Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shikaku had loved his clan once. Now, he loved the niche he'd managed to carve out for himself outside of it. His position as the head of the Logistics Division, which everybody knew had been a consolation prize after he got passed over for Jounin Commander. His apartment, which was roomy and overlooked Konoha, but would never be as serene as his parents' old house in the hour before dawn. Yoshino's last name on their newborn son's birth certificate.

"Congratulations," Ikoma said, ducking into his office. He handed over a wrapped gift. Something soft.

The two of them weren't forbidden from speaking. They just... weren't really supposed to seek each other out anymore. Not outside of work matters. Shikaku had broken that unspoken rule a handful of times. Ikoma hadn't, up until this very moment.

"Thank you," Shikaku said. "How's Heguri doing? And your daughter?"

"Heguri's fine," he said, admirably breezing past the fact that the woman they were speaking of had been Shikaku's betrothed before she had become his wife. "My daughter read a book out loud to me last night."

"Your daughter is fifteen months old," Shikaku pointed out, less because he was skeptical, and more because he was curious.

"I'm aware. But she's-" There were footsteps out in the larger Logistics office. Ikoma glanced back, as though worried Father would step in to scold him any second now. "Never mind. It's late."

Ikoma was clan head. Their father had been dead for two years.

Shikaku wanted to ask more questions. How things were back home, and whether the rumors he'd heard about his niece's ill health were true, and whether Uda and Miyake had made any headway with their research projects now that the village was at peace.

Instead, he just sighed. It was the path of least resistance. "Alright. Let's talk some other time."

The very next week, the village lay in ruins, his brother was dead and so were three dozen other Nara including their mother. Shikaku had to learn to love his clan once more.

"We'll have to change the children's names, of course," Kofuku said. She was the head of something-or-another now. He'd barely had time to catch up. "It's distasteful, but perhaps it's for the best, given the girl's... disadvantage."

Ikoma's widow said nothing to that. Hadn't said anything at all since viewing the body, at least not in his presence. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her little daughter.

"That won't be necessary," he said.

"Huh? But-"

"If she can't be a ninja anyway, then there's no harm in her having a 'shika' name, is there?"

His son's original birth certificate was erased without a trace. The replacement read 'Nara Shikamaru'. 

He would have been willing enough to let his brother's widow keep the old house as well, but there was just so much to do. By the time he managed to find five minutes between all his other duties to go check up on her, Heguri had already moved back in with her parents. She let her father do the talking and refused to look him in the eye.

The next time they crossed paths on the wider clan grounds, she pointedly looked straight ahead while her daughter peered at him curiously. Then she stopped crossing paths with him. Shikaku was almost impressed by the amount of effort she was pouring into this pettiness; he had to pass by her front porch every day on his way to work.

More than a year passed like this. He was happy enough to let the issue lie, until one of the workers at the main clan office approached him hesitantly. 

"Shikaku-sama. Can I talk to you?" the young man asked. There was barely enough space for his crutches in-between desks. He was one of several people who were only here because Shikaku wouldn't have known what to do with them otherwise - an eighteen-year-old who'd lost use of his right leg in the Kyuubi attack, who had no training in the medicine production the clan specialized in because he'd been a field shinobi up until then, and who had never even done any kind of clerical work on his rotations.

"Go ahead," Shikaku said, hoping this wasn't going to require his personal attention. Just because the initial chaos had died down didn't mean they weren't busy. Right now, everyone was up in arms about a Cloud ninja getting sighted near the capital. And he had a terrible hangover.

"I mean," his clansman quickly reassured, "I don't want to overstep. And I don't have anything against Heguri-san-"

"Out with it."

Still hesitant, he confessed that Ikoma's widow was badmouthing Yoshino whenever Shikaku wasn't around. "-and she even said her daughter would make a better clan heir!"

Shikaku sighed. "How troublesome. By the way, have you finished processing those forms yet?"

"Y-yes, Shikaku-sama. Hours ago."

"Good job. Take the afternoon off. You've been working hard."

It wasn't just him. Almost one fifth of the staff at the offices were people who couldn't be of use anywhere else; hasty replacements for those who had tragically lost their lives that day, or those who had - almost as tragically - attempted to retire into a desk position after the war and were forced back into active duty so soon afterwards. The rest, however, were the old guard. Competent. Reliable. Shikaku wondered how many of them still hadn't forgiven his transgression all these years later.

This wasn't helping his hangover.

The next day, he walked straight up to the house she lived in so there would be nowhere for her to hide.

"Heguri," he said, when she - surprisingly - slid the door open herself. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

She hesitated briefly, then looked straight at him. "You made a mistake that day, Shikaku."

"Is that so?" he asked, in lieu of asking what the hell she was talking about. It occurred to him that he hadn't heard her voice once since they'd been, what - twenty?

"Shikako is going to be a ninja," she explained unprompted. "The medics were wrong. She can use chakra."

Shikaku hadn't felt one way or another about the idea of having her for a wife until he'd found himself falling in love with Yoshino. Perhaps he would have if she'd had this steel in her spine back then, though he couldn't say whether it would have made him like her more or less.

It didn't matter. One way or another, his dead brother was the one who'd put that look there.

"Really?" he asked. Made a show of yawning. At least two clan members were listening in on their conversation from nearby homes. Three if you counted little Shikako herself, who was standing motionless on the other side of a closed shoji door. "That's great. Have her fainting spells gone away too?"

"We'll see how your own son compares to her in a year," Heguri insisted. "Father and I have both been training her."

"So that's a no," he said, not quite a reprimand. "What about you, Shikako-chan? What do you think?"

The door slid open just a crack, a dark eye peeking through. Amusingly, the child seemed to let out a breath she'd been holding.

"Shikako! We don't listen in on other people's conversations!" her mother snapped and opened the door all the way, as though that was going to convince him that she'd been totally ignorant to the presence of this three-year-old up until now.

"Sorry," the child said.

"Well?" Heguri asked. "What do you have to say to your uncle?"

"I... I... Good evening," she said, toddled over to her mother and hid behind her legs.

He finally got to have a proper conversation with his niece just after her fifth birthday. Shikamaru and her were sitting in a clearing. He had one of those plastic magnetized shogi boards and was explaining fortresses to her. Badly.

Shikaku approached him from behind and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Dad? What's up?" Shikamaru asked.

He leaned in to whisper. "Your mother's going to be home in half an hour. Do you really want her to see what your room looks like?"

Shikamaru went pale. Shikako blinked after him as he made himself scarce.

"Do you play?" he asked her.

"Grandfather taught me how all the pieces move," she said, which was basically a 'no'. "Why did you send Shikamaru away?"

There went his hope to lead into things with a nice and easy shogi lesson. "How old are you now, Shikako-chan?"

