“What’s wrong, daughter? You are acting like you are ill today, not working at all…” Meiko’s father noted.
The young kunoichi had heard him enter her workplace, it was quite impossible not to hear such a tall man wearing steel gauntlets, shoulder pads and boots enter. Especially so for a ninja. His voice did not sound angry or complaining, he was mostly concerned. Meiko folded the letter she held in her hands and put it down near her unfinished work. A bunch of screws, bolts and gear work, all disjointed and scattered across the workbench.
“I’m sorry, father. I’ll get to work…” Meiko tried to act like she took her father’s words as scorn, maybe that way she could have avoided talking about what her father really may have wanted to know?
“I did not mean it that way, daughter, I hold no grudge for a child who doesn’t finish her old man’s work. I am just dumbfounded by the lack of enthusiasm in it. You are working on a model of an entire tower operating on gear work. Eccentric clients like that used to get my little sparky all fired up!” Meiko’s father energetically gestured accidentally taking down a pile of steel plates and tools. Caught in embarrassment the man quickly piled it all by pushing the mess back into a pile with his boot.
Meiko looked down and picked the folded letter up, extending her hand up and bending it over her own shoulder as if gesturing for her father to check the piece of paper out.
“This little speck of documentation is making my daughter upset!?” the man roared out like a lion angered by a too bold approach of one of his cubs. The tall blacksmith smashed his hands together blowing air through his palms.
“Fire Style: Ash Cinder!” he yelled out as small cinders came out from his lungs and focused into a burning stream of incineration that burnt the letter to a crisp and also singed Meiko’s upper body from behind leaving a massive layer of ash on the younger blacksmith’s body.
Meiko angrily shook her upper body shaking off the layer of cinder, she didn’t even have to augment her body to withstand a pitiful D-Rank technique that was unpleasant at best. Her father always had a habit of reacting excessively even if he usually stroke the first impression of a cold and unemotional giant like a nail to the head. That trait was multiplied tenfold when his family was in question.
“That letter actually contained the problem!” Meiko vibrantly yelled at her father who just apologetically shook his hands trying to avoid his lovely redhead’s wrath.
“Really? What problem troubles my little daughter? Who dares send problems to my child!?” the man snapped back beginning to look for the author of the letter as if the man was waiting in Meiko’s workplace the whole time just waiting to leap out and reveal themselves like a villain in a bad spy movie.
“The Hokage… I mean… The Fifth Hokage” Meiko replied quickly remembering that shortly after her return the Hokage had changed. She had managed to miss the final days in office of the Fifth Hokage. That certainly put the temporal length of her journey in perspective.
“Are you leaving on another mission, my little rabbit in fox’s colors?” the man shrugged trying to wrap his quite thick head around the possible problem that could’ve troubled his daughter so much that she stopped enjoying what usually breathed great enthusiasm into her.
“She asked me to meet her today. Said she wanted to interview me for a position in her team.” Meiko explained with a degree of sadness that was very much unlike her.
“But munchkin, that is great! Are you perhaps not aware of the honor of being in the Team Hokage?!” the blacksmith charged at his daughter, grabbing her into an uncomfortable hold that would’ve undoubtedly squished even a strongman civilian into bloody mush but Meiko just uncomfortably squirmed until her head finally appeared from the mountain range of her father’s muscle and then allowed herself to push herself out of her father’s hold working from the head down.
“That’s the thing…” Meiko returned to profound sadness once her feet landed firmly on the ground. “Team Hokage is always composed of the most talented and amazing students. Usually genin that are in the Team Hokage are expected to either become Sannin or Hokage themselves at some point. I failed the Academy graduation exam once and I’ve been ditched from way too many teams to think of myself as Team Hokage material…”
“But do you not think that Lady Hokage is more perceptive than that? Maybe she sees the little fighter in you and acknowledges that?” Meiko’s father lightly tapped Meiko’s chest strong enough to punch a man’s heart out but barely fazing his little daughter.
