Naruto 1. Dark Corners Part 1

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

(Tales from Konoha's Quintessential Dysfunctional Family, the Hyuugas)

A/N: I love the Hyuugas, and I write tons of shorts and not-quite-one-shots for them, which I'm compiling here. These are drabble, usually interconnected drabble, although sometimes they don't connect at all... I'll try to list the related stories in the beginning of each, along with a short summary, so you'll know what you're getting into.

Ok, Short Summary One: The chapters named after the title (Dark Corners, or DCHRS) are all stories from Hiashi and Hizashi's childhoods... or young adulthoods, told as flashbacks from Grandma Hyuuga. There is a frame story... good luck piecing it into a plot, though.

Chapter One: Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun, Part One (An Intro)

* * *

Life is full of maybes and what-ifs. For example, if Itachi Uchiha had stuck around, he would have been able to coach Hinata Hyuuga in the pitfalls and problems of having a little sibling five years younger. However, it didn't work out that way, and Hinata had to learn for herself that little siblings love, repeat, LOVE to wake up their older siblings at one in the morning.

"Hinata, Hinata,"

Hinata snored. She was a notoriously heavy sleeper.

"Hinata, wake up."

Snore.

Hanabi bit her lip, and finally came up with a solution, namely, clamping her hands over her sister's mouth and nose so she couldn't breath. This succeeded in waking Hinata.

"AH! I wasn't sleeping! Really! I was just... resting a little, that's all!"

"Sis, it's one in the morning," Hanabi said, a little startled by her sister's reaction. "You're allowed to be asleep."

Hinata took a deep breath. Hanabi could practically hear her blushing (Hinata blushed a lot). "Sorry, Hana-chan... it's just, the only time that people wake me up when I'm sleeping is when Dad wants to yell at me for being lazy... or that time when Kurenai-sensei's apartment caught fire because Asuma spent the night and forgot to put out his cig... anyway, what's up?"

Hanabi thought briefly about pressing for details on the Asuma's cig story (Hinata's life with her team was a good deal more exciting than anything that ever happened to Hanabi, and the younger girl was always eager for stories) but she had a more important mission. She sat down on the bed next to her sister.

"Hinata, what happened to Mommy?"

"Huh?"

Hanabi sighed in that angsty way little kids have. "All the kids my age have mommies except me. Where did she go?"

"Uh..." Hinata was stumped. It had honestly never occurred to her to ask about her mother. Anyway, who would she ask?

So, Hinata pulled out her Sprint Katana (it's a cell phone, not a sword), and called her lifeline.

* * *

Three pairs of eyes shot open as a tinny electronic version of the 1812 Overture resounded throughout the house. The fourth pair remained closed. The problem; the fourth pair owned the cell phone bursting forth in all its glory.

"Sensei, permission to force his door and flush the cell phone down the toilet?"

"Permission granted. Come, let us fetch the emergency ax!"

Tenten preferred to take a more direct approach, pounding on the wall that separated her bedroom from her teammate's. "NEJI GET THE DAMN PHONE! AND FOR GOD'S SAKE, TURN IT OFF AT NIGHT IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO ANSWER IT!"

"Merg," Neji groaned groggily, groping around for his phone with his eyes closed. "'Ello?" he asked it, having managed to locate the "accept call" button.

"Nii-san, what happened to my mother?"

Neji forced his eyes open in order to do the confused blinking this question demanded. "Hinata, it's one in the morning."

"I know."

"You called me up at one in the morning to ask about your _mother_?"

"Well, Hanabi woke me up, and she wants to know what happened to mom, and I don't think she's going to leave me alone until she finds out."

"Typical," Neji sighed. He didn't know what had happened to Hinata's mother. He didn't know what had happened to his own mother, come to that. "Just tell her Hyuugas reproduce by budding."

"But that'd be a lie."

Neji made an annoyed noise that was a cross between a sigh and a growl. "You're an older sibling, it's ok to lie."

"I guess..." Hinata said, not sounding convinced. "Ok, thanks, nii-san."

"Mergh," Neji replied, hitting the end call button, rolling over, and going to sleep in one graceful motion.

A second later, he sat bolt upright, fully alert, then sank back onto the pillows, staring at the ceiling. _Hey, what DID happen to our moms?_

* * *

The question kept him up all night, and bugged him to the point where he actually contacted Hanabi, an unheard of phenomenon, and together the two of them made the Ultimate Sacrifice and went to the Keeper of the Family Secrets; Grandma Hyuuga.

She wasn't really their grandmother. In fact, no one in their family was really sure exactly how she was related to anyone. She just _was_. All the Hyuugas could really agree on was that she was old and crazy, and a branch. (This last was actually pure speculation, as she had very long bangs, very thick pancake makeup, and the last person to ask she had knocked senseless. That was thirty years ago, and no one had brought it up since.)

"Well, if it isn't my favorite grandson!" she exclaimed upon opening her front door. "How are you, sweetie?" She grabbed Neji in a suffocating and ego-destroying hug, then spotted the little girl over his shoulder. "And a young'un! Why, hello, honey! Look at how big you've gotten! Mwuh!" she planted a very wet granny-kiss on Hanabi's cheek. "Where's your sister?"

"I dunno," shrugged Hanabi, waiting for Grandma Hyuuga to turn around so she could wipe her cheek off.

"She couldn't come out and see her old grandma?" huffed the old lady.

Hanabi perked up a little, her initial instinct to show up her sister kicking in (in the Hyuuga clan, this was a survival technique). "I'm here, Grandma," she said hopefully.

"Pft," snorted Grandma Hyuuga. "Well, I suppose you mean well, dear."

Hanabi looked over at Neji, looking a little hurt at this. He shrugged apologetically and twirled his finger around his temple in the "don't mind her, cuz, she's nuts" hand sign.

"Now, have some cookies, darlings," the little old lady said, pushing a plate of homemade cookies at them. "How is Paul doing these days?" she asked Hanabi.

Hanabi paused with her molasses crinkle halfway to her mouth. "What?"

"Paul, how's he doing?"

"... Grandma, I don't know any Paul..."

Grandma Hyuuga sighed. "That's right, what the hell is his name? Your daddy, honey."

"Oh... he's fine, I guess."

"When your daddies was born, I told your grandparents to name them Hizashi and Paul," she griped to no one in particular. "Bad enough they're twins, I said, don't make it worse by giving them names one consonant off. But no, your grandmother said. It'll be cute, she said. Uptight psycho bitch."

* * *

It must have gotten back to young Hiashi and Hizashi that one member of their family had had the courage to object to the indignity of the boys' names. Even though their parents (Neji, Hinata, and Hanabi's real grandparents, deceased) had spurned the questioning of their logic, the twins appreciated the gesture anyway. In Hiashi and Hizashi, Grandma Hyuuga had made an ally.

The boys took to stopping by their Grandma Hyuuga's home after school whenever confronted by some identity confusion during the day. She was their favorite relative (even though she wasn't their grandmother, either. Everybody just called her "Grandma Hyuuga"). After a day of endless "He's Hizashi, I'm Hiashi!"'s and "No, that's Hiashi, I'm Hizashi!"'s, always dismissed with an impatient "Oh, what's the difference, you know who I mean," from the teacher (who was by no stretch of the imagination an Iruka-esque father figure), they could go to Grandma Hyuuga's, and she would give them cookies and call Hiashi "Paul" and ramble about back in the day, when her Herbert was alive.

(It was not quite clear who Herbert was. Mostly the Hyuugas figured he was Grandma Hyuuga's husband, but this was not really a certainty.)

"Well, if it isn't my favorite grandsons! You boys want some snickerdoodles?"

Hizashi picked up a cookie and picked at it listlessly.

"Paul, what's wrong with your brother?" Granny H. asked Hiashi.

"Oh, he's got a crush on some girl, but she gets him mixed up with me, and she thinks he's a Nazi," he explained glibly, checking the expiration date on the milk before pouring himself a glass (something the boys had learned to do after a very bad experience early on in their lives.)

"Hmm... you'd think it'd be one or the other," mused the old woman. "Well, sweetie, sit her down and explain that you're not a Nazi, but your ancestors are."

"Good luck with that, she doesn't even talk to us."

"I should just kill myself and get it over with," Hizashi sighed melodramatically. He said this so often that it was practically his catchphrase... and, if they had thought of it, would have been a good way for the girl in question to tell him apart from his brother.

"Or you could start cutting yourself, see if that gets her attention," Hiashi suggested sarcastically. "Wear some black eyeshadow, too."

"Mom won't let me."

"... I was joking, bro."

"I need to pass the entrance exams early so I can hurry up and get a headband."

"You think that will help?" his 'grandmother' asked. He nodded. "Well, heck, no need to wait for the exams (or study for them, for that matter). I must have about fifty of those headbands in my attic... come on upstairs and pick one out... you, too, Paul, come on."

The twins lingered over the snickerdoodles. "But... we aren't ninjas yet... are we ... allowed?"

"Who cares?" Grandma Hyuuga shrugged. "No one will dare give you any guff about it, you're from the most powerful clan in Konoha."

Hiashi and Hizashi looked over at each other and shrugged. Hey, when Grandma Hyuuga was right, she was right.

* * *

"Uh, Grandma?" Hanabi started after listening to this story. The old lady ignored her and continued talking. Neji shrugged at his little cousin. This wasn't called "The Ultimate Sacrifice" for nothing; their day was pretty much over the minute they knocked on the door.


	2. Passion of the Plush

The Passion of the Plush

(Summary: Hinata sleeps with a teddy bear, of sorts, and this is why. Takes place in part during the Chunin Exams.)

* * *

Kurenai-sensei's apartment had burned down recently when an overnight guest forgot to put out his cigarette, and this left three unfortunate genin with no place to live. Well, more accurately, it left Hinata without a place to live, since Kiba and Shino's parents love them or some crap like that.

In an effort to avoid actually going to stay at her father's house, she had asked every person she knew and had, for one reason or another, been turned down, until word that she was homeless got back to Neji, and he took pity on her and invited her to Team Gai's. And that was why she was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of her cousin's bedroom.

"Hinata-sama? What is that?"

Hinata squeaked a little, turning over to hide the object she was holding against her chest. "N- nothing!"

"Is that a teddy bear?" Neji persisted, trying to turn her over to see what she was hiding. "You still sleep with a teddy bear? I thought you kicked that habit when you were seven!"

Hinata turned red and tried to explain. "I— I got back into it."

Neji found this hilarious. "Hey, let me see it," he asked, laughing.

"No."

"Come on, let me see."

"No! Hey, stop!"

They had a small scuffle on the air mattress, until Tenten got sick of it and pounded on the wall next to her bed, which adjoined Neji's room. She had long since come to regret her choice of bedrooms. "Yo! Sama! Nii-san! Some of us are trying sleep here!" (Tenten had started calling Hinata and Neji "Sama"and "Nii-san" when she found out that they referred to each other as such. She found the duo very amusing... just not while she was trying to sleep.)

Neji snatched the stuffed toy out of Hinata's hands. For a moment, he stared at it, then handed it back, looking mildly disgusted.

"Can't you do _anything_ without being so cute it hurts?" he asked. Hinata shook her head and cuddled back up to her very worn and much loved Naruto plush doll.

* * *

It is a difficult thing, to be born with a purpose. To have no choice in what you will become. Your life is planned before you even draw breath. What if there is something more important to you? You must leave it behind. You already have your purpose; that must be the most important thing.

He had been born with a purpose, and he hated it, because it kept him from what he loved most of all.

Plushies.

He loved plushies. Loved their smooth hair, their big eyes, their soft, huggable bodies. Even as a small child, plushies were what he lived for. Teddy bears that he could hold when everything was too much, when his purpose was too disgusting to bear.

And then, miracle of miracles, he discovered a precious gift; he could make his _own_ plushies! Not just animals, not just cartoon characters, but plushies of everyone he knew, his own family of loving plushies.

How he longed to quit his task, to throw up his hands and leave _them_, and devote his life to plushies.

But he could not. His _purpose_ (how he hated it!) stopped him. He was forced to leave his refuge, his room of felt and cotton and sewing equipment, and train.

"You had no right, Father," he often whispered to himself, kissing his latest creation goodbye for the day. "No right to sell my destiny like this..." And not only his destiny, but _theirs_, as well. They surely suffered for it, too. They had had their own dreams, surely, that vanished at his birth.

It wasn't his fault, and he knew it, but he wanted to make it up to them, so he tried to share his gift. He made them plushies. Temari plushies, Kankuro plushies, plushies of himself...

Gaara loved plushies.

Aside from every possible variation on him and his siblings, he had a plushie of his "Grandma" Chiyo (a crazy old lady who was obsessed with him, and whom his father made him be nice to), his uncle (which Temari had removed when she saw that it upset him, but didn't have the heart to throw away. She hid it in their basement.) his mother, his father, Shukaku, Baki, and their next door neighbors.

The latter signified a problem; he was out of people to plushify. He only made plushies of people he felt deserved the honor. It was hard for him to specify the criteria that he graded plushibility by, but it was a very rigid one.

The Chunin exams solved everything. Konoha was a gold mine of plush-worthy subjects. The possibilities! Rock Lee plushies, Gai plushies, Tenten plushies (for Temari), Shino plushies with little bugs, Sakura and Ino plushies with carefully concealed velcro so you could connect their fists to the other's forehead, a plush Kiba and Akamaru, Zaku plushies with detachable arms, extra-squishy Chouji plushies, Sasuke plushies (he would have to fight him some time. sigh. troublesome...) Shikamaru plushies, Naruto plushies, Neji plushies, Hinata plushies, Asuma plushies with cigarette, Kurenai and Kakashi plushies, Anko and Ibiki plushies, Hokage plushies, Hayate plushies with little squeakers so that they coughed when you squeezed them...

He couldn't wait to get back home to his plushie lab. A month? A month sitting around without anything to do, with all these plushies walking around? Torture!

He bought some fabric and started early.

"What the hell are you doing?" Baki had asked on finding his youngest charge sitting in the corner stitching patiently. Gaara hadn't responded. He was busy. "Temari, what's your brother doing?"

"Look, he'll get out of the bathroom when he gets out of the bathroom. That's all we need to know."

"Not Kankuro, Gaara!"

"Oh." Temari shrugged. "He's making a plushie. It's his hobby."

"Besides killing people, you mean?"

"Oh, leave him alone." Baki had been forced to comply; Gaara, sensitive to criticism of his plushies, had left.

* * *

"Onee-san!" a little girl called out happily, running up to glomp her sister, who was walking down the hospital hallway in search of vending machines.

"Hello, Hanabi!" Hinata beamed, embracing her sister. "Careful, they just got all that internal bleeding stopped."

"Oh. Sorry," the girl eased off a little. "What are you doing here? Are you still dying?"

"No, Hana-chan, I'm not—,"

It was at this moment that Hiashi, Hinata's vaguely-evil father, rounded the corner.

"Oh, you're _still_ here?" he asked Hinata, who guessed then that this was not a surprise visit from her family.

"I'm getting out soon," she said meekly. "Um... what are you doing here?"

"It's time for your sister's booster S. H. O. T.'s," Hiashi explained, spelling out the fatal word so as not to let Hanabi know that she was in for a good deal of pain in the near future. "And we must be going, or we'll be late. Come along, Hanabi."

Hanabi followed her father off, looking puzzled. "Booster Hosht?" she asked as they walked. Her father patted her head.

Hinata sighed, coughed a little, took a few steps, coughed a lot, and decided to sit down and take a breather. Still coughing, she hobbled over to the bench where Gaara was sitting.

He liked sewing in the hospital. It smelled like blood, death, and sick people. He also liked watching Hinata interact with her family. They reminded him vaguely of his own. He liked Hinata, hers was one of the first plushies he wanted to make, right after Lee. He had enjoyed her fight, because it was one of those few instances where his initial reaction (how can anyone beat on that poor girl?) was the same as everyone else's.

Hinata, breathing heavily, watched Gaara finish his stitching. "Ex— excuse me," she asked after a moment. "Is... is that... Naruto-kun?"

Gaara nodded. Orange fabric had been on sale, and he didn't have enough pocket change to buy much of anything else. No Lee, no Hinata, until he got home.

"Aw..." Hinata turned pink. "It looks just like him!"

"Thank you."

"It's really cute... did you make that on your own?"

"Yes." Gaara cut the final string. Plush number one of the exclusive Konoha Plush Line, complete!

"Uh," Hinata made an uncertain little squeaking noise, like she was about to say something but thought better of it.

"Yes?"

"Um... how much... would you want to make me one?" she asked, pulling out her wallet.

Gaara's eyes bulged a little at the sight of the money. Enough for a Lee... a Hinata, a Neji, a Tenten (for Temari, of course), Sasuke, Sakura and Ino... but he was getting ahead of himself. He couldn't ask her for enough to make all those. If her father was anything like his (and the brief encounter in the hall had convinced him that he was), she probably wouldn't have much money to throw around. She probably didn't even have enough to cover the materials for the one she wanted, let alone the ones he wanted to make for himself...

"That depends," he said finally. "Who would you like?"

Hinata hung her head shyly. "Uh... one... just like that one."

"Naruto?"

"Yes... Na- na- naruto-kun..."

"Oh." Gaara looked at the dopey smile on the plushie in his hand. Naruto wasn't even in his top ten list of plushies he wanted to make; plenty of time to make another back in Suna, when he was done with some of the more interesting people. He dropped the plushie on Hinata's lap. "Twelve dollars?"

Hinata forked over the money without turning a hair.

And, ever since, she slept with her Naruto-kun every night.

* * *

"So disgustingly cute that even Gaara hurts," Neji muttered bitterly to himself on hearing this story. "You might want to find a way to ... re-word that last line... it has implications."

"I know," Hinata sighed, rolling over and pretending to fall asleep instantly.


	3. Dark Corners Part 2

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun, Part 2

More tales from the memory of Grandma Hyuuga, everyone's favorite OC!

* * *

One day Hizashi came home from school alone. Expecting her sons to announce their presence as usual, by fighting over who got the good Nintendo controller (because the Hyuugas are filthy rich and could afford to buy a Nintendo before they were even invented), their mother didn't realize he was home at all until she found him popping some kettle corn in the kitchen.

"Hello!" she exclaimed. "I didn't hear you come in!"

"Yup." Hizashi shrugged, pressing his ear against the microwave. "I've just got sweet ninja skills that way."

Mrs. Hyuuga waited for a moment. "Well?" she finally asked.

"Yeah?"

"...Where's your brother?"

"Well, we had this really awful test last week, and everyone failed. Except Hiashi, he only missed one. So, he set the curve really high, and a few of the kids circled around him after class to pat him on the back. Most of them were aiming for his kidneys when I left."

"And you didn't help him?!" his mother gasped. "HIZASHI!"

Hizashi looked up from the microwave blankly. "What?"

"You're supposed to be watching out for him!" admonished Mrs. Hyuuga, pushing her son out the front door.

"But, Mom!" Hizashi protested, trying to grab onto the doorpost. "My kettle corn!"

"NO! Get out there and help your brother! It's your duty to protect him because—,"

Hizashi sighed the sigh of someone who is not paid enough to put up with his family and stopped struggling, instead walking down the road resignedly. "Yeah, yeah, I know, the Main House is completely incapable of taking care of itself."

"Hizashi!" his mother yelled, angry at this blasphemy. Hizashi turned around and threw up his hands.

"What? Look, you and Dad are always telling me that Hiashi is inherently _better_ than me because he's five whole minutes older, and then turning right back around and saying that I need to defend him because he can't watch out for himself. I'm getting some real mixed signals here!"

Mrs. Hyuuga sputtered for a second. "Just go save your brother!" she finally ordered, running back inside to deal with the billows of smoke now issuing from the microwave. She was careful to lock the door behind her.

* * *

So, kicked out of the house with the mission to rescue his brother, Hizashi went to his Grandma Hyuuga's and hung out with her for a while, eating cookies and talking about her Herbert.

Half an hour later, Hiashi stumbled in, limping a little and sporting a fat lip and an eye that was beginning to puff up.

"Hey, if Mom asks, I showed up and saved you in the nick of time, ok?" Hizashi said as his brother flopped lifelessly into a chair.

"You're such a good brother," he muttered, glaring through his quickly-blackening eye.

"I failed that test you set the curve on, too, you know."

"Urgh," Hiashi moaned, his eyes starting to cross. His grandmother watched them as she handed him a cookie, then whacked him on the back of the head with her rolling pin.

"OW! Grandma! What was that for?"

"I was whacking your eyes back into place. Now shut up and cover for your brother! Hizashi, go get a steak out of the fridge for Paul's eye."

"I think I'm bleeding internally..." Hiashi groaned.

"Oh quit your whining. That's what you get for setting the curve."

(Odds were, Grandma Hyuuga was a branch.)


	4. Neji's Blood Money

Neji's Blood Money

A/N: Really, I should wait for July 13th, or at least until this story will fall into some kind of chronological order, but I just can't.

Birthday fic, takes place post-time-jump. Well, you'll see.

* * *

It was a bright, sunny summer morning, full of chirping birds and happy flowers.

Neji Hyuuga was up nice and early, as was his custom, only today he actually had something important to do, so he was also out wandering the streets.

"Hey, Neji!" Naruto greeted in his usual bright happy tones. It was unusual that Naruto was up; odds were he simply hadn't gone to sleep the night before. "Happy birthday! Eighteen, right?"

"Yup!" Neji returned the greeting with an equally bright wave, which was also odd, because even after five years of extensive anti-emo therapy, he was still a very serious angry young man.

"You off to buy your first porn and cigs?" Naruto asked. Neji laughed mysteriously and continued walking.

* * *

"You know, Neji, I don't think I've ever seen you smile before," Hanabi noted curiously on seeing her all-but-estranged cousin walk into her house.

"That's because you've never seen me on my eighteenth birthday before, sweetheart," Neji said happily, patting her head. "Now, where's your father? We need to talk."

"Are you going to start out your adult life by fulfilling your childhood oath to kill him?" Hanabi asked suspiciously.

"He's still asleep," Hinata said immediately, pointing towards her father's bedroom. She had been sitting in the room the entire time, reading a book (Clan Management for Dummies), but very few Hyuugas ever noticed when she was in the room, and her sister and cousin were no exceptions.

* * *

Hiashi awoke to find someone sitting at the foot of his bead, smiling. It was because of this smile that he didn't recognize Neji immediately.

"Good morning, Uncle! Do you know what today is?"

"Your birthday," Hiashi said, blinking a little.

"No, it's my bir—," Neji paused. "Oh... yeah. It's my birthday."

"Happy birthday."

Neji smiled smugly. "I'm eighteen, and an adult. Isn't there something that you need to tell me about?"

Hiashi thought about this for a moment. "Well, I would have liked to have a cup of coffee first, but if you insist... when a man and a woman reach a mutual understanding... er, love each other very much, something... happens, and-,"

"Or, I dunno, about my father's life insurance policy?" Neji interrupted, slapping a handful of legal documents triumphantly onto the mattress.

"Oh... you found out about that, did you?"

"I sure did."

* * *

Roughly fourteen years ago, Neji's father, Hizashi, had taken out a very large life insurance policy on himself, to be paid (in the event, God forbid, that he should die) to his son when Neji reached that legal El Dorado of ages, 18.

"_Hey, Hiashi, how much did Uncle Henry win in the lotto last year?"_

"_I'm about to start a WAR and all you can talking about is Uncle Henry's gambling addiction?!" Hiashi looked over his brother's shoulder at the long list of calculations Hizashi was busy with. "What on earth are you doing?"_

"_I'm figuring out the exact amount of life insurance it would take to be richer than the net worth of the rest of the Hyuuga clan put together, adjusted for inflation over the next decade or so..."_

"_Why?"_

"_Well, you see, it's ok to defend your helpless little cousin. It's brave. It's chivalrous... having to ask her for money, on the other hand, is just plain emasculating."_

"_You do realize that you have to die for him to collect the money?"_

"_Of course."_

"_... and committing suicide negates your contract."_

"_I'm not committing suicide, don't worry."_

"_Hizashi, you can't even __**afford**__ a policy that large. The only way you could possibly work it is if you manage to get yourself killed before they realize that you can't pay them regularly."_

_Hizashi laughed mysteriously._

And now Neji was 18, and had just become the second richest man in Konoha (the first being Uchiha Sasuke, who had inherited the entire assets of the Uchiha clan some years ago).

