Tumgik
#when i say hes thinking about kakashi being a jōnin sensei and laughing
mokutone · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
2K notes · View notes
whatshernameis · 1 year
Text
The fourth fic for @kakashiweek! I'm getting there!
Main characters: Kakashi, Obito Uchiha, Team 7 Chapter TW: Grief, memories, angst and feelings Chapter: 4/8 Chapter word count: 899 Prompt for chapter: Devotion
Sfw
Dear Obito
Initially, I was going to write to Minato-sensei, about how he implanted the whole idea of teamwork into me… But after my student’s rage I decided to write to you again, and tell you about something I involuntarily devoted myself to. You’d laugh about one of these things, oh you would just burst into loud laughter, and you would do it for so long you’d lament how your stomach hurts.
But you’d also say “worth it” I’m so sure about it…
You know, sometimes I hear what people say about adapting someone’s behaviors. Whether it’s the ritual of making a red tea with exactly one spoon of sugar every morning, drinking a glass of hot milk before sleep, training until all limbs are numb or playing shōgi to focus and clear your mind - every little habit has its history and is rooted deeply in us, anchoring us in reality in some way, bringing us peace. Sometimes it’s just a way of being - one of many things that define us. Sometimes it’s an attempt to be like your idol, match them and make them proud.
Sometimes it’s a way to honor someone we lost, believing that no matter who we miss, part of them lives with us and carries us on in tough moments. I could go on and on about what I tried to borrow from all the people I lost. I could, but this letter would just turn into a sad list of people who I cared about and are gone, and surprisingly I’m not in the mood for that kind of memories, especially that this letter should be to you and about you, not about them.
I guess people might say that after you gifted me your Sharingan, part of you already lives with me - I like to think that you see the world through this eye even if most of the time it’s darkness as it’s hidden behind my band. Some people might say that with sharingan the part of your personality “infected” me, giving me some habits and views that I never had and that were completely reverse of what I thought as a dumb 9 year old jōnin.
First, and I think the most important thing, is that I devoted myself to never let my friends die. That people who leave their friends are worse than scum. It’s what you said on that day, and I can still hear these words ring in my head. I can’t bear another death, Obito. I can’t lose another important person. As I write this, I can feel how on the mere thought of more death my eyes start to sting. There were only a few moments in my life that made my… Eyes sweat. But if I imagine another death… I just can’t. 
It just hurts too much, you know? And I think it’s enough to learn that from you, and promise myself to follow that path.
Another thing, the second one that I like to think I got from you as a way to honor you, is something that pissed me off like hell when we were kids. Oh, how I hated that you were always running late. Gods only know how many times I wanted to punch you and your stupid goggles, to punish you for being so chilslish and wanton, that you didn’t understand the way of ninja. Your excuses about meeting an old lady and helping her with groceries. A black cat running across your road. An old man having a problem with his cart. Little girl whose cat got stuck on a tree. Or that one, the most annoying one, that you got so deep in your thoughts you got lost. All those annoying excuses made me burn red from rage, I remember.
And now I realize what nonsense that was. I mean, my behavior, not you being almost always late. You know why? That’s why I said above that you’d laugh.
Because now, I’m doing exactly the same. I’m late to every meeting. Well, almost every - I wouldn’t dare to be late into official ones if I don’t want to end up doing D-rank missions and listening to my three little goblins about how they are getting only meaningless tasks.
And speaking of them, Naruto and Sakura, they react with absolute fury to me being late. Well, maybe Sakura a little less, she at least tries to keep an appearance of being polite but I know that inside she is boiling. And Naruto, every time I need to promise him that I will take him to ramen, and believe me, he can’t remember simple and basic shinobi rules, but he will remember forever if you promise him ramen.
Only Sasuke worries me. He is always calm and cold, not showing any emotions in situations like this… Maybe a frown or grimace, but nothing more. I guess Uchihas are always troublesome, eh? 
Yeah…
Speaking of being late, I’m sure they are on their way to my place. It’s been an hour and a half since I was supposed to be on the training grounds, and I’m here, writing my letter to you. I think I’m getting a little better at that, you know? I mean, writing letters, not being late. Although when I think about it…
Anyway, I should go now.
I’ll write to you again soon.
Your friend,
Kakashi.
***
Thank you for reading! Proofread by @wind-becomes-lightning
|| AO3 || Masterlist || Dump blog || Like my works? Support me on Ko-fi! ♥️ ||
11 notes · View notes
hajimesh · 4 years
Text
𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐢
𝚑𝚊𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚔𝚊𝚔𝚊𝚜𝚑𝚒 𝚡 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 // 𝟷.𝟷𝚔 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲; 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦'𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘶. 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰
𝐚/𝐧; 𝘪 𝘴𝘢𝘸 *𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵* 𝘱𝘪𝘤 𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘢 𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘭𝘮𝘢𝘰
-ˏˋ𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 ♡
Tumblr media
Being part of team Minato was something that brought the happiness you didn’t know you needed into your life.
During your Academy days, you never got a chance to talk to those three kids who would later become your teammates. Rin and Obito were inseparable, and Kakashi was in your class only for a year, graduating early and becoming a genin right away.
Over the past year, you’ve made progress not only on your skills but with your relationship with the team as well. Which led to you wanting to let them know they had earned a spot into your heart. And what a better day to tell them than on Valentine’s Day.
“Ohayō!”
Rin’s voice caught your attention. She ran towards you, holding a pink bag with hearts on it and a huge smile on her face.
Internally, you felt embarrassed since you arrived at the training grounds, awfully aware of the extra weight inside your backpack. You were waiting until everyone arrived and, surprisingly, Rin was the one who was running late.
You had always admired how easily the compliments flowed out of her mouth, able to brighten anyone’s day. You wished you could voice out your feelings freely just like her, especially for a silver-haired boy.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Rin smiled, stopping in front of you to rummage through the bag excitedly. “I brought you presents!” she handed out a small box of chocolates to everyone with a letter attached to it.
Everyone thanked her and she flashed her signature smile, her hands clasped in front of her.
“I-I brought something too,” you spoke softly, nervous at what their reactions would be.
But it was enough to catch Kakashi’s attention.
He had always found you interesting. You were quiet when you first met, only speaking when you were specifically addressed. It wasn't until your first mission together when he got the opportunity to see your skills up close, he was truly impressed by your quick reflexes especially at hand to hand combat. After that, he would insist to fight against you, ending in a draw most of the time.
Kakashi didn’t know when it happened, perhaps it was your constant presence or how you started opening up to him, but he couldn't deny he had a crush on you. Not like you knew, of course.
You squatted down to pull out a box from your bag, the rest of your team watching in curiosity. You were nervous, thinking that maybe your present was too cheesy but it was too late to back down.
Inside the box were four cookies, each one wrapped inside a clear plastic bag, and they were shaped and decorated with the Uchiha, Hatake, Namikaze, and Nohara clan symbol. You gave them to each one of them and took a step back, bowing before them.
“I hope you like them.”
Everyone was silent, which you took as a bad sign. But before you could say anything, Rin threw herself at you, squealing in delight at your present.
“This is so cool!” Obito yelled, clearly amazed at the cookie with his clan symbol on it.
Kakashi walked up to you, patting you on the head and his eyes closing as he smiled underneath his mask. “Thank you.”
You nodded at them in awe by their reactions while Rin finally let go of you.
“Thank you, girls,” Minato smiled, patting both of the tops your heads. “But you’re not the only ones who came prepared,” he winked at you, giving a look to the two boys next to him, which they answered back with a nod.
Obito pulled out a red rose from his sweater, suddenly sweating and blushing as he nervously walked towards Rin. He handed it out at her, her eyes widening before accepting the flower with a smile.
“Obito! This is so sweet, thank you!”
The black-haired boy laughed in relief. “I’m so glad you liked it!”
You watched in awe, noticing how Obito's eyes seemed to sparkle at the girl in front of him.
Kakashi, who still stood next to you, reached back to his pouch and took your distraction to his advantage.
Suddenly, a white rose appeared in front of you, making you gasp. You slowly followed the hand holding it until your eyes met Kakashi’s. He stood with a mix of embarrassment and annoyance in his eyes.
You grabbed the rose from his hands and unconsciously smiled, your heart beating quickly at the surprise.
“Thank you, Kakashi.”
Your soft voice caught his attention, making his though exterior relax once he saw the positive reaction from you.
“I–I think the white matches with your personality,” Kakashi rubbed the back of his head, a blush covering his cheeks. “You’re always calm, even during our missions,” he couldn’t take the pressure of your gaze anymore, making him look away. “I-It’s soothing.”
You were speechless for a moment.
“I’m– I don't know what to say."
But your evident blush was all he needed. He felt a sense of pride swirling in his chest at his accomplishment.
“Girls," Minato spoke up, catching your attention. "Without you, the team wouldn’t be what it is today. Rin, you always heal us and make sure we are safe,” he smiled at her before turning to you. “Y/N, I’ve never seen a kunoichi fight with so much determination as you do, while looking after your comrades at the same time.”
Minato pulled out two pink roses from his vest, kneeling down on one knee and offering them to you two. His eyes gleamed, pride, and affection shining in them and a soft smile on his lips.
It was as if the whole aura around you changed. The scene turned brighter, the cold breeze flowed and made your hair fly around you.
“Sensei,” you said under your breath, completely captivated by his actions, and a blush covering your cheeks while you looked back and forth between the flower and him.
When I’m older, I’m definitely marrying someone like my sensei. You thought, smelling the two roses in your hands.
“Thank you!” Rin squealed in delight, her eyes closing and a huge smile lifting the corners of her lips.
Minato laughed, amused at your reactions but he did mean what he said. Team Minato wouldn't have been the same without you two, you were the string that managed to hold the two boys in place.
An irk mark appeared on Obito’s forehead while Kakashi’s eyes widened in shock. They felt betrayed, watching as their sensei easily swooped in and stole their girls away from them.
“Minato-sensei!” Obito started to complain to Minato, saying something about how it was a low move from him.
The jōnin sheepishly laughed, internally enjoying the reaction he got out of everyone. “Gomen, Gomen!”
Kakashi was silent, standing with his arms folded in front of him and feeling jealous that his sensei was able to make you blush so easily. He found himself wishing that you had looked at him with the same amazement as you had looked at Minato when he gave you the flower.
It seemed like the two boys still had a lot to learn from their sensei.
895 notes · View notes
Text
Hills of Marigold
Before that, we must find love and fill the vessel with it. (Chapter 500) | Discord Secret Santa 2020 for @chavelink​. | AO3 | Holiday Prompt: Day of the Dead.
                                ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
It starts with Kakashi’s sticker chart.
Naruto is not quite old enough for the Academy yet, but his eagerness to become a shinobi is almost as vast as his ability to turn his home upside down the minute his parents look away.
Though Kakashi’s duties don’t usually leave him much time for babysitting, he knows more than most how rare it is that the Hokage gets free time, so he volunteers himself twice a month to be subject to the hurricane that is five-year-old Uzumaki Naruto in his sensei’s stead.
Out-running Naruto is not the problem. Kakashi is certainly fast enough to reach him before he can do any permanent damage. What really perplexes Kakashi is how to keep a five-year-old entertained. Naruto is more loud, curious and insistent on clinging to Kakashi every minute of he’s around than anyone he’s ever met. (Even Gai can be reasoned with, Kakashi thinks, trying to make rice with two sticky hands tugging on his jōnin blues.)
“Why can’t we eat ramen instead, Kakashi-niichan?” Naruto complains, scrunching up his face.
“It doesn’t have any nutritional value,” Kakashi replies, sighing.
Naruto pauses, and though Kakashi’s eyes are on the stovetop, he knows the younger boy is frowning. “What’s that?”
“Vitamins and minerals. Those things are in the vegetables you’re going to eat.” He eyes the other pan, and decides it’s time to plate the sweet potato and broccoli. Naruto doesn’t look particularly enthused, so Kakashi reminds him, “If you want to become a ninja, you’ll have to eat the kind of food which makes you stronger.”
At the mention of the word ‘ninja,’ Naruto’s face lights up. “Hey, Kakashi-nii, teach me a jutsu!”
It’s not the first time Naruto has asked, and Kakashi usually flat-out refuses. Naruto is destructive enough without any shinobi techniques. But an idea suddenly strikes Kakashi. “How about we make a deal?”
The deal Kakashi proposes is premised on the most basic of tactics Minato-sensei has instilled in his team: Positive reinforcement. If Naruto behaves well enough, Kakashi will teach him something.
It becomes clear to Kakashi in the first hour or so that Naruto’s impatience outweighs his focus. With the prospect of a ninja technique on the line, he is far more concerned about hassling the information out of Kakashi than he is about washing up after lunch, or cleaning his room. So it falls on Kakashi to improvise.
Kakashi holds up the latest Ichiraku flyer. “You see these stickers?” he asks.
“So we are getting ramen?” Naruto asks, bouncing on his heels.
“Not today.” Carefully, Kakashi peels up a circle which announces a 10% off deal on yakisoba. “If you can earn five of these stickers, I’ll teach you how to knock someone my size off of their feet. But I’ll keep the flyer with me, so there’s no cheating.”
Kakashi’s plan is more effective than he could’ve predicted. Not only does Naruto manage to keep himself clean the rest of the afternoon, but his attempts at taijutsu tire him out to the point where, for once, he is asleep in bed by the time Minato and Kushina come home.
“Are you interested in becoming a jōnin-sensei, Kakashi?” Minato asks him with a wide smile.
“Not on your life,” says Kakashi, shunshin-ing away with a wave.
Whether he likes it or not, Kakashi does become something of a teacher to Naruto. The young boy, distracted as he is, doesn’t shy away from hard work, as long as it’s something that interests him. After a while, they make their way through some basic attack and defence strategy (though Naruto seems to rely much more heavily on the former). Kakashi even tries to work with him on chakra control, but despite his size, Naruto’s chakra reservoir is enormous, so even gathering chakra to his palms proves difficult.
By the time they take a break in the late afternoon, Kakashi half-wishes he could reach for the book in his pocket and spend the rest of the day letting Naruto practice, but he knows shinobi at this age usually need supervision. He sighs, passing his hand over the dandelions wistfully.
“It’s not fair, y’know,” Naruto complains, sprawled out on the grass. “How come I can’t make my hands work like yours, Kakashi-nii?”
“You’re five,” Kakashi tells him, as if it’s that simple.
“But Sasuke can—”
Kakashi hears Naruto complain about Sasuke, his habitual playmate, often. Itachi’s little brother, if the name is anything to go by. Kakashi isn’t sure if Naruto sees Sasuke as his greatest enemy or best friend.
“It doesn’t matter how quickly you can learn. What’s important is that you work at it.” Kakashi says firmly. Sensing Naruto needs more reassurance, he adds, “Besides, Sasuke may not have as much chakra as you do.”
Naruto mulls this thought over, tugging the grass into his small fists. “Why not?”
Kakashi thinks of Kushina, and the overwhelming energy it must take just to contain her presence. “It seems to run in your family.”
As if summoned by these words, Kakashi feels a shift in the air which marks Naruto’s mother’s arrival. The sure-footed sound of her sandals landing on a tree branch, the smell of coconut oil from her hair, and the loud chakra signature which matches her son.
“It’s time for dinner, y’know!” Kushina announces, hands on her hips as she jumps down. “Minato made grilled saury, and I won’t have you boys coming back when it’s already cold.”
“Food!” Naruto says, hopping to his feet with a grin. He grabs his mother’s hand. “Let’s go, kaa-chan!”
Weakly, Kakashi tries to raise his hands in a warding gesture. “Actually, I have some food at home—”
“Nice try,” Kushina says, grabbing the collar of his flak vest with her free hand. “You’re coming too, Kakashi.”
Kakashi sighs, letting himself be tugged along. “Aren’t I too old for you to still be force-feeding me?”
“If you want to be a ninja, you have to eat strong things,” Naruto pipes up from Kushina’s side helpfully.
“You tell him, Naruto!” Kushina says, grinning at her son.
“I don’t like being a sensei,” Kakashi mutters under his breath, while Kushina and Naruto laugh at him.
Despite Kakashi’s words, dinner at the Uzumaki household isn’t so bad. Kushina may give him too many helpings of saury, Minato might be far too concerned about his social life, and Naruto might try to dump his vegetables on Kakashi’s plate, but there is a warmth in their home in which Kakashi cannot help but feel caught up.
It is this same warmth which has him linger after dinner is over, handing plates over to Kushina as Minato carries Naruto off to bed.
“I want to thank you, y’know,” Kushina says gently. “Naruto thinks pretty highly of you.”
Kakashi ducks his head, cheeks ruddy over the edge of his mask. “I’m not doing much.”
“He really looks forward to those stickers, and your lessons.” she says. Her eyes drift towards the fridge, where Naruto has stuck a colourful paper with his assortment of Ichiraku coupons. “I was wondering, do you mind if I join you both next time? There’s a place I’d like to show Naruto. And you, if you’re willing.”
The request leaves Kakashi taken aback. While Kushina doesn’t often leave the village, he knows she’s as busy as Minato-sensei, overseeing most of the genin and chunin missions in his stead. But Kushina’s eyes are sincere and bright, so he cannot bring himself to question the request.
“Ah, sure,” he replies. “What did you have in mind?”
What Kushina has in mind, it turns out, is a week-long trip to the coastline. It requires Kakashi to turn down a two-man mission with Tenzō, and an invitation from Asuma to join his former classmates for Yakiniku, but he is curious about what could Kushina could want to show them so much. A curiosity which only grows when he realizes that Minato-sensei will be joining them.
Kakashi leans against the doorframe, straightening up when his sensei walks in, backpack in hand. “Is it really okay for you to be leaving Konoha for a week, sensei? I mean, Yondaime-sama?” he corrects.
“I wouldn’t be leaving if I didn’t think so,” Minato replies firmly. “Our village is made up of more than just the Hokage, Kakashi. Shikaku-san will look after the the jōnin, and Chōza-san will see to the genin and chunin. Sandaime-sama has agreed to deal with any emergencies. Konoha will be fine without us.”
Kakashi’s brows draw together. “Whatever Kushina wants us to see must be important.”
Minato smiles. “I’ll leave it to her to tell you the rest. Let’s get going.”
It occurs to Kakashi, as they head east, that he has never seen Minato and Kushina on a mission together.
It is something to behold. They keep pace with each other naturally, even with Kushina carrying Naruto on her back. And though Kushina’s presence is louder and bolder than Minato’s, there is a synchronicity in their movements which makes Kakashi think of celestial bodies moving in each other’s orbit. It strikes Kakashi with the memory of being five years old himself, seeing two smiling faces looking down at him in the moonlight.
As they stop to rest for the night, Kakashi puzzles over if he’s ever taken a trip like this, just for the sake of it. If he has, it’s hard to recall. At Naruto’s age, his world had been so different.
Even his sensei has changed somehow, he decides, looking at Minato, Kushina and Naruto piled beneath one blanket. More at ease with the world, he thinks, watching as Naruto’s knee digs into his father’s chest. He hears Minato whisper something to Kushina, and watches their hands intertwine, musing on what it would be like to look so certain of his place in life.
“Don’t look so gloomy,” Kushina tells him the next morning, as they pack up. “You’re not on duty today. You can relax. Maybe even smile.”
“I relax,” Kakashi replies, crossing his arms.
Kushina laughs, reaching upward to muss up his hair. He wonders when he outgrew her. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
The last half of their trip passes quickly. They stop in a seaside village long enough for lunch, but from thereon out, the rest of their trip is past far enough from the forest that the landscape remains full and vast before them.
Kakashi takes note as they pass over rolling hills filled with marigolds, adding unusual brightness to their path. Kushina’s speed finally slows down to a walking pace, and it allows Naruto to stare with open-mouthed appreciation at their view.
“Orange is my favourite colour,” Naruto announces, holding up a flower right up to Kakashi’s visible eye.
“I believe you,” says Kakashi.
Kakashi wonders if this is another trait that runs in their family, as he watches Kushina gather a bouquet of her own. Minato looks on with fondness, taking their son into his arms instead, so that his wife can move more freely.
When Kushina is nearly done, Minato approaches her and tucks a flower into her hair. His gaze is warm and soft in a way that makes Kakashi feel like he should look away. He wonders yet again why Kushina has asked him here, with their family, bright and orange and whole.
Kushina turns to Kakashi. “We’re almost there.”
Flowers clutched in hand, they walk until the flowers give way to grass, and until that grass shifts to sand. Though it’s approaching sunset, the water still shines with its warm reflection, straight through the lapping waves to let its bright golden twin rest at their feet. The salted air fills their lungs with every breath.
Wordlessly, Kushina removes her shoes, and Minato takes them into one hand and watches her walk slowly across the sand. Kushina approaches the edge of the water. Marigold petals fall into her footsteps, somehow unmoved by the changing winds.
“Mito-sama,” says Kushina, clear and certain over the breeze. “It’s good to visit you again.”
It only occurs to Kakashi then just where Kushina has taken them. Beyond the horizon line, though he’s never seen it, he’s almost certain there would’ve once been an island. The tide looks calm now, but he’s heard of the powerful current that few shinobi would be able to navigate unscathed.
Kakashi doesn’t expect Kushina’s call to be answered, if her words are for the person he suspects. To his surprise, however, he does hear something, a melodious whisper, by wind or water, that makes Kushina turn to them with the widest smile Kakashi has ever seen.
“Mito-sama,” Kushina says, with nothing pride in her eyes, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Naruto?”
Minato sets his son down on the sand, and lays an encouraging hand on top of his hair. “Go on.”
Naruto is uncharacteristically quiet as he approaches his mother, gazing up at the horizon as he might a new friend. “The name is Uzumaki Naruto!” he proclaims, to the sea.
Kushina’s arms come around Naruto, allowing him to lean his back against her legs. “You told me once that I needed to fill this vessel with love. Naruto... it’s more like he makes the vessel bottomless, because he fills it with more to love than we ever thought possible. He eats lots, and grows every day. He’s really good at making friends. He’s not in the Academy yet, but he’s always doing his best to learn. He’s probably a little too much like me, but I see Minato in him too. We’re a family now, y’know?”
With that, Minato steps forward. Kakashi’s eyes are so fixed on the scene in front of him, he doesn’t notice Minato looking at him until a hand touches his shoulder. “Kakashi,” he says gently, inclining his head towards the water.
Hesitantly, Kakashi walks in step with Minato. When the sand grows wet beneath his feet and his toes are lapped at by the tide, he feels Naruto grab for his hand. He stares at the small fingers for a moment, feeling Minato’s palm still resting on his shoulder, and strands of Kushina’s long hair brushing against all of their backs.
Kushina listens to the wind’s rhythm intently, and continues. “You know Minato. We’ve been walking side-by-side since we were kids. And now, we look over the village together. I think you would like the way it looks now.”
Kakashi feels Kushina’s eyes turn to him. “And this is Kakashi. He’s like a little brother to me. Or like... an older brother to Naruto. I think he’s still too scrawny to be someone’s uncle. He takes too many missions, and he doesn’t spend enough time being a teenager, and he’s always slouching— but he also cares about people more than almost anyone, in this land or the next. I think he likes being Naruto’s teacher, no matter what he says. He’s family too.”
Swallowing against a suddenly tight throat, Kakashi tries not to let Naruto feel his hand shake. “Nice to meet you, Mito-sama,” he says, when he can find his voice.
He cannot make out the wind’s song over the sound of his thudding heartbeat, but he does feel a light breeze against brush against his forehead, leaving the same warmth in its path as his mother and father did when they pressed a goodnight kiss to his temple. His eyes widen.
“I’m glad you could join us, Kakashi,” Minato says, squeezing Kakashi’s shoulder.
In turn, Kakashi’s grip on Naruto’s fingers becomes tighter, if still gentle. “Me too.”
177 notes · View notes
cyhyr · 3 years
Text
Summer of Whump Day 16: Touch Starved
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: G
Pairing: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka, pre-relationship
WC: ~1870
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
A/N: Are y'all ready for some whumpy fluff??? Cuz I got some kinda cavity-inducing treat here for those that're into that.
~
In theory, Kakashi should have been assigned a touchstone during his ANBU service. Looking back, he’s ambivalent about how he feels on the subject. Sure, a touchstone could have been helpful if they were trained well and able to calm him down from the nightmares he had as a teenager; but he’s also historically one of the deadliest shinobi enlisted in ANBU and the possibility of accidentally killing a touchstone would have gotten him discharged early at best or put down because of a psychotic break at worst.
He doesn’t casually touch people, and hasn’t since his fist went through Rin’s chest ten years ago. He’s okay with this. He doesn’t want to touch people anyway—it registers a part of his instincts that equates touch with mission and he doesn’t like being “on” while in the village. Even Gai keeps a respectable distance unless they’re sparring, especially after the last time they had been walking through the village and brushed elbows and Kakashi flinched hard enough that two on-duty ANBU flickered into view on the rooftops.
But really, he’s fine.