"Five," she said, showing it on her fingers. He had received no invitation to her birthday party, but had still sent over a gift through one of their cousins.

"Already? That's old enough to go to the academy."

She nodded. "I'm starting next year."

"Are you excited?"

The child squinted. "You know," she said. "My mom doesn't like you very much."

Shikaku let out a loud guffaw. "I hope I don't get into too much trouble for talking to you, then."

"Don't worry," she reassured. "Mom is never angry for more than a couple minutes, and she always forgives me if I do well at throwing practice. Also," the girl said in a hushed voice, like she was about to reveal a terrible secret.

"Yes?" he asked, leaning in.

"Grandmother still scolds her sometimes. I've heard them argue about the dishes."

If Shikaku's parents hadn't cut all contact with him and then died, he imagined they would still be scolding him for stupid little things by the time he was sixty.

"Your mother trains you herself, doesn't she?" he asked. "Have you learned any jutsu yet?"

A strong kunoichi was considered a good mother precisely because she could impart basic skills upon her children and protect the home while her husband was at war, and Heguri had been good enough once that she probably would have been promoted to jounin if not for the open secret that she was going to be married soon. So it wasn't, exactly, that Shikaku doubted her ability to train her daughter well... assuming the diagnosis was incorrect.

"No," Shikako said. "I thought you're not supposed to until you're in the academy."

He searched her face. "Really? What's this I hear about you using chakra at the training grounds, then?"

For a moment, it seemed like she was searching his face in turn. "Those… were chakra control exercises?" she said very slowly. It wasn't really a question.

There was nothing in her body language to suggest that she was unhappy. That she was suppressing memories of pain. Shikaku wasn't Inoichi; he could be missing something. But nobody had mentioned any fainting spells in a while...

He wondered what it would look like if she was hiding pain. If her voice would get watery like Ikoma's when he'd been trying to put on a brave face, in that brief period after he'd figured out the necessity of keeping useless emotions to himself but before he'd actually learnt how to do it.

"I see," he said. "Did you enjoy playing shogi with my son?"

"He's alright," she said, and diplomatically abstained from sharing her opinion on shogi. He took the plastic set with him when he left.

Maybe, he thought, they wouldn't manage to ruin their kids after all.

.

.

.

Neji sat in perfect seiza at the dinner table and used his chopsticks properly. Miyabi, who was only a few months younger than him but still ate like a baby, looked to him in awe.

"There won't be many children from proper clans in your class," mother said. "One Shiranui, as far as I'm aware. One Mochizuki."

Neji waited for a beat to make sure he had permission to speak. None of the adults at the table took the opportunity.

"Are they strong?" he asked curiously.

"Not at all," said great-aunt Kamome. "These are both minor clans."

"They don't have a special ability like the Byakugan," a different great-aunt explained.

"There's the Uchiha clan…" Miyabi said, counting on her fingers. "The Akimichi clan… The Aburame clan…"

"Those ones won't be in my class," Neji reminded.

"There should be one Nara," Mother said. "She won't be able to rival you in strength, of course, but she should be acceptable com-"

There were loud footsteps out in the hallway. They belonged to an adult. Neji's heart dropped. This had to have something to do with the Main Branch; no adult would dare stomp otherwise. Everybody turned as one to watch the door before it flew open.

The first thing he saw was a bandaged forehead. The woman it belonged to was horribly out of breath. "Kugi-san," she just barely managed to get out in-between gasps, addressing Mother.

"What is it?" she asked. He looked between them cautiously.

"I'm… sorry…" the woman said. "Hiashi-sama… wishes to see your son again."

Neji recognized her now. She was one of the ladies who were married to Main Branch members, which was a great honor, so she didn't live here with the rest of them.

"May I accompany him?" Mother asked.

"No."

Mother turned back to her food with graceful resignation. "Then he'd better not leave the Clan Head waiting."

Neji spent the whole way there preparing himself for pain, so that he would not fall to his knees and scream like Iroha had two months ago. It didn't come to that. Grandfather told him to represent the clan well. A different elderly Main Branch member told him much the same as he was told back at the side branch house.

"There will be an Uchiha in a different class in your year," Grandfather added. "That is not an excuse for poor rankings."

Neji bowed dutifully.

"One last thing," Uncle said, looking out into the garden. "What happens between these walls is of no concern to outsiders. You will never mention the Mark to anyone who doesn't already know."

After that, he was sent back.

Oh, he realized much later, lying on his futon at night. It's impossible not to scream. Even Father couldn't do it.

"This is our classroom. Everybody, sit down," the teacher said on their first day at the academy.

Neji stood rooted in the doorway. Which seat? All his classmates were his equals in age, the only adult in the room standing before them. These benches and desks were nothing like the seiza cushions at home. They were more like the chairs in the waiting room at the doctor's. Which row was supposed to be for the most important people? The front one, because it was in front, or the back one because it was highest?

"Over here! Hurry up," one dark-eyed boy told another, physically blocking the rest of his bench with his whole arm. A girl with twin braids made a beeline for the uppermost window seat.

Neji refused to be the last to pick. He sat down directly in front of the teacher, so that he could listen closest. He studied the man for any kind of disapproving reaction, and accidentally caught his gaze. The man smiled. It seemed like Neji had picked correctly.

They were instructed to stand up and introduce themselves one-by-one. "It's important to get to know your classmates, even if you won't remember every name right away. You there in the back, go ahead and start."

Neji turned around to see who he was talking to, resolved to remember every name right away. "My name is Nara Shikako," said the girl with the braids, the slightest tremor in her voice, and sat back down on the bench. This was the one who was supposed to be acceptable company? Neji had expected her to stick out in some way, but she looked no different than the row of academy students who weren't from a clan.

'But where do people come from if they're not from a clan?' he had asked the adults once, cautiously interrupting a conversation about some rude chunin at the tower.

'Simple families,' someone had explained. 'With no legacy. No special abilities of their own. Their role in life is to be insignificant and to support their betters.'

Neji was pretty sure those people actually came from apartment buildings, the same way clan people came from normal wooden houses. He remembered being taken on an errand to the Akimichi grounds when he was very young. Their houses were made of wood as well.

The boy who sat next to Neji introduced himself as Shiranui Kasei. He wrote it in katakana, but Neji could read at least one hundred kanji already; 'Kasei' sounded like 'Mars', which had 'fire' in it. Only Main Branch members were allowed-

Later, during lunch break, Kasei introduced himself again 'just in case' and showed Neji his pencil which had a shuriken-shaped eraser at the tip. His hair was cut in a weird sort of fringe which hid most of his forehead but bared its precise center. Neji was starting to realize that none of them were anything like the Hyuuga.

He looked back up at Shikako. She met his eyes for the briefest of moments and then turned to look out the window.

