With Kakashi perpetually away on missions, Meian's days fell into familiar rhythms. Training grounds. Observation. The same faces, the same patterns—until one of them began watching back.
Hinata Hyūga had started noticing him. More than noticing. Observing, the way her clan observed everything. Her eyes tracked his movements across the training field with an intensity that didn't escape his awareness.
A week later, word came: Kakashi's mission was complete. They'd meet behind the mountain after the academy dismissed.
The moment the classroom doors opened, Meian was gone.
Hinata watched him vanish, her fingers twisting together. "He seems rushed today," she whispered to herself, her pale eyes narrowed with concern. For weeks now, her attention had drifted from Naruto Uzumaki entirely. This boy—this Meian—held her focus in ways she couldn't quite explain.
After a moment's hesitation, decision crystallized. "He must be in trouble. I have to check."
She grabbed her bag and followed.
Meian noticed her within ten minutes of leaving the academy. He didn't acknowledge it—simply took a corner at speed and vanished, his body flickering out of existence through the Body Flicker Technique.
Hinata rounded the bend to nothing but empty street. She froze, her Byakugan blood screaming that she'd missed him somehow. His sensory abilities are impressive. He discovered me long ago and used the Body Flicker to escape. A Genin who'd mastered that technique was rare. Even among the Hyūga, she'd only seen Jōnin perform it smoothly.
She stared at the space where he'd vanished, her worry deepening. What had made him move with such urgency?
---
Meian reappeared hundreds of meters away in a burst of displaced air. The entrance to the Konoha Back Mountain loomed ahead, dense forest stretching upward into shadow. Walking would waste time.
He leaped.
His body shot toward a tree thirty meters high, chakra flooding into his feet as he landed. The bark held. He pushed off, soaring toward the next massive trunk, then the next. His movements were rough at first—unpredictable, stuttering. But with each leap, muscle memory adjusted. By the tenth tree, he'd found rhythm. By the twentieth, he was flying through the canopy at genuine speed.
Ten minutes of tree-running brought him several kilometers deep into the forest. The clearing opened before him like a held breath.
Kakashi stood at the pool's edge, nose buried in a small orange book.
"Ah," Kakashi said without looking up. "You can navigate the canopy. Progress."
Meian approached, a faint smile on his face. "Your reading habits are consistent, Sensei."
Kakashi's visible eye crinkled with embarrassment. He tucked the book away. "Never mind that. Let's see where you are with the Great Fireball Technique."
Meian didn't hesitate. He moved to the water's edge, his hands flowing through the seals with practiced precision. The kata came naturally now—Fire Style, Great Fireball Technique.
His breath exploded outward.
An eight-meter sphere of roaring flame tore across the clearing and smashed into the waterfall. The impact sent a wall of steam skyward, billowing and thick. It took five full seconds for the water to finally quench the remnants of fire.
The crater left in the stone behind the cascade was deep.
"Well?" Meian asked, turning back to his teacher.
Kakashi's composure didn't crack, but Meian had learned to read him. There was surprise there, carefully buried. "You didn't waste the week. Good. Today, I'm teaching you Water Style ninjutsu."
Meian's interest sharpened. Something new. Something beyond fire.
Kakashi spent the next hour breaking down the theory—how water techniques worked, the flow of chakra, the mental visualization required. It wasn't flashy instruction, but it was thorough. Meian absorbed every word, his focus absolute.
"The technique is called Water Style: Aqua Torrent," Kakashi finished. "It's a C-rank jutsu. Practice it enough, and you'll understand the fundamentals of all Water Style techniques. Ready to see it?"
Meian nodded.
Kakashi's hands moved through the seals methodically, each one sharp and clear. "Water Style: Aqua Torrent!"
Water erupted from his mouth like a pressurized geyser. It shot forward in a thick, roaring stream, hitting the pool with enough force to raise the water level a full meter.
"If used correctly," Meian observed, his mind already working, "that could counter the Great Fireball Technique."
"Both C-rank," Kakashi agreed. "Both designed, in a way, to be natural opposites."
"They're not as balanced as you think," Meian replied. "Not against an Uchiha casting the Fireball. The Aqua Torrent usually isn't strong enough to stop it."
Kakashi tilted his head slightly. "You sound confident."
"Because I'm right," Meian said simply. "And I intend to prove it."
He didn't wait for permission. His hands began moving.
The seals blurred. Fast—faster than any Genin should achieve. His fingers wove patterns so quickly that only afterimages remained, a ghost-trail of motion that seemed to spiral into itself.
Even Kakashi's eye widened fractionally. "Your hand speed is nearly at my level. How did you—"
Meian's eyes narrowed. Chakra surged upward from his core, a building tide that crested in his throat.
"Water Style: Aqua Torrent!"
The water that erupted from his mouth was nothing like Kakashi's demonstration.
A lance of pressurized water shot forward with brutal force—not a stream, but a spear. It didn't dissipate or spread. It carved through the air like a blade, smashed through the waterfall as though the cascade was nothing, and punched clean through the stone face behind it.
The impact left a crater three meters across, stone dust still drifting like smoke.
Silence.
Kakashi stared at the damage, his jaw tight. When he finally spoke, his voice was carefully measured: "That... isn't the Aqua Torrent I taught you."
Meian said nothing, already knowing the answer forming behind those dark eyes.
"What exactly did you just do?"
---