If you want to help me financially, you can do it on
https://ko-fi.com/neverluckysmile
The Academy classroom had long been emptied. The lone girl inside had long ago eaten her bento and it was almost time for dinner. It was dark outside, and those goddamn crickets just wouldn't shut up. For a long, terrible moment, Aiko gave serious thought to senbon practice. But that would be ridiculous. She couldn't possibly kill all the noisy bugs in the world, could she?
'I could try,' she thought darkly.
Luckily, that was when the classroom door slid open and a man who could only be Kakashi stepped in, nonchalant as you please. She lifted her head off the desk and swiveled to look at him. Aiko's eyes narrowed. He'd made her wait far longer than the anime had indicated. Was it because he was testing her especially harshly, a simple coincidence, or just because he was less ready to deal with his dead sensei's child?
"My first impression… you're a shrimp."
"And mine is that you're an inconsiderate asshat!" she snapped. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth and flushed. 'There goes the good impression…'
He seemed stunned by being called 'the hat of the ass' (so it didn't translate well, whatever), but recovered in time to tell her to "Meet me up on the roof."
And then he was gone in that damned smoke. She coughed, waving it out of her face. Instead of heading down the hall to the staircase, she pushed the window open and cautiously swung out onto the ledge, slowly and carefully walking up the side of the building.
She'd had more than enough time to try tree-walking before, after all. It wasn't exactly kept secret, and she knew of other Academy students who had been able to perform the chakra exercise, like Hinata. She should be able to do this for three stories if she concentrated. Even at her cautious pace, she'd save about five minutes off the walk. 'He's probably counting on some time to read before I get there,' she thought with a little too much glee at the thought of thwarting him. Her foot slipped once on the crumbly brick surface, but she quickly regained her footing. Aiko curled her fingers around the metal bar at the top of the railing on the roof and kicked outward to flip over it entirely and land semi-gracefully.
'Best part of being born in this awful place. I would be a great gymnast, if the ninja thing doesn't work out.'
Her sensei looked up from his book, completely bored. "Maaa, took you long enough. Alright. Tell me about you." He monotoned, flipped a page, giving the impression that the question was standard and that he didn't care in the slightest.
Aiko felt an eyebrow twitch. She'd known what to expect, but he was just so rude. "Uzumaki Aiko, as you damn well know. I'm ten and I like my brother. I'd ask about you, but I bet you wouldn't answer."
He stood, ignoring her. "Well, now that we know each other, I should tell you about the genin test. It's pretty funny, actually." He chuckled darkly.
From an adult perspective, he was clearly being theatrical for some nefarious reason.
"Let me guess, one out of three or some other ridiculously high number fails, then I panic and you disappear before I can ask questions. Spooky spooky." She wiggled her fingers at him, distinctly unimpressed.
'What kind of adult gets that much amusement out of psyching out a kid? Does he really not want to have anything to do with genin? Is he trying to get rid of me?'
Kakashi frowned at her, wrinkling his mask. "I don't like you. Meet me at training ground seven at five am." Then she was alone on the roof.
"Well, that was a fantastic waste of my time." She paused for a long moment. "And where is training ground seven?"
That night, she and Naruto ate raw cookie dough instead of dinner and watched tv. It wasn't very good- she recognized it as some sort of monster movie, but it definitely wasn't one she was familiar with from her old world. Sometimes she thought this place was some weird splinter reality from Japan- the language was similar and shared vocabulary, and she recognized several of the legends. The technology was completely inexplicable, though. It wasn't very advanced from her perspective, but it was still strange it had developed along some similar lines.
~~~
Kakashi relaxed in his perch in a tree above the clearing in training ground seven. As five am came and went without a student in sight, he started to wish he'd spent more time at the memorial stone. His one normal eye was fixated on his book even now, when there was no one to act for. His other senses were scanning the area rigidly, however.
He'd wondered what Minato's kids were like. It had been years since he had been enough of an ANBU rookie to work protection detail in-village. Sure, he'd seen glances of them from a distance, but that didn't tell him much. Well. Okay, it did—he saw that the boy was loud and mischievous in a way that pained him –likeObitoObitoObito- though his apparent stupidity was baffling, where had that come from? The girl was much quieter. Someone seemed to be taking care of them, as they appeared well-fed and dressed. They were each painful to look at in their own way- the boy was like a tiny Minato clone with Kushina's exuberant personality. The girl looked like a perfect blend of her parents' coloring with what he fancied was Minato's serious mien.
