AN So the general consensus is that I should keep writing as is. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice and feedback!
000
Returning to Konoha was nothing like going home. I could still remember that the word home should be accompanied by concepts and feelings like "peace," "safety," "love," and "family." That seeing Konoha's walls in the light of the setting sun should be accompanied by a feeling of relief or happiness. I was neither dumb nor had I forgotten what emotions were. However.
My heart sat dead in my chest.
That was safety. That protected me from…from vulnerability, useless anger, feeling regret like Yūgao had. No, there was nothing to regret in a job done. We had been ordered to kill, we had fulfilled that direction. At that thought a small amount of warmth entered my heart. Satisfaction. The only thing that would be missing was Danzo-sama's "Well done." At that thought the warmth died. Not that it mattered.
We checked into ANBU headquarters and gave a short debriefing. After getting changed into civilian clothing Yūgao and I headed towards her house. Unfortunately, someone ran into us on the way there.
The man swept Yūgao up into a hug in the middle of the street, garnering stares. "You're back!" he crowed, and then released her.
Yūgao gave him a playful shove to the chest. "Hayate! There's no need to make a big deal about it. We weren't gone that long."
"I know, but I'm always happy to—wait, we?" He looked at me. I was henged into my "Yugao's cousin" disguise. "Oh. You have your limpet with you."
I had no idea if he was trying to get a rise out of me, using "limpet" as a form of endearment, or simply using the first common phrase that came to his mind. Whichever, I was a little insulted. Limpets brought to mind small children hanging onto their mother's skirts. I wasn't exactly tied to Yūgao out of any strong bond of fear or love.
"If I had a place of greater convenience to go, I assure you I would, Gekkō-san."
He flushed a little "I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it."
"Apology accepted." I dismissed the subject.
"Would you like to come to dinner?" Yūgao asked him hopefully.
"Oh, um." His eyes went back and forth between hers and mine. It didn't take a genius to know who the pro was and who the con was in his internal debate. Personally, the thought of having to interact with him throughout a meal was painful. I decided to remove myself from his considerations.
"I'm not very hungry." I said. "I'm going to get vendor food and then go to bed."
"You don't need to do that, really." Yūgao protested.
"I'm not doing it for you." I told her, watching as both of them winced simultaneously. "I'm really not hungry."
"Al-alright," she said, before turning back to Hayate with a questioning look.
I was already walking away as he accepted her offer. I had soon sped up into a power walk, and suddenly I wanted to run. Run until I dropped. I knew that would only draw attention to myself, so I had to content myself with tapping my foot rapidly as I waited for the nearest vendor I saw to hand me something hot and oily in a napkin. Then I prowled around a bit until I found a nice little blind alley that went behind a building. There was trash piled up against the farthest wall but I got as close to it as I could. It didn't really lessen the directions someone could come at me from—a person could burst through any of the walls or even come at me from underground, but it made me feel slightly safer nonetheless. I turned my Byakugan on just in case. I leaned against the slightly dirty stone wall to eat and soon found myself mulling over the whole situation.
I knew I wasn't the most pleasant dinner guest. I barely spoke, leaving Yūgao to essentially talk to herself most of the time. I sometimes cooked, but Yūgao wanted to be a good host and not have her guest cooking, which created more work for her. She was an earnest twenty-year old and I could acknowledge her stubbornness, seeing as she hadn't given up on me yet. But really, I was wearing out my welcome and my store of food at her place was almost gone anyway.
Hayate had come over once before, and that had been uncomfortable, as most of my interactions with people were. We were all in ANBU together, so he knew my situation, but that didn't stop him from being surprised at the way I behaved. And eyeing me throughout the whole meal. Whenever he wasn't looking at Yūgao, that is.
And that was the crux of the matter. I was an oddity. In ROOT my behavior was perfectly normal. Not remarked upon. Not given second glances. In fact it was encouraged and seen as professional. And now here I was being expected to adapt to a whole different set of social expectations. But none of it mattered.
I tapped my heel against the wall as I thought. What I really wanted to do was kick it as hard as I could, but that would probably damage both the wall and my foot, which I didn't want to deal with.