Mother had been right. None of his classmates could 'rival him in strength'. At least he didn't think so, because they were all slower at the obstacle course when Sensei timed them and couldn't do as many pull-ups. 

"Mother?" he asked after dinner on Thursday. His third week at the academy was almost over.

"Yes?"

"We have taijutsu classes every day," he said, uncertainly.

She said nothing.

"But we haven't learned any taijutsu yet."

Her lip quirked up ever-so-slightly. "Neji," she said. "Just as it was our fate to be born as members of the Side Branch of the Hyuuga Clan, it was your classmates' fate that they weren't born to the Hyuuga at all. I doubt you will learn much of anything in taijutsu class."

Neji wasn't sure he understood, but it was so rare to see her amused that he was glad he'd asked the question anyway.

They ran laps every morning, except for Sunday, when the academy had a day off and the bulk of Neji's training took place. Nara Shikako really was the least hopeless one. He only ever passed her once by the time he completed ten laps, instead of six or seven like he did with most of the others. Kasei was somewhere in the middle.

"I thought you were alright at first," the boy told him about halfway through their first year. "But you're really stuck up. I'm asking Sensei to sit somewhere else."

Sensei said no, and Neji pretended he didn't mind sitting with him now, the same way he pretended there was no deep dark pit in his chest whenever he saw Hinata.

It wasn't until the start of their second year that they started to learn actual kata. Two simple punches, at first. Two types of blocks you could do in return. It felt strange to be punching instead of striking with an open palm, but none of it was difficult.

It had felt strange to sit on a raised bench instead of the floor at first too. Now he hardly noticed it anymore. He wondered if, one day, it would dawn on him that he'd gotten just as used to having the cursed seal on his forehead. After all, everybody always told him and the other children that they must accept their fate. Just yesterday, Miyabi had gotten slapped and then reprimanded in hushed desperate voices because she didn't want to go help clean the Main House.

When they started practicing actual kumite, Neji was pulled away from a civilian-born boy he barely knew and paired off against Kasei instead. "There. That's a better match," the teacher's assistant said, pleased. "No need to scare all the other students."

It wasn't a better match. Not really. He looked around to see how the others were doing and found Shikako knocking her friend to the ground with a punch to the throat. Her name was - Tenten, or something, and she didn't even have a last name.

"Sensei," a different girl raised her hand a few lessons later, but didn't wait for permission to speak. Her forearm was rapidly developing a bruise. They were only just starting to work on high kicks. "Why don't you have Shikako fight against one of the boys for once? Say... someone like Neji?"

Girls never fought against boys in taijutsu class. Neji had simply accepted it as how things were done at the academy, but the teacher's assistant seemed to contemplate it. "Maybe that's not such a bad idea. What do you think, Daiya-sensei?"

Shikako was frozen in place, eyes wide like a deer's.

"Come here, you two," the teacher decided. "Show the class what you can do."

The girl who had made the suggestion dusted imaginary dirt off her hands. "Sweet revenge."

Shikako threw her a look. When she turned her attention back to Neji, she looked resigned to her fate, not terrified like Hinata would be. They made the seal of confrontation.

Neji never would end up learning much in taijutsu class - save for joint locks, which his cousin Takuma would later explain much better, even though a Hyuuga had no need for them - but this was the day when he learned an opponent might pull his hair and try to throw dirt in his eyes.

"K.O. Shikako! K.O. Shikako!" the whole class chanted.

Neji won despite the hair-pulling, so it was fine.

"The dirt trick wouldn't have worked if I had my clan's technique activated," he informed her once the lesson was over.

She halted in her tracks. It was lunchtime. Like most of the class, she always brought her bento box with her when they had outdoor practice right before lunch, but there was a rule against staying at the training ground to either eat or play and she was the type to actually adhere to it.

"The Byakugan, right?" she asked, eyes shrewed. "Your taijutsu wouldn't have worked if I had my clan's technique activated."

Before Neji could voice his skepticism, Tenten interjected. "Yes, but you don't know how to do it yet. Come on, I'm hungry." She grabbed Shikako by the wrist and pulled her towards the main path. The bento she held in her other hand was the plain plastic type and looked old and full of scratches. Her name was written on it in permanent marker.

Shikako sputtered. "That's not true. I can almost-"

"Hey, Neji-kun, how about you eat lunch with us?" Tenten sounded hopeful.

He looked at Shikako, who settled and gave him a shrug. "Why not?"

"I don't have my bento with me," he said.

"It's okay. We'll wait here," Tenten promised. "Then we can go on the roof. You can see everything from up there!"

He went inside to grab it.

They continued to eat lunch together and Shikako remained his regular sparring partner. She never won, but that was to be expected considering her clan were mid-ranged fighters who specialized in ninjutsu, and weren't any good at solo combat anyway. At least, that was how his great-aunt explained it.

"Neji-kun," Tenten asked out of the blue, "would you like to go to the sweets shop with us after class?"

He looked over at her, trying to puzzle out why she would even suggest such a thing. "I don't have any money," he finally answered, once a few seconds had passed and it became clear that she was serious.

"I do! I got one hundred ryo for my birthday," she said, proudly patting her bag.

"I told you I can pay. I get pocket money," Shikako said. It was an argument he'd heard between them once before. It had sounded well-worn back then already.

"So can I. Because I've got money now," Tenten reiterated.

"But Neji doesn't. Wouldn't it be weird if I paid for him and not-"

"I can't come with you," Neji interrupted. "I'm expected back home."

He was normally great at reading people - 'you have good eyes', everyone always said - but Shikako had a look on her face that he couldn't decipher. "Are you not allowed to go anywhere at all, or...?"

He stared at her blankly. How was he supposed to know? He'd never tried to go anywhere without specific instructions before.

That evening, he asked Mother.

"Go to do what?" she asked. "If you're training with that Nara girl, then that's acceptable."

He relayed that information to Shikako the next morning.

"We can train," she promised. "We have training grounds back home. It's more convenient than looking for a free one in the village. And mom can supervise - I've been wanting to have a proper spar with you, with chakra and everything."

"Her grandma's a great cook," Tenten added cheerfully.

.

.

.

Heguri had a fight with her parents. Shikaku knew this only because everyone around them was talking about it. He didn't ask any of the gossip-mongers what they thought the fight had been about. That woman and her child were, through no fault of their own, an ugly scar in the fabric of the clan. One that would twinge and complain whenever Shikaku dared touch it. They were a constant reminder to the rest of the Nara that their leader had willingly abandoned them once.

He could deal with it and ask his questions anyway, but it was just too much trouble. The idiots in the offices could gossip as much as they wanted so long as they respected Yoshino as his wife and Shikamaru as his heir. And if Heguri and her family didn't...

Well, they had better be alone in that.

