Kakashi laced his hands behind his back and avoided eye contact with his military leader. She did not, he noticed, seem very happy with him.

“If I could kill you, I would,” Tsunade-sama said bluntly. “It is an affront to my dignity that I had to learn about the internet in the first place. And now I have to know that strange children all over the world are sending you death threats for being mean to Maito Gai. I want to pull your intestines out via your asshole and stuff them down your throat.” 

Ah, well, he gave himself a pat on the back for reading the air on that one.

“I can’t believe all this ludicrous mess.” Her nose wrenched up into a snarl that made her, rather fetchingly, resemble a blonde bulldog. “If it’s any consolation, I am ending this social media experiment and I am smashing Sakura’s phone with a paperweight when she comes in next.”

A faint “WHAT” echoed out from the hallway. Both of them ignored it. 

“But you.” Tsunade-sama folded her hands on her desktop and leaned forward at him. “I don’t want to look at your stupid face.”

He pointed at his mask.

“You can’t possibly cover up enough of your face for it not to piss me off. I’d be angry at you if you were in the secret ANBU closet over there.” She jerked a mocking finger at her protection detail. “So I am sending you away on a mission.”

That didn’t really sound like a punishment. He went on missions all the time.

“You’re going to the North Pole for a year, to take twice daily salinity tests of some godforsaken hole or another that had an endangered fish in it.”

Kakashi took that in. “Had?”

“Yes, it’s dead now. But this stupid shit was requested, and paid for, and I hate you.” His Hokage gave him a sharkish smile. “You’d better get a good parka.”

Kakashi put his hands on his thighs and gave her a deep bow. “I understand. Will I be going alone?”

“No.”

shit.

Kakashi stopped the optimism that had been building. 

Tsunade-sama gave him a look that implied she knew he would have enjoyed a solo posting. “You’ll have a civilian partner who changes bimonthly. You’re expected to be responsible for their well–being, of course. The scientific institute for the fish expects it.” It was said with perfect innocence. There was not a chance in hell it was the truth.

“The scientific institute for the extinct fish,” Kakashi clarified. “Which definitely exists.” 

“What?” Tsuade’s eyebrows went up in mock disbelief. “Surely you don’t think I’m using my own money to send you away.”

He thought about the price for a year long mission for a jounin. “No,” he had to admit. “You’re too poor.” He dodged her paperweight.. He did not dodge the follow-up inkan. Kakashi rubbed the dent in his forehead and looked up at her ceiling from his new home on the carpet.

“Next,” she called. “Sakura, get your pointy ass in here.” 

His wretched student stepped over him on her way to stand in front of the desk with clasped hands, vibrating with her desire to plead her case. 

“Hand me your phone and my paperweight. It’s embedded in the wall back there.”

“But Shishou, please–”

Kakashi made himself scarce before electronics started flying.

It wasn’t that bad at the North Pole, he decided to believe, when he finally arrived there a few weeks later. Sure, it was cold enough that he had to warm his hands between turning book pages. But the fish society had made a 3m by 3m cement building for him to live in for the duration of the stay, and even provided a tank of allegedly clean drinking water. The never ending daylight was giving him nightmares about slowly rotating to death in a microwave, but aside from that, it was pretty livable until his civilian coworker showed up. 

“Hey,” she said, and pointed her phone at him. “What did you think about Gai-sensei’s petition to have you recalled to Konoha and given a gold award for being the coolest guy ever instead of a punishment for being the most unpopular man alive?”

Hm, well, that one didn’t require a lot of contemplation. His immediate reaction was that he did not want to get involved. He had learnt this lesson already. 

He moved to placate the problem with a winsome smile. “Excuse me.” Kakashi took a step towards the door. She was blocking it. Hm. Knocking her over would read poorly on camera. He leaned over and picked up the toolbox. “I have to check the salinity of where the fish were.” 

“You can do it later.” The camera was obviously still rolling. “He wants you back. Your comment?”

It was a terrible trap. There was no way to win. Kakashi weighed his odds of taking the phoe from the civilian and genjutsu-ing her subscribers to believe nothing had ever happened, but he didn’t know if it would work via the screen. 

‘Trying and failing would be a P.R. disaster. Tsunade-sama would peel my face off and staple it to my ass. I have to find another way.’

