บท 3: Objectively staring
"Simple," the answer came from behind a stony glare, "I needed to let you know that you are not alone in this world."
Naruto scratched his head for a second. Not alone?
"Of course I'm not alone in the world, other people are in it too," Naruto said bluntly.
Koan just smiled and said, "That's right naruto and never ever forget, it you....are not alone; that's why don't do it, the pranks i mean
Naruto: ????
"You do it because it gets people to look at you. It doesn't matter if they look at you with scowls or smiles, outright hate or cheer; the fact is that they are looking at you. They're acknowledging you in some way, acknowledging that you are there. And believe me when I say I know what it's like to be ignored."
Naruto's eyes widened slightly. He wasn't being probed for information. This was no elaborate prank or joke. He knew it had to be true. He couldn't be the only one to be alone.
He continued. "They hate you because of the Kyuubi, something you didn't even know about until a few hours ago. They ignore you because you're a reminder of tragedy, something they can blame for a disaster that came out of nowhere."
He stopped for a few moments, taking a breath between his quiet, yet piercing words. "I won't say that I've had it the same as you because I haven't at all. I'm not something they can pile hate on for something out of anyone's control. I've been ignored, not out of spite or hatred, but because it was easier not to see me. I was easy to miss, easy to disregard and overlook. Life as an orphan will do that to you, but I don't need to explain how that works. One way or another, both of us know what it's like to be alone."
Naruto said nothing, simply comprehending what he had said in silence. After a long space of stillness, the blond genin spoke up.
"If you were just as alone as I was," he said, looking down at the floor, "What took you so long? We're the same age, aren't we? So why didn't you tell me earlier?"
He looked the Uzumaki straight in the eye. "It was because I only found out about the Kyuubi two days ago. Before that, I didn't think I could trust anyone."
Naruto looked up at him. "How does the fox come into this?"
He lean further back into the wall, arms crossed and deep in thought, like he was deciding whether or not to tell him something.
"The Kyuubi no Youko is one of the nine bijuu, nine beings of living, immortal chakra. The Kyuubi is the greatest of the nine, but it is not the only tailed beast. The bijuu are extremely powerful, and they could be used by humans as weapons. They were named jinchuuriki, the power of human sacrifice, because that is what it took to seal a tailed beast inside a human, to make a human a living weapon. They fear us, so they cast us out until they need a weapon greater than all others."
Naruto nodded, starting to understand. The Kyuubi was sealed inside him, but he was not the only one that had been used like that. There were other bijuu, and other people like him. And he finally had a name for what he was: jinchuuriki. But something he had said stuck out: 'us'.
"You're a jinchuuriki as well?"
Koan nodded.
The Uzumaki once again said nothing. After all, what could he say? There was someone else just like him standing right across from him, someone who knew what it was like to carry a burden, a source of hate and pain for so many people. He may not have suffered the same pain and rejections as he had, but Koan knew what it was like to be ignored and to be shunned.
"Which... which one are you?" He managed to force out after a long moment spent with his mouth hanging partially ajar.
"Yon," Koan said simply. "The Yonbi, the Sen'en no Ou, the King of the Sage Monkeys, and the Seiten Taisei, the Great Sage Equaling Heaven, is the one I hold." Koan face was red like tomato when he said the entire thing
"What do you mean by 'sage'?" Naruto asked.
Koan considered him for a moment, tilting his head backwards in appraisal. "A title, as far as I am concerned, just as Kyuubi no Youko is a title for the ninth bijuu."
They said nothing to each other for a few more moments, Naruto deep in quiet thought and Koan leaning, his face impassive.
The blond glanced towards his genin comrade. "So where does this leave us?"
Koan shrugged.
Naruto chuckled somewhat at the movement.
"Something funny you feel like sharing?" Koan asked, his voice suddenly turning to icy indignation.
"I don't know," Naruto said honestly, "Shrugging just doesn't suit you. It looks awkward as hell."
Koan shrugged again, this time a little less awkwardly. "To each his own, I guess."
"Uh, my question...?" Naruto trailed off.
"Right," Koan confirmed. He cleared his throat before he continued speaking, "I'm not really sure where to go from here, but one way or another something is clear; we have to stick together, We are both jinchuuriki and we are both ninja of Konoha. Even if we are not put on the same team, that doesn't mean we don't support each other; We both can understand each other at the very least, so we can at least try to be friends of some sort."
"F-friends?" Naruto stuttered out in question.
Koan blinked twice before he spoke again. "Well, yeah. It's not something either of us is familiar with, but we should at least try, I guess."
