Interlude: Socialization
"Why do I have to do this, anyway? This is stupid."
"You're doing this because it might save these kids' lives," Mari said gently. "You wouldn't want them to die, would you?"
"Well, n...I mean...they probably aren't...they aren't on my team!"
She sighed. "Do it as a favor to me?" she asked hopefully. "I know you don't think of them as part of the team, but I do. You, me, Keiko, Hazō, Noburi, and Akane are always going to be the core of our team, but I've decided that Hazō is right: all of Leaf is part of the team now. Not as strongly, perhaps, but enough that we should do our best to keep their kids alive."
Kagome digested that. "Stupid idea," he grumbled. "Stinkers sure don't act like they're our team. They threw us in a killbox."
"Before they joined the team. Before we became Gōketsu and took over."
"Hmph. Well...that Hyūga woman was mean to you."
Mari's laugh was silver bells and gentle reproof. "You let me worry about her. Yes, she made me mad, but once I got over it I've been enjoying it. She's vicious as a snake, but she's really good at playing the game. I haven't had a chance to play against someone at my level in a long time. It's invigorating."
"
Blowing her up sounds plenty invigorating," Kagome grumbled. "Besides, her boy is always being rude to Noburi."
"He tries, and then Noburi always makes him look like a fool. You have to admit—"
"Excuse me," the teacher said, opening the door and poking his head out into the hall. "Are you two about ready? The kids are waiting, and they're pretty excited."
"Just one more minute," Mari said, smiling and surreptitiously catching Kagome's hand as it reflexively twitched towards his belt. "We'll be right there."
"Yes, ma'am," the teacher said, disappearing inside and closing the door behind himself.
"Kagome, I won't force you to do this," she said seriously, looking up to meet his eyes without letting go of her grip on his wrist. "I hope you will, though. Whatever you feel about Leaf as a whole, these kids have done nothing to us. They're six years old, and they're incredibly excited that Gōketsu Kagome himself would take the time to speak to them. Listening to you is going to be the high point of their week, and it might save their lives some day."
"...Fine."
His face was sour as a lemon tree, but there was a determination in his eyes that gave her a little bit of hope. She smiled at him again and let go of his wrist; he didn't wait, choosing instead to yank the door open and march inside.
"YAAAAYYYYY!"
The sound startled even Mari slightly and it made Kagome jump back, hands coming up before she could stop him...
...and then pausing, lethal explosions not triggered and the shining faces of thirty-three young kids not splattered against the walls. His arms fell back to his sides, limp in shock as he read the banner that hung at the back of the room, the kanji smudged and messy with childish handwriting:
Thank you for coming, Gōketsu Kagome!
"Children!" the teacher snapped, struggling to conceal his alarm. "What did I say?"
Silence.
"Sora, what did I say?" the teacher demanded.
"'Be 'spectful to Mr. Gōketsu'," the boy mumbled, eyes down as he stared in fascination at his desk.
"Reo, is it respectful to yell at someone as they come in the room?"
"No, sensei. Sorry, sensei."
"'Sorry, sensei'? How about 'Sorry, Mr. Gōketsu'?"
"Sorry, Mr. Gōketsu," the children chorused. Amazingly, they even managed to sound contrite. Chances are none of them realized how close they had come to death.
"Um...but...ah...." Kagome floundered, glancing over to Mari in mute entreaty. She smiled and gestured to him in a 'well, go on' way, even as she hopped up onto one of the cabinets at the side of the room. The teacher stood against the wall opposite the door, leaving Kagome on his own in front of the hordes of excited youngsters.
"It's...um...it's okay?" Kagome said, fidgeting. "It's...it's nice to meet you all?"
The kids looked up, contrition promptly forgotten as forgiveness was unexpectedly granted. Thirty-three mouths opened, ninety-nine questions prepared to tumble forth, and the teacher hurried to cut them off.
"Quiet! If anyone would like to ask Mr. Gōketsu a question, you raise your hand and wait to be called on!"
