Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Embracing Dreams ❯ Chapter 2
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Arigatomina 
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Comedy / Romance | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 08.12.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.7K | Visits: 371 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Naruto Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Comedy / Romance | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 08.12.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 4.7K | Visits: 371 | Status: Work In Progress
Embracing Dreams
Part Two: Kakashi, Sasuke
There was a nice tang in the air, the sort that bloomed in late spring with hints of the chill to come. The breeze was fickle enough to nip at the knee high grass and bend the blades nearly in half before darting off again like it had never been. The wind and the tang, more than the hint of storm clouds over the mountains in the far distance, promised a storm by evening. Or so claimed Hatake Kakashi, nature reader expert.
He sent a sidelong glance at his companion to see how the boy had taken his confident warning. If he weren't so used to being ignored by the dark broody little brat, he might have sighed in boredom.
This was payback, he was sure, for deciding to do the kind thing and letting Sasuke carry their bags. Sasuke wanted to do everything he could to get stronger as quickly as possible, so far be it from him to carry the stuff and prevent his kid the pleasure of exercising those ever so important arm and back muscles. Not to mention the calves and hamstrings. Rolling hills and knee high grass just did wonders on building hamstrings. Sasuke should be thanking him for letting him get such a work out. At least he could put forth the effort required to twitch when Kakashi went out of his way to annoy him. Selfish, ungrateful brat.
But, really, he'd known Sasuke would ignore him. Because ignoring him was the easiest way to annoy him. And no matter how Sasuke tried to convince him he existed purely to epitomize the angsty, broody little teenager, Kakashi knew his kid was a closet sadist who snickered inside his gloomy little head every time he successfully annoyed him with that 'you don't exist in my angsty world' ignoring routine of his. Sure, he'd never actually seen him with any smile besides his patented shitty little Sasuke smirk, let alone caught him indulging in a sadistic giggle of manic pleasure, but he could tell just by looking at him. He could see the inner sadist sniggering from the way Sasuke refused to so much as wrinkle his nose at him. That, and the fact that he hadn't told him to shut up, yet.
Kakashi suppressed a sigh and the urge to get a book to read while they walked. He did like the way Sasuke twitched when he read one of his brightly labeled books in his presence. Unfortunately with Sasuke carrying their bags, he'd have to ask if he wanted to get his book. Asking would be admitting that he'd given up his attempt to con a response out of his companion without having the book to fall back on. That would mean Sasuke had won. That was unacceptable. If he couldn't spend his free time making the boy twitch, he'd have no excuse to keep him around.
Kakashi was anything but a samaritan. If he gained nothing out of helping his fellow man, well, his fellow man wouldn't be getting any help, now would he? It was a matter of principle, really. He was a vagabond and his kind didn't bother with things like picking up stray kids and going out of his way to protect, feed, and teach the little buggers. Especially if they were boring selfish little buggers. As long as he remained amused, it was all good.
He was aware that his outlook on life was a bit...unique. That was such a nice word. Unique. Yes, his outlook was unique. It had to be unique, because his outlook was the only thing unique about him. The moment he'd realized his mutant talent was to copy other mutant talents, he'd realized he needed something unique to make him, well, unique. He could mix and match the talents he'd picked up during his travels to create new ones, but they were never really his. They weren't really new, either. It was no different from having the two mutants standing together and performing their skills at the same time. Sure, he might have met one of them in Florida and the other in Kyoto, but just because the two mutants would probably never meet didn't mean that if they did meet they couldn't do the exact same thing he did when he mixed their talents. So there was nothing new there.
He liked new things, interesting things, unique things. He'd been traveling since he was fourteen and despite his initial lack of funds, he'd managed to get all over the place. It was actually amazing how many mutants there were around the world, if a person had the free time of a lazy vagabond to look for them. His favorites were the mutants with talents he couldn't copy. And the ones who somehow knew what his talent was, the ones who kept their distance and refused to let him near enough to touch them. It was like the way some mutants had learned to block their minds from the telepaths to keep their secrets, without having the telepathy to know the people they were blocking were telepaths. Interesting and rare. Almost as rare as telepaths themselves.
Kakashi couldn't duplicate telepathy. Oh, he'd touched at least two telepaths and tried to copy their talents, with their permission, since they'd known exactly why he sought them out and lazily stalked them for weeks until they'd given in. He was nothing if not persistent. He was lazy when he traveled, definitely, but he didn't mind putting forth a little effort on things that proved to be very rewarding. Like making Sasuke twitch. Very rewarding. With the telepaths he hadn't gotten a reward, which was sort of rewarding in itself. It was rare, after all, to find a talent he couldn't copy. Oddly enough, while he couldn't copy telepaths, he could copy the block other mutants used to ward off telepaths. It was really interesting the way his talent worked and didn't work, depending on the mutant he touched.
With his talent, it all came down to touch. That wasn't too bad since he rather liked touching most of the time. But it could be awkward, too. He'd first discovered his talent by accident, having bumped into a classmate of his. Looking back he was pretty sure the girl had no idea she was a mutant at the time. She'd been, well, ugly, to put it bluntly. He didn't really think she'd have let herself be ugly if she'd known she could change her appearance just by staring at a picture and rubbing her hands over her eyes.
