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“—cute for a little shit, I guess.”
Kakashi tilted his head, peering down at his ANBU teammates from behind his mask. They hadn’t noticed his arrival, which immediately lowered them a few rungs in Kakashi’s private ranking of his fellow shinobi. Even if they had, his regard would've still lessened due to the fact that they were, of all things, gossiping while on duty. Had the military of Konohagakure stooped so low?
He dropped down from his vantage point on the tree, where the canopy enshrouded him, and landed on the branch above his two ANBU teammates. He disturbed his surroundings just enough to announce himself and no more. Luckily this seemed to be sufficient ruckus to alert two highly trained agents to his presence. The one closest to him gave a small jump, and Kakashi squinted behind the mask at her lack of professionalism.
“Hound!” she said, almost squeaked. “We didn’t hear you.”
Her candidness spoke of someone more suited to a position as an Academy instructor than a member of ANBU. Kakashi supposed there was a reason she was called Hamster.
“We’ve been waiting for hours,” Grouse said.
Kakashi handed over a scroll, triple-sealed and tied with chakra-wire as an extra measure. There was no actual need for any of those precautions; still, he liked reminding people that they had been paired with him and what that might imply in terms of how risky the mission might be. When one took nothing below S-rank missions, one tended to lose some perspective—not all dangers were equal, and not all agents were equipped to handle them equally.
“What’s this?” Hamster asked, taking the scroll. To her credit, she managed to open it quicker than he would have expected. She made a pleased little sound as she skimmed the contents. “You did some recon!”
“Without us?” asked Grouse.
“We’ll have to split up,” Kakashi said, ignoring them. He pulled out another scroll and let it unfurl, hanging from one hand, so his teammates would see the few areas he had marked out during his reconnaissance. “If two of us work as a diversion while one infiltrates the building, our chances of success increase.”
“That’s against regulations,” Grouse said, their tone taking on an edge Kakashi didn’t like. “You know what happens when a team splits up, Hound.”
Before Kakashi could reply, Hamster tapped her colleague’s forearm and said, “We’re ANBU, Grouse. Regulations follow us; we don’t follow regulations. I don’t like it, either, but Hound may have a point.” She turned to Kakashi, passing the scroll she had opened to Grouse. “Can you walk us through your plan?”
Kakashi did, any unkind retorts that he might’ve made dispersing before they could even take shape. He was used to the comments and the glances. He was used to much worse. He wasn’t okay with it, but he was used to it, and he knew better than to pay attention to something someone whose code name was Grouse said.
As he explained, Hamster listened, one hand cupping her puffy porcelain cheek. Grouse also listened, arms crossed and curved beak of his mask making him look every bit as disapproving as his comments indicated. Hamster nodded at the end of Kakashi’s rundown. “All right. We can do that.”
She glanced at Grouse, who gave a put-upon sigh. “I don’t support this. I want that on record.”
Hamster produced a small piece of charcoal from her hip-pouch and, crowding Grouse against the tree trunk, scribbled down something in the scroll with Kakashi’s recon notes. When she was done, she pulled back and offered Grouse the writing implement. “There. Now sign it so we can get started, okay, sweetie? I have plans this weekend, and I don’t want to be late.”
“I’m just saying,” Grouse said. “We’re not here for a half-baked ambush.”
“It’s not an ambush,” Kakashi said. “We’re giving up the element of surprise.”
Hamster happily took the scroll from Grouse the second they were done signing it and handed it back to Kakashi. “Here you go, Hound.”
Kakashi accepted the scroll, putting both it and the map away. “Gear check,” he said, and they went over their pouches and pockets and hidden compartments, checking and double-checking all their gear. When nothing was amiss, Kakashi, being the mission captain, lifted two fingers in the usual ‘attention’ sign, then flicked them down to ‘go,’ and they all moved to their respective positions.
Grouse, for all their failings, was a perfectly adequate infiltrator. They would find the quiet and secluded spot Kakashi had discovered earlier that day and lie in wait until the diversion began. Sadly, as well as somewhat predictably, the prime time to carry out their plan would be in the evening. This was to be expected—that was when the people standing guard would shift duty, and the shuffling of personnel would provide a very small window of possibility for them to boost the mayhem they intended to cause.
But until then, they had to wait. Kakashi’s hopes for peace and quiet weren’t very high, considering he had found Hamster and Grouse chattering away at their rendezvous point. As if to prove him right, Hamster crouched down closer than necessary in their shared waiting position, patting down her prim bob-cut, he guessed more out of habit than necessity—not a single hair was out of place.
“So,” she started.
“Who’s cute?” Kakashi asked.
Hamster got startled into silence for three whole seconds, then said, “Sorry, what?”
“You said someone was ‘cute for a little shit’ before,” Kakashi said, turning to face her. Hopefully, both his blunt scrutiny and the legendariness of his mask would intimidate her into silence. “Who?”
“Erm. Um. Er.”
Kakashi looked away and mentally patted himself on the back.
“Well,” Hamster said, her drawl deliberate.
And that’s when Kakashi realised: she thought he wanted to gossip.
“You know the Umino kid?” Hamster continued.
