Chapter 3; National Pride

IreallyhatethetitleofthisstorybecauseitsreallyannoyingtotypeoutonfilesandocumentsandIalwaysgetconfusedwhenitypetheapreviation(YTIAA)*sigh*anditsreallyclicheandsoundslikealovestoryandthere'sNOTEVENANYROMANCE

If you could read that, you are immensly talented, and deserve a coke. But I don't have one, because I'm at school, even though I REALLY want one, so... sorry about that. ;.;


'Let her have it,' I thought. Even as my feet left the ground, and my arm reached for the shiny little object that seemed to float in the air. 'LET her HAVE IT' I screamed at myself, at my body, but I still moved towards the bell, I still kept reaching for it.

And my hand closed around it something.

Something else clamped over my hand.

Suddenly, the moment of floating silence was finished, and my feet hit the ground with a shocking thud that raced up through my knees with a painful jolt.

Shenme and I stared at each other, not with hostility, but with shock.

Shenme had reached the bell first, then my hand had closed around hers, and her other hand around mine.

Suddenly everything was happening quickly; Shenme removed her hand from mine, and, I, while still registering what had happened, stupidly left my hand around hers. Then Megumi-sensei was upon us, placing her hand over ours as Mingzi watched from her side of the field, standing on her toes and flailing around to get a good view.

"You're going to have to fight for it," sensei muttered. "A tie breaker is in order, I think."

Shenme nodded, but she was still staring at me, as if she was expecting something.

I can't really say I got the message, but I can say in some far away place in my mind, I knew what was right. So I did the cheesy, noble thing.

"No…" I said shaking my head. I looked up at Megumi-sensei to find her glaring at me, and I instinctively shrunk away from her harsh gaze. "S-she can…" I gulped. "Have it…" I withdrew my hand to justify my statement. "Yeah, she can have it," I said more firmly when I was a sufficient distance away from Megumi-sensei and her liable possibility of glaring and Shenme's look of disbelief. The look that appeared almost… staged.

You probably get what Shenme is thinking, but for some reason, I never did.

Then again, you could be as oblivious as me.

This is your wake-up call; SHENME IS NOT HAPPY WITH ME.

It was silent for a moment, and I felt the nerves on my fingers itching as if I had run them across a rough cloth. It could have been just me, but it seemed there were A LOT of awkward silences today.

"I-" I tried eventually, but as soon as I opened my mouth, Sensei spoke up.

"Why?" she asked me.

I refused to look up as I spoke. "I… She deserves it more than I… do."

I heard the rustle of grass and a slight tapping as she moved her foot in impatience. "And what, pray tell, caused you to arrive at this conclusion?"

I bit my lip, thinking back to the kunai pressed against my jugular and resisted the urge to clutch my throat. "She's been here… She's lived in this village all her life. And I just… sort of dropped in, and…" I was struggling for words now, so I paused to think, but instead, I ended up losing my courage on the subject all together. I pressed my lips together, wishing to weld them shut if that would stop the intense stupidity I was feeling for what I had just said.

"Then what your saying is…" Megumi-sensei began. "You think you cheated."

I jerked my head up in surprise at her words, to find her looking down at me with an amused glimmer in her eyes. "Well, no. I do-"

"AHAHAHAHAHA!!!" she exclaimed patting my head with rather rough, very exaggerated movements causing me to jump a foot or so in the air and get my head whacked a bit harder then I would have if I had stayed still.

"YOU'RE TOO MODEST, AKINA-CHAN!!! AHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"I fail to see what is so funny," Shenme muttered, crossing her arms so the bell jingled gently as it hung from her finger, almost un-hearable over Sensei's frighteningly loud laughter.

"Oh, but you don't have to, Shenme!" Sensei exclaimed happily. "In fact, I don't expect you to!"

I saw something then, something I was probably not supposed to see.

Megumi-sensei looked almost… frightened all of the sudden when her eyes connected with Shenme's. I saw her tense, her fingers clench and her face flush white in the unmistakable presence of fear.

Just as soon as I spotted it, it was gone, and the next second, I began to doubt I had seen anything at all. A Jounin, scared of a Genin? Unthinkable… impossible… and yet…

"WELL," Sensei said, eyeing Mingzi, who stood across the field from us. When she heard that incredibly loud "well", though, she began running towards us with an excited look on her fair-skinned face.

"DO I… GET TO.. EAT NOW?!?!"

"Yeah, yeah," Megumi-sensei said, waving nonchalantly at Mingzi. She turned her back on us, heading for the side of the field where she had left the boxes.

"But wait!" Shenme yelled. "So… I graduate to Genin right? And she…" she glanced at me and stopped midsentence. She didn't have to say it though; I understood what would happen when I choose to release the bell. I was not going to graduate to Genin. I would go back to the school and retake the classes that I had never taken in the first place. But that ws okay. I had no memory of learning the things I knew. It wouldn't hurt to get a refresher, right? It might even jog my memory. Help me remember something important. Like my village… or my name…

Of course, deep down I was slightly disappointed. I was excited to start missions; the way people talked about them seemed somewhat glamorous in a way. It sounded like fun. But I was sacrificing for a teammate. That was a good virtue to have as a ninja, wasn't it?

"Hmm?" Sensei asked, spinning around to face Shenme head on with her intense blue eyes. "Of course you graduate. Baka…" She turned back around, and added, just as an after-thought. "And so does Akina-san."

