Hoshigaki

An Unsettling Feeling

It wasn't a secret. Or at least, it wasn't supposed to be. 

::

When people look through Academy students' files to assign them to teams or scrutinize their abilities, they base them off superficial judgments without looking deeper than the surface. Why would they dig? We're barely considered genin.

The fact that they had found out so quickly didn't hit Kurenai in the gut until after Wednesday's practice and after she had to witness their solemn faces. She expected them to figure it out, of course, but maybe it would've taken them a week or two and they would've only scratched the surface.

Two weeks and an idea. Not two days and the whole story.

It scared her that every single one of her expectations had been surpassed. And even if they were so caught up in their research that they didn't notice she'd been watching them the whole time, she couldn't bring herself to call them out on it. Not with what they now knew.

And with being barely genin, we're still widely regarded as children, save for the occasional prodigy. As children, we're expected to do the best we can in those six years because we want to be the fastest, the strongest, the smartest, the best. We're expected to do the best so we're assigned the correct teacher and teammates to hone in the skill set that we're expected to uptake. 

But as children, we're not expected to think about fundamentals, so no one really cares that they're being watched, and because I'm not expected to understand this much of the system, I can very well work against it as much as I've been allowed.

Shino had taken a small idea and expanded it through sheer fact. He became an expert on the Senju and the Uzumaki with only what the public library and his father had to offer; comparing skill sets, genetic traits, mapping bloodlines, and making sense of a hundred different voices trying to say the same thing. He found loose threads and tied them together. Threads became knots, knots became ropes, ropes became webs of statistics and walls and knowledge.

He wanted to know something, so he found it out.

Kiba had a silver tongue, she learned, and played the card of a fool like an ace up his sleeve. People talked to him like he was stupid so they never took care of what they spoke, but as soon as they finished he walked away with what he wanted and them never knowing they gave it to him in the first place. He saw Minato's face in Naruto's and Naruto's in Minato's and filched Kushina maiden name off an old vendor whose memory made her forget current laws and remember the little redheaded girl that passed her stall over twenty years ago.

Being oblivious was his cover, seeking was his trade.

Sakura became a shadow for a full eight hours, never speaking or moving when her cover didn't call for it. She didn't eat or drink in that time and became familiar with each and every one of Naruto's tells from the slight rising of his shoulders when someone looked at him or how he forcefully added a spring in his step to keep up the appearance of a happy-go-lucky kid. What Sakura saw Kurenai saw, and what they'd seen they didn't like.

Sakura was like a killer in the mist, silent and undetected.

Knowledge is a very dangerous thing, sensei. I know I'm here to fulfill my duty under the Hokage, but if I'm unable to do so without being kept in a spotlight, then that's where the true shinobi lies, isn't it?

But what was a shinobi's duty? Because genin were not supposed to be this smart, this accurate, this passionate for the truth. She had been there when they placed everything together in that library, close to being caught if Kiba had been paying more attention as he went to the railing to peer around, and watched with slowly growing horror as each piece of the puzzle they slotted together rose to a bigger picture. She'd left shortly after Sakura explained the different tailed beasts and their current locations—information she certainly shouldn't have been in possession of—and went home to sit and think.