The next morning, Fuuka awoke to a gentle scratchy, tapping coming from her window. Yawning, Fuuka sat up in bed and stretched, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and turned to make eye contact with the large rat standing on the sill of her window, tilting its head to peer curiously at her with its dark, beady eyes. A year ago this would have terrified Fuuka and in fact the first time she had encountered this situation she had woken up the entire family (except for Fuuken who had already been working in the bakery) with an ear piercing scream. It had taken nearly twenty minutes of wailing and ineffectual jabs with a broom head before Fuuka had realised the rat was wearing a little harness with a pouch on it and, in between dodging swipes from her broom, was trying to offer her a tightly curled little scroll.
With his two other students being clan born, Yoritomo sensei hadn’t remembered he would need to tell Fuuka about the Shinizumi clan and the specially trained rats they used to scout, patrol and most importantly send messages all over the sprawling city of Chowaku. Eventually though, like many other aspects of shinobi life, Fuuka grew accustomed to the occasional messenger rat and even grew to enjoy their visits. Small, furry animals were cute after all, as long as they didn’t carry any diseases. Struggling to her feet, Fuuka fought off another yawn and pulled the hem of her jinnbei down from her midsection where it had gotten hiked up during her night time shifting. Then she walked over to open her window, allowing the patient rat to enter and scamper onto her desk.
“G’morning… Marusuke?” Fuuka said, squinting to study the rat, who shook its pointed little head dismissively. Fuuka tsked. “Then Yajishi?” Fuuka guessed again and was rewarded with a little chitter. “Well hey two guesses isn’t bad right? Besides you two are cousins,”
Yajishi chittered again and Fuuka laughed. “Okay I know, you’re all cousins, still!” As Yajishi fiddled with the flap of his pouch with his little paws Fuuka opened a drawer on her desk and withdrew a rice cracker from a packet she kept on hand for just such occasions. An older genin had been the one to tell her that the Shinizumi message service became faster and more reliable if you were willing to grease some paws with a tasty bribe. The fact that this tactic also afforded Fuuka the privilege of gently running a finger down the sleek fur of Yajishi’s back was a bonus as well.
“No bills I hope,” Fuuka said, taking the scroll and handing the cracker to Yajishi, who seized his bounty with two paws and began hewing into it at industrial speed.
Team Shimamura: Members Fuuka Kurokawa, Nagisa Hanamachi and Kaoru Shinizumi to report to 382 Jinshouji street, Soru Ward 0730 hours.
So read the message, once Fuuka had gotten a fingernail under one edge of the very tightly compressed slip of paper and unfurled it. Fuuka frowned. The Shinizumi clan were important and influential in Gunshugakure but they never took to the frontlines. The clan’s specially trained rats were too small and weak to inflict damage on most opponents without relying on suicidal swarm tactics and it took too long to train them up for that to be worthwhile. Meanwhile as long range scouts and messengers the rats were worth their weight in gold so the Shinizumi clan focused on a support and communications role. It was a big part of the reason they weren’t considered to be in the same league as Gunshugakure’s two major clans, the Naruhiko and the Fujihara.
Am I being assigned to some kind of non combat squad Fuuka thought, a twinge of unease needling at her gut. Is that what the Chowakage meant when he said I would be walking a different path? Before Fuuka could chew on that disturbing train of thought for very long another section of the terse message caught her attention.
0730 hours.
Fuuka’s eyes flicked over to the delicate little wall clock she’d received for her tenth birthday, watching the carefully wrought iron minute hand tick up to mark seven o’clock on the dot.
Oh gosh!
Fuuka bolted over to her closet, planting one hand on her mattress to vault over her bed in the middle of the room and ripped open the doors to hastily retrieve an outfit. There was no time to agonise over her choices, carefully balancing practicality, professionalism and cuteness so Fuuka threw on a fresh set of yesterday’s outfit in record time. She shimmied into a pair of wide, olive drab shorts; wriggled into a slim, black sleeveless top and threw on a cropped jacket that matched her shorts. Normally Fuuka would play around with a few different accessories and accent pieces, sometimes she added sleeves of wire mesh for extra protection and there was a scarf she liked for winter time that added a cool, flow-y element to her usual ensemble but there was just no time for that today. Instead, Fuuka snatched up her standard issue kit, wrapping her tool belt and pouch around her waist and hopping alternately on each foot to pull on her dark blue tabi.
Fuuka’s hair was last on the list and she nipped back over to her desk to pick up her hair brush, gritting her teeth as she readied herself to begin dragging out knots and tangles. Fuuka’s hair (chestnut coloured if you asked her parents, dirt coloured if you asked her brothers) was actually fairly cooperative most of the time, it was straight and lacked volume so it tended to do what she wanted even if the result verged on drab sometimes but Fuuka had been letting it grow for a while now.
