A shinobi is a high school student like an other… part four.
 
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I took my sweet little time to go from the high school to the HQ infirmary, even taking a ‘long-cut’ by the Information wing, just to see if there were new gossips floating in the air. I wasn’t disappointed.

“…but I’m hungry!”

“Go eat somewhere else!”

This was followed by a whole concert of various noises, sounding very much like those produced by the eventful meeting of a soft body and harder objects, ending majestically by the powerful ‘VLAM’ of a door opened by non-conventional means. A dark UFO came in front of me by said suddenly opened door before ending his course against the opposite wall.

“Hi Kodia,” I said, when the crashed UFO get cataloged under the ‘Flying Human’ type.

“Ghh hi Hatake.”

And here’s Kodia. I’ll spare you his family name, I’ve never been able to pronounce it – my Russian needs some work. He’s a tracker beyond compare, thanks to his particular…particularities. So particular that he’s kinda forced to stay at the HQ; it would be too dangerous for him as for his close circle of friends and/or family – and not so close one – that he lives ‘outside’.

“You got thrown out again?”

“ ‘m hungry…”

Kodia tried the well named puppy eyes no jutsu, still collapsed against the wall. Tried is the key word, his iris made almost red by the hunger were a bit spoiling the effect.

“Sorry man, I’m not enough of a philanthropist to let you suck my blood.”

He pouted while standing up, smelling the air.

“For lack of something else… It’s not like I would like some, seems rotten. You smell like fever.”

Yeah, Kodia is what you would call a vampire, more exactly a human coming from a bloodline, a clan, a family – call that as you wish -, that, from mutation to mutation, feed from blood and have the needed senses coming with. For example, he can follow your tracks just by smelling your blood. Thus the tracker post. Nin-dogs or ninja having trained dogs haven't been that widespread since three or more generations.
“Thank, ‘would have never know without you…”

Seeing my death warmed over face and guessing where I was going – without the need to be a medium -, he gave me one of his psychotic smiles.

“I’ll go put some incense on your grave.”

“So kind of you.”

He went back from where he came; this made me rise an eyebrow.

“You’re going back?”

“What? It’s only the third time she threw me out…”

He disappeared by the door. It seems I’ve forgot to mention that not only he was hungry, but that he’s also head over heel with one girl of the Information.

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I continued my path, trying to make myself the more humanly-possible discreet. If only I could manage to come across Shizune instead of Scary Woman at the hospital wing; Shizune had the huge advantage of not trying to kill you before healing. Not to mention that she was younger. And nicer. And that she knew every single gossip running in Konoha.

I think I mentioned something about miracles earlier. ‘Cause this was exactly what I was asking for; a miracle.

So, when I bumped into someone without seeing or feeling this someone arrive, I knew exactly who it was. But what have I done to deserve such a karma?

“Hatake…”

“Yeah Grand’ma?”

She struck me with  The cuff of Doom™, her trademark. This blow could be compared to the one which made Kodia meet a wall - at the difference that she used, as usual, just one finger.

“What have you get yourself into this time brat!”

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I finally ended with most of my pieces in place, sitting on one of the beds of the infirmary. Tsunade was in front of me, working her magic hands on my stomach and the bad gash on it. Soon the red swollen skin was no more.

“There, it should be fine… Don’t let me catch you at healing yourself on your own when I’m there for that.”

She straightened, staring right at me. She ended up by getting me ill at ease by staring at me like that, as the only clothes I still got on were my jeans and my shoes, and the infirmary made it a point of honor to be the coldest place in the HQ in this season.

She looked me up and down, noting every wound’s trace, every scar, her gaze lingering on my a bit too showing ribs to finally end by staring at my left eye hidden behind my hair.

“You eat properly at least Kakashi?”

This is the main reason for why I try my best to avoid Tsunade aka  Scary Woman, more than because of The Cuff and the yelling. The ‘discussion’  - more the argument…- always ends to come back to this point, implying all the rest. I half-smiled to her, a smile well visible for once because I had no collar or bandana behind which I could hide.

“Don’t worry about that grandma, it’s fine.”

She knows as well as me that it will never be totally okay, even less fine. It’s just a way as an other to put a polite end to the conversation.

“Would you stop with the ‘grandma’? He begins to call me like that too, and I’m young enough that I could have been your mother, brat.”

The intercom ringed. Tsunade went to answer it.

“Thanks the gods it haven’t been the case…” I mumbled while putting my sweater back.

Tsunade, at the intercom, by way of answering me – extraordinarily mature – stuck out her tongue at me. Then she hung up and came back toward me.

“I give you the day off, just go by Yondaime’s office on your way out.”

“Does everybody but me know about this nickname?” I asked the ceiling, while picking my bag up from the floor.

Tsunade let out a laugh, and extended a hand to tousle my hair. I was barely aware of my reaction that I had already intercept her wrist. Time froze. I stared at my hand for what seemed to me an eternity. Then I let go off her wrist, turning my head away so as not to look at her.

“Sorry Tsunade.”

I felt more than I saw her smiling sadly at me before I left the room.

