-1Right. For those of you who've made your way through this little piece (and by God, if you did so, I'm impressed!), I decided to map out my thoughts and reasonings behind my choices in titles. The likelihood of anyone actually reading this is fairly low, but what the heck, it's better then homework…

Naruto: Right. Well, since his father was also a rather well-known Jounin (you might have heard of him. I believe he was the fourth hokage…?), I wanted to reference his title of the Yellow Flash. However, since I still wanted some reference to his rather wild demeanour (which, after all, is the main point of his chapter), I went with fang. And besides, those teeth of his are kinda sharp, ain't they?

Sasuke: Since pretty much everyone writes about Sasuke coming back to Konoha at some point, I thought I might try to put a bit of a spin on it. It led to quite a nice contrast with Naruto; one's an outsider who becomes excepted, the other's a well-known and respected guy who everyone turns against. Thus, I wanted to work similar references in to his title, but as opposed to his father, I went with his brother, and as opposed to a tooth, I went for his rather more distinctive Sharingan eye.

Sakura: Since the other two members of Team 7 both had references to some part of their body, I thought I'd keep to the theme, and went for "Fist". That in itself is a rather subtle little reference to her habit of punching anyone who annoys her into the upper atmosphere. The healing part came from her being a med nin; she's not just a human battle tank, after all. I thought it led to an interesting contradiction; Sakura hurts as much as she heals, which must be a rather difficult thing for a doctor to deal with…

Hinata: For some odd reason, the Hyuga have always seemed very snow-ish to me, and the wonderful thing about fan fiction is that you can sneak in all those little bits and pieces without a single guilty thought. The princess part comes from the idea that the Hyuga are accepting her as who she is; the rightful clan heiress. It also preserves Hinata's more feminine feel, and that's practically unique compared to the other girls in the twelve. Ah well- she's prettier then them anyway…

Kiba: Ah yes, everyone's favourite flea-bag. I wanted to preserve Kiba's very much feral nature, both as an Inuzaka and as a hunter. His original title was "Dog Hunter", but that frankly sucked, so I switched out the Dog for Wolf (which has a much better resonance to it, with all those lovely connotations) and put Hunter first (because Wolf-Hunter gave entirely the wrong image). Overall, I think it fits Kiba perfectly.

Shino: Shino's one of my favourite characters, mainly because he's got some of the best one-shots centred around him in the entire fandom. Go read Break Out by Moonsheen to see what I mean. Anyway, Bug Boy's name was the easiest, mainly because there's barely any canon info on him that would limit my choice. I went with Mantis Prince because it sounds cool and brings up a very appropriate image of a calm, controlled, and utterly deadly character.

Choji: Another cool character. Choji gets much less love, though, so I decided to remedy that with a really cool title. Since his combat style revolves around him getting really big and just smashing anything that gets in his way, I decided to go with "Giant Lord". It fits just right, I think.

Ino: Ino's always annoyed me, because she's effectively just Sakura without the character development. Since her family's speciality is supposedly Genjutsu (which, in my experience, can make a character THAT. MUCH. FREAKIER.), she always struck me as a total waste of potential. And why train her as a friggin' medic? Get that girl a big book of Genjutsu and let the mind-fuck fu begin! The end result of that is my version of her turning into "The Nightmare Touch", a thoroughly creepy sounding name and thus utterly fitting.

Shikamaru: Gah. My dirty little secret. "The Shadow King" is, in fact, a villain in the X-Men comic, and while I can't stand the character, I love his name. This prompted me to steal it wholesale and slap it directly onto Shikamaru, who I consider far more worthy of such a bad-ass title. God, Marvel, please don't sue…

Neji: Again, gah. I'm really not fond of Neji's nickname, but I was kinda snowed under with limiting factors; it had to be connected to Hinata's name somehow, but it needed to be different enough to stand on it's own, and it also needed to be sufficiently masculine. The end result works okay, but I think I might need to redo it.

Rock Lee: Not my title, I should point out. Still, I find it entirely appropriate.

Tenten: A reference to her focus on throwing weapons, as well as her Twin Rising Dragons technique. I'm quite proud of the title, but the chapter leaves me distinctly underwhelmed. I'm thinking about revising the fic as a whole, though, so I might be able to fix that…