Chapter 7: to strike a deal

The school grounds of the academy were always busy in the beginning and the end of the school day and even more so, if it was the first day of the schoolyear. Numerous new kids who needed to see the results of the entrance exam were gathered in the normally huge, but now almost small in comparison, field. With the children were even more parents in the crowd, making it even more impossible to find one person.

"I give it five minutes." I heard dad mutter under his breath.

"I give it one minute." I nodded.

"What's the catch?"

"Eh… the loser has to cook tonight's dinner?" I acted on old instincts, deciding on something that could benefit me more than it sounded if I won. Some could say that Carol was a bad influence on me, teaching me something like that.

"Deal." Sakumo grinned, not noticing what I did, before aiming his attention to the crowd.

The monotonous colors wave of gray was alternated with some dark green in between, the ninja outfits of the parents consisted mostly of the same attire with a green chuunin or jounin vest so here and there after all. So here and there, the crowd of gray was interrupted with a splotch of color because of either civilian parents or the more daring ninja's, but that wasn't the splotch of colors where we were looking for.

But I was sure that if we couldn't find him, he could surely find us.

In 5, 4, 3, 2-

"Let's make it another youthful year, my eternal rival!"

"I win." I grinned to my father before greeting the steadily approaching splotch of neon green, bright orange and vibrant red. "Yo Guy, how was your vacation?"

"Great!" The boy smiled with a brightness that could rival the sun's. "My father and I had the most youthful training sessions in the break, how about you, Kakashi?"

"Me?" I asked, feeling my grin slip up a little bit at the memories of my break. "It… could have been better."

If I didn't have to kill a giant centipede, that is. The hellish creature still made me experience a nightmare so now and then.

Or hearing that I could have been a chuunin if it wasn't for my father. Really, why did the Hokage even want me to be a chuunin so young?

Or losing my hope in finding common sense in this world…

Especially the last one.

"I did meet an interesting person though. Oreo was… pretty interesting to talk to." I added in the hope of feeling a little better. It didn't really work because our encounter was in the very forest where I had to kill a giant centipede, where a certain exam was held and where I lost my hope in finding common sense in this world.

"Who is Oreo?" Sakumo frowned.

"You know him, dad. He has really pale skin that reminds me of vampires, long locks of silky black hair and yellow eyes with the gaze of a snake on the hunt. I also thought that he was using make up." I tried to explain, but seeing how dad didn't seem to recognize my desperate attempts to describe the pale man, I offered a whole different kind of description. "I dubbed him Snake Lady because I didn't know that he was a man in the beginning."

The fact that I still called him Snake Lady in my mind so now and then didn't need to be mentioned out loud. His name was too long to remember, but it had the word 'snake' in it and I still think that he looked like a woman… or at least, the last time I saw him he looked like a woman. Snake Lady got stuck in my head as one of his official nicknames now, just like Oreo did.

In my defense, Oreo's did have around the same coloring as the pale man.

"Oh Orochimaru!" Dad realized a bit too quickly, making me suspect that he used to call Oreo a Snake Lady too. I wouldn't be surprised if dad did and I wouldn't have blamed him if he still did. Oreo needed a haircut to avoid looking like a woman, but instead of cutting it he probably used a lot of hair products to keep his hair shiny and silky.

I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that his hair was nicer than the hair of the women who I used to see on L'Oréal ads or the ads of other hair products in my former life.

"You shouldn't call him Oreo, you know? He is older than you and technically seen he has a higher rank than you or me." Sakumo reprimanded, pulling me back to reality. "At least call him uncle Oreo or Oreo-san… or uncle Snake Lady. That way he will know that you are talking about him."

…

As a tradition that I didn't really understand, the academy had the results of the exams displayed on a pretty list in the hall. From the moment I saw the lists hanging on the walls I knew that I would probably never be able to understand why the ninja's loved to make lists or to showcase them in public. Sure, it could be motivating to see that you got good scores, but if you had bad scores the list would act demotivating.

As if to prove my own point, my gaze wandered to the last name of the list. The person with the lowest scores of our year.

