A/N: Here it is, another chapter :). I'll be posting one chapter per day until I run out my old chapters that are already written.. then I'll start posting the new material I've written for this story.

I thought it might be interesting to share that I have this story planned out in my head pretty much from beginning to end... and it's only about I'd say 10%-15%ish done in my ThreeJewels account, somewhere around there. So if/when I complete this story, it's going to be an absolute monster lengthwise. Hope that's something you guys enjoy :)

By the way I'm making it my mission to reply to every single review I get from now on. It's my way to show my appreciation to readers and to feel like I'm in touch with people who enjoy my story and like what I do. Feel free to put any questions or comments you have in a review and I'll reply before I post my next chapter.

So that's about all.. enjoy!

000

It took Hinata a week to realize it. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, but for some reason she was. It was something she hadn't planned for, did not think was all that possible, but she could no longer deny it was the truth of things.

Sensei was absolutely insane.

As in, Hinata thought she might need some help (not that she was stupid enough to even suggest that). The young Hyuuga had always assumed her sensei's eccentric, confusing and violent behavior were just a mask… she acted unstable and switched personalities on a dime out of habit to keep people around her off balance. That is what she had told herself. That she could manage.

But now Hinata was convinced. It wasn't all a show to help her keep an edge by keeping other people guessing. No, it was just that her sensei was, indeed, completely off her rocker.

As violent as the woman was, Hinata wasn't sure what to think of her own life expectancy. Especially with this latest bit of idea from Sensei.

Sensei was smiling at her broadly, looking happy as ever but with a twinkle in her eye that made Hinata more nervous that it had a right to. "So, what do you think Hina-chan?" Anko asked in a teasing tone.

I think you're absolutely insane, thought the young girl. Not that she would ever, ever say something like that to Sensei. She didn't have a death wish.

"Sensei," began Hinata cautiously, having to consciously stop herself from fidgeting, "are you sure this is, um, a good idea?"

Anko looked at her curiously. Then the woman produced a seemingly normal kunai out of nowhere, and threw it hard. It imbedded itself deep in a tree trunk some fifty feet away.

The Jounin then put her hand to her chest, and made a one handed half-ram seal that Hinata had never seen before. "Kai!" said the snake Jounin, and Hinata felt her chakra spike ever so slightly.

The kunai in the tree exploded, shattering the trunk of the tree with such force that Hinata felt the force of the blast and some small bits of wood hit her even fifty feet away.

The tree groaned and after a few seconds it collapsed. The area around the explosion was covered in smoke and kicked up dirt that made it hard to see. But it was impossible to miss the tall tree collapsing and falling on its side.

Hinata just stared, not sure what to say.

"What about that is a bad idea Hina-chan? You keep saying stupid shit like that and I'll break your ribs and not heal them for a week." Anko whirled on her, and Hinata found herself staring at a kunai pointed between her eyes not an inch away from her. Sensei had been a good ten feet away and Hinata had not even sensed any movement. She gulped nervously. How could she move so darn fast?!

"I picked this because of your special talents," Sensei said to her, her voice suddenly gone husky. She liked her lips in a way that suggested she was going to eat her. "Now tell me what they are and why I picked this in particular. Otherwise I'm going to carve 'dumb cunt' on your forehead and tie you down naked while I bleed you dry."

Hinata wasn't sure what "cunt" meant, but she was sure she didn't want it on her forehead. And she sure as hell didn't want to give her sensei an excuse to do as she promised. Hinata touched her neck subconsciously. She remembered the last time Sensei had wanted her blood, and shuddered.

The young Hyuuga went over it in her mind. Sensei had brought her out here and told Hinata some of what "she planned to do with her". In essence she had told Hinata that she was going to make her 'bread and butter' be exploding tags. Or exploding seals on weapons to be more precise.

Anko had done something Hinata had never seen before. Instead of having an exploding tag on a timer like what was customary, or even set up to be triggered like a trap, Sensei activated the explosion with a hand seal done with one hand. Hinata had never even heard of one handed seals before.

Even scarier to Hinata was that the kunai she used looked like regular kunai. There was no tag tied to the hilt like was often done, in fact there was nothing to tell it apart from a regular kunai. Hinata had to admit that was a great advantage, after all surprising the enemy was just another way of saying the Shinobi mantra of deception and misdirection.

