Vitalis

[YukiTen]

[style=width: 100px; height: 100px; float: center; border-radius: 60px; border: 4px double #9999ff; background-image: url(http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb128/nayora_wolf/b0a536ec.jpg);] [/style][style=width: 250px; height: 250px; border-radius: 25px 25px 25px 25px; background: #ffffff; border: 5px double #9999ff; font-family: tahoma; font-size: 10px; text-align: justify; color: #000000; padding: 10px; overflow: auto]PULLED STRAIGHT FROM MY ASS.




Her name is Kusanagi Yuki: self-appointed squad leader that specializes in taijutsu and genjutsu, advances in ninjutsu; pessimist, over sensitive; insomniac, narcoleptic; bad with insults, good with ass beating; average body with a heavy set of breasts, average looks, animalistic face, freckles, ice blue and lush green eyes (now a bloody shade of red), albino white hair (now dyed a deep purple), a fading scar winding around her forearm and up to her jaw (she received the wicked scar from the calamity that racked her legendary family, from a dark-haired man with a too-long tongue and the glowing blade that belonged to the Kusanagi clan in the ages that it had to be under heavy protection); daughter of the late Kusanagi Midori and Kusanagi Suzaku (both murdered, both outstanding ninja and the previous heads of the Kusanagi clan), sister to the missing Kusanagi Yasuo (presumably in the company of Orochimaru or dead), and adopted daughter of the highly renowned Hatake Kakashi (Jounin, ex-ANBU); easily frustrated, easily hurt, stubborn, pig-headed, crude, blunt, hyperactive, all-around bitch, boyish behavior half of the time.

No one really quite knows her all that well, what with her being on the mysterious side. She's only a well-rounded shinobi to pretty much everybody. They know nothing of the hardships and destructions in her past or the flaws in her personality. No one knows her even though she'd been within their midst in Konohagakure no Sato for a long eight years of her life. She was born in Sunagakure no Sato, the Sand Village, but her vast and skilled clan had been almost completely destroyed. Few members remained. Very few. Two at the most. She made a weak journey to Konohagakure shortly after at only the age of five, alone and ill. Bandits were all around, older ninja passed as they embarked on their missions, and princes and princesses came from all over in their lavishly decorated chariots. Then, soon to start on his own mission, Hatake Kakashi stumbled upon the weakened blond child and quickly stole her away into a hospital. Without much thought or careful consideration, the silver-haired boy adopted her. Hatake was only around the age of fifteen, but even he couldn't leave a child to die.

~

Yuki let out a soft and irritable sigh, running her thin, calloused fingers through her long purple hair, occasionally twirling a few of the thick strands around her pinky. She frowned slightly, her reddened eyes flitting about the room in hurried twitches, strained from almost severe sleep deprivation. She tapped her thumb on her lightly freckled cheek, each time harder than the first until her nail left a mark under her eye. A small huff and she closed her burning eyes, leaning her head down on her arms.

If only she could've gotten more sleep the night before, she would be more prepared for the events of today. But Hatake Kakashi wouldn't let her sleep with all of his calm bickering and strategy talk, going on and on about the importance of caution, stealth, concentration, and how strong Yuki had become in all the years she'd been under his careful watch and training, how intelligent she became in the eight short years she'd been in his company, and how quickly she advanced in the academy (it took her only about two or three months to advance). It went on for hours and hours and into the wee hours of the morning, the man's voice never wavering or trailing off into sleepy mumbles. No. His voice was the same from the moment he opened his mouth until Yuki's body decided to go to sleep standing up in the kitchen with her hand gripping the wooden handle of a frying pan.

Alas, here she was with her head down and eyes closed, the irritating thought of her lack of sleep swirling around in her brain. There was no such thing as getting a wink of sleep in a public place. Especially if that public place just so happened to be a classroom filled with graduated academy students.

