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Chapter Thirty-Four
~First, a giant THANK YOU to everyone who followed and favorited this story during the month of November when I was doing Nanowrimo. It really helped to have the support! And for everyone else - the comments for C33 were overwhelmingly wonderful to read. You guys are the best. The support you guys give me . . . it's crazy.
Some of you might find a certain conversation in here rather satisfying. After the month it took to write it and subsequent months trying to edit it into something I'm happy with, well, hopefully you are. I'm not super happy with various pacing/how things are put together details, but it's either post this or wait six months until I've collected enough thoughts to edit it nicely. You guys have waited enough. I've worked enough.
I don't know how it's taken SO LONG, but the last chapter was posted on July 1st and it's nearly been six months! I'm so sorry, guys. :(
In the last chapter, Orochimaru creamed everyone and then the Id creamed him.
.
The stunt with Orochimaru . . . I was never going to attempt that again.
Never.
"I will throw you in Inoichi's mind tank to be certain you will never try that again," said Daddy.
Ever.
"Don't worry, I'm saving the real lecture for Sasuke when he leaves the Forest of Death."
Again.
"I'll be honest," Shisui said. "You're likely to find yourself in that position again one day. We're going to step things up, young lady."
I shifted on the couch across from my mother's comfortable chair in her diplomatic guest suite. Oh, no wait. We weren't in her suite. We were in the Hokage's living room as she visited "him" for a private lunch. At least the sofa was comfy.
"Well, then," my mother said. "Kato can use chidori. There's a surprise."
"Mm."
"And the Sandaime doesn't mind you coming in as him while he takes a nap."
"There's a surprise."
She sighed. She sounded exhausted. "You are a very bright girl, Kana. I am very thankful that you and your brother survived relatively unscathed."
Yeah, so were we. Although I should mention that Kato wasn't here. He was in the hospital under observation for his tenketsu coils while he recovered his chakra reserves. Otherwise he would have been by my side for all of these lectures.
Traitor. No wonder he was willing to stay there a bit longer.
Mei smiled. "I'm not going to lecture you. You're not dead, and you and your comrades survived against Orochimaru. Not even I would want to face him in a fight." What sane person would? "I want to hear the story from you," she said. "Official reports between allied villages don't give much away."
"Isn't it a state secret?"
"It's no secret that Kiri and Konoha are close allies. The official missive is just posturing for spies. Hiruzen sent me a note that alluded to you two, but I still don't know the details. Kakashi is such a man about information."
I couldn't guess what "such a man" meant, but her meaning came through well enough. Far be it from me to turn down an opportunity to bond via ranting! Especially if I could avoid yet another lecture telling me that yes, my actions had indeed been terrifying for all involved.
"Tell me about it," I agreed fervently. "I think his comatose body told me more about the mission in Wave Country than he did the first day. Up until the point where he started teasing me about . . ."
Mei smiled and sighed. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat," she whispered under her breath.
I paused mid-rant.
She blushed.
"Um . . . well, I think he's going to tease me about the exam, too, but he's been waiting for the medics to kick Kato out first. Kato passed out for a few hours from chakra depletion while his system was dealing with the after-effects of soldier pills. The medics did a chakra transfer, but they didn't notice that his tenketsu had relapsed until Shisui-sensei came to check on him. Everything else healed just fine. His tenketsu are stable now."
"What about your injuries?"
I shrugged. Injuries to physical henges were never as bad after I dropped the henge. "My chakra was pretty low. I just stopped making genjutsu for a few hours and ate the vitamins they gave me. They healed a few of my cuts and bruises." I remembered my time arguing with the summoned chūnin much more clearly. He'd wanted to disqualify all three teams due to interference. Anko had shown up just in time to distract him.
Such a close shave.
"You're just like your father," Mei said wryly. "Regardless, I'll wring the true details out of him later. I just wanted to talk to you, Kana. And schedule your training in the family kekkei genkai. Can you go get your brother discharged from the hospital?"
"He won't like it," I warned.
"I'll take my chances," she said dryly. "I came here early because I was worried, but I'm not going to waste the time. Get Kato. Your father set up a way for us to train."
