Dragonfly

Chapter Three: Keeping Up With The Uchihas

Damn.

The old lady was right. The entrance evaluation was easy. So easy, in fact, that my pride hardly allowed me to flunk something even a five year old could ace. Even if it landed me in the last place I wanted to be.

All the kids there just looked so damn happy to get the chance to become little killing machines. I didn't really get it. Why were such violent, dangerous occupations glorified? If they were lucky, they'd live long enough to have a family, but even then was it even worth it when they would probably die during a mission anyway? Maybe it was to become strong; to protect what they loved. But that wasn't something they could do if they kicked the bucket.

Well. In their defense, they probably weren't thinking about something like this in the long run. Konoha was a ninja village, after all-becoming shinobi was just sort of what everyone did.

I wasn't sure about the village's economy, but I was pretty sure the job paid well enough to live super comfortably, too.

But no one really wanted for much in the Uchiha clan either way, so there wasn't anyone to compare that assumption to.

Oh well-whatever it was, by the time graduation rolled around, me and half of my class would be dropouts anyway. Not everyone was made to be a shinobi.

Even so, Satoshi was over the moon when he heard the news that I'd become a student at the Academy. He was so overjoyed, in fact, that he immediately wanted to start me on the beloved katon jutsus the clan was known for, and the idea was just all kinds of bad. Come on, Satoshi, who in their right mind would let a kid learn to play with something so dangerous?

I swear, the man fostered some huge delusion that I was going to sprout into this Sharingan-wielding genius kunoichi one day and he believed it was his duty to prepare me for that.

The only thing I ended up doing was catching the kitchen table on fire. And that mishap wasn't even thanks to a technique.

"Come on, Rika, the hand seals aren't that hard to learn. See?" Satoshi entwined his fingers together to demonstrate, speaking the name for each seal as they were formed as we sat across the table from each other (it got replaced). "Snake, Ram, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger."

He may as well have been rapping at me for all I knew. Six hand seals-six? I could barely even form the most basic one yet! And out of all of them, the Horse seal looked almost impossible for my stubby little fingers. Not only that, but he didn't even tell me what jutsu these seals were for-probably the Fireball, but who knew.

I wish I could say that I could just cop out on it all and claim I couldn't manipulate chakra at all whatsoever, but Daddy here was a sensory-nin and he was smart enough to know I'd be lying. And he'd started teaching me how to handle chakra since they'd decided to send me to school. He was smart, that Satoshi.

Too bad I was a genius at being stubborn.

"I can't do that."

"What? Of course you can. Look, watch again." He repeated the hand seals, a little slower than before.

"Are you crazy?"

"Rika..."

Unlike his wife, Satoshi was more passive with my upbringing and only got his authority involved when something I did concerned ninja training. Otherwise, when I got in trouble, he only gave me a slap on the wrist and a short lecture because Emiko's rage was something to be reckoned with and he probably figured I suffered enough punishment already. Typical good cop, bad cop routine.

Oh, and he literally was a cop.

"Just try it, okay? If you do, on my way home tomorrow, I'll bring you something nice from the bakery."

He was also the one who bribed me with cakes and candies.

"...'Kay. Deal."

Halfway through the seal set he'd assigned, I ended up getting a cramp in my pinky.

"Ugh, I told you! Impossible!" I waved my arms about to get the feeling back into them, scowling, and let them drop like dead weight on the tabletop along with my head. I wasn't even pretending-it was getting on my nerves. Why couldn't I just be like a normal civilian kid whose parents didn't want me to become some great, legendary ninja? Or at least on Shisui's level. It was no mystery that Dad was only doing his best to train me up because there was some sort of unspoken competition going on between him and Kou. Now that Shisui and I were both Academy kids, it was a game of who graduated first and whose family would produce the best pint-sized shinobi.

Who knew that even ninjas got caught up in mundane things like keeping up with the Joneses? Or keeping up with the Uchihas, rather.

In any case, Shisui and Kou were going to win, hands down.

Satoshi ignored my dramatics and hummed quietly. "I don't think it's impossible." There was a sudden smugness in his tone.

I glanced up to see he'd crossed his arms and was studying me from the corners of his dark eyes doubtfully. New approach, hm?

"I think, maybe, you're just a chicken."

Now he'd gotten my attention-and he knew it. But, calling me a chicken? Of all things? Hah! Once I found out where the clan kept the coops I'd show him just what a chicken was! I'll turn his bedroom into an animal farm!

"Am not."

"Are you sure? It's perfectly fine to be afraid of fire. I mean, for most people."

"Afraid? I'm not afraid of nothin'!" I was well aware he was stooping to such a low, immature level because he knew it would get my goat, but-damn, did it piss me off! Who liked being called a chicken, really? No one. "I can do it. Just watch."

I straightened my back and held my arms out in front of me before running through the Fireball's required seals one more time.

"The Boar seal doesn't look like that."

He interrupted me and my fingers tangled together, ruining whatever I'd been trying to form next, just before I was done! Satoshi was a cool guy, but he could be a real jerk and my temper was already past boiling point because why did he care so much about whether or not I became a shinobi? He didn't even care if I didn't want to follow that path! It was all about his stupid competition!

I had a special one-finger hand seal that summed up my feelings on the matter, just for him. "Oh yeah? Then, this is right?"

"Rika!"

Jeez, did Emiko have the worst timing.

But, on the bright side, because she'd caught me flipping Satoshi the bird, she had me pulling so many weeds from the front garden that I couldn't physically perform any more hand seals for a week.