Twisted Pinwheel

Picture eventually goes here.

Statblock of some nature would fit around here.

Jutsu:

Transformation, with variations.
Pencil-Sharpening Jutsu.
Knot-tying Jutsu.
Hot-Plate Cooking Jutsu.
Match-Light Fire Jutsu.
Body Flicker (Warning: May still be extremely dangerous and/or exhausting)

Friends Support characters and minions:

Minion: Ami the Purple. Mio's opinion: Dumb muscle type. Fights dirty with elbows and nails and teeth.
Minion: Shonen-Girl Fuki. Mio's opinion: Hits with sticks. Diligent, little initiative. Sword harder.
Minion's associate: Afro-girl Kasumi. Mio's opinion: That is NOT A PERM. Does medicine or something.
Masochist: Uzumaki Naruto. Mio's opinion: Grade D stubborn dumbass. Why the hell does his blood taste like soup stock?

 

What few probably appreciate is that while the Kyuubi killed a lot of ninja and did a little bit of infrastructural damage, it barely touched the village at all.

But it didn't need to touch to kill. Not in all cases. The civilians were fine, though more than a little traumatized, as were most of the reserve ninja forces and their families.

There was one clan, however, that was hit harder than everyone else still in the village combined. Ironically, it was the clan selected as the last line of defense for the civilians, as the ninja they were most familiar with, in charge of the village police services.

The Uchiha.

In a further mark of cruel irony, it was in the end their own cherished bloodline that did the most damage. Most of the adults were shinobi, and had through one means or another discovered how to awaken their Sharingan, the focus of their bloodline. More importantly, it had always occured in a fight they could theoretically win, after which that trauma came to an end and allowed them to work out how to turn their eyes off.

The Kyuubi attack was not something that could be easily defeated. Though experienced shinobi could put the situation aside to at least function, many members of the clan were closer to civilians than anything else. Hatred flowed from the tailed beast in great waves, drowning the village in oceans of murderous intent, paralyzing and smothering the Uchiha as eyes that had never before awoken bled suddenly red.

And left them with an understanding of exactly how little they could do about it. Nothing. Nothing at all, as they trembled and gasped for air, desperate for anything to escape. Some few of the adults managed to force their eyes to obey, deactivating them through simple and uncommon force of will, before collapsing to the ground, shuddering under the force of a hatred that would be seared and burned into their minds for all of time.

Others turned the power of their eyes inward, seeking and finding a way to flee the oppressive hatred, and left behind no more than husks that breathed for a time as their hearts slowly faltered. The rest found more bloody methods of escape.

But the true tragedy was the children, for while the adults often understood their awakened Sharingan, and could activate and deactivate them at will, the rest could at least struggle under the general understanding of how it worked, and possibly even succeed. Most often, however, the children scarcely understood what the Sharingan was, much less how it functioned.

Of all the children below the age of five, there were two survivors.

The first was Sasuke, second son of the head of the clan, by dint of a wedding gift to his mother. The crib was a small masterpiece of seal design, protecting the child within from many things, and the hatred of the Kyuubi flowed around it like a hollow stone in a river. Sasuke slept through the entirety of the attack, from start to finish, eyes peacefully shut in every sense.

The second survivor was a little more complicated. Mostly because when the Kyuubi appeared, through sheer coincidence of timing, the mother had not quite yet given birth. Her water broke with the first howl, and her chakra flooded into the infant as its own coils stirred, beginning to slowly drip-by-drop replace that chakra with its own in the miraculous process of birth.

That chakra was mingled with the pure and undivided hatred of the Kyuubi, from the moment her waters broke to the final push of a rapid, painful, and unusually bloody birth. And as the Kyuubi was defeated, and that oppressive chakra and hatred dispersed, that child took in its first breath, howling out proof of birth and life, and that it had not been killed by the Kyuubi.

Warped, and twisted, perhaps. But the girl was nonetheless alive, even as her eyes opened in proof that they all but glowed with a red nearly the same shade as the blood smeared across her whole tiny body.

The Uchiha took pride in early activators of the Sharingan, their personal ninja geniuses, to the point where an outsider could venture that there was no age too early to show it off. An outsider would be completely wrong.

"Gods." the midwife says, trembling from both the residual weight of the Kyuubi's hatred and what she's looking at, voice a quiet and horrific thrill. "Gods. Can she... turn it off? Is there any way someone else can...?"

"Not and be sure that she can turn it back on again." the mother sighs, weak from enduring both the waves of foreign chakra and the bloodloss.

"Gods." the midwife repeats, softly. "She'll... it's trouble. Children forget, should forget, are meant to forget easily. She'll remember even this conversation forever, even if she doesn't understand yet. It will be years before she can turn it off on her own, and the brain, the mind, it's not prepared for memories to stay..."

She shakes her head somberly.

"If it's a choice between a risk of never activating the Sharingan again and a risk of potentially irreperable mental stress and damage, then many of the Uchiha clan have lived perfectly fulfilling lives without awakening their doujutsu!" the midwife suggests, knowing that failing to awaken those eyes if it is at all possible is something close to death in the opinion of the clan.

"You know much of our bloodline, and you have always served our clan discreetly and with the greatest care." the mother said, voice soft. Then her gaze rises into red red red and the hypnotic whirling of tomoe stop the midwife in her tracks. "But I do not require your opinion on this matter."

Only later would the midwife consider that she could remember very little of the birth, clouded in a sort of mental haze. But then, that was hardly abnormal. In the first place, delivery was always a hectic matter, and delivering a child in the middle of a biju assault even more so.

Besides, she had the documentation confirming the birth of Uchiha Mio right here, and no real reason to explore her memories any further.

---

[ ] You are four, and have just been convinced to turn your sharingan off for the first time. It's almost painful, and you don't see why you should bother. "But this means that I can leave the house sometimes now, right?" All the walls are exactly the same since you first saw them and you hate it. Mother smiles, wearily.
[ ] You are five, and you hate being known as a prodigy. You don't see what's so special about something you've had since birth, but you can't say that either. "I'm bored of this district, and everyone in it." Who cares if the other kids are jealous? You'll find your own fun, even if it means breaking the rules.
[ ] You are six, and your opinion about being entered in the ninja academy was never asked. Duty duty duty to the clan.... "You were expecting a transfer from the civilian school. But it was I, Mio, Grand Demon King of the Uchiha!" Sasuke quietly hides his face behind his hands and pretends to have no idea who you are.

 

You don't really have a choice about going to the Academy, and can probably count yourself lucky that the clan elders started in lightly, trying to guilt you into agreeing by talking about what your poor dead mother would have wanted.

Stupid woman. Stupid, wretched, prideful fool of a woman. It's not unusual for bloodline carriers to be mistrustful of medics at large, ninja who can easily tamper with, steal, or possibly replicate their prized achievements, but that doesn't mean that when one of the few you do trust says 'this sickness is beyond my ability' you should just quietly waste away at home instead of going to a hospital!

Not even a year, only a scattering of months after she died, and they've already begun hounding you to do your part as a prodigy of the clan. Saying no isn't an option, even without a parent to lean on they'll find ways to pressure you into doing what they want, and you aren't interested in being assigned a caretaker to keep a tight grip on your leash. That doesn't mean you can't do what they say how you want to. They're pushing their boundaries by not giving you even a year to grieve, but that means you have some allowances for acting out.

You barely wait for the instructor to call for you for an introduction, then kick open the door. You're supposed to walk out in front of everyone and politely introduce yourself as a powerful but demure maiden of a noble clan.

Instead, you cartwheel into position in front of the class, stop in a pose, and snap your fingers to point your thumb at your face, red eyes whirling.

"You were expecting some civilian transfer? Too bad! It was I, Mio, highest devil-king of the Uchiha!" you bark.

Little Sasuke grits his teeth and sulks, staring out the window.

"Huh? Do you know this girl, Sasuke?" one voice stands out from the murmuring.

"I don't!" he insists, snappishly.

"Just... take a seat." the old and greying instructor sighs, waving you along as he begins the lecture.

You don't really even need to bother listening, since you read through all of the books once with your eyes burning actively. That information is saved, and the instructor is just rehashing some of it. You take your seat anyway and pretend to be listening enough to catch questions in case you're called out.

They say that having the Sharingan active for too long messes with your mind, in a similar fashion to how some Jounin have claimed that shadow clones give you something resembling a hangover if you dispel more than one at once. As such, between those unsubstantiated rumors and the mild chakra drain, while the clan takes great pride in their eyes they don't really use them much. A definite victory button to be used in combat or times of emergency, or as a tool to be used for a specific purpose and then put away again to spare the fragile Uchiha psyche.

You say that that is bullshit and that they are pussying out, turns of phrase that mother would be upset to hear as part of your vocabulary, even if she wouldn't ultimately do anything about it. Before she went and died in her sleep, anyway, leaving you alone in an empty house. What they're so worried about is the idea that the brain can only hold so many memories, and then it'll pop, like a water balloon forced to contain a volume so great that it rips itself apart.

It's ridiculous. Occasionally even a completely untrained civilian can be born with perfect recall, and they didn't have any of the troubles theorized. Personally, you think that the historical cases of overuse that get pointed to are actually either coincidental unrelated mental issues flaring up, or entirely faked to take advantage of that rumor.

The fact of the matter is simple. There's no difference between having the Sharingan active and inactive except that it drains against your chakra to stay active. If there were more, then even having it mostly only recording the back of his headband or eyelid, the infamous Kakashi...

... might not be the best example, considering his own host of issues.

In any case, the question is what you're used to. If you're in the habit of forgetting things as quickly as you see them, then of course remembering them in perfect detail feels different. It's the same for you, but in reverse, so used to knowing exactly what you'd seen that you kept having to look back at things again and again to reassure yourself that your memories weren't lying. The sort of treachery that you had never before experienced, and which wasn't easy to work through. You would almost compare it, with a chill crawling down your spine, to hints of senility.

It also doesn't help that while they keep their mouths shut about it, there's a large number of the ninja and civilian population that genuinely do not like the Sharingan, and by association those who bear it. You haven't bothered to look into why, only reluctantly admitted that it's a problem, since you don't actually have a choice about whether or not you feel like attending the academy, outside of the Uchiha district. You have some amount of talent and you have the Sharingan, and so your only options are service as a ninja or service as a ninja followed by enlistment in the police corps. The clan will allow nothing else.

One stifling grip of circumstance after another, closing around your throat.

On the plus side, the sharingan can memorize ninjutsu as easily as facts and images. The first one you stole was the body flicker, from a ninja who was in a hurry and careless about who was watching.

You could have died when you tested it. You probably would have died, if it weren't for the constant drain of the Sharingan working your chakra reserves from birth like a flexed muscle. As is, you'd tried it out slightly after breakfast, and woke up in time to drag yourself home for dinner and pretend you'd worn yourself out playing instead of nearly killing yourself with ninjutsu practice you idiot. It's been a while since then, so... you probably wouldn't be out as long. Might not pass out at all, though you doubt you'd be up for anything after it.

It would probably be better to wait a while longer before trying it again, since you're in no hurry to take a nap in another mud puddle.

You also stole the academy standard transformation technique, though, and have cheerfully mutilated your own variation to just conceal your eyes. It's not going to do shit to keep them hidden if even an elite chuunin feels like taking a close look, but you can at least walk through a bunch of civilians without them getting on edge about red eyes.

You haven't stolen any other techniques. Yet. You've been forced to admit that this might just not be safe until you have the chakra reserves to use them, and so you instead focus on keeping active and training your body.

...

It's a while, but you're eventually all ushered outside to the training grounds, a mass of cheerful six year olds, and told that now you're going to be punching each other for fun.

It's not in those words, the instructor instead insisting that it's just a test to see who stands where in basic taijutsu, but naturally, none of the class is upset about this. Two at a time you're paired up in circles and set to fight, either to surrender or forcing the loser out of bounds. It's boys with boys and girls with girls as much as possible...

But it looks like you're the odd girl out, matched up with a brightly smiling blonde boy who tries his best to make sure you know that he's not going to hurt you as he falls into a sloppy stance.

"Begin!" the instructor calls, and then immediately gets distracted by biting and hair-pulling that needs to be corrected.

The kid you're matched with goes into a highly telegraphed punching lunge and you can see every bit of where he's going and what he's going to try to do. You move his fist slightly to the side with your left hand and bury your right in the side of his chest, an audible crunch sounding beneath your knuckles as you vent just a little bit of your gathered frustration.

He drops to his knees as you step back, gasping and clutching his side as you pose with your arms crossed.

"Foo. That blow has cracked three of your ribs." you say, extending the correct number of fingers. "It must be painful, but you aren't in serious danger from just that. Surrender and ask to go to the hospital."

"I... I won't!" the boy declares, rising shakily to his feet again, returning to his terrible ready stance. "I won't surrender. To win, you're going to have to force me out of the ring, because I won't back down."

---

[ ] This does not please Mio.
[ ] This does not displease Mio.
[ ] This slightly pleases Mio.
[ ] This greatly pleases Mio.

 

Frankly?

You're a little pleased with the boy's resolve. Not because you're impressed with him, but because the longer he's standing and the instructor hasn't called things decided, the longer you get to toy with him.

It's just enough to get you to smile slightly.

"You're going to stand and fight? How useless."

You tap his fist aside again and lightly slap his broken ribs, leaving him stumbling to the ground and gasping.

"You see? You aren't-"

The boy interrupts by flailing into a back-hand. You squat slightly and rap a couple of your knuckles against his cracked ribs again.

"Ghnargh!" is the closest approximation of the noise he makes.

It's a little cruel. Actually, it's very cruel, but you can't help but feel a perverse enjoyment.

"Is that all?" you ask, as he pants for breath on his knees, one hand in the dirt and the other across his chest. "Not a drop of skill, and you're going to face the devil of the Uchiha? Your willpower must border on masochism. How useless. Surrender is an option, you know?"

"I won't." the boy grunts, wobbling back up to his feet.

He's smiling, still. Why's he smiling at you? You're just going to hurt him more for it, and he should have realized that by now. Stupid boy. Or he really is a masochist. You're still a little pleased with the opportunity to vent, but you're starting to get annoyed with the boy himself.

"Moron. Do you see my eyes?" you say, pointing them out. "With eyes like these, I can see everything you do before you do it. I'm faster and stronger than you too. That in account, even if you had a lot of taijutsu training I'd be the obvious winner, and you clearly don't have any. I'll be happy to break as many of your ribs as you like, if-"

He moves again, fist lunging for your face and where you're already ready to catch his wrist in a display of superiority that the idiot can't possibly miss.

"I told you, it's use-" you start in, pausing as you see him do something after you catch his wrist a moment before you catch his wrist.

He opens his fist into a puffing palm and dust flies out, stinging your eyes. You shriek, slightly pained and furious and most importantly of all no longer having fun as you lash out with fingers slightly bent and bleed him, drawing lines of red across his face and your hand with your fingernails.

Your vision is blurry at the moment through dust and tears, but you've immediately switched modes from hurting him because it's funny to hurting him because you're pissed.

The next few moments are a blur in more than just vision, but when the instructor finally pulls the two of you apart you had your arms around the boy's neck from behind, slowly strangling him as you bit at his head.

You finally get his name but spend more focus on picking golden threads out from between your teeth, trying to place...

.... the taste in your mouth is coppery and salty, but it also tastes like food. Like miso, or almost beef broth...

...

You lick a trace off your finger to confirm that he doesn't just have stupid ideas about how to wash his hair, and feel like you should boggle a little. He's named after a noodle topping and his blood tastes like ramen.

