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Sensei often brought in guest lecturers. Chiyako had heard a number of theories about why. One was laziness, but anyone who actually knew Sensei could rule that out immediately. Another was that the novelty helped the students retain the lessons better. If that was true, it was to such a small degree that Chiyako wasn't able to measure it. There was also the rather morbid theory that they wanted to give people a little teaching experience just in case they had another incident when teachers had to sacrifice themselves to save their students again. The last theory was that if the guest lecturers were in the classroom, they weren't out in the wild causing trouble. Considering that most of these people were her brother's friends, Chiyako could see where this line of reasoning came from.
Today Sasuke-senpai had come by to talk about counter infiltration. Exactly why that was the subject of today's lecture was an open question. Most of Chiyo's classmates of course jumped to the conclusion that there had been an infiltration attempt recently. Chiyako suspected that Sensei had simply vetoed every other topic Sasuke-senpai had come up with as too destructive to teach academy students.
There was a predictable amounting of primping and sighing as Sasuke-senpai got ready to start. Chiyako didn't understand the point. First off, for some reason the Konoha Military Police Uniform that he was wearing made him look more like a girl than usual. Chiyako wasn't sure why. The outfit wasn't that different from the standard jounin uniform, consisting of a dark blue flak vest over a lighter blue long sleeved shirt and pants. Maybe it was the color scheme? Or maybe it was from association because she saw so many mothers wearing the uniform?
But more importantly, sighing and delicately brushing your hair over your ear wouldn't help attract his attention. From everything Chiyako knew about how attraction worked for the Uchiha clan, the most important metric for an attractive woman was badassitude. Considering he saw Shikako-senpai practically every day, there was no chance an academy student would ever be in the running. It wasn't even their age. It was simply that if you couldn't make multiple S class ninja cry before lunch then you didn't register on his badassitude scale. (Chiyako was only up to one and that was because Naruto was a complete wuss in some ways. Even then she'd have to pay the penalty for desecrating ramen afterwards.)
"Today we're going to talk about stories," Sasuke-senpai declared. At the confused mutterings from the class, he nodded his head firmly. "Stories. Enduring stories - stories that are shared over the generations - are shared for a reason. Some tell you how to do things. Some teach values. Some are told because we owe it to someone to keep their memories alive. Most stories that live on fall in more than one category."
Sasuke-senpai scowled slightly. "When I was young, my favorite bedtime story was about Uchiha Akatani: a popular story in the clan where a boy went on a journey and on the way met a snake, a ram, a monkey, a boar, a horse and then a tiger. I had thought it was a story about the value of self sufficiency and the value of everyone in the clan learning basic skills. I was sixteen before I realized that snake, ram, monkey, boar, horse, and tiger were the seals for the Great Fire Ball jutsu."
Chiyako kind of wondered if he thought he would have figured it out sooner if his clan hadn't all died off, but wasn't stupid enough to ask.
"Sneaky," Moegi said to herself a few seats down from Chiyako.
"Of course, as values change, so do the stories. In my great-grandfather's time, the story of Uchiha Akatani was a tragedy where, because of the supplies he gave up to help the snake, ram and other animals, Akatani died at the end at the hands of a dastardly Senju. The version my mother told had everyone coming together to help each other in a new village. Now what lessons about counter infiltration can we learn from the story about the story of Uchiha Akatani?"
Immediately several hands went up.
"Hanabi."
"It would be suspicious if someone was pretending to be an Uchiha and they didn't know the story of Uchiha Akatani."
"It would be suspicious if someone was pretending to be an Uchiha at all," Sasuke said dryly. "But that's the right idea. Moegi."
"Is Akatani something an Uchiha would name their child?" That was actually a pretty good question. Akatani wasn't that strange of a name for a civilian.
Sasuke shook his head. "It would be like naming your kid Momotarou. Anyone mean enough to do it wouldn't like a name that silly and anyone silly enough to do it wouldn't be that mean." He pointed.
"It's suspicious if someone knows the wrong version of a story," Yumi said.
"It might be suspicious," Sasuke-senpai corrected. Chiyako tried not to be happy that Yumi was taken down a peg, but failed. "My clan was filled with jerks, and some of them would have told the version where the Senju weren't to be trusted and the village was a mistake. It's not actually suspicious to have a parent that's a giant-"
Sensei cleared his throat pointedly.
Sasuke-senpai rolled his eyes but didn't finish what he was saying. "No, unless they were pretending to be an old person, the suspicious part would be if they didn't also know the more modern version. Then they might have learned about the story from an old book."
Konohamaru suddenly stood up. "Son of a-" Sensei cleared his throat again and Konohamaru sat down again and started hitting his head against his desk. "Dog. Boar. Monkey," he chanted with the hits.
Sasuke snapped his fingers and pointed at Konohamaru. "That's exactly how I felt when I figured it out."
