Changed Fates
By Jennifer Darknight
Ichi:
Just Another Day
Morning. It was morning in the Hyuga household. Everything seemed in perfect order: Hinata's room was spic and span, with her teddy bears on their own shelves and the books sitting neatly on her desk. Her jacket was hung on the back of her chair, and the purple tank-top she usually wore under it was folded on her dresser. The usual smell of lilac perfume lingered in the air, and Hinata herself was curled up under her blankets, with an Angelic smile on her face.
Ah, the benefits of being twelve years old. You have your own dreams and desires, and although life would eventually slap you in the face, everything just seemed so far away. Much farther away than one would usually like. For Hinata, it was a little too close for her liking, but being the heir of the greatest clan in the village was one of the worst feelings of responsibility that anyone could have. There were days she just wanted to sleep her entire life away, much like a certain lazy genius, but decided against it quickly.
It was one thing to want to sleep the day away, but it was a completely different matter all together to actually do it and get Neji- niisan to rag on her all day. She knew that he didn't like her, but she also knew that it was his duty to get her up and to train—and it was much better for him to do it than her own father.
So, sighing with a bit of regret, Hyuga Hinata sat up in bed, running her fingers through short hair. She did that every morning—sort of a personal tradition, just to make sure that everything was still, as it always was, normal.
A stretch of arms and a soft yawn, the Hyuga heiress swung her legs over the side of her bed, stepping onto the floor where she stood for a moment, trying to regain her balance after a night of deep sleep. Despite what people thought, the girl was a horribly deep sleeper, and one couldn't wake her up even if a hurricane hit.
Or if a bunch of enemy-nins stormed the Hyuga home in hopes to kill her.
Whichever.
She peeked at herself in the mirror, and sighed to herself. A pale, plain, forlorn-faced twelve-year-old with the proportions of a girl even younger than that was staring back at her. She tried to force a smile onto her face, but it just looked so fake. The slump of shoulders, and the shaking of a head in a defeated fashion. That was Hyuga Hinata all over again.
"...still not tan." Was all she said, before she walked to the vanity to smoothen the knots out of her short indigo hair.
She was quite aware of the time. She had about an hour to get ready, and then she had fifteen minutes to eat breakfast before she had to make a mad dash to school to get there on time ('on time', meaning, 'at school before everyone else was'.) . Today was the genin graduation lecture and team assignments, after all. She couldn't afford to be late.
Although, she thought as she changed out of her cotton nemaki and into her purple sleeveless shirt before putting her jacket on over it, It won't be the same without Naruto-kun in my class.
Ah, yes. Naruto. The one (and only) reason that class was fun those years that she had spent under Iruka-sensei's tutelage. He was always making trouble, causing ruckuses and making all the adults crazy, but he had a sort of a glow to him, which made him a sort of person who Hinata wouldn't mind spending more time with, not to mention the fact that he never gave up no matter how mean people were to him. It was a shame that she wouldn't see him during her beginning days as a genin, and maybe she wouldn't see him ever again.
But he failed the test. She couldn't do anything about that. But she would still miss him. She would miss his bright, shining smile, and his animated blue eyes that could just gaze right through her, and...!
She blushed and shook her head. She wasn't going to think about him—not first thing in the morning anyway. She had enough dreams of him to make the biggest romantic puke, and to say that she had a crush on him was...really, rather an understatement. Everyone else in class knew it, and Yamanaka Ino threw little playful cracks at her more than once when Naruto would screw up or enter the room or look her way.
Speaking of Naruto-kun...there was that weird dream that she had last night...about him getting married to that Haruno girl, Sakura. And a shooting star that flew through the sky. She was like a spectator to a sepia-colored home-movie, like the ones that her father would often watch when he thought nobody was looking... reliving memories of her mother when she was still young. Even though she was watching, she knew that it was her on that hill, looking towards the sky. She was older, but she could still tell. Call it a sense of knowing oneself, if you will.
It was so strange, though...
It felt so...so real.
She could feel the breaking of her heart, the desperation in her voice as she murmured her wish to the star that flew above her head.
She could feel the wind brushing against her face...
Focus, focus, focus, Hinata! She berated herself.
Today was Genin initiation. She had to be at least a little prepared.
