whew, I thought I wasn't going to be able to write enough today, but I pulled through! I'm not about to lose my streak at this point! Also, I'd like some feedback, I know my writing sucks so help me improve please, because there's only so much I can proofread before crying and giving up xD
Guest: Thank you for sticking with me:)
LB Cat: I promise there will be lots more fluff later, but this is mostly foreshadowing. We're all doing fine so far, I hope you and your family are okay too
"Alright, you may begin," Iruka announced.
Without a moment of hesitation, everyone flipped over the sheet of paper and started scribbling what they could scrape from their mind. It was only a matter of minutes before the exasperated instructor weeded out the students who clearly had no interest in ascending to a higher grade of shinobi training, though there were various exceptions including every clanborn child in the room (and yes, including the Nara boy) and strangely enough, civilian born Sakura Haruno.
There was mostly nothing strange about the scene, the only part that seemed out of place was one Naruto Uzumaki who for once looked like he had some sort of idea on what he was doing. Iruka almost cried in relief; maybe the boy wasn't destined to fail after all.
Or perhaps he is, he nearly slammed his head on his desk as the blond started to nervously chew on his nails and conspicuously look around the room in search for answers before suddenly looking bright once more and proceeded to jot down what he recalled.
With his usual determination he thought, I can't fail this! A delicious lunch with my friends is on the line!
As students finished one by one, they were sent to the courtyard where they were free to eat their lunch before the second part of the exams began. Hinata, who finished minutes after her cousin, ran up to Sasuke who was already picking at his lunch. She looked at him with hopeful eyes and palms pressed together as she got closer and the Uchiha nearly groaned in annoyance.
Before letting her speak he barked, "don't even think about it."
"Please? I'm your favorite cousin, you should help me out."
Sasuke glared at her and shook his head, thinking, nuh uh! No way!
"Just half, okay?" Hinata pleaded.
he demanded, "what happened to your bento?"
The heiress hid her hands behind her back with a sheepish grin. "I lost it."
"Sure," Sasuke muttered skeptically. "I suppose you can take some-but not all, like last time!"
The heiress hurriedly nodded and swiped half of a rice ball before her friend could blink. Her uncanny ability to gobble everything within seconds and leave no trace never ceased amaze him. It was an enviable trait both he and his brother strived to achieve in order to succeed in the noble art of food theft.
"Thanks," she gave a slight bow before taking a seat beside her cousin. "When do you think Naruto-kun will finish?"
Sasuke snorted, "you dream big if you believe he's actually going to finish."
"Well, Itachi helped us study, I don't see how he could flunk it this time," Hinata defended. "Oh! By the way, Hanabi-chan wants to eat ice-cream with us, think you could join us?"
"As long as she stops looking at me and Nii-san as if we were the bane of her existence," he spoke with annoyance.
"She doesn't mean it, Hanabi-chan is really sweet when she's your friend," the heiress gushed with a bright smile.
"Right," Sasuke nearly laughed. "Do I have permission to return anything she throws at me?"
"No," Hinata's left eye twitched. "She's young, that's all. Hanabi-chan isn't used to you and Itachi and Shisui."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he sighed before offering her a kunai. "Practice?"
"Okay!"
As soon as the cousins stepped into throwing range of an oak tree every last classmate of theirs scurried out of the way without looking back. It always surprised Hinata when they did that because she knew for a fact her aim wasn't so bad that she'd hit someone behind her.
They were always so skittish.
At the count of three, they each threw a kunai at the target with Hinata's being the closest. Sasuke glanced at the heiress, "best two out of three?"
"You're on," she grinned as the other children slowly inched even further away from the mad girl and her equally mad cousin. It made sense that those two would be the only ones willing to hang out with the village's outcast.
oOo
Naruto, as expected, was the very last person to finish the test, but seeing the encouraging smile on his gentle Hyuuga friend and the not-so-gentle Uchiha who despite his expression didn't leave without waiting… it made him feel warm.
With 'light' footsteps, he tried to sneak up the cousins who were resting between the roots of the oak tree. Hinata looked up at him within six seconds; it was an improvement, he supposed.
"Took you long enough," Sasuke sneered at the blond as he made his way to his friends, but greeted him with an awkward pat on the shoulder.
"You were great!" Hinata smiled brightly with her hands clasped together by her chest. "There's no way any of us can fail, I know it!"