“I… What if the Fifth actually acknowledged Mana? I mean she was the one who finished off the Pirate Lord, not me. What if I’m just being judged unfairly just because of what our team has accomplished? After all, Mana was the one who put the team together, she schemed the entire adventure as an expression of gratitude for our services and us helping her out with her magic shows. I was just always… Kind of there. They don’t give awards to people who were kind of there…” Meiko began digging deep into her insecurities.
The massive blacksmith tapped her shoulder with all the subtlety of an extinction level event and laughed out giving his daughter a thumb up.
“Even if you are just a “Was Kind of There” kid, you are the best “Was Kind of There” kid ever and you go show that woman that you are ready to just kind of be there wherever you are needed. You are late already! Go! Confront your fears, ask her about it. Don’t just sit this out, do you think you’d have gotten where you are now if you sat your puny magician girl’s mission out? Making a thousand shoddy spoons is better than to refuse your client at all, at least in the first case it makes you better at making spoons!” Meiko’s father encouraged his daughter and for the first time in a while the redhead’s face was finally dyed with a beautiful and dreamy smile.
“For the record, I really didn’t get that spoon thing you did… I do get that I’m late though!” Meiko laughed out before grabbing all of her scrolls needed to armor up and fight. She expected some sort of test to follow this invitation to a team, such was always the case and Meiko quite often failed tests of both the paper and practical variety.
*****
“I’m sorry I am late!” Meiko shouted out landing right in the middle of the described training grounds that had a bunch of empty and barely standing buildings put together to emulate a settlement environment. The new Hokage has done his best to revamp the entire ancient system “ revamping the training facilities was one of the first things he did as he was a firm believer in good training improving the mission success rate.
“Well, I was late as well. I’ve never really figured out how those weird new display clocks worked, things were much simpler with pointy arrows and numbers…” Hanasaku smiled in a monkey-ish smile mirroring that which Meiko often gave Mana. Seeing this simian smile made Meiko understand that maybe being picked by this woman was no mistake. Maybe she could just fit right in?
“So, Wakizashi Meiko, what say you if I picked you as the third member of my team?” the woman boldly declared pointing at the blacksmith who was still feeling uneasy about this whole spectacle.
“Ummm… Actually… I was really wondering if it was the right idea…” Meiko scratched the back of her head messing up her red short hair to where they looked even messier than she usually had them.
“No. Initially I was really wondering if it was the right idea!” Hanasaku declared clenching her index finger into a tight fist and giving her recruit a daring and expressively confident smile. “Then I realized just how similar you are to how I was as a child! Your grades in the Academy are terrible, so terrible that you’d never pass with the current revamped standards in mind. You’ve been booted out of multiple teams you were assigned to for various reasons. One of which being that a lot of sensei didn’t want to work with a student so inept at chakra control.”
Meiko jumped up and began to develop a certain puppy look to her eyes as she was desiring to sink into the ground after each belittling word coming out from her sensei’s mouth.
“In many ways you’re more of a loser than I ever was! At least I had my honorable clan name to hide behind, you are from the “Wakizashi” family which has no ties to Konoha, it’s not even in the archives!” the Hokage kept on going after which Meiko finally wanted to butt in.
“Actually… I made that name up, I was told that I was allowed to dismiss my clan name and make up a different last name when I had my license made. I am actually a Kirikuzu clan member.” Meiko shyly explained rubbing her foot into the sticky dirt.
“Oh? I was not aware of that!” Hanasaku curiously exploded in surprise, the woman had no composure or restraint behind her emotions and seemingly just erupted like a volcano any time she wanted to emote something. To a woman like this it would’ve been literally quite impossible to tell a lie.
“I just… I don’t…” Meiko tried to put her feelings into words but then Hanasaku interrupted her.
“I have also dismissed my own heritage. I was nothing like my other clan peers!” Hanasaku cheered out seemingly viewing Meiko more like a good friend than her potential student. This matching detail made the strange student-mentor relation between the two fade entirely, at least on the Hanasaku front.
