Oinari Academy

1.

The Hyuuga were prestigious. They had pride, and they would only accept the best. That, really, was the problem.

Konoha was one of the five great Hidden Villages in the Elemental Countries, and the Hyuuga were one of the top two ninja clans within Konoha. A wealthy, powerful family, they were aware of their own greatness and expected much from themselves.

The Hyuuga were separated into two groups, the main family and then the branch family retainers. Hinata's father was the head of the main family; his younger twin brother was the head of the branch family. A simple accident of a few minutes of birth had separated them irrevocably forever. The elder sibling became head of the family, while the younger sibling was branded upon the forehead with what was called "a Caged Bird seal", which could be activated by any main family member at any moment and cause untold devastation on the brain.

Hinata could remember, once, in one of her earliest memories, this seal being activated. Her father had been putting her through moves out on the Hyuuga clan sparring mat, when she was only a few years old - the Hyuuga clan specialized in a style of taijutsu hand to hand called Jyuuken, or Gentle Fist, which involved devastating soft, graceful attacks to vulnerable anatomical areas, and they expected even their youngest members to be able to perform it, something Hinata did not realize was peculiar until later on in life.

So she was going through the movements, but she was clumsy. She kept tripping up. With calm patience, her father did the moves with her over, and over again - until the air began to get heavy. It was at this point that her father's head shot up and he glared at his twin brother, who was sitting nearby with his own son. The twin brother screamed out and fell to the ground, his forehead seal glowing, twisting and writhing as though he was having some sort of seizure. His son Neji, Hinata's elder cousin, fell back fearfully, watching with big eyes.

At last, the seizure faded away, Hinata's uncle gasping and drooling on the floor. Neji and Hinata stood straight and stiff in the terrified silence. It was the first time Hinata had ever been afraid of her father, who was tall and dignified, his eyes dark with fury.

"Be warned," he told his shaking, prone brother. "I will not tolerate that again."

It was only later that Hinata learned the heaviness in the air had been killing intent. Her uncle had been directing the killing intent at Hinata herself, who had never been quite as naturally good at Jyuuken as her cousin was, or even as her younger sister would later turn out to be. She was clumsy, she tripped and slipped and always felt like she was messing up. Hinata was not coordinated in a world where one had to be coordinated to survive. As she grew older, she realized - though he said nothing of the kind - that her father wished her younger sister or her cousin were the clan heir instead.

But as time passed, nothing changed. Hinata heard whispers from the clan elders sometimes, as she grew older and shyer and no better at Jyuuken, that her father was "delaying the inevitable." But Hinata thought nothing of this.

In her own eyes, her father was the ultimate protector, unbreakable.

Her mother helped with this. Hinata's mother was a beautiful, soothing presence, always tranquil and peaceful. She tended to the compound garden herself, and was gentle, demure, and kind. Hinata looked nothing like her mother - her face was round where her mother's was slim, and her hair was short and blue-black where her mother's was long and pure dark. In addition to being clumsy and shy, Hinata was plain; she had not inherited her mother's beauty. But her sister Hanabi looked just like their mother, and Hinata loved her for it. The wonderful thing about Hinata's parents was that it was an arranged intra-clan marriage, and yet there was love between them. Her father, so cold and dignified, always softened around her beautiful and gentle mother. He could have taken other wives, but he was happy with his first.

Hinata tried hard to be like her mother in ways other than physical appearance, inspired. Her mother taught her grace and etiquette lessons, and she became from an early age soft spoken, diplomatic, and kindly feminine.

There was a great feast for Hinata's third birthday, and she went to sleep in her vast set of rooms on her pallet peaceful and tranquil, with all being right in the world. She was a princess in a vast, beautiful compound, destined to be homeschooled in ninja training as most female members of ninja clans were, with loving, appropriate parents and a little sister who did not resent her. Her father, she felt, would protect all of them, even Neji and his father, from the bad things forever. He would only hurt Neji and his father in defense of his own family, Hinata felt; so admiring her mother's kindness, she also admired her father's strength, and felt he would only use it appropriately, where he must.

She believed this with the fervency only a young child could. When she grew up, Hinata wanted to be just like her parents. She wanted to take the very best from both people.