Missions mattered. People didn't matter. Talking didn't matter except to relay information about missions. Social expectations were pointless and I knew that and still it made me feel like I was doing something wrong whenever someone wanted to talk to me. I was made to feel like there was something wrong with me because of something unimportant. Every time I interacted with anyone.
My tapping had increased in rapidity and strength. I stilled my leg, forcing myself to calm down and breathe a little slower. And chew my last bites a little slower. It was fine. Soon I could stop going to Yūgao's house for meals and subsist off of what little I could store at ANBU headquarters day to day. It would be fine.
The fact was, I could "act" normal. I had gone on enough infiltration missions and still remembered enough about social interaction from….somewhere that I could ape being a cheerful girl. But that was tiring. And the motivation would be to fit it and have people stop acting like there was something wrong with the way I acted. And I didn't, or shouldn't, care about what they thought about me. It had only been about a month since I'd been taken out of ROOT and I was already getting more flustered than I should be at other people's reactions. I just didn't know how to handle it. I wasn't on an infiltration mission, which meant I shouldn't have to act, and yet people weren't treating me the way I'd been treated for as long as I could remember now. And that made me feel like I should change something, but I knew that in reality nobody was…..
I jerked my head back and knocked it against the wall, but that didn't stop me from completing the thought
…nobody was going to treat me like Danzo-sama did. No matter what I changed, they'd taken him away from me. But they wouldn't take the "me" that he approved of away from me. I wasn't going to change my behavior or heart. He was "safety" and "family." He was everything.
My hands balled into fists, the napkin getting crumpled in my right hand. I turned around and back up a step, considering the wall. The spot where I hit my head throbbed just a little. I touched the back of my head with my left hand, but it came back clean, which was good. I hadn't hit it hard enough to break the skin. I left the alley and found a trash can to throw the napkin away in.
I was making my way back to ANBU headquarters when a member of the Uchiha police stopped me.
"Hey kid, are your parents ok with you being out after dark?" She asked.
"Yeah." I lied. I did not want to deal with this right now. I couldn't tell her I was in ANBU, and I wasn't supposed to be out as myself without a visible ANBU escort either. If I told her who I was, then she'd most likely take me straight to the Hyūga compound, which was not an option in my mind. So pretending to be just a kid was the only option I had. In a situation like this, I had to act. It was part of protecting my official cover, which made it an imperative.
"Where do you live?" She asked.
I named an apartment complex close to where ANBU headquarters were. "I'm going home now," I offered, "and I'm really fine on my own."
She looked skeptical. Which, ok, Konoha is a pretty safe place to live compared to other Hidden Villages, but it is still a big village that the average ten year old girl probably should not be wandering around in by herself at night.
"I'm in the ninja academy, and I'm pretty good at taijutsu." I said, radiating confidence. A kid even half-competent at taijutsu could overpower your average untrained civilian mugger. Unfortunately, that was somehow the wrong thing to say, because her face hardened.
"Right. I'm going to escort you home." She said disapprovingly.
Well, darn….if I ran with the intent of losing her I'd have to show off evasion skills the average academy student wouldn't have, which would raise warning flags and probably have her raise an alarm. On the other hand I didn't know anyone in the apartment complex I just named. So I was going to have to tell her that I lied about living there. Which would also make her suspicious.
Of course, the fact that I was hesitating at all right now while trying to think of a way to salvage the situation meant that she was going to get suspicious.
"Right, what are you not telling me?" She was tensing, just a little. She didn't think I was a threat, yet, but her thoughts were clearly going in that direction.
"I lied! I'm sorry!" I blurted out. "My parents died in the Kyūbi attack and I live with my cousin and she doesn't know that I'm out right now. We live over there," I pointed in the direction of Yugao's apartment. "and I just wanted to…go out, I don't know! She never lets me out after dark. Please don't tell her." I managed to force tears to come to my eyes for extra effect.
"Of course I'm telling her, and I'm taking you home right now." Left unspoken went the fact that if I was lying again I was going to be in some serious trouble.
She marched me all the way there and knocked sharply on the door. I could hear laughter cut off, a sound of scrambling and a "Just a minute!"
"She's on a date." I muttered. The police woman shot me a glare.