That kid gives you a headache. He's waving as you stalk off to wash your face and get the dust out of your eyes. He'd better not think you're friends.

Once everything's settled down you're divided into boys and girls and split up along the most unfair division of labor ever as the boys get sent to run through an obstacle course and the girls are sent to pick flowers.

You're sent to pick flowers.

Flowers.

You quietly plot the death of the woman in charge of this class who seems to see absolutely nothing wrong with telling you to go pick a few flowers instead of doing anything meaningful.

Wait. Maybe your temper is getting the better of you.

Some flowers have medicinal purposes, right? And others, as a girl's shrieking from nearby reminds you, are toxic. You were told to just pick some you like, but maybe it's actually a test in disguise? Sorting out potential medics and poison-users from the idiots.

If that's the case, then you'll delay the execution.

---

[ ] ??

 

Alright, poison.

You haven't made a serious study of toxic flowers, but there were a few mentioned in the textbooks.... none of them are immediately obvious in this field, though, and the majority of the class is just going with a basis of 'these are pretty' as they ravage the delicate balance of wildflowers and weeds. You consider that and start walking.

You know of at least one place where there's a poisonous flower. Or so you heard. Tracking that down will clue you in on what you're looking for.

You follow the swearing to a purple-haired girl with a red face.

"She should be expelled, the brat!" purple seethes.

Her invecture is agreed with by a girl with short red shonen-hero hair with matching shonen-hero scarf and...

"Did you paint a shuriken into your afro?" you're forced to ask. That can't be natural.

"It's a peeeerm!" the girl howls back.

That's not what you asked and you swallow your disgust with the afro-girl.

"Whatever." you sigh. "I hear you have poisonous flowers. Hand them over."

"Why should-" shonen hero starts to say, confirming that she has them and drawing your attention to her hand.

You step forward and pivot around her, that wrist caught. A little bit of pressure from your thumb opens her fingers with a squealing spasm, and you pluck them away from her grip.

"Yoink." you say simply, and turn.

You're just in time to see your field of vision become overwhelmed by Purple's fist, and feel a wet crunch as your head rocks backward, nose broken and eyes stinging.

The fuck is wrong with you today? You're zero for two on countering cheap shots, and that is bullshit. Honestly, though, purple seems sort of shocked herself, though you can't tell whether it's that there's blood all over your face now or that you're unmoved by just taking the hit. Taijutsu of some kind is probably her focus?

"And now, the shitstorm." you say, eyes blazing and whirling.

Thirty seconds later, you've thoroughly proven that you can beat the crap out of these girls three on one, they're moaning on the ground and clutching sore spots. Meanwhile, you crunch your nose back into place, wincing slightly at the pain, and examing the slightly crumpled flowers more closely.

"Crap." you grunt, tossing them aside. "These only have poison in the root system."

"They what." Purple snaps, somehow standing again and with her eyes blazing.

"Not that I'm not impressed, but shouldn't you be pissing yourself with blood right now?" you ask. You're pretty sure, after all, that you just did a number on her kidneys.

"And shouldn't you be fixing your make-up for your shift at work? Your tea-house only opens after six, so you don't have much time after school lets out."

That's cute. She's insinuating you're a thinly-disguised whore. She's all bark and no bite, but cute.

You did not expect to accidentally meet someone you liked today. Even if it is only a little. She doesn't like you, of course, but that's more in line with what you were going for. You can't do anything about how the clan sees you, flip flopping between upholding you as a prodigy like the clan head's elder son and trying to forget that you're more of a visible prodigy than his younger, but this is outside the clan walls. The Uchiha still have influence, but if other people dislike you it's on your own merits and actions and not because you're a part of an infamous ninja clan and they feel like they have to at least pretend.

Besides, you prefer being disliked anyway. It's more satisfying.

"Listen, idiot, you think I'm looking for poison for no reason? We're being tested." you say instead of anything else running through your mind, deciding that you are going to back your personal conclusion on this one to the hilt.

"On how well we can arrange flowers." Afro girl says, slowly.

"That too." you say, waving a hand idly as you wipe the blood off with your other. "You don't seriously think that's all, though, right? Some flowers also have uses for medicine or assassination...."

You trail off, shaking the blood off your hand, and then stalk without a word to a little patch of something that's caught your magic eyes.

"Suzuran!" you say, and are pleased that the other girls recognize it. Pretty and deadly, you don't touch it with your bare skin. Even drinking water that's been in a vase with suzuran in it has killed the unwary. Purple's jaw clicks firmly shut as all three put a hand over their mouths, the hell is up with that. "But anyway, we're being tested to see if we have interests in traditional kunoichi fields other than spying and looking pretty too, you know. You might want to find something interesting yourself."

Satisfied, and seeing that nothing else is jumping out at you particularly on the basis of being poisonous, so you shift to flower language to finish up. Suzuran accompanied by a pair of orange lilies and a white anemone... 'My vengeance will be truly sweet'.

Sensei smiles slightly and takes your sprig of flowers with a napkin, but doesn't comment on it. You guess she's just going to make a private note for the academy files.

That done, handouts that nobody seems interested in actually reading are handed out, and class is dismissed.

Nobody else is reading their papers that you can see, but you only need to flip through yours once and slowly skim to acquire the information. Starts off with a lecture in print about proper behavior for academy students, so you can understand the lack of interest, and moves on to suggest that tutelage will be pretty hands off. There are requirements that every candidate for genin must be able to reach, and the instructors will help you reach them, but it seems like they aren't obligated to go too far out of their way, either.

In counterpoint, there's a note that as academy students you are allowed to use the shinobi libraries to some degree, and in smaller print that you're allowed to learn whatever E-rank jutsu or theory you want on your own time. Anything higher than that is restricted, and you can't get at it just by flashing a student identification. You guess that makes sense. And that aside, trying to pull off something too far out of your league probably means that they can note your cause of death as stupidity.

You stretch, and consider if you really want to head back to a house that's either empty or has elders waiting to shame you for letting, while they wouldn't put it in exactly these words, clanless scum with no particular quality or advantage get the better of you twice in one day.

Then you saunter off to the library, where you can linger for a while and force any lectures to happen on your own schedule.

Since it's a ninja library, most of it is for ninjutsu. Not all, though. You wave disinterestedly at one of the keepers.

---

[ ] You could go with the traditional favorite and read about the ninjutsu. There's one to sharpen your pencil, one to tie shoelaces, one to... most E-rank ninjutsu are like that, and the academy tests on the three basic and 'best'.
[ ] Maybe look at Genjutsu. You haven't figured it out yet, but you're supposed to be able to use your eyes to cast strong illusions. You haven't figured that out yet, though, and who would expect you to use entirely unrelated genjutsu?
[ ] Not much you can do with Taijutsu without a teacher, but you can at least glance through the theory and some basic kata, even if the instructors are only going to test on konoha standard.
[ ] Weaponry isn't really going to be covered in class at all, though, aside from throwing practice. If you want to get physical, that might be a better plan.
[ ] Seals? Those make the boom tags, right? You like you some 'splosions, yes you do. Looks like instructions for actually making a standard exploding tag is forbidden to academy students, which is unfair, but all the theory-stuff is just right there.
[ ] It looks like half the Icha Icha series is stashed in between anatomical medical scrolls. Restricted for purchase to age 18 and up, but fuck the police, you know them for a guarantee to be dicks since they're family or you can maybe just actually review anatomy in both the medical and 'stab here' sense?
[ ] ??

 

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.

 

You're a little tempted for dango and tea, which is an acceptable snack, but you need food. Sweets aren't going to do it, even if Head's Eldest Brat Itachi has apparently without realizing forced dango and tea to be considered an acceptable Uchiha meal.

Way you hear it told, it's just about the only thing he eats at all if the Head's Wife doesn't literally tie her son down for a family meal.

You genuinely have no idea how he is still alive if that's the case, but you'll chalk it down to genetics and possibly a stolen digestion jutsu of some kind. You wouldn't put it past him to do so, or to medically experiment on his own stomach to convert the dango into the nutrients that are actually required after the fact.

Right now, though, you want something that fulfills certain requirements. It has to be cheap, since while you have a stipend it's only going to stretch so far. You'd prefer it to be filling. And ideally, it will contain meat.

That leaves you a lot of options, but the best is probably...

Not even a roadside stall or vendor, but a movable cart, set up somewhere a little different every day, manned by a heavily bearded and heavily framed man with jovial eyes. And trouble talking. You're pretty sure that a couple ninja keep an eye on him out of casual suspicion of foreigners, but since he's still around they haven't found anything, and so there's probably nothing to find.

You ring the bell to get his attention and wave money.

"Skipped lunch, Tiny." you say, with no further explanation.

"Hah. Then like the buddha, I make you one with everything, yes?" Tiny responds, fishing a fire-blackened and cracked sausage out of the storage case and onto a split bread bun, then layering sauces and finely minced plant matter pinched between fingertips the size of your wrists, before finishing it off with crumbled white and molten yellow cheese, poured over the mounded top of what most of the village would hesitate to call a meal.

It's a little different from what you're used to, and no less than three times as fatty and five times as greasy as a normal dish. The first time you ate one of these you could only keep it all down for an hour and then were initially convinced you needed to go to the hospital when it came back out. Until you recalled the layer of red sauce that had gone over first, anyway, and put together that it wasn't internal bleeding.

And later on, the cheese passed through your intestines. For the most part, there's not a lot of dishes in Konoha that call for cheese, and those that do typically only want a small amount. The big dairy product is milk and flavored milk, fluids which pass through more easily than the thicker and more congealed product of cheese, and so...

You were unprepared for the results, in the end.

The sausage in a bun is not a meal for the frail or faint of heart. Much like poison resistance training, you think that if you eat this too often then you'll die, but if you don't eat it often enough then you'll start to lose the resistance to the worst effects. Once in a while is best.

It's not like it tastes bad once you get used to it, either.

Food in hand, you eat slowly as you wander around... today the cart is on the edge of what passes for a 'bad part of town' in Konoha. That's only by comparison, since there's a lot of towns where the Konoha slums would look like a paradise.

The worst that can be said about it is that this section of town is where a lot of the orphans and red-light workers live, in an uncomfortable juxtaposition. Thanks to the police force's tireless work, though, crime as a whole only barely exists, where through the rest of the village it's virtually unknown. Grafitti, vandalism, and some relatively harmless swindler's street games. The Uchiha police force stomps down hard on anything more than that.

There are street gangs too, of course, but as far as you've been able to tell they don't have the slightest idea of what to do aside from sometimes beat each other up for pocket change.

Distant rhythmic thumps suggest that one such scrap is going on right now, and you're bored enough to go have a closer look. If you were older then you might just ignore that you aren't actually a part of the police force and arrest everyone involved for giggles. The actual police would probably play along.

It's the Uchiha way. And you have to make a few obvious shows of corruption in some ways if you want to use them as a counterpoint and 'but it's not that bad' in others or the civilians will go looking for where the corruption can actually be found. After all, the Uchiha are a ninja clan, and nearly every member of the police force has been a ninja and what that leads to in the minds of civilians is too often just 'paid killer'.

The phrase 'fox guarding henhouse' doesn't even begin to cover it, and even if a small portion of the population would offer the benefit of the doubt if it was suggested that the Uchiha Police weren't corrupt at all, most would laugh the idea out of town.

The best thing to do was to keep the 'corruption' a perfectly visible and mostly harmless abuse of authority, so that nobody got any ideas about maybe bribing a cop to look the other way for a while. After all, those tyrants would happily come down on any of their own just as hard, if given an excuse.

You're pretty sure that that's an approach the Uchiha clan use for a lot of things, including diplomacy, shopping, and love lives.

You lick the last traces of spicy tomato paste off your fingers and toss the paper aside before getting a closer look at the fracas.

... Isn't that Purple and the Shonen-hero girl? Former's split her knuckles a bit and the latter has a bit of wood that's sort of held a little like a sword but mostly like the beating stick it is. They're fighting with four boys, a little older.

Someone yells something about 'Ami and her boyfriend' and Shonen-hero girl's body visibly twitches. Then she smacks her stick into kneecaps.

Honestly this is pretty even as far as you can tell, though there's naturally a little numbers advantage. It'll take a while for things to be decided, unless someone intervenes... looks like the boys are expecting reinforcements. Ah, urchin turf wars.

If you don't get involved, you guess your classmates will wind up being roughed up and lose some pocket money. That's all right, builds character. Boring though.

---

[ ] This is nooot Mio's problem. And so Mio will find amusement elsewhere. There's still three more E-rank jutsu to work on.
[ ] You have dibs on certain people vis a vis the places to put them in. Besides, when it comes to punching faces, variety is the spice of life.
[ ] You know the transformation technique, and now's a good time to use it! After all, coming to the rescue would just ruin your reputation, but you can easily get the brats scattering if you're a huuuge stray dog.
[ ] ??

 

Well... free entertainment isn't easily passed by. You take a seat on top of a trash can and watch.

The girls cover each other pretty well, to be honest. One on one, it's quickly clear that this would be a loss. In a sort of team brawl, though, they're more than the sum of their parts. Not really any training, but it looks like they've been fighting back to back often enough that a punch that would get through to Shonen Hero girl gets slapped aside by purple Ami, and a kick that would have hit her in turn gets knocked out of the way with the stinging punishment of Shonen's bit of wood.

You make some rude commentary, but aren't entirely focused on what you're saying as you think. If you need to review the advice or exact insults then you can take a few minutes later. For now...

Well, there are different kinds of ninjas just as much as there are different degrees of civilians. For these two, it's pretty obvious that they aren't in the academy just out of pity and to make up the numbers, like some orphans are. It all depends on where the orphans come from, really.

Ninja die all the time, after all. Sometimes they have kids first. And even if it's only a few generations back, civilians with ninja in their family tree are very different from civilians of civilian stock, though it's more and more unlikely to actually find such a thing in a ninja village. And it's a truism that every generation tends to outstrip the previous by a bit, possibly something to do with the difference between parents who use chakra and who don't affecting the chakra of child.

Of course, that usually takes a lot longer than the villages as a system have been around, of similar talents training and intermarrying with similar talents, before an actual bloodline appears. As far as you know, anyway. Medical experiments and current technology might be able to speed that along, you guess.

You applaud a blow that leaves one of the boys on the ground clutching himself and gasping for a minute.

In any case, it's likely that there's ninja hiding in those family trees. Where precisely doesn't matter, but it's not like pure civilians go out and get in fights at the age of six, even if they are orphans. And they don't last long in the fight if they do.

In counterpoint, these two... it's kind of a shame that unless you have an official clan backing special requests, genin teams are selected on a basis of grades and not by who already works well together. Team-

You're interrupted from your thoughts, mid-insult, by a foot in the back that sends you rolling across the ground before you come up to your feet.

Right. The boys did look like they expected reinforcements. Three more, and they came from behind you, instead of the open alley in the other direction that you were keeping your eyes on. Neat. Now you've been forced into the conflict.

You still have a clear path to escape, but that gives entirely the wrong idea.

"Am I, Mio, going to have to choke a bitch?" you ask pointedly.

You catch an incoming fist and hold it in place.

"Because I, Mio, feel that there has not been anywhere near enough bitch choking lately." you continue.

"Crap, she's a police brat!" one of the little thugs yelps as your eyes start to whirl.

"Three guesses who's not going to get arrested for brutality~" you half-sing as the beating commences.

