Vaeius: I'm glad to make you smile, I hope you keep liking this story!
Harmonic Bunny: 4:46 is the time for sleep! That is the funniest mental image though, it's definitely something that would happen.
Kakashi comes home from a mission on his birthday and there's a party waiting for him inside. Halfway through everyone starts going outside and he, being led by Asuka, joins them on the street. They all turn around to face the house. Asuka is giggling madly, bouncing on her feet with a light switch in hand. Kakashi frowns, noticing that the wire it's attached to leads to his house. His mouth is open to ask what it's for when the switch flips.
The entire sky is lit up with the fireworks.
Kakashi has to find a new house.
The owner of the Ice Cream Parlor is putting his kids through college with the money that Yugao has to spend.
Sabie0521: Nope, Kakashi had no idea that her heart was messed up. Her friends have a vague idea, they all know that she can't do things for very long or she feints or has to sit down for a while but no one really knows why, except maybe Hinata and Shikamaru.
As for how hard things will be I guess it depends. Things are going to get a lot harder now that she's a ninja and we're dropping into the real plot so in that sense it will definitely be getting more difficult. In relation to her heart it's a little more complicated. You'll see. Thanks for reviewing, I appreciate it!
It was my last year in the academy and things were, well, I don't know what they were. I was starting to get nervous, finicky, and it showed. I started going over everything I knew almost obsessively, writing constantly and filling notebook after notebook with timelines, information and maps. I think I scared the boys. My bedroom was filled with tacked up information and piles of papers that no one except me could decipher. My inventions, while still for the most part fun, had also taken a turn towards the darker path. They got smaller, more explosive, and more aimed. I began gathering together scrap metal and molding them together, using fire and hammers until I abandoned them in favor of molds and molten iron, all put together in the shed behind my house.
It was in there that all of the dangerous things were kept. There were radios and cameras too small to be noticed held in plastic bags, carved molds and their products sitting in lines on shelves. I was trying to arm myself with a personal industrial revolution.
There were holes in trees in training ground, not always ones that were supposed to be there. Sometimes I failed spectacularly, sometimes I almost succeeded.
It was difficult, a work in progress that I could not yet rely on enough to work with my hands instead of yanking strings from behind trees.
For the time being I had to focus on the regular ninja tools instead of the weapon I was trying to create. Which was probably a good thing, seeing as my grades in that class could have been better.
Even with Gai's help my stamina was still lower than almost all of my friends, the exception being Shikamaru, though I hardly counted him. He never tried. Ever. This meant that whenever I got into a fight I had to end it quickly.
I can honestly say I was no longer the weakest in my class. Through hard work and a near lack of self-preservation I now ranked higher than Sakura and Ino in physical aspects, and fought for the top space in written grades with the former. I needed to be in the top space by graduation, I had to be.
Sasuke was top in physical, there was no one who could beat him there that the teachers would acknowledge, which would, if my memory served, get me paired with him for balance, assuming my plan worked.
Naruto was still in the last for everything, in spite of mine and Sasuke's attempts to help him. The kid just wasn't book smart. Which isn't to say he wasn't cunning. That child could pull off maneuvers that no one else was crazy enough to try and succeed at whatever he was trying to do. So while his grades were shit he would be a master at trapping if he put his mind to it. He got in trouble like no other though, he, Shikamaru, Kiba, Choji, Sasuke and I were dragged along with him.
So, unfortunately, that meant I was still getting detentions.
Which in all honesty was spent doing more and more crunch work before everyone graduated. I needed to be with Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura was currently a fangirl that would probably do, well, nothing until she was snapped forcibly into action. She would be useless, and in all honesty Sasuke and Naruto did not need her around. She would stroke Sasuke's already large ego and crush Naruto's spirits without a second thought. She already did whenever the boy tried to talk to her.
The respect I'd once held for her, watching her destroy puppets and refuse to be left behind anymore was now gone, replaced by irritation and a fierce protectiveness for my boys.
I was going to stay with them, as long as I possibly could.
I had already met and befriended most of the future Rookie nine, with the exceptions of Sakura and Ino, who were just too obsessive right then for me to care much about. There was only one that I hadn't held a conversation with yet, something that was fixed by Iruka.
After the third time I accidently set our desk on fire Iruka moved me from sitting between Sasuke and Naruto to the seat up at the front with one Shino Aburame, who I'd never actually spoken to before.
I sat next to him, spread out my things and blocked out Iruka's ramblings on the code of shinobi. I already knew that, serve your village no matter what, follow orders, blah blah blah. We'd been learning this for the past six years.
Shino said nothing, I said nothing. I couldn't tell if he had even looked at me when I sat next to him. The boy was odd.
Class dragged on as I wrote quickly, scratching diagrams and formulas and trying to figure out how to get my hands on fireworks that I didn't make myself. I could cook up gunpowder without any trouble at all, though saltpeter was a little harder to get than I would like and I was pretty sure there was a law in the works that would ban me from buying sulfur. Charcoal was just burnt wood, something that I would never run out of.
That was fine, I was working on refining something I needed more than that. I just didn't know the exact process needed to make it. I had an idea on what I needed. Potassium Nitrate, Sulfuric Acid, Nitric Acid, Cotton and Hemp, maybe some kind of unstable plastic, Nitroglycerine, Petroleum Jelly and Acetone. With all that I could maybe make Cordite. Given that some these combined would make the others which made the process delicate.
I already had an abundance of copper and hard plastics, as well as a whole stack of old lead cups, and pipes that had come from condemned houses.
