Name: Unlucky Thirteen: Reunion Beneath the Founders' Eyes

Author: Christopher J. Velez

Date: 10/8/2006

Legal Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto and all rights to the publication and broadcast of it belong to the myriad domestic and international firms who have purchased said rights. Eijirou Kasabayashi, Fumio Uchiha, Chijiro Katsuhito, and Suguru Henzami are creations of the author. This work's intent is solely to bring merriment to both writer and reader, through the exploration of the world created the Masashi Kishimoto.

Language Disclaimer: Being that this is a work of English set in a series whose original language is Japanese and which draws heavily on Japanese and Chinese culture and folklore for its universe, so at times the English language proves inadequate for the task at hand, especially when dealing with idioms and colloquialisms. Thus, certain decidedly American English idioms or Latin or Greek phraseology will turn up from time-to-time as there's no suitable analogue within the canon to either a specific idiom or phrase.

Chijiro yawned absentmindedly. Founders' Park, located in the shadow of the Hokage's Tower and built in commemoration of the founding of Konoha after the end of the Second Great Ninja War, seemed as if the Kyuubi had not been at the gates of the village nearly a month earlier. On this cool and crisp spring morning, the sky was blue and the meticulously tended landscape of the park was coming into bloom: The bronze statue of the Firsts gleamed, with the metallic eminences of the First Five, the men who had founded the modern hidden village system in the hopes of never again seeing a blood-letting like the Second Great Ninja War, still keeping watch over the park, as if there had never been any earthquakes or flying human flotsam from the battle that raged just to north of Konoha. The whole park had a lulling effect, seeming almost as if it had escaped the past three weeks unscathed.

Almost, Chijiro reminded himself, was the key word. He and his mother had rushed through Founder's Park on their way to the shelters as the alarm over the Kyuubi's approach was sounded. Even by that early point in the battle, the tremors from the beast's footfalls had started the impact the village, as he distinctly remembered hairline cracks beginning to form in the great granite base of the statue of the Firsts, and thinking it an ominous sign of what was to come. Thankfully, he had been wrong. But that still hadn't saved him from three days on a cot in a dank and overcrowded shelter. That made his neck twinge in pain: It had been two and a half weeks since they'd been allowed to return home and he still hadn't worked all of the kinks out yet.

Chijiro took a slow walk around the statue of the Firsts, examining it intently. He was a few minutes early and he had never really spent any time looking at it, even though he passed the park every other day or so. It was also a better way of killing time than simply twiddling his thumbs and letting nervousness well up inside of him. He was not the type who was unnerved by meeting new people: He blamed his current uneasiness on his mother, who had shown up at his door at dawn to make sure he looked "presentable", whatever that meant.

Admittedly, how to dress when going to meet your new team leader for the first time was not exactly something that he was taught at the academy. And he really could see it from her side of things, as she just wanted her son to make a good impression on his new boss. But he hadn't seen it her way then. And that had been the cause of much friction between them. They had went at each other for at least an hour, or so Chijiro thought, before they'd come to an agreement that was amicable to both of them. He, however, thought he'd gotten the better end of the deal. He had managed to convince her to drop her insistence on his wearing flowing fineries and instead acquiesce to a simple and "respectable" look: A dark, collared shirt and beige knee-length shorts, with his crest tied around his forehead, an outfit which wasn't all that terribly different from what he would normally wear, save that his shirt now had a collar.

His mother had, however, remained adamant that he not wear his chest plate, gloves, assorted joint protectors, or tactical vest and not take his kunai holster and quarterstaff, lest their presence ruin the air of understated professionalism she insisted he present. He'd protested strenuously against that, as any illusion of professionalism would implode quite quickly if he did not bring his ninja kit and the new team's jounin wanted a demonstration of his skills. But she had held firm, leaving him only with the recourse of smuggling out whatever kit he could fit into his rucksack. With a little luck and a lot of shoehorning, he'd managed to squeeze his tactical vest, holster, gloves, armguards, elbow- and kneepads into the rucksack while still retaining the essentials and enough food to ensure he wouldn't starve. It was, he felt, quite the accomplishment, given the limited amount of time and space he had to work with.

As he stood there staring at the statue of First Tsuchikage, however, he felt naked. He'd been wearing the same protective gear for the past six months straight: Light tactical vest worn over thick leather chest and back plate, with heavy fabric tactical gloves and cloth-bound leather arm, shoulder, elbow, knee, and shin guards and it simply felt wrong to be without the chest plate, shoulder, and shin guards. He felt even more awkward without his quarterstaff, the weapon he'd been working with intermittently for the past three years and which had been at his side nearly every day since he left the academy. He was less than thrilled with the idea of having to demonstrate his melee skills without it, but he was confident enough that his taijutsu would suffice should the jounin want a demonstration. There was also little to be gained from more fretting beyond even more worry and anxiety.

The "Oy, Chiji!" that resounded from the opposite side of the statue brought Chijiro crashing back to reality with a start. He foundered for a moment as he shook himself free from his introspection, searching for the possessor of the voice that had called to him. As his mind found its feet, he tried to place the voice. He knew he had heard it somewhere before.

