Published: 5/15/2016

Edited: 5/22/2019

BURNING POINTS

I woke up in a pile of dogs. Kiba was snoring across the way with Akamaru bulging under his shirt; another dog had its paws over his shoulders. I myself found that there was an enormous canine resting its snout on my neck, and my pillow was being slept upon by a pair of puppies. There was another dog curled into my stomach.

I rolled over, which prompted some shifting and whining. Then I crawled out of the pile toward the kitchen where Tsume-san was having tea with my father.

"Oof," Dad said when I headed straight over and sat myself down on his lap. "Missed you too, sweetfish."

Tsume-san snorted, but she looked a little wistful. "I remember when mine did that," she said, and I was reminded that even tough mothers are still mothers. "Kiba wouldn't dream of it now. Hana's too old, too."

"Ayuri's too old," Dad teased and poked my sides. I just squirmed and mumbled.

Though it was spring now and the whole Inuzuka compound smelled like soil and fresh wet grass, Dad still carried the scent of fire. Only slightly masked by soap and shampoo, I could smell it: the burning of dry autumn leaves and the scent of fresh air mixed with fresh ashes… Just a hint of Mom's dewy morning breeze was lingering on his chest. He must have been lying down with her before he came here.

"How's Mitsu?" Tsume-san asked. It seemed we were on the same wavelength.

"Asleep," Dad replied as he rested his chin on my head. "But she's finally stable now. I figured it was a good time to go home and get washed up before team assignments. Thanks for taking Ayuri for so long, Tsume."

"I'd be an ass if I didn't help you out after that clusterfuck of a mission," Tsume-san replied as she set her cup down on the table and leaned her chin into her hand. "Ayuri's welcome here anytime."

Dad smiled with immense gratitude. He and Tsume-san lapsed into silence. A significant moment seemed to pass between them. Then Tsume-san, still staring at my father, let out an amused sigh. I glanced curiously over my shoulder.

"Well, go on now," Dad said before I could do anything. He pushed me off his lap with an affectionate slap on the rump. "Go get dressed. We'll walk to the Academy together."

I tried to look sullen, but I didn't have it in me. I took my duffle bag to the bathroom and put my day clothes on after brushing my teeth and washing my face. My hair looked a bit rough, but I didn't have a comb, so I tossed it a bit and went out like that.

"Your mother would have a heart attack if she could see you right now," Dad informed when I returned and presented myself to him in all my rumpled glory. Then, rather shockingly, he began pulling my wardrobe into order: untwisting my shorts, fixing my belt and the brand-new hitae-ate tied to it, straightening my jacket collar...

"What?" he asked, amused, as I gaped at him. He ran his fingers through my hair to get out the worst of the tangles before taking my bangs and plaiting them into a braid just as Mom did every morning. He dug around in his pocket and then pulled out one of my dragonfly hair clips, which he then used to fix the braid in place. "Don't you think I know how to do a girl's hair? I was also half-responsible for raising you, you know." He chuckled. "Mom would flay me alive if I had let you meet your genin team looking like a slob."

"Speaking of slobs," Tsume-san muttered as she rose with arms akimbo. "Kiba!" she roared at the doorway. Several yelps sounded from the next room. The loudest of them was very clearly not a dog's.

"You'll be late if you wait up for him," Tsume-san mused. "Don't feel obligated to stay."

"You're probably right," Dad agreed. He dropped his hand on my head and ruffled my hair. "Why don't we get a move on, then, Ayuri?"

Tsume-san saw us off with a wave and another one of those not-quite-melancholy smiles. We waved back over our shoulders before stepping out into the sunny Inuzuka compound, where a few other clan members were already out and about. Tending yards before it got too warm, running laps and exercising with the dogs, returning with breakfast ingredients from early-morning grocery runs… it was only another day in Konohagakure no Sato. The earth had not truly quaked and turned over when my parents had returned three days ago. It had only felt like it.

But what an earthshaking day it had been. Something was, even now, very wrong. Dad didn't know, but I had seen the ANBU watching him when he had first arrived to fetch me from the Academy. They had been two masked men, standing in the trees above him with arms crossed, and they had been visible only for a brief second before they repositioned themselves out of sight. But after that sighting I had constantly been smelling them—or smelling the lack of them, rather, because it had been a windy day and there had been strange blank spots in the breeze. And they were here now, following him again.

What had happened on the mission to prompt a three-day-long ANBU escort for my father? He was a jounin, and though he was fairly well-known, he didn't need guards or watchers. He was loyal. He was smart enough and skilled enough to take care of himself.