But it was soreckless and dangerous. Especially the explosions created by Sensei. The few tags each student had been given to learn how to use them in the academy had not been anywhere near as powerful as the one Sensei had just used. It was also easy for the enemy to hide if they survived the attack with all the dust and smoke created by the explosion. That was one of the big disadvantages.

So why had sensei chosen it for her? Why did she want her to use this crazy fighting method? What skills did she have that made her pick this for her?

Byakugan.

Hinata's eyes widened slightly as the pieces began to fall into place.

Of course. No one could hide from the Byakugan. If she knew where they were, she just needed to get a kunai somewhere close to them and she would be able to… blow them apart. The mental image of that made her stomach flip unpleasantly.

Even if that didn't work and the enemy survived, an exploding tag going off near you will damage your senses for a few seconds. The concussion from the blast and the noise would damage hearing and awareness, and dust and smoke would obscure vision. She was also fairly certain one wouldn't be able to smell very well at least for a few seconds. If all went well, even if the explosion did not do much damage just being in the vicinity would render them more vulnerable for a short time.

"Sensei, it's because of the Byakugan," said Hinata with more confidence in her voice than she thought she had in her. She kind of surprised herself even. "With my eyes I'm almost guaranteed to be able to get a kunai at least close to my opponent. Then even if they avoid the blast, being next to the explosion will leave them temporarily disoriented. Normally all the smoke would hinder the thrower of the tag as well and thus make it hard to take advantage of the short opening. However, with the Byakugan that would not be a problem." Hinata stopped, having finished and feeling somewhat pleased with herself.

Sensei, however, was still looking at her expectantly. Hinata started to get nervous again. Was there something she had missed? The girl had no doubt the woman would carry out her threat if she didn't appease her.

Suddenly frightened, Hinata started to stammer the other things that had come into her mind, "Also, I'm small and quick and good with weapons. I can store a lot of these potentially in a scroll so there is some flexibility as to how big explosions I can make. And… and, well…I'm not fast enough to take advantage of the opening created by a blast really, but maybe I will be since you said Sensei kunoichi need to be fast… and, you know, my strength is the Juken… so… umm…"she trailed off, looking at her Sensei like waiting for the pronouncement from the executioner. This woman scared her, by Kami she did.

Anko continued to stare at her for a few moments with cold eyes, Hinata looking at her face but not her eyes, starting to feel the cold tendrils of fear crawling up her spine. Then, abruptly, the Jounin put her kunai away and smiled a big smile at the girl, hand on her hips. "You got it mostly right Hina-chan. Good enough for now at any rate" said the woman. Hinata let out a sigh of relief, not bothering to hide it and amusing the hell out of her Jounin sensei.

"So, does that second scroll I gave you make sense now?" asked Anko.

"Hai" replied Hinata. On the first day of training Sensei had given her two scrolls to study. One had been on the fundamental theory of Fuinjutsu (the Justu of Seals). The second much smaller one had been a Chunnin-level scroll detailing how to make exploding tags. Hinata had just assumed it was to practice and improve her skill in Fuinjutsu. She didn't know it was going to be a big part of how Sensei taught her how to fight.

She was going to fight mainly with powerful explosive tags? Sensei was well and truly gone, she decided. Hinata cringed slightly as she thought what her family would think of such an undignified fighting style.

Still, Hinata was still firm in her decision to trust Sensei… the woman obviously knew what she was talking about when it came to fighting.

Fighting. It made her think of her training that morning with her team. Kami, that had been a crazy ride.

000

- Flashback; morning of the same day –

"So," asked Kurenai, "what will the rules of this match be Hinata?"

Hinata looked at Kurenai-sensei. She knew what she wanted. Sensei had asked them to be creative though… but still. This was supposed to be her strength, after all. So it technically was skewing things in her favor.

"Taijutsu only" Hinata said. She wanted it. Wanted to fight. Not for violence…just, to remember. What it felt like. She wanted to just fight and leave all the problems behind.

She was eager, and it excited her.

"Face each other" said Kurenai. Hinata stepped away from the group and gave herself a good deal of room. Shino walked with her, settling himself just out of reach in front of her.

