#(in)difference

The Utsugi clan compound is hardly deserving of the name. There are maybe eight smaller families, siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles to each other, and really it's more of a massive extended single house than a neighborhood.

She was born during a low birth peak meaning that, unlike her other cousins who have at least three age mates to grow up with, the nearest Utsugi relatives to her on either side have a gap of over eight years. She's far from lonely though, a trail of children not yet old enough to be at the academy beseeching her to play ninja. Older cousins ruffling her hair in congratulations for passing, their own flak jackets as new as her headband. An uncle, who may or may not be ANBU, gives her a booklet of shock tags, a handsome graduation gift indeed.

Her parents, as enthusiastic over their only child's achievements as ever, have begun planning a clan wide celebration. Though, to be fair, there was a celebration for cousin Tetsuo's promotion to tokujou last month and anyway, her father is the clan head; a celebration was expected.

It should be a good day.

But as she watched her friends get placed on teams obviously slated to fail, and herself put on a team with two of the better male students in their class, she couldn't help but feel the weight of her plan twelve years in the making crumble around her.

She could have been a Nae-chan, she thinks. She would have been free. Instead, Kunugi Mokume stares dispassionately at her while Dan Katou smiles, young and very much not dead.

Her eyes flick between him and the only other viable team--the one with the Rookie of the Year, the frustratingly skilled dead last, and the Senju Princess.

Likely sensing her gaze, Tsunade looks back and smiles hesitantly.

She could have been free.

~

A/N: Aaaaand some Kiyoshi Utsugi feels, also brought about by my seven hour bus ride to my sister's.

They try not to think too often about their first attempt at the Jounin Trials. Not that they comported themselves shamefully, but it was still embarrassing to be denied something you wanted in such a public manner.

The Jounin Trials are far different than the Chuunin Exams--the latter focusing on teamwork, strategic thinking, and, to put it crassly, staying power. You don't always have to win in order to make chuunin, you just have to last long enough and be impressive while doing so.

In contrast, the Jounin Trials were determined by the number of victories scored. Jounin trials were unique to each village, some needing a jounin hopeful to kill a current jounin in order to be promoted (no guesses as to which village that was) but Konoha, touting their friendly peace-time reputation merely needed their ninja to be good enough to win against other chuunin in the running and two jounin moderators.

Fighting chuunin hadn't been a problem, no matter that some of the other jounin hopefuls were almost twice their age. But it was when they were fighting the two jounin moderators that they realized--together the twins fought like two jounin, but alone they were always outmatched.

There had been a few other candidates promoted, but they had been found unowrthy. In the face of their father, who declined to make a decision, the Jounin Commander and the Chuunin Commander their hopes were rejected.

Instead, they had been made tokubetsu jounin, specialty "teamwork," which was ridiculous because, except for each other, they never had any permanent teammates.

~

They are not opposites, nor are they two halves of a whole. They are similar, but not the same; complementary, resonating, twins. They are the children of a genius and a prophetess, and they see the world around them with open minds ready to learn. Her first word is "how," his is "why;" and it is a theme which follows for the rest of their lives.

-

As younger siblings they are always a step behind their older brother. It's not so bad, because at least they walk together. Their brother graduates from the Academy at six years old, they do so at seven. He achieves the rank of chuunin at eight, they at ten; he becomes jounin at twelve, they do so at fifteen after spending a year as the in-between tokubetsu rank. They are still leaders of the pack, of course, but they look forward when they run and all they can see is themselves falling behind their older brother no matter how they strive.

-

The war ends abruptly in the spring between their ninth and tenth birthday. By that time, they have already served for two years and are considered veterans. For the most part, their missions were low-risk, no one wanting to endanger two of the Hokage's children. But they still reach for their blades at sudden movements, begin gathering chakra when any noise seems out of place (they have not been in the village for seven months, so every movement seems sudden, every noise out of place).

Their age-mates, the ones who have just barely missed war-time graduation protocols, complain about being stuck in school for another three years. These students will be utilized in reconstruction, small chores that will gradually be turned into low-rank missions as peace settles over the world. Some of them smile in relief at not having to go to war, but others still dream about the adventures and glory of being real ninja.

The twins know that there is no such thing.

~

She makes plans, has arrangements waiting in the wings, to leave. But she holds, because she doesn't want to do so in the dark night, like a secret. She's not running away, fleeing like a criminal, like prey, but it is leaving. She lets her friends know, murmurs it to them in between snippets of normal conversation. She states her intentions, because she is not going to be convinced otherwise. But there is one person whose blessing she needs, whose word would make her postpone but not completely forgo her plans.