~
Then he becomes a jōnin-sensei and formally meets Uzumaki Naruto and, by extension of Naruto, Umino Iruka. And see, after a week of training with the genin, he thought he’d gotten used to being casually touched again. Naruto, in particular, likes to take Kakashi’s palm in high-fives without permission and run circles around his legs like an over-excited pup. But Sasuke also will lean against him for a breath if no one else is looking, and Sakura is a hugger.
This does not prepare him for meeting his team’s old Academy teacher, who invites all of Team Seven—including Kakashi—to his home at the end of their first week for dinner. It seems odd that Naruto knows where everything is in the home enough to help Umino-sensei finish cooking and set the table; even more odd is Umino ordering Naruto around and Naruto following those orders without question. After the meal, Kakashi resolves to pick the man’s brain to figure out how he does that.
But then he notices how the man is moving around the kitchen; stiffly, limping, one hand bracing his lower back if he needs something out of his reach. And how Sasuke and Sakura are also hovering, asking if there’s anything they can do to help—and Kakashi realizes that he’s missing crucial information.
He gets the story about the scroll, the betrayal, and the fuma shuriken after dinner, while he’s helping Umino-sensei clean up. They had sent the genin out of the kitchen—Umino hadn’t wanted to recall it around them, worried it might “upset them”—so it was just the two of them in a tiny space.
And he’s not ready for it. Every time Umino passes behind him while Kakashi’s washing up at the sink, he presses a gentle hand to his upper back. Their fingertips brush occasionally when Kakashi’s handing Umino freshly washed dishes to dry.
His fucking laugh is a touch of its own.
Kakashi starts out tense but minutes go by and Umino doesn’t seem to recognize that his actions are distressing so Kakashi just… breathes through it. And relaxes. And lets himself feel.
And, gods, it’s nice.
~
It doesn’t stop. Umino—
“Iruka, please,” he smiles and it’s like sunshine after a month in the Land of Frost. “I’d like to think we’re friends, Kakashi-sensei, and my friends call me Iruka.”
“Then just ‘Kakashi’ is fine,” he replies—
He’s still wondering why he said that, but it certainly happened; it was at the Mission Desk and there were witnesses—
Anyway.
Iruka doesn’t stop with these friendly, gentle touches. But after that first night he is always careful to do them in places where no one else can observe Kakashi’s reactions, which Kakashi is immensely thankful for.
He doesn’t ever turn on Iruka, but there are some close calls. He once followed Iruka down into the archives and while they were down there he said something—likely a crass joke, remembering Iruka’s flush and that particular smile. In hindsight, Kakashi realizes that the jab on his arm was meant to mean oh gods why are you like this in an amused air; at the time, he froze and his heart had started pounding and he briefly saw Iruka as a threat.
Iruka didn’t move, either away or closer, just waited until Kakashi’s tension released. It took almost a minute. He did, however, continue speaking; going into a story about Naruto and Shikamaru from their earlier days at the Academy. Once Kakashi was back to himself he stuck his hands in his pockets and Iruka finished his filing in the archives, walking around again as though he hadn’t just been in potential danger.
Kakashi wonders if Iruka has touchstone training. He wonders if Iruka would entertain being his touchstone; but, no, he’s not ANBU anymore, he doesn’t need one anymore.
~
It’s too much.
It’s not enough.
~
One day after training his team, he catches sight of Iruka lounging in the grass by the river, reading a novel. The sunset warms the deep tones of his skin even more than usual and Kakashi groans because he’s been psyching himself up to do something like this for weeks and here, here is the perfect chance. And he could absolutely keep walking down the road and keep his hands and body to himself and Iruka would be none the wiser; and even if he does find out, Iruka will never hold it against him or call him a coward.
He can do it. He takes a few steps down the hill.
He can’t do it—he turns back up to the road and puts his face into his hands. He resists groaning, as that would alert Iruka to his presence and then he’s fucked.
He turns back around and looks at Iruka, turning the page of his book and tucking an arm under his head. Gods, he’s…
If I go down there, I’ll destroy him.
If I don’t, I’ll destroy myself.
Kakashi doesn’t whine, he doesn’t. He fought in the Third Great Shinobi War. He’s a hardened ANBU operative—retired, but. He’s one of the deadliest shinobi Konoha has on its roster. He can approach a chūnin Academy sensei, his friend, for no other reason than to just sit near him.
His legs move before he can form the thoughts to stop them, and he’s dropping into a cross-legged seat beside Iruka.
“Hello, Kakashi,” Iruka says. He sets his book aside and sits up, shifting so he’s more facing Kakashi. And gods that smile. “How are you?”
Kakashi finds that he can’t quite get the words out, and so just holds out a hand between them hoping Iruka will understand.
“Ah.” Of course, Iruka does. He slips his fingers between Kakashi’s slowly, giving him the chance to pull away if he needs. But Kakashi isn’t here for need; he’s here for want.
He pulls Iruka’s hand up to his cheek and presses into it, his pulse quickening.
“Kakashi, is everything alright?” Iruka murmurs.
He nods. The lump in his throat eases enough that he’s able to mutter back: “Exposure therapy. My apologies, sensei, for using you this way.”
Iruka’s palm is warm through his mask. He wishes he hadn’t done this in public, that he could feel Iruka’s hand on his bare face.
“I understand. I have done this before.”
“Y-You have?”
Iruka nods, shifts closer and lays his other hand on Kakashi’s shoulder. “I’ve had other friends in ANBU,” he whispers. “I was a touchstone for, ah, three years? For them.”
Kakashi can’t help the bubbling laugh. “I had wondered where you got these kinds of instincts, sensei.”
“It’s certainly not from teaching pre-genin.”
Iruka continues lightly stroking his shoulders and cheek where Kakashi placed his hand, until Kakashi fidgets and shifts and reaches up to rub at the back of his neck.
“I was wondering if—um—could you—that is—”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Iruka nods.
“That’s just the thing,” Kakashi sighs. “I’m not comfortable with any of this.”
“Okay, so then just ask,” he says instead. “I promise, it’s neither the oddest request I’ve gotten, nor will I refuse you.”
Kakashi quirks an eyebrow and Iruka chuckles.
“I’ll tell you later. Ask.”
He takes in a deep breath and on the exhale says it at once: “CanIputmyheadinyourlap?”
Iruka takes a second to decode what he says, and then his grin widens and he turns back to where he’d placed his book. He shifts it further aside and situates himself better, and then nods, making a subtle come here gesture with the hand near his book.
Kakashi turns and just about falls into Iruka’s lap, now laying parallel to the river and looking up at the reddening sky. In the east, a few early stars are coming out. But here, on the riverbank, Iruka runs his fingers through Kakashi’s hair and it’s heaven. Fingertips from his other hand stroke gently down the side of Kakashi’s face and neck. After a few minutes, Iruka settles his arm over Kakashi’s chest in a loose embrace and it causes a hitch in his breath and a stutter in his pulse but—
But he’s with Iruka and he’s in the village and the fingers through his hair are so nice and he’s safe and Iruka’s safe—
He relaxes.
“Let me know if it’s too much,” Iruka says softly.
“This is wonderful, sensei,” Kakashi breathes. “You’re just enough. Exactly what I needed.”
Iruka lightly scratches at his scalp and Kakashi groans. The arm across his chest gets a little heavier and Kakashi notices but doesn’t care because he’s in the village and safe and with Iruka—
“Can I… um. No, nevermind.”
Kakashi opens his eye, looks up at Iruka, flushed in the sunset, and says, “Ask anyway?”
Iruka bites at his lip and hesitates, but Kakashi has all the time in the world right now. Eventually, the sun goes beyond the horizon and Iruka asks barely above a whisper, “Can I kiss you?”
He’s honestly surprised, thinking that he was the only one harboring a crush. But then he thinks about the sensitivity of lips on lips and tongue and teeth and being that close and I’ll destroy him—Kakashi stops that line of thought fast and clears his throat to fight off the bile wanting to rise. He swallows hard and says, “Not yet. I don’t know if I can—”
“Shh,” Iruka presses one finger to his lips over the mask; it’s excruciating. “You don’t need to explain yourself. A no is enough. I’ve got this,” gesturing to Kakashi, laid out beside him, and then threads his fingers back in his hair, “and I'm more than happy.”
Iruka eventually relocates them to his apartment, where Kakashi goes along quietly and eats what he’s given and washes up beside Iruka like he always does at the Team Seven dinners he hosts. And when they move to the living room and Iruka sits in the corner of his couch and pats his lap questioningly, Kakashi falls into place like a good soldier and spends the rest of the night trying not to tear up at how good it feels to be touched so carefully, so gently, so lovingly.
37 notes · View notes
ohayohimawari · 5 years
Text
Kakashi Asks-Answer
Q: (From @thetoxicstrawberry) What are your thoughts on Sukea? Do you think this disguise existed prior to him messing with Team 7?
A: I know that you and I have congratulated each other on having the same brain before Berry, and this is another of those priceless occasions, haha! I’ve been hoping that someone would ask me about Sukea so that I could have an excuse opportunity to geek all over my favorite ninja dork’s alter ego. Thank you for reading my thoughts (your thoughts? Our thoughts?)!
*Cracks knuckles* My study of the development of Kakashi’s photogenic photographer not-so-secret identity starts below the cut.
It’s a beautiful coincidence that I answer this question so close to my first anniversary as an outed writer in the Naruto fanfiction community. I wrote my headcanon of the origin of Sukea in my very first (and very naughty) fic! Seriously, I can forgive Kishi for almost everything simply because he removed the mask from my favorite character and put a camera in his hands (for those that don’t know, I’m a photographer).
In my story Supplemental Training, I portray Kakashi just as I imagine him when he’s nearing the end of his ANBU career. While he claims to be a man of many hobbies, he is first and foremost a ninja. He goes to sleep and wakes up a shinobi. His ability to form plans and strategies makes him both a powerful ally and a formidable enemy, but beyond the scope of missions, I don’t believe him to be an especially imaginative person. At the very least, I mean to say that he doesn’t put much stock in his own latent creative ability, and that prevents him from attempting such. Further, at that stage in his life and career, Kakashi is wound tighter than a two-dollar watch.
In my fic, he is reluctantly thrust into a situation that he is suspicious of, and is determined to control. He plays along with another character when she asks what he would like to call her, and Kakashi dubs her with a name that is obvious and unimaginative. She, in turn, christens him with a name that is equally obvious and unimaginative: Sukea.
(Side note: sukea is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word scare. Kakashi means scarecrow in Japanese, so, his alter ego’s name is a play on his own.)
In the story, Kakashi accepts the offered moniker, and it’s not long before he realizes that he stands to gain new skills if he manages to successfully navigate his situation. I’d written that my quick-thinking bean likens this experience to being an actor that is assuming a role. In scrambling for a costume, he tugs his mask down; effectively removing the face that most have come to recognize as his. Then, he’s nervous af.
This leads to the pivotal moment of my story, and in the creation of Sukea. Konoha’s prodigy, for all of his brilliance, doesn’t shine in the social interactions arena. Kakashi, bless his heart, wants so badly to be in control of the situation. However, it’s only when he lets himself go in favor of becoming Sukea, that he finally does gain control of it.
Near the end of my story, I write that Kakashi considers, “… what he had gained, who he had escaped, what he had beaten back, and who he became.” It’s from this moment on that I believe Sukea is an important part of this character’s life.
This transition doesn’t have to play out the way I’d written it in that fic, but I think Kakashi would have to be pushed into stepping outside of himself. We don’t see him assuming different identities in his career. He’s not a role-playing kind of dude in his downtime. He lives in a mask and wears an additional one when he clocks in for his shifts. He insulates himself during missions and isolates himself between them. I sometimes wonder if, by this stage in his life, he’d hidden his identity so well that Kakashi had lost sight of himself.
So, the experience of being Sukea-however it comes about and for whatever reason-would be something between refreshing and liberating for the Copy Nin.
Now I’m going to pull a Kishi tactic and employ a time jump with minimal backstory. A couple of years go by in which bad things happen to the Uchiha clan, Konoha adopts yet another orphan, and Kakashi is released from ANBU.
I imagine that this is one of the most difficult stages of Kakashi’s life. Nothing could be more unsettling for this dork than idleness after the familiar, strict, comfortable routine of the decade he spent in ANBU. I honestly think Kakashi wouldn’t know what to do with himself in the years between Black Ops and Team Seven. As a result, he begins to have a greater appreciation of Gai and his challenges. Also, this is when Kakashi would flesh out his secret identity as Sukea.
Because escapism.
Kakashi can’t stand himself in the years between Team Minato and Team Seven, and after he’s out of ANBU, he’s got too much time on his hands to ruminate on it.
There’s no way in hell that he would just wake up one day and decide to skip along the streets of Konoha without his mask on though. Kakashi would approach this consciously and meticulously. It helps to occupy the extra time. It postpones the moment between deciding to go out as Sukea and actually doing it. He would need time to prepare for this, mentally and physically.
There’s more to my headcanon than loathing himself though. The Third Hokage decided that this traumatized soldier was grade A teacher material, and Kakashi takes his orders seriously. While I don’t think he would view his eccentric nature as odd, I think he would be aware that he is socially awkward (at least, he would be aware that he feels awkward in social situations). I think he would strive to improve at this, if only for the sake of being a sensei.
This is why Sukea is a photographer.
Being a photographer is similar to being a fly on the wall. In order to capture candid moments or gather pictorial evidence, a photographer needs to melt into the background. Kakashi, being a ninja, would know how to succeed at that. He’d come to terms with the fact that the mask that hides his face makes him stand out. He’d know to cover his luscious, outrageous silver cowlicks, his famous scar and borrowed eye.
I can almost hear a couple of you piping up in the back asking, “But Hima, he’s a ninja! He can just don a henge!” The answer to that is no, unfortunately. As long as that sharingan is in Kakashi’s eye socket, that shit never shuts off. Even though he’s wearing a contact lens, as long as both of his eyes are open, it’s a constant drain on this poor knucklehead’s chakra reserve. Also? I think he doesn’t want to.
Choosing photography as Sukea’s schtick was brilliant. Photographers are expected to focus on their subjects, affording Kakashi plenty of time and opportunity to study others. He would definitely learn a great deal about people this way. Relationships and their dynamics are captured by his lens. He gains some new social skills by watching and catches up on the lives of the folks of the Hidden Leaf at the same time. One of his many hobbies is born. The best photographers are careful in their observations, quick in their actions, and Kakashi is already carrying those tools around in his fanny pack.
Unrelated, but, only Kakashi could make a fanny pack look asjkfsd hot. Another trivial detail, but you know how I love those: I’m thinking of one of Berry’s delightful headcanons about his mask and drawing from it now in my imagination. I wonder if Sukea carries Kakashi’s mask in his coat pocket the first few times he goes out in public.
Whether he does or not, after a few field trips around Konoha, I think Kakashi would genuinely enjoy stepping out as Sukea. He would have to if he’s still doing it during his sensei days, and again in the next-gen era.
He delights in trolling Team Seven, that’s for sure. Sukea is his own private joke, and who among us tires of laughing at our own jokes? Kakashi’s no different, and that’s why we catch him smirking at his reflection when we finally got to see the goods in that special manga chapter and anime episode. It felt so good to have my anime crush validated, btw.
Every time Kakashi drifts undetected around the Leaf Village, there is one other jōnin that Sukea’s camera avoids. As much as he enjoys his joke, he wouldn’t push his luck when it comes to the possibility of Maito Gai recognizing him. I think it speaks volumes about their friendship when we see Sukea sweating it out as Gai’s eyebrows invade his personal space and he stares the other man down. I’m convinced that this is how Kakashi learns his eternal rival is hopelessly face blind, but that’s a headcanon for another day.
Sukea is still stalking the inhabitants of the Hidden Leaf when Boruto’s generation of ninja are preparing to graduate. However, we see Kakashi tugging his mask back up and pulling the wig off, transitioning in front of Iruka. In so doing, he proves how much he’s grown throughout his life. I imagine that being Sukea had a lot to do with that.
This alter ego of Kakashi’s-like so much about him-is enigmatic. It seems to me that he’s revealing himself rather than hiding himself; giving others a chance to get to know him underneath the underneath. The person aside from the elite ninja that he is.
I said earlier that I wondered if Kakashi had hidden his identity so well, that he had lost sight of himself. I like to think that in being Sukea, Kakashi reconnected with himself.
XOXO
43 notes · View notes
raendown · 5 years
Link
@letliv3 You will take it and you will like it because this is your fault.
Pairing: MadaraKakashi Word count: 3745 Summary: In which Obito helped found the village, Madara was a member of Team Minato, and Kakashi gets lost down a few different paths in his life.
Follow the link or read it under the cut!
KO-FI in the blog header!
Building Our Own
Kakashi was pretty sure he didn’t like Madara. Pretty sure. There were times when it was really difficult to stay inside his shell and hate the world because watching Madara – barely taller than himself yet filled with enough attitude for the whole village – face off against the taller, brighter, unsuspecting Minato-sensei was always the highlight of his week. Knowing the two of them had so much in common did not mean Kakashi wanted to make friends with the other boy. He didn’t need friends to become the greatest ninja this world had ever seen and restore his family’s honor.
Anyway that Gai idiot followed him around too much already. His non-existent friend quota had been filled, thank you very much.
It was still kind of hard to ignore Madara. The boy refused to not be seen but he wasn’t obnoxious about it. There was just something magnetic about his competence even at such a young age, the confidence in every move he made, even the spiky stupid mess of his hair. Most of the Uchiha that Kakashi met had beautiful smooth hair but Madara seemed to have skipped that gene; his hair stuck straight out from his head in stiff spikes reminiscent of Kakashi’s own locks. Yet another thing they had in common and could have commiserated about together – if he had time for stupid things like friendship. Which he did not.
Much to their sensei’s despair, Madara didn’t seem all that upset that one of his teammates refused to bond with him. The majority of his concentration went to edging a few words about his precious baby brother in to every single conversation ever. None of them had ever met Izuna but after less than a month of being a team they all could have probably picked him out of a crowd and recited at least ten different points of trivia about him off the tops of their heads.
And that right there was the one thing that truly set them apart, the one bit that stopped Kakashi from allowing himself to at least like the boy, even if only from afar. Where Kakashi had lost everyone he ever loved Madara still had someone, even if it was just a useless little brother. He still had someone to care about, someone precious, and besides that he had a clan that treated him like absolute royalty. Apparently Madara was a direct descendant of the great Uchiha Obito, founder of their village and betrayer of the Shodaime Hokage. Kakashi didn’t really see why he got to be venerated for being related to a traitor when others were shunned for the same thing but the one time he had tried to question it Minato-sensei had hushed him and Kakashi felt his heart grow a little bit smaller.
So Kakashi stayed small and quiet and spent the hours he wasn’t training with his team training in private instead. He would grow bigger, stronger, and someday he would be the one to show Madara his back. He would be the one that others watched from afar.
He would restore the honor his father had lost. Only then would his life be worth something.
-
“Your father’s honor is not your own.”
Madara’s words left him reeling, adrift and unsteady where he had always felt solid logic underneath his feet. Kakashi waited for the world to stop spinning before baring his teeth behind the mask that hid them.
“What would you know about it?” he snarled. Madara scoffed.
“I’m descended from the biggest traitor this village has ever seen but does my clan care about that? No. They care that I inherited his strength. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘innocent until proven guilty’ before?”
“At least you have a clan! Don’t talk like you know me!”
“Of course I know you, dumb ass.” Everything Madara said was always said with confidence, as though it was an absolute immutable truth. It made refuting him very difficult sometimes because the way he spoke made Kakashi want to believe.
He resisted because clearly no one else should have a say in his situation not when they weren’t the ones living it.
“I will restore my father’s honor!” he began. He got no farther in to his rant before Madara rolled his eyes and interrupted.
“There’s nothing to restore, he’s dead. We build our own honor. And you have plenty of that even if you’re an asshole. Take the stick out of your ass and wake up. You’re Kakashi, not Sakumo. You can’t fix his mistake any more than I can. He didn’t even make one!”
“He – what?”
Kakashi sat, stunned, and listened to the entire fifteen minutes of Madara’s rant about how true dishonor was in abandoning your comrades and how the entire concept of their village itself had been founded on the desire to protect one’s comrades. Apparently the history books left out quite a bit of information about Uchiha Obito’s life before he abandoned Konoha; Kakashi never knew it was him that had named their fledgling settlement or him that had come up with the idea in the first place as a way to protect his own precious ones.
All through the boy’s impassioned speech he remained silent, soaking in every word like a message from on high, and when Madara finally stopped to pant angrily, kicking at a nearby tree stump, he cleared his throat with more awkwardness than should have fit in to his twelve year old body.
“We should find Rin,” he murmured. It was the best he could do for an apology. Madara narrowed his eyes, probably trying to determine whether or not he meant that, then nodded decisively.
“Good to see you got your head out of your ass. Damn right we go find her. No more of this ‘the mission is more important’ bullshit, alright?”
“Yeah…”
“So what are we waiting for? Aren’t you supposed to be mission leader? Lead on, jōnin-taichou!”
Amazed that his teammate still trusted him to do so when he had only just a few minutes ago suggested abandoning Rin to her fate, Kakashi nodded and closed his eyes to think. “My summons will be able to follow her trail more easily than we can.”
Kannabi Bridge went on to become the mission famous as a long-awaited turning point in the war, the incident that finally gave them a clear advantage to end things in Konoha’s favor. For the ones who carried it out, however, it was memorable for a different reason. The mission to Kannabi Bridge was the day they finally – finally – became a true unit, the day Madara brushed that chip off of Kakashi’s shoulder and offered the hand of friendship instead.
It also became the day Kakashi would look back on and realize he was completely and utterly screwed.
Of course he would fall in love with his best friend. Of fucking course.
-
ANBU suited him a little bit too well but that was fine. Everything was fine as long as he had Madara there with him, eagle mask covering his face and endless black hair spilling around it like a cloud of death. He wondered why they bothered with the masks sometimes. Both of them were entirely too identifiable by their hair alone so really all the masks did was add a bit of extra dramatic flair.
Shaking his head, Kakashi forced his attention back to the task at hand, pushing just a little more speed out of his tired legs. The two of them had run countless missions together since becoming true comrades, both in the name of Team Minato and as the perfectly matched pair they were now in ANBU, but never had they run a mission this important before. It was only the second time Rin had been captured and already it was starting to feel like a pattern. He wondered which idiot had been the one to decide this time that she was the weak link in their band of comrades. Rin was many things but she was not weak.
As evidenced by the carnage that came in to view when they finally found her. More than half of the bodies that lay dead around her were decorated with perfectly normal wounds, their flesh opened by blades and the extra clean sort of cut that could only come from her weaponized medical jutsu. The rest had been mauled as though by a hungry beast – and a beast she looked, right then.
Her pretty brown eyes glowing red and her entire body bubbling with a sickly green cloak of pure poisonous chakra, it was hard to tell whether or not she recognized them at first. A low growl rumbled across the space between them and the two young men shared a look before hastily removing their masks.
“It’s fine now,” Madara attempted a soothing voice. “They’re dead.”
“Don’t,” she warning when he tried to take a step towards her.
“It’s just me, it’s just Madara.”
“Shut up! I know who you are, dummy!” The growl in her words cracked and hiked to a whine that Kakashi recognized all too well. He’d raised eight dogs on his own; he knew what a wounded animal sounded like. “I can’t go back with you. Not like this.”
Unfortunately neither of them had been born with an ounce of tact. Kakashi snorted. “Can and will. Haven’t you heard the rumors, Rin-chan? We’ve had a beast living with us the whole time and I’ve never seen Kushina-nee bite anyone’s head off yet. Well, not literally. She’s scary but she’s not out for blood no matter what the monster trapped inside her wants. She can help you.”
It was a terrible thing to see in a friend, that broken light of hope too small to be believed in. Kakashi inched forward, saddened when she flinched away but determined to reach her, and when her bubbling chakra burned his skin he refused to show any sign of pain.
“Come home. If we can survive Madara for this long then we can survive you. He’s more of an animal than anyone.”
His friend’s offended screech broke the tension and Rin’s startled laugh was a balm on all their souls, just enough of a positive emotion to push the beast in her belly down. The effort left her exhausted but Kakashi caught her and Madara took point to protect them both as they turned for home, wearing a pout still but it was a very cute pout so Kakashi only teased him a little bit. It was good to be together.
-
“That’s a big fox.”
“Your observations are as astute as ever,” Madara’s voice drawled from behind his shoulder.
“We have to fight that big fox? He’s just a big scary dog. I don’t wanna hit a dog, Dara-chan!”
“Stop calling me that!”
Kakashi smiled briefly to see Madara stomp one foot. Fifteen years old and he still hadn’t grown out of the habit. Then he turned his eyes back to the carnage in front of them when Rin touched down at his other side.
“Isobu says that Kurama isn’t acting like himself,” she reported. “Something must be controlling him.”
“Right. Let’s found out who, shall we?” Kakashi narrowed his eyes, all traces of amusement gone from their little trio of death as they all pushed off the Hokage monument they had been perched on to make their assessment. Team Minato, as they still sometimes thought of themselves, were not the first line of defense in any fight. They were the ones who ended the fight.
