We Were Children Once
PartI
Author's Notes: I'm having lots of fun with this one. I can totally see Genma as a farm kid, you know? After all, not all the ninjas can come from ninja families. There have to be at least a few who just started with a dream and the tuition for the Academy -- and one of them became a Tokubetsu Jounin. Imagine that. Anyway, it's really entertaining to draw out the dynamic between them as kids, since we know nothing about how well they knew each other.
The two boys lay side by side in their field, dragonflies humming by overhead.
"It's their mating season, look," Hayate pointed out in his soft, raspy little voice. Sure enough, Genma saw a pair of insects buzz past, intertwined at the end.
"Yeah. Creepy."
With a lazy minimum of motion, he raised the stick in his hand and swiped at the passing pair. His companion gently snatched the stick from him. "Don't do that."
"What? It don't bother 'em none."
"It doesn't bother them any." One of Hayate's noble crusades in life was to repair the battered grammar his farm-reared friend used. But only sometimes.
"Sure." Genma flicked the end of his nose contemplatively, grinding down the end of a piece of wheat between his teeth. The sun glinted in his eyes, and he raised a hand to blot it out. Except for a few stealthy rays that crept around his fingers and fanned the black outline of his hand, he was mostly successful.
Between pouted lips, Hayate sighed. "Father took me to meet that girl I told you about last week."
Genma glanced over, just his eyes moving. "Oh, yeah?"
"Mm-hm. Yugao-chan."
"She cute?"
"I guess so." Hayate furrowed his brow. "Anyway, I don't know if I want to get married yet. I haven't even graduated from the Academy."
"The Academy? Ha!" barked Genma. "You ain't even turned ten," he reminded scornfully. He himself was a much-elevated eleven-and-a-half.
"Anyway...the point is, I think it's a little weird that I'm engaged to someone I just met." He rolled over onto his side, watching Genma's dirt-smudged face settle back into the quiet of the moment. "I'd rather just lie out in this field all day with you, just like this. Just talking. It's...nice. You know?"
The unwavering solemnity in his tiny little kitten-voice made Genma lapse into a silence of half-amusement, half-consideration. "Yeah, I know."
"I'm not even sure I want to be a ninja. It's just that my father and mother are, so I am, too."
"See, that's your problem." Languidly, Genma rolled over until he, too, faced his friend straight on. "Me, I ain't gonna be like my old man and just work the land all day. I wanna be a ninja, so I'm gonna. All he's got is dust and a bad back. I see it, and I don't want none of it, so I'm goin' to the Academy." He spit out the wheat stem, mutilated and wet. It landed in the grassby Hayate, whoedged discreetly away from it. "Point is, Hayate, do what you want. Not what your folks want. Get it?"
Hayate flinched back as Genma thrust out a hand to ruffle his hair. "I don't not want to be a ninja. I'm just not sure."
"Well, stick with it. 'Cause everyone else in our class hates me."
"Sure," agreed Hayate, smiling slightly.
