Akari Uchiha

Ch. 39 Sword-Training! Finally~!

"...and see! Now I can stand on water! And jump on water! And run on water!"

Kakashi lazily stared at his tiny apprentice from where he sat in the shade of a tree. Said apprentice, in contrast to him, seemed to be too full of energy to stay still or stop talking. So she kept running and jumping on the small pond in front of him.

"That's great," he drawled, ending with a yawn. Kakashi sighed loudly. He hadn't even gone home yet. He met his tiny ball of energy right when he was submitting his mission report.

He tried to ignore her shouts from outside the tower and go home to sleep when she kept shouting of animal cruelty and her Inu-chan and what not.

Then that brat threatened to read Icha-Icha.

"Stop talking," he sighed, realizing the constant buzzing in his ears wasn't because of his tiredness, it was because when he had zoned out Akari had still been continuously talking.

"Not until you acknowledge my mastery over walking on water!" she demanded.

Kakashi raised an eyebrow, before making a few hand-signs and slamming his hand on the ground.

The tiny Uchiha shrieked in surprise before losing her balance and falling into the pond.

Kakashi smirked.

She deserved that. He would rather be at home resting right now after a long and tiresome mission.

Okay, that was a half-lie.

He would still probably search for her first to make sure she didn't accidentally kill herself and then go home.

But he would rather blame it on her while he could.

"Hey! No fair!" Akari came out of the pond soaking in water with a sulking expression on her face.

"The water won't always stay still for you to perform summer-saults on, chibi."

"Stop calling me that!" she whined. "At least I learnt to walk on water while you were away!" she declared with a proud expression.

"And just doing that took you two weeks?" Kakashi drawled.

"....Well...." she started, trailing off, her proud expression falling off her face as she frowned slightly, averted her gaze to the ground and kicked a rock.

Kakashi sweat-dropped at the sudden transition to her kicked-puppy-face.

He wasn't supposed to say that, was he?

"But," he started, and saw her perk up slightly. "Nice dedication."

Her face brightened up before she grinned at him.

Kakashi internally sighed in relief.

He was still trying to keep his word that he'd work for her trust or whatever... but he never had to deal with stupid, idiotic, reckless, over-energetic, emotional ten year old apprentices.

His previous students were twelve, and were all different.

Naruto was always happy.

Sasuke was always gloomy.

Sakura was always obsessed.

His opinions didn't affect their emotions.

And he knew he did revert back a little to his... harsher side... when they went away. Like he used to be before he became team seven's jonin sensei. When he was in the ANBU.

Akari already had bad luck in that sense, plus her being an Uchiha wasn't helping him motivate himself to even try to not show his frustrations by pushing people away with rude remarks.