"Hinata, you made the rules," said Kurenai, "and the rules said only Taijutsu. No Byakugan, or you lose." There was some amusement to her voice…Hinata had been entirely too eager to think things through properly.

Hinata blushed slightly, and derided herself internally for her stupidity. "Hai, Kurenai-sensei" she said. It shouldn't matter too much anyway.

The Hyuuga eyes her teammate across from her, and tension began to mount. Shino lowered himself into the standard Taijutsu stance from the fighting they taught all shinobi at the academy. Hinata eyed her teammate, and something shifted inside of her. Her look became serious, the look on her face calm but intense. She settled into her Juken stance, and all three people present could tell that something had changed in the girl.

Internally, Shino decided he needed to take this seriously. Things could well go much differently than they had a week ago when they'd sparred.

"Begin!" said Kurenai.

Shino wasted no time, and attacked. He stepped forward, and launched a powerful punch toward Hinata's sternum. Hinata surrendered. She died. She gave herself over to her training.

And she came to life.

Hinata stepped to the side slightly and parried his arm with her outstretched hand. She put chakra into that lead hand, and in what was considered a crude move by the Hyuuga fed chakra into his muscles so they would contract and convulse painfully for a short time.

Shino's surprise at the pain in his arm distracted him for a split second, long enough for Hinata to pull his punching arm just enough to "encourage" him to keep going forward, making him stumble a step. With a step of her own Hinata got behind him, fluid as a dancer, and aimed a palm strike at Shino's exposed kidney.

At the last second before her blow landed Hinata was shocked in terror and pulled the chakra in her hand back, in the end hitting Shino with just enough chakra to give him some mild soreness later on. But acting purely on training and letting go… she had almost delivered a full power Juken strike to her teammate's kidney. Unless it was treated quickly, that was a killing strike. The kidney bled like nothing else, and internal bleeding could kill you before you even really realized how serious it was. She was shocked and horrified at what she had almost done.

She was going to have to be more careful. A lot more careful.

For their part, the other three members of her cell were shocked in their own way as well. Hinata, shy little Hinata that all of them had known (the two boys for far longer) and who had always been so timid and reserved…and who had just a week before been soundly beaten by Shino and Kiba both… she had just taken out the much larger boy in an instant. The match was not over, but no one was fooled. Even without the Juken, being able to maneuver behind your enemy and strike from there almost always guaranteed victory. Not least because if a shinobi got behind you and got a clean strike, you would likely not survive the encounter.

In under two seconds, Hinata had essentially won.

"W-Wow…! Hinata, that was AWESOME!" cried Kiba from the sidelines, Akamaru barking in chorus with him.

Kurenai for her part was pleasantly surprised, but not as shocked as the other two boys seemed to be. The girl had the training, and Kurenai was convinced also had the potential. She just needed someone to bring it out of her. Leave it to Anko to make the girl improve this much in one week. It was simply amazing. Almost all her gross hesitation was gone.

So no, Anko was not making the girl improve in her fighting. Right now, she was just unleashing what was already there. She had been heir to the Hyuuga clan (though she still technically was). There is much buried underneath there, already planted (if somewhat heartlessly) by her family, just waiting to be unearthed and brought into the light.

Shino for his part was flexing his arm, the one Hinata had struck, the pain starting to leave his muscles and his control over them coming back after a few seconds. The larger boy had been one of the better ones in Taijutsu in the academy, but he had been bested in a second. Shino decided to test if it had been a fluke, or if something had happened to change his teammate almost literally overnight.

The young Aburame came at her, hard, putting everything he had into his attack.

Hintata whirled and danced around him once again. She hit his face and swept his feet out from under him, and managed another Juken strike to his body when he hit the ground.

So this is what they meant about Hyuuga having the best Taijutsu in the Land of Fire, Shino thought to himself as he looked up at the sky, flat on his back and feeling the pain of Hinata's deceptively light hits. His Taijutsu he had learned at the academy seemed so simple and formulaic compared to her spinning moves, unusual hand work coupled with her confusing and graceful footwork. And that was without her using the Byakugan.

From that moment on Shino decided not to rely on his Taijutsu for much of anything anymore, if he could help it.

