"Congratulations, everyone! The path that awaits before you is difficult and maybe even painful; but I have the utmost faith in your abilities to succeed! You may only be starting as genin, the lowest rank of ninja, but your futures are bright. I will announce your team plac—!" Iruka Umino, the graduating classes' sensei, was cut off by a loud snore coming from the back of the classroom. The young senseis' eyebrow twitched, but he reigned in his temper with some difficulty. Looking to where the offensive noise had come from only forced the twitch into a greater spasm at the sight that greeted him.
One of his brightest students was leaning back so far in her chair as she slept that it was a wonder she hadn't fallen completly, mouth hanging wide open as a loud cacophony of snores escaped. The loudness could probably be due to the angle her head was bent at, Iruka thought critically, and maybe exhaustion. The girl did practically drag herself into the classroom seconds before the warning bell rang. He sighed as the class laughed, gripping his forehead tightly.
"Kiba. Wake your classmate, please." Iruka asked warily, mindful of his injuries he had acquired the night before. The look of abject betrayal in the slightly feral boys eyes was only slightly comical, but he kept the emotion from his face anyway. Tamashī Shiro could be strangely violent if woken up suddenly. Strange in the fact that it wasn't always violence per se that she reacted with. A few of the more memorable occasions consisted of turning Ino Yamanakas hair into pale yellow tentacles, Sasuke Uchihas hair into an impressive black chicken— clucking and pecking beak included—and seemingly turned ex-fellow teacher Mizukis legs into jelly. It was like all of the bones in his legs were just… gone. Although, with the recent development of Mizuki working for Orochimaru, Tamashī couldn't really be faulted for that last, ah incident.
At his weary request, the laughter stopped abruptly. Everyone wanted to know if something would happen this time, even the usually aloof Sasuke.
Kiba stretched out his hand, the other holding Akamaru to his chest firmly, and pushed Tamashīs chair into the proper position. Only it was done with a bit too much force, causing Tamashī shoot forwards and smack her chin into the top of the desk.
"Ugh… I bih my tong…" Tamashī voiced thickly around a mouth quickly filling with blood. One fingerless gloved hand reached up cover her mouth while the other delved into her thigh pouch and pulled out two vials, one empty and the other full of a soft blue liquid.
"Maybe you should go to the nurses office..?" Iruka spoke from the front of the class in a worried tone but Tamashī just flicked open the two vials and let the blood from her mouth leak slowly into the empty one until it was full and snapped it closed again.
"Eww! Are you going to keep that?!" Sakura Haruno screeched from near the front of the room, her face scrunched in her disgust.
"Of course." She didn't elaborate. They didn't ask.
Tamashī swished the light blue potion around her mouth for a moment and then swallowed it down when she felt her tongue stitching back together, letting out a sigh at the pleasant taste. "I'm fine now." She announced, putting the vials back into the pouch. There was a vast difference to the sound of her voice, back to its original rich huskiness as it was.
"Right…" Iruka sweatdropped before clearing his throat hastily to carry on with his original speech. "I will announce the team placements now." He flipped to the next page on his clipboard, scanning the list quickly and nodding his head. As he spoke, Irukas voice took on a slightly boring, lecturing tone that Tamashī had heard in her previous 'life' by her ghostly History of Magic professor. It took all she had to not fall asleep again from preconditioning.
"–and Sakura Haruno under jonin Genma Shiranui." An inconsolable wail came from the aforementioned girl, apparently because she didn't make the team she wanted. Tamashī rolled her soft grey eyes towards the ceiling in a silent prayer for patience.
"Team seven will consist of Sasuke Uchiha, Naruto Uzumaki and Tamashī Shiro under jonin Kakashi Hatake." Tamashī nodded in acceptance of her placement and allowed herself to slump into her chair again, trying to drown out Narutos shouting about being put on a team with a slug on it.
"Naruto! You were placed on this team because both Sasuke and Tamashī are tied for top student. You on the other hand are dead last. Team placements are made this way to balance out the skills of the whole team. You may not like this, but you will have to work together for at least six months before you can apply to be placed on a different team."
