Nightfall

04. Deep Dive II

"Why do I even bother putting up with you?" Kakashi nudges his passed out companion with a stick.

The sun rises, and another day begins. The two are still at the same spot from when they arrived. One, not twitching a muscle, and the other tired out from having to deal with troublesome people.

Groaning in the distance, Hayate's expression cannot even come close to what he's feeling. He looks at the two, flooded with something. Anger, disgust, jealousy? He doesn't know, can't even recognize it. Even if he were to pinpoint anything, he wouldn't understand what to do.

Hayate has always been content with what he's had. Whether people have taken the effort to push him down, and make him feel worthless, he's never been one to take it to heart. Yet, just watching fellow classmates of his advance, and now those younger than him by many years, go by so fast, he realizes the gap.

Ashamed of how he could even think thoughts such as that, he tries to suppress them. It doesn't do much but fester and grow. He wants to become something more.

Hayate doesn't normally look back on his past. He doesn't question his dedication nor does he question his motive that fuels him to keep going.

(Does he have doubts? He doesn't know.)

(He never really seems to be able to answer.)

Hayate had nothing and in return, no reason to not go down the path of a shinobi. He carries the aptitude, can use chakra, and his physical state isn't too bad. Currently, it's all he has.

He has to make it out of the academy with a hitai-ate strapped to his head.

He assumed that being willing to dedicate his life to the village was all that was needed. It turns out there is much more, and he is not enough. He's never enough.

Hayate has seen the bribery, the little tricks up each person's sleeve.

Akihiro gives him some resources and that is the only purpose of him sticking around the group. Everyone is ready to do the bidding of this one person. The majority of the people who linger around Akihiro, do it for the same aim.

He's one of them.

. . . .

Kimaru keeps watch of the site after a brief scolding from Kakashi. Toying around with the tag in his hand, he thinks. Instructions are always the main, otherwise a key, part of being a shinobi. Listen to the superiors, until they are capable of climbing the ranks to become the superior. The cycle would then continue on.

'Figure out how to use this, and that's it. Done and over.'

What was said about spending three days, and surviving through it was probably exaggerated more to be used as a distraction. No one really needs to clue each other in on this, it was a bit too simple. Just a little bit of weird wording. Odd, but Kimaru wasn't one to care.

He pulses some chakra, and to his surprise it's just a storage tag. Storage tags were becoming somewhat of a rarity. Not to the extreme, where it was increasingly difficult to even find one, but more so that the tags were given out less casually. In other words, the tags were getting stockpiled for actual qualified shinobi since the tension between nations was getting worse.

A scroll appears.

This is eerily familiar to what Kimaru remembers of the Chunin exams. (How does he know this again? He can't remember.) People don't look too creative in the aspect of training new generations, though.

It's as he expects.

The real objective is to take each other's scrolls.

Very uncreative. The thought lingers in Kimaru's head.

. . . .

Kakashi comes back with more supplies, and alongside him are what he considers his heavy burdens as of lately. Kimaru's zone-outs were random, sporadic, and all of the above. Confronting him was of no use either, with his comments getting brushed off easily. He tends to leave Kimaru to watch over Hayate as a result.

The Uchiha blinks away his daydreams, and opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. He instead chooses to begin preparing the food. Kimaru keeps hesitating about something while they eat, but from what the both of them can sense, it's better to keep quiet.

They finish up what they need, with great care and urgency. With plans to ditch the little camp that was set up. Dragging Hayate along would be counterproductive, so he is left there as well.

The two barely reach a few feet from the area before getting surrounded.

Random as it is, the people who had circled them, didn't pull out any weapons.
(It couldn't be said the same for Kakashi and Kimaru.)

On the other hand, weapons are not needed to be known as a threat. Akihiro gives a little wave, the initiation of his negotiating has begun.

He orders one of his members to turn their attention to untying Hayate. With it out of the way, Akihiro is told privately of the information that was picked up during his little 'stay' with Kakashi and Kimaru.

"So I hear that the both of you aren't as close as you seem." Akihiro glances with a light twinkle running through his eyes.

Kakashi is confused about the 'closeness' being mentioned, since currently, for all he knew, he was being bribed with dango on the daily in return for some sort of companionship. Kimaru stared blankly as the words spilled out of Akihiro's mouth. What could he say aside from...dango is the way to go.

Akihiro continues, "Rumours are always unreliable, but it seems that even some of the most obvious things seem to spill out of the gossip mill and into the pile."

Kimaru blinks a couple times, then again, and again.

Were the monologues he remembered from all those visions always this bad?

"Listen here Hatake, the Uchihas are bad apples. We all know it, and a few prodigies like the two of you shouldn't be mixing around, since we can all tell," he looks at Kimaru, "one of you is going to drag the other down." 

Kimaru intervenes, "It's people like you who don't deserve the title of shinobi, but that's the reason you're still here, aren't you?"

His eyes crinkle, recognition of what Kimaru was trying to imply. "The only reason the rest of us even tolerate the Uchiha is because of the very fact that we can use you as little pawns in the war."

The political tension never seemed to die down. Credited to Danzo's influence, of course. He may not need an eyeball, or the civilian council members to get his brain thinking like he's already been doing for years.

