"Tadaima," I called as I walked back into Akane-obasan's home. Kazuhiro had left a note on our rarely-used dining room table, stating that he had been summoned for a mission, which was a bit worrisome. These days, he typically showed up at the administration wing of the Tsuchikage's Palace and was assigned a mission; he hadn't been sent for in over a year.
I tried not to dwell on it too much. I'm sure my god-brother would be just fine.
A sniffling sound around the corner distracted me, punctuated by sobs. Slightly alarmed, I rounded the corner to find Akane-obasan reclining on a chair, crying her eyes out.
"Oh, Kasaiki-chan," she said, startled at my appearance. "Is it that time already? How was your first day at the academy?"
"It was fine," I said, frowning. To call the sight disconcerting would be an understatement. I had never seen Akane-obasan sad before; she was always bubbly and cheerful, nagging in an endearing way and painfully optimistic. I've never seen her upset even once.
"Good, that's good," she said, hiccuping slightly and furiously wiping away her tears with a handkerchief.
"What's wrong, Oba-san?" I asked bluntly.
"Oh, nothing's wrong, dear," she lied, and I put my hands on my hips.
"Obviously something's wrong," I said. "Please tell me what."
"You're a very sweet girl to worry about me, Kasaiki-chan. But it's alright. It's just…today is Atsuchi-kun's birthday. I was hoping…see, he didn't visit last year either. And I haven't seen him between that time, and I just realized…I don't think I've seen my son in over two years."
Wow. What a piece of shit. Ingratitude was my biggest pet peeve, but I especially couldn't stand it when kids neglected their parents once they moved out. It was one thing if said parents were shitty and mistreated their kids, but Akane-obasan raised me. I'm sure her son received the same treatment as I did, perhaps even better.
"I'm sorry, Oba-san," I said, wrapping my arms around her side to treat her to one of my rare hugs. "You deserve better than that."
"Oh, it's not Atsuchi-kun's fault," she said, returning the hug nonetheless. "Not really. He was born with a curse, one that you unfortunately share."
"A curse?" I repeated. What curse?
"Yes. The curse of intelligence and capability," she said with a watery chuckle. "You both see the world in ways that no one else can, and because of that, people begin to rely on you. That's what happened to Atsuchi. He mastered an art that most couldn't even begin to understand, and as a result, they've worked him to the bone. I'm very proud of him, and though I don't know exactly what he does, I'm sure he is doing this village a great service. But I do miss him so."
Akane-obasan was clearly referring to fuinjutsu, the art capable of sealing away the most destructive entities in this world. I understood why the powers that be might force him to work for two years straight, but I highly doubt they had clamped a literal ball and chain to his leg, or that they locked him in some cell. He could leave, if only for a short time.
This was an important moment for me, because I came to a decision. I was going to learn fuinjutsu—it was too powerful of an art form to neglect. But I refused to end up like Atsuchi. I would be keeping a tight lid on my studies, and not breathe a word of it to anyone outside of my family.
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
Later, I passed a note to one of the administrative staff on the first floor of the Tsuchikage's Palace. Despite its formidable exterior, the building's inside was rather bland. It reminded me of an office building back on Earth, with even fewer windows.
"Could you please deliver this to Hamamoto Atsuchi at your convenience?" I asked, standing in my tiptoes to reach over the attendant's desk.
"Hamamoto-san?" The worker asked, clearly amused by my struggle. He knew who the man was at least, thankfully.
"Yes please. It's a personal note. I assume I will not be allowed to deliver it myself?"
"You assume correctly," he said, taking the envelope. "I'll see what I can do, chibi. We will have to screen it though—is that alright?"
"Yes, that is no problem," I said. "Arigato."
The message was simple and mostly innocuous.
Visit your mother.
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
Kazuhiro hadn't known what to expect for this mission, but this was definitely not it. His squad was large, made up of three chunin, including himself, and even more strangely, three jonin, none of whom he had ever met before.
He worked with jonin occasionally, but since the war ended, never with more than one at a time. They were all at least twice as old as he was too, and the type of humorless that he associated with people high up on the totem pole.
"There's a merchant, moderately wealthy, that would see the alliance between Kusa and Konoha restored," the most senior jonin, Nakamura Teruo, announced. "His suppliers are in the Land of Grass, but his wealthiest buyers are in the Land of Fire. Unfortunately, simply killing him is not an option, as he has a long line of succession, and even if his whole family was eliminated, he has high enough demand for his wares to ensure his venture would be picked up again by another. Assasination, in this instance, would only delay the problem and make it more difficult to contain in the future."
