Twisted Pinwheel

Let's see... of the three cornerstones of ninja training, there's Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and Ninjutsu.

Genjutsu doesn't have much of a following, mostly because from the outside a genjutsu match is boring as fuck. Inside is a different story, but outside all an onlooker gets to see is a couple of people staring at each other until someone falls over, twitching. You guess it's also different if only one side is using genjutsu, but that's that and this is this. In any case, there's not really much to cover on genjutsu in the academy, because if there's nothing else ninja love, it's grandstanding and showboating, and staring people to sleep doesn't usually get a lot of that in. Useful, maybe, but not interesting.

As far as Taijutsu goes, it's not like Konoha Standard is bad or anything, and the clan keeps on trying to drill the ancient and sacred Uchiha arts of slap-fighting into your head too, so you've at least got the basics of the basics there. Something about redirection of force and positioning for a final blow to end things in one shot. You don't see it as being hugely important when you've got the Sharingan. As long as your body can keep up with what the other person's going to do, you're golden, so while physical conditioning is important the actual forms... aren't, so much?

Anyway.

Ninjutsu isn't unexpected. Everyone loves setting things on fire, you won't be convinced otherwise.

More importantly, just how pissed would the elders be to hear that you're bucking however-long of tradition and learning your ninja magic from scrolls and experimentation instead of stealing the hard work of others for your own benefit, as is right and proper for an Uchiha? And learning jutsu that aren't even meant for combat, at that.

You think you'll look at ninjutsu scrolls. After all, why tie your shoes with your fingers, or heat your food with a microwave, when you can do things with ninja magic?

You'll be quick about it, though. You can't practice jutsu in the library itself anyway, so you'll just memorize the instructions for a few...

The pencil-sharpening jutsu. The knot-tying jutsu. The hot plate jutsu. And the match lighting jutsu.

Four is a good number, and you'll stop there. You had to walk right past the 'basic three', Transformation, Duplication, and Replacement to get at them, but there's no point to reading the instructions to those. The academy instructors are going to go over them in detail anyway, so you might as well spend your time instead on reading the instructions for something that you aren't already set up to be spoon-fed.

Any student can come and look at these if they know they can, and you suspect that few read enough of the handouts to know it's an option or someone else would have already showed up. But they aren't taught at the academy, and by the time you make genin the only reason a competent Jounin sensei would have to teach such weak and combat-useless jutsu to their soldiers in training is as chakra control exercises. And even if that's the plan, there are better control exercises that actually have a lot more combat utility than reheating half your dinner.

You haven't figured out how to steal water or tree walking yet, since it's not really a jutsu, but those are on your list.

In the meanwhile.

What you're actually most interested in isn't training at all. Or, not unless you turn your head and squint until it looks like espionage and intelligence profiling practice. Or maybe scouting.

They said that kid's name was 'Uzumaki'.

There has to be something in this library related to that surname. He's surprised you once, and you don't like being surprised.

....

Of all things, your first strike of luck is in finding a book of romantic poetry written by an Uzumaki Mito. It's pretty old fashioned, and all around just old. If you think about it, the first Hokage's wife was also named Mito, though she of course married into the Senju. Original name... you don't know.

This may be her work, or it may be someone else who happens to bear the same name. No way to say for sure. There were probably a few people impressed enough with the First's wife to name their own daughter in her honor.

Leaving that aside, and checking closing time, you instead resort half-heartedly to a who's-who sort of a reference to ninja clans. The book doesn't contain anything classified, but it has some details. Name, general physical characteristics of clan members, bloodline talent, if any, is named though often not described, and a tendency towards certain roles are all noted in a very dry and dull informative text.

It also includes dates of the destruction and reformation of clans, dying out and dragging themselves out of death through luck and the skin of their teeth. There's a lot of clans that died off before the whole ninja-village as a concept came into existence. Not all of them bounced back. And going by this, there's a fair chunk of clans that didn't buy into the system that got obliterated early on in the formative years of ninja villages.