"Yes sir, Mother."
.
Mei didn't like it, but Shisui knew the family secret.
Shisui didn't seem to mind being asked to keep watch while Mei took Kato and me deep into Team Twelve's training ground in the Uchiha section of the forest. Mei said that our kekkei genkai couldn't be copied by the Sharingan. I dunno, Shisui read elemental combination theory books for fun.
Oh, and "our" kekkei genkai? I'd never accessed a hint of it. Granted, I'd never taken a chakra nature test or ever seriously played with my chakra in that way.
Enough shocks from Kato and ain't nobody interested in chakra nature.
"Here," Mei said once we'd reached the cliff edging the Nanako River. "Now, you both understand how chakra paper works?"
"Yep," I said. I was curious if it would feel similar to the chakra impression stuff that the Hokage had trained me with. There were five or six varieties of chakra-infused paper for sealing, too, and from what I'd heard some of them were just as volatile as the papers Mei had given us.
"I wonder what my chakra nature is," Kato muttered.
Mei snorted. "Why don't you go first?"
Kato nodded and looked at the small square of paper he was holding. His eyes narrowed the minutest fraction of an inch as he directed chakra to his fingers (hm, he was still recovering from the tenketsu problem). The paper crumpled. It all but curled into a ball.
"Surprise," I said.
Kato grinned. "I think you meant 'shocking.'"
There were five elemental natures of chakra, as every good little genin except maybe Naruto knows. The five ninja nations are named after them: water, earth, fire, wind, and lightning. Human chakra always favors one of the elemental natures. Kato's affinity, of course, was lightning. Shocking.
"Okay, good, and Kana?"
Mei and Kato eyed my paper.
Fine, fine. I sent a touch of chakra to my fingertips— Okay, a touch more—
"Go ahead, sis," Kato said.
I frowned down at the fibrous white square. "It's not working. Bad batch, maybe?"
Lightning wrinkled, fire ignited, water dampened, earth turned to dirt. Much as I'd like to have a wind affinity, it was rare in the world, rarer still in these parts, and neither of our parents seemed to use wind jutsu. The paper wouldn't split in half.
I touched the thing with my other hand. No, it definitely wasn't damp. Not even my lower lip detected dampness (that's an artist's trick, I wasn't eating it).
"Try using a lot more chakra," Mei suggested. "As much as you can control."
Well, I could wield chakra with blunt trauma force if I had to. I did so, and the paper immediately dissolved into steam. "Eep!"
Wait, had that sound just departed my mouth?
Kato burst into laughter. "Shut up," I hissed.
"Hahahaha, your face, and you jerked like," he demonstrated; "you're never living this down."
There were ways to alter people's impressions of events. Ho, ho. But I didn't need that right now. "Two words," I said. "Mask. Henge."
"What—don't you dare!"
I grinned.
"Moving on," Mei said. "Kato, your dominant elemental affinity is lightning. Kana, you have two dominant affinities. I believe yours are fire and water."
. . . At least I could always train for wind. Wind and hearing, what couldn't be done with that?
Kato pursed his lips. "So fire and water cancelled each other out at first? Water got the paper wet, but fire made it evaporate? And when she used force, the rate increased enough that the kinetic energy of both types had to displace proportionately." He continued on an increasingly scientific route. I tuned it out. We still shared a room and he liked to rant at night.
"Asahi's Five Natures?" Mei asked.
Kato blinked. "Um, no, just the lightning and fire volumes. The library said a genin had no business in reading the whole thing. I had to ask Kana to even get access to those." Ah yes, Kato's amusing debut as Suzume. Probably not something I should have agreed to.
"I'll get you all of them," Mei promised. "And that new theory from Kumo. I can pull a few strings."
Kato blinked again.
"So then. I brought some fancier papers with me. Since my kekkei genkai gives multiple chakra affinities, I wanted a way to test that for you, Kato." She pulled out a small stack of black paper strips. "They're all marked by the elemental color. Just apply a consistent amount of chakra to each one."
