oh the minor non-characters
I have no memory of why writing this occurred to me, but it completely consumed me once it did. I rewatched episode 3, pausing every two seconds, taking copious notes. I wrote this before class, during class, during lab, while waiting on the curbside for a ride, when I should have been studying. My second longest completed piece to date.
Title: “Twenty-One Nameless Fail Outs”
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: OCs (though the physical descriptions are accurate from episode 3), mentions of Naruto/Sasuke, Hinata, Sakura, Kiba, Ibiki, Yondaime, Shino, Iruka, Shikamaru
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: episode 3 (read: none)
Word Count: 1,884
Disclaimer: Naruto not mine
i: Team 1
The kunoichi was a chubby girl with a motherly face and shoulder-length straight black hair. She wore a long-sleeved orange dress under a dark blue sleeveless dress. There was a loud relieved sigh when all but two people in the room realized they weren’t on her team. She was a cousin of the Akimichi clan head.
The first boy’s clan was originally from Wind Country. He had short dark hair under a mummy-bandage turban and wore a dark brown shirt with a high-necked light brown shirt under it.
The second boy was so effeminate it had taken years for some of his classmates to realize he was male, even with his short cropped black hair. He wore a gender-neutral light green kimono.
She was a slow taijutsu heavy hitter. He was a wind jutsu user. He was a spider summoner.
They failed.
They went back to the Academy. Two years later, their years of Academy experience finally overcame their mediocrity enough that only two other teams were better.
Everyone always took her for a civilian, him for a Sand-nin, and him for a girl.
Two of them lost older brothers to a failed mission to Sound. Before they could recover from their grief they had a failed mission of their own.
Jounin sensei dead, they called back to Leaf for relief, aid, rescue. It never came.
“Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. We can’t complete this mission.”
“They’ve abandoned us.”
“If they’ve left us, let’s leave them.”
They abandoned their mission, their village. They hadn’t been seduced by the life of a missing-nin or they’d have been disappointed. Life was hard and hungry and unfulfilling and only their anger and despair kept them going.
They died of infection and starvation and cold in the barren lands of the north.
ii: Team 2
The kunoichi was a bit too feral-looking to be pretty. Her short dark brown hair was almost as messy as her cousin Kiba’s. She wore a green-brown vest over a light gray shirt and dark shorts, unlike the dresses worn by the rest of the girls in the class.
The first boy had short dark hair and wore a sleeveless orange shirt with harnesses crossing over his body.
The second boy had dark brown spikes for hair and wore tan.
She was a wild, head-on, all-out fighter with a tiny puppy tucked in the sports bra she wore solely for that purpose. He was a weapons specialist. He used earth jutsu.
Their jounin sensei had to admire their spirits and both respect and fear their unwillingness to admit they had failed. She had let them try all day, though she had decided earlier that she wasn’t going to pass them. It would be good for them to know that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t be better than they were.
The plan was probably the kunoichi’s. It was bold, incredibly stupid, and if it had worked it would have worked. It didn’t fail. They did.
They fell over a hundred feet from the thin mountain goat trail of rock on the cliff face. The girl, boys, and puppy were buried as genin.
iii: Team 3
The kunoichi was ugly and she wasn’t doing anything to hide it. She wore her black hair short and a sleeveless brown dress like a sack.
The first boy had brown hair and wore a light blue jacket with a dark blue hood.
The second boy had short, ragged black hair and wore a dark red-brown jacket and black jeans.
She was an earth jutsu user who was better at genjutsu. He was a taijutsu user who was better at air jutsus. He was a genjutsu user who was better at fire jutsu.
They failed.
More than failed, they gave up. They quit being ninja.
They opened a perfume and apothecary shop together. It barely held on for a long time before achieving moderate, comfortable prosperity in supporting them in their later years.
The first boy left after some time and became a builder and tester of experimental technology. He was the first person in Fire Country to fly without ninja abilities.
They did well enough for themselves. But they weren’t ninja.
iv: Team 4
The kunoichi really didn’t care about Sasuke. She had seen the appeal, but also that he was really an asshole. She only pretended she did because all the other girls except the Hyuuga and the Akimichi were spazing over him and unlike them, she wanted to fit in. She had long black-blue-gray hair and wore a light blue dress in the same style as Sakura and a number of the other girls.
The first boy had a longer fringe in his short black hair that often fell down to cover his right eye. He wore a light gray jacket.
The second boy had brown hair gelled straight up in back and looked terribly in-the-wrong-decade and flammable. He wore huge black goggles and a dark green long-sleeves shirt with a light green neck scarf.
She was second to Sasuke in every practical subject and second to Sakura on the written. He was a genjutsu specialist. He was a combiner of wind and water.
