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runespoorTitle: Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son. (or: a cage is a cage is a curse, dammit.)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: PG-13
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics on the AU premise stated in the title.
Notes: meh.
[I have done a dvd commentary of this fic here.]
previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
11. ninja academy – take 2
Hinata is the only one who goes to the Academy.
It makes sense, really; she's a lowly Branch House member, and Neji-sama is the heir. He is personally taught by his father, whose whole attention is devoted to him.
By contrast, Hinata has to make with a thirty-something class and teachers who are only chuunin.
When she comes back home in the evenings, she has to walk through the Hyuuga courtyard. Occasionally Neji-sama and his instructor, sometimes a Hyuuga specialist of some move or another, are still at it.
Hinata hurries up then, and tries not to see Neji's movements and techniques.
They are so above her own level she doesn't even know their names. It makes sense, she tells herself, because not only he is one year older than she is, but he is the heir. It is normal for him to be a genius.
Still, some nights it isn't enough to soothe her.
When she cannot sleep, she dresses up and slips out of her room as silently as she knows how – and she knows how, she's one of the best in the class at sneaking around, and she doesn't even have genjutsu to fall back on; if she was even adequate at genjutsu, she might be the best, but this is another of her failings – though she knows it's pointless; her mother takes sleeping pills. She could sleep through an earthquake, and has, in fact, slept through the calls of a messenger from Hizashi-sama's pounding at the door and demanding that she let him in.
But it still is training.
If anything, Hinata is even more cautious than if she was likely to be caught; she cannot afford to take bad habits and grow complacent. Thus she doesn't only avoid making noise, she also makes detours around any window or reflective surface that could cast her shadow on the floor or otherwise betray her presence.
Then she goes to that same courtyard, and she trains until her shoulders start slumping with tiredness.
She used to stop when her knees failed her in sheer exhaustion, but now that point never comes anymore, and she is able to train for several hours on end without ever running out of breath. When she still stumbles, panting, after a sparring match at the Academy, she wishes she had a partner in the compound too, so she could improve her sparring skills as well. Fights, even mock fights, are harder on her stamina than any amount of personal training.
But at least she is able to bide her time and dodge her opponent's strikes until she can bring them to the ground, with a swift chain of blows she's always perfecting and devising variations of. Variety is her only weapon against opponents who otherwise surpass her on every ground.
(Hinata is well aware practically every area of her abilities is deficient. But this is no excuse for losing against Uchiha Sasuke in spars – against him she wins four times out of ten. She is the only one who manages to defeat him more than two-tenths of the time, but her results are otherwise mediocre at best, and generally more abysmal than not. So far she has managed to beat Aburame Shino only twice in their three years at the Academy.)
Anyway, she trains the only way she knows how – following her Academy education.
When she mentally compares with Neji-sama's form, she inevitably finds herself lacking. Her Jyuuken is a clumsy affair, a bastardised version mixed with the basic taijutsu taught at the Academy, with none of the grace and precision of the Main House's accomplishments.
But she still perseveres, because if she doesn't she is going to fall even further behind Neji-sama, and he may be the heir and he may be a genius, there is only a one-year gap between them.
From times to times, when she is at the Academy laughing with the rest of the class at Naruto's antics – her heart somersaults every time Iruka-sensei falls on him with his booming voice, but Naruto always manages to tear a laugh out of her even as he is being punished – or when she asks Ino for advice on flowers or on the proper way to throw a senbon, because Kiba has maintained that she wouldn't be able to and she refused to back down, she thinks that on some grounds she may have, not the better end of the deal, but maybe a few compensations for her not being taught at home.
She has classmates with whom she can talk and who often talk around her about things she had previously never heard of, even in the Hyuuga compound; she wouldn't really call them friends, because she knows most people call her 'creepy' behind her back, but she finds she likes the sound of that a lot better than 'weakling'. In the Hyuuga, this is what she is.