She gave us both five strips. Neither of us asked why we hadn't just started with these. It was a sign of trust from Kato. I liked messing with free chakra paper.
Kato's papers turned red, yellow, and brown for fire, lightning, and earth. His wind and water papers stayed black.
My papers turned bright blue and pinkish-red. The wind paper faded to a sickly muddy green. Another grew a spot of yellow that vanished the next moment.
"As you can see," Mei said, "this test is not as accurate. There's no way to measure the exact percentages."
"Does vibrancy matter?" I asked. Poor little wind paper.
Mei gave my green strip a dutiful glance. "If it's not bright green, it's not strong enough to matter. The red is bright enough. It's a shame you don't have much earth."
I shrugged. Nooo, wiiind.
"A child with Boil Release and a child with Lava. I'll have my hands full." This didn't seem to faze Mei. "Hm, I wonder if it's because you're twins? Eh. Enough talking." She cracked her knuckles. "Let's frustrate you kids out of your minds."
.
Everlasting. Destiny. Sadao. Isami.
Journey.
Dream.
Friend.
Trust.
Kato groaned from his bed. "Is that a calligraphy brush I hear? Ack, am I turning into you?!"
Peace, I painted next.
Memory.
Bother.
"And now you're scrapping it for a new one," Kato told his pillow. "Why are you up this early?"
We were meeting "Shisui" at seven, which wasn't that early to someone who had trained with Mei. Morning was truly a time of mourning now.
I dipped the brush again. "Eh, I'm really not. I put a genjutsu on you for the window and clock so that you wouldn't wear yourself out training for Dad, Shisui-sensei, and our new kekkei genkai." I wasn't sorry. He deserved some involuntary breaks.
"But . . . I already set the clock back an hour so that you wouldn't get up and write after you trained with your Hyūga friend last night."
We shared a terrified glance through the walls of kitchen and bedroom.
I reacted first. "I've got breakfast!" I darted to the sink and rinsed the brush, then ran back to the table to gently replace the lid on my inkstone (wonderful choice of gift, Dad!) and set the brush out to dry. By the time I'd grabbed some muffins, Kato was opening the front door.
"We've got this," I said, referring to the teamwork.
"But what happens when Shisui-sensei teams up with Mom?"
"Mom?"
Kato took to the roofs without answering. I followed and scarfed down my breakfast. Apparently I could call Mei Mom now. And I suuure hoped no one had been spying at our front door. The inside of the house was sealed off from everything except the Byakūgan. Not so the outside. And Orochimaru didn't like us. . . .
Oh well. He'd sent Suzume mail, he hated my guts, and his underling Kabuto had dropped out of the chūnin exam to parts unknown. Why stress about relationships?
I should have made chocolate muffins.
". . . Mizukage-sama. I've observed what you talked about yesterday myself, and I was wondering if it's possible for a secondary mastered elemental nature to bleed into an elemental technique. It's supposedly impossible without a kekkei genkai, but I've noticed this more than once while on duty."
"On an amateur level, or as fully-developed nature transformation?"
"The latter. Most have been jōnin. I . . ."
"Kana, are you gonna eat that one? Thanks!"
Ugh, who wants to hear more about elemental nature transformation affinity make-this-leaf-burn-or-die.
Was there anything better to listen to today? Let's see.
"Hey, where'd you go, Ero-sennin? You'd better not be at the bathhouse again! Don't old geezers like you have anything better to do with their time?" Not that channel, then.
"Kana, do you know where we're going? Are you zoning out?"
Oops. Back to manual tracking mode it was.
". . . So yes, Uchiha-san, that sounds like it's worth looking into. Let me know if you've made any progress in the next week or two. I won't have any time once the final tournament starts. I imagine you won't, either."
"If things come to a head."
"Don't pretend. You were the only one of your clan to truly survive a catastrophe. You know how the world works."
"I wish I didn't, Mizukage-sama."
Kato and I skidded into the clearing beside the cliff, and Mei and Shisui looked up in perfect unison. I shivered. Shisui knew things about us. Mei wanted to push us. He was just taking notes for the future, wasn't he? Let's hope it was the future where Yakumo made it out of the hospital without an ANBU escort or career-altering seal. I liked having her as a buffer.