She didn't have time to be thinking of silly dreams.
But still...
She tied her shuriken pouch around her leg, and looked back down at her nightstand, where the all-too-familiar hitai-ate was sitting, with the Leaf symbol freshly carved into the metal that sat on the blue silken fabric. A pale hand ran over the strokes that made the Konoha symbol, and a smile came to her lips.
It was the first step. It was the first step to becoming a true ninja. With all the weaknesses that Hyuga Hinata had, she was surprised she even earned it at all. The day she got it she would look down towards it, and wonder what she had done to get this far. She lost to her little sister, who was much younger than she was. And she still managed to become Ninja. Well, she was Hyuga after all, so maybe that was it.
A slight grip held onto the headband, and picked it up from the table. It felt uncomfortable to put it on her forehead, and to wrap it around her arm was out of the question.
So what was the best thing to do?
Tie it around her neck, of course!
She looked at herself in the mirror, and this time a true smile graced her features.
Maybe her weakness would subside now that she had become a genin, and maybe her luck would improve.
...............................
She was the first to the class, again. Iruka-sensei was here, but that hardly counted, since it seemed like he lived in that classroom sometimes. He would be there from early in the morning until really late at night, so he might as well have lived there. He was scribbling something on a sheet of paper on his desk, she noticed. Hinata could have used Byakugan to figure out just what he was working on, but unlike her younger sister Hanabi or even Neji, she wasn't one to stick her nose into other peoples' business. Besides, it was probably something that was strictly confidential, and the mere thought of a genin like her reading something like that was just unheard of.
Her seat was near the back of the classroom, top row, where nobody's eyes really wandered, and she could watch Naruto-kun without anybody really noticing (besides Ino, who noticed everything there was to know about who- likes-who), more importantly without him really noticing. True, Naruto-kun wasn't in the class anymore, but still. It was nice to keep with routine. It made her feel better—that things were still at least somewhat the same. It was like how she ran her fingers through her hair every morning.
She sat down in her usual spot, and sat her hands in her lap like a nice, mannerly little girl. A Hyuga must always be mannerly, even when nobody else was watching. It was the image of the Clan that was important, and Hinata must carry that belief everywhere in her daily life, even with her closest and most intimate of friends. She must never lose her dignity.
Even when normal twelve-year-old girls were giggling over boys, applying the most pointless of makeup, and messing with their hair every five minutes.
Iruka-sensei looked up from his papers, and, noticing Hinata's presence, threw a warm, brotherly smile in her direction.
He was always so nice to everyone. Hinata couldn't help but blush a little at the attention, and smile back.
"Ohayo, Hinata-chan."
"O-Ohayo gozaimasu, Iruka-sensei."
That was their normal morning small-talk. They'd greet each other pleasantly, and then Iruka-sensei would look down at his work, and Hinata would take out a book she was currently reading (her pouch was big enough to hold those pocket novels), and start to read it.
But for some strange reason, she was restless this morning. She couldn't pick up her new Mikihara Megumi romance novel and start reading it. A sense of excitement ran through her, and her mind would swim, into strange thoughts that would run through her mind time and time again.
Teams were being assigned, right? Genin teams that would stick together through thick and thin, and would probably have a sense of companionship that would last them the rest of their lives. She had heard about it from her Father the night before, at her small 'congratulatory' dinner that the family had prepared, at least to show that she could do something right instead of sitting around and looking scared. She would be dealing with these people in her team for a long time now...it was only natural that she would worry about who she was going to be paired with.
There was Uchiha Sasuke, the top of the class for that year. He was strong, silent, but very skilled as a ninja, with a strength that most ninja would give their own body-parts to possess. He was also the last member of the Uchiha Clan, which, next to the Hyuga, was the strongest Clan in Konoha. She didn't know if she would actually blend with him personality- wise, but working with him was sure to help her at least a little bit...at least to help her learn something from him.
Then there was Nara Shikamaru. Personally, Hinata didn't mind him all that much. Most people thought of him as a lazy person, but he was also a genius, and didn't seem like he cared about what others thought. He didn't criticize others for being different, either...maybe it was because he was too lazy to do so, but working with someone who didn't treat her like she was lower than trash was not a bad idea. He seemed like a likable person too, despite all of his sleeping in class and being bored with everything.
