Hello hello my darlings! I have once again faithfully returned, and brought with me another chapter!
There were very few things that you were able to get away with when growing up with extremely skilled ninjas as parents, and the three girls currently gathering in the empty Hatake apartment understood this better than any.
Rin's father had the Hyuuga eyes that were able to stare through walls to see even the slightest of misdeeds and while her mother had no blood line limit she still had the uncanny ability to be right around the corner she was trying to slip by guiltily, able to grin at her and completely disarm her before systematically destroying any hope of escape the girl had.
Kori's father wasn't around as much as the others but his ANBU were and they were more than happy to report the teen's misdeeds to the Hokage or, if they were in a particularly spiteful mood, they'd go to her mother, though the woman did not need their help in figuring out her children's secrets. She didn't even have to use her all seeing eyes, barely having to spare the children a glance before seeming to know every thought that had ever passed through their heads and then with a single stern look from the normally gentle woman they all found themselves easily spilling their guts and awaiting their punishment.
And Karin, along with her brother and father, was terrified of her mother and her temper so she tried her hardest to not evoke the woman's wrath, and then there was her father who with his sharigan -though he had never used it on her or her brother- was just as threatening.
Really, the poor girls had no way to win.
But there were a few times that with careful planning and whispered secrets they managed to rebel, and after weeks of veiled looks they finally had the perfect opportunity on the day that Karin's mother was working with Jiro following her around and her father was out on a mission.
Rin was sitting down on the floor and leaning against Karin's bed when Kori came in through the window, holding the white plastic bag in her hands aloft with pride.
"I'm back and have succeeded in my most important mission!" She declared, setting the bag down next to her cousin and setting down on the bed. Rin "hmm"ed at her, prying the bag open to see the fruits of the blonde girl's labor.
"Hey, so I found some cups and- Kori! Did you come through my window again? You know it freaks the neighbors out when they see us doing that, let alone strangers." Kori rolled her eyes at her best friend, waving her worries away with negligent hand.
"Yeah, yeah. But it's faster and adds to the whole secretive element of the whole thing and I'm sure that no one saw me. Ninja, remember?" Rin, while the two girls were talking, pulled the bottles out from their home in the bag. Reading the labels as she did so Rin had to wonder where the blonde girl had managed to acquire them, especially since she was the well-known and underage first born of the Hokage.
There were bottles of whiskey, beer, vodka that apparently tasted like green apple, wine –both red and white- and tequila all seated together, clinking against each other as they were moved.
"Well," Karin said, sitting down beside Kori, "Let's do this thing."
The other two girls nodded, eagerly waiting for Kori to take the bottle caps off of the first bottles that held the green apple flavored drink, smiling and shifting around nervously as they prepared themselves to be rebels, to be teenagers. Clinking the glass bottles against each other in a little toast they brought them to their mouths with a grin and took the first drink of the night.
It took less than a handful of seconds for the taste to compute, and when it did their faces twisted into identical expressions of distaste.
"Ew." Karin muttered, trying to get the bitter taste out of her mouth by quickly swallowing a couple mouthfuls of the water she had sat on her bedside table.
"Yeah." Kori agreed, quickly setting the bottle down on the floor and hoping to never see it again, "I don't know what kind of apples they grow over there in vodka land, but it tastes like they were poisoned after being rubbed over a hobo's foot."
"Thank you so much for that lovely and twistedly weird image." Rin sighed setting her own bottle down. "It just added to that whole lovely experience."
The girls shoved their bottles away, each grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge to try and combat the bitter and cottony taste that still resided in their mouths. After a few more minutes and a cookie for comfort they switched their attention over to the wine.
"This shouldn't be all that bad," Rin offered as she poured a splash of the white into the little plastic cups they had, "I mean, people drink it all the time at parties and the red is supposed to be good for your health." They all nodded and took a sip, observing the expressions of the others instead of paying attention to what they were drinking, so when the dry taste hit their taste-buds they were very unpleasantly surprised.
Once more their faces took on expressions of distaste that would have been hilarious had they not been preoccupied by the stale taste in their mouths.
"Maybe the red will be better," Rin hopefully suggested, the other girls nodding and putting out their cups once again to watch as a splash of the red tinted liquid was poured into their cups. The girls brought the cups up and hesitatingly sniffed, Kori and Karin watching as Rin bravely sipped the bitter smelling drink that they were now hesitant to try.
They watched as -when the taste registered- Rin's face scrunched up comically as she made a sound of disgust in her throat, practically throwing the cup away from herself. "It tastes like cough syrup!" She choked out, frowning, "I hate cough syrup!" The other girls sat their own drinks aside, unsympathetically happy that it at least hadn't been them.
