Omake: Kakashi's Day at the Beach
Kakashi ambled across the sand with his hands in his pockets. He'd had a day planned. It hadn't been easy. Once you were ANBU, you couldn't simply submit a request for time off. There were forms, of course, a byzantine mess of paperwork that he felt certain was a practical joke that the Hokage played on newcomers. He hadn't fallen for it, but every few months, you could see someone's eyes getting increasingly wild behind their mask as they looked for green ink on a Tuesday when no Hyuga had a second cup of black tea before noon.
This was not a vacation. This was professional development. Officially, he was spending the day on the Seventh Path recruiting additional summons, and would be unreachable. In reality, he'd spent the past weeks flitting between the Dogs and the Human Path when he should have been sleeping, slowly building trust, telling stories, trading favours, and he'd managed to recruit Canndu, a wide-eyed golden with a temperament to match. She padded alongside him right now. He adjusted his pack, allowing himself a resigned sigh. The plums would stay perfectly sweet and cold in the storage scroll, but by the time he'd be in a position to sit and eat them, it would be past breakfast. Securing them in a manner that hadn't betrayed his intention to savour them had been difficult, working through a cutout and vying against clans who would have treated the out-of-season fruit as a status symbol instead of the rare delicacy they truly were. The waste was unforgivable.
It wasn't, he supposed, Cannai's fault that
something happened to be roaring towards the shore, moving too fast and kicking up too much spray to be visible to even the sharpest-eyed canine. But when he'd been asked to evaluate and meet the threat, were it within his capabilities, he'd gotten the distinct impression that the Alpha had known full well what his plans for the day were; namely, doing absolutely nothing beyond reading the most recently released Icha-Icha, for which he'd thus far avoided any spoilers through a mixture of organization, bribery, and evasion worthy of an A-rank espionage mission. As well as being surrounded by an aura of optimism and positivity Kakashi couldn't help but feel bordered on genjutsu, Canndu was literally faster than the wind, and had long-distance communication jutsu that would keep Cannai in the loop.
At least he only needed to consider a single threat. The little holes in the sand which opened occasionally were just clams. As long as he stayed back from the water's edge, he didn't need to worry about the Sharks, and the occasional bit of seaweed that washed ashore could be stepped over without worrying about dismemberment, chakra drain, or any number of far worse fates.
Canndu seemed happy enough to walk in relative silence, pausing occasionally to sniff this or roll around in that. It took a deliberate act of will not to erase their footprints (and pawprints) but he could still try to relax even if morning was shot. Suddenly, he halted, nerves tingling as the retriever let out a low growl, dropping into a combat stance. He pulled his headband up, revealing his Sharingan. The plume of water kicked up by whatever it was had been getting steadily larger as the source reached the coast, but its velocity had spiked, and had resolved itself into two fan-like sprays of water. Something was very, very wrong. His hands involuntarily clenched into position for the first seals for chidori. He whispered to the now-silent retriever next to him. "Do you feel that?" All he got was a quizzical look back.
As the tomoe whirled, his stomach dropped. Even his pessimism, honed by years of missions and failure after failure, comrades dead and crippled in his arms due to his inattention and lack of preparedness, couldn't have foreseen this. Canndu's ears pricked. He couldn't hear it, yet, but he knew exactly what that sound was.
"
YoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUTH!"
Man and Dog leapt to the side, barely-avoiding the pair that crashed headlong into the shore. Of the two projectiles, the taller and greener recovered first, laughing gaily, pulling his companion free of the sand by an extended flipper.
Kakashi felt as if he were floating outside of himself. He focused his will, and the world failed to shatter. He was hard-pressed to determine whether an assault by Itachi would have actually been preferable to this.
His next words were delivered in a tone he reserved for disasters; failed missions, the death of friends, and worse.
"Hello, Gai."
With a speed that even Kakashi strained to follow, the other man - taking no discernible heed of the gravitas with which Kakashi delivered the greeting - spang to his feet.