Inuzuka Kiba was rather loud, and seemed a little too brash with his constant bravado that rivaled even Naruto-kun (although Naruto-kun was a lot more lighthearted about it...Kiba-kun tried to compete with everyone), but maybe the loudness might complement her near-silence, and help her be more outgoing. And that dog that followed him everywhere was really, really cute. She had just never built up the guts to ask him if she could pet it, much less talk to him.
Aburame Shino...she didn't know much about him, except that he was a member of the Aburame Clan. Haruno Sakura was the top of the class in her written tests (Hinata herself was a high scorer on the written tests, but sometimes she drew blanks and made careless errors), but she seemed a little intimidating to the girls in the class, and would be rather competitive with her, especially if they were both put on a team with Sasuke. Akimichi Chouji she didn't know much about either. He was always eating in class, and didn't talk much, although he did spend a lot of time with Shikamaru. Yamanaka Ino was on the same level as Sakura, although since she knew that Hinata liked Naruto, she'd be a lot easier to get along with than Sakura would...
She continued to tick off the names of people in her head, weighing their pros and cons and what the chances were of her working with them. It helped her get over her nervousness (although it didn't help much, to be honest), and it killed time. Actually, it killed about an hour's worth of time, and students were already starting to pile into the classroom in droves.
"Huh?" Kurogane Makikuni's voice reached Hinata's ears, even through the loud hubbub and noise that filled the classroom (like it did every day).
"Naruto, what the hell are you doing here? Only those who PASS are supposed to be here."
N-Naruto-kun? Hinata's eyes jerked over to where Makikuni-kun was standing, leaning over a certain someone. At this point she was thankful that she was sitting high up—she could see everything that was going on below her. And...sure enough, Uzumaki Naruto was sitting there, Hitai-ate on his head, grinning at the other boy.
Hinata felt her heart skip, and her stomach do a flip-flop of joy. Naruto-kun...he had graduated after all! He was here, in the same classroom! She was tempted to run down there and congratulate him, to tell him how happy she was that he graduated too, but she held herself back, as usual. He probably didn't know who she was, so why did she want to do that now?
But still...her heart fluttered at the sight of him. The shining blond hair, those rugged good looks, and those bright blue eyes that could see everyone and everything. Oh...he looked so...he looked so cute like that. It was a wonder why the other girls weren't hanging all over him. But...maybe that was a good thing. Maybe.
"Hey, hey, can't you see the headband?" Naruto-kun said with a grin, pointing to his headband and making his companion groan.
"Excuse me...will you let me through?"
Hinata could see Haruno Sakura coming a mile away. The girl Naruto- kun had been watching since the day school started, the girl-genius with the exotic pink hair.
Naruto-kun's face beamed with excitement, and a redness crossed his cheeks as he gazed at her. Sakura's girlish build seemed to tower over him, and Hinata knew that if she was in Naruto's position she would feel intimidated by her presence.
A growl crossed the Haruno girl's face. "Naruto, move your ass!!! I'm trying to get on the other side of you!!!"
And Hinata knew why, too. Sakura-chan was well known for her obsession with the class genius, Uchiha Sasuke.
Who was, at the moment, sitting on the other side of Naruto-kun.
It was only natural for Sakura-chan to jump over Naruto-kun, and snag a seat next to Sasuke...she really wasn't paying attention to all the goings- on between Sasuke and Sakura. Her eyes were fixed on Naruto...
Who was glaring at Sasuke, and just jumped on the table and glared at him. The two boys' eyes were locked on one another's, and the nearby girls were yelling at Naruto-kun to 'leave Sasuke-kun alone' and for Sasuke to 'kick Naruto's ass'. It was a wonder how Sasuke-kun put up with that much attention. If it was centered on her, Hinata might just die.
One of the boys moved in front of Naruto-kun, and his shoulder brushed him, sending Naruto falling forward.
Oh...my.
A deep blush covered Hinata's face as she saw Naruto and Sasuke's lips... locked in a rather...unwanted kiss. It was like a scene out of those shounen-ai manga that Hinata would catch some of the girls reading out of the corner of her eye during class, where two boys would fall in love and kiss when the moment of romantic tension reached its peak. But even though she was far off, she could tell that those two were not liking this at all, unlike the mangas that she had seen.
