Sage's Resurrection

Chapter 37

Six other agents appeared and grabbed a different examinee.

Kakashi turned towards her after the others had cleared out.

"You are not supposed to be here," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean? I'm not doing this for the village, I'm doing it for me."

"That makes it worse, not better," he pointed out. "That means that you're blatantly ignoring others' advice when it suits you. I know you're smart. You know better than this."

"My business is not relevant to what I am trying to accomplish here."

"Then you should not be here." He sighed in exasperation. "Very well. Let's begin. You said you specialised in assassination, yes? Take this tag and kill my clone." He handed a slip of paper to her and vanished in a cloud of smoke.

She blinked, and then activated her sharingan.

Annoyingly, it had been a clone, and the trail had stopped dead at the entrance.

Still, she'd spent enough time around Kakashi to never mistake his signature, no matter how faint.

The glow of her former sensei's chakra -bright, flashing white interspersed with blue sparks- trailed off from where he'd stood.

She leapt out of the room, out of the ANBU bunker, and out of the mountain.

The thousands of unique lights flared, some dim, some sharp and focused.

She spent the better part of a minute sorting through all of them, and then dashed off.

She flickered from roof to roof, camouflaging herself with the walls as needed, before finally reaching Kakashi.

He was a paranoid man, if nothing else, constantly flickering into crowds, doubling back from where he'd go, looking around every which way regardless of how civilians would look at him, all under heavy disguise.

It was difficult, and she spent ten minutes playing cat and mouse with him, but she finally stabbed his back. He popped.

Another Kakashi appeared behind her.

"Good. That was step one. Now, we're going to be doing this in reverse. I'm going to be hunting you, and you have to get back to the training room before I catch you, through any means which I deem fit. You get a single second head start. Go."

She blasted away from him as fast as she could, wind flying past her.

Kakashi trailed after her like a comet, electricity rolling off of him in waves. The silk in her clothes crackled with static.

She turned back around, and Kakashi was charging straight at her with a Lightning Blade in hand.

She formed a Lingchi and parried a glancing blow.

The clash blew her away from him, and she landed on a rooftop. She continued to run away as fast as he could, just a few dozen metres away from the entrance to the training room.

Her teacher hurled a rasengan at her- he can do that?- which blew up mere metres away from her face. The chakra in it spiralled out, leaving her off balance for a brief moment.

She stumbled into the entrance as Kakashi reached out for her.

"Alright. So, you're probably wondering why I chased you back here. Well, the truth is," he said while she nodded expectantly. "I did it because I wanted to." She slouched in disappointment.

"Now, it wasn't in vain, because I needed a warm-up," he said before dropping into stance. "We're going to fight. One-on-one, no holds barred. We go until I say so, or one of us drops from exhaustion, or one of us surrenders."