Chapter Text
Nagisa doesn't have time to think about her conversation with Kurama because she is late to the agreed-upon meeting the next day. Her conversation with the Nine-Tails was long enough that she's just slept through her alarm. It's terribly embarrassing.
Thankfully, she knows her new sensei is the chronically-late type. She's not entirely convinced that he's not lurking somewhere observing them, but she is pretty confident in the fact that, if things go as it went for Naruto, he'll have no leg to stand on if he tries to tell her off for being late.
She still rushes to the training ground, a piece of toast in her mouth.
Then belatedly remembers as she faces Sai and Sasuke that their sensei had instructed them not to eat. By the boys' unimpressed faces, they followed the instructions.
Nagisa is embarrassed, but she hides it behind a sheepish grin. She finishes her toast in two quick bites before settling down to stretch.
"You're late," comments Sai, curious.
"I was so excited I stayed awake too long," she lies as she carefully arranges her limbs into a split like Manami-nee taught her before bending down to touch her toes, "so I overslept."
"I wager this is also the reason why you disobeyed our sensei's orders not to eat."
His tone is very disapproving this time.
Nagisa wracks her mind for her memories of what Kakashi-sensei said exactly. She tilts her head, slowly rising from her split. "Ne, I'm pretty sure he said he didn't recommend eating, not that we're not allowed to do so, ya know."
Sai's eyes widen.
His expression is so baffled Nagisa has to stifle a laugh. It's a bit sad, but it seems like the boy has never heard of the idea that a statement from an authority figure could be taken as anything other than an order.
"He also said we'd throw up if we did," scoffs Sasuke.
She concedes the point. "True. But what does that have to do with you?" She pauses. That's actually the perfect opportunity to mention what the test will be about. "Hm. Unless we're evaluated on teamwork. Then it will suck for all of us."
"Teamwork," repeats Sasuke with a sneer. "That's ridiculous."
Nagisa stares. "Is it? We're being put in four-man cells to complement each other's skills and you don't think our ability to work together is a valuable thing to evaluate?"
This time, it's Sai who sounds disbelieving. "Why does it matter? If the individual is competent and acts with professionalism, mission parametres can be completed without a need for deep connections or whatever you're suggesting, Cherry."
"Cherry?" she exclaims incredulously.
He shrugs.
"I read that nicknames are a good way to build rapport. I'm trying things out. Your hair is the most distinctive thing about you and it looks like cherries," he explains tonelessly, gesturing at her twin pigtails.
"You say that and you think team-building is irrelevant?"
This guy is really strange, thinks Nagisa. She hears a snort and a general feeling of agreement coming from Kurama. She smiles helplessly. She thinks she could get used to that.
Sai seems to consider her rebuttal carefully.
"I'm saying that individual shinobi should be competent enough to be able to achieve mission objectives without needing any type of team cohesion. Professionalism should be enough. Teams of chuunin and above are rarely fixed and no one should rely on good team relationships to carry them." He pauses. "Of course, seeing as we'll be spending months if not years on the same team, our situation is different."
If they actually pass the test, is unsaid.
Nagisa considers his words.
"I think it's not just that shinobi need to be individually strong enough not to be dependent on others. That part's obvious, ya know," she says. "But you still need to be able to rely on your teammates. When we're chuunin, we'll be experienced enough to be more adaptable so we can fit into any team without issue, but that's only if we've worked on our teamwork skills to get there. I think it's not just about trust, you need to learn how to move with other people, not get in their way, all that, ya know. You have to know what you're best at and cover others' weaknesses as well."
"Says the girl who intends to defect," murmurs Kurama in her mind amused at her impassioned speech.
"Hush", she thinks. "They don't need to know that. And I do believe what I said."
She sees nothing wrong in Konoha's philosophy on the importance of teamwork. What Nagisa has a problem with is the fact that they don't actually mean it when it counts. If they did, she wouldn't have spent her entire childhood ostracised and alone save for a clan member who was arguably in a worse situation than she was.
(She hopes Manami-nee is okay. Nagisa hasn't received a single letter in months.)
It was so incredibly short-sighted of them too. She could have grown to do worse than wish to defect. She could have decided to raze the village to the ground instead. If they'd brought her into the fold properly and she hadn't seen how far Naruto had needed to go to win their approval, she'd have been the most loyal shinobi of Konoha.
