Naruto : Monsters: Chapter 30

"Late-late-late, he's late!" Frustration oozed off Naruto like heat from an open flame as she paced in circles at the front of the classroom, walking from wall to wall like a caged animal. "I haven't even seen our new Sensei yet and I'm already beginning to hate him."

"I don't know." Shikamaru stretched and yawned from his perch on the window, bathing in the sun's rays like a cat. "I kinda like the guy already."

"That's only because he's turning out to be even lazier than you!" She snapped at the napping Nara.

"Exactly." Shikamaru nodded without a hint of shame. "He's literally the perfect Sensei for me. There is a lot I can learn from a guy who can be-" Shikamaru cracked open a single eye to peek at the clock, "-two hours late for work and get away with it."

Naruto muttered something rude under her breath before turning to me, "Hey Hikaru! Did you find him yet? What's taking this guy so long to get here?"

I was sitting behind my desk and I could feel my eyes twitching with irritation as I tracked Kakashi with my Byakugan, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Oh come on, how unbelievable could it be. Just tell me why he's late already."

"Fine," I sighed, "He's currently lost on the road of life."

Naruto actually stopped her pacing to stare at me blankly, "…huh?"

I couldn't blame her, even I was having trouble believing what I was seeing, "There is a road in Konoha that's literally called 'life' and he is lost on it. He has been for the last hour."

Silence descended on the room as everyone tried to picture what I had just said.

Shikamaru snickered from his perch. "Yeah, I'm definitely going to like this guy."

"You mean to tell me, that this guy can walk in here any second and tell us the reason he's late is because he got lost on the road of life, and he'd be telling the truth," Naruto spoke the words slowly as if she couldn't quite make herself believe what she was saying. 

A conflicted expression appeared on her face. "I'm…I'm not sure what I should be feeling right now. Should I respect the guy for a well-played pranked or be pissed at him for wasting our time?"

"Pissed," I answered, feeling no such conflict, "When it comes to Kakashi, the default response should always be pissed off." My head snapped up when I saw that Kakashi had finally begun to do something different. "Wait, he's finally off the road. Kakashi is no longer lost on the road of life."

It took me a second to process what I just said before I slap a hand over my face. Never in my life did I ever expect to string those words together in a single sentence.

Even after a full decade, my childlike wonder over the Byakugan never left me. It was something incredible. With it I could see every inch of Konoha, the entire village was laid out before my eyes. I don't even know where to begin to describe what I was seeing, what's it like to see everything.

To say I had a bird's eye view of Konoha would be incorrect because it implied that I was only looking in one direction. My Byakugan granted me the ability to see everything in my range of sight from every angle as if I had an entire 3-D model of Konoha imprinted in my head. The sheer scale of what I could see was almost overwhelming.

Just by focusing I could see my sister in the Academy's training room, two floors below this one, where she was in the middle of a taijutsu spar with Konohamaru – kick his ass Hanabi! Another shift of my focus allowed me to spot my mother, where she was tending her flowers in the garden, while my father was watching over her from the porch, a tender smile on his face.

Most Hyuuga could see for miles in every direction, their vision's range stretching from as little as 4 kilometres to as much as 16 kilometres. 

My eye's current range extended to a little under 12 kilometres, an unimpressive number when compared to the best the Hyuuga Clan had to offer but unprecedented for someone at my physical stage of development. Most Hyuuga could only break past the 10 kilometres limit when they were well into puberty.

Though I was still nowhere near my father's range of 21 kilometres, it was enough. I could still see everything I needed to. All of Konoha lay within the range of my sight.

Even the other teams were not beyond my limit. I could see team 10 celebrating in the Yakiniku Q restaurant. Choji was scarfing down strips of grilled meat as if he hadn't eaten for years, either not noticing or caring about the looks of disgusted Sakura was giving him. 

While Ino, having long gotten used to her teammates eating manners, was reprimanding Asuma instead on his smoking habits. Which, if the cigarette he had between his lips was anything to go by, was sliding off him like water off a duck's back.

Team 8 was still in their training field. Akamaru was scratching and biting his fur like crazy while Kiba yelled at a stoic Shino about keeping his bugs to himself. Kurenai was off to one side from the boys, where she was caught up in an in-depth discussion about the finer nuances of genjutsu to the third member of their group, a brown-haired girl by the name of Yakumo.

Thanks to my familiarity with their chakra signatures, it only took me a handful of seconds to spot them all. Had I not been as familiar with their signatures as I was it could have taken me hours to find them, as I would have been forced to look for them street by street instead of simply allowing myself to be pulled towards their chakra.

If I had to describe it, it was almost like picking out a familiar face from a crowd of strangers.

But the process wasn't perfect. While it was impossible to hide from the Byakugan, you could make it much harder for it to find you. If you suppressed your chakra well enough and hid yourself in a densely populated place like Konoha, it would take me time to pick out your chakra from the thousands of other signatures. It could take hours, even days if the city was large enough.

Which was why I knew Kakashi wanted me to find him. His chakra signature had been blazing full force all day, deliberately calling attention to himself.

When the rest of the Genin had been picked up by their Jonin-instructors and Kakashi still hadn't arrived yet, I naturally decided to use my Byakugan to find out what was taking him so long and spotted him almost immediately.

He had been at the Memorial Stone, quietly paying his respects to his fallen comrades. Deciding to give the guy some privacy, I lied and told Naruto that I couldn't find him. We could afford to wait for a bit, it's not like we were in any hurry.

When Kakashi had finished paying his respects about an hour later, he turned and waved at me. Well, technically he was waving at the general direction of the Academy but I had no doubt it was aimed at me. Which was why I knew that when he walked off and gotten himself lost on the road of life he was doing this to fuck with me.

"Really?" Naruto leaned over my desk, eager for information. "Where is he now? Is he finally on his way here?"

I held up a hand. "Give me a moment…Yes. Yes he's currently walking down the main road to the Academy and he should be reaching here any minute now…and…and…and his turning back around."

"What! Why?" Naruto screamed out in frustration.

"…because a black cat just crossed his path."

...

"Sorry I'm late," The silver-haired man rubbed the back of his head in faux embarrassment as he sat down on the railing. "I got lost on the road of life."

"We know." Naruto and I deadpanned as one.

Kakashi didn't seem to mind our unenthusiastic response because he carried on giving excuses. "Then a black cat crossed my path and I had to take the long way round because I didn't want to get unlucky."

"We know." We deadpanned again.

I didn't mention how convenient it was that a dog just happened to chase that cat in front of him. Or that said dog happened to be a familiar-looking, brown-coloured pug wearing a Konoha forehead protector on its head.

"Then I had to help a little old lady cross the street." Kakashi shamelessly carried on.

"WE KNOW ALREADY!" We snapped and yelled.

...

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