Those Little Moments (Hatake Kakashi)

2

I started to wake up to the voice of Minato.

"It looks like Emi was here all night." He commented. "Ne, Kakashi, what do you think about Emi?"

"What do you mean?"

My ears were straining to listen eagerly. If he said anything pretentious, I would kill him.

"I mean what I asked. What do you think of Emi?"

Kakashi waited before answering. "She gets angry a lot at me for no reason, and doesn't like sharing attention." I gritted my teeth, holding my breath to not attack him. "But, she's a lot less annoying than the others. And she's a skilled shinobi who works hard. So, I guess I'd say I respect her, even though she has jealousy issues." My eyes opened wide and I could feel my cheeks warm up a bit in embarrassment. This guy... He just insulted and complimented me at the same time! How am I supposed to stay mad at him now? Actually, I can easily stay mad at him, that was uncalled for, he could've left out the insults. I guess I can't really hate him though, as annoying as he is.

"Ne, Emi-chan, wake up. We're training." Minato said, shaking my shoulder a bit. I could hear him chuckle under his breath and knew he knew I was awake.

"Good morning, Minato." I rolled over, then stood up, stopping at the sight of Kakashi's black eye and deadpan expression. I snorted out a laugh, putting my hand over my mouth and trying to contain myself. I felt very accomplished that my punch had left such a mark.

"I guess you and Kakashi had a nice walk home together yesterday?" Minato said, also chuckling.

"You could say that." I said proudly, noticing that Kakashi's expression wasn't deadpan and kind of wishing I could see beneath his mask to know what his reaction was. I couldn't tell just based on his eyes.

Minato shook his head, still laughing under his breath. "Let's get to work, then."

Kakashi started working on step 2, power, which was exploding a rubber ball, while I continued my work from yesterday, which was containing the spinning chakra in a balloon. 

I tried balloon after balloon, focusing my chakra to stay within the sphere I envisioned in my mind, but, although it had improved from exploding immediately to moving the balloon around a lot first then exploding, I couldn't contain it for more than a few seconds at a time.

Having not eaten since lunch the previous day, I couldn't help the waves of dizziness that were coming over me, but I refused to faint again, especially in front of Minato and Kakashi.

Eventually, although I managed to stay awake, my progress started regressing and I grew more and more frustrated with my inability to focus and blurring eyesight.

"Emiko, you're going to faint." Kakashi said, appearing in front of me.

"I'm fine, Hatake."

Minato sighed, putting his hands on my shoulders and forcing me to look at him. "Kakashi's right. We'll go get some ramen, then we can come back."

I huffed. "Fine. You're paying though, Minato."

"Hai, hai." Minato pushed me down the road by a hand on my shoulder and Kakashi walked on my other side. 

We sat at Ichiraku and I got extra pork slices with my ramen, eating happily. The three of us were silent as we enjoyed our food.

I finished as quickly as I could, before hopping off my chair and waiting impatiently for Minato and Kakashi to finish. 

We got back to the training area and continued working on the rasengan, with Minato giving the occasional tips to both of us. 

The next day, I had training with my team, so, with Orochimaru-sensei's help, I worked on my fuinjutsu (sealing jutsu), which I was already pretty good at due to my clan, deciding to work on the rasengan only in my own time. After this, I had a few small missions, but in those 2 months, I had managed to perfect my rasengan.

Running through the village excitedly, I searched for Minato to show him. I found him at a training ground with his team and yelled happily.

"Minato! I got it! I finished it!" 

Minato looked at me shocked as I executed the perfect rasengan while Kakashi, Rin, and Obito stared in awe.

"Congratulations, Emi-chan!" Minato grinned.

Obito ran up close to me, in awe, saying, "Wow, that's so cool! You're awesome, Emiko!" I felt my face burning and I knew I probably looked like a tomato, with my face matching my hair.

"Th-Thanks, Obito!" I stuttered, smiling nervously.

Kakashi, as usual, was just staring. He needed to learn how to at least be subtle about it, but he seemed fine just rudely staring at people since he did it all the time.

Rin was raising an eyebrow at me cheekily at my reaction to Obito, while Minato, who had obviously noticed it, had a pensive aura to him.

"Hey, Kakashi, how close are you to mastering it?" I asked proudly.

Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I finished a few weeks ago."

My mouth dropped and my left eye was twitching. "You... are so... annoying." As I walked past him, I punched him in the stomach. As he went to retaliate, Minato pushed us apart, looking down at me sternly. I rolled my eyes.

"Sorry, Hatake." I mumbled, glaring at him grumpily.

Kakashi just looked away, almost seeming as if he was trying not to laugh.

"Emi, you should go back to your training now." Minato advised, sighing in fond exasperation.

I huffed. "Fine. I'll beat you next time, Hatake."

I turned around, hearing Minato tease Kakashi, "Is that a smile under your mask?"

"No." was the deadpan answer.

The next years were filled with constantly trying to learn new jutsu before Kakashi, often barely falling behind, except for medical jutsu, which I had help learning from Orochimaru-sensei and later Tsunade-sensei. Mastering the changes in chakra nature quickly, Kakashi always won whatever challenge I'd mentally decided to beat him at. He became a jonin at 12 and even made his own A-rank jutsu, while I stayed a chunin. Even though he was older than me, it pissed me off that he did everything better than me. Nothing annoyed me more than him.