"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."
― Benjamin Franklin

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Ren is actually very proud of herself for not blowing up at Neji. He's a child, one in desperate need of a stable authority figure to guide him because by Jashin and all the other gods, childcare in Konoha is one of the worst Ren has ever seen, ranking only barely above her own family from Renee's time. The point is, the last thing Neji needs is a blowup. He needs a responsible adult to care for him.

And no, the Hyuuga do not fit this criteria. They suck, but Ren has no idea how on earth she would even begin to correct his behavior (and boost Hinata's confidence while she's at it) while being an Uchiha attempting to correct a Hyuuga.

And boy isn't it telling about her that she'd like to just take all those broken kids in and show them that an adult they can depend on is not, in fact, a mythical cryptid? She's already taken in two, after all, and dropped another on the only other possibly responsible adult in the vicinity.

Not everyone has crap parents, of course. The Ino-Shika-Cho trio are incredibly well-adjusted for children training to be soldiers and killers, and so are Kiba and Shino. Sakura is doing better, but she has the fact that she frightens most people these days going for her. Sasuke and Naruto are also decently adjusted. Leagues better than they otherwise would have been, at least.

But Hinata and Neji?

From the standpoint of a fan reading and watching the series, the Hyuuga were assholes, but ultimately didn't have too much bearing on the overarching story.

From the perspective of someone who lives in the same village than them, however, who interacts with them and sees them interact with others? These people should have the custody of each and every child taken from them the second a child is born. The clan is oppressive and toxic, and Ren knows for sure that Hinata has actual anxiety, and Hibiki hadn't come out unscathed either.

They just live in a society that doesn't give a single flying fuck about people's mental health. Not to throw shade, or anything, but that is so typically Japanese. Not like Ren has a place to talk, either, but that isn't caused by a whole country, or, less so by a whole country—just a singular, terribly toxic family unit.

"Right!" Ren claps her hands a few times, regaining the children's attention. "Do I have teams?"

The girls had put their collective foot down—Hinata included—and formed a distinctly 'no boys allowed' team, and the boys had to grudgingly split between themselves, Naruto and Sasuke particularly sour that they couldn't team up with Sakura. Canonically, Sakura would have been the most useless part of the team, but with Ren's intervention she has become a terror that everybody both fears and wants on their team at the same time. But she also has a good relationship with Ino and Hinata, and boys are stupid, so the girls teamed together. Naruto and Sasuke, ever the wonder twins, grab Kiba for their third, so the last team is comprised of Shikamaru, Chōji, and Shino. All in all, relatively balanced.

"What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do?" Naruto asks, jumping up and down. "And what's that stick you have there?"

"That's a guandao, I just got it and I will be training to use it," Ren explains. "I'll show you later. For now, one of the groups will be trying to fight me, and the other two will be going against one another. I have six ribbons with me; tie them to yourselves somehow. My forehead protector will do for a ribbon for me. The team who gets the most ribbons picks what we're eating today."

"I'm gonna win, believe it! And we're gonna eat ramen!" Naruto yells, and Ren chuckles. Sakura slaps him upside his head.

Kurama had made himself comfortable around Ren's guandao, now set by the tree, and, after a bit of a staring match, Sasuke relinquished Awai back to her. He's been taking care of her non-summon spiders when she was out on most missions, this one being no exception. At first, he treated it like a chore, but having found out that the spiders are a great warding charm against fangirls, he started enjoying the duty.

Ojo is currently on the lookout for Danzō and his little brainwashed puppets, and Ren wonders if it is possible to teach non-summons how to read.

"This is an exercise in teamwork and creativity! Especially when going against me. My forehead protector is worth six whole ribbons!" Ren explains as Sakura's and Shikamaru's teams tie ribbons to themselves. Naruto's team will be fighting her first. "Half an hour and we rotate. Hibiki, help me keep track of points? And make sure the brats don't kill each other, or go outside the training ground. You can use the forest nearby and everything you've learned. Is that clear?"

A chorus of agreement.

"Good. Begin."