Back to back, Purple and the Shonen Girl can hold their own against a greater number with roughly equivalent ability. Alone, as long as you can see all of your enemies, you can destroy them. All you really need is to be strong and fast enough to keep up with your eyes.

One by one, the miniature thugs wind up stacked into a groaning pile, and you dust your hands off, blood pulsing hotly. Ami and the shonen girl are tense, but you don't see any attacks to start countering. Yet. Honestly, either one of them could make the first blow.

You smirk, silently inviting it. And for a moment, Ami seems perfectly willing to throw the first punch, and you can almost see the lunging motion starting to fade into being.

And then shonen-girl remarkably displays a marginally cooler head.

"You cut our training short." she says, a little crossly, and the image of Ami's attack steams away into nothing as she crosses her arms and 'hmph's.

"That so?" You say, idly.

"Might not have noticed, but not everyone has a big clan to provide personal instruction just for free." Ami remarks, snidely waving her hands. "So, what are you going to do about sticking your nose into someone else's practice uninvited, huh?"

That's cute. They're trying to ham-fistedly coerce you into helping. It's like baby's first ultimatum.

---

[ ] They've just told you a funny joke. Laugh and leave.
[ ] You were going to look for an excuse to punch them anyway, so...
[ ] They're going to need to make you an offer here. Like they said, they can't demand training for freeeeee....
[ ] Invent some sort of 'meaningful' task that could pass as training to get rid of them. (write in?)

 

"... or what?" you say, pointedly. "Don't get me wrong, it's adorable that you think you can strong-arm me into doing anything I don't feel like doing, but with number three with the 'fro switched out for a bit of wood I don't see you pushing this by force going even as well as last time."

You grin widely, to the point where it stretches out into a rictus that you could call a leer as shonen-girl's teeth grit.

Honestly, you could just make them learn jutsu and steal them on demonstration in traditional Uchiha fashion, but the problem with stealing jutsu with the sharingan is that you learn them exactly as they're being used. When you stole the transformation technique it took you much longer than you will ever admit to force it to do anything but turn you into a duplicate of an academy teacher. Seriously, that crap went on long after the joke wore thin.

In order to do anything else with the basic transformation technique you effectively had to un and re learn it and you honestly feel that you wasted much more time on it than if you'd just learned the technique from scratch and then altered it the way you eventually did.

This completely leaves aside the fact that you're left sitting on your ass and picking your nose until someone else learns the technique that you then have to un-and-re-learn after stealing.

.... Well, if you want to bother doing more with it than using it exactly as it's shown. Jutsu stealing isn't the perfect bloodline like the clan would have you insist, but if you're going to just grab a one-off jutsu to use like a thrown kunai and then ignore forever, or steal so many hundreds of techniques that you have a pretty good one for just about any situation, then it's still all right.

Just not so good for training. None of the exercising your own ninja magic with failed attempts, and it'll probably take other students your age longer than a single all-nighter to get an E-rank trick like the pencil sharpener down.

"So you can't really lay down 'this is how it'll be', because frankly I'll just ignore you. Or laugh. Maybe punch you. Some combination of those. Which means you get nowhere with a broken stick and have to use the carrot instead." You say idly. "Like you said, nothing's for free."

You move your thumb around the tips of your first two fingers in a deliberate motion that signifies 'money'. Ami's face purples to match her hair, and she sucks in a sharp, deep breath, probably getting ready to yell something about clans and money and other meaningless things before shonen-girl drags her slightly to the side.

The conversation that the girls hold is in hissing mutters just slightly too soft for you to hear. You're going to guess that most of it is cooling down Ami's hot head.

"We've got... family discount at the steamed bun place." Ami says, baffling you as your immediate assumption that one or both of them were also orphans is nixed.

Though technically, being part of a clan, you can't legally be considered an orphan as long as even one other member of the clan exists so doesn't really matter that your mom's dead. Legally speaking.

"Well, that's a start." you say, dubiously. "But it's going to take more than buying me a discount plate every now and again."

"You can spend your own money, I'm offering the discount you-!" Ami starts to snap, before shonen-girl clamps a hand down on her mouth from behind.

You scratch your jaw and pretend not to notice Ami's angrily flailing arms.

Well, on the plus side, you won't be lacking for entertainment. Even better, if you do this properly, then they're paying you for something they could have gotten for free. This could come back to bite you if they ever read that hand-out, but so far the odds of that are looking pretty long.

"I already ate, but I suppose I can pick up snacks for later." you decide aloud, letting the comedy duo lead the way to a dumpling stall you haven't been to before...



... Ami's sister isn't the owner, but the assistant, and you quickly realize you have no idea how to approach or interact with the much older woman. She and Ami are at least ten years apart, if not more, so... are there other siblings too? And parents obviously.

What concerns you is that in her presence you have an unsettled feeling in your guts, like you've eaten bad sushi, and you find yourself edging slightly out of the way and out of her line of sight, with the impression that you're either about to swallow your own tongue or have it swell up in your mouth to choke you.

Bafflingly, you've temporarily turned into a shrinking wallflower and can't quite shake it off until you've left the stall behind and set up a little play-park picnic. Luckily, it looks like the prospective minions didn't notice your floundering. Unluckily, it looks like the big sister did and was amused for some reason and you don't even know why.

Not for certain. It's much too early for the first fiendish claws of puberty to be settling in. Even with ninja kids developing a bit quicker all around, the better to be able to make use of their talents faster, you should at least have a couple more years before you have to enter that field of battle. Even so, you're vaguely aware of the messy details and that there are girls who Like Girls, and if you can say nothing else about Ami's sister it's that she is visibly and extremely a woman who catches notice, even if it's in a way that most ninja diverge from. Even kunoichi who make their beauty the focus of things. The possibility rattles you.

Of course it could also be that the whites of her eyes are black and your subconscious doesn't have the slightest idea of what to make of that and keeps trying to figure out if she's an assassin or spy in disguise. That possibility is both more and less comfortable, for different reasons.

Ami grumbles for several minutes about the price of meat buns and how this is going to affect her allowance until shonen girl seems to conclude that she has to start things off.

"So?" she asks pointedly.

You tap your chin slightly, drawing it out for a bit, before giving in.

"You probably remember them testing to see if you were developed enough to use chakra without hurting yourself when you were admitted into the academy... or maybe not, they slipped it in with a normal physical exam." you say. "That's because the most important thing overall is chakra. Having enough to use, and being able to use it well."

"Huh? They haven't even mentioned it in class yet..." Ami says doubtfully.

"I read ahead. But anyway, it's because it's the universal factor."

You shrug and raise three fingers.

"The three disciplines are Gen, Nin, and Taijutsu, but those are broken up into different parts. A ninjutsu specialist needs to understand their own chakra more than anything else, and more in depth than other fields. You need to work out the elemental nature of your chakra before you can really get started in elemental techniques. Ninjutsu shows more than anything else the importance of chakra training. How fast you can get hand-signs off is important too, but if you practice enough you're supposed to be able to do away with those, or at least get it down to one."

You lower one finger, continuing on.

"The other two aren't as obvious. In Genjutsu people will talk forever about how important it is to have a keen mind and understand how your targets are seeing things, in order to disguise that they're under an illusion at all. But it doesn't matter how smart you are if you don't have the chakra reserves to put them under that illusion, keep them under it when they try to escape, and the practice to maintain it as long as you need to without slipping up. In Taijutsu, the most important thing is having a strong body, because you only use Chakra to amplify what you already have, so it's best to improve your physical condition. But chakra still lets you make yourself stronger and faster, and if you're better there you can do it more and longer. Considering there's only so far you can push yourself before you get through all your growth spurts or you might accidentally cripple yourself in the long term..."

"So it's better to focus on chakra and chakra control now." Shonen girl says, considering the breakdown.

"That and when it comes down to it you don't need help to run laps around somewhere and if I start throwing clan secrets or training around the elders are going to prepare a funeral pyre." you note. That's not a metaphor either, you're pretty sure the punishment for willingly handing over is pretty much 'burned to death' if anyone important finds out.

Doesn't make Ami any happier when you pour out a bag full of pencils on the park bench table. Need materials for the jutsu, though, and you've got more.

"The hell?" Ami snaps, as you pick a nice fresh one.

The jutsu peels away wood and lead, sharpening it into a conical point. Thinking about it, that's probably sharp enough to stab more or less okay-ish, which you'll have to keep in mind in case you find yourself out of things to poke through the soft bits with and only have blunt bits of wood available.

You extend two fingers and pose slightly, as much as you can while sitting down. It winds up as just a little twist of the torso, tilt of the head, and lifting those fingers above the opposite shoulder.

"There's two handsigns to this jutsu, and as an E-rank even academy-student levels of chakra can spit it out over and over for hours. Since you're using chakra to perform a jutsu, it's going to work a little at your total reserves and fine control. And once you get it right, you'll never again have to leave your seat or dig out a hand-sharpener because your pencil broke during class."

"Lazy b-" Ami starts to grunt.

"So, it's a training technique that can be used during lecture hours." Shonen-girl cuts in, before Ami can say something you're going to have to smack her for.

"Stop interrupting me, Fuki!" Ami snaps as you rise and stretch and collect your fee.

Shonen girl's pencil loses a few splinters as she focuses on it.

"It's going to take a while for you to get that right, so I'm going to take off now." you say, waving. You've got clan taijutsu training that you probably aren't going to make much use of but have to attend anyway, else the elders will crap their adult diapers in fury.

It's not until you get home that you realize that the girls swiped a few of your buns for snacks. The cheeky little shits. You were iffy before, but this cinches it.

You take a few minutes to retire to Mother's bedroom to unlock and open the closet door, revealing her secret shrine and standing tomb. You clap twice in prayer, set your hand against a mark and let it prick you to acknowledge your blood and chakra, and then slide the window open.

"Mother!" you say to her polished and preserved skull, embroidered silk covering the preserved Sharingan eyes. "I think I made friends with other girls my age today."

You can't say for sure, but the ivory leer seems approving.

With that, everything settles into a routine for a few days, of lectures and jutsu practice, barely interrupted by your finally learning all the E-ranks you selected and a new instructor, Umino, coming into the class as an assistant, until something breaks the tedium.

---

[ ] That Uzumaki boy is a menace. You don't know how he managed it, and the elders are calling for his head, but he's dyed all the Uchiha clan clothes shades of yellow, tricked everyone into dying their hair blonde, and given the police office a new coat of orange paint. You kind of like it, but you're also getting pressured to respond in kind.
[ ] Flyers are being set up for an academy-wide weekend scavenger hunt. Winner gets a D-rank jutsu scroll, and the Hokage signed off on it so everything's official and everything. Better still, you can do whatever you want with the scroll when you have it. Upperclassmen are favored to win, of course, but will that stop the Demon of the Uchiha?
[ ] Ami and the other two get into a fashion disagreement with the Yamanaka girl and her pink pet. Blood is spilled, and a show-off with neutral judges is arranged. You weren't initially invited, which is a grave insult. Are you not worth including in a fashion contest? Bitch, you are fashion. What's more fashionable than coordinated armor?
[ ] There's some kind of civilian holy festival going on, and while the standard Uchiha response to such things is 'what an adorable waste of time when you could instead be learning to stab better', there's enough civilian kids in the class that you can be justified in getting dragged along to the candy and games without much note. Sucks to be you, Sasuke, have fun not-having-fun.
[ ] Actually, nothing much happens, but you do go out for a meal again.
-[ ] Dango.
-[ ] Yakitori.
-[ ] Barbecue.
-[ ] Dumplings.
-[ ] Fried rice.
- Sausage-inna-bun. Too soon, there'll be an armed mutiny in your guts!
[ ] ??

 

At first, you don't notice that anything is amiss.

Not until after you drag yourself out of bed and take your morning shower. Then, wrapped in the largest and fluffiest towel you own, you look in the mirror.

Your hair, which before was black like the void between stars in the night sky and a sealed and empty underground room, is now like unto strands of spun gold, and it glistens and glimmers with the allure of precious metal, sparkling as light reflects off of it.

Your wardrobe has been similarly dyed, in hard and soft yellows and very subtly red oranges, like sunlight and fire.

You like this.

You like this very much.

Unfortunately, the rest of the Uchiha appreciate the change to their appearance... less. Your best guess is that his antics amuse the Hokage somehow, or ironically keep him too focused in the spotlight for him to disappear the way an ordinary orphan could if they were even half as annoying.

You'll keep your opinions to yourself on this one. Honestly, you aren't as thrilled by the police station being given a new coat of paint either, even as the elders shriek so loudly you wonder if one of them might drop dead of a heart attack. There's a couple that you wouldn't mind being on hand if that happened, so you can be properly helpful and look for someone who knows what to do about it. You guess you'd actually be fairly prompt about finding a doctor for a couple others though.

One of the elders grabs you by the shoulder, and you're hard pressed not to laugh in his face at how he looks, like a great ball of sunshine.

"You. You are in that little wretch's academy class." he recognizes, though it seems like he's having trouble speaking through the fury. "Adults can't respond to childish misdeeds, but you will do something about this!"

....

Well damn. You're pretty sure that giving the guy a pat on the back isn't exactly what they're looking for out of this, so now you're a little stuck. Can't exactly pass the buck to one of the head's kids if there's any other option, and all that.

---

[ ] ??

 

"AAARGH!" one of the civilian-born clowns howls, clutching at his eyes as you enter the classroom, gleaming. "It's like staring into the sun!"

The Uzumaki boy is pointing and laughing, and the crowd shifts, glancing to the impeccably-tidied-up Sasuke. Cousin-dearest is back in his normal clothes, and it appears that his hair has either been scoured clean in the time provided, or simply dyed back to proper Uchiha black.

He scowls and looks away, the petulant boy. Still, you suppose you had better take control of this incident before trouble sets in. Being children, the other students might come to think that pointing at you and laughing is in any way acceptable.

"That's right! I, Mio, am the sun!" you declare, stomping up onto a desk and pointing dramatically. "I, Mio, am malevolent flame and death given form, and it is only by my benevolent forbearance that your crops continue to grow, only by my whim that basking in my glory produces only a subtle warmth! Praise me for my natural mercy!"

"... Ha?" The Uzumaki boy continues, extended finger drooping as the class chews on your words, scattered muttering erupts, and it's all written off as you being slightly more eccentric than normal today. 'Future Jounin', one of the instructors grumbles darkly, under his breath.

The Uzumaki is left blinking as you toss your hair over your shoulder, scattering a tiny pinch of the glitter caught within along the breeze, and the whole matter is ignored.

"..... I did that." he complains to himself, as the instructor wastes his time with a review ensuring that all the civilian children still remember what the country is named, and other only mildly less inane things.

"You're so eager to take the blame." you hum to yourself, idly. "Really, masochism is distasteful to most people, you know? And it's always paint. Is it that you have no better ideas, or are you just trying to sign your name so people know who to look for?"

"Getting away with it isn't the point." Naruto huffs.

"Such a masochist." you sigh, even as he scowls and grumbles about not knowing what that word means. "But at least, you should put a little variety into it. Try something new. You don't seem particularly clever, so we'll have to take this slowly."

"Hey!" the Uzumaki boy snaps, and gets a bit of chalk beaned off his head for his trouble.

"How do you feel about rotten eggs... triggered stink-bombs?" you ask, leadingly.

Naruto pauses, and then his grin is fiendish.

In hushed whispers, back and forth, you ignore the lecture and quietly guide the Uzumaki's thoughts in the general direction you want, coaxing him into taking notes and thinking things through and accidentally dropping hints about how to mess with the Uchiha elders.