And instead, here she was.
"Besides, I count you as a teammate," she adds mentally.
The fox feels pleased in her mindscape, and she pictures him swishing his tails with a fanged grin.
Sasuke is not convinced.
"What is the point of taking an entire squad on a mission that might be better accomplished by a single more competent shinobi?" he scoffs.
Nagisa looks at him like he's dumb.
"Really? You can't see a single reason why a squad might be better than one person?" He stares at her disdainfully. "Not even to heal you if you're injured? Or to cover your blindspots? To guard you while you sleep?"
Sasuke has nothing to say to that. He simply turns away and starts doing stretches. Nagisa rolls her eyes. She makes eye contact with Sai, who is staring at her with an expression she cannot decipher. A discrete sniff only gives her the smell of ink and nothing else. It's as odd as it was the day before, but she doesn't forget the grief and bewilderment she briefly smelled yesterday.
She decides to change the subject.
"So. Cherry, is it? What's Sasuke's nickname then?"
"I was thinking Ducky," says Sai carelessly. "His hair looks like a duck butt, doesn't it?"
Nagisa doesn't even have time to start laughing before Sasuke launches himself at Sai. The boy dodges nimbly and raises a challenging eyebrow at the Uchiha heir. The kunoichi watches them attack each other for a petty nickname and can't contain her mirth. She still tracks their movements, evaluating their fighting styles. Sasuke is sloppy when he is angry, she notes, but the Uchiha style serves him better than what they were taught at the Academy. The Little Leaf taijutsu style is designed to be adaptable. It is meant to teach you the fundamentals of martial arts while making space for students to implement their own style. What Sasuke is using now looks like a dance and a war cry all at once. Every move is a finishing move, but with every dodge she sees the way Sasuke follows where Sai leads then turns the rhythm back to his advantage.
Sai fights like he's playing around. Like smoke curling through the trees, he dodges, obscures and redirects nimbly. He lets Sasuke agitate himself into a frenzy, the boy disrupting his own flow to instead try and blast Sai apart. And when Sasuke is sufficiently riled up, Sai takes the high ground and strikes only once, hard enough to send him careening into a tree.
Nagisa whistles.
That was impressive, and it really shows that the unknown element of their team really has the Uchiha heir pegged. He knew he could not match Sasuke's technical skill, so he instead turned his anger against him to finish the fight as soon as possible without taking damage. If the Uchiha's mind hadn't been clouded by his anger, he would have already won. He is faster, stronger and more consistent. But he's also ruled by his emotions in a way that does him a disservice.
Sasuke is snarling as he raises himself up. He throws himself at the other boy and does not give him time to breathe. Sai is not exactly caught off-guard, but his reaction time is too slow to properly dodge this time. The Uchiha heir gains back control of the fight and delivers multiple punishing blows before Sai can even react.
Nagisa pushes chakra onto her feet and jumps in between them, "Stop," she orders.
She nudges at Kurama, who releases a little bit of his chakra alongside hers for added effect. The two boys instinctually freeze.
"Why are you fighting to kill just for a dumb nickname?" she asks Sasuke, unimpressed. "You're a crazy guy, ya know."
Sasuke is breathing heavily, but he's calming down. "Tch," he spits before rolling his shoulders and turning away from Sai and Nagisa.
She rolls her eyes.
They spend the next hour ignoring each other. Nagisa finishes her stretches then lays down on the grass, looking at the clouds. It seems like they'll be waiting a long time. At some point, Sai sits down next to her.
He gives her a searching look and says, "your chakra feels strange."
Nagisa shrugs.
"Yeah. Dunno what's up with it," she lies, "but it's probably why people avoid me a lot. It's a real pain to control because I've so much of it, ya know, so I had to work twice as hard to do the most simple jutsu. You can't even imagine how long it took me to manage a proper Kawarimi. And Henge and Bunshin are completely beyond my ability. It's awful."
"How did you make kunoichi of the year then?" asks Sai, leaning forward in interest.