Yugao opened the door hesitantly. When she saw me sullenly standing there and who I was with, she got the biggest look of surprise on her face.
"Hi—" she stopped herself from saying my name just in time, switching it out with another "Hisami-chan!"
I went to walk in with a grumpy "tadaima" but the police woman caught my shoulder. My, she was being thorough.
"You know who this is?" The Uchiha woman watched both of us. "What's your relation?"
"She's my cousin, Uchiha-san. Was she doing something wrong?"
The lady let go of me and relaxed, "No, no, other than being out without your permission of course. Sorry to bother you, I just thought I should escort her home."
I squeezed myself past Yūgao, kicked off my shoes and threw myself on the couch in the living room like an angry teenager. Hayate was smirking at the table.
Laugh it up, fuzzball…Where did that come from?
Yugao finished thanking the police lady and promising to punish me before shutting the door and turning around. After waiting for about thirty seconds both she and Hayate started laughing. I was already in the bathroom changing into my ANBU gear, which I always had sealed into a scroll on my person. If anyone stopped me in that all I had to do was show my tattoo.
By the time I came out she was back at the table, but they were still laughing about it.
"Sorry to interrupt." I murmured, snatching up my shoes.
"Wait, wait! What happened?" Yūgao giggled.
"I was returning to ANBU headquarters when a member of the Uchiha police stopped me at approximately 7:15 pm. I convinced her that I was a random girl, but could not convince her that I didn't need her assistance. She insisted on escorting me home." I reported clinically. No need to tell her all the details.
Hayate shook his head, but didn't say anything.
"Well, go on home now," Yūgao said, and then started laughing again so she could barely finish her sentence "and don't be out too late!" That made Hayate crack a smile again.
I left post-haste and made it back to headquarters with no further incident. At least the squad room was empty. Tenzo only slept there when we got back to Konoha either really late or in the wee hours of the morning, so I was glad this wasn't one of those days.
000
The next morning Tenzo came into the squad room with some paperwork in his hands.
"We're getting a new squad member, Hikaru-chan."
I glanced at him from where I was doing push-ups on the floor. He took my silence as an invitation to provide more information.
"His name is Tadao Hyūga."
Uup. Down. Uup. Down. The name didn't ring a bell. Uuuuup. Down. If he was a Hyūga it was unlikely he'd stay at the barracks at all, which meant I'd continue having the room to myself. He had a compound to go back to after all.
"We're going to meet him at noon today at Training Ground 10."
"Hai." I bit out. Three more. I could stop after three more.
Tenzo was still there when I let myself collapse onto the floor. I rolled over and tilted my head back to look at him, which made it look like he was standing on the ceiling.
"Do you know him?" He asked me. "He's a member of the main house."
"No."
"He used to be in ANBU, but he's been a Jonin instructor for the past seven years. He's coming back to help fill up the shortage left by the ROOT purge."
I sat up and then got to my feet, turning to face Tenzo as I stretched out my arms. That was a nice explanation, but I smelled politics at work here as well. A Hyūga main house member randomly assigned to our squad? It wasn't impossible, but it seemed a bit unlikely.
Tenzo gave up at conversation over my blank face. "Anyway," he said, "I'll see you then."
"Hai, taicho."
000
Tadao Hyūga was a man in his early thirties, which meant he'd distinguished himself early on to have been in and out of ANBU by his early twenties. He had long dark brown hair pulled up into a topknot, a thin nose, and, of course, the color of his eyes went without saying. His mask was Monkey.
Introductions were brief and then we ran through a team building exercise. Tadao asked to speak to Tenzo and me afterwards. Yūgao left with a jaunty wave.
"So, what did you want to say to us?" Tenzo asked.
"I don't mean to step over your role as team captain, but I was assigned to this squad was so that I could help Hikaru-chan with her Gentle Fist style, since she isn't spending any time training at home." Tadao told him. "Do you have any objections?"
Even though he tacked on the question at the end, it was clear he didn't expect any resistance to the arrangement. Well, he wasn't off the mark.
"No. I have no problem with you overseeing her taijutsu training." Tenzo said.
So I wasn't wrong about his assignment to our squad being beyond random selection. I thought.