Hands shot into the air, waving wildly to attract attention even as the bodies below them bounced in excitement and young voices yelled, "Ooh, ooh! Mr. Gōketsu, Mr. Gōketsu! Pick me, pick me!"
"Quiet!" the teacher thundered. The kids shut up and stopped bouncing, but hands retracted only slightly and waved no less furiously.
"Um...you," Kagome said, pointing helplessly at a random child.
"Is it true that you dueled the Mizukage in single combat for thirty days and thirty nights?" the boy asked, eyes shining in excitement.
"What? No! That's ridi—"
"I'm afraid that most of our background is classified," Mari said smoothly. "Mr. Gōketsu is here to talk about wilderness survival. Specifically, all the dangerous things that might try to eat you and how to build a camp that's safe against them."
Hands went down slowly, but the air was not filled with too much disappointment. Survival against chakra beasts was cool. Not as cool as dueling the Mizukage, but you took what you could get.
Kagome digested the sudden silence, then nodded and stepped to the blackboard. "Right," he said, lifting the chalk and starting to sketch. "The wilderness is dangerous. Stupidly dangerous. Not as bad as sealing—it won't melt your face off or rip open a hole in space and time through which extradimensional horrors try to eat your nose. Still, dangerous. There's three things you'll need to focus on: warmth, food, and protection. Oh, and water. Four things. Wait, disease. Five things. Now, you're not going to be able to make seals, so—"
o-o-o-o
They were halfway back to the house before Kagome finally spoke.
"
Thanks," he mumbled.
"Hm?" Mari asked. "What?"
"Thanks," Kagome said, still sounding embarrassed. "That was fun. Cute kids."
"They were, weren't they?" she said, smiling fondly. "Would you like to go back at some point?"
"...Maybe."
o-o-o-o
Knock, knock, knock.
"What?! Who is it! Stay back, I'm warning you!" The words were out of his mouth before he'd come fully awake, but his body had already scrambled into the mousehole and prepped a blastdisk. A quick toss, toss it hard against the back wall of the room so it bounced forward, past the mousehole, to land at the feet of whoever came through the door....
"It's just me, Kagome," Mari called through the door. "You've got a letter."
He blinked. A letter? He had a letter? Like...words? Written on paper for a particular person to read? Who would be sending him a letter?
"It's from...Yamamoto Honoka? Does that name mean anything to you?"
"No! Send it back, it's probably poisoned."
"Do you want me to open it?"
"No! Poison!"
"It's fine, I'll just open it and let you—"
He flung the door open and snatched it out of her hands, not paying any attention to the way she gawped at his tie-dyed purple-and-pink sleep trunks. (He'd seen them on sale and fell in love.)
He ripped the envelope open and skimmed through the contents. Then skimmed through them again.
"What."
Mari took the letter gently from his hands and read it, then chuckled. "Sounds like you have an admirer."
"Why am I getting letters from children?" he demanded querulously.
"Well, in this particular case it's because you've got a kid who was enraptured by your lecture and wants to become a security specialist after she leaves the Academy," Mari said patiently, tapping the relevant words in the letter. "You've actually got a whole bunch more." She pulled a thick sheaf of envelopes from an inside pocket of her vest and handed it over.
He stared at them blankly for a moment, then inspected the bundle carefully without touching it; Mari held it out patiently until he hesitantly took the letters. He examined the top one again before ripping the envelope open and reading the contents.
"'Thank you for coming to our class, Mr. Gōketsu. It was really cool. Signed, Chiharu'." He looked up at the redhead, eyes full of suspicion. "Is he making fun of me?"
She thwapped him lightly on the shoulder. "No, silly! He liked your lecture! Those kids are all firsties; the only things they're doing are boring stuff like memorizing ninja ranks, learning to meditate so they can feel their chakra, and basic academics. Hearing a real live ninja talk about wilderness survival would have been super exciting for them."
