"Sana?!"
The startled call immediately drew the surrounding crowd's attention. The Hatake closest to the young woman did a double take when they saw her.
It had been almost a month since any of them had last seen Sana leave her little house. After her husband's passing and her parents' long-gone status, she had chosen to lock herself away and grieve.
Now, seeing her again, they paused to wonder if she had always towered over almost all of them.
There was also that scar. Had it always been there? It must have, after all, it looked pretty old.
None of them seemed able to remember the young woman's features clearly, and her now-worn cloth mask drew all their attention.
"Oho, what do we have here?"
At the sound of the voice, the crowd quickly made way for the speaker.
That Minoru guy walked toward Kakashi with confidence dripping from every step. "Well, if it isn't Sana, I was about to come get you, but you being here saves me so much trouble."
Kakashi squinted at him.
He looked, well, exactly like what you would expect a Hatake to be, with gray hair and dark eyes, but otherwise there was nothing especially notable about him aside from the weird wolf-head cloak he was wearing over his clothes.
There was a vague memory of him talking to Sana, but Kakashi couldn't make out what was said. All Kakashi knew was that Sana was afraid the entire time she had been in his presence.
"So did you make up your mind?" Minoru leaned forward, his lips twisting into a sinister smirk.
Kakashi tilted her head to the side. "What are you talking about?"
Something about the way Sana looked at Minoru annoyed him. It felt as if something were different. Something missing from her eyes.
She wasn't hunched in on herself anymore, and she actually looked Minoru in the eyes when they were speaking.
That pissed him off.
"I told you not to come out of that shack unless you plan to marry me," he growled.
"Oh? Is that so?" Kakashi relished something about this man as he realized exactly what he had been planning to do.
If Sana hadn't decided to go and reunite with her lover, she would have been dragged out of her house by this worm and forced to marry against her will.
Forcing an unwilling woman to marry you and gathering a crowd to watch. Minoru was, simply put, the filth of human existence.
"Well, I'm not interested."
Minoru's expression twisted.
This woman dared to embarrass him in front of their people. Looks like he needs to teach her a lesson.
"Funny you think you have an option in this!"
Minoru lunged forward, trying to grab the neck of her yukata, but Kakashi was no longer interested in entertaining this. And hey, this could be a good opportunity to test this body's fighting capability.
She caught his hand in her grip and twisted it. "You-" Minoru clenched his fist and tried to punch her with his left hand. Kakashi caught that one too. Quickly letting go of his right hand, Kakashi used his left arm to flip his body over her shoulder.
The people who had circled around them to watch the argument gaped in disbelief. None of them knew that Sana could fight like that!
Minoru hastily got to his feet. "You woman!"
Wow, why did he make that sound like an insult? Kakashi really didn't like this guy.
Kakashi dodged a few of the punches aimed at her, analyzing his fighting style. He was obviously a shinobi. But at best, he was chunin-level.
"Stop moving around!" He made the sign for water release. And for a moment, Kakashi thought he was going to pull off some impressive move.
Only for him to spit out a water bullet from his mouth. Kakashi moved her head to the side and paused to watch as the water projectile hit the bystanders and sent them flying.
She was completely lost for words. None of them had even tried to dodge it. Weren't the Hatake supposed to be super shinobi like her dad?
Hatake Sakumo never liked to talk much about their clan because it brought him too much pain. But Kakashi had always assumed they were at least all proficient in lightning jutsus.
If the Hatake around her could hear what she was thinking, they would cry in anguish. While in Kakashi's eyes, this guy's moves were worse than a baby genin, to them, the fight was pretty impressive.
After all, the Hatake, while a lot of them were shinobi they were farmers first and foremost.
Watching Hatake Sana, the one they saw as a meek girl, play around with Minoru-sama like this was destroying their worldview.
Kakashi dodged as another punch was thrown at her. She grabbed his wrist and twisted around, hitting him in the face with her elbow, once, twice, three times, before finally letting him go when his nose broke with a loud crack.
Minoru fell to the ground on his back, a steady stream of blood pouring out of his nose. The crowd stood there in complete silence.
"Hmm, did I go too hard on him?" Kakashi gave his body a good kick to see if he would get up. When he didn't, she just shrugged. "Ah, whatever."
Kakashi turned away from him, and that was the moment Minoru got back up. A kunai in one of his hands was aimed directly at Kakashi's exposed back.
He didn't even get to blink before Kakashi's body flickered behind him, using purple lightning to blow his head off.
In that moment right before his death, Minoru finally figured out what was missing from that woman's eyes. It was fear.
His body fell to the ground with a splat.
The crowd was too stunned to let out a single sound. They just stood there, staring at the now-missing head of Minoru with wide eyes. It wasn't the gory outcome that stunned them, but rather that the one who killed Minoru, their best fighter, was the helpless widow they all used to pity.
"Maa, I got blood on my yukata," Kakashi said, inspecting the sleeve with a frown.
She turned to talk to one of the Hatake, the one she had spoken to when she first stepped out. "I hope the clan head wouldn't be too mad that I killed him."
The guy looked down at the corpse with uncertainty. "Um… Sana-sama… Minoru was the clan head."
"Eh?!"