II.
It was a normal day in the household of Uchiha Emiko and Satoshi.
And by normal, it was meant that everyone in the immediate proximity could hear me starting up a racket and pissing off my mom first thing in the morning.
"I don't wanna go the ninja Academy! Can't make me!"
"Why? Rika, it's what every child does, and it's what your father wants," Emiko stated matter-of-factly, hands on her hips. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure dear old Dad wanted me to be born a son like Shisui, too. "I just can't understand why you won't do what we ask—are you embarrassed of your language skills? They're getting better every day!"
"No?! Hah, I talk good!" I threw out my hands in a shrug before crossing my arms defiantly, refusing to change out of my little frilly pink nightgown (had to admit, Emiko dressed me up pretty cute) and into proper outerwear for the trip to the Academy.
The entrance ceremony was scheduled for today and Satoshi and Emiko had been planning for me to enroll since three months ago when I turned six. They just couldn't understand why I was so against it. I mean, I was pretty sure Emiko was capable of homeschooling me either way—and I didn't care for becoming a shinobi at all. I couldn't understand why they couldn't understand.
"Don't wanna go is all."
At first, Emiko always tried the gentle approach, even if her expression was strained. "I promise the evaluation won't be something difficult, Rika. If there's a written test, it'll be easy! No kanji at all—you know most of your hiragana and some katakana. And you can speak well enough to get by for your age!" She held out a plum-colored dress with the Uchiha crest printed on the front and smiled kindly, as if she wasn't cornering me at the end of the hallway and trying to force my hand. "Shisui goes there, too, you know. You won't even be alone. You two can even walk to school together when you get accepted."
Yeah, and he wouldn't be there for much longer, probably. Even if he acted like a totally normal—well, over-responsible—kid around me, he was talented and intelligent. He'd graduate and become a genin just as soon as I started classes, probably, and leave me in the dust. Then, Itachi would enroll when he was five or six and I'd become known as the unskilled loser of an Uchiha who was no good at ninja stuff.
Nah, I wasn't afraid of being teased by the other students for my Japanese skills that left much to be desired—I was just totally unwilling to live in those two's shadows since I wouldn't put any effort into learning anyway.
I knew I was being a brat but the hell with it!
"Bribery." To my credit, I could at least pick up a few useful words from Satoshi's heated summaries and criticisms concerning the clan meetings. Even if I couldn't use them in a proper sentence most of the time.
"Rika..."
"Look, you can't make me, okay?"
"Oh you wanna bet?"
"I'm not goin' anywhere, Emiko! You're not my mom!"
Even if it was half true, that was the wrong thing to say—especially calling her by her first name. Emiko flipped her switch and engaged in full-out demon mom mode, and if I knew what a threatening chakra flare felt like I was certain it would be the thing that caused me to break out in a nervous sweat and try to disappear into the wall while questioning my entire life's choices because her glare was terrifying.
I was gonna die!
Again!
...But in reality, two minutes later, I found myself fully-dressed, dark hair combed neatly (aside from the way the layers habitually fanned out awkwardly to the sides), with my hand gripped in an iron hold as Emiko ruthlessly dragged me out of the district and down the street towards the Academy.
Damn.
The old lady was right. The entrance evaluation was easy. So easy, in fact, that my pride hardly allowed me to flunk something even a five year old could ace. Even if it landed me in the last place I wanted to be.
All the kids there just looked so damn happy to get the chance to become little killing machines. I didn't really get it. Why were such violent, dangerous occupations glorified? If they were lucky, they'd live long enough to have a family, but even then was it even worth it when they would probably die during a mission anyway? Maybe it was to become strong; to protect what they loved. But that wasn't something they could do if they kicked the bucket.
Well. In their defense, they probably weren't thinking about something like this in the long run. Konoha was a ninja village, after all—becoming shinobi was just sort of what everyone did.
I wasn't sure about the village's economy, but I was pretty sure the job paid well enough to live super comfortably, too.
But no one really wanted for much in the Uchiha clan either way, so there wasn't anyone to compare that assumption to.
Oh well—whatever it was, by the time graduation rolled around, me and half of my class would be dropouts anyway. Not everyone was made to be a shinobi.
