Naruto : Wind of Catastrophe

My breath freezes in my throat.

Hatake gazes up at the stars, and says quietly, "Almost like they wanted to start a war."

...

"You're joking, right? You still don't want to tell me the real reason and you're just screwing with me," I say desperately.

"Do you know how long Iwa and Konoha have been enemies, Naruto?" He asks, leaving my hysterical question unanswered. "Since before the Sandaime became Hokage, Iwa and Konoha have been constantly at odds with one another. We've never signed treaties with one another, never even began the first steps towards diplomacy. Nothing but armistices. Breaks, between wars." He sounds tired.

"We waited twenty years between the first and the second Great Wars, ten between the second and the third. It's been almost two decades since the end of the Third Great War, and Iwa hates us no less than they did at the start of the first."

"But the Yondaime crippled their forces," I say, grasping at the history lesson like a lifeline. "There's no way they could beat us now if they couldn't back then."

"There's no way they could beat the Yondaime," he corrects me. "Without the Yondaime we would have lost that war." Kakashi's hands clench into fists, obscuring the design he'd drawn in the dirt. "And without him we might lose the next one."

When I finally manage to speak again my voice is strained, and not because of the damage to my throat. "Is that what you wrote in that note?" Hatake hums in confirmation. "... Wow."

That's when he tears his gaze from the night sky and looks at me. "It's not something you need to worry about," he assures me. "They might want to wipe us out, but they can't do it alone. They'll need allies, just like the last war, and they won't get them without an excuse to paint themselves as the victims. We won't give them one."

"Yeah. Sure."

We fall back into silence, Hatake contemplating the stars while I stare into the fire and wonder if maybe I should have accepted his excuse.

"Naruto." I jerk, turning to look at him. "Trust me. The Hokage has been dealing with Konoha's enemies for decades. He won't let her fall into another war if he can help it."

I exhale slowly, nodding. "I know. I trust the old man, and everyone knows that Konoha and Iwa have hated each other's guts since forever. I just didn't know it was that bad."

"Most don't," Hatake says, eye closed. "I only had my suspicions until now, which is how the Hokage likes it. He's always done his best to keep these things from the public as long as he can. I don't agree with it, but it seems to have served him well so far."

I fidget, an internal debate being waged in my head. "Then why did you tell me?"

"I didn't," Hatake says wryly. I roll my eyes.

"You might as well have. I'd have stayed fixated on the ANBU ignoring Neji if you hadn't set me straight."

Hatake just sits there across the fire, head cocked towards the sky, silent.

"What would you say a leader is, Naruto?"

I blink, taken aback. "Uh, you mean a leader of shinobi?"

"No, just in general."

I scrunch my nose up. What's he thinking? "Someone strong, I guess. Not strong like a shinobi, or at least they don't have to be. But strong enough to lead, obviously."

"What do you mean?" Hatake prompts me.

What do I mean? "They have to make people want to follow them, you know? And then they have to be strong enough to lead them no matter what."

"So would you say they have to value the people they're leading?" Hatake asks. I consider that. Is there anyone in the village that the old man doesn't like?

"Probably." I look over at him. "Why?"

"Sakura told me that you used the Great Breakthrough in your fight," he says.

"She did?" I ask, surprised. The recount we'd all given our jonin sensei had glossed over a few things, one of them being the specifics of Sakura's trap and my part in it. I had been too focused on flipping the hell out over Lee's Reverse Lotus and begging Gai to teach me it to brag about my success with the jutsu. I wonder why Sakura told him.

Hatake hums in agreement. "She told me that she couldn't believe her eyes when you pulled yourself out of what should have been a fatal loss of control and brought it back under control."

"Yeah, I screwed up pretty bad. Almost cut my throat all the way open like you said I would." As if to remind me, a little spike of pain prompts me to take another swig of water, grimacing.

"How many times had you performed that jutsu before then?" Hatake asks, but I get the feeling he's asking more for my benefit than his.

I shrug, looking away. "I hadn't."

"It must have taken a lot of strength to pull through for your teammates like that," he says mildly.

"What are you saying?" I ask, wary. I'm really not in the mood for his antics right now.