"WHAAAAAAAAT?!" Shenme roared. We stared at her. Except for Sensei, who's back was so tense she might as well have been staring in amazement like Mingzi and I were.

"Well, yeah," she said.

"You can't do that! Only two of us ca-"

"I can do that," Sensei said quietly, then shot a glare over her shoulder at Shenme. "And I will. You'd do well to remember who is the Sensei here and who is the student."

Shenme bit her lip, sufficiently silenced.

"You two," she nodded to Mingzi and I. "Can go eat. You," she glared at Shenme. "Will still graduate, but will not receive a box."

Shenme said nothing; she glowered at Sensei.

I glanced at Mingzi, who was looking with interest at a blade of grass she was twirling between her fingers, then at Sensei, who was turning back around, walking to the left of the boxes, as if to leave the field.

"As soon as you eat, you're dismissed."

I was not really paying much attention to myself, while I watched Sensei walk away, so it was a shock to me when Mingzi hooked arms with me and I realized, with a start, I was moving.

She didn't say anything, and neither did I, sensing the reason for her lack of speaking, but when we were a good distance from Shenme, who honestly looked kind of murderous, she spoke up;

"Shenme-chan isn't happy."

"Think it has something to do with the bento boxes?"

"No…" Mingzi glanced at me. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, since I was keeping my eyes trained on the boxes buried in the grass. "I think it has something to do with… you."

"Me? Why are you telling me this?"

"Because," she glanced to her other side, looking away from me. "I've never seen Shenme act like this before. It's… scary, for me."

"Scary…" I muttered, rolling the word off my tongue.

"We've been friends since… we first entered school."

"How long is that?"

Mingzi stared at me for a moment before answering, "About…seven years."

"That's the majority of your life."

"Yeah…" Mingzi said.

By this point, we had reached the boxes at the edge of the field. Neither of us risked a glance at Shenme as we lowered ourselves to the ground. Mingzi hugged her knees to her chest and seeming to fold in on herself, and I bucking my own knees so I looked, or at least felt, like I was collapsing in on myself, and crossed my knees under me. If we had risked a glance at Shenme, we would have seen she was on the other side of the field now, braiding grass together frivolously, with a slightly detectable furiousity, and staring up into the clouds.

"I don't…" Mingzi started suddenly, but she closed her eyes and broke off suddenly. Her lips turned white from being pressed together, and I could almost see the definitions of her characteristically smooth neck stand out. Mingzi was more stressed than I would have guessed.

"I don't mean to… scare you but, I don't want… you to be totally unaware… of any harmful intentions Shenme ma-"

"Because of a bell?" I asked, leaning forward to grab a box and start on it; I wasn't that hungry, but it would give me something to do with my hands.

"No, no, no," Mingzi shook her hands in front of her frantically and I stopped opening the box to look at her. "She… doesn't like you. She wouldn't tell me why, or… anything for that matter. I don't un-" She gulped. "I don't understand her anymore. I'm sorry…."

"Its fine, Mingzi. Its not your fault. I just… I really don't want people to hate me."

"You're a foreigner," she stated, resting her chin on her knees. "it's sort of inevitable that some people will hate you."

"I guess…" I said

"I just wanted to make sure you knew to… watch out for Shenme."

"She doesn't scare me," she growled. "She can't hurt me."

I felt Mingzi stare at me. She kept staring, and for all I cared she could. She was underestimating me and it drew up some sort of intense anger in me that swelled in my chest, threatening to burst and flow out through my mouth to burn the grass around me.

Shenme wasn't going to threaten to kill me, like Sensei. Shenme wasn't going to hold a kunai to my throat.

Or maybe she would…

What did I actually even know about these people? About anyone here? What justified my trust in them? And their lack of trust in me? Sure I was foreign; big deal. Too much national pride is not always a good thing, especially in this case.

"Akina-chan, I don't think you u-"

"I understand perfectly," I said, rising to my feet and leaving the bento box on the ground. "You think I'm weak. You think I cant defend myself."

"No! No its no-"

"I don't care, Mingzi-chan," I said scornfully. "I don't know much about you, and you don't know much about me." 'Not that I exactly do either,' I thought sullenly of the hole where the memory of my name should be and sighed somewhere inside myself. But outside, I was not in the mood to sigh, not by a long shot. "To make the assumption in such a case, is of the upmost inconsideration, Mingzi-san."

"I didn't mean-"

"Whatever Mingzi-san." I kicked the bento box over so it laid on its top, the contents untouched. "Give this to Shenme. I don't want it."

And, so, I walked home alone, through the teeming streets of Konoha, not really thinking, and not really seeing the things and people around me. I didn't even see "my" house when I stood in front of it, and just kept walking.

It was stupid, but… Mingzi's words really hurt me.

Did I look weak? Did I seem weak to everyone else? Is this what people thought of me? Then, the most pressing question; WAS I weak? I didn't know the answer, and that hurt me even more. It sort of felt like wounds that had just been cleaned and wrapped in pristine white gauze has suddenly been reopened. And here I was to deal with it.

Alone.


THAT IS SUCH A DEPRESSING ENDING ISN'T IT?! I hate the cliche's that I write all the time. Oh well...
I know its Febuary and I know I haven't posted a chapter since uh... December and if anyone is following this story, I'M REALLY SORRY. I'm kind of really lazy... If anyone is just passing through, REVIEW!!! Or I will buldger you over the head with the coke can I do not have. ;.;
With Love,
Anira