"Why six months?" The whisper ghosted over Tamashīs ear from her right and she leaned closer to Kiba so she could answer.
"Chunin exams are held every six months. If you've applied to be placed on a diffent team, you're usually just put on a team where one of them has risen up in ranks or have died." She whispered quietly so as not to provoke Irukas wrath. Again.
"Morbid."
Tamashī shrugged, "That's the reality of being a ninja."
"Team eight: Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame and Hinata Hyuuga under jonin Kurenai Yuuhi."
"A good team." Tamashī mused quietly, "You'll get mostly courier and tracking missions."
"That's boring though." Kiba whined quietly from beside her, echoed faintly by Akamaru.
"That's life." She snickered quietly at his continued whining.
"Team ten: Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akamichi and Ino Yamanaka under jonin Asuma Sarutobi."
"What happened to team nine?" Kiba questioned her again over the sound of Ino's complaining this time.
"They're still in active duty. That genin team name will be until all the members have made chunin or the team is disbanded, then it'll be in rotation for genin teams again."
"Oh." He went silent for a moment, then: "How do you know all this? You sleep in class more than Shikamaru." He sounded indignant.
"Just because I'm 'asleep' doesn't mean I'm not listening." She threw him a sharp grin, "Also, I don't actually sleep that often."
"You're a sneaky bitch." Kiba looked kinda awed and confused, like he was trying to remember every instance Tamashī had ever 'slept' in class.
"I'll take that as a compliment, coming from you."
"Heh." Kiba blushed faintly pink and scratched the red triangle on his cheek with a clawed index finger. "Oh, my ma was asking for you actually. Wonderin when you'd come back for dinner again."
"Eh… I'll come over later, after we meet our new senseis. Will I bring that melon wine your ma likes?"
"Probably a good idea. She said something about a clan meeting before I left, so she'll be in a bad mood."
"Those damn elders." Tamashī mock growled in agitation before laughing heartily. Kiba laughed along with her, glad he didn't startle at the sound of her growling anymore; even if it was fake angry tone. The sound of it made him have a gut reaction to obey that he didn't really understand yet.
The bell for lunch time rang and they said their goodbyes, promising to meet up at the gate of the Inuzuka compound at eight, just in case they couldn't talk when lunch was over. As the class swiftly emptied except for a few stragglers, Tamashī sighed and pulled out a spiral bound notebook from her hip pouch that honestly shouldn't have fit in there.
She didn't look up when a much too smooth fist for an academy graduate slammed into the desk in front of her, nor when her second name was growled out in a frankly pathetic attempt at intimidation. She did look up slowly when the notebook was snatched out of her hands before she could even open it though; but she wasn't worried. It was sealed up to its proverbial eyeballs so only she could open it, along with other safety measures like water and fire damage.
Sakura Haruno stood in front of her with a group of girls that used to bully her until they found a different target; namely, an extremely indifferent Tamashī.
"If you think you can use this as an opportunity to get close to Sasuke-kun, then you are dead wrong." Sakura shouted as she passed the notebook to Ami by roughly shoving it into her hands.
"Yeah. You're just a little freak. A freaky little ghost orphan." Ami taunted as she went to open the book but grew frustrated when it wouldn't budge.
"Oh did you forget how to speak?" A mousey brown haired girl asked smugly, reaching forwards to yank at Tamashīs white hair. She missed because Tamashī leaned back, but the altercation was getting physical, it would have to end soon.
"Say something when your betters ask you a question!" Ami shouted in frustration, dropping the notebook to the floor and stomping on it.
"Yeah, freaky ghost orphan. Or are you afraid?" Sakura spoke again, sounding superior, but Tamashī could tell she was becoming discomfitted by her continued silence.
"Sorry did you say something?" Tamashī asked in the most dry tone of voice any of the girls in front of her have ever heard. Tamashī thought she could hear a stifled snicker from the trees outside the window, but ignored it for now. She could take a guess at who it was anyway.
