Chapter Twenty-Eight
The team photo was a trainwreck, and that was just the beginning.
Well, not quite. We didn't really have problems until we began training that day. Even then—even then our second impressions could have been salvaged.
I guess there are more specific ways to describe our team's first day together. Well, then.
Yakumo wanted center stage in the photo. Her reasoning was that she was the tallest of us genin. That sounded fine to me. It was just a picture, and I didn't particularly care about our team's arrangement. Kato, however, took offence.
The Hatake family viewed art as a rather pointless frivolity (or rather, there had still been nails in the wall when I'd first arrived at the house, and I suspect that any hasty removal of inherited decorations in years past was eventually regretted). The exception, or rather the textbook example of this was the two seals hanging in the bedrooms. The sealwork was absolutely gorgeous, and I'd spent most of my life wondering if I could ever achieve that level of finesse. That question was immaterial, but it's telling that I stared at those seals for a full decade before observing that the one in my room filtered air, and the one in Daddy's room kept tabs on chakra signatures in a wide radius around our house.
In light of the seals, it's surprising that we didn't have racks of weapons on every spare inch of the house. Still, even with a parent who refused (wisely) to install any of my decorative seals, we did have one "useless" piece of nostalgia. Daddy's old team photograph was framed on his wall. Unsurprisingly, it had achieved godlike status.
Anything that survives toddlers and ANBU is pretty special. Anything purely decorative in our house is pretty special, too.
In the wonders of The Photo, Rin took center stage. It was Kato's opinion that like Rin, I deserved to be in the middle (This statement, I privately reflected, was not completely inaccurate).
Somehow, the difference of opinion turned into a vehement argument that only grew more and more heated.
Shisui rolled his eyes after a few minutes of the pointless fight, winked at me, and disappeared unnoticed. My teammates were moving on to straight insults when our sensei returned with two bags of popcorn. Hm. It appeared that being friends with Shisui might just pay off.
The photo itself was simple enough. Yakumo got to stand in the middle, and Kato picked his side. I ended up where Obito had stood in Daddy's old team, and when Kato shoved Yakumo at the last second, I managed to avoid her. Kato glared, Yakumo bit out a retort, I accidentally smiled like Mona Lisa, and Shisui stood in the back and emphatically did not give any bunny ears.
Doom, I predicted. Even Daddy's current team had a better chance at health and happiness. Teamwork? Unlikely.
The poor photographer waved us away, and Shisui led us to his favorite training ground.
Just like yesterday, we ended up beside the Nana River. This put us within earshot of the Uchiha Compound, which was, of course, empty save a few stray cats and birds. Sasuke must have left a long time ago for his first day of training.
It's hysterical that Daddy would take hours to finally reveal himself to his team. He used to have all sorts of planned excuses for everything he could possibly be late for. This lateness never extended to us twins, because once I made certain that he understood that bottles were never going to be late, he simply never fell out of the habit. I am overjoyed that the constant visits to the Memorial Stone were eventually given less priority than time with us. Still, his private time was spent talking to his deceased friends and that was what he'd be up to right now. Albeit combined with a few inches of paperwork. I suppose that's what promotions do to you. Or so.
Once we'd arrived in the proper clearing, Shisui assigned us our first training regimen. We were all going to stretch. Next, we'd work on some of the forms and moves required for the basics of bladed combat. Kato and I had been doing this for six years. He was understandably disappointed. Finally, a jōnin sensei—a famous one, even—and once again, absolutely no chance to show off. This was murder for a boy as driven to please as he was.
Frankly, I could hardly have cared less. The only test of patience I cared about was the ongoing battle of wills between my stubborn brother and our older teammate. They'd been on even ground during the photography part of the day, but it wasn't hard to imagine that things were about to change. As the Hokage had told me once or twice, teams are chosen to balance each other out. As Kato and I hadn't exactly graduated early from lack of effort, I had a few hunches about Yakumo. A few of them had been addressed last night while I'd fished in some of my usual ponds for information. Until my nondescript civilian disguise started getting male attention, which was weird.