They closed about half the distance at a battlefield creep. Sakura’s heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder that Kakashi-sensei didn’t hear it! He had horrible dog ears.  But he was concentrating and the sound of the river must have shielded their creeping steps.

Sukea readied his camera. Sakura went still. Kakashi-sensei was shaking his wrists out and chakra was building in the air. The surface of the river lifted. In her last glance at her teacher she thought she saw his head move.

‘Wait! Did he glance over at–’

The water obscured Kakashi-sensei. Mist and spray roiled out and up. Sakura put a hand up against the flood- 

And was bowled over by a slapping wave. Water was everywhere, ice cold and full of twigs and leaves and random river trash. She shrieked and got dirty river water painfully up her nose. The next second was a disorienting and long moment of sliding backwards on her butt on the grass.

The water crashed out harmlessly and settled into a traveling puddle coating the entirety of the training ground.

Shell-shocked, Sakura sat there. She tilted her head forward and breathed hard to get some of the stinky water out of her nose in a sad little stream. She shifted and squelched.

No. No way. She discreetly checked.

...There was mud in her underwear. She looked down at her legs and saw they were brown from polished toenails up to her thighs. Betrayed, she lifted her head to see the faint figure of her genin teacher give her a peace sign, giggle, and then book it in the opposite direction.

“Oh, dear.” Sukea fussed with his camera, giving it a checkover for water. He had protected it with his body. “I don’t think I got a shot. I guess we have to give up-”

Sakura roared. She didn’t even think about grabbing Sukea’s arm and bodily forcing him to run with her. They were going to get that rotten bastard, even if it meant she was going to copy Sasori and puppet him into acting right.

They sprinted. Sukea huffed a little but he kept pace. Kakashi-sensei was just baaarely visible. He scrabbled over the fence and into the adjacent training ground. Sakura cocked her fist back and smashed her way through it to save time. Wood flew. Sukea yelped. She barreled on with the power of her fury. “Kakashi-sensei!” she howled. A flock of birds took flight. “Stop running!”

“No thanks!” His voice carried back to her faintly. She dug into her reserves and somehow found she could run even faster. Mud splattered up to her face. 

Kakashi-sensei hopped the other fence. Sakura busted through 2 seconds later and looked around wildly for him, irritated by all the wood splinters in the air and screams. “Stop complaining!” She dodged a mother and toddler duo and caught sight of a man disappearing down an alley on the right side of the street.

“Sakura!” 

Sukea sounded panicked. “Wait! It’s 3:00! You have to stop!”

Sakura sprinted into the alley and immediately had to leap up to avoid killing a small child holding his mother’s hand. “Why are you here!” She shrieked. She nearly kicked him in the gut in her dodge.

The toddler gaped up at her. He was drooling onto his blue uniform smock.

“Oh, my!” Shocked, the mother picked up her kid and looked at Sakura as if she was a dangerous criminal. “Pay attention!”

“Whatever, lady,” Sakura said, too focused to feel human guilt. She skipped around the woman and into the human crush of the midday preschool released crowd. Kakashi-sensei had disappeared in the crowd of mothers picking up toddlers from preschool. Sakura pushed her way through viciously, making liberal use of elbows. He had done this on purpose! He knew about the preschool crush and he had used it against her!

Sukea was on the rooftops, running adjacent to her. “Sakura-san!” He sounded harried. “I think that it’s time to give up.”

“Never!” She broke through the crowd. “I can get him before he gets to the shopping street!”

“You’ll never make it!” Sukea howled. “It’s the start of the daily meat discount! Don’t be a fool! He must be disguised by now!”

Kakashi-sensei was standing on the top of the Hokage mountain. He gave the camera a peace sign. Then he flipped it to spend 10 seconds focusing on what was apparently his favorite of the fourth hokage’s hair spikes. He covered 80 percent of the camera with his thumb and kept recording the sky for a long time. There was no audio. Kakashi-sensei probably didn’t know that. 

As Sakura watched it for the second time, the view counter ticked up to 3. Her eye twitched. 

‘He’s not even trying. I specifically requested effort.’ 

There was no way she could repost this. She would make Konoha look like a bunch of dorks in front of the other nations. 

“Okay.” Sakura pushed her chair back and kicked it in a circle. She put her hands up in her hair and bunched everything up at the top of her head. “I have to kill him and hire an impersonator who can take direction,” she decided. “That’s the only way to shut up Team 9.”

