#UNLESS the short fics show themselves and demand i write them first; then all bets are off

[driftbending]

today i wrote:

2607 words of fanfic. i really liked this part. like a lot. i was meant to have HK & MH meet SH, but i diverged it a for a bit of ~healing magical tea~ at a ~magical spa~ and it was really nice. i’m glad i chose the setting i chose for this fic and decided to use a new-ish character for this fic, bc it lets me world build in terms of design and backstory. it must be noted that i had a hard time figuring out MH’s voice, but i just went back and found her anger and it was like !!! that’s what i was looking for! there’s the MH i love and adore. i didn’t however, like how i ended this particular chapter bc i’m not certain if i should merge it with the prev chapter or have it be it’s own chapter, bc i had hoped to reunite the entire gang in one big chapter, but now i’m like...the transition wasn’t there for it. whatever. i’ll consider this again later when i re-write it. at least they’ve all met which was my goal for this session.

(edit to add: i shared a short scene with my sister for this and she’s all !!! about it, but the second she started to critique how i wrote the dialogue for one of her faves, i’m like “no, this is the first draft, i accept no critique,” and she moved away smirking at me, bc this is just how she came in a moment ago w/a watercolor drawing of an octopus she was making. either way, i can’t wait until i rewrite this so she can read it properly & critique it well. she gives really good advice & considering how much she likes these characters, i hope she’ll be able to enjoy the story and help me whittle it down to perfection.)

2162 words of my original story. okay, i was able to solve my problem with S’s introduction and move the story along by having J, G, and C finish breakfast and go on their way to the cemetery. C is absolutely my favorite character and his relationship with J & G is one of my favorites. but for the sake of the story, i’m going to have to make them meet with the others a bit more. considering that S is one of the most important characters, i’m going to have to figure out where they’ll best interact. i already have a few scenes in mind, but i need to grow out their world, too. i should make a list of each location that matters to them and plant them on an old chicago map soon. and i have to figure out what to do with all the children these people have because i haven’t written them in at all, even though they’re supposed to make an appearance. although, i might be able to find reasons to keep their appearances short. okay, i think actually writing this out helped me figure out more of my plot. awesome. now to go jot all this down before it escapes me.

#e.e.c. writes #e.e.c. diary #today i was able to write more because i gave myself a lot more time to write #i tend to not let my mind wander as i write and stick to my 1hr time limits most days #but today my brain needed me to look at my pinterest boards for the stories #and look at the shows i'm writing fic for so i can worldbuild #and as a result i was able to write more and catch up to my word count #and now i'm itching to do research for another story & write two fanfics #but seeing how the heat makes me tired & life is just stress sometimes i hope i can make time for them #my priority is these two stories tho so i'm going to stick with them #UNLESS the short fics show themselves and demand i write them first; then all bets are off #anyway i'm really happy that these stories are coming along well and that at one point they'll be completed

[ferrero13]

That Which We Call a Naruto (7/11)

Fic summary

The road to becoming a good Hokage is a long and tedious one. As it turns out, it’s also incredibly confusing — there is no shortage of people who can’t keep track of who he is.

Or, 10 people who didn’t recognise who Naruto was, and one person who did.

Read on AO3

Chapter 7: Hokage Impersonator

In which a genin team is accidentally acquired.

Kai didn’t know how Nari convinced this man to help them, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Especially not if said horse had failed the Academy’s graduation exam three times (a fact that, bafflingly, he didn’t seem too ashamed of) and still managed to wipe the floor with both Kai and Nari every time they challenged him to a two-on-one spar. (They’d learned very early on that one-on-one was asking for a death sentence.) He even had sufficient attention to spare while sparring for correcting their stances and regaling stories of the outrageous pranks he’d pulled off in his misspent youth. Kai didn’t believe a single one, of course, because there was no way an Academy student could have been capable of vandalising the entire Hokage monument without getting caught halfway. But he stayed anyway because even an irreverent braggart of an instructor was better than no instructor at all.

It was all his stupid jounin-sensei’s fault, really. If he hadn’t made himself into an amputee by stepping on an exploding tag during practice, they’d still have a teacher. But because he had made himself into an amputee, not only was Kai down one jounin-sensei, he was also down one teammate because Takamori had taken one look at their legless teacher and decided that he wasn’t cut out to be a ninja after all. So until they were reassigned, Kai and Nari had to take their training into their own hands, which at the moment meant being whipped into shape by an Academy dropout who actually taught better than their jounin-sensei ever did.

“And that’s how you walk up trees. Give it a go,” said the gift horse who never seemed to leave Training Ground 3 no matter how late it was.

“If I manage to climb to the top by sundown, will you tell us your name?” Kai said, one foot already on a tree, chakra pushed gently through its sole.

“I told you, my name is Uzumaki Naruto.”

“Cut the bullshit, old man. You’re here all the time. The Hokage is too busy to spend all day training. And you’re not even a real ninja. We want to know your real name,” said an Academy student who had actually found the gift horse before Nari did. Kai would’ve preferred not to fall off a tree in front of a pre-genin, but Oka had been training with the gift horse for months before Nari roped the gift horse into teaching them so he couldn’t in good conscience ask the boy to leave. Oka charged up his tree and managed two quick steps before tumbling back down.

