I am cold and sick and wet, and updating. What more do you want from me?!
Disclaimer: Hiss.
Dedication: Once again, to Eleni (uhm, uhm, uhm, you know why, too. "Flail- ASS CRUNCH!"). And Erika, and Dessie, and Caitlin, and Stephi, and Xena (BECAUSE SHE IS HAWT. ILYS), and Sonya (because she lets me bitch when I don't even deserve it. LOVE)...
Dedication x2: To Painter'sTape! She's the only one who got who the story-teller was! OH YE-S!
P.S.: It is snowing where I am. THIS IS NOT COOL.
---
The sharp sting of metal-against-metal broke through the night, followed by much laughter and cheering. "Ha, take that, Tenten! Payback!"
"Oi! Try not to cut me to ribbons, okay? I don't wanna die!"
"Everyone dies, stupid!"
"Not tonight, madam Princess!"
Metal clashed again, and the cheers grew louder. Sakura and Tenten twirled around each other, swords attached precisely at the middle of the blade, blocking, jabbing, anything, anything to get the other to yield. Of course, they had changed into fencing suits - padding, breeches, and a tunic each; fencing in dresses was just not done.
After almost twenty-eight minutes of sparring, neither girl looked ready to quit, nor was neither tired. Given that Sakura and Tenten had been known to have sparring matches that lasted hours, this was not abnormal.
But the other girls were getting bored. They were leaning against the picket fence, quietly chatting amongst themselves, while Sakura and Tenten sparred happily.
"Hey, losers, can we go? You've been at this long enough, already!" Temari called, Sakura and Tenten, swords crossed high, at the moment, stopped moving, and looked at her.
"We're not done yet!" they both called back, and went back to sparring.
Temari twitched. "Don't make me come in there and break you two apart, because I totally will, okay? Now get out of there! North Tower, remember?"
Sakura grimaced, and stopped the flat of Tenten's blade from hitting her in the shins. "Fine! Tenten, call it a draw?"
"Again? Really?"
"Really."
"Fine, it's a draw, again. Are we still even, or are you up one?"
"Nah, we're even, I think…"
The two girls confidently walked to the edge of the area, and slipped over the picket fence. The other girls stared at them, deadpan.
"You two look like idiots," Ino said boredly.
"What? Why?"
"You're wearing padding! You look like men!" She explained with a roll of her big blue eyes, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world.
"What-ever, Ino, if it came down to it, neither Sakura or I would take a sword to the gut. Excuse me for wanting to live," Tenten replied blithely.
Ino just rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up. We've got things to do, places to go, lives to ruin!"
"Uh-huh, sure, Ino. Whatever you say." Tenten shot back, but, even so, she and Sakura tore the padding off quickly.
Really, they all wanted to get somewhere, where they could entirely drop the royalty act - even though there was no on around, the walls had ears, and mirrors weren't used as scrying tools for nothing.
Temari jerked her head, and the other five girls followed her, straight up to the North Tower.
---
It was quiet in the North Tower. It was always quiet in the North Tower - as Princess Sakura's personal refuge, it was to be left alone, and only one, ancient, very loyal, loyal maid was allowed in, to clean it.
It was a safe place, and the girls all knew it. Here, in this Tower, Sakura could practice her fencing all she wanted - no disapproving eyes of the Courtly Ladies. Here, Temari could tinker with gadgets of all sorts, and not be shamed by the fact that she liked to use her brain. Here, Tenten had a family. Here, Ino did not have to put on a display. Here, Karin could stop dealing with scheming family members. Here, Hinata was an equal.
Here was a place of safety, of freedom, and of total, brutal honesty.
"Ino, put some clothes on, you look like a prostitute," said Sakura.
"It's fashionable, Sakura, every in Court is-"
"I don't care. You're my friend, and I don't want men who are three times your age slavering over you. It's creepy, and a damn shame, okay? Besides, don't you ever, like, get cold?"
Ino sighed, and, with a toss of her long wheat-blonde hair, went to find a blanket to wrap around her exposed shoulders.
It was, after all, fairly chilly in the North Tower.
Temari immediately went to her corner of the Tower - an array of gadgets, bottles and bric-a-brac lined the table she had set up there, giving a mad scientist sort of impression. The sandy-haired girl happily sat herself down in front of it, and went, just as happily, straight to drawing up blue-prints for yet another one of her crazy inventions.
Tenten had started a roaring fire in the hearth at the opposite end of the room, and she watched, happily, as the flames leapt and danced, quite merry in their own little world. She sat back upon the hearth-rug, and allowed the fire to warm her toes.
Sakura went and sat down next to her, and the two girls remained quiet, sitting comfortably together.
Hinata's first order of business was to get out of the dress she was in; in the North Tower, wearing a dress was normally the last thing anyone wanted to do. Really, in their world, the girls had to wear dresses most of the time - a chance to get out of the skirts was normally a relief, to all of them.
