Work Text:
“Oi, Hatake.”
Kakashi turned, deliberately taking his sweet time but also not taking too long, as if he knew exactly how long he could draw this out before Tobirama walked away.
“Hmm?” Even through the fabric of his mask, Tobirama could practically see that damned smirk on his face. He was starting to wonder if this was even a good idea, having to deal with a frustrating Hatake hardly seemed worth it, but…
Tobirama itched to wipe that smirk off of his face.
“Spar with me.” The tone of his voice left no room for negotiation, but luckily for him, Kakashi didn’t seem like he was in much of a protesting mood either. He simply fell into step beside him as Tobirama began marching over to the forests. Although the only sounds that could be heard were their soft footsteps against the grass, Tobirama was acutely aware of the damning eye-smile that Kakashi wore the entire time.
As if Tobirama needed another reason to hate the other man more than he already did.
Right on cue, he could hear his brother’s voice in his head, reminding him that Kakashi was the one who saved Itama from the Uchiha’s ambush and that he had provided so much valuable intel to them over the years. Sure, Kakashi had done nothing up to this point to betray them, but Tobirama’s skepticism would never go away.
He had Uchiha blood. That was enough of a reason for Tobirama to never trust him, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t use him.
“Well,” Kakashi drawled when they entered the clearing. “What–”
Tobirama didn’t give him a chance to finish his question. He lunged at him, blade already arching high to slice him in half. Kakashi jumped backwards, pulling out two kunai from his weapons holster all while simultaneously activating his clan’s prized dojutsu.
The tomoes in his eyes spun rapidly as Kakashi matched Tobirama’s movements blow for blow. Clashes of metal rang out in the clearing as the two of them moved in tandem, vigorously trying to out-do each other.
Tobirama’s movements were more coordinated, each strike embodying more of the traditional Senju fighting style. Despite the predictability of his fighting style, Tobirama made up for it with his superior speed, almost always slicing out his Uchiha opponent’s throat before they even had a chance to react.
Kakashi didn’t move quite as fast, but Tobirama couldn’t help but grudgingly acknowledge that he was still fast enough to block every single one of his blows. His fighting style was all over the place, still practiced, but never seen before. It was neither that of the Senju style or of the Uchiha, but seemingly like he had made up his own and it somehow worked.
The unpredictability of his fighting style had thrown off Tobirama multiple times, and he was only saved by his speed. It was a serious spar, but as Tobirama raised an arm to block Kakashi’s next punch, he caught a glimpse of the amused spark in Kakashi’s eyes.
This wasn’t a serious spar to him.
Arguably, Tobirama was the second strongest fighter in the Senju clan after Hashirama and somehow, Kakashi still didn’t seem to take him that seriously. Maybe he had gotten overly confident that he knew all of Tobirama’s jutsus after seeing him multiple times on the battlefield, but oh, Kakashi severely underestimated him if that was all he thought he had.
Tobirama blocked Kakashi’s kunai, feet sweeping outward to knock him off balance. Kakashi side-stepped him, kunai slicing through the space in front of his throat, while simultaneously attempting to hook his feet around Tobirama’s ankle. Latching onto the marker embedded into the tree, Tobirama pulled himself out of reach.
And then appeared right behind Kakashi, kunai already going in for the kill–
Kakashi disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Tobirama only had two seconds to contemplate where the hell Kakashi could have gone before the earth began to rumble beneath his feet. Kakashi came barreling out the ground, streaks of purple lightning crackling around his kunai, aimed straight at Tobirama’s throat–
Tobirama teleported himself out of the trajectory of the kunai, swapping places with a stray piece of log. The loud snapping noise filled the clearing as the substitution was shredded into pieces. Kakashi didn’t even blink before he spun around, kunai leaving his hands, aimed straight and true at Tobirama’s hiding spot. The kunai zipped through the air, the tingling intensity of the lightning slicing the surface of his armor before lodging itself into the tree behind him.
Tobirama stepped out from behind the trees.
In reality, it had only been a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity as the two of them stood on opposite ends, staring each other down. The weight of his stare was often enough to scare most opponents into submission, but Kakashi held his gaze without trouble. The tomoes in his eyes spun lazily, first counter clockwise, then clockwise…
Kakashi rushed forward, a bundle of lightning chakra overflowing from the palms of his hands. He shoved the jutsu mercilessly through Tobirama’s chest, only to be enveloped with a puff of smoke.
The memories slammed into Tobirama at full force.
