"Hi I'm Naruko Namikaze," Naruko said, as soon as Anko's sandal touched the academy roof. It had been a few weeks since she'd observed her students, and decided she was gonna fail 'em. She'd gotten real drunk last night, gotten up nice and early at the crack of noon, and led the recent graduates up here so she could give 'em the bad news and dip the fuck out. "My father was once a Konoha shinobi so I'm not really a foreigner like everyone says! I'm glad I'm out of that stupid academy cuz it was holding me back! I don't have a dream, but I do have a goal. And I will achieve it. There's a certain man I must-"
"I'm gonna fail all of you," Anko said impatiently. After following Hinata home, she didn't want to learn all their sob stories and get emotional. Better to cut things off clean, shinobi had to be treated as commodities, and you had to drop the bad investments. Treating 'em like people just led to trouble. "I observed all of you at the Academy, and you all sucked. I'm not gonna waste my precious time testing you."
"Then I fooled you," Naruko stuck out her chest proudly. "I was only pretending to suck because the academy was a waste of my precious time. I have to become a fuinjutsu master, and they didn't teach us a single thing about sealing. So yeah, not to brag or anything, but I'm pretty much a prodigy."
And Anko was pretty much a jounin. See, when words didn't mean shit you could say whatever you wanted.
"Course you are kid," Anko said cheerfully. "I'm still gonna fail you."
Naruko had frozen. She'd forgotten to take off her cheerful smile, and wore it like a videogame character who'd glitched out. Sakura and Hinata hung their heads in resignation as Anko had known they would. That was why they were failures, cuz' they expected everything handed to 'em on a silver fucking platter. They didn't even go down swingin-
"You bitter old coot," Naruko said angrily, getting in Anko's face, spraying her with saliva. Anko gently pushed Naruko away from her. This hadn't been so bad. She'd met a little resistance, but she was doing it. Extinguishing dreams. Ain't nothing she could say to make this not hurt. She just had to get through this, and she'd be done with this whole genin team bullshit. Tomorrow she'd be back to her true calling, stabbing suckers in the back. Ya know, the whole shinobi thing, not all this touchy-feely crap. Naruko glanced at the other two failures. "Can you believe this?"
Sakura didn't answer. Just looked at her feet and said nothing. She looked like she was about to cry. Anko fought off the instinct to console her. She'd created these feelings, she'd callously crushed their dreams, she had no right to try and play the good sensei now.
"...I always knew," Hinata whispered, she couldn't even meet Naruko's gaze. "...I knew I would fail."
"No!" Naruko stamped her foot. "Sakura, you're the smartest person in class, and Hinata, you're a Hyuga! We deserve to be shinobi! We at least deserve a chance!"
Fuck this shit. Why the fuck was she still here? She'd done what she'd needed to do. Why the fuck was she forcing herself to watch these little girls' broken hearts? Anko leapt off the building, making a b-line to a fucking bar. She needed to get some alcohol in her, she needed to kill some fucking brain cells so she wouldn't have to think about what she'd done anymore. Acting like a callous ass to a buncha starry eyed little kids. Rejecting students cuz they weren't talented enough. How many times had she told herself that if the tables had been turned, she'd have been different? Now the tables turned, and lookie here, it turned out she was a total piece of shit too.
"Give us a chance," Naruko said.
How the fuck had the brat followed her from the building? She'd thought she'd been moving too quickly for a genin to follow, but then, her judgement had been a little off lately. Anko used shunshin to dip the fuck outta there. You know what? This was a fucking blessing, she didn't wanna deal with some bartender she didn't know trying to be her best friend.
Anko appeared in front of a green roofed walk-in dango shop. Perfect. She ordered an assorted stick with all her favorite flavors, and waited for her order. After this she'd drop by a liquor store and buy a couple fifths. Then she'd sip on 'em for the rest of the day, watching whatever light ass fluff was on television. She fidgeted. Could they hurry the fuck up? Okay, she needed to relax. What the hell was she so worried about?
