With a little extra at the end:)
It's not really important for the story, but canon anyway.
On another note: I need a beta reader T-T
is anyone interested?
"So you really think this is a good idea," Sasuke says, thoughtfully chewing on his nankotsu.
"No," Hisana says, "I actually prefer shabu-shabu. More filling, you know."
He throws her a scathing look.
"Yes, I think this is a good idea. You'll have to work in a team eventually and I could get an early recommendation for the Chunin Exam."
"Really?"
"Yes. If our supervisor thinks I have the makings of a team leader, he can recommend me. If my own jounin teacher for some reason thinks my team isn't ready, I can enter the exams with a make shift team."
Or at least, that is what Iruka-sensei told her. The inner workings of a ninja village are complex and interesting. There are a thousand rules and regulations, but at the same time countless exceptions and loopholes for everything. Should her team fail the jounin test, she could get an apprenticeship. She'd still have to wait around for a year, because a genin needs to participate in D-rank missions with a genin squad to enter the Chunin Exams, but it would count as an early specialization – in other words, the first step towards tokubetsu jounin.
In some ways that route actually interests her more than possible years with a bunch of twelve-year-olds. She conveniently suppresses the thought, that she'd technically also be twelve. Admittedly though, most of the attraction stems from the idea of taking the Chunin Exams with team 7.
An apprenticeship would give her an excuse to be a genin for three years; something that would surely make Sasuke lose all respect for her otherwise. Or at least open the door for a lot of mocking.
"I know you don't like Naruto very much … or Sakura for that matter. But do you at least believe me when I say I see something in them? Something special?"
He seems to consider this. Not seriously, because his mouth does that funny little quirk, the one he also gets when he humors little old civilian ladies, but finally he gives something vaguely resembling a nod.
"Fine. But if they lag behind I'm not waiting for them."
"Sure, sure. Don't worry, I'll kick their butts into shape. Maybe in the end you even want to keep them. Like pets. Naruto-chi and Sakura-chi; they already follow you around like puppies."
Note to self, she thinks, no team-jokes until there is a team.
"Alright, alright. I already set them straight once, I can do it again if they bother you. Ito-sensei said she'd find me a supervisor by next week, you won't have to deal with them for a while yet anyway."
Naruto takes the news a lot more gracefully. Or, well, gracefully for Naruto.
"SAKURA-CHAN? That's great, dattebayo! Then she'll finally see that I'm a great ninja already!"
She doesn't quite have the heart to tell him that Sakura would probably need a few more years until she even considered him anything but a nuisance.
"If you really want to impress her, you better train hard. I already told her a ninja who doesn't take their career seriously can go right home and stay there. She took that real seriously."
The boy nods, eyes wide and earnest.
"Of course – I'm gonna be Hokage, after all!"
Sasuke rolls his eyes but stays quiet. She wants to think it's because he's coming to tolerate the loud blond, but it's more likely that he simply hopes Naruto succeeds just to get Sakura out of his hair. She can't really blame him right now.
The coming Monday Ito-sensei takes her aside.
"I found someone for you. He's a chuunin, and he's hoping this might get him tokubetsu jounin qualifications. So this will be mutually beneficial. He will wait for you after class at the dango-ya, you know the one, close to the genin training grounds?"
"Yes."
Ito-sensei nods, pleased.
"Official training starts only when you are sure you'll get along or this might hurt your career more than it helps."
So that means she's supposed to leave the others at home. It makes sense of course. She's supposed to handle them, he's supposed to handle her. Having the three brats there, especially as volatile as they are now, would only complicate a tentative first meeting. She feels vaguely, ridiculously reminded of a first date. The impression only intensifies as she arrives, at 1400 hours on the dot at the dango shop, fiddling with her clothes, like the nervous school girl in whose body she currently resides. She looks around the dingy little shop. Is this already a test? Is she supposed to find him?
"Yo."
She viciously suppresses the urge to jump. Whirling around Hisana comes face to face with – "What."
What.
Grinning at her, an empty dango stick dangling from his mouth, is Shiranui Genma.
"Not very observant, are you, little lady?"
She stares at him. 'How do you know Ito-sensei?' she wants to ask. 'How in all the world does someone like Ito-sensei know you?' – and what made her think this would be a good fit?
