Bench Warmer Ch 3
This surprising turn of events...did not spark joy.
Now, normally, I was all for a change. For a difference, no matter how small and insignificant it might have been in the face of fate and prophecy. Small moments like those gave me life. They gave me the oddly euphoric feeling that I'd just spat in the eye of someone I disliked very much.
I'd never done anything of the sort, of course, but that was how I imagined it would feel.
Of course, when a change in the path led to a strong chance of personal harm and danger, I naturally-
"Bells?" Naruto loudly interrupted my internal turmoil with an almost yell. Or, in other words, with his normal tone and volume. "What bells?"
Damn it, Naruto, I'd been having a moment.
"I'm glad you asked, Naruto. I'm glad you asked." Kakashi, the corner of his single visible eye crinkling in an emoted smile that filled me with more than reasonable amounts of discomfort, gave the blond a pat on the shoulder. "And so is Yanyan-Kun."
How...sickeningly cutesy sounding. And worrying. As the unknown tended to be.
I didn't give him the satisfaction of audibly acknowledging what he'd just said. But it had affected me, even if slightly.
He probably knew it too, the bastard.
"Yanyan-Kun?" Sasuke did all of the acknowledging for me, clearly skeptical about what had just come out of his mouth. A good thing to be, I'd say.
Better him than I.
"Did none of you notice him? You were just looking at him a moment ago." Kakashi blinked sleepily at us as we all turned back to Naruto's trap, which we'd been ignoring for less than a minute in favor of...whatever this was turning out to be. "His day was already going terribly. Now you've just hurt his feelings."
We all finished turning...and we all took in the view. That view being a stuffed dog...an abnormally cute stuffed dog. Very high quality at a glance. Imported, maybe? One with soft, white fur and big, round eyes that just drew you in and...focus. Not the time for that.
Later.
A short look gave me what I was looking for. The bells were around its neck, swaying, and ringing lightly in an unseen breeze. The entire animal was wrapped up in strategically placed ninja wire, the anchor points disappearing into the unreadable labyrinth that Naruto had created from baling wire (Yes, baling wire, which was different from the ninja variety) and office supplies.
"He wasn't there before," I pointed out.
And I didn't squeak while doing it. Or squeal. Or any variation of either of those things. I was far too dignified for that. Really.
Not a peep.
Ino would think it was cute though. And she'd do all of that.
And not me.
It was a very nice toy and I wasn't made of stone.
"Nonsense. He's been there this whole time, Sakura-chan. It isn't his fault you didn't notice him."
"What?" Naruto actually yelled, outraged in that way only Naruto could be. "No, he wasn't! Where the hell did-"
"And now you're victim-blaming delinquents. I worry for Konoha's future. But, maybe, you will all turn it around. Maybe you aren't hopeless after all?" Kakashi hummed. "Can you three get Yanyan-Kun free of the trap you created?" He paused for a long while. "Can you keep yourselves from being sent to the academy for another year?"
"What do you mean, go back to the academy?" Naruto continued to yell. "We already passed!"
"Sure you did." Kakashi chuckled. "Sure you did."
"We don't pass till he says we pass." I clarified before this could drag on any longer, an eye on the trap once more to try and find some semblance of reason and sense. It having been made by Naruto though, that was a hard thing to ask for. "That's what he means."
"Has anyone told you that you're a killjoy, Sakura?"
I shrugged.
All the time. But he probably knew that already too.
Sasuke's fists clenched. His brow furrowed. The promise of Uchiha violence, which was a special kind of violence, was made imminent, carved out of the lines of his body. "What does any of that have to do with the bells?"
"You have a hostage in front of you and you're worried about bells. There is no bottom with you. But, fine. I'll humor you." He sighed. "Save the dog. Save your careers. Is that clear enough for you?"
And here it was. Solid ground. Something I knew how to work with. Work together. Get through together.
"But-" Naruto started loudly.
"Naruto," I ended flatly. "We can stand here and yell at our new sensei all day or we can get this over with. I'm hungry."
We'd passed lunch hours ago and I was starting to get irritable.
"Ah, damn it. Now you got me thinking about ramen. Okay. Guys. I'm going to be serious right now." Naruto grimaced, the dark whisker lines on his cheeks standing out starkly on his even paler skin as Sasuke and I got into position. "You're going to have to do everything as soon as I say it."