When they found the man controlling the Kyuubi he was much older than they might have guessed – ancient, in fact. The fact that he could still move the way he did seemed to be due to the fact that one entire half of his body had been reconstructed with an unidentified white substance that reformed and reattached itself when injured, healing faster than they could hurt him. And that wasn’t even the part that made the fight difficult. No, that was the fully formed Sharingan in his one good eye, an abomination that enraged Madara.
It took all three of them to bring him down, one unit moving perfectly in sync. It took Isobu and Susano’o and eight dog summons. It took everything they had but in the end Uchiha Obito lay ancient and exposed at their feet, screaming his impotent rage and crying out revenge against a man who had never truly wronged him.
“Senju Hashirama is dead,” Kakashi muttered in exhaustion, kicking away a severed limb still trying to crawl back to its host. “You should be too. Hold still and let me fix that.”
“He abandoned me! He will pay! The world will pay! I will have what I am owed! The perfect world, don’t you see? We could all live in the perfect world!”
“Something tells me your perfect world would not be like mine.” With his blade raised Kakashi shook his head in pity. “The world owes you nothing. Those who go back on their word like he did are trash, that’s true. But those who abandon their comrades? People like you who break bonds, you’re nothing but scum. Goodnight, Uchiha Obito, I hope you find rest.”
“Poetic,” Madara noted, watching as Kakashi impassively drew a blade through their defeated enemy’s throat.
“Maa, I didn’t mean to be.”
Rin groaned and sat down on the bloody grass. Then she fell over backwards with a sigh of relief. “Well that wasn’t what I wanted to do with my Tuesday,” she said.
“Any chance one of you can sense how Minato-sensei is doing with the Kyuubi? I’m fresh out of chakra.” Very gently, slowly so as not to jostle his sore body, Kakashi lowered himself down to join Rin. Madara snorted at them both.
“Your reserves are pathetic,” he pointed out. “The Kyuubi’s chakra has been split but I can still feel Kushina-nee. It would seem sensei was able to seal the beast in to two places at once. Very interesting.”
Both of the two on the ground made soft noises of curious agreement but investigating would have to wait. Just knowing their precious ones were alive was enough for now. Everything else could be left until after they had recovered the feeling in all of their limbs, possibly until after they had slept for a week. They had gone head to head with a legend today, after all. That definitely deserved a nap.
Madara wandered over to perch next to Kakashi, brushing something out of his hair without seeming to realize he was doing so. As much as he didn’t seem to want to admit it he was just as tired as the other two. Kakashi held his breath and allowed gloved fingers to trace the shape of his jaw.
“You took a lot of stupid chances today,” his friend murmured. Kakashi nodded.
“So did you.”
“Hn. Dumb ass.” His piece spoken, Madara’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body gave in to the exhaustion he’d been trying not to show. Unfortunately when he passed out he flopped down across the other two, who both grunted in surprise and then wriggled in dismay to find themselves trapped, lacking the energy to roll the idiot off of them.
Rin was the first to give up, flopping back down to the grass with a sigh. “You know for a second there I thought he was going to lean down and kiss you.”
Then she laughed as best she could at the redness of Kakashi’s face and the disconnected syllables gurgling out from behind his mask.
-
Twenty years old was a terrible age all of his friends were at least one year older. Twenty years old meant that all of his friends could drink while they oversaw the chūnin exams here in Suna but all he could do was sip soda and watch. What was the point of such a high drinking age anyway? And who had ever heard of a shinobi being denied a drink? He’s been getting served back home since he reached jōnin at the age of twelve.
Actually that probably wasn’t a high point and Minato-sensei should probably make sure that practice wasn’t still being followed. But his point still stood!
Kakashi felt cheated when his decision to go out with his friends in the hopes of watching them all make fools of themselves ended with sitting in the corner of a dusty Suna club watching over the ladies’ purses while Madara snoozed next to him. He’d really been hoping Madara would get drunk and do something stupid. Or maybe that he would get absolutely blackout drunk and do something completely out of the blue like, say, decide to make out with the comrade who’d been silently in love with him for almost a decade now.
Life was so unfair.
Jerking his elbow in to the other man’s side at least got him the amusing reaction of bleary eyes jerking open and an angry expression. He muttered something too but it was impossible to hear of the thumping music so Kakashi shrugged and shook his head, completely unrepentant. Madara scowled deeper and leaned over to put his lips right next to Kakashi’s ear.
“I said, you’re a dick. I was trying to sleep until we can get the hell out of here.”
Kakashi pushed away the urge to shiver and shouted over the music. “So let’s get out of here.”
Rin and Anko both tried to wheedle them in to staying when Kakashi wound his way through the dance floor to give them back their purses but he skipped free of their reaching hands and hustled back to Madara’s side. Stumbling outside was heaven on his ears, stepping passed the barrier of excessive noise and in to the blessed silence of the desert at night. Both of them groaned with relief and rubbed at their aching heads as they hurried away, ignoring the judging eyes of the club’s bouncers, eager to get back to their hotel rooms and just relax. Neither of them were really the sort to enjoy this stuff anyway. A nice homey bar would have been more their style but it had been Rin who invited them out so it had been her choice of venue.
Madara’s steps were surprisingly steady for someone who had pounded back enough alcohol to fall asleep in that blaring chaos. He wove side to side a bit whenever something interesting caught his eye but for the most part he didn’t seem too dizzy and Kakashi felt cheated all over again that he wasn’t needed to heroically offer his shoulder as support.
“Where are we?” The sudden question made him furrow his brows.
“Uh…Suna?”
“No! I mean I don’t recognize this street.”
Stopping to look around, Kakashi bit his lip. “Huh. You’re right. I think we’re lost.”
“That’s fine. As long as I’m lost with you.” Madara shrugged and continued on while Kakashi’s feet stumbled to a halt, one hand pressed against his chest to sooth his suddenly racing heart.
He glared as best he could and hoped the darkness covered the blush on his face.
“You can’t just…say stuff like that.”
“Oh. Shit. You’re right.” Confusingly, Madara looked embarrassed as well to realize what he’d said, clapping a hand over his mouth and sending a guilty look out the corner of his eyes.
“Wait. I know I’m right but why do you think I’m right?” Kakashi asked.
“Cause I don’t want you to know that I like you!”
“Maa, of course you like me, we’re best friends…”
Now frustrated that he wasn’t being understood, Madara stomped his foot and turned to shake a finger under Kakashi’s nose. “No! I mean like like you! Love like you! Don’t misunderstand me! I swear sometimes you do it on purpose because you know it annoys me and–”
His friend continued to rant but most of it washed over Kakashi, who had of course heard this lecture a hundred times and more. Well, except for the part where Madara was apparently in love with him, that bit was new. And mind-blowing. Life-changing, really. It took a while to sink in that Madara didn’t seem to realize what he had just confessed, either because he was too drunk or because nothing else ever mattered when he’d found something to be irritated by.
Why Kakashi found that cute was a mystery.
He did finally shut up when Kakashi kissed him, though. Actually, to be fair, he did make a few aborted attempts at speaking before finally giving in and kissing back, one hand fisting in the front of Kakashi’s vest to keep him in place. When they slowly pulled apart he licked his lips and fell immediately back in to a scowl.
“The mask, you idiot,” was all he said. Kakashi scrambled to pull it down out of the way.
“You want–?”
Madara’s answer was another kiss. And it turned out he was right, it was definitely better with the mask out of the way.
Someday, when he had eventually recovered his scrambled wits and picked himself up from the puddle of goo he could feel his body melting in to, he would need to say thank you. Not for the kiss, although the kiss was good enough on its own to warrant starting a diary just to describe it and Kakashi very much hoped they could do this again. Preferably every day from now on. But eventually he would need to impress upon Madara how grateful he was to have the other man in his life, how important it was that Madara had never abandoned him even when he was a young child with a terrible weight on his shoulders that he should never have been carrying in the first place.
Eventually he would need to say that he owed everything he was as a person to Madara.
But not now. Right now he pressed forward slowly to bury his fingers in long thick hair and cling to the one person he had been striving for since long before he had ever acknowledged it.
My honor is my own, he thought as they stumbled against the front of a nearby shop, his thoughts going back to a moment between them half a lifetime ago. And I owe my honor to you, who showed me how to believe in it. How to believe in us.
45 notes · View notes
wafflelate · 6 years
Note
An interaction with Shikako, Sai, and Kakashi - what's Kakashi's perspective on Shikako adopting socially-stunted Root agents?
hell yes more Sai. i love Sai so much.
takes place some time after the current chapter (ch 146/145) but doesn’t really contain any spoilers or anything.
I’m pretty sure that Kakashi hasn’t actually met Sai — Sai was at Naruto’s going away party, but Kakashi was in the hospital for chakra exhaustion. I didn’t check this very closely tho.
also i’m pretty sure that Shikako hasn’t told anyone about her water whip thing but I only like… scanned the Wave arc for that so who knows.
word count: 1973
                    ————————————
There’s a stranger in Team 7’s training ground.
It’s not like Kakashi or his students ever actually book the training ground, because it’s rare for anyone but them to chose to train so close to the memorial, and most of the people who might consider it know that it’s Team Kakashi’s space. Still, there’s always some wayward unobservant chūnin or fresh genin looking for a place to train, and occasionally they end up here. They’re always easy to scare off, and if they get snotty Kakashi sends them to Gai’s training ground for all the training they can stand.
(This is a punishment for them and a favor to Gai. He loves helping.)
The boy in the field is about the age of Kakashi’s precious not-genin-any-more genin and he’s not even training. He’s leaning up against the training posts, lapdesk out, drawing. Kakashi will give him this: it’s an unorthodox use of a training field.
“Aa, this seems like something you could be doing anywhere,” Kakashi says as he drops into view.
The boy is not surprised. He looks up at Kakashi calmly and gives a slow blink. “I believe there are several locations where this would be difficult,” says the boy.
A shiver walks up Kakashi’s spine. The blandness of the boy’s expression, the flat look in his eyes… he’s not confused, or annoyed, or nervous. He’s not anything, not like he should be with Kakashi standing over him and hinting that he should get out.
Tenzō had been the same way when Kakashi met him. Untouchable and untouched. Not missing social cues so much as not even attempting to look for them, sorting every interaction into Orders and Not Orders. And Tenzō had had the same bland tantō, the same standard-issue shoes and slightly subpar equipment pouches.
“I have training scheduled here,” Kakashi says, “so this is about to become one of those places.” He does not waste a smile or a cheerful, friendly tone on this boy. He speaks flatly, directly.
Kakashi is the boy’s superior and he will order him away if that’s what it takes to keep Danzō’s grasp from closing in around his kids.
The boy smiles, a rearrangement of his face with no feeling behind it. “I checked the training ground bookings and no one was scheduled to use this field,” says the boy. “But I think we are here for the same training partner, because you were Nara Shikako’s jōnin-sensei.”
“Don’t be rude, I’m still her sensei,” Kakashi says, and then gives the boy a second look with this new information. “You must be Sai.”
“I am,” says the boy, and now Kakashi feels rude.
And even more worried, because Naruto has described his and Shikako’s occasional mission partner as ‘kinda weird, but good, y’know?’ and Kakashi had had no idea that Shimura Danzō had managed to get one of his lackies so close to the kids. What in the fuck is Tsunade thinking.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Kakashi says. “Why don’t we spar? I have to make sure Shikako-chan’s teammates can keep up.”
Kakashi had thought that he could depend on Tsunade to keep unsuitable mission partners away from his team, but apparently not. He’ll have to get a little more hands on, starting with a good evaluation of Sai.
“Yes,” Sai agrees blandly. “It is good to know if someone precious to you has teammates they can trust.”
The problem with ROOT agents is that you can’t even tell when they’re being threatening. Tenzō used to say things like, ‘I’ll gut you like a fish’ in the same tone of voice he’d say ‘I’ll lend you my whetstone’ and that tone of voice was wrong for both.
Sai tucks his drawings away and they fight. Sai is good, but uninventive. He uses a lot of the same moves Tenzō started out with, at least right up until he pulls out a scroll and a brush.
Kakashi has had this skill of Sai’s described to him a couple times by Naruto, with lots of enthusiasm and little technical detail, so he’s not surprised when chakra constructs leap of the page but he is surprised at how fast Sai can produce them. Faster than any Kurama Kakashi has ever known, although that’s not saying much — the clan heir that Anko is teaching is maybe the only one who’s ever attempted to use the Kurama clan jutsu for combat, a choice that has Shikako’s fingerprints all over it — and Sai has the advantage of working without color.
Shikako shows up when Kakashi is closing in on destroying Sai’s last ink beast. She lingers on the edge of the training field, cautious as always about interrupting even a spar as lazy as this one.
(Well, lazy for Kakashi. Sai has worked up quite a sweat. He’s not entirely useless, but he’s still probably the enemy.)
When Kakashi stops and looks towards where Shikako is waiting, Sai halts, too. Shikako practically bounces onto the field moments later.
“Sorry I’m late, Kofuku-oba trapped me with more questions about Shika’s arm seal,” she says. “Hi, sensei! I see you met Sai. And stuff.”
“Yes, we’re acquainted now,” Sai says. “I have been assessed to see if I have weaknesses that may lead to you being injured or killed while working with me.”
“Okay,” Shikako says slowly. She looks at Kakashi critically. “I’m sure that’s not exactly what you meant, right Kakashi-sensei?”
“I was just curious about his combat skills,” Kakashi says innocently. “Naruto is terrible at explaining things, you know.”
“Don’t bully my friends,” Shikako chides, like an academy teacher lecturing pre-genin to share their kunai.
“How come you always assume the worst of your poor sensei?” Kakashi complains. “I just wanted to make sure he wouldn’t break on one of your rough, scary missions.”
“It was a good spar,” Sai says. “I enjoyed having my skills assessed.”
Shikako looks suspiciously between them, dissatisfied, but eventually decides to move on.
“Fine,” she says, and claps her hands together. “Since sensei is so interested in making sure your combat skills are developed and well-rounded—”
“I never said that,” Kakashi objects, uselessly, because he can see where this is going.
“—he can teach you some new things!” Shikako says. “He knows lots of water jutsu, you know.”
“You teach him some water jutsu,” Kakashi demands.
Shikako blinks at him. “I don’t know any? I mean I guess there are some in that book you gave us, but…”
“You used water whip months ago,” Kakashi says. “Without seals. Teach him that, it’s B-rank.”
“What?” Shikako asks. “When do you think you saw me do a B-rank — are you talking about the chūnin exams?”
Kakashi says, “I understand it can be hard to remember what exactly you pulled out in the heat of the moment.to please the crowd.”
“You said that your chūnin exam fights in Grass weren’t very interesting,” Sai observes.
Shikako is such a liar. It’s actually almost embarrassing.
“Really?” Kakashi asks, keeping his voice mild and raising his visible eyebrow at Shikako. “I guess we remember those fights very differently. But you definitely used water whip.”
“Sensei, I did not,” grumbles Shikako. She crosses her arms and gets that look that says she thinks she’s going to say something embarrassing. “It’s just a dumb chakra trick. For chakra control. I can’t just teach it to someone unless they want to spend a year or two messing around with it.”
“A… chakra control exercise,” Kakashi repeats.
“I think it becomes a technique once you attack someone with it successfully,” Sai offers.
Shikako says, “Well, it didn’t really do anything.”
“That’s because you were attacking the Kazekage,” Kakashi says dryly. “What kind of chakra control exercises have you been doing?”
“I made some up,” Shikako says, which doesn’t answer the question.
“You attacked a foreign Kage?” Sai asks. He actually manages to sound like… something. Worried, maybe? It’s probably Kakashi’s ears playing tricks on him.
“He wasn’t the Kazekage yet,” Shikako grumbles.
She gets so petulant when people start talking about her like she’s impressive. It’s adorable.
“Show us your chakra trick.” Kakashi waves in the general direction of the stream. “It’s a good learning experience for all of us.”
“Sensei, you’re not getting out of teaching Sai something,” Shikako warns him, but she does lead them over to the stream and show them her water whip.
It starts with water scooped out of the stream into a hollow ball of chakra. The chakra becomes a cylinder. The cylinder becomes a whip, and Shikako uses it to smack an impressive splash out of the stream. Water, she explains, is noncompressible. Also she doesn’t really know how to use a whip but it’s an easy shape to make and more impressive than a staff..
How is it that Shikako still manages to surprise him all the time?
“How long can you hold that?” Kakashi asks.
Shikako shrugs. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried to test it. Two hours? More?”
“Well, I guess if your fight lasts that long it won’t be chakra exhaustion that gets you,” Kakashi acknowledges.
“Oh,” says Shikako. “No, that’s not what I meant. After a couple hours the chakra bleed would mean that I wouldn’t be able to reabsorb any of the chakra, it’d be all used up. But I’d still be able to make another one.”
Kakashi huffs. “Chakra cycling. For external chakra manipulation. And you didn’t think you should mention that?”
Shikako’s brow furrows. “Is it a big deal?”
Is it a big deal, she asks. Kakashi wants to laugh and cover his face. Instead he says, “You’re probably right that you can’t teach Sai that. So, fine. Water jutsu. But I want something in return. I want…”
Kakashi turns to Sai and lets a sliver of ominous intent work its way into the air between them.
Kakashi draws the moment out, watching the way Sai reacts — his shoulders pull back, his stance evens out. Preparing to take a blow, literal or metaphoric, but not scared for his safety, likely because he registers that Shikako is exasperated by Kakashi’s dramatics rather than concerned.
Tenzō used to tense by relaxing to accept a blow just the same way, especially when it came to receiving instruction. Kakashi catches himself planning how to fix that in Sai, too, and kind of hates himself for his own predictability. Maybe, at least, he can introduce Sai to Tenzō and his kohai will do most of the work?
“…drawings of my ninken,” Kakashi completes.
Sai’s eyes open a little wider. His mouth falls open for just a moment and he feels the need to glance at Shikako as it to make sure Kakashi is serious. His surprise is immensely satisfying.
Carefully — probably unsure if this counts as backtalk or intel gathering — Sai asks, “How many ninken do you have?”
“Lots! Which is why he’ll give you one jutsu for each drawing,” Shikako interjects, before Kakashi can snow Sai into doing all that work for one C-rank water jutsu. A look at Shikako shows she’s definitely going to stick to that, too. No arguing her down with that look.
Damn.
“Fine,” Kakashi says, aiming his best woe-is-me face at Shikako. “You work this old man so hard.”
She laughs at him. “Someone has to,” she says, like coercing him into sharing his precious jutsu with random Danzō minions is some kind of public service she provides for the good of the village.
At least now Kakashi will be able to keep a closer eye on Sai. The boy can’t very well disappear into whatever muck Danzō usually has him wading through when he owes Kakashi eight dog portraits. Shikako looks so satisfied by this arrangement that Kakashi wonders if this is exactly what she had planned.
279 notes · View notes
kiyoitsukikage · 6 years
Text
First Databook Character Sheets
Yoshi! @silalcarin asked me to do Hinata's concept art + Masashi-sensei's inteview (which, I discovered, is not really an interview, but a description of the pictures).
To be honest, I might have misinterpreted your request (maybe you just wanted the part regarding Hinata), but the interview was very interesting and I got carried away (especially after I saw that there was also something about Jiraiya). So...
Some terms you’ll meet in this interview:
- 設定 settei. I translated it with “setting”, “creation”, “design”, “character sheet” and so forth. Basically, it’s a character’s or a place’s concept art, to be used as a reference (it can be both for the artist’s staff, for the animators or for the artist himself, for later uses).
- 先生 sensei. It obviously means ‘teacher’, but it’s also the form you use when you speak to artists who became famous in their field: when they say sensei here, they mean Masashi Kishimoto.
- イメージ ime-ji. I often translated it with ‘mental image’. It’s a loanword from the English ‘image’, sometimes used as a verb meaning ‘visualise’. It has mostly to do with the author’s imagery of the world.
- 世界観 sekaikan. Literally, the ‘vision of the world’ (I translated it with various words). It’s the outlook of the fictional world, how the world of Naruto looks like. In this interview, it’s mostly used with the expression ‘slightly off’ (when Masashi-sensei decided to discard an idea because it would sound inconsistent/weird in the Narutoverse).
- 読切 yomikiri. ‘Non-serialised story’ (though I should have translated it as ‘one-shot’ or ‘pilot’ probably), as opposed to the Naruto serialisation. I guess they’re referring to this one. I think that’s something a newbie artist draws for manga editors, a sort of let’s-try-and-see-if-the-readers-like-the-story.
- 打合わせ uchiawase. I translated it as “preparatory meeting”, I guess that’s something the artist and the producers do before publishing stuff. It can also mean “previous arrangement”.
- 担当 tantou. Translated it with “the ones in charge”, maybe I should have gone with “supervisor” or something. But, ah, you get the idea.
There. The numbers correspond to the pictures. Anything between square brackets is something I added up to clarify my translation.
[Sideband:] Character sheets
The Nine-Tailed Mythological Fox Spirit
Tumblr media
1
“This is the non-serialised Naruto”
The non-serialised Naruto had the appearance of a human, but he was a fox inside.
Though in the present setting the mythological fox spirit is sealed inside Naruto…
Before the serialisation was decided, I changed it in a preparatory meeting with the ones in charge of it.
The demon fox is intense, they said.
No matter if he takes a human shape, he’s a fox really, then the readers won’t be able to sympathise with Naruto… they said.
And I also ended up thinking something like… “that’s pretty true” (laugh).
Tumblr media
2
“This is the Nine-Tails drawn for the first time”
This is the Nine-Tailed Mythological Fox Spirit I drew in the spur of the moment as the image expanded [in my mind].
And then, since I was pleased with it, I used it as it is also in the main event [as opposed to preparatory sketch].
I traced it with a lightbox (laugh).
For this reason, I drew nothing but that after all, the Nine-Tails (laugh).
However, also the appearance of the present world of “Naruto” spread from it in some respects. Of course, also things like the creation of the characters and the development of the story expanded.
So it’s like the concept art drawn in order to transmit the story and the setting to the staff, when you make a movie.
 [I always rejoice internally when I see an awesome artist being a lazy bum. Because retracing a previous painting is something I’d totally do.]
The faces on the Hokage Rock [lit: the Hokage Face Rock, though I couldn’t find a corresponding term in English – it’s only called the ‘Hokage Rock’]
Tumblr media
1
“There was a dog”
That’s the only thing that could upset the present appearance of the “Naruto” world from the root (laugh).
As a matter of fact, the Third Hokage was a dog, at the beginning.
He was the dog the Second Hokage had, an exceptionally awesome dog, so I tried to make him elected as Hokage in the setting.
Though I thought “It’d be interesting if a dog stood at the summit of the village, what would happen…”
However, in the end I thought that it would be slightly off with the appearance of the world, and I gave it up.
That’s why the present Third was supposed to be a dog.
So I changed it right before the serialisation, erased only the face of the dog in a hurry and it disappeared in the trash (laugh). I used the other parts as they were though.
Hokage
Tumblr media
[Actually I’ve read a post long ago in Tumblr where they answered exactly that question, and my greatest regret is that I haven’t saved it and now I can’t add a link here, because it was freaking hilarious]
2
“There’s a heinous face (laugh)”
My mental image of the Hokage wasn’t quite settled at first. The first and the Second… I had put an x-mark on the First, but they haven’t changed much from now since the mental image in relation to these two was good enough; however, the Third and the Fourth Hokage are impressively different.
The Fourth had a rather heinous face (laugh).
Well, I had various things going on in my mind.
Design sketches 
Tumblr media
1
“The Grass Nin looked like a troop”
The Grass Nin looked like a troop but they couldn’t convince me and I changed them. So, I drew them again, but… this guy (on the bottom right) suddenly turned into Orochimaru, so… finally I was pleased with it and made up my mind about various things (laugh).
2
“Lovable pugs”
They are the ninja dogs I thought about when Kakashi uses the Earth Release: Tracking Fang Technique. There’s also Pakkun. I like pugs, because they’re cute (laugh). When I drew him, while I made them chat about various things in my imagination I expanded the character’s personality.
Tumblr media
3
“The mental image had almost settled”
The jōnin I thought about before the serialisation began… I mean, the design sketch of the sensei and others. If you look at them, it’s already clear who was going to become which character. Well, if the mental image came clearly, I kinda made up my mind in one shot (laugh).
4
“I just drew it out of fun”
That’s just what I drew out of fun, right (laugh). This was what I drew once to convey my mental image of Hinata to my assistant though. I intended to draw it being aware of the appearance of the world, but… it turned into a more modern-style girl (laugh).
Discard
Tumblr media
1
“The huge guy was deleted…”
He reached the level of rough sketch, but the just huge and unattractive guy was likely to be deleted from the moment he appeared already. In the preparatory meeting with the people in charge, we ended up saying “he doesn’t make your heart throb from a reader’s point of view, right?”.
Moreover, it was the scene that shows Gaara’s first battle, so I resolutely drew it again.
