Disclaimer: I own nothing but the general plot and OCs

Warning; zero editing

Okay, not a training day today. A brief day off. I'm going to try not to drag out Sonaru learning the shinobi arts for too long, whilst also giving it enough detail to give you all a good understanding of her capabilities. Also I'd like her to know Genma before the next darker segment. I think I'm going to introduce them in Genma's POV, or would you all hate that?

I predict this training segment being anywhere between four and seven chapters. Maybe slightly less, maybe slightly more (probably not more). It's supposed to cover somewhere around a year - including what's already happened training wise.

Also, the clothing bit at the start is a bit random, but I felt like including it so... yeah

Thank you so much for awesome reviews, as well as favs and follows! Let me know what works, or what doesn't work for you, as well as any prompts for scenes you'd like to see.

Chapter 29 - Running Around Like A Clown On Purpose

In my old life, people were a lot louder at claiming that what we wore shouldn't and didn't matter, that they weren't a reflection of who we were on the inside and so we shouldn't be judged for our styles or our bodies or our biology. And I mostly agreed with this, but the matter of fact was that even if they said otherwise, people did judge other people within seconds of seeing them based upon looks.

It was a lesson my mother had had to slowly learn - as a single mother looked down upon where I grew up - whilst she gradually morphed from baggy relaxed 'hippy' clothes to stylish expensive cuts and a subtle 'I'm not trying or even thinking about it because my whole wardrobe is like this since I live in the city now and my life is bigger than you could imagine' attitude, in order to even be taken seriously by any institution that had a say in our lives.

In turn, once I went to live with her, she encouraged me to walk a similar journey. She told me to find out what people really thought of me when I dressed a certain way or styled myself differently. She wanted me to be aware of the different ways I would be perceived in public, so that I could take control of that perceived image before I even left the house.

So I did; I wore heels and thigh high socks with short shorts, and wore makeup and jewellery with a bob cut, and got stared at and sneered at behind badly composed faces, had my friends parents tell them to be careful of my influence in their lives. I wore baggy three quarter lengths and hand me down t shirts from my brothers, with cheap trainers, and asked if I was a lesbian or just had no self respect, and had people treat me like I was their poor ugly friend who had too high an opinion of her looks. I wore incredibly conservative dresses and trousers and shirts, with neat black shoes, where suddenly people assumed I was a snob who'd had life handed to me on a platter, someone who went to a school that was clearly all about churning out the next right wing clone achieving high grades and repeating the same sheltered privileged rhetoric.

I dressed elegantly, or smart, or cute, with just a dash of sexy, threw on some obvious but not too heavy makeup, wore a chic haircut and had people falling over themselves to tell me how stunning I was everyday that I went out. All it did was tell me how little any of that fucking mattered to me. I realised, once I'd succeeded in my little girl dream of people thinking I was beautiful every time I left the house, that I wasn't beautiful. I wasn't ugly. I wasn't plain. Or feminine, or masculine, or 'slutty', or conservative, or any of the things that people would call me. I wasn't those things because I didn't want to be.

What I wanted was for people to look at me and stop fucking assuming that they knew anything about me, incorrectly, based upon what I wore. So with careful trial and error, I figured out how. I wore androgynous but sexy, or conservative but feminine, or elegant but masculine, or plain but cute and expensive, or sometimes even just loungewear/pyjamas if I really couldn't be fucked. I learned which makeup colours and styles - if any at all - went with what to make people assume what I wanted them to. I cut my hair off once I realised that I'd rather have people occasionally wonder what my sexuality or gender was than what they thought of me when I had long hair.

All that hard work meant that I knew exactly how to hold myself wearing certain things to subtly tell people to politely fuck off, or that I was open to be talked to by anyone, or that I was friendly but not interested in flirtation, or that I was unapproachable to teens, or children, or adults, or rowdy people.

It was during one of the blessed days that I had off that I woke up against DFB's back, the delicious smell of food curling around my nose and making my mouth water - seriously DFB could cook - and dragged my eyes open. As usual I had my arms around DFB's neck, and promptly slurred a 'g'mornin' against his shoulder.