"Don't think about trying to get any of it," Neji told his uncle with a cheerful grin. "This morning I went to the bank and made out my will. If I happen to die mysteriously, it all goes to Tenten and Lee. Oh, and this check's yours. It's the money that you gave Bill to take care of me when I was little. So, that's taken care of, and I'll see you around. Now, if you'll excuse me, a pack of cigs and this month's _Hustler_ are calling my name!"


	5. Fireworks: A NaruHina

Fireworks: A NaruHina

A/N: I've sometimes been critical of NaruHina, so I'd like to clarify: I like it all right. It's no ItaTem, but it's not bad. My real problem with it is that it's impossible to write well, so it's almost impossible to find any good ones. The fanart for it is adorable, though. I get cavities.

For NekoRaven and Youkai-girl23, in response to the latest Naruto game released here in the states.

Warnings: typical poorly-written NaruHina. I did spell check it and capitalize my sentences, though. SasuSaku, also some NejiIno (It's not a KalliopeStarmist story without a _little_ crack.)

* * *

Hinata had a plan. It wasn't exactly criminal-mastermind quality, more "awkward teen finds way to ask out crush" quality. The preparations for it didn't include making replica keys, overriding computer databases, or going to her inside man. They included extra makeup, trying on different outfits, and rehearsing in front of the mirror in the bathroom until Kurenai, Kiba, and Shino yelled at her, in unison, to get the hell out.

* * *

"Na- Na- Naru-," This was never going to get his attention. He couldn't even hear her. "Naruto-kun!"

Naruto turned around, along with the rest of his team. "Huh? Oh, hey, Hinata!"

Hinata felt herself blushing, but she had been expecting this, and she figured the extra layer of foundation would cover it up. "I was wondering, are you going to the fireworks tomorrow night?"

Naruto shrugged and looked over at Sasuke and Sakura, who refused to give him any reinforcement. "I was planning to, I guess. Do you want to come along?"

Hinata forced herself to take a deep breath and bend her legs so she wouldn't accidentally lock her knees. He had asked her out! Naruto had asked her out! _Be firm_, she reminded herself. "Well, actually... the ones in town aren't real great..."

"Yeah, I know," Naruto shrugged again. Was he disappointed that she didn't want to go with him? Could it be? "But I don't have anything else to do, and bad fireworks are better than no fireworks."

No, she decided, he wasn't disappointed. Oh well, continue with the operation. "The Yamanakas smuggle in some really nice ones every year, you know, the insanely-dangerous illegal kind-,"

Naruto's eyes lit up.

"And you can see them from the back of our property... if you wanted to come over and watch those with me, you could."

"Yeah! That'd be great!" he turned to Sasuke and Sakura. "What do you guys say? Sound good?"

Sakura slapped her hand against her forehead. Naruto was a first-class certified nimrod.

Sasuke chewed the inside of his lip, annoyed beyond belief at his teammate's utter inability to catch on. "Actually, we can't. Sakura's... um... got a date with Lee, and she wants me to chaperone, 'cause who knows what he's going to pull."

"Oh." Naruto wilted a little, but turned back to Hinata. "Well, I'll come. It sounds like fun."

* * *

"Guess who's got a date?" Neji announced in a sing-song voice when he ran into her skipping down the street happily.

"I do!" Hinata said brightly.

Neji glared at her. Just when he thought he had her. There was no way to make this girl jealous. "Well, I do, too."

"That's great! Who with?"

"Ino. She invited me over to her place for fireworks... of course, her parents will be there, but that's ok."

"Cool. Naruto's coming over, we're going to watch the fireworks Ino's family sets off... maybe we'll see you!"

"God, tell me you're not going to Ino's."

"No, we sit on the roof and watch."

"That's your property behind her's?"

"Uh-huh. We own that whole block."

"I didn't know that."

"You'd be welcome to come over any time, you know."

"Hinata, I HATE your family," Neji explained patiently. She didn't seem to quite understand that he was in the middle of a feud. "I don't want to hang out with you, I don't want to spend any time at all at your house."

Hinata smiled. "All right. Have fun on your date." It was clear that not a word had gotten through to her.

"What the hell was I thinking, swearing a vendetta against you?" Neji muttered, mostly to himself. "It's like trying to fight a very friendly golden retriever."

* * *

"That was really nice of you, making up that thing about Lee so Hinata can have Naruto to herself," Sakura told Sasuke after Naruto went home. "She was so happy."

"Oh, was that why she was asking us over?" Sasuke said, blinking a little. "That does make sense."

"..." Sakura blinked.

"I just didn't want Naruto to commit us to anything. If he did, I wouldn't be able to ask you out."

That would be the happiest moment in Sakura's life.

* * *

"Seriously, sis, red's not your color," Hanabi said, sitting bored to death on her sister's bed as Hinata played the "Oh God What Am I Going To Wear Does This Look Ok" game.

Hinata sighed and began undressing. "But red's sexy..."

"Not on you. What's wrong with that lilac kimono you have? It's cute on you. It brings out your eyes."

"I don't like my eyes."

"What, you think any of us do? So our eyes look creepy, they're still the most prominent part of your face, there's no use trying to hide them. Wear the lilac."

Hinata should have known, because Hanabi was being so helpful, that there was something wrong with the lilac kimono. And there was.

She was about to open the gate and let Naruto in when she decided that she should prepare herself first. He was so handsome, she usually got caught off-guard when she got her first look at him, hurting her ability to start a conversation. So, she took a quick peek through the wall (she hated how her eyes looked, but she sure loved their espionage capabilities).

"AH!"

"Sis?" Hanabi stopped Hinata as she was running down the hallway to her room in a panic. "What's wrong? Is Naruto here yet?"

"Yes, and he's wearing orange!" she wailed.

"... isn't that what he always wears?"

"Yes! Exactly! I'm completely overdressed! If I go out there like this, he'll realize that I wanted this to be more like a date!"

"Isn't that the point?"

"It'll be awkward and completely kill the mood!" she said, continuing her dash. "Could you let him in for me while I change?"

* * *

Naruto fidgeted outside as the gate was opened by a little girl. She stared up at him without blinking. "Hello," he said.

"Hi."

"... is Hinata here?"

The girl nodded. "She's getting dressed."

Naruto smiled. The girl didn't smile back. "So... who are you?" he finally asked.

"Her sister."

"Oh..." Naruto waited for a name; it didn't come. He waited to be let in, but the girl just stood there, staring at him. He wished she would blink. He started getting nervous. Naruto was the kind of kid who needed noise around. He couldn't just sit in silence for any amount of time. He even played the radio while he slept, and the girl was making him excessively anxious. She seemed to realize this, because she smiled evilly. She looked like the possessed demon child from a horror movie.

"Hanabi!" Hinata called from the other side of the fence. "Where's Naruto? Didn't you let him in?"

The girl gave him one last eerie smile, then swung the gate open and let him pass.

Hinata had to stop herself from over-apologizing for her sister's behavior. Her brain was working overtime to enforce all the rules she had set for herself. Don't stare too much, don't stutter, don't talk too fast, act natural, breath.

Naruto shook off the feeling of uneasiness Hanabi had created and didn't comment on how long it had taken Hinata to put on her typical jacket and pants. He worked instead on keeping up the conversation with Hinata. He had learned a long time ago that this required a lot of effort. She had a very quiet voice and sometimes trailed off uncertainly, but he always found that it was worth the trouble. He liked Hinata, despite how bizarrely shy she was around him. He figured it might have something to do with Kyuubi and his (Naruto's... also Kyuubi's) reputation as a troublemaker, and so could be excused. At least she talked to him at all, that was more than he could say for some of the other girls he knew.

Hinata lead him up to the roof of the building furthest back on the Hyuuga property. "That's Ino's yard, over there."

"Cool." Naruto walked up to the edge of the roof and turned around to face her. "So, when do these fireworks star—,"

There was a huge booming noise behind him as a thin line of light shot into the sky and exploded into a red shower. Naruto jumped up in the air... and right off the roof.

"NARUTO!" Hinata gasped, scrambling down the sloping tiles to where she had last seen him. "NARUTO!" She peered down at the ground. "Naruto, where are you?"

Naruto's face poked out from under the eaves. "I'm right here," he grinned.

Hinata clutched at her heart. "You scared me!" she exclaimed as he pulled himself back onto the roof. He ruffled her hair.

"Sorry, Hinata-chan. Couldn't resist."

Hinata laughed. She wanted to hug him, but couldn't quite force her muscles to work. Naruto seemed to notice he had shaken her up, because he helped her sit down once again so they could watch the Yamanakas' insanely-illegal fireworks display.

* * *

"Wow, Hinata, these are amazing," Naruto said after a few moments watching in stunned silence.

Hinata smiled at the awe-struck expression on Naruto's face. All Naruto's facial expressions were so cute, but when he was stunned he was especially adorable. She wondered if he would look at her like that if she kissed him. Right now.

The idea had entered her brain, and there could be no getting rid of it except to act on it. She leaned in. Even her thoughts were stuttering, she was so nervous.

Something popped oddly in the yard below them, and some pain filled yells, mixed with laughter and shouts from the others at the party, ones who hadn't gotten burned trying to set off fireworks, say, floated up to the roof.

"Ooh... hope Ino's dad's all right," Naruto said. Hinata's moment passed before she was close enough for Naruto to realize that it had come at all.

"Yeah," she sighed. Cheer up, she thought, there would be plenty of opportunity later tonight. "Should I make some kettlecorn while he gets bandaged up?"

Naruto nodded eagerly. He liked kettlecorn.

"All right... wait here, ok, Naruto-kun? Shout if they start the fireworks again."

"OK! Hurry back."

Hinata blushed as she hurried away.

Naruto sat on the roof and tossed twigs at a blond head that might have been Ino. Hinata seemed a lot bolder tonight. Maybe she was getting over whatever it was that made her hung-up around him, and this made him happy. Years of rejection made Naruto value his friends, and he was never happier than when he was getting closer to one.

* * *

Hinata looked through the kitchen. That was funny, she could have sworn there was some popcorn around their house somewhere.

"Daddy?" she knocked on her father's bedroom door. "Is there any kettlecorn?" No answer. Her stomach lurched a little as she slid open the door. "Daddy?" The room was empty. Hinata ran to the liquor cabinet, which was open. Not tonight, of all nights...

* * *

Naruto peered into the Yamanakas' yard. "Hinata? It looks like they're getting ready to start again!" He looked around. He didn't know how far away the Hyuugas' kitchen was from where he was. He knew his voice carried, but he wasn't sure if Hinata heard him. "Hinata?" he called again, climbing down to ground level. "Hinata!"

He heard footsteps behind him and turned, feeling a little like he was in a horror movie.

He didn't know how close he was to the truth.

Hinata's father was standing behind him.

"AH!" Naruto screamed. "I mean, uh- Hello, sir!" Naruto was afraid of Hinata's father. Every kid in Konoha was.

* * *

Hinata knew where the rum had gone, and was looking for her father so she could keep him away from Naruto, which was the safest way to avoid him saying anything embarrassing and frightening away the love of her life. When she found the two of them talking in the yard, she almost had a heart attack.

"I— uh, I was just... watching the fireworks," Naruto was trying to explain. It was a lost cause, as Hiashi wasn't interested in why he was there.

"... you have a large amount of _chakra_," Hinata heard her father observe. You couldn't really tell when he was sloshed if you didn't know him. The major symptom was that everything he said sounded really perverted. She was never really sure if this was because it was meant that way, or if it just sounded that way.

Naruto's mouth dropped open. "Excuse me?"

* * *

Meanwhile, in the Yamanakas' backyard, Ino and Neji were alone while her parents found the medical gauze.

Neji picked up one of the roman candles and pointed it towards the backyard neighbors'. "When I was little, I was a total pyro," he told Ino, picking up a lit sparkler and resting it against the fuse.

"Me too!" she said, watching the fuse ignite. "Hey, put that out, man," she said as her date backed away from the explosive, pulling her away with him and taking advantage of the contact to kiss her.

Ino giggled. "Put it out," she repeated playfully, clearly no longer interested in the ever-shortening fuse behind her.

* * *

Had Hinata not long ago given up any hope of being able to kill her father, she would have tried right about then. As was, however, she was more concerned with finding a way to kill herself.

"Your chakra... it's unusual," he told Naruto again. Naruto began squirming.

"... right..."

At this moment, the building that Naruto and Hinata had been trying to watch fireworks from exploded in a yellow flash.

* * *

"Oh my god," Kurenai gasped her over the phone as Hinata related the night's events to her. "Was anyone hurt?"

"No," Hinata replied in the flat monotone she had used the entire call. "It started raining not long after that, that put the fire out."

"That's good. Is anything going on right now?"

"No. Neji and Ino split when we realized it was them, I put Dad to bed before he could go chasing after them, and Hanabi was asleep the whole time anyway."

"Where's Naruto?"

"Probably running for his life," Hinata said. She was staring straight ahead blindly, so she didn't see Naruto peeking his head into the room. "I should have known this would happen. The one time I need my family to come through for me, they end up doing what they always do. My father gets drunk, my sister goes Child-of-the-Corn, and my cousin burns down a building. It's like they've come together in a giant conspiracy to keep me from having the one guy I want."

And suddenly it dawned on Naruto, the shyness, the stuttering, the invitation. He wrung out his shirt a little(the rain was really pouring down out there), ignoring the sooty finger marks he was leaving on the orange fabric, and stepped inside. "Hinata?"

Hinata turned her head just enough to get a glimpse of him on her peripheral and hung up the phone mechanically. "I'm really sorry, Naruto-kun," she said in her monotone. "You can leave if you want. I'll see you around sometime."

"Why would I want to leave?" Naruto laughed, sitting down next to her. "Because your family's a little dysfunctional?"

"A little?"

Smiling softly, Naruto wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "So what? I mean, it's not like Kakashi's never gotten drunk and hit on me, or like Sasuke's never tried to creep me out. Ok, granted, I've never set fire to a building with an illegally-obtained firework, but I'm not saying I never will. Your family's not that horrible. I still had a really good time."

Hinata smiled and blushed. "Re- really?"

"Yeah, really. I think we should spend more time together." Naruto looked down at the almost-euphoric expression on Hinata's face. "...is the offer for kettlecorn still good?"

Hinata nodded. Naruto looked happy, almost cocky, another one of his cute, mischievous expressions. But not her favorite. She kissed him.

He did look stunned.


	6. Fairy Tale Ending

Fairy Tale Ending

A/N: So, I rented a bunch of fairy tales from the library, which sent me into a fairy tale and folklore frenzy, so I decided to write this.

Of course, Hiashi and Hizashi are bad at dealing with things the way typical fairytale parents do... but I'd be concerned if they weren't.

Not a story told by Grandma Hyuuga; more like one told by a slightly drunk Grimm brother.

* * *

All right, so, once upon a time, Hiashi and Hizashi went out of town. No, I don't know why! They just went, ok? Maybe they were trying to get away from their whiny little kids... after keeping you little bundles of joy and plot-hole-finding entertained, I don't blame them in the slightest.

Ahem... where was I? That's right...

So they went out of town for a few days, and on the return journey they were ambushed by a little old man in a top hat.

No, they didn't kill him. Where do you _get_ these ideas? No, he stabbed Hiashi and immediately (say, before he could be violently murdered) informed the two brothers that the blade he used was poisoned, but he would sell them the antidote.

"Quite a racket the old guy's got," Hizashi commented wryly, not particularly concerned that his brother's arm was turning a ghastly purple shade.

"How much?" Hiashi asked, trying not to focus on the poison that was visibly spreading through his body.

The old man answered that it would be quite cheap ("Goddamn right, it'll be cheap! I should sue!"). He only asked for whatever first came out to greet Hiashi when he returned home.

"Sounds like a deal to me," Hizashi shrugged. His brother pulled him away so he could talk to him without the old man overhearing. "What?"

"It's Hinata."

"What?"

"Hinata. He's asking for Hinata. Didn't you ever read any fairy tales when you were little?"

"Oh, come on, like she's really going to be the first one running out to meet _you_. You're like the worse father in the world. She doesn't even like you that much."

"After spending a week with Grandma, you'd be surprised how much I go up on her favorite family members list."

"Grandma was always nice."

"She was always nice to _you_, maybe, branchy."

"What was _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You were her favorite, not me, and sure as hell not Hinata."

"Well, what do you propose we do? Let you die? Bro, that arm's looking pretty nasty, and it's not like you've got _such_ a great kid."

"Hey, I love my daughter every bit as much as you love your son!"

"Really? How old is she?"

Hiashi turned to the old man. "It's a deal."

* * *

The two men were on their way back home, Hiashi understandably tense.

"Hey, at least this way you won't have to pay to put her through school!"

"Shut up, Hizashi. Look, I can't die until I've got someone to replace me, and I don't want to deal with having another kid."

"Yeah, I doubt you'd be able to get your wife that drunk again.."

"Shut up."

"You know, there's always Neji... He's a good kid..." (Yeah, well so's Tobi, but we aren't putting _him_ in charge of anything important.)

"Yeah... that's right..." Hiashi suddenly smiled. He reached into his pocket, grabbed his headband, and began to tie it around his forehead. "There is always Neji..."

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing... walk a little behind me, Ok?"

"Why, what are...?"

Hiashi started to walk a little faster as he explained, putting a little distance between him and his brother. "Hinata's afraid of you, probably because you're always trying to kill her... at least, that's my guess. Neji is not afraid you...in fact, Neji really loves you, and if the two of them saw somebody who looked like you coming down the road, Hinata would hang back and Neji would run out to greet that person... and if that person happened to be me instead of you—,"

"GET BACK HERE YOU BASTARD!"

"HEY! Leggo my arm!"

"GIVE ME THAT HEADBAND!"

"I'LL GIVE YOU A BLACK EYE! LEGGO!"

A few minutes later, a comical, cartoon-style dust ball containing Hiashi and Hizashi rolled down the street to Grandma Hyuuga's doorstep.

"Neji! Dad's home!"

"No he's not! _Stay in the house!_"

"As soon as I get my arms free, you are so dead!"

"Yeah, as soon as I catch my breath, I'm so calling Hinata out here,"

"Over my dead body! I'll bite your throat out!"

"_Meow."_

The fighting immediately stopped as both brothers slowly turned their heads to look at the little gray kitten sitting on the ground in front of them.

"... that was a freebie," Hiashi said.


	7. Introducing Bill sensei

Introducing Bill-Sensei

A/N: I slipped up and referred to Bill-sensei briefly in "Neji's Blood Money", and he also appears as the buzzed assorted relation in The Fortune of Mrs. Sakura. He was invented by a friend who wondered who Team 9 was and why we never see them. (As in, Team Kakashi is Team 7, Team Kurenai is Team 8, and Team Asuma is Team 10, skipping 9). I decided to make him a Hyuuga to answer a question that had been bugging me, namely;

Where the hell _was_ Neji during those nine years wherein he hated his entire family but was too young to do anything about it?

Bill and his posse are frequently recurring characters, so while this particular story starring him isn't great, plot wise, it does introduce some key OC's and allows me to post some of my better Hyuuga-centric stuff here in the future.

* * *

When Neji's father died (from... um... natural causes...), it was generally agreed by everybody involved that it would be best for somebody who was not living on Official Hyuuga Main House property to take him in. (Some wires had gotten crossed explaining the circumstances of Hizashi's death to Neji, and the boy spent several nail-biting years convinced that he was next.) The problem was, however, that the vast majority of the Hyuugas preferred taking the rent-free way out and living on their ancestors' already-paid-for property.

The only exception to be found was Neji's distant (very distant) cousin, Bill.

Bill was a young ninja of average talent, average appearance, and slightly abnormal independence. Realizing one day that living in such close quarters with all his psychotic relatives was suffocating him, Bill rented an apartment with money he had made ninja-ing and set up a relatively Hyuuga-free existence for himself. Oh, he still showed up at the Christmas parties, and he still picked on Hinata like everybody else, and he even dropped by to hang out with the old extended fam once in a while, but mostly Bill was on his own.

He eventually bought himself a house and accepted lodgers to pay his mortgage, so when his distant (very distant) "uncle" tried to push Neji on him, Bill was perfectly glad to take him in. After all, he reasoned, what's one more?

So, Neji went to live with his eccentric cousin Bill and his eccentric lodgers.

* * *

"Neji, this is your house?" Tenten asked upon being taken to Bill's for the first time (it was right after being assigned to Team Gai, and he had forgotten something.

"Yeah. Oh, hey, Norman!"

An older man with gray hair, bifocals, and a very out-of-date outfit smiled. "Hello, Neji-kun." Norman was one of Bill's lodgers. He was a 67-year-old genin who failed the chunin exams every year. He did very little to refute Neji's theory on destiny.

Tenten smiled at him and patted a little beagle that had toddled up to her.

"That's Travis the Gay Rights Dog," Neji explained. "He belongs to Shaun the Nonbeliever," he elaborated, pointing over to a corner where a beatnik sort of man was feeding an already morbidly obese parrot. "Shaun and Travis the Gay Rights Dog and Lady Mimi the Morbidly Obese Parrot tour and fight social injustice... not that they ever accomplish anything, because Shaun doesn't believe in anything he fights for. Don't talk to Mimi; she repeats everything you say."

"Don't talk to Mimi. Give Mimi a donut!" Mimi squawked. Tenten laughed.

"No more donuts for Mimi if Mimi doesn't want to get another bypass surgery and have to eat hospital food again," Shaun the Nonbeliever said, patting the bird. She tried to bite his finger.

"Neji, I don't get it," Tenten said. "Your house is so fun and carefree and relaxed; why are you such a stuck-up snobby asshole all the time?"

"I'm not. I just tell things like they are."

"Neji?" Bill leaned over the stair rail, looking down at the kids. "What are you doing back?"

"I'm missing my camera."

"Oh, sorry... I borrowed it," Bill said with a good-natured smiled. He ducked into a room and threw down a camera case a minute later. "So, who's this?"

"Uh..." Neji paused. Tenten had the distinct impression that he had forgotten her name. "Tenten."

"Oh... she's cute. How'd you pick her up?"

"She's on my team, Bill," Neji said flatly as Tenten blushed. She didn't think he needed to sound so insulted, though.

"Talented, too," Bill said. "Listen to me, young lady, be careful you don't break too many hearts."

"Yugao still hasn't called you back, huh?" Neji asked.

Bill had recently discovered that his girlfriend Yugao was planning to leave him for his best friend Hayate, whom she had secretly been seeing for quite some time.

* * *

One day a year or so later, it happened that Neji couldn't stand Team Gai's home for another minute, so he decided to spend a night or two with his least-despised family member.

"Hey, Bill, I'm back," he announced, walking into his old bedroom and collapsing on the bed. Bill's house was very casual, and he was sure there would be no problem with his visiting unexpectedly.

"AH! OW! Who the hell do you think you are?" yelled a very butch young girl who had been lying on the bed.

Neji jumped up, ready for a fight. "What the hell are you doing in my room?"

"YOUR room? Excuse me? This is _my_ room!"

Two boys, both less muscular than the girl, walked into the room.

"Butch-chan?" One of them exclaimed. "You got a boy in your room? ... or is that just a really flat chick?"

"Moron," the other boy poked the back of the first's head, then struck a devil-may-care pose. "That's just Neji."

"Oh!" the first boy said. "The doob cousin that Sensei's 'uncle' is paying him to put up with?"

Neji glared at him.

"Don't look at me like that, man, they're Bill-sensei's words."

Just then Bill arrived to see what all the fuss was about. "Hey, kids. Hey, Neji! Guess what? I finally got stuck with a team. Meet Cell 9: Butch-chan, Bungalow Ferdinand, and Angsty Jim."

Butch-chan waved her fist at him, Bungalow Ferdinand waved, and Angsty Jim struck another angsty pose. Neji paid no attention to any of them.

"What do you mean 'the doob cousin that Hiashi's paying you to put up with'?"

Bill sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Look, it costs a lot of money to raise a kid, and, frankly, a Jounin salary doesn't cover it."

"But... but... DOOB? I'm not a doob!"

"But you sure are whiny," Butch-chan threw in. "Now will you guys get out of my room? I'm gonna pop a few Midol and crash."

* * *

"Gai-sensei? Tenten? Lee?" Neji called out, throwing his stuff back on his bed. "I'm back!"

* * *

One last A/N: Bill's team follows the archetypes that Team Kakashi and Team Gai fall into... except for Butch-chan, who's making fun of how anime guys are so effeminate that they make all the girls look... well... butch.

Grandma should be back next chapter. X3

Characters copyright Masashimi Kishimoto and ChanChopkins


	8. Dark Corners Part 3

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 3: Cheating: How to Make It Work for You

A/N: Well, you've put up with enough filler, time for more from Granny H.