"You are so gloomy, Ayuri," Dad said, snapping me out of my thoughts. "You should be more excited. It's your first team assignment ever, you know. It's a huge milestone."

"I can't be cheery," I grumbled.

"Sure you can," he said easily. "What if something great happens? What if Sasuke-kun's on your team?"

"I don't care about Sasuke-kun right now." I tried not to scowl.

Dad let out a whistle. "Then this is serious," he decided. He looked mildly impressed. "You and Ino-chan can never stop talking about him."

"Of course it's serious! Mom's in the hospital."

"Mom's been in the hospital before," he pointed out reasonably. "And besides, she's fine now. Well on the way to recovery."

"If things are fine," I began. Then I flicked my gaze to the side. Why are they here, I wanted to say. But then I didn't know if I should.

Dad, though, was a keen observer. "You can tell?" he asked with surprise. "That's unexpected. Most wouldn't."

"It's because they're making big blank spots," I mumbled and scuffed a toe in the dirt. Dad laughed and glanced up at the rooftops.

"Sloppy," he remarked. "A genin is never greener than when she graduated yesterday, you know!"

No one replied, but the empty spaces in the air suddenly seemed to fill. Then I couldn't tell where they'd went no matter how hard I tried.

A beat passed in silence. Then Dad murmured, "Don't be worried because of them. It's just that Hokage-sama prefers to be overly cautious. They're more a formality than anything."

"If it's not a big deal, why is Jijisama involved at all?" I asked mulishly. "You can't expect me to go and have a happy day without knowing anything."

Dad's face suddenly morphed into something more serious.

"I do expect you to, Ayuri. You're a ninja now. You have to get used to that fact some things are just not for your ears."

"But it's Mom," I protested again, though less heatedly now. I was feeling more and more half-hearted by the second. "She's my mother. You're my father. I want to know if something bad is happening to you."

Dad smiled then, and he put an affectionate hand on my head.

"Thanks, sweetfish," he chuckled. "But you know that we're high-ranking ninjas. Sometimes the people you care about will have to keep secrets. For your safety and theirs."

I ducked my chin, stared at the ground, and concentrated on putting one sandaled foot in front of the other. Dad retracted his arm, put his hands in his pockets, and ambled on beside me in comfortable silence. When I finally looked up again his eyes were on the sky, gaze glazed over with some distant thought I couldn't divine.

"I love you, Dad," I said plaintively.

He slid out of his reverie with impressive fluidity. Transitioning from abstract thought to concrete conversation with not even a twitch of surprise, he down at me again and said, "I love you, too."

We arrived at the Academy soon after that. We even walked inside together, though he had to keep going when we arrived at my classroom. The jounin sensei were meeting in the administrative wing before coming to pick up their teams after lunch.

"Good luck, sweetfish," Dad bade. "I probably won't get to see you until the evening, but I should be back in time for dinner. Wait for me before you eat, okay?"

"I will," I promised. Dad tweaked my nose and then strolled away, waving at me over his shoulder. I waved back until he turned the corner and went out of sight; then I dropped my arm, pursed my lips, and lingered for a long moment in the hallway.

I was too old for separation anxiety. Nothing was going to happen to him while he was gone. He was in the heart of Konoha and he would be surrounded by other jounin—not to mention he was being watched by his ANBU tag-alongs. Keeping this in mind, I inhaled once, nodded, and turned toward the door.

The room was filled with a couple of my classmates already. Ami and her friends Fuki and Kasumi were seated in the center of the classroom, chattering, and Morihei and Atsuka were standing by the blackboard. Shockingly enough the sloth named Shikamaru was also already present, though he was staring out the window like a prisoner longing for sunlight.

Ino, too, was already here. She jumped at me, grabbed my hands, and began speaking excitedly.

"It's finally here!" she exclaimed. "Team assignments! Can you believe it? I've been waiting all week!"

She looked as immaculate as always. Her skin was clear; her long, shiny blond hair was pulled up into a perky ponytail; her clothes were without a wrinkle. It was obvious just by looking at her that she was already beginning to develop pleasant curves and full breasts. Not for the first time I found myself holding in a sigh. Mom had assured me that not all twelve-year-olds would be immediately as busty as Ino was turning out to be, so there was still hope for me, but I had a feeling that I ought not hold my breath. I followed her to a seat and sat down with a two-folded depression.

Time moved at a crawl. No matter what I did I couldn't concentrate—not on what Ino was saying, and not on was about to happen. My thoughts kept drifting back to the the moment the classroom door had slid open and one of the chuunin teachers had called my name. I had gone outside to the Academy entrance and found my father there, those ANBU watchers in the trees, with arms bandaged and vest still spotted with blood. The look of grim sobriety on his face lingered in my mind even now. He took me from school to the hospital to witness what we had thought would be the final hours of my mother's life…

"...yuri. Ayuri. Hey."