He tilted his head toward me slightly and eye smiled, "good morning Su-chan." Now that I was awake, he placed me on the counter top so he could use both hands, as I rubbed my eyes free of sleepy dust.

"Any plans today?"

"Maa it's come to my attention that yesterday the last change of clothes which still fit you were ruined. We need to get you some more."

I nodded absentmindedly. I had never been a part of getting my own clothes so far. By the time I was healthy enough to even pay attention to things like that DFB had already kitted me out with a full wardrobe - or someone else did? I couldn't remember, I hadn't exactly been paying attention - and each time I outgrew something, DFB had slipped a new item in there mostly without my notice. The only difference between the things DFB got me and whoever dressed me before that - and now I was almost certain that he didn't used to buy my clothes - was that he always went for functional and plain rather than decorative and cute clothes. Now that I had started intensive exercise I was burning through them at crazy rates, since no matter how functional the clothes he bought were, they were still not clothes designed for shinobi which were more hardy.

Now that I had the opportunity to create my own image and decide what sort of initial impression I wanted people to have, I wondered how I should dress. I had to think of both the Subaru shinobi in training persona I wanted to have, when I wanted to be taken more seriously, and the cuter more innocent Sona persona. Trying to imagine what different cuts, styles and colours would look on me, I came to a sudden and incredibly important realisation. My eyes shot open in horror and I loudly inhaled.

DFB looked at me curiously, "what is it?"

"I can't believe I've wasted so much time!" I flailed dramatically.

"Is that so?" He mused, no longer so interested once he knew it wasn't a 'real' emergency, and concentrating on breakfast once more.

"Yes! You don't understand, I'm physically two years old, DFB," I wailed, "I've been at prime cuteness levels for a whole year now and I've been wasting it! I have maybe another year or two to get away with dressing up in fluffy animal onesies and giving puppy dog eyes before no one gives a fuck. This is a travesty and it must be corrected!"

DFB gave a vaguely affirming noise as I ranted and fondly ignored me. I continued to espouse the benefits of being so overwhelmingly cute, with a badass aloof shinobi parent hanging around - prime manipulation tactics alongside DFB essentially acting as a deterrent to all but the most determined cheek pinchers and cooing mothers.

Truthfully, the vast majority of the time I really didn't like shopping. I was an in and out kind of person- don't talk to me, fuck off I don't need your help, I know what I'm looking for, no I don't want to stand around having a chat with you and hearing all about your holiday in Barbados, no I don't give a shit about that sale in that shop we never go into, no thank you let's not have lunch out, hurry the fuck up let's move it - but sometimes, very rarely, perhaps once every few years, I just wanted to go out shopping and go full Diva.

So, with DFB's permission, I dragged him along to spend too much money on overpriced onesies. I wasn't ashamed to admit that it gave me warm fuzzies inside that a notoriously tight pursed Scrooge like DFB was so willing to spend money on random shit that I wanted. Not that I usually asked for much. I got a dog, fox, panda, turtle, kitty, pink bunny, flying squirrel, lamb, bumble bee, teddy bear and dinosaur onesie. For each one, I insisted on trying them on, prancing and dancing and twirling around in front of DFB and the mirror, revelling in the hushed squeals across the shop from the girls working there at how cute I was, cackling evilly inside at how well my plan was working.

DFB seemed to be swerving between happily stuck in his Icha Icha largely pretending to ignore the world around him, looking at me in exasperated amusement, and twitching at how genuinely fucking adorable stuffing me in fluffy onesies made me look.

"I was wondering why less people were curious about the fact that your size and your attitude don't match. I'm not wondering anymore," DFB commented dryly to me as I sauntered out of the first shop in my teddy bear onesie.

I sniffed haughtily, "bitch I look fabulous. Besides, that's the whole point. I say things far beyond what's expected of my age bracket? Look at how adorably precocious I am!"

