Chapter 2
"Who's that?"
"But Sarada's the only Uchiha,"
"She must be joking,"
"She's not an Uchiha,"
"Hah! Look at her hair!"
Eyes and voices and fingers all point in Rinali's direction. Humiliation and anger combine to leave her face a red more prominent than her hair, making the situation all the more worse.
"I am an Uchiha!" she says, slamming her fist down in frustration.
"Prove it," shouts someone from the back.
"Yeah show us your fire-style!" another exclaims.
"And your Sharingan!"
She pauses. "My...what?"
The class erupts with a laughter so deafening, it's all Rinali could do to keep from covering her ears. She realizes how much of a mistake coming to the Academy was; she doesn't belong in Konoha. She's just a permanent mistake her father wishes he never made. A bane to the Uchiha name.
While Aburame sensei is occupied with trying to quiet the class down front, Rinali grabs her bag and shoves her way through the remaining kids in the back who are still pointing, still laughing. She doesn't bother looking towards Sarada, the real name of nerdy four-eyes. No doubt she's laughing along with the rest of the class, satisfied with having won the first round of their unspoken rivalry.
Rinali walks the streets of Konoha alone, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. She walks between people she's never met, past shops she's never entered, and through streets she's never heard of. She's torn between wanting to return to the Mist and continue her simple life of isolation and wanting to stay in the Leaf to claim her name as an Uchiha. But in the end familiarity rules over foreignity, and she only pauses by her apartment long enough to collect her few belongings before heading towards the village gates.
"Leaving so soon?" asks a voice from behind Rinali.
She turns to see two men, one with grey hair and a headband covering his left eye while the rest of his face is obscured by a mask, and the other seated in a wheelchair with a black mushroom-cut to compliment his bushy eyebrows, both of whom look old enough to be her grandfather.
Rinali narrows her eyes at the odd men before replying, "It's none of your concern." She turns her back on the pair, expecting them to just leave her be and go play poker or something, but what they say next freezes Rinali right in her tracks.
"You know, Kakashi, I don't remember kids being so quick to run away back in our day," mushroom-head says.
"Especially not an Uchiha," the man named Kakashi replies.
Mushroom-head sighs. "What a shame. The power of youth is certainly not what it used to be. Kids can't take a challenge anymore."
"I couldn't agree with you more, Gai."
It wasn't enough that Rinali had already been ridiculed in front of her class during her first day at The Academy, but to now be criticized by a couple of has-beens that know not a thing about her is more than enough to set her ablaze. Her hair is a blur of red as she twirls to face them.
"Easy for you two geezers to talk when the most challenging part of your day is walking to the bathroom," she says, fuming with anger. "You have no idea what it's like to be shunned, to not belong anywhere…" her voice trails off.
"Maybe." says Kakashi, "But I had a student long ago who felt the same. He had no family nor friends, failed his Academy graduation exam 3 times, and everyone in the village wanted nothing but to be rid of him,"
"Yeah, and how'd he turn out?"
"You tell me," he says, turning his head to look at the mountain side view of the seven Hokage.
"He became Hokage?" Rinali says, eyes wide in astonishment.
"The 7th Hokage," Gai chimes in. "Not too bad for being shunned, I'd say."
She stares long and hard at the faces of the Hokage. She knows little of their history and even less of their attributions. But what she does know is that they're powerful, respected, revered. The thought that a kid who was in a position no different than her own grew up to become Hokage leaves her in awe. Maybe she could also one day become…
"By the way," Gai says, interrupting her mid-thought. "This 'old geezer' next to me is actually the 6th Hokage,"
Rinali scoffs, returning her gaze to the pair in front of her. "As if I would believe…" And suddenly it dawns on her. How many other people constantly wear a mask over their face? Her eyes shift between the old man in front of her and his stone-carved face on the mountain, her mouth agape.
"Did I say old geezer?" Rinali says, a smile of embarrassment splaying across her face. "I...I was only talking about old mushroom-head. But your face, it's just radiating with youth, all one-thirds of it,"
"Why thank you," he says smiling. "But old mushroom-head here is in fact the 5th Hokage," Kakashi says, patting his accomplice on the back.
"WHAT," she exclaims, her face warming to scarlet. "I meant...I meant…"
The two men chuckle at her stuttering failure of excuses. She decides not to say anything more for fear of looking more foolish than she already does.
"I gotta go," she says, running back into the Leaf Village, wanting nothing but to leave the whole situation altogether.
She hears their voices faintly behind her. "I told you she wouldn't leave. Never underestimate the power of youth, Kakashi. That makes it 661 to 660 in my favor."
"I'll give her a couple weeks before she finds out,"
"You're on, Kakashi!"
Confused at the last bit, Rinali shifts her thoughts onto more pressing matters. First thing's first, she needs to find her father. She's more than determined to get answers to a heritage she knows nothing about. And with her father's whereabouts being a constant mystery, she has no choice but to visit the next best bet. Oh, how furious her mother would be if she knew that Rinali was about to see the "pink-haired brat".