“Okay, pay attention now,” Kakashi says for what seems like the tenth time. “Before we do anything else, we need to figure out what the hell happened — Gai, are you listening?”
His friend is usually a lot more focused than this, when it matters. Today, however, (whenever that is) Gai is positively brimming with excitement and enthusiasm…. much more than is his norm. It’s giving Kakashi nausea just watching him.
He bring a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, flinging the other out to snatch his fellow jounin —whatever that means for them now — by the collar before he can do something stupid, like rush off into the village spouting everything he knows about everything at the top of his lungs and call it helping.
“Gai, listen,” he stresses, speed walking toward the nice looking abandoned alley twelve paces ahead of them. Anything to get out of the bustling marketplace. The two of them are garnering a number of stares. “We need a game plan.”
Predictable, Gai perks up brilliantly at the g-word. “A challenge, my rival? What a youthful idea!”
Kakashi is burdened with a beaming smile shining directly into his retina. He blinks black dots away from his vision and looks away.
“Not a challenge. This is — it’s a mission, okay? We can’t just go out there and do whatever we want. It could fuck everything up royally.”
By everything, he means the timeline. Because right now, he’s manhandling a man-child (literally) when he himself looks to be just shy of nine years old. They’re both wearing chuninvests, for crying out loud. Kakashi hasn’t worn one of those since —
“Ho! But a challenge is the perfect way to think of it!” Gai breaks free from his grip and flashes him a hearty double thumbs up. “I fear that not even our youthfulness shall save us if we are to take this monumental burden upon our own shoulders without first taking precautions!”
Kakashi stares at him. For Gai, that’s a rather bleak way of looking at it.
But not entirely untrue.
He shrugs, trying to make it casual, but his child self has knots on the knots in his back, so the movement ends up stiff and unpracticed. His fingers itch for his book. Kakashi applies more force to the bridge of his nose.
Gai’s hand comes down heavily upon his shoulder, on just the right vertebrate to cause a horrendous cracking sound. Like bubble wrap, except if it was ten sheets all twisted at once in an empty warehouse with a fantastic echo. The two of them freeze, exchanging startled looks.
“We should,” Gai starts, pauses, and then rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “We should perhaps take stock of ourselves first?”
Kakashi can feel a migraine coming on.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he groans.
He leans back against the brick wall of the alley and slowly slides down until he’s sitting on the ground. He pats the packed dirt beside him, and moves his hand away before it can get crushed as Gai plops down next to him.
“Now,” he starts, looking his friend in the eye. “Tell me everything you know about the 2nd Shinobi War.”
Asking Gai to debrief him of everything had been a mistake. A horrendous, terrible, ignorant, miscalculated mistake. Kakashi should never be allowed to make calls, ever.
He’s very bad at this, obviously. He’d be even worse in an administrative position. Are their peers from their own timelines watching this? Does Tsunade see what he’s done? He’d be a terrible Hokage, and this is irrefutable proof.
Kakashi tilts his head back until the crown of his skull meet brick, perhaps with too much force, but it puts a nice ringing in his ears that temporarily drowns out Gai’s rambling about niche knowledge of the Konohan outskirt market businesses circa several decades ago (or rather, now, he guesses?). If he has to listen to one more example of a sales log, he’s going to brain himself and leave the timeline at Gai’s sole mercy. Who knew the man had such in depth knowledge of the merchant trade? It has to be Tenten’s influence.
“— rather impressive display, all the way from the higher reaches of Tea Country, which at the time of war was considered rather exotic, so profits boomed exponentially, and surrounding shops had to up their own game to even have a chance of competing! What an absolutely youthful tournament to display their skills in their trade!” Gai puffs his chest out, as if he’s proud of these shopkeepers who were probably already dead by the time their kids were born. It looks less impressive than it would when they were in their adult bodies. Kakashi thinks it’s the smaller pecs. The biceps aren’t as bulging as he’s used to seeing, either.
