The Twisted Reality 4
And corpses' stenches cannot rise to the nostrils of the living, if thick is the perfume that covers them.
Konohagakure no Sato – Taifuu Shimura
The smell of incense was pungent. It laid softly upon his nostrils, but strong enough for him to feel slightly dizzy after two hours in its presence. Yet he didn't want to move from that spot. He stood there quietly, watching without blinking the picture in front of him; the only picture that actually depicted his father out of the entire household. It was the six man group of the Nidaime Hokage. His father was there, gruff and caught by the camera rolling his eyes to the antics of the man, barely a teen at the time, next to him. An Akimichi was puffing his chest out, recognizable by the sheer mass the man possessed, as well as the tattoos on his cheeks.
A girl with two buns on her head, aunt Koharu, was looking with a mixture of disgust and humor at the reactions of both his father and the other boy. The other man, Homura, was holding a scroll by his neck, doing his best cool guy pose. The Nidaime watched over the scene with an amused smirk, next to him a raven haired boy with the Uchiha fan crest on the shoulder.
The first Hokage was looking with a heartily laugh at the assembled group, garbed in the white and red clothes that would soon be passed down to the Nidaime, and then to his father.
He had known that his father wouldn't be around forever. He had known it, he understood it, yet he had always thought he'd be around long enough for him to become a chuunin at least. Maybe he'd be around long enough for him to become Jounin too. Instead he hadn't: he had barely lasted four days after he had entered training camp Four.
Death by critical heart failure, his body was found one week later. By then, the house was sealed off and his body buried. Even the funeral had been done without consulting him, without telling him anything. The no external contacts policy of the training camp had left him devoid of the information, at least until the day had come for him to graduate.
Minutes after Dr. Dreadful had removed the intrusive objects from his body, Mai-san had come in with a stack of letters addressed to him. He hadn't believed. He had thought it was still part of the test. He had kept on thinking it was all a giant test. Maybe in two years, at the end of all, his father would pop out and laugh at the joke.
It hadn't been a test. The tomb was really there, his name was really there. Danzo Shimura, Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato lay dead beneath the earth.
He hadn't been there for his funeral. He hadn't been there for him. He knew he should have yet he hadn't been there.
Now he looked once more at the picture, hanging from the small shrine reserved for the deceased that he had placed in his one room apartment. The fact that his father didn't have any single photos of him just meant that he was actually respecting the souls of the first and second Hokage, together with all the others that had died and were in the picture.
A light knock came to his ears, coming from the door. He knew who it was obviously. There were only two persons who would knock at his door at this hour of the day. One was a sugar-high Okito. The other was a bored Chikao. Considering that Okito would have already barged in, if in his sugar-high state, that left but Chikao: the emotionless sentinel.
He didn't know how Totsuba fared however, and he had no means of contacting him. He'd either see the boy at the next term or he wouldn't, but he had no doubts the teen had passed the exam. To think he had been praised by the instructor for getting past the swimming part. The purpose of the test was to survive the pain at least until the first bear trap: obviously nobody had expected him to last more.
His highly clotting blood had probably something to do with it, but he wasn't in the mood that day to discuss it. He wasn't in the mood even that day, as he carefully moved to open the door mumbling.
"Chikao, need something?" The question wasn't met with an immediate answer and that puzzled him. Chikao was all but time-consuming. He had a problem? He'd state it immediately.
"Ehm…hi?" The voice wasn't Chikao's. Said voice was however familiar. It took him a moment to remember, and when he did his eyes bulged out wide. Katsu was standing just outside of his doorway holding a couple of voluminous books. Books that he had loaned the girl and that he had yet to get back. He had known the girl would come to live here.
He hadn't just expected her to find out he lived there too so quickly. Maybe he had hoped secretly to bump into her one morning or one afternoon…but not for her to come looking for him there. He realized that she was scrunching her nose, probably because of the smell of incense lit. There was a thin layer of smoke coming from the room after all.
"Hey…Huh…how are you doing?" He asked. He couldn't ask something with a bit more of tact obviously. No, he had to ask something like that.
"Fine." She replied. How was he going to make conversation if she kept answering like that?
"Would you like to come in?" He tried, hesitantly gesturing with his right hand to his own one-room apartment.
"If you open the window," she replied with a light cough, "how can you withstand the smell?"
He nodded numbly, moving to open the only window of his apartment and letting the girl come in and close the door behind her. It was then that he realized just how thick the smell of incense was. The first breath of fresh air actually made him chilly, and they were barely in the middle of September. In the Land of Fire September wasn't even a cold month to begin with.
The cold air did him good. He recalled that there was a girl in his apartment. A girl that was probably right about ready to bolt, considering the state his place was in. He turned around already expecting her to still be standing and being ready to bolt out. Instead she was there, sitting down next to the only table there was.
It was like she was subtly ignoring the crumpled clothes to the side or the frankly bizarre shrine he had built in place of the shelf. Thinking about it he quickly went to close the two wooden panels of said shrine, before offering.
"Would you like some tea?" He hazarded, "I have brown rice one." He added hopefully, "Cold, in can." He swiftly specified. "That and coke." A moment later. "For Okito. Then there's Ginseng tea for Chikao…I don't know what you like though…"
"Ah…Tap water?" She hesitated. Had he appeared weird? It wasn't weird to be on the lookout for what other people liked to drink and have one of each in the small fridge, right? It was thoughtful. Thoughtful and polite he would add mentally while self-patting his brain.
"On to it." He luckily did have a clean glass. He had gone over to his house to take at least some spare changes of clothes, and in doing so had discovered just how much being in a shinobi village meant hassles. He wasn't yet a shinobi. He wasn't even a civilian. Hanging in between the two denominations he couldn't be given access to his father's secrets or to the jutsus he might have hidden in it. At the same time had he been a civilian untrained, there would have been no problems in simply emptying the house and letting him stay there.
Yet he did not want to go back to that house. It haunted him like a sort of wretched being. The very thought of the creaking wood and the eerily silent atmosphere choked him. He knew it wouldn't last. Obviously when he made Genin he'd end up there. He had a house to go back to, differently from the others who were living here. He'd leave the apartment to someone who wasn't as lucky as him.
