"Kitten Mistakes"
Nikoru had looked through this stuff with Hotaru countless times. She would sit Hotaru down in the middle of the living room or bedroom floor and make her spread her things out, telling her what each standard weapon was and what it was used for. She would unroll scroll after scroll and show her the writing on it, the long columns of faded and aged inks of different consistencies and colors flowing over feet and feet of thick and worn paper.
Her favorites were Hotaru's summoning scrolls; she had quite a few. She loved to see the aged blood stains streaked and smeared hastily over the brittle papers, and loved the each one had a story behind it. It was apparently unusual for a genin to be able to summon things, but Hotaru had been able to do it well apparently. Kakashi had told her it was because she was an Uchiha, and because she was his "daughter". That had always made Hotaru beam to an extent Nikoru rarely got to see on her.
She reached in and pulled out some of those scrolls, not knowing what was what. She knew that Hotaru's summoning scrolls had looked ancient and decrepit, burn holes dotted in the papers, cuts and nicks in them, and all sorts of inks scribbled on the papers. They were thicker and bigger usually and had blood spread over them in long slashes at random spots. Kakashi and a few other shinobi she knew that summoned had given her them, because summoning scrolls were only ever passed down. But, that was all she knew.
She unrolled a scroll and looked over the columns of words and symbols. Symbols represented hand forms...words were mutterings and chants...was there more than one jutsu in a training scroll? Or was it all just one thing? There were so many jutsus to learn, so many different forms of "magic" that ninjas could wield and use. Hotaru made it look so easy...she could do it too, dammit.
Nikoru closed her eyes and put her hands in front of her face, squinting with the effort of trying to recall everything she had forced herself to remember in a short time. She tried to fold and bend and move her fingers and hands as effortlessly and quick as Hotaru and them often did, but she fumbled and stumbled, having to stop, glance at the scroll, and start all over again. She didn't know how many times she did the stupid hand symbols. And, once she got somewhat use to doing those, she had to learn what the words were.
It was hard to string and flow the two together at the same time, making sure to say the words as fast as her hands were going, or visa versa. Again, she tripped and stumbled, and had to do it over and over again. Just as she was about to give up, she tried it one more time. At the end, positive she was still doing something wrong, she was engulfed in a shot of smoke.
Coughing and gagging she shook her head, rubbing her hand over her face to make the smell go away. Gods, whatever it was smelt horrible! What was this? Was Hidan screwing with her? Or had Hotaru caught her and thrown a smoke bomb at her to piss her off and confuse her? She blinked, looking around and watching the smoke dissipate and swirl throughout the air as it got thinner and thinner. Something seemed wrong here. She looked around again, realizing the box was much bigger than it had been...so was the rest of the room...and she was sitting in mounds of something really smooth and soft. Looking down she saw her kimono puddled around her like some kind of giant lake of silk. And she saw white paws. Tiny white paws. Where her hands should be.
Her eyes widened and she screeched, jumping back instinctively, all the hair on her back standing up and her tail poofing out. But, she couldn't escape herself. She spun around in a circle, trying to see herself, only catching sight of a thin, but frighteningly poofed up white tail and occasionally her back feet. She was yowling and whining, trying to understand what the hell was going on. Then she stopped in front of the mirror. It was hard for her NOT to attack her own reflection, she kept having to remind herself it was a picture of herself and not another cat. But, she swallowed it and sat down, her tail curling around her body and tapping over her little feet.
She was solid white with crystal clear eyes and a baby pink nose. She was narrow and lithe, short haired and...well...a cat. Shaking her head she turned and padded back over to the scroll, pawing at it and nosing it to unroll it a bit farther. There had to be something in here about changing back. It was cool and all, and she was proud of herself, but she didn't even know what she did or how she did it. She didn't even know what she had been doing. She had just grabbed the first scroll she had grabbed and started going at it.
Running her paw down the lines of scribbled characters she frowned, her tail starting to tap even louder as she realized she had no idea what she was doing again. Sitting back on her hind legs, hunkered down like a meercat, she put her front paws together and aimed to make hand signs again. But, that was the thing about these jutsu hand signs that ninjas seemed to so love, you had to have hands.
Tiredly she dropped back to all fours and closed her eyes, heaving a heavy sigh and flattening her ears against her head. 'Alright...let's go get fucking Hotaru.' She got up and started off, trying to plan out what she was going to say in her head, how she was going to apologize and how she was going to explain what happened. Hotaru wasn't going to talk to her for days after this. She might not even turn her back for a while.