It was funny now, when he thought back to how he'd accidentally made himself out to look like the elderly general in his history text. Right in the middle of class. Shocking his teacher into falling over in her chair. It was really quite amusing in retrospect. Unfortunately it hadn't been nearly as funny at the time. He hadn't realized he'd changed his face and once he was ordered in front of a mirror, he'd been nearly as horrified as his teacher. He'd been terrified that he'd be stuck like that, a teenager with the droopy face and hair of a very old, overweight man. He'd had to replay the day in his mind four times before he'd made the connection with the ugly girl and that bump in the hallway a few minutes before class. After an hour, his face had turned back to normal. But his hair never did. Naturally he'd never tried to use that talent again. No, looking back, it hadn't been the least bit funny.
His parents hadn't thought it was that funny, either. He'd always been something of a lazy prankster. He was sure he'd been born taking sly amusement from the mishaps of the people around him. He could just see himself smirking in a cradle as his sitter stubbed her toe and hopped around cursing words he wasn't supposed to repeat. So his parents had naturally thought the incident in class was some extravagant prank on his part. Then they'd thought his explanation of what really happened was a prank. Then they'd thought he was insane. And since the silver-white in his hair wouldn't wash out, they'd thought it must have been caused by trauma of some sort. So he wasn't just insane. He was possibly dangerous.
It still amazed him how long it had taken for the first generation of mutants to be recognized for what they were. The psych wards must have been filled with kids his age who suddenly spouted outlandish stories and were committed by their horrified parents. He'd never seen any in the ward his parents sent him to, but that was probably because back then mutants had been rare, widespread, and unaware of their own talents. He was sure it had been much worse in the states. Once he started traveling he noticed that there were a lot more mutants in countries made up of mixed races and ethnicity. He'd spent more time in the states than he had in any other country, so he was sure their psych wards had been filled to the brim with hapless kids just like him.
He hadn't really checked when he started traveling and searching for other mutants to copy. His own time in the ward made him shy away from checking them for other mutants in the same situation he'd been in. He wasn't a samaritan, after all, so there was no point finding them and feeling sorry for their situations. They were probably there, but as long as he didn't go near the buildings, he wouldn't have to admit he knew they were there. He'd broken out and taken care of himself, so it wasn't like they couldn't do the same. He hadn't spent more than a month in the ward before he realized he had nothing to gain from the place, or his parents, or school and a stationary life, either. He'd decided on a profitable existence of doing things only when they benefitted him in some way. And so he'd left to find mutants he could use to add to his collection of copied talents.
He really was quite the collector. Sasuke, who occasionally did offer his views on things, assuming his cold statement would annoy Kakashi, claimed a collector was an obsessed person, the opposite of the lazy drifter Kakashi proclaimed himself to be. Yeah, that had annoyed him. Just a little. But he didn't see his collecting talents as an obsession. It was just a way to pass time, profitable, interesting, and not boring. He'd spent a month in a padded cell. The last thing he wanted was boring. So he collected and traveled and every day was spent doing something new. Or, if not new, at least entertaining and profitable.
Sasuke seemed to be an exception to his self-proclaimed mission in life. He'd had to stop and take a long hard look at what he was doing with the boy before he was able to reconcile it with his motto of profit-only.
They'd met by accident, so that couldn't be helped. He'd been passing through Tokyo on one of his yearly trips to Japan. He didn't like his homeland all that much, so he only stopped by for a week out of each year. He'd snatched a talent from a mugger two blocks from a seedy little bar and he'd stopped to play with it near an open alley. It turned out to be a really weird and useless talent. He could make things glow by touching them. Just little things, like the knife he'd stolen from the mugger. He'd thought the man had a glowing knife because his talent was to make metal burning hot, or something useful like that. But, no, just a bright glowing knife that had to make mugging a lot harder since the weapon would stand out even in the daytime. Whatever genetic fairy had gone around granting humans with mutant talents, she had to have been on some sort of drugs when she'd handed out that one. Who needed a little glowing object when flashlights sold for pocket change?
Disappointed by the cute but not all that interesting talent, he'd tossed the knife into the alley. Now that he thought about it, that careless action on his part might have made him a little to blame for meeting Sasuke. He hadn't known anyone was hiding there, but still, just randomly tossing sharp pointy weapons into shadows was asking for trouble. He'd gotten trouble, too, quite a bit of it. There was a hiss of breath and movement, and his first thought was that he'd impaled a cat. He had good senses, after all, even then. He'd been living on the streets since he was too small to properly defend himself, so he'd picked up quite a few things along the way of surviving to adulthood. Like his sense of smell. Any perfume, cologne, soap, body odor, anything that cried human, he could pick up from a good distance. Sasuke must have been hiding there for hours because none of his 'nearby human' radars went off when he winced and stepped over to see what he'd hit.
