"Have you heard?" Asuma asked as he moved to join his fellow jonin in the Hokage's office for discussing the upcoming graduates.
"Hmm?" Kakashi asked from where he was lounging and reading a book.
"What's going on?" Kurenai asked.
"Might Guy and his team are back in town," Asuma said in an undertone.
The other two jonin turned to look at him, Kakashi's interest being only momentary before he turned back to his book.
"You know what this means," Kurenai said.
"Yeah, yeah," Kakashi said. "I'm guessing the pool is already formed."
Asuma nodded.
Hinata paused in her training to watch the sun sinking down over the horizon. Her cousin was back in town today, which meant tomorrow she probably wouldn't be able to use this training ground for a bit.
Neji would not like her to be hanging around while he trained with his team.
It was so relaxing out here with no one to watch her and see how useless she was.
The Hyuuga girl could almost stay out there all the time and she would if there wasn't something bigger than a desire to be left alone driving her.
Acknowledgement.
She'd failed to find it from her father and cousin.
Besides, she wanted someone else to acknowledge her.
Someone who was seeking acknowledgement just like her.
"Naruto-kun," she sighed.
As she sat and rested after her personal training session, a training session that had her lightly covered in sweat and breathing slightly hard, she found herself wishing that she could push herself like Naruto did everyday. Just how could he bare to strive to succeed like that against everyone that said he would never amount to anything.
He certainly wasn't the established weak link that she was.
Nobody who could spend so much time doing everything they could to improve themselves could ever be a loser.
She wondered why nobody else could see that about him.
That thought passed through her mind as the sun finally set. She'd like to get in some more training, but tomorrow was the graduation test and she had already practiced all the jutsu that were likely to be dealt with. It was time to head home and get some rest.
Sighing at the necessity, Hinata started walking slowly off back toward the village.
The Hyuuga was surprised to find someone else coming out of the overall training area toward the same return path, pulling a moderate sized wagon by hand. The wagon was empty, but it still had to be quite a handful for the short girl that was handling it.
It didn't take Hinata long to catch up to the wagon, curious to see who had been on the field at the same time as her.
When she recognized the chi-adept almost instantly.
"He..hello, Ryoko-chan," Hinata said as she slowed to match the other girl's stride.
"Ah, Hyuuga-san," the other girl said. "What are you doing out this late?"
Curiosity made Hinata want to take a peek through her Byakugan at the chi-user and update what the disturbance around her was like, but she didn't want to do something so impolite.
"I had to do some extra training to get ready for graduation," Hinata said quietly.
"Ah, I see," Ryoko said, nodding in approval. "You train quite a lot, Hy..Hyuuga-san, you must be very good."
"You too, Ryoko-chan," Hinata said, unsure as always how to respond to the only person that referred to her with an honorific. "The handprint is still on the Academy wall after two years."
Ryoko flinched at that and bit her lip.
"Su…sumimasen," Ryoko said. "I…did not mean to do t…."
"Umm, Ryoko-chan," Hinata said, hesitantly. "Why do you train so much?"
"Oh…mother allows me," Ryoko said. "As long as I learn how to use a sword. I…I am not quite very good at that yet."
"Not very good? You beat Naruto easy," Hinata said.
"But that was a while ago," Ryoko said. "His unarmed technique has improved, and my sword has not. L…last time he ch…challenged me I only won because he disarmed me. I rely too much on unarmed skill. But I am to the p…point I can self-train in that."
Hinata wondered briefly how good the girl was in unarmed combat.
Now wasn't the time to test, however, so late in the evening and with both having things they needed to do that night or tomorrow. Hinata held off on challenging her just yet.
"You could always ask for one of the weapon masters here to train you," Hinata suggested.
Ryoko stopped and blinked as if in thought.
"Ano…" she said, pondering.
Hinata paused herself and looked back toward the girl until the younger, black-haired girl noticed she'd fallen behind.
"Ahh!" Ryoko gasped when she finally did. "Sumimasen!"
"I…it's all right," Hinata said waving off the concern.
"So, why do you train, Hyuuga-san?" Ryoko asked.
Hinata flushed brightly for a moment and started pushing her fingers together.
"I…I…want someone to…acknowledge me," she said finally.
"Acknowledge you?" Ryoko said. "Ano…"
"I want…someone…to recognize…that I…am worth….a little something…" Hinata said. "Don't you?"
"I…worth something?" Ryoko asked as if it had never been something she considered before.
Hinata twisted her head too look at the friendly girl as they walked along and frowned.
"I think you're worth something, Ryoko-chan" Hinata said.
The other girl bit her lip as if not sure she was supposed to accept that comment or not. The remainder of their walk to the village was spent on other topics.
