Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed! I really appreciate hearing what you think. I'm sorry for the long wait for this chapter, by the way. Excuses time - since I actually have some now - I didn't have access to my computer for over two weeks, and then my internet broke and I needed to fix it, and then I got sick and just really didn't have the energy. So, yeah! I'm still a little sick, but well enough to write this chapter. Also, I am still making stuff up as I go along. It's been a long time since I've read or watched canon, so I don't know how accurate my facts are; I basically just put stuff that I think makes sense.

Well, anyway. Hope you enjoy!

Edit: fixed the linebreaks where I forgot to change them to actual line breaks. Sorry about that!

Chapter Eleven

The problem with Medical Ninjutsu, I decided, was that it was really, really difficult. According to the scrolls I'd gotten, Medical Ninjutsu took a lot of practice to get the high level of chakra control required. Obviously, having good chakra control was extremely useful for other ninja skills – such as genjutsu – besides Medical Ninjutsu. This should have meant that even if I never used Medical Ninjutsu, practicing it would have been worth it anyway. However, because of the way that Medical Ninjutsu worked, it was a different kind of chakra control from everything else.

Actually, to be fair, everything required precision, including Medical Ninjutsu. Unlike everything else, however, Medical Ninjutsu also required a… special type of chakra, almost. That is to say, chakra is usually – not destructive, but more… possessive. Chakra is quite literally a person's lifeforce; the combination of somebody's mental energy and their physical energy. As such, a person trying to put their chakra in somebody else's body – as was required in order to heal them – ordinarily resulted in both the healer's chakra and the recipient's chakra reacting badly.

Medical Ninjutsu users have developed a way to keep that from happening. This technique to morph their chakra into something that wouldn't react with their patient's chakra was what caused it to be green. It was just very difficult to do, and that was where much of the practice was required. A trainee Medical Nin was expected to already have near perfect chakra control before they started their Medical Ninjutsu training.

Theoretically, a ninja should be able to heal their own body without having that problem or needing that solution; however, the current jutsu used for Medical purposes were all highly tied in with the technique used to prevent a bad reaction from either party's chakra. Due to this, anybody who wanted to heal their own body without mastering that technique would need to invent the jutsu to do so themselves.

I did not know enough to do that. In fact, I was very close to giving up on Medical Ninjutsu entirely. Iera-sensei said that all Academy teachers were required to learn basic Medical Ninjutu, which must have meant that it wasn't that hard, but… I only had four years to catch up with a lot of frankly terrifying ninja. Of course, Medical Ninjutsu would be useful, but time-consuming…

There was a knock on the door, jolting me out of my thoughts.

Can nobody leave us alone? I wondered uncharitably, irritated.

Sasuke and I went to open the door. In walked Kigawa-san, greeting us formally and looking slightly apprehensive. Kigawa-san politely waited for us to invite him in, and took his shoes off without prompting.

Once we were sitting in the living room, Kigawa-san started with, "I believe I owe you an apology."

Sasuke blinked at him. "An apology?" he asked. "For what?"

Kigawa-san shuffled, looking awkward. "Well," he began, "firstly for, ah, ignoring you when you visited me." Sasuke nodded, accepting the apology, and Kigawa-san continued. "Secondly, for misleading you in the matter you questioned me in regards to."

"Misleading us?" Sasuke said suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

"Yes, I-" Kigawa-san cleared his throat. "That is to say, I… looked into your case after you left, and what I found, well."

"There is somebody who was given legal control over our estates," Sasuke realized, and glared at Kigawa-san.

I tugged on Sasuke's sleeve. "It's not his fault, Sasuke," I murmured.

Sasuke sighed and closed his eyes, placing his hand over them.

"Yes," Kigawa-san answered belatedly. "That is, the woman who was put in charge of you was also given the duty of ensuring that your belongings would be kept in order." He hesitated. "Possibly needless to say, that is not what she has been doing."

Guardian-Lady, how could you? I wondered. I had been suspicious of something going on, but I hadn't truly expected her to have been doing anything. It was odd, I mused. She didn't seem the type at all. Somebody like her was certainly interested in power and prestige, but not so much material or property wealth. At least, not the illegal kind. Why would she risk her reputation for something like that?

Kigawa-san started talking again, seemingly unnerved by our silence. "I will, of course, handle this matter, and you – well, you can expect not to see that woman again."

"Great," Sasuke said, stoic but viciously pleased. "But Kigawa-san, if I could ask you a favor."

A blink, and Kigawa-san answered, "Yes, of course. What is it?"