The glass with the water within was gently handed over to Katsu, who appeared to be fidgeting. Maybe he had left the shrine open long enough for her to see it? The image on the mountain behind him most certainly would have made her connect the dots. Wouldn't it?
"Thank you." She politely addressed him. Quietly they sat looking at one another, and he had the feeling there was something the girl wanted to ask him.
"I…I wanted to offer my condolences for your loss." She began quietly, holding the glass with both her hands.
"There's no need." He hastily replied, shaking his head. "I've already got enough of them from the entire population, from civilians and shinobis…got stopped on the street twenty times at least. If I stop to chatter they actually manage to block off the road by ganging on me."
"The Sandaime was loved by the people." He snorted at that.
"No. Father was a lot of things, but loved isn't just the term. He did his job, always did. He kept his successes hidden from view, didn't want to make a fuss of it. Shinobi live in the shadows…Kages should be an example of that." He added thoughtfully. "Never boasted about anything. For most of my life I thought he was just an old man, even a retired smith once…" His voice wasn't cracking was it? "He always had that way of doing things…just, without expecting nothing else back you know? It was like he didn't want people to know he could care and he would help. He regularly sent checks to the orphanage, to the hospital, to various animal shelters even, and he did all that while staying anonymous…Yet for what do they remember him? For fighting off Kumo shinobis…for winning a war." He shook his head. His vision wasn't blurry because he was crying, had to be the incense stinging in his eyes.
"He was a lot of things, and I'm the only one who knows about most of them. How is that fair? How can people just come up to me smiling, saying they knew him when they didn't?" Was he ranting now? He didn't want to appear to be the ranting type. Why was he trying so hard not to appear as such was a mystery even to him, but it was all that mattered to him at the moment, wasn't it?
"I'm sorry." He muttered after a moment, catching his breath. "I shouldn't have…"
"No…No, it's alright." She replied. "I think I can understand the feeling. Not knowing if you could make a difference or not, not knowing if you could have done anything different to change the outcome…I know."
Her eyes drifted to the side, and he knew he had to do something to change the argument.
"So, tonight we're going to eat out?" He asked, "The bet's done I suppose, since I passed. You passed too right?"
"Obviously, or I wouldn't be here." Her answer's hasty. "So where's the place in question?"
"It's called Ichiraku's ramen." He replied with a heartfelt sigh, "Lots of types of ramen."
"You haven't been living off the stuff till now, right?" The question hung in the air for a moment, before he chuckled nervously.
"Of course not." Why was she getting all worried over him? He was fine, really. Sure, maybe he hadn't seen a vegetable in two or three days, but it was alright. Vegetables can wait.
"Liar." She pointed it out with ease, "You're a terrible liar. That's a good trait I suppose." She added before impishly snapping her eyes shot. "I did not say that."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Nothing important." She shook her head quickly, "I'm keeping an eye out for you."
He heard the sentence. He did indeed hear the sentence, but the question that rose to the forefront of his head was instead another. It wasn't a thank you, or a 'stop it you're making me blush'.
"Why?"
"I lost my parents too." She was quick about it, and terribly brisk. He winced mentally: she didn't want to be talking about this and yet there she was, doing it nevertheless. "I know the feeling. I know them all…and we survived Psycho-sensei together. We went through the training camp four together…we're comrades. It's what friends are there for, right?"
He blinked once. Quietly he nodded numbly. Maybe that was all the purpose of the academy's initiation: to form tightly knitted groups of shinobi. It kind of made sense too.
"Yeah…right. Thank you." He whispered, not trusting his voice. "Still, the bet was on that place. So it's ramen tonight."
"Fine." She rolled her eyes, "When you'll be lacking breath because of the excess of cholesterol in your veins, I'm so going to tease you."
He chuckled. This was certainly the start of a good friendship…wasn't it?
Konohagakure no Sato – Katsu Uzuki
She had finally mustered the guts to actually ask the boy if they had ever met before. Then, she had knocked on the door and she had realized just why he was there. If the chatter on the streets hadn't clued her in on the death of the Sandaime, she'd still have understood it considering the shrine that had been built from scratch within the apartment. Or the new added statue in the square just next to the apartment complex.
The atmosphere had lightened up, and every now and then a little joke concerning fat being an effective shinobi weapon entered the discussion. Afterwards, he had told her of his own graduating system, and she of his.
The boy had far more guts than her, to last that long. She wouldn't have survived something like that. Maybe till the bear trap, but to reach past the rope bridge? Definitively not.
"It's getting late, shouldn't we be going?" She mentioned. Had she been dating someone, she'd have probably gone back to her room to change, maybe have a shower. This however wasn't a date. It was a mere dinner with someone she considered a friend.
"On it." He replied standing up. The grin was all there. It was such a nice grin, a pity for the blotched tattoos on both of his cheeks. It actually didn't even seem to matter that they had gone through hell, as they walked alongside in the street.
Never mind the stalker that was following them quietly. She knew there was someone following them. She had caught a glimpse of him at least twice by now, and it wasn't anyone like Okito or Chikao or Totsuba. It wasn't even Benika or Fukuyo or Waka. Whoever it was wasn't obviously a trained ninja, but still…it was starting to grate on her nerves.
She turned around to give the man a talk off, hoping for an Uchiha guard or two to stop by and arrest him. He was gone when she did though, and she decided against abruptly turning midway because it perplexed Taifuu.
The Ichiraku ramen stall was precisely that: a stall. It had a set of wooden stools, a wooden counter, and the smell that came from within was precisely what one could expect from such source of highly cholesterol damaging place: good. Why were the good things the one that smelled heavenly?
She sat down right next to him, not hiding a snort as the ramen stall actually held an old man and a young woman, the woman in particular giggling at them. He hadn't been living off the stuff much, right? That's what Taifuu had said to her before. Strange, because it appeared as if he was a habitué of the place.
"So Taifuu-kun," the woman began gently, "Who's this adorable friend of yours?"
