บท 17: Chapter 17: Team Training Arc: Five
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I most likely never will.
"In position." I whisper as we stare down at the sleeping camp of enemy shinobi with Ichi at my side. We'd tracked the group of low level nuke-nin that had been hassling merchant caravans in the area down to this camp and two other camps.
"In position." Tokuma whispers. We'd been outfitted with radios this time around because we'd split up to track the different groups as individual skill tests before converging on the biggest camp for a nighttime visit. Tokuma is on my right then.
"I as well." Muta sighs across the connection. "I've got my kikaichu on them sucking them dry, so these should be easy deaths." We must have shuddered simultaneously at the thought.
The last time we'd been involved in a death it had been life or death. We were going to die if we didn't do something.
This time? This time we were sitting in the trees plotting cold blooded murder.
We slip down into the camp as silent as ghosts, Ichi padding beside me sniffing at the first man we came to. His sleep is deep and undisturbed, most likely due to kikaichu on his skin. I pull out a kunai and hold it across his throat.
He has killed before. My mind whispers, thinking back to the day they'd brought Ritsu's body back to Konoha. A genin death during peacetime is a heavy blow to the morale of the village. He will kill again. One quick slash across the throat and it will not be so.
But another voice rises, from years and years of living in a different culture. So will you. You have killed before. And you will kill again. My hand moves and the blood that flows in the moonlight is almost black.
But I have my brother to think of, and the rest of my family. This I choose. I think, and the metallic taste of raw flesh crawls up my throat. I straighten, and do the same to the man's neighbor without hesitation this time.
Six sealed bodies later, we stow away the scrolls, and leap back up into the trees as silently as we'd come.
Sensei is waiting for us in our designated meeting place, his own scrolls, hanging like fish from a line, dangled at his fingertips. He looks over us once. "This was a better choice than that terrible chase." His lips quirk into a crooked smirk. "It just goes to show that we all fail in one way or another."
We look at each other, and do not say a word. It's clear from my teammates' pale faces that the boys hadn't an easier time of killing again despite the months that had passed since our disastrous second C-Rank.
"If any of you ever want to talk, know that I'll be open to it whether you are still my student or not." Sensei glances around at us once more. "Scatter."
We turn and begin the jog back into Konoha.
I sat in my usual personal training ground. There are only four hand signs necessary for the Earth Release: Mud Wall Jutsu, but it is a B-Ranked Jutsu for a reason. The chakra cost is tremendous. With my reserves I could at most make two walls of chest height and hold Fang Passing Fang for about thirty seconds, anything further would push chakra exhaustion.
Never the less, Tou-san had left me the scroll for a reason. I make the four hand signs. Tiger. Hare. Boar. Dog. And slam my hands onto the ground. The wall that rises in front of me has the audacity to wobble. I glare at it, and then kick it down.
"Is it not enough chakra? Not enough something or other?" I ask the sky as I stomp on the mud that is mostly useless.
"Maa." I turn to look at the source of the sign and find Kakashi leaning against a tree. "You'll never get anywhere like that.
" I throw up my hands. "Well, I've been trying this for two months now, and the only time it works is when I am convinced that I'd die without it." And that only happened because Sensei decided that I should be kicked around until I didn't want to be a punching bag anymore. Then, trying to get Sensei to do anything that involves physical exertion when he's not on a mission is nearly impossible.
"And what caused you to think that you'd die, Hana-chan?" He asks, somehow making the statement seem obnoxious even though it is clearly well intentioned.
I frown at him with my arms crossed against my chest. "My lazy Sensei kicking me around, because he's actually a taijutsu genius." I spit, and scuff my toe against the remnants of what used to be an attempt at jutsu.
Kakashi stops leaning against the tree and walks over. "Well, actually you could do-"
"What are you doing out of the hospital?" I point at the growing stain on his right side. If I'm not mistaken, then that's actually blood. He's not in the normal Jonin gear either. It's probably an ANBU mission, but I'm not supposed to know about that. "Oh, actually let me guess, you didn't even report to the hospital."
"There's no need for concern, Hana-chan." He eye smiles at me, but it's worse than if he didn't smile at all. I mean it's so fake that I don't even need to pay attention. I just know that it's plastic. "I won't be dead any time soon."
"Either way," I say, because if he didn't want me to see anything, I probably wouldn't have. There is some sort of importance to letting me see his wounds, but for the life of me, I don't really know what it means, except perhaps Kakashi didn't interact enough with other people considering we don't even know each other very well. "That just means that you shouldn't be attempting to show me a better mud wall than I'd be able to make even if I worked for years."
"I was about to offer, but I do suppose you'll be fine on your own." He makes to amble off, but I grab the back of his shirt. He turns to look at me with an unimpressed look on his face.
