I love this story – I really, truly love it.
No idea how that happened, because I usually get bored with my own ideas pretty quickly. In fact, I've never written more than three chapters to a story! (Not to mention, I've never gotten more than 5 reviews – so thank you all very much!)
It's probably because I fell in love with my own characters for the first time ever – so I'm really pumped for this story. But please don't expect me to keep cranking out chapters like I have been; I don't know how long this spell of creativity will last :D
They get lunch at – surprise – Ichiraku's.
For once, nobody's complaining. The atmosphere is relaxed and Sakura is enthusiastically describing her first taste of healing chakra.
"It's just a pity," Naruto finally says between mouthfuls of noodles, "that I didn't get a crack at Kiba. I was really looking forward to it."
"Then none of us got what we wanted", Sasuke muses. "You didn't fight Kiba, I didn't get to fight Hiro and Sakura won't be fighting Ino."
"That sounds really shitty if you say it like that. But it was a good day, dattebayo."
"Is a good day", Sakura reminds him. "So don't eat too much, we still have some more matches to go."
Once they return, Hisana pulls Genma aside.
"How many matches to go?"
"For your brats? Two at most. For team Yamanaka" – here he rolls his eyes dramatically – "just one. While you were gone they steam rolled another Hyuuga's team by knocking his teammates flat and ganging up on him. That girl nearly scratched his eyes out."
"Naruto, be careful," she warns.
"I'm tough as old boots," he boasts, but she whacks him upside the head.
"I don't care if you can grow back half your insides. She gets your eyes, I will personally staple them back into your skull."
No jokes about losing eyes; there's going to be enough of that in her future as it is.
Naruto salutes out of sheer fear.
"Gotta teach me that," Sakura remarks.
"Any advice for us?" Sasuke enquires.
So he does remember her warnings.
"An Akimichi's biggest advantage is their physical strength. Stay away from Shikamaru's shadow. Be quick about it."
It isn't much, but her cousin nods thoughtfully anyway.
"Ok," he decides, "the plan's still good."
"Of course it is, it's my plan after all, dattebayo!"
"Is it now?" Sakura scoffs.
Close by Mizuki-sensei is ushering a completely unfamiliar team into an arena. Team 7 joins them, still amiably bickering.
This time she does hear very soft footsteps approaching, before a voice says "This will not be an easy fight."
It's not Shizuha though, but Shino.
"Do you know any of them?"
"I know their names. Hirose Kaori" – he indicates towards the short, black haired girl that hunches a few feet away from her teammates - "I have never seen her interact with anyone beside the teachers. Fujimori Hisao" – his finger wanders left, towards a tall, lanky boy with straight, white blonde hair – "Utatane Koharu-sama appears to have taken an interest in him. Inoue Tatsuya" – the runty looking boy with the gold blond ponytail and glasses – "he appears to be a ninjutsu prodigy."
All three of them seem determined to win. The best three teams, she thinks, are all balanced male-female-male teams. She wonders at the correlations for a second, but there's something else that has been bothering her for a while now.
"The ability gap in your year is pretty vast."
Shino nods.
"It is mostly those from civilian families who fall behind."
Hisana thinks back to Ami and her team. She certainly feels no love for them, but it still strikes her as supremely unfair that they suffer under such a disadvantage. Haruno Sayuri's way of thinking still makes the hair at the back of her neck stand up straight. It's not unreasonable to assume, that those girls' parents might be the same.
But then she thinks of Hinata and realizes that ninja clans bring their own disadvantages.
There aren't very many spectators left. Most of the parents went home when their children were eliminated; only some of the ninja families are left, as well as the teachers and medics. Far to the right she can see Shizuha and Shiki with what would be team 10.
Mizuki-sensei impatiently waves her team over and for the first time she feels truly nervous.
"This isn't right. I feel like this shouldn't be happening."
"Onee-san says you have good intuition," Shino quips. "They have not been attending the Academy for almost a year now."
Her mind races with possible explanations. Utatane Koharu, she remembers, of the Konoha Council. Does Danzo have anything to do with it? But Utatane has no relation to Root … as far as Hisana remembers, she has no idea about Danzo's betrayal.
Today she's come into contact with the evidence of Danzo's existence for the first time. There's a difference between knowing things in theory and witnessing the ripples it makes first hand, she finds. The mere thought that his eyes and ears are everywhere – and probably on Naruto and everyone that surrounds him – is more than chilling.
The only thing that keeps her from actively wasting any thought on it is the watchful eye of the Sandaime that follows Naruto just as doggedly. All of the Council has, of course, a vested interest in seeing both her and Sasuke die, too. But Itachi is still alive, so this doesn't really worry her yet.
The older Uchiha brother might not care about her, but she knows in his own way, unaware, Sasuke is shielding her life with his. And if they want to kill her, they'll have to go through him first – and for that they'd first have to kill Itachi.
The sound of Mizuki-sensei's whistling startles her out of these grim thoughts.
There's no funny posturing or trash talk this time. In fact, there's none of what made the previous matches so funny and charming – these are not children bumbling about.