Ryoko had very…strange ideas on how the various girls could solve their problems with Sasuke Uchiha.
They were well into the village when another group started working its way up to the training ground.
"Isn't it a little late for training, sensei?" Tenten asked.
"Nonsense Tenten!" Guy declared as they walked under a group of trees. "Not every fight you have will be in the bright light of day. You must learn to harness your Powers of Youth even in the dark of night. And that is what we're going to be practicing as we spar in…"
The sound of a rattle cut through the sound of Guy Sensei's speech.
"Did anyone else hear that?" Tenten asked as she looked around.
Another rattling sound across the other side of the small clearing came to their ears.
"Yes!" Lee said. "I do believe I heard the sound of something."
Another two rattling sounds joined the first two which were turning a bit more rapid.
Neji's eyebrows twitched as he started the seals to activate his byakugan, silently kicking himself for not checking the field beforehand. Perhaps it was just having returned from a mission and having forgotten the dangers of the training ground.
As his byakugan came active, he saw, buried under shallow dirt all across the plot, coiled springs of various sizes and held tight by triggers connected intricately by wires all across the area tightly meshed together and covered by the dirt. Each with a mousetrap set at the front.
It was set so that anybody walking atop the ground would set the wires vibrating against each other and each further step would make more vibrations in those wires.
Wires that were already vibrating against each other in a series that was swiftly unlocking the triggers on every spring, causing the baby rattle at the tail to vibrate more and more violently, giving them the audio cues they were hearing.
"Watch out!" Neji shouted aloud.
In the next moment, the ground below started to erupt.
After about three minutes, Team Guy limped out of the training ground. Neji's eyes were closed as he removed the third mousetrap that had decided to latch tightly onto his person.
"Guy-Sensei," Lee said. "Is this the training you had in mind?"
"No, Lee-kun," Guy declared. "I'm afraid we've stumbled upon someone else's training exercise."
"Again," Neji muttered. "This has been happening at least once a month for a year."
"Indeed, Neji-kun," Guy said. "We must eventually find the maker of these trials and request more deliberate training in the future."
"What are you doing with that?" Neji asked coldly.
"It's cute," Tenten said, holding up the booby trap, carved into a good likeness of a snake with a big, friendly head and long slinky body, that now that the spring wasn't primed to launch, coiled around Tenten's arm fairly amicably.
Neji's eyebrow twitched.
Joseibi panted heavily as she looked across the field to where her sister was returning to the Utsuro Kamae, the blank form. Her father's Utsuro Kamae was an over-exaggerated pose that gave something of the appearance of a rank amateur's level of skill. Ryoko's was the stance of a demure young maiden, even down to holding a sword improperly to start.
Though that last might have been more because Ryoko was self-taught was mostly. Through manga, no less. Their father had no sword skills beyond what translated from his skills with a rod or baton, and the elder sister hadn't sought out a master yet.
As a result Ryoko was comparatively weak with that sword.
Joseibi was careful not to accidentally disarm her sister in their spars.
The younger Saotome watched her sister bow politely.
That was usually the signal for the spar to end, but Joseibi didn't let her guard down just yet.
A Saotome never did.
In theory.
In practice, Joseibi found that Saotomes let their guards down a lot depending on what you meant. Emotionally speaking, Ryoko was full of openings, and it didn't take much to predict the old man's actions.
Still, she let herself stand up a bit straight and glance toward the glimmer of light on the horizon.
"Sun's going to be up in an hour or so," she said.
"Hai, hai! Imouto-chan," Ryoko said. "We just have one more special exercise to complete and it should not take too long."
Joseibi flinched at the words "special exercise".
The blonde girl had several definitions for that term.
These included:
Aggravating.
Annoying.
Painful.
Embarrassing.
Devious.
Oh so very, very devious.
Wrapped up in her sister's runty little face.
But they were useful.
There wasn't anything visible that looked like something that qualified "special" in Ryoko's vocabulary, that meant they needed to go to another part of the field.
"Yeah, yeah," Joseibi said, stretching out. "Let me get my kunai and stuff."
"Hai, hai!" Ryoko said approvingly. "I'm glad you're cleaning up after yourself, Imouto-chan."
"I just want all the ammo I can get," Joseibi muttered before moving up to join her sister and walking with the older girl towards and through a small stand of trees to find a shaded clearing…
…that was littered with loose dirt and cast about fragments of wood and metal.
"Ano…" Ryoko said, looking about in confusion and biting her lip as she tried to figure out what had happened.
"Well," Joseibi said, snickering as she put her hands behind her back . "I guess I've got a little free time before the Academy today."
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:20)
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