"Chijiro Katsuhito," a short, scraggly black-haired girl with equally black eyes, said as she emerged from around the statue. "It is you!"

An Uchiha. Fumio Uchiha, he remembered, finally matching a name and face to the voice. That realization made his gut roil with turmoil. He hadn't seen Fumio since he'd left the academy, much to his own enjoyment. It had been a quiet year without her in his life. It had been a year without the headaches Fumio's mouth caused. A year without the headache that Fumio herself was.

Upon further inspection, Fumio hadn't really changed all that much from when he had last seen her, at the academy's graduation ceremony. She was still a good half-a-foot shorter than he was and he would have been astonished if she weighed more then eighty pounds. She wore an outfit not entirely dissimilar from his own, though swapping the collared-shirt and tactical vest for a thigh-length jerkin and tunic beneath it and lacking his eclectic assembly of limb protectors.

"I should hope so," Chijiro replied with an exaggerated eye roll, "because if it wasn't me, then that'd mean I'd lost me, and who'd report me missing if I'd lost myself?"

"What?"

"My point exactly!" he said with a laugh, slapping his knee.

"I see that sense of humor of yours is still a twisted morass of the indecipherable rantings of madmen, past and present," she jeered, smirking mightily, "some things never change, do they?"

"That you've managed to say a sentence without the invocation of profanity is proof that there are no eternal truths, Fumio."

"Fuck off, Katsuhito."

"So much for going for two, then?"

"You know, Chiji, I've missed our banter and battles of wit," Fumio replied, grinding her fist into her palm, "they're so much funner than the physical variety."

"I think that's because, unlike most of your other opponents, I'm actually armed," Chijiro retorted, grudgingly letting himself enjoy seeing Fumio again. This was, he admitted, what was pleasant about her company. She was sharp if nothing else and she was probably the most capable of thinking on her feet, at least in matters of discussion and rhetoric, in their class. But that silver spoon she had lodged in her mouth, he forcibly reminded himself, was why their friendship at the academy had been so difficult. When they had parted ways, she still hadn't learned when, or even how, to stop herself. He'd be surprised if in their year apart she'd managed to make gains toward either of those goals.

"I hear you've had more than your fair share of the latter since we left the academy," Chijiro stated as delicately as he could, though he had the feeling he was taking a sledgehammer to an exposed nerve.

"Eh, what can I say?" Fumio said with a shrug. "Dipshits say stupid things. I correct them. They, being dipshits, can't accept that their dipshittery is incorrect. And then I have to kick their asses."

Yep, still no clue when to stop, Chijiro sighed to himself. He wanted to like Fumio, he really, honestly did. But times, such as this, made that a difficult proposition. One that usually became more difficult the further one progressed into a conversation with her.

"Every one of them couldn't have been wrong—"

"You callin' me a liar, Katsuhito?"

"No," he denied emphatically, "I'm just saying that maybe you were in the wrong once or twice."

"You are calling me a liar!" said roared, shaking an accusatory fist at Chijiro. The rational part of Chijiro's mind winced: This was a fight he shouldn't have picked. But, in his infinite wisdom, he had. Which, in all honesty, might not necessarily have been a bad idea for his subconscious. He had five years at the academy with her that he'd never properly gotten off his chest and he'd yet to find an outlet for. At the moment, he couldn't think of any better use for his repressed anger and frustration than using it as fuel for a shouting match.

"I'm calling you a fool," Chijiro spat back, "so if you're going to start insinuating that I'm calling you names, at least get them right."

"I think I liked it better when you were calling me a liar," she replied with a cold huff.

"I never called you a—you know what? Nevermind," Chijiro gently rubbed his temples. "This is exactly what Henzami-sensai was talking about. And maybe, just maybe, you'd see that if you had even a hint of perspective. And maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation if you had even a trace of self-control."

"You always were old man Henzami's toady," she spat callously, almost choking on Henzami's name. A pang of guilt echoed through Chijiro. He had always felt vaguely responsible for the tumultuous relationship between Fumio and Henzami-sensai, if only because he considered the former a friend and his near-constant siding with the latter agitated Fumio to no end.

"Because he was right about—"

"Right about me?" she seethed, turning her back to Chijiro and throwing her arms up to the heavens in frustration as she cut him off mid-sentence. She then turned on her heel back towards him and banged her pointer finger against her chest. "If he was so right about me," she scowled with increasing invective, "then maybe you ought to just go join him!"

Chijiro sighed heavily to himself. Vindication, he thought, should taste sweet. As realization spread across Fumio's face and her hands clasped over her mouth, Chijiro felt he was entitled to feeling good about being right about Fumio still being unable to control her mouth in particular and lacking any kind of self-control in general. All he found, however, was morbid shame. Suguru Henzami had been the elder statesman of the academy, an icon to whom every ninja-in-training looked up to and strove to emulate. He had been a mentor to all who sought his guidance and was a god-figure to those under his direct instruction, which had included Chijiro and Fumio. He had been killed during the defense of the village, as every able-bodied man and woman was called to ramparts to turn back the Kyuubi. From what Chijiro had heard, there was barely enough left of his old teacher to properly identify the body.