I was just writing down how I might find Nitric Acid when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. There, crawling over to me, was a small black bug. I stared at it, train of thought broken. It was… weird.
Three segments, six legs made it an insect. The middle was grey and looked a little fuzzy. I had never seen anything like it. So I did what anyone would.
I poked it with the tip of my pencil.
It squirmed and retreated back towards Shino, scuttling across the wood. I frowned, resisting the urge to keep poking it and possibly stab it. Shino would not be pleased. He wouldn't be pleased with my practice of lighting ants on fire with spy glasses.
The bug crawled up its owner/houses sleeve and I tilted my head, leaning closer. I'd always been curious about the Aburame, even before my untimely demise. There were just so many things that were never clarified about them, it piqued my interest.
"Hey, Shino, can I ask you a thing?"
I was relatively sure he blinked.
"You just did."
"Smart ass," I accused. "Yes or no?"
I couldn't really tell what he was thinking but the boy nodded, chin dipping below his collar. "Yes, you may."
"What's it like having bugs under your skin?" I asked, twisting on the bench and facing him.
I could barely see his brow arch above his dark glasses.
"What is it like not to?" he returned, and for that I had no answer.
"It's uh… I dunno."
"Neither do I."
And that was the end of that.
Shino didn't talk to me against that day, or try to strike up a conversation the next. It was Friday before he talked to me again, and that was a question about what I was doing.
I looked up from where I was stabbing holes into the desk. I saw stabbing, it was more like reinforcing grooves that generations of children had put into the wood, making their mark and building upon the vandalism of those that came before them.
"I'm expressing my frustration in a manner that won't get me yelled at," I explained, carving away at the straight line.
"Why are you frustrated?" Shino quizzed. From the desk directly behind me I could feel the slight shift in Shikamaru's chakra that happened when he started paying attention to someone. Choji's chip crunching paused as well. It never ended well for others when I was irritated. I blew off steam by blowing up buildings. They had also learned over the years that I had quieter, equally dangerous ways of calming myself.
"I'm trying to figure out a way to make a triple-base, slow burning, high powered explosive. I have the theoretical knowledge but I'm more mechanic than chemist, so it's really hard and I don't have access to the materials I need to succeed. Cotton, Nitroglycerine and Petroleum Jelly are easy to get but I don't know where to get Sulfuric and Nitric Acid or Potassium Nitrate. I can probably make the last one myself just those other two are hard to get to. And on top of that my prototypes keep gumming up because there's too much charcoal in the powder-" I cut myself off, realizing that Shino probably hadn't wanted to know all of that. "Sorry," I muttered.
"You should go to the hospital," Shino commented. "Why? Because they might have the chemicals you need."
I stared at him blankly, unsure what to say. Why hadn't I thought of that? The nurses all knew and loved me. Or at least pitied me enough to be nice. I was a fool not to think of it earlier!
"Shino," I asked, "Would it hurt your bugs if I hugged you?"
The Aburame was silent, his mouth partially opened in what I could only assume was surprise. Slowly he shook his head back and forth. "I do not believe so."
I grinned widely and tossed an arm around the boy, yanking him into a hug. "You're a wonderful friend!" I declared.
I heard a muffled "Thank you?" and ignored the itch of a bug crawling across my stomach.
Turns out the hospital had exactly what I needed. And with the puppy eyes and a few tears (and possibly the threat of fire branding a house or two) I was walking away from my daily talk with my mother with a backpack full of books and dangerous chemicals.
Apparently my gleeful expression was so scary that Kakashi felt the need to stop in the middle of street, ask me what I was planning and make a quick getaway when I smiled sweetly at him.
Smart man.
It wasn't long enough before it was graduation day. We all knew it, we were all prepared, even Naruto. For the past six months our friend group had been doing out damndest to help him.
By some kind of miracle we succeeded.
Naruto couldn't make three regular clones. No, no way in hell. It was just impossible for him to use so little chakra. It was like trying to push a river though a kitchen sink. So we found a way around that, with the help of Hinata and the brain of Shikamaru. Instead of just making three, he would make three dozen.
Hopefully he wouldn't be counted off for that.
With the help of Shikamaru's mother we had also managed to teach him Shadow Clones. It had been my idea, of course. I had mentioned it during lunch one day, about the technique I had read in a book. From there Naruto had scoffed and called it useless until I explained what it could mean if he managed to get it right.
Blue eyes had grown wider with the possibility of pranks and new information that he didn't have to worry about actually being hurt getting and before long we were on our way to Shikamaru's house, bound for the adult in the village that probably liked Naruto the most.
See, when you weren't being disrespectful, mean or dismissive to him, Naruto was actually a very nice person. He was by no means calm, but when Shikamaru had invited everyone to his house under orders of his mother Naruto had appeared on the doorstep last, shifting nervously from foot to foot with a handful of daisies, ripped from the roots.
It had taken her all of five minutes to decide that he was more useful than Shikamaru and whisked him away into the kitchen to put the flowers into a vase and put the little jinchuriki to work.
When we brought our idea to her she had been reluctant, probably because the jutsu required so much chakra to complete. That had been her excuse at the time. I waved it away, telling her about how Naruto had more chakra than the rest of us put together.
Yoshino had agreed at last, and together we all learned it. Nearly dropped Shikamaru and I on our asses. Naruto not so much. He could now make regular clones and Shadow Clones.
So when graduation day came I was confident he would pass with flying colors.
I was more worried about myself. People would be scrutinizing my every move as I stood in front of them, making copies of myself.
When my name was called I stood up from my desk, took a deep breath and walked to the door, my defective heart pounding in my ears.
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. - Colin Powell