My heart fell an inch or so, closer to my stomach. "Why?"
"What did you do, dumbass?" Sasuke swore.
"Fuck you, asshole!" Naruto snapped before turning back to me, Kakashi having backed up minutes ago. Smart. "Each piece you disarm starts a three-to-five-second timer. It's random." He licked his lips. "If you don't disarm the next piece fast enough, in the right order, it all goes off."
I gave him a blank, disbelieving stare.
He continued to look nervous and shifted on his feet.
"What the hell, Naruto?"
"You told me to bring my A-game!"
I took a deep breath. He was right. He wasn't the only one to blame here. Damn my curiosity. "I did."
"Damn it, Sakura," Sasuke muttered.
I ignored that. We had a job to do and pointing fingers would get us nowhere. "Where do we start, Naruto?"
"Uh… Do you see the widget? Right next to the doo-hickey?"
"The what and the what?"
"You know! The thing with the kunai!"
Sasuke closed his eyes, as resigned as I was quickly becoming. "Nice knowing you, Haruno."
I had run out of things to be happy about today.
Just as I'd expected.
==========
Prodigy.
How I loathed that word. Prodigy. I loathed everything about it. What it meant. The connotations. The expectations. The glorification of your empty future as a child soldier (With a title such as prodigy, that was the only future you had) and future mess as an adult.
I hated that it was so cheap. You couldn't walk down the street without stumbling on a loudly declared 'prodigy'. There was a new one every minute. Hyuuga, Uchiha, Kurama. From families you've never even heard of and families you have. We weren't running out of them any time soon.
All it was, was an excuse to throw more of these young ninja into the meat grinder. Couched in terms of praise, of honor… It was a trap. It was a lie that had led to my sensei's well-known participation in the third ninja war at the age of five years old. It was a fiction that had turned Sasuke's brother into a barely human, pacifistic, and almost definitely entirely insane, guilt-ridden murder machine.
It was a constant weight on my mood.
I wanted no part of it. I'd worked hard for what I had. I was still working hard for it.
"A new bloodline, you think?"
"She'll outrank her parents before she hits her next birthday."
"The Haruno child will be doing S-ranks before she's twenty at this rate."
"This chakra control is on another level…"
"She's a real genius."
…The idea that might have been the case, that nearly all my 'talent' was the result of hard work instead of inborn abilities wasn't one my peers could accept though. Because of course not. You were born special or you weren't. And that was that. That was how ninja worked. My blatant refusal of the title couldn't be allowed to happen, if only for their own egos. All for some false assumption that they mattered, out in the real world.
Just over a decade of training my relatively minuscule chakra pool to respond at a thought had led to it responding at a thought. Shocking. And nearly inconceivable.
If not for what was coming, I'd have stayed a civilian. Mom and Dad would have been cool with it. Maybe opened up a bakery. Done a reasonable approximation of a slice of life manga, but for real. I'd even have coffee. Hot chocolate. And a little veranda so that people could eat and drink outside. Something nice that wasn't selling my life for money I'd never get to see.
…Life wasn't all bad though. Don't get me wrong. I had parents that loved me, even if they were away a lot. A home to come back to at the end of the day. Hot food. I had good friends, some of them better than others. For obvious reasons.
"You're very pretty, you know? Those guys are just jerks!"
"Uh...thank you? But that wasn't why I was-"
"You should come play with us!"
"What. Who? Oh, no, that's oka- How are you so strong!?"
"Keep up! I've got just the right thing for that hair of yours!"
Or just around the longest...which might have been the same thing, really. Ino had been Ino even then. As only Ino could be.
Never change.
"And I'd been starting to think you'd forgotten how to smile." Ino took a peek at me from below the steaming hand towel she'd placed over her eyes. "Would you look at that?"
It was probably terrible to look at.
"I'd smile more if it hurt less," I groaned, my pleasant and highly distracting from the pain reminiscing cut off at the sound of Ino's real voice… Maybe she could change after all. Just a little? Just a thought as I ran a green-lit hand over my cheek again; I swore I could feel sandal treads. "Kakashi-sensei is a real hardass."
