Out of the Darkness: A Jinchuuriki's Tale
Tests of All Kinds
By Viridian
Of course, keep in mind... they ARE twelve. Best to be patient...
Chapter Four
Asuka was ominously quiet as we walked home after classes. Iruka had me stand off to one side and practice katas during the taijustsu drills, but Jaboru was happy to practice with Asuka again - even after she bloodied his nose with a spinning jump kick.
Fortunately Naruto was still with his team when we reached the apartment. I didn’t really need any witnesses for this anyway.
"Asuka," I said firmly as soon as the door was shut, "I am sorry if I scared you this morning. It was not my intention to do so, but I apologize anyway. But remember that we are both training to become shinobi. Even as genin we may be called on to do dangerous things. I can’t promise I’ll never get hurt, but I won’t intentionally do anything to break my promises to you." As the old man once told me, if you are unsure of your defenses, it’s sometimes better to just go on the offensive and pray for luck. I figured after nearly incinerating my hand saving that idiot Senjiro from his own clumsiness, the gods owed me a little luck for dealing with the fallout.
This was back when I believed the gods possessed some niggling sense of justice. Now, I know better.
Asuka turned toward me, her entire face trembling. I tried to find something else to say, but my mind went completely blank. Something about her tears just turns off all my higher brain functions. Probably has something to do with the day we met, and how running into me completely screwed up her life.
All right, maybe that was a little harsh. She’d already discovered that her so-called family were merely playing roles in an elaborate deception intended to manipulate her. But if I hadn’t appeared when I did, she might have cried her private tears over their betrayal, regained her composure, and bided her time before making her bid for freedom. Instead, she helped me escape. I took her with me, and then promptly got captured and beaten.
She never did say exactly what happened in that alleyway with Tetsuo after I’d been dragged off, but I suspected the worst. He hadn’t survived, but that wasn’t much consolation to Asuka after what had to be the worst day of her life.
I really didn’t like thinking that I might have caused the runner up in that list as well.
All those thoughts passed through my mind as she launched herself forward and slammed her face into my chest. The wind was knocked out of me as her arms wrapped around my ribcage like a band of steel.
To this day I’m not exactly sure how I managed to maneuver her over to the couch while she completely broke down. I do know that it was well after dark before her tears began to slow. The front of my tunic was nearly soaked through and my legs had gone numb hours ago. Asuka wasn’t a large person by any stretch of the imagination, but she was a little big for me to have sitting curled up on my lap for hours on end.
Not that I was idiotic enough to complain.
I had more that a suspicion that this wasn’t just about what happened today. I just didn’t have the slightest clue what to do about it. This was another area where my prior education was woefully lacking.
Asuka was only starting to wind down when I heard Naruto’s key in the lock. I craned my head around as he opened the door. He looked around in confusion at the darkened living room before cautiously entering.
"What’s wrong?" he asked in a quiet, worried voice that was totally at odds with his normal manner.
I explained, in as few words as possible, what happened at the Academy.
Though I was speaking as quietly as possible, the conclusion of the story still wrenched a sob from Asuka. I felt her fingers twist in the fabric of my tunic.
"You know," Naruto said after a moment, "in movies, when a woman gets upset or hysterical or something, sometimes they slap her to help her snap out of it."
"Naruto," I said through clenched teeth, "have you ever had someone rip your arm off and beat you to death with it?"
Naruto lifted his hands in a warding off gesture. "Hey, it was just an idea."
"Don’t fight," Asuka murmured into my tunic, then hiccupped. After a moment she slowly let go of me and sat up. Her face was a mess. "I’m going to take a bath," she said quietly and slowly left the room without another word.
I looked back at Naruto after she left.
"Want to go spar?" he asked.
OoOoO
A lot of people underestimate Uzumaki Naruto. It’s not hard to do, given how he acts at times. But that’s the key word, you see. Acts.
Given our… unique… perspectives on his situation, Asuka and I like to think that we know him better than ninety-nine percent of Konoha. And that’s true, to a degree. We should.
That’s why it was particularly galling when I realized that I had underestimated him.
I’d thought that his offer was just an idle one. He’d witnessed an uncomfortably intense emotional scene, and been snarled at by someone who should know better. So, he offered to do something that would get us both away from ‘the scene of the crime’, along with relieving our boredom.
It wasn’t until after we’d arrived at his favorite training area that I began to suspect the truth. Naruto hopped up onto a tree branch, formed a seal with his hands, and promptly surrounded me with several dozen clones. "Knock yourself out," he said as they converged on me in a babble of battle cries.
The next few minutes are mostly a blur in my memories. The clones weren’t incredibly skilled, but there were a lot of them, and they coordinated uncannily well. I was totally on the defensive from the very start, and it was nearly a minute before I was able to counter and land a solid blow, making a clone dissipate. As it slowly sunk in that I could go all out against the bunshin, I began pushing more and more chakra into my limbs.
Time seemed to slow down a little as I warmed up and began moving faster and faster. My right hand seemed to have recovered from the chakra burns already, though my whole forearm still felt a little warm. This was especially apparent when I instinctively used chakra to boost a spear-hand strike and the greenish coronal discharge atomized the bandages around my hand. It also exploded the clone I struck, as well as one that was right behind it.
