Something Ends, Something Begins

by Zachanariel

Summary:

[Translation] Hitomi died, and that sucked. Then she got reincarnated into the Naruto universe as a baby, and that sucked even more. Facing seas of fire and rivers of lightning before breakfast wasn't exactly her idea of a second chance, you see. But that's what she had, and so she grabbed it by the horns. This is the story of how she'll attempt to make the best of it. And if she can save a few people here, screw over a few other there, and get Danzō dead then deader, well, what more can a girl ask for?

Notes:

• A translation of Quelque chose s'achève, quelque chose commence by Zachanariel

Hi! I’m Zachanariel, a Belgian, French speaking author. No, don’t go, don’t go, okay? This translation is probably not the best work you’ll read, grammar and spelling-wise, but I assure you I’m trying my best. I love this fanfic so much I decided to translate it myself (I’m the original writer) after previous attempts from friends failed due to the sheer length of this story. In French, it’s 875k words long. And I love every single one of them.
You’ll have to be aware, too, that even though this is a self-insert of sorts (Hitomi is more like a harder version of myself, and certainly not a better one), I decided to change parts of the canon that I didn’t like. Mostly the senseis’ ages (except for Kakashi) and a lot of details. Just bear with me on this one and trust me. I did a lot of research; I just decided to tweak and expand the universe. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that you’ll love this work as much as I do.
Please leave comments, be it to explain a point of the English grammar I don’t seem to grasp quite yet, or to gush endlessly about Hitomi and her friends. I will be there either way. Please know, though, that I don’t need critics. This story is long done, I’m not rewriting it, just translating it. If you really don’t like it, don’t lose your precious time by telling me so. All others, I’ll welcome gladly in the comment section.
I love you all already,
Zachanariel.
PS: I’m trying to go for one chapter a week, but I don’t know if I’ll manage it as well as I did in French.

Chapter 1: Rebirth

It was amidst chaos and noise – weak, muffled, but noise nonetheless – that she regained consciousness. Her last memory was of a hospital bed with a stiff mattress and abrasive blanket, never enough to keep her warm, as well as a high-pitched, never ending sound, both dissolving slowly into a mild, soft obscurity. Her last surge of consciousness before that still soaked her distressed soul, a numbing mix of regrets and despair. She hadn’t done anything really bad during her life, but nothing really good was born from her hands either. She had been one of these bland, countless souls that  wandered through life without purpose or will, without hope or radiance.

And she regretted it. She regretted it so much… She hadn’t left anyone thinking about her, wouldn’t stay in anyone’s memory. In that respect  at least she was unusual, but what a sad irregularity it was. She knew that, within a few years, she would only be a name on a damaged tombstone, surrounded by others that were covered in flowers and love.

She died alone, as she knew she would, in a little hospital bedroom reserved for dying patients – of course, they never used such words here. Her only friends had been a laptop, loyal to the end, and an e-reader she would have liked to use more often. They would probably be seized by the government to try to pay her hospital bill, since she had no parent, nor child or lover. She didn’t know and couldn’t bring herself to care. But still, it hurt, in an ethereal way.

At the very last moment before closing her eyes, that  blurred and tired moment engraved in her mind forever, she had used her last conscious thought to beg for another chance. She had never believed in God or other deities . Wars of faith had always seemed so vain to her. And yet there she was, pleading for something she didn’t quite understand, to an unknown and all-powerful entity. And yet, there she was, her wish granted.

She didn’t understand what was happening around her, the noises still so muffled that they mingled together in her ears, an agitation that she felt only because it made the air move around her body. She couldn’t see, and her sense of smell was all messed up as well.

The hands were the first thing she recognised – or rather their touch on her, their warm skin, their calluses smothered by time, and their size… their unnerving enormous size, the way they picked her up like she weighed nothing and had become minuscule. Startled, she opened her mouth to speak, but only a long, long cry escaped her lips. She could only stop to breathe, and then cry some more.

And then the hands placed  her on something soft, something warm and safe and right. The feeling was so striking it appeased the cries ringing in and out of her. The same instinct that had made her scream now made her let out a different noise , an animal keening sound full of satisfaction. One of her legs twitched, and then…

Sleep, at last, came to her  like a blessing, as if she had just run an impossible marathon.

It took her a stupidly long time – months – to understand what had happened to her. She’d  never thought it was possible. For her, reincarnation was just fiction. But wasn’t it what she had begged for, in a way? Wasn’t this a sign that this higher entity, whatever they were, had heard her last and only prayer, and had decided to give her another chance? One had to be careful while wishing something: sometimes, you got exactly what you had asked for, but in a way you hadn’t quite foreseen. There was always a pitfall.

And, for sure, she had not foreseen reincarnation.

She appeared to have all her previous memories, a fact which came with its own inconveniences. The worst of them was certainly boredom. She was almost certain that babies, normal babies at least, didn’t know boredom. They didn’t know much at all, in fact . For her, boredom was a pain. She slept a whole lot, sure, but she still spent way too much time lying or half-sitting depending on her parent’s will, staring at a world still too blurry to be seen by her infant eyes. Her meals started and ended, each one similar to the one before, always right at the time she started to feel hungry. That probably meant she was well cared for. She hoped so, anyway.

Still, boredom couldn’t explain the feeling that  had started to haunt her a few days after her birth. It felt like something was swarming under her skin relentlessly, pinching, tugging and tingling to no end. It would have driven her crazy if she hadn’t quickly realised that focusing on her previous life’s memories could help her manage and ignore the feeling. In a way, she had to direct all her thoughts on her memories and on filing them in a space she had started to create inside her mind, motivated by ennui and the terrible desire to flee that excruciating feeling eating under her skin.

Her mind, in a few months, had become a vast library, each memory a leather-bound book with a relevant title, all filed with loving care in shelves, then rows for a precise subject; the rows themselves were put together in sections by discipline, and for each very large theme – languages, fiction, sciences, personal life and such – she had built a floor. The tower climbed high in the fog of her own soul, already designed to welcome all the new themes that would overlook her life to come.

She had already possessed a wonderful memory in her previous life, able to stick to the tiniest details and never quite forgetting anything. She remembered being envied for it, as if being able to forget wasn’t an awesome advantage when someone tried to build meaningful relationships. She couldn’t forget when she had been hurt. The resentment, anger and sadness laid festering in her mind, unable to leave. Each of the pardons she had given had been lies and, after some time, people realised it. She wasn’t good at putting something behind her – or leaving it there.

Now at last it was useful. When the mysterious itch was too strong, since she couldn’t make it  go away, she scavenged deep in her Library for memories she hadn’t re-lived for a long time. Some things weren’t unpleasant, even in her flavourless life. She stayed there until sleep found her, telling herself the beginning of a novel she had once read, or re-seeing a beloved movie, like a lullaby. It worked, to a point, but her skin was still haunted by this faint and irritating disruption. Her parents seemingly didn’t notice.

She had quickly left behind the weak and muffled hearing she had inherited by being born again. Sounds were sharp and clear now, and she was under the impression that her perceptions evolved sometimes, as if something in her brain had clicked. First, she had recognised her mother’s voice; she was the one talking to her most often, after all, even if the language was unknown to her at first. Her voice was soft, warm, emotions clearly displayed for her to hear despite the meaning of her words escaping her. Then it was her father and his deep voice, striking in spite of its rarity. Her instinct told her they were her parents, and it was confirmed when she started understanding the meaning behind their words.

She didn’t speak Japanese, but she had been very interested in manga and other Japanese media, which had helped her pick up some basic vocabulary. She had always wanted to learn this language, in her previous life, but had lacked will and focus, all alone in her hospital room. To whom would she have spoken, and about what, anyway? Maybe she had been called back to life in this family to be able to do so. Fortunately, her exposure to the japanese language  in her previous life through anime had allowed her to learn some basic words and she quickly sought her Library to refresh them in her mind.

A few weeks after getting back her hearing, she understood her name, Hitomi. She didn’t know what it meant but remembered that, in the Japanese culture, parents chose the meaning of a name very carefully. She couldn’t wait to see it, to learn it. Would it be something pretty, something that would show her parents’ love for her even before she was born? She couldn’t help but hope it would.

After a few months in existence, Hitomi’s sight cleared enough that she could see her surroundings. She understood, then. She understood, like a punch in the gut, in what kind of deep shit she was. The higher entity was probably cackling like crazy right now. Sending her to a world where civilians were acceptable casualties and ninjas, the only ones to possess true power beside the Daimyō, could literally kill with a stare… That had to be a terrific joke.

Oh, how she had loved this manga. She had devoured it from the first to the last page, e-book copies instead of paper when she couldn’t have a lot of books to her name, after going to the hospital to one day die there. Naruto had been one of those stories to offer her little bubbles of oxygen, of happiness, to help her sleep at night, a smile on her lips even after she had truly understood that no one would ever come and see her, doctors and nurses excepted. The staff had welcomed her whim with an indulgent smile, and she had invested a lot of her voracious, starving feelings in its paper characters and ink voices. Yes, she had loved Naruto, as a manga.

But having to live in this world? That was a disaster. When Hitomi saw the insignia on her dad’s forehead protector, the itch under her skin became fire and she started to scream, beyond breath or thought, so loud and long a taste of blood, unforgettable, bloomed in her throat. She heard her mother’s voice over her screams, the woman distressed and powerless to sooth her. She could only take her shivering body to the hospital, her screams gathering the on-duty ninjas who only gave way to more screams and fire inside her as the feeling grew, absolute and never-ending. Finally, she lost consciousness, exhausted by the sheer intensity of it.

Not a moment later, she shot through her Library, finding the floor and row where she had put everything she knew about Naruto. She extracted it from its place and put it in a new floor that became the main one. She renamed the row “canon knowledge” and started consulting every memory stocked there, so they would be as fresh as they could.

When Hitomi woke up, she had the seed of a plan. Her mother’s hand was on her forehead; the woman seemed so worried for her little girl. She was a beautiful woman, tall and slender, with black curly hair falling to the small of her back and stunning red eyes. Hitomi had never noticed the colour before she was able to see beyond the neonate blur. She only knew one woman with such eyes in this world. Kurenai Yūhi was her mother, which posed a problem – because Asuma Sarutobi was definitely not her father.

He didn’t smoke, for a start, and didn’t look like the character Hitomi knew from her previous life. She had only seen her face clearly once, before blacking out, but she knew he couldn’t be Asuma. Kurenai looked strikingly like her ink-and-paper counterpart. Her voice was different from the one she had seen in the few anime episodes she had watched, as was her body language, but the basics were there.

“Boys!” she called. “She’s awake. You can come in, rather than pacing up and down the corridor and scaring the nurses half to death.”

Hitomi couldn’t stop the happy babble coming from her mouth in answer. Okay, she really needed to start talking, and fast. At least now she understood most of the words she heard. Somehow, her gut told her learning to write wouldn’t be such a piece of cake. Perfect memory didn’t apply to muscles.

When her father came in, a man looking very much like him in tow, Hitomi forgot how to breathe. Because she knew that other man. Tall and slender, his gait carefully relaxed, he wore his black hair in a short, spiky ponytail. His neat goatee accentuated his sharp features, as did the two scars barring his face. Over his Jōnin vest, he wore a deer coat she would have identified at the first glance.

Her father looked like a brother to Shikaku Nara. A brother. Shit. Shikaku Nara, tactical genius without peers  in Konohagakure and probably in the whole fucking world, was her uncle . She was in the deepest shit and it looked to her like each new discovery she made about her new life just kept digging in the shithole. Soon someone was going to tell her that Morino Fucking Ibiki would be her nanny for the night, and she wouldn’t even bat an eye, because she would already be in such a mound of shit that even that couldn’t make it worse.

She slapped her mind-self, already halfway in her Library. She certainly didn’t need to add panic attacks to the never-ending list of her problems, now, did she? She couldn’t tell if she would be fine, if it was for the best, but she wasn’t defenceless. She knew things people didn’t. Okay, she couldn’t throw lightning bolts or fireballs at will like some shinobi she knew about, but she had weapons. Knowledge was power, after all.

Chapter 2: The Kyūbi

Notes:

MERRY CHRISTMAS Y'ALL. I have good news: my editor and I agreed that we can afford to do twice a week updates. This story will have a new chapter every Tuesday and Friday! Please don't hesitate to leave comments and kudos, you can't begin to imagine how much they motivate me to translate my own story. Thank you for your support!

One night, as Hitomi was falling asleep after spending the day trying to learn how to speak rather than babble senselessly, a terrible feeling startled her fully awake. Since her ill spell after she had realised where she was, her voice had changed, gotten huskier and veiled because of the scar tissue around her vocal cords. The knowledge of that unique pain, of the taste of her own blood in her mouth, didn’t stop her from screaming in her crate against her mother’s bed, still empty. Wild, foul chakra burned against her skin.

She felt so much worse than she had been last time. This was not just her own chakra system trying to work; the other source stimulated hers, aggravating  and stimulating it endlessly. She screamed and screamed in the dark, terrified, unable to stop or think, even for a moment. And yet, by doing so, she would have understood. This chakra could only belong to one entity around Konohagakure, after all.

She heard someone running and, suddenly, the bedroom’s door opened, yellow light pouring in from the corridor. Hitomi, despite her terror and pain, recognised one of her neighbours, a civilian working in a Nara pharmacy who sometimes babysat her when her parents were kept away. It wasn’t the first time the teenager helped herself in their home, so Hitomi didn’t worry about it, even though she would have liked to know why her mother wasn’t there. She was starting to think again.

She’d understand later, but as Anako the neighbour picked her up and started running outside, in Konoha’s streets, she could only contemplate the devastation far away, hear the noises of dozens of men and women fighting, dying, their chakra exploding powerlessly against the titan facing them. The Kyūbi was raiding the village and she was screaming, terrified and decaying, body and mind on fire. Even her Library couldn’t help her this time.

Quickly, Anako reached the closest emergency hiding shelter with her precious, wailing bundle and, after giving their names to the sentinel, she sneaked in the narrow pass that would soon fade into the mountain. The shelter was full already, terrified civilians huddling in little groups where they could.

In the shelter, the itch from the monstrous chakra had lessened, but she could still feel it, and feel with it the chakras of all the defenders , outside. If she focused enough, she could even single out her parents from the huge energetic mess, but she refrained. She didn’t want to feel it if they died.

Somewhere between the house and the shelter, her screams had faded to tired sobs. She wasn’t the only one to cry: a civilian wearing the Uchiha fan embroidered on her clothes was soothing a sobbing infant. Everywhere Hitomi saw it, the despair that parents tried to hide so they could comfort and appease their young. They succeeded sometimes. Sometimes they did not.

Somewhere deep in Hitomi’s mind, a cold power awoke, analysing the situation. If the Kyūbi’s attack, happening not so long after the last war, could put the civilians in such a state of distress, what would it be when the canon would continue to unroll? She had, since her realisation, toyed with the idea of staying a civilian herself, protected from the danger and ordeals coming with a ninja life. But she didn’t want to feel this powerless ever again. She didn’t want her choices to be taken from her, didn’t want to wait in the dark for news of those who fought for her safety.

She had just one possibility left, then, barely safer or more reassuring: she had to follow, as soon as possible, the ninja way. She had to go to the Academy, to succeed in her studies, to become strong and then stronger. As strong as it was possible without dying, even. With that choice, she exposed herself to all the dangers she was aware of and then some, but at least she would never feel that powerless waiting in the dark again, would never be defenceless again. Danger would strike again, but she would be ready.

In the morning, the shelter’s door opened on two obviously high-ranking shinobi. Hitomi didn’t understand all the words they were using, but Anako did. The teenager stood up calmly, the baby secured in her arms, then left the shelter to go home with her. The streets were devastated, a mess of rubble and dust. Had the Kyūbi gone that far into the village’s defences? Some parts were in ruins now. Such a shame…

Hitomi’s house was still empty when Anako went in. All ninjas were probably in the hospital to treat their wounds, or in the Hokage’s office reporting their actions during the battle. Hiruzen was already back in his place. A surge of disdain went through Hitomi’s brain. She’d have to work on that, too. The child hated the silence hovering over the living room, as if life had frozen and waited for a signal to continue. She looked for her parents with anxious eyes, even though she knew they were not home. She felt it. Their chakra, which had become a reassuring strength for her, had grown cold and faint.

Her mother came home alone, far after the sun had reached its peak position in the sky. She was visibly exhausted and the skin around her eyes was red and puffy. As soon as she saw her baby, the young woman hid her face in her hands, nails still encrusted with blood and dirt, and started sobbing, prompting Hitomi to cry too. She understood, as much as she didn’t want to. Kurenai was home – Shikano wasn’t, and never would be again.

She’d always felt thorn between her infant body and her adult soul, but this time all her being cried for the father she had known less than a year and yet loved for his tenderness, his soft, deep voice, his huge hands and his laugh so lively it had made his whole body shake. She mourned with her mother the goatee that had tickled her and the smile powerful enough to light up a whole room, mourned the softening stare, the callused, patient fingers that had sculpted her toys, mourned the way he tucked her in at night and the last glance, so full of love, he always gave her mother before leaving the house for a mission. She mourned and cried until sleep, at last, fell over her.

Later, Hitomi awoke in Kurenai’s lap. Her mother was singing a soft, sorrowful lullaby, the melody a balm on the wounds left by Shikano Nara’s death. A loving father, a rightful son, a brave brother. The lullaby hadn’t awakened her, though. It was the knock at the door.

“Come in, Father,” Kurenai said.

This took Hitomi by surprise. She didn’t know her grandfather was still alive. He had never been in the manga, so she had supposed he was dead, like most shinobi of his generation, but there he was. She stared at him intently, scrutinizing the shoulder-long black hair under his forehead protector, worn as a bandana. His eyes were the Yūhi’s, red with an inner circle of deeper red, and he had scars all over his hands and throat. His face, though, only bore the marks of age and a hard shinobi life.

“I heard about Shikano. I’m so sorry.”

“You should have let me help him!” Kurenai spat. “It’s your fault if none of my unit was on the frontline!”

“And what would have happened, then, Kurenai? What if the Nine Tails had killed you both? Did you think about what your daughter’s life would be without you? Don’t you think there are enough orphans after this night already?”

His angry tone made Hitomi moan anxiously. Adults didn’t shout often under this roof, Kurenai made sure of it. The mourning mother’s hard and angry stare softened as it went from her father to her daughter. The tenderness in her eyes mixed with a nameless suffering and loneliness, feelings so intense and raw Hitomi couldn’t quite grasp them. Ghosts were with her now, and they would never totally leave her. “You’re right, Father,” she answered after a short silence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you.”

“I don’t blame you. It was a difficult night.”

If she had been able to, Hitomi would have let out a joyless laugh at this bitter euphemism. A difficult night, yes, for the civilians who had left the shelters and helped clean the streets of the dozens of corpses that littered them before going home; a difficult night for kids who, like her, had lost a parent or, even worse, both of them; a difficult night for those who mourned a friend, a lover, a brother, a sister; a difficult night for the Uchiha Clan, which would suffer starting from today the consequences of a greedy, paranoid Councilman’s machinations.

But she knew the real culprit behind the attack. She’d make him pay for the blood he had spilled senselessly, be it in the past, present or future. She’d make him pay by disturbing his plans every step of the way, by being the plague he could never get rid of nor identify. She’d make him pay, yes, until his sick soul devoured itself.

She didn’t have a plan yet, but it would come. Closing her eyes, she pretended to fall asleep in her mother’s warm embrace as she entered her Library. She walked deep into her mind and looked around. The shelves that didn’t concern the canon but all the other information she was learning about this new world were filling in slowly. It was hard to collect knowledge as a baby, after all.

Her determined pacing led her to the correct shelf, to the book labelled Madara . Danzō was on her list, too, but she’d worry about him later. She had always liked the old phrasing “Know your enemy” and fully intended on applying it in this situation. But to the Founders, first. She didn’t have much on them, but what she possessed was enough already to start scheming. Her plan would be void of pity or morality, as Madara surely had neither of those. Whatever else she needed, be it intel or power, she had years left ahead of her to collect it. Silently, she started reading and plotting.

When she came back to her senses, night had fallen upon the village. She was settled in the baby carrier her mother had recently adjusted to her measurements, but it was her grandfather carrying her as Kurenai was busy cooking. The smell of food awoke Hitomi’s hunger each time someone cooked. She couldn’t wait to get past her milk stage. And nappies. Urgh.

All evening, Hitomi listened quietly while the adults spoke. She learned that the Uchiha Clan was well on its way to ostracization, a situation that would probably worsen during the days to come. The village was slowly rebuilding already, thanks to the shinobi adept at Earth Style ninjutsu. The service for those who had fallen during the attack would happen in two days, and all citizens were invited, ninjas and civilians alike. They had all lost loved ones, after all.

Soon enough, it was time for her to go to bed. She hated sleeping all day. At least she wasn’t bored half to death, but she wasn’t doing anything useful either. She far preferred strolling through her beloved Library. A new section had opened, full of Japanese vocabulary and grammar rules. She spent part of the night listening to the new words she had learnt until she could repeat them in the secret of her mind, since her body couldn’t quite do it yet. When the sun came back in the sky, she felt rested, and a little bit of her pain had eased away.

Chapter 3: Shōgi

Notes:

Hi! I started a tumblr about my translation process. It will include diary entries, memes, aesthetics, playlists, fanarts and all that. The address for the blog is zachanarielwrite (.) tumblr (.) com
If you go see it, I hope you like it!

Until her third birthday, not much happened to Hitomi. She spent a lot of time with her mother, but also with her late father’s clan. Nara Shikaku had a son too, one year her junior, and the man often turned up in the middle of the night for advice before going home to repeat the good word to his own wife. It was fun to see him in such a state of disarray, his ponytail half hanging on his neck while trying so hard to look as dignified as he could, but Hitomi didn’t make fun of him.

He was her favourite uncle, after all, and not only because she needed him and his influence in her plan to make Danzō’s life as shitty as she possibly could. Yes, she needed to be close to him, needed him to like her, but it wasn’t the reason she loved him to bits. He was kind, quiet, far from the lazy image he hid behind. And he was so clever! He had been the one to understand she was too advanced for her age. When Nara Yoshino, his wife, babysat the little girl for Kurenai, she made sure to teach her vocabulary beyond her expected level. Hitomi adored it.

She could walk and talk now, even if the two skills were still raw and difficult. Still, a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and she felt much better. She was freer now, and yet she was safer too. She hadn’t learnt anything that would directly help her in her different schemes yet, but she collected all information preciously, without ever looking down upon any knowledge. You never knew when something would be useful, after all.

The day after Hitomi’s third birthday, Kurenai woke her up far earlier than usual. She wore a dark blue training outfit which fitted her perfectly, something the little girl had never seen her wear. When her mother helped her in similar clothes, she raised her eyebrows and waited until the kunoichi answered the unspoken question.

“There is a huge difference between civilian and clan-born children. Do you know which one?”

Hitomi nodded. “The clan-born children,” she answered in an assured voice, “are trained by their clan way before going to the Academy, while the civilian-born kids start from nothing when they decide to pick a shinobi career.”

“Exactly!” Kurenai beamed. “You may not know it yet, but you’re part of two clans, sweetheart: your father and uncle and cousin Shikamaru belong to the Nara Clan, and I’m part of the Yūhi clan, even if it is almost extinct.”

A smile appeared on Hitomi’s lips. “We begin training, then?” she pipped.

“You got it!”

Enthusiastic, Hitomi helped her mother as she got her ready then stayed still while her long, nimble hands tied her hair in the traditional Nara ponytail. Well, hers was too long to stay up in the rubber band, but she still loved to wear it. In her dark apparel, she looked like the idea most people had of a shinobi. A miniature version, but still.

The obedient young girl followed Kurenai outside. The woman stood in the centre of their garden, firmly settled on her feet. It was the beginning of November, but the air was mild in Konoha: no snow had been seen there for at least ten years, or at least it was the information Hitomi had gotten by listening to the grown-ups who had visited her mother during the last three years. Those visits were precious to Hitomi: she could use them to fill the section of her Library reserved for information about her new world, her new village.

“Let’s start, then. Copy my position, feet apart shoulder-width apart, back straight, arms along your flanks.”

Hitomi did as she was told. She knew this position well: before the hospital, she had been in a theatre club, and it was called the ‘standard position’ there. Despite that background, she realised that she had trouble taking the correct stance. Her brain remembered the instruction, but her body didn’t quite execute them. It took her three tries to get her feet correctly apart, and a full minute to stop fidgeting.

“That’s good, sweetheart,” complimented her mother. “Now, slowly extend your arms and raise them so your fingers draw a circle and join over your head, as high as you can.”

Guided by her mother’s sweet voice, Hitomi discovered what would now be her routine, every morning, before starting her day. Kurenai called the stretching exercise ‘greeting the sun’ and, indeed, it appeared while she taught it to her daughter. When they were done, Hitomi discovered with amazement that she only felt the healthy aches of a physical exercise well executed. All the pains that had haunted her previous body from childhood hadn’t followed her in her new life. She was free, at last.

After only a few weeks of that daily routine, Hitomi felt her body get better already: her young limbs were still malleable and, according to Kurenai, the more flexibility she acquired as a kid, the more she would be able to retain as an adult. Later, she could enhance her body’s abilities with chakra, but she needed a strong foundation to work with before that.

It wasn’t the only skill Kurenai had her work on. After all, she wouldn’t go back to active duty before Hitomi graduated. The little girl started learning endurance running and sprinting – both much more enjoyable now that she didn’t have to spit out her lungs after ten feet – and strength-building exercises. In the afternoon, Kurenai took her to the living room, made her sit in front of the coffee table and talked to her about the history of the Elemental Nations, about chakra, about Hidden Villages, about the Academy. She had obviously spoken with Shikaku; what she told Hitomi, she never repeated, and she made sure to interact with her rather than just teaching her.

Hitomi had never felt better. She learned so much every day, and yet it seemed to her she would always crave more, more knowledge and more new things to discover. Soon, bored by simply trying to draw what her mother taught her during their lessons, she decided to copy the kanji she saw on the spines of books in the living room. She couldn’t read them and she realised quickly that her fingers were far too clumsy to write correctly. As for strength, speed and flexibility, she just needed to work on it, so work she did.

Her daughter was almost four years old when Kurenai realised what, exactly, she was trying to do. She was trying to learn how to write all by herself; she proved then, probably without knowing it, how much Shikaku had been right about her. The young mother immediately took the matter in her own hands, so Hitomi wouldn’t adopt bad habits concerning the order of the strokes, and the girl learned to write, exactly as she had wanted.

It took her a few weeks to master the two kana syllabaries. Her memory was as good as ever, but her strokes lacked the natural elegance one could only achieve through practice. Then she was able to learn kanji. She already knew some, like the one she would see one day on Gaara’s forehead, but she had to learn how to form them, the order you were supposed to use to trace the strokes. It amused her and helped her relax, so she practiced an hour every night before going to bed.

With all those new skills, Hitomi gained in independence, too. With her strange chakra sickness, she had only been authorised to meet Shikamaru from amongst the clan children. Kurenai decided then that she was ready for others: Akimichi Chōji first, then Yamanaka Ino. She could only see them on the Nara lands, the only place in the village where the population density was low enough for her senses. She had to admit she liked the quiet Chōji a bit better, but she got along well with Ino too. One day, they would be part of Shikamaru’s team. Her cousin looked up to her, and so his two best friends imitated him. It felt good, to lead them through games and adventures in their part of the land. And, of course, Shikamaru was her favourite. Family always came first.

One evening, he knocked on her door overly excited, cradling a wooden box against his chest as if it were a treasure. His father was at the corner of the street and walked slowly, his gait flexible and lazy. Most often, he evoked a feline to Hitomi, indolent but dangerous. Anyway, Shikamaru’s excitement was of more interest for the girl, since she rarely saw her cousin in such a state. Without waiting for the adult, she let him in. Immediately, he grabbed her arm and dragged her to the other door, which opened to the garden, mumbling he had something to show her.

He didn’t go to the grass, settling on the patio Shikano had built shortly before Hitomi was born. Behind the wall that separated the garden for the rest of the land, the sun was slowly ending his run across the sky. Its light stained the clouds with pink and orange shades. For a few seconds, Hitomi lost herself in that silent, colourful infinity, finding energy and calm in it.

“Come on!” Shikamaru called, making her focus on him again. “Sit in front of me.” As she obeyed, he set up something that looked like a chessboard without its black and white colours between them. Hitomi knew what it was: so, Shikaku had taught the rules of shōgi to his son…

“Your father talks about that game sometimes, he plays with the ANBU captains! Do you know how to play?”

“Yes, and I’ll show you, Hitomi-chan. My dad is a difficult opponent, I need someone closer to my level to progress.”

She nodded and, just like that, it was settled. He taught her the set-up rules as he put the pieces on the board, then the game’s rules through their first game. It was for that kind of intimate moments that Hitomi loved her cousin to bits. He never displayed boredom when she wanted to talk about something too complicated for their age and offered invaluable little beads of knowledge to add to her collection.

She lost her three first games. No doubt Shikamaru had already made progress by playing against his father. Like her, he soaked in other people’s knowledge, often without their notice. The fourth game was much, much longer. The sun had long settled under the horizon, and yet the outcome was still unclear. Before every single move, they both took the time to think and analyse the situation. Somewhere during the middlegame, Kurenai brought them blankets and hot cocoa, but they didn’t let the board out of their sight, even to drink.

Finally, Hitomi won by the skin of her teeth. She felt such euphoria that she let out a victorious cry and leaped to her feet, a surge of energy coursing through her body. Shikamaru looked at her proudly, a deeply satisfied smile on his thin lips. He had found his opponent.

“We shouldn’t start a new game now. You still have to do your writing, right?”

“I know a lot of basic vocabulary now, so I focus more on reading. But you’re right. Mom was already nice to let me out so late.”

The two adults could be seen through the patio door, sitting on the couch and observing them while talking. They looked relaxed, content. With a happy sigh, Hitomi opened the door and went through it, her mug in hand and the blanket worn as a cape over her shoulders.

“Well, well,” Shikaku drawled with a tender smile, “didn’t take you too long to get it, kitty! A few years of training and maybe you and Shikamaru will manage to kick my ass.”

The girl answered that affirmation by snickering cheekily. She and Shikamaru were geniuses, yes, but so was Shikaku, and he had dozens of years of experience on them, no matter the field. They would probably never be his equal, and especially not in his specialty, strategy. It was perfect that way, in her opinion. Shikamaru followed her inside, his board carried in his arms like a precious baby, and the evening continued under that gentle atmosphere until it was time for the two kids to go to bed. Shikaku, who’d come pick up his son in the morning, would join his wife for a well-deserved one-on-one night.

Chapter 4: Nara Ensui

On Hitomi’s fifth birthday, a man who hadn’t been seen in the village for years appeared at the doors of the Nara land. He wore the Nara ponytail, his just too long to stay up in the air. His dark grey eyes were underlined by a streak of mossy green eyeliner, giving him a dangerous, wary look. If the stories were true, these two adjectives fully applied to him. His name was on everyone’s lips, the Nara civilian amassed on each side of the street without daring to put one foot on it.

Nara Ensui. Konoha’s Strangling Shadow. The only one daring enough to pay no respect to the Hokage, or even to ignore his orders sometimes – his way of showing that Hiruzen should never have accepted the hat back. That hat should have been Shikaku’s if you asked anyone in the Nara clan. He had never wanted it, true, but he would do it if someone asked. He was younger, fitter, and he wouldn’t bend against the Council. Yes, Hitomi agreed. He’d be a better Hokage.

And she, too, looked as the strange man roamed the streets. She bore the itch from other people’s chakras better now, but this situation was her limit, and she almost never went to that part of the Nara land. If she hadn’t come to see Shikamaru, if Shikaku hadn’t thrown her a birthday party, she would have missed the return of the man that everyone, in the clan, seemed to respect so much.

“How troublesome,” Shikamaru pouted.

The young girl glanced at her cousin, surprised. “You don’t like him?”

“Don’t have any problem with him. It just sucks because I can already see Dad spending way too much time with him and I wanted him to show me how to throw shuriken.”

Hitomi nodded, understanding. Her mother had started to show her how to manipulate throwing weapons a few weeks earlier, deciding she was ready, but Shikamaru had always shown a lack of will in his preparation for the Academy. But that was it: just a show, nothing more. Shikaku always saw through his son’s game. Then again, Shikaku was the Jōnin Commander and the Nara Head. He was incredibly busy, and it was why he had planned on starting with his son close to when Hitomi, one year his senior, had started herself. He couldn’t train Shikamaru all day, every day. “Just come to my place one morning, Mom is teaching me. She won’t mind explaining stuff to you too.”

As they settled on a day for his visit, Nara Ensui faded to a mere silhouette at the end of the road. Storing away the invaluable little bits of   information she had just acquired, Hitomi wrapped an arm around her cousin’s shoulder and convinced him to come with her to the Deer Forest. They didn’t see even a single animal from the herd, but they had fun, exactly as she had intended.

The next day, someone knocked at the door while Kurenai was away grocery shopping. In any other part of the village, a child would never open to a stranger, but in the heart of the Nara land, no one feared intruders. Because she knew that full well, Hitomi opened the door and was left with her   mouth hanging open as she discovered Nara Ensui on the front step.

“I’m looking for your mom, kiddo. Is she home?”

“She’s at the marketplace, she should come back in twenty minutes. If you want, you can wait inside.” That scheme probably wasn’t her most subtle or clever. Hitomi, by welcoming the strange man into her house, hoped he would start talking and give her precious intel. On him, on the world beyond the village, anything would do.

When he accepted, she beamed at him and presented him with a pair of slippers that looked to be his size. While he switched footwear, she went through what her mother had taught her about welcoming guests and, as he settled in the living room, she brought him a tray where she had put homemade lemonade and a variety of biscuits. She was lucky everything she had needed wasn’t stored in the higher cupboards. Thanks to her merciless training regime, she had no trouble carrying the heavy weight.

“Thanks, kiddo,” Ensui said as she poured him a glass of lemonade. He had an amused smile on his lips, and probably saw right through her. Almost all Nara were geniuses, after all. Nodding with a polite smile, she sat on the ground in seiza, at the other side of the coffee table, all the while analysing the way he had settled on the couch, not quite a mess of limbs but not quite the correct, polite stance. All Nara, all the adults anyway, had that kind of quirk. It was weirdly cute – as much as that adjective applied to someone like Ensui.

“You look an awful lot like him, you know.” She stared at him, a question in her eyes, until he continued. “Shikano-kun. You look like him. I’m only a cousin, but his sensei was my shishou. I was his first ever student, so I often tagged along when he had missions with his Genin team. He was a good man.”

Most of the sadness Hitomi had felt when her father died was long gone, locked in a book in her Library. The bitterness, though, had lingered. She had just managed to tune it down enough to be able to pretend, in case she met   with Danzō or anyone close to the ploy that had caused the Kyūbi’s attack. Still, hearing his name awoke all those feelings as fresh as the first day. She couldn’t forget.

“I’m happy that I look like him, Ensui-san. I don’t hear about him much, but I feel like he was indeed a very good man. I’ll do my best to uphold his memory.”

The man’s smile grew larger and Hitomi felt like she had said exactly the thing he wanted to hear. He crouched toward her over the table, extended an arm and gently patted her head. She pretended to frown when his long fingers made a mess of her hair, then pulled away laughing.

“So, kiddo. Shikaku tells me you play shōgi. Got a board somewhere?”

She nodded and went to fetch it from her bedroom. It was a beautiful thing, ornate with kanji and lovingly veneered, a gift from her uncle for her birthday the day earlier. She had barely used it for a few games against Shikamaru, who had never lost on purpose – he knew her well and respected her enough to offer her meaningful defeats and true victories. With the board in her arms, she went back to the living room.

Her movements were almost ceremonious as she settled the board on the table and opened the two little drawers carved into the board, where the pieces were stored. Silently, she and the man set up their side then started playing, only letting the board out of sight for a rare sip of lemonade.

It came almost immediately to Hitomi that her opponent was the strongest she had ever played against, even stronger than Shikaku, and probably the only man in the world to claim that feat. She drank at the source of his knowledge, to all the choices he made, her big red eyes fixated on the board as if it was the most enthralling novel she ever read. In a way, it was. The pieces were telling her a story: who lives, who dies, who wins, who loses. She felt her throat tighten with emotion at some moments. She lost, but she felt like she had won, deep inside.

“I see you play often against Shikamaru-kun and Shikaku.”

“Can you see that, Ensui-san?”

“Of course. Every player, after a while, grow their own style, influenced by those he fought the most, those who taught him to play. Maybe one day you will take after me, too.”

Hitomi nodded in understanding. It made sense. She had heard of similar things happening with chess players. So why not with shōgi too? The two games were awfully similar, after all. As she wondered about it, she set up the board for a new game.

They were in the middle of their third game when Kurenai came home. If she was surprised to see the Strangling Shadow, a lemonade in hand and slippers on his feet, on her couch, she didn’t show it. Without looking up – it was her turn – Hitomi greeted her mother, her mind totally focused on the game and her next move. She had no hope whatsoever to win against Ensui, but she owed him the best version of herself. She owed him that, just as she owed it to every single opponent she had, so their victory was fully deserved and her loss full of dignity.

“No need to beat around the bush,” Kurenai said as the game ended. “I know why you’re here, Ensui-san. Shikaku told me this morning.”

“I’ll get the kid home in one piece, Kurenai-san. You know I will. I take care of my team.”

“She’s not your team, for fuck’s sake, she’s just a child who hasn’t even set a foot at the Academy, and Shikaku decided without consulting me, just because he’s head of the Nara clan!”

This tone from her mother made Hitomi tense, for two reasons. First, she felt on her skin the whiff of killing intent oozing around Kurenai, so weak she probably didn’t even notice it happening, and second because she didn’t get angry often. Such outburst ought to be regarded with particular focus when they came from her.

“Listen, I know it’s not what you want,” Ensui tried, “but there’s no other way. If you want the girl to go to the Academy and become a kunoichi, she has to learn how to muffle her perceptions, and you know I’m an expert on this subject.”

Listening carefully, Hitomi glanced at the man, unable to hide her mix of wariness and interest. She had, of course, worried about the Academy and the rest of her career. She couldn’t stand even leaving the Nara land. She was lucky Kurenai had asked for the authorisation to stay after Shikano’s death. But leaving with that man, even if it implied going through the village to the main gates… Where did he even want to take her? It sounded like a weird, half-baked plan.

“I know!” Kurenai snapped. “I know all that, okay? Am I supposed to give you my only daughter without even fighting it? You don’t even know her!”

The argument continued for a few minutes that Hitomi used to hide in her Library and think about things. She didn’t know much about Ensui Nara, but there were advantages to his proposal. Well, it had been accepted by Shikaku already, but she wanted it to feel like her choice, to be able to support it with sincerity. When she opened her eyes, she had reached a conclusion. She stood up, the two adults immediately focusing on her, and went to hug her mother.

“I’m gonna miss you a lot,” she mumbled, her voice muffled by the dress she was pressing her face against. “But it’s a big deal for me, to be able to go to the Academy in the best possible condition. Please, Mom, if going with Ensui-san can help me, let me go. Please.”

Mother and child exchanged a long look, full of promises and things left unsaid. Hitomi would have gladly died for Kurenai. She loved her unconditionally, and was loved back in the same way, something she had never known in her first life.   She held onto the fabric of her dress and breathed in as deep as she could her mother’s unique scent, all the while focusing on the way her chakra, now at peace again, touched her skin. Without the killing intent, Hitomi only felt pressure and softness, strength and tenderness.

“Okay, sweetheart. I’ll miss you too, my sweet baby… But you’re right. Go prepare a bag. You’ll be gone for more than a year, but I hope for him that Ensui-san will ensure you have everything you need, so just some clothing, your writing set, kunai and shuriken, and maybe one or two books. Got it?”

“More than a year? But I’m supposed to enter the Academy in April…”

“And what I’ll teach you,” Ensui interrupted, “needs far more time than six months to be fully taught. I’ll continue training you like your mother did, and then teach you some more things. When you go to the Academy, you’ll be one year older than your classmates, yes, but you’ll also be far stronger than they are. You’ll have no trouble being the best in your year.”

No trouble, no trouble… That meant she’d go to the Academy in Naruto’s year, and not Neji’s like she had thought initially. It would change some of her plans, facilitate them in fact. She would have less trouble being at the centre of the action that way. Feigning an annoyed sigh, she nodded and went to her room to do as she was told, leaving the logistics to the two adults.

Chapter 5: Outside The Village

The next morning, Hitomi and Ensui left the village just after dawn. He’d decided this whole trip would be a new learning experience for her, that it would do her good, and she could only agree with him. She couldn’t wait to discover the world the higher entity had given her for her second chance, couldn’t wait to understand more about the challenges other people faced, from the most powerful shinobi to the most peaceful civilian. Knowledge was power.

It was strange still to see the Gates for real. Going through the village had left her feverish, so sick Ensui had had to carry her, but she had been able to see them before he took her far enough from them that she could breathe again without feeling set on fire. Shikamaru had done his best to describe them and Chōji had drawn them for her but seeing them in all their glory was still something she couldn’t quite wrap her head around.

It was a mild autumn day. The tree leaves all around them were still mostly green, rare touches of yellow and red scattered here and there. The air still smelt of flowers blooming in the area. So close to the village, no one would have dared to disturb the peace and safety felt all around, almost as substantial as honey. It would have been a war declaration, and no one was mad enough to go against Konoha. Not yet, anyway.

“Why are you the one taking care of me, Ensui-san?” she asked after a while. “Yesterday, you hinted that you knew my… my problem well.” Even if her mother wasn’t there to chastise her, Hitomi still intended on being polite with the man who had taken her under his wing without any hope of reward beside Shikaku’s gratitude. The word around was that Ensui had more than his share of that already. This decision meant a huge dedication to their clan. Putting his career in hold for almost two years, just for a brat he didn’t know… Hitomi wasn’t sure she would have done it, and she was all the more thankful that he did.

“Your condition is called Meridian Oversensitivity. That’s what your medical file says anyway – as your shishou, I was able to look through it.”

“How come you’re my shishou?”

“Er… We had to tell that to the Third so he’d let me take you out of the village before you graduated from the Academy. You don’t have to see me as your shishou, but I’m sure you’d make for one hell of an apprentice.”

Hitomi thought about it for a while, silent and focused on the road so she wouldn’t trip like a moron. She thought about the future, when the canon would really start to unroll and she’d need a reputation for some parts of her plan. Apprentice to the Strangling Shadow sounded like a good start, right? The kind of thing that would make someone think twice before attacking her.

“Ensui-shishou it will be, then. But wouldn’t it stop me from getting a sensei after graduating?”

“Only if your class had a number of students that couldn’t be perfectly divided by three. Then, I’d supervise you until you got promoted to Jōnin. But, even if you get a sensei, nothing will stop you from taking another shishou or coming back to me after you get promoted to Chūnin. It’s your career, your choice.”

“You don’t seem to have any doubt that I’ll graduate, then be promoted. How come?”

He shrugged then, after seeing the way she stared at him, he decided to explain. “You’re a Nara, daughter to two incredible shinobi, and your uncle says you’re as much a genius as his own son, which says a lot. I saw his file, too, the kid has as much potential as his father had, and look where he is now. He could be entering the Academy now and rank first with no trouble.”

Hitomi giggled and nodded. They both knew Shikamaru would do his best to be a middling student at the Academy. He wasn’t interested in glory or power over his comrades, didn’t want to attract the teachers’ attention to himself. She was different. Girls needed to work twice as hard for the same result. Kunoichi needed to prove they were strong, and as one, she fully intended to do so. She wanted to be taken seriously, wanted to instil fear in her enemies’ hearts. For that, she would have to work incredibly hard.

“Now, to come back to your oversensitivity… I have the same thing. The sickness runs through our family and has done so as far as our records go. When I was born, I was diagnosed immediately – Tsunade-sama was there, you see, and she understood immediately. Everyone thought I couldn’t become a shinobi, but I wanted it so much. One day, when I was your age, a kunoichi came to my parents and took me away from the village, just as I did for you. When we came back, I was able to turn my sickness into a weapon, and so will you.”

Hitomi nodded, her eyes full of newfound respect. If he could do that… If he could allow her to go to the Academy, to become a ninja the normal way… She’d owe him everything. Even then, even when it was just them and he didn’t use his chakra, she felt it against her skin, itching and pinching it. Going through the village had been torture. Without him carrying her most of the time, she wouldn’t have managed.

“Will you teach me other things too, shishou?” A warm feeling pooled in her belly as she said the word, as she truly used it for the first time. Safety.

“Yes, but I don’t know what exactly quite yet. I need to observe you for that. When I know what your strengths are… Well, let’s just say I think you’ll like my areas of expertise.”

She nodded, encouraging him to continue, her big red eyes full of a hunger he recognised immediately: the girl wanted knowledge, was desperate for it even. She looked at him as if he was an oasis in the middle of the desert.

“First, there’s the Nara techniques, of course. Since you’re half-Yūhi, you probably have good chakra reserves, but you’re still a bit young to learn more than our opening technique. I’m also good at battlefield control, which means I’m probably going to teach you how to set traps and use chemicals to your advantage. It’s not overly difficult stuff, but I can assure you that even Sunajin puppeteers are jealous of some of my babies. Then, and that’s if you’re a really special girl, I’ll teach you fūinjutsu basics. Do you know what that word means? It’s…”

“Seal mastery!” she interrupted, almost shrieking in her enthusiasm. “Oh, I can’t believe it! I want to learn everything so, so much! When do we begin then?”

For the first time that day, Ensui started laughing, throwing his head back to free his intense amusement. The sound was so deep it seemed to come from far, far below, husky and soft like an ancient melody. “Ah, kid, you’re so freaking cute. We’ll see if you’re still so eager this afternoon, when we start training. You’ll probably end up hating me, but it’s still gonna be worth it.”

They continued chatting, about banalities mostly. Hitomi was quivering with impatience, which made her skip more than usual. Ensui, of course, had noticed the change in her behaviour and, internally, was increasingly overjoyed by the decision Shikaku had made. The clan head hadn’t lied about that kid. Of course, Ensui had already suspected as much while they were playing shōgi, but he was now sure that she was the type of apprentice he had always dreamt of. Of course, the Third had bitched about it when he’d seen the papers, but Ensui didn’t give the slightest fuck when it came to the old man’s opinion or feelings. How could he respect him? The man couldn’t even put a leash on Danzō. He should have had him executed after his betrayal, nothing less.

Shortly after noon, they arrived at an inn that offered bedding and meals to travellers. After a quick check through his meridians, Ensui was sure that he was the only shinobi around. He touched his apprentice’s back to make her go inside. They were now in a big room – inns were always big around villages. In a few days, they wouldn’t be able to find one, big or otherwise. Then, he would teach the girl to find shelter, food and water wherever she was. No one would dare say that Ensui Nara hadn’t done his job. This kid was gonna kick ass at the Academy, or he would swallow his eyeliner.

Their lunch was light and tasteful, just as Hitomi liked it. Since her mother left the physical part of training for the afternoon, she had gotten the habit of keeping her meal light before that. That way, if exertion made her puke, she wouldn’t be too sick.

After Ensui paid, they left the inn and walked for about a mile, then he told Hitomi to stop once more. They were in a nicely sized clearing, a fallen tree marking the centre. Flowers were everywhere, touches of white, pink and yellow in a sea of green. It was the kind of place Hitomi liked, quiet and fragrant. She usually only found that kind of peace in the Deer Forest.

“Well, time to start then,” he said. “First, I’m gonna test your writing and reading skills. Your mom would tear me a new one if I were to let her teaching slip. Take one of the books you packed and start reading.”

Hitomi did as she was told, her hands shaking slightly with anticipation. She took a big book from her bag, a strategy manual Shikaku had given to her as a starting point. Her voice stopping at the more complex kanjis she didn’t know yet, she started reading about the specifics of fighting on wet ground, after a few days of rain. Once or twice, Ensui corrected her on the meaning or pronunciation of words.

“You’re doing great, kid. And that book, a very good starting point. Shikaku’s pick?” She nodded. “Well, let’s get to writing, then. Take a notepad and a pen and sit where you can, I’m gonna dictate…”

He took the book, opened it at random and started describing the different uses someone could make of hallucination powder. Oh, Hitomi could see herself doing all sorts of wicked things with that. A grin on her face, she wrote the kanjis trying to respect the stroke order, but she had to leave some space for the ones she hadn’t seen before.

Ensui then tested her on the Land of Fire’s history. Rather than just asking questions, he participated in the exchange by adding clarifications and information she didn’t know about yet. After an hour, having spoken with him about medical procedures, strategy, and literature, she looked at him like he was a hero of the old times. Ensui noticed, of course, but he didn’t say anything. It felt good, having a child looking at him that way. He suddenly got why Shikaku almost kissed the ground his son walked on, if he was the same material as his little apprentice.

The physical part of the day was what Hitomi anticipated the most, waiting with a mix of apprehension and excitement. She didn’t need Ensui’s guidance as she greeted the sun, as she had learned it almost two years ago. Sometimes, Ensui asked if he could touch her to push her limbs harder, testing the limits of her flexibility, and she accepted every time, surprised he even asked. She had been manipulated a lot by doctors and nurses in her prior life. They certainly never asked. They had mostly seen her as a broken thing that needed fixing.

After she was done greeting the sun, he carved a target on a tree and told her to throw some shuriken and kunai as close to the centre as she could. Hitomi wasn’t the prodigy Itachi was in that field, but she managed okay, and she had trained a lot. However, she didn’t put any weapon in the centre of the target. Ensui had to cheer her up so she didn’t brood on that perceived failure.

“I guess your mother hasn’t gotten you started on katas yet. They’re the base for all forms of taijutsu. I’ll teach you that, too. For that, I’d like to test your strength, speed and stamina. Start doing press-ups, please, as many as you can.”

Obedient as ever, she dropped into position and got started. She didn’t really like that kind of exercise, she found them to be boring. She had found something to fight that feeling though: she went in her Library and read a book selected at random. That way, she disconnected from her body, forgot all pains and aches, didn’t feel tired and kept pushing herself while also keeping busy. She always surpassed herself that way.

And she did it that day, too. She surpassed herself so much she couldn’t walk when the night fell on the Land of Fire. Ensui had to carry her back to the inn, but the only obvious emotion in his eyes was an intense form of satisfaction. In the span of time it took him to get them a room, the girl had fallen asleep in his arms. He climbed the stairs as smoothly as he could then decided to give her the only bed, tucking her in as he would his own child before settling on the ground.

Chapter 6: Training Begins

Notes:

This comes a bit early because I have a class to teach in half an hour and won't be there at the usual posting time!

The next day, as promised, Ensui started to teach Hitomi. She woke up incredibly sore and couldn’t quite hide it, which made him give her a sorry look. However, he told her she was going to have to bear with it. Still, he didn’t intend on starting her on the physical part of training until the afternoon – Kurenai had explained how she did things with her daughter and Ensui had thought it was a good plan – he made her a hot water bottle with what they had in the room and showed her how to apply it to the worst aches in her body.

He set up a travel shōgi board on the table he had pushed against the bed and started teaching her about strategy while illustrating it with the game. They ended up playing a normal game where she got her ass properly kicked, but she acquired new moves Shikamaru probably didn’t know about. She couldn’t wait to give him a run for his money.

Then, he showed her the basics she’d need to know for battle chemistry. Hitomi already knew some of that thanks to her prior life, but she couldn’t really show him that without explaining how she knew. She settled for making him believe she just understood very quickly – and, in all fairness, it was already the case for the things she didn’t know about, so it didn’t shock him.

“If everything goes as planned,” Ensui promised, “I’ll let you try to blow up something on your own. It’s the most basic skill of battle chemistry and very efficient if your goal is to take control of the battlefield, be it during a one-on-one fight, in team configuration or during open battle. This knowledge wins war, Hitomi. It’s usually only taught in the Nara, Yamanaka and Akimichi clans, since we’re so closely tied. And even amongst us, not a lot of people master it, they want to focus more on common ninja arts, but since you’re an amazing little apprentice, I’ll make sure you don’t go down that road. Got it?”

“Got it!” she beamed.

The teaching lasted all morning, making Ensui stupidly happy. He had a hard time hiding it, even. He just wanted to go hug his clan leader, to thank him for giving him such a gem. The kid seemed tailored to receive all the knowledge he had to give her, and the pleasure to learn was as clear as day in her big red eyes, along with insatiable curiosity and eagerness to prove herself. She reminded him of the child he had been, once.

He would continue to teach while she attended the Academy and even later during her career. He’d sharpen her like he would his best blade, physically and mentally. She’d become the beautiful, terrifying kunoichi he could see in her. She’d look like her mother, perhaps with the more delicate features that all Nara had. The day she’d surpass him, he’d be so impossibly proud. He was already proud   to see her devour all the technical chemical notions that were usually so hard on students. She was his first apprentice but he wasn’t entirely clueless as to how to teach her, since drunk Jōnin bitched about their own apprentices from time to time.

After a light meal, man and child paid then went outside, the room carefully locked just in case. Hitomi was still sore and limped slightly, but she knew it would have been far worse if Ensui hadn’t given her the hot water bottle. She hadn’t thought about that before, while training with her mother, but this was a trick she was definitely going to use again.

“We’re gonna stay a few days here,” Ensui said that evening, “so your body can adjust to be in the best conditions possible. When you can walk without problems in the morning, we’ll hit the road again. We’ll walk in the morning while going over theory stuff, then we’ll stop to get lunch and stay in whatever area we’re in for physical training. You’ll be working on reading and writing before you go to bed.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she stretched. He had made her work hard that day, but she didn’t feel as exhausted as last night. Could her body be getting stronger already?

“Probably Suna. I want to show you chemicals drawn from stones you can only find there.”

She noticed he used the short version of the Village’s name, as he would for Konoha, but she didn’t say anything about it. She was too busy wrapping her head around all the things he was teaching her. She didn’t know that man well, and yet she’d felt honoured, yesterday, upon seeing the gleam of pride in his eyes. It was invigorating. She hadn’t thought about the eventuality of getting noticed by a powerful shinobi; she’d thought she’d get in a typical Genin team then advance on her own. How absurdly lucky she was, to have Ensui focusing on her.

As soon as they got to the clearing, serious business began. He made her run for twenty minutes so her muscles could warm up and take what he had planned for her. He had decided that the girl, first and foremost, needed to learn how to fight. He was feared, a shinobi no one in their right mind would fight without a good reason, but he knew anything could happen. Hitomi needed to be able to defend herself.

Katas, fighting moves used as a base to learn how to fight, were usually taught in the Academy from the third year up, Hitomi knew that. She had sometimes watched her mother do them to warm up and they looked easy then. As she tried the first move under Ensui’s watchful eyes, she tripped and fell face first in the grass. She stood back up with a groan and started again from the beginning, as he had ordered her to do if she made a mistake.

It took her an hour to master the opening stance, and her limbs didn’t move as gracefully as Ensui’s had, far from it. Her hands and feet, mostly, were still clumsy, and her balance was highly challenged as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other. It was increasingly frustrating, but she comforted herself by focusing on the fact that she didn’t feel tired at all. Her body had never been this strong, this healthy. She knew she would succeed eventually. And knowing that felt wonderful.

The katas couldn’t be used in a real fight. They were too predictable, too common. But they were the working foundation for every shinobi: they used their favourite katas, modified and adapted to become suitable for battle. Ensui explained all that to her in a soft voice as he corrected her starting stance, his hands careful not to press too hard on hers. He probably knew that a prolonged touch would be painful for her sensitive meridians.

“It’s time now for me to help you work on your oversensitivity. There is no secret, unfortunately, no shortcut that could help you cope until you get it under control. You’ll have to meditate and create a box, hideout, cage, whatever comes to mind the fastest for you, and put the information given by your meridians there.” He sighed then continued. “After that, you’ll need to find out how to manage the opening of that place so you can receive information, but only enough that you’re aware of people around you without being overstimulated. No shinobi at my level or below can take me by surprise, but I’m not writhing in pain either. Got the difference?”

Hitomi nodded calmly. She understood the concept, better than he imagined. The exercise sounded very similar from what she had done with her Library, what she had had to do to automatise the sorting of new memories.

“Your mother said you were already meditating once a day. Show me the posture you use.”

Immediately, Hitomi sat in seiza, the traditional sitting position used by all traditional families in Konoha. She knew that, in the Previous World, this posture was well-known too, but she had never used it then. Shikaku had helped her practice until she got it right. Hands on her thighs, back straight and shoulders relaxed, she closed her eyes and stood at the very edge between her Library and the physical world. It was hard not to go in, to stay between two planes, where she could still focus on Ensui.

“Good. Now imagine the thing you want to use to contain those perceptions. Take what comes first to mind, and get it attached to your mind. This sickness is an advantage, Hitomi. You’ll treat it with the respect it deserves, no less.”

She obeyed him. She saw a cage, a beautiful, delicate thing, made in one block of crystal. As soon as she went inside her Library, she made a column out of marble in the centre of the rotunda around which she had organised her sections. It formed a light well and illuminated the whole place. There, she stopped and thought about what to do next. On the pillar that she had raised to waist-height, she built the cage she had in mind. She carved it with flowers and animals she loved, made sure the crystal captured light and refracted it all around in pretty rainbow colours. It took her an hour to make her vision reality.

In the crystal cage, she tried to put her meridian’s perceptions. It was incredibly complicated, because she didn’t know if she was transferring feelings or memories of those feelings. The line between those two concepts was thin and she didn’t know how to walk it, even after a few tries.

If this difficulty wasn’t enough, Hitomi started feeling a form of fatigue she had never felt before. Her thoughts were weirdly sluggish sometimes, like being stuck in honey, and her breathing was becoming more and more laborious. Her limbs were shaking and covered in   cold sweat. Despite this, she didn’t stop trying, and she wanted to scream in frustration each time a book, a memory, appeared in the cage.

“Hitomi? Hitomi!”

She regained her senses in a start, her pupils extremely contracted in the centre of her red eyes. Ensui’s hands on her shoulders were gripping the joints painfully, but she realised he had no other choice: she would have fallen without his strength, her legs so weak they couldn’t even bear her weight. She shook in the mild evening air, coldness growing slowly inside her. Wherever she looked, it made her nauseous. “W-what’s happening to me?” she whined.

“You spent too much chakra. I’m sorry, kid, I didn’t know you could use it. Most children your age or even older can’t access their reserves.”

She answered with a wordless whine, her shaking getting worse after each passing second spent in that dreadful state. Ensui wrapped her in a blanket he had taken from his backpack, put all their stuff inside it instead then picked her up in his arms like she weighed nothing at all.

“You’re in for a dreadful night, I’m afraid. During the hardest parts of it, remember that everything will be better in the morning. I swear it will be, kid.”

She heard shame in his voice, and it frightened her. She tried to calm the chattering of her teeth by biting her lower lip, hard. She didn’t want to worry him more than he already was, but she could see from his weather-beaten face that it was already the case.

Once they were back in their room, he tucked her in with as much care as he possibly could then heated water up with a wisp of chakra so he could make her a hot water bottle. His dark grey eyes didn’t leave her for a moment. He was ready to act if she took a turn for the worse. He remembered the first time he had been in that situation: he had thought he was going to die but had survived, and learned his lesson. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts never to go through chakra withdrawal again, shinobi didn’t have much choice in the matter. There was always a good enough reason.

The night was difficult, just like Ensui had assured Hitomi it would be. After an hour, she had started to feel her limbs burn, a terrible pressure that made her want to lose consciousness. She muffled her cries of pain in her pillow, biting so hard she tore it apart. Ensui petted her hair, whispering comforting words and meaningless promises.

Then the nausea and vomiting started, leaving her exhausted and haggard. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she got a fever that gave her chills and vertigo, making her lose her grip on reality. She was so dependent on her knowledge and awareness to feel safe that she spent a lot of those hours sobbing, terrified and deaf to Ensui’s tender words.

The night was hard and long for both master and student. The sun rising in the sky found them both asleep, her between the half-undone sheets and him sitting on the ground, his back painfully bent so his head was on the mattress, the rest of his body on the ground. He snored weakly, his unkempt hair slightly moving each time he released a breath. One of his hands was reaching for Hitomi but not quite touching her, as if he had fallen asleep while trying to comfort her.

As he had promised, everything was better in the morning.

Chapter 7: The Caravan

After that mishap, Hitomi couldn’t continue her sensitivity-related training until her reserves were replenished. Children as young as she was weren’t supposed to be able to mix chakra or use it, Ensui explained, and even less to the point of exhaustion like she had. He listened very carefully as she told him about her Library, how it worked and how she had built it. When she was done, he sighed and shook his head, mumbling something about Yamanka bitching when they’d think he had stolen clan secrets to give them to her. Yeah right, as if she would ever be that reckless. The Yamanaka were telepaths , for fuck’s sake.

It was time for Hitomi to put the theory into practice with her chemicals. After a few tries, carefully supervised by her mentor, she succeeded in creating a nice, strong explosion, enough to shake the ground and make dozens of birds fly away in panic. At night, she consulted Ensui’s chemical notebook, where he wrote down all the formulas and procedures he used for his creations. The notebook was locked by a seal that used his chakra as a key, which she found absolutely fascinating.

She couldn’t grasp everything on those pages, far from it, but she still had a lot to learn in that field. Delayed reactions, doses, projections, … The possibilities were endless, and one day they would all be hers. The first step was just reading the notebook, as Ensui had instructed her: she just had to look at the pages to remember them for when she’d be ready.

Ensui made sure she’d seen it all before taking it back. “You won’t always have me around,” he said “when you want to make things go boom. That way you’ll have everything you need in your head, you’ll just need to find the chemicals for the situation.”

A week later, they left the inn behind and hit the road again. Their progress toward the Sunajin Desert was slow, but the weather was colder every night, a sign they were closing in on the border. The first night outside was difficult for Hitomi. She wasn’t used to that kind of temperature, to the hardness of the ground, to the thousand noises that kept her up all night. After that though, she did better.

“The first thing you need to know to survive outside is how to hunt. You can’t expect food to come to you nice and prepared just like in a village. Take your kunai and follow me.”

Hunting was not a problem for Hitomi, but skinning and gutting were another story. She couldn’t prevent her hands from shaking as she followed Ensui’s instructions, the rabbit’s dead eyes looking at her like they could still see her. She had to prepare dozens of preys before she could do it without hesitation. Each of the lives she took, even if they were just animals, made her heart a little colder, a little harder.

She had to be honest with herself: she needed this. It was one thing to plan violent acts and fights in the safety of her Library, and another one altogether to spill blood in real circumstances, to see pain and fear on some opponent’s face. Sometimes, they might even   be kids, just like her.

When she stumbled while training, Ensui showed no mercy. He made her attack again and again, made her pitiless, even if she couldn’t hurt him; it was the spirit that mattered. And when night reached the cave he always managed to find to shelter them from the elements, he hugged her and cradled her until she stopped crying then fell asleep. When she had nightmares, he always woke her up and appeased her so she could get back to sleep.

After a few months, she had mastered all the basic Konohajin katas. To celebrate, he bought her a dark green outfit, nicely cut for fighting, the fabric breathing like nothing she had ever worn and tailored so she had plenty of room to move. He showed her how to tie her kunai pouch to the belt, then got her started on another set of katas only Nara used.

He sharpened her, like he would a weapon. Hitomi liked the idea. He didn’t coddle her, wasn’t afraid to push her just a bit harder. Every morning, she woke up stronger, harder, but, more importantly, she woke up more ready to face the opponents that she would drag back by the hair to face her if need be. They dared to be assholes, they couldn’t whine when they got trouble biting their ass back. Trouble being her , of course.

After almost five months, they reached the edge of the Sunajin Desert. They had been slow, while Hitomi could walk fast for a child, she was no match for even civilian. She wasn’t a ninja yet, wasn’t even an Academy student. It frustrated her to no end, but Ensui always appeased her. They found a caravan, bound for the Desert and equipped to cross it. Those people were merchants, and not only from the Elemental Countries. They hired shinobi so they could be protected: bandits rarely dared to attack a protected caravan. This time, it was a team composed of two Genin, one Chūnin and a Jōnin to lead them. Obviously, they had a lot of experience as a team: they didn’t need to use words to coordinate their efforts and protect the caravane.

“Shishou?” Hitomi asked.

“Hm?”

“I think the Chūnin is a puppeteer.”

He groaned. “Please don’t go harass the man with questions, kid. We don’t need a diplomatic incident.”

With a pout, Hitomi took refuge under one of the tarpaulins protecting the goods from the sun. A ninja only needed a few days to reach Sunagakure from Konoha, but a caravan moved much slower, even slower than a walking civilian. They could only move during the early and late hours of the day, when the air was neither too hot nor too cold. The time spent moving, Ensui used to make Hitomi work on her meridians.

One day, while she was meditating under his ever-watchful eye, she felt something click in her mind, almost like a   touch or the noise of a branch snapping under the pressure. This time, it wasn’t a book appearing in the crystal cage, but a ribbon cut from white light, flowing quietly above its floor.

She snapped out of her trance and fell on all four, trying to catch her breath. For the first time, people around her felt a bit faded. Not enough for her headache to disappear, but still, it was progress, she couldn’t deny it. Beaming, she stood up and looked at her mentor. “I think I’m starting to get it, shishou!”

He smiled too, unable to stop it. To hell with the empty face shinobi were supposed to wear in all circumstances, he couldn’t resist when she looked at him like that, so happy, so full of hope for the future. “Congrats, kid. You’ve done the hardest part. I’m very proud of you.”

She froze, her eyes staring into his own, a red as rich as wine against dark, quiet grey. After a few seconds, she understood how much he meant it, the strength he put in those words, the dignity, the righteousness, the faith. He didn’t know any other way to get them out and she wondered. She wondered if she really deserved them. After all, she was good at fooling people, lying, manipulating her way into their heart with the sweetest smile. But she hadn’t done anything like that to Ensui. She wanted to be worthy of him.

Her progress had been a temporary fix, unfortunately. Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke up with a start as the light ribbon slipped away from its cage and faded away. Ensui was up, as if he knew it would happen. He probably knew, since he’d been through that well before her. She was exhausted – in her case, it seemed that keeping her oversensitivity at bay had to involve using chakra. Yet she knew she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Wrapped in her blanket, she went to join her mentor, who was reading a scroll. “Shishou?”

He answered the question she hadn’t asked, shifting sideway on his futon so she could sit with him and read too. Fascinated, Hitomi stared at the elegant strokes of black on the cream paper. She identified a seal structure, but she didn’t know which one. It was magnificent, so complex it would make any calligrapher pale with jealousy, and her palms tingled with the desire to be the next one drawing it.

“You remember the day when we left Konoha? I told you I’d teach you some fūinjutsu. I’m not a Master like the Sannin or the late Fourth Hokage, but I have some skills, which is more than can be said of almost everyone in the whole world. This knowledge is on the verge of disappearing, and we don’t ever teach it to people who wouldn’t be good at it. I think you’re gonna do great in this field with your memory, kid. Since you’re awake, we can start right now.”

Her eyes shining with adoration, the little girl nodded so vigorously her neck protested. She didn’t care about this kind of pain, not when fūinjutsu was on the table. Since the day he had mentioned the topic, she was obsessed with it. What she knew about the art of seals made it look insanely powerful and the idea of endless possibilities was enticing to her. Imagining herself with such a flexible tool satisfied something deep and dark in her mind.