Hinata, for her part, was also somewhat surprised… though not as much as everyone else. And she would be lying if she said she wasn't pleased, though she felt a little bad about manhandling the boy.

"Um, Shino. Are you all right?" she asked cautiously when she saw he wasn't getting up.

The boy got up to a sitting position a little slow. "Yea," said Shino, "I am fine. Don't worry about it. Its training. As to the match," he said, getting up, "I give up. I can't defeat you in Taijutsu." With that Shino straightened up, and, somewhat stiffly from a bit of pain, walked over to the rest of the group.

To Hinata, it was strangely anticlimactic… she had expected to be able to trade blows back and forth and be able to lose herself in a fight. It had ended so quickly. Was Shino sick? Or… did it really make that much of a difference, fighting like you're dead as Sensei said, that she had really improved this much?

She wondered what her father would think of that fight. Hinata sighed. She was sure he would deride her for ruling out her own blood limit with the rules, and with resorting to crude uses of the Juken such as pushing large amounts of chakra into an opponent's muscles. What little relief she had started to feel from all her worries was instantly flowing back into her with such thoughts.

"So, I guess I'm next?" said Kiba, with a mischievous smile on his face as he stepped forward towards Hinata.

Hinata looked at him, his smiling face, wondering what the boy was planning to do.

"Rules, Kiba?" asked Kurenai as she reclined against a tree.

The boy just smiled. "Blindfolded. No Byakugan. Akamaru runs and hides. Whoever finds him first wins."

"WHAT!?" blurted out Hinata. She wanted to fight, not, not… of course Kiba would win, he would smell Akamaru out in no time!

"Sensei…" she turned to Kurenai with a pleading look. Their Jounin Sensei just smiled. Kiba acts like a fool, but when it counts he's smarter than people give him credit for. He figured out the purpose of this exercise on the first try.

"Nothing I said makes that against the rules Hinata. Sparring can be any contest between people, technically, and tracking is a crucial shinobi skill. I'm afraid you're just going to have to do your best Hinata" said Kurenai with a smile. Even though she knew it was impossible, she could have sworn she heard Shino snickering just a little bit.

"But… But… "Hinata protested, but nothing to contradict what sensei said came to mind. It was within the rules the red eyed Jounin had set out, after all.

"No buts, just do it Hinata. Only from now on, no blindfolds, and no more targeting Hinata's Byakugan in particular. Any questions? Good. Now get going."

Needless to say Hinata lost, and Kiba found Akamaru hiding in the bushes a few hundred feet away before Hinata could even come up with a plan in how to go about it.

But at least she figured out what was hidden underneath the underneath. This was sensei's way of testing how clever they were, and how well they knew each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Shino was next, and he challenged Kiba to gather leaves from thirty different trees in the shortest time. Shino won that one easily, sending out his bugs to trees and having them bring back one leaf from all the different trees, already done by the time Kiba was on his tenth. After that Kurenai said no more using bugs for retrieval.

Next, Hinata still wanted to fight… but she thought she would do something more clever. She challenged Shino to weapons only on the trees, first blood wins. This got a lot… a lot… of raised eyebrows. But Hinata had gotten so used to being cut by kunai in the past week that it didn't seem weird to her to win by scoring one little cut on her teammate… it was childish, really.

They traded weapons back and forth, Shino being surprisingly good with them, but Hinata being better, and with the Byakugan to track movement it was no contest. Hinata dragged it out until Shino ran out of weapons, then she scored a thin cut with a shiruken on his cheek. By this time the grey eyed princess was starting to feel a lot better. After that, much to Hinata's disappointment, Kurenai said no Byakugan.

After that Kiba challenged her to see who could catch Akamaru first… which was pointless, since as Hinata tried to run after Akamaru, the little dog jumped right into Kiba's arms. Hinata was getting very annoyed at her teammate and his admittedly surprising cleverness. She wanted to fight, dammit! She wanted to practice this new 'technique' of hers some more, being almost killed (maybe) to acquire it did make someone rather passionate about the thing. After that, Kurenai said no Akamaru anymore, which made Kiba groan and moan in protest and made Hinata smile a little bit.

