Academy Arc: Chapter 3

Childhood is fleeting.

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In addition to attending the Academy, I was also signed up for special 'kunoichi classes'. These started a week after the Academy did and took place after the regular academy hours so were technically more of a 'club' than a 'class'. They weren't mandatory, but all the girls were strongly encouraged to attend. I think the only one who didn't from our year was Hinata, probably on the basis that it wasn't appropriate for a Hyuuga, or that she had her own, better tutors on the subject. On the surface the classes were reasonably innocuous. We learnt about festivals and holidays of the major lands, we learnt ikebana and basic cooking. We learnt sewing and embroidery. We learnt tea ceremonies and how to apply makeup and wear formal kimono. We learnt instruments. All typical, girlish things. They were all also things that would aid us with infiltration. We were taught how to sing and how to act and how to dance. It was extremely thorough training and none of the other girls even realised it.

Ikebana taught us which flowers were poisonous and where they were found and how to arrange a bouquet to look beautiful while hiding death inside. It taught us how to pass coded messages to each other, hidden in flower meanings. We could imitate geisha or highborn ladies. We could pretend to be natives to any country of the elemental nations.

We were taught how to draw, to sketch the face of people we needed to identify, to hide messages within images to get them past scrutiny.

This was where I met Sakura and Ino.

The first day was difficult. Shika and Chouji weren't there, and I didn't know any of the other girls. It's probably a little sad to admit that I used a child as a shield, even disregarding that I was a child myself. But Shikamaru was good at it, with his nonchalant, 'I don't care' attitude, where I seemed to take everything too personally. He was my buffer to the world. When Suzume-sensei told us to go and gather some flowers, I stood awkwardly to the side.

I felt shy. Terrified of trying to introduce myself when, it seemed, everyone had naturally fallen into groups already. I was lost.

Then I noticed Sakura. Her pink hair should have stood out horribly, but it blended remarkably well. She was alone, diligently picking flowers, as we had been told. I licked my lips nervously and headed towards her.

But someone got there before me.

I couldn't see what Ami said, but I definitely saw Ino's throw. A take down with flowers. It was a wonder that Ino didn't specialise in thrown weapons.

"That was a good throw," I said, approaching Ino and Sakura, hands fiddling with my flowers. Several of them were bringing to look mangled. It shouldn't be so hard to approach two young girls. But it was.

Ino beamed at the compliment. "Thank you! She deserved it! I'm Ino, and this is Sakura."

"Shikako," I replied, relieved that she was being so friendly. God, how pathetic could I get? "Umm," I said when the silence stretched. "What flowers do you have? I could only find these."

Flowers were no where near my best subject, and it wasn't like we had really started learning anyway. I doubted anything important would be covered in the first week or so. Half of what I was holding was probably weeds. But I should have remembered that Ino's parents ran a flower shop, because she picked up the conversation easily, chattering along and helping Sakura and I with our selections.

And that was pretty much that.

Ino was an incredibly gregarious girl. She seemed to know everyone. And had absolutely no compunctions about sharing what she knew, either. It was with her that I discovered people watching. Shikamaru could keep his clouds, this, this was interesting.

I wanted to know how people interacted, I wanted to know who got on well with who. I wanted to know who did well in which class and which skill and why. I wanted to know who had shinobi parents and how much of their skills that explained. Apparently, this was something that was normal. I was a girl. I gossiped. It was… something of a revelation.

I still wasn't particularly sociable, preferring to watch others than interact with them but a small group of friends was better than nothing.

Ino and Sakura and I still hung out with Shika and Chouji, and Naruto was there constantly. He was exhausting. Not just physically, which he was, always running and playing, but socially exhausting. I wasn't really used to dealing with anyone other than Shika for long periods of time, and Naruto couldn't be more different.

We ended up 'recruiting' Kiba, as the only other student with near as much energy, just to keep him occupied.

