Chapter 12: Academy Arc: Six

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

"Catch me if you can." I shriek as I throw myself forwards, and Tokuma's hand can't graze me in time. From across the clearing, I see Muta closing in and I hurriedly make the five hand signs necessary to replace myself with the log, but Tokuma is one step behind as he replaces me with himself, sending me right back into Muta's waiting arms.

"That's not fair!" I grouse at them.

However, even Muta's cracked a smile wide enough to be actually visible. "It's a part of the rules of the game, Hana-chan."

I laugh off my embarrassment at having been caught again, and stick my tongue out at them. "It's time to chase Toku next."

Muta and I share a look and we're after him yet again. It's the heat of high summer and in less than eight months we'd be slated to graduate and find a sensei for all of us together.

The thought seems more precious as time goes on. When we'd leave the safety of the Academy and everyone else we'd known to enter a brand new world. Even if it is just cleaning houses and scrubbing pots, we'd be doing it together.

By the time we collapse in a heap on the ground, we're all sweaty and out of breath from laughing too much. "This is the best game ever." I gasp.

Toku points at a bird flying across the clearing. "Just think, we were going faster than that."

I bump his shoulder with mine. "Just think, once we graduate we could go even faster than that."

Muta chuckles from beside us, and we both revel in the experience of a rare sign of joy from our stoic friend. "Statistically speaking, we will go much faster than that, if we want to make our dreams come true." He pushes his glasses up his nose. "I'm thinking about going into tracking after making chunin now." He waves his hands, and gathers up a stray kikaichu floating in the air above us. "You'll both be on my team, I know you will."

Tokuma raises himself up on one elbow and prods him in the cheek. "We've always known that, you told us that on the first day of class."

Muta blushes pink all the way from the two brightest spots on his cheeks down beneath his high collar. "I said that because I wanted you to like me." He whispers. "I didn't know if it was actually going to be true, but I wanted friends."

I sit up. "Well, you know, you've got friends and we are going to be on the same team, so you better be ready for more sparing."

Muta groans and rolls over to bury his face in the grass. "No, Hana-chan I don't want to be black and blue until next year." He pulls his sunglasses down to glare at me with a single compound eye. "You hit so very hard for such a small compact body."

Tokuma throws back his head and howls with laughter, his shoulders and legs shaking until he can no longer breath quite properly and then he just lies there and gasps instead. He's so different now from what he'd been like on the first day we met, and the thought warms my heart. Just you wait, we'll corrupt you until you don't act anything like a proper Hyuga in public too.

I brace four shuriken in my hand and stare at the target across the clearing. With grim determination, I flick my wrist and watch as they all land haphazardly on the target. It's nowhere near Itachi's perfect bulls eye score, but I punch the air and dance around him anyway. "I did it. I did it."

He offers me a smile. "You did."

I throw my arms around his neck and forget everything except that this is true happiness. "It's thanks to your help, Itachi-kun, otherwise I'd fail the shuriken test for sure." He pats my back awkwardly and I realize that I really shouldn't be hugging him if it made him so uncomfortable. I let go of him rather quickly after the realization. He had problems with fangirls all the time, he didn't need a friend mauling him as well.

"Well, I wouldn't do nearly so well on history if you didn't tutor me."

I shrug. "I've always been reading about history even when I wasn't in the Academy yet anyway. It comes quite naturally after that." The trips to the library as a child wandering through the adult section paid large dividends now, when most of my classmates are still cramming for the graduation exam less than a month away. We gather up all the missed shuriken, and tug the ones that hit out of the tree so no one injures themselves on ninja weaponry for baby ninja.

Afterwards we walk down the street together in companionable silence searching for dango and I roll out the tight muscles in my shoulders. Toku and Muta hadn't entirely taken to Itachi within the year, but they weren't hostile if he came along with us either.

It is a start, which is good enough.

The morning of team placements, I tie my forehead protector around my neck to protect a vulnerable area, throw on my typical tan kimono shirt, and shorts and race out the door with the Triplets in tow. Kaa-san's gotten much busier since the clan elected her to lead it, and Cousin Ashi spends more time sleeping in the spare room than not.

"Eat breakfast on the way, Hana-chan." Cousin Ashi calls after me, and I throw up a hand in acknowledgement.

"I will!"

"Slow down, Hana." San huffs at me.

I turn back to look at San who is trailing behind and stick my tongue out at him. "You're just slow." He barks at me with wordless irritation at this, and I turn and keep running all the way down to the corner store, where Obaa-san still sold candies and onigiri for breakfast.

"Good morning, Obaa-san." I duck in amid the tinkling of bells.

"Oh my, Hana-chan." She puts a hand to her open mouth. "Where'd the time go? You're a genin already?"