Sakura gained an ugly snarl on her face as she reached forwards again to try and pull Tamashīs hair herself this time, but Tamashī was much faster and flicked her larger than average forehead with a tiny burst of chakra; causing Sakura to fall unconscious. As the pink haired girl crumpled to the floor in a heap, the others in the little heckling group decided they had had enough and fled the room, leaving their supposed 'friend' to the mercy of Tamashī.
Said girl just shook her head and opened the window fully beside her and stood up to crouch beside Sakuras unconscious form. Tamashī picked her up surprisingly gently and just tossed her out of the window to the bushes nary a foot below the sill, before picking up her trampled notebook and dashing out the window herself.
Sakura would wake up in about five minutes, so Tamashī wasn't worried about her. She also wouldn't say anything about what happened, because it would become clear that she was a bully and it could jeopardise her ninja career. Despite the fact that she didn't really take it seriously, Sakura didn't want to be at her parents mercy for longer than she absolutely had to, and being a ninja would make the transition to independence much quicker.
Tamashī knew this, because when they were both eighteen the first time, they had gotten riproaring drunk and Sakura had spilled the story of her early childhood. It made Tamashī sad to see one of her closest friends making herself into a bully to fit in, but it was understandable. In this universe, Tamashī hadn't shown up until halfway through the third year of the academy, so she didn't make friends with the painfully shy first year Sakura. In this universe, Sakura was saved from her bullies by Ino and had a falling out with her barely two years later over Sasuke. Tamashī was just an intruder, a potential rival for Sasukes affections. But when she wasn't interested in fighting over a prepubescent little boy with prepubescent little girls, she was ostracized for being a weirdo and a 'little freaky ghost orphan.'
Tamashī shook her head at that last thought. What would that group of girls think if they knew that Sasuke knew they were bullying someone for being an orphan? It was like not one of them remembered that Sasukes' whole clan had been murdered. That was part of the reason he hated his fangirls. Or everyone really. They either forgot the whole reason he was 'the last Uchiha' and fawned over him or pitied him relentlessly and gave him everything he wanted.
In all the time Tamashī knew Sasuke from Before, she knew he hated getting things without working for it, hated that people forgot his families' tragedy and hated that people thought he was perfect. He wasn't, he had said so himself after the Fourth Great Shinobi War, in a quiet moment between celebrations and rebuilding, that he wasn't perfect and hated himself so much that people thought he was even after everything he had done; so much so that it was the only thing pushing him forwards sometimes, because if he didn't push… he would surely drown because of it.
Tamashī mentally shook off her morose thoughts and turned to her notebook after settling into a decently sized tree on the far side of the academy training grounds. It had sustained no damage when Ami stomped on it, except for the dirty footprint from the girls sandal. But, that was easily cleaned off with a wave of her hand. Flipping the book open exposed ideas for jutsu and seal creation in a unique cipher that Tamashī had created some fifty years ago, consisting mostly of small circles and dashes that only translated into numbers before needing a further translation to English.
She had never focused on the creation of new jutsu in her last 'life', but she found that, while not having a nack for it, it was fascinating and posed a challenge she was willing to pursue. Because really, for someone of Tamashīs true age, very few things could keep her really occupied for long. That was one of the reasons she was pretty glad her skills had diminished with the deageing of her body. Having to train herself up again gave her something to do. Something to work towards. Sure, her skill level was much higher than her original genin days, but it was nowhere near the level she was at before taking an accidental tumble into… what she thinks might be an alternate reality that ran slower than her original; because she knew her father didn't know she existed yet and he was the one who brought her to Konoha the first time.
Tamashī shook her head of shaggy white hair again to focus her thoughts. Such was the perils of getting old, she thought ruefully, going off on tangents and forgetting what I was doing.