All good things have to end, though, and you're counting down the minutes.

"Sooo.... why aren't you mad?" the Uzumaki finally asks, as you eat lunch outdoors, having quietly escaped class.

This is actually in the rules, though you doubt that anyone, even the teachers, read them in absolute thoroughness. You can just cheat, though. If you get caught cutting class, then of course you'll be punished for it. If you get away clean, however, the judgement appears to be that you deserve the break and get to keep full attendance credit, though the instructors will be watching closely for your next attempt. It's assumed that you'll just keep up with whatever you skipped on your own time.

You hum, thoughtfully, around a skewer of grilled meat.

"Two things. Firstly, I, Mio, do not particularly mind the style change. I, Mio, am the definition of fabulous, no matter what I am wearing." you declare, smugly.

.... In hindsight, you feel like you could be putting more dramatic impact in. You'll have to think of a way to make a genjutsu to do that. You know there's a Jounin who does something with the setting sun, though all other details are not spoken of. Maybe you should just try for some sort of glowing aura, or spotlight? That seems easier.

"Secondly, however, you did enter my home and unlawfully desecrate it." you allow, and smirk. "Since when were you under the impression that I was not upset?"

Naruto appears baffled, before a group of merchants and towel-wrapped hot-spring-visitors burst around the corner. They're covered with foul smelling eggs, remnants of smelly smoke, and are howling for blood.

Much in the way you wasted no time in preparing traps to go off on a specific timer, you don't hesitate to raise a hand and imperiously finger Naruto for the crime.

The gobsmacked betrayal on his face is delicious, though you have only a moment to savor it before he breaks off in a sprint to escape his newfound pursuers.

You stretch and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You'd be more satisfied if you weren't basically coerced into it, but you're pretty sure that the Uzumaki boy doesn't currently have the level of suspicious double-think necessary to figure out that you're pointing him at the elders deliberately, so it's treachery all around. Flawless.

Unless he's spiteful enough to completely discard your efforts to improve his japery just because you stabbed him in the back a little, anyway.

You stretch, decide not to think too deeply about it, and consider how to spend the rest of your day.

---

[ ] You could hit the library for something. (What?)
[ ] Class lets out soon. You could find one of your classmates and harrass them. They call it 'hanging out'. You've got a lot of classmates to pick from, although obviously the Uzumaki boy isn't going to be available for your attention. Maybe the Inuzuka one? Or one of the others... (Who?)
[ ] Actually, you think you're on to something with the thematic genjutsu idea. You just need to find that Jounin. All of the older people go a little pale and uncomfortable when he's mentioned, including the older Uchiha, so you can call that a net win no matter how it goes.
[ ] You can practice stealth and espionage skills. By which you mean you'll lurk around the slums, sniff around for gossip, and if you're lucky you might finally catch a pickpocket in the act. That would be a victory on two counts, learning to pick pockets, and a justified target.
[ ] ??

 

Yeah, you think you'll go with the theme genjutsu. Illusions are supposed to be a specialty of your clan anyway, even if they're pretty much disregarded in favor of flashy and highly visible ninjutsu these days. What you need to do is grandstand in a similar way with illusions.

Which means you need to find that Jounin. It's a simple step from one to the other. Now, if you were a Jounin, you would be... training, most likely. And where else would you train but the training grounds?

Well, it's not that you couldn't train elsewhere, but you would probably cause a scene if you were practicing ninjutsu in the market square or throwing up illusions in the bath-houses.

You quickly rule out the private, clan-owned and operated training grounds that are there for practicing secret techniques and bloodline abilities, and make your way around town, glancing across the occupants, or lack thereof, briefly before moving on.

There's some that are just too big to be covered by a quick glance, needing a couple of minutes of searching, and you genuinely won't be allowed into some others under any circumstances, due to their general lethality from one thing or another. The forest of death and the halls of infinite torment, for a start. Those are chunin and jounin ranked training grounds. If your target is in there, then there's no way that an academy student is getting entry.

You strike it lucky, though, and find your target in a sparring match.

"HUUUUOOOOH!" Maito Gai howls, muscles rippling beneath a skin-tight green jumpsuit that would conceal literally nothing if it weren't for the cup protection.

"Hah!" his opponent, similarly on nearly-full display through the fishnets, cries, flinging a fistful of venomous snakes from the voluminous sleeves of her overcoat.

Or so it seems.

With a puff of smoke an oversized snapping turtle appears, biting the heads off of all the serpents in one smooth motion. The woman isn't discouraged though, and more snakes rise up from the grass.

Neither opponent is resorting to more direct combat, with any other form of jutsu. Is this a pure summoning battle? Not the sort of thing that ever actually happens in combat, but for training...

You seat yourself and watch, pupils twirling. Eventually, the woman is left on her hands and knees, panting for breath.

"HAHAHA!" Gai bellows, posing with his fists at his hips. "Excellent work! I would say... another month of strict training with your summons at most, and you'll be well qualified for Special Jounin on that merit alone. Usually just displaying a boss summon would be enough to meet qualifications, but..."

"Yeah, fuck Manda." the woman grunts.

You clap lazily, drawing their attention. In theory, anyway. You doubt that either of them actually didn't notice you.

"Oho? We have an audience." Gai laughs, heartily.

"Some would call that-" "-spying." the woman says, last word right in your ear from behind. The afterimage of her on the ground blurs away...

... No, it's not that you didn't see it happening, with your Sharingan active. You recognized the movement, in less than the time it took to blink an eye. It just didn't matter, because there was no way you could respond in that frame of time.

She brushes your hair slightly out of the way. With the tip of a kunai.

"Aw, what a cute little infiltrator." she hums. "... Sharin-? Oho, so you're the Uchiha's anomaly."

"That's Queen freak of nature, if you don't mind." you huff, crossing your arms.

This sets the woman off in a laughing fit for some reason, as Gai frowns.

"Shouldn't you be at the academy right now?" he asks.

"Shouldn't you?" you counter. Not your best effort.

"No, I don't believe so. Wait, or was I scheduled...?" Gai says, and then pulls a day planner from... somewhere, and starts flipping through it rapidly.

"A summoning battle is more interesting anyway." you claim. "Isn't that really tiring?"

"Oh yeah." the woman agrees. "Not the worst, but it's up there. I bet you saw the summoning technique in there? No point hiding it from an Uchiha, I guess, and it's not hard to dig up in the library anyway. Little bit of blood, then it's boar, dog, bird, monkey, then ram. So easy even a genin can do it."

You didn't actually catch that, but you nod anyway, quick to capitalize on the assumption of superiority.

"Anko!" Gai interrupts, putting his day-planner back away in a quick movement. "How unyouthful of you! You can't just hand out the hand-signs for the summoning technique without a warning like that!"

"Warning...?" the Anko woman replies, coquettishly. "Oh? You mean you don't think the tiniest Uchiha in the village is smart enough to look up the drawbacks of a jutsu before using it? It's not like it's my fault anyway, kids already copied the technique. Check out those eyes."

"Don't try to use that technique." Gai continues, ignoring Anko's mischief. "Not without signing a contract first. It's dangerous."

"How so?" you ask, politely enough, realizing that you probably shouldn't offend the man until you've gotten what you want.

"Hm... simply put, even if you are successful, if you use the technique without a contract then instead of summoning something to you, it will summon you to something. You understand?" Gai says. "In theory, to the home of whatever is your 'best match'. This isn't as much of a problem if you happen to go to the home of monkey or rabbit summons, but if it happens to be some kind of fish, you may arrive at the bottom of the ocean. That aside, there are some summons that don't appear to live in any known location at all, anywhere in the world."

Illuminating. Not what you came here for, though.

---

[ ] ??

 

"Riiight, don't do the thing, gotcha." you say, waving it off.

"I'm quite serious you know! Youthful error that it might be, there's little that can be done to help in a case like that. Bad enough if you find yourself in the pit of the Scorpions, who devour nine of every ten prospective summoners, but it's possible you may find yourself best suited to something that doesn't exist on this world at all." Gai warns, sternly.

"Not what I'm interested in, anyway."

"Ah? Sorry kiddo, but you're about ten years too young to come begging for a date." Trenchcoat-flasher Anko says, shrugging smugly.

"Haha, are you joking?" you laugh. "Or are you going cross-eyed? I am the one who gives rejections."

You squint and look between the two of them again.

"... And you know, when it comes down to it, kiiind of prefer the idea of some modesty in a potential wife, so, uuuuuuuh... that rules out both of you, really."

"I am not entirely comfortable having this conversation with an academy student." Gai admits, raising his arms up to cross over his chest. Pinkies out and hip quirked in a way that completely derails your train of thought into ever more baffling questions.

"Not Bad." you reply, instantly discarding all questions in favor of matching his pose and raising the stakes, with a lean and a raised hand in front of your face.

"Hm?" Gai answers, with hands behind his head and knees jutting forward, an air of nonchalance on his face as the muscles of his muscles bulge.

"Oh my god, why do I hang out with you." The Anko woman says, hiding her own face as she tries not to laugh.

"Yosh! The art of dramatic posing requires great strength and flexibility, in order to absolutely control your own body." Gai says, gesturing with one hand without moving anything else. "It's excellent Taijutsu training, even if you don't adhere to a specific form or stance!"

You respond with a quiet grunt, upping the ante with a tilted posture, knees together and feet as far apart as you can manage.

"Haha, give me a break... well, I'm out. They're doing a half-price hour sale at the dango place I like, so I can't miss it." the Anko woman says, walking away without the slightest look back.

"Huuuoooo! Abandoned by my training partner!" Gai wails theatrically, arms akimbo and balanced on one foot.

Honestly, you're going to have to cut this short. Not because it isn't amusing, but because the muscles in your legs are starting to tremble and so unless you get drastic and start doing handstands you're going to collapse not too long from now.

You lean in a way that would drop an ordinary person on their ass, pointing with one hand.

"That said... I understand that when it comes to thematic illusions, you're the man to see." you state. "And I'm interested in knowing more."

"Oho? I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." Gai replies, stroking his chin.

He grins and a glimmering flash reflects off the enamel of his teeth. Behind him, a flock of doves carry a rainbow on silken cords and your eyes whirl and whirl and whirl and you can't pick apart the pieces.

The hell is this? Is that even Genjutsu? No handsigns, you didn't catch the chakra expenditure, incredibly subtle... both there and not there, and even knowing it's an illusion it won't dispel.

What is this?

If that really is an illusion and not a flock of trained ninja doves, then for all that Gai is supposed to be a taijutsu specialist, you'd have to say that the area where he's a true genius is Genjutsu.

"Frankly speaking, helping out fellow ninja is fine, but Jounin aren't supposed to get too involved with the academy students before graduation." Gai says, still balanced on one foot, the other leg crossed up over his knee, squatting in place and resting his chin in his hand. He taps a couple of times, then shrugs expressively.

"Ahaha, but I suppose I can't just look away from the flower of another's youth, either!" he laughs. "Hm. Let me think... it should be fine just to give one or two tips for training, I would think? Assuming that they were earned. Ah! I happen to know a young genin who's looking for new opponents in team subdual training. If you could collect a couple of your friends, then that would be worth a little advice."

---

[ ] ??

 

So, you have to train with someone.

In order to get tips on how to train yourself.

... That sounds like a deal where you win coming and going. The best kind of deal! Unfortunately, your minions don't see it quite the same without encouragement.

"... And what do we get out of this?" Shonen-girl asks, arms crossed.

"You get to fight a real genin, for one." you say flippantly, waving a hand.

It does not sparkle quite as much as the rest of you. You're going to have to find a way to fix that. You're thinking... gold nail polish. Probably not with real gold in it, because that'll get expensive quickly, but that's something to keep in mind for the future.

"You were thinking something incredibly tasteless just now." Ami accuses.

"Don't be ridiculous." you rebuff. You are the very definition of taste and class. Therefore, everything you do is tasteful and classy by default. That's basic logic for you. "Leaving that aside, where is the afro girl?"

"Kasumi was one of the students that got invited to the medic corps." Ami says, stressing the name as though she thinks that more emphasis will make you care. "You have to remember that they tested everyone's chakra, and while not everyone took them up on it, everyone that had enough control got invited to the medic-nin programs, right?"

That's ridiculous.

"I didn't." you point out.

".... You're an Uchiha." Ami points out in counterpoint. "It doesn't matter if your control was literally perfect, your clan wouldn't let them even try."

Oh, they wouldn't let you do something, is it? You feel a perverse inclination to go look up what it takes to learn healing jutsu.

Shonen-girl sighs deeply.

"Kasumi attends classes, but she also spends a lot of her free time interning at the hospital." she says. "Aside from all the standard ninja education, she needs to pick up advanced anatomy, get a solid understanding of the hospital paperwork, and develop an appropriate bedside manner, among other things."

What you're getting out of that is that you'll have to take part instead of just throwing the minions at the problem. Whatever.

"You still haven't said what we're getting out of this!" Ami snaps.

"Fighting a genin isn't enough? Bonus physical and chakra training, and since they're training tracking, take-downs, and captures you are training withdrawal, fighting retreats, and generally how to escape from bad situations." You bluff. "On top of that, Gai is a jounin, you know? If he's going to help me out, then he's probably got a tidbit or two that he can throw your way, right?"

Ami looks doubtful, but Shonen-girl nods sharply, seeming to find that reasonable enough.

So you don't have to physically drag them to the training ground. Which, while it would have been amusing, would also have been a pain.

Gai is waiting there, along with a young girl and three small dogs. Ah. ... Inuzuka? There's one in your class, but his own puppy is small enough to fit in a hand or pocket.

"Yooooosh! You've arrived!" Gai howls, exuberant. "Ah, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. Before we begin training, why don't you all introduce yourselves? Your name, why you are here, and anything you want to share?"

He looks like he's put some practice into saying that, or something like it. Practicing for taking a genin team? It's a leap of intuition, but not very far-fetched. He's an elite Jounin, so having him focus on teaching for a while means a net loss for the village when he could be taking high-ranking missions, but in return it should produce higher quality genin from his training.

"I, Uchiha Mio, the Golden Devil, am here entirely out of self-interest!" you howl immediately, making no bones about your selfishness. You're here because you want those delicious illusions, and this gets you closer to having them.

"... Fuki." Shonen-girl says. Ami glances her way before she continues. "I like swordplay and sealing jutsu theory. The academy doesn't test over those, though. I'm here to train and develop my body and chakra."

"Haaahg..." Ami groans. "... I have a family name, but as civilians it doesn't mean much. I'm Ami. Remember that. And I'm here because I can't let Fuki get dragged into this idiot's shenanigans on her own!"

"Ho. You're being quite cheeky, minion." You note, mildly approving.

"Since when was it that I entered your service!?" Ami snaps.

"Since the day of your birth. Don't fret. In time, all will come to know my benevolent tyranny." you declare smugly, hands held out to the sides.

".... Did you find me academy students to train with, or just raid a traveling circus?" Dog-girl asks.

"It's the prerogative of the youthful to be boisterous!" Gai declares. "Come! Take a deep breath and shout so the whole world hears your voice!"

"The only Jounin who's really helpful just has to be..." the genin sighs to herself, then waves. "Yo. I'm Inuzuka Hana, and these are the Haimaru brothers. I'm a genin, and I'm training to pass the Chuunin examinations and open up a veterinary clinic."

"A vet?" Ami asks, dubiously.