It did remind Kimaru of the Senju clan. During the Second Great Ninja War, when the chance was there, the clan had gotten wiped out to the extent of only a few clan members remaining, but they still dwindled down to one clansman.

"You know, Hatake?" Akihiro questions. "He was planning to leave you in the dark. My own companion that was in your care saw how he opened up his scroll, finding the real objective."

"Why wouldn't he tell you the first chance he got?"

Kakashi blankly stares at Akihiro before slowly lowering his kunai. He spins it in his hand a few times and sighs. "I suppose you have some kind of point."

"It's a good thing you have common sense," Akihiro says. "I'll have you know that I can give you almost anything you want."

He strains his smile a bit more. "But in return, you belong to me."

Hayate Gekkou would seem expressionless, if not for the constant glances between the two and their interaction.

He thinks glumly of his own situation. He liked to believe that he was an opportunist, afterall, everybody else who passed their obstacles in life had help. No one was ever made by themselves. How can those two even be labeled as prodigies? 

The only aspect they held, what made them even slightly special in any way other than him, was privilege. A clan, or heavily respected shinobi, yet here he-

minemineminemineusefulusefulbetter

Kakashi seems to think about what he's been offered for a second, then flicks his kunai and cuts Akihiro next to his eye. As blood drips, the people around Kakashi and Kimaru attack.

One of them aims directly for a vital before getting flipped against the ground. It was their fault for not checking if it was a trap-populated area. They struggle profusely to get out as they hang from the ground. Another rips the rope with a kunai hidden in their sleeve.

Kakashi's smaller stature is unfavorable in close range combat, but with a bit of thinking he's able to erase that disadvantage.

Kimaru is slightly smaller than Kakashi, his immature sharingan unable to be put to full use, and his Uchiha fighting style making him helpless in a way. Yet, his knowledge on a variety of Jutsus make up for it.

They both get bombarded by those who made it through to them, all of the unknown academy students seemingly scared as if they dare try to defy, they would be punished. Even the ones stuck in traps struggled to make attempts as Akihiro stared at the back of their heads.

Akihiro wipes the blood trickling down, asking, "Why would you not want to go with me? I can give you what you want. What I said was all true."

The Hatake said, "We all know what you said was quite the opposite. Of all the people here, it would take me immense effort to believe just one word that comes out of that mouth of yours."

Kakashi roughly jumps ahead by propelling himself off someone, before quickly knocking them out.

Kimaru preferred using chakra to even out the battlefield. Somehow matching the same amount of people being taken out by Kakashi.

Simple tricks like replacement really did come into play.

Akihiro is now the only person left, with no one to fight for him. Except, Hayate was still there, not having moved an inch the whole time.

Akihiro simply sneers as he looks at Hayate. "What do you think you're doing? Come on."

Akihiro signals for him to move, to protect him, but nothing is done.

After a little, Hayate takes a stand reluctantly, and it can be seen. His movements falter with none of the sharpness he usually carries. When he halts at the incoming shuriken, barely blocking it, he hears a laugh.

The laugh is muffled alongside him, but Hayate is still startled by it.

"How useless." Akihiro's grim smile just spreads. "Everything I've done up to this point for you has all been for naught. How long have you been in the academy?"

He goes on, "So slow, right? And here I am. A generous and forgiving person who always seems to have to clean after your mistakes. Yet, you still can't manage to accomplish even this simple task. I don't ask for much, so..."

"Protect me!" He commands. "Even if it costs your life."

"I own you."

Kimaru doesn't know what goes through himself. He hasn't had any ideas or visions about this. He doesn't know how to comprehend the situation but before any part of him can stop himself he blurts out, in an odd manner unlike him, "You? Someone like you?"

"Out of everyone here, you are the only one that is not ever going to be known or mentioned. If anyone is of no use, it'd be you." Although Kimaru has never gotten a chance to see himself in the visions, as a viewer, he knows that Hatake Kakashi and Hayate Gekkou have legacies ahead of themselves. Good or bad, they are there.

"Your input is not needed, pawn." Akihiro is angered, but more so to Hayate who has yet to say a word.

Akihiro explains, "The weapons he uses, I give. The clothes, the equipment, the information...all mine. I essentially own him."

Hayate is heaving. His breaths quicken by the second as more things keep running through his head uncontrollably.

howdarehe?howdarehe?howdarehe?Iamuseful

Iwillbebetter

Iambetter

useful.

Kakashi and Kimaru leave that day to Hayate Gekkou uncontrollably beating Akihiro to the ground.

Repeatedly, under his breath saying, "I am useful."

. . . .

Kimaru tries treating Kakashi's injuries, wincing as if he were the one in pain. Which he was, injuries scattered throughout him as well. But with Kakashi dealing with the bulk of it, Kimaru silences himself.

It was already the third day. Kakashi's excellent memory skills were the only thing that got them by, since he managed to snag the scrolls from the unknown academy students, who followed Akihiro, as they fought.

Back at the compound by night, Kimaru receives his congratulations. All he thinks about while resting in his room is whether or not it was for the best to have had it turn out that way for Hayate. 

(He hopes that fate is only a possibility, and that what leads them there can be changed.)

2,180 words

: chapter four end :