Knitting Fate

Second installment in Canon Patchworking with Uchiha Ren series

Sixth 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

"There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate."
― Linda Grayson

0

It takes Ren only until Tuesday to decide that Hyūga Hibiki is, indeed, the mediocre kid she had thought him to be when she first saw him. One would think that all of his clan are at the very least decent, but no. There's Neji, the boy with a face like he's suffering from really bad constipation but can land a hit on older kids while he's still only nine, but then there's Hibiki, who tries very hard to have the same face all the time but… but.

But Ren, still on medical leave, technically, and being told by everyone to take it easy for a week or two, wipes the floor with the guy. Twice. Without even breaking a sweat, and getting only a mild sting in her chest, like when she walks a bit faster. What.

The first time is in the classroom, right before lessons start. Hibiki, being Hibiki, had been particularly annoying that morning (although, Ren isn't sure still, it's only the second day she actually knows him personally), so she gets mad and punches him so hard he flies through the classroom like a particularly ugly bird, and the class (most of it, anyway) bursts into applause just as the very confused chūnin teacher appears.

The scond time is when they have taijutsu practice. Ren is just sitting calmly on the bench, enjoying the whole hour of doing nothing, because bless medical leaves. She may not loathe physical activity, but she sure doesn't mind a moment of idle laziness. And, as if on cue, here comes Hibiki, the left side of his face red and swollen, and starts calling her out. That she's a coward and stuff, and she surely isn't able to beat him in a fair spar with a supervisor.

So, what does Ren do? She snaps her former self's diary (she's taken to reading it quite a lot), instinctively chakra-locks it, and stands up without a second thought. She isn't one to turn down a challenge, not even from someone like Hibiki. Long story short, he isn't as smug when, not even a minute later, she has him pressed down on the ground with her whole body, while practically breaking his arm with how hard she bends it back.

Public humiliation, of a sort. Especially since, as she learns later, her class isn't the only witness to it. Not when the exercise takes place on the main training ground, meaning that most of the Academy classes had gotten a good look.

"Nee-san," Sasuke says the second he catches her during lunch break. "That was amazing."

Of course, if there's someone who knows how to catch Ren off-guard, it's Sasuke. It's always, only him. So, a bit confused, she looks at him with a questioning look.

"You kicked that mean guy's ass, dattebayo!" her answer comes from Sasuke's shadow, that recently has come in the form of an over-active ball of sunshine. She is still amazed at the fact that it had taken Naruto all of a day and a half to latch onto her little cousin and not let go, without Sasuke even minding. Astounding, even. Not that she minds, though, no. Sasuke desperately needs friends, and who better than the kid he would end up befriending anyway later on?

And, honestly, how can those two be so adorably amazed by her?

"What do you mean by 'mean', huh?" she asks, her eyes narrowing just as Awai casually jumps from her shoulder onto Sasuke's hair. The boy doesn't seem to mind, really, but Naruto lets out a slightly startled 'ewww'.

"He picks on the younger kids with the older boys," Sasuke explains to her, pointing with his thumb to where Hibiki sits with some guys whose names she hasn't bothered to remember. They are from her class, that much she knows, and they appear to be civilian-born.

"That's not what I'd expect from a Hyūga, really," she murmurs, crossing her arms on her chest. "They're always so fractious and arrogant, but bullying?"

"He stole my food once," Naruto murmurs, puffing his cheeks. "And hit me real hard when I tried to take it back."

At this, Ren smiles. She smiles in such a way that even Sasuke looks at her wide-eyed, all remnants of color suddenly drained from his face. Naruto himself looks quite scared, too, because, well.

"Just you wait for when I'm completely healed and greenlit to kick asses," she says so sweetly that Sasuke looks even more frightened and Awai actually curls around his hair. "Just you wait, you fucking piece of shit. You'll see what I have to say about you bullying my little adopted brother and his friends."

Somehow, neither boy doubts her promise for even a second. And if Hibiki glances at them with a glint of uneasiness in his eerily pale eyes for a split second, well, no one really bothers to notice. Not when there's Hana startling Ren by glomping her and really what the fuck, how did you sneak up on me, stop. With Kiba right behind her, of course.

