Oh, Midori...what are you doing? No really, what are you-where are you...O.O
Oh dear...well...there goes the plot. Cheers!
I'm six years old now, and I'm entering the Academy. Well. It's probably a momentous occasion. Somewhat.
Okay, so I didn't even know I was going to head for the Academy until Mom woke me up one day, handed me a bag, and said, "Hurry up! You're going to be late for class!"
Of course, this was done while I was still groggy from sleep, with crusty eyes and duckling footie pajamas. (Yes, I sleep in footie pajamas. My feet get cold at night and nobody seems to have any spare blankets. That and my mom thought it was cute.)
So, conditioned by a lifetime of schooldays and last minute dashes, I sped through my morning rituals and came to the table fresh-faced, but still very muddled. Then I was given a rice ball to nom on while my mother half-directed, half-dragged me to school.
Of course, when I reached the Academy I started shaking my head wildly, because I had entered a zoo. The inside of the enclosures, not the safe place you can stand and knock on the glass.
(Okay, so you're not supposed to knock on the glass, but I couldn't see the lizard!)
The Academy is a very prestigious school of Konoha, having been founded by the Shodaime and produced nearly five generations of shinobi who had brought the village through two wars. Of course, given that it's the only school in Konoha, that prestige tends to become a little…ignored. And given that all children at least six years of age are allowed to enter, and given the extreme diversity of shinobi children, shinobi clan children, civilian children, not-so civilian children, and all the others in between including the occasional baby summon…(I blame the Sarutobi clan and their monkeys) the results are pretty…well, loud.
Okay, so ear-piercingly loud, I wince as triumphant shrieks ring through the air. Some sort of tag game that had devolved into a battle royale.
A couple Hyuuga are hovering over a boy and exchanging haughty farewells in condescendingly hushed tones. No, it is not my Uchiha bias or whatever you think. They were exchanging haughty farewells with flipping hair and speaking in increasingly soft tones that had the boy cupping both ears to listen.
…Yeah, not going to go there.
After a couple austere bows of Dignity, the adults left the boy to step into the classroom with great (hidden) trepidation. And a lot of turning up of the nose at the plebeians screaming and roughhousing.
I, on the other hand, clung to my mother like a barnacle, raising pleading googly eyes at she who had brought me to life, "Don't leave me here!"
Sadly, that was not to be. I was patted on the head, pried off, and actually tossed through the door due to how desperately I was clinging. (It was an accident. Mom was re-enacting the hand-flailing dance with as much cool as possible but more because Uchiha, but ended up flinging me away. If I ever have mental problems, I will know the cause.)
So there I was, peeling myself from the wooden floorboards, tossing my messy hair back from my face and feeling very much like the whole clan of Uchiha had just tripped over their feet and exposed their underwear.
…You know what? That's a sight I'd like to see. Too bad for Shinobi pants.
Either way, I started off not to a very good or cool start, being as the whole class saw me being hurled to the ground and face planting onto the wood. And then if went further down the hill when the teacher picked that exact moment like some huge Shame Exploiter Extra Strong to introduce me to them.
"Class, this is Uchiha Midori. She'll be starting with us today due to Advanced Placement."
Now, here's the thing: Advanced Placement equals genius. There's normal placement which means you enter with the standard batch, the Civilian Placement which was actually for those who come from purely civilian families (a common thing in the beginning of Konoha's founding) but is more widely known as the retard group. Then there's Half-Push which is those who have some knowledge of shinobi arts, and there's Push which mostly consists of Clan children.
Push was named thus when the Niidaime, confronted with yet another war to deal with as well as the trouble of sorting out the problem of children too smart for the standard syllabus, threw his hands up and yelled at his brother who had been trying to give him friendly Big Brother Advice, "Just give them a push!"
The retired Shodaime, a literal blockhead, went ahead and 'pushed' nearly half the classes into respective ones that were a year ahead, graduated those who were in their last year, and sent Jounin running around wildly trying to train teams of five.
When barely a month passed and half those classes started flagging, he reduced them back by half a year and merrily followed the naming trend that had been started.
Much later, when Sandaime started getting these strange poppings of children far, far beyond a Push, he determinedly penned down a much more suitable name—but his idle comment of mushrooms standing out amongst the grass came back to bite him in the ass when Advanced Placement became unofficially known as the Fungi Class. Because some other smartass had come up with the completely unwitty joke of 'fun guys' and everybody knew genii didn't have humour.