No buffer today!
"Grab a leaf," Mei said.
Kato smiled and tossed a kunai up. It flew in a lazy arc and landed in his hand. Unfortunately, the leaves he'd coolly sliced off took sail in a breeze instead of floating right to him. Our mother's eyes danced, but she didn't tease him.
"Burn your leaves. Kato, remember that you do have fire nature and it's possible to separate it from lightning. Kana, your leaf isn't a genjutsu."
We glanced at each other guiltily. Kato kept frying his leaves. I had a worse habit of unconsciously starting a fire genjutsu. Good thing henges still required a hand seal.
Sheer force of will, unfortunately, was not enough to light these stupid things.
Mei stood up after a few more quick lectures.
"I have a brunch meeting with a retired architect. Uchiha-san will stay with you while I'm gone. Don't destroy the forest."
Destroy the Uchiha clan forest? That would take a while. Besides, the trees would grow back in a few years.
"Bye, Mom!" I called as she left.
"Bye," Kato said more sedately.
She departed. We were left with our cheerful sensei. "So," he said, "who wants to hear what you've been doing wrong?"
Ugh. I just needed time away from elemental things to stop thinking about it, and my subconscious would figure it out.
"Kana-kun, you're thinking too hard. Hop down to the river. Go play around with one of those fire painting genjutsu that I definitely know nothing about." I ran down the side of the cliff before he could add more. "And don't listen to random conversations. Watch your fire. Think of that fire."
Yikes, someone knew me too well.
I settled on a mossy platform halfway down the cliff face. The moss was dry enough to sit on today. I sat there and just breathed. The water below gurgled and drove itself forward relentlessly. Water was funny. Content to stay, eager to go. I could always hear water wherever I went. Dripping from a pipe, trickling through a stream, raining, falling. It struck me as an overwhelming element.
Always coming, always going, always present.
My fingers curved through hand seals until fire sprung up to greet me. I liked to start this jutsu with a pile of flames on my lap. I'd paint them, handful by handful, into the air. Illusory fire was beautiful and incapable of burning. It would burn things if you fell for the act, and then only in your imagination (except for Yakumo's alter ego). My little paint jutsu was made of awesome.
Shisui materialized beside me a good twenty minutes into my replica of the Hokage Monument. "May I see?"
I jumped and pushed an errant smudge of flame back into place. "It's just a memory game." I tapped him anyway with a dollop of chakra.
"Huh. That's not bad. Have you been taking notes from Yakumo-chan?"
"No." I scooped a shadow out under Tobirama's nose. Whoops, too much. I had to leave some fire there or it would be too much contrast. Flames were a finicky medium.
I sighed. "Here, scoot over so you can see it from the right angle. No, don't hunch down. I was kneeling for most of it. There."
The river filled in a long gap where Shisui glanced back and forth, stared into the flames, squinted, poked a finger through Minato's chin—whack.
Not Minato! Minato was a sealing master (as were the other Hokages, come to think of it).
"How can you understand this much about angles and not throw a weapon to save your life?"
Boo.
He was on my left, and there was space next to Minato, so . . . I scooped up more flames for another face. This one formed effortlessly. I knew my father's face better than my own, what with henges being debatable copies and the fact that a person in his twenties changes less over time.
"You really think they'll catch him without his mask?"
"It depends how fed up I'll get when he skips the photo sessions." I chiseled out the lazy dips of his hair. The flames didn't agree with this, but they weren't in charge of the jutsu. I controlled reality here. We were on my turf. Mainly because the Id had scared me so badly that I'd resorted to a skill that I hadn't touched for a decade.
I needed to think of fire as my own. If my chakra created it, it had to be mine.
Even the Id couldn't change the outside world without expending chakra (I'd asked Sasuke the instant Daddy and Shisui had left him alone).
Shisui laughed. I ignored him in favor of my father's mole. Beauty mark. Eh, who cared.
Beside me, Shisui's face turned intent. "I've never seen this side of you before. I think I understand now."
"Understanding is generally performed in silence."