Ino was giving me a concerned look. "Are you okay? Is your mom…?" she trailed, guessing the cause of my distraction correctly.

"She's okay now," I quickly assured her, not wanting her to misunderstand. "She's stable, don't worry. I'm just brooding, that's all."

Ino tried hard to salvage the conversation, but it was a meaningless effort. I didn't register a word she said. I was so zoned out I even missed the uproar that happened when Uzumaki Naruto, whom everyone knew had failed his graduation test, marched into the classroom with a hitai-ate on his forehead. It was only when Iruka-sensei opened the door and took his place at the front of the classroom that Ino put her foot down and pinched my arm. I jerked my attention back to the present.

Iruka-sensei greeted us formally and congratulated us on our induction to the ranks of Konoha's shinobi before smiling and thanking us for allowing him to be our instructor for our final year. Then, before we were assigned our teams, we were taken through the process of registering ourselves as part of Konoha's ninja forces. In between receiving dog tags, identification numbers, filling out medical histories, and nearly a hundred other things, it took nearly the whole morning to get everything done. By the time the team assignments came around I was in an utter daze.

I didn't have any hopes for team assignments aside from a vague desire to be in Kiba's squad. After all, there was no way Ino and I could be together—not with the traditional distribution of one kunoichi per team—and they were my only friends. I definitely didn't get along with Ami and her crowd, and though I talked with Shikamaru and Chouji on occasion—if only because they were around Ino often—I really couldn't call them friends. Aside from the hope of Kiba, actually, the best that I could probably ask for was friendly classroom acquaintances. So, I had concluded, it didn't really matter where I ended up.

At least, that was what I'd thought until the actual assignment came.

"Team 7," Iruka-sensei read. "Uzumaki Naruto. Sarutobi Ayuri. Uchiha Sasuke."

Ino turned to look at me with huge eyes. I didn't know whether to shriek with delight or crumble in absolute horror.

Ino and I had both shared crushes on Sasuke-kun for a while now. I had always known that he was way out of my league, of course, and that if he was the type of boy to pick a girl based on her looks he'd definitely take the exquisitely beautiful Ino over plain-looking me. And unlike Ino, who was brave and assertive enough to talk to him when she had the chance, I was half-sure that he didn't know I even existed. The only hope I held out at this point was that he might recognize my name from the grade boards. I'd never managed to displace him from the first spot, but I did get good scores, so at the very least he might have seen "Sarutobi Ayuri" a row beneath his own listing… but I doubted it. Never in a million years had I ever dreamed that I might actually land on Uchiha Sasuke's team. My heart might have burst with uncontrollable joy had this new development had not been paired with the utter disaster that was Uzumaki Naruto as teammate.

The sum of Naruto could be conveyed in three words: loud, rude, and stupid. He was a braggart with no particular skill and he was always holding the class back when we did group exercises. I couldn't count the number of times we had practiced the clone jutsu or the henge over because of his smartass remarks and outrageous pranks. Added to that, his breath smelled. Sometimes Kiba hung out with him but I couldn't stand him.

And now I was going to be stuck with him for the rest of my genin career. Possibly longer. Team missions with Sasuke-kun would forever have Naruto, the scourge of our Academy class since age six, tainting them. I put my face in my hands.

"Oi, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto said loudly as her stood and planted his foot atop his desk. Ino put a hand of support on my shoulder as I looked despairingly over at him. How could such a delinquent even exist?

"Why does an excellent ninja like me have to be on a team with that bastard Sasuke?" Naruto demanded.

"Naruto," Iruka-sensei began, incensed, "Sasuke graduated at the top of this class. You, on the other hand, were dead last! It's only natural that we balance the teams this way."

Dead last! He really was that stupid! The class burst into laughter, but I wanted to cry.

"Try not to hold me back too much, dead last," Sasuke-kun said with sardonic aplomb. At this point I didn't know who could blame him.

Like a little thug Naruto whirled around and held his fist up. "What'd you say?" he screeched as he pushed his sleeve back.

"You want to fight, dead last?" Sasuke-kun challenged with a sneer curling on his lip. Naruto sputtered with ineloquent rage.

Iruka-sensei had to wave his arms and do a lot of shouting, but eventually the class pariah was settled back into his seat and team assignments went on. Kiba was paired with Hyuuga Hinata and Aburame Shino, possibly the two quietest students in the class, and Ino was put into a team with Shikamaru and Chouji. She put her hands on her head and groaned.