Naruto, unwilling to burst her bubble, only laughed before declaring, "of course I did great, I studied with the best shinobi around! But I don't know how well I'm going to do in the next part..."
"Just pray that you don't get paired with Hinata and even you should be able to get a decent score," the Uchiha muttered.
The heiress looked offended at this, but didn't comment while Naruto stared at her for a translation of Sasuke's gibberish.
"What?" Sasuke raised his hands in defeat. "I know for a fact that the loser who gets paired up with her won't land even a scratch on her."
Oh, I see now, Naruto nodded to himself. "If I get paired with either of you, I'll beat you somehow," he declared. "But no hard feelings, okay? I like you two."
Hinata only gave him a sympathetic smile while holding in a laugh. Sasuke, on the other hand, did no such thing (she wondered if it was an Uchiha thing to mock their close friends) and shamelessly snickered at that, much to the blond's irritation.
"You'll see-"
"-everyone in first year, to the training area!" a chūnin shouted to everyone in the courtyard, "I repeat, all first years to the training area!"
All three groaned in annoyance before reluctantly standing up and following the wave of students. When they arrived, the students formed into uniform lines with their friends and kept chatting.
Then, Hinata overheard from the nice bubblegum-haired girl speaking nervously, "You-you don't think girls will fight boys, right?"
Her blonde friend shook her head with a resigned smile saying, "only some, the matches are completely random."
Seeing that the Yamanaka's words weren't helping, the heiress interjected kindly, "don't worry, Sakura-san, they've been teaching you to fight for three years, right? Besides, I'm sure Sasuke will be cheering you on."
Said boy glared at the bluenette, "don't put words…" seeing the dejected looks on her and Sakura's face, he corrected with a simple, "you'll be fine."
"Yeah," she said more to herself and then giggled, "I can knock out anyone if I try! Sasuke-kun believes in me!"
From the sidelines, Naruto commented dejectedly, "I believe in you too, Sakura-chan!"
"That's the spirit!" Ino encouraged her. "But what about me, Sasuke-kun?
He raised a brow, "what about you?"
"Oh, aren't you gonna say how you believe in me?"
"N-" with a glance at Hinata's menacing expression he once again corrected himself, "sure."
"See?" the heiress smiled, "I knew you could be nice."
"Barely," Naruto jabbed on Sasuke's other side.
He only frowned at the two before Iruka started talking about the rules which seemed simple enough. Just a friendly spar with no lethal strikes, no weapons, and no Dōjutsu. The winner would be whoever manages to land the first strike or kock over the opponent.
The matches went by fast for some and slowly for others, but by the time that Naruto was called, the other two had already taken a seat on the ground like most of the other kids. The fight was one of the short ones; Naruto had tripped the other boy with a pebble as he pretended to run away. It had taken the chūnin and the spectators a few moments before they could slowly clap and burst out laughing for the rather hilarious defeat of the kid who was a well known bully.
When it was Sasuke's turn, he was paired with the Nara boy who fell over with a mere glancing hit. No one was surprised, but it was rather anticlimactic for her taste. Her mother would kill her if she dared roll over and raise a white flag.
By the time Hinata's name was called out, the last few students who had yet to spar took a look at the tiny girl before sighing in relief. Even if she was a Hyuuga, a girl so small couldn't do much damage, right?
The chūnin coughed and cleared his throat, "sorry, I was saying Hyuuga-san vs. Inuzuka-san."
The boy was considerably taller than the bluenette, but that worked for her, though she was reluctant to hurt the boy who had always been so nice to her. With a sigh she stood before him and bowed before placing most of her weight on her left foot while her right foot was slightly raised. She held two fists by her unactivated white eyes.
Naruto looked at his Uchiha friend who seemed very used to that. "My aunt likes to teach her more than one form of Taijutsu."
"Sometimes I think Hinata-chan's a bit overpowered," the blond said with envy.
"No kidding," Sasuke sighed. "My aunt is really into teaching everything she knows to her."
It started simply enough. Kiba attacked and Hinata dodged with surprising grace until she suddenly sweeped out a leg meant to knock over the boy, but Akamaru (Kiba's ninken) jumped in the way and took the blow.
oOo
"So you won, right, Aneki?"
"Uh," Hinata's face went red. "No."