She's being interrogated, she thinks with some amusement. She figures it would be more suspicious to refuse to reply so she decides to be as frank as possible. Besides, being upfront about her skills with her team is a good thing. She really does believe that teamwork is necessary, especially with what's to come.
Nagisa twists her hands in a series of hand signs, and three Kage Bunshin form at her side. "Iruka-sensei gave me extra points for this. It's not the Academy Bunshin but it's still a clone, so he said it counted. Then I compensated with my other skills. I'm leagues above the second-ranker in taijutsu and bukijutsu and I aced my fuuinjutsu elective. Plus, I don't look it but I'm top of the class in kunoichi arts," she brags before dispelling her clones.
"Huh. What do they teach in kunoichi classes?"
She blinks.
"Eh, that's right, you didn't attend the Academy. We learn about different cultures and about the skills necessary to infiltrate female spaces and pass as civilian women. So, like, etiquette, hanakotoba, dancing, tea ceremonies, musical lessons, calligraphy, make-up, costuming, sewing, embroidery, the art of conversation... things like that." It was basically the same kind of training Manami went through as a kamuro. Being familiar with it helped Nagisa greatly. "There was also an elective on poison cooking, but I didn't take that."
Unlike Iruka-sensei, the kunoichi who held the classes hadn't believed her when she said her application form hadn't made it to her. She doesn't mind it too much, she isn't planning on becoming a poison-specialist.
They also learned how to stop their monthly bleeding during missions, avoid getting pregnant and what to do if an enemy-nin attempts to assault you, but she's not about to mention that to these guys.
"And this is not taught to boys?" asks Sai dubiously.
Sasuke, who is pretending not to listen, also looks outraged at the idea of having missed out. It's not because he finds the subjects particularly interesting, but because his ego can't take the idea of someone else having something he doesn't. The kunoichi does think the boy would have benefited from the more social skills-oriented lessons, but half of everything else is something all Noble clan kids learned by default. He probably had similar lessons before the Massacre.
Nagisa shrugs. "They get extra taijutsu lessons instead."
The boys look like they're about to say something else, but their sensei suddenly appears out of thin air and cuts them off.
"Good morning!" he exclaims before looking up, "or is it afternoon?"
"It's lunchtime," says Nagisa flatly. "And you're late."
"Ah, sorry, sorry, I was helping an old lady cross the road and the next thing I knew, several hours had passed."
He waves his hand in a dismissive gesture then pulls out the infamous bells. He explains the parametres of the test and Nagisa can already see the boys' mindset shift. They are eyeing each other in a predatory way. Nagisa wonders what Sai plans to do. If he's here to spy on her, he'll probably want to ensure she passes alongside him. If he's here for Sasuke and using the fact that there was an empty spot for a boy on the team, he'll be focusing on him. But if he's not a spy at all...
Kakashi gives the starting signal right after psyching them out.
Nagisa wastes no time and summons a dozen clones, who all make the hand signs for the Fuuton: Great Breakthrough. Her sensei dispels them all effortlessly, but it gives her enough space to attempt to sneak behind his back and grab a bell. It obviously doesn't work, and Kakashi engages her in taijutsu instead, cheerfully claiming it to be their first lesson.
She's hopelessly outmatched, but she tries to adapt as much as she can. When she's starting to get overwhelmed, she pulls out multiple explosive tags and sticks them to the ground, taking multiple blows in the process.
Thank the Sage for Kurama, she thinks, and the kitsune snorts.
The explosion propels her into the forested area and she uses another Great Breakthrough to break her fall. Nagisa clicks her tongue. She at least wanted to try getting the bell by herself, but she's clearly not strong enough to even touch it. It's grating, but she knew what the test was for.
Now that she's had her little selfish attempt, she needs to find the others. She thinks she saw Sai go hide in the trees, and she wouldn't be surprised if he already knows how to tree walk. Nagisa's control being shot to hell, she failed the few times she attempted it and resolved to shelve it for a later time, so she has to run on the ground while keeping an eye above instead. This is how she finds Sai in the throes of a genjutsu.
She falters. She knows how to dispel one, but only on herself. What can she do?
"A blow to the head works," suggests Kurama in her mindscape.
"You sure?"
Nagisa moves forward, observing the way Sai's expression is twisted in pain.