A roundhouse kick that I hadn't even seen coming had me skipping across the dirt like a stone across the surface of a pond, head spinning and ears ringing.
"He sure sounds like it. And looks like it too. I don't think I've ever seen you that messed up." Ino shrugged her way up against the stone platform we were both leaning against, higher out of the water. "But at least you passed, right?"
Naruto pinwheeled past me with a dumb expression of surprise on his face, rear-end thankfully unpoked as he vanished into the bushes.
"We passed alright," I grumbled. "He was so impressed with our teamwork, and how we didn't end up accidentally killing ourselves that he let his normal test go."
Sasuke found himself tossed into a tree by a punch, stunned, limbs askew and an empty fallen bird's nest in his hair.
"So then he decided to see what you could do the day after instead. The hard way." Ino nodded to me, her towel falling back across her face. Then sliding down it, into the water where it began to float away. "You told me."
An orange book laid in the dirt. Pages splayed out awkwardly, the spine slightly cracked.
A terrible, awkward silence.
Kakashi blinked a single eye in surprise, an elbow cradled in the palm of his hand while he rotated the wrist of the other. "That wasn't in your file."
"It started like that," was my hollow reply. "It sure started like that."
"My second impression of you all is… I don't like you."
Kakashi hadn't appreciated the feeling of his funny bone being hit about twenty times in a row with a rock. A sharp rock. The feeling and its aftertaste.
He had not...and he really should have dodged instead of blocked.
That hadn't been my fault.
And, after the last couple of days, I wasn't sorry.
"Hm. That's ominous. And you didn't tell me about that." Ino slid closer to me. Not quite touching, but closer. Her milky breasts bobbed gently in the water, soothing my spirit with their presence… I could sleep on them all day, I swear. And I had. "Do you want to talk about it?"
I didn't want to think about this anymore. Or the last day in general.
It could have been better.
Time to pretend like it never happened.
"...Not really." I'd never been schooled so badly in my life. Sure, Kakashi was a jounin but I had my pride, even if it was a small thing that I'd throw away in a second if it meant staying alive... And besides. Ino would probably just laugh at me again. "How was your time with your sensei?"
Better than mine, clearly. She didn't have a limp.
"Nothing like yours," Ino told me what I'd already known. "Asuma-sensei is a lot more laid back. Maybe too laid back." Ino gave me a light pat on the back, making me flinch a little and move away from the wall. Then she slid into the gap, hands flipping smoothly through the hand signs for the mystic palm as she did so; she was an absolute angel. "He had us demonstrate the jutsu we knew, gave us a pat on the back, and challenged Shika to a game of shogi."
I couldn't help the wince and the moan when Ino's hands started roaming over my back. And at what she'd just said. This wince was multi-tiered. "You're kidding me."
"Shikamaru kicked his butt. It wasn't even a contest. Also, your back looks like it took on night camouflage."
"Purple, blue, and that weird sort of gray?" My back arched, and not in a good way as she pressed down between my shoulder blades… Lesson learned. Don't touch the book. "Gentle!"
"There's some yellow too. To break up your shape. How thoughtful," Ino proceeded to not agree to be gentle. But, seeing as the general level of pain was starting to drop, I found it within myself to forgive her. "This jutsu is actually pretty useful, isn't it?"
I blew out a breath. "I'd think so, yes. That's why I taught it to you."
Why this wasn't part of the basic curriculum for people with decent control, I had no idea. Sure, it wasn't going to fix organ damage or a broken bone but, sometimes, all you needed was to keep the blood in.
Or fix a sudden case of third-degree burns.
I heard that the last one happened a lot.
"Right. Someone has to patch you up when you do something dumb. Like, antagonize a jounin." Ouch, Ino. "It would be a shame if skin as nice as yours got all scarred up and gross just because you were acting too much like yourself."
I huffed out a laugh, a puff of steam off the water wafting into my face. "I don't think that's something I'd be all that concerned about when I'm bleeding to death, Ino. But, sure. That's why I taught you that."
"Kunoichi of the year," Ino sang into my ear, the hard points of her nipples grazing me as she leaned in to clear up some of the scratches on my collarbone. "Always two steps ahead of everyone else."
She'd be throwing that 'accomplishment' at me until the day I died, wouldn't she? Ah, well. There were worse things to be teased about. Like tactical considerations. "Always looking underneath the underneath."