"God, I didn't know that this kind of score was possible." I muttered under my breath. The low number, not even a double digit number, did nothing but display the abyssal score that one 'Uchiha Obito' got and I couldn't hold back the shudder of horror. How the hell was this score even possible?

I ignored the small jolt of recognition at the name of the owner of the dead last of the year, or actually dismissed it as my imagination because I knew that remembering names was close to impossible for me. Maybe it was another one of Carol's favorite characters from this fishcake series? Or maybe I had heard the name recently? I couldn't really remember.

The combination of a headache and exasperation made me pinch the bridge of my nose in frustration. The headache mostly originated from trying to remember where I heard that name before, but the other cause of the headache was bothering me more. Displaying all the scores, the bad ones included, was bound to backfire someday. If not with bad cases of bullying, then with the demotivation of the worse students. Were ninja's really that stupid that they couldn't even understand something like that?

Someday, I swear, I'm going to reform all the ninja's and knock some common sense in them.

"Congratulations on getting first place, Kakashi!" Guy shouted loudly, forgetting that I was standing right next to him and that I wasn't hearing impaired enough to need this volume. Knowing Guy, he probably didn't realize that he was actually shouting and possibly creating a need for hearing aids for everyone around him. I still hope that he would be able to tame his enthusiasm, and voice, one day though.

"Thanks." I winced. My hand moved away from the bridge of my nose and rubbed one of my ears innocently in an attempt to get rid of the high pitched sound in my ears. The shouted words echoed through the hall and I was pretty sure that everyone within a radius of a small hundred meters could hear the promise of a challenge in his voice. Luckily for us, most people here were already used to our frequent challenges and matches, so the shout was ignored by those who heard Guy.

"Next time, I'll-" Guy began with a glint in his eyes that clearly stated that a challenge for another match was going to follow.

"You're actually smart?!" A rather familiar voice exclaimed behind us, interrupting Guy's proposal for another challenge. When I turned around, I could see Goggles pointing accusingly at Guy with an expression that showcased his pure shock and disbelieve.

"I am?" Guy confirmed in confusion, though it sounded more like a question than an answer.

"You are." I hummed, pointing at his name on the list. "You're number four according to this list, not bad Guy."

"But how? You failed your first entrance exams!" Goggles asked. Loudly. Like Guys words not too long ago, his question echoed through the hallway and raised some murmurs from those who heard him. Although the crowd was clearly used to Guy's loudness and my occasional exclamations of frustrations, they apparently weren't used to the addition of the third voice.

"How am I supposed to know stuff when the academy didn't teach me anything before those exams?" Guy shrugged, clearly not feeling comfortable with the incredulous looks that were aimed at him.

It did make sense why people looked at him in something akin to wonder since Guy didn't look like a studious person and still got the fourth best score of the year. Add the fact that Guy had failed his first attempt to enter the academy and the incredulous looks were perfectly understandable.

"That kind of makes sense." I nodded in agreement, deciding to help my friend out of this awkward situation by acting casual. "How can we know something we're not taught to begin with?"

"Like you can talk." I heard Goggles mutter underneath the high pitched noise in my ears. "You knew everything immediately, even without being taught anything."

"That's wrong." I huffed. "I have been taught everything too, once upon a time."

I clearly remembered having trouble with the questions about history and geography in the first exams that I made here, even though it wasn't exactly the official entrance exams. Somehow I still passed, but only because of my knowledge of my former life. The lack thereof didn't apply to my memories of Carol teaching me and me teaching Carol in our high school years. Those faint memories of the good old days could still bring a smile on my face whenever I remembered it, even though it made me wonder why I still couldn't remember my name.

My old name.

My name before I became Hatake Kakashi.

Nah, it doesn't really matter right now, I decided as I waved goodbye to Guy and walked to my classroom. After all, I was Hatake Kakashi now and that alone was troublesome enough. I kind of wished that I knew what the backstory of the original Kakashi was though, maybe I would feel a bit better knowing that Kakashi had to go through the same madness as me.

That is, of course, if the original Kakashi had common sense as well. Otherwise I would prefer staying ignorant of his life. I liked my common sense and it wouldn't be funny if my alternative self didn't have this common sense.