Gai opens his mouth to continue, enthusiasm exuding from him in waves that make Kakashi want to leave and find someplace quiet to nap his headache away.
“It’s much like the chunin exams that we shinobi hold, except for civilians! Marvelous! To know that our fellow villagers can still — Kakashi! Where are you going?”
“To find a bridge to throw myself off of,” Kakashi stuffs his hands into his pockets, head tilting downward until his chin hits his collarbone. “The bottom of the river is bound to be more peaceful than this.”
Gai gasps, and he can hear his thundering footsteps as the man-turned-boy dashes after him, right at his heel as Kakashi stomps his way across the market street and takes to the nearest roof.
“A brilliant plan, Kakashi! Chakra breathing exercises in the depths of rushing water to both train your decreased chakra reserves and ability with water techniques, as well as my lung capacity, which is regrettably smaller than I am used to! As expected of my cool and intelligent rival!”
Kakashi catches blond hair from the corner of his eyes, and adds a touch more speed to his shunshin. Gai follows his lead promptly, and for all his friend’s rambling, he thinks that maybe Gai is doing it to distract himself as much as he’s doing it for Kakashi.
Kakashi shows up to morning training dripping wet and gasping.
Minato abandoned his other students where he was going over the theory of tree climbing with them — they really needed to start teaching this basic stuff in the academy — to rush over to him.
“Kakashi! Are you alright? What happened?” A quick look over of his youngest student proves that he isn’t injured, but there’s nothing to explain why he’s soaked to the bone like this.
Kakashi tilts his head back, mask making an odd slurping sound, like the boy is trying to filter the last of a beverage through a straw. All the water must be making it difficult for the boy to breath. Minato taps his wrist and unseals a work out towel from his storage seal, handing it over. It’s probably salty smelling, he’s already used it, but Kakashi accepts it without a word and pats the excess water from his mask before pulling the fabric down and burying his face into the super-absorbent material of the towel instead.
“Thanks,” the boy says, muffled.
Minato blinks down at him with uncertainty. He places a hand on the kid’s shoulder and leads him over to one of the logs that sat in a heap to the side of the training ground, and has him sit.
Once Kakashi’s eyes peek out of the towel, Minato tries asking again.
“So… mind telling me why you’re dripping water everywhere?”
“I had to rescue a dying kappa from the riverbanks,” Kakashi answers promptly, expression entirely unchanging.
What?
“A kappa?” Minato asks, confusion probably strongly evident.
“It’s life was draining away, sensei,” Kakashi states so solemnly that for a second Minato almost finds himself believing this ridiculous tale. “I couldn’t have just left it there. Even I’m not that cruel.”
Minato gives his head a slow shake to clear away any lack of common sense, and says, pointedly, “Kakashi, kappa aren’t real.”
The woebegotten gaze he received in turn makes something inside his chest clench, despite the fact that there’s no way he believes the kid’s story, and he’s pretty certain Kakashi knows that, too. Which really just begs the question of why Kakashi’s trying to feed him a fairy tale in the first place.
“That’s rude, sensei,” the young chunin chides him, sounding almost righteously indignant.
“No, it’s the truth,” Minato replies dryly. He clicks to his feet, dusting off his knees. As odd as the way he’s chosen to go about it is, clearly Kakashi isn’t going to tell him the truth anytime soon. “Sit there and dry off, okay? You can join the rest of us when puddles aren’t gathering at your feet.”
Kakashi glances down at his sandals , and the squelching sound that comes whenever he moves. His head tilts to the side acquisingly, and he makes an agreeable sound.
Minato leaves him to it. He walks back over to his other students, and are still watching Kakashi with wide incredulous eyes.
“Sensei,” Rin begins hesitantly. “Is Kakashi-kun alright?”