Tumblr media
[In the first caption, it says 金太郎とペットのポチ Kintarou to petto no Pochi. I’m unsure about the meaning, I guess it’s the ‘pet called Kintarou’. Apparently, petto no Pochi is  something like ‘Spotty the pet’ (pet with a ridiculously common name).]
2
“I planned to use it in the Land of Waves volume”
Originally, there wasn’t Zabuza and I had planned to use this character. But I gave it up for the same reason of the discarded character of the page before. (Ah! It’s the character I had made earlier, haha…) I think just about the fact of making the enemy characters entry on stage, that is, how they’re likely to hurt the protagonists. [Twisted sentence here: I guess he means that when he creates villains, he also need to think how they’ll look appearing on the scene and the impact on the protagonists.]
3
“Serious taste…”
Naruto had just graduated from school so I thought it was okay even if I made him act in a funny way. However, it had turned completely like a story set in a school [学園もの gakuenmono I think it’s intended as a manga genre]… I had forgot about the whole “ninja” thing.
Sound effects lettering
Appearance pattern
Tumblr media
1
“That’s incredibly unskilful”
That’s sound effects lettering practice. They’ve been incredibly poor from the time of the non-serialised story (laugh). I often practiced using various comic strips as a reference. Well, even now they’re not my strong suit really (laugh).
2
“Having a mental image of moving pictures”
It’s the thing in which I drew some pattern of the production of the scene where a ninja appears, or the scene where they disappear, having a mental image of moving pictures. Once inside your head, the action turns into a moving picture. Then, you draw thinking about the composition you cut out from there.
Signature
Tumblr media
[The pictures in which he practiced his signature say (in this order): Masashi (with the ma and sa character written as one), Masashi (all linked together), Kishimoto Masashi (stand-alone characters), Kishimoto (above) Masashi (below, ma and sa together), Kishimoto Masashi (current signature).]
3
“That’s Naruto’s face together with the signature”
When I write my signature, I put the face of the protagonists. Well, that looks like the practice of that. The Naruto I drew here are all smiling, but I often thought what kind of expression I should do.
4
“I decided on the spot”
When the serialisation was decided, some friends came and saw me. So, make us an autograph, they said. That time, I ended up saying “Crap… I haven’t thought about my signature!” (laugh). I decided on the spot. Saying “Which should I choose, let’s do this” with my friends.
Jiraiya
Tumblr media
1
“At the beginning, [I decided to] make a fatty middle-aged man”
I had decided from before the serialisation that Jiraiya would certainly appear even in “Naruto”, because of his fame in various ninja legends. At the beginning, I decided that I’d make him a fatty middle-aged man… that he’d transform in an unattractive-faced middle-aged man (like the picture at the very top) when he got angry or excited seeing pretty girls. That that’s why he got stronger when he transformed, but not good-looking. However, I thought that drawing him differently would have been troublesome (laugh). Though he was also supposed to use frogs that are carried on both his shoulders, in the same illustration.
Once, I made them do a two-man comedy act in the character sheet called “Husband and Wife Frog” (laugh).
However, it was difficult from the prospective of the design, so I also give it up…
  [I love how he dug out his old ideas, years later, to create Fukasaku and Shima and Jiraiya’s Sage Mode.]
Summoning Animals
Tumblr media
2
“The oriental dragons and western dragons are different” [Actually, it’s “dragons and dragons are different”, with the first being ドラゴン doragon, the transliterated English word dragon, and the second being 竜 tatsu, the Chinese dragon]
This is the dragon I drew thinking that I’d make it Naruto’s summoning. In my mental image, Chinese dragons have a thin body. And western dragons are chubby and have big feet. So, that is an overly fat Chinese dragon (laugh). It became fat and looks like a western dragon…
3
“Speaking of ninjas, there’s the mental image of frogs”
That’s Gamabunta’s first design. But in the preparatory meeting, since he’s a toad I added warts and made him a toad. Then, I also decided to make him express himself in the Hiroshima dialect. So, I said “I come from the Okayama prefecture, near Hiroshima, so leave it to me” (laugh).
Frontispiece
Tumblr media
1
“It’s a compilation of ideas”
Before the serialization, I drew some reasonable ideas for the frontispiece. I’ve almost never used them though (laugh). However, the picture in which [Naruto] is gardening appears (JC vol.3 pag.86).
2
“Imagining Naruto that makes graffiti”
That’s what I drew while thinking in what way I could make Naruto paint graffiti on the Hokage Rock.
It’s also the picture I thought I’d use in the first chapter, yes.
3
“I discarded it myself”
I drew it to use as the first chapter’s frontispiece, but when I thought that to point Naruto’s gaze towards the readers it became unnatural, so I discarded it. It was also slightly off with the appearance of the world (laugh).
Clouds
Tumblr media
“Anyway, I love clouds”
That’s the thing in which I just drew Naruto and clouds imagining a moving picture, not to use or not use it.
I’ve liked clouds since I was a child, and also the sky (laugh). That’s why I love things like comics where there are clouds and the sky, and fantasy in which the clouds are whirly like the “Neverending Story” (laugh). I think I want to draw something like that once, too, though. It’d be nice one more whole chapter, a story in which they fly among the clouds (laugh).
...phew, that was long. But very interesting (artistically speaking)~
EDIT (CLARIFYING TRANSLATION)
So, @silalcarin asked me to include in this post something we've discussed about.
Her question was: Were Ibiki, Iruka, Kakashi, Hinata, Anko, etc., were all of these character sketches the earliest concept art? Were these characters the earliest characters Kishimoto created after Naruto himself?
(Apparently, there's a dispute about whether Sakura was created before Hinata or not. Silalcarin also provided me with a translation, made by Koshej back in 2013, which you can read here)
My answer: First of all: yes, they are early sketches. The first line of the paragraph says 連載が始まる前に, which is literally “before the serialization began”. I don’t know where that “I have designed the characters at a very early stage." comes from, to be honest: the Japanese raw of the title says イメージはほぼ決まってました, “the mental image had almost settled/I had almost made up my mind”. So, the other translation is not *wrong*, content-wise, but it’s not what the text says (more like a free interpretation of it). As for the order of creation, I admit I have no idea. The text doesn’t clearly say if they’re the very first characters, or if they’ve been created early in general. I think it’s difficult to say which characters he created first… because I remember I’ve seen other character sketches, which Kishimoto provided at the end of some Naruto chapters (I remember there were Iruka, Konohamaru, Kakashi, Sakura and Sasuke as well), together with some other he discarded in the end. Long story short: 1) yes, Anko and co. are pre-serialized sketches, 2) Koshej’s translation is not wrong in general, but mine is closer to the original one (that’s why I had a hard time explaining the terms, and sometimes my translation is almost unreadable), 3) there’s no way to tell which character was created first after Naruto, unless you’re Kishimoto himself I guess (or at least, this databook doesn’t clarify it here).
So, uhmm, that's what I have to say on the matter. Silalcarin also gave me this link (in which you can read further thoughts on the matter)
Last but not least, I feel like to add a link to another interview I translated, from the fourth databook, in which they talk about character creation and such (unfortunately, the part about Sasuke's creation was too difficult for me to translate, so once again I can't give an answer to the question "were Hinata and company created before Sasuke and Sakura")
69 notes · View notes
dimancheetoile · 6 years
Text
I'm finding I'm not her (the girl I thought I'd be)
Nine months later, to celebrate Sasuke's graduation from Explosions and Booby-traps Academy, she drags both him and Naruto to a lingerie store.
Read it on AO3
The title is from @mouseymightymarvellous's AMAZING poem, "forgiveness for matryoshka dolls"
Haruno Sakura is born in the early days of spring. She has hair the colour of cherry blossoms and the brightest smile you could wish on a baby's face. Her parents adore her and early on, she's spoiled rotten by every single member of her family. It could be the beginning of a beautiful tale, a happy story to tell children when they ask what a perfect life is. For a few years, it is.
One hot, tiring day of summer, Sakura comes home after a full day playing with the Yamanaka heir, and tells her parents that she wants to join the Academy. She smiles her bright smile and proudly explain how she's going to become the strongest shinobi in the world.
On the same day, Sakura also tells her parents that she is a girl.
Let's try again.
Haruno Nadamaru is born in the early days of spring. He has hair the colour of cherry blossoms and the brightest smile you could wish on a baby's face. Nadamaru is the Haruno's heir, destined to take the Clan Head mantle and keep their trading network in good shape. His mother is already eyeing his cousin Haeru as a potential bride.
One hot, tiring day of summer, Nadamaru comes home with a red ribbon in his pink hair and bright orange fingernails. He talks about his best friend Ino and all the fun they've had playing ninja. He tells them all about Yamanaka-san with his kind eyes and quick laugh and how bad Nadamaru wants to be like him when he grows up.
On the same day, Nadamaru tells them to call him Sakura, like his pretty hair, and asks for a qipao on his next birthday.
Hikari sends her son to his room with a shout and starts crying in her husband's arms. Nadamaru goes, tears streaming down his round face, and swears he'll show them how good a shinobi Haruno Sakura will be.
Sakura graduates a few weeks after her twelfth birthday. She comes home ecstatic, but already expecting the disappointment in her mother's eyes, and the complete disinterest on her father's face. She quickly makes herself a snack, before her mother can decide she'll punish her for her foolishness one more time, and disappears in her room. It still hurts, but it stopped bothering her a long time ago.
Her brand new qipao is waiting for her under the bed, where Sakura hid it this morning. Hikari can't force her to wear more appropriate clothing, but she tries really hard to destroy every dress Sakura might buy for herself. Tomorrow is the big day, and she wants to be the prettiest girl in their promotion. Maybe one of the boys will notice her; surely, if she brings back a good husband, her mother will finally be convinced to let Sakura be herself?
She sighs and carefully braids her long hair, before going to bed. She knows she won't be able to sleep for a while, for how excited she is, but she needs to be well-rested if she wants to pass the test. She can't wait.
Tell me your likes and dislikes, asks the jōnin teacher, and Sakura is about to comply, when he adds the annoying bit about their dream. Sakura has a dream, but she learned a long time ago that it was best not to tell people. No one understood her dream, and her family kept scolding her every time she brought it up. Just like they did when she wore her hair up in a bun with glittering pins, or when she dressed up in her most elegant outfits.
So she bites her lips and waits until both Naruto and Sasuke are done. Then, in a gentle voice and with the greatest care, she crafts her words. She says that her dream is to be acknowledged for who she truly is, and stays quiet when Naruto side-hugs her. She knows how close her answer is to his, and she pretends not to notice her sensei squinting his only eye at her.
The test is a disaster. Sakura gets caught in a genjutsu almost as soon as it starts. She sees Sasuke, lying dead in a pool of blood, and she runs to his crumbled form. Only when she's kneeling next to him does he open his eyes and stares at her. Nadamaru, he whispers, Nadamaru, Nadamaru, Nadamaru—
"Hey, Sakura! Wake up! Kakashi-sensei put you in a genjutsu, but it's over now, don't worry."
Except it's never truly over now, is it, Naruto?
Sakura honestly didn't expect for her secret to hold this long. She's done her best to act true to herself, but sometimes she slips up because Hikari drilled habits into her as hard as she could, whenever Sakura was too tired to fight her mother. Oh, how relentless Hikari could be. And sometimes, that means that Sakura walks with a hunched back and a different sway in her walk. Sometimes, she forgets that she's supposed to trust her team and jokes in a deep voice about girly things and cooties, only to catch herself because she's the one who should be offended at her teammates for making the jokes, not telling them herself.
And yet her secret holds until a few days before the start of the chūnin exams. Everyone in the village heard about it, and so did her parents. When they realized there was no convincing their daughter to back down from her goal, they decided to invite Team 7 to a family dinner, hoping to embarrass Sakura. She won't let them.
After a particularly successful training session that ended with Kakashi almost praising them, Sakura grits her teeth and takes a leap of faith.
"Boys, can I talk to you before we go to Ichiraku?"
Sasuke grunts, looking annoyed, but stays in place. Naruto grins and sits cross-legged next to her, while she gestures for their sensei to join the lopsided circle they created.
"What is it about, Sakura-chan?" Kakashi asks, his orange book balanced on one of his knees. Sakura feels weirdly warm to think he cares enough not to read it when she needs to talk.
"You know my parents invited you to dinner, tonight. And you all promised to go."
Naruto beams. "Yeah, I can't wait to meet them! I'm sure they're really cool."
Cool. Sakura feels like crying. If only.
"There is something you don't know about me, and my parents will definitely talk to you about it. I hope... I hope this won't ruin everything."
Sasuke is frowning and Kakashi has the same look than the day of the test. Naruto just wraps an arm around her shoulders in the half hug he seems to be fond of.
"You can tell us anything, we're your team!"
Sakura nods quickly, holding back the tears she can feel gathering in her eyes. And before she can change her mind, she rushes to grab her ID card in her pouch and throws it at Kakashi's face. Then she ducks her head under a fall of pink strands and waits for the inevitable. And waits. And waits some more.
"Uh."
Sakura chokes on her next breath as she quickly raises her head again. Kakashi is looking at the card with an eyebrow raised, before looking briefly at her, and going back to the card.
"Uh." He says again, then proceeds to shrugging exaggeratedly slow before handing the card to Sasuke. The Uchiha's eyebrows disappear into his hair and he stares at her, not moving when Naruto looks over his shoulder at the ID.
"Who's that, Sakura? Is it your brother?"
It's too much for her, the lack of reaction and Naruto's misunderstanding, and Sakura starts to sob. Deep, ugly sobs she tries to keep silent when she notices how uncomfortable Kakashi looks, but sobs nonetheless.
"Moron!" And Sasuke is punching Naruto, who starts to insult him before freezing when he hears Sakura's hitched breath. He glares back at the card, and a look of understanding settles on his face.
"So you're..."
"Naruto, for once in your life, shut up."
And suddenly, Sasuke is hugging her. Sakura is pretty sure her soul starts to shrivel and ultimately dies inside of her.
"I don't give a flying fuck what your parents decided to call you," he whispers against her ear, "but you're my teammate, Haruno Sakura, and that means I'll stand by you tonight."
As quickly as he appeared, he releases her and settles again on the ground, on Naruto's left. When the Uzumaki looks at him funny, he blushes slightly and looks away.
"My cousin Shisui was... well, you know. Like you. He was like you."
And that settles it. Naruto still hugs her approximately five minutes too long and Kakashi offers to braid her hair, which is frankly terrifying and she does not feel the slightest inch of regret at refusing. When they arrive at the Haruno Estate, on the outskirts of Konoha, none of the boys bat an eye when Hikari asks her son to help them settle in. They call her Sakura and compliment her on her dress and later, much later, after Sakura's tears are dry and Kakashi has finished tying knots in their hair (which he keeps insisting on calling braids), they laugh about the angry look on Hikari's face when she understood she couldn't hurt her daughter that way anymore.
When Sasuke starts his apprenticeship in the Sabotage squad, where his fire jutsu and sharingan makes him an amazing student, Sakura starts to consider her options. Naruto is hinting at a trip with Jiraya, to learn both about his family and the Sannin's techniques. Sasuke is barely in Konoha anymore, spending most of his time in the Forest of Death. And she can't stay with her parents anymore.
Now that she made it clear her shinobi career is here to stay, on top of Konoha's administration giving her a new ID card with her true name on it, the Haruno want nothing to do with her. She's this close to being disowned, and she knows it. It means Sakura needs new living arrangements, possibly someone willing to give her their name. She doesn't mind being clanless, like Tenten, but having a name would definitely help her.
It's Kakashi who suggests she tries it with the Hokage. Tsunade has been here for a few years now, and as scary as she still appears, Sakura has seen her smashed more times than she's seen her sober. It helps a lot with the fear. So she goes to Tsunade, bows to her waist and asks to learn her legendary strength. If Sasuke is to be a sabotage expert, with Naruto's quick thinking and his love for traps, Sakura will need to be the blunt force of their team.
Tsunade laughs at her face and calls her a naive little girl. She tells her she'd be better as a medic, that she should stay at the back because she's not as strong as her teammates. That she should go back to her civilian family and think of marriage and bearing children.
Sakura punches a hole through the Hokage's desk and starts screaming. Tsunade lets her swear for thirty seconds before sending her flying through a wall with a flick of her finger. Then she marches out of the office, picks Sakura up, and goes to the nearest training ground.
Sakura grins a bloody smile. The Hokage read her file. She knows of Nadamaru's shadow, glued to Sakura's steps. And she still asked her if it wouldn't be better for her to go back to her clan and get pregnant. That's the whole three seconds it takes for Sakura to fall in love with the idea of becoming the new Tsunade.
Later in the day, when the Hokage is done printing Sakura patterns into the earth, Tsunade sits in the dirt next to her. She asks in tactless and ugly terms if Sakura wants something done about her body. She talks about surgery and procedures and hormones and medical ninjutsu. When she's done talking, Sakura is smiling through her tears, and Tsunade pats her on the head.
Nine months later, to celebrate Sasuke's graduation from Explosions and Booby-traps Academy, she drags both him and Naruto to a lingerie store.
They're seventeen, with a spring in their steps and the future laid down at their feet. Naruto is trying on a emerald bra with a dangling heart pendant in the center while Sasuke stares at a garter, probably trying to figure out if it's going to kill him in his sleep. Sakura looks at herself in the mirror of their proud eyes and she smiles the brightest smile she can conjure. She's beautiful.
She's beautiful and they tell her that, later, when they're all in the kitchen of their tiny apartment, stuffing their face with ramen. Naruto is leaving again in a few days, this time to the ruins of Uzushio. Except he asked them to come with him, and they both accepted. Sakura is eyeing the jōnin promotion Kakashi swears she has a shot at, but she won't take it just yet. She wants to enjoy the time she has with her teammates, while Naruto is still looking for himself in the shadows of a destroyed village.
They tell her she's beautiful when they lie down on the largest futon and Sasuke unties her chest bandages with his teeth. They tell her how proud they are of the woman she has become while Naruto nips at her hip.
In the morning, when they read over her shoulder the letter of repudiation from her clan, they will kiss her gently. Then Kakashi will rush inside with forms and applications, a few chosen words for the Haruno's decision, and an offer to take his name. And Sakura will smile.
29 notes · View notes
kuriquinn · 7 years
Text
Walk A Mile [7/?]
Cover & Disclaimer
Chapter Beta: None at the moment, but I’ll send it to my beta when she gets back from vacation. 
AN: So, this is a bit of departure from the usual format, but it’s kind of a time-skip. The first week of the swap, with a lot of things needing to be adjusted to hehe. I put a little bit of plot in places...but really, this is totally filler that I had too much fun writing :D Hope you enjoy reading it!
“Kakashi-sensei!”
SLAM!
The sound of a door being thrown open and hitting the wall yanks him from his dreams. Kakashi vaults upward and snaps, “Reinforce the barriers and send the first wave!”
The familiar surroundings of his living room come back to him, and his dream fades away. The panicked, slightly confused face of Sasuke Uchiha swims into view.
No, wait—not Sasuke. Sakura, he remembers. Must not have gotten enough sleep. Head’s still pounding…
“What is it, Sakura?” he mumbles—maybe; his words are rather slurred.
She frowns at him. “You sleep with your mask on?”
“Not usually,” he replies, rubbing at the scar on the left side of his face and squints up at her. “Is there an emergency, or do you just enjoy shouting yourself hoarse before sun-up?”
Sakura’s expression becomes pinched once more.
“I…have a…problem,” she reveals jerkily. 
“That’s remarkably self-aware.”
It’s possible the lack of sleep is affecting his normally easy-going manner.
Sakura draws her borrowed mouth into a thin line, emphasising her expression of utter agony, and glances meaningfully downward. It takes a beat before Kakashi follows her gaze, fixing on something in the southern hemisphere of her borrowed body. Once he does, her total panic makes sense.
A very dark part of him wants to laugh, if only at the absurdity of the whole situation, but Sakura would never forgive him for it. Instead, he schools his face into neutrality and says, “Go take a cold shower. It’ll help.”
Horror overtakes her obvious humiliation, probably at the notion of a shower, but it’s early and he’s exhausted and wouldn’t be doing her any favours sugar-coating things.
“Look, you have three options,” he yawns, falling back against the couch cushions. “Either take a cold shower, which you should do anyway because you’re beginning to stink, or you could wait it out. It’ll eventually go away. Or there’s the old-fashioned method…”
He trails off meaningfully. She doesn’t understand him immediately, but when she does, it looks like she might have a nosebleed.
“What the hell is your problem?!” she snarls. “You can’t say stuff like that!”
“Why, because you’re a girl, or because you’re a kid?” Kakashi challenges.
“Either! Both!” she yells in frustration. “And because this isn’t my body! Besides I’d never… I couldn’t—!” Her face is so flushed with blood now he’s surprised she’s still having a below-the-belt issue. She shoves a finger in his direction. “You’re a pervert, Kakashi-sensei!”
And then stalks away once again slamming the door behind her.
He winces.
And I thought it was just the boys I had to worry about property damage with, he thinks tiredly, curling into the couch and hoping he can get back to sleep.
SLAM!
The door is open once again, and he groans, pressing his face into the couch cushions.
If she does that the whole time she’s here, I’ll never get my security deposit back…
“Kakashi-sensei?” her tone is quieter this time, ashamed.
“What, Sakura?”
“Uh…where’s your washing machine?” she asks, in a tiny voice he would never have thought Sasuke capable of. “I might possibly…maybe…sort of have to do a load of wash.”
He cracks an eye open against the couch cushions. Why…?
“And, uh…do you by any chance have any other sheets?” she squeaks.
Kakashi groans, pulling the covers of his head.
Shit.
ナルト
Sakura paces back and forth in front of the chain-link fence of the usual spot, glancing around every now and then for some sign of Kakashi or Sasuke.
She’s not completely sure how she lost track of her teacher that morning, since they left from the same place. One minute he was behind her, and the next she heard him say he’d catch up, and when she turned around he was gone without even a puff of smoke.
As for Sasuke, he’s uncharacteristically late, and Sakura can’t help worrying.
What if he got caught by my parents? What if my mother says something embarrassing to him? What if Dad makes a really tasteless joke and Sasuke punches him? Oh, I’ll be in so much trouble when we switch back, and we’ll have failed Lord Third’s mission, and…
She inhales sharply and tries to clear her mind.
There’s nothing she can do about any of those things right now.
What she can do is stand here and wait for her teammates so that they can go to wherever Naruto is and make sure he and Condor haven’t killed each other yet.
Sakura tries really hard to just sit there and wait – to lean against the uncomfortable fence and meditate (or whatever it is Sasuke does when they’re waiting for the rest of their team to arrive in the morning). But she can’t stop fidgeting. Every few minutes she crosses her arms or shifts her weight or gives into the compulsion to check the very white, baggy shorts for signs of dirt or grease from the fence.
She starts to wonder if Sasuke wears white shorts just to show off how effortless he finds being a shinobi. As if he doesn’t even have to worry about getting dirty unless he feels like it. She always thought he was just naturally cool, but it might just be that Sasuke actually puts energy into it. It’s the only explanation she can come up with for how he always looks so unruffled, and yet twenty-four hours in his body she feels like a mess.
She’s sweating – is it just me, or is his body-temperature higher than mine? – and is hungry again, even though she ate all the leftovers from dinner the night before this morning.
And, of course, there’s the addition of an extra –
Her thoughts flounder for a moment, her cheeks turning red.
Appendage, she supplies, forcing herself to fight back the mortification and think of things in the same distant terms a doctor might. 
It’s not really working.
The point is, the new addition makes even walking feel utterly foreign to her, and that’s the absolute least of the problems associated with her new body.
When Sasuke finally does arrive, Sakura’s worried questions die on her lips as she takes in his rumpled, red-cheeked, veiny-eyed form.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she cries in lieu of any greeting, hands on her hips as she looks him over.
Her normally pristine hair is a tangled mess under his care, brushed in the front but a complete matted nightmare in the back. Sasuke’s borrowed cheeks are reddened by infinitesimal scratches, probably from a rough scrubbing with a cloth, and his eyes –
“You slept with my contacts in, didn’t you?” she hisses.
“I forgot, okay?” he barks, not sounding anything like his usual calm self even with the borrowed voice. “I don’t know how to take them out, or put them in for that matter, and until I do I’m not about to walk around bumping into things.”
“My vision’s not that bad!” Sakura snaps.
“Well, I had more important things to worry about,” Sasuke growls, eyes shifting from left to right to ensure they are alone. In a lower voice, he goes on, “I couldn’t find…where do you keep your…” He trails off, frustrated, and then tugs at something beneath the fabric of the tunic he’s wearing. She recognises the thick strap of a sports bra. “I was going to change this when I woke up, but the only ones I could find were…”
Realisation dawns on her, and warmth floods her cheeks too. “You dug through my underwear drawer?!”
“It’s not like I wanted to! Besides, from the look of them there’s no way to get the damn things on or off, at least with this one I can just pull it over my head!”