Unfortunately for Yakumo, she was indeed a beginner to armed combat. Kato very wisely chose not to mention this. Yakumo decided he was being patronizing. Yakumo shared her opinion with the world at large.
Kato looks and acts so much like Kakashi that it's easy to forget the major differences in personality. For example, Daddy is able to flat-out ignore other people's attitudes. Kato is not. Kato doesn't have the fundamental apathy of the Hatake family (I think he takes after Sakumo, though). He has a strong drive for action, if not harmony. So where Daddy would have just ignored the bait, Kato couldn't. And unlike me, who would usually calm down the offender, Kato wouldn't think that far ahead. Case in point.
"Shut up," the brown-haired girl snapped. "Like you're doing any better." She hissed and adjusted her grip yet again.
Kato's face twisted in confusion. Perfect he was not, but the tip of his tantō hadn't wavered out of position, whereas the tip of hers hadn't done more than droop. "Ah—" Kato glanced at me for support. I rolled my eyes. "I am, actually. Can you even hold your tantō upright?"
If I hadn't spent the entire morning learning just how vindictive my brother could be, I would have been shocked. This was a girl, not our mother! A virtual stranger. A neutral party. Or at least she had been, at one point.
"Sorry for not being trained before I could talk," the no-longer-neutral party returned. "My clan doesn't believe in infant soldiers."
"No wonder I've never heard of your clan," my brother muttered under his breath in a tone that really shouldn't have carried. But it did. Quite clearly, as it happened.
"How dare you!" she yelled, and just like that, she attacked us. It wasn't a bad attempt. She almost got under Kato's guard with one of the more piercing of the screams. I backed out of the way to give her better odds.
Kato dodged and blocked until he'd had enough and finally lifted his blade to retaliate. Unlike her, he had the presence of mind to use a basic strike. It was a simple diagonal slice. Any beginner should have seen the swing in plenty of time and countered. Yakumo, however, took the idiom "blind rage" a bit too literally. She wasn't going to pull up, and because Kato had never pulled a stroke in his life and didn't seem likely to start now, I had a split second to react.
And that was how I got on my entire team's bad side.
"They're idiots!" I ranted to Daddy that evening. "Rude, insensitive, prejudiced, immature, blockheaded—ugh!"
"You know," Daddy replied carefully, "Kato is right in the backyard. He's not deaf."
"I put a genjutsu on him," I explained. "But Yakumo is so touchy! I get that her clan is underrated these days, and it's fine that she doesn't have stamina. She doesn't have to delude herself into thinking that it's my fault! I can hold my own in a fight. I can run laps. I can use genjutsu better than she can. It doesn't mean she gets to hate me from day one!"
Daddy let me rant and was kind enough not to collapse on our couch. His hair was singed.
"I can befriend almost anyone when I use a henge. Kids, adults, the spy we caught that one time. Anyone! And yet she hates me, and Kato hates her now, and they're both mad I stopped them from maiming each other, and Shisui thinks I just got frustrated, and—"
The raised eyebrow really says a lot.
"Shisui-sensei," I corrected myself. "He thinks I lost my temper and attacked both of my teammates. Both of them! If that had been your team, would you have jumped to that conclusion?"
The eyebrow didn't lower. "Considering that you put a genjutsu on your brother, I don't think you want to hear my reply."
"Well, after I saved them both from twin visits to the hospital, they both attacked me. Kato stopped holding back. I couldn't just stand there."
"So that's why your brother has that bandage?"
This seemed like a good time to change the subject. "All that aside, how was Naruto-kun today? Did the catfights continue?" I headed into the kitchen. Hm, did we have anything edible in the fridge? Peas and eggs. Lovely. We'd already had mame gohan more times than was acceptable for the season, though, so I might be forced to wade into the pantry.