"Ah, Kakashi! What a remarkable coincidence that you'd be here! Did you see who made it ashore first?"
Gai's grin sparkled with reflected sunlight with such intensity that it would have constituted the opening of hostilities in any other context. The Hokage had been forced to ask him to stop smiling quite so brightly in his day-to-day life after an enthusiastic salutation had provoked a counter-assault from a pair of Cloud shinobi escorting a merchant. Amazingly, nobody had been hurt, and not only had Gai insisted on paying for and performing the repairs to the damaged buildings, he'd browbeaten the bodyguards into helping. As a result, the building's facade was something to behold, a mixture of Cloud sensibilities and Gai's...enthusiasm. He even took personal responsibility for the maintenance of the building's bright-green glow, never seeming to notice that the owner stank of paint stripper.
Canndu came to life. "Wait - you're
him!" She bounded forward, running around him at a dizzying speed. "The Cock that Crows! The Youthful Fist! The Pulsing - "
Kakashi cut in, as quickly as he could without betraying his growing panic. "Now, now, Canndu, I'm sure that Gai would much rather hear about the outcome of the race than have you go through his titles." He tried to remember what he could of the geography of the Seventh Path. Surely, they hadn't swum all the way here. Had Gai even been swimming, or running across the water? He knew that Gai's reserves were large, but not that large - but if he hadn't been water-walking, and he hadn't been swimming, what possible explanation could there be? Could he actually have been running across the water fast enough not to
need to water-walk? How had they negotiated passage with the Sharks? There were too many questions.
Gai struck another pose - kneeling, chin supported by a fist, one eyebrow raised. He barely seemed to move, instead vanishing from one stance and reappearing in another. "Yes! Who was the victor, Kakashi?" The turtle was panting, rocking back and forth in an attempt to right itself, obviously exhausted. Gai glowed. It took chakra manipulation of the individual muscles in his jaw to get the words out. "You did, Gai. By a hair."
The turtle, almost righted, overbalanced as Gai exploded into a victory dance which was almost enthusiastic enough to make up for an absolute lack of rhythm or spatial awareness, to say nothing of the sheer volume of hip-thrusting. Canndu danced alongside him, skipping from one paw to another. Not for the first time, Gai left Kakashi stunned. He'd seen the man navigate a storm of kunai, ninja wire, shuriken, and more exotic projectiles so dense that it had quartered a mayfly without so much as a scratch. For all his faults, there could be no doubt that Gai could exhibit a frightening degree of control over the movement of his body. And he danced like
this. Canndu paused her jig just long enough to nose the poor Turtle right-side up. The creature was trying to say something. Dying words? Skirting the edge of the developing sandstorm, Kakashi knelt next to it, leaning in.
"...isn't he...isn't he...isn't he amazing?"
The world had gone mad.
Cannai was nowhere to be found. Canndu had howled his question, and translated the response. 'Important business: very far away'. Kakashi had almost howled himself. He'd sent the pair off after them - his argument had been that Kamasole should present himself to Cannai, but it had the fringe benefit of separating Gai from what threatened to become a fan club. The performative energy had been redirected to regaling Kakashi with the story of the journey. Apparently, the Turtle had designed a new shell - Kakashi felt it best not to ask - and they'd been exploring the limits of its ingenuity together.
"...and I tell you, I've never
felt so fast, Kakashi! It was like they were standing still!"
The taller man's hands swept through the air, and he pivoted with them. It was like watching a dance - a real one. Gai moved with the grace of a forester felling a particularly troublesome tree. On the surface, it was all brute force and straight lines, but the subtle interplay between each motion became clear if you watched carefully enough. Each movement was just so, exactly correct, and absolutely necessary. The intricacies of underwater combat with a school of Sharks would have eluded him were it not for the wild gesticulation.
But the other man's animated explanation ground to an abrupt halt.
"Anyway, it was a race for the ages."