It was wishful thinking, of course. Anyone who might do a good job impersonating him was probably still out of the village chasing Kiri no Kisame from hole to hole. 

If she couldn’t kill him, she would have to hunt him down personally and oversee his social media presence. Sakura cracked all of her knuckles. Her bad energy seeped all around the room and rose up in whorls, tinting the walls grey. She barely remembered to shove her phone in her pocket before she set out to fix everything. 

He wasn’t at his apartment this time. That figured. Sakura stomped back to the admin tower and demanded to know his assignment for the day. 

“He’s not on shift,” Yamakawa said. He tried to shoo her out.

‘You can’t tell me you have no idea how to track down a jounin in village.’

She planted her feet and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m terribly sorry,” she lied sweetly. “Only, I was supposed to give him something.” She dug a toe into the ground. The admin stared at her, not charmed in the slightest. “Can you give me any idea how to find him?” She dropped the act and went businesslike about it. He obviously wanted Sakura to leave.

Sakura watched him measure how much he disliked her against how much he wanted her gone. Win! Yamakawa-san pointed to the green filing cabinet. “Check if he’s reserved a workspace or requested personnel.”

He had. Kakashi-sensei had reserved special training grounds 5 for the morning. Sakura reread it, positively baffled. Kakashi-sensei was up early training? 

‘It doesn’t seem right. But I’ve never seen him exercise…. And I’ve never seen him in the morning. I guess it must be true.’

Wait. It wasn’t a regular reservation. Sakura dashed to the reference materials to figure out usage what STG5 was designated for. 

It wasn't a taijutsu field, that was for sure. It was for B rank or higher ninjutsu, and it featured a large allotment of water that made it suitable for safely practicing either water or fire.

‘I bet he’s practicing the water dragon he stole from Zabuza.’ A thrill ran up Sakura’s spine. ‘That’s outright cool! If I can secretly record his practice, he’ll blow Gai-sensei’s kicking videos out of the water.’

She took note of the address and hustled there. Sakura stopped at the gate and peered in, holding her breath. She could see him. Kakashi-sensei was a distant figure on the lake, doing some kind of drill. 

“This is perfect!” Sakura had to whisper, but she was too excited to say nothing at all. She dug in her pocket and felt her face freeze. She looked again. She turned her pockets inside out and then started looking in her hip pouch. ‘This can’t be happening! I could swear that I got it. I really thought I brought the phone!’ 

She looked up to stare at Kakashi-sensei again. Failure reared its ugly head. Failure looked an awful lot like losing to a team of undeniable dweebs.

“Excuse me.” A man on the street edged around her.  

Sakura let him pass and glanced at his back, still thinking of where her phone might be. 

Wait. Just. One. Minute! She knew him! 

‘I’m saved!’

“Excuse me!” Sakura rushed over to tug the adult’s sleeve for his attention. “Do you remember me? I’m Sakura.” 

He opened his mouth; obviously to say no.

She barreled on. “‘My teammates and I met you last autumn, you helped us take photos of my teacher.” Sakura gave Sukea the photographer a winsome grin. “Would you mind helping me out?” She clasped her hands together in prayer. She was so adorable that he had to help her. If he didn't, she would kill him with her mind.

Kakashi wheezed helplessly. When he clawed the hateful plastic up to his face and opened it, Kakashi felt his heart sink. “This, ah.” He cleared his throat. “It’s a lot, Sakura-chan,” he said delicately. He flipped a few pages. There were mood boards. 

‘Not a chance, kid.’

“You have to.” She hissed the order at him. “You’re embarrassing me in front of the other nations.”

“Ah,” he said, not sure where that was coming from. “It can’t be the first time.” She’d get used to it or whatever.

Sakura dug into the zip pocket of her top and unfolded a shiny brochure emblazoned with Gai’s face, bulging and glistening upper body, and some words or whatever. He was busy looking at biceps and half heard - “turns out that feelings sell. So now you have to have them.” Kakashi looked at the fan print some more. Not the words, of course. The trapezius muscle. 

‘Nice,’ he thought with feeling. 