Their jounin sensei hadn’t known the field she had chosen was being used by members of the Torture and Interrogation squad for routine training. The team was recruited on the spot. The three were practically dragged into Ibiki’s office to make the appointments official.
Within a week they knew more secrets than anyone else of their generation. They even knew everything that had happened the night the Fourth Hokage died from a Leaf ninja turned missing-nin who by the time they finished was falling over himself to tell them every piece of vaguely secret information he had ever known.
The first boy said Team Four was lucky. The girl attributed it to the sheer awesomeness of the Fourth Hokage. The other boy pointed out just what had happened to the Fourth and what they did to missing-nins, but in a way that meant he agreed with both of them.
v: Team 5
The kunoichi had dirty blonde hair past her waist, even with her ponytail high on her head. Her dress was black.
The first boy had short black hair that made him look like a stereotypical sushi chef. He wore a formal collared shirt everyday and a sports coat in winter.
The second boy had short black hair and wore a full set of metal-enforced leather armor. The tan burnoose he wore under it reflected back to his birth in Sand.
She was a manipulator of light chakra. He was a swordsman who never had to move a foot. He was a taijutsu user who also trained in a more dynamic sword fighting style.
They failed.
The next year they passed. They were not considered very exceptional and it was quite some time before they took the chuunin exam.
When they did, five years later, they all came to their own very spectacularly. They all passed their first try.
They very quickly made jounin after that. They all served occasional stints in the ANBU, but mostly they worked jounin-level missions. They all trained teams of their own eventually.
They were all successful jounin, so successful in fact they even managed to die in ways so that their names were not added to the multitudinous others on the memorial stone.
vi: Team 6
The kunoichi had short black pigtails under a dark red headband and wore a dark red sleeveless dress over a light-brown long-sleeved dress. She hit on Sasuke in compensation for realizing she was a lesbian about a year before.
They first boy had shoulder-length black hair, longer than almost any other boy in the class. He wore a long-sleeved gray-green shirt and dark brown pants and sunglasses almost as often as Shino.
The second boy was a samurai, not a ninja, and it showed in his samurai-style black topknot. He wore a green jacket with light purple sleeves and a dark purple hood. He wanted to restore his family’s name in the eyes of the daimyo and wanted their lands back. He wasn’t loyal to the Hidden Village of the Leaf; he was loyal to a legacy ten times as long.
She was best at taijutsu, but considered it too butch, so she studied medical techniques. He practiced genjutsu in an attempt to impress his betrothed in the Aburame clan. He was best at genjutsu, but his samurai honor led him to disdain such techniques in favor of swordsmanship, at which he had no natural talent.
They failed.
They went back to the Academy. They stayed close, which was why they skipped class together one day to go watch the second half of the chuunin examination matches. They never made it that far.
The samurai rushed the first attacking Sound ninja they saw straight on. His friends jumped on the ninja’s back from the roof of a building behind him. Between the three of them and the surprise of being attacked by children who fought like cornered rats, they killed him.
The Sound-nin’s partner killed them all.
vii: Team 9
The kunoichi had fuzzy brown hair in ponytails that exceeded her head in diameter. She wore a green dress over white pants. She was the only girl who, on the day after graduation, didn’t beat up Naruto for that incident but the one responsible.
The first boy looked so much like his cousin on Team 1 most of the class couldn’t tell the boys in turbans apart.
The second boy had a spiky black ponytail and a light-hearted personality. He wore a gray shirt with black sleeves and stripes and gray pants. He always found it kind of funny that his sole greatest claim to fame was that when Sasuke and Naruto had first kissed, it had been totally his fault. Well, actually, at the time it had been painful, because his future teammate had beaten him up, but since then.
They were all equally mediocre at everything.
They failed.
They achieved the record in Leaf’s history of most times graduating the Academy without becoming genin. They were finally picked up by a jounin as a curiosity.
They held the record in the entire region as the team who took the chuunin examinations the most times without a single member being promoted or dying.
Every mission, no matter how easy they never succeeded, no matter how hard they never died. Their reputation went as such: incompetent, but immortal.
Watching the pain, suffering, and eventual death of everyone else in their class, they, not even the hot tempered kunoichi, couldn’t help but think that maybe they had it alright and they could live with it.
viii: The Class
Everyone in the graduating class knew at that moment on that day that they were going to be the best ninja ever (except Shikamaru).
Every kunoichi knew in her heart that she didn’t have a chance with Sasuke (except Sakura).
Everyone would secretly miss seeing Iruka-sensei spazing out when Akamaru ate Kiba’s homework (except Kiba).
Everyone was secretly curious about why their parents wouldn’t let them near Naruto, but all found him too annoying to bother trying to find out or to defy all the adults (except Hinata).