He eyed her suspiciously, then opened the next envelope. "'Thank you Mr. Gōketsu ur lecure was neat Homaru'." He glared at the paper. "Why are they calling me 'Mister'? Nobody calls me 'Mister'."
Mari facepalmed. "Kagome," she said gently, "you are their elder, and an experienced ninja, and the cousin of the Hokage—"
"No I'm not! Jiraiya-stinker's just pretending."
She bapped him on the arm again. "Yes, you are, you thick-brick twit! Jiraiya is not 'just pretending.' In every way that matters, our family is as real as any other. We have all the same political and legal rights as any other family. Our children will not be Inoue, Kagome, or Kurosawa, they will be Gōketsu." She laughed. "If you ask me, our family is
better than blood family; people born of one blood are only family because they have no choice. We are family because we
chose each other."
He cleared his throat and blinked; perhaps he needed to clean the hallway a bit, since it seemed that there was a lot of dust in the air and it was irritating his eyes.
"Now, as I was saying," Mari continued, "you're their elder, and an experienced ninja, and the Hokage's cousin, and one of the first missing-nin to ever come in from the cold. You are a hero to them, and to most of Leaf. People are already writing songs and stories about you, Kagome."
"They what?"
"Songs. And stories. Go into any bar in Leaf at night and sit for an hour or two. You'll hear at least one song about each of us." She grinned wickedly. "Fair warning: Some of them are pretty raunchy."
He didn't know what to say to that, so he went through the rest of the stack of envelopes. They were all the same: A sentence of thanks in sloppy handwriting, followed by a signature. And then, of course, there was the first one, the one from the little girl who wanted to be a security specialist. He went back and re-read it. It was a whole page, full of excited gushing about how wonderful the lecture had been and how she hoped to be as smart as him one day and how grateful she was to him for showing her how she could support her family even though she couldn't be a ninja.
He frowned at that last part and thrust the paper at Mari. "Why can't she be a ninja?" he demanded.
Mari glanced at the page, then shrugged. "No idea. Not enough chakra, or not enough control? Sickly, so she can't hack the physical side? Or maybe she just doesn't have the will to stick with it. Could be lots of things."
Kagome's frown got thunderous. "She's not giving up. Come on." He strode off down the corridor, making it only a stride before Mari grabbed his arm.
"Whoa, there, Stompy," she said. "We can go talk to her, no problem, but you should put some pants on first."
Kagome looked down at the sleep trunks and blast harness that were his only items of apparel. "Oh. Yeah, I suppose. Hang on." He ducked back into his room and rummaged quickly through the stacks of laundry to find one of the Leaf-ninja uniforms that Jiraiya-stinker had insisted he have. Probably smart to look formal if he was going to ream out the head of the school. (He felt a pleased glow of satisfaction at his recognition of this fact. Maybe this social stuff wasn't so hard after all!)
o-o-o-o
Neither Kagome nor Mari had any idea where the headmaster's office was located. Mari would have assumed that it was roughly at the center of the building and simply headed inwards, but Kagome had a far more direct problem-solving strategy: He yanked open the door to the first classroom they went past and shoved his head inside.
"Where's the headmaster?" he growled.
The teacher, an older man with an armband that indicated he was a civilian auxiliary, blinked in surprise. "Down the hall, left, then right?"
"Good."
Kagome closed the door and stomped off down the hall, Mari trailing in his wake with a small smile and an amused shake of the head.
The headmaster's secretary was a civilian in his late fifties, maybe early sixties, with steel-gray hair and a pitted face that suggested a pox survivor. He was probably accustomed to all sorts of angry parents, teachers, and students bursting into the office at random times. At least, that was the only reason Mari could think of for his aplomb when Kagome swept in.
"May I help you?" the secretary asked calmly.
"Gotta talk to the headmaster," Kagome said, striding across the room and into the office of the man in question.