"She's Katsu-chan: we did training camp together." The boy replied with a knowing nod, earning a slight gasp from the ramen girl. Of course: she didn't think she was a girl. Fine, maybe she wasn't actually wearing girly clothes, maybe she didn't have a chest like hers, maybe she was fine without a skirt, but it didn't mean that she had to be confused for a man. She didn't have the Adam's apple to begin with! Was it that difficult to see it?
"A pleasure to meet you," she gritted out from her clenched teeth. The stall girl simply smiled sweetly back, before replying in a tone that she had to be faking. Nobody could be that coyly sweet.
"Oh my! What a cute little thing you are! The pleasure is all mine!" She had to be faking. She should have just come out clean and said that she thought she was a boy.
"Neh Ayame-san, two miso ramen." Taifuu's voice suddenly butted in.
"Two? Are you ordering also for me?" She asked perplexed. She knew what type of ramen to eat after all. She'd rather have pork. Pork was by far the healthiest thing in a ramen bowl.
"Oh, hum… yeah!" His exclamation came with a bright and completely fake smile. She merely narrowed her eyes, trying to convey just how much she would like to hear the real reason behind ordering two bowls, but kept quiet when he simply kept the grin up. In the end his sweating gave him away, but she relented. No need to bash him tonight on what was healthy and what wasn't.
"Aw…Taifuu-kun that's not fair!" Ayame pouted, "I told you to call me Ayame-chan!"
The old man that was probably the girl's father seemed to be merely content in cooking the required dinner. This had the look of a truly cliché and old plot. Something that repeatedly happened every night, considering the rest of the stall's occupants merely looked at it with mere normalcy.
Well, everyone except a pink haired girl that appeared to be strangely fixating on the scene. She did look familiar, but yet she couldn't quite actually place her anywhere. Maybe she had seen her along the street? Pink hair… Who, sane in their mind, would ever dye their hair pink?
She was glaring at the ramen stall girl, glaring outright. Whoever she was, it wasn't her business to meddle with fan-girls. If the academy did wonders to the girls, it certainly didn't work on the civilians. The Miso arrived in time. She might have pointed out on Taifuu's order being bigger than hers, but after all everyone deserves to be coddled at least once, right?
"Itadakimasu!" The cheerful exclamation of the boy got her out of her thoughts, and splitting her own chopsticks, she returned the greeting.
The ramen was warm, and good. She didn't even know why she had been so hostile over the young woman. Probably because she had appeared as a menace, when in truth she was merely playing with Taifuu. Since when did she need to take care of menaces? Oh yes. Since the moment she decided that keeping Taifuu happy was her responsibility.
She stopped mid-slurping on the noodles. She blinked once then twice. She suddenly halted thinking before coming to a screeching realization. She slowly chewed until the last bit of the wet pasta string was inside her mouth, before turning to stare owlishly at Taifuu.
It wasn't that she actually had a crush on him. They were kids, they were friends, but that was all: there was no heart flutters, no butterflies in the stomach, nothing of the sort... It was more like there was something else that made it feel right to be there to protect him. It was just, in one word: familiar. It was kind of like being more of a sister than a lover.
At the mere thought of the word lover she felt heat rise to her cheeks. Heat that was suppressed down quickly, as she finished eating the salty and unhealthy food in the blink of an eye: something that Taifuu had already done it appeared, since he was waiting for her to finish. She was just overthinking everything. She had to take a deep breath, and calm down.
Taifuu sweetly paid for both of them while she internally debated her problems, even though the bet hadn't said anything about it, and then he began to walk her back home. Well, to walk the two of them back home. She kept quiet for a while looking at Taifuu's scrunched face, like he was debating whether to say something or not. She waited, and it wasn't until they were near the apartment complex that he finally decided to speak.
"It feels like we have already met before." He mumbled quietly. "I mean…even before the training camp."
"I know." She replied quickly, "maybe we played together in the park?" She queried.
He winced for a second, before strangely finding himself to nod.
"Yeah. I recall going there a couple of times…the orphanage's garden was the closest one to my house."
"Oh." She murmured. "Then that's it!" She exclaimed, clapping her hands with a light giggle spreading from her throat.
"What?"
"It means we are both fated for greatness! You'll see. They'll put us in the same team, doing the most difficult missions and then we'll rise through the ranks like a flash and end up becoming the next sannins!" As she proclaimed that, she suddenly realized just what she had said. Taifuu was looking at her strangely, a mixture of shock and perplexity that made her blush fiercely. She had kept a mostly somber attitude until then, and now she had to go and show off her tomboyish attitude in one go. Nice. She was really smooth when she wanted to be…sarcastically thinking.
"Ehm…that is if…"
"I'm in!" He replied with his usual smile. "I'm planning to become as cool as Jiraiya! He's head of Anbu for a reason you know?"
"Nah. Orochimaru-sama is better." She replied smoothly. Of course he was better: he was Hokage. He gave the shots and the orders and everyone else followed.
"Tsunade." The monotone voice broke her from the chat and made her yelp in fear, just as at the same time Taifuu did too. Chikao was looming behind the two of them. Just when the hell had he reached behind them? He was holding a plastic bag, the contents of which appeared to be ramen cups.
"Ohi Chikao! You scared the crap out of us!" Taifuu exclaimed, being the first to regain his breathing. Had they been stalked by Chikao all along? No, it wouldn't make sense. The boy could have merely sat down with them or walked alongside them. Even if he had wanted not to interrupt them, he could have at least entered the stall afterwards, instead of buying cup ramen.
No, he had to have gone out before them, and had been returning only then. Maybe he had gone to a convenience store?
"Point taken." He muttered with his usual dead-like tone, before turning his head behind. His eyes scrunched up for a moment, before his head shook slowly.
"Nothing." He murmured before starting to walk alongside us. "Heard from Totsuba: hospitalized after passing."
"Oh man! He fell for the bear trap?" Taifuu winced, as she did too. A bear trap's pressure on the leg could be pretty much career ending, depending on how it ended up.
"The second one," Chikao deadpanned, "Was not set to cut neatly: he did not risk losing the leg. Bone broke however."
"Phew." She was actually relieved to hear that. The more people passed that they knew, the better chances that in the future they'd end up with squad mates they'd be able to tolerate. She was pretty sure that a team made of her, Taifuu and…probably someone else of their common friends would be the best.