"Yeah... I-I guess," Naruto repeated, extending his hand to Koan. "Friends?"
He had seen the gesture many times as he had wandered the streets aimlessly as he had tended to do before he joined the academy, but he never had the chance to use it in practice. Naruto just hoped it was the right moment to offer a handshake.
Koan considered the hand offered to him for a moment, right before he slapped his own firmly into Naruto's and squeezed with what felt like almost bone-crushing force. "Friends."
The Uzumaki winced heavily but still managed a nod.
"Well, see you at team assignments," Koan said as he relinquished his hand, stepped through Naruto's open window and dropped out of sight.
Naruto didn't do anything for a time, simply watching the window where his friend had dropped away. Friend, he thought distantly. That sounds... good.
He brought his palm up to his face with a loud slap when he looked up to the clock on the wall above the blackboard at the other end of the room. I called it; I just had to call it.
Koan though it rather apt that he had to be so correct about people's attitudes, considering the amount of time he had spent observing others during his life. After simply watching the patterns and repetitions that people exhibited for so long, he could pick up someone's general outlook on life in a matter of minutes, and why they looked at the world in such a way.
It was particularly useful in gauging the potential of his classmates at the Academy. For example, Koan knew Hyuuga Hinata – the white-eyed and dark blue-haired girl that always wore a somewhat bulky beige jacket that hid an exceptionally well-formed body that he couldn't help but notice just like any other healthy teenage boy – suffered huge self-esteem issues with the only solution to said issues being to gaze Naruto's massive level of determination and unrelenting nature. It was amusing to be aware of but at the same time tragic, if he knew what the emotion felt like. The girl, much like him in a way, simply watched from a distance, but she only ever seemed to watch one thing: Naruto. The weird stalker-like admiration she had for his fellow jinchuuriki was merely depressing for him to observe, and the desperate crush she had on the oblivious-as-a-stonewall boy but couldn't bring up the courage to act upon it just made the situation more and more saddening for him to watch. But despite Hinata's emotional downfalls, her skill level was well above the majority of the other kunoichi of their class. Sakura, constantly fawning over the douche bag of an Uchiha, left Hinata as the one of the two kunoichi with even a shred of potential to succeed in her chosen career.
Besides he never did said this to anyone but he love her...he always watch her from the distance but he always liked her; the beautiful angel who is seemingly one of the nicest person in the entire world
Koan didn't stop the analysis of his classmates at Hinata but included everyone else who showed even a scrap of potential. Inuzuka Kiba was merely one out another ten promising shinobi that he knew, specialising in the nin-dog tactics his clan utilised as their primary method of attack, defence and even as tracking techniques. Effective, but in Koan's opinion, it left the user wide open if an opponent could separate an Inuzuka from their partnered animal. There also was something to be said for the pack mentality of the Inuzuka clan, each member striving to be the alpha, or 'top dog' as they so quaintly portrayed it as. Kiba himself was no exception to the generalised rule Koan had formed on his clan, the boy constantly boasting about his skills and trying to outdo his classmates in everything he could, no matter how trivial he thought it was. In short, Kiba, with all his fur-lined parka-wearing and dog-carrying, was capable but so very prone to manipulation and simple aggravation that it was almost laughable.
Aburame Shino was an interesting sort, or at the very least his clan was. The Aburame clan, a group of insect users that were effectively bonded with their insects from birth by allowing them to nest within their bodies, were as freaks of nature. Koan refused to look upon them as such, instead seeing the entire clan as similar to his own kind: misunderstood and often rejected to varying degrees. Shino was a very rational fellow, excellent in his level of quick understanding and comprehension and skilled in deduction and logical thinking. It made him an efficient warrior, despite his reliance on purely clan-based techniques and a lack of truly effective taijutsu skill. He would improve greatly over time, of that Koan was sure.
Another odd addition to the Potential Ten, as Koan would refer to them in his head as, was Nara Shikamaru. The pineapple-haired boy was nothing short of a strategic genius, already capable of conceiving fully fleshed-out battle plans on the fly and would only become more and more proficient with his mind as he grew. The only problem that he had with the genius was his total lack of drive. The guy was one hell of a lazy bastard when it came to effort of any kind, no matter what it was. He was so fucking lazy that it put him in the back of the class with Naruto, Kiba – at least when his book work was slipping – and the lazy bastard's best friend Chouji. The lazy ass was – just like the other mess of clan heirs that had been somehow magically put together in his class – skilled in his own clan techniques, the infamous Nara shadow manipulation jutsu, useful for trapping opponents and assassinations in dark areas, something that Koan simply had to admire the ingenuity of. But that didn't mean he in anyway admired the Nara he knew personally, or at least as personally as Koan knew anyone save-
NO! Koan forcefully cut off any thought deviation. He returned to his analysis with slowly building calm.