“Actually you kind of should’ve known that fact, it’s sort of in my file.” Meiko pouted, she wasn’t that knowledgeable of bureaucracy or paperwork of any matter but she knew at least that much. “Wakizashi is so clearly a made up name, it is literally the name of a short blade…” the redhead suddenly realized that this strangely ignorant woman in front of her was in charge of the entire village. More so, people were praising her in the last year for the immense maturity and growth she had displayed while governing the village yet she couldn’t see a fake name even if it was spelled out in front of her.
Hanasaku snickered cheerfully while apologetically rubbing the back of her head. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t notice that…”
An awkward silence took over the training grounds before Hanasaku finished her smiling and chuckling and took a fighting stance.
“Now, before I accept you and add your name to the file officially, I’d like to test your abilities.” The woman declared.
That was something Meiko feared, being exposed as being as inept as she felt being inside. Then again, judging from the highly physical stance of the woman she was a purely physical combatant. That was a front where Meiko excelled in and made herself look that less incompetent.
“Look… I think this is all some kind of mistake… You clearly are silly enough to make such a mess up and accidentally check a different name on the list.” Meiko’s fears were beginning to wrap around her throat but then Hanasaku just kept staring at her.
“Yeah, it’s possible, that’s why I’m testing you, that’s how tests work “ they test. You know, you’re not that bright, in reality.” Hanasaku snickered in a very unrestrained and monkey-like manner again.
“Coming from you that’s rich…” the blacksmith thought to herself and pulled out a couple of seals from her back pocket. The young woman extended them and made a hand seal unsealing her armor pieces.
“I didn’t have much time to get dressed, I was really late so hopefully you won’t object if…” Meiko tried to explain but then she noticed that her possible future sensei was no longer there. Being involved in the field of physical combat Meiko knew both what that meant and how bad of a sign it was.
Meiko caught the fist of Hanasaku while slapping her shoulder guard. It was pure luck that the blacksmith even guessed the right position to block in “ she merely deduced it was the most alluring opening to not exploit. Suddenly a gigantic air pressure shocked Meiko in her boots and blasted her away “ the force behind Hanasaku’s punch was immense! The redhead had thought she had caught the punch but the actual force behind it was so immense that it took greater time to be transferred.
Meiko felt the whizzing air in her ears, she felt weak and powerless as her chakra was burning away, like billions of small flames burning their brightest before going out. Her body managed to augment itself successfully to survive the rushing force but it cost her a great deal of her chakra reserves. Not that she was that good at carefully managing what she spent and what she kept, accurately putting just the necessary amount of chakra into each augmentation like really skilled ninja did.
Tight hands locked in on Meiko’s throat and wrapped around her head. The blacksmith felt immense pressure pressing against her throat and from the top of her head as the clutch pressed on, was the woman trying to crush the whole planet or just her head!? The blacksmith wanted to scream out by how much force was put out by the Hokage “ it was like the woman was really trying to kill her!
The blacksmith felt her consciousness slowly fading away, the air so high up was dense, the pressure from Hanasaku’s clutch was enough to press juice out from a diamond… Meiko would’ve screamed if she had enough air to do so in her lungs, or if there was anyone at all alive in this altitude to hear her. This crash will definitely kill her, definitely! Was this woman crazy!?
Then again… Those were always the odds. Mana survived these odds even as a civilian, she faced the Nine Tailed Fox while being completely powerless, she faced the Pirate Lord while he was holding the entire Earth in his hands and was fully willing to crush it. Right after he had killed her friend like it was no big deal, right as he tried to kill everyone else… Meiko’s hands were completely free to bend and make hand seals. The blacksmith shoved her other shoulder guard which was still in her hand back on and made a hand seal.
“C-Rank Seal: Release!” she shouted out but her words fell to deaf ears due to the rushing air. Her eyelids were becoming difficult, her head felt like it weighed ten billion tons and was dragging her to the bottom of the ocean. A powerful surge of chakra erupted from Meiko’s shoulder pads from the sealing glyphs she had placed all over her armor. The chakra worked like a jet mechanism slowing down the fall completely “ seeing how it opposed no force from Hanasaku’s behalf, only the natural velocity of two objects falling down.