“You know that there are ways to be in two places at once, right? Oka, don’t run. This isn’t a sprinting exercise. Watch Kai. He’s doing it right,” the gift horse said. “This is because I failed the graduation exam three times, isn’t it? I swear I’m actually a qualified ninja, you know. I have a registration number and everything.”

“You’re just gonna give us the Hokage’s number if we ask,” Nari said, hanging upside down from the branches by the soles of her feet. She’d been able to walk up trees for as long as Kai had known her, so the gift horse was having her complete a chakra control obstacle course that included walking in a spiral around a branch and tiptoeing on water. “And everyone knows that if you fail three times you’re not allowed to take the test again. So obviously you’re not a ninja, even if you are very good at doing ninja stuff. Where’d you learn all this anyway?”

The gift horse threw his hands up. “There’s no winning with you brats. I learned it from my jounin-sensei, but, since none of you believe me, where I learned to do ‘ninja stuff’ is none of your business. Nari, stop pretending to be tired. I know you have more chakra than that. Kai, you’re going to need to compensate for the unevenness of the bark with every step. Applying the same amount of chakra every time won’t work. Work with the tree, not against it.”

Kai adjusted his footing and took another step. Someday, he’d find out just who the gift horse was by beating—or, as the case was, betting—the truth out of him. Until then, he needed the gift horse’s inexplicable expertise to get good enough.

---

“Tomorrow is Oka’s graduation exam, so I have something special for the three of you today,” the gift horse told them when they were all gathered at Training Ground 3 after the Academy let out for the day.

“Please don’t be ramen. Please don’t be ramen,” Oka muttered under his breath. Kai tried to empathise with him but free food was free food, and if the gift horse wanted to give them free ramen he wasn’t about to say no. His stomach hadn’t been quite so well fed since Nari impressed the gift horse by running up a waterfall on her first attempt and earned them all-you-can-eat ramen coupons at Ichiraku’s.

“It’s something less delicious but just as important. This,” the gift horse said, brandishing a sheet of paper with a wide grin, “is form A28-A. I’ve filled it in for you and all you three have to do is say yes so I can file it.”

“I’ve never heard of form A28-A,” Nari said, shuffling closer to the gift horse to get a better look.

“That’s because it’s used mostly by Academy teachers. It’s a genin team allocation form. You and Kai still don’t have a team yet and I figured that you wouldn’t want to have to get used to a new team dynamic, so I asked the people in charge for a favour, and here we are. Do you want it or not?”

“We don’t even know if Oka’s going to pass,” Kai said. Oka’s taijutsu may be impressive, but his chakra stores were pitiful to the point of being nearly non-existent. Making a single clone exhausted him. At this rate, Oka wouldn’t have much of a choice but to specialise in something like sealing if he didn’t want to end up ‘youthful and vigorous’ like that green-spandex-wearing jounin whose idea of a warm up was ten laps around Konoha. On his fingers. Balancing weights heavier than himself on each leg.

“Have a little faith, asshole! I can do the Academy Three just fine!”

“You barely passed the last mock written test,” Nari pointed out.

“Play nice, now. You need a functional three-man genin team to take the chuunin exam. Kai and Nari will almost definitely be assigned a fresh Academy graduate, so why not just go with the enemy you know rather than the enemy you don’t?”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying works, sensei,” Nari said, laughing.

The gift horse waved the insult to his intelligence off with the same ease he used to bat away all of Kai’s attacks. “I was never any good at studying. Now, do I or do I not have your agreement?”

“Who’s going to be our jounin-sensei?” Kai asked.

“A panel will make that decision after the teams are finalised. You can also put in a request using form A28-C, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the jounin you asked for. So is that a yes from you about being on the same team as Oka?”

“Yes, fine. At least we already know how to compensate for what he sucks at.”

That earned him a punch to the head, but he’d been training with Oka for months by then and could see it coming. Having Oka on his team probably wouldn’t be a complete disaster. Now all he had to do was find form A28-C, try his luck at requesting a non-ninja as their jounin-sensei (even though by definition a jounin-sensei had to be a jounin-level ninja), and he wouldn’t even have to get used to a new teacher either.

---

“Kai, Nari. What can I do for you today?” Iruka-sensei asked, looking mildly surprised to see his former students at his office door.

“Where do we turn in form A28-C?”

“What?”

“Form A28-C,” Nari repeated.

Iruka-sensei appeared to take a while to recall what the form was for. When he did, he narrowed his eyes at them. “You realise that this is highly unusual? Most genin don’t choose their jounin-sensei.”

“Yeah, but we’ve already been training with this one guy and we don’t really want another teacher,” Kai said, shrugging. “He’s better than our last one.”

Iruka-sensei stretched out a hand toward them, palm up. “Show me the form.”

Nari wordlessly pressed it into Iruka-sensei’s hand. They’d filled it in as well as they could, but they mostly just ended up writing things like ‘calls himself the Hokage’ and ‘we don’t know his real name’ and ‘actually we’re not even sure if he’s from Konoha.’