Shinobi humour was warped—look underneath the underneath and both jokes were still cold as ice.
On the other hand, Civilian Placement came earlier, having been called the Pull group—as opposed to Push—until the civilian families started pulling their weight and every shinobi realized they were kind of fucked without the resources provided by their trade. Some very frantic placating later, a little bit of grovelling and apologizing, Shodaime being forced to build houses, and the civilians sat back with satisfaction at how the shinobi winced at the word 'pull'.
Civilian families in the olden times were not to be fucked with.
As to the name, nobody wants to keep cringing over a word, so Sandaime, after cursing his predecessor and bashing the nose of his monument in with his Diamond Staff, changed the name to maintain his health and the health of all his ninja.
So there I was, being announced into class that yes, this kid is smarter than all of you by a lot, just after proving the opposite by diving face first onto the ground and skidding a little like a cartoon. If I had been announced as anything other than Advanced Placement, I'd probably be laughed out of class. As it was, genii children were known to be kind of twitchy and I got rather dubious looks instead.
So I stood up, ignored the imprint on my face, and bowed, "Pleased to meet you, my name is Uchiha Midori. I look forward to working with you."
Then I blinked at them all placid and half-lidded until the teacher cleared his throat and sent me off to the back row where I could be creepy mostly out of sight.
xXXx
Itachi sighed quietly to himself from his comfortable crouch on a tree. He was watching Midori's first day in school, having been tasked by his mother to observe her so as to get to know her better. As it was, he didn't think he was learning much more about his fiancée than the fact that she was skilled in manipulation and very contradicting.
Very contradicting.
And more than a little absurd.
He nearly closed his eyes as she tumbled face first into the ground. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Miyuki-san toss her daughter around, but it had never happened Outside before so he was a little surprised. And embarrassed for Midori's sake. His fingers twitched as she lifted her head and revealed a rapidly reddening face. Uchiha had pale skin that made bruises stand out like beacons and her nose was becoming much like a Kabuki actor's.
But then he remembered the bruises on his face that she had caused, and very quietly smiled.
The strange part however, was when she was introduced, and she was perfectly cordial, albeit more formal than she usually was. Her face took on a familiar expression, one he had seen in the mirror many times, and he pondered if this meant that both of them shared similarities he had previously not considered.
Strangely, the reaction of the rest of the class was very unlike that of his own, and even the sensei seemed a little afraid. Itachi's Academy teacher had been unbalanced but not fearful, and so he wondered what it was about her reaction and his that had caused the difference.
He continued to ponder it as he watched Midori doodle on her schoolwork.
…Wait. What?
xXXx
Blahdyblah chakra control blahdyblah Hokage blahdyblah jutsu.
Blahblahblah BIG HEAD NO JUTSU SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO WHAT I'M SAYING blahblahblah UZUMAKI NARUTO WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
Blahblahblah…wait what?
Midori blinked.
And stared.
And stared again.
She counted the numbers in her head, realized it was still May and that Naruto was four years old going on five and nodded to herself. Then, she turned back to the sensei berating the boy for invading his class and disrupting it and yaddayaddayadda while the kid insisted on learning because the Old Man had said he could sit in he could!
Sit in on Academy classes? She raised her eyebrows. Huh. Weird. Why?
YOU CAN'T EVEN READ THE TEXTBOOK WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN FROM THIS CLASS IT'S NOT EVEN A 1ST YEAR CLASS THIS IS 3RD YEAR GO THE OTHER WAY NO NO THERE'S NO WAY YOU'RE ABLE TO GET ADVANCED PLACEMENT YOU IDIOT THAT'S FOR—
Midori blinked as her heart hammered in her chest and she went What? What? NARUTO CAME IN HERE BECAUSE I CAME IN HERE OH NO PLOTLINE OH NO CHANGE OH NO WHAT DO I DO Hey sensei isn't being prejudiced towards him just angry over the trouble he caused huh that's not what the fanfictions said they lied to me all lieezzzzzzz…Wait NARUTO CANNOT READ HOW IS HE GOING TO LEARN ANYTHING IN CANON?