They just had to go through the second term and all of the following without failing. How hard could that be?
It was then that she caught once more the glimpse of the damn stalker. This time it was clear it was someone else following them. Her eyes settled on the figure that appeared to be wearing some sort of black cap to conceal most of her head. It wore a pair of thick and black sunglasses, and the next moment it scampered away.
She growled lightly at the retreating figure: if there was one thing she didn't tolerate was someone messing with one of her friends, one of her first friends. Well, the figure was probably just a fan. A civilian one at that…it wasn't going to be dangerous.
"You're growling to the trashcans now, Katsu-chan?" Taifuu teased her. It wasn't her fault the mad figure had hidden behind them. She growled once more, before shaking her head.
"Nothing. I'm just tired, that's really all." She murmured as a reply, before waving goodbye and heading to her room.
Tomorrow she'd have to go to the bank, to settle the last few problems that had incurred. It was going to be a boring and tedious day…maybe she could ask for Taifuu to come with her, considering the boy had probably nothing better to do.
It was when she opened the door of her apartment that she stood still for a second. Dark eyes were staring at her from the other side of the room, the glint of a kunai visible. The individual was masked for all except the eyes, and she felt fear. Such fear, fright, pure terror that she couldn't move, for some strange sort of reason something prevented her from even screaming as the figure moved closer. The figure stood in the shadows, it wasn't a bulky person, but neither was it lithe. It appeared average in height, weight and muscles.
Whoever it was, it kept to the dark side of the room preventing her from seeing even what the right color of his eyes were. Carefully it inched closer, the Kunai in the hand twirling quietly. No words were said as the metal tip of the weapon carefully reached for her left cheek to draw a single line of blood along it.
Then the figure was gone in a twirl of leaves and she took a deep breath. She crumbled on the floor shivering, sweat pouring down from her body as she tried to come to terms with what had happened. Was this some form of subtle menace? If so for what? What did she do? Carefully her left hand was raised to touch the light wound on her face, and as she did so, she finally took in the sight of her room.
Completely and utterly smashed: somebody had gone to great lengths to trash everything, breaking the table, splintering the floor, destroying the walls and so on…wasn't this supposed to be a ninja complex!? Weren't there supposed to be ninjas in there, paranoid ones at that?
She didn't know what to think: it was just like…she'd have to ask her neighbors. At least, that would have been her normal, logical thought. Yet she just numbly stood up and walked out of the room, closing it behind her.
She gently wobbled her way in a half dazed state down to where Taifuu's room was, and knocked quietly.
He opened, as always he opened the door. She said nothing. She just simply hugged him and began to cry on his chest…it just felt like the right thing to do.
Konohagakure no Sato – Taifuu Shimura
One month can pass by quickly, when you're fending off some strange stalker. He hadn't thought much about it, but maybe his father had a reason to not like being in the village. Of course the Uchiha police had been most understanding of the problem, and similar accidents hadn't happened again. This didn't matter to Katsu, who was actually glad they'd end up soon in the second term, moving to a training camp.
The next day, they'd have to go to the academy once more, to get settled into classes. This time, they would be separated into groups of thirty-three before departing once more.
Katsu was a bit fidgety, that much he could see. She jumped every time something blurred on the rooftops, and he couldn't help but think there was something really strange going on.
He could understand being scared, but he had no idea why she had to be so much traumatized out of the event. Maybe it was the underlying fear that she might not be in the same class as him, or anyone else. He had thought about it too: what if he ended up in a class made only of repeaters? He'd probably be singled out.
Still, that day he had done his best to make sure she wouldn't be scared by anything. That had been harder than he had thought, especially when it came to navigating Konoha. He was currently eying a set of clay cups and mugs, trying his best scrunched up expression.
He did need some new pottery after all. He shook his head slowly, eying Katsu's drooling face over what appeared to be the next shop window. Assorted shinobi weaponry.
"Katsu-chan. That's for the two last terms onwards." He pointed out quietly.
"I know, but…" She whined at him, rolling her amber eyes. "I think it's unfair." She pouted crossing her arm in front of her chest.
"Yeah. Come on. We need to finish buying the stuff for the training camp." He pointed that out, and as he began to walk alongside the street Katsu followed him cheerfully.
"You know. I checked on the others by mail: Benika-san says that from the second year onwards the dates for entrance and leaving are fixed. We're all going to be in the same class." So that was the reason she was so cheerful today. She had been smiling a lot on that day, something she hadn't been doing since the beginning of the month. Still it didn't explain the fidgety attitude then. If it wasn't for that, what actually made her scared?
"That's good." He replied with a chuckle. "Well then, I don't have to go with you to the lingerie shop, do I? Or maybe you want me to check the battle underwear out?" The question that he asked had the desired effect: Katsu turned beet red, sharply jerking her head to the side and then…then she clenched her fists and flung a punch at the side of his face. A fist that he dodged by ducking down and out of harm's way.
"Watch it tiger!" He grinned, "You risk harming my beautiful face. What will my fans do afterwards?"
"You! You damn cheesy Casanova!" At her reply, he merely chuckled harder. He actually hadn't thought much about it nor did he think it was a big deal, but being the son of the Sandaime, recently deceased, had brought him a fan club.
At first he had tried to laugh it off, but when things had aggravated Katsu's life, he had pointed his feet. They were only friends, more like brothers in arms than anything else. That was all there was, and probably all there would ever be.
He waited for her outside the shop in question, shaking his head with a sigh. Sometimes he wondered just how he managed to cope with everything, and how did the older shinobi do so? Probably by getting some sort of quirk or strange thing that made them different from others.
"Lo and behold, thy perversion outshines the sun's golden rays!" Totsuba was still in the process of finding out his own, but at the present he was stuck in the usage of archaic terminology. It could have gone worse: he might have ended up being an outright pervert or sugar addicted sloth.
The boy was walking, his hair now long, black and tied in a pony-tail, along the street. He chuckled at him, before coming closer. Behind him Chikao and Okito were both having a strange sort of conversation. They were speaking about something that involved sugar, kidneys, bile and staring at open windows.
"Toma, shove it!" He snapped back with no anger. "I'm helping Katsu-chan with her shopping."