Looking up at the sky, Tamashī guessed she had another half an hour of lunch break left and opened the last experiment she had been working on. It was an unassuming offensive and defensive jutsu that worked in a similar way the grand fire ball technique. By utilising a bit of transmutation and transfiguration, the chakra expelled by the jutsu would release a breath of razor-sharp poisonous butterflies. The mechanics were all worked out at this point, the only real block to her success was the hand signs needed to push it from being just a concept to a fully fledged jutsu. Dragon for power, Snake for stability... and then maybe Bird or Dog for a consistent flow of chakra.
"Bird is commonly used in wind release jutsu, and Dog is seen in a water release more often than not. Hmm…" Tamashī closed her eyes and tapped the end of her pencil to the page. "Will the poisonous component be gaseous or a liquid...?"
"A gas will spread farther through the air but will disperse quicker. Liquids would need to be ingested or through contact with the skin." The deep voice above her didn't even cause her to flinch, engrossed in her project as she was.
"True... the jutsu would have to be fast if I want a longer lasting effect with a liquid… or just big enough to cover a large area with a gas… hmm." Tamashī gripped her chin with the hand still holding her pencil, nearly poking her eye out in the process. "The Snake seal would add stability, while also giving it that extra boost of speed that's needed. But it's commonly a lightning seal so it wouldn't necessarily work with a water seal unless I added extra…"
"It can be used in earth jutsu as well."
"Hmm… maybe a Tiger seal instead of a Dragon for power, Snake for quick movement and stability and then… a Dog seal for a liquid. Then I can incorporate Tiger and Dog seals to make a poisonous steam, while the Snake and maybe a Hare seal add the necessary speed." She nodded and scribbled out a few circles and dashes to her page below a diagram for a monarch butterfly. "Then the transmutation of the chakra as it leaves the users body would give it poisonous components while also changing it into a physical shape for deception." Tamashī nodded again, this time decisively, and stashed away her notebook and pencil into the pouch that still seemed too small for them, took out an onigiri wrapped in plastic, then jumped out of the tree just as the bell rang for lunch to end.
Kakashi watched the girl walk away as she munched on her rice ball, still seeming to be stuck in her head thinking about complex jutsu theory that should be well above her current level.
While she hadn't really said much about the process of her jutsu, Kakashi had taken a peak at the notebook in her hand from over the top of her shaggy head of disconcerting white hair, and could reliably say that what she was working on was advanced. That was only going on the detailed diagram, distracted musings and the cipher scrawled over every available space on the page that he had seen somewhere once before.
The sight of the cipher alone made her suspicious, but the clear level of intelligence she had unknowingly displayed ticked the mental meter in his head from suspicious to possible threat.
It looked like he wouldn't get to observe his new team like Kakashi had initially been planning. He may just have to ask the Hokage some questions after all.
Decision made, Kakashi stashed his book away and, performing the necessary seals for a body flicker, reappeared outside of the double doors to the Hokages' office.
"Kakashi, come in." Hiruzen Sarutobi beckoned from beyond the doors, sounding amusedly resigned. He knew the silver haired jonin had arrived to ask questions, but thought it would take longer for the younger man to do so. He couldn't have even met his genin team yet!
"Maa, Hokage-sama, my new students…?" Kakashi trailed off purposefully, waiting for the Hokage to fill in for something he wouldn't ask.
"Close the door, Kakashi. This is a sensitive subject." The younger man complied automatically, viable eyebrow winged up marginally. Kakashi had thought something along those lines would be said, but when the Hokage immediately ordered his ANBU to leave them and then ambled towards the bookshelves, Kakashi was a bit sceptical.
"Hokage-sama…?" He asked in a generic bland tone of voice that was far more telling than if he had sounded concerned.
"Take a seat," Hiruzen stated, walking back towards his own with a manila folder in his hands. There was something telling in the way the mans hands stayed completly still. It was an unnatural stillness, like he was concentrating on what his hands contained far more then what he let on. "Your team is a tricky one, and that's only considering the two known problems on it; Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki."
"And the third?"