"When do you have free time?" Tadao asked me.
"Most of my time is free time." I informed him. "I eat meals, sleep, go on missions, and make periodic walks around town with either Yūgao or Tenzo openly escorting me to cement the fact that I'm back and being protected. Other than that, I have nothing to do but train."
"That makes it convenient." Tadao looked pleased. "Do you have time right now?"
"Yes."
"Show me your opening stance." I did so. Tadao immediately had corrections to make. Tenzo left us to it.
For the next week and beyond Tadao was correcting me on lots of fine details of stance and form that I'd unintentionally let slip during my time in ROOT, which meant lots of pausing and adjusting. As restful as that sounds, Tadao still ran me into the ground every day. That intense level of training was almost like being in ROOT again.
Tadao was not particularly chatty with me, so I didn't have any problems with interacting with him until our next mission.
000
There were three bases belonging to Orochimaru within Fire Country that ANBU had the location of, and did periodic checks on just in case he came back to one of them. Any signs of activity would be treated with extreme caution and if there was the slightest hint that the snake summoner himself was there then we were to retreat and call for the Hokage himself. Konoha had a responsibility to put down her missing-nin, and to be honest we didn't want anyone else collecting the bounty on his head either. The fact that he was still out there made Konoha look bad too.
Both Monkey and I turned our Byakugan on after we got closer to the entrance of the base we'd been assigned to check up on. It little more than a crevice in the stony ground. Monkey was a little rusty with his ANBU hand signals, but he conveyed to Tiger-taicho that there were six shinobi inside. None of them had sannin level chakra reserves. I signaled taicho that it looked like at least two of them had Jonin level reserves. From the schematics we'd memorized beforehand, it looked like they were all clustered in the largest chamber.
Then Monkey indicated, very emphatically, his opinion that I should stay outside and keep watch.
"Why?" Tiger signaled.
"Inexperienced. Handicapped." Went the response.
Tiger shook his head. "Capable." He signaled. "Discuss later." Then he gave us our formation. Diamond pattern, with himself taking point, me on the right, Leopard on the left, and Monkey taking rear.
I could see Monkey's chakra wavering with displeasure, but he fell in position. Then we slipped in like shadows.
It was pitch black inside, save for the shafts of sunlight coming in from the entrance. I knew from reports there were brackets for torches on the walls, and had the place been empty we could've lit them up. As it was, we'd all memorized the layout and would have to navigate from that. We crept forward silently and steadily until we were close enough to hear voices echoing and see light up ahead. Tiger signaled for us to halt, and then he melted into the dirt wall in the hallway and went on ahead. He went upward until he was just above ceiling level, and then forward. I watched as he bent down just a little, sticking his head through the ceiling for a look and a listen. Then he came back.
"Iwa nin" he signaled to us. "Capture if possible."
Not all missing nin put a nice identifying slash through their headbands, so we couldn't be sure if we were dealing with an infiltration or just a bunch of dropouts. Taking them on a trip to T&I would straighten things out.
We had a quick pow-wow where we drew out where the targets were standing in the room for Leopard and picked out our targets. Then we went in.
Branches sprouted from the ground to entrap our opponents as soon as we entered the chamber, but only succeeded in capturing two of the ninja. The remaining four scattered. They had been gathered around a small campfire built on the floor. The room was filled with tanks of glass—some still filled with sickly green liquid and some broken open with glass scattered around them on the floor. The campfire didn't cast much light, leaving most of the room in shadow, making it seem larger. The tanks in the light cast long shadows behind them, which stretched and eventually melded into the general darkness behind.
The ninja nearest to me tried to slip into this glass forest and I went after her. She looked to be about fifteen, which meant that she had less of a reach than an adult. That would make things easier for me. I swung my fist at her jawline, going for a quick knockout. There was a moment of contact—my skin scraping against her rough rock-covered arm. She had both hands and forearms covered in stone, and I felt the air whoosh by as I ducked under her other fist. A quick jab to the side of her knee wasn't enough cause her to fall, but it did knock her off balance for a few seconds, which let me grab her ankle and yank to off the ground while turning around, simultaneously drawing a kunai with my left hand and stabbing that into the side of her other knee and twisting. This left me crouched basically underneath her. She had one foot off the ground and the other no longer able to support her weight, so I let go of her ankle and rolled forward hastily as she collapsed to the ground.
