I Don't Think You Understand
folder
Naruto › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
35
Views:
1,349
Reviews:
264
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
Naruto › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
35
Views:
1,349
Reviews:
264
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own Naruto, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
I Don't Think You Understand
“I Don’t Think You Understand”
by: WaterShadow
DISCLAIMER: Ladies and gentlemen who peruse fanfiction, I don’t own Naruto. I may speak some Japanese, but let me assure you that, unlike a native speaker (like, say, Kishimoto-san), I actually need subtitles to understand the anime, and I definitely need the manga translated because I’m out of practice and can’t understand half of the kanji. Temporary tangent; it takes 4000 kanji to read a newspaper. Considering that, I have approximately ten percent of the required number of kanji to read something that can be considered so basic, and so therefore cannot be Kishimoto-san or even Japanese.
Now that I’ve thoroughly dashed the thought from your minds of a famous manga-ka (artist who draws manga) writing fanfiction in amazingly idiomatic English, shall we continue with the story?
~~()~~
Good things come in small packages. The value of something lies within. If you do good deeds, Santa’ll give you something fantastic come Christmastime.
To some those little sayings might be true. For a shinobi, they’re bullshit.
Smaller weapons might get the job done, but it’s easier to just throw those things at people until they’re dead (or better yet, just use a giant fucking sword to finish everyone off), the only value in a dead person is their organs (if they’re not mangled too badly), and Santa was a myth in the mysterious West that travelling shinobi brought back in bewilderment.
Shinobi have an axiom all their own, and in every case, it’s proven surprisingly accurate. It is as follows: “anything can surprise you.”
However, Hatake Kakashi wasn’t in the mood for surprises.
Tiredly pulling off an ANBU mask, he ran a hand over his one exposed eye and looked around his apartment, finding everything to be in the same condition as he’d left it. Stripping off his clothes and hitae-ate, he bent his lean, muscular body in a backbend, sighing in pleasure when his back cracked. He bent forward as well, sighing again when he felt his spine elongate into something more like its normal length. Striding to his bathroom, he proceeded to wash the dirt out of his few scratches with a piping-hot shower, carelessly drying off body and hair when finished.
Falling into bed, he didn’t awaken until the sun smacked him right in the eyes with an imperious demand to open them. Grumbling curses, he curled onto his side, determined to ignore the gaseous being’s arrogant demands.
Sadly for him, gaseous beings often get their way through means both tricky and downright rude, but highly effective...that is, making the space around him so warm that he couldn’t even stand to lie there another second. Yawning and sighing, he turned his head to see the clock on his wall.
“Saa,” he murmured. “Only 1:15?” Grimacing, he went to the bathroom to rinse out a mouth tasting foully of bile and sleep, then grinned tiredly at his reflection in the mirror. “Poor Sasuke-kun’s been out there for two hours already.” Shrugging at himself, he proceeded to dress himself. He’s waited longer.
Still, it wouldn’t do for him to be too late. He did want some actual taijutsu practice, after all.
***||***
“Higher on the kicks, Sasuke-kun; none of those will penetrate my guard.”
Thuds, grunts, and soft thumps met Kakashi’s ears as he strolled leisurely to the training ground where he and Sasuke had agreed to meet. His visible eye crinkling in confusion, he walked a little faster to the designated clearing--
--only to have his jaw drop. Figuratively (though with that mask, who could tell?), but he was shocked, physical nonreaction notwithstanding.
Uchiha Sasuke, a tall, strapping youth of eighteen, wearing loose blue trousers, sandals, and a kimono-like shirt of a darker blue, sparred with a uniform-wearing Umino Iruka. The sight wouldn’t have shocked the silver-haired man so much if Sasuke had been winning--he’d taught that boy most of the taijutsu he knew before he went to Orochimaru for training and treachery--but Sasuke wasn’t winning.
In fact, he was sweating. Uchiha Sasuke may do a lot of things normal people did, but he never sweated.