The kids look at her dumbly for a second at the abrupt start, so Ren shunshins behind Sasuke and takes a halfhearted swipe at him. He yelps and ducks, dragging Naruto and Kiba with him, and the fight is on.

Kiba and Naruto are both the 'abandon all sense and go for it' type of fighter, with Sasuke only marginally more cautious, so a few minutes in, all three—four, because Akamaru—are on the ground, trying to catch their breaths. They tired themselves out almost entirely by attempting to attack Ren and her evading. There was yelling, too. Leaving the misfits to catch their breath, Ren turns her attention back to Neji, his eleven minutes almost up. He remained in his naughty spot, back to everyone and front to the tree, and Ren is willing to bet he's making a face as if concentrating in an effort to make the tree spontaneously combust.

"Alright, your timeout is up," Ren says, placing her hand on the boy's shoulder and gently turning him around. Oh, he's fuming, alright, possibly having worked himself up for the past eleven minutes instead of figuring out why he's been put in timeout. "What do you want to tell me?"

Neji looks away, gritting his teeth.

"If you need another eleven minutes-"

"I'm sorry!" he snaps. "Now let me leave."

Ren sighs, rubbing her temple. "You do need another eleven minutes. I'll be back by then."

He looks like he wants to argue, but instead just snaps his mouth shut and turns around.

"Neji, I'm not doing this to be mean. I'm doing this because your behavior is unacceptable. Consider that instead of attempting to combust the tree, please."

With that said and with the kids having mostly recovered, they throw themselves at her again, once more separately. Dodging and tripping them like that is childishly easy. If they decide to attack her all at once, they might have a chance to grab her forehead protector, but that's the point of this exercise—to have them figure it out. After all, Ren did say it was an exercise in teamwork, but did the three daredevils listen? Of course not. They'd have another give-or-take ten minutes, after which she'd talk to Neji again.

It is a bit difficult, wrangling so many children doing different things at once, but Ren supposes it's her own fault for collecting them. Thank Jashin Hibiki is willing to make sure the remaining two teams don't kill each other—as nice as Hinata and Chōji are, the Sakura-Ino and Shikamaru-Shino pairs more than made up for it in terror. If Shino had hoped the girls would forfeit the match at the sight of bugs crawling from under his skin, he was sorely mistaken. Sakura is a budding medic and finds it more fascinating than anything, Hinata has known since day one due to her Byakugan, and Ino… Ino is starting to show some scarily Anko-like tendencies as of late, although Ren is sure the two did not, in fact, know each other. So no, no screeching at bugs, just an evenly matched duel. On top of that, Shikamaru had, predictably, figured out what she wanted to do on the fly, and the girls had to adapt to not be picked off one by one, so those two pairs are doing well on cooperation front.

Much better than the boys attempting to take Ren's forehead protector, at least.

Naruto—still unaware of shadow clones, thank Jashin, swarming Ren would allow them an easy victory and teach them nothing—tries to kick her in the stomach, but Ren catches him by the ankle and throws him at Kiba, who yelps and falls down pinned under the blond. Sasuke goes at her with Uchiha taijutsu, but these are all stances she knows, stances she trained with him, so she matches him step by step, easily slapping his hits away, making him grow frustrated. Or maybe it's her serene, somewhat smug face that's making him frustrated.

Ah, well, at least he hardly ever thinks about Itachi anymore, let alone obsess over him. It's good—Sasuke is happy, a bit grumpy, yes, a bit better-than-thou, but way, way happier and much more stable than he would have been.

Minutes tick by and as Neji's second timeout comes to an end, she grabs both Naruto and Kiba by the scruff of their necks and throws them at Sasuke. Akamaru yips in offense, but then attempts to make a jump for the forehead protector tied around her biceps. She catches the puppy and cradles him in her arms.

"Alright kids, give me a minute then I'll tell you what you're doing wrong," she tells them, placing Akamaru on the grass, and walks over to Neji, crouching by the sulking boy. "Okay, what do you have to tell me?"

He seems much calmer now, but Ren isn't sure it's a good thing.

