Thanks, to-someplace-else! I’m glad you’re enjoying it ( ˘ ³˘)♥
Externality, part 2e (2017-06-21)
Tetsuki stares at the card in her hand.
Not her card–with its sparse, two prong objective–but Naruto Uzumaki’s card and its impossible instructions.
“This is a third of the class,” Tetsuki says, brows furrowed in consternation, “This is impossible.”
Technically, Naruto Uzumaki’s objective is also only two parts. The first being “collect five armbands.” The second being “collect five tokens.”
Of course, taking their other sector mates as the norm–one token or armband each–that would be ten people.
“Why would Yanagi-sensei do this to you? This is impossible,” she repeats, dumbly, as if Naruto Uzumaki weren’t completely aware of what the instructions on his card meant.
Somehow his face twists into a combination of defiance and bitter, unsurprised resignation, shoulders hunched up protectively, like a feral cat when confronted.
“Yeah, well, I’m still gonna try,” he mutters, but he doesn’t even sound convinced himself.
Awkwardly, Tetsuki hands him back his card, unsure what–if anything–she should say.
Life isn’t fair. Of course it isn’t. That’s one lesson she learned early on watching other children with parents, with family, with anyone beyond the impersonal reach of a government run orphanage. She knows that sometimes–no matter how hard you work, no matter how polite you are, no matter how much you really want it–life is unsympathetic.
Naruto Uzumaki knows this, too. An orphan just like her with the same scrawny, underfed and sallow look of someone who has to fend for themselves because there is no one else to fend for them. Life isn’t fair; it’s harsh and demanding and never about want or deserve or even need.
It’s never been so obviously targeted at her like this, though. Life isn’t fair because life is uncaring. This isn’t fair because someone is actively making it so–
“Here,” Naruto Uzumaki says, handing over card and token both. “One of us might as well pass this stupid thing.”
–and yet, something in him is still kind, still generous.
“Hey!” she says as he begins to walk away.
He turns back to look at her, confused.
“A deal’s a deal, right?,” she asks, bravado burbling up and out of some part of her that hasn’t gone completely cold and steely. “You help me, and I help you.”
This isn’t about being friendly, not about reciprocating kindness. It’s not even about honoring their flimsy deal, not really: life isn’t fair and nothing can change that–but there are two ways to respond.
Give up or fight back.
Externality, part 2d (2017-06-20)
In the dozen or so weeks that they’ve been classmates, Tetsuki has observed the following about Naruto Uzumaki:
He has sloppy taijutsu form.
He can never sit still during class.
Whenever teachers have to speak, look, or even think about him, they get the same flat expression on their faces like someone trying not to admit they have a stab wound and might need to go to the hospital.
He gets bored very easily.
He gets bored very loudly.
He is craftier than people expect.
“What do you want?” he asks, straightforward, which is another thing she’s noticed about him, never mind that it ought to conflict with that last one.
“What do you need?” she shoots back; information more powerful than any number of kunai.
“How about, I give you my token and you help me with my objective,” he says, the back and forth they have not quite like experienced merchants–nothing like what Hikari-san and TenTen’s boss do–but a childish mimicry of it. They way all children who spend more time out on the streets than in a home learn to do.
“How about you give me your token and tell me what your objective is and maybe I’ll help you with yours.”
“No way! How do I know you won’t just take it and leave?”
“I could just fight you for it. We both know I would win.”
“You’d have to catch me first. I can outrun ANBU.”
At this, Tetsuki hesitates. She’s not sure about the ANBU part–that’s a bit of a stretch–and outrunning isn’t the term she would use, but the only thing she knew about Naruto Uzumaki before he joined her class is that every so often he’ll pull an obnoxious, public prank and not even chuunin can track him down.
She’s already shown her hand by asking for the token. He’d know who, specifically, to avoid for the next three days–she might be faster than him in a flat out sprint or even have quicker reflexes in a fight, but if he loses her in these woods she probably won’t find him until after the exam is up.