After that we were dismissed for lunch. Both Ino and Kiba went off with their own squads. Sasuke-kun took off before I could so much as speak to him, and the rest of the kids drained away in short order. Soon I was sitting alone in the classroom and staring down at the desk in front of me.

I put my head down on the desk and squeezed my eyes shut.

.

.

On top of everything our jounin sensei was late. Not by fifteen minutes, or half an hour, or even an hour. He was late by two.

Needless to say I was bored to tears. So were my new teammates, though they manifested their agitation in different ways. Sasuke-kun's energy turned inward, and his gaze intensified more and more until his smoldering glare looked as though it could burn a house down. Naruto, on the other hand, fidgeted and paced and whined and groaned. He flailed his arms, kicked chairs, and crawled all over the classroom in search of distraction. As for me, I was in the process of slowly grinding a nub of chalk into powder. The desk in front of me was coated in white dust and my fingers were matted with the stuff, but I didn't care so long as I was doing something.

And then I smelled it—a faint, acrid tang. It was something not unlike a summer thunderstorm, and it was mixed with the scent of loamy, wet earth; the smell of it was almost as prominent as the odor of the ozone was. It was incredibly hard to pick up, though, so much so that a moment later I was wondering if I had imagined it. But then the classroom door slid open and it appeared again. It took only a second of thought to realize that this subtle, unobtrusive smell was the scent of our new jounin instructor, Hatake Kakashi.

Naruto broke into uproarious laughter when the chalkboard eraser he had wedged into the doorway hit Hatake-sensei square on the head, but I hardly noticed. I was immediately absorbed in trying to dissect the smell. Despite its faintness it was a rich and complex scent. How was it possible for a person to smell like so many things at once? The only one I'd ever met with a scent so layered was probably Hiruzen-jijisama. And even then it was still different. Jijisama smelled more like smokiness—something interspersed with fresh bursts of wind that uncovered the scent of upturned fields before being obscured by that same smoke again. His smell had distinct portions. This man's was muddled with all sorts of things all at once.

"Hmm." Hatake-sensei glanced us up and down. He looked a little strange with flopping silver hair spilling over his hitai-ate; his visible eye was dark and droopy. He regarded us for a moment, picked up the chalkboard eraser, and then said thoughtfully, "First impression… mm, I'd say I hate you."

My jaw dropped. Naruto looked horrified. Even Sasuke-kun seemed dismayed. Despite this assertion, however, Sensei shrugged and made a lazy follow-me gesture. Like lost little lemmings, we trailed after him up to the roof, where he settled himself on the railing and stared expectantly at us until we seated ourselves on front of him on the ground. There was a beat of silence.

"Well, I guess we should start out with introductions," he drawled after a moment.

"What do you want us to say?" I asked cautiously.

"Oh, likes, dislikes, future dreams, hobbies," he waved a hand. "Stuff like that."

"Why don't you introduce yourself first?" Naruto suggested doubtfully, and for once, I wasn't utterly appalled by his lack of manners.

"Me?" Hatake-sensei seemed surprised to be asked. "I'm Hatake Kakashi."

There was another beat of silence.

"So, uh, your likes and dislikes?" Naruto prompted.

"I don't feel like telling you," our teacher replied. Naruto and I exchanged looks.

"Then, future dreams and hobbies…" I trailed.

"Future dreams… who knows about stuff like that?" Sensei shrugged. "As for hobbies, I do some stuff."

"Unbelievable," Sasuke-kun uttered under his breath.

"Well, your turn," Hatake-sensei cheerfully continued. "You go first." He pointed at Naruto.

"Me? Me? I'm Uzumaki Naruto," Naruto immediately forgot his exasperation and puffed up when he saw he had our attention. He began adjusting his forehead protector incessantly. "I like cup ramen, but I like the Ichiraku ramen Iruka-sensei treats me to even more! I hate the three minutes you have to wait after pouring the water for instant ramen. My hobby is eating and comparing different types and brands of cup ramen. As for my future dream, I'm going to be better than the Hokage and make everyone in the village acknowledge me!"

If I looked a little dumbfounded I don't think anyone could fault me. Even Sensei seemed a little incredulous. Well, even I suppose even loudmouthed instant noodle-connoisseurs could have grand dreams...

"Right…" Hatake-sensei said slowly. "Okay, next."

"Oh, um," I said, off-guard, when he looked at me. Were we going clockwise? "I'm, um, Sarutobi Ayuri. I like… I like gymnastics, I guess? Dancing and stuff?" I mumbled as I thought of the flips and turns and tricks Mom occasionally found time to teach me. "I don't like… well, I don't like loud noises. Or… rude people." I very deliberately did not look at the blond-haired boy to my left. "And my hobbies… well, it would probably be dancing. When I have time."