"Chiji…I…I mean…err…" Fumio fumbled for the words she was looking for, after an awkward silence of a few moments. That, bizarrely, brought him a little bit of relief. At least she was cognizant that she had crossed a line. Most arguments between the two of them involving anything related to Henzami-sensai tended keep tumbling out of control even after she had said equally, or even more, disrespectful things of their teacher. That she stopped, and realized the scope of her mistake, impressed him.

"You know, for someone whose mouth gets them into trouble as often as yours does, you really are terrible at this whole apologizing thing," Chijiro grinned a little, in hopes of lightening the mood. As Fumio returned his smile, he felt his mission accomplished.

"This is hard enough without your being an asshole," she snorted in slightly better spirits, "and just what makes you think I'm gonna apologize?"

"Well, for starters, a few moments ago you were acting like an actual human being after you told me to drop dead in arguably the worst fashion imaginable, given the circumstances. On the basis of your behavior, I think you're feeling guilty about what you did and want to find an outlet for that guilt, which would be apologizing," Chijiro replied matter-of-factly, smirking as he did, "and there's the fact you started it. So it only makes sense that you apologize first."

"Wait, wait! You were the one who was lecturing me. You're also the one who brought up old man Henzami in the first place," she retorted indignantly, eyes widening in realization, "and that means that you've got something to apologize for, too!"

"Well, yes, I guess I do have something to apologize for," Chijiro nodded wryly, "but I'm not going to apologize until you do so first. Because, as I said, you did start this."

"Well, I'm not apologizing. I didn't do nothin' wrong."

"Guess I'm not apologizing then either."

"We'll see about that!" She smirked in a way that caught Chijiro off-guard. What caught him even more off-guard was when she threw herself at him, tackling him and wrestling him to the ground. After pouncing upon him, she hastily attempted to extricate herself from the grapple she had initiated so as to get into a better position to extract the apology she desired from Chijiro.

That was a mistake. He could see that Fumio hadn't fully thought out just what she intended to do when she'd jumped on him. She had tackled him on playful impulse and only then had started to think about how to wring an apology out of him. As she fumbled to get into a position to pin or otherwise immobilize him, Chijiro saw his opportunity as she momentarily turned her attention away from him.

He quickly and firmly grabbed her left wrist with his right hand. She stopped momentarily, surprised by his action, at point which he rolled to his left, snatching her right wrist and inverting their positions. He now pinned her to the ground with his arms pinning hers at the wrist and, with his legs swept under him, pinning hers at the thigh. It was by no means a perfect hold and would, in all likelihood, have gotten him a stern lecture from the wrestling instructors back at the academy. But it worked for the task at hand: Fumio was petite, much to her own consternation, and his weight was enough to hold her in place beneath him.

"We'll see about what now?" Chijiro grinned broadly, savoring his moment of triumph. Truthfully, he hated to admit, it wasn't all that much of a victory: He'd always been out of Fumio's weight class, both literally and metaphorically, when it came to matters of wrestling and grappling at the academy. Still, given that she had initiated this little brawl, he felt entitled to a little satisfaction for turning the tables on her.

"Can't…breathe…" Fumio choked out, at which Chijiro shimmied his center of gravity off her chest. She gasped for air as his knees were removed from her chest. "You know," she coughed, still regaining her breath, "might've been easier to have just gotten off of me."

"Hey, you wanted to make this about apologies," he said, grin growing even larger, as he leaned towards her. "I'm not leaving until I get what I came for."

"Is that what they're calling it these days? When I was your age, we didn't bother with the euphemisms, you know. Just went straight to Tab A into Slot B. Was much more efficient and much less confusing that way," a wry voice sounded from above and behind Chijiro and Fumio. The final stage of Chijiro and Fumio's wrestling match had attracted a spectator. The sound of the voice caused Chijiro to release Fumio and bolt to his feet. Fumio continued to lay where she had been, staring at Chijiro's embarrassment and laughing hysterically as he turned a deep shade of red.

"No need to stop on my account, kids," the possessor of the voice, a balding, elderly gentleman, said with a gentle chuckle, "though doing that in the middle of a park? For shame." The old man stroked his fingers together as he tut-tutted Fumo and Chijiro.

"It really isn't like that, sir. Really," Chijiro guffawed and him-hawed, much to the enjoyment of the still prone Fumio, who by this point had resorted to quite literally rolling on the ground laughing.

"Really?" The old man stroked his chin. "Well, if you're not doing anything…inappropriate," he nodded with satisfaction at his choice of words, "then what in the name of the Hokages were you doing down there?"

"It's…complicated," Chijiro smiled weakly in the hopes of signally his discomfort with the direction the conversation was taking. By the way the old man beamed, Chijiro got the sinking feeling things were going to get worse before they got better in this conversation.

"Life is little more than one complication complicating another complicating another ad infinitum, my boy, and if you're shying away from the complicated, why, you're shying away from life itself!" the old man roared jovially. "Besides, my dear lad, I like the occasional complication every now and then. They taste suspiciously like chicken."