Sasuke smirked ever-so-slightly, giving his eight-year-old face a wicked look. "Could you keep us from being assigned another guardian, please?"

…Well, that wasn't actually wicked at all…

"Oh, well – see, you're… still eight, you know," Kigawa-san stammered slightly.

"I do know," Sasuke said soberly. "But we've seen how well us having a guardian goes."

"Uh."Kigawa-san faltered at Sasuke's intense look. "…I'll see what I can do."

He left quickly, unwilling to hang around us for likely obvious reasons. Sasuke stared a hole in the wall.

"What's wrong?" I asked, sitting next to him and ignoring the dying screeches of the remnants of my personal space.

Sasuke scoffed. "People are so untrustworthy," he said bitterly.

I wondered if this had happened in canon too – it must have, since this wouldn't have been the kind of thing affected by me. That must have been why he was so distrustful.

Poor Sasuke. "There are people who are," I agreed cautiously. Apparently it was up to me to be the optimist. I couldn't help but find dark humor in the irony. "But, you know, they wouldn't try stuff like this if there weren't other people it worked on, right?"

I received an unimpressed look for my troubles. "Or they're just all manipulative in different ways and don't notice any of the ways but their own," Sasuke pointed out logically.

Faltering for a moment because I didn't have an answer to that, I found myself rather impressed with this eight-year-old. He was really quite brilliant for his age.

"Well, that's true," I admitted eventually. "But… do you trust me?"

"Of course I do," he said, looking at me like I was being stupid.

"You don't think that I'm just using you?"

Sasuke gave me an annoyed look, seeing where I was going with this. "That's different."

"How?" I challenged. "What's so special about me, specifically?"

He opened his mouth, and I knew what he was going to say, You're my sister. And then he faltered and closed his mouth, because he couldn't use that as a reason. Because his brother had betrayed him, and so clearly family wasn't automatically trustworthy.

"Because I trust you," he muttered finally.

I leaned into his side, hugging him around the midsection. "If you never give anyone a chance, you'll be stuck with just me forever," I mumbled into his shirt.

Sasuke huffed. "You want me to trust people?"

I shook my head. "No. I just want you to consider the possibility that some people are worth it."

He grumbled wordlessly, but laid his head on mine and returned my awkward sideways hug.

I smiled against his shirt. Maybe I can help this Sasuke be a little bit less standoffish and hostile.

"No."

Iruka blinked. "You don't want to move ahead?"

"No. I want to stay with Sasuke," I said.

"Really?" he said doubtfully. "Why?"

I frowned at him. "Because I want to be with Sasuke."

He'd tricked me into taking the test to get into the fifth month, and I hadn't noticed. I was a little embarrassed about that. More importantly, though, I didn't want to skip a month. It could be useful to graduate before Sasuke, have more time as a genin before the storyline started, but I… didn't really want to be a ninja. Graduating with Sasuke was my best compromise between the half of me that knew I needed to be able to fight for the storyline and the half that never wanted to do anything ninja-like at all. Also, Sasuke would probably be really upset if I got ahead of him. It was bad enough that I had caught up.

"I see," Iruka said slowly. "You know it won't matter anyway once you both graduate, right?"

"I know."

He gave me a strange look. I knew that I wasn't acting five, but at this point I didn't really care. If I continued acting my age, I'd be stuck acting like a kid for years. Might as well pretend that it was an effect of the Massacre.

Iruka sighed, acting upset. Secretly, I could tell, he was actually fairly happy about it. "Are you sure?"

I sighed, too. "Yes, I'm sure," I said, getting exasperated. I did not want to get ahead of Sasuke.

"All right, then," Iruka said.

Honestly. I should pay more attention to these things…

The first year of the Academy was split into twelve classes, meaning that there was an exam at the end of every month to see if every student was worthy of moving into the next class. It was almost disturbing to watch as several students disappeared from class, either held back or dropped out entirely, every month.

I calmed down a little about the end of month exams after the fifth month one – putting me in the sixth month class. It was funny to me to think about that, since I'd actually only been in the Academy for five months as I entered the sixth month class. I had stopped panicking quite so much at the exams, both because they weren't as hard as I'd expected, not really, not if my teachers kept giving me higher grade ones and I didn't notice, and also because if I continued devoting all of my time to passing them, I'd never practice anything else.

So I'd restarted practicing my other skills. However, I'd decided against trying to learn Medical Ninjutsu – it wasn't worth it for how much work it was, and that was even assuming that I'd have time, mid-battle, to heal myself. Besides, I'd much rather simply avoid getting hurt in the first place.