Really it was more that Fuuka didn’t have much of an idea of what to do with it that had stayed the hand of her mother’s barber scissors. For a while now Fuuka had been doing a twin ponytail sort of thing with long, straight bangs in the front which looked okay, if a little girlish. Recently the bangs in particular had grown to the point that they more or less completely obscured her hitai-ate and the village’s three person symbol completely which didn’t seem right at all. On the other hand Fuuka had lately been a little unsure of her right to bear the village’s symbol so proudly so maybe the bangs were fine. In any case no wasn’t the time to experiment, so once her hair had been tamed into something vaguely resembling neatness Fuuka tied it back in her usual two tails and bolted out the open window, kicking off to jump to the neighbour’s roof and then setting off on a mad, hopping dash from rooftop to rooftop in the direction of Soru ward.
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Soru was an inner ward but it didn’t quite have the cachet as other inner wards. Fuuka’s parents hadn’t outright forbidden their children from entering Soru the way they had with the Outer Wards but they hadn’t ever taken them there either. The houses here were all tall but extremely narrow, jostling each other for every square inch of land and in some cases seeming to lean against each other to stay standing. It might have been a claustrophobic place to live but on the plus side roof top running was extremely easy here, the streets being even narrower than was normal for Chowaku so that the only real tests of skill were the occasional loose tile or unsteady support beam.
Fuuka made good time on her journey and arrived at the rooftop across the road from 382 Jinshouji street with almost three whole minutes to spare. Panting lightly, Fuuka rested her palms on her knees and studied her destination.
It was a pretty unremarkable town house of the sort popular in Soru, Fuuka had leaped over several on her way here. The house was a narrow, two storey affair made of wood and roofed with terracotta tiles. The bottom floor of these houses was often used as some kind of store or other business, with a whole family dwelling in cramped quarters on the second. This didn’t look to be the case here, there was no signage advertising any kind of craft or wares and the blinds behind the slatted windows were pulled firmly down on both floors. In front of the closed door were two youthful figures, maybe a little shorter than Fuuka herself, though it was hard to tell from the sharp angle Fuuka was looking at them from. The right most figure was wearing a long, brown cloak that obscured their form but Fuuka could guess this was the Shinizumi member. Fuuka had only rarely seen members of the reclusive clan but they seemed to favour garments like that to keep their trained rats concealed on their person. The second person was leaning against the wall of the house with their arms crossed.
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It was the tomboy from yesterday, Fuuka realised quickly. The other girl’s bandaged arms were a dead give away, “Nagi chan” , one of the boys had called her yesterday. Fuuka decided she wouldn’t follow their example and deploy that particular nickname. Fuuka didn’t have any balls but that kick still looked really painful. The scroll had said her full name was Nagisa so that would probably be better to use.
“Um! Hello!” Fuuka called out, as she landed with a soft thump at ground level, causing the Nagisa and the other genin to turn towards her. “Team Shimamura, right?” she said, flashing a nervous smile at the two.
“Huh? You’re that girl from yesterday,” Nagisa said. Her appearance hadn’t changed much from yesterday, although the shirt peeking out from underneath her vest was black today. Nagisa frowned, pale blue, almost grey eyes sharpening even further down to knife-like triangles. It was an intimidating expression, although Fuuka didn’t necessarily detect any hostility. Nagisa just seemed like the kind of person who would rather look angry than surprised.
“Oh? You two are already acquainted? No fair I’m feeling rather left out,” said the Shinizumi playfully, pulling down the hood on their cloak to reveal a silver mop of hair and underneath it a round, pale face and large, round glasses. “Ah, I’m Kaoru, looking forward to working with you both~”
“We’re not really ‘acquainted’ , we just bumped into each other yesterday,” said Nagisa curtly, settling back against the wall she had been leaning against earlier. “Since we swapped names earlier it’s fair to say I know you better at this point, Shinizumi,”
“Ah how reassuring,” said Kaoru with a little smile. “In that case though Nagisa chan please feel free to use my first name. There are rather a lot of us Shinizumi so it might get confusing,”
“I’ll think about it,” Nagisa said in a flat tone of voice that strongly implied she would not. “Actually now that I’m thinking about it, why don’t I know either of you two from the Academy?”
Fuuka’s smile turned brittle.
“Oh my clan has our own internal training program as we don’t typically perform the full range of frontline shinobi duties,” said Kaoru.