"Do you have a problem with that? Ninja animals get injured too, and most medical ninja focus on healing humans once their training is done." Hana says, scowling.

Her dogs growl a little, in response to her annoyance, and Gai claps his hands.

"Yosh! Now that we all know each other, let's begin. This training ground is lightly wooded, and approximately one kilometer in diameter, simulating thin forests and trails of the sort that can be found across many countries. I will be waiting at the other end, having marked out a space to represent a 'Safe zone'. The training is to simulate an ambush, both on enemy ninja and from enemy ninja. It's Hana's job to capture the intruders, so that they can be questioned about their intent, and it's your job as the intruders to escape and withdraw from the area now that you've been caught."

Gai claps his hands and disappears. The body-flicker technique, like Shisui's Shunshin...? ... No. That's not a jutsu at all, just pure and overwhelming speed!

Hana grins at the three of you, like a hound that's scented a wounded rabbit.

---

[ ] ??

 

"I didn't take you for a cruel sort, Gai."

The Blue Beast of Konoha laughed heartily, an outpouring of sound that one would think would reveal his presence to the competitors below.

"Hahahaha! My Eternal Rival! What a surprise to see you taking note of a Youthful Training Exercise."

Kakashi showed no reaction to Gai' words, except to turn a page in his book, a moment later.

"Mm." he said, without any commitment, as his sole visible eye moved away from Gai's posing and down below the canopy. "A few academy students, in this sort of situation? From the beginning, there was no hope of victory."

"Oho?" Gai replied. "Victory is not the point of training, you know. That aside, those are bold words, considering your history in students."

"That's different." Kakashi denied, and turned another page. "Even on the face of it, with proper teamwork, it's feasible that a group of genin can outmatch a single superior opponent... your average Jounin, for example."

Left unsaid was that while Kakashi could be called a great many things indeed, 'average' was not one of them... and that he would never be willing to abandon some form of the bell test, as long as he could point at his own past and declare that it was absolutely possible to pass.

"This sort of a scenario, though... you should be aware that the girl down there is the Inuzuka clan head's daughter. Overlooked they might be, before they come into their full growth, but the training of Inuzuka nin-dogs is every bit as grueling as the training of the Inuzuka themselves. She's not here because she doesn't know how to hunt, but because she needs to practice against people that don't react the same way Inuzuka do, to avoid falling into mental traps. Basically... it's not a case of strength in numbers overwhelming a single, greater foe. In this case, it's a group of academy students matched up against a group approximating a squad of low chuunin. Not just outmatched, but outnumbered."

"Indeed!" Gai agrees heartily. "The purpose of this training is not to fight. All shinobi eventually find themselves in a situation where open combat isn't feasible... or at the least, is unwise. In such a case you must be able to understand that the time has come to withdraw, and be capable of retreating effectively."

Kakashi sighed slowly.

"...Mm. Well, at least they seem to halfway understand that much." he says. "... Some more than others."

"Ahaha! It's delightful, is it not, to see youths with such spirit?" Gai laughs.

"... And you just got finished talking about how this was training to retreat." Kakashi mutters to himself. "And in the end, resorting to fire. How unexpected of an Uchiha. Really... you couldn't have at least found actual Genin for this? From what I see of those kids... They aren't going to make the cut."

"You think so?" Gai asks curiously, peering down through the leaves and thin traces of smoke.

"Well, I guess that's up to their instructor to decide... if they make it that far." Kakashi says, only hinting at retracting his words. "Two of them are clumsy and unskilled, and their chakra barely merits note. I suppose their control might be a little better, but unless they're keeping something truly phenomenal up their sleeves... and all around, their teamwork and cohesiveness is terrible. The Uchiha girl... might barely make the grade, depending on who tallies the score. There are great expectations set on the ninja who awaken those eyes... and she doesn't seem to live up to any of them."

"Ah, we cannot all graduate from the Academy at five." Gai chuckles.

"Just going by theory, at least, she could have. And didn't." Kakashi notes. "If I'm informed correctly, then she didn't even begin at the Academy at all until recently. Even after that, she's noted as acting out, ignoring lessons, and being a general disruptive influence. Left to her own devices, she could probably have mastered enough of the basics to be theoretically qualified for Genin in a day. Maybe..."

Kakashi grows silent, pages of his book un-turning and still. Drifting through thought and memory, interspersed by the shouting below.

"Kakashi?" Gai asks, after a few long moments.

"Mm?" Kakashi replies, blinking away images of the past. "... Maybe it's for the best." he decides aloud, and disappears in a puff of smoke.

"Hahaha! My Eternal Rival, I think that's the closest you have ever come to admitting that you might regret testing out of the academy early." Gai chuckles.

Shaking his head, he looks down at the rumpus below, intently watching the struggles of the next generations.

---

"Why didn't you run!?" you whine, Ami caught in a head-lock and your knuckles dragging along her scalp.

"Why didn't you, huh?" Ami shoots right back. "You dumbass, do you think it's going to go well on a real mission if we get away and have to go 'oh, yeah, we left the clan kid behind'?"

Shonen-girl sighs in the background as Ami drives an elbow into your solar plexus. Hana just continues watching, munching on a doggy biscuit that's gone when you turn your head that way. If your sharingan wasn't constantly running you'd probably assume you'd imagined it!

"Yosh! Well done." Gai declares, clapping his hands. "I've taken the liberty of stamping out the fires before they could spread too far, so allow me to offer my post-training assessment!"

He begins by pointing a finger Hana's way.

"To begin with, you should keep in mind that the enemy will not always behave or respond in the way you expect them to!" he declares. "Whether they are more competent or less, fight when you expect them to flee, or flee when you expect them to fight, say one thing and do another or even ignore the orders they receive to do something else entirely! It made little difference here but you took several blows throughout this exercise that could have been avoided. On a mission, any of those could have proven debilitating!"

Hana grunts, looking mildly irritated.

"Now, for the three of you... you did well for your age and experience!" he says, beaning a folded paper shuriken off of your head and looking at you for only a moment before immediately continuing on to the others. It looks like there's at least a little writing inside. "Particularly you, young Fuki! Your use of the taller grass to hinder, trip, and briefly bind your pursuers was particularly interesting. Was that the knot-tying jutsu?"

She what? You honestly weren't paying attention, your focus entirely on more immediate things than what Shonen Girl was doing.

"Ah... Mio demonstrated a few simple Jutsu." Fuki says, deferring the praise. You could preen smugly, but don't.

"In truth, most ninja entirely ignore simpler jutsu once they have access to more powerful or effective ones." Gai says. "There's some merit to both points of view, either focusing on the basics or discarding them, but in truth it depends on how highly you train your abilities. I believe you mentioned you had an interest in sealing theory?"

"Yes... but I've already read what's available and permitted to academy students. Nothing practical is really allowed until you're at least Genin rank." Fuki answers.

"Hmm... yes, those are the rules, I suppose." Gai agrees.

He seems disappointed by her answer anyway.

"Ah, and young Ami!" he continues, spirits more noticeably upbeat. "From what I can see, you could easily train a taijutsu focus, as you appear to default to acting and reacting to things in a very physical and direct way! So I went to the liberty of picking this up."

He pulls a length of fabric from who knows where and waves it slightly in the breeze, showing off a skin-tight suit in a lightly pastel purple and sized for Ami's frame, but nevertheless identical to his own.

"One, when the hell did you get that, and two, No." Ami instantly rejects.

"I stepped out for a minute near the start and end of the training to place and collect an order." Gai replies, smile sparkling in the light. "It's the pinnacle of high-stress training and mission-wear, wicks away sweat to dissipate scentlessly into the air, moves completely silently with no rustling of cloth, is smooth and silky against your skin, and breathes as though you were wearing nothing at all!"

"If you wear it you look like you're wearing nothing at all!" Ami snaps back in irritation.

---

[ ] ??

 

"Mooooron." you say, thumping Ami in the head. "It's a gift from a Jounin suited to your specialization."

"I'm not specializing in anything yet!" Ami snaps back.

"Wear it." you continue.

"No!" Ami rejects without any form of hesitation.

Idiot girl. Is this about fashion? The fool. You can't sit back and just follow the trends. Better to set the trends yourself, and let everyone else follow in your wake like shifting water.

"I'll take one in gold!" you declare.

"Don't you dare. If you show up and start chasing us around with bodysuits and masked helmets we are through." Ami seethes.

Fuki sighs deeply, picks the suit up, and stretches it a little.

"Probably okay for training... maybe if you're wearing more stuff over or under it. Or both." She decides, dubiously.

"Don't give in, Fuki!" Ami yells.

Over it all, Gai laughs like he's watching the greatest show of manzai comedy in the world, for free. Then he says something about feeding the flames of your youth, but you can't quite make out what because Ami's gotten an elbow in at your ear and it's ringing like a bell.

And then he disappears, before you can wheedle further training or one of those suits out of him. There's a tag in the jump-suit that you've memorized, though, so you can show up and buy something for yourself.

"Haaah..." you sigh, wiggling a pinky in your ear until it seems like you can hear well enough again. "Oh, and shonen-girl. Keep in mind that breaking a few little rules only matters if you're caught. If you aren't, then who's to say they were broken at all?"

".... Not all of us have a clan to throw their weight behind us over that sort of thing, if we get caught." Fuki says, stiffly. "Or family that could do anything about it at all."

... You guess that's all that's going to be said, and huff in annoyance before stalking off.

Clan.

The ninja clan.

What's so great about being part of a clan? There are perks, but it really irritates you that people seem to think it's just sunshine on flowers all of the time, and disregard, or don't care, about the spiders in the garden.

You sulk most of the way back home, behind the walls that seem at the same time to both defend and imprison the Uchiha clan, then come to a stop as someone slinks out of the shadows.

"Hey there, little spitfire." Shisui chuckles, waving slightly. "Hoped I'd run into you. You might not want to go home right away."

You turn your head a little, looking in that direction, and then scowl.

"... Politics again, so soon?" you spit in slight disgust.

"Well, you know how it is. Your situation is kind of unique... and a lot of the elders are curious to see if it might breed true." Shisui admits. "So they've got elder Ryuichi's grandson waiting in there for a surprise omiai."

Ryuichi's...? Isn't that one a career chuunin? Made the grade and backed out of service to join up as one more member of the overstaffed police force. At this point, just a pawn of his grandfather, being jerked around on invisible strings.

You doubt that he's had the motivation to so much as take a shit on his own for at least the last ten years.

"Disgusting. I can't handle this the same way Mother did, yet..." you muse to yourself, scowling.

She ran the elders out of her house with a broomstick that could smash through trees whenever she saw hide or hair of them, after a while. You remember that very well.

... You don't like thinking too much about your early years, though. Too much wells up, of the memory of bone-deep exhaustion that never fades no matter how much you sleep, and the gnawing and ravenous hunger that isn't sated no matter how much you gorge yourself...

For the sake of your blood, the Sharingan never drained you to the point of death. But it was a near thing sometimes, and in spite of the elders' desires, you couldn't just start copying jutsu and throwing them around the moment you learned to walk. You'd have died for real, if you'd tried.

"Hah... that's what I'd expect the brat with the gumption to steal my body-flicker to say, really." Shisui chuckles.

"You have no room to talk." you snort. "Unless you're saying that you don't have your own instructions? Sabotaging a direct move to further your own chances..."

"Sharp. But y'know, while I don't mind throwing a few caltrops on the old folks' dance floor... I kind of prefer looking for suitors a little closer to my own age." Shisui claims, shrugging.

You'd like to believe that, but aren't inclined to trust him at his word. Shisui can easily be claimed to be the strongest of this generation. If the elders have some kind of breeding program in mind, he's probably someone most, if not all, of them could agree on. Probably drool over the thought, really. Your own situation matched with his demonstrations of skill... they'd probably think of it like the possibility of a new Madara.

Without a further word, you turn on your heel and stalk away. It's nice weather, and should hold. It doesn't hurt anything for you to take a nap somewhere, and leave your surprise marriage-interview to just stew.

....

That's right, Gai threw that shuriken... you unfold it and read the contents.

It takes a moment before you realize, a little baffled, that the note inside might as well have just been copied word for word from a basic-level textbook on chakra and its properties.

Chakra is generated constantly by everything that lives. Through training, you can generate more, faster, and more potent chakra. This chakra remains in your coils until used, and if you entirely run out of it, you're likely to die. Unless you get immediate medical attention, you probably will die.

The bit he scribbled down refers to the tenketsu, specifically. Tiny 'bleed-off' pin-holes in the chakra coils that vent the chakra, either when used or when it's built up to the point that your reserves are full, and the chakra that is generated has nowhere to go and pushes the old chakra out to dissipate and make space.

.... And that's it.

You don't see how that's relevant. Is he trying to say that he forms the illusion... that it's related to his tenketsu, or the natural process of venting excess chakra like sweat?

Ah, how annoying. You suppose you should have known better than to expect a direct answer, or everyone would know how that thing he does works, though.

Well, whatever.

Sensei is visibly unimpressed when you slouch into class the next day in the same set of grass-stained clothes and picking leaves out of your hair.

---

[ ] Ami and the other two get into a fashion disagreement with the Yamanaka girl and her pink pet. Blood is spilled, and a show-off with neutral judges is arranged. You weren't initially invited, which is a grave insult. Are you not worth including in a fashion contest? Bitch, you are fashion. What's more fashionable than coordinated armor and jumpsuits?
[ ] There's some kind of civilian holy festival going on, and while the standard Uchiha response to such things is 'what an adorable waste of time when you could instead be learning to stab better', there's enough civilian kids in the class that you can be justified in getting dragged along to the candy and games without much note. Sucks to be you, Sasuke, have fun not-having-fun.
[ ] The academy instructors have finally made it to a demonstration of the replacement technique, first of the standard three.
[ ] You feel like harassing the afro-girl in her medical studies.
[ ] The library is always an option.
[ ] ??

 

You sort of zone out through classes and then make your way to the merchant's quarter, where you sniff out the jump-suit store.

Gold is not a color that they have in stock, despite having greens, purples, reds, and a disgustingly pastel sunflower yellow. The difference between it and gold is vast and insurmountable.

You have to place a special order at a higher price. Annoying, but these things happen.

With that, you head to the library. You're going to figure out how to do Gai's genjutsu even if it kills you!

...

... In hindsight, you have no idea why you assumed that the library would be in any way helpful for you, here. It's pretty clear that Gai's thing is some kind of either a secret technique or unique trick that he developed on his own.

Neither of which are the kind of things you find in a library.

"Useless. Useless, it's all useless." you snap to yourself, sweeping aside memorized scrolls on chakra theory and anatomical representations of the coils and tenketsu.

"It's not!" A piping voice insists.

.... The Yamanaka girl's pink civilian pet flinches back a little and trembles when you turn your head to look her way.

"The library isn't useless!" she insists, knees shaking a little.

---

[ ] ..... You pickin' a fight, punk?
[ ] Roll your Sharingan and leave. There's got to be someone else to spend time harassing.
- [ ] Who?
[ ] New source of amusement located. Time to mess with the pink one.

 

"Nah. It's completely useless." you declare, waving your hand flippantly.

"It's not!" Pinkie insists. "Theres, all the condensed written knowledge of-!"

"Yeah, that's great." you interrupt, shrugging and holding your hands apart cockily. "I guess it might be useful for you, I guess. But in my case, this whole trip was a complete waste of time! The library is useless for me!"

"Is that the case?" a new voice sounds.

Spoiler

....