The child he was thinking about meandered into his space of awareness and he lowered Icha Icha Sexy to eye her. She was dressed much the same as yesterday. It was a strange combination of minimalism and that eye-gouging yellow (andthathaircut, it was like Minato's coincidenceornot?). Today he spotted a single weapons pouch secured to her leg, which was an improvement. He'd wondered if she fancied herself good enough at taijutsu to not need any weaponry.
His leg twitched. His body was clearly eager to get back to the stone (taking an apprentice was a painful parallel; what would Sensei think would he laugh Kakashi-kun you have no patience), but he'd wanted to see her when she thought she was unobserved to get a read on her. He wasn't sure what it meant that she wandered in six minutes late, seemingly unconcerned about disobeying her first order from a superior officer. The child didn't even look around for him.
Kakashi felt a little affronted- she shouldn't be jaded enough to assume there was no way he'd show up on time yet- and pouted from his perch while she unloaded what looked like a bento (yum, perhaps he'd borrow that) and slipped off her sandals before engaging in what looked like the strangest warm up he had ever seen. He almost considered uncovering his other eye to try to find some sort of meaning in the way she folded over with her hands on her feet, then slid them to the ground and stepped back to some sort of plank. 'Maybe a stretch?' The 24 year-old shifted uncomfortably. 'No point in spending much time here,' he decided, leaping away silently. 'I can't fail her. Hokage-sama made that clear'.
The Hokage had actually forcibly retired him from ANBU specifically for this assignment, actually. He wasn't sure if it was sentimentality or vicious practicality. He was, after all, the last living person to be familiar with both of her parents' techniques. A lot of Kushina's were unique and couldn't be performed by someone outside the bloodline. Reviving those techniques would do a lot for village morale and how they looked to enemies. Having not one but two children from the union of two of the greatest heroes of the last war—well, those kids were resources the Sandaime would have had to be crazy to waste. That wasn't her fault, of course. He was still going to punish her by making her wait.
He wasn't ready to confront living reminders of how he'd failed everyone he'd ever loved.
~~~
When the itch on the back of her neck left, Aiko breathed a sigh of relief. It was probably paranoia, but she'd felt like she was being watched. 'Don't be stupid,' she scolded herself. 'You're just excited about beginning real training.'
When her warm-up was done, she tried to kill time by running through handseals to improve her dexterity and accuracy. When her fingers began to feel sore, she performed from stretches on the ground. Then she paced for a while, wishing she had brought a book. She had a short spar with a tree, pretending it was Neji. Then she climbed the Neji-tree only using chakra in her hands and hung upside down on a branch from her knees. Her sensei didn't announce his presence so much as suddenly appear directly in front of her face.
Aiko shrieked in surprise, reflexively batting at him and swinging away to crouch on the tree trunk. She didn't hit him, of course, but he seemed mildly amused by the attempt. "Maah, what kind of greeting is that?" He pretended to look sorrowful.
"The kind you merit," she said dryly, "You creeper. Seriously, why would you pop up in my face like that?"
"I had no idea you were here," he lied easily, "I was too distracted by heavy thoughts. You see, I found a poor stray mama cat who had lost her kittens and I helped her track them all down, but now I'm thinking that perhaps I should have escorted them all the way back to their home."
There was a long moment of silence.
'I can't believe he really says things like that' was warring with 'if the cat is a stray, what home is she going to?'
She swallowed all comments. "I see." Aiko wished she knew what to expect. Obviously, she couldn't be tested on teamwork like the original team seven would be, since she had no team per say. What else did Kakashi care about in students? Dedication and insight, perhaps.
"Today… We will be sparring until I can determine the extent of your capabilities." Kakashi eyed the sudden slump of his student's shoulders and wondered if that meant she disliked sparring or that he'd disappointed her expectations. No matter. "Come at me with intent to kill." He chuckled lowly just for effect. "Trust me, you'll need to be trying your best." He raised his visible eyebrow when she remained completely still, gazing at him impassively. "Well?"
Then she attacked. After a few moments to get his bearings and merely blocking her blows (she hit like a girl her age, but a relatively strong one) he adjusted the level he was fighting at to mid-chuunin levels so that he could easily overpower her without hurting her too badly.