Whispering so they wouldn’t bother the other sleepers around, Ensui started explaining the basics of seal drawing. Every seal had an outer and an inner circle written with modified kanjis all connected to each other and almost impossible to decipher if one didn’t have the knowledge of the language used to write them. You couldn’t allow the brush to leave the paper even for a moment as you traced them, and the seal would be activable as soon as both circles would be connected, its function hidden in plain sight. Then there were the ornaments, between two and a hundred chains linking to two circles togethers, their number and complexity an indicator of how much power the seal could draw from its surroundings and rely upon. Those ornaments had to be equally spaced or the seal would become unstable and often dangerous. Finally, in the space left between the ornaments, the seal master added characters that looked like simplified kanjis and would define how the seal behaved: how much chakra the user needed to inject, the self-timer if the seal needed one, the area of effect, its shape, … The possibilities were truly endless.

For example, for a storage seal, she would have to trace the two circles using kanjis that could be roughly translated as ‘I store and release at will’, then add enough ornaments for the volume of storage needed. The finishing touch was adding precisions as to the place relative to the seal where things would appear or disappear – two manipulations that needed different characters. It got even more complex if the seal master wanted a precise storage place for each object, so they wouldn’t end up buried in a mountain of clutter each time they wanted one precise item.

Fūinjutsu was rarely an innate skill and, even when a shinobi had such a gift, they had to work precisely and repeatedly to master even the simplest seal. The special ink used to draw them, infused with chakra at least, was only produced in the Fire Temple. Any seal had the potential to fail catastrophically if mistakes were made in its conception. Fortunately, they all needed chakra to be activated, so it was possible to train without blowing up something by accident.

Hitomi was fascinated. Her left hand, the dominant one, almost twitched with impatience. Her whole body called for those yet unknown sensations, the sound of the brush against paper, the heady smell of ink, as if something deep in her knew what it would feel like. If Ensui noticed the urge running through her, he didn’t say. Was he, too, captivated by the seal he was looking at? Did he feel like he instinctively understood how it was drawn, and did he feel the need to lose himself in seal mastery? She couldn’t tell.

The sun was rising when he finished his explanations. He didn’t need to tell Hitomi to get up, she was already jumping on the ground. Her movements slow and steady, a thousand times more at ease than she had been even a year earlier, she started greeting the sun under the amused stare of some of the civilians, used now to her strange behaviour. In the afternoon, when they couldn’t continue traveling, they often sat in a circle around her as she fought against Chiki, one of the Genin the caravan had hired for protection. He had agreed to help her in her training: against him, she could practice her katas and try to adapt them to her future fighting style.

Sometimes, more rarely, she fought against Ensui or Takano, the Jōnin leader of the team, but it was like trying to break a mountain with a blade of grass. Despite this, she was learning, no matter who her opponent was. She also saw the foreign shinobi, or even the civilians when she took the time to look at what they were doing, tense under her focused and voracious stare. Were they afraid she would steal the secrets hidden in their minds? She wasn’t a Yamanaka, for fuck’s sake.

Hitomi’s fighting skills were becoming really impressive for her age. She immersed herself in training without counting the hours or aches. Most of the time, it was Ensui who had to call it a day before she exhausted herself. She had already shown some worrying tendencies in that regard. This kind of instinct was great during a mission, but when she was just training? It was asking for trouble, and Ensui was worried.

The following days, she continued to work on her oversensitivity. She got better and better at it, but the ribbons always escaped their cage after a while. When she explained what she had created in her mind to her mentor, he assured her the space between the bars wasn’t the problem. The only way she would get them to stay there was by practicing again and again. With his constant support and because he never focused her on just one topic, she still felt good about herself.

And it paid off. Slowly, it paid off. In her master’s eyes, Hitomi saw a quiet kind of satisfaction, and it made her feel honoured, more than she could possibly say. When they weren’t training, they talked a lot about their personal lives. He told her about all the missions he had accomplished with her father, described the sensei they had had in common. As a sign of respect, he never toned down his tales: he knew that, like Shikamaru, she had been forced to grow up faster because of her intelligence. He was wrong about this, at least in part. She would have placed her life in his hands without hesitation, but she would never, ever tell anyone about reincarnating. Her safety depended on it.

Fortunately, because he was raising a genius himself and was used to their ways, Shikaku had never suspected a thing. When Kurenai had told him about the fact that Hitomi had tried to learn how to write all by herself, Shikaku had just taken her to have her IQ, and other parameters she hadn’t understood, tested. Those had declared her Shikamaru’s equal. No, Shikaku didn’t know a thing about her previous life. He was just grateful when she pushed her cousin to do more than the bare minimum.

How was he doing back in Konoha? She missed him a lot, but at least he was surrounded by peers and friends from his clan, the Yamanaka, and the Akimichi. She only had Ensui. He was an adult, and she didn’t know him since he was born like she did Shikamaru. She really liked her mentor, but having him around wasn’t the same as having a friend, an equal.

The next day, an hour and a half after the end of their afternoon break, they got their first sight of Sunagakure. They walked the whole evening before really standing in front of its huge sandstone doors, then another hour before they could enter the city. Hitomi had quietly decided to watch and learn. Fortunately, her oversensitivity was manageable enough now that she could spend days without meditating to cage her meridians back in. Curious and giddy, she walked behind Ensui and waited until being given permission to go explore.

Chapter 8: Gaara

The next morning, Hitomi was allowed to explore, but she had to face the facts: she had devised dozens of plans for this place, and yet she had no fucking idea on where to start. As she left the hotel where Ensui had booked a suite for the entire month, she realised she was standing out, with her traveling outfit. A carefully innocent expression on her face, she reached a little street far away from the main ones then looked for what she needed.

On a clothesline, she found an outfit roughly fitting her size and looking like the one kids wore in this village. She took it and left a bit of money in its place before going to change in an alley and putting her previous clothes in her bag. She could have bought clothes, yes, but it was funnier to do it the ninja way.

Now that she was ready, she could start working on her main scheme for Sunagakure, the one she had not even dared dream of. Finding the Sunajin kids was easy: just like Shikamaru had said about Konoha, they played not so far from their Academy. She looked around but didn’t see the dark red hair she was looking for. A few boys tried to have her play ball with them but she refused with a playful laugh: she had better things to do than run after a fucking ball , thank you very much.

She found him well away from the other kids, a torn ball at his feet. He looked so sad, so small , Hitomi’s heart broke a bit as she approached him. She had done the math while on the road: at five years old, Gaara’s loneliness upset him, but no one had tried to kill him yet – no one had yet pushed him to a killing spree that would leave him scarred for life.

“Hi!” she chirped. “Can I sit with you?”

He jumped so hard when he heard her voice, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop her laugh. Obviously, Ensui’s lessons worked if she could take anyone by surprise.

“Y-you want to sit with me?”

Hitomi’s heart broke again, but she kept her feelings at bay. Taking a few steps toward him, she offered him her sweetest smile, the one that made people think she was harmless. She needed more smiles, and quick. “The others are too noisy for me. You look quiet and not too, ah, agitated, so I thought you’d be a better choice.”

Just like that, it was done. The first phase of her plan had been so simple to check off that it shocked Hitomi quite a bit, but not when she started really thinking about what was going on. Gaara was just a little boy, starving for any kind of affection, and he hadn’t yet learned to be wary of people his age. For a moment, she felt guilty about using his weaknesses to her own advantage, but she brushed that feeling off: she knew it was for the greater good.

“So you control sand, uh?” she asked half an hour later. “Do you think you could use it to make sculptures?”

“Doesn’t it f-frighten you?”

She shrugged. “I live in a clan where people control shadows . Way scarier than sand, trust me! Can you make me a camel, please? I’ve never seen one and I’d really like to.”

The little boy nodded, his cheeks a pretty shade of pink, and Hitomi applauded when the sand did his bidding for her. It was so easy to play the affectionate little girl in this situation, although Ensui would have raised an eyebrow then died of laughter if he’d seen her act that way. Since it was what Gaara needed, though, she was happy to do it.

Soon, too soon, the sun started to set, throwing warm colours all over the sand. Sunagakure was a really beautiful village, even if the forced isolation had cost it a lot of luxuries and it showed. Compared to Konoha, this village wasn’t quite as developed, especially in the poorer areas. Hitomi reached to take Gaara’s hand, moving as quickly as she was used to, but his sand reacted without giving her time to back away, violently scratching her hand. She yelped and looked down to the angry red marks, where her skin was starting to bleed.

“O-oh no, I’m so sorry!” Gaara looked almost sick with worry and regret. His hands were shaking, and he seemed to be holding back tears. Hitomi’s heart hurt to see him like that. With her good hand, she touched his arm, careful this time not to startle him.

“It’s okay, Gaara-kun. Ensui-shishou will heal this in no time at all.”

“But I hurt you!”

“And?” she shrugged. “You didn’t do it on purpose. My shishou did worse to me during training, and yet I know he cares for me, a lot. I’m not angry with you, Gaara-kun.”

“Gaara… Only Gaara, please. A-are you sure you’re okay? Maybe we should go to the hospital.”

Frowning slightly, she looked at her hand more closely. Sand had gotten in the deepest parts of the wound. “No, I’m okay, don’t worry. If you want, you can come to see Ensui-shishou with me. He’ll heal me and you’ll be able to see with your own eyes that it’s not a serious wound. What do you say?”

It wasn’t what she had planned, but she could adjust around this new development. This time, she made sure not to take Gaara by surprise as her hand found his. She answered his obvious surprise – he probably wasn’t touched often by anyone – with a soft, encouraging smile, then took him to the hotel where her mentor was waiting, thanking her awesome memory that helped her find her way.

Ensui was not pumped about her being wounded and gave Gaara a dirty look. As soon as she saw the child making himself cower, on the brink of tears, Hitomi stepped in, giving Ensui one of her own stares. She looked almost defiant, her delicate features as calm as the night sky despite the difference of strength between them. “It’s not Gaara’s fault. No one taught him how to control his powers. He’s my friends and I won’t let you scare him, shishou.” Her tone was still respectful but firm. She wouldn’t back down from this.

Her heart ached when she heard the little choking sound coming from behind her. She knew no one ever fought for Gaara; he only had an uncle who hated him and could barely hide it, two frightened siblings, and a father who saw him like a tool and nothing more. It only made Hitomi more certain that she wanted to be this person for him. She stood up a little taller, her eyes looking right at Ensui’s with all the righteousness she was capable of, as she made the little voice in her head saying she was no better shut up.

“I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

As Gaara still hid behind his apprentice’s back, the Jōnin sighed and crouched to their level, trying to reduce the danger he represented. It was hard for him, who was oozing a cold and quiet threat at all times without even trying. He didn’t really get why Hitomi was stepping in like that. She’d always accepted him and who he was. He understood a bit better when he looked at the boy, at the way she protected him.

He was important.

Ensui didn’t know in which way yet and wasn’t sure she would ever explain it to him. He had known from the very first day that his little apprentice left nothing to chance, a common trait amongst geniuses. Hell, he had been like that too. The Nara clan was full of manipulative people, himself included. He gladly left Hitomi toy with him, since she did whatever he asked, always. She was a good enough apprentice that he let her get away with it.

“Listen, Gaara-kun, right? I know children can play a bit rough sometimes. I’m not mad and I’d say Hitomi here isn’t either. Could you please take the sand out of her wound so I can close it?” He could have used a jutsu to do it, of course, but he thought it was important for the kid to participate in the fixing of his mistakes. He didn’t have a lot of experience with children – Hitomi didn’t really count – but it seemed like a nice principle. Once the wound was clean, he wrapped her hand in his, the gesture gentle and careful, then used a surge of minty chakra to mend her skin. It was just a scratch, really, but he felt better now that it had disappeared.

“So, I understand you have spent part of the day together. Please tell me about it. And Hitomi? I’d very much like to know where you put the clothes you left the hotel with.”

The little girl shrugged, trying her best to look guilty – her best wasn’t really good, her eyes were sparkling. She knew what she was doing, did everything for a reason, but he doubted he’d get the complete version of this one right now. After all, they had company, a little boy who followed her around like she was her hero. Ensui trusted her, though, and he had learned to be patient: she would tell him what he wanted to know.

“I just wanted to walk around the town without being noticed, that’s all. I took an outfit from someone who wasn’t looking, but I left money, so it doesn’t count as stealing.” She blushed under his inquisitive stare and even lowered her eyes to the carpet, looking embarrassed. Gaara was shaking his head, clearly astonished. He clearly couldn’t believe the audacity she was showing. “Well, after that, I found Gaara, all alone, and I decided to talk to him because he looked sad. His powers are awesome, shishou! He can command sand . He made me animals that don’t exist in Konoha.”

“And your friend isn’t required to be somewhere at this time? Surely, his parents should be looking for him.”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Gaara spoke. “I can go home whenever I want, sir.” He didn’t say why, but Hitomi signalled to Ensui and nodded in the direction of the window. At his suddenly thin lips, she knew he was probing the area with his meridians and had felt the presence on the roof of the building in front of their hotel. His eyes shone with comprehension for a second and he smiled at Gaara.

“Well, you can stay, then Gaara-kun. I don’t know what Hitomi has in mind for you, but I’m sure it implies…”

“Can you play shōgi, Gaara?”

“Shōgi, yes. I can see you have the situation under control, kid. I need to run an errand in town, I’ll be back early enough to order food. Do you want to stay for dinner, Gaara-kun?”

The child looked up to Ensui, adoration in his eyes. “C-can I?”

“Of course you can!” Hitomi reassured him as Ensui left the suite. “Now, about shōgi…” She taught him the rules then they started playing without caring about the time they spent on it. After a while, Ensui came back with a bag full of local dishes, and Gaara explained everything they were eating. The food was a bit spicy for Hitomi, but still good. The two children continued playing then, sometimes advised by the adult, who tried to stay impartial. Of course, Hitomi led, as she was used to the game, but Gaara was a clever little boy and he held his own.

Alas, it was quickly time for him to go. It was late and Hitomi needed her sleep. She had had a full day of freedom, but her mentor didn’t intend on letting her wander around during the month they would spend in Suna.

“If you want,” she said to Gaara as he prepared to leave, “you can come tomorrow morning. Ensui-shishou has booked a training room in the hotel, I’ll be there to fight and practice with my shuriken. Then, in the afternoon, he’s gonna give me a botanic lesson and make me work on my strokes. I’d like it even more if you were there.”

Gaara’s smile was so bright it had to hurt. Carefully, so she didn’t spook his sand, she came to him and hugged him, bidding him good night. Then, she went back to the little living room their suite had, where her mentor was waiting for her. Judging by his amused and yet impatient expression, he had questions.

Chapter 9: Pain

“You have things to explain, young lady.”

Obedient as ever, Hitomi went to sit in the chair in front of Ensui, not at all fooled by his playful, light tone. It was the first time they had a true suite, with its own bathroom, a bedroom for each and a living room. Hitomi wasn’t used to that kind of luxury, but she knew that any Jōnin worth their title could pay for something like this. Ensui had chosen such a place because they were going to spend four long weeks in Sunagakure. They had never spent more than three days in the same place since the week lost at the Konohajin inn, at the very beginning of their journey.

“First of all… The Kazekage’s son? Of all the kids you could pick as a friend, you chose the Kazekage’s youngest?” She nodded, not even trying to deny she had targeted the war chief’s son on purpose. Since Ensui didn’t look like he wanted to tear her a new one, she explained.

“I heard other kids talking about him. Brats, really. I knew who he was when I met him, but I didn’t tell him that. I don’t want him to think I’m nice with him because he’s someone important here.”

“But you are, a little bit at least, right?”

She shrugged. “It’s not the only reason. We talked a lot, today. He’s really kind, as nice as any Akimichi at least, and yet everyone hates him and is afraid of him. It’s not his fault if Shukaku is acting up…”

“Wait, Shukaku? As in Shukaku, the One-Tailed Beast?”

“I know, right? I had a hard time believing it when he told me. He explained when I asked where his powers were coming from. The demon is really mean to him, you know. He doesn’t even let him sleep at all.”

Ensui went limp in his chair. “From all the kids in the fucking Elemental Nations, you’re the only one who would dare… Well, what is done is done.”

“Exactly what I thought, shishou.”

The man didn’t answer right away, standing up to serve them both glasses of water infused with his chakra as he wrapped his mind around the whole thing. It was so easy to get dehydrated here in the Desert, and the public sources of water weren’t the healthiest ones. Even if Water Release wasn’t his main affinity, he preferred giving her water he knew was pure.

“Well,” he sighed as he sat back, “there’s no harm in letting you spend time with the boy, I guess. But, please, don’t tell your mother or your uncle that I let you anywhere near a foreign jinchūriki. I’d like to keep my head on my shoulders, not buried in Kurenai’s garden.”

“So, I guess I can be friends with Uzumaki Naruto too when we get back?” she chirped. Living isolated inside the Nara land hadn’t stopped her from hearing about the Nine Tail and his young host. She had developed a talent for being exactly at the right place and time to collect intel.

“Hitomi, you’re not supposed to know that!”

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “Really, shishou. It’s the worst kept secret in the whole village.”

He at least had the gracefulness to appear embarrassed, rubbing his neck with an uneasy smile. She would be embarrassed too if her Jōnin colleagues had been unable to keep a secret. Ninjas were always the worst gossips.

Adult and child talked for a while until it was time to go to sleep. She woke up startled in the middle of the night; her meridians sensitivity was back with a vengeance. She felt like she was drowning in lava and had to spend hours in her Library fixing the problem. Ensui was right: the quiet times between her oversensitivity coming back were getting longer and longer. She could even start to summon this sense as will without getting overwhelmed. It wasn’t a complete success yet, but still a really good start.

In the following days, she got herself into a comfortable routine. In the morning, Gaara brought them some breakfast, something special they would only find in the village. A few mouthfuls provided enough energy for a whole morning of hard work. After that, they went to the training room in the basement of the hotel and Hitomi greeted the sun with Gaara, who had learned the moves by watching her.

Once she was properly warmed up, she worked on the skill Ensui had chosen for the day, often fighting. She wasn’t ready to spar with a real adult partner, so he made her do it against a shadow clone he transformed into a copy of his student with strawberry blonde hair. It was weird to fight against herself, but incredibly efficient: the clone, with Ensui’s taijutsu skills, was impossible to hit at her level, so she could never manage to dissipate it.

From time to time, Ensui asked Gaara to give him a hand in shuriken practice; the little boy was delighted to help by creating targets she had to hit with her weapons. It was hard sometimes, the targets hidden or too high for her to reach easily. Ensui told her he didn’t care how she hit them as long as she did, so she had to put her mind to it. After a really good training session, he even told her he wanted to teach her how to use senbon, the long needles that could be so precise and deadly. Before that, though, she had to master shuriken properly.

After a short break around noon, Hitomi had three hours of free time she always spent with Gaara. He showed her the sights of the city, the places he really loved and the ones that were important to him. She carefully stored each memory she built with him away in her Library. It was easy to entertain Gaara, who always looked at her with stars in his eyes. She was the stranger in this village, but it was ten times easier for her to communicate with adults and get what she wanted – be it ice creams or a pair of cinema tickets. Mentor and apprentice didn’t talk about it, but she was under the impression that Ensui always had his eyes on them.

At four in the afternoon, she came back to the suite, alone most of the time. Gaara was always sad when she had to go, but Ensui had explained to the boy that she didn’t have a powerful demon for protection and that she needed to learn new things, secret things, so she’d have alternatives if she needed such a weapon one day. Hitomi found him really good with special kids. Her, first, then Gaara. It couldn’t be just a coincidence. She wondered why he’d never helmed a Genin team. He would make a wonderful teacher.

With her mentor, Hitomi was learning the subtle and incredibly difficult art of sealing. As he had thought, she was instinctually predisposed to understanding how they worked. The only thing she lacked was experience, the thousand repetitions of a stroke before it was truly perfect, the time to master complicated moves necessary to draw some of them. Of course, Ensui didn’t allow her to use the special ink, only a simple one she could have bought at any store. She used stacks and stacks of paper scrolls. After a few days, her wrist was sore all throughout the day, and the ink stains didn’t wash out anymore. It was a small price to pay, though, for a bit of progress in the field she was so passionate about.

She’d been at Sunagakure for ten days when Gaara asked a question she hadn’t foreseen, his big turquoise eyes looking up to her as if she had an answer to all the mysteries of the universe. “Hitomi-nee, what does pain feel like?”

They had just left the cinema after seeing the most recent adventure movie. The girl wondered why her friend was asking such a question at this exact moment, then she realised that it had to have weighed on his mind for days, perhaps since the day they had met, and he had needed all this time to muster the courage to ask. He was the kind to swallow a feeling for days and days because he didn’t know how to translate it into proper words. She had had to work on him for days to get him to open up slowly, to admit the crushing loneliness that haunted him at all times.

“It’s… it’s a bit hard to describe with words. You see, when you’re in pain, it’s your body telling your brain that there’s danger and you have to back away as quickly as possible.” She let out a big sigh, weighing her words carefully, then continued. “There are two main types of pain: physical or emotional. People sometimes think they’re the same, but I strongly disagree. I’d prefer a physical pain lasting for years rather than an hour of emotional pain. Do you understand how they’re different?”

He nodded but she knew he was only doing so to please her, and was still struggling to wrap his mind around the concepts she was introducing him to. After all, he had never felt any physical pain and lived his life under constant emotional pain without knowing it. Her hand around his, she opened the door to the suite, which was starting to permeate with traces of its inhabitants’ personalities. Ensui didn’t bother packing all his things when he left, for instance: he knew Hitomi wouldn’t use them in a dangerous way.

“I know a way to make you feel physical pain despite your sand, Gaara, and in a safe way, but I have to warn you: it won’t be pleasant at all, if you decide to follow my idea.”

“But you always say that knowledge is a ninja’s most important weapon…”

“I do, and it is. I think you should do it because you have to be prepared to face this sensation if, one day, an opponent manages to hurt you. If you know what it feels, you won’t be caught off guard, you’ll know how to react.” She didn’t say it, but she also wanted him to learn pain so he never became the monster she knew from the first part of the canon. She knew he could have empathy, but empathy came with experience and understanding. He couldn’t see from other people’s perspectives if he never knew similar torments to the ones they faced every day.

“I-I’ll do it,” he mumbled. He looked so frightened it prompted Hitomi to hug him, as softly and tenderly as she could. She breathed in the scent of the sun and sand on his red hair, realising how small he looked compared to her, who wasn’t exactly a tall kid. She fully intended on taking advantage of this size difference when she still could, to deserve the suffix he’d used with her name for a few days now.

“You’re very brave, Gaara. I’ll be with you through this, I promise.” Under his anxious stare, she went to Ensui’s chemicals and looked for the one she needed. He had left them here for her to experiment, mostly on poisons. She didn’t have permission to test them herself, of course, and hadn’t asked what her mentor did to ensure her creations worked. She didn’t want to know.

“I guess you’ve heard of poisons, since it’s a Sunajin specialty. That’s what I’m going to use to make you learn pain but don’t worry, it will just last for a few minutes before I give you the antidote.” She picked a pill in Ensui’s poison kit then its counterpart. He had started desensitising her to common poisons, since she might use them in her fighting style. After pouring water in a glass, she dropped the pill in it and watched it dissolve and turn the liquid white. “You’re sure you want to do this, Gaara?”

She looked him in the eyes until he nodded. He still looked afraid, but there was a new-found determination in his eyes. This would make him an incredible shinobi one day. With an encouraging smile, she gave him the glass and watched him as he drank it in a few fast sips.

A few minutes later, she had to help him lay down on her bed. He had grown excruciatingly pale, his face covered by a thin layer of sweat, his limbs shaking as he hugged his no doubt painful belly. Terrified little moans escaped his lips, tears rolling on his cheeks.

“Take this, put it under your tongue and let it melt,” Hitomi whispered calmly. “It’s the antidote. Everything is gonna be okay, Gaara. You’ve very brave.”

He did as he was told and held Hitomi’s hand in his own, clammy and shaky. She cradled it until it was over and his body was done fighting off the poison – she felt it, in the way he slowly relaxed in her embrace.

“Y-you should hate me,” he mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard, his face drenched in tears hidden against her shoulder. She shifted away, just far enough to take his face between her hands and dried the wet paths on his cheeks.

“Why would I? I couldn’t hate you even if my life depended on it, Gaara. I’m so incredibly proud of you, and proud to be your friend. Friends hurt each other sometimes, physically or emotionally. That doesn’t mean they stop loving each other, and I still love you very much. Do you want to keep being my friend?”

With a hasty nod, he moved back in her arms, nuzzling against her like a tiny animal, and started sobbing uncontrollably. She let him cry, knowing full well how tears could set someone free. Her hands traced comforting circles on his back and did so until he fell asleep. An hour later, Ensui found them both sleeping, still hugging each other. He saw the glass, the traces of poison and disturbance of his bags, but didn’t say anything. Sometimes, he preferred not to know.

Chapter 10: The Project

The idea came to Hitomi, with the subtlety of a storm, during a restless night. She sat up on her bed, eyes wide open, her body tensed by a rush of adrenaline, then threw the covers away and stood up, the movement so quick she almost tripped on the cold floor. She had to fight with the desk lamp to get some light, cursed at her fingers, turned feverish by her haste.

She grabbed a notebook, still untouched, and started jotting down ideas as fast as she possibly could, almost afraid to forget something. She knew she couldn’t, but still. She almost felt like flying, pure euphoria pumping through her veins as she saw her pen scribble all the pieces she would need for this project. It was feasible – and she couldn’t understand how no Seal Master had ever thought of it.

“Hitomi?”

Startled out of her trance, she threw her pen in the direction of the voice by reflex. Ensui caught it between his index and middle finger and raised an eyebrow, looking at the tiny thing that could have killed him if he hadn’t been a shinobi. Okay, that was a good reflex to have for a young, future kunoichi, but still. “Wanna explain why you’re up in the middle of the night despite knowing I expect you ready for training at dawn?”

Only then did she look up from her notebook. Ensui couldn’t muffle his laugh when he saw the state she was in, ink staining her skin up to the tip of her nose. It made him look back and reflect on his own training, ages ago. He certainly hadn’t tried to appear clean or neat when he was in a studying frenzy. Once again, he mentally thanked Shikaku and the Hermit for giving him such an apprentice.

“I’m s-sorry, shishou. It’s just… I had this idea , something that could change the world or at least be an awesome tool for us, one day. I can’t go back to sleep now, I just can’t. I’m not even tired, I swear.”

With a sigh, Ensui came into her room, his bare feet producing an almost inaudible pitter-patter against the tatamis. Hitomi had made fun of his shuriken pyjamas, with this gleam in her eyes that meant she did it out of affection. Now, she didn’t even notice it anymore. It was just a cute outfit for a big, terrifying ninja. He tied his hair in a hasty ponytail – he probably wasn’t going to get anymore sleep – then looked at her work, his hand rubbing her frail shoulder when he noticed she was cold.

It took him a while to understand what she was up to. It was very technical, her notes using kanjis and ornaments he had never used and barely remembered seeing in the books he had given her to study. Frowning, he brushed a kanji in particular with his finger then tapped on it, as if to emphasise his deep thinking. “It is possible… But you’d have to work like hell to do it, kid.”

“Can I try?” she asked. “Please, shishou!”

He met her stare and almost stumbled from the strength of those large red eyes, full of supplication, avidity and impatience. He didn’t have a chance against such a stare and he knew it. His hand softly patted her shoulder. She had grown a lot these past few months. He noticed it sometimes, like someone would notice a train hitting them full force. “I think you can succeed. Fine, I’ll allow it, but on one condition: it can’t interfere with your other duties, to me or to your friend.”

She’d have less free time that way, but Ensui knew she would manage it just fine. She wouldn’t break under any pressure, he was sure of it. He didn’t want to test that hypothesis, of course, but she had taken the best traits from the Nara clan and from her terror of a mother. He could already see the girl walk in Kurenai’s steps in that regard and even surpass her. By the time she hit puberty, the whole village would probably have a reason to fear and love her.

It was settled then. That night, Hitomi didn’t sleep, so deeply immersed in her complex calculations and test strokes that she didn’t see the time pass. When Gaara walked in her room the following morning, she was still bent on her notebook, now almost full of notes of all kinds. She rubbed her eyes, staining them a bit more with black ink. She looked a bit like her friend, now, or like a chirpy little raccoon.

“Oh, thank you, Gaara!” She stood up and hugged him. She had discovered he loved hugs but didn’t dare ask for them, so she had taken it upon herself to hug him at least five times a day. He didn’t know how to react quite yet but it was coming to him slowly, and already he understood how to wrap his arms around her neck to hold her close. He almost purred with pleasure. So fucking cute.

“Did you decide to shower with an inkwell, Hitomi-nee?”

The girl looked up, startled, and stumbled upon her reflection in the mirror suspended behind her door. She grimaced when she realised the state she was in. She had ink all over her face and hands, even in her hair. That would be a pain to wash. “Uh… I’m gonna take a shower and change, okay? Go wait with Ensui-shishou, I won’t be too long.”

She was long, but trying to get those stains to disappear from her pale skin involved a liberal amount of scrapping and soap. When she was done and more or less clean, she put on her training outfit and went to join her mentor and friend to the training room, wondering at the way her clothes felt too tight and a size or two too little for her. In this life, would she continue growing and reach a decent size? Five feet seven inches sounded good, for a kunoichi.

In the training room, with Gaara following each of her movements, she greeted the sun with a contented sigh. Her back and shoulders had suffered that night and it relieved her to no end to move once more. Her spine and joints snapped right in place again as she stretched through the routine of the greeting, pushing further than she usually did. She had to find something, a way for her body to stay in top condition even when she worked on theoretical subjects. Her enemies wouldn’t politely wait until she was done creating a seal before beating the shit out of her. She couldn’t allow herself to take it easy, in any kind of way.

That day, she fought against a clone, with weapons this time. Ensui tried to discover which type of blade would suit her the most – he didn’t like her to wander around without steel in a foreign village but knew he couldn’t give her even the dullest kunai. Ensui didn’t like much about Sunagakure, really. The sand annoyed him to no end, all the water around tasted like rust, and the sun burned like hell. Despite the constant unhappy grumble at the back of his mind, he always took care of putting sunscreen on Hitomi’s paler, more fragile skin before doing it for himself. She needed it more, and he could take the pain if he delayed enough to get a sunburn.

Kunai, as main weapons, didn’t suit Hitomi. They were too short, and even with one in each hand, she felt almost unbalanced when she tried to create a safety circle around her body. It wasn’t any better when she attacked: she hated being forced to stick to an opponent like glue to have a chance to land a hit. With a katana, she had another problem: she lacked accuracy, and the length of the blade disturbed the still hesitant harmony of her hits. She almost screamed with frustration when, trying to dodge a punch from the clone, she impaled herself on the wooden katana’s guard.

The   tantō, though, felt perfect from the moment she tried her first swing with it. It was shorter, but not to the point of her not being able to defend herself, and lighter as well. It was a short and straight version of a katana, with a guard fit only for a one-handed hold. The   tantō adjusted itself to her, rather than the other way around. She tested it against Ensui’s shadow clone until her shoulders shook with exhaustion. She felt so incredibly good.

“Well, I think we found your weapon, Hitomi. Go play with Gaara and be back in time for your lesson.”

The girl nodded, a smile on her lips. She took care of putting back all the wooden weapons she'd used, respecting of her mentor’s efforts to get them, then she took off with her friend. She knew how difficult it had been for Ensui to gain the right to train her on foreign grounds. She still listened to gossip, wherever she was, and she understood how fragile the peace between Konoha and Sunagakure was. And the situation would get worse before it got better, if she didn’t find a way to change things. Maybe she already had, with Gaara, but she couldn’t be sure, not before events unfolded.

She went with Gaara to a little stand not so far away from the hotel. It sold food that was practical to eat as they walked, and Gaara really liked it. Her own palate had gotten used to the spices Sunajin seemed to throw in every dish in liberal amounts. She didn’t feel hot anymore when she ate, which was really for the best. Gaara, at least, couldn’t make fun of her red cheeks and sweaty forehead anymore.

The two kids had a pleasant afternoon, as always. Sometimes, other children dared to try messing up with Hitomi, but one look at Gaara always made them back away. The girl was glad her friend protected her that way: it would be so bad for the peace if she grabbed one brat and used him to hit the others. The fact they had started it wouldn’t matter then.

When Gaara walked her back to the hotel, she was more enthusiastic than usual and had a hard time hiding it. After all, he’d be the first to receive her secret project, if it worked like she had intended it to. She hugged him, not caring one bit when the sand rose around them. Gaara couldn’t always control his power and she had gotten used to the tiny scratches he left her with sometimes. They didn’t even hurt anymore.

She found Ensui in their living room. He was waiting for her, a chemistry book opened on his lap, his long legs crossed. His hair was still damp from his last shower, probably an effort to fight off the Desert’s heat – a pointless effort, if his discreet frown was any indication. After taking a biscuit from the tray he had left her, she sat on the ground, looking up to him, and the lesson started. It was madly interesting. Hitomi wasn’t satisfied with the colour of her smoke bombs, so he had decided to talk to her about pigments: he explained their origins, their potency, the particular effects she could expect if she mixed them with other chemicals.

After that, he gave her a history lesson, focusing on the last Shinobi World War, of which he had been a big part. It was during those dreadful fights that he had gained his nickname, Konoha’s Strangling Shadow. Now the Bingo Book advised shinobi not to fight him, except if they could count on the support of two Jōnin. Right at the beginning of the lesson, Hitomi understood her mentor hated war, found it dirty and pointless. Yet, he had followed orders, because he was loyal to Shikaku and to the Nara Clan. He finished by telling her about the incident that had made him lose all respect for Hiruzen Sarutobi, Hokage the Third.

“I had a son, a ten years old boy, when ROOT reappeared. He was incredibly talented, a genius even, just like you and Shikamaru. He could master his shadows with an accuracy that even I lack. Of course, we were living through dangerous times. Despite his young age, he was already a Genin and the rumour was he’d be promoted soon. Danzō took him from his team while I was away on a mission and put that dreadful seal on his tongue. He sent my boy to dangerous missions he couldn’t tell me anything about. He always came back wounded – one day, he didn’t come back at all. They told me his body couldn’t be found. I still don’t know why he died, what obscure mission was worth him dying. I couldn’t… I couldn’t even give him a service.”

Hitomi was lost for words. She didn’t know what to say, what could possibly make her shishou’s pain a little bit more bearable. Such words probably didn’t even exist. She had to settle with putting a hand on his forearm without looking at him, because she knew how embarrassed he would be if he knew she could see and hear his tears. He had never cried in front of her. A lot of shinobi found tears disgraceful, a sign of weakness. She disagreed. One had to be strong to cry, to face their own distress.

After that, the lesson stopped. Hitomi got up and brought a glass of lemonade to her mentor, then fetched her books so she could work there, sitting her back against one of his legs. After an hour or so, he got himself back together enough to be able to watch over her shoulder and tell her some piece of information that would be useful to her project. Thanks to him, she advanced a lot on her research that night, even if she wasn’t quite ready for an experiment yet.

“You’ll need a lot of paper for this, I guess.”

She hummed in answer, busy biting on her pen, then answered in more detail. “I think I want to use notebooks for them, so you can easily carry one around but it won’t get crumpled if you rough it up a little. Hardcover notebooks, I guess. Do you think I could find some at a bookshop?”

He considered it for a few seconds then answered, tapping his fingers against his knee as if to help gather his thoughts. “Possible, yeah. Your mother gave me some money for you, an allowance if you will. I was just waiting for you to need it… and I guess you already know how you’re gonna spend it.”

She laughed, a soft, light sound that warmed both their hearts, then looked up to him. “Can I have the money tomorrow, please? I’d like to go around the bookshops with Gaara.” Since it had worked so well last time, she used the Kitten Stare Technique once more. She didn’t use any chakra, so she wasn’t sure she could really call it a technique, but who would complain? Not Ensui, that was for sure: he was too busy drowning in her big red eyes and trying to resist her cute pout. It wasn’t her fault if adults, especially her mentor and her uncle, were so sensitive to it. When he sighed so loud it looked like he was trying to blow away the whole desert, she knew she had won and hugged him, laughing again.

Chapter 11: A Delicate Balance

“I still don’t understand why you need so many notebooks,” Gaara huffed. He wasn’t the only one having a hard time there: Hitomi too crumbled under the weight of dozens and dozens of notebooks. She had bought so many . After a while, her friend had had enough and had used his sand to carry most of the stack, but still, they had their hands full. The Sunajin walking around probably thought they were hallucinating and watched, open-mouthed, as their jinchūriki and this damn foreign girl went back to the hotel.

“I’m working on that fūinjutsu project…”

“I know that! But you have enough to open your own bookstore, where you’d only sell empty notebooks. Don’t you think you went a bit overboard there?”

Hitomi looked at all the notebooks, their colourful spines and white edges, then shrugged. “Nope!”

Gaara sighed, doing his best to follow her. Almost two years her junior, he couldn’t help but admire her – but she walked too fast for the Desert, she really did. “Anyway, you gonna tell me about this project?”

“Sorry, Gaara, it’s a secret. You won’t know a thing before it’s done and I can show you.”

“But you told Ensui-san!”

For just a moment, Hitomi almost gave in. She shouldn’t have taught the Stare to Gaara, he was too effective with those damned big turquoise eyes of his. She shook it up, freeing herself from the ‘technique’, and gave him her most sibylline smile. “I told him because he has at least twenty years on me when it comes to fūinjutsu, so he can help. And I want the project to be ready before I leave. I need all the help I can get.”

“But why ?” he whined.

This time, she burst out laughing. Seeing Gaara acting like a boy his age was pure bliss, a consecration even. She was so happy she almost wanted to drop her notebooks and hug him. She’d get a mean scratch from his sand if she ever did that, and didn’t want to damage her new acquisitions, but still, the desire was there.

“You’ll see!” She started running then, all her ninja agility stopping the notebooks from falling all over the road, thrilled to hear him run after her. She reached the door of the suite before him, but only because she had trained for almost a year now, at least when it came to running. Her body really started to get in a satisfying shape. With a playful laugh, she entered the living room, not giving the slightest fuck about the sand she was leaving everywhere. Anyway, Gaara would do worse than that. Far worse.

Ensui was reading, slouched on the couch like the Nara he was. He looked up from his page when he heard her turn up with such a racket, then raised both eyebrows as he saw the unholy number of notebooks she had bought. Then he saw Gaara’s stack and it took all he had not to start laughing maniacally. If there was just one empty notebook left in any Sunajin bookshop, he’d eat his whole pouch of kunai. Slowly, feigning a laziness that didn’t fit him but went along with the Nara brand, he got up and caught the books from the top of her pile, which were perilously sliding forward.

“If you don’t have enough to get your project ready with all that, I’ll be damned. What will you do if you have some left?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something,” she answered with a mysterious smile.

Ensui let out a resigned sigh then served them both a glass of lemonade. He let them calm down for half an hour, knowing full well how useless and mean it would be to make them work so quickly after living quite the adventure – for their age, anyway. They could have focused, but why take away the tiny joys he could offer them, and what were thirty little minutes to him? He had to admit he liked seeing his apprentice so happy, and he himself had come to like the little jinchūriki who followed her everywhere.

When they calmed down, he started that day’s lesson. For some subjects, he allowed Gaara’s presence. He knew the little boy didn’t have any form of teacher or even authority around, except for Hitomi and now him. What harm would it do to teach him about medicine, like today? It was even a good thing that he was there: that way, Hitomi could practice on someone around her size and weight. The children trusted each other so deeply they didn’t have any problem with letting the other manipulate their body.

After the lesson, Gaara went home, saying goodbye to Hitomi as he always did, with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She knew how hard she would miss him once Ensui decided it was time to go. She had come to know him, really know him, and to love life around him. He was a true friend, someone she could go to if she wanted to speak about anything, be it her day or the fears keeping her up at night. It would be hard, not seeing him every day anymore.

When he was gone, she went back to her fūinjutsu books. Some of them were very old, and she was aware Ensui hadn’t gotten them the legal way. Sometimes, he went away for a few hours during the night and, when he came back in the morning, there were new books on Hitomi’s desk, books that smelled like the Sunajin’s shinobi library and were now missing from it. Quite frankly, Hitomi didn’t give a shit about the fact that her master stole priceless books from a foreign nation. If the public had been able to read them and check them out, he wouldn’t have had to do that. But no , the fūinjutsu section had to be for Sunajin Jōnin only. Ridiculous.

During most of the evening, she worked on her first test of the seals. She went to fetch two empty notebooks from one of the piles in a corner of her room and, under Ensui’s ever-watchful stare, she drew her seals on the inner part of the covers, one book then the other. Her calligraphy had gotten a lot better these last few months, to the insane level of precision asked from fūinjutsu apprentices. She still had a lot to work on before she could aspire to the title of Seal Mistress, but at least she was good enough for this work.

After twenty minutes, her first test was ready. She mixed chakra and infused it in a page after writing a few kanji on it, her eyes full of a voracious impatience. She only owed her safety to Ensui’s prodigious reflexes: he grabbed her and propelled her away from the two notebooks just before they turned into a huge ball of fire. His hand slightly shook as he held her against his torso, his mouth spewing chakra-infused water to extinguish the flames. “That was close. What do you say, Seal Mistress?”

She swallowed the nervous laugh that wanted to escape her lips and put a few strands of hair behind her ear so they wouldn’t get it the way. “The combustion wasn’t planned and means that something is seriously wrong with this seal, that it lacks stability. However, the fact they both caught fire at the same time is a very good sign, right, shishou?”

Ensui couldn’t help but laugh, seeing her in this state of dishevelment and yet so serious, so enthusiastic. She had failed, and yet she didn’t seem affected at all, or only by an impatience to get back to work. He messed up her hair even more, his hand soft on the black curls. She had scared him. “I agree with you, kid. But seeing the strength of the reaction makes me believe it best to have you experiment only when I’m there and ready to grab you. I forbid any test without my supervision. We still have ten days left in Suna. You have enough time to finish it before we go. Alright?’

She nodded, meeting his eyes to show him she took it all seriously. His instructions made sense, after all. She certainly didn’t have the power to extinguish fire with a few hand seals. She didn’t have large enough chakra reserves yet for any ninjutsu training, and even less for techniques that looked around B rank like this one.

After working on it for one more hour, she was ready to try again. Another failure: this time, the two notebooks turned to dust. It was frustrating, yes, but it also gave her valuable information about what had gone wrong. With the help of her books, she could discover why her seals didn’t turn out the way she wanted them to. Still, Ensui didn’t seem to think the number of books she had bought was so insane anymore.

She only had ten days left and she intended on getting the most out of them. She wanted to succeed before leaving Sunagakure. Imagining Gaara’s reaction when she’d give it to him was motivation enough. She wanted to see it for real. She didn’t count the hours, nor the number of books she had to read through to get what she needed. She had chosen another of her notebooks to write down her ideas for improvements. She didn’t really need to, but it comforted her.

The hard part was hiding her work without making it unstable. Ensui had lectured her for two hours about the secret she needed to keep in mind at all times around seals. All masters had to be careful, so their seals didn’t fall into enemies’ hands. She had to find ways to make her seals more complex, impossible to decipher, by using more than one layer of ink on the paper so a curious reader couldn’t tell which one belonged to her seal, all without disturbing the fragile construction that her work was.

During a sparring session, Hitomi understood she had to learn how to compartmentalise her thoughts and activities. She was fighting against a shadow clone Ensui had created, her naked feet pattering against the tatamis each time she dodged, but part of her mind was focused on the last problem she had stumbled upon with her seal. She did her best to focus on her opponent, but she had to admit it: she was doing a pretty shitty job of it.

Suddenly, she was overwhelmed, the clone pressing harder and harder against the weakest points of her defence, so hard, in fact, that her feet got mixed up and she tripped. Usually, the clone backed away, allowing her to regain her balance, but not this time. On the contrary, it pushed its advantage against her and picked up the pace, the wooden blade hitting her hard on the shoulder. She yelped in pain, but that didn’t stop the clone either, nor did it let her time to protect herself or back away.

And then…

Then.

Then her whole world turned into a sandstorm, billions of abrasive grains of sand shifting and flying to form a protective dome around her. The clone exploded in smoke, its wooden   tantō falling on the ground. A hand on her shoulder to assess the damage, Hitomi tried to get up, out of breath and her hair stuck against her skin from sweat.

She couldn’t see it but, outside the sandstorm, Ensui and Gaara had gotten in a glaring match. Everything contrasted them, up to their very attitude: the Nara looked relaxed, as always, but the child was so tense his body probably protested, his two hands up in the air to command his sand to protect his precious friend.

“Call back the sand, kid. Lesson isn't over yet.”

“It is, and I won’t! You hurt her!”

“She didn’t focus ! What do you think, kid, that enemy ninjas will wait for her to give them her whole attention before doing something far worse to her? I won’t watch my apprentice get killed because she didn’t learn she can’t be distracted during a fight, I just won’t!”

A heavy silence settled on the training room. Mortified, Hitomi cowered against the sand wall, still slightly shaking. She knew Ensui was right, of course, but she had worked so hard from the very beginning so she wouldn’t disappoint him; having it happening after so many months made her feel so lost she didn’t know how to react. Her face burning with shame, she forbade her tears from running down her cheeks.

Gaara reluctantly obeyed Ensui’s instructions. The sand crumpled then came back to pool around his feet. When he didn’t use it, Gaara usually gave it the shape of an animal from any part of the Desert, since he didn’t have his gourd yet to transport it. Sometimes, his creations were so vivid they seemed to be the real thing. This time, though, he was too upset to create anything.

Ensui was the first to Hitomi’s side, kneeling to come eye to eye with her. His hand careful and soft, he pulled on her neckline to expose her shoulder and see the wound he had inflicted to her.

His features were frozen in an expressionless mask as his dark grey eyes took in the dark purple bruise on her pale skin. Without commenting on it, he stood up and helped her to her feet, careful to avoid her painful shoulder. “Come too, Gaara,” he commanded calmly.

Without even checking if the little boy was following – he was quite obedient after all, thanks to Hitomi’s influence – Ensui led his apprentice through the hotel, to their suite. In three days, they’d leave the desert and all its hidden treasures behind, as hard as it would be. Hitomi’s training was far from over. He still had a lot to teach her before she was ready to go back. Before he was ready to go back.

In the living room, he made her sit on the couch and asked her to take off her shirt, giving her a towel to cover what needed to be. He knew children her age weren’t really modest, but Hitomi was different. If he could avoid it, he'd rather not intrude or make her embarrassed in his presence.

His features now betraying an emotion Hitomi couldn’t quite define, he brushed his fingers against the bruise then engulfed it under his large, calloused palm. In Hitomi’s eyes, her master’s hands were beautiful, a work of art even, the scars and calluses a testimony of his life as a shinobi. She closed her eyes and sighed with relief when he got to work, minty green chakra pouring out of his fingers to slowly erase the bruise. When he lifted his hand, her skin had turned a fading shade of yellow and it didn’t hurt anymore when she moved, only when she touched it – which she did only once. Medical ninja arts were a true miracle.

“I’m really sorry, Hitomi. Gaara is right, I was too hard on you. You need to learn this lesson, but still, I was too hard. Sometimes, I forget how young you still are. I’m sorry.”

Speechless, her eyes wide open in shock, Hitomi stared at her mentor. Next to her, Gaara acted the same. Neither of them were used to adults admitting when they were in the wrong in front of them or, even worse, accepting that a child had shown better discernment than they had. The girl pulled herself together first and brushed his forearm with a comforting smile. “It’s okay, shishou. Look, it’s almost gone! I know you won’t make this mistake again, I trust you. And you’re right, I have to learn.”

These words didn’t do much to ease Ensui’s guilt. He had never thought he’d ever be that hard on his apprentice, who worked so hard to please him. Still, he was thankful for the mix of kindness and sweetness she offered him. He knew that, with a memory like hers, forgiving was not a small feat. He had lived long enough amongst his clanmates to understand.

After making sure his apprentice was alright, he allowed Gaara to take her for lunch. Later, still feeling a bit guilty, he cut the theoretical lesson short so she could have a bit more time with her secret project. The faster she was done, the faster he could fully get her back, anyway.

Chapter 12: The Departure

In the middle of the night, a victorious cry woke up a number of people in the hotel, some starting to grumble about the damned girl who had interrupted their night. Not one of them, though, dared to go knock on her door, knowing full well that she was sharing her suite with an adult, terrifying shinobi. They liked their head on their neck, thank you very much.

In the suite’s living room, Hitomi had jumped on her feet and was hopping up and down with excitement. Deep in her euphoria, she leaped in her mentor’s arms. He held her close, laughing with her. He had seen her throw herself in this project, put her whole soul into it, and was just delighted for her to see that she had succeeded in time.

The due date had grown so close he had allowed her to have a sleepless night: in a few hours, at dawn, they would say their goodbyes and hit the road again, leaving Sunagakure behind them. Then, Ensui would have quite some time left for Hitomi’s training before she had to be back in Konoha for the Academy. When his protegee would get in a Genin team and go out again without him, she’d know what to do.

Ensui had to admit it: for her age, Hitomi’s prowess was incredible, the kind even Hokage the Fourth hadn’t been capable of. To be fair, Namikaze Minato hadn’t been taught from as young as she was, but still. Ensui knew full well that he couldn’t have created that seal, even if he had had the idea in the first place. One day, one day so close he could feel it breathing down his neck, she’d surpass him in this field. She’d need someone who knew far more that he did about fūinjutsu. As if Seal Masters were easy to find. Only two of them were still alive in the whole world, and both had left Konoha a long time ago.

Gaara, still very punctual for a four years old child, was at their door ten minutes before dawn. Hitomi hadn’t been able to make him grow out of the fear she wouldn’t be his friend anymore or wouldn’t want to see him if he was even a minute late and, since being on time was a good habit anyway, she had stopped trying.

The suite had been emptied of everything that had made it lively during the past month, clothes, weapons and unholy piles of notebooks back in a storage seal she kept in her backpack, far lighter than it had been when she had left Konoha. There were only two left, waiting on the coffee table – but those were really, really special.

The two kids couldn’t really hide their sadness as they ate the breakfast Gaara had brought. Ensui was too respectful of his apprentice to act like he hadn’t noticed, but they couldn’t be late: the caravan they had come with wouldn’t wait for them as it left Sunagakure. He motioned for her to proceed as she had planned when the time of departure approached.

She stood up then, her eyes shining with restrained tears. She kept her emotions at bay, her back straight, like the future kunoichi he could see in her, in her silhouette, in her eyes, in the way she carried her wooden tantō, in her aerial gait. Her movements almost reverent, she took the two notebooks waiting on the coffee table and went back to Gaara, who had followed her with his eyes filled with such melancholy Ensui’s heart ached.

“I-I’d like to give you a gift before leaving. I know you’ll be alone again and I’ll miss you an awful lot, s-so I thought… Here, it’s for you.” She gave him one of the notebooks, the one with a turquoise spine. She had written his name on the cover in golden kanjis, her calligraphy as perfect and harmonious as ever.

The boy took her offering but stared at it with confusion, biting his lower lip. “You… You got me a notebook?”

She blushed and showed him the one she had kept for herself, red and black, with her name written in silver on the cover. “You see, the project I was working on… well, that’s it. Wait, I’m going to show you how it works.” She opened her notebook, grabbed a pencil and wrote a few words on the first page. When she was done, she infused chakra in the paper; immediately, Gaara’s notebook turned cold, making him suck in a breath. Hitomi had quickly discovered that, with a flammable medium, the opposite reaction was asking for a disaster. “Open it,” she smiled.

The boy obeyed, as he always did when her friend spoke. He raised an eyebrow when he saw that a message had appeared on the first page. He wanted to understand but didn’t dare to, fearing the bitter sting of disappointment if he had gotten it wrong.

“See,” Hitomi chirped, “we can stay in touch that w–“

She didn’t get to finish her sentence: he had pounced on her like a cute kitty cat and was hugging her as strong as he could without hurting her. And how much stronger he had become, even in a short month! Hitomi hadn’t been the only one to work during Ensui’s training sessions. With a delighted little laugh, she hugged him back with her free hand, petting his hair.

“I love you, Hitomi-nee!”

Those words really surprised her. Her eyes widening in surprise, she looked at Ensui in hope he’d have the answer to her silent question. When he gave her an encouraging smile and a nod, she relaxed. “I love you too, Gaara. Don’t you ever forget that.”

She spent the next fifteen minutes explaining everything he needed to know about her invention to Gaara. He could write as much as he wanted before infusing chakra in the paper: the complete message would appear on her notebook. She didn’t tell him, but she had discovered she could link as many notebooks as she wanted to hers, and she planned to use this as a way to create a little net of communication. The notebook grew cold when it got a new message, which stayed until an hour after the notebook had been opened without disappearing from the page. It was more than enough time to copy the message before answering if Gaara wanted to – Hitomi herself would never need that.

The two children agreed to write to each other at least once a day, and to warn the other when it wouldn’t be possible. They agreed on the fact they could send more messages in case of emergency, and that it might be impossible for the other to answer right away. After all, Hitomi would soon enter the Academy, and Gaara would follow his own teaching program, even if he wasn’t sure yet he wanted to go to Suna’s shinobi school. Teachers wouldn’t know how to manage him, and all his classmates would be afraid of him. When she would be gone, there wouldn’t be anyone left for him. She needed to change that.

The goodbyes were bitter, but sweetened by this new possibility, this line of communication. Gaara was still learning to write, but his kanas were good enough for them to communicate. He’d even have a good motivation to learn his kanjis now that he had someone to use them with. Hitomi had never wondered about ninja children and their precocity. It seemed normal to her, now that she was immersed in it. Most clan kids could read and write without problems around the age of six. Gaara was already really good for his age, and she – no, she was a special case.

Some members of the caravan remembered them and greeted them kindly, memories coming to mind of their willingness to help with chores even though they had paid for their spot in their group, of their tendency to stay apart during mealtime, of their training when they stopped because of the heat. This time, it was another team escorting them, three Chūnin. Hitomi was delighted to realise she had been able to keep her perceptions encaged for more than two weeks now. She didn’t need to back down, didn’t need to stay aside. She was free.

Once again, the days became monotonous. They walked slowly on a sea of sand, the sun glaring at them before allowing a cold, cold night to replace its suffocating heat. Fortunately, this time, Hitomi had more things to do to keep busy, and she didn’t have to cope with her feelings coming back like a rubber band breaking. She took a week just to make another notebook for Shikamaru. She missed her cousin dearly and working on this gift for him helped her tone down this yearning.

She had also started drawing her own storage seals. They were so expensive in Konoha, after all. Every ninja who could make their own did, even if it took them hours for the simplest seal. She also knew how to make basic explosive seals but preferred chemical explosions when she had the choice. She was working on the possibility of combining the two types of seals to make one that would create a chemical explosion after storing its components. Her smile as she thought about it made the Chūnin who was looking at her step back with a chill.

During that trip, she also learned survival tactics that would help her if she was ever alone in a desert. One night, Ensui led her far away from the camp, ordered her to wait for two hours then to get back to the fire through her own means. It was harder than she had thought, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that her mentor was following her, his chakra so muffled she couldn’t feel it at all, but she managed after some time spent looking at the night sky. He made her do it every night until he was sure she’d never be lost in such an environment.

The lessons continued, of course. One of the Chūnin was fourteen years old, and quite frail for his age: he soon agreed to be her sparring partner. To make their strength difference less painfully obvious, he was only allowed to use taijutsu, while Hitomi could use her wooden   tantō. Still, she couldn’t even touch him with it, no matter how hard she tried. At least she was good at dodging his attacks. She knew Ensui was incredibly proud of her, and it was all that mattered to her.

One night, bored and not at all drawn to her usual projects, she took an empty notebook from one of her storage seals, sat near the fire and went into her Library. She found what she wanted and started writing the first words of a book she had loved in the Previous World, when she was still a sickly child. It was hard, since she had to translate and adapt it to her new situation, but she really wanted to get all the stories she had loved into this world.

Every night, she waited impatiently for her communication notebook to get cold. She loved it when Gaara told her about his day. He finally had an instructor that didn’t fear him too much and taught him things. Alas, Hitomi feared it wouldn’t last, so she tried to push him to go see his siblings, with no success for the moment. He told her, his writing still a bit clumsy, about what he had learned during the day, and she answered with tales of the Desert and life in a caravan. In the end, what they had to say didn’t matter as much as the fact they were there for each other.

Finally, the Sunajin Desert ended and green replaced yellow in the horizon. The caravan wasn’t as heavily loaded as it had been the first time, which had made it that much quicker. Hitomi admitted this trip wasn’t as boring as the first, but she couldn’t wait for a change of scenery. When Ensui decided it was time to continue alone, she said her goodbyes to the men and women she had come to like, eager still to go back to being alone with her mentor. The fact that he was less grumpy now that they had good grass under their feet was just a bonus.

Chapter 13: The Shinobi Arts

Ensui didn’t want to go near any Hidden Village before coming back to Konoha and was very careful to go around the one in the Land of Rivers. When they left the Sunajin Desert, he guided Hitomi south. After a day and a half, they reached the ocean. He watched, moved by a feeling he didn’t quite understand yet, as his apprentice discovered this new scenery.

This ocean couldn’t be more different from the one she knew in the Previous World. This water was a perfect, pure shade of blue, reflecting a sky no cloud troubled. The waves didn’t carry any dirt or trash, gently rolling on the shingle beach. She loved it. She loved it more than words could convey.

With her master’s approval, she had a long walk along the shore, allowing water to tickle her naked feet. The water had been warmed by the sun all day and was quite mild against her skin – and so perfectly transparent. She’d tell Gaara about it and maybe take him here one day. She could already picture the sweet amazement on his face, his turquoise eyes going wide with happiness, and his smile, almost shy but so, so happy.

When she had played enough for her taste, she obediently came back to Ensui, who had gotten a camp ready far enough from the beach, so they didn’t have to sleep on pebbles. He had, though, gotten driftwood so he could show her blue and green flames, and explain how the chemistry behind it worked. That day, they hunted together in the undergrowth a mile from the beach: Hitomi caught a hare and Ensui two birds they ate in a comfortable silence, their legs warmed up by the fire.

Hitomi had to admit that, despite her affection for Gaara, she had missed being alone with Ensui. The boy hadn’t been there all the time but, in the hotel, the relationship between them hadn’t been the same. They had had to adapt, to include her third person in their dynamic, because Hitomi wouldn’t have had it otherwise and Ensui would have been disappointed in her if she had.

Hitomi’s sixth birthday happened a few days later, as they followed the littoral to reach the Land of Fire’s territory. The weather was starting to get cold but, in the south, winters were brief and even milder than in Konoha. The little girl didn’t expect any gift. She knew it wasn’t a priority, for herself or her mentor, and birthdays weren’t really celebrated in her Hidden Village.

However, in the morning, he had something ready for her. As she finished greeting the sun, he bowed slightly and gave her a long package wrapped in a length of dark red silk. Adults seemed to agree on the fact that this was her colour, and she didn’t dare disagree. It could have been far worse, after all. She actually liked dark red, so it was okay. She took the package politely, with her two hands, like her mother had taught her to.

She lost her breath after removing the silk. It was a tantō, a real one, the kind you only found exposed in manors belonging to feudal lords. Unable to hide her amazement, she brushed her fingers against the lacquered black wood, following the red deer silhouettes painted from the extremity of the sheath up to the guard. Slowly, she unsheathed it, the blade whispering against the wood, her movement practiced a thousand times with her practice tantō. This one was so much lighter, and so clean, so perfect. She could see her reflection in the steel. On the brink of tears, Hitomi swallowed the big ball of emotion that had formed in her throat.

“You like it.” It wasn’t a question. Ensui knew, as surely as he knew how to breathe.

“It’s… It’s…” Overwhelmed by emotion, she couldn’t find the words to tell him how grateful she was for this gift. Her mouth hanging open, the little girl managed to tear her gaze away from her new blade to look up at her mentor. There was no need to deny the tears in her eyes. She couldn’t fool him, ever. “Thank you, shishou. I’ll treat it well.”

“I’m glad you like it, kiddo. And I’m sure you will. Tell me, if you decide to name it.”

“I have, shishou. Its name is Peregrine.” She looked at him, then, watched as he understood what the name meant, who it was intended for.

Ensui smiled as she sheathed it and helped her hang it to her belt. In seven years, his apprentice would graduate from the Academy. Then, she’d have to think about a battle outfit, but he had a few ideas for her, if she needed some. He’d have years to tell her about them. He could already dream about them, though, about the kunoichi she’d become. The others wouldn’t be ready for her, even the toughest ninjas he knew. They’d melt and kneel before her, and he couldn’t wait to see it.

The next days were a bit more relaxed. Finally, they got into the Land of Fire, but Ensui didn’t want to go north to the Hidden Village just yet. He still had things to teach to his apprentice, things he wanted her to learn in the security of a seemingly endless forest, rather than in a village where anyone could be a ROOT operative in disguise. He preferred her being here, with him, safe.

He ensured she could find her way from anywhere in the Fire Forest, taught her to hunt from the trees, how to run for hours without feeling tired, even if she hadn’t started on chakra training yet. She hadn’t been ready, not quite yet, but he could feel it when the day came, a deep warmth when he opened himself to her chakra.

One day, a downpour hit the Land of Fire so hard they couldn’t walk far without being drenched and cold to the bone. Ensui often pushed his apprentice to her limits, but it would have been stupid to make her this uncomfortable when he already knew she could manage under rain. However, he refused to waste this precious time so, when he found a cave big enough, he sat with her in front of the fire he had made her light up. She was ready for a half-forgotten training, one only some almost-extinguished clans could make their children follow. Since they were almost gone, no one would really complain about him teaching her their secrets. Anyway, she was the heir of one of those clans. He owed it to her.

“Chakra,” he explained, “is a force present in all living things, but also in the air you breathe. You can’t feel that one yet, but maybe it will come one day. You produce chakra, but that doesn’t make you any different from a civilian. What makes the difference is the capacity to use this energy, to turn it into a weapon. Anyone can work at this and become a shinobi, but clan-born children will always be better at it than civilian-born will. Do you know why?”

She knew it was connected to what Kurenai had taught her. “Kinda. We learn earlier, right?”

“It’s one of the reasons, yes. Clan-born children start training far before the Academy. Your mother followed her father’s and Shikaku’s advice, she started teaching you things other kids will discover at the Academy. It gives you an advantage compared to civilian-born children. At best, they will know how to write and read, but look at what you know.”

It was unfair, of course, but Hitomi was happy to be on the privileged side. Her plan would require everything she had, every advantage she could get. Too bad if it was unfair. Fairness couldn’t win wars. One day, she would.

“The main difference, though, is innate. Clan-born kids have bigger chakra reserves. Some clans, like the Uzumaki and the Yūhi, were even renowned for their prodigious reserves once, before wars had them almost extinct. They were called the Tailless Demons. Once they reached their full potential, they could compare to jinchūriki. This power is in your blood, Hitomi.”

Hitomi couldn’t believe her ears, but she knew Ensui wouldn’t lie to her. She had never heard this about her clan. She wondered why her mother and grandfather had never told her. Were they afraid she’d burn too high, too quick?

“Those two clans are almost extinct, as I said. There’s three members left of the Yūhi clan, and the Uzumaki clan… You know the jinchūriki, Naruto, at least his reputation, right? I can’t tell you about the reasons that led to their disappearance, only that their chakra reserves made them targets.”

The girl nodded, still staring at her mentor. She hung on Ensui’s every word, storing everything he said in her Library. She knew more than he thought about how the Uzumaki Clan had disappeared, but how could she explain where her knowledge came from, so she kept quiet.

“Today, I’m gonna teach you the basis of chakra control. Civilians won’t learn anything about this before their third year in the Academy, and that’s if they’re lucky. It is, though, of the utmost importance that you , my dear apprentice, start today.” He held a leaf between his fingers, one he had carefully dried out with chakra. He gave it to Hitomi, who looked at it, clearly a bit lost. “You’re gonna try to use your chakra to stick this leaf to your forehead without tearing through it. Continue until you master it, or until you can’t mix chakra anymore.”

Hitomi got settled in seiza position and started. She had already used chakra for little things before, and instinctively in her Library, but it usually only left her body through her hand. It was another matter entirely to get it to her forehead, to measure the exact quantity she needed – too much and she ripped the leaf up, too little and it fell on her knees – then to keep the chakra flow steady for more than a few seconds. After two hours and a stack of leaves at her feet, she managed to stick the damned thing to her forehead. She was already feeling the first signs of chakra exhaustion, even if it was nothing compared to what she had gone through when she had first tried to cage her meridians’ perceptions.

It was so difficult to describe how she felt, having chakra in her body. For Hitomi, it was like having hot chocolate coursing through her body, coiling around her organs, enhancing her senses. She often wondered if other shinobi were conscious of this, of the presence of their own chakra system inside their bodies, of each meridian under their skin. She could never totally forget about it.

Sending chakra somewhere in her body was complicated: the energy didn’t comply easily and kept wanting to go back to its normal cycle through her limbs. She probably wasted a lot of it during this exercise, or even when she mixed it. However, Ensui seemed satisfied when another leaf stuck to her forehead for more than a minute. It fell and Hitomi cursed through clenched teeth.

“Do it again. You’re on the right track.”

“Yes, shishou.” Motivated by the compliment, she picked up the leaf and put it back on her forehead, calling her chakra to keep it in place. Her hands had started shaking, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t stop either when her breathing became laborious, when she started feeling dizzy. Her eyes stayed on Ensui’s silhouette against the light. She was waiting for his permission, and too bad if she burned away everything she had before he gave it. She refused to back down.

He waited until the very last moment, catching her when she fell, so out of breath she choked on air. Her heart thundered under her ribs, so strong and fast she feared it was going to break out of her chest. She knew she had a hard night ahead of herself and looked up to her master, confusion clearly written in her eyes.

“The only way to enlarge your chakra reserves to their full potential is to empty them again and again,” he explained in a compassionate and soft voice. “It has to be done when you’re just a child or it’s too late. Like your speed and flexibility, the size of your reserves only expands with hard and painful work. You’ll be in pain, and maybe you’ll hate me, but if you keep it up, one day you’ll be called a Tailless Beast, too. That’s what you want, right?”

Ensui wasn’t stupid. He was aware of her thirst for power. He didn’t see it as a bad thing, quite the contrary. It meant she wanted to learn, wanted to get better, wanted strength. Those were good desires for a shinobi, a motivation that often made the difference between getting a sensei after graduating or being faced with other possibilities. He couldn’t imagine her doing her last year at the Academy again, joining the General Genin Forces or even transferring to another career like medicine or research. She was a shinobi through and through, despite her young age.

He knew , and he never let go of her. Everyday, Hitomi emptied her chakra reserves one way or another, often through control exercises. When she was able to stick a leaf on her forehead for more than an hour, he added one on her right shoulder, then on her left, and cetera. He got the number up to ten, each on a different part of her body. Once she had understood what she needed to do, once she had gotten the exercise drilled up to her core, it wasn’t hard at all to add more leaves. Changing the material was easy too, from the paper of her scrolls to the thick wool of her blanket. She just needed to find the right dosage. The more fragile the material, the more control she needed to apply, since the quantity of chakra was less and less important. When Hitomi was able to get a piece of silk paper stuck on her forehead without tearing through it, he changed exercise.

She was sick every night with chakra exhaustion and, sometimes, she had to admit it, she hated what her mentor made her go through. Oh, she didn’t hate him , could never hate him, because he took such good care of her, sacrificed countless hours of sleep to comfort her and hold her hair back when she threw up, her body burning in agony. She had to admit, too, that she felt her reserves grow day after day, and replenish faster each night. It got harder to empty them.

She didn’t cope just because Ensui was there, though. Somewhere deep in the cold fog which had replaced her chakra inside, a flame burned high and clear, pushing her further and further, refusing her to stop or to yield. Sometimes, even her mentor was worried about the way she spent her chakra as soon as it reappeared in her reserves, but he couldn’t deny that the pain she inflicted upon herself now would help her in the future. Her flame of determination, he would have called it the Will of Fire. She called it her plan, her desire to change things for the better, the list of people she needed to save and the other list, the one of all the people she’d have to kill one day.