"I see you've been talking to a fortune teller. That's cryptic. I do like the sound of it though. That's good advice if you look at it the right way." Ino chuckled, her fingers suddenly tickling my lower stomach and making me sit upright. "I wouldn't mind if you looked at my underneath while I looked at yours."
Sometimes, letting Ino set the pace of whatever we were was...difficult. And confusing.
Ino could afford to change. Just a little.
"No, that's something my sensei said about ninja life while working us over. I wasn't trying to seduce-" I coughed, knees slowly coming together so as not to make any noticeable splashes while Ino suggestively tangled her digits up in the dark pink curls of my pubic hair and gave them a tug. "Not in public, Ino. That's rude."
And illegal. Pretty sure it was that too. Public indecency tended to be that.
"Of course not in public. What do you take me for? I'm a lady." Ino let go, sounding positively scandalized at the idea. "That was just something to remember me by."
Of course it had been.
"Because my memory is just that bad." I leaned back and into her, pretending that no one could see us. Which was a lie, even if there was no one else in the springs with us. As Kakashi had reminded me, I was good, but there were better. Not seeing anyone didn't mean anything. "Also, Ino?"
Ino answered me with a questioning hum as she got back to making my back a single color once more.
"Do you think I'd be a good baker?"
I had to ask. That thought of mine hadn't been entirely serious. But neither had it been entirely not.
Ino's family ran a flower shop. Why couldn't I have something off to the side as well?
"What? ...Sakura." Ino took her time with that one, stretching out my name and pounding my mood into the ground at the same time. "You can barely toast bread. And you want to be a baker? Where did that come from?"
"I can toast bread," I said back, miffed. She was exaggerating. "It's just that I like the crunch. And I thought it sounded nice. Relaxing."
"Of charcoal? And, I guess?" Her hair tickled the back of my neck as she shook her head. "But that isn't really you, you know?"
Dark brown wasn't black. But I didn't expect her to understand the difference.
"You could have just said 'no, Sakura, I don't think you'd be a good baker'."
"No, Sakura, I don't think you'd be a good baker."
I'd walked into that one. Really. I should have known better than to say anything. "Well played."
"You make it easy, forehead...and we should go. We've got missions to do tomorrow! We'll be real ninja, doing things that real ninja do!" She gave me a cheerful pat on the shoulder and stood up. "And besides, I'm starting to prune and that's gross."
"Real ninja. Uh-huh. We are that now, aren't we?"I didn't have the heart to tell her that she'd be weeding someone's garden tomorrow. Or painting a fence. Or getting groceries. I just didn't… That or I was feeling vindictive again. More the latter. Some the former. "That'll be something alright."
The blonde sighed. "You're not even trying to be convincing. Do you even care?" Ino poked me playfully in the chest as I crawled out of the water, goosebumps popping up all over my skin. "Would it kill you to be excited about something for once?"
"I wouldn't want to risk it."
Ino wasn't the only one that had fences to paint tomorrow.
"Oh. Wait. I forgot to ask. And what was up with the bells?"
My shoulders fell. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"What do we get for getting all the bells while disarming Naruto's trap and saving the dog, anyway?"
"What do you get for getting the bells?"
"Yes."
"Oh, just something I like to call…"
"Nothing." That was my empty reply. I hadn't expected a party or anything, but I hadn't been through something so nervewracking since the first time I'd had sex with Ino. "He was just screwing with us."
"Wow."
"Yeah, wow."
Kakashi-sensei was sort of a dick. But that was okay.
"... Where's Yanyan-Kun?"
"Dunno."
I'd got mine.
==========
I was ambushed as soon as I walked through the door of my own home, relaxed from the warmth of the springs and the cessation of pain; Mercilessly assaulted in my moment of weakness I was reminded that nowhere was safe, no matter where or when I was. Arms like iron held me tight and I was defenseless to do anything about it.
It wasn't as if I could lash out, after all. Or that I wanted to.
Torturing family was more of an Uchiha thing.
"Mebuki! Our little girl! Our little girl is-" My dad fake-cried over my head after having picked me up off the ground and forcibly buried my face in his chest before he started twisting his torso, making my legs flop like a rag doll's. He smelled like dirt. And sweat. My childhood, in other words. "She's a genin now, just like her parents! We need to celebrate!"