I wasn’t even aware of how my grunts had changed into roars of fury until I rounded on the last ten clones. I even copied one of Asuka’s moves, diving forward and somersaulting into a lunging punch that nailed the last clone.
I stopped as the smoke of its destruction wafted around me, hands at the ready in a deep stance. But no more clones appeared and I slowly became aware of Naruto cheering from his perch.
"That was great!" he said with a wide grin as he hopped down. "You’re not as fast as Sasuke-baka, but I bet you hit a lot harder."
"Why don’t you spar me and see?" I asked with a grin that I couldn’t hold back. Damn that had felt good.
Naruto shrugged. "Not until after you graduate, it’s a rule. Otherwise it would be like picking on a civilian, and the Hokage doesn’t like that. Technically, I’m breaking it with my bunshin, but this is just practice, right?"
I raised an eyebrow and also raised my opinion of Konoha another notch. That rule would explain why the civilians didn’t seem quite as hesitant and fearful as they did in Iwakagure. Then it struck me.
I’d been a boiling stew of rage, frustration, and guilt when I left the apartment. I’d hurt Asuka, without meaning to, and opened a lot of old wounds that I suspected would be a long time healing. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about that. She wouldn’t really talk to me about it, let alone anyone else.
So Naruto brought me out here, expended Kami-knew-how-much-chakra forming clones for me to beat up, and let me get it all out of my system. I’m not sure he realized what he was doing, but I’d been completely clueless at the time. "You did this on purpose, didn’t you?" I asked.
He didn’t even bother to deny it. "When I had a bad day, sometimes I’d come out here and throw kunai as hard as I could. One of the trees here still shudders when I walk by."
"I can’t try that method," I said. "I’d miss the tree too much and probably end up killing some defenseless animal." I shook my head ruefully. "Thanks," I added after a moment.
Naruto shrugged. "Want some ramen?"
I thought about the money we’d earned with the tags. "All right, but I’m buying this time."
I’d never regret those last four words more in my life.
OoOoO
The apartment was quiet when we returned. With Naruto having eaten all my pocket money, I quietly reminded myself to never underestimate his ramen capacity.
Asuka was sitting at the kitchen table with an empty cup ramen in front of her, next to her history book. I felt a stab of guilt that we hadn’t come back to collect her, but then I noticed her bathrobe and the towel wrapped around her head. Maybe a quiet evening alone suited her better, all things considered.
"Did you boys have fun?" she asked quietly as she marked her page and turned toward us.
"Yeah," Naruto reported. "Hikaru put the hurt on my clones. I’d like to see him spar Sasuke after you graduate. It’d be great to see him get flattened by a newbie genin!"
"Have you ever beaten him, Naruto?" Asuka asked in an arch tone. I was a little confused by her manner. She’d been damn near incoherent a few hours ago, and now she acted like nothing was wrong? That must have been some bath.
"Well…" Naruto replied. "Technically, yes." He then proceeded to tell us about what happened between the two of them the day they’d been assigned to Team Seven. Asuka was outraged that he’d masqueraded as Sasuke to talk to Sakura, and I suppose that was a bit creepy, but the image of Sasuke trussed up like livestock kept making me laugh out loud.
All right, maybe I had picked up more than a little of Naruto’s attitude regarding the Uchiha. But the stuck up way he’d acted around us — not to mention refusing an invitation to ramen — wasn’t winning him any points in my book. I was more than happy to laugh a bit at the twerp’s expense.
OoOoO
Class was somewhat back to normal the next day. I was more than a little tired from lack of sleep, but I also felt… I don’t know… lighter, maybe… than I had in a while.
I decided as we walked to the Academy to make Naruto another batch of tags that evening, with only slightly less chakra than the first ones.
Iruka-sensei was a little startled to see my hand un-bandaged and fully recovered from the chakra burns. The old man had hinted that my healing rate was unusual, even for a ninja, and my new teacher’s reaction only underlined this. For the sake of our ‘cover’, I said out loud that the burns weren’t as bad as they’d looked.
Iruka just nodded, evidently relieved at my subtlety. Of course, it’s not like I wanted to wave a banner and announce, "Freaks here! Everyone hate us now!"
After that initial awkwardness, things settled down into a semblance of normality. Asuka and I struggled to pack away as much information about Konoha as we could. I think Iruka was a little unnerved that we actually paid attention during his history lectures. Naruto later confirmed that those were his favorite times to pull a prank.
I, on the other hand, found them highly interesting. We were living here now, and Asuka and I both wanted to fit in. Things that were common knowledge to our classmates were unknown territory for us.
Did you know that Konoha celebrates thirteen different festivals that aren’t observed outside of Fire Country? Some of them make sense, like the Day of Remembrance in October (which is why Naruto never celebrated his own birthday before we arrived), but seriously, the Water Lily Festival? Those don’t even grow around here that much.
Anyway, any kid will tell you that a desire to fit in is one of their most fervent desires, even when it wars with a desire for attention or recognition. That’s one thing that made Naruto’s situation so bad. And that’s why Asuka and I were so interested in assimilating ourselves into Konohagakure’s culture. Even if they are a bunch of weirdoes at times, they were our weirdoes now.