EDIT: Silver Dragon15 has corrected my poor jutsu knowledge, and the result is a story that's cannon (if you squint.) :)

* * *

"So, how's Hinata?" Grandma interrupted herself to ask. "She's made genin already, right?"

"Already?" Hanabi asked. "That's not how Dad puts it."

"What do you mean, dearie?"

"Well, just, she's a little behind..."

"High expectations from someone who was older than you two when _he_ made genin."

"Uh, Grandma?" Neji interrupted. "I'm thirteen, remember?"

"I know, dear. Paul and Hizashi must have been fifteen when they became genin."

* * *

It was true. Back when the Hyuuga twins were up for genin (a long time ago), students had to pass a written exam to graduate, and the two boys simply weren't natural test takers. The first time they just failed, and after that they kept getting caught cheating.

"All right, boys," the teacher broke the silence of the exam suddenly. "Byakugan off and step away from the tests."

"What?" Hiashi gasped, looking desperately between his paper and the teacher, as if sure this was some cruel joke. "No. No. I'm not cheating this time! I studied! I studied _all_ _night_! The only thing keeping me awake right now is the five straight shots of espresso I had this morning!"

The teacher sighed. "Bring your tests up." The twins complied, and the teacher read through each briefly. "You two have the exact same answers."

Hiashi glared at his brother. Hizashi grinned obliviously at him. "Aren't all the answers correct? Of course they're the same."

The teacher glared at both of them. "Get out of here."

"No!" Hiashi yelled, slamming his fists against the desk desperately. "You can't! I actually passed this time! I swear!"

The teacher scrutinized the boy closely. His eyes had dark circles under them, like he had stayed up all night, his hands twitched like he had too much caffeine in his system. Maybe he was telling the truth. "Come back tomorrow after class."

At that moment the fire alarm and sprinklers went off, soaking the kids' test papers.

* * *

"All right, we'll have to re-take the exam tomorrow," the teacher informed the kids as they stood outside drying off. All of them groaned, except for Hizashi, who was getting a second chance... and was inexplicably dry... like he had been in the hallway... where the fire alarm was.

* * *

"Nice headband," the teacher remarked sarcastically to the first Hyuuga as he handed out the tests to the students. "Wistful thinking, Hizashi?"

Hiashi rolled his eyes and started on his test, making sure to copy all of his answers on his scrap paper.

* * *

"Nice headband. Wistful thinking, Hiashi?" he asked once again as the second brother came in to prove that he wasn't a cheater. "You should know that your brother got perfect marks, without cheating."

"Good for him," Hizashi said flatly, taking his test. The teacher quickly lost interest in him; there was no way he could be cheating in an empty room, and focused on grading the other tests while Hizashi was copying the answers off of the paper that Hiashi was holding up the next room over.

* * *

"Grandma, you're making that up!" Neji accused the old lady at this point. "You couldn't possibly know all this stuff! You're telling these stories in third person as an omniscient narrator, which you clearly aren't—,"

"Don't be so sure."

"Ignore Neji, Grandma," Hanabi said, sticking her tongue out at him. "He's just angry because _his_ dad had to ask _my_ dad for help on the entrance exams."

"My father did **not** have to cheat to make genin!"

"He did too! Grandma said so!"

"She doesn't know that!"

"Why not, she knows everything else."

"No she doesn't!"

"My dad rocks and your dad sucks, just accept it."

"Why you little—,"

"Children, stop fighting, now."

* * *

So both boys got to the second part of the exams, the practical one that Konoha still uses. They had the night after the first test to practice, and they were finding the prep time less than adequate.

"Transformation I know... Substitution I know... clones I have no idea how to do..."

"What do you mean, you can't do them? Hiashi, you have to do them. Clones are on the exam every year. EVERY year. Always. If you can't do them, you're screwed."

"Why? Who the hell ever uses clones for anything?"

"I dunno, but they test them anyway, so..."

"That's the dumbest thing ever. They're so impractical, and they're almost impossible! How many genin can make two perfect clones?"

"I can," Hizashi shrugged.

"You're kidding!"

"Nah," he shrugged again, creating two more of himself to demonstrate.

"Unbelievable," Hiashi muttered. "Where'd you learn to do that?"

"In class."

"Oh. I was probably asleep," Hiashi said with a "that explains it" shrug. Hizashi rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing. Look, you won't be able to learn how to do them before the exam tomorrow. It took you how many years to get byakugan down, again?"

"Dad sucks as a teacher!"

"I figured them out ok... Oh, don't look at me like that, it's not my fault that you're slow. Guess we won't be in the same cell after all, huh?"

"What? Of course we will be. Why wouldn't we be, aside from the fact that we confuse even our own parents, have almost exactly the same fighting style and the goal of assigning cells is to diversify talents?"

"Well, I'm making genin the year before you..."

"What?! Hizashi, you– you can't!"

"I will never be able to pass the written test again, ok? I'm not good at that kind of stuff, you are."

"If you had to memorize as much stupid family trivia as I had to, you'd—,"

"Relax, Nii-san,"

"Don't call me—,"

"I wasn't blaming you, I just might not be able to make genin if I don't tomorrow. Sensei knows I cheated, and he's going to be watching next time."

"I can't make genin after you! Do you have any idea what our father would say? He'd never let me forget it. The rest of my life would be about how my useless inferior branch brother left me in the dust in a stupid exam... like he isn't always going on about how much better you are, anyway."

"He just does that to keep you fighting for his approval, you know that, right? He hates both of us. If we switch places tomorrow and I help you make genin instead of me, it's going to be, 'see, this is why your brother is inheriting control of the family and never question anything he says' until the day I die. And if I never make genin..."

"Don't talk like that. There's got to be a way for both of us to pass tomorrow. How difficult can it be to create two exact copies of someone? Mom managed it with us, right? How hard can clones really be?"

Very, as it turned out.

* * *

"Grandma!" Hanabi objected.

"What, dear?"

"Dad can make clones!"

"Well, he can now, of course."

"And he could then, too! I mean, _Hinata_ can make a clone! _I_ could probably make one!"

"Well, you and Hinata didn't sleep through class."

"Neither did Dad! And Neji's right, you add way too much dialog for this to be accurate. And you consistently refer to Dad as Hiashi rather than Paul, which never happens... there's something weird about this whole thing."

"Hanabi, my father rocks and yours sucks. Just accept it," Neji smirked.

"Rocked. Past tense," Hanabi corrected angrily.

"Oh_, lovely_,"

"Children, please."

* * *

"Ok, show me the clone hand signs one more time," Hizashi demanded. They were the last two standing in the hallway, waiting for their turns to take the test.

"I did them right the first 800 times, I don't think I'm going to screw them up suddenly,"

"Don't be so arrogant, it's _your_ ass on the line,"

"And it was yours yesterday, and you didn't break a sweat."

"All right," the teacher stuck his head into the hallway. "Which one of you is failing first?"

"Hizashi's the only one failing today, Sensei," Hiashi declared haughtily, ignoring the death-glare from his brother as he swaggered into the examination room. Hizashi, muttering angrily to himself, activated his byakugan as soon as the teacher was out of sight so he could watch the proceedings.

"Really? And which one are you?" the teacher asked.

Hiashi stared at him blankly.

"Come on, I don't have all day."

"Are you serious? You can't figure out if I'm Hizashi and just insulted myself in third person, or Hiashi?"

"Headband off."

"I'm Hiashi, you moron."

"Headband off. Now."

"Oh, come on!"

* * *

"Hiashi, what the hell are you doing?" Hizashi muttered to himself as he watched his brother untie his headband. "You moron, put that back on!"

* * *

"See?" Hiashi sighed impatiently, tossing the headband into a corner. "Can we get started?"

"Very well. Transform into me."

* * *

"Shit shit shit shit, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do..." Hizashi hopped up and down nervously on one foot. "We're gonna get caught..."

"Transform into you?" Hiashi asked loudly enough for his voice to carry to the hall.

"You are the luckiest bastard in the world," Hizashi whispered.

"Yes, you heard me," the teacher said. "Now, can you do it, or not?"

"Of course I can transform into you. Like I said, Hizashi's the only one failing today."

"I ought to just leave you hanging for that," Hizashi growled, quickly transforming into a copy of his teacher.

"Is that going to be it?" Hiashi continued. "I thought it'd be something _vaguely_ challenging. Don't do clones any more?"

"Let's screw up one jutsu at a time, shall we?"

"All right, you're the boss," Hiashi shrugged, very slowly beginning the hand signs for transformation jutsu.

Meanwhile, Hizashi was working furiously to finish the signs for a substitution jutsu so he would be able to finish the clone jutsu quickly.

The teacher was a little surprised to be confronted with three copies of himself, all looking vaguely arrogant and pleased with themselves.

"Anything else, sensei?" the one in the middle asked.

* * *

"All right, boys," the teacher glared suspiciously at his two students. "I know you cheated. But, since I can't prove it, and since I never want to see your faces again, I'm letting you pass."

* * *

"Look at that! You two made genin after all!" Grandma Hyuuga exclaimed when she saw them at her front door. "This calls for ice cream!"

"We're not kids anymore, Grandma,"

"Shut up, Nii-san,"

"Don't call me—,"

"I need the ice cream," Hizashi snapped, following Grandma Hyuuga into the kitchen. "Nothing replenishes chakra like ice cream... And what the hell was all that, "Hizashi's the only one failing today" crap?"

"I was trying to act casual so he wouldn't suspect anything. Arrogance hides anxiousness. You should try it sometime."

"I should beat the crap out of you for that," Hizashi muttered. "But I don't have the strength left after taking two tests in a row."

"You owed me from the written test."

"That wasn't _half_ so difficult."

"Oh yeah? Then why didn't you pass it yourself?"

"Look, boys, you both made it, that's all that matters. Now eat your ice cream."


	9. Tenten's OTP

Tenten's OTP

Warnings: Fangirls and all that the word implies

* * *

Nobody names real-life pairings that they ship. They just say, "oh, I hope Lee asks Sakura out now that she's not a hateful bitch," or "Do Naruto and Sasuke give anyone else major gay vibes?"

Tenten would have been overjoyed to discover that, in another dimension, there was a whole fanbase of people who were as devoted to her favorite couple as she was.

For Tenten was a NejiHina shipper.

Neji had picked up on this, of course, but he tended to avoid confronting her about it, in hopes that if he refused to acknowledge the pairing, Tenten would forget about Hinata and fall in love with him and they could live not-unhappily ever after and his life would be relatively good. (Puberty had hit Neji like a red-headed stepchild. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but the result was that he just wanted things to sort themselves out on their own. Actually, this had been Neji's philosophy on just about everything. Thus the Destiny Theory.) He felt that if he was meant by the Powers That Be to hook up with Hinata, 1) he wouldn't hate her entire family, including herself on occasion, 2) she wouldn't be related to him 3) she would be on his team, 4) she would have brown hair and brown eyes and wear pink and... well, you get the picture.

Hinata, on the other hand, didn't spend as much time with Tenten, and didn't notice until she happened to run into Team Gai by the river, Konoha's ever-popular swimming hole, where most of her friends were hanging out.

"Oh, Neji, look, Hinata's here!" Tenten exclaimed, waving the girl over before Neji could stop her.

"And you wonder why I hate leaving the house," he muttered under his breath

"Oh, don't be so anti-social! I'm sure that she'd like to talk to you, you just don't let her."

"There's a reason I don—,"

"Hey, Hinata!" Tenten said brightly, grabbing her by the arm when she got within reach and pulling her uncomfortably close to her and Neji. Of course, uncomfortably close for Hinata was what other people consider the average distance required to have a conversation.

"H-hi..." Hinata stuttered. She might have been blushing, or she might have been sunburned. Neji knew which one Tenten saw.

"It's really great to see you!" Tenten babbled eagerly. "We were just talking about you,"

"No we weren't—," Neji started. Tenten stepped on his toe.

"Well, I'd better get going," she said, pushing the pair a little closer to each other and skipping off. "I've got to get home! But you two have fun!"

"So, Nii-san, what's with Tenten?" Hinata asked after Tenten had excused herself. "Is she... in love with me?"

"Nah, nothing like that. She thinks I'm in love with you."

Hinata smiled, like this might be a mildly-amusing joke, but she wasn't sure. "But... we're cousins... and you hate me."

"Yeah, I know."

"Talk about a crack ship," Hinata whispered. She could have said some other stuff, but she figured that Neji would hit her if she said anything too insulting about his teammate. She understood; Tenten was cute, the only girl he talked to, and he was always looking for an excuse to hit her (Hinata) anyway.

"Pure cocaine," Neji agreed.

Naruto, slightly moist from being pushed in the water by Kiba, draped one arm over each cousin's shoulder. "Are you two dealing drugs? Can I get a cut?"

"Tenten's a crack shipper," Hinata explained. Sakura and Ino's heads snapped up a few feet away.

"Tenten likes the crack?" they asked.

"What pair?" Naruto asked.

"She thinks me and Hinata should hook up," Neji explained. He and Hinata smiled and rolled their eyes as if to say, "see, isn't she nuts?"

"She ships Hyuugacest?" Sakura asked.

"If you want to call it that... but yeah, crack."

The rookie eight stared at them. "NEJIHINA ISN'T _CRACK_!" they yelled.

"What do you mean it isn't crack?" Neji yelled. "The only thing more on crack than that is ChoujiIno!"

Chouji and Ino coughed. Neji glared at them. "Well, all right, but NejiHina's still crack."

"You're joking, right?" Sasuke asked. "I mean, the only pairings with you guys LESS on crack than you together is NaruHina, and that mostly on the basis of," he tapped his fingers together and whispered, "Na-Naruto-kun, when I do this, I'm trying to tell you I like gay sex..."

"And NejiTen," Shikamaru explained, "which comes solely from Tenten thinking about you so loudly at the Chunin exams that you _hear_ her. And I guess that if she ships NejiHina, she can't be in love with you, after all, so I guess NejiHina really is the closest thing to cannon Neji's got going on for him."

"What about NejiLee?" Hinata suggested. Neji gave her a look that could have stopped Chuck Norris. "That's not crack."

The others considered this. "It's more crack than NejiHina," Sakura said. "'Cause Lee and Gaara, well..."

"What about KibaHina?" Neji said. "That's not crack."

"Neither is KankyKiba," Shino said. Kiba hit him.

"Sakura's the Town Bicycle," Hinata said, "Surely NejiSaku's less on crack than—,"

Sakura sized him up coldly. "You've _got_ to be kidding."

Neji shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not that bad... What about Uchihacest? Sasuke, you should be on our side of this discussion!"

Sasuke shrugged. "I'm over it. I mean, Nii-san and his Kisa-kun are happy now, and we all know he wasn't stable, it seems possible he used to..."

"Look, it's perfectly plausible that you two are in love,"

"BUT WE AREN'T!"

"Did we say you were? No, we said you could be."

"She's my cousin!"

"And?"

"He tried to kill me!"

"Sexual tension..."

"Have you guys lost your minds?! We're not— we haven't— we wouldn't—,"

"Methinks the cousins doth protest too much," Chouji quipped, ducking under the water and making a swim for it before either of them could come after him. However, they weren't about to stand for this from the kid from Clan Happy and Well Adjusted, and both of them dove into the water to go hunt him down.

"Try to keep your hands off each other while down there trying to kill him, ok?" Naruto laughed when they were submerged. Because he liked the Hyuuga cousins, for all their bizarre dysfunctionality, and didn't want them thinking that he was into Hyuugacest.

Neji's head popped up above the water. "You're next!"


	10. Parental Consent

Parental Consent

Warnings: NejiTen and the Undead. Now _that's_ what I call a warning.

Story written in response to a small mistake in Arafaxdeep20's ItaTem-tacular One Shot at Love. No, I'm not bashing her; I've got her permission. XD Go check out her stuff!

* * *

"So," Neji took a deep breath and prepared for the most difficult thing that he had to do on a regular basis. Be civil to his uncle. "I need to talk to you about Tenten."

"Tenten?" Hiashi asked, the name clearly not ringing a bell.

"Yeah, Tenten... she's sort of my girlfriend?"

"I don't think I've ever met Tenten."

"Yes, you have."

Hiashi had met Tenten.

"You let her in," Neji said, moving aside and pointing to the young woman standing in the room behind him. "See, that's her, over there."

"Oh, right! Tenten! Of course, I've met Tenten."

"Well, I want to marry her."

"Her?" Hiashi asked, a little puzzled to hear this sentence paired up with the girl standing in his living room. Hiashi felt that his nephew was setting the bar a little... _low_ with his current girlfriend.

"Do you not like her?" Neji asked.

"What? No, I like her, I just meant you want to marry... _her_?"

"You're marrying BlandBland?" Hanabi asked, appearing out of nowhere, which was something Hanabi had a nasty habit of doing. Neji glared at her.

"Tenten, and she's _not_ bland,"

"Are you sure? Because under her photo in the registry it says 'not pictured'."

"Look, they printed a retraction in the spring supplement," Neji said angrily.

"Hanabi, please," Hiashi snapped, herding the girl out of the room. He turned back to Neji. "Yeah, I don't think the marriage is such a good idea."

"What the hell business is it of yours who I marry?"

"... Why did you tell me in the first place, then?"

"Because Tenten won't marry him unless she knows she won't be starting any shit in our family," Hinata explained, strolling through on her way to the kitchen.

"Hinata!" Neji snapped.

"What? He would have found out anyway. Anyway, it's your own fault that she's convinced that we're going to torture and murder you and then dispose quietly of your corpse if you get on our bad side; you only spent the first 9 years you knew her complaining about what horrible people we are." Is Hinata being a little more outspoken than you picture her around her family? Well, if you had been the one to get the butt end of the "Hyuuga Main House Members Eat Babies" rumor that flew around Ninja Tech during your socially-formative years, you would be angry, too.

After glaring at Hinata in such a way to communicate "Girl, next time you see me coming you'd better run," Neji decided to end this conversation once and for all, and then maybe take Tenten to dinner to talk about a guest list that didn't include anybody more closely related to him than Sasuke's pet goldfish. "Look, all she needs to hear from you is three words, "_I don't care_." It's the same statement that has basically defined your relationship with your oldest daughter since she turned 4, I think you can manage to say it to your nephew's fiancee without any major qualms. So, I'm going to call her in here, and you're going to say that. Do we understand the plan?"

Hiashi nodded and picked up a newspaper, and Neji very quickly pulled Tenten into the room before he could change his mind or forget what was going on.

"Uncle?" Neji wrapped his arm around Tenten's waist. "Tenten and I want to get married." Tenten smiled and tried to act like she had a personality. Well, she did, but there was absolutely no way for the Hyuugas in general to know this.

"I don't care if it's all right with your father."

There was a very intense silence in the room.

Hinata hadn't been so uneasy since the time Naruto and Sasuke kissed in front of her, and you would have to know Hinata pretty well to understand just how stressful that made the current situation. "Um... Daddy? Neji's father... um..."

Tenten, too, was becoming increasingly tense, and was beginning to see Neji's logic when he suggested they elope. She tugged at his sleeve, trying to distract his attention from the staring contest he and his uncle were engaging in. "Neji... forget it... let's just go to Tanzuko and get married by an Elvis impersonator, ok?"

"No," Neji said, still not taking his eyes off his uncle's. "We're going to go get my father's permission. Just watch."

* * *

Tenten had known when she agreed, conditionally, to marry him, that Neji was a little off-balance. She was aware that his family was infamous to the point where the Konoha police had their own code word for a domestic disturbance involving them. She had even entertained the idea that this was a genetic thing, and she should be prepared, possibly, for children with an emo tendency. However, she figured that these things were nothing that a little Gai-style Power of Youth (wink wink, nod nod), a restraining order or two, and some wonton soup filled with motherly love couldn't fix, respectively.

Her game plan at no point included trips to the Land of the Dead.

"Neji, look, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made you talk to them."

"No, I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did," Neji said in a very threatening, ominous way without looking at her, or at anything besides the road in front of him.

"No, really, it was dumb of me, let's just pick up a license somewhere... Naruto can witness, since he doesn't have a social life and won't be doing anything."

"They would like that, wouldn't they... us sneaking off to some sleazy little place like we're ashamed..."

"Neji... you're doing that thing again? With the revenge and the angst and self-righteousness? You promised you would quit for me because you love me and want to be with me and don't want me to poison your oatmeal some morning when I've decided I can't stand to hear the word 'destiny' one more time, remember?"

"Tenten," Neji spun suddenly and wrapped his arms around her neck. "I do love you, and I do want to be with you forever," He didn't mention that any oatmeal Tenten created with her dubious culinary skills would probably be inedible whether she intended it to be or not. "And I want my asshole baby-eating relatives to know that nothing they could possibly do would stop us, and they'd better not try. I need to do this, Tenten. Sweetie. _Sugar-pumpkin_,"

Tenten sighed and wished that she weren't so malleable. "All right, fine. But this is the last time. And you're going the wrong way."

"Huh?"

Tenten pointed off to her right. "The Land of the Dead is that way. Remember the time we had to go down there and pull Lee out of the Pit of Slow and Painful Suffering?"

"No, I was sick that day... you tagged along after Team 7."

"Oh yeah."

* * *

In an ice cream shop in the Land of the Dead, a couple of Akatsuki members that won't be named to avoid spoilers were sitting down at the bar. Yes, the ice cream shop in the Land of the Dead has a bar.

"The usual, Haku," one of them said to the boy working the counter. He smiled and bowed politely to them before rushing off to scoop up two mango sorbets.

"Here you go, SPOILER-san," he said, handing it to the deceased nin before turning back to the kitchen. "ZABUZA-SAMA! We're running out of butterscotch!"

"ALREADY?"

"Well, Hayate-san wanted extra, and he's so cute,"

Zabuza poked his head into the dining area. "Haku..."

"What?"

"Nothing... just, it eats into our profits."

"What profits?" asked one of the Akatsuki. "You're dead."

Zabuza sighed. Everybody always took Haku's side.

In a very Western-movie style moment, the glass doors to the shop swung open, and a blast of hot air blew into the air-conditioned salon, turning everyone's attention to the young man and woman framed in the doorway. Tayuya noticed the atmosphere and pulled out her flute quickly to play a few dramatic notes.

After the newcomers had surveyed their surroundings once, the man walked over to the bar and sat down, the woman following nervously, seemingly more aware of the fact that every eye in the place was watching them, and that none of these eyes belong to living people.

Haku smiled at them. "Hello. New here?"

"You could say that," the man responded.

"Don't worry, you'll get used to it... do either of you want a sundae? It's on the house."

"Don't let him fool you," one of the Akatsuki whispered to the woman, "it's all on the house. There's not a whole lot of sense to having an economic system here."

The woman laughed. "We actually came looking for someone," she started, but the man leaned over to whisper to her.

"Don't give too much away... we're dealing with an entirely different class of people here... we might not want them knowing who we are."

Haku continued to beam at them adorably. "Oh, don't worry about it! We're not going to eat your soul or anything."

"Or will we?" asked one of the Akatsuki.

Zabuza, still watching from the kitchen doorway, grinned. "Don't hassle the newbies... What did you kids in?"

"Oh, you think we're—," Tenten stopped herself from finishing the sentence.

Zabuza winked at her. "Fine, don't tell us... we'll find out sooner or later. Just enjoy being the mysterious strangers until then."

"Not that mysterious," said a dark-haired, red-eyed man sitting at a table towards the back with a woman that might have been his wife. "I know who you are."

The kids turned around, both a little anxious to hear this from the undead. "You do, huh?"

"Yeah, I do," the man said, "And I don't want to be around to see the look on your poor father's face when he sees you here. You couldn't have made it a couple more decades?"

His wife punched his arm. "Fugaku! Don't screw with the poor kid, he just died. Don't worry, sweetie, he'll get over it, and then he'll be happy to see you!"

"You realize that's 'Zashi's kid, right?"

"Oh..." the woman looked over at the couple at the bar. "Ooh... ooooooooh... Yeah, he's gonna open up a vein."

"But... would it matter, since he's–," Tenten decided not to finish her sentence again. "Look, whether he likes it or not, we really need to talk with him, so I don't suppose you could give us his address or something?"

"No way. We are not letting him go emo again. You have _no idea_ what their incessant whining about their screwed-up families is like."

Tenten looked over at Neji. "Oh, I think I have an idea."

"What was _that_ supposed to mean?" Neji asked her.

"I think what your chick's trying to say is that the apple didn't fall far from the tree," Zabuza said. "Haku, help them find 'Zash, will you?"