He was less than a foot away when Sasuke so kindly returned the knife to him. The brat really was a vicious little thing. At first he was stunned, vaguely appreciative of the speed of his attacker and how small and quiet he was. Then came the blindness and pain on the left side of his face, and the warm blood in his mouth. There were few things he hated more than the taste of blood, especially his own. His instincts kicked in then, immediately noting two things. That the kid planned to kill him. And that as fast and vicious as the brat was, he might actually succeed if he worried about hurting him. He grabbed the arm with the knife and broke it.
That talent was one he'd picked up from a good looking guy in Osaka during his last trip to Japan, and it was a great talent for crushing things with his bare hand. If Sasuke hadn't been so fast, he would have broken the knife instead of his arm, but he hadn't survived so long by ignoring his instincts. So he disarmed him. And damned if the brat hadn't tried to poke out his right eye with his free hand. Vicious. Seriously. If he could have done that crushing talent with both hands, he'd have broken Sasuke's other arm just for the hell of it. Instead he'd had to suffice with catching it and holding him as far away from him as possible. He'd half expected to be kicked in the crotch next. Instead, he'd found himself staring down into two wide red eyes with black curls spinning around the pupils.
He'd never figured out exactly what happened after that. He woke up in jail with a bandage covering the left side of his face and attempted murder as the charge. The guard, a big stupid looking man, who didn't care that he'd lost an eye and was in serious pain, and who didn't believe that he was the one who'd been attacked, told him they'd picked him up at the 'scene of the crime' and that he was 'one sick bastard' for attacking a helpless kid. The guard also told him he'd be charged with homicide if the kid died at the hospital. So he guessed they'd both been found in the alley. And since he was the older one, they automatically assumed he was the bad guy. Just great. They'd believe the kid, too, because he'd been really small and everyone knew little kids didn't try to kill people. Right. And if they identified him, they'd link this charge with his having been dubbed insane, toss him into prison, and he'd have to break out all over again. At that moment he'd been pretty sure his day couldn't get any worse.
He was corrected a few hours later when the guard came back with a disgusted face to tell him someone had posted bail and that the charges had been dropped. Good news? Not likely. Not with his bad luck.
He'd barely stepped out of the building and there was the kid, looking like he'd crawled out of a train wreck and left a few pounds of skin behind. His first thought was that he'd bailed him out to finish the job. At least his eyes weren't spinning, and they were black now, instead of red. It was funny that he noticed the kid before he noticed the guy he was standing by. An older double, tall, kinda sickly looking with a grayish pallor and lines under his eyes, like he was sixty instead of in his early twenties. He probably noticed the kid first because his older double looked like he was dead, or one of those mannequins in a clothing store. No emotion, no color, no movement. He talked like he was dead, too. All soft and blank, maybe a little clipped around the edges.
Kakashi hadn't been in the best state to really get what he was looking at. His face was throbbing, he could swear the kid was bleeding all over the place because he could smell the blood from five feet away - he'd never finished walking down the steps outside the station - and that guy was talking like he'd just asked him the time. It took him a minute after he finished talking for him to realize he'd just gotten an apology. And a promise of reparations. Like the kid accidentally hit a baseball through his window. Unreal. Unique. And he was too out of it to care. He thought he might have made a comment about the guy being a nutjob, but he really wasn't sure. He'd started to wonder if he was back in a padded room having a really bizarre daydream.
Then the kid took off and he ran really fast for a bloody little thing with a broken arm. That helped snap Kakashi back to the real world, but not before he wondered curiously if the mannequin would follow a trail of blood drops to find him and bring him back so he could apologize to him for breaking his window. Yeah, he'd been a little out of it, but he came back in time to hear the guy invite him to join him for a cup of tea. At least, he thought the guy had really said that. Looking back, that might have been part of the lala land padded cell fantasy. He really wasn't sure. He remembered declining the invitation, though. And the guy had nodded to him and walked off.
All things considered, Kakashi didn't think it was his fault he ended up following Sasuke. He'd just walked in the opposite direction from the one the nutjob had taken. It was only natural to walk away from scary and bizarre things. It wasn't his fault that happened to be the same direction the kid had taken. Picking him up when he found him and taking him back to the hotel with him? Yeah, that was his fault. But he blamed his curiosity for that. It had been a pretty bizarre day and he didn't think he wanted to go to the mannequin for answers. He didn't think he wanted to go anywhere near any mannequins for the rest of his life.
So, yeah, he'd had a good reason to take him home and patch him up. He couldn't very well get answers if he bled to death, right? Right. Then the ungrateful brat had refused to talk to him, so it was only fitting that he keep him prisoner in the hotel for a week, right? Right. Probably. It wasn't like Sasuke had actually tried to leave once he realized Kakashi wouldn't be throwing any more knives in his direction. He just glared, and Kakashi glared back from his place in front of the door, and then he went back to his corner to skulk and play another day of ignore the old guy. He was really good at that game. A little too good.
By the time the kid started talking to him, Kakashi was sort of used to having that sullen glare follow him around. It was like having a cat. A cat that didn't like him but planned to keep him around for food. Emergency rations. He had to sleep sometime.
Okay, so he'd gotten a little paranoid, but it sort of fun wondering when the kid would snap and go for his throat. It was entertaining. In a 'pet me and I'll bite your hand off' sort of way. A fun, psychotic cat. And as soon as he figured out how to rub his fur the wrong way, he'd be a really fun cat. He owed him some grief, after all, for his eye.
