Gingerale pranced around the room, as if she were amazed at how roomy it seemed. Her head and tail held high, there was a spring in her step, clearly from the delight of it all.

Neji sat on his bed watching her. A month and a half had passed since Sprite had left and Gingerale had done this almost every morning since. He couldn't help but smile a bit. Kittens had done nothing to change the cat's cheery disposition.

He got up and filled the food and water bowl. Then he went into his bathroom to brush his teeth and hair.

It wasn't long before Gingerale was in there with him, weaving between his legs. "Mreeeeooow!
she said. "Let's go somewhere!"

Neji obliged. He finished brushing his hair, got dressed, and headed for the door. Of course, Gingerale was with him, but she was walking beside him instead of sitting on his shoulders.

Coke was quietly snoring on the ground right next to the stoop, his brown pelt warm with the late spring sun. When Neji saw him he bunted the kitten with his foot. He knew that if he didn't wake up the guard, Hiashi would. And that would hurt... even though he had taken a visible liking to Coke.

Disturbed from his comfortable slumber, Coke was rolled onto his back. His eyes popped open and his ears twitched. He looked up at Neji, his eyes slanted in irritation, and then slowly got up, stretched, and climbed onto the porch and sat sphinx-style, his amber eyes dazed and unfocused from tiredness.

"Well," Neji sighed, looking down at Gingerale, "where do you plan to go? You seem to have someplace in mind."

She looked thoughtful, her emerald eyes darting left and right as she thought. She finally trotted in front of him and started to lead. Neji obediently followed.

To his puzzlement, she led him to a spot not too far outside the gate, but far enough away that it was easily unnoticed. There was a mound of turned-over dirt where little grass had regrown there. He stared at it, trying to remember its significance. After a short pause, the vision of Gingerale laying on his pillow with four bundles of fur at her belly came to mind. Four. Not three. The fourth! The stillborn kitten! The grave! Now he remembered.

Gingerale was sitting next to the mound of dirt, her eyes fixed on Neji in patient waiting. He looked into her face and he remembered, for once unable to read the question she was trying to ask. He knew she had one. She always did when she did things like this. But he had seen this question before. He just had to remember where...

The three tiny balls of fluff tumbled together, playing their clumsy little game. They were only a few weeks old, and had just woken up from a nap a few minutes ago.

Gingerale sat a little ways off from them, watching them lazily. Neji sat across from her on the other side of the kittens, so that they were between them.

Neji watched them with silent amusement. "...They need names," he murmured, before his mind could comprehend what he had actually said.

Gingerale slowly looked up at him. The question was silently being asked. Neji stared back at her, unable to read her. She patiently saw there, pushing her question upon him. It finally clicked, and his gaze dropped back to the kittens.

"I don't know what genders they are," Neji pointed out, looking for any sign of gender at all.

Gingerale rolled her eyes and sighed. She padded into the middle of her wrestling brood and picked up the brown kitten, who was the biggest. It squirmed and and wailed in protest, but she ignored it and set it down in Neji's lap. She pointed to the kitten, and then to him with her tail.

"This is the male?"

Gingerale nodded.

"The only one?" He looked at the other two, who were still playing together

Again, Gingerale nodded.

Neji's attention turned back to the kitten in his lap. The kitten looked at him with big gray-blue eyes. He reached down to pick it up. To his surprise, the kitten reached an unsheathed paw up at him and smacked his hand with it. Neji's hand recoiled and he stared at the kitten for a moment. "Coke," he said at last. "Coca-cola." He had thought through that one. Everyone would think that he got his name from his coloring. But it was actually because he didn't like coke.

Gingerale's tail swished, and she purred. She rubbed the length of her body against Neji's arm, and then picked up Coke and brought back the calico kitten.

As soon as she was placed in his lap she started to purr. She rolled onto her back and rolled around, blinking up at Neji with big eyes. Her eyes were huge in proportion to her body, and she was absolutely adorable.

Neji smiled crookedly at her and ran his finger along her soft belly. She purred louder, to the point that her little rumble could be heard through the whole room. She had a very bubbly purr, and now Now Neji realized that she was the smallest of the kittens. "Sprite," he said surely, convinced that the name fit the kitten perfectly.

