Chapter 3
I’ve never written anything on clothes shopping. Most of my character descriptions are slipped in in little tidbits, so that I don’t bore you with them. First time for everything, I guess.
Spending time with Anko isn’t as bad as Hisana expected. It’s … exhausting, yes, but the woman reminds her a little of an older, female Naruto. It’s endearing, in an entirely wacky sort of way, to listen to her babble while she dismisses shop after shop after shop.
“Real clothing,” she stresses. “Not something every idiot is wearing and throwing away. You need a signature style.”
It’s a daunting prospect, mostly because Hisana isn’t so sure she wants to be remembered at all, much less for her outfit.
“Nothing too revealing,” she repeats, probably for the fifth time today. “I’m fifteen. And also, if someone tries to look up my skirt I won’t be flattered, I’ll break their neck.”
Anko looks at her as if Hisana just handed her the answer to everything.
“Something badass then – sexiness can wait until you’re legal.” … or until never, Hisana thinks a little squeamishly. She can fake confidence for a few precious minutes, mostly by imitating women who don’t have to fake it, but there’s no way she can be convincing with an outfit like Anko’s. Ever.
They bicker over every little detail. In the end Hisana is half convinced they’ll kill each other before the Exams start. But it’s also fun. Anko deals out abuse and compliments and ribs in rapid fire and takes them just as easily. At some point she will inevitably yell in Hisana’s face and then break out in thrilled guffaws. A little dazed Hisana wonders if, instead of Naruto, a few years down the road this might be Ino. The thought is sobering. If this is the sort of person Shiki knows, she suddenly gets why her friend is so keen on curing the girl of her strange obsessions. What a waste it would be.
It takes them four precious hours, but then they finally settle on something that Hisana likes and Anko deems ‘not too terrible’. It almost reminds her of a sleeker version of the ANBU garb. It’s a bit tighter than what she usually wears, making for an entirely novel experience while wearing it. But it’s sort of useful too – it’s a one-piece, easily put on and off thanks to the zipper on the side. To Hisana’s delight the collar is reinforced with leather and steel wire – no getting to her throat anymore – and reaches up to clamp over her chin, reminiscent of both Kakashi and Tenzo. They’re matching now; she doesn’t know how to feel about that. She also looks a bit like Gai, Hisana thinks with a frown. But all in black.
“In no way like Gai,” Anko assures her unprompted, fuelling Hisana’s suspicion that the comparison does come to mind. “It’s not spandex,” the woman continues. “I can see the look on your face. If Gai dressed like that I’d date him.”
Putting on her high boots and flak jacket do make her feel a little less naked. It’s the pants part she thinks, looking down her legs. It feels like wearing leggings instead of pants.
“You … wanna invest in a push-up?” Anko suggests carefully, eying how the suit outlines Hisana’s serious lack of bust. She’s met with a death glare so severe that even the tokubetsu jounin has to backtrack. “Just a question!”
For the first time ever Hisana feels like an adult. How ironic it should happen while she’s wearing a fifteen year old body. She decides that she quite likes it anyway.
Sasuke is avoiding her. Not in an aggressive way that has him glaring and stomping around, but in a quiet way. She knows he’s still brooding about what she said, wanting to deny it, but her words are getting to him. Hisana is really only waiting for his anger to fade completely, giving him time to think the whole thing through, before she apologizes. Doing it now would invalidate everything she tried to impress on him. But not doing it isn’t an option either. What she said was … unintentionally cruel.
Fighting with Sasuke, as rare as it is, always makes her feel a little sick to her stomach. They’ve clung to each other for so long that it feels wrong not to have him nearby, emotionally more than physically. Team 7 did them both good, stopping them from becoming nothing but an extension of each other – ‘Uchiha’, rather than ‘Sasuke’ and ‘Hisana’ – but it didn’t impact the bond they formed in a matter of weeks after the massacre. In some ways they’ll always be a unit, for better or worse, which makes true fights painful.
It’s been only a few days, but she wants to do something about it.
For now she’ll wait. As long as he’s still coming home instead of holing up at Naruto’s he can’t be too angry with her.