"Fine," Chijiro sighed a weary and beleaguered sign, "I was tackled by this…this…Uchiha!" he said exasperatedly, gesturing to Fumio, who returned the favor by sending him a long, drawn-out raspberry. "I was just minding my own business, waiting for my new sensai and team to show up, when—"

"WAIT!" Fumio exclaimed, hurriedly clamoring to her feet. "You're here for that too?"

"Yes," Chijiro replied hesitantly, "but…here…that…too…" he trailed off, as grim realization set in. That made his gut roil with newfound fury. "Oh. Oh dear," he murmured softly, shock about his predicament setting in. He came to the realization that once, in another lifetime, he had been a tyrant whose acts of villainy and debauchery were unmatched and unparalleled within the annals of history. As that was the only way he could think of that karma would reward him with a punishment quite like being on the same squad as Fumio Uchiha.

"We're gonna be squadies!" she squealed with excitement, throwing an arm around Chijiro and putting him in a headlock. She ratcheted his neck downward, angling his head towards the ground, into a position where she could administer a playful and enthused noogie. Chijiro's discontent and discomfort were palpable as he squirmed as she ran her knuckles across his scalp. He continued to attempt to extricate himself from her grasp, though his efforts were largely to no avail.

"Yeah, yeah," Chijiro sighed, rolling his eyes as he finally pried his way free of her headlock. "But did you really have to rub it in so hard?" He said, wincing slightly as he tenderly prodded the part of his scalp that had born the brunt of her knuckles.

"I do so love wordplay that works on multiple levels," she beamed savagely, "though I'd say you more than earned it. Though honestly Chiji, given how you've been acting, I'd think you were unhappy that we were on the same team."

"I'm positively morose about the situation, Fumio," Chijiro said with another roll of his eyes, "I daresay I've never been more morose about anything in my entire life." He smiled inwardly as Fumio nodded slowly. When they had been at the academy, they'd both found dictionaries exceptionally useful tools in perpetuating their endless rhetorical bouts, as there seemed to be a never-ending supply of new verbs, adjectives, and nouns to be found and used against each other. He'd found he his memory retained all manner of things better than Fumio had and he felt vindication at the fact that the status quo had remained intact even after a year apart.

"But why would you be sad about working with such a feisty young lady?" The old man inquired innocuously. Benedict Arnold Geezer! Fumio's gaze narrowed and turned towards Chijiro. He gulped as terror welled up inside of him. Fumio when she was exuberant was bad enough. When she was angry, she was even worse. And, at the moment, she was on the warpath. If he survived this, Chijiro told himself, he'd make sure that the old man paid for what he had unleashed upon him.

"Not looking forward to working together, Chiji?" Fumio pouted as she cracked her knuckles, voice growing deeper in tone and tenor as she continued. "Well, that's just too bad, Katsuhito. Maybe you'll be a bit more jolly after you've had your ass kicked and the shit beaten out of you."

She threw the first punch, taking Chijiro by surprise, driving her fist into his gut with more force than he thought her capable of mustering. That made him wish he'd managed to find room for his chest plate in his rucksack: He suspected it wouldn't have hurt nearly as much as it did if he'd had some kind of padding to blunt the blow. He staggered back a half step, world spinning and pain surging from his gut, as Fumio's next blow, a high kick, was already bearing down on his head. There was no time to block, let alone counter: His only recourse was to lean in the direction of her momentum and hope he managed to dodge.

Pulling and ducking to his right, he got his head clear just in time to see a sandaled foot whiz through where his jaw had been a fraction of a second earlier. He used the opportunity presented by the follow through of Fumio's kick in order to jump clear of her and regain his composure. This gave his vision a chance to begin to clear and him a chance to get a handle on the situation. Fumio was serious about this: His gut still burned and ached from her initial punch and that kick could well have dislocated his jaw had he not gotten out of the way. That made him angry. If she had taken the kid gloves off, why shouldn't he, as well? Dropping his rucksack, he readied himself for her.

She came at him again. This time, her eyes flashed black on magenta: The Sharingan, he recalled. Deep in his mind, the rational part of his being screamed that he should be intimated by Fumio's manifestation of the Uchiha's bloodline limit. She had added that trick to her repertoire since they'd left the academy and it was a little unnerving, though more because of the unnatural colorization and shape of the pupil than what Fumio may well be able to do with it. Even then, however, he would not let himself be drawn into the trap of intimidation: Fumio was still just Fumio, even if she had added the ability to palette swap her eyes.

She swung high with her right fist, which Chijiro deftly blocked with his left arm. Surprise flashed in Fumio's eyes as her fist impacted the tough leather of Chijiro's armguard: She hadn't expected him to block her punch with the relative ease with which he had. Fumio transitioned her stance forward, hoping to hook her surging left leg between Chijiro's, to setup for a trip attempt: Chijiro, however, knew the technique she was using well, as it was a staple technique of his. Seeing where Fumio was headed, he grabbed Fumio's still blocked right fist, and pulled her towards him, thrusting his knee into her abdomen as he did so.

