Akari Uchiha

Ch. 83 The Aftermath of Nightmares

Akari knew that randomly disturbing the copy ninja's sleep in the middle of the night wasn't a privilege that anyone could afford, and she was grateful (and a little embarrassed) that she was granted that privilege.

However she did not expect to wake up with Scarecrow sensei staring at her face at five in the morning as he called out her name.

She immediately sat up. "I'm so sorry!"

Kakashi gave her a blank stare in response.

Akari blinked again. "You're not mad," she pointed out matter-of-factly before sighing in relief. "Thank you, Kami-sama," she sniffled in relief, joining both her hands and looking towards the ceiling.

THONK

"I am fully awake and ready to listen, master," the eleven-year-old chunin sat up straight on the bed with one bump on her head a few seconds later. 

"I need to talk to you. You can go back to sleep in an hour. Is that fine?" Kakashi asked her tilting his head slightly.

Even though it was posed as a question, Akari had a feeling that she didn't really have a choice.

"Yes master," she nodded defeatedly.

"Go, wash your face," Kakashi ordered. The Uchiha crawled, CRAWLED, out of her bed to the washroom, making Kakashi sweat-drop. 

Akari sighed as she splashed water on her face. 

Last night had been scary. She barely even remembered how or when she decided that she would run in her slippers to Scarecrow sensei's house. 

She had just dreamed of the Land of Wolves because of stupid Eisaku-nii's sudden appearance. And then correlated it with how she would've reached the village before Kakashi sensei's death if she hadn't gone there, and how Scarecrow sensei didn't wake up like he did during the Pein attack.

How Naruto-san wasn't there and everyone who was dead... remained dead. 

And then she had woken up, covered in sweat, and running across the village to just make sure that her master was really alive and their conversation at the ramen stand hadn't been just a dream.

Try as much as she might, she could never get that image out of her mind. Scarecrow sensei lying dead in a rubble of stones piled up all around him. His forehead covered in blood as his head swayed lifelessly in the wind.

Akari still shuddered even thinking of it.

She had been getting nightmares ever since she first encountered Itachi, but they weren't this... real.

She glanced down at her slippers, sighing. Now that she thought about it, this was kind of embarrassing. 

She hoped no one saw her at 3 AM. like running around in her night dress like a maniac.

On that note, she'd probably need to get back before Ohana woke up or she would freak out seeing her child roommate absent from her disheveled bed and no note left behind.

"I'm done," she called as she hopped outside the bathroom and sat on the bed. There was a reading table in one corner of the room covered in mission reports and two or three books piled on top of each other.

She paused.

She came here around three AM. Currently it was five AM. 

It had only been two hours since then... and Akari could see a partially opened can of instant ramen on the table with still some ramen left in it beside the pile of mission reports on the table.

Was Kakashi sensei working those two hours then?

"I read your mission report properly," Kakashi said pulling a chair in front of the bed and taking a seat on it. "The Kazekage did give me a vague idea of what he got from his subordinates. However your teammates only reported things up until the 'Village of the Walking Dead' and then you ordering them to escape. Here you said that you defeated those men with 'Zip Zap'?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow.