The Girl's Trading Cards

Sasuke stood in the court in a two story building whose first red titled roof came out farther than the top roof so that there would be a sheltered walkway around the court corned by right angled dividers between the walkway and the grassy field. The training yard would be his, as he wanted it, for the moment, because his other class mates either could not perform the new jutsu, or had decided to wait at a table for the others to be dismissed for lunch. He heard footsteps behind him and sighed.

"I'm not here to fight you," Shikamaru said in a slow grumpy voice, "I just want to get away from it all. Most of the time, anyone here either fights you or the girls with those troublesome cards."

"It's not too troublesome for you to look up in a thesaurus to decease the boredom of listening to you, is it?" Sasuke said. He bent down to adjust his the straps of his sandles.

"I believe I hold the record in votes towards most boring last year," Shikamaru stated. Sasuke stood up from his knee.

"Uh," Sasuke started to reach into his pocket of his white shorts. He detected a kunai heading for him and side stepped it letting the spaded blade to plunge into a high wooded post cracking its dirty and water stained surface. Sasuke ran towards Naruto, Kiba and Akamaru who stood out in the court. As he reached them, he jumped and kicked off Kiba's shoulders to leap up to the lower roof. They pursued with a twisting back flip that landed them on the same level.

Naruto held his right fist into his left hand and rubbed his fist. "Why do you think you are better than us?" Naruto shouted. "I could knock the shit out of both of you with my hands tied behind my back with rusty barbwire soaked in vinegar after I have gone through three weeks without food and hooked up to a machine to pump horse tranquilizers into my blood stream, dontcha know?"

"Shut up, Naruto." Kiba and Sasuke ordered Naruto. Even Akamaru added in a little growl.

"Do you truly want to know?" Sasuke asked and reached a hand into his pant pocket. An eye stare down caused a moment of silence. The wind whistled over the top roof and carried a leaf in between the three.

"Yes!" Kiba and Naruto spoke. Sasuke pulled out a trading card with his picture on it. The picture on the front was of him on his birthday showing his cake by tilting it towards the camera. His brother, Itachi, stood behind him, still in his grey uniform provided by the ANBU squad. Naruto tried to grab this card but Sasuke pulled it up to his face without any anger at Naruto's attempted treachery.

"Uchiha Sasuke." He read. "He has been the subject of the most attractions of his age, beating out former record holder, his older brother, Uchiha Itachi."

"Even Naruto wouldn't go that low to make a card after himself, but he would now because he would want to impress me and Akamaru," Kiba stated.

"Shut up!" Naruto yelled but Sasuke nodded to the comment.

"Don't you notice that the girls are always together during breaks? And they are playing cards." Sasuke said. "I have realized the girls have manufactured cards of male ninjas and update every year with stats about qualities related to personality and rated on how much the girl population wants to date the guy of the card."

"That is a conspiracy theory!" Naruto declared. He formed a seal. "Your excuse is perverted and egoistical! You will die from this jutsu. Secret Jutsu: Sexy no Jutsu."

A window of the second floor, near Sasuke, opened and a pail of water was tossed out to hit Naruto who had turned into a nude girl with clouds around her private parts. This unbalanced Naruto to fall off the roof. From inside the hall, Shino looked out of the window and crawled out onto the roof.

"Sorry, I didn't have anything funny to say to joy this conversation," Shino stated and pulled out a hologram card that he tilted side to side and reflected the colour spectrum over a picture of him with a plain white t-shirt and plain shorts. His brother, Shiro, was also in the background but was dressed up in full sunglasses and had a scarf over the lower half of his face. "This current year's special hologram card series is dedicated to brothers. I keep it as a reminder that someone snuck up on me and took a picture of me when I was not prepared."

"You are looking at the camera, Shino," Kiba pointed out and listened to his dog's growls. "Right, Akamaru, Shino is no different than Sasuke."

"I could either remove my coat and glasses," Shino said, "or, send my bugs to kill her."

"No way you would ever score to pass your STDs to others," Naruto said as he climbed up onto the roof transformed back to his original round face tensed with determination.

"Are you going to take that," Kiba snapped at Shino who mouthed some low words and Akamaru barked up to Kiba. "I guess you don't have anything to prove to him."

"The cards are only created for a ninja until he or she is promoted to a Jounin." Shino said. "Hinata gave me this card. There is a bit I know about them while hearing some of their lingo about the card game, but I have still not found out the proper translation or context. I understood that the way they play is by the transaction of the cards by trading, competing, and selling."

"So, there would be cards of us." Kiba said.

"My oldest sister has a card of both of you," Shino said.

"Where?" They asked.

"She has them on the back of her bike so the spokes will hit it for that noise it makes," he said.

"To the bike," Kiba shouted and ran off with Naruto and Akamaru following. Sasuke turned to Shino who put his hologram card back into his pocket.

"Could Hinata give me a more recent card?" Sasuke asked.

"Lao Tzu wrote: 'Great love incurs great expense, and great riches incur great fear,
but contentment comes at no cost; who knows when to stop does not continue into anger, and so may long endure.'" Shino recited. "What do I make through it? You may ask, Hinata, yourself."

"Whatever," Sasuke said and walked off the roof back into the court. A group of girls under the roof giggled as they saw Sasuke then returned to throwing cards at the wall once he gave them a cold look. Across the field, he saw Hinata in the corner speaking to other girls. Slowly he approached them, and stopped to inspect some of the equipment. Unzipping a pouch tied to a post, Sasuke replaced the padding and looked into the opened hallways over the waist high dividers to Hinata.

"No thanks, Hinata," a girl with a brown pony tail said, "you only have junk cards."

"Junk cards?" Sasuke murmured as the group of girls left Hinata. Looking around to see if anyone was watching, Sasuke hand sprung over the divider and held Hinata's small pale hand. "Follow me."

"What's happening?" She said as he pulled her down the hall and into the Men's washroom.

"With what type of cards are you, girls, playing?" Sasuke requested. The short blue haired girl looked into his steady brown eyes and exhaled. "I have just discovered that Shino and Shikamaru have their own cards."

"It's girl stuff," Hinata declared. The door opened and Shino walked into the washroom and lowered his sunglasses down his nose to see Hinata and Sasuke.

"Oh, Sasuke, make certain your treat Hinata as the proper woman, she is." Shino said and with the knuckles of his index finger, he put his sunglasses back over his eyes. He walked over to the sink and rolled up his grey sleeves of his overcoat. "Pardon for my interruption, but could either of you give me a hint about how to perform that jutsu?"

After washing his hands, he removed a brown single use paper towel from the dispenser and used it to turn off the water. Hinata and Sasuke stared at him.

"Then I will return to Kurenai," he said and left.

"I thought he finished already," Sasuke commented.

"Maybe Ino could explain this girl stuff to you, Sasuke," Hinata suggested. She opened the door of the washroom and left quickly enough to see that a card had fallen out of her pocket. He bent down and picked the card up to inspect it. The card was wrapped in a clear plastic and each of the corners were pointed.

"Naruto's card," Sasuke looked at the picture of Naruto sitting at a bar with a veil of ramen decending down his mouth. Flipping the card over, he looked at the stats for him. "Oh, that is why he acts the way he does."