Working on our Taijutsu with Jaboru and the other larger boys also helped us improve. One of his buddies, a hulking kid with what I later learned were Inuzuka facial tattoos, was nearly as strong as the Akimichi, but moved a lot faster. He consistently pounded the snot out of me unless I used chakra, but I closed the gap between us a little more each day.
Asuka had grown a little fierce after the accident, and she seemed to relish fighting boys that outweighed her by a factor of three. The few times the other kunoichi talked ‘The Iwa Princess’ into working with them, she pretty much mopped the floor with them. Some of them resented it, but a couple actually got serious about their taijutsu and began to challenge the boys as well.
Given some of Naruto’s off-hand remarks about his Academy days, this seemed somewhat unusual. Maybe not having a ‘heart-throb’ like Sasuke in our class encouraged more thinking and less hormones. Or maybe they found Asuka a little intimidating.
My friend had been raised in the Tsuchikage’s household, but I didn’t always grasp the implications of that upbringing. She had a way of looking at annoying people that I think she picked up from her fake mother. It was a combination of "you aren’t nearly as amusing as you think you are" and "your life expectancy is dropping rapidly". I know for a fact that I was her best friend in Konoha — hell, her best friend, period — and it still made me twitch when she turned that glare on me.
The old man definitely hadn’t prepared me for that.
Between her manner and the wildly exaggerated stories that were circulating — courtesy of my big mouth — Asuka was pretty much the queen of our class by the time of our graduation exam.
OoOoO
Naruto, in his less than subtle way, tried to prepare us for what would be on the examination. He rationalized this by saying that many of our classmates came from Shinobi families, and of course their older siblings, cousins, etc. would give them clues about what to expect.
It wasn’t like the previews would help that much anyway, since the instructors changed the exact format a little each term. For example, we might be tested on any of the ninjutsu techniques we’d covered in class, and the exact rules for the Taijutsu matches could vary as well. Sometimes it was a straight tournament, other times competitors fought in a narrow circle until one was forced out. On one occasion, the genin candidates merely had to last thirty seconds against a bad-tempered chuunin without being knocked out. Naruto swore up and down he’d passed that last one, but the examiner with the stopwatch lied to make him fail.
Of course, now that I think about it, it doesn’t seem quite as far-fetched as it had sounded at the time.
So it was with some trepidation that Asuka and I approached the Konoha Ninja Academy on the day of our examination.
Iruka seemed especially friendly that morning, and my opinion of him rose again. He knew that a good number of his students wouldn’t make it. Some would stay in the academy to try again next term. Others would opt out of the Academy and transfer to the civilian school or apprentice themselves to a tradesman. Only those who’d truly mastered the basics would have a shot at joining a genin team.
But no matter the outcome, Umino Iruka didn’t want his students’ last memories of the Academy to be any more unpleasant than they had to be. It was this insight that made me grasp why a seemingly undistinguished chuunin was given a position of such responsibility. He was a natural.
The Taijutsu examination was first. We were paired off by random lots to fight for two minutes or until one participant was clearly defeated. If the battle was inconclusive, grades would be assigned by the observers. I winced visibly when Asuka was called along with Senjiro. I more than half-suspected that she resented him for the burns I’d received as a result of his clumsiness.
This suspicion was borne out when Asuka proceeded to beat the crap out of a skinny boy that was nonetheless head and shoulders taller than she was. When Iruka’s hands chopped downward to start the match, she was already a blur of motion. Senjiro, caught completely off guard, doubled over when the ball of her foot said hello to the pit of his stomach. Things went downhill from there, and it was just a matter of time before a spinning elbow strike impacted the hinge of his jaw and knocked him flat. Iruka called a halt just as Asuka was executing a leaping attack that would have landed her, knee-first, on the hapless boy’s ribs.
It all happened so fast that I’m not one hundred percent sure of what happened next. Asuka was nearing the top of her leap when Iruka signaled the end of the match. She should have continued downward and either cracked his ribs or awkwardly straddled him if she could move her legs in time. That’s why I rarely go aerial when I fight. I don’t need the altitude to reach someone’s face like she does, and it limits my ability to react if something changes while I’m in midair.
Instead of either of these things happening, Asuka seemed to glide backward a little in the air and landed gracefully in a crouch at the supine boy’s feet. Iruka blinked twice, but then declared Asuka the victor.
Like it wasn’t pretty obvious.
She was breathing hard and her cheeks were a little flushed when she walked back to the assembled students and stood next to me.
"Impressive hang time," I murmured.
She shot me a quick look, but didn’t say anything as Iruka was already announcing the next match.
Of course, it had been a while since the gods had demonstrated their sadistic side where I was concerned. So it was only natural that I was called up along with Jaboru — someone else who desperately needed to do well in the Taijutsu exam.
The larger boy eyed me as we stepped into the sparring area. I nodded warily. "We need to make this look good," I mouthed to him.
His eyes narrowed. "All out?" he whispered back, making Iruka frown.
"Ready?" Iruka asked as I nodded. I felt a surge of chakra from Jaboru as our sensei signaled for us to start.
Jaboru mainly used chakra to enhance his speed. Otherwise, his bulk made his Taijutsu clumsy. I had a fair bit of speed already, so I used it more for striking power and blocking. The latter was highly advisable when your opponent’s arms were roughly the size of tree trunks.