When Ensui was perfectly content with her mastery of the leaf exercise, he taught her how to use chakra as a boost when throwing weapons. It hurt like hell in the beginning, when the meridians on her hands and feet fought to adapt to this big impulsion burning through it. She didn’t back down, though, even when her joints started to ache after practice then never stopped.

When would adversity ever stop and wait for her to catch up, after all? She’d pursue this training until there was no more progress to be made and only time could enlarge her reserves anymore. Puberty was a miracle, really. It was for a good reason that, outside wartime, Academy students couldn’t graduate under the age of eleven, and were still strongly advised to wait until they were twelve. Youngsters burned too fast, too quick, when they were sent too early in the field. Most of them never came home.

Four months after her birthday, Ensui deemed her ready to take a new step on the road she had chosen for herself. She took her first full rest day in all that time, sleeping for twelve hours straight and waking up to feel her reserves almost full. She was ready for more, now.

Chapter 14: An Indolent Fire

The next morning, Hitomi was in better shape than she had been in months. She had pushed so hard and so far that her reserves only needed a day to replenish, against a week when they had started training. And yet, they were considerably larger, at least ten times bigger than they’d been before. Most of her progress had been made now, and chakra control exercises weren’t enough anymore to put her in a state of chakra exhaustion, even if she spent the whole day throwing weapons and sticking leaves to her limbs.

She couldn’t wait for time to bring her its own expansion: around her fifteenth birthday, her reserves would be at least ten times larger than they were now. She understood now why her clanmates had been called Tailless Beasts once. If her grandfather and mother could muster such power, they probably never had to suffer from chakra exhaustion. It explained, too, how Kurenai had become a Genjutsu Mistress, able to fool even some Uchiha. Genjutsu, the art of illusions, required a constant flux of chakra from the caster to their victim to disturb the internal circuit of their own chakra through their meridians. Most people couldn’t maintain an illusion in place for more than two minutes, but the rumour said Kurenai could keep one going for days before she got tired. As for Shinku Yūhi, her grandfather, she didn’t know much about him, but she knew he had been a terror on the battleground.

After she was done greeting the sun, Hitomi followed Ensui to a clearing. For the first time in ages, it snowed in the Land of Fire, and the little girl wasn’t sure she liked the drop in temperatures that came with the white snowflakes upon the lands. To keep warm, she had to get her chakra coursing faster through body and wasn’t adept enough yet to do it by reflex.

“Today, you’re gonna tackle an exercise most ninjas don’t practice before being out of the Academy. You’re gonna climb trees without your hands. With each try, mark the trunk with a kunai, as high as you can. Stop only when you don’t have chakra left, or when you master the exercise. Got it?”

Hitomi nodded. She didn’t even need him to demonstrate, since this exercise was so similar to the leaf one. It would probably require more chakra, and better control on her part. She was glad for it. She needed to continue emptying her reserves for at least a few more weeks to reach her full potential. Then she would just have to wait for the years to pass. She probably already had the best reserves in her generation, Naruto excepted. None of the other children had shown really good chakra reserves in the canon.

It had become rare, Ensui had explained one night she was particularly sick, for parents to make their children go through such training. The Hidden Villages weren’t at war anymore, hadn’t been for more than ten years now, and no parent wanted their child to suffer night after night for months, for results that weren’t so great most of the time. This training was truly efficient on kids from the Yūhi and Uzumaki clans, with their predilection for larger reserves. For the other clans, there were other valuable skills to work on: Hyūga children learned the Gentle Fist, Uchiha children trained in Fire Release, Sarutobi children worked on Wind Release techniques… As for the Yūhi, they were gone beyond recovery in a few generations only, burned away by the wars they had helped win. They had been so willing, all of them, to die for their country.

For a moment, Hitomi stayed motionless in the centre of the clearing, convincing her chakra to go in her legs. When she was ready, she ran to the tree she had chosen, an oak rising high over its peers. She only needed a few steps to get to its roots, then an adrenaline rush in her veins to overcome the fear of falling that wanted her to stop and start climbing. A few more steps to adjust the quantity of chakra needed in her feet to stick to the trunk without damaging its bark and she climbed up without difficulty, only stopping when she reached the tree’s summit. She planted her kunai as high as she could then settled on a branch wide enough to support her weight. “Is it supposed to be this easy? Can we start water-walking now?” she chirped.

Her cheekiness made Ensui burst out laughing. He knew this would happen – all the chakra control exercises were similar and, once a student mastered the first, it was quite easy to master the others as well – but he still felt the tiniest bit of surprise. He carefully reached out to the point where he kept his meridians’ perceptions, so he didn’t suffer from them. He then probed in her direction and was baffled to feel how strong her reserves had become. The quiet whisper had become a roar against his skin. He hadn’t expected such progress, not even with her innate advantage. He couldn’t have been prouder.

Water-walking came next, as she had guessed, and it was harder than tree-climbing. She constantly had to adjust the quantity of chakra she used on the water to answer its constant movements, and to strengthen the surface so it could support her weight. She needed a few weeks to master it and, before that, her reserves reached their maximum capacity.

It was time, then, with her reserves expanded and her control improved, for her to learn the first Nara Clan technique. Most clan kids learned that kind of thing at that age and worked on it through the Academy, after classes. The Nara, though, were even more diligent: even the civilians born in the clan had to learn the theory behind the techniques. That way, if a new war was to erupt and kill all the clan’s ninjas, the knowledge wouldn’t be lost. The children would still have someone to teach them. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but already better than most clans had. Who remembered the Uzumaki and their jutsus today?

“Shadows are our best allies,” Ensui started one night, as the fire was declining in the cave they had found for the night. It was raining hard outside but spring was there, giving back their tender green shades to the woods. Ensui didn’t say it, but Hitomi knew they were going to go back in a few months. Before the start of the Academy’s new year, she’d see her family again. This made her happier than she could express, but she also felt something close to melancholy. She wanted to go back, of course, but Ensui had become such a precious person to her. She didn’t want to lose him.

“I know you already know your mind well,” the mentor continued in a soft voice, “and this exercise will push you even further, deeper than the barriers you surrounded your Library with. Go down and down inside yourself, until you get there.” He brushed his fingers against the skin above her navel, but she knew he was talking about her Gate of Wonder, where part of her reserves laid. She shivered, feeling her chakra react to the touch, then closed her eyes and obeyed his command.

She found herself in the centre of her Library and relaxed as she watched over her lair. The meridian cage refracted the light from her lightwell, splashing colour everywhere. It was so pretty… And yet she turned her back on it and walked through rows and rows of shelves until she reached the end of the ground she had imagined to support the whole structure. She had never been there after creating her Library, had never needed a book from this section. It was like discovering it anew.

The only thing in front of her now was nothingness, an infinity of velvety, peaceful darkness. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the ground, letting herself fall into the void. The sensation was incredible, beyond words. She could have stopped her fall at any moment, but she knew she was far, far away from the Gate Ensui had told her to reach. She could see them now, eight stars brilliant enough to light up a whole sky, hearts of blueish pure light lost in a sea of darkness.

Finally, she was able to touch it. She didn’t have a body in her own mind, and yet she was able to sit, to touch, to breathe. She didn’t know how to describe it. Perhaps it was just her thought process trying to wrap itself around a wordless experience. An energy wave hit her and, in the physical world, she started oozing chakra from all the pores of her skin. Without her huge reserves, the effort would have killed her in a mere couple of minutes.

“This is where you’ll find the subconscious link between your shadow and your corporeal self. Find it now.” A voice. Low, husky, like a wave and a hug. A voice she loved so deeply.

Obeying to Ensui had become natural after all this time. Sometimes, his instructions didn’t really make sense at first glance; she had to reach the goal he had set for her to understand what he had truly wanted and struggled to put into words. She had to touch the precise point in her Gate where the line between her body and shadow disappeared to understand, deeply understand, the link he was speaking about.

In the physical world, her shadow reacted violently to her contact, writhing far beyond its natural reach, the one the fire gave it. She stopped breathing for a moment, then the deep and quiet rhythm resumed. She was peaceful, so much so that someone could have thought her asleep if she had been lying down.

“Your shadow is an indolent fire, but a fire nonetheless. It will hurt you if you don’t treat it with the proper respect and carefulness it deserves. From tonight on, you’ll meditate for an hour next to your Gate of Wonder, until you can stretch your shadow at will.”

That first night, and the twelve nights after that, she failed despite her best efforts. The fourteenth night, however, under Ensui’s intense stare, she managed to stretch her shadow until it almost brushed against his. The edges were clearly defined, and the dark shape didn’t seem to want to snap back to her, like an overused rubbed band. She hated the feeling and was happy not to have it this time.

“Congratulations,” Ensui whispered, pride gleaming in his dark grey eyes. “You’re ready for the next step. Tomorrow.”

The following day, he didn’t wait for nightfall to act. Instead of the sparring exercises he gave Hitomi ever since she didn’t need to empty her chakra reserves anymore, he made her stand in front of him, back straight and shoulders relaxed, in a pool of sunshine. Spring had started to settle in the Land of Fire and, once or twice, they had stayed in an inn for the night. She knew what that meant but refused to acknowledge it.

“You’re able to command your shadow when you meditate. It was the hardest part of this training and you managed to do it in a decently short span of time. I didn’t expect anything less from Shikano’s daughter but still, I’m very proud of you.” He hadn’t mentioned Hitomi’s father for months now, not since he had told everything he knew about him to his apprentice. Hearing his name surprised the girl and made her stand a little prouder, a quiet satisfaction on her features.

“You now need to find a shortcut for that ability. You have to be able to connect to your shadow instinctively, to make it answer your commands immediately. I’ll let you find the most appropriate way; it’s your mind, after all.”

With a smile on her lips, Hitomi sank in her Library, a content sigh escaping her chest. She felt safe here. The ribbons made of light floated in their crystal cage, always ready to serve. A deep feeling of peace settled inside her. Her body slowly raised its hands, the fingers from the left curling vertically around the index and middle finger of the right. The Rat hand seal.

She needed something she could touch as soon as she came into her Library. The only object she could reach was the pillar supporting her crystal cage. On the side facing her, she carved the emblematic animals of both the Nara and Yūhi, a deer and a cat supporting each other with a stare. Ensui had told her about the cat, but there wasn’t much more he knew about. The only way to learn more about her own roots would be to go meet her grandfather again. She hadn’t seen him since the morning after the Kyūbi’s assault and she wasn’t even supposed to remember.

“You’re on the right path,” Ensui hoarsely whispered in the physical world. It still felt strange, when she was in her Library. She wasn’t isolated from the outside, could hear, smell, feel, but she could only see the infinity of books surrounding her. She crouched in front of the two emblems and chose the place carefully, halfway between their eyes. It was there. The place she could touch with her mind in an instant, without even having to consciously go to her Library, the place that would summon her shadow.

In the world she had built inside her mind, everything was possible. She could shape her own chakra, make it visible and solid, without losing any of it. A pale blue ribbon made of light appeared between her fingers. When she turned her head, she saw it stretch to the very edge of the floor then fall in the darkness. She knew it was connected to her Gate of Wonder without having to check. It was the most intimate place, the one where she became the shadow and the shadow became her, but she didn’t have time to lose herself there, not now.

She stood up and the ethereal body she used in her Library grabbed the ribbon. Instantaneously, her shadow stretched and caught the one expanding from the Cinder Clone he had left for her to train. Cinder Clones were the Fire Release solid clone technique, and way less powerful than any shadow clone, which allowed her to use her shadow on it without losing all her chakra. She couldn’t catch him , that was for sure. He was so much more powerful, so much stronger, the effort would kill her in a matter of seconds. She fully came back to her senses and tested this new ability, making sure she could use it quickly enough for it to be useful in a fight.

“Looks like you’re ready.”

The young girl tensed and met her mentor’s eyes, her hands slowly breaking the hand seal. Her shadow, obedient, came back to her. “I… Ready, shishou?”

“Yeah,” Ensui sighed. “You didn’t think I’d keep you away from the village forever, right?”

Stunned, she shook her head, the movement stiff and a bit shaky. As if he felt her sudden distress, Ensui knelt in front of her and made her raise her chin with the tip of his fingers, the touch delicate and tender. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? I left active-duty years ago. The Third knows he can’t trust me on the field.”

It was the first time Ensui really admitted to Hitomi how serious his feud with Hiruzen was. His situation in the village was complicated, but she had had time to guess that. It didn’t stop her from taking her mentor’s hand, so much longer and larger, between her own, gripping it with all her strength. Right now, she looked like the child she should have been, a troubling sight for her master, used to a mature mind inhabiting her frail body.

“I’m gonna work for your uncle, for Shikaku, help him manage the clan until Shikamaru is old enough to do it so he can focus on his Jōnin Commander duties. I’ll have all the time in the world to train you, Hitomi, I promise.”

It was the first time he used that word to talk about her, but it didn’t really comfort Hitomi. She realised, sometimes, like she was now, the extent of the dangers she’d face in the future. She needed Ensui right by her side to rise to those challenges. Her shoulders shook, her knees went weak, and then…

And then she felt another chakra touch her skin, a strength she’d identify among a thousand others. Ensui. These past few months, he had given her chakra transfusions to try to lessen the effects of exhaustion. He couldn’t do much, not when she needed to empty her reserves to stress them into expanding, but it had helped. The touch was soft, familiar and comforted her body and her mind alike.

“I’ll always be there to watch you grow, Hitomi. I’ll always be there.”

Whispering those words like a prayer, a promise and a wish, he pulled her in a warm embrace and she closed her eyes, accepting his words and his arms for what they were. The assurance she would never have to face any danger alone.

Chapter 15: A Place Like Home

Hitomi now had enough control of her chakra and large enough reserves to be able to travel at a decent speed. She needed a few days to master running on trees, the Konohajin way of travelling, but soon she was following Ensui’s steps. The man took advantage of their last days together to make sure she was as sharp as she could. He didn’t admit it, but he sometimes deviated from the fastest route to sleep every night in an inn and therefore stretch their time together.

Hitomi was aware of that but didn’t hold him accountable for it. The same feeling, the same need was burning inside her. It was easier to cope that way. On the road, he made sure she knew everything he wanted her to, then told her about what he’d teach her in the village, when she’d come home from the Academy. They would have access to different resources in Konoha, like fully equipped labs. Hitomi couldn’t wait to learn new ways to make things go boom.

Finally, they reached their destination, the huge Konoha gates standing open in front of them. A hand on his apprentice’s shoulder, Ensui made her stop before she crossed them. “How are your meridians?” he asked softly.

He knew she had no problem with them, hadn’t had one in weeks, months even. It was just his last card to delay their return to the village. Obedient as ever, the girl sank in her Library and checked her crystal cage. “They’re good, shishou,” she assured him when she came back.

He nodded, satisfied, then brushed his hand against her back to make her take her first step in the village. As she looked around, curious, he signed the registry the on-duty Chūnin gave him. When she had left, she was in such pain she couldn’t really pay attention to the village. This time, she could and did so, drinking in the sights, smells and noise that would one day be as familiar as the palm of her hand.

A few minutes later, she walked toward the Nara land next to her mentor. Only the manner in which she held herself, one step behind and deferring to him, betrayed their relationship with each other. They had adjusted so subtly to their new environment and what was expected of them there that only other high-ranking shinobi could notice it, or the ones who had had a master for themselves. Only they could really understand what was conveyed in their quick glances to each other or the song whispered in the harmony of their gait. A few Jōnin greeted Ensui with a nod, but none deemed him popular enough to stop and talk to him. Hitomi clenched her teeth when she saw that. Her mentor was only a hero amongst his own clan. It made her want to punch someone.

Finally, they got in front of her house, away from the main streets of the clan land. A little brush against her crystal cage made Hitomi aware of her mother’s presence inside. Silently, applying everything Ensui had ever taught her in that regard, she opened the door and took off her shoes. Her slippers were still there in the entrance, but they looked so tiny now… She chose to go barefoot, her voracious eyes taking in that environment she knew so well and missed so dearly.

Her mother was in the kitchen, doing the dishes. She had her back on the door, her curly black hair falling like a waterfall to the small of her back, her hands busy drying a plate. Suddenly, it was all too much for Hitomi, the ball of feelings in her throat bursting and bringing tears in her eyes.

“Mom!” She ran to Kurenai despite the sound of broken table-wear, reaching her in a mere two steps. Her mother's discreet perfume surrounded Hitomi as she hugged her. She closed her eyes, not caring one bit about the sharp shard she had stepped on. She knew Ensui would fix this with no trouble at all. All her new strength was focused on hugging her mom, on taking in everything her senses could to fill the void that had suddenly hit her.

Later, man, woman and child sat in the living room. Ensui had taken the couch to heal Hitomi’s foot after she had dried her tears – and wisely decided to ignore that Kurenai was crying too, remembering how reserved she could be about her feelings. He held his apprentice’s foot carefully, light green chakra pouring through his fingers to take care of her cut as he listened to their conversation.

“… and that’s how I discovered you can find water in cactuses. Can you imagine, Mom? I won’t ever be thirsty in a desert now!”

The two adults laughed gently. They were both trained shinobi, used to completing missions all over the known world for their village’s sake, but the innocence Hitomi showed them was a sweet blessing in their eyes, putting their knowledge in perspective, reminding them how everything they had learned could seem precious and extraordinary.

The rest of the day was blissful. Soon enough, Ensui left mother and daughter to their reunion, going to find Shikaku to report on their trip. Hitomi needed help to settle back in her room and to assess everything that would have to change – mostly her clothes, a few sizes too small now. She only had her travelling and training gear, which would only get her so far. They took more than an hour to fold and store everything in the boxes Kurenai would give to the orphanage in a few days.

For now, it was time for Hitomi to discover what a normal life looked like in Konoha. For the first time, she was allowed to go in town with her mother, beyond the Nara land, to buy new clothes. Before, it had been out of question, and it was weird for the girl to walk past the guarded gate of the land she knew so well to the rest of the village. She didn’t need to fear that kind of pain anymore, she was free to roam the streets Shikamaru, Chōji and Ino had told her about, walk peacefully amongst shinobi and civilians alike, without the tiniest discomfort.

With her mother’s blessing, Hitomi chose her own clothes. She liked shades of grey and red, of course. She picked three dresses, two kimonos and a yukata, but most of her choices were angled toward the Academy, training and home-wear. The start of the school year was so close now. She couldn’t wait.

That evening, they ate dinner at Shikaku and Yoshino’s house. Shikamaru had a surprising burst of energy when he saw his cousin behind the door and hugged her so fiercely it probably hurt a bit – she wasn’t sure and didn’t really care. He had grown, too, and towered over her by more than three inches. He seemed to take after his father, tall and thin just like him, but his features had a softness that belonged to Yoshino.

During dinner, she agreed to tell her adventures again. She didn’t go into details about Gaara but, for the rest, she went into extensive details to please her cousin. His eyes went wide with amazement when she described the couple of fennecs she and Ensui had seen during their second trip through the Sunajin Desert.

She had missed him so, so much.

The evening continued through the night, the two children starting a shōgi tournament to assess their opponent’s progress. Shikamaru had got so much better, his style really close to his father’s now, but Hitomi hadn’t lazed around: she had played against Ensui at least once a day and even more often when they were in Sunagakure.

Before going to sleep, she opened her communication notebook and wrote to Gaara.

Dear Gaara,

I’m so happy you’re starting the Academy at the same time as I will! We’ll be able to compare our teachers and classmates, if you want. Today, I got back home, in Konoha. It’s so strange, after so much time on the road. My mom had to get me a whole new wardrobe; rumour is I’ve grown up in a year and a half, but it doesn’t look like it from my perspective.

I understand it’s hard for you to talk to your siblings. I think they know the village gossip about you better than they know you, as a person. Show them the sweet, amazing boy you were with me. You’ll win them over, especially Temari, based on what you told me about her. They’ll be your best allies, Gaara, and you know you need those. Of course, you can always count on me, but I’m too far away to help if something happens to you, something serious and urgent. I’d feel better if you had someone on your side there, in Sunagakure.

At lunch, my mom took me to a gyoza place in town, outside the Nara land. It was the first time I could really go anywhere outside the clan’s territory. Tomorrow, my cousin Shikamaru will take me on a tour of the rest of the village. Gyozas, Gaara… I have to make you try those if you come visit one day. They’re just so good, I promise.

I hope you’re okay. Take good care of yourself and talk to you tomorrow.

Tenderly,

Hitomi.

After sending her letter, Hitomi got in bed. She was exhausted, but it was only the kind of healthy exhaustion she felt after a great day, the edges of her mind softened by a deep, deep feeling of belonging and happiness. In the guest room, next to Shikamaru’s bedroom, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep, smiling in the dark.

The next day, Shikamaru kept his word. Konoha was beautiful, like a gem gleaming under the cheerful sun, and Hitomi was delighted to finally discover the village’s little secrets, the places where kids liked to hang out to play ninja, and the ones where parents waited for them, chatting about politics and their past missions. Children, here, were incredibly free. In the Previous World, it was unthinkable to let a five or six years old walk alone on the streets. But cars didn’t exist in this world – even horses were only used by nobles who wanted to show off – and safety was assured by the joint effort of the Uchiha police force and the General Forces, composed of Genin who hadn’t managed to get into a Genin team after the Academy but had refused to choose another career.

When she was alone with her cousin, Hitomi gifted him one of her communication notebooks. She had prepared it for him, after all. He was amazed by the possibilities this new way of communication offered and tried to convince her to sell it to the Research and Development Department, but she refused. She couldn’t deem the concept ready for shinobi or even civilians, not when she had so many improvements in mind for it.

Then, she showed him other things she had learned. He looked at her tantō with respect but refused to touch it. If Hitomi seemed made for frontline battle, he definitely wasn’t. Hidden behind people like her, he could scheme and plan in peace, and save thousands of lives – win wars, really. Most children didn’t think about that when they were their age, but they were Nara by blood, raised to think about strategy almost from the crib. He was, though, very interested in the new field control skills she had developed. He particularly liked the flash bombs, so useful to naturally stretch his shadow just for a second. It was all he needed to connect it to the person he wanted to catch.

As they talked about their time apart, the two children also established their plans regarding the Academy. Most students shared the same goal: doing their best and graduating. The Nara Clan, though, didn’t raise kids to just do their best. Shikamaru, for example, had decided to hide in the middle of the class, which necessitated a level of cunning, intelligence, and patience far beyond what was asked of any Genin twice his age. Even some Chūnin wouldn’t be able to do it, but Shikamaru would succeed, she knew it, and he’d manage to pretend it was all involuntary. He was just that good.

For Hitomi, though, this strategy wouldn’t work nor fit her ambitions. She was from two clans and knew it made her future place in one of the three teams to graduate in her year almost certain. By elimination, she had deduced she’d take Haruno Sakura’s place in Team Seven, which meant a whole shitload of trouble in her future. Besides, she felt a moral obligation to find an alternate way for Sakura to get where her canon-self had been: Senju Tsunade’s apprentice, and one of the best medics in the world.

If that wasn’t complicated enough, she also wasn’t satisfied with the idea of taking the First Kunoichi place in the ranking of her year. It would be easy to get, what with all the training Ensui had made her go through, but there was no glory in the position of First Kunoichi. All glory went to the boy who was deemed First Genin. She knew it would be Sasuke and wanted everyone in her year to know she was as good as him, or even better – she doubted she would be, though, she knew what crazy shit he was able to do thanks to the canon. She had to leave her mark on her teachers’ mind, and the only way to manage that was to do her very best to be ranked first at both the theoretical and the physical tests, without failing or any sign of tiredness. Fortunately, it was the kind of thing Ensui had shaped her to do these past eighteen months.

She talked about it a lot with Shikamaru. He would be her closest ally at the Academy, after all. He had had a chance to really socialise with his peers, and she knew he would help her find a place she would like in their class’ dynamic. Sure, she only knew Chōji and Ino outside of the Nara Clan, but that would change.

Another problem would appear then: she wasn’t good at direct socialisation. In the Previous World, she had been isolated and laconic, quick to chase people away, led to loneliness by an extreme wariness and loads of disappointment since her childhood. She hadn’t known anything of the sort since her second birth, but those memories still haunted her. But she needed to befriend some people to make her plans reality.

She still had time to prepare for the Academy, though. When the time came, she would be as ready as she possibly could be, and would do her best to reach her goals. It had to be enough. Failure was unthinkable.

Chapter 16: The Academy

Finally, the school year started. Hitomi was impatient and anxious. She had spent the last two months not only getting back to a sedentary way of life, but also working on chemistry. Ensui had helped her and kept his word: he was always by her side when she wanted to train, to get better at anything. In that span of time, she managed to create several kinds of flash bombs with different stunning potencies and areas of effect, and smoke bombs in six different colours. He had also pushed her to practice her accuracy with throwing weapons, arguing that if she wanted to throw all kinds of nasty things to people’s heads, she had to know how to aim.

The year of training she had on her future classmates would soon reveal itself to be an advantage or an inconvenient: either the other children would think she had a lot more experience – at this age, she remembered how a full year looked like an eternity – or they would jump to the conclusion that she had started the Academy a year later because she was lacking compared to other students her age. All stakes would be on her first days of class, on first impressions. Her skin was still lightly bronzed by the Sunajin sun, which would give her a bit of an adventurous look, but it wouldn’t be enough to impress those kids.

The anxiety that was eating her alive during the first day weakened when she saw her mother, waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. Rubbing at her sleepy eyes, Hitomi went to hug her then squealed indignantly when Kurenai picked her up and spun round and round until she started to laugh. She knew, already, how proud the kunoichi was to see her make her first steps on the shinobi’s path. In her opinion, she had made these steps next to Ensui, but it didn’t really matter.

“Go greet the sun, sweetheart, breakfast will be ready when you come back. Your uncle will be there in an hour. We’ll go to the Academy with him and Shikamaru. You want to share this special day with him, right?”

Hitomi nodded, a warm and soft feeling spreading in her chest as she realised, for the thousandth time, how much her mother loved and cared for her. She had a hard time considering herself like the child she was, like someone who needed parents, since hers had never been in the picture during her first life. Sometimes, though, she was reminded how precious Kurenai was to her, or of the extremes she’d be ready to devote herself to, to protect her.

An hour later, Hitomi had her arm linked with Shikamaru’s and made him walk in quicker steps than he had planned to. He tried to play the martyr, but she saw the smile he tried to erase from his lips. For him, though, school would be a pain in the ass. Like her, he wanted to become a ninja and protect his clan, but his mind was wired differently from most others. It was so reactive, noticing too much all the time, that even blinking for too long could make him fall asleep. He would get better with that, she was sure of it, but now he was still raw, perpetually on the edge of oversensitivity.

These last few weeks, to Hitomi’s strong surprise, she had been eager to start bonding with her future classmates, and not simply because she could use the help they would lend her in years to come. She knew that Shikamaru would always be by her side, but she wanted more, she wanted friendship, wanted to be loved, wanted the loneliness haunting her at night to disappear. She was so, so tired of it.

Someone had erected a temporary stage in the Academy’s courtyard. People were already gathering in front of it. There were around a hundred future students, a far larger number than Hitomi had anticipated. Yet she knew that in six years they would only be twenty-seven or twenty-eight to graduate. And, in that group, only nine would become Genin under a sensei’s guidance.

Kurenai, in the middle of the crowd, took her daughter in her arms and settled her on her shoulders so she could see the stage. Hitomi was a bit old for that kind of thing but, since her mother didn’t seem to have any difficulty, she didn’t try to get down. That way, she could see the Hokage perfectly, for the first time in her life. He looked frail, especially in that big white robe that came with the hat. She stared at that hat, the symbol of his power over the village. He didn’t deserve it.

In a respectful silence, the children listened as their war chief spoke about the Will of Fire, of her glorious warmth guiding their teachers’ hands as they made their student into the best version of themselves. Hitomi stared at the stage, at the teachers lined up behind their Hokage. She recognised Umino Iruka, with his tanned skin and the scar running across the bridge of his nose, then Mizuki, taller and silver haired. The bastard had a smirk on his face. Hitomi had to bite her inner cheek to stop herself from glaring at him; she knew he would feel it. Anyway, she didn’t have the slightest chance against him now, and even if she had… She couldn’t interfere with Naruto gaining the Shadow Clone Technique. Too much depended on him having it.

The speech was brief but Hitomi had time to grab all the subtleties hidden in it. When the Hokage spoke, he stopped looking frail and turned into the war chief so many people admired, the hero, the Professor, true to his name. He could summon Death itself. Why hadn’t he done it when the Kyūbi had attacked? The village would have been better off if Minato had survived and Hiruzen had died. Of course, his speech didn’t lack propaganda, quite the opposite. She knew what to expect in that regard: this school was in charge of the education of the Land of Fire’s army, after all. Even if Konoha had a reputation as the nice one that didn’t mean high-ranking officers hesitated before indoctrinating six years olds, so they’d one day give their life for their country.

Once the speech was over – did he write a new one every year? – another teacher took the Hokage’s place, a list in his hand, and started calling children to sort them in three groups. Hitomi was surprised by how unbalanced they were: all the clan kids, herself included, were in the same group, the first one to be called. Civilian-born kids brought the group to thirty kids, but that sorting couldn’t possibly be random.

Iruka led them to a big classroom. Light came from huge windows to the left side of the room. They were big enough for people to go through them rather than doors when need arose, which was a common practice in Konoha. According to Kurenai, students would be able to use those in a few years in case of emergency – otherwise, they would use the door, thank you very much.

Hitomi immediately noticed two children she identified as Aburame Shino and Hyūga Hinata, sitting in the last row of the classroom. It was wise, not lazy. What shinobi worth the title would even want someone in their blind spot? Only clan kids were aware of that kind of thing. The girl grabbed her cousin by the arm – he, in turn, grabbed Chōji to make sure he’d follow – and dragged him with her before sitting next to Hinata. With Ino, they occupied a good chunk of the last row, which was also the highest, the others just a bit lower than the one behind them to form steps. From where she was, Hitomi could survey the whole room.

Their first hours at the Academy were quiet – too quiet. Iruka-sensei’s explanations were typical of a first day at school: timetables, gear, mandatory reading, class rules, … Hitomi ended up bored half to death, and she couldn’t stand it. After a while, she discreetly took her communication notebook out of her back. It had turned cold during the Hokage’s speech, but she hadn’t opened it yet.

Dear Hitomi,

Have your classes started already? Here, they have, and I’m bored. I’m alone at the back of the class and I feel like it’s not a good thing to do, but Ensui-san always told us to watch our back, didn’t he? There’s no one here I trust enough for that, so the wall it is. They all look at me weird, like I’m gonna get angry and hurt them.

Thing is, once, I could have. Before I met you, I was always so angry at them, all the time. I didn’t understand why they left me alone, why they didn’t want to play with me. I never wanted to hurt them, not really, but sometimes, my sand, by accident… You know how it is.

I tried to talk to Temari this morning, when she took me to the Academy. She was alone, it seemed easier that way. I asked her how she was today and thanked her for going with me. She looked so surprised! But not angry, not at all. I guess you’re right about her.

My teacher is a bit weird but I think I’m gonna like him. Okay, it’s boring right now, but he doesn’t look that strict. Less than Ensui-san was, anyway! The guy in front of me is asleep and the teacher didn’t do anything to wake him up.

I can’t wait for your answer, I miss you.

Gaara.

A sweet smile on her lips, she got started on an answer for her friend, describing Iruka-sensei, who was yelling at Kiba and Naruto. She explained how the Big Head genjustu worked, and why the teacher seemed to really like that technique. In her opinion, it made him look funny rather than threatening, but she could see how normal kids would feel intimidated by that. Still, she had to fight an eye roll when she felt a shiver run through the students in front of her.

Shikamaru didn’t follow the lesson any better than she did. He was napping on the notebook his cousin had gifted him, his features childish and relaxed. He was so cute when he was asleep. She turned her head to the left and met Hinata’s eyes, which made the girl blush deeply. She tried a gentle smile to appease her, but she knew, deep down, that the Hyūga heir was far too shy to relax at the first sign of kindness.

At ten, the children had fifteen minutes of freedom before going back to class. Hitomi mustered all her courage and breathed deeply, squaring her shoulders as if to make herself taller. That wasn’t supposed to be this hard, for fuck’s sake. “Hi!” she chirped. “You’re a Hyūga, aren’t you? What’s your name? I’m Yūhi Hitomi!” She knew she probably sounded weird, but most Nara were the same. Their reputation had been built ages ago, after all, and Hitomi had been careful to choose a shirt with the clan’s emblem on it for her first day, just like Shikamaru had.

“I’m Hi-Hinata,” the other girl stuttered.

“Pleased to meet you!” She looked at Shino, sitting between Hinata and the window. “And you’re an Aburame, right? What’s your name?”

“Shino. My father often works with your clan. Some insect species can only be found in your forests.” That didn’t surprise Hitomi. The Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka clans worked together in and outside the village to recreate ecosystems that favoured the growth of very specific medical plants. They used them to create medicine of all kinds, but mostly for shinobi. It was a colossal amount of work, and a lot of civilians from the three clans specialised in that field, but it was worth it for their shinobi, and so they toiled to create the kind of environment rare species of insects needed to thrive.

In the end, Hitomi felt a bit ridiculous for panicking so hard, seeing how easy talking to others was. The two children followed her when she left the classroom and they spent their break getting to know each other, Shikamaru and Chōji walking behind them. Ino, for her part, had made friends with a group of students from their class, mostly girls. Hitomi knew her friend would soon become the queen of her little court.

After the short break, Iruka decided it was time for the students to introduce themselves to the rest of the group. The teacher started to call them by alphabetical order, starting with Aburame Shino, as Hitomi tried to muffle a new surge of anxiety and waited for her turn. She’d be the last, with her last name. When she got a hold of herself, she focused on the other students’ introductions. They stood up when their name was called; she carefully registered all the information they gave about themselves. Their name, age, hobbies, what they liked, what they disliked, their dream for the future.

Then a blonde boy stood up. She knew so much about him, of course, and yet she listened carefully about what he had to say. “… And one day, I’ll be Hokage, believe it!” The mood in the classroom immediately got lighter, except for a tension point in the stage, where Iruka stood. A lot of boys, the ones Naruto had played with during the break, smiled at him. Their friendship seemed genuine, but Hitomi’s heart ached – she knew it wouldn’t last. When those kids would go back to their parents and would be told about the Nine-Tailed Fox, because that was what you did when you wanted to keep a secret, repeating it to six years old children, they wouldn’t even want to talk to him anymore.

“Yūhi Hitomi!”

Obediently, the girl stood up, doing her best to hold herself straight and proud, her two feet firmly rooted on the ground, her shoulder line relaxed, as Ensui had taught her so she could look taller and fearless. “Hi!” she beamed. “My name is Yūhi Hitomi. I’m seven and my hobbies are reading and training. I like shōgi, my family and my clan, but I don’t like red bean paste or being stuck with a problem. My dream is to become a Seal Mistress acknowledged in the whole world. Nice to meet you!”

Many of those children didn’t know anything about fūinjutsu, but Iruka knew what the field was, like all Chūnin. He couldn’t perfectly hide his surprise as he stared at the girl. She looked back at him then sat up. Shikamaru patted her knee discreetly, knowing how she hated to speak in front of a crowd. Thirty kids definitely qualified as such.

The lunch break started thirty minutes after that. Hitomi woke Shikamaru up with a hand on his shoulder, careful not to startle him, then turned to Hinata and Shino, who were taking their bentō out of their bags. “Hey, I had a good time earlier. D’you wanna eat with me?”

As the two children nodded, she wondered how other people socialised all the time. Weren’t they anxious? One look to Hinata, who was blushing again, gave her the answer: yes, people were anxious, and some hid it better than others. She turned to Shikamaru to make him the same offer but, before she could say a word, he met her eyes and rubbed his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Err… Would it bother you if I went to eat with Ino and Chōji? Our parents want us to grow even closer during the Academy. It’s troublesome, but we’d better start now, or my mom will get all angry and stuff and she…”

She cut him with a gentle nod and a smile. She wouldn’t be alone, after all. And even if it had been the case, she was a big girl, she knew how to cope. “Write if you need me,” she just said while drumming on her own notebook for emphasis. She always had it with her and didn’t plan on changing that today. Since she had two pen pals now, she had created sections and linked each of the other notebooks to one of them. She had prepared more sections for more people and prepared the supplementary notebooks accordingly, but she knew she wouldn’t need them for some time.

After grabbing her own lunch, she followed her new friends to the outside courtyard, the one where the welcoming speech had happened. The stage was gone now, like it had never been there. It was larger and nicer than the inside courtyard, but students were only allowed there during lunch break.

The three children found themselves an isolated tree and settled in its blissful shade. Hitomi sat on one of its roots, her back against the trunk, then opened her bentō as her friends did the same with theirs. The Nara clan had taken on the Akimichi tradition to always cook more than needed if food was to be shared, a tradition Kurenai had made her duty to follow for this special day. She had made sure her daughter would have enough to share with her friends if she wanted to. In the end, they put their three lunches in common and picked whatever they fancied while chatting lightly.

Shino, more talkative now that the rest of their classmates couldn’t eavesdrop on them, told the two girls about his clan, their traditions and the role their civilians played in it. Those things, after all, were different from one clan to the other, and it fascinated Hitomi. After a dozen of minutes, the conversation went to the reasons for her late start at the Academy.

“I have a sickness that affects my meridians and could have stopped me from ever becoming a ninja. Fortunately, one of my clanmates, who was born with the same problem, came home from a long mission in a foreign country and took me in. He taught me how to control it while we travelled… In fact, he taught me a whole lot of things so I wouldn’t be sad to start the Academy later than the other kids.

“W-what kind of things?” Hinata didn’t speak a lot, and even less to say something about herself. Hitomi knew how the Hyūga clan could be, so she supposed they had ordered her to say nothing about the clan at school. As she was already such an introvert, it would have been enough to bully her into silence. With a gentle smile she hoped would calm down her friend’s anxiety, Hitomi ate a mouthful of rice before answering.

“Basis for taijutsu and kenjutsu, a lot of chakra control, fūinjutsu… that kind of thing.” She was careful not to go into details. Ensui had taught her the benefits of secrecy, especially about her own skills. Only her trusted allies had the right to know about them, so they could work with her as a team, but, beside that, it was better to say just enough to impress, but too little to give others weapons against her. She doubted Shino or Hinata would or could threaten her, but still, it was a good habit to build.

They continued talking until the end of the lunch break. Hitomi had time to tell her about Sunagakure and her friend Gaara – no one knew who he was here, and she made sure to leave his demon out of the picture. She told them about Ensui, too, and was so ridiculously proud to notice from their reaction that they knew about his prowess. Of course, they knew nothing about his feud with the Hokage: people usually didn’t talk about their war chief’s failures.

When they came back to their classroom, turned over sheets of paper waited for them, placed on each occupied desk space. A test already? Hitomi exchanged an annoyed glance with Shikamaru as they sat down. While she had been so impatient to start Academy, she had taken care to ignoring this part of the process. She sighed and listened to Iruka, then began.

It took her ten minutes to complete it, against the two hours the teacher had given them. Most questions were there to evaluate the students’ reading and writing skills, as well as their general knowledge. All those subjects had been covered by her mother, then by Ensui during their trip. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her cousin correctly answer the exact number of questions needed for an average score, then give wrong answers to all the others. In the same movement, they crossed their arms and put their heads down on them.

As Shikamaru napped, Hitomi sank in her Library to scheme about that part of her life. The following day, if everything went as planned, she’d approach Naruto and would show him her intention of becoming, then staying, his friend. Getting Shikamaru and Chōji to follow would be easy. As for Shino and Hinata, it might be a more complex matter: both were obedient children, and if their parents told them to stay away from the jinchūriki… That being said, she was resourceful. She knew that, if need be, she could persuade them.

When the bell rang, she opened her eyes and woke her cousin up again. She watched him stretch lazily before putting his things in his bag as she did the same. They placed their tests on Iruka's desk as they left. Hitomi said goodbye to Shino and Hinata, then followed her cousin outside.

Her mother wasn’t waiting alone at the gate, to Hitomi’s surprise. Shikamaru, Ino and Chōji’s parents were there too, chatting quietly as they waited for their children to come out of the courtyard. The girl could guess why they were there. She foresaw a clan party in her near future; what better day for a celebration, after all, than the first step in a shinobi life for four kids from their clan?

At home, Hitomi had to let her mother dress her as she saw fit. Kurenai decided the day was important enough to necessitate a kimono and taught her girl how to put it on. Hitomi’s long black hair was tied in a bun, a few curly strands escaping to brush against her neck and shoulders. When she looked at her reflection in a mirror, she saw nothing that would hint at the kunoichi she would one day become. That was good: a shinobi was more efficient if no one had any idea of the threat they represented.

The Akimichi Clan had restaurants everywhere in the known world, but the oldest was in Konoha’s main street. The only way to get a table was to book it weeks in advance and, even then, one had to open their pockets. The party had been organised there, which meant the restaurant was closed for business and full of Akimichi, Nara and Yamanaka, civilians and ninjas alike. They all wanted to pay their respects to the new generation that would soon protect and honour them.

Ensui was amongst those people. Hitomi saw him almost every day, but it still wasn’t enough, wasn’t the same as how it had been when it was just the two of them. She missed him dearly. Amazed to see him in his Jōnin vest – he only wore it for important occasions – she ran to him and hugged him, a beaming smile on her lips. With a little rumbly laugh, he closed his arms around her and hugged her back.

He listened attentively as she told him about her day. She described the test, the introductions, her new friends… and Naruto. He already knew how she felt about the boy and the way the village treated him. He himself found it incredibly stupid to mistreat the only person between them and the demon fox. How could they expect the kid to want to protect them, protect his village, if they treated him, at best, only with coldness and disdain?

Then dinner was ready. For the first time, the children sat with their parents at the table of honour. It was weird for them, which they commented discreetly between two giggles. The food was amazing, of course – how could it not be, when an Akimichi had cooked it? Sake ran abundantly as the children settled for fruit juice.

An hour or so later, it was time for the gifts. The four children went to sit on chairs on the stage, which a band sometimes used, in a corner of the room, waiting together for the adults to bring them their presents. Amongst other things, Hitomi got a calligraphy set from her mother, a chemistry kit from Ensui so she could experiment without sneaking in the labs; from Shikaku, she received eight fūinjutsu books. They all looked really rare and old. Other people offered her gifts, mostly clothes and weapons, but nothing had more value in her eyes than the ones she got from those three adults she loved so much, not even the delicate hairpin encrusted with rubies that could turn in a mortal weapon with the brush of a finger.

She went to bed late that night, a big smile fixed on her lips, and slept like the dead. It was rare enough to be noticed: her sleep had always been light, especially when she went into her Library to spend the night rather than allowing her mind to rest. When she woke up, she was almost bursting with energy, which was for the best: she had a jinchūriki to befriend today, after all.

Chapter 17: The Dreadful Demon Fox

Notes:

I'm so sorry I'm late! I'm having a major surgery in three weeks and I have a lot of things to do before then :/

Hitomi had to wait for lunch break to act. Before that, she simply couldn’t see any opportunity to approach Naruto in a natural manner, but she watched him carefully, noting his gloomy face when he entered the classroom and the way he held himself, a bit prostrated over his desk in the first row. She spent that whole morning so angry at the world, at the boys who had played with him the day before, at their stupid, stupid parents. She sat there, her back stiff and her chakra so agitated the students next and in front of her could probably feel it. It wasn’t killing intent, not yet, she was too young, but an intent of some sort, that was for sure.

At noon, she engaged Shino and Hinata in a ninja game. The teachers expected their students to play those kinds of games during their free time, so they could practice what they learned in class. They hadn’t learned anything yet, really, but clan children still had skills to work on. Hitomi’s plan to approach Naruto and persuade her friends to follow, was simplistic. “We need one more player to have two teams of two,” she frowned. She made a show of looking around then to light up as she saw Naruto, alone on a swing. “I have the solution, wait for me!”

She took off before they could answer, hurrying to the boy. She didn’t allow her heart to ache for him too much. Wallowing in compassion for him was useless. She wanted to act, not to watch him stay unhappy. Soon, that sad and lonely look on his face would just be a bad memory, she promised herself that. “Hi!” she chirped. “D’you wanna play ninja with us? We need you so we can have teams of two.”

She had expected to have to convince him but, as soon as he heard her voice, his whole face lit up and he jumped on his feet, clearly excited and amazed. Now that was more like it.

“I’ll be the best ninja you’ve ever seen, believe it!” he beamed before following her back to Shino and Hinata.

With a grin, she suggested doing girls versus boys. She knew Shino wouldn’t be pumped about getting paired up with the loud and energetic Naruto, but she wanted her friends to grow closer to the jinchūriki too, and was aware that Hinata couldn’t manage if she had to work with someone she didn’t know at all.

That game ended with the girls winning, but not by much. The boys had done well, but Hinata was an excellent strategist when she set her timidity aside and her chakra control was as excellent as you could expect from any Hyūga her age. Hitomi, over the moon, congratulated her friend profusely, making her blush and smile at the same time.

Shino was lecturing Naruto – the blonde boy listened with surprising diligence. The two had been a good pair during the game, scoring points often enough that they could have won if Hinata or Hitomi had been just a bit less efficient together. Naruto’s impulsive and daring nature was a good counterpoint for Shino’s reluctance to act without a solid plan ready.

During the afternoon, they got their first taijutsu lesson. Mizuki-sensei – Hitomi hated associating this sign of respect to the man’s name but she had no choice – was in charge of those classes. For the first day, he just wanted to assess his students’ physical skills. He explained the safety rules they would have to follow in his class, listed the supplies they would need, including wooden shuriken and kunai, then got them started.

First, the students had to run a lap around the courtyard. Hitomi was faster than all the other girls, but a bit slower than Sasuke, who finished first, and Kiba, just after the Uchiha boy. Shikamaru had kept to the middle of the group, as usual. After that, Mizuki tested their strength through muscle-building exercises, including press-ups and sit-ups. Most times, Hitomi beat Kiba, but she could never surpass Sasuke. He always had a few seconds on her, no matter how hard she tried.

Then Mizuki tested their stamina, making them run laps for as long as they could. There, Hitomi truly shone, with her travelling experience. Even Sasuke had to stop, well before she started to sweat, his face red and damp. Finally, the teacher realised he wouldn’t tire her out and made her stop. She obediently came back to her classmates, waiting for the next exercise.

Naruto had done well so far. He had no talent whatsoever for the intellectual dimension of the Academy’s program, but he was in excellent shape and had ranked high in all the exercises. Was it the Kyūbi lending him its strength? If it was the case, he didn’t show any sign and the girl didn’t ever feel, even once, the demon’s chakra manifesting.

After that came precision exercises. Hitomi didn’t have an innate gift for that discipline, but Ensui had mercilessly trained her, refusing to let her settle for an average performance. She had thrown those damned weapons again and again, until her wrists were on fire and her arms couldn’t aim anymore. She could even do it with senbon, the long needles most ninjas didn’t like much but she appreciated their true value. She would never be perfect in that field, but she was good , and she intended to show it.

When that class was over, several girls waited for Hitomi in the locker room. She recognised Aimi, a civilian-born student who was trying to overcome Ino as the leader of the crowd. She wasn’t eloquent or pretty, but her size and strength made people respect her instinctively. Wary, Hitomi waited for one of the girls to speak, shifting quietly to a defensive position.

“So apparently you’re better than anyone around here uh?”

Hitomi shrugged, staring down at the other girl. It was a hard feat, since Aimi was a few inches taller than her, but she managed. Fights weren’t exactly forbidden out of taijutsu class, if you didn’t seriously injure your opponent, but she preferred psychological warfare against other children. “If you want to surpass me, Aimi- chan ,” she said with a sweet, dangerous smile, “you should train a little harder. You did okay earlier, after all.”

But I was far better than you, was left unsaid but still painfully obvious. Hitomi didn’t get any pleasure from pushing another kid around, even if that kid was already showing herself to be a fucking pain in the ass. Still, she wouldn’t hesitate to go harder on her if she didn’t settle down and accept the situation. She would take the first rank, at least amongst the kunoichi of their year, whether Aimi liked it or not. There were very few things she wouldn’t sacrifice for that goal, and the ego of a pitiful little bully wasn’t amongst them. An air of disdain on her face, she grabbed her things and pushed through the girls like they were nothing. Like all bullies were.

Shikamaru was waiting for her outside with Ino and Chōji. Naruto, Hinata and Shino were there too. All looked various degrees of worried, except maybe her cousin, who knew more than anyone what she was capable of when she was in danger, or just crossed, really. After all, they had trained together for the last two months, mostly under Kurenai or Yoshino’s supervision.

The two women were waiting for them at the gate, as if the mere thought of them was enough to summon them. Now that would come in handy during a fight, Hitomi thought with a smile. Kurenai’s thoughtful stare fell on Naruto, who was telling his new friends what he would do to Kiba if he continued ignoring him the next day. Hitomi knew the Inuzuka boy would come around, but she understood Naruto’s wounded reaction.

Kurenai, though, didn’t say anything before she was alone with her daughter, both working on dinner. Hitomi loved gyoza and was humming a tune as she put seasoning in the mix of grounded meat and vegetables that would fill the delicious little dumplings. Her mother had promised to tell her the full recipe one day, since it was an original. “So, sweetheart,” the woman started gently, “you hadn’t told me you were friends with Uzumaki Naruto too. Did it happen today?”

The girl stiffened slightly, glancing at her mother before going back to the filling. She didn’t try to be discreet about it; nothing could really surprise Kurenai. “The other kids have decided to leave him all alone today. Yesterday, I heard parents say mean lies about him. So, at lunch, I decided to ask him if he wanted to play ninja with Hinata, Shino and me.”

“And I gather it went well?”

“Yeah, of course it did! He’s really nice. Well, he’s a bit loud and obnoxious sometimes, but he hasn’t done anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve to be isolated like that for something that was never his choice, something that saved the whole village.”

Kurenai gasped. Hitomi gave her a bored look, like she hadn’t just mentioned an S rank secret. “Mom, everybody in my class knows, even the civilian-born kids. That’s not a secret, or no one should ever trust the adults with secrets again.”

Kurenai burst out laughing and messed with her daughter’s hair with a playful hand. “That bad, uh? Don’t worry, sweetheart, I wasn’t going to forbid you from seeing your friend. You could invite him to dinner here, tomorrow evening. The orphanage is not really the happiest place in town after all…”

Hitomi nodded, a relieved smile on her lips. She wasn’t certain she would have had the guts to confront Kurenai if she had decided to stop her from being around Naruto. She respected her and loved her so much, the mere idea of disappointing her filled her with anxiety. It would have been dreadful, harrowing, to be forced to choose between her mother’s approval and the path she had decided to follow years ago.

The next day after class, Hitomi invited Naruto to dinner and was astonished to see him blush up to the ears. When he got down to it, he could even compete with Hinata. A hand to her lips to hide her smile, she shook her head slightly, moved by the intensity of his reaction. “Don’t worry, okay? My mom just wants to get to know my friends. She’ll be delighted to meet you, you’ll see. And she’s such a good cook!”

That night, after dinner – delicious, just like she had promised – Hitomi settled her guest in the living room. He kept looking around, seemingly astounded, and she understood he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. She did everything she could to put him at ease, ignoring his manners when they got awkward. She knew no one had taught him how to behave in someone else’s house.

“I was wondering, Naruto,” she said after a bit of chitchat, “do you know why you have a hard time with Iruka-sensei’s lessons?”

He lowered his head, obviously ashamed. She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it gently to encourage him. “I try to listen, you know, I really do, but I get bored so quickly and I can’t focus on what he’s saying when I get like that. So since I can’t focus in class I tried to read the books he told us to read, but the kanjis keep changing and getting mixed up in front of my eyes. I don’t want him to think I’m lazy…”

“You’re not lazy, Naruto. You just need a little bit of help, and you’re going to get it, you see.” What he described looked like what most people thought dyslexia and hyperactivity were. She didn’t know much more herself, but she could help him. Help him work, help him study, make sure he didn’t fall behind. As long as he was trying, she would be able to support him.

The next day, the ranking was waiting for them in the Academy’s hall. Hitomi wasn’t surprised when she saw it: she was first on the girls’ side and tied with Sasuke, who was first on the boys’ side. Naruto was last in the written test but decently ranked in the physical one. Shikamaru was somewhere in the middle of their class. As Hitomi had foreseen, the children from the two other classes had far lower results than her own classmates. So it was intentional.

This discovery didn’t disturb her. In class, she continued doing her best, always pushing further than what the teachers expected. When she came back home, she made Naruto study by short sessions of fifteen minutes, explaining again to him alone what Iruka had taught them that day. This worked marvelously with the little boy, but not enough to push him to the top part of the ranking in written tests. At least he wasn’t dead last anymore. The tests were still hard for him, but he understood, she could see it in his big blue eyes. And his reading and writing did improve, which was important too.

When Naruto went back to the orphanage – before dinner during the week and after on the week-ends – the day wasn’t over for Hitomi yet. Ensui arrived around that time and trained her too, making sure she didn’t lose any of the skills she had acquired during their journey together. When he wasn’t available, Kurenai trained her daughter herself. She had gone through it first, after all. Even if the village had been at war when she had graduated from the Academy, the competition had motivated her too.

Her correspondence with Gaara – and Shikamaru, too, sometimes, when theoretical lessons were too boring but he didn’t want to nap – was her breath of fresh air. The Sunajin told her, day after day, how he grew closer to his sister, who was starting to warm up to him. He had tried to approach Kankurō, too. To the jinchūriki’s deep surprise, he had just had to congratulate him on his proficiency with his puppets to make his elder brother feel safe with him. The boy seemed happy, calm, and Hitomi was immensely proud of him.

One night, though, those feelings were smashed to pieces, giving space to a cold, cold wave of panic. As she was getting ready for the night, she felt her communication carnet turn cold against her leg, where she had put it after closing it an hour earlier. Her belly twisted into knots by a bad feeling, she opened the notebook and felt like her heart was sinking from her chest.

Hitomi, help me, please! I was attacked by my uncle tonight, he said he was doing it because my father asked him to and I think I killed him, please, help me, I don’t know what to do!

Chapter 18: Turmoil in Sunagakure

The few words scribbled on the page by Gaara made Hitomi jump on her feet. She knew it would happen, of course, but not this early. Her heart thundering in her chest so hard it was painful, she took a pen and answered hastily.

Go find Temari and explain. She’ll help you. I’m gonna ask Ensui-shishou to go there as quickly as he can. I love you, Gaara. Be brave. You’re not alone.

As soon as the page was infused with chakra, she put a jumper on over her nightgown and opened her window wide. Her notebook in hand, she jumped to the garden one floor down, strengthening her legs to handle the fall. Without losing anything, she started running. Ensui’s house was on the other side of the Nara lands, not so far from the entrance, but she got there faster than she ever had and started pounding on the door, calling her master in a panicked voice.

“Hitomi? Are you okay? What is it?”

For once, she didn’t notice his pyjamas or his sleepy eyes. “It’s Gaara, shishou! He’s been attacked by his uncle and begged for help. He… He needs help. Please. Can you go to Suna and protect him? Please, I’ll do whatever you want.”

The shinobi stiffened with shock, unable to hide his emotions for a second. He got a hold of himself and put a reassuring hand on his apprentice’s shoulder. Even in the dark, he saw how frantic she was. This feeling wasn’t of any use for ninjas, but she was still so young… she would learn. “Show me his message, kiddo. Calm down, take deep, slow breaths.”

Her hands shaking violently, she obeyed, opening her notebook to the correct page to show him. Gaara’s message hadn’t disappeared yet. It made her almost physically sick to watch the clumsy kanji on the page – the young boy was always so careful to write them precisely, he must have been really terrified to let go of this habit. Hitomi’s powerlessness made her throat constrict, made her breathing shallow and laboured. She wanted to go help Gaara, to go now , but she knew it was impossible. She was too slow… and what could she do, anyway, against trained Sunajin Jōnin?

“Okay… Listen carefully, Hitomi. I’m gonna go prepare and leave as soon as I can. Tell Gaara that I’ll be with him in three to four days. Until then, he has to stay with his sister at all times. If his father is behind all this, other shinobi won’t want to take the risk to hurt her. Before returning home, go find Shikaku at his place and tell him everything. Tell him I’ll come back when your friend is safe. I’ll keep you posted with his notebook. Take care, kiddo.”

Ensui’s voice, so calm and decisive, appeased Hitomi immediately. He always knew what to do. She nodded, her bravery coming back to her like a warm wave, and opened her notebook again as he came back inside.

Gaara, are you with Temari yet? Don’t leave her side. Your father’s men won’t dare to approach you if there’s a risk she could step in to defend you and get wounded. Ensui-shishou will take three to four days before he gets to Sunagakure, just the time to run there. Take good care of yourself, the both of you, and keep me posted.

Hitomi.

The message sent, she turned her back on her mentor’s house. She didn’t want to wait, to see him go. That would be too painful, even if she knew it was for a good cause. She ran to Shikaku’s place, ignoring her protesting lungs and the cold air on her naked legs. He was probably getting ready for bed when she knocked: he opened the door, still in his uniform, except for pyjama pants. Still, he listened to what she had to say, probably worried by the distress he could see on her face.

“I see,” he sighed. “Keep me in the loop, Hitomi, and do your best for your friend.”

Hitomi nodded then went back home. She felt so cold inside, so weak. By the living room window, she saw that a lamp had been switched on and made out her mother’s silhouette, pacing around the coffee table. She had probably heard her go out; not much escaped Kurenai’s vigilance, especially not a first-year Academy student, no matter how good she was.

“Where were you?” the mother asked when her daughter got to her. Hitomi was relieved that she didn’t hear any accusation in her voice, only a gentle and sincere concern. To the brink of tears, she ran in her arms and nuzzled her head against her neck, where the skin was so soft, so warm. She needed this, needed it so much.

“I went to see Ensui-shishou. There’s… There’s turmoil in Sunagakure. Gaara’s father has tried to get him killed. I’m so scared for him, Mom…” She didn’t need to say more. Her mother’s arms wrapped around her and held her close, with gentle strokes against her back. It soothed her a bit: her body relaxed at least, but her mind still agitated. She hated feeling so useless.

“He’s gonna update you on the situation, right? You have already done the best you could by sending him Ensui, sweetheart. He already left, right?”

“Yeah… He told me it was gonna take him three to four days to get there.” Hitomi knew very well how much time it took a shinobi to travel that distance. It felt so short, and an eternity at the same time. In three days, Gaara could die a thousand times. It was terrifying for her to know she had done everything she could and that it could still possibly not be enough.

Gaara would only be six in a few weeks, which meant someone had pushed the Kazekage to act earlier than planned against his son. Could it be her ? What if, by stabilising him, giving friendship and tenderness, she had distracted him from the hatred that was supposed to turn him into a weapon like his father had wanted? A jinchūriki that didn’t obey blindly was no use to such a man.

And yet the idea that she had even the slightest influence on a fucking Kazekage seemed preposterous. She was just a kid, for fuck’s sake! She wasn’t even supposed to have influence over her own family – and, yeah, okay, she had some, but only because she had developed an unfair weapon, the Stare, and not because she had real power over them. The Stare most definitely hadn’t made the Kazekage even more of a fucker than he already was.

“You should try to sleep now, sweetheart. It’s late and you have school tomorrow.”

The girl nodded, understanding. She could have just asked for the permission to stay home, but what good would it have done for anyone? She would, in the long run, be more useful to Gaara if she didn’t miss a class and tried her best to surpass her own performance every day. Staying home wouldn’t bring them any benefit.

However, the next morning, she realised how anxious the whole situation made her feel. She could barely listen to what Iruka was teaching them – fortunately, listening was enough for her to never forget. She kept a hand on her communication notebook at all times just in case it would turn cold, afraid she’d miss a message if she stopped touching it even for a second. She had received one in the middle of the night: Gaara had informed her that he had found Temari and she had taken him to safety, in a disused guarding post along an old border. Now the country had spread a hundred miles further in that direction, so no one ever used it anymore. It was barely a few hours from the Sunajin Gates, so it would be easy for the two children to find Ensui there.

The true surprise, for Hitomi, had been to read that Kankurō had been included in their plans, and was helping them too. One year Temari’s junior, he had just graduated from the Sunajin Academy, whereas his sister had one year of experience on the field. They were only nine and ten years old – according to Gaara, Sunagakure didn’t have the same standards as Konoha about their shinobi – and yet they were brave enough to help their little brother in a time of need.

At least Gaara was in better company than she could have hoped for. Admittedly, his siblings weren’t exactly the kind of strong shinobi she would have liked to guard him, but they could fend for themselves. Besides, they would bring him the kind of emotional support he truly needed. He would feel loved, cherished, more than Hitomi could ever make him feel through their letters.

And never mind her heart screaming that she should get back to Sunagakure. Never mind the feeling of emptiness, of coldness that invaded her mind when she realised how powerless she was to help him. She could at least continue talking to him, and in the long run she’d help more by being stronger, by graduating, by being free to travel through the Elemental Nations without an escort. As for the girls who glared at her because she had beaten their idol once… Well, when they’d be a real threat, perhaps she’d worry about it.

When she got back home, she was surprised to see her mother getting ready to go out, and not only to run a grocery errand. Was she already seeing Asuma or was it someone else? She didn’t dare to ask. Kurenai was secretive about her feelings and her relationships.

“Ibiki-san will babysit you tonight, okay sweetheart? Ensui is away on a mission with your uncle and Yoshino is away with Shikamaru to see her family. Ibiki-san owed me a favour so… You’ll be good, right?”

Hitomi quickly hid any sign of nervousness she could have let slip through the net and nodded in answer with a quiet smile, not even looking up from the book she had to finish reading before the following Monday for Iruka’s class. She still had to explain the last few chapters to Naruto so he would understand them. “Yep, don’t worry. Uh, before you go, could Naruto sleep here tonight? We have to study for the Academy.”

It was the perfect excuse so she wouldn’t have to spend the evening and the night – probably – alone under the same roof with the best interrogator from the Torture and Intelligence fucking Department. To Hitomi’s relief, her mom nodded in acceptance. She closed her book and ran outside, decided to fetch her friend and come back before nightfall.

Naruto wasn’t hard to convince; the two children were already working, bent over their books, when Ibiki arrived. Hitomi had to bite her inner cheek to stop herself from smiling as she caught the very discreet hesitation in the man’s behaviour when he saw the young jinchūriki. It was subtle, because you didn’t end up leading the Torture and Intelligence Department by throwing up your emotions in other people’s faces, but still, she had seen it.

The girl hugged her mother goodbye, watching her leave the house and walk down the alley. She seemed so relaxed, so happy, eager and impatient to join her date for the night. She was so beautiful in her dark green dress, the wind playing with her hair. Glorious, really, in the sweetest way a kunoichi ever could be. When Hitomi couldn’t see her anymore, she focused on Naruto, not caring one bit about Ibiki after he had greeted them both.

“So, the Elemental Nations are called that name because each of their names is one of the elements the chakra can naturally take in a shinobi’s Gates. We live in the Land of Fire; the other ones are the Land of Wind, the Land of Water, the Land of Lightning and the Land of Earth. Those five are considered the most powerful on several fronts, mostly military and economic. They all have a Hidden Village, like Konoha, but other countries have ninja villages that are too small to deserve that title.”

“Ah, I see!” Naruto beamed. “Do they do everything like us there?”

“Uh… No, not exactly. For example, after graduation at Konoha, Genin are paired in groups of three, each under the orders of a Jōnin-sensei. At Kumogakure, Hidden Village of the Land of Lightning, shinobi are often organised in teams of two. Sunagakure, Hidden Village of the Land of Wind, organised its ninjas by squadrons based on their skills until recently, but, at least for their Genin, they started to copy Konoha’s system. They saw it was efficient during the Chūnin exams, which are public.”

“Sunagakure, it’s the Village where you went with your shishou, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Gaara, the friend I made there, would like you very much. You could be good friends! He’s really sweet, just like you.” Without even trying to be subtle – sometimes, manipulating from the shadows was less efficient than throwing her intentions in the face of her victims – she stared at Ibiki, whose posture stiffened somewhat in the chair where he sat. He had listened carefully to Hitomi’s explanations, sometimes nodding with approval.

He cooked dinner for them as Hitomi helped Naruto with his calligraphy. He was still pretty bad at it and hadn’t passed any of Iruka’s tests. In the shinobi world, learning disabilities like the one the jinchūriki probably suffered from weren’t at all taken into consideration. You had to follow the rhythm or be left behind. As if Naruto would ever surrender.

After dinner – which she had to admit was quite good – Hitomi took Naruto to the garden. She felt Ibiki’s chakra behind her back; he had obviously decided to guard them perfectly. Maybe he was afraid of Kurenai’s reaction if something happened to her friend or her. After all, if gossip was to be trusted, her mother had the reputation of being terrifying when she was crossed. She had won her Chūnin exam’s tournament and had only used genjutsu from the beginning of the exam to its very end. All of that meant something in Konoha.

Darkness was falling slowly over Konoha, but that didn’t bother the girl at all. She could feel Naruto’s chakra; before her journey with Ensui, the boy’s very proximity would have made her scream in pain, but now she could manage and only felt a wave of warmth when he stood in front of her. Her voice gentle and confident, she taught him the opening kata Ensui had taught her an eternity ago, correcting his stance again and again. She congratulated him after each bit of progress, each success, and the infinite motivation in his big blue eyes was her reward.

Later, when Naruto was in the shower, she went to Ibiki, determined. “Do you play shōgi?” she asked while looking him in the eyes.

He had a little husky laugh, a deep and gravelly sound who reminded Hitomi of Shikaku. “You really are a Nara, ain’t you? Yeah, I play. Would you like a game or two?”

She nodded and went to fetch her board, settling the pieces in a few quick movements. When Naruto left the bathroom, still drying his hair, he found them both bent over the board, frowning and focused on the game. Of course, Hitomi lost that one, but Ibiki looked at her with interest as she put the pieces away.

“You have a peculiar style, d’you know that?” Ibiki asked.

“Learning to play with Nara Ensui, Shikamaru and Shikaku would do that to anyone, right?”

He laughed again then went back to his duties as the kids focused on their books again. Hitomi foresaw a test just after the weekend and it was out of question for Naruto to fail that one.

Chapter 19: A Study Group

The idea came to Hitomi as she was explaining mathematics concepts to Naruto. It really wasn’t her strongest subject, and she had a hard time finding the correct words to explain the steps to solve the exercise Iruka had given them. She would have liked to have Shino on hand: he absolutely loved maths and was patient enough to explain again and again to the blonde boy until he got it right.

Her thoughts drifted to other students from her class and their specialty. Hinata knew all the subtleties of the Land of Fire’s traditions. Shino was the master of all fauna and flora, and really good at mathematics. Shikamaru was the king of strategy, and Ino never missed a hidden code in any situation. Before graduating, they would all have to master all those subjects, and not only their specialty.

The study group emerged from a conversation during the lunch break. As always, Hitomi, Hinata, Naruto and Shino sat on the roots of their tree but, for once, Shikamaru, Ino and Chōji were there too. Usually, they ate lunch away from the rest of the group and they came back together in class – they were all sitting in the last row now.

“You should include Sakura in that group,” Ino said. “She’s very smart and she works a lot, even if she doesn’t have a preferred subject. She’s good at everything theoretical.”

Hitomi nodded, a smile on her lips. She hadn’t forgotten that Sakura would become Tsunade’s apprentice one day – and if it didn’t happen exactly like in the canon, she’d force the events in another way. She would have her place in the world, Hitomi would make sure of it. “I’d like Sasuke and Kiba too, but I don’t see them agreeing to work with a group. Too proud, the both of them.”