Gingerale's tail swished again. She picked up Sprite and switched her for the last kitten, the ginger kitten. Neji scratched her under her chin. She had a deep rumbled purr. "Cream Soda?" The named seemed to not fit, and he wanted to change it.

But Gingerale did not. She gurgled blissfully and picked Cream up. She put her down and crawled into Neji's lap. He stoked her silky ginger spot on her back, and she purred loudly.

Now he knew what Gingerale wanted. "You want a name for that one."

She nodded.

"Alright," he said slowly. He tried to remember what the kitten looked like. Very light ginger. Almost cream-colored. "Mountain Dew," he said a last. "...Dew. How's that?"

Gingerale let out a "mrrow" of delight. Her tail swished as it had done when he had named the other kittens, signifying the moment.

Neji smiled and nodded. "Good." He looked at the grave and tried to picture what the kitten would look like if it had lived. He imagined a long slim cat with a flume of a tail that was very fluffy in proportion to its body. The idea ended up a mirror image of Cream Soda except lighter in color, and he disregarded it and stood up. "Okay. Are you satisfied now?"

The cat looked up at him expectantly.

"Good. Come on then." He didn't give her a chance to get onto his shoulders because as soon as he was up, he was moving. But even so, Gingerale still ended up leading.

As she left the Hyuuga estate, she spun around to face Neji with an excited glint in her eyes. "Meow mroop!" she said. Then she turned around and dashed away. From that, he concluded that he wanted to race, and he jogged after her to give her the impression that she was winning.

She was running toward a training area. He hastily sped up with her until he was next to her. She looked at him competitively, and to his surprise she stretched herself out to that her tail was strait out behind her, flattened her ears on her head, narrowed her eyes, and lowered herself to the ground. She sped up until she was far pass him, only to skid to a clumsy halt when she came upon the training area.

It took Neji a moment to cat up because he hadn't sped up to match her. He stopped next to the cat and peered into the area, where he now realized someone was in. A kunai suddenly flew pass his face. A moment later an orange streak flew by his feet. He looked up to follow it, but before he verified that it was what he thought it was, a familiar voice confirmed what his eyes did not.

"Good fob, Cream Soda! Bring it back and this time I'll surprise you!"

He cocked his head toward the voice. On the other side of the training area was TenTen,with her hands on her hips. She looked at him. "Hey!" she said with a friendly grin.

He walked out, but jumped back again as Cream darted in front of him, carrying TenTen's heavy kunai. She came to a canter, and then slowly to a halt in front of her. She sad down, her bad leg sticking out as it always had. Her head was tilted with the weight of the kunai in her mouth, and as TenTen took it from her she straitened her head.

Neji and Gingerale walked into the area again. They both gazed at Cream for a moment in silence. Or, at least her back. "She didn't get very big," Neji finally said. Gingerale gurgled in agreement.

Cream, who had intently been waiting for TenTen to throw the kunai again, turned at the sound of her mother's voice. With an excited "mrrow," she spun around and galloped up to her and pushed her muzzle into Gingerale's cheek.

"She's only... what? Six months old? She'll get bigger," said TenTen, looking at the two cats. But Cream was small. She only came up to Gingerale's shoulder at the tip of her ear, and Gingerale was a small cat. Coke was almost the same height as his mother already. There was a huge size difference.

After a few months, Cream had already been the smallest of the kittens. Sakura once said it was because of her injury. It was the body's ways of trying to fix something unfixable: take more energy from other things, like growing, and transfer them into mending the bone. The truth was that she wasn't likely to get much bigger. But TenTen could believe whatever she wanted. And it was clear that she wanted to believe that Cream was going to be a big cat.

"...So you gave the other kitten to Sakura, right?" TenTen asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah." His mind was shocked back to reality far before his body seemed to be. He turned to face her. "Have you seen them around?"
She shook her head, walked up to the cats, and picked up Cream. "No. But Gingerale and her kittens are the only cats that anyone talks about. When word got out about Sakura and a kitten, I just took a guess."