Her eldest son is six years old, a child still, but with knives in his hands and an even more dangerous mind. Technically, with that stamped metal plate tied around his head, he's a soldier and so an adult. But he's just a boy, and while she knows he can do amazing things without her, she's not just going to abandon her son.

The twins are only two, too young to fully understand, and though it breaks her heart, they may not even remember her (but their eyes gleam with that same cognizant genius that allowed her eldest to skip years ahead of the pack). Her eldest, though, he may see her leaving as betrayal, as her picking his newest baby sibling over him.

She goes down on her knees before him. Ostensibly to put them at similar eye levels, but it feels almost supplicant. They are at home, at the house so large and protected, like an empty shell; they can speak freely because no one is there to eavesdrop. She is sometimes struck with the thought that she tried to fill it with children, only to have doomed them to rattling around this prison with her.

But her eldest darling boy understands too well, has tried to do the same with pups of every breed. He listens and, after a tense silence, acquiesces. He is envious, but he knows it is too late for him and for the twins.

It is the last time they see each other for a decade.

A caravan of civilians are making their way out of Konoha, among their number is a black-haired woman breast-feeding a similarly black-haired baby. In the comfort of their own home, the gate guards are lax and as squeamish as any single man--they do not look at her closely; and anyway, two groups behind the caravan is the Sannin Tsunade, scowl on her pretty face and as frightening as ever.

The Yondaime Hokage is told that his wife and unborn child died during labor. He hasn't seen her in three weeks, so accepts it as true.

I love brainstorming. It's one of my pitfalls as a writer because I can world-build and outline but as soon as I need to start on prose I just... can't. It's part of the reason why I made this blog.

Usually a stray thought just develops into a gargantuan potential plot--practically a mental storyboard of certain scenes I would want to write, certain imagery that I would want to describe. But for some reason there are a few, I guess, "prompts" that I would really like to run off and play with but just aren't inspiring anything beyond a desire to do something with it. So what follows is literally me just rambling about the ideas, hoping that in the process I'll shake something out.

1) A Year With The Moon - Satoshi and Satsuki While I have sort of hinted at using this in my Naruto fanfiction, (In)Difference--as my OC's middle children, Kakashi's younger brother and sister respectively, I don't actually know if that's a route I want to go down... and even so, I haven't developed them enough to be anything but faceless sibling stand-ins.

I'll be honest, I'm kind of doing this for the pun. I mean, Satoshi and Satsuki? A Year With The Moon? Like... that's totally the title of whatever I'm going to write, but I don't actually know. Do I want it to be an (In)Difference spinoff/sequel? Do I want it to be an SI!twin!OC for the Pokemon cartoon series? I don't really know what else to do with it... the only other Satsuki I know is Momoi Satsuki from Kuroko no Basket... and, well... unless I want to make a basketball playing Satoshi and somehow insert him into the series... but that series really is very much so Kuroko's story... so it wouldn't be much of a difference.

Anyway. Either (In)Difference spinoff/sequel or twin!SI!OC for Pokemon. Either way, I think the Satoshis of both would be similar, as well as the Satsukis. Hm... while I'm not too keen on the binary "one twin is this while the other is this" I do think Satoshi would be the more... average of the two. Even strictly appearance-wise, Satoshi has black hair and brown eyes. And Satoshi doesn't have genius-level intellect, but he has heart and instincts and, apparently, aura powers? For everyday things, Satoshi is kind of hopeless or inferior to his sister--he's not as smart or as skilled--but he works miracles under pressure.

In contrast, Satsuki is visually striking--in (In)Difference, she'd have the Hatake silver hair, but maybe it translates to something different the Pokemon universe. Or maybe it doesn't--silver hair in young people is a real world phenomena too. Wait a second... I think I've written something like this before. Here it is. So maybe she does keep silver hair in the Pokemon universe too. Hm... as for her Pokemon starter... I'm thinking either a Sandshrew or a Vulpix.

Ability-wise, she is better than her brother more often than not, but it's the kind of ability that's... static. She doesn't get better when there's pressure, her skill level remains the same regardless of situation. Obviously she's not stagnant, she grows and develops and improves, but when it comes to crises--if she's not up to par, then she's just not up to par. She'll most likely still fight, of course, but she kind of accepts that she'll fail and it's more of a stall for time or a go out swinging sort of fight. And then her brother somehow pulls out a win from nowhere, which she's usually okay with.