As its replacement, I'd decided on genjutsu. The Uchiha, for obvious reasons, had many, many scrolls about it, and it wasn't as complicated as I'd been worried about. It wasn't easy, not by any means, but it wasn't complicated. Essentially, it was using your chakra to infiltrate somebody else's brain, affecting their senses to be aware of whatever you wanted.

It didn't require a special, non-reactive kind of chakra like Medical Ninjutsu did because it didn't need to be accepted. It was perfectly fine for it to be hostile. Additionally, it was supposed to be secret, and was more subtle than Medical Ninjutsu, preventing an explosive reaction. This, however, meant that in order to use genjutsu on somebody, your chakra had to be able to overpower theirs. To do so wasn't very difficult if you knew what you were doing, as long as they weren't aware of it. During the finals of the Chuunin exams, when somebody (I couldn't remember who, a fact that caused me no little worry) used a genjutsu that put everybody in the stands to sleep, a few of the Jounin, along with Sakura, had noticed in time and pulsed their chakra to get the invasive chakra out. It had been relatively easy then, because it was a large-scale genjutsu that was meant to affect a lot of people. If the genjutsu-user had been targeting one person specifically, it would have been much more difficult to throw it off.

Sakura had also been able to use her own chakra to get rid of the invasive chakra in Naruto, which was only possible because she hadn't tried to maintain it. Sakura's pulse of chakra had attacked the genjutsu-user's chakra, getting rid of it, and then easily been eliminated by Naruto's chakra.

Basically, genjutsu was a very fine art that changed depending on circumstances, which could make it really complicated. The actual usage of it, however, was not. According to the scrolls, it needed very precise chakra control, because you had to affect their mind using chakra, which was hardly easy. It also required a meticulous mind, because the user had to imagine exactly what they wanted their target(s) to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. If the user's imagination was even the slightest bit imperfect or lacking in detail, it wouldn't seem real.

And that was where I ran into a wall. I could focus my chakra, picture exactly what I wanted, for as long as I liked; without somebody to practice on, I'd never know if I was doing it properly. I didn't really want to ask somebody, because if they knew I was doing it, they'd be able to see it easily. But I also couldn't use it on Sasuke, because he may have been eight, but he'd already started using the Great Fire Ball Jutsu, which meant that he had quite a bit of chakra.

It was mean of me, I knew, but I decided to practice on Mayumi. She was civilian-born, so she wouldn't have large amounts of chakra due to genetics, and she wouldn't have practiced using chakra yet, so she wouldn't have built up any chakra.

I didn't want to be too mean, so one day during lunch, when she wasn't looking at me, I tried to use a genjutsu on her to make her think that my book – some novel that we had to read for class – was a different novel that we had to read for class.

Nothing happened. She didn't even look at it funny.

I frowned inwardly at my failure, though I should have expected it for my first try.

I'd just have to keep practicing.

I was still kind of distant from most of my class, preferring to spend time with Mayumi instead, even though she was now in a different class. I almost wished that I hadn't moved ahead, since I liked Mayumi and Iera-sensei much more than Iruka-sensei and my new class.

Iruka didn't seem to know what to do with me, since I was three years younger than the rest of the class. Sometimes he treated me exactly like he treated all of the other students – like an eight-year-old, which was annoying enough. It was better than the usual, though, when he treated me like a five-year-old. I think that Iruka had been nine when the fox attacked, and Itachi, five years older than Sasuke, had obviously been five. Kakashi was even older than that. Obviously, Iruka had been too young to have dealt with the super-creepy-ness that had likely been five-year-old genin Kakashi or seven-year-old genin Itachi. He was probably too young to have been very aware of the war, too, which means that he doesn't even remember when nine was the standard age for graduating the Academy.

Basically, he didn't understand how ninja children worked, and it was really annoying.

The rest of the class wasn't much better – they were ninja children, but they were also three years older than me, and there were a lot of clan members. They weren't impressed with my status as an Uchiha, nor as a five-year-old in the Academy. At best, they were condescending, seeing the fact that I was five as me being weak, and at worst they were jealous, since I'd gotten into the Academy early and they hadn't.

Also, because so many of the characters from Naruto were in this class, it was weird for me. With Sasuke, I was unable to avoid interacting with him, seeing as he was my brother. Even after spending five years with him, though, there were occasional moments of sharp dissonance between how I'd thought of him as a character and how I thought of him as a person. I didn't really want to approach the others because of that, and they certainly weren't going to approach me.

I didn't really have much time to socialize, anyway; I spent almost all of my time training. I only ever talked to Sasuke, and even then it was because we lived together.