…

It was during my next class when I noticed that someone was observing me, but I dismissed the feeling because I was used to being watched in my class. My seat was nearly in the back of the classroom, so I could see the children giving me swift glances whenever they thought that I was paying attention to our teacher. In the beginning it was nerve wrecking because I wasn't used to attracting attention, but then I remembered that I was the only girl in the classroom with a mask. No wonder that the other girls would give me criticizing glances when they judged my fashion sense.

How troublesome, as our teacher would say, but in the end I got used to ignoring the girls during classes.

"Kakashi, I get think that we're being watched." Guy mentioned casually during our lunchbreak.

"I know." I nodded equally casually.

"Then why are you acting as if nothing is wrong?" Guy asked, looking up from his youthfully healthy lunch but not stopping with stuffing the rice in his mouth as he waited for an answer.

"I'm not." I shrugged. "But I'm simply used to getting stares in the class, so this addition doesn't bother me much more."

…

I was so wrong about that, but I only decided it when it was too late and when 'the addition' was caught in one of the many traps in the Hatake mansion.

"What are you looking at? Get me out of here, bastard!"

"Good to see you too, Goggles." I said slowly, not sure whether I should laugh at his situation or groan at the fact that he followed me all the way to my home. I did notice that someone was following me on my way home, the unnaturally rustling movements from the bushes and trees were only a small hint of a stalker, but I chose to ignore it because I didn't care about someone finding out where I lived.

Now, I regretted allowing the normally loud, but currently loud and tied up boy following me… even if it was funny to see him hanging upside-down on the ceiling. It was surprising how inventive the traps in the Hatake compound were, none of them had the same way of trapping people and they were all equally effective. Goggles was lucky to be caught by one of the harmless ones. The one which left his entire body tied up in sturdy ropes and which hanged the victim to the ceiling by their feet. Compared to many of the other traps, this trap was harmless.

"What do you want from me?" I sighed, deciding that it was too troublesome to bother with choosing between cackling in glee or groaning in frustration. Goggles was the person who kept on bothering Guy and me with his simple pranks whenever he could, but he was a ninja in training above that. Or supposed to be one. He shouldn't have been caught in one of the more obvious traps.

But then again, falling for this trap saved his life because the truly dangerous one was going to be activated if someone dodged this trap in the wrong way. I was sure that Goggles and his family wouldn't appreciate if he was impaled by bamboo spears.

No one would.

The person who installed that trap was either a paranoid bastard or a sadistic idiot, or maybe it was a ninja thing to install deadly traps in your own home.

"I want you to get me down!" Goggles complained.

"Not until you tell me why you followed me."

"Nu-uh, let me down first."

"I see." I nodded casually. The decision was made for me, but I couldn't find myself to care. On the contrary even, I was perfectly fine with choosing to ignore the kid. "Then you can keep on hanging there until my father returns from his mission."

"No wait a second!" Goggles shouted and I halted for a second.

"Your second has just passed." I deadpanned before continuing on my path.

"Just listen to me, bastard! I just- wantedtoaskyouifyoucouldtutorme."

"What did you say?" I frowned. If I heard it right- actually, I didn't want that I heard it right. Teaching Carol was one thing, but tutoring Goggles? No thank you.

"I know that I'm not the smartest guy around." Goggles groaned, clearly looking at everywhere but me. It sounded like he was in pain when he continued talking again. "So I wanted to ask you if you could tutor me… please."

"What?"

"I'm not going to say that again, bastard!"

"That was more a disbelieving kind of what than a what-did-you-say kind of what." I clarified. "But why would you ask me out of all the people you could ask?"

"You sounded like you knew things, or is that number one spot on the list fake?" Goggles taunted.

"Oh, I don't know. The Hokage does love placing me on wrong lists." I muttered sarcastically. Though the lists always ended up being the right lists, even if I wasn't happy about it. I was seriously concerned about the safety of Konoha, knowing that the Hokage's common sense told him that a six years old girl could be a proper chuunin.

"Are you going to tutor me or not?"

"The question is: why would I?" I sighed. "Tell me one reason why I should tutor you."