"What are you plotting, huh?" the Inuzuka girl asks, and Ren just shrugs.

"You know, dinner, and a bit of murder here and there. You know, a colorful homocide, so we can make garlands out of Hyūga Hibiki's intestines, and maybe gloves out of his skin–"

"Oh god, Ren," Hana just facepalms. "What did he do this time?"

"Fun fact number one; did you know who's been bullying the younger kids?" she asks, and Hana's eyes narrow as she shoots a glance at Kiba. The boy just smiles sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.

"You told me those were street hooligans," she says. "Not my own classmate!"

"Uh, you know…"

"Okay, Ren," the brunette turns to her, face stern. "What were you saying about a murder?"

"Hmm, well, first, we lure him onto a dark street…"

"Man," Naruto says, turning away from the plotting girls. "Older sisters sure are scary, aren't they?"

"You realized that just now, moron?" Sasuke huffs, allowing Awai to climb up his arm and onto his shoulder.

"Mom's scarier," Kiba admits quietly. "But Hana can be pretty scary when pissed, too."

"Do you really think they'll kill that mean guy?" Naruto whispers to the other two conspirationally, and earns a sigh in return.

"Kill? No," Sasuke shakes his head. "Beat into a pulp? Most likely."

"Those are girls," Kiba admits solemnly as if there is something more to that than just the obvious. "Girls are scary."

Somehow, the other two find it hard to disagree.

On Friday, Genma finally comes back from his secret mission, whatever it is, and actually bothers to show up at the Academy once lessons are over. So Ren, just like that, glomps the man so hard she almost bowls him over, and refuses to let go, because it's Genma, and he's so beyond awesome, and she's missed the smug fucker, too.

"Well, I see I've been missed," he chuckles, patting her head, but she still doesn't loosen her hold on him, burying her face in his flak jacket instead.

"You're too cool to not be missed," she admits; her voice is muffled, but the tokujō still makes the words out, somehow. "Why are you here anyway? I doubt you bothered just to see that one kid you visited in the hospital after they had their entire family slaughtered."

Genma just chuckles, shaking his head. "That, too, but not just that. I also–"

"Genma-nii!"

"Hello to you to, Iruka," the tokujō says, waving the senbon in his lips at the boy approaching. Well, that's Iruka, all right, but… younger. "I heard you passed the tests just fine?"

"Yes!" the boy admits cheerfully, and really, he can't be older than seventeen or something like that. Renee had never really thought about it before, but he did start teaching young. But hey, it is a ninja world with ninja logic. "I will be a full-time teacher next year!"

"Shame," Ren mutters, letting go of Genma. "I'm graduating this year, and if Genma likes you, then you must be awesome, too. I would've loved to have you as a teacher."

"Really?" Iruka asks, his eyes shining with excitement and pride.

"Really," Ren agrees, nodding her head. "Everything touched by the miracle of being near Genma is a good thing."

Iruka just snickers at that and then bursts out laughing, as the tokujō in question rolls his eyes with a smile.

"Not just touched," he says, glancing at Ren. "I've been raising him for, like, seven years now."

"So you're the local hen mother?" the girl asks, very seriously, and Genma pales for a second, but then coughs into his hand and regains his composure quickly.

"I swear to god, if you start clucking I'm going to kill someone. Aoba, most likely," he says seriously, but his face isn't that serious, so Ren just laughs in answer.

"Nee-san, what the hell are you doing?" Sasuke's tiny voice sounds behind them, and the girl growls, turning around to face the boy.

"Squirt. Language," she says, looking down at him. Awai, the sneaky little bastard he is, seats himself on her shoulder and looks at the boy judgingly, his front legs crossed. It's comical, in all honesty. It's enough for Naruto, trailing behind Sasuke like the shadow he's become (at least throughout the whole Academy day, and Sasuke tolerates it, because, honestly, it's either Naruto or the fangirls), to actually snort at the spider.

