"Winner, Uzumaki Naruto."
Genma shifts the senbon to the other side of his mouth and smiles crookedly at the rambunctious kid, still running victory laps to the thunderous uproar of the spectators. Of course. He should have known better.
Genma shook his head. "Nah, you're crazy. I don't care how well the kid did in the prelims, it was pure luck that brought down that Inuzuka."
Hayate coughed quietly into his sleeve. "You're missing the point," he said softly, returning his attention to the sword in his lap. He had a mission early the next day, and the first thing Hayate always did before missions was care for Tsume.
Lame-ass name for a sword, Genma remarked once. Hayate had shrugged and pointed out that he'd been very young and full of himself when he'd named it.
Privately, Genma thought naming weapons was stupid. Weapons broke and then you got new ones. No point was served in getting attached.
Hayate had given him a long, thoughtful look when he'd said that. It always struck Genma that Hayate seemed to get a lot more out of what he was saying than just what he meant by it.
"Make it a bet," Hayate said, sliding the cloth over Tsume's gleaming blade. "If I'm right"—cough—"you take all my patrols for a month."
"Too easy," Genma muttered. "That Hyuuga's a prodigy, a genius. Uzumaki's gonna get flattened. You saw what happened to that girl, right?"
Hayate gave him a tired look and didn't bother to point out that he'd been standing in the ring, had been one of those who'd had to restrain the branch Hyuuga from killing his cousin.
"Someone lost that fight," Hayate said quietly. "It wasn't Hyuuga Hinata."
Genma's eyebrows knitted together. Genma is a practical person. If someone knocks someone else down, they've won. It's not all that complicated. Hayate liked to look deeper, and Genma couldn't always follow his train of thought.
"One month of patrols if Uzumaki Naruto defeats Hyuuga Neji in the finals," Hayate said, sliding Tsume back into the plain sheath.
Genma gave him a suspicious look. "All right. And you take one month of my patrols when the Hyuuga kicks Uzumaki's ass."
Hayate smiled and coughed and said "That won't happen."
Genma really should have known better than to doubt Hayate's prediction. He thinks he sort of gets it now—something about the smartest people being their own downfall, maybe.
You were right and I was wrong, he tells Hayate silently. Happy?
Of course, he's been taking Hayate's shifts anyway, these days, because Hayate died four days after making the bet, and they still don't know how or why, but that's not really the point.
Genma knows a little about seals and curse seals.
Mostly because Hayate had one, and Genma needed to recognize when it was acting up, when he needed to get his friend to the hospital, quick-fast-and-in-a-hurry.
So when Hayate sympathized quietly with the branch Hyuugas (although their seals were much more stable than the one on Hayate's neck, and didn't drop them in their tracks, hacking up a lung), Genma listened. Genma always listened to Hayate, even when he didn't understand exactly what Hayate meant by what he said. Mostly because Hayate was so quiet, someone had to listen to him, or risk forgetting he'd said anything.
So Genma knows that there are ways to fight curse seals. He was never sure exactly how similar Hayate's seal was to the bird-in-cage one the Hyuugas use, but he has his suspicions.
"If it's clever enough," Hayate said once, wistfully, "even a captured bird will eventually figure out how to open the cage with its beak."
Genma remembers, because it's one of the longest sentences Hayate's ever managed without breaking off to cough.
It's not really common knowledge that Gekkou Hayate and Mitarashi Anko were on the same genin team, Orochimaru's first and only students. It's even less common knowledge that, where Anko's seal broke her mind (though she manages to stay within spitting distance of sanity, most days), Hayate's broke his body.
If Hayate hadn't been killed four days after making the bet, he would have died within a few years anyway, his body slowly deteriorating.
It's practically a downright secret that their last teammate had been a cadet family Hyuuga. Genma only knows because he's nosy as hell and heard Hayate reference the name a few times, prompting him to go digging through the rolls from Hayate and Anko's year at the Academy.
Hyuuga Haruki had been Orochimaru's last victim-cum-experiment, the event that had prompted Anko and Hayate to go to the Third.
Genma, too nosy for his own good, had actually needed to pull rank as an ANBU to get access to the file for that case. He'd skimmed over the grisly details—Orochimaru had gone to great lengths to try to circumvent the bird-in-cage seal, even to the point of attempting to extract the eyes while the kid was still alive—to the conclusion, which stated that the attempt had failed, as the removal had triggered the seal and killed the boy, locking the secrets of the byakugan away forever.
The smug satisfaction had practically wafted off the page, and Genma, on a hunch, had checked the name of the report-writer. Another damn Hyuuga, no doubt a main family Elder.
So Genma knows a little more about the bird-in-cage seal than the average person. He doesn't like it, doesn't like how it traps people like that, like Hayate's seal, only somehow worse, less forthright about the damage it does.
He doesn't like traps or cages. It's just how he is.
It's a little for Hayate's memory and a little for the memory of Hyuuga Haruki (who Genma thinks he might have made fun of, back in the Academy, but whose face he can only vaguely bring to mind) that he repeats Hayate's words to the defeated prodigy.
The medics are hurrying over, ready to drag the kid back to the infirmary, mend the broken jaw and get him back on his feet.
Genma looks down at the kid (who might be Haruki's cousin or nephew or something—Hyuugas are inbred all to hell) and half-smiles.
"Heh," he says, shifting the senbon between his teeth. "Even a caged bird, if it's clever enough, will try to open the cage with its beak," he thinks about Hayate, trapped in a broken body, Haruki with the same seal on his forehead, "never giving up its desire to fly free."
Hah. Shiranui Genma, inspirational speaker.
He sorta hopes this kid gets his act in gear and comes back fighting. He doesn't want to see some damn scrawl on skin ruin another life.
Endnotes: And you totally know that's why Hayate was always coughing. Heh. That was fun. Been reading some of the threads over at ScarletSpiral, so you can probably blame those folks for the excess of Genma and Hyuugas. Because Hyuuga Haruichi? Awesome. Coolest Hyuuga ever. Long live the snark!