A mosquito was buzzing around her head and it irritated her to no end
Title: Birth Rights
Chapter: 1
a/n: I decided to write this because I thought it sounded like fun when I came up with it, so hope you get a giggle or two out of it.
A mosquito was buzzing around her head and it irritated her to no end. It woke me up, damn thing. She thought before flicking out a chakra infused finger to kill the insect, not even opening her eyes. That's better, but I'm still awake. Neji opened her lids and grudgingly greeted the morning.
"Good morning honoured father, mother." The Hyuuga heiress greeted her parental units as she entered the dining room, where hot and delicious food awaited.
Hiashi glanced up at his daughter and nodded while his wife smiled demurely and gestured to Neji's designated chair, "Sit down and eat before you go off to train, darling."
Hanabi rushed into the room shortly after the three had slipped into comfortable silence. "Daddy, I don't want to train today, my friend is having her birthday party!" she whined.
Neji grimaced. She tolerated her sister only because she was blood, that and the fact she was showing promise to become a great kunoichi. Other than those reasons she saw no real need to associate with such a complaining…brat.
Standing up, Neji bowed to her parents, ignored her sister and the lecture she was being given and exited gracefully, ruining the effect by nearly bumping into the always bumbling Hinata. It was bad enough he had such a girlish name, his parents had wanted so bad for a girl but they got a boy, though his mother insisted on giving him the name anyways. "Watch it, loser." Neji spat in his red face.
"Y-yes…I'm, I'm very s-s-sorry, honoured cousin Neji." The boy stammered.
Hinata was taller than Neji and his muscles more defined, but he hunched to appear the same height as his cousin and his skills in the soft fist were hardly perfected. In short, Hinata Hyuuga was the failure of the family and Neji could only thank fate that he was not born into the first branch in her place. "Sorry, I have to go, sorry!" Hinata kept apologizing and bowing, his bangs falling to the side to reveal the curse seal.
"You're lucky I'm not cruel." Neji poked the bowing Hinata on the symbol and walked away, flicking her hair behind her, just seeing such a pathetic member belong to the proud Hyuuga family line made her sick.
At the training grounds Lee, Ten-ten and Gai were arriving at almost the same time as Neji. She did not consider herself to be friends with any of them, but then again, Neji Hyuuga did not have 'friends' in any case. They were unnecessary parts of life that only exploited your weaknesses. However, despite her rather obvious ways of letting her team know this, the three always treated her kindly.
Ten-ten rushed forward, "Neji, Lee said that he's finally going to beat you today! He just can't stand always losing to a girl!" she giggled happily, Lee right behind her.
"Yosh, let's do our best, I must win against your top performance!" he gave her a thumbs up.
"Uh, yeah…whatever." She brushed the two of them off and walked over to listen to her teacher.
"Lee is right, Neji! You must let the fires of youth burn passionately in a display of bright love and tenderness, if you fail to do this, you fail your time as being young!" he cheered.
Neji only cringed and nodded. If there was one this the Hyuugas taught, it was to respect your teacher, though sometimes it may be hard. "Can we spar?" she asked hurriedly.
Needless to say, (in Neji's view) Lee did not win. He did hold his own for the first ten minutes, but soon Neji defeated him and she decided she was tired. "Sensei," she started sweetly. "I think that we should call it a day, you don't want to train so hard that your flames of youth…burn out." the last part almost killed her.
"You are right, Neji! Ten-ten will stay behind a while longer, though, since she only sparred with me slightly. You two go on an enjoy being young and full of passion!" he gave him his 'nice-guy' pose then went back to training the other girl on their team.
Lee mimicked his sensei and tried to follow Neji. "Thank you for the work-out, friend, next time for sure I will get you!" his swollen face and beaten body was way too cheery for a normal person.
Neji turned slowly, brushing her hair out of her eyes and smirked. "First off, I'm not your friend. Secondly, you'll never be able to beat me. Some are just destined to have better skills than others, deal with it, loser."
Lee stopped in his tracks and was fuming, something Neji had never seen before. And while intrigued, she also didn't want to stick around to have him follow her again, so she sped up and left the training area.
On the walk home she passed by the Ichiraku ramen stand, kept in business by, in Neji's opinion, the most annoying ninja to ever live, Naruto. And surprises of surprises, he was there today.