Daddy's voice said he wasn't fooled, but as usual, he let the subject change to what I'd suggested. The subject, not his pointed remarks. "It could have been worse. There could have been a three-way brawl."
Oh, boo, quit rubbing it in. Kato and I would apologize to each other tonight. Over ten years of sharing a room had brought us to the point where we couldn't sleep while we were still mad at each other. One way or another, we'd resolve our differences. Tonight's talk was going to be harsh. Oh, well. Maybe I could win him over during supper. Maybe I could win over myself. There were more appealing things than apologizing to someone I still found frustrating.
Food, I reminded myself. Chocolate. Ice cream raids before bed. All were plausible ideas to lift moods, but we didn't have chocolate and that last one wasn't a possibility when Daddy was home. I'd have to make a dessert, instead. One with ice cream. But enough thoughts of happy bliss.
"It was four-way for a few minutes," I said as cheerily as I could manage. "You know, I think Shisui-sensei showed you up today. He used five or six new disarming techniques." I walked over to the sink to wash the required pan—interesting. Something must have happened after breakfast this morning. Daddy hated dirty dishes nearly as much as he hated sloppy weaponry habits.
"I can't show you everything," my father mumbled. He yawned. "I have a late night tonight. Wake me up when you're ready. Better yet, just let me sleep until you're done fighting."
"Boo," I replied. He headed to his bedroom, pulling down his mask to rub at the stubble it hid. "You should shave," I said.
"You should finish your fight," he countered. "Or it will finish you."
He collapsed on his bed (really, what was with his current schedule?!) and I listened as his breathing went through the usual cycle of winding down. There's something wonderful about hearing one's loved ones relax into sleep. Of course, getting supper at a decent hour is pretty nice, too, so I dried off the pan and began my honed skill of ninja meal improvisation. It's telling that I knew the Academy's so-called ten most common poisons before I was a student, isn't it? Some things are learned best in the kitchen.
Kato walked in the back door like a grumpy storm cloud when my concoction was nearly ready, and I rolled my eyes. "Don't wake Daddy up," I warned him.
"Like he can't smell," Kato muttered. He stepped around me and headed to our room, where he took off his weapons and tossed a novel he'd been "researching" for the last few days. Daddy did roll over when Kato turned on the shower, but evidently my cooking wasn't enough to tempt him awake.
I'd set the table and was mostly done with dessert when Kato came into the kitchen in a grumpy cloud of steam. "Cream anmitsu?" he asked.
I huffed. "If you don't want it—"
He cocked his head at me. My eyes narrowed.
"The genjutsu," he said at length. "You removed it when I came in, right?"
I jammed my thumb into the first of a long line of shiratama dango balls. Oops. Too hard. "Nope." I rolled the small lump of dough between my palms and pressed it down again.
"Seriously? I thought I felt something when I walked past you."
"Your temper? Because I didn't do anything."
"Besides attacking me this morning."
I scooped up half of the dango balls and dropped them into my boiling water.
Kato plopped himself down at our scratched kitchen table. He was wearing one of my shirts. I suppose that should have made me angry, but really, most of the clothes I owned were getting worn out, anyway. I tended to use a henge or genjutsu on them in public. The shirt he'd borrowed was sleeveless. That made sense, since his left arm had a bandage. I'd put that bandage there in both senses of the word.
"How's your arm?" I asked him.
He shrugged, then winced. "The cut must have stopped bleeding by now. I think I strained it."
The dango balls in the pan kept rolling each other over. They didn't seem to take offense.
Kato eyed his bandage. "Shisui-sensei was right."
On second thought, maybe they kept crowding each other in frustration, annoyed that none of them were actually showing signs of progress.
"It was kind of cool, wasn't it? Even though he'd disarmed Yakumo and me, you did that feint we always practiced together and she and I had time to recover. He was right, I shouldn't have come back for more. But it was worth it. Maybe next time we spar with Dad, we'll have some tricks."
Even two-on-one, we had absolutely no chance of ever beating our father. Not when he'd trained us.
