“I'll be famous one day, but for now I'm stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons."
― Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Ren hates Mondays, and that is a stated fact. Renee hated Mondays, original Ren hated Mondays, she knows, and just… Honestly, there must be something wrong with person who actually likes said day when it’s not free from any sort of activity, because there’s something definitely wrong with the day itself.

So, when around six in the morning (what the actually fuck, what a masochist gets up this early?!) Konohamaru’s mom enters their room and announces that breakfast is ready and they better get going or it’ll cool down, Ren curses her existence, and everything live. So hard that Sasuke sputters and Konohamaru’s mom actually says something about washing her mouth with soap.

(She, very smartly, changes her mind when Ren flashes red at her. The woman isn’t stupid, and Ren never was below intimidation. Especially given that the woman is, in fact, younger than her.

And she might be twelve in body, but her mind is thirty-one. And she will not be disrespected by brat who’s barely turned twenty-three!)

She really had to figure out how to make a proper bento, though. A very much rice-less one, because Konohamaru’s mom (was she like Moomin’s mom here, with her function much more important than her name? Ren suspected she might be) didn’t really comprehend how could she dislike rice. Up until she took it out and threw at the floor, because goddamnit, she was trying and trying to tell her like a civilized person, and it just didn’t work-

No, she did not feel bad for being a moody brat. If the damned woman couldn’t understand after being calmly told five times, then told louder three times, then yelled at twice, she felt fully justified.

Instead, after some wait, she got katsu sando, and only then she decided that she’s content and it’s time to face something she was fully free off for five years. Thank gods that in this world she was going to attend it for half a year and some change, and then she would be done forever, as well. Like, forever-forever.

Unless she would warp to yet another dimension, which she didn’t exactly want. Being in Naruto, a world of super-powered, logic-defying child-soldiers was, in fact, better from… Dragon Age, for example. It was ordinary, but with magic and medieval. Ren wouldn’t be able to survive in hygiene-deprived, mind-clouded medieval. Ever. Naruto was quite advanced, to be honest.

If she was to guess, it was about twenty years behind in development to her old world, which, honestly, really wasn’t that bad. She was around ten again, too, if only physically, and it seemed oddly… Fitting, and perhaps even reassuring.

And armed with a proper, rice-less bento and Sasuke latched onto her hand as if his dear life depended on it, Ren sets off to school.

(She was so not ready for this. She’s been there, she’s seen that. And yet, she was so not ready for this.)

In revision, she was so not ready for the sheer annoyance she would feel after mere five minutes after stepping into the academy building. And why would that be? Well, teachers and some students apparently decided her to be some sort of a glass doll, or, better yet, and holy cow. Was this anywhere near Hindu religion and had her vitiligo been better visible than on her Uchiha-pale skin, it would be, in fact, almost adequate.

Still, she hates it. It’s pissing her off, to be honest. Like, so, so much. Lessons are far from starting yet, and she already feels like destroying something. Preferably levelling the Academy itself, but rearranging someone’s face will do in a pinch. As much as she shivers in fear of any thought of Nagato/Pain at this point (and perhaps forever will), she really does envy his ability to Shinra Tensei things into dust within mere seconds right now.

So, after bidding Sasuke goodbye by forcing bento into his hands and pushing him into his classroom (let him be flooded with all the fangirls for all she cares, she isn’t going to do anything with them, yet), she is royally pissed at… Well, everything. She makes her way to her own classroom seriously starting to plot Great Fireball-ing at least one of the fretting people, just to make an example, really. Her chest still aches, but it’s dull and merely annoying. Or, she’s just used to it by now. Her heart has to both heal and beat at the same time, after all.

(The secret as to why she wasn’t healed enough was, apparently, the fact, that they haven’t medics skilled enough to do so, so  they just let her body to heal itself as it saw fit, instead of, possibly, ruling out her life as a ninja by permanently distorting her heart’s function. Both bullshit and way to fucking go, Leaf, if you’d ask Ren, leaving almost-ninja kid with a nearly-lethal injury and hoping for the best.

If it hinders her future badassery, Ren is very much going to strangle Hiruzen for not dragging Tsunade’s ass back to the village even if just so the Sannin could patch her up and then flip at the Leaf again. And then, she will find the Slug Sannin and force her to fix it over, and she neither doesn’t nor won’t give a single flying fuck about just how serious Tsunade’s hemophobia is.

That’s a promise, believe it.)

But, of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg called ‘making Ren’s life harder in many unnecessary and perfectly avoidable ways’. Because, well, this:

“Back from the dead already, Uchiha?” a snarky, pre-pubescent, boyish voice asks the second she steps into the classroom, and Ren’s head snaps around to follow it, laying her eyes on him. Short, straight, brown hair, bandaged forehead and those creepy, soulless, glassy white eyes, so starkly different from her own dull, charcoal ones. Of course, why is she surprised. That’s just how her luck goes with her life. Filling it with perfectly avoidable nuisances.