I nod at her, proud of my achievements. "I get team placements today." I take a handful of hard candies and a packet of six onigiri. "Did Tou-san used to come here a lot?"

Obaa-san's eyes are far away as she nods. "He was always such a polite young man." She brushes a tear from her eye. "He was on my daughter's team actually, she'd so many good things to say about him." She pats me on the head. "It was all so long ago, Hana-chan. You'll find her name on the memorial stone too. The next time you go to visit say hello to Ito Ritsuko for me, will you? These old bones aren't what they once were."

I nod, and my hands fall to my bag where Tou-san's papers are tucked carefully away for me to read later. "I'll make sure to do that Obaa-san." I hadn't known about Obaa-san's personal sorrows, didn't know that she'd known Tou-san so well, but it made sense that she had to have, she'd always treat him kindly despite how the other civilians had acted.

I sit down before the memorial stone and scan the names until I find Ito Ritsuko. "Hello, Ritsuko-nee-chan. Obaa-san told me to say hello." And then I trace my hand over the familiar lines of Uchiha Obito. I hadn't wanted to come back after the Kyuubi Incident. He'd proven himself not to need a memorial after all with how many lives he'd taken, but I set out the handful of candies anyway. Uchiha Obito still deserves someone to acknowledge how good he was once. Even if it is someone he'd never met before.

"He'd liked the strawberry ones best." I look over my shoulder to see Kakashi behind me. After what, nearly four years of visiting the memorial stone, this is the first time he's volunteered information about his genin teammates. The last time he said anything about them he'd been drunk to the point of delusion. This is a very strange day.

"Oh, I'll get him only those next time, then. Thank you, Hatake-san." I turn back to my thoughts.

"Kakashi." For a moment I think that I must've misheard him, but he says it again. "Call me Kakashi, please." He comes to crouch beside me. "I didn't appreciate them when they were still alive." His fingers brush against their names so tenderly, unlike anything he'd been like before. "I shouldn't have been cruel to you the last time we met."

I blink at him. "What?"

He sighs."You were right. It's rude to be unkind to my hosts, and you gave me a place to sleep and a perfectly respectable meal because you thought I might've rolled into the river and drown myself, which was incidentally what I'd have liked to do." How long of a memory did he have anyway? He wanted to drown himself in the river? Why?

Everyone he'd known and loved had been gone. A nasty voice whispers. Would you be alright if that happened?

Yeah right, I think back. You forget I lost an entire life before, so you can scram and get lost.

"That was nearly a year ago, Kakashi-san." The words are more sarcastic than I had intended, and he winces. "Also, I don't think that death is all it's cracked up to be." No, don't pay attention to that statement Kakashi! I had been so stupid to make that joke, but it really doesn't seem like he'd noticed the slip.

"I wasn't in a nice place then." He looks down at his hands. "I don't think I'll ever be in a nice place again."

My lips twitch, partly because I'm happy he didn't notice, partly because I know how much he'd grown and change in the years to come. "Well, I don't know. Tou-san did always say that I should take care not to become like you. That strange Hatake boy, as he'd always say." I stand up and brush the grass off my knees. "But I think becoming as skilled as you is certainly something I should strive for." I toss him an onigiri. "The first step to recovery is feeding yourself. You should try it sometime."

He eye-smiles at me. "This is convenience store onigiri, Inuzuka-chan. You won't grow up big and strong if you only eat these."

I frown and cross my arms at him. " It's Hana, and if you wanted actual food you'd have to go to my house to get it."

"And team six will be Hyuga Tokuma..." Muta and I exchange a look and wait with baited breath. "Inuzuka Hana and Aburame Muta under the leadership of Jonin..."

"Yes!" Tokuma stands and punches the air. "Team Tan is ready to face the world."

"Excuse me, Funeno-sensei?" I raise a hand. I didn't get to hear the name of our sensei because Toku was too excited. "Who did you say is our sensei again?"

"Nara Ensui-san, Hana-kun." Funeno-sensei looks over his clipboard at me. "I know you'll do just fine, so don't be nervous."

In fact, I don't think I've been this elated since the time Tou-san and I headed out to fly a kite nearly three years ago. I get to meet Nara Ensui again. The last time I'd tried to find him, I heard from the Nara clan that he'd moved out of the compound following the Kyuubi attack and they weren't at liberty to give his address out to little girls.

It had been a blow, since Kaa-san wasn't all that acquainted with Tou-san's only friend, and Ensui-san is probably so lazy that he'd not get out of bed in the mornings if he thought he could survive the slow torturous grind of hunger, which is why he wouldn't have ambled over on his own free time to visit me.

Nevertheless, I am elated that he'd been selected to lead my genin team.