Fumio's eyes went wide as she impacted against his knee. She gasped for air, as the force of the impact winded her. That plays to my advantage, Chijiro thought as he brought his right hand back for a backhanded clearing shot. Fumio, however, still had not lost her advantageous footing. Realizing this, she drew her free hand into a fist and aimed for another strike at Chijiro's belly. Once more she drove a fist into his stomach and once more he winced in pain. This time, however, he didn't stumble or stagger backwards. Standing firm, he delivered his backhand, slapping Fumio with the back of his thickly gloved hand. As her head bobbed to the right from the force of the impact, Chijiro took the opportunity to seize Fumio's other wrist, to setup for a trip-and-pin to end the fight.

As Fumio's mind recoiled from the blow her head had just suffered, she knew the time to counterattack had come. She rocked backward, pulling Chijiro towards her, and head butted him as they closed together. She then rocked forward and swung her left leg out, shaking the dazed Chijiro off of her and sending him tumbling earthwards, where he landed face-first with a dull thud. Seizing the opportunity generated by her tripping of Chijiro, she dove onto him, driving her knee into his back and ratcheting his right arm behind him, into a locked position.

"That enough for you, Katsuhito? Gonna be a bit more jolly from now on?" Fumio inquired rhetorically, ratcheting his right arm a little more, though Chijiro could barely hear, let alone understand, her. His world had degenerated into little more than a kaleidoscope of pain and other bodily discomforts. His gut and back throbbed, his ears were both ringing and burning, his heart was thudding out of control, and the taste of blood and grass in his mouth made him want to vomit. Reminding himself he had to keep his wits about him, Chijiro managed to stow the daze and mental fog he felt welling up in the back of his mind. Fumio was proud, if nothing else, and in this fight he'd given at least as good as he'd got. She wouldn't be done with him until she'd played with him for a little while and rubbed his face in his own defeat. That meant her guard was probably down and, so long as he could keep her gloating, he still had a chance to find a way of turning the tables.

"Kind of hard to be jolly when you've just discovered what a mulch sandwich tastes like," he groaned meekly. Just play along for now, he told himself, at least until you figure out some way out of this. He could feel her resting herself on his back and arm. That was a fairly effective means of sustaining the pin for someone of Fumio's size, as it provided her with a means of preventing him from rebounding to his feet vertically while also providing support to maintain the immobilization of his dominant arm. But the problem with the pin Fumio held him in was Fumio's positioning of herself: She was quite literally balancing herself on his back and arm.

That gave him an idea. Fumio had made the same mistake he had when he had pinned her earlier, in that she was immobilizing him by balancing herself atop him. This had been one of the gravest of sins imaginable in their taijutsu grappling class back at the academy, one that Chijiro was increasingly sure Fumio had slept through. This was frowned upon because, if someone could generate enough lateral motion, such as by rolling, it was wholly possible to throw the maintainer of the pin and break the hold. The only reason he'd managed to hold her in place earlier was that his relatively large weight was pinning a relatively small entity.

"Come on Chiji-chan, play along. I did beat'cha fair and square," Fumio taunted sweetly into his ear. Did, he thought, was the operative word, bristling over her choice of honorific. The pain and world spinning were beginning to abate, with his right arm remaining an unwavering voice of discontent due to its contorting and bearing Fumio's weight. Judging by the bend of his right arm, he guessed Fumio's center of gravity was on his right. Which means one good push from the left and she should go tumbling. He had two means of generating the push he required: His left arm and left leg. His arm had, thankfully, been trapped beneath him: Using his own body as cover, slowly opened his left hand and placed his palm on the ground, ready to push. With his leg out of her line-of-sight, it too was covertly readied for when the time came to break her hold on him. Now, all he required was the proper moment.

"Chiji-chan, why do you do this to yourself?" Fumio asked innocuously, half to the wind and half to Chijiro, as she began to play with his hair. "Just admit you lost and that you're happy to work with me and I'll let you go…oh! And I want my apology from earlier, too!" She said, giving his hair a solid yank for emphasis.

Chijiro winced as she tugged at his hair and fought with all of his might not to give her the satisfaction she'd get from a yelp of pain. Even though it was painful at times and more than a little embarrassing, her mussing with his hair was a good thing. She was bored and looking for a distraction. As he felt her fingers in his hair, Chijiro became fairly certain she was becoming engrossed and his scalp was providing a suitable distraction for her. That meant her guard was lowered further still. He felt the pressure on his arm relent slightly: She was engrossed enough that her concentration was beginning to fade. That meant the time had come.

As he pushed with his left arm and leg, Chijiro heard something he'd never heard from Fumio before: A shriek of the decidedly feminine sort. That took him by surprise, as he'd have bet good money that the Hokage would've screamed like a girl before Fumio did. She had always been the sort whom one immediately recognized as a girl, as her features were too feminine to be otherwise, but one could never quite picture actually sounding or behaving like one.