She is inadequate.
She knows it.
This is why when the call comes from Hizashi-sama that she is required to attend Neji-sama's training session that day, she blanches and feels utterly, utterly powerless.
What does she have to prove?
Nothing.
Neji-sama is so above her level that Uchiha Sasuke once came up to her and asked about him. He is the genius of the Hyuuga clan.
Hinata is nowhere near that, as her stats and report card state for the world to see. And – Hinata doesn't think that Hizashi-sama would pay enough attention to her to remember her grades, but – surely he'd have realised that he receives no letter of glowing praise about her?
When she arrives on the courtyard, Neji-sama and Hizashi-sama are already there. As well as several persons Hinata recognises as members of the Council.
She wants to curl up and die. There is losing, and then there is being humiliated bad enough to consider going missing.
She is quickly reassured, though, when she hears Hizashi-sama explaining the goal of this encounter to the Council members; this match is to show Neji's prowess against an average genin. She breathes a little more easily; she's in no way expected to shine. This is a relief, she judges as she takes position in front of Neji-sama.
Of course, it doesn't entirely erase the burn of humiliation that she is going to get her ass kicked, but she consoles herself by thinking that she won't be the one the watchers will be focusing on.
In front of her, Neji-sama looks grave and serious, and gravely nods at her in acknowledgment.
The butterflies in her stomach are making her slightly nervous, but she nevertheless bows back. He's much more serious about it than most of the people at the Academy – generally they smile at each other or exchange at least a few words before starting (and in some cases even after they started; a sparring match can just as easily change into a match of wits) – but Hinata is starting to get used to stoic geniuses.
He's not all that different from Sasuke. Or at least from what he used to be. Now Sasuke's not as professional.
Well, he still only just nods solemnly, but then he immediately undercuts himself by starting to talk before Iruka gives them the signal to start. He only does that with her, though, and Naruto, of course, and she almost wishes he'd do it with other people, but then she sometimes feels like she's the only one who isn't offended by what he says, so maybe it's not that bad.
Sometimes they even eat together (he makes really good onigiri, which is an unspoken promise between them that she'll never mention in front of Akimichi Chouji).
The first time they did it was after Hinata had been kicked seven ways to Sunday by Yamanaka Ino and her blood was pounding into her head, so she didn't know how to react but was somewhat grateful for the quiet – even if it was bewildering that Sasuke would want to eat with her. But then again, Iruka-sensei had told him his mid-range taijutsu needed more work, so maybe it made sense.
She wasn't been sure what to call him after that, but then she took to mirroring the way he called her, without honorific at all. She feared she was taking liberties, but she'd thought long and hard about the issue of 'Sasuke-kun' and had come to the conclusion that he didn't seem to enjoy it when other girls called him like this. He didn't remark on it at all, which she'd taken for Sasuke-approval.
He seems to work mostly by not talking a lot. She's getting better at reading him, she thinks – at least he doesn't glare at her like he does when people annoy him, not a lot. At least she thinks that's what it means when he glares at people.
The goal of this is for Neji-sama to show off what he can, so Hinata obediently does her best. She's here as an opponent, because you can't demonstrate your skills against a log.
So she avoids and jumps backwards and does everything she usually does when she's fighting someone. She's very concentrated, but she's not especially aware of whom she's fighting. Well, she realises at his fighting style that he is Hyuuga, but she's not faced with his personality, the way it's always the case against Naruto – and increasingly against Sasuke, whom she's getting to know rather well now.
It's rather impersonal and distant, but strangely it has some familiarity to it.
Jyuuken.
Hinata is very concentrated on the fight and the movements; she rather likes the flow of it. The speed changes, but there's always a pleasing regularity to it – and after sparring against Shikamaru, Hinata can safely say there is nothing more gnawing on her attention and nerves than irregularity in a fight. Though compared to him, she never had trouble adapting to Kiba's feral style.
