We graduated already, remember? Where's your forehead protector?
Naruto reaches up to touch his forehead, his brow creasing, before his eyes widen and he jolts out of his curled position. "You're right!"
"I thought I broke mine, but then I ended up here instead," Sakura explains. "Maybe we need to break it together?"
"Right," Naruto nods, finally standing. The sound around them suddenly stops and Sakura exchanges a nervous glance with Naruto. She takes a deep breath and nods.
"Kai," they say together, channeling chakra in hopes of disrupting the genjutsu.
Naruto blinks—
—and the moon above him is red. The civilians that had been harassing him are gone. Naruto glances around him nervously, clocking Sakura doing the same from beside him. He squints his eyes and he spots a silhouetted figure in the distance. They're crouched on a tall pole in the distance. Clouds roll over the moon in the sky, covering the red glow and throwing the already dim area into further darkness.
Naruto jumps in surprise when a devastating scream sounds behind them. He spins around and stares at the average-looking house, a faint glow emanating from the windows. The door is ajar, the scream cuts off and then continues once more, sobbing following quickly afterward.
"Sakura," Naruto asks slowly, eyeing the house, "What's going on?"
"I don't know," Sakura answers, wringing her hands together nervously. "This…this place looks like the Uchiha compound."
"It does?" Naruto asks, looking around once more. "Does that mean that scream—was that Sasuke?"
Naruto gets his answer almost immediately when Sasuke stumbles out of the house, covered in blood. His eyes are red and he looks devastated. He doesn't even seem to notice them as he makes his way down the stairs, his face twisting from grief to anger.
"Itachi!" Sasuke bellows, his voice cracking. "Itachi, why!?" Sasuke continues to stumble forward, passing them. Naruto and Sakura both turn to watch him, stunned into silence. The figure Naruto had noticed before had moved from the pole to the end of the street.
They have the same glowing red eyes that Sasuke seems to have.
"I-It-ta-," Sasuke stumbles over the name, his knees shaking until he finally collapses a few feet in front of them. "Brother, why?" he struggles to ask over a sob.
The clouds must blow over because the red moon is suddenly bright once more and Naruto's heart stops when the figure finally draws closer to Sasuke. Naruto watches his approach but is distracted when he realizes something he hasn't noticed before.
Bodies litter the street.
Naruto stares in horror at the scene and turns to Sakura. She wears a grim expression as she watches Itachi, the boy Sasuke had just called brother, menacingly approaching him with spinning red eyes.
"Uchiha Itachi," Naruto hears Sakura whisper. "He massacred the entire Uchiha clan in one night. Sasuke is the only survivor."
Itachi is wearing a familiar uniform, a mask hanging from his belt. Naruto has seen ANBU following him around the village before. He's been saved from a sticky situation or two by the ANBU that discreetly followed him around. Naruto can't help but wonder if Itachi was ever one of those guards.
Itachi looks down at the crying figure of his brother, seemingly unaffected by his gasping sobs. He reaches behind him, pulling his katana from its sheath. Naruto stares in horror, mouth agape as Itachi brings his sword into position, seemingly prepared to strike Sasuke down.
Naruto is terrified and he feels stuck as Itachi answers Sasuke's pleading questions with: "I needed to test my strength."
"What kind of reasoning is that?" Naruto asks incredulously. Sakura seems to be just as speechless as him, her frame shaking as she watches the scene in front of them.
"But you," Itachi continues, "you are too weak to even kill."
"Kai," Sakura forces out. "Sasuke, this is a genjutsu!"
Sasuke doesn't seem to hear her, staring up at Itachi with a complicated mix of emotions on his face.
"Sasuke!" Sakura tries again, taking a hesitant step forward.
"Screw it," Naruto mutters, dashing forward. He steps right in between Sasuke and the illusion, forcing Sasuke to meet his eyes. "We're stuck in a genjutsu, bastard!" Naruto debates reaching forward to shake Sasuke, but he doesn't get the chance to. A sharp burst of pain races down his spine, a gasp involuntarily escaping him as Itachi's katana bursts forward out of his stomach.
"Naruto!" Sakura screams, her face twisted in shock.