“It’s not nice!” Sakura reached a shriek. Kakashi clutched his covers in fear. “Team 9 is rubbing it in my face every time we meet.” Her face was actually quite ugly when she sneered, he thought. Like a storybook gremlin. “Lee said it’s statistically relevant proof that Gai-sensei is cooler than you.” 

“Lee said that?” Kakashi wondered aloud. “I didn’t know the kid could, like, read. Much less do maths.” Then he suddenly paid full attention to Sakura because she had her hands wrapped in the collar of his nightshirt and was mildly strangling him. 

“Sensei,” she said. She said it from very close. Her breath was minty.

“Yes?” 

“I am going to record you performing impressive feats. And you are going to say some things that sound cool.” She shook him. “Inspirational, even.” 

“And it doesn’t matter to you that this is entirely fake?” He checked. “You want me to construct a personality for the online? To make you look cooler in front of your friends?” 

“Finally, he gets it.” Sakura muttered that and let him fall. “Read that,” she said. “It’s your storyline, new opinions, and recording plans. Post the first video today and I’ll repost it.” She tossed a phone on the bed next to him, made the “I’m watching you” gesture, and was gone with the flap of a curtain.

In the pleasant silence that followed her window departure, Kakashi flipped through the binder. “Is she well?” He wondered aloud. He scratched at the back of his head. “Maaa… The most important thing is that you believe in yourself,” he read flatly. Total crap. The most important thing was being born talented. Kakashi snorted and tossed the binder away. “She cribbed that from Naruto.” 

Sakura-chan’s notes fell off the bed and landed in a mess on his floor boards. He kicked it under the bed on his way out of the room. 

“Not even close,” Anko said grimly. She hadn’t even filled the first of 3 shipping crates with serpents. None of these snakes even spoke her language yet, so she didn’t know if a single one of them would be an alright partner. She needed infinite snakes. She squinted at the shoreline. The people holding the signs were in some sort of official looking uniform and waving their arms. There was also a group of… well, she was pretty sure that a group of her fans were being held back by a line of police officers. Ha. 

Well. She would never disappoint her fans, but she also didn’t want Tsunade to bomb her when she returned. Anko pondered how to balance this. 

Australia had like, 170 types of land snakes. She couldn’t pass this opportunity up. 

A crew member sidled up and cleared his throat to get their attention. “Honored guests,” he said apologetically. “I believe the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry has strict laws about the import and export of animals. They have reached out to us with their concern that you might not understand these rules and inadvertently break them, by, for example-“ 

“By taking 2 to 4 hundred snakes, yeah,” Anko agreed. She shrugged. “I do intend to do that.” 

The crew member merely bowed. “Of course, honored guest. I am merely conveying the local laws. They are also concerned that, were we to dock, we might release serpents from other islands onto the mainland.” 

“That’s stupid.” Anko rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to let them go.” 

The old people watched this exchange with open fascination. 

“Be that as it may,” said the crew member. “They will not allow us to dock as planned. Other patrons will be ferried to the shore by boat. You are invited to remain on board for the duration of our planned stopover in Australia.” 

“That seems unnecessarily harsh,” Kensuke interjected. He held out a hand to indicate Anko. “The girl likes snakes. What could be wrong with that? She has a little collection.”

“It’s sweet,” agreed Michiko. The old lady pursed her lips in disapproval. “And as you have said, she is a paying customer.” 

Genuinely touched, Anko put a hand to her heart. “It’s alright,” she promised. Then she looked at the crew member, who was only doing his job. “I’ll stay on the ship while you unload all the other passengers,” she said magnanimously. “I know that you don’t want conflict with the local authorities.”

The crewman accepted this with no small amount of relief and no further questions. 

A pleasure crew manned and full of civilians from the Elemental Nations knew perfectly well that a Shinobi could exit a ship on her own. Anko waited patiently for the ship to empty. She waved at her fans. She waved extra hard at the people holding signs with X over her face, just to watch them scowl. She was wondering how, exactly, she would incognito get the snake tracking information that she needed, when a different crew member approached her. 

“Mitarashi-san? If I might offer a suggestion.”

She looked at him like an interesting bug.

He twitched. “A local paid for me to have this sent to you.” He held out a little box.

Anko hesitated. “Is it a bomb?” she asked sternly.

“It is not a bomb.”

“If it’s a bomb, you’re going to regret–”

“It is a cell phone!” He opened the box to show one of the little black things that these Outer Country civilians all seemed to have. “As I said, a local has gifted this to you with the hopes that you will contact him.”