“Yeah but Sasuke is so cool,” Ino sighed.

That made Hinata and Hitomi exchange an amused look. Ino wasn’t a fangirl – she had dignity, she was clan-born, a heiress, after all – but she clearly had a little crush on the Uchiha boy, like a lot of girls from their class. And the other classes. And the other years. Still, it was funny to see them chase him. They didn’t have the slightest chance with him, now or ever.

“We could also get a head start on the program, maybe even free some time to learn things that don’t even come up at the Academy.”

“Like the katas you show me when we’re at your place?” Naruto asked.

“Exactly. Ensui-shishou taught me things we’re supposed to learn during the next few years. Are you in?”

The other exchanged glances before Shikamaru answered. “More work? What a drag… But I guess we have to do it if we want to be the best of our year.” This line released the slight tension in the group. Even Hinata laughed, a quiet, light sound muffled by her hand. She was, without a doubt, the most emotionally fragile person in their group and, since no one could do anything about her family being assholes, it had become a habit for Hitomi and Ino to invite her to spend the weekend at their place.

Hitomi stiffened when her communication notebook turned cold against her thighs, where she had put it so she could eat. She never allowed herself to stop paying attention to it, hiding it as best she could during tests so she would still know when a new message arrived from Sunagakure. Her friends, whom she had explained the situation to, helped her in that complicated undertaking.

Ensui had arrived at Sunagakure and found Temari, who had led him to the place where she and Kankurō were hiding Gaara. Since then, the man taught them, just like he had done with Hitomi. He was more than able to cover the Academy program for the youngest, and to teach new tricks to his older siblings. The siblings had started taking missions again but visited as often as possible, be it to bring provisions or simply keep Gaara and Ensui company.

Shikaku had let out a loud sigh when he learned that his newly found right-hand man was to spend four – or more likely six – years in the Sunajin Desert, since no other solution could be found. Then Gaara would become a Genin and would be able to fend for himself. Hitomi had felt a bit of selfish sadness but had quickly buried the feeling far beneath the surface of her mind. Gaara was safe. It was exactly what she had wanted. She’d miss Ensui, but she could cope with his absence.

And it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk to him: he sent her a message every night, after the one Gaara always sent her. She didn’t even feel that lonely, not with all the friends surrounding her. The boy had a far more urgent need than her for friends and adults. She could share, even if she wanted to see her mentor.

A few days later, she went to the first kunoichi class. It wasn’t exactly mandatory, but only a small part of all female students could graduate without following those lessons. Hitomi didn’t think it was very fair: she lost two hours twice per week, while the boys were free to go cloud watching – Shikamaru – or train even more – Naruto.

Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Ino and Sakura were there too, but not Hinata, who probably had access to far better tutors at home. Hitomi hadn’t found a way to approach the Haruno girl yet about the study group but a perfect occasion presented itself while Ino was explaining how to choose the best flowers to go with her lily. The blonde girl elbowed her lightly to make her look up and nodded to another part of the Academy’s garden, where Aimi and her goons were surrounding Sakura. That couldn’t be a nice chat. Leaving her bouquet behind, Hitomi stood up and went to them, Ino on her heels.

“What do you know about beauty, Aimi?” she drawled, as cold and cruel as she could be. “Leave more intelligent people alone and work on your own skills, if you even have some, you’ll make everyone happy.”

The girl couldn’t stand the fact that Hitomi had taken first place in the girls’ ranking and always tried to start arguments with her. Usually, one mean comment was enough to make her lose her barely existing wits, and the young Nara exploited that time to get away. But this time Aimi reacted, balling her hands into fists and taking an opening fighting stance. Hitomi adapted immediately, falling in a defensive position between Sakura and the girl.

However, Aimi didn’t have time to attack before Ino moved , throwing flowers in the other girls’ mouths, not only Aimi’s. As her friend explained about the poisonous properties of the flowers in question, Hitomi focused on Sakura. “Are you okay?” she asked gently. “I’m so sorry about Aimi, she’s insufferable. She can’t stand it when someone is better than her, and you definitely are better than her in class. She’s just a pathetic bully who prefers pulling people down rather than fighting to the top.”

And just like that, it was settled. Sakura joined her meetings in the courtyard, and the study group supervised by Kurenai, two hours a day after school and four hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Often, those sessions continued until dinner, especially when Hitomi tried to explain notions that were a bit too complicated to her friends. Slowly but surely, their little group progressed, each of them receiving Iruka’s compliments regularly – except for Shikamaru, perfectly satisfied with feigning mediocrity. Even Naruto had his fair share of encouragement from the teacher, which made him incredibly proud.

One of Sakura’s hidden talents was calligraphy. Her parents, rich kimono merchants who had left the Land of Tea to settle in Konoha a few years before having children, had taken care of teaching her all about it when they saw she had a talent for it. As Hitomi studied a treatise about storage seals borrowed from the Hokage Tower’s Library – it was only available for Chūnin and up, but, eh, it wasn’t her fault if they couldn’t protect their documents – her pink-haired friend looked over her shoulder to see what she was working on. “Oh, those are complicated strokes. You can do that?”

“Not quite yet,” Hitomi sighed. “The seals I created until now are mostly transfer seals, the strokes are easier. Ensui-shishou told me he was gonna help me learn those ones, but since he’s in Sunagakure now…”

“D’you wanna try with me? In exchange, you could tell me how all this fūinjutsu thing works in general.”

Hitomi thought about it for a second then nodded. Fūinjutsu was a disappearing art, despite its usefulness and potential. The girl understood she couldn’t give the precious knowledge to just about anyone but, even in Konoha, the village known for the Seal Masters it had brought into the world, the people able to do more than copying store-bought seals were rare.

That afternoon, after class, the two girls went to the Haruno household. Sakura had to pick up some of her calligraphy books to guide her friend through complicated exercises. As she went to fetch them, Hitomi talked about the Academy with her parents, describing the teachers and lessons. Apparently, communication was complicated in the family: the adults didn’t understand why, of all possible careers, their precious little girl had decided to become a kunoichi.

A bit later, they walked back to the Academy but had to stop in the middle of an alley, far away from the busy streets. A man, mid-twenties perhaps, his brown hair cut short, stood firmly in their way, his big arms crossed over his muscular chest. Everything, from his posture to his stare, darkly satisfied, screamed trouble to Hitomi. This was a trap. She was certain of it when, turning her head to the left just far enough to see, she spotted the silhouette of another man in her peripheral vision. “Sakura,” she warned in a low voice.

The girl hummed in understanding then pressed her back against Hitomi’s, covering the angle she couldn’t see. Ensui had taught her how to react to an ambush of that sort and to hell if she wasn’t going to fight back. She fell in a defensive position, one of her hands finding the kunai strapped to her forearm, inside her sleeve. Her master had shown her how to hide a weapon on her body at all times. Her lips pressed into a thin line, her red eyes analysing the situation. Sakura had just started on katas a week ago and couldn’t send chakra in her muscles. She was a civilian, for now.

And herself… She was good, yes, for a student, around the strength and skills expected of a Genin. She had a weapon and could fight. She stared at the man in front of her; she had chakra to enhance her skills, but she had never beaten an adult, let alone two of them. They were just civilians, but even then… Her focus came back to the threat as the man in front of her pulled out a knife.

“You’re gonna come with us like nice little girls, the both of you. If your parents are clever, we ain’t gonna do nothing to you.”

Hitomi answered by stepping toward him, all her muscles buzzing with chakra, then hit his knee with a side kick. Behind, she heard Sakura getting to work too. Her own opponent groaned and fell to his knees, swearing through clenched teeth. She didn’t allow him to react before punching him in the temple. If she had been stronger, she would have stunned him or even knocked him out cold, but he just groaned again and retaliated. With his knife.

Hitomi yelped in pain when the blade drove in her right thigh. For a dreadful second, she froze, then she overcame the shock and, strengthening her hand with all the chakra she could muster, she backhanded him so hard he fell backward, his head hitting the ground hard enough that he didn’t get up again. She hadn’t even used her kunai. Stupid.

When Hitomi turned to Sakura, her eyes went wide with horror: the other man had a knife too and was slowly getting the upper hand over her friend, whose arms were covered in bleeding slashes. Hitomi hurled herself in that direction but her brain screamed she didn’t have time, she’d be too late, her lips opened on an anguished sob as the knife initiated its descent toward Sakura’s chest. Her chakra went from her hand to her legs so fast it was visible for a second, enhancing her muscles. Still not enough.

And then he was there, his hand stopping the knife easily. His eyes turned from Uchiha black to Sharingan red. Hitomi froze again, shocked to the core, when she understood who , exactly, had saved her friend. She recognised the necklace around his neck, the stress lines on his face that would slowly spread under his eyes, year after year, until he was consumed.

And disappeared.

Except if she could prevent it.

Before she could react, he moved, speed and elegance embedded in a deadly, sharpened body. His other hand hit the thug’s throat and, as he fell to the ground choking, Itachi disarmed him, knocking him out with a fast hit to the head. Then he went to check if Hitomi’s opponent was unconscious too, his arm brushing against hers for a second.

He only relaxed then, his tall silhouette losing a bit of presence as the Sharingan dissolved in the black of his eyes. Using it against two civilian thugs was probably overkill, but Hitomi had heard that the Uchiha activated it on reflex when they were angry. He studied the girls with a long, inquisitive stare, his eyes stopping on each of their wounds. “Come here.” His voice was unbelievably soft and made a shiver run down Hitomi’s spine as she obeyed, limping hard. Sakura looked terribly shaken, pupils contracted to little dots in her green eyes and tremors running through her body.

“I’m going to make sure those two are taken to the police station to be interrogated, then take you both to the hospital. Everything is going to be okay, now. You’ve been so brave, the both of you.” His tone was calm, quiet, comforting. He was obviously used to talking to children – one in particular. Her lips a thin line, Hitomi watched as he used a kunai to nick his index and summoned a raven, ordering him to fetch the policeman patrolling a few streets from there.

Adrenaline was dissipating in Hitomi’s body, its disappearance awakening all the small and large aches of the fight. The worst was, without a doubt, the one burning her leg, where she had been stabbed. She felt blood running down her skin from thigh to ankle, a sickening sensation. Her dizziness became stronger with each passing second, especially when she started going through chakra exhaustion. Her muscles ached, her hand throbbed. She had probably broken a few bones there by hitting the man so hard.

“Easy,” Itachi whispered as he caught her before she fell on the ground. “I’m sorry I didn’t step in faster.”

Hitomi’s eyes met the young boy’s. They were still sharp despite the strain the Sharingan had put on him – she could feel his chakra levels, after all. Quick maths made her realise he was just twelve years old. In a few months, he would kill his entire clan, because no one could stop that chain of events. Hitomi was only seven. There was nothing she could do, not without revealing her deepest secret to the world, and she couldn’t do that. Not even for him.

“Thank you for stepping in at all, Uchiha-san,” she mumbled. “You saved Sakura.”

He gently shook his head, a smile on his lips, and signed Sakura to come closer so he could examine her wounds. “It was my duty. Here’s the patrol. Just hang in there for a few more minutes and you’ll be at the hospital, okay?”

Hitomi hummed in approval and closed her eyes, all her aches fading in a blissful wave of darkness.

Chapter 20: The Fading Clan

Notes:

Just wanted to thank you all for the support and the love you show this story each time I update it. I'm going through challenging times and planning for a major surgery in March and your words are a great help! Thank you ♥

When Hitomi regained consciousness, she was in a hospital room. She took a few minutes to understand, but she couldn’t confuse that smell with anything else. She pressed her lips with displeasure and turned her head, looking around. Shikamaru slept nuzzled against her flank. Her mother sat at her bedside, her eyes fixed to the door as if to guard her. Sakura was sitting in another bed and talking with Shikaku in a low voice while he took notes.

“Mom,” she mumbled in a surprisingly hoarse voice.

Kurenai started and turned her head to her daughter, her hands immediately stroking her cheeks tenderly. The touch brought tears to Hitomi’s eyes – she didn’t quite understand why – and she closed them, fighting against the need to cry. It was stupid. She didn’t have any good reason to cry. She let out a little groan, hating the hard time she had to simply think. She felt like her thoughts were mired in a thick sirup, which was terrifying for someone like her. She shook her head slightly once her mother’s hands were on her shoulders, trying to get her usual efficiency back. “I need to train harder.”

It was probably something stupid to say, since it made Kurenai, Shikaku and Sakura laugh. Hitomi frowned, her lips forming a pout before she could stop them. Okay, it probably wasn’t something people said when they woke up in the hospital after being stabbed, but it was the truth! She needed to learn how to defend herself against all types of opponents, even adults.

“We’ll talk training when you’re up and about again,” her mother said, tenderness and amusement in her tone. She stroked her hair and Hitomi leaned in the touch, fighting to keep her eyes open.

“About that. What’s the situation?” She emphasised her question with a gesture of her hand. She couldn’t see her leg, but she recognised the sensation of bandages around it. It wasn’t painful yet, but she knew it would come. Medical ninjutsu wasn’t miraculous. That was what Iruka repeated each time he told his students about that field, but she disagreed. Medical ninjutsu could do miracles in her eyes; but what ninja skill couldn’t?

“You come home tomorrow and can get back to the Academy in a week. Until then, you’re forbidden from any intense training.”

Hitomi groaned in frustration but fought the desire to roll her eyes. A week just seemed so freaking long… Pouting, she stared at Shikamaru, still asleep against her side. He hadn’t moved since she had woken up, but she suspected he was only pretending to sleep, like he often did. She knew he would bring her homework and notes from Iruka’s lessons but, for Mizuki’s class, she was fucked. She sighed, already planning all the training she’d have to go through once she was cleared if she wanted to stay top of the kunoichi.

“My father will come to see you during the week, to tell you about the Yūhi clan. He should have done so months ago, but it was hard for him to find time… Anyway, you shouldn’t be too bored with all the things he wants to tell you.” Kurenai smiled and took her hand, careful not to press on the bones she had broken. They had been fixed by medical ninjutsu but were still a bit sore.

Hitomi frowned, surprised. Yūhi Shinku was a loner. She remembered a few visits, including the one after her father’s death, but he spent a long time away on diplomatic missions out of the village. When he came back, he rarely took time to see his family, which made his willingness to teach her something a bit strange. But what did she really know about the man? This whole thing would be interesting, no doubt about it.

Her mother made sure Hitomi was resting. For the hospital, she had brought her two adventure novels as well as a language-based puzzle book. Hitomi had discovered those a few months ago and she couldn’t get enough of them. She wasn’t allowed to work on Academy stuff before coming home the next afternoon, and her mother made sure she relaxed. She also brought her food so she didn’t have to eat the hospital meals, so Hitomi wasn’t too mad about that deal.

One afternoon, as she was learning to prepare the lemonade she loved so much under Kurenai’s guidance, Yūhi Shinku decided to pay them a visit. He looked out of place in the peaceful house, with his Jōnin uniform and the tension running through his body without respite, as if he couldn’t see anything but a battlefield wherever he was. It was so rare for ninjas, especially Jōnin, to get to know their grand-children – and yet he was still there. He had probably seen too much to be able to play civilian, even for a few hours.

Hitomi followed Kurenai’s instructions to the T, preparing a tray with tea and biscuits before bringing it to the coffee table. It was included in the kunoichi cursus, but Hitomi had finally decided she wanted her mother to teach her and had dropped out of the class entirely. Her gestures still a bit clumsy, she presented biscuits to her grandfather after pouring him a cup of tea. He stayed silent for a few minutes, content with sipping on his tea, then seemed ready to speak.

“Well before ninjas decided to build the Hidden Villages,” he started in a soft, weary voice, “the Yūhi clan was one of the first to choose the Land of Fire as their home. The members of our clan weren’t as easy to identify as Yamanaka or Hyūga were, for example, and that discretion was their strength. For a long time, they thrived, careful to mingle with carefully selected civilians so they wouldn’t become inbred and weak.” He took another sip of his tea, his red eyes so similar to hers staring right at her, as if to make sure she understood each and every word. Knowledge was power, and she was fascinated by the one he was giving her.

“Our clan’s characteristics were transmitted by the father or the mother, but only the women could awaken the different powers the clan amassed through generations. When the village was founded, some scientists wondered why, but we still don’t know to this day. For a long time, our clan was entirely matriarchal, like the Inuzuka clan. Those were the only two clans with such a power system.”

“What changed?” asked Hitomi in a soft voice?

“My father was born. Since we became part of the village, the clan had started to fade, but my father’s birth was the last nail in the coffin of our lineage and traditions. His mother was an only daughter, you see, and after him, she couldn’t have children anymore. All the other branches of the clan had disappeared, one after the other, destroyed by the three wars. We were, after all, perfect for the frontline.”

Hitomi nodded, fascinated. She was probably a bit unsettling, staring at her grandfather with such avidity, but she couldn’t feign the distant and polite attention that was probably expected from her in this kind of situation – in fact, she had never been good at it. Ensui had told her more than once that he found her adorable when she gave him that look, but she had often seen people pull away when she stared at them that way.

“After that, things just got worse. My father died a short time after I was born, and my grandmother a few months after she had started teaching me. In Konoha, the law states that a clan can only retain that title if it’s composed of at least three members linked by blood. When you were born, we could reclaim the title and, if I survive until you get your own children, we’ll keep it.”

For a moment, tension surged in the room. It wasn’t killing intent, not at all, but an intent nonetheless, so intense that his chakra made it almost physical. Then Shinku sighed and the sensation passed, dissipating into thin air.

“To me, however, our title isn’t the priority. Our traditions and our history are far more important to me. I don’t care if you decide to have children or not, if I get to know them or not. What matters to me, more than anything, is that if you do have children, you tell them what I told you today, and what I still have to tell you, so our clan is never forgotten.”

The child nodded, solemn. She felt her mother’s presence, a few steps behind her. She had probably received the same words from her father when she was younger. Had Shinku dropped all his hopes and her shoulders too? It was a heavy charge but, compared to Hitomi’s other self-assigned missions… Yes, it seemed easy compared to the other things on her plate.

“Our clan,” he continued, “has always been considered minor. Despite this, our characteristics were very useful during the numerous conflicts that happened before the Founders Era, and then during the Shinobi World Wars. Foreigners started to call us Tailless Beasts during the first war.”

“Ensui-shishou told me that,” she said respectfully. “But is it… Is it an accurate comparison? I know I have a lot of chakra for my age, and that my reserves are only going to expand with the years, but compared to jinchūriki…”

“Trust me, it’s accurate. Look through the village’s archives when you have time, particularly for the first two wars.”

Hitomi thought about it for a few seconds then decided it would be as interesting as he hinted. The only man alive to bear that title to that day was Hoshigaki Kisame, former member of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist turned Akatsuki nukenin. If that title meant she was to possess one day the kind of power he had, she had to be warned, she had to prepare, and quickly, so she could pick the shinobi arts she wanted to specialise in, on top of fūinjutsu and kenjutsu.

“Our history often blended, in the past, with the history of other clans. We first were considered a very secondary branch of the Uzumaki Clan but, when Konoha was founded, our clan leader received an offer that was hard to turn down: the hand of a Uchiha son, from the main family. He was only a third son, not much in the inheritance line of his clan, but he gave us so much through marriage and, later, lineage.”

It was commonplace amongst the clans: daughters and sons who couldn’t inherit were married in other clans to forge new alliances. The person wedded in that way gained a little more power for the rest of their life, and their descendants gained all or part of their genetic abilities.

“Is it why we don’t look like the Uzumaki?” Hitomi asked as she poured another cup of tea for her grandfather.

The shadow of a smile appeared on his lips. “Exactly. The Uchiha’s black hair is transmitted to all their children, even in families far away from the main branch. It’s also because of them that we have red eyes, although we could never awaken the Sharingan. Some researchers from the Land of Whirlpools tried to figure out why, but they could only muster that it was an incompatibility between the Sharingan and our own Kekkei Genkai.”

It took all Hitomi had to stop her from choking on her tea. “We have a Kekkei Genkai?”

“We had one. You know what a Kekkei Genkai is, right? They are categorized in several types; the most well-known are the dōjutsu, with the Sharingan and Byakugan, and the Hiden, like the techniques only the Nara clan can use. Our Kekkei Genkai fell in that category. The nature of this power, what it did or meant, has been lost since the end of the first war, when the Konohajin Library burned. No person alive in this world remembers what we could do then, but I suspect…”

Hitomi stared at her grandfather, an all-consuming curiosity lighting up her big red eyes. She was stunned, fascinated by all the things she was learning that day. However, she took Shinku’s assertion about no one alive remembering the Yūhi Kekkei Genkai with the appropriate grain of salt, since she knew of at least two people having survived the First Shinobi World War still being alive. And, one day, she would have to fight them.

She wouldn’t be alone in that venture, though, she knew it. She had befriended Naruto and, if she wasn’t exactly at ease when it came to creating meaningful bonds with people, he had such a talent for it that it made her a bit jealous. She had Gaara, too, and Shikamaru. The three boys were probably the people from her generation she offered the most trust to; Naruto because he wouldn’t betray her even if his life depended on it, Gaara because he truly loved her and was terrified by the mere thought of hurting her, and Shikamaru because he’d been raised to think family was all that mattered, even before the clan or the village, just like she had.

“The most useful gifts the Uchiha offered us, what convinced our ancestor to accept this suitor as her husband, will be offered to you in turn when you’ll start your last year at the Academy. It’s a summoning contract.”

Hitomi’s eyes went wide. She had thought about signing such a contract, especially since Ensui had expanded her chakra reserves with his extreme training regime. She only knew of a few of them, the ones mentioned in the canon, and her research had established they weren’t accessible to her. But if Shinku had one to give her… He answered her question before she could ask, amusement gleaming in his eyes.

“It’s the Nekomadake Forest Cats contract. They are considered minor summons, but don’t underestimate them. They are individually weaker than the serpents or toads, that’s true. However, they only take one summoner per generation for a very good reason.”

“Mom, did you sign that contract?” Hitomi pipped.

“No, I didn’t. Since my childhood, everyone knew I had a strong predisposition for genjutsu and cats weren’t a good pairing for me, but Father made them do awesome things when he was at war. I signed the Dragonflies contract when my shishou offered it to me.”

Were there that many summoning contracts? What was certain for Hitomi was that the canon vision of this whole thing, with the Spiritual World divided in three realms for the three main species of summons, was critically simplistic. After all, didn’t her grandfather just mention a fourth one? She was sure there were even more.

“Hitomi,” her grandfather said, “Nara Ensui did the right thing when he shocked your chakra reserves into expanding, but he couldn’t have known you would get our contract. Unless… Did he offer you another one?”

Hitomi shook her head, lost in thought. She was wondering about the cats’ skills, and how she could mix them with her fighting style, the one she was already starting to develop and would continue to do for years to come. She already knew genjutsu wasn’t the right pick for her. Her mother had talked to her about it a few times since she had started the Academy and, if she acknowledged the power of illusions, the girl’s instinct told her that her own path was elsewhere.

She knew, for example, that she wanted to focus on kenjutsu, even if she hadn’t yet found someone to train her intensely. Her choice of weapon almost made her want to talk to someone who was or had been ANBU, but how could she even explain that she knew about their ties with the secret services? For a while, she’d train with her mother, since Ensui was in Sunagakure.

Then there was fūinjutsu, of course. With the creation of her communication notebooks, she had reached a kind of plateau, one she struggled to overcome. She knew it would pass. After all, all Masters had been capable of far more than just combining a few basic seals – because, really, once she had had the idea, it hadn’t been more complicated than that. The hard part had been stabilising the whole seal, and she knew she’d have to go through that with all her creations. She was currently working on storage seals and explosive seals, which was already far more than expected of even a Genin.

But it wasn’t enough, not for her. She didn’t know her elemental affinity yet, but she knew she would want to use it on the battlefield. Those powers were too flexible, too strong, for her to ignore them, especially with her chakra reserves. She also could count on the Nara techniques, even though she wouldn’t learn the next one before she was a teenager.

And then, there were all the minor but oh-so-useful talents she had: battle chemistry, her sickness turned sensor advantage, the battlefield control skills Ensui had taught her. She also wanted to learn more about psychological warfare, the basis of medical ninjutsu, and make her chakra control good enough to be useful in a fight.

Add the ninja cats to the mix and her arsenal started to look really good. It made for an awful lot of things to learn, to research, to develop, but… but she knew the results would make it all worth it, one day.

Chapter 21: Ten Future Rookies

Coming back to class was a bit strange for Hitomi. Her friends welcomed her as if she’d been through war, even if she had just been wounded. Okay, it was a worrying wound for a child but, compared to what she would face as a shinobi, what they would all face, it was absolutely nothing. Hitomi herself only vaguely realised what was awaiting her in the future, and only because she had seen Ensui’s scars, and knew what the canon had in store for her friends and her. She only had an abstract idea of the pain such terrible wounds would make her feel, and the consequences it would have on her mind.

She needed a bit of work to get back in shape for Mizuki’s class. She hadn’t run for a week when she came back, but the teacher didn’t see it as an excuse to take it easy, and she had to agree with him. The opponents she would meet later in her life wouldn’t politely wait for her to be back in top condition before throwing their worst at her, and she would always have to be able to give them her best.

No matter the consequences on her body, her mind, her soul.

No matter the guilt, the “I should have done better”, the physical exhaustion, the mental weariness, the apparently insurmountable difficulties, the thousands of mountains she’d have to cross and the seas she’d have to reroute. Shinobi had a moral duty to always overcome the person they had been the day or even the instant before. It was the reason why children weren’t allowed to skip classes anymore in the Academy. With Kakashi, Itachi, Shisui and so many more, the Third had finally seen the waste and consequences of burning all those flames too early, too fast, too hard.

In the theoretical class, she wasn’t behind, thanks to Shikamaru. Naruto, however, had suffered from her absence. He had come to see her at home almost every day, all cute and careful around her, but he had refused to make her work, even if it was to help him as she wanted to. When she saw the public ranking of their year, the day of her return, she saw how many places he had lost – she wasn’t ranked since she had not been able to pass any test the previous week – and couldn’t help but feel guilty about not helping him. He smiled and pretended not to care, but she knew that, deep down, it affected him.

For that exact reason, she put him back to work with a renewed focus, and herself at the same time. She had to get stronger so that that kind of wounds didn’t happen again, not against opponents that weren’t worthy of her time and of the time she’d spend healing afterward. A similar flame burned in Sakura’s eyes. The lucky girl had only missed two days of school. Hitomi was a bit jealous but also glad her wounds hadn’t been as severe as the ones she had suffered herself.

During Iruka’s lessons, Hitomi had started to take note of what he was saying but presenting it in another form, adding all the related information she had gotten from her family and Ensui on little cards for Naruto. This system had proven its efficacy when she was in college in the Previous World. She remembered full well the money she had made by selling her decks of cards, one per subject. It wasn’t about money, this time. She just wanted to help her friends.

Her cards immediately got a lot of success in her circle of friends. They had even developed a memory game with the decks she started to hand them at the end of each week. They drew a card, read the first five words and the other player had to recite the rest of it. It was a good game that made them memorise all her cards and the valuable information on them.

The game ended up attracting Inuzuka Kiba’s attention. He was friends with Naruto again, but had never really shown any interest in joining their study group, or even just in staying with them all during breaks. He was content enough with the playful rivalry opposing him and Hitomi during the speed tests in Mizuki’s class. The girl hadn’t ever won twice in a row against the Inuzuka boy, no matter how hard she tried, and that only made her try harder.

One day, as Sakura, Hinata and Shino played the memory game – Shikamaru and Hitomi had been forbidden from doing so and usually referred – Kiba approached their tree. Several times during the week, Hitomi’s friends had noticed he was listening to their conversations. Only Naruto, who wasn’t the most observant person, didn’t know. “Uh… Hitomi-san?” he asked politely.

That was uncharacteristic of him. Kiba wasn’t the kind to waste time with social niceties – most times, Hitomi wasn’t even sure he knew the rules in the first place. Staring at him, she slowly nodded, leaving Shikamaru to supervise the game – her friends hadn’t stopped but were on their guard, just in case.

“Yes, Kiba-san?” she answered in the same tone. She could play this game too, after all. She allowed a sweet smile to appear on her lips as Kiba got his dog Akamaru, perched on his head, to go down in his arms so he could pet him. He always did that when he was nervous and probably didn’t have any idea how telling this simple gesture was.

“My ma… My ma says I have to get better in Iruka-sensei’s class. My results aren’t enough for her.”

Hitomi nodded and gestured for him to continue. Oh, she had a rather precise idea of what he wanted, but she was still a bit crossed with him: a few weeks earlier, he had made fun of their study group and hadn’t apologised. Okay, it was commonplace for children to laugh at each other, but she didn’t want to make it easy for him.

He shifted his weight, scratched his cheek, and continued. “Uh… I heard you helped Naruto study and he’s getting better. Could you help me too, please?”

Hitomi had absolutely no intention of refusing, but she feigned a slight hesitation, just to make him squirm a little. She hadn’t liked the way he had laughed at her precious study group. It appeared that a childhood and adolescence spent, in the Previous World, bullied by her cruel classmates had taken its toll in a deeper and heavier way that she had initially thought. After a few seconds, she smiled and gestured for him to come closer. “Of course I can. Here, you can borrow my deck of cards while I create one for you.”

Kiba’s eyes went wide as he took the deck of cards she was handing him. “But how are you gonna make a new one if you give me yours?”

From the root he was sitting on, Naruto snorted loudly. A smirk on her lips, Hitomi pretended to glare at him and pushed him with her foot, just hard enough for him to lose his balance without falling. “Study the set on Kirigakure instead of playing smartarse. If you know it well enough tonight, I’ll convince Mom to cook ramen for us.”

She let him choke on his own saliva then swear he was going to know them by heart, ‘believe it!’, turning back to Kiba. “Trust me, I already know them all. I’ll bring you your deck in two days and, after that, I’ll give you the new cards once a week, like I do for everyone here. Now, listen carefully, here is how the game works…”

Under Shikamaru’s amused stare – the others were either busy eating, playing or frantically studying the Kirigakure cards – she started explaining the rules and briefly went over why she and her cousin only refereed. Before the end of the break, Kiba was perfectly integrated in their group, like he had always been part of it. Just like Naruto, he had that luck, those instinctive social skills that made Hitomi both slightly admirative and secretly jealous.

A few weeks later, Hitomi realised the amazing feat she had accomplished: eight of the nine ‘rookies’ from her generation in the canon presented an united front, and she was a member of that group, seen as a dear friend by each and every one of them, as someone they could count on. She would probably never feel the crushing loneliness that had been constant in her first life. Her family loved her, her friends loved her. She wasn’t alone anymore and, if she had to finish this life in a hospital, she knew she wouldn’t spend her last moments listening to the echo of her weakening breath against the walls of an empty room.

It was hard to admit how much her first life influenced the way she lived her new one. She was frightened by the mere idea of being alone, physically or mentally. When she studied in her room – she far preferred the living room – she couldn’t spend an hour without checking for chakra around her, just to make sure she wasn’t alone in the house; when she was, her gut clenched painfully. At the Academy, she always sat in the last row, but felt uncomfortable if the chairs next to hers were empty, which made her one of the last to sit down each morning.

Shikamaru had understood the unease she felt at the idea of being alone. He didn’t speak about it, but his looks, his body language, were clear and appeasing. He always had an eye on her and, when she had to speak on the little stage in front of the class, mostly for exercises given by Iruka, he stared at her, consciously giving her someone to talk to rather than the group the students represented.

She knew she would grow out of this fear one day. As a shinobi, she would have to, but it was even more important considering the enemies she had chosen for herself. She would have to fight some of them alone, so no one was ever harmed by them again. Her path was still nebulous, hidden in deep and thick shadows, but she already had some certainties concerning her future.

Gaara hadn’t been pleased to learn she had been attacked and stabbed – neither had Ensui, of course. Both had sent her long messages filled with worry and the adult had been very close to strapping the little jinchūriki on his back and taking him to Konoha. The mere idea of the diplomatic incident this would have caused made Hitomi shiver in anxiety. She had managed to reassure them by writing every day to explain the details of her health and remission. Even with that, she could still read the worry between the lines of Gaara’s letters.

To shake off her frustration, Hitomi had started to work on a plan to get Sasuke to join the study group. He was always first in the ranking, but she was always so close on his heels she could have surpassed him by sheer luck. She was slightly better in Iruka’s class but he always had a large enough lead in Mizuki’s class to keep his first place. She approached him when he was leaving the locker room, taking advantage of the fact that he was alone for once. “Sasuke-san?” she asked politely.

“Yes?” he answered with a weary glance in her direction. He didn’t have much luck with the girls in their class. Hitomi and Hinata were probably the only ones to leave him alone. Those kids were only six! How could they even think about having a boyfriend? It frightened the girl sometimes, to see her classmates pursue him with such intensity. As if Uchiha Sasuke was going to even notice them… The only important person in his life was his older brother. Still, her choice of particle, the -san rather than the -kun the other girls used, seemed judicious enough not to make him flee.

“I’d like to spar with you. I know you’re stronger than me, but I want to get better before we start sparring in class.”

He stared down at her, which was easy since he was taller than her; she didn’t step back or let herself feel intimidated by him, though. “What is in it for me?” he drawled.

“I think you will make progress too by sparring with me. I know I don’t look like it, but I’m strong and my shishou taught me how to fight. I could also teach you the basis of kenjutsu, if you’re interested and, of course, I could welcome you in the study group so your results in Iruka-sensei’s class would be even better.” She kept a straight air during her plea. She didn’t want him to think she was begging, it would ruin the effect. She was watching him, though, and she saw the interest he was trying to hide when she told him about kenjutsu.

“ You know kenjutsu?” he asked warily. She knew how much he admired his brother, and it was a skill Itachi hadn’t passed onto him, but was renowned for. Soon, the boy wouldn’t be able to teach anything to his baby brother. She suppressed a shiver; she couldn’t do anything about it. Not yet, anyway.

“As I said, I mastered the basis,” she answered with a shrug. “My shishou was an ANBU captain once. Before we came home from our trip, he wanted to determine what kind of weapon I would like to use, so I could do okay with it, just in case. If you come home with me, I can show you.”

“You wouldn’t offer me knowledge without a proper compensation.”

“Well, that much is obvious. I only offer knowledge without compensation to my friends. But, as I said, I want to get better at sparring.”

She didn’t mention the study group again. She knew she didn’t need to, since she had Sasuke’s attention. He was still a child, appreciative, jealous of a brother he would never surpass, saddened by his father’s impossible exigences. So easy to play. She refused to feel guilty about it: one day, he would need the support system she was offering him without his knowledge. She knew she was doing the right thing.

She saw him measure her with a stare and did her best to adopt Ensui’s posture, relaxed but vaguely threatening. Maybe she should start using the same dark green eyeliner… Nah, out of the question. She could hear from here the hysteric laugh the on-duty shinobi at the gates would throw at her if she did that.

“We can try, yes,” he said reluctantly. “But if you’re not good enough, I’m not going to waste my time training with you.”

Hitomi nodded, a peaceful smile on her lips. She knew Sasuke was arrogant and a bit of a prick – everyone knew that. And everyone knew, too, that she was even more self-assured than he was. Eighteen months on the road with a living legend tended to do that to a child. If Ensui had been able to see her value, so would the younger Uchiha brother. Her gait a bit jolly – she couldn’t allow for total exuberance, it was undignified – she took the boy to one of the Academy’s training grounds.

They weren’t as large or as interesting as the ones true ninjas could use, but they worked out okay. The one they picked had a little grove and was cut in half by a stream. Almost by reflex, she turned her back to the grove, allowing its shadow to embrace her. The sun was low in the sky, but they still had a couple hours of good light before sunset. Anyway, in case of trouble, she could still use the flash bombs Ensui had taught her how to make. She suppressed a wicked little giggle.

The two children started in a typical way, their still clumsy fingers forming the Seal of Confrontation. Hitomi didn’t waste a second after that, throwing herself at her opponent. Ensui had taught her a style of taijutsu that was fitting her small, delicate build. It was all speed and flexibility, made her hit as close to vital points and nerve bundles as she could without seeing them – not everyone was born with a fucking Byakugan – then backing away as quickly as possible, before retaliation happened.

She managed to hit Sasuke on the right pectoral, her open left hand slamming against the flesh hard enough to leave a bruise, then rolled under his extending harm to dodge the hit coming for her shoulder. He only brushed against her harm, staggering from the impact. The time he needed to recover was enough for her to back a meter away from him and take the opening stance again, her muscles tense and her legs ready to react. Ensui hadn’t put her through an extreme stamina or speed training – all training ended up extreme with him anyway – considering her too young to go through it without risking serious injuries. He had promised to do it after she graduated, and she shivered with impatience just thinking about it.

She hadn’t even recoiled like he had expected her to that day, only beaming at him so hard her cheeks hurt a little. She loved training, even and especially when he pushed her so hard, so far beyond her prior skills, that she was in pain afterward. Deep inside, she had been overjoyed as he had made her stress her chakra reserves into expanding again and again, even if her body had made her feel like she was in agony, because she had felt herself progress every day.

It didn’t stop her, the morning after sparring with Sasuke, from collapsing with a dramatic moan on Hinata, who blushed but caught her and stopped her fall, exactly like she had anticipated. That way, she of course attracted the attention of all her friends who had already arrived in the classroom, Shino and Sakura. A pained groan escaped her lips as she straightened up just enough to lie on her desk, her arm invading Hinata’s space. The Hyūga girl didn’t seem to mind: she patted her wrist, looking quite pleased with the whole situation. Hitomi filed that information away with another groan.

“Good morning to you too,” Sakura said. “What have you done this time?”

Half offended – only half, because everyone knew how hard she pushed herself in training, and how little she listened to people telling her to be careful – she opened her mouth to answer and closed it so fast her teeth clanked when Sasuke walked into class. Without any hesitation, he walked to her, ostensibly ignoring the painful way she bore herself as she straightened up.

“When do you organise your study group?” he asked.

“Every day after class for two hours, and from two to six in the afternoon the Saturdays and Sundays.”

“I’ll be there. Add two hours with me on Tuesdays for kenjutsu and on Fridays for taijutsu.”

She beamed at him then, so bright he recoiled slightly by reflex. Oh, she would love using the Stare on him, she was sure he would be sensitive to its effects. Still smiling, she extended her hand. “Deal!” she chirped.

He hesitated before taking her hand but, when she wiggled her fingers encouragingly, he gave in, his reluctance as obvious as it was overacted. “Deal, then.” Without another word, he went to sit down at his desk, leaving Hitomi still beaming – so much it was upsetting, didn’t she know shinobi were supposed to show dignity, restraint and impassibility? – behind him. He tried very hard not to wonder in what impossible situation, exactly, he had just stepped.

Chapter 22: The Second Year

After that little event, the group Hitomi had had in mind from the beginning was complete. The ideal situation, for her, would have been getting her hands on Hyūga Neji, Mori no Tenten and Rock Lee, but she couldn’t see a way to make it happen: they were their upperclassmen and didn’t want anything to do with younger students, even though Kurenai taught their study group things that would never be tackled through the Academy program.

The young mother made sure all ten children knew how to get checked in at the hospital. For that to happen, she had just let them injure themselves while sparring, then took them to the waiting room and explained the procedure while illustrating it with their own example. It was very informative and Hitomi was sure most Genin would be at total loss when they would have to seek medical attention for the first time.

Kurenai also gave them theoretical lessons. One afternoon at the end of winter, she gathered them around the big picnic table she had paid a Genin team to install at the beginning of the school year, when it became clear Hitomi would bring her friends home very often. When they were all sitting around her, she told them about the payment a ninja received after a mission.

During that talk, Hitomi and her friends discovered how crazy rich the Jōnin were, and how even Chūnin wouldn’t ever fear poverty. Even Genin had comfortable means. They learned that each clan had rules about the part of the pay a shinobi had to give them for maintenance. For example, with the Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka clans, half the money went to the ninja’s pocket and the other half was used to provide for the clan: its land, but also its children, elderly, sick, and wounded. What was left of that part went to the scientists of the three clans, who worked together to create what their ninja would need for their missions, and thus to bring back more money.

Later, Hitomi and her mother had another talk, just with Shikaku and Shikamaru this time. The Nara Clan was the only one to have a whole infrastructure dedicated to research and development. The Yamanaka had a kind of equivalent for psychology, the Aburame and Inuzuka worked together around fauna – in short, each clan had its specialty and systems to support it. The Nara, with their sharp minds and strange sense of creativity, explosive and lazy all at once, were quite rightly considered the inventors of the village. The Uchiha, for example, owed them all the different shapes of shuriken they liked so much, for instance.

Hitomi and Shikamaru thus learned how to file a patent under Kurenai and Shikaku’s supervision. The two parents demanded that they always did it with the Nara branch of the Research and Development Department rather than using the village’s one, first because they would get better royalties for their discoveries, second because it was an excellent way to support the clan to allow them to commercialise the concepts they had created, third because, if their findings were considered too dangerous or inappropriate, they wouldn’t be punished, just warned – extreme cases excluded, of course. The adults didn’t expect their children to have such a problem, but one never was too careful.

A few weeks after that, they went through the end-of-the-year evaluations. They wouldn’t be determining the young students’ future, but the parents of most children at the end of the ranking took them from the Academy and sent them to the civilian school, estimating that, if they couldn’t face the first exams of their life, they would be killed quickly during real missions. They were right. Hitomi had watched some of those kids. They didn’t have what it took to become a shinobi, and had mostly wanted to try because they wanted to become heroes. The ninjas weren’t heroes. They were the monsters waiting for the good people to fall asleep before they acted. It had never bothered her to think of her future self as such.

The overall ranking of their year didn’t surprise anyone. Sasuke was first, Hitomi on his heel by one point. She had been better than him in theoretical fields, but all the training he provided her with in the physical ones wasn’t enough for her to become his equal. After all, he’d made some progress too there. Mizuki had been reluctant to admit how far the two students had come, but he was that way with everyone, so Hitomi didn’t take it personally. She still hated his guts on principle, though.

Then came, in that order, Hinata, Shino, Ino and Sakura. Chōji and Kiba weren’t as dedicated to their studies than those four and thus were ranked under them. As for Shikamaru and Naruto, they were the only ones to be ranked far below, in the middle, amongst civilians: Shikamaru because he had intended it so, and Naruto because he had started the year dead last and was slowly climbing his way up. Kurenai, very conscious of his efforts, made sure to invite the little jinchūriki to the party she had planned to throw for Hitomi alone at first.

Hitomi,

Congratulations on your second place. I was certain you would make it. Continue to make me proud. Gaara works hard too. I had his chakra affinity tested last week: he got Wind, and Earth as a secondary affinity, the perfect combination for Shukaku’s host. Your mother should do this for you very soon. Depending on your results, I’ll have D-ranked and even one or two C-ranked techniques to teach you once I’m back home. I know it’s supposed to be left to your future sensei, but you are still my apprentice and I want to pass my own knowledge to you.

I miss you, kid. Take care of yourself and of your friends.

Ensui.

Hitomi,

When we see each other again, you’ll be even stronger than you were before. I will be too, of course. Temari decided to teach me Wind Release techniques, but I don’t feel like wandering around with a huge fan strapped to my back like she does, on top of a huge gourd for my sand. Ensui-sensei and I are working on a way to always have some of it around and infuse it with chakra at all times, to see if it does something that regular sand wouldn’t.

Kankurō has started training with the Puppeteers Squadron, but he comes back here every night. He started decorating the walls and crafted pretty trinkets with the scraps of wood he’s got once he’s done creating a new puppet. He’s really good at sculpting animals, but we don’t have a lot of models here in the Desert. Would one of your friends like to draw some animals for us? I know you don’t like drawing much.

I miss you,

Gaara.

Both messages appeared simultaneously as she was getting ready for the party her mother had thrown – rather a diner, though – but Hitomi liked taking care of her appearance in this body. She finished brushing her hair, styling them in a bun, her still a bit clumsy fingers fighting against the rubber band, then sat down at her desk to answer.

Unlike some students around her, Hitomi hadn’t lost time wondering what her main elemental affinity would be, or even what the secondary ones would be. She didn’t want any more than the others: each had their strengths and weaknesses, and each made its master capable of exploits. The affinities didn’t decide the role a shinobi would be best suited for, even if Lightning Release masters rarely went for spy work. Anyway, they were all suited for the frontlines, and that was where Hitomi wanted to be.

Her answer written, she put her notebook away in a little handbag and went downstairs, wearing a pretty dress. Its pale pink shade was matched by the flower in her hair, and it complimented her skin in a way she really liked. Kurenai really had a knack for fashion and loved dressing her daughter up. The girl met her mother’s eyes and smiled before sitting next to Naruto, who was telling a story about paint and… socks? She didn’t want to know.

To her deepest surprise, Sarutobi Asuma knocked at the door a few minutes before dinner was scheduled to start. Hitomi only then noticed the extra plate her mother had gotten ready for him at the table. When she was done berating herself mentally for missing such an obvious detail, she wondered about their relationship. Were they already in love? She sometimes missed being an adult, or even a teenager. At seven, almost eight years old, she couldn’t really tell dirty jokes to tease them.

The holiday month before the Academy started again, for Hitomi, was spent training and honing her skills to a razor’s edge. She mostly worked with Hinata and Naruto, since both children didn’t want to spend time home. Naruto wasn’t allowed more than one night a week out of the orphanage, but it didn’t stop him from spending all his days in the Yūhi garden, working with his friends. As for Hinata, she had obtained the right to stay all weekends, thanks to heavy negotiation and subtle manipulation from Shikaku and Kurenai. It didn’t save either of them, but it softened their daily life to know that they were wanted and loved in at least one place in the village.

Hitomi had really expected her first day of the school year to be predictable, boring even. However, she had to admit that something was weird. Sakura didn’t show up at all that day, nor the following one. It wasn’t like her, not at all. She was extremely dedicated to her studies and, even when she was sick, she went to school. If she really couldn’t make it, then she contacted Hitomi and Shino at least to ask them to bring her notes on the lessons she had missed and the homework they had to do.

After class, Hitomi and Ino decided to investigate. Their arms heavy with their new Academy books, they walked to Sakura’s place, this time careful to avoid alleys and stick to the main streets of the village, even if it was a longer distance to walk. Hitomi still had a kunai strapped to her forearm and wasn’t making any effort to hide it. Her teachers knew why she wore it and they understood – or perhaps Kurenai had threatened them.

Sakura’s mother opened the door. She looked surprised to see them there for a second then her expression softened and she let them in, inviting them to the living room. They obeyed after taking off their shoes. Hitomi’s slippers were a bit too big, which made it hard to walk without tripping. And she didn’t want to trip. It wasn’t dignified for a kunoichi. Yes, she still had five years of Academy before claiming that title, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t start behaving accordingly.

In the living room, they found Sakura sitting on the ground in front of the coffee table, which was almost disappearing under a mountain of books. Approaching, Hitomi realised they were mostly about medicine. She raised an eyebrow, exchanging a quick look with Ino. The Haruno girl seemed surprised by her friends’ presence, as if she had expected to be forgotten.

“Hum, you’re not coming to the Academy anymore?” Hitomi asked. She felt uneasy despite her best efforts to relax. Sakura’s house was lovely, but it was a civilian home, full of dark corners and hiding spots. Even with her sensitivity to chakra, Hitomi didn’t feel safe in there. Ino to her side, she sat around the table too, crossing her legs under it. Her hands went there too, so she could pretend she was alright.

“I thought about it a lot during the holidays,” Sakura said. “With my parents, we decided that medical school would be a better fit for me. You don’t remember because you had passed out from the pain, but a medic nin came to heal our wounds, that time, at the hospital. He looked so self-assured and… Well, I think that’s what I want to do.”

Hitomi made her best effort to stay impassive, but her thoughts started to run full speed. Sakura wasn’t supposed to leave the Academy. She was supposed to become a ninja then bloom under Tsunade’s tutelage. Was it still possible to put woman and child on the same path? Sakura would become one of the best medics to ever exist if she became the Senju Princess’s apprentice. The world needed her, and Hitomi couldn’t take that away from her. She would find a way, if it didn’t happen on its own. She still had years to plan it.

“Do you like it?” Ino asked gently.

Sakura’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, giving them all the answers they needed. A bit of Hitomi’s unease disappeared then. After thanking her friend’s mother, who was bringing them refreshments, the girl listened as Sakura described the classes she had had so far. The school that taught the future medics was attached to the hospital and had been founded when Tsunade of the Sannin still lived in Konoha, under her loving care. She had written the program from the beginning to the end and had updated it as new discoveries, mostly hers, made the field evolve. She had only stopped when she had left the village; other, less talented doctors, medics and scientists had continued to take care of her pride and joy.

Tsunade should have been labelled a deserter the minute she had refused to report for duty after a summons from the Third. Only her reputation and her ties to the Senju family had allowed her to remain free, and out of the village. Despite that, she was still a hero in Konoha, especially amongst the kunoichi. It was the Princess, after all, who had developed the contraceptive all the women in the ranks took when their first periods happened to stop having them until they wanted to get pregnant – then, they only had to take the other injection that neutralised the first one. It made it all so easy.

Before that, kunoichi had been forbidden from doing any mission out of the village one week per month, just because the blood made them dangerously easy to track. The cramps, discomfort and mood swings weren’t as deadly but had also been at risk of compromising the most delicate missions. Tsunade had changed that system, giving back their full capabilities to her peers, in all circumstances.

After an hour spent chatting with Sakura, the two girls took their leave. Their day was far from over: in the heart of the Nara lands, Kurenai was waiting for them, a whole back-into-shape session planned to start the school year on a sound basis. Some of them had trained during the holidays, but others, like Shikamaru, had decided to rest so they would be up for the new challenges waiting for them. The two approaches were as good as the other. Hitomi was just always one to choose the restless path.

In second year, the Academy classes intensified but still stayed very theoretical. For the first time, students heard about chakra and how it was used to create ninjutsu techniques that defied the laws of nature, and sometimes even reality itself. Those lessons Hitomi already knew like the back of her hand – Ensui had made sure of it before teaching her how to control her own chakra.

She kept boredom at bay by trying to transcribe the books and stories she had loved from the Previous World in one of her infamous notebooks. She wasn’t at a loss for choices but had decided to pick the first Warriors stories to start. Adapting those wild cats’ stories to the codes of the shinobi world was quite easy, after all. She started working on it at the beginning of the school year, even though writing all day made her left-hand ache.

Shikamaru sometimes read what she was writing over her shoulder. He was trying to hide his interest, but his cousin knew him better than that – so much so, in fact, that when she finished the first book around December, she put it in his bedroom with a note instructing him to suggest edits. He never got to know how she had sneaked in while he was asleep without waking him up.

If she had lacked relational and material happiness in her previous life, she had known the serenity, the gentle and sincere surge of joy from reading stories that echoed deep inside her and equally brought her to tears and laughter. Those stories had never reached her new world, she had made sure to check. If she could do it… Her memory was a perfect tool for that, after all. She wanted to pass on the felicity she had felt one page after the other, and that goal seemed so innocent, so devoid of the violence that would soon fill her shinobi life… Maybe this breath of fresh air would give her the strength, when she needed it, to turn her own heart cold and hard.

Her mind lost in her notebooks, Hitomi barely noticed the months go, until a terrible, heart-wrenching event reminded her that this world wouldn’t wait for her to be ready to fight back.

Chapter 23: The Night Of Tears

Notes:

I'm so sorry I'm late. I had a major surgery Monday and was still very out of it yesterday. I feel better now!

She had just spent the worst night of her life. What should have been a joyful celebration had ended up in blood, terror, and tears. She only wanted one thing: to go home, hug her little boys as hard as she could without hurting them, and finally close her eyes. This respite  had been taken away from her, however, by the ANBU operatives who, instead of offering her the help and comfort she needed after seeing Biwako and Taji being murdered, had arrested her and treated her like a criminal.

She had lost two comrades that night, and she didn’t know why she was still alive herself, didn’t know what the masked man had seen in her, what had restrained his blade. That didn’t matter, not really; what he’d seen in her hadn’t stopped him from taking the tiny, adorable baby her friend had just given birth to from her arms as she was cleaning him. She had stayed in the room where Kushina had gone through labour, alone amongst corpses, terrified, until the ANBU had arrived and taken her away.

She only owed her freedom, after a few hours in a cold, dirty cell, to her husband’s influence. He was still there, sitting right next to her, a hand against her back as a rare public gesture of comfort and support. He was dignified, after all, so dignified, so proud. It was one of the things that had made her fall in love with him, even though their wedding had only been a political one in the beginning.

In front of them, the Third breathed deeply then straightened up, his stare hard and serious. “I can’t let you have Naruto.” The sentence was short, cutting, and left the two Uchiha outraged. Mikoto’s heart broke as a rush of panic washed over her. She was Naruto’s godmother, for the Hermit’s sake! Minato had chosen the godfather, and Kushina had… She had chosen Mikoto to watch over her son if something happened to her. But even the formidable, terrifying jinchūriki hadn’t expected the Shinigami to take her so soon.

Before she could open her mouth, try to defend her rights, the man that was once called a god amongst Shinobi talked again. “We still don’t know what happened, Mikoto-san. The only thing we know for sure is that you are the only survivor. Given those conditions, the Konoha Council and I refuse to put the jinchūriki in your care. We can’t guarantee you wouldn’t use it to release the Kyūbi on the village once more, it’s a safety measure, nothing more.”

And suddenly, suddenly Mikoto started to hate that man, who was speaking about Naruto as if he was nothing but a weapon, with all she had. Her eyes burned with the effort to attempt to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan. Had been burning without rest since last night. She had only fought against it because she knew how this new, terrible ability would only make her even more suspect in front of the rest of the village. The blooming of her hatred, violent and yet so quiet, almost pushed her over the edge despite her best efforts. “I’m his legal guardian now,” she tried. “You can’t…”

“I can!” the Third snapped. “I can and I will. Jiraiya, the boy’s godfather, passed his responsibilities on me before leaving the village for a long trip. If you can make him change his mind, I’ll have to bend. Until then, however, you won’t go anywhere near Naruto.”

For the first time since that dreadful night had started, Mikoto fell apart. It was discreet, because she was still a kunoichi, born and raised to become the Uchiha Lady since she was a child. A lukewarm, bitter tear ran down her pale cheek. She stiffened her hands on her knees to stop them from forming fists, her exhausted eyes looking at the delicate fingers and dirty nails – she hadn’t had the occasion to clean them, to wash away the blood and dirt. She forced herself to meet Fugaku’s eyes.

And there, she saw it.

The perfect reflection of her own hatred.

That night, for the first time, Uchiha Mikoto followed her husband under the Nakato temple, the only building on the clan lands to have resisted the Demon Fox’s fury, and she listened to what the men had to say. For the first time, she became the traitor Konoha saw in her anyway.

Hitomi woke up with a start, her eyes wide open. She shook so hard her teeth chattered, her breath shallow and painful. She had never had a dream that gave her such an impression of reality. She tried to appease her body and her mind and sat down on her bed, hugging her legs with her arms. She was terrified, in a way that even childhood nightmares had never managed to make her.

It took her long minutes to calm down enough to think coherently. The dream, of course, was waiting in her Library to be filed and analysed, but what was she even supposed to do with it? She knew Uchiha Mikoto had been friends with Uzumaki Kushina, but she didn’t know if they had been together during the labour that had led to the Kyūbi attacking Konoha, the death of its jinchūriki and of Hokage the Fourth. Yet, it seemed plausible. With great precautions, she filed the dream in an empty shelf of the section reserved for her new world. Her gut told her this shouldn’t be easily discarded.

In the morning, she was horrified to hear about the Uchiha Massacre, which had happened during the night. She burst into tears in her mother’s arms, her mind still full of the quiet, gentle hatred Mikoto had felt for the Third. Her hands tensed so hard against Kurenai’s back her joints ached, a sensation she perceived somewhere deep and far away inside her mind. It took her more than ten minutes to become calm enough to act.

She sat at her desk under her mother’s ever-watching stare and started writing, her cheeks still wet with tears. She hurt, hurt for Sasuke who was suddenly alone, hurt for Itachi who only wanted peace and abhorred violence, but her words, that at least she knew, were never more beautiful or truer than when her pain took control and spoke for her. At least, for once, they would be useful, really useful.

The funerals happened two days later. The Academy would only re-open the following day – two teachers and seven students were amongst the victims. The endless rows of coffins, some of them so little , made Hitomi shiver and ache deep inside. She still held herself straight and strong, as dignified as a child could be in the de rigueur black kimono. Eight monks had come from the Fire Temple to lead the oration, their deep, solemn voices praying for each of the one hundred forty-nine victims to have eternal peace now that they had departed.

Hitomi noticed Sasuke standing in front of his parents’ coffins. He wasn’t crying, but his fists were so clenched it had to hurt, his dark and tired eyes staring at nothing in front of him. The girl knew him well enough to know that he wanted – and had to – say a few words at least, but didn’t know what to say. He had never been good with words, their beauty and righteousness. She, however, had that gift. Encouraged by her mother’s hand brushing against her back, she went to join him.

Long minutes passed, the children standing side by side in silence. It slowly attracted the adults’ attention, but they didn’t notice it. When Sasuke finally turned toward her, she offered him a sheet of paper with both hands. It was folded twice and covered in her handwriting on both sides – her gift to him. He took it in the same way, slightly bowing by reflex before unfolding it and starting to read for himself. His dark eyes widened slightly when he understood what she had given him and, if he didn’t smile, a quiet relief appeared on his features. It was enough, and so much more than he could have done by himself. Worthy of them. Respectfully, Hitomi took a step back as he straightened and spoke, reading the speech she had written in his name.

When the boy’s voice choked around the words, Hitomi put a gentle hand on his forearm, just for a moment. She hadn’t expected him to become a true friend in the months she had spent training and working with him, but they had too much in common for it to have gone any other way. She had spent many afternoons at his place studying for a test or working on the katas Ensui had taught her and that she had offered him in turn. She had seen Itachi’s features slowly grow gaunt with anguish, the tender and reserve affection uniting Mikoto and Fugaku. She had seen it all, and her heart was mourning too.

Several hours later, when the ceremony had ended and the guests had started to leave, Kurenai approached the two children, noticing their linked hands and the way they drew comfort from each other’s presence. Sasuke’s free hand was clasped around the oration Hitomi had gifted him – a gesture the young mother approved of entirely. She knelt down to look them in the eyes, extending a hand to gently pat the boy’s shoulder. “I spoke to the Hokage,” she announced in a soft voice. “If you want, you can come live with us from now on. We’re very extended family, but you’re still my blood and I would be honoured to take you as my ward.”

Sasuke looked astonished by her proposal. Internally, Hitomi was too. She knew it hadn’t happened that way in the canon, knew that Sasuke had simply lived alone because in the Hokage’s mind it was totally fine to let seven years old kids live alone. When her friend looked at her, as if asking for her approval, she nodded with a quiet smile. Only then did he answer, almost choking on his own words. “I-I accept. Thank you, Yūhi-san. You have no idea how much it means to me.” So dignified, even in sorrow.

“Call me Kurenai, please. Come, let’s go find some food. It’s getting late and I’m sure you’re both hungry.”

Two stomachs growling answered that question. With a sad little smile, the young woman stood up and took both children to a civilian Akimichi restaurant in the area. The meal was quiet, the discussion focusing mostly on Sasuke’s room and how he wanted to decorate it to really make it his own. The topic was voluntarily light. Hitomi sometimes intervened to suggest a shade or pattern that she knew her friend liked.

That night, the boy joined her in her room in the middle of the night, his cheeks drenched in tears. Supposing he probably had had a nightmare – who wouldn’t, in his place? – she didn’t say a word, simply moving sideway in her bed to give him space. He crawled between the warm sheets, as silent as she was, taking refuge in the open arms ready for him, then fell back asleep.

The following days were a challenge. Sasuke, as was to be expected, was deeply affected by his brother’s betrayal and by what he had seen during that wretched night. His visits to Hitomi’s bed became a habit, since it didn’t really disturb her. Sasuke was an agitated sleeper, but she managed to ignore it, sometimes by going to her Library instead of really sleeping. The most important, for her, was that he was getting better little by little. When the third year started, he was able to sleep in his bed all night again.

Hitomi’s nightmares continued to appear every few days to put her in a state of constant anxiety. She didn’t see the past anymore but the future, little pieces of it that, as she well knew, hadn’t been modified by her actions yet. Those dreams reminded her of why she sometimes had difficult decisions to take and how long the path still was under her feet.

Third year began at top speed with Mizuki’s class. Up to that point, he had only made them work on ways to improve their stamina, speed, strength and flexibility without ever applying it to fighting in any way, but it was time for them to learn the basic Konohajin katas. They were different from the ones Ensui had taught Hitomi, the ones she had in turn taught to her group of friends, but they still had an advantage on other students, since they already knew how to work on that kind of exercises.

Hitomi fell into a comfortable routine week after week. She didn’t really like the katas taught in the Academy but mastered them as soon as Mizuki showed them to the class. She didn’t really see what they could offer her: their style was very flat, predictable, polyvalent but without a true advantage in any aspect of a fight. The ones Ensui had taught her were a better fit for her, by far: thanks to them, she had learned to target her opponent’s weak spots and vital points, then back away before they could reciprocate. Fighting like that required astonishing speed she was still far from reaching and a lot of agility, but very little strength. A perfect combination for her.

Before Hitomi realised it, the fourth year had started. Now, the Fellowship, as she liked to call it, was established in the Academy, and the three groups had been reduced to two, still separated by levels. The taijutsu class gathered all the students now and, one month after the beginning of the school year, Mizuki announced that it was time for them to start sparring. Hitomi felt ready and self-assured. She had trained and only feared fighting against Hinata or Ino – because, of course, the teacher had separated girls and boys, as if there was such a gap in strength that pitching them against each other wouldn’t have been good for anything.

The way he organised these duels was obnoxious, Hitomi picked upon it instantly: the teacher picked two weak children for the first match, then selected a student from the ones who hadn’t fought yet to spar against the winner. He claimed he was doing it at random but, very often, the matches opposed a weak and a strong student. He used an Earth Clone to keep an eye on the girls while he watched over the boys.

Hitomi smelled trouble when Aimi overcame her opponent, another civilian girl, and Hinata was called to fight next. The girl couldn’t stand to be excluded from the Fellowship and, rather than trying to join it by being nice and polite, she verbally attacked everyone of its members every chance she got. She especially picked on Hinata, the only girl who didn’t fight back. Most often, Hitomi or Ino stepped in and sent Aimi away with a cutting remark. Seeing their friend climb on the stage the teacher had built with an Earth Release technique made the two girls nervous. Aimi had a violent, vicious fighting style for a civilian, and Hinata… Hinata wasn’t there yet. She hadn’t yet cultivated the aggressiveness she needed to fight against that kind of opponent.

Hitomi clenched her teeth through the whole fight, her red eyes fixed on the little bully who took such obvious pleasure in hurting her friend, one hit after the other. Hinata tried to fight back, but she had never tried to fight outside of katas or friendly spars amongst the Fellowship. Even when she parried punches and kicks, she couldn’t quite hide the pain it made her feel.

And then Hinata tripped and fell on one knee with a pained yelp. One of her cheeks was red and slightly swollen, and the other sported a deep clawing mark. Her hands had taken the worst of it, though. She probably wouldn’t be able to use them for hand seals in Iruka’s class the next day. She opened her mouth to yield, but didn’t even have the time to articulate the word before Aimi’s hand struck her already painful cheek, the impact violent enough to make her head tilt to the side.

An icy anger invaded Hitomi’s mind as she watched her best friend fall unconscious after a last, vicious punch to the temple. She and Ino were the only ones who hadn’t fought yet, on the girls’ side. When the clone called her, Hitomi tried to stay impassive, wiping the blood on Hinata’s split lip before dragging Hinata to the edge of the stage as gently as she could so Ino could take her and wake her up. Only then did she look up and meet Aimi’s eyes, which were suddenly nervous. For the first time in her life, a bit of killing intent bloomed on her skin like a poisonous flower, turning the air around them heavy and stale.

She didn’t care.

Blood called for blood, after all.

Chapter 24: The Halcyon Years

Mizuki seemed totally unaware of the danger Hitomi was to her opponent; Iruka, in his place, would have stopped the fight, and the previous one too, just to make sure his students were safe. An icy wave of fury surged through her mind, quiet and violent at the same time, blooming like a flower in her chest tightened by anger. She had never felt so calm, so detached.

Suddenly, she let energy explode inside her and leaped toward Aimi, feinting with her right hand before slapping her with the left, probably twice as hard as the bully had slapped Hinata. Aimi attempted to counterattack with a knee strike but Hitomi simply faded away from her strike’s path, long black curls floating in her wake until she was behind the bully. A solid kick to the small of her back made Aimi fall to her knees, and Hitomi knocked her unconscious with a hit to the neck. The whole thing had happened in barely more than a second.

She wasn’t even sweating. Her breath was still regular, calm, as if fighting at this speed was natural, as if the blows she had dealt to her opponent had been effortless. It was at least partly the case: Hitomi had sparred against a clone of herself controlled by Nara Ensui, Strangling Shadow of Konoha. A cruel, brutal, crude civilian girl wasn’t the slightest threat to her.

Without even looking back at her, Hitomi jumped down from the stage before Mizuki’s clone could even call on her next opponent. “Sorry, Ino,” she said as she stepped toward her, “I’m gonna take Hinata to have her wounds looked at. We’ll spar next time, okay?” Her tone was still stiff with anger. A few girls whispered as she walked past them to kneel in front of a still groggy Hinata. Slowly, as to not hurt her more, she helped her stand up and guided her out of the Academy, one step at a time.

“N-not the hospital,” Hinata groaned, leaning heavily against her.

“I know. Don’t worry, I have a plan.” If she took Hinata to the hospital, it would be written down in her medical file and her asshole of a father would use this incident to further destroy his daughter’s self-confidence. That was out of the question, and the reason why the girl was leading her friend to the Nara lands instead. Hinata was a few centimetres smaller than her, but she was still heavier than what her still young muscles were used to. Without another word, she strengthened the most solicited parts of her body with chakra and only stopped when she arrived in front of Shikamaru’s house.

There, she released a spike of chakra in the air without letting Hinata go – the girl would have fell if she had had to stand alone. In a short distance, chakra spikes worked a bit like a distress flare, but one only shinobi could sense. A few seconds later, Nara Yoshino threw the door open, a kunai in her other hand. She only needed a second to understand what her niece and the Hyūga heir were going to ask her. She negligently threw the kunai on a wall behind her back and took Hinata in her arms, lifting her up effortlessly.

 During the following minutes, Hitomi didn’t say a word, only watching with a slight air of anguish as her aunt healed Hinata’s bruises and wounds. When she was sure her friend would be okay and all the traces of the fight would disappear, she went to the kitchen, still moving on autopilot mode, and prepared tea for all three of them. She slept over often enough – her cousin and her always tried their best to fool Yoshino’s vigilance so they could play shōgi until dawn – to know where everything she needed was.

When she came back, a tray in hands, Yoshino and Hinata were talking softly. They stopped when they saw her approach. With a little smile, Hitomi put the tray on the coffee table then went to face her friend, who was still sitting on the couch. She raised her chin with the delicate pressure of two fingers so she would look at her, then her red eyes searched for any trace of damage. When they didn’t find any, she let her expression soften and hugged Hinata, pressing her forehead against her friend’s shoulder. “We’re gonna make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again, okay?”

And, the following weeks, she focused on that goal. She talked about it with Sasuke for hours, seeking his help to find a way to train her best friend. Obviously, Hitomi didn’t at all function like Naruto: she had a formidable will, but this quality was hidden deep inside her, and pretending she wasn’t up to the challenge would only break her, not motivate her to prove them wrong.