Haku looked at his friend. "Zabuza-sama, think about what you're asking. You want me to walk up to Hizashi-san, and say 'hey, by the way, your beloved precious cherished kid is dead and he wants to talk to you.' _That's_ gonna go over well. It's called Shoot the Messenger."

"You used to be emo, though, you speak the language."

"I am not emo!" Haku said, genuinely offended. "I'm _tragic_. I would never bitch about my angsty past the way that Sas—," he glanced over at the corner that contained the Uchihas. "The way that some people do."

"Um, I'm – we're not dead," Neji said, half-raising his hand. "We just needed to talk to him, then we're going back to being... alive and all that..."

"Oh, well why didn't you say so?" the SPOILER-haired, SPOILER-eyed Akatsuki who hadn't spoken yet said. "I'll take you to see him."

* * *

"Read 'em and weep... a royal flush."

"You've GOT to be cheating,"

"Come on, Lamont, fork over the pants."

Neji and Tenten's undead guide knocked on the door this interesting conversation was coming from. Tenten fidgeted. She really, really wanted to just go home and plot out a guest list for the wedding that had no one more closely related to her future husband than Sasuke's pet goldfish.

"Come on in!"

Their guide pushed open the door. "Hope you're all decent," he said cheerfully. "Because you've got some kids to see you."

"Oh, god, your little demon child finally snapped and killed the other two."

"_My_ little demon child? Let me explain something to you, buddy," a woman growled. Neji and Tenten looked over at each other.

"Your father hangs out with _Gaara's_ parents?" Tenten asked.

"Hey, shut up! My father was a saint!"

"Geez, I'm just sayin'," she muttered. "All right, let's go in there and get this over with... I'm starting to feel like I'm in a Tim Burton movie."

Neji sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I know it's a hassle, but it's gonna save us a lot of aggravation in the future."

Tenten shivering a little, the couple pushed the door open wider.

A few undead adults were sitting around a table with a few shirts piled in the center. A woman who vaguely resembled the Sand Sibs was holding the jeans of a man who also vaguely resembled the Sand Sibs and who was wearing only boxers. A man with somewhat shiny black hair, a man Tenten assumed was Neji's father, and one she recognized as Hayate-the-worthless-exam-proctor were also in various stages of undress and holding poker cards.

The adults turned to stare at the living couple for a second, then simultaneously turned to the man Tenten now _knew_ was Neji's father as he slammed his head against the table and sat like that.

"SPOILER, you're a dick," the boxered Kazekage announced to the Akatsuki member after a moment of silence.

"What? They wanted to see him. Makes sense to me."

"You're still an ass," Hayate said, pulling Hizashi's head off the table by his hair. "Come on, 'Zash, speak to me, man. How many fingers am I holding up?"

There was a long pause.

"None! That's exactly right. You're good at this game."

"Neji, say something," Tenten whispered.

"Like what?"

"I dunno, he's your father, not mine!" Tenten said. Tenten didn't have parents and didn't know how to talk to them, and as a result they made her extremely nervous.

Neji cleared his throat. "Um... Father?

"You shouldn't be here, Neji."

"Well, actually, I'm—,"

"The author must hate me... I mean, I get such a raw deal in all of these drabbles, and now she's killing off my son..."

"Actually, we aren't–," Neji started again.

"It's a twisted display of affection," the Kazekage said. "It's called 'Favorite Character Mutilation Syndrome.' It explains all the crap she does to us."

"And Tenten and I aren't—,"

"Well, it's entirely unfair! It's not our fault that she decided to pick on us! We TRIED to be minor, unlovable characters!"

"Dad, I'm not–,"

"I mean, why can't she torture Sasuke or some other character that NORMAL fanfic authors like to pick on?!"

"Dad, I'm not dead!"

Yet.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Hizashi exclaimed, actually standing up and hugging his son. Tenten noticed an overall easing of tension among the other strip-poker players.

"Well, Tenten and I... that's Tenten over there, she's not dead either," Neji explained, pointing at her.

"I like her hair," said the one with the greasy black hair. Tenten smiled at him.

"Yeah, me too," Neji said. "Anyway, we want to get married, and since Uncle Hiashi's crazy, we decided to ask you instead."

"Oh, well why didn't you say so in the first place? Of course I'll give you my permission..."

"Letter form, if you wouldn't mind," Tenten said. "We're gonna need some legal proof."

"Or you two could get married here!" Karura (Gaara's mom... yeah, she has a name... weird, huh?) exclaimed, "Elvis here could do the ceremony," she said, pointing at the greasy fellow, who nodded.

* * *

So Tenten and Neji were married by Elvis Presley instead of an imitation, with Hizashi as a witness, which gave them a wedding certificate _definitely_ worth framing. And so our crack story comes to an end.

* * *

A/N: Happy Birthday, Arafaxdeep20. Even though it's not your birthday.


	11. Bill sensei Outsources

Bill-sensei Outsources

A/N: I've noticed Neji pairings have a tendency to go through brief periods of popularity (except for NejiHina, which is incest and therefore eternal). When I first started writing for Naruto, NejiGaar was all the rage, and then NejiTen, and then ItaNeji, and recently LeeNeji. I didn't write this for the yaoi fanbase, so get that thought right out of your head. It was just odd that ItaNeji happened to be the fad while I was writing this.

Summary/Warnings: Itachi does a brief stint as a babysitter. Baby!nin story... so more fluff than a kitten caught in a cotton candy machine.

* * *

"Itachi-kun, my man!" Itachi was accosted on his way out of the Hokage's office, where he was turning in paperwork on his latest mission. "How would you like me to owe you a favor?"

Itachi coldly sized up the man who now had an arm around his shoulder. Long brown ponytail, carefree smile, disheveled attire, and the copyrighted, trademarked, and patented Little Orphan Annie Eyes. It was Bill Hyuuga.

"How much will you pay me?" Itachi asked.

"Fifty bucks."

"What do you want?"

"I need someone to babysit my little cousin Friday night."

"Can't Norman do it?"

"No, he's got training for the next Chunin Exams. _Please_, Itachi, I have a date, and no one else can do it, anyway, you watch your little brother all the time for no money,"

Itachi sighed. "Which cousin?"

"Neji."

"...Hizashi's kid? Isn't he neurotic?"

"Very, but he's a well-behaved neurotic!" Bill said eagerly. "He's no trouble at all, you hardly know he's in the house."

Itachi remembered using these words on Hana Inuzuki once to get out of watching Sasuke. He also remembered that she was not happy when she found out the truth. But, fifty bucks was a lot of money to watch a kid for one night...

* * *

"Hey, Sasuke, I've got a babysitting job... want to tag along?"

His mother looked suspiciously at him. "Who are you watching?"

"Bill's little cousin."

"Bill... Hyuuga?" Itachi nodded, and his mother grabbed Sasuke by the back of his oversized collar and pulled him towards her. "No way. I'm not letting my baby anywhere _near_ that family."

"Aw, come on, Mom," Sasuke begged.

"Nah, she's right, Sasuke... we'll hang out tomorrow, k?"

* * *

"Neji-kun, come out, we'll watch a movie or something, ok?" Itachi asked gently, knocking on the door of Neji's bedroom.

"Can we watch The Godfather?"

"Does Bill let you watch that?"

"...yes..."

"Didn't he teach you how to lie convincingly to your babysitter?" Itachi asked with a chuckle.

"..." The door slid open a crack and Neji peered out. "Itachi, right? What's your family name?" he asked suspiciously.

"Bill didn't tell you it's Uchiha? Do you want to play Go Fish or something?"

"Main house or Branch?"

"Do you interrogate all your babysitters like this?"

"Do you answer every question with another one?"

"Do you?" Itachi asked, making a mental note to ask Bill for a bonus.

"What's your father's name, then?"

"Look, kid, just drop it. What difference could it possibly make to you what side of a clan you've never had any dealings with your babysitter happens to be on? I'm still stuck watching you, so let's try to deal."

"Touchy subject? Branch?"

"NO!" Itachi snapped.

Neji smiled and slid the door completely open. "Can we watch Neverending Story?"

_What the hell is this kid's deal?_ Itachi wondered. "Wait, if I had been a branch, you wouldn't have anything to do with me?"

"Like you said, we're stuck together, so it doesn't matter," Neji shrugged, leading Itachi nonchalantly into the living room and retrieving the video.

"Then..."

"Well, I wouldn't have been very happy with Bill," he said matter-of-factly.

"You're pretty arrogant, ain't cha?" Itachi smirked. "May I ask what side of the Hyuugas you happen to be on? Main or Branch?" Itachi had never seen a smug smile drop off of a kid's face so fast. "Uh-huh, so no more playing Rank-the-Babysitter, ok?"

"I'd rather be a Hyuuga Branch than an Uchiha."

Sometimes people say things that are such obvious lies that it isn't worth it to call them out. Itachi shrugged. "And I'd much rather be watching your cousin. I bet _Hinata_ doesn't talk back to her babysitter. I bet she sits quietly in her room the whole time." Neji glared at him. "Now, do you want to watch Neverending Story, or what?"

* * *

This shut both of them up for about ninety minutes, at which point the Neverending Story did the unthinkable and ended.

"... so... who's your favorite character?" Itachi asked.

"Your mom."

"You never let up on the angry, do you?" Itachi muttered. "Is it hard to hate _everybody_ **all** the time? Does it hurt or something? I mean, how do you do it?"

"It must be easier to be naive like you..." Neji said simply. "But don't you feel like an idiot every time somebody betrays you?"

"Seriously, kid, you're gonna pull a muscle or something trying to be so cynical at your age. It's not normal."

"It's not normal to be as old as you are and still think the world is sunshine and rainbows, if you ask me."

"And what the he- heck would the kid who researches his babysitter's family affiliations know about normal? Look, I'm your babysitter, so I'm supposed to feel concerned for your welfare, so it worries to see you so upset by... basically everything."

"What's it to you? Bill really doesn't expect you to psychoanalyze me or make me act like a normal kid or anything. If I'm still alive and not too hyper when he gets back you get your fifty bucks."

"Bill's that predictable, huh?" Itachi grinned. Neji glared at him. "Oh, cut me some slack. I've got a little brother, you know, and I've got a soft spot for kids. Naturally I don't like to see one that's about to open up a vein."

"Open up a vein?" Neji asked.

"Cut his wrists. It's a way to commit suicide," Itachi explained.

"Is Bill worried about that? Because I wouldn't."

"I was just joking. I don't think you're going to kill yourself."

"You _joke_ about suicide, and I'm the morbid one?"

"If you're not an orphan, you're allowed to joke about suicide," Itachi said matter-of-factly. Neji's eyes teared up, and Itachi knew immediately that he had just said something incredibly stupid. "Oh, God, don't—!"

* * *

"So, how was your night?" Itachi's father asked when Itachi tiptoed into the house, clutching his earnings.

"Not real good, Dad. Not real good."

"Bill didn't get home until after midnight again, I notice..."

"Yeah, that and I made a seven-year-old boy cry."

"Hey, look at it this way," his father laughed. "Now you'll never have to watch him again."

Itachi glared at him. "It's really not funny."

"Oh, lighten up."

* * *

"Say, Itachi-kun, my favorite person ever!"

Itachi winced as Bill walked up to him, smiling in that "I'm-just-about-to-ask-you-a-favor" way.

"How would you like me to owe you another favor?"

Itachi blinked at him. "What is it?"

"I've got another date next week, and I need someone to watch Neji again,"

"Now I'd like to use the favor that you owe me from the last time I watched him and decline."

"Please! He was asking for you!"

Itachi blinked at him once again. "Right, Bill. I'm sure he was."

"No, seriously. He was! Please, please, Itachi, he actually asked for you! He doesn't do that! He usually just nods and shrugs and stuff... sometimes he points out ones that he really hates, but that's it. I don't know what you did, but he really likes you!"

"I made an orphan joke and he started crying."

"I don't think that's it. It's actually kind of rare for anyone to spend the night with him and not make him cry... He's got more taboo words than the FCC. Anyway, please? You're making a very miserable person happy."

Itachi's poker face softened. "He's really unhappy, huh?"

"I was talking about me, actually, but yeah, Neji's a _mess_."

* * *

"NEJI!" Bill called up the stairs when Itachi showed up. "Itachi's here, so I'm leaving! Be good, ok? I don't want to hear any horror stories when I get back!"

Itachi sighed. He should have known that Bill was lying, and now he was roped into spending the evening with a hostile child.

"Itachi?"

Itachi jumped. Neji had materialized next to him to tug at his pants leg.

"Can we watch the Muppets tonight?" the boy asked, holding up two or three video cassettes.

"Of course. Do you want me to make some popcorn, too?"

Neji nodded happily. "You're the best, Itachi."

_Little kids scare me,_ Itachi decided.

* * *

"Are you getting sleepy?" Itachi asked when they were halfway through _Treasure Island_ and Neji was starting to lean on him.

"No... I want to finish watching this."

Itachi checked his watch. Bill had said he was coming back at ten... it was 11:35, so they had about another hour. "All right."

"Hinata has a little sister," Neji decided to inform him.

Itachi took this non-sequitur in stride. You had to, if you spent much time with kids. "Oh?"

"I've never met her. She's not very old."

"No, I guess she wouldn't be," Itachi agreed.

"Is your little brother very old?"

"He's about a year younger than you."

"Is he happy?"

Itachi had to think about this one. "... yes, I think he is."

Neji processed this, then frowned. "But your family is different, aren't they." It wasn't a question, and it wasn't directed at Itachi. "What's going to happen to him when he grows up?"

"I– I–," Itachi sighed. "I don't know."

"Do you think he's going to be ok?"

"I hope so..."

Itachi trailed off, and for a while they went back to watching the Kermit and his friends.

"Do you think my little cousin's going to be ok?" Neji asked suddenly.

Itachi sighed again. "I don't know, Neji."

"I don't think she has much of a chance. Younger children don't, usually."

"Hmm."

Neji felt Itachi tense next to him, and threw his arms around his babysitter's middle. "I'm sorry, Itachi. Maybe your brother will have more luck. Maybe your family is different." His tone was the kind you use to tell a child that you took their dog to "a farm where he'll be happier."

* * *

"Back late again?" Itachi's father asked. "I hope Bill's paying you what it's worth. I wouldn't take money to watch that kid."

Itachi ground his molars together and fought his urge to hit his father. "He's a good kid, he's just been through a lot. You shouldn't be so harsh."

"Don't turn him into one of your strays, now."

"My strays?"

"Like that little cousin of yours that follows you around,"

Itachi stared at him for a moment. "Sasuke?"

"...yeah, him."

"Sasuke's your son," Itachi growled.

"Whatever."

If he were to stay any longer, there would definitely be bloodshed, so Itachi excused himself and fell into bed.

Or, he was about to, but Sasuke was already asleep on it.

Itachi smiled as he scooped up his little brother and carried him to his own bedroom. Sasuke had a fighting chance. Of course he did. How could he not? What did Neji know, anyway? It wasn't so horrible, being an unimportant Uchiha.

Was it?

Itachi watched Sasuke curl up with his teddy bear. "Well, if it ever comes to that, I'll look out for you, Sasuke-chan."


	12. Dark Corners Part 4

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 4: Louise Makoto

A/N: I've screwed myself over by toggling between Western and Eastern style name-order between fics, and I can never remember which I'm using... I used to use Eastern all the time, but since all of my OC's in this story have comically western names, and Hyuuga Bill sounds funny, I've changed it. I've also gone back and changed all of them... I think.

* * *

"Team 3- Nara, Yamanaka, Akamichi," the teacher called out last names in a monotone. "Team 4- Ayanami, Sohryu, Ikari, Team 5-,"

The recently-initiated genin sat very straight, leaning in tensely. Teams were so important, and nobody wanted to miss their names.

Well, two kids weren't paying attention. The Hyuuga twins were thumb-wrestling violently. Hiashi, sick of losing, finally stomped on Hizashi's toe, so Hizashi used his free hand to nail Hiashi in the stomach. It was several minutes of real wrestling before the two boys realized that everyone was staring at them. Slowly, suddenly self-conscious, they picked themselves up off the floor and resumed their seats.

The teacher cleared his throat and pointed to a girl in the back of the room who looked particularly disgusted. "Makoto, you're with the Hyuugas."

"Why, what'd I do?" she asked with start.

* * *

"Uh, Grandma?" Neji tried to interrupt.

"What, dear?"

"We... uh, came to ask about our mothers..."

"Oh, well, why didn't you say so, dear? Here, have another cookie."

* * *

Louise Makoto dressed a little oddly. She wore a lot of fishnet, a lot of gel bracelets, and a lot of black. Please keep in mind that this was long before "goth" or "emo" was invented. Her hair changed color roughly once a week, but never styles, so it remained in its loose ponytail even though it had changed from green to purple since the exam.

She was a very outspoken young woman, and you could tell right off the bat that she was not pleased with the team assignments. "All right, let's make the best of this," she sighed, forcing a bright smile when she met her two classmates outside the school building. "I'm Louise. Good to meet you."

"We've been sitting behind you for two years, we know who you are," Hiashi told her.

"Yeah, well, I've been sitting in front of you for two years, and I still have no idea who you are, so please clarify. Is there any way to tell you two apart?"

Hiashi and Hizashi looked at each other. "No," Hiashi said.

Louise blinked once, turned around, and walked back to the school to confront her teacher.

"How could you do this to me?" she asked. "How could you leave me with both of them?"

"It's always been an unspoken agreement to expose as few kids to the Hyuuga clan as possible... you just lost, I guess."

"Please! I'm gonna die!"

"Now, now, Louise, I'm sure they have some good qualities."

"Like what?"

"...well... um... you're going to be on their team for a long time, I'm sure you'll find something."

* * *

"So, did you boys get your team assignments today?" Grandma Hyuuga asked her twin "grandsons" after they returned from their last day of school. "You're in the same cell, I hope?"

The boys nodded.

"Lovely. Here, try the peanut butter cookies, dear, the recipe's new. Who's your third?"

"Louise Makoto."

"She's kinda mean," Hiashi added, picking up one of the cookies gratefully.

"Well, wouldn't you be, if you were stuck on a team with a member of our family?" Hizashi asked, yanking the cookie out of his hand and munching on it. (Hiashi was sitting closer to the plate.)

"I AM on a team with a member of our family!" he said, reaching for another cookie as though nothing had happened. "And so are you!"

"Oh, Nii-san," Hizashi said patiently,

"Don't call me–,"

"You're not a member of our family. You're my brother. The two are totally different."

"I still don't think it gives her the excuse to be such a bitch," Hiashi muttered. Grandma Hyuuga slapped him upside the head.

"Watch your language."

* * *

Louise yawned and stretched out on her bed. She wondered how long you had to stay in your cell before you could ask for a transfer.

"Eh, maybe one of them will be sane," she shrugged, closing her eyes. "But I doubt it."

* * *

A/N: Short? Yes... the next few Dark Corners will be. Sorry.


	13. Holiday Season

Holiday Schedule

A/N: You thought I wasn't going to do a Christmas special, didn't you?

Granted, it's no "Sugary Sweet Christmas Story" (which is in my profile, by the way. Hint. Hint.) But it stars my current obsessions.

* * *

Christmas can be hectic. It can be unpredictable. Or it can go like clockwork, every single year. You would think that was a good thing. Less stress, right?

November 30th: Tenten and Neji were walking through downtown Konoha, holding hands and trying to look like they were on a date so Lee, Naruto, and all their other obnoxious friends wouldn't try to talk to them. It was a nice enough evening, a little nippy, but otherwise fine. It had been an OK day, nothing special, but nothing horrible.

So Tenten was a little puzzled when Neji sighed angstily.

"What's up?"

"Tomorrow is December first," he explained.

"Yeah, I guess so... is something happening?"

"_It_ begins," he said ominously.

"...what begins?"

"Christmas. The holiday season."

Tenten smiled. "You sure bring out the Bah Humbugs early. Please tell me that you're not so emo that you hate Christmas."

"You don't understand. Tonight at midnight WKNH, the local radio station, will begin their 24/7 barrage of holiday music. Tomorrow at 8 o'clock, Hinata's alarm clock, which is set to that particular radio station, will go off. She will go to breakfast singing whatever Christmas-themed song was on the radio that morning."

Tenten blinked. "Ok..."

"It goes like this, every. Single. Year. This will signal to the rest of the herd that the Holiday Season has started. And then..."

"And then?"

Neji took a deep breath. "December 2nd, Hinata shuts herself in her room and writes out her Christmas list. She carefully writes down the name of every living family member she has, as well as their addresses and ages, so she can send them personalized Christmas cards. Then she gives it to her father and asks if she's left anyone out. He doesn't have a damn clue, there are hundreds of us, so he tells her it's fine. But Hinata knows he doesn't have a damn clue, so she gives the list to me. I don't have a damn clue, either, and I tell her. She pulls me into her room and we go through the list, person by person, to see if I think of anyone else. I never do; she always lists everyone the first time.

"December 3rd, Hinata repeats this process with her non-related friends. This means that Kiba and Shino come over to repeat the same process. It's much shorter with them. But they're loud, and everyone hears them.

"December 4th, at this point, everybody has caught onto Hinata's indefatigable Christmas spirit. The next week is spent being pulled aside by people closely enough related to me to want to get me something. This is fine if when you're a little kid, but when you've got a job, say, ninja-ing, they expect you to get them something in return, so you have to remember everyone who asked you. Fortunately, nobody expects much from me, so I can just buy some cards, but it's still a hassle. Also, I have to give a different Christmas list to everybody, because if I don't, inevitably I'll get the same thing from 20 different people, and any given one of them would be pissed if I tried to return their gift.

"December 8th, Bill pulls me aside for the day to find all of the Christmas decorations. I have an allergic reaction to the mildew and spend the rest of the day zonked on Benedril.

"December 9th, Bill, Bill's squad, Bill's lodgers, and me go find a tree, bring it back, decorate it, and decorate the house. Let me tell you, Christmas lights are a bitch to put up on a roof.

"December 10th, December 8th, again. Substitute Hiashi for Bill and Clairtin for Benedril.

"December 11th, December 9th, again. Substitute Hiashi, Hinata, and Hanabi for Bill and Co. Less lights, but more trees. They've got a big house.

"December 12th, Gai gets angry at me for ditching the team for four solid days. A hundred laps around the track and then report back to him for my next punishment.

"December 13th, At dawn, Gai decides that I've suffered enough. I stagger back to Bill's. I'm not welcome at Bill's because my room is full of Christmas presents, some of which are mine. He never has a spare bed in December, either. So I stagger back to HyuugaLand and collapse on the floor. I wake up at about 6 a.m. the next morning.

"December 14th, after a few cups of coffee and a bottle of apsirin, Gai calls me up. He's forgiven me, which I guess is a good thing. Anyway, you know what happens on the 14th. In preparation for Christmas Tree Day, we all go down to Gai's basement and bring up bunches of decorations. I have an allergic reaction the mildew this time, too, but Gai tells me to walk it off, so I just sneeze and be miserable for the rest of the day. We go shopping, me with Kleenex stuffed up all my sleeves.

"December 15th, It's Christmas Tree Day. We all go out and find a tree, then decorate it, and then drink hot chocolate. Gai and Lee have an eggnog chugging contest. Sometimes we sing carols. Gai and Lee suggest making cookies. You talk them out of it.

"December 16th, Hinata wakes me up at 7 o'clock in a panic. There are less than ten days till Christmas and she hasn't done her shopping! We rush downtown, her anxiously consulting her Christmas list. I have a Christmas list, too, even if it's not as long, or as well-planned as hers. She already knows exactly how much she's going to spend on each person and what she wants to get them. Sometimes she has some trouble finding Naruto's gift... that's why she brings me. I'm less decisive, because I haven't been obsessing over what I'm going to get for people. She eggs me on the whole time, tapping her fingers together nervously and glancing at the exit whenever we spend more than 10 minutes in a shop. But it still takes us all day.

"December 17th is spent with Hinata, wrapping all our presents and addressing envelopes. We aren't finished at the end of the day.

"December 18th, Hanabi needs to go shopping. She's a small child, and a procrastinator, to boot, so I take her and help her out. She's much less organized than Hinata, but her list is also smaller, and her spending money is shorter, so it takes less time. We get everything back to her room and wrapped before her bedtime.

"December 19th, One week until Christmas. Hiashi has an emotional breakdown. This probably wouldn't happen every year if he didn't try to do everything on his own every single Christmas, but I know that the one he would be asking for help would be _me_, so I'm all too happy to have him threatening to kill himself every Yuletide... maybe someday he actually will... but I doubt it, because that would be too nice of him.

