Chapter 1: Sensei's Late
Imagine if you will, a bird. There are quite a few sayings about birds, one might say you 'eat like a bird' or have a 'bird-brain' but the phrase we want to focus on at this point is 'a bird's eye view'. Now in actuality a bird's eye view isn't much to think about. In a bird's eye there're things, and things that move, things with sharp teeth that move, and things that rustle and go squeak and are quite tasty if rather a meal on the go. Birds, at least birds of the sort that we are imagining right now, don't pay much attention to anything that doesn't squeak and run about making itself a tempting target.
Now our bird's eye has just caught such a movement, and with the large part of its brain that says 'swoop and kill' it dove. Feathery death rained down from above. Nearly. For feathery death became feathery thump as it tried to dive and get the heck out of the way of the sharp whispery thing that nearly divided its tail-feathers whilst causing the meal to get the heck out of the way of feathery thud as it hits the ground.
There was quite a lot of getting the heck out of the way at this point.
Our bird takes a minute of irritable feather rustling to get things back into place, as well as to sooth its injured pride, and heads aloft again. Next time it will choose a different field. So our vision draws back with it, again skyward, and it leaves behind three figures getting smaller by the instant, and the words that trail off as it finds a suitable air current and wings away.
"Sensei's late!"
Let's take our gaze back down and see these figures more clearly.
"I really wish you wouldn't do things like that." Said another, "the poor bird…"
And the bird probably would have agreed, but it was too far away by now, and besides, it wouldn't have understood, anyway.
"I wasn't going to hit it."
"She is correct." Said a third voice. "The trajectory was 10 millimeters off."
"Yes, thank you, Ibitsu." The first voice said peevishly. "We all needed to know the exact measurement."
"Oneesan…" Said the second voice.
"Oh, be quiet, Taihei, and I told you not to call me oneesan, call me oniisan!"
"I'm not going to call you that," Taihei said tiredly. "You're my sister, not my brother. I'm the brother, Toride."
"I'm convinced that was a mistake." Toride said in a manner that said she'd said it many times before.
The three in the field paused to look at each other for a moment. Toride breathing heavily in the way she usually did when she was bored and spoiling for a fight, her fraternal twin brother Taihei smiling slightly in a mildly exasperated way, and Ibitsu watching the both of them with a worried expression on her face.
"Sensei is late." She said, hoping to diffuse the situation a bit. She was somewhat shorter than the other two and stood in such a way that she seemed to think made her look even smaller. Put her in a snow bank and she'd nearly be invisible, what with her white hair and pale skin and quiet way of holding herself. Anyone looking at her would immediately peg her as 'painfully shy'.
They would be correct.
Her one sign of a desire to boldness was the red design on her shoes and apron-like dress. When she shifted her weight slightly under the gaze of her teammates the sun glinted wanly off the plate of the Konoha hitai-ate around her neck.
Her visible eye shifted furtively between the two very similar faces of her teammates, it was hard to tell if the other eye did as well, since it was hard to see behind the thick glass that covered it, but we can assume so. She coughed delicately and continued in a small voice. "As Toride-san said."
"Right." Toride agreed, the bubbling of her temper subsiding a bit. "Like I said." She looked up at the sun from her spot sprawled in the shade of one of the posts set into the turf of the training field. She frowned, her blue eyes glinting, and ran her fingers through her spiky mossy green forelock.
Spiky was a good word for Yamanami Toride. She would have approved of it if anyone had said it to her face, well, approved of it from the lofty position of being somewhere above the person who said it, since they would likely be laying on the ground and groaning within a few seconds. But she would have approved.
Toride would have said that she had gotten a bum deal from the moment of her birth, and all those years of dealing with said bum deal gave her a temper as sharp as a handful of thorns and hot as magma. It bubbled and seethed and only cooled down after it had destroyed several villages and sent the natives rushing for the hills.
The reason, besides general personality, for this was she was convinced, absolutely convinced, that she was the one who was supposed to be the boy. Maybe, perhaps, her brother also should have been a boy, but she was rather doubtful on that point.
She had no use for all those girly things like makeup and boys and flower arrangement. She had been sick on the days that those classes had been covered, with fatal diseases. It was a miracle she survived, really. No, she didn't think she would like to take advantage of the make-up courses, she was feeling ill again. It was probably something incurable. Just make sure not to put any flowers on her grave, all right?