Anko saw a flash of yellow in the corner of her peripheral, and winced as Naruko shoved a few civilians waiting in line out of the way. "Give us a chance," Naruko said, sprinting into the restaurant.
Well there went that fucking plan.
"Order up!" A worker yelled, holding up the dango Anko had ordered.
Fuck that! "Keep it!" Anko disappeared with a shunshin. Then she used shunshin again. And again and again and again. Until it was kinda dark. Deciduous trees rustled above her. She was deep in the forest, which one, and exactly where she was, she didn't know. She was way out in the fucking boonies, and the little brat wasn't gonna be able to…
She was outside of Konoha's city limits, outside the protection offered by the Hidden Village Seal. She got out her kunai. Not cuz she was scared or anything, but just… Look, you'd have to be a fucking idiot or a damn kage to feel safe outside the Hidden Villages. It wasn't safe. That was why they all worshipped Uchiha Madara. He had worked with the Uzumaki Clan to create a seal which could keep shinobi from being picked off like flies. She'd heard the stories of Tailed Beasts that could sense chakra, that would snap up any shinobi wandering between villages alone. And of course, of the most powerful beast of all, the Nine-Tailed Fox, who held a vendetta against Konoha shinobi in particular. But Anko had travelled between villages plenty of times, she wasn't one of those losers who'd never left her hometown. More importantly, she was Anko fucking Mitarashi, and she didn't go jumping at the terrors in the nigh-
A stick snapped. Anko let loose a kunai, and heard it clank against metal. Another shinobi? Fuck, and this close to Konoha? What if it were the person who had taken out that other Hidden Village? She'd studied under Orochimaru, she knew damn well that the world was full of monsters stronger than entire villages.
The bush rustled, a flicker of an orange tail, and Anko got out another kunai. She bit her finger, drawing some blood. If she was gonna die, she was at least gonna tell Konoha who the fuck had done it. She pressed her hand down, "Summonin-"
"Give us a chance!" Naruko asked, bursting out of the fucking bush. Anko let out a breath, but kept up her guard. For a moment there she'd felt a killing intent that felt… Familiar... Anko rubbed her aching shoulder. She felt sticky, anxious, small as a fucking pill bug, she could feel a set of eyes on her, picking her apart and finding her wanting.
"Fine kid," Anko said quickly, her eyes darting from branch to branch. "I'll give you the ole' bell test tomorrow at eight. But when you fail you fail and that's the fucking end of it. Now let's get the fuck outta here."
Was she losing her mind, sensing ghosts like some genin on her first mission? No, she was very familiar with Orochimaru's taint. He was here, examining her once again. Or maybe… Naruko burst into a grin, and gave her a big hug. Attempted anyways, Anko wasn't about that shit. She shoved Naruko into a tree, and sprinted back to the village. Not at full speed of course, she wasn't about to leave the blondie to Orochi, but damn faster than an academy punk shoulda been able to go. But Naruko had no problem keeping pace with her.
That girl wasn't a fucking slacker. She'd make a damn fine kunoichi. Too bad she was in a group with those other fucking losers. Anko would tell the hokage to sneak her into their ranks somehow. Maybe give that ole' perv Jiraiya another student after his last had abandoned the village. Whatever, Anko had some dango to eat, some liquor to drink, and some anime to watch.
"Get a bell you pass," Anko said the next day, jingling the two bells and yawning. Her breath smelled like shit, just one of those days y'know? Made sense though, she'd woken up early, realized she was late, and hurried to the training ground by three. "If you don't you fail."
Naruko glanced at the two anchors beside her. Anko could almost read her thoughts. Two bells, that means two of us can pass. Who should I team up with? Sakura? Why the fuck is she wearing makeup for a field exam? That shit'll just get in her eyes. She'll just get in my way. Look away before she asks to team up. Hinata then? Why the fuck is the girl already curled up? We haven't even started yet, and she's already shaking. How can I trust someone like that when things get hot? All on me then. I didn't want teammates anyways. I don't need them.
