5

Today had just been full of surprises.

Kakashi hated surprises. In his line of work, surprises got people dead more often than not.

Or, worse, decommissioned.

Worse, because you were still alive and had to deal with the shame of everyone you knew telling stories about how it had happened and how you'd got that scar.

As a warning, of course. Which was fair, even if these stories were entertaining in their own morbid way. Not that you'd think that if you were the warning.

After what had happened to Gerbil two years ago at Bear's birthday party for example (no one liked to think about it)… No one was going to stop throwing surprise parties, no one had even thought about doing that for the whole ten-plus years he'd been in Anbu and the multiple cases of inappropriate retaliation by high-strung ninja, but it was a reminder of how there were worse things than death.

Not that the latest surprise he'd been subjected to was that bad, but it was quite a reminder. He'd let a genin tag him. A wet behind the ears non-clan girl had tagged him. Or, not let. 'Let' was not the right word for what he'd done. He hadn't let her do anything.

He'd instantly regretted getting tagged anyway, whether he'd let it happen or not, and he'd do so until he hit the bed tonight in a drunken stupor.

The fingers of his right hand twitched and flexed, a phantom pain shooting up his shoulder and into his neck. His left hand, entirely unconcerned by this, continued to bring the deliciously numbing taste of good sake to his lips.

He hated surprises.

"Kakashi!"

Kakashi kept himself from flinching when one of Gai's gigantic mitts clapped on his bad shoulder; thankfully, whatever had been done to him earlier hadn't made him sensitive to touch. It had just given him the constant urge to check if his arm wasn't hanging from one last strand of flesh and muscle.

Thankfully… It was still there.

He'd checked.

That it had reminded him of that time he'd had his eye torn out with a kunai didn't matter. It was still there.

This would pass.

"I heard you decided to keep and train a team of your own this year, my rival! I knew you couldn't resist the urge to pass on your knowledge and wisdom to the next generation of the Leaf forever!" Gai continued to crow as only Gai could, giving Kakashi another clap. "You're going to have to hurry if you want to catch up to mine anytime soon!"

If that was the case, he'd be out of a job in a couple of years then.

And wasn't that a horrifying thought?

What would he even do with retirement if he had it?

"Hmm?" Kakashi shook that off and brought the glass back up. It'd never happen. "You say something, Gai?"

"Damn you, Kakashi!" Gai growled as he took a seat on the barstool right next to his, arms crossed over his chest as he grit and gnashed his teeth. His shiny, shiny teeth. "Always so hip and cool!"

"I have no idea what you mean." He gave his cup a turn, the beautifully clear and swirling liquid inside distressingly low. He should have known he'd need the bottle instead. It wasn't as if he hadn't been invited to a gathering of his fellow freshly-minted jounin teachers (and Gai) or anything like that. He must have been losing his touch. "Can you repeat that thing you said?"

Gai grumbled but, not the sort to ever let something as minor as outright dismissal keep him down, rallied. "Your team, Kakashi! Tell us about your team!"

Every person in the bar, the ones involved and those that dearly wanted to be involved (ninja were dreadful gossips), turned to them as one; some were more obvious than others. Some didn't even bother trying to hide their interest. Some could have passed as just any old drunk enjoying their five P.M. liquid dinner.

Some might have been actual drunks.

Everyone wanted to know the hows and whys of 'Never-Pass' Kakashi giving up the moniker, once and for all. At least two jackpots that he knew of were riding on his answer. That he knew of. There were at least four times that, that he didn't.

Ninja, besides being gossips, were also dreadful gamblers. If someone's pension wasn't riding on this, he'd challenge Gai to eat one of his masks.

Kakashi would have done it himself but he was on a diet. Too much fiber.

Gai would understand.

"What is there to tell? They're genin. I'm their teacher." He considered getting a refill when the pain spiked again. "They were slightly less terrible than their predecessors and I was suddenly afflicted with a case of empathy and compassion for my fellow nin." He knocked on the counter, consideration done with. He needed it after all. "Now that I've gotten to know them, I regret everything."

Sure, Sakura had brazenly stolen his dog and had barely even tried to hide it (she was slick, but not that slick and she clearly knew it), but those kids had honestly impressed him. He knew chunin that wouldn't have been able to work together that well while on a time limit, even if they liked each other.

Which these three did not. Or, at least, if they did, it wasn't...how could he describe it? Even? Reciprocal? There was something going on there that he didn't have a read on yet. The dynamic between Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura was going to need watching. Not that it hadn't before, but it looked like he was going to have to brush off his interpersonal skills for this one.

He'd just got them and they were already far too much work. He hadn't needed to be personable for the last decade and they'd broken his near-perfect streak of anti-sociability.

"Come on, Kakashi. Don't give us that crap. Compassion? Hah. Right." Asuma chipped in from three seats down, his forever present cigarette glowing brightly in the perpetual dark of bars everywhere. "You wouldn't pick them up if you didn't think they could hack it."