She's not fighting a person; she's fighting a body, movements and techniques, sidesteps and dashes forward and things she has seen before when she passes through the compound after school.
She's following the pulse, though it drums less soothingly through her than it regulates her opponents, obviously, sometimes her pace is shattered by the clashes of the Academy's taijutsu. This taijutsu has its own music, less subtle and louder than Jyuuken, but it comes hopelessly mangled when it mixes with the Hyuuga clan form – and that is exactly what Hinata is doing.
Still, she's long learnt that beginning a move as Jyuuken and ending it in Gouken, with a kick of the heel to finish up, jars her opponents at least as much as it does her, and she's become more used to the lack of harmony than them because it is the way she fights, so ultimately it gains her an advantage, even if it exhausts her, the parallel lines of concentration and instinct she has to switch and which sometimes throw even her when they run ahead of her.
Finally the rhythm comes to a stop.
Hinata takes a breath and lets go of her fighting tunnel vision, the meditative pace of striking, blocking and dodging, and she blinks away the trance.
Memory comes back to her; she was fighting Neji-sama. Is the fight done? Hizashi-sama must have been satisfied that the Council had been properly impressed, then.
She blinks again in the utter silence. She slowly realises that every stare is fixed upon her, and blood slowly rises to her cheeks. Why are they all looking at her like that? She was only supposed to be Neji-sama's demonstration partner, that was all! They were never supposed to pay attention to her performance!
The stares are heavily weighing down on her.
She quickly looks down.
It takes her a moment to register what she is seeing, in front of her on the ground.
The body.
Neji-sama.
Out cold, with an angry red mark on the temple that she knows would flourish into a beautiful bruise if unhealed.
"I – er, what?"
"You won," says Hizashi-sama as if in a daze.
Hinata gapes.
"I what?"
"You won," he repeats. He frowns. "You won," he says again as if he was trying to convince himself and not liking the conclusion he's coming up with.
"B-but how?" she splutters. It makes no sense.
She'd believe Sakura has wrapped her in a genjutsu without her realising, but she remembers there was no school today and they don't know enough genjutsu yet to distort someone's time perception, so it's a real memory and there really was no school today, so she isn't sparring against Sakura, so it's not genjutsu.
Hizashi-sama looks almost annoyed now. "He was not expecting it."
"Oh." She blinks again.
The Council members are whispering among themselves, but she ignores it. She is trying to find a new axis for her world.
Neji-sama is the genius of the Hyuuga. He was not expecting it. But – how?
Hinata's Jyuuken isn't even second-rate.
It's a self-taught, watered-down version that is at best a distant illegitimate embarrassment of a cousin which borrows moves from even the Inuzuka fighting style and that has been influenced by more than a touch of the Academy's style.
Neji-sama's Jyuuken is so pure that when Hinata is trying to learn a kata from a scroll, she ends up closing her eyes and picturing him, and then she follows the moves.
…Oh.
Oh.
Hinata is struck dumb by the realisation. Around her there's starting to be some noise – arguments, she distractedly hears – but that's not what she cares about.
All she can think of is how the people at the Academy will react when she tells them about it.
Author:
runespoor7Rating: PG-13
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics on the AU premise stated in the title.
Notes: meh.
[I have done a dvd commentary of this fic here.]
previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
11. ninja academy – take 2
Hinata is the only one who goes to the Academy.
It makes sense, really; she's a lowly Branch House member, and Neji-sama is the heir. He is personally taught by his father, whose whole attention is devoted to him.
By contrast, Hinata has to make with a thirty-something class and teachers who are only chuunin.
When she comes back home in the evenings, she has to walk through the Hyuuga courtyard. Occasionally Neji-sama and his instructor, sometimes a Hyuuga specialist of some move or another, are still at it.
Hinata hurries up then, and tries not to see Neji's movements and techniques.