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I’m paranoid. That’s a fact. In my line of work, if you don’t learn very quickly to become so, at best you’re behind a desk, at worst you’re pushing up the daisies - when there was enough pieces of you left to be buried. So, when I saw my sensei’s smile from behind the rubbish dump he dared to call a desk, I mentally reviewed the list of the exits.

“Kakashi, since Tsunade gave you the day off, could you do me a favor?”

From his tone of voice and face, it was rather a big glowing ‘HELP!’. Sensei needs to take this tone of voice just for one thing. It was my turn to try the puppy eyes no jutsu.

“Please sensei, not that, don’t make me babysit…” The end of my sentence was cut by a very, very enthusiastic “Kakashi!” howled by a black and orange meter who jumped on me. This had been brought in by an exhausted looking Shizune.

“Look after Naruto for the day for me?” tried – pathetically – Sensei in front of my desperate glare.

“Isn’t he supposed to be in school?” I asked, more rhetorically than not. The ‘he’ was currently announcing his undying love to my pant leg. Shizune had already left. Rat.

“On strike” answered laconically Sensei.

“They all deserve to be chidori-ed up their asses,” I mumbled hoping it to be discreet. Don’t get me wrong, I love the kid, but every person because of whom I have to baby-sit Naruto is a foe.  Sensei seemed to mumble something that sounded a lot like ‘Amen’.

“Please?” added my sensei, clasping his hands and smiling more and more desperately.

I sighed deeply before talking to the six-years-old blond kid who was trying to go through my pant’s pockets.

“What do you want for lunch Naruto?”

“RAMEN!” Naruto bawled in response.

“Then leave my leg alone, we need to get some shopping done.”

Sensei sank in his armchair, hidden behind the masses of paper on his desk.

“Thanks Kakashi.”

“Yeah, yeah,” then I mouthed ‘you’re so dead for this’, slipping a finger on my throat. He just smiled and ruffled his as-blond-as-his-son’s hair, while said son was dragging me out singing ‘ramen’ on every single key.

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Konoha became a pretty cosmopolite place in a few decades, you can hear nearly every language spoken on the planet here, you can cross representatives of every country, resident as well as just tourist. More people imply more troubles for us, but tourism is a great way to get some money coming in Konoha’s coffers. You wouldn’t believe the number of people reading to spent an eye just to see for real the carved Hokages’ faces, witnesses of Konoha's old days of power, or a leg in the numerous festivals taking place all around the year. Most of those festivals have been created out of nothing.

One of those festivals had to be the cause why the streets were packed to this point. There was no way Konoha had that many inhabitants. The take-out ramen restaurant in which I was an usual customer was totally packed – the boss made my order just because he knew Naruto and me since we were big enough to eat his ramen. The crowd wasn’t very convenient to keep an eye on the orange-clothed thing that was going everywhere without leaving me a second to catch back my breath, forcing me to run after him with our lunches in my arms.

Sensei said once that running after Naruto was the best training exercise he knew. His dear wife knocked him on the head at this moment. He had said that when his kid was only three years old. Naruto had gotten some training himself since. Now, I just had to wish that I had had a good idea – said idea was to make the kid walk and run ‘til the house, in order to have him tired enough after lunch so that he’d behave like a six-years-old, and not like a solar battery on legs.

He’s rather like a chakra battery. I can swear this kid is a descendant worthy of the Uzumaki line. He’s boosted by energy and chakra. I could close my eyes and still be on his trail, just like a lighthouse’s light. This wouldn’t be the greatest of my ideas either - there would be too much undetectable people between him and me.

The crowd began to thin out as we moved away from the main shopping and pedestrian streets. The ‘Akuma’ was just a block away, maybe Haku would feel like babysitting just the time to let me breathe? I turned down the idea as soon as it came to my mind. I had no wish to end with Zabuza on my back ‘cause the kid would have exhausted his boyfriend – I had no death wish.

“Naruto!” I yelled at a crossing. “Where are you going? It’s this way!”

The orange jacket turned round, coming back to me from the wrong street he had began to take, the marks on his cheeks thinned by his smile.

“Kakashi, I’m hungry!”

“Yeah, well it’s this way,” I pointed with a chin move.

The “I’m hungry” echoed to another heard earlier on the same tone. A drop of cold sweat slided down back. A little Naruto with red eyes and pointed teeth appeared in my mind. Please, don’t dump another potential vampire on us. Said potential demon slipped quietly his hand in my free one, waiting for the traffic light to pass to green for the pedestrians.

The same demon, once appeased by generous offerings of food  -you got to understand my part of ramen in addition to his there- settled on the couch where I was already reading, beating me up until I caught him by the neck and put him on my stomach, where he rolled himself in a ball like some little animal – just before falling into Morpheus’ arms. I couldn’t help myself but to pass a hand in his hair; in case he would purr. He didn’t purr, no, he made something which went straight to my heart. He talked in his sleep. He said ‘Kashi-nii-san’.

Kakashi-big brother.

They’re my family.

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Kodia came from ‘Night Watch/Nochnoi Dozor’, great Russian movie with a lot of vampires and cool supernatural stuff in urban environment.

 
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