She woke to a hand clapping over her mouth and nose, large and rough and male. She screamed, but she was muffled, strangled, from behind, and no one heard her. She was lifted upward, bound and gagged roughly, and stuffed into a cloth bag. One moment she was in cold night air, the next she was inside heavy cloth darkness, her mouth yanked shut by a rag from behind and her hands and feet being cut by ninja wire.

She rattled around, staring terrified at the mesh lining of the bag, as she felt her captor creep silently through the black, sleeping Hyuuga clan compound. She still had not seen her attacker, though she had gathered he was a male adult, and with those silent footsteps, he had to be a ninja. She had no idea where she was, no way to tell where he was taking her.

Then there was a shout and she was thrown to the ground. There was a man's grunt, followed by a scream and the smell of blood. She lay still, horrified, as she heard shouts and chaotic footsteps. Then the bag was thrown backward, and she lay exposed to the cold night air. She stared up in primal fear - at her mother's face.

She relaxed. They hadn't made it outside the compound.

"Hinata-chan! Are you alright?" her mother cried, shaken, hugging her very tightly, as little Hanabi and Neji stood back staring with big eyes. The whole clan was gathered around them. But not everyone was looking at Hinata. Some people were standing around the dead assailant.

He had a ninja headband from the Hidden Village of Kumo, in Lightning Country. Blood spurted out of his ears and nose, gurgling up out of his open mouth from within his chest. Hinata's father stood, covered in blood, pale and icy. He had dealt two killing Jyuuken blows in a needless show of violence, one to the brain and one to the heart.

"He was a diplomat," observed a clan elder at last, blinking heavy lidded eyes down at the dead Kumo ninja. "They were signing a treaty with Konoha today."

"He had kidnapped my daughter!" Hinata's father snapped. "You know how much they've always wanted to study our eyes!"

The Hyuuga clan's Jyuuken taijutsu abilities hinged around their Byakugan eyes, a doujutsu that could help them see through anything - like anatomy - and also across enormous distances. It ran in their bloodline; only they had this eye related ability. It had left them with silvery eyes that contained a permanent and irrevocable lack of visible pupils. Their irises were almost unintelligible from the whites around their eyes. Hinata had the Byakugan just as much as any of them did.

They had wanted, she realized with a thrill of terror, to kidnap the Hyuuga heiress, kill her back in Kumo, rip the eyes out of her head, and study them. She bent over and threw up all over the grass. Her mother's warm hand rubbed her back soothingly. Her father glanced over at her once, but his face was tight and defensive now as he stared at the judgment of his fellows.

"Oh, Hiashi," said Hinata's Uncle Hizashi, "I can understand why you did what you did. But you're in a lot of trouble."

Hinata became very sick and was confined to her bed for several days. Only her mother and her sister visited her. Her father never appeared. Hinata asked questions of her branch guards, her mother, her sister, but though everyone looked very worried, no one would tell her what was going on until Neji walked into her quarters one day.

She brightened from her vast bed. "Neji-nii-san!"

But he looked cold. She had never seen the normally smiling Neji look that way before.

"... I thought you should know," he offered softly after a moment, "your father's head has been demanded by the Hidden Village of Kumo." Hinata gasped. "But -" And here, Neji's face worked furiously. "As the Caged Bird seals the Byakugan upon death, my father's head is going in his place." Tears stung Neji's eyes despite his cold, furious expression.

Hinata was struck silent for a long time.

"... I am sorry, Neji-nii-san," she whispered at last.

Neji's face twisted. "You should know, Hinata-sama," he said, "that just as it is my fate to always be a branch member, just as it is my father's fate to die in place of his twin, you too have a fate." He spat the word. "Main family members are not exempt! I may be fated to always be a branch family member despite being strong, Hinata-sama, but you are fated to always be weak despite being a main family member."

Hinata sat there in silence as Neji left.

When Hinata could finally leave her bedchambers again, her world had changed. Uncle Hizashi was gone, Neji would only address her as "Hinata-sama," and her mother was sick. All of the stress had struck her ill, and she lay bedridden for several days. Hinata was not allowed to visit her, but she could hear her mother moaning every time she passed by her set of rooms.

One day, Hinata was playing with her sister and Neji walked up to the two of them.