Sakura decides to take pity on him. “If you can’t find any sports bras in my drawer, you have to go down and check the laundry room. I wear them the most often because of missions, so they have to be washed out a lot. Maybe my mother did a load – wait.” She shoots him a sharp look. “Are you saying you put that thing on again this morning? It’s filthy!”
“I didn’t put anything on, I slept in it.”
“You’re not supposed to sleep in a bra!”
“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” he counters. “I shouldn’t even be thinking about bras, let alone yours!”
“Say that a little louder, I don’t think they heard you in Kiri,” a familiar voice says, and a second later Kakashi materialises in a puff of smoke. “Yo.”
Sakura lets out a half-groan, half-wail of humiliation while Sasuke glowers at their teacher.
“So, who’s ready for training?” the jōnin asks mildly.
“I hate you,” Sasuke informs him, and Sakura nods in agreement.
ナルト
Naruto wakes to the sun streaming through a window right into his eyes.
With a groan, stretches and yawns, then freezes as his brain catches up with his current surroundings. He is in the wide-open living area of a farmhouse, perched on a makeshift bed of pillows and blankets. He remembers Captain Yamato offering them to him yesterday when he couldn’t get comfortable on the spare sleeping mat –
Because he has cumbersome wings and claws and the weirdly shaped body of an ostrich now.
“Aw, man, it wasn’t a dream!” he wails, throwing his head backward in frustration. “I thought for sure when I woke up all this would be fixed! Aw, man, this sucks…”
“How do you funny little creatures not break your necks in your sleep with all the tossing and turning you do?” Condor wants to know, sitting up on his own sleep pallet. He shakes his arm. “And why does my arm constantly feel like it’s got pine needles sticking into it?”
“Yeah, well, I feel like I slept standing up in a closet…”
“You both snore,” Yamato informs them with a yawn, also sitting up on his bedding.
Condor sets his hands on his hips in indignation. “I beg your pardon, I do no such thing!”
“Yeah!” Naruto pipes up. “And I couldn’t have snored because I didn’t sleep! So maybe it’s you that was snoring, you creepy faced weirdo!”
Yamato blinks at him, bleary eyed from waking, and then glances at Condor. “What’d he say?”
“He says your mother wears army boots.”
“Oi! I did not!”
A knock on the door interrupts the potential bloodshed, and after a sharp look in Naruto’s direction, Yamato goes to open it. Outside, the rest of Team 7 are standing on the landing; Kakashi expression is drawn and exhausted, while Sakura and Sasuke bicker with one another.
Whoa. Now that’s weird…
To an outside observer, it already looks odd to see Sasuke Uchiha haranguing Sakura Haruno, who is clearly trying to tune him out, arms crossed and face pulled into a scowl. It’s even odder because Naruto knows it’s actually the other way around – with Sakura raving at Sasuke – and that has never happened before.
Condor shivers.
“I don’t even know them that well, and that’s just unnatural,” he says.
Naruto nods. “Funny, though.”
“Sakura, Sasuke,” Kakashi says, putting an end to the very strange argument. The two of them glance up. “This is Captain Yamato. He’s going to be working with Naruto and Condor for the duration of this…situation.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Sakura says, offering a shy wave.
Sasuke frowns and gives the man an appraising up-and-down look. Then he turns to Kakashi. “What’s so special about him? He doesn’t look like much.”
“Sasuke!” Sakura chides.
“Yamato’s Mokuton is going to be very helpful keeping the Nine-Tails under control,” Kakashi explains. “On that note – Condor, have you had any more trouble with the fox spirit?”
“Only in that I didn’t sleep at all last night trying to keep the thing from eating me,” the bird snorts.
“You big liar!” Naruto snaps. “You were snoring the whole night, remember? Stop making things seem more dramatic than they are! If I can’t hear the fox, you can’t hear the fox.”
“I’ve already told you the reason you can’t hear him is because you’re thick.”
Naruto bleats at him in wordless anger, and Kakashi clears his throat.
“Yamato can work with you on that a little then. Meanwhile, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke – it might be best to revisit some basic skills today. Like taijutsu.”
“Are you seriously going to teach a bird taijutsu?” Sasuke deadpans.
“Don’t be like that, he’s still Naruto,” Sakura tells him. “I’m sure he can figure it out.” She smiles hesitantly at Naruto and wanders a little closer. “Hey, Naruto – are you going okay in there?”
He pulls away, shuddering. “No offense, but it’s really weird to have Sasuke look at me like that. No, scratch that, it’s not weird, it’s creepy.”
Sakura frowns in confusion and asks Condor, “What did he say?”
“He’s afraid you were going to kiss him,” Condor informs her with a straight face.
“You idiot bird!” Naruto bellows and vaults across the room, intent on destroying him. Condor, meanwhile, darts out of the way blowing raspberries, while Sakura and Sasuke begin to shout angrily at them both.
He is distantly aware of Yamato and Kakashi exchanging glances.
“Trade you?” they ask each other.
ナルト
When Sasuke returns to the Haruno household later, he is exhausted. Honestly, he doesn’t remember ever feeling this tired before.
Did Sakura not do any training before we switched bodies? These muscles feel like they’re on fire…
He’s barely got the energy to eat the meal Mebuki puts before him (he’s dimly relieved that there’s nothing sweet in it), and he must look as tired as he feels because Sakura’s parents don’t try to talk much with him.
There’s a minor moment of awkwardness afterward when Mebuki reaches over to feel his forehead – he jerks away before he can stop himself, but seeing her mouth can firm in suspicion, Sasuke mutters about having a bad headache.
“Got some mind grains sprouting?” Sakura’s father asks with gentle amusement, while Mebuki tells Sasuke to go up to bed and she’ll bring him some honeysuckle tea.
He trudges up the stairs and once again starts the laborious process to get ready for bed; he’s quicker about it today, once again leaving the lights off the whole time. He only turns them on again to take Sakura’s contacts out, having had her explain the process to him before he returned home.
These things come with containers, right?
That takes him longer to hunt down than he’d like, and the actual removal of the lens leaves him swearing and his eyes twitching in both reflex and annoyance.
Am I even going to be able to get the damned things on again tomorrow?
He waves it off as a future problem, squinting at Sakura’s reflection in the mirror. It’s blurred now, but as she said, not enough to make him blind.
Just annoying, he thinks as he stalks out of the bathroom, just like her.
ナルト
SLAM!
“Kakashi-sensei!”
He grabs his pillow and presses it over his face, groaning into it in dismay.
“Don’t kill her,” he mutters to himself, “Think of the paperwork.”
“I need you to go to Sasuke’s place and sneak in and get some things for me without anyone seeing you, it’s urgent!” she tells him, all panic and tension in her voice.
Kakashi shifts the pillow to one side, shooting her a bleary, exasperated frown with his one good eye. “Sakura…you’re literally walking around in his body. Go get whatever you need from his apartment yourself.”
“But…but I can’t go wandering around his house without him there!”
“Why not? He’s wandering around your house without you there.”
“Well…well even if I wanted to, I can’t exactly go now and I really, really need your help!”
Her bottom lip juts out, eyes wide and teary, and Kakashi thinks it’s just him being stunned that Sasuke could ever look so pathetic and helpless that has him sighing in agreement. “Fine.”
“Thank you!”
“But I’m only doing this the once,” he tells her, going back to press his face back into the pillow and cursing. “Damn it…only the second day…”
Sakura clears her throat. “And Kakashi-sensei?”
“What?”
“I’m hungry.”
ナルト
“Ow!” Sakura cries, ducking an angry beak. “Naruto, stop – ow! I’m sorry!” She holds her hands over her head. “I wasn’t trying to kick you – ow! – I just overshot and you were – ouch! – in the way!”
Her teammate hisses at her, rearing up and flapping his wings at her.
 ナルト
“Let’s try this again,” Kakashi says wearily.
Sasuke scowls, but then dutifully pulls his face into a wide smile. The slight narrowing of Kakashi’s right eye tells him he has once again failed.
“This is ridiculous,” he complains, dropping the false visage.
“It was better,” his teacher offers, and when Sasuke raises an eyebrow at him, he shrugs, “Okay, not really. We may be going about this all wrong.”
“If you try to tickle me I will stab you in the throat,” Sasuke informs him pre-emptively.
Kakashi ignores him. “What’s the first thing you notice about Sakura when she smiles?”
“It’s genuine,” Sasuke says immediately, surprising himself with how instinctive the answer is. He’s never really considered the question before, but he knows instantly that it’s true; Sakura’s smile is untarnished by darkness, anger or pain. “Happy.”
The word is foreign to him.
“Alright,” his teacher says. “That in mind, I’m going to ask you to do something difficult. And I know it’s difficult because I have to do it every day, too.” Sasuke shoots him a questioning look, abruptly curious, but Kakashi continues.  “Think back. To the last time you felt something like what Sakura feels. Think of happiness. Peace. Something that genuinely made you smile to see.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” Sasuke bites out through gritted teeth, because Kakashi knows full-well the last time he was happy about anything.
“Then work on it, because learning to smile might be your only saving grace in succeeding at this mission.” Kakashi straightens up. “I get that you have your goals, but the mark of a good shinobi is to compartmentalise their emotions.”
“I know this already.”
“Note that I say compartmentalise, not ignore. The more you ignore, the more builds up and the more likely you are to explode with all those pent-up feelings later. Or make stupid choices,” Kakashi goes on. “I really advise against stupid choices, because that gets people killed.”
“I advise against switching bodies,” Sasuke grumbles. “That gets people killed too.”
Kakashi blinks at him. “Did you just make a joke?”
ナルト
Naruto stares down at the large container in front of him, and then looks up at Yamato. “No.”
The jōnin sighs, unable to understand him, but clearly noticing the refusal.
“Come on, Naruto, you have to eat something. You’re not going to keep your strength out without eating healthy.”
Naruto glares at him. “I want ramen.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Ramen. I want ramen. Rah-men!”
“I want ramen, too,” Condor pipes up from where he’s watching the exchange.
“You’ve never even eaten ramen,” Yamato reminds him.
“I don’t care, I want it.”
Yamato sighs, shoulders slumping.
ナルト
 “Kakashi-sensei!”
SLAM!
“Sakura, if it’s related to food, bodily functions or laundry, I don’t want to hear it,” he tells his pillow.
“No, it’s…um, I think I broke the lid off your electric kettle and…I didn’t mean to, I swear! It’s just…I think I was holding it to tightly, but I didn’t realise, so…”
She trails off, and Kakashi sighs.
He has never pictured having children before, and living with Sakura – who he never in a million years imagined he would live with – has shown him the wisdom in that. It’s like dealing with a teenager and a toddler all in one.
“I’ll pick up a new one on the way home,” he tells her.
“…’Kay.”
Well, at least he doesn’t have to worry about her taking all the hot water…
He feels little guilt at chuckling over that.
ナルト
“How do any of you guys walk properly with one of these?!”
ナルト
“What are you talking about, you don’t want any?” Mebuki demands, hands on her hips. “Anmitsu is your favourite.”
“I’m…watching my weight,” Sasuke mumbles uncomfortably.
“Oh no, none of that,” Sakura’s mother sniffs. “You know how I feel about that dieting nonsense, Sakura. If you’re going to be training so hard, you need to keep your strength up.”
“This isn’t exactly going to help with that,” Sasuke deadpans.
“Well, we can’t always be sensible,” Kizashi says. “Where would the fun in that be?”
They are both watching him now, and Sasuke winces, knowing he has to play along. Swallowing thickly, he takes a spoonful of the jelly dessert and just hopes he can keep it down long enough to throw off suspicion.
ナルト
“Get your butt out of my face!”
“Get your face out of my – oh for goodness sake, must you be so crass?”
“At least I’m not a sissy,” Naruto mutters as they continue their slow trek across the floor. “Now shut up before we get caught.”
“You two wouldn’t be trying to sneak out, would you?” a deceptively calm voice asks behind them.
Condor and Naruto freeze, and then very slowly turn around. There’s a click and a flashlight turns on.
Captain Yamato looms over them, the shadows making his face seem even more hollow than usual.
“It was his idea,” Naruto says immediately, shivering at the sight.
“My idea? Why would I want to sneak out of these lavish accommodations?” Condor asks in a high voice, and then points at Naruto. “He’s the criminal mastermind – not me!”
Yamato’s eyes narrow, and Naruto crack.
“I just want some ramen!” he sobs, throwing himself at the jōnin’s feet (or at least trying to, he still isn’t used to his knees bending backward.”
“What was that about me being a sissy?” Condor asks, contemptuous.
ナルト
“Sakura, if you don’t stop slamming the door in a panic every morning, I will take it off the hinges.”
ナルト
“Your biggest issue is that you’re used to a body that has mastered its ability to control its anger and impulses and channel it into other things,” Kakashi explains to Sakura, while in the background Sasuke impatiently ducks Naruto’s clumsy kicks. Several feet away, Yamato corrects Condor’s grip on a kunai. “Sometimes it seems as if you have a second self that filters all of that for you. When you first switched, you mentioned a voice in your head?”
“Yeah – well, sort of,” she says. “I mean…I always thought it was just my conscience of something.”
“I guarantee you, most people’s consciences aren’t loud enough to have a voice,” Kakashi says dryly. “Both your parents are genin?”
“Well…Dad’s a chūnin. Barely. But they haven’t been active since before I was born, and only because of the war,” Sakura explains.
“And your father’s family?”
“Isn’t from here,” Sakura says. “Mom is, though, but I don’t know much about her side of the family. Grandmother was a Konohako, so…”
“Ah,” Kakashi nods, recognising the term. It’s a surname given to illegitimate children whose legal parents won’t recognise them. “And not even an idea where that lineage came from?”
“I would have to ask my mother.”
“Which you can’t right now,” he sighs.
“And asking Sasuke to find out probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” Sakura agrees.
He’s not exactly tactful…
“Right…”
ナルト
“What the hell is an exfoliator?”
ナルト
“I was just thinking,” Naruto says, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness.
“Did it hurt?”
He snorts, side-eying the bird in his body. “Really? Nothing more creative than that?”
“It’s been a long day. Don’t worry, I’ll reach my stride soon enough.”
“Do you think maybe all this would be easier if we stopped giving each other a tough time and just tried to work together?”
The two of them slowly glance over at each other, sizing one another up. Then, in unison, their turns their backs on each other.
“Nah!”
ナルト
“Kakashi-sensei!”
He cracks one eye open, waiting for the slam of the door, and then smirks when he remembers that he took it off its hinges night before.
ナルト
“I don’t understand,” Sakura says, frustrated. “I mean, it completely defies logic!”
“I know,” Condor nods.
“It’s like…I would understand if I was looking at something…you know…but I’m not looking at anything. I was literally staring at the wall just now, noticing the way the paint is curling and – and it happens!”
“It’s an utterly rubbish system,” Condor agrees. “Obviously it’s faulty – I mean, I don’t even find your species appealing at all. But now I – ” He makes a face and looks at his lap. “Oh damn. It’s happening again.”
“Don’t draw attention to it!” Sakura hisses, pointedly looking away from him.
She notices Sasuke and Naruto standing over them, identical looks of horror on their borrowed faces.
“What?”
ナルト
Sasuke considers the long, wet locks of pink hair spilling down his chest and back, frowning critically.
Keeping all this clean is such a waste of time. If there wasn’t all this hair, I could be in and out of the shower in minutes.
Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a pair of scissors sticking out of a first-aid kit.
ナルト
“I don’t care if you’re used to eating it to help digest your food – if I catch you using my mouth to eat sand, I will sit on you until you pass out!”
ナルト
“What do you mean, you still haven’t found anything?” Kakashi demands early one morning after skipping out on Sakura to visit the graveyard and then the Hokage’s office. He’s trying and failing not to sound exasperated. “It’s going on a week now.”
Inoichi shrugs apologetically. “We’re combing the records as fast as we can, but so far nothing.”
“And our investigations to the shrine have yielded no information either,” Lord Third says gravely. “Inoichi and I have read the Akimichi and Nara clans into the situation, however. Given their ancestors involvement in helping to seal away Noburo, it was thought they might have some insight that was perhaps…misplaced by the Yamanaka.”
“And has it?”
“Not yet.”
“Great,” Kakashi groans. “So what do I tell the kids?”
“Nothing,” Inoichi says. “As before, we’re looking into the matter. They’ll have to be patient.”
“Have you even met my team?”
ナルト
“He’s late.”
“I noticed.”
“He’s later than you. That never happens.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
Sakura glares at her teacher, wanting more than anything to punch him. She’s not sure if that’s just her annoyance or some inborn reflex that’s part of Sasuke’s body. Either way, she hopes Sasuke arrives soon to keep her from trying something so stupid.
“Oh.” Kakashi says suddenly, his visible eye widening a bit. It flits to Sakura, flashing with something that she’s tempted to call panic, even if she doesn’t know the reason for it. “Oh, fuck…”
“What?” she asks, following his gaze to the familiar figure of Sasuke in her body wandering toward them.
She has a few seconds of trying to figure out why his looks bother her today, and when she makes the realisation, it is as if the bottom of her stomach has dropped out. She goes absolutely still, barely aware of Kakashi’s continuing murmured curses.
“I would’ve been on time if your mother let me out of the house,” Sasuke complains to them in place of a greeting. The accusing explanation is as close to an apology as anyone has ever heard from him. “I had to wait until her back was turned.”
“I can see why she didn’t,” Kakashi blurts out, and then clears his throat when Sakura’s fists clench. “Now, Sakura…”
“My. Hair,” she seethes at Sasuke, eyes fixed on the messy, chin-length monstrosity that has replaced her lovingly grown-out hair.
“Just so you know, this is the opposite of blending in,” Kakashi informs Sasuke. “If Sakura’s parents weren’t suspicious before…”
“It’s fine,” Sasuke shrugs it off. “I said I saw it in a magazine and decided to try it. They seemed to buy it –”
“Are you kidding me?!” Sakura demands – but the sound comes out as a squeaky whine as Sasuke’s voice cracks.
“Stop that!” Sasuke snaps, looking around lest someone be walking by to hear. This just enrages her further.
“WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!” Sakura screams. “I gave you specific instructions and you – just – how – why – it – how dare you?!”
“It’s hair,” Sasuke tells her slowly, like she’s missing something important. “It was getting in the way, and making…washing more inconvenient.”
She’s too angry to even get embarrassed, can only sputter in response.
“It will grow back,” Sasuke goes, taking rare advantage of her incoherence. “Besides, you’re a shinobi, not a princess. You ought to concentrate on improving your battle techniques instead of your looks.” He shrugs. “It’s not like you grew it out for some important reason.”
Sakura opens her mouth and closes it several times.
She knows that he has a point about her hair – that keeping it long is an unnecessary hazard, that every lesson she’s ever had on proper gear and appearance stress the importance of short hair. That only the supremely talented shinobi keep their hair long, showing that they have no fear of it being an impairment in battle.
But at the same time, her hair was hers. It was important to her. And he not only disregarded her wish for him to take care of it, but he hacked it to pieced.
It’s the first truly horrible, mean-spirited act he has ever committed against her. He might be short with her, lack patience and encourage her by way of criticism, might offer her blunt truths which sting at first but which she slowly comes to see are meant to help her –
But he has never been intentionally mean or hurtful to her. And this…
This is a very personal insult, and he doesn’t care.
She can see that he doesn’t care, and this knowledge above everything else makes her suddenly desperate to make him understand.
ナルト
Sakura suddenly turns on her heel and marches off.
“Oh, this isn’t going to be good,” Kakashi mutters, indicating to Sasuke that they ought to follow her. Sasuke tells himself it’s because his teacher told him to, and not because the look in Sakura’s borrowed eyes just now filled him with a very sharp sense of unease.
If she notices them following her, she doesn’t say anything, and before long they come to one of the public training grounds. Several groups of young Academy students are spread out in the area, practicing throwing shuriken and kunai at targets nailed to the posts.
Sakura marches up to the large post right in the middle of all the groups and methodically brings out a few handfuls of shuriken.
“Huh,” Sasuke snorts as he and Kakashi come to a stop several feet behind her. “Now she wants to train?”
If I’d known all it took was to make her mad, I’d have done it ages ago.
“I seriously doubt that’s what this is,” Kakashi says tensely.
The words have hardly left his mouth when, once again methodical very deliberate, Sakura begins to toss the shuriken.
And misses.
Once.
Twice –
Two dozen shuriken later, none of them have hit any part of the target.
“Wait…” Sasuke says, frowning. “What’s going on? Even in my body, she should have better aim than that.”
“Oh, she does,” Kakashi tells him.
When her ninja tools are exhausted, Sakura stomps forward, snatches the shuriken from where they are embedded and returns to her previous position. Then, she repeats the exercise.
“She’s missing on purpose,” Sasuke realises. “Why?”
“Well…technically, she’s not missing anything,” Kakashi reminds him, and Sasuke’s eyes go wide. At the same time, he notices that the lively din in the training grounds has started to go quiet as the other kids begin to take notice. There’s a growing whisper around them, and the sound of chuckles behind people’s hands, and it finally occurs to Sasuke what Sakura is doing.
She is very publicly torpedoing his reputation – a reputation he doesn’t even really care about.
Or rather, one he told himself he was above actually caring about. Right now, watching the pointing and sniggering from a bunch of younger kids, an unfamiliar sense of panic and embarrassment fills him.
“Better hope that doesn’t turn into village gossip,” Kakashi muses out loud. “If it gets around that Sasuke Uchiha can’t even throw a shuriken, we might not be considered for higher ranking missions in the future. Which I’m all for, because I’ve been meaning to catch up my reading, but –”
Sasuke isn’t listening to him anymore, instead stalking forward and grabbing on to Sakura’s wrist before she can throw another volley.
“You’re having an off-day today, aren’t you?” he says loudly, and then drags Sakura from the field.
It irritates him that it’s a lot harder than usual to do, and eventually he has to stop trying even though they aren’t even out of the training field. He hopes there aren’t any prying eyes and ears paying attention; Kakashi lingers in the background with his hands in his pockets.
“Nothing,” she snaps. “Just getting rid of something unimportant. I mean, you don’t care what people think of you, right?”
“This is not the same thing!”
“It is too! It’s something that means a lot to you, right?”
“It’s different from cutting hair!”
“That’s not the point!” she snaps. “It’s something that meant a lot to me, and I told you to take care of it, and you just…cut it all off.”
“But it’s hair,” he protests, still not understanding. “It’s not permanent, it’ll grow back, so it’s not important –”
“But it was to me!” she cries. “And I thought that you’d at least…” She trails off, swallowing and hangs her head. In a quieter voice, she murmurs, “Never mind. You never care about how people feel anyway, I don’t know why I…I don’t know why I thought…”
Her shoulders begin to shake, and Sasuke realises a beat later that she’s really crying now.
He fights down a note of panic, not knowing what he’s supposed to do, glancing around to see if anyone around is paying attention to the fact that Sasuke Uchiha is standing there crying in public! He shoots Kakashi a look pleading for help, but Kakashi shrugs, looking as uncertain as him.
This isn’t exactly an area either of them are comfortable in.
He clenches his fists, then frowns down at them, remembering that he’s in Sakura’s body. And if Sakura noticed him crying, even over something ridiculous, would she just stand there?
No, he realises.
Before he’s even aware of his body moving he approaches Sakura and pulls her into a tight embrace, winding his arms around her borrowed body and fitting his head into the space of her shoulder.
“There are so many worse things in the entire world to cry about, cut hair shouldn’t be one of them,” he murmurs in a low voice, trying to fight off his own discomfort knowing that Kakashi is watching – knowing that the people in the training field are probably watching, too. “But…if it’s important to you…I should have asked your permission first.”
Sakura is tense within his hold, but a moment later relaxes against him. He hears her sniff and then clear her throat.
“Sas…” she begins, and then coughs, straightening up and pulling away. In a loud, exaggerated groan of annoyance, she says, “Sakura, you’re choking me.”
But as she pulls away, he sees a brief flicker of a smile on her face, before she adopts scowl and stalks away from him. Sasuke watches her go, staring at the back of her borrowed neck, which is flushed with colour.
“Huh.” Kakashi is looking down at him now in speculation. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all.”
つづく
Reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated! Also, if you are in a supportive mood, I have a tip jar button for ko-fi located at the top of the page - or through this link. Thanks for your interest in my work!
クリ
81 notes · View notes
discoabc · 7 years
Text
Ch 19 Deleted Scene: Team 10
A/N: So I actually wrote Sakura meeting and interacting with team 10 no less than three times and ended up scrapping each and every one of them because I wanted what I’ve got planned to do now instead. I’ll release probably another of these soon though cuz they are quite nice little scenes :) This is set right after Sakura is dimissed by Sarutobi
I followed the trend of basking in this sense of bewilderment for a while, Kakashi gently pushing me towards the door with his hand on my good shoulder. “Now, unlike Sasuke, I’m not merely suggesting you go to the hospital,” he declared and the world suddenly rushed around me.
My feet were no longer standing on varnished wood, instead on polished white tiles, and I almost fell just at the shock of the change in environments. It was louder too and I blinked at the sight of a queue in front of what I recognised as the main desk in the Konoha Hospital’s A&E.