As things turned out, he hadn't lost it like he'd thought when he woke up in the jail cell. The cut had been deep, and he'd always have a scar from his eyebrow to his chin, but the eyeball itself still worked. It worked way too well, as a matter of fact. Once he understood what Sasuke's talent was, he knew why they'd both been knocked out when he touched him and looked into his red eyes. Their talents were very similar. Where he copied talents by touching people, Sasuke could copy just about anything, talent or simple body motions, by watching and activating his red eyes. Sharingan, he called them. A nice enough name. Unfortunately for Kakashi, that seemed to be one of those rare talents that he couldn't copy. Not successfully. Something had gone wrong when he'd touched him. He'd learned not to copy things by accident years ago, but his adrenaline during their encounter must have activated his talent by accident. His left eye was now just like Sasuke's, only he couldn't turn the damn thing off. Just having it open too long was exhausting.
That freaked the kid out something awful. It was rather rewarding, too, the way he'd reacted to seeing it. Sasuke seemed to think he'd given it to him, instead of his having copied it. It turned out the mannequin was Sasuke's brother, and he had the same eyes. One of the talents he'd picked up with the sharingan was the ability to transfer his own talents onto non-mutants. He'd used that to give the eyes to Sasuke, who he expected to use the gift to pick up skills just like he had so eventually he could repay him by killing him. To speed that along, he hired people to attack him ever so often. Hence Sasuke's counterattack in the alley. Real nice family he had there.
Kakashi was still pretty sure he'd copied the sharingan. He hadn't picked up any other talents from the kid, and he'd definitely have noticed if he suddenly had the ability to turn normal humans into mutants. That was one scary talent. There would be a global panic if word ever got out that there were at least two mutants running around with that ability.
Sasuke told him there was probably only one. His brother wasn't a nice passive collector like Kakashi was. He preferred to have one-of-a-kind talents in his collection. Selfish mannequin bastard. Of course, that meant if he ever found out Kakashi had copied at least part of the sharingan, he'd have to hunt him down and kill him. The little brat smirked when he imparted that bit of happy news. As payback, he wiped the smirk off the brat's face by pointing out that meant he couldn't let Sasuke go because he was the only one who knew about his left eye. Yeah, it was really fun once he got the kid to talking. Certainly entertaining enough to excuse sticking in one place for nearly two weeks.
Eventually Kakashi got restless, the kid started getting antsy, and the brother started lurking around the neighborhood the way only nutjob mannequin bastards could do. Real creepy like. So Kakashi decided it was time to switch venues and Sasuke, since he didn't really have a choice in the matter, decided to tag along.
Rinse, recycle, repeat. Times two years. Divided by a long distance custody battle. Minus a victory. Plus an online invitation and one intriguing telephone discussion. Equals asylum in a country with no extradition treaties or passport verifications.
Yeah, the kid was a pain. A lot of trouble. And Kakashi had to admit he probably wasn't gaining as much as he was losing by keeping him around. But it was fun, and he'd started to like the little brat. He wasn't promising to stick around, anyway, just to hang out for a while and see what the place was like. If his suspicions were right, there'd be quite a few second generation mutants taking this Iruka guy up on his offer. That meant fresh blood and quite a few talents to copy before he got bored of the place. Sasuke had the same thing in mind, considering his life goal was to pick up enough tricks to defend himself so he'd live long enough to repay his dear sweet nutjob brother for the thoughtful gift he'd given him. Ah, but kids were so cute these days.
His happy thoughts were interrupted by a thin book slapping him upside the head. Kakashi turned a droll stare on his scowling companion.
"You're drooling," Sasuke muttered, purposely looking in the opposite direction. "At least if you're hiding behind that it won't be noticeable."
That, as he quickly noticed, was a piece of his prized porn collection. Kakashi rescued it from the tall grass with an affronted look on his face. He was half tempted to give Sasuke a lecture about mistreating precious classical novels. He probably would have, except he'd managed to win without even trying. Sasuke had snapped and he hadn't even had to pick at him. Just a little wet spot on the corner of the mask he wore over his face and crack, there went Sasuke's broody little mask. Yeah, he was fun to have around.
"You're so thoughtful," Kakashi beamed, his right eye crinkling happily. He promptly opened the book right in front of his head and moaned happily. "Mm, this part is so good...!"
Sasuke picked up the pace until he was walking a few yards ahead, a dark 'I don't know this guy' glare plastered over his face. He made up his mind not to take the book back when they met up with the owner of the house they were heading towards. It would serve the pervert right to be seen as exactly what he was on the first meeting. He didn't care much about first impressions, but he knew Kakashi liked to sweet talk mutants before copying their talents. With that book hiding his face, the owner and his son wouldn't willingly go anywhere near him. Perverted bastard.
An exaggerated moan sounded from behind him. Sasuke twitched and put more distance between them. If Kakashi hadn't copied so many talents, which he swore he'd share eventually, he'd have killed him years ago. It couldn't be that hard. He just had to get him when his face was buried in one of those disgusting books. Unfortunately that meant he'd have to get so close he might accidentally catch sight of the illustrations in the book. He'd done that once and it really wasn't worth it. Perverted gay bastard.