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the card with her objective on it. “I have a two parter,” she says, “You give me that token and help me with the other part of mine, and I’ll help you with yours.”
She doesn’t know yet if she can trust Naruto Uzumaki, but if she never gives it a try then she’ll never find out.
And plus, how bad could it be?
Externality, part 2c (2017-06-19)
Tetsuki would never claim to be a people person. She’s not charismatic, not naturally kind or generous. The closest she might get is relentlessly civil, and even that is more of a fault than a strength–manners aren’t exactly high on the list of criteria for a soldier.
Still, even if she is no miss congeniality, at least she’s not a total ass either.
For the exam, Tetsuki was dropped in the southern sector of the training ground, along with seven of her classmates. Some of them were given tokens of different colors, some of them were given armbands–again, in different colors–Tetsuki has neither.
Naruto Uzumaki has both: the armband in a purple so deep as to be nearly black, clashing harshly against his jumpsuit, and the token a shining silver.
He hides both of them immediately, even as the others with armbands dutifully put them on, but not so quickly that she doesn’t see.
The rest of her classmates begin to disperse, some of them volunteering their objectives out loud, though most of them shake out the same: those with armbands are to find and collect the token matching their color. Those with tokens are to defend theirs for the entire three days.
Tetsuki’s objective is to collect two different tokens; one copper, one silver.
Naruto Uzumaki doesn’t move, and neither does she.
The most obvious solution would be to fight for the silver token–she could take him in a fight. Has taken him, during class spars–he’s shorter and slower and has the sloppiest kata form she’s ever seen. She doesn’t even like taijutsu.
She could collect the token by force easily and be halfway done with her objective in the first ten minutes. But…
Why would she be put in the same sector as one of her targets right from the beginning? If this really were to test her abilities, wouldn’t it make sense to put him elsewhere–make her hunt him down instead of handing him over on a platter?
And why does he have both a token and an armband?
Yes, Tetsuki is not the friendliest person. She’s reticent and cynical and her default expression is, according to Hikari-san, cold and uninterested. Yes, she could fight for the silver token and be on her merry way…
… but she is a suspicious person and that’d be too easy.
Instead of challenging Naruto Uzumaki to a fight or even attacking him without warning, Tetsuki asks for the silver token.
The immediate rejection isn’t a surprise.
The considering, curious bargaining a few moments later is.
Externality, part 2b (2017-06-18)
That first month, she doesn’t ask.
That first month, she doesn’t even talk to him.
It’s an interesting mystery, of course, but ultimately irrelevant to her everyday life; she’s mired in too much as it is.
The second and third months are much the same.
This final year of the Academy seems to be less teaching and more training–a narrow, but distinct separation between the two–forcing students to apply what they’ve learned over the years into actionable combinations. It’s one thing to know the standard hand signs and team formations, how to make wire traps and stealth genjutsu, but it’s another to use it in a class-wide six-way game of capture the flag while Yanagi-sensei and his assistant pelt everyone with blunted wooden kunai.
The other drills and assessments aren’t nearly as fun, but they are equally as likely to give bruises or headaches to everyone involved.
And as if that weren’t enough, it’s as if Hikari-san has taken Tetsuki’s dwindling free time and increasing exhaustion as some kind of permission or, worse, a challenge.
A chuunin war veteran, regardless of the years off the field and the prosthetic leg, will still handily smack down an Academy student without breaking a sweat. Tetsuki would prefer it if Hikari-san wasn’t so smug about it, but it’s not as if it is a surprise.
“That technique,” Tetsuki says between panting breaths, ignoring the dirt pressing into her cheek in favor of the coolness of the ground, “with the flashing light. What is it?”
Hikari-san smiles, teeth sharp and bright, “It’s my own invention. Maybe if you can last more than a minute against me, I’ll teach it to you.”
It’s more of a threat than an offer.