"I- uh… I will cut down the amount of pranks on you and Guy to half?"

"Half?" I snorted. If he really needed my services, they weren't going to be cheap. "Stop it completely."

"Hell no!"

"Why not?"

"Listen to me bastard! Are you going to do it or not?"

I turned my back to the goggles wearing boy and started walking away. "Goodbye-"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop bothering you and that freakish friend of yours!" Goggles caved in.

"Deal." I grinned, not bothering with looking back. "Come back tomorrow, we'll see what you do and don't know then."

"Aren't you going to let me down?" Goggles asked.

"Nope." I cackled as I walked away from the boy who was still tied up and hanging upside-down. "You are the one who got caught, what happens next is not my responsibility but your own."

…

His head hit the table and he refused to look up again. If it wasn't for the occasional growl of frustration that escaped his throat, I would have thought that he passed out immediately after making the worksheets that I gave him.

"It can't be that bad." I sighed before gathering the worksheets which were used for his evaluation.

"It is." Goggles lifted his head to complain before hitting his head on the table of the guest room again.

As my room was still under renovations because of my excessive experimentation with ninjutsu techniques, we couldn't study in my room. Instead, we went for the best alternative with the least distractions.

Guest room three was the most impersonal room that ever existed, with bare blue-grey walls, a single bed, a table and some comfortable cushions. Before I started his evaluation, Goggles commented on how my room was as boring as the lessons we got in the academy. I only shrugged in response.

If he was going to think that this was my room, then I wouldn't correct him until he asks me.

Unfortunately, when I finished skimming through his answers, or lack thereof, I realized that this kind of approach wouldn't work for his studies. Not at all.

"Jesus Christ, how do you normally study for your exams?" I almost growled when I reread the given answers on his worksheet. I even made sure that the questions were the easiest ones that possibly exist, but somehow the goggled boy didn't even get a single answer right!

"I fill the bath, sit in it and try to drown in my sorrow." Goggles groaned, not lifting his head from the table this time.

"You're kidding, right?" I asked hesitantly, half-expecting it to be a joke or prank which was not unlike his normal behavior. But as I didn't get the answer from the suffering boy I could only speculate and look at the familiar ceiling of the guest room and pray that I wasn't going to be responsible for his low scores now I was his tutor.

"Do you at least know the politics between the clans in Konoha?" I asked, trying to make the best out of this hopeless situation.

"They are boring?" Was the only answer that he gave and I gave up. I tried to make the best out of this situation, but if he couldn't even get a single answer right on this evaluation then my help alone wouldn't be able to help him.

"We need backup." I decided as I packed some textbooks and the worksheets.

"Can we ask Rin?" Goggles asked, suddenly awake and excited again.

"Who is Rin?"

"You don't know Rin?" Goggles gasped, horrified at the idea of not knowing who this Rin was. "She's in our class."

"Really?" I wondered out loud, trying to remember someone with that name. I should have known that I wouldn't have been able to connect a face to that name anyway.

"She is the second best of our year. if it wasn't for you, she would have been on the first place-"

"Listen, if you want to study with number two, then you should have asked her. Instead, you asked for me." I frowned. Why couldn't he just have asked number two instead of me?

"You need backup, right? Who could be better backup than Rin?"

"I don't actually know her." I pointed out. "Or at least, not personally. We're going for someone who I do know and deem reliable enough to help you."

…

I absentmindedly pushed some of the leaves out of my sight with the back of my hand, wondering why we were sitting in a tree and observing two children of our age through a window. One black haired girl with red eyes and one tanned black haired boy who were apparently helping each other with their homework.

I remembered how my reliable backup took one glance at the worksheets before he took our hands and pulled us out of his house without missing a beat. It kind of snowballed from that moment on, from being guided through one of the less crowded streets of Konoha to being pushed into a tree to see this duo doing their assignments without any care in a world. If Guy was doing what I suspected that he was doing, then Goggles' situation was even worse than I feared that it was.

"Who are they, Guy?" I asked my supposedly reliable backup.

"Our backup." Guy grinned.

"I thought that he was our backup?" Goggles frowned as he pointed at Guy.