He flashed forward, aiming a pile-driver punch at my face. I leapt upward, violating my own rule since I needed to make a point to my instructors. The palm of my hand briefly rested on Jaboru’s forearm as I vaulted over his attack, landing in the square behind him. I spun and made a lightning quick knife-hand strike at his kidneys. He put his elbow into my wrist hard enough to make my hand temporarily numb and followed up with a ridge hand strike to my neck. I ducked under that and neatly swept his legs out from under him.
But rather than crash to the ground with enough force to rattle everyone’s teeth, he actually caught himself on the palm of his other hand. There ought to be a law against people large enough to qualify as a postal district being that agile. A foot larger than my head brushed past my hair as I barely dodged his counter. I swear I think that big turkey was holding back a little in our previous sparring sessions.
I guess he was also a little more devious than I gave him credit for. Good show.
But for all his mass, I was pretty sure I outweighed him on the chakra side of the equation. Hachimata aside, all that training with the old man occurred under the chakra suppression field of our shared cell. I think one factor in my initial recapture was the incredible distraction of my own chakra circulating freely for the first time in my life. I’d had no idea that it was supposed to be that easy.
So as the clock ticked down on our little exhibition, I began stepping up my own chakra usage. Jaboru’s eyes narrowed as he realized that I might not have shown all my cards in our previous sparring either.
Let me make something clear. Passing this examination was crucial for two very important reasons. Making enough money to live on, without depending on the charity of others, was pretty important to both of us. I don’t think Iruka, or the Hokage for that matter, would let us starve. But making enough money to have a choice in what we ate, or what we wore, meant more to us than I think anyone who hasn’t been in our situation can appreciate. But even beyond that, I promised Asuka that I wasn’t going anywhere, and damned if she wasn’t going to hold me to that. The Hokage said he’d see what he could do to help us, but his hands would be tied if one of us passed the genin exam and the other failed.
After her performance against Senjiro, I suspected that unless I did as well, Asuka might very well throw the rest of her tests to ensure that we weren’t separated.
Damned if I was going to be what held her back, and kept her eating plain rice another six months. Damned to hell if I would.
Jaboru’s eyes widened when, instead of ducking a roundhouse blow that would have felled a tree, I blocked it instead. And with chakra gluing my feet to the ground, it was him that stumbled backward from the impact.
And then I went on the offensive. Jaboru, with the ‘subtle’ warning I’d just given him with that block, used his enhanced speed to dodge my axe kick. He’d blurred aside in a move that earned a few gasps from the dumber students as my heel put a six inch deep divot in the ground where he’d been standing.
He put a roundhouse kick into my side that I had to lean into in order to block it. As it was, my feet left furrows in the ground as I was shifted several inches to the left by the impact. Without chakra, I’m pretty sure my arm would have been broken as well.
I stumbled forward as I ducked under a punch. I’d tried to glue my feet to the ground with chakra to block the kick, but that only meant that the loose soil under my feet was shifted aside as well, leaving me with uneven footing. Damn, but that Akimichi hit hard. Making the best of my stumble, I dove between Jaboru’s wide-set feet and did a duck and roll, rising up behind him with my fist cocked back just as Iruka called a halt to the match. Jaboru, who was spinning around in a panic, relaxed and let out his breath with a whoosh.
I extended my hand. "Good fight," I said evenly.
He slapped at my hand instead of shaking it. I was confused for a second as his hand drew back, but from his smile I guessed it was supposed to be a friendly gesture. "You are one tough bastard, Snake-Eyes," he said with a grunt.
I scowled at him. "You aren’t so bad yourself, Mountain-That-Walks," I replied sarcastically.
Iruka shook his head as Jaboru laughed out loud and strutted back toward the other students. Our sensei was smiling a little, but the other examiners still looked a bit shocked. They had to suspend the matches for a few minutes and use a Doton jutsu to level the ground in the sparring area again. I had a pretty good feeling about my grade as I rejoined Asuka in the ranks.
OoOoO
The rest of the examinations went about how I expected. The written ones were tough, but we made do. It wasn’t like we had the money or the friends to do much besides study in the evenings, and Naruto rarely finished with his team before it was fully dark. I still finished my tests a little before Asuka, but that was mostly owing to my penmanship. I’d tried to teach her a little about seals when she asked, wondering if her… tenant… would have any unusual effects on any tags she produced. Unfortunately, she just couldn’t seem to get comfortable using a formal calligraphy brush.
I considered just letting her charge up some tags I’d drawn, but the old man had cautioned me against trying anything like that. Tags tended to be a lot more stable, and safer to store, if you didn’t mix foreign chakras during creation.
Given how powerful my explosive tags had turned out, safety considerations were paramount.
Okay, maybe that was an odd word to end a sentence with. I’d discovered another vice that had been virtually unknown in my prior existence: books.
Of course I knew what books were — the old man wasn’t that daft. We just never had any. At all. I’d never had the opportunity to read something that wasn’t just written in blood by myself or the old man. That’s fine for learning your letters, but is a bit unwieldy for general education. Thus, most of my formal learning had been conducted orally. When I’d asked Iruka about the books stored in the low shelves in the corner of the room behind his desk, he handed me a primer on Konoha history and told me to bring it back when I was done.
