The lunch break had ended nearly an hour ago, and all three newly graduated genin were running desperately short on patience. Sasuke slouched in his usual personal cloud of gloom, chin supported by his folded hands. Sakura was mostly occupied with making calf-eyes at him, but would scowl at the classroom door every minute or two. Naruto... Well, Naruto was having a staring contest with a cat.
Naturally, this was a singularly futile thing to do, as cats don't care if a silly human thinks it can compete with them, they'll watch as long as they're interested and only blink when they feel like it; the fact that they may not feel like it for quite some time or might decide to ignore the human entirely in favor of cleaning a paw is irrelevant.
This particular cat was of slightly smaller than average size, had a glossy coat blacker than a missing-nin's heart, and seemed to find Naruto very interesting indeed. As long as he could remember he'd been seeing it, sometimes several times a day, just watching him, utterly indifferent to attempts to lure it closer to play or drive it off in frustration. It got into his apartment no matter how tight he shut the windows or locked the door and left again without a trace, it could be watching from a rooftop on one street and sitting in the shade of a shop awning two blocks away as if it had been there all day when he'd run without stopping between the two locations. He was pretty sure it was some kind of demon-cat, having heard some of the students from last year's graduating class talking about one when he saw them in the village, but he didn't know why it would be so interested in him. He wouldn't have minded - getting people's attention was why he pulled so many pranks - but, well, it was a cat, and the most scornful villager had nothing on a cat for cold, indifferent eyes. At the moment it was sitting on the classroom floor in front of and partly under Iruka-sensei's desk, as it had been since they'd come back from lunch. No one had paid it any attention or even seemed to notice it there except Naruto and Inuzuka Kiba's nin-puppy, who'd just taken a distant sniff or two before whining to be picked up.
Naruto stared at the cat.
The cat stared at Naruto.
His left eyelid twitched, from a combination of mental irritation and the itch of drying eyeballs.
The cat stared at Naruto.
Naruto wiggled in his seat, his chronic fidgets acting up at staying still so long.
The cat blinked, then continued staring at Naruto as if nothing had changed.
"AH! AH! YOU BLINKED! I WIN, YOU STUPID CAT!!" the boy shouted, vaulting out of his seat to crouch on the desktop, pointing an arm at his feline opponent.
The cat raised its left paw and licked away a fleck of dust, then stared at Naruto.
Eyes blank, the boy flopped off the desk and rolled around in the aisle, pulling at his already messy hair and complaining about bastard cheating cats who don't even admit when they lose.
Sasuke snorted, having endured similar rants from the dobe, directed at himself. "Moron," he thought, but didn't bother to say.
Sakura just sighed in exasperation. "Why did I have to get stuck with him? Is it divine punishment? I'm a good person, right, so why!?" she complained in her head. "Of course I am!" she replied, "but even that's worth it if I get to be with Sasuke-kun!"
The cat stood up, and jumped onto the top of the teachers' desk. It seemed to eye the clock on the wall behind it, but Sakura dismissed the idea as being a fluke of how it stood while collecting itself after the leap. Cats couldn't tell time, after all.
She was forced to re-examine that assumption an instant later, when the cat turned around and spoke.
"Well, I'm tired of waiting around, how about you?" it - he? The voice was a bit high pitched but it was a CAT after all, and the speech used masculine forms - asked, looking them over as Sakura gaped, Sasuke raised an eyebrow, and Naruto froze in shock. "You're Team Seven, right? Hmmm..." The cat tilted its head and looked them over more critically, as if making a tricky decision.
Sakura leaned over and whispered to her crush, who'd raised his other eyebrow but had managed not to react further. "You don't think that's ... Can a cat be a ninja sensei?" she asked.
Sasuke didn't reply, but a small drop of sweat appeared and slid slowly down his cheek.
Naruto was still mostly frozen but had managed to get a finger up to point at the now apparently confirmed demon-cat. He sputtered incoherently and shivered.
"Well, why not, maybe I'll have some fun with you," said the cat. "Follow me, if you can. If not I suppose you aren't worth my time." Without any sign of effort, the little black cat leapt the ten feet from his perch to the open window sill, looking back over his shoulder to add, "Don't fall behind, you three," before hopping out.
Sasuke was instantly on his feet, one hand slapping down on the desk and eyes alight with fury at the suggestion of the possibility of being considered too insignificant to be worth a common animal's attention, even one that could talk. He followed in a flash, well used to using the window route to ditch his squealing, obnoxious fangirls.
Sakura, one of the girls who pursued the young Uchiha with the full power of her heart (and the one who was certain to win, now that she was on his team away from those other girls! Shannaro!) hurried to the window as well but balked at the two-story fall, as usual, at least until she was knocked over from behind.
Naruto, seeing his own crush heading after the bakeneko and the bastard, had forced himself to his feet and followed, but was still a little unstable between shock at having his feline nemesis talk and a (well founded, in his opinion, given what he'd recently learned about his own spiritual tenant and the blurry shapes he could sometimes make out where other people saw nothing) fear of evil spirits and stumbled against the pink-haired girl's back when she suddenly stopped, tumbling them both outside. He wailed and grabbed the girl tightly, flailing his legs as they fell and making them spin even faster in the air.
They landed with a shriek and a crash, Naruto managing to arrive at the ground first and cushion her fall. Sakura was furious even so, her heart pounding in her throat as she sat up on his chest and stared around wide-eyed at the close escape. "NA-RU-TO!!" she yelled, burying a fist in his face. "BE MORE CAREFUL YOU IDIOT! I ALMOST DIED!" Spotting the cat and Sasuke in the branches of the tree in front of the Academy she jumped to her feet and ran to catch up, the shot of adrenaline giving her legs an extra boost even as the fear and anger faded.
The blond boy moaned and rubbed at a rapidly swelling cheek, then scrambled to his feet as well. "Aah! Sakura-chan, wait for me! Stupid bakeneko sensei!" With all three humans on their feet, the cat crouched, then leapt again, this time so fast he vanished. The genin looked around for a few seconds, trying to spot him, until Naruto gave a shout and ran off, having seen the cat a block down the street. Sasuke and Sakura followed tight on his heels.
In the abandoned classroom, a small dust-devil settled, having been kicked up from a sudden breeze by the window. Around an hour later, a silver-haired man with a half-mask and his hitae-ite cocked over one eye wandered in and looked around curiously at the empty room. After a few seconds he noticed the scrap of paper that had been left behind, and picked it up to read it.
"Kakashi -
Took the kids off your hands, since you couldn't be bothered. When that eye appears you might be needed to train it, otherwise keep your tardy ass out of the way.
-Yoruichi"
For just a moment, his one visible eye tightened before he shrugged and wandered off again, somehow avoiding obstacles while walking and reading a bright orange book.
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(Posted Fri, 28 May 2010 00:26)
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