There were a couple of groans around Chiyako. The Aburame didn't really have clan jutsu that used hand signs, so she wasn't sure if she felt left out or if she felt glad she didn't have something to feel stupid about.
"On top of the stories that are clan specific, there are stories that are known to all of Konoha. Most of these are less useful, because, again, everyone in Konoha knows them, but some events were big enough that they affected everyone in the village. It's not suspicious to have not been involved with something like Sandaime dying. A lot of people were in shelters. But it is suspicious if someone can't tell you where they were when they found out the old man had died."
Chiyako immediately flashed back to standing in the Academy yard where they had mustered for a head count before being released.
"For people older than me, the death of the Yondaime has a similar emotional impact." Sasuke-senpai paused. "That whole mess has a lot more trauma associated with it than the Sand-Sound invasion, so be careful poking at it. And speaking of trauma, another thing to watch out for is that some people tell stories that they were personally involved with differently than stories that they're repeating. To use my teammates as examples, if Naruto is telling a story about something he was there for, be prepared for it to take ten times longer than necessary as he does sound effects and pantomimes for every little thing."
There was a giggle from the class at that image.
"On the other side of the spectrum, any story Shikako tells that she was involved with will have most of the details stripped out. Ask her to repeat a story she read just once ten years ago and she'll tell it with every word in place. Ask her to tell the story of our first C rank and you'll get about five sentences."
"Some stories are just short," Konohamaru said.
Sasuke-senpai rolled his eyes. "You should know better than that. This was a Team Seven mission. It changed the maps and laid the foundations of our diplomatic relationship with Kiri."
"You changed the maps on your first C rank?" asked Yumi.
"Let me tell you the story of the Great Naruto Bridge."
"How the heck do you squeeze that into five sentences?" Konohamaru demanded.
"And still meet reporting requirements," Hanabi added. Reporting requirements was something they had spent far too much time on in class, and Chiyako was beginning to suspect that Team Seven had something to do with that.
"Parentheses," Sasuke-senpai replied, causing Sensei to twitch next to him. "'We accompanied the bridge builder Tazuna open parenthesis insert description here close parenthesis to his home village but were intercepted by the Demon Brothers open parenthesis insert description here close parenthesis who were defeated in a single exchange with no injuries' and so on."
"She reduced that fight to 'a single exchange with no injuries?'" Moegi sputtered.
"It is a factually correct description," Sensei said dryly. "And due to the shortness of the fight, it falls within reporting requirements."
Sasuke had a facial expression that was half amused and half annoyed. "Considering how dense those sentences were, no one thought to call Shikako on her reporting style until it was far too late to break her of the habit. Though, I'm not sure it would have helped. Even when Shikako breaks the rules she follows them to the letter."
Chiyako tried to wrap her head around that statement for a moment.
"Please note that you should not expect your first C rank to be that exciting," Sensei lectured.
"For homework-" Sasuke-senpai paused as the class groaned. "I want you to ask people you know for stories. Obviously, this isn't something you turn in. Try to make it a variety of people, both civilian and shinobi, and a variety of stories like children's stories and anecdotes about friends or missions. Think about what kinds of values those stories are trying to convey, and in the future think about the stories new people you meet might tell you and if those values match the ones you've heard from people in Konoha."
Back home, Chiyako asked her brother, who was Shino-nii again and not Sensei, if he had any stories that he could tell her.
"I do not think so. Why? Because any childhood stories I know you would have heard from the clan and any stories of my own I would have already told you."
She shot him her cutest expression. "Then can you tell me the love letter story again? It's for school."
Shino-nii in return gave her a deeply unimpressed look. "You just want to hear the part about Kiba regretting ever being born."
"It's the best part!"
A ghost of a smirk passed across his face. "True."
"I should write it down this time. Because it's for school." And it wasn't that much work now that she figured out how to use her swarm to write for her.
"And not because you want to immortalize Kiba's embarrassment."
"That would be highly irrational."
Shino-nii nodded. "So that's not why you're doing it."
Chiyako, of course, knew the story already so it didn't bother her when her brother sped through the setup: a noble wanted to send a love letter to another noble and on top of having some fairly ridiculous conditions like the letter being delivered to the lady while her dog was there and wearing a specific ribbon, he also paid for an A rank and the appropriately higher level ninja team to do the A rank as a status play.
"Is that really common?"
"Normally? No. However, courtship between nobles is one of the activities used to establish relative status. As such, it is fairly common to use ninja when it isn't strictly necessary either as a display of wealth or as insurance against interference."
"Like this time."
"Indeed."
Because the ridiculous condition about the dog and the ribbon? Well, a rival noble had gotten wind of it and hired another ninja team to kidnap the dog and the ribbon.
"Yes, they really did say the ribbon was kidnapped. That detail hasn't changed since the last time I told the story. No, it still doesn't make any sense."
"I'm still confused as to how these kinds of people got wealthy in the first place."