"December 20th, Hiashi's breakdown has a domino effect. Hinata has a breakdown and runs around the house crying and anxiously arranging the poinsettias.

"December 21st, The Konoha Kids Alliance Christmas Party. Much of the time before the party is spent helping Hinata recover from her breakdown so that she can get drunk and hit on Naruto and they can fall in love and she can stop stalking him. This never happens, but it would be damn nice if it did, because then she would be his problem. But instead we all decorate cookies... does anyone know who bakes the cookies? They always just seem to appear."

"I think Sasuke brings them," Tenten shrugged. "I don't know where he gets them, though."

"Hmm... Anyway, December 22nd, Hinata and I wake up sometime around noon. This prompts a lecture from Hiashi, who's still recovering from his day of being locked in his room with a bottle of scotch. I think he would stop if Hinata burst into tears or something, but she never does. I think she sleeps through it.

"December 23rd Hanabi is impatient for Christmas. She also has a very high-pitched voice. It makes being in the house utterly unbearable. We (Hinata and I) started taking her caroling to put her little vocal cords to good use a few years ago. Now we call up the Konoha Kids Alliance and make a night of it.

"December 24th, The Hyuuga Family Annual Christmas Eve Party. Party doesn't start until 7:30, but the preparations start sometime the night before. Plus, Hinata absolutely hates it. I don't blame her. Imagine a high concentration of me's drunk on eggnog and looking for a little Main House girl to pick on. I get hugged a lot. That's almost as bad.

"December 25th, The actual blessed event. Starts with Hanabi waking up and running down the halls singing. Then we sit around the dead tree in the livingroom and eat candy out of our socks until we're sick, then I go to Bill's house and repeat the process with him. It's a good day. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas.

"December 26th, Boxing day's never fun for anyone, but in HyuugaLand it means an entire extended family waking up and realizing that Hinata's birthday is the next day, because Destiny hates her and as a result she has the worst birthday in the history of the world. They need to get her something in a hurry. And they need someone to ask what she wants. My phone starts ringing around 10 o'clock."

Tenten blinked at him. "Wow."

Neji shrugged. "Eh, holidays are like that."


	14. Dark Corners Part 5

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 5: Mission Impossible

A/N: Sorry I didn't reply to all the holiday reviews... holidays, you know how they are. Anyway, thank you all very much!

Do you realize that I have 13 years to kill in this story before I can throw in the kids? Thirteen years. That's a long time for someone like me. Expect giant time skips. Or maybe not. We'll see if I get any flashes of inspiration.

* * *

Louise tapped her foot impatiently and cleaned out her nails, waiting for her new sensei and teammates to show up. The teacher she knew would be late, because teachers inevitably were. But as for the boys—,

"GIVE IT BACK!"

"Give what back? It's my wallet!"

Louise glanced out of the corner of her eye at the dustball rolling towards her. She leaned against the wall of the school. It looked like her teammates had arrived.

"LIAR! It's got my picture in it!"

"Proof that it belongs to me. How vain would you have to be to keep your own picture in your wallet, Nii-san?"

"Don't call me—,"

"And we need money on us so we can treat Louise to lunch after we meet with Sensei."

"Since when do we have to treat her to lunch?"

"She's a girl! We're supposed to! Don't you have any sense of duty?"

"Not when my money's involved! If you want to flirt, pay for it with your own damn allowance!"

"It IS my allowance, it's my wallet!"

"It's not, and she'd never agree to go out with you, anyway."

"She'd never go out with _you_, maybe,"

"Why would I _want_ her? She looks like a–,"

By this point the boys were standing right in front of Louise, and totally ignoring her. She decided it was a good time to clear her throat.

Hiashi turned a shade of gray similar to the future leftover rice in Naruto's fridge. "Erg—,"

Louise rolled her eyes and turned to Hizashi. "He's right, though, you know. I wouldn't go out with _either_ of you losers. So you can give him back his wallet."

"It's my—,"

"Whatever," Louise sighed. "So, what ingenious and ill-timed piece of cheating has lead to you two being in my graduating class?"

"We didn't cheat! We _combined forces_."

Louise smiled. "Relax. I didn't exactly pass, myself. I'm friends with the janitor, he let me in the day before the test to put mirrors in the lights. You can see three or four other papers no matter where you sit. Rather clever, if I do say so myself."

"Wish you'd told me that before the exam," Hizashi muttered. "How'd you get by the practical test?"

"Oh, I passed _that_ one," Louise laughed dismissively. "I mean, I'd be a little worried to have my headband and still not be able to even make a clone."

Hiashi became very interested something on the ground. Hizashi might have made a remark about that, but somebody on top of the roof began groaning rather loudly.

"Are you kids telling me that NONE of you passed your tests fair and square?" a man said, jumping down amid the new team, looking disgusted and a little worried.

"None of your damn business," Hizashi snapped.

"Go eavesdrop on someone else, you old perv," Louise yelped, pulling the edges of her v-neck collar together.

"Yeah, I may not be able to pass an entrance test, but I can still kick your drunken ass," Hiashi added.

The man rubbed his forehead tiredly. "Kids these days.. No respect for their squad leaders."

The three teens blinked, and Hiashi walked up to the wall that Louise was leaning against and slammed his head into it. "Not my day..."

"Not mine either, apparently, kid," the jounin muttered. "Let's see, from my first impression... I hate you all."

"The feeling's mutual," Hizashi said with a smile as Hiashi banged his head into the wall again.

* * *

"All right, kids," their teacher had herded them to a training field and was making a half-hearted attempt to do the things regular senseis did. "Um... Want to introduce yourselves? Maybe say a little bit about your... I dunno, likes, dislikes... vendettas and other goals?"

There was a long silence. The adult sighed. "Oh, come on, make my job a little easier. Anyone?"

Louise finally raised her hand, mostly out of pity. "Fine. My name's Louise Makoto. My favorite thing is hair dye, which I know sounds shallow, but it's a surprisingly good way to express myself, and if you laugh, I'll sock you one right in the kisser. My least favorite thing is immature little boys who think that jokes involving the words "booger" or "boobie" are funny, and my goal is to raise enough money doing this ninja gig to rent my own place and get away from my parents."

The teacher nodded. "All right. Boys?"

"Well, we're the Hyuuga twins," Hizashi said. "Hiashi,"

"And Hizashi," Hiashi said. "Our favorite thing is our grandmother's snicker doodles,"

"Or her chocolate chips cookies," Hizashi said.

"Oh, yeah, those, or kettle corn,"

"Yeah, kettle corn!"

"And our least favorite thing is written exams,"

"Or family genealogies," Hizashi said. Hiashi looked at him.

"I don't mind them so much."

"Then why the hell are you always complaining about them?"

"I don't like getting quizzed on them before I'm allowed to eat dinner, that's all. Oh, and you know what else I really hate? When Mom gets me confused with you."

"Yeah, or when Sensei," Hizashi glanced up at his new teacher, "Er, the one back at the academy, would say "oh, what's the difference? You look alike, you sound alike,"

"Yeah! I HATE it when people do that,"

"Um, boys?" the jounin interrupted. The two boys looked up at him at exactly the same time, with exactly the same expression.

"Sorry," Hizashi said. "Where were we?"

"Our goal," Hiashi said.

"We want to destroy our family!" they said in unison.

"Um..." the poor jounin was at a loss for words. "Do you maybe want to do that... separate? Is there anyway I can tell you apart?"

The twins tilted their heads in unison. "No," they shrugged.

"All right... Um... Well, the first piece of wisdom I want to impart to you three is, never, ever, EVER step on a twig really loudly just as your squad is sneaking into a camp of high-ranked enemy agents, because even if all of you manage to get out alive, you will be stuck doing D-rank missions with a team that didn't even pass their tests."

"Hey!" Hiashi said, "It took a lot more effort to cheat on those things than it would have to actually pass them. We're probably better ninjas than those saps who did it the 'right' way."

Louise and Hizashi nodded fiercely.

The teacher sighed and gave them a very hassled look. "Maybe you're right, but that doesn't... well, let's just say that I'm very clearly being punished."

"What's that look supposed to mean?" Hizashi asked.

"It's the Oh-God-Hyuugas look," Hiashi told him. "Can't believe you didn't recognize it."

"It is not. It's the Oh-God-Main-House-Brat look," Hizashi said, grinning snidely.

"You're way off, it's the Oh-God-A-Branchy look."

"Or maybe it's the–,"

The two boys grinned at each other and yelled together, "God-Help-Us-All-It's-Hiashi-and-Hizashi Look! Hell yeah!"

Louise pointed at them as they did some kind of secret handshake. "Sensei, I just want you to know that until I got assigned to this team I never spoke to them before in my life."

The jounin sighed and checked his watch. "Screw up one little mission and suffer for the rest of your life," he muttered to himself.

* * *

A/N: Heh... sooner or later I'm going to wear out the 'too young to tell' defense and start making people in character. What a shame.


	15. Dark Corners Part 6

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 6: The Gang

A/N: The sensei for Team Makoto-Hyuuga originally had a much smaller role. In my notebooks (Rough Draft Land), I have a chapter where he's referred to as "a very boring jounin not worth mentioning." However, by popular demand, I now have a name for him. (Only a last name, but I promise it will be sufficient) So, please, give a warm welcome to Yuhi-sensei (AKA Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Chapter.)

This chapter (its general contents, anyway), have lead to a fic from Arafaxdeep20 by the name of "Why Not". It's on my faves.

Also, please pronounce "Fugy" so it rhymes with "Yugi" and not "Pugy".

* * *

"Hey," Fugaku Uchiha, a sort-of friend/classmate (and, according to Mr. and Mrs. Hyuuga and Uchiha, Hiashi's eternal rival, although this was more wistful thinking on their parents' part than actual practice.) caught up to the twins as they were wandering around town aimlessly. "Haven't seen you guys in a while! It's been, what, a month since we graduated?"

"Yeah, time sure flies when you're doing D-ranked missions," Hizashi commented sarcastically.

"Hey, they're fine with me. The less work I've got to do, the better," Hiashi shrugged.

Hizashi turned to him, irritated. "You are _the_ laziest—,"

"So," Fugaku hurried to interrupt; once the Hyuuga twins started fighting, it was hard to get them to pay attention to anything else. "Do you guys want to grab some ramen? I'm trying to avoid going home tonight."

"Family?" they asked sympathetically.

"Egh, yeah, my cousin's birthday."

"Watcha doing?" a young blond man, Inoichi Yamanaka, asked, throwing an arm around Fugaku's shoulder. "Planning a party? Are we invited?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Aw, man, I can't tonight," one of the boys on Inoichi's team, Chouza Akamichi, groaned. "Family gathering."

"Tell them you got stuck on a long mission," Hizashi suggested.

"We do it all the time," Hiashi shrugged. "If you ever need help getting out of stuff like that,"

"No, you don't understand," Chouza grinned. "I love it when my family gets together, I don't want to miss it."

The others stared at him as he walked off.

"The Akamichi's are always so happy," Fugaku noted in an awed tone.

"It's like some alien freak-show," Hiashi said.

Hizashi sighed, somewhat dramatically. "Happiness would only be considered freakish in families like ours." Hiashi slapped the back of his head.

"OW! What the hell?"

"You promised!"

"Promi–,"

"No emo."

Hizashi rolled his eyes. "No emo," he repeated resignedly.

This was as good an opening as any of the others would have. Shikaku Nara shoved his hands in his pockets. "Actually, I'm out, too, guys. I told my girlfriend I'd go shopping with her."

Hizashi bit down on a knuckle and turned his head to the side, his shoulders shaking a little.

"Shopping?" Hiashi asked, his face twitching ironically.

"For clothes," Shikaku clarified.

Hizashi burst into laughter and had to turn away completely, clutching his sides. Inoichi shuffled his feet, being embarrassed on the part of his teammate.

"You can't be serious," Fugaku said. "You like _shopping_?"

The boy shook his head with a sigh. "No, I hate it, but I promised her I'd go." He shrugged and walked off, waving casually.

One of the remaining four (not Hizashi, who was still laughing) pantomimed cracking a whip behind Shikaku's back. The rest giggled.

Shikaku turned around. "Laugh all you want," he said, walking backwards. "But I'm the one getting laid tonight."

The other four stopped laughing and contemplated this.

"So... speaking of women," Inoichi said, turning away from the street Shikaku had taken as though clearing the topic of him and his girlfriend for his head. "How's Hiashi getting along with Louise?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we all know how you get around girls," Fugaku laughed, holding his hands together close to his face and tapping his index fingers together. "Y-you get all sh-shy and stutter li-like this..." he whispered, staring at the ground.

"Yeah, you're like the most awkward boy we know," Inoichi said. "Are you actually able to function on a team with a female?"

"Oh, Louise isn't female," Hizashi laughed casually as his brother turned a shade of magenta. "She's some kind of sub-species that makes Hiashi want to argue with her all the time."

"So no stuttering?" Inoichi asked.

"No, no stuttering. Just lots of yelling."

"Feel free to stop talking about me any time, guys," Hiashi muttered. "Any time."

"Hey, are you guys making fun of Hiashi?" threw in Tsume Inuzuka, who held the esteemed position of only female to be friends with all the boys without calling undue attention to her breasts. "About how he's incapable of talking to women?"

"I- I- I am not," the Hyuuga stuttered on seeing her. She grinned. "Sh-shut up," he whispered, staring at the ground again.

"Oh, don't worry, hon, you'll grow out of it," she said, patting his head.

"Um, Tsume?" Hiashi, standing on her other side, raised his hand. "I'm Hiashi."

Tsume looked over at him, then at the boy she was petting. "Hizashi?"

The boy looked up at her innocently. "Yeah?"

"KAMI!" She jumped a little. "You two have to stop _doing_ stuff like that!"

"Ouch!" Hizashi yelped as she punched him. "Oh, come on, Tsume, you have to admit it that was a good one."

"It was not!" Hiashi yelled. "I don't stutter around her!"

"Yeah, but Tsume's one of the guys," Inoichi said. "She doesn't count."

"I don't stutter around women."

"Come on, we _all_ remember the time Mikoto Whatsherface tried to talk to us at the river," Tsume grinned. "That was _classic_."

"She was wearing a string bikini!" Hiashi objected indignantly. "And if an eye-jutsu user has to chose between ogling and talking, their brain naturally chooses ogling! It was instinct!"

"Yeah, that explains why your _identical twin_ was the one who pushed you out of the way and went on to have an actual conversation with her," Inoichi grinned.

"Fugy wasn't exactly functioning, either," Hiashi exclaimed, pointing to Fugaku, who turned red.

"Yeah, I also didn't pass out, bleeding profusely from the nose." Fugaku thought about this memory. "I wanted to, sure, but..."

"All right, that's it," Hiashi started walking off. "You guys go get ramen on your own, we're leaving."

"Oh, don't be such a drama queen," Tsume called after him.

"And who's the 'we' in that sentence?" Hizashi called.

"I only ever use 'we' when referring to us."

"Since when do you decide who I hang out with?"

Hiashi turned around and pulled something out of his pocket. "Since I stole your wallet," he said, immediately turning back around and sprinting down the street. He got about a yard before Hizashi tackled him.

"Say uncle!"

"AUNTIE EM! AUNTIE EM!"

Inoichi grinned. "Those boys need to get laid."

"Don't we all?" Tsume asked. "You guys are getting ramen?"

"Yeah, want to come?"

"Of course!"

* * *

"There he is again," Fugaku whispered suddenly, lowering his head into his ramen.

"Who?" Inoichi turned his head around to see, but Tsume grabbed him and yanked him back down, so their heads couldn't be seen from the counter.

"Minato Namikaze."

"Oh, the little runt from the year behind us?" Inoichi asked.

"The little runt from the year behind us who graduated a year before us," Hiashi clarified. "God, we can't stand him."

"He takes things so seriously," Hizashi said. "Look at him!"

"He's just buying ramen..."

"You want to go talk to him, be our guest," the twins said. "Just don't tell him where we are."

"Everything's always 'the village this' and 'the village that' with him," Fugaku said.

"Or 'shinobi code of honor blah blah blah,'" Hiashi said.

"It makes you want to puke," Hizashi added.

"We could just go home and get the same lecture from our parents,"

"And that's actually better, because they don't expect us to contribute to the conversation."

"I hear Sarutobi-sama really likes him," Tsume said. "Isn't that crazy?"

"... Really likes him?"

"Yeah, like he depends on him to do important missions and things, real top-secret stuff." She leaned in, lowering her voice.

"Does that mean..." Fugaku trailed off, then snuck a look at the counter where the young blond man was happily gulping down ramen at an impossible speed.

"No fucking way," Hizashi said.

"_We'd_ make a better Hokage than him!" Hiashi exclaimed quietly.

"Hell, _Louise_ would make a better Hokage than him, and you can see her hair from the moon!"

"What does hair color have to do with being Hokage?" Inoichi asked.

"You can't be a good ninja with bright green hair," Hiashi explained.

"You get caught very easily," Hizashi added.

"...has she gotten you guys caught?"

The twins looked at each other. "Well, no," they admitted. "But it's only a matter of time."

"So, you really think that Sarutobi's retiring?"

"That's word on the street. His wife just had a baby, you know."

"He'd still have to wait a few years, at least," Fugaku said. "If he wants Minato. The kid's younger than us, and, let's face it, we're not exactly mature enough to run a village."

"Yeah, hell, we can put an entire clan in crisis mode armed with a box of Oreos and some soap, imagine what we could do with the keys to the village," Hizashi grinned.

"Ooh, soap? I haven't heard this story," Tsume said. "Do tell."

"Well, we exaggerated a little," Hiashi said. "We also had some squirt guns and a gallon of Diet Pepsi..."

* * *

The twins tried to be quiet as possible when they got back at about three in the morning. But they weren't quiet enough.

"_Careful, the floorboard squeaks here,"_

"_Yeah, I know. Shh."_

"And where have you two been?"

Hiashi and Hizashi turned around, their faces impassive.

"Getting drunk," Hiashi said.

"And watching porno," Hizashi added.

"Then we robbed a convenience store."

"And then Hiashi stabbed the cop who came after us."

"But it didn't kill him, so Hizashi had to finish him off."

"Don't worry, we framed Sarutobi-sama for the murder."

"And then painted 'Hyuugazzz roxorz' on his living room wall."

"And now we're back," the two of them finished, tilting their heads towards each other and smiling.

Their father glared at them. Hiashi grabbed Hizashi's sleeve and pushed him down the hall towards their rooms. "And now we're going to sleep," he said simply.


	16. An Email of Questionable Content

An Email

A/N: So, right now my college's anime club has kidnaped me and forced me to watch several episodes of... you'll see. They have thus completed my education.

I don't really expect reviews or anything... It just needed written, and these drabbles are for stupid things like this. (It is very late at night and I am not thinking clearly.)

* * *

Email

From: TooSexy (at) shinobimail. com

To: ThingOne (at) hyuuga. net

Subject: Remember the time when...

So, Hiashi, I was snooping through my daughter's computer because if she's looking at porn I want to make sure that she's not paying for it. (After all, that defeats the purpose of the internet.) And I found this show... and, god, Hiashi, you need to watch this episode.

Ouran Host Club, Ep 5

It's like our entire adolescence compressed into thirty minutes... could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble, right?

Anyway, enjoy!

- Inoichi

* * *

Email

From: ThingOne (at) hyuuga. net

To: TooSexy (at) shinobimail. com

Subject: RE: Remember the time when...

Inoichi, this is without a doubt the best drunken email you have ever sent me (and I am convinced that you must have been drunk out of your mind to think that this would amuse me).

This was kind of like watching a horror movie. I kept yelling at the screen, "No, Hikaru, Kaoru, don't let that Haruhi bitch mess with you! She'll destroy your entire relationship and screw up your lives and you'll never be able to rebuild what you had!"

My daughter is looking at me very oddly, and since I'm hoping she _won't_ become a worthless otaku like, say, her father, her sister, and her drunken "Uncle" Inoichi, I'm going to wrap this up.

-Hiashi

PS: No comment on the incest.

* * *

Email

From: TooSexy (at) shinobimail. com

To: ThingOne (at) hyuuga. net

Subject: RE: RE: Remember the time when...

Three things:

One, I'm not drunk. I'm just bored.

Two, I don't think Hanabi has a chance with you, give up on the idea of non-nerdy progeny.

Three, you laughed at the incest and you know it.

- Drunken Uncle Inoichi


	17. Dark Corners Part 7

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 7: Playing House

A/N: Warning: Darker humor, but, hell, you've read this far. It's also insanely long... See? I do write long chapters! Sometimes!

When I picked Louise's last name (Makoto), I didn't realize that it sounded so close to Sasuke's mother's name (Mikoto). So, I feel I should explain the choice, to justify the confusion (and to let you all to know just how nerdy I am); I'm an Evangelion fan, and Makoto Hyuuga happens to be one of the Nerv underlings who yells stuff like "Unit 00 has a sync rate of 99!" It was too good a coincidence to pass up.

* * *

"Watch your back, squirt!" Somebody whacked Hizashi in the back with enough force to knock him to the ground.

"AH! My spine!"

The person kicked him a couple of times. "Oh, get up, you're fine."

"No, I'm not..." Hizashi lifted his head off the ground cautiously. "Uncle Hazazu?"

The man blinked. "Oh, Hizashi. Hey, are you ok?"

Hizashi stared suspiciously at the man as he helped him up and dusted him off a little. "What the hell was that about?"

"Oh, I thought you were your brother... maybe you two should stop wearing your headbands everywhere, make it easier to tell you two apart."

Hizashi (who _wasn't_ wearing his headband, as he had just been walking from the kitchen with some kettlecorn when he was mauled) decided to let the matter drop, lest Hazazu Hyuuga should decide to attack him again for being troublesome. "All right, sure, whatever you say..." He said cautiously, inching over to where he had thrown the popcorn when he was attacked.

"But, hey, I'm glad I caught up with you, I wanted to ask you something."

Hizashi stepped back a few paces. His uncle (once again, a misnomer; he was actually a second cousin in the same general age-group as Hizashi's father) was a large man, and could do considerable damage to the skinny sixteen-year-old he had cornered. "What?"

Hazazu, not paying attention to how scared his 'nephew' looked, wrapped an avuncular arm around Hizashi's shoulders. "Well, you know that the family usually rents a beach house down in Wind for a week or so, and I was wondering if you wanted to tag along this year."

"Oh, yeah, that would be fun," Hizashi said, shrugging. It wasn't that he was big on spending a week with his family, but the beach would be pretty cool. "I'll see if Hiashi wants to."

"Oh, no," his uncle laughed, "You misunderstand. It's a Branch family thing."

"...oh..."

* * *

Hiashi was sitting in his room reading a book that, in Hizashi's opinion, was unnecessarily thick. His brother tossed the bag of kettlecorn at him when he walked in.

"What the hell happened to you?" Hiashi asked, folding down the page and grabbing an handful of popcorn. "You look like you got in a fight."

"Uncle Hazazu just _clobbered_ me for no reason," Hizashi groaned, throwing himself on to the bed.

"Did he think you were me?" Hiashi asked, not particularly surprised.

"Or so he claimed... Wait," Hizashi sat up. "He's _done_ that to you before?"

"Sneak up on me and attack? Yeah, he does it all the time."

"Is he always so _violent_?"

"Yeah, he claims it's something about keeping me on my toes. I think he just likes the excuse to hit me."

"Hiashi, that's not ok! That's abusive! He can't do stuff like that!"

"Well, he does," Hiashi shrugged. "Look, it's not a big deal. I'm sorry he got you, though. You ok?"

"Forget about me!" Hizashi yelled. "This is serious. You need to do something about it!"

"I _do_ do something about it," Hiashi explained calmly. "I keep my byakugan on when I'm at home."

"Well, you shouldn't have to! That's not how to deal with things. You should– you should— you should tell Father on him or something!"

"Come on, 'Zash, think about what you're saying. Does the guy really deserve that?"

"YES! He beats my nii-san,"

"Don't call me–,"

"He deserves to die a horrible, slow, painful death the likes of which even our father could not inflict!"

"All right, calm down. If it makes you feel any better, I already told Father when it first started, and he didn't do anything."

Hizashi gaped at him. "... No, that doesn't make me feel better. Why on earth would it make me feel better that my father advocates child abuse? And why didn't you tell _me_?"

"Because I knew you would react like this! I'm not a child, I don't need my baby brother's help to deal with things like this."

Hizashi lunged across the bed and latched onto his brother. "Yes you do," he whispered.

"'Zashi! You're squishing the kettlecorn!"