"Hi, Dad," I muttered as I tried to return my dad's hug with debatable success, the tips of my feet repeatedly brushing over the floor the whole time. "Hi, Mom."
"Hello, Sakura," my mom said back, amusement clear in her voice while she did nothing to help. "Do you want barbecue tomorrow, or sushi?"
I thought about it. Barbecue sounded nice, but I'd had some just two days ago. And, again. Habits were the enemy. "Sushi, please. Tuna sounds good."
"Then we'll have tuna. And we picked something up for you while you were out." I felt a pull on my hair, my mother's deft fingers unweaving then reweaving my hair to add something to it. "A pin to go with that bow of yours."
"A sakura blossom pin, for our little Sakura."
"Dad. Come on." I squirmed, my face suddenly uncomfortably warm. Dad could be - mushy - sometimes. "Is it - pointy?"
That might have sounded ungrateful, but it was an important consideration.
"We wouldn't have got it for you if it wasn't. And it's a father's job to embarrass their daughters. You'll just have to cope," Dad informed me kindly. Not for the first time. Not for the last. "Right, Mebuki?"
…This was great.
Mom gave my hair a tug to retighten my braid, the feeling of cold metal at the back of my head an oddly reassuring one. "As long as it isn't in front of her friends, Kizashi."
Dad shook me some more. I continued to play the part of a ragdoll. "But that's when fathers truly shine!"
I reached a hand back behind my head to feel out the pin… The petals. The senbon sharp point... It felt useful. Beautiful. "I wouldn't know what to do without that mortified feeling in my life."
Even if my life really didn't matter in the greater scheme of things...at least it mattered to someone.
Three someones.
Naruto might have had a point.
Precious people were pretty nice to have.
Bench Warmer Ch 4
Today was a beautiful day.
At seven in the morning, as the sun's first rays came up over the horizon; as the birds started chirping and the faraway murmur of an awakening village reached my ear that was the only conclusion that could be reached with any honesty.
A cloud drifted on by, one of a wispy bundle. My back continued to soak in early-morning dew while my foot bounced to an unheard beat and a gust of wind blew several strands of hair into my face.
A teenage boy exploded off the side of a tree with an angry scream to hit the ground with a thump and a swear. With the squeak of a body sliding over wet grass and gathering enough stains to turn orange into yellow. More swearing.
Today was a beautiful day.
As if to give emphasis to this thought of mine, a larger cloud among the multitude momentarily broke its cover, letting a ray of sunshine through. A solid line of it. Near entirely circular as well. And, thankfully, nowhere near my position. Or Naruto's as he did an inspirational speech. Or promised to climb a tree before he went to sleep tonight.
I wouldn't have handled that well, I think. If anything could ruin this day, it would be that.
Glass-half-full optimism had never sat well with me.
…Anyway. Where that solitary beam of light ended up, I had no clue. But it had been very pretty to look at, I suppose. Very dramatic if it came down at the right time. I was sure that, somewhere, a lesser protagonist than the ones in this clearing was having the time of their life with that.
I was only being objective...this world was that sort of place. And, I suppose, I was also being just a little silly. Just the smallest amount that I could get away with while in the debatable safety of my mind. Yes. Debatable.
The sanctity of one's thoughts when you were a ninja is mostly a suggestion. Cold reading was a basic skill in this profession, just for a start. The best of us could get someone's life story from the brand of cigarette they smoked and how many times they went to the bar. The number of jutsu that were meant to loosen your lips was beyond counting as it was and… And what I was getting at was that, when you slept with a Yamanaka, you gave up some things.
I believed that what I'd exchanged to have Ino as my closest friend was worth it, but what I'd given up was no small thing.
I'd resigned myself to never having a private thought again years ago. Not that Ino had been rifling through my brain like it was an unguarded filing cabinet or anything, I would have noticed if she had been, she wasn't her father, but I was resigned to it by now. The possibility that it could happen.
…The thought of her doing that, finding out my deepest, darkest secrets was sort of freeing, to be honest, as much as it was terrifying. Cathartic? Possibly. Unadvised? Definitely.