They continued walking. Absent a reason to speak, Kakashi puzzled over puzzling over Gai's change in behaviour with an internal frown. It wasn't like Gai to leave a story unfinished, and, truth be told, he'd been wondering exactly how the pair were going to get out of the mess they'd found themselves in. He only knew the Sharks by reputation, but he'd been part of a cleanup squad tasked with clearing the area where Kisame had squared off against a dozen Mist hunter-nin looking to bring him home, before he'd been Akatsuki. The landscape had been as ravaged as it had been waterlogged. Huge chunks of earth had simply been missing, jagged scoops taken from the land by the Summons. Now that Gai's hair and clothing had dried, you couldn't have guessed he'd done anything with his day other than perfecting his smile, much less having fought off a dozen apex predators on their home turf.
So much of his life had been spent staring others in the eyes, evaluating how to best incapacitate if not kill them. He'd long been robbed of the ability to see any interaction, much less a conversation, any other way. His next words were experimental, probing the quiet and offering openings, anticipating the other man's explosion into violence. (Any conversation with Gai, even if the man was simply paying for groceries, could unquestionably be described as 'violent'.)
"It sure sounds like it."
Gai simply...nodded. In all their verbal sparring matches, Gai had never responded like this. As Kakashi pondered, confused, they made their way across the rolling hills. The silence softened, becoming comfortable. Gai's stride shortened, and one of his hands even found its way to a pocket. Minutes passed, and Kakashi was forced to acknowledge the possibility that the Fountain of Youth showed no signs of eruption.
Their relationship had always been...strange, but it
was a relationship. They shared a certain kinship. Both men would tell you that their journeys through life couldn't have been more different, each insisting on the superiority of their approach (Gai so loudly the earth shook) but they had taken parallel routes. They'd saved each other's lives on almost innumerable occasions. (254 to 257 in his favour, as Kakashi recalled). Gai was brave, tough, clever and wise in his own way, but that wasn't what made their relationship unique; he could have said the same about Anko, or Asuma, or any of their peers.
The difference was that Gai consistently demonstrated an absolute inability to speak when he could instead
announce. He was unsophisticated, unbecomingly emotional, and dedicated to an utterly nonsensical code of honour, to say nothing of the nigh-incoherent philosophy upon which he based his life.
In many ways, Kakashi had opted for the path of least resistance. He wanted a simple, quiet life. He had sweat blood to reach his level of personal excellence, but he considered the awed deference it bought him to be well worth it. Where possible, he made things easier for himself. His training made missions easier. His reserved manner meant that fewer people tried to strike up conversation, saving the effort social interaction demanded. Maintaining his gear, dressing simply, his modest living space, and alphabetized shelves of novels all served to smooth his path. Gai's life could have been infinitely easier, were he willing to live it even slightly more quietly. He'd had this discussion with Gai, many times, years earlier, first trying to convince him of the value of peace and quiet. Not a man accustomed to failure, he'd made attempts to then simply understand
why the other man might make such stranger choices, before he realized how exhausting the process was. Gai's life was a complicated mess, the man constantly straining to push the envelope at every given moment. And why? For...nothing, as far as Kakashi could see.
What made Kakashi's relationship with Gai unique was that there
was no point - or that there was no point
was the point. Gai's singular dedication to the life that he wanted to live mirrored Kakashi's. The two men shared too much - they were jounin, Summoners, and Kakashi wouldn't have put it past Gai to somehow be ANBU - for Kakashi to be able to dismiss Gai's accomplishments or invalidate his worldview.
It was that respect that drove him to break the silence, not only dropping his guard but giving Gai a genuine opening.
"What's on your mind, Gai?"