The librarian is getting all up in your face for some reason. She looks annoyed. You can't imagine why that would be.

Suddenly, you're outside and on the roof of the place across the street, librarian's grip on your shirt coming loose as she tosses you away.

"Of course, I'm sure we can't compare with the resources of the vaunted Uchiha clan." she says, in a stiff tone of formality. "But if you are so displeased, then we will of course extend the fullness of our effort to assure you are not bothered by the poor quality of our inventories for at least the next... month, shall we say? With our warmest regards, Uchiha-san."

Bitch disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving you to slowly come to the realization that you just got yourself kicked out of the library for running your mouth.

... And the hell if you're going to poke around in the clan archives, there's always some ninety year old Uchiha asshole or another poking around in there.

---

[ ] ??

 

Hmph. Banned, huh?

You'll show them banned.

In your own good time, and in your own inscrutable fashions that may appear to the less educated and distinguishing eye to be just waiting out the duration but are in fact clearly distinct, perhaps. But you will.

It can't just be said that any old library woman can manhandle you about without consequence, after all.

For now, though, you have made no progress on figuring out Gai's not-Genjutsu thing.

And that is unacceptable. Unacceptable.

Maybe if you watch him more?

... You sit down on the roof and shut your eyes, calling to mind the encounter.

For the next hour and a half you focus the entire intensity of your being on the appearance of the illusion. How it appeared. When. What Guy was doing when it appeared, before, and afterward. You analize it down to every single shift of microfiber over his flexing abs.

...

Nope, it didn't help. You feel a little funny in the gut, but that's about all and could be put down to clenching your own muscles in an attempt to reflect what he was doing, just a little bit.

Or it could be that you just had one too many meat-products in a bun recently and need to lay off for a couple extra weeks.

Still, it doesn't seem like that particular encounter has anything to offer you.

You could watch him again, but you're a little skeptical about what you'll gain for this from doing so. Of course, Maito Gai is a skilled Jounin, and so anything you were to pick up from watching him would probably be valuable.

Just... maybe not in this sense.

You flop backward onto the tiled roof, rubbing your nose and thinking.

Well, it stings your pride a whole lot to even consider the fact that you might be missing something, but while the elders would likely tear strips off your back and rub salt, vinegar, and lemon juice in for suggesting it, it's much easier to believe that the Sharingan is just inadequate for what you're trying to do. You can't directly copy bloodline techniques or special jutsu with no handsigns, after all, though it does make it easier to work the latter out.

What you need is...

You consider Gai's 'advice', such as it was.

... What you need is to get a good close look at what Gai is doing inside his body. What's going on with his Chakra network. Now, the Sharingan isn't really so good at that.

The other famed Doujutsu of Konoha, the Byakugan, however... that is.

And wouldn't you know it? You've got a pair of those sitting right in your own classroom.

You're up and moving and several blocks away before you slow down. ... Much as you hate to stop and think about things much before actually following through with them, now that you are thinking about it, you have to reluctantly concede the point that that set of Byakugan are currently lodged in a girl. That's a fact.

And that girl is, in fact, the Hyuuga head's daughter.

So...

... It's not to say that you're concerned about what would happen if you, the objectively best Uchiha, but with admittedly less in the way of political clout within the clan, were to barge in and kidnap the Hyuuga Head's daughter for your own nefarious purposes, but...

Well, the good thing about a clan, when it comes down to it, is that there are a lot of people with the same last name and general set of abilities. And the good thing about the Hyuuga Doujutsu is, as far as you can tell, that unlike the Uchiha everyone with the correct last name has it, and there's no fiddly 'unlocking your true power' to go through.

Probably. Could just be another clan secret, and they're only passing down so many Byakugan eyes down through the generations or some such, but if you dwell on that for two long then you're going to get into conspiracy theories and the bad thing about that is that you might accidentally hit a bullseye on a real conspiracy and get murdered for it.

But in any case, that leads you back to the first good thing about a clan.

... By this point you have the schedules of the instructors pretty well memorized, and while things are trapped up in case of students getting into private areas, they can't be too trapped up in case students get into private areas. It's a nifty little conundrum that you'll take full advantage of.

You aren't sneaking in to get at anything sensitive, anyway.

Just the roll call for all the classes.

.... Aaaand got it. There's a good option a couple years ahead of you, not too far distant from your own age. You memorize the name and face and head out looking.

And if you're looking for a Hyuuga, then where better to look than the Hyuuga compound? That makes perfect sense to you. You heave yourself over the walls to a section that looks like the laundry and start poking around, ignoring the befuddled older Hyuuga with loads of cloth in their arms.

After a moment, they seem to decide that this is someone else's problem to deal with and hurry along.

Eventually you find her though, and don't have to go too far before then. She's still in the large laundry section, in an area that seems to focus on linens.

Spoiler

"Hyuuuuuuga Saki!" you declare, pointing her out.

"Whu?" she intelligently answers, before grabbing a headband and tying it quickly on to cover her brow. You picked out marks there, but it's unimportant for your aims.

"Borrowing you." you declare, simply.

"Wait. What?" she replies. "You can't just borrow-"

"Watch me!" you respond, stepping forward and throwing her over a shoulder before she can think of the words or actions to reply to you with. You wobble a little before balancing the weight.

"Hang on, I'm in the middle of-!" she babbles, clearly flabbergasted at your rudeness to the point of indecisive paralysis. "You can't just walk off with a Hyuuga!"

"Relaaaax, I'm going to bring you back later." you say, heading back to the section of wall that you came over. "Besides, your clan's eyes can see through anything for, like, miles. There's got to be at least a dozen people watching me right now, and if I'm not being stopped then that means it's fiiiii.... ne..." you trail off.

Standing in front of you and looming slightly, looking down with an arched brow and arms crossed arms, is the goddamned Hyuuga clan head himself. You feel like whistling. It was this sort of thing you were trying to avoid by changing targets!

"Hi, Hiashi-sama!" Saki babbles. She doesn't quite vocalize the words 'oh no' or 'help', but you get the feeling they're written all over her face.

"Can Saki-chan come out to play?" you ask, just going for broke now that youre here.

Your cheekiness must win you points or something, because Hiashi sighs deeply.

"She will be returned unharmed." He says, flatly. "Or your own clan will handle matters."

"Uh huh." you agree, vaguely.

"And you will have the decorum to properly use the entry gates." he continues.

".... Suuuuuure." you say, despite having little intention of actually doing so.

He stares you down, then sighs, mumbling 'children' under his breath.

"You will finish other chores later." he says, this time to Saki, before turning and striding away.

"wai... b-bu..." Saki says, reaching out behind you as you go ahead and head for the gates, not because he told you to, but because you feel like it and it would be a pain to carry her over the wall anyway. "... Hiashi-sama..."

---

[ ] ??

 

"Put me down already..." Saki whines, wriggling around on your shoulder. "People are watching you clown around!"

"Excellent!" you shoot back. "It is only right and proper that I, Mio, be the center of attention!"

"Are you crazy?"

It's such a ridiculous question that you don't even bother to answer. You do toss Saki down on a bench, though, and she groans quietly.

"So, you're going to help me with a thing." you begin, simply. "I need you to take a look at Jounin Maito Gai."

"Wha... from here?" Saki babbles. "Even leaving aside that, that that's spying on a Jounin, I can't!"

"Sure you can." you press.

"No, not won't, I can't!" Saki insists again. "I'm, I'm not super-skilled or talented or highly trained! I'm Branch House. I'm not even a part of the Branch that's, that's set to guard the homestead, or scout, or anything. I'm in the academy because, because that's expected of all Branch Hyuuga, but I'm the kind of branch member that's going to be a housekeeper or cook after the academy!"

"Huh... not what I'd go for, but I guess if that's what you want to do with your life." you note, dubiously.

"Wanting doesn't have anything to do with it!"

"Whatever, whatever you say." you continue, brushing her insistence off like water off a duck's wings. "So, you've got the Byakugan, but you can't... it's a matter of accuracy, or distance?"

Saki's hands come up to cover her mouth, like she's horrified at letting slip that not all Hyuuga can see for miles.

Which is kind of disappointing, but there's always variables in ability to account for.

"How close are we going to need to be, here?" you ask.

"I don't want to spy on a Jounin!" she insists.

"... Close enough that he's going to know you're there, huh." you muse aloud, and a frustrated flush crawls across her face.

"T... Twenty meters." She finally hisses, softly.

... Well, that's not so good. You point at a billboard way down the street.

"What's that say?" you ask.

"I'm not blind outside of that!" she huffs back at you.

That's just how far her Byakugan works, huh?

It's not like she's even crippled in terms of how the clan stuff works. For all that you hear about Hyuuga vision stretching for miles, few of them make much use of that. The famous ones are all known for their Taijutsu. Extremely short-range combat, to the point where all that's absolutely relevant is within a meter or so of the furthest reach of your arm.

"Hm... so we're going to have to get inside of twenty meters." you muse aloud, rubbing your chin.

"Are you crazy?" she repeats herself.

"We're going to have you look at what Gai is doing when he pulls out that sunset-vista trick of his. I'm really interested in it!" you say, not answering her question again. "Doesn't do much, but it's a sealless genjutsu that doesn't release properly... as far as I can tell. Wahaha! The fun I can have with that..."

"I'm a Hyuuga, Genjutsu isn't my thing..." Saki complains again.

"No, that's Taijutsu you're famous for." you agree. "Huh, you guys should love Gai, I'd think. He loves brawling, you love brawling-"

"You know nothing of Taijutsu at all if you can equate the elegant and sophisticated precise nature of Jyuuken with, with the coarse and unrefined approach of Jounin Maito Gai's full-force 'just punch harder' style." Saki snaps.

Whoo, looks like you finally touched a hot button. The grin slowly crawls across your face.

"... I'm not doing it." Saki says, frowning at you.

"Oh, come on. It'll be fun." you cajole.

"It will be a breach of trust between, between active duty ninja and genin candidates, and- stop iiiiit!" Saki complains as you decide to just ignore her whining to grab her and run again.

She thumps her fists against your back as you move, and while it's tiring it's not anywhere near enough for you to drop her...

... Ah, there you are.

Maito Gai is doing a handstand and walking around the small combat ring of a training ground. No. You correct yourself as you draw a little closer. He's not standing on his hands, he's balanced perfectly on just one fingertip of each hand, keeping himself perfectly at a right angle to the ground. He bounces a little and switches fingers with every lap, and he makes those laps at a rapid clip.

---

[ ] ??

 

[Fuki]

"The hell is she doing now...?" Ami interrupts your quiet tea break to mumble, staring off to the side with a scowl.

You turn your head to look yourself, taking in the scene.

That adult Jounin from the other day blitzes past fast enough that there's a strong breeze left in his wake. Not unusual, except for three points. First, Jounin don't usually bother to travel at street level. Too many ordinary people getting in the way. Second, he's running on the tips of his index fingers, entire body ninety degrees to the ground. Third, he is trailing rainbows behind him like a flapping flag.

"Aaahahahaha!" his laughter booms, as Mio and another girl sitting in piggyback sprint up behind him. "If you want to get in close, you'll have to run a little faster than that!"

"I don't want to do this any mooore!" the unknown girl... Hyuuga, from a different class, you notice now that they've closed in.

"You didn't want to do this to begin with!" Mio cheerfully rebuffs, a declaration to the world about how little she cares, a savage sort of joy thrumming through every motion.

"And I still don't want tooo!"

A moment passes, and then you set your cup down with a quiet click.

Then you stand, lifting your training sword with a smooth motion as your stool clatters backwards.

"Fuki." Ami says.

"Running is healthy. Cardio." you say.

"No no no, don't get us involved-" Ami says, breaking out into a series of vulgar words as you move into a sprint.

It doesn't help. You run full out, at your top speed, for a solid fifteen minutes as your legs scream at you and sweat oozes out of your clothes, and Mio pulls further and further away. Then a leg gives out, sending you stumbling to the ground, and she disappears entirely.

You still hadn't even seen the Jounin, not since he first zipped past you. Ami comes to a huffing stop, squatting to gasp for breath. Sweat drips off your face and onto the ground.

Mio didn't even notice the two of your, as far as you can tell. And she outran you both while carrying the full weight of a second girl to slow her down.

Is she just that strong?

No. There are definitely stronger students than her. It's not that she's strong, but that you are weak.

The realization stabs into you like a knife, and it's a surprise that you're so surprised. After all, you train with a sword... if not religiously, then at least fairly regularly. Not... in any specific style, but in the basic strikes.

You're strong. Aren't you?

For a girl, and for your age. And leaving clan kinds and crazy-obsessive trainers out of the equation. Them aside, you're near the top of the class. Only if they are left aside from the scale, and ignored.

You're strong enough that you can go pick fights with older boys, and even win. ... Does that make you strong? No. It just means those boys are weaker. That's less of a surprise than it should be. They aren't trained at all, after all. They're all going into other jobs, or don't have a plan for their future at all.

You are stronger because you've had more training. Similarly, the clan kids, the genin... they are stronger than you because they've had more training.

Your hand closes into a fist, clawing sand out of the ground.

"What are we doing...?" you say aloud.

"Running after the exercise freaks like a pack of idiots while our tea gets cold." Ami sighs.

"No... We're being left behind. Because we can't keep up." You say, struggling to your feet. "We need to train more."

"Huh? Oh, come on Fuki, are you really going to... hey, that tea is the good stuff too, are you going to waste...? Aw man..." Ami complains, grumbling as you pick up your sword.

---

Your everything is sore, and you're flopped across a public bench as Gai gives a gratifying thumbs-up and tooth ping, then disappears.

You groan quietly for a few minutes, then heave yourself up to a sitting position.

"So. What have you got?" you ask Saki, pointedly.

She sighs, rubbing her forehead.

"A headache." she answers, stiffly.

"I meant that I can use." you clarify.

"I don't know, okay? That genjutsu is... ridiculous." she grumbles. "You know I shouldn't even see it? Passive effect of the Byakugan. And it's still sunsets and rainbows and flocks of doves and the open ocean whenever he feels like it."

You wave your hand for her to continue on, and she crosses her arms in a huff, forehead wrinkling in deep thought.

"... As far as I can tell, he wasn't doing anything, either." she admits. "... I think. Maybe? There was... one unusual thing."

"Yeah? Hit me." you say.

Saki decks you full in the face, sending you sprawling across the ground.

"Figuratively." you clarify, clawing your way back up again. "Inform me of what you noticed."

"Well... excess chakra vents out from the body and disperses into the environment." Saki says, scratching the back of her neck. "Civilians don't train their chakra, so it's a small but constant amount. Ninjas, though... we use a lot, and so it seldom really fills up all the way to where it starts spilling over. Usually. But Gai... I'm not sure, but I think he was deliberately venting, whenever I was close enough to see?"

She shakes her head, though.

"I don't know why, though. Maybe one more crazy training limitation, reducing the chakra he has available? Once it's been vented it isn't like it can still be used, after all."

Huh...

---

[ ] ??

 

"Can't it?" you ask. "This is a Jounin we're talking about, here."

"It doesn't matter if we were talking about the Hokage." Saki insists. "It doesn't matter what your rank is, chakra works the way it works. It's a fundamental force, like gravity. That's like saying that fire can be wet if you're a Jounin."

You cross your arms.

"No. Do not. Try to make wet fire." Saki says, sternly. "You'll kill yourself and maybe make steam."

"Mhm?" you say, obstinately. "Then you're saying that just because we know how to do a lot of things, we shouldn't try to work out ways to learn how to do more? Besides, what about elemental techniques..."