This sort of thinking is what you got when you couldn't talk to anybody about anything without risking a kunai to the eye, I suppose...and I must have been more tired than I'd thought.
My early morning brooding was normally reserved for when I had nothing to focus on. Which I did at the moment. I suppose.
What use there was in observing natural energy when you couldn't even use it without turning to stone, I had no idea. It was just something I'd been up to lately, between comments on nature's beauty. I hadn't gotten much out of it so far besides a moderate jump in my abilities as a chakra sensor, but it was what I'd been up to lately.
It wasn't much. And I could be doing something more useful. Something that I could reasonably apply sometime within the next year or so. Or my lifetime. Anything.
Anything at all.
…At least the day was nice.
I yawned widely, making my jaw crack while I scratched a cheek. Orange began to shift to yellow in the sky as a leaf tumbled and twirled past my vision. It was just the first of many as Naruto hit the dirt once more, the crack of broken bark now an old friend.
More of an acquaintance really, but the sentiment was there.
"You need to use less chakra, Naruto. Again." I forced myself to sit up with a roll of my shoulders and a flex of my will; every ounce of water in my clothing was pushed back and behind me all at once, a fine mist. Comfort returned. "A lot less."
"Yeah, I know. Less chakra. Less chakra. Yeah. Damn it…" Naruto grunted back as he clambered back up onto his feet with a scowl. Not at me, thankfully. But at the tree. The tree that looked like it might have been a few more tries away from falling down, thanks to the large chunks that had been torn out of it. Poor thing. I felt kind of bad for it. "You don't have any more advice?"
Plenty. But none that he was ready to hear.
"Not really. It's your chakra, Naruto. I can't control it for you. You'll have to figure it out on your own," I told him for the third time that day. I didn't mind it though. Much. At least he was asking. "If you don't want to keep beating your head against the wall, then you know what to do."
Naruto growled again, louder. Then he made a fist in front of his face, eyes narrowed as he let the next two words out in a hiss. "Leaf exercises."
If Naruto hated anything, which was hard to imagine seeing as this was Naruto, it was leaf exercises. He had his reasons.
His reasons were stupid, and I'd told him so, but he had them.
Making a leaf stick to his forehead wasn't cool enough. It wasn't a real jutsu, or so I'd heard. It was useless, or so he'd said. It was too hard to do to be worth it when he could be learning how to set things on fire with his mind, he'd told me.
He'd said that. Once.
A long ten seconds of disappointed silence and a look had convinced him to never say that in my presence again.
"Leaf exercises," I agreed. Water and dirt continued to neatly fall from my form, from my head on down as I rose to my feet; chakra control was the furthest thing from worthless and I'd fight to make someone else die on that hill for me. "How are you doing, Sasuke?"
I looked over in his direction before he could say anything...and, much like most other things I tended to look at, how Sasuke was doing was revealed to me at a glance; his story, his journey towards tree-climbing competence as it were, might as well have been written in the air in foot-high letters. It might as well have been.
He'd taken a black and blue knee a while ago and had yet to move.
A while ago, being nearly fifteen minutes.
Most likely because he couldn't. Literally could not. Not appreciably; badly hidden winces and the twitching of abused musculature was not what I considered appreciable.
That said enough, I think.
"I'm fine, Haruno."
"I see."
"Do you?" Sasuke asked, his question an exercise in bad faith and a denial of observable reality; I wasn't blind. "I'm resting."
Of course. He was just resting. I should have known. That explained everything.
Boys being boys explained it better.
Boys.
"You do seem tired," I agreed pleasantly, my hands moving in a familiar pattern as I got right to it. Slow. Deliberate. Exaggerated for Sasuke's viewing pleasure, something that I couldn't really call a pout crossing his features as he attempted to subtly lean away from me and the cool green that coated my fingers. "I don't think you need to be told to stand still, do you?"
I wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he'd come around this morning... But it hadn't been Naruto and I moving around as if we hadn't had seven shades of hell kicked out of us the day before, unlike him. Or maybe it was just Naruto's wellbeing and ability to walk without hissing that had raised his hackles.
He'd turned his health as compared to mine and Naruto's into a contest from that point on, or so it felt. There was no other reason as to why he hadn't asked me for help.
His not asking me for healing had to have been a conscious choice. It wasn't as if me being a healer of some small skill was a secret, after all.