She hadn't really noticed (not caring to) the loud clamoring of the afermentioned fresh academy graduates that was so thick in the air, and only now did she even think to pay attention to it. By the sound of it, the whole thirty-by-thirty room was packed full with noisy students and with the increase of noise, that meant there was a growing influx of all the graduating students. The more students that flocked in, the sooner the genin orientation was going to start. That meant that she would get put on a squad of three. Well, a squad of four considering the fact that there was an odd amount of students and if that number was divided, there would be one extra student. So, someone was going to be an extra on a squad.

It didn't really matter so long as everyone was on a squad.

Yuki groaned minutely, lifting her head slowly. It would be best not to fall asleep when the orientation began for two reasons: the first, if she fell asleep, she wouldn't exactly be able to tell what team she was on and she would sleep for way too long, and the second, it's just very unbecoming for a kunoichi of her stature, academy graduate or not. She breathed in coldly and opened her burning red eyes, nodding in agreement to her own thoughts and found herself staring blatantly at a certain coffee-skinned, dark brown haired, slit-eyed boy working his way through the crowd of students with a sly grin on his cocky, tattooed face. She blinked at him, making note of the small white dog barking happily in the front of his hood. She sighed. Her reaction was almost automatic, a conditioned response to the sight of someone new and different. But the boy wasn't exactly new or different. He was a classmate that Yuki had sat next to once upon a time when she first started at the academy. She had ignored him the whole time until she got fed up with his constant dozing and cocky blathering and moved herself to another desk.

It wasn't that he was annoying. It was that she didn't like show-offs or show-offy behavior.

"Oi, Kusanagi," quipped that cocky fucking voice. A calloused hand slapped down on the desk and the tapping of individual fingers followed, the noises grating on Yuki's too-sensitive and already strained ears.

She frowned and let out an irritated groan, her reddened eyes shifting from the sharpened nails of Inuzuka Kiba's hand right up to the red triangle tattooed on his creased-with-a-frighteningly-over-confident-grin left cheek, her thin eyebrows furrowing. There were two problems. One, he knew her by name and judging by his overall demeanor, he was most likely bad at memorizing things. And two, he was standing before her, leaning over her desk and staring down at her with his mischievous eyes like she was lunch. But, the former was the one that bothered her the most, unlike the latter which is the one she should be worried about.

He knew her fucking name.

If he were captured by an enemy and she withheld important information or was a 'key' to a 'lock', he could leak some of that information or the location of which she was in, thus revealing who and what she was. If someone was strange and creepy was seeking her out (without knowing her name), he could tell that person her name and that person could find her address and stalk her and continuously be a fucking creeper. There were a number of scenarios that could end badly for Yuki. It would inevitably end badly for Inuzuka as well, what with the simple fact she would beat the stupid coffee-skinned dog brat to a bloody fucking pulp.

She breathed in and then out slowly. "What do you want?" she snapped almost viciously, reaching up with her tired hands to run her fingers through her mass of bright purple bangs.

Another cheap, confident grin on Kiba's part. "I wanna sit with ya," he declared, his voice grating on Yuki's ears again.

"Why?" There was no kindness in her voice. Only annoyance and cold sleepiness.

"Why not?" he barked, his grin widening. Without a moment's hesitation or even a second thought (or even any fucking permission), the boy slid into the seat beside her, his dog ruffing in mild protest. The small puppy was almost as noisy as the chittering academy graduates, but in a different way.

He wasn't annoying.

But, then again, puppies weren't exactly annoying.

"So...Yu-Yu. What team do ya think you'll be on? Like...with who?" [/style][style=width: 250px; border-radius: 25px 25px 25px 25px; background: #ffab64; border: 5px double #ff7100; font-family: tahoma; font-size: 10px; text-align: center; color: #000000; padding: 10px;]credit goes to LUNAR of LOVE STAMP[/style]

[ink]

"So, they roped you into teaching, huh?" Kakashi drawled at Sīneah, arms crossed.

Sīneah rolled her eyes at him and ran a hand through her short, shaggy purple hair, "And forced me into ANBU retirement, to boot," she complained.

