Chapter 2 - the Itachi take
Some time later...
"All right, my cute little students!" Hatake 'Sharingan' Kakashi called out to the students in question - i.e., Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto, and Haruno Sakura. "Today we're going to practice our survival skills for the upcoming Chuunin exam!"
There was a general pause as the aforementioned trio stared at their sensei in ways that were anything but good. Quite the opposite, in fact. "...Sensei, it's sunset!" Haruno Sakura finally opted to be the spokesperson out of the three. "We've been waiting here since this morning! It's the latest that you've ever been!"
"Yes, well, I'm a bad, bad boy," Kakashi said faux-brightly, (he still was nowhere near forgiving Sasuke for pulling the stunt with the bunshin and Iruka in the first chapter, cough), "and I'm fashionably-unfashionably late, and now we're going to practice survival skills! Here! At the Konoha-Suna border! Yay!"
"He's lost his mind," Naruto muttered to Sasuke, who just shrugged and said "Hn."
"Now then," Kakashi continued, loftily ignoring this exchange, "my cute little students, as you have must've seen all throughout the day, we've - well, you've - been camping in a very colorful spot. We've got a copse of trees directly in front of us, a mountain ridge to the right, a lake on the left, and a salty swamp behind us. We cannot get lost here during the day, but it's night now! What do we do?"
"Judging by your exaggerated gestures, the answer isn't 'break camp and wait until morning'," Sasuke commented dryly.
"You're absolutely right!" Kakashi continued to work with his (admittedly captive) audience quite well. "Everybody - sit. Sit still. Pause, close your eyes, relax, take a deep sniff and open your ears! What do you hear and smell?"
"I smell something spicy and plant-like," Naruto intoned.
"And I hear the nightingales!" Sakura added with something actually approaching delight.
"Precisely!" Kakashi nodded, actually pleased with his students' response. "The copse is there! Want to go and find it following just your nose and ears? Sasuke?"
Sasuke paused, clearly trying to figure out the right words to say. "If, uh, the copse is in front of us now, rather than to our left, then doesn't it put the salty swamp behind us instead?" he finally countered with a question of his own.
"That's good," Kakashi nodded - by Sasuke's standards, this was enthusiasm. "Genin, turn your ears to right and press the palms of your hands to them for better acoustics! Do you hear the crickets? They love to live next to salty swamps!"
This time, Kakashi's only response were a series of nods... and the hoot of an eagle-owl coming from his back, so he continued:
"And do you hear the eagle-owl? Here, they nest only in the mountains, so the mountains are to our left! And that leaves only the right side, so... do you hear the cackling of the geese. Hm. This cackling also means that someone has disturbed them-"
"Yes, that would be me," Killer Bee, the host of the Eight-Tailed beast said brightly as he appeared out of nowhere and crushed Hatake against his chest, in a manly way. "Got your letter, feeling frisky, decided to accept the date. You are pretty cute, after all!"
"Wait, what?" Hatake Kakashi wriggled out of the other man's grasp and looked around. "Hey, where is everybody, where are we? Help!" But no help was forthcoming...
/ / /
"Uchiha Itachi is being a very bad ninja," Uchiha Tobi/Obito/Madara/one of them/someone else of them/all of them/you get the idea, told the man in question. "Why did you do that to poor Hatake Kakashi? Couldn't you just put him into a room? A room with a moose? How about that? How about youse?" he added, not even trying to pretend that he had serious views on that issue.
"...I'm a nukenin, a missing-nin," Itachi shrugged instead. "Of course I am a bad ninja...who happens to dislike Hatake 'Sharingan' Kakashi...for no particular reason, and not that he's a crappy sensei to my brother. Want to steal his Sharingan eye and tease Orochimaru with it?"
"...Tobi likes the way you think!" the other Uchiha made a very good evil laugh that scared everyone who heard it shitless - there was a reason as to why he was one of the final villains in the original comic/anime storyline. "Orochimaru is always fun to tease! But we mustn't use a real Sharingan - he isn't worth is. Instead - and you follow Tobi, Tobi will tell you his plan on the go!"
...And the Akatsuki formerly present at the scene left. Hatake Kakashi, who's been caught in Itachi's illusionary Hell, remained.
With an illusionary Killer Bee.
Until he escaped.
But that was another story.
End