"Targeting his buyers is also out of the question," another Jonin, Maeda Satoshi chimed in. "Many are a part of the fire Daimyo's court, and the difficulty in reaching them is disproportionate to the urgency of the mission. Additionally, we do not want to target the suppliers in Grass either. If for some reason we failed to mask our intervention, we would lose all of our current amity with Kusa, and drive them back into Konoha's arms. This would be the worst case scenario."
"It would also be a shame," the third, Takeuchi Minoru proclaimed. "As Iwa can turn this situation to our favor. That will be our mission; we will infiltrate their supply line and replace their precious textiles with damaged and poor quality alternatives. Once the buyers unveil our additions, they will lose faith in the merchant and in Kusa. They will accuse both parties of trying to pass inferior goods upon them. With the Kusa suppliers' reputations ruined in their buyer's eyes, business between the two will cease. Kusa will be desperate to find new buyers, and our merchants will swoop in, securing trade deals at a much lower market rate."
It was an extremely convoluted scenario. Luckily, Kazuhiro didn't have to question his superiors, because a temporary squad mate did it for him.
"Pardon me, sirs," a man slightly older than he was, who Kazuhiro believed was named Taku-san, interrupted. "I have no background in such matters. Will the fire nobles truly sever ties with a valued merchant over something as simple as a bad shipment?"
Maeda-san snorted. "He'll be lucky if that's all they do. These nobles, these…people, live in a very different world than we do. They have put families to death for similar crimes. Which is why completing our objectives, though they may sound simple, will be no easy feat. The merchant, Oburo Taidachi, always personally inspects his merchandise before transport, and he always hires leaf shinobi as protection. Therefore, it is useless to make the switch before he is present, and at that point, there will be enemy shinobi present and on watch.
Ah. Kazuhiro could see how that would complicate things.
"Obviously, we cannot kill the Konoha shinobi," Nakamura-san said. "Doing so would launch an investigation, and it would be clear that we tampered with the goods. However, in a way, the shinobi presence works in our favor. If we are successful in our mission, foul play cannot be called after the fact. Konoha could never admit the fallibility of their shinobi to the fire nobles, not even to save a valued client's life."
"Do we know the identities of their shinobi guards?" Kazuhiro asked, because he thought that was a good question.
"Not yet," Takeuchi-san said. "However, he prefers a genin team, so he can get a jonin protector for a discounted price."
Well, fuck. They would have to fool a jonin? Even most jonin couldn't fool a jonin. Having three on their side was barely a reassurance.
"Oburo-san is set to arrive in three days," Nakamura-san revealed. "We'll make it in two, and spend the third planning. We'll go over additional details on the way."
- - - { ワナビー } - - -
I wasn't expecting to be challenged in the academy. Even in the physical department, I considered myself well above what I thought my peers were capable of.
I was wrong. The academic classes put me in a false state of security; survival was almost entirely new material, but it was all introductory and edited to be palatable for kids, and arithmetic was arithmetic. I could do it in my sleep.
Then conditioning happened. I was solidly in the lower middle, though given my growth disadvantage I suppose that was to be expected. Everyone with shinobi parentage had begun their education early, with varying levels of success. I couldn't outclass the kids with a jonin parent in any way, physically.
On our first real day in the academy, Yoshiro-sensei ran us ragged, through a series of drills to gauge our baseline. There weren't weights to lift—which was good, because I knew that weightlifting at a young age could stunt growth—but we were made to do push-ups until failure, sit-ups, and laps around the park outside of the academy. He gave punishments in the form of extra workouts that encroached well into the lunch period directly afterwards to the three lowest scorers in each exercise, and the unlucky recipients turned out to be, in order, Aimi, Satoshi and Yosuke. Yes, only the three of them; they fell last in every event.
It's a good thing they were so shit, because I was in legitimate danger of joining them after the push-up test. I could only perform twenty-three consecutively, which placed me twenty-second in the class.
I faired a lot better in the endurance test. We were tasked with keeping pace with a genin assistant, Kenshi-sensei, for as many laps as we could manage. Lagging behind too much would be considered a forfeit, and so would stopping, of course. I kept with him for a respectable twelve laps, each of which I estimated to be a bit longer than the standard track length. That meant I ran over three miles, basically a 5K, albeit at a very slow pace.
That might sound impressive, especially for a four-year-old, but don't forget, I'm not in Kansas anymore. We all have chakra, and even if most of us can't actively use it, we still reap some benefits simply from its presence.
Some kids lasted a lot longer, and among them was Iwao, who gave me a snide grin even as he collapsed a distance away from me in exhaustion. I ignored him, focusing on the Konjiki twins, who were the only ones still keeping easy pace. The final handful of students dropped off, but it took an entire four additional laps for them to falter, even when Kenshi-sensei picked up the pace, which he hadn't done up to that point. He probably just wanted to move on.
