Will of Fire: Kakashi Hatake

Chapter 13

For a long time, Akira's life finally settled into a regular pattern that she found very appealing. Her life as a chunin involved her going on longer, more difficult missions. After the exams, Kishi started signing her, Ranko, and Muta on C-ranked and B-ranked missions. She learned that her teammates were very skilled, each with their own skill set. Kishi pushed them hard to come up with strategies that complimented each other in battle. Akira and Muta were able to sense enemies from far distances away. Sometimes his bugs were able to spot enemies that were concealing their chakra signatures. Ranka was very analytical and was able to come up with strategies fairly quickly. They didn't always work out, but where his idea failed, Akira was usually able to pick up the slack.

They trained together every day, even on missions. Kishi was on top of them constantly about improving their skills. They did at least have Sundays off. Muta and Ranka had quickly grown on Akira, and she found herself enjoying working with her new teammates. Kishi encouraged them to spend time together outside of training together as well, so they scheduled dinner nights twice a week.

Muta was quiet but kind and spent a lot of time caring for his beetles. Ranka spent a lot of his free time at the hospital, where he was training to be a medical ninja. But otherwise, he was well-versed in wind-style jutsu. When Akira watched Ranka attack with wind jutsu, she found herself a little jealous. She wanted to learn wind style too.

Akira's water-style abilities had increased exponentially, and the more she practiced water jutsus the better she became. She found her quicksand jutsus were becoming more powerful as well, and she was able to do more with quicksand than just create pits and trap people.

Kakashi had found her another book, one that was full of water-style jutsus. He even took the time to teach her the water dragon jutsu that he had used on Somaru.

Akira didn't see much of Somaru anymore after the exams, though she did hear that he was also made a chunin. She crossed paths with Yuhi almost every week, and they got breakfast together on Sundays. She really looked forward to the girl's time after spending a week with the boys.

Even Guy had started hanging around more. He had a tendency to interrupt Kakashi's jutsu lessons with a new challenge for Kakashi each time. Akira had been annoyed at first, but quickly warmed up to the spunky teenager. His antics were funny, and she enjoyed watching him. He even let her spar with him every once in a while. Though she usually ended up beaten up pretty badly.

For two years, things were normal for her. As normal as they could be anyways. Until Kakashi was promoted to ANBU captain. Then he was gone more often, which made Akira a little sad.

Both she and Guy missed Kakashi being around.

"You ever wonder about how Kakashi is doing?" Guy asked her one Sunday afternoon.

Akira dodged the attack that he had aimed at her head. She threw a punch at his head, which he ducked under.

"I don't see him as often anymore. He's always busy."

Guy frowned. He pulled his next punch more than normal, and Akira was able to catch him off guard. She landed a solid kick to his side, sending him stumbling to the side.

He didn't raise his hands back up and had a frown on his face. Akira lowered her hands as well.

"We should go try to talk to him."

"He's just busy Guy, I'm sure he's alright." Akira didn't believe her own words though. Kakashi had always made time for her, but lately, he seemed to be avoiding her. And she didn't like it.

Guy's frown deepened. "Let's still go try."

He started making his way across the field in the direction of town. Akira followed after him, the now eleven-year-old tucking her hands into her pockets. She didn't know how this interaction was going to go, but she didn't have high hopes.