He was a little surprised when I returned it the next day. I’d already read all my textbooks. Twice. So it wasn’t like I had anything else to focus on the previous evening.
Naruto did bring some books over when he moved in, but most of those were old text books or training manuals, most of which were out of date. There were a few tattered old comic books as well. While my roommate treasured them, I found them a little thin on the plot side.
Anyway, this led to me devouring all four of Iruka’s shelves before the end of the term — to Iruka-sensei’s vast amusement, it seemed. It also led to me occasionally using larger words than usual, to Naruto’s visible dismay. Asuka thought it was kind of funny though — and I don’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed about that.
But in the end, some of the things I’d read helped me complete my Konoha History, Shinobi Law, and Chakra Theory examinations a little faster, so it wasn’t exactly wasted time. If I passed, my next leisure-time project would be to tackle the Konoha Public Library. Naruto assured me that they had an entire wing devoted to scrolls on Ninjutsu, Genjutsu, and sealing techniques, but admission was restricted to only those wearing a leaf forehead protector.
Asuka looked a little less confident than I felt, but it wasn’t like she didn’t know the material. I was confident she’d passed those tests as well.
It was the rest of the day that sucked.
The weapon tests went about as badly as I’d expected. The kunai-throwing was downright embarrassing. Asuka did all right, but out of ten throws, six were required to hit the target in order to achieve the lowest passing grade. By some miracle (not to mention hours of boring practice with Uzumaki-san on the weekends) I managed to get six hits in nine throws.
Iruka’s audible sigh of relief when I made that last hit was entirely uncalled for.
Eight hits was the threshold for the mediocre rank, so my tenth throw was purely a formality. It was sheer pique that lead me to palm one of my smallest tags and attach it to the handle of my kunai without Iruka noticing. The ball of fire that incinerated the target, not to mention making Sensei jump with a muttered oath, more than adequately expressed my feelings on the whole subject of kunai-chucking.
Still, that was the test I’d been dreading the most, and I managed to squeak by. Asuka had nine hits to show for her ten throws, so there were no worries there either.
The final test was almost anti-climactic. Kawarimi no Jutsu, the emergency substitution technique was selected for the Ninjutsu exam and both of us performed it flawlessly. As I walked back to my seat, Asuka showed me how to do a proper "high five".
At the end of the day, we’d both been presented with forehead protectors etched with the symbol of Konohagakure. It was, without a doubt, the best day of my life so far.
OoOoO
We were both a little surprised to see Naruto loitering around the entrance to the Academy. He explained rather sheepishly that Team 7 had finished that day’s mission a little early, and he’d begged off from training so he could find out how we’d done. Reading between the lines, I guessed that his jonin-sensei wasn’t up to training a thoroughly distracted Naruto, but I was touched nonetheless.
What I wasn’t expecting were the reactions of our classmates. Several of them stared at our roommate with expressions ranging between wariness and outright distaste.
But the anxious parents who’d come to pick them up acted far worse.
It didn’t take a lot of skill to read their lips or hear the muttered curses. A few glared at him with such venomous hatred that I was really surprised they didn’t draw weapons.
Naruto seemed oblivious to this at first, but I did notice the skin tighten around his eyes. It was a little disconcerting how well he hid his emotions when he actually bothered.
I quickly looked around, but Iruka-sensei was still inside, no doubt collating the examination results for the Hokage’s office. I gritted my teeth. Time to put my ryou where my seal was.
"Oi! Naruto-san! You didn’t have to take off from work just to check on us!" I said in a loud voice. Some of the glares changed to looks of shock as their eyes shifted toward me. Normally, I’m not too comfortable being the object of public scrutiny. I didn’t have any say in the events that changed my eyes along with my hair and complexion, so it naturally irks me a little when people stare. But anything was better than watching all these idiots hating Naruto for being the instrument of their salvation.
Naruto’s eyes widened at my… unexpected… jocularity. When he hesitated, I quickly stepped forward, suppressing my discomfort, and gave him a quick, masculine hug, punctuated by a firm slap on the back. I locked eyes with him as I stepped back, hoping to get the point across.
Asuka looked far more natural as she stepped forward and hugged him tightly, cooing something about "Naruto-ni-san" before she stepped back.
Naruto was blushing a little now, but his eyes were grateful as he babbled happily, pointing at our new forehead protectors. Unlike some of our classmates, we both wore ours around our foreheads. In my case, it helped keep my hair under control. Regular washing didn’t exactly make it want to curl, but it seemed more and more to have a mind of its own.
With her shorter hair, Asuka didn’t need to hold anything back. On the other hand, it did add some weight to counterbalance her features, helping her to not look so young. From some of her comments, she hadn’t enjoyed being the youngest in her ersatz family, and didn’t enjoy being dismissed as a mere child in her new home. I always talked to her like the adult she now legally was, given that she had graduated, because it hadn’t really occurred to me to do anything different. In time, I’d come to realize how much that pleased her.
Our overly friendly greetings to our room-mate definitely had their desired effect. We’d managed to confuse the hell out of everyone around us — to my vast amusement.
"Hey Snake-Eyes!" Jaboru called out. I winced at my new "nickname" as Naruto’s grin grew even wider.