"What're your dreams?" Naruto asked me curiously.

My dreams? I was silent for a moment. Then I put my forehead on my knees and said, "It'd be nice if I could live peacefully with my family, I guess."

If it could be so that my parents never had to go to the hospital again. If they never almost died again.

When I looked up I saw a wide variety expressions. Sasuke-kun's face was flinty and Naruto seemed a little puzzled. Hatake-sensei was giving me a calculating look. But he didn't comment; he just said, "Next."

"My name is Uchiha Sasuke," Sasuke-kun began. He linked his fingers together and hid his mouth behind his hands. "There are a lot of things I hate and there isn't anything I like in particular. My hobby is training to become stronger. As for my dream…" His gaze went dark. "I have no dream. I have an ambition. I'm going to resurrect my clan… and I'm going to kill a certain man."

Naruto jerked away, sweating, and even I found myself leaning back at that. Hatake-sensei had no visible reaction. There was a long pause.

"Well, good," Sensei finally said several moments later, shattering the tense silence. "You three are interesting, individual people. I'm sure you'll get along splendidly."

...Did he mean that unironically? There was no possible way he wasn't being sarcastic.

Nonchalantly, Hatake-sensei forged on. We were informed about tomorrow's "mission," the 66% fail rate of the test, and were cheerfully advised not to eat breakfast lest we throw up and make fools of ourselves. My teammates and I went home feeling quite terrified. I puttered all about the house without sitting down for a whole hour, just twisting my fingers and wondering just what kind of exercise would fail eighteen genin-hopefuls. I was so distracted that I jumped halfway to the ceiling when my father appeared in the hallway. He was yawning into one hand and holding a plastic takeout bag in the other.

"Jeez, what's wrong with you?" he asked, eyebrows rising, when I held my hand over my heart and glared balefully at him. "Did I scare you or something? That's unusual… you usually know when I'm home before I even unlock the door."

"I wasn't paying attention," I grumbled as I crossed my arms and flushed pink. "Never mind."

"Hmm." Dad gave me a look but didn't pursue the matter. Instead held up the bag. "I stopped by that donburi place you like. Wanna eat?"

.

.

When we sat down to eat in the kitchen with our respective plastic bowls I suddenly found that the absence of Mom was excruciating. After I had started worrying about tomorrow's test she'd totally slipped my mind, but now she was once again front and center of my attention. Even Dad had a pained grimace on his face as we uttered a pathetically sad "itadakimasu."

"This is no good," he sighed after three minutes of complete silence had passed. "We really fall apart without her, don't we?"

"She hates eating alone, after all," I mumbled as I stabbed at a piece of pork with my chopsticks.

"Yeah…" He absently put a piece of fish in his mouth. "I guess we should make small talk," he garbled while he was chewing.

"Gross, Dad." I wrinkled my nose as a few grains of rice flew from his lips. "Don't spew like that. It's nasty."

"You talk, then," he said through his mouthful of food. I gave him a disgusted look. He rolled his eyes, swallowed, and said, "Tell me about your team."

"Team 7," I sighed at that, not really sure to begin. My mind flew back to our self-introductions on the roof. "Sasuke-kun's on it, but…"

"Oh? You don't look too enthused." Dad tilted his head. "I thought that'd make you happy."

I sat up straight.

"Wait, you knew? You knew he was on my team?"

"Well, I am a jounin instructor," he replied a little dryly. "I knew the team assignments weeks ago."

I gave him a scandalized look.

"What? It's not like I could have told you," he exclaimed indignantly. "That would have gotten me in a lot of trouble, you know. Even if it's just genin teams classified info like that is a big deal. I know a guy who went to prison for leaking a mission's team comp once."

"But that means you knew about Naruto, too, doesn't it?" I whined. "You knew he was on my team?"

"Uzumaki Naruto?" Suddenly, Dad put on a strange face. "Well… I mean, yeah, I did. I saw that too. And it's not like I didn't…"

"What?" I paused at his sudden silence. "...What's wrong?"

"No, nothing," he sighed and dismissed it with a look that was a wild mix of concern, displeasure, and guilt. "Just… well, the world's made of all sorts, Ayuri. And people can have complicated circumstances. Remember that, okay?"

His gaze suddenly seemed heavy—very heavy.

"Um, okay…" I said smally, feeling suddenly timid. "I… I will."

The conversation went dead cold. No more talk about Team 7 ensued, and Dad didn't say anything about his team, either. We went back to eating in silence, and it wasn't long before we were both longing for the warm presence of Sarutobi Mitsu one more.