It was pretty much proven after Naruto jumped away from Sasuke, and Sasuke looked like he was about to die. Naruto-kun did too, but Hinata couldn't see his expression for long, as Sakura-chan had started to beat the living daylights about him.
...And people wondered why Hinata thought she was intimidating.
As Naruto lied on his desk like a lump of raw meat, Iruka-sensei had stood from his seat, looking to all the graduates and coughed loudly, which was the signal for all the kids to sit down and shut up.
It was about now that Iruka-sensei would begin his speech.
"As of today," he said, "All of you are real ninjas. Although as of now, you are just merely genin. The hard part has only just begun."
A pause. It seemed that everyone was listening. Iruka-sensei always did that, just to make sure he wasn't talking to air, and that it was getting through to his students' heads.
"You will soon be assigned duties for the village. So today I am to assign you each to three-man cells, and each team will have a Jounin sensei. You will follow your sensei's instructions and complete your assigned duties."
He picked up that same sheet of paper off his desk, and looked down at it. "We have arranged everyone according to their strengths and weaknesses, so every team would be about equal."
At that, the class let out a loud groan, and lots of students glared at their sensei. But Iruka-sensei ignored them and just started to read off the list:
"Team one, Yuko Mikami, Nagi Sugo..."
Hinata's eyes concentrated on her teacher, and her ears were alert for when she would hear the names of her teammates, and what team she was supposed to be in. She didn't want to miss her name being called without her realizing it. But after a few more teams were named, she still wasn't called on.
Until...
"Now...team seven. Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke...and Hyuga Hinata."
Hinata's heart felt like it was going to stop, and she suddenly felt like her desk was the most interesting thing in the classroom, especially when she felt all the eyes on the class, especially the heated, jealous gazes of the girls, suddenly fall on her.
Well, that was a fun first chapter, wasn't it?! I'm going to follow the plotline of the manga pretty closely, but things are going to change considerably, since Hinata is going to be on Team Seven instead of Sakura. MWAHAHAHAHA...I had wanted to write a story like this for a long time. And now I can! GO ME!
Well, until next time!
Jen
By Jennifer Darknight
Ichi:
Just Another Day
Morning. It was morning in the Hyuga household. Everything seemed in perfect order: Hinata's room was spic and span, with her teddy bears on their own shelves and the books sitting neatly on her desk. Her jacket was hung on the back of her chair, and the purple tank-top she usually wore under it was folded on her dresser. The usual smell of lilac perfume lingered in the air, and Hinata herself was curled up under her blankets, with an Angelic smile on her face.
Ah, the benefits of being twelve years old. You have your own dreams and desires, and although life would eventually slap you in the face, everything just seemed so far away. Much farther away than one would usually like. For Hinata, it was a little too close for her liking, but being the heir of the greatest clan in the village was one of the worst feelings of responsibility that anyone could have. There were days she just wanted to sleep her entire life away, much like a certain lazy genius, but decided against it quickly.
It was one thing to want to sleep the day away, but it was a completely different matter all together to actually do it and get Neji- niisan to rag on her all day. She knew that he didn't like her, but she also knew that it was his duty to get her up and to train—and it was much better for him to do it than her own father.
So, sighing with a bit of regret, Hyuga Hinata sat up in bed, running her fingers through short hair. She did that every morning—sort of a personal tradition, just to make sure that everything was still, as it always was, normal.
A stretch of arms and a soft yawn, the Hyuga heiress swung her legs over the side of her bed, stepping onto the floor where she stood for a moment, trying to regain her balance after a night of deep sleep. Despite what people thought, the girl was a horribly deep sleeper, and one couldn't wake her up even if a hurricane hit.
Or if a bunch of enemy-nins stormed the Hyuga home in hopes to kill her.
Whichever.
She peeked at herself in the mirror, and sighed to herself. A pale, plain, forlorn-faced twelve-year-old with the proportions of a girl even younger than that was staring back at her. She tried to force a smile onto her face, but it just looked so fake. The slump of shoulders, and the shaking of a head in a defeated fashion. That was Hyuga Hinata all over again.
"...still not tan." Was all she said, before she walked to the vanity to smoothen the knots out of her short indigo hair.