The worst, though, the worst were the fangirls. Unavoidable and overbearing, I absolutely hated them – Sakura and Ino included, though I knew they'd mellow out during the storyline. I was kind of glad that I didn't have to attend the Kunoichi lessons. Their purpose was to teach young future Kunoichi everything that a woman was 'supposed' to know, such as flower arranging. They were mandatory for civilians, but optional for clan members. Since I was a clan member, I was able to avoid going, thankfully. Mikoto had taught me everything that the class would, anyway.

The fact that the fangirls targeted Sasuke made it worse for me than it might have been had I not been his sister. They often either used me to get to him, or hated me because I was already close to him. Because I was an amazing little sister, I let Sasuke sit at the window, taking the seat immediately to his other side for myself. Because they were all mini and I was even tinier, it wasn't hard for one of the fangirls to sit on my other side, even though it was a two person bench, but at least it kept them from being right beside him.

Which was the current situation, and I was trying to fend off one of the fangirls, this time Sakura. As a courtesy to Sasuke, I only sat on the desk during tests, sitting on the bench most of the time. He so owed me for that. I felt kind of bad for him, though; he'd end up stuck with her on the same team as him.

Perhaps somewhat belatedly, I realized that I'd end up with a team too. I glanced around at them. I didn't actually know much about the people except the ones who'd been in Naruto.

There was the future Team Ten: Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji. I wouldn't be put with any of them, since there was no way they'd split up the next generation of Ino-Shika-Cho.

I also saw Hinata, Shino, and Kiba; they would probably become Team Eight. There wasn't technically any reason that I wouldn't be put on their team, except that their personalities and fighting styles worked well together. Hinata was shy and didn't speak much, and was a taijutsu user. Shino was quiet but self-assured and was a long-range fighter. Kiba was loud and brash and a taijutsu user. Of course, saying that Hinata and Kiba were both taijutsu users didn't really encompass how different their fighting styles were.

Basing it off of that, there wasn't much reason that I couldn't replace Hinata or Kiba as far as fighting style. Personality-wise, they probably thought I was shy like Hinata. And she had an eye-based Kekkei Genkai, but then so did I. But what would happen to Hinata if I took her place? They could put her on Team Seven – they put Sakura on it – but there was a difference between Sakura's fanatic fangirl attitude towards and Hinata's shy, passes out if Naruto talks to her attitude.

But they obviously wanted all of their clan heirs to pass the exam. It couldn't be coincidence that only a third of Academy graduates would actually become genin, and the three teams that passed happened to have been almost entirely made up of clan heirs, plus Konoha's Jinchuuriki. They definitely wouldn't put Hinata, the Hyuuga clan heir, in a team that wouldn't be able to pass.

So I wouldn't be put on Team Ten or Team Eight. Meaning that there was any number of other teams I could be put on. And if I was put on a team that failed originally, what was to stop them from failing this time? I hadn't really considered that I'd need to pass a Jounin-sensei's exam besides the Academy one.

I'm doomed.

I spent a couple of days being melodramatic about graduating, even contemplating talking – of all the horrible things – to my classmates, but lost the train of thought rather quickly after remembering that I still had three and a half years before it would matter, and it wasn't like I could really do anything about it now. Besides, none of my classmates would have talked to me anyway.

Finally, a couple of weeks after my first attempt to use genjutsu on Mayumi, we were at lunch, and I tried to use a genjutsu on her so that she'd think that my history book from the Uchiha clan library was the book we'd been assigned in class.

I focused my chakra and pictured exactly what I wanted her to see.

Mayumi turned back to me, and frowned down at my book, squinting her eyes. "Why is your book blurry?" she asked perplexedly.

Squealing and doing an excited victory dance on the inside, I simply blinked at her outwardly. "What do you mean?"

She shook her head. "Never mind."

I waited for the opportune moment to release it, hoping that she wouldn't notice.

I did a genjutsu!

For a ninja school, everything was relatively normal for the rest of the year. More people were held back each month. They introduced new subjects: Geography, Navigation, Map-reading (not the same thing), and World Politics, among others. Sasuke's ninth birthday came and went; I got him a birthday cake with nine candles. My sixth birthday came and went; Sasuke got me a cake with six candles. And then, after what really didn't seem like a year, we were taking the month twelve test.

"This test will be different from the others," Iruka-sensei explained. "There will be one singular written test, made up partially of all of the subjects you've been learning this past year." A bunch of people gasped, as if they hadn't known that the end of year test would include material from the entire year. That was an odd way to word it, though. 'Partially of all of the subjects'. Wouldn't it have made more sense to say 'of each of the subjects'? "Yes, it will include things from the past year, not just this past month. There will still be a physical portion, held afterwards. You'll have three hours to complete the written test."