“So what, you’re all desk jockeys or something?” Nagisa asked and now her frown did have an edge of hostility to it. “I didn’t sign up for anything like that,”
“Ah not to worry, not to worry!” Kaoru said quickly, raising his hands up from underneath his cloak in a placating gesture. “As it happens you’re looking at the very first Shinizumi clan combat specialist! You see my mother has been developing several new techniques to help our clan’s abilities be more viable in direct combat. Sadly Mother’s health prevents her from showing off these techniques herself, so she’s been teaching them to me! I will be acting as a prototype of sorts! Paving the way for a whole new generation of combat ready Shinizumi shinobi! It’s all very exciting~”
“Hrmm,” Nagisa said, while Fuuka herself made a sort of vaguely impressed sounding cooing noise.
“Oh if you’re using your clan techniques does that mean you have rats with you now? Can I see them?” Fuuka asked suddenly, her anxiety pushed aside temporarily by the notion of seeing cute little furry animals.
Next to Kaoru, Nagisa started violently at the mention of rats and then took a step backwards as several bulges arose on the surface of Kaoru’s cloak and began moving, forming a rough file along his left arm and travelling down it until five pointed, furry snouts were poking out the edge of his sleeve, sniffing curiously.
“I suppose we’re all teammates so it would be only right to introduce them to you both,” said Kaoru cheerfully, holding his arm level across his chest so that the five rats could line perch atop it. “From left to right we have: Takeha, Wakaya, Sukuna, Oohiko and Hikofutsu,”
“What the fuck is wrong with both of you?” Nagisa asked bluntly, her eyes and mouth wide open with revulsion.
“I was pretty surprised at first too but you get used to them,” Fuuka said, leaning over to let Sukuna sniff her fingertip, the creature’s little black eyes shining with curiosity as it tickled her skin with its nose. When the digit was well received she moved on to gently tickling the top of its head and Sukuna closed its eyes with pleasure, causing the other rats to bunch up to investigate.
“Shinizumi rats aren’t like feral vermin or anything, they’re specially trained and bred for intelligence,” said Kaoru with a patient expression. “You can pick them out from wild rats pretty easily once you know what to look for. See how glossy their coats are?”
“Oh of course their coats!” said Nagisa, with a sarcastic snarl. “Well that makes all the fucking difference doesn’t it? They're like little puppies aren’t they?”
“They kind of are?” Fuuka said quietly, still fussing over the rodents in question.
“I’ll try to keep them at a distance from you unless it's absolutely necessary,” Kaoru said agreeably. “At the same time they would be quite troublesome to replace and I am rather fond of them so please try not to react too violently,”
Nagisa shifted her jaw around, thinking. “As long as they don’t go anywhere near me while I’m sleeping I won’t mess with them,” Then Nagisa’s expression hardened and she glared at the rats. “If I find one in my sleeping bag or wake up to one of the little fuckers on my face or something then all bets are off though,”
“That seems like a reasonable compromise, it shall be so Nagisa chan,”
“I think I would be pretty spooked if I was woken up by one of these guys on my face or something even though I think they’re cute,” Fuuka said, having moved onto Takeha, who seemed to prefer belly rubs over head scritches. “I like they’re names too,”
“Are you perhaps a student of history Fuuka chan?” Kaoru asked as she stood up, taking that as his cue to let his arm down and have his rats navigate adroitly back into concealment under his cloak. “I didn’t think the five founders were part of the academy curriculum since none of them are directly to Gunshugakure,”
“They aren’t,” Fuuka said with a shrug. “There’s a big statue of Hikofutsu in the middle of Hanagakure with a plaque about them though,”
“You’ve been to one of the other hidden villages?” asked Nagisa, her guarded expression giving way to open curiosity. Kaoru looked interested too.
Fuuka winced. “Ahh, ah ha. Well I guess this was bound to come up eventually,” she said, rubbing the back of her head as her cheeks heated up. “I took the chunin exam in Hanagakure with my last team. Both of my teammates were promoted but I wasn’t so I needed a new team I guess…” Fuuka trailed off, swallowing nervously. Would they think she was pathetic, the equivalent of someone being held back a year?”
“Hmm so should we be calling you Fuuka senpai?” Kaoru asked, with a teasing grin.
“Yeah I’m not doing that,” said Nagisa and Fuuka shook her head quickly.
“Please don’t! The whole thing is embarrassing enough already!” Fuuka pleaded.
Kaoru laughed lightly. “I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about. It’s not unimpressive to have taken the exam at all at our age, right Nagisa chan?”
“Huh? Oh sure, whatever,” said Nagisa absently. “Hey listen, do either of you have the time?”
“It’s about twenty to eight,” said Kaoru, after pulling back the sleeve of his cloak to reveal Takeha, who squeaked at the sudden daylight, and a slightly battered looking wristwatch with a leather strap, a hand-me-down?
“Yeah that’s about what I thought,” said Nagisa sourly. “So where the fuck is our sensei?”