"Well," Anko said, jingling the bells. "What are you waiting for? A signal? We're shinobi, I ain't gonna spell out everything for ya."
Sakura and Hinata darted for cover. Cute. In braver shinobi, it would have been smart. Trying to ambush a stronger opponent was the clear strategic choice. But… There was a difference between being strategic, picking your spots, and running away. They hadn't hid for some elaborate strategy, they'd hid cause they were cowards too scared to fight for their dreams. She'd bet a thousand ryo that they never confronted her.
Naruko stood in front of Anko, wearing that orange jumpsuit that screamed, 'look at me'.
"Can you please give me the bells?" Naruko asked. She got out a frog purse and started counting out coins. "I'll give you… Fifty ryo."
Not a chance. Clever though, and not a bad strategy in a real mission. Why fight your enemy when you could bribe them? "Not for five million," Anko said.
"Your funeral." Naruko grinned like a fox, her thin scars twisting her cute face into something vicious. Anko could have sworn she saw the girl's blue eyes flash red, but it must have been a trick of the light cuz Naruko disappeared in a blonde blur. Where the fuck was sh-
"Fuck!" Anko wiggled around Naruko's stab attempt. She tried to counter, but sweet little Naruko had some jets on her, and was attack-attack-attack. Anko couldn't do nothing but dodge Naruko's strikes, the tip of her kunai aiming exclusively at Anko's vitals. Ha! As if! Anko weaved around Naruko's strike, letting the girl overextend herself, and grabbed her-
"Fuck!" Naruko's kunai had switched hands, and that apparent overextend had revealed itself to be a beautiful left-handed roundhouse. Anko was forced to block the kunai with her forearm. Well that was almost as fucking painful as it was humiliating. Anko slammed her fist all up in the bitch's gut, and sent her flying into a nearby river. She wrapped up her arm, hiding her wound, fighting down a blush. She'd let herself take damage from a goddamn academy student!
Ya know what? Naruko was pretty damn good at taijutsu, and if she tried that crap again, Anko was gonna bust her ass with a barrage of ninjutsu… Nah... Anko smirked as she thought of something about a million times better. She was gonna repay that little shit, and show her what a dumbass she'd been to challenge the great Anko Mitarashi. Anko made a show of looking around, covertly setting up a trap that'd be sure to hook the blonde line and sinker.
And when her prey came flopping out of the river- Anko had known the persistent little fucker wouldn't go down with one punch- Anko got into another taijutsu flurry. Naruko had slowed way down, her strikes lacking the speed and grace from earlier. All that noise and the little fucker couldn't take a damn punch. Anko almost abandoned the plan in favor of punching the bitch in the nose, and ruining that pretty face. But no, Naruko's taijutsu was fine, it was that damn impulsive attitude that needed fixing, that arrogance that needed to be knocked down a peg or five. So Anko positioned the fight, attacking and retreating in calculated steps, until she was just a bit slow in jumping away from Naruko's kunai, it sliced through a leather strap, and a single bell jingled onto the forest floor.
Naruko's eyes darted to the bell and Anko didn't even bother to hide her smirk as the dumbass dove for it.
"When a trap is obvi- Fuck!"
Naruko had set off Anko's marvelous rope trap with her kunai. She'd clutched the bell in wonder. Then she'd put her hands together, and in a puff of smoke revealed herself to be a pink-haired golddigger.
"Does that mean I pa-" Anko punched Sakura in the face, and sent her flying into a tree. Lil' Pinky slammed into the trunk, and crumpled like a ragdoll. Anko skipped to the fangirl, grabbed a fistful of that silky pink hair, and yanked the girl up into a staredown.