.-.
TBC
Part Two: Kakashi, Sasuke
There was a nice tang in the air, the sort that bloomed in late spring with hints of the chill to come. The breeze was fickle enough to nip at the knee high grass and bend the blades nearly in half before darting off again like it had never been. The wind and the tang, more than the hint of storm clouds over the mountains in the far distance, promised a storm by evening. Or so claimed Hatake Kakashi, nature reader expert.
He sent a sidelong glance at his companion to see how the boy had taken his confident warning. If he weren't so used to being ignored by the dark broody little brat, he might have sighed in boredom.
This was payback, he was sure, for deciding to do the kind thing and letting Sasuke carry their bags. Sasuke wanted to do everything he could to get stronger as quickly as possible, so far be it from him to carry the stuff and prevent his kid the pleasure of exercising those ever so important arm and back muscles. Not to mention the calves and hamstrings. Rolling hills and knee high grass just did wonders on building hamstrings. Sasuke should be thanking him for letting him get such a work out. At least he could put forth the effort required to twitch when Kakashi went out of his way to annoy him. Selfish, ungrateful brat.
But, really, he'd known Sasuke would ignore him. Because ignoring him was the easiest way to annoy him. And no matter how Sasuke tried to convince him he existed purely to epitomize the angsty, broody little teenager, Kakashi knew his kid was a closet sadist who snickered inside his gloomy little head every time he successfully annoyed him with that 'you don't exist in my angsty world' ignoring routine of his. Sure, he'd never actually seen him with any smile besides his patented shitty little Sasuke smirk, let alone caught him indulging in a sadistic giggle of manic pleasure, but he could tell just by looking at him. He could see the inner sadist sniggering from the way Sasuke refused to so much as wrinkle his nose at him. That, and the fact that he hadn't told him to shut up, yet.
Kakashi suppressed a sigh and the urge to get a book to read while they walked. He did like the way Sasuke twitched when he read one of his brightly labeled books in his presence. Unfortunately with Sasuke carrying their bags, he'd have to ask if he wanted to get his book. Asking would be admitting that he'd given up his attempt to con a response out of his companion without having the book to fall back on. That would mean Sasuke had won. That was unacceptable. If he couldn't spend his free time making the boy twitch, he'd have no excuse to keep him around.
Kakashi was anything but a samaritan. If he gained nothing out of helping his fellow man, well, his fellow man wouldn't be getting any help, now would he? It was a matter of principle, really. He was a vagabond and his kind didn't bother with things like picking up stray kids and going out of his way to protect, feed, and teach the little buggers. Especially if they were boring selfish little buggers. As long as he remained amused, it was all good.
He was aware that his outlook on life was a bit...unique. That was such a nice word. Unique. Yes, his outlook was unique. It had to be unique, because his outlook was the only thing unique about him. The moment he'd realized his mutant talent was to copy other mutant talents, he'd realized he needed something unique to make him, well, unique. He could mix and match the talents he'd picked up during his travels to create new ones, but they were never really his. They weren't really new, either. It was no different from having the two mutants standing together and performing their skills at the same time. Sure, he might have met one of them in Florida and the other in Kyoto, but just because the two mutants would probably never meet didn't mean that if they did meet they couldn't do the exact same thing he did when he mixed their talents. So there was nothing new there.
He liked new things, interesting things, unique things. He'd been traveling since he was fourteen and despite his initial lack of funds, he'd managed to get all over the place. It was actually amazing how many mutants there were around the world, if a person had the free time of a lazy vagabond to look for them. His favorites were the mutants with talents he couldn't copy. And the ones who somehow knew what his talent was, the ones who kept their distance and refused to let him near enough to touch them. It was like the way some mutants had learned to block their minds from the telepaths to keep their secrets, without having the telepathy to know the people they were blocking were telepaths. Interesting and rare. Almost as rare as telepaths themselves.
Kakashi couldn't duplicate telepathy. Oh, he'd touched at least two telepaths and tried to copy their talents, with their permission, since they'd known exactly why he sought them out and lazily stalked them for weeks until they'd given in. He was nothing if not persistent. He was lazy when he traveled, definitely, but he didn't mind putting forth a little effort on things that proved to be very rewarding. Like making Sasuke twitch. Very rewarding. With the telepaths he hadn't gotten a reward, which was sort of rewarding in itself. It was rare, after all, to find a talent he couldn't copy. Oddly enough, while he couldn't copy telepaths, he could copy the block other mutants used to ward off telepaths. It was really interesting the way his talent worked and didn't work, depending on the mutant he touched.
With his talent, it all came down to touch. That wasn't too bad since he rather liked touching most of the time. But it could be awkward, too. He'd first discovered his talent by accident, having bumped into a classmate of his. Looking back he was pretty sure the girl had no idea she was a mutant at the time. She'd been, well, ugly, to put it bluntly. He didn't really think she'd have let herself be ugly if she'd known she could change her appearance just by staring at a picture and rubbing her hands over her eyes.