"Wow," Kato commented. "You've really got a vendetta against Shisui-sensei."
I sent a scathing look his way. "How about you and Yakumo?"
Secure in his own personal prejudice, he shook his head. "I don't like Yakumo. She doesn't like me. But at least I didn't—"
The dango had risen to the surface, which meant it was time to exchange the cooked ones for the second batch. The cooked dango was destined for the fridge, where the rest of the anmitsu would stay until we were ready for ice cream. When I closed the door of the fridge, my brother's eyes were glowing. Or gleaming. Something.
"Sensei's an Uchiha," Kato observed with brilliance truly befitting his family name. "Come to think of it, you always used to hate Itachi-san." Something eerily close to wicked humor sparked. "I don't think you ever disliked anyone else that much." He smirked. "You have a thing for Uchiha boys."
"Hatake Wakato, I do not!" I shrieked. And then I realized what octave I'd just used. For the next ten seconds, I listened like my life depended on it. "He's still asleep but if you change that, you'll never wake up again."
Kato shook his head. "You used to talk to Itachi-san all the time, right?" Vicariously. Mostly secondhand. But often with weeks between, and rarely in person. "And now you refuse to talk to Sasuke, his younger brother." My twin looked at me slyly.
"I don't 'refuse' to talk to Sasuke," I argued, which was kind of a lie, "he's the one who never talks to me. We weren't in the same semester, so don't pretend that there's ever been a reason to talk."
Kato's expression didn't change. "What about the Academy tournament last month? You don't remember sparring with him? Or the mission survival drill? Didn't you and he get into a fi—"
"Kato, my best friend was an Uchiha."
He blinked.
I bristled. "No, not Itachi. Kiyomi. You know exactly who she was." She was the only Uchiha who'd ever apologized for the clan's actions the day they'd attacked me, and she hadn't even been at the meeting.
"Uh-huh." We lapsed into silence. I put the rest of the dango into the refrigerator and let the water cool. Kato leaned against the wall. The back of his chair settled into the groove he'd carved out of our kitchen's pale blue paint. "Cream anmitsu sounds nice," he said. His chair bounced gently.
I pulled an experimental heat-resistant seal out of a drawer, activated it, and stuck it onto the pan of rice. For whatever reason, the seal would amplify the existing heat of the pan without letting it spread to other surfaces. The details were a mystery, but at least that batch of experiments had ended up with a use. And were temporary and water-soluble.
"Sensei pushed us today," Kato observed.
Off the edge.
"He found out how far our patience goes."
We ate without Daddy, since he'd been serious about the "finish fighting" thing. If he hadn't been, he would have already woken up.
"Yakumo's really touchy," Kato continued quietly. "She doesn't have stamina, and I think that's why Shisui-sensei was mad at us for fighting. I strained my arm, but she looked pretty bad. It's a shame she focuses so much on her weakness."
I'd bet my share of the seal business that Shisui's anger had more to do with the fact that all three of us were happily fighting each other.
At this revelation, Kato actually stared at me in shock. "Kana, you mean you didn't notice him manipulating us?"
"You and Yakumo were doing fine on your own," I said mutinously. "You've been doing it the whole time. She has a chip on her shoulder, and you won't just shrug it off."
"You didn't notice? You didn't notice that Shisui-sensei egged us on?"
"I noticed my teammates fighting, and I didn't stop them!"
Daddy sighed into the following pause. I groaned. "Just eat, okay? I have to run some seals to Isami before she goes to bed. I'll be back by ten."
My brother shook his head firmly, an action that splattered the whole kitchen with droplets of water from his shower. "We're teammates now. Not twins. We have to trust each other."
"We always have," I reminded him. "We've been kidnapped, played pranks, shared our lives . . . we can't get rid of that."
His dark blue eyes bored into mine. "But if we were strangers, wouldn't you have acted differently today?"
If we'd been strangers. . . . Kids really did ask the wrong questions.