In the end, he learned the cause of the fight from Shikamaru.

"Shikako said Baa-san wants her mother to get married again," he said. "Sounds like a pain."

"You have no idea how right you are," Shikaku said mournfully over the shogi board between them.

Heguri's younger brother was scheduled to get married in July, he remembered. He had personally rubber-stamped the permission form to relocate his bride from the northernmost Nara farm into the village proper. She was a civilian with very little actual Nara blood, which would have been almost as scandalous as Yoshino not being a Nara at all if he had been the one to do it.

Maybe their parents felt Heguri should get out of the house now that there was going to be a new young woman around.

"Say, Shikamaru," he asked, "what do you think of your cousin?"

"Of Shikako? She's troublesome. Everyone always says, 'one year ago, Shikako was already doing this and that', and then I have to do it too."

"Maybe they wouldn't be saying it if you trained more," he suggested.

Shikamaru fell backwards onto the engawa like a sack of rice. "Ugh. She can be your heir if she wants. All the old geezers would be happy about it anyway."

But he himself didn't seem happy about it at all.

Shikaku found the girl's mother drinking tea on her back porch and sat down next to her without asking.

"Damn you," he said lazily. "Because of you, I had to start teaching Shikamaru jutsu in his first year. It's such a pain."

She only made the slightest of motions to look over at him, but something came awake in her eyes like all she'd ever wanted had been for him to be rude to her back. "Didn't you also start learning Shadow Paralysis when you were five?" she asked. "I remember everyone talking about it. 'Our clan heir, so talented'. How sickening."

"Why, how old were you when you started to learn it?"

She took a sip of her steaming tea. "Eight. Shikako isn't like me, though. She takes after her father."

Ikoma had been almost seven when their own father had began personally training him. In hindsight, Shikaku wasn't sure if that had been a matter of talent or of birth order. Who knew what kind of considerations her father had made when deciding when to start training his children - he could have simply been waiting until his son, who was younger only by a year, was ready as well so he didn't have to go through all the same explanations twice.

"You can't force her to be his legacy," he said. "Our children are not clay for us to mold."

"No," she agreed. "But she wants to train this way. You haven't seen the fire in her eyes. There's something motivating her. I don't know if it's Ikoma's memory, or that boy in her academy class, or the diagnosis-"

"Heguri," he interrupted. "If you want to move into a different house, you don't have to go through the office. I can approve it here and now."

She placed her cup on the edge of the engawa next to her little teapot. "O illustrious clan head. Would you like some tea?"

He studied her. "No, thank you. I just had tea back home."

"I said, would you like some tea?"

He would rather have something stronger. "Alright, then."

She went inside and returned with an empty cup from the same set. Handed it to him and poured the tea properly with both hands.

"I'm returning to active duty," she stated as he took his first sip.

He wondered, for the very first time, if this woman had ever wanted to marry him in the first place. "Why?" he asked.

She poured the rest of the tea into her cup and drained it in one gulp. "This is not a request. Haven't I fulfilled my duty to the clan already?"

He laughed. "You're never done fulfilling your duty to the clan."

"I see," she said. "In that case, at least I'll be able to do it away from you."

Yoshino, he knew, was glad to be rid of a ninja's duties. She had told him as much herself, whispering at night while their son was in deep sleep. Shikaku, too, hadn't been out on a mission in three whole years.

"And if something happens? Are you ready to leave your daughter alone?"

She stood up and brushed off her yukata. "She won't be alone. She has the clan, doesn't she? Now finish your tea. Damn you for leaving me with more dishes."

She moved in with Kofuku the following week and took her daughter with her. There was no need for application forms or requests of any kind. Kofuku had lost a husband too, so there was plenty of room in her house.

Shikaku quietly updated the address on the clan registry and didn't ask any questions. It was the path of least resistance.

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.

.

Shikako had been reading a biology textbook, so she had no idea what Neji had said to prompt Tenten to reply, "She's, like, really important in her clan. I think their leader is her uncle or something like that."

Shikako winced. They didn't normally talk about these things. Not with Tenten, who had always seemed so uncomfortable with their differences, and especially not with Neji. Of course, that didn't mean that they weren't allowed to bring it up.

She shut her book.

"My father was the previous Nara clan head," she said, hoping to nip any forced parallels in the bud.

"See?" Tenten said, hands out in a 'what can you do' sort of motion. "We might as well be talking to a princess."

It was a joke, but it wasn't.

"It's not like that," Shikako said hastily. "My clan - isn't like that."

The truth was that it didn't matter how closely related Shikamaru and her were; he was the heir by default, and in the event that he died, Uncle would be free to pick literally anyone from the clan as his replacement as long as they were a ninja. The fact that people acted as though she was next-in-line was... it was irrelevant.

What really mattered - what still caused Mom's jaw to set whenever Aunt Yoshino was mentioned - was the circumstances under which Shikako's father had become clan head in the first place.

She didn't voice any of that. Discussing her cousin's hypothetical death during lunch break would be far too morbid. That, and telling outsiders about the laws and traditions of your clan just wasn't done. Much less their scandals.

Thankfully, Neji didn't have any follow-up questions. Or, if he did, he decided not to voice them at this time.

"Oh, right," their teacher said at the tail end of a monday-morning math class. "Mayumi-sensei asked me to pass on a message to the girls."

"Why only the girls?!" a boy who sat in the second row demanded loudly. His name was Saizo and his father was a special jounin who headed the Mission Assignment and Processing Office. Shikako knew this because he never shut up about it.

"Because Mayumi-sensei is the kunoichi class teacher, idiot!" a girl who sat all the way in the front, next to Neji, answered just as loudly.

Sensei scolded them both for talking out of turn and then informed them all that kunoichi classes were canceled today and next week.

"If you're free, we could train together this afternoon," Shikako said once math class was over, Tenten and her joining Neji in the front row. "Since nobody's expecting us back home."

Neji's home life was a curious thing. It seemed like somebody was always expecting him back home, except for all the times when they weren't. Somehow, what little he'd allowed Shikako to glimpse felt incongruent both with how children had been treated in her past life and with how they were treated here.

There was the Caged Bird Seal, sure. But he never exactly seemed afraid to go home, the way someone constantly in danger of getting tortured would be. Mostly, he just made it sound suffocating.

"Not me," Tenten said. "Monday is my chore day. I might as well go back and start earlier."

'Go back'. Not 'go home'.

"That's... fair," said Shikako, who would definitely have chosen to procrastinate and then regretted it in the evening if she'd been in Tenten's place. Not that she herself didn't have chores - it just didn't particularly matter when she got them done. Especially since Mom was away on a mission and Kofuku-oba rarely told her what to do. She still treated her as a houseguest more than a stepchild. Shikako liked the woman, but having heard what she sounded like when scolding her subordinates in R&D, she was more than happy with this arrangement.