Toride, watching the sun rise higher in the bright sky, beneath her vast bulwark of hot, spiky anger, felt a little frisson of worry. It was not like sensei to be late.
Observing her from what most people would not consider a safe distance away was her twin brother Yamanami Taihei. Contrary to his sister's belief he was personally convinced that yes, he was supposed to be a boy. No matter that she could spit farther than him and cursed twice as well. Not that Taihei cursed, or spit. He considered that bad manners. But he did know all the words. Just for reference.
Where his sister was spiky, he was more like a river smooth stone. Calm, implacable and not inclined for rushed movement. Anyone who saw the two standing side by side in a calm moment would think that he and his sister were just alike, his features just a bit broader and not as sharp as Toride's. When the moment passed the unwary would find just how unalike they were, and after a few more moments would wonder if they were related at all.
And he nearly always smiled, just this small knowing smile that molded his mouth into a general shape of affability. It was a smile that hinted that he knew things you did not, or worse, hinted that he knew things that you didn't want anyone to know. Even the most hardened characters, if Taihei's smile were turned upon them for even a short time, would wonder in the depths of their tarnished souls how he knew that they had a stamp collection hidden under their beds, or had a weakness for cuddly little kittens, or still looked for animal shapes in the clouds, or missed their dear dead mother so very much.
People had been known to dissolve into tears after a prolonged session with that smile.
Taihei didn't see what the big deal was. He was just a generally content person.
The only time people had to worry was when he stopped smiling. Even his sister stayed out of his way when that happened. A stone is a stone, after all, and when hurled with sufficient force the least you're going to come away with is a nasty bruise.
As Toride returned her brother's gaze she saw his smile fade by half a degree. While not big on accurate trajectory measures she knew the exact specifications of the smile on her brother's face. It was a survival instinct.
The frisson of worry grew.
The sun slipped higher.
They waited.
Taihei looked thoughtfully upwards. "Perhaps she was sent on a mission." He suggested. The other two pondered this slowly, as it was difficult to ponder on eleven-year old stomachs that were just then pointing out how long it had been since breakfast. A mission had possibilities.
When it became clear that neither of the girls was going to answer he shrugged and lapsed back into silence. It was the only explanation he could think of. And yet it did not ring quite right in his head. Sensei had been sent on missions before, and she had always made sure to let them know in one way or another that she was not coming that day.
He brought his gaze back down and glanced between the two girls, who perhaps had, or had not been thinking the same.
"I'm hungry." Toride grumbled.
Taihei smiled.
Ibitsu glanced away. "I'm not leaving until sensei comes." She said, trying to inject an iota of stubbornness into her naturally submissive voice.
Taihei's smile never wavered. "I agree, Ibitsu-san. I'll go get us some bread."
"Curry!" Toride said promptly.
"M-melon, if it's not too much trouble. I mean, maybe I should go and you can rest here. It's a long walk and… Oh! I don't mean to say that you wouldn't be able to. I just think um maybe I would be…"
Taihei let this disjointed speech wash over him, nodding occasionally. When she stammered to a red-faced halt he said. "Curry and melon it is." And vanished before Ibitsu could get started on another protest.
Ibitsu looked down at her hands, which were a rather safer prospect for observation than her genin partner. They fidgeted. When this ceased to be remotely entertaining she switched to watching the sky. But as it was a clear sunny day there was not even a single cloud to imagine being anything other than a large puff of accumulated mist high in the atmosphere. Relentless blue, no matter how much it resembled the color of a robin's egg, wasn't much of a diversion.
"I'm going to get my kunai." Toride grumbled, startling Ibitsu out of her reverie concerning why sky blue didn't really resemble its name. The other genin stood, brushing off the back of her shirt. She strode off purposefully, walking it what she liked to think of as a boy-like manner.
It was a rather swaggering slouch and no matter how hard she tried she could not keep her, distressingly girlish, hips from moving in a distressingly girl-like way. The result of this was a rather awkward looking gait that made her look, although no one would ever say this in case she were listening, as though one leg were markedly longer than the other.
She swaggered across the clearing following her ten-millimeter-off trajectory and in no time at all found her weapon.
