Author Note: I'm shocked anyone liked it but I did say I'd post more if you asked…so here, I hope you enjoy it—it actually has a plot plan this time!
Disclaimer: Naruto, me, blah blah blah, Masashi Kishimoto.
I was too revolted by myself to sigh. Some people can look beautiful and cry, but I'm not one of those people so I've long since developed a habit of spreading my hand in a claw like shape to cover the lower half of my face which tends to look the most horrible. I walked my self off the training floor but Anko-sensei stopped me mid-way out of the room. "It's fine," she motioned to the only other person still on the floor practicing, "Neji doesn't know it either…just go home and memorize the first part of it," she said waving it off dismissively, "you can come earlier Wednesday to learn the next part." Neji heard his name and spared me a parting look. I'm pretty sure he was sickened I'd cry. How was I ever going to be kunoichi if I cried over things like this?
"Yes, thank you sensei." I bowed. "I'm sorry."
Contrary to what you might believe and what you may have been told about Anko-sensei being borderline psychotic, she's actually a pretty sane and kind person (which is how she got anywhere near a teaching job)—when she's not training you. When she's training you she's an absolute despot and she will pound you into the ground and work you till you drop. I'm pretty sure that's why the Hokage has put her in charge of Demo every year since she was a chuunin.
Demo happens once annually and it's the most important thing that can happen for an academy student. It's a performance-demonstration by a hand picked group of academy students for daimyo and kages of countries and villages the leaf is allayed to. The event is flawless—flawless—it has to be to make sure that we maintain our regional influence by showing how strong our students are, and it's different every year. Which means, one week before it happens the teachers suddenly remember to tell us about it and everything is chaos as we attempt (and usually succeed) to put together an impossible amount of new forms and fight sets in one day which have to be learned and memorized in three days then executed in perfect synchronism.
It was both my good and bad fortune to be one of Anko-sensei's favorites, the others being Mameha, Lee and Neji. (Everybody loves the prodigy.) Only the best and most impressive students are selected for demo; for some unfathomable reason Anko-sensei asked me—along with all the most amazing genin the academy has had since her class graduated. The conversation actually went something like this:
Anko: Tenten, how was your Christmas break?
Me: Oh, it was fine, a little weird though since my family came over for lunch instead of dinner. (I smile sheepishly.)
Anko: Can you cook?
Me: Only a few things.
Anko: Oh. So…you gonna be here on the thirtieth?
Me: Yes, why?
Anko: You wanna be part of the Demo team?
Me: (stunned silence)
Then I finally said yes. Stupid, stupid response! I cannot believe I thought for a second I was on par with the likes of Neji, Buka, Takashi, Hiroshi, Ryoku, Tashi, Mameha, Hana and Shuske. Unlike them, I hadn't been training since birth, and I wasn't from a traditionally shinobi family with clan specific jutsu or a bloodline limit. I became a kunoichi just three years ago, most people thought I was too old and honestly I agreed and I'm shocked I made it this far. Neji, Buka, and Shuske are so talented they have been chosen for as long as they have been at the academy and the others had been chosen a few times already too; but this was the first time I'd ever been chosen to do this—and I had no idea what I was suppose to do.
The first practice, I walked in and everyone was on the floor at the same time practicing. It was pretty intimidating. Buka was going through her Jonin level jian form, Neji projected chakra streams while doing eight trigrams sixty-four palms, Hana worked on tetra-piercing fang while in her double headed wolf form, Mameha practiced a high level staff sequence, and Shuske was breaking out into Ariel twists and 1080 degree flips in the air over all of them along with Ryoku. Anko walked in followed by the rest of the Demo team and started grouping people for different forms.
I was sorted into the sword, pole arm and taijutsu groups. I memorized the weapons forms and fight sets by the time we had stopped changing them and put them together but I couldn't remember the taijutsu no matter how many times I did it.
Anko-sensei kept changing things so the form got longer and more and more complicated. I tried looking around at other people and following Hiroshi but I was slower than him and the movements didn't stick. My timing was off, I kicked at the wrong times and I didn't land my spins. We redid the form at least twelve times because of me. Everyone was tired but Anko-sensei insisted we do it till I got it right and we were all moving together.
After the fifteenth time Takashi took me aside and tried to teach it to me individually. "Look, we've all done this form before from the last Demo, so it's not your fault," he told me, "we're just to lazy to come up with an entirely new form this year." At this point, even that didn't save me from feeling like a complete moron. "And no one ever remembers when they're watching," he finished, trying to assure me. I still wish we had come up with a new form, at least if we had made up another one there would be someone struggling with me so I didn't feel like an idiot by myself.
Takashi is a great friend and I know I'm a frustrating student but I hope he never becomes a teacher. He gave up in just a few minutes and tried to get me to fake the form acceptably instead. I couldn't even fake it and I just got more confused because he stopped correcting me and told me everything was right. He told me I'd figure it out and didn't correct me as long as I did something that resembled the right move. Like hell I could figure it out! He left and I kept practicing the same incorrect movements in the wrong order for ten minutes before I asked Hana to help me and found out Takashi was being a butt.
Hana explained it better but she showed me the whole thing at once and I barely caught any of it. She patiently walked me through the first half of it a few times but then she had to go too and I still didn't get it. The only person still in the training room who knew the form was Buka and she was teaching it to Neji because Anko-sensei had suddenly decided he should be in the regular taijutsu group too.
Neji got the gist of it minutes. Unfortunately, he stayed in the room and kept practicing and training while Buka tried to teach it too me. Every time I remember what happened next I want to smack myself. I still couldn't get it after half an hour and I just sat down and cried.
"I'm sorry I took up so much of your time Buka."
Thank God I remembered to thank her before I broke down completely. "Thank you so much!" I bowed and started to run out of the class room before Anko-sensei stopped me, as I've already said. Wednesday was going to be a long day. A really really really long day.