"If you leave him, he'll probably break out on his own. But a little hit will make it go faster."
She takes a deep breath and nods. Nagisa pulls out a kunai then turns it around and hits Sai's temple with its hilt. The boy stills, then dispels the genjutsu with a ragged, "kai."
"You with me?" she says.
Sai wipes the sweat from his brow and nods weakly. He smells like grief again, notes Nagisa.
"We can't beat the guy by ourselves, so I'm pretty sure we're gonna need to try as a team. We can figure out the bells later, what do you say?"
The boy straightens. "Understood," he says in a monotone voice, his eyes empty.
So that's his mission-ready mode, she notes, discomforted. She shakes it off. They need to find Sasuke.
They go back to the clearing, where the Uchiha heir is stuck in the Double Suicide Decapitation Jutsu.
"Any ideas on how to get him off?" murmurs Nagisa.
Sai pulls out his scroll and starts drawing. A giant bird materialises from the ink and flies up to Sasuke before digging its claws in his shoulders and pulling him out.
Nagisa takes that as her cue to distract Kakashi. She vaults forward, summoning multiple clones in a blatant mirroring of the tactic she used before. She uses her jutsu to propel herself into the air then her and her clones, armed with explosive tags. It doesn't take long before she's thrown to the ground once more. She braces for impact, but it doesn't come; she finds herself picked up by an ink tiger. A second later, Sasuke is using the head of the chakra construct as a vaulting point and throws a Great Fireball jutsu on Kakashi followed by a complex ninja wire trap.
Nagisa launches herself back into the fray, and makes space for Sai who henges himself into one of her clones and uses the confusion to get behind Kakashi and—
"Time's up!" declares their sensei cheerfully before grabbing at the three of them with well-timed shunshins and throwing them down.
The three of them sit up, a mix of disgruntled and exhilarated as the adrenaline quietens. Kakashi gives them the time to catch their breath before he speaks again. They eye his cheerful expression warily as he dangles the bells in front of them.
"You're not at the level to beat a jounin at their own game but you've done well. Nice teamwork around the end there. Still, you failed to get the bells, which means you... didn't fail!"
"Yes!" crows Nagisa before adding, "huh?", playing at confusion.
She can't contain her giddiness at the thought that they've managed it. Naruto will be so proud, she thinks.
Sasuke looks hopelessly lost and furious about it. Sai on the other hand is tilting his head, thinking it over.
"The test had a hidden parametre," he deduces.
"That's right, Sai-chan. I tested your teamwork. At the beginning, I wasn't impressed. You all charged forward without consulting each other, it was a terrible mess. But then Nagisa-chan found you in the forest and you all got together to free Sasuke and make a plan. So you've not failed."
"We didn't fail, but we didn't pass," grumbles Sasuke.
Kakashi eye-smiles.
"That's right! After all, if you do remember, there are only two bells! Since you didn't do horribly, I'll grant you the privilege to choose amongst yourselves who will go back to the Academy. Aren't I nice? So, who will it be?"
A second teamwork test. Nagisa pouts. She thinks it's really unfair. She moves forward and opens her mouth to volunteer, but Sasuke beats her to it.
"I'll go back to the Academy. I was the last to join the team formation, it's only fair. Besides, it's only one year, and there's apparently additional lessons I can do. And maybe next year I'll get a sensei who's not four hours late to every meeting," he snarks, his hands in his pocket.
Kakashi places a hand on his chest in mock offence, "you break my heart, Sasuke-chan," he declares dramatically before turning to the other two genin. "What do you guys think?"
"Sasuke's Rookie of the Year, it would be kind of embarrassing if he had to go back," says Sai. "I can go."
"I don't mind going either. You're kind of a lame sensei," says Nagisa, sticking her tongue out at Kakashi.
"So cruel, my cute little genin!" whines the man. "I suppose I'll have to keep the three of you and really make you regret it, then!" he adds with an ominous grin before grabbing Nagisa by the jaw and placing a kunai at her throat.
He releases his killing intent, which makes the kunoichi freeze and the boys tense, caught off-guard.
"Sai, kill Sasuke or Nagisa dies," he orders.