He sighs. "Naruto, despite what you might think, I don't hate you." My brow furrows, but he doesn't give me a chance to speak, one way or another. "I do the things that I do to make you stronger. You might not like it, and you might think there's no reason for it, but everything I've done with you and Sakura and Sasuke since the day you passed your genin exam has been in the interest of making you stronger."

"Well yeah, you're our sensei," I say. Am I the only one suddenly feeling awkward?

"Not quite," he says. "It's a sensei's job to teach, yes, but they rarely teach their students more than the basics. Their main role is providing support, both physical and emotional, for their genin taking their first steps into the shinobi world. Otherwise, genin are supposed to develope their own unique fighting styles themselves."

"You're telling me you've been teaching us more than you should?" I ask, incredulous.

He nods. "I have."

"Why?" I've been asking that a lot, lately.

"Because you three are special," Hatake says, meeting my eyes. I can't see a hint of mockery, sarcasm, anything. It's unnerving. "There's just something about you, something that I'm sure the Shodai saw in the Sandaime, the Sandaime saw in the Sannin, and the Toad Sage saw in the Yondaime. It's been a suspicion of mine since I saw you three fight in that forest the day I was assigned to you. A suspicion until now, that is.

"Your first mission and the trials following it showed me that you three are capable. This one showed me that you're more than that." He chuckles at my dumbfounded expression, and reaches up to touch the part of his headband covering his eye. "Do you want to know how I got this eye?"

I just nod.

"It was back in the Third Great War, and I had just been promoted to jonin. I still did my mission with my teammates and my jonin sensei back then, so they each decided to give me a present for my promotion. The day before we left Konoha for another mission, my teammate, Rin, gave me a medical pack. My sensei gave me a special kunai from his repertoire.

"My other teammate, Obito, was late that day. He had a terrible excuse, as always, and when he realized he'd forgotten to get me a gift and tried to apologize, I told him that it didn't matter. It probably would have been something useless anyway," he says, his voice heavy. "During the mission we were forced to split up from our sensei while he assisted a nearby army of Konoha shinobi. It usually took me a long time, and a lot of convincing from Rin, for Obito to recognize me as the team leader but that day he accepted it without a word. It confused me at the time, but I wasn't going to call him out on it.

"Along the way to the bridge we were supposed to destroy, we were ambushed by Iwa shinobi. They captured Rin and ran. I told Obito that we needed to finish the mission, and that we couldn't afford to go after them. He punched me," he says, and it isn't hard to imagine the sad smile underneath his mask. "Then he made me realize that sometimes there are more important things than finishing the mission.

"We tracked down the Iwa shinobi who had taken Rin. In the process, Obito unlocked his Sharingan and I lost my left eye. Together, we took Rin back and killed the shinobi who had taken her. But the last shinobi, in a last ditch attempt to kill us all, collapsed the cave we were in." His hand falls from his headband. "He threw me out of the way, and the entire right side of his body was crushed when the cave in hit.

"Rin was a medic. He told her to take out his left eye and give it to me, as a belated present for my promotion to jonin. He always was late for everything," Hatake says fondly. "I was a mess while Rin prepped Obito for the surgery. I felt like I wasn't worthy of being a jonin, let alone a leader. But Obito, going through an agony I couldn't imagine, just looked me in the eye and told me that he'd help me be the great shinobi he knew I was. We could all live on, together.

"His gift to me was the best one of all, but it wasn't the Sharingan like he said it was. It was the simple idea that he left me with, that broke me out of the haze I had been living in for years, condensed into a simple phrase."

He reaches out, over the fire which has dwindled to little more than embers, and clasps my shoulder. "It took his death, but he taught me what it really means to be a leader. It's a lesson I've kept with me my whole life, and one that I thought I would have to teach you some day. But today I realized I don't have to." He squeezes my shoulder. "You already know, and I couldn't be more proud of you."

"So I'll teach you things that I'm not supposed to, and tell you things that nobody else would, and sometimes treat you harsher than your teammates, because I trust you. All three of you are special, but I trust that you can handle it, and that no matter what you'll use what I give you to keep your teammates safe. You understand what Obito put it into words better than I ever could."

His eye quirks up. "Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their friends are worse than trash."

He makes to take his hand back, but I reach up and cover it with my own. He looks at me in surprise, but I just give him a little smile. For the first time since he introduced himself to us, I don't mind the gesture of fondness.

"Thanks... sensei."

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