"That was clever," Anko said, and pried the bell from the girl's fingers like she was stealing candy from a baby. "But all the brains in the world don't mean shit if you don't got the strength to back it up." Anko released her hold on the girl, letting her flop back into the mud. "You still fail."
Now then… If that had been Sakura it meant that Naruko was still out there. Anko whistled a jaunty tune, attached a wire to her kunai, and threw that sucker into the river again and again. She was fishing for some revenge. And yeah, she was back on ninjutsu strats. Next time she saw Naruko, she was gonna light her ass on fir-
"...I… Um… Mitarashi-sensei…" The delicate Hyuga outcast was bowing to her. And in her hands glittered three silver bells. When the fuck had she- both bells were still attached to leather straps on her mesh shirt.
"Okay, I'll bite," Anko said, staring curiously. "Where the fuck did you get those bells?"
"...I bought them, while you were, um..." Hinata whispered each word as if she was scared of her own voice, her nose still buried in the mud. "...That way… That way we can all pass, and nobody will have to fight!"
"Hmm…" Anko said, rubbing her chin. She glanced at the river. "Let me think about this."
The bitch had taken the bait! Naruko struggled out of the river, clutching her stomach, staring at the bells lustily. She limped to Sakura, and helped her up. Both of them could barely stand.
Anko punted Hinata's bells over Hokage Mountain. "After careful consideration, your application has been rejected! I ain't accepting any ole' bells. Just these!" Anko thrusted her hips suggestively, enjoying the jingle. "If you wanna pass, you're gonna have to take 'em from me!"
Hinata stood, and got into a fighting stance. Anko waited. And waited. No byakugan then? Okay fine, Anko struck. Hinata blocked the blow, and backpedaled out of Anko's followup.
Hinata's taijutsu wasn't half bad, for a genin at least. It didn't hold a candle to an actual Hyuga of course, nor even Naruko, but it was better than she'd been expecting. Anko couldn't quite slip her defenses. Not that she wanted to anyways. Cuz Anko wasn't gonna fail Hinata cuz of her taijutsu. She was going to fail her because she was weak.
Anko stilled, stopping her attack, physically anyways.
"Why are you even trying?" Anko asked harshly. "You know damn well you're not cut out for this line of work. Sakura and Naruko are both more deserving, so you should give up, and stop being so damn selfish."
"...Sorry…" Little Hinata trembled. She took a half step back, holding her arms out in front of her as if to ward off Anko's words. "I'm… I'm so sorry…" And then she was groveling in the mud again.
Anko smirked. As she'd known all along, a delicate little flower like Hinata was far too easy to trample. She had no place in the shinobi world.
"Get up Hinata!" Naruko barked angrily, straightening herself stubbornly. "You're always gonna be weak if you keep telling yourself you're gonna change! Don't try and be stronger tomorrow, try to be stronger right now! And Sakura, if you fail here, none of those boys will ever take you seriously! But you're a dumbass who studied her ass off to get the highest test scores in the academy, I know you've got as much grit as anyone! Let's all work together and get those damn bells, and show everybody what a team of underdogs can do!"
Naruko, Naruko, Naruko, Anko shook her head, the little blonde was barking up the wrong damn tree. These girls were failures, and their fate was set in sto-
"Hell yeah," Sakura said, standing up on her own.
"I'll do my best," Hinata said, getting to her feet.
And look at that, the three little failures stood side-by-side, ready for one last futile stand against fate. It was hopeless, naive, and stupid. In the real world, it was way better to give up on a mission with impossible odds than to try the whole brave soldier routine. Anko knew where that got you, on a damn memorial stone. But of course for this stupid test it meant that they passed.
Wait a second...
...They'd passed, hadn't they? They'd fucking passed! This band of losers had unambiguously, without any help, passed the bell test! Suck on that Itachi! Anko could almost feel a smile coming on. Turned out that all those stuffy geniuses weren't so fucking prescient after all! That's what happened when you started judging kids when they were fucking twel-
...What the hell was wrong with her? She wasn't gonna waste her precious time training up a bunch of snot-nosed brats just to thumb her nose at the hokages. And why the hell was working together the answer anyways? What kinda touchy-feely bullshit was that? Just cuz you worked together didn't mean the mission would succeed!