Nagisa makes a strangled sound as Sai shunshins at Sasuke's side and picks up the ninja wire dropped at the boy's feet. She makes an aborted movement, only stopping when Kakashi's blade digs into her skin and draws blood. She freezes.
Kakashi stills and lowers his blade at the moment Sai starts holding the wire in front of the Uchiha heir, his expression entirely blank.
"Stand down, Sai," he barks.
Sai blinks, then lowers the wire. "Hai," he says monotonously, moving away from Sasuke.
Sasuke eyes him warily and takes a step to the left, rolling his shoulders. His back is tense, notes Nagisa, whose heart feels like it's beating in her throat. She raises her arm and wipes the blood that is dripping on her high-neck collar with a mechanical swipe of the hand.
Kakashi rubs his hand over his face.
"This demonstration was meant to emphasise that teamwork is necessary to get out of situations where an enemy-nin has backed you into a corner, not to show how easy it is to kill a comrade. Complying with this type of order should be your absolute last resort, not your first," he instructs.
Nagisa raises a hand. "What if a higher-up is the one who gives the order?"
She's a bit sore about being chosen as the sacrifice, sue her.
Kakashi eyes her knowingly. "If the Hokage asks you to kill a comrade, you obey. But no one else has the power to make that call."
Sai looks unconvinced, but he says nothing. Nagisa wonders.
After this harrowing experience, Kakashi leads them to the Memorial Stone. They stand in front of the kunai-shaped edifice, staring at the thousands of names engraved on the stone. Nagisa looks on, unsure what to think about it. There, Kakashi introduces them to his nindo.
"Those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash," he says with such conviction they have no choice to believe him.
Nagisa nods distractedly, her attention caught by a tell-tale spiral.
"Uzumaki Mito," she murmurs, tracing the name on the stone. Then she looks further down. "Uzumaki Ryuuji. Akie. Hinata. Aoi. Kushina."
Manami-nee was right, thinks Nagisa. All the Uzumaki shinobi who came here after the destruction of Uzushio are dead, except Nagisa. It would not be notable if there weren't so few of them and if their names — save for her mother and Uzumaki Mito's — weren't engraved so close to each other. Barely a dozen shinobi made it to Konoha after the devastation their village suffered, and they all died in the same war. She cannot blame her nee-san for thinking there was foul play.
"Careful, kit, you're attracting attention to yourself," warns Kurama.
Nagisa tenses and switches to another name, "there are hundreds of Uchiha names too. Your clan spilled so much blood for the village," she says to Sasuke, bowing in respect. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Kakashi-sensei twitches, but says nothing.
Sasuke on the other hand bristles, but after taking a look at her, he visibly schools himself and mutters, "thank you."
It's begrudging but she'll take it. Manami-nee taught her manners, she'll be using them. Naruto could have done with a few of those.
Their teacher, who probably feels like he's losing control of the situation, rallies them again and tells them to meet him at the same time and same place the next day.
"Will you be there on time, then?" Nagisa asks.
"Maa, who knows," he says vaguely, before he herds them to the Hokage Tower to take a team picture and receive their identification numbers.
***
The next day, Kakashi is late again, but Nagisa is on time.
She spoke to Naruto in her bathroom mirror before leaving. He advised her to wait and see what Sai would do instead of keeping her guard up all the time. He's confident she's capable of getting through to him and break the conditioning. Nagisa, who didn't even know conditioning was a thing she had to worry about, is not so sure about that, but she's willing to let it go for now. Naruto did say the man Sai is spying for is a village elder whose name escaped him, and that she should report to the Hokage if she has any proof of wrongdoing from the guy.
He also suggested she propose team spars to pass the time while they waited on their sensei. Looking back on it, he signed, he thinks they wasted that time instead of turning it into something productive. So Nagisa follows his advice and makes a beeline for the library where she withdraws a scroll on sealscript, a theory on elemental manipulation and a scroll about the Hiding in Water technique.
Sai is already there when she arrives, but Sasuke gets to the training ground right after she does. She greets her teammates with a salute before pulling out her reading material.
"What are you doing?" asks Sasuke, looking like he'd rather do anything but talk to her.