"I know. That silence is our weakness."
My second meaning instincts tingled. "Um—"
Shisui threw up a hand. "Hear me out, Kana. You hide. That's fine, we all do. But you only let certain facets of yourself out."
I nodded. "We all have a people face."
"It's not healthy."
Wait a second. "Shisui-sensei," I said, "are you sure this speech is meant for me? I actually do know how to relieve stress. I've had practice recently. Yakumo, as I mentioned before, asked the creature that you refuse to talk about if it would save us. That wasn't quite a stress thing either."
"You didn't hear me out."
"Fine, then. Share the deep, dark thoughts that you've had ever since you met cute little me. I'll listen. I like to hear about myself." I settled back on my heels and conjured a new lick of fire to mold.
"This conversation has been a long time coming," Shisui said.
Each conversation took so much of a lifetime to happen regardless.
"My father," he began. "You knew him as ANBU Deer. His name was Uchiha Kagami. He was famous and deserved his reputation. The Second Hokage trusted him completely. But you remember him because he didn't mind changing diapers." Shisui's mouth tugged up on one side. "He liked babies. My mother had me very late in life, so he always said he was making up for lost time. He was a good father."
Good thing I was hearing him out, because I didn't know what to say.
"He died saving Kato-kun from bounty hunters," Shisui said. "It was a death he would have picked. Tobirama-sama died saving my father's team, and my father never quite forgave him for that. My father died knowing that he saved an innocent life. Just a few months before that, he'd heard that Hatake-san's little twins had gone to an Uchiha chakra specialist. The girl apparently had chakra almost identical to the kind that fuels the Sharingan. My father doubted that there would be foul play, but he asked me to keep an eye on you anyway.
"I was away on missions and busy with training. You went to the Academy and befriended one of my relatives. Then I noticed that Itachi had found a girlfriend while I was out, and that Itachi wasn't always Itachi. You're lucky I checked first. He and I have played some dangerous stunts before.
"Lo and behold, the small Hatake girl was a budding copyist, doppelganger, and friend to my very own second cousin. A close friend. You even had supper with his family. Only you forgot to bring him. If you'd eaten with Itachi, that night would have gone differently."
I doused my new drawing. "I don't remember what happened. I guess you know that, since Daddy and I talked through it on the trip to Kiri. Someone did a memory jutsu. I noticed, but there wasn't enough of a trace for him to use the Sharingan to fix it."
"That's because your chakra is so compatible with the Sharingan. Your father asked if I could unlock the memory while you were sleeping the first night on the road. There was no trace by then. Whoever did the jutsu intended for you to notice and may well have included a suggestion. If you'd been in Konoha, you would have gone back to the clan. Without proof. In fact, your father was already scheduled to go to Kiri for the exams. Had you stayed behind you would have had no choice.
"As it was, Kakashi-san took you along and picked me when my clan tried to send me or my cousin along. I think he tried to kill me a few times. We knew each other decently well from ANBU. Probably why I'm not dead. That and I managed to save your life later on."
"Thank you."
"But that all paled when we got the code from Konoha . . . my cousin, your friend, did something terrible."
No, I didn't want to talk about this. I'd already convinced people that I thought of Itachi as a dangerous murderer. I didn't want to do it with his cousin of all people. I knew that Itachi had been under orders. Shisui had to know it, too. Why couldn't we just let it lie?
"Your father is in line to be the next Hokage," Shisui said. "They'll announce it soon. A chūnin exam is as good a time as any."
I, ah . . . was he hinting back to Fugaku, who by rights should have been nominated beside Minato?
"A Hokage can forgive many things," Shisui said next. Oh.
I stared at him.
Seriously, he thought that Itachi could be officially pardoned?
Shisui's eyes glittered. "I knew it. You do know. Your father thought you were too young to piece it together. I figured that with all of your teenage aliases, age didn't matter. Oh, don't look at me like that. I know what I saw."
(Ahem, he thought that that murderer Itachi could be pardoned?)
I shook my head. "I don't know exactly what happened. Your clan was restless, and there was considerable bias against them. Bias goes both ways."