Another choice had been me not offering. To be sure, just to be clear, but I couldn't do all the reaching out. Some of it. Not all of it. But I'd do it this time though. Just this once. Before his misplaced pride took any further hits thanks to Naruto overtaking him on this exercise.
Pragmatism won out over my sense of schadenfreude in the end.
He clenched his teeth but did, in fact, stay still as I continued my advance. If he could have escaped with any speed, he would have. But he couldn't. He recognized his coming doom for what it was and accepted it with all the stoicism of a man walking to the gallows.
How dramatic.
"Comparing your healing rate to mine is just absurd. Or Naruto's for that matter." These words came out just loud enough for him to hear; the small flinch that got me before I'd even touched him told me I'd hit on it. "So that's it then."
Wasn't it a little early for him to feel like he was falling behind? We hadn't even been a team for an entire week yet. These worries of his were clearly unwarranted and always would be. Unlike mine.
I only barely avoided giving in to the urge to smack him in the back of the head.
With my fist.
He averted his eyes from mine, his teeth clicking together in pain as I started working on his left shoulder. "Not you. I know better." He slowly shook his head as I touched up the area around his neck on my way to his right. "How is he still…?
There was another loud snap as a tree lost yet another percentage of its structural integrity in a burst of wood chips and sap.
"He's got a bloodline limit."
Sasuke jolted and, as he let a slow and pained breath out through his nose, I welcomed the delayed feeling of satisfaction. It might not have been a slap, but… I took what I could get. "What?"
"He's an Uzumaki. Regeneration and gigantic chakra reserves come with the territory." A wave of the hand down his back removed a line of bruises like an eraser over a whiteboard; Sasuke became visibly more relaxed as the cessation of pain registered. "As well as hyperactivity. Find something else to beat him in before you cripple or kill yourself. Something to do with I Spy, maybe?"
He made eye contact with me again, brows furrowed and forehead scrunched. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No." A little. "I'm just saying that you shouldn't try and compete in a healing competition against someone who can regrow their internal organs."
His forehead scrunched even harder yet, his questioning look turning into a questioning stare. "Can he really?"
Seeing how Sasuke had shoved a hand through his chest in another life, I was pretty sure; the fox might have been helping, but it wasn't as if I could say that, now could I? "I'm not going to test it. But, yeah. Probably."
He frowned at that and broke eye contact. "Hey, dumbass!"
God damn it.
"Fuck you, bastard!"
"Why didn't you tell me you had a bloodline limit?"
"Why didn't I tell you I have a what!?"
"A bloodline limit, dipshit!"
What have I done?
"What the fuck is a bloodline limit?!"
Gave two idiots a reason to fight, it seems… That was my fault. I should have seen this coming. I'd given Ninja Jesus and Ninja Antichrist a reason to interact. What other outcome could there have been?
I had to wonder how Ino was doing right now. Better than me, I suspected.
I'd have to ask when I saw her again.
==========
Sakura had been right to not be excited.
Ino didn't think that often. Sakura was great, sure. Wonderful, yes. A real prodigy that Ino would never, ever refer to as such, without a doubt...but Sakura could stand to lighten up a little.
When Sakura was right though, she was right.
Being a real ninja wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Actually, so far, it sucked. It sucked real bad. It sucked so bad it had Ino thinking thoughts.
Bad thoughts.
"How much trouble would I be in?" Ino softly asked in a seemingly random non-sequitur, on her knees, her head lowered and fingers digging deep into the loamy earth beneath her palms as she gave in to despair. "How much?"
The vole she was hovering over said nothing back as it looked up at her with tiny, cute, and very wide eyes. Very wide for a vole. Which wasn't all that wide but it was the thought that counted.
It was just the cutest little-
"For what?" Choji asked to her right, halfway through a protein bar as thick as her wrist. This question broke the spell that she'd placed over the vole, that spell being one of hope that she tracked her prey through movement; it vanished into a pile of discarded leaves and weeds that she'd personally pulled from a flower bed and it was gone. "Why would you get in trouble?"
"It doesn't matter, Choji." Ino sighed as she forced herself upright to violently pull another weed out, being careful not to disturb the peony next to it. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."