"Huh? Well, if sensei's gonna be late everyday I thought I might as well be productive. It's kind of a waste of time to wait around like that, ya know. So I brought reading material! Did ya know, with our shinobi identification we have access to the first floor of the library? Only the genin section, but that means we can look through the general repository, with all the recorded taijutsu and kenjutsu styles, D and C rank ninjutsu and genjutsu, and even the Bingo Books. We get what's not classified basically."
She bounces on her feet as she says so before summoning three clones. She gives one scroll to each then starts stretching. The clones step away and sit down to pour over the scrolls.
"You retain the memories of your clones, Cherry?" asks Sai.
"Uh-huh. Neat, right? Makes training and studying much easier, believe it!" She pauses. "Self-study's not gonna be enough to improve, so I do hope sensei is not gonna be the flighty type. We pick up bad habits when we train by ourselves for too long."
Sai hums. Sasuke looks disgruntled that he hasn't thought about it. Nagisa gives them a cheeky grin before settling down to stretch properly, then going through a series of kata. When she's done, she does some target practise, summoning clones and ordering them to evade her kunai and shuriken.
After an hour of this, she's properly worked up a sweat. Her clone working on the theory of elemental manipulation has dispelled, but the others are still hard at it. She rubs her temples to chase the brief headache caused by the influx of memories given to her by her Bunshin, then looks at her two teammates.
Sai is drawing and Sasuke is going through his own series of kata.
"Anyone up for a spar?" she says, clapping her hands.
Both of the boys straighten, then look at each other, undecided.
"How about we do a free-for-all?" suggests Nagisa with a bloodthirsty grin.
She mentally orders her studying clones to get the away, and they scramble to their feet, scrolls in hand.
The boys pull out a kunai each, their eyes intent on her.
Chaos ensues.
***
Kakashi finds them dishevelled, bruised and poring over scrolls. Nagisa is reading the Hiding in Water technique, Sai is getting a refresher on sealscript and Sasuke has monopolised the elemental manipulation scroll she finished before their spar.
"Well, well, what do I see here? My cute little genin are hard at work, I see. I think you've warmed up enough for a D-rank mission!"
They both stand to attention eagerly. Nagisa puts away their reading material into the storage seal she embroidered on her kunai pouch.
"Ne, ne, what kind of missions are D-ranks, sensei?" she asks, already anticipating the face Sasuke will make when he finds out D-ranks are glorified chores.
"Maa, you'll see."
She pouts, disappointed, but gamely walks beside Kakashi as he leads them to the missions office. She muses that them meeting at the training ground when this is what their teacher planned for the day might actually be an indication that Naruto's advice was in fact what Kakashi expected of them in the first place.
Their first mission is to clear a field.
The look of disgust on Sasuke's face when he learns this is priceless. Nagisa snickers under her breath then pulls out her bandages and scarf from her storage seal to hide her whiskers and hair. She adjusts her hitai-ate on top of her head scarf so it's still visible with expert hands.
"What are you doing, Nagisa-chan?" asks their sensei curiously as they're walking.
"Civilians don't like me much, sensei, so I'm taking precautions," she explains brightly when she's done.
The two boys stiffen and Kakashi-sensei suddenly smells so intensely like pain that Nagisa has to cover her nose. The scent is gone as soon as she picks up on it, and she lowers her hand slowly, looking at it like she's not sure if she hallucinated it.
"It's okay, I'm used to it," she tells him with a reassuring grin and a shrug.
Kakashi-sensei looks like he wants to argue, but he says nothing.
Nagisa does not resent his silence. Not at all.
"Don't lie to yourself, kit," sighs Kurama.
They arrive to the client's house, and though she gets funny looks for the way her hair is wrapped — the twin pigtails bound by cloth make it look like she has horns, it's kind of funny — it seems like the farmer who greets them attributes it to the general weirdness of ninja so he doesn't comment.
They're shown to the field that needs clearing, and realise with dismay that the entire ground is covered in sharp rocks and fallen trees. It's a huge mess.
"How long do we have again?" asks Sai faintly, experimentally bending down to pick up and crush a decently-sized stone with a chakra-enhanced squeeze.
"Four hours," says Kakashi cheerfully before pulling out a book with an orange cover.
Nagisa sighs and starts scoping out the place, dragging the boys with her. They trade suggestions back and forth until they have something resembling a plan of attack. Sai has to break a small argument between her and Sasuke at some point, but they still get things done.