In any case, Tsunade had given this mission to Shino, Kiba, Sasuke and Shikako. Shino and Kiba went after the dog while Sasuke and Shikako went after the ribbon. While Shino was interviewing a lead, Kiba got a message from one of Shikako's clones about potential opposition. Unfortunately, he misunderstood the message.
"'Shikako is a lying liar that lies. This is not a few small red ants!' Kiba shouted and threw his arms in the air. 'They're blue and giant!'"
Chiyako giggled, half because her brother's Kiba impression was completely wrong and half because she knew the funny part was coming up soon.
"Then I asked 'What were Shikako's exact words?' To help recall, Kiba settled into an imitation of Shikako's slouch-"
"Which is very different from his own slouch. He slouches forward while Shikako-senpai slouches back."
"Yes, the appearance of Kiba taking on Shikako's mannerisms is quite odd. In any case, he recalled her saying 'There, uh, might be a few small vermillion ants. Shino will know what I mean.' Then I informed him that I understood the miscommunication and that Vermillion ants were chakra mutations named after the Vermillion group - not after their color - and were normally three meters long and not two meters long like the ones we fought."
"Then Kiba said 'Fuck my life-'"
"I'm positive that I never shared that detail before. Why? Because that would be extremely inappropriate."
Chiyako tried to look innocent, but she was sure that she failed.
Shino-nii shook his head. "Kiba," he sighed. Then looking at Chiyako, he said, "You should know better than to repeat things like that."
"Accuracy is important when recording something for academic purposes!"
Shino-nii gave his sister an unimpressed look. "If this is for academic purposes, what lessons are there in this story?"
"Imitating someone's body language can be used to help recall something they said."
"What about values?"
Chiyako frowned. "If someone tells you to talk to someone else you probably should listen to that advice?"
"Good enough."
"You have to admit that saying that 'he deeply regretted the decisions made leading up to this point including his own birth' doesn't have the same feel, Shino-nii."
Her brother sighed. "I suppose it doesn't sound like something he would say."
"More gravity, though."
"I think you mean gravitas."
"That too."
"There's another important lesson from this story: never tell a Nara how to do their job. Especially Shikako."
Chiyako frowned. "I don't remember this part."
"Why? Because the part of this story that interested you was Kiba lamenting his life. When we were given this assignment we were told to follow the client's instructions exactly. No improvisations and no using our best judgment about orders to ignore."
"Isn't the point behind sending a jounin on a mission to have someone to exercise their best judgment? Who would give an order like that?"
"Someone who has now been demoted for extremely poor decision making."
"Wasn't rescuing the dog using your best judgment?"
"It was a necessary prerequisite to following the client's directions and there were no orders forbidding it. However, the lighting instructions were not an area where we were given latitude."
Chiyako blinked. "They gave a Nara lighting instructions. Why?"
"The love letter contained poetry that supposedly would have the effect heightened if read at a certain time of day with certain lighting conditions. Unfortunately, being delivered at dawn while the addressee was facing the direction of the client's lands was in contradiction with the sun's light being at the addressee's back. Or rather they are in contradiction if you are limited to the normal Euclidean geometry of spacetime, which Shikako is not."
Chiyako's academy class was probably the first one where a sizable fraction knew what non-Euclidean geometries meant. No, that was wrong. After playing tag in hyperbolic space, they were all very invested in never figuring out what non-Euclidean geometry really meant, but they had a general idea. Needless to say, Shino-nii got a lot stricter about rejecting ideas from his guest lecturers after that.
"We actually take missions like this?"
"We were offered a very large sum of money."
Chiyako had really enjoyed the story assignment and had continued asking for, and writing down, stories from anyone who would take the time to talk with her right through the rest of her time at the academy. Then graduation came and Chiyako practically hyperventilated when she was put on a team with Hanabi and Takuya… under Jounin Nara Shikako.
"We all know each other, so we can skip introductions." Which was a shame because Chiyako didn't want to admit that she didn't remember the names of Takuya's dogs - mostly because Takuya never actually used their names and just barked at his dogs. Well, she supposed he could be saying their names in dog. "I also know you've all heard about the bell test, so I won't bother giving you that. There is still a test." Shikako-sensei paused dramatically. "You're all clan kids, so your test is to go home, tell your family that you're now part of Team Seven with me as your Jounin-sensei and survive to come back here at eight tomorrow."
Next to Chiyako, Hanabi and Takuya got very wide eyes.
Takuya swallowed loudly. "Team Seven?" Even his dogs seemed alarmed at this idea. They, of course, had realized they had been assigned the number seven, but it didn't really sink in that they were the new Team Seven, with everything that implied, until Shikako-sensei had hit them over the head with that fact.
"Father is going to lock me in a closet until I'm twenty," Hanabi stammered.
Normally, Chiyako would have said she was exaggerating, but Team Seven, especially the last iteration, had a reputation for a reason.