Graduation is only a few weeks away.
Team 7 seems to have fallen in some sort of battle calm about it, which is nice. At least Naruto isn’t having panic attacks anymore. From afar Hisana watches the current team 7, Team Gai, as it will be called soon, practice near training ground one.
In said training ground a group of genin is currently trying to repair the damage she and Kakashi did to it. Or rather Kakashi. He’s a heavy hitter, which, once she thinks about it, doesn’t suit his character very much. The sounds of shovels and muffled curses masks whatever careless noises she produces, sitting in a tree not too far from Neji and his team. Her chakra signature is muffled so none of them has any reason to look up to where she is. Gai probably noticed, but chose not to say anything. Sometimes Hisana really can’t puzzle out that man’s motivations.
They’ve been at it for almost a year now – team exercises. For all intents and purposes they aren’t bad at it. It’s just that Neji hates it. With a passion. Hisana knows this because he gets unusually aggressive whenever Gai comes up with a new exercise. She’s aware Gai knows this too, and it’s the reason why he keeps going. As long as Neji hates teamwork, he’s not doing it right, even if the result looks about right.
And it’s an interesting team too, she thinks. Almost interesting enough that she wants to get involved. Lee is as enthusiastic as she feared, but there’s a simple charm to him that gets to her even from afar. She’d always scoffed at the thought of Lee and Sakura – Sakura obviously belonged to Sasuke – but looking at it from this angle she can almost see it. Especially with Sakura as she is now. They’d surely be an entertaining duo.
And she sympathizes with Tenten. The girl obviously has the short end of the stick here: One teammate a certified genius, the other her teacher’s favorite. Gai doesn’t do favorites, but with Lee it’s still different. The poor girl is in any case the odd one out, despite being pretty remarkable herself. It’s what happens if you have no pink hair, Hisana thinks wistfully, probably over-identifying with Neji’s female teammate. After all she still remembers vividly what it’s like to be so casually outshone.
But, no matter how tempting, she isn’t going to introduce herself. If Gai decides to call her down some day that would be a different thing. But right now she’s perfectly happy waiting for Neji like this and properly meet them all during the Exams. She suppresses a quiet laugh; they don’t even know they’re participating yet.
The Hyuuga hangs back when his teammates jump at the suggestion of dinner. His refusal to join them is reasonably polite, but abrupt enough to put a consternated look on Tenten’s face. “Fine then,” she says, brows furrowed. “One day you’re going to have to come along though. Gai-sensei will drag you if he has to.”
As soon as they’re out of view Hisana slides out of the tree. If she startled him, Neji gives no sign of it. He expected her of course; she always watches the last half of his team’s Saturday practice. But occasionally Hisana makes an effort to act as if she doesn’t.
Neji falls into the Juuken style without a further word. They’re still not talking much, though Hisana has made an effort to produce a few words every now and then. But Neji takes aloofness to a whole different level. It’s like this most of the time; he just expects her to get on with it already with the simple sense of entitlement that a lot of Hyuuga seem to have perfected. She huffs at him but complies anyway.
It’s not as if she has the unbearable urge to be his friend. Screw him. When Hisana trounces him, she gleefully holds close the memory of the great Hyuuga Neji trying and failing to rub the dirt out of his shirt. And when he stalks off in a huff, starting the long walk across the entire town to the Hyuuga compound, she doesn’t even consider calling a warning after him. There’s mud at the seat of his pants and he deserves it.
Seeing Ibiki’s face first thing in the morning is indeed an experience. The man himself doesn’t look like he particularly wants to see them either, but he’s probably still better off than the number of chuunin and tokujou gathered around the table. At least he is hardened to the dark rooms that are his workplace; the rest of them have never stepped foot into the innermost chambers of T&I.
Of course the Chuunin Exams are a group effort. Sitting here, brainstorming, vaguely feels like high school all over again, and not in a good way. Across from Hisana Yamanaka Inori is preparing to take minutes. The image is crassly at odds with two chuunin telling dirty jokes a few chairs over. The Yamanaka’s face gets increasingly more aggravated, until Inuzuka Hana lobs an eraser at the two idiots, knocking one of them clean off his chair.
