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TKAB ch3 sneak peek

fun fact: according to the Naruto wiki, Ami is the japanese name for opossum shrimp

I watched as Ino made her way through our class, the girl waving and smiling to her supporters like she was some kind of celebrity. Her smile dropped however when she reached me. The blonde placed a hand on her hip, gaining a definite sharpness to her gaze as she looked me up and down. “Hmph, well I was hoping I’d get a chance to shut up shrimp-face over there-” she jerked a thumb in Ami’s direction, making said girl splutter in indignation, “-but I guess I can settle for one of her little minions.” She grinned at me then, vicious and confident.

“Hey! Who do you think you’re calling shrimp-face, pig-face?!” Ami shrieked.

“Ugh, stop talking, I can smell the fish stink from here.”

“Says the pig stinking of mud!”

“Girls, please!” Iruka tried (unsuccessfully) to stop the insult match between the archnemeses as I resisted the urge to groan aloud at the situation I’d been handed.

Of all the girls I could’ve been paired up with, Ino had to be the worst. For our entire first year at the Academy, our taijutsu classes had been restricted to performing drills to learn correct stances to the standard Konoha fighting style. Now as second years, we were finally allowed to have full-contact spars, making this the first time for many that they would fight another person.

That is, unless you happened to belong to a major clan.

It was like that chūnin instructor had told my parents a year ago: all major clan kids received some level of private tutoring outside of the Academy. This was an inevitability, really. Even if there wasn’t a kekkei genkai to pass down, each of these clans had secret techniques that the next generations had to learn, with training regimes that had existed long before the concept of the Academy and its standardised teaching had even been conceived. There was a reason beyond just biological advantage that the top grades in our class belonged to major clan kids: they simply were being taught things earlier than the rest of us. 

And, as daughter to the current head of the Yamanaka clan, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind Ino was receiving this tutoring, which would have certainly included taijutsu training.

So, adding on that my association with Ami meant she hated my guts, not only was I going to have to take a beating from Ino to maintain my averageness, the beating was going to fucking hurt.

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May I request another sneak peak of the next chapter...perchance a sliver of text. /><\

ask and you shall receive! I will post a snippet momentarily my liege 🫡🫡🫡

to give an update to all on the next chapter, it is unfortunately still going to be a little while - had a death in the family (all is fine, the person who passed wasn't v nice lol) and I am desperately trying to finish writing my first paper so girlie is a little stretched thin atm 🫠

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got this critical review on ff.net and like initially I was gonna respond to them bc criticism is fine but it’s only fair I get to then defend my choices in response

only to go onto their profile and see that their proudest moment was getting a fanfic author to block them bc of their criticisms of their fic and….yeah, no that’s not the flex you think it is :/

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was just looking through all my google docs and found a completed aot one shot fic that I have legitimately no memory of writing????? 😭😭😭

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the first plan I made for the original fic is so funny actually 😭😭😭 I have a brief bit saying her opinions on the rookie 9 in the academy and after a few lines about how Shikamaru’s intelligence impresses her, it’s just:

“Naruto irritates her. Sasuke irritates her.”

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Hey! I was wondering what the title "to kill a bull" means or what it refers to. Btw Ik the rookie 9 all sort of have a lower opinion of si!kura but are there any specifics? Or is she just an extension of Ami rn. Also has Iruka noticed anything odd with her or is she firmly undercover?

So the title actually comes from a Japanese proverb “to kill a bull by straightening its horns”, the English equivalent to this being the remedy is often worse than the disease it cures.

The reason I chose it is because at the time tkab was originally being published, a lot of si/oc-insert fics had main characters that were trying to stop bad things in the canon from happening. In turn, that inspired me to make an oc who was a lot more selfish - basically the title is tkab!sakura turning to those other si/oc-inserts and saying “you guys are idiots, trying to fix things will only get you killed” AKA don’t be the remedy.