"Oh," Neji mumbled. Gingerale let out a purr of delight. "I didn't know that... It was never something I took note of."

"Really!?" TenTen looked amused. Cream squirmed in her arms, and she put her down. The cat looked at her impatiently and meowed. TenTen looked at the kunai in her hand, and then at Neji and Gingerale. She grinned. "I got and idea," she said. "Why don't Gingerale and Cream Soda race?"

Neji raised a brow. "Alright," he said.

Gingerale purred and pranced to Cream's side.

TenTen's grin widened. She paused, and then pulled her arm back and threw the kunai. As soon as it left her hand the two cats bolted forward. Gingerale was, to no one's surprise ahead from the start. Cream was about two feet behind her. Neji watched with interest as Cream ran. She had her won little technique. Her bad leg just seemed to dangle from her side, until you took a closer look at it. For Neji, it was easy. As she ran, she threw the leg forward, which, in turn, three she whole back end forward and gave her momentum.

None the less, Gingerale quickly lengthened the space between them. She ran until the ginger spot on her back was even with the kunai, and then waited for it to drop into her range. She lunged at it and just barely caught it around the whole. She fell to the ground, hopelessly thrown off balance. The kunai wrung from her mouth as she stumbled, and as Cream aught up, the point almost hit her in the head. She dodged it and slowly came to a halt, and then walked back to her mother and sat down with a defeated look burned into her face. Gingerale finally caught herself, and dropped the kunai.

TenTen laughed. "Aww, Gingerale can't pick up my little toy!" she joked.

Gingerale's ears went back and she lowered her head shamefully. Neji was quick to jump to her defense. "So you're saying that Cream Soda can? It's a heavy weapon for a cat."

TenTen made a face. He knew that face. It was her 'Is that a challenge?' face. She put two fingers to her lips and blew, creating a sharp whistle sound that was so loud Neji feared his ear drums would bleed.

Cream cocked to attention at the sound. She got to her paws, picked up the kunai with little effort, and sprinted to Tenet's feet to give it to her. The only sign of weight from the kunai was the slight tilt of her head.

TenTen picked up the kunai and then kitten, and turned to Neji. "Don't even ask. She can catch better than Gingerale, too."

Neji didn't know whether to be amused or irritated. Gingerale was at his side already, so he simply picked her up and walked away. He knew that if he let his teammate bask in her victory for too long, she would find some other ways to show superiority that he couldn't get around.

Gingerale gurgled and climbed onto his shoulder as they went out of sight of the training ground. Neji watched her, trying to read her mood. "You hate that Cream beat you, don't you?" he asked at last.

She looked at him. Her green eyes met his, and he could see that they were clouded with rhetorical questions, questions completely out of both his and her power. None the less, se twitched her ear, which was a no, and she looked away. She started to look around at the stores and people as they entered the main part of town.

Suddenly there was a plume of smoke, and a jounin appeared in front to him. "Neji Hyuuga?" he confirmed.

Neji nodded. Gingerale cocked her had and his Neji's cheek with her tail, demanding him to introduce her, but he pretended he hadn't noticed.

"Hokage-sama would like to see you in her office."

Neji nodded again and said "Thank you."

The jounin nodded, pet Gingerale's head and then disappeared.

"This might be a solitary mission. If it weren't I would have either been told to inform someone else, or have been informed by a teammate," Neji told Gingerale as he headed for the hokage's palace. "This might be my first mission as a jounin alone."

"Mroop, mroop!" Gingerale replied. She was as excited as he was.

He smiled a little and pet her head, and she purred.

She looked at the palace looming in front of them, and then up. She stared at the clear blue sky, dotted with a single cloud; her ears were perked and her eyes were wide, as if she were paying very close attention to something that only she could listen to. Maybe she was even asking questions. The wind blew, and the lone cloud drifted a little to the south. Her ears went back and she looked down again, her eyes narrowing with regret.

Neji saw it all, and he knew after a moment that she could sense his puzzlement, But she only looked at him, licked his cheek, and looked forward again.

At the point, he knew that something was very wronged.

Because that alone, was peculiar.