Personality, hm... this is what I'm having difficulty with, which is I guess part of the reason why this plot-bunny isn't developing as quickly as they usually do. She's not a strait-laced monotonous robot, she's not just a female version of her brother. She's more sarcastic and pessimistic but she's still playful--she'll tease, she'll compete, she'll make mistakes, she'll be afraid. It's just that I can't quite think of specific scenarios to toss her in to elicit such reactions.

... I think... if I were to write this (In)Difference spinoff with the twins. It would be when they're adults (or at least chuunin) already. Then again, considering their older brother Kakashi made chuunin at like... eight, that's not saying much. But I'm thinking... well... they're OC's living in a universe after an SI!OC has already made significant changes to the Naruto universe. Whether or not they themselves are also SI!OC's or just regular OC's means that there are a lot of ways to present the changes. Given how (In)Difference may end, the twins get a mission (whether official or not) to find Utsugi Kiyoshi, aka Hatake Kiyoshi, aka their mother. Either their younger sister Shizuka (who their mother took away from Konoha and named Utsugi) is the client, or the twins receive a letter from their mother talking about changes or... either Nawaki or Orochimaru, whose lives Kiyoshi had changed irrevocably and who are the only two who know about her "prophecies," are being confronted with something that they need her knowledge... or their father, Sakumo, the Yondaime realizes that his wife has been gone for a decade and he should probably make efforts to find her. Something.

So the twins try to track her down, but a lot of it is them interviewing the various people she changed and hinting at the various repercussions of her meddling. Maybe Kiyoshi has been hiding out in Rain this entire time in order to head off the Akatsuki, or is skulking around trying to find and destroy Madara... I don't know.

(Next time on strange brainstorming ideas:

Just Harry... An HPxNarnia crossover/fusion featuring Harry the Just. Hermione the Magnificent. Ronald the Valiant. Neville the Gentle.

And Rowan(/Bromley/Branton) Evans, brother to Petunia and Lily Evans, uncle to Harry Potter. And mafioso. An HPxKHR crossover/fusion featuring the Ministry Six plus surprise Hogwarts student as the newest generation of Flame users in organized crime.)

~

When it comes to our clan's heritage, there's a disparity in what we tell people and what we keep to ourselves. Father claims we share ancestry with the Hyuuga (brags it more like). Superficially it passes muster--we share the same basic coloring of black hair, pale skin and eyes. But while our eyesight is sharp, it's still within baseline human ability--we have nothing on the Hyuuga or even the Uchiha. It still helps with our archery techniques, though--which is yet another thing which sets us apart from our supposed cousins who use mostly close range taijutsu.

But our clan's skills, like our keen eyes, straddle the line between the truth of our ancestry and the falsehood of our Hyuuga relations. While most people know of the Byakugan, there's more to the Hyuuga blood limit than that. Jyuuken, their family taijutsu style, relies on the blocking of an opponent's tenketsu. This is done by making one's own chakra an almost solid plug--chakra is energy, it dissipates in most circumstances. Unless you are a Hyuuga. But our clan's archery doesn't need physical arrows because we make them out of our chakra. Just like the Hyuuga, Father attributes, in the rare occasions it comes up.

For the most part, when Father says we're distantly related to the Hyuuga, everyone knows it's a lie--which makes it harmless and a good cover that no one bothers to crack. In everything, Father tells the truth, unless a lie is necessary. Father is the clan head. The lie is necessary.

There is an art to teaching children of our clan's true heritage. We are never told outrightly, not when the walls have ears, not in this political climate, but by the time we are of training age we know. Those born to our clan develop an extra sense, one which we are encouraged to keep quiet, to keep hidden. The sense isn't flashy, as invisible as the magnetic fields it corresponds to. But sometimes we slip, children do not always know what is secret and what is normal.

We master cardinal directions as children before figuring out the idea of left and right. We claim that it makes communication more precise, that we are simply maintaining our family's reputation as excellent navigators. Even as children we can always find our way Home, regardless of where in the village we are. Our clan buys property in the north part of Konoha for a reason.