It was funny now, when he thought back to how he'd accidentally made himself out to look like the elderly general in his history text. Right in the middle of class. Shocking his teacher into falling over in her chair. It was really quite amusing in retrospect. Unfortunately it hadn't been nearly as funny at the time. He hadn't realized he'd changed his face and once he was ordered in front of a mirror, he'd been nearly as horrified as his teacher. He'd been terrified that he'd be stuck like that, a teenager with the droopy face and hair of a very old, overweight man. He'd had to replay the day in his mind four times before he'd made the connection with the ugly girl and that bump in the hallway a few minutes before class. After an hour, his face had turned back to normal. But his hair never did. Naturally he'd never tried to use that talent again. No, looking back, it hadn't been the least bit funny.
His parents hadn't thought it was that funny, either. He'd always been something of a lazy prankster. He was sure he'd been born taking sly amusement from the mishaps of the people around him. He could just see himself smirking in a cradle as his sitter stubbed her toe and hopped around cursing words he wasn't supposed to repeat. So his parents had naturally thought the incident in class was some extravagant prank on his part. Then they'd thought his explanation of what really happened was a prank. Then they'd thought he was insane. And since the silver-white in his hair wouldn't wash out, they'd thought it must have been caused by trauma of some sort. So he wasn't just insane. He was possibly dangerous.
It still amazed him how long it had taken for the first generation of mutants to be recognized for what they were. The psych wards must have been filled with kids his age who suddenly spouted outlandish stories and were committed by their horrified parents. He'd never seen any in the ward his parents sent him to, but that was probably because back then mutants had been rare, widespread, and unaware of their own talents. He was sure it had been much worse in the states. Once he started traveling he noticed that there were a lot more mutants in countries made up of mixed races and ethnicity. He'd spent more time in the states than he had in any other country, so he was sure their psych wards had been filled to the brim with hapless kids just like him.
He hadn't really checked when he started traveling and searching for other mutants to copy. His own time in the ward made him shy away from checking them for other mutants in the same situation he'd been in. He wasn't a samaritan, after all, so there was no point finding them and feeling sorry for their situations. They were probably there, but as long as he didn't go near the buildings, he wouldn't have to admit he knew they were there. He'd broken out and taken care of himself, so it wasn't like they couldn't do the same. He hadn't spent more than a month in the ward before he realized he had nothing to gain from the place, or his parents, or school and a stationary life, either. He'd decided on a profitable existence of doing things only when they benefitted him in some way. And so he'd left to find mutants he could use to add to his collection of copied talents.
He really was quite the collector. Sasuke, who occasionally did offer his views on things, assuming his cold statement would annoy Kakashi, claimed a collector was an obsessed person, the opposite of the lazy drifter Kakashi proclaimed himself to be. Yeah, that had annoyed him. Just a little. But he didn't see his collecting talents as an obsession. It was just a way to pass time, profitable, interesting, and not boring. He'd spent a month in a padded cell. The last thing he wanted was boring. So he collected and traveled and every day was spent doing something new. Or, if not new, at least entertaining and profitable.
Sasuke seemed to be an exception to his self-proclaimed mission in life. He'd had to stop and take a long hard look at what he was doing with the boy before he was able to reconcile it with his motto of profit-only.
They'd met by accident, so that couldn't be helped. He'd been passing through Tokyo on one of his yearly trips to Japan. He didn't like his homeland all that much, so he only stopped by for a week out of each year. He'd snatched a talent from a mugger two blocks from a seedy little bar and he'd stopped to play with it near an open alley. It turned out to be a really weird and useless talent. He could make things glow by touching them. Just little things, like the knife he'd stolen from the mugger. He'd thought the man had a glowing knife because his talent was to make metal burning hot, or something useful like that. But, no, just a bright glowing knife that had to make mugging a lot harder since the weapon would stand out even in the daytime. Whatever genetic fairy had gone around granting humans with mutant talents, she had to have been on some sort of drugs when she'd handed out that one. Who needed a little glowing object when flashlights sold for pocket change?
Disappointed by the cute but not all that interesting talent, he'd tossed the knife into the alley. Now that he thought about it, that careless action on his part might have made him a little to blame for meeting Sasuke. He hadn't known anyone was hiding there, but still, just randomly tossing sharp pointy weapons into shadows was asking for trouble. He'd gotten trouble, too, quite a bit of it. There was a hiss of breath and movement, and his first thought was that he'd impaled a cat. He had good senses, after all, even then. He'd been living on the streets since he was too small to properly defend himself, so he'd picked up quite a few things along the way of surviving to adulthood. Like his sense of smell. Any perfume, cologne, soap, body odor, anything that cried human, he could pick up from a good distance. Sasuke must have been hiding there for hours because none of his 'nearby human' radars went off when he winced and stepped over to see what he'd hit.
He was less than a foot away when Sasuke so kindly returned the knife to him. The brat really was a vicious little thing. At first he was stunned, vaguely appreciative of the speed of his attacker and how small and quiet he was. Then came the blindness and pain on the left side of his face, and the warm blood in his mouth. There were few things he hated more than the taste of blood, especially his own. His instincts kicked in then, immediately noting two things. That the kid planned to kill him. And that as fast and vicious as the brat was, he might actually succeed if he worried about hurting him. He grabbed the arm with the knife and broke it.