In the next shop we bought actual clothes, and it was easy enough buying a mixture of cutely elegant and practical but definitely feminine clothes, alongside a couple of hair accessories and shoes. However, buying a style that would suit someone more serious and shinobi-like was more difficult. I needed DFB's expertise and know how, and whilst he knew more than I did how kunoichi tended to dress and need, it didn't change the fact that they all seemed to dress- well, like kunoichi. That right there was a problem. I didn't want people to look at me and think 'kunoichi' as I grew older, there were a shit ton of assumptions that came alongside that label which I was unwilling to don until I knew a bit more about it.

Despite DFB's best efforts, I turned down style after style until we sat down in a tired pile in the clothes shop and considered taking a break. The problem was, all of these kunoichi styles were too loud. They all made some sort of statement in some way, whether people thought they did or not.

For a time, I was so devastated to be stuck with a new body entirely. I thought all that effort and time into knowing and controlling people's visual impressions of me was put right back to the start. But I'd come to realise that although yes, there were differences in the nuances of the assumptions people made based upon certain dress styles, things weren't so different that I had to do it all over again. I still knew how to make people assume the things I was looking for. Or at least, I'd know it when I saw it.

My answer came as I despondently scanned the clothing shop, and smirked when I saw a chibi version of the skin tight blue top/mask that DFB wore. As more of a joke than anything, I grabbed the top, went into the changing rooms whilst DFB was distracted with a particularly 'riveting' part of Icha Icha, if his ridiculous chuckles were anything to go by (seriously I'd read that book and there was nothing that special about them. They were just soft core porn with average plots and the occasional humorous or unexpected twist). Putting on the top and wearing the teddy onesie on top of that, I stared at the result with wide eyes.

Holy shit did I look like a longer haired, red/purple eyed, petite chibi version of DFB. I critically examined my reflection, and realised if I cut my hair short it was thick enough by now that I would look so much like him, it was quite likely people wouldn't be able to tell if I was a boy or a girl. Rapidly mentally building an outfit around the sleeveless blue masked top, I added on a smaller version of the trousers DFB wore, a longer sleeved blue top that I'd be able to roll the sleeves back on, and a pair of fingerless gloves. Whilst I wouldn't have his Jōnin jacket, and I'd probably have to forgo the steel plated aspects of his gloves and leg bandages for now, if I wore the toeless shinobi sandals... I'd look almost like a mini clone of DFB. If I changed up the way I wore it ever so slightly from DFB it'd look more like I was trying to emulate him from a sense of hero worship.

It would work, after all as Subaru I was trained by my tou-san, I admired him, I wanted his approval, I was quite like him. I already wanted to be relatively removed and aloof from those who were my physical age mates, I wanted people not to question my intelligence levels and how advanced I'd be by the time I was entering the academy. I didn't want people thinking they knew too much about me, I wanted to be a relative unknown even to people who were going to be around me every day for years.

DFB was more like that already than any shinobi I knew of, and his outfit most definitely contributed to that; how could people convince themselves they knew him if they didn't even know his face? They already had that perception of him and his outfit, if I turned up dressed like him, intelligent, skilled, aloof, looking like him, fighting like a Hatake and carrying his surname... well fuck, I had a niche waiting right there for me. Yes, I would be opening myself up as a target for his enemies but that was pretty much guaranteed to happen anyway, I might as well gain the benefits from it too.

If only my eyes were black, I thought to myself with some humour, I could try to turn only one ketsuryūgan eye on and have that eye covered with a hitai ate until it was needed, once I became Genin. That would be a mind fuck for everyone.

Skipping happily out of the changing rooms I chirruped to a preoccupied DFB, "look tou-san, I look just like you now!" And plonked myself sweetly down on the floor in front of him.

"Mm?" DFB glanced up at me over his book, before he did was sort of half spit take, half double glance. It was immensely satisfying. I eye smiled innocently in a manner that I knew was perfectly reminiscent of him - as someone who had already been prone to eye smiling in my old life so that I could avoid any deeper more meaningful reaction in social situations that would expose how few fucks I could really give the vast majority of the time, I got the look down pretty well.