"You were in T&I for five years.  You needed to get out," he promptly replied, regarding her balefully.

"And teaching is the first thing they have me do afterwards?" Sīneah asked incredulously, raising an eyebrow.

Kakashi shrugged and offered, "You can use the bell test too, if you want."

Sīneah gave him a pointed look, "I don't think so."

"Your loss," he shrugged again.

Sīneah laughed, "Besides, do you really think Yuki would get it?" she smirked, "I'd hate to fail your precious little girl," she teased him.

Kakashi just scoffed, "'Precious'? Have you met Yuki?"

Sīneah laughed in return, "Yes, and I'm about to meet her again for the team assignments," she smiled and waved as she began to walk away, "Bye, Kakashi!"

"Bye," he called out to her as she weaved through the crowd and she couldn't help but to laugh because she knew that he would have absolutely no interest in even heading towards the Academy for another hour.

She pitied the poor brats that were going to be his team, for as ever short as that may be.

[YukiTen]

Yuki gave a frustrated sigh. Another one.

So what, now she had nicknames?

She shook her head, pinching the bridge of her straight nose, letting out yet another sigh. When did he get this annoying? Back when Yuki was first attending the academy, the Inuzuka was someone irritating, but he didn't say her name or gave her nicknames. Hell, he didn't even talk to her. At least, not really. Every once in a while, he would try to strike up conversation, but to no avail. She would ignore him, he would snort and return to barking at his friends. When he did so, he would just speak in such a snappy and cocky manner and the mere sound would grate on her poor, over-sensitive ears. Eventually, she just got up and moved. The noises the Inuzuka would make were just impossible to deal with. As animalistic as Yuki was herself, Kiba was even moreso.

"Inuzuka-san, I don't care," she muttered gruffly, closing her stinging eyes.

What reason did she have to care? She would be placed on a three-man team, each member selected to balance out the others, and she would have to work with them no matter who they were and how awful or how good their skills were. It did not matter. Her teammates could be black, light-skinned, tanned, intelligent, stupid, strong, weak, losers, winners, skilled, skill less. She didn't care. Because no matter who they were, she had to get along with them and work with them as if they were all of them a machine, a singular unit.

If she were to care about the contents and quality of her team members, then she would be more concerned of how they looked and whether or not they were good or bad. She would be labeled as a 'bitch' for labeling others. There was just no use in--

"Yuki? Oi!" barked that too-cocky voice again, quieter and more personal. The grating sound rang in her ears like a shrill bell, clanging around in her head.

This fucking idiot...

"What do you--"

"Hey, Yuki-chan!" a kindly male voice belonging to that of the purple-haired girl's friend, Hasegawa Senri, entered the small exchange of useless conversation with calmness and an underlying tone suggestion that he knew how Yuki needed saving (though she didn't actually need it).

She turned her head and gazed up at the boy, a small smile gracing her features.

Senri had a messy mop of dark brown hair that fell into his intense orange eyes and framed his face, a seemingly permanent and good natured grin always on his face. He was kind and thoughtful, putting his friends and family before himself always. He was a very tall boy and his height at his age (14) was a bit scary to some people because, by the time he was 20, they all said, he would grow to be at least six-feet-and-five-inches tall or approaching seven-foot mark.

"Hello, Senri-kun. How are you?" Yuki asked warmly, taking this moment to completely steal her attention away from Kiba and place it on her friend.

"I just came here. I'm pretty excited. We'll be genin now, Yuki-chan!" he replied simply, grinning all the way.

Yuki smiled.

Senri had an affinity for always being happy about everything, namely simple things. He was very happy about this. It must have been pretty big for him, graduating the academy and finally becoming a genin. He would finally be able to advance in the ninja world, show his sensei (whoever it was) that he was a good enough shinobi too. This was all Senri really wanted.