The solution was more complex than it had been for Naruto, because Hinata was a really good fighter. Her taijutsu was far better than average. What she lacked was the aggressiveness to use it, and this, she wouldn’t learn in her clan. To develop that characteristic in her, the children decided to put her in carefully controlled situations of danger, under Kurenai’s ever-watchful eyes.

Hinata needed time to adapt but, once she started to progress, she didn’t have any more problems during the sparring matches Mizuki organised several times a week at school. As for Aimi, she was keeping to herself now. She had lost a lot of her popularity after her match against Hitomi, whose win had been painfully obvious, and she seemed frightened by the Yūhi girl… rightfully so. Unable to forget, Hitomi maintained a stubborn grudge against the opponent she had already beaten.

Hitomi was still writing every day to Gaara and Ensui – she had even exchanged a few letters with Temari and Kankurō, on their younger brother’s insistence. Sasuke was used to his new life now, but still spent a lot of his free time visiting his parents’ memorial stone. At least one evening a week, Hitomi joined him, bringing food as an offering to their spirits and one of her current projects. They stayed there until the sun set, soothed by the distant sounds of the village and the repetitive grating of her pen against paper.

In fourth year, the students finally heard about the shinobi arts other than taijutsu. At the beginning of the year, Iruka had started using one hour a day to teach them hand seals. It was difficult to form them perfectly, even for their hands turned nibble by dexterity games. The only one Hitomi mastered prior from the class was the Rat Hand Seal, since it was the one she needed for the Shadow Manipulation Technique. As for the eleven others, she trained every day to form them under her mother’s intransigent supervision, until her fingers turned stiff and painful.

During Kurenai’s unofficial class, the children had started to learn chakra control. Of course, they started with the typical Konohajin exercise, sticking a leaf on their forehead. It was highly symbolic, and yet subtle enough to blend perfectly in the village’s propaganda. Since Hitomi had already mastered that exercise and a few others in that field, her mother had something else in mind for her. “You’ll start with a kunai,” she said after the other children had started working with their leaves.

Surprised, Hitomi looked up to her, tearing her eyes away from Naruto’s efforts. “A kunai?” she repeated, trying and failing to hide her confusion. Her mother answered her unspoken question by showing her her left hand, opened palm up. In its centre, a kunai stood on its point, perfectly balanced and immobile. Hitomi raised her eyebrows and called upon her meridians to try and understand what Kurenai was doing. Kunai weren’t supposed to have the kind of gravity centre that would allow them to stand like that.

“You won’t understand just by looking at it and feeling it,” Kurenai said with a playful smile. “This exercise is far beyond the level we ask of even a Genin, because you have to give your chakra a physical form, something that the techniques you’ll learn at the Academy don’t need to work. As it is now, this kunai is enclosed in a chakra cocoon, and that’s what allows it to stand like that. If it moves, the exercise is not mastered. Have fun, sweetheart!”

It took weeks for Hitomi to bend that exercise to her will. She trained at it for hours every day, until her hands burned. Sometimes, her mother forced her to stop, but Sasuke knew very well that she continued once she was in her room. He didn’t tell Kurenai, though – he understood far too well the need to get stronger that was pushing her forward. The first step was to apply a sufficient strength on the kunai to make it stand on its point. All the exercises she had trained on, except the throwing one, had taught her to stick to a surface, not to push it away. The reason suddenly seemed obvious to the girl: pushing constantly, and not in one quick burst like she had learned, was a hundred times more complicated, and way more chakra intensive.

After mastering that first step, she had to find a way to hold the kunai still, which meant applying an accurate and constant pressure all over it. She quickly realised that she lost her focus after a few seconds, just enough so part of the chakra cylinder she had enclosed the kunai in, weakened. Before going any further with the exercise, she decided to research the meditation methods applied to ninja arts.

Ensui and Kankurō helped her a great deal with that, giving her a list of books she would find in any library and that could point her in the correct direction. Hitomi was surprised the Sunajin volunteered to help her. One night, when her left hand couldn’t stand even the tiniest spark of chakra, she wrote to him about it through the notebooks. With a reserve and modesty that surprised her greatly, he explained he wanted to please his baby brother and the only way he knew how was to help her.

She was softened by it all, she had to admit it. She spent several hours, that night, writing to Kankurō about her month in Sunagakure and all the things she had learned about Gaara during that time. She told the puppeteer about his brother’s habits, his favourite candies, the sand sculptures he only showed to his loved ones when he started to feel at peace. In turn, Kankurō told her about their routine at the forgotten border post that sheltered them. They had to move three times just that year to escape new murder attempts, and that filled the girl with a soft, ferocious rage.

The books she needed found themselves a very nice place on her desk. She always had at least one of them in her Academy backpack; she spent as many breaks as she could reading through them under the benevolent and slightly amused eyes of her friends. Her Library, for once, couldn’t help her to find in her inner-self the focus and detachment she would need to keep that damned kunai up on her palm. It wasn’t an impossible goal, and she knew it. She had to succeed; she would need this.

She spent a lot of her free time meditating in seiza, kneeling on the floor, her back straight and yet relaxed, hands folded in her lap, her eyes staring at nothing. She had tried a few exercises proposed by the books, but the one she favoured made her imagine herself slowly sinking into a quiet, bottomless ocean. The only sport she had been allowed to practice, in the Before World, had been swimming – then, the disease had taken that away from her, too. She had been more at ease in water than on the ground. The plenitude she had felt during those rare occurrences still lived sharp and clear in her mind.

Sasuke always came to fetch her in the garden when dinner was ready. He brushed a careful hand against her shoulder – she had long ago stopped tensing when he touched her. He was family now. Her brother. She couldn’t fear him, only for him. During the meal, the two children told Kurenai about their day, then she got out again to practice the tantō katas Ensui had told her an eternity ago.

In Mizuki’s class, Hinata had quickly turned into a little demon and Hitomi dreaded the inevitable moment they were pitched against each other. The Hyūga girl used the Gentle Fist even against her friends now. That style of taijutsu, unique to her clan, used chakra to close the tenketsu, three hundred and sixty-one intersections of meridians through the body. Shutting them off disturbed the flow of chakra through the victim’s body. Even when it was opened immediately afterwards, a sealed tenketsu still hurt like a bitch, and her best friend often managed to hit her a dozen times before the end of a fight. Hitomi had to sweat for the first place of those tournaments now.

Ino was a difficult opponent too: Yamanaka Inoichi had obviously decided it was time to speed up his daughter’s training. She got better and better at analysing the movements and intentions of her adversary. Psychology applied to fighting was often overlooked… and yet Hitomi could testify of its efficacy. She had numerous bruises to prove it.

Shino and Shikamaru had started learning more about their respective clans’ techniques. It wasn’t rare to see the first trying to control his bugs as the second sat in the shadow of a tree and tried to stretch his own. The two boys had discovered they got along well, in the same way Chōji and the Nara heir did.

Hitomi progressed too. She was able to keep a kunai up on her palm for longer every day. Kurenai had told her she would have mastered the first stage when she would be able to keep it that way indefinitely while doing something else on the side, and that the next levels would be easier to bend to her will.

When the fifth year at the Academy started, the two remaining class groups in their year were merged into one. Guests came to Iruka’s lessons and told them about their specialities or department in the hope that the children would want to join them. Kiba’s mother, for example, came to talk about the Hunting Department, which handled the most sensitive tracking missions. It had always been led by an Inuzuka, but one didn’t need to be born in that clan to join their ranks. The Bunke-born Hyūga and Aburame, for example, were often good elements of that department, their Kekkei Genkai helping them to find their mark.

It wasn’t the only novelty the students had to face that year: from then on, two hours a day were devoted to ninjutsu and genjutsu. Iruka had hammered on the theoretical aspects of those two ninja arts during their whole fourth year – Naruto had needed Hitomi’s help for that part – and had decided his students were ready for a bit of practice. However, learning actual techniques was still out of the question – that would have to wait until sixth year.

There was something inherently cruel about the way the Academy worked, something that quickly separated the students who would be able to keep their Jōnin-sensei, and the ones who would have to rethink their future after the sixth year – either the General Forces, reorientation or retrying the graduation and the following test. Those who failed that following test but still entered the General Forces would struggle even to get promoted to Chūnin and often try out a new, more fulfilling career after a few years, while the ones who had succeeded would get a real shot at getting promoted at least to Chūnin. The best of them could even get to Tokubetsu Jōnin or Jōnin, or even be recruited into the ANBU, the service so secret civilians believed it to be a legend.

The difference between those two groups of future ninjas was made clear as early as the first year of Academy, and rare were the weaker students able to get to the better part of their year group. Even the resources they had out of school to work and train were different : the students at the top of the rankings were either from a ninja clan or a very wealthy family that could afford private tutoring. Hitomi’s class was no exception: From the nine students of the Fellowship, seven were ranked in the top ten. The students ranked eighth, ninth and tenth were the rich heirs of noble families, who dreamed of adventure and heroism. They would get very disappointed very quickly.

It was unfair, yes, but a lot of things were that way in a Hidden Village, even the one most foreigners called ‘timorous’ and ‘pampered’. For now, those injustices played well in favour of the Fellowship, so Hitomi wasn’t planning on protesting. Her plans only focused on saving lives and ending others. She didn’t care about justice, only about the greater good. And too bad if it was unethical. Ethics didn’t win wars. One day, she would.

Chapter 25: Fire In The Hole

Notes:

Hi! I'm still not very good at the tag system on AO3. Would you have suggestions of tags I could add to this story? Thank you!

Long after that scream-worthy night, Hitomi would wonder how exactly an exercise had turned into such a mess. She would only need a few seconds of contemplation – her gloomy stare fixed on nothing tended to give shivers to some students – to realise, again and again, that everything was Naruto’s fault, and that realisation would make her glare at him until he gave her the Stare. He was the only one able to beat her with that technique and she regretted teaching it to him every day.

Everything had started a few days before that damned night, when Iruka had announced that the class would spend a night on training ground number six, usually forbidden to students, for a survival exercise. It was a first for the Academy to organise such an event, and students owed this opportunity to a suggestion from Inuzuka Tsume, Kiba’s mother, who thought the students weren’t crafty enough outside of the classroom.

The students had been divided into teams of three by Iruka. He had pretended to pick them randomly, but he couldn’t fool Hitomi: he had formed Team Eight and Team Ten as they would be after graduation. The Yūhi girl was paired with Naruto and Sasuke, which probably meant that, in less than two years, she would be part of Team Seven instead of Sakura. Would they follow similar paths? Like all kunoichi, Hitomi deeply respected Tsunade, and would be infinitely grateful for everything the Sannin would like to teach her, but she was no medic and didn’t intend to become one.

Fortunately, in this version of the universe, Sasuke and Naruto got along well. The Uzumaki boy was sometimes jealous of his friend-turned-rival-but-still-friend, be it about his unwanted success with girls or about the grades he got seemingly without any effort. There was conflict between them sometimes, yes, but they often trained together, shared their lunch at least twice a week, and they had often gone to see a movie together, several times this year alone. Their relationship was as lively and shifting as a flame, but it made them progress and, if they had a problem, the other was there to help. Sasuke had handled a civilian bully who had decided to pick on Naruto when the little jinchūriki hadn’t stood up for himself; Naruto was always there when Sasuke needed to talk about his parents, about the void they had left in him when they died.

The true conflicts, the ones that could have set them apart with no turning back, Hitomi had handled them by stepping between them. She was the only student in their class group to be able to form a bit of killing intent around herself, as well as a softer version that allowed her to threaten them without even opening her mouth or touch them. One time, though, she had had to trap them in her shadow. She hadn’t been happy about it and they had felt it, the both of them. Since then, they did their best to avoid going through that ordeal again and pouted rather than getting angry with each other. Wise, wise boys.

The three days following Iruka’s announcement had been devoted to intense preparations. Hitomi had made sure, on the first day, that her two friends knew how to behave in a hostile forest. They probably didn’t need all that information to make it out okay, but one never knew when knowledge could come in handy. The second day, she had approached Shikamaru’s and Shino’s teams and proposed a non-aggression pact they had both accepted on behalf of their teammates, which was a relief for her.

Spending a night in the forest was just the first goal. Each team had to keep the flag they had gotten before entering the training ground, then steal at least one from another team. The exercise looked a lot like the one she had read about in the Previous World, during the second part of the Chūnin exam. At least this forest didn’t have giant tigers and chakra leeches, and the students weren’t allowed to kill each other.

The third day, Hitomi focused on packing. Since she had already been out of the village, she was the person to talk to about traveling gear in the Fellowship. Shino and Kiba had a good idea about what was necessary too, but they didn’t have real experience in the matter so, when it was brought up, they all looked at her. “Take a blanket, but not a sleeping bag. It’s warm enough to go without a tent, and they are too easy to spot anyway, even in the middle of the night. As for sleeping bags, well, it’s hard as hell to get out of them in a hurry and it’s gonna be a problem if you’re attacked in the middle of the night. Take a coat or something like that for when you’ll have to stand watch. No need for a change of clothes this time, but make sure you don’t forget your weapons and usual gear.”

Then she had focused on her friends’ specific needs. She made sure, for example, that Shikamaru had as much ninja wire and smoke bombs as he could possibly need for the traps he was starting to love so much. It had been months since he had stopped buying them: Hitomi made him far better tools than what he could get in the armoury: it was better quality, more varied, and probably far more dangerous than what the Academy students were authorised to shop for anyway. She was working on a lot of projects at the same time, including smoke bombs that wouldn’t disturb Kiba’s smell. She hadn’t gotten far with it yet, though. The Konohajin scientists had been working on it for years, so it wasn’t likely that she would find a solution any soon.

On Wednesday afternoon, instead of going home, the students gathered in the Academy’s courtyard, each of them wearing a backpack. Hitomi was the only exception: she had chosen to take storage seals instead, since Ensui had advised her to work some more on them. She was also heavily armed for a simple student, with her tantō, her two pouches of senbon and her trapping gear. She had added a few novelties to the kit Ensui had helped her assemble in Sunagakure, an eternity ago.

After Iruka reminded them of the rules, the children were led to the entrance of the training ground. Five Jōnin, including Maito Gai and Shiranui Genma, would supervise the exercise with Iruka and Mizuki. Their role was to make sure that the rules would be followed dutifully by the students, especially the one that forbade the different teams from attacking for the first two hours of the exercise. Hitomi fully intended on exploiting that time to make a secure and easy to defend little camp in their corner of the forest.

From the moment teams had been announced, she had taken the lead of hers, with an  ease that almost shocked her. She was, after all, the most experienced, and the oldest. She felt good when her two teammates looked at her, waiting for her orders, both focused and calm, so sure she would lead them well. With a sign of her hand, she instructed them to follow and went deep inside the forest without any hesitation.

It took her twenty minutes to find the perfect place, a clearing that was several metres wide, marked in its centre by a big oak. If she perched on its branches, she could observe her surroundings without too much trouble. The tree was old enough, its branches sturdy enough, so that a camp could be established comfortably far above the ground. The following hour was spent trapping the hell out of their clearing. Hitomi’s hands had become nimble with the cables, mechanisms, and springs that would help her trigger her traps with the edge of a kunai, safely linked to her branch of their tree. Very quickly, their tree had become a true fort. She straddled her branch, Sasuke and Naruto sitting right under her.

“Sasuke, you’re the most offensive of us three. You’ll be in charge of finding Aimi’s team and stealing their flag. If you have to harm them for it… Don’t hold back too much but still play by the rules.”

“Why Aimi?” Naruto asked, picking on her icy tone.

A vaguely cruel smile appeared on Hitomi’s lips and made the two boys tense slightly. Their years around her had made them wary of her memory, of how it made her warped and resentful sometimes. “I’m not exactly done making her pay for what she did to Hinata,” the girl said with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “And I will feel a little less bad if we take hers since she makes the other civilian students’ lives a living hell.”

“What do I do if I find another team on the way?” Sasuke asked while standing up.

“The examiners didn’t forbid us from taking more than one flag. Take as many as you want but leave enough for our allies.”

The Uchiha boy nodded, already focused on his mission and, a few seconds later, he had disappeared amongst the leaves, perfectly silent. He still had around forty minutes before he was authorised to attack anyone, but looking for a target before that time wasn’t against the rules. Other students had probably had the same idea.

Sasuke gone, Hitomi turned to Naruto, who was almost hopping up and down on his branch with impatience. “Here, take the flag. Tie it to that branch and stand watch. I’m gonna continue working on our traps. When night falls, I’m gonna take your place and you’re gonna sleep for three hours. Then it’ll be my turn.”

If there hadn’t been a rule forbidding teams to hide their flag out of the training ground, Hitomi would have just sealed hers away. She couldn’t, since, technically speaking, the dimension where sealed objects went was… elsewhere. More than once, the girl had wondered if life was possible there. She had seen more surprising things than that.

Naruto nodded and obeyed, leaving Hitomi to her preparations. She had learned to draw explosive seals and thought about using them. Maiming and killing were forbidden, Iruka had been very clear – and perhaps he had been looking in her direction when he said that. Her seals were of an average potency, so it was probably enough to kill a child, future shinobi or not. With a pout, she put those away where they couldn’t be found and worked on other traps.

Night had fallen an hour ago when Sasuke came back to camp. One moment Hitomi was alone on her branch; the next, the Uchiha boy was there, already leaning away to dodge the kunai she had thrown by reflex. He answered to her frown with a smirk, so obviously full of himself he could have died if he had jumped from his ego. Brat . He had two flags hanging around his neck: the pink one was Aimi’s, and the green Kakeru’s – one of the top ten kids who wasn’t from the Fellowship.

“Well done,” she whispered with a nod to the flags. “Ours is hidden there. Use the green one as a lure on another branch and tell me how it went.” She couldn’t suppress a snicker when he told her, after obeying her orders, how he had used the several storage seals she had given him before the exercise. Imagining Aimi furious and covered in mud made her almost regret she hadn’t been there to see it. Once he had taken them by surprise, Sasuke had just had to surpass them physically, which hadn’t been hard, then he had tied them up and watched as a Jōnin had retrieved them before leaving.

While coming back to the camp, he had stumbled upon Kakeru’s team and hadn’t hesitated before fighting them. One of the team members had managed to trap him in a genjutsu, which was surprising considering that Sasuke’s clan was specialised in that shinobi art, but Uchiha Sasuke could never be fooled for long. He had beaten his three opponents, tied them up, and left even before a Jōnin appeared with their flag. Maybe he was a bit pissed at them.

Hitomi could see how he had enjoyed fighting: his dark eyes gleamed, hungry for more, his body was as tense as a bow, still bursting with formidable energy. It had to be difficult to stay furtive when he was in such a state. Without a word, the girl tossed him one of the rations she had stored in her storage seals. The Akimichi had the best ones according to the whole village, and she agreed. She was glad to have access to them without being overcharged like people out of the clan alliance were.

“In an hour, I’ll wake Naruto up so he can stand watch. You’ll come and sleep too.”

“But…”

“If it was a mission, you wouldn’t protest. Sleeping is important for a shinobi.”

“ You ’re the one saying this? Who are you and what have you done with my sister?”

That word, so short, so simple, paralysed Hitomi on her branch. Her eyes wide, she stared at Sasuke, the jab about her numerous sleepless nights completely forgotten. A warm sense of belonging bloomed in her chest, her hands stiffened around her own ration. He had never… She knew he was seeing her like family, and Kurenai too, but he had never put their new relationship into words. Respectful of his modesty and the memories of his clan, she hadn’t either.

She was lost for words, so they just sat there, silent and staring into the dark, until it was Naruto’s turn to stand watch. Hitomi took a few moments to wake up the little jinchūriki then climbed on a higher branch, wedged herself in a split comfortably and closed her eyes. She couldn’t afford to sleep during a mission, even as simple as this one, not with her nightmare problem, but working in her Library allowed her body to rest just as well as sleeping did. That way, she stayed alert, ready to react if a problem appeared.

And, of course, problems appeared around an hour later. A noise tore through the night; Hitomi needed a few moments to understand, her mind still half-lost in her Library, what it was. Naruto knew how to choose the perfect moment for everything, including a fucking sneezing fit. It was so grotesque, so improbable, and yet so very much happening. Purely running on instinct mode, Hitomi activated her main trap when she perceived chakra and movement at the edge of their clearing.

With a terrible roar, flames appeared from nothingness and circled the tree where they were staying. The collar of oil pockets she had placed around the roots made the blaze even fiercer – in the centre of all this fire and smoke, Hitomi, Naruto and Sasuke stood proudly, goading the two teams at the border of their clearing to come and get them.

Hitomi had taken the highest position, sword unsheathed and kunai ready to spring more traps. Being surrounded by fire and perched on a tree probably wasn’t the best situation, but no one would dare get to them before she decided otherwise. Water Release was the second rarest affinity in Konoha, and Sasuke was probably the only student to have mastered any elemental jutsu in their year yet anyway. Kurenai had even taught them a few more than the ones he had learned with his father.

Searching around with her meridians, Hitomi cut a cable, sending a salve of kunai flying in the direction of one of the two teams lurking in the dark. Naruto and Sasuke were protecting their flags – the lure and, without looking too much like it, the real one too. A member of the second team took a step towards the flames but was stopped by Sasuke throwing three kunai in his direction, and then…

The disaster, the real one.

Sasuke’s movement had thrown Naruto off-balance. He fell from his branch – none of the two boys had good enough chakra control yet for tree-climbing. Sasuke was close to it, but Naruto had a hard time, what with the Kyūbi messing with his chakra control.

Hitomi jumped, but even her chakra-enhanced reflexes weren’t enough to catch the boy. She froze, paralysed in horror, and watched her friend plunge towards the flames, a distressed cry on her lips. Its echoes were still ringing in the air when Sasuke moved . She had to re-watch her memory of it in her Library later to understand what happened then. A shadow brushed past her, so close and so quick her black curls followed the movement and blinded her for a second.

When she could see again, Sasuke was hanging in a neighbouring tree, Naruto shaken but safe under one of his arms. His other hand was bleeding, cut by the ninja wire he had used for that formidable jump. That wire, once filled with chakra, became a thousand times sturdier and extremely sticky. However, his jump and reflexes weren’t the source of Hitomi’s shock. She had prepared far too well for that kind of situation to ignore that Sasuke was better at improvisation than she was.

No, what shocked her was the pair of Sharingan she was staring into. Deeply shaken, she felt her whole body tense, hard enough to cause pain later. Sasuke couldn’t have already awakened the Sharingan. It was too early. Things didn’t happen that way in the canon, not at all.

But this universe wasn’t the canon. She had thought about it again and again, tried to stick to what she knew, to assume everything worked like she had read it in another world, and had never stopped to think about what she was changing, about the consequences of her actions. She had thought she had years before doing so. She couldn’t even, at this moment, try to go back through the chain of actions and reactions that had led Sasuke to this unplanned development.

Once she had overcome her stupor, Hitomi straightened up and moved, too. Shadows would be useless here, but they weren’t her only resources. Crouching on her branch, she brushed her fingers to the ninja wire lying at her feet, infusing it with chakra. Immediately, the largest seal she had ever drawn activated, raising a translucid barrier inside the circle of fire. This wouldn’t let anything go through without eating away at them like an acid. It was probably the most dangerous seal she knew, one capable of blowing up the whole training ground had she drawn it poorly. It consumed her chakra really fast, but she trusted Naruto and Sasuke to come back, to protect her.

Even though everything was Naruto’s fault.

“Do it fast, boys. I want to finish the night in peace and quiet.”

Of course, they understood what she couldn’t say out loud, the light pins and needles in her fingers telling her she had already spent a quarter of her chakra reserves. They hadn’t been full when she had entered the forest, and were even less so when the attack had started, but this seal was still a demanding creation.

Fortunately, Naruto and Sasuke had her back. In a few minutes, their six opponents were all beaten and tied up, and she could relax. Two thirds of her reserves were gone, an uncomfortable situation, even though she had known far worse when Ensui was training her. With a rigorous care and slowness, she cut the influx of chakra towards the wire and her feet, then straddled her branch.

She was trying to hide how taxing maintaining the barrier had been, but the look on Naruto’s face as he climbed up again and put his orange vest on her told him she hadn’t been able to fool him this time. Sasuke joined them too but stood watch behind her, looking around with his still activated Sharingan. The horizon was turning orange and pink in some places. Dawn would come soon.

“Well, boys… What mistakes did we make during this exercise?” This sentence had become a ritual amongst their peers during Kurenai’s classes. Often, they relied on Hitomi’s mother to tell them why they had had such a hard time with the exercise and advise them on how to make it easy next time, but they always had to start the process. It was just the three of them this time, though. The two Jōnin picking up their last opponents, who had been stripped of their flags before attacking, didn’t really count – although Hitomi didn’t doubt they could hear them.

“Everything started when I sneezed. I should learn to do it silently, that’s probably how they found us.”

“I shouldn’t have been so near Naruto, so I wouldn’t have surprised him while throwing my shuriken.”

“Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised!”

“And I shouldn’t have chosen a trap that could turn on us so easily just because it was easier to set up,” Hitomi concluded. The three children watched each other in silence for a long time, then Naruto started snickering and Hitomi followed, unable to resist. Even Sasuke was smirking, and trying very hard to hide it.

“We still kicked a lot of butts so that’s good, believe it!”

“The Sharingan is probably a blessing in disguise, but you’ll have to get it looked at, Sasuke, just to make sure it works correctly and you don’t risk harming yourself by using it. Mom or Grandfather may know something useful about dōjutsu, I could ask.”

“Hm… Anyway, we should go visit my clan lands too. No one went there since I went to live with you, I gave orders that they wouldn’t disturb anything, just in case I needed to go back one day.”

Hitomi nodded, acknowledging how wise this choice was. She couldn’t help but feel dread at the idea that everything was still exactly like Itachi had left it, years earlier. Would she be able to feel the echo of his chakra? Would she see where his tantō had hit? She had learned how to read such signs under Ensui’s care, but right now… No, she couldn’t say she would have liked not to know. She would never disregard the knowledge her mentor had given her like that.

“You won’t have to face it alone, Sasuke, believe it!”

Hitomi muffled a laugh to her friend’s enthusiasm, even that simple action leaving her slightly breathless. She didn’t need to put her support for Sasuke into words. Their eyes met for a moment and it was enough. They were family, after all. The most important thing for the Nara clan.

When the sun had completely risen, Hitomi slowly straightened up, sending enough chakra to her limbs so as not to fall from the tree. She could still hang on for a few hours if she was just doing it, but she didn’t need to: the exercise would be over for their team once they managed to leave the training ground. The children gathered their things, except for the traps they hadn’t sprung; a Genin team would probably have to disarm them and Hitomi wished them good luck with that.

Barely half an hour later, they were out – they had had to take a large detour to avoid another team. Hitomi had seen how Sasuke loved fighting and wanted more, but he wouldn’t have put her at risk by looking for trouble while her chakra reserves were low.

“Hitomi, debrief!” The dry and demanding snap in Iruka’s voice made the girl jump and stiffen, almost at attention. She spent more than an hour arguing her case to the teacher, justifying all her choices. He saw her as the team leader – and thus the one responsible for everything that could have happened under her care. He was right, of course. Such authority on her peers couldn’t come without that. At least, he was satisfied when Sasuke gave him their three flags. Still, during the following weeks, Hitomi glared at Naruto a lot, just on principle, and because she didn’t like it when Iruka lectured her.

Chapter 26: Echoes From An Empty Land

During the following weekend, the children planned their expedition into Uchiha territory. Kurenai had decided to let them do their thing and go there alone: after all, in eighteen months, they would graduate, and Sasuke and Hitomi were the brightest students of their year, to such an extent that they were compared to Hyūga Neji and Mori no Tenten, who were expected to become First Genin and First Kunoichi of their own year. Additionally, the Uchiha lands were under high surveillance from an ANBU team who stopped anyone from entering without authorisation, except for Sasuke.

Kurenai had been the one to get this authorisation from the hands of the Hokage himself. No one was overtly talking about it, but Hitomi had eavesdropped on a rushed conversation between two Nara, about how the relationship between her mother and the war chief was strained. The young Jōnin had felt insulted by the fact she had had to fight tooth and nail to obtain Sasuke’s wardship, and the Third had felt insulted by how all his mistakes – like the monumental one he had made with Kakashi, by forcing him to live alone in the house where he had found his dad after his suicide – were brought up. He had only been six years old. The Copy Nin wasn’t exactly an example of balance and stability.

Friday evening, the Yūhi family invited Naruto to sleep over. It had become kind of a habit – the orphanage staff was relieved to leave the little devil in their care during the weekends, and he was always calmer when he came back. A lot of civilians in the village thought Kurenai had some kind of magical power in addition to her talents for ninja arts, to be able to take care of nine children like it was no big deal, including the dreadful Demon Fox brat.

After dinner, Kurenai settled on the couch, a book on her knees. She already knew she would get a Genin team, and who her future students would be; for each of them, she had to learn a lot of things. She had decided to start with the law books specific to each clan, three heavy tomes full of judicial talk that she had already seen Hitomi sneak away, when she thought she was alone. Kurenai sometimes watched the three children sitting around her coffee table, listening distractedly as they quietly discussed their preparations.

Over the course of years, Kurenai had seen her daughter shift into a leading position amongst her peers. She would probably be one of the first from her generation to graduate to Jōnin once they became Chūnin, because she had the natural authority and the cool head necessary to take decisions even in a dire situation. Of course, the young mother had read Iruka’s report concerning her children’s performances during the field exercise the Academy had organised. She had had a good laugh at how everything had spun out of control, but she was very proud of the three students, and of the way they had behaved that night. She had seen, most importantly, what kind of unit chief her daughter would become, and had hurried to go show the report to Yoshino and Shikaku, not really hiding her pride and the rush of satisfaction running in her veins.

The new Nara clan generation tended to elicit that kind of reaction, she had to admit it – and so did  the whole freaking clan.

Kurenai hadn’t been as keen to learn that her two kids and Naruto would be placed under Hatake Kakashi’s care. She liked the guy and respected him a whole lot, even going as far as considering him a friend, but… she had seen what damages the last war had done to him. He had lost his teammates and master in such quick succession that it had destroyed him, far beyond what Maito Gai’s sunny friendship could mend.

“I have enough ink for several storage scrolls for each of us, but I’m gonna need to buy more very soon. And I’ve spent most of my winnings from the trip with Ensui-shishou… I can’t wait to be a Genin.”

This attracted Kurenai’s attention. She knew the special ink Hitomi used for fūinjutsu was expensive, probably expensive enough to burden her daughter’s finances, since she only had a weekly allowance for her gear and one or two outings with her friends. Until she was a Genin, she would have a hard time earning money, but Kurenai had decided to limit her financial means to teach her the value of money and the pleasure of spending what she had earned for herself. Of course, clothes and books were limitlessly financed: her allowance was only for her kunoichi gear and occasional little pleasures.

“You know,” Sasuke started, “I know several students, even the older ones and a few Genin, who would pay for your bombs and seals. I would pay for sure.”

“Me too, believe it! The armoury ones are always crazy expensive and really not practical compared to yours. When we’re all Genin, we should at least pay for what it costs you to make them.”

The young mother looked at her daughter as the girl thought about it, her features void of all expression as her eyes focused on a random point in front of her, meaning she had dived in her Library. Probably for some maths, if Kurenai had to bet on it.

“I… I think you’re right, boys. I could try to sell some of them. But not to you, of course, nor to people from the Fellowship.”

“You should at least charge us for the raw materials,” Sasuke insisted. “It’s not fair that you pay for all of it and spend all your earnings trying to equip nine people alone.”

“What do you think, Mom?” Hitomi asked after a moment of silence.

Kurenai suppressed a laugh when she saw all three children look up to her with their big, cute eyes in the middle of a serious face. They were adorable, even Sasuke, who had started opening to her through the years. He had broken her heart the first time he had called her ‘Mother’. In his mind, ‘Mom’ would always be Mikoto, which was perfectly fine in the Jōnin’s eyes.

“I think it’s a good idea, sweetheart. When you come home tomorrow after visiting the Uchiha lands, you could try to determine how much each of your seals and bombs costs to make for one unit. For your friends,I would suggest that price, with adjustments if they can’t afford it when they need it – it can happen, you know it. For the others, you would add a margin that would be your benefit. If you don’t start replacing the armouries, the civilians shouldn’t have a problem with your little business.”

“Well, if they have one, they should sell better products!”

They all started to laugh, Hitomi putting an arm around Naruto’s shoulders to get him closer to her. He still felt insulted, rightly so, by the way civilians and some ninjas treated him. Kurenai had had a memorable argument with Hiruzen, trying to convince him that Naruto had to learn what was inside him for his own good. She had spoken in vain. The Third didn’t listen to anyone anymore, except for his Councilmen, and everyone knew they didn’t have the villagers’ interests at heart anymore, only their own. Danzō’s poisons had reached too deep inside them, for far too long.

“Well, that’s decided then. We’re gonna do this tomorrow evening, and Sunday morning if we’re not done before that.”

With a smile, the girl focused once again on the preparations her team needed for their trip. After all, it could be considered a mission. Her movements confident and fluid, she dipped her favourite brush in ink and started to draw her first seal with a precision that would make Ensui proud. He had drowned her with questions when she had written to him about the field exercise, and Gaara had apparently begged him to organise such exercise for him and his siblings, who would be a team once Gaara graduated from the Academy. He didn’t need to be enrolled to pass the exam, not in Sunagakure. Anyone could just come in, succeed at the exam and become a Genin. Some legend-worthy shinobi, like Akasuna no Sasori, had followed that peculiar path.

“Naruto, could you make us some bentō, please? That way we won’t have to leave the clan lands to eat.”

The boy nodded enthusiastically and jumped to his feet. A moment later, he was in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards and the fridge to find everything he needed. Kurenai didn’t even feel the need to go supervise him: from the three kids, he was the best cook by far, even when he had to do something other than ramen. That innocent passion had given the young mother the idea to offer him a cookbook for his last birthday. He had loved it and thanked her by jumping in her arms. So cute.

“Okay, so food and transporting the things we’re gonna take from there are handled. Do you have a suggestion for weapons, Sasuke?”

“Let’s take our swords. I don’t think we’ll encounter problems, but you’re never too careful. The ANBU team I hired in the name of the clan to watch upon the land only manages the human threats. I wouldn’t want to have to fight a bear without weapons.”

Bears, uh? Hitomi nodded, slightly impressed. “That’s right, the land has an opening on the Fire Forest… Yeah, let’s take our swords. And for Naruto?”

“You can fill his pouch with kunai. He’s still not so good with shuriken. We’re gonna have to work with him on that before graduation.”

Hitomi nodded again, deep in thought. To pass that part of the exam, a student had to prove their mastery of at least one throwing weapon. Most students stopped there and chose kunai, easier to hold and throw. Sasuke had put his priorities on shuriken. He and Hitomi could add the kunai to that list, and the girl was working on senbon too, but she wasn’t sure she would have perfectly mastered them by graduation: their lightness made them very hard to throw correctly without hundreds of hours of training.

For each weapon a student showed mastery of, the Academy gave bonus points. Neither Sasuke nor Hitomi needed them, but Naruto couldn’t afford to turn his nose on them. He had gotten much better in the theoretical classes, thanks to the card game the Fellowship used, but he had stumbled upon a new difficulty when Iruka had started teaching them about chakra control. Hitomi, of course, knew his problems were due to the Demon Fox’s chakra inside him, an energy he couldn’t incorporate in the exercises since he didn’t know it was there. For most students outside the Fellowship and teachers as well, though, Naruto just sucked in that field, no matter his efforts and his slow, indisputable progress.

An hour and a half later, all three children went to bed. They had decided it was better to have a good night sleep before such an important mission – the fact it wasn’t official didn’t make it any less crucial in their eyes. Hitomi smiled when she heard the boys bicker for toothpaste in the bathroom. In the canon, most unhealthy aspects of their brotherly relationship had bothered her, but she couldn’t find anything of the sort now, only two friends, two brothers, who loved each other without shame.

That night, Hitomi dreamed again. She saw rows upon rows of scrolls, cupboards brimming over with weapons that time had started to erode, stains of dried blood and walls scarred by fights. She woke up at dawn, her body covered in cold sweat, her breathing shallow and burning through her lungs. It was too late to go back to sleep, or she would have sought refuge in Sasuke’s bed. Even when Naruto was there, she wasn’t afraid of hiding in her brother’s arms for comfort. One day, she would probably need to find a true solution concerning her nightmares. One day… Later. When she managed to tell Kurenai about it, perhaps.

The rest of the house slowly woke up when the scent of breakfast started to float around in the air. Naruto was the chef of their little group, but Hitomi wasn’t bad herself once she got started on it. She liked cooking traditional dishes, even if some of them were still far too technical for her.

“Well, boys, we should take off for the Uchiha lands in about an hour. The ANBU who stand watch have been warned of our arrival. Sasuke, you have the Hokage’s signed authorisation, don’t you?”

“You already checked, nee-chan. Stop fretting and breathe, everything is gonna be okay.”

Swallowing nervously, the girl nodded and obeyed. Sure, last time she had led her team had almost become a disaster, but that didn’t mean it would happen again. She could trust the boys, they had her back. “Well, I’m gonna get dressed then. Your gear awaits you next to the door. You know how to strap the big scrolls to your backs, right?”

“For the Hermit’s sake, Hitomi! Go change before I kick your ass until you get that we already know this! Come on!”

The girl rolled her eyes but obeyed again. Death by Uchiha wasn’t in her plans for today. In the corridor, she met her mother coming the other way, already radiant. Kurenai had always been a morning person. Hitomi suspected some Jōnin hated her for it. Stories and gossips were spreading around the village and the girl had learned to listen to them. She knew so much about the ninjas surrounding her now… The story of Shikaku falling asleep halfway through his report to the Third always made her want to scream with laughter when she thought about it.

An hour later, just like she had planned, the three children were ready and walking to the gate of the Nara lands, their impatience so obvious on their features and in their gait. They greeted the clan members who were waking up and starting their day – the rest of the village was already quite busy. The Nara clan had always been one of the late risers. It didn’t stop Yoshino, who they met a few hundred meters from the gate, from dragging a barely awake Shikamaru while mumbling about new pants and kids who didn’t want to stop growing. Poor him.

They took around twenty minutes to reach the Uchiha lands. Once, Shikaku and Hitomi’s grandfather had told her about the injustice that had pushed the clan to its old lands from before the Founders Era, in the border of what had become Konoha. Because of this new place in the village, they had been isolated from the rest of the population, and the police services, under their care, had started to crumble and lose their quality. Year after year, their resentment had settled in and grown amongst the clan, until the massacre had stopped them from staging their coup.

Sasuke was the one to unlock the iron portal that was the only access to the lands, after the ANBU cleared them to enter. His hands shook hard enough that he had to try four times before inserting the key in the lock, but neither Naruto nor Hitomi commented on his difficulties. The two children followed the last Uchiha as he took his first steps beyond the gate, silent and solemn behind him.

The first house, really a manor that towered over its surrounding, was the masters’ domain, the one where Sasuke had lived his first years, the one that had heard his first words, the echo of his first steps. This time, he gave the keys to Hitomi without a word. He didn’t need to talk for her to understand the ghosts living before his eyes, the feeling of emptiness and pain so tightly blended, the muffled buzzing in his ears threatening to become a groan, then a long scream of anguish. She understood, because it was her role in their Fellowship – the pillar, the guide, the empath.

She opened the door and stepped in first. The hall was relatively intact. The only witness of the time that had passed was the coating of dust on the tatami and on every object. She extended her hand and grabbed Sasuke’s, as Naruto put an arm around his shoulders. All three touching each other, they contemplated the room where they were standing, trying to overlook the slight shaking agitating the youngest Uchiha.

“You can go, Hitomi,” he said in an empty voice. “If you wait for me, we’ll still be there in three hours.”

Before complying, Hitomi exchanged a look with Naruto and only stepped away when he nodded, his eyes more serious and solemn than what the scandalmongers in the village would have deemed him capable of. People were so quick to turn a blind eye to Naruto’s sweet, gentle, compassionate nature. They didn’t see his loyalty or bravery, only the occasional prank he pulled on people who, by being nasty to him, practically begged for it.

Hitomi froze in the living room, her breath stuck in her throat. Everywhere her gaze went, there were traces of the massacre, up to the point she could reconstitute Itachi’s steps in the room. No one had taken the time to even clean the blood off the floor. She took a few faltering steps inside and knelt on the stained tatami, her fingers brushing against the spot where Itachi’s blade had gone through Mikoto’s chest and stopped its course in the quilted floor. He had killed her first, probably because it was the most painful one – he had always been closer to her than he had to his father.

She looked up and suddenly she could see him, as clear as if he’d still been there, his feet soiling the tatamis, his tantō already bathed in the blood of his clanmates gripped in shaking fingers – only that would explain the pattern of droplets there. She could see the place where he had knelt behind his parents, almost heard the terrified, lonely note in his voice as he promised them to protect Sasuke. She didn’t need to have been there for that. Her mind reconstructed the scene with an acuity and perfection that made her want to scream, to curl up under her bed and disappear.

The girl stayed there for a moment, her head bowed respectfully, ignoring the distant ache of the old tatamis under her knees. She had no prayer to offer them, no abstract faith to call upon for herself and for the souls of all the people who had lost their life during that cursed night – no one to beg for mercy in Itachi’s name.

In this universe, they hadn’t been close. He was the older brother of one of her best friends, it didn’t go any deeper than that. And yet she had been able to observe him. She had seen, week after week, how anxiety took its toll on him, on his body, his face, and had found an echo in the loneliness she had read in his dark eyes. She had asked Fugaku for advice about kenjutsu, and Mikoto had helped her master complicated strokes for her calligraphy and fūinjutsu. But it was Itachi who had saved Sakura and her, who hadn’t made fun of the two students overrun by their civilian opponents.

In the Previous World, when she had read this story, Hitomi had grown fond of Itachi. It felt so far away…

Slowly, her body bearing the weight of all the deaths and the blood that had once impregnated the walls and stones of this forgotten land, she stood back up. Her hands and mind got to work automatically, while her consciousness observed, cold and detached. Such a beautiful mask. Deep inside her Library, an anguished howl rang out, so deep and strong it made the whole foundations and anchors tremble. Already, she was learning to tune it down, to ignore it.

She kept going like that for more than ten minutes, opening drawer after drawer to sort through their content and decide what they would take home, before her mind yielded. She staggered, her hands hanging onto the closest chest, a strangled sob fighting its way out of her throat. She immediately muffled the sound, a fist against her lips to keep it inside. Sasuke couldn’t hear this. In her state, she wasn’t sure she would be able to pretend she was fine. And yet, she couldn’t explain to him how she mourned his decimated clan and his brother too, the way he had been before his slow fall from grace. He didn’t know. Itachi’s sacrifice had been kept secret from him.

She had to make him uncover the truth before it was too late.

She would have loved nothing more than just go back to the hall and explain everything to him. But how would she have justified her knowledge of it? If the rumour broke out of her awareness of the future – if her actions hadn’t modified it anyway – and her village’s past, Danzō, the son of a bitch, would put his dirty hands on her. She knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the torture he would put her through to steal her secrets, just like she knew such information couldn’t be given to anyone without him learning about it sooner or later.

No, she couldn’t do that. She had to be patient, subtle, to discreetly feed him , vague clues, month after month, year after year, until she could finally tell him the truth and pretend she had deduced it. That way, her own secret would be safe, and perhaps Sasuke could forgive his brother. If, in that process, she could make Itachi live and Danzō die… Two of her goals would be reached.

After a slight shake of her head, she put herself back together, rubbed her damp cheeks and puffy eyes, then got back to work. She was only filling a little scroll first, with trinkets Sasuke might want to take back. The interesting part, however, was in the shelves along the wall opposite to the window. The sun had faded the colours of those books, but their content was still untouched. Of course, she wouldn’t find anything secret here, exposed to sight, but she still wondered what the Uchiha family had read once.

The lower shelves were filled with children books that had probably belonged to Sasuke. She took them without hesitation: if her friend didn’t want them, she would suggest he gave them away to the orphanage. The higher shelves contained a complete encyclopaedia she didn’t even touch – Kurenai already had one – and, the two highest, a set of all law books for Konoha’s clans, and even some about foreign ones. Those she took immediately, since they were very precious resources.

She had still so many things to see and take before going home – the real home, for all three of them.

Chapter 27: A New Blade

Notes:

Please note: The name Shingi to Giri comes from silenceia’s Growing Strong. silenceia allowed me to use it when I asked and I’m very thankful for it!

The sun had almost reached its peak when the three children reached a house built aside from the others. Hitomi had ended up taking care of Sasuke’s house entirely, except for his bedroom. She’d felt like an intruder, going methodically through his family’s things. In Itachi’s room, she had found a poetry book he had written. She had hidden it away in one of her scrolls, one that already contained her own things and wasn’t used to collect what they wanted to take from the clan lands.

She would read it, one day.

“Whose house is it?” She had asked that question each time they had gotten ready to cross a threshold, and Sasuke answered, giving the names of the people who had lived there and then a few information about them, as if to introduce living relatives to his friends. Naruto was listening, his blue eyes darkened by a touch of seriousness and maturity that felt almost out of character for him. Fortunately, he still spoke with excitement when he discovered something, providing his two friends with the lightness they needed to handle their conflicted feelings and the weight on their shoulders.

“Uchiha Shisui. His father died when he was fourteen and his mother followed not so long after that. When he found himself alone, he couldn’t bear to live so close to their ghosts. My father gave him this house and turned the other one into a dojo for the police force. He was known for his usage of the Shunshin. He turned it into a weapon, just like Hokage the Second wanted to.”

Hitomi’s eyes went wide. The Shunshin was one of the techniques she wanted to learn the most. Until she could use it, she would settle for the Substitution technique, more restrictive but taught at the Academy. Kurenai had mentioned wanting to get them started on the basis of these techniques during the holidays, before sixth year started. The girl had no trouble picturing an offensive usage to these two techniques. Their applications and limitations were different, but with some training…

She shook her head and filed those thoughts away in her Library. The section reserved for her projects would soon burst with them if she continued having new ideas. She could have created more shelves, but a bit of chaos seemed fitting for that part of her mind. Back in the physical world, she took the lead and opened the door.

“I’m taking the living room,” Sasuke said. “Naruto, take the kitchen. Hitomi, the bedroom and library?”

The girl nodded. It was the way they usually did it since they had started in the morning. Naruto also took the basement and bathroom, and Sasuke often came to help his sister finish with the library or office. She was most at ease with entering the intimacy – bedroom – and mind – library – of people she had never even met.

This was their eleventh house and, after all this time, Hitomi had found a routine. For example, she didn’t take the clothes. She would later suggest to Sasuke that he gave them all away, but she had no space for it. The shinobi gear, however, she never left behind. It would have been stupid to do so; they would find a use for it, without the slightest doubt. Of course, the blades needed cleaning and sharpening, the grips tightening, but nothing a bit of care couldn’t provide.

Shisui had been the kind of guy to care for his interior design. For his bedroom, he had chosen pale blue shades, incredibly soft and soothing, that made Hitomi feel safe, like she was inside a bubble. His furniture was a very light cream, almost white, under all the dust. The girl had kept a straight face when Sasuke had said his name. She hadn’t known the man when he was alive, but she knew he had been Itachi’s best friend, and he had died offering him the eye he had left.

She knew his other eye was in Danzō’s body.

A flash of anger burned through her veins, the sweet melody of vengeance promising her a thousand marvels for the day when she would finally act. Whatever the fall from grace that would break the cycle of violence and manipulation in which the councilman was sweeping up people, she would take part in it. She would make him fall, she would break him. And if she couldn’t do so herself, she would be there watching, making sure all his victims were finally avenged. And that was why she couldn’t, without hypocrisy, reproach Sasuke’s desire for vengeance. She, who couldn’t forgive without lying at least a little to the person in question, understood how bitterness corrupted the mind slowly, day after day, until it reached a point where everything, except revenge, faded. There was a way out of that kind of darkness, but it seemed so far out of reach. She understood.

Her eyes went to the trinkets and paintings decorating Shisui’s room. He had obviously loved animals. Some of the species represented there didn’t appear in the Land of Fire. Hitomi notably recognised a fennec fox that had probably been drawn in Sunagakure, and a salamander that could only be found in the Land of Iron. As for the rest of them, she couldn’t even say where they were from.

Resolute, she walked to one of the two wardrobes in the room. The other contained clothes and trapping material she had inspected before packing  away. She pouted when she heard the door creak so loud it ringed in her ears. A tantō occupied the middle shelf and, even without unsheathing it, she knew it was a masterpiece, the kind that could only be found in houses where nobles lived, or where shinobi brave enough to steal them did.

The sheath was the purest shade of black, smooth and carefully lacquered. Feathers painted in blood-red ink fell from the guard to the tip, each detail painted with striking precision. Until his death, Shisui had possessed the Crow Summoning Contract, Hitomi knew. She found it sweet that the fierce shinobi had chosen such a pattern for his weapon of choice. Slowly, as reverently as she could, she took the weapon from its stand and wrapped her fingers around its guard, getting a feel for the braided silk that reinforced it, its shade of red matching the paint perfectly.

She drew the blade out in a swift move – too swift, in fact. All the swords they had found so far had been gripped by rust, almost impossible to unsheathe. It wasn’t the case this time. Careful not to harm herself, the girl got the edge of the blade closer to her face and inspected it. It was absolutely perfect, as sharp and formidable as it had been in the first weeks of its service, without any usage mark. Even her tantō had those. The sword’s name was carved on its blade. Ishi to Senrigan, Determination and Clairvoyance. It was said that blades were named after the virtues they offered to their masters as they lived, battled, and travelled together.

“Sasuke?” she called in a soft voice.

He joined her in the room a few seconds later. She had often called him, in other houses, to ask about a particular item, so he had grown accustomed to it. His dark eyes went wide when he saw the tantō in her hand. The light pouring through the window reflected coldly against the edge of the blade. The last Uchiha, as he was called in the village, hadn’t thought he would see this weapon ever again, he who had only glimpsed it once, the day Shisui had received it from his clan leader.

“Do you know why this weapon looks like it had just been purchased and placed here yesterday? Hitomi asked to make Sasuke focus on her again.

Sasuke shrugged off the shock he had just felt and squared his shoulders, taking a step in the bedroom. He didn’t dare touching Ishi to Senrigan, only eying it respectfully. “It’s a chakra blade. That steel can resist anything, including the passage of time and its master’s chakra. This tantō has been in my clan for at least as much time as Shingi to Giri.”

Shingi to Giri, Loyalty and Honour, had been Uchiha Fugaku’s katana. When he had been fighting with that sword in his hand, the blade enshrouded in chakra flames, not many foreign shinobi had been able to face him. The rumour said he had been the one to remind his clan of their old kenjutsu style, based on flaming swords – that tradition coming back in fashion had terrified the enemy during the last Shinobi World War. Sasuke had found the katana in his father’s office and decided he would wield it rather than the one he had bought when he had started training with Hitomi.

“What do you want me to do with it?” she asked. “Do you want to keep it too?”

“You can take it,” he said with a shrug. “I’d rather you have it and use it than any alternative. If we find another, you could give it to Naruto and teach him to use it. Could become the special thing our team does or something like that.”

The two children exchanged a knowing look. They were very aware of the fact that they would form a team later and didn’t understand how others, like some civilians, could miss it. Iruka and Mizuki always prioritised making them work together, even if they still made sure they could work with most people of their group. The two teachers knew what Hitomi had done with the clan-born kids and the jinchūriki, but they hadn’t tried to stop her, since it fitted so well with the Academy’s goals.

“Do you think they’d call us Team Sword? That sounds good. Maybe when we’re promoted to Chūnin…”

“Who knows. I just think it’d be neat to have a skill in common. We’re all more or less frontline-oriented, but we don’t have something special, something that would make people remember us as a team.”

Without giving it any more thought, Hitomi tied the sword to her belt, switching it with her old one, which went in one of her seals. This weapon had served her well, and she loved it so much – Ensui had given it to her, after all – that she preferred keeping it safe rather than risking breaking it.

The children finally found a sword for Naruto around the end of the afternoon, but it didn’t look like anything they had seen before. Hitomi, with her knowledge from the Previous World, would have called it a claymore. It was almost as tall as the little jinchūriki and had a seal allowing it to adjust to his wielder’s size, but the boy would have to build up serious muscles to use it. That sword was made for titans more than men, and if Naruto was still a scrawny kid, his chakra and willpower would do the trick. He immediately fell in love with the sword and swore he would learn to use it before graduating. Hitomi knew he would.

Sasuke told them, during a break they had, with a shy smile, that this sword had belonged to Uchiha Takami, Fukagu’s mother. She had been the Lady Uchiha then, until her husband had died on a mission. Then, she had taken control of the clan, since her son had been too young to do so. She hadn’t been a gentle ruler. Mikoto had told her sons about that time in a low voice, as if she still feared being heard by the woman’s ghost. Hitomi hoped she would never have that kind of cold and cruel power over people. She was determined, not heartless.

Finally, they found the thing that had led them there in the first place: the collection of techniques scrolls the Uchiha clan had kept for teaching and archiving purposes. It was hidden under the dojo just next to the main police station. Hitomi took them all, no matter the subject. She didn’t care, she just wanted the knowledge and knew it would be useful in one way or another anyway.

When they were finished with the scrolls, they found a strongbox in one block of black stone that only opened when Sasuke touched it and focused chakra in his palms. There were the scrolls about the Sharingan itself. Of course, they would just introduce the basic knowledge – Hitomi remembered the sacred stones under the Naka temple, and what Sasuke would need to do in order to access them. He still had a lot to learn to get to that point. He could summon the Sharingan at will, but it used up a lot of his chakra and he couldn’t do much with it yet. Hence the need for the scrolls.

As the sun slowly set on the village, their many storage scrolls full to the brim, they decided it was time to leave this painful place and go home. They would come back, in a few weeks maybe, to take care of all the clothes that filled wardrobes and were never worn. No one would miss them, and Sasuke, despite his attempts on the matter, couldn’t quite hide his need to be useful.

Kurenai welcomed them with a daimyo-worthy feast on the table. As soon as the three children were home, she drowned them in questions about their unofficial mission. Some things, they told her without the slightest hesitation. Others they barely dared whisper, their postures defeated, and their eyes filled with a dull sadness no kid should ever feel. Others yet, they didn’t say at all. A team knew how to keep its members’ secrets.

The dinner was quiet; even Naruto behaved as perfectly as he could, as if the day spent rummaging through the Uchiha lands had spent part of his amazing stamina. It didn’t stop him from bickering with Sasuke like usual, but the way the two boys were smiling stopped Kurenai from asking them to stay civil. Hitomi, too, refrained from kicking them in the shins so they would calm down. Wasn’t she nice?

Once the table was clean, the three children settled in the living room just like the day before, and just like the day before Kurenai sat on the couch as they claimed the coffee table. It wasn’t time yet to sort through the tremendous volume of things they had brought back from the Uchiha lands, but they had other work to do. In one of her pockets, Hitomi found a pen and a notebook. She never went far without that very useful pair of items. She didn’t ever forget anything, but it wasn’t the case for Naruto, far from it, and even Sasuke didn’t have her eidetic memory. If they were captured with written information somewhere on them, they could still swallow it. Good luck to their opponent then to have that back.

They had a very lively conversation that lasted the whole evening. Establishing the cost of a product was hard enough as it was; adding the production cost and a margin could turn in a real nightmare, especially when Sasuke and Naruto had to fight tooth and nail against Hitomi’s instinct to devalue her own work. The girl had a hard time understanding why her friends were fighting so hard so she would have more money since it didn’t change anything for them. She ended up giving in, though. Somewhere deep inside, she wanted that income.

When the night came, Hitomi had a lot to think about and, when she finally fell asleep, a dream came to her once more.

Chapter 28: Monsters Under Her Bed

His bloody hand wrote the kanjis for his name on the parchment, then applied his prints carefully. Ready at last, he focused his chakra and formed the necessary hand seals. An Uchiha should have been impassive in all circumstances, but he had never managed it: he couldn’t stop his body from jittering with impatience and his eyes from gleaming, full of anticipation. When his hand touched the ground, all the chakra he had been able to gather was spent in an instant, and a crow bigger than a horse appeared in front of him.

Probably surprised by the summon, the bird spread his wings and stared down at the boy. His pearl white beak slightly open, he towered over the child who had just dared to summon him just as he was going to tuck in for dinner. Humans never thought about that kind of detail. Especially shinobi. In former days, centuries ago, when chakra and ninja arts were just a rumour amongst the tree, the Crow Summoning Contract had belonged to the monks living in a temple hidden deep in what would become the Land of Fire. They had been so much more respectful of the Crows.

“Well, kid, what do you want? Speak, I don’t have all day.”

The Crows had always been this way, incredibly intelligent but impatient. Their thoughts ran far quicker than any human’s and only age gave them the ability to settle down and wait for their summoner to decide what they wanted to do. Shiromaru was still a child in the eyes of his race, though. Waiting was like a burn on his nerves.

“I’d like to become one of your summoners, Crow-sama” the child said softly.

The crow threw his head up and started laughing, the sound dry and jolting but not devoid of humour. No one had ever called him that. When he’d tell Nee-chan about it… “Our contract comes with a price, kid,” he said when he calmed down. “We won’t let you use us without the compensation we ask of any summoner.”

“What do you want from them then?”

Shiromaru stared at the human child for a while, trying to decide if he was the kind to accept the compensation. That rule had been installed when the Hidden Village had stolen the scroll from the monks the Crows had loved so much, in hope the humans, disgusted, gave it back to its rightful owners. Alas, the ploy had failed and, since then, the birds had simply learned to profit from the deal. “We want your opponents’ eyes, kid. Each time you kill, you’ll do it without damaging the eyes, and then call the one who decided to assist you while the corpse is still warm so the crow can take them back to our realm.”

The boy tensed, surprised. He had found the scroll in the clan archives, well hidden behind the most boring treaties, the ones no one ever read. Who expected to find such a treasure there? He had learned from his parents that the Uchiha had guardianship of several summoning contracts: the most famous were the Crows and the Rams, which only the clan head could use. Others, less powerful, were also in their hands, but most had been forgotten. After all, they mostly kept them so no enemy could have them. “I agree to your terms,” he said politely. “What do I do now?”

“Now, kid, I will observe you for fifteen days and fifteen nights, then I will share what I learned about you with our Elder, who will decide who your companion will be.”

The boy nodded and, his gestures precise and respectful, wiped his bloody hand clean before closing the scroll he had signed. Shiromaru observed him, trying to assess him already. During these two weeks, he would have to discover his brightest qualities and his deepest weaknesses, so his report to the Elder was as complete as it could possibly be. He would finally be able to explore the Physical World… Natsutaiyō had bragged so hard about it during the gatherings. It would soon be his turn to do so.

“Alright, then,” the boy said. “If you plan on staying with me for so long, stop calling me ‘kid’. My name is Shisui. What’s yours?”

Hitomi jerked awake, her heart racing in her chest and her breathing shallow. When she raised her hands to rub her face, she found her cheeks damp with tears. She didn’t understand why she dreamed of the past so much. Because it could only be the past. Shisui was dead, he had committed suicide to stop Danzō from taking his remaining eye and offered it to Itachi instead. A tormented moan escaped her lips and she quickly muffled it, her fist against her mouth, trying to calm down.

Even when they weren’t frightening, just like this one, the dreams always made her body react to such an extent that being terrified or not made no difference. She felt as if she had just run a marathon with her former body, something she would have been happy never to go through again. Her joints ached, her lungs burned. Nothing would have pleased her more than going out and running, feeling free, strong, healthy, but the reminder of what she had been in the Previous World always put her in an unsettling morosity, which was difficult to hide.

Even Sasuke, who welcomed her in his bed each night she had a nightmare, didn’t know what they showed her exactly. He didn’t need that to understand she couldn’t stand her dark, empty room once she woke up. After all, he was going through something similar, had been since the Massacre. She had just told him she didn’t want to talk about it and it had been enough for him to never ask about it again. It was better that way: she couldn’t really tell him about her dreams of the past, some showing her members of his decimated clan. She couldn’t tell him that, sometimes, she saw his brother too.

With a slight shiver, she left the bed and stumbled to the bathroom, barely avoiding a painful meeting between her pinkie toe and the corner of a book she had dropped there. Why was she always doing that? It was stupid. She had enough shelves for all the books she could possibly dream of. Maybe she needed a bit of mess around her to feel like she belonged. Once she was in her bathroom, she freshened up a bit and looked at her reflection, her stare cold, tired, detached.

She had changed a lot these last few years. If she was still little for her age, lean and wiry muscles gave strength to her limbs, to her whole body. Her black hair, wavy like her mother’s, was still untied, but she quickly grabbed a hairbrush and a red rubber band to tie them Nara-style. They were too long to stay up on her head, like Shikamaru’s or Shikaku’s; untied, they reached the bottom part of her shoulder blades. Still, the gesture meant a lot to her.

Her red eyes were still a bit too large for her face, the rich colour complimenting her black eyelashes and pale skin. She had lost the tan her trip to Sunagakure had granted her years ago: now, her skin was freckled, especially on the nose and the cheekbones. She was slowly losing the baby fat she had had around the lines of her cheeks and chin. Her cheekbones would be high and salient, just like any Nara’s.

She really didn’t look like much when she had just left the bed. It was different at the Academy, where she was one of the rare girls to wear an appropriate outfit for the training the children went through every day. She was small, stunningly fast, and if she lacked strength compared to the boys in the Fellowship, she was clever enough to still be their match during sparring exercises most of the time – except when she went against Sasuke, because he was one little devil when he fought one on one. With a heavy sigh, the girl turned away from the mirror and looked at the clock on the opposite wall.

What could she do to pass the time? It was too early to wake someone up and train. Idle and grumpy, she came back to her room and turned the light on to write a letter to Gaara. He too knew she had nightmares. She had wanted to tell Ensui and had figured it wasn’t fair to hide things from her friend since they were both using his notebook to talk to her. She hadn’t told either of them about the content of those dreams, though. She fully intended on having this secret die with her.

It had become usual for her to end her letters to Gaara with a few words for his siblings. Temari had a knack for riddles so the two girls played a game with them that had lasted for months now without a clear winner. With Kankurō, she talked about the fauna and flora of the Land of Fire. The boy dreamed about building his own puppets one day and was looking for inspiration there.

Once she was done with the letter, she stood up once more and went to the kitchen. Kurenai and the boys would be up in two hours. It was too early to get started on breakfast, but she wanted to cook a little something for herself. Eating always brought her comfort. She understood why the Akimichi, empaths in a world of violence and blood, needed it so much. When Chōji had told her their jutsus weren’t the only reason behind that behaviour, she had nodded in comprehension and shared the onigiri Kurenai had made for her. For the Akimichi, sharing food was a gesture of deep friendship and trust.

When boredom threatened to engulf her again, she decided to go out, even if the night would still last for a bit more than an hour. Sitting on the porch, she watched the starry sky, revelling in the peace and quiet all around her. She breathed in deeply and allowed her muscles to relax. She was safe here. Her gaze followed the dance of three fireflies around a flower, then went to the silhouette of a clanmate walking to the gate of the lands. A mission, probably. He looked fast and lazy at the same time, which made her smile tenderly. Only Nara could pull that off.

She turned around when she heard noise behind her, a kunai finding its place in her hand, and felt a bit dumb when Asuma opened the door… from the inside… She raised her eyebrows and blushed slightly when she understood, finding comfort in the obvious embarrassment he was showing himself.

“Err… Hi, Hitomi-chan.” He scratched his neck, looking ready to shunshin away at the first sign of anger from her.

“You know, you don’t have to sneak around when you want to spend the night here. I’m sure I can convince Sasuke to leave you alone and in one piece.”

“Uh… Actually… I’m more afraid of you . The Academy’s reports say you’re a wicked little demon.”

Well, that explained why he had been muting his chakra. A startled laugh escaped Hitomi’s lips as a wave of heat bloomed in her chest. She was so happy people noticed. She also hoped to cut the ‘little’ part of it, but ‘wicked demon’ sounded good as a reputation.

“Who, me? Nah, I’ve known for ages now. I don’t need to remind you that shinobi are gossips, since I heard you tell Shiranui Genma about the woman Morino Ibiki sees after his shifts, three days ago.” Her smile turned almost feral when surprise came back on Asuma’s face. Oh, she loved that power. Sasuke and Naruto thought it was terrifying – how could she know Mizuki’s shoe size and that Iruka hated pickles without any research? – but she was very satisfied with her ability to listen and to be in the right place at the right time. It was an excellent weapon for a shinobi.

“On the other hand, if you hurt my mom… Well, you probably can imagine far more horrible punishments than I can, being Jōnin and all that, but whatever it is, do know I’ll do it to you. Even if I haven’t thought about it yet.”

The powerful shinobi, son of Hokage the Third and former member of the Twelve Guardians in service of the daimyo, stiffened so obviously that she couldn’t help but laugh, the sound wild and lively, her eyes gleaming and her mind at peace for the first time that day. With a light-hearted gesture of her hand, she patted the man’s forearm and tried to appease him. “There, there. I’m sure you don’t have anything to fear. For now, you’re doing well with Mom.”

She didn’t need to repeat her threat, even if toying with Asuma that way was incredibly easy. Since she had so much power over him, she might be able to make him quit smoking… But, in that case, she would probably need Shikamaru and Naruto’s help, and a lot of time. You couldn’t go headfirst against a Jōnin, not for something like that. She liked her head attached to her shoulders, thank you very much.

A comfortable silence settled between man and child; they didn’t feel the need to fill it in anyway, content just to enjoy it. They watched the slow arrival of dawn together, her sitting again, him standing up a few steps away from her so as to avoid bothering her with his cigarette. As the last beams of light extracted themselves from the horizon, Hitomi stood up and started greeting the sun, not at all surprised when Asuma joined her, the nicotine stick firmly stuck between his lips. Once the stretching routine was over, she shook herself and rubbed her arms, only noticing how cold the air was.

“Well, I’m gonna get started on breakfast. You should go back to Mom and tell her that no, you haven’t suffered ‘death by Hitomi’. Get downstairs in half an hour and take the boys, they should be ready by then.”

She nodded to him then got back inside, a wicked smile on her lips. Asuma was indeed an easy prey, mighty Jōnin or not. Maybe it was because she could pressure him that Hitomi was so tempted to tease him all the time… After all, he wasn’t wrong when he feared her turning his life into a living hell if she decided she didn’t like him or the way he treated her mother. She couldn’t really hurt him, but she had the skills needed to annoy him to no end: she was dangerously intelligent and, if it wasn’t enough, she had Naruto as a secret-not-so-secret weapon. Dangerously intelligent was good, but dangerously intelligent and unpredictable? Even better.

Humming quietly, she settled in the kitchen to cook. A lifetime ago, she had been a talented singer, but hadn’t had the health or desire to practice and get better. Who would have listened anyway? Her voice wasn’t the same but, in a strange happenstance, she had kept that little talent, even after damaging her vocal cords as a baby. She was very careful not to sing in either of the two languages she had known in the Previous World, that knowledge locked away deep enough inside her mind to never be used by accident. She didn’t want the Jōnin surrounding her at all time to focus on her in the way an unknown language would make them.

Kurenai and Asuma were the first to arrive in the kitchen, just in time to sit in front of their breakfast. It was a mystery how Hitomi managed to only give the man things he enjoyed, leaving the nori and green tea away from him. When he looked up to her, she just gave him her sweetest smile. He couldn’t know, of course, that she was playing shōgi with Shikaku every week and that her uncle was particularly chatty when he was immersed in the game. He and Asuma were good friends, but they didn’t play yet. It would only start when Asuma would get his Genin team.