She was quite aware of the time. She had about an hour to get ready, and then she had fifteen minutes to eat breakfast before she had to make a mad dash to school to get there on time ('on time', meaning, 'at school before everyone else was'.) . Today was the genin graduation lecture and team assignments, after all. She couldn't afford to be late.
Although, she thought as she changed out of her cotton nemaki and into her purple sleeveless shirt before putting her jacket on over it, It won't be the same without Naruto-kun in my class.
Ah, yes. Naruto. The one (and only) reason that class was fun those years that she had spent under Iruka-sensei's tutelage. He was always making trouble, causing ruckuses and making all the adults crazy, but he had a sort of a glow to him, which made him a sort of person who Hinata wouldn't mind spending more time with, not to mention the fact that he never gave up no matter how mean people were to him. It was a shame that she wouldn't see him during her beginning days as a genin, and maybe she wouldn't see him ever again.
But he failed the test. She couldn't do anything about that. But she would still miss him. She would miss his bright, shining smile, and his animated blue eyes that could just gaze right through her, and...!
She blushed and shook her head. She wasn't going to think about him—not first thing in the morning anyway. She had enough dreams of him to make the biggest romantic puke, and to say that she had a crush on him was...really, rather an understatement. Everyone else in class knew it, and Yamanaka Ino threw little playful cracks at her more than once when Naruto would screw up or enter the room or look her way.
Speaking of Naruto-kun...there was that weird dream that she had last night...about him getting married to that Haruno girl, Sakura. And a shooting star that flew through the sky. She was like a spectator to a sepia-colored home-movie, like the ones that her father would often watch when he thought nobody was looking... reliving memories of her mother when she was still young. Even though she was watching, she knew that it was her on that hill, looking towards the sky. She was older, but she could still tell. Call it a sense of knowing oneself, if you will.
It was so strange, though...
It felt so...so real.
She could feel the breaking of her heart, the desperation in her voice as she murmured her wish to the star that flew above her head.
She could feel the wind brushing against her face...
Focus, focus, focus, Hinata! She berated herself.
Today was Genin initiation. She had to be at least a little prepared.
She didn't have time to be thinking of silly dreams.
But still...
She tied her shuriken pouch around her leg, and looked back down at her nightstand, where the all-too-familiar hitai-ate was sitting, with the Leaf symbol freshly carved into the metal that sat on the blue silken fabric. A pale hand ran over the strokes that made the Konoha symbol, and a smile came to her lips.
It was the first step. It was the first step to becoming a true ninja. With all the weaknesses that Hyuga Hinata had, she was surprised she even earned it at all. The day she got it she would look down towards it, and wonder what she had done to get this far. She lost to her little sister, who was much younger than she was. And she still managed to become Ninja. Well, she was Hyuga after all, so maybe that was it.
A slight grip held onto the headband, and picked it up from the table. It felt uncomfortable to put it on her forehead, and to wrap it around her arm was out of the question.
So what was the best thing to do?
Tie it around her neck, of course!
She looked at herself in the mirror, and this time a true smile graced her features.
Maybe her weakness would subside now that she had become a genin, and maybe her luck would improve.
...............................
She was the first to the class, again. Iruka-sensei was here, but that hardly counted, since it seemed like he lived in that classroom sometimes. He would be there from early in the morning until really late at night, so he might as well have lived there. He was scribbling something on a sheet of paper on his desk, she noticed. Hinata could have used Byakugan to figure out just what he was working on, but unlike her younger sister Hanabi or even Neji, she wasn't one to stick her nose into other peoples' business. Besides, it was probably something that was strictly confidential, and the mere thought of a genin like her reading something like that was just unheard of.
Her seat was near the back of the classroom, top row, where nobody's eyes really wandered, and she could watch Naruto-kun without anybody really noticing (besides Ino, who noticed everything there was to know about who- likes-who), more importantly without him really noticing. True, Naruto-kun wasn't in the class anymore, but still. It was nice to keep with routine. It made her feel better—that things were still at least somewhat the same. It was like how she ran her fingers through her hair every morning.
She sat down in her usual spot, and sat her hands in her lap like a nice, mannerly little girl. A Hyuga must always be mannerly, even when nobody else was watching. It was the image of the Clan that was important, and Hinata must carry that belief everywhere in her daily life, even with her closest and most intimate of friends. She must never lose her dignity.