"So... fire jutsu to burn down the logs that are in the way, wind to push the stones down the ravine and Sai's beasts to do the heavy lifting," she sums up, then they get started.
When they're done, it's been five hours and they come back to the farm with lowered heads, disappointed to have failed to finish on time. Their sensei is still reading when they get back, and he takes the news with nonchalance.
"Maa, did I say four hours?" says Kakashi. "I meant six hours. My bad."
Nagisa yells at him until her voice is hoarse and Sai has to restrain Sasuke from launching himself at Kakashi. Her sensei is unphased.
"So that means we have an extra hour," comments their teacher once the yelling is done. He has put his book away and is looking at them intently. "What do you want to do?"
"Teach us an A-rank jutsu," commands Sasuke.
"Maa, let's do more D-ranks before we get to that. You're not quite at that level yet."
Nagisa raises her hand, "can we learn how to do the roof hopping thing? All the shinobi I see in the village travel by roof, but I can only jump off them. I'd move around faster if I didn't have to dodge civilians all the time, ya know."
"Do you mean tree-walking?" asks Sai, raising an eyebrow. "Is that not taught at the Academy."
Sai is so unimpressed he forgot to ask an inflection to his voice, she thinks, amused. She's pretty sure his last sentence was supposed to be a question.
"I'm afraid not," says Kakashi.
The rest of the session is spent demonstrating tree-walking. Sai already knows how to do it, and acts as an assistant sensei to Kakashi for the hour. Sasuke and Nagisa both fail at tree-walking before the end of the day, so they resolve to take some time to get it done the day after in-between studying.
Nagisa thinks this was a good day.
***
The next two weeks are spent doing the same things. Team Seven spar and study together in the mornings, Sasuke and Nagisa try to master tree-walking while Sai does his own things — currently, he tries to mix contact-activation poison with his ink so the beasts he summon can paralyse enemies with just a touch. Then Kakashi-sensei arrives and they do one to three D-ranks, depending on the level of difficulty. If they finish some time in advance, they request to learn something and almost always get shut down.
Once they get the tree-walking thing down, they switch to water-walking. To congratulate them, Kakashi agrees to teach Sasuke an electric palm jutsu, Sai gets a demonstration of a kenjutsu style he was interested in and Nagisa receives a bound journal shock-full of sealing theory. Judging by the Uzumaki spiral she finds doodled in the pages, she suspects this is her clan's sealing style. She doesn't say a word about it, though.
The contents of the journal are fascinating.
It starts with some kind of philosophical discussion of what sealing is that is honestly beyond Nagisa's capabilities. She understands the gist of it, though. Fuuinjutsu conducts chakra with its own language, in the same way that the combination of hand signs and their associated jutsu names shapes a shinobi's chakra to its desired manipulation. The practise has its roots in quite literally sealing things, but a close second application was the use of barriers. From what Nagisa understands, the first general uses of sealing had to do with spatial manipulation and still do.
Protecting or limiting access to a space. Creating more space, folding and hiding the things inside of it. Forcibly displacing something outside a space within it, or something inside outside of it.
This explains how barriers and storage seals work, the theory behind the jinchuuriki seals, even Namikaze Minato's technique. Things like silencing and stasis seals also work the same way: they limit how sound travel within a space or the movement of its components. Explosive and flashbang tags disrupt space while controlling how light and heat travel within it.
Once Nagisa understands the language of spatial fuuinjutsu and how to adapt it, she will be able to do anything.
She's so giddy at the very thought of it and absorbed in her reading she doesn't notice Sai before he plucks the journal from her hands and examines it. She yells at him and tries to get at her study material, but the boy is simply too tall and she doesn't want to use a jutsu that could potentially damage it.
"I'm gonna eat you, believe it!" she yells, jumping on top of him.
Sai finally releases the journal with a smirk. He's been more expressive lately. Not much, but it's nice to see. Except when he's teasing her, and then it's absolutely terrible and she hates him.
"I just wanted a look," he says innocently before his expression smooths into something more neutral. "And that thing is incomprehensible. Are you actually getting anything out of it?"