Naruto was annoying. He wasn't abused or treated badly. People didn't really even glare that much. To them, he was just there, as unimportant as the trees by the side of the road. He was the epitome of 'somebody else's problem'. Most children are, and that 'somebody else' is their parent. Naruto didn't have parents, and the orphanage caregivers were run so ragged with so many children they had no time for individual attention. He just… wasn't important to anyone. Yeah, it might have been emotional neglect, but it wasn't done intentionally or maliciously. There was just no time. But he wanted attention. He craved it. And he would go to extreme lengths to get it. He was a brat and knowing why didn't make it any easier to deal with. He was obnoxious and loud and insulting and for all his desire to be a ninja never sat still to listen to anything he didn't deem 'cool'.

But it was Naruto. I knew he was going to be great, and kind and a loyal friend. If I could just deal with him, help him, teach him a little, get him to think things through, then things would be better. If I could just be his friend…

I tried.

There were other hiccups. Children don't all get along, and those that are different, weird, are identified immediately. It's not always malicious, but it's there. Ami, who I had met an Kunoichi classes, was one that took exception to Sakura and I. We were the quiet ones, the smart ones, the ones who hung out with the boys. We didn't fit.

I don't want to cast her as the stereotypical bully. She could be kind and polite. Outside of class, I once ran into her serving customers at her mother's tea shop and she was as polite to me as any other. She took her job seriously; a good trait for a ninja.

Inside of school, however, there were… confrontations.

"God, Ino, you used to be cool. Now you're picking up all the weirdos," Ami said, one lunchtime, sneering at the three of us. Ino, I knew, would be happily accepted into anyone's social circle, but chose to stay with us.

Chose. Even at six, maybe especially at six, that's a hard choice to make, and an even harder one to stick by. I know I had, in my previous life, drifted away from friends from things much less than out right confrontation.

I wish I could say I had retorted with something so witty that she ran away crying. Truthfully, as always happens, my throat locked up tightly and I was silent. Humiliation, this is thy name. I know, I know that it wouldn't have been so bad if I had been able to reply with anything, anything at all, but I couldn't, I've never been able too, and my silence just makes things worse.

But Ino, Ino is brilliant. "The only weirdo here is you," she retorted, not in the least bit cowed. She tossed her head, long blonde strands highlighting the movement. "At least I have friends, all you've got is mindless sycophants."

I was impressed. As insults go, it was children's level, but I've known adults that couldn't say 'sycophants'. And Ami clearly had no idea what it meant. She turned red and stomped off, and the laughter, the dreaded laughter, followed her.

"Thanks," I muttered, half ashamed I couldn't even defend myself.

Ino just smiled, cheerful and confident, like nothing could shake her. "That's what friends are for, right Sakura?"

Sakura looked as startled and afraid as I felt, eyes wide under her shaggy pink hair. But she nodded timidly. "Right."

And of course, classes were progressing. I was well ahead of the others in the basics - reading, writing, mathematics, history - and usually ended up bringing my own books to class to read while Iruka-sensei taught. It was a skill that any school child picked up; the ability to simultaneously pay just enough attention to know what the teacher was talking about, while aimlessly gazing out the window. I read, instead. The teachers didn't care as long as you didn't disrupt the class, which was why Shikamaru got away with sleeping through everything short of Taijutsu training, when Naruto and Kiba usually ended up with three or four detentions a week between them.

Even though I was well ahead in theoretical classes, I worked hard to bring myself up to par in the physical department. Six weeks later, I was nearly on average with the other students - due to far more extra running than I ever thought I'd do - when I realised with blinding clarity that made me feel like an idiot just why I was so far behind.

They were unconsciously enhancing their muscles with chakra.

They could no more control it than they could their blood flow, but like blood, exercise increased the amount of it flowing in their muscles. I wasn't doing this. I was aware of my chakra in a way they weren't, consciously aware of it. When I was exercising it was flowing exactly as it always flowed.

I felt rather stupid. It was obvious in hindsight. If I focused, I could even 'see'? 'feel'? the flows of chakra in them. It wasn't Byakugan standards, but rather like knowing I had my own chakra, like seeing the chakra in the air - it all resonated.