He thought he had overestimated her for a second when a punch sent her reeling, but her quick recovery turned her retreat into a side-step attempt to flank him. He didn't let it work, but he noted that she seemed to have a good understanding of the fact that she had no chance of defeating him head-on. That showed some tactical thinking. She didn't look irritated that her feint failed- as if she'd never expected it to. Her taijutsu was acceptable genin levels. 'I can work with that, at least.'
He could see the moment she decided to switch tactics- largely because her eyes narrowed and her chakra rose up.
She created three bunshin copies of herself and then did a kawarimi with one of them in the smoke –not too bad—and then all girls simultaneously used kawarimi not once but twice (this reminded him of that game with rice under a cup, he'd always been good at the game. The trick was seeing when the rice was taken out.)
Just as he'd suspected, she had made a fourth clone at some point and they all rushed him. The girl herself was clinging to a tree and drawing out a shuriken in each hand. The instant he'd destroyed the second clone was when she released the projectiles in a line aimed at his face. He dodged with a faint smile.
'So that's genin-level taijutsu, decent aerial weaponry skills, some tactical thinking… What about genjutsu?'
In an instant he disappeared from her field of vision. He could sense her vitals spike in alarm and restrained a chuckle. Oh, cute. He whipped through the symbols for a standard Hell-Viewing technique and used the movement of leaves in the wind to catch her in it. She wavered on her perch on the tree—and for one second he moved forward to catch her, he should probably have waited for her to be on the ground—but she outright yelled "KAI" and shook her head, looking disgruntled. She regained her footing but he was already below her. She chose to kick off and fall directly at him, kunai in hand.
He smirked. Instead of side-stepping and letting her hit the ground, he looked up calmly and snatched her right out of the air, grabbing her under her arms then switching his grip almost immediately to her upper arms, which he twisted behind her and used to easily force her to the ground. Her chest hit the dirt with an 'Oof!' and he kept her there with a foot planted on her back. She huffed irritably and turned her face to glare at him with one eye. He smiled mildly down at her.
There was a sudden burst of weak killing intent and she began to struggle. Kakashi frowned. "Hey now, don't do that," he chided. "You could break something when I'm holding you like this. Admit when you've lost."
"Yes, sensei," she scowled. "I give up."
"That's what I was looking for." He released her and stepped back, calmly watching her regain her footing and snap to attention. "Well," he began contemplatively, tapping his chin, "It's a shame… but I'll guess you'll have to do." He watched her reaction- what kind of kid had she grown up to be? She rolled her eyes, but didn't look all that affronted. That was acceptable. He didn't want to be stuck with a brat who got their hackles up at everything.
He stepped away, then looked over his shoulder as if his next statement was an afterthought. "I suppose I should tell you to meet me at Hokage Tower at eight am tomorrow to get your first mission." He lazily raised one hand, then flickered away, eager to be away from the gir—his student. Ugh, what a terrible thought.
~~~
Aiko considered dragging herself home, feeling soreness in pretty much every muscle she had. Taijutsu with a Jounin was not fun, not fun at all. She felt tired and not exactly eager… Meeting with Kakashi had made her realize just how emotionally distant and eager to flee he was. Since she didn't have a team, she was going to be spending a lot of time alone. She'd never been the type of person who needed a ton of socialization, but she would be getting pretty lonely if she spent her days alone and only nights with Naruto.
It was barely noon and she'd been abandoned for the day. Was she meant to keep up with her same workout routine? She had hoped to get some instruction from him. He hadn't told her anything about whatever conclusions he'd come to about her level- no praise or critiques.
Since she was already there- and was finally considered mature enough to use a real training ground, that was an improvement, right? – Aiko pushed herself through the motions of a workout.
She concentrated on sprints and building leg muscle through lunges, then transitioned to working on her flexibility until the strain in her joints bordered on painful.
Her next self-designed training exercise was meant to combine agility and chakra control: She flipped counter to gravity in the tree tops in increasingly acrobatic stunts, keeping her breathing even and flinging kunai at falling leaves to pin them to tree trunks. She counted the kunai that hit trees without snagging their leaves and was relatively satisfied, but knew that she needed to continue working on accuracy with moving targets. Aiko had no plans to specialize with aerial weaponry, but she was sure that using the skill in real combat was nothing like flinging kunai at a stationary pole while standing still at a certain distance.