"What is it, Mountain-That-Walks?" I asked as I turned around. Behind Jaboru was a man I assumed was his father. There was no doubt in my mind that he was an Akimichi, given his size. I also noticed that he wasn’t scowling like most of the adults. His expression was carefully neutral, if anything.
"You know this joker?" he asked, cocking his head in Naruto’s direction.
"He’s just our roommate," I replied calmly. In for a senbon, in for a kunai.
Jaboru snorted, but it wasn’t a completely unfriendly sound. "I’ll be damned," he said after a moment. "Make sure you get him to tell you about the time he ‘decorated’ the Hokage monument." With that, he turned toward his father and they made their way through the crowd.
Amazing how it just parted before the pair of juggernauts.
Naruto’s shock didn’t eclipse the small grin of pride on his face. But if anything, the expressions of the adults grew even angrier and more outraged. At this point I decided it might be better to leave before we started a riot or something.
I just shook my head at Uzumaki Naruto. Then I said the magic words. "You can tell us at Ichiraku’s."
OoOoO
For once, I didn’t mind dropping a wad of cash into Ichiraku Teuchi’s retirement fund. As genin, we’d be making our own money soon, so I didn’t mind dipping into the envelope Iruka had given us for the tags.
Of course I was a little less sanguine about our expenditures when Naruto mention the individual tests that some instructor-jonin liked to spring on their genin teams. The possibility that Asuka and I could still be shuffled back to the Academy hadn’t even occurred to me.
Naruto quickly reassured me that the tests usually weren’t all that bad. Only his instructor had a reputation for regularly failing teams with something called a "bell test". I don’t know if it was my facial expression that first alarmed my roommate, or the fact that the chopsticks I’d been holding were now a mass of splinters.
Ayame passed me a fresh pair with a sympathetic expression — right before she rapped her knuckles on Naruto’s forehead. His complaints earned him a further scolding, but I could tell her heart wasn’t really in it.
"We’ll be okay," Asuka said quietly as Naruto and the waitress squabbled. "I heard one of the older examiners say after you and Jaboru fought that he hadn’t seen a genin Taijutsu match that good since Kakashi fought someone named Gai."
I shrugged. "You schooled Senjiro pretty well too. I didn’t even see him at the later tests. But what if our new teacher wants to see how well we throw kunai?" I asked worriedly.
Asuka actually smiled at that. "Then you tag your kunai like you did today and blow them up."
"Maybe," I grunted sourly, "but I still don’t like this."
That just seemed to set her off, and her incessant giggling made it a challenge to maintain a proper scowl. Finally, Naruto’s bottomless stomach was temporarily filled and we bade good night to Teuchi and Ayame.
OoOoO
Once we were home and sorting through our paperwork from the Academy, another problem presented itself.
Since we didn’t have adult guardians, it fell to Asuka and me to fill out our official paperwork and applications for Konoha Shinobi Licenses. Naruto wasn’t much help, as the Hokage had filled out most of his paperwork for him. Though our roommate did mutter something about his official photograph, he refused to elaborate.
In my case in particular, I had to leave an uncomfortably large number of questions unanswered. I didn’t actually know my biological parents, though some of the old man’s comments allowed me to supply my mother’s profession. But writing down ‘prostitute’ didn’t make me feel any better.
For that matter, I didn’t really have a family name either. Asuka did have one, but she didn’t really want to use it, so we were in the same boat. We both looked up at each other when the answer to our mutual dilemma presented itself.
Naruto, attempting to make some cup ramen, let out a rather vile epithet when he burned his hand on the kettle.
Asuka and I looked back at each other and nodded. I jumped up and carefully righted the kettle before the kitchen floor was covered with boiling water, while Asuka dragged the genin over to the sink to run cold water over his tender hand.
"Naruto-ni-san?" she asked in a sweet voice as he let out a sigh of relief. For an instant I felt a pang of what I supposed was jealousy. She never talked to me like that.
"Yeah?" he asked warily. He’d evidently picked up on the fact that little Asuka clearly wanted something.
"Would you mind if we adopted your last name for our official records?" she asked sweetly.
I was a little surprised he didn’t immediately agree with her. "Why would you want to do that?" he asked, confused.
"Well," she said, taken a little aback, "we have to put something. Hikaru doesn’t have a family and I don’t want anything to do with mine."
Naruto frowned. "Wouldn’t that make us… like a family or something?" he asked slowly.
"Cousins, at least, from a legal standpoint," I said thoughtfully, trying to recall one of Iruka’s lectures. "More like a clan since we aren’t all brothers and sisters."
"Uzumaki Clan," Naruto said slowly, as if he was tasting it. He slowly smiled. "I like the sound of that," he added.
That grin of his was damned insidious. "Since you are, technically, the oldest, that would make you the head of the clan, wouldn’t it?" I asked innocently. If he wanted to be Hokage someday, maybe a little leadership practice would be a good thing.
I swear to Kami I saw his eyes ignite in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. "That is soooo cool!" he shouted. "We’ll be the Uzumaki Clan! And we can all wear-"
"No Orange!" Asuka barked, jolting Naruto out of his twisted power fantasy.
"What’s wrong with orange?" Naruto asked petulantly, sticking out his lower lip. I began wondering if this was a good idea.
