Kakashi's Teammate, the Lightning Goddess

My Obligation

*edited*

Chapter 24: My Obligation

                “Sasuke Uchiha!” I shouted, flinging open the door to my apartment. As I’d expected, Sasuke sat in the dining room, calmly eating noodles from a blue bowl. He swallowed a mouthful and raised his eyebrows at me challengingly.

                He’d been getting haughtier and haughtier, prouder and prouder, and I knew he was growing more distant – just as I’d predicted.

                “You – “ I pointed my index finger at him angrily. “ – are going to scrub the entire apartment clean, from top to bottom, and without rest. Understood? Good.”

                It took him a moment to reply, and by that time, I had taken off my shoes and dumped the grocery bags in front of the pantry. “What?” he spluttered, and I rolled my eyes.

                “You heard me perfectly fine.”

                “I am not cleaning your house,” he stated, and I turned, giving him my deadliest glare. He gulped visibly and held his hands up in a sign of surrender. “Alright, alright! Gosh, what brought this on?”

                “Only the fact that you’ve skipped three days of training straight and refused to help me with groceries. Now go, before I make you put away the groceries, too!”

                Letting out a sigh of defeat, he scurried for the guest room, where I knew he was straightening things out. He was already pretty neat, so it would take him only a few minutes to get to my room – which I’d messed up on purpose.

                I was going to put an end to this. It didn’t matter if I knew what was going to happen, and it didn’t matter that this was what Itachi wanted. I was at least going to put up a fight; what had I been thinking, just giving in?

***

                “See this?”

                Sasuke nodded, his dark eyes following my every move. I twirled the kunai.

                “Watch me.”

                “I am.” 

                I threw the kunai past him, missing him by quite a margin, and it embedded itself into the tree behind him. As I’d predicted, his eyes slid sideways as the knife passed, and only now did they flicker back to me. “You failed,” I told him.

                “How? What was the point of that, anyway?”

                “I told you to watch me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But you followed the knife – “

                “It was instinct.”              

                “I know it was. See, that’s the kind of thing you need to learn to do. People say to follow your instincts, but what if you predict your opponent’s instincts ahead of time and use them to your advantage? For example, your eyes left me for a single second, and I could’ve leapt forward and stabbed you.”

                “No, you couldn’t,” he returned haughtily, the proud fire back in his eyes. “I’d get out of the way – “

                “What if you were facing two people? Or three? Or ten?” I sighed, walking over to retrieve my kunai. “Ducky, you aren’t the best ninja in the world yet, and you don’t need to prove yourself so early. Your time will come. You’re already a genius.”