She ate her prepared bento once she was done under the shade of the trees, laying on her back and cloud watching. That done, Aiko meandered home, trying not to look too wistfully at the Academy age children playing in the streets. She didn't see Naruto but she did see the unmistakable signs of his passing- a series of plastic tatters from broken balloons and bright, inky stains on light colored buildings and signs.
"Hey, Uzumaki!"
She stopped, mildly surprised. "Ino-san?"
Judging by the uncharacteristic dirt on Ino's white shorts and her messy ponytail, she'd been doing something like gardening. The shorter girl put her hands on her hips, tilted them sassily, and scowled at her. "I heard you graduated, but I just couldn't believe it. You're our age! How'd you do that?"
"Well, I was enrolled four years," she pointed out.
Ino's eyes widened. "No way!" she exclaimed in disgust. "You're ten like me."
She shrugged. "We started early." Aiko shot her former classmate a weak smile. "Sorry?"
Ino waved the apology away. "Don't be ridiculous, you don't have anything to apologize for. I guess that means that you aren't necessarily good. It's more that-" She seemed to realize how rude it would be to complete the thought that 'Naruto is bad at school 'and cut herself off guiltily. "Hey, walk with me. I'm supposed to pick up from colored paper for the flower shop."
"Sounds fine," Aiko agreed easily. She glanced down at herself and grimaced. "I'm pretty gross right now from training, though."
"Do you have a super-cool sensei? What's your team like?" The blonde girl shot out, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
"Actually, I don't have a team," she sighed. "It's a bit of a disappointment actually. My sensei… Hmm. Well, he's very skilled, but also very distant from what I can tell. I'm sure I will learn a lot from him, but I wish I had a team."
"I bet I know my team," Ino groused. "My dad told me once that his genin team intentionally had their kids within a few months so that they could have a second generation of their team. Creepy, right? And the boys are so weird!" She threw her hands up in disgust. "All they ever want to do is lay around and eat." She gave Aiko a dirty look. "And you- you were supposed to be my competition for top kunoichi of the year. Now you've gone and shown me up."
Aiko shrugged helplessly. Before she could say a thing, the blonde had continued. "I'm happy for you, of course, but you were really the only other girl who took this seriously. I thought Sakura had potential…"
When Ino trailed off miserably, Aiko shot her an inquisitive look. Last she'd seen, the two girls were practically attached at the hip. "Is something wrong?"
Ino flushed. "Well, yeah! I helped Sa-Forehead girl out for years, and all of a sudden she tells me she doesn't want to be my friend anymore because we like the same guy." Despite her tough act, her dejection was pretty obvious.
Aiko averted her eyes and tried to look like she was surprised. "I'm sorry to hear that. That's dumb. It was really short-sighted to put a boy before both her career and her best friend."
"That's what I thought," Ino grumbled, before she perked up. "I guess that means I'm in the market for a friend, huh? And you need one too, or you're going to go nuts with just your old person sensei for company." She flashed a mischievous grin. "Hey, wanna help me train? I bet you're going to get really strong, working one-on-one all the time. It'd only be fair to help out your Academy rival."
'Well, that was subtle.' "Sure," she laughed. "Once I know my regular schedule, we can plan out a training schedule. How's that sound?"
"I'll hold you to that," Ino nodded seriously. They stopped outside the general store.
"I'm going to leave you here." Aiko pulled at her shirt and grimaced. "I need to get home and clean up, desperately."
With a wrinkled nose, Ino agreed. "I wasn't going to say anything, but yes. You do. Later!"
Aiko felt an eye twitch coming on. 'Does this girl need someone to be frenemies with, or is she really just that rude?'
~~~
Monday, January 5.
Her first mission was lame. D-rank missions were utterly vile, she decided, and she had definitely gotten cheated by being a one person team. Kakashi certainly wasn't helping. Actually… She looked around. He wasn't even in sight. Aiko huffed, blowing a longer piece of hair out of her face because her hands were filthy from carrying chemicals around.
'Boy am I glad I had that Academy lecture on safely handling dangerous materials,' she snarked internally. This mission was just manual labor- it would have been given to civilian teams if the junk she was carrying out of a home that was about to be demolished wasn't unsafe. It needed to be disposed of in several different places, depending on substance. She'd found meticulously labeled reagents ranging from super-expired cleaners, herbal materials, bottles of human blood (disgusting!) and homemade poisons. Whoever owned the home had been some sort of specialist with a higher budget than she'd be able to even hope for for years.