Even when normal twelve-year-old girls were giggling over boys, applying the most pointless of makeup, and messing with their hair every five minutes.
Iruka-sensei looked up from his papers, and, noticing Hinata's presence, threw a warm, brotherly smile in her direction.
He was always so nice to everyone. Hinata couldn't help but blush a little at the attention, and smile back.
"Ohayo, Hinata-chan."
"O-Ohayo gozaimasu, Iruka-sensei."
That was their normal morning small-talk. They'd greet each other pleasantly, and then Iruka-sensei would look down at his work, and Hinata would take out a book she was currently reading (her pouch was big enough to hold those pocket novels), and start to read it.
But for some strange reason, she was restless this morning. She couldn't pick up her new Mikihara Megumi romance novel and start reading it. A sense of excitement ran through her, and her mind would swim, into strange thoughts that would run through her mind time and time again.
Teams were being assigned, right? Genin teams that would stick together through thick and thin, and would probably have a sense of companionship that would last them the rest of their lives. She had heard about it from her Father the night before, at her small 'congratulatory' dinner that the family had prepared, at least to show that she could do something right instead of sitting around and looking scared. She would be dealing with these people in her team for a long time now...it was only natural that she would worry about who she was going to be paired with.
There was Uchiha Sasuke, the top of the class for that year. He was strong, silent, but very skilled as a ninja, with a strength that most ninja would give their own body-parts to possess. He was also the last member of the Uchiha Clan, which, next to the Hyuga, was the strongest Clan in Konoha. She didn't know if she would actually blend with him personality- wise, but working with him was sure to help her at least a little bit...at least to help her learn something from him.
Then there was Nara Shikamaru. Personally, Hinata didn't mind him all that much. Most people thought of him as a lazy person, but he was also a genius, and didn't seem like he cared about what others thought. He didn't criticize others for being different, either...maybe it was because he was too lazy to do so, but working with someone who didn't treat her like she was lower than trash was not a bad idea. He seemed like a likable person too, despite all of his sleeping in class and being bored with everything.
Inuzuka Kiba was rather loud, and seemed a little too brash with his constant bravado that rivaled even Naruto-kun (although Naruto-kun was a lot more lighthearted about it...Kiba-kun tried to compete with everyone), but maybe the loudness might complement her near-silence, and help her be more outgoing. And that dog that followed him everywhere was really, really cute. She had just never built up the guts to ask him if she could pet it, much less talk to him.
Aburame Shino...she didn't know much about him, except that he was a member of the Aburame Clan. Haruno Sakura was the top of the class in her written tests (Hinata herself was a high scorer on the written tests, but sometimes she drew blanks and made careless errors), but she seemed a little intimidating to the girls in the class, and would be rather competitive with her, especially if they were both put on a team with Sasuke. Akimichi Chouji she didn't know much about either. He was always eating in class, and didn't talk much, although he did spend a lot of time with Shikamaru. Yamanaka Ino was on the same level as Sakura, although since she knew that Hinata liked Naruto, she'd be a lot easier to get along with than Sakura would...
She continued to tick off the names of people in her head, weighing their pros and cons and what the chances were of her working with them. It helped her get over her nervousness (although it didn't help much, to be honest), and it killed time. Actually, it killed about an hour's worth of time, and students were already starting to pile into the classroom in droves.
"Huh?" Kurogane Makikuni's voice reached Hinata's ears, even through the loud hubbub and noise that filled the classroom (like it did every day).
"Naruto, what the hell are you doing here? Only those who PASS are supposed to be here."
N-Naruto-kun? Hinata's eyes jerked over to where Makikuni-kun was standing, leaning over a certain someone. At this point she was thankful that she was sitting high up—she could see everything that was going on below her. And...sure enough, Uzumaki Naruto was sitting there, Hitai-ate on his head, grinning at the other boy.
Hinata felt her heart skip, and her stomach do a flip-flop of joy. Naruto-kun...he had graduated after all! He was here, in the same classroom! She was tempted to run down there and congratulate him, to tell him how happy she was that he graduated too, but she held herself back, as usual. He probably didn't know who she was, so why did she want to do that now?