"I'm not joining your crusade against Yakumo," I said. "But I'll stop standing on the sidelines. I guess trying to mediate didn't work this morning. I'm sorry for what I didn't do, and what I did."
He blinked. "Wait, that's why you joined the fight? I thought you were trying to treat her as an equal or something. She tried a lot harder when both of were fighting."
"You only attacked her so that she'd think you respected her?"
"Well, that and I was getting tired of stretches. Shisui-sensei knows what he's doing."
I snorted. Whatever Shisui had wanted, he'd ended up with more than he'd bargained for. Yakumo had put her all into that fight. Kato had sustained a good slice on his arm, but Yakumo had come close to passing out. All three of us had bruises and bruised egos, thanks to Shisui's love of equality. He'd spent the rest of the day exhausting us mentally and giving us pointless tasks—Yakumo had "useless strings of hand seals," Kato had to identify when I released genjutsu on him, and I had to close my eyes and listen to Shisui throw kunai. In short, none of us lost touch with our tempers at any point of the entire day.
Kato and I ended up talking for the next hour instead of eating dessert, which meant at some point I'd have to boil the dango again. He even came with me to drop off the seals, although he kept his distance from "Suzume." He told me how his graduation exam had gone. I told him what Daddy had said about Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura.
"You know, you can't pretend the tournament didn't happen, Kana-chan. He's on our father's genin team now. He's not exactly going to go away."
I snorted.
~Mame gohan: a light Japanese dish consisting of peas (or any legume) and rice, typically served in the summer. In the story, it's currently late January. Hooray for greenhouses!
Cream anmitsu: a traditional summer dessert with cubes of agar jelly and a variety of other ingredients, such as fruits, mochi, endomame peas, black sugar syrup, and anko paste. Cream anmitsu specifically includes ice cream.
Shiratama dango: a type of mochi made of sweet rice flour, sugar, and water. The dough is rolled into small balls, pressed down in the middle, and boiled in water until the balls float. If not eaten within thirty minutes, the dango will harden and need to be reboiled.
Important note! FFN sends an email alert for each review given, but I only ever get about 80% of those alerts. The problem is, after I posted chapter 27, I started getting emails about reviews . . . and several of those reviews never showed up on the site or in the total review count. I've done my best to PM you guys the bonus material, but I don't know how many people slipped through the cracks. If you think you reviewed and were never sent bonus content, just let me know! I'm pretty sure I only replied to reviews today. If you're OCD like me, I might be able to send you your vanished review. :)
FANART alert! A dear anonymous reader sent me some awesome fanart, and for the sake of anonymity and your curiosity, it's been posted on my DeviantArt account "Genedie." There's a link in my profile. You should go check it out, because it kind of made me over the moon. I didn't realize how much I'd love getting fanart! Especially a cute little family shot. (Thanks again, reader friend.)
Dear anonymous reviewers: thanks for your input! Anonymoose (Ha, clever. Can't deny your observation. And Shisui and Kana are incapable of not bantering, I think. Don't worry, stories written in first person are always centered around the narrator. But yeah, focusing too much on following/thinking about canon gets really annoying really fast), Maxine (I get you. That was pretty young, wasn't it?), and Kumikocr (Hey hey, that's a good point. Although maybe I should consider just having no plot at all . . . nah. Sasuke should show up soon, and I'm sure Kakashi will have plenty of things to say when he wakes up).
Hey, some of you signed-in reviewers leave me long, thoughtful reviews but don't have private messaging enabled. If you want a reply, or the chapter's review incentive, please consider changing that setting! Sometimes I write a long reply before clicking on the reply to reviews link, and it's kind of sad to me. If you don't enable PM's, please let me know if I can reply to you the same way I do to anonymous reviews! (mdmichener, I have a long reply for you, if you want it. Too long to put up here.)
This chapter's review incentive/bonus content is Daddy!Kakashi fluff. Until next time, guys! Thank you so much for sticking with me all this time. :')
~Posted 6-9-17.