Kobayashi Saito had been head of the Leaf Academy of the Ninja Arts for fifteen years; he'd had angry clan nobles in his office more times than he could count, and he didn't bat an eye as Kagome stomped in, Mari in his wake, and thrust the letter under his nose.
"Why can't she be a ninja?" Kagome demanded.
"I'm terribly sorry for the interruption, headmaster," Mari said with a disarming smile, slipping up next to Kagome. "We were in yesterday for that guest lecture on wilderness survival, and the kids were sweet enough to send thank-you letters. Kagome was particularly taken with this one."
The headmaster took the letter without comment and skipped to the bottom to find the signature. "Hm...oh, yes. Yamamoto Honoka. Sweet child, hard worker, decent-sized chakra reserves, but simply can't keep up with the academics or the necessary control exercises. She's on academic probabtion now and if she doesn't improve by the end of midterms next year then she'll be cut."
"I'll teach her!"
The headmaster raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"
"I'll teach her. If your teachers can't do it, I will."
The headmaster paused; clearly that had not been the direction he'd expected this conversation to go. "Do you have experience teaching, sir? It's more time-consuming than most people expect."
Kagome snorted. "I taught Hazō sealing and he only ripped the universe open twice. I think I can manage to teach one little girl her numbers and some chakra control."
The headmaster paused again. "Of course I have no objection, sir, but may I advise you to think carefully? It would be cruel to get the child's hopes up if you're going to be unable to maintain the effort. Most ninja are called away on missions regularly...."
"Kagome is a sealmaster," Mari said. "He's far more valuable on the home front and should have regular availability. I'm happy to fill in for him when he has other obligations." She kept the smile bright, allowing no trace of her true feelings to show. She'd already proven herself a terrible mentor and mother-figure to three kids, should she really be volunteering to help a fourth? Still, Kagome was set on it and she needed to support him. Leaving aside the fact that having her team's back was the one virtue she still had, she'd already put too much work into this situation to let it come apart now. And she probably wouldn't actually need to step in. Kagome was nothing if not dedicated.
"In that case, why don't we talk to the child's mother when she picks her up after school today? We can work out schedules and such."
o-o-o-o
When Yamamoto Aoi arrived at the gates of the Academy, she was surprised to see three adults standing beside her daughter, one of them being the headmaster. The other two...the man wore a ninja uniform and the woman was in a clan robe, but Aoi didn't recognize the emblem. The Leaf symbol, the word Gō—her eyes widened as she recognized the emblem for what it was: that of the Hokage's family! The red-haired woman must be the Hokage's wife, and that tall fellow was his cousin! The one who had been tortured into near-insanity by those demons of the Mist. Oh, Sage, protect and preserve.
"Good evening," she said, bowing deeply and hiding her hands in her sleeves to conceal their tremors. "I'm terribly sorry for any trouble. What has Honoka done?"
"She's failing out," the Hokage's cousin said bluntly. "I want to teach her."
Aoi blinked. "That's...very kind of you, sir, but—"
"What, I'm not good enough to teach your daughter?"
"No! I just, I meant, I didn't want—"
"It's all right," said the Hokage's wife, smiling. "I think we've given the wrong first impression. No one is in trouble, no one is angry. We're just asking your permission to give Honoka some extra tutoring after school. Would that be all right?"
"Please, mum?" Honoka's eyes were huge and dewey, nigh-impossible to resist even if Aoi had wanted to.
"Yes! I mean, of course, but...."
"Excellent!" the tiny woman said, clapping her hands. "Would it be all right with you if we came over now? Your husband should be consulted as well, and perhaps we could have the first lesson tonight? I know it's an imposition, but we'll be as unobtrusive as possible. Oh, and I have dinner for everyone." She produced a scroll, presumably one of the ninja magic ones, from inside her robe. "That way you and your husband needn't be distracted by cooking."
"Oh, I couldn't let you—"
"Please do," urged the redhead. "I would be so embarrassed if we descended upon you without warning and put you to any trouble."