Along with the more physical, literal beating her into the ground, Hikari-san also involves her more with the operation of the shop:
Business to business trading verses customer transactions, quotas and market equilibrium. What the forms she delivers daily to the Tower are for, where that information goes–funneled to the Logistics Department, just a drop in the flowing river of data–the correlation of sales and Academy enrollment, decreasing demand of smoke pellets as preferences move toward flash bang tags.
Or so Hikari-san says. But the shop is just one data point and they are not the ones in charge of interpreting the information.
Still, Tetsuki’s dreams, if she has any, are filled with numbers in the night, masked and waiting to jump out at her armed with wooden kunai and bright red yarn.
The weeks slip by and she doesn’t ask.
She barely even manages to talk to TenTen, much less a boy she’s never properly met before.
In fact, that doesn’t even happen until the first trimester’s exam, when the students are really put to the test: a three day trial in the dense forest of Training Ground 53–the students given unique, secret objectives and told to survive without any teacher interference.
Maybe that’s what prompts her to approach him: not having to worry about the flat expression Yanagi-sensei sends his way being extended to her by association.
Alternatively, it might be the sabotage.
Externality, part 2a (2017-06-17)
There are two orphanages in Konoha: Enshoku House in the southwest–between the Hyuuga and Aburame holdings–and Ryokushoku Institute in the northeast–between the Akimichi district and what used to be Uchiha land.
Not that their proximity to cardinal clan territories have much influence on which orphans end up where, it’s just the easiest way to differentiate the two. That and the fact that most orphans from Enshoku tend to wear shades of red while those from Ryokushoku wear shades of green.
It must be a subliminal influence; Tetsuki certainly isn’t basing her fashion choices on nonexistent fond memories of the place.
Though perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Ryokushoku was hardly torture, and she knows that orphanages further from Konoha’s reach and subsidies aren’t as professionally run.
But maybe that was the problem–it was too well run, too clinical and cold and objective. They weren’t family, they weren’t students, they were barely even wards of the state–they were resources, potential products, and future soldiers. A mass assembly line of moldable children without anyone to care for their well-beings outside of what makes them useful.
Technically, six year old orphans aren’t mandated to join the Academy, but if they haven’t been adopted by that point then there aren’t many options left: very few orphans show an aptitude for a strictly civilian vocation that would induce government sponsorship for Shougakkou. After that, frankly, between the red light district and urban legends of ANBU stealing children in the middle of the night, the Academy is the safest bet.
Her Academy file had her name as Ryokushoku no Tetsuki until she was ten, when she updated it along with her new address–moving out from the orphanage as soon as she could even remotely support herself. Her life path thus far is in no way unique, but at the very least she has heard of others.
None of that helps in figuring out Naruto Uzumaki’s situation.
Externality, part 1d (2017-06-16)
After five years of being in the same class, Tetsuki is a little ashamed to say she’s only really on speaking terms with a few of her classmates.
It’s a matter of time, is all. Or scheduling, rather.
If she’s not at school, then she’s working. If she’s not working then she’s training. She’s quite behind some of her classmates: especially the ones who have the full support of a clan, tips and tricks passed down from older relatives who serve, generations of honing their members into efficient shinobi.
But even the ones from civilian families–those who don’t have to worry about where their next meal will come from, or how they’ll pay for their school supplies, or even just have an adult presence in their lives who put them first unconditionally–have advantages over her that she must work hard to compensate for.
It’s nobody’s fault. Not really.
Tetsuki is just one of many orphans of Konoha; a babe found in the rubble of the Kyuubi Attack’s aftermath.
TenTen is another.
Talking to someone who has the same background as her is just easier. Someone who understands what she’s going through, who knows what it’s like to crawl and claw and carve their way up and out. Perhaps it’s elitism of its own in a backwards, twisted way.
And also, Hikari-san orders kunai in bulk from the armory TenTen works at, so the two of them often see each other in a work setting. Passing off a storage scroll of kunai like a baton in a relay race or getting shooed away whenever the adults renegotiate prices.