Kori hesitantly opened the whiskey and sniffed the bottle, recoiling at smell that made her nose burn and her eyes water. Shaking her head she pushed the bottle aside, the trio becoming dejected in the face of how big a failure their little rebellion was. Shaking off the mood and determined to make sure the night wasn't a complete disaster Karin reached out and picked up one of the bottles of beer, figuring that since she knew so many people who liked it it couldn't be that bad. Quickly taking a deep swig Karin then sat down the bottle with a solid thunk on the floor, blinking her teary eyes and gagging slightly.
"Karin…?" Rin prodded, seeing how miserable the girl now looked after the last drink. Without saying a word or even acknowledging that the other girl had shown any concern Karin jumped up, holding on hand to her stomach and the other to her mouth as she ran as quickly as she could to the bathroom.
Kori brought the bottle up to her nose and sniffed, wrinkling her nose at the stale smell and then feeling her stomach turn when the sounds of retching filled the apartment. A few minutes later Karin shuffled back into the room her hand still pressed to her stomach and her face pale and drawn. She seemed to slump into herself, crawling up onto the bed to curl into a miserable ball on the sheets.
"That was terrible." She muttered, soothed as Rin began to smooth back her hair from her sweat spotted forehead. "I really don't see what the whole alcohol thing is about after all of this." Kori nodded and shoved the bottles away with her foot, standing up and stretching the kinks out of her back as she contemplated.
"Well, I think we can all agree that this sucked." She said, putting her hands on her hips as she looked down at the two younger girls, "So, are we going to continue with the plan? We still have the movies and I think you brought cigarettes, right Rin?" The dark haired girl nodded, but hesitated over the decision of whether to continue or not, put off by the complete failure it had been so far.
"I don't know about you two," Karin grumbled from the pillow she had shoved her face into, "But I don't really want to watch porn or whatever else you brought after becoming good friends with the toilet and my breakfast, and I definitely don't want to smoke. It smells gross and will probably taste just as bad." Kori nodded at the wisdom of the words and puzzled over what to do next.
"Hey, Karin, you guys have that one cartoon movie, right? The one with the fighting panda?"
"Yeah, it's in the living room on one of the shelves."
"Okay then, I'll go get it." She decided, striding over to the door. Karin nodded but popped her head up to call after the blonde.
"Hey, bring me some orange juice!" She paused, thinking it over, "And some cookies!"
"Fine!"
"You like milk, right?" She asked Rin, who nodded, "And Rin wants some milk!"
"Fine!"
A few minutes later Kori came in with a plate of cookies and the drinks, the movie held in her mouth, and as they settled in with their chocolate chip cookies to watch a cartoon movie about animals who knew karate, Karin laughed at the image they made.
"God, we're terrible teenagers, aren't we? We try to rebel and we end up watching a children's movie while eating cookies and drinking juice and milk."
"Yeah, but we make up for it by being amazing people with sparkling personalities, so just shut up and eat a cookie." She demanded, holding said treat up to the other girl's mouth until she took a bite from it.
"And hey, don't go bashing on the movie. I like it." Karin snickered and shook her head at her best friend, but none the less stayed silent as they continued to watch the cartoon together, silently admitting that it was a pretty great movie.
Once again, this was based off of events in my friend's and my lives.
Beer- My family is a big beer drinker, so one day when I was younger I decided to just smell it to see if it had some amazing and magical awesome property, but all it managed to do was make me decide to never try it because it smells really icky. And then about a year ago my friend Tiff decided that she would be a rebel and try a beer at her cousin's house without her parent's knowledge, and after a sip she threw up all over his girlfriend's rug.
We do not like beer.
Wine- I tried this very recently at my family's Christmas party (after asking my parents for permission and making my family think that I'm a budding alcoholic) and these were my exact thoughts. It tasted like cough syrup and it was icky and I didn't like it. End of my experiments with alcohol.
Whiskey- I had to pour some whiskey over something to kill the germs one day after my dad told me to so after doing it I paused and said to myself "I'm a teen, so I'll act like a teen and be a rebel!" So I decided to try it because, hey, alcohol! But here's the thing, after this one time I drank rotten milk (two times in a row) at school I always smell new drinks to make sure that they're not rotten. So I sniffed the whiskey, which made my nose and throat burn from just the smell, and put the drink away.
apple vodka- this was actually apple flavored Smirnoff, and my dad let me and my younger brother try it one day. It was bitter and gross and I really don't know what kind of freaky apples they put in that thing, because neither of us liked it.
And that is all my experimenting with alcohol! Though I did try a sip of an apple martini once, and I liked it because it tasted like green jolly ranchers.
Like I said, my friends and I are pretty much failures with the teen rebelling thing, though I don't have to or want to. My parents have given me permission (though they're not telling me to do it) to try alcohol, drug and sex (because they say that I'll probably experience it in college) as long as I'm careful and tell them about it. So what do I do?
I stay at home in my fuzzy purple pajamas with my laptop with my toaster strudels and write these stories for you precious darlings.
So, I'm a failure as a teenager, but I don't really care. I'm awesome no matter what.
Bye bye, my sweet hearts (and I hope you had a wonderful Valentine's day)!