To his credit, Iruka-sensei seemed slightly winded, but he didn’t look nearly as tired as the lone Uchiha did. The chuunin uniform the man wore still flowed lightly around his lithe form, untainted with moisture as he and Sasuke met once again for a flurry of fast blows.
They sprang apart, Sasuke gasping and favoring his left side a bit, Iruka-sensei looking...much the same as he had. “Stop thinking I’m Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun,” Iruka said mildly. “No matter how tempting that last opening looked, don’t think I’m going to automatically go for where I know your guard is sloppy.”
“Hai (gasp), sensei,” Sasuke panted, straightening up again.
“When you’re fighting, fight me,” the brown-haired teacher continued as if his former student hadn’t spoken. “See what I do, not what Naruto-kun does, or Lee-kun, or even Hatake-san. Fight who’s in front of you, not people you’ve fought.”
Sasuke nodded, then--to Kakashi’s complete shock--bowed his head respectfully toward the chuunin teacher. “Thank you, sensei.”
Iruka-sensei smiled gently. “I am always happy to help,” he said, purity in his voice. “And now that Hatake-san has finally arrived”--Kakashi jumped a little at the unexpected change in subject (how did he know I was here? I was being quiet)--”I will leave you to it. Ja ne, Sasuke-kun, Hatake-san.”
“Thank you for troubling yourself to help me,” Sasuke replied, some of his wind having returned. Nodding back, the chuunin teacher strolled past the still-stunned jounin, pausing for a nearly imperceptible moment to murmur one thing that almost sent Kakashi reeling, before he left;
“Stop being late to teach him, or I’ll make what I did to him look like love-taps compared to what I’ll do to you.”
Kakashi’s eye blinked. Blinked again. Then again. Who the hell does that little Academy teacher think he is to--
“Finally, Kakashi-sensei,” Sasuke drawled, strolling up to his sensei. “What’s the excuse this time? Saved a king’s harem from a flood and got ‘rewarded’ for it? Rescused all of Konoha’s kittens out from the oppressive rule of their masters?”
Shoving the odd happenings of the last few moments from his mind, Kakashi shook his head at the excessive sarcasm his younger jounin student used (maybe his time with Orochimaru and more recently with Naruto made him snarkier than usual) and made his eye curve happily. “No, just made sure to photograph Jiraiya-sama photographing the nude women in the bath photographing each other. Shall we spar now, since you seem to be so full of energy?”
If eyes were weapons of the sharp and pointy variety, Kakashi was sure he would have looked like that strange foreign beast with spikes...what was the name of it?
Oh, yes, porukupinu.
And judging from the amount of kunai and shuriken flying toward him at that moment, Sasuke-kun must have decided to make one out of him in truth.
***||***
Later, after he’d soaked all the new aches and pains out of his muscles after an astonishingly vicious few-holds-barred spar with Sasuke (really, where did his student get off on constantly doing Chidori at his head?), his mind wandered once again to the chuunin teacher who’d more or less outright threatened him. Did the man actually think that he stood a chance in a fight against him? How did he think he could even threaten him safely?
These thoughts did not come around in arrogance, but in pure simple belief in his ability to kill something very dead. He was one of the youngest people to ever make chuunin, jounin, and ANBU level, had completed an incredible number of missions of A and S-class, and at nearly forty was one of the oldest shinobi to ever have survived (the Third, gods bless him, and the Sannin were the people in front of him for that particular honor).
So what, precisely, did Umino Iruka-sensei think he was going to accomplish by saying something that, by all rights, Kakashi should have attacked him for?
“Except,” Kakashi murmured to himself, laying his head back on the couch, “I haven’t even gone near him.”
In Kakashi’s tired mind, there was only one course of action that made sense; tail him. Tail him and find out why the chuunin could threaten his superior in skill with impunity.
His head started getting cloudy. Tomorrow, I’ll start.
