"Ugh! I don't get it… Why are they still stalling the event?" Meiko groaned and leaned back against a locker behind her. She was beginning to feel hot inside her armor, though she would have been glad to stick it in her father's face given how due to the white weave underneath her body she wasn't really uncomfortable wearing it. The protective pieces didn't bruise or cut her body at all and it didn't feel all too different from wearing a thick jacket.
"I'll ask around," Kiyomi mumbled in reply and disappeared from the locker room. Meiko followed her teammate with her eyes, wondering just whom she could have asked for help and why someone important enough to know the real reason would just tell her but she didn't have the opportunity to ask it. Moments later, Kiyomi returned.
"Well…?" Meiko wondered and looked up at her teammate.
"Don't say it out loud or make a face that would suggest that I've told you anything," Kiyomi voice rung in Meiko's mind with clarity she hadn't previously experienced. To this version of Kiyomi, talking to someone mentally appeared to be as flawless as using her voice to talk to them. There didn't appear to be any secrets that were safe from this young lady as whenever she'd have wanted to know something, the impression was that she could have just "asked".
Of course, by now Meiko had been playing this game long enough to realize this might have just been appearances she kept up on purpose. Ninja did that sometimes, showed un unnecessary amount of power and skill to deceive everyone around about their exact potential. Such a thing harkened back to the earliest days of people walking on wooden paddles and fooling people they could walk on water.
"Blusckel Steinck from Iwagakure is missing. He just hasn't shown up and nobody anyone's inquired so far has seen him for some time, likely he's disappeared shortly after the battle royal stage of the exams," Kiyomi said on the mental link.
"Blusckel… That's the guy that was supposed to be in the first match, right?" Meiko looked up into the ceiling as if she was just acting bored. She wasn't selling this at one-hundred percent but nobody was too into the idea that they were being shifty to begin with so nobody paid it much mind that Kiyomi just walked in and Meiko didn't care to ask her how'd it go.
"Yeah. He's from Iwagakure so… People think that somebody from Kumogakure might have had something to do with it. I'm almost certainly sure of it. Talk of the high-society parts of the town is that he wasn't too fond of the hostile Kumogakure takeover and might have seen the big stage as a platform to let it be known. Whether it's right or just some conspiracy theory, there's some unrest in the Ninja Council too. Before the big cheese can decide if Kumogakure representatives are a bunch of rotten molds or not, the exam's on hold," Kiyomi relayed.
"Wow, you got this much information? I guess you really have learned to just read people's minds…" Meiko very nearly restrained herself from whistling out loud.
"Well… Not quite. Some green-vests have asked me to do our village a favor, which was why they briefed me in. You wanna come?" Kiyomi wondered.
"What do you mean exactly?" Meiko looked at her friend who pushed her back off the locker room and left the room. Her mental signals slowly weakened in volume though it was the intended effect. If Meiko agreed to help Kiyomi out with her little errand, it would have been for the better if they weren't seen leaving together and, if she refused, it would have been for the best for Kiyomi to not waste any time.
"I'm going to the infirmary to ask what that Kumogakure genin knows. I could use your backup since I might need to focus on the deed. Join me if you're interested," Kiyomi's thoughts lingered in the air like a fading smell but then it dispersed just in time for Meiko to catch and process them.
"Who's this?" the green-vest pointed at Meiko with a discontent face. "We thought we've made it abundantly clear that this is a sensitive matter!"
"Oh, it is. A pair of Iwagakure ninja sneaking in to kill a weakened Kumogakure ninja within Konoha's borders. Such a problem, Iwagakure's gone, who's to blame? Kumogakure in charge, right? So many villages have been looking at Konohagakure to do something now that Kumogakure's military's been weakened, to cement themselves on top and who's to benefit from such conflict more than scorned Iwagakure loyalists?" Kiyomi shrugged with a sly smirk.
Meiko's eyes shifted from her bold companion in a slick, black dress and the two very confused and emasculated ninja before them. Just what was Kiyomi's game this whole time? Did she know that these two were Iwagakure ninja trying to kill this rapping kid? How? Did she genuinely read their minds when they contacted her or did some of her clansmen tell her that? Did she find out now or was she aware this whole time that this might take place?
"Wh-What are you talking about, young lady? This is preposterous!" the second green-vest tried to defuse the situation but the sweat breaking down from underneath his bandana and down his forehead might as well have exposed his Iwagakure headband hidden underneath for how much of a telegraphing signal it was.
"Preposterous isn't the right word, inconvenient is it. After all, taking out a single Yamanaka heiress who appears so underprepared for the gruesome festivity of combat in the arena is so simple but tackling her companion who's looming whole head over her and looks like she's capable of whooping some serious ass is a whole thing entirely, right? Don't worry, Meiko won't be the one to deal with you two," Kiyomi waved with her hand in dismissal. Meiko wasn't sure from where or how but the pair of green-vests slumped on the ground unconscious, their eyes whited out and jaws loose, slobber dripping down their chins just a few whips short of foaming.