Everyone in that graduating class was firmly of the belief that Naruto was only graduating to make it an even thirty.
Title: “Twenty-One Nameless Fail Outs”
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: OCs (though the physical descriptions are accurate from episode 3), mentions of Naruto/Sasuke, Hinata, Sakura, Kiba, Ibiki, Yondaime, Shino, Iruka, Shikamaru
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: episode 3 (read: none)
Word Count: 1,884
Disclaimer: Naruto not mine
i: Team 1
The kunoichi was a chubby girl with a motherly face and shoulder-length straight black hair. She wore a long-sleeved orange dress under a dark blue sleeveless dress. There was a loud relieved sigh when all but two people in the room realized they weren’t on her team. She was a cousin of the Akimichi clan head.
The first boy’s clan was originally from Wind Country. He had short dark hair under a mummy-bandage turban and wore a dark brown shirt with a high-necked light brown shirt under it.
The second boy was so effeminate it had taken years for some of his classmates to realize he was male, even with his short cropped black hair. He wore a gender-neutral light green kimono.
She was a slow taijutsu heavy hitter. He was a wind jutsu user. He was a spider summoner.
They failed.
They went back to the Academy. Two years later, their years of Academy experience finally overcame their mediocrity enough that only two other teams were better.
Everyone always took her for a civilian, him for a Sand-nin, and him for a girl.
Two of them lost older brothers to a failed mission to Sound. Before they could recover from their grief they had a failed mission of their own.
Jounin sensei dead, they called back to Leaf for relief, aid, rescue. It never came.
“Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them. We can’t complete this mission.”
“They’ve abandoned us.”
“If they’ve left us, let’s leave them.”
They abandoned their mission, their village. They hadn’t been seduced by the life of a missing-nin or they’d have been disappointed. Life was hard and hungry and unfulfilling and only their anger and despair kept them going.
They died of infection and starvation and cold in the barren lands of the north.
ii: Team 2
The kunoichi was a bit too feral-looking to be pretty. Her short dark brown hair was almost as messy as her cousin Kiba’s. She wore a green-brown vest over a light gray shirt and dark shorts, unlike the dresses worn by the rest of the girls in the class.
The first boy had short dark hair and wore a sleeveless orange shirt with harnesses crossing over his body.
The second boy had dark brown spikes for hair and wore tan.
She was a wild, head-on, all-out fighter with a tiny puppy tucked in the sports bra she wore solely for that purpose. He was a weapons specialist. He used earth jutsu.
Their jounin sensei had to admire their spirits and both respect and fear their unwillingness to admit they had failed. She had let them try all day, though she had decided earlier that she wasn’t going to pass them. It would be good for them to know that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t be better than they were.
The plan was probably the kunoichi’s. It was bold, incredibly stupid, and if it had worked it would have worked. It didn’t fail. They did.
They fell over a hundred feet from the thin mountain goat trail of rock on the cliff face. The girl, boys, and puppy were buried as genin.
iii: Team 3
The kunoichi was ugly and she wasn’t doing anything to hide it. She wore her black hair short and a sleeveless brown dress like a sack.
The first boy had brown hair and wore a light blue jacket with a dark blue hood.
The second boy had short, ragged black hair and wore a dark red-brown jacket and black jeans.
She was an earth jutsu user who was better at genjutsu. He was a taijutsu user who was better at air jutsus. He was a genjutsu user who was better at fire jutsu.
They failed.
More than failed, they gave up. They quit being ninja.
They opened a perfume and apothecary shop together. It barely held on for a long time before achieving moderate, comfortable prosperity in supporting them in their later years.
The first boy left after some time and became a builder and tester of experimental technology. He was the first person in Fire Country to fly without ninja abilities.
They did well enough for themselves. But they weren’t ninja.
iv: Team 4
The kunoichi really didn’t care about Sasuke. She had seen the appeal, but also that he was really an asshole. She only pretended she did because all the other girls except the Hyuuga and the Akimichi were spazing over him and unlike them, she wanted to fit in. She had long black-blue-gray hair and wore a light blue dress in the same style as Sakura and a number of the other girls.
The first boy had a longer fringe in his short black hair that often fell down to cover his right eye. He wore a light gray jacket.
The second boy had brown hair gelled straight up in back and looked terribly in-the-wrong-decade and flammable. He wore huge black goggles and a dark green long-sleeves shirt with a light green neck scarf.
She was second to Sasuke in every practical subject and second to Sakura on the written. He was a genjutsu specialist. He was a combiner of wind and water.
Their jounin sensei hadn’t known the field she had chosen was being used by members of the Torture and Interrogation squad for routine training. The team was recruited on the spot. The three were practically dragged into Ibiki’s office to make the appointments official.