"... Your mother is dead," he offered quietly, and left.

Hanabi immediately started crying, but Hinata just sat there for a long time.

It was then her world changed again. Her father never remarried. But that did not mean her arrangement did not shift. Not only did she miss her mother, but it was as if her mother had provided some unseen bulwark for Hinata against the world. With her mother gone, she began being called into the clan sparring rooms more and more, to show her performances further and further for her father and the clan elders. But it seemed she always fell further and further behind, clumsy till the end.

Neji and Hanabi, on the other hand, got better and better. The chip on Neji's shoulder got heavier; it seemed he always had more to prove. Meanwhile, Hinata's father had become colder. He demanded much, showed little mercy, and while Hanabi thrived under this kind of treatment, Hinata did not.

Hinata also did not like sparring with her cousin or her sister, or with any of her other relatives - she always feared hurting them. She especially could not hit her sister - her sister, who looked so much like their dead mother.

Her sister suddenly became more vicious and aggressive toward her. She was always pushing and hitting Hinata, making her fall, pushing her further and further back. Their father never intervened. "Why are you always trying to hurt me?" Hinata asked her sister one day plaintively after falling back for the third time on the mats.

Hanabi sighed impatiently. "Nee-san," she said, "don't you see what's going on?"

But Hinata did not see, and apparently Hanabi felt no need to enlighten her; she stormed from the mats. Neji, Hinata's father, and the clan elders watched from a distance with veiled eyes, and Hinata felt a strange sense of humiliation rise within her.

Finally, one day, Hinata was called by surprise into the clan sparring room. She walked inside, and found everyone assembled there. Her sister stood in the center of the mat.

"Hinata," said her father in a deep, rumbling voice, his eyes stern, "you will fight your sister."

But this was nothing new for Hinata. She faced her sister across the mat, the signal to begin came, and as usual Hinata did horribly. She was pushed back and pushed back, clumsy and under pressure and afraid to hit her sister; at last her younger sister felled her and arced a knife hand right up close to her heart.

All was still for a moment.

"... Very well," said their father at last, and Hinata could see he was feeling something very strongly for a moment, but she could not tell what it was. "Hanabi is now clan heiress."

Hinata gasped, her heart stopping. Hanabi turned calmly, and bowed, as if she'd expected it all along. "Thank you for the honor, Father," she said, with the kind of calm Hinata had never felt she possessed. Hanabi had grown, without Hinata realizing it.

And all of a sudden Hinata realized she'd been playing in a high stakes game and she hadn't even known there was anything at stake and now she had lost. She had lost horribly.

Everyone filed out of the sparring room. "It is to be expected," Hinata heard one clan elder murmur to another. "Hiashi gave the girl her little sister instead of her cousin, but it was of no use." Then they were all gone, and Hanabi, Neji, and Hinata were alone in the room. Hinata stood slowly, shaken.

Neji walked up to her. "It appears I may have been wrong about your fate, Hinata-sama," he said formally.

Hinata stared at him like he'd just grown six heads.

"Hinata-sama," Neji sighed, "what happened to the last younger sibling of a main family head? How do you think the branch family was created?"

Hinata went cold right down to her heart. The last person with such a position - had been Uncle Hizashi. All the branch members - they were descendants of clan rejects.

"My father will brand me," Hinata whispered in horror. Hanabi just looked at her matter of factly. Hanabi had apparently figured it out years ago - it was why she'd suddenly become more aggressive. She didn't want that fate to be her own.

"Not if he can help it," said Neji clinically, who had a forehead seal himself. "Not after what happened between your father and mine. My father died resenting your father; he won't try that method again in a hurry. No, your father will try to make other arrangements for you. He's been fighting for you all along, you know. Perhaps he will arrange a wealthy civilian marriage for you; that is always an option for girls.

"But Hinata-sama." Neji looked at her seriously, apparently moved by her unusual closeness to his position into more ordinary speech. "He must find an answer quickly. He cannot keep the clan elders at bay forever."

Sakura probably had more experience of Konoha village itself than a girl from a typical ninja family did. Most girls in established ninja clans, during their youngest years they lived mostly inside their compound, were homeschooled inside their compound, only venturing out as they got older and took the rank test to become official ninja.