Ibiki clears his throat, nipping any argument in the bud. “Now! Quiet down, you aren’t silly teenagers anymore.” He casts a look at a number of tittering younger chuunin and amends, “Most of you in any case. You are all here because you expressed a wish to participate in the Exams.”
A man rolls in a creaky blackboard and hands him a case of chalk. Ibiki pointedly snaps off a piece and taps it against the table. “Ideas!” he barks, looking for all the world like a general leading them to war.
“We stick them in the forest,” Anko immediately volunteers, gleeful look on her face. “With the snakes and the lions. Make them work for it!” The others seem to contemplate this.
“Yes,” Namiashi Raidou starts carefully, “ … but why?”
“It’s too dangerous,” someone immediately frets. “They’re all going to die – for what? A survival exercise? I don’t see the point either.”
“But they are real-life conditions,” Hisana throws in. “At least in Fire Country. Duel style matches and clever tricks are all good and well … but shouldn’t we test how they perform in real mission conditions?” Everything in her protests saying ‘we’. She doesn’t feel remotely qualified to contribute anything to this, but she won’t let them shoot Anko down. This is right – this needs to happen; why make it difficult?
“There are other ways to do that,” the same woman complains, leaning forward in her chair until Hisana can properly see her face. Obviously a long-time chuunin. Desk job. Fussy – former Academy instructor or possibly got traumatized during the Exams herself. Hisana doesn’t need her Sharingan to figure that out. Her mouth pulls down in distaste.
“Are there?” she asks sweetly. “I’d love to hear some.”
The woman sputters.
“We … we could stage an escort mission.”
“On the open field? To make it nice and easy?”
“We could … send them on a courier run and have them hunted by volunteers.”
“You mean like Kusa did last time? I don’t think that’s fair – some of them will do that twice then. Do you want our finale full of Kusa-nin?”
Next to Hisana Anko is snickering. She pinches the tokujo until she muffles her sounds of amusement. The other woman falls back into her chair with a huff. Inuzuka Hana is staring at Hisana with interest.
“And then there’s the teamwork angle,” Hisana adds, emboldened by her victory. “Why draw it out into two tests if we can get it done in one? Team exercise and survival. If that’s … too dangerous, we could station a few guards around. To keep an eye on everything.”
“Let’s write it down,” Ibiki finally agrees. “It seems like an option at least.”
When Hisana finally steps foot outside T&I it’s already dark outside. It’s easy to lose track of time down there, which is probably intended, she realizes belatedly. Next to her Anko stretches obscenely and yawns loudly enough to startle some passers-by. “I’m going home,” she announces. “Was a hard ass day.” She punches Hisana in the shoulder. “Good going down there. Looks like you’re useful after all.”
“Strangely, I get that a lot.”
They part ways in easy silence. Maybe getting to know Anko isn’t such a bad thing. She’s obviously pretty capable and a go-getter. If she’s really lucky Hisana might even get a few insights into Orochimaru’s dark, dank noggin though her. She’s being pretty optimistic here, but Hisana has long since learned to keep her thoughts light if she can, even if it means lying to herself a little. Hope is always a good thing to have.
While a stroll through Konoha at night is a really neat thing, the village is pretty safe after all, it does give Hisana too much time to think. It’s not so late yet that Sasuke will have gone to bed already. Yesterday evening was pretty awkward because they were both at home early. She’d intended to apologize, but Sasuke’s ire still hadn’t entirely cooled. As soon as she opened her mouth the boy fled the kitchen, so she thought better of it. It also makes the entire sleeping arrangement awkward; it made Hisana seriously consider looking for a bigger apartment after all.
It’s only a matter of time before they argue again and she has really no desire to share a bed with him when he’s angry, as if they were some sort of frustrated married couple. And no matter what her cousin might still think, it’s bound to get awkward at one point for at least one of them. Probably him. Though that’s a topic she may not want to bring up so soon after a fight.
When she turns into their street Hisana can already see that the lights are on in their little kitchen. She really hopes they can talk now or she’ll sleep on the couch tonight.