They are so above her own level she doesn't even know their names. It makes sense, she tells herself, because not only he is one year older than she is, but he is the heir. It is normal for him to be a genius.
Still, some nights it isn't enough to soothe her.
When she cannot sleep, she dresses up and slips out of her room as silently as she knows how – and she knows how, she's one of the best in the class at sneaking around, and she doesn't even have genjutsu to fall back on; if she was even adequate at genjutsu, she might be the best, but this is another of her failings – though she knows it's pointless; her mother takes sleeping pills. She could sleep through an earthquake, and has, in fact, slept through the calls of a messenger from Hizashi-sama's pounding at the door and demanding that she let him in.
But it still is training.
If anything, Hinata is even more cautious than if she was likely to be caught; she cannot afford to take bad habits and grow complacent. Thus she doesn't only avoid making noise, she also makes detours around any window or reflective surface that could cast her shadow on the floor or otherwise betray her presence.
Then she goes to that same courtyard, and she trains until her shoulders start slumping with tiredness.
She used to stop when her knees failed her in sheer exhaustion, but now that point never comes anymore, and she is able to train for several hours on end without ever running out of breath. When she still stumbles, panting, after a sparring match at the Academy, she wishes she had a partner in the compound too, so she could improve her sparring skills as well. Fights, even mock fights, are harder on her stamina than any amount of personal training.
But at least she is able to bide her time and dodge her opponent's strikes until she can bring them to the ground, with a swift chain of blows she's always perfecting and devising variations of. Variety is her only weapon against opponents who otherwise surpass her on every ground.
(Hinata is well aware practically every area of her abilities is deficient. But this is no excuse for losing against Uchiha Sasuke in spars – against him she wins four times out of ten. She is the only one who manages to defeat him more than two-tenths of the time, but her results are otherwise mediocre at best, and generally more abysmal than not. So far she has managed to beat Aburame Shino only twice in their three years at the Academy.)
Anyway, she trains the only way she knows how – following her Academy education.
When she mentally compares with Neji-sama's form, she inevitably finds herself lacking. Her Jyuuken is a clumsy affair, a bastardised version mixed with the basic taijutsu taught at the Academy, with none of the grace and precision of the Main House's accomplishments.
But she still perseveres, because if she doesn't she is going to fall even further behind Neji-sama, and he may be the heir and he may be a genius, there is only a one-year gap between them.
From times to times, when she is at the Academy laughing with the rest of the class at Naruto's antics – her heart somersaults every time Iruka-sensei falls on him with his booming voice, but Naruto always manages to tear a laugh out of her even as he is being punished – or when she asks Ino for advice on flowers or on the proper way to throw a senbon, because Kiba has maintained that she wouldn't be able to and she refused to back down, she thinks that on some grounds she may have, not the better end of the deal, but maybe a few compensations for her not being taught at home.
She has classmates with whom she can talk and who often talk around her about things she had previously never heard of, even in the Hyuuga compound; she wouldn't really call them friends, because she knows most people call her 'creepy' behind her back, but she finds she likes the sound of that a lot better than 'weakling'. In the Hyuuga, this is what she is.
She is inadequate.
She knows it.
This is why when the call comes from Hizashi-sama that she is required to attend Neji-sama's training session that day, she blanches and feels utterly, utterly powerless.
What does she have to prove?
Nothing.
Neji-sama is so above her level that Uchiha Sasuke once came up to her and asked about him. He is the genius of the Hyuuga clan.
Hinata is nowhere near that, as her stats and report card state for the world to see. And – Hinata doesn't think that Hizashi-sama would pay enough attention to her to remember her grades, but – surely he'd have realised that he receives no letter of glowing praise about her?
When she arrives on the courtyard, Neji-sama and Hizashi-sama are already there. As well as several persons Hinata recognises as members of the Council.
She wants to curl up and die. There is losing, and then there is being humiliated bad enough to consider going missing.