***||***
Umino Iruka. Chuunin, sensei to Academy students, former prankster. Possessor of a temper that few spoke of because no one wanted wrath of that magnitude to come crashing down upon sensitive vital areas. Used to buy ramen for Naruto when Naruto didn’t have money to buy any for himself. Brave, resourceful, cooed over by women in most areas.
Right now, he didn’t feel like any of those things.
A head with a flowing mane of chocolate brown hair (he’d taken the hairtie out earlier) banged gently against a wall as he berated himself verbally. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Bang. “You had to go and threaten him, didn’t you, Iruka-baka?” Bang. “Sure, threaten the damn jounin.” Bang. “I’m sure he’ll run screaming in fear from the rage in your steely brown eyes and never be late again.”
Particularly hard bang. “IDIOT!”
Five minutes later, he regained consciousness.
Raising a hand to the rapidly swelling lump in front and turning onto his side to ease the equally swollen lump at the back, he sighed and mumbled one last thing; “idiot.”
Getting up after the throbs subsided to an extent, he went to soothe them with healing cream. Sighing after the bumps had disappeared (strong stuff, that cream), he sat on his couch and lay his head back. “Now what the hell do I do with this?”
Two men, one already asleep, one joining him in slumber, dreamt of each other in extreme confusion.
***||***
There should be a few things to mention. Since I do speak some Japanese, I tend to use the Japanese pronounciations for words that aren't native to Japan. To "Japanize" an English word, they put it into their own sound system, and there are few sounds that have just one letter to represent then. Porcupine to we who are native speakers of English is "porukupinu" to them.
Also, while I do read PWPs that have characters jumping into bed with each other pretty quickly, I find that when writing stuff of a similar nature, I just can't throw them into bed very quickly, so as a belated for-your-info, if you are looking for quickies, sorry to disappoint.
I love reviews! Please feel free to leave me one :-).
SIDE-NOTE (very recent): I am sincerely considering doing either a sequel, a prequel, or a related story to add to this "universe" I've created. Thoughts would be appreciated. Before I forget, I hear there's a thread about this story somewhere. If that's the case, would anyone mind telling me where it is so I can satisfy my curiosity?
by: WaterShadow
DISCLAIMER: Ladies and gentlemen who peruse fanfiction, I don’t own Naruto. I may speak some Japanese, but let me assure you that, unlike a native speaker (like, say, Kishimoto-san), I actually need subtitles to understand the anime, and I definitely need the manga translated because I’m out of practice and can’t understand half of the kanji. Temporary tangent; it takes 4000 kanji to read a newspaper. Considering that, I have approximately ten percent of the required number of kanji to read something that can be considered so basic, and so therefore cannot be Kishimoto-san or even Japanese.
Now that I’ve thoroughly dashed the thought from your minds of a famous manga-ka (artist who draws manga) writing fanfiction in amazingly idiomatic English, shall we continue with the story?
~~()~~
Good things come in small packages. The value of something lies within. If you do good deeds, Santa’ll give you something fantastic come Christmastime.
To some those little sayings might be true. For a shinobi, they’re bullshit.
Smaller weapons might get the job done, but it’s easier to just throw those things at people until they’re dead (or better yet, just use a giant fucking sword to finish everyone off), the only value in a dead person is their organs (if they’re not mangled too badly), and Santa was a myth in the mysterious West that travelling shinobi brought back in bewilderment.
Shinobi have an axiom all their own, and in every case, it’s proven surprisingly accurate. It is as follows: “anything can surprise you.”
However, Hatake Kakashi wasn’t in the mood for surprises.
Tiredly pulling off an ANBU mask, he ran a hand over his one exposed eye and looked around his apartment, finding everything to be in the same condition as he’d left it. Stripping off his clothes and hitae-ate, he bent his lean, muscular body in a backbend, sighing in pleasure when his back cracked. He bent forward as well, sighing again when he felt his spine elongate into something more like its normal length. Striding to his bathroom, he proceeded to wash the dirt out of his few scratches with a piping-hot shower, carelessly drying off body and hair when finished.