He’s fast, had been his shadow clone’s last thought before it vanished out of existence. That confirmed Tobirama’s earlier theory; Kakashi had been holding back: gauging, assessing, sizing him up.
Tobirama stepped out from the trees again.
This time, Kakashi flicked a normal kunai at him. Tobirama dodged with ease.
“Out of chakra?”
Kakashi scoffed. “I’m not the one wasting half of my chakra creating clones.”
Tobirama blinked in surprise. How did he know? This was his newly created jutsu; he hadn’t shown it to anyone else other than Hashirama and he doubted that his brother had caught onto all of the nuances of his technique just from one display.
Was it the Sharingan? Had his efforts to create a jutsu that would confuse the Sharingan fail?
“Your eyes can tell the difference?” This time, it was the real Tobirama who stepped out from behind the trees.
Kakashi smiled. “It’s impressive. The difference is hardly noticeable. I would have missed it if I didn’t know what I was looking for.”
…Whatever that meant. Tobirama hadn’t expected anything less from him. His crypticness only added to the long list of reasons why he didn’t like him.
But surprisingly, Kakashi actually opted to be helpful this time as he started to explain what those differences were. His clone’s chakra coils still weren’t fully developed; the details were easily overlooked the first time someone saw it but became identifiable the second time around.
“You’re not fully splitting your chakra in half,” Kakashi said. “That’s why your clone’s chakra coils are weaker. It’s also affecting your clone’s abilities too; you should have been able to dodge my Chidori.”
“Thanks for that. You could have killed me,” Tobirama remarked dryly. Kakashi let out a bark of laughter.
“As if you’re not the one constantly reminding me that I couldn’t take you down even in a hundred years.”
Huh. Tobirama may have made a threat like that once or twice. But that had been before he truly found out about Kakashi’s vast range of abilities – Tobirama wasn’t above admitting that he grudgingly respected Kakashi’s skills.
Tobirama went through a familiar sequence, performing the same signs that he had endlessly practiced for the last few weeks. On the last sign, he felt a familiar whoosh of chakra draining from his body as a carbon copy of him appeared next to him.
“How’s that?” He listened. He didn’t try to limit the chakra he shared with the clone and his terrifyingly low reserves was the result. Draining chakra reserves was such a detrimental drawback of this jutsu that even if Tobirama perfected it, he doubted that he could use it much in battle.
So much for coming up with the ultimate counter to the Sharingan.
Kakashi nodded in approval. “Much better. But it’s draining on the chakra reserves, isn’t it?”
Tobirama grunted in agreement as he dispelled his shadow clone. Its short-lived memories and chakra reserves returned to him.
“Tch. I guess I’ll have to work on something else…”
“Have you ever considered adding a chakra nature to your clones?
What? This was possibly the first time that Kakashi had seen his shadow clone jutsu, and in less than ten minutes, he had already seen through the weaknesses and already was proposing an idea for another iteration of a brand new jutsu?
“It's weaker than a shadow clone, but does more damage than a normal clone.”
“Shadow clone?” Tobirama repeated, running through their conversation in his mind at least a dozen times before he convinced himself that no, he wasn’t going crazy. “I never told you the name of the jutsu.”
It had been a tentative name too, until Tobirama could come up with something better.
Kakashi shrugged. “Would you believe me if I told you I can see the future?”
If looks could kill, Kakashi would have been bleeding out by now.
Kakashi laughed. “I almost got you, didn’t I?”
Tobirama was highly unamused and decided that he needed to quickly move on from this topic before Kakashi could get too much enjoyment in driving him insane.
“Have you ever created one before?”
“Sure have. Want to see?” Kakashi didn’t bother waiting for Tobirama’s verbal confirmation; he was already half way through forming the hand seals – the same exact signs that Tobirama used for his shadow clone, only with a slight modification on the last two signs. A copy of Kakashi appeared next to him. The two of them looked at each other, fist bumping each other before the clone ran head first into a tree.
“Ow.” Clone Kakashi raised a hand to rub his forehead.
Kakashi jerked his head towards his clone. “See. Sturdier than a normal clone.”
Kakashi flicked a kunai straight at the clone. Rather than disappearing with a puff of smoke, the figure dissolved into a puddle of water.
“A water clone,” Tobirama murmured. Water style jutsus were his speciality, but he didn’t think that it had been Kakashi’s. Then again, Tobirama didn’t even know half of the things that Kakashi could do until now.
“You use water style too.”
Kakashi hummed in agreement. “And lightning. And earth. And fire. And wind.”