The body flicker jutsu, I noted, felt like a far more extreme version of the substitution jutsu I was used to - which made sense considered the latter was derived from the former.
“Go sit down and your lovely teacher will get you your appointment,” Kakashi declared, patting my shoulder a little patronisingly. “I’ll contact you about our next team meeting later.” With a waggle of the fingers, he headed off to the desk, ignoring the queue yet again although with less acceptance from those waiting. Still feeling a little disorientated, I followed his orders and sat down in the first seat I saw in the waiting room.
Shell-shocked would be the best word to describe what I felt beyond the slight dizziness. It reminded me of what Orihae had said on Tazuna’s balcony about breaking down when she and her friends were finally home and safe. Dully, I wondered when everything would really crash down on me.
“Sakura? Is that you?”
I twisted round to see Ino of all people standing in the waiting room, cradling soda cans and crisp packets in her arms as she stared at me. Her lips were parted in mild surprise, although that didn’t last long and she strode towards me. “It’s been so long, wow, how are you?”
I didn’t really know what to say. To be honest, I hadn’t expected Ino to ever suddenly approach me like this. We hadn’t exactly been friends during our Academy days. Perhaps amiable acquaintances, nice sparring partners, but it was hard for Ino to even try to encroach on a friendship with me when I was supposedly best friends with her arch nemesis Ami.
The sudden thought of the purple haired girl struck me. I had no idea how or what she was doing. She’d been a bitch but she’d been a constant presence for a good portion of my life and it felt strange to not know anything about what had happened to her.
Thinking about Ino again, I then realized she probably hadn’t had much contact with other girls our age since team placements. Those that had failed their jōnin test would be busy back in the Academy or in the genin corps and Hinata would be busy with her own team. I doubted Ino was so much lonely as she was bored of the same old company and therefore, with that reasoning, of course she’d suddenly approach me like this.
“...Great,” I eventually replied, looking down at my sling to punctuate my point.
Ino, unlike Lee, caught onto my sarcasm. “Oh, ouch. Mission gone wrong? Because, if so, I entirely understand.” She huffed, flicking her ponytail behind her shoulders with a graceful jerk of the head. “My two idiot teammates on our first C-rank messed everything up. Got their hands caught in this stupid sticky stuff and have been stuck together for hours now. We completed the mission but god, it was so embarrassing!”
“I can see how it would be.” It felt a little like talking to Ami with Ino taking complete control of the conversation but I didn’t have that developed irritation of the girl just being around me.
The blonde nodded with a sigh, then a friendly smile. “Come on, sit with us, it’ll be boring waiting on your own. It’s already boring with my team now we’ve been waiting for hours.”
I got to my feet and went with her because refusing felt like an unnecessary hassle I really didn’t want to deal with right now. That and, like Tenten, I didn’t see any merit to isolating myself from Ino. “So, how’s Sasuke?”
Yes, this is very Ami-esque.
“Normal I guess?”
“Devilishly handsome you mean?”
My face started to pull into the same shape I’d shot at Tenten only for my spatial awareness to stop my knee right before it hit something. Glancing down, I saw I’d been very close to accidentally kneeing Shikamaru in the face, the boy sprawled out along the length of waiting chairs. His arm was raised up and hung over the back of one of the seats and from the wrist down his skin was covered in this blueish substance. Chōji, who was sat on the other side, had his hand stuck in the same thing.
...Didn’t this happen to Sasuke and Naruto in a filler episode?
“Here, I got you your dumb snacks,” Ino announced, shoving the crisps and drinks towards Chōji, who chirped an appeased ‘thanks’ back. One packet dropped directly onto Shikamaru’s face.
“Hey, I’m trying to sleep here.” He didn’t even open his eyes.
Ino scoffed, hands on hips. “And I should care why?”
Asuma, who was sat on the same length of chairs as Chōji, twisted round, raising an eyebrow when he saw me beside the blonde. “Now which poor soul have you kidnapped this time?”
Ino shot a glower at the man. “Sakura Haruno, from team seven,” I answered instead.
His eyebrow rose even higher, regarding me thoughtfully. “Oh, Kakashi’s kunoichi? You must’ve just got back from your mission then.”
He’d obviously heard of me, judging by his reaction. Then again, it wasn’t that strange. Anko had mentioned hearing about me breaking Kakashi’s arm so it made sense that he’d heard the same rumour, especially since I assumed he was in my teacher’s circle of friends.
Just great, everyone knows who I fucking am now. Exactly what I’ve always wanted.
Ino blinked. “Kakashi Hatake is your teacher? My dad’s always complaining about him.”
“Well, there’s a reason why,” I muttered. Asuma smothered a laugh at that one whilst Ino shot me a mildly surprised look.
“You have my sympathies,” the jōnin informed me with a twinkle to his eyes. “Although I don’t think that’ll make things any better.”
“Sakura Haruno!” A man called my name from one of the doors to the waiting room, indicating it was time for my appointment.
Ino gaped. “B-but you just got here! We’ve been waiting here for hours!”
“Kakashi probably pulled some strings,” Asuma declared as I started to leave.
“And you can’t?” The blonde sighed again. “Ugh, you’re such a useless jōnin-sensei!”
“I’m wounded, Ino.”
25 notes · View notes
cyhyr · 3 years
Text
Summer of Whump Day 3: Drowning
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG
Pairing: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
WC: ~1380
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply; drowning
Notes: Part I, pre-chūnin exams; established relationship. Inspired by this prompt from @whumpster-dumpster
~
It’s on their way home that the mission goes to shit; and isn’t that just the way. They’re only a day’s walk from Konoha, their guard is down, and this shouldn’t have happened. Yet, here he is, watching his genin sleep—Sasuke, back against a tree; Sakura, curled on the ground a little ways from the fire; Naruto…
Naruto, leaning heavily against Iruka, his ear to the older man’s chest. 
Iruka, leaning against Kakashi’s side, breathing ragged and painful to listen to. If they’re not careful he’ll develop pneumonia overnight. Kakashi keeps shaking Iruka awake so he can take deeper, fuller breaths. 
He always passes out quickly afterwards. Drowning will exhaust a man, it seems.
~
Just a simple escort mission, really, sponsored by the village itself. Bring a chūnin sensei to a small hamlet a few days away, let them evaluate a few of the promising children in the area, and bring them home. Normally, it would be a duo mission; two senseis, keeping watch for each other. But the Sandaime gave it a bit of thought, and figured the experience of a longer trip, and the chance to see another facet of one of the potential shinobi professions the genin could take later on, were all good reasons to assign the escort to a younger team, and Kakashi happened to be the first jōnin-sensei in that morning after the matter was settled.
It just so happened that the chūnin sensei Team 7 would be escorting was Umino Iruka. Kakashi was… hesitant, at first, but seeing the genin excited at the prospect of almost a week with their former sensei solves that. 
He took Iruka aside before they left the village and asked him quietly, “Will this be a problem?”
Iruka grinned, leaned into his space, and said, “I can separate work and pleasure; can you, Kakashi?”
Not if you’re going to be like that.
But Iruka kept his word, and throughout the mission remained professional. He answered Sakura’s unending questions about the Academy, drew Sasuke into conversations Kakashi didn’t think the boy had any interest in, all the while corralling Naruto and keeping him from straying too far or showing off too much.
If he ever wanted to test up, Iruka would make a perfect jōnin-sensei, too. Kakashi might have a competency kink.
~
The evaluation goes well, with the children showing promise in their chakra manipulation, but none of them have a particularly strong reserve. Iruka recommends that the children be given a tutor to learn control should it become a problem, but they likely wouldn’t become the kind of strong shinobi the Hidden Villages would plunder a hamlet to steal away. The parents are honestly relieved to hear it, and Team 7 turns back to Konoha.
This is where, as mentioned, the mission went to shit.
The bandits that attacked didn’t even ping on his danger sense. They weren’t a threat to his kids—the three of them could have taken these guys in their sleep. As it was, they were outnumbered two-to-one, and Kakashi called it, “Genin, take one each; Iruka, the two by the river; I’ll get the rest.” He smiled at the kids. “First one done gets a second bowl of ramen when we get home.”
Naruto yipped and took off. Even Sakura and Sasuke picked their targets with a smirk on their face. Kakashi caught Iruka’s eye quickly, exchanged a nod with him, and then turned to the five bandits left untargeted.
They’re used to picking on civilians. They’re used to being the big bad guys. They weren’t expecting Kakashi to beat them five-to-one without even taking his hands out of his pockets.
He looks over his shoulder as the sound of fighting stops. Sakura is finishing with some chakra wire, Naruto’s is running away with their trousers around their ankles, and Sasuke has one foot calmly on the back of his unconscious foe.
But no—
“Where’s Iruka-sensei?” Naruto asks.
Kakashi runs to the river and curses; the current is fast, and just a little ways downstream is a waterfall. He takes a deep breath, scents the air, and is at once sure and dreads the answer. 
Naruto is shaking with nervous energy. Kakashi shouts over his shoulder, “Sasuke, Sakura! Keep him calm!” and then he runs down the river, keeping his senses open for any ping of Iruka—sight, smell, chakra, anything.
He gets to the overhand of the waterfall, looks over the edge, and oh gods; dives after the swirl of brunet hair in the plunge. He picks Iruka out of the water, and settles him on the shore. He’s unresponsive.
Kakashi starts rescue breaths. He’s no medic-nin, but his hand is glowing green next to Iruka’s broken ribs and he’s hoping it’s enough.
Four breaths, and the kids show up, hovering worryingly near him. They don’t even mention that his mask is down. 
The sixth breath does the trick, Iruka coughing up lungfuls of river water. Kakashi has Sasuke and Naruto assist him in keeping Irua on his side so he can heave and cough without choking; at the same time, he coaches Sakura through readying the shoreline for camp.
“Kakashi,” Iruka groans.
“Don’t—”
“My head. Concussion. Can’t—” Iruka slips unconscious again. Naruto doesn’t exactly scream, but it’s a near enough thing.
He puts his hand on Iruka’s head and tries to fix it. But he doesn’t know how to fix a concussion. He knows how to escape the hospital through a concussion; fixing one is beyond him. “Naruto,” he says, “help Iruka-sensei out of his flak. Search his scrolls for extra clothes.”
Naruto is gentle with Iruka’s limbs, but knows exactly which pocket to open to get the correct storage scroll. Kakashi sends Sasuke and Sakura out to find firewood, and then enlists Naruto to help him in dressing Iruka in dry clothes. Iruka wakes up a few times while they’re dressing him, flushes at what’s happening, but can’t seem to help much. Kakashi shushes him when he tries to apologize.
He gets Iruka to take a few deep breaths before he falls asleep again. 
Naruto pulls Iruka’s hair out its tie, then gives it to Kakashi. “He likes to sleep with it braided,” Naruto mutters. 
It’s as much of a blessing as he’s going to get, he supposes. “I don’t know how to braid hair,” he admits. “Could you show me?” Naruto smiles, and shows Kakashi how to braid Iruka’s hair, still wet, before Sakura and Sasuke get back. He doesn’t use the sharingan; this time, above all others, would be cheating.
~
They’re walking back, slowly. Iruka has an arm braced over Kakashi’s shoulder, and Kakashi has his arm wrapped around Iruka’s waist. If it takes them an extra day, so be it. Sasuke and Sakura are out front, and Naruto is between the pairs, torn between wanting to stay next to Iruka and wanting to hang out with his peers.
Iruka solves his problem. He waves Naruto ahead with a smile. Once Naruto is distracted though, he lets himself lean heavier on Kakashi.
“Iruka,” Kakashi starts, and he knows his voice sounds wrecked but he can’t help it; he almost lost him.
“Team leader or not, it’s not your fault,” Iruka says immediately. “I took a bad hit. No one could have predicted that.”
“You drowned. If I had been seconds later, I might not have—”
“But you weren’t, Kakashi.” Iruka looks up at him with the softest eyes and Kakashi’s heart clenches. “You were just in time. You’re enough.”
They continue to walk in silence a little longer. 
“I can’t go on missions with you again.”
Iruka snorts. “Clearly. We should have updated our paperwork before we left.” He lets his head fall onto Kakashi’s for just a moment. “We’re just so new, I didn’t think it’d be a problem.”
“Certainly not a problem of authority,” Kakashi agrees. “I think the genin would actually castrate me if I tried anything without your full and enthusiastic consent.” They share a hearty laugh, which for Iruka turns into a coughing fit; the genin turn around and glare at Kakashi as though it’s his fault, and yeah it kind of is but—
Iruka’s waving them off, smiling again, “I’m alright, just something funny Kakashi-sensei said.”
The kids turn around slowly and start walking again.
10 notes · View notes
Text
Standing on Ceremony
Isn’t the Hokage inauguration ceremony kinda like a wedding between you and Konohagakure? (Kakashi Hiden Ch. 2) | AO3 |
When Naruto arrives the training grounds, he feels a distinct sense of déjà vu.
Firstly, because Sasuke and Sakura are already there. Secondly, because Kakashi isn’t, in spite of the fact it was definitely him who’d sent the vague summons asking him here.  
“You guys too?” asks Naruto, holding up the note. It contains only three lines and a poorly-drawn depiction of one of his sensei’s dogs. 
Sakura and Sasuke nod, and fish notes out of their own pockets. “‘Training grounds. Morning. You’ll want to be there,’” reads Sakura in a drawling tone that must be an impression of their teacher. “Who sends this kind of message?”
“Kakashi,” says Sasuke, shaking his head. 
“What do you think he wants?” asks Naruto, sitting down beside them. “Not another bell test?”
Sakura laughs, and throws a skeptical look at the two boys. “I don’t think he wants to be responsible for the damages.”
Sasuke and Naruto meet eyes, and Naruto grins. Sasuke gives him what passes for a smile in Sasuke expressions, which mostly consists of his mouth twitching at the corners like his lips want to turn upward but they’ve forgotten how.
Though Sasuke isn’t residing in the village currently, Kakashi does ask that he make regular, if brief, in-person reports. Yesterday, he’d delivered one such report, and it appears that he has yet to leave. Naruto suspects that Sasuke is getting lonely in his travels, and that Kakashi has caught on. He doesn’t think Kakashi would go as far as staging an intervention, but perhaps this meeting is meant as a reminder that he has something waiting for him in Konoha.
Either way, it’s nice to have the three of them together like this, so Naruto can’t be too mad at Kakashi for being vague about when he’d arrive. He’s the Hokage now; he finally has a legitimate excuse.
“Could be a mission, you know,” muses Naruto aloud. Excitement flares up. The three of them haven’t been partnered together since the war.  
Sasuke raises an eyebrow. “He’d just call us into his office for that.”
“Maybe he just wants to spend time with his old team,” offers Sakura with a smile. “He’s kind of a sap, when it comes down to it.”
“If it was all about spending time together, you’d think he’d actually be here,” says Naruto, flopping down on the grass. His arms form a headrest beneath his chin.  
Sakura and Sasuke both let out long-suffering sighs. “Same old sensei,” says Sakura.
They sit there for like this for a while, chatting idly as they wait. Naruto tells them about his most recent date with Hinata and his shadowing of Kakashi as the Hokage, Sakura informs them about the progress of her children’s therapy centres and the vegetable garden she’s started with Yamato’s advice, and Sasuke tells them about the rumours he’s been following and, surprisingly, a tea shop visit with Jūgo, whom he’d run into while passing through Kusa. 
After an hour and a half has passed, Sasuke pulls out a pocket watch. “It’s afternoon now,” he says, not sounding surprised in the least. 
Naruto groans and stands. “I can’t sit still like this forever, you know. I’m going to go get him.”
“Get who?” asks a voice from beyond the trees. 
“Sai,” exclaims Naruto, upon looking at the new arrival. “Did Kakashi-sensei ask you to meet him here too?”
“Yamato-taichō did, actually,” Sai tells them as he approaches. “Though he stated that he would not arrive until shortly before two in the afternoon. I thought I’d come early to do some sketching.”
Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke all exchange looks. It cannot be a coincidence that Yamato and Kakashi would send messages for a meeting at the same spot on the same day. And since Yamato’s instruction tends to be much more precise than Kakashi’s... “We’ve been waiting here for hours for nothing,” concludes Sakura, exasperated. 
“Sensei,” says Naruto crossly, eyes in the direction of the Hokage tower as if to somehow project his annoyance on Kakashi from a distance. 
“Hn.” Sasuke folds his arm across his chest. 
Sai pulls a sketchbook out of his bag and sits down. “This is an unusual occurrence,” he comments idly, flipping to a blank page. “To have both versions of Team Kakashi come together. It is rare that all six of us are in the village at once, these days.”
Naruto’s sour expression is replaced by a smile. “That’s right! All of Team 7 will be in one place. That’s pretty exciting, you know!”
“Don’t forget Team 10,” pipes up Ino, bounding up towards them with Shikamaru and Chōji in tow. 
Sai smiles at her, setting down his sketchbook as she finds her place between him and Sakura. “Hello,” he says sociably. “Would you like to hold my hand? Sakura tells me it is common practice among new romantic partners.”
Ino laughs. “Only if you want to,” she says, and seems pleased when he grasps her fingers. 
“What are you doing here, Ino?” asks Sakura, prodding her friend. “Do you and Sai have a date after our meeting?” 
Shikamaru is the one who answers, coming to stand at Naruto’s side. “If you mean the meeting with Kakashi-sensei, we’re here for it too. Ino made us come early because she saw Sai headed this way. Troublesome,” he adds, sighing. Ino aims a stray kick at his ankle. 
Naruto’s brow creases in thought. “So it’s not a team meeting then,” he says. “What do you think they want?”
“They?” asks Chōji, confused. 
“Yamato-taichō will be here also,” explains Sai. 
Shikamaru’s eyes narrow. “Both of them? It’s strange that they’d call us all here on our days off.” 
“Speak for yourself,” says Ino. “Sakura and I just got back from a mission at dawn. Overseeing children’s therapy centres isn’t a simple task.”
Naruto and Sasuke stare at Sakura in surprise. “I slept for a few hours when I got back,” she says, shrugging. “And I’ve got the next week off, so I figured taking one meeting wouldn’t kill me.”
“Will you kill Kakashi, if he doesn’t show up?” asks Sasuke. His comment is for Sakura’s benefit, but it goes unmissed by the rest of the group.
They all turn to stare at him. It is, Naruto realizes, glancing at his expression, Sasuke’s attempt at humour. Involuntarily, Naruto lets out a snort. Sakura giggles. Ino and Chōji look conflicted, and Sai only shakes his head.  
“You’re not allowed to make treason jokes,” says Shikamaru, unamused. Sakura is the one who kicks Shikamaru this time, and her blow lands. Wisely, he offers no further admonitions. 
“The two of them have got to be up to something,” declares Naruto. “Why else would they gather so many of us here?”
Thoughtfully, Sakura asks, “Do we know if anyone else is coming?”
As if summoned by the question, three new figures approach the grounds. Four, if Naruto is being technical, but only three of which are likely to have received a message about this meeting. Naruto recognizes each of them in different ways. Hinata, by sight, since he’s learned to spot her across crowded rooms. Kiba, by sound, since sure enough, he is in the middle of saying something to Akamaru loudly enough to be heard even from this distance. Shino, by the presence of the other two, and the unsettling feeling of having bugs nearby. 
“Hinata-chan!” Naruto calls out to his girlfriend, waving. 
Hinata smiles and returns the greeting. When they are close enough for Shino’s calm voice to be heard, he tells Naruto, “It is common courtesy to greet all members of a group when they arrive. Why? The reason is because we are also your friends, Naruto.”
“Sorry,” says Naruto sheepishly. “Hey Shino, Kiba.”
Kiba laughs. “That sounded sincere. Why are all of you guys down here? Me and Akamaru could smell everyone gathering. You got the same note too?”
“Yeah. Actually, can we see yours?” Naruto asks eagerly. “We’re trying to figure out what this is all about.”
Kiba pulls out a crumpled note from his pocket. On it, the neat scrawl of their former captain states, ‘Please come to Training Ground 3 at two in the afternoon. There is an important matter to be discussed. Your presence would be much appreciated. Yamato.’
“‘Important,’ huh,” muses Naruto. “Wonder what it could be.”
Only more questions are raised as their party grows beyond just the rookies of their year whom Yamato and Kakashi have been teamed up with before. Tenten and Lee are next, the latter pushing Gai’s wheelchair at a pace which cannot be safe for either of them. Gai seems to know better than the teenagers about what’s going on, but when asked, simply says with shining eyes, “My rival has surpassed me once more!”
Kurenai joins them too, balancing a growing Mirai on her hip. A few more jōnin Naruto recognizes follow, like Shizune, Aoba, Genma, and Anko. And some he doesn’t, like a woman with long purple hair and a man with sleek brown hair, though Naruto must assume they know Kakashi or Yamato based on the way they keep referring to a ‘taichō.’ Iruka shows up a bit later among a handful of chūnin, and Naruto tries to bargain with him for answers only to find out he doesn’t know anything more than him. 
Finally, exactly ten minutes before the scheduled meeting time, Yamato himself shows up. He stands by the posts where Team 7 was first officially formed. Strangely, he is not wearing his jōnin uniform or face plate. In fact, he is in nicer clothes than Naruto has ever seen him, looking like he wouldn’t be out of place at one of the Daimyo’s fancy events that Naruto has started being invited to since the war. 
“Taichō!” Naruto says. “What’s with the outfit? Where’s Kakashi-sensei? Why’d you make all of us come here?”
“I think we’d better wait for Kakashi-senpai before we get into the details,” says Yamato.
Sakura groans. “We’ve been waiting, Yamato-taichō!”
Yamato smiles. “He’ll be here.”
The younger members of the group try to convince him to explain, but years of ANBU training have made him plenty able to withstand questioning. He starts by shooting down questions politely, but eventually turns to them with a ghoulish expression that silences the most vocal of his interrogators. 
As it happens, they don’t have to wait all that much longer, because fifteen minutes after the agreed upon time, Kakashi indeed arrives, dressed just as properly as Yamato. With him, he brings his predecessor, Tsunade, who is donning the hat she passed on not long ago with pursed lips as she hauls around a bag that makes a suspicious sloshing sound. 
“Sorry I’m late,” says Kakashi, sidling up next to Yamato. “I had to collect a very important guest.” He nods at Tsunade. 
“Guest for what?” Naruto demands. “What’s this about, sensei?”
Yamato turns to Kakashi. “Shall we start?” 
“Right. As you know, Tenzō and I have known each other a long time. I consider him to be a very important person in my life,” Kakashi says, nodding at the man beside him. “So, we wanted to announce it to you all.”
“Announce what?” asks Ino, folding her arms. “That you care about each other?”
Kakashi shrugs. “Sounds about right.” The group begins to sigh and exchange murmurs, until Yamato adds, “Legally.”
“That’s not a legal procedure I’m familiar with,” says Sai, pulling a notebook from his pocket. He skims it, and then frowns, looking to his peers for answers. “There isn’t any formal custom for simply declaring one’s importance to one another, is there?”
“Sure there is,” jokes Kiba, throwing his hands behind his head. “Marriage.”
Kakashi snaps his fingers. “That’s the word.”
A stillness falls over the crowd. For a moment, everyone just stares at the two men, who have remarkably calm faces for people who’ve just announced a lifelong commitment. They don’t seem inclined to elaborate, simply smiling (or in Kakashi’s case, hiding a smile) as they look out at the faces of their loved ones. The silence drags on, until Naruto shouts, “I knew they were dating!”
“Well, yeah,” says Sakura. “They were holding hands at the ramen stand last week. What did you think they were doing? Practicing hand signs?”
“Naruto was on a mission then,” Sai reminds her.
Naruto looks between Sai and Sakura, betrayed. “You went for ramen without me?”
“I think there are bigger questions here than about ramen,” interjects Sasuke, eyeing Kakashi and Yamato as if they’ve suddenly caused him to reevaluate his world view once again. 
“You’re getting married?” asks Hinata. “Have you decided on a date for the wedding?”
“Today,” says Kakashi affably. 
“We knew you’d all be free,” Yamato adds. 
Dozens of eyes turn to each other, looking for the same flabbergasted expression on their neighbours’ faces as there is on their own. By the looks of it, almost no one but the pair at the front had prior warning. Except...
“Did you know about this, Gai?” asks Aoba.
Gai beams, putting up a thumbs-up and a wink in the direction of the two men. “Kakashi knows that he cannot hide anything from me.”
Kakashi chuckles. “We needed witnesses for the legal filing. Gai is my best friend.”
The clearer it becomes that this is not some kind of joke, the more eyebrows go up. “But Kakashi-sama, as the Hokage, shouldn’t your wedding be an event for public celebration?” asks Shizune. 
Kakashi and Yamato share a look, as if they’ve been expecting this question all along. “Not if no one is aware of it,” says Kakashi. 
“I told him it was a nonsensical idea. But then, that’s never stopped us before,” says Yamato, doing a poor job of suppressing a smile.