"But—"
"If you'll pardon me," said the headmaster, "I believe things are in hand now. If I'm not needed, I should return to my paperwork."
"Of course," Aoi said, bowing deeply to the man. "Thank you, headmaster, for your time."
o-o-o-o
"That's how they taught it to you? Giant tables of stuff?"
Honoka nodded, cringing only slightly at the expected scorn for her inability to understand such a simple thing.
Kagome-sensei looked disgusted. "What a stupid way to teach math! No wonder you can't find any sense in it when those stinkers teach it in such a stupid stinking way! What a bunch of stupidheads!"
Honoka couldn't stop the giggle from escaping, but she clapped her hands over her mouth lest any more follow it. Laughing at your teachers was not permitted! Fortunately, Kagome-sensei didn't seem to have noticed.
"Okay, look," the strange man said. "Here's a number line. Let's put a mark here and say that's zero. Now we'll add the other numbers." He made a quick series of evenly-spaced ticks along the line, writing the numbers one through twenty above each one. "You showed me that you can already count, so start at zero and count three tick marks to the right." He took her finger and put it on the 'zero' mark.
"One, two, three," she said, moving her finger up each time. Counting she could do, it was the adding and subtracting that gave her trouble. Even if she
had had trouble with counting, it was super easy when the numbers were already there for you!
"Good. Now count left one tick mark."
"One." That was a little confusing...the number above that tick mark was two, but she was counting one?
"Good. Okay, adding and subtracting are just counting. Adding is when you move right on the number line, subtracting is when you move left. You just added three to zero, getting three. Then you subtracted one, getting two." He checked to see if she'd followed and clearly noted the confusion. "It's like putting things in a pile and then taking them away. Watch." He reached out without looking and grabbed some of the nuts from the bowl that Mrs. Gōketsu had placed on the table earlier. He gently brushed her hand aside so that he could point at the 'zero' mark, then he gestured to the empty space on the table in front of Honoka. "Zero nuts." He moved his finger to the right one mark on the line, simultaneously placing a nut down in front of her. "I add one nut to zero, and I've got one nut."
She grinned. "No,
I've got one nut!" She grabbed the nut from in front of him and nibbled on it, eyes dancing.
"You subtracted one nut!" Kagome-sensei said, his outrage clearly feigned. "Now there's zero nuts!" He moved his finger back to the left and was pointing at zero again.
Honoka blinked as the world shifted around her. "Wait...sensei, is that what it means? Adding and subtracting are just putting things in a pile?"
"Yep!" He tossed a nut in his mouth and chomped it up with a horrible lack of manners and a tremendously satisfied look on his face.
Honoka leaned forward, putting her finger on the zero. "One, two, three, four, five. I started at zero, then I added five. Now I go left, one, two." She checked to see that her finger was pointing at the three. With her other hand she counted five nuts into a pile in front of herself, then moved two of them away. There were three nuts left!
"Three! Three nuts! Five minus two is three, just like on the table!"
Kagome-sensei seemed conflicted about that. "Yes. Table is a stupid way to teach, but if it works for you, fine. Yes! Five minus two is three."
Honoka couldn't help herself; she glomped onto him and squeezed tight in gratitude. It made sense! Maybe she wouldn't fail out! Maybe she really could be a ninja and make lots of money so that Mum and Dad could always afford good food and they could all have new clothes every birthday!
"Yeep!" Kagome-sensei squawed, waving his hands in surprise at the glomping.
"Honoka!" her mother hissed, blushing beet red in embarrassment. "Let go of him! Mr. Gōketsu is a very important man! Be respectful!"
Honoka's arms sprang open as though burned and she shrank back into her seat. "Sorry, mum. Sorry, Kagome-sensei."
"Um...it's fine," her weird, balding, brilliant teacher said. "Surprised me, that's all. Anyway, let's do a few more."
Dimly, Honoka noticed Mrs. Gōketsu standing up and gesturing the other adults to follow her into the kitchen, but she couldn't bring herself to care. There was math to learn!
