The Fox's Third Flash of Hope

Chapter 2

Bookcases surrounded the nine children as they flipped through tomes of all sizes and colors. Most of them were reading. And most, in this case, meant four out of nine. Considering this was a group of shinobi in training that were meant to fight and be physical, that wasn't too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

Well, if we went down to the tiny details and technicalities it would be three and a half, since Kansen spent half the time glancing around at her fellow students, seeing as she had already read these same books god knows how many times. Yes, she was a frequent visitor of the library.

The other three who were actually researching were Penami, Koruro, and Hituro.

All the not aforementioned students were displaying interestingly varied ranges of activity, from taking naps to glaring at anything they could set their eyes on to looking like they would burst if they had to hold in their words for one more minute.

The silence was broken by a loud sigh and the sound of shoes heavily hitting the carpeted ground.

Rasu had jumped up from her seat, book abandoned and lying haphazardly face down on a patch of blue carpet several meters away. Her curly, brown hair that reached down to mid back looked ruffled, despite her having done nothing except sit for the last hour.

Well, on second thought, with curly hair that long, even sitting could do damage.

"You know what? Koruro, Hituro, we're leaving. I'm pretty sure you guys have more than enough info."

Almost obediently and immediately, the two boys put away their books in their proper place on the shelves and Koruro picked up Rasu's as well, hurrying to catch up with his teammates afterwards.

Typical of that team, seeing as Rasu was a bully, Hituro simply followed orders, and Koruro was in reality quite intelligent but saw no reason to incite hostility and therefore stayed quiet.

They were a perfect trio, really.

Taking the said team's leave as a cue, Shikabe slowly opened one eye, sat up, stood up, and told Choi and Inora something similar to what Rasu had said except with less hostility and superiority.

About five minutes after their sauntering forms disappeared through the glass doors of the edifice, Kansen gave up on trying to find new material as well.

"Come on, guys. We have to get back to class in half an hour anyway. We can just wing this whole project, it won't matter in our final grade. And we don't want to be late to class either for obvious reasons."

The obvious reasons were that Aburame-sensei was absolutely terrifying when it came to punishment. He took "disappointed adult" to a whole new level. The visor didn't help the image much. Sheesh, didn't he ever take that damn thing off?! Even in his childhood pictures he was always wearing a pair of sunglasses.........maybe the guy had creepy bug eyes. That would explain a lot.

Niju looked quite happy to finally be able to stand up and move around. His entire clan was like that: physical, restless, impatient......or so Kansen heard. Maybe they weren't all like that, seeing as she had only met one Zanto in her life, a.k.a. the boy who was currently in her group.

Penami didn't say anything, just stood up and stretched, her usual emotionless expression plastered on her face. That was about the only thing Kansen could relate to with the Sarutobi girl.

*****

Kansen furiously scribbled words and letters on a piece of poster paper, ignoring the existence of Niju(who was ripping up a spare piece of paper about two meters away) and attempting to avoid bumping into Penami(who was drawing and coloring on the same piece of paper as Kansen).