#people talk a lot about steam ninja scrolls but no one talks about kakashis story

[gai-sucks-titties-in-my-basement]

Gai has plummeted from the sky exactly twice in canon, one was his fall after releasing the 8th gate. A serene acceptance of his own end. And the second was off the Tobisachimaru, where Kakashi caught him and they fell hand in hand. Kakashis Story (the book) opens up to Gai I think at his most honest, he is childish and selfish and desperate. He threatens Lee into getting him on a flying boat for absolutely no reason, other than to feel the importance of being one of the first Shinobi to be on it. He is striving for a significance the universe stole from him by allowing him to leave past his prime, his moment with Madara where he was no longer human; but God. Kakashi has spent the entire novel not scrutinizing, but pitying Gai for a lack of understanding of what they have left. But Kakashi, who has lived in the past for nearly his whole life, is met with a woman who lives in that same war; who’s leaking grief out onto Kakashi the entire novel. In a moment of her exposition, her; the embodiment of past, weeping before Kakashi, Gai is falling off the boat. A descent into oblivion; an oblivion he wants but was denied. And Kakashi cannot care about the war or the woman or the past, all he does is jump after Gai. And hold his hand. It is by outside, coincidental forces (Sai, on a bird.) that either survive. Kakashi refused Gai to descend into oblivion alone.

This novel is also the first instance of Kakashi being relevant with both of his eyes. I like to think it’s them falling together that Gai really understands that this is the first time he’s looked into Kakashi’s eyes since adolescence.