Ryoko quietly sat seiza in the field, taking the place of the exercise she missed out on for missing Joseibi's morning training. Quietly, she was wondering if she should be included in such an exercise if she wasn't going to be a ninja, but then, it was more training, and training was always good.
Her instructor had said not to have breakfast, which meant that they were going to be working on an empty stomach. That sounded similar to a lot of her father's basic training ideas, and, having lived on the road for half a year, she knew that food wasn't always readily available when you were traveling.
That still left just what skills Hatake-sama would be testing them on. It seemed time appropriate for generic challenge of their overall skills. To see what each of them had accomplished in their time.
She did hope that she got to go first.
Challenges were so much better when they were unknown.
She would be able to deal with this easily.
Her stomach growled loudly, prompting Ryoko to nervously bite her own lip.
Sasuke and Naruto didn't arrive much later than her.
"Ohayo," Ryoko called out waving cheerfully as the two moved over to them.
She stood up and bowed as they moved over to her, Naruto looking like he hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before.
"Hatake-sama is not yet here," Ryoko said.
Sasuke nodded with a brief snort as he moved to stand in the center of the field.
"Probably going to be late," Naruto muttered as he sat down and promptly fell asleep.
Ryoko blinked and looked to her two teammates in confusion as they more or less ignored her. Well, not so much ignored in Naruto's case, as it was just fell unconscious, but Sasuke was definitely ignoring her.
"Ano…" she said.
As soon as it became apparent that Naruto wasn't about to wake up and Sasuke would go on ignoring her, Ryoko sat back down, looking moderately nervous and disturbed about something. That, however, was her normal expression so it was hardly noteworthy.
Ryoko sat down with Naruto between her and Sasuke, whom she occasionally glanced at cautiously. Sasuke himself tried not to notice what he was mistakenly identifying as the amorous glances of yet another fangirl.
A particularly disturbing fangirl at that.
Sakura paused on her way to her own first day exercise when she saw Team 7 sitting quietly together in the field. Instantly she was flat on the ground and staring down at the scaredy cat casting sly glances at her Sasuke.
Bitterly, Sakura remembered what she had overheard yesterday at the first meeting of Team 7.
"'Oh, I could not marry you,'" Sakura whispered mockingly. ""A…at m…most I could be your m…mistress.' What an act. No way I'm letting Ino beat me out, much less some outsider scaredy cat."
Inner Sakura had a slightly less civil response to the Saotome Girl's previous comments.
"Get the little hussy!" the inner Sakura declared. "Chandarro!"
"Ah, Sakura-chan," a calm voice asked from behind her said. "You weren't planning to be late this morning, were you? I think your own team has to pass their test, don't they?"
She turned around to see Kakashi Hatake crouching over her, his one visible eye giving the impression of a friendly smile.
"No, sensei," she said nervously as she stood up from her reconnaissance and quietly shuffled away.
Kakashi sighed as he watched her go off.
He had to admit, he'd underestimated her drive in at least one regard: her interest in Sasuke Uchiha.
If her team didn't pass their test and give her something to do with her time, she was going to be trouble.
It was some time later, exactly how long none of them knew quite for sure but Naruto was awake by that time, that Kakashi finally appeared. The blonde shinobi snapped to standing as the masked ninja greeted them and shouted out.
"You're late!"
"Yes, well, you see there was this black cat that crossed my path…" Kakashi started to say.
"Excuses?" Sasuke muttered, in his own thoughts he added "Is this guy really a jonin?"
What followed was an explanation of the exercise before them that Ryoko rapidly analyzing the challenge before her as Kakashi watched. She was biting her lip and squinting her eyes nervously.
If she took one of bells, then either Sasuke or Naruto would be failed, which wasn't fair because she wasn't even a ninja. But if she let one of them get the bells and failed to do so herself, that would mean she'd lost.
A Saotome didn't lose.
And, of course, underneath the façade of nervousness, the eagerness to engage in battle glittered behind her eyes.
Kakashi watched those thought processes and recognized them.
The path of the wandering martial artist was a truly lonely one, and all three of his students seemed to follow that path more than they did the path of the ninja at the moment. They'd been taught betrayal, ostracism and conflict and to rely only on themselves, for the most part.
One focused on vengeance.
One focused on acknowledgement.
One focused on other people's desires.