"You don't throw chakra out and then try to make it into a technique afterward." Saki stresses, then leans back and sighs. "You make the Jutsu first, and then you let the chakra go. That's how it works, it's even usually in the names... like your clan's favorite coming of age jutsu. You release fire-natured chakra that is shaped into a great fireball."

... You scowl, not really wanting to discuss the traditions of the Uchiha clan.

Still, what you've learned...

"He's definitely venting chakra for something, though." you point out.

"I said it looked like he might be doing it deliberately, but I wasn't sure." Saki objects. "That sort of thing is what some debilitating poisons do, limiting the ability of enemy ninja! Doing it to yourself would be counterproductive..."

Yeah, yeah, you've stopped listening.

---

[ ] If he's doing it, it's possible. To vent a lot of your chakra out and then do stuff with it afterward, you mean. And you're going to try.
[ ] If you have to do stuff first, but Gai isn't doing anything that can be called a jutsu... maybe he does most of the genjutsu in advance, and then lets it seep out a bit at a time?
[ ] ??

 

If Gai does it, then it's possible.

If it's possible, then you can do it.

... Well, maybe not as well as the infamous elite Jounin, but you have the option on the table. You just need to figure out how to do it.

...

Not much comes to mind. The Academy students are all tested to see if they can touch their chakra at all, and while you were spared that by dint of being a member of a famous ninja clan, meaning it would be foolish to suppose that you couldn't touch and use your chakra, you know the process.

You sit down on a bench and focus.

Within a few minutes, you start to feel the fire inside of you. Warm, pulsing with life, and gently suffusing your whole body, from the core outwards to the inside of your skin. Centered, as befits a Doujutsu user, not only in the brain, belly, heart, and lungs, the four main nodes of thought, fuel, life, and breath, but also in your eyes.

It's all very interesting, but for what you're doing...

You try forcing a little out.

... It isn't easy. Your chakra is stable and contained in your body, and it does not want to leave it. It's slow to move. Painful, almost. No, not almost. Definitely painful. You're doing something your body isn't supposed to, it's like trying to bend a joint backwards. Possible, but...

And when it does move, the little bit that you were trying to move spurts out all at once, almost stirring the air in a physical puff that sets Saki flinching.

"Did you just force chakra out of a tenketsu?" she asks, uneasily.

"Yeah, maybe?" you reply.

Saki gives you an uncomfortable look.

"... Don't kill yourself." She finally says, seeming to have weighted a lot of possible responses and carefully selected her words. "Ninja have a lot more chakra than we need to live, but we still need it to live."

Yeah, yeah.

You barely pay any attention as you bring Saki back to the Hyuuga compound, and then head home yourself. And then... then you get to quietly training.

It's hard. After the first night, you are exhausted enough that you just sleep through all of the academy classes, ignoring bits of chalk bouncing off your head and quiet checks to reassure people that you hadn't just died in the back of the classroom without warning. Which has apparently happened, a student that thought they were a lot better with poisons than they actually were, and with a foolish understanding of how resistances were gained.

It's at the second day that you finally gain headground, and manage to force a little bit of chakra partially out, but not completely out of your grasp.

You're hanging on to the fragment of chakra outside of your body with what feels like the tips of your fingernails. The slightest slip, the faintest jostling, and the energy is gone. Dispersing freely into the environment around you, and unable to be retrieved. Or used, in any way.

... fingernails aren't the best way to put it, but the only other metaphor you can think of is disgusting. The tenuous grip you can keep on the chakra, not quite lost to you...

It's like taking a massive, painful shit. Stopping in the middle, and just holding it.

It's hours after you first think of the metaphor before you can pick up another attempt at it, and what you manage is shaky.

It takes a lot of concentration, to hold chakra like this. Most of it, in fact. You find yourself moving through life on autopilot, the absolute minimum attention devoted to the real world, all the rest of it wrapped up in holding chakra with invisible fingertips.

And frequently slipping, losing hours and hours of work in an instant.

Weeks pass, to little more effect than to leave a cloud of chakra hanging invisibly around you like a cloak, and disturb your sleep trying to work out a way to keep hold of it while you rest, because otherwise it's just thrown away uselessly again as you fall asleep and let go again.

It's really all a crapshoot, like trying to hold a secure grip on a knife while you sleep. Sometimes you manage to keep hold of nearly everything, other times it all goes away and you wake up needing to begin from scratch again.

... It's exhausting, and you don't sleep well from the effort. But you have to get the basic ability down before you can work out things to do with it. And so you go through all your classes in a dull haze, relying on your sharingan to memorize the lectures so you can go through them and read the instructor's writing and lips to piece together what it was about.

This continues until, in the lunch break of an unremarkable day some number of uncounted days into the training, you're confronted by Hinata of all people. The most timid wallflower of the Hyuuga.

And she's in your face for some reason.

"Y-you have to stop." she stammers, trying her hardest to be authoritative and failing hard, fingers trembling. "You're making, you're making yourself sick!"

"... I'm fiiiine." you reply, the word stretching out as you strangle off a yawn.

"Y-you look like you haven't slept in a week!" Hinata insists.

You've slept. Not... great, but that's how it goes. You wobble a little and let your eyes focus again, then unfocus them as your attention reverts to keeping a grip on your cloud of chakra, invisible to everyone else. Who doesn't have a doujutsu. Huh. Does Hinata see it?

You wave a bit of the chakra cloud in her face and she flinches. A slow grin crawls across your face as you wiggle more of it.

"Stop it!" Hinata insists. "You're hurting yourself!"

---

[ ] "Ssssssso?"
[ ] "Yep."
[ ] "Make me."
[ ] ??

 

Well, yeah.

It hurts. It really hurts. Forcing chakra out of a tenketsu feels something like being stabbed with a hot knife, only from the inside out, and holding on to the chakra afterward is like a dull burning ache representing pulled muscles in your soul.

... With that said, the elders' fucking gentle-dissuasion jutsu that they've kept breaking out since your mother kicked it makes this feel like you just stubbed your toe. And you remember when you were really tiny, just the effort of breathing and walking around on your own hurt sort of like this.

You don't think you're supposed to remember that long ago, but you think that might have been the feeling of your chakra coils and tenketsu all settling into proper place, so you feel like you're on the right track here for something, even if it feels like crawling over hot coals sometimes.

The hell if you're going to stop just because someone tells you to.

"Make me." you snort, obstinately.

Both Hinatas in front of you look despondent at the rejection.

"You can't.." she stammers, working around the words.

If you were civilian kids, it would be a cute fluster of her not knowing the right words to say.

... Since you're both the children of clans famed for shinobi of great prowess and ocular jutsu, it's instead a visible display of her trying to work out how much to say to make her argument without letting on about clan secrets. She's visibly frustrated, and almost despairing.

"Don't bother." You say, interrupting and focusing hard, until all three Hinata merge into one. You pick your nose with a pinky and flick it away. "There's nothing I'm interested in hearing from you. Get lost already."

Hinata's bangs have fallen over her eyes.

"Shoo, shoo." you say, waving a hand. "I'm the glowing golden genius here, I know what I'm doing." More or less. Sort of.

"Shiny and yellow, anyway. Does she wash her clothes in glitter?" one of the onlookers gathering mutters.

"... You w-won't stop?" Hinata says. "Even though... you're just making it worse?"

You make a rude gesture in her general direction. You're pretty sure. Your vision is swimming a little at the moment. Someone gasps.

"Are you gonna take that from her, Hyuuga!?" Someone yells from elsewhere on the playground.

"..." Hinata says, something too low for you to pick out. Can't read her lips from this angle either. "... people that don't understand... anything but fists..."

"... Eh?" you say.

The words strike you as something you remember from recently... a lecture from the Taijutsu instructor? A couple of days ago, some of the other students had a bout of pacifism when a nose got broken and bloody, and there was a patriotic bout of assuring the new trainees that of course they weren't just learning to go out and hurt people for money, but that sometimes people really, really needed to be hit.

... Wallflower Hinata seems to be unexpectedly taking it to heart, though, as she moves into a stance.

"Fight, fight, fight!" someone cheerfully yells.

... Something about this, though. Er. The Hyuuga...

... Something about attacking the chakra network? You don't know much about the intricacies of their style beyond that, except that they can see the chakra system with their doujutsu and do stuff to it.

Ah, hang on. Hinata wants you to stop.

You throw yourself into an ungainly dodge, wobbling and flopping and rolling out of the way of poking fingers.

Not quite fast enough, as one clips near your wrist and slices away your grip on something like a solid hour's worth of gathered chakra to dissipate uselessly away.

"Hey! Do you know how hard it was to hang on to that!?" you snap, rolling up to your feet.

Hinata doesn't say anything because she didn't let up on the attack and is right in your face.

You reflexively try to escape, realize that you can't dodge everything at this face-to-face range, and then reflexively escape anyway.

It takes you one hearbeat to realize that you just used the Shunshin. You body-flickered away. For another heartbeat you brace yourself against passing out from chakra exhaustion.

Which... you don't feel.

You only moved a couple of feet, which is usually useless for a Shunshin, since the drain is the same up to somewhere near fifty meters away. In combat, especially when you don't throw up some sort of obscurement with it, it's worse than useless as a mobility technique because of how draining it is.

... Only, this time it wasn't.

What was different? You used a much smaller amount of chakra than you should have, less than a twentieth of the usual... and it was very close. So close, that you were still inside of...

Ah!?

The difference was that you moved within the area that your chakra was already clouding up, the zone of control where your chakra filled the air? In terms of the technique... you weren't moving your body somewhere far away. Your chakra system is a part of your body, and so the effect of having part of the chakra still... technically inside of your system, but outside of your body...

Your 'body' isn't constrained by the outer limits of your skin, as far as the technique is concerned?

Low cost, ultra short range combat Shunshin, instead as an emergency escape or non-combat travel technique? And people thought Shisui had something interesting, just because he obsessively trained with it and has a lot more chakra to blow on it than normal!

... Your thoughts race in an eyeblink's time, and that eyeblink of time is enough for Hinata, not caught up in BLINDING FLASHES OF GENIUS like you are, to start whirling around with both hands outstretched, her ruination fingertips at the ready.

Reduced specialty Shunshin costs or not, you don't have enough fuel in the tank to keep pulling that off right now.

So instead you try and spontaneously master the replacement technique, a much more typical close-range evasion jutsu.

Someone helpfully rings a bell as Hinata's fingers drive into a randomly selected bystander's body. He hurks loudly, spasming, and then flops to the ground, unconscious.

"... Na.... Naruto?" Hinata gasps, seeming genuinely shocked for a moment.

She looks at her hands.

Then she looks at you.

Then all expression melts off of her face, until you seem to be staring at a fragile doll posessed by an absolutely murderous ghost.

---

[ ] "Bye." Time to ditch class for the day. Also tomorrow, probably.
[ ] "Oops." Shrug apologetically. Maybe you can talk this out?
[ ] Pick up a student and throw them at another student. "Riot!"
[ ] ??

 

"Heeeey, someone call a medic-nin!" you call, sloppily. "Hinata went nuts and laid a guy out!"

"I didn't-!" she insists.

"Knocked him clear out." you appraise, and then whistle, as though you're impressed, your whole demeanor suggesting that the situation has nothing to do with you.

"You made me do that!" Hinata continues.

"Made you? Do I look like a Yamanaka to you?" you say, completely disregarding the current state of your hair. Which you flip idly over your shoulder, wobbling in place. "You need to take responsibility for your own actions sometimes, you know."

Hinata's knuckles crack from how tightly they're formed into a fist.

Then she starts moving, and so of course you do too.

---

About three hours later, you're both sitting in front of the head instructor.

"Do you both understand why you're here?" he says, gravely.

"Because Hinata's got a mean right hook, and she showed everyone?" you reply, flippantly.

"kill you" she whispers under her breath.

It was actually really impressive. No matter what you did, she just kept coming. You still don't have the stamina for long range shunshin, and replacing yourself with stuff kept working, so you kept doing it.

Currently, the entire student body, save the two of you and including at least one of Hinata's very surprised cousins that you noticed, is undergoing medical care. As is some of the staff.

Principal doesn't seem to consider it as impressive as you do, though.

"Classes have been cancelled across the board for today. I am going to have to go in person to explain... this to the Hokage." he says, gravely. "And I'll be fielding complaints from upset parents over it as well. Do either of you... have anything to say for yourselves?"

---

[ ] Nope.
[ ] Do you look sorry?
[ ] It was all Hinata's fault.
[ ] ??

 

"I just wish to say." you say, raising your hand. "That everything I did was in pursuit of withdrawing from the conflict that Hinata initiated and throughout which I never made a single direct attack."

You feel as though hot breath is suddenly on your neck, and when you turn, Hinata's byakugan-veins are bulging. As are her normal veins. You didn't realize she had so many in her pale eyes.

As the devil of the Uchiha, you are not given to panic, or fear, but you respond to this by realizing how little chakra you have available for your fight or flight reflexes at the moment and attempt to pull a little back by your spiritual fingernails.

For some of it this works. Some slips out of your grip. A little...

... That's funny. It feels like you pulled a little chakra back in through a different chakra-sphincter than you pushed it out through. Tenketsu. It feels different, unsettling, and strange. But also good, sort of?

It's kind of... a thin stream of chakra feels like it's flowing in a fragile current around your wrist, there.

"Settle down, you." the principal says to Hinata, breaking you out of your self-inspection and attempts to ignore her mouthing about 'killing you with her own two hands'. "And you, pay attention." he says, to you directly.

The old ex-T&I Chuunin leans back in his seat. It's in a case like this that his past is clearly apparent, as he judges the both of you with a stare.

"Detention for the both of you. Until you're notified otherwise." he says. "Hinata, you clearly need to learn some restraint."

"i what." she says, under her breath.

"So until notified otherwise, you will be assisting the younger children in their taijutsu lessons. You are not to attack them. Purely defensive." he stresses. "And as for you, Mio..."

He frowns.

"The kind of girl who uses her classmates as replaceable shields... you obviously need to learn some empathy." he says. "So you'll be going from class directly to the hospital in the evenings, helping to care for invalids and such."

"Eh..." you reply, not at all thrilled by that.

"Do you have... a complaint?" he breathes out, slowly.

You rapidly shake your head in the negative as Hinata's teeth grind.

...

Well, if nothing else, the clan will be happy that you dragged Hinata into the mud, publicly. There's sort of a polite thing between your clans, even if you both usually try to pretend it isn't there.

A few days pass before anything particularly notable crops up. Hinata doesn't bother you again, though her white-knuckled death-stare is focused on your jugular in every class. In spite of the extra work, you feel a little more rested, with a few... pseudo-coils circulating chakra out of your body and then back in, along one arm. Not far outside of the skin. Just a few centimeters. But...

---

[ ] Dodging Omiai.
[ ] Is it Terminal?
[ ] Crows and a Red Moon.
[ ] ??

 

You go into things expecting to steal some medical jutsu or something along the way.

Instead, you wind up taking care of sick children even younger than you are.

And they are all shits. Some of it is because they don't feel well and want to spread the misery around, but overall it's like you took the worst, most rambunctious and annoying student in the academy, Naruto, and spread him out across sixty smaller individuals.

And you can't even hit them.

You felt as though you were getting one over on the elders, as you stole some knowledge that they didn't want you to have, but truly... truly this is hell. It's only taken three days to determine this is hell, and could you have the fire instead, please? You're an Uchiha. You can tolerate fire. Metaphorically, anyway.

