Arc One, Team Temari; Chapter Two, Teamwork
Once again, Mokuren awoke from a nightmare around midnight. She had tried taking a pill, in the hopes she could get enough sleep for whatever Temari might have planned, but it seemed that wasn't going to work. Sitting up, she sighed and stretched before standing, wondering how she could be sore when she'd hardly done anything the day before. Going for a walk didn't sound like a great idea just then, so she grabbed a couple of scrolls, set an alarm for 3:30, and climbed onto the roof to read by the moonlight.
All too soon, her alarm rang and she went back inside. After starting the coffee pot, Mokuren put on her clothes and strapped on her weapons pack and sheathed sword. She was a little tempted to wake her mother, if only because it would annoy the woman, but she controlled herself.
Since her house was on the outskirts of the residential district, Mokuren didn't really need more than five minutes to reach the twelfth training ground. She left ten minutes early and found that once again, Tetsuko had beaten her there; and once again, he had set a trap for Kentsu. Irritated by this repetitive action, Mokuren dismantled it immediately.
Tetsuko looked a little resentful, but he didn't say anything. When Kentsu finally showed up, however, he had plenty to say. "You're so lazy! Are you trying to be late? Do you want to go back to the Academy?" Tetsuko bellowed at the tanned boy.
"Shut up, moron!" Kentsu immediately replied, his fingers curling to form fists. Tetsuko quickly pulled out a kunai, and Mokuren set her hand on her sword. She didn't really want these two idiots fighting each other today, but perhaps words could handle things.
"Are the two of you really going to fight? Temari-sama - I mean, Temari-sensei - could be here any minute."
"Don't interrupt! This has nothing to do with -" Kentsu broke off as the blood suddenly drained from his face. Mokuren had known that the sheer amount of chakra trapped in her father's sword could paralyze civilians, but she hadn't thought it would work quite this well on her teammates. They've got a lot of training to do. She sighed to herself. That hasn't bothered me in months, and yet they can barely turn their heads to look at me.
"You both need to calm down and be quiet. You're teammates now - fighting amongst yourselves is disgraceful." Mokuren informed them, and then sheathed her sword again. A drop of sweat trickled down her forehead, but she doubted the other two would notice it and wiped it away with the guise of massaging her forehead exasperatedly. It took the boys a minute to start moving again, and their first action was to move far away from the girl.
The horizon looked a sickly sort of green by the time Temari arrived - exactly four in the morning. "Good morning," She said without a smile. Her students immediately replied in kind, Kentsu's response punctuated by a yawn. "Today, we'll have a sort of test. In order to effectively train you, I need to see for myself your strengths and weaknesses. For that reason, I want you all to attack me as if you wanted to kill me." Their new teacher declared.
Kentsu and Tetsuko shared an uneasy glance. "W-what are you saying? We can't do that! You're the -"
"Do you two completely lack brains?" Mokuren asked as she took a step towards Temari. "She's a jounin. My best efforts won't be able to touch her - yours won't get anywhere near her. You've got no reason to hesitate." Temari raised an eyebrow at her. Glancing back at the fuming boys, Mokuren shrugged and offered a smile.
Their teacher sighed, and then moved on. "Start!" She declared, and after a brief moment Kentsu barrelled towards her. She didn't even have to move; Kentsu blasted on past her, and made it ten feet before he turned around and tried again. Mokuren couldn't help imagining Temari dressed as a torera sighing and saying, 'Toro, toro...' while yawning.
"You should attack, too." Mokuren told Tetsuko, frowning. She couldn't let her imagination distract her. He jumped slightly, giving her an alarmed look before stepping unsurely towards Temari, who had only moved a few inches to avoid Kentsu's sloppy moves. Pulling out a kunai, Tetsuko awkwardly tossed it. The handle smacked Kentsu's arm, and he yelped before turning angrily on the black-haired boy. Tetsuko, too busy hiding his blush, stumbled back several feet and fell when Kentsu hits him.
All in all, Mokuren can't help but be disgusted. She still moved to help Tetsuko up and stand between the two boys, however. "Bishou, you're not supposed to attack Ringo, you're supposed to attack Temari-sensei." Mokuren scolded Kentsu. Ignoring the confused look on his face, she continued to say in a quieter voice, "The two of you need to cooperate! And practice, too, definitely, but that's later. For now - Bishou, run at her again like you did before but keep an eye out for Ringo's weapons this time. Try to annoy her enough that she'll lower her guard and then I'll go in. Ready? Go."
"I - What?"
"Who are you even talking to?!"
"The two of you, of course." Mokuren replied, not understanding what their problem was.
"Then what's with the smiles and apples?"
Mokuren frowned momentarily. "Well, I can't seem to remember what your names are, so I decided to give you new ones. You are Bishou," she explained, pointing at Kentsu. "And you're Ringo." She told the other boy.