"These are number three and number five of our year." Guy gestured to the two unsuspecting children, either not hearing the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. "Yuuhi Kurenai and Sarutobi Asuma. The backup's backup."

"Even the backup needs backup." I sighed in English. "How useless is this situation?"

"Did you say something, my eternal rival?"

"Nothing important." I smiled wryly. "Just wondering how we're going to ask them to help us out."

"Yosh, we make a dynamic entry of course." Guy nodded excitedly. He somehow managed to stand on his tree branch and strike a pose without falling out of the tree or catching the attention of the targets.

"That sounds great." Goggles agreed for once. "We just need some paint and some tags. Do you think that a smoke bomb would do the job or-"

At this point, I had already given up on these boys. It was clear that they weren't going to use their common sense. That is, if they possessed common sense. Guy may be my friend, but it was painfully visible that his common sense was somehow tainted. Goggles wasn't much better from whatever I saw.

Neither of the boys noticed it when I decided to jump off my branch and landed safely on the ground without injuries. They were both still discussing their entry when I reached the door and knocked on it, waiting patiently until a woman with the same eye color as the girl opened the door.

"Can I help you, dear?"

Even with the names still fresh in my mind, I couldn't remember the names properly, but I still managed to ask the friendly woman for the duo upstairs. "I was wondering if your daughter and her friend would like to study with us?"

Even at this point, the boys still hadn't noticed what I was doing.

…

"Nice to finally meet you in person, Kakashi. Guy… eh… brags a lot about your matches with him?" The male part of the duo smiled. I was invited into the room where they were doing their homework to ask them if they wanted to join us myself. But even if Guy and Goggles should have been able to see me through the window, they hadn't noticed that I was inside.

"Nice to meet you too." What was his name again? A-something. It began with A… A-Asu… Assume? No, not that wasn't right… but I was sure that his name ended with -kuma. But calling your son Akuma, which translated into demon, didn't make sense.

In that case a nickname would do, as always.

Either Akuma, which translated into demon, or Kuma, which translated into bear… In the end, I went for the lesser evil of the two. "Do you mind if I just called you Kuma?"

"B-bear?" Kuma spluttered.

"Glad that we could agree on that, I'm bad with names." I agreed with a satisfied smile, blissfully ignoring the incomprehensible stutters that followed.

"I think I like you." The female part of the duo decided when she was done with laughing at the new nickname of her friend. "And I think that we'll get along just fine."

"Thanks, Crimson."

"I get a nickname too?"

"Do you mind?" I asked sheepishly.

"Not really, but why Crimson?"

"Oh, because of your eyes." I explained. "Calling them red wouldn't properly describe their vibrant color, so Crimson it is."

"Crimson it is." The girl giggled. "I can see why you're so popular."

"Me, popular?" I snorted. "Please, I'm not popular at all. Why would someone like me be popular?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe because you're smart, do not act like the average snot nosed boys?" Crimson shrugged. "And those are only the lesser reasons why all the girls in our year-"

"Kurenai, I think that this is enough." Kuma smiled nervously. "You said that you're inviting us to study with you?"

"And a few others." I nodded, walking to the window of the room before the sentence was finished. "Do you mind if I opened your window?"

"No, why?" Crimson asked, but she didn't need a vocal answer as the dynamic entry of two boys shocked her and her friend to silence.

"This is why."

…

Omake: Sadako's influence

A bet was a bet and if Sakumo lost a bet with his daughter, he was going to fulfill his daughter's wishes. Or at least, that was what he thought before he opened the fridge to see what food he had to cook with. At the very moment that he opened the door, he knew that his teammates were a bad influence on his daughter.

Toshio for teaching Kakashi how to seduce. The man may deny what he wanted, but Sakumo knew that it was him. It must have been him. Who else could it have been than Toshio?

And Sadako for teaching Kakashi how to manipulate people.

The fridge turned out to be empty, meaning that Sakumo needed to do some grocery shopping before he could actually cook dinner. Grocery shopping was a task that belonged to Kakashi, so by getting Sakumo to cook she also got him to do her share of work as well.

But a bet was a bet and Sakumo was going to play fair.