“Still haven’t removed that stick from your ass I see, Hyūga?” she retards nearly instantly, promptly throwing her bag and planting herself in one of free spots left in the classroom. The fact that a girl with three puppies around her occupies next spot might or might not be a direct reason and the fact that she decided to live with sitting basically right next to the snarky Hyūga brat.

Hibiki, she thinks, is his name, which the original bothered herself with remembering only because the boy was a constant nuisance, and only because of that. He was nothing special, really, not outsmarting anyone, not a taijutsu prodigy, and his clan never did actual ninjutsu anyway. He was just… The generic Branch Family member, Ren would guess, who will hardly make it anywhere past chūnin. Well, the Hyūgas could have only as much geniuses.

(A.k.a. Neji, perhaps Hanabi, and very wasted Hinata’s potential.)

“Please, you two, could arguing not be the first thing you do once you enter the classroom?” the girl sitting next to Ren says, and her tone is warm and kind, yet somehow underlined with a dangerous, feral trace of a growl. So, Ren completely ignores the Hyūga brat and focuses on her instead.

She is pretty, alright, even at this age. Her hair is long, chocolate-brown and in a loose ponytail, her eyes dark enough to rival Ren’s, but not nearly as empty-looking, and there are red triangle-shaped markings on her cheeks.  Three puppies, almost identical save for differing shades of grayish-brown overcoat, were definitely ninken.

Better yet, Ren was almost certain that those were Three Haimaru Brothers.

And the girl next to her was, obviously, no one else than Inuzuka Hana, older sister to Inuzuka Kiba, one of Rookie Nine. Of Sasuke’s classmate.

“Doesn’t Sasuke have an Inuzuka in his class, too?” she asks, cocking her eyebrow, which instantly morphs Hana’s face from a scowl to delight.

“Yes, Kiba!” she chirps. “He’s my younger brother!”

Perfect older sister alert.

“Well, Sasuke is basically my younger brother now, too, so I guess we have that in common.”

“Oh,” girl sighs. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“No pity, Hana,” Rn growls. “No pity. Compassion. Unless anyone wants to become my training dummy. I could use some work on my fireballs lest I’ll get rusty,” and if she makes extra certain to speak the last sentence loud enough for whole classroom to hear, well. Uchiha Massacre was not her tragedy, per say.

“You know my name?” Hana asks, surprised. “You never bother to remember anyone’s name!”

“Well, I bothered with yours, because you’re apparently worth it,” she just shrugs in answer.

“And me?” Hibiki cuts in. “You remember mine?”

“Get lost, Hisoka,” Ren growls, and then coughs to stop herself from laughing hard at boy’s expression.

“It’s Hibiki!” he yells at her, and she just rolls her eyes in obviously ‘what-the-fuck-ever’ motion. She has a feeling that this might become her favorite form of tormenting the boy over and over again; getting his name wrong. Always.

Yes, it’s cliché, but never gets old.

And it’s about a time when a female shriek cuts through newfound silence, and everyone look towards the source. A girl, with blond hair and very civilian clothing, raises her book with every intention of smashing it down. On a spider.

On a very much albino Japanese Huntsman Spider.

Ren moves before she even registers herself moving – because it’s a spider, that stupid hoe is going to smash a poor, innocent spider, that dumb blonde bimbo is going to murder an innocent and useful creature for no reason – and snatches the creature before the book can hit the wood, protectively covering the spider with her other hand.

“Are you fucking nuts?!” she hisses and almost headbutts the mortified girl, but restrains in the last moment. No violence at school.

“But, but-“ she tries. “It’s a spider!”

“So?” she cocks her eyebrow.

“It’s big, and ugly, and-“

“Shut up,” Ren growls. “Thy feed on cockroaches and crickets. Do you like cockroaches and crickets? Because I don’t.”

The girl looks like crying when she shakes her head. Good, it’s not like Ren feels bad for her. She never felt bad for stupid people. Also, Renee always liked spiders. She had a goddamn Gooty Ornamental Tarantula, true beauty she was, who she allowed to crawl all over her when she was doing paperwork at home. It’s also worth mentioning that Cobalt - the tarantula, because Renee was genius with names, let’s name cobalt-colored spider ‘Cobalt’ – was never de-fanged, and never once bit her.

Ren sighs heavily. Cobalt died about half a year before her own ‘death’, and she would lie if she said she didn’t miss her pet, for she did. And now, maybe to honor her friend (Renee was such a looser, with her only friend being a spider, wasn’t she?), she saved spiders whenever she could. So, she took this one outside, crouching on the windowsill and placing the spider on a bush behind the window.

The spider, however, had different plans, as it showed with swiftly jumping back onto her hand and making its way up, before it seated itself on her shoulder, visibly content with its life choices right now. Oh well.

“So, that’s how you want to settle it?” she asked the spider, even if she didn’t expect any sort of answer. “Well, whatever, little one, you may stay. You’re less annoying than some,” cue meaningful look towards Hibiki.

Today was going to be… Fun.