When Naruto and Sasuke arrived, she served them breakfast too then sat and started eating. It was still too early for the blonde boy to go from a sleepy bundle of cuteness to overexcited battery, but she knew it would come, and soon. It was perfect: after the dream she’d had, she couldn’t wait to train. The energy buzzing inside her wanted to come out, and the slow stretches of the sun greeting weren’t enough.

“Naruto, today we’re teaching you the basics of kenjutsu. Asuma-san, do you think you could help?”

“Well, I probably could. The Twelve Guardians have to wield a katana. That’s not the same as Naruto-kun’s sword, but I should be able to help.”

The girl nodded, thrilled to have convinced Asuma without even really trying. A part of her wondered if he was doing it so she would be pleased and support him in his courtship of Kurenai. The other part didn’t care, since she was getting what she wanted anyway. When she was finished with her meal, she started to put the dishes in the sink for the adults to clean. Sasuke followed her every move, as if he could read something she wasn’t saying in them. This thought made a surge of anxiety surge in her mind, but she muffled it. It was so stupid. Allowing her nightmares to make her paranoid was out of the question.

“As for you, Sasuke, you have things to read. The scrolls we took from the Uchiha lands are in my room, I’m gonna bring them to you before going with Naruto. Sounds good?”

The boy nodded but didn’t look away. It wasn’t like she was forcing him to do something he didn’t want to do: he wanted to master the things that had elevated his clan amongst the most powerful in the whole world. He had to, if he wanted to kill… no, he couldn’t think about him, not under this roof. He didn’t want to bring that kind of damnation upon the household that had given him love and safety again. Hitomi, the girl he had come to see as a sister, already had shadows carved deep enough under her eyes. He often wondered about her nightmares, but he understood. He didn’t want to talk about his, after all.

She didn’t need to talk for him to understand, as he didn’t need to say how the power in his eyes frightened him sometimes for her to get it. They understood each other.

Chapter 29: New Comrads

Several days later, Yūhi Shinku was back in the village after a long diplomatic mission in Sunagakure. He was well past the age of retirement but, as he admitted himself, he was driven by the deep and sharp need to be useful to his village. He had missed his grand-daughter’s birthday and hadn’t found Ensui during his mission, which was to be expected – he didn’t want to draw any attention to the place where he was hiding with the Kazekage’s youngest son.

“Hitomi-chan,” he said when he came to see her that day, “you’re twelve now. It’s time for you to be introduced to the spiritual creatures who lend us strength in battle. Today, I’m going to make you sign the Nekomadake Cats Summoning Contract.”

Hitomi, who had greeted her grandfather and had been ready to go back to the book she had to read for the Academy, stopped her gesture, her features showing her astonishment despite her efforts to hide it. She hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly, even if, she had to admit it, she had thought about this honour more and more often. Her dream about Uchiha Shisui had helped her understand the deep peace that had motivated him, so gentle and comforting. She wanted to take that feeling for herself, to find strength in her own convictions despite the gut-wrenching fear that inhabited her when she projected her thoughts on the many battles to come.

Slowly, his movements suffused with extreme respect, Shinku took the contract and unrolled it for her to see. Perfectly silent, Hitomi stared at the names and prints succeeding each other on the parchment. It was a very old scroll, only preserved by the chakra that had impregnated the paper for generation after generation. Uchiha shinobi first, then Yūhi. Her ancestors.

“Let’s take it outside,” Shinku said with surprising gentleness. “You can’t even imagine how big those creatures are!” His voice was full of tenderness for them and a thin smile played on his lips. This was incredibly rare for him. Kurenai followed them to the garden, settling in a chair to continue reading. She wouldn’t miss an occasion to see her father’s cats. She had signed with the Dragonflies, and was quite satisfied with them, but she liked the felines too, with their witty tongues and surprising love for cuddles. They would be an amazing fit for her daughter.

“Before we get started, I have to explain how the Cats Contract works.” Elder and child sat in seiza simultaneously, staring ahead at nothing in particular. They didn’t need to see each other to talk. Hitomi was surprised at the contemplative tendencies a lot of shinobi were showing, especially the oldest, the ones who had known war and found in this placid attitude a necessary counterpart to the horrors they had seen and taken part in.

“The most important thing to know is that the Cats Contract is a set contract. It means you won’t have a bond with only one cat, but several of them. This one is based on generations: I had all the warriors who had been recognised as such since I took possession of the contract, but all the apprentices, kittens and cats not yet born of the clan are yours, until you decide to transmit the contract to someone else.”

Hitomi nodded, a grave expression on her features. She had read an article in the Academy’s library that explained the different categories of contracts; the set contracts bonded the summoner to several specific creatures, the individual contracts to only one of them, and the exclusive contracts, like the Toads one, gave the summoner the right to summon any creature linked to the contract they had signed. Of course, the canon had never explained all this: you just had to accept that Jiraiya could summon any toad and Kakashi had a pack of dogs.

“Don’t ever summon a cat that isn’t bonded to you, except if it’s a case of extreme necessity. In that case, you can contemplate summoning a healer or the clan leader, but don’t choose that option lightly: you will have to justify it, and if the summoned cat decides the situation wasn’t dire enough, you will gravely offend the whole clan.”

Her eyes gleaming, Hitomi drank her grandfather’s words, struggling to hide her eagerness to learn more. She was captivated. How had customs morphed in that ironclad rule? She would have to ask, one day, if she had the occasion. If you could do it without insulting anyone.

“If Tsurī, the cat I’m going to summon for you when you sign the contract, deems you worthy, she will go back in the spiritual world and come back with the first litter of apprentices you will be allowed to summon. They will stay by your side for six months and learn everything you think they need to learn, then go back to their home. From then on, you’ll have to summon them regularly to work with them, but they will continue learning things in their world with their mentors.”

The girl nodded once more, and her grandfather continued talking. He explained the theory behind the summoning jutsu, describing the way she would have to manipulate her chakra, the hand seals she would have to use, and the principle of signing in blood. He was looking at her now. Under his heavy, attentive stare, she unsheathed her new tantō and used the edge of the blade to open her palm with a quick, self-assured move. Her nerves screamed their protestations immediately but she ignored it, ignored the pain and feeling of unease to focus instead on the gestures of her other hand. She used her own blood to write her name and sign by appending her prints under the kanjis.

This time, she didn’t have to spend the chakra necessary for the summoning jutsu, and she was relieved when the cloud of smoke dissipated and she saw a tortoiseshell cat, as big as a pony, appear in front of her. Despite her huge reserves compared to other children, she wouldn’t have been able to maintain such a summon in the physical world for even a few minutes, and the effort would have left her exhausted or even sick. She never wanted to go through that again – and yet she knew she would, a certainty carved deep in her meridians and gates.

“Tsurī-sama,” Shinku said as he bowed to the cat, “I present to you and your ancestors this apprentice, so they can decide if she is worthy to run and hunt by your side.” The way he said them, not quite rehearsed but close, told Hitomi the words were part of a ritual. Was it common with other contracts? She drove that question away from her thoughts, since she couldn’t answer it.

Hitomi shivered but tried to hide it, to project the perfect image of serenity and dignity her grandfather dreamed she would be one day. Under the intense, green stare of the cat, she refused to bend, to break, to fidget with embarrassment or impatience or fear. She was a true shinobi, and always eager for new knowledge – Tsurī could see it in the shadows and sparks swirling in her red eyes. The healer raised her head and inspected the sky, painted orange and pink with dusk.

“My ancestors looked upon you, Yūhi Hitomi,” Tsurī said, managing to show tenderness and dignity in equal parts, “and they deemed you worthy. From now on, you will be known amongst us as the Lady Summoner; our children and the children of our children will answer your call until, in turn, you choose one amongst your successors to run and hunt by our side. Hold us dear, and may you walk with us for many years to come.”

The imposing cat slightly bowed her head, until her muzzle touched the shoulder of the child who stared at her, stars and night sky both in her eyes. The clan would have to monitor her gaze closely, to preserve it from the threats of dark and pain as much as it would be possible – which wasn’t a lot where a shinobi was concerned. Tsurī had faith, though. Her clan would never abandon the Lady Summoner’s.

“It’s time for me to go fetch your first litter. You’ll learn together in the physical world, then separately when the time will come for them to get back to us. Be prepared, child, I will use your chakra to create the bridge this time.”

Hitomi nodded; Tsurī was gone even before she had the time to raise her eyes. A few moments later, she was back, five kittens in her wake. The girl really couldn’t call them anything else: they still had a fluffy, messy coat, and short, round legs. She didn’t wait for permission before kneeling in the grass and looking at each of them. They were clearly separated in two groups: ginger, grey and black kittens to one side, and two tabbies to the other, one a pale shade of ginger and the other grey with black stripes.

“Lady Summoner, here are your companions. May your hunt be long and fruitful.”

Upon those words, Tsurī disappeared, leaving Hitomi with five unknown cats who, while obviously young, were already bigger than a small dog. They looked around with obvious interest, their big eyes gleaming with a quiet curiosity. The first to shake it off was the ginger cat, his green eyes stunning in contrast to his fire-coloured pelt. He walked toward Hitomi, his gait supple and perfectly quiet against the blades of grass, then sat in front of her.

“Greetings, Lady Summoner, I’m Hoshihi. The black cat behind me is Kurokumo and the grey one Haīro. The two cats there together are Sunaarashi, the sable one, and the tabby is Hokori. We’ll stay here for six months, right?”

“Very nice to meet you all,” Hitomi answered softly. “My name is Hitomi. And yes, you’ll stay here for six months and train with me.”

“If they want to hunt,” Shinku pitched in, “the Nara Forest is vast enough. Disturbing the deer is forbidden, but all the other animals are fair game.”

“Wow, it’s the Lord Summoner!” the grey cat, Haīro, exclaimed.

“The former Lord Summoner. Have you listened to what Tsurī-sama just told us? This girl bears the title now.”

The voice came from both tabbies at once, which was slightly disturbing for Hitomi. Since none of the cats seemed shocked and Shinku just nodded with approval, the girl decided to take it as an established fact and move on.

“Well,” she said as she stood back up, “now that we’re done with introductions, let’s go for a tour of the clan lands. I’ll also take that opportunity to assess your physical abilities. I hope you like to run?”

The cats looked at each other, then Hoshihi and Kurokumo burst out laughing seeing Haīro dramatically devastated expression. Obviously, those three didn’t mix that much with the two others, and Hitomi was set on changing that. Working with the Fellowship, she had understood the capital importance of teamwork, the strength of the group compared to the sum of all its individuals. And they would have the same realisation, she would make sure of it.

As they walked to the fenced-in part of the Nara Forest, she tried to gauge the stamina and speed of each cat now in her care. They were still young and would get better, but she still had to hide a grimace when she saw how far they were from the standards she had to follow at the Academy – standards she had long surpassed. While they explored the hunting grounds, she started planning the necessary training sessions. It meant suspending her research on battle chemistry, amongst other fields, but she accepted the sacrifice without any difficulty. The world wouldn’t crumble into itself if her smoke bombs were grey instead of red – even if red was cool .

The next morning, the child woke her five cats up and got ready for the Academy. She caught Sasuke staring at her with supreme amusement a few times and had to fight her instinct to answer this provocation. She would make him pay the next time they’d spar: she was working on a way to use her shadows in close combat, and that would be an absolute pain in the ass for any opponent. Since she finally managed to call on her shadows without using the Rat Hand Seal, she was ready to try – she couldn’t wait to see if her idea was doable and really applicable to a fight.

She had gotten to know her new friends a bit better during the evening, to her greatest joy. Those cats were young, yes, but incredibly clever. Kurokumo was so clever it made her want to smile, Haīro had a razor-sharp tongue and had made Kurenai giggle until her muscles ached, and Hoshihi was incredibly aware of his litter-mates needs, and adapting to them constantly.

As for Sunaarashi and Hokori, the brother and sister, they were peaceful companions who still had trouble mixing with the other three. They had a form of telepathy that allowed them to see through the eyes and thoughts of each other and often talked in the same voice, but they were still distinguishable: Hokori was placid and observant, and his sister Sunaarashi had such a panache Hitomi couldn’t help but admire her.

As the cats went to hunt their fill – Kurenai had offered to give them meat but they had refused, claiming they were old and strong enough to catch their own food – Hitomi dressed up and checked she had everything she needed for the day to come. She didn’t have the right to take her sword with her but still had a kunai for self-defence, if needed, and her wooden tantō to spar with Sasuke after class.

Once she was ready, she left for school, collecting her cats at the rendezvous point they had agreed on so she could lead them through the village and to the Academy. She showed them the Tower where the Hokage worked, attached to the school, and the Torture and Intelligence Department just across the street. She also described her typical day, and told them what she had planned for them after class, relieved to see how eager they were to learn.

Troubles started when Hitomi stepped in the classroom. Immediately, her cats reacted to something she didn’t understand right away and deployed in a triangle formation in front of her, Hoshihi at the point, hissing and spitting. When she identified the thing they perceived as a threat, she threw herself at the ginger cat to grab him by the scrape of his neck before he jumped on a very surprised Akamaru, her shadow stretching to freeze the four others. Trapping an animal – or more than one – with that technique felt wrong , and the fact she couldn’t move made it even worse. Still, allowing them to attack wouldn’t have attracted the Inuzuka Clan’s sympathy to Hitomi, and she knew it.

When she felt Haīro and Sunaarashi fight against her grip, she spoke, her voice snapping like a whip. “Enough! Kiba and Akamaru are our friends . I know dogs and cats don’t get along, and you perhaps have quarrels with some mutts in the spiritual world, but you will learn to be civil with the Inuzuka dogs! Is that clear?”

The whole class was focusing on her now. She instinctively answered their attention by releasing a bit of killing intent in the air, just enough to make it thicker and run a shiver of anxiety down everyone’s spine. That kind of reflex was more and more frequent for her, but Ensui had told her it wasn’t unheard of in children her age, like a new defence mechanism testing itself in weak danger situations so it would be ready to operate when it would be really needed. It at least had the advantage of pacifying her feline companions, who all stopped fighting. Slowly, she let them go, her shadow pooling back under her.

“I’m sorry, Kiba, I should have thought about it and warned them. Are you okay?” she asked as a frown creased her brow.

The Inuzuka child looked absolutely stunned, but his dog was just quietly wagging his tail, perched on his shinobi’s head. Then the boy got himself back together and beamed at her, maybe teasing her a bit. “I’m okay, don’t worry. What did you bring us today?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. My grandfather just made me sign the Summoning Contract our clan uses.”

“What? But that’s awesome!”

She lit up then, bouncing up and down with barely contained exaltation. “I know, right? We’ll have to train a whole lot for the next six months, but I’m really happy!”

“And you’ll have to resolve that problem with the clan dogs, too, right? I guess you’ll go to Hana-nee if your cats are hurt during training.”

“Yeah, that too. And of course I’ll go to your sister’s. She’s the best.”

He grinned and they would probably have continued to chat if Iruka hadn’t entered the classroom, asking everyone to calm down and sit. Hitomi obeyed, settling her things at her usual place in the last row as her cats found a place on her desk. They didn’t leave her much space to write, but she would still be able to do it, so she didn’t protest. Hoshihi went over the edge of Hinata’s desk but the Hyūga girl didn’t seem to mind: she started petting the cat distractedly as Iruka started the day’s lesson.

The teacher didn’t say anything about the five cats present in his classroom: either someone from the Yūhi-clan had told him about the Summoning Contract, or he had just stopped wondering about the weird things coming to, or happening in, the Academy as long as his students continued taking notes dutifully and didn’t disturb the class. As a teacher for future shinobi, he had learned to go with the flow when it was possible.

That day’s lesson explained what medical protocols were to be followed when it was possible without dropping the mission, if a teammate was wounded. Of course, the teacher reminded the class, the mission was always a good shinobi’s priority – it made Hitomi boil with outrage on her chair. She kept silent, because she knew better than trying to convince people otherwise. That was just so stupid. Who was to take care of the mission – of any mission, really – if all ninjas were dead because of their wounds? Fortunately, Iruka quickly went to the interesting part of the lesson and Hitomi took notes for the new memo cards she would offer to her friends at the end of the week.

Some time before the first break, her attention snapped to what was happening in front of her. Iruka had just thrown a piece of chalk to Naruto, who had stopped focusing. Before the projectile could touch him, Kurokumo jumped from the place where he had been sitting just a moment before and caught the piece of chalk on the fly between his jaws before spitting it on Naruto’s desk with a disgusted face. An astounded silence fell on the classroom.

Hitomi silently counted to three.

On the mark, everyone burst into laughter, except for Shikamaru who didn’t even crack an eye open, Sasuke who almost never laughed, and Hitomi who hesitated between mortification and proudness. All her muscles went stiff. She extended an arm, grabbed Kurokumo gently and picked him up, placing him on her desk again. Her cheeks a discreet shade of pink, she scratched him behind the ears to make him understand she wasn’t mad, then stood up. “I’m sorry, Iruka-sensei. It’s the first time those kittens come to school, they still have to learn how to behave.”

The teacher, who was obviously struggling to believe what had just happened – and he wasn’t the only one, Hitomi mused – waved his hand to make her understand it wasn’t a problem and picked up the lesson again. Around ten minutes later, the mid-morning break cut all students free, and the Fellowship started walking to the interior courtyard. Hoshihi had settled on Hitomi’s shoulders and Kurokumo on Hinata’s, while the other kittens just padded around their summoners. “I didn’t know you were that fast, Kurokumo,” Hitomi said as they all settled around a bench. “You held yourself back yesterday.”

“Y-yeah, I didn’t want to leave my friends behind and…”

“I understand. But training is different. You have to give me your best, so I can help you focus on what you need to improve. That way, you’ll get as strong as possible, and quickly. Your mentors had to mention it, in the spiritual world.”

“Err… Something like that, yes. They mostly made sure we could hunt for now, but we’ll have fighting training when we get back there in six moons.”

Hitomi nodded, satisfied. Of course, she fully intended on training those cats in taijutsu at least, before the end of the six months, because they had to know how to support her in battle. She would have to ask the Inuzuka clan for advice. Sure, their companions were dogs, not cats, but there had to be common ground between all ninja species, things she could learn to help her summons get better by her side.

The girl spent the break very close to Hinata. They had chosen a tree not too far from the bench where the others had settled to lay their backs on, and their arms constantly brushed against each other. It wasn’t the first time it was happening, nor the first time Hitomi surprised herself by blushing and stuttering slightly when the contact threw her inner self off-balance. At least she wasn’t the only one reacting that way: Hinata, too, was sensitive to the closeness they were creating, without even thinking about it, it seemed. The Yūhi girl liked the feeling of intimacy and warmth that spread in her chest when they were talking like that, so close their body heats mingled, their eyes often meeting without ever daring to seek each other.

She had never dared wonder about how Hinata made her feel, about that sweet, gentle impulse, the deep peace she couldn’t ignore when her friend was close. Why would she have wondered, anyway? Hinata was the Hyūga heir, and then… Hitomi didn’t know if that thing was requited or not – didn’t know how she would know, anyway. They were still so young… She forced herself to think about something else. Finding new objections to her heart’s desires was painful, she discovered that day.

Despite those doubts, when the two girls and their friends went back to class, Hitomi realised her heart was light and at peace again. A simple chat with Hinata had that effect on her. Even her cats seemed to pick up on it: Hoshihi and Sunaarashi, the two Hinata had got on her knees during the break, were the striking image of intense satisfaction. Seeing this, Hitomi shook her head, an indulging smile on her lips. She knew what to do, then, if they decided to become agitated.

And then, it would give her an excuse to be near Hinata.

Chapter 30: Alternative Strategies

One week later the kittens were already getting better. Hitomi didn’t go easy on them, making them train until they were exhausted. Then, it was her own turn, between her mother’s very capable and loving hands. Asuma sometimes helped her too, and they were often surrounded by members of the Fellowship. The end of the fifth year grew nearer and nearer, and Hitomi fully intended on keeping her title of First Kunoichi until graduation. Even if Hinata and Ino weren’t exactly breathing down on her neck, her personal pride pushed her to surpass herself again and again. That would make her an exceptional shinobi, one day.

One afternoon, Kurenai gathered all the kids in the garden, while Hitomi’s cats were trying to enhance their stamina by running laps around the house until they couldn’t take even one more step. The woman wasn’t alone: behind her stood Asuma, who had gained the respect of the whole Fellowship. Well, they were still teasing him exactly like Hitomi did, but they were grateful for his presence and help, and they let him know.

“Like you all well know, Iruka-sensei is waiting for your last year at the Academy to start to teach you the E-ranked techniques you will have to master to graduate. He has decided to work that way with you so the ones in your class that don’t get special training are ready to learn when the time comes, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait too.”

If the children were excited, they tried to hide it out of respect for the woman they had learned to almost revere as the years went by. She was nice with every one of them, remembered details about them that made them feel special and appreciated. Even Naruto always obeyed her, so desperate to keep her attention and favours – he should have known that he would never lose her. Kurenai wasn’t the kind to play stick and carrot. She never pushed her own austerity too far, settling for a kind of authority that was as quiet as it was indisputable.

“We’re going to start with the Substitution Technique. Hitomi, can you explain what it is?”

The girl nodded, an eager smile on her lips. “The Substitution Technique creates a link between the shinobi who’s using it and an object of similar size placed in a five meters radius from the shinobi’s position, then swaps them in space.”

“A very good definition, if you don’t explore further than what you can find in the Academy’s books. However, it’s a bit limited. Shino, give us an idea of another application for this technique.”

The Aburame straightened up, surprised to be asked to speak, as he always was. “My clan possesses a secret technique that will allow me, when I’ll have mastered it, to create a clone of myself out of insects from my hive. I guess I could substitute with the clone?”

“Excellent! All solid clones allow for that move, and it can greatly confuse your opponent. Anything else? Yes, Hitomi?”

A crazy idea in mind, the girl had just shily raised her hand. “Uh… Would I be able to swap two objects of similar size and mass?”

“Yes, exactly! You really have to master the technique well to be able to do it, and have excellent reflexes, but it’s possible to use it that way indeed. That’s how Hokana Minami, the Iwagakure Secret Services Commander, was beaten by Uzumaki Mito, a century ago. She was married to Hokage the First, as you well remember. She swapped Minami’s katana with a simple branch, then took advantage of the surprise to knock her out and capture her. Minami had been the first prisoner to be exchanged, which allowed us to get Mito’s sister back.”

A wily smile twisted Hitomi’s lips as she assimilated that information. The possibilities were… they were staggering, really. She stayed there smiling, her mind twisting and prodding that new concept to shape it exactly like she intended.

She was so focused she probably started oozing a bit of killing intent again, just enough to attract Naruto’s intention, and then the others’, because the blond boy wasn’t one to react discreetly. “Aaah!” he exclaimed. “Stop smiling like that! You always smile like that when you plan on doing something awful!”

His whining attracted Hitomi’s attention and dissipated the aura around her. She straightened and, surprise and offense mixed on her features, brushed her fingers against her lips. “What do you mean? I don’t understand why you’re scared when I smile.”

“Because,” he sniffled, “when you smile like that, it always means you’re preparing something mean for our next training session. I don’t wanna run after a ramen cup for three hours without ever managing to catch it…”

The entire group giggled then. That had happened in the very beginning of their association, when Hitomi had still trouble motivating Naruto to train – he was so sure he was already an amazing ninja. Tired of having to berate him, she had waited for him to fall asleep, had tied a perch to his back and stuck a ramen cup to it with ninja wire. He had started to run as soon as he had woken up, and had never understood the trick she had played on him.

“Come on, children. You’re very far from using the Substitution Technique in that way, but if you train hard, you’ll be able to do it.” Kurenai’s voice, soft despite the amusement she couldn’t quite hide, got the attention of her students back. They listened attentively to her instructions then trained their hands to reproduce the hand seal chain necessary to use the technique, until they didn’t need to look at their hands anymore to be able to do it quickly enough.

They were very careful not to use chakra – they would have wasted it, and even Hitomi had to be thrifty despite her big reserves now that she had to maintain five summons in the physical world at all times. They helped her by paying part of the tribute the technique asked for with their own chakra, but she could still constantly feel the strain on her reserves.

Then, the children could start practicing the technique for real. Kurenai had prepared a log for each of them, and they were spaced out enough in the whole garden that they weren’t at risk of getting in each other’s way. Chōji was the first to get it and do a successful substitution. To reward him, Kurenai gave him a ‘all you can eat’ coupon for Ichiraku Ramen. With Naruto as a student, she had learned to have those ready at all times. You never knew when they could become useful.

Then it was Ino and Hitomi’s turn, exactly at the same time. The sensation was disturbing: one moment she was there , the next she was elsewhere . She was sure her brain could adapt, but she would need to train first. Each new piece of knowledge, each new skill, came with a price to pay before mastering it. If it was just time and a bit of effort, Hitomi accepted the deal without any second thought. Focusing once more, she did the hand seals but didn’t succeed in substituting this time: the flux linking her chakra and her log wasn’t perfectly smooth. It was just about control. She could master it.

It took her ten more irregular attempts to be able to do it systematically, and she was starting to feel her reserves decreasing. However, Kiba, Naruto and herself were the only ones still standing. The others, their reserves smaller than theirs, were resting in the soft grass, their muscles spasming with exhaustion. The girl’s cats were shaking, as spent as the kids were, but had just started a battle simulation and, even if they were fighting with their claws carefully sheathed, the paw swipes they were throwing at each other were still powerful enough to stun.

Catching her breath, the girl went inside with her mother and helped her get refreshments for everybody. Asuma was there too, but was distracted by the three kids he would teach after graduation. He wasn’t even subtle about it, Hitomi mused as she was kneeling next to Shikamaru and helping him to sit.

“Tch… I was really happy napping, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but you need to drink. I can feel your chakra levels, silly. You shouldn’t have pushed so hard.”

“Hm… I wanted to master this technique. ‘could save our lives one day.”

“That’s for sure. I’m gonna continue training with it. I really want to be able to do that thing with objects.”

The boy let out a tired snicker then dropped his head on his cousin’s shoulder, his water gourd still firmly gripped in his right hand. She saw the tension in his muscles, an instinctive response from his body to the violent effort it had just gone through. Shikamaru would never change in some ways: he would always like lazing around and avoiding what was too troublesome for him. But it wasn’t a major trait of his personality anymore – it was more of a gift, a luxury he offered himself when the situation allowed for it. He had explained one night that he wouldn’t stand the consequences if his team or family had to pay for him not working hard enough.

The following weeks were entirely focused on learning the E-ranked techniques: substitution, transformation, cloning, rope escaping and genjutsu reversal were the five techniques required to be part of their arsenal before graduation, a year later. They could only get a pass on one if they were able to show mastery of a superior technique with similar effects.

The one Hitomi struggled the most with was cloning – and suddenly she understood why Naruto had absolutely no chance of mastering this one ever. The simple cloning technique required such a tiny spark of chakra he just systematically overloaded the technique, which made it fail. Hitomi herself had trouble with it, especially when she couldn’t quietly focus on what she was doing, and her chakra control was exceptional for any kid her age. Their reserves, Naruto’s and hers, were simply too huge for it.

That assessment led the girl to go see her mother one night, after a particularly challenging training session with her cats. Sasuke was immersed in one of the scrolls about the Sharingan they had gotten in his clan’s lands. Kurenai was preparing bentō for her two kids’ lunch the next day. Silently, Hitomi joined her in the kitchen and started cutting carrot slices to a star shape with a little knife. She really liked pretty bentōs but always used the rests for other things – the bits of carrots would be great in the gyoza filling for the next evening’s dinner.

“Mom,” she said after a few minutes, “I think Naruto won’t master the cloning technique. Ever.”

Kurenai looked up from her own cooking space. “What’s making you think that, sweetheart?”

“Hm… Did Ensui-shishou mention a secret of the village… that I would have discovered by hearing adults of the clan talking about it?”

A heavy sigh from Kurenai pushed her girl to focus even more on her hands, so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at her mom. “Yeah, he told me, and added that you would discover it anyway between your friendship with Gaara and your oversensitive meridians. You can’t tell anyone, alright? Hokage-sama doesn’t want Naruto learning about it.”

“That’s dumb. This information could allow him to train accordingly, with full knowledge of his difficulties. It’s dangerous to keep him in the dark.”

“I agree, you know… But when he graduates, he’s gonna be considered as an adult, since he’s an orphan. I’ll tell him the next day, when I’ll invite him to come live here.”

Hitomi’s eyes went wide. “Really? Mom, that’d be great!

“Of course! A twelve years old child, living all by himself, without any adult supervision or support? Out of the question. The only problem is that we lack space here… But now that you have your meridians under control, we can probably buy the house next to Shikaku’s. It’s been empty for ages and no one needs five bedrooms in the clan.”

Hitomi snickered. “Except us, obviously! Can we afford it?”

“I think so. I still have a nice part of the money your dad left me when he died – by the way, you’ll have your share when you graduate – and savings from when I still was on active duty as a Jōnin. If it’s not enough, your uncle will lend me the rest and I’ll be able to pay him back once I’m a sensei and going on missions again.”

By the longing on her mother’s face, Hitomi could tell she was missing active duty an awful lot. She got it, more than she wanted to: if she had listened to her own frustration about staying in the village and sitting at a desk all day, she would have clawed the walls like one of her cats. She sighed and touched Kurenai’s elbow to get her attention. “You’ll have to tell Sasuke soon. It’s a lot of change, he needs to prepare for it.”

Kurenai brushed her hand against her daughter’s cheek, a sad smile on her lips. The Uchiha heir, her beloved ward, still had nightmares from time to time – how could he not? – and she knew moving out and changing the family dynamic would disturb him. “I will, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

Satisfied, Hitomi nodded. After a while, though, she thought of something and had to fight a wily smile. “About Naruto… When Ensui-shishou was training me, he sometimes used a technique that could replace cloning. He called it the Shadow Clone. Could Naruto learn it?”

If she was surprised by the casual way her daughter was mentioning a secret technique, Kurenai didn’t show it. “Well… It’s on the forbidden jutsu list, so I can’t teach him without the Hokage’s permission, but he wants Naruto to graduate above all else. I’ll handle it tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mom, you’re awesome!” So Naruto wasn’t destined to miserably fail his exam. It was a relief. Hitomi couldn’t protect him against all the threats in the world, but she remembered the cruel, casual way Mizuki had told him about the Kyūbi. It had probably conditioned the way Naruto perceived the demon. But if he never saw it as a threat to the village, rather like a potential ally, how powerful would he get?

The next afternoon, after class, even if it wasn’t a Fellowship training day, Hitomi managed to get Naruto to come home with her. She didn’t really need much effort for that – he loved Kurenai and each moment he spent with the Yūhi family, their ward included, healed some of the wounds the village’s rejection caused him. Kurenai and her children accepted him unconditionally and without hesitation, even when he was agitated, tiring, noisy – Hitomi, Kurenai and even Sasuke went out of their way to make him feel wanted.

“Naruto,” Kurenai started, “I spoke to the Hokage about your difficulties with the cloning technique.”

The boy lowered his head, a very familiar shame blooming in his chest. Amongst his friends, he had been the last to completely master the E-ranked techniques, but the cloning… He felt like he would never get it right. He didn’t even understand what it was he was doing wrong.

“Hokage-sama and I agreed on a solution. It seemed stupid to us that you would stay stuck at the Academy or in your ninja career because something as insignificant as an E-ranked technique. That’s why I found another jutsu, a similar one that you won’t have as much trouble mastering.”

Naruto looked up to her, his big blue eyes gleaming with a quiet kind of hope. Hitomi’s heart ached as she saw the anxiety below the surface, because she knew Naruto still had trouble understanding that people were willing to fight for him, for his dreams and goals. Before the Academy, the only person showing him kindness had been the Hokage, and the girl knew the man was acting that way because of the worst reasons possible: not for Naruto’s sake, but for his parents’ ghosts.

“This jutsu is called the Shadow Clone Technique. It requires a lot of chakra. At this stage, only you and Hitomi have a chance of mastering it, but you’ll have the best results out of you two.”

“What? Why? Hitomi is way better than me in ninjutsu!”

“I don’t have as much chakra as you have, Naruto, far from it,” Hitomi said with a gentle smile. “My reserves have been extremely stretched when I was traveling with Ensui-shishou, and grow bigger everyday because I’m right at the age where potential develops… But, in the end, you’ll always have a lot more chakra than me. I can feel it when you’re close to me. This technique is really perfect for you, and I don’t mind it at all that you’ll be better at it than me.”

“Hitomi is right, Naruto. Now, kids, here is the hand seal chain for the technique. As you practice, you’ll be able to reduce it until only the Cross Hand Seal remains. When you’re there, you’ll have mastered the technique.”

The two children nodded and listened to the rest of her explanations. That technique required, as she had told them, a lot of chakra. It cut the reserves in halves and gave one to the clone – when you only created one – but, with reserves too small, not only would the caster put himself at risk because the energy was then lost, but the clone would also just appear for a moment before puffing out of existence. It was because of that risk that the Shadow Clone had been deemed a forbidden jutsu. No one under Chūnin level could learn it without the Hokage’s approval. Hitomi was really lucky her mother had included her in her request to Hiruzen… And she had probably terrified the old man again to get him to accept.

Hitomi was the first of the two children to have a viable result with the technique. The sensation of half of her chakra leaving her body unsettled her; she would have fallen on her knees if Naruto, alarmed, hadn’t caught her by the shoulders to stabilise her. In front of her was a perfect copy of herself, her big red eyes staring at her with a quiet self-assurance. So that was what she looked like? The mirror wasn’t accurate then. She smiled and the clone did the same. She felt the other half of her chakra, the way it ran through this other body and anchored it in reality. Briefly closing her eyes to focus, she tried sending it a thought, a fragment of her will – then giggled when the clone, reacting to her command, went behind Naruto and threw itself at him to tickle him.

When she ordered it to dissipate, the clone obeyed, disappearing in a puff of smoke, and most of the chakra she had sent it came back to her. The sensation made her dizzy again; surprised, she had to put all her weight on Naruto not to fall, to allow her body to absorb the energy back. Even for such a short appearance, the clone had consumed a chunk of her chakra, which obviously was gone. A few moments later, she was stable again, ready to try once more.

Barely two minutes later, it was Naruto’s turn to succeed: a dozen clones appeared around him, beaming and victorious. He didn’t look frazzled at all by the sensation of his divided chakra, or even by the fact only a thirteenth of his chakra still ran through his body. Seeing him so astonished and proud, Hitomi knew she had done the right thing by speaking about the technique with her mother. Even if it implied she had to flee, howling with laughter, as thirteen Narutos were chasing her for a chance to tickle her back.

Chapter 31: Elemental Affinity

Notes:

I'm so sorry this is late. I had a very hard day yesterday and it left me sick, and I totally forgot I had a chapter to post :/

When the sixth year started, the students immediately felt a change of atmosphere. Their two teachers were more demanding, less tolerant of mistakes, and rewarded success in a more concrete way – they often liked to explain how the one to master an exercise first would be an incredible shinobi thank to the skills that they did their best to acquire and work on, and how these skills would probably save their life many, many times. Surprise evaluations had become something of a norm, just like presentations from active duty shinobi who came to class to talk about their specialty in the hope of inspiring vocations in most promising students.

The students were now all able to communicate with the Konoha Sign Language: Iruka assured them that, after a few months in their Genin team, they would have adapted it to take their specificities and needs into account. Hitomi made sure her cats could also understand it, even if they obviously couldn’t answer her. Her felines formed, after almost six months of hard work, a very fine team, able to fight without any word exchanged, coordinate even when they couldn’t see what the others were doing. Hitomi was particularly proud of Kurokumo, who had gained in self-assurance, and of Hokori, who mingled enthusiastically with the others now.

A Saturday morning, as Hitomi was preparing to go run with her felines, her mother stopped her in the kitchen. She was wearing a training outfit, her hair gathered in a ponytail, her weapons strapped to various parts of her body, where the hand could grab them easily. It wasn’t rare nowadays for the girl to see Kurenai in such an attire: the Jōnin wanted to be in top condition for her future team and the time was approaching quickly.

“Today, you train with me,” her mother said with a smile. “It’s time for you to discover your elemental affinity.”

The girl’s eyes went wide with joy and she started bouncing around, overexcited and suddenly so full of energy she caught Hokori by surprise. The young cat couldn’t suppress a hiss but settled down next to her. “Really?” Hitomi chirped. “I can’t wait! Is that chakra paper?” she added, pointing to her mother’s hand.

The young mother let out a little laugh, endless tenderness in her eyes. “Yes, it is. Come, let’s go in the garden. If you have a fire affinity, I don’t want you to torch the house.”

They found themselves on the little patio overlooking the garden. Hitomi loved to sit there, her legs hanging over the wooden edge, to watch as the sun set. She feared she would be too tall one day to be able to do that.

“Now, take this,” Kurenai said as she handed her a sheet of chakra paper, “and infuse your chakra inside. If you have a fire affinity, it will make it burn. Wind will cut it in halves, lightning will crumple it, earth will crumble it and water will drench it.”

Hitomi knew how that paper worked but allowed her mother to explain. She had read books about how the Hashirama wood was prepared to create it. Sometimes, she wondered about the shinobi world and its dependence on legends and their heritage. What would the world be like if Hashirama Trees had been infertile, or if they hadn’t existed at all? With a smile, the girl took the almost translucent sheet of paper her mother was handing her and, without any real need to focus, she obeyed her instructions. A delighted giggle escaped her lips as the paper filled with water and turned into a little squishy ball in the palm of her hand. All the affinities would have been nice for her, but water? Water was awesome.

“What do I need to do now?” she pipped.

“Now, you’ll have to learn to infuse your chakra with your water affinity so you can use it for Water Release techniques. Wait here, I’ll go grab the scroll you’ll use to train.”

Quivering with impatience, Hitomi obeyed under her cats’ interested stares.

“Water, uh?” Haīro said. “You know cats don’t like water, right?”

She beamed at the grey cat, enthusiastic beyond belief. “And I don’t like to find balls of cat hair under my pillow, and yet it happens at least once a week. You’ll learn to deal with it, I’m sure. Anyway, do you know how to swim?”

Four horrified pairs of eyes met her scarlet stare. As for Sunaarashi, she just licked her paw and rubbed it against her ear. “Of course I know how to swim. I love fish.”

The logic couldn’t be disputed, that was for sure. Hitomi decided not to push further, seeing her mother coming back to her, an ornate scroll in her hands. It looked brand new. Had Kurenai bought one scroll of each affinity, just in case?

“Here, those are the instructions you’ll have to follow to create water chakra. This scroll also contains a few D-ranked techniques you’ll be able to learn once you’re past the first stage. For the rest, you told me you and the boys had found scrolls for all the primary affinities in the Uchiha library, right?”

“Yeah, we did! I’ll consult them once I’m done with this one. Thanks, Mom, you’re the best!” The girl then moved to the side and started to read. She had needed some time to grow accustomed to reading from scrolls, but she didn’t even notice it anymore. She learned water chakra needed prolonged contact with water. The first step was to go find a big enough pond, lake or river and float there, meditating as the body gave in to the current and other forces there.

Worrying her lower lip, Hitomi went to find her mother, who was reading a scroll about team strategies. “Mom, I think we need to go shopping. The last swimsuit I have is from when I was eight, it doesn’t fit anymore.”

Looking up from her scroll, Kurenai stared at her daughter. Hitomi wasn’t in the habit of asking for that kind of thing: oh, the young mother wasn’t stupid, she could see her sweet girl loved spending time in shops, trying out outfits and clothes until she found what she was looking for. And yet, she didn’t ask that often, as if the idea of frivolity was upsetting to her. A quiet smile on her lips, the Jōnin closed her scroll and got on her feet, taking Hitomi by the shoulder to make her follow. “Come on, sweetheart, don’t look so embarrassed. You can say it’s part of your training, hm? After all, you’re gonna spend quite some time in water for some of those techniques…”

A good part of the afternoon was spent looking for the perfect swimsuit. Hitomi was still far too young for a bikini – anyway, it wouldn’t have been comfortable – but most one-pieces were conceived to appeal to civilians: their cuts were impractical, or in bold colours. Finally, they found what they were looking for in a little shop in the Aburame lands, open to Hitomi because of her friendship with Shino. It was a dark red one-piece, its simple cut leaving plenty of space for the body to move but still fitting enough that it wouldn’t slip as she swam.

“Do you still want to do this today? If you want to practice kenjutsu today, we can go to the river tomorrow.”

“No, Mom, I’m okay. Swimming in the dark doesn’t bother me. Besides, you’ll be watching over me, right?”

The sun was setting when mother and daughter reached the part of the Nara lands where a decent river could be found. The current wasn’t that strong, but the river was deep, too deep for Hitomi to be able to walk. It wasn’t any bother for her. She sent chakra running in cycles through her body to keep it warm, entered the river one step at a time then started floating. She had tied a rope to her wrist and given the other end to Kurenai, so she didn’t have to worry about anything and could just lose herself.

“Shikamaru would like this,” she mumbled before falling in her Library, her eyes closing on their own. At the highest point, where her mind looked like the sky at dawn, she sat on a rocky spire and started meditating. She had no difficulty whatsoever finding her Gates; their warmth made her want to curl up against them to sleep, but she couldn’t. She had work to do, had to find the peculiar spark that would infuse her chakra with her main affinity. She tried a lot of things during the following three hours but, when Kurenai brushed a hand against her shoulder to make her come back to the physical world, she hadn’t found a solution to the mysterious equation her mind was presenting her with.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it, even during the night, as she roamed through her Library on the lookout for something that could help her succeed. Unfortunately, she had to admit her defeat some time before dawn. The canon hadn’t given enough information about that, but it was her fault too, since she had never really studied affinities beyond what the Academy had taught her. It had seemed so uncertain, so far in the future…

With a little sigh, she left her bed in the quiet light of dawn, waking her five cats up with the whisper of fabric against her skin. She dressed up, her swimsuit dried by a bit of fire chakra from her mother the previous night under her clothes, she watched the felines woke up and stretched languidly. Sunaarashi had been lucky – or clever – and laid down where the sun was pooling now, and took solace in the warmth and light.

Wearing a light yukata in a lovely mint colour, she walked to the place where her mother had led her the previous day. She hadn’t wanted to wake Kurenai up today: she knew that, the next day, she would have to pass an aptitude test in the Tower, and would need all the energy she could muster. The mere principle of that test was stupid in Hitomi’s opinion. A ninja’s power didn’t matter when it came to raising kids to follow his footsteps. If they didn’t have any educational skill, their students wouldn’t learn anything. That was why people like Ebisu were so valuable: they didn’t have any flamboyant jutsu, weren’t even incredibly good in one particular skill, but they knew how to teach, really teach. And yet the Hokage persisted on testing his Jōnin’s strength and power like a fucking moron.

Once she was at the river, she shrugged off her yukata without fear of being spied upon. She had five brave warrior cats to protect her, and she knew how any Nara would react if someone was seen ogling a woman – or worse, a girl. An angry Nara was terrifying, because fury provided them with a motivation they never had otherwise, a motivation that allowed their sharp mind to focus all its incredible strengths against one problem. No one wanted to become the enemy of such a phenomenon.

Once she was floating on the water, the rope stuck between Hoshihi’s jaws, it only took her moments to find her Library. Like the previous day, she climbed on the summit of the rocky spire, crossed her legs and started meditating, trying to perceive the natural current of chakra through her body. The influx was warm, peaceful, comfortable. She could feel the places in her limbs where it was a bit weaker, like behind her right calf, and the ones where it was particularly vigorous, like her hands and feet.

Suddenly, a reflection far beneath her attracted her attention. She looked down and a shiver of horror ran down her spine when she realised the two first floors of her Library were completely immersed in water. The only thing stopping her from jumping to save her books, her precious memories, was a feeling of strangeness. No book floated at the surface, and there was no way the ones that were already under the waves rising faster and faster could have stayed in place if this had been real.

Perched on her stone spire, the impossible equilibrium maintained by constant tension and iron will, she waited. The water was slowly, regularly rising, and soon the fresh liquid was lapping at the edges of her spiritual form. She stayed still and allowed it to engulf her. In this mental world, she didn’t need to breathe and could open her eyes; her movements didn’t meet any resistance like they would have if she had been swimming. She relaxed from her meditative stance and let her whole being rest easy in the ascending current.

And then.

Then she felt…

The water wasn’t just water. Her chakra was so tightly mingled in it she couldn’t determine where the liquid stopped and her energy started. She opened her eyes, her real ones this time, and the river exploded around her, its water reacting to her every subconscious solicitation.

“Oi, careful, Lady Summoner!”

Haīro’s annoyed hiss made her giggle, the sound wild and exalted; the power running through her meridians was tumultuous, fresh and pure like water, and she had the impression that she would never see the end of it. The euphoria sung inside her high and clear, her heart thundered blissfully in her chest – she felt powerful, unstoppable.

And that last feeling allowed her to go back to herself. She wasn’t unstoppable, far from it. This impression of imperviousness could only lead her to one end, the most sinister of all, and she didn’t want it. Her loved ones expected better from her than complacency. She closed her eyes again, isolating herself from what her body was experiencing, and meditated for several more hours under the sun’s warmth, until she had gotten control of her mind back.

It took her several careful attempts to successfully create water chakra at will without losing herself in this attractive new skill. Only then did she leave the water, dried her body and dressed up again, indicating to her feline team it was time to leave. They had spent most of the time taking turns hunting as she was mastering her affinity, respectful of her efforts to bend her mind around new concepts and dangers. Well-fed and happy, they were chatting about the preys they had caught, tail and whiskers held high in pride and satisfaction.

“Hitomi, there you are!” Kurenai sighed with relief when she saw her daughter coming home. “I should have known you had gone back to training. Next time, leave a note to tell me where you are, alright?”

Caught out by the request, Hitomi nodded. She hadn’t even thought about doing it. Usually, Kurenai knew where she was, without her needing to tell. She just knew, and Hitomi hadn’t even considered that leaving without warning could worry her mother. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said as she lowered her eyes. “I’ll tell you next time, promise.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Let’s talk about your training instead. Did you have any results this time?”

“You could say that, yes!” Hitomi grinned and focused water chakra on her palm, making water ooze from her skin. Without a technique to make anything of it, the result wasn’t that impressive, but it was the first step they needed to get back to work. The afternoon was already well-advanced, so they didn’t have much time for a new technique before dinner, but each moment could be used in a smart way and they fully intended on doing just that.

Chapter 32: Her First Arsenal

The first Water Release technique any shinobi interested in that affinity would learn was the Hiding in Water jutsu. It was a D-ranked technique that allowed its caster to hide in any liquid by becoming part of it. However, it had a huge weakness: the person hiding that way could still be perceived through their chakra, which meant most of the experienced Chūnin and almost all the Jōnin could still notice someone was there even if they couldn’t see them. Besides, the bigger the body of water was, the more difficult the technique became, because the caster was at risk of losing themselves under the surface, and never coming out again.

That explained why this technique wasn’t used often, but it still was the mandatory first step to learn Water Release techniques. As Kurenai often said to Naruto, you couldn’t build a house without laying out its foundations first. The same logic applied to learning any new skill. When she mastered a few D-ranked techniques, Hitomi could start working on more interesting jutsus, not before.

“The scroll says you have to cover your whole body in the thinnest layer of water chakra you can possibly manage while touching the surface of the body of water you want to hide in, your hands forming the Dog Hand Seal. Ready to try?”

The girl nodded to her mother’s words, a determined frown creasing her brow. She wasn’t tired yet, after all, and even if she had to keep a bit of chakra to maintain her cats in the physical world, she could still train for a few hours before making a significant dent in her reserves. Her hands formed the Dog Seal, the movement as natural as breathing, and started projecting the relevant chakra around her body.

It took her a few tries to finally experience her shape melting slowly, attracted to the little puddle she had stepped in, and finally she became tiny, compressed in the liquid, her field of vision going all around but unable to focus on a precise spot. To come back to solidness, she stopped feeding the layer of chakra around her body and immediately got back to the shape of a little twelve years old girl. “Well?” she asked her mother, who had been staring at her. “Did I do it correctly?”

“Yes you did, congrats! You’re ready for the next technique, but not today. You’ve got to go to school tomorrow.”

The world wouldn’t stop running just because she wanted to train and Hitomi understood that, but it was always a bit frustrating to have to stop because of an obligation she would sometimes have liked to forget. Despite that, she liked the Academy, that school where you learned to run on walls and clone yourself – Naruto wasn’t dead last anymore now that he had his Shadow Clone to show Iruka when the teacher decided to test the class. As for Hitomi, she had decided it was wiser to hide her own knowledge and mastery of the technique.

The next morning, Hitomi had a hard time hiding the eagerness clawing at her mind at all times. She could perform as expected in class, but part of her mind was jumping up and down in her Library – if such concepts even existed in her beloved refuge – as she tried to decide what to learn next. From the technique she knew, she could learn the Water Clone or the Hiding in the Mist jutsu, both opening their own list of possibilities.

Seeming to sense the underlying tension in her friend, Hinata made sure to stick around all day, often pushing her bravery to brush against her hand, her shoulder. The Hyūga girl blushed intensely at each of the touches she was initiating, but they seemed to appease Hitomi up to a point. In her mind, a few spikes of shyness were worth the warmth blooming in her chest each time she did it.

The heiress’ constant presence by her side that day led Hitomi to invite her to her place, after class. They often slept over at the Yūhi household Friday and Saturday night, anyway: Hinata was always welcome, Kurenai made sure of it, and the girl’s father didn’t dare forbid her from going, fearing the very risky possibility of insulting the Yūhi clan. On a whim, Hitomi took her friend’s hand rather than just walking beside her. Hinata’s cheeks blushed beautifully, and once she was over her confusion, a small, tender smile appeared on her lips. Maybe Hitomi wasn’t imagining things after all.

“Make yourself comfortable, okay? I’m just gonna tell Mom you’re here and that I’m cooking tonight. Do you want something to drink?”

“S-some tea would be lovely. Thank you for inviting me, Hitomi.”

“I’m the one who ought to thank you for coming. I love it when you’re here. I’ll have to train during the week-end, I’m working on my ninjutsu, but I know it won’t bother you so…”

“I’ll just train with you. Thanks a-again…”

“Stop, I told you you don’t have to thank me. I’m always glad to have you with me, you know that. I'll be back in a sec!” With a smile and a little wave, she left the room and walked to her mother’s office. She knew that, at this time, she would be working on accounting and paperwork for the clan. She knocked and opened the door, finding Kurenai… and Asuma… half… No, she didn’t want to see this! How in hell could she have missed his chakra?

“Mom!” she yelped as she closed her eyes, the memory already carving itself a nice little book in her Library. “Hinata’s home and I’m cooking, oh hi Asuma-san, bye!” Her heart thundering in her chest, she slammed the door closed and hurried down the stairs, a whine of anxiety constricting her throat. She leaned against the corridor wall and breathed deeply a few times to regain her composure then came back to the living room, where Hinata was sitting all stiff and nervous, toes of one foot rubbing against the talon of the other. “Are you okay?” Hitomi asked softly.

Hinata jumped a bit, turning her head to her. “What? No, I mean yes! Yes, I’m okay. I’d just like… Could I speak to you about something? In private?”

They were alone in the room, but Hitomi understood perfectly what her friend meant: a place where she would feel safe and at ease, where an adult wouldn’t just walk in unannounced – the Yūhi girl had been impressed by the discretion and respect her mother offered her, and so was Hinata, who was used to the way of the Hyūga clan. Without a word, Hitomi took the other girl’s hand and led her to her bedroom. There, she closed the door without locking it, sat on her bed and invited her to do the same.

“Well?” she asked as Hinata settled next to her. “What did you want to tell me?”

“I-I… It’s difficult…”

“I can see that. Take your time, okay? Whatever it is, I’m here for you.”

“It’s… For a long time now I have been…”

Hitomi stayed still and silent, but not inactive, noting Hinata’s quickening breathing, her eyes catching the way her friend fingered with the hem of her shirt. If she listened closely, she could even hear her thundering heart. In that situation, it was best for her to stay silent and wait for her friend to overcome the anxiety constricting her throat. She knew it would come.

“I-I started… I started noticing you, in a way that… Well, I want to do things with you that are not… appropriate… between friends… I think?”

Hitomi gave a light, tender chuckle. “Would you like me to kiss you, Hinata?” She felt warm, her heart was fluttering, but she knew she could handle it. Shyness, or what little of it she had anyway, never got the best of her, even when it hit her full force. Her dark red eyes, quiet and affectionate, met Hinata’s pale lilac gaze, so expressive and vaguely nervous. Her proposition was met with a shy nod, and a smile appeared on her lips. She had never kissed anyone, in this life or the previous one, but she was ready to try with Hinata, since the surges in her heart weren’t unanswered after all.

Slowly, so as to not frighten her, Hitomi shifted to a seiza position and leaned toward her, keeping her balance easily on the mattress. She took Hinata’s chin between her fingers, her grip light and delicate, then turned her head so they faced each other, their lips a breath away from each other. She crossed the distance without hesitation nor rush, her mouth brushing against Hinata’s. Comfort and tenderness fell into place in an emptiness she hadn’t been aware of before, somewhere deep under the surface of her mind. Her first kiss, willingly given to a person she had feelings for – not love, not yet, but a fondness she wouldn’t have for just a friend.

The kiss was soft, long, quiet. Hinata’s hand found a place, after an adorable hesitation, against Hitomi’s neck so she could bring her closer. Neither of them had any experience in that field, so there was awkwardness, noses bumping, breaths forgotten, each of them bringing them to low giggles. When they separated enough to watch each other in the eyes, Hitomi caressed Hinata’s cheek, pressing her forehead against hers, then spoke again, her lips reddened and puffed by this new, and no doubt interesting occupation curving into a playful smile. “So, Hinata, those were your inappropriate things you wanted to do? If so, do know we can do it again, whenever you want.”

“I-I think I’d like that, yes.”

“Really? Well, in that case, I will ask: Hinata, will you be my girlfriend?”

“I… Yes!”

They were both beaming, happy beyond measure like only teenagers in love could be. They were only twelve and thirteen, but this ageless joy made them feel mature, so sure of what the future held. Hitomi, not thinking about training at all for once in her life, straightened just enough to go get a kiss on Hinata’s lips once more. Her girlfriend. It sounded so good, so sweet. She took solace in brushing her dark hair with delicate fingers, the locks as soft as silk against her skin, then kissed her again, and again.

When they left the room two hours later, the two girls were positively glowing with happiness. It was time to get started on dinner, so they went to the kitchen, Hitomi suddenly remembering her five cats, who had been waiting this whole time in the living room. She went to get them, and understood as soon as she saw the wicked spark in their eyes that they had heard them talking – kissing.

“Well, congrats you two,” Hoshihi said with an amused flick of his whiskers. “You’re cute together.”

“Yeah,” Haīro added, “and we couldn’t stand you both beating around the bush for so long. Enjoy being a couple now that you’re decided, alright?”

Hitomi laughed heartily as Hinata blushed and hid her face against her new girlfriend’s shoulder. With a contented sigh, she walked towards the kitchen, Hyūga heiress in tow. She was in the mood for tempura and she had seen her mother put shrimps away in the fridge. Humming quietly, she started preparing the breadcrumb coating while Hinata got her hands on the vegetables that would come as a side for the dish.

When Kurenai came back, wearing a light pink yukata – tightly closed this time – Asuma just behind her, the two girls were completely focused on the kitchen. Even then, their arms constantly brushed against one another, and Kurenai raised an eyebrow when she saw her daughter put an arm around Hinata’s shoulder, then kissing her cheek with an enamoured smile. She had missed something. Several somethings, more like. But could she really protest, she who had tried to hide her own romance from Hitomi?  Asuma had told her about their talk in the dawn light and how her daughter had closely woven threats and approval. Kurenai was incredibly proud. “Congratulations, you two!” she exclaimed with a wide smile.

Hitomi and Hinata jumped at the same time, but didn’t draw away from each other. Living with shinobi helped them get used to being taken by surprise, especially when the shinobi in question were so much stronger than them. The Hyūga heiress blushed and tried to answer, only able to stammer an unintelligible answer, but Hitomi straightened with a cheeky grin. “That’s right, Mom. I’d introduce you to my girlfriend but, well, you already know each other.”

And just like that, it was settled. Hitomi hadn’t been the slightest bit worried about confiding in her mother. Most people in Konoha were totally open to the idea of lesbian relationship – of all consensual relationships, really. Ninjas lived like a flame would, intense and slowly burning to their end, confronting death during all their missions outside the village. Their relationships could be light and ephemeral, long and tender, monogamous or polyamorous, almost no one would judge. And then there were the traditionalist clans, like the Hyūga.

“Well, congratulations, you two. Hitomi, Naruto and Sasuke won’t be there tonight, they have been invited by Inuzuka Tsume for a game night with Kiba.”

Hitomi hummed in approval, taking the tempura out of the frying oil with an ease that only came with habit. She had sustained enough burns to learn how to handle herself in the kitchen, even when she had to use more complex tools. Quickly enough, dinner was ready, the two adults and two children sitting around the table to tuck in.

Half an hour after dinner, when the dishes were done and put to dry on the rack, Hitomi took Hinata’s hand and led her outside under Kurenai and Asuma’s discreet supervision. They were too busy cooing over how cute they were to really keep an eye on them anyway. In the middle of the garden, her mother had placed a little pool full of water so she could train. It was only two meters wide and three meters long, but it was enough at her level. Not too far from it, she had piled storage seals full of water, just in case she needed to add some in the pool.

“Water Style: Water Clone Jutsu!” she said once she was standing knee-deep in the water. She had never understood why ninjas said the names of the techniques they used out loud in the canon, but she got it now.  Most of it was just the habit they had built in the Academy – such a deeply rooted reflex couldn’t be suppressed easily. But there was something to be said about the shinobi code of honour: by using the name of the technique out loud, ninjas indulged in the mix of pride, achievement and respect they felt while fighting properly. A lot of foreign shinobi froze in terror for a second when they heard the name – or loud chirping – of the Chidori, Kakashi’s legendary technique. But she could use any of her techniques without using its name, if she wanted to. She had made sure of it.

Halfway through its formation, the water clone Hitomi had tried to create fell back in the pool and the chakra she had used dissipated into thin air. She hadn’t expected any other result: it was far harder to shape water than to lose herself in it. Breathing in slowly, she allowed her hands to form the mudras once more and focused her chakra again. This time, the clone almost appeared completely shaped before falling.

“You’re getting there, Hitomi.” Hinata’s gentle, encouraging tone drew a smile on Hitomi’s lips. She met her eyes and thanked her with a nod before going at it again, totally focused once more.

Hinata was right. She was getting there.

Chapter 33: The Forest Recalling

After six days of hard but careful work, Hitomi mastered the Water Clone Jutsu. After that, creating a fog thick enough for the Hiding in the Mist Technique was child play. She was very good at it when she had enough water around. The hard part would be trying to navigate through the mist, to walk through it in perfect silence. She respected Momochi Zabuza far more now that she knew how difficult that was, since it was the basis of the assassination technique he was renowned for.

She presently had two D-ranked and one C-ranked elemental techniques in her arsenal. It was far more than any student outside the Fellowship and even inside the group only Sasuke surpassed her, with all the Fire Release jutsus his clan had taught him. He had started working on the Wyvern in Flight Technique a few days earlier; that jutsu was almost B-ranked, according to the scroll from the Uchiha lands where they had found it described and explained. The boy had been essential to Hitomi’s training regimen, since he had gone through something similar before her. Fire and Water Release couldn’t be more different, but some tips worked with all elemental affinities.

When Shinku arrived at his daughter’s house one evening just before dinner, he found the two children training in the garden. Hitomi was trying to create and manage two clones at the same time while Sasuke spit fire at regular intervals, attempting to shape the long and thin flames so they looked like wyverns. It was way harder to create something approaching a real animal form. In the Previous World, wyvern didn’t exist – but here, they didn’t exist anymore .

Around Hitomi’s pool, he saw something that surprised and impressed him: a thick patch of mist covered the grass, as thick and dense as the girl had been able to create, and he could see her five felines moving inside it. From time to time, a quicker movement than the rest saw two of them meet, and he heard hissing and spitting when that happened. Obviously, his granddaughter had taken the instructions she had received from Tsurī very seriously. His own familiar, Aotsuki, leader of the Hikari clan cats, would be very pleased.

“Grandfather?” she asked with a respectful bow of the head.

He focused on her rather than her cats. He really liked the spark of intelligence, cunning even, gleaming in her red eyes at all times, and liked the way her calm demeanour made her look non-threatening. Those attributes would be unquestionably useful when she was ready to take part in her own missions. He smiled and walked towards the pool where she was still standing, the water reaching her knees. She didn’t seem cold, which meant she had her chakra cycling through her whole body to keep it warm. One day, she would be able to do it automatically, but he was already very satisfied, knowing full well that most Genin couldn’t do it even when they stood still and focused.

“I’m here to tell you and your companions that the time has come for them to go back to the spiritual world. You will not be able to summon them for two weeks, as their mentors will use that time to test each of their new and improved skills extensively. After that, they will be available to you as you see fit, of course.

Hitomi flinched and lowered her gaze to the ground. Of course, she had been aware the moment was growing close, but she didn’t want to say goodbye. Even knowing they would come back, be with her soon, she ached at the idea of not having them around, be it for one day, two weeks, or longer. They had become an important part of her life, from their weight on the blankets when she was waiting to fall asleep to the training sessions where they pushed her to grow better and better. Her eyes couldn’t hide how lost she was as she looked at them – they had left the mist to rub against her legs, frightened of water no more. Hoshihi was the tallest; he could reach above her knee with his head.

“Don’t worry, Lady Summoner,” Sunaarashi and Hokori exclaimed. “You won’t even have time to miss us before we’re back. Work hard and make sure we can hunt fish from the river, alright?”

Hitomi simply nodded, not trusting herself to speak without dissolving into ugly sobs. She left the pool and knelt on the grass, her cats soon surrounding her to press their lean bodies against her. She brushed a caress against each of their backs, trying to fight the ache tearing her heart apart. Her grandfather had stepped back to allow her space: when it was time, he sliced his thumb open and composed the hand seals to summon Tsurī.

The tricolour cat licked her shoulder then nodded at her summoner. “Shinku-kun. You called me for the apprentices, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Tsurī-sama. They spent each day of their stay here with Hitomi-chan, exactly like we had asked them to.”

“Good. Children, say your goodbyes, we’re leaving. Aotsuki got me a pigeon and I don’t want someone to take it from me.”

Kurokumo, obedient as always, stepped in front of Hitomi and rubbed one last time against her legs. “Goodbye, Lady Summoner. You’ll see, we’ll be back soon.”

After each of her cats had said their farewell to her, they disappeared, escorted to the spiritual world by the strict but benevolent care their elder provided them. Hitomi stayed still for a few moments, her eyes staring at the place where they had been just a minute before. Finally, she shook her head and went back to the pool, ignoring the tears that wanted to run down her cheeks.

As she raised her hands to create Water Clones – she was still struggling to control more than one at a time and was training by making them throw kunai to various targets in the garden – Shinku stepped towards her. “I understand your sorrow, Hitomi-chan, I went through it too once. The separation is as important as the six months you spent together. It reminds you that you can function alone as well as you did with them. They will benefit from the time they spend in the spiritual world, learn skills that are specific to their species, and you will be able to train freely, without fearing to hurt them. Those cats need to become your allies, or even your friends, but it’s not your job to protect them.”

Averting her gaze, Hitomi nodded reluctantly. Oh, she knew he was right. A lot of shinobi saw their summons as mere tools. But she had spent six months training, playing, failing, winning by their side. She couldn’t see them as just an addition to her arsenal. Without answering, she formed the hand seals for her technique and managed to create three perfect copies of herself from the water, sending them to throw kunai on their targets. She would be satisfied once each of her clones would be able to throw twenty of them accurately as she was working on her shadow jutsu.

When Hinata saw her coming alone in the classroom the next day, she hugged her without a word, her hands rubbing comforting circles against her back. The Hyūga heiress had spent a lot of time around the five cats who had followed her girlfriend like miniature shadows, seen their bond strengthening day after day.

Hitomi had spent most of the evening curled up on the couch, writing to Gaara and Ensui. She had exchanged with Temari too: the older girl had signed the Weasel Contract, and formed a very deep bond with her familiar, so much so that the weasel in question demanded to be able to see her at least once a week in the physical world. Hitomi was glad to read that she wasn’t the only one going through such sorrow, that her friend had been through something similar and had handled it. If Temari could do it, so did she.

During the following days, Hitomi saw herself focus even more on training. She fulfilled each task she was given by her teachers with a dedication her peers couldn’t help but admire, their behaviour even adapting to hers. They were more determined, more involved, and the whole class’s atmosphere shifted because of it. Even the teachers followed the subconscious trend.

Or maybe they did so because the final exam was to happen very soon. After all, this particular class gathered children from all of Konoha’s major clans, a jinchūriki, and Hitomi herself, who had to be noted because of her Nara father and because she was the Yūhi clan’s last hope to come back to its former position of power. They had never been a major clan, but they had been invaluable to win wars. This generation bore on its shoulders all the hopes of grandeur Konohagakure could possibly have and they fully intended on honouring each of them.

Sasuke, Naruto, Shikamaru and Hitomi didn’t bother with hiding deep in the Nara territory to train anymore. If the Nara heir was often seen with his future teammates, he also took the time to spar with her, with taijutsu and shadows only. Because of that, they could each work on their own fighting style relative to those two skills: he liked keeping the opponent away from him with his shadows, while Hitomi sought close combat to throw her adversaries off-balance with hers.

It had taken her years of disjointed training between her other obligations to come up with that fighting style, to be able to catch someone’s shadow with hers quick enough to use it in a taijutsu spar. She just caught it for an instant, barely enough to shift her opponent’s stance, then released them and tried to exploit the unbalance to force through their defence. That fighting style was particularly effective against adversaries who were slower than she was. For the faster ones, she could still use the Shadow Binding Jutsu in a more classical way.

It was becoming more and more common for sixth grade students to train brazenly, in the outside courtyard of the Academy or in empty classrooms when they didn’t have access to proper training grounds – some couldn’t wait for their forehead protector just to get that little advantage. Hitomi and her friends had seen it from their upperclassmen during the former years, and now it was their turn.

The day before the exam, Hitomi invited Shikamaru over for the night. The two children had never stopped playing shōgi at least once a week, but they rarely spent time together without their other friends around outside of that. After telling her mother about their guest, she took her cousin to her bedroom and immediately started setting the shōgi board up. They had both gotten so much better over the years – and yet, neither of them was able to beat Shikaku still.

“So… You and Hinata, hm?” he asked with the shadow of a smile. He was really starting to look like his father, and to behave like him as well. Did he even notice? She doubted it: Shikamaru was incredibly observant, but he had a big blind spot about himself.

Hitomi nodded as she considered her options to cover her knight, threatened by her opponent. Neither she nor Hinata had wanted to keep their relationship a secret amongst the Fellowship: they trusted their friends not to go repeat it to any Hyūga who could in turn tell Hiashi, Hinata’s father, about it. The patriarch was so conservative he would be better suited in a fuckin museum – and Hitomi didn’t dare thinking about his reaction if he learned his daughter and heir wasn’t heterosexual. “Yup,” she finally answered. “Surprised?”

“Not really. I have been wondering for a while if you were going to figure out that you liked each other or not. For a genius, you’re pretty slow, uh?”

“I may be slow, dearest cousin, but I am the one with a girlfriend, aren’t I?” On those words, she decided to act and placed her dragon king in the way of his gold general. She answered his vaguely annoyed scowl with a grin, then the game could resume, interspersed here and there by jokes and playful banter. It was part of the things she liked so much about Shikamaru: with him, no need to fill each second of silence, but if she wanted to talk, be it about complex, intimate problems or about the latest gossip, he was there and eager to participate.