That talent was one he'd picked up from a good looking guy in Osaka during his last trip to Japan, and it was a great talent for crushing things with his bare hand. If Sasuke hadn't been so fast, he would have broken the knife instead of his arm, but he hadn't survived so long by ignoring his instincts. So he disarmed him. And damned if the brat hadn't tried to poke out his right eye with his free hand. Vicious. Seriously. If he could have done that crushing talent with both hands, he'd have broken Sasuke's other arm just for the hell of it. Instead he'd had to suffice with catching it and holding him as far away from him as possible. He'd half expected to be kicked in the crotch next. Instead, he'd found himself staring down into two wide red eyes with black curls spinning around the pupils.
He'd never figured out exactly what happened after that. He woke up in jail with a bandage covering the left side of his face and attempted murder as the charge. The guard, a big stupid looking man, who didn't care that he'd lost an eye and was in serious pain, and who didn't believe that he was the one who'd been attacked, told him they'd picked him up at the 'scene of the crime' and that he was 'one sick bastard' for attacking a helpless kid. The guard also told him he'd be charged with homicide if the kid died at the hospital. So he guessed they'd both been found in the alley. And since he was the older one, they automatically assumed he was the bad guy. Just great. They'd believe the kid, too, because he'd been really small and everyone knew little kids didn't try to kill people. Right. And if they identified him, they'd link this charge with his having been dubbed insane, toss him into prison, and he'd have to break out all over again. At that moment he'd been pretty sure his day couldn't get any worse.
He was corrected a few hours later when the guard came back with a disgusted face to tell him someone had posted bail and that the charges had been dropped. Good news? Not likely. Not with his bad luck.
He'd barely stepped out of the building and there was the kid, looking like he'd crawled out of a train wreck and left a few pounds of skin behind. His first thought was that he'd bailed him out to finish the job. At least his eyes weren't spinning, and they were black now, instead of red. It was funny that he noticed the kid before he noticed the guy he was standing by. An older double, tall, kinda sickly looking with a grayish pallor and lines under his eyes, like he was sixty instead of in his early twenties. He probably noticed the kid first because his older double looked like he was dead, or one of those mannequins in a clothing store. No emotion, no color, no movement. He talked like he was dead, too. All soft and blank, maybe a little clipped around the edges.
Kakashi hadn't been in the best state to really get what he was looking at. His face was throbbing, he could swear the kid was bleeding all over the place because he could smell the blood from five feet away - he'd never finished walking down the steps outside the station - and that guy was talking like he'd just asked him the time. It took him a minute after he finished talking for him to realize he'd just gotten an apology. And a promise of reparations. Like the kid accidentally hit a baseball through his window. Unreal. Unique. And he was too out of it to care. He thought he might have made a comment about the guy being a nutjob, but he really wasn't sure. He'd started to wonder if he was back in a padded room having a really bizarre daydream.
Then the kid took off and he ran really fast for a bloody little thing with a broken arm. That helped snap Kakashi back to the real world, but not before he wondered curiously if the mannequin would follow a trail of blood drops to find him and bring him back so he could apologize to him for breaking his window. Yeah, he'd been a little out of it, but he came back in time to hear the guy invite him to join him for a cup of tea. At least, he thought the guy had really said that. Looking back, that might have been part of the lala land padded cell fantasy. He really wasn't sure. He remembered declining the invitation, though. And the guy had nodded to him and walked off.
All things considered, Kakashi didn't think it was his fault he ended up following Sasuke. He'd just walked in the opposite direction from the one the nutjob had taken. It was only natural to walk away from scary and bizarre things. It wasn't his fault that happened to be the same direction the kid had taken. Picking him up when he found him and taking him back to the hotel with him? Yeah, that was his fault. But he blamed his curiosity for that. It had been a pretty bizarre day and he didn't think he wanted to go to the mannequin for answers. He didn't think he wanted to go anywhere near any mannequins for the rest of his life.
So, yeah, he'd had a good reason to take him home and patch him up. He couldn't very well get answers if he bled to death, right? Right. Then the ungrateful brat had refused to talk to him, so it was only fitting that he keep him prisoner in the hotel for a week, right? Right. Probably. It wasn't like Sasuke had actually tried to leave once he realized Kakashi wouldn't be throwing any more knives in his direction. He just glared, and Kakashi glared back from his place in front of the door, and then he went back to his corner to skulk and play another day of ignore the old guy. He was really good at that game. A little too good.
By the time the kid started talking to him, Kakashi was sort of used to having that sullen glare follow him around. It was like having a cat. A cat that didn't like him but planned to keep him around for food. Emergency rations. He had to sleep sometime.
Okay, so he'd gotten a little paranoid, but it sort of fun wondering when the kid would snap and go for his throat. It was entertaining. In a 'pet me and I'll bite your hand off' sort of way. A fun, psychotic cat. And as soon as he figured out how to rub his fur the wrong way, he'd be a really fun cat. He owed him some grief, after all, for his eye.
