"Shiranui!" the teacher yelled.

Young Shiranui Genma looked up from his history textbook. He had actually been reading and not passing notes to cute boys for once, so he wondered what he'd done to get yelled at this time.

"What have I told you about eating in class?"

Genma nibbled his pocky stick down to nothing and brushed the crumbs off the pages in front of him. "Not too…?" he guessed.

The teacher frowned. "See me after school," he said.

"Okay." Genma gnawed on his pencil and tapped his foot nervously.

The last of the genin filed out of class, but Genma stayed.

"Do they not feed you at home?" the teacher asked. "Why do you insist on eating in class? Every report you've turned in this week has been covered in crumbs! This is not the way a ninja behaves."

Genma shrugged. "It's not that I'm hungry," he explained. "I just want something to chew on. It gives me something to do."

"If you aren't hungry, then find something to chew on besides pocky!"

"Okay," Genma said.

The next morning the teacher looked across the classroom to see Genma chewing on something. It was a small barked twig.

"What?" Genma said. "It's not food."

The teacher sighed. The boy was hopeless.

Three days, one twig, four pencils, and seventeen toothpicks later, Genma's class went on a field trip. Literally.

"All right, everyone," the teacher said. Three scarecrows stood in the training field behind him. On a cloth before him lay an assortment of small throwing weapons. "Today we're going to practice hitting targets. Now, let's take a look at the weapons we'll be using. These are different types of shuriken…"

"What's this?" Genma said, picking up a very long silver needle.

"Careful with that, Shiranui! That's a senbon needle. It takes a great deal of skill to hit anything with them accurately. I don't expect any of you to use them just yet, I merely brought them as an example of - GET THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH RIGHT NOW!"

Genma ignored his teacher and gently rolled the senbon around with his tongue. It was very much like the toothpicks he'd been chewing on for the past three days, only longer and made of metal. He wondered…

Genma took a deep breath and spat the senbon at the scarecrow behind his teacher.

Fwip!

Slowly, the teacher turned around. Where the senbon had hit would have been a vital point on a real person. The late summer sun did nothing to lessen the cold chill that ran over the teacher's skin. Dear God, the teacher thought. This child is going to be in ANBU.

Genma picked up another senbon and grinned like a maniac. He'd found his calling.