She tossed Naruko the bells. "You didn't take them from me," Anko said cruelly. "You fail."
"That wasn't the deal!" Naruko threw the bells back at her. "You said you'd give us a chance!"
"I lied!" Anko shouted. "And if you're planning on becoming a shinobi you better get used to it!" Anko smirked at Sakura. "I wasn't from a clan… But I had talent." Anko looked down her nose at Hinata. "I sometimes doubted myself… But I never gave up." Anko returned Naruko's glare. "I wasn't the best student… But I was a fucking awesome fighter. And you know what all my hard work got me? Nothing! In this fucking town you better be from a clan, you better do well in the academy, you better have the attitude they want, because if you don't they'll pick you apart, until there's nothing left and they throw you away."
Anko pulled off her trench coat, and gave them a good look at her shoulder. At her three tomoe curse mark. The one which had ruined her life. "This was given to me by Orochimaru. You heard of him?"
The girls paled. Yeah. They'd heard of him.
"He was my sensei. I was his star fucking pupil. And one thing about him, one thing I've gotta give the freak, he was always honest. He told me there was a 90% chance that this curse mark would kill me. But if I survived it would make me stronger. All the others he gave the mark to died, only I survived."
She let his chakra, his taint, spread through her chakra network, let the painful black flame seals burn over her skin, and as much as it hurt, as wrong as it felt, she knew Orochimaru had kept his word. She was way fucking stronger. If she fought with his seal, there was no doubt she'd be a jounin. But… "The day I received this cursed mark was the day Konoha learned what a monster he was. That was when he got exiled. I already knew of course, but I didn't care. I wanted power. I'd do anything for power."
The girls recoiled. Just like everyone fucking else, just like Anko fucking deserv- Where was Naruko?
"How does it work?" Naruko asked, poking Anko's shoulder curiously. "Does it force you to obey Orochimaru? If so, why hasn't Konoha used a seal to inactivate it? Why haven't they tried to reproduce it? Can it actually make you stronger?"
"Not strong enough," Anko admitted. "When he left the village, I begged the sick freak to take me with him… And… He said… He said no… He said I was too… Weak… And he was… Right." Anko sighed. It felt good to finally admit it. To accept the truth for what it was. "As a shinobi, I'm nothing special. I worked harder than anyone, I was more ruthless in my pursuit of power than anyone, but the students everyone knew would be powerful slid right on by me. Obito was a deadlast in the academy, but he's got crazy sharingan powers. Kakashi has always been a lazy piece of shit, but he's always been a prodigy. Neither of them have trained half as hard as I have, have done half the things I've done for power. It doesn't matter. They're both far stronger shinobi than I will ever be."
And there it was. Ideas she'd not even dared think, but which she'd always known, deep down, were true. And here she'd said it aloud, and the world wasn't ending. Why the hell had it always been so hard for her to admit that?
Admit that all her hard work had been for nothing, admit that she'd never become a legendary shinobi, admit that she'd be better off loosening up, maybe teaching some brats? Admit that her career as a kunoichi was nothing special. Admit that she was nothing special.
"You don't want me as a sensei anyways," Anko heard herself saying. "I have no idea how to teach you. All the folks in the village hate me. They should. I deserve it. As long as I have this seal, he can control me like a puppet. If you're even associated with me, they'll think you're evil too. I'm doing all of you a favor by failing you."
Anko sighed.
"Just try again next year."
She could feel Naruko's glare on her back, as she left like a coward.
"I will not fail here," Naruko declared. "I will accomplish my goal. By whatever means necessary."
Well that was fucking ominous. Even more so because Naruko wasn't chasing after her. Whatever, Anko wasn't gonna deal with it.
