A shinobi is a high school student like an other - 12
Unbeta-ed, so forgive my mistakes please.
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'Full service', that meant you were staying in the HQ day and night till the end of said service. It had been three years since I had last slept on the supposed-to-be-bed of the HQ, and I hadn't missed it one bit.
The weekend had been strange, if not downright weird. Usually, when discreetly patrolling, we were always meeting shady things, such as brawls, deals, or organized fights, even the motor gangs fighting between them but on the street… There, nothing of that.
I spent Saturday and Sunday polishing my aim and my blades' skills.
The only thing we did of all week-end was being back-up for a covert police operation. We did nothing else but waiting though, there's was nothing to do. Zabuza was on the mission as well. I think he spent a good part of the time glancing my way, but with the masks on and the imposed radio silence, I couldn't be sure.
When we finally retreated to the HQ, I didn't had the time to ask him what was wrong, if something was; he was already gone.
In the end, Sunday night, half of the strength called for the weekend had the possibility to clear out if they wanted. That's what I did, and gladly.
Monday morning though, I was back to HQ. I had used the night to go over all the books and scrolls which have passed trough the family from generation to generation, those which dealt with chakra, ninjutsu, varied jutsu and ninja history. Not a single one talked about a reaction to chakra like Iruka's. It would have been easier if I had took a look at his chakra, but the idea to hurt him first, and then to do it without him knowing about it, was disgusting me.
What was certain now, after a night spent digging through old papers, was that it had never happened in my family, or in my family circle. I really had ancestors who had nothing else to do with their time but writing page after page about every single thing happening in the clan. Unfortunately for me, I had learned most of this stuff by heart.
I was hoping to find something into medical scrolls - tough luck. After had managing to persuade Tsunade to let me take a look at them, without really explaining why, and promised to be very very careful with her precious scrolls, I spent my morning reading them. So now, I was knowing everything about the ancient seals to seal cursed seal - not that it was really useful nowadays, this kind of seal had disappeared with the end of the Konoha-Oto war-, and I knew a bit to much about the very detailed and graphics effects of many different poisons, which hadn't all been used by others villages during the ninja times.
Nothing seemed to be connected even from afar to what I had seen happening to Iruka. And I could help but to have this nagging feeling I had to know.
Shizune found me at lunch time, still buried in the archives, trying to find something.
"Why don't you go look by the Research section?" she asked me.
I groaned and banged my head against the table. Why didn't I thought of this earlier?
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The Research section is really little more than two offices barely passable because of the mass of paper ending here. They eat as much if not more paper here than in the Info, and the Info are definitely paper-eaters.
Then, 'Research' is only half secrete -its members pass just for crazy academics. After all, there are crazy academics; they put their hands and nose on everything dated from the ninja period to draw up family trees of still existing or vanished clans, and inventories about just everything they can think about, jutsu, weapons, treaties, and other nice little reminding left in the Nature by our venerable ancestors. If there is one place to ask about a jutsu, it's here.
But after that, all is a question of 'is the head of the section is in the mood to give you the information'….
I pushed open the door leading to Research. The boss was here, glued to his chair as usual, feet on his desk and cancer stick in mouth - the latter wasn't the brightest idea around, with so much paper stocked in the room.
I made a fan of my hand to try to clear away the smoke.
"Bonze bogus, think about airing, at least for your visitors' health sake!"
The bleached guy didn't even raise his glasses from his reading. "No-one is enough mentally retarded to come here brat, so shut up."
"Sorry, I need your lights Sanzo."
This made him put his reading on the desk and look at me.
"…Don't you know how to evade blows anymore?"
The bruise on my face was of a beautiful blue turning green-yellow. Don't ask me how such a color could exist, all I can said was that it wasn't a pretty sight. I breathed deep and plopped on a chair in front of Sanzo's desk. I took the time to wonder once more how could this guy be a buddist monk and a ninja. You really have to know to guess it, and still, when youo knew it, you couldn't help but wonder.
"I didn't came to talk about my face..."
And then I told him everything I had constated, without forgetting to leave the identity of my 'subject' on the side.
Sanzo Genjyo frowned, lighted another ciggie, blew the smoke to the ceiling and stared at it as if all the answers were written on it. I waited a bit, suddendly remembering I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday night. He finally spoke.
"I can't recall anything remotly similar..."
His gaze returned to the room and me in front of him.
"There have been a lot of bloodlines mutations, and if your guy isn't from a ninja clan in the beginning, there's still the possibility for a spontaneous mutation. That's all I got."
I nodded, standing up from my seat.
"Sankyu bogus."
"Die!"
I barely escaped the very thick file he throwed at me when I left.
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We created a sensation Iruka and me, when we went back at school Tuesday morning.