It takes only a split second and the entire enemy team is gone. Instinctively Hisana knows it's a genjutsu, but this should not be possible. Sasuke tries to dispel it but nothing happens. Then his head jerks back, as if punched. Blood sprays.
Naruto and Sakura yelp.
"Where are they?"
Something hits Naruto in the back of his neck. There's a crack and a howl and another crack as his leg bends at an unnatural angle. He drops.
The girl, Kaori, reappears behind Sasuke. She aims a kick at his stomach; he blocks once, twice, the third times his fingers break with an audible snap. What the hell happening here? She catches Shiki's wide eyed look. So it's not her, this really isn't normal.
"This is too much, Sensei stop this," an older woman says from across the field, but Mizuki-sensei stays silent.
More blood sprays, but it's neither Sasuke's nor Sakura's. It's Naruto's and Tatsuya, the ninjutsu boy, is standing above him, fingers formed into a futon jutsu – one she recognizes only, because she's read ahead of her own curriculum.
"He's already down," she yells, "What the hell, Mizuki-sensei!"
"Sensei!"
"This is unfortunate, but not against the rules," he echoes.
His face is expressionless, but there's an eerie glint to his eyes. There are more cries of outrage as Sakura is caught in a genjutsu and starts crying. It's a small, heartbreaking sound as she simply sits down and gives up.
She wants to do something, stop them, anything. But she's honestly not sure if she herself stands any chance in this. Frantically she searches for Shizuha and Shiki in the crowd.
One of the adults is quicker than her. It's an Akimichi woman. She stomps onto the battlefield and grips the still invisible Hisao out of thin air. He struggles in her meaty hands but it's useless.
"Hey!" Mizuki-sensei calls, "don't interfere! This is a learning experience!"
He makes as if to forcibly remove her from the field, but the shrill sound of Ito-sensei's outrage stops him in his tracks.
"Are you insane? Oh my – medic!"
She pries Kaori off Sasuke and takes a threatening step towards Tatsuya, the last one standing. He is smarter than his teammates though, and simply raises his hands in surrender. The two medics are already on team 7. They are calm, so there doesn't seem to be anything to worry about, but Sakura is still crying while everything else is deadly quiet. Genma shoulder through the onlookers, Iruka-sensei hurrying after him.
Mizuki-sensei is already blustering.
"If this is how you're pampering future generations –"
Ito-sensei throws Kaori at Genma's face. He catches her with ease and, ignoring her indignant protests, throws her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
"How dare you," Sensei snarls, stepping so far into Mizuki-sensei's personal space that their noses are almost touching. Her tone quiets so far that the words become indiscernible, but they're hissing into each other's faces like angry cats.
Hisana leaves them to it in favor of checking on her team. She approaches the only very slowly, half afraid of what she'd see or that she might startle them.
Her cousin is sitting despondently on the floor; legs thrown out wide and hunched over. He looks a lot like he did at the very beginning: a small boy, unable to deal with what he just witnessed. The medics seem to be done with him. There are still scrapes along his arms and legs, but his ribs appear to be healed and his hands look fine.
Naruto is being tended to by a short, elderly woman. She mostly pokes at him with sharp fingers, probably only watching over the Kyuubi self-healing his vessel. He's already whining and complaining again, trying to squirm away from her.
"Baa-saaan - … ouch, that hurts! I'm ok, I'm ok!"
She ruffles his hair in passing. He really is though as old boots. The medic from earlier today is sitting with Sakura. She's not physically hurt, only frightened, she realizes. They're talking in hushed voices.
"Genjutsu plays on your fears," she hears him say. "It has nothing to do with reality, only with your head and what the aggressor knows about the victim. I believe, since he didn't know anything about you, it was a generic one. Your mind came up with it all on its own – that doesn't mean it's real in any way."
They are discussing the specifics of genjutu. Sakura is nodding along. With every statistic the medic spits out, a little color returns to her face. She's in good hands for now, Hisana decides, and turns back to her cousin instead.
"What is it?"
It sounds harsh, she realizes, as soon as it's out of her mouth, but Sasuke gets it.
"I'm not sure. It's just … I knew them. They weren't bad, but I beat them lots of times. And suddenly they disappear and now …"
… and now they've returned as super-powered monster ninjas. Sasuke's frown deepens.
"It happened so fast."
He sounds irked, more than shocked now. Of course they'd have bruised his ego.
"You were outclassed. It happens. As long as it makes you train harder, not give up, that's fine."
"Were you ever defeated, Hisa-nee?"
She sighs and drops down next to him.
"Yeah. But I'm not ashamed; that day all us were defeated."
She's reluctant to leave them alone. They're squabbling again already, but every once in a while there's a telling silence that makes her skin crawl.
There's no victory lunch, as she'd hoped, of course and they've left the training grounds as soon as the medics gave their ok. She didn't even want to stick around to find out whether or not there even would be a final.
According to Shiki, most definitely not.
"I don't care," she said, incensed. "None of you is getting anywhere near those little sociopaths."
There was no protest from team 10 at all.
When they left, Ito-sensei and Iruka-sensei were still in the middle of a heated discussion with Mizuki-sensei and Genma fervently trying to decide what to do with the psycho team.