(I actually just looked through my notes for the first original chapter and my working title was twisted flower so I am glad I was a little more creative lmao)

Regarding your other questions, I think they may have to remain unanswered for now as my answers would probably reveal a bit too much about future chapters! It will all certainly get explicitly covered in the fic at some point however

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what's funny is in the same series of extras from my Kyoko fic that became the origin point of tkab I also wrote like a three-line extra for a vampire knight oc-insert.

so there is a timeline where I wrote that instead of tkab

me: please for the love of god let me finish writing tkab chapter 3

my brain: hey so remember that vampire knight show?? what the actual fuck was up with that

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me: please for the love of god let me finish writing tkab chapter 3

my brain: hey so remember that vampire knight show?? what the actual fuck was up with that

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Sneak peek tkab ch 3

gonna be a bit before I finish this chapter (one and a half scenes in, five ish to go) but here's a very short sneak peek regardless <3

“Match over!”

I watched from the sidelines as Kiba gleefully whoop-ed at his own victory, the boy he’d just beaten looking both embarrassed and irritated by his posturing. “Heh, next time you should think twice before challenging the great Kiba-sama!” he declared, Akamaru barking in support from nearby.

Iruka sighed heavily, one hand holding a clipboard whilst the other was placed on his hip. “Kiba, a true shinobi is self-assured enough of their own skill that they don’t need gloat,” he informed the boy smartly. “And he didn’t challenge you, I paired you up, so tone down the dramatics, okay?” A smattering of giggling went around the class, Kiba now looking suitably embarrassed as Iruka pushed the two boys to form the seal of reconciliation. 

Ami leaned towards me, voice only a half whisper so everyone around us could hear. “Looks like he doesn’t just have dog breath, he’s got the brain of a dog too,” she remarked snidely.

More giggles erupted and I forced my lips into a small smile, looking away when I noticed Kiba’s cheeks turning a splotchy red. Iruka shot Ami a stern look but he didn’t say anything more, instead lifting his clipboard up again. “Right, next match: Ino Yamanaka versus Sakura Haruno.”

Oh for fuck’s sake.

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The bots on ff.net are actually driving me insane 😭

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ao3, your tagging system may be nice and you arent falling apart at the seams like ff.net, but your lack of stats is...upsetting

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tkab spawning off a kyoko extra is still my favourite part of my lore as a fanfic author 😭

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wow i was looking at tkab on ao3 and i only just now remember that YOU (aka discoabc, yes YOU) wrote it and i didn’t realize you’re active again?? i’m sure you get this a lot but i’ve been a fan since kyoko so it’s great to see you still kicking :>> wishing you the best on your phd!!

also speaking of kyoko, can i just say that even though it’s been almost 10 years, i think that even if i reread it now with my more developed frontal lobe, i would still think it’s peak. middle school me genuinely thought it was the best piece of literature ever, and university me might be inclined to agree. kyoko was one of those OC fics that changed my fundamental understanding of how much a fic can diverge from its canon (i still remember the shivers i get from the ryuga reveal. just insane) and i can still vividly remember when i sobbed my eyes out at 2am at certain moments in the story (alouette…) and. yeah.

sorry that got long THE POINT IS love your writing and i hope you keep at it remember to take breaks and hydrate and breathe!!!!!

A true discoabc og-er, thank you for your service in the kyoko trenches 🫡

But seriously, thank you so much this is so sweet 😭😭😭 it always makes me so happy whenever someone says they read kyoko when they were younger it was so fun to write back then!! And honestly, even though there’s defo a lot of cringe in it, I’ve reread it a few times and I was low-key cooking with some of those plot lines. Like, hello, zombie kokuyo arc? Belphegor being part of the vongola succession line? Young discoabc you were insane for that 😭

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Tkab chapter 2 summary:

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Hate Ami all you like, but if a girl had come up to me and told me my hair was pretty, I too would’ve folded

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me for the entire last part of chapter 2:

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Initially I had a line in that chapter where Ami calls Kiba dog breath and sakura’s like “yeah bullying isn’t okay…but is she wrong?” 😭