"I know. I hope we can train together," Yuki murmured, her eyes fixed on Senri's. They were a cloudy but intense orange. His eyes were small contradictions with gentleness gracing their roundness, a smile creasing the corners.

She did hope that she could be with him. After all, he was her friend, and friends stick together.

"I do, too, Yuki," he said softly, his grin widening. "Do you mind if I sit next to you? I have a feeling the orientation is about to start."

"Of course," she said, nodding her head slowly and scooting over a few inches to make room for her tall friend.

She was surprised that Kiba hadn't yet barked in protest, his attention probably on his dog after Yuki turned away from him. Strange. She always thought that Kiba would be a little more persistent, yet he had not been, his spirits probably dampened by Senri's sudden entrance. The Inuzuka boy was an odd one, only persisting when no one of value was around.

Whatever the case, who cares?

Senri took the seat that Yuki made for him and sat down, sliding in beside his friend. She looked at him and smiled, a frown replacing that kind gesture as a headache stabbed at, well, her head. She sighed and leaned her head back down on her arms.

"Are you okay, Yuki-chan?" the boy asked worriedly, a large hand patting her back gently. "I can take you home if you need me to..."

"No, I'm fine." Definite. Yuki huffed and lifted her head back up. "I'm not missing my genin orientation just because I'm tired and have a headache."

The boy looked at her for a moment and shook his head. "If you say so."

She turned her attention forward as the chitter of the academy graduates came to crashing halt, her eyes finding the nasal scar of Umino Iruka-sensei, watching as he crossed his arms over his flak-vested chest and smiled at the class with approval. He would probably begin his speech soon, seeing as how the room was dead silent and that he had everyone's attention. Iruka-sensei should probably take advantage of this...

The brown-haired man took a second to clear his throat and his proud, approving smile seemed to widen all the more.

"As of today, you are all real ninja," he began, beaming. His voice was a little nasal, calm, but it was full of his afermentioned pride and happiness for his students.

Yuki just had to smile too, running her clawed fingers through her purple hair.

"But you are still merely rookie genin. The hard part has only just started. Now..." He paused and Yuki watched as the newly pronounced genin shifted in their seats with excitement or slumped with disappointment. Rank didn't matter much to her, so long as she could progress. Another clear of his throat and Iruka continued. "You will soon be assigned duties by the village."

Another pause.

Wow, sensei. You're really taking your time with this, Yuki thought, twirling a piece of hair around her fingers. He really was. He kept pausing and picking his orientation announcement back up then pausing again and so on. It's not that it was annoying. It's just no one really wanted to sit here all day. They would have to do so anyway with their jounin sensei when it came time for introductions. Just speed it up already...

And...still that pause continued.

Iruka-sensei was letting it all soak in, Yuki decided. She huffed and shook her head.

"Yuki," Senri whispered, leaning in close to the girl. "This is taking longer than I thought it would."

She shushed him, covering his mouth with her hands. "Be quiet!" she whispered frantically in return.

"So today we will be creating the three-man teams...and each team will have a Jounin sensei. You will follow that sensei's instructions as you complete the assigned duties," Iruka-sensei explained, making his typical hand-motions as he went on.

Blah, blah, blah... I've heard this all before. We already know all of this. Just get to the good part, she thought bitterly, releasing Senri's face and placing her hands back on the table, tapping her sharp nails on the wooden surface.

She was bored. Already. She just wanted to know who her friggin' sensei was!

"We tried to balance each team's strengths."

Here it is... His announcement of the teams.

"First, Team Two: Hasegawa Senri--"

The very first syllable had Yuki's artificially colored eyes planted firmly on Senri, slightly widened. He was smiling, but it was forced. He was worried and she could see it clear-as-day. She was too. She may not be on his team, and they both were afraid of that.

"--Inuzuka Kiba--"

A scoff had Yuki turning to face the dog boy, a frown jerking at the corners of her lips. Why did he get to be on the same team as Senri? She growled inwardly. Stupid dog.

"--and Kusanagi Yuki."

