Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Third Thread

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This chapter has been beta'd for you by hestia8639. Thanks a lot!

Official beta'd version posted 04.08.2017

"I'll be famous one day, but for now I'm stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons."
― Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

0

Ren hates Mondays, and that is an undeniable fact. Renee had hated Mondays, the original Ren had hated Mondays, she knows, and just… honestly, there has to be something wrong with anyone who actually likes the first day of the week when it's not free from any sort of activity, because there's definitely something wrong with the day itself.

So, at around six in the morning (what the actual fuck, what kind of a masochist gets up this early?!) when Konohamaru's mom enters their room and announces that breakfast is ready and they'd better get going or it'll get cold, Ren curses her existence, and everything alive. She curses so much that Sasuke sputters and Konohamaru's mom actually says something about washing her mouth with soap.

(She very astutely changes her mind when Ren flashes red eyes at her. The woman isn't stupid, and Ren isn't below using intimidation tactics. Especially given that the woman is, technically, younger than her.

She might be twelve in body, but her mind is thirty-one. And she will not be disrespected by a brat who's barely turned twenty-three!)

She really has to figure out how to make a proper bento, though. A very rice-less one, because Konohamaru's mom (is she like Moomin's mom here, with her function being much more important than her name? Ren suspects she might be) doesn't really comprehend how she can dislike rice. Up until she takes it out and throws it at the floor, because goddamnit, she is trying and trying to tell her like a civilized person, and it just isn't working-

No, she does not feel bad for being a moody brat. If the damned woman can't understand after being calmly told five times, then told louder three times, then yelled at twice, she feels fully justified.

Instead, after some wait, she gets katsu sando, and only then she decides that she's content and it's time to face something she has been fully free of for five years. Thank the gods that in this world she is going to attend it for half a year and some change, and then she will be done forever. Like, forever-forever.

Unless she warps to yet another dimension, which she doesn't exactly want. Being in Naruto, a world of super-powered, logic-defying child-soldiers is, in fact, better than being in… Dragon Age, for example. It's ordinary, but with magic and set in medieval times. Ren wouldn't be able to survive in an unhygienic, cloudy-minded medieval environment. Ever. Naruto is quite advanced, to be honest.

If she is to guess, this world is about twenty years behind in development compared to her old world, which, honestly, really isn't that bad. She is around ten again, too, even if only physically, and it seems oddly… fitting, and even somewhat reassuring.

So, armed with a proper, rice-less bento and Sasuke latched onto her hand as if his very life depends on it, Ren sets off to school.

(She is so not ready for this. She's been there, she's seen that. And yet, she is still so not ready for this.)

In revision, she is so not ready for the sheer annoyance she would feel after a mere five minutes since stepping into the academy building. And why is that? Well, the teachers and some of the students have apparently decided her to be some sort of a glass doll, or, better yet, a holy cow. If they'd been anywhere near Hindu religion and had her vitiligo been better visible on her Uchiha-pale skin, it would be, in fact, almost adequate.

Still, she hates it. It's pissing her off, to be honest. Like, so, so much. Lessons are far from starting yet, and she already feels like destroying something. Preferably levelling the Academy itself, but rearranging someone's face will do in a pinch. As much as she shivers in fear at the thought of Nagato/Pain at this point (and perhaps forever will), at the moment she really envies his ability to Shinra Tensei things into dust in mere seconds.

So, after bidding Sasuke goodbye by forcing his bento into his hands and pushing him into his classroom (let him be mobbed by all the fangirls for all she cares, she isn't going to have anything to do with them, yet), she is royally pissed at… well, everything. She makes her way to her own classroom as she seriously starts to plot throwing the Gōkakyū at a couple of the fretting people. Just to make an example, really. Her chest still aches, but it's dull and merely annoying. Or, she's just used to it by now. Her heart has to both heal and beat at the same time, after all.

(The secret as to why she isn't healed completely is, apparently, the fact that they haven't any medics skilled enough to do so. So they just let her body heal itself as it sees fit, instead of, possibly, ending her career as a ninja by permanently distorting her heart's ability to function. Both bullshit and way to fucking go, Konoha, if you ask Ren, leaving an almost-ninja kid with a near-fatal injury alone and hoping for the best.

If it hinders her future badassery, Ren is going to strangle Hiruzen for not dragging Tsunade's ass back to the village even if it's just so the Sannin could patch her up and then flip Konoha off again. And then, she will find the Slug Sannin and force her to fix it; she neither cares nor gives a single flying fuck about just how serious Tsunade's hemophobia is.

That's a promise, believe it.)

But, of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg called 'making Ren's life harder in as many unnecessary and perfectly avoidable ways as possible'. Because, well, this:

"Back from the dead already, Uchiha?" a snarky, pre-pubescent, boyish voice asks the second she steps into the classroom, and Ren's head snaps around to follow it, laying her eyes on its owner. A boy with short, straight, brown hair, bandaged forehead and those creepy, soulless, glassy white eyes, so starkly different from her own dull, charcoal ones. Of course, why is she surprised. Just her luck that her life is filled with perfectly avoidable nuisances.