After an extensive cooldown, the majority of us were let go for lunch. I had a bento in my bag, but I ignored it, choosing instead to rush for the showers before anyone else did. I found them in the basement of the First's building, and winced when I discovered that, while I had in fact beaten the rest of my class here, there were twelve other classes, all with slightly different but mostly overlapping lunch periods.
With carefully masked trepidation, I pushed open a door on the far end of the locker room, which I could hear talking and running water behind. It was the showers, as I thought, and they were almost entirely full. Not making eye contact, I quickly walked to the far, moderately less populated side of the room, my little soap caddy in hand.
I pretended to ignore the lapses in conversation my arrival ushered and the whispers that rose to fill in the gaps, turning towards the showerhead on the wall as I mechanically went about my business.
"I thought seventh semester came in next?" One whispered. "We should have more time to ourselves."
"She's so small though, maybe she's one of the sensei's kids?"
"Oi, chibi!"
I sighed internally, and spared the speaker a glance. The girls I had walked in on were obviously many years my senior, probably close to graduation. This one in particular had dark hair, though I couldn't discern any more of its appearance as it was down and soaking wet. There was a smattering of oddly dark freckles around her nose and cheeks, and one of her incisors was a snaggle tooth that poked out in front of her lip even when they were closed.
She looked almost shark-like, and not just because of that. It was the glint in her eye, and the pull of her smile. I could tell that this wasn't some nobody—she gave antagonist energy.
"Can I help you?" I asked with forced boredom, even though my heart began to race. I would get my ass kicked if I got into a fight here. I was hopelessly outnumbered, and I couldn't flee—I was naked, they'd jump me before I could get my clothes on, and I'd frankly prefer that to being known as a streaker.
"What batch are you in?" She asked bluntly.
"Sixty-seven," I replied blandly.
"Is that the newest one?" A bystander asked a friend.
"How should I know? I don't keep count."
"It is," I provided graciously, and the shark girl groaned.
"Great. Does that mean we're going to have a bunch of brats coming in any second now?"
"I don't think so," I said mildly, realizing I probably should have lied as soon as the words left my mouth. "…I think most of them went to eat first," I finished belatedly, cursing myself. "I could be wrong, though."
The shark girl hummed. "That's good, because they'd have to wait. We're not done yet."
I grunted in acknowledgment, and turned back around in hopes that the conversation was over. But I couldn't be so lucky.
"So why aren't you eating with them?" Shark girl asked.
"They're noisy," I supplied. "And I don't particularly enjoy their company."
She seemed to find that response funny. "Is that right? Or is it because they bully you? You look pretty shrimpy."
"I'm small because I'm a year younger than most of them, and apparently humans grow a lot in that time," I retorted. "And I'd like to see them try to bully me."
"Oh?" The girl sneered, losing some of the humor in her voice. "What will you do? Set your daddy on them?"
I had no idea what the fuck she meant by that at first, but then I remembered that most early enrollees were spoiled brats who got their patrons by simply being born to them.
"My parents are dead," I said in a bored tone. "I was given the chance to enroll early because I wanted to, and sought out a jonin to be my patron personally."
The girl arched an eyebrow. "You're telling me you impressed a jonin?"
"I'm here, aren't I?" I drawled.
She snorted. "Prove it."
I bent down to agitate the bar of soap I brought and used the resulting suds to lather myself. "Why should I? I don't care what you think of me, and I don't particularly want your approval either."
"How about this," the girl countered. "If you prove it, we'll let you shower with us every day. If you refuse, or if you can't manage it, you'll just have to shower with your class."
"C'mon, Hanabi," a girl tried to step in. She was blond and had a round face. "Stop tormenting the kid."
Hanabi, like Hinata's little sister? What a cool name. And fitting; this one looked like a firecracker, that's for sure.
"Fine," I cut her off, to the rest of her class' surprise. "If this is your allotted time, you're within your rights to kick me out. But I'd rather you didn't, so I'll play your game. What are the terms?"
Hanabi considered the question, mocking grin still wide. "How about this? You try and get past me. If you can make it to the doorway, you win. Capiche?"
Not sure how Italian words got introduced into the Elemental Nations, but thinking about it gave me a headache, so I let it go.
"Sounds easy enough," I goaded. "But your friends have to stay out of it."
"Naturally."
"I'm not just going to take your word for it," I claimed. "We're ninja. Tell them they have to keep one hand on the wall at all times. If they let go, that will count as intervention, and I'll automatically win."
"That's fine with me," she said magnanimously. "As long as forcing them to let go of the wall is also prohibited."