"You need my help or you'd just take everything on yourself, just like they want you to, and you'd turn into an angry, bitter, evil old man like our father, and abuse your kids and keep this whole stupid, evil cycle going."

"Oh, come on, 'Zash," Hiashi said comfortingly, patting his brother's head (at a somewhat awkward angle; Hizashi's hugs rarely allowed for movement). "We're going to change things around here someday. We've already promised each other, and you're more important than anything else in the world to me, do you really think I'm going to break a promise to you?"

* * *

"Wow," Neji said. "Epic fail."

Grandma Hyuuga looked at him. "What's that now, dear?"

"A failure so epic that it curves around time and space and becomes a win," Hanabi said.

"Grandma, I really want to hear the rest of this story, I really do... but, can we just have a moment of silence to appreciate the epicness of that fail?"

"Sure, dear."

Neji closed his eyes for a moment. "Wow... _that_ is a fail."

Hanabi picked up another cookie. "All right, you can keep going, Grandma. I don't think Neji's going to be able to comprehend until he's heard through to the end."

* * *

"I don't think you'd break a promise to me, Nii-san,"

"Don't call me–,"

"I just worry you might forget."

"Forgetting a promise and breaking one are the same thing. And why would you worry about something like that? Do you forget I'm your brother on a regular basis or something?"

"Of course not!"

"Why on earth would I forget about you, then?"

"I just worry."

"Well, stop it. Your lack of faith in my cognitive abilities is making me anxious."

"It's not your cognitive abilities I worry about. It's something else. What did you do with the kettle corn?"

"You're lying on it."

"Oh..." Hizashi sheepishly adjusted himself and rescued the abused popcorn bag. "_That's_ what that crunching was." He peered cautiously into the bag, poking at its contents with a finger.

"Is it ok?" Hiashi asked, concerned.

"I think it'll make it... It's pretty crumbled, though. We might have to eat it with a spoon."

Hiashi reached over to his desk and pulled a spoon out of a former bowl of cereal that had been sitting there for a few months. "They should make kettle corn cereal," he announced, rubbing the spoon off on his sheets.

"You're not actually going to eat with that thing, are you?" Hizashi asked.

"Yeah. Why not?"

"It's been sitting here for..." Hiashi shoveled some kettle corn fragments onto his spoon. "Oh, never mind. Hey, you know how everyone disappears for a week or so in July?"

"Yeah... they go to the beach," Hiashi shrugged through a mouthful of kettle corn crumbs. "Some Branch thing."

"Um... yeah... well... I got invited..."

Hiashi froze with the spoon still in his mouth. "Dm mmm mwn noo no?" he asked cautiously.

"No, I don't really. I mean, unless you think I should..."

"S'up to you," Hiashi said, pulling the spoon out of his mouth again. He shrugged without making eye contact.

"I dunno, I'd rather just hang out with you and Louise and the guys."

"Then don't go," Hiashi said, relaxing visibly. "They probably just didn't want you to feel left out, you don't have to go or anything."

"You think?"

Hiashi nodded emphatically. "Yeah, that's it. They won't care... we'll have a party or something while they're gone."

"...yeah. Yeah, it'll be fun. And they probably don't really want me there."

* * *

"Hizashi?"

The twins looked at their father simultaneously. The only thing rarer than the Hyuuga household having a conversation at the dinner table was having a conversation at the dinner table that Hizashi was involved in.

"...yeah? Er, yes?" Hizashi gulped.

"Hazazu told me that you were invited to the beach this year."

"Yeah, well, Uncle Hazazu also tried to break my ribs this afternoon, so," Hizashi shrugged. Hiashi shifted uncomfortably and twirled his chopsticks around in his noodles.

"You're going," his father informed him bluntly.

* * *

"Hiashi, hand me the cyanide," Hizashi ordered as he considered his suitcase. "I'm going to kill myself."

Hiashi didn't look up from his book. "I told you, you look fine in that swimsuit, and it's not like there'll be girls there to impress."

"No, not because of the swimsuit. I can't spend a week with those people! Better to spare myself the pain and make my death quick."

"You're not going to die, 'Zash," Hiashi assured him patiently. "And don't forget your sunscreen."

"Yeah, thanks, mom. This had better be a one-time thing. I won't go next year. I don't care what they tell me. I'd rather die."

"For God's sake, Hizashi, you haven't even finished packing yet. How do you know that you'll hate it?"

"Common sense, Nii-san,"

"Don't call me-,"

"I'm not going to have fun stuck in a hotel with a bunch of people who have done nothing but make us miserable our entire lives, _especially_ if you're not there to suffer with me."

"I know... but it's only a week... just wander off by yourself whenever you have the chance. I'll lend you something to read. Odds are nobody will miss you."

"I'll write."

"Zash, it's only a week."

"I'll still write."

"Fine. I'll read, then."

* * *

Over the past two days, the phone had learned that it was not going to get more than half a second worth of ringing in per call, so it put everything it had into being as loud as possible for the meager amount of time it was allowed.

"_**RI-**_,"

Sure enough, Hiashi snatched up the receiver instantaneously. "Hello?"

"Hiashi! I want to go home!"

"Already?"

"Oh, like you haven't been waiting next to the phone ever since I got outside city limits. Don't we have friends you can hang out with?"

"I- I was worried, about you, that's all! It's a dangerous trip, you know."

"Wouldn't be so dangerous if I wasn't with these freaks," Hizashi muttered, peering out from the hotel's phone-booth suspiciously. "They try to have conversations with me and stuff... like, they make me talk to them at dinner, and I have to share a room with some random cousin I've never even seen before, and tonight I'm going to have to sit around and play cards with them or whatever they think is fun."

"Sounds like hell."

"It is! And they all know each other... it's like some weird cult."

"...Hizashi, they all live in the same compound... WE live WITH them. Of course they know each other."

"But, they're... like... loud and friendly, and they don't act like this at home, Hiashi! I'm freaking out! This isn't the family that I know and hate! It's a family that I don't know and hate! I'm going to die here!"

"You're not going to die, Hizashi. They're just excited to be on vacation... they're still the same old Hyuugas. Just stay out of their way and you'll be fine."

"That's not going to be so easy...They keep _talking_ to me. And on top of that, I forgot my sun screen."

"I _told_ you to pack it."

"Yeah, well, I didn't. I'll try to borrow some, but you'd better work on your tan while I'm gone... I don't want people to start distinguishing between us just because I had to spend a week in hell and came back sexy."

"Ha, like _that_ could ever happen."

"It wouldn't happen to _you_, maybe. It's not my fault I inherited all the mojo."

"You did not!"

The phone beeped urgently.

"What was that?" Hiashi asked.

"Oh, I'm on the pay-phone... Just a sec..."

The phone beeped again.

"Dammit, I don't have any change... Listen, I'm not going to be able to call you back... Don't worry about me, I'll survive, and I'll see you soon, ok?"

"What happened to 'I'm gonna die?'" Hiashi asked.

"Well, I am going to die here, but I don't want it to ruin your week. Get out of the house and do something productive while I'm gone, k?"

The phone beeped.

"I love you, nii-san."

"Don't call me-,"

The phone disconnected.

"Gee, Hizashi, I love you, too," Hizashi grinned to himself as he hung up. The door to the phone booth opened.

"Hey, Hizashi-kun, who ya calling?"

Hizashi backed against the phone defensively. Possibly the scariest part of the whole ordeal thus-far was how many people who seemed to know who him versus how many he actually recognized. Such as the cousin he was rooming with, and who apparently felt the need to follow him. "Nobody... A friend at home..."

"You have friends?" the cousin asked, genuinely surprised. "We never see you with anyone."

"Are you stalking me or something? How do you know who I'm hanging out with?"

Rather than answering, the cousin laughed. "Come on, you're going to miss dinner."

* * *

"Hiashi, are you going to sit next to the phone all day?"

"All week, actually," Hiashi informed his father without letting his gaze fall from the phone.

"That's not very healthy."

"Neither is spending a week at the beach with that monstrosity of a family."

"Sooner or later you're going to be in charge of that 'monstrosity', remember."

"If you say so, sir."

His father stared at him suspiciously for a moment. "Hiashi?"

"Still present and accounted for," Hiashi said in the same deadpan voice, right before his father reached over his head and ripped off his headband. "I was wearing that, you know."

"Look at me."

Hiashi sighed heavily and turned around. "Yes, your more-obviously unwanted son is the one stuck in a hotel with the freak-show. We did not switch places because as much as I'd like to spare him that experience, I want to spare myself that experience even more. Can I have my headband back?"

"No. You shouldn't be wearing it, anyway."

Hiashi rolled his eyes and made a mental note to ask Grandma Hyuuga for another one the next chance he got. "Yes, sir."

"And if you think that this moping is going to convince me that you're better off with your brother around, you are sadly mistaken. You two are too close. It's time that you both began making friends from your own social status."

It wasn't that Hiashi didn't know that his father was a cruel, heartless, scheming, puritanical bastard. Oh, Hiashi knew. Hiashi had 16 years of experience, 32 if you counted Hizashi's. It just always took him off-guard when he said something that revealed exactly how warped he was. But Hiashi was also incredibly afraid of his father, so he didn't say anything. He just thought very angrily to himself.

"Get up, you're going to do something productive for once."

"The gutters need cleaned again, huh?" Hiashi sighed, reluctantly standing up and preparing to leave the phone.

"No, I'm going to teach you how to do Kaiten."

Hiashi perked up. "Is that some kind of drug?"

"No, it's a jutsu."

Hiashi's enthusiasm went away as quickly as it had appeared. "Oh. Lame."

* * *

Hizashi was not happy. He had thought, briefly, that he might get along with at least a few of his cousins, or that he would enjoy having people who were related to him treat him like a human being, but this was not proving to be the case.

He was already well into the book Hiashi had lent him, and it didn't look like it would last out the week. He couldn't scrounge up enough change to make another call to Konoha, and he could only imagine what his father would do to him if he called collect. His hiding places kept getting discovered, mostly by the army of small Hyuuga children who spent their vacation playing Hide and Seek. And then at night...

Hiashi and Hizashi's main hobby, when they were alone together, or when they were around their friends, was complaining bitterly about their parents, their clan... or, actually, just complaining in general. So Hizashi _liked_ complaining. He even liked talking about people behind their backs. And he _hated_ his family. So there was no reason that he would want to stand up for them.

But, man, when Branch Family Hyuuga cut into the Main house, they played for keeps. Every night, after dinner, people would be sitting around, chatting, playing cards, hanging out (Hizashi would be in a corner, ignoring them), and then someone would casually mention the Main house, and the conversation would turn immediately to every vicious joke anybody had ever thought up about any of them.

Hizashi sometimes felt like pointing out that whatever he thought of her, nobody was allowed to talk about his mother like that in front of him, but he felt like anyone standing up for his side of the family would be torn to pieces immediately. He dealt with it by concentrating on his book and humming a little to himself.

"You think things are bad now, wait until Hiashi-sama's in charge. Kid couldn't manage an ant farm."

"HEY!"

Hizashi clapped a hand over his mouth as every pair of lilac eyes in the room turned to his corner.

"Oh, Hizashi, we forgot you were here..." one of them said, smiling.

"Yeah, you've got it worse than us... Bet you've got some _real_ horror stories."

Hizashi pressed against the wall, hoping that it would give way and he could escape. "N-no, not really..."

"Don't worry, we won't rat you out. You're one of us."

"Really, I don't have anything to say."

"You sure? Come on, you're hardly ever out of Hiashi's sight, don't you get tired of him?"

Hizashi gritted his teeth and eyed the exits. No luck, he would have to step on people to get out. "No."

"They've really got you on a leash, huh?"

"We should have rescued you earlier... Didn't know you were so scared of them."

"Rant a little. We'd love to hear it."

"No need to be shy, we're on your side."

"Aren't you even a little sick of being their pet?"

"I'm not their pet and I don't have anything to say!" Hizashi snapped, standing up and storming out. Screw it if he stepped on a few of them; serve them right.

"No need to get so upset."

"Oh, he'll come 'round... they've just got him brainwashed."

* * *

There was nowhere in the hotel that was really isolated enough, so Hizashi decided to wander onto the beach and sit there, at least until he was sure his roommate was asleep. Although, the sand was still warm from the sun, and the waves were very soothing, and the hotel was very loud and full of Hyuugas. He decided to just sleep outside. The crabs probably wouldn't pinch off his fingers.

He woke up at noon with a seagull trying to pick up his hair and a horrible sunburn, trying to shake off the horrible, burdening knowledge that it was only Thursday.

* * *

Hiashi was sitting on the porch. Every muscle in his body hurt; he had the suspicion that his body had _grown_ new muscles in order to have them hurt. Kaiten, he had decided earlier that week, may be a nice party trick, but was generally a lot of work for very little pay off. He didn't understand why he couldn't just dodge things like every other ninja under the sun.

But at the moment he wasn't thinking about ridiculously complicated blood-line abilities. He wasn't even thinking about his muscles (for the first time since his father had dragged him off to the garden to train). He was watching the road... or what he could see of it from the porch.

Hizashi was one of the few Hyuugas _not_ saddled with a family or talking to a group of friends. He was the only one barreling down the road to home at top speed, and he was the first one to burst through the gate to his house. Odds were, he was the only one who was weak-kneed with relief (and possibly exhaustion) to see Hiashi sitting outside waiting for him.

It worked both ways. Hizashi was the only Hyuuga that his brother was glad to see. He jumped up as soon as he saw him, only to be knocked back down as his brother jumped on him.

"HIASHI! You're still alive! You're still here!"

"...Gee, Hizashi, I love you, too."

* * *

The next day, Inoichi, Chouza, and Fugaku were going to their favorite greasy burger joint, The Konohamburger, to make fun of Shikaku for ditching them again.

"You think Thing Two's back in town yet?" Inoichi asked as he watched Chouza mix together random drinks at the soda fountain.

"He should be... And then Old Man Hyuuga should start letting the other one leave the house, too," Fugaku said. "Probably."

"'Zash has been at the beach, right?" Chouza asked. "And you just _know_ he forgot his sun screen."

"Yeah, what's your point?"

"He's gonna be sunburned!" Chouza explained. "And Hiashi won't be! We'll be able to keep them straight for a while!"

The three friends grinned at each other, and the door swung open.

"Hey, guys!"

Inoichi, Chouza, and Fugaku gaped at the two sunburned young men flagging them down.

"You- you... that's impossible!" Fugaku stuttered.

Hiashi and Hizashi tilted their heads to the side in unison. "What's impossible?"

"You're both sunburned!" Chouza said.

"Yeah... we both got out a lot this week," one of them shrugged, grinning.

"But... in the exact same places and everything? How do you _do_ that?"

The twins smiled at them.

* * *

A/N: The moral of this chapter is "No matter who you are in the Hyuuga clan, somebody is going to hit you."


	18. Shaun the Non Believer

Shaun the Non-Believer and the OCD Child

Summary: An episode from Neji's childhood. Starring Bill-sensei and company, and also a little bit of Itachi. (I'm in the middle of an Itachi fangirl fit, excuse me while I vent my love via OOC baby stories.)

This is a real rambly one... Writer's Block again.

* * *

Neji was, as Bill put it, an unreasonably well-behaved child. He brushed his teeth after every meal. He finished his vegetables. He cleaned up his toys. He went to bed at exactly 8:30 every night. And he did all this without being asked.

"I just don't see the problem," Hiashi had said when Bill called him up to complain.

"It's not _natural_ for a kid his age. 8:30 _every night_. He watches the clock. He'll turn off TV shows just to get ready for bed."

"Well, is he sneaking out?"

"No," Bill sighed. "I've been checking. He goes in there and... and...sleeps. I don't know what to do about it."

"Well, I would-_ HINATA! NO! Put it back where you found it! You'll get rabies!_- _I_ would sit back and have a drink at 8:35 every night. You can't exactly tell him to kick and scream at bedtime."

"I know."

"I'd be willing to trade, you know, if you want- _WHAT DID I SAY!? Not in the house!_ - if you want to switch kids sometime, I would kill to have one that behaves- _I don't care if it's hurt, it's a wild animal!_"

"Something tells me that he wouldn't be so well-behaved for you, no offense."

"Yeah, I know, just a thought. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in- _YOU'RE CLEANING THAT UP, YOUNG LADY!-_ and you're calling me to complain that he's too well behaved?"

"He takes his lunch to school, you know, and he eats all of it. And he saves the dessert for last every time."

Hiashi sucked in his breath. "Do you think he should see a therapist?"

"I do, but I doubt we'll get him in; the waiting list is awful, all those ninjas with Post-Traumatic Stress. A mildly-OCD kid doesn't have much of a shot."

"I'll see what I can do, but- _WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?_" A baby started crying in the background. "Ah, great, now Hanabi's awake. Bill, I've got call you back.-_ WHAT WERE YOU DOING?!_"

Bill sighed as he hung up the phone. He was simply not equipped to deal with a child, let alone one with problems like Neji's. It was one thing to have a little kid running around, being the darling of the lodgers and getting away with comical misadventures, à la a children's book, but it was another thing entirely to drop a real-life orphan into Bill's house and hope he'd be ok. Actually, given his experiences with Neji over the past few years, Bill would be concerned about dropping him off _anywhere_ and hoping he'd be ok.

"G'night, Lady Mimi." Bill heard the little voice in the next room and checked his watch. 8:25, just like clockwork.

"Mimi gets a bedtime snack?" the parrot asked hopefully.

"Not tonight, Mimi. Shaun said not to. G'night, Travis."

Travis barked cheerfully. Travis was a very friendly dog.

"G'night, Norman."

"Eh? What's that, little fellow?"

"I said GOOD NIGHT, NORMAN!"

"Oh, right. Good night, Neji-kun."

A sound that sentimentals commonly refer to as "the pattering of little feet" approached , and Neji tugged at Bill's pants leg. "G'night, Bill."

"Good night, Neji."

"Have you seen Shaun?"

"I think he's at one of his poetry readings."

"If you see him, please tell him I said good night," the little boy said seriously. He turned to go upstairs, when Bill decided to be a good parental figure and take a stand against this delinquent behavior.

"Neji!"

Neji turned around. "Yes?"

"Um, listen, if you're not tired yet, you can stay up a little later. Say, till nine."

Neji shook his head. "I'm tired," he said.

"It's ok with me, you know," Bill said. "I'm going to be up for a while, anyway."

"No!" Neji didn't yell. Neji never yelled. But when he got anxious he talked in the louder, more desperate voice that he used now. "I'm tired! I need to go to sleep. Good night."

Bill started up the stairs, but Neji had already scrambled up and locked himself in the bathroom to brush his teeth. Neji always brushed his teeth before bed.

* * *

"Shaun, could you pick Neji up from school today? I've got to go explain to the Hokage that I can't take a team this year because I'm irresponsible."

"Shouldn't be a long hearing," Shaun said snidely. "I'll go pick up Mimi's prescription and then I'll get him."

"NO!" Bill gasped. "No, you have to get him as soon as class lets out, or otherwise he hunts down Hinata and beats on her."

Shaun raised an eyebrow at him. "Really?" he said sarcastically. "The little girl with the stutter? He picks on _her_?"

"Yes, really. Please, Shaun, just run down there and pick him up, you can drag him down to the petshop with you afterward."

"Uh... Is he ok with petshops?"

Bill shrugged. "I don't see why not."

Shaun gulped uncomfortably. Bill's lodgers knew that their landlord came from a clan with some less-than-ethical practices (it was hard not to, living with Neji and all), but all of them preferred to avoid the topic unless Bill breached it first, and even then, they'd rather not talk about it. "It's just... well..."

Bill entirely missed what Shaun was getting at. "I take him along when I run errands, he just follows me around quietly. But, hey, if he wants a gerbil or something, go ahead and buy him one, I'll pay you back."

"Well..."

"Please, Shaun? PLEASE? I can't take a team... I can barely handle Neji, and I don't have to drag him around on missions."

"I dunno, it might look pretty bad- er, good if you were late to your 'I'm irresponsible' meeting."

"Not if I'm late because I'm picking up a kid that I don't have any legal obligation to raise."

"Yeah, why do you take care of him?"

Bill shrugged. "Where do you suggest he live? No one knows what happened to his mother, his dad's dead, and he practically has a heart attack when he gets within two blocks of the clan property... that leaves me."

"So, you do have _some_ kind of obligation."

"Only so much as I would feel a little guilty if I sent him back to his uncle and he killed himself as a result. Also, they are paying for me to put up with him, so I might as well."

Shaun lowered his glasses to get a better look at his landlord. "All right, Bill, I'll pick him up... and, at your meeting, I suggest repeating what you just said to me."

* * *

"Well, Neji, Bill isn't here," one of the girls in his class remarked as the children were released. She sounded just a little smug about this. "Are you going to have to walk home alone like us lesser beings?"

Shaun heard her and bit back a grin. So, Neji didn't have any social skills around children his own age, either.

"Of course not," the boy said, pointing at Shaun. "He's picking me up."

The girl rolled her eyes. "You don't even know who that is."

"Yes I do. It's Shaun the Nonbeliever." Neji waved his hand in the air. "Shaun! Shaaaaauuuun!"

Shaun waved back and walked over. "Hey, Neji. Bill asked me to pick you up today."

Neji nodded, glanced back briefly at his classmate, just to confirm that he had won their competition, and walked off with Shaun in tow.

"I have to stop by the pet shop for a minute," Shaun said. "Lady Mimi's diet food is in... is that ok, buddy?"

Neji contemplated this for a moment, then nodded. "As long as I can get my homework done when I get home."

Shaun looked down at his charge for a moment, hoping that Neji was joking. But of course, he wasn't. Neji didn't joke.

* * *

"Hello, Shaun," the lady at the counter greeted as they entered "Animals Etc," the local pet store. Shaun let go of Neji's hand, and the boy wandered off promptly towards the rodents. "Here for Mimi's food?"

"Yup."

The woman hauled up a carefully-wrapped package of birdseed with a prescription label affixed to it. "I saw your performance at The Tango Mocha the other night," she said, leaning over the counter, brushing artistically-cut dark hair over her shoulder.

Shaun raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

"Yeah... it was so dead on, about oppression and everything. You have a real _voice_."

Meanwhile, Neji had grown bored with the rats and guinea pigs, and had located the parakeets.

Shaun cleared his throat. "Ah, well, when you're inspired, it just sort of comes to you, you know."

"Oh, totally," the woman breathed. "I mean, you've got a real message, man."

Shaun pushed his sunglasses against his nose to hide his eyes, which were affixed to the cashier's cleavage. "Yeah, thanks."

Neji looked around the shop and located some cat scratching-posts the right height for a young boy to use as a step-ladder.

"You write poetry?" Shaun asked.

"Oh, me? No," she said. "I mean, I dabble, of course, but I've never finished something, that, you know, I would read aloud."

"No, no, don't underrate yourself. I'd be happy to come by your place sometime and take a look at your- er, poems."

"That would be-,"

"Be free, little birds! Be free!"

Shaun and his admirer looked over towards the shelves where the gleeful shout emanated.

"That sounds like Neji..." Shaun said.

"Neji?" the woman asked. "The boy you came in with? Is he your son?"

"Oh, no!" Shaun said. The woman looked suspicious. "He's-," Shaun thought, then decided on the truth. "He's an orphan, I watch him after school... you know, I've always felt that this town doesn't have a good enough system to care for children from broken homes." Ok, mostly the truth.

"I totally agree," she said adoringly. "I mean, they're our country's future, we should put more effort into their upbringing."

"Yes," Shaun leaned onto the counter. "In fact, I'm thinking of starting a petition to provide more services for Konoha's disadvantaged children."

"That is _so_ cool," she breathed. A canary landed on her head. "AH!"

"Oh crap," Shaun ran down the aisle to the bird section, where Neji was happily climbing from cage to cage, opening the doors.

"Come on, you're free now!" he told a disgruntled-looking group of finches. "Fly away! LIVE!"

"Oh no, you don't!" Shaun shouted, snatching Neji off of the shelf.

"Shaun, let go!" Neji tried to squirm out of the man's grasp. "Quick, birdies! Get away while you still can!"

Shaun tried to reach for the cage door, but his hands were busy with Neji. The finches seemed to sense his intentions, however, because they exited their cage en masse.

"What are you doing?!" demanded Shaun's admiring petshop cashier, pointing at the rows of empty bird cages.

"I'm letting them free!" Neji declared as though this was the most natural thing in the world.

The cashier looked in despair at the flock of exotic birds above her. She was no longer the infatuated activist of a few minutes ago. "You had better either catch those things or pay for them," she told Shaun flatly, hands on her hips.