Of course, there were clan-wide chores as well. Academy-aged kids, in particular, were expected to help the elderly or clean the paths or babysit. Shikamaru had to feed the deer every morning. Shikako did get asked to help out sometimes, but the clan had mysteriously failed to assign her a permanent duty like that.

She wasn't going to be the one to point out this oversight.

"I have to be home by five," Neji said, and didn't expand on what would be happening at five.

This still left them with several hours to train. The three of them did, in fact, spend almost all their time together training, something that's never been the case back when it had just been Tenten and her. So it wasn't like they were lying to the Hyuuga clan; it was only today that Neji and Shikako found themselves up on the roof of the academy instead.

"My younger cousin likes to watch clouds," she said, leaning over the railing to watch kids from other classes stream outside, "but I think I like people-watching better."

Some of the other children must have been coming from the training grounds or from that one wing of the building where you had to go all the way upstairs and then three floors down again. Some were milling about while the parents picking them up talked to each other.

"Oh, there he is," she said, having located someone vaguely Shikamaru-shaped down below.

Neji's pupil-less eyes scanned the crowd. It was always so hard to tell where exactly he was looking. "Which one is he? The one with the pineapple hair?"

She snorted. "Yeah. How did you know?"

"The woman he's with is wearing your clan's crest."

"You can tell that from here?" she asked, impressed. She was unsure if the Hyuuga naturally had an advantage when it came to eyesight even when they weren't using the Byakugan, or if they did some sort of training to improve it. Was eyesight even a sense one could train?

"Of course," Neji said. "See that girl next to the tree, with the short black hair? That's my cousin."

And - Shikako knew. She knew she had to talk to Neji at some point. That she couldn't simply let him go on like this and develop into that angry person who would try to kill Hinata in the chunin exam.

She just didn't know what to say.

"I think we both have lots of cousins," she said. "Well, second cousins. My mom's brother is about to get married though-"

Neji regarded her like he also knew she was full of shit. It felt unfair, coming from a child.

"Do you believe in fate?" he asked.

"Erm," she said, to buy herself time. "Depends."

"Depends on what?"

"Depends on what you mean by fate. Do some people have a grand destiny to save the world or whatever? Maybe. But I don't think there's some higher power out there micromanaging every aspect of our lives."

He was frowning. She wasn't entirely sure if he knew what the word 'micromanaging' meant.

"What about who's a leader and who has to listen to their orders? Does fate decide that?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe that's just politics." She spoke with as much patience as she could muster for this topic, which wasn't a lot of patience. "And I wouldn't want to run my clan anyway. Too much paperwork."

"I don't want to do paperwork either," he said. "I just wish..."

There, she thought. He was finally going to bring up the mark or the circumstances of his father's death. Then she would have no choice but to talk to him about it.

"Never mind," he said instead.

"Do you believe in fate?" he asked Tenten on Saturday. This was one of Shikako's least favorite aspects of the academy - they had classes six days a week.

"Yes!" Tenten said, terribly excited. "Want me to tell your fortune? I learned from one of the older girls at the orphanage."

"...Go ahead," he said.

Tenten whipped out a deck of regular playing cards. Shuffled them the proper way, so that they were practically a blur in her hands. Laid them down and did a series of mystical-looking hand motions. "Draw three," she instructed.

Neji drew three.

"Alright. This means deceit or betrayal... by a friend with dark hair... related to an unpleasant or immature person." She frowned. "That doesn't seem right. Neither of us is going to betray you. Maybe it was supposed to be the other way around...?"

"It's okay. Maybe the cards mean someone from my clan," he said. "We all have dark hair. But do you believe in real fate?"

Tenten looked down at her cards almost shyly. "Yeah. I have to believe my parents died for a reason. Otherwise, isn't it just sad?"

"Just sad," he echoed.

Shikako felt like a third wheel in this conversation. Every instinct in her body told her to stay that way. But she simply had to say something.

"Even if someone up there decides what will happen to us or how good we'll be ahead of time," she said, looking up at the clouds. It was a moderately cloudy day. "It doesn't mean we can tell what they've decided from all the way down here, does it? So we might as well do our best."

"I guess that sort of makes sense," said Tenten. "I'm already giving it my all, though..."

"At least you're better than all the other girls," Neji said, excluding Shikako by default.

Shikako looked at him, sitting down on the grass in his beige pants in the middle of lunch break, and tried not to envision an older version of him on a manga panel with a wood spike through his chest and blood dripping down his chin. Tried not to thing about Uncle Shikaku, who was always so nice to her. About Pain's attack, which was going to kill so many, and how precarious the circumstances of their return would be.

Morbidly, she wondered how he would react if she told him he was destined to die protecting Hinata. He would probably say it was only to be expected.

.

.

.

"I hate her," Neji admit to Shikako one day, up on the academy roof again, just the two of them.

"Your cousin Hinata?" Shikako asked to clarify.

"Yes. She's just a spoiled brat. She can't do anything right," he said, the very beginnings of venom in his voice. "And because of her, one time, Hiashi-sama..."

Shikako looked away from him. Looked down at the yard, which was empty right now. She feared that if she looked at Neji right now, he would remember that he wasn't supposed to talk about this and clam up again.

But hadn't he talked to Naruto about it in front of a packed arena at the chunin exam, in that story from before?

"He got really angry at my father," he finished, vaguely. "He punished him."

Heh. From up here, Shikako could just barely see the lone swing Naruto sat on in all those flashbacks.

"That sounds very scary," she said. Careful, careful, like painstakingly folding complex origami out of the wrong type of paper and trying not to let the edges rip.

"My father died because he ordered him to," Neji added.

Now Shikako did look at him. Hadn't there... been something, about that? But she could hardly mention it to him without some way to explain where she'd gotten that information. Technically speaking, she wasn't even supposed to know about the Kumo incident.

"What a cruel thing to do," she said, and felt more useless than ever.

In some ways, the academy functioned exactly like a school from Shikako's past life - or maybe like a civilian elementary school in this life. She didn't know anyone who went to one, so she really couldn't say.

In other ways, the true purpose of the academy was plain to see. They had weapon-throwing classes with diagrams of the human body. They had lessons on the shinobi rules of conduct during a war. And, in their very first year, two students from their class dropped out because they couldn't quite keep up with the physical requirements.

A few more had quietly left in their second year once they started to learn the fundamentals of molding chakra, before Sensei even got around to explaining what ninjutsu was. It wasn't a lot of students, and Shikako hadn't known any of them well, so she'd barely noticed save for a brief worry that Tenten would struggle with it and it would put strain on their friendship. She had, a bit, but was still leagues ahead of most students who didn't have ninja parents.