Hanabi deadpanned once Naruto explained the story. "It's just a dog! Why did you have to drop your guard?"
"I'm sorry, Hanabi-chan."
"And not only did you lose, you just had to bring your barbarian friends with you!" she exclaimed with a glare in the direction of the brothers.
Itachi and Sasuke collectively felt their eyes twitch, but remained silent. To be fair, they did often anger the second child of the Hyuuga Clan by being as eccentric as Uchihas came and because they kept hogging her sister's time in another district.
"I'm sorry, Hanabi-chan," she apologised by passing the girl another spoon full with banana ice-cream. "But they're really not that bad, you should hang out with us more often."
"Hinata didn't even correct her," Sasuke muttered as the younger Hyuuga girl happily chatted away in her elder sister's presence. "And why is she not including Shisui?"
"I believe we owe her this for all the time she wanted with Hinata," Itachi mused as he tried not to laugh at the two year old's antics. "As for him, he already charmed his way into her good graces." Do all Hyuugas have such advanced grammar at young ages?
Despite Hanabi's manners, Itachi couldn't help but smile as the girl proudly showed Hinata her most recent painting. Was that how Sasuke looked like to spectators when he was young and eager to share his accomplishments? He wondered if the heiress ever thought of what would be Hanabi's inevitable destiny as the second born.
"Natsu!" Hanabi called as she raised her empty ice-cream cup. "Can I get more?"
"Yes, Hanabi-sama," the woman smiled gently. "Would Hinata-sama like another cup too?"
"No thank you, I'd rather get-oh!"
With a sudden movement from Hanabi who was swatting a fly away, the Hyuuga woman dropped the remains of yellow ice-cream on Hinata's sweater. As if instinctively, Natsu quickly took a step away from her charges and bowed with an apology at her tongue.
Sasuke and Naruto tilted their heads in confusion while his brother and cousin stopped talking. Why would she fear the ever sweet Hinata who'd never hurt a fly if it was avoidable?
"It's alright," the heiress dabbed the sticky substance with a napkin. "I'll get it washed later."
"No, I'll buy you a new one!" and with that, she ran off far from the daughters of the Main House.
Hinata, by look on her face was just as lost. "What was that about?"
"Hitomi activated her seal a few days ago," the brunette explained. "Natsu's been pretty skittish after that, but she knows you'd never do that."
"What seal?" Naruto and Sasuke asked.
"You mustn't go around asking that, you two," Itachi scolded stiffly. The last he wanted was to remind Hinata of the less than noble side of her family, she already suffered enough by its threat.
"It's alright," Hinata shrugged. "The seal is on every Branch Cadet, when they die it makes their Byakugan useless for scavengers."
"Oh, so it's a good thing, right?" Naruto asked.
"Well, yes-no, kind of…"
"Neat! So why doesn't the Main House have those too if they help?"
"Um, we don't use them."
Sasuke then remembered. "So it's what Neji covers on his forehead?"
"Yes."
"Now that you mention him, where is he? I thought he was coming," the blond questioned as he looked around for Neji who could potentially sneak up on them.
"He's sick, his cousins said he needed to rest for a week," Hinata grimaced as she remembered the unpleasant exchange.
Picking up on the girl's uncomfortable twitching, her older cousins decided to take pity on her and change the subject. Shisui wondered if later on she would just marry one of her many Uchiha cousins to spare herself and her children the appalling nature of her clan's class system. Surely the Hyuugas wouldn't dare seal her if she decided to leave?
Speaking of which, he didn't even know what the girl wanted for her future. She was much closer with his younger cousins who weren't out on missions as often.
"So what do you want to do when you become shinobi?" Shisui asked the trio, finding Naruto who perked up at the question with a dreamy gaze quite endearing.
"I'll become Hokage!"
"I'll join the police."
"I'll be just like Aneki!"
"I'll make my clan proud," Hinata declared.
Naruto snorted, "that's not what he meant, what are your goals?"
The bluenette looked around for anyone that could overhear before saying lowly with averted eyes, "I'd like to join the police, too."
"And why's that a secret?"
"It-it isn't… I just, the police are composed mostly of Uchihas only and I'm not…"
"You don't need to worry about a thing," Shisui winked and raised an arm around Itachi. "This guy adores you and by the time you're ready to join us, he's probably going to be the commander and voila, problem solved."