Kai tracked Iruka-sensei’s eyes as he started reading the form, stopped after a couple of lines, reread from the start again. And again.

“Nari, which training ground does this person use?”

“Training Ground 3. Why?”

Iruka-sensei sighed and got up from his desk. “You two, follow me.”

If they hadn’t just been told to follow, they wouldn’t have thought that they were expected to. Iruka-sensei was fast in a way he never was unless a particularly foolish pre-genin had accidentally stuck a kunai in their eye during target practice and needed immediate medical attention. As much as Kai hated to admit it, he was still short and he wouldn’t have kept up if Nari hadn’t picked him up and carried him under one arm.

When Kai and Nari finally caught up to Iruka-sensei, they found themselves in front of the Hokage’s office. The doors were wide open and they could see Iruka-sensei slamming the form onto the Hokage’s table, sending stacks of paper flying.

“Naruto. What the hell is this,” Iruka-sensei demanded.

“Uh. What is that?” the Hokage said, trying to pry Iruka-sensei’s fingers off the form to get a better look.

“Two of my former students just handed me form A28-C requesting a Hokage impersonator as their jounin-sensei. Apparently they’ve been training with him for the better part of six months.”

The Hokage laughed nervously. “Their names wouldn’t happen to be Kai and Nari, would they?”

“Why yes, Naruto. Their names do happen to be Kai and Nari.”

The Hokage peered around Iruka-sensei to address Kai and Nari directly. “You know that your jounin-sensei is supposed to be jounin-ranked, right?”

“But they don’t have to be,” Kai said. “I read the official specifications for the formation of genin teams, and our proposal fulfils every requirement. We’re just…not sure he’s from Konoha.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” the Hokage said, waving it off in a way that echoed strongly of the gift horse. “What is a problem is that I can’t leave Konoha with you on C-ranks missions. I won’t leave the village under-protected, even if this is a time of peace.”

“Wait, what?” Kai blurted out.

The Hokage continued to talk as if Kai hadn’t said anything. “How about I do this the same way I’ve been training you? I can send a shadow clone with you, even for D-ranks. That way, I’ll be able to get regular updates and give you advice without Crow getting on my case about putting myself in unnecessary danger.”

Kai hoped that he was imagining the killing intent that the ANBU with the crow mask was directing at the Hokage. Surely the Hokage knew better than to entrust somebody who wanted him dead with his life, right?

“You mean he’s actually you? I mean, you’re actually the Hokage?” Nari asked, incredulous. She pinched her arm, then Kai’s as well for good measure when Kai continued to gape in a manner that spoke of a person who had just had his entire worldview rearranged. The fact that the Hokage did not sound at all confused about what was going on had strong implications that meant that Kai had to rewrite all he knew about the gift horse, starting with the fact that the gift horse was in all likelihood exactly who he claimed he was.

“Uh, yes? I kept telling you, but none of you would listen. Well, technically I wasn’t actually at the training ground so it wasn’t strictly speaking me, but—”

“Hokage-sama,” Iruka-sensei interrupted, kneading the space between his brows, “would you like to explain how you ended up instructing these two while pretending to impersonate yourself? I’m sure your security detail will be very interested to know that you’ve been sneaking off to train genin. In addition, if you have so much time on your hands that you have to find ways to entertain yourself, I’m sure the council will be happy to arrange for more paperwork to be brought to you.”

“Shadow clones!” the Hokage said, a bit too loudly for the size of the room. “It wasn’t me! I swear I was safely tucked away in my office during work hours and always have two ANBU guards with me at all times. And I’m also completely busy with work. Just ask Shikamaru.” The Hokage gestured to a man on his left.

Shikamaru-san looked up from his own pile of paperwork. “He’s been complaining that there’s too much. Don’t give him any more or it’ll just be more troublesome for me,” he said, then looked back down, efficiently ignoring everybody else in the room using the often underestimated power of the Not Caring Jutsu. Kai hoped to one day be just as unflappable as him.

“Naruto.”

The Hokage almost seemed to cower when Iruka-sensei turned the full force of his disapproving teacher glare, which had a long history of intimidating disrespectful pre-genin into submission, on him. Apparently it worked just as well on a Hokage. “Yes, Iruka-sensei?”

“You have three days to settle this and when I announce the teams nobody had better be under the impression that they’re getting trained by an overqualified civilian of unknown loyalty.”

---

One week later when team assignments were announced, Kai and Nari once again found themselves without a jounin-sensei.

They had a kage-sensei instead.

On one hand, it seemed unfair to the rest of the genin teams, but on the other hand, they were being taught by a shadow clone that was always one misaimed shuriken away from being dispelled. They’d learned it the hard way when they went on their first C-rank and had to wait an entire afternoon for a replacement clone to arrive after a run in with bandits wielding pointy objects. There were some kinks in the whole taught-by-a-shadow-clone system that needed to be worked out, but for the time being having two shadow clones was a working quick fix. Even if they fought very loudly over who was the actual sensei and who was the backup.

#That Which We Call a Naruto #Naruto #Uzumaki Naruto #Umino Iruka #Identity Reveal #Mistaken Identity #AO3 #fic