But still...her heart fluttered at the sight of him. The shining blond hair, those rugged good looks, and those bright blue eyes that could see everyone and everything. Oh...he looked so...he looked so cute like that. It was a wonder why the other girls weren't hanging all over him. But...maybe that was a good thing. Maybe.
"Hey, hey, can't you see the headband?" Naruto-kun said with a grin, pointing to his headband and making his companion groan.
"Excuse me...will you let me through?"
Hinata could see Haruno Sakura coming a mile away. The girl Naruto- kun had been watching since the day school started, the girl-genius with the exotic pink hair.
Naruto-kun's face beamed with excitement, and a redness crossed his cheeks as he gazed at her. Sakura's girlish build seemed to tower over him, and Hinata knew that if she was in Naruto's position she would feel intimidated by her presence.
A growl crossed the Haruno girl's face. "Naruto, move your ass!!! I'm trying to get on the other side of you!!!"
And Hinata knew why, too. Sakura-chan was well known for her obsession with the class genius, Uchiha Sasuke.
Who was, at the moment, sitting on the other side of Naruto-kun.
It was only natural for Sakura-chan to jump over Naruto-kun, and snag a seat next to Sasuke...she really wasn't paying attention to all the goings- on between Sasuke and Sakura. Her eyes were fixed on Naruto...
Who was glaring at Sasuke, and just jumped on the table and glared at him. The two boys' eyes were locked on one another's, and the nearby girls were yelling at Naruto-kun to 'leave Sasuke-kun alone' and for Sasuke to 'kick Naruto's ass'. It was a wonder how Sasuke-kun put up with that much attention. If it was centered on her, Hinata might just die.
One of the boys moved in front of Naruto-kun, and his shoulder brushed him, sending Naruto falling forward.
Oh...my.
A deep blush covered Hinata's face as she saw Naruto and Sasuke's lips... locked in a rather...unwanted kiss. It was like a scene out of those shounen-ai manga that Hinata would catch some of the girls reading out of the corner of her eye during class, where two boys would fall in love and kiss when the moment of romantic tension reached its peak. But even though she was far off, she could tell that those two were not liking this at all, unlike the mangas that she had seen.
It was pretty much proven after Naruto jumped away from Sasuke, and Sasuke looked like he was about to die. Naruto-kun did too, but Hinata couldn't see his expression for long, as Sakura-chan had started to beat the living daylights about him.
...And people wondered why Hinata thought she was intimidating.
As Naruto lied on his desk like a lump of raw meat, Iruka-sensei had stood from his seat, looking to all the graduates and coughed loudly, which was the signal for all the kids to sit down and shut up.
It was about now that Iruka-sensei would begin his speech.
"As of today," he said, "All of you are real ninjas. Although as of now, you are just merely genin. The hard part has only just begun."
A pause. It seemed that everyone was listening. Iruka-sensei always did that, just to make sure he wasn't talking to air, and that it was getting through to his students' heads.
"You will soon be assigned duties for the village. So today I am to assign you each to three-man cells, and each team will have a Jounin sensei. You will follow your sensei's instructions and complete your assigned duties."
He picked up that same sheet of paper off his desk, and looked down at it. "We have arranged everyone according to their strengths and weaknesses, so every team would be about equal."
At that, the class let out a loud groan, and lots of students glared at their sensei. But Iruka-sensei ignored them and just started to read off the list:
"Team one, Yuko Mikami, Nagi Sugo..."
Hinata's eyes concentrated on her teacher, and her ears were alert for when she would hear the names of her teammates, and what team she was supposed to be in. She didn't want to miss her name being called without her realizing it. But after a few more teams were named, she still wasn't called on.
Until...
"Now...team seven. Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke...and Hyuga Hinata."
Hinata's heart felt like it was going to stop, and she suddenly felt like her desk was the most interesting thing in the classroom, especially when she felt all the eyes on the class, especially the heated, jealous gazes of the girls, suddenly fall on her.
Well, that was a fun first chapter, wasn't it?! I'm going to follow the plotline of the manga pretty closely, but things are going to change considerably, since Hinata is going to be on Team Seven instead of Sakura. MWAHAHAHAHA...I had wanted to write a story like this for a long time. And now I can! GO ME!
Well, until next time!
Jen