Sakura's family lived in a relative shack.

Really, it wasn't a bad house. Just very simple. Two stories, a faded lemonade pink color, no surrounding property. It looked like it had been new once and then its life force had drained away, and it sagged a bit to the side. It was surrounded by a forbidding, rusty, spiked iron fence. Sakura's parents were first generation ninja - her grandparents had been civilians - and though they were technically a ninja clan by law, they could not perform any of the official ninja clan functions. They had not accumulated enough wealth to have their own compound, and her father only could afford the one wife and child.

This meant Sakura ventured out into Konoha a lot, playing with the civilian children. She came to know well the dirt streets lined with green trees, the many colorful white-washed cottages with spiraling lemon, lime, and strawberry colored roofs, the green forests beyond, the great wooden wall surrounding Konoha on all sides, the vast sandstone Hokage monument looming out into the center of it all in the mild weather, carved with the faces of the previous all-male ninja village leaders.

She played barefoot with the civilian children, and this meant she got it from both ends. Her mother, on the one hand, always got annoyed and tight-lipped when she played with the civilian children. "You are above them," she said, she herself a hard, fierce woman who life had dealt a bad hand. Her mother, it seemed, was always frowning, and the lines in her face showed it.

Sakura scowled. "I don't have anybody else to play with," she'd mutter.

The real trouble, however, came when the civilian children and their parents found out that Sakura and her family were technically a ninja clan. "Those Haruno people, they don't know how to be proper ninja," the parents would say disapprovingly.

"My parents know plenty about being ninja!" Sakura would defend angrily, and the parents would just glare at her sideways suspiciously. "They do!" No one believed her.

But the worst thing was that the civilian children she used to be friends with started picking on her. They would surround her as she curled up on the ground, kicking her and shouting jeers at her. "Forehead Girl! Forehead Girl!" they would call, as tears stung Sakura's eyes and she curled herself into a tighter ball, helpless anger choking her.

Sakura's forehead was her most sensitive feature. She had short carnation pink hair and spring green eyes - hence her name - but she had a heart-shaped face, and its wide forehead and pointed chin were both points of self consciousness for her.

The children picked up on that and went right for it. It wasn't long before Sakura felt very ugly indeed. She wanted to stand up to all those people, but then she would be left all alone and anyway how did you stand up to everyone? Without getting in trouble? Sakura was too quiet, too obedient, needed others too much, to make for a rebellious rule-breaker who stood up for herself. Anger only got a person so far, but it was the anger that ate away at her from the inside. The anger, and the self loathing.

They also made fun of her for the books she loved so much, gotten from homeschooling with her parents, always on such a higher level than what they could read themselves - and not because they went to public general ed civilian schools, either. "Nerd," they called her, and this Sakura also took with silent, repressed anger.

"You're not better than us," they would sneer at her. "That's why you wear those poor clothes. Your family doesn't have any more money than ours."

Sakura glared helplessly, her teeth gritted. "That doesn't matter," she forced out. "I'll still become a great ninja!" But inside, she knew they were right.

She came home after being picked on one day, and her dress was torn, her lip and knee bloody. "Sakura!" her mother shouted, aghast, at the door. "What happened?"

"What does it look like?" Sakura muttered resentfully. She could not look her parents in the eye.

"Sakura, you must learn to stand up for yourself," said her mother firmly. "You can't let anyone pick on you as a ninja!"

Sakura's head shot up. "As if I want to be picked on!" she shouted.

Sakura's father looked unusually sober at the kitchen table. He shared a look with Sakura's mother. "This isn't working," he said meaningfully. "She isn't learning anything this way."

Sakura's mother's expression suddenly became veiled. "Sakura," she said, "go upstairs to your room."

Sakura stared between them suspiciously, and then trudged slowly, reluctantly, up to her room. She lay down on her bed and took out a book, paging through it. The recommended reading age range was ten to twelve, but this had never been a problem for Sakura when it came to books and learning.

She heard the shouting begin downstairs, and she sighed. Her parents were always fighting. It had been a bad match. Her father was laidback and easygoing, flirtatious, while her mother was fierce and hard, responsible and jealous, staid. But they both had short tempers.