She didn't even know what she'd get in trouble over anyway. There was nothing to tell. She'd just known she'd have gotten in trouble over something. Something like force-feeding her teacher all forty pieces of his shogi board as an act of symbolic revenge against the ninja system as a whole… Or something oddly specific like that.
An incensed glare at Shikamaru made his positively glacial work pace speed up momentarily, the fear of a light beating the next time he tried to take a nap giving him all the motivation he needed.
That she was getting paid to take care of an elderly woman's garden, an elderly woman that had called them 'very nice kids' and given them candy, only did so much to cool her temper. She'd been promised fame. Excitement. Recognition! Not pocket money and ume lozenges!
She wasn't going to refuse the pocket money or the candy though, even if it wasn't what she'd been promised. She wasn't ungrateful.
"Daddy and I are going to be having words though," Ino made a promise of her own, tone full of menace as she moved that piece of sour candy from one cheek to the other. Keeping D-ranks a secret from her was a betrayal of the bond between father and daughter and she was going to make sure he understood that, the traitor. "He'll rue the day. Oh, he'll rue the day he-"
"Hi, Ino."
Ino's tirade was stopped dead in its tracks by those two words. She was moving one of her bangs behind an ear before she was able to consciously recognize it and stop herself, long hours at the flower shop letting her ignore that she'd just dropped a double handful of dirt in her lap and had left some in her hair.
Her best friend blinked placidly at her over the red fence in the client's yard, waiting for a response.
Ino didn't even bother trying to clean herself up. No point when the damage was already done and witnessed. She just sighed again and, pretending she hadn't just made a fool of herself, pulled up another weed. "Hello, Sakura. What are you doing here? Did your sensei already dismiss you?"
"Yes, actually." Sakura nodded. "He finally showed up an hour ago with a D-rank. I just wrapped it up and here I am."
"An hour-" Ino looked up, eyes narrowed, letting Sakura's comment on how she'd finished her mission in less than an hour slide by without comment. It was Sakura, so that went without saying. The sun was just overhead, so that meant… "Five hours!? He took five hours to show up?!"
She'd thought that Sakura had been kidding!
Not that Sakura made things up all that often, almost never, but that had sounded just too ridiculous to be true.
Showed what she knew though, clearly.
"He was too busy looking for his stuffed dog to show up on time. Or something." Sakura began her explanation for her teacher's tardiness with something nearly as ridiculous. "He lost it two days ago and he's worried about it." Sakura took a lean on the partition between them, arms crossed over the top with a small grin on her face; that was as good as any other person smiling from ear to ear. "He's been finding it hard to sleep without them nearby, he says."
Were they talking about a jounin or a child?
"You can't be serious," Ino said with a hushed tone, the thrill of gossip overtaking her.
Sakura leaned forward until her top half was over the fence, that smile still firmly in place as she spoke back with just as much volume. "Entirely."
"Oh my god."
The day had just become a great deal brighter. Which wasn't much of a surprise.
Sakura tended to do that for her.
==========
Asuma, for a second, thought about saying something. Just for a second...but he decided to turn his head and light up another cigarette instead.
Ino had put in the work. More than Choji and Shikamaru had combined. They could pick up the slack on this one… And there was nothing wrong with making ties with fellow Konoha ninja, even those outside of your team. Nothing wrong with that at all.
"Nooooooo…" Ino gasped, not nearly as quiet as she thought she was as she met the Haruno girl in the middle. It couldn't have been more obvious that she'd forgotten about the job if she'd tried. The pink-haired kunoichi that Kakashi had called 'a miserable monster' whispering into the blonde's ear, brushing her off with some of the finest chakra string work Asuma had ever seen, was the most important thing in her entire world. "You're kidding."
Also, he was half sure she'd have tried to kill him if he had. He'd seen how she'd been looking at him as she'd been working. That had been some pretty impressive killing intent for a newbie.
He blew a ring of smoke out, the rush of nicotine a calming one.
Having to do the paperwork and evaluations for when your genin tried to kill you would have been hell. And then he'd have to deal with his dad pulling the disappointed parent card too.
It just wasn't worth it.
Asuma then frowned and looked back, past his student and her friend, cigarette in between his fingers as he was struck by a sudden realization.
Hadn't that fence been blue when they'd got here?
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