The following day, when the two children arrived at the Academy, Hitomi was incredibly calm and focused. She perceived the tension around her but didn’t react to it, even dissipating it for some of her friends, the ones who were particularly receptive to her influence. In six years, Hitomi had slowly but surely become a leader amongst her peers, and even the students who weren’t part of the Fellowship reluctantly looked up to her.

The day started with two hours of written tests, which were done in barely twenty minutes for Hitomi. With her memory, she just needed to blink to find the information she needed, somewhere in her Library. She spent the remaining time staring at her friends, noting amongst other signs the way Chōji flinched when he got to the second page – and his discreet sigh of relief when he realised he knew the answer to the complicated question.

Then came the genjutsu test. The students were put under a harmless illusion and had to free themselves from it. Students didn’t learn any genjutsu technique during their Academy time, since most of them required far too mature a mind for a twelve years old child. The students were graded on the quickness with which they broke the illusion. With Kurenai as a mother, Hitomi could only excel in that test.

After a short break, students walked to the gymnasium for their throwing weapons test. Three children at a time, they aligned in front of the targets and demonstrated their mastery in that field. Sasuke, Naruto and Hitomi were far above average in that exercise: all three of them had worked very hard, the Uchiha and his sister to support their blond friend in his own training, and it had been worth it. They were the only students able to use three types of throwing weapons accurately, each with their favourite: Sasuke loved the shuriken, Naruto was more at ease with the kunai, and Hitomi’s small, thin hands were perfect for the senbon.

Finally, the students were allowed to have their lunch break. Most of them were exhausted and famished, freed from part of the stress that had blocked those signals from reaching their brains. Chōji had brought enough food for everyone, and they had all decided to add their own bento to the mix for a true feast. When they were summoned to the Academy’s training ground by their teachers, they were all more at peace.

The taijutsu test made them fight against Mizuki-sensei for three minutes in a circle six meters wide. Weapons were forbidden, of course. In that circle, Mizuki had an advantage with his long limbs, but he would restrain himself, fight at Genin level, so his students would have a real chance to stay in the circle during the whole time if they were good enough. Three minutes granted the student a top mark, but a minute and a half were enough to pass the exam. Hitomi watched, calm and collected, as a few students failed. She was proud when her friends handled themselves against the teacher – Sasuke even fighting for the whole three minutes.

And then it was her turn. She stepped in the circle perfectly calm, each of her movements pondered and collected. She crouched slightly, her feet solidly grounded and her arms up in a guard position, just like Ensui had taught her, then waited. As soon as Iruka gave the signal, she stepped to her right to dodge Mizuki’s extended arm, her open hand hitting him right at the centre of the chest. He coughed with the strength of the impact as she sneaked under his arm and got behind him, out of reach. The fight continued in that way, the girl targeting the teacher’s weaknesses then dodging with as minimalist a move as she could when he retaliated. She wouldn’t have been able to handle herself much longer, not with the way breathing burned her lungs and the slight tremors in her muscles when Iruka whistled the end of the three minutes. At least, if Mizuki turned traitor and she had to fight him, she would have more weapons at her disposal.

The ninjutsu test came last. The students were called in a room one by one and had to demonstrate one of the techniques they had learned during their time at the Academy. This year, the subject was cloning, just like in the canon. Hitomi wasn’t worried at all. Not only did she master the basic technique taught in class, but she also had two variants in her arsenal and could show them to the examiners for bonus points. When Iruka announced the subject, she met Naruto’s eyes and answered his confident grin with one of her own. He wasn’t worried either. He had got the confirmation that the Shadow Clone was an acceptable technique for the exam months ago. After all, it was way harder to master than the typical clone technique for most people.

When she was called, after all the other students, Hitomi stepped inside the room without the slightest apprehension, be it for herself or her friends. She stood proud in the centre of the room, her back straight and her arms relaxed along her flanks, waiting for her teachers to give her orders. Iruka was the one to speak, a deeply satisfied grin on his lips. “Hitomi-san, I know you’re the one we should thank for the astounding results your year group got during this exam, but also during the past six weeks. Please, do your comrades the honours by showing us how good you are.”

The praise made Hitomi smile. She didn’t blush, didn’t avert her eyes with a shy look on her face, simply accepting the congratulations from her teacher for what they were: the recognition of six years of hard work, which would finally pay off that day. She formed the Cross Hand Seal, and two solid clones appeared at her right and left. Perfectly synchronized, the two clones and their master summoned a Water Clone each. It was a bit risky, but Hitomi had enough chakra to manage it, and to manage the cost of her five copies and herself each creating a standard, E-ranked clone, which made them twelve identical girls in the small room.

“Well, I didn’t expect that,” Iruka said with a playful grin. “Congratulations, Hitomi. Starting today, you’re a shinobi from Konoha.” On those words, the teacher stepped around his desk and handed her a forehead protector with a respectful bow. She took it with both hands, as one should in such circumstances, then stared at it, incredibly proud to be there, to have achieved that. When she was able to wrap her mind around it all, she tied the forehead protector at its rightful place, on her head.

“Thank you for the knowledge you offered me, Iruka-sensei, Mizuki-sensei,” she said with a deep bow. She left the classroom with her head held high, a faint smile on her lips, leaving her clones to dissipate in her wake. Only when she was alone in the corridor did she allow her body to slouch against a wall and an exhausted sigh to escape her lips. The chain of techniques had taken its toll on her reserves with the demanding edge she had been expecting. She had wanted to impress them and had done so, but there was always a price to pay.

When her dizzy spell passed, she decided it was time to go to the Academy’s courtyard, for the last time as a student. She wondered if she would be one of those shinobi who came back every chance they got, this time to teach rather than learn. In a way, she hoped for it, but what precious knowledge could she even give the new generation without putting the lives of the children at risk? She still needed to grow up before she even thought about the future. For now, she could only focus on the next obstacle in her way, and the different ways she could go around it or knock it down.

“Hitomi!”

The young girl’s head snapped in the direction of the voice. Kurenai, Sasuke, and Naruto in tears were waving at her. Beaming in pride, she ran to them. The two boys were wearing their new forehead protectors – she was so incredibly relieved she had been able to spare Naruto, to protect him against one of the ordeals he had been confronted with in the canon.

“Hitomi,” the blonde said with a quivering voice, “your mom said I’m coming to live with you now, that she has filled the papers at the orphanage and I just have to go back there once to get my stuff then never again .” His eyes shone with unshed tears, his hands fidgeting nervously with the hem of his obnoxious orange jacket.

Hitomi had a moment of stupor, then a giant smile appeared on her lips, so wide it hurt a bit. She hugged Naruto, allowing him to crush her with his arms in return. “Welcome to the family, Naruto,” she whispered in his ear. “Mom, does that mean we’re moving out?”

“Yeah,” the woman answered, a hand brushing against Sasuke’s back when he stepped towards his two friends and now siblings. He didn’t join the hug, but she was happy to see that he didn’t shy away from the public manifestation of affection. “I made an offer on the house next to Shikaku’s and it was accepted yesterday. We’re starting to move the furniture tomorrow, so we can make the best of the weekend. Monday, you’ll be busy little Genin and I’ll have a team of my own, so we’d better be done with it before that.”

Those words only made Naruto hug Hitomi tighter, which in turn made her feel lightheaded. She understood the storm of feelings that was falling on him right that moment, the fight in his mind to wrap it around the idea that it was over , that he wasn’t alone anymore, that, for the first time for as long as he could remember and even longer than that, he had a family. When he finally released her, she patted his shoulder gently with a side glance to Sasuke. He looked rather satisfied about the whole thing – the little smirk on his lips was more telling than he thought. As for Hitomi, she was trying to evaluate the thousand ways the canon had just been fucked, and failing.

“I’m very proud of you three,” Kurenai beamed. “You have worked hard for the last six years, and look at you now. It was all worth it. Akimichi Chōza is throwing a feast and party for your little group. We’re gonna go home, change, and tonight I’m counting on you to have fun. Sounds good?”

Obedient and glowing with pride, the three children nodded and followed her home. Home for all four of them, finally.

Chapter 34: The Genin Teams

No one was surprised, the following Monday morning, when Iruka announced the teams. Hitomi, who had never understood why it was a surprise in the canon, found solace in the certainty of her teammates’ identity. The Genin – then students – had been separated into teams of three, always the same ones, for about twenty exercises throughout the last two years. On rare occasions, when they had to work in pairs or in larger units, their usual teams would be broken and rearranged, but those were exceptional occurrences.

This way of doing things was just so much more logical. The children had learned to work together, their solidarity forged and tried in the fire of hardships – sometimes very literally, like during the field exercise when Sasuke had awoken his Sharingan. Of course, their individual qualities had been developed too, but not to the detriment of teamwork, and that was the detail that mattered the most in Konoha, a Hidden Village renowned for its powerful shinobi teams. The ninjas who couldn’t work in teams were condemned to stay at the very bottom of the social and military ladder for years or even their whole career, if they never gave in or died trying.

For Hitomi, the weekend had truly shed light on the team dynamic that was developing between Naruto, Sasuke and her. Saturday morning, the three teenagers had been made to rise with the sun by a very enthusiastic Kurenai and had discovered their new home in the warm light of a spring morning. It seemed big despite its two floors. The old bricks and wood had been neglected and the polish was falling out at some places, but those details didn’t matter; they could be fixed.

All four of them had gotten to work immediately. Hitomi and Naruto had created solid clones. Despite the girl mixing Shadow and Water clones, her new brother had drowned the street in blond boys. After complimenting them for their initiative, Kurenai had also joined in with five copies of herself. Only Sasuke didn’t know any solid clone technique, since his chakra reserves didn’t allow him to learn the one Naruto would become famous for yet and the Fire Style cloning technique wasn’t very well-known.

Taking all their belongings from one house to the other, with the help of such an army, only took three little hours. When their new neighbours had woken up and understood what they were doing, they had joined in – even Shikamaru, who only grumbled for show and made Hitomi promise that she would come and play shōgi with him in the evening – Shikaku making sure everyone was well fed while Yoshino and her Earth Release Clones pitched in with the Yūhi army.

Once their former house was empty, Kurenai and the three children went to a furniture store owned by several members of the Nara clan. A lot of the wood the village used came from Nara civilians who worked either in the Deer Forest, or in the land the clan held everywhere in the Forest of Fire and in the Fire Country in general. When ninjas had still been nomads, the Nara were already renowned for their mastery of wood – and of medicinal plants, of course.

Naruto needed a whole bedroom’s furniture, as well as objects to decorate it. As for Hitomi and Sasuke, their new bedrooms were larger than the old ones, which also implied buying a few things to fill and arrange them like they saw fit. Hitomi had enough money to pick whatever she fancied: during the Friday feast in the Akimichi restaurant, one of the two gifts Kurenai had given her had been a thick file filled with all the relevant documentation about the money and properties her father had left her with when he passed away. Since she was a Genin, she was allowed to access and use it at will. Sasuke had received the same kind of file, since he had become Uchiha-sama the very moment he had been given his forehead protector. Naruto probably had an inheritance too, and thinking of it between Hiruzen’s rotten hands made Hitomi ache. One day, he would get it back, she promised herself.

Once they were done shopping, their new things safely taken to the house by very diligent clones, they separated to organise their own room like they wanted to. One of Hitomi’s walls was occupied by a massive window, which brought a generous amount of light inside. She decided to make the best of it by putting her king size bed right under the window, so she could lounge and read there when she had the time. She also knew her cats would love that spot.

She also found the perfect place for her desk and shelves and unrolled an absurdly thick and soft rug in the middle of the room, its pearl grey shade perfect with the pale wood floor and the lavender paint on the walls. Next to her door, she hung the pictures Chōgi had drawn for her over the years as well as a few pictures of her friends. She took the time to look around then. Her bed was still bare and her shelves and desk empty, but it already felt like home.

Somewhere along the line, Yoshino came to fetch everyone for lunch in the Nara household, which Kurenai accepted immediately. They ate, drank and laughed in the cramped living room, filling the time with light banter. Hitomi knew immediately that this memory would hold a special place in her mind, that she would try to relive it when hardship would come for her, when she would need comfort far away from home.

The meal and their last chores over, the three teenagers and their mother went to the most renowned armoury in Konoha. As Genin, they needed far more gear than they had as students, and they also had access to new weapons and traps that made Hitomi shiver with anticipation. She would also be able to get access to the labs, without adult supervision, between missions and definitely had work to do there.

The shop Hitomi was most eager to get to was the tailor’s. When it was her turn, she climbed above the armoury, in a room whose walls were covered in mirrors, trying to look as expressionless and self-assured as a ninja should. A stool marked the centre of the room and two civilians, a man and a woman, were waiting next to it. “Yūhi-san,” the woman greeted her, “come in. Your mother made the appointment for your brothers and yourself weeks ago. We’re most honoured to create Kurenai-sama’s daughter’s outfit.”

“You know my mom?”

“We come from a merchant clan from the Land of Earth. During the last war, we decided to move to Konoha and were attacked by Earth shinobi who, as long as we stayed in Iwagakure, had sworn to protect us. Your mother saved us.”

Hitomi could understand that kind of gratitude. She felt something very close to it for Kurenai, who loved her without expecting anything in return. She had never known anything like that in the Previous World, and for the first years of her new life she had really struggled to simply understand . Her mother loved her because she was loveable. Because she deserved her love, despite any mistake she could ever make. It didn’t mean her mistakes would be instantly forgiven, but it meant she would always be listened to, considered, and that in case of a great mistake a chance to fix it would always be given to her. It made her feel safe.

“We’re going to start with a classic,” the man said, “steel fishnet. Most new Genin neglect that piece of equipment, but it’s very useful to deflect most projectiles and shocks. At your level, you shouldn’t encounter opponents strong enough for steel netting to be a real help, but you never know.”

Hitomi couldn’t suppress a nervous giggle. At Sasuke’s and Naruto’s side, she was sure to have the worst of luck. She had had time to psychologically prepare for it, but this simple sentence reminded her that the Demon of the Mist was the next significant adversary she would encounter. She knew what she needed to do if she wanted to save him, to save Haku – in fact, she even had several plans, depending on how the situation would evolve – but, to get there, she would still have to fight against them. A terrifying perspective.

With the help of the two tailors, the girl put on a steel fishnet shirt and the matching leggings. With that, she’d be protected from the collarbones to the ankles against light to middle shocks and superficial cuts. It wouldn’t save her life, but it would spare her from little inconveniences that could hinder her focus and lead her to death on the battlefield. The feeling of steel against her skin was strange, smooth, cold and surprisingly light. She would get used to it with a bit of training – training that would be mandatory anyway so she could grow accustomed to her whole battle outfit.

“Your mother said you want to become a Seal Mistress. A popular feature for our shinobi who like to use seals in battle is to hide them in layers of strengthening bandages around their limbs. Would you like to try it?”

Hitomi nodded, trying and failing to hide her interest. She had managed, with Ensui’s help, to find a few seals she had been able to adapt to her needs and fighting style. Nothing, though, would be more useful in her opinion than having a shitload of storage seals filled with water at her disposal, so she wouldn’t need to waste chakra creating it for her Water Release techniques. She wasn’t Senju Tobirama, after all: generating water from the air or summoning it from way below ground was costly. She extended an arm and the man wrapped a bandage around her wrist, slipping a blank piece of paper between two layers so a little corner would stick out.

For a few minutes, the girl practiced pulling out that fake seal in a fluid gesture. She would need to repeat it until it became instinctive, but she had made up her mind. “Okay, I want those in my outfit. As for its general appearance, I’d like a short battle kimono, with sleeves large enough to hide my hands when I’m preparing a jutsu or an attack. Would it be possible?”

They knew their craft and started talking her through enough options to make her dizzy. She decided on a light leather kimono cut above the knee, the first layer a dark shade of grey while the second one was the exact same red as her eyes. The obi was red too, with a thin braid of black silk that would bear part of her tools while the rest, including her tantō, would be stuck between her obi and kimono. The cut fitted her closely, but was still comfortable enough for her to move around without problems. The sleeves were as wide as she had wished for and added flair to her movements. She was sure they would distract some of her opponents, at least a little.

Sure, she would have to come back to the tailors often to fit the whole outfit again, but it was a small price to pay to look like she did with those clothes on. The obsession with appearances had always been prevalent in the shinobi world, despite what some traditionalists tried to pretend. A ninja had to make an impression within the first moments of a confrontation and, for that, a well-chosen combination of outfit, hairdo and makeup could be very efficient. Sure, no one would be afraid of Hitomi wearing a battle kimono, but fear wasn’t her goal. She looked like a little puppet, harmless and sweet, her wide sleeves and dark kimono emphasising how small and frail she was. Even the boots she chose, with their flat soles, insisted on the picture she was drawing of herself for the benefit of her adversaries: a fragile and superficial little girl. The very opposite of a threat.

When she went back downstairs, her usual clothes on her back and the new ones in a bag, Hitomi felt deeply satisfied. She had spent good money on this outfit plus variations for warm and cold weather, but she still had enough on her to pay for fūinjutsu equipment. Since she didn’t need to pay for her friends’ seals, bombs and such, she could afford to experiment with the pricey ink she fancied, and it would even be truer now that missions offered an added source of income.

Then it was Naruto’s turn to go upstairs and come back the owner of a steel net shirt, black pants and a long, dark grey coat. The hems of the coat were decorated with orange flames, because Naruto wouldn’t be himself without his favourite colour on his clothes. Sasuke took twice the time his siblings had spent upstairs, only to get down with the exact same outfit Naruto had picked, minus the flames and with an Uchiha fan on the back. The two boys seemed proud of their choice and were right to be: they looked young, yes, but they didn’t have this “fresh from the Academy” look about them anymore. As for Hitomi, one would think she had never even stepped in the shinobi school in the first place. Perfect.

“Well, now that you have everything you need, we should head home. The first dinner in our new house is an important matter for the family.” Kurenai was smiling, obviously satisfied with her children’s choices.

“In that case, Mom, you should invite Asuma-san.” Hitomi’s words made her mother freeze. The woman stared at her child as if she was speaking a foreign language; but she had those in check: there was no way they could break free of her Library. She answered the look with her most innocent smile.

“Asuma? But…”

“Mom, please. I know it’s really serious between you two, even if you try to hide it. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s as much about us children than it is about the fact you’ll both be leading a Genin team starting Monday.”

“But how do you…”

“Asuma-san and Shikaku-ojisan meet at least once a week for months, and often more than that. Shikamaru mentioned it and I could see it by myself a few times. So, as I was saying, I understand why you don’t want the whole village to know, the timing is not the best. But I know it’s very serious between you, you really love him, and I can see how he loves you too when he looks at you. I’m not saying you should marry tomorrow. I’m just saying that, if you want to, you should really invite Asuma-san to have dinner with us tonight.”

“Hitomi’s right, Kurenai-san! Asuma-san is awesome, right Sasuke?”

“Hm.”

“You see, Mom? Everyone agrees. As long as Asuma-san behaves, I swear I won’t tease him too much. I’ll even stop Naruto from pranking him.

“Eh!”

“Yes?” the girl asked him with her sweetest smile, her eyebrows slightly raised as if to dare him.

“Ah… Eh… N-nothing?”

Once Asuma arrived, dinner could start. Exactly as Hitomi had imagined, the evening meal was delicious. After dinner, she spent a few hours playing shōgi with Sasuke and Naruto, who teamed up to try to defeat her. The good strategy instincts of the former and the unpredictable tendencies of the latter weren’t enough in the end: after all, Hitomi often played with her cousin and her uncle, both incredibly gifted, and her playing style was still impregnated with Ensui’s pitiless and flexible style.

Gaara,

I hope your exam went well. Today, I went with my family to buy my ninja gear. I realised how much I’ve changed physically these past few years. Would you recognise me? I miss you terribly. I want to introduce you to my brothers, my mother, my girlfriend, my friends. I can’t wait for them to be able to meet you and realise what an extraordinary person you are. When we were at the Academy, they often asked what I was writing in my notebook, and to whom. I didn’t tell them about my creation, but I will tomorrow morning: I want us all to stay in contact. I hope a mission will lead me to Suna soon. I miss the desert, and I miss you even more.

Yours truly,

Hitomi.

Hitomi,

My exam was a mere formality. Ensui-sensei prepared me well and, thanks to Temari and Kankurō, I knew what to expect. I think the Academy students had the fright of their life when they saw me in the classroom. My reputation is still bad around the village. I hope it will change one day.

Your shishou, as you know, grew close to several Jōnin from the village who don’t approve of my father’s politics and general behaviour. One of them, Baki, will become the sensei for a team composed of my siblings and myself. It’s very rare to have Genin teams in the village, but we want to try the Konohajin system because your mortality rate is much lower than ours for Genin. Ensui-sensei has decided it was time for him to leave us, since we’re safe and able to look after ourselves. He’s probably right. He’ll leave tomorrow morning and should arrive in Konoha in three to four days, depending on the weather. I’ll miss him, of course. He’s been very good to us three. He made sure we would have a future within the village.

I miss you too. I want to see what you describe in your letters, to meet the people you love so much, to understand how your bonds with others work. Thanks to you and to my siblings, I think I understand bonds better – but there’s always more to learn and discover in that field

Yours,

Gaara.

Seeing that message the following morning made Hitomi’s heart soften. A quiet smile on her lips, she dressed, greeted the sun in the garden and, for the first time, tied in place the forehead protector that designated her as a Konohajin shinobi. During the weekend, her mom had sewn it to a strip of dark red fabric in accordance with the rest of her outfit. Her brothers came downstairs as she was filling their pouches with throwing weapons. Naruto was already brimming with energy, while Sasuke was frowning and pouting as he did every morning.

“I can’t wait to start missions! Everyone will see that we’re the best team!”

“Ah, Naruto, we won’t exactly be able to show our talents to the village right away.”

“Uh?”

“Well, the D-ranked missions we’ll have to do in the beginning will be more like chores than real missions. Weeding a garden, delivering groceries, that kind of stuff.”

“ What? ” He looked more crestfallen than angry, thank the Hermit. “But why do they give those kinds of missions to ninjas? We’re ninjas !”

“For several reasons,” Sasuke intervened. “The village wants to make sure we can be trusted before giving us more important tasks. They also help us learn how to function as a team in real conditions, but with low stakes.”

“Sasuke’s right,” Hitomi continued. “We’re the first generation of Genin who worked in teams in the Academy already rather than after graduating. We’re test subjects, if you will. We know we’re ready, but they don’t and we have to show them. Besides, we’re gonna get paid for those missions and become part of the village’s economy. We pay for the services our civilians provide and, in return, when they need help, they hire us. Those missions aren’t fun, Naruto, but I promise they’re useful.”

Naruto stared at the floor, scratching his neck with a pensive expression. “I get it, I think.” He sighed then smiled, looking at Sasuke, then at Hitomi. “Bah, as long as I’m with you, I could even sort through rice grains for a whole day without feeling tired!”

“Aaaaw, Naruto, you’re so cute!” Hitomi chirped as she hugged the living hell out of him. “Right, Sasuke?” She threw the Uchiha boy a look, raising an eyebrow with her sweetest, most threatening smile. He jumped slightly, an expression of fright appearing on his face as he frantically nodded. His eyes were so wide he looked like a hunted deer.

“Hitomi,” Kurenai intervened as she walked down the stairs, “stop upsetting your brothers this early in the morning.”

“But Mom, it’s so easy !”

“Exactly. Find yourself tougher prey to play with. That would be more gratifying. Come on, children, it’s time to eat breakfast if you don’t want to be late for the Academy.”

The three new Genin obeyed, sitting around the table to enjoy the breakfast Hitomi had prepared after greeting the sun. Even Sasuke had a hard time hiding his impatience under his usual impassive mask: his eyes were gleaming, his movements were quicker and less precise than usual, signs people who knew him understood sometimes better than he did. Naruto, of course, was far more obvious and easy to read. He was twitching in his chair and spoke loudly, exuberant and joyful to finally advance towards his dream.

He had had a talk with Kurenai, as the woman had promised her daughter they would, during the week-end. She hadn’t told him about his family – this secret was still foolishly protected – but she had explained about the demon fox inside him, about the way it would perhaps manifest in times of dire need. She had tried to show it under a positive light, with mixed results: at first, Naruto had been tense and ill at ease around Sasuke and Hitomi, as if fearing they would reject him. The girl had hugged him the way he liked, hard enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs, whispering in his ear that she knew, that it didn’t change anything – and Sasuke had smirked, this discreet expression as clear as words.

They arrived at the Academy a bit before Iruka entered the classroom. They immediately went to mingle with their friends, welcomed with enthusiastic exclamations. Everyone knew Naruto had passed the exam: he mastered the tested techniques, except for the cloning, and he had something even better than it. No one was surprised to see him there, amongst his friends.

When the teacher walked in and asked for calm, everyone obeyed. No one wanted to disturb that final day at the school, after all. As usual, the Fellowship occupied the whole last row of desks. Iruka met Hitomi’s eyes and smiled. She nodded in response, mutely thanking him for everything he had taught her, and he was thanking her for everything she had accomplished with her peers. Without her willingness to unite the most influential students within her year, the experiment he had attempted to make future teams start working together before graduation wouldn’t have worked. The other students, once they had understood they wouldn’t enter the Fellowship because they didn’t want to work as hard as Hitomi made her friends work, had formed other groups. The teachers just had to look at their students to form teams.

There was no problem or protest as Iruka formed the teams. Quickly enough, the new sensei came in, called their teams and left, until Team Seven was alone with its former teacher in the classroom. Time slowly stretched from minutes to hours while Hitomi read a book and the two boys sharpened their weapons. Finally, Iruka let out a heavy sigh and stood up, disapproval clearly appearing on his features. “Well, children, I have to go. Can I leave you to wait for your sensei?”

“It won’t be a problem,” Hitomi answered. “If we make sure not to miss him coming in, can we please use one of the training rooms while we wait?”

He seemed to hesitate then, probably remembering that Hitomi was his most serious student, he nodded. “Sure. Here, take the key to Room Two, it should be empty right now. I’ll come and get it tonight, just give it to Kurenai-san when you get home.”

“Thank you, Iruka-sensei! See you later!”

The three kids watched as their former teacher left the room. When he was beyond earshot, Naruto turned to Hitomi, visibly curious. “How do you want to watch out for our new sensei while we train in another room?”

“Oh, that’s right, I didn’t tell you… Last week, I was training with the Shadow Clone technique and I noticed something weird: when my clone disappeared, I always received feelings and memories that didn’t belong to me. I asked Mom about it and she explained it was one of the things the technique can do. Since you have the most chakra, you’ll leave a few clones next to the entrance of the Academy, on the roof and in the corridors and if one spots an unknown ninja, he’ll just have to dissipate and you’ll know.”

“Woah! The Shadow Clone technique is the coolest of all!”

“Don’t you say that in front of Kiba. He’d be so wounded that you think any technique is better than his clan’s.”

On those words, the children left the classroom behind them, Naruto creating clones who’d stand watch for them.

Chapter 35: Preparations

By the time one of the clones saw a shinobi it didn’t know enter the building, the three children had already spent two hours training in Room Two. They were slowly starting to tire, especially Sasuke, who had the least stamina amongst them – although Hitomi was barely better than he was. They had focused on kenjutsu, since Hitomi always had their training swords in a storage seal wherever she went. The boys had quickly gotten used to that little eccentricity: it wasn’t the craziest thing she had in those seals she loved so much and hid everywhere she could: in her pockets, under her bandages, against her skin even, stuck there with chakra, if she lacked space.

“Time to go back to the classroom!” Naruto announced, his eyes widening in surprise. Was he doubting Hitomi’s words before getting proof she was telling the truth? If so, she was happy. It was more than time for her friend to start doubting what people told him.

When the sensei walked in the classroom, he found them sitting at the back, in their usual seats, quietly eating a light meal Naruto had been clever enough to prepare and take with him in the morning. Hitomi only had rations in her seals, which weren’t exactly pleasant to eat. Even the variant prepared by the Akimichi, which she could afford thanks to her late father, didn’t exactly taste good . It wasn’t their purpose.

“My first impression of you,” Hatake Kakashi drawled, “is… better than I would have thought based on your files alone. Meet me on the roof in five minutes.” He shunshined away in a puff of smoke before they could answer, addressing them the first eye-smile of a long series to come.

Five minutes was a short time for such a distance – the Academy was seven floors high – but they were ninjas, so they couldn’t complain. Such a speed wasn’t beyond their abilities, only slightly annoying when the guy asking for it had just made them wait five fucking hours.

When they arrived on the roof, Kakashi was waiting for them, sitting on the edge with his body facing the door they came through. The wind was toying with his hair, and the silver mass really defied gravity. Hitomi had never met the man, who was smiling at them behind the mask hiding almost his entire face, but she knew he was her mother’s kind-of-friend. Despite that, he was the only one amongst the Jōnin-sensei who had never visited them in the Nara land. Even Gai had come once or twice – and yes, he really was as eccentric and dynamic as the canon showed him to be, losing himself in long tirades about the virtues of youth and effort at the slightest provocation. Cute, in a way.

“We’re going to start with introductions. The important stuff: name, what you like and dislike, your hobbies, your goals in life. Girlie, you first.”

“Err… Couldn’t you go first, please?”

“Ah… Well, yeah. My name is Hatake Kakashi. I don’t really want to tell you about my likes and dislikes, and my hobbies are, well… As for my goals for the future… Nah, you’re too young and innocent to hear about that. Come on, your turn.”

“Fine. My name is Yūhi Hitomi. I love my family, my shishou, reading and learning. I don’t like people who abuse their strength or power, treason and wasabi. My hobbies are training, reading, experimenting and learning fūinjutsu. My dream… My dream is to become a Seal Mistress.”

“Well, kid, that’s ambitious. That title hasn’t been granted to anyone since…”

“The Fourth. I know. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though.”

“Ah, we shall see,” Kakashi concluded with a dismissive shrug. “Now, the Uchiha. Your turn.”

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke. I like training and spending time with my family. There are a lot of things I dislike. I don’t have any hobbies outside of training, nor do I have a dream. I just have a goal: to kill a certain man… to stop him from destroying the people I love and the things I believe in.”

When she heard that, Hitomi shifted so her shoulder pressed against Sasuke’s. She didn’t feel at ease enough to do anything more in front of their sensei. As for Naruto, he didn’t hesitate and hugged Sasuke – it was always fun to watch the Uchiha try to escape even if his eyes gleamed with pleasure. The Yūhi girl couldn’t help but think about Itachi at that moment. She wanted to change his destiny, but she was still far too weak as a shinobi to be able to intervene in any manner.

The sensei seemed unfazed by what he had just heard. If the gossip was to be believed, he had been part of the team that had found Sasuke after the massacre, under his ANBU mask. He had to know who the boy was talking about, and yet he only nodded to Naruto. “You, blondie. Your turn.”

“Okay! My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I love my family more than anything in the world! I also really love the ramen from Ichiraku! I love ramen, swords and cooking! I hate when someone I love is sad, and waiting when I’m cooking. My dream… It’s surpassing all the Hokage, so the whole village will have no choice but acknowledge me!”

Kakashi, despite his surprise – Naruto had been described by the Third in quite the caricatural manner and he hadn’t thought about asking Kurenai about the boy – managed to see the other two children’s reaction to his declaration. The Jōnin, by observing them, had a brief idea of a possible future: if Naruto showed himself to be worthy of the position he coveted and accomplished his dream, his adopted siblings would stand right by his side, as councilmen and armed hands of his will.

He hadn’t been surprised when he had seen that his team included the last Uchiha. After all, he was the only shinobi loyal to Konoha to have a Sharingan, and he was expected to teach the boy how to use it, even though he hadn’t had anyone to teach him about it. Uchiha Sasuke would probably get married very young to a woman deemed able to give him as many children as possible – probably a civilian with a history of twins in the family – in the hope that his clan would be reborn from the ashes.

Getting Naruto under his wing had been somewhat logical too. He was the only student of Namikaze Minato to still be alive and knew his and Kushina’s fighting style quite well. If the boy was to awaken the Uzumaki Chains, Kakashi would be able to teach him how to use them. Naruto had also been placed under his nose as a reminder – a reminder of what Konoha’s enemies could do to the people he loved. Kakashi had understood the message and didn’t plan on getting attached to the kids. He would accomplish his duty and, when they all became Chūnin, he would quickly take back his Hound mask and hide in the ANBU. His place in the secret force would wait for him to get back.

No, having the two boys didn’t surprise him. The girl, however… Since she was the daughter of one of his few friends, he had kept a distant eye on her. She was clever, cunning, a born leader who would jump all her life from one incredible feat to another. He was surprised she hadn’t been taken by the shishou Kurenai had told him about, the one who had taught her to turn her illness into an asset. She would have bloomed faster if she had been the sole focus of an accomplished Jōnin, someone who would lead her step by step on her way to the unthinkable summits she was shamelessly aiming for. Kakashi couldn’t do that for her. He wasn’t capable of such devotion anymore. “Well, this was all interesting, but I know enough about you now,” he said with his typical eye-smile. “Before we get started on missions, I want to be sure you’re good enough. For that, I planned a little exercise we’re gonna do, just the four of us.”

“Uh? An exercise? What kind?” Naruto asked.

“Why, a survival exercise, what else?”

“Ah, just like the Academy!”

“Yeah… Well, not exactly like the Academy. Who knows, maybe having done that will help you. This exercise isn’t like any you’ve done before. You’ll have an opponent unlike any you’ve fought before: me.”

“Eh?”

Hitomi desperately wanted to calm Naruto down, but she knew she couldn’t intervene. She had known this would happen and had prepared accordingly, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous, on edge even.

“That’s not all, kids. Ah, the heads you’re gonna make when you’ll understand the stakes of this exercise…”

“The stakes?” Sasuke intervened. “What stakes?”

“Amongst the twenty-seven graduates of the year, only nine will keep their sensei. All teams will face a challenge that will decide if they are worthy to continue being Genin. In other words, this is a hyper-selective trial with a failure chance above sixty-six percent.”

Hitomi felt her adopted brothers tense next to her and, yeah, they were probably making funny faces right now. She put in the effort to seem rather anxious, but she wasn’t afraid. She had a plan. Her goal wasn’t to kick Kakashi’s ass – although she could see the appeal in that – and she knew it wasn’t what he wanted from them anyway.

“But it’s stupid !” Naruto yelled. “Why did we just spend six years of our lives in the Academy if you can throw it all away like that, diploma or not?”

“Ah, yeah, the diploma. It’s just a kind of preselection, to sort through the kids who want to become ninjas and stop the ones that would die during their first mission on the job, that’s all. You’re not even forced to go back to school if you fail: you can enter the General Forces, start a formation in the police or the hospital, or even find a shishou willing to train you… But being in a Genin team is your best chance of getting promoted one day. Now, that’s enough. I’ll decide tomorrow if you’re worthy of my tutelage or not. Bring your gear and don’t eat breakfast before coming. You’d puke it all anyway.”

Once again, Hitomi feigned fright, but she was rolling her eyes hard internally. Kakashi obviously liked toying with the minds of children, and scaring them wasn’t below him. If she hadn’t had her precious knowledge of the future, she would have been terribly anxious, terrified by the idea of failing that test.

“Well, you’ll find everything you need to know about the exercise on those papers,” Kakashi concluded as he gave the documents to Hitomi. “Don’t be late!” He then disappeared in a puff of smoke, eye-smiling once again.

Hitomi stood up with a groan of annoyance and shook her head in disbelief. What a good start… Under her brothers’ perplexed stares, she minutely stretched, warming one muscle after the other. “What? Worrying is pointless, boys. We won’t make incredible progress before tomorrow, right? Let’s head home. Mom is with Team Eight today, and it’s Naruto’s turn to cook. After dinner, we’ll talk about strategy.”

The following day, the team arrived on the training ground two hours before they were supposed to. All three had had very little sleep, but the survival exercises at the Academy had gotten them used to the effects of tiredness. They were able to work around them or despite them with a rather stunning efficiency for children their age. Training ground number three was still plunged in darkness – Kakashi-sensei’s document had ordered them to be there at five in the morning. That didn’t bother them either.

Hitomi hadn’t needed to insist much for her brothers to take breakfast with them. Kurenai hadn’t been able to tell them anything about the exercise, but she had listened in on their preparations with a proud little smile on her lips. Her daughter knew her responsibilities as the implicit leader of her team for the mission to come and was planning accordingly. Kakashi really didn’t know what a hornet’s nest the Third had given him. Poor him.

“We’re gonna start with traps, alright? Naruto, a clone please. Good… The original goes with Sasuke and the clone with me. Let’s trap the hell out of this training ground, boys.” They snickered and went their separate way. In their team, Naruto created improbably complex traps. Hitomi worked on logistics and creation, which was already interesting on its own, but Naruto? Naruto had a particular fondness for chain reactions and random triggers. There was only one trap that Hitomi absolutely wanted to set up herself, because this particular thing wouldn’t be used to harm or disturb their teacher, but strengthen the one skill she possessed that might help them accomplish the goal Kakashi would set for them.

At five, as touches of pink and orange started to appear on the horizon, the three children met again in the central clearing of the training ground. Each of them sat with their back against one of the three wooden poles aligned in the centre of the clearing, sharing a quiet breakfast. Nothing would have worried them more than not feeling ready for the test to come, and Hitomi was willing to let them think, for now, that they could beat a Jōnin by working together. She had spent enough time training with Ensui to know they didn’t stand a chance of kicking his ass.

But, once again, the goal here wasn’t to beat Kakashi, which her brothers didn’t know yet. Fortunately, their true goal would be easy to reach. This year’s students had insolent luck, being the first teams trained to work as one for years before graduating, and Hitomi could only try to guess how this change from canon had even happened.

Since their sensei still wasn’t showing up, they started warming up after finishing their meal and stretch in prevision of the physical intensity the test would probably include. Naruto had recently decided to focus on taijutsu and kenjutsu, and it showed: his shoulders were becoming wide, his arms were growing stronger. Sasuke was going to the opposite process. He too was focusing on sword skills, but had decided to improve his speed rather than strength. Hitomi had trouble winning against either of them in a spar when only taijutsu and kenjutsu were authorised. She was managing to when ninjutsu was allowed, though – Sasuke looked so offended when she forced him to go to close range, where his Fire Style techniques were useless!

When Kakashi finally arrived, Naruto had just thrown Hitomi to the ground and she was starting to stand back up while stopping Sasuke from immobilising her feet. When they were fighting to be the last standing, the two boys had taken the habit of teaming up against her until she was out then focusing on each other. Both of them knew that, if they didn’t take care of her very quickly, they would have a greater problem than any they could create for each other. After all, she fought dirty as hell, her little strikes with the tips of her fingers or her open palm always hitting exactly where it should to send pins and needles or outright pain down their limbs.

“Yo!” the teacher drawled as he shunshined on top of the centric pole. “Feeling good?”

“You’re late!” Naruto whined.

“Come on, Naruto, did you really expect anything else?” Hitomi said with a snicker before he could answer. “In the village, they say our sensei is the least punctual man of the whole Elemental Nations. I’m even surprised he remembered to show up!”

“Aw, so mean, Hitomi-chan. Your poor sensei is sad now…”

“But you’re not really my sensei, right?” she challenged with a rise of her eyebrows. “So I don’t care about your feelings yet . We have to beat you first.”

“Ah, right, the exercise. See those bells? You have to take them from me before noon.”

With a sigh, Hitomi watched the man as he tied the jingling trophies to his belt. It was almost ten in the morning. Two hours seemed kind of short to accomplish the goal he had set for them. It was still possible, but she would have liked a little more time just to be sure.

“The ones who won’t succeed in taking any of the bells before then,” Kakashi continued, “will not eat lunch. They will be tied to one of the poles and I’ll eat their lunch just under their nose.”

Only Naruto reacted to that idea; out of all three children, he was the most recent addition to the family, the one who had known mind-numbing hunger, the need to fight to eat and muffle the icy emptiness that filled his belly with pain and darkness. He sometimes forgot that food would always be there for him, be it on Kurenai’s table or inside one of the numerous seals Hitomi always had on her.

“As you can see, kids, I only have two bells. It means one of you will miss lunch. Furthermore, the ones who fail from taking a bell will also fail the exercise. It means at least one amongst you will inevitably fail. You’re allowed to use weapons. If you don’t come to me with the intent to kill, you don’t stand a chance against me.” He punctuated this last sentence with a faint whiff of killing intent, just enough to make a shiver run down Hitomi’s and Sasuke’s spine. Naruto, as always, was oblivious to it.

Steady and coordinated as one body and one soul, the three children straightened up and squared their shoulders. Hitomi and Sasuke stroked the guard of their swords. Naruto’s was sticking to his back with a constant influx of chakra, but it would find its place between his hands as quickly as they would unsheathe.

“Are you ready? Start!”

The three Genin immediately used the Permutation Technique to switch with logs they had placed all over the training ground during their preparations earlier that day. It had been Naruto’s idea, based on what Sasuke had told them about Shunshin no Shisui’s exploits. The idea was brilliant: it wouldn’t be enough to efficiently flee from an Jōnin, but it was a good attempt, and Hitomi knew deep down that it was what the man expected of them.

Only when they were out of reach did they stop, all three hidden in the thick undergrowth near the border of the training ground. Hitomi used her meridians to locate the sensei. He hadn’t even taken a step in their direction and his chakra was peaceful. He was probably already reading and waiting for them to make the first move. Good. The time he spent doing anything but coming after them was an advantage for them.

“Naruto, Sasuke,” she whispered, “go watch him but stay in the forest. I’m gonna send my cats with you.” As she spoke, she quickly summoned her three fighting cats. The twins had no place in such an exercise. Her summons had grown during the last few weeks and were on their way to reach her hip with their shoulders in less than a month. They immediately understood how serious the situation was and silently nodded to her in greeting before sitting next to the humans, waiting for instructions.

“Hoshihi, you’re the strongest, so you’re gonna team up with Naruto and Sasuke. Haīro and Kurokumo, you’ll drive Kakashi, the man we’re fighting against, to the point Sasuke will show you – you remember, Sasuke, right? I’ll wait there. We have to act quickly. Go!”

The two boys and three cats immediately obeyed, leaving her alone as they ran without hesitation nor fear towards an opponent who surpassed them in all possible skills.

Chapter 36: A Risky Plan

As her teammates and summons were running towards the clearing, Hitomi went to the trap she wanted to use against the Jōnin. Fortunately, she had found another clearing, smaller than the first, almost at the fence of the training ground. Without that, her only trap to have a small chance of working against the sensei would have been unusable. Even this way, she was tense and anxious at the idea of using it. But the alternatives…

“Well, well, leaving all the work to your teammates, uh?”

The girl tensed and, before she could even think, a pair of senbon flew from her hand to the source of the voice. The Jōnin dodged by leaning in slightly, the two needles embedding themselves in the trunk of the tree behind him. The killing intent she didn’t seem able to control yet started to bloom on Hitomi’s skin, thickening the air around her.

“What a welcome,” Kakashi drawled. “Breathe, Hitomi-chan.”

Her eyes wide, she watched him form the Tiger Hand Seal and disappear, slowly dissolving in a storm of dead leaves. It didn’t look like a shunshin, nor like any substitution technique she knew. She took a few hesitant steps, in the hope of discovering what he had done, when a scream tore through the air. Unable to breathe, she ran to the source of the sound, not caring about the low branches whipping at her cheeks and neck.

When she arrived at the place where the scream had come from, she froze, icy sweat rolling along her spine. Her eyes wide in disbelief, she fought, fought to understand what she was seeing. On two spears planted in the ground Naruto and Sasuke were impaled, their blood already watering the soil beneath their feet.

“Hi-Hitomi… Help…”

“Save me… Please… Hitomi… It hurts!”

Tears bloomed in her eyes and rolled on her cheeks, burning her skin and blurring her vision, as her dark red stare registered every detail of the situation unfolding in front of her. She took a trembling step towards them, then two, then kneeled next to the spear going through Sasuke’s chest, her throat so constricted she could barely breathe. How did it happen? Even if Kakashi had decided to fail them from the beginning, they were Konohajin citizens, he owed them protection, he…

She broke the illusion so violently that the rush of chakra burned through her arms. Her surroundings immediately shifted, the broken shapes of her brothers dissolving into nothingness. Killing intent was now buzzing so hard around her that the animals of the forest had started running away from her. It had probably attracted the attention of the closest patrol, but she didn’t care. She was furious that she had to see such a scene, to feel her mind anchoring this memory in her Library. She had to breathe deeply a few times before she could even enter her refuge. She grabbed the book containing the memory and took it far, far away, deep under the surface, where anything that couldn’t see light was kept. She needed a better place for those memories, something guarded and protected.

The number of chains she wrapped around the volume before putting it next to the one containing her knowledge of foreign languages was probably excessive – but so was the cruelty of the vision Kakashi had imposed on her mind. She left her Library still furious, but the abject terror that had haunted her when she had seen her adopted brothers agonising in front of her had somewhat dissipated, smothered by the weight of the chains that stopped it from paralysing her.

She was close to the meeting place and, when she arrived, she was more focused than ever. Not once did the killing intent fade around her, and her logic whispered that a patrol should have arrived and checked what was going on – but she doubted even one shinobi in the village was unaware of what was happening that day for the newly graduated Genin. A bit – a lot – of killing intent on a training ground probably wasn’t out of place under those circumstances.

Naruto appeared first, three clones behind him, and froze for a second when he felt the tension emanating from her. Since he wasn’t the target for her will and anger, he didn’t exactly feel the effects of it, only a strange distortion in the atmosphere around her. Sasuke, who arrived just after him, met Hitomi’s eyes; his dreary expression made her understand that he knew what it was, and that she was doing it. She nodded and signed to them, her hands telling them to go hide in the undergrowth behind her.

She seemed alone when Kakashi came. Before he could even talk, because she would probably have lost control of her emotions if he had said anything, she formed the Rat Hand Seal as she took a step back. Her shadow came alive; one moment later, her chakra went through the holes she had drilled in the soles of her shoes and activated a seal she had drawn there long before dawn. Barely a meter behind her, flames appeared with a terrible roar and extended towards the sky, brutally giving fuel and power to her shadow, which connected to Kakashi’s. She had control.

Immediately, she understood she had made a mistake. The sensei’s strength was monumental in comparison to her own, his reflex of trying to step back and his body brimming with chakra threatening to tear away the bonds that kept him in place. Unable to stop herself, Hitomi screamed in pain, her mind trying in vain to push back the pain she felt from just keeping the Jōnin still. In barely a few seconds, almost all the chakra she had had left before evaporated and she was forced to let go. She fell on all four, shadow and flame disappearing at the same time, and threw up her breakfast on the grass.

He had stopped resisting immediately after his reflex to step away from the flames, but Hitomi could still feel the places where tension had turned to fire in her muscles, her bones, and even on the deep and intimate level of her nerves themselves. Her cheeks were wet, her limbs shaking and spasming, her breathing ragged and shallow. She was so dizzy she couldn’t even sit up.

Piercing the wall of pain and brutal exhaustion raised between the world and herself, her brothers’ footsteps approached quickly. She managed to open her eyes and saw them standing in front of her, like a shield between the sensei and her body, too weak to continue fighting. In front of the two boys were her three giant cats, hissing and growling with their fangs and claws ready to maim.

“Well,” Kakashi said, “you three are a surprising bunch. To say I had prepared a whole speech about how important teamwork is… I see the Academy has now decided to do all the work for me. Congrats, you pass!”

“What? But we didn’t get the bells!”

“But, Naruto-kun, the goal was never for you to actually get the bells. In the beginning, I thought you and Sasuke had decided to ditch Hitomi, but I understood she was still with you when I saw the cats.” The man stepped around the cats and boys without much resistance then kneeled next to Hitomi, his large hands helping her to sit up. His only eye registered the cold sweat, the sickly pale tone, the spasms running in the muscles under his fingers. “As for you, young lady, nicely done. If I had been your equal, your plan would have worked. You still have a lesson to take from this: against an opponent that is immensely stronger than you, direct confrontation rarely works.”

“Ugh…”

“Yeah, I know, it hurts. Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun, I’d like one of you to go warn Kurenai that her daughter is at the hospital for chakra exhaustion. She’s with Team Eight on the training ground number five.”

Sasuke ended up handling it. In an instant he had disappeared, his legs faster than they had ever been before. Kakashi’s hand started rubbing comforting circles against Hitomi’s back as she felt her eyes close against her will. “Good. Now that that is handled, Naruto, take her stuff and follow me.”

“What about us?”

Hitomi recognised Hoshihi’s voice and a little smile appeared on her lips. She wanted to cuddle against him and nuzzle against his neck, where the skin was warm and the fur so soft. One of her hands twitched harder than before, probably in answer to the longing she was feeling. Her smile turned to a mask of pain.

“No,” Kakashi growled softly, “you stop trying to move right now, young lady. You’re just going to hurt yourself. As for you three… I don’t know. Do whatever you want, I’m not your summoner and she isn’t available to decide right now. You can follow if that’s what you want.”

Those were the last words Hitomi heard before her eyelids won the battle and closed down, the sounds and feeling softly fading around her until they were only silence and comforting obscurity.

She regained consciousness in a hospital room, which she recognised by smell long before opening her eyes. She wanted to take her time before fully waking up, savouring the heat of the three heavy bodies on the covers. Finally, when her thirst became too pressing to be ignored any longer, she blinked and grimaced when light stabbed her eyes. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as soon as the feeling stopped: Naruto had just closed the blinds, and the room was now comfortably dark.

“Ah, Hitomi-chan, finally. We were starting to worry, your friends and I.”

“K-Kakashi-sensei?”

“Hm hm. Niji-sama, the girl is awake, as you can see. I think her mother would like to know. Hitomi, your mom couldn’t leave her students in the middle of their own test but, as you can see, she still wanted to be kept in the loop.”

The girl nodded and watched the huge dragonfly, Niji, taking flight and leaving the room, his wings shimmering even in the semi-darkness of the room as they brushed against the frame of the door. “I had never seen my mother’s summons,” she whispered hoarsely.

When he heard the pain in her voice, Naruto jumped to her side and presented a straw to her lips, so she could drink effortlessly.

“Niji is Suisei’s eldest daughter, and Suisei is your mom’s familiar. Trust me, you do not want to meet Suisei, Kurenai only summons her when her ninjutsu needs an enormous boost, and the results are terrifying. Now, let’s get back to you. When were you deprived of chakra to the point of disturbing your growth?”

“I… What ?”

Hitomi looked so shocked, her eyes wide and her shoulders tense in a way that had to be painful for her exhausted body, that it made Kakashi reconsider and stop himself from scolding her. “Naruto-kun, can you please leave the room for a moment? I have to discuss private subjects with Hitomi-chan. She can tell you about it afterwards if she wants to, but right now I’d prefer it if it stayed between us. Maybe you should go find food for her.”

The blonde boy obeyed, but not without throwing a suspicious look at his sensei as he walked past him. Once he had closed the door behind him, silence settled on the little room and stretched for a few moments, until Kakashi decided to break it. “As a sensei, I have been granted access to your medical file. Naruto’s and Sasuke’s too, of course. When I brought you here, the nurse who reversed the damage caused by chakra exhaustion, especially in your arms, told me she felt traces of repeated scarring in some places, especially in your muscles and around your organs.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“Chakra exhaustion is a very dangerous state for the body. When it only happens once in a while, it’s not that big of a deal, but this nurse says that you have been in that state countless times during your childhood. And yet, you’re a Yūhi, which means you have massive chakra reserves, larger than any of your peers, except for Naruto. I just want to understand, Hitomi-chan, why your health has been put at such a risk.”

“I… What… I don’t think Ensui-shishou knew about… all this.”

“Ensui… Nara Ensui, right? Kurenai told me you had left the village with him for a year and a half before entering the Academy.”

“Yeah. I have an illness that could have stopped me from becoming a ninja. It’s been in the clan for generations, according to Ensui-shishou. Until he took me out of the village, Mom and I lived in a house in the Deer Forest, as far away as possible from the rest of the clan, because I felt like I was caught on fire with too many people around.” Hitomi sighed and rubbed her hands on the blanket before petting Kurokumo, who purred softly. “Once he taught me to muffle my meridians, so I’d only feel chakra to a useful level, Ensui-shishou taught me other things. He told me about a method that would stretch my reserves by emptying them again and again.”

“Ah, yeah, that method… I understand, now,” Kakashi assured in a calming tone. “The research on the long-term consequences of chakra exhaustion is recent. Your shishou probably hadn’t heard about it, or he wouldn’t have put you through that training. When he comes back to the village, I’ll have a talk about it with him.”

“Am I… Am I gonna be in trouble?” She hated the way her voice betrayed her fear, but she couldn’t have hidden it. She wasn’t strong enough, not yet.

“You’ll have to be looked at by a doctor regularly, especially once you hit puberty. You’ll stay tiny all your life and will have trouble gaining weight or building muscle mass. You won’t ever be a taijutsu specialist… But I don’t think it’s a problem. You have a lot of other interesting skills, after all. The most important thing to do now is to make sure you don’t get chakra exhaustion too often in the future.”

Frowning, Hitomi nodded. Her eyes glared at nothing in front of her, but it was only an expression of focus, not anger. She knew Ensui had meant well. He wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer any long-lasting consequences from his training – even seeing her in pain then and knowing it would pass had been hard on him. Besides… It was probably the best choice in the long run. All the fields Hitomi was interested in implicated the use of chakra, kenjutsu excepted. She needed her reserves as they were and as they would be. Staying scrawny all her life seemed like such a small sacrifice to receive what she needed to fight.

“Don’t worry, Hitomi-chan,” Kakashi said after a while. “We don’t know each other yet, but you’ll learn that I look after my team. Besides, your mother would skin me alive if I neglected one of her precious children. Even without that threat, I want to see all three of you become accomplished shinobi. That weakness of yours we just discovered isn’t more serious than Naruto’s impulsivity or Sasuke’s stubbornness. Yes, I already noticed that.”

“Thanks, sensei,” she whispered as her eyes softened. “Uh… You can leave, if you want. You probably have other things to do.”

“Not at all. Making sure one of my cute little students isn’t left without supervision in a hospital is the top item on my to-do list today.” On those words, the teacher left the wall he was crouching against all this time and sat at Hitomi’s bedside. From the pouch where he should have stocked shuriken and kunai, he took a novel the girl immediately recognised: Icha Icha Paradise. While he started reading, she sat up with a pained grimace and guided Hoshihi, the closest of her cats, even closer. She put her head on his shoulders, ignoring the way his fur tickled her nose, then stayed like that for a moment, a warm and soft body pressed against hers.

“You know most of our warriors would never accept that kind of cuddle, right?” he said playfully after a while.

“But you like it, right?”

“Yeah, I like it. We all like it here. Please don’t tell the adults?”

“Okay,” she whispered after a while against his pelt. Her eyes closed and she stayed in that position for a long time, cradled by a concert of purrs. After a few moments, Haīro and Kurokumo joined in – when Kakashi looked up from her book, he couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow as he saw his little student under a pile of giant cats.

When a nurse left her room two hours later, after chewing her up about her chakra exhaustion, Hitomi still hadn’t moved, only exchanging a few words with Kakashi from time to time. It wasn’t much, nothing extraordinary, but it still was enough to appease something hidden deep inside her, something that had grown agitated these last few weeks.

Chapter 37: Finally Home

Notes:

Just a quick note: I'm behind on replying to comments right now. I got a work-related opportunity that I can't let go of, which makes me incredibly busy, but please don't stop commenting! Reading you all is the light of my days.

For two days, Hitomi was totally forbidden from using chakra, even for things as easy as activating a seal. When her team took its first D-ranked missions, she thus had to limit herself to supervision and logistics. She would have loved to do more – fuck it, no chakra was needed to weed a garden or transporting a bag of groceries – but her teammates didn’t indulge her, and the only time she had gotten angry and rebuffed Naruto, he had hit her right in the feels with The Stare. She regretted more than ever teaching him this technique that day.

As for Kakashi, he was observing this whole affair with something that looked like a mix of amusement and approbation. While he gifted the two boys with advice concerning their taijutsu, he dove deep in Hitomi’s work on fūinjutsu and annotated her recent attempts to create a flash bomb seal – but ten, maybe twenty times more potent than the real thing. As long as she confined herself to theoretical material, he didn’t see any trouble with helping her. If he hadn’t done it, he knew she would have tried all by herself. At least this way he could keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t use chakra.

When he arrived on training ground number three the third morning, he found her alone, her feet in the river that ran through the clearing, obviously trying to learn a new technique. He was surprised to see her: he had come very early on purpose to greet Obito before starting his day. The fact that that day generally started by making his cute little students wait for hours was just an added homage to his departed friend – and to the sensei who had loved teaching as much as teasing his students. “Morning, Hitomi-chan. Water Release, hm? What are you trying to learn?”

The girl jumped and lost her focus, the water that had started to rise in front of her falling and splashing impressively around. When the disturbance was no more than a ripple in the river, she answered her sensei, her tone probably far too joyful for someone who had just failed at something. “The Ambush of Moving Water, sensei! I don’t know yet why I can’t do it properly, but I’ll find the answer!”

The Copy Nin nodded in approval. This technique, while quite neglected by most shinobi in possession of a water affinity, was very useful in battle. Since it wasn’t shown much interest, not a lot of opponents with a different affinity knew it even existed, and the ones who actually knew wasted this advantage away by still being surprised when they were trapped in its effects. The technique was a stepping stone towards learning the Water Prison, and in essence was a weaker, but also less chakra intensive, version of that infamous technique. It immobilised the opponent up to the knees in water made thicker by chakra. Yes, he could see Hitomi doing wonders with that. “Well, you won’t succeed this way. Some jutsus need a living target to be mastered.”

“Sensei!” she whined with a pout. “I told you I’d find the answer!”

“Why waste time and chakra by groping for success blindly?”

The girl didn’t answer, frowning and pouting, but she turned away from him with an annoyed huff.

“Aw, come on, Hitomi-chan, don’t be mad at your poor sensei. Will you forgive me if I’m your training dummy?” She turned to him again, cold and careful consideration gleaming in her red eyes, and he stepped in front of her with an eye-smile. He was careful to stay on the surface of the river, since his boots were open at the front. Kakashi didn’t like his shoes much, but almost all the shinobi he knew – except Hitomi, damnit – wore them. He wanted to belong somehow.

Hitomi mastered the technique just in time for her brothers to see her using it perfectly as they arrived on the training ground. She let out a victorious exclamation and immediately let go of the water before running to Naruto’s arms. The boy welcomed her with a laugh before handing her a bento box decorated with jasmine flowers.

“Really,” Sasuke teased, “with a memory like yours, how can you forget such simple things?”

“Hm?” Kakashi stepped in. “How is her memory special?”

“Ah, Hitomi is a genius! She never forgets anything, never! She helped me so much with Academy stuff, sensei, believe it!”

“Really? Well, Hitomi-chan, such a skill isn’t mentioned in your file.”

Hitomi snorted dismissively. “Of course it isn’t mentioned. I was very careful to hide it from the adults at the Academy. I didn’t want to be required to go to the Encryption and Decoding department, thank you very much!”

Kakashi couldn’t help but freeze when he heard the quiet certainty in his student’s voice. The fact that a child entering the Academy at seven years old had been able to think clearly enough to understand how showing certain skills could lead her down a route she didn’t want to follow baffled him. Hitomi lived with Nara and was a Nara herself though. Her clan was known for producing genius after genius, so much so that a lot of clans had tried for an arranged marriage between their heirs and members of the Shadow Clan to make this propension theirs as well – without success. The Nara were one of the very rare clans to refuse that kind of match.

“I see,” he said after considering his options for a moment. Well, in that case, I’m gonna test your memory now to see how we can use it for our team strategies. Do you think your memories are reliable?”

“Depends. When a memory is linked to powerful feelings, it’s hard for me to dissociate the former from the latter. When I revisit the memory, I feel the emotions I had while living it all over again. It’s weaker, but still… Some of my memories are tainted, altered by my own feelings…”

“And despite that?”

“Despite that, my memory is flawless. I remember everything I ever experienced without any problem. All my readings as well. I can access those memories at will.”

“Is that really so? Well, let’s see. Recite page 247 of the Shinobi Rulebook, starting from the second paragraph.”

“The shinobi’s duty goes to their village first, then their clan, and to his family and friends next in a lesser measure. If one of your friends turns traitor to your village, your duty as shinobi is to collect proof of their treachery and bring them to your Kage, who’ll decide their fate. You’ll have to prepare your soul and your arm, if needs be, to…”

“Stop there.”

Hitomi obeyed so promptly that her teeth clicked uncomfortably against each other. She had never told Sasuke and Naruto about that aspect of a shinobi’s life. They had both read and learned about that rule, of course, but her blonde brother was too pure and too naïve to understand exactly what it meant. As for the last Uchiha… It sometimes seemed to Hitomi that he felt a weak, distorted link between what that principle and what had happened to his clan. So many suspect circumstances surrounded the night of the massacre… She was surprised she had never heard him ask questions about them.

“Did you read the clans’ law books?” Kakashi asked, pulling her away from her thoughts.

“Only the ones from the Yūhi, Nara, Uchiha, Uzumaki, Hyūga, Aburame and Inuzuka clans. It’s not easy to access them so for the others, I’m waiting for an opportunity.”

“Very well. Uzumaki lawbook, chapter five, article six, paragraph two.”

“Growing medicinal plants in a private garden on clan territory grants the owner the right to request a five percent exoneration from tax on their pay for missions B-ranked and higher, on the condition that one fifth of the harvest from those plants is given to the Uzumaki administration. To obtain this exoneration, one has to meet the clan’s clerk, who has to give the applicant the correct paperwork to file and give back in the following seven days. An inspection of the garden shall be conducted in the following month and a decision shall be given to the applicant within sixty days after introducing the request.”

“When did you read that lawbook?”

“Uh… It was when I was telling Naruto about his clan, so five years ago.”

“I see. We’ll test your memory further in real situations in the weeks to come. It can become a very good asset for our team.”

Hitomi nodded enthusiastically. She had already had her fair share of tests from the Nara clan, but they had never been geared towards her career as a shinobi. She had been too young then, and everyone had thought she wouldn’t be able to become a ninja because of her illness – who could have blamed them? Even being in presence of her clanmates had been a torture before Ensui had taken her in.

During the following hours, they worked on the first D-ranked mission Hitomi was allowed to participate in. They had to sort through the new books ordered by the Central Library, something any civilian could have done with a bit of practice, but that didn’t stop Hitomi from being happy to work, to contribute to her team. The fact she was doing it surrounded by piles of books taller than herself was just a nice bonus. With the clones she and Naruto could produce at will, the mission was done in little more than an hour.

After they had written and given their reports to the Genin Liaison Bureau, Kakashi decided to take them to a restaurant. Naruto had pleaded for Ichiraku, but the teacher resisted and led them to one of the barbeque restaurants held by an Akimichi cook. They were soon settled around a table, strips of marinated meat happily sizzling on the grill. As she was putting her share on her plate, Hitomi heard a voice that made shivers of sheer joy run down her spine. “Kid, the next time you send me in the fucking Desert for six years, I promise on Hashirama’s head that I’m taking you with me.”

“Shishou!” Her loud exclamation attracted the attention of all the other patrons, but Hitomi couldn’t care less. She pushed her chair back and, in a mere two steps, she found herself drowning in a hug that smelled of pine and cinnamon – her shishou was finally home. She held him as close as she could, her face pressed against his neck, her nose touching the place where his carotid artery pulsed quickly. She had missed him so much. So fucking much.

The girl knew shinobi weren’t supposed to cry. She found this rule stupid, useless, hurtful even in some situations, but she had never publicly protested against it and had followed it with grace, sometimes even helping her friends to manage their own emotions. And yet, pressed against her shishou, she burst into loud, heavy, relieved tears. Despite her extended vocabulary, her intimate knowledge of three languages rich in nuances, she couldn’t find words to express the feelings dominating her mind now.

“It’s okay,” he whispered against her hair. “I’m here. I missed you too, Hitomi.”

A child once more, the Yūhi heir was grateful for her teammates and sensei, who let her have this moment uninterrupted. She could hear Sasuke explaining to Kakashi, in a low voice, the intense correspondence exchanged by master and student during the past six years. Naruto pitched in with an anecdote from the Academy, when she had answered Iruka’s complicated question without even looking up or stopping writing. The two children and the adults kept away from her, letting her have the bubble of intimacy and comfort that separated her from the rest of the world.

“Everything is okay, Hitomi,” he assured her with a brush of his hand against her wet cheek. “I’m okay. I’m just tired and famished. Would it bother you if I joined in?”

Just like that, it was settled: Ensui took Hitomi’s chair next to the window and Sasuke pushed his aside so she could sit between them. The table was a bit crowded, but she couldn’t have cared less, not with her master finally home. “Shishou, let me introduce you to my team. Naruto and Sasuke are my brothers, adopted by Mom these past few years, just like I told you. Hatake Kakashi is our sensei.”

The two men exchanged a long look, the tension between them suddenly lifted. Of course, the façade they put on for the public were in opposite factions of the village: Kakashi was Hiruzen’s man, linked to him by a succession of masters and students, while Ensui had never hidden his thoughts about the way the village was led by the old man. Despite that, they had no trouble finding common ground: children they intended on protecting, at the cost of their life if necessary.

Later, when it was time for Team Seven to go back to their training ground, Kakashi suggested Ensui joined in. Despite his exhaustion, the Nara accepted. He didn’t have enough vocabulary to express it, but he had deeply missed his apprentice. The mere vision of her, older, wiser, alive , filled his chest with a warmth he had been yearning for during all those years away from her. The letters… They had helped, without a doubt. But nothing she could have put into words could even compare to the relief and tenderness he felt when he looked at her, listened to her.

He had never wondered about the place she had taken in his life, because it had seemed so natural, so easy and simple. Once he had left on his mission, separated from her, with no way of protecting her and the people she loved… The questions had come, one after the other. He had had enough nightmares where he had found her tiny, broken body, lying in a pool of blood, to know it had become his greatest fear.

Ensui had had a son, an eternity ago. A son he had raised alone as he still mourned the woman who had brought him to the world, a son he had carried in a sling all around the village, a son who had quickly been stolen away by Shimura Danzō’s dark influence. Oh, how Ensui had hated this spider made man when his son hadn’t come home . How he had hated Hiruzen for the weakness of his ageing soul. He couldn’t bear, then, to even look at the land he had loved so much, the land that had taken the one thing he had loved even more.

His return to the village, almost eight years ago, was supposed to be temporary. He had intended on fleeing again, far away from all the memories walking in his shadow to meet him at night, but Shikaku had stopped him. Ensui had always respected his clan leader, the only one who had always known to hold the High Council away from his own business, so brilliant, so wise, and yet benevolent, compassionate even when Ensui had appeared in front of him a broken man. He had listened as his clan leader told him about a little girl, his niece, sick as he had been at the same age, a little girl who didn’t want anything more than to become a ninja like her mother and her late father.

He had agreed to take her in, more as a favour to Shikaku than because of a drive to teach. He had to admit he had immediately felt a fair amount of curiosity as he had listened to the man describing the kid. He had sounded so proud of her, as much as he was of his own son, when he had told Ensui about her, her intelligence, her talent with shōgi. And then he had taken the girl away from the village and realised each praise he had heard from her uncle’s mouth had been well-deserved. Yūhi Hitomi was an exceptional child but, more than that, she was his ideal student.

He who had never really expected to pass on his knowledge had quickly found in her the perfect recipient for it. He was sure she would surpass him one day in more than one field, and prayed to all the gods he knew that he’d be alive to witness it. He wanted to see her, grown up and triumphant, accepting from the Hokage – whoever it would be then – the title of Seal Mistress, just like she wanted.