That she shrieked was good news to him. He had taken her by surprise and, between that and his rolling motion, she had lost her balance and had been thrown off of him. As he righted himself and got his bearings, he saw Fumio prone, dazed, and confused to his left. There was opportunity to be had here, hopefully enough to end the fight. Chijiro scrambled to his feet and pounced upon Fumio, landing on her abdomen and pinning her upper body beneath his left forearm.

"Wakey, wakey," he said, gently slapping her cheek with his free hand, "well, Little Miss Sunshine, if we're going to be working together, we'd best be setting some new ground rules." She coughed meekly and nodded in agreement. He sympathized with her: A few moments earlier, after all, he had been in her place. And he had not been as gentle as he could, or would have liked, to have been as he straddled and held her down.

"Rule Number One," he enumerated, fishing a kunai out of his holster and pressing it flush against Fumio's neck, "is that if you ever call me 'Chiji-chan' again, the kunai doesn't stop till it's severed your windpipe. Am I perfectly clear?" Her eyes went wide as his kunai rested against her neck and she nodded as hastily as she could without inadvertently slitting her own throat. He nodded inwardly: The kunai was probably overkill, but sometimes extreme measures were required to make Fumio understand. "Rule Number Two? If you ever sucker punch me again, refer to Rule One for the outcome. Rule Number Three? If you ever play with my hair again without my permission, refer to Rule One once more for the consequences. Are we perfectly clear on those?" Fumio continued nodding hastily. "Good. I'll also just assume that, in the future, you'll also be a bit more circumspect and even-keeled, lest we have to have a repeat of this unpleasantness."

With that, Chijiro released Fumio and clamored to his feet. Having achieved something that approximated victory, he holstered his drawn kunai and brushed himself off, before extending a helping hand to Fumio.

"Geez, Chiji, since when did you become a such a hard ass?" Fumio coughed as she took his hand and pulled herself to her feet.

"Since I started taking my mother's fashion advice," he groaned, rubbing his aching stomach. "That hurt, you know."

"And being backhanded and impaled on your knee didn't?" she counter-groused, cracking her jaw for added emphasis. "Though I daresay you've improved since we parted ways. Was a time that kick would've cleaned your clock."

"There was a time I would've seen that head butt coming, too," he chuckled ruefully. "Maybe it's not so much that I've gotten better that we've both gotten worse."

"Now that's rather pessimistic, don't you think?" The old man, who had been silent for the duration of Chijiro and Fumio's spat, spoke up. "Once there was a time when feuding genins wouldn't give a senile old man a floorshow. But, what with everything changing of late, I suppose I must thank you for the entertainment."

"Pessimism pays," Chijiro shrugged as nonchalantly and nonplussed as he could. The truth was that this was an awkward situation for him. Part of him, that which acknowledged etiquette and propriety and the rules of civil society, had been having a conniption fit since Fumio had thrown the first punch. You simply didn't brawl in public places like the Founders' Park and there was little question that what he and Fumio had engaged in was a brawl. But, on the flip side, if he had let Fumio pound on him without fighting back, it would have only emboldened her and guaranteed she'd have been even worse the next time she got violent around him.

It also concerned him that the old man was still around. Chijiro figured that, at the sight of two teens fighting, there were really only two logical courses of action: Either quietly leave and let them continue to make nuisances of themselves or attempt to intervene. That he was still here, and that he had been observing them no less, was suspicious. As was the fact that he had said precisely what was required to set Fumio off in the first place. Something didn't quite add up here. And that worried Chijiro to no end.

"Well, I suppose it does," the old man nodded hesitantly, "but aren't you more than a little too young to be so cynical?"

"After dealing with her for five years," he countered, gesturing to Fumio, who beamed widely and defiantly as he did so, "I think I'm entitled to expecting the worst from humanity in particular and the universe in general."

"And speaking of the worst," Fumio interjected, cupping her chin in her hand in thought, "just where is Eijirou-sensai? He's late."

"Eijirou…sensai?" Chijiro echoed, not entirely sure of what to make of what Fumio had said. "You know who our new jounin is?" It worried him even more that she may well know who their new team leader was and he didn't. It meant he was either out of the loop or that Fumio was up to something.

"Yeah," Fumio replied nonchalantly, "don't you?" Chijiro bit his tongue. She was being rhetorical. Her arched eyebrow and folded arms told him as much. Which meant that it was almost invariably the latter. Which caused more worry to well up inside of him, as when Fumio was up to something, trouble followed as regularly as night follows day.

"Errm, no, I don't," he sighed, hating to admit she knew something he didn't. "I was just delivered a summons to get here bright and early this morning. Nothing about whom the team leader would be," he turned an accusatory glare towards Fumio, "or who'd be on the team, for that matter."

"Well, fine!" she huffed, cracked under Chijiro's glare. "Maybe I didn't find out through…the most conventional of channels," she suppressed at giggle at her own euphemism, "but you'd be amazed what you can find in your uncle's office when he's…distracted."

Uh-oh, he groaned deep inside of himself. "When he's the head of the Military Police and you've arranged for said distraction, eh Fumio?" Chijiro rolled his eyes once again. The worry that had been building up within well justified, as Fumio's 'distractions' tended to rival small-scale terrorist attacks in their complication and potential for mayhem. "Just how much property damage did you do this time?"