That became my new project to work on at home. How to enhance my muscles as ninja did so easily. I could, of course, see the benefits of continuing to practise without it, however much I disliked the extra work, but the higher the base, the better my improvement would be once I added chakra.

Logically, I knew that, and continued as I had been, albeit with little enthusiasm.

There's not really any way to describe how it feels to channel chakra. It's like breathing. You just do it.

But when you internalise it, channel it to your muscles, its like being superman. You want to leap tall buildings in a single bound. You want to yell 'I am God! I defy the laws of physics!' No wonder so many ninja are nut cases. It's a pure adrenaline rush. Nothing compares to it.

It was easy to use chakra like this, to simply enhance things you could have done anyway, because chakra was part physical energy, generated by the body. They fit together naturally.

On the same note it was no wonder that chakra exhaustion was lethal. Chakra might be thought of as the 'extra' energy that the body (and mind and spirit) produced. Stuff that you didn't need to move or to breathe or to metabolise, so you could use it to do jutsu. Once that reserve was used up, you could either stop, or start taking energy from your muscles. That was chakra debt. First went the skeletal muscles, the arms and the legs. It felt like they were filled with lactic acid, too weak and shaky to contract anymore. Then, if you kept going, you started drawing energy from other muscles, ones that didn't normally fatigue, like your lungs, and heart. Breathing grew difficult, your heart stopped beating. You died.

We covered that very clearly at the Academy, early on, along with many, many warnings not to try and use chakra unsupervised.

I had average sized chakra reserves, on the small side for a ninja, but normal for a kunoichi. Nara have never been exceptional in that department, but we make use of what we have cleverly. Mine may have been slightly larger than expected, since I had been practising using it, and that does help build reserves.

You could build your chakra stores, but they wouldn't keep increasing forever. Just like there was a limit to how fast you could run, or how smart you could get. Training would help push those limits, for you to reach your greatest capacity but there was a limit. The maximum that your body could allow. Most ninja never reached that maximum. There was always a little more training they could squeeze out, a little more their chakra capacity could increase. Of course, the closer you got, the less that 'little bit more' was. Though failing that, their control could improve a little more.

I had exceptional control over my own chakra but it wasn't just the chakra in my body that I could sense. It was everywhere. It was in the air I breathed, the food I ate, like persistent smoke. It caused me to cough whenever I paid too much attention to it, further cementing my reputation as a sickly child. Whether it was natural chakra or chakra residue from jutsu or emitted from people I didn't know, and resolved not to mess with it until I understood more. The last thing I wanted was to become a stone statue.

Later on, that overdeveloped chakra sense would come in handy. I could sense the bodies of chakra that were other people, sense residue from leftover jutsu, point out chakra enhance traps and so forth. Anyplace that chakra had been used or anything that chakra had been used on was lit up like a beacon to my senses.

In our first year at the academy we weren't taught about chakra, other than that it existed. As I had found out for myself, chakra reserves aren't really that large until seven or eight years of age. We wouldn't be taught to use chakra till our third year, and it would be our last year before we were taught anything even remotely resembling a jutsu.

I had run through dozens of chakra control exercises. I hadn't managed water walking, because drowning was too much a risk as a child, but many other exercises were possible. The wall walking exercise had been only the start. There were chakra strings. There was the leaf sticking, that I remembered from the show. And from leaves, I progressed to ever more brittle and fragile things. At first, my chakra had ripped through paper easily until I managed to adjust the force of it's output. I had been terribly proud when I managed to stick rice paper to my hand and slowly, carefully, without rushing, fold it into a clumsy, lopsided origami crane. I had managed it without a single tear.

Chakra was difficult to manipulate once it had been expelled. That was why chakra strings - like those used on puppets - took so much concentration. But it wasn't impossible. And I liked working with my chakra. This was something I could do for fun, bend it and twist it and see the outcome.