"Nothing if you want to get killed on a mission," I said snarkily. "Now, dark colors like black and green," I explained, gesturing downward at my outfit,"are much more practical."
"I like red," Asuka interjected in a firm voice.
I shot her a look, but she had a point. "Maybe we shouldn’t try to have official colors," I said quickly. I peered at the back of Naruto’s jacket. "What about a common symbol?" I suggested, pointing to the red spiral adorning the orange canvas. "Uzumaki is derived from a word for spiral or whirlpool, so it seems appropriate," I added.
"I like the color," Asuka added brightly.
I rolled my eyes until her foot rapped my shin.
"Okay then," I said quickly. "We’ll use the Uzumaki name on our official paperwork. That should get the ball rolling." I scratched my head. "Do we need to do anything else to make it official?" I asked Asuka. I couldn’t remember for sure, but she’d attended the same lectures.
She shook her head. "I don’t think so, not yet anyway. Most of Konoha’s shinobi clans weren’t really recognized as such until they’d been around for a while. I don’t think we’ll be campaigning for a spot on the village council any time soon, will we?"
I shuddered, imagining the outcry that would spark. "No, not for a while yet," I agreed quickly.
OoOoO
You’ll understand if I was still a little nervous when we reported to the Academy for team assignments the next day. The specter of failure still haunted my sleep and I had no idea what to expect.
Naruto’s stories about his sensei utterly failed to reassure me.
Still, it wasn’t like we really had a choice. So nine a.m. found us reporting to the assigned room with the other graduates. I nodded to Akimichi Jaboru and his Inuzuka buddy, Kaizo, as Asuka and I took a pair of seats near the front. It actually wouldn’t be too bad working with the big guy, but I doubted they’d assign two taijutsu specialists to the same team.
On the other hand, this was Konoha, so common sense was, at best, optional.
Something was bothering me after I sat down and Iruka strolled in and congratulated everyone. It wasn’t until he’d started calling out names as the jonin arrived that it dawned on me.
There were fourteen new genin in the classroom.
As far as I knew, genin were assigned in teams of three, so something was definitely going on here. This suspicion was borne out as the last jonin left and Asuka and I were left alone with Iruka in the classroom.
I raised my eyebrow at our former instructor. He made a face.
"We had an odd number of students graduate this time," he explained. "Normally, we’d adjust the minimum threshold for passing to ensure that we graduated a multiple of three, but there weren’t really any students left that were close to passing. Conversely, it wouldn’t have been fair to fail the two lowest-ranking students, since even they were well above the minimum. Given you two and your… situation… the Hokage decided that it might be best to do something a little different with regards to your team assignment."
"Different?" I asked warily.
Iruka nodded. "Given the circumstances, it would be better if you two stayed close to Konoha for the most part. The Hokage said there was a chance that you two might become targets for foreign shinobi, and there weren’t any jonin-sensei’s strong enough to ensure your safety if you traveled far from Konoha."
It irked me a little that being jinchuuriki would bar us from being on a regular genin team, but I could see his point. It also made me reevaluate the grey-haired weirdo that Naruto worked for. I nodded.
Iruka winced as a loud thump echoed from the outside wall. "You two have been assigned as assistants to a special jonin working on an important project." He paused. "Don’t consider this to be a negative reflection on your skills or the work you’ve done here," he added in a stern voice. Then he smiled. "Given your circumstances, I am quite pleased by the progress you have made. I promised you once that if you studied hard, you would succeed, and you have proven me correct!"
It was a little hard to be cynical in the face of such blinding sincerity. So I just smiled instead. He was kind of a dork at times, but Iruka’s heart was definitely in the right place, and I appreciated him wanting to reassure us.
That was when the door opened and my warm and fuzzy feelings came to an abrupt halt.
"I definitely need to work on my aim," a woman with spiky purple hair muttered, rubbing her head. She appeared to be wearing a trench coat over shin-guards, a leather mini-skirt, and a tight mail shirt that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. "Oi! Iruka! Are these my new…"
Her voice cut off as she looked toward us. The next thing I knew a pair of very sharp kunai were speeding toward me. I leapt out of my seat, fueled by panic and all the chakra I could mold on an instant’s notice. As it was, one of the blades still nicked my calf, drawing a tiny amount of blood. Diving into a roll, I came to my feet just in time to duck a punch that cracked the plaster of the wall behind my head.
My desperate counter-punch was mostly absorbed by her metallic body armor, eliciting little more than a grunt. She’d just grabbed me by the throat, short nails digging into the flesh, when there was a loud whoosh and a gout of flames set the back of her trench coat on fire.
The crazy woman spun, flinging another pair of kunai at Asuka and I promptly
went berserk.
A fist, wreathed in a glow of sickly green chakra, crashed into her jaw, sending her stumbling backward. I realized after a moment that the fist was mine. Her fingertips were red with blood where they’d been ripped loose from my throat, but I was feeling no pain. She cocked her arm at me and a freaking snake flew out of her sleeve at me, fangs extended. Gluing my feet to the floor with chakra, I ripped a desk loose from the floor and swatted the reptile out of the air.
You might think my tenant would have objected to that, but I figured he was called the eight-tailed dragon for a reason. Confusing him with snakes was probably as insulting as calling a human an ape.