Her heart skipped a beat and she deadpanned, turning her head to face Iruka-sensei, noticing that shifty twinkle in his eye. That bastard.

Before she could protest, he smoothed right over and continued. "Next, Team Seven: Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke."

Just the mentioning of that emo fucktard's name had Yuki gasping for air, her face and overall demeanor ridden with disgust. She let out a... less than quiet cough containing the word 'fucktard' and turned away from Iruka-sensei, her eyes sagging shut, and her head down on her arms.

She was going to catch so much hell from all the girls later.

"Iruka-sensei, why does an outstanding ninja like me have to be on the same team as that bum, Sasuke-teme?!!" Uzumaki Naruto (you just mistake his voice. Impossible.) snapped, the screeching of wood on wood ringing in Yuki's ears, making her headache worse. She frowned and lifted her head back up, a hand drifting to her pouch.

"Sasuke's grades were second among all thirty graduates. Naruto, you were dead last!" Iruka-sensei quelled, his voice booming and almost cruel. "We have to do this to balance the teams. Understand?!"

"Sasuke-sama was only second?" Yuki heard someone nearby whisper.

"Yeah. Kusanagi-sama kinda always had a higher score so she was first..." another person would whisper back.

She frowned. People talk too much.

"It's because her dad is Hatake Kakashi-sama... He's the Copy Ninja and he used to be ANBU. Now he's a jounin."

She growled and whipped around, glaring right at the odd-looking couple who were gabbing right behind her. "What are you, our fucking groupies?!" she snapped queitly, a snarl painted on her face.

As she bickered with these two offending know-it-alls, her ears perked up and she stopped her hand and frowned deeply, turning away to face forward again. It would be best not to cause a scene. She was already goin to catch hell from the girls, she knew, but if she incapacitated another genin at orientation, she would catch all kinds of hell from all kinds of high-ranking ninja. Fuck that.

She didn't wanna die yet.

"Team Eight," Iruka just skimmed over everything, "Hyuuga Hinata, Aburame Shino, and Hana Kuni."

Hana Kuni? Who the fuck is that? <<I swear Yuki has ADD.>>

"Team Nine: Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Chouji."

Ew, cool, and ew. The next Three Stooges. Great. Yuki shook her head and pinched her nose, listening with mild disinterest as Iruka listed off the rest of the teams. There were ten teams this year, it seemed. If you divide thirty by three, you get ten. She sighed and paid little attention to the new prodding in both of her sides, shaking her head throughout the rest of orientation.

People suck, she concluded seemingly out of nowhere. She had an idiot on her team and the rest of the rookie twelve were idiots. Except for Senri. He was the one exception. The only exception. Everyone else was just...ugh. She should her head for the millionth time.

A hand gently pinched at her shoulder. Blinking her eyes open, she looked up at Senri, a confused look in his eyes, and a lip-curl on his face as if to say 'don't look at me, I'm not touching you'. Her eyebrows furrowed and she turned her head to look at the Inuzuka boy, a small grin gracing his lips.

Immediately, as if on cue, she grew irate.

"The fuck did you touch me for?" she quipped, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Just wanted to get your attention, yo. The jounin are here," Kiba explained calmly, his voice rough and nonchalant.

credit goes to LUNAR of LOVE STAMP

[ink]

Sīneah strode into the Academy Room where the new genin were waiting.  She was late. Kakashi must be catching, she thought to herself with a wry smile.

She nodded at Iruka and turned to face the baby genin.  There were two teams left.  The other one was presumably Kakashi's.

"Team 2!" she cried out, hands on her hips, "Come with me!"

She turned and walked out the door, expecting her genin to be obedient enough to follow.  She paused in the hallway and said to the genin, "Ramen or Dango?"

[YukiTen]

Yuki blinked.

In no time, it seemed, the entire room that had once been packed and overflowing with the thirty academy graduates was now empty, save for half of the rookie twelve. In the wake of the new genin's leave, there were no messes, nothing mussed or astray, only perfectly straight rows of tables and seats and Teams Two as well as Seven, each frustrated and impatient in their own right.