One of the things we were drilled mercilessly on was hand seals. How to recognise them, how to form them, what they were most often associated with. The Tiger seal, for example, has the index and middle finger held straight, and is a common end seal for many fire techniques. Useful information, yes, but hand seals were a bitch to do . I had no idea how people managed to do them so fast. My child's fingers were awkward and clumsy as I forced them into positions that were entirely unnatural. The only one I could manage with ease was Snake, the clasping of both hands. Even then, in the time taken to form, hold and disengage, (something just as important as the first two) a skilled shinobi could run through three or more seals.

But there were more than enough things to keep me occupied researching. There were so many things that I wanted to know, like, what was it about shadows that let us control them, and control people with them? Shadows were only areas where sunlight didn't reach, they were nothing physical. What was it about that lack that made them special? Of course, there was much about shadows in folk law and myth and our clan, unsurprisingly, had a great many books on the subject.

Shadows have long been a part of folklore. Along with reflections and portraits, they're thought to be the soul, or part of it. The shadow is the negative double of the body, the alter ego of the soul, and sometimes an image of evil.

The shadow can represent the darkness of the personal unconsciousness, the other, unfathomed side of the personality, the secret sharer. It is everything that the individual refuses to accept or understand about themselves. If not assured and integrated, it may become evil and destructive.

It is for this reason that the Nara believe in self acceptance. Our clan might be considered lazy and unmotivated to most - and we are, to a large degree - but we know ourselves. We try not to self-destruct. It's not so much as always remaining calm as knowing why you're angry and what you're prepared to do about it. Even if that 'what' is 'anything'.

It's a little terrifying, looking deep into your heart and asking 'what would I do if someone hurt my brother?'. Not 'what should I do?' or 'what would I be expected to do?' but actually, truthfully, all pretences aside, what would I do?

We're not always the people we like to think we are.

Of course, it wasn't all school work. At home, I began to explore the clan grounds. The clan was rather large and sprawling. From the show I think I had assumed that Shikamaru's family was the entirety of the Nara clan. It wasn't. In fact, those that lived within the walls of Konoha weren't the entirety of the clan. The Nara ran many farms in Fire country to supply the ingredients for our medicines. Farming took up a great deal of room, and Konoha proper was a walled village. There simply wasn't space.

Within Konoha itself, we had a small forested area where we ran a herd of deer, as well as a few workshops that produced our medicine and research.

Deer are odd creatures. At once supremely intelligent and incredibly skittish. They are very intelligent, they seem to know instinctively which plants will make them better when they are ill. Deer are pretty good at looking after themselves. They don't need a lot of attention or managing. In fact, they're the kind of animals that you can kill with kindness. Too much human attention makes them shocky. I think a lot of the Nara attitude stems from that; acknowledging and accepting the fact that sometimes, if you just leave it alone, it'll come right on its own. Lazy, sure, but pragmatic too. It made me wonder if our clan had started our medical theory not from the deer but from observing them. There are some parts of our research that directly involved the deer though. Because male deer, the stags and the harts, shed and regrow their antlers every year, there was some serious study being done into the ways that they do this, in the hopes of adapting the principles to allow people to regrow limbs and tissues. A lot of it, however was based on herbs and plants and the chemicals found in them, much the same as my old world. There was less synthesising of chemicals, and I don't know that chemistry itself was as advanced, but the results were impressive all the same.

I spent a lot of time in the workrooms. They smelt strangely, of the medicines that were prepared, of the herbs that were hung up to dry, of deer and of smoke, but it wasn't an unpleasant strangeness. The workers, mostly my aunts and uncles and cousins, though there were a few hirelings who were unrelated to us, were more than happy to indulge my curiosity about what they were doing. I was put to work with a mortar and pedestal more than once to grind herbs to paste.

The clan was pleased with my interest in medicine, having, as they did, that diagnosis from the hospital.

I struggled through the 'basic' textbooks on the subject. It wasn't that the concepts were unfamiliar to me, but the change in language meant I had to learn everything all over again. I could have gotten the same information from reading a dictionary, but it was easier to learn in context. I was thankful to note that the principles seemed the same, despite the differences in worlds.