It was why she spent so much time out of the house, away from home. It seemed they were always shouting horrible things at each other, and only later would Sakura realize this was mostly unique to her family. In her younger years, family was just disagreeable and angry, there for nagging and fighting and nothing else.

At last, she put her book down, curious. She crept out of her bedroom, and crouched to listen on the landing. Her father's voice came.

" - you know we can't teach her here. We have no significant clan skills, and she won't learn how to be a ninja spending her life around civilians. She's not a boy. She can't go to a general ed ninja training Academy and also stay here with us."

"You want to send my daughter away!" her mother shouted, emotional and heated, and Sakura repressed a gasp.

"You know that's not what I want!" her father shouted. "But we don't have a lot of options! We're first generation ninja and we have no abilities; we barely passed the Chuunin middle rank exam! You know Sakura deserves more. Her scores in intelligence and control are off the charts. And anyway, she's not happy here!"

Sakura's mother went silent. "I can't believe we're considering this," she murmured. Then there was a long silence. Sakura waited. Considering what?! she wanted to scream. But there was no answer.

At last, realizing the fight was over, Sakura crept back to her bedroom, numb.

She knew she'd never seen her parents talk about or show any significant clan abilities. But she'd always assumed they'd know what to do when the time came. They were her parents, after all. But apparently they didn't know what to do. They couldn't pass on to her any significant ninja clan abilities, because they had none.

They'd taught her how to channel her chakra, and found that she had "the most precise control I've ever seen," her mother had said, in something like surprised awe. Though Sakura had very little chakra, she could channel what she did have into even the tiniest of spaces. She thought that meant she'd be building to something, some special ability.

Now she considered the frightening possibility that this was all they had to teach her - and if that was true, they themselves could die at any moment on a ninja mission.

Sakura sat down on her bed, angry tears stinging her eyes. Her parents wanted to send her away. But was that such a bad thing? She imagined the rest of her life here stretching out before her, interacting with and being picked on by jealous civilians, never going to a ninja academy, never gaining any significant abilities, always being a low ranked cannon fodder ninja like her parents. Yet she didn't want to give up being a ninja - she dreamed of becoming a powerful fighter.

She felt trapped and hopeless and upset and confused. This was the only home she had ever known. But was it one she wanted to be permanent?

Ino's father had several wives, and countless children.

They all lived in a clan compound. The Yamanaka were not the Hyuuga or the Uchiha, but they did well. They were a well established Konoha clan. Ino's father had several drinking buddies, and they all had the same lackadaisical, kindly condescending, amused attitude toward women that had started infuriating Ino at a very young age. They all had several wives and children as well, and often the three of them went off on ninja missions together.

But make no mistake, Ino's father was not an alcoholic. On the contrary, he was a measured, even tempered man who worked for the ANBU Black Ops Intel and Torture & Interrogation division. He never talked about what he did at work, and Ino had learned from a young age not to ask. A survivor to the end, she heeded this lesson. She had realized realistically that she probably didn't want to know the details of what her father did for a living, didn't want it to tarnish her image of him.

Ino's father insisted that none of his wives - all of whom he had married from outside the previously small Yamanaka clan - had to work. Ino's mother, his first wife, rebelled against this in a subtle way, by opening up a flower shop that Ino sometimes helped with. It was a genteel enough job, almost a hobby if you spun it the right way, that Ino's father looked the other way.

This was, as far as Ino could tell, her mother's sole sign of rebellion. She was an older, dignified, silent, traditional woman. Her responsibility and even temper, her maturity and acceptance of her lot in life, were what had made her first wife. Ino's father was nothing if not pragmatic.

Ino and her mother rarely spoke outside the flower shop. Ino was nothing like her mother, and in any case, Ino's mother often did not have much to say. She had hidden depths known only to herself; she preferred not to socialize with the world except when she had to. She was, in Ino's eyes, totally and painfully repressed.

Ino didn't get much control from her father either, so she was essentially allowed to run free for several years. The other wives sometimes said that Ino's spoiled lack of control or dedication would come back to haunt her someday. Ino thought they could all go screw themselves.