"Our real names are -" Tetsuko tried to offer helpfully.
"Anyway, let's go!" Mokuren intervened. "Bishou, get out there. Ringo, try not to hit him this time."
"Hell no! Shut up... ah... era-sou o sage!" The boy paused briefly to come up with the insult.
Mokuren thought on it for a moment. She couldn't really find it insulting, though - she knew she could be condescending and she did wear pigtails. "Do you have another plan, then?"
"Yeah!" He sneered. "You go out there and be the distraction! I'm not some warm-up act!"
"Maaa, you two aren't good enough to help me out anyway. It would be best if I tried alone." Dodging Kentu's sloppy fist and pulling his leg out from under him in the same movement, Mokuren then started towards their teacher, who had been tapping her foot and waiting up til then.
"You're finally going to do something?"
"Sort of." Mokuren shrugged, and then ran at Temari, pulling out a kunai. The older woman easily avoided the blade and girl, but looked a little less bored after Mokuren tried a taijutsu move her former tutor had shown her. Temari had dodged that as well, of course, but there were follow-up moves for that, leading up to the use of a minor illusion that almost tripped Temari up. She'd made the teacher move almost four feet from her original space, though, and Mokuren felt slightly proud of herself. Her angrier teammate, however, looked like he wanted to chop her to pieces.
"A girl is not better than me!" Kentsu barked, mostly to himself. Temari gave him a flat look, but he wasn't paying her any mind as he ran at Mokuren who, once again, knocked him down and kicked him back towards the other boy. Furious at the sight of blood on Kentsu's face, Tetsuko began throwing kunai and shuriken at Mokuren, a few coming close enough that Mokuren actually had to knock them away.
A huge gust of wind sent all three new genin flying, until they smashed into a cliff. Their teacher approached them slowly, each step loud in Mokuren's ears.
"That was dreadful." Temari declared, her eyes flashing angrily. "Unbelievably so. Mokuren - you at least realized that this is meant as an exercise of teamwork. However, you clearly need to work on your communication skills and make a real effort to work with your teammates. Kentsu, Tetsuko - unless you are sparring each other at the request of a higher-ranked ninja, teammates are never allowed to attack one another. I thought that was taught in the Academy, but evidently the two of you were unaware of this and so I'll let it go this time. The next time it happens, I will revoke your genin status."
Mokuren grimaced, sitting up. She couldn't remember being taught such a rule, but it did seemed like common sense.
"I think that proper communication is the first thing we need to work on. After all, you do need to be able to talk to your teammates without provoking them in order to complete even D-Rank missions. So for the rest of today we'll work on that - if any of you go more than twenty feet away from me, hit one another, push one another, argue or in any way demonstrate dislike towards another teammate before sundown, you will all be forced to return to the Academy. By the way - because of the nature of this test, even if you fail and are sent back you will be placed together on a team once again, you'll just be someone else's problem." Temari paused for a moment, looking over the boys' aghast faces and Mokuren's grimace before she reinforced her final point. "The three of you will have to learn how to get along or none of you will ever become shinobi."
The brunette cringed. She could almost hear her aspirations flushing away.
Kentsu and Tetsuko, however, shared fearful looks that soon hardened into determined ones. Kentsu had worked so hard on the basic jutsu over the last few months in order to pass that stupid test, and Tetsuko had spent so many hours exhausting himself in order to bring his taijutsu up; compared to that, how hard could it be to be friendly for a day?
Not that they'd ever tried before.
"Kill me now..." Kentsu moaned as Temari led the way out of a fifth clothing store. He hadn't even known there was more than one clothing store in Suna.
"I can't..." Tetsuko groaned back. "Get off my shoulder." He added to Mokuren, just barely remembering that he couldn't just shove her off.
"Hmm? Are we going back to the Academy yet?" She yawned as she pulled away. She had barely kept pace as she slept.
"I wish." Kentsu mumbled, although he probably didn't mean it. Another year in the Academy was looking like a better and better option, though. "She's having too much fun torturing us."
"Common enemy tactic, maybe?" Mokuren mused, still half-asleep.
Temari stopped and gave Mokuren an amused glance over her shoulder. "No, that's what I went for earlier. This is a little more like a punishment for not taking that seriously. Don't argue," She added as Tetsuko opened his mouth. "I would rather think you weren't taking me seriously, because it's either that or believing that you don't take training seriously."
The pale boy's mouth snapped shut immediately, and he turned away as he began to blush. "Hmm, let's see... ah, this store looks interesting."
"... you're joking, right?" Mokuren said, slightly alarmed as she took in the sight of the lingerie store. "They can't go -"
"Oh, I'm sure there's something for the boys to look at." Temari replied, waving off Mokuren's concerns.