Tobirama scoffed. “Stop boasting.”
Kakashi gestured vaguely in the direction of his eyes. “Haven’t you heard? They call me the Copy Ninja. My Sharingan can copy anything and everything.”
This was one of the more believable explanations, but after years of hearing all sorts of bullshit spew out of Kakashi’s mouth on what his Sharingan powers were, Tobirama wasn’t going to believe him now.
Creating pocket dimensions to warp people and objects?
Pulling an user into an imaginary world that passed in a blink of an eye?
Manipulating someone’s mind to do their bidding without the person knowing? Yeah right, if Kakashi had that kind of ability, he would have taken over the entire Senju clan by now.
The corner of Kakahi’s eyes crinkled in amusement. Tobirama sighed. He should have expected this; in all of the years he had known Kakashi, he was simply incapable of being serious for more than five minutes at a time. No wonder he and Hashirama got along a lot better than he did.
Still. He gained useful information from this spar so at least it wasn’t a total waste of time.
“Thanks for sparring with me.”
“No problem. Always happy to be your Uchiha test subject.”
Tobirama glared. Kakashi smiled.
“But next time you want to use me as a test subject, a heads up would be nice.”
“As if I would tell you what I’m working on. Who knows if you’ll wake up one day and decide to join the Uchihas.”
“Hmm, not a bad idea. I have plenty of intel on the Senju too…” Kakashi drawled, ducking to dodge Tobirama’s right hook. “Hey! I thought we were done sparring.”
“You’ll get worse than that if you keep threatening to share intel with the Uchihas.”
Kakashi held up his hands in defeat. “Maa, maa calm down. It was a joke.”
“I do not–”
“Take any threats to the Senju clan lightly,” Kakashi finished. “I know. I heard you say this a hundred times already.”
Tobirama gritted his teeth. If this was the price he had to pay for using Kakashi to test his new jutsus, then maybe it wasn’t worth it. His tolerance for Kakashi’s nonsense for the month – nope for the whole year – was used up.
Even Izuna, an actual Uchiha, was less annoying than him. And that was certainly saying something because Tobirama hated all Uchihas equally.
Tobirama turned to walk away, all while rapidly repeating in his head to ignore him, ignore him, ignore, don’t let him get on your nerves–
“So,” Kakashi called after him, “Is your next invention going to be resurrecting dead people?”
“What?”
“Resurrecting dead people,” Kakashi repeated as if bringing people back from the dead was an everyday activity.
Tobirama rolled his eyes, letting out an annoyed sigh. Kakashi had lost his mind; Tobirama was sure of it.
“If you have all of these ideas, why don’t you try to invent something yourself?”
Kakashi cocked his head. “But why would I need to do that when I can just copy them from other people? It’s way less effort.”
There he went again with his bullshit.
“What, you don’t believe me?” Kakashi raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Of course I don’t believe you.”
“Fine, give me a jutsu, any jutsu. I can replicate it.”
Well if Kakashi was asking for it…Tobirama couldn’t wait for the satisfaction of punching the arrogance out of him.
“Don’t blink.” That was the only warning Tobirama had given him before his chakra coils latched onto the marking on Kakashi’s shoulder and transported him to his side. A dull kunai was raised to Kakashi’s throat.
To his credit, Kakashi didn’t even flinch.
“The Hiraishin, huh,” Kakashi murmured under his breath, so quietly that Tobirama would have missed what he said if not for the fact that the two of them were almost face to face with each other.
Tobirama retracted the kunai. “Well, admitting defeat?”
This was his first invention, one that Tobirama was quite proud of. It had taken over two years, and multiple iterations of markings before he finally created something that was stable and dependable enough to use in battle. And despite numerous attempts at teaching others, the jutsu was simply too complicated for anyone else in his clan to learn. There was no way that Kakashi could copy this–
Kakashi smiled. “Don’t blink.”
A blur of white and then a tap on his shoulder. Tobirama whirled around, getting an eyeful of Kakashi waving cheekily at him. Before he could grab hold of Kakashi’s throat to strangle him, the other man teleported to the nearest tree.
“How did you–”
Kakashi pointed at himself. “I told you, I’m the Copy Ninja.”
“I had enough of your bullshit!” Tobirama hirashined himself across the clearing, kunai sinking into Kakashi’s stomach. Kakashi’s eyes widened, mouth parting to let out a pained wheeze…
Before his fingers went up to form a mock salute.
“Ja ne.”
And then he promptly disappeared into a puff of smoke.