Then, when they received their end-of-year rankings, the total number of students in their year was lower by almost forty. Tenten's scores were pretty good - sixth in their class. Shikako herself was ranked third out of 112 students in their year, only behind Neji and the Uchiha boy from class E. It made Mom glow with pride and caused Kofuku-oba to start complaining about Shikamaru. He was one of her favorite topics to complain about.

"-brought it up with Shikaku. He won't do anything about the boy's grades, of course, and don't even get me started on that Yoshino woman," she said, wiping her hands with a dish towel after she'd finished washing the rice. "That's what happens as a result of lax parenting." Kofuku-oba didn't even have children.

"Shikaku probably doesn't consider his scores as a second-year important," Mom said. It was unusually charitable, for her. "Nobody ever looks at anything but the graduation scores, and even those are only important if you're trying for a position that requires good academic skills. The child will be part of the Ino-Shika-Cho anyway."

"Of course, of course. But he's still making the clan look bad. Good thing we've got Shikako here." She laid a hand on Shikako's shoulder. "Hm? You don't look happy."

Shikako had been focused on chopping vegetables, but maybe she'd been glaring at the leek a bit too hard.

"I'm fine," she said. "I just don't understand why we have to have the survival training after all the exams. Shouldn't this mean the school year is over?"

It wasn't like she could say she was trying very hard not to think about that Uchiha boy. How old had Sasuke been during the massacre, again?

Over the too-short spring break, the classes were reshuffled to bring them back to the standard thirty-student average. Thankfully, the reshuffling was done in such a way that students from class E were spread evenly among the other classes, which meant Shikako - who was in class A - got to keep all the same classmates she had known from the beginning. She did not envy the students who were suddenly made into the 'new kid' without even switching schools.

Rock Lee, she learned, had been in class E. She learned this when he stood in front of the class and loudly introduced himself, even though nobody had asked for self-introductions. Shikako tamped down on her secondhand embarrassment in favour of studying him. He wasn't wearing any green yet and his hair wasn't in a bowl cut - but then again, why would it be? He probably didn't even know who Might Gai was yet.

"That's very nice, Lee-kun," Sensei said and ushered him towards a seat. Several of their classmates laughed.

"What an idiot," said Neji, who had taken the opportunity of a new school year to join Tenten and her in the back of the class. It had taken some convincing, namely Shikako telling him that a good ninja never let his back be exposed while Tenten nodded sagely.

Neji didn't look like he was trying to suppress secondhand embarrassment like her so much as relishing in someone else's failure. Shikako ignored him and wondered about Lee. Had he fallen behind already? Did he feel the same pressure to drop out as all those other kids? Did he have parents or other family to make the decision on his behalf? The look on Tenten's face betrayed no familiarity, but Konoha had more than one orphanage.

The Uchiha boy in their year, meanwhile, ended up in class B. His name was Takagi and he seemed perfectly nice the one time Shikako heard him speak - "Man, I'm so jealous. Everybody says I probably won't unlock mine until I'm a genin," he had said to Neji, having started a friendly conversation with him for the first and last time.

"Why?" Tenten asked.

"Huh? Oh, I guess I'm not really supposed to talk about how it works..."

He was dead by September.

.

.

.

"What do I call Kofuku-oba now, anyway?" Shikako asked her mother once, since the woman wasn't really her aunt.

"You call her what you've always called her," Mom replied a bit testily.

"Alright, I get it," Shikako said.

"She is graciously letting us live in her home-"

"I get it."

.

.

.

Neji told Shikako and Tenten about the Caged Bird Seal near the start of their fourth year. 

Shikako and Tenten had been about to have a sleepover. Neji wasn't allowed. This wasn't, as far as Shikako could tell, due to any horrific Hyuuga-related reasons but just because his mother thought it would be inappropriate for him to sleep over at a girl’s house.

At least he was allowed to stay a bit past dinnertime.

"Can I show you something?" he asked, in the middle of a conversation about seals. Tenten and Shikako were currently trying to figure out non-standard storage seals - something Shikako knew Tenten would eventually figure out anyway, so it didn't feel fair for it to be so difficult for both of them now.

They had the house to themselves. Not even because Mom was on a mission this time, but because she’d decided to accompany Kofuku-oba on some business at one of the Nara farms outside the village. They had taken advantage of it by eating only sweets for dinner and monopolizing the living room table with all their papers. Neji had been very quiet for all of it so far; Shikako had assumed he simply found the topic of storage seals boring.

"Sure," Tenten said.

"You have to promise not to tell anyone," he said, and that - and that made it fairly clear what he was about to show them.

Tenten and Shikako both promised.

Neji reached behind his waterfall of dark hair and unfastened his bandages. They loosened enough that he could pull them up like a headband.

"That's... a seal," Shikako hazarded. Pretended to hazard. After nine years in this world, she wasn't shocked at the sight of the manji symbol.

"It's the Curse Seal of the Hyuuga Main Family," Neji explained. "In the past, before the founding of Konoha, enemy clans would try to steal the corpses of Hyuuga they've killed and take their eyes for themselves. And so, the clan head at the time invented a seal and placed it on the foreheads of all the weaker clan members, so that their eyes would be destroyed when they died. That's what I was told, at least."

"But it's not just to protect your eyes, is it?" Shikako asked, already knowing the answer. "I've seen your cousin. Her hair covers her forehead, but…”

"There's nothing there," Neji confirmed. "Nobody in the Main Family has the mark. And every single one of them gets taught a special hand seal which can cause those who bear the mark excruciating pain."

"Your father," Shikako said, a throwback to a past conversation.

Tenten looked between them like she was watching a ping pong match. "I don't get it," she said. "If this seal is meant to protect your eyes from being stolen, why doesn't your main family have it? Aren't their eyes the most important."

"That is why it's the duty of the Side Branch to protect them at all times," Neji said, and told them the story of his father's death.

And even now, even after all of this, Shikako didn't know what to say. If this had been a spontaneous reaction - if she truly hadn’t known - then maybe she would suggest finding a way to remove it. 

But Shikako had spent years at this point rehearsing this conversation in her head and picking her own responses apart and scrapping every version. Without Naruto's promise to change the Hyuuga clan, the idea of trying to remove the mark would sound like nonsense to Neji. She was probably decades away from that kind of sealing prowess anyway. Had no evidence she would ever be able to achieve it. After months upon months of practice, she had only just managed to remove a harmless flare seal from the surface of a scroll without causing an explosion.

“This is awful! Can’t anyone do anything?” Tenten asked, outraged.

“If this happened during the signing of a treaty, then the Hokage has to have been involved,” Shikako said practically. “He knows. I bet everyone important in this village knows.”

“Yes,” Neji agreed. “This is the fate of the Hyuuga branch family, and it can’t be changed. I just wanted to tell the two of you.”