"If for some reason they're actually supportive of this idea, ask your family to tell you a story about some mission they've gone on with me or my teammates, and come back at the same time if you still want to be on the team."
Takuya raised his hand as if he was still back in class. "Uh, sensei…, is there really a Team Seven curse?"
"Of course not," Shikako-sensei answered immediately, causing Chiyako and her teammates to relax slightly. "Sasuke and Naruto's luck only got better after being put on Team Seven."
Chiyako exchanged glances with Hanabi and Takuya. Sasuke-senpai, who was the only survivor of the Uchiha massacre and Naruto, the jinchuuriki of the Nine Tails - well, you could definitely argue that their luck was so bad that a curse could only make it better.
Chiyako swallowed. "Uh, sensei? I don't think I can really follow your directions."
"Oh?"
"Uh, well, Shino-nii is the one who put me on your team, so he's not going to argue against it, and I've already heard all the stories about his missions with you. And wrote them down."
"You wrote them down?" Shikako-sensei looked confused by the idea.
Chiyako nodded. "If you just talk about it, it's gossip, which is bad. But if you write it down, it's codifying modern history and therefore scholarship."
"Ah. Well, not all gossip is bad. It can be an important tool, especially for kunoichi. That said, was it just the missions? Did he ever tell you about our first chuunin exam?"
"Not that I remember?"
"Maybe you should ask for that story instead."
"Okay."
If Chiyako's eyes got any wider they would have fallen out of her head. "That was your first chuunin exam?"
"Indeed."
"That sounds like a lot of bad luck," she said, then bit her lip in thought.
"Largely centered on Team Seven."
"Mostly Sasuke-senpai, though, and it was because he had an available Sharingan."
Shino nodded in an approving manner. "The causes of Orochimaru's attention predated and were independent of what team Saskue was on. That iteration of Team Seven was formed specifically so that Kakashi could guard Sasuke and Naruto against threats."
Chiyako frowned. "So Shikako-sensei was an afterthought?"
"The records suggest that she was the only girl in the graduating class that wasn't a fangirl for either of them."
"Naruto… had fangirls?"
"He is a famous war hero now."
"I've met Naruto."
Shino cleared his throat. "There really is no accounting for taste."
"So you don't think there's a Team Seven curse."
"No, I do not."
Chiyako squinted at her brother. "You don't sound very sure of yourself."
"While I don't believe there's a curse, I do believe that all the members of Team Kakashi have astoundingly bad luck that simply predated the curse. If there is a curse, it is sufficiently powerful that it acts retroactively. As I lack the ability to plan around paracausality, it is best to proceed as if it doesn't exist."
"Para what?"
"Paracausality. Where the time index of an effect precedes the time index of the cause."
"That's an actual thing?"
"Shikako assures me that it isn't, but at the same time she also felt the need to come up with a word for it. Make of that what you will."
"How did that even come up in conversation?"
"I cannot tell you. Why? The events are still classified."
Chiyako pouted. Way too many of her brother's stories ended like that.
Chiyako just did not understand clan politics. This was somewhat problematic considering her future role in her clan, but the Aburame clan made sense. At least Takuya looked as confused as she felt.
"So, by taking a position on Team Seven, your dad can put off choosing between you and your sister for clan heir a little while longer? Because they wouldn't be sure if they wanted Team Seven luck infecting the clan if you become head?"
Hanabi sighed and nodded. At this rate, in a few years Chiyako would be able to reclassify killing all the Hyuuga elders from murder to pest control (and the Aburame were very good at pest control). She was already inching close to justifiable homicide.
Takuya shook his head. "And I thought my family's response was messed up."
If you knew Hanabi, you'd be able to tell that she was grateful for the opportunity to change the subject from her. "What did they say?"
"That if I survive it'll toughen me up."
Hanabi blinked slowly. "That's a - let's go with ominous - way to put things."
"But on the plus side, I don't have to live with the shame of not becoming a super awesome ninja."
"That's the plus side?" Chiyako choked out.
Hanabi squinted at him. "Is this a boy thing or an Inuzuka thing?"
Takuya shrugged. "Maybe both?"
Chiyako stared at him for just coming out and admitting that.
"And that brings us to rule one of Team Seven: no dying." They all jumped as Shikako-sensei appeared out of nowhere. Takuya even fell on top of his dogs. It was rather embarrassing since they were all theoretically sensory specialists.
"Does that really need to be a rule?" Hanabi asked.
"Yes, because you need to know that as long as we're a team, you can screw up any mission, fail any goal, if you can honestly say that it was either that or dying."
"And that's it? Everything is forgiven?" Hanabi asked doubtfully.
"Everything's forgiven, but that won't be it. At the very least we'll try to figure out if there's anything you could have done, some training that you need." Shikako-sense shrugged. "Sometimes there isn't. If an S class ninja shows up and catches you alone then, yes, right now you back down and run away."