"Long live the gentlemen's race," Okito sagely nodded, before yawning and stretching for a second. "Anyway, we were heading off to try a new Cake shop that opened recently." He added thoughtfully, "Want to come?"
"I'll ask Katsu-chan." He replied, "Want us to catch up?"
"No need, we'll wait too," Totsuba shrugged. "A group of boys outside a lingerie shop? Grants the benefit of doubt."
"I think that actually enhances the point of a group of perverts." Okito retorted, trying to hold his best poker face.
"People see what they want." Chikao deadpanned, his eyes rolling at the sight of the people staring before moving on. He obviously could stare at others, but didn't like when the roles were opposed.
"Alas thee words beseech the truth of thy qualms."
"I thought I was hearing nonsensical speaking. Heya guys!" Katsu exclaimed as she exited the shop just as Totsuba was speaking.
"Battle underwear?" Okito's question was met with a fist on the face as a reply; one that sent the boy careening backwards, before falling on the ground.
"A no would have sufficed." The boy muttered standing back up, massaging his hit cheek.
"Knowing you? No it wouldn't have." He pointed out, before adding, "Katsu-chan: want to go and eat cake with these troublemakers?"
"Troublemakers? Please." Totsuba snorted, "We're the less trouble making guys of Konoha. Just look at Chikao: he's more of a corpse than a troublemaker."
Chikao's face sported for a brief moment a flinch of annoyance, before muttering back.
"Annoying."
"Monotonous robot." Totsuba replied as fast as lightning.
"False actor." Chikao was as fast as him with the rebuttal.
"Ehm guys, the cake…" Okito tried to butt in.
"Caffeine addict." Totsuba pointed at Okito.
"Sloth." Chikao nodded.
"You two…" Okito growled for but a second, clenching both of his fists. "Fine. I'm off for cake. Keep on insulting one another!"
"Lead on cake-leader." He chuckled as he made a mock-like military salute. Katsu giggled before getting in line. Okito nodded and began a triumphant march, soon followed by the others who decided to stop bickering long enough to start walking.
He was actually having fun. Meeting friends, going to places together, everything was good. He hadn't had anything of this for a long time. It had always been him and his father, sometimes the caretaker too. This was different. It was new. It was exciting. It made him feel fine. This, this was what had brought his mind out of the gutters of melancholy and sadness.
He wouldn't exchange this for nothing else in the world. The cheerful banter blanketed his ears, the noise of the street doing nothing to prevent him from hearing them just fine.
There was indeed a new cake shop, one of those new additions to Konoha that was ever expanding. A set of tables and chairs and a decorated door that reminded him of whipped cream, considering their light beige colors. The door opened with the jingling of a bell, located at the top of the doorframe.
The shop was devoid of customers, probably because it was just barely past lunch hour, and nobody would have entered a cake shop at said time. The cake shop doubled as a bar, and the owner of said establishment appeared with his short cut dark hair and bright blue eyes from behind the counter. He was wearing a white apron, a green shirt behind it and a pair of white plastic gloves.
"Customers? Of course." The pastry owner self-said to himself with a light chuckle, before sporting a grin, "Well sit down somewhere, and I'll be over soon enough." The man walked towards the back of the shop, disappearing probably to get something for a cake order or something like that.
He merely watched as the others sat down, before taking his own seat. In front of him he had Katsu, while to his side stood Okito. Next to Katsu was Chikao and as the head of the table there was Totsuba.
"The first reunion for the group of 'let us conquer the world' can now begin." The boy states with a serious tone, "First order of business: we need more female members to have equal sex parity."
"You want me to get some friends because you want a girlfriend." Katsu snorted back, "And I told you: Fukuyo's from the Northern Hi no Kuni province, Benika's with her mother somewhere she didn't want to say and Waka is…I have no idea where Waka lives."
"Shouldn't girls have that sort of special power, that grants them the 'always bring a friend to a date when needed' ability?" Okito pointed out, only to receive a hardened glare from Katsu.
"No. There's no such thing."
"Ah…It's a secret Kinjutsu only for women?" The boy replied with a light chuckle, raising his hands in order to gesture for Katsu to calm down, "Just joking Katsu, just joking."
"Sexist." Chikao muttered once more.
"Well then, what can I get for you?" The voice came from a teenager with black hair and piercing red eyes, wearing the same outfit of the man behind the counter. He held a small notepad within his hands and a pen, ready to scribble down orders.
"Just point at something at the counter," the teenager added with a chuckle, using the tip of his pen to point at the glass counter that encompassed half of the shop. It was filled with a variety of cakes, all cut in half in such a way that one could see what was in the filling. There were numbers next to each cake, probably to help with the orders.
"I'll take that one with strawberries, number twenty-seven." Katsu pointed, receiving a nod from the teenager in reply.
"I'll have a thirteen." Okito said, his eyes fixed on the white chocolate cake with sprinkles of candies.
"Four." Chikao pointed out, earning a light chuckle from the teenager.
"Death by Chocolate: a personal favorite of mine if I can say." The cake in question was four layers of chocolate, on the top stood whipped black cream that was probably chocolate mousse. "Dark cacao chocolate, dark nut chocolate, a core of white chocolate, and a bottom of normal milk chocolate and within the layers, chocolate cream…nobody survives it unscathed." There was a dreamy tone in the teenager's words, before he turned his attention to those who still had to order.
"I'll get a thirty-six," Totsuba commented. Truly, more than a cake the thirty-six appeared to be some sort of mixture between a fruit jam, a fruit juice, and an intricate mixture of colored ice-cream flavors.
"I'll take number fifteen." He finished last, his attention caught by what appeared to be a wonderfully baked imitation of a ramen bowl.
"It's got alcohol inside," the teenager replied smoothly, "a bit of this and a bit of that, shouldn't be too strong but one never knows: can't serve it unless you're either ninja or eighteen years old."
"Then I'll take the fourteen." A quick nod was the reply that the teenager had heard. Cake number fourteen was a white chocolate one, but with bits and pieces of strawberry and random fruit assortments on them.
"Anything to drink? Water, juice, coffee, tea?"