"I was just about to say that you shouldn't walk alone when you're injured."
He hmms for a moment, but doesn't immediately run away. Instead he lets me walk with him. "You aren't going to ask that I go to the hospital?"
I raise an eyebrow at him. "Would you go if I asked?" He shakes his head, and I continue. "Well, I wouldn't be able to drag you there by force anyway, so I might as well walk you back to wherever you were going to ease my own conscience."
"Why would it be your problem?" He tilts his head back and we continue walking together. He lived rather far from center city, and also rather far from the path from the Hokage Tower to my training ground.
"Well, if the legendary Hatake Kakashi dropped dead after seeing me, there'd be an inquest." I stare at my hands and laugh. "It would be a death I wasn't responsible for, and it would look bad on my record."
"You've been responsible for different deaths then?"
I nod. "Aah." I've killed three people by now. one woman trying to her level best to kill me, and two barely genin sleeping men. I look at Kakashi through narrowed eyes. "Has Sensei been talking to you?"
He rubs the back of his head. "How would you know about that?"
I sigh. "Because I know Sensei, and he went into Papa Bear Mode when he realized that I knew who you were." Kakashi pulls open a door.
I'm greeted by the smell of wet dog, which somehow seems much like home anyway.
"Anyway." Kakashi tips through the door and I catch him. He's heavy. Or well, heavier than that time I dragged him back home. "Don't look so upset, Hana-chan."
I glare at him. "You're heavy, Kakashi-san." He looks almost hurt, but I will have none of it. "You are Kami-damned heavy, Kakashi-san. I am eight years old."
"Well, you were the one who wanted to walk me home, Hana-chan."
I huff and dump him on a chair. "You're awful, Kakashi-san."
"Kakashi-san?" I ask as I poke through his refrigerator. "Are you sure you have any food in here at all?" He'd done a rather neat job of bandaging his side, but is still moving like an old man, probably because he is chakra exhausted. I am mildly confused that he's let me poke around in his life for this long, but I chalk it up to the fact that he hasn't had enough years to calcify into an actual impersonal troll.
"Um..maybe?" He doesn't sound sure at all.
I cross my arms and turn around to face him. "And you said I wouldn't grow big and strong because I like to eat convenience store onigiri." I gesture back at his fridge. "You'll become a midget at this rate." I stomp towards the door. "I'm going to find some real food."
The nerve of him. Honestly. Would it kill him to go grocery shopping? Would it? Does he even know what a food pyramid is?
I pick out a good number of easy to cook vegetables and fruits. At the dairy aisle, I pick up a quarter gallon of milk and then I snag a loaf of bread and a pound of beef as well. Perhaps I go a little overboard, but in this life I've never lacked for money. I pass the dog food aisle, and consider it. Pakkun had been rude, but there's no need to be rude back. If I'm going to feed the human I might as well feed the dog.
Everything I bought at a grocery store or a butcher went on the family tab. I'd use a C-Rank pay check to pay off the debt I incurred today. By the time I'm done with shopping, I have three full bags of groceries and I take to the roofs. The perks of being an actual ninja is that I don't ever need to navigate the crowded streets as a rather small child anymore.
I pound on his door until he actually opens the thing and shove the food through the door. "You should buy more fruits and vegetables in about a week." I say as I stick most of the food I bought on various shelves of his sad, sad, refrigerator. He probably doesn't use the pantry either. I leave out the pound of beef and several tomatoes though. "Do you have a cutting board?"
Kakashi's still staring at me wordlessly, and I feel as though if he didn't wear a mask, his mouth would be slightly ajar by this point. "Oh forget it." I shake my head and pull out a kunai to cut everything up. "You probably don't even know what that is."
We end up eating a late lunch. He doesn't pull the mask down in my presence, but it must have tasted alright given that I'd laid out dog food for the eight dogs that suddenly appear from another room, and he inhaled an entire bowl of beef stew in the same time period.
"You're the snappy dog girl."
I frown at Pakkun. "You aren't taking very good care of your human."
He does have the decency to look ashamed. "We're dogs."
I roll my eyes at him. "Ichi, Ni, and San wouldn't let me keep nothing except a sad looking dead carrot in my fridge if it was the last thing they did." I rise and brush the dust off my shorts. "Well, there's nothing I need to do here, and I still have to meet a friend for a spar, so I'll be going." I make sure to glare at Kakashi as I step through his doorway. "Remember to actually eat food, Kakashi-san. You need to grow up big and strong after all."
Perhaps the last statement triggers an episode and pushes too far, because there's a kunai embedded in the doorway an inch from my head that I pull free an instant after.
