“You’re unusually tense today!”
“Shut the hell up, you ugly bird!” Kohana yelled at her summoning’s constant squawking. Hitoshi, the giant vulture’s noise and talkative attitude often sent Kohana on edge and often made her regret even making a contract with the confounded creature. Like her relationship with Kiba, Kohana and Hitoshi didn’t exactly get along. Of course, the vulture and his master had a much closer relationship and they often agreed with each other during missions and such. However, if Hitoshi was in the mood to try and make the atmosphere more light-hearted, it ended up with the two throwing lame insults at each other.
Hitoshi always flew as high as he possibly can without cutting Kohana’s source of oxygen. This was for the sole reason that his massive size was too suspicious and flashy. The farther they were from the ground, the smaller his figure seemed to be.
Over the two and a half years of absence, Kohana had created two summoning contracts, one with Hitoshi and another with Kunio, a fat and polite mole that helped Kohana with travelling underground and with searching for enemies that knew how to perfectly cloak their chakra. However, with Kunio’s size as brassy as Hitoshi’s, he was only used a little less often than Hitoshi. Not to mention Kunio was clumsy and often destroyed trees that he would make contact with… or at least turn an untouched dirt path into a rut.
“Well, calm down! From running a whole day, you really should take a break.”
Kohana’s eye twitched. Truthfully, she appreciated Hitoshi’s genuine concern for her well-being but she just hoped that sometimes, he would just shut up… even if he did have a point.
The loud flapping of wings and the violent brush of the wind filled the space silence had created. Still, it didn’t last very long.
“What’s wrong?” Kohana solemnly asked as she tightened her grip on the vulture’s soft, brown feathers. Hitoshi had stopped accelerating and just remained still, airborne, with his wings flapping at a slightly rapid pace. His mouth was open and his golden eyes darted below them.
“We’re going down.”
“What? Why?” Kohana demanded.
“You’ll see.”
Hitoshi’s tone was grim, and it made Kohana all the more uneasy. Hitoshi was always the reason why she kept calm during missions—aside from Osamu or Kunio—which meant that whenever Hitoshi knows that something is about to go wrong, Kohana could never find it in herself to think straight. Perhaps she relied on the bird too much.
The vulture dove straight towards a clearing in the forest.
In the middle of the clearing stood a dark figure and Kohana was now sure why Hitoshi was so serious about going down.
With the wind whistling in her ears, Kohana couldn’t fight the steady hastening of her beating heart. It was different this time though; instead of feeling uneasy like Hitoshi, Kohana felt almost excited. Yet, behind that certain anticipation was anger. Kohana didn’t want to feel anger because the feeling was for the young man she’d learned to hate, Sasuke.
Several feet from the ground, Hitoshi disappeared with a poof and down came Kohana from the sky. When it was a few more feet, the redhead somersaulted, somehow softening her fall on the ground.
Falling to one knee, she looked up into the red eyes of Uchiha Itachi.
As she stood on her feet, Kohana could feel something inside her soften. Even though their first meeting in years was most unfortunate and for the purpose of him taking Naruto away, Kohana still couldn’t bring herself to feel overly-negative feelings for the man. How could she?