"What do you mean?" she exclaims. "It's fascinating! Here, this is talking about the trigram principle and how it allows to layer intent and stabilise sealing structures. The idea is that..."
She rambles about it for a good few minutes when she realises she's lost Sai at the third sentence. He's staring at her with a bemused expression. Sasuke, who's wandered closer somewhere around the five-minute mark is staring at her like he's never seen her before. She flushes.
"Anyway, it's not hard, ya know!"
Kakashi-sensei materialises behind her and pats her head.
"It is, Nagisa-chan. But it seems like you're some sort of fuuinjutsu genius. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with that."
Huh.
***
After two months, Nagisa takes Naruto's example and wheedles the Hokage for a C-rank.
By this point, her team has mastered tree-walking, water-walking and they have achieved some level of team cohesion. They break formations all the time when they disagree with each other or just to show off, but a small cough from Kakashi is usually enough to settle them. Sasuke has three more jutsu in his arsenal, two of them being lightning techniques and another fire jutsu, and has started learning how to wield a katana. Nagisa has reached the level of an intermediate student in fuuinjutsu, she can perform Hiding in Water and the Gale Palm consistently in concealment exercises and spars and Kakashi is trying to find her a close-combat style she actually likes. Sai has perfected the Headhunter jutsu and the Double Suicide Decapitation technique, which he's wanted to use since the bell test, and learned Foxfire, the same fire jutsu as Sasuke.
It has crossed Nagisa's mind that Kakashi has started training them more like ANBU than genin. She's not going to complain, though. Naruto is very jealous of the way she's managed to kick their sensei into gear and get him to properly teach, but she's pointed out that this is entirely on him since he gave her the advice to be pro-active and her team has only followed suit.
They've also done up to fourty D-rank missions, seven of which were orders to find Tora the cat. Looking for that demon might have improved her tracking skills, but she is sick of it. Besides, she and Naruto calculated the best time to ask so she would be assigned the mission to Nami. She's hoping to find a way to contact Manami-nee on her way there.
When old man Tazuna shows up to tell them they'd be leaving the day after and complains that they're little kids who couldn't guard a barrel if their life depended on it, Nagisa feels so victorious she decides to ask her teammates if they want to have ramen to celebrate.
Sasuke is about to refuse when their sensei railroads them all into accepting. Nagisa doesn't like the heavy-handedness, but since it works in her favour, she decides to ignore it. She is a shinobi after all.
She leads the way, eager to get to her favourite shop in Konoha.
"Miso Chashu, please, Teuchi-oji-san," she exclaims as she bursts inside of it, her teammates filing in after her.
The boys order in a more sedate manner as she goes to chat with Ayame-chan.
When the food is there, she bickers with the boys and makes a game out of trying to see under their sensei's mask. It's a very fun evening, and by the end of it, Sasuke lets Sai call him Ducky without trying to tear his head off. The boy-spy paints a portrait of all of them, and Nagisa notices him stilling when he stumbles upon a drawing of himself and a grey-haired boy on the back of his notebook. She looks at him curiously, but since he smells like grief again, she does not ask. Instead she challenges Sasuke to a dumb game and ends up spilling the Uchiha's bowl on their sensei's lap. Kakashi-sensei uses that as an excuse to disappear without paying, and the three of them swear their vengeance will be sweet.
They go their separate ways after Nagisa has finished her fourth bowl of ramen, and the girl takes to the rooftops, feeling full and warm.
On her way home, Kurama talks to her.
"You're getting comfortable with your teammates," he observes.
Nagisa falters.
"Is that bad?"
Her voice is small in their mental link. There is a beat of silence, then a sigh.
"You tell me, kit. You're the one who's planning on defecting."
There is an implied question in there. Kurama is wondering if her resolve has faltered.
"Befriending them doesn't change anything. They can't make up for everything else, Kurama-san. Not for my suffering, and especially not for yours. This village has taken too much from us," she says quietly. "I'll not let it take more in the name of friendship. If they do care for me, they'll understand. And if they don't... it will all have been a lie. And I'll forgive that, since I'm a liar too, and we'll forget about this. It's fine."
"It's not fine if it hurts you," murmurs the fox.
Nagisa has no idea what to say to that, so she stays silent.