Falling into bed, he didn’t awaken until the sun smacked him right in the eyes with an imperious demand to open them. Grumbling curses, he curled onto his side, determined to ignore the gaseous being’s arrogant demands.
Sadly for him, gaseous beings often get their way through means both tricky and downright rude, but highly effective...that is, making the space around him so warm that he couldn’t even stand to lie there another second. Yawning and sighing, he turned his head to see the clock on his wall.
“Saa,” he murmured. “Only 1:15?” Grimacing, he went to the bathroom to rinse out a mouth tasting foully of bile and sleep, then grinned tiredly at his reflection in the mirror. “Poor Sasuke-kun’s been out there for two hours already.” Shrugging at himself, he proceeded to dress himself. He’s waited longer.
Still, it wouldn’t do for him to be too late. He did want some actual taijutsu practice, after all.
***||***
“Higher on the kicks, Sasuke-kun; none of those will penetrate my guard.”
Thuds, grunts, and soft thumps met Kakashi’s ears as he strolled leisurely to the training ground where he and Sasuke had agreed to meet. His visible eye crinkling in confusion, he walked a little faster to the designated clearing--
--only to have his jaw drop. Figuratively (though with that mask, who could tell?), but he was shocked, physical nonreaction notwithstanding.
Uchiha Sasuke, a tall, strapping youth of eighteen, wearing loose blue trousers, sandals, and a kimono-like shirt of a darker blue, sparred with a uniform-wearing Umino Iruka. The sight wouldn’t have shocked the silver-haired man so much if Sasuke had been winning--he’d taught that boy most of the taijutsu he knew before he went to Orochimaru for training and treachery--but Sasuke wasn’t winning.
In fact, he was sweating. Uchiha Sasuke may do a lot of things normal people did, but he never sweated.
To his credit, Iruka-sensei seemed slightly winded, but he didn’t look nearly as tired as the lone Uchiha did. The chuunin uniform the man wore still flowed lightly around his lithe form, untainted with moisture as he and Sasuke met once again for a flurry of fast blows.
They sprang apart, Sasuke gasping and favoring his left side a bit, Iruka-sensei looking...much the same as he had. “Stop thinking I’m Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun,” Iruka said mildly. “No matter how tempting that last opening looked, don’t think I’m going to automatically go for where I know your guard is sloppy.”
“Hai (gasp), sensei,” Sasuke panted, straightening up again.
“When you’re fighting, fight me,” the brown-haired teacher continued as if his former student hadn’t spoken. “See what I do, not what Naruto-kun does, or Lee-kun, or even Hatake-san. Fight who’s in front of you, not people you’ve fought.”
Sasuke nodded, then--to Kakashi’s complete shock--bowed his head respectfully toward the chuunin teacher. “Thank you, sensei.”
Iruka-sensei smiled gently. “I am always happy to help,” he said, purity in his voice. “And now that Hatake-san has finally arrived”--Kakashi jumped a little at the unexpected change in subject (how did he know I was here? I was being quiet)--”I will leave you to it. Ja ne, Sasuke-kun, Hatake-san.”
“Thank you for troubling yourself to help me,” Sasuke replied, some of his wind having returned. Nodding back, the chuunin teacher strolled past the still-stunned jounin, pausing for a nearly imperceptible moment to murmur one thing that almost sent Kakashi reeling, before he left;
“Stop being late to teach him, or I’ll make what I did to him look like love-taps compared to what I’ll do to you.”
Kakashi’s eye blinked. Blinked again. Then again. Who the hell does that little Academy teacher think he is to--
“Finally, Kakashi-sensei,” Sasuke drawled, strolling up to his sensei. “What’s the excuse this time? Saved a king’s harem from a flood and got ‘rewarded’ for it? Rescused all of Konoha’s kittens out from the oppressive rule of their masters?”