The snake disappeared in a puff of smoke, making me wonder if it had even been real. Of course, that was enough distraction for the crazy woman to follow up with a kick to the stomach that sent me flying across the room.
Remember that part where I’d glued my feet to the floor with chakra? Well, two rather large hunks of flooring accompanied me on my journey, still stuck to my sandals. That woman hit hard.
My shoulders and back hit Iruka’s desk hard enough to send it careening into the wall. I was vaguely aware of him shouting something, but I needed to keep all my attention focused on this Iwakagure infiltrator. More than anything, I was annoyed that he wasn’t helping, at least a little. Or going for help. Or something!
I was starting to wonder about that when Asuka chucked a ball of fire at the assassin. I noticed a line of blood from a long scratch on my friend’s cheek and my mind went up in flames. My muscles began to burn from all the chakra flowing into them as I leapt up from the floor and slammed my shoulder into the assassin’s midsection. I heard a muffled ‘oof’ from her right before we punched through the wall of the classroom and into the hallway.
However, blasting through a cinder-block wall takes no small amount of effort. Even though my legs were still pumping, without a running start I couldn’t smash her through the opposite side of the hallway. I kept her pinned there for an instant before something thick and scaly wrapped around my neck, squeezing tight and cutting off my air.
I stumbled backward with an enormous python wrapped around my neck and shoulders. It reared back to hiss at me, grinding scales into my flesh and doing its damnedest to pop my head off like a stubborn cork.
Drunk on chakra, I still have no idea what possessed me to bite the damned thing. I was probably more shocked than it was when some abruptly enlarged canines punched through the scales like rice paper. Again, the snake disappeared with a loud pop and a puff of smoke. Was it some kind of jutsu?
I had no time to ponder that question because a monstrously powerful kick sent me flying back through the hole we’d made in the wall. I hit the floor and tumbled, bits of debris bruising the already-abused flesh of my back.
The assassin was just coming back through the hole in the wall when an intense wall of fire blocked her path. She stepped back, seeming to consider running through it or going for the door when Iruka jumped in between us.
My ears were still ringing, but it looked like he was yelling for us to stop. Lip-reading attempts aside, the purple of his complexion set off the scar on his nose nicely, and hinted that something was wrong here.
OoOoO
It took a little while for order to be restored. Fortunately, Asuka proved to be just as good at putting out fires as starting them, and she was able to snuff out her improvised barrier before it set off the overhead sprinklers.
But my appreciation of Asuka’s talents was abruptly forgotten when Iruka announced that this Mitarashi Anko was going to be our jonin instructor.
"We’re supposed to work with this crazy woman?" I demanded at the top of my lungs. "Iruka, she just freaking tried to kill me!"
"Hey, I thought you were someone else," she said dismissively, like that explained everything.
I grabbed the top of my head and roughly gathered a hank of hair in my fist. "Just for the record, psycho, this is GREEN hair. Any other resemblance to that whack job is just a coincidence. Do you normally go around killing people because of how they look or do you get especially murderous around schools?"
That earned me a scowl. "I don’t see why you’re so upset; it’s not like anyone was seriously hurt."
"Not for a lack of effort on your part!" I shot back. "And look at Asuka’s face! Two inches to the left and she’d be on her way to the morgue right now and you’d be next," I snarled.
"I. Don’t. Miss." Anko said, stalking toward me again and biting off every word. "Ever." She poked a finger into my chest. "And don’t you ever threaten anyone unless you plan to follow through on it, boy."
"Stop it! Both of you!" Iruka shouted, making both of us jump. "Anko, one more word and the Hokage will get a detailed report of everything that happened here today. Hikaru, I’m ashamed of you. She may have jumped to conclusions, but Anko is your new sensei. You will show her respect if you want to be a shinobi of the Leaf."
I couldn’t ever recall being this angry — not even when I made my first kill in Iwakagure. I stood there, trembling on the verge of complete insubordination, when Asuka put her hand on my shoulder. "Hikaru?" she said in a quiet voice.
I gave Iruka a quick nod, then turned back to this Anko person. "Yes, you are our new sensei and as such I will show you the proper respect," I said aloud. Then I dropped my voice to a whisper. "And if you ever hurt Asuka, they will never find your body."
I’d meant every word, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Anko’s eyes narrowed as she glared at me and then glanced at Asuka. Finally, as Kami is my witness, the crazy woman smirked at me!
What the hell had we gotten into here?
Author’s Notes:
Thanks to Runsamok and Bibliophile for excellent and speedy beta-work.
Gai and Kakashi are roughly the same age, so they probably did attend the Academy together. It isn’t specified when Gai graduated, but even if it was after Kakashi, they could have fought each other in the taijutsu examination and Gai could have blown one of the other tests and had to repeat. (Which might explain some of his support for Rock Lee’s ambitions.) Their 'epic' rivalry had to start sometime, right?
People who object to my use of the word "odd" need to look at all the definitions of the word. Fourteen can still be an odd number if you are dividing something up into threes. (I’m amazed at the number of ‘corrections’ I receive where the person didn’t even check dictionary dot com.)
If you have questions about my update schedule or future plans, please check the blog (link is in my profile) — I recently posted about some changes, starting this month with NaNoWriMo.