I was vaguely aware that deer velvet was considered a medicine but in my world it was regarded as something of a herbal remedy, the sort for new age health nuts. However, I remembered with a jolt, here, the Nara were regarded as expert medical specialists. They were the ones that supplied Tsunade with the information that allowed her to reverse Chouji's food pill poisoning. I had to try and stop applying knowledge from my past world; things were too different here.

The medical sciences were nothing short of amazing - once I got over the fact that the most important and essential medical tools weren't needles and scalpels but paper and ink. Just about everything that we used machines for, they used seals. To stabilise patients, to monitor them, during surgery - all seals. Sealing and medicine went together hand in glove. They had more use, or more easily recognised use, in the stable environment of the hospital than being weirdly adapted in the every changing realm of combat.

It had never occurred to me before, but Tsunade was probably equal to, if not greater in sealing knowledge than Jiraiya, if her Rebirth seal was any indication. Orochimaru's dabbling in cursed seals was also explained by his scientific leanings.

Seals were the machines of the elemental nations. Seals are Kanji. That surprised me to discover. I had always thought they would involve a specialised alphabet or complex symbols - esoteric lines and circles - but it wasn't. It was Kanji. Yes, there were specific ways in which they should be combined for best effect, but in that manner it was more like writing a contract or telling a story. That was … interesting to learn.

Of course, it was limited. It took time and space and ink and paper. Only the very best seal masters could use seals in combat, because they were the only ones that could design or alter and apply a seal with merely a twist of chakra, a hand seal and maybe some blood. Minato Namikaze was lauded as a genius for a reason.

I noted it as an avenue I definitely wanted to explore. I very much doubted I would ever get to any sort of mastery of it - probably never more than the basics - but there was still a lure to it. If nothing else, storage scrolls would be handy.

These things filled my time admirably. As the year passed and we entered our second year of the academy, little changed. The lessons became slightly harder, slightly harsher, slightly more geared towards the 'truth' of ninja missions. It was a slow process to familiarise us with what would be expected of us - so slow it was almost unnoticeable. We were being conditioned.

In our second year, we started learning how to throw kunai and we started to learn taijutsu.

At the academy we were all taught an adaptation of the basic Konoha-ryu style, called the Shorin-ryu, the 'small forest style'. It was a version of the Konoha based taijutsu style that had been adapted specifically for children and teenagers. It emphasised dodging and deflection with the understanding that any opponents we encountered were likely to be taller, stronger and faster than us. On the surface, it appeared to be a rather simplistic style, with limited numbers of strikes, block and kicks. Of course, given that it was being taught to children, this straightforwardness was probably more an advantage than a disadvantage. There were no flashy moves or complicated locks; things that could easily fall apart in actual combat. It was the basics of the basics, something that we could build on with our family styles, or simply once we left the academy and started gaining personal experience.

I had studied Karate before, which sounds like it should have given me a bonus in learning taijutsu here. That really wasn't the case. For one, it had been so many years previously that I had forgotten nearly all the technical details. For another, it had been in a separate body. But thirdly, perhaps more importantly, I had never had to actually use Karate in a real life situation. The closest I had come was the single Tournament I had participated in, but I was intelligent enough to know that that wasn't even close. Here, Taijutsu wasn't just a hobby, it was real. It was something that people lived and died by. And what we were taught reflected that.

On the other hand, there were things that I had learnt that stood me well. Not the techniques, but more important things than that. Our motto had been 'First the body, then the mind, then the spirit'. Meaning that your body tired first. Your muscles ached, and trembled, you panted, you sweated. But you kept going. Then your mind became tired. You acknowledged your fatigue. Your determination wavered. You wanted to give up. But your spirit kept you going. It wasn't quite 'never give up' but more 'persevere. Keep going despite that'. It was a hard lesson to learn, to push yourself so hard and so far. Harder still when you were solo training.