Kakashi was faced with the amusing fact that the most emotionally balanced and well-developed the three was actually the jinchuriki. If they passed his test, he'd have to depend on Naruto to work on uniting and hopefully healing the other two.
In any case, it was time to start testing them.
A comment about losers set Naruto off as expected, and then, suddenly, the jonin was among the three, with his hand around Naruto's and the young ninja's kunai pointed toward the back of his neck.
"Hey now, I didn't say start yet," Kakashi said as he noted Ryoko quietly set aside her bokken. "But at least you came at me with killer intent, I'll give you that."
At the start of the test, Kakashi looked around from his position in the open field to take into account where the three had started themselves. He'd had to make it clear to Ryoko that this scenario was to be started from hiding.
She had frowned, obviously not particularly liking attacking from ambush. But she'd hidden surprisingly well given her background. He wasn't entirely sure where exactly she was. It spoke oddly of her style, since she'd plainly been trained in stealth of a kind.
Sasuke, of course, was equally well hidden as Ryoko was. That was too be expected from the Uchiha genius, of course. He'd trained heavily in every of the shinobi's basic skills since even before his brother's actions. Afterward, that training had become obsessive.
No, what brought the sigh from Kakashi's mouth was that Naruto was standing out in the open talking about fighting fair.
Ryoko watched from her hiding spot as first Naruto and then Sasuke gave their best efforts to take the bells and failed. With each of them recovering from their first attempts, the martial artist made her play.
"Ryoko-chan," Kakashi said, as he stood up from where Sasuke was buried from the neck down. "When are you going to come out here?"
"Ano…" Ryoko said, stepping out and bowing nervously. "Sumimasen, Hatake-sama."
"You know," Kakashi said. "You have a time limit, and you have to get these bells from me. Your tactic doesn't work in the scenario."
"H…hai, Hatake-sama," Ryoko said, biting her lip and driving forward.
Kakashi let her come, resisting the urge to activate his sharingan to see just what she was doing.
Her initial strike was a leaping axe-kick which Kakashi dodged easily enough. After that, she drove the fight in close, pressing in at grappling range with short, swift punches and kicks aimed below the knee. Her skill was good, up to par with Sasuke's earlier, but the Uchiha had already put him on warning and he knew that when it came to taijutsu, Ryoko was the strongest of the three.
Or at least he had thought so, but the skills she was showing right now weren't what he expected of her, even with the fact that she was aiming for the bells mostly rather than attacking him directly much of the time.
A bit disappointed, Kakashi shifted aside at just the right moment and broke the contact from grappling to boxing distance. For just an instant he relaxed as he came out of what was obviously the girl's favored range and instantly recognized the trap.
The foot that clipped his jaw couldn't have been aimed by sight, but only by prediction. In boxing range, she was pressing him unmercifully, forcing him to step up the pace past what he had against Sasuke. Combos flowed into combos and kept Kakashi off his feet.
He stepped back and Ryoko dived forward and to the side, seeking to cut around him, leg chambering for a kick. His arm rose to ready a block and partially obscured his sight, so that he almost missed the feint for what it was. The leg motion wasn't a chambering kick, but a swift push against the ground to dive around Kakashi's opposite flank, using the older man's own blocking arm to conceal the motion.
Had he had slower reflexes and eyes, he'd have followed a mental phantasm, a projection of what his brain had determined should have been Ryoko's path. It was a clever move, but he'd seen through it, and it was defeated as he rolled into her true path, forcing her into grappling distance again.
Sasuke, stuck in the ground, watched in sheer shock as the girl he'd been dismissing pressed the man that had so thoroughly defeated him.
Even now, he watched as the girl took what should have been a vicious throw and turned it against the jonin into a painful looking slam into the ground.
And puff into smoke.
"Ano…" Ryoko said, blinking and looking about in confusion.
She'd been about to win, she was sure of it. Then again, she'd gotten the feeling that the man had been holding back against her. Now she wasn't so sure, and the trace of annoyance at not being taken seriously faded away.
"Ryoko-chan," Kakashi called out from where he'd perched on a nearby tree. "Up here."
The black-haired girl looked up and caught the man's hand signs just moments before the leaves swirled around her.
Under normal circumstances, Kakashi would have used a fear-inducing genjutsu to make the target faint. In Ryoko's case, her…condition meant that she would likely almost instantly break the genjutsu as well as becoming more dangerous.
As such, he had other images in mind.
Sasuke watched with arched eyebrows as the Saotome girl cheerfully muttered to herself.
