Just Another Day in the Neighborhood [P]

“Asami…Asami!...ASAMI!”

“Mmmmommmmm, it’s 4:30. Let me sleep.”

The lights flicked on mercilessly in the young girl’s room as her mom went about what had become, as of late, an early morning ritual.

“Come on honey, it’s time to wake up,” her mother sat on the side of the bed and worked to pull Asami’s head out from under her pillow. “Come on, let’s get going.”

“Ok, ok, ok, fine. Give me five more minutes and I’ll be down,” Asami muttered into her bed.

“Alright, five minutes, but not a minute more,” the older woman smiled a soft motherly smile before going to the door. “I’ll get breakfast started.”

Hearing a single metallic click Asami let out an exasperated gasp just loud enough for her mother to hear her through the closed door. Pulling the pillow off her head, the young girl looked up at the incandescent light above her in the vain hope that willpower alone would cause it to wink out and leave her in darkness once more. A few minutes passed and the darkness never came; giving into the inevitable the girl slipped out from under her blankets and got ready for the day. She shimmied into her well-worn workout clothes, dragged a comb through her black hair till she liked the way it fell across her forehead, and glanced in the mirror longer than she really should have before being drawn to the kitchen by the promising smell of bacon.

“Honey, you can’t go to the academy with your hair like that,” her mother exclaimed upon seeing her. “Sit down, sit down.”

Glaring darkly at her taller mother, Asami begrudgingly allowed herself to be ushered into her usual seat and started poking at her breakfast while her mother fussed about with her hair she had just so carefully combed out.

“Ow, mom, come on,” the young girl yelped as her mother tugged her hair back into a bun.

“You can thank me later,” her mother assured. “It won’t do to have hair getting in your eyes.”

Asami chomped down hard on a particularly crispy piece of bacon, but said nothing. She figured even if her mother was right that she didn’t have to give her the satisfaction of agreeing with her. Yeah, that would totally show her.

“How’s breakfast, everything taste alright?”

Around the time Asami failed her first genin exam, Mrs. Miyamoto had taken it upon herself to improve her dismal cooking skills in a show of solidarity with her daughter who found herself practicing harder than she ever had before. The first few months were more than a bit rough on the family of three with both undercooked and overcooked meals, but now even Asami had to admit that her mom wasn’t a half bad cook.

“It’s alright, I guess,” the teenager shrugged downing the last of her orange juice.

The two women continued to eat in silence until Asami got up, cleared her dishes, and soundlessly made her way towards the front door in hopes of escaping from under her mother’s watchful eye.

“Love you, honey,” her mother’s voice echoed down the hall to her. “Work hard, your dad will be by to walk you home!”

“Bye.” Asami replied offhandedly as she slipped on her shoes and out the door into the cool morning air.
The genin hopeful immediately regretted not bringing her jacket. The sun had not yet peeked over the horizon, so the empty streets felt cold and damp from the previous night’s rain. In hopes of staying warm her walking pace slowly transitioned into a steady jog and soon the familiar streets clipped by as she focused not on the invasive cold around her, but rather the day ahead of her.

Left at the bakery, right at the armory, and then straight down the beach…

She repeated the familiar set of directions in her head as she ran and in what felt like no time at all she arrived at her destination, the academy of Kirigakure. Looking more like a fortress than a school the walled complex overlooked one of the island’s many bays. In the past, the building—if one could call such an amalgam of ramparts and towers a building—served as a pirate base of operations until the shinobi of the island drove them from it.

Stepping through the large gates, Asami could not help but glance back at the sea. The orange glow of the coming sun contrasted sharply with the deep blue of the ocean making a scene anyone could appreciate. Well, almost anybody…

“Miyamoto! Get moving double time, you’re late!” A man’s rough voice rang from within the complex.

“Coming!!” the young girl chirped obediently.

So much for waking up before the sun…

“Line up with the rest,” the tall black haired man commanded when Asami entered the courtyard.

Taking her usual spot at the end of the lineup of seven other teens, Asami stood up straight, clasped her hands in front of her, and waited for instructions. After failing her first genin exam her mother spared no expense and enrolled her in special lessons to better hone her skills and prepare her for whatever may come. The young girl, of course, thought the whole thing silly, but went all the same.

“Now sound off!” the older man barked.

Each kid in line stepped forward one at a time greeted the man and stepped back into line.

“Good morning, Kentomoto Sensei,” Asami shouted at the top of her lungs when her time came.

The distant cry of a gull emphasized the silence that followed as the man known as Kentomoto Sensei walked up and down the line of students. Pausing here and there he would nod or frown before ending his rounds at the opposite end of the line from Asami.

“Very good, at ease,” all eight students released a collective breath and allowed their posture to break ever so slightly. “Today we will be drilling the two most basic techniques a shinobi can master. Miyamoto! What are these two techniques?”

The black-haired teen stepped forward.

“Sir, they are the clone and transformation techniques,” she’d be hard-pressed not to know them at this point; her legs still ached from the laps she had to do last time for not knowing them.