Within a week they knew more secrets than anyone else of their generation. They even knew everything that had happened the night the Fourth Hokage died from a Leaf ninja turned missing-nin who by the time they finished was falling over himself to tell them every piece of vaguely secret information he had ever known.
The first boy said Team Four was lucky. The girl attributed it to the sheer awesomeness of the Fourth Hokage. The other boy pointed out just what had happened to the Fourth and what they did to missing-nins, but in a way that meant he agreed with both of them.
v: Team 5
The kunoichi had dirty blonde hair past her waist, even with her ponytail high on her head. Her dress was black.
The first boy had short black hair that made him look like a stereotypical sushi chef. He wore a formal collared shirt everyday and a sports coat in winter.
The second boy had short black hair and wore a full set of metal-enforced leather armor. The tan burnoose he wore under it reflected back to his birth in Sand.
She was a manipulator of light chakra. He was a swordsman who never had to move a foot. He was a taijutsu user who also trained in a more dynamic sword fighting style.
They failed.
The next year they passed. They were not considered very exceptional and it was quite some time before they took the chuunin exam.
When they did, five years later, they all came to their own very spectacularly. They all passed their first try.
They very quickly made jounin after that. They all served occasional stints in the ANBU, but mostly they worked jounin-level missions. They all trained teams of their own eventually.
They were all successful jounin, so successful in fact they even managed to die in ways so that their names were not added to the multitudinous others on the memorial stone.
vi: Team 6
The kunoichi had short black pigtails under a dark red headband and wore a dark red sleeveless dress over a light-brown long-sleeved dress. She hit on Sasuke in compensation for realizing she was a lesbian about a year before.
They first boy had shoulder-length black hair, longer than almost any other boy in the class. He wore a long-sleeved gray-green shirt and dark brown pants and sunglasses almost as often as Shino.
The second boy was a samurai, not a ninja, and it showed in his samurai-style black topknot. He wore a green jacket with light purple sleeves and a dark purple hood. He wanted to restore his family’s name in the eyes of the daimyo and wanted their lands back. He wasn’t loyal to the Hidden Village of the Leaf; he was loyal to a legacy ten times as long.
She was best at taijutsu, but considered it too butch, so she studied medical techniques. He practiced genjutsu in an attempt to impress his betrothed in the Aburame clan. He was best at genjutsu, but his samurai honor led him to disdain such techniques in favor of swordsmanship, at which he had no natural talent.
They failed.
They went back to the Academy. They stayed close, which was why they skipped class together one day to go watch the second half of the chuunin examination matches. They never made it that far.
The samurai rushed the first attacking Sound ninja they saw straight on. His friends jumped on the ninja’s back from the roof of a building behind him. Between the three of them and the surprise of being attacked by children who fought like cornered rats, they killed him.
The Sound-nin’s partner killed them all.
vii: Team 9
The kunoichi had fuzzy brown hair in ponytails that exceeded her head in diameter. She wore a green dress over white pants. She was the only girl who, on the day after graduation, didn’t beat up Naruto for that incident but the one responsible.
The first boy looked so much like his cousin on Team 1 most of the class couldn’t tell the boys in turbans apart.
The second boy had a spiky black ponytail and a light-hearted personality. He wore a gray shirt with black sleeves and stripes and gray pants. He always found it kind of funny that his sole greatest claim to fame was that when Sasuke and Naruto had first kissed, it had been totally his fault. Well, actually, at the time it had been painful, because his future teammate had beaten him up, but since then.
They were all equally mediocre at everything.
They failed.
They achieved the record in Leaf’s history of most times graduating the Academy without becoming genin. They were finally picked up by a jounin as a curiosity.
They held the record in the entire region as the team who took the chuunin examinations the most times without a single member being promoted or dying.
Every mission, no matter how easy they never succeeded, no matter how hard they never died. Their reputation went as such: incompetent, but immortal.
Watching the pain, suffering, and eventual death of everyone else in their class, they, not even the hot tempered kunoichi, couldn’t help but think that maybe they had it alright and they could live with it.
viii: The Class
Everyone in the graduating class knew at that moment on that day that they were going to be the best ninja ever (except Shikamaru).
Every kunoichi knew in her heart that she didn’t have a chance with Sasuke (except Sakura).
Everyone would secretly miss seeing Iruka-sensei spazing out when Akamaru ate Kiba’s homework (except Kiba).
Everyone was secretly curious about why their parents wouldn’t let them near Naruto, but all found him too annoying to bother trying to find out or to defy all the adults (except Hinata).
Everyone in that graduating class was firmly of the belief that Naruto was only graduating to make it an even thirty.