"Yuki-chan, our sensei is late," Senri announced softly, slumping with mild disappointment in his chair beside the purple-haired girl, leaning his head in a large palm with his elbow planted on the smooth tabletop. "When will they be here?"

"The hell if I know," she quipped, rolling her reddened eyes and slumping as well. She sighed audibly.

"Pfft." Kiba scoffed and leaned his own head in his hand, elbow pinned to the table. His actions were a mirror to Senri's, as if he believed mimicking such actions would draw Yuki's attention from the tall boy to him. "If our sensei isn't here in the next five minutes, I'm leaving."

Yuki shook her head, a fuzzy mop of purple dipping into the room followed by an actual body of the darkly tanned type, clothes of green and grey. Her interest was immediately piqued. This woman was taller than the average kunoichi, eyes gray, hair purple, short and feathered, her shoulders much wider and there were black seals decorating her belly and sides. The sealings were intricate, the kanji drawn in that special messy-yet-clean manner, as if they were made with the care and quickness of a professional painter.

The woman planted her hands on her hips and all of Kiba's and Senri's bickering was blocked out by the sudden yell she released.

"Team 2!" she cried out, hands on her hips, "Come with me!"

She turned and walked out the door, expecting her genin to be obedient enough to follow. She paused in the hallway and said to the genin, "Ramen or Dango?"

Yuki blinked. Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

In less than even the smallest portions of a second, Yuki was at her feet and her chakra was focused to the points in her small feet. She could feel the rush of energy pooling in her soles and making her toes tingle. She closed her eyes and pushed off the wooden flooring with her focused chakra, rolling her body into a cat-like arch and descending to the very front of the room, a platform at the bottom of the floors and stairs where all of the tables and seats were placed. She landed as gracefully as she had kicked off, feet firm and at level with her shoulders.

She elicited a cool breath, opened her eyes, and turned to face her retreating sensei, ready to follow.

A grin stretched across her face. "Sineah, I think you and I can agree that some Dango is in order.".

credit goes to LUNAR of LOVE STAMP

[ink]

Sīneah laughed.  Yuki was such a showoff.  She smiled and cocked her head to the side, "Let's ask your teammates, what they want, eh?"

She considered something then informed Yuki, "Never do something like that stunt you just pulled again, you hear me?  It goes against everything a ninja stands for," Sīneah looked at her two other students and announced, "Pop quiz!  What was wrong about what Yuki did?"

[YukiTen]

Yuki scowled at the taller purple-haired woman, her teeth bared. "Shut up, you old hag!" she snapped, tightly crossing her thin arms over her slowly developing chest. Her eyebrows furrowed and a frown planted on her face, she tapped her foot on the wooden floor and pouted with great irritation.

"What Yuki did was dangerous," Senri blatantly offered to Sīneah, every ounce of his voice thick with amusement and fondness for Yuki's predicament. "She could have fallen and hurt herself, which would be a disadvantage for the team."

The short girl's little ears pricked and she shot an angry and disapproving glare at the tall boy, visualizing daggers and stabbing them into every chakra point in his body. His betrayal, while good natured, was still betrayal nonetheless. Her face was drawn into an ugly frown of annoyance.

She said nothing and instead opted to switch her glare to the coffee-skinned Inuzuka boy, as if to say 'if you say anything, I will fucking kill you!'

Kiba only smirked and let his thin lips flap open, teeth gleaming in his triumph. "Not only that, but it's just some indecent show-offy behavior, yo. Especially for a Kusanagi." At this poit, he wasn't really even speaking to Sīneah. Every word was a direct prick at Yuki's already non-existent fuse and emotions.

"Sīneah! I will personally make YOU suffer if you do not shut these two traitors up!" she quipped, her voice laden with an untraceable hint of hurt and a heavy taste of anger.