Gai stopped, abruptly, planting his feet to stare out over the landscape. Kakashi's forehead furrowed, but he stood next to him, silent. To say that this was unlike Gai would be an...understatement. He had no words that did it justice. He'd seen him exuberant, determined, and even utterly defeated, on rare occasions. They'd shared heartfelt moments, drenched in sweat and blood, the lone survivors of gruesome battles. But he'd never seen the other man...still. Even when they'd been on missions which necessitated long periods of silent observation, Gai hadn't been still - merely still
at that moment.
"It's beautiful. It's all so...quiet. It's…"
Kakashi nodded. He understood. "It's peaceful." His books were the only reason that the word was so close to hand. There were passages, dogeared and practically memorized, which described the feeling exactly. It was tantalizing, wonderful, and above all, utterly alien.
They simply stood there, together, watching the sun dance and the wind weave between the plants. Gai's words were uncharacteristically tentative and soft.
"If something happens to me, Kakashi, I…"
Gai took a breath. It was unsteady.
"Lee isn't - I'm not...."
The words flowed again. Gai confessed fear, worry, and for the second time, Kakashi knew exactly what he meant. They'd both had complicated relationships with their fathers, and the host of responsibilities that came with being jounin, Summoners, and clanless to boot had consumed the possibility of forming strong bonds to anything save abstract concepts - the Will of Fire, Youth, and ideas which defied words.
When he'd heard of Lee, Gai hadn't wasted a single second. Legend had it he'd simply appeared in the Hokage's office, strutting out seconds later. He'd swept the boy under his wing with his characteristic and effortless panache. It had looked effortless, but Kakashi knew better. Gai's focus on Lee's training was singular. His dedication to the boy's mentorship was ignored as everything but a curiosity, Kakashi knew, not only by clans but the clanless. After all, Lee was nothing - another one of Gai's quirks. But the world had thrust upon Gai a son.
"It's okay, Gai."
His interruption was scrutinized, all of the tension and energy and
Gai contained within the other man suddenly focused and brought to bear on Kakashi. He didn't push back, or resist. The pressure faded as quickly as it had mounted. He knew the other man's need to test his resolve.
Kakashi had never taken on a challenge beyond necessity. Gai had thrown himself headlong into any that presented themselves, and not manufactured but manifested them where none appeared. But he knew that, should the occasion arise, he'd meet this one with square shoulders and simple, unyielding force of will.
"If anything happens to you, I'll make sure he isn't alone."
The challenge of duty in the Hokage's office, once you'd become as accustomed as possible to Hiruzen's periodic tests of his appointed guardians, was remaining
alert. Kakashi knew he'd deny it, but the God of Shinobi's deep, enduring love for every ninja in the village wasn't something he could restrain completely. His hold on it was nearly perfect, but after four hours standing over the man, even Itachi's heart would have thawed somewhat. Care and attention and respect for you and you personally roiled off of him.
This was why the ANBU limited shifts to three hours. The end of the third hour was punctuated by the arrival of the Hokage's lunch. He neatly stacked scrolls to make room for the covered tray. The awestruck civilian bearer retreated from the room, favoured by a smile. Every hair on Kakashi's body stood up. As soon as the door swung shut, he shifted his attention to his charge. There was
danger here - terrible...the Hokage smiled at him, as well, and Kakashi's heart dropped. It had been 97 days since he'd fallen for one of the Hokage's tricks, and that smile was reserved for victories.
"I read your mission report, Wolf. Well done - those will be valuable relationships."
He didn't dare move, but his Sharingan spun madly behind his mask. Somewhere, somehow, something terrible was going to happen, but if he could see it coming, maybe, just may-
A gnarled hand lifted the tray.
Turtle and sharkfin soup.
He couldn't have arranged that. He couldn't have even
known. Gai hadn't even been planning on going to Dog - the Sharks had been a surprise, and...
The Hokage smiled, again.
"Your service to the village is to your credit, as always."
I'm not sure that this is as
good as the previous omake I've written, but I love Gai as a character and unlike the QMs I have no particular obligation to write well. This was kicking around half-finished, so I got it to a point where I was happy and now it's in your eyeballs.