She really doesn't care how it'll end.
They don't go to Ichiraku's. Lunch feels like an eternity in the past, but it seems wrong to wallow in their defeat in front of Teuchi-ji's eyes. So they walk home Sakura first. A few hours before sundown she gets twitchy and confesses that she should be home by now.
Haruno Sayuri is not happy to see them. She takes in Sakura's bruised and dusty appearance and her eyes bug unattractively.
"Sakura! Your clothes! Please don't tell me you walked through the village like this – what will the neighbors say!" She grabs the girl by the arm and drags her inside, away from possible prying eyes. "Look at yourself – like a heathen!" She throws them a wild glare. "Go! I don't want anyone to see you lurking around here!"
The door slams shut in their faces.
"Maybe," Hisana wonders aloud, "this wasn't such a good idea."
Naruto is sleeping on their couch tonight. She wishes they could have dragged Sakura along, but Haruno Sayuri is truly impossible and refused to open the door, no matter how long they rang the doorbell.
So now there are two pre-pubescent boys sitting on her couch and pouting, with no puffer zone between them. She fights the urge to erect some sort of physical barrier between them – couch cushions, if they had any.
"I want you two to behave. Your teamwork today was impressive, keep it that way."
Sometimes she feels more like their mother, than a sister. Three years age difference isn't even all that much and in fifteen years or so it'll cease to be of any importance. But up until then she'll have to resign herself to playing the mother hen.
"This sounds as if you were leaving," Sasuke comments.
"That's because I probably am."
As if on cue someone knocks onto the door.
"Door's open."
"'Door's open'?" it comes from the entrance hall, "What kind of ninja are you?"
"None yet," she deadpans. Shikano sticks his head into the living room.
"I'm supposed to scare you into showing up."
He looks supremely unenthused.
"What are you – her lackey? Weren't you the older one?"
"I don't even know anymore."
"You're whipped, aren't you?" Naruto jeers, "That's what 'whipped' means, isn't it?"
She leaves the idiots to it.
For a second she considers dressing in her nice kimono, but then she remembers with whom she's eating and opts for something simple. Which means pretty much what she's already wearing, only clean, and a pair of simple civilian shoes.
"You could just tell her no," Naruto's voice echoes through the flat when she steps out of the bedroom.
"Or I could choose to live another day in relative peace. Hisana-san, are you done?"
"Let's go before you fall asleep in my living room."
The boys promise to be good – for a given value of 'good' – and she ends up being the one dragging Shikano along.
"You can't just come to get me and then go home yourself! I don't believe this …"
Fifteen minutes later they arrive at a rather run down looking yakiniku place not far from the Konoha Hospital. Shiki is already waiting impatiently outside.
"Everyone's already sitting down! Hurry up; if you eat with an Akimichi you've got to be fast."
This seems to wake up Shikano like all her nagging hadn't. He snaps to attention and shoots past his sister with a speed she wouldn't have expected from a Nara.
"You're actually the first, apart from Kaa-chan and me," Shiki confesses and winks at her."You just got to know how to push his buttons."
It seems that Shiki at least knows to take the whole thing slow. Inside there's indeed only a woman sitting on a huge corner booth; beside her a sulking Shikano.
She's not a Nara, Hisana recognizes the instant the woman gets up to greet her.
"Uchiha-san! How lovely you could make it!"
She seems genuinely pleased, but she's wearing the same fox-like grin Hisana has come to fear from the woman's daughter. Not a Nara by birth, but Hisana can easily imagine that her holding her own in a clan of geniuses.
Hisana is strategically positioned across from Nara-san – that is going to get confusing with so many of them – and next to Shiki. She strongly suspects her other side will seat a Yamanaka of some sort.
There's no small talk, because apparently there is no clan in Konoha less interested in polite chit chat than them. Instead there is talk about food and a rather serious battle plan to keep the Akimichi away from theirs.
"Alright," Nara-san says, smacking the table with both hands. "I'm going to get your father. Inoichi-kun and Ino-chan should be here soon." Then she turns to Hisana, "She has been talking about you almost as much as about your cousin. Don't be intimidated if everyone is curious."
Then she squeezes out of the booth and hurries away.
"Ok, who exactly is going to be here?" Hisana asks, casting a careful look around the humongous booth and fearing the worst.
Shikano waves off.
"Akimichi," he emphasizes. "It's just Shika-kun, and Ino-chan, and Choji-kun and their parents. We are only here because of you."
Shiki kicks him.
"What he means is that we are here so you aren't alone with them. In other words, Nii-chan, you're getting yakiniku because of Hisa-chan."
"Yes," he says, breaking out into a lazy grin, "that's right. And that's also the reason I was so nice and volunteered to get you."
"You volunteered?" Hisana asks in surprise. With all the zeal he displayed she would have thought Shiki had forced him.
"Sheesh, why couldn't you have let your sister come instead?"
"Oi," he protests, "you should be grateful. It could have been Inoichi-san; after all it's his daughter who's obsessed with your family."
She has to bow to this superior argument.
The door opens with a bang that has every waiter in the place jump. There's rumbling laughter and the sound of heavy footsteps – the Akimichi have arrived.