Normally she wouldn't look twice but something was very familiar about the person who accompanied him. Usually Neji did not concern herself with other people's business, but nonetheless she quickly whispered 'Henge no Jutsu', giving herself the face of a kind, middle aged woman. She ambled over to the food stand to sit beside the two and ordered some miso soup. "It's great that you offered to pay, Hinata!" Naruto gushed as he slurped down a heaping bowl of ramen.
"It's n-no problem at a-all." The boy, who Neji's suspicions were correct about, turned bright red.
"No, really, it's great having a friend like you, you're so generous and you've got a wicked style of fighting!" He continued.
"Thank you, my…family is very p-proud of it. I am n-not very good at it though." His naturally soft voice got even quieter.
Neji snorted, "Damn right." Almost inaudibly.
But apparently Naruto could still hear. "What did you say?" his eyes narrowed.
Neji widened her eyes in innocence, probably giving her fake visage the look of surprise. "N-nothing! My, what a scary, scary boy… you'd best not hang out with him, young man." She pointed a finger at Hinata.
Naruto glowered back at the Neji in disguise as she took out some change out of a small coin purse, when she glanced towards Hinata, the male was staring at the purse, eyes wide and blushing. Ah, shit, looks like Hinata is at least somewhat observant. Oh well, nothing he can say about it. Neji inwardly grimaced. "Well have a good day, young man. And…you." She said, waving her hand and scurrying away.
Once she was out of sight, Neji dispelled the jutsu and grimaced at her forgetfulness. It was not good for a ninja to be this absent minded. Sure, it was just because of uncharacteristic curiosity, but if that were a real mission…she shook her head, it simply would not do.
There was a soft knock on Neji's bedroom door. She stopped her taijutsu kata and picked up a towel to mop her face with as she answered, "Permission to enter: granted."
At the other side of the doorway was a trembling Hinata. Neji's eyes widened, this was a first. "Y-you were s-s-spying on me!" he exclaimed, not quite looking her in the eye.
Neji did not care if Hinata had found out, but she was not going to have the whole first branch talking about it. "Yeah, so? Shut the door behind you, dork."
Hinata wiped the sweat that was beading on his forehead off hastily and licked his lips, trying to formulate a response. "I…I am n-not someone y-you can j-j-just do that t-to!"
"On the contrary, you are. I'm first branch, you're second branch…hence the mark on your forehead, which, may I remind you, is still there and I can activate it anytime I please." Neji sighed, bored.
"I…d-don't…care. Please do n-not spy around me and Naruto anymore." He gulped, obviously scared.
The light switch went on in Neji's brain and her whole face contorted into a sort of twisted smile. "You have got to be kidding me!" she giggled, sitting down on her bed. "Oh, god, this is just too rich!"
"W-what are you talking about, honoured cousin?" Hinata was blushing, though, seeming to have guessed what Neji had concluded.
"I can't believe it, a Hyuuga, Hinata Hyuuga is gay!" Neji squealed with laughter.
It seemed as if Hinata's soul just left his body, his face went from beat red to blanching ash white and he only stood there. Neji continued to sing and dance around her cousin, teasing him mercilessly, not that she had any intolerance to the orientation, but more so that realizing that a Hyuuga had fallen for that Naruto brat. It was terrible. She could not let this happen. Finally, Hinata snapped to and whipped her head around to stare Neji in the eye. "You can't s-say anything about this. Not a-anything!" he pleaded.
"Hmm, I guess I could do that. But only if we make a deal." The cogs in her brain were going ever so much faster now as she plotted.
"Anything, cousin, I promise!" Hinata was practically on his knees.
"Okay, you can never talk to Naruto Uzumaki again!" Neji announced brightly.
The second branch member's face was crestfallen. Neji could swear she saw some of his hairs gray and dark circles appear under his eyes as soon as she said those words.
But instead of protesting, he could only hang his head and nod. "Good, now get out." Neji kept up the cheerful façade.
"Yes, honoured c-cousin…thank you for your kindness." Hinata bowed, but just before he turned away a small smile played on his lips. The door closed and Neji sighed, the boy was just too predictable. Sure as hell he was going to abide her little 'rule'. This meant matters were to be taken into her own hands. This was just going to be too fun.
a/n: kind of silly, but I was thinking to myself, 'zomg!11!! what if Neji was the girl in the main branch and Hinata was the boy in the lower branch?' It's really fun to write, I'm not sure if I'll go on with this though.