"The meeting that you infiltrated. Do you know what they talked about?"
Hadn't he skimmed through my memories of that night? "No. I do not."
"Neither do I. You have to understand, Kana, Itachi was furious when he found out. You were his friend. He didn't want you to be a bargaining chip. But the clan saw your friendship a different way."
Ugh, okay, enough. Time to switch gears. "We were friends. There's no need to read into it, I know that his friends were few and far between. He doesn't like the thought of using people even though he does it all the time." Blah, blah. I'd have been angry too if my family brainwashed a child. "Actually, I have a que—"
"When we arrived in Kiri I received a message that said Itachi attacked a clan member when he heard. Have you ever even seen him angry before?"
Babysitting. . . .
Shisui was the clan's eyes on Itachi. With him gone—hang on, hadn't Itachi snapped when Shisui had died way back in my memories? Things must have been tense. No one left in town to moderate, and bitterness on both sides. Small wonder that everything had gone downhill.
"Yikes," I contributed.
"You were a bargaining chip. Soon after that, my best friend made a certain choice."
It was so weird to be talking about this. Yeah, but stay focused, Kana, or your painting will burn you. It still obeys its nature first. Eh, who cared about the genjutsu. "Itachi wouldn't send people after you," I pointed out. "And you were undercover."
"Ignorance is bliss," said Shisui.
Oh, come on. "When Itachi was eleven, he joined ANBU. I'm not too young to know things. I'm also old enough to know that the things I don't want to hear about are the things I shouldn't avoid."
"I didn't join ANBU at eleven," muttered Shisui, "I joined your team. Same difference."
"Fine. I'll shut up. Keep talking, O great sensei. The Kiri assassins can be your secret. Same difference."
"He never wanted to talk about you," Shisui said, "which was his mistake." Ah, back to Itachi. What a surprise. "I knew him too well."
Silence fell. Had I not had any number of leaves rustling in the light summer breeze to occupy me, I might have felt awkward.
Somewhere in the woods, a snake ambushed an annoying cricket.
Plenty of snakes in the world. No need to worry.
"My father knows?"
"Yes."
"This pardoning idea, did you—" I reconsidered. "My father trusted him a lot. The village likes my dad, and you, even if half of the girls here have lost their senses over you. I can't see our brainwashed masses accepting him back." Brainwashed was a strong word.
Shisui's eyes glinted. "Funny you should say that."
Um, hey, what?
"Right then. Back to the grinding stone, Kana-kun. You're a smart girl who sees what you want to. Treat fire like you treat your genjutsu. You're the boss, not it. Just don't touch it until you've mastered it."
I tossed a handful of fire at him and laughed as his muscles involuntarily betrayed his brain. "Don't worry, Sensei, genjutsu isn't fire. At least mine isn't."
He shot me a look that meant I Wasn't To Think about the Id until Yakumo was able to explain it herself, which in turn reminded me of the question I'd meant to ask. "How come you never talked to me?" I asked. "I even came to your door once."
Granted, he hadn't been in his house at the time. Knocking on the door had only gotten me Sasuke, who'd telepathically communicated that his cousin was out, go away. Also jump off a cliff.
"I didn't know you very well," Shisui said. "To be honest, Sasuke took up most of my free time, and I wanted time alone."
Fair enough. Regardless of his career and its accompanying life outlook, the clan had been his family. Sasuke had been a child and protected from the public eye. Shisui must have dealt with more ramifications and paperwork than anyone else. Registered ninja deaths have all of these filing codes and and medical records to compile. A good half of the clan were civilians. There were burial details, inheritance puzzles (the clan holdings were already divided for any future children), and of course Itachi wasn't the monster he'd been painted to be.
"I kind of thought that you were out of the village a lot back then. Was that just because you were Sasuke's guardian?"
His eyes slid off shiftily.
I seized the opening before he could give me a straight answer. "Did you meet up with him?"
Ooh, yes, he definitely had!
"We share a summoning contract," he said eventually. "We actually talk a lot. It's all back and forth with genjutsu, just like you and Yakumo-chan do."