He couldn't hear much of what she was saying, only fragments of it seemed to be working out, but had he been able to hear her thoughts as well as the mumbled words, it might have been something like this:
"Mother, I have found instructors to teach me the sword!" she declared. "Oh, no, I have not yet found husband, but there are many potential manly men here. And Joseibi-chan is doing so well! She is at the ninja academy. WAI! I knew you'd appreciate Imouto-chan eventually, mother! Why certainly we don't need the family wakizashi any more. Oh this is a great day."
Kakashi smirked from his position only moments before leaving to go attend to a certain ninja that was breaking probably breaking the rules just now.
Ten minutes later, Sasuke had successfully managed to dig himself out and charged ahead to make a last ditch effort to take the bells, leaving Ryoko to slowly come out of her illusion as the slow flow of chi washed it away.
"Ano…" Ryoko said, looking around and wondering where everything and everybody had gone.
Then the alarm rang sounding noon.
"Ryoko's lack of understanding of this task is expected," Kakashi said, he noted the girl in question bite deeper into her lip as he said that. "She was not raised in Konoha, but I expected better of the two of you."
"But the whole thing is stupid," Naruto protested. "What are we supposed to learn from trying to grab a couple of stupid bells from someone like you."
From his position under Kakashi's foot, Sasuke could do little more than grunt.
"Are you guys brainless?" Kakashi asked. "What's the point of three man teams?"
Struggling from where he was tied up, Naruto practically growled.
"What do three man teams have to do with anything?" he demanded.
"Simply put," Kakashi said. "Teamwork."
"Ano…" Ryoko said. The girl opened her mouth to say more, but stopped uncertain of what to say.
"Go on, Ryoko," Kakashi said firmly. "What were you going to say."
"Tr…training partners make y…you strong," Ryoko said. "But ev…eventually a ri…rival must be defeated or must de..defeat you."
Naruto blinked and looked to the black-haired girl as she spoke of that particularly cold philosophy of cooperation. Did she really believe that was the extent that people could relate to each other?
"That's the view of a martial artist, no not a martial artist, a mere figter who sees only the next challenge," Kakashi told her flatly. He turned toward the other two young fighters. "Or someone who thinks only of his own goals. Your team members are not mere rivals or training partners. They are your comrades. This exercise is meant to find those who are able to understand that distinction and weed out those who aren't. Acting alone and as an individual does nothing but bring the team to crisis and destruction."
He drew a kunai and quickly had it out at Sasuke's throat.
"Ryoko! If you don't kill Naruto, I'll kill Sasuke," Kakashi declared roughly, before removing his knife a full second later and continuing in a more normal tone. "Is what would happen. The enemy now has a hostage and you're presented with two unacceptable results. Meanwhile, if you had worked together, you could probably have taken the bells."
He stood up and let Sasuke up from the dirt, the young Uchiha grudgingly rubbing at his shoulder.
"But…why only t…two bells?" Ryoko asked. "Wh…why n..not one or three?"
"To cloud the issue," Sasuke said grimly. "Make us think of our own goals instead of the team's objective."
Ryoko slumped. She really wasn't suited to this sort of thing it seemed.
"Well," Kakashi said. "You'll have one more chance to get the bells, but first, let's have lunch. However, no one let Naruto eat anything. His punishment for breaking the rules. If anybody let's Naruto eat, they'll be disqualified instantly. I make the rules here, understand?"
The three nodded and then Kakashi vanished.
"We're going to get those bells this time," Naruto said some minutes later, laughing as he ignored the fact that he was still tied up and hadn't eaten yet.
Sasuke turned as the sound of Naruto's growling stomach put a lie to his boasting. He started to offer his bento.
"No, h…he can have mine," Ryoko said quietly.
"What?" Naruto said surprised. "No. You'll be disqualified, you'll have to…"
"Ano…" Ryoko said. "I…I am n…not a ninja in th..the first place."
"But," Naruto started to protest.
"Quiet, if all of us aren't at our full strength, we'll have trouble getting those bells," Sasuke said. "We'll need to share all our bentos across."
"I…I am fine," Ryoko said. She knew from experience that she wasn't near the point that she'd have to start sacrificing performance yet.
"But…" Naruto started to protest before he found a ball of rice in his mouth.
And that was when the world started to go crazy.
See other episodes by Thrythlind
(Posted Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:22)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.