"Um, I'm pretty sure that's not what you did when you were our age," Chiyako pointed out. She had heard a lot of Team Seven stories, usually prefaced with 'Here's what not to do' or the equivalent, though she didn't really hear what she should do in those kinds of situations.
"Well, yes, but the thing about missing nins is that… let's put it this way, when you're fighting someone who kills for the fun of it, running away just means not seeing where the killing blow might come from. Maybe you'll only have a two percent chance of living if you fight him, but that's still better than the one percent if you run away."
Chiyako was pretty sure that substituting for Sasuke-senpai when they were fighting Itachi didn't fall in this category, but decided not to bring it up. She also didn't bring up the fact that Shikako-sensei's clarification had just directly contradicted her instructions.
Chiyako hated D ranks. Shikako-sensei had explained how each D rank prepared them for actual missions in the future (like how disturbingly little changed between babysitting and body guarding), but she was starting to believe that they were actually intended as team building exercises through shared rage and frustration. The only thing that made them halfway tolerable was that Shikako-sensei would often share stories while they were working. Stories about working with Team Kurenai were especially popular with Chiyako's team.
Though it was disturbing how many of those stories had the lesson of be careful of what you try sensing, with a disproportionate number of those having the very specific lesson "If a dog doesn't want to smell it, don't sniff at it yourself." To be fair, only half of those stories were Kiba's fault. Chiyako wouldn't say she lost a lot of respect for her brother due to those stories, because Shino-nii was awesome, but she wouldn't say the same about her memories of his twelve-year-old self.
After a long day of weeding, Takuya lay on his back as if he was willing the earth to swallow him whole and put him out of his misery. "You know, when my mom said that the point behind D ranks was to give us practice not murdering our clients before they let us near anyone important, I thought she was joking."
Hanabi fumed silently next to him, exhibit A for people who needed practice not murdering their clients. "How could he mistake me for being a boy?"
"I wouldn't take it personally," Shikako-sensei said. "He probably just met Neji when he was around your age."
That didn't actually make Hanabi any less mad. It just changed the target of her ire as she started ranting about how effortlessly pretty Neji was and how he didn't even do anything special to take care of his hair.
"Fate conspired to give Neji great hair," Sensei intoned.
Hanabi glared at her. "Not funny."
The twitch of Shikako-sensei's mouth said that she thought otherwise. Instead of saying so, she clapped her hands together and said, "Okay, we've now taken enough D ranks that I feel comfortable asking for a B rank."
"Isn't that skipping something?" Takuya asked.
"Not really. We're forbidden by treaty to take C ranks in the Land of Fire. Or Wind, Mist- Actually, it's easier to list where we can take C ranks, which basically boils down to the Land of Birds, Demons and Snow." None of them felt the need to question why anyone would put that in the terms of a treaty. The bigger question was why there were any exceptions.
Well one of them had an obvious explanation. "Isn't Snow so far away that any mission there is automatically a B rank?" Chiyako asked.
"Which would explain why they didn't feel the need to put it in a treaty."
One thing about being a team with Shikako-sensei was that it gave Chiyako a lot of practice with her unimpressed facial expressions.
"Besides, the daimyo owes us a favor."
"And the Land of Birds and Demons?" asked Hanabi.
"Toki, the daimyo of the Land of Birds also owes us a favor. The chief priestess of the Land of Demons wants Naruto to be her baby daddy-"
"What!?" shrieked Hanabi.
Shikako-sensei shrugged. "It is what it is."
Chiyako gaped at her teacher. "There really is no accounting for taste."
Takuya looked thoughtful at this. "I guess being on Team Seven has its upsides."
Hanabi groaned. "Boys."
Takuya was single handedly setting back all of Chiyako's efforts at getting Hanabi to be less sexist by years. Chiyako didn't know why she, the girl raised in a clan associated with insects with extreme sexual dimorphism, was the one who was trying to get Hanabi, the girl with X-ray vision and could see that men and women weren't all the different inside, to be less sexist.
To be fair, skipping C ranks worked for avoiding the C rank curse. On the downside, there weren't many B ranks a fresh genin team were qualified to take. A lot of those were the kind that would normally be C ranked but got bumped up due to distance like long range courier missions.
Kankurou shook his head. "I still don't understand how, out of all the villages, it's the tree hugging friendship fanatics that believe in complete and utter overkill."
Shikako-sensei gave him a skeptical look. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"A Hyuuga, an Aburame and a Inuzuka being led by the most stupidly powerful chakra sensor I know of? This is such tracking overkill that it's not even funny. At least Kurenai was a genjutsu specialist."
"I think it's a little funny," Takuya said. "You can run but you can't hide."