She is quickly reassured, though, when she hears Hizashi-sama explaining the goal of this encounter to the Council members; this match is to show Neji's prowess against an average genin. She breathes a little more easily; she's in no way expected to shine. This is a relief, she judges as she takes position in front of Neji-sama.
Of course, it doesn't entirely erase the burn of humiliation that she is going to get her ass kicked, but she consoles herself by thinking that she won't be the one the watchers will be focusing on.
In front of her, Neji-sama looks grave and serious, and gravely nods at her in acknowledgment.
The butterflies in her stomach are making her slightly nervous, but she nevertheless bows back. He's much more serious about it than most of the people at the Academy – generally they smile at each other or exchange at least a few words before starting (and in some cases even after they started; a sparring match can just as easily change into a match of wits) – but Hinata is starting to get used to stoic geniuses.
He's not all that different from Sasuke. Or at least from what he used to be. Now Sasuke's not as professional.
Well, he still only just nods solemnly, but then he immediately undercuts himself by starting to talk before Iruka gives them the signal to start. He only does that with her, though, and Naruto, of course, and she almost wishes he'd do it with other people, but then she sometimes feels like she's the only one who isn't offended by what he says, so maybe it's not that bad.
Sometimes they even eat together (he makes really good onigiri, which is an unspoken promise between them that she'll never mention in front of Akimichi Chouji).
The first time they did it was after Hinata had been kicked seven ways to Sunday by Yamanaka Ino and her blood was pounding into her head, so she didn't know how to react but was somewhat grateful for the quiet – even if it was bewildering that Sasuke would want to eat with her. But then again, Iruka-sensei had told him his mid-range taijutsu needed more work, so maybe it made sense.
She wasn't been sure what to call him after that, but then she took to mirroring the way he called her, without honorific at all. She feared she was taking liberties, but she'd thought long and hard about the issue of 'Sasuke-kun' and had come to the conclusion that he didn't seem to enjoy it when other girls called him like this. He didn't remark on it at all, which she'd taken for Sasuke-approval.
He seems to work mostly by not talking a lot. She's getting better at reading him, she thinks – at least he doesn't glare at her like he does when people annoy him, not a lot. At least she thinks that's what it means when he glares at people.
The goal of this is for Neji-sama to show off what he can, so Hinata obediently does her best. She's here as an opponent, because you can't demonstrate your skills against a log.
So she avoids and jumps backwards and does everything she usually does when she's fighting someone. She's very concentrated, but she's not especially aware of whom she's fighting. Well, she realises at his fighting style that he is Hyuuga, but she's not faced with his personality, the way it's always the case against Naruto – and increasingly against Sasuke, whom she's getting to know rather well now.
It's rather impersonal and distant, but strangely it has some familiarity to it.
Jyuuken.
Hinata is very concentrated on the fight and the movements; she rather likes the flow of it. The speed changes, but there's always a pleasing regularity to it – and after sparring against Shikamaru, Hinata can safely say there is nothing more gnawing on her attention and nerves than irregularity in a fight. Though compared to him, she never had trouble adapting to Kiba's feral style.
She's not fighting a person; she's fighting a body, movements and techniques, sidesteps and dashes forward and things she has seen before when she passes through the compound after school.
She's following the pulse, though it drums less soothingly through her than it regulates her opponents, obviously, sometimes her pace is shattered by the clashes of the Academy's taijutsu. This taijutsu has its own music, less subtle and louder than Jyuuken, but it comes hopelessly mangled when it mixes with the Hyuuga clan form – and that is exactly what Hinata is doing.
Still, she's long learnt that beginning a move as Jyuuken and ending it in Gouken, with a kick of the heel to finish up, jars her opponents at least as much as it does her, and she's become more used to the lack of harmony than them because it is the way she fights, so ultimately it gains her an advantage, even if it exhausts her, the parallel lines of concentration and instinct she has to switch and which sometimes throw even her when they run ahead of her.