Even so, Satoshi was over the moon when he heard the news that I'd become a student at the Academy. He was so overjoyed, in fact, that he immediately wanted to start me on the beloved katon jutsus the clan was known for, and the idea was just all kinds of bad. Come on, Satoshi, who in their right mind would let a kid learn to play with something so dangerous?
I swear, the man fostered some huge delusion that I was going to sprout into this Sharingan-wielding genius kunoichi one day and he believed it was his duty to prepare me for that.
The only thing I ended up doing was catching the kitchen table on fire. And that mishap wasn't even thanks to a technique.
"Come on, Rika, the hand seals aren't that hard to learn. See?" Satoshi entwined his fingers together to demonstrate, speaking the name for each seal as they were formed as we sat across the table from each other (it got replaced). "Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger."
He may as well have been rapping at me for all I knew. Six hand seals—six? I could barely even form the most basic one yet! And out of all of them, the Horse seal looked almost impossible for my stubby little fingers. Not only that, but he didn't even tell me what jutsu these seals were for—probably the Fireball, but who knew.
I wish I could say that I could just cop out on it all and claim I couldn't manipulate chakra at all whatsoever, but Daddy here was a sensory-nin and he was smart enough to know I'd be lying. And he'd started teaching me how to handle chakra since they'd decided to send me to school. He was smart, that Satoshi.
Too bad I was a genius at being stubborn.
"I can't do that."
"What? Of course you can. Look, watch again." He repeated the hand seals, a little slower than before.
"Are you crazy?"
"Rika..."
Unlike his wife, Satoshi was more passive with my upbringing and only got his authority involved when something I did concerned ninja training. Otherwise, when I got in trouble, he only gave me a slap on the wrist and a short lecture because Emiko's rage was something to be reckoned with and he probably figured I suffered enough punishment already. Typical good cop, bad cop routine.
Oh, and he literally was a cop.
"Just try it, okay? If you do, on my way home tomorrow, I'll bring you something nice from the bakery."
He was also the one who bribed me with cakes and candies.
"...'Kay. Deal."
Halfway through the seal set he'd assigned, I ended up getting a cramp in my pinky.
"Ugh, I told you! Impossible!" I waved my arms about to get the feeling back into them, scowling, and let them drop like dead weight on the tabletop along with my head. I wasn't even pretending—it was getting on my nerves. Why couldn't I just be like a normal civilian kid whose parents didn't want me to become some great, legendary ninja? Or at least on Shisui's level. It was no mystery that Dad was only doing his best to train me up because there was some sort of unspoken competition going on between him and Kou. Now that Shisui and I were both Academy kids, it was a game of who graduated first and whose family would produce the best pint-sized shinobi.
Who knew that even ninjas got caught up in mundane things like keeping up with the Joneses? Or keeping up with the Uchihas, rather.
In any case, Shisui and Kou were going to win, hands down.
Satoshi ignored my dramatics and hummed quietly. "I don't think it's impossible." There was a sudden smugness in his tone.
I glanced up to see he'd crossed his arms and was studying me from the corners of his dark eyes doubtfully. New approach, hm?
"I think, maybe, you're just a chicken."
Now he'd gotten my attention—and he knew it. But, calling me a chicken? Of all things? Hah! Once I found out where the clan kept the coops I'd show him just what a chicken was! I'll turn his bedroom into an animal farm!
"Am not."
"Are you sure? It's perfectly fine to be afraid of fire. I mean, for most people."
"Afraid? I'm not afraid of nothin'!" I was well aware he was stooping to such a low, immature level because he knew it would get my goat, but—damn, did it piss me off! Who liked being called a chicken, really? No one. "I can do it. Just watch."
I straightened my back and held my arms out in front of me before running through the Fireball's required seals one more time.
"The Boar seal doesn't look like that."
He interrupted me and my fingers tangled together, ruining whatever I'd been trying to form next, just before I was done! Satoshi was a cool guy, but he could be a real jerk and my temper was already past boiling point because why did he care so much about whether or not I became a shinobi? He didn't even care if I didn't want to follow that path! It was all about his stupid competition!
I had a special one-finger hand seal that summed up my feelings on the matter, just for him. "Oh yeah? Then, this is right?"
"Rika!"
Jeez, did Emiko have the worst timing.
But, on the bright side, because she'd caught me flipping Satoshi the bird, she had me pulling so many weeds from the front garden that I couldn't physically perform any more hand seals for a week.