You're stuck here for a certain amount of time after class, and have to do what the nurses and doctors of the hospital tell you to, but they can't give you instructions if they can't find you. With this in mind, you're currently hiding out in one of the nurse lounges that they're too busy to stop back into to look for you in, trying not to think about how much you would rather be dead than come back again tomorrow so you can get puked on, your hair pulled, have little brats just spontaneously break into tears for no reason, and have to wipe people's butts for them when the flu gives them surprise shits.

Your respect for medical professionals has increased, at least in their ability to restrain themselves from just euthanizing all their patients right away. But you don't want to do this any more. You can't imagine why you ever wanted to do this.

Damn the principal, and Hinata. She's having a fantastic time with her 'equivalent punishment'. The younger students seem to look up to her as a kind of big-sister, and don't hold any grudges about getting knocked out. You saw her smiling and laughing the other day, which was honestly unsettling because like most Hyuuga, Hinata never smiles.

Though her not smiling is more of a dour gloominess than the standard superior brick-like stoicism.

... There's a click as someone sets a bottle of chocolate milk from the nurse cooler in front of you. You look up to the boy who deposited it.

He's dressed in the medical uniform, with an unobtrusive Konoha headband, and smiling lightly. Some kind of 'Cool Senpai' overtures? You're instantly suspicious about his intentions, even if he is a little cute.

"Rough time?" he asks, gently. "I remember my first few days helping out in the hospital. It can only be worse that this is a punishment for you."

"Bite me." you grumble, turning your focus away from messing about with your external Chakra veins and to cracking open and chugging his offering.

He chuckles.

"You get used to it." he says. "I'm Kabuto, and I'm the son of one of the lead surgeons myself... so I wasn't exactly asked my opinion when I found out that I'd been signed up for this either. I'd prefer to be learning offensive ninjutsu, really, but between taking assignments as a Genin and my duties here there never seem to be enough hours in the day to look for instruction..."

Baiting that hook pretty hard, aren't we? You aren't sure what he wants. Could be relatively straightforward, and wants to see if you know anything he can coax out of you while you're stuck here. As an Uchiha, you're expected to have a big ninjutsu repertoire, after all. Or he could also be the kind who likes younger girls... not sure.

Either way, you'll nibble.

"Isn't the training supposed to be your Jounin-sensei's job?" you ask.

"In theory yes." he replies, freely. "But my instructor was a stealth and infiltration specialist. If he had to fight, it would be quietly, with Taijutsu and Kenjutsu... even if he knew a lot of Ninjutsu to teach, I've already been pigeonholed into the role of team medic. Going by Tsunade-sama's rules of engagement, technically I'm supposed to be prohibited from fighting at all." he sighs.

You're vaguely familiar with those, and nod consolingly when he sighs.

"It isn't that the woman doesn't deserve the respect people have for her. In her prime she was a legend, after all, and she all but singlehandedly developed Konoha's current medical system." he says, immediately turning to respect for the past to cover up what he might feel for things as they are right now. "But I don't exactly agree with her combat principles. I mean, she outlined them to prevent a medic from fighting at all unless everyone else was already dead, and in that case they wouldn't have the training or ability to handle whatever had happened. Hardly the sort of teamwork we're supposed to practice, is it? And she wrote in a special rule that effectively just means that she can ignore all of her own rules as she pleases."

"It does sound hypocritical of her." you agree easily enough, amused at the idea of having enough power to simply declare a rule that says you can flout the rules and then making everyone else go along with it.

"I know, right?" the boy sighs. "But most people don't appreciate that kind of talk. They idolize the past so greatly that they refuse to admit that she's crippled the future of medical ninja. Do you know when the last time a medical-ninja was promoted to Chuunin was?"

You deliberate upon it for a few moments, but then have to admit that you don't.

"Well, I don't remember the exact date and time myself, but I'll tell you this much." he says. "It was a promotion based on exceptional service in a time of war. All medical ninja are promoted in the field, because it's the only conditions where you can be promoted just for doing what you're expected to do in the hospital every day. The Chuunin exams that are held outside of wartime, though? It's a whole different story."

He shakes his head a little bitterly.

"There are stages where you pass and fail as a team, and a weak link will bring you down as a whole. There are stages where your direct combat skills are tested, and if you're below par then you can't proceed. Guess what Konoha medical ninja aren't trained in?" he asks rhetorically. "It's been three times now that our instructor has tried to push us through the Chuunin exams, and each time I've been stuck having to fight someone, and in the past two the entire team failed when I was knocked out. I can't say... that that hasn't fostered some ill will, since my teammates would like to be promoted as much as I would." he admits. "I think that they're going to start requesting temporary teammates to take the exam with instead of me, if nobody passes again next time."

Super cool sob story, bro. So, is now the point where he offers to swap medical jutsu for ninjutsu?

... No, apparently. Now is the time when he leans back in his chair, groaning, and chugs his own small bottle of plain milk. The different flavors only now hit you, and you bristle a bit at being treated like a small child.

"Anyway, my break-time is over and I have to go see how an old man managed to get his hip broken for the third time this year." he sighs, and pats you on the head. It doesn't dislodge glitter only because a head nurse deliberately and painfully went through your hair with a fine toothed comb to remove potential contaminants and you haven't gotten around to putting more in yet.

"Keep at it, all right?" he says, warmly.

And then he just... walks off, instead of anything else you'd imagined might come up.

You feel an unsettling mixture of relief and disappointment, feeling at the same time as though you'd narrowly dodged a kunai and been cheated.

The next time you see Kabuto, it's coming out of the washroom with traces of vomit in your hair and shit stains settling on your pants from having had to corral a screaming naked toddler with an intestinal virus.

It's far from the best time, seeing as you want to kill everyone here and then die, or vice versa. You aren't quite sure what to say.

---

[ ] ??

 

You aren't as reflexively on the ball as normal, but it only takes you a couple of moments of wishing you were dead to hit the proper bombatic beat again.

"Don't think that I don't know what you're up to! I'm on to you..." you say, pointing your finger accusingly.

"Oh?" Kabuto replies, placidly.

"You can't fool me." you huff.

"Of course, of course. You've completely figured me out." Kabuto says, agreeably starting to pat your head.

He moves it away again though, not actually wanting to touch the remaining mess, and instead casually shrugs at a passing nurse, who titters a little bit at the byplay.

"Th-that's right!" you say, not liking the way you're being treated as a child. "But I'll bite anyway. You want my help, and I'll get your help."

"If you're having trouble with something, I'd be happy to lend a hand...?" Kabuto says, in an affected air of bafflement so patently false it makes your teeth hurt slightly. You can't imagine why people are buying into his nice-guy schtick.

"And you're buying me dinner." you quickly add on to the deal.

"Uh... Hold on, that's a little..." Kabuto says, starting to look uncomfortable with the way this conversation is going.

"It's a deal, no backsies!" you declare, in a confident manner. "We'll eat at Yakiniku Q. Meet me there once I've made myself presentable."

"Now you're going a little far..." Kabuto starts to object.

"If you say no, I'll burn down your house." you threaten, voice pitched in a low whisper that doesn't carry any further than his ears.

Kabuto stares and slowly swallows. There's probably something in your face, or the rapid and glinting spin of your red eyes that suggests to him that you'll go through with it.

There's a little bit more of a bounce to your step as you leave to go get cleaned up.

...

It's not unexpected, so you aren't surprised when someone starts beating on your door in the middle of your bath. Obviously, the old farts have their own plans for things to do with your...

You make a disgusted face as you edit your thoughts.

They have a breeding agenda, you mean, and have their own plans for your romantic future. All they can agree on is that you should keep it in the clan, though. So, since you're being spied on by brown-nosing suck-ups, the old men are quickly getting informed that someone is completely willingly and of their own volition buying you dinner, with hardly any coercion or death threats at all.

You towel dry as one or another of the crotchety old men beats at your door with a cane.

---

[ ] Put on clothes. Answer door. Kick old man. Fite me. You can take him, you bet. Maybe whoever he has with him, too.
[ ] Go out the bathroom window, using false coils and shunshin. A glorious golden streak across the rooftops.

 

You towel dry and dust a pinch of glitter through your hair, combing it into place and then scratching your butt as the hammered knocking gets more insistent and infuriated.

Then you grab your clothes and move to the window.

You could just snatch clothes along the way, but while it would be amusingly ironic considering the clan's status as the village policemen... that kind of petty theft also gives the elders an iron-clad excuse that nobody will argue against to let them lock you up in a cell for the night, in an effort to scare you straight or some other garbage.

Besides, you'd be fully clothed by the time you left the Uchiha compound anyway, and everyone else has already re-dyed their clothes into proper colors by now. You like your current look better, though you might need to touch up your roots soon.

Anyway, the window is nowhere near any handholds or trees that can be used to climb down, because of Mother's concerns about peepers when she was still living here. It does, however, look out on the roof of the next house down the way, somewhat downhill.

It's far enough that any way you slice it, you shouldn't be able to make it there without then passing out from exhaustion immediately afterward, and so the elders won't be seriously watching for you to reappear there, even knowing that you know the Shunshin.

They don't know about your new trick, and you focus intently in order to stretch out a wriggling tendril of Chakra, a fake coil, moving further and further. It stretches out into a tenuous thread so narrow that it is hardly there at all, and then just before it feels like the line of chakra is going to snap, it touches against the rooftop.

With that contact, you body-flicker over, moving the rest of yourself to that point where a tiny portion of yourself has made contact, and then pull the thread back around your arm with a feeling like mental slurping.

Then you hop on one leg across the roof, pulling your pants on as you head for the far side, where you flicker across to the next roof.

And the next one, and then the next one. By the time you hear a quiet, distant uproar from behind you about your absence, but that you can't have gone far, you've got your shirt mostly on too, and another two rooftops later your shoes are on.

You're in an unusual situation for someone traveling the rooftops, in that you can't leap the distances between them at all, much less easily, but you can use the Shunshin technique to travel between them with ease, using your newfound cheating trick. That catches some attention, almost as much as your pulling clothes on did.

You leave quite a flustered hubbub behind you as you head out to Yakiniku Q.

...

You're kept waiting a little while, but Kabuto shows up. He almost seems reluctant when he does. You can't imagine why that would be.

---

[ ] ??

 

You grab him and pull him in, your own stomach grumbling loudly.

"Come on, time to eat up!" you say, boisterously. "You need energy to train, right? Two all you can eat combination platters, and keep 'em coming! This guy is paying."

Kabuto lets out a distressed noise somewhere deep in his throat. You don't know what they pay him as a hospital intern, but it's probably nowhere near enough.

Well, it'll all work out. For you.

He looks like he's almost ready to start crying as the first load of thinly sliced delicious beef and vegetables come out, ready to be grilled at your table. The look on his face is almost as delicious as the food.

"So anyway." you say, munching a mouthful of grilled beef, onion, and carrot. "I know a bunch of casual jutsu, but if you're actually a genin you don't need my help with that. They're all open to academy students and up." you say, and swallow. "I can teach you the Shunshin, though."

"You are picking up a little bit of infamy over that. Something about how you were assigned to the hospital in the first place, I believe?" Kabuto says, polite mask fixed over grit teeth as he says it, then pops a piece of meat in and slowly chews and chews and chews it away to nothing.

"Well, I don't mean to brag, but I'm sort of a genius." you brag.

"A genius who has yet to graduate the academy." Kabuto half-agrees, half calling you out.

"Aw, you serious? But if I graduated early I would, like, have to go and do actual work." you say, deliberately putting your tone of voice into the stereotypical Nara drawl.

Everyone knows those guys are all sandbagging it unless they have no other choice. Kabuto sighs at the little joke.

You chuckle to yourself, then demonstrate the stolen hand-signs.

"Just push the chakra out and want yourself to be there, instead of here. Well, that's the basics of it anyway. I stole it, so I never got any formal instruction or anything." you admit. "Just be careful the fIrst couple of times, because it gets harder the further you jump, and if you run out of juice midway between two roofs it's gonna reaaaally hurt. You need to build up chakra reserves."

"About that..." Kabuto says, something in his eyes flashing before he fixes on a pleasant smile. "... I'll admit, I'm not much of a sensor myself, but medical training does have you pick up how to gauge if someone has a lot of chakra to recover with or if they're dangerously low... and if I can say so, you don't seem to have much more chakra than your average academy student. With that in mind, the Shunshin by your own admission being a comparatively chakra intensive technique... might you have developed some kind of alteration to the technique that makes it more economical for combat use? I believe even Shunshin no Shisui can only make as much use of the technique as he does in combat because of his own high levels of chakra..."

Oooooh, you found what he actually wants to know!

And hey, wait, you might be getting a little more famous than you thought, thinking about that.

"Yep, more or less." you say. "But you don't think I'm just going to tell you how I do that, right? You're going to have to do a lot more than buy me dinner to get those tricks out of me..."

For shits and giggles, you salaciously waggle your eyebrows. Kabuto looks extremely uncomfortable.

"But we're doing a whoooole lot of talking about me. And it's not that I don't enjoy it, but I think it's time for your end of things." you say.

Instantly, Kabuto's giving off this air of an abashed young man ready to be scolded for skipping out on chores.

"Well, my specialty really is medical jutsu." he says. "So, well... I'm not sure how interested you're going to be in the Mystical Palm jutsu..."

"Oh, just go ahead and whip it out already." you say, beaning a bit of carrot off his forehead.

"I... would truly prefer you didn't phrase it in that way." Kabuto says uncomfortably, as a couple of other patrons give your table strange looks before returning to their food. "In any case, much like your shunshin relies on great reserves of chakra to make proper use of it... usually... the Mystical Palm requires exceptional control of that chakra. Or else... well, better to demonstrate."

Kabuto pulls a live mouse from his pocket, and does he just walk around with that all the time? Then he makes a careful demonstration of activating the jutsu, leaving a little green energy floating around his hand and holds it above the mouse.

One side bulges out. Another withers away to nearly nothing. The creature gives a pained shriek, and thrashes. Then it dies, and Kabuto carefully nudges it down into the coals before anyone notices that he brought a demonstration animal in.

"It's like that." he says. "Medical chakra is difficult to keep a grip on, so to speak. It has almost a will of its own, in some ways, like it wants to be used. But while it can be very useful, there's an alarming array of potential side effects or results from flawed usage. Cancers, accidental death, 'healing' the nostrils of a broken nose shut... in order to make effective use of the technique, it generally takes a lot of training time. Which is why once your specialty is obviously medical jutsu, you're a little boxed in..." Kabuto says, seeming a little wistful. "It's particularly dangerous to try and heal yourself, too, unfortunately."

Well, this has been a fantastic exchange. You've given him a jutsu that he can't use without a lot of work that he doesn't have the time to do in order to get an emergency medical jutsu that might kill you if you try to use it when you really need it, without proper training that will get you labeled as a side-line support character and upset a lot of people.

Been fun, though, and at least you got dinner out of it.

"Well, it's about time for me to bounce along out, then. Two more platters of beef for my buddy boy here, he's going to need the energy for training!" you call to the kitchen.

"Please don't, I can't afford that!" he instantly yells back there, in distress.

You laugh as you walk out, into the last fading rays of sunset, and take off at an easy stroll.

Then two roads down, you get plucked off the street and find yourself looking into a strange mask worn by a figure with long, shaggy hair.

"Hi there." the mystery man in the swirling orange mask says, voice peppy and upbeat.

---

[No voting. To be continued.]