That makes sense. If you want to gather ninja clans to a greater central authority, and you know other people are watching your success, then you want to do two things. First, gather as many of those clans as possible to your control. Second, destroy the ones that don't fall in line before someone else can get their hooks in them. It's a give and take thing. People outside of a clan can train to become ninja in a way they never really could before, even if they're very seldom as good at it, and some clans have flourished greatly, where others withered under the new rules.

Very few of those officially restored themselves after being destroyed by villages, but you're on the right track.

Uzumaki are listed here. Extinct, as a clan, and the manner of extinction is listed just the same as every case in which Konoha actually knows how it happened. The cascading exotic flower-pollen allergy that had eliminated one particular clan was actually pretty hilarious to read about no matter how clinically and vague the details were presented.

Uzumaki, though, are unique in probably being the first clan to become extinct after joining a village, though they'd made their own. And they made a serious splash going down. Three major villages and four minor had unanimously launched a surprise attack and massacred every living thing inside of Uzushiogakure out of fear.

You have to check what Uzumaki were good at after reading that, and find yourself baffled to read that it was the sealing arts. That's the stuff that makes explosive tags and that you use to put your ninja laundry in scrolls for long missions, but nobody is going to kill people over being good at that with no other reason.

You're missing something here, you think. Besides, he can't be one of those Uzumaki if everyone inside...

... That doesn't account for people outside of that village when it was sieged, and ninja go out of the village on missions all the time. Often for a long time. And those aren't going to come back to a burned out husk just to wait for someone to hear that they're there and come to finish the job.

So it's not as surprising as you thought at first. The surviving ninja probably scattered in every direction, digging holes to pull in after them until people had forgotten them.

Mysteries unearthed, and with the library starting to close for the day, at least to genin and below, you slouch out and head back to the Uchiha quarter. The looks you get from the guards confirm that you're in trouble now, and your slouch turns into the saunter of a sly cat slinking home and whoever could have eaten the goldfish, it certainly was not meee....

You make a point of stopping by the cracker shop and take your time nibbling through dinner before you swagger the rest of the way home. It's not the best idea, but officially you have no way of knowing you're expected to be anywhere, and you're in charge of your own care and feeding. It's not like you hate everyone else in your clan, either. It's just that if the clan as a whole is a body, certain members stand out as the puckered and wrinkly assholes.

Of fucking course one of the elders is sitting in your home waiting for you when you get there, eyes burning and whirling in furious indignation. Some of them might have gotten bored, or legitimately had better things to do than to wait around to scold a child. This one in particular, though, he's had a bone to pick with you for a long while. Very big on tradition, respect, and everything being as is proper.

The fact that you're about as distantly related from the head family as you can be and still be a part of the clan at all, and your eyes outshine little Sasuke's by so much? Does not give the man a happy, not at all.

One of his flunkies grabs you as you step through the door and throws you to the ground in front of him, venting a little bit of his own frustration at being kept waiting.

You don't fight back. You get up as far as your knees, but no further. You might like acting out, but you do have perfectly good survival instincts too, and this guy has always struck you as the sort who would be more than pleased to aggressively correct a mistake in the world that doesn't fit his beliefs of how it should work.

If you push him far enough. Pissing him off from a distance, that's one thing, but you don't have the protection that'll let you get away with disrespect right to his face. No matter how hard it is, you think you'll seriously die, so you have to keep your mouth shut and not insult him or make any comment at all about adult diapers or sponge baths.

"You have allowed... two nobodies to make a fool of you." he says, very slowly and with knuckles slightly white around the top of his cane.

Well. If you suspected before, that's pretty much proof that there's a retired Uchiha, probably Jounin level, spying on your classes and reporting to at least this geriatric fuck.