"I like it!" I told him, giving a small laugh at his response as he almost incredulously scanned my new look. He quickly collected himself though, his mind coming to many of the conclusions I had myself.

"We should find an outfit like yours to complete the look."

"Are you sure?" He asked me, are you sure you're up for everyone knowing you're related to me the moment they look at you? Are you sure you're ready for the heap of expectations they'll have for you? Are you sure you want to be exposed to that danger? Are you sure the pros outweigh the cons for you?

He looked very subtly conflicted, and I could already tell that he didn't know if his concerns should take precedence over the all the warm feelings my choice was giving him.

"I'm sure," I nodded resolutely, to my pleasure he softened for a second, before he eye smiled and together we hunted through the shop for clothes that closely resembled what he tended to wear. We ended up with a couple of the tiniest pair of shinobi sandals, a few black three quarter lengths to make up for the fact that I wouldn't be tying up the ends with bandages to keep them out of the way, plain dark blue, green and red long sleeved tops, three pairs of dark blue gloves, a dark grey jacket that vaguely resembled the shinobi flak jacket - except it was less bulky and with straps rather than a zip, and at the last minute I threw something that resembled a couple of blue and green Afghan scarves into the pile.

"You know what this means," DFB informed me cheerfully. I eyed him warily.

"What?"

"You have to learn the art of the mysterious face." Suddenly I realised I'd have to learn how to time my eating perfectly so that no one saw, if I ever used public baths I'd have to hide my face, and multiple other little details which would prevent curious people from successfully revealing me.

"Ugh so much effort," I deflated, "I guess it's worth it in the end."

Wearing my new clothes and sticking the teddy onesie back in a bag, DFB ruffled my hair before giving me a shoulder lift. As we walked past the shop I had gotten my onesies from, my head snapped to the window display in delighted shock. Somehow I had missed the adult sizes at the front of the store. Grabbing DFB's head on either side, I turned his gaze toward the wonder that I saw.

"Look," I whispered in awe, "they come in your size."

He paused and realised what I was looking at, "no."

"Go on, please?" I wheedled.

"No."

"They're super comfy, and you don't even have proper lounge wear at home."

"No."

"But we could rock out in matching outfits. Imagine the look on people's faces when they realise we wear the same shit, it'll screw with them so badly."

"..."

"I promise if you buy them and wear them, I'll convince Gai to get rid of that last green spandex outfit in my size he's got hidden in his apartment."

And that was how I found myself wearing a pink bunny onesie, shinobi sandals and masked top, dropped off at Gai's knowing DFB was going home to change into his own. Gai exuberantly greeted me once I landed through the window and practiced my rolling to land comfortably.

"Beautiful Blossom! You look radiant and Youthful today in that rabbit costume!"

"Thank you Gai," I faced him properly and grinned. He froze the moment his eyes landed on my covered face, before tears began to stream down his cheeks.

"SO YOUTHFUL! MY BEAUTIFUL BLOSSOM ASPIRES TO BE LIKE MY HIP AND COOL ETERNAL RIVAL SO MUCH!" He picked me up as his volume tripled, and smooshed me against him.

"Volume control please, Gai," I muffled against his chest.

"Ah, sorry Su-hime!" he released his tight grip on me, allowing me to wriggle my way to sitting on his shoulders.

"It's okay," I patted the top of his shiny hair, "also I promised DFB that if he wore the same all in one clothes that I did, like this bunny costume, I would get you to get rid of my green spandex costume... so I was wondering if you'd give it to me."

"You want to dispose of your powerful green suit?" He asked, sounding disappointed.

"No, no! I'm not going to get rid of it, it's very useful in certain situations. I just need you to get rid of it."

I spent the next couple of hours at Gai's as I got swept up in his enthusiasm for life. Thankfully he didn't try to make me doing anything too energetic, and mostly stuck to feeding me, since I would have thrown the closest I could to a terrible twos tantrum if I'd had to push my still quite achy muscles any further than necessary on my precious day off.

