Ch318. Reinforcements

Four days passed and Team Seven gathered again around the kitchen table in Tazuna's house, eating dinner alongside Tazuna's family.

Anko enjoyed these past few days a lot. Now that Kakashi took his teaching duty seriously, she had nothing to do for most of the day so it was her who accompanied Tazuna to the bridge. She also confiscated a certain book from the Copycat to make sure he won't be distracted during training.

'I have to admit, Icha Icha is not half-bad.' Anko inwardly snickered.

Frankly, all members of Team Seven except Anko looked like crap. Even Naruto was swaying in his seat, his eyelids drooping from time to time. Kakashi certainly didn't pull his punches during the training but Anko suspected that it was more from the build-up frustration rather than wanting to make the brats stronger. She knew best how hard it was to deal with them.

Teaching Naruto, even when he was serious, was nerve-wracking. The boy was the type that learned by doing and trying to explain something to him with words was simply pointless. Unfortunately for Kakashi, Naruto was still pissed that he didn't learn anything for three months straight so he decided to step up his 'excitement' and made the training literal hell of exuberance for Kakashi. No wonder the jonin was dead tired on his feet and that didn't even take into account the other two of his students!

Sasuke was moody and liked to hold his grudges. He would not interrupt Kakashi mid-explanation with inane questions like Naruto, bouncing up and down with an innocent look and a wide stupid grin. No... he rather liked to take a different approach.

Anko's eyes flickered towards Kakashi, letting out a small snicker at his singed clothes with various burn marks. He was a mess and his lone visible eye conveyed profound exhaustion. While Naruto and Hinata got shadow clones, the real Kakashi focused on Sasuke. It wasn't because of favoritism or anything like that. It was simply because Sasuke liked to bathe the shadow clones in fireballs so sending them was counterproductive.

'I taught him so well! He can already perform techniques fast enough to clip Kakashi with his Fire Release.' She thought proudly before her eyes landed on the brooding Uchiha, causing her to snort. 'I will have to give him another brutal behavior correcting training session when we get back to Konoha. No student of mine would be brooding emo.'

Anko did watch all of these training sessions with Shadow Clones. Sasuke's drive was clearly to barbecue Kakashi alive and the brat was putting extreme determination into it. Anko might or might not have provided some more advanced tips for Fire Release so the play of 'Burn Kakashi' would get a bit more interesting. Needless to say, seeing Kakashi desperately dodging small balls of searing flames with a disturbed look was always fun. Especially since he couldn't really retaliate and had to take it.

The funniest of the lot was by far Hinata though. She was quite vindictive and decided to give Kakashi the stuttering treatment.

'And Sage was it irritating to teach her anything when it took her five minutes to just ask a simple question!' Anko remembered her own early experiences with the Hyuuga heiress.

Kakashi's patience was put under an extremely straining test. He had to repeat any explanations at least three times, every time Hinata asked a question, she made sure she stuttered in the exact right places to ensure Kakashi wouldn't clearly hear her so he had to ask her to repeat the question. Teaching Hinata in this mode was a long, frustrating, headache-inducing process. Especially since the girl took to her lessons under Anko like a fish to water.

While it was a shadow clone that was annoyed by Hinata's behavior, when it popped and gave Kakashi the memory feedback, it made him instantly weary and frustrated out of nowhere. It was the sort of emotional bullying one would expect from Anko's apprentice.

The only reason why he didn't find it suspicious was that he never really paid much attention to Hinata. He left her in Anko's care while he focused more on Sasuke and Naruto. That galled both Anko and Hinata but... it was better that way anyway.

Nobody spoke during the dinner. The civilians kept to themselves, seeing how tired the ninjas were, and the majority of the ninjas were too annoyed or tired to say anything. As such, the awkward silence was maintained until suddenly, three knocks resounded from the door and everybody instantly tensed.

"I assume you don't expect guests this late in the evening, Tazuna-san." Kakashi quietly asked in a laid back tone.

The bridge builder just frantically shook his head. Kakashi was about to give orders but Anko decided to give her team a break, "Relax. It is the reinforcements Lady Tsunade arranged."

"And how would you know?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow at that. He had the house surrounded by his shadow clones keeping watch, yet, the people near the door slipped right past them without being noticed. He didn't really think anybody in Konoha would be able to get past him like this.

"The same way as you are keeping the perimeter watch." Anko casually remarked, "While I guarded Tazuna, I also made a few shadow clones to scout ahead. One of my clones met them earlier today. They were quite suspicious so the clone decided to confront them to find out if they were hired by Gato and would attack me or not." Such suicidal tasks were best for Shadow Clones, after all.

"And you didn't deem it important to tell me?" Exasperation seeped into Kakashi's voice.

"You were busy... and I am telling you now." Anko nonchalantly shrugged. Honestly, she might have been taking out her own frustration on the man at this point. Scouting ahead the entire four days and getting no real result was quite maddening. Anko tried to find the hideout of Gato and Raiga. Unfortunately, she had no success. She couldn't create an army of clones like Naruto so her means were limited and despite everything, the Land of Waves was a country. It was impossible for one person to scout even one-tenth of it in four days.

Before Kakashi could give some snarky reply to Anko's easygoing excuse, one of Anko's shadow clones led inside two people wearing Kiri hitai-ate.

"This is Zabuza Momochi and his apprentice, Haku Yuki." The clone introduced them before gesturing towards Team Seven, "The civilians are Tazuna the bridge builder, his daughter Tsunami, and her son... I have no clue what his name is nor do I care. The gloomy broody is Sasuke Uchiha, the blushing mess is Hinata Hyuuga, the brat who is half-asleep and leaning on Hinata is Naruto Uzumaki. The annoyed creep is too famous for you to not know him and I am your awesome guide, Anko Mitarashi!" The clone exclaimed with a thumbs up. "The rest is up to you, original." With that, the clone popped out of existence, making the real Anko chuckle while the people in the room felt very awkward.

"Kiri?" Kakashi eventually asked, suspiciously eyeing the two newcomers. As much as he wanted to trust Anko's words, he wouldn't just accept them at face value.

"Yeah," Anko dismissively waved her hand, "Raiga is Kirigakure's missing ninja so Lady Tsunade reached towards her friend Lady Mizukage and the result is this creep being present," She pointed at Zabuza who was getting seated behind the table and threw her unamused look. Anko just ignored it. "Don't worry, Kakashi. I am sure you will get along smashingly! You aren't all that different. Both of you are ashamed of your faces and are tsunderes." She tried to reassure them but for some reason, it only earned her two heated glares. Anko wondered why...