What surprised me wasn't the whispers barely whispered, nor the not-discreet-at-all glances toward my face turned yellow-green, nor the stares I could only qualify as ambiguous and calculating cast in my and Iruka's way, coming from various specimens of the human kind, from our classes or just passed by in the corridors. No, really, I was kinda expecting that.
The most surprising was that the king Itachi barely cast a neutral glance at us - no weird comments, no 'did that hurt, junkie?'. I wondered why he wasn't taking advantage of the oportunity thrown at him on a silver platter; but I guessed that asking that to Iruka wasn't the best idea to have now.
This lead me to wonder, Tuesday morning during the two boring first hours of class, what was Iruka and I relation... Could we being tagged as friends?
When the ring for the ten o'clock rang, I swept this ideas away from my musings, and I left the classroom.
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We were all three - 'all three' being Iruka, Zabuza and me - seated in a unfrequented area of the corridors a bit later in the week, busy doing nothing and chatting, when a black tornado rushed past us and dived into a nearby classroom ; the one which was sporting the inscription 'Newspaper'. Yeah, as in 'the high school newspaper', but here, unfortunatly for us, it's not only a rag, it's a real tabloid. Its members are full of themselves and totally unbearable, ready to put their noses everywhere.
Iruka's eyes had widdened on the tornado's path, and he had turned hs head away to follow it from sight, just enough to miss the tornado's pursuer. I recongnized him from the picture Iruka had showed me -dark hair, check, hair in the face, check- and from his description - black clothing from head to toe, check. The guy quietly making his way in the deserted corridor was Izumo Kamizuki, 'local goth leader' with his girlfriend, according to Iruka.
I deduced from that that the black tornado had been Iruka's cousine. Said Iruka spotted the newcomer.
"Izumo? What's going on?"
The called took a second to stare at me, look at my bruise and imperceptibly salute me with a nod before answering. "There's going to be bloody news if Emily isn't stopped."
He didn't seemed to have the desire to stop her. We walked closer from the now open door, and we managed, somehow or other, to fit at four in the treshold.
This was a normal-looking newspaper office, with desks, blackboards covered with notes, computers and pens. What was going on inside didn't seem 'normal'. Us excepted, there were only two people in the room: a girl, maybe the local editor in chief, seated on a normal desk chair, and an other girl, leaning so far over the other girl that they were nose to nose, smiling in a rather... weird manner, but which somehow fitted her 'classy vampire' look. With such a smile, I was close to think she was one of us - it looked too much like Kodia's smile. The vampire-girl leaned forward on the other girl, murmuring a litany of threats which managed to give me shivers to her ear, shaking the arms' chair for emphasis.
"Emily?" cut Iruka. "Emily, what are you doing?"
Emily let go of her grasp on her prey and straithgned up lithly in a move that looked like a dance. I noted she was holding a copy of the newspaper. And I noted after that, hadn't I knew she was already in a relation, I would have pushed my luck even if it meant having my blood sucked to death. Zabuza put a well-aimed elbow in my ribs.
"Shut it you're drooling."
Emily and Iruka were talking in english, just the two of them. She seemed to be in a cold rage, he seemed to be completly lost. Izumo had slipped in the room, and was kepping an eye on the girl shaking in her chair.
Appartenly, what Iruka and Emily were talking about concerned the last newspaper, the one which had been released Monday. Iruka ended by taking the copy his cousin was wielding, and I came closer from him. I read the charged article over his shoulder - and suddenly I had the irrepressible urge to do like my new vampire friend, but with much less subtlity. Understand here that I would jumped the 'threat' square to go directly on the 'body harm' one. The article under my eyes was relating the 'event' of last Thursday in such a twisted way I couldn't even begin to qualify it, twisting reality to heap all the pieces of slander roaming the corridors onto the guy next to me who was finishing reading - the joints of his closed fists on the paper turning white.
Iruka rolled the newspaper in a ball after having finished reading, his teeth clenched tight , and glared death to the still sitting girl.
But he didn't say anything. He turned and left the room.
Everyone left, and I waited until just Zabuza was waiting for me at the door to got closer from the editor. I leaned forward, resting against the arms' chair, putting my mouth just against her ear.
"If I ever heard of an article such as this one again," I sighed langourously,"you can be sure I'd make a it a point of honor to put my friend's threats into the reality realm."
Then I left.
In the corridor, Emily had her arms around Iruka, and Izumo a hand on his shoulder. Izumo glanced my way before they left all three. We didn't follow them - Zabuza and me were de trop for now.
"What was the meaning of all that?" he asked me, frowing.
"Apart from the fact that some people held a grudge against Iruka, I don't have the slighest idea."
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'I'm the cliffhanger whore!' Genjyo Sanzo comes from Gensoumaiden Saiyuki, welcome to him. Questions, horrors' shouts, complaints and protests welcome too.