Ninja texting.
"That's cool," I said with passable neutrality. "I still wish you'd talked to me, but I guess I never hunted you down and I wasn't ready to talk for a while, either. I'm, um, still not ready." And now that I knew that Shisui and Itachi had venting buddies, I was frazzled. It was good, they deserved to help each other. Not like I could share very many secrets with anyone anyway.
My sensei nodded and eyed me askance, but he said nothing after that and eventually headed off to help Kato again.
I stayed on the ledge and wondered if I should have asked to say hi to Itachi. Would I ever see him again? Could my father really pardon him and allow him back into the village?
My genjutsu fire drawing was pretty unimportant by comparison.
So once again, I picked up a leaf. . . .
.
Neji didn't look up when I dropped my elaborate genjutsu disguise, which I found condescending as usual. He hadn't acknowledged any of my guises so far—deer, waterfowl, stray dog—a perk of the Byakūgan since I knew I could pull off appearances and definitely the proper sounds pretty accurately.
Still.
He was lousy at this friendship thing.
"Isn't your opponent supposed to be good with genjutsu?"
Neji was perched cross-legged on the underside of a branch. His eyebrows creased just enough that I was imagining it.
"Oh, right, that was the girl you already fought in the qualifying round," I continued. "She can't have been that good at it. Her teammate Haku-san keeps asking Sakura-chan about genjutsu theory. Although I think that their team was a recent formation. I doubt that teams in Kiri refuse to share tips with each other."
"I imagine," Neji muttered.
I laughed. "If you didn't want to hear me, you should never have called me out during your Academy years. Should have picked a different destiny."
He scowled. "My destiny was to win. She did well enough in our match, but her destiny . . ."
Oh, Neji. If you're going to make your bed and lie in it, at least pick a nicer bed first!
"Would I win against you?" I asked.
He sighed quietly. I had before (by trickery). It was why he didn't run off to his compound when he saw me coming. "You're not in the finals," he settled on. True enough. I wasn't. I also wasn't here for my own benefit. Neji, as mentioned, had creamed Haku's teammate in the qualifying round after the forest exam. His cousin Hinata had duked it out with a competent but exhausted Sakura.
Both Hyūga were matched together for the last round of the exam.
I was here for any number of reasons. Deep down, Neji was a hurting soul. He needed someone to be there for him without saying a word (and someone else to slap those words into him). I needed to figure out weak points for Hinata. I simply couldn't stand by when my every instinct told me that Neji had a horrible grudge against his family.
These private spars always came with conditions and stated goals—he wouldn't hold back while vying for his promotion. I had to slip under his shell and tempt him with my own abilities to get him to use his.
And when you have two stubborn genin who like to hold back on surprise skills . . . I'd rather just fight him in the tournament myself. Even though I know that with those stakes Neji would literally maim me if I wouldn't go down.
I walked across the grass until I was under his meditation branch. "You ready?"
"Did you really observe new fighting styles?"
"Pfft. We have an unspoken agreement, remember? I'm not in the tournament but I still want to pit myself against your destiny with the hopes of it rubbing off on me. That's the plan, right?"
"You do your reputation a discredit when you talk like that."
What reputation? I cocked my head. "Well, I'm not going to pretend that I'll do them any credit, but would you prefer to fight Gaara-san, Haku-san, or Sasuke-kun today?"
Neji accepted my seal of confrontation but didn't answer. His code of honor kept him from asking me to go quite that far. Plus, I was far from infallible while mimicking other styles. I'd throw in a few moves when I could. In turn, he had to treat my genjutsu of things like sand as real. It was a fun way to spar.
I promise, I would never sell out anyone's actual style for something as irrelevant as a chūnin exam. Neji was the only person I practiced like this with, and he wasn't the most curious person.
We sparred.
I did my best to match Sasuke's inhuman speed (pointless, Neji's teammate Lee was faster) and eventually retreated with "Gaara's sand." The best part about these spars was that Neji treated any realistic projectile weapons as a genuine threat. That was also the hardest part—when he's spinning in the Revolving Heaven weapon-reflecting stance, I want to be preparing for an offensive move, not getting bogged down with the proper deflective angles for ten different kunai. Neji liked to drop our arranged conditions when I messed up visually. Cheater. I didn't judge how he sounded!