It was as if someone had turned them off.
It was only when the infirmary window popped open and a masked ninja in civilian clothes and a red scarf stepped inside, pressed his palm to his chest and bowed to Kiyomi as if she was his queen or something that Meiko realized that her friend had Yamanaka plants observing the situation from afar and that neither of them were in any sort of danger.
"Ma'am!" the kneeling ninja muttered, awaiting orders.
"Give these two to the village authorities. I'm sure Lord Seventh has his ANBU watching us so it would be hilarious if you dropped them by their posts and waved at them too. I want to know that he's wrong to underestimate us and the intelligence we can provide, also, that he was wrong to support the Uchiha during the little cold civil war we had going on. I want him to regret that but let's also be useful…" Kiyomi kept staring at the ceiling, pondering and pouting like an immature brat but Meiko had to admit that despite her calls being entirely selfish, it didn't appear like she was not making sense or acting like a child.
She was being an actual politician right now.
"Lords Sixth and Seventh must have forgotten how useful we can be due to my uncle being so good at sitting on the sidelines and playing shadow games. Let's tease him a little bit and turn on the gas, as long as it's warm and not hot…" Kiyomi made a teasing face while her masked subordinate picked up the unconscious Iwagakure loyalists and bowed again as if their limp bodies weighed nothing.
"Ma'am!" he exclaimed again before flickering away through the open window. His step was heavier in the first few stages of Body Flicker but just enough for the step to shake the window and have it close shut behind him. It felt as if Meiko's friend had a personal strike force of her own, one that rivaled Konoha's ANBU in skill and experience.
"So you're the Queen Bee of Yamanaka now?" Meiko pressed her hands against her hips and leaned over her friend, looking a tad irritated that she's been kept out of the loop but more in the goofy, friendly manner in which a pal was mad for a farting pillow being slipped under their seat than the appropriate kind of mad her friend deserved. "What happened to your uncle, did you off him or something?"
"Kill him? No, eww!" Kiyomi shook her head while acting playful with her body language. "I haven't replaced him officially though it'll happen after the Chuunin Exams. The Yamanaka and the Inuzuka are going to be the tightest buddies. Uncle even showed me his real form for the first time before relinquishing some of the clan's control, I've been on sort of a test drive lately."
"Inuzuka? So you're getting married?" Meiko slipped her helmet off and scratched her messy, red hair.
"Well… I'll admit, me handling the clan while my husband handles me wasn't my ideal pick for management conditions but with an alliance of the military strength of Inuzuka and the intelligence capabilities of the Yamanaka, no Hokage will ever undermine my clan for the Uchiha, no matter how fancy their eyes are. They're just one clan," Kiyomi shrugged before putting her index finger by her chin and turning her eyes up, "Koaki is pretty cute and I think I can work with him so it won't hurt at all…"
"Wow, you got over that Yakiniku Q episode really fast!" Meiko crossed her arms over her chest. She's been meaning to look into that and this sudden change of her friend which could not have been healthy for her psyche but Kiyomi didn't even look back at Meiko after the blacksmith brought it up. "So your goons could have taken care of these two assassins here at any point, right? Why even come here and show your face?"
"How else could I poke around Ripper Inaba's mind?" Kiyomi replied, finally turning back at the redhead with a confident smirk. It was because of Meiko's stumped expression that the blonde groaned in aggravation, "Oh come on! Aren't you at least a little bit curious? It's basically free intelligence up there."
"The guy's been beaten down. Judging from how he sounded, he won't be taking this defeat well and it didn't seem like he had a happy life to return to either. It's not like a rag such as him would know much of Kumogakure's secrets, if he did – he'd have someone watching over him," Meiko didn't like that idea one bit. It didn't seem like Kiyomi to see people as just scoops of intelligence, something akin to living books to be read from. Due to something in the teachings Meiko had picked up along the way it just didn't stick right with her.
"He would have if I didn't arrange for him to be alone," Kiyomi replied without actually confronting Meiko's objections. She extended her hand over the beanie-less head of the resting young man. Ripper Inaba grunted and wriggled in his bedding, sweat started running down his face as he began wrestling against the phantom assailant though not at all in a meaningful way. He was just a book in Kiyomi's hands now.
"Ready, set, go!" a middle-aged woman in a black dress with the white Kumogakure vest over it waved her hand. A handful of children dashed across a hundred-meter track. Some made it in the first half, others were the losers but even the losers couldn't contain their laughter. It wasn't because they were glad to be learning and training their body, it was to poke fun at their fallen friend who had tripped over his awkward legs and planted down on the ground.
