Ikko was snapped out of his reverie by the promise of the best kind of eggrolls, eggrolls that someone else was paying for. While "Don't steal from people in the village" was one of the first lessons that had been impressed upon the small child when he had arrived at the village, he had also took great pains to confirms that it isn't stealing if people give you free stuff, just if you take free stuff. Why the two concepts were actually different was a lesson that was quite honestly lost on the boy, free stuff was free stuff, but he was also told that he didn't need to understand, and he was trying oh so hard to do that whole "obedience" thing. He wasn't very good at it.
Ikko craned his neck back whenever it was the woman, now known as Fujiwara Minako, had her turn to speak, the boy almost reclining the full arch of his back to gaze up at her with those ocean blue eyes. Her words caused the boy's face to scrunch up a bit, like he was experiencing an especially unpleasant smell right under his nose. She didn't like being made fun of because of her mask? Well, that did make sense, no one was especially fond of humor at their expense, especially not if it was something that could hit an especially sensitive nerve, but had Ikko inadvertently hit that nerve? To be fair, he had made fun of her hypothetical breath, not necessarily her mask, but he supposed the two were interconnected enough that he may have offended her. Maybe her parents were killed in a freak halitosis accident. Ikko continued to be...what was the word the woman had used...Incontinent! Ikko would need to stop being so incontinent when he could offend people. Before he could apologize for his incontinence though, Junko spoke up once more, first to answer Minako's question and crush Ikko's spirit...and then to crush Ikko's spirit some more.
It had started off strong as Ikko turned his attention back to his new teacher. The man opened up with liking combat, Ikko was on board with that, Ikko liked to punch bears too. Ikko didn't like reading much, that involved words and writing and other icky stuff, but it was fine that he enjoyed it, plus he liked hunting, to which the previous bear punching could be referenced, but then he said something that made Ikko's heart drop through his chest and, as far as a straight line was concerned, somewhere out of his left buttock, and through the very floor. Family. That was a word that had, in multiple shapes and forms, haunted the young boy. Junko was hardly the first to claim that family was of paramount importance, that everything began and ended with family and that without family, life really had no meaning. To someone who had never enjoyed such a luxury, that concept was so fascinatingly confusing. Ikko had never had a family and as a result had no idea how to define the word much less understand how it felt to experience it. Of course, he understood the definition of "family," such as parents, brothers, cousins, the temple camel, etcetera, but the abstract concept of family, the true meaning that evoked such powerful emotions...it was something beyond his comprehension. The monks had said he would come to see them as his family, so he rather liberally gave them the moniker, and then when he came to The Hidden Cloud, he was told that the whole village was his family...which he again just accepted, but he never felt the feelings that Junko conveyed...it was like asking a fish what it felt like to walk.
The mention of cookies helped a bit, Ikko was quite partial to cookies, but any spirit he recovered was quickly dampened when Junko gave them their task. Not only did he want them to think about goals and what they wanted for the future, which was a difficult enough task for a boy who was hard wired to think exclusively about where he was going to get his next meal to be able to survive to see tomorrow, Junk wanted him to write it down. Now Ikko's heart AND his confidence were plummeting. It didn't help that Arata had strode up to the board and handled the task easily, not only did he find the right place to underline, which was useful for Ikko because he didn't know what that word meant, but he even had goals. Ikko didn't understand those goals outside of "get stronger" since he didn't know what the Uchiha clan was outside of, he presumed, Arata's family, which is something he wouldn't understand and he didn't know why he wanted to defeat Junko, since he wasn't a bear, but he at least had goals, Ikko had no idea what he wanted to do in the future, much less how to write it down. He had just barely learned to write a week ago.
Still, as Arata cleared out, Ikko was not going to let a little thing like competency get in the way. The boy bolted toward the front of the class and eagerly took up the piece of chalk. He had never written anything with chalk before, but he just had to do what Arata did, right?
"FUnAi iKKo"
While Arata's text was clear, concise, and properly capitalized, Ikko's handwriting looked like he wrote his name with the chalk in his mouth rather than his fingers while he was having some convulsive neck seizure, but he at least managed to spell his name right. Next came the hard part. Arata had four goals, so he should have four goals, probably, maybe, he didn't know what the rules were. What were his goals? Right now he wanted an eggroll...so was that a goal? He'd write that. No, that wasn't big enough. He needed a bigger goal than that right? What else did he want to do? Oh, the obvious answer, he wanted to punch a bear! That was what he really wanted to do, but was that big enough to fit for Junko's goal? He thought it was, but he didn't know if that was really what Junko was looking for. There were other things he really wanted too. It was difficult to remember which was which with that word though. One had four letters for cognizance, it was tricky to remember. Oh, he also like popsicles. OH! And he wanted to be stronger too! It worked for Arata it could work for him too!
"EgGropuNcHbeNofAmmaKepopsicleGETSTRONGER"
When Ikko backed away from the board, instead of a neat coherent list his teammates were greeted by this Frankenstein abomination of language, but Ikko didn't seem to understand the horrors he had unleashed upon the world as he proudly did an about face and beamed happily at the rest of the team. He didn't care if it didn't look at nice as Arata's or if his attempt at writing had taken up roughly 80% of the remaining space on the board, he had five things to Arata's four, he clearly won.
"My first goal is to get another Egg Roll. I also really want to punch a bear in the nose because an unpunched Bear is...well I just really want to punch a bear." He hesitated, a pang of uncertainty coming over his otherwise cheerful face, before it vanished and he quickly continued on. "I also like to make popsicle and eat popsicle and then make more popsicles and I really want to get stronger so I can afford to eat more egg rolls and punch more bears and make more popsicles!"
Ikko then strolled away from the board, acting as if anything he had just said made sense in any way, shape, or form. He'd settle for tying Arata, this time, he wasn't really ready to open up about his point of ignorance that truly bothered him, that truly upset him. For now he'd focus on strength, egg rolls, popsicles, and bear punching.
[WC: 1344]