Naruto feels the blood rise in his throat, the cough tearing itself violently up andout of his mouth. It watches the blood splatter, several speckles landing on Sasuke's face, forcing a flinch and blink from his dazed face.
"N-Naruto?" Sasuke asks, his confusion slowly shifting to horror.
"Genjutsu," Naruto chokes out, trying not to panic. Both he and Sakura were stuck, so that means Sasuke is too, right? Naruto had felt pain then, and he feels pain now, but that doesn't really mean he's been stabbed through in real life, right?
It's all an illusion. Right?
Panic grips him and he feels something inside him bubble up at the feeling. It burns, so maybe he's about to vomit, but his limbs tingle as the feeling rises. He can feel his eyes start to tear up, pleading silently as he meets Sasuke's gaze.
"Kai," Sasuke whispers, staring at where Naruto has been stabbed and—
—It's no longer night. Sasuke blinks rapidly at the light shining brightly in his eyes, a gasp leaving his lips as he scrambles to look around. Naruto is collapsed next to him, Kakashi kneeling over him as he affixes some type of seal to his stomach. Sasuke doesn't see any blood, but he needs to check, needs to make sure It- his br- that man hasn't actually killed Naruto.
Sasuke crawls forward, his legs too shaky for him to stand, and he scans Naruto quickly for any sign of blood. When he finds none, he feels relief, but he quickly has to turn away because bile rises up from his stomach and he expels it violently, choking it out onto the grass below him. He hears faint crying and glances up as he heaves again, Sakura's tearful eyes glued to an unconscious Naruto. She meets his eyes briefly, but then returns her gaze to their other teammate.
"First lesson," Kakashi says as he stands, taking several steps away from them. He turns and stares at them, his eye dark as he glances at the mess by Sasuke's hands. His gaze is cold, Sasuke notices, heaving once more as he tries to calm his aggrieved stomach. He chokes slightly, gasps puffing past his lips, a gross symphony of sound when combined with Sakura's scared sobs. Naruto doesn't so much as twitch at the words or their hacking sounds, completely ignorant of the world around him.
"First lesson," Kakashi repeats, gaining Sasuke's attention once more. He immediately feels sick again, his stomach swooping violently as he meets the eye Kakashi has just revealed.
A sharingan. Kakashi has a sharingan. Sasuke stares at it, his throat constricting as he swallows. The ruby red eye is a beacon of warm color on Kakashi's otherwise cold palette and Sasuke can't make himself look away.
"When you're alone, you're vulnerable," Kakashi continues, briefly flashing his gaze past Sasuke to the stirring Naruto. "You'll always be vulnerable. No backup, no support," he explains, now shifting to meet Sakura's puffy eyes, "you'll only have yourself to rely on. And none of you are currently someone I'd choose to rely on."
Sasuke feels his eyes burn as he meets Naruto's dazed ones, the blond shaking slightly as he starts to sit up. Sakura moves closer, carefully avoiding Sasuke's vomit as she comes to rest beside them. Sasuke stays quiet as they all look up at their sensei, their appearances creating a scene of ruin.
"Go home and pack a bag. Act as if you're going on a long-term mission. For every item you don't have that you should, you'll be punished. For every item you do have that you shouldn't, you'll be punished. If you're late, you'll be punished. Fail to show up at all?" Kakashi pauses his speech, deliberately making eye contact with all of them. Sasuke shifts his eyes away, not being able to force himself to meet the cruel glare any longer, the bared sharingan continuing to taunt him.
"You have one hour," Kakashi says as he turns and walks away. Sasuke allows himself a glance up, watching Kakashi swagger away, only to stop briefly to add, "Don't disappoint me. You won't like the consequences if you do," before he uses a shunshin to fully disappear.
Sasuke lets out a shaky breath and slowly forces himself onto trembling legs.
"Sasuke," Sakura says softly. He can see her reaching out slightly in his peripheral. He ignores her. Sasuke doesn't want to think about what they saw, what he was forced to relive. He needs to get home so he can pack and get back as quickly as possible. He needs to pack it perfectly so Kakashi will train him to be better, to be stronger, so he will no longer be helpless and vulnerable.
Sasuke heads home and refuses to look back, scared of what he might see if he does.
also adding that im probably making them all OP. I'll try making their progress somewhat feasible, but like, who cares not me