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"My hair is too short!" seven-year-old Akiko Nara declared one morning, standing halfway down the flight of stairs in her leaf-print pajamas and holding a hairbrush.
"How so?" her father asked absently. Most of his attention was focused on the rice balls he was making. He knew the rice and filling would both be edible, but they sure didn't look it. "Hurry up and get dressed or you'll be late to class."
He stuffed the filling into the second rice ball and stared at it, dejected. He never quite managed to get these as nice as his wife, but last night had been her ninth double-shift in two weeks and he couldn't wake her. She had already been working more than full time before the invasion, and now, she spent every waking moment at the hospital treating patients. It worked out just as well, because he was still benched due to an injury (probably permanently, they didn't-quite-say) and his job at the clan's accounting office was nothing more than a formality. This way, at least, his child didn't have to walk home with aunts and cousins anymore.
"It's too short to make a braid, dad," the little girl said, ignoring his last point. "I need to grow it out."
Now that he looked, it was obvious she had done something to her hair, though he couldn't quite discern what. It was probably long enough to cajole into very short twin braids, except he didn't know how to do that either and didn't want to send his daughter to school looking like an idiot. He wasn't even sure his wife had ever made a braid; that was not how Nara wore their hair. "Right. That will take a while, so for now, let's just tie it like always, yeah?" he said, and would have patted her head if his hands weren't dirty. "Why do you suddenly need to change your hair, anyway?"
He hoped it wasn't a crush. Oh, please, don't let it be a crush.
"Because Shikako-onee-san always braids hers! And it's really long." She made an exaggerated gesture to demonstrate. "I told you, I wanna be a kunoichi like her when I grow up."
Right. He didn't quite see why the hairstyle mattered, but that did explain Akiko's recent bout of enthusiasm. The clan head's daughter had been promoted to special jonin more than two months ago and the muttering still showed no sign of dying down. He had heard everything from her single-handedly defeating enemy jonin to the idea that Tsume Inuzuka offered her the position in an effort to snatch her away from a different department. The former sounded like the standard drivel that followed those genius types everywhere - not impossible, though probably exaggerated - but the latter was simply ludicrous. Either way, she made the clan look good to outsiders, which was probably why they were willing to forgive her for snubbing the head of R&D.
He wondered if he should tell his daughter that thirteen-years-old was hardly considered grown up and that she had no business being anything but a genin at that age. Until this month, she's never expressed any desire to be a field ninja at all. "Hmm? But I thought you wanted to be a surgeon like your mother?"
She looked torn for a moment. But only for a moment. "Well, now I want to be a kunoichi. Did you know Shikako-onee-chan can blow people up by touching them?"
"I've heard that, yes." And he didn't believe it for a second. Since the Fourth Hokage's death, there were no shinobi in Konoha who could apply seals with a touch, so there really was nobody who could have taught her this ability.
(But really, what did he understand about the children of clan heads?)
Akiko's face lit up suddenly. "Hey, she's my cousin, isn't she? Kao Inuzuka says that his cousin teaches him stuff. Do you think she'd teach me?"
He was gripped by a bout of horror. Whether at the image of his daughter randomly asking the clan second - who was, in fact, her fifth cousin once removed - for training advice or just the idea of his child playing around with explosives, he wasn't sure. "She's very busy. I think she's actually on a mission right now."
Escorting an important political figure, if the rumors were to be believed. The chief accountant, shriveled old traditionalist that he was, had spent half an hour yesterday explaining that there had to be foul play involved if the heir was being led by his own younger sister ("She was always better in the academy than that boy and then she goes and gets promoted ahead of him. I'm telling you, she's going to bring the boy back in a black scroll.") until Shikaku-sama just happened to walk by the office to go over some reports.
"Oh. So maybe later?"
"Maybe. How about this: once you finish your last exam for the year, we'll start working on the clan style." As opposed to explosives.
Akiko practically bounced with excitement. "Really?"
"Yeah. Now go get dressed or you won't have time to eat breakfast."
He sighed and started tying the lunch box shut. Before the invasion, he had been a chunin for thirteen years. A respectable career for the average ninja, sure, but merely fulfilling expectations in any major clan. If a Nara made the decision to go into the active forces, they would not stay a genin and go on safe missions forever. But Akiko wasn't the daughter of anyone important and nobody would expect her to become a jonin or fight in any wars (and damn, Shikaku-sama had always seemed like such a reasonable man before he'd pushed that girl into an early promotion). He didn't even know anything but Shadow Paralysis well enough to teach. He knew better than to directly forbid a child from training, but learning the barest basics would take years and that would hopefully be enough time to dissuade her.
And if it didn't work, she'd actually have to ask some cousin or another to take over her training. Ensui, he decided, would be a good choice. Or his father-in-law, if he lived that long.
Definitely not the clan head's daughter. Judging by her reputation, she just might actually teach a child how to blow themselves up.