And then she realized she had raised her hand and the teacher was staring at her exasperatedly waiting for her answer. So was Naruto, who was giving her a cross between an envious glare and a puppy-eyed pout.
No, it did not work for him. Only an Uchiha could pull it off. Probably. Sasuke, most likely.
"He can sit here," Midori chirped, indicating the empty chair beside her, "I'll keep him quiet. Can we get on with the lesson?"
"But I'M sitting right here!" somebody negligible protested and so she cleared the empty chair with a little chakra-enhanced push and patted it welcomingly. Daintily even. She brushed the dust away and all that.
Naruto went a little white, turned his now fully pleading look at her teacher who was starting to look rather stressed but felt vindictive enough to keep the suddenly reluctant child in his class.
"Sit right there!" He bellowed, clamping a firm hand over the kid's neck and frogmarching him over. "You wanted to join the class, well, there you go!"
And then Midori started puzzling over what the heck she was going to do with the kid now that she had him within arm's reach.
xXXx
"No, that won't work," she told him in a bored tone, "if you set the trap up over the door without fixing it properly it would just fall lopsidedly and you wouldn't get the desired result. And the way you're positioning it would make it too obvious."
Naruto scowled over his Master Plan as Midori-neechan pointed out yet another flaw in it. It was a crudely drawn picture of a paint bucket over a door with a rope to keep it from tipping too soon. Some squiggles that were supposed to be the title were carefully printed in red crayon. They proclaimed the piece the Uzumaki Naruto Awesome Academy Plan.
Midori-neechan was scary but pretty nice. Or well, not very nice but at least she was like the Academy teachers in that she didn't ignore him. Actually, she was better because she didn't yell at him either!
But she wasn't very nice because her voice wasn't like the Old Man's when she talked to him—she sounded like she wanted to ignore him too.
But she didn't, so she was nicer than those people, but not as nice as the Old Man or Teuchi-san or Ayame-chan!
He didn't know you could be not-so nice. Maybe there were other people out there who were not-so nice too. He decided he liked that idea, because that meant less people who were mean. When he became Hokage, he'd find all the not-so nice people and make friends with them too. That way, he'd have more friends and people who would look at him instead of from the corner of their eyes.
He blinked and realized that Midori-neechan had turned away to look at the whiteboard.
He pouted, then saw that she had written out the words she'd been telling him on a little blank book. She'd told him to practise writing them better but he'd wanted to write his Plan out first, and she'd let him do it, but told him it wasn't very good because the po-si-tion-ing wasn't good. So maybe since she'd let him write his Plan even though she said it wouldn't work, he'd practise writing now and then tell her his writing wasn't very good too.
It made sense in his head, so he put away his crayons and took the pencil Midori-neechan had given him and started copying the words carefully.
xXXx
Naruto just did what I told him to do, Midori thought to herself in a daze as children ran about playing tag. It was lunch time, which meant playtime for many of the younger students, and Mother had made her favourite grilled eel with a side of tri-coloured dango and some watermelon slices.
Okay, so maybe it wasn't Mother who had made the meal, seeing as she only knew how to grill skewers over an open campfire, but she'd probably been the one to order it made. Kudos for picking someone good in cooking.
She bit into a corner of the eel, it was delicious.
She sighed as the wide-eyed stare that had been going on beside her followed her chopsticks. The pause was punctuated by a gulp. Even she wasn't that evil.
"Do you have a lunch?" she droned, the question nearly turning into a statement with how flat she'd said it.
Naruto squirmed and swallowed, "I ate ramen yesterday at Ichiraku, but I don't get more allowance until Sunday so sometimes the Old Man comes and buys me food…"
Midori took another bite. It was Thursday, she never got the hang of Thursdays.
There were a hundred and one theories about what could be going on with Naruto not having enough food to eat, but the hundred and one were just that—theories. And given that she'd just had proof that fanfiction were not to be believed, she decided to find out. She didn't really want to get involved, but nobody was likely to unless someone stumbled over it and the most likely should be Sandaime but since he hadn't for the years he'd been seeing Naruto it probably wasn't gonna happen.
And Naruto starving was nowhere in her book, so it wasn't happening.
She calculated the calories a young prepubescent boy needed, then the calories she would need to make it through sparring, then came to a conclusion.