She trudged her way to the dango store, ordered her favorite type, and ate the sweet dumplings listlessly. She almost regretted failing the three kids. She hated what she believed, but she couldn't help it. Losers would always be losers, and winners would always be winners. A loser could scratch and claw to change their fate, but in the end it was a pointless endeavor that only led to pain.
She hated Naruko. That ambition, that energy, that belief in others no matter how much they didn't deserve it. She'd been so desperate to follow anyone, even a wreck like Anko. How fucking stupid could she be? She was clearly an outcast, separated from everyone else, so why hadn't she just fucking left? Nobody wanted her to become a shinobi! And what the fuck was up with the way she talked? Not feminine at all, she talked like a fucking boy! And what was with the 'there's a certain man I have to'... what exactly? Didn't she know that revenge was a pointless ambition? Probably way stronger than anything she could deal with, so she'd gotten the brilliant idea to climb Konoha's ranks. Hah! So fucking stupid! And she'd clearly been training up her taijutsu, what kinda kunoichi tried to become a ninjutsu specialist? Taijutsu specialist, that was what Anko meant, she was thinking about Naruko, not herself. That would be ridiculous, the two of them were nothing alike! For one, Naruko had blonde hair! For two…
…
Anko was tired of thinking about this crap! She needed something to distract herself… That's right, the mission! She took out her scroll, and examined the drawing Ibuki had made of the seal on the three-pronged kunai. Every village had a Hidden Village Seal, which kept foreign chakra signatures outside of a certain radius. It had made war almost impossible, and since the founding of the Hidden Villages, the shinobi world had experienced an unparalleled era of peace. But somehow… Somehow this seal had allowed somebody to circumvent the Hidden Village Seal. Who? Why? Those questions were interesting, but Anko was most concerned with the how.
She had come up with two explanations. One was that the seal nullified the Hidden Village Seal, and cancelled its effects somehow. She didn't find this explanation very likely. She suspected that this was a time-space jutsu that allowed the user to teleport. The Hidden Village Seal allowed for a shell of protection, but if someone could teleport past the barrier the seal would be useless. That explanation also explained how the Hidden Village Seal had disappeared. There were still a few holes in the explanation, but now was when Anko got excited by the who and the why.
She suspected that the Hidden Village Seal had been stolen, so a true nullification fuinjutsu could be developed. Why else would the seal have been stolen? The motive was obvious. This mystery man wanted to bring about the end of this era of forced peace. But who in the world would want...
Why the fuck was everybody being so fucking loud? Anko couldn't hear herself fucking think! And what the hell was up with all the green vested shinobi hopping around as if the world was about to end? Anko grabbed one of 'em, a silver haired man who she felt like she'd seen before.
"Naruko has gone too far this time!" The man said haughtily, straightening his chunin vest. "She has stolen The Scroll of Seals. I knew we couldn't trust the outsider! She has to be executed!"
Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! And now, onto the reviews!
WarFlower - Thanks for the review! I'm really interested to see what you think about chapter 4, because that's when the story really opens up.
Kitten Arina - Thanks for the review, and I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the story. I felt like the hokage had to be an Uchiha if I wanted Naruko to be an underdog. She too easily embodies Senju ideals, so I wanted Konoha to have a culture she struggled with a lot more. Anyways, I'm sorry that the grammar got in the way of the story for you, I haven't been focusing on it as much so I can right my chapters more quickly, but I hate when grammar in a story is bad as well. I'll try and do better in the future.
Luiz4200 - Anko is certainly gonna try and test it! Thanks for the review!
Mimi-moo224 - Sakura is the most competent of the three at this point.
Amaterasu53 - I felt like I had to switch Madara and Hashirama's backstories or else Naruko couldn't be a true underdog. The Uchiha definitely got the short end of the stick history wise in cannon, so here everything is switched. I can't reveal much more without spoiling the story though.