And you bet it just burns him up inside. Even if it was another great clan, being shown up would sting at a guy like this just for the reputation factor. Since he's got to admit you've got real damn good potential, getting caught off guard or with dirty tricks by kids who aren't a part of a clan at all would make the humiliation an order of magnitute worse. You bet he doesn't like that you barely give a shit about it yourself, since you got a little petty vengeance. It's that they succeeded in any measure at all that he hates.

"Ah... well, about that." you say, scratching the back of your neck. "Shit happens?"

It's clearly not the right thing to say, as two fingers press against your spine and you hear the soft crackle of an electric punishment technique that someone stole a few hundred years ago and has seen some use through the clan ever since for the sake of discipline. There's some soft-hearted outsiders who make a fuss every now and again, but it's not like they can do anything about it. Until you become a ninja, a child of the clan is basically property of the clan and matters inside the clan are handled by the clan. As long as it's nothing that affects you outside of the clan, there's nothing to be done about it even after you make the grade and become both clan and village property. And inside the clan, punishments go through parents first, and after that elders. With no parents, it's just one particular elder with a brambly set of thorns up his ass and a hard-on for displaying authority.

The Hokage might be able to lay down the law from on high, but he's not going to start a civil war over it when it's just more or less the same thing as a thrashing, only more dramatic and actually less physically damaging, especially when the Hyuuga jump all over and beat the living shit out of anything that looks like it might even faintly resemble impugning on clan rights.

More painful than a beating though.

Oh holy shit is it more painful. Broken bones aint shit compared to getting all of your nerves set to yelling that shit hurts all at once. Your ears are ringing like an emergency siren, but you faintly make out something about 'disappointment' and 'better than best' and you need to find a way to convince this fucker to get the hell out of your house before you do something really stupid like spit in the guys face and give him an excuse to respond to the insult.

You can't think of a good way, so you resort to a dumb one, letting your self control slip beyond just twitching and spasming uncontrollably on the ground. You roll your eyes and let go of your iron-shod grip on your bladder, pretending to pass out and soil yourself.

Fucker sneers and gives you a thump with the cane as he limps out of your house, too disgusted by you to keep lecturing you on Uchiha pride. Hooray for pyrrhic victories. Now once you get up you're going to have to change and wash clothes.

You wait a good hour for that. For realism. And also because it's going to take a while before you can stand up again anyway, so you might as well be able to take more than a step before you go face-first into the floor again.

"Goat fucker." you eventually groan as you lurch to your feet.

Once you've showered, dressed, and mopped up the mess, you head to the kitchen. There's more instant food there, and after dinner...

You balance the pencil on the top of a cup, make the hand-signs, and focus.

Slowly, a curl of wood peels away from the tip and drops to the table. Then the jutsu stops and you catch your breath.

Okay.

Something not quite right with how you're moving the energy, there. You take another shot... and at the opposite end of the pencil, the eraser drops completely off and rolls onto the floor.

You scowl, realizing that unlike stealing jutsu this is going to take a while. More like modifying them once stolen. Swell.

You get no sleep that night, but that's fine. You make up for it in class, as the instructor dings one ignored piece of chalk after another off of your head until he gives up and just pretends you aren't sleeping.

You're going to get away with it too, because you can legitimately answer any questions from the curriculum while half asleep and the goat-fucker of an elder must have some small shred of decency, at least enough not to follow up with a punishment for what to all appearances is how you're recovering from the last punishment.

You drowse your way back awake toward the end of the day, and only come completely aware after class is dismissed. Was it all lecture today, or did you sleep through the class leaving for practicals and coming back in?

It takes a moment for you to decide you don't care, as your stomach sounds off. You didn't bring lunch today because you knew full well you weren't going to eat it, so...

You're dining out, you suppose. All right then. You had several packages of instant ramen through the night, so literally anything other than noodles will be fine... there's plenty of specialized eateries, and this is Konoha. Nobody is going to look around for your parents when you walk in waving money.

---

[ ] Dango.
[ ] Yakitori.
[ ] Barbecue.
[ ] Dumplings.
[ ] Fried rice.
[ ] Sausage-inna-bun.