Hanabi scowled. "We get a lot of missing children missions." Which accounted for most of the rest of the B ranks they were qualified for. Chiyako didn't know why Hanabi was complaining. Finding lost children was a lot more interesting than the courier missions. No, that wasn't right. Traveling to new places was interesting, but the tracking missions at least felt like they were using their skills. These courier missions felt like anyone could do them. It made Chiyako feel like they weren't going to live up to the legacy of Team Seven being awesome ninja.
"Anyway, Gaara wants to talk to you. I can watch your brats. We can do story time with milk and cookies."
"We're not six," Takuya protested.
Sensei ignored the protest. "Tell them about the curious incident of the dog in the night time."
"That's one of your stories. You tell it."
"But you do the voices better."
Chiyako was positive that Shikako-sensei wasn't flirting with Kankurou, but at the same time, she was starting to understand the existence of the eldritch abomination called the Shipping Chart that her brother once tried explaining to her.
Kankurou playfully shoved Shikako-sensei. "Get going." Turning to the genin, he said, "I was joking. You're too old to waste milk on." Which was probably fair since they were in a desert. What did you even get milk from? Camels?
"So are cookies still an option?" Chiyako asked.
"Chiyako!" Hanabi said, turning vaguely red.
"No, I get it. Never turn down free food." For some reason, Takuya agreeing with her made Chiyako feel worse. "At least, if you're sure it's not poisoned, and we all know that sensei would do horrible things if he poisoned us."
"Lethally poisoned you," Kankurou corrected. "Non lethal poisonings for training purposes are still on the table."
"Do you have any non lethal poisons that you think we wouldn't detect?" Chiyako asked.
The puppet master grinned. He was clearly trying for an evil grin, but Chiyako wasn't buying it. "Only one way to find out."
"Okay," she agreed.
Hanabi groaned.
"What? Either the cookies are poisoned or they aren't. If they are, then we detect them or we don't. If we don't then we get experience that will help in the future."
Takuya cocked his head. "How would not detecting a poison be a helpful experience?"
Chiyako blinked. How did he not understand this? "I meant experiencing the symptoms."
Kankurou shuddered. "Aburame! I still have nightmares about the poison resistance training your brother said he went through, and I work with poisons every single day."
"Well, yeah. You don't store your poisons inside your own body like we do."
"You know, I thought that meeting an Aburame that talked like everyone else would be less creepy, not more."
Chiyako huffed. "Why do people keep saying that?" She had worked hard to copy her classmates' speaking patterns. It hadn't really helped with getting along with them, but it seemed to help dealing with clients, so she couldn't say that the effort had been wasted.
"It's like finding a black widow without the hourglass mark."
Chiyako rolled her eyes. "You realize that black widows are nowhere near as deadly as popularly believed, right?" Honestly, spiders were so misunderstood.
"Whatever. Sparky asked me to tell you a story."
"Right!" Chiyako unsealed her notebook and let her kikaichu cover it.
"What is that?" At least Kankurou looked confused rather than disgusted.
"Oh, I like collecting stories, so I write them down."
"With bugs?"
"Yeah! I got some of my kikaichu to secrete ink. They aren't as good in combat, but it turns out to be very useful for surveillance." Or babysitting missions where the parents want to know every single thing their kid got up to while they were away. Chiyako was told that those were two different things, but there were days she didn't agree.
Kankurou nodded. "You know what? Respect." He held out his fist and she bumped it with her own. "At least it wasn't a sealing notebook. Though, if you like collecting stories, let me tell you a word that will really annoy your sensei-"
"This isn't going to be a dirty word, is it?" asked Hanabi in a very dubious voice.
"Gah! What kind of creep do you think I am? No, don't answer that." Kankurou sighed. "No, the word is hagiography."
"What's that mean?" asked Takuya.
"It means the biography of a saint or religious leader. Try labeling any stories you write about Shikako as hagiography and watch her turn colors."
Takuya looked at the puppeteer in wide eyed wonder. "Wow. You really have no fear whatsoever." Chiyako was pretty sure that you shouldn't be saying something like that in admiration, but that's what Takuya sounded like. Too much fear was bad, but a little fear kept you doing things that were stupid.
"Isn't this how cults get started?" Hanabi asked.
Kankurou shook his head. "Nah, she already has a cult."
Chiyako blinked. "What?"
"I'd tell you, but your sensei asked me to tell you a story about a horse."
Takuya frowned. "I thought it was about a dog."
"It's both. Now there was a horse called Silver Blaze…."
Story time! Chiyako wished that Mr. Cranberry was still young enough that he could go on missions with her. He would have enjoyed this.
Takuya seemed dissatisfied by the story, and Chiyako had no idea why. It's not like this was their first encounter with the idea of looking underneath the underneath. Instead of trying to get into that she asked Kankurou, "Is this the kind of story that you tell in Suna?"
"It needs some reworking for the audience here, but we need more stories like this one."
Takuya groaned. "But where were the epic fights?" Now that Chiyako was on regular speaking terms with boys her age from outside the clan, she was starting to understand why Hanabi had developed her attitude of boys being idiots.