"Water." The reply was pretty much unanimous: how could they taste a cake if they drank something that wasn't water?
That normality, that small talk that happened as they ate the cakes and drank the water, those simple gestures of paying and then walking back home. This was normality.
Wasn't it?
Konohagakure no Sato – Katsu Uzuki
There they sat, on the stone rows of the small amphitheater built within the side of the mountain. She was sitting with Benika on her right and Waka on her left. Fukuyo was further to the left, next to Waka. In front of her she could see the back of Taifuu, the boy having next to him on the right Chikao, on the left there was Okito, and further to the left there was Totsuba.
This time, they were considerably far more in numbers than before. Probably had to do with the amount of students that hadn't passed the second term, and thus had to repeat the 'year' or maybe it had to do with the high number of graduates of the first term. In any case, there was barely a spot for everyone, and some had ended up having to sit on the stone stairs.
The three chuunin instructors of last time were there too. Mizuki-sensei was actually holding on his frown face, as his eyes scanned through them like they were some sort of wild animals that had to be put down. The scarred chuunin merely tried a sheepish smile while the red haired woman was giving the thumb ups to…the pink haired girl of the ramen stall!
Now that she had the time to think about it, she could see how the girl in question had been giving lingering gazes every now and then to Taifuu, for some strange reason. Still there was no way she could have been the same figure that had trashed her room: for one, she was clearly smaller, and secondly she appeared too frail to actually be a shinobi.
After three months of training camp, she had put up some muscle in her body, as well as a strong tan: the girl's skin was still a pale milky white. Probably it was even smooth. Did she even train?
They had been expressly told not to bring their bags, because they'd be collected later on should the need arise. That had outright brought a new level of worry in her head: what if they were going to start something concerning survival? She just hoped her memories weren't all that foggy from months ago: she had read books on edible plants for a long while.
"Class A will contain…" names began to be called quickly, as everyone lined up behind the chuunin-senseis without wasting time, all probably ready to depart. It took her all of her patience not to groan, when her name popped out…but not that of Taifuu. She hadn't considered they might have been divided even more.
"Class B…" Taifuu ended up in that class, as well as Totsuba, but the others ended up in the last remaining class: C. They had been separated. It was with another hearty groan that she realized that, indeed, she had been entered in a group where she knew no-one else.
She suddenly found herself being forced to follow the red haired woman, as well as the pink haired girl. Among the others, she could see the other clan children, as well as some apparently new faces too. The gut wrenching feeling didn't leave her, as they were moved towards the western gate of Konoha, or when they did indeed reach the depth of a forest.
"Now then!" The woman cheerfully exclaimed, "Sit down in a big wide semi-circle." The clan's children all sat on one side, while she ended up in the middle of the right one.
"We're going to start the second term of Konoha's academy right now, but don't worry: I'm not going to ask you to do anything too difficult." The other children cheerfully made exclamations of excitement. She merely narrowed her eyes.
"My name is, as many of you know already, Kushina Uzumaki." The woman replied with a happy and cheerful exclamation, "I'm the instructor for class A for this term." She smiled sweetly as her eyes looked over the kids in front of her. "Let's all get along, alright?"
This felt completely different. Was the second year taken in a more soft way to avoid piling up the stress on the children? She had no idea. Still, Taifuu was probably going to be fine with Totsuba…it was she who had to find someone to talk to, or make friends with, if she wanted to survive three more months in a training camp.
"By the way! You'll be trained here in the outskirts of Konohagakure, so fret not! Always meet me by the West gate at nine in the morning, bring a packed lunch, and then we'll keep going till four in the afternoon!"
Her mind skidded to a halt. Her eyes widened with surprise. Well, every teacher had their schedule that much she should have thought of. She just hadn't thought she'd be this lucky: a pity for Taifuu who was Kami knew where by now.
Still, this meant that she would have more time to train on her own, if she…she couldn't.
In the training camps, she at least could have gone running around and nobody would have said anything. Heck, she had barely had the time to go to sleep and rest, after Takane-sensei ran them ragged. The laws of Konoha however prohibited shinobi to leave without permission. She was an academy graduate, and she couldn't however enter the training grounds. She couldn't leave by the gates to train outside, and she didn't have the money for going to a gym, of all things.
It was as she was thinking hard about it, that she heard the sensei exclaim.
"Anyway, first thing firsts: I'd like for each of you to do the Ram seal…which is this one."
Quietly, everyone scrunched their eyes at the form of their teacher moving her right hand into the form of the Ram seal.
"Close your eyes and look within you for your chakra." The woman added, that cheerful tone not leaving her for even a second. She concentrated, her eyes closed as she welcomed the familiar sensation of her heartbeat drumming quietly.
With her hands in that symbol, she felt a strange sensation of warmth spread throughout her body, coming from the depth of her stomach. She had done so once before too, in the orphanage when they looked for who could mold chakra and who couldn't.
She had been able then, and she was more than able now too. She could feel it rumbling within her stomach, like a small pool of water that suddenly began to grow and push towards her extremities. A few seconds later she felt a wisp of air touch her skin, caress her entire body, and as she opened her eyes she saw the blue filaments of chakra escape her body in a non-precise pattern.
She looked around, seeing that many of the other kids had done the same, some with bigger quantities and others with smaller ones even.
In particular, the pink haired girl appeared to be channeling quite an amount of chakra through her body, so much that the children next to her had moved away in slight awe.
"That's enough!" The chuunin-sensei barked with a smile, clapping her hands. "For today, as a first day, class is dismissed! See you all tomorrow morning! Don't be late okay!?"
"Hai sensei!" The children…they cheerfully replied as they got up and moved away from the clearing. Konoha wasn't even all that far.
As she stood up to leave, she felt a familiar chill fall down on her spine. She gasped for air for a brief second, before quickly snapping her head to the side. Nothing was there, of course. She was going paranoid. Clearly paranoid…yet why had she the feeling she had been watched from a tree branch?
Everything was going to be fine.
Sure, she was alone, but at least she wasn't heading off to kami knew what training camp. Still, if this was all they had to do, then why have the others move out?