"I resent that!" she huffed in protest once more. "How dare you insinuate that I'd do something as distasteful as devise and execute a cunning ploy to lure my uncle out of the office so I could rummage through the MP's classified documents. I'm ashamed that you think so little of me, Chiji," she chided him, voice laden with self-righteousness. That made Chjiro want to laugh, as he'd heard one variant or another on this speech at least a half-dozen times. If anyone had the right to impugn her integrity, it was him, as she found a way to drag him into nearly every one of her cockamamie schemes.

"Fumio, you've already been caught doing it once," he sighed, the sound of then Chief Satoshi Uchiha's angry shrieks still nostalgically ringing in his ears. "And I seem to recall that you're still grounded for that particular offense," Chijiro shook his head at the connivance that Fumio had wrought. "So, yes, I wouldn't put it past you to try it again. Hell, I can think of at least two other instances where I'm positive you did the same damn thing and just were lucky enough not to be caught."

"I'm hurt, Chiji, really and truly hurt," she frowned as she pouted. That made him want to chuckle bitterly, as they both knew she was hamming it up for no other reason than her own enjoyment. "If we're going to have a healthy working relationship, musn't we trust each other?"

"I do trust you, Fumio. I trust that you'll be sneaky and deceitful and conniving when it comes to satisfying your innate desire to know things for knowing's own sake," Chijiro retorted matter-of-factly.

"Truth!" Fumio exclaimed, laughing boisterously. "So, fine, maybe, just maybe,I might have bent a rule here or there. But only just a bit." That made Chijiro do a gut-check. If she was admitting to minor transgressions at this point, that meant what she was really up to may well have a lynch mob forming sometime soon. "At the very worst the smell will dissipate from the Merchants' Quarter in a week. Tops."

"…smell?" both Chijiro and the old man echoed in unison. That was that, then, for Chijiro. Whatever she was planning definitely was on the small-scale terrorist attack side of the spectrum. All that remained to be seen was just how nasty she had gotten and how much trouble he'd get in because of his newfound official association with her.

"Proving that discretion may well not be the better part of valor, I'm going to go out on a limb and ask the obvious," Chijiro sighed, giving into the inevitable, hesitancy and trace amounts of fear building up in his voice as he continued, "just what have you done this time, Fumio?"

"Well, were I a knavish rapscallion, which I most assuredly am not, and I wanted to cause a distraction to clear out the Military Police's headquarters, I would check the village's municipal garbage collection schedule and construct an intricate and elaborate plan involving detonating several dozen explosive tags attached to the garbage carts simultaneously, flipping over refuse-laden carts all over the Merchants' Quarter so as to achieve maximum public disorder so as to distract the Military Police for as long as possible and provide for maximum perusing time," she grinned mischievously, reveling in revealing her devious plot. It was, Chijiro begrudgingly admitted, audacious if nothing else. It also meant that his lynch mob thesis might not be all that far off, either.

"Destruction of village property, destruction of private property, instigation of public disorder, unauthorized viewing of classified documents, conspiracy to commit all of the above…" the old man counted off, whistling softly as he finished. "I'll give you kids this much, if nothing else, you're ambitious. The most daring we got when I was your age was spying on the girl's bathhouse."

"Whoa, whoa, old man," Chijiro shook his hands and head, hoping to distance himself from the conversation and the fact that Fumio had managed to drag him kicking and screaming into another one of her hare-brained plots, "this is all her doing. I had nothing to do with this."

"But I did this for you!" Fumio stopped her foot in protest. "I did this for you and team! I did this so we'd know who we're dealing with! I…I…I just incriminated myself, didn't I?"

"S-E-L-F-C-O-N-T-R-O-L, Fumio. Lemme know if you ever know what that spells," Chijiro sighed, shaking his head with frustration and massaging his temples. Though he did take some solace at the look on her face as it sank in what she had said. "Well, Gramps, this makes me an accessory to at least eight crimes, some of which are punishable by hard labor or time with the ANBUs. What's it be gonna be for you?" He was being rhetorical. He knew the old man would rat them out to the proper authorities and he'd get to look forward to turning big rocks into little ones. Or, worse still, finding out just what "Special Interrogation and Tactics" really meant.

"Oh, you kids have made me laugh more than once this morning, and I've certainly been an accessory to much worse in my time," the old man grinned and chuckled. That sounded the warning klaxons in Chijiro's mind and raised even more red flags. It was bad enough that the old man wasn't going to run to the authorities: Chijiro wasn't entirely sure he wasn't serious about that "being an accessory to much worse" bit. "But if I'm going to keep this secret, I'm also party to this information you've dug up on your new team leader. Who knows, I might even know him. I've known more than a few of Konoha's ninjas in my day."

"Deal!" Fumio beamed, an aura of accomplishment radiating outward from her. Chijiro stifled a gag. Though she might have just gotten away with turning the Merchants' Quarter into a zoo, he couldn't help but vaguely feel that this would not end well for her or him and that she would be responsible for that. "Our team leader is Eijirou Kasabayashi, who's apparently some war-hero big-shot who's been stationed in Hikyou for the last few years heading up Konoha's operations there."