This took all of five seconds, but the fight wasn't quite over yet. She still had use of her hands.
I substituted myself with a large piece of glass lying a few feet away and was rewarded by the sound of shattering as she made a spike come out of the ground where I had been crouched a moment earlier. I took a second to appreciate usefulness of the Byakugan: even though I'd been facing away from her I could see her weaving handsigns, helping me to avoid her jutsu.
I threw a kunai at her head as I advanced, more to keep her occupied with deflecting it with her rock-guarded forearms than actually intending to hit her. It stuck, she pulled it out and threw it back, and I deflected it easily…right into the glass tank I was walking beside. Where it exploded.
My head knocked against another tank and I heard ringing in my ears before I registered that she'd added an explosive tag to the handle. My heart rate kicked up as I scrambled up, getting glass in my palms, before flying forward.
I had been planning on just knocking her out, or at most pinning her hands to the ground with my kunai, but now I wanted something a bit more final. I drew my tanto, ignoring the pain in my hand as I gripped the handle. Ignoring the pain all over my left side. There wasn't time to check my status. I needed to end this fight now.
And then I had to stop myself from slicing Monkey's back open and skid painfully when he appeared on top of her and knocked her lights out with a punch. My tanto clattered on the ground and Monkey made a little "Umpf" sound as I ran into his back.
I winced as I backed up and picked up my tanto. Status: Headache, ringing ears, lacerations and burn damage to arm, leg, shoulder, and collarbone on the left side. Minor cuts to left ear and cheek, and neck. Glass in my hands and possibly in my other wounds. My armor had protected my side and chest.
"Are you alright?" Monkey asked.
"Yes." I said. No arteries were hit and nothing was immediately life threatening. Cleaning the wounds out and applying bandages would be a good idea in the near future, but I wasn't about to die. That counted as "alright."
"Don't run away now!" A man called out.
I whirled towards the voice and saw Monkey shunshin away.
He heard the explosion and left in the middle of his fight to come check up on me. My hand twitched as I sheathed my tanto.
I filed the information under "Discuss later" and went over to the downed girl to administer first aid to her leg. It wouldn't do to have her bleed out. My hands trembled and I got blood on the bandages before I even touched her. Leopard finished up her fight while I was pulling the knot tight, grimacing and leaving more spots of blood behind, and I watched her and her chakra move in a streak of light as she went back to the campfire to make sure the two shinobi we'd captured there hadn't broken free.
The adrenalin in my system ran out and I knew I wasn't going to do any good in any other fight, so I grabbed the girl by her collar, lifted her up enough that her head wouldn't bounce on the ground as I went, and started dragging her over there. Leopard moved again, going to assist Monkey. It took me about five minutes to get to the dying campfire, moving slowly and picking my way around broken glass, but by that time all the enemies were down.
I was lowering my opponent to the ground when the others arrived with their opponents over their shoulders, and the power difference between me and then was never more apparent. None of them had a scratch on them.
I … managed. I was capable. But nothing more than that.
I was ten.
I had to remember that. I was useful, for my age. Still, I felt older. I felt like I should be much better than I was.
Tiger snapped his fingers in front of my face and I realized I was zoning out.
"Sit down before you fall over." He ordered.
I did. Yūgao came over and started tugging my bracers and gloves off of me. I noticed that at some point Tiger had bound the rest of the shinobi in branches and someone had put knockout tags on all of them for good measure.
"I'm going to need tweezers, guys." Yūgao said as she inspected my hands. "But I don't think she's cut deeply enough to damage her hands permanently."
And that was the ninja way of looking at things showing through. You'd think she'd have looked at the rest of me first, but for a ninja taking care of hand injuries was very important. Handseals were most ninja's bread and butter, with the exception of the few capable of doing ninjutsu without seals. Yūgao did move on quickly though and started running a green hand over the rest of my left side.
"You shouldn't have left your fight for me." I said to Monkey. Tiger pushed his mask to the side of his face and raised his eyebrows at him.