She was sick to death of working with snakes who still hung out with that jerk. She needed to meet new snakes, snakes with integrity and taste. 

“…why the hell not,” decided the Hokage. “I’ll approve your leave.” She cracked her neck. “Have a nice trip. I need a weekly report, and try to stay out of the goddamn news. If you fail, send me a copy so I know what to do.” She ticked off her orders on her fingers one by one, then paused. “If you make us look bad in front of the other continents, I’ll blow up your ship before you can return. Got it?”

“Yeah, all the standard shit,” Anko dismissed. She gave her Hokage a tight salute. “I’ll be a good girl.”

Tsunade visibly shuddered.

Japan. first stop of a cruise ship that departed from the Western coast of the Elemental Nations

Not a week later, Anko was on a slow-moving cruise ship with three large shipping containers, a bunch of silly tourists, and a strict personal schedule. She had prepared a whole shelf of international language resources for this self-assigned mission. The first week of her cruise was spent preparing a massive personal language resource with what she would need. It was grim, necessary work to achieve her ambitions.

The first stop was in some island chain called Okinawa.

Anko got off the ship for the 32 hours of stopover, ready to work. She vaulted off the side of the ship and easily passed the slow moving line of sunburnt civilians in large hats and swimming wear who also wanted off the ship. It sucked to suck! She beelined her way to the hotel and was the first one to get helped. 

“いらっしゃいませ.” The clerk greeted her and bowed. 

Anko cut them off with a hand gesture. “蛇下さい。” she held out cupped hands, as if the hotel staff might have a snake on hand to give her. 

She received a baffled look in return. Fair enough. Most people wanted to go to some dumb beach.

Anko cupped a hand over her eyes and made a show of searching. “蛇？蛇！”

“ああ、” said the clerk. She pointed outside. Then she gestured with her hands to indicate water. “蛇は….” The rest of what she said was indecipherable gibberish, because Anko had only learnt how to say, “Snake, please,” in each of the 10 languages she was studying. She gave the clerk a nod and a grin. “Thanks.” Anko strode back outside to the water, fiddling with the net in her coat pocket. Did she need that? Eh, whatever. She would use her hands. Anko licked her lips in anticipation.

She got back to the shoreline, thrust her coat off (ignoring some surprised sounds) and dove into the water to get herself a black-banded whatever. Krate? Sea krate? The important thing was that it was cute as hell and she needed 5.

When Anko emerged from the seat, soaking wet and satisfied, there was an audience waiting. A man in lurid orange underpants blathered at her in his foreign language, trying to get into her personal space with some sort of over sized plastic donut. He had huge pecs, with a whistle bouncing on them. She noted how nice they were, appreciated them, and then thrust her own chest out in a dominance display.

"Stay back," Anko warned. "And look!" She thrust a sea serpent at him, beaming. "Look at his cute little snoot!"

The serpent struck, bare millimeters from skin. The half-naked man screamed and fell back, scrambling away. He shouted in his language as he fled.

The beach erupted in screams. Everyone else ran away. Within seconds the beach was clearing up.

"...Huh," Anko said, baffled, and stuffed her snake into a sack from her coat pocket. She tied it up and slung it over her shoulder. "Weird." It took her a few hours to get her fill of sea snakes. She stored them safely away on the ship in a tank and then went back to the tourist center. The same woman was trembling behind the counter, a customer service smile frozen in place.

"Jeeze."

It hurt her feelings a little.

Anko pretended not to see the manager duck under a table to avoid meeting her eyes. "Snake, please," she said again, in the local language., head up high. This sea snake was kickass, but they had to have more than one kind.

The receptionist trembled. She reached over and pulled out a brochure. She got out a red pen and circled several areas, which were currently marked with ... hm, at a guess, they were normally meant to be off-limits.

"Ha-bu," the woman said. She pointed at each area. "habu, habu, habu, habu."

"Neat." Anko took the brochure with a flourish. She tossed off a salute on the way out. She saw the white flash of a photo being taken, but she didn't pay it any mind. She was on a snake quest. PART 2

If you liked this intro, join us over on my discord server and maybe vote for the next short story concept. But Anko isn't done cruising for serpents yet, she'll have at least 4 parts.