Shaun's eyes widened. "But- I don't have the money..."

"Well, I'm not going to lose my job just because you can't keep one little kid under control, so you'd better start grabbing those birds."

The bell at the counter rang a couple of times.

"That's enough, Sasuke. Be patient."

Neji wiggled free of Shaun's grasp and ran through the shelves towards the new customer. "Itachi! Look what I did!"

Itachi smiled at the boy, although he did step between Neji and Sasuke protectively. "What did you do, Neji?"

"I set all the birds free!" he said, pointing at a nearby pair of lovebirds.

"Oh, you did, huh?" Itachi said. "And where was Bill while you were doing that?"

Neji shrugged. "Bill's with the Hokage."

"So, are you here by yourself?"

"No. I'm with Shaun the Nonbeliever," Neji pointed at his angry babysitter and the angry cashier. Itachi nodded.

"Hey, Shaun. How are things going?"

Shaun picked Neji up. "Not real great, Itachi. Not real great."

"Look, why don't you go on home?" the young Uchiha suggested. "Tell Bill what happened when he gets back."

"He's not going anywhere," the cashier said angrily.

"I'll take care of any damages," Itachi assured her, reaching for his wallet. "Unlike Shaun, I can actually afford to."

The woman looked uncertain, but Shaun darted out the door before she could protest. "Hey, thanks Itachi, I owe you one," he muttered quickly before slamming the door closed.

Itachi turned to his little brother. "Hey, Sasuke, how would you like to play a game?"

Sasuke looked around uncertainly. "Dad said to buy the catfood and then go home..."

"This won't take long, and it's good training."

Sasuke perked up immediately. After all, if Itachi said it was ok, it was ok. "What's the game?"

"It's called 'Catch all the birds'."

* * *

"Hey, Shaun, guess who doesn't have a team this year?" Bill walked in the door, looking happy, seconds after Shaun and Neji returned. "Why do you have feathers in your hair?"

"Why don't you ask your cousin?" Shaun said, pushing Neji forward.

"Oh, god, what did he do?"

"I let all the birds at the petshop free," Neji said proudly.

Bill looked from Neji to Shaun to Neji again. "And my day was going so well..." he sighed. "Neji..."

"Yes?"

"You can't let other people's pets go, ok?"

"But they were birds," Neji said uncertainly.

"I know they were birds, but they belonged to the petshop, and when you let somebody else's pet go, it's the same as stealing."

"I don't think it should be legal to own birds," Neji announced.

"What about Lady Mimi?" Bill asked patiently. "Shaun owns her, and she's happy."

"But Mimi's not caged," Neji explained. "That's different."

"Look, you can't set birds free, ok?"

"Why not?"

"Because I said so!" Bill snapped.

"Why are you saying so?"

* * *

"I don't understand how you can brush your teeth after every meal and go to bed at 8:30 every night without a single complaint, but you can't understand why you don't let animals free at petshops! It's just against the rules, ok?"

"Since when?"

"SINCE ALWAYS!"

Itachi stopped on Bill's porch to set Sasuke down and pat the beagle that trotted up to them. "Sasuke, you wait here with Travis, ok?"

"Why?"

"Well, this is where Bill and Neji live, and they're cousins of Hinata's," Itachi explained. "Remember what we say about Hinata's family?"

"Stay the hell away from them," Sasuke said with a smile. Itachi ruffled his hair.

"That's right. I'll be right back."

He knocked on the door.

"You're grounded for the rest of the week!"

"You're not my boss."

"Oh, yeah? Fine. I'll call up Hiashi and let _him_ tell you that you're grounded, how does that sound?"

"NO!! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll be good, please please please don't call him!"

Itachi knocked louder, trying to make himself heard over the small boy crying inside the house.

"All right, fine, I won't call him, but you'd better behave."

"I will, I will!"

"Way to enforce the kid's irrational fear of his relatives, Bill," Shaun muttered sarcastically.

"Shut up, Shaun, I didn't see you offering any advice. I also didn't see you _watching_ him like you were supposed to."

"You told me he wasn't going to be any trouble, you liar!"

Itachi knocked again, and this time Bill answered.

"Oh, hey, Itachi! What are you doing here?"

"Shaun left Mimi's food at the shop," Itachi held up the package. "Neji doin' all right?"

"Oh, with that boy, who the hell knows? What was he _thinking_?"

Itachi smiled. "You never tried to set animals free when you were little?"

"No, never. Why, did you?"

"Yeah, once or twice. When you're little, you sympathize more with animals than with adults, and you don't like to see them locked up."

Bill shook his head. "You're so much better with this child-rearing thing than I am..."

"What can I say? I'm a natural-born older brother. You want me to talk to him?"

"That would be wonderful of you."

"Make sure Sasuke doesn't wander off, ok?" Itachi asked, nodding over at his brother and walking past Bill into the kitchen.

Neji wiped some tears out of his eyes when he saw him. "Itachi!"

"Hi, Neji. What's up?"

Neji looked down at the floor and scuffed his feet. "I'm grounded..."

"Ah, really?"

"Yeah... Bill's mad at me."

"Ooh... well, do you want to go up to your room and talk about it with me?"

Neji nodded. "Ok."

* * *

Itachi emerged five minutes later. "It won't happen again," he told Bill when the young man looked up at him hopefully.

"How do you do that?" Bill asked. "I can't talk to him at all..."

Itachi shrugged. "It's just a certain mentality, I guess."

"Hey, maybe next time you babysit for him, could you find out why he's so... obsessive-compulsive? I know I'm not the best parent, but I do worry about the little bugger..."

"You do all right, Bill. I mean, he's still alive. You're too young to deal with a kid."

Bill scuffed his foot against the floor and tried not to blush. Itachi had a way of making people feel inferior, and the more he tried to cheer them up, the worse it got. "You're younger than me, and Sasuke worships you."

"Yeah, but I don't have to feed him... also, he's my brother. He'd worship me if I killed his dog," Itachi smiled, but for some reason it wasn't the reassuring expression he intended it to be. Bill wondered how any small child could want to play with the young man standing in his kitchen. Itachi had something about him that made adults shudder. Nicest kid ever, but still, there was something unsettling in his eyes. "I'd just let Neji keep going to bed on time and brushing his teeth and all, by the way. He said you were trying to stop him."

"I wasn't, really," Bill protested, "I just offered to let him stay up later, I didn't think he would get so upset."

"His father told him to get to bed on time, so he does," Itachi explained.

"Huh?"

"Oh, you know, it's just the sort of order you give a kid. 'Go to bed,' 'brush your teeth,' 'eat your vegetables,' 'pick up your toys,' that sort of thing, and he doesn't have much left of his father, so he keeps doing them. He'll grow out of it... or he'll have the best teeth in Konoha. Either way, it's not doing any harm."

Bill stared at him, open-mouthed. "_That's_ what it is? You got all that out of him in five minutes?"

"More or less... Don't feel bad, Bill, it's harder for him to talk to family members, that's all. SASUKE!"

Sasuke's head poked around the doorway. "Yes?"

"Come on, Sasuke, time to go."

"Can we stop and get dango?"

"Maybe next time. Mom'll kill me if I spoil your dinner."

* * *

"Neji?" Bill knocked on the door quietly and received a sullen grunt, which he took as permission to enter. Neji was sitting on his bed, staring out the window. "Hey, buddy..."

"What?"

Bill cursed his horrible parenting skills for approximately the 21,389th time since Neji had come to live with him and sat down on the bed next to the boy. "Neji, I've been thinking... you didn't know about the birds, maybe I should let you go with a warning this time."

"So... I'm not grounded?"

"Not this time... next time, though, I won't go easy on you."

Neji actually turned to face Bill, which Bill figured was something akin to forgiveness. "Really?"

"Yes. Just, no more letting animals go, ok?"

Neji nodded and leaned onto Bill's shoulder. "Thanks, Bill."

Bill pulled him closer. "Ah, well, I overreacted. You're a good kid, really."

"You're a good guardian, Bill," Neji said, snuggling closer. "I like living here with you and Shaun and Norman and Travis and Lady Mimi."

"I'm glad to hear it," Bill said softly, smoothing his ward's hair. "Hey, Neji, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Bill."

"Itachi told me a little bit about why you... why you have those rituals of yours."

"I know you don't like them," Neji whispered, "but... I need to keep doing them. I don't want to... I don't want to disappoint him..."

"Shh, it's ok," Bill hurried to assure him, "I just didn't know... if they make you feel better, it's fine to keep doing them. I won't stop you."

"Thank you."

Bill hesitated before he asked his question. He was already in dangerous Neji Territory, and he was about to go one step further than he had ever gone before. But he needed to go there, because he thought he now knew why the two cousins had to be separated. "Neji... did your father ever say anything to you about Hinata?"

"Like what?"

_Like that you had to kill her when you grew up?_ "Well, did he ever give you any orders about her?"

Neji sat up and thought for a moment. "Um... he told me I needed to protect her..."

"Oh?" Bill suddenly saw a bright future ahead of him; a future where he didn't get irrate calls from the school asking him to come pick up his kid because he'd just beat a girl black and blue during recess. "You don't really do that, you know."

Neji furrowed his eyebrows and thought very hard about this. Finally, his face cleared, and he smiled up at Bill. "Oh, I'm sure he didn't mean _that_, though."

* * *

A/N: Neji's logic always amuses me.


	19. Dark Corners Part 8

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

Part 8: Wherein Team Makoto-Hyuuga goes on an Adventure, Part 1

A/N: So, I'm co-writing a less fluffy, more absurd Hyuuga fic with my friend Bookwyrmy. It's called "Spiritual Relations", and it's on both my profile and my favorites. I recommend you check it out. It's about the Hyuuga Dark Angsty Backstory, a sailor suit, and possession jutsus. There's incest! (And if _that_ doesn't sell you...)

------------------------------

"So, are you guys ok?" Louise asked while they sat around waiting for their teacher. Hiashi was rubbing aloe vera on his forehead, which was just as sunburned as the rest of him and was not reacting well to having a headband over it all day.

"Well, I've got a killer headache," he said, tying the headband back gingerly.

"And I keep finding sand in my ears," Hizashi said.

"But other than that, we're fine."

Louise shrugged. "Well, if you're sure." It didn't seem polite to point it out, after all, it wasn't really any of her business. They weren't even friends of hers. The brothers just seemed a little... distant today, and then there was the fact that they hadn't been seen in a week.

"Why, is something wrong?"

"Just... I was wondering if you guys were having a fight or something."

The twins laughed. "We don't fight."

"Well, we do, but we hit each other and yell. You would know if we were fighting."

Louise chucked a stick over the railing of the roof they were sitting on and listened for the yelp below her as it hit. "I mean, like, actual falling-out fighting."

"Nah, never."

She might have pressed it, but Yuhi-sensei appeared, surprisingly early and unusually angry. "Oh, you all showed up today," he said sarcastically. "What an honor."

"Hey, shut up," Hiashi snapped. "We've had the Week From Hell."

"And of course the infamous Hyuuga Twins couldn't be bothered to let their sensei know that they wouldn't be available for missions for the week. No, that would be far too considerate of you."

"Look, the last thing we need is a lecture from you," Hizashi said. "Let's just all forget that this week ever happened."

"I'd be all for it," their teacher snapped, "except that we have an escort mission that should have been done a week ago, so now we're headed off to some remote little temple so that this guy can get his tourism done."

"Why's he need an escort?" Louise asked. "Is he important?"

"Hell no," Yuhi-sensei snorted. "Like they'd put us duds in charge of someone important. He's just a random monk or something, but he's on a pilgrimage to this place, and he's paying for us to keep him from getting mauled by tigers on his way out. And we're going to do it in record time, got it? Because my wife is _this close_," He held his thumb and forefinger together. "To having her baby, and I am not going to miss the Miracle of New Life and the Joy of Fatherhood because three little brats couldn't show up for one damn C-rank mission the week it was assigned." Yuhi-sensei leaned in and glared at the three teenagers before him. "There will be no delays. We will sleep the bare minimum necessary to regain our strength. If the client is still tired, we will carry him. Fights will be short and sweet. And so help me, if one of you gets in trouble, I'm leaving you behind. Any questions, kids?"

All three of the children raised their hands, so Louise lowered hers to rest on her hip. "I think Cloud Village has a better teamwork ethic than you, sensei."

"Good for Cloud. Yes, Hi– ashi?"

"Hizashi," Hizashi corrected. "Your wife is pregnant?"

"Yes. Very. Hizashi?"

"Hiashi. You're married?"

Yuhi-sensei stared at him for a moment, and then plunked down on the ground, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I am," he said tiredly. "To the most beautiful, perfect woman in the world, and yes, she is getting ready to have my child, and I would give my right arm to be home with her sharing this joyous experience, not to mention helping her out around the house so that she can relax, but NO, I'm stuck with the team who goes MIA right before a mission and I have to wait for them to honor me with their presence before I can go home."

"Hey, I would have rather been here!" Hizashi yelled in response to the accusatory glance his teacher cast at him. "Better than sitting around playing the Let's-Talk-About-Hizashi's-Family-Like-He-Isn't-_In-the-Room-With-Us_-and-See-What-He-Does Game and being force fed lobster by crazy Aunt Hazel."

"Lobster?" Louise asked, sounding scandalized. But not as scandalized as Hiashi.

"The _What_ Game?!"

"I was at the beach," Hizashi explained to Louise.

"You lucky bastard," Yuhi-sensei muttered bitterly.

"With my clan," explained his student.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Me too," Hizashi said.

"What did they say about me?" Hiashi asked.

"Nothing."

"No, really, they must have said_ something_."

"Drop it, ok?"

"And Hiashi!" Yuhi-sensei snapped. "Where were _you_, if I'm allowed to ask?"

"I was being held _captive_! You should have sent out a squad to rescue me!"

"Yeah, the horrors of having to learn some super-secret technique," Hizashi muttered sarcastically to himself.

"Really?" Louise asked. "Could you teach it to me?"

"No."

"Why not? Some bloodline thing?"

Hiashi looked at her for a moment. "... No, I just don't feel like it."

"SENSEI!" Louise yelped. "Hiashi's being a prick!"

"What else is new?" the responsible adult said. "And don't look to me for solace; you still haven't accounted for your whereabouts."

"_Louise_ was missing, too?" the twins asked. "Where the hell did you go?"

Louise pulled up her shirt to just below her breasts. "I was getting my belly-button pierced, look." The males watched, mesmerized, as she poked at a neon-green ball on her midriff. "I had to go to the next town over to get it done... I don't trust the ones here ever since they screwed up my cartilage piercing. I'm learning how to make it wiggle, look."

"Uh- uh..." Yuhi-sensei blinked. "Well, Louise has the best excuse so far... All right, let's all... put our shirts down and get started on this mission."

— —

"All right, kiddies, this is Kenta-san. We'll be escorting him to..." Yuhi-sensei turned to the unprepossessing young-ish monk next to him. "Where are you going again?"

"The Peach Blossom Temple," he responded with a good-humored smile. He was quite clearly looking at this team as one of those expected misadventures of traveling; a temporary setback not worth getting worked up over. Yuhi was grateful for his attitude; he only wondered how long it would last.

"That's only about a day and a half from here, isn't it?" Louise asked. "That's not so bad; we can be back here in three days."

Yuhi-sensei cleared his throat. "It's _one_ day from here, now," he announced. "We'll be back in two days, end of story.

Kenta looked down at the small folding map in his hands. "It says two days in the guidebook-,"

Yuhi smiled and turned to him. "Really? Must be a mistake. It's one day. Let me know if the pace is too much for you... I'll be more than happy to carry you."

"What do you mean _more than happy_?" Hiashi asked. Yuhi sent him a glare that could have killed a bijuu. "Nobody really believes that you're even _happy_ to carry some guy around for money, and what does _more_ than happy even _mean_?"

"Excuse the twins, they slept during most of their education, especially the part that involved dealing with clients."

"We resent being referred to as 'the twins', especially when Hiashi's the only one who slept through class," Hizashi informed his teacher irately. "Well, at least, he's usually the only one who slept through class."

Louise shouldered her knapsack and gave Kenta the Monk a sympathetic shrug. "Trust me, sir, by the time that we've dropped you at your temple, you'll be _more than happy_ we cut the travel time in half." She grabbed the man's hand and pulled him onto the road. "Start walking, they'll get the hint."

— —

"Hey, Hiashi."

"Yeah?"

It was almost noon, and the team was now deep in the forest, Yuhi in the lead, with Kenta behind him, followed by Louise. As always, the twins were in the back. Yuhi claimed that this was because their peculiar eyesight made them ideal rear guards, but Louise had always suspected that her teacher hoped that they would be the first to die if the group was ever ambushed.

"I've been thinking, when we get back from this lame assignment and sensei's busy with his knocked-up girlfriend,"

"WIFE!" Yuhi-sensei snapped from the front of the line.

"Yeah, her. Could you show me that jutsu our father taught you?"

"Of course-," Hiashi paused just long enough for Louise to realize that an argument was coming and roll her eyes. "Of course I can... if you'll tell me what you talked about at the beach."

Louise fell to the side of the path and let the boys pass her. It was shaping up to be a boring trip, and she figured watching them fight about something petty would be entertaining.

Hizashi stared down at the rock that he was kicking along the path. "I didn't talk much to anybody."

"They didn't say anything interesting all week?"

"Pretty much. You know them," Hizashi was now surveying the trees on his left and ignoring his brother's stare on his right. "They're crazy, they never make sense."

"Anyone ever told you how bad you are at lying, 'Zash?" Hiashi muttered.

"Beside you? No one."

"Come on, they must have talked about me some."

"Why? They were on vacation, some skinny, lazy, anti-social kid who lets Hazazu beat the snot out of him every so often was the last thing on their minds. Anyway, forget I asked," Hizashi shrugged and turned back to his brother with a smile. "I'll just ask Father to teach that thing to me, wouldn't want to waste your time or anything."

Hiashi took a sudden interest in kicking the stone closest to his foot. "Nah, I can do it. I've got nothing better to do, anyway."

"Oh, no way. I've changed my mind," Hizashi was grinning, but Hiashi didn't know this, because he was still staring at the ground. "You're a lousy teacher, it'll be much easier to ask someone else."

"For your information, I have this technique down _perfectly_, and I can teach it better than anybody you know, and if you ask Father, it'll be your loss."

"Just how stupid do you think I am? I mean, it's not like you're the only one who's willing to put up with our father to learn something potentially useful, and I bet _he_ won't drill me about family gossip."

"Why won't you just let me teach you?!" Hiashi half-shouted, exasperatedly turning to his brother just as Hizashi threw up his hands and began yelling, himself.

"Why do you keep asking about the stupid beach?!"

Louise came to a halt to put a little distance between herself and them. She didn't want to get injured when it came to blows, after all. She wondered if Yuhi-sensei would bother to stop them, or even if he would bother to protect their client from them. Always an adventure with Team Yuhi Makoto Hyuuga, that was for sure.

But the twins didn't hit each other this time. They each caught the other's eye about mid-yell and suddenly stopped. There was a pause roughly as pregnant as Yuhi-sensei's wife, and then both boys quickly turned away from each other and resumed looking at the ground, each mouthing a microscopic "oh."

Louise was disappointed about the anti-climatic ending to this fight, but she didn't give it much thought, especially as Yuhi-sensei picked this moment to snap at her to get back in position.

Kenta slowed his pace slight to walk next to her as she trotted back to her spot in line. "Are your teammates... all right?" he asked quietly.

Louise shrugged. "Oh, they're always like this." She turned to the boys behind her, still being bizarrely quiet. One of them (she was pretty sure it was Hizashi, but, honestly, they went so far out of their way to make sure you couldn't tell, she couldn't be certain) noticed her and forced a small smile. And she realized that this _wasn't_ normal. Not at all. "They're brothers," she added to the client, by way of explanation.

"So I gathered."

— —

"Why is it _dark_ out?!" Yuhi exclaimed several hours later after he tripped over a log.

"Because that's what happens when you try to travel a day and a half in a single day with a client and Team Makoto-Hyuuga; time goes by," Louise said. "Can we stop, eat something, maybe get some sleep, and then run home tomorrow?"

"No."

"Sir," Kenta the monk threw in politely, "I'm sure that you're eager to return home, but I'm not used to-,"

He was interrupted by the firm clunk of Hiashi and Hizashi simultaneously throwing their bags down with the amount of force necessary to embed them into the ground.

"...Communication skills need some work..." Kenta muttered to himself, settling down against a tree, presumably to meditate.

Louise began unpacking their food, only pausing to ask whichever twin was working on starting a fire, "Do you think we should tell Sensei that we've stopped for the night?"

"Nah," he replied. "He'll notice we aren't following us and come back, if only for the client."

"Do you remember doing those team-unity exercises in school?" Louise asked, tossing a twig at random into the baby fire.

"Er... I do seem to remember us counting off by threes and having to run bizarre obstacle courses."

"Yeah. Do you think senseis have to do them before taking a squad?"

"Yes. But I think Yuhi-sensei skipped that step."

Louise nodded in agreement. "So, do you think I should make enough rice for him, too, or let him deal with it on his own?"

"Why don't we make his share... and then eat it?"

Louise nodded once again and pulled out a measuring cup. "Sounds like my kind of plan."

— —

It wasn't, Louise thought, that the twins were bad at picking camp sites. Actually, they were pretty good at it. It was just that the forest this temple was located in had the rockiest, most root-filled, uneven ground on earth. She was contemplating this in the wee hours of the morning, when she woke from a not-very-restful sleep. The fire was still cackling, which was comforting, not because its warmth could reach her, but because it meant that the person on watch was still awake enough to tend to it. She peeked out of her sleeping bag to see one of the twins leaning against a tree not far from her. Two lumps of sleeping human lay around the fire, one opposite the fire from her, the other near their night watchman.

"Sensei still hasn't come back yet, huh?" she whispered, crawling out from her sleeping bag and sitting next to the tree.

"Nope."

"Hmm..." Louise watched her teammate very carefully for a moment. He noticed her staring and looked over quizzically.

"Louise?"

"Wait, wait, don't tell me..." she whispered. "You're... Hi...zashi, right?"

It was rare to see the twins look genuinely pleased, so getting a happy smile from her teammate was enough of a reward for the strenuous mental task this early in the morning. "Yeah, that's me. How did you figure it out?"

Louise shrugged. "It wasn't easy... you two are different, I guess... somehow."

"Nobody ever says that to me," Hizashi grinned.

"Well, in all fairness, you don't give them much reason to," Louise said. "Do you two naturally talk exactly alike, or did you have to work on it?"

"...I'm pretty sure it's natural," he said, "But I suppose Hiashi could be adjusting every time I change my speaking habits. That's something he'd do."

Louise gave a theatrical jump and made a show of peering at the sleeping bag next to Hizashi. "He can do stuff besides sleep?"

"Of course he can. He can pretend to be me while_ I_ sleep."

"Don't you dare try to tell me that your parents don't let you sleep. I know you have a conflicted relationship with them, but-,"

"My parents tried to murder me when I was four days old," Hizashi said simply.

"Yeah, we've all got prob-...Wait, _what_?" Louise gasped. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, yeah. They only wanted the one kid, and they figured it would be less trouble if I died in infancy. So they put a curse on me first chance they got... they were hoping that the stress would be too much for a newborn. Unfortunately, I managed to foil their plans a second time and survive."

"That's..." Louise stuttered. Hizashi chuckled a little.

"Horrible? Yeah. Sorry, I can be a real downer at three in the morning. But, yeah, you're right, they do let me sleep. I lied about that."

"...It's three in the morning?" Louise looked around uneasily at the woods just outside their campfire. "Where the hell is Sensei?"

"Beats me. I figure that as long as all of _us_ are alive in the morning, I've done my job. It's not like Sensei cares about us."

"Hmm..." There was a silence, which Louise used to throw another log on the fire. It didn't give off much light, but it was better than nothing. "So... when you say 'curse'..."

"The full deal, chakra and visible oddly-colored marks and horrible restraints included. It's something we do."

"...Why?"

"That's a very good question, now, isn't it. They never answer me when I ask."

"Ah," Louise nodded sagely. "One of _those_ things."

"Yup."

"Ah, well, every family has one," Louise said in what she hoped was a comforting voice.

"True that... It's some kind of succession thing. Wouldn't it be funny, though, if I was the oldest and Hiashi and I got switched in the hospital or something?"

He winked at her, and the two of them started giggling.

"Why are we laughing?" Louise laughed.

"I don't know."

"I mean, it's really not funny."

"No, no it's not... I'm glad you're on my team, Louise. You have a horrible sense of humor."