Even trying to conserve my wobbly energy, I had to tap out far earlier than usual before I exhausted myself, and had Gai take me home with the green spandex hidden in my bunny onesie. I walked in through the front door, and then promptly had a brain glitch as I registered that there was a stranger in our home.

It was stupid, I knew that DFB had friends outside Gai and I. I knew he had a life outside of us, and a history. But seeing that in front of me, in my home, was confronting. In his pink bunny onesie as promised, DFB was leaning close to a man by the table -covered in paper and ink - who had his tongue stuck wide out.

In the split second before the man clocked me, I took the useless feeling of possessiveness, the feeling that my safe space was being invaded by a stranger, the feeling of discomfort, the feeling of anxiety, and I shoved them all away to deal with later when I had time to think.

As the brown haired man turned to face me, I saw his unusual hitai-ate which covered his forehead and then traveled down either side of his face to briefly cradle his jaw. I immediately guessed who the man was, but I couldn't remember much beyond the bare basics of his history, and to be honest I didn't remember all too much of his personality depiction in my old world.

It took a second, but his eyes definitely widened, and then he bit down on his tongue in surprise. His eyes whipped back and forth between DFB and I, clearly comparing out outfits and resemblance in disbelief.

"Am I interrupting something?" I asked, half innocently, half suggestively.

DFB ignored my tone, and by the furrowing of Tenzō's (or was it Yamato?) brow, he was probably wondering if he was imagining what I was insinuating, or if he was giving far too much credit to a toddler.

"Maa, come meet Tenzō. We were working on the seal together. Tenzō this is Subaru."

Ignoring the fact that Tenzō was still staring at me like he couldn't believe I existed, I plodded over to DFB and sat by him, casually sweeping my eyes over squiggles and symbols that I couldn't make heads nor tails of.

"It's nice to meet you, Tenzō-san," I tilted my head in his direction, and glanced at him, concealing how awkward I felt. I had always felt a deep discomfort with non family members in my home, and it still existed. I was good at ignoring it once I'd acclimated a little to the new person, but each time it was difficult at first.

I was lucky that bowing was not as strict in Konoha as I knew it was in some Asian countries in my old world, because sometimes I just froze up if I met knew people and I wasn't feeling up to it. I was definitely curious, but Tenzō seemed more cautious by nature than I was, more reserved and carried a sort of proprietary air around him that made me not want to fuck up. It all served to make me tense and I could feel anxiety tightening my chest the longer his eyes remained on me.

"We've already met," he informed me with a straight face.

"We have? I'm afraid I don't remember."

"Aa, Tenzō helped get you to Konoha when you were born," DFB told me, still mostly paying attention to his scribbles.

Oh that's right, Tenzō and DFB were in Anbu together, which also explained why the dude was sticking his tongue out. When DFB first mentioned the seal that would help him maintain secrecy, I was almost certain he was talking about the Root seal on his tongue. I had to give no indication that I knew what he was talking about, however, thanks to the fact that DFB knowing that I was aware of more than he was giving away would give far too obvious implications that I also knew something about Root itself, that I knew too much about Danzō.

I resisted the urge to fidget under Tenzō's continued stare, and gave him a weak eye smile, "is that so?"

"I didn't expect her to look so much like you, Kakashi-senpai," Tenzō finally dragged his eyes away from me and bluntly ignored my attempt at conversation.

"Mm, really? I don't think she looks much like me," DFB bullshitted surprisingly convincingly with an innocent eye smile, as he sat there in the exact same pink bunny onesie as me.

I scowled at Tenzō from underneath the mask at his shitty social skills, and tried to figure out how he'd known I was female straight away. It suddenly occurred to me that my hair was still uncut, and deciding to take a leaf out of Tenzō's book if he wasn't going to bother with politeness, I turned to DFB.

"Tou-san, how do you cut your hair?"

He turned to me looking vaguely surprised, "with a kunai, if that's what you mean."