With obvious exceptions that she knew better than to touch, some of the more benign items were interesting to the really terrible, naughty, Naruto-ish part of her mind. Since no one was around to care, Aiko snagged a few interesting materials that she had read about but not had access to before, as well as some empty glass vials. It couldn't hurt to practice, right? She could rush to the library to copy down the recipe she wanted after she was free for the day.
After she had finally finished working, Aiko mixed together her dreamed-up concoction (using gloves and a mask) and carefully poured them into three glass bottles that she stoppered and held up to the light. The end result was a pretty blue color… and she immediately tested it in training ground seven by tossing it at a tree a decent distance away (she didn't want to breathe it in). Somewhat strangely, the glass didn't shatter on impact. Instead, it cracked and bounced off into the bushes.
Aiko cursed quietly, wondering if it was safe to approach. She didn't know if it had gone off or not. That is, she didn't know until a horrid yowl split the air and she jumped, first in fright and then to a higher position to see what had happened.
Her concoction did actually seem to form a respectable amount of smoke (who says Naruto was the only one with a mind for chemicals, ha!). It was what she saw when the smoke faded that worried her.
"Oh, shit." She broke off a stick and gently poked at the prone animal she'd found, hoping for good news but already knowing what had happened. "I killed a cat." The thing looked like it had died horribly- it was in a strange pose as if it had convulsed, and blood was leaking from the nose and mouth. Good thing she hadn't breathed in the smoke herself. Aiko bit at her lip. "I'm sorry little guy. You were probably just minding your own business, hanging out in the wild. Maybe you're Kakashi's stray cat. Oh kami, I killed Kakashi's cat. He's going to kill me, 'ttebane! And Naruto! What would Naruto think if he knew I killed a helpless little kitty cat?!"
The corpse seemed to be staring at her accusingly through eyes that were quickly glazing over.
She quietly hyperventilated for a few long moments, trying to repress the panic. When that didn't work, she forced it away by pacing and trying to think. "Okay, just stop. I… I need to destroy the evidence. Cremation is respectful, right?"
It turned out that in her adrenaline-fueled haze, even the silly sparking jutsu could get a decent fire going. She coughed, trying to wave the foul-smelling smoke away from her face. "That's foul." She began to cry. 'I'm a terrible human being. I killed a kitty cat—I'm a terrible ninja! My first casualty was a kitty.'
Somehow her brain had time to conjure up the image of her rotting in jail, explaining to other inmates that she was in for cat murder. That definitely wasn't a respectable ninja action.
'I really hope that isn't Kakashi's cat... If it is, I orphaned a litter of kittens.'
She did her level best not to cry at the thought. Her eyes darted around, looking for other evidence. There were scorch marks on the ground… 'Well, accidentally starting a forest fire would be the exact opposite of subtle.' Terrible human being or not, she wanted Naruto to find out about this absolutely never. That meant no one could know. With that in mind, Aiko ran the hundred meters to the river and gathered up a huge glob of chakra-soaked water in her hands, stumbling back to the scene of the crime post-haste. She splashed it on the area, making sure to leave no trace embers. It was still obvious that something had happened there…
'But would that matter?' She took a long look around the training field. The earth was gouged with holes, some of which were full of water. The trees were scarred from kunai and other weapons, shards of rocks scattered the grounds, and more than one tree looked decidedly crispy. Her little patch of scorched ground didn't look that suspicious, really.
She gathered the two unused bottles and disposed of them quietly on her way home. If her eyes were a bit haunted, Naruto certainly didn't notice that night when he slurped down his oden.
'No one will ever know.'
Thankfully, her next missions were less eventful. After that mess, grocery shopping, raking leaves, and babysitting seemed like a much better use of her time.
~~~
Friday, January 9.
"I can't understand it," the Sandaime Hokage groused to his civilian secretary who looked more than a bit sympathetic. "I've had three experienced genin teams fail to find the Fire Lady's cat. This is just ridiculous." He finished signing the papers with a flourish and handed them off. He added in an undertone, "If she comes by again to ask me about her precious baby, I'm not in. You hear me?"