| We Started Nothing | [Dec. 21st, 2013|11:48 pm] |
[Takes place early in the morning on May 4th, two days after Ain’t We All Just Runaways and one day after The Morning Breaks]
That night, Katsuko dreamt of the Kyuubi’s tails trailing fire in the night sky. The scent of smoke and charred flesh hung thick and cloying, almost enough to drown out the demonic intent that stained the air red. The Kyuubi’s chakra ate up all the light, burning like a small sun in the wreckage.
Hideki-sensei grabbed Katsuko’s shoulders and pushed her back, into the arms of the waiting medics. Soot streaked across his forehead where his hitai-ate should have been; she could see burns on his arms, on his jacket. Beni and Nori hovered behind Hideki-sensei, faces grim above the collars of their chuunin vests.
“Let me go with you,” Katsuko begged, reaching for him. “I can fight, I can help, just don’t leave—”
“You’re still injured,” Hideki-sensei said, catching her hand. His eyes softened. “Go with the medics, Katsuko. Stay safe.” He let her go and turned away, towards the center of Konoha where the Kyuubi raged.
Katsuko woke up still calling for him, throat tight and eyes burning. Sweat ran down her temples and neck, clammy and cold. Air rushed out of her lungs in a ragged gasp as she threw the covers off, swinging her legs off the bed.
Her alarm clock read 0300 in neon red. Katsuko dragged her hands down her face, gritting her teeth. “Shit.”
The walls of her apartment offered no reply. She cursed and dragged herself to her feet, stumbling for her dresser.
She hadn’t dreamed about her old genin team in months. Hideki-sensei, Beni, and Nori— It would have made more sense for her to dream about the demon bugs. That mission hadn’t even been a week ago. But nightmares didn’t have to make sense.
For a moment she was tempted to go find Raidou, but he needed all the rest he could get. He’d already helped put her back together after the mission; there was no sense in testing the limits of his goodwill. No one felt charitable towards 3 am visitors, and Katsuko had managed to survive years without a strong shoulder to lean on. One more night spent training herself into exhausted sleep wouldn’t hurt.
She hadn’t done laundry in weeks; the cleanest things she owned at the moment were her jounin blues, folded neatly at the bottom of her dresser. She threw them on and added the jounin vest on a whim, shrugging as the awkward weight of armored canvas settled over her shoulders and torso. Not something she really wanted to get used to, but right now she could use the extra security. Her mother’s kodachi hung useless and broken on the wall next to her mask, but she had an ANBU-issue kodachi as a backup. She slid it through her belt, next to her katana, and ran her fingers over the plain black hilt.
Her face in the mirror looked haggard and wan: pale skin, chapped lips, bruised eyes. The wild tangle of her hair stood in stark contrast to the military neatness of her uniform. She grabbed a hair-tie from a drawer in a fit of pique and wrestled her hair into a low ponytail at the base of her neck.
Better.
The air tasted clean and sharp on her way up the monument to the ANBU training fields. Katsuko tilted her head back and savored the pure bite of it, closing her eyes. Still dark outside, still quiet; if she tried hard enough, she could pretend she was somewhere else.
Someone was already using the field furthest away from HQ. Katsuko slowed, wary, and stopped completely when she recognized the chakra signature and the shock of grey hair. Two Kakashis flickered in and out of sight in the middle of the field, trading blows too fast for a non-Sharingan eye to track. Katsuko shoved her hands in her pockets and watched in frank fascination.
Kakashi didn’t break pace, even though he must have sensed her. He and his clone moved with savage grace, changing fighting styles on each other fast as a drawn breath. Katsuko recognized several different schools of taijutsu, from Academy-standard to Wind Country Mantis. When the clone ducked underneath Kakashi’s scything kick and came back up with a volley of sparks, Kakashi countered with his own lightning, narrowly missing the clone’s heart. A short round of ninjutsu followed, where the clone yanked spikes out of the ground and ice gathered in a fine mist around Kakashi’s hands. They charged each other at the same time.
Katsuko didn’t see the hit connect, but the clone erupted into a cloud of smoke. Kakashi landed in a crouch ten feet away from Katsuko, slightly out of breath, and looked up at her. He was a lean shape in the darkness, pale skin and hair even more striking for the contrast. “What?”
“Morning, Sparks.” Katsuko grinned in delight, sour mood forgotten. “Done playing with yourself?” |
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