The teacher did not approach the kid or help him up, she stared at him as if he was afflicted with something loathsome before turning at the children and flipping the switch from disgruntled to excited as she wrapped her arms around the group and gently led them toward the Academy. Seeing the fallen boy whimper and whine on the ground she turned around and thrust a sharp glare at him.
"Well? You're not excused from the Academy, you know!" she hissed. The boy of spiky, bright hair sniffled and wiped the snot off his face, rising on his legs and limping at an accelerated pace toward the teacher and his group.
"What a weirdo…" someone in the group poked fun at him.
"Why does he look like that? Is he from the Snow Country?" a girl amongst the group wondered.
"Makes sense that he ate shit, that's why there're mountains separating the Snow Country and Lightning Country, after all. So that all that filth doesn't bleed into our home…" an older boy in the group, likely someone who was repeating the Academy course postured to the group of students a couple of years younger than him. All of them nodded in some sort of sick admiration.
"Hey, are you one of those albinos or something?" a girl with curly hairs tied into two pigtails ran up to the limping kid with two of her own friends that looked hesitant to be seen close to the paleskin.
"Albinos?" the fallen kid wondered.
"Yeah, my brother's like that. He's normal like everybody else, just his skin is all pale and his hair's white, it's genetic, or something…" the pigtails girl declared.
"I'm normal too!" the boy pointed at himself with his thumb, striking an inspiring pose since his busted leg didn't hurt that bad when he was standing still. "There are loads of people over the mountains to the south that have pale skin!"
"I mean… Yeah but not like us," the pigtails girl turned on one foot and tapped around playfully. "We could beat them all if we wanted to and they're always looking at us for help and to tell them how to fix their villages… Dad gets really mad talking about it but I think it's cute. It's kind of like we're their mother!"
"I'm not an albino, my name's Inaba, and I don't need anyone's help with anything!" Inaba yelled out.
"You clearly need to be shown how to run right," a girl beside the pigtails girl pointed a finger at him and chuckled, making the whole group laugh.
"You've torn your trousers?" mother crossed her arms over her chest, worried.
"Who cares, they were made from sacks anyway…" Inaba imagined himself drilling a hole in the floor. He was embarrassed to go back home with torn trousers after just the first day of the Ninja Academy but he was getting kind of hungry and they had saved enough ingredients to salt the soup that day.
"And you've bled all over them…" mother pulled her beanie over her head. She did so when she got nervous. She used to be a ninja at some point so Inaba was glad she pulled her hat instead of hitting him. He couldn't recall her ever hitting him but he couldn't have had that thought stuck in his head for no reason at all, right? She must have hit someone at some point…
"Sorry…" Inaba mumbled and looked away. "I guess that means you'll need to make new ones, right? I can help…"
"Ugh… It's not just that… Those trousers were made from our last sack of herbs. We'll need to first get a sack of herbs to make you new trousers from in the first place," mother sighed.
"Hey, Pale Inaba, we're playing ninja, do you want to play!?" a teen-aged boy waved at Inaba while he was passing by.
"Me? You want to play with me?" Inaba wondered, pointing at himself in disbelief. He was lucky not to have to fend them off from harassing him on even the good days and here they wanted to play with him. Could they have been a bit more used to his weird skin after studying in the same class as him in the Academy?
"Sure, we need someone to play the Konoha spy. You're perfect for that, wasn't your father from the Snow Country or something? You paleskins do look the same so you'll be the perfect fit. It's an easy role to fill, just act yourself and you'll be fine," the boy teased him.
"My mom's lived in this village longer than you!" Inaba clenched his fist.
"You paleskin, you would dare hit him?" one of the boy's friends gasped.
"Don't worry, what good is he going to do? I've seen him run and I've seen him try to throw a punch. I thought you paleskins were meant to be useful for cheap labor, or something, how come you're so shit at taijutsu?" the leader of the group kept teasing Inaba.
"That's just Snow Country! You don't know anything!" Inaba yelled clenched his fists and shook his head. He felt on the fringe of crying, that would have been the worst-case scenario but he knew that the boy was right – there were more of them and they were all better fighters than Inaba. The only subjects Inaba excelled in were chakra control and theoretical genjutsu classes.
"There's more of the Snow Country than there is of Konohagakure, I'd say Snow Country defines paleskins better…" one of the kids teased him again. Inaba wanted to object to that statement but he wasn't quite sure, his geography wasn't that good. He got confused all the time. He turned around and just bolted back home. He could hear his mother jump up from the sudden noise of him bursting in and tackling the door to his room.
Maybe everyone was right, maybe he was different from everyone else? He couldn't fight as good, he wasn't as fast or as strong, he constantly messed things up and even the teachers didn't get mad at him as much as the other students for flunking his tests. None of them say any of that offensive stuff about foreigners being only good for physical labor but they may as well say it with the way they're all looking at him.