"Come on," he says, throwing his arm around her shoulder and dragging her away. "This shop is a dump, and I feel more like Okonomiyaki anyway. Hope you're hungry."
While the manga never gave much information about Genma, or at least that she remembers, fanfiction tended to portray him as a womanizer. They were half right.
As Genma sits down across from her, carelessly throwing around a beaming smile, he seems entirely oblivious to the chaos he's causing. Or maybe used to it? To their left two waitresses are pinching and showing each other, not very subtly fighting for their table. A quiet 'ouch!' announces the victor. The leggy blonde flounces over to their table, as the busty red-head disappears with a pout into the kitchen.
"May I take your order?" she asks, not sparing Hisana a glance. Genma beams at the girl.
"A big pot of genmaicha with two cups. Talk first, then food."
The girl gives him a vaguely stupid looking smile, before snapping out of it.
"Right away!"
His smile doesn't change an iota as he turns back to Hisana. Not a womanizer, she thinks. Just good-looking and a bit of an idiot.
"So Osen tells me you want to train a team."
Hisana nods slowly.
"Yes. I've trained Uzumaki Naruto for awhile now" – there is no reaction to Naruto's name – "and recently my cousin Sasuke has gotten involved. They're both very … headstrong and Iruka-sensei suggested I add a girl to try and balance them out. I've already asked Haruno Sakura and she agreed."
Genma nods to himself. At this point the waitress returns with a truly humongous pot of tea. She deposits it on the table, along with the cups, and looks to Genma for approval. But the man is still lost in thought. The girl then turns to her, obviously seizing her up, weighting the chances whether or not she's young enough to be his daughter and if being nice to her would make a difference. It wouldn't, Hisana thinks amusedly, as Genma causually lifts the huge pot and pours them both tea without even acknowledging her. The waitress huffs and leaves.
"I understand the boys," he says, "but why Haruno? I already have all of your files and she's good, but is that all?"
She can't very well tell him 'Oh, you know, in the future they're supposed to be the next Sannin, so I thought I'd keep them together'. Yes, that would go over well.
"I … already spoke to Sakura before. She liked to follow Sasuke around and I told her to concentrate more on her training instead. But" – here she winces – "she took me a little too seriously, maybe? I feel responsible now, because she's not taking care of herself."
That, at least, isn't a total lie.
"What did she do?"
"She's not eating properly. Last week I almost didn't recognize her, she looks as if she's about to keel over."
He considers this.
"That does sound like a problem. But why not let the parents handle it? They surely noticed such a weight loss?"
The problem with ninjas, she thinks, is that they all think, everyone is a ninja. Civilians don't seem to exist to them, outside of service personnel and the occasional grandma, who needs her gets her garden weeded as a D-rank mission.
"I don't think her parents are aware that there's a difference between healthy civilian portions and healthy ninja portions. And Sakura herself insists she's only 'dieting'."
He frowns.
"How old is she?"
Hisana gives him a look.
"Ok. So you plan on doing what exactly?"
"Train her into the ground until she's so hungry she has to eat?"
He snorts.
"And plan B?"
"Sic Sasuke on her. I probably should talk to her parents, but then she'll only get angry and still won't learn anything. I made some sort of impression on her already; maybe if she sees how I'm eating, she'll come around?"
Genma scratches his head.
"This is really not a problem I thought I'd see on a team of seven-year-olds. But I guess your plan's not so bad. You should also talk to Suzume-san. If it's about being thin and girly, maybe her girly-make-up-teacher-thingy can do something. Do you have a plan for the team as a whole?"
She gives a vague nod.
"I think they should all learn about working as a team. Right now they're all solo fighters. Naruto's stubborn, Sasuke's proud, and Sakura would probably just trail after them as the third wheel. Of course I also want them to get better. Naruto's useless in everything concerning theory and Sakura is useless in everything but theory. Sasuke is … well, I just want him to have a few friends."
It sounds a little pathetic, both for Sasuke and for her, but it's true. The boy needs friends. And she is exactly the kind of overbearing relative to get some for him.
"Did you already plan something concrete for the next weeks?"
"Well, Iruka-sensei gave me a list of taijutsu styles that I wanted to test out with them. I currently have five at home to study them."
"Well", he says, "that all sounds pretty good to me. Food!"