"Tamashī Shiro herself is not so much of a problem. She is mostly level headed and intelligent, but her circumstances are.. troubling, to say the least."
"Sir?" Kakashi was feeling mostly confused now with a tread of concern.
"She is my granddaughter."
Tamashī was back in the classroom at her seat, jutsu delema solved by the mysterious voice from earlier. So now, she's working on something else. Something that might actually be too ambitious for her current skill level in fuuinjutsu. A giant flying sake dish that could carry her and a passenger. But it was hard to concentrate with all the noise in the room currently.
"Yo. Could you tone down the cackling? I'm working on something." Naruto looked up from positioning the chalkboard eraser between the sliding door of the classroom and the wall, tilting his head curiously.
"What are you working on? School is over!" He protested indignantly, seemingly offended that she would do 'school work' when they had finished the academy.
"I'm trying to make a seal so I can fly." She deadpanned, made all the easier because that as literally what she was doing.
Narutos eyes began shining, and even Sasuke shifted in his seat with interest. "Oooh! Can I help?!" The grin on his face was infectious, and Tamashī didn't bother hiding her own smile.
"Sure, if you can understand the seals. Come over here." Tamashī was glad for the chance to get closer to him, having avoided most people in her sadness of knowing them but she being a complete unknown. It was heart breaking, seeing people you would consider family and have them not recognise you at all. The perils of being an accidental dimension hopper, and all that.
Naruto clamboured over, forgetting his prank entirely as it clattered to the floor uselessly. "Alright you have a look at this, for like, a crash course on fūinjutsu, and I'll try figure out what I'm stuck on." Tamashī said distractedly, handing him a similar notebook to the one in her hands, completly forgetting it was sealed to stay locked to anyone not of her blood family. It opened easily for him. "I'm thinking of using a Wind chakra based seal, but a more stable result would come from using Earth and Lightning to make a sort of magnet seal. It would be more work, undoubtedly so, but I think I like the probable results."
"I can make out some of these symbles, they sorta come in and out of focus and get kinda blurry if I look too hard." Tamashīs head snapped up to look at Naruto in surprise before a gleam appeared in her eyes that he couldn't identify.
"Naruto, do you have trouble reading the board sometimes?"
"Uh, no? Well not all the time. It was hard to read it when we did that thing on seals. Like regular reading is fine, some of the kanji still trip me up though." He sheepishly rubbed the back of head with an uncertain grin on his face. Like he expected her to lash out at him for not being able to perfectly read a difficult language at the age of eleven. She knew some adults that still tripped around reading their native language, like for fuck sake, she still did it too!
"Hmm." Tamashī looked at him with squinted eyes for a moment before nodding and detaching her double sized hip pouch and placing it on the desk in front of her. Once she opened the flap, Naruto lost all interest in what she was doing and began to flip through the notebook again, which he distantly thought was weird.
Tamashī had an inkling of what was going on, which is that something about Naruto was sealed or just mentally locked away a few hours after his birth. Because even in the old timeline, Naruto had a strangely hard time trying to understand seals. Which he shouldn't. Because both of his parents used them and his mother was a feckin Uzumaki, for crying out loud! It should be hard wired into his chakra to understand them; and he could—with difficulty. It was the same thing with Tamashī really, but she wasn't being blocked from the ability. Her father is a fūinjutsu master and had been for at least thirty years before she was conceived. His chakra knew the process of fūinjutsu, and because of him, hers did too.
"I don't have what I need right now, but I'll get that fixed for you tomorrow." Tamashī announced decisively as she snapped the clasps closed on the pouch before reattaching it to her belt.
"Fix what?" Naruto asked suspiciously, squinting his eyes right back at her. Tamashī thought it just made him look like a sleepy fox and had to use a lot of willpower to not coo at him.
"Your eyes. I'll explain later." She answered as the door to the classroom opened and Kakashi Hatake poked his head into the room.
"My first impression of you guys… you're a bunch of morons. Meet me on the roof in five minutes." And then he was gone.