Shoving the odd happenings of the last few moments from his mind, Kakashi shook his head at the excessive sarcasm his younger jounin student used (maybe his time with Orochimaru and more recently with Naruto made him snarkier than usual) and made his eye curve happily. “No, just made sure to photograph Jiraiya-sama photographing the nude women in the bath photographing each other. Shall we spar now, since you seem to be so full of energy?”
If eyes were weapons of the sharp and pointy variety, Kakashi was sure he would have looked like that strange foreign beast with spikes...what was the name of it?
Oh, yes, porukupinu.
And judging from the amount of kunai and shuriken flying toward him at that moment, Sasuke-kun must have decided to make one out of him in truth.
***||***
Later, after he’d soaked all the new aches and pains out of his muscles after an astonishingly vicious few-holds-barred spar with Sasuke (really, where did his student get off on constantly doing Chidori at his head?), his mind wandered once again to the chuunin teacher who’d more or less outright threatened him. Did the man actually think that he stood a chance in a fight against him? How did he think he could even threaten him safely?
These thoughts did not come around in arrogance, but in pure simple belief in his ability to kill something very dead. He was one of the youngest people to ever make chuunin, jounin, and ANBU level, had completed an incredible number of missions of A and S-class, and at nearly forty was one of the oldest shinobi to ever have survived (the Third, gods bless him, and the Sannin were the people in front of him for that particular honor).
So what, precisely, did Umino Iruka-sensei think he was going to accomplish by saying something that, by all rights, Kakashi should have attacked him for?
“Except,” Kakashi murmured to himself, laying his head back on the couch, “I haven’t even gone near him.”
In Kakashi’s tired mind, there was only one course of action that made sense; tail him. Tail him and find out why the chuunin could threaten his superior in skill with impunity.
His head started getting cloudy. Tomorrow, I’ll start.
***||***
Umino Iruka. Chuunin, sensei to Academy students, former prankster. Possessor of a temper that few spoke of because no one wanted wrath of that magnitude to come crashing down upon sensitive vital areas. Used to buy ramen for Naruto when Naruto didn’t have money to buy any for himself. Brave, resourceful, cooed over by women in most areas.
Right now, he didn’t feel like any of those things.
A head with a flowing mane of chocolate brown hair (he’d taken the hairtie out earlier) banged gently against a wall as he berated himself verbally. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Bang. “You had to go and threaten him, didn’t you, Iruka-baka?” Bang. “Sure, threaten the damn jounin.” Bang. “I’m sure he’ll run screaming in fear from the rage in your steely brown eyes and never be late again.”
Particularly hard bang. “IDIOT!”
Five minutes later, he regained consciousness.
Raising a hand to the rapidly swelling lump in front and turning onto his side to ease the equally swollen lump at the back, he sighed and mumbled one last thing; “idiot.”
Getting up after the throbs subsided to an extent, he went to soothe them with healing cream. Sighing after the bumps had disappeared (strong stuff, that cream), he sat on his couch and lay his head back. “Now what the hell do I do with this?”
Two men, one already asleep, one joining him in slumber, dreamt of each other in extreme confusion.
***||***
There should be a few things to mention. Since I do speak some Japanese, I tend to use the Japanese pronounciations for words that aren't native to Japan. To "Japanize" an English word, they put it into their own sound system, and there are few sounds that have just one letter to represent then. Porcupine to we who are native speakers of English is "porukupinu" to them.
Also, while I do read PWPs that have characters jumping into bed with each other pretty quickly, I find that when writing stuff of a similar nature, I just can't throw them into bed very quickly, so as a belated for-your-info, if you are looking for quickies, sorry to disappoint.
I love reviews! Please feel free to leave me one :-).
SIDE-NOTE (very recent): I am sincerely considering doing either a sequel, a prequel, or a related story to add to this "universe" I've created. Thoughts would be appreciated. Before I forget, I hear there's a thread about this story somewhere. If that's the case, would anyone mind telling me where it is so I can satisfy my curiosity?