"The Eijirou Kasabayashi?" the old man whistled softly once more. "He's a damn fine man. Served with him in the Seventh Battalion during Operation Thunderclap."

"The Seventh Battalion? Operation Thunderclap?" Chijiro gaped in astonishment, much to his own consternation. The Seventh Battalion was something of a living legend to the youth of Konoha. Eighteen years ago, the Country of Fire had marched an army into the Country of Lightning, under the rubric of Operation Thunderclap: The invasion quickly degenerated into a rout, as the army's vanguard was encircled and cut off. All seemed lost, but for 99 days the vanguard, led by the Seventh Battalion of Konoha, fought its way home, fighting a three-month running battle while vastly outnumbered and outgunned, as it hacked its way southward to freedom. "He served in the Seventh Battalion?" Chijiro inquired as skeptically as he could, trying to keep his wits about him. "And, for that matter, you served in the Seventh Battalion?"

"Boy, don't they teach you history anymore at the academy?" the old man fumed. "Eijirou Kasabayashi led the Seventh Battalion!"

"Our jounin led the Seventh Battalion? Our jounin led the Seventh Battalion!"Chijiro repeated excitedly. The rational part of his mind, so much maligned this morning, screamed its discontent at the situation. This was all too coincidental, too convenient. But it was drowned out by giddiness to study under one of the greatest leaders of war time Konoha. "Did you hear that Fumio? We're going to be taught by a living legend! Imagine the things he's seen! The tales he's got! The things we can learn!"

"Whoa there, Spunky, might want to turn down the hero worship just a smidge," Fumio smirked as he chided Chijiro, "as once I had a name, I did a little more digging on just who our new living legend jounin is. Apparently, in addition to being a war hero, he's the Third's crony-in-chief, a renowned Hyuugaphile, and the only member of the council of elders ever to be officially ejected from its ranks because he mooned Councilor Danzo in chambers. His stationing in Hikyou was apparently some kind of diplomatic exile."

The old man stifled a smirk as Fumio mentioned mooning Danzo. Chijiro probably would have missed it, had he not spent so long watching Fumio do the same thing in the presence of Henzami-sensai. The pieces fell into place. An old man just happens to show up just about the time his new team leader is supposed to; Says just the right thing to goad Fumio into wailing on him; And the same old man just happens to become complicit in a plot that would send any upstanding citizen running to the proper authorities; And he just happens to have served in one of the most famous foreign campaigns of the War, in the unit that just so happens to have been commanded by the team's new jounin. And now he was forcibly repressing mischeavous smirks about what was probably one of the most disgraceful episodes in Konoha's recent political history. It all added up to one thing, and on thing alone.

This old coot was Eijirou Kasabayashi.

"And that's just his political baggage," Fumio laughed, "and he's got more than enough personal problems to go with his troubles with the Big Guys in the Hokage's Tower. I hear he's got the hardest ass this side of the Country of Stone and a stick lodged so far up it it's a wonder he can breathe at all. I also hear he's a world class ass-rider and that he moonlights as one of the Taskmasters of the Nine Hells."

Chijiro grimaced inwardly. Fumio hadn't put the pieces together yet. "Ockknay itway offway! E'shay Eijirouway!" he hissed frantically at Fumio in what Pig Latin he could muster, making a slashing movement across his neck with his pointer finger for her to cease and desist. Unfortunately for Chijiro, knowledge of Pig Latin, even pigeon Pig Latin, was not one of the skills in Fumio's inventory, much to his own disappointment. Every word out of her mouth dug a deep pit that they'd both end up residing in soon enough.

"I'm glad the lights are on upstairs, Mr. Katsuhito." Even more unfortunately for Chijiro, Pig Latin, both proper and pigeon, was one of Eijirou's skills. "A clever attempt to warn your colleague, I must admit. Probably would've worked, too, had my classmates and I not taken it up as a way of getting around old man Henzami's seemingly omnipresent ears. Though I must wonder, what gave my ruse away?"

"Ruse? What…ruse…" Fumio trailed off as fumbled with Chijiro's attempt to warn her, before realization dawned upon her as well. "That means you're—"

"The hardest ass this side of the Country of Stone, the possessor of a stick so far up my posterior I can hardly breathe, a world champion ass-rider, and part-time Taskmaster of the First, Third, and Seventh Hells."

"Why yes, Miss Uchiha, I am Eijirou Kasabayashi."

Author's Notes: I had originally intended this to come in at somewhere around 2,000 words. I've only overshot it by about 400, which is a damn sight better than Choices, which was intended to be roughly the same length and ended up ballooning to 15,000 words. This, I think, sets a rather firm foundation for that which is to come, as well as introduce two of the three genins who really are the stars of this little enterprise, Eijirou's massive presence in the preceding chapter not withstanding. Fumio was exceptionally fun to write, as she's all over the map and whose particular outlook on life provides a wonderful foil for Chijiro. And an even better foil for Hanaryuu, though that will have to wait until next chapter.