Shino then beat Kiba by finding a specific kind of bug in the forest faster than the other boy, which was an easy win for him and got Kurenai to declare no more bugs in the matches.

By this time however Hinata was starting to have a good time… and so was everyone else. So she decided to put off her fighting for another day. She challenged Shino to a water walking contest. Hinata was surprised the boy knew how to do it, but he was not nearly as good at control as she was, so he tired faster and she won that contest after he sunk after about fifteen minutes. Kiba lavished her with compliments about it and she promised to teach him how to do the water walking. After that Kurenai said Hinata was not allowed to do chakra control in any of her challenges.

After a while of being restricted, they each found that they could no longer play to their strengths and had to look for weaknesses in their opponents they could exploit. It was very educational.

Shino was surprisingly well rounded, being above average in all Shinobi disciplines, but his weakness was sometimes too much reliance on his "family", his bugs. This only showed up as hesitation sometimes when he would like to use his bugs on instinct but would remember he could not. He was calm and rational and Hinata found that he would not be someone she would want to mess with if he was serious. She might have a hand up in Taijutsu, no doubt… but Shino was toosmart for his own good sometimes.

Kiba on the other hand was almost below average in all shinobi disciplines, be they weapons or ninjutsu. He was average at Taijutsu she would say. He insisted he was much stronger when he could use his clan techniques (Kurenai had banned all offensive ninjutsu as too dangerous for this time) and Akamaru. But he was devilishly clever when he had to be, even if he was kind of silly oftentimes. He was the only one that without fail managed to come up with some task that ensured his victory.

In the end, they all had a great deal of fun… even Shino. And in the end Kiba, surprisingly, was the one who ended up with the most wins. It was a great bonding experience, and they all got to know each other a lot better than they previously had. They were coming closer together as a team.

Kurenai saw this, and was pleased. All had gone according to her plan.

-End Flashback -

000

Afternoon, back with Anko

For the next few hours, Sensei walked her through creating an explosive tag. It was essentially the same as the scroll, except that Sensei changed it slightly so it would go off with the half ram real she was going to learn to do one handed as opposed as with a timer. She also learned why Sensei's tags were so much more powerful. The power was proportional to how much chakra you put into the tag. Sensei had put a LOT of chakra into the one she used to knock down that huge tree. It would take at least three regular ones to bring down a tree that size.

There was a problem though that at a certain point you got diminishing returns with how much chakra you put into a seal versus the power. So Sensei also showed her how to tweak the seals further so more chakra could be absorbed for more power. It was horribly complicated, and just barely she was able to grasp all of it and remember it. If she didn't like Fuinjutsu so much that she had read the fundamentals scroll almost every night, there was no way she could have kept up.

Then it dawned on her: Sensei was going to torture her by making probably hundreds of exploding tags. They took a great deal of chakra to make them even moderately powerful. She almost cried out in despair when she realized this, as she hated training to exhaustion of her chakra now more than almost anything else on earth.

Next Sensei showed her how to wrap the tag around the handle of a kunai, and then wrap cloth over the tag like you would a regular kunai to hide the tag. However, the wrapping of the paper around the hilt would interfere with the seal since it deformed it into a much different shape. Hinata didn't know that made a difference. So she had to learn yet another set of seals to put on the inside cloth that went around the hilt so the tags would work properly when they exploded.

How Hinata managed to remember all that Fuinjutsu long enough to write it down at home, she'll never know.

Next, it was one handed seals. Anko explained that one handed seals moved chakra though your body in specific ways that were sometimes harder to do with full seals. For example she explained, the effect they were after with only one half seal would need four regular seals to accomplish. It was just a shortcut to move chakra in specific ways.

The drawback however was that half seals were much less effective. A half seal jutsu would be anywhere from a third to a ten times less powerful than full seal jutsus, even though you used the same amount of chakra. Most people would rather just do an extra couple of full seals and get ten times more power for the same chakra. Still, sometimes half seals were useful, and it was not a commonly known art. It didn't take her long to learn the half ram seal.

After a few hours of work, Hinata was somewhat tired, but she had her first exploding kunai in her hand, made by her own hands (with close supervision from Anko, of course). She felt the weight, flipped it in the air a few times. The balance was till the same, the additional paper didn't really make a difference. It looked exactly like a regular kunai, except perhaps the hilt wrappings looked a tiny bit thicker than usual.