She was the only child of her father's first wife, and though she had older half siblings, and though she was pretty with short platinum blonde hair and icy blue eyes and a desirable oval face, Ino knew her father would have preferred for his first child to be a boy. It was well known: boys went to the Academy, girls lived at home. The separation was obvious from a young age. Ino always had a mysterious sense that she disappointed her father, and instead of making her timid or angry, this frustrated her and made her act out rebelliously in other ways.

Today, she crept up on her older half brother and her two younger half siblings (a boy and a girl). Tenshi and Kaneda, the boys, were picking on the little girl, Ume. She was crying as they snickered and yanked on her pigtails. Ino snuck up behind Tenshi, and kicked him in the butt.

As the eldest, she found him personally responsible for picking on her little sister.

Tenshi yelped, fell head over feet, and landed in the mud and fertilizer out in the center courtyard. He growled and sat upright, glaring at Ino, and Ino grinned. He stood up, charged toward her - and tripped a hidden ninja wire trigger Ino had placed in the courtyard hours ago, which caught him suddenly up in a big net.

"Hey!" he yelled, struggling with the net. "Let me go!"

Ino snickered. Kaneda let out a surprised laugh, Ume looked up smiling through her tears, and all the other children gathered around the courtyard to laugh as well. So did a couple of the younger wives who did not like Tenshi. Then, suddenly:

"Ino!"

The courtyard went silent. Ino turned around, sullen. Her mother was standing there. Her mother was reserved, but her lips pursed with disapproval.

"You disrespect your elder brother, and you disobey and shame your parents," Ino's mother said coldly at last.

In response, Ino stuck out her tongue. She'd defended her little sister and she refused to apologize.

"Your father should see you," said Ino's mother simply. "Come with me."

She turned around, and Ino followed her down the hall into her father's office. Ino's mother entered the office first; there was the murmur of voices for about a minute. Then Ino's mother came out. "You may enter," she said, stepping aside. Ino walked in, passing her. The door slid shut behind Ino, and she stood reluctantly, refusing to be fearful, in the office before her thoughtful, distant father. She stared at the calligraphy scroll hanging behind his head, hands behind her back, trying not to fidget.

And she waited.

"You are always causing trouble, Ino," said her father at last. "You shame me. Why?"

"I was just using the Yamanaka clan powers of craftiness," Ino argued firmly. "If I were a boy, you would not call my actions a dishonor."

"Silence!"

They glared at each other for a moment.

What Ino meant was this. The Yamanaka clan specialized in mind and body control. It was why Ino's blue eyes lacked pupils. She could look into a person, and travel into their mind through her eyes. She could also use these powers to manipulate their bodies, like a spider spinning invisible webs.

Ino's father had mastered these abilities. It was why he worked for the ANBU division that he did. But they required great craftiness to execute properly in a fight.

"There is a world of difference between using those skills on a mission and using them to entrap your brother," said her father.

"He was picking on my little sister. Am I not allowed to defend her?" Ino demanded defiantly.

"Yet you had placed that trap hours ago. You were just waiting for the appropriate person to fall into it," her father pointed out.

Ino went silent, sullen.

Her father sighed. "Ino…" he said.

"It's still because I'm a boy," Ino insisted. "You don't scold my brothers when they fight each other!"

Ino's father looked away. "... Women have a different role in life," he forced out after a moment, and as always, he sounded disappointed.

"Including kunoichi, female ninja?" Ino asked sharply. "Like what I intend to be?"

Her father looked at her meaningfully. "Especially kunoichi, female ninja, like what you intend to be." Ino glared, refusing to be apologetic. Her father's eyes sharpened. "I shall have to teach you a lesson," he said at last. "Leave while I contemplate what that lesson is."

"Ooh, I'm terrified," said Ino with bratty sarcasm, storming out of the office and slamming the door behind her.

"And don't slam doors!" he called fruitlessly after her.

Ino stormed off of the compound and into the nearby flower shop, where her mother stood behind the counter. "What did your father say?" Ino's mother asked reservedly.

"He said he's going to 'teach me a lesson'." Ino made a face. "Whatever that means."

"Oh, Ino," said her mother. "You forget your father's role within our village. This will not exactly consist of extra training sessions when your time for private schooling comes.

"Be careful. Your father's lessons are never kind."