The second was intent. 'The easiest way to win a fight is to avoid it'. There is no reason to fight if you don't have to. But if there is, if you have to fight, commit to it 100%. Commit to every action as though it will win the fight. You should throw the first punch and throw the last punch and make sure the two of them are the same strike. In the academy they talked about this, they called it 'Ikken Hissatsu'. 'To kill with one strike'. Here they actually meant it.

When we sparred, the others had the tendency to treat it as a game. I was tempted to. Throwing light punches and kicks, dancing around weak attacks, it's fun and easy. And I had no real desire to hurt any of my classmates. On the other hand, it was easy. A knee to the stomach, an elbow to the temple, a palm strike to the jaw - fast and brutal moves that folded the others to the ground instantly.

After a few days, the others started calling me 'KO Shikako'. It almost made me laugh. It wouldn't last, not as they got better at blocking and dodging, at overcoming that instinctive flinch at violence, at protecting their vital spots, but I'd improve too.

We didn't do a lot of freeform sparring, not at first, anyway. It was still mostly stamina exercises, like we had already been doing; running, press-ups, setups, training bag work. There were flexibility exercises, stretches and slalom poles. There were obstacle courses and games like dodge ball. And there were rigidly repeated basics; one hundred of this punch, one hundred of this kick. For those it was hard to keep up the one hundred percent effort that I was determined to put into my taijutsu. Mentally, motivating myself for it was the hardest part. I'd probably never be a taijutsu master, but I didn't want to be crippled by poor fighting skills or stamina.

Of course, my effort had the surprising side effect of motivating the other girls. I guess it was easy for girls like Sakura and Ino, who had high academic scores, to slack off when the highest placed Kunoichi in physical scores was Hinata at only slightly higher than the class middle. She was better than that technically, but lacked the aggression to truly compete. Added that Jyuuken strikes were generally forbidden, she was at a serious disadvantage. But no one likes being overshadowed or dropped on their ass repeatedly, and they were genuinely motivated to show me up. Or at least, get me to stop kicking their asses.

On days when Jyuuken was allowed, Hinata was the worst opponent for me to face. Even though she could only use those attacks from her hands at this age, they limited the areas that I could strike. The hands have a large range, and can move very quickly. The only area that was really free from their range was below the knee, and even that was compensated for by some of the lower stances. Fighting Hinata like that, more than any of the others, forced me to think ahead. The only strike I could inflict without danger was a leg sweep, and even that put me in grabbing range. I was forced to feint and circle and dodge every strike. To some degree, I did this with the others, anticipating where and how they would strike, how I could retaliate, how to maneuver them into the best position to me. It was interesting to experiment.

But it was fighting with Hinata that made me resolve to look up counters to the Jyuuken. Either emitted chakra to serve as a shield, or perhaps harnessing my own shadow to take those strikes. Jyuuken hurt. The intrusion of foreign chakra into my system, forcefully, violently, was excruciating. It was like being stabbed and burnt and frozen and electrocuted all at once. The first time we fought I was incapacitated by a mere glancing blow. I built up very, very little tolerance to it at all.

Whenever we fought, most of the class would cheer for her. My habit of beating people swiftly made me an unpopular opponent, and everyone was more than willing to encourage her to beat me. I didn't begrudge her that because she was a genuinely nice girl, if very shy, and that was something I could sympathise with. She was always willing to unblock my tenketsu afterwards, shyly apologising, regardless of which of us won.

It was during my second year that I caught my first, and only, glimpse of Itachi Uchiha. I knew Sasuke quite well, being in his class, but Itachi had slipped my mind. That happened. It was hard to remember the exact details from something that had been only a very small part of my life. Even details as important as this.

"This is my Itachi-nii," Sasuke said, introducing the older boy who had shown up to pick him up from school. Usually his mother came, but not today. He sounded so proud, so adoring of his brother. My heart twisted in guilt, knowing, knowing, that soon he'd be broken and shattered.

"Hi," I said, barely loud enough to be heard, staring at my feet. Itachi, already a jounin, already an ANBU. Willing to sacrifice everything for his brother and the village. What would he do if he knew what I knew?