"Well, get to it runt." Said Anko, watching over her shoulder amusedly.

Hinata liked the feeling of it in her hand. Something about having something so dangerous in her hand kind of excited her. She wasn't really worried about blowing herself up… Sensei had made sure she knew exactly how not to do that… but there was a thrill about having something that could kill you, or someone else, in the palm of your hand. Well, she guessed a regular kunai fit that criteria too, but it just didn't seem the same thing.

Before Sensei got impatient, Hinata selected a small tree and threw the kunai at it. It landed about an inch lower than she wanted it to. The girl frowned. She was going to have to practice with these kunai, apparently the extra mass of the exploding tag made more of a difference in throwing than she thought.

She put one hand to her chest, two fingers up and pressed against her heart. Hinata took a deep breath, and gathered her chakra like she had been taught. "Kai!" she said, and released a small bit of her chakra, thereby releasing the chakra in the kunai she was focused on.

The explosion was much less powerful than Sensei's had been, but Hinata was oddly satisfied when the small tree splintered and broke apart, toppling over violently. She was oddly sad that hours of labor had resulted in destroying a small tree, but still, she was pleased that her work had paid off. The power of those little things was intimidating. She was surprised when she found herself smiling.

"Aww, isn't that nice, Hina-chan likes her own handiwork," said Anko in a sing-song voice and with a sadistic grin, "now how about you make a half dozen more by yourself. For every mistake you make I'm going to break one of your bones, Hina-chan. Better you learn that way now than do something dumb and blow yourself up later. Do you understand?" the Jounin asked sweetly.

Hinata gulped, and she nodded. What else was she going to do? Sensei was crazy indeed.

000

Shino was finishing his first trip to the farm of Inuki Janos, the eccentric horse breeder. The new type of beetle he had discovered was proving to be very interesting. It was much too soon to think of any type of martial application at this point, but since that was the eventual aim it was hard not to think about it.

They did not seem like they would be good in the conventional Aburame way, since they were flightless. As this would the first ever beetle to be used this way, it would be breaking completely new ground.

Aburame insects were not naturally communal, but learned to be so by training. They had not found a communal species that could be adapted to combat yet. That is why this new species seemed so promising… the synchronization with a communal species has always been theorized to be many times better than what most Aburame can achieve.

He cleaned off some with a hose behind the barn, and picked up his bag. This part of the trip kind of irritated him. After spending hours before training with his team cleaning the stable for hours, and spending hours after training studying the new bugs, Shino just wanted to go home. But one of Janos's conditions was that he eat dinner with him with the food he brought. It was already getting dark and Shino was not in the mood.

But, he was a dutiful shinobi and an Aburame. So he would do as he must.

Shino found Janos sitting at a small wooden table in a simple kitchen in his small house, oil burning lamps already lit as it was quickly getting dark outside. There was no electricity this far from Konoha, but the burning lamps provided surpassingly good lighting in the small cozy house. Shino sat across from Janos with his food sack, the man watching him intently while he puffed on a pipe with foul smelling smoke.

"So," asked Janos in an old drawl, "what did you bring me?"

The Aburame genin reached into his sack wordlessly. He produced quite a few things taken from his clan's stores and some other things his mother had told him to go buy. There was a fine bottle of wine, ridiculously expensive by Shino's taste. There was cheese and breads from the most exclusive Deli in Konoha that served such things. There were fresh fruits and vegetables of every kinds, and some raw cuts of steak of the best kind he could find. He wasn't sure how Janos would feel about brining uncooked food to him, but Shino decided it was worth giving it a shot. It was expensive steak.

The man however, broke into a smile at seeing the steaks and all of the other things. "Very nice my boy, very nice. It's hard to get good food out here. Why don't you open that bottle of wine and pour me some while I cook us up these steaks, hummm?" with that Janos got up and limped over to the modest gas stove in his little kitchen with the food. He began to cut up the vegetables and the steaks, Shino watching very closely. Soon the tantalizing aroma of steak and vegetables was permeating the air.

Shino noticed the old man was very good with a knife. Maybe even shinobi good. Ex-samurai maybe? Mercenary? He really couldn't be sure.