"Oh, and _you're_ a whole lot better," Louise grinned.

"Yeah, but Hiashi's not."

"Are you joking? You're the _good_ twin. He knows more dead baby jokes than both of us combined."

"Dead baby jokes don't constitute a twisted sense of humor," Hizashi objected. "They're just dead babies, for cryin' out loud."

Louise blinked. "Maybe I assessed you two wrong..."

"Hiashi gets weird when I joke about family stuff."

"Yeah, how stuffy of him to be upset that his parents tried to kill his little brother," Louise snorted. "I can see how that would get to you."

"I guess it's sweet of him, but geez, I'm the one they tried to kill," Hizashi sighed and kicked gently at the sleeping form next to him (Louise supposed he meant it as a tender gesture), "Some kind of survivor guilt, I guess, but I wish he wouldn't stress so much about it. He's already way too anxious... I worry about him, too, y'know."

"Are you sure everything's all right with you two?" Louise took this as an invitation to ask something that had been continuing to bother her. After all, she could tell Hizashi from his brother now, they had laughed about his horribly abusive parents, they were bonding. It was ok to bring it up. "I mean, you didn't even hit each other today."

"We don't hit each other _every_ day. Just sometimes. It doesn't mean anything is wrong."

"But... earlier, you two were _arguing_, and you just kind of... I don't know, it didn't seem like you at all."

"Oh... that..."

Louise sensed that she had brought up an awkward topic, and was fully prepared to let the matter drop, but Hizashi kept talking.

"Well, I suppose I might as well tell you, although it's not that exciting, and I'm not sure you'll get it. Hiashi was freaking out about me asking my father to teach me whatever thing he taught Hiashi, because apparently it's a Favorite Son Only thing, which my father won't teach me because I'm not worthy."

"And what's with the beach?"

"So, the Branches... so, the side of the family that I'm officially a member of, the less-important ones, get together and go to the beach... and they invited me out of some misplaced sense of reclaiming me. The thing is... they all _hate_ Hiashi..."

"That must have been miserable for you," Louise said. She had never tried it, but she was aware that if she told Hizashi that she hated his brother, he would black her eye.

"Pretty much sums it up... and Hiashi wanted to know what they had to say about him... but..." Hizashi kicked at the sleeping bag again. "What's he want me to do, huh? I'm not going to repeat anything... I didn't want to hear it the first time. It's stupid of me, he'll figure it out with or without me. It's just..."

Louise put on her very most sympathetic expression when Hizashi looked up at her.

"It's just that he's always looking out for me, right? Protecting me... I know he keeps our parents from treating me worse than they do... They probably would have killed me properly by now if they didn't think the _important_ twin would get upset. I don't know half the things he keeps me safe from. All the Branch family call me a pet."

"None of us think of you like that," Louise interrupted. "Especially not him. You two are a little bit too equal. At least, in the _real_ world."

"I know that, but, in a way, they're right. He's the one who takes care of me, and there's not much I can do in return. I just want to be able to protect him, too."

"You do," Louise whispered. "He wouldn't make it long without you. Any of us will tell you that."

"Heh..." He might have laughed, Louise wasn't sure. He wasn't looking at her, he was staring at the sleeping bag containing his brother. "Sorry, Louise. I told you I'm a real downer at three in the morning."

"Why don't you get some sleep?" Louise suggested. "I can watch for the rest of the night."

"Nah, you need sleep so that your new piercing will heal up right. I'm not tired. And if I want to protect you two, this is probably as close as I'm going to get."

"What if you fall asleep?"

"Then Sensei will yell at us for not posting a proper guard when he gets back. Go to sleep."

"You're not going to change your mind, are you?"

"No. You need to sleep, you're the only one who's going to be able to find this stupid temple in the morning; you're the only one who can use a map."

Louise sighed as she crawled back into her sleeping bag. Nobody was better at making one feel irresponsible than the twins.


	20. The Date Auction

Dark Corners of the House of the Rising Sun

The Date Auction

A/N: Orgs at my college do this as fundraisers. It's not this sketchy.

Birthday fic for the twins. (And, no, it doesn't fit in the Dark Corners timeline. They're older in this.)

* * *

"Hizashi? I've been looking for you. What are you doing in here?"

Both young men looked up at their father blankly from Hiashi's bed, where they were halfway through a game of Battleship.

"I'm dutifully awaiting any orders that our clan's heir might have for me," Hizashi answered glibly. "F4," he added in the same tone, his eyes still on his father, who was twitching with the audacity of the lie.

"You should show Hiashi more respect," his father muttered, which was in his repertoire of last-resort comebacks when he couldn't _prove_ Hizashi was being anything but obedient.

"He's letting me win, isn't he?" Hiashi asked, going back to carefully counting his obsessively-composed chart of his opponent's ships. "No hit." He glanced briefly at his father, still standing in the doorway looking unamused. "Did you want something?" he asked.

"Not with you," Mr. Hyuuga snapped, turning to Hizashi, who was still watching him with mock politeness. "Your Aunt Helga's Ladies' Society is having a date auction to raise money for an endangered animal breeding program."

"Are cougars endangered? I didn't know Aunt Helga was such a rare woman," Hiashi asked sarcastically. "C7."

Hizashi shook his head without taking his gaze from his father, who glared irately at his other son.

"Your Aunt Helga is an important woman in Konoha society," he said sternly.

"Branches are allowed to be important?" Hiashi asked scathingly, raising his eyebrows as he placed another white peg in his game board.

"I don't think that's something either of you need to worry about," their father replied without missing a beat. "Hizashi, your aunt needs someone to put up for auction. I volunteered you."

"What?!" Hiashi exclaimed, suddenly focusing on the conversation at hand. "You can't do that!"

Hizashi, however, only nodded politely, even forcing a slight smile. "I'm not stripping," he said.

"You'll have to take that up with your aunt," his father shrugged. Hizashi's expression suddenly changed to something more closely resembling his brother's.

"I was joking," he said. "We're not really supposed to strip?"

"Have you ever _met_ Aunt Helga's Ladies' Society?" Hiashi snapped at him. "Why do you think they're auctioning off twenty-year-old men?"

"What exactly am I supposed to _do_ with the winning bidder?" Hizashi asked slowly.

His father shrugged again. "Have dinner with them, I think. I'm sure she'll tell you. And I think it goes without saying that this is not an _optional_ event for you. Your aunt and I are both expecting you to be on your best behavior... lacking though it is."

"Of course, Father," Hizashi said, hurriedly reverting back to a semblance of politeness.

* * *

"Hey, what are you doin' Friday?" Chouza asked Fugaku when they ran into each other dropping off mission reports.

"Well, I was going to research my clan's history and see if there are any interesting jutsus I'm missing out on," Fugaku said in the braced tone of voice that one employs when one doesn't want his friends to point out how nerdy his hobby is.

"Not anymore you're not," Chouza said. "You're coming to the Ladies' Society Date Auction to help us defend Hizashi's honor."

"What?"

Chouza giggled. "I know, right? Apparently Old Man Hyuuga is trying to sell him into prostitution. Hiashi says he's supposed to either wear a dress or strip."

"Really?" Fugaku snorted. "My mother's in that club. She started to ask me to be in the auction, then stopped herself. Said it'd be too awkward for her if one of her friends...well, she said _bought_ me, but I don't think that was the verb she wanted."

"So you see why we've got to show up and buy him?"

"Oh, yeah. The Ladies' Society is _terrifying_," Fugaku whispered with a shudder.

"I'm only going to see 'Zashi in a dress," Chouza admitted, beginning to giggle again. "Anyway, bring a little money, just in case."

"In case Hiashi runs out?"

"I was thinking more in case you see someone cute," Chouza shrugged. "I mean, seriously, it's just a date. Nobody's gonna break the bank."

* * *

"Are you _sure_ no one's gonna break the bank?" Fugaku questioned under his breath later, as the boys slunk into the dance hall where the auction was being held. "They all seem pretty drunk."

"Yeah, Fug, isn't that your mother dancing on the punch table?" Inoichi asked, pointing through the throng of excited bidders to a table decorated with a large punch bowl and a respectable-looking woman head banging. She was being cheered by several of her friends and not a few men of her generation or younger.

"Mommy?" Fugaku whimpered.

Hiashi glanced over in the direction Inoichi indicated. "If your drunk mom lays one hand on my brother, I will cut your eyes out," he growled. Fugaku did not look nervous or upset so much as relieved that the threat had given him a reason to look away from his mother.

"Geez, relax," Chouza muttered, punching Hiashi lightly on the arm. "What's the absolute worst that could happen? He'll get picked up by an appreciative and experienced older woman and go around telling everyone that he's gotten more action in one night than you will get your whole life?"

"My father wouldn't have signed him up if it had even the remote possibility of turning out _well_ for him," Hiashi muttered grimly, weaving his way through the crowd towards the front of the room, where a small stage had been set up and an auction was currently in progress, the sound lost over the blaring metal music. "Now hurry up and let's find a place to sit. We need to be able to see when he-," Hiashi turned around, to find himself talking to nobody. "Guys?"

He backtracked through the crowd and found them talking to a semi-attractive woman slightly younger than the aunt who even now was no-doubt forcing his brother into an underwire nightdress. "What are you _doing_?" he hissed into Inoichi's ear, only to be waved away like an oversized mosquito.

"You boys want something to drink?" the woman half-slurred. "Here, I'll go get you some punch. Wait here," she added, pinching Chouza's cheek and winking. She squinted a little at Hiashi before leaving for the punch bowl. "You're supposed to be backstage," she told him.

"And _that's_ why we have to go find a seat," Hiashi muttered when she had left. "Come on, let's go."

"It's rude to ditch a lady like that. You go on and hold our seats, we'll be right over with our punch," Inoichi replied, yanking his arm back from Hiashi, who was attempting to drag him away.

"You're not drinking tonight! This is important! Anyway, she'll probably slip you some roofies, don't you know anything about safe partying?"

"You can't invite us to your aunt's stupid thing and then expect us to be sober," Inoichi snapped. "Go grab us seats."

Grumbling about loyalty and friendship, Hiashi pushed his way through the crowd and threw himself into a row of folding chairs, glaring at the girl in fishnets on top of the table.

The Ladies' Society MC was announcing, "Sold for two hundred! Ladies and gents, the lovely Tsume Inuzuka!"

"What?!" Hiashi sprang to his feet again, trying to get a better view. Indeed, the half-dressed woman on the table was his spiky-haired colleague. She noticed him looking indignant and winked at him, a gesture that would have been more reassuring if it hadn't lead to catcalls from the rest of the audience.

The rest of the guys, sporting plastic cups of punch, filed in, all looking mildly-interested in the proceedings.

"Is that Tsume draped off those two drunk women?" Fugaku asked, handing Hiashi another cup and not sounding particularly concerned.

"Yes, our friend has just been sold to a group of lecherous cougars, thanks to your philandering! I hope you're proud of yourself."

"I'm pretty sure those are cousins of hers," Chouza said. "And why didn't you make a bid on her, if you were concerned?"

"This money is for my- look, when we're done here, we'll go spring Tsume free."

"What makes you think she needs help? It's a date auction, isn't this kinda what she signed up for?" Inoichi asked.

"We don't know that she signed up!"

"She's not a Hyuuga, she's got a _little_ say in where she spends her Fridays," the Yamanaka pointed out, taking another swig of his punch. Hiashi glared at him.

"You know, that hurts."

"Yeah, well, I'm here at Midlife Crisis Fest on an evening that would better be spent-,"

"Drinking?" Tsume, having sidled her way into a chair behind the group, poked Inoichi the back of the head. "You seem to be doing that just fine here."

"Tsume, I'm sorry I didn't get to you on time! These _idiots_,"

"Hey, Hiashi, _that_ hurts," Inoichi muttered. "If I'm not allowed to state simple facts about your family, you aren't allowed to call us-,"

"Get to me on time for what?" Tsume interrupted.

"To buy you, of course."

"Buy me?" Tsume punched his arm. "You creeper!"

"But-,"

"I know we're cool and all, but it gets kinda inappropriate when you start buying dates with your female friends, you understand."

"So having us buy you would _look_ bad, as compared to having some drunk old guy buy you?"

"My cousins buy me every year, Hiashi," Tsume explained, less-than-patiently.

"Hey, Hiashi," Fugaku interrupted. Tsume glared at him.

"Hey, I'm the one talking to the moron right now." She turned back to Hiashi. "I've been doing this auction thing for a while. It's for a good cause, and it's fun. We have a little bit to drink, I get up there, do a little dance, and try to see how much I can go for. Then me and the cousins have a girls' night out. No big deal. Please tell me you didn't come running out here to defend my honor," she added, raising an eyebrow.

"Nah, we're here for Thing Two," Inoichi threw in.

"I figured as much," Tsume said.

"Hiashi," Fugaku tried again, "If you're done offending Tsume-,"

"Yeah, yeah," Hiashi absently handed over his untouched cup. "Not sure why you gave it to me in the first place."

"He'll be happy to see you, I imagine," Tsume was saying, "I told him it was a bad idea to sign up for this thing unless you have someone on standby to buy you."

"Yeah, about why we're here," Fugaku started once more.

"Did he not realize we were coming?" Inoichi asked over the sound of Chouza giggling uncontrollably at something on stage.

"He said I was overreacting," Hiashi muttered.

"He changed that tune when he got a look at the crowd," Tsume said. "Pretty common, really. Guy signs up, thinking it'll be all in good fun, then realizes how very, very creepy a date auction is when you don't know who's buying you or to what end."

"And that's why we're spending our Friday night here," Hiashi said self-righteously, with a glare at Fugaku.

"Then you might want to make a bid on 'Zashi before that dude in the corner wins him," Fugaku said, pointing at the makeshift stage.

"What?!" Hiashi's attention snapped back to the auction fast enough to break the sound barrier. A very upset Hizashi in a pink, lacy nightdress was hunched protectively on top of the table, ignoring the suggestions from the audience that he 'show a little leg! Come on!'

"Sixty, do I hear sixty? Come on, ladies, not all guys look this good in a slip,"

"Sixty!" Hiashi yelled over the general noise. The woman nodded at him.

"Sixty, we have sixty, do I hear seventy?"

"I tried to tell you, but you were busy talking about the sociological aspects of blah, blah, blah," Fugaku said, taking an unconcerned sip of Hiashi's drink as his friend sat back down.

Chouza, still giggling uncontrollably, gasped out, "Pink's a good color on him. You two should wear it more often."

"Well, crisis averted, despite your best efforts," Hiashi muttered.

"Seventy! We have seventy, do I hear eighty?" the announcer shouted.

"Eighty!" Hiashi stood up again.

"Eighty! Do I hear ninety?"

"You'd better not hear ninety," Hiashi muttered to his friends, "Eighty's all I brought with me."

"What?" Tsume gasped. "Are you serious? These are drunk middle-aged women with steady jobs! You're with the high rollers, now, boy."

"What? It's a charity auction!"

"I went for two hundred this year," Tsume said. "It wasn't my record."

"And Hizashi has much nicer hair than her," Chouza added. Tsume pinched his ear viciously.

"Ow, hey, that hurts! Leggo! _Tsume!_"

A man in the corner, the same one who had bid the seventy, stood up.

"Ninety, I have ninety!" the announcer shouted. "Do I hear one hundred?"

Hiashi leaned over Fugaku. "Chouza, lend me some cash. I _know_ you brought a little extra!"

"Okay. But I only have fifty, so..."

"That'll be a hundred thirty," Tsume said. "You may get away with it, but..."

"Well, here, I've got seventy-five," Inoichi said, reaching for his wallet.

"Okay, two hundred and five, that should,-"

"Going once-," the announcer started.

"One hundred!" Hiashi jumped up, placed his bid, and shot back down to the huddle.

"I've got seven and..." Fugaku rooted through his pockets. "Forty... no, forty-three cents!" The others looked at him. "I wasn't planning on buying anyone. How creepy would that be?"

"Mikoto's got an aunt in the Society," Tsume said offhandedly. "So, two hundred twelve."

"Actually I think I'm keeping mine, just in case..." Fugaku started to put his money away, but Chouza grabbed it from him and handed it to Hiashi.

"Seven forty-three is _not_ enough to buy a date with her, even outside auctions."

"I have one twenty-five, do I hear one fifty?"

Hiashi jumped up once again.

"Right, that should do it," he said on returning. "It'd better, my knees are starting to hurt."

"You're so middle-aged," Inoichi muttered.

"One fifty, do I hear one seventy-five?"

Tsume glanced around. "I saw Shikaku in the audience, I'll go grab him," she said, sprinting off.

"Why does she think we need-," Hiashi asked.

"One seventy-five, do I hear two hundred?"

The boys glanced around at the man attempting to outbid them as Hiashi sprang up again.

"Uh-oh."

"What do you mean, uh-oh?" Hiashi asked as he sat down, bid placed.

"Jiraiya's the one bidding against us," Inoichi explained.

"Who?"

"Sarutobi's old student. Complete perv and completely unpredictable. And he looks _pretty drunk_, to boot."

"He hit on Shikaku's girl one time while they were on a date, and so obviously Shikaku had to confront him, and he ended up in the hospital for two days," Chouza added.

"What's this about Jiraiya?" Shikaku and Tsume returned to catch the tail-end of the conversation.

"He's the one bidding on 'Zashi," Chouza explained.

"Shit, man," Shikaku went pale. "Listen, you guys have to win this thing, because Hiashi will _die_ if he goes after him."

"What makes you think I'm going to go after-," Hiashi started, and quickly stopped again as everybody rolled their eyes at him.

"So you'll donate to the cause?" Inoichi asked. "Come on, 'Zash has enough trauma in his life without a Jiraiya horror story to add to it."

"I feel his pain, man, I really do," Shikaku said, "But I'm here for Yoshino. If you don't buy 'Zash, Hiashi's life won't be worth living, whereas if I don't buy Yoshino, my life will not be worth living. And I'm more attached to my own life."

"How much do you have?"

"Three hundred," Shikaku shrugged.

"Yoshino isn't going to go for _that_ much!" Hiashi exclaimed. "Just twenty, that's all we need!"

"You don't _know_ she won't go for that much!" Shikaku exclaimed in return, getting flustered.

"Yes I do. Tsume only went for two hundred, and she's way hotter."

Chouza slapped his palm against his face. Inoichi winced.

Shikaku sighed. "Going back to my seat now. I'll call you tomorrow to see if things worked out... assuming I'm not too tired from all the wild sex I was having the night before with my ugly girlfriend."

"Wait! Shika, I'm sorry!" Hiashi cried out desperately. "Just a little cash!"

"He looks good in that slip, by the way," Shikaku added with a smirk. "You two should cross-dress more often. See you later!"

"I have two hundred, do I hear two fifty? Two fifty?"

"You deserved that," Chouza informed Hiashi when his teammate had left.

"He's so sensitive about her," Hiashi muttered.

"'Zash would make a very attractive woman," Fugaku noted. "He ever considered it?"

"You shut _up_!" Hiashi snapped. "Why are you grinning?"

"Oh, nothing," Fugaku smirked with the self-satisfied air of someone who has proven a point to themselves.

"Two twenty-five? Come on, ladies, you know you want to!"

"Split up, look for people we know! Tell them I'll pay them back!" Hiashi muttered wildly.

Tsume nodded. "I'll go tell Casanova over there that he's bidding on a guy," she said. "And I blame you two's unnecessarily-nice hair for this, by the way."

She returned a few moments after Jiraiya placed a bid for two twenty-five. "He knows," she said flatly. "But, two fifty's his limit. So we just need to get to there."

"Look who I found!" Chouza came bounding up, Louise in tow.

"I heard you're having some cash flow problems?" she smirked.

"Yes," Hiashi said urgently as the announcer asked for two fifty, no, two forty. "We need... thirty?"

"I've got twenty," she said, handing over her share. "I only stopped by 'cause I heard Zashi would be wearing a dress."

"You did not," Hiashi muttered.

"It's very flattering on him. Tell you what, instead of paying me back, you can show up to training in the same outfit, it'd be worth it."

"I'm paying you back," Hiashi snapped.

"Right, we've got two thirty-two..." Tsume reached into the bikini she was wearing in lieu of clothes. "Actually, I think somebody stuffed about eight ones into my undies as a joke... yes!"

Hiashi took the money she handed him as though it was radioactive.

"Tsume, that is so..."

"Two twenty-five going once, going twice-,"

"Two forty!" Hiashi yelled.

"Two forty! We have two forty... do I see two-fifty?"

Jiraiya stood up.

"Two fifty! Do I see two sixty? Two sixty?"

"Is that that Jiraiya guy?" Louise asked, looking slightly more serious. "Just bid on him, we'll scrounge up the money, somehow."

"Two fifty going once!"

"Nah, they want the cash up front," Tsume muttered.

"Where'd Fug go?" Inoichi asked, glancing around.

"Two fifty going twice!"

"Here, here!" Fugaku shoved a bill into Hiashi's hand. "Found it on the floor! Had to stop to make sure the owner wasn't looking for it!"

"Whatever, TWO SIXTY!" Hiashi screamed.

"Okay, okay, we hear ya," the announcer muttered. "Right, two sixty! Going once! Going twice! Sold, to the group of overly-insistent young men over there!"

"I hate it when people judge us all based on you because you're the loudest and your eyes look the weirdest," Louise muttered.

* * *

"Really?" Hizashi asked loudly when Hiashi went up to the front to pay the Ladies' Society and pick up his winnings. "My own brother bought me? How embarrassing."

"Well, if it's any consolation, the rest of the audience put up a fight," Hiashi told him, offering him a hand to help him down from the stage.

The hand was ignored. "Really, you are not the attractive woman I was hoping you'd be," Hizashi sighed melodramatically as he jumped down. Behind him, a young man who was too late realizing the wisdom of having friends in the audience was climbing onto the stage.

"Come on, the guys are already annoyed at me for wasting their Friday night," Hiashi said flatly, grabbing his brother's nightgown and tugging him toward the door.

* * *

"We were just talking about how flattering that dress is on you," Inoichi said the minute the twins emerged from the building. "With the lace edging and the plunging neckline."

"And the lobotomy-patient look is a particularly nice touch," Chouza added, pointing to the bandages around Hizashi's forehead.

"Yeah, Aunt Helga stole my headband. I thought this was pretty attractive," Hizashi grinned.

"So did Jiraiya," Louise said.

"You went for more than Tsume thanks to him," Fugaku added. "You owe us, buddy."

"Come on, guys, it was for a good cause," Hizashi shrugged. "Thanks for coming out, though. I'm gonna get going."

"Hey, we all bought shares in a date with you, and we're damn well gonna get our money's worth," Tsume said, blocking his path as he tried to weave past them.

"So we expect to see you tomorrow night," Louise grinned.

"We're thinking dinner somewhere cheap (because you cleaned us all out), party, following Shikaku and ruining his date with Yoshino, more partying..." Inoichi shrugged.

"And Hiashi chipped in the most for you, so we figure you'll probably go home with him," Fugaku said. "Hope that's okay with you."

"Or you can pay us back the whole two sixty," Louise said when Hizashi glared at them. "Come on, it'll be fun."

"Yeah," Chouza draped an arm over Hizashi's shoulder, "We wouldn't've shelled out for you if we weren't friends. So we'll see you tomorrow?"

"Sure. I'll see you tomorrow," Hizashi sighed, smiling.

"Good. Now go home and change out of that slip. You're giving me the creeps."

* * *

"You shouldn't have come," Hizashi said as he and his brother headed home.

"I wasn't going to leave you at the mercy of the Ladies' Society, no matter what you said."

"It's just weird. You buying me. Y'know."

"Weirder than having a date with Jiraiya when he sobers up?"

"You couldn't have let Louise bid on me or something?"

"She'd never have done it," Hiashi said. "What's wrong with me, anyway?"

"It's just... we're... you're..." Hizashi shook his head as if reconsidering what he wanted to say, "You're my brother. What's wrong with our other friends buying me? ...not that they didn't show up, but... I don't want a reputation with the Ladies' Society as the kid who has to have his brother bid on him. Anyway, I totally would have gotten laid if you hadn't shown up. Some of Aunt Helga's friends were _all over_ me, you have no idea. I was doing just fine on my own, trust me."

Hiashi rolled his eyes and silently pulled his jacket off and handed it to his brother, who took it and put it on over his dress.

"Tomorrow'll be fun, though," Hizashi said, quieting down, "So I guess it wasn't such a bad ordeal."

"You're welcome," Hiashi said, smiling a little.


End file.

Naruto, Family, Humor