Chapter Text
“Now, my cute little apprentice, you will be trying to find my cute little Kohai here, while his apprentice tries to catch you.” Katsumi thinks Sensei looks far too happy as he tells her this.
Sakura is standing beside her with a slight smile curving her lips. Katsumi is slowly learning that means the pink haired girl is about to make her life hell. Yamato looks a bit put out at having to be the one playing what is essentially shinobi hide and seek.
“Oh, I almost forgot, no improved hearing. That’s cheating.” The eye smile increases and Katsumi is certain he’s going to enjoy watching this.
Katsumi understands why no hearing. They’re working on improving her ability to track by smell. And chasing Yamato through the woods is about as difficult a task as it gets. The man smells almost exactly like the woods. Even with the metal and blood scent all shinobi carry, his scent blends stupidly well into the forest around them. Katsumi isn’t sure if Sensei actually thinks she can do this or if he’s just going to have her do this until she’s able to.
Katsumi sighs and increases the flow of chakra to her nostrils as Yamato disappears into the training ground. In the two months since becoming Sensei’s official apprentice, it’s become far easier to sift through all the different smells in the air, easier to focus on some and disregard others. It’s still a lot, but far less overwhelming than before. Katsumi forces herself to ignore the the faint ozone smell that she’s started to pick up on Sensei and the even fainter smell of roses that Sakura gives off.
“Well, Katsumi-chan? Go.”
Katsumi barely manages to dodge the wood suddenly reaching up out of the ground as soon at Sensei finishes speaking. So Sakura isn’t going to give her any time today. Alright then.
Katsumi flits through the trees trying to find Yamato will also avoiding Sakura’s extremely enthusiastic attempts at stopping her. Katsumi never realized until Kakashi-sensei banned her from using her hearing just how hard it actually is to track. Especially under the circumstances Sensei likes to put her in. As soon as Katsumi thinks she’s found Yamato’s trail she’s being forced away from it by Sakura. Who’s laughing. Loudly.
Since Kakashi-sensei decided to start having weekly joint training with the mokuton pair, Katsumi has learned the blank, seriousness Sakura usually projects is only a mask. Strictly for missions and dealing with clients and superiors. The girl is much more animated in more relaxed settings. More like the girl she remembers from the academy. She’d appreciate it more if she didn’t have to be constantly trying to avoid being slammed into a tree by her wood release, though. Sakura is a gleefully sadistic training partner.
Katsumi stifles a curse as she’s forced off the trail again. Sakura is definitely enjoying this. Katsumi is having to sprint through the tree branches to avoid Sakura, and more than once that results in her loosing the trail altogether and having to double back to find it again. Which tends to result in Sakura wholeheartedly trying to fling her into the air like a rag doll.
The scent is getting stronger at least so she knows she’s on the right track. Katsumi bares her teeth mockingly in Sakura’s general direction. She’s close and Sakura hasn’t managed to wreck her yet. That’s progress.
Katsumi is certain she’s about to catch Yamato when Sakura’s wood release forms a wall in front of her and she has to pull up short unless she wants to slam straight into it. That sudden stop is her downfall, before she can mentally regroup she’s being knocked out of the tree unceremoniously. She twists wildly in the air and uses her chakra to soften the landing. Before she can take back off again a wooden dome is around her reminiscent of the one Sakura used to protect her and the coffin against the Oto nin. Damn. Katsumi hates being in caught like this. It fills her with anxiety now.
Katsumi doesn’t need chakra enhanced hearing to make out Sakura’s shout of triumph. The wood disappears back into the ground and Katsumi sighs in relief when she’s free again. Sakura is standing beside Yamato, a wide, satisfies smile on her face. Kakashi-Sensei is reading his porn again but he gives a satisfied hum and says, “maa, Katsumi-Chan, you made it twenty minutes this time. Better. And you were only fifty meters away from my kohai.”
“Good job, Sakura, you’re getting much faster with your wood release.” Yamato gives Sakura a pleased smile, Katsumi is still mildly unnerved by him since the first day she met him and made the mistake of complaining about the training exercise. He’s far scarier than he looks. She sees why Sakura dropped the fangirl stuff with him as a sensei.
“Katsumi-chan, after training, would you like to join Ino and I at the onsen?” Sakura smiles as she offers, lately the pair had reconciled at were once again joined at the hip. It’s a development Katsumi approves of greatly.
“Of course, Sakura-Chan,” Katsumi has been making an effort lately to find time to do things unrelated to training and work. Yoshino has been not so subtly implying she needs to. Katsumi hates disappointing the woman so she’s trying. She went to the dango shop with Anko-San the other day and they discussed the pros and cons of hallucinogenic poisons. She thinks that counts. It’s not like she uses hallucinogenic poisons.
Kakashi-Sensei eye smiles at the small display of camaraderie before he continues, “Katsumi-Chan, if you’ve had enough running through the training grounds with Sakura-Chan, I have a jutsu I’m going to teach you. Since Hayase already taught you to make your own pools of water, I’ll be teaching you something a bit more advanced.”
Katsumi’s attention is immediately focused on her sensei. She hardly notices when Yamato and Sakura move to the other half of the training ground to focus on their own training. Sensei has been promising her a new jutsu for over a month now.