I'm halfway back to my training ground when I realize that there's a note wrapped around the handle of the kunai. Maybe he wasn't being touchy after all?
"You're overcompensating yang chakra in your jutsu. Elemental chakra is perfectly balanced yin yang." And then underneath that, "Thank you." And a henohenomoheji. Oh, he actually wasn't being touchy. He was being appreciative Kakashi-style. I wish it didn't involve being scared halfway into the grave though.
I wave at Itachi as I draw closer to the clearing. "Sorry to keep you waiting, I had to save a scarecrow from starvation." His eyebrows draw closer in what I recognize is confusion and I have to clarify. What am I? Obito? Kakashi? "Kakashi-san knows nothing about nutrition."
If anything, it just seems to make Itachi more confused. "Kaka...shi?"
I shake my head. "Just forget about it, Itachi-kun." I slide into a taijutsu stance that I'd seen Toku and Koma mirror so many times. "Let's spar."
He blurs and I spin around to catch his kunai strike. We trade a flurry of blows, and then I leap backwards giving myself a little space. I see Itachi make the hand signs for the Great Fireball, and I flash through four hand signs of my own.
"Doton: Earth Wall!" I slam my hands on the ground and the wall that rises above me holds even as tongues of flame spill over the top close enough for me to feel their heat.
I'm too elated by the success of the jutsu and that distracts me enough for Itachi to substitute himself behind me and place a kunai against my throat.
"I yield." I say, absently, still marvelling at the solid chest height wall that'd not taken as much chakra as before. It's so much more efficient now. And I thought I was a genius. It's clearly nothing on an actual genius.
"-Hana-chan?" I look up at Itachi. He's looking down at me with concern. "Is there something wrong?"
I laugh. "No, everything's fine, Itachi-kun." I straighten, and pull the chakra I'd put in the wall back. The wall crumbles sure, and there's a fine cloud of dust rising which I brush off of my shorts, but yes, everything is more than fine. "I just finally made an advancement in Doton jutsus, that's all."
"Oh, congratulations." He sounds subdued so I make an impromptu suggestion.
"Did you want to go for dango?" I suppose being friends with Itachi made it hard to avoid dango in one's daily life, but I happened to like other sweets besides rice dumplings.
"No, it's alright." He shakes his head. "Sasuke is upset that I don't spend enough time with him." I wince. It looks like I wasn't able to help with that bit.
But if Itachi doesn't have to kill his clan then they'll grow up better. Then Sasuke and Itachi can be just as close as they were supposed to be before everything got shot to hell.
"Hey, Itachi?" I ask, and shove my hands in pockets, a mirror of Sensei's lazy slouch.
"Yes?" He slows his pace towards the Uchiha district, letting me fall in step beside him.
"How are the work hours in the Military Police?" I'd been reviewing my options for employment after making Chunin. And I had found that there aren't many in village options that aren't desk jobs. I have no desire to teach anything to actual children. The Academy teachers have the patience of saints. No manning the mission desk, either. Not cut out for Torture and Interrogation. No desire to work in Intel.
"Otou-san works from about seven in the morning until seven at night, but he doesn't hold regular shift hours." Itachi tilts his head back to look at the sky. "There aren't many non-Uchiha down at the station." Ah yes, the only caveat in the road to my job. There aren't all that many members of the Force that aren't Uchiha.
"That doesn't mean I can't apply right? I mean," I say, as he turns his dark eyes at me with so many questions. "There are military police officers that are not Uchihas."
"But why would you want to?" He doesn't get it.
I sigh. "I told you before, I don't think I'm cut out for the Hunter Nin Squad."
"Right." We walk on in silence for another block. "I'll ask Otou-san about it for you, and some of the other regular officers to see what their work hours are like." It's generous...And I am suddenly struck by how utterly different the eight year old Itachi is compared to his older self. Eight year old Itachi is kind and selfless, he loves his brother, and at times he is happy.
Twenty one year old Itachi had been a guilt ridden mess of duty and pain with an extra dose of sadism and fear on the side. He had been hell bent on committing suicide by brother to pay for his sins.
The orders for the massacre must have broken him much worse than anything he could have found on the frontlines of a war. Of course they had, of course, but I could only see how scarred he'd become. The image is scary, superimposed as it is on the boy beside me.
"Thank you, Itachi." I say. I'll pay you back for this. I swear it to you. I will change your destiny. I will. I smile at him. "I don't think you know how much you've helped." Me, you, your brother, your clan, this village.
I have to save him. But first, I have to make chunin.
A.N. And now we get a bit more motivation. I guess we'll see where it goes.
Thanks to Shy911, Snidekick, WhiteFang001, and Guest for reviewing! You all are fantastic.
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~Tavina
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