That gave Kakashi pause. He did, in fact, know the Umino kid. Not personally, only through rumours, which were unnaturally kind to the orphan. The kid was, by all intents and purposes, as annoying as he was good at laying traps in inconvenient places. Such behaviour didn’t invite gentle words—unless, apparently, you were the Umino kid.
“Sandaime-sama’s pet project?” he asked, though he didn’t need the confirmation.
Hamster giggled. “If he hears you say that, you’re toast.”
“I doubt he can even hold a kunai right,” Kakashi said, shifting away ever-so-slightly. To trained shinobi such as them, the subtle movement was as obvious as a bear in a meadow, but Hamster seemed far too taken with the idea of making Kakashi her unwilling conversational partner. He had accidentally given her an opening, and she was going to use it for all its worth.
“I meant Sandaime-sama,” she said, sounding far too amused.
Kakashi couldn’t help it—he frowned at her. The ANBU mask hid his expression, but something in his body language must have filtered through. The next thing he knew, Hamster had lifted a hand to her mask as if she could, somehow, use it to stifle her snort of laughter even though she had her own mask on. Her mirth was inelegant, not to mention inappropriate for a stealth mission. He clicked his tongue, the rebuttal obvious in the dry short sound.
Hamster’s ANBU-grade composure fell back over her at once. She recovered some of the points she had lost in his mental ranking, though she would need to regain a lot more before she reclaimed the position she had held previous to their current mission.
The silence held for about an hour. Surprising even himself, it was Kakashi who broke it. He blamed Hamster, of course. Normally, he could stay silent for hours, days, even weeks on end. If a mission required stealth, he dedicated himself to the rigorous task of self-aware non-existence. He was nothing, ready to be something at the exact right time. He had been something, and he would be something again, but in the stealth, in the waiting, he was nothing.
But now he couldn’t stop thinking about what Hamster had said.
Their Sandaime, kicking someone’s ass over the Umino kid? It seemed unlikely.
Well, Hamster hadn’t explicitly said the Sandaime would exert physical punishment if he heard anyone slandering the orphan, but she had implied it. If the Sandaime decided you were toast, then the least that could happen would be complete annihilation. So, what, exactly, made this boy so interesting, so unique, that the Sandaime had decided to take him under his wing? What had made him charming enough to avoid vitriolic compensation for his pranks and jokes?
“You said he’s cute,” Kakashi said.
Hamster turned her face to him, the few beams of light filtering through the foliage surrounding them catching on the edge of her round cheeks. “Yes,” she said, her tone polite, disciplined, but obviously curious at the non-sequitur.
After a pause, Kakashi asked, “So, have you met him?”
In the ensuing silence, Kakashi had the distinct impression that Hamster was trying very hard not to laugh. When she spoke next, the slight trembling tone of her voice confirmed his suspicions,
“Oh, I have.” She shifted, tilting her head at the angle that ANBU used as a substitute for a belly laugh. “He has tea with Sandaime-sama the first Saturday of every month, and I’m on office guard duty often.”
Kakashi hummed and said nothing. He was aware that doing so would mean succumbing to gossip. He kind of already had, but he liked to pretend that he could still salvage the situation by giving non-answers. He trusted Hamster to give in to her predilection for chattering even without his actively engaging in the conversation. More importantly, he hoped she would. The Sandaime was a kind man, inasmuch as any of them could be called that, but he wasn’t one to play favourites. That he had handpicked a Kyuubi orphan to be his protégé was as unexpected as it was compelling.
Why had he chosen him? And why had he chosen him? Why, out of all the kids? Why, when he had his own son? Sure, Asuma was fucking around somewhere in the capital with his gaggle of Guardians, and the oldest Sarutobi child was busy being a breadwinner for their spouse and little baby boy. Which meant that their Hokage might be experiencing a bit of an empty nest syndrome.
“He’s a good kid,” Hamster said softly, then chuckled. “But he is a little shit.”
Inexplicably, Kakashi wanted to know more. He regretted having chastised Hamster for her loudness before. So much. Now the words seemed to leave her like medicine left a dropper. Drip, drip, drip.
“I’m on duty for their next meeting,” Hamster went on. Not the sort of information Kakashi was looking for, but not useless either. “Goose is supposed to be there, too, but who knows if he’ll make it. He always comes up with the weirdest excuses to get out of working on Saturdays. Dick.”
Kakashi suddenly remembered that an envoy from another country would be visiting Konoha at the beginning of the month. Usually, such events meant that the more elite ANBU agents would be on duty where they might be more visible—on display, basically. No one would think twice if Kakashi were to be on duty that day. Hamster might not be the most professionally-apt ANBU agent, but she was one of the best in their ranks, so it stood to reason that she would remain on duty that day. But Goose?
It would be child’s play to convince the slacker to let Kakashi cover for him in exchange for a case of beer or something equally stupid. And then Kakashi would have a chance to meet this Umino kid that was the talk of the town.
Kakashi was curious, for the first time in a long time. Even more, he was intrigued. The idea of getting to the bottom of this very simple but very singular mystery called to him. His friends, few as they were, were always telling him that he needed to get a hobby.
They probably hadn’t had this in mind, but it was a start.