|| [Hatake] : Fascination : [Kakashi] || [Part XIII] ||
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Oriko couldn’t help but twitch nervously as she stood on the grass, about thirty-seven seconds after she’d finished performing the last Jutsu in her array. She been at the training grounds at half seven in order to practice furiously for her fight with Kakashi’s friend’s student and it was close to ten thirty – her body now being rested for as long as she could manage – Kakashi again late, although it didn’t surprise her, but neither was there a sign of ‘cute Lee’.
She was looking forward to a chance to prove her skills against another (who seemed not to be a Jounin considering he had a sensei) but wished that it would hurry up – rather than having to hang around for hours, it really was quite troublesome.
However, she felt quite prepared and was ready to face any challenge – she felt sure (to a comfortable degree) that he wouldn’t be better than Kakashi (although he did lose the Jan-Ken…). Oriko was nearly forced to physically shake her head to break her train of thought; her nerves were getting the better of her as she found another seat on the grass and attempted to mediate to clear away her worry.
It didn’t really work; not to mention that as soon as she’d closed her eyes, or so it seemed, she could hear the familiar voice of Kakashi, she immediately snapped her eyes open to meet his only visible one, curved which signalled he was grinning.
“Hi,” She sighed,
“Morning! Are you ready to spar with Lee?”
“Uh… yea, I guess,”
“Great! In the meantime, there’s something I want to tell you,” What? “There are a number of things you need to know about doujutsus, which I assume you’ve heard of,” She nodded in response, why did I think he was going to say something else? “There are certain techniques you may well encounter in the future which utilize a Kekkei-Genkai or blood line limit, these are usually manifest in the form of eye patterns and colouration for doujutsu although other types of limits are possible,”
Oriko continued to look at him, feeling more fascinated by what he was saying, “A good example of this is in the Sharingan, a limit passed on by the Uchiha clan of Konoha. I happen to possess a Sharingan, I don’t really care to explain how,” He muttered under his breath, but it was obvious she heard as he lifted his head band to reveal his typically covered left eye.
He had a deep scar running over both eye lids and the iris was abnormal to say the least, she could see from her distance its deep crimson colour with three little ‘comma’ like marks around the jet black pupil. She was tempted to get a little closer to try and get a more detailed look but knew that was a bad idea;
“Cool,” Was her rather modest response and although Kakashi’s outward demeanor didn’t change, he couldn’t resist rolling his eyes internally at her childish response.
“This eye allows me to see through all nin, tai and genjutsus and even copy them, I can see chakra flow, pre-empt taijutsu moves…what?” He questioned seeing her semi-blank stare,
“You aren’t actually of the Uchiha clan, right?” He shook his head in slow negative, “Then is it a little contradictory of the point of a blood line limit if you don’t have any of their blood?”
“Well…” What was the point of me saying that I didn’t want to explain? He thought to himself as a sweat drop formed, “That’s a long and…uh…long story which I don’t want to get into here; suffice to say, that I am not a natural successor of the Sharingan and it steadily eats away at my chakra when its activated. As it doesn’t suit me well, I can’t deactivate it and must keep it covered. Neither can I use it to its full potential and it tends to wear me out after long,” Kakashi explained observing her unimpressed look;
“I thought it was supposed to be useful,” Kakashi rolled his eyes,
“It is, but its value comes at a price,”
“Stupid reality,” She commented quietly to herself ignoring his sharp breath of irritation;
“Oriko,” She looked back up to him at the sound of her name but didn’t finish his sentence; rather he seemed to be focused on…well…Oriko herself,
“Uh… Kakashi?” She queried, finding her feet, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable under his rather intense gaze (as well as with such radically mismatched eyes), but he responded to her almost immediately and cleared his throat,
“Well, as a demonstration, why don’t you attempt to use your needles of wind energy, I’ll copy it and counter the jutsu,” She looked suspiciously at him.