Finally the rhythm comes to a stop.
Hinata takes a breath and lets go of her fighting tunnel vision, the meditative pace of striking, blocking and dodging, and she blinks away the trance.
Memory comes back to her; she was fighting Neji-sama. Is the fight done? Hizashi-sama must have been satisfied that the Council had been properly impressed, then.
She blinks again in the utter silence. She slowly realises that every stare is fixed upon her, and blood slowly rises to her cheeks. Why are they all looking at her like that? She was only supposed to be Neji-sama's demonstration partner, that was all! They were never supposed to pay attention to her performance!
The stares are heavily weighing down on her.
She quickly looks down.
It takes her a moment to register what she is seeing, in front of her on the ground.
The body.
Neji-sama.
Out cold, with an angry red mark on the temple that she knows would flourish into a beautiful bruise if unhealed.
"I – er, what?"
"You won," says Hizashi-sama as if in a daze.
Hinata gapes.
"I what?"
"You won," he repeats. He frowns. "You won," he says again as if he was trying to convince himself and not liking the conclusion he's coming up with.
"B-but how?" she splutters. It makes no sense.
She'd believe Sakura has wrapped her in a genjutsu without her realising, but she remembers there was no school today and they don't know enough genjutsu yet to distort someone's time perception, so it's a real memory and there really was no school today, so she isn't sparring against Sakura, so it's not genjutsu.
Hizashi-sama looks almost annoyed now. "He was not expecting it."
"Oh." She blinks again.
The Council members are whispering among themselves, but she ignores it. She is trying to find a new axis for her world.
Neji-sama is the genius of the Hyuuga. He was not expecting it. But – how?
Hinata's Jyuuken isn't even second-rate.
It's a self-taught, watered-down version that is at best a distant illegitimate embarrassment of a cousin which borrows moves from even the Inuzuka fighting style and that has been influenced by more than a touch of the Academy's style.
Neji-sama's Jyuuken is so pure that when Hinata is trying to learn a kata from a scroll, she ends up closing her eyes and picturing him, and then she follows the moves.
…Oh.
Oh.
Hinata is struck dumb by the realisation. Around her there's starting to be some noise – arguments, she distractedly hears – but that's not what she cares about.
All she can think of is how the people at the Academy will react when she tells them about it.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 02:51 pm (UTC)And oh, I adore what you do with Hinata here. It's clear that she's an exceptional kunoichi but her low-self-esteem is ever in prevalence, even in this universe (though you do a great job justifying it.) I love how she's like-- 'I only win 40% of my matches against Sasuke! I'm awful!' So funny and sweet and sad, that.
And the crush that Sasuke has on her is seriously adorable and-- even better-- appropriate! I have a guilty love for quite a few Sasuhina fics but even the ones I enjoy reading usually don't make that much sense. I mean, what could Hinata offer him except maybe the closes thing to a woman with a sharingan? (And even there, the genetics are iffy.) But this Au!Hinata could offer him a challenge and something extremely different from the shrieking fan-girls that mostly surround him and-- yeah. I can see it working out, if I look at it sideways. ;)
Plus, complacent!Neji just makes os much damn sense, he really does. It's always fun to see him get knocked on his ass. In any case, great job as always, and I'm glad you're still continuing with this!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 03:23 pm (UTC)Sasuke's crush on Hinata was for the biggest part unplanned, but, um. Once I'd said Hinata was the one who won most spars against him, it was inevitable.
<i>I love how she's like-- 'I only win 40% of my matches against Sasuke! I'm awful!' So funny and sweet and sad, that.</i>
At the same time, that's because of their respective fighting ranges. Even here, Hinata mostly relies on taijutsu, and Sasuke, for all his massive katons, likes his fights up close and personal. Of course, in such a set-up, Jyuuken will >>>>>> normal taijutsu user. Against people like Shino, not so well.
Complacent!Neji is aw. Such a woobie.
