A Hole in One's Village [Kakashi Hatake]

Chapter 1: The Level One Clearance Scroll Handler

New book, yay! So I really don't like the cover. Ana looks way too angry, and she looks nothing like how I envision her while I'm writing. When I have time, I'm going to redraw it, but until then, this cover is just going  to have to do. Sadly. Well, I hope that you enjoy the first chapter of this book!

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     My feet barely touched each branch that I leapt across as I sprinted through the treetops at a speed even most ninja would have had trouble keeping. My byakugan was activated and my sensory skills were feeling the subtle changes in energy all around me. An important scroll bounced slightly in my weapons pouch as Nishi ran right next to me. She was the smallest of my coyote summons, the runt of the litter. In the past year, she had grown to just reach my hip as her slender, white and silver body undulated with every powerful bound. Her three siblings had grown a lot too since the war had ended. Higashi and Kita were now the same size as their mother, Hokomaru, and Minami was the metaphorical gentle giant of the pack. The tops of his ears almost reached my shoulders. I'm not too short, about five foot six, so he was about the size of a small horse, maybe a pony.

     Because of my distance running abilities (I was a good runner in my old world before I had the use of chakra to aid me), sensory skills, and byakugan, I've been sent on missions like this a lot. I've pretty much become the runner for the Shinobi Union. Not that I minded, though. I love to run, and that's pretty much what all of these missions were. They were all A-ranked due to the important nature of the information I was carrying so they paid well, but I never actually had to fight anyone. My sensory skills made it so that I was very good at avoiding other ninjas and by extension, conflict. Pretty much, they paid me to run around. You won't see me complaining. Yes, I did miss battles and dangerous missions a bit, but being a glorified messenger for the intel too important to send by summon or jutsu was a good gig.

    About a half mile away, I could sense four ninja. They were powerful shinobi and were doing a decent job of masking their chakra signatures, but they weren't good enough to hide from me. I scouted ahead with my byakugan, and my eyesight momentarily left my body to fly forward to where the repressed chakras were. They were Leaf Village ANBU, and I adjusted my route to take me past them, just out of range for any sensor type that they might have. Even though we were from the same village, we were both on important missions so it would probably just be better to avoid them all together. So long as I stayed out of sight, I wasn't too worried. I could mask my chakra from an average sensory ninja while standing next to them. Any sensor good enough to get into the ANBU wouldn't be able to be fooled that easily, but I was still fairly confident in my ability to hide my presence from them. Okay, I was still wary and recognized that someday I will probably come across someone with superior sensory skills to my own, over confidence kills ninja faster than kunai, but I would have been able to feel if one of them was exceptionally skilled at chakra manipulation. 

     A few completely uneventful hours later, I was outside the gates of the Cloud Village. Two young ninja greeted me as I stepped through the gate. One had very pale hair that contrasted with his dark skin as he sucked on a bright pink lollypop. The other ninja had the same dark skin, but her hair was a dark red and held back by a bandanna, and the two of them seemed to be bickering about something trivial.

     "Omoi, Karui," I nodded to them as they stopped their fighting to look at me.

     Omoi glanced down at his wrist, "Hello, Ana, you're right on time."

     I laughed, "I've made the journey between the Cloud and Leaf so many times now that I could time it down to the second and name every tree that I pass by."

     Karui put her hands on her hips, "Doesn't it get boring just going back and forth all the time?"

     I shrugged, "Well, I make trips between all of the hidden villages so I get to see a lot of the world, and I really enjoy running. Besides, someone's got to do it; I just happen to be the best suited to the job."