"Still haven't removed that stick up your ass I see, Hyūga?" she retorts immediately, promptly throwing her bag and planting herself in one of the free spots left in the classroom. The fact that a girl surrounded by three puppies occupies the next spot over may or may not have been a direct reason and the fact that she decides she can live with sitting basically right next to the snarky Hyūga brat.

Hibiki, she thinks, recalling his name, which the original Ren bothered to remember because the boy is a constant nuisance, and only because of that. He is nothing special, really. Not particularly smart, not a taijutsu prodigy, and his clan never does any ninjutsu anyway. He is just… a generic Branch Family member, Ren guesses, who will hardly make it anywhere past chūnin. Well, the Hyūgas could have only so many geniuses.

(A.k.a. Neji, perhaps Hanabi, and a lot of wasted potential in Hinata.)

"Please, you two, can the first thing you do once you enter the classroom not be to argue?" the girl sitting next to Ren says. Her tone is warm and kind, yet somehow underlined with a dangerous, feral trace of a growl. So, Ren completely ignores the Hyūga brat and focuses on her instead.

She is pretty, alright, even at this age. Her hair is long, chocolate-brown and in a loose ponytail, her eyes are dark enough to rival Ren's, but not nearly as empty-looking, and there are red triangle-shaped markings on her cheeks. The three puppies, almost identical save for differing shades of a grayish-brown overcoat, are definitely ninken.

Better yet, Ren is almost certain that they are the Three Haimaru Brothers.

And the girl next to her is, obviously, none other than Inuzuka Hana, older sister of Inuzuka Kiba, one of the Rookie Nine and Sasuke's classmate.

"Doesn't Sasuke have an Inuzuka in his class, too?" she asks, cocking her eyebrow, which instantly morphs Hana's face from a scowl to a look of pure delight.

"Yes, Kiba!" she chirps. "He's my younger brother!"

Perfect older sister alert.

"Well, Sasuke is basically my younger brother now, too, so I guess we have that in common."

"Oh," the girl sighs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"No pity, Hana," Ren growls. "No pity. Compassion. Unless anyone wants to become my training dummy. I could use some work on my fireballs lest I get rusty," and if she makes extra certain to speak the last sentence loud enough for the whole classroom to hear, well. The Uchiha Massacre is not her tragedy, per say.

"You know my name?" Hana asks, surprised. "You never bother to remember anyone's name!"

"Well, I bothered with yours, because you're apparently worth it," she just shrugs in answer.

"And me?" Hibiki cuts in. "You remember mine?"

"Get lost, Hisoka," Ren growls, and then coughs to stop herself from laughing at the boy's expression.

"It's Hibiki!" he yells at her, and she just rolls her eyes in a 'what-the-fuck-ever' motion. She has a feeling that this might become her favorite way to torment the boy over and over again: getting his name wrong. Always.

Yes, it's cliché, but it never gets old.

And it's at this moment that a female shriek cuts through the newfound silence, and everyone looks toward the source. A girl with blond hair and very civilian-looking clothing holds a book raised high with every intention of smashing it down. On a spider.

On a very albino Japanese Huntsman Spider.

Ren moves before she even registers herself moving – because it's a spider, that stupid hoe is going to smash a poor, innocent spider. That dumb blonde bimbo is going to murder an innocent and useful creature for no reason– and snatches the creature before the book can hit the wood, protectively covering the spider with her other hand.

"Are you fucking nuts?!" she hisses and almost headbutts the mortified girl, but restrains herself at the last second. No violence at school.

"But, but–" she tries. "It's a spider!"

"And?" she cocks an eyebrow.

"It's big, and ugly, and–"

"Shut up," Ren growls. "They feed on cockroaches and crickets. Do you like cockroaches and crickets? Because I don't."

The girl looks like she's about to start crying as she shakes her head. Good, it's not as if Ren feels bad for her. She never feels bad for stupid people. Also, Renee had always liked spiders. She'd had a goddamn Gooty Ornamental Tarantula, a true beauty she was, which she had allowed to crawl all over her while she was doing paperwork at home. It's also worth mentioning that Cobalt - the tarantula, because Renee was a genius with names, let's name the cobalt-colored spider 'Cobalt' – had never been de-fanged, yet had never once bit her.

Ren sighs heavily. Cobalt had died about half a year before her own 'death', and she would be lying if she says she doesn't miss her pet, because she does. And now, maybe to honor her friend (Renee was such a looser, with her only friend being a spider, wasn't she?), she saves spiders whenever she can. So, she takes this one outside, crouches on the windowsill, and places the spider in a bush behind the window.

The spider, however, has a different plan, which it shows by swiftly jumping back onto her hand and making its way up before seating itself on her shoulder, visibly content with its life choices right now. Oh well.

"So, that's how you want to settle it?" she asks the spider, even if she doesn't expect any sort of answer. "Well, whatever, little one, you can stay. You're less annoying than some," cue meaningful look towards Hibiki.

Today is going to be… fun.