What happened next would have severely puzzled anyone who thought they knew her. She relaxed and smiled after taking a moment to minutely examine the grass and finding nothing but a few of the bird feathers that it had left behind in its hurry to be someplace else. She crouched down and rummaged in her pack, pulling out a breakfast roll that she had neglected to tell her brother she had. Breaking off a piece of it, she held it out between thumb and forefinger, saying, "That was close. Be more careful, stupid."
The little creature that rustled and squeaked and had very recently nearly become someone else's breakfast came timidly forward and took the piece of roll out of Toride's fingers with its little paws. "Good boy."
She left the rest of the roll on the ground and stood, sheathing her kunai. Then, as though the interchange had never occurred, she swaggered her way back out into the clearing and back into the company of her tiresomely boring teammate.
Upon arriving back at the training posts she stared down at Ibitsu, who had carefully sat down on the grass in her absence. It took her a moment to recall that it was no fun picking on the other girl, who, in her opinion had about the same amount of backbone as a wet sponge. So instead she took her favored spot in the shade and entertained herself by playing with her kunai. Ibitsu edged diffidently away when she started juggling them.
Thankfully it did not take long for Taihei to return with bread and tea.
They ate as though in concert, very slowly, and making sure to chew each bite at least twenty times, pausing between each slow mouthful.
Their shared thought said, "She'll come before we finish. She wouldn't miss lunch." Taihei kept glancing at the bag beside his knee. It contained a loaf of sensei's favorite. But, regrettably, it failed to vanish between one mouthful and the next.
But as they finished and sat quietly digesting she still hadn't appeared.
"Do you know where she lives?" Asked Toride, who had taken out her kunai again and was having a great deal of fun flipping it into the grass and scaring the earthworms. The other two shared a glance and agreed that they didn't.
Taihei stood and stretched. "Well, while we're waiting we might as well practice." He slanted a long look at his sister, his smile teasing. "Perhaps on your aim, oneesan?"
He didn't even flinch as the kunai she had been balancing on her fingertip whistled past his ear. "How off was that one, Ibitsu?"
Ibitsu had flinched enough for both of them. "I…I-I d-don't know. Was she trying to kill you?"
"Could be, could be." He grinned, as a few sliced hairs from his forelock blew away. "Or give me a haircut. One never knows. Shall we?"
"It's oniisan! O-nii-san!" Toride shrieked, "Get it right, will ya?"
"Hai, hai." Taihei said pleasantly, glancing down at the bag that contained sensei's lunch. His smile slipped down slightly and Toride backed off.
"Well, just until she comes."
"Yes," Her brother agreed. "Until she comes."
But by the time the sun had slipped behind the trees and the fireflies came out to play it was clear.
She wasn't coming.
And all three shared another thought as they looked at each other in the dusky clearing. "Something is wrong."
"We'll come back in the morning." Toride said.
Ibitsu hesitated, looking at Taihei. He smiled reassuringly.
"In the morning." He repeated firmly. "It will do you no good to stay out here all night, Ibitsu-chan."
"Hai, Taihei-san." She finally said, looking down at her feet. "Well…I'll be going then." She added reluctantly. Taihei bid her a warm goodnight and the two siblings watched her walk out of the field, glancing from side to side as though expecting to find sensei secreted among the bushes. When she was no longer a ghostly speck in the distance Toride turned to Taihei.
"No," He said. "We would have been notified."
"But if it were…" Toride said.
"Still." Taihei said. He looked pleasantly thoughtful. "I don't think she'll go home."
"You're worried about that sponge?"
"She's our team-mate, Tori-chan." He said reprovingly.
"We should be worrying about sensei."
"Team is nakama. Team is family, even if you don't think so. I will worry about both of them."
Toride snorted. "Do whatever you want. I'm going home."
"I'll stay a bit longer."
"Damn it, Tai!" Toride looked torn between leaving and seeking her nice warm bed and staying with her twin.
"Look, Tori-chan."
"…kun." She grumbled, realizing that she'd missed a chance to correct him earlier, but turning her head and seeing what Taihei had already noticed. "For crying out loud."
"Let's collect her and take her to our house." Taihei smiled. "You girls can have a sleepover."
Toride's fist whirled over his head as he ducked automatically. But she grunted "Fine."
A moment later they had taken Ibitsu, protesting, one on each side, and marched her off towards home and dinner.
As they left the clearing Taihei took one more look back. But there, as he had suspected, was nothing to see.