#meanwhile Sakumo is conflicted

[cropofshinobi]

@hyuga-natsu:

It was a delicate balancing act within the clan, but Natsu had two worried parents and protective older sisters to guide her into making sure she kept her head low and didn’t draw too much attention to herself. In the past, she’d thought briefly about making it all the way to a tokubetsu jonin rank and specializing in tracking missions.

Then came the wake-up call. Boys and girls from her caste were very limited on what they could do, and even more limited on which legal rights they carried in the village. The Hyūga Clan had always been particularly strange in this regard: the one exception where a clan’s traditions were left accepted and unhindered by the village with no effort made to change or conform. This had apparently been part of their initial agreement in joining the village.

It meant slavery was going to continue well into the new millennium.

“Indeed. It sounds like it. I’m starting to think my generation is a generation of inheritance with little to no progress.” In short, she knew what her future was going to hold. The day Hiashi-sama became a father, his son or daughter would have Natsu (or someone like Natsu) to tend to them around the clock.

There wouldn’t be any chasing rogue ninjas or looking for foreign shinobi on Konoha terrain for her. She’d be a glorified babysitter paid only with food, shelter, and a meager allowance.

Natsu had to chuckle, though, hearing Sakumo talk about the time he tried to color his hair. “My goodness. You probably should have had someone who knew what they were doing handle that. There’s a Yamanaka in my team. She maintains a magenta stripe in her hair and she’s platinum blonde, almost as light as you.” That hot pink really popped.

Sakumo privately agreed, but was careful to toe the line. Constructive criticism of the village could mean accusations if the wrong person overheard them,  especially by the current administration so soon after the war. Carefully, he nudged the conversation in a little more neutral direction. “It doesn’t help that the generations before you grew up during such a turbulent era. War can make people so concerned about keeping things stable that improving on them can become an afterthought if it happens at all.”    

Rather than improve on the work of the founders those in power, born between the end of the warring states era and the armistice no one believed would last, seemed preoccupied with preserving it. Even if it meant Konoha repeating the same mistakes.

At least Sakumo had learned from his hair-dying incident. In the years that followed he always opted for using wigs, disguises, or transformation jutsu for undercover missions.

“It probably would have been far more successful. For one thing, they might have told me how different weapon grade materials are from hair dye.” Despite his punishment for ‘wasting valuable supplies’ it was a fond memory. While Sakumo grudgingly accepted, after the hack-job haircut, that he’d become a laughing stocking until his hair grew back the neighbor he’d tried to imitate hadn’t. After hearing about Sakumo’s near baldness she (and her many siblings) pitched in and tried to find something to mask the worst of the bare spots. White paint, textured glue, and feathers wrangled from an old pillow didn’t solve the problem (nothing but time would), but the emergency meeting had lead to a much appreciated revelation: hats weren’t banned at the academy. He might look he’d just been de-loused, but at least none of the other students would have to know. “At the time I thought if I asked anyone they’d immediately inform my family, so ‘poor’ was better than nothing.”

He tried to picture it, but Natsu-san’s teammate didn’t ring any bells. Sakumo was sure he’d remember someone with such striking hair. “That sounds difficult. I wonder how she keeps the streak from bleeding into the rest,” he wondered..

[blackkatmagic]

Submission

Hey Kat, what do you think of a Reverse x One Piece crossover? Like during the battle where the Akatsuki ambushed the Jinchūriki fam while they were on the way to Konoha something wonky happened, (like kamui reacting odd with seals or something) and everyone there is hurled randomly into the One Piece world, with the last thing Kurama sees being the foxes latching onto Naruto and Gaara (because I think he would literally destroy the planet if he thought they didn’t have protection of some sort).

Then Kurama wakes up and he’s alone again but he contacts his siblings and they’re ok but nowhere nearby, so they make tentative plans to lay low and figure out what happened and how to get back to each other. Only, that doesn’t quite work out for Kurama, as he’s landed in the middle of Sabaody and one of the first things he witnesses is a Tenryūbito harshly beating a group of child slaves, and well, there’s only one way Kurama would respond to that (The bastard’s lucky, had he known the kids were slaves he would have made the asshole’s death so much slower). Now he’s got new kids in the form of Koala and the Boa sisters, an absurdly large bounty, and he can positively feel everyone he knows rolling their eyes from half a world away. So now he’s on a mission to reunite his family, punch every Tenryūbito in the face with a bijūdama, probably punch a good number of marines too, and collect all the abused children he can find.

Meanwhile, Naruto and Fuji make friends with a trio of brothers, Gaara and Momiji meet a desert princess, Kushina meets a man with hair as red as hers, Fū ends up on an island floating in the clouds, Roshi runs into a ship load of fishmen about to execute a woman protecting her daughters (the villagers aren’t sure if all the lava is an improvement), Bee finds a dojo with a pair of kids who are positively brimming with potential, Yagura is used to feeling short compared to others but the man with the white mustache is more than slightly absurd, Tsunade encounters a young boy with an ‘incurable’ disease and decides to help him and his walking hazard of a father, Yugito runs into some cat themed pirates and is amused deeply offended (okay, okay, I’m suitably offended, you can stop yelling Matatabi), Shizune meets a young boy who tells tall tales and does her best to save his mother, Tenzō accidentally gets hired by a ship builder to provide the wood for a train that crosses the water, Mei encounters another lava user (he’s not nearly as charming as Roshi), Zabuza and Haku have a run in with a man with hawk like eyes (like hell was he losing Haku, he grabbed him as soon as the seal imploded), Shisui winds up on an island full of dinosaurs and two very large people (why does everything always want to eat me, at least the giants were kind enough to help me salvage a boat and weird compass thing), Itachi winds up on a ship and helps a young blond in the kitchen, Sakumo and Orochimaru encounter a talking reindeer that helps them get medical aid, Jiraiya lands on an island filled with hot springs and is deeply conflicted (on the one hand research, all the research, on the other Naruto, decisions decisions), Kakashi encounters a clown themed pirate and wonders why is this even his life, Han meets a young girl on the run for a crime she didn’t commit, Utakata meets a white haired marine private made of smoke and wonders if he’s somehow related to the Hōzuki clan, Kisame is surrounded by people that look vaguely like him but are clearly not of the Hoshigaki clan and he is confused, Sasori is deeply offended by the walking flamingo that dares to make light of his art, Kakuzu doesn’t care where he is (he’s too busy staring at the number of zeros on the wanted posters he found), Konan and Nagato find themselves in the middle of a Revolution and it brings back memories (now if only the paths hadn’t been thrown out of range), Obito winds up in a gilded palace filled with slaves and is abruptly reminded of why he’s doing what he’s doing.