Once she was dressed in a pair of loose breeches -very, very loose, around the waist and knees, especially; they ended at her calves, and hung off her hips-, and a shift, she, too, went and sat with Sakura and Tenten on the hearth-rug.
Karin seemed to be in a dilemma - she loved watching Temari draw up plans (everyone loved watching Temari draw up plans - it was something like marvelous), but she did also want to go sit by the fire. It was rather cold.
Her dilemma, however, was solved a minute later, when Temari shivered, stood up, and walked towards the fire, and the others.
And so the six of them sat there, together, in a circle, every one of them facing each other. It was a quiet sort of companionship - the sort that grows out of having been friends for a very, very long time.
Finally, it was Temari, who said "Alright, what have we been hearing? And Hinata, do not resort to the stutter, we all know you only keep it up so that people think you're innocent."
Hinata smiled, innocent as spilt milk. "Well… My father's been talking about marrying me to a cousin of mine, again. I've only met him once - his name is Neji."
"And?"
"And my mother put it down like a rebellion being quelled. She said she didn't want me marrying that close in the family - apparently, he's my father's twin's son, which would make him technically my half-brother."
"Uhm, creepy much?"
Hinata nodded. "Uh-huh. It's also kinda obvious who wears the pants in my family."
The girls fell into a giggle fit, and they only calmed when Tenten offered "I heard from the cooks that the Uchiha family are coming back to Court."
Sakura's eyes darkened. "Are they really? The jerk better not come back."
"Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke is not a jerk. He's a very, very, very good-looking piece of man."
"Ino… shut up, please. And how do you know? You haven't seen them since they left Court the first time, either!"
Ino shrugged. "I remember him being totally adorable. And no one that cute as a child could grow up ugly. No one."
Sakura rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever."
Hinata said "Sakura, I'm sure he's not that bad. You were only engaged for like, five minutes! And you were seven years old!"
Sakura kind of… flailed in place. "But we were still engaged! I do not want to get married! Not now, not ever! We've been over this!"
Karin grinned. "To quote you: yeah, yeah, whatever."
Sakura sent her a stony glare. "So mean, Karin, so mean. Anything else?"
It was silent for a minute, before Temari said "I think the council's plotting something. Something big. I saw the one of the ambassador's giving you the evil eye, earlier tonight."
Sakura sighed heavily. "Yeah, I know. I keep telling my parents not to trust them, especially Da-" she broke off, then started again. "You know who I'm talking about. I hate him. I keep telling them not to trust him, but they do and I can't-!"
"Shh, it's okay Sak, we know," Hinata soothed.
"It's just-! It's ridiculous, Hinata, how oblivious my parents are, to some things. And I don't even know how I'm supposed to tell them things like this, because this Tower is the only safe place!"
"We know, sweetie, we know. And we're trying."
"Trying?" Sakura asked, blinking at a smirking Karin.
Karin continued to smirk, and pushed her glasses up her nose, for the thousandth time. "Of course. You think we don't notice stuff like that? Tenten and I have been collecting dirt on the council for weeks."
"So… what do we have?"
Karin looked slightly disgusted. "No-thing. That's the problem. There's absolutely no evidence of wrong-doing, when there clearly is! I don't get it!"
Temari shook her head. "Neither do I; it doesn't make sense, because they all give you evil looks. And that ambassador looked like he wanted to eat you."
"Creepy, much?"
"Uhm, yeah."
It went quiet as the six girls contemplated exactly what was going on.
Sakura looked pensive, and spoke slowly. "We know something's up. We know that much, for sure. Let's just stay on guard; if we're lucky, everything will go back to normal, right?"
Sharp nods went around the circle, and that was the end of the brooding-time in the North Tower.
---
The sun rose the next morning, as always, burning red against the early morning clouds. Temari looked annoyed, and murmured to herself "Sun rises red - sailor's dread; great, just great."
"Hmm?" Tenten stated sleepily, as she stumbled out of the North Tower, onto the balcony where Temari was standing, alone and wrapped in thick blanket. It was autumn - the leaves had started to change colour, painting the world in bright, vibrant, explosive hues of red, orange, and yellow. The trees had not yet started to lose their leaves, but the chill in the morning air spoke of a cold winter to come.
Tenten shivered slightly, and wrapped the blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders a little tighter. She went and stood next to Temari, staring out over the morning kingdom.
"Nothing, Tenny, just a saying, that's all. 'When the sun rises red, sailors will dread'." Temari said softly.
Tenten blinked sleepily. "I've never heard that one, before."
Temari laughed, as softly as her voice had been, before. "No, you wouldn't have. It's something my littlest brother told me, before he and my other brother went off sailing to find treasure a year before we came to Court."
"They never came back, did he?"
"No, they didn't."
"Do you think they're-?"
"What, dead? No, I don't. I just… don't know where he is. They can't be dead, though."