I couldn't even contemplate it. I was too selfish. I knew I wouldn't interfere. I would let these horrible and despicable things happen, because they didn't touch me. Didn't touch my family and my safe little world.

As much as I told myself 'there is nothing I can do' I knew that at heart I was just a selfish coward.

Shortly after that we turned seven and the Uchiha clan lay broken. The whole of Konoha was in a sombre, shaken mood. Whatever claims of oppression and hatred Madara made, they weren't noticeable now. These were people that had lost friends, neighbours, comrades - these were people in mourning.

Sasuke didn't return to school for several weeks. When he did he was pale and wild eyed, snappy and sullen. He avoided everyone and at lunch chose a spot well away from everyone else. He was sitting, back to a tree at the side of the field. It was as isolated as he could get, considering that only final year students were allowed to leave the grounds at break time. A group of girls (including Ino and Sakura) were sitting close by, casting him looks and chattering. Either they had already been repulsed, or they lacked the courage to approach him.

I watched him go and tugged on Shika's arm. He was damn good at interpreting what I meant. It should have been scary, but it was just relieving that I didn't have to verbalise it. I wasn't sure what I would have said, in any case.

"Troublesome," Shikamaru said, but adjusted our course. Chouji, bless him, followed without comment.

We sat without a word.

Sasuke tensed and glared, angry and upset and grieving. I had no doubt that he could be fairly viscous. "What do you think you're doing?" He hissed.

I flinched, but Shikamaru just yawned. "Sitting, eating lunch," he said.

"Well, sit somewhere else! I'm here!"

"You can come sit with us, Sasuke-kun!" Ino piped up eagerly from nearby.

He cast them a look, half anger, half disgust.

"Are you going to Suzume-sensei's class tonight, Ino?" I asked, thinking it time to intervene. I didn't think we should push too much. There was a very large difference between trying to include Sasuke and bothering him.

Of course Ino was going, she never missed a class, but she took the comment in the spirit it was given, as a conversation starter, and began to chat happily with me about our lessons. After a brief moment, Sakura joined in, followed by some of the other girls, while Chouji and Shika peacefully ate lunch behind us. Sasuke was alone but not excluded. He was a part of the group without being bothered. Maybe we could head off his loner tendencies.

I don't know if it helped, but it was something. And if I was doing it to assuage the guilt in my heart… well, that was my own business.

And, at seven, we were deemed ready to begin training in our family Art. Nara believe in contingency plans. Every person in the clan, be they ninja or civilian knows at least the theory of the Shadow Possession Jutsu. That way, if something happened to the clan, there would be someone to pass that knowledge on. They may not have expected me to learn it, but I was still taught.

And this was my chance to prove that I could.

Learning to infuse object with your chakra is reasonably easy, learning to do it without damaging them is harder, and to infuse an object that has no physical mass, a shadow, harder still. Managing that, then manipulating it… that's the true difficulty. Our clan style isn't a bloodline, but we do have an affinity towards shadow that mimics an elemental affinity. Other people could learn it, but it would take double, triple maybe quadruple the amount of time and they would never be as efficient nor as effective at it as us. Given that many of our jutsu are fairly limited, and support types, it's not hard to see why no body bothers.

Of course, there is far more to the Art that any one ever sees.

I spent a fair bit of time practicing the Shadow Possession Jutsu after dad had shown it to us, and we had mastered the basic steps. It took us several months to progress onto creating and maintaining a 'chakra infused shadow' and from there we had to begin the tedious process of learning how to manipulate it. It had once been known as the Shadow Paralysis Jutsu, but not so long ago, it had been reinvented to control the victims movements instead of just paralysing them. No one says so, but I'm fairly certain the innovation was dads.

I wanted to be good at it. I practiced the speed of initiation, my hand seals, speed of capture and release, the length I could stretch my shadow, the number of times I could split it, the shape and direction of movement… There were so many parts to it that needed to be perfected.