Konohagakure no Sato – Taifuu Shimura
Glistening fangs glittered in the light cast by the dying sun. Thick growls echoed in the air as the bushes parted their ways for the kings of the forest. Claws elongated for the attack, muscles and bones thick enough to kill even the strongest of men with a mere impact. They roared, and his hands trembled.
"Don't drop the kunai!" Okito seethed through clenched teeth, standing behind his back as the two growling tigers appeared to be in the process of selecting their prey. He took a deep breath, calming himself. He wasn't alone: they could do this.
"Where's Benika when you need her?" He growled back, his left arm covered in thick tree bark. Better than nothing against the claws of the tigers of the southern area of the land of Fire.
He should have gone with the scarred chuunin, Iruka-sensei. Midway however two masked shinobis had appeared, warning the man that there had been an accident in Mizuki-sensei's class, and for that they needed two new boys of his.
Of course, he had decided to volunteer as well as Totsuba in order to get back with the rest of their friends.
Now they stood in their finest hour: surrounded by two tigers, with their teammate Benika hiding somewhere, if not outright having run away.
"She's gone to get help, trust me on that," he murmured back, swallowing the drop of tension and saliva in his mouth.
"We're fighting tigers." Okito muttered back, "I think adrenaline is better than sugar, but really…tigers…can't I have some help here?"
"KYAI!" The yell came from a charging Benika, who in a display of prowess jumped out from behind one of the tigers, leaves and branches sticking from most of her body: a clear sign that she had tried her best to break through the thick undergrowth. Holding her kunai with both of her hands, she probably didn't even think before acting: she just plunged it deeply in the neck of the beast before jumping backwards on shaky legs.
The birds nestled on the tree branches near them flew away cawing as the wounded tiger let out a fierce roar. Nothing is fiercer than a wounded beast, but as the bleeding tiger turned its gaze on the girl, it gave them an opening.
"Fall back on me Okito!" He yelled, moving forward to the wounded tiger. Having turned its back on Benika, he got the jump on the beast, plunging the metallic tip of the weapon in the soft underbelly to form a large gush. Okito let out a startled cry, and as he turned to stare, he sighed in relief.
In fright and with his eyes closed, the boy had managed to plunge the kunai straight into the belly of the other beast that had of course tried to pummel them when they had begun running. Pushing the corpse to the side, Okito let out rasped gasps for air. Then, within a mere moment of peace, the retching sound of Benika echoed in his ears.
The girl was a mess, a trembling mess of dirty matted hair and scratches.
"How's team Totsuba doing in your opinion?" Okito murmured, sitting down just next to the body of the tiger. Dead beasts don't stand up again.
"I hope they make it to camp." He muttered back, "I'm sure he's going to manage. He was in a team with a repeater of this term…"
"You know, was he with the same chuunin-sensei as before?" Okito mused out loud, "I mean: he did appear pretty jumpy."
"Shut it!" He growled letting his gaze move to the trembling form of Benika. "It's all going to be alright. We just need to keep on moving along the map…the map!" He carefully began to pat around his body, before taking a sigh of relief and taking out a small paper square. Carefully unfolding it, he eyed the trail they were meant to follow.
"You know: I'm starting to think that following that piece of junk is a bad idea." The other boy pointed out, flipping the kunai and starting to cut through the beast's belly.
"What are you doing?" Benika queried in a soft voice, as he put back the map in his pocket.
"Taking provisions." He replied in Okito's place, "You know how to carve the meat?"
"Not a clue." Okito replied with a hearty chuckle, "But my uncle's a butcher: I'm used to seeing meat everywhere dangling around. At least I can get the job done without being squeamish…one of you want to try?"
He took a deep breath, before moving closer to the other corpse. The blood had already begun to pool around the carcass, and yet he didn't feel all that skittish about it.
The blood, crimson liquid that it is, pooled around the man's neck. Gushing out like a river of deep red color, the ground was soaked and drank thirstily from it. The eyes open in shock, their light gone.
He took a deep breath steadying his hand as the kunai it held, the only weapon they had all been given, fell down in a deep arc. The skin of the beast was lacerated with a sickening pop as the tip of the blade moved in a zig-zag line across it. Hadn't the beast bled enough? Why was there still blood, emerging from the newly made wound and coloring his hands?
Benika watched in silence the scene, her stomach empty. In the end, he had to stop. There was just so much blood, so much…flesh and meat and muscles and red.
"First comes the skin, then comes the fat, then comes the muscle and then comes the bone." Okito pointed out, moving closer with what appeared like a small greasy and red bag of fur. "No use trying to conserve it without salt. Did well in cutting it though…Taifuu, can you start a fire?"
He nodded, quietly keeping the kunai in his hand as he looked around. The kunai was their only weapon: the only one. If they lost it, they'd be without. They'd be without and in a clearly hostile territory.
"I think the map was made to mislead us." Benika pointed out, once the fire was going and she was sitting in front of it, her shivers a bit subsiding. "The point is the destination right? So it doesn't matter how we reach it as long as we reach it."
"That's only if the destination is right too." Okito retorted. "What if we must follow the trail because the destination is alongside it?"
"So…we're in deep shit both ways." He muttered gingerly grabbing with a pointy stick, courtesy of his kunai and a branch, a piece of cooked tiger meat.
"Chew it a lot: it's harder than it looks." The other boy mused, his right cheek swollen by said meat and the process of chewing it.
"We killed two tigers." Benika muttered in a light giggle. "Aren't we great?"
"I don't see the greatness in that." He murmured, "We have one week to reach camp, we haven't seen any of the other teams, and for all we know we could just as well be lost."
"Always the stick in the mud huh, Taifuu?" The snort came at the same time as a howl echoed throughout the forest.
"Wolves? The carcasses." He muttered grabbing a hold of his kunai. They should have disposed of them, but the beasts' corpses weighted far too much for them to handle.
"We should move to the trees," Benika suggested. "We can leave the fire here." He nodded, as well as Okito did too, and then the three moved towards the base of the nearest tree.
"Benika, you go up first." With a quick nod from the girl, she was hoisted upwards to reach for the closest branch, and from there on climb upwards.
"Okito, you go next." His order received another reply, and with a grunt of effort, even the sugar-high sloth reached its branch.