"Sasuke is better than that," Neji said while I covered myself in illusory sand. "You fought him in the Academy tournament."
He relaxed while I stalled. I was listening to his muscles, since he was always happy to go on the offensive with me. Defence was his main strength. Unfortunately, I wasn't fond of losing to Revolving Heaven so I tended to play defence in these fights. How to beat that jutsu? What can I tell Hinata to do when he uses it? Think, Kana, think!
"You mean I beat him in the tournament. I don't think I could now. I'm just not built for speed."
"If you don't waste your chakra on illusions," Neji said innocently, but I caught the slight hitch and threw my pretend sand to the side. He skidded into it.
"Ha, that's your arm! Ack!"
I jumped away from the stupid Revolving Heaven. Gaara's sand was probably a match for it. Neji didn't agree and I didn't want that jutsu anywhere near me.
The spinning death circle came closer, but I kept retreating. He got the hint. "Why won't you attack the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heavens?"
"You mean the Revolving Door technique," I muttered. I tossed a few chakra-eating seals when he came closer and watched them shred uselessly. "I don't know," I said more loudly, "why wouldn't you run headfirst into my father's chidori?"
Neji paused, hopefully due to some latent seal results, and looked at me like I was an idiot and he hadn't meant sacrifice yourself but instead find a weakness. While he expressed his opinion, I channeled Haku and let fake senbon materialize mid-flight. Swipe, swipe, swipeswipeswipe. He swept back into his spinning jutsu.
That was just mean! Senbon were lighter, smaller weapons and I never knew what they were up to in my genjutsu.
"Come on, Neji, if I wanted to find flaws, I wouldn't just tell you!"
He substituted himself with a nearby branch and smirked. "Then you'd better find a new way to win. You had the angle wrong on your cheap tricks."
Uh-oh. "Don't you touch my tenketsu! I'm training with nature—"
"You're not in the finals." He swept into close range and deflected my tantō with practiced ease. I ducked back and tried to hook his knee out from under him. Wrong move.
"Ack! Neji, I'm going to a wedding this week!"
"Not yours."
The things I do for my friends.
.
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~Whabam. The next few chapters are written but still in need of good solid editing. All comments will be taken as encouragement for this endeavor. Please feel free to inspire me. Some things I'd love to hear about:
-did the Shisui talk answer satisfy anyone?
-were there any jarring spots - say, I alluded to something that didn't match up with the rest of the paragraph
-did you see any typos?
-did anything amuse you?
-do you want to see more combat? between who?
Ero-sennin is Naruto's nickname for Jiraiya.
ANBU Deer has finally been revealed as Uchiha Kagami. I could easily change him to being Shisui's grandfather, instead. Way back when I first put him in the story, there was no info on Shisui's parents.
Chronononological replies to the dear anon reviewers: Guest 7/1/18 (Noted! The plot should be moving along in the near future. I get frustrated with the chapter-equals-two-hours kind of feeling, too...but it simply takes me a long time to write, and I think skipping through things is usually a bad idea), SeishunObore (Ah, thanks! Let it never be said that I'm proficient in the slightest at Japanese), Guest 7/2/18 (Awesome! I'm thrilled to hear that), Guest 7/2/18 (Ah good, I'm glad you think that it's balanced! Wordplay is the love of my life), Guest 7/2/18 (You're very very welcome!), Guest 7/2/18 (True true. Not a kind move on his part. Morale is important!), klo (Pfft, absolutely not. I do, however, tend to write the most when I'm very tired. Every chapter is edited several times, and I have a sad habit of throwing more jokes in every time), GUest 10/5/18 (Funny you should ask, here they are! I hope that you enjoyed reading through those scenes)
Bonus content (alas, it can only be sent to signed-in reviewers) is some concept work for that conversation with Shisui that was literally more painful to write than pulling teeth.
Next time: the tournament! a wedding! not necessarily in that order!
~12.29.18