Iruka-sensei passed out each of the papers, as all of the teachers likely did, and spared only a passing glance for my position on top of the desk. He was used to it by now.

We all started the test, and it was hard. I swear that we'd never officially learned most of the material. It was far, far harder than any of the previous tests had been. They must rely on the end of year tests to remove most of the students, because I'm sure that most of them failed it. I probably failed it.

Finally, the three hours were up, and Iruka-sensei brought us to do the physical portion. He brought all of us out at the same time, unlike usual.

It soon turned out to be because we were supposed to do it in larger groups, purely because it was too long for us to do it one at a time. The class was split in half, so there would ultimately be two groups.

The whole thing soon dissolved into utter chaos. Not only was the test much harder than anything we'd trained for, none of us were prepared for having to do it in a group. It was hard to avoid figuratively and literally tripping over each other, and we ultimately ended up slowing each other down. I was able to squeeze between them and avoid most of the other students, and I ended up finishing first of my group purely because I hadn't been slowed down by the others. Iruka looked rather surprised about that, almost troubled.

It's not my fault that my size is occasionally an advantage, I grumbled at him mentally, irritated at being underestimated.

Once I was finished, I collapsed onto the ground and felt like dying.

They can't intend for many of us to pass. I guess it made sense; make everybody do the last month until they've improved a lot, enough to get into the next year. But still, it was rather mean.

As always, we were told to show up early the next morning, and we'd be told then if we'd passed or not.

So Sasuke and I showed up early, used to the routine but somewhat more nervous this time – Sasuke had agreed with me that the exams had been insanely difficult –and went to Iruka's classroom. Sasuke was ushered to a seat, but Iruka gave me an apprehensive look.

Heart sinking, I asked, "Did I fail?"

Iruka gave a short, humorless laugh. "No," he answered, sighing. "The opposite." At my uncomprehending look, he clarified, "The test is meant to be hard. You aren't supposed to be able to pass it. It's actually a fairly low grade on it that allows you to get into the next year."

"But then why make it so hard?" I asked. It seemed ridiculous.

"Because they want to see who's better than the others," Iruka-sensei explained. "If any of the students actually pass it, then they're allowed to skip ahead into the third month of Year two."

Wait… "Did I pass it?" I questioned, cringing at the screechy way it came out. There was no other reason he'd be telling me about it.

"Well, yes," Iruka said. He shrugged. "You'll have to go to a different –"

"No!" I interrupted. "I won't move ahead! I want to stay with Sasuke."

Iruka sighed. "Uchiha-chan, you don't have a choice –"

"I don't care!" I said stubbornly.

"You can't –"

I huffed. "You can't make me!"

"Uchi –"

"Are you trying to get rid of me, sensei?" I asked, looking up at him with a deadpan expression. "I'm wounded."

While Iruka-sensei spluttered, trying to deny it, I skipped over to the seat next to Sasuke, sitting down rebelliously. I shot Iruka-sensei a defiant look, daring him to stop me. He could, of course – he could just pick me up and carry me to the other class if he wanted – but he wouldn't. As I predicted, he just sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Ha! I win!

I swung my legs triumphantly.

Really, I did want to stay with Sasuke, but I wouldn't have been so happy about staying in Sasuke's class if Iruka hadn't tried so hard to get me to skip ahead.

I later learned more about the end of First year test. First year had one class per month, but Second year had one class per two months, so it didn't mesh very well. To even it out, they'd done something really mean. They had to have two classes that would both go into Second year together, but that wasn't really possible, so one of the classes was given a test to see if they could get into month fourteen. If they graduated, they'd be with students who'd already been in Year two for a month – it was still Class One, but they were in Year Two Month Two, so if Year One Month Twelve joined them, they would technically skip Year Two Month One.

Because the teachers didn't want that, the Year One Month Twelve test for that cycle would be to see if they were capable of skipping Year Two Month One. If a student did well enough, they would actually get into the next class, skipping a month. That was very rare, however, and so most of the time, the entire class was held back a month, graduating with the class behind them. The next class, now two classes large, would be given a test to see if they could get into Year Two Class Two, or Year Two Month Three. They wouldn't be expected to pass the test.

Sasuke's class was one of the lucky ones, the class that just went through.

Basically, it was a very good thing I'd skipped ahead to Sasuke's class, or I would have ended up two months behind him.

It was probably terrible of me that I hadn't even noticed when our class doubled, though.