“Why didn’t you simply show me that when we were testing counters for my ‘playing-card’ Jutsu?”
“Well, I would have needed to explain the Sharingan and I thought it was a conversation for another day.”
“Mhmm-hmm,” The disbelief was evident in her voice as she stepped back into a fighting pose, which Kakashi mirrored, as she leapt forward performing the hand seals, which she could see Kakashi too mimicked perfectly in time with her own and as she’d just organized the chakra and the needles appeared, Kakashi had mirrored it so perfectly that the jutsu cancelled itself.
“I see how that could really piss someone off,” She commented under her breath, resisting the urge to throw random jutsus at him,
“Do you see its strength?” He questioned as she now fully noticed his right eye was closed,
“Yea, that would come in seriously useful for enemy you’ve never faced before,” She slowly pieced together the little snippets of information about it, but wanted to know more. To the library it is then, after this damn spar, she thought a little grumpily.
Kakashi nodded, again remembering the quick mind of hers may well allow her some minor advantage over Lee…but that was a gamble, and he’d have to wait to find out the real winner of the match. He allowed his Sharingan to carefully observe her chakra flow but he could sense Gai and Lee’s approach and quickly covered it with his head band, allowing his right eye to open and the world to appear as normal again.
“Kakashi! Are you prepared?” Gai’s booming voice interrupted the momentary peace, as Kakashi securely fixed his bored expression as he turned to face his rival,
“What is your name?” He took a few steps closer to Oriko and the small – miniature version of him followed, Oriko eyed them both carefully before answering,
“Oriko,”
“I’m Rock Lee!” He spoke confidently and with a random kick as though to prove a point, Oriko raised only an eyebrow at his odd appearance – a surprisingly (if not almost impressively) super shiny bowl cut, thick eyebrows and definitely abnormal eyelashes.
Although she wasn’t really a fan of spandex, he at least had the physique to carry it off, so she couldn’t complain too much. He stood there, with a strangely determined look on his face as Gai stared at Oriko too,
“Are you prepared to lose?”
“No, I’m prepared to fight,” She retorted, not meaning to sound as rude at it no doubt came across,
“Don’t mock Gai-sensei!” Lee suddenly pointed a horrified finger at Oriko, his voice sounding overly defensive,
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, but can we please get on with this?”
“Yosh! Lee, win this battle!”
“H-Hai Gai-sensei!” Lee responded, saluting his teacher, as Oriko flashed one last look at Kakashi who was stood, with a hand in his pocket looking absolutely uninterested.
She and Lee leapt further away from the tree line and stood facing each other in the tradition way to begin sparing; they observed each other carefully, their respective determination as strong and resolute as the other’s.
“Are you a Chuunin?” He asked, his tone still confident,
“No, still a Genin,” The boy allowed a smirk of pride to pass over his lips before he nearly shot towards Oriko at lightning speed, and threw a kick at her sending her flying backwards before she’d fully realized; shit he’s fast.
She steadied herself and thought hard for a moment, whilst trying to keep up with his speed, she managed to block the next kick he had, but not by much – his strength was more than she’d been expecting.
She managed to leap back onto a tree branch and prepared some kunai and shuriken with chakra threads, she hurled them – a great cloud it seemed of them fell all around the boy, who expertly dodged them all, but Oriko hand managed to connect one thread to him. He again leapt forward to strike her but she leapt up, allowing enough distance on the thread so that he wouldn’t notice it as she quickly performed a kage-bunshin in mid-air, keeping her senses open for any jutsus he might pull.
The clone moved quickly around behind Lee, who’d already caught up and was throwing as many punches and kicks at Oriko as he could manage. She held a kunai in one hand and nearly managed to kick him just behind the knee, but she couldn’t keep up with his movements and was forced to leap away, and quickly perform the hand seals to a Goukakkyuu no Jutsu.