"What's the problem? It's just another clothing store right?" Kentsu asked, his expression somewhere between confused and irritated. The girl just grimaced in reply.
Mokuren had been in this kind of store before and expected that the two twelve-year-old boys would bleed to death quickly after taking a look around the place, but instead they merely looked puzzled - until they noticed a corset-like... thing on a mannequin, about which they spoke in horrified whispers, wondering why women would want to buy or wear such a thing and speculating how painful it would be if either of them tried it on.
Mokuren shrugged off her confusion. Honestly, she had the same reaction to that kind of clothing. Glancing around, she realized that Temari had disappeared into the changing room - why was there even a changing room in a place like this? - and she couldn't help facepalming. Temari-sensei's such a weird person... how much time will we have to spend with her, anyway...
"How does this look?" Temari asked, her voice annoyingly casual as she stepped out for a moment. The man at the register almost instantly passed out, and Mokuren had to stuff something up her nose very quickly to keep herself from following his example...
... but the boys only cried, "Don't walk around in your underwear!" and covered their eyes. Not even a drop of blood from their nostrils.
"I envy your naïvety." Mokuren told the boys solemnly, her voice distorted by her plugged nose.
"We're not naïve!"
"It was an honest compliment." Mokuren reassured Kentsu, not willing to look towards Temari at the moment but hoping that the tanned boy's yell hadn't registered as something they'd be disqualified for.
Luckily, Temari had already returned to the changing rooms and quickly dressed so that the four of them could escort the shopkeep to the hospital. They also checked Mokuren's nose, which had already stopped but had soaked through the paper clog and dripped a little on her shirt before ceasing.
"That was fun." Temari remarked.
Her true motive for going clothes shopping to start off with was more so that she could calm down rather than to test her students, but she was nonetheless pleased that they were so easily bored into compliance. That wouldn't work for anything above D-Rank, of course, so she'd have to provoke them a bit more. Temari didn't actually want to fail this team; they were brats, but most kids were. They would grow out of it eventually, she knew.
For the remainder of the day, she dragged her students through food markets and even to her former sensei's house for tea - leaving the three standing in the foyer for an hour almost led to several fights, although raising her voice while talking to Baki caused them to shut up immediately. Temari was definitely pleased with her new team's fear of her - whatever the cause - and decided to take them out for dinner.
Mokuren, of course, argued for Gyo Shokudou but Temari thought fish would be far too expensive and Mokuren unwillingly acknowledged that. Instead, they went to a sukiyaki restaurant near the Academy.
Looking over towards the cash register, Mokuren sighed. She was pretty sure the man scolding his employee was Maitsu's father, and wondered absently if he actually owned the place. Maitsu had never talked about her father - or anything about herself, really - but Mokuren knew from interactions with them that the two didn't get along and wanted to know why.
"What are you staring at?" Kentsu asked irritably, interrupting the brunette's train of thought. Temari shot him a look and he bowed his head, returning sheepishly to his food. Mokuren did the same, giving up temporarily on that mystery.
Eating with her team was proving very awkward. Nobody really had anything to say and eating quietly seemed to frustrate Kentsu. Sighing, Temari decided to give conversation a try. "So, do you really like fish, Mokuren? Since you wanted to go to..."
"Mm. I love squid, especially. I won a squid-eating contest once." She added randomly.
"Kentsu got second place in one." Tetsuko offered, although his sulky teammate glared at him for it.
"Really? Where? Is there somewhere that hosts them often? The only one I'd ever heard of was at a party."
"I don't think so, sorry, Kentsu's was at one of Suikana's birthday parties a couple years ago."
"... Was he the guy who choked a little and someone came and hit him?"
Kentu groaned. "I lost that contest to you?"
"Watch your tone." Temari reproved him. "The sun hasn't quite set yet, you know." After a few minutes of ringing silence, Temari tried again. "So what are your favorite foods, boys?"
"Falafel." Tetsuko answered, while Kentsu looked at her like she was crazy and repeated, "Favorite?!"
Grimacing at the other boy, Tetsuko explained, "I don't think he really pays attention to what he puts in his mouth."
Mokuren sighed and rested her head on the table. "Too bad he's not the main character."
"...What?" Kentsu asked, confused and irritated.
"Main characters in manga about fighting tend to be boys with bottomless pits for stomachs who will eat absolutely anything. However, I'm the main character here."
"Like hell you are!"
"Language." Temari admonished, rolling her eyes at Mokuren's odd statement before glancing out the window to see the sun disappeared behind the cliffs.
End Note: Why a lingerie shop? I don't know. I really don't know. The best excuse I have is that Naruto was full of weird fanservice stuff and i wanted to mimic that style slightly, and hint at sexuality stuff, but that's pathetic. If you have suggestions for what to do instead there I'd really appreciate it, for now I'm leaving this chapter.