I couldn't hold it for long, however. It was an incredibly intensive technique. Chunin level skill is to be able to hold it for five minutes - at this stage I was lucky to be able to hold it for five seconds. That was something I couldn't really change. I could perfect my control over it to reduce my chakra wastage, and do what I could to improve my reserves, but until I was older, they wouldn't grow very much at all.

And until we had the Shadow Possession Jutsu mastered, the other family techniques were out of our range. Even the next simplest techniques were many times more difficult and exhausting.

But apart from my desire to learn and my fascination with all things chakra (which still seemed so magical, no matter how many scientific explanations I read) there was no real pressing need to master it. Most of the time, the impending future slipped my mind, inevitable but ignored like an exam I hadn't studied for. I was trying, and I was training, but single minded dedication had never suited me.

Indeed, Shikamaru barely bothered to learn it before ceasing practice and returning to cloud watching. He too knew he probably should, but didn't have the motivation when there was no immediacy to it. Unlike me, he didn't know the specifics of the looping future, and still held hope that he would be an average ninja, do an average amount of missions and face an average amount of danger.

I pestered him into practising with me as much as I could, but I still feared it wouldn't be enough. Shikamaru, for all his smarts, had been so lucky to survive.

And he was smart. Insanely so.

By nine it was incredibly clear that my assumptions about being as smart as Shikamaru had been incredibly, incredibly arrogant. I wasn't even close. Not even with a twenty year head start. It was a little humbling. I don't know if any one else saw it, because I was more motivated, I was constantly reading because I liked learning new things, but I knew, and our parents knew.

Tactics wise, he beat me at every turn. Oh, I made him work for it, but he beat me all the same. Games of Shogi turned into gruelling hour long contests of wills. It could have very easily lead to things getting nasty between us. I found, much to my chagrin, that I had become decidedly unused to losing. The anger and resentment, once I noticed them, made me distinctly uncomfortable with myself. They were not good emotions to be feeling. It was, after all, just a game. One that I was playing with my brother. It should have been fun.

I resolved very quickly that it was going to be. I was going to take a step back, I was going to breathe and I was going to calm the hell down. I wasn't going to get angry at loosing. I was going to see what he'd done better than me, and how I could use it. I was going to treat it as a lesson, not as a failure.

After all, I could still learn. I could still improve. I didn't want to be the kind of person that made everything a life or death issue. There was going to be enough of that soon enough.

Graduation came far too soon. And brought with it a whole suite of problems that I hadn't anticipated.

"If we assume that teams will be assigned using the 'one kunoichi' method, you are going to be paired with Ino and Chouji," I said to Shikamaru. He kept staring at the clouds. It was likely that he had already reached that conclusion long before. It was practically a given. That wasn't what I wanted to talk about though, that was just a conversation opener, towards the question I couldn't ask - what will happen to me?

I didn't think anything would break up the Ino-Shika-Cho grouping, and putting more than one Kunoichi on a team generally lead to a weaker, less stable team (or so was the official line. I wasn't quite sure I believed it.) For the same reason, I was almost sure that Hinata, Shino and Kiba would be teamed together. Their combination of abilities complimented each other nicely, for tracking, search and rescue, or non-lethal capture missions.

Which left me dreading team assignment. I was friends with Naruto, and friendly with Sasuke, and the top ranked kunoichi but I didn't particularly want to be on Team 7. Not with all the trouble that they would attract.

Shoulda thought of that before scoring 100% on all those tests.

I had never purposefully done less than my best before, so it was hard to think I should have now. On the other hand, I didn't really know many of the others. I was semi-friendly with a few, and sure I could have dragged them to a team pass but none stood out as anything special. Not like the Rookie 9.

What about Sakura? I wondered. If I was placed on Team 7, what would happen to her? The answer was obvious. She wasn't quite the friendless fan girl she had been in the anime, but she still lacked… ambition, drive, realism, even common sense sometimes. She would fail. Guilt gnawed the pit of my stomach.

Shoulda damn well thought ahead.

Something so central to a ninja's life should have occurred to me ahead of time. But even if it had, I wasn't sure what I would have done about it.