The more he watched them, the more he understood; that was just the way it worked for him. He turned his sightline towards the Akimichi. The tubby bucket of lard in front of him did the reputation of his clan proud. Their size-altering jutsu and variations thereof were quite unique in the way they functioned, converting body fat into chakra in a very explosive manner when it came to witnessing an Akimichi at work in the field first hand. Chouji himself was a bit of the quiet type, preferring the company of his first-day best friend Shikamaru and his seemingly endless supply of chips to other people. Not dissimilar to himself when he thought about, though Koan preferred silence to chips hands down. The Akimichi heir was capable in his own clan techniques but, like so many of the others, lacked variety in his arsenal and Koan knew it would prove to be a weakness at some point in the future.
Haruno Sakura was, to simply put it, a regular fan girl bitch of the Uchiha club. She was book-smart, Koan could give her that, but in any other regard she was just pitiful. The pink-haired banshee could barely pull a punch, let alone hold a kunai or throw a shuriken in a straight line. The only useful and somewhat redeeming feature about the girl was that her chakra control was second to none in his class, but even that came with a heavy cost: her chakra reserves were roughly equal to the amount of chakra he had in his left hand alone when he wasn't channelling it actively. It would be a miracle if the girl would ever be able to muster the needed chakra to perform an offensive C-rank ninjutsu without passing out from chakra exhaustion in less than thirty seconds afterwards. And that was if she could ever pull her mind away from her beloved Uchiha.
Speaking of that emo asshole, Uchiha Sasuke had the emotional range of a rusty spoon: brooding, smirking and basking in the limelight of his fan girls while simultaneously ignoring them. At least Koan bothered to make the girls that even attempted to be like the Uchiha's towards him know that he didn't care about them in the slightest. All the pasty raven-haired boy did for the females in his class – apart from two – that couldn't keep staring at him was walking by them with an emotionless smirk on his face that made him look like even more of a pretentious prick to the guys but some kind of sex god to the dumb kunoichi-wannabes that had no idea of what they were even trying to get themselves into thanks to that emo prick. In short, Koan was sure that the Uchiha would be responsible for the deaths of a bunch of girls who should've remained civilians but tried to become shinobi for a chance to be with some good-looking asshole that would treat them like shit even if he wanted a relationship with any of them.
Iruka was going to read out the team listings in roughly fifteen minutes and Naruto still wasn't in the room. Damn it, Nine, he internally berated his jinchuuriki superior. He knew the number of tails determined the level of respect to be given, but how could he possibly bring himself to use the 'sama' suffix for Naruto when the guy wasn't at his level? And he was the freaking fourth jinchuuriki; Naruto should have been outclassing him by years!
"He is not stronger than you" came a very old but strong voice...
"Kyuubi is way stronger than i am but don't forget; your clan is the founder of iwa and also something comparable to senju and uzumaki clan, and with me the Yonbi, the Sen'en no Ou, the King of the Sage Monkeys, and the Seiten Taisei, the Great Sage Equaling Heaven teaching you your clan's taijutsu and how to manipulate earth's defense and lava release you are bound to become even more powerful than your father ever could since he didn't had someone who has countless years of experience in your clan jutsu's to teach him..... that nine tail fox boy does not stand a chance against us; with your heritage and my experience we can easily make up the amount of power difference"
Koan: "Don't you ever get embarrassed saying such a large name for yourself; why don't you just call yourself Yonbi?"
"Ignorant little brat how dare you tease me the great Yonbi, the Sen'en no Ou, the King of the Sage Monkeys, and the Seiten Taisei, the Great Sage Equaling Heaven"
Koan: (facepalm) "...."
"Hell yeah, I'm finally ready to get my team!" Koan just palmed his face again from his seat at the back left-hand corner of the classroom.
"What are you doing here, Naruto? This is for the people who actually graduated from the academy, not the dropouts," Shikamaru asked as Naruto wandered in.
"The regulation hitai-ate says otherwise about my 'dropout' status, Shikamaru. For a genius you don't notice much do you?" Naruto retorted, tapping the Konoha hitai-ate wrapped around his forehead with a blue cloth. Shikamaru just snorted and muttered something about it being to 'troublesome' to continue talking to him. Naruto ignored the pineapple-haired Nara and continued over to his normal place in the classroom.