"You really bother?" Genma asks, clicking the senbon between his teeth. "Of course he's going to imitate his role model."

"Me, a role model? That's such a load of crap, Genma!" Ren disagrees, earning herself a chuckle from the man, a snort from Iruka, and yet another wave of smugness, this time from Sasuke. Overall, Ren notices, her life is full of smug people. Genma radiates it, Sasuke will grow up to be a smug little shit – not that she minds, as long as he doesn't become the power-hungry, revenge-driven maniac she dislikes so much.

"Well, nevermind," Genma sighs. "Oh! Since I'm back, how about I treat you to some food? I'm freshly paid after all," he smiles, and Ren just sighs.

"If you're willing to feed me, the squirt, that little ball of sunshine, and two Inuzukas, then I'm game," she shrugs, receiving a confused look in return.

"Inuzuka?" Genma asks.

"Hana and Kiba, the children of the current clan head," she answers, as if it's the most obvious thing ever. "We promised Naruto ramen last time–"

"Ramen! Yay!" the boy pounces at her without a second thought, and Ren grunts, as her nearly-healed wound flares with new pain. Not nearly as much as before, though, so it's a good sign. In a week from now she should be perfectly fine to kick Hibiki's ass on a daily basis via taijutsu practice. However, she isn't so sure they would team the class' very own Dead Last against one of the Rookie of the Year' candidates.

(If Hibiki wasn't a Hyūga and likely to be teamed with an Inuzuka and an Aburame as part of a Tracking Team, Ren might actually fear he'd end up on the same team as her in order to compensate for his ridiculously low-level performance.)

Genma, as it turns out, really had been on some sort of important mission, and his paycheck apparently reflects it, since he doesn't even flinch as Naruto makes his way through his fourth bowl with no sign of stopping anytime soon. Meanwhile, Ren, eating much slower, is only on her second bowl.

And as much as the boy seems to like every single type of ramen (there's, like, more than ten variations and Teuchi apparently knows every single fucking recipe), he isn't limiting himself to any. Ren, however, finds herself favoring the most unoriginal, boring, 'primal' variation of the broth; shōyu ramen, topped with additional Narutomaki and Menma (ever wonder where Naruto's dark counterpart's name from 'Road to Ninja' comes from?). She makes her way through it much more slowly, preferring to eat slowly and savor the taste, but she is pretty certain she can eat at least half of what the boy is eating. On her right sits Sasuke, finishing his own miso ramen in silence, and a bit further, Hana and Kiba, bickering over their portions of tonkotsu.

Genma, the smug bastard, watches them all from above his bowl, goddamn cat, pleased about Ren-doesn't-know-what.

"What's so funny, huh?" she asks finally, as she sets her second bowl aside and motions Teuchi for another one.

"I remember you, week ago," he says quietly. "A broken kid, confused and scared. And look at you now. You almost have a gang now."

"Hn."

For lack of anything better, she just gives him the Uchiha™ response with a shrug, to which the tokujō only chuckles.

"Besides," he says again, bending towards her, "I'm glad you're friendly to Naruto. He doesn't exactly have many friends. And we… well, people closely related to him and his parents are for some reason forbidden from approaching him."

That's all Danzō, Ren thinks. There's no fucking way it's anyone other than Danzō. Also, as for why no one, not Kakashi, or Genma, or any close friend of Minato and Kushina, had ever tried to take Naruto in? Mystery solved. Not that she likes this particular turn of events, but she's already plotting.

"Don't worry," she says finally, digging her chopsticks into her fresh, steaming food. "I'm already plotting. I'll have an army of tiny Academy-sized minions in no time, trust me."

"What?" the tokujō actually laughs this time, attracting the attention of the others.

"You'll see," she winks at him, grinning mischievously. The man eyes her suspiciously for a while, then wiggles his eyebrows, earning a snort. Unfortunately, Ren had been working through a mouthful of noodles, so it ends in a coughing fit and threats of murder from Ren, an exasperated sigh from Sasuke, and laughter all around.