Part 10: Sand in My Eye

Depending on your background of how you were raised you had a love or a hate relationship with the beach. Majority of normal people enjoyed the beach. It was a fun place to play, have picnics, make sand castles, sand angels, surf, swim, collect seashells and other dead things. For most ninjas, it was a horrible place. There wasn't much to hide in or behind, the weather could change in a snap, the tides and the sandy water below is too imbalanced to have a real good chakra foot hold and then there was the undertow. Only ninjas specializing in the water element wouldn't suddenly be ripped away and pulled down to the crabs and sharp rocks below.

Of course you the Inuzuka can easily turn from work mode to play mode, it's how the normal dog mind works. But I have managed to get mixed feelings about the place. It's a wonderful place to play fetch and chase but I can't help but feel very wary. I think it was because I was picking up the emotions from Hinata and Shino, who couldn't just turn their work mode off like you.

Hinata was due to how she was raised. Even Shino was willing to show some of his emotions on the subject and it disgusted us too about her father. I had never known a parent who treated their child like an unwanted creature that they were forced to care for until I met that man. My first visit to her house was a planed event, like everything else was in Hinata's life.

We Inuzukas are spread out over Konoha in multiple layers of territory. The first is a given, where Konoha ends ours end. The second layer starts where our home's walls begin. The third is where it makes the blobs on our map show surrounding our houses, favorite places and close family friends. The forth are the smallest, thirty to sixty feet radius from our homes depending on how many lived in that house.

The Hyuugas where kept in one place, with one large estate with multiple houses, flats and a manor. A lot like the Uchihas, but their design is less boring with more variety (due to them being copycats). Almost everything about the Hyuugas was just as plain as their eye color. Thankfully, Hinata brought some iridescent to those eyes. Even her sister seemed stiffer than a dry branch but I truly cannot say much because I hardly see the girl. For all I know she is just as scared, trying hard not to become the same status that her older sister is in.

It was Kurani-sensei's idea trying to make us more of a team. We would visit the other's houses to see how they where raised so we could understand each other's thought processes better and therefore predict each other's movements and communicate better. Which in most cases, is a great idea. You volunteered first, Shino was second and Hinata was last.

I could tell our teacher was starting to wish she thought this though a bit more when she introduced Hiashi to us. He, he looked at us and Shino as if we were some disease. As if we were the reason Hinata wasn't preforming like he wanted her to do. And she looked so embarrassed, the poor girl. After we left the house (Kurani-sensei had stayed behind) you gave her the biggest hug you could give her saying we should go someplace fun for a bit. Hinata in her shocked state didn't have much to say. Shino had pried you off of her and suggested a quite place.

"I know just the place!" you turned heel and began to run off. Shino snorted, he probably didn't believe that you knew what the word 'quite' meant.

I flexed my paws on the sand that was below me now and overlooked the waves to the gulls in the sky. You had already thrown your sandals on a grassy ledge shouting at the others to join you in the cool waters. Shino kept his ground (or sand?) and Hinata cautiously made her way down to the sand.

"No no! Hinata, take off your shoes!"

"Ah...! Ok..." she said in her soft voice, blushing as if she had done something wrong by forgetting.

Now I'll admit, as much as I criticize you for stupid actions you commit. I've done some myself with no thought process of what would or could happen if I preformed that action. Hinata's mind was still held in what had happened at her house, Shino wasn't participating and you where doing all of the work. It was boring so my thoughts were to liven up the situation.

I am a true ninja dog, in my younger days I was an acclaimed shoe thief. Shino being my next victim.

And my last.

I heard a grunt from Shino's fall behind me as I ran past Hinata's legs to you clutching tight to the indigo leather in my teeth. You were laughing madly pointing behind me but I didn't dare look back as I threw myself headfirst into the salty water paddling as madly as I could. Shino's insects couldn't come for me here, they'd drown.

By the time I bought my head up to the surface half of the damage had been done. You were sitting in the shallows laughing and rubbing a growing bruise on your cheek. "Way to go Akamaru!"

Shino looked exasperated. He was gasping as if he tried hard to catch up to me before it was too late. Now I was a wet puppy in the waves where he couldn't touch me. And Hinata just standing where the waves could lap at her feet, was laughing. It was quite, and it was soft, but she was laughing. I call that a job well done.

But I can't imagine getting out of the water anytime soon with an angry Aburame waiting. Yea, I think I'll be here for awhile...

I watched Hinata's interest for seashells grow as she picked up a stick and let it trail behind her as she searched. Shells would be a nice touch in her room. You jumped around picking up rocks disturbing the wildlife while occasionally running over to Hinata giving her the little dead treasures you found. Shino however, just stood there.

It's kind of creepy...

Doesn't he notice his feet are getting wet...?

He's just staring at me.

Kiba? ...it's kind of cold here.

This chapter is set before the Chuunin Exams, back in time when Hiashi's was just a prat. I'm so glad he turned around. Who knows what Hinata might have done if he didn't?