Chapter Text
It was the day that they would decide on the next genin teams.
In only a few weeks—just over a month, immediately after New Years—they’d be graduated, would be ready to represent Konoha in an official capacity under the watch of a jounin.
It was an exciting time.
It was an exhausting time.
Denpan Akio was the newest entrant into these meetings, was by far the youngest—an intentional choice, no doubt, because he actually grew up in the modern Academy and none of the others could say that—but he’d still been given a lot of responsibility.
“Chuunin Hyuuga?” a voice called. Akio winced, but he’d only have to respond to that name for a month more.
The forty-ninth year since Konoha’s founding would be very good indeed.
“Yes, Head?”
“Do you have your recommendations ready?”
Every member of the team had to look through the graduates individually, make their own suggestions. They would then be compared, and final teams would be formed.
Akio glanced down.
The Ino-Shika-Cho teams had been the easiest to work with, what with them already being formed, but there were relatively few of those. Jiraiya’s students were already placed in their own team, and Akio had been specifically instructed to think no more about them. Those students going directly into seal-work or the genin corps were also straightforward: they got no teams at all. There were even a few select apprenticeships for some non-jounin-track children. And then there were all the other students. Graduating students every quarter was better for Konoha, but it also left much fewer options for team selection.
For Akio, this was a good thing. Was a lot less daunting.
But he knew that his elders preferred the old model, when there were far more options to achieve harmony within a group.
(On the other hand, Akio had seen the statistics. Konoha hadn’t actually graduated all that many kids every year; many had had to drop out or join the permanent genin corps, not qualifying for anything else. Today—today Konoha might have less options for each individual graduation than if they just had one class a year, but the kids themselves had a hell of a lot more options to make their families and Konoha proud.)
“Yes, Head.”
“Alright, we’ll be meeting in twenty.”
Akio didn’t know how many of his teams would be finalized.
He did know, however, that his voice would be heard.
For a boy that had been born a branch Hyuuga, for a teen that assumed he would always be stifled, never allowed any responsibility because his seal made him merely an extension of the main branch, more property than person—
There was nothing better, than to be able to speak.
And soon, soon… he wouldn’t even be Hyuuga. He’d be Denpan, alongside the other former branch Hyuuga, and he’d never have to call a Hyuuga his clan head again.
There were a few weeks left until the new year began.
It couldn’t come fast enough.
.
The Onikuma clan was one of the smaller Konoha clans.
Their bloodline—jutsu that allowed them to cede their bodies, give them over to the darkest impulses—was powerful.
It was also deadly.
And not necessarily just for their enemies.
It was a trance-like fury that they gave themselves over to, that compelled them, made them act out of control in all the best and worst ways.
It wasn’t—
Kumako knew it was powerful.
She did.
She just… didn’t think it was all that powerful.
Her mother had had eight siblings.
Her father ten.
Her maternal grandmother had no siblings; she’d married in.
Her maternal grandfather had twelve.
Her paternal grandmother had only six siblings.
Her paternal grandfather had ten.
And Kumako? Kumako had eight siblings, a mother, a father, three aunts, an uncle, and two surviving grandmothers.
Kumako attended the Academy.
Kumako understood the basics of statistics.
Kumako understood that actually using their bloodline in combat—which nearly everybody in her family did—was very likely to lead to death.
Not good odds.
She wanted nothing to do with it.
Her parents had been… displeased, to say the least, when Kumako had announced that she was going into medicine.
There had been a lot of yelling.
Demands for her to reconsider.
They’d met with her teacher, tried to convince him to force her to go into a combat-heavy role instead.
Somehow, he’d convinced them that she was intending to be a combat medic—she wasn’t—and that, at least, stopped most of the yelling.
It was a good thing she had a friend whose parents were willing to take her in, though, because the second they realized she wouldn’t be joining a genin team, would be going straight to the hospital—
Well.
There were some things that were impossible to ignore.
Kumako had no interest in dying.
She had no interest in anybody else dying, either.
And perhaps, one day, her parents would understand that her different focus—her focus that had nothing to do with her so-called ‘blood right’—might allow there to still be an Onikuma clan despite the best efforts of the rest of her siblings.
Dying for your clan was honorable.
Surviving for your clan was smart.
And Kumako? Kumako was smart.
.
It would be a lie to say it had all been going well.
It hadn’t, really, and if Rento wasn’t so desperate for results—and he knew himself enough to know that he was—then he wouldn’t have even been on the ‘human testing’ step.
They’d thought they’d figured out all the little ways that attempting to seal a person could become dangerous, at least.
They’d thought, at least.
And—and this hadn’t even really been supposed to be a test.
Well, not of a truth seal, anyway.
Or even a babbling seal.
If Rento was going to make a babbling seal, then it would be best if it was easy to apply and remove, and that was a novel requirement for a human seal, so he’d just been working on that.
How to get that to work.
Rento created a short of see-through sheet on which to apply dye. The sheet could be wetted, and then stuck to skin, and then—after a short pause—removed.
The dye would remain.
Temporary tattoos, his genin underlings were calling it.
They really liked the idea of it, and Rento was reasonably sure that they’d siphoned some away to use for ideas that had absolutely nothing to do with sealing.
Nevertheless, their purpose was sealing.
Rento had decided, in his infinite wisdom, to start with a barely-modified storage seal.
After all, everyone knew storage seals were safe on living tissue.
You could put chakra in, and it would try to store.
Highly complicated, yes, but… no risk.
Or so Rento had thought.
(Perhaps, if he’d been smarter, he would have required the storage seal to be one of the old-fashioned ones, one of the ones that had actually been tested on human skin before.
(He had not been that smart.
(He had only thought of the most common seal to use nowadays, thought of the smallest number of brushstrokes to make it theoretically work on human skin.)
It had not been going well, but they had been making progress, they had been avoiding any major mistakes, they had applied the seal—
And Rento hadn’t even removed the sheet before he’d funneled chakra through it.
Stupid.
(Was that the problem?
(There would be months of checking, now, to find out.
(There would be more deaths, to make sure.)
The room was silent.
He could almost hear his own rapid heartbeat.
He could almost hear the rapid heartbeat of both of his assistants.
“The Hokage… would probably like this?” one offered. She didn’t seem—well, she seemed like she’d be having nightmares about this.
The other nodded. “An instant kill. Very… effective, for…” He, too, did not like the idea of how easily they’d just erased somebody’s very existence.
But Rento’s eyes had had time to adjust past the sudden lack of a death-row prisoner in front of him, and had taken the time to look around.
To see something on the floor.
Heartbeat even louder, now, almost breaking his ribs, Rento crouched.
There, next to the chair the man had been sitting on, was the sheet of paper.
With the dye still on it.
Dye that should have been on the man.
Rento’s breath was coming thin and fast.
He reached out.
His assistants had gone quiet, again, had noticed Rento’s unexpected reaction.
Because—
Well, they were right.
The Hokage would want to know about this.
Would want to know, because anything that could make someone disappear that fast would have to be publicized—
But also, because the ink was still on the sheet.
Rento reached forward, and touched the paper.