(She has never actually disciplined a kid before. All Naruto needs is genuine attention and a chide here and there and he behaves well, and Sasuke, coming from his background, is not problematic in ways some heart-to-heart and genuine care couldn't rectify. Actually putting a child in timeout though?

Thank god for Supernanny and Renee's penchant for watching those types of shows after work.)

"I- I was mean to the other children. I should not have been," he says, eyes downcast.

"Do you know why?"

No answer.

"Because they're younger than you, Neji. Not much, one might think, but for shinobi, especially children, a year is an awfully long time during which anything can happen. So instead of constantly berating the children who don't know better, how about you show them better?"

"They're destined to die," he snaps before he can stop himself, and winces.

"Neji," Ren sighs, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Neji, their fate is not for anyone but them to decide. My fate was to die during the massacre, you know? And yet, here I am, having said 'fuck you' to death. I know you're in a worse position, what with the seal and all, but your fate is not outside of your grasp either."

He looks at her, eyes wide, as if she'd just told him that the alien goddess descended and ate a fruit of a tree leeching life from the land, thereby kickstarting the shinobi times and chakra usage.

(Which is a crude summary of how it actually started, but no less insane.)

"And who knows? One day, someone might come, tell 'fuck you' to the Hyuuga and actually dismantle the seal."

"That's not possible," Neji says. "The seal is warped, it's—I don't know."

"And yet," Ren whispers to him conspiratorially, "the Uzumaki were widely recognized geniuses when it came to sealing, you know."

He looks at her, then at Naruto, who cocks his head, then back at her in unasked question. Ren winks at him.

(Naruto is nowhere near a master, true, but when Ren introduced the concept of sealing to him a while ago, he was very interested. His reading skills are so-so, his writing is abysmal, and his reading comprehension is severely lacking—but with a seal he could sit still for hours studying it.

Only Uzushio could unlock his true potential, Ren knows. But Uzushio is near Wave. Wave is only two years away, and Ren is not above interfering if needed.)

"Now go pester Hibiki, I have to teach the brats the basic principles of the village."

He nods and runs off, somewhat lighter. Ren just hopes it sticks.

"Alright you three!" she turns to Naruto, Kiba, and Sasuke. "What part of 'this is an exercise in teamwork and creativity' did you forget?"

They look at each other, then at her, each reddening a bit.

"You still have like, uhhh, seven minutes? Come at me, and do it together this time. Maybe you'll grab the band this time," she taunts the kids, and they exchange looks, and charge at her again—this time, all together.

Fending off all three is significantly more difficult than dealing with one at a time, and there's also a dog in the equation. Kiba and Naruto both try to immobilize her arms, but they weigh nothing at all to her so it does nothing, but the mean kick Sasuke delivers to her shin will bruise. Momentarily distracted—she wasn't keeping her guard up that much anyway, for their sake—she almost doesn't notice Akamaru. She does in the last second as he makes a grab—a bite?—for the fabric around her arm, but manages to grab him by the scruff. However, with her eyes occupied, Kiba—who has been hanging off that very arm—grabs and successfully unties the band with a loud victorious yell. Ren snorts and lets him, unorthodox as it may be.

Hibiki calls time, and the two remaining teams stop their brawling—it was a close one, but the girls end up victorious, having taken one of the opposing team's ribbons.

They switch around, each team getting their half an hour with each other and with Ren. The girls manage to take her headband in the first ten minutes, because they're all sneaky monkeys, and it takes a while longer for the other boy team to do the same, Shikamaru and Chōji finally managing to immobilize her long enough for Shino to grab it.

The boys' teams going against each other is pretty well-balanced, all things considered, but when it's the girls against Naruto, Kiba, and Sasuke, the match looks more like a round of bullying. Don't get Ren wrong, the boys try to fight back, but—

Ren fully understands why Naruto wanted Sakura on their team so badly, with how well she was using everything she knew—and, if Ren isn't wrong, she is already starting to reverse-engineer Tsunade's super-strength.

Sakura would turn out rather scary, in the future.