"Shut it dobe, and quit bothering my Sasuke-kun!" came the scream from the pink-haired girl sitting on the left hand side of the soon-to-be-bloodshot Uchiha. Naruto attempted to take his usual place next to Sasuke when an elbow from beneath bumped him forward and, in slow-motion, their faces drifted towards each other's in an inevitable collision of hot wet boy mouth.
Uchiha and the blond-haired fox-carrier locking lips in front of the Uchiha's fan girls who are very sure going to proceeded to beat Naruto in an all encompassing burst of pure estrogenic rage.
The blond jinchuuriki suddenly found his vision blur in a mass of dispersing smoke as he leaned forward unwanted towards Sasuke's mouth and found his mouth planted against something soft and surprisingly supple. Naruto was violently shaken from his reverie when the angry shriek of a certain pink-haired girl pierced the air from behind him.
"NARUTO, YOU BAKA! HOW DARE YOU GET THE LIPS OF MY SASUKE-KUN !!! WHAT KIND OF A STUPID, SELFISH DUMBASS ARE-"
Her raging cries were cut off unexpectedly when Sakura slumped back in her seat like a rock, revealing a bored-looking Koan standing directly behind her. "I cannot stand the sound of her voice when she gets going like that," he muttered while beginning to walk back up to his seat after roughly placing Sakura back in her chair in a relatively awkward position.
The few and far between angry glares he received from a number of girls and boys in his class were met with a firm response of "You would've done the same thing if you could actually be bothered to do it."
"Alright class settle down, SETTLE DOWN." Iruka certainly arrived to a strange scene when he walked into the room carrying the team list under his arm, which for some reason no one apart from Koan actually recognized.
A confused "huh" over the concept of 'teams' sounded about the room, while Koan just clutched the bridge of his nose and shook his head slightly. "Well all the graduated genin will be assembled into teams, consisting of three genin and one jounin sensei."
"Okay here we go," Iruka paused as he looked over the list in his hands. "Team 7 will consist of...Uzumaki Naruto...Haruno Sakura...and Uchiha Sasuke."
In a very unusual occurrence, Koan found his reactionary prediction of the three named by Iruka as the members of Team 7 to be incorrect in several places. First and foremost was Naruto's reaction to Sakura's name being called; Koan would've expected Naruto to suddenly jump for joy and shout something incredibly stupid like, "I'm with Sakura-chan, believe it!", but he didn't make a noise, instead folding his fingers underneath his chin in a thinking position. At least Naruto's little manoeuvre earlier with sasuke had made some lasting impact other than just knocking Hinata out cold. The second was that Sasuke actually showed a slight reaction to the announcement, groaning beneath the hand on his mouth when he heard his name called alongside Naruto and Sakura's when Koan just expected the stuck-up ass to not make a noise and a bunch of stupid fan girls who managed to graduate by the skin of their teeth to start making swooning noises and flutter their eyes idiotically. And the third didn't even have to do with the members of Team 7 named but rather a noise coming from Hinata who seemed to awake suddenly upon hearing Naruto's name readout alongside Sasuke's . She actually groaned in a somewhat annoyed tone and furrowed her eyebrows slightly. That was certainly unexpected, Koan thought while he began to scratch the back of his head.
Iruka continued after a second or so of looking at the list. "Team 8 will consist of... huh, that's odd." Iruka paused and scratched his head. "Team 8 seems to have four members instead of three... unorthodox, but not entirely unheard of... so yeah, Team 8 will consist of Hyuuga Hinata, Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino and Koan. I don't know why you're on a four man team, Koan, but it's definitely you the list specifies as the fourth member," Iruka directed his last sentence towards the one sitting in the corner of the room on his own. Koan nodded in concurrence.
There wasn't much for Koan to note about his new teammates reactions. Kiba grunted in disdain when he heard the name of the fourth member read aloud. Hinata's lavender-tinted eyes flicked in a glance toward Koan when his name was heard and Shino simply nodded, any sort of expression hidden behind the mouth-covering coat and sunglasses he wore. Smart move for a ninja, Koan thought systematically.
"And Team 10 will be composed of...Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji," Iruka finished reading the list.
"...meet here after lunch, in one hour when the jounin sensei's come to collect their teams," Iruka said before he walked out of the classroom leaving the teams to their own devices.
Koan immediately stood up and motioned for his team to exit with him, with Naruto following shortly with his own disorganized team in tow.
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