As the eldest Hatake looked around in the markets, he wondered when Sadako had the time to corrupt his daughter into tricking him so casually. He remembered that his daughter made the deal casually, so casually that the thought of being tricked didn't even pass his mind.

Sakumo wasn't sure if he should be proud of his daughter or genuinely worried for her future. He didn't want Kakashi to turn out like Sadako, the most manipulative woman that Sakumo knew. Because, sure, it was useful to know how to manipulate and trick people, but to think that Kakashi could turn out to become like Sadako?

Words failed to describe what Sakumo thought about that.

He was still holding his inner conflict when he returned home with the groceries and he would have continued pondering about it if it wasn't for the swaying figure above him. The shuriken flew out on instinct and all but one hit their target: the thick ropes. The person who was hanging on the ceiling because of said target fell on the wooden floor with a loud thud, unharmed except for the bruises because he fell down.

"Who are you and what are you doing in the Hatake compound?" Sakumo asked threateningly, though the overall effect wasn't all too threatening with the paper bag filled with vegetables in his arms.

"I'm Obito Uchiha, sir." The unknown boy answered quickly. "And I was- Wait a second, your son tricked me!"

The Hatake blinked only once before he got the gist of what must have happened. This boy obviously didn't like his daughter and, from what Sakumo understood, Kakashi didn't like this Uchiha. So she tricked him into doing something, or not doing something, which worked in her favor, like how she tricked her father…

It was then when Sakumo decided that he was proud of his daughter for being able to trick people after all.

Hey guys, doubleyy here.

I have no excuses for the slow updates of this fic, except for the fact that I had written this chapter out… on paper. Then I forgot to type it out and- I could make more excuses, but I'll keep it at this. Seriously, I should be studying for my exams (like everyone else who has exams, but who decided to read this fic instead of studying), but I had to finish this chapter first. In the draft there was another part attached to this chapter, in which there is more interaction between Kashi, Kurenai and Asuma, but I decided to cut that part out. It will probably be a part for the next chapter instead. At least, Kurenai and Asuma in were finally introduced in this chapter and Orochimaru got a mention (because he's worth it), so I think that I can be satisfied.

Thank you mysterious guest number 1, I personally think that the relationship between Sakumo and Ka(ka)shi needs more love.

We'll see what happens with Orochimaru, mujoona. I won't be spoiling anything yet though.

If I'm right, xxOchibixx, Sakumo committed suicide in canon when Kakashi was nine or eight years old…

I agree that a bored Hatake is a scary Hatake, mysterious guest number 2. (Just as background information, after finishing last chapter the history of my computer was filled with sites about centipedes, so I had to delete it :P)

Thank you too, mysterious guest number 3. I think that it would be hilarious too, but what happens is for me to know and for you to find out ;P.

I agree with all that, hachinonana, Kashi does need more friends and a Orochimaru who isn't exactly good or bad is… eh… anyway, I like it.

You got the general idea of Kakashi's naming sense, SparkShuffle :). Also, I think that PedoSnake is only usable for the people who know that Orochimaru went after Sasuke and since Kashi doesn't know a thing about the plot… (I liked Oreo better than that nickname anyway)

It would be hilarious if it did make it in the records, KiraKiraBluemoon.

Rin could also be a shippable character in a way, Ebony sword, but I'm not sure about it. We'll see what happens in the future. What happened after Sakumo read the seduction results- eh… well, I'll leave it to your imagination for now.

I'm glad that you liked it, Kohlii. Your reason for reading this fic was a huge part of the reason why I wrote it ;).

Hahaha for someone who doesn't know anything of the plot, it's natural to question the world all the time, ForgettableWriter192. I'm glad that you liked that aspect of Kashi.

Now this is updated, I can return to my studies again. Thanks for all the support through the other reviews, favs and follows as well! Sometimes I wonder how you guys managed to find this fic, but I'm glad that you did! For the ones who have to suffer their exams: good luck with studying. And for all the others: have an extra nice and carefree day and (plus advice to not write fanfics when you're supposed to be studying). Anyways thanks for reading and please review.

Doubleyy out.