"I need a haircut. My hair is still uneven one either side from that backfiring explosion before my birthday."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tenzō looking alarmed, I imagined at that point he was probably imagining all sorts of horrors about DFB's parenting techniques.

"Aa, sure I can show you how to do that this evening if you'd like," he confirmed.

"Is it wise to let her handle a sharp kunai before she's three or four, Kakash-senpai?" Tenzō sounded dubious.

"It's fine, she's already training. In fact why don't you help out, since you have concerns?" He sounded far too casual and unbothered, and I suddenly realised that DFB had planned this outcome from the start. I thought I could learn everything I needed from Gai and DFB, but clearly he was inviting Tenzō because either he thought the man could impart some skills in me better than they could, or he had other intentions that required Tenzō's presence at my training.

Tenzō's expression radiated shock and uncertainty, "I don't know..."

I turned to him, ramping my puppy dog eyes up to max, and projected suppressed excitement, "oh please, Tenzō-oji, I bet you know so much!"

As his eyes connected with mine, I could see his willpower wilt under the toddler cuteness and the claim of uncle.

"Fine," he caved in defeat, then added in a mutter, "you're more like Kakashi-senpai than I had predicted." He cast an accusing glance at DFB, as though he blamed the man for all his troubles, which to be fair wasn't entirely inaccurate in this particular situation.

I tilted my head to the side slightly, eye smiling happily and aware of DFB doing the exact same thing in my periphery.

"Maa, you think so?" We asked at the same time.

"Okay, nope, I'm done. I'll see you both tomorrow."

By the time we had opened our eyes, Tenzō was gone, clearly having been too freaked out by our double act.

"I told you it would fuck with people."

DFB made a noise of approval as he looked at the direction Tenzō had disappeared off to, "you'd like something short, like my hair?"

"Yes please. What's he supposed to be teaching me, anyway?"

"Our skill set is in many ways very similar, actually. Whereas I have a large ninjutsu repertoire, Tenzō can utilise earth and water together in a unique manner. It's his skill in fuuinjutsu that I need."

"What do you mean?"

"He's not as experienced as I am in fuuinjutsu, but this particular seal is one he has a greater familiarity with. He's one of the few people I'd trust to work with to create this new seal. I need him around whenever possible to help with it, or to stand in for me in your training while I attempt to unravel some very sensitive parts of the original seal.

"Additionally, Tenzō has skill in kenjutsu on par to mine, however there are elements of his style that I believe would suit you better than the reliance of strength that the style I use has."

"But... I thought you didn't intend to teach me kenjutsu for months yet."

"I don't. I'd like him to be invested in your training before that point, though. Tenzō won't have too much time to spend around Konoha, thanks to his shinobi duties, but he's an excellent ally to have. He's proven his loyalty to me, and I trust him."

Trust. That was a word DFB knew meant a lot to me. If he thought that Tenzō should know some or all of what we were going to be doing in the future- whatever it may be- and what I knew, then I would trust DFB to know what to do. The man- teenager technically- was a little awkward and kind of lacking in social skills, but you didn't need to be suave and eloquent to be a great shinobi, and if DFB wanted to involve Tenzō, I'd follow his lead. After all, DFB had very clearly not stated that Tenzō had proven his loyalty to Konoha, or the Hokage, but to DFB himself - that in itself was an indicator of DFB's confidence in where Tenzō's priorities lay. Neither of us knew where our future was going to take us, but we could only benefit from another person in our corner.

If you were wondering by any chance if I created some of this chapter inspired by the front picture of the story, no, I chose the front cover of the story because it fit perfectly into this random outfit part that I've known I was going to include from the start. Why? Because I felt like it.

As for abilities, where would everyone like her to be by the time she's around three, considering the work she's putting in is going to be sustained at this level until that point? The direction of the story in bits does depend on her skill level, but I'm up for whatever you all want.

Do you want her to be at Genin level? Below that? Above that? Bad at some things, excellent in others? What sort of shinobi in training do you want to see her become with a years worth of intensive work under her belt? Let me know!