Lee too had fast reactions and leap back well out of the way of the way, right into the path of the kage-bunshin who had her card Jutsu ready. As Oriko predicted, Lee again tried to dodge her clone and she chose that moment to drag him back by the chakra thread, right into the path of the Jutsu.
The Oriko-clone managed to scrape down Lee’s back and cut into his shoulder with her Jutsu, but he managed to twist his body into a kick which turned the clone it a small cloud of smoke, and rescue himself from complete annihilation.
“Shit,” Oriko half-whispered, as she again mentally ran through her list of Jutsu and selected the best one to use while Lee stood for a few moments, clearly trying focus through the pain he was in. Oriko began to furiously form hand seals and created three clones, each which dragged out a string of kunais all with chakra threads attached ready to throw at Lee, Oriko managed to mix herself up in the other clones as they all dashed forward and threw the kunais simultaneously.
All of them, however, purposefully aimed to miss, and allowed Lee to doge any direct hits, but all the while, threads were winding around him, he attempted to leap out of the way but there were already too many threads, and Oriko had a good enough grip to drag him back to the floor and just as soon she was crouched next to him with a kunai at his neck. Lee conceded defeat with a sigh and Oriko cancelled the threads having found her feet and put away her kunai, Lee too rose to his feet,
“Hey, why didn’t you use any ninjutsu?” She questioned, only now fully taking in that he’d used only taijutsu, he look over to her, still holding his arm at an awkward angle,
“It’s because I am unable to use either nin or genjutsu,” Oriko widened her eyes at his unexpected statement,
“Wow, really?” He nodded as Gai appeared at his side,
“Lee! Are you alright?”
“Y-Yea,” He responded, suddenly looking quite pale,
“Uh…I- I’m sorry about hitting you with that Jutsu so hard,” She commented, scratching the back of her head, as Lee again smiled – kindly this time,
“That’s alright! This will help me get stronger!” Oriko too smiled back; glad she hadn’t hurt him too badly, she looked back over to Gai who was staring at her strangely, as she pulled her left arm across her chest, stretching her shoulder joint,
“What were you saying about losing yesterday, Gai?” She questioned, with a playful smile on her face, as Gai’s serious expression suddenly turned to one which told how unimpressed he was,
“Fine, you win,” He grumbled slightly,
“Ah ha!” Oriko smiled triumphantly, “But, uh, maybe you should take Lee to the hospital,” She pointed in his direction to see his eyes glaze over slightly, and his jumpsuit now looking more red than green,
“Ah! Lee! You are indeed a great for you to care so much for your opponent!” Gai just managed to catch Lee as he fell into unconsciousness and sprinted off with him – presumably towards the hospital.
Oriko sighed a breath of relief, wondering what other weird people she’d have to put up with soon, as Kakashi finally chose that moment to appear beside her,
“Good job,” She flashed him a half-hearted smile,
“He was a Chuunin, right?”
“Yes,”
“How so? With only taijutsu to work with…and although it was impressive it’s no match for ninjutsu,”
“Well, whilst that’s true, most missions are typically carried out in teams, only the exceptional shinobi at Jounin level take on solo missions, so Lee has Chuunin level skills in taijutsu which would greatly benefit whichever team he was on,”
“Oh…” Oriko responded, suddenly wondering what the point of hard work was; she again rubbed her shoulder where the deer had charged her the day before, remembering that Lee had kicked her pretty fiercely in exactly that spot;
“Come on, let’s get some lunch,”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you hungry?” He questioned, observing her single raised eyebrow and uncertain look on her face – as though questioning what the hell he was doing,
“Uh, well,” She stumbled a little –feeling horribly uncertain at the prospect of having lunch with him, but unfortunately, her stomach thought otherwise and rumbled, very loudly just as she’d finished speaking. Kakashi couldn’t resist a smile at her very Oriko-like actions as he turned to walk away,
“Come on then,” She walked to catch up with him, and his leisurely gait.