"Are you okay?" mother's voice reached Inaba from behind but he didn't as much as turn around to look at her.
"Yeah, I'm just reading my mag, why would I not be rad?" Inaba shrugged, he still didn't look at her though.
"It's just… It's a pretty day and you're spending your time indoors, windows, and covers shut whole day…" mother sat closer to him. If he didn't look at her, maybe he wouldn't about how much weight she's lost, maybe he'd not notice that she's been looking exhausted and pale, paler, lately. Coltan mines were no place for women, let alone single mothers who already had plenty on their plates but it was the only source of income that mattered in their family.
"This reading is like training, really / I'm cool so how 'bout you act chilly?" Inaba mumbled.
"Look, there's this whole business going on with the youth of this village, calling themselves weird names, this rhyming thing might be in it too, honestly, I wouldn't know but… You don't have to shut yourself in. You don't have to lie to me. It's okay if you just wanna be alone but… You won't get rejected all the time, one of these days your team's gonna stick together," mother tried cheering him up but it was useless.
Inaba's first team got disbanded because he flunked it. He could have read all about genjutsu theory but, at the end of the day, it didn't matter. His second team got crossed out of the active list because his teammate didn't want to work with him and flat out punched him out. After that whole thing, the lacking odds of two members facing a test meant for three were just not in their favor. By now he had acquired a bit of a reputation as an undesirable. Almost like he's cursed or something…
"You know… It's not always going to be like this. Things have changed drastically in just the last couple of years, they'll change a whole lot more too. I don't understand this whole A, B, Q movement, or whatever but… People like us get noticed a bit more. People from abroad come to work and they don't have to feel like they're afflicted or something. My supervisor thinks this youth culture is a bunch of boloney, reducing a proud nation to something ragged and challenging to society's norms but, you know what? I think… I think it's great because paleskins and locals are both capable of being ragged and challenging at the same time. I think…" mother sniffed, it didn't matter, as long as Inaba didn't look at her, her tears may not have existed. Maybe it was all in his head…
He couldn't read his mag, too much water in his eyes, if he blinked, it would all go coming down and then he'd get busted. He'd be some damned crybaby in front of his single mother who was the only person pushing them along this whole time.
"I think that a movement that challenges this society is just what we needed because we've been thirsty for this challenge our entire lives!" mother was crying, there was no doubt about it. Inaba stood up and wrapped his hands around her. He wasn't a big guy, whoever picked a fight with him picked a fight they'd win but mother fit in his embrace so well, it's almost as if she was meant to be comforted by him. The best part was – with her collapsing like that, she didn't see him cry…
"You better believe things'll change, sister / All this damned posh attitude is a damned blister / Genjutsu's a real tongue-twister / But I'm gonna use it to kick some keister / This country won't even know I dissed her / Illusions can be used to create a world / I'm gonna do that and mine will smell like pearls!" Inaba whimpered out, halting for a good handful of seconds to come up with the following rhyme. His eyes had been closed, he could no longer stop his tears unless he kept them shut in.
A tearing sound made Inaba look up, all tears fired loose but he was worried that his mother was hurt. There were a couple of rude tears in her old and timeworn beanie. Much to his surprise, she slipped it off of her head and slipped it onto his. Her finger rubbed against his eye with rudeness that only a woman working the coltan mines and made insensitive to how human flesh compared to the handle of a pickaxe mining minerals felt.
"Maybe this hat will distract everybody from your sack-pants long enough to take you seriously…" she joked. It was a measly but brave ray of sunshine in a room of complete gloom, a candle lit up nine miles of problems deep, hoping someone on the surface could have picked it up by some miracle.
Kiyomi stepped away from the sweating young man who was putting up quite pathetic opposition to her mental inquisition. She sighed and wrapped her arms around her chest as if trying to shelter from a chill while she approached the door.
"Well…?" Meiko wondered. While she wanted nothing to do with this horrendous idea of probing this young man's mind, at the very least she'd have liked something good to come of it so that her friend didn't invade someone's privacy for no reason at all. She wasn't sure if that made her a better or a worse person, honestly.
"Nothing useful…" Kiyomi replied. "As you've said, nobody trusted this buffoon with anything important that hasn't already been destroyed."
Heavy mood lingered between the two and they didn't talk all the way back to the locker room. There was a small spark of activity in there, the stoppage must have been lifted and matches were allowed to continue. Meiko wondered if Kiyomi knew the reason for that if she knew if the Ninja Council found Kumogakure responsible for anything or not but she decided to focus on the matches ahead as well as her own matches as spending her time looking for clues she had no hope of putting together might have very well have rendered the past couple of months wasted in a blink of an eye.