Kankurou cocked an eyebrow. "Murdered by world peace. And, you know, your sensei getting bored and slaughtering all the outstanding missing nin on the continent."
Shikako-sensei appeared out of nowhere and smacked the back of his head. "That's not what happened."
"And how is that functionally different than what happened?"
"A lot less premeditation, it wasn't just me and we left some of them alive."
Hanabi raised her hand. "Uh, sensei, that sounds a lot like you're saying you accidentally killed most of the missing nin on the continent."
"These things happen!"
The worst part was that Chiyako completely believed that Shikako-sensei really thought that was true.
Kankurou smirked. "At least it can't happen again."
"Because there are no more targets?" Takuya asked.
"Nah, 'cause Konoha can't give these bad luck magnets C rank missions anymore."
"Well, technically-"
"Shut up, I don't want to think about those idiots. Hopefully if you three never take a C rank you won't get the curse either."
"There is no curse," Shikako-sensei ground out between gritted teeth.
"Then why was our genin test to convince our parents to let us be part of Team Seven despite the curse?" asked Takuya.
Kankurou barked in laughter. "Seriously? And here I thought you wussed out and gave them an easy test."
"While there isn't a curse, the fact that international treaties suggest that there is one means I need to take people's irrational superstitions into account." If this was a manga, there would have been the angry vein marks on their teacher's forehead.
Kankurou shook his head. "But, yeah, with peacetime, ninja are doing more tracking and investigative work. Stories about things like looking for things that should be there but aren't are going to be important moving forward. I just need to make it more relatable for people living in the desert."
"He had to look up what a moor meant," Shikako mock whispered.
"The idea of uncultivated fertile land is still weird. So sue me."
"Oh, is that what that means?" asked Takuya. "I thought it meant a swamp."
Hanabi gave him a disdainful look. "How would you lead a horse into a swamp?"
"Dunno. Do I look like a horse person?"
Shikako-sensei bumped Kankurou with her shoulder. "When you rework it, you should add a bird at the end of the story."
"What? Why would I-" Kankurou suddenly groaned. "That's horrible."
"I don't get it," Chiyako admitted.
Shikako-sensei smirked. "Dog, horse and bird are the hand signs for the wind technique Great Breakthrough."
"That's almost physically painful," Hanabi said flatly.
Chiyako squinted at Kankurou. "But you're still going to do it."
He sighed. "Yeah. Probably."
Takuya looked between Chiyako and Kankurou. "Okay, now I don't get it."
Hanabi shook her head. "Great breakthrough in a detective story about a breakthrough-"
"No, I get the pun. I don't get why you'd still do it if the pun is supposed to be that bad."
Hanabi's eyebrows shot up. "'Supposed to be?'"
"You've obviously never met my uncle. I've heard worse, a lot worse."
Shikako-sensei nodded sagely. "There's one in every family."
Chiyako furrowed her brow at that one. Horrible puns didn't seem like a very Nara trait. Then again, Shikako-sensei was proof that not every clan member fit the stereotypes. Though Chiyako didn't have anyone in her family that was a bad punster. No, wait. Her stupid cousin's use of inappropriate pheromone trails was probably close enough.
Takyua looked as if he was happier thinking that there was no one else like his uncle. "Okay, so if it's a universal trauma, why would you want to inflict it on people?"
"Do you want the real answer or one that sounds good?"
One of Takuya's dogs barked. "Ichimaru says he can always use more examples of good spin." Then the other dog barked. "And Jirou says- Hey!"
Wait. He named his dogs One and Two? Sadly, that was still better than Hana-senpai who didn't bother giving her dogs individual names. At least Chiyako felt better about not learning their names until now.
Shikako-sensei snickered. "Jirou said that he could use examples of how to direct the blame to Takuya where it belongs."
Takuya shook his head. "You blame your missing homework on your dog just once…."
Kankurou gave Shikako-sensei a strange look. "When did you learn to understand dog?"
Shikako-sensei looked equally confused. "You know what kind of animals my sensei summons."
"Yeah, but they all speak human."
"Yeah, and they also speak dog. Meaning they could conspire with Kakashi-sensei right in front of us."
"Ah, self defense. Gotcha." He turned back to Takuya. "So the answer that sounds good is that it adds something non-obvious that people can find later so they'll look for other hidden things. Takes the edge off of getting bored if you hear it more than once, right? Plus it's a wind technique, so it makes it feel more like a story for Suna."
"Okay, and what's the real answer?" Hanabi asked.
"Spite. I had to suffer through figuring it out, so I'm going to spread it around."
Shikako-sensei nodded. "Spite makes the world go round."
"Uh, literally?" Chiyako asked. She didn't think so, but sometimes with Shikako-sensei you needed to check these things.
"Ummm. If you had two people and one of them said, 'well, if you're going to spin clockwise, I'm going to spin counterclockwise' would you count that as spite?"