From his mouth, it sounded like rebellion.

.

.

.

In the end, their friendship didn't end over the issue of immutable fate or anything dramatic like that.

"Second-to-last again?" Shimura Hone from their class asked another girl, holding her report card just out of reach. When Shikako had first learned her clan name, she'd been cautious of her due to the potential connection to Danzo. This had lasted all of a week until she'd found out the Shimura clan didn't have their own area of the village like the Nara or the Hyuuga and Hone only ever met her clan head for assemblies, weddings and funerals.

These days, Shikako was cautious of her because she was mean. Not a bully, exactly - she wasn't afraid to punch up, and didn't go out of her way to target specific kids either. She just never let an opportunity for a sharp remark slip by.

"Give it back," the other girl - Megumi, no last name - demanded, but shakily.

"Man, you're lucky," Hone said, slapping the report card back on her desk. "You would be dead last if they didn't put Lee in our class. What a loser."

"As far as I'm concerned, neither of them deserve to be at the academy," Neji said. "They should both drop out already."

In hindsight, Shikako would think of half a dozen clever comebacks to that which would simultaneously keep the peace and refute what Neji was saying. In the moment, though, all she could think to say was, "Lee works very hard."

She'd been about to say something more, she was sure of it, but everyone around was suddenly looking at her. It almost qualified as an audience.

"Are you kidding?" Hone asked. "He hasn't even gotten the first step of the transformation jutsu yet! They'll kick him out in no time."

"If they were going to kick him out, they would have done it last year already," Shikako objected weakly. It was true - somehow, in the story, Lee had made it all the way to graduation - but she couldn't exactly prove it here and now.

"Are you picking up charity cases now?" Neji asked, and actually had the gall to sound disappointed. "Is that why you made friends with Tenten?"

Hone laughed.

Tenten was looking between Neji and Shikako like she wasn't sure who to be offended by. Finally, she settled on Shikako. "Is that true?!"

"Obviously not," Shikako snapped, cheeks burning with embarrassment. This wasn't fair. Neji should have been the one who's embarrassed. "And you're not bad at being a ninja either."

"See? She knows Lee's a loser, too," Hone said practically. "She's just too much of a doormat to say it."

Shikako would have liked to say she kept arguing after that.

She didn't.

"You're doing it wrong," she told Lee a month later, having caught him out at the academy training fields during lunch break. "At this stage, you're supposed to visualize the transformation. You're just letting it sputter out."

Lee was looking at her for a few long moments, his eyes too round for comfort.

"Yosh!" he exclaimed and formed the full set of hand seals. "With your advice, I will definitely be successful this time!"

"It wasn't really-" Advice, Shikako didn't finish, because Lee's attempt at the jutsu dissolved into useless chakra smoke again.

Shikako hadn't spent a lot of time considering why exactly Lee was unable to perform ninjutsu and genjutsu, but if somebody had asked her back before she'd started to learn it herself, she would have likely said something like 'deformed chakra coils'. Now, with an understanding of how jutsu actually worked, she was more inclined to guess that he just sucked at it. The same way some people just sucked at hand-eye coordination or at doing math in their head. The Lee from the show could walk on water, after all, which meant that he was capable of external chakra manipulation. And physical issues with the chakra system were no different than physical issues with the circulatory or nervous system. They were more likely than not to result in much worse symptoms than this.

Was it the visualization aspect of ninjutsu that was the issue here, or the complex manipulation associated with individual hand seals? Technically speaking, chakra was controlled by the brain via the first two gates, and there certainly was no issue with Lee's gates.

Some of the books Shikako had read claimed that the soul was also a factor in chakra control. She didn't like to think about this part.

Hmm...

"Can you try something else?" she asked. "Don't imagine a person to turn into. Just leave that step out and surround yourself with the chakra shell of the transformation."

Lee looked puzzled but obeyed. Shikako looked down at the ground, focusing as hard as she could on her chakra sense instead.

For three long seconds, it felt like somebody was using the transformation jutsu, chakra near the skin and all.

Then it sputtered out again.

"Okay," she said. "Now try to imagine- a color. No details. Just try to make the shell pure white or something like that."

"But Shikako-san-" Lee began. Shikako didn't get to learn what his objection to that was, because Neji was approaching the two of them.

"You're helping him?" he asked derisively. "What's the point? He'll be gone soon and you'll have wasted your time."

"I will not quit!" Lee exclaimed.

Shikako sighed. "Neji. Do you really want to do this?"

Neji raised his chin. "Do you really want to be seen with him? He's an embarrassment."

"Is Shikako-san not your friend?!" Lee demanded. "How can you talk to her like that?"

Neji ignored him, still addressing Shikako. "Do you feel sorry for him, is that it? Or do you sympathize with him because of your diagnosis?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Shikako asked, actually angry now rather than mildly irked.

"Tenten told me. They didn't even think you could be a-"

"Don't make this about me!" Shikako snapped, stepping towards him just in case she needed to physically slap a hand over his mouth.

"What diagnosis?" Lee asked cluelessly.

"Don't interfere in other people's affairs," Neji told him, even though he had been the one to bring it up. "Shikako, let's go already."

Shikako would have loved to let the issue lie, but unfortunately, it didn't look like Neji was going to. She brought it up as a preemptive strike on their way home.

"If anything," she said, "you'd think my diagnosis would go against your idea of fate."

Neji believed people were bound to the station of their birth. That royalty was destined to remain royalty and peasants were destined to be peasants. He also believed that people's worth was determined by their merit. He had not, when she'd asked, seen any contradiction in this. Or he refused to see it.

"Your diagnosis was probably wrong," he dismissed.

"You don't know," she said, a bit dry, a bit done with this whole thing. "I could have worked very hard to overcome it."

"You're not the type," he said, sounding very certain about it. "If you really were sick, you'd give up and find something else that you're actually good at."

It was true. That was why it stung. "Chakra hypersensitivity isn't a sickness," she said. "But- if the doctors could be wrong about me, who's to say people can't be wrong about anyone else? Or that Lee has something he'd be good at, but he hasn't found it yet?"

"Even if there is," Neji said, "who's ever heard of a ninja who can't do ninjutsu?"

"Guys," Tenten said, flapping her hands in the air. "Do you really want to be fighting over Rock Lee of all people?"

"You're right. It's a waste of time," Neji said.

Once they reached an intersection and Neji split off from them, Tenten apologized to Shikako for telling him about her supposed chakra hypersensitivity. "I didn't know it was such a big deal."

"It's not," Shikako said. "Or it is, but only to Neji. I... honestly haven't thought about it in years."

"So you don't actually have chakra hyper-whatever?"

Shikako shrugged. "I wouldn't be able to do jutsu if I did."