“They have my blessing,” says Tsunade, shrugging. “Sarutobi-sensei’s wedding wasn’t a big event. I don’t see why Kakashi’s has to be. Besides, we’ve still got Naruto’s wedding to look forward to if we want something to bring the villages together.”
Hinata and Naruto catch each other’s eyes and then turn red. Luckily, Sakura saves them from having to address the comment by aiming a reproachful look at Kakashi. “You could’ve told your guests at least, Kakashi-sensei.”
“What would be the fun in that?” asks Kakashi with alarming sincerity. 
“We could have dressed appropriately,” says Sai, with a glance down at his bare midriff. He notes something down on his sketchpad, which Naruto is willing to bet is a question about wedding attire. A few more voices offer their assent to Sai’s words.  
Yamato waves them down. “What you’re all wearing is fine. We didn’t want to waste anyone’s time with having to prepare.”
Kakashi nods. “I know some of you have just returned from missions,” he says, a bit more seriously, “and some of you will be leaving in the morning. We didn’t want to take up more than an afternoon.”
“For your marriage,” says Sasuke, still sounding startled.
“Wedding,” corrects Kakashi easily. “Marriages usually last longer than an afternoon.”
Yamato nudges him, raising an eyebrow. “We’ll see.”
“Have a little more faith, Tenzō,” says Kakashi, grabbing hold of his hand. “Our marriage should survive at least until next week.”
“Next month, optimistically.”
“I bet we could even make it until the winter.”
Naruto gets the feeling their exchange could go on for some time, but a cleared throat brings their attention back to the crowd. 
“Where will the ceremony be?” asks the purple-haired woman. She is one of the few who doesn’t seem very caught off-guard by the antics of the two men. 
“Oh,” says Yamato, as if remembering himself. “Here.” He lets go of Kakashi’s hand in order to form the signs of the mokuton, and from the earth, several rows of benches rise up. With a few more gestures, an altar has formed, and several fruits have dropped down from nearby trees to adorn it. Tsunade pulls out a bottle of sake and three cups from her bag to join the display.
“Please sit,” says Kakashi, gesturing to the impromptu arrangement. “We’ll begin shortly.”
There is a general shuffle towards the seats. Naruto wonders if he should be sitting with Hinata, but he’s still a little bit sheepish about the wedding comment, mostly because it has been on his mind lately. Either way, his decision is made for him when he finds himself squished between the other members of Team 7 in the seats closest to the altar. 
“This is crazy, you know,” says Naruto, as his former team leaders begin to move into place. “Is the Hokage allowed to do this kind of thing?”
“He’s ranked higher than anyone else in the village,” says Sai, “so probably.”
“I still can’t believe he was late to his own wedding.” Sakura sighs, but then laughs. “I guess I can’t imagine him getting married in a normal way.”
“Marriage,” repeats Sasuke, shaking his head. “He never struck me as the type.”
“I don’t think you need to be any particular type,” says Sakura, with a gentle smile, “as long as you love the other person.” Sasuke stares at her for a moment, and then nods. When Sakura turns away, Naruto smirks and pokes Sasuke in the leg. He receives a slapped hand in return.
It seems as if they’ve tasked Tsunade with filling the role of master of ceremonies, if the way she stands in front of them is any indication. Naruto supposes it’s fitting. Kakashi isn’t much one for pomp and circumstance, and Yamato has always been a staid, if stalwart, presence. So they would’ve chosen a ceremony as simple as possible, without the numerous steps required with a priest. 
They exchange vows, which Naruto hears but understands very little. There are mentions of ANBU and a boy named Kinoe, whom Naruto has never met but of whom Kakashi seems to be very fond. He figures it can’t be another nickname, since Kakashi already calls Yamato ‘Tenzō.’ They reference locations that Naruto isn’t aware of Kakashi ever having gone, but he supposes they are old. Yamato even mentions the word ‘Tsukuyomi,’ which sets Sasuke on edge beside him. If Naruto didn’t know any better, he’d think they were speaking in code.
What Naruto does understand comes at the very end of their speeches. 
“Kakashi,” says Yamato. “I would be honoured to spend my life with you.”
“Good,” Kakashi replies warmly. Tsunade huffs and gestures at the scroll in front of her. Peering down at it, Kakashi adds, “I accept.”
As Kakashi and Yamato begin to offer each other sake, it dawns on Naruto that this is actually happening.
Kakashi, his sensei and Hokage, who has taught him almost every important lesson he knows, is marrying someone. Kakashi, who has spent more time at the memorial stone at this training ground than half the people present combined. Kakashi, who buys their team ramen, and pretends to like Sakura’s food experiments, and strong-arms Sasuke into displaying human affection, and accepted Sai into their team without a word. He has someone to hold him up, in the same way he holds their team and the village up.
It makes Naruto smile. He’ll have to thank Yamato later. 
Though Naruto hasn’t been to a wedding before, he knows enough to understand that the exchange of sake is among the last of the rites performed. He watches as Kakashi somehow manages to take a sip without lowering the fabric on his mouth, and then gives the cup to Yamato. When the motion has repeated itself, they shift beside one another and the movement sets off a thought like a light bulb in Naruto’s brain. 
Naruto suddenly leans forward in his seat, and elbows Sasuke in the side, jostling him into Sakura. “What was that for, dobe?” Sasuke complains, elbowing him back. 
“They’re going to kiss, you know,” whispers Naruto, staring forward intently. 
Beside him, Sakura and Sasuke frown at each other. “And why are you so excited about it?” asks Sakura, giving Naruto a concerned glance. 
“They’re going to kiss,” Naruto repeats, eyes trained on Kakashi and Yamato as Tsunade begins to conclude her ceremonial duties, “and Kakashi-sensei will have to take off his mask.”
Both Sasuke and Sakura immediately look at Kakashi and Yamato. As Naruto predicted, their sensei and captain are moving closer to one another, and each of them inclines their head as far as they can, hoping to get the best angle. Tsunade says the last of her speech, and all three are frozen in anticipation. 
And then Yamato takes a large step forward, placing himself in front of Kakashi with his back to the onlookers. He puts his hands on either side of Kakashi’s face, so even those sitting on the side can’t get a good look at him. Kakashi’s hand rises to pull down his mask, but all they can see is the back of Yamato’s head, leaning into the person he is marrying. 
“Come on,” says Naruto, at the same time Sasuke says, “What the hell?” and Sakura says, “Really?” 
And then they’re separating, and turning to the crowd with bright and pleased faces and the mask already back in place. Kakashi spots the dejected faces of his former students, and he winks. 
Sai seems confused by the behaviour of the rest of his team. “I don’t understand what the fuss is about,” he confesses. “Kakashi-senpai took his mask down when we had lunch last week, Sakura.”
“He did what?” ask Naruto and Sakura simultaneously. Sasuke narrows his eyes. 
When Kakashi and Yamato move away from the altar, hand in hand, to join the crowd, Naruto asks, “Did your really let Sai see your face before us, sensei? We’ve known you longer!”
Kakashi laughs, his dark eyes alight. “I believe the customary greeting is ‘Congratulations,’ Naruto.”
“Oh,” says Naruto, cheeks turning pink. “Congratulations.” His teammates repeat the sentiment. 
“Thank you,” says Yamato, with a broader grin on his face than Naruto has ever seen. Turning towards the rest of the guests, he tells them, “For those of you who are available, there will be food and drink at my home this evening. No ramen, I’m afraid,” he adds teasingly to Naruto. 
There are some cheers among the attendees. Gai and Lee decide to race to Yamato’s house on their hands, and a disconcerted Tenten is left behind to bring Gai’s wheelchair. “How do they think they’re going to get in without either of you to open the door?” she asks. Kakashi shrugs, and she sighs, going after her team. 
“Will you be taking time off from your duties?” Sai asks, as the crowd disperses. 
“A few days,” Kakashi affirms. “Tsunade-sama has agreed to look after the administrative affairs while I’m gone. Though I told her she could pass a few tasks on to Naruto.”
Naruto’s mouth drops open in surprise. “Really, sensei?”
Kakashi nods. “I trust you.” Then, his gaze turns to Sasuke as he pulls something out of his pocket. He places the object in Sasuke’s hand. “You’ll be minding my apartment at the Hokage’s residence,” he declares. 
Sasuke blinks at the key in his hand. “I didn’t agree to that.”
“Think of it like a wedding present,” says their teacher, patting him on the shoulder. “Besides, I can’t have you sleeping on the roof of the tower whenever you spend the night in the village.”
Naruto and Sakura look at Sasuke, alarmed. He shrugs. “I needed somewhere to camp out. Naruto was already asleep. It seemed as good a place as any,” he explains. 
“We’re getting you an apartment in Konoha,” mutters Naruto darkly. Sakura nods. 
Sasuke opens his mouth to refute them, but Yamato cuts across the protest. “We’ll talk about it later,” he says lightly. “For now, we celebrate.”
At that, the group can offer no further argument. They move along with the rest of the guests in the same direction as Team Gai. Sakura starts telling Sasuke sleeping on roofs is bad for his back, and Sai asks Sasuke if any respectable landlord will rent to him. Naruto lags behind his teammates, still looking at his sensei and captain. 
“Naruto?” prompts Yamato quietly.
“Congratulations,” Naruto says again, hoping they know what he means.
He thinks they do. Because they smile at each other, and then at him. Kakashi throws an arm around his shoulders as he replies, “Thank you.”
80 notes · View notes
raendown · 7 years
Link
Pairing: KakashiIruka Soulmate au: The one where you can only see color of any objects that your soulmate has touched; everything else is black and white
Follow the link or read it under the cut!
When he figured it out after so many years Iruka was angry. His soulmate laughed about it of course because he always did think these kinds of things were funny. Iruka did not. It was just confusing. Confounding. The biggest mystery he’d been trying to figure out since he was a child when he first noticed the pattern. How could there be so many signs that his soulmate was in the same village and yet he’d never touched a single doorknob? A strange thing to notice, possibly, but once he did it stuck out like a sore thumb.
More than half the people in the village could see the color of the doorway which led to the room where shinobi came to sign for new missions. Iruka had heard many people describe it as dark brown wood with a faded brass knob. To him both looked like different shades of grey. It wasn’t that he couldn’t imagine the colors because he could. He had seen colors before in many varied places around town and each new discovery was a thrill that raced up and down his spine like lightning. But what he had never seen the color of was a doorknob and it boggled his mind. How could someone touch so many things yet never open a door?
One of the things which kept Iruka sane was his classroom. Most people would say it was because the Academy was his safe harbor and he found himself at his happiest when surrounded by his beloved children. Those people would be only half right. What he liked best about his classroom was actually the colors. The walls, the ancient posters, even some of the books were visible to him in brilliant color. A handful of the desks, as well. They existed as light brown islands in a sea of muted white and grey. Iruka liked his classroom because it was easy to tell that his soulmate had spent time in here and he liked to imagine them attending lessons the same way he had, a small body sitting behind one of those light brown desks and flipping through one of the bright blue textbooks.
Random other things around the village showed color for him: a single table inside an old café, every stool at the ramen stand, random books in his favorite book store, handrails and patches of brick in dark alleyways. Iruka would visit a friend in the hospital only to realize that the blankets on the bed were a soft blue. He would visit another and notice the faded yellow sheets. He could see the mission room where he worked after school in minute detail, every desk and wall lit up like his soulmate had gone around and run their hands over everything. There were times he suspected that rather than the idea that they visited frequently enough to touch so many things over time because he could never understand how they would do so without ever touching the blasted doorknob.
The most common thing for Iruka to see in color were trees – for whatever reason. He was hard pressed to find a tree in Konoha which did not register in leafy shades of green and rich browns. Fall was his favorite time of year, when the greens would turns to a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges and yellows and purples. He liked to see them carpet the earth until color stretched as far as his eyes could see.
As a child he had reasoned that it would be easy to find his soulmate because their clothes would bloom with color. You can’t help touching what you’re wearing after all. His theory held until one day when he got lost in a crowd and a kind man knelt in front of him, offering to lead him back to his parents. The man’s clothes showed up green and blue and white, small red triangles running around one sleeve. After that he took notice of what he hadn’t before: that weird kid who wore a jumpsuit everywhere showed up in green, though his necktie stayed grey. His neighbor Rin flounced through life with a new color for her shirts every day but never for her shorts. Over the years people came in and out of Iruka’s life, sometimes in color and sometimes in grey, and he realized his theory had been wrong.
Even years later he couldn’t help but be a little bit annoyed when he thought back to the day when he finally figured it all out. His whole day had gone wrong from the moment he woke up to realize his alarm had failed to go off. His students had been rambunctious, Anko had stolen his lunch again, and he’d had to chase a sleeping Hatake Kakashi out of three different trees in the school yard. If the man wanted to nap he should just go home!
By the time Iruka arrived to his shift in the mission room he had very little patience left and a vein in his forehead ticked ominously when a young genin told him the Hokage wished to see him in her office. He stomped his way to the upper floors of the Hokage Tower and when he stood in front of Tsunade’s desk there was nearly a visible cloud of steam above his head. She only smiled at him in faint amusement, entirely unbothered by one of his infamous moods.
“Iruka-sensei I’m afraid I’m going to need you to play scribe to someone for a little while today,” she told him. The corners of his mouth turned down and his head tilted to one side in question.
“Scribe? Forgive me my lady but you have dozens off off-duty shinobi at your disposal and I’m supposed to be working the Mission Desk right now. Why me?”
He didn’t at all like the frozen look of her smile. “I’ve just had one of my jōnin come back with important intel. It needs to be recorded but he also managed to shatter his right hand on the way home; I’ve seen him make attempts at writing with his left hand, it’s even more illegible than usual. Yours, on the other hand, is perfectly neat. I need you to record what intelligence he managed to gather and copy it in triplicate for the council meeting tomorrow.” Tsunade smiled wider and it was a strained thing, pulled at the edges in all the wrong ways. Iruka narrowed his eyes.
“My writing is no neater than any of those in the cipher department,” he pointed out. “And they would likely have the clearance this kind of thing should have. I don’t. So…?”
“Do you enjoy thinking yourself clever?” His Hokage asked him, dropping the smile and replacing it with a frustrated look instead. He shrugged.
“I might not be very clever but I’m also not stupid. You’re not telling me something.”
Tsunade made a sound of disgust as she yanked open one of her desk drawers and pulled out a ceramic bottle. Iruka scrunched his nose at the sight of her sake but said nothing. He was impertinent but not so impertinent that he would tell the Hokage what she could and couldn’t do.
“Fine. He’s wounded and grumpy and hopped up on meds. We need to get this information out of him as soon as possible but he’s being difficult so we need someone to deal with him who won’t take any of his bullshit. You’re good at dealing with children, Iruka-sensei, and Kakashi is nothing more than an overgrown child.” She paused to throw back a mouthful of sake, stress obvious in every line of her body. “My hope is that he won’t find you a threat and will therefore speak to you where he hasn’t spoken to anyone else. If we can find him, that is.”
“You may wish to try the schoolyard. He’s been napping in the trees there all day.”
He sat still under the very long, tired look that she gave him, raising an eyebrow but offering no comfort. He was feeling bitchy too. Tsunade turned away and hollered for her ANBU guards to go check the Academy grounds for Hatake Kakashi and bring him to her at once.
Ten minutes later her guards retuned, one of them popping his head in the door to say that Kakashi would be arriving any moment. Iruka watched them close the door and wondered why they didn’t just leave it open if they knew someone was coming. He got his answer when a large mass of blue and green thumped against the window right behind the Hokage’s desk, wiggling it open with a small bit of trouble and then tumbling in with a low curse.
Kakashi stood but did not straighten, keeping his shoulders hunched inward slightly. His right hand was trapped in a cast and held at a protective angle close to his chest. His one visible eye was glazed and Iruka sighed at having to deal with someone ‘hopped up on meds’ as Tsunade had put it. He would have wondered why she didn’t just heal the injury but Hatake was famous for injuring himself so badly that even this world famous healer threw up her hands in frustration. This did not bode well for his poor mood.
“Brat! Are you incapable of using the door?” Tsunade growled as Kakashi slunk around her desk. Iruka blinked, pulled from his internal musing.
“Don’t like doors,” Kakashi mumbled as he made his way over to the couch sitting along one wall. Two of the cushions and the back of it were a horrible mustard yellow. Kakashi sat down on the third cushion and Iruka felt his heart skip several beats at once as he watched it light up, fading in like a developing photograph until it was the same ugly shade of the rest of the couch.
And that was when Iruka realized the answer had been much too obvious this entire time. He understood why so many things in the village had color and yet he’d never seen a doorknob that wasn’t grey. He understood why every tree in Konoha showed up in his spectrum.
Because Hatake Kakashi was his soulmate, the man infamous for never using a door where there existed a window and who spent his recovery time between frequent injuries napping in tress around the village. Iruka’s bad day compounded with the frustration of his discovery as he watched Kakashi curl up on the couch, hazy eyes sweeping each corner of the room like he expected to be attacked any minute. The poor man was high on pain killers and Iruka did not care.
“HOW?” he demanded, startling both Tsunade and Kakashi with his sudden outburst. “We’ve been living in the same village this entire time! We’ve crossed paths thousands of – UGH! Just how!?”
Kakashi barely managed to dodge the paperweight Iruka threw at his head before storming out. Tsunade watched the chūnin go, baffled and a little worried. Then her attention was turned back to her injured jōnin when he began to coo and turn the paperweight around and around in his hands.
“Did you know this is red?” he asked her dazedly. “I didn’t know it was red! Pretty!” Tsunade’s jaw dropped so low she nearly dislocated it.
Later – much later – Iruka would apologize and explain himself and he would of course feel very bad for the way he behaved. Kakashi would laugh it off and make a comment that earned him a swat up the side of the head. The two of them would blush and talk circles around each other until Iruka gave in first and kissed Kakashi with all the pent up emotions he had been waiting to unleash on his elusive soulmate.
All of that would have to wait, however, until his temper cooled down and Kakashi wasn’t drugged to the point where he didn’t even realize he’d just found his other half.
It wasn’t the meet cute Iruka always pictured but even he had to admit it was just so very them.
36 notes · View notes
kuriquinn · 7 years
Text
An Inch of Gold [12/?]
General Disclaimer
This chapter has been beta-read by: Sakura’s Unicorn
It seems like an eternity before anyone can process what just happened.
Naruto hits the ground several metres away, his cheeks scraping across the stone. The pain in his shoulder and chest roar like flames, and his lungs scream for air. Even as he struggles upright, one hand pressing against spurts of blood, his knees buckle.
Still crouched by the water, Sakura’s fingers clap tightly to her mouth. Shock, horror, and disbelief war for dominance over her face.
“So nice of you all to swarm here,” the newcomer sneers, pointing bloody claws at Sarada. A pair of brass knuckles have been fused to the back of each hand, gangrenous around the seam. “Especially you, you little bitch. I’ll enjoy shredding you for sealing me into that cave-in.”
He shifts into a crouch, like a tiger preparing to spring. At the same time, Kakashi dashes away from the mouth of the other tunnel. Bull is at his heels, both of them intent on the man, but Kakashi is still weak and slower than normal.
He won’t make it in time.
Sasuke would normally coordinate his movements with Kakashi’s—flank him and provide another front of assault on the enemy—but he finds himself torn.  Naruto lies severely wounded and bleeding nearby, still trying to stand. He’s a clear target of attack, if the clawed man wasn’t so focussed on the girls. While Sasuke knows from even short experience that they can both defend themselves in a normal situation, this thing has a curse-seal spread across its body.
With a snarl, the clawed man lunges at Sarada and Sakura. Sasuke is instantly in front of them. Sakura’s jaw drops as he catches the downward swinging blade with his kunai. He reverses, kicking his foot upward in the initial movement of Shishi Rendan. Before he can fully execute it, though, the man vaults backwards and lands in a crouch, eyeing Sasuke warily.
“Your eyes…” he murmurs, a touch of suspicion in his words. “You’re the Uchiha brat, aren’t you?”
“And if I am?” Sasuke counters. Behind him, Sarada makes an inquiring noise.
The man’s ruined mouth pulls into a grin that is more of a grimace. “Orochimaru spoke of you. He has plans for you, kid.”
Sasuke narrows his eyes. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours. It’s only fitting I know who I’m about to kill.”
The man barks out a bitter laugh. “I haven’t had a name in years. But if you’re so sentimental, you can call me Mumyōi.”
“A fitting moniker,” Kakashi says as he and Bull plant themselves beside Sasuke. He studies this newest opponent, trying to decide whether he has enough strength to deal with him. It’ll be a close fight, but he can manage, as long as he’s careful.
Bull growls and snaps his jaws threateningly.
“That mark of yours seems to allow you to survive where normal humans wouldn’t,” Kakashi remarks. In a louder tone, he warns the kids, “Keep an eye out for others.
“Don’t bother,” Mumyōi sneers, lips widening over rotted teeth. “The other bastards were all crushed. About the only favour you did me. I’ve been listening to those losers scream and cry for months.” He chuckles. “Their deaths were so satisfying once the door was open. I bet it’ll be the same when I’m done with you.”
Sasuke clenches his fists, preparing to throw himself at the creature, but Kakashi stops him.
“Save your strength,” he warns him quietly. “There’s a chance you’ll need it. Sakura, Sarada—” The girls straighten up at the sound of their names. “Go help Naruto.”
Neither argue; in fact, Sakura is already inching toward the boy, frantic to see if he’s all right. With Kakashi and Sasuke covering them from the enemy, they hurry across the cavern.
“I’m…fine,” he breathes through gritted teeth, still trying to get up.
Sakura pushes him back down to the floor. “Stop that! You’re losing too much blood. If you don’t stop moving, you’ll—”
“I’ll heal,” Naruto slurs, rolling away from her before slumping forward.
“—pass out,” Sakura finishes, colour draining from her cheeks.
“Why aren’t you healing? Something like this should be nothing for you!” Sarada cries, her frightened expression reflecting what Sakura feels.
“For someone whose mother is a medic-nin, your bedside manner sucks!” she accuses the other girl.
“I’ve seen him impaled on a sword and he walked it off! So, excuse me for panicking!” Sarada shoots back, turning desperate eyes on Naruto. “How long will you need before you can fight?”
Naruto blinks in surprise.
“What do you mean, fight?” Sakura demands. “He can’t—”
“He can!”
She gazes at Naruto as if trying to ask a question without voicing it.
Realisation hits him. Obviously, Sarada knows more about him in the future than simply information about his family. She knows who he is and exactly what’s inside of him. And, instead of dislike or hatred in her eyes, right now she’s looking at him like he’s worthy of respect. In fact, since they’ve met, she’s looked at him like that.
Naruto decides that it doesn’t matter if it’s possible, or how long it’ll take him. He will damn well get to his feet and protect his friends.
“As long as you can give me,” he tells her, his voice slurring as darkness overtakes his vision. Now, he just needs to convince that damned fox…
“What was that all about?” Sakura wants to know, but Sarada shakes her head.
“You said we have to stop the bleeding, right?”
“Right. He might heal fast, but even Naruto can bleed out if we don’t slow it down.”
There’s no more time to waste with questions. The girls set to work peeling Naruto’s jacket from his body and using it to stem the flow of the blood.
Meanwhile, Kakashi, Sasuke, and Bull surround Mumyōi. In his team’s diminished state, Kakashi isn’t keen on fighting someone who obviously has no compunction about attacking a kid with his back turned. If there’s a way out of this situation without having to exchange blows, he has to try.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he offers. “You answer a few questions for us, and you can go. We won’t have to kill you. Given the fact you injured my student, I’m letting you off easy.”
Mumyōi scoffs. “What makes you think I have anything to say?”
“You’ve been living as one of Orochimaru’s experiments all this time. You’ve probably heard things. Tell us what you know. It’s not like you owe him anything.”
“Is that what you think?” the man sniggers. “I volunteered for this. He said I’d be stronger. And I am.” As if to punctuate his point, he lashes out in the same instant that Bull leaps forward, spinning and kicking the dog across the room. The force of impact is such that the dog creates an indentation in the cave wall before collapsing with a pained whine.
Kakashi’s jaw clenches as his first plan fails. A fight is inevitable, it seems.
He can’t rely on his Sharingan. He’s already weaker than he was, but this creature needs to be dealt with as soon as possible.
“Be ready to move when I tell you,” he murmurs to Sasuke. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices his student nod, which is surprising. It has never come naturally to him, taking orders. Sasuke, however, knows of the precariousness of their situation. More than that, he knows that this thing intends to go after Sarada. Even if he isn’t sure he even likes the girl right now, she is his future. She represents everything he’s been fighting for since that awful night when he was eight.
She is—will be—important to him. And it’s the same for Sakura.
So, he’ll listen to Kakashi and do his best to protect them because they are his—the word is utterly foreign in his mind—family.
When Kakashi takes a step forward, Sasuke keeps his eyes firmly on the enemy. He knows that the jōnin is not fighting in his prime today and using the Sharingan anymore could be disastrous.