Thanks for telling me you like this, I was kinda unsure about it , and, I dunno. I guess I felt I needed to post so I could work/post on the next ficlets. (I couldn't scrap it because of, well, the points you made, actually.)
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 10:43 pm (UTC)Oh, that is DEFINITELY another reason I like Sasuhina fics (at least when they're decently written and don't make Hinata into a total push-over for manly Sasuke. Ugh!) I mean, I just think it's funny to see the shoe on the other foot for once, with <i>Sasuke</i> having to win someone's favor instead of having it slathered all over him, as in canon. And the irony of Hinata liking the 'Dead Last Loser' over him is too delicious to resist, no?
And I'm guessing that Sasuke occasionally pulls a Neji and cops a feel during a close-fight, right? Hate a see a strapping you man miss an opportunity like that. ::cough:: ;)
Dude, as long as you keep writing fun fics like this, I SHALL REVIEW HAPPILY. I'm not even really IN the Naruto fandom, though I updated with new fic a while back. But trying to find good fic in the Naruto fandom can be a bit crazy-making so as far as I'm concenred, I found a gold mine with you. ♥
no subject
Date: 2007-04-18 08:27 am (UTC)just think it's funny to see the shoe on the other foot for once, with Sasuke having to win someone's favor instead of having it slathered all over him, as in canon. And the irony of Hinata liking the 'Dead Last Loser' over him is too delicious to resist, no?
Yeah. Besides, it's nice to see him fumble with something a light and unconsequential as unrequited-crush angst/inadequacy for once, ratherb than the all-encompassing massive self-destructive Angst that is his life (<-no irony).
Nah, I don't think he does. Once he tried (it wasn't like it was conscious! It was just that she looked warm and she was right there and Sasuke's not a touchy-feely person but he wondered about resting his hand instead of landing a blow, and and, it's not any of your business.) and he got beat so fast he's never ever ever trying that one again. Besides when he fights her he doesn't have the time to joke around.
...He would be so horrified if he knew what his liking-to-spend-time-with-her, staring-at-the-way-her-hair-brushes-against-her-cheek meant. AND EVEN MORE SO IF HE COULD HEAR US TALKING ABOUT 'COPPING FEELS'.
*wibbles* Er, thank you? *insert blushing Hinata impression here*
Someday I'll get to making those reclists I've been thinking about putting together, really.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-18 07:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-16 06:55 pm (UTC)i really like hinata here, she comes across as very real. we see her working so hard in canonverse so to see her behaving that same way here just rings very true. i would say the characterizations in this segment are possibly the most canon like of all so far.
the way she's combined the jyuuken with the schools taijutsu and how this is able to take neji so completely off guard was just fantastic. i would love to know neji's viewpoint on all of it.
and the implied sasuhina was cute :D (as were the brief bits about her interactions with her schoolmates - i love getting glimpses of stuff like that)
great work as usual!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-18 07:47 am (UTC)Neji: DDDDDDDDDD: ... D: (combining jyuuken/gouken = mixing > supposed purity! this is brought to you by my country's elections for a president, starting in four days from now.)
Chibi Sasuke is made of cute, and any Sasuke who's dealing with an unrequited crush is even cuter. (Hinata is honoured, and intimidated, and happy that he's her friend, but completely and utterly clueless as to more.)
i love getting glimpses of stuff like that
So do I! ^^
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Date: 2007-04-17 06:54 pm (UTC)And I love the parts about Hinata and Sasuke's freindship. Absolutely adorable ^^
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Date: 2007-04-18 08:06 am (UTC)A self-taught technique with touches of other fighting styles which she probably knows as the back of her hand... I feel like it'd be superior, too.
Well, at least she can rely on more than one fighting style, while Neji... is a prodigy Hyuuga taught in the way of the Jyuuken. :/ methinks that will not work so well out there in the real world.
They are adorable, aren't they?
later they fall in love with Naruto.