He was the last one, and as swiftly as he could his hands moved alongside the bark of the tree, climbing like only a monkey could do. Finally he got atop his own branch, landing his back against the trunk and letting his legs dangle from both sides.
"You know: the shodaime Hokage created Konoha's barrier of trees with especially thick branches and trunks, so that shinobi could rest perched from them with little risk." Benika spoke quietly, trying to make small talk.
"Who believes we're being watched even now?" Okito mused with a light chuckle. "You know the gist? If you claim in an empty room the words 'I know you're watching', you either make an Anbu afraid he's being discovered, or simply speak in an empty room?"
"We walked all day, killed two tigers, ate a half-assed dinner." He began counting with a grim chuckle.
"Hey! My cooking skills are elite, please!" Okito snapped back.
"And we're making small talk atop a tree that has branches out to murder my ass. Can we please, pretty please, speak of something else than if there are or not Anbu enjoying watching us squirm?"
"I'm just saying, what if there actually aren't?" At Okito's question, Benika whispered back.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I was thinking…everyone eventually gets promoted, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Well what if one, let's say, fails repeatedly the same term? Like, ten or twenty times."
"I suppose he'd stop being a shinobi and have his chakra sealed, right?" The girl's question hung in the air, before he decided to reply.
"That's not possible. A shinobi can only retire of old age or from active service. Chakra sealing is a punishment for crimes."
"Yeah, anyway I was listening in to the other guys from the class while walking. Those who had failed were all from different classes. You know…but the fun fact was that they all claimed they were from classes B."
"So what?" He queried, "There are different times to start off, right? Might have been from a term later on, or earlier on."
"Yeah, but there wasn't one from class A to begin with." The boy's voice came from behind him, and it was as low as a murmur, "And you did tell me that the guys came to ask for two of class B right? You and Totsuba volunteered but the point is…wouldn't that mean that two folks died on the march towards the training camp, and they replaced them with you?"
"I think I get what you're trying to say." Benika exclaimed, "There's no way they'd ask for only two, if we were divided in groups of three. Furthermore none of us saw two disappear while we were waiting for them…so we had to have started with two less than normal."
"If that is the case, then another class should have two more." Okito mused, "Or both classes should have ended up with one extra."
"You think so?" He whispered.
"I think class C is the pool for the failures of class B and A." The boy replied, "And in our class lethal force is authorized to terminate the problem."
There was a startled gasp from Benika, who began to whimper.
"That's…That's not possible Okito! They can't go and kill us off! We're still people of Konoha!"
"Then they don't. They just make it look like it. Maybe they do it for those who fail a lot, like, more than three times. Otherwise they'd just keep having classes and classes of thirty-three students that grow progressively older, and cost to the village…isn't that right?"
"Maybe…" He murmured, "But I'm not going to start wondering if we've been sent to our carnage or not, Okito…let's just get to that damn training camp, alright?"
"Alright…who's actually sleepy tonight?" The boy's voice was soon met with the light sobbing from Benika, who stood on her branch shivering.
"We're all going to die…" she murmured, and in the silence of the night that voice was something that clearly echoed through the trees.
"There you go Okito: now you calm her down." He snapped, growling slightly at the red haired boy who sheepishly grunted an affirmative reply.
"Benika-chan," he heard Okito start, "Calm down…everything's fine. We've got our stick in the mud, and my fabulous sloth powers. Come on, me and Taifuu over there both know you're stronger than this. You're our regular ape-man."
"WHAT!?" She shrieked, fear forgotten as rage probably took its place. "I'm murdering you when I get my hands on your neck!"
"Oh my! Big words Doormat girl!"
"Doormat!? Doormat!? I'm…argh!"
He merely chuckled, shaking his head as his eyes looked above them, to where the smaller branches moved gently to the strength of the wind.
"Thank you." Benika's whispered words reached him, as they probably reached Okito's ears too, before he finally drifted off to sleep.
Whatever was going to happen from there on, he just hoped they'd turn out alright. Quietly, he scratched his shoulder, where the bark he had placed there as a sort of make-belief armor rubbed against. They'd make it.
They'd survive the second term.
A question however popped up, within the deep recess of his mind.
When did pass the second term, become survive?
Tears are hidden and cries are deadened. Hide what you can't comprehend. Kill what you can't understand. Murderous eyes will shine through the darkness, asking the question of old: is it over yet?
Author's notes
And another chapter is out.
I'm sure a lot of you will be 'miffed' is that the correct word, at how 'slow' I'm going with this.
At the same time I'm going fast. I'd suggest a Persona 4 approach to the matter, or a School Days thing. You know: a nice happy start. People being happy, getting to know one another, everything is fine. Then something starts to seep through the cracks, and fluffiness leaves the place to a dark and creepy understanding that nothing is as it seems.
In the end I decided that for this story, I'll keep the third person narrator.
Another thing! AS always, OCs are there only to support main characters, that doesn't mean I am not going to expand on them.
(of course in a limited way) It's too easy to go 'meh' at the death of an Oc. (I do that a lot too, trust me) That's because they are either insufferable things or little expanded things. (That and usually they get their entire life told in a single chapter. Just no.) A character needs more than one chapter to be loved, to be accepted, to become someone that is, indeed, liked by the reader.
Then you can kill him in a mass of blood and gore and make the reader start crying tears on 'you cruel bastard!'
As always, I have no idea where this story is going. At present my mind-plot has reached till the chuunin exams, and it's not going to be a happy ride till there either.
Oh and before anyone starts complaining about another 'Jinchuuriki Sakura that is just like Naruto/Canon Sakura'. No. Please no. One thing are the quirks that carry on (the naruto's 'ttebayo, for example, is some sort of genetic trait since he had it even without knowing Kushina's own) another is just plopping canon on fanfiction.
Some things are just not done.
By the way…I'm kind of wondering if you'd either want me to keep this 'pace' (Aka at least some more chapters before 'canon days' of last term+graduation) or if you want me to go faster. I'm just curious mind you, I'm the writer, so if I actually want to start a day by day narration (No worries, the answer to that is no) I'll do it, but hey, I enjoy hearing the reader's opinion on what 'pace' is kind of their liking.