Her family was a touchy subject and everyone knew that, even if they didn't know Yuki herself personally. Her entire family, save for herself, was entirely wiped out several years ago and the person who did it held no sympathy or children or women. In fact, he brutally murdered her true father, Kusanagi Suzuku, his blood forever staining the once beautifully painted walls of the now dilapidated Kusanagi Clan compound. In a report that Yuki found four years after the incident, Suzuku's body had been recovered in the main house, his arms burnt to a crisp and sticking out of a pot in the ashen fireplace, his torso pinned to one of the walls in the room that once belonged to Yuki, his long legs in bloody, smattery chunks all over the wood flooring of the room belonging to a boy named Yasuo, who has been reported missing for nearly a decade. A year or so prior to this event, Yuki's mother was kidnapped and murdered, only to be discovered as a puppet used by a puppeteer ninja, Akasuna no Sasori, that had once been of the same village, Sunagakure no Sato. Her body had been dried, though well taken care of the last time she was seen in use. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, all of them were murdered and each of their individual abilities had been robbed from their bodies, their techniques the only thing allowing them to be remembered.

The carnage of that day...

As her father's blood splattered across her face, Yuki remembered, that man with the long black hair and those snake-like eyes bent over in his uncomfortable looking flak jacket, his tentacle of a tongue stretching from his mouth to lap oh-so suggestively at her cheek. She didn't know it, she couldn't hear it, but he uttered a simple set of words and her skin erupted into blood-boiling flame wherever his tongue touched, not even bothering to ask permission. It swirled around her arm, scorching her skin to black as it went, only stopping at the crease in her arm where a cluster of nerves was bundled up so carelessly. She couldn't remember doing anything but screaming, tears searing her cheeks as her throat grew weary and sore.

"Yuki-chan, what's wro--" Senri tried to interject, but to no avail. Yuki seeme to be having another flashback or something. He sighed and looked to his sensei. "Sīneah-sensei, if I may call you that, must we tease her so much? I mean, look at the result of it..."

And then that tall, tall boy of stark white hair threw himself onto the scene, his albino brows creased and his eyes a set of light pinkish brown and purple (it was a flaw in the blood of the Kusanagi clan, the first born always has the darker eyes which were seen as impure) so full of anger and fear. He kept screaming but the snake man never released the tiny girl. Yuki huffed, letting out a hard breath and quickly reaching into her pocket, her throat burned and her chest heaved. She yanked out a small blue inhaler and slapped it to her face, pressing and inhaling without hesitation. The boy offered something to the man and slowly, his tongue uncorked from around the tiny girl, the burning sensations never retreating.

She couldn't hear what they were saying. All she could hear was the faint yell of the albino boy. "Yuki-chan, you have to run. I will find you one day, my dear sister." A tender kiss to her forehead and he was gone, that snake-tongue of the snake man's draped around his wrist, dragging him away.

Yuki looked to Sīneah, every emotion in the world passing through those reddened eyes.

"So what? Yuki can handle her shit, yo," Kiba barked and threw his arms behind his head.

She flinched, the action only visible to a shinobi of ANBU status, and let out a breath barely audible.

"I don't think you should talk about her that way!" Senri snapped, his kind voice still too kind and reassuring. "She is still a girl! Don't treat a girl badly, especially not Yuki-chan!"

"Shut up."

"I will not sit here idly as you hurt my best friend!"

credit goes to LUNAR of LOVE STAMP

[ink]

Sīneah knew she had to handle the situation carefully.  When Kiba had brought up Yuki's dead family, Sīneah had sworn, pissed that her team's teamwork was so poor that the boy would do something like that.

But then... Yuki's flashback.  It was debilitating.  If they had been in a battle and the enemy somehow knew about her family and brought them up...  Yuki would be dead right now.  Sīneah sighed as her genin fought.

How would she approach this?  It required delicacy to be sure.  She couldn't just be a hardass, but she couldn't be soft either.

