Roses {Kakashi Hatake}

1. Meeting

The five year old girl was excited to go to the Academy for the first time. Her parents were only civilians, yet she had always wanted to be a shinobi. She had always admired them for their strenght en courage, and she wanted to be like them. She wasn't physically or mentally gifted, but she was smart enough to know when to attack and when to run away, and she knew the physical strenght would come after a lot of training.

She was late for class that day and had to introduce herself in front of everyone, "My name is Kobayashi Akahana," she said, with a smile on her face, "I'm here to become a shinobi who protects those she loves and defends the village she has been raised in."

She seated next to a boy with silver hair, since it was the nearest vacant seat. The boy obviously didn't like her sitting next to him, he'd rather sit alone.

"What's your name?" Akahana asked him.

"Hatake Kakashi," he replied reluctantly. He was grumpy like hell, which she didn't like.

"If you want me to sit somewhere else, you can just say so," she said, "No need to be so grumpy."

The rest of the time, they ignored each other. Akahana took her time to chat with other students like Might Gai, Sarutobi Asuma and Yuuhi Kurenai. She also spoke with a few others, but all of them were people Kakashi believed were below him.

He was a grumpy, arrogant, self absorbed jerk, according to nearly everyone Akahana spoke with, yet she still wanted to give him a chance.

He didn't seem the type to actually want people to talk to, but she knew everyone needed friends. After all, that was what her parents always told her.

***

She learned what could be the reason for his arrogance rather soon, when they were practising throwing shuriken. He was better than everyone else, hitting the bull's eye nearly every time.

She was actually getting envious of his talent, it all seemed to come so natural to him, whilst she trained whenever she had the time, until the point she would drop in exhaustion, without drastically improving.

Even though, she couldn't allow herself to lose hope. She would have to remain positive and believe she could be just as good as him if she trained hard enough.

There were times she had to help in their small flower shop, what she did with pleasure. Their store had lovely decoration and they sold all kinds of flowers. Her personal favourite kind were roses, even though they were beautiful and full of colour, they had thorns.

It was also a way her mother used to refer to her. She believed Akahana would grow up to be a beautiful woman with hair as fiery red as her passion for everything that had to do with being a shinobi.

"Mummy, why do you think that?" she would ask and her mum would tell her she just knew. She never asked for a better explanation, her mother's intuiton was rarely wrong.

That afternoon, she didn't have to help, so she decided to take the time to train. Shuriken after shuriken hit the stump, but she was far from the middle circle. She didn't even hit the target in the first place.

"If you're gonna suck this hard, it's best for you to quit going to the Academy and go to a regular school instead," the silver haired boy stated as he walked out of the forest.

"I'm sorry I don't have your talent," she said, "but I'm not going to change my dream."

"You'll never make it, you'd make an awful shinobi. I doubt you'll even get to become genin."

Akahana didn't like the way he looked down on her, that arrogant jerk could say whatever he wanted about her, she was not going to change her mind. Rather, she was going to prove him wrong. She was going to show him she could make it to jounin, perhaps even ANBU and she would have the last laugh, "We'll see about that."