And Asuma was right. Kakashi wouldn't pick up just any kids. Especially not those that couldn't 'hack it'. If he'd thought that his sensei's son and Obito's last living non-traitor relative wouldn't have been able to handle the life they'd chosen, he'd have tossed them out of the program in a heartbeat. He'd have been doing them a favor.

They'd done well enough in the aftermath of the bomb disarmament though. And what came next. He supposed. Kakashi hadn't exactly ever been normal when it came to his progression and he knew it. His idea of what was normal and what was exceptional was somewhat skewed.

He'd killed his first man at four years old. Skewed.

But, as he'd already noted, he knew chunin that wouldn't have done as well against him as they did. Up until he forgot what he was doing when… That was good enough for now. A few months of D-ranks. Some teamwork drills and training and mindless drudgery would iron out the wrinkles.

Sakura had been an unexpected variable though. Very much so. He admitted it. He'd been somewhat - focused - on the other two members of his new team. She hadn't stood out in comparison even after he'd looked through her file and he'd paid for it.

People had died from less.

"They weren't as terrible as the rest, Asuma," Kakashi repeated himself, the arrival of a bottle a great relief. Taking his time in pouring out his drink satisfied that particular need for building suspense he had, another ninja trait. "In comparison, I could almost call them competent."

"The last Uchiha? Almost competent?" Asuma took a long draw from his smoke and rested his head on a hand, elbow on the countertop while Kurenai looked on with warranted disapproval; Who put their elbows up on the table, really? So rude. "You've got some high standards, Kakashi."

"It's nothing like that. After years of putting new genin through the wringer, Asuma, my standards are through the floor." That was the truest thing he'd said all night. "That Naruto and the miserable monster-"

"Excuse me?" Kurenai's quiet listening very quickly became not so quiet... If anyone had been following the career of this year's top Kunoichi, it was Kurenai. Crap. "The miserable monster?"

How many drinks had he had so far? He'd lost count at six cups. Enough that he hadn't been keeping a watch on what he was saying.

Miserable monster wasn't even a good nickname. He was slipping.

Maybe he needed to go to the hospital after all?

…Maybe if it still hurt in the morning.

He'd sleep on it.

"Haruno Sakura. Her. That's who I'm talking about. My student. That was who I meant... Look, Kurenai, you'd understand if you'd ever met her," Kakashi defended himself, wary of anything weird, like the walls bleeding or his fingers growing extra joints as Kurenai's eyes narrowed dangerously and Asuma vacated his seat to take another two yards away, disengaging entirely.

The coward.

Kakashi couldn't blame him entirely. He'd seen how the younger Sarutobi had been making eyes at the village's local Genjutsu master, but that didn't make Asuma any less of a coward.

"She carries her own rain cloud around with her," Kakashi grumbled as he rubbed his temples between drinks. "I haven't heard a single positive thing come out of her mouth, she tried to cripple me multiple times in the first thirty seconds and I don't think she can smile."

He was probably exaggerating. Most likely. Kakashi had only known the dispassionately brutal girl with the pink hair and the earth-shattering scorpion-tail hair-jewelry for a couple of hours, and the situations she'd been in hadn't exactly been anything to smile about.

He wasn't feeling all that charitable at the moment though. And he might have been drunk. Or well on the way towards getting drunk.

At least sleep would be easy later. Maybe he'd even get a nice, solid four hours out of this. That sounded nice.

One could hope.

"She has no mercy. No remorse. That I was a fellow Konoha nin didn't even matter to her. You could see it in her eyes. She took my suggestion to go for the kill at face value." He'd thought that Sakura's stodged persistence in turning his joints into powder had been adorable at first, but not for long; the bar was so focused on chewing over his small admittance of vulnerability that not a single one of them had focused on how he was drinking while wearing a mask, an old bar staple. "And whoever wrote her file missed some things."

Big things.

Like how she could turn your very existence into blurry agony and genin-punting need by rubbing you with the back of her hand.

Anything that could make him nudge out one of the top fifty most painful experiences of his life should have been in yet another file, one that was somewhere dark and dank and behind some very mean seals as files like that tended to be.

Jutsu like what she'd hit him with didn't appear in a vacuum. And perfectly sealless.

Sealless.

Kakashi had known the girl was a deft hand when it came to medical jutsu and chakra control before he'd even met her, but come on.

His fellow jounin mulled that over while he contemplated, visibly unimpressed as she judged him with flat red eyes. "So you're saying that she takes her job seriously, follows orders without complaint or hesitation and she knows how to stick to opsec."

Kurenai wasn't getting it.

"Well, yes. If that's what you want to take away from this, then yes. She is that." He slumped in his seat with a sigh. She'd figure it out. Eventually. "But I was her target and that's bad."

There was a team of genin repairing training ground three as he spoke, all the evidence he needed as to why that was.

Someone had heard stories about Jiraiya and his signature jutsu, clearly.

"If you say so, Kakashi."

"She sounds very youthful!"

None of them got it… At least Sakura would be a hell of a ringer during the next inter-team jackpot.

Silver linings.