"Do you know our sensei?" Muta whispers as Funeno-sensei moves on with team placements. "You seem abnormally excited to meet him."

"He's a friend of Tou-san's" I say and actually think about it for a moment. "And I don't think he's going to fail us because if he's volunteering to train a genin team he really wants us."

Beside me, Tokuma is positively giddy with glee. "Alright." He says as he slams a fist on the table. "We must be the luckiest genin in the Elemental Nations."

At the confused glances of our other classmates and sensei, Muta and I can hold our outrageous giggles no longer. Toku's been corrupted. Call the Military Police. He's not snobbish enough. Help.

Ensui-sensei doesn't talk to us about a test. He simply slouches into the room, glances blearily around until his gaze falls on the three of us, and says. "Follow me." Then, he moseys off at a snail's pace.

We follow after him as he ambles about the city without a single word spoken. He'd gotten even lazier than the last time I'd met him as a child, and he'd a hangover from hell back then.

He slouches into a tea house off of main street, the sign reads Mufu-an, and a waitress shows us to a table in the back despite the packed crowd of morning customers. "Right this way, Ensui-san." He's a regular here then. The staff uses his first name instead of Nara-san.

Once we are seated, he turns to us properly and looks the most awake he's been all day. "I'm sure Hana-chan's told you why I took your team. I'm here to watch her and teach her as a last gift to her Otou-san." Here he looks at Toku and Muta, with an undercurrent of something sharp. "If that sticks in your throat too much then both of you can get up and leave, and I'll just have an apprentice, that clear?"

Tokuma swallows. "I'm here to be a member of Team Six, Nara-san. I did know why you wanted to be our sensei, and I don't care."

Beside him, Muta nods. "We are a team, Nara-san. You'll take us or leave us together."

I frown at Ensui-sensei sitting across from us. He looked...tired and bedraggled. Overly sad. Nothing like the man I'd met with Tou-san who'd joked about troublesome women and perked up at training puzzles. "It's not like you to be this grumpy, Ensui-san." I read out across the table to set my small hand on his clasped ones. "But if you're only doing this for me, maybe you should take sick leave instead of a genin team." His eyes widen, but I continue. "You do look very tired."

But for the first time that day, he smiles.

"You all pass my test. Welcome to Team Six." And suddenly he isn't a bedraggled, deeply saddened and grumpy sarcastic man anymore. He's alive, almost vibrant despite the green mascara under his eyes giving him a bruised, tired look. It was a test all along? I think back to what we said. We demonstrated teamwork. The ability to sacrifice ourselves for the good of the group. Oh. He was playing with our emotions and seeing if it'll break us apart.

"I don't get it. Why was that a test, and why do you pass us?" Toku leans forward and stares very hard at Ensui-sensei with his disconcertingly pupil-less eyes.

To Sensei's credit, he doesn't even seem to notice. "There are going to be times when a superior tells you that it's not about you, that you're not important. You three decided to stick it out anyway." With that, Ensui-sensei waves his hand at the waitress. "Four cups of rose tea, and dim sum please."

"So we were supposed to answer the way we did to pass the test." Muta thinks aloud as he allows a steady stream of kikaichu to crawl over his fingers and back down his sleeve. "You wanted us to think that you were only here for Hana-chan, but actually you're here for all of us."

"The Hokage wouldn't have given me a genin team if I wasn't. It would be bad for your development."

I smile, at last somewhat relieved. He isn't suffering from depression after all, or if he is he won't let it affect us. "I'm glad you're doing alright, Ensui-sensei." I say, and pick up my cup of tea as it arrives to blow on its surface. "I was afraid that you really needed help."

Ensui-sensei smirks. "I'm doing alright." He picks up his own cup of tea and takes a sip. "I got married in the fall and there's been plenty of hell to pay the months since then."

And he has evidently wooed his troublesome woman as well. Oh congratulations, Ensui-sensei. "Well that's great news, Sensei. We'll have to pay our respects to the woman that could persuade you not to be lazy."

He tugs a stray lock of my hair. "Not even half an hour and you've already lost all respect for me, Hana-chan." He turns his gaze heavenward with a wry smile. "Is this your final cosmic joke Kai-kun?"

A.N. ...And now we are barreling into a New Arc. Team Training, and more Nara-isms coming up! And if you haven't seen the side stories and would like to, Ashen is now live, and updating semi-regularly.

Thanks Shy911 for the review! Actually, Dreaming of Sunshine is a big favorite of mine, although I do try to make Bloodless unique, so your review actually made me very excited. I'm happy to know that you like it so much.

If anyone hasn't read Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen, you should hop right over and do that because it is truly fabulous.

Thanks so much for all of your support everyone. It truly means the world to me.

~Tavina.