Monkey's chakra sputtered and I belatedly realized I should turn my Byakugan off. No need for it anymore. "Of course I should've. You're important."
"I'm not talking about my worth." I snapped. "I'm talking about procedure. Besides, since you were watching you should've seen that I was taking care of my target."
In the silence that followed Yūgao unsealed a roll of bandages.
"I healed the wounds without glass in them, but I'm just going to wrap the rest." She murmured.
"You were about to kill her." He said.
"I was about to cut off her hands. Which may have killed her. If that didn't succeed I was going to kill her." I paused. "I admit it might not have been in my power to finish the fight without killing her, but I figured that we already had at least two live ninja to take back to Interrogation." My vision was starting to turn fuzzy around the edges. I decided not to mention it.
"She's right." Tenzo said.
Tadao started turning red. "Look at how injured she is! She shouldn't be fighting even chunin level ninja. I knew that before the fight started; I've known that from her taijutsu level. I was protecting her."
"But you put yourself in danger." Tenzo said. "You let yourself become distracted. It's fortunate your opponent was an idiot and chose to taunt you instead of taking full advantage of it. Then he would've gone after Owl and she would've died. Owl is fully capable of protecting herself. She's a member of this team. She might not be up to the level we are, but she is skilled enough to get by at the very least."
"You're callous." Tadao said heatedly.
"No, I'm not. I understand it feels different. You're used to teaching kids older than her and letting them grow, but ultimately controlling the fights they encounter. Owl-chan—look, never mind. I need to talk to you later, in private. We shouldn't be having this discussion right now—"
"Owl-chan?" Yūgao's hands bracketed my shoulders. Her voice was very loud and sudden, but I focused on that and breathing slowly as my vision slowly wavered in and out. "Are you alright?"
"Give me a minute." I said. "I'm trying to not black out."
"You must've lost more blood than I realized." Yūgao fretted.
I hated getting cut up. It didn't even have to be deep to be debilitating. It took three more minutes, but I pulled through and my vision returned to normal. They all insisted that I not help carry anyone back to Konoha though, so I was left with my hands free while they all had a double load.
Yūgao finished treating me back at ANBU headquarters, and then she insisted that I bring things to sleep over at her place. I packed a little overnight bag.
On the way to her apartment she took us by the market and bought meat and dark greens. I made a mental note about the expense. I napped while she cooked, and when I woke up the smell set my stomach growling. It was a good meal.
000
Back at ANBU Headquarters:
"She needs to feel like she's part of the team after what she went through." Tenzo said, standing with arms folded. He briefly thought this might be easier if he could tell the other man he was speaking from personal experience, but there was no use dwelling on it. "Your telling me in front of her like that, that you don't think she's good for anything but guard duty was the exact opposite of what she needed. And then if I had done it, she'd feel like an outsider and a burden."
The frustrating thing was, he had been about to assign her to stand watch when the other man had so tactlessly given his suggestion. He'd seen Hikaru-chan stiffen in response, and immediately knew that it was no longer the best option. He told himself he'd keep an eye on her in the ensuing fight though, and then things hadn't turned out as planned.
"I don't see eye to eye with you," Tadao said stiffly, "I think that if she saw we were looking out for her she'd still feel like part of a team. However, I'll respect your authority as team captain."
Tenzo sighed. "We can talk more about this later, when the situation isn't so raw. You're free to go."
000
I would've been lying if I didn't admit to feeling an easing in my stomach when we were given an infiltration mission a week and a half later. As long as things didn't go south, this was going to be a lot less stressful for me. An infiltration was just putting on another mask for a while. I could do that pretty well.
000
AN: I was going to introduce another Hyūga OC, but in the end I decided I'd rather keep and develop a previously introduced character. It may be unrealistic, but I think it's better to have a smaller character pool that's better developed than have loads and loads of characters that you don't interact with much. I was even considering having their new squad member be Kō, but decided against it. For those of you who don't remember who Tadao is, he was mentioned briefly in Hiashi's viewpoint spiel as the one who was guarding her when she was kidnapped by ROOT, and he also knows about her being reincarnated.
Gal: I will! :)