She nodded, finally formulating a plan.  She said authoritatively, "Hasegawa Senri.  Inuzaka Kiba.  Stand down.  You are not to fight your teammates while under my command.  It will be inevitable that you will have to work with people you don't like.  As legal adults, I expect you to be mature enough to do so."

She turned to Yuki, "And Kusanagi Yuki.  We've known each other before this.  Because of this, I understand the difficulty you have with mentions of your family.  And I understand that emotional trauma is inevitable.  But," here Sīneah paused, "You can not  both have flashbacks like that on the field and disrespect me like you did."

[YukiTen]

Sineah's words seemed to bite at the shells of Yuki's slightly pointed ears, clawing at the fragile state of mind that had been caused so cruelly by the trauma of the day her entire clan had been destroyed. For a moment, she could understand her friend's seriousness. After all, as it were, she had only just been demoted to a jounin. A jounin that had to lead a team of annoying teenagers for life. And still somehow remain sane at the end of it when her students progressed and became chuunin or jounin or even ANBU after each exam.

But even so, Sineah was still her friend, age difference out the window and all formalities forgotten. She was still her friend.

Yuki bowed her head for a moment, eyes downcast, and stared at the wood flooring, studying each curve of where a knot in the trees that made up the floors should have been. So what, we're her feelings dismissed so easily because Sineah was possibly irritated with her new job? Were her feelings so dismissible just because of formalities? She bit her lip and clenched her clawed hands into tight fists, her stare becoming a heated glare.

"Sensei, please don't be so harsh on Yuki-chan," Senri said defensively, his words calm and gentle. "Please, sensei. Yuki-chan may be rude, but it's good natured and full of fondness. She isn't being deliberate. So please--"

"Quit being a suck-up. Yuki will get over it," Kiba quipped nonchalantly, his own eyes pointed up at Sīneah, thin and slitted. He shook his head and let his eyes fall to the quiet puppy in his jacket, the white puffball returning the look and giving a soft bark. "I know, I know, but still..." he muttered, as I'd talking to the small creature.

"I'm not being a suck-up! Yuki-chan is my dearest friend and I will not stand for anyone harming her!" Senri crossed his own arms and made his way over to the sulking girl carefully, a gentle hand reaching out to tap her shoulder. He frowned when she ducked away, his eyes drifting to her sullen face. He frowned deeply, sympathy and sadness overwhelming him. "Yuki-chan... It's okay."

She only shook her head and ignored him, her head lifting to reveal a blank face. She turned, looking at Kiba for a brief moment with nothing but a calculating glare. Without a moment's hesitation, she bent forward at a forty-five degree angle for a standard an polite bow. "I am sorry for my behavior, everyone."

"Yuki-chan--" Senri started, only to be interrupted.

"Whatever, brat," Kiba muttered.

"Please do not follow me," Yuki murmerred softly to Senri, ignoring Kiba's snarky comment.

Sineah was her friend. She should act like one, Yuki decided, turning on her small heel and walking with an emotionless swagger out of the classroom, only a hair's breath away as she brushed past her older friend. She didn't acknowledge the distance, nor did she even acknowledge the look on the woman's face. She just kept walking, turning to the left and walking towards what she assumed to be the entrance.

"I'll give her that I'm disrespectful at times, but it's not like I did it to be mean. What she said was deliberate," she hugged under her breath, placing one foot in front of the other as she made her way down the winding halls and through the many doorways.

______

"Sensei, please don't be angry with Yuki-chan," Senri mumbled softly, looking down slightly at the older woman. He sincerely hoped the best for his friend, hoping to the gods that someone like Sineah would understand.

credit goes to LUNAR of LOVE STAMP

[ink]

Sineah sighed. "Senri, I'm not angry. Just disappointed," her gaze turned sharp as she cast it over her remaining genin, "In all of you. At this rate, I don't know if any of you a ready to be genin you. There is, in fact, one last test to determine whether you are ready or not, and this shall be mine:

Work together to find and collect Yuki and impress upon her the Three Faces of the Ninja."