"Naturally," I parroted. A technical victory wasn't what I had in mind.
"Are you seriously challenging a kid in the shower, Ichikawa-san?" A dark haired girl asked.
"I'm just being an attentive senpai, Suzuki," she retorted. "I can't let her get a big head just because she got in early. Look what happened to Aki. He's insufferable."
"Oi, don't talk about Aki-kun like that—"
"Are we going to do this, or not?" I asked.
"Oh, we're going to do this," Hanabi said with dark promise. "The challenge will continue until you either admit defeat, or it's time for us to leave. We have about eight minutes until the next class comes in."
"I won't even need one," I proclaimed.
"Whatever you say, chibi. Suzuki, count us off."
There was a put upon sigh. "You're so annoying. Fine. Three, two, one, go."
As soon as the rushed countdown concluded, Hanabi sank into a crouch, fingers bent into claws. Almost literally, because I noticed for the first time that the nails were sharpened.
Without ceremony, I flipped through hand signs, lunging to the side as Hanabi's eyes widened.
"Wait, what the fu—"
Too late. I had already replaced myself with a shower caddy nearest to the door and daintily pressed my hand to the frame.
The Kawarimi no Jutsu wasn't without its drawbacks or restrictions. It didn't miraculously switch me with an object of my choosing; I was propelled the distance between myself and it, just as it was propelled in my own direction. And yes, there was an art to orienting your body so the object you were switching with didn't collide with you at breakneck speeds. It also meant that, if there were obstacles in between its caster and their target, like the bodies of Hanabi's classmates for example, it would fail spectacularly. It would probably hurt both me and the person I ran into quite a bit, if they didn't block my chakra tether to begin with (you can't substitute with another living thing, I'm still not sure why). That was the reason I insisted the other girls stuck to the wall, leaving me a clear avenue of escape.
"I win," I proclaimed to the dumbfounded audience. "Now, let me finish my shower in peace."
I was very conscious of the fact that I was naked in front of eight strangers, and I was really trying my hardest not to look at their…anything. I would really like to face the wall again so I could stop feeling like Orochimaru. Y'all know what I mean by that.
"Did you just use a fucking jutsu?" Hanabi spluttered, impressively not having slipped despite her quick attempt to block me.
"Yep," I answered, avoiding looking at her as I retook my place and slid the caddy in the direction I pulled it from.
"How?"
"With chakra and hand seals, same as everyone else."
"You know what I mean! How did you learn a jutsu at four? I didn't learn the Kawarimi until a year ago!"
"Sounds like a skill issue," I said, turning to lather my head with a bar of shampoo. I missed my liquid, chemically stuff back on Earth.
It took a second for my words to sink in, probably because that wasn't a phrase used here often. But once they did, Hanabi's class erupted into laughter.
"Oh my god, Ichikawa-san," Suzuki gasped. "It's like she's a mini you!"
"I'm not a mini anyone," I said, at the exact same time as Hanabi loudly proclaimed, "as if."
"I'm one of a kind," we said in unison. Then we looked at one another. "Oh god/kami damnit."
"The academy barely survived with just Hanabi-chan, and now there's another one?" Another asked, gasping for breath.
"I'm ignoring all of you," I declared, speeding through the rest of my routine. As soon as my skin was properly rinsed, I switched the nozzle off and turned towards the exit. But before I got too far, a wet arm wrapped itself around my neck, and I barely resisted the urge to squeal.
"I like you, chibi," Hanabi said, apparently over her mock outrage at the claim to our likeness. "I'm Ichikawa Hanabi, but you can call me senpai from now on."
"I will not, Ichikawa-san."
"Harsh," she said, though the dangerous smile didn't leave her face. "You'll come around eventually."
She lowered her voice to whisper in my ear. "Soon, if you haven't already, you'll discover that there are two types of people in the academy. The ones who are here to learn to be good little shinobi, and those who are learning to be great. Those who aren't here to get noticed, but to make themselves noticed. You know what I mean?"
Poor grammar aside, I knew exactly what she meant.
"There are those who are content to make a living, survive, and follow orders, and there are those who aspire to become infamous, live how they want, and give the orders," I said.
"I couldn't have said it better myself. I knew you'd get it—I could see it in your eyes. That second future you described? I will make that my own or die trying. What about you?"
I allowed myself a cocky smirk. "Do you even have to ask?"
She laughed and slugged me on the shoulder. It kinda hurt.
"Get some food in ya. Sparring's always in the second half of the day, so I know you haven't had it yet. If you make a fool out of yourself, I'll hear about it. These bitches will spread around that I've claimed you as my kouhai, whether we want them to or not. Make me look bad by association, and you'll regret it."