“Very good, now pair up and get to work,” Kentomoto said giving a dismissive flourish of his hand.

In the shuffle that ensued the eight students hurried into the preferred groups. Asami wove deftly wove past a particularly tall boy by the name of Shun until she got to Junko. Junko stood around the same height as Asami, had hair of the wildest red due to her Uzumaki lineage, and had been Asami’s best friend since childhood.

“Shun was totally looking at you,” Junko giggled.

Asami’s face flushed a deep crimson, but couldn’t defend herself as Kentomoto cast the two girls a dark look that said much more than words.

“Yeah, whatever,” Asami rebutted weakly. “Let’s get to work.”

This seemed to appease Kentomoto as he continued on his way without a word.

“Fiiine,” Junko jeered quietly. “I have this down already anyway.”

“Oh really?” Asami fired back—it was common knowledge to both that neither was the best student in the world.

“Yeah, watch,” screwing up her face Junko wove three hand seals, dog-boar-ram. “How do I look?”

As the cloud of smoke dissipated from around Junko, Asami’s jaw dropped. Instead of the small brown haired girl stood a perfect image of Kentomoto Sensei, large facial scar and all. Junko had actually been practicing.

“Hmph, that’s nothing,” Asami shot back, weaving her own set of hand signs. “Watch this.”

Concentrating both her thoughts and chakra, the young girl molded her new form. Much to both her and Junko’s surprise she transformed perfectly, perfectly into the tall boy Shun. Blushing deeply Asami broke the transformation before anybody save for Junko could see her the result of her wandering mind.

“ ‘Yeah, whatever’,” Junko quipped referring back to Asami’s dismissive attitude regarding the boy and bubbling with laughter.

“Is practicing jutsu funny to you, Uzumaki?!” Kentomoto screamed from across the courtyard. “Everyone, form up. These two are going to give us a demonstration of these jutsu in combat.”

The laughter died in Junko throat. The chorus of ‘Yes, sirs’ that followed almost made up for it though and in a few moments the whole class stood around the chalk marked arena. The two friends stood on opposite sides glancing around in hopes of something preventing the inevitable.

“We will be following the normal ruleset,” Kentomoto decreed once everyone had settled. “Begin!”

To accent his words, he threw a kunai into the center of the arena. The goal of this exercise, as all the students knew at this point, was to get to the kunai and win the fight by any means necessary. That is to say the ‘normal ruleset’ meant anything goes.

In a movement that had become muscle memory by this point, Asami chained together three hand seals as she ran forward, ram-snake-tiger. In hopes of confusing Junko, two illusionary clones appeared on either side of Asami as she slid forward. Junko, who had always been faster than Asami, reached the kunai first, but by sliding as if stealing a base Asami managed to send her friend toppling to the ground. Not wasting a moment, the black-haired teen leapt at her friend and drew her fist back only to be stopped by the electric sensation of cold metal pressed against the back of her neck.

“This fight is over, Uzumaki Junko wins,” Kentomoto declared as if he had expected it from the onset.

Glancing down at where she thought Junko had been, Asami saw only a log—the substitution jutsu. She had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, hook line and sinker. Putting on her best smile, the defeated student accepted Junko’s help up.

“Great job,” Asami sighed without even a sliver of resentment in her voice. “I’ll get you next time.”

As if to make her point she stuck her tongue out at Junko when Kentomoto’s had his back turned. The rest of the day wore on in much the same way; practicing in pairs broken up by intermittent spars and instruction by Kentomoto Sensei. By mid-afternoon the group called it a day and everyone went their separate ways.

“Asami! Over here!” Kenshi yelled upon seeing his daughter exiting the compound.

“Hey, dad.” Asami replied with a friendly wave, but still looking as if she wanted to crawl under a rock at the sight of her dad coming to walk her home.

“How’s training going?” Kenshi asked as the two made it some distance from the fortress.

“Not too poorly,” she beamed triumphantly and felt more comfortable now that she was out of earshot of her friends. “I almost beat Junko today…I think if I had jumped instead of sliding it would have been better…or maybe if I had wove my hand seals faster…”

Kenshi looked on happily as his daughter rattled on and on about what she should have and could have done better. The older man was not a shinobi himself so a lot of what his daughter said said went over his head, but he was comforted by the fact that she was making progress. He had seen what happened to those who did not progress in the new village of Kirigakure and he would not wish such a fate on one of the people he treasured above all others.

“That sounds great,” he finally interjected as Asami’s torrent of words began to die out. “It’s good to see in such good spirits. Maybe this time you’ll pass. What’s the phrase? Second time’s the charm?”

He was not above making fun of his daughter and the two often shot barbs at each other with the understanding that it was all in good fun.

“Ha ha ha, you’re sooooo funny dad.”

For the rest of the way home, the pair talked about what they’d have dinner and other small unimportant things. Such was life for the Miyamoto family: unimportant and untouched by the brutality of the village around them. And if Ai and Kenshi could have their way that was how life would continue to be for their daughter, uneventful.

{Total Word Count: 2047, 500/500 for Clone technique and 500/500 for transformation techniques. +10 stats}

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