It's the arrows that gives it away to a close observer. They are made from chakra, yes, but not pure chakra like the Hyuuga use. This is our secret: our arrows are Lightning natured chakra wrapped in Wind natured chakra. The latter is not a secret, there is no harm in Wind affinity--the Sarutobi family occasionally has natural Wind affinity, and one of them is the Hokage.

It's the former which we hide, careful and unspoken; we try not to bring much attention to ourselves and our techniques even less so. But when we do, when that attention is on us, we mimic what Father says: the Hyuuga, we're just like them. And we fall back into obscurity soon enough--we are a minor clan trying to ride the coattails of a Noble clan, one of the oldest stories in the book. Boring, predictable, obvious.

Except for how it's a lie.

~

A/N: Ugh, it's all over the place. I'll post this for now so it's technically still 0301, but I think I'll edit it a bit in the future so it flows better. Obviously Naruto fanfiction, probably in the (In)Difference 'verse featuring Kiyoshi Utsugi.

Sometimes, I like to think about various shounen series--about their blatant sexism--and ponder ways to make it less so while still making sense in canon. In particular I think about Naruto and Katekyo Hitman Reborn, in part because those two are basic world states with glaring plot holes which can be filled in pretty easily without necessarily contradicting anything... and in part because those are two that I already kind of know.

If you've read some of my previous posts... in particular, the ones tagged (In)Difference or Trailblazers, you'll see that they are, unsurprisingly, semi-Self Insert!Original Characters who are female. I try not to make them Mary Sues (though, the idea of a Mary Sue is steeped in sexism), but I definitely do tend to make them treatises of feminism into that respective shounen series.

In (In)Difference, my way of dealing with the sexism of Naruto--that is, literally less than 30% of the named characters are female. [The teams are literally designed that way--one jounin, three genin, and usually only one of those are female.] is by having a kunoichi-only program called "Nae-chan."

The reasoning behind this is that, in canon, females tend to have smaller chakra reserves and better chakra control. Well, civilians have small chakra reserves and are always dismissed by ninja as insignificant. So Konoha has a program reserved for seemingly forgettable female students with small chakra reserves and high chakra control, "Nae-chan." They become a hidden-in-plain-sight standing army. Women can go where men cannot... women can go unseen where men cannot. And civilian women are especially invisible.

In (In)Difference, my OC, Kiyoshi Utsugi actually wanted to be a Nae-chan so as not to accidentally interact with Naruto canon characters and make things worse. But her chakra reserves became too noticeable, her control just short of enough, and there were already enough candidates that she was superfluous. She spends a lot of time afterwards still wanting to be a Nae-chan, but eventually, grudgingly, makes peace with herself as the token kunoichi on a jounin-led team.

In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, everyone has Wave Energy and there are seven kinds of Wave Energies. It is canon that people can have different types of Wave Energies, via Hayato Gokudera who is predominantly Storm type but also has Rain, Lightning, Cloud, and Sun. So it is my belief that females tend to have mixed Wave Energies as well, but in more balanced ratios such that there is no predominant type. Because of this, females tend not to be "Guardians" because they can't be shoehorned into just one type.

Similarly, in Trailblazers, my OC Tetsuki Kaiza has energy that doesn't match my headcanon typical female levels. She is either purely or at least predominantly Lightning (maybe with some Mist or Cloud). It is canon (manga at least) that both Haru Miura and Kyoko Sasagawa have been shot by a Dying Will Bullet, so their Wave Energies have already been activated into Flames. According to beta canon (that is video/card games) Kyoko is Mist and Haru is Lightning. But it's also canon that Flame types tend to run in families, and I highly doubt that Haru who loves children would allow for Lambo to fight for his life if she could step in. So I think Kyoko also has Sun, like her brother, and Haru has something else such that she's not predominantly Lightning--I'm thinking Storm, actually. And for the hell of it, I also want to give Kyoko Rain as well.

In Trailblazers, Kyoko then becomes an apprentice to Shamal since she's basically a walking surgery with Rain being anesthetic, Mist being surgical tools, and Sun being general healing. Haru, since she doesn't need to step up to be Lightning Guardian, is more of an inventor--she already makes clothes and it's canon that she's ridiculously smart so why not mix the two? Since she is dragged along to the future, she sort of learns from Spanner who already has invented gloves, a cape, etc. But when they go back to the present, they're more like partners. And so two of the more sexist characters of Katekyo Hitman Reborn who are themselves in feminine non-combatant roles of healing and creating are confronted by female characters who were sidelined into cooking and cleaning cheerleaders in canon.