As things turned out, he hadn't lost it like he'd thought when he woke up in the jail cell. The cut had been deep, and he'd always have a scar from his eyebrow to his chin, but the eyeball itself still worked. It worked way too well, as a matter of fact. Once he understood what Sasuke's talent was, he knew why they'd both been knocked out when he touched him and looked into his red eyes. Their talents were very similar. Where he copied talents by touching people, Sasuke could copy just about anything, talent or simple body motions, by watching and activating his red eyes. Sharingan, he called them. A nice enough name. Unfortunately for Kakashi, that seemed to be one of those rare talents that he couldn't copy. Not successfully. Something had gone wrong when he'd touched him. He'd learned not to copy things by accident years ago, but his adrenaline during their encounter must have activated his talent by accident. His left eye was now just like Sasuke's, only he couldn't turn the damn thing off. Just having it open too long was exhausting.
That freaked the kid out something awful. It was rather rewarding, too, the way he'd reacted to seeing it. Sasuke seemed to think he'd given it to him, instead of his having copied it. It turned out the mannequin was Sasuke's brother, and he had the same eyes. One of the talents he'd picked up with the sharingan was the ability to transfer his own talents onto non-mutants. He'd used that to give the eyes to Sasuke, who he expected to use the gift to pick up skills just like he had so eventually he could repay him by killing him. To speed that along, he hired people to attack him ever so often. Hence Sasuke's counterattack in the alley. Real nice family he had there.
Kakashi was still pretty sure he'd copied the sharingan. He hadn't picked up any other talents from the kid, and he'd definitely have noticed if he suddenly had the ability to turn normal humans into mutants. That was one scary talent. There would be a global panic if word ever got out that there were at least two mutants running around with that ability.
Sasuke told him there was probably only one. His brother wasn't a nice passive collector like Kakashi was. He preferred to have one-of-a-kind talents in his collection. Selfish mannequin bastard. Of course, that meant if he ever found out Kakashi had copied at least part of the sharingan, he'd have to hunt him down and kill him. The little brat smirked when he imparted that bit of happy news. As payback, he wiped the smirk off the brat's face by pointing out that meant he couldn't let Sasuke go because he was the only one who knew about his left eye. Yeah, it was really fun once he got the kid to talking. Certainly entertaining enough to excuse sticking in one place for nearly two weeks.
Eventually Kakashi got restless, the kid started getting antsy, and the brother started lurking around the neighborhood the way only nutjob mannequin bastards could do. Real creepy like. So Kakashi decided it was time to switch venues and Sasuke, since he didn't really have a choice in the matter, decided to tag along.
Rinse, recycle, repeat. Times two years. Divided by a long distance custody battle. Minus a victory. Plus an online invitation and one intriguing telephone discussion. Equals asylum in a country with no extradition treaties or passport verifications.
Yeah, the kid was a pain. A lot of trouble. And Kakashi had to admit he probably wasn't gaining as much as he was losing by keeping him around. But it was fun, and he'd started to like the little brat. He wasn't promising to stick around, anyway, just to hang out for a while and see what the place was like. If his suspicions were right, there'd be quite a few second generation mutants taking this Iruka guy up on his offer. That meant fresh blood and quite a few talents to copy before he got bored of the place. Sasuke had the same thing in mind, considering his life goal was to pick up enough tricks to defend himself so he'd live long enough to repay his dear sweet nutjob brother for the thoughtful gift he'd given him. Ah, but kids were so cute these days.
His happy thoughts were interrupted by a thin book slapping him upside the head. Kakashi turned a droll stare on his scowling companion.
"You're drooling," Sasuke muttered, purposely looking in the opposite direction. "At least if you're hiding behind that it won't be noticeable."
That, as he quickly noticed, was a piece of his prized porn collection. Kakashi rescued it from the tall grass with an affronted look on his face. He was half tempted to give Sasuke a lecture about mistreating precious classical novels. He probably would have, except he'd managed to win without even trying. Sasuke had snapped and he hadn't even had to pick at him. Just a little wet spot on the corner of the mask he wore over his face and crack, there went Sasuke's broody little mask. Yeah, he was fun to have around.
"You're so thoughtful," Kakashi beamed, his right eye crinkling happily. He promptly opened the book right in front of his head and moaned happily. "Mm, this part is so good...!"
Sasuke picked up the pace until he was walking a few yards ahead, a dark 'I don't know this guy' glare plastered over his face. He made up his mind not to take the book back when they met up with the owner of the house they were heading towards. It would serve the pervert right to be seen as exactly what he was on the first meeting. He didn't care much about first impressions, but he knew Kakashi liked to sweet talk mutants before copying their talents. With that book hiding his face, the owner and his son wouldn't willingly go anywhere near him. Perverted bastard.
An exaggerated moan sounded from behind him. Sasuke twitched and put more distance between them. If Kakashi hadn't copied so many talents, which he swore he'd share eventually, he'd have killed him years ago. It couldn't be that hard. He just had to get him when his face was buried in one of those disgusting books. Unfortunately that meant he'd have to get so close he might accidentally catch sight of the illustrations in the book. He'd done that once and it really wasn't worth it. Perverted gay bastard.
.-.
TBC