The crash felt more like falling out from bed than being driven down from high above by a crazy murderous woman trying to recruit Meiko into her team. The unleashed stream of chakra slowed down the fall to where crashing into the ground barely even mattered.
Hanasaku jumped back and released Meiko from the clutch, she looked like her shoulder had taken some damage but then a moment later any accidental injury she had sustained had disappeared. Meiko stood back on her feet and charged at the woman. Hanasaku didn’t even try to defend herself. However Meiko’s attack was not gunning for her sensei “ it was aimed at the pieces of her armor still laying around. She needed her weaponry, her seals to survive. She needed all of her skills, all of her craftsmanship just to survive!
Success! Meiko reattached her shin guard and quickly fastened it to hold. The redhead could feel her opponent’s presence right behind her, she touched the shin guard and fired off a jet stream of chakra she usually used to fly her around like jet boots. Charging at the couple of remaining armor pieces Meiko extended her arm, she just needed to grab this and then glide up, give herself some time to suit up in the air!
Hanasaku’s laughing image blurred in right in front of the armor piece but it was too late. The woman ruthlessly kicked Meiko up and piercing the sky again. The clouds in the sky exploded like a heavenly arrow would’ve just burst them away like troublesome pests when the redheaded girl blasted away and into the blue skies above. Meiko recovered halfway in the air, she clutched herself together and forced her feet behind her so she could redirect herself and go right down, swoop down and grab the necessary armor.
Now Hanasaku was toying around with Meiko “ she was hitting with enough force to murder a genin tens of times over. She would’ve hit hard enough to blow up the whole planet with just a punch, nevertheless, she was clearly restraining herself still. The Fifth’s speed was fluctuating and she was getting hundreds of times faster than the last time Meiko saw her with no visible strain. She was being as fast as she needed to be to make her visualized move a reality.
Finally! Meiko’s desired armor piece was in her hand and the blacksmith steered up, desperately trying to flee into the sky where she could place the piece where it belonged. A firm clutch didn’t let Meiko take off. Hanasaku slammed Meiko into the ground creating a small crater. Meiko could feel the taste of blood in her mouth, her vision was getting blurry and nausea was beginning to set in “ her power was also steadily increasing. This woman lacked any semblance of control to her inhuman abilities. She was a monster, if Meiko had any brain matter left uncrushed in that head of hers she needed to give up and quit!
Meiko’s vision finally returned, the girl realized that she was looking at her own bruised and bloody hand while she was writhing in a small crater of her possible sensei’s making. More and more chakra was fading away with each augmentation desperately trying to keep Meiko alive. Training with Mana helped Meiko’s chakra control somewhat but she only had about a third of her resources left. She wasted chakra just to survive, she had none to spare for actually attacking her opponent! More so, if she lost that same amount of chakra, the second third, she’d need the rest to stay alive! That was the necessary amount she couldn’t spend and if she was hit by those ridiculous punches and kicks again, how would she not end up a bloody stain?
“Why don’t you substitute?” Hanasaku asked almost mockingly, but also with a hint of curiosity. “I mean even a dropout of the Academy knows the Substitution Jutsu, you could’ve saved yourself a great beating if you used it at least once…”
Meiko didn’t reply. She felt completely powerless and her insecurities were burning her up from the inside. If Meiko used that ninjutsu of the most primitive level and failed just like she botched the Transformation Jutsu in the Katabami Mines or how she botched the Art of Wall Climbing Jutsu in the desert ruins nearly getting Mana killed, how would the Fifth react? She’d not only cancel this test, she’d tell it to the current Hokage and demand that Meiko’s license be terminated, Meiko would go back to the Academy again… Struggle with those stares of people making fun of a failure, making fun of someone who failed the graduation test, someone who failed at life and came back to the Academy…
She was better off just giving up…
Just give up…
That wasn’t what she had agreed to do. That’s not what her father told her to do! That’s not what Hanasaku, Mana or anyone she had ever met and admired would do. Meiko shouted out in pain after she picked her tired body off the ground and met Hanasaku’s stare.
She needs her armor back together…
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