Talking during taijutsu class–during the practice matches–isn’t outrightly forbidden, so long as it isn’t a distraction. But it’s pretty much expected. There’s only so many combinations of sparring partners available, after all.
After five years, even watching Neji Hyuuga stomp his opponent into the ground gets boring no matter how elegantly he does it.
Tetsuki leans in close–more out of politeness than any real attempt at concealment, if someone really wanted to listen they could–and asks about the four new students in their class.
Old students, TenTen corrects, from last year’s graduating class that failed to do just that. Determined and optimistic, Yanagi-sensei had said. Stubborn, foolish, a waste of his time, he didn’t need to say.
One shining example of that being Rock Lee who everyone knows can’t do even the basic three which requires the minimum amount of chakra. It’s no surprise that he failed. Just as it isn’t a surprise that he’d come back for more, a glutton for punishment. What he’s expecting to change in this year is a mystery to everyone.
There’s another boy and a girl, neither of whom seem remarkable in any way–not enough for TenTen to point out beyond a nod in their directions and their names.
But the final boy–short, blonde, and in eye catching orange–TenTen has more. “He’s younger than us.”
With a confused, prompting look, she continues, “He used to be at Enshoku with me, though he left before I did. I always thought it was because he got adopted out…”
At an orphanage such a thing is less a dream and more a miracle, both of them would know.
“… but he still has the same name as before.”
A second, more confused, prompting look. Why would getting adopted change someone’s name? That’s just asking for identity crises.
“Well, same names. He has the same surname.”
Which both clarifies things and brings up more questions. Why would someone with a surname be at an orphanage with TenTen? If they have a surname then they must have–a clan or a family or some trace of guardianship; a distant relative, a godparent, their parents’ teammates, a legal tie of some kind–someone who would take on a child rather than leave him to an orphanage with less than no support system.
Tetsuki is sure TenTen has had the same thoughts and, also, found no answers. It just doesn’t make any sense.
As Neji Hyuuga’s short lived spar comes to a close, TenTen concludes, “Naruto Uzumaki.”
~
A/N: Which is of no surprise to anyone 😛
Missed Post (2017-06-15)
My entire body is still sore from moving stuff 😛
Missed Post (2017-06-14)
Helping my sister move to a new place. Might not be able to post tomorrow(/later today, technically) either, but we’ll see…
Did get to hang out with a very nice, very cute, somewhat melancholy dog for a little bit so I’d say it’s definitely worth it.
Externality, part 1c (2017-06-13)
Dropping off paperwork to the Tower everyday makes her, if not a known quantity, then at the very least a face familiar enough to be allowed to walk through the lobby unimpeded. It’s more than she ought to expect, really–there are many cogs in this administrative machine and she is the most minuscule of a part.
Sneaking into her classroom is far more difficult, even if that is where she belongs.
Yanagi-sensei spots her immediately. Unsurprising, given he is a chuunin, and she’s not sneaking in to fool him so much as she’s trying not to be noticed or interrupt his lesson.
Beyond a tilt of his head, he doesn’t remark on her entrance though, which she is grateful for. Some students, when they’re tardy, get punished–standing outside with buckets of water in each hand or being tied upside down until their faces turn bright red–though generally they’re also troublemakers for other reasons.
Tetsuki tries not to make trouble; she can’t afford it.
Still, being late is not without drawbacks: her preferred seat, four rows back and nearest to the window, has been taken by someone else, and she catches looks from her classmates who already have wandering eyes.
She slinks into the nearest available seat–second row, closer to the wall, unfortunately–and doesn’t recognize the person beside her.
She’s taken aback for a moment, a flash of mortification–has she entered the wrong room? Is this the wrong class entirely?–before logic asserts itself.
No, Yanagi-sensei wouldn’t do that to her, and she did spot classmates she knows from her original cursory glance around the room; it’s just this one in particular that she doesn’t know.
The boy beside her gives a baffled look in return, before shifting his attention back to their sensei.
Following his lead, Tetsuki does the same.
She can solve the mystery later.
JackSGreyson Says 