He brought them plates and they sat in silence for a few minutes. And then Janos started to talk, and ask the boy all sorts of questions. Where had his clan originated from, how he liked being a shinobi, what his opinion was of Konoha. At first Shino was Shino, and answered in very short clipped responses. But as time drew on, he grew more and more comfortable and started to open up a little bit more to the eccentric man. There was something about the man that just drew him out and made him open up. Oh sure, he was still serious Shino, but he at least started talking more and more freely.

Janos, Shino realized, was a nice guy. Overly curious and boastful at times, but Shino formed the opinion that he kind of liked the man. Rare thing for those who knew Shino well at all.

"Can you guess what I did before I bred horses Shino?" asked the old withered man, eyeing the younger man quizzically.

Truth be told, Shino only had one guess after hearing the man talk for a while. However he was fairly certain he was right. "You were a Shinobi" he said.

Janos nodded, "Yep, you got that right. You've got good eyes on you boy."

"Shinobi from Konoha?" asked Shino cautiously.

Janos nodded, "Of course, boy" he said. Shino relaxed a little bit at that.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Shino ventured to ask what had been on his mind, "so why do you hire shinobi to help around here and not stable hands? It would be a lot cheaper."

Janos did not answer, and after a few minutes stretched out Shino decided he wasn't going to get one. He was wrong however. The old man smiled a secret smile that cracked all his withered sun scorched features. "That," he said, "is my secret. And one for another day."

Shino thought that response should bother him, but it didn't. They made light conversation for the rest of the meal, and bug shinobi stayed much later than he had originally intended to stay.

000

The Next Morning

Hinata showed up at the training field to meet her sensei, a few minutes before five in the morning, like she had been doing every day.

Sensei was not there yet, so she sat down under a large tree, took a deep breath, and began to take in the woods around her. It was rare when she had even a few moments to take in the trees and appreciate the natural beauty around her. It was peaceful. Quiet. She wished she could stay like this for the rest of her life.

Hinata looked around when she felt a presence, only to notice a snake slithering towards her. It was green and yellow, a grass snake like the one she had seen the first day she had met sensei… the overly friendly one. Except this one was about four feet long, when the one she had seen then was about three feet. Surely a snake couldn't grow a foot in a week, could it?

It came to a stop a few feet from her, Hinata examining it curiously. Just a grass snake like before, long and thin. It came closer, and before she knew it it was crawling up her arm, being overly friendly and… it seemed to her… wanting her attention.

The young Hyuuga giggled a little bit. This had to be the same one as before, right? How many wild snakes were this friendly? "There there cutie. I do like you, you're very nice you know that?" she cooed at the snake. It looked at her, and then lifted its head exposing the underside of its head. Hinata thought she knew what the little snake wanted. The girl reached over and started scratching the little thing under his chin. It curled its tail and rubbed itself against her hand in obvious pleasure, and Hinata couldn't help but giggle at the little thing.

She suddenly felt a presence and looked up. There she was, Sensei, looming over her. And Hinata had not even heard her come, had not felt any chakra, anythingto indicate she was going to move. The woman was like a ghost. Nobodycould move like that. How did she do it?

The woman smiled savagely at her apprentice. "Hina-chan, now that you can actually use what you learn to fight, it's time for me to tell you what sort of a shinobi I'm going to turn you into. You're going to find out what's going to define you for the rest of your life as a shinobi." She said a slightly excited and dangerous tone to her voice.

Hinata gulped. She wrapped the snake around her neck without thinking and spoke. Obviously she was expected to ask. "Wha-t sort of shinobi is that…sensei?" she asked.

Anko's smile widened even further, and for a second Hinata thought she looked like a snake. "An assassin, Hina-chan," she said, "you're going to become an assassin- little girl."

000

A/N: Well, sorry for the delays. Next chapter some more character development, training and so forth, and pretty soon they will be going on their first mission. Everyone needs a good initial mission, right? :D.

Anyway, thank you everyone who reviewed. It makes writing all the more fun. I'm still slow, I know, but without reviews I would be slower still. Thank-you guys (and girls).

Tell me what you think. Feedback encouraged an appreciated.

Everyone… Take care! …