Katsumi eagerly follows Kakashi-Sensei to the pool of water in the back of the training ground.
“This is a long range jutsu, and it’s going to take probably a quarter of your reserves. So be prepared for the exhaustion after this. I want you to try it three times today and we’ll see how you do. I stole this off a Ninja I came across a long time ago. It’s called suiton style: mouth of the serpent. It’s handseals are: monkey, Rat, Tiger, dragon, horse, dragon. Watch carefully.”
Katsumi keeps a safe distance as Sensei flips through the handseals. A giant spiral of water twists up out of the pool at takes the shape of a snake. Wow. That looks far more difficult than anything she’s learned. She watches as he aims it at a nearby trees and releases it. It’s startling, the force of it hitting the tree. She watches the water uproot the tree and wash it over thirty meters away. Well, damn. That’s impressive.
“We’ll be working on this after your tracking exercises from now on. You need more long range jutsu, it’ll keep you a bit safer. Now you’re going to have to use your Chakra to manipulate not just the shape of the water, but also it’s direction and force. You’ve done this on a very small, basic scale with your water shrapnel, but this is going to require a lot more concentration. I expect you to take three weeks of work to get it. You’re going to be exhausted from it but that’s fine. It will help your chakra reserves increase. So three times, and then we’ll work on something else.”
Katsumi eyes Sensei and then the pool of water with trepidation. Right, well here goes nothing. Katsumi gathers her chakra and begins.
Monkey. Rat. Tiger. Dragon. Horse. Dragon.
Sensei wasn’t exaggerating the amount of chakra used. He also wasn’t exaggerating the difficulty. She gets a pitiful stream of sluggishly spinning water rising up maybe a meter out of the water and she can’t even direct it. Damn.
“Maa, try again.”
Monkey. Rat. Tiger. Dragon. Horse. Dragon.
This time it’s a bit wider and it spins a bit faster and if she squints it almost looks like a snake’s head at the top. It’s still pitiful compared to Sensei’s though. Katsumi has only tried twice and she’s already shaking a bit from the sheer chakra usage.
“One more time.”
Right.
Monkey. Rat. Tiger. Dragon. Horse. Dragon.
Katsumi manages to get a very long, very skinny tentacle looking thing that she can sort of direct but when she releases it, it ends up falling straight back down. Katsumi is actually sweating now and she feels a bit dizzy. Wow, Sensei wasn’t exaggerating how difficult just three attempts would be. She kind of just wants to go lie down for awhile.
“Maa, Katsumi-Chan, Good first attempts. Do some stretches. And we’ll work on your Taijutsu while we wait for Yamato and Sakura to finish. If you can beat me in a spar, I’ll give you the day off tomorrow.”
Katsumi shoots him a dirty look as she begins her stretches. With as little energy as she has left, and with him being Hatake Kakashi, they both know she has no chance of winning any kind of spar against him anytime soon.
Still, she tries. He still pulls his punches with her, but when she does it, she’s admonished immediately. The entire spar is him beating her soundly while explaining to her in a bored tone what she’s doing wrong.
Kick to the left side. “You’re guarding your right side more. It leaves you open.”
Punch to the right shoulder that nearly makes her yelp at the phantom pain in the spot she was stabbed. “You could have blocked that if your elbow was a bit closer to you.”
Katsumi ends up in a hold that she knows would snap her neck if he applied a little bit more pressure. “Think, Katsumi-Chan, how do you break this hold?”
It takes her a moment but she manages to go through the motions that would break it. She’s under no illusions that it only worked because he allowed it too. It’s Sensei’s sparring equivalent of positive reinforcement.
Eventually she ends up pinned to the ground on her stomach, one arm pulled behind her, and Sensei’s knee pressing down on her spin.
“Maa, you need to work on avoiding getting caught and breaking holds. We’ll work on that next time. I believe Sakura and Yamato are done.”
Sensei releases her and pulls her to her feet as the others approach. Katsumi exhausted. When sensei told her being his apprentice would be a lot harder, he wasn’t exaggerating in the least. At least the training sessions are a bit more varied now. It’s like he’s trying to pour every drop of skill he can into her.
Sakura looks just as exhausted as Katsumi does. Yamato is possibly a harsher taskmaster than Kakashi-Sensei.
“Katsumi, onsen, right now.” Sakura grabs her wrist and practically drags her away. The pair yell goodbyes to their sensei before either can decide they need more work for today.
Ino is already there when they arrive, and is sitting low enough that the water comes up to her chin, her head tilted back against the edge of the bath. She looks like Asuma went easy on her team today. Lucky bitch.
“Sakura, you’re late! But you brought katsumi so I suppose I can tolerate it.” Ino grins at them as they join her.
“Yamato-sensei and Kakashi have been driving us into the ground lately, blame them.” Sakura says with a happy sigh at the feel of the hot water on her muscles.
Katsumi is immediately in heaven when she gets in. Her muscles have been screaming in pain lately from all the work Sensei has her doing and the hot water feels like heaven. She was already happy because water, but hot water is even better. Katsumi doesn’t even care about the conversation. She just wants to enjoy the hot spring. Katsumi lets her head tilt back like Ino’s and her eyes slide shut and listens to the pair with half an ear. Yoshino-San may be onto something with the whole “do things for enjoyment” thing.