"I'll share my lunch with you today, but I'm eating the dango."
Later on, she asked some questions, did some research, harangued the receptionist at the Konoha's Orphan Fund and then stole a menu from Ichiraku.
Huh.
Ichiraku was giving rather reasonable discounts to Naruto, given the amount he consumed and the frequency with which he visited them and drove away civilian customers. (Yes, that part is true.) However, the orphan allowance wasn't quite prepared for the amount of ramen a young jinchuuriki could eat and with no impulse control, well…
Yurgh…sodium and carbohydrates…
Midori shuddered as she read her notes. Her liver screamed at her as she tabulated the total amount of salt. It was, quite frankly, terrifying even for a grown adult.
If Naruto were a normal human being without super-efficient metabolism and some kind of strange magic that took all the salt he put in his system and somehow got all the other proteins and vitamins he needed from it—he'd be dead.
Not super obese, not with skyrocketing blood pressure, not with arteries so clogged you couldn't stick a needle through them, not with bones so porous they'd crumble like chalk.
Dead. He'd be D-E-A-D.
…Yeah. With the way he was surviving on pure chakra, Naruto might as well be a zombie. She didn't dare think what the malnutrition was doing to his brain, let alone his kidneys. Even the pictures of bloated African children couldn't hope to match the result that would be a Naruto without Kyubi.
So she took a deep, deep breath and gently, very gently, patted the undead boy on the head.
"Naruto. Let me teach you a new skill. It's called math."
xXXx
After thoroughly drilling the boy's head with numbers, been persuaded to show him how to Step Lightly all over the place, and telling him that yes, Naruto, you can only eat one bowl of Ramen every meal when you're paying for yourself, she had whiled most of her day away and was thoroughly regretting it.
She'd very nearly thrown her hands up and declared feck it! Hero or no hero she was going to throw him to the wolves and maybe a kami's mercy.
But there was sympathy and then there was just plain decency and while Midori couldn't call herself a good person, she'd rather not be an evil one. She wasn't going to bring him up herself, but she was going to fix a few things so he'd not die from negligence. She honestly didn't understand how anyone could have missed it but nutrition wasn't exactly something taught in Academy.
…Actually, nutrition wasn't something mentioned at all.
…Maybe sodium didn't exist in this world?
Yeah right, and all food were basically one big vitamin that was the only thing a person needed to eat. That's why there were still people getting rickets and scurvy and Brittle Bones…
Wait a minute…really? Really?
Midori stared at the chart in her hands. Then at the boy diligently doing math problems.
Oh hell no.
So...the shinobi world has no concept of nutrition. Except for food in equals food out apparently. No, no. It's just highly specialized knowledge, is all. Otherwise all the clans of shinobi'd be getting osteoporosis or something. But it's not taught in Academy, only to medic-nin, and even then only to medic-nin who are interested in nutrition. Of course, every medic knows the basics, but calorie counting isn't really something the average iryo-nin knows. But a civilian stallholder? A not very wealthy civilian family? Ehehehe No.
If only we needed only one nutrient to survive, huh?
Nope, Midori isn't going to teach Naruto nutrition. Just what she's already taught him plus the rest of his words. She is REALLY not keen to befriend him and just looking at him makes her uncomfortable (and not just for the sake of her liver).
For the person who protested opposite elements. I'm subscribing to Aristotle elements for that. The Asian belief is basically about adjacent elements and how everything wins the left or right element, but I'm also adding in certain parts where chakra acts differently. Jutsu-wise, everything goes the way of the circle, but when it comes to internal chakra it's more the square version. Either way this is crack, and even in our world certain things work differently under different circumstances. So yeah.
Of course, then there will be the inevitable question: Will Midori Get Close To Naruto?
Nope. I don't know? I don't intend her to, but sometimes she just WANTS and then poof! Naruto invades her class. Or poof! Naruto has problems she can't walk away from. Well, she can, but she doesn't really want to. Who doesn't want to know the main character of a story? So she's contradicting herself without realizing. She doesn't really want to CARE about the plot, and yet it keeps cropping up at her. She'd argue it was inevitable since she's an Uchiha but there are so many ways to leave. But nooo... Eh, every person has contradicted his or herself once.
So maybe there's some inner turmoil here. But. Well. Isn't that human? :D
Memory25