Tenten's brain was not processing very well, and so she continued to blink at the slightly-older girl (no one knew the precise date of birth - no one ever really knew the precise date of birth), in a rather sleepy manner. "How do you know?"
Temari raised one of her shoulders, and then dropped it in a crow's uncaring, unknowing shrug. "I just know."
"Mhmm…" the younger, brunette girl-child murmured, and turned her attention to the early morning kingdom.
Not even the market had really started waking up yet; it was so early that only the cooks and the bakers were awake, preparing breakfast for a host of irritable nobles, later on in the day.
It was quiet between the two girls for a moment; a sleepy lull of happiness, it was. It remained quiet for a quarter of an hour, until Ino came exploding out of the North Tower, with a cheery "Good morning!"
"Oi, Ino, it's too early for noise!" Tenten stated, her eyes still half-closed with sleep, but half-awake with the chill of the early morning.
Ino, in a bright red dress the colour of a maple tree's leaves in October, trimmed in golden rope, smiled. The scarf wrapped around her neck, too, of a darker, mahogany colour, twined with the same golden thread that was wound into a thick rope on her dress and tied about her waist like a belt, completed the image.
Already, her big blue eyes were wide open, her cheeks pink with the early morning cold, her hair done up in the latest Court fashion. She seemed in a fine mood.
"C'mon! It's not so bad! Go get dressed, there's a hunting party this afternoon! We're all invited!" Ino said with a bell-like laugh.
The tall, gorgeous blonde, slipped back inside, leaving Tenten to mutter to Temari "Of course we're invited; we're always invited, but those idiots never give us the chance to say no…"
Temari chuckled, and tugged the seemingly-reluctant Tenten inside.
Things on the inside of the North Tower were an Ino-induced flurry of movement. Lady Sakura was groaning on the ground, half-awake and half-dreaming, while Ino threw beautiful dresses at her.
"Up, up! Seriously, get up! I'm hungry, Hinata's hungry, Karin's hungry, and we're not being fed because you are being slow! Get up, Sakura! You know how you cousin gets when she hasn't been fed!"
All eyes turned to Karin, and a flush crept up her neck. Her appetite was the subject of many an inside joke between the girls; especially given that, when not sated, Karin was an absolute beast.
"You, my dear friend, are absolutely ridiculous," Karin said with a sniff.
But the flush on her cheeks gave her away, and it was to much, much laughter that the group of girls left the North Tower.
Once they reached the castle -of course, by now, more of the royal family was awake-, the first smatterings of food were appearing on the long, room-length tables. Sakura -the princess must always be a princess, firstly- invited her friends politely up to the head table.
When they accepted -just as politely, as is right and proper; they were in the public eye-, Sakura happily led them to the head table, and showed them to their usual seats.
Sakura was nothing if not gracious (when in public, perhaps; in private was another matter entirely).
So the girls happily sat down to eat, just as the remainder of the royal family entered the hall.
The Court stood as one; simply etiquette. The King nodded merrily at them all, and those in the room sat, and resumed the morning activities.
The King and Queen walked up the main aisle to the head table. Sakura wasted no time, and went and greeted her parents.
The happy glow that surrounded the family was felt by all; the royal family was loved by their Court and their People. They were just rulers; fair in all matters, to all people. Rank did not affect how a person was viewed in the eyes of the King - if an Earl was abusing his rights as Earl, the King would as soon kick him off his throne as send a murdered to the gallows.
The King was just, and the People loved him dearly.
Sakura, chattering happily to her mother, returned to her seat, in the midst of her friends.
"Father," she called out loud, "Lady Ino told me something about a hunting trip this afternoon-?"
The King chortled with laughter, and the Queen answered for him "I do wonder, Ino, how on earth you learn of such things. The King told me not five minutes ago!"
Ino smiled slyly. "Your Majesty, I am simply good friends with the maids; and the maids know everything."
The Queen smiled a knowing smile. Really, it was such a good thing that Sakura was friends with Ino - it was simply such a pity that Sakura refused to be like the golden-haired girl. The Queen silently mourned her loss. Her daughter was not a simply princess - her daughter was going to be rule.
And a ruler should never, never bow to the demands of another. It was unbecoming of a Queen, and so, very slowly, the current Queen smiled to herself.
"Yes, Ino, I rather know you are," the Queen said, and continued to smile kindly at the blonde, who flushed in pleasure at the praise.
Sakura looked at her mother, for a moment. She was a beautiful Queen - with long, long hair the colour of snow piled atop her head, and sharp, see-all golden eyes, she was beautiful. Sakura had inherited the Queen's mouth, and her nose, and her mother's infamous temper, and prickly tongue.
All in all, Sakura thought she had the better end of the deal, as she had her father's spontaneity to make up for the sharp tongue.
The roseate princess sat back in her chair, and watched as Temari quietly tinkered with her glass, and murmured quietly to Hinata.
She smiled.
It was going to be an eventful day.