Minato pauses, scratching the back of his head. He’s not sure how to answer the question when it’s pretty clear Kakashi is not, in fact, fine. “I think he just needs a moment to himself, Rin.”
“He looks like he just took a swim in the Naka,” Obito comments, eyebrows up near his hairline.
“A youthful swim indeed!” A young voice booms from behind them, and all three shinobi jump out of their skins.
Spinning around, Minato sees a green blur dash out from behind the trees, advancing upon Kakashi like a whirlwind. As exhausted as he appears, Kakashi immediately substitutes himself with a nearby log, forcing the spandex-clad chunin to scramble to the side in order to avoid face-planting straight into the bark.
“Rival!” The chunin praises. “Your evasion skills still far outmatch my own! As expected of —“
“GAI,” a louder voice, deeper and with baritone, bellows, and Minato winces as the sound of trees crashing to the ground. A jounin with an incredibly formidable build explodes into the clearing, looking rather pissed off and exasperated all in the same expression. “GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE RIGHT NOW — !”
“Choza?” Minato asks, watching the trees of his training ground collapse with slumped shoulders.
The Akimichi casts him an apologetic look, before rounding on his student with a stormy expression. “Gai,” he thunders, “remember what I said? You can’t skip out on training, I don’t care if you’re a chunin now, you will —“
“But sensei!” The chunin, Gai, explains, eyes wide and watery as he clings to Kakashi who, to Minato’s complete shock, does nothing to get away. “I promised my rival that we would train together today!”
“You’re such a liar,” Kakashi interrupts whatever Choza was gearing himself up to reply. He doesn’t take his eyes off the scroll he’d whipped out from somewhere. Unlike himself, it’s miraculously dry. “You didn’t promise anything. You demanded we train together, and I told you no.”
“But rival—” Gai whines. Kakashi doesn’t even look at him.
“We already trained this morning.”
“That’s why you’re soaked,” Obito crows from over Minato’s shoulder triumphantly. “You were trying to water walk in the river and you failed, that’s why you didn’t want to tell sensei what happened! You’re embarrassed!”
“Nonsense!” Gai cries, somehow more offended than Kakashi is, especially because Kakashi looks uncharacteristically unruffled in the face of Obito’s usual needling. “Rival already knows how to water walk! Why else do you think he is a chunin?”
Kakashi lets the scroll roll closed with a snap. He tucks it into the inside of his still-damp best and stands up. Minato watches as he actually rolls his eyes with a feeling of befuddlement welling up inside his chest.
“I feel a cold coming on, sensei,” Kakashi says, sounding incredibly blasé about it. “Choza-sensei, can I borrow Gai for the afternoon?”
“Kakashi —“ Minato tries, but Choza interrupts him.
“He’s already skipping training, Hatake-kun,” Choza sighs out, thought neither of the jounin miss the minute flinch that racks Kakashi at the sound of his surname. It’s worrisome. “What’s a few more hours? But, may I ask why?”
“He’s my emotional support ninja,” Kakashi says, reaching out to grab a nearly vibrating Gai by the collar. He has to stand on his toes to do so. It’s strangely adorable, and the thought nearly gives Minato whiplash. “Also, he makes good soup. I could use some of that to get over this cold.”
“You don’t sound sick,” Obito accuses, and Kakashi immediately raises his arm to cough loudly into his elbow.
It’s all very theatrical, and Minato gives his student a Look that Kakashi pointedly ignores.
“Anyway, we have to go now,” Kakashi says, tugging at Gai’s vest when the boy goes to open his mouth and add something. “See you all later. Choza-sensei, thanks.”
Without being able to get anything in edgewise, Minato watches nonplussed as the young chunin manhandles the one nin that Minato was before now entirely certain he actually went out of his way to avoid, away and supposedly to his apartment for, what, soup? Company? A friend to act as a nurse? Something else? At this rate, it could have been to go help another youkai that shouldn’t exist, and Minato might even believe it.
The day was already strange enough.