From then on, Shikako and Neji existed in uneasy symbiosis. He made fun of the mousy girl who had the second-worst scores in their class for saying she wanted to become a field chunin like her dad. Shikako called him out. Nobody sided with her. She came away from that encounter with tears pricking at her eyes.

At least she didn't properly cry. Not like the girl who'd been the subject of the argument in the first place.

A month later, Lee picked a fight with Neji during taijutsu practice. That was his own business, and Neji was well within his right to retaliate - aside from the fact that this was a random brawl and not a sanctioned practice match - except Neji looked like he was about to use a Jyuuken move, and that gave Shikako pause.

"Stop it," she told them both, stepping between them. She felt utterly unsuited to this. "Sensei didn't say we can switch sparring partners."

"Now you're defending him too?" Neji spat out. "Whatever. I'm done with you."

He walked away.

"Neji-kun! You can sit with us at lunch instead!" a girl called. Shikako didn't even look to see who it was. Neji ignored her too.

"Shikako? What's wrong?" Mom asked her that afternoon, approaching her out on the engawa. Shikako hadn't been paying attention. She hadn't felt her approach. "Are you crying?"

Shikako hurriedly wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. It occurred to her that Mom hadn't seen her cry since she'd been... what, four?

It wasn't like she hadn't cried since then. About her old world. About her old family. She'd just made sure to do it tucked away so that nobody would see.

"You don't have to tell me what happened," Mom said. "But if I can help..."

"You can't help," Shikako said. "I lost a friend."

Mom wrapped her in her arms. This, at least, was good.

.

.

.

Lee never did learn how to do the transformation jutsu, or any of the academy three. Shikako tried and tried to figure out some method to teach it to him. Eventually, she gave up.

.

.

.

Once Gai had made the decision to take Lee under his wing, he booked an appointment with the head of the academy and asked him to let the boy become a ninja despite his inability to pass the practical half of the graduation exam. The head teacher, clearly moved by Gai's faith in the boy, agreed very quickly.

"Now please leave! I have a lot to do!" he exclaimed.

Gai gave him a thumbs-up.

On his way out, he passed by the training grounds. They hardly counted as nostalgic - everything this close to the tower had undergone heavy reconstruction eleven years ago.

But there was someone there, training on a Sunday, and it wasn't Lee. The girl probably wasn't from a clan; they usually had access to their own training grounds. She seemed to be trying to practice both throwing while in motion and throwing at a moving target at the same time. Her target was a wooden board swinging on a rope. She somersaulted off a tree branch and threw a kunai at the target, hitting dead center.

Instead of celebrating, she sighed, walked up to the target and set it swinging again.

Then she noticed him standing at the edge of the training ground. He hadn't been hiding. Hiding didn't suit him.

"A - a pervert?" she asked, puzzled.

"I am not a pervert!" he exclaimed helpfully, and made his signature pose. "I am Might Gai, Konoha's Handsome Blue Beast!" 

The girl's gaze slid to his vest. "Are you a jounin?" she asked.

"Indeed I am," he said. "You don't seem satisfied with your training."

She looked down. "It's fine. It's just... I've mastered all the throwing exercises we learned at the academy and all the ones I found in scrolls. I even got some friends to act as targets a couple of times. I'm not sure what else to do."

"And what about non-throwing exercises?" he asked. Taking a broader approach wasn't what he did, but that didn't mean it didn't work for other ninja.

"I wanted to be a medic-nin, but my chakra control isn't good enough." The girl slumped even further, somehow. "My best friend picked it up in a couple months. And she doesn't even care about it."

And how awful would that feel?

"This best friend of yours," he said. "Would you consider her a rival?"

"Oh, no, no," the girl said hurriedly. "There's no way I'll ever be as good as her. I don't know why I'm telling you any of this." She placed her hands on her hips. "What are you doing on academy grounds, anyway?!"

After the final exam - which nobody failed this year - there was a meeting for the jounin instructors to go over all the graduates. Gai had attended a meeting much like this three years ago, the last time he'd volunteered to test a genin team. Its actual purpose had appeared to be going over the promising graduates while consigning the less promising ones to the weaker jounin or the ones who were less interested in teaching.

A jounin was, of course, always at liberty to pass a team that would be a better fit for the genin corps and try to beat them into shape. But hardly anyone ever did.

This year, Gai knew before having stepped foot in the conference room that he was going to be Lee's sensei, and that meant they were likely going to give him the top-ranked graduate in the name of balance. Probably a highly ranked kunoichi as well.

"We've got one graduate too many this year," said the head of the academy. "So that's one automatic transfer to the genin corps. Aside from that..."

To Gai's right sat a freshly promoted Hyuuga jounin named Hoheto. To his left sat nobody, because his Eternal Rival hadn't shown up yet. Gai took the stack of three brand-new ninja files that have been prepared for Kakashi and flipped through them. As expected, the academy teachers creating the teams had wised up and started assigning him teams that were bound for the genin corps anyway.

Gai's own stack consisted of Rock Lee, Hyuuga Neji and Shikako Nara. On paper, this was looking like a fine Takedown-and-Capture team.

Hoheto raised his hand. "Has Hiashi-sama not submitted a request for me to be made Neji-kun's sensei?"

"J-jounin-san-" one of the younger teachers said, looking very intimidated.

"There are no guarantees," said the head of the academy. "Gai-san is Konoha's foremost taijutsu expert. Besides," he said, and struck Gai as annoyed, but that couldn't possibly be, "we had to reshuffle the teams last second."

"Hokage-sama did approve our preliminary team assignments before this meeting," the teacher added.

"I have a solution," Gai said, because he'd gotten a glance of Hoheto's genin files as well, and one of them was the girl he'd run into out on the training fields. "Simply switch Hyuuga Neji and Tenten." He gave the row of teachers up front two thumbs up. There was no guarantee that he would be able to help the girl. There was also no guarantee that Hoheto would try.

"Who?" the head instructor asked.

"Oh!" exclaimed an older teacher, probably nearing retirement. "It might not be such a bad idea to separate Neji-kun from the other two. We haven't taken personality clashes into consideration, but he has been at odds with Shikako-chan and Lee-kun for a while."

He must have been the teacher of these kids' class, if he knew them this well.

"But that would mean Team One has two female members!" the head instructor objected.

"Shikako-chan is very competent," the older teacher said. "We've been having her spar with Neji-kun in taijutsu class for years. For the purposes of team assignment, I believe it's appropriate to treat her as though she's a boy."

There was a series of oohs and aahs around the conference table. "She's really that good?" somebody asked.

Gai stood up from his chair. "Then it's decided!" he declared, and it was decided.

"What did I miss?" Kakashi asked, having finally arrived when the meeting was almost over. How hip and cool.