Chiyako glanced at Hanabi, who shrugged. "I guess," they chorused.
"Well that's how conservation of angular momentum works, so, yes, literally."
"Wait, what?"
And that's what led to Chiyako's genin team spending time in a spinny chair holding a wheel which did weird things when you tilted it, all while Shikako-sensei prattled on about math that frankly went far over their heads. It was one thing to believe that the laws of the universe ran on the power of spite. It was an entirely different thing to be able to prove it mathematically, whatever the heck "continuous symmetry over physical space" was supposed to mean.
At least Kankurou looked just as disturbed as the rest of them.
They had finally taken a C rank, and true to expectation, it had turned into a complete fiasco. It was hard to figure out if they should blame the Team Seven Curse, however. After all, why wouldn't you expect to run into a demon worshiping cult in the Land of Demons? Complaining about that would be like going to Iwa and then complaining about all the rocks lying around.
It made Chiyako question the judgment of anyone who lived there, but seeing as she lived in the Land of Fire, she probably shouldn't throw stones. Speaking of not throwing stones, this was also the mission where she discovered that someone saying "you don't want to smell this" somehow completely sidesteps self preservation.
This also led to a very disturbing realization: Chiyako wasn't sure she wanted to be a super mega awesome ninja like Shikako-sensei anymore. Sure, it sounded good on paper, and who wouldn't want to be able to protect their friends and family? On the other hand, Shikako-sensei looked downright bored by fighting an entire cult of demon worshippers. Chiyako had seen her teacher show more emotion over an expired coupon. Okay, yeah, their team did eat a lot, but demon cult! Chiyako wasn't sure she wanted to get so jaded that a demon cult just rated an "Again?"
That didn't mean she was going to slack off on her training. That would be silly. It's just that unlike her teacher, Chiyako didn't have any reason to push her to fight S class threats as a genin. The only real threat to any of her family and friends was someone out to steal Hanabi's eyes and historically the worst that had gone after her was an A rank. There was nothing wrong with only being an A rank threat by the time she was fifteen, and it would give her time for hobbies. Well, Shikako-sensei had a lot of hobbies, but it seemed like she weaponized them all, so Chiyako wasn't sure that they counted as hobbies anymore.
To that end, Chiyako decided to work on her personal spin on her mission notes while still in the field. "Which sounds better?" she asked Hanabi. "The great Shikabane-hime then disdainfully smote the heretic-"
"Chi-chan, what are you doing?" asked Shikako-sensei.
"Writing up my notes about the mission."
"That… doesn't sound like a mission report."
Chiyako shook her head. "These are for my personal notes." She held up her notebook, which proudly read 'The Testament of Aburame Chiyako, First Disciple of the Shikabane-hime.' She had redone all of her old notes after Kankurou had mentioned hagiography. It was actually a lot of fun.
"What."
"Yeah!" Takuya shouted. "Why do you get to be the first disciple?"
"Because I met her first?"
Hanabi patted Takuya on the head. "Don't worry, being the third disciple isn't bad."
"Why would any of you be my disciples?" At least their sensei sounded more confused than annoyed.
Chiyako had been prepared for this and unfolded a piece of paper from inside the cover of her notebook. "Disciple, noun: one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another."
"One, I don't have doctrines. Two, even if I did have any, you aren't spreading them."
"What's rule one?" Hanabi asked.
"No dying," Shikako-sensei replied almost reflexively, then caught herself. "That's not a doctrine."
Chiyako went back to her paper. "Doctrine, noun: something that is taught. Also, a military principle or set of strategies."
Takuya placed his hands behind his head and leaned backwards. "Our lives come before the mission sounds like a doctrine to me."
"Okay, fine, but how are you spreading it?"
Chiyako flipped back in her notebook. "'And we traveled to the Land of Wind where, nestled in the dunes of the desert, lay the shining jewel of Sunagakure, whereupon we met with Shikabane-hime's boon companion Kankurou, who shared with us, under her direction, the parable of Silver Blaze.'"
"'Boon companion?'" Shikako-sensei pinched the bridge of her nose. "Right, scholarship isn't scholarship until you publish. What about you two?"
Hanabi and Takuya glanced at each other. "Mission reports," Hanabi replied.
"I guess that's technically correct," Shikako-sensei admitted.
"Which is the best kind of correct," chorused Chiyako and her teammates.
Their teacher wiped her face with one hand. "This is my past misdeeds come back to haunt me, isn't it?"
"And - lo! - the great Shikabane-hime spake unto us the nature of karma and how one's deeds-"
Shikako-sensei hung her head. "Yeah, karma. And with my luck, a hundred years from now someone's going to find your journal and think you were being serious about all this."
Chiyako summoned the image of Mr. Cranberry in her head and tried to be as cute and innocent looking as him. "Why don't you think I'm serious?"