“Last chance,” Kakashi directs at the marked creature. “We’ve already dealt with one of Orochimaru’s experiments. I figure being imprisoned somewhere with no chance of escape might be a worse fate than if I kill you.”
Mumyōi smirks. “Even if you could send me wherever you sent that bastard—that was a nice trick, by the way—I figure you don’t have the energy to pull it off again.”
“Try me and see.”
“I’ll take my chances. Being trapped with him isn’t the worst thing that could happen. You’ve got bigger problems than a half-crazed clone with an inferiority complex—things I only heard rumours about.”
A shadow passes over his face, and for a moment he seems uneasy. The expression disappears once again, replaced with the predatory look from before.
“Anyway. Bored now.”
And he bounds forward.
Kakashi and Sasuke both dodge and land equidistant from the wild-eyed man. Sasuke’s fingers crackle with electricity, but a tiny shift of Kakashi’s head stops him. Common sense catches up—they’re in a damp cavern where current might carry. He could end up harming them all to take out this one psychopath.
Kakashi is already forming seals with his hands, and Sasuke’s Sharingan allows him to perform them completely in sync with his sensei.
Snake—Ram—Monkey—Boar—Horse—Tiger!
After summoning chakra into his chest, Sasuke expels a giant fireball, curving the flame around Mumyōi. Opposite him, Kakashi does the same, and their opponent is instantly surrounded by an inferno of skin-melting fire. Hopefully, it’ll reduce the bastard to ashes.
Somewhere behind him, he hears Sakura sniffling. She’s still desperately fighting to save her teammate and trying not to forget every bit of first aid training she’s had.
She can’t help the worried tears streaming down her cheeks at the sight of Naruto. It’s like the Land of Waves all over again. Only, instead of mourning the boy she’s in love with, she’s trying to keep the person who’s become like family to her from dying.
Sakura doesn’t want to lose him, but she has no idea what to do. Sarada—up until now, the all-knowing, incredibly cool kunoichi—is becoming frantic with worry as well.
“No! No, no, no, no!” she hisses. “You can’t die! You can’t die now! Do you hear me? You’re supposed to be stronger than this! Come on!”
She presses the already-saturated compress against his wounds. They’re closing, somehow, but not fast enough. Her eyes flash red as she glares down at Naruto, as if his injury is something offensive and unbelievable. Sakura is hit by the realisation that the other girl is also watching someone she cares about die.
Naruto is family to her in the future.
“Come on, Naruto,” Sakura whispers, pressing harder against the wounds. “You need to pull off another one of your miracles.”
Which, Naruto would love to do, really.
He swims in and out of consciousness, trying his best to hold on to the two voices that are speaking to him. It’s hard to focus past the overwhelming pain. He doesn’t remember ever being hurt this bad—of course, he’s never really been hurt, but that’s down to the Nine-Tails.
Yeah, it is. And you’d damn well better not forget it, growls a voice in his ear.
In his delirium, Naruto hallucinates the familiar, dark, damp room which exists somewhere deep within him. Whether it’s a real location or his subconscious, he’s never really thought too much about. He doesn’t like this place, even if it didn’t have a fox demon locked within it.
A fox demon who is now laughing at him.
Hey, how about you shut up?  Naruto snaps, glaring up at the thing and trying not to imagine its powerful jaws clamping around his entire body. We had a deal! I die, you die, remember?
Maybe, the Nine-Tails sneers. Or maybe, I think it’s your turn to stew for a while. You obviously aren’t going to die today. The Uchiha brat says you live. So relax.
My friends are out there, possibly dying, and you want me to relax? Naruto yells. What the hell is wrong with you?
I’m bored. I’ve been stuck in here too long. I need to stretch my legs.
Yeah? Well, tough. I’m not letting you out of there, even if I knew how.
Obviously. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun. There is a sickening kind of bloodlust in the demon’s eyes. That guy out there… He’s practically begging for it. The fox licks his lips and almost giggles. You know what he will do, right? He will tear up the scarecrow man and reduce the other Uchiha nuisance to ribbons.
Shut up!
And afterward he’ll do the same to that girl you like so much. Which is probably for the best because she’s useless. I’d eat her in a heartbeat, if I was free.
Don’t talk about Sakura that way!
Why not? She doesn’t care about you, the Nine-Tails mocks. It’s all down to Sasuke for her. She even said so. Even now that she knows she has no chance with him—have you seen the way she—
Stop it!
You really are stupid. No wonder your father trapped me inside you. Obviously, he had higher priorities than his own kid—
Shut the hell up! I don’t care about any of that! Naruto explodes. I just want to keep my friends safe! And if you running your mouth gets them killed, I swear, I’m going to make the rest of my life all about making you miserable! Even if that means dying to make sure you die, too! Now, are you going to help, or keep making stupid comments?!
The fox snarls in response.
Well? Naruto prompts.
Hmph. Give him to me.
Huh?
Give me the cretin who wounded us. Let me show him power doesn’t come from some blemish on his neck. You let me have him, and I’ll lend you enough power to heal. Then you can protect your weak, useless friends.
Naruto doesn’t reply right away, worrying that giving any kind of control to this creature might be exactly what it wants.
You’re not killing him, Naruto warns him. He could know something about the clone who caused this whole time travel mess.
Feh.
Hey, you want that fixed as much as we do! If it destroys the world, you’re as screwed as the rest of us!
The Nine-Tails is mutinous, but finally huffs in disgusted surrender. Fine, it agrees. Then, as Naruto suddenly feels the overwhelming chakra take hold, the demon adds, He doesn’t really need all of his limbs to survive, right?
Naruto’s eyes snap open. Sakura cries out in shocked surprise, watching in awe as the skin of Naruto’s shoulder knits together.
“What?” she whispers. It shouldn’t be possible—cellular regeneration is an ability she’s only ever read of in medical treatises and mythology. A thirteen-year-old boy shouldn’t be able to heal this fast.
As Naruto’s chakra changes, burning with a livid, bubbling power, an angry roar sounds from across the cavern. Within the wall of flame, a dark shadow appears, and a body vaults out of it. Mumyōi—skin singed and shiny with blisters—throws himself at Kakashi, shoving his claws into the jōnin’s throat.
Kakashi utters a strangled gurgle and disappears into a mess of sludge.
Kawarimi.
The clawed man curses, searching around for the real Kakashi.
Given the fact he used mud, Sasuke suspects that his teacher has slipped underground, intending to attack from beneath. It’s the same technique he used on Sasuke during the bell test—one that doesn’t need the Sharingan to be effective. Which means Sasuke simply needs to keep the enemy occupied.
He sets to that task with vigour, charging forward and aiming a spinning kick at Mumyōi. He holds kunai in each hand and, as he lands, swipes downward. The enemy blocks them with his claws, kicking Sasuke back while their weapons are locked. One bladed fist swings forward, but Sasuke dodges a little too slowly—the tips of the claws rend part of Sasuke’s shirt, nicking the flesh beneath.
He bites back against the pain, landing in a crouch, but only long enough to regain his momentum. While Mumyōi straightens, Sasuke slices upward with his kunai. To avoid it, the clawed man throws himself backward, rolls around, and tries to stagger to his feet. But Sasuke is airborne, bringing his weapon down…only to miss once more.
Frustration is mounting every time he fails, and Sasuke is tempted to call on the power of his own curse-mark. If it’ll help him catch up with this synthetic monster—
As if sensing his thoughts, Kakashi makes his reappearance. Two hands shoot out of the ground, about to fasten around Mumyōi’s ankles.
Sasuke knows intimately what’s about to happen and prepares himself to deliver a finishing attack to the creature’s head once he’s firmly ensconced in the ground.
Except that’s not what occurs.
Instead of being dragged underground, Mumyōi snaps forward and shoves his hand into the dirt. The broken earth trembles, and Sasuke’s heart plummets when the man straightens up—
—and drags Kakashi out by hooking his entire bladed hand through his stomach.
Kakashi coughs, blood staining his mask.
“Nice try,” Mumyōi jeers. “But my strength isn’t the only thing this curse-seal gives me. I can hear little rodents like you crawling around in the dirt. I’ve known exactly where you were this whole time.”
With a grunt, he lobs Kakashi across the room. The jōnin’s lifeless body skids and rolls, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.
“Kakashi-sensei!” Sakura screams.
Sasuke is having a hard time processing the sight himself.
Kakashi is the most talented shinobi he knows, but somehow, he’s been bested by this creature bearing the curse-seal. Somehow, Sasuke hadn’t truly believed Kakashi when he said he’d been weakened by using the Kamui, but everything happening now suggests Sarada was right. There is a price to using the evolved form of the Sharingan. One that might very well be worse than the price of using a curse-mark.
Sasuke’s neck twinges as Mumyōi turns to face him, disgusting features pulled into a triumphant smirk.
“One down, four to go. You up for it, kid?”
Sasuke’s fists clench, and he bends he knees, preparing himself for the next assault.
It never comes.
There’s flash of orange and yellow, and suddenly, Sasuke’s view of the curse-marked creature is obscured by his teammate.
“If you touch any more of my friends,” Naruto says, voice dripping with dark promise, “I will tear you to shreds.”
ナルト
The dangerous aura emanating off of Naruto is one that Sarada has never seen or felt before.
Whenever she’s witnessed Lord Seventh tap into the chakra reserves of his demonic partner, its bright, comforting, and powerful, like a warm flame. What radiates from him now is nothing like this—it’s anger, pain, and hatred. It’s making her sick just being within a few feet of it.
Naruto throws himself forward, kicking the clawed man in the chest with both feet. Mumyōi flies backward with unnatural force, slides across the floor, and nearly skids over the drop. At the last second, he uses his claws as anchors, slowing down just as his head tips over the edge. His legs kick up over his head, and he rolls to his feet, baring his teeth in a vicious snarl.
“You think that impresses me?” he growls. “So, you’re still standing. Big deal. Watch me cut your knees out from under you!”
He lunges at Naruto again, barrelling headfirst into him and throwing him backward this time—right into the path of Sakura, who’s trying to get to Kakashi.
At the last moment, Sasuke appears in front of her, grabs Naruto, and redirects him. The blond boy doesn’t even seem to notice his teammate, and instead, launches himself back out at their opponent.
“Move it!” Sasuke commands the girls, his eyes tracking Naruto’s fight.
How the hell is he doing this?
He was sure he saw the creature shove its claws straight through Naruto, and there’s no way Sakura or Sarada could have healed them that fast…is there?
“What do you think we’re trying to do?” Sarada returns while Sakura drags Kakashi out of the direct line of combat.
He gasps as her efforts tug at his wound, but there’s no choice. Slowly, they manage to get farther out of the attack range, while Kakashi tries to keep his breathing steady. Sarada doesn’t know if it’s to block out the pain or keep his students calm, but she appreciates it, nonetheless.
He squints at the ugly tears down his abdomen. “Stomach wound,” he pants, his mask almost completely saturated with red. “Without a healer…half an hour. If I’m lucky.”
“Kakashi-sensei—” Sakura protests.
“If I don’t make it—”
“Don’t say that! You’re going to be fine!��
“Sakura,” Kakashi cuts her off, a command in his tone. He has to take a moment to breathe, and then, with obvious exertion, ensures his orders are clear. “If I don’t make it, you’re in charge.”
Her eyes widen and she squeaks, “What?”
Based on both hers and Sasuke’s faces, that’s not something either of them expected him to say.
“Get Bull—he can find you a way out. Get away from that thing.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Sarada cries. “You’re not going to die, and we’re not leaving you here!”
Kakashi can’t argue with her, though, because that’s when he passes out.
Sarada curses and glares at Sasuke. “So, still think having a Mangekyō Sharingan is worth it?”
“Don’t start!” Sakura snaps. “Kakashi-sensei needs help! Your arguing will not keep him from dying!”
For the second time in less than ten minutes, they’re trying to help a loved one who is gravely injured. And Kakashi doesn’t have Naruto’s healing abilities.
“So, we won’t let him,” Sarada insists.
“How exactly are we going to do that?!”
“I have no idea—I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” Sarada replies, staring at Sasuke in the hope that he’ll come up with some kind of plan.
He’s not paying attention, though. His eyes flick back to where Naruto and Mumyōi are doing their best to tear chunks out of each other. Even in the distance, Sarada can see how Naruto’s nails have lengthened and sharpened unnaturally.
He seizes his opponent, lobbing him toward the rocky ceiling. Mumyōi’s back hits the dome, causing the entire room to shake. Cracks appear where he hit.
Sakura dives forward, shielding Kakashi and his wounds from any of the falling debris.
“We need to stop them before they bring this whole place down,” Sarada says. “We were lucky to get out of the first cave-in. I don’t want to tempt another one when Uncle Kakashi is near death.”
“Then we have to end this, now,” Sasuke declares, straightening up. He means to join Naruto and take out the enemy, but Sarada grabs for him. Her fingers settle plaintively around his wrist. He flinches at the touch—this him probably dislikes physical contact more than the older version—but it doesn’t stop her from objecting.
“You can’t. You saw what he did to Naruto, and what he did to Kakashi-sensei. If he gets you, too… If you die now…” She can’t put into words how bad it would be.
For a wonder, Sasuke actually hesitates, and something like conflict passes over his features. His gaze flicks to Sakura, who’s staring at him with the same beseeching expression Sarada feels on her own face.
There’s another dull thud, and the cavern shakes.
Naruto hits the ground, and for a few seconds, looks unable to move.
“That’s it?” the clawed man taunts. “That’s all you got? I’ve gotta say, I’m disappointed. And still a little riled up. Tell you what, kid—when you and the other pipsqueak are dead, I think I’ll take my time with the girls. They both seem so…spirited.”
The words drip with intent, and Sarada can’t quite disguise the shiver of dread that travels up her spine. Sakura’s cheeks drain of colour.
Sasuke goes very still. Suddenly, Naruto’s chakra isn’t the most disturbing thing in the cave anymore. Something dark and dangerous glints in his eyes.
“Stay behind me,” he orders the girls, voice devoid of inflexion, but leaving no room for argument. “As soon as you can, take Kakashi and the dog, and get out of here.”
“What are you going to do?” Sakura protests.
“I’ll help Naruto distract him while you run. Go through the tunnel.”
“And then what?”
“Then I’ll kill him.”
“You’re not strong enough—” Sarada’s protests dies in her throat as she notices something moving across Sasuke’s neck. At first, she thinks it’s a shadow, or maybe even a legion of bugs like what Shino-sensei commands. It spreads from a small, circular bruise, which was covered before by his clothes, and stretches across his neck, legs, and arms.
But when her Sharingan picks up the mottled colour—like dried blood—and she feels a more pointed, colder shift in her father’s chakra, a new conclusion hits her.
He has a curse-seal.
Just like the monster Naruto is fighting.
Just like the teleporter who threw her off a cliff.
“Why…why do you…” she falters.
“What did I say?” Sasuke growls at her, eyes blazing and tomoe spinning furiously. “Get moving! Now!”
“Is that…is that what I think it is?” Sarada whispers, but neither of her young parents answer her.
“You can’t!” Sakura cries. She doesn’t seem unsurprised by this, but her worry is plain. “You’re not supposed to use it, you know what it—”
“If I don’t, we’re all going to die,” Sasuke snaps. “So, shut up and stay back.”
Sakura’s mouth closes with an audible click, and she shrinks back, while Sasuke stalks purposefully away. Sarada gapes at her mother, utterly floored by what she’s just seen.
“Are you just going to let him talk to you like that?” she demands, unable to keep the reproach out of her voice.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Sakura replies dully.
“You’re his…you’re his teammate! You need to stop him!”
“Not when he’s like that. I only managed to once, and…I think it was a fluke.”
The words ‘fits of rage’ and ‘mental instability’ echo in Sarada’s mind as she remembers her conversation with Kakashi. At the same time, she makes the connection to what he said about there being only two people with curse-seals that Konoha had access to.
Sasuke is one of them.
Questions explode half-formed in her mind, but before she can settle on any particular one, her attention is drawn by the whirlwind of movement that is her father. She has a Sharingan and can barely follow him as he hammers into Mumyōi, shuriken clutched in his hands like he has his own claws. There’s a manic grin on his face that, coupled with the intensity of his eyes, makes him look as mad as the man who attacked them.
“Sarada!”
She jumps, glancing over at Sakura. Her mother’s fists are clenched, and she is very studiously trying to avoid watching the brawl unfolding across the cave.
“We have to help Kakashi-sensei,” she reminds her, words forced like they’re being spoken around a lump in her throat. Her eyes are panicked. “But I don’t know what to do.”
It’s not a question, but there’s enough weight to Sakura’s words that Sarada knows she’s expecting her to have an answer. Sasuke’s curse-seal and brutality aside, Sarada needs her attention to be here right now.
She wracks her brain for an answer to Sakura’s plea. This whole day—this whole mission—she’s been required to come up with solution after solution. She is getting closer to the bottom of her metaphoric bag of tricks. Even now, she’s not sure if there is anything she can do.
What would Mama do?
Not give up that’s for sure.
Sakura Uchiha’s determination to succeed is just as legendary as Lord Seventh’s. He once told Sarada the story of how, during the war, Mama actually stuck her hand in his chest to keep his heart beating after he’d technically died. And when Sarada was a little kid, Mama saved Uncle Shikamaru’s life by tying their life forces together. Lady fifth was furious, but that’s the kind of thinking Sarada needs right now, just enough to…
Her thoughts come to a halt as she remembers something else she saw her mother do that day.
She knows for a fact that if her mother ever finds out she considered doing this, she’ll throttle her. Because it’s not only dangerous to Kakashi, but one wrong burst of chakra could kill Sarada just as easily.
“I might have an idea,” she says, exhaling shakily. “But I’ve only ever watched my mother do it once before. If she found out I was suggesting this—”
“I don’t care what it is! Just do it!” Sakura cuts her off. “If we live through this, I promise I’ll never tell your mother, okay?”
If the situation weren’t so dire, it would be funny.
“Right.” Sarada breathes again, trying to centre herself. “I’ll need you to lend me chakra.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s the same as what you did before with Sasuke. You remember how to do that, right?”
“I think so,” Sakura allows and holds out her hand.
Sarada doesn’t mention that it’ll be even easier between them, as parents and children share certain biological properties. Now isn’t the time to continue with their ever-unfolding family drama; it’s time to save the man who’s like a second father to every single one of them.
She concentrates.
Sakura’s chakra fits seamlessly into her own, as she expected, familiar from so many incidents of healing scraped knees and fevers. There’s less of it than she’s ever felt, but it’s still familiar and strong.
“Focus on stopping the blood while I work,” Sarada instructs. “Stitch the wounds closed, if you have to. I’ll contain any bacterial infection that I can sense.”
Her left hand glows, but it’s not the same stable light her mother’s healing chakra takes on. It flickers, like an unsteady flame, because Sarada is not a medic-nin—she doesn’t have her mother’s training, and she can only rely on books and observation.  If she fails at this…
The blue glow sputters out.
“What happened?” Sakura cries.
“It’s nothing,” Sarada assures her, pushing away all doubt. “I’m just… I need to concentrate better. I’ve never…”
“You can do this,” Sakura tells her, firm. “I’ve watched you do impossible stuff the whole day. This is nothing.”
Sakura might not be her mother yet, but hearing those words bolsters Sarada’s resolve. She nods, determined, and goes back to work.
She never realised just how much exertion goes into healing someone. Her mother always makes it look so effortless, even for life-threatening injuries. The Sharingan can copy techniques flawlessly, but if it weren’t for her precise chakra control, none of this would be possible.
Doing all this while trying not to listen to the growls and pained cries from across the cave where her loved ones are either being ripped to shreds—or ripping someone else to shreds—is even harder.
She visualises the rents in Kakashi’s abdomen closing and tries to see the injuries to his internal organs do the same. After a few minutes, she pulls back, forehead and back drenched with sweat that stings the open wounds on her body.
“It’s not going to work,” Sarada pants in frustration.
Sakura’s expression is agonised. “What do you mean? The wounds are closing. I’m watching you close them, right now. I barely even have to stitch—”
“He’s lost way too much blood. Even sewn up, his heart won’t have anything to pump. Not unless we can transfuse—”
“What?!”
“It means you—”
“I know what it means! I just didn’t think you were serious!”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be serious?!”
“So, what—we’re just supposed to magically find a bag of blood somewhere?!”
“No. We’ll have to make do.”
“With what?”
“With you.”
“What?!”
“He’s O-positive, and so are you!” Sarada hisses. “So, you’re the only one who can help him right now!”
“How do you know my— Hold on. You want to do a transfusion here?! Are you insane?! That’s an incredibly complex procedure, and they don’t even do that in hospitals anymore because they have—”
“I’ve seen my mother do it in an emergency situation, and I copied it with my Sharingan, just in case,” Sarada cuts her off. “I’m not saying it won’t be hard, especially because I’ve only got the one hand working right now. But it’s just a matter of creating a cut and using a line of chakra to—”
“Explain it later,” Sakura interrupts. “Just help him now, before I come to my senses, okay?”
It’s easy to understand her sudden change of attitude. Kakashi’s skin is almost corpse-like in pallor now, and when Sarada touches her fingers to his wrist, it’s cold and his pulse is sluggish.
“Get me some water,” Sarada orders. “We need something to conduct the blood.” In the hospital setting where her mother did this procedure, she used a sterile medicinal fluid, but their options are limited right now.
Sakura scrambles to fill the small flask from her pack, and Sarada busies herself with cutting Kakashi’s sleeve from his arm. When Sakura returns, she takes the full flask and gestures for her to lie down beside Kakashi.
“Bind your arms together—not too tight, or you’ll cut off circulation, but enough to keep you close. The closer you are to one another, the better.”
Sakura does as she’s told, bringing her arm and Kakashi’s parallel to each other. With the fabric of his shirt holding them together, Sarada indicates that Sakura should lie back and be calm.
Because one of us needs to be, and if you freak out, I’ll freak out.
Summoning up her focus, she pulls her chakra into one point on her uninjured hand, her index finger. She visualizes it forming into a blade, a chakra-scalpel like she’s seen her mother use. The edge shivers on the tip of her nail before smoothing into a solid line of chakra.
All right. Here goes. Gods, please don’t let me kill him by accident!
Sarada sets to work, searching the crease in Kakashi’s elbow for a vein, and then makes a small incision. The cut is crude and larger than it should be, so it bleeds more than she expected it would. She grits her teeth and channels chakra into her injured hand and crouches forward, ordering her swollen, broken fingers to bend. She just needs them to shove enough chakra into the wound to keep the blood flow under control.
Hands shaking from pain and nerves, she wills the edge of her chakra-scalpel to become sharper. Eyes search out an artery in Sakura’s inner elbow.
“I’d go for a vein, but an artery is faster,” she explains, and Sakura nods in encouragement.
Sarada makes the incision. Her mother grimaces in discomfort as blood spills forth, and she releases the chakra-scalpel, taking up the flask and splashing across their joined arms. She’s breathing hard now, like she’s just run a marathon or survived a sparring session with Metaru, but she can’t give in.
Her hands are shaking again, and doubt fills her once more, but Sakura leans forward and grasps her wrist. Chakra flows through her body, steading her hands.
“Thanks,” she says. “But you shouldn’t move.” And she goes back to work.
Using a blend of her own and her mother’s chakra, she charges the water until it forms a bubble-like shape in the air. Sakura stares in wonder, much the same way Sarada did when she watched her mother do this the first time.
With supreme effort, she forms the glob of moisture into a tube, fitting it to the bleeding wounds in each arm. Sarada concentrates, pressing the ends into the delicate membranes of her mother’s and Kakashi’s major blood vessels.
A dark, rushing line of red flows from Sakura’s arm toward Kakashi. Sarada half expects it to hit his skin and trickle off or for the chakra line to fail in the middle of the procedure, but by some miracle, it holds.
She and Sakura watch with bated breath as, ever so slowly, Kakashi’s skin colour returns to normal. The next five minutes tick by in agony, neither girl allowing the battle in the background to faze them. As the three warring dynamos skirmish, doing their best to destroy each other and the surrounding cavern, the girls have found some kind of vacuum of utter silence and concentration.
Only when Kakashi gasps and opens his eyes, do they move once more.
Sarada falls back, her concentration broken.
The blood-fluid tube succumbs to gravity, and it’s all she can do to press her hand against Sakura’s inner elbow to stem the flow of blood. With the last of her chakra, she does the same for Kakashi.
“That…was very foolish,” Kakashi tells her as he sits up, but there’s a softness in his eyes. “Yet…exactly what your mother…would have done.”
Sarada tries to call up a watery smile, but lacks the strength to even do that. Something warm trickles from her nose, and a wave of sharp, splitting pain hits her right behind the eyes.
“Sarada!” Sakura cries, lurching forward.
It’s the last thing she sees.
つづく
Comments and constructive criticism are much appreciated, and very motivating! For more information about supporting my original, non-fandom related works, you’re welcome to check out my ko-fi tipjar, or my patreon page KuriWorlds.
First Page
Previous Chapter - Next Chapter
15 notes · View notes