Maybe she shouldn't have doubted Ito-sensei's judgment. The guy is weird and a smart ass, but he doesn't treat her like a kid and it's nice. They seem to click in a way that reminds her a little of Marie. When they part ways he ruffles her hair and promises to come by the next day to have a look at those taijutsu scrolls. Proper training would start at the end of the week.
"How's the supervisor?" Sasuke asks as she comes through the door. Nosy.
"Hello Sasuke, I had a lovely day. How are you?"
He huffs.
"Nee-san. I just saw you a few hours ago. Who is the supervisor?"
"His name is Shiranui Genma. You'll meet him sometime tomorrow."
He makes a face, obviously hoping she'd reveal a little more – uhuh, no playing favorites. She'd have to ease him into the equal treatment. He'd already meet Genma half a week earlier than the rest of the team. She doesn't like that either, but she couldn't very well kick him out of the house.
As it turns out, she doesn't have to. Instead of ringing the doorbell, like a normal person, Genma lets himself in through her bedroom window like a creep. He's also an hour early and in full stealth mode, which is why she nearly jumps out of her skin when he blurts out a noisy greeting.
"Hey little lady! You got those scrolls ready?"
The scream stays in her throat through sheer willpower, but she does throw a scroll at him in shock.
"Oh hey, I know that style", he says cheerily, after opening it and peering at the contents. "That makes it easier."
"WHAT. are you doing? Do you always break into girls' rooms?"
"Nah – you're special!"
"And that's not weird at all?!"
"Calm down, you're what – six?" – "Ten!" – "It's not like I'd walk in on any funny business." "I could have been changing!"
"But you weren't."
He looks completely unapologetic, which annoys her even more. She wants to throw something else at his head, but there's nothing physical in reach and she's all out of arguments. The ass. He grabs some more scrolls from her desk and makes his way back over to her window.
"I'll wait for you on training ground four – we'll see what of those you can do and then we figure out how you could teach the other brats. Hurry up, I want to get started!"
Five hours later, dusk is rapidly approaching, she's crawling home. For all his vapid grinning and smart-alacking, Genma is a slave driver. They've picked out two styles to start with, and the other three he'd teach her later; all different, just to see what the team likes best.
The first is a bastardized version of the Juuken. It's a flowing style that strikes with an open palm and targets mostly the inner organs. It's full of liver strikes and shots to the throat and really nothing to teach a genin, but she likes the thought of them knowing it for emergencies – for Zabuza specifically.
The second one is full of locks and holds to break joints and bones. It's far better for the Academy, because nothing says you have to overstretch your opponent so much that you actually break something. But for it to be effective you have to get very close to your opponent first, so it's tricky.
She already knows that none of them will be any good for Naruto, Sasuke will attempt to master both, just to make a point, and Sakura will probably take to the first one, but would eventually benefit more from the second. Hisana is partly pleased but also impatient. Things are progressing, even if just a little, and she's more than ready for the day to be over. Of course she'll first have to brave Sasuke's wrath, because she denied him meeting Genma just yet.
Contrary to her expectations, Sasuke is not pouting. Instead he is sitting in the living room, with only a small lamp turned on and a book on his lap. Hisana is bizarrely and fondly reminded of her father waiting for her in exactly the same way once or twice. She half expects her little cousin to ask 'where have you been, young lady?'. He doesn't.
What she gets instead is a supremely disappointed look, a specialty of her mother. Sasuke closes his book with a snap, pointedly turns off the lamp and goes to bed. She watches him bemusedly, wondering what the hell just happened.
He may be younger than Nee-san, but Sasuke isn't stupid. He wants to yell at her sometimes, because of a lot of reasons usually, but he doesn't. Not after he realized that Nee-san would never really understand why he did it. For his young age, Sasuke is also surprisingly self aware. Enough to know, that, yes, he is a brat occasionally, and yes, it's not fair to want his cousin all to himself.
But even that, no matter how much he wants to do otherwise, is something he mostly expressed through sulky silence and glares. What Nee-san doesn't understand is, that the thing that makes him want to yell the most, is the fact that he worries about her, and there is really nothing he can do about it.
Nee-san does whatever she wants, and if that means leaving, then she does just that. And if there's something that scares Sasuke more than anything, it's people leaving him again.
Unfortunately, lately Nee-san has been doing a lot of leaving.