Even if he didn’t have a natural child to take over once he was too old and tired, Ensui had Hitomi. He had her sweetness, her liveliness, her laughter and that terribly accommodating smile when she was preparing a wicked stunt. He had the way her voice dragged slightly on vowels, her flexible greetings to the sun, her love of convoluted speech and the smell of ink in her hair when she fell asleep while working.

He had a daughter, and he was back home to protect her and help her grow up. This conclusion had been painful in the beginning – accepting a child like her felt too much like betraying his son’s memory, maybe. He couldn’t care less now, as she was hanging on his arm and told all his achievements, real or not, to the two boys she called her brothers. This vision seemed so precious to him that he would have wanted to possess his apprentice’s eidetic memory to be able to live it again and again.

“So, here you are, finally,” Kakashi drawled. “Hitomi speaks very highly of you.”

“And she speaks highly of you as well. In any other circumstances, we would have probably found each other on opposite sides of a battlefield one day. But making you my enemy would break Hitomi’s heart.”

“And we wouldn’t want that now, would we? It’s funny, I thought this sensei thing would be the worst thing happening to me as I am today, but when I saw them working together… I had to reconsider. Those changes at the Academy are for the best.”

“Oh, trust me, she had started working with those boys far before the experiment started. Hitomi told me about every progress she made building her beloved Fellowship.”

“Her Fellowship?”

“Yeah, the name is a bit weird, but the concept itself… It’s an alliance, or rather a friendship, between the members of your team as well as Kurenai’s and Asuma’s teams. Those children have been working together for… I don’t even know how long. First or second year at the Academy, I’d say. They help each other, learn from each other, train together, seek support from the group when their life becomes complicated. I know the Hyūga girl, for example, spent a lot of weekends at Kurenai’s.”

“Ah, yeah, the Hyūga…”

“Indeed.” Ensui snorted dismissively, his distaste for the clan’s leader barely hidden. “Anyway, it’s probably because of all that that your two boys are so well-adjusted and performed so well at the Academy, especially Naruto. Hitomi told me about all the research she had to do to get around his learning difficulties. Without her efforts, who knows what he would have become?”

“Sounds like Hitomi, yeah. When I tested them, I noticed the authority she had over them. It looked really natural; they obeyed her instructions without even thinking about it. They always do.”

“It’s a good team dynamic. And it almost worked that day, didn’t it?”

“Almost, almost… It would have worked if I hadn’t had so much more chakra than her that even standing in her shadow emptied her reserves in two seconds.”

“Of course. She still struggles to understand the difference in power between herself and her opponents. In Suna, her first friend was the village’s jinchūriki…”

Kakashi almost tripped. “What the fuck ?”

“Yeah, I freaked out too. She just came back to our hotel with him in tow one night. He had hurt her by accident, and when I tried to intimidate the boy as payback, I thought she was going to claw my face off.”

“Hermit’s balls, what did I get myself into…”

“Troubles, that’s what. But honestly? Those kids are worth every second of it. I never thought I’d want to teach before Shikaku-sama asked me to, and now look at me, I absolutely love it. Sometimes, it’s hard, and you’ll suffer since the kids will go through puberty on your watch, but trust me, that pride you’ll feel each time they succeed at something, each time they make any progress… It’s worth it.”

“I’m not even good at teaching.”

“Nor was I! But you’re lucky to have had the Fourth himself as a sensei, and if someone was good at teaching, it was him. You’ll do well, I’m sure of it. In case of doubts, you can still ask Kurenai for help. She knows her kids, knows how they work. She’ll give you the best advice.”

“And you? Will you stay around this time?”

“I don’t intend on setting even a foot outside the village without Hitomi if I can prevent it. Those six years in Suna… It was for her, and I’m happy I did it, but I really missed the kid, and it wouldn’t be careful of me to take any mission from Hiruzen.”

If Kakashi tensed at the lack of respect Ensui showed to their Hokage, he didn’t show it. “Well, in that case, I’ll be able to ask you to help as well. And if something happens to the kids during training, I’ll tell Kurenai it’s your fault so she tears you a new one and not me.”

Ensui burst out laughing, attracting the attention of the three Genin who, a few steps in front of them, were holding their own conversation. The kids exchanged slightly surprised looks, tried to obtain explanations, failed then went back to their own business. Adults were weird anyway.

Chapter 38: A Genin's Life

During the following days, Team Seven settled in a comfortable and interesting routine. In the morning, while they were waiting for their sensei to arrive, the three children had breakfast on the still damp grass, then sparred in various configurations and analysed each other’s performances. Naruto’s comments were always a bit complicated to understand; because he lacked the necessary vocabulary to describe precisely what he meant, but decoding his approximations was also part of the exercise.

When their sensei arrived, they all went to the Tower to receive their first mission of the day. For the time being, Kakashi kept them on D-ranked missions, which Naruto had a peculiar talent to complicate. Despite that, and despite the ridiculously bad luck that seemed to stick to them like glue, they had never failed a mission that had been assigned to them. After lunch, Kakashi took them to the training ground number three. Often, Ensui was waiting for them there.

He and Kakashi seemed to have found a common interest in training the three kids. It wasn’t rare, after training, to see them both headed to a bar to discuss the following day’s program. Despite how rigorous training could be for the three Genin, none of them complained. It would be incredibly foolish and ungrateful to do so: two Jōnin knew more than one, and thus had more to teach them.

In the evenings, after dinner, Ensui met Hitomi in her bedroom and worked with her on her fūinjutsu and chemistry. Thanks to him, she managed to create her flash bomb seal and quickly filed a patent in the Nara Clan armoury and gave them authorisation to recreate and sell the seal in exchange for a commission. That way, even her most distant cousins would have access to her creation. For people who turned shadows into a weapon, light was a precious resource.

Sometimes, Hitomi managed to steal a few hours away from her duties and spent them with Hinata, be it to watch her train with her team or to take her somewhere in the village. Sasuke and Naruto frequently collaborated to make those outings happen, by taking her work from her and insisting she went to see her girlfriend, all under Kakashi’s and sometimes Ensui’s amused eyes. Hitomi only protested for show: it was sweet and liberating at the same time to have feelings, and she intended on savouring what she could of her relationship with Hinata.

After a week of that regime, they were assigned their first C-ranked mission. Hitomi had to admit her surprise: Naruto hadn’t tried to push the Hokage to assign them a more ‘ninja-like’ mission. In fact, Hiruzen wasn’t even there. Trying to hide her puzzlement, the girl glanced at two shinobi who could only be Shiranui Genma – forehead protector worn as a bandana over chestnut shoulder-long hair, a senbon between his lips – and Yamashiro Aoba – spiky black hair, sunglasses, always frowning – sitting behind a desk. They were the only high-ranking officers present outside of Kakashi.

“Team Seven,” Genma greeted with a grin. “We were expecting you.”

He pulled out a document and handed it to Aoba, who quickly read it before grabbing a green scroll. Green meant C-rank and a shiver ran down Hitomi’s spine. Could it be the Land of Waves already?

“Yūko-sensei, from the Academy, is sick today and needs to be replaced. Your mission isn’t to teach, only to supervise her students in second year. Here is the mission order.”

To Hitomi’s great astonishment, Aoba didn’t hand the scroll to Kakashi but to her. She raised her eyebrows, her hand half-extended towards the order hesitating to cross the last few centimetres.

“The request comes from Iruka-sensei,” Aoba explained, “and he specified he wanted you to lead the mission, Yūhi-san. According to him, you have experience watching over children, especially Academy students.”

The young girl couldn’t help but blush up to the ears, her long, thin fingers finally reaching the scroll and taking it. Once she got it, she stared at it, unable to hide her amazement, then realised her teammates were waiting for her. Her posture slowly stiffened, a perfect picture of dignity and self-assurance – such a pretty façade. Honour and fright mixed inside her, almost intense enough to make her choke and collapse under pressure. Was she good enough, the best possible leader for this mission? She had to be. She refused to fail.

“I accept the mission,” she firmly said. “Team Seven will go to the Academy as quickly as possible.” She bowed and left the room, her teammates docilely stepping aside before following her, Kakashi walking behind his students. It didn’t stop Hitomi from hearing the two Tokubetsu Jōnin laugh gently. Before they closed the door, Genma mumbled something like “I can’t wait to tell Kurenai about it.”

The pink shade on her cheeks turned to bright red but she didn’t falter. She truly felt honoured by Iruka’s choice to request her to lead the mission, and at the same time, she was intimidated by the importance of the event. It was her first mission as unit chief, and her whole career probably depended on its success. It was hard to mess up a C-ranked mission: if it happened, she would probably never be given a unit to lead again.

The team arrived at the Academy very quickly – the main building was linked to the Tower so it was easy to defend in case of emergency, and all the vulnerable students and civilians could evacuate together, protected by paperwork ninjas. Hitomi took the time to correct her stance, to emanate quiet self-assurance, which she was very far from feeling at that moment. She entered the classroom first and heard the students calm down as soon as she stepped in, just like her own group had when she had been a student herself.

“Hello everyone!” she started. “Yūko-sensei is sick today and won’t be able to attend. We’re here to replace her. We won’t be teaching, but we’ve recently started our own careers as shinobi after graduating, so if you have questions, we can try to answer them. The ones who aren’t interested, feel free to do something else, but stay quiet.” She let a solid second pass so the students would process the information, as she had seen Iruka do so many times. “My name is Yūhi Hitomi. To my right is Uzumaki Naruto and, to my left, Uchiha Sasuke. The man hiding behind his book over there is Hatake Kakashi, our sensei and commanding officer.”

The students politely greeted them, then a young Akimichi raised her hand. “What is it like, being part of a ninja team?” she asked with a slight blush.

“It’s awesome, believe it!” Naruto beamed.

“It can be surprising,” Sasuke nuanced with a smirk.

“It’s like working with an extension of your family,” Hitomi concluded. “Well, Sasuke and Naruto are my adopted brothers, but working as a team has brought us a lot closer. During training, it’s easier to progress when you’re driven by the idea that you’ll be able to protect your teammates. And when training becomes hard, because you’re hungry or tired, because you feel like you’re not getting better despite all your efforts, the others are here to pick you up, to stand by your side, to make sure you don’t stay behind. For me, that’s what it feels like.”

The silence that settled on the classroom after she was done answering the question only emphasised the sweetness and affection that had played in her voice. She exchanged a look with her brothers as they subtly adjusted their stances so their body heat would brush against hers. She smiled, a tender, discreet expression, refusing to feel shame for showing emotion to all those kids. They were always told that ninjas had to make themselves numb, to be impassive in all circumstances, to turn their heart cold. She disagreed.

In her opinion, a shinobi was never stronger than when he was animated by an emotion, no matter which one. Be it anger, revenge, protectiveness, loyalty, bravery or love, emotions were a driving force, a secret and infinite source of energy that made her stand back up again and again, even when Kakashi-sensei was afraid he was pushing her too far in training. More than once, Ensui had put a hand on the teacher’s arm and stopped him from trying to stop the exercise she was doing. The Nara knew Hitomi better than anyone and knew the concept of limits was only a challenge in her eyes.

“Did you fight foreign shinobi already?” The question came from a boy who looked civilian-born, sitting at the back of the room. The whole class looked interested in the answer and looks from Sasuke and Naruto enjoined her to handle that one as well.

“No, we didn’t have a mission leading us outside the village yet. I have already fought against Sunajin shinobi, but it was in friendly spars.”

“How are the Sunajin ninjas?”

“I think they are a bit like us. They want to protect their village, their family, their secrets, and are ready, just like us, to offer their life for it. We didn’t go to war with them because of real differences in the past, but because of conflicts, and you’ll have to learn how and why before you get your forehead protectors.”

The questions went on and on for the better part of an hour. When she wasn’t busy answering, Hitomi watched her teammates attentively: Naruto beamed each time he spoke and, if Sasuke didn’t show such obnoxious joy when it was his turn, he was clearly liking this exchange with the students. The girl was always surprised and moved when she saw the last Uchiha interacting with children: it happened from time to time since they were living next to Shikaku’s house, in the heart of the clan’s lands. Each time, he had been perfectly at ease, considerate, delicate, a discreet smile adorning his lips.

“Can you show us a ninjutsu technique?” The question came from a young girl sitting on the front row.

In the space of a second, Hitomi foresaw what would happen if Sasuke used his Fire Release ninjutsu, or if Naruto drowned the classroom in clones. She stepped forward before her brothers could even react. “Sure, no problem! I’ll do it. Watch closely.” She sliced her thumb open with her sword then formed the hand seals for the summoning jutsu before slamming her injured hand to the ground. When the puff of smoke coming with the technique dissipated, only Kurokumo stood there, looking a bit surprised that he had been called without his companions.

“Oh, hi, Lady Summoner!” he chirped. “Do you need me?”

“I just wanted to introduce you to those future shinobi. Children, this is Kurokumo, one of the giant cats I signed a summoning contract with. They help me in battle and with some missions, where their skills can be useful. However, before being warriors obeying my orders, they are my friends, my comrades, as all Konohajin shinobi are. There are a lot of summoning contracts in the world, and several among you will probably sign one of them one day. If it’s the case, remember that the creatures you summon also have an identity, a personality, and that you can’t treat them like mere weapons.”

Without waiting for her to stop talking, Kurokumo had jumped on the first row of desks and, despite his large paws, managed to wander through the students’ things without disturbing a single object. He obviously liked being, for once, the centre of attention. Amongst the summons, he was always a bit occulted by Hoshihi’s commanding presence and Haīro’s easy-going demeanour. Hitomi had chosen well in summoning him.

They finished their mission without any problem. Hitomi secretly admitted her relief when she guided her team back to the Tower to get their payment. It wasn’t a lot as far as C-ranked missions went, since neither fights nor excursions outside the village occured. Still, it was a comfortable income.

The day was still far from over, so the three children and their sensei naturally went to their training ground. Ensui was waiting for them, sitting in the shadow of a large tree. His hands, perfectly still, were forming the Rat Hand Seal, and his eyes were closed, his whole face frozen in an expression of quiet focus. Around him, the shadow was quietly rippling, slowly leaving the ground to take the shape of a deer. Still under the Jōnin’s rigorous control, the animal took a few steps around the tree before melting back in two dimensions against the ground. Ensui opened his eyes, the hint of a smile on his lips.

“New technique, shishou?” Hitomi greeted as she sat just next to him.

“Yeah. I’m trying to create a technique that could be used with rather small reserves but a very good chakra control.”

“For Shikamaru?”

“His birthday is in two months and I think Shikaku will have my head on a spike if I gift another shōgi board to his boy.”

After a few minutes of chatting, Hitomi walked back to her teammates and training could start. Ensui and Kakashi had decided it was time for the team to create strategies adapted to their strengths and weaknesses. Since Hitomi’s summons were an asset in the same way as the kids’ techniques or kenjutsu, the ninja cats were always part of these particular sessions. Their summoner had also decided to work them through different ways of communicating non-verbally.

Hoshihi was in the middle of a sudden growing spurt and, if it didn’t stop soon, Hitomi would be able to ride him like she had seen several Inuzuka shinobi with their ninja dogs. It would be an interesting asset for their teamwork, a possibility to anticipate just like any other that would present themselves to the Genin as they evolved, with each new progress and spark of maturity they would acquire.

When the sun started to dive behind the horizon, Kakashi granted them a well-deserved rest. All three Genin were exhausted and dirty, but the beaming smiles on their faces betrayed the solace they found in training with their sensei. Hitomi’s expression softened with a touch of tenderness when she noticed Hinata waiting for her next to the entrance of the training ground. Without hesitation, the Yūhi heiress went to her girlfriend, hugged her and dropped a soft kiss on her lips, her fingers brushing through the long violet strands of her hair.

“Would you like to go out tonight?” she asked on impulse. “Dinner, on me.” After all, who had decided that she had to spend all the money she was getting from missions on gear and fūinjutsu supplies? She had been dying to take Hinata out to a nice restaurant for two weeks. She wanted a real date, in the civilian part of the village where they would most likely not be spotted by the Hyūga clan. Hinata deserved the efforts. She deserved everything Hitomi could give her. Was it love? She wasn’t sure, and that told her a lot.

Later that night, wearing a black summer dress decorated with pale pink orchids, Hitomi went to pick Hinata up at the entrance of the Hyūga lands, under the pretence of only going to meet their other friends to watch a movie. When they were deep enough in the civilian part of the village, she took her girlfriend’s hand and led her to an Akimichi restaurant. She had gotten a reservation through Shikaku, even though people had to wait for weeks to get to eat there.

They ended up in a park close to the Akimichi land after dinner. The sky was marvellously clear, and Hinata seemed fascinated by the stars. Sitting on a bench, the two teenagers were huddled together, Hitomi’s head on her girlfriend’s shoulder. She breathed in her discreet perfume and shivered as the Hyūga girl’s fingertips danced on the sensitive skin of her neck. She wished she could stop time and make this moment last forever.

After around an hour, spent kissing, cuddling, whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears, the two girls left their little bubble behind so they could go home. As she was standing up from the bench, Hitomi tensed and froze, but, when she looked in the direction that had attracted her attention and extended her meridians towards that point, she couldn’t see or feel anything. She was probably just on edge because she knew they were doing something Hinata’s father wouldn’t approve of. She stayed, for a few seconds, attentive and immobile. When nothing happened, she took her girlfriend’ hand and led her out of the park.

They took their time on the way home, but soon enough they were too close to the Hyūga lands to act as close as they wanted. Hitomi walked Hinata to the entrance, where a guard stood watch. She said goodbye to her girlfriend, very conscious of the scornful look the Chūnin on duty was giving her. Despite this lacklustre conclusion, the mere memory of the evening put her in a state of deep satisfaction. Once she was home, she fell asleep with a smile on her lips, the ghost of Hinata’s perfume leading her to the realm of dreams.

“Hitomi, get down!”

Her mother’s call made the teenage girl snap out of sleep. More by reflex than anything, she jumped out of her bed, ran down the corridor and the stairs under Naruto and Sasuke’s dumbfounded stares. Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw Hinata in Kurenai’s arms but worry quickly surged over the puzzlement: her girlfriend was crying, her frail shoulders shaking with sobs she was trying to muffle without much success.

“What- What’s happening? Hinata?”

“M-my father…”

Without even asking for permission, Hitomi took Hinata from her mother’s arms so she could hold her instead, cradling her against her torso. “Explain,” she encouraged softly.

“He… A member of the Bunke saw us last night… He told Father and he p-promised that if we didn’t stop seeing each other immediately, he w-would seal my Byakugan.”

A freezing anger invaded Hitomi’s chest. Killing intent slowly bloomed on her skin, thickening the air, but it wasn’t all that was happening within her body. Under her skin, an ominous tension was building up, so intense she had to push it down to be able to think clearly. Bitter tears came to her eyes and she took her decision then, in a heartbeat. She offered herself the luxury of an embrace, breathing in Hinata’s scent, her hands brushing against her neck, her shoulders, her back. Her eyes met Kurenai’s. Mother and daughter had probably reached the same conclusion. “You’re not ready to defy him, Hinata, are you?” she asked in a soft, sad tone.

“B-but I… I…”

“I know, Hinata. But I can’t… I can’t put you at such a risk or put myself between you and your family. I can’t force you to choose.”

They were both crying, lilac eyes lost in a sea of dark red. Hitomi ached and a thousand times damned Hiashi for what he was forcing her to do. He had won, of course. The threat he had used could only make her react one way, and he knew it.

“I don’t want…”

“Me neither, Hinata. But we don’t have a choice, you know it as well as I do. Perhaps… Perhaps in a few years, when we’re stronger, we could… But trying to plan it out in advance is not worth it. It’s over. He has won.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Hitomi…”

“It’s not your fault. You’re a victim of all his schemes, not guilty of planning them with him. And, well, it won’t stop us from being friends, right? I’ll always be there for you, you know it.”

With those words, Hitomi’s heart closed itself to the feelings that had started blooming and growing inside up until that point. Only the anger stayed, cold, patient, unyielding. One day, Hiashi would suffer the consequences of his actions. She was just a Genin, insignificant, dispensable, but one day… Yes, one day she would make him pay for the pain he inflicted upon his own daughter.

Chapter 39: A Shinobi's Truth

That afternoon, as if he had been told about the whole affair – maybe by Naruto and Sasuke, or even Kurenai herself – Kakashi arrived alone on the training ground. Like a lot of people around Hitomi, he had witnessed a few sweet moments between the two girls but, unlike a lot of other adults, he was versed enough in clan politics to know this relationship was doomed before it even started. Hitomi and Hinata wouldn’t have been able to hide their relationship much longer and, as a member of the Sōke, Hinata had the duty to produce children. Hiashi was cruel, but maybe he would have been softer on the girls if the Hyūga Council hadn’t been watching him like a hawk.

“Hitomi-chan, come here. I have a technique to teach you, I think you’ll really like it.”

Her sensei’s voice helped the teenage girl shake off her furious torpor. Her feet in the river, she had gone through all the Water Release techniques she knew again and again, imagining more than once what she would do to Hiashi once she caught him alone. As if she stood a chance… The village’s archives had told her he was a Jōnin, and had been one for years. He was probably in Kakashi’s league in terms of power, or maybe a bit lower.

Slowly, begrudgingly, she left her attack stance and left the river, one step after the other. She was still shaking with rage, chakra and whispers of vengeance seething silently under her skin as she tried to clear her mind. The air around her was almost unbreathable, her killing intent so tight and thick it was driving all the animals away, but Kakashi didn’t seem affected one bit. It wasn’t surprising: no matter how good that skill of hers was, Hitomi was just a Genin. She lacked the years of cruel experience, of terror and powerlessness beyond words, to be able to form an intent potent enough to affect a veteran such as him.

“Come on, I swear it’s gonna be interesting,” Kakashi cajoled in a tone that was almost too soft compared to what she was used to from him.

One breath after the other, Hitomi managed to push back the storm that was building up inside her, and finally her eyes were lucid enough for the Copy Nin to pull his hand away from the pocket of his jacket where he stored his ninja wire. He didn’t like the idea of forcing one of his cute little students to listen to him by tying her up to the nearest pole or tree, but he had received that treatment from Minato enough times after his father’s and then teammates’ deaths to know how efficient it was.

When she stood in front of him, Kakashi gestured for her to sit on the ground and handed her a towel he had just pulled from a seal so she could dry her naked feet and put her shoes back on. She didn’t need to take them off, usually, to train with Water Release techniques. That she had needed to today only showed how angry she had been, how upset she had felt. He was worried they were only in the eye of the storm, but what could he offer her besides knowledge to distract her, to make her feel better?

“Alright,” he said when she was done, “the technique I want to teach you today is a bit peculiar, you could say. In some parts of the world, people clench and tense in fright just by hearing its name. That means you’ll have to be careful when you use it, be sure to master it before calling upon it in battle. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded, docile and focused. Her sensei’s deep voice had managed to wake inside her a spark of interest that was smothering, as well as it could, the rush of anger drilling holes in her mind. Oh, it was still there, pernicious, well-hidden under the surface of her drive to learn, in the shadow of eyes clear and sharp once more, only waiting for a new occasion to hit – and to do it cruelly, again and again.

“This technique is called the Water Whip. Have you heard of it?” When she shook her head, the sensei continued. “It’s part of a trio of techniques that force water to take the shape of a weapon you can use in close combat. You will learn all three of them, but that one comes first for you, since it’s better suited to your fighting style. Watch, those are the hand seals you’ll have to use. Your chakra will have to go through your Gate of Limit, then turn to water affinity and take the shape of a whip. Wanna try?”

Relieved to find a diversion to her unprecedented anger, Hitomi dived deep into the exercise. After an hour, she only managed to form the vague shape of a whip that fell with a splash to her feet after a mere second, and her hands were aching with the repeated rush of chakra in her meridians. Kakashi had already suggested a break, but she had refused in a dry, stubborn tone. She wanted to master this fucking technique.

And then her will won the battle. She was breathless, her spasming fingers wrapped around the handle of a whip, its point dancing at her feet. She gestured to hit the Earth Clone Kakashi had created for her, and the weapon responded instantly – but hit the air far above the clone’s head. She frowned, thought about what she could possibly have done wrong and tried again. This time, she was closer. Once more and she hit her target, the clone dissipating in a pile of dirt and mud.

“Congratulations! Well, it’s enough for today. I wouldn’t be happy if you managed to injure yourself the day before our big mission…”

“A mission? What mission?”

“A C-ranked mission in the Land of Waves. Ensui-san didn’t take you there, right?”

“No… No, we didn’t go there.” Hitomi’s voice had turned thoughtful, her impassive features hiding her sudden, sharp interest perfectly. She had had doubts about this whole arc of the story when another C-ranked mission had first been assigned to her team – but apparently the Land of Waves still needed help. Fortunately, she had prepared for this years ago. Her plans were ready, as were their variations in case of problems.

“Since you worked so well today, let me take you to the tea house. I’ll use that time to brief you on the mission so you can repeat the information to your brothers.”

In the end, she indeed had to pay, Kakashi having shunshined away just before the bill came, but at least he had stuck to his word and given her all the necessary intel concerning the Land of Waves and the goal of their mission. It followed what she had read in the canon a lifetime ago. She was still disturbed by an unanswered question: how had Hiruzen been fooled to that point on the mission’s parameters? None of the hypotheses she had made were really reassuring.

The first one, the obvious one, was that he didn’t know anything about the real situation in the Land of Waves. In that case, either Danzō had to hold a considerable power on the intel that reached the Hokage’s desk, or the old man had stopped listening to his spies – stopped listening to Jiraiya. Her second hypothesis supposed that Hiruzen knew what was really happening in the Land of Waves and had still chosen to send Team Seven there. And, in that case, he had to have a goal by picking them for that dangerous mission. Could he want Naruto to open himself to the Kyūbi’s power?

None of those ideas were comforting to Hitomi, but she didn’t have any choice. She had to put this question aside for the moment. It wasn’t time yet to go after the Third, and even less so to go after the Councilman hidden in his shadow. She still had a whole universe of progress to make before she had even the slightest chance of overcoming either of them. But she wouldn’t forget. She couldn’t forget any harm they had and would cause to her loved ones. She didn’t care about their reasons; she would make them pay one day. The monstrous genocide they had organised was only their largest offense. They had  a lot more blood on their hands, and she would make them pay for every drop of it.

When she came home, the sun was setting behind the horizon, and the mood in the living room was quite subdued. Naruto and Sasuke were whispering in a corner while Kurenai was sharpening a stack of kunai. Hinata had left soon after the breakup; Hitomi had walked her to Kiba’s house on the Inuzuka lands before going to the training ground. She was sure Tsume and Hana would be a great help to her ex-girlfriend. Thinking about her in those terms hurt.

Hitomi didn’t even think she had been in love with Hinata. She had felt for her a tenderness far greater than what she felt for any of her friends, that at least she was certain of. It was the reason why she was so angry: this relationship hadn’t even had the time to bloom that it was already a thing of the past, buried under political games far above them. It was unfair, and they were powerless against it.

“Boys, we have a big mission starting tomorrow and Kakashi-sensei told me to brief you and help you prepare.” She knew she had interrupted their talk, but she lacked patience and delicateness today. Everything that could have softened her seemed far below the surface of her mind, unable to reach her conscious actions and thoughts. She knew it was distress speaking, that she still had in her the ability to be sweet, kind, attentive, but she just wanted to drown in the fire of her anger. In a voice that was probably stiff and distant, she started listing the parameters of the mission, her perfect memory taking over where her dull fury made her want to scream wordlessly.

She spent the evening helping Naruto and Sasuke prepare for the trip. She crafted them several storage seals, replacing the ones they had overused. The repetitive dance of paintbrush against parchment and the smell of ink helped her reach a state of fragile peace, probably too precarious to fool anyone. Of course, the boys knew what had happened with Hinata, the reasons for her dark mood, and reacted in more or less subtle ways: Naruto was sitting so close to her he kept brushing against her, and Sasuke’s eyes didn’t leave her for a moment.

That night, she had a nightmare about the Land of Waves, dreaming of a little motor boat attacked in the middle of an estuary, then jumped awake – just to find Kakashi crouching on the frame of her open window. She reacted without thinking, throwing the kunai she kept under her pillow to him. He simply made himself smaller, the weapon whistling just next to his ear. Usually, he would have smiled at this attempt at self-defence. The fact that he didn’t made a chill of unease run down Hitomi’s spine.

“Dress up, Hitomi-chan. The Hokage ordered that I take you with me for a quick mission before leaving tomorrow.”

As she obeyed his instructions and dressed in a whisper of fabric against skin, Hitomi glanced at her alarm clock, on the bedside table. One in the morning… A mission that took less than nine hours to be accomplished didn’t bode well, especially when it involved an elite Konohajin Jōnin fetching one of his students from her bed.

“It’s an assassination mission. Around midnight, a member of the Encryption and Decoding department turned rogue. We have to find him before he reaches the border. Your role will be to follow my every move – you are not allowed to intervene in any way or to make your presence known. Understood?”

She nodded, struggling to keep an impassive face as a wave of ice took over her heart. Why her? She was only a Genin, why… The realisation made her want to vomit. Hiruzen could have two objectives by sending her so young on such a mission. Either he wanted to divert her from a shinobi career, or he wanted to prepare her to accomplish such missions once she would be promoted to Jōnin. Even though neither of those hypotheses sounded pleasing, she still hoped for the second one and found it more probable as well. After all, the skills she was developing were fitting for the Assassination Brigade.

“Let’s get going,” Kakashi ordered softly.

Without a word, Hitomi followed as her teacher took off, her frail shadow perfectly melting into the darkness of the night. The new moon had risen two days ago, so the only light came from the distant stare of the stars, and a silver crescent so thin it was barely visible. A bit of focus, a mild rush of chakra, and Hitomi’s eyes adjusted to night vision. She learnt that trick in sixth year, during one of the last survival exercises Iruka had assigned to her class. She couldn’t have imagined using it in such a situation, not so soon.

After running for an hour, the teenage girls started to have a hard time following. In normal conditions, she would have kept going far longer, but she had spent hours training earlier in the day, and Kakashi pushed her to a far more demanding pace than what she was used to. A pale fire lit up in her flanks, spreading in dull beats each time she breathed in. She refused to give in or slow down – it would be too much of a failure for her liking, really too much. Since she didn’t have a satisfying way out, she just ignored that alert signal, focusing on the tenuous and regular sound of her feet against the tree branches. That way she could ignore the pain.

Kakashi attracted her attention after thirty more minutes. In sign language, he ordered her to hide in a bush and observe. He himself stopped at the border of a clearing, his chakra barely muffled. Did he want to give a fighting chance to the target? Hitomi didn’t know, but she obeyed his commands to a T, hiding her chakra to the best of her capabilities as her body faded into the shadow of the bush that would give her the best view of the clearing.

And of this view she didn’t miss a thing. The man, the deserter, had brown hair and a small frame, the lower half of his face flecked with scars that looked like shrapnel or sparks. He looked out of breath, frightened, his widening eyes searching for an escape route. He wouldn’t find one. He wore a Chūnin vest – and didn’t stand a chance against the Copy Nin anyway. Kakashi stepped in the clearing, stoic and vaguely threatening. Killing intent slowly formed on his skin, a sun to Hitomi’s candle flame. If this intent had been targeted towards her, the Yūhi girl wouldn’t even have been able to breathe.

Kakashi stood as a rampart in front of his target, indisputably strong, gifted with a crushing presence, thin and streamlined as the hound that had once given him his code name in the ANBU. He got a kunai from his back pouch then took a fighting stance under Hitomi’s stare and attacked. In other circumstances, maybe he would have offered the man a chance to surrender, but people from the Encryption and Decoding department weren’t given such opportunities. They were supposed to be tailed by ANBU if they took even a step outside the village; their mere existence was at the same time essential and a terrifying threat for a Hidden Village. In their memory laid secrets of the village and the key to access much more. A traitor from that department… Death was the only possible way out of service for him.

Hitomi realised she was hyperventilating when Kakashi formed the hand seals for the Chidori technique and the blue pale light appeared in the clearing, followed by the thousands of bird’s chirping that gave it its other name. Curled up in a ball under the damp leaves of her bush, Hitomi tried to calm down but had to bite her fist hard enough to draw blood to muffle the little panicked whimpers that were escaping her throat. Never, during the past few weeks, had she considered Kakashi as what he really was: a merciless killer, so good in that field it was almost laughable. Never had she thought about the blood staining his hands or the blood that would one day stain hers, not with such acuity, not having under her very eyes the proof that it was indeed what she had been taught to do.

All the panic and terror rushing through her veins did nothing to change the outcome of the fight, the way the hand surrounded by lightning dove into the deserter’s torso and existed through his back, shattering his shoulder blade. At least the man died instantly – a meagre comfort for Hitomi, who left, despite her sickly shivers, the bush where she had been hiding to enter the clearing. She only took two trembling steps over the treeline before falling to her knees, her breathing still shallow and painful, blood slowly dripping from the bites she had inflicted on her fingers in the hope of forcing herself to silence.

Kakashi didn’t turn to her right away. First, he unrolled a storage scroll specially conceived to hold corpses and activated it after putting the paper over the dead shinobi’s body. He only left a stain of blood on the ground where a bleeding corpse had been a moment before; at any other time, this would have fascinated Hitomi, she would have begged to examine the scroll. Then, Kakashi took a cloth in one of his pockets and used it to wipe out the blood on his hands, face and torso, his cautious and meticulous gestures erasing the liquid as well as they possibly could.

Only then did he turn to her, look at her, his hands about as clean as they could and his eyes acute and full of sorrow. She couldn’t help but stiffen, even though she knew he wouldn’t ever raise a hand against her. She wasn’t a deserter, didn’t intent on ever turning rogue – except maybe if she couldn’t stop Danzō from taking power. It was irrational, she knew it was; knowing so didn’t help her manage the unstoppable fear running deep inside her.

Hitomi needed a few moments to register her sensei’s arms around her, his embrace, his large, powerful hand turned soft and comforting against her back, his deep, soothing voice whispering senseless promises of safety in her ear. Several minutes later, she realised he was apologising, explaining that he had had to follow orders, that he had tried to make Hiruzen understand she wasn’t ready but the war chief hadn’t listened to him. He was sorry that he had made her see that, sorry to know that, one day not long from now, it would be her turn to do it.

When Hitomi calmed down, the man relaxed his embrace but didn’t let go of her. His two hands, warm and sturdy, enveloped the one she had wounded by trying to stay quiet. She perceived the caress of his chakra against her skin and, when she saw her fingers again, they were intact, the small bite marks erased like bad memories. This gesture, maybe, comforted her more efficiently than the hug had, for a reason she couldn’t quite grasp.

He took her by the shoulder and led her out of the clearing, then lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing – and it was probably not so far from truth for him – before walking back towards Konoha. He was so much faster now that he didn’t have to worry about her being able to follow. Despite that, his every movements were fluid, precise, free. It was the gait of a man who had been everywhere in the world without his legs ever going weak. Almost without noticing, Hitomi closed her eyes.

She dozed off during the journey back, her anxiety muffled now that adrenalin had stopped enhancing it. She would have probably fallen asleep properly if the memory of the very moment her teacher had killed that nukenin hadn’t played on repeat in her mind. Kakashi seemed to understand: each time she tensed, his arms went tighter around her, and a deep, soft sound rose from his throat, soothing her again.

When he put his student in bed, Kakashi decided he couldn’t leave her alone. He had been in her place once, and loneliness had been the hardest part of it after seeing his first corpse. The fact it had been his own father had only made things worse, but Kakashi didn’t think about those very painful memories if he could avoid it. Still, he knew how that kind of silence and isolation hurt, and the way a psychological wound could become infected, how it gangrened the mind day after day, year after year.

He wasn’t the person Hitomi could talk to about her trauma and the many more to come – the ones a ninja could only escape by dying prematurely. He had learned all too well to accept his own wounds, something he didn’t want for any of his students. That night, in the privacy of his mind, the Copy Nin lost a bit of the respect he had always held for Hokage the Third, linked to him by a chain of masters and students, once so great and now so far sunk in his mistakes. “I’m gonna leave you with Pakkun tonight, alright?” he whispered in as soothing a tone as he could manage. “He’ll wake you up and take you to the Gates in a few hours. See you tomorrow, Hitomi-chan.”

He didn’t wish her a good night or pleasant dreams, because he knew she would probably stare at her ceiling for a good part of the several hours of rest she still had before going back on a mission. Hiruzen was crazy to have ordered him to take the girl with him so close before her first real, long mission, the first outside the village – as if he had forgotten the damages this first encounter with death caused to a young mind, or the time it needed to heal afterwards.

When the Copy Nin left her room, Hitomi opened her eyes on the silence that was slowly settling back around her. She couldn’t close her eyelids anymore, despite Pakkun’s warm and comforting weight against her side. Right at that moment, she felt like she couldn’t do anything, anything at all.

Chapter 40: To The Land Of Waves

Notes:

I'm so sorry this chapter is a day late. My desktop computer broke and I'm very unsettled by the fact that I can't use it right now. I hope you envoy this chapter!

In the morning, since she was unable to sleep anyway, Hitomi left her bed a few minutes before dawn and took the scrollpack she had prepared for the mission, her movements rushed and numbed by the exhaustion that was seriously starting to weigh her down. The first hours of the morning were always the hardest after an almost sleepless night: she would feel better in the afternoon, physically at least. Her mind was a whole other story, one she had decided to ignore for as long as possible.

She left the house before anyone was up and was very careful to avoid the tea room where Ensui went to properly wake up every morning. At such an early hour, the only people awake and around were shinobi going home after their latest missions and the ones that were leaving for their next one. Her back stiff, she stood next to the Gates after nodding in greeting to Izumo and Kotetsu. Pakkun had left her halfway to meet with Kakashi and probably report to him. This idea slightly unsettled Hitomi. She hadn’t exactly broken down hysterically but being unable to sleep after seeing her first murder was probably something a sensei would want to monitor.

Naruto and Sasuke arrived almost an hour later and seemed to realise immediately that something wasn’t right with their adopted sister – maybe from the way she was standing, the tension in her shoulder line poorly hiding her discomfort. Naruto walked to her and shifted so their forearms would brush against each other; Sasuke stood to her other side but didn’t touch her. After a few minutes, he gestured to get her attention and put a fresh little apple in her hand. She raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. “No dishes in the sink this morning, nor any smell of soap, which meant you didn’t eat this morning. Eat now.”

The command was said in such an impassive voice she obeyed without thinking about it, the first mouthful bursting with tart juice on her tongue. She drank a sip from her gourd and continued eating slowly under Sasuke’s vigilant stare; when she was done, she threw the apple core on the ground, as all Konohajin did in hope that a tree would grow there. The Land of Fire didn’t lack trees, quite the opposite, but all the shinobi who had been raised there agreed on at least one thing: you never had enough trees in front of you.

Kakashi arrived not so long after that, the client in tow – that the two men shared a lack of punctuality didn’t surprise Hitomi, and nor did the scruffy, already sozzled look of the bridge builder. His clothes betrayed a wealth long past, and his hand was wrapped around a bottle of alcohol like his life depended on it. It had probably helped him lie when he had requested the mission. Only liquid bravery could make someone stupid enough to lie to a high-ranking shinobi.

“Are you fucking kidding me? This is the team Konoha gives me for that super important mission? They look like brats, especially the runt in the middle!”

Hitomi was already opening her mouth to defend Naruto, since he had been the one insulted in the canon, but then she realised she was the runt in the middle, with her adoptive brothers flanking her. Any other day, she would have probably laughed it off, but exhaustion had always aggravated her temper. She stepped towards the man, killing intent already blooming on her skin, but Kakashi’s strong hand on her shoulder stopped her. His thumb was pressing slowly against a knot of nerves, threat or promise of pain if she attacked Tazuna. “Come on now, Hitomi-chan, you can’t attack the client who hired us to protect him, alright?”

“Yeah, that’s right!” the bridge builder boasted. “You’re all gonna take me to the Land of Waves, and you better do a good job! I’m very important an’ all.”

Hitomi resisted the impulse to roll her eyes, allowing her body to relax slowly under her sensei’s hand to make him understand she had regained control over her anger, that she wasn’t gonna turn berserk and make a pair of shoes and a pile of minced meat out of their client. After a few seconds, he patted her shoulder and let her go. That simple gesture of affection made her understand he knew what was making her react so badly. She knew he had been in her shoes once, another sensei patting his shoulder in a silent promise everything would be okay. Had he known, too, that it was a lie?

A few minutes later, the four shinobi and their client left the village. Their first day on the road was eventless, which threw Hitomi off-balance. Since the canon had never been very clear on temporality, she should have assumed such things would happen, but she was really disconcerted, as always, when time tricked her into thinking something would happen earlier or later than it really did. She had spent the whole day looking for the first sign of the ambush waiting for them somewhere, terrified by the idea, unable to control the tension affecting her every reaction – in vain. The Demon Brothers were just so lazy .

She put herself forward for first watch but Kakashi wasn’t having it, and both Sasuke and Naruto supported him on that decision. Irrational anger invaded Hitomi’s mind for a moment. She pushed it down severely, refusing to act childishly during her first mission outside the village. This was also an important step in her career. And if that reason wasn’t enough of a muzzle, she knew, deep inside, that she was being unreasonable: she had to sleep if she wanted to be strong enough for the ordeals to come.

She dreamed of blood and tears, of the taste of iron and salt on her lips, of an endless sea and a mountain in the mist. Sasuke was the one to wake her up, a hand against her mouth to muffle the yelp that always escaped her when she woke up from a nightmare. He had learned those uncontrollable habits that clung to her skin, he who had spent so many nights in her bed, he who expected similar demons to meet him in his sleep.

Despite the nightmare, most of the exhaustion that had wrapped around her bones like a second skin was but a memory. She left the bundle of blankets she had used as a bed, shivering in the cold air, and sat on the tree stump her brother had chosen to stand watch. The ghost of his body heat lingered there, as well as a hint of chakra, discreet and appeasing. She sighed, a puff of white mist escaping her parted lips. When she had been on the road with Ensui, an eternity ago, in the icy nights that the Desert threw at them, she had loved trying to decipher shapes in their breaths. That time seemed so completely over, and she didn’t miss anything more than the feeling of being minuscule and safe, wrapped in the benevolent and feral shadow of her master.

Silently so as not to wake up her companions, Hitomi unsheathed Ishi to Senrigan. The tantō was still so magnificent it was almost painful to look at, still deadly sharp, still very slightly infused with Shisui’s chakra, although it had started to fade. She had never really used it, had never brandished it with the intent to kill her opponent. In a few hours, or maybe a few days, she would have too, and the mere idea tied her stomach in knots.

Nothing could protect her from that unavoidable development, nothing in her power anyway. All she could do was make sure she was ready. Her fingers snatched the whetstone without her even thinking about it and started sharpening the blade. The rhythmical, long strokes soothed her, as did the soft fiction noise each time stone kissed chakra-infused steel. She couldn’t help but touch that sword like lovers touched each other, with care and tenderness – and love, too.

Could she, just like this blade, grow sharper in Kakashi’s care? He was so different from Ensui, so loyal to the village and its power that it almost blinded him. If she went to him with her secrets, he would probably repeat them right away to Hiruzen, so sure of doing what was best for her, unknowingly sealing the fate of a child he had sworn to protect. After all, like everyone, he thought ROOT had been disbanded. If even the Hokage didn’t know that it had reformed, how was he, loyal and keen to please the man he admired so much, to know the village’s darkest and best concealed secret?

Hitomi, however, was unaware that Kakashi’s faith in Hiruzen had irrevocably wavered. He had been torn by the attribution of his Genin team, since he hadn’t been ready for such a charge, but he had accepted it because it had been his duty, because there were only a handful of shinobi in Konoha good enough to teach and the others already had their own team to care for. He had accepted, because Hiruzen had always taken good decisions – hadn’t he? It was one of the things that made him a great leader, one of the reasons the clans still trusted him and followed him despite the disasters and conflicts that had hit the village under his rule.

Some of those disasters and conflicts hadn’t been his fault. Others had been.

Other decisions had continued gnawing at the absolute trust he had offered to the man. More of such decisions had only been avoided by Kurenai’s lucidity. Minato’s son, alone in a flat, without any supervision, at barely twelve years old? It would have been a folly, even the Hound could see that. As for Sasuke… Kakashi had heard, in a bar Jōnin liked to patron, that the Councilmen had pressured the Hokage to refuse her wardship request. A little boy, not even out of the Academy, would have been forced to live alone where his family had been massacred, if his sister in arms hadn’t received support from the Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka in her request. Just thinking about how things would have turned out in that eventuality made Kakashi shiver in horror. The boy was already messed up as it was; his sensei had gotten closer to him and knew which path he would have followed then. Even with a loving adopted family, he wasn’t quite saved yet. They all had a long road ahead before reaching that destination.

As for Hitomi… Hitomi was such a thorny problem. She was the unknown variable in Team Seven, the only one of the three children who didn’t remind him of the team he had once been a part of. Most of all, she was unpredictable, he had realised it many times at his own expense. Sometimes, she behaved in accordance with her age, laughing carelessly with her adopted brothers, and sometimes… Sometimes, redoubtable intelligence gleamed in her eyes, a feral power that wouldn’t concede victory to anyone or anything. Kakashi was afraid when he witnessed that look in her eyes. It reminded him of the boy he had been once – so self-assured, so certain to be right in whatever he did.

The mission he had taken her along for had landed a heavy hit against Hitomi’s assurance, Kakashi saw it. He had expected it to – she was so sweet deep inside, so little prepared, a child. Akin to a stormy sea, a quiet, cold fury had ragged inside him when he had seen her so broken and terrified afterwards. That feeling had washed away more of the respect he had once blindly offered to the Third. Kakashi’s duty went to his entire village and its wellbeing; the village needed a strong, healthy generation to protect it. Kakashi only had distaste for the rotting roots hiding far below the surface.

He was the first to wake up that morning and stared for a while at the young kunoichi. The unsheathed tantō, a true work of art in the Copy Nin’s opinion, was carefully laying on her legs, the recently sharpened steel throwing cold reflections where the light was shining upon it. He couldn’t see the girl’s face, only long, wavy strands of her dark hair dancing in the wind, and the dew shining around her.

She turned her head towards him when he stood up and greeted him with a slight nod, silent as to respect their teammates’ sleep. Her eyes had changed, a subtle evolution he couldn’t miss. If she didn’t overcome the numbness that had come after the shock, she would grow cold, distant, would slowly lose her taste for the relationships so dear to her heart, for any type of feelings. Kakashi was ready to resort to extremes he didn’t quite comprehend yet to stop that from happening to her. Konoha didn’t need one more killing machine. “At ease, Hitomi-chan. No one will attack us here, now that the sun is up. Come and help me make breakfast.”

Docilely, she sheathed her weapon and left her seat. In her gait, the ninja she would one day become was already apparent. She still lacked the perfect silence, redoubtable flexibility and quiet assurance that inhabited her shishou’s steps, but, one day, it was unavoidable, he would ensure she inherited each of those characteristics, and Kakashi could see it better than anyone, he who had had one of the best teachers the village had ever known as a master. “Say, Hitomi-chan, how do you feel being out of the village again?” he asked as she approached him.

“I had missed it,” she said with the slightest hint of hesitation. “I love Konoha, but the world is full of things you can’t find in our village.”

“You loved the Desert too, right?”

“The sand was annoying, slipping everywhere and all. But the smell of dunes and sun… The best friend I had there smelled like that back then. I wonder if it’s still the case.”

The girl’s hand briefly brushed against the bump in one of her pockets, where she kept her communicating notebook. Since she was out of the village again, she wrote to Shikamaru as well as Gaara, and had given notebooks to her mother and Ensui so she could talk to them too. During the hour of free time Kakashi had granted his Genin the previous night, she had written to each of them to tell them about the beginning of her mission and what she had seen in the Forest of Fire. With the civilian pace they were forced to take for Tazuna’s sake, she had plenty of time to look around.

When Naruto and Sasuke woke up, she had had time to prepare eggs, to cut thick slices of bread and to garnish them with leftovers from the previous day’s meat, quickly reheated in what was left of the fire. Managing a camp was very different with four shinobi than it was with only three, and having a civilian charge disturbed their habits as well. She had had trouble adjusting but felt better that morning, without exhaustion to numb her senses and thought process.

They broke camp an hour after the sun had risen. Two hours later, Hitomi finally saw that sign of an ambush she was expecting and fearing at the same time. Her eyes spotted the puddle, ten centimetres in width, that was laying in the middle of the way, and she had to suppress a sigh: this was just so fucking stupid . There had been no rain whatsoever in days in the area. Since they had left Konoha, they hadn’t seen anything akin to traces of a past shower, and yet here that puddle was, so limpid it looked like it had formed barely a few minutes earlier.

She tapped her thigh in a seemingly erratic rhythm, using the Konohajin morse. She had learned that at the same time as the sign language, at the Academy, and had made sure her friends and cats could use it as well. The noise was weak, but she knew that Kakashi, with his hearing akin to a dog’s, heard it. “ Suspect element , she said. Probable ambush. Orders? ”

The answer came quickly. “ Stand down. Ascertain target. ”

Therefore, she pretended she was shocked, terrified even, when the two ninjas sprung out of the puddle in the middle of their group and sliced Kakashi in three pieces. She didn’t have to look too deep inside herself to find those emotions: her heart was throbbing in her throat in anguish. She just gave them time to move clearly towards Tazuna then unsheathed her tantō and sliced her thumb open before slamming her hand against the ground. “Ninpō: The Iron Claws Brigade!”

Her three cats built for fighting appeared in a puff of smoke. Hoshihi stood in the middle, the tallest and most ferocious of their group, and immediately threw himself on the closest of the Demon Brothers, the one who was attacking Naruto. The two other cats followed, black and grey fur turning to a blur and a storm of feral hisses. At the same time, Hitomi stepped in front of the other assailant, Sasuke with her. She exchanged a glance with her brother and, without a word, they decided what to do.

With a brutal shove of her sword, Hitomi bought Sasuke the distraction he needed to stick that terrible shuriken chain the brothers were renowned for to a tree with a kunai. It didn’t stop the duo for more than a second, just enough time to shed the now useless weapon. Despite that, they were still heavily armed, and the one Hitomi and Sasuke were fighting against seemed extremely offended to have been forced to abandon his favourite toy against mere Genin. He rushed towards Sasuke, steel claws extended, approaching his exposed throat.

“Water Style: Water Whip!” Hitomi didn’t lose a second and made the weapon snap in the air, wrapping it around the enemy ninja’s throat so she could pull downwards with all her strength to make him lose his balance. On Naruto’s side, Haīro yowled in pain, dark red splattering his grey pelt. Fury exploded in her summoner, anger and failure mixing inside her to create an unstable and dangerous gush.

Hoshihi didn’t give her time to be distracted or upset: every bit as furious as she was, he hit the nukenin so hard at the base of his spinal cord that he made the man scream with all he had. The first of the brothers fell on the ground, the cat immediately jumping to his throat mercilessly to end his life with a miserable, wet gurgling sound.

The last brother hissed in anger and doubled his efforts against the two children facing him. Hitomi’s attack had barely annoyed him and he was slowly getting the advantage on them, one hit after the other. Suddenly, he managed to make her trip and to push Sasuke away. He raised his steel claws, the gleam of a cruel smile in his eyes, and…

And a kunai went through his hand like butter, stopping him from killing the girl who had his brother’s blood on her hands. His eyes widened with sudden terror and with the pain rushing through his arm, he realised, far too late, that he had never had the slightest chance of killing Hatake Kakashi. Neither he nor his brother had been strong enough for such an opponent, and yet they had thought… The last of the Demon Brothers was thrown against a tree, his spinal cord breaking with a sickening snap, and he stopped thinking forever.

Deep silence fell on the road all of a sudden, its soil already drinking blood. Hitomi tried to catch her breath on the damp patch of grass where she had fallen so close to her own demise. She was slightly dizzy, her muscles sorer than they had ever been in any training. The knee the other ninja had hit to make her fall hurt and throbbed, a bruise already blooming on her skin. Tazuna, who had been protected all that time by Kurokumo and Naruto, was as pale as a corpse behind the sea of clones the jinchūriki had used to shield him, but he was alive and well.

That much couldn’t be said of the Demon Brothers. In the canon, they had survived this encounter. As she recovered, Hitomi couldn’t tear her gaze away from the body fallen under Hoshihi’s body, still bristling in anger, and more specifically from the dark red wound on his throat. For her cat, this hadn’t been more than taking out a particularly feisty prey. For her… It was the first death she was truly responsible for. The fact that this responsibility was indirect didn’t matter.

She sat up, her eyes wide and her skin sickeningly pale, her hands contracting like talons around the guard of her tantō. Something balled like a fist inside her chest and she realised, as if she was out of her own body, that her breathing had turned hoarse, shallow, painful. Her shoulders tensed weakly, a buzzing sound invaded her ears, and she stayed there trying to understand, unable to calm down or stand up.

Suddenly, Kakashi’s hands and chakra were on her. She lost her eyes in his, both of his, one black and the other red, red… A shudder ran through her whole body like a ripple through still water and her eyelids dropped down. 

Chapter 41: A Shadow In The Mist

When Hitomi came back to her senses, night had fallen on the Land of Fire. Camp had been installed not so far from the road, but the spot was different enough that she couldn’t recognise it with sight alone. Without the smell of blood and water that hit her when the wind changed, she wouldn’t even have guessed that they were still on the same road. Naruto was sitting next to her, a hand on her shoulder to feel for the first sign of her waking up – he beamed, so obviously relieved that she was opening her eyes. “Hitomi, finally! Kakashi-sensei told us everything was normal, but Sasuke and I, we were still worried! What happened to you after the fight?”

The girl answered with a careful shrug. She didn’t want to tell her brother that she didn’t know, because it would have been a lie. She was still able to recognise a panic attack when she was going through one. After sitting up, she looked around the camp. Sasuke was using his chakra to stoke the fire and work on his chakra control at the same time, Tazuna next to him staring at his sake bottle down to the last quarter with hesitation. Behind them, Kakashi was making sure his kunai were sharp. Her three cats were patrolling in the shadows of the woods surrounding the little clearing where her team had decided to settle. On her lips, Hitomi forced a smile and gestured for Naruto to help her up. “Don’t worry. Whatever it was, it’s over now, I feel better. You should go help Sasuke with this fire, and perhaps get started on a meal. It’s your turn, isn’t it?”

“Aaaah, you’re right! How do you always remember?”

She let out a half-genuine chuckle then got up and stepped away from Naruto, still weak on her feet. She grabbed a blanket tossed on the ground and draped it over her shoulders. A quick whiff told her it was Sasuke’s. He wouldn’t mind, he who was never cold. She arrived next to Kakashi-sensei, who stared at her for a few moments before going back to checking his weapons.

For a long time, they didn’t say anything, then the teacher started, in a low voice so only she could hear him. “You’re not the first to have such a reaction after a real fight. It’s only a problem if it becomes your systematic response, but I’m gonna watch you closely starting from now.”

“It’s just… The mission with you, and now this… It’s a lot.”

“I understand that, Hitomi-chan. That’s why I think it’s not a serious problem and that you can overcome it. Your mind is strong enough to take it. But, no matter if it happens again or not, I want you to see a therapist. Normally, Genin don’t need it, but you’re not just any Genin, are you?”

“I didn’t ask for it…”

“That you asked for it or not isn’t important. The village uses you as it sees fit, and in turn you use the resources laid down for you depending on your needs. It’s best for you to start therapy now, when your mind is still in quite a good shape. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience here.”

Hitomi didn’t q. When Kakashi had been her age, he had already been drowning in his own demons, between his father’s suicide and the war that hadn’t allowed him to mourn properly. When would he have had time to go to therapy? She was already extremely surprised that he was bringing it up. Where was the Kakashi with no real mentoring skills from the canon?

“I wouldn’t know what to say to a shrink,” she mumbled.

“You don’t have to speak right away. Mine started by telling me about her, to make me feel more at ease. Would you want me to make an appointment with her for you?”

For several seconds, Hitomi stared at her teacher without any visible reaction. She could only see one of his eyes now, the one so black she couldn’t make out the pupil from the iris. Still quite hesitant, she finally nodded. She had seen more than her share of therapists and psychiatrists in the Previous World, to put words on some of the things that had turned her life hard, cold, tasteless. She was happy in her new life, so she hadn’t thought she’d need that help again. Stupid and presumptuous, without a doubt.

“It’s decided then,” Kakashi said in a gentle, comforting tone. “ I hope it’s gonna help you, to have someone to talk to about those things. I discovered it was important for me, anyway…”

His thoughtful tone made Hitomi understand it was time to leave him to himself. After a slight hesitation, she went to sit next to Sasuke. He was done working on the fire but hadn’t stepped away from it. He greeted her with a nod and shifted to make room for her.

“I was worried for you.”

“I’m sorry, Sasuke. Do we know why those ninjas attacked us? This was supposed to be a C-ranked mission, but ninjas are at least…”

“B-rank, yeah. Apparently, the man who owns most of the Land of Waves’ industries wants to stop Tazuna from finishing his bridge at all cost, even if he has to kill him for that, just so he keeps the monopoly over trade. The bridge would break that monopoly. We can expect other enemy shinobi, but probably not right now.”

“And Kakashi-sensei decided to continue anyway?”

“He didn’t want to but Naruto convinced him. He said you wouldn’t want us to give up on it, and I quite agree with him. We were right, weren’t we?”

“Yeah… I wouldn’t want to give up on this mission, or on any mission, if I can help it. I just would have liked to not kill that man…”

“You didn’t, Hitomi. Hoshihi did. And, for him, it was probably just like killing a rabbit or a rat. Okay, you summoned him, but that doesn’t make you responsible for his actions, nor for your other cats’ actions. They are almost adults now, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. According to Kurokumo, they will soon be considered warriors, and will be able to take apprentices that will add to my summons if they want to.”

“That contract is really good. I’d like to get my hands on my clan’s contracts, the Rams and the Falcons, but I have no idea where they are hidden.”

“Shikaku-ojisan said the Uchiha had weapons and storage hideouts all over the Land of Fire, and even outside of it just in case they had to flee. Apparently, some of those hideouts are even older than Konoha. Maybe we can go see some of them during our next missions?”

“I’d like that, yeah. I’m not even done going through everything we got from the clan lands in the village, but I’d like to get everything I can before…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to for Hitomi to understand what he meant: he wanted to get everything before Itachi could get his hands on those objects, books, scrolls, everything that could make the nukenin even stronger. She wasn’t even sure the older Uchiha was interested in any of those things. A much more powerful adversary, armed with a Sharingan as well, haunted Hitomi’s mind. She had no way of sharing that secret with anyone – how was she even supposed to know? No, the time wasn’t quite right yet.

Naruto joined them a few moments later, handing them steaming bowls of food. If the blonde was the best at cooking, Sasuke was their hunter; even without his Sharingan, he was able to kill his prey with a kunai right to the eye, and more than once the three young Genin had skinned his kills and sold the hides to Konohajin civilians. It was only a small part of their income, but no one frowned upon ryōs honestly won. “Kakashi-sensei told us that in three days, at our current pace, we’ll reach the beach. Have you ever seen the sea?”

Sasuke shook his head, but Hitomi nodded, her head filled with memories of the time she had spent with Ensui on one peculiar pebble beach. She had been so happy, so free, so innocent back then.

“Really, Hitomi? How is the sea then?”

“You’ll know you’re getting close before you can even see it if you focus on smell. It’s blue or grey depending on the colour of the sky, and it looks infinite. When you bathe in it for a long time and then leave, it’s like the movements of the waves follow you for a few steps, so you have to be careful not to fall.”

“I really can’t wait!”

 Hitomi couldn’t suppress a small giggle, more sincere and light this time that she had been after waking up. No one could make darkness retreat from people’s minds like Naruto could. She shifted slightly, just enough to press her shoulder against his for a moment, then straightened up and started to eat the rabbit stew he had cooked. The food warmed her up from the inside just like the fire did from the outside, and she thanked Naruto with a smile.

The following morning, they got on the road again. The weather stayed merciful: summer was approaching, as shy and distant as the beautiful Does haunting the Nara forest, who only showed a flash of brown pelt in the corner of the eye before disappearing out of sight. Day after day, Hitomi looked better, even if she spent long hours in deep silence. Kakashi had given her a lot of things to think about.

As the trees grew sparser and the smell of iodine grew stronger, they had to fight off a group of bandits. After the Demon Brothers, those civilian thugs hardly were worthy opponents, so Hitomi didn’t summon her cats that time. Under Kakashi’s satisfied stare, the three children tied their attackers up, then they all went out of their way to drop the five men to the police station of the closest village, since it was a ninja’s duty.

And then they reached the sea. That day, the sky was such an extraordinary shade of blue that Naruto’s eyes almost looked dull in comparison, and that amazing colour reflected in the water. The blonde boy let out an amazed exclamation but, instead of running to the waves like he would have done a few years earlier, he was content just to look, beaming so hard Hitomi’s cheek ached just glancing at him.

Tazuna had apparently prepared better than Hitomi had thought based on his initial lie: he guided them along the beach to a small fishing village – rather a group of six tiny houses than a real village – where a man who had agreed to take him back to the Land of Waves was waiting for him. They arrived at the village in the evening and were scheduled to take to the sea in the morning, which meant they had the time, around a big fire, to hear the story of the place.

“We’re from the Land of Waves, too,” a young woman with pale grey eyes said. “My family has always lived there, but today… It’s just too dangerous.” She put a hand on her belly and her companion, a sturdy man sitting on her left, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Hitomi understood what the woman wasn’t saying, and she probably wasn’t the only one to make the connection.

“Everything is hard there,” the woman continued. “The men are forbidden from fishing or hunting without Gatō’s authorisation, and the women and children are starving. He hired rōnin from the Land of Iron, all kinds of mercenaries, and even nukenin, to make sure everyone obeys his law. If it’s a man breaking the rules, he’s whipped publicly or worse. If it’s a woman… If it’s a woman, her punishment is private, but everyone knows what happens. If it’s a child, Gatō either hands him to the men who pleased him, or the child gets a public whipping.”

Another man, half his face devastated by an old wound, spoke then. “My father told me before he died that our country wasn’t always like that. We had efficient orphanages once, and the people who didn’t have a job could feed themselves and their families without hurting anyone. Now, everything is a struggle there. What you have, you take from someone. If you live, it’s at the cost of another person inching closer to death.”

The three young Genin listened attentively, their face serious and sober. Those fishermen were barely a dozen, but each of them had some cruelty of the regime to add to the tale. One had to be immensely lacking in morality to push a whole country to its ruin for personal gain. For a moment, Hitomi thought about the leaders of the Previous World, who had acted that way on many occasions during her short lifetime.

“We left around a year ago. We were supposed to be twentyish, but some of us didn’t make it through the guards who patrol the villages to make everyone obey the law.”

“If the situation in the Land of Waves got better,” Hitomi started in a thoughtful tone, “would you want to go back?”

The answers to that question were unanimous. Each of those people had left behind relatives or memories they wanted to get back to. There were terrified fugitives, broken by the horrors they had escaped. Hitomi and Kakashi shared a meaningful look. It wasn’t the objective of their mission, but if they could do something about it… Ninjas weren’t anything like righters of wrongs, but they had an honour code. It was different depending on the villages, more or less righteous, more or less oriented towards a particular value. Konoha’s value was the Will of Fire, and Team Severn bore it high and strong, no one could doubt it.

At the first light of dawn, they took to the sea on a tiny motor boat belonging to the elder of that little community. His hands were scarred in a way that didn’t fit his job, but none of the young ninjas asked about it and the adults had enough scars, psychological and physical, to know that it would have been rude. Hitomi showed Naruto how to put his hand under the water so it splashed in its wake; it kept him busy for a while. At other moments, she used her chakra to make faceless water characters rise from the waves and dance to work on her control. During a mission, one didn’t try to learn new techniques, but training in other ways was fine.

The mist grew thicker each hour that went past and, when the coast of the Land of Waves appeared in sight, their little boat had become invisible and quiet, its motor shut so they wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. In a silence full of respect, they went under the first part of the bridge, its piers going deep into the sea, as sturdy and full of people’s hope as Hitomi had imagined. She had never really understood what the creation of wood and steel had represented for the people living on the island, but she got it now. Even before it mended their failing economy by allowing them to trade without Gatō’s interference, it was a symbol of resistance and bravery, of infinite possibilities. They needed all that.

They had landed only for an hour when it happened. Naruto, more than the others, was tense and looking for traces of the enemy in every bush, behind every tree. Who could have blamed him? Hitomi barely contained her own reactions, and their nervousness was slowly infecting Sasuke too. When the blonde boy threw a kunai at a bush and the only thing to run away was a terrified snow rabbit, Hitomi knew what it meant.

“Get down!” Kakashi yelled.

He didn’t give time to Hitomi, who was the closest, to obey his command before he tackled her to the ground to shield her against the attack he had felt coming before anybody else. Sasuke had done the same with Tazuna; Naruto, who was only two steps in front of them, had lost a strand of blond hair to the giant sword that was now stuck in the trunk of a tree, a menacing silhouette standing on its guard as if it had always been a perch.

Zabuza was as tall, muscular and sinister as the canon had depicted him. His skin was sickly pale, his bare torso built as though the muscles had been directly carved on it, and she could count his ribs even from where she stood. The lower half of his face was hidden under bandages yellowed by use, and his grey eyes were cold, cruel. Around him rose a blithe killing intent, promising blood and brutality.

Hitomi shivered but didn’t back down, standing up next to her sensei. Already she had unsheathed her sword and blood ran down her thumb, but she didn’t dare act first. She was afraid of making a mistake – terror clawed inside her belly like a harpy. Sasuke and Naruto didn’t do any better: even the Uzumaki, usually so unaware of that kind of thing, had noticed how out of their league this adversary was. The enemy ninja smiled, his expression visible under his thin bandages.

“Momochi Zabuza, Kirijin shinobi turned deserter…” Kakashi’s voice sounded like a bad omen and was enough to stop Naruto in his rush of stupid, stupid bravery. Naruto didn’t know if it was the Demon Fox or the Uzumaki blood that made him so oblivious to danger, but it was worrying.

The blonde boy turned to his adopted sister, his perplexity not quite erasing the fear from his face. “Hitomi, who’s that guy?”

“Momochi Zabuza,” Hitomi repeated, her tone almost soft, “also called the Demon of the Hidden Mist. He wasn’t even an Academy student yet when he massacred an entire year worth of students. They were going through their graduation exam, they were supposed to be much stronger than he was. He killed them all.”

“The girl did her homework, that’s good.” The nukenin’s voice was mocking, cruel, but this time Hitomi didn’t take offense – she was too busy trying to hide her fear. She obeyed Kakashi’s discreet sign and took Naruto by the arm, walking him back to Sasuke’s position in front of Tazuna, taking her place at the point of their triangular formation, as she had always done before. The Jōnin straightened his forehead protector, and Hitomi felt more than she saw the Sharingan awakening inside his newly uncovered eye.

“I don’t have time to fool around, Kakashi,” Zabuza growled. “Give me the old man and I’ll let the kids and you go unarmed.”

“Aah, I’m afraid I can’t do that, Zabuza. What kind of example would it show to these youngsters if I abandoned a mission at the first hindrance?”

The assassin barely looked offended by Kakashi’s barb. Around him, the killing intent thickened, so intense that the three Genin started choking, an instinct inside them screaming for them to run and hide. This instinct was right: after all, Zabuza was dangerous, terrifying, deadly, bloodthirsty. He didn’t know mercy and would smash them to a pulp effortlessly if they opposed him… Hitomi swallowed nervously, took control over her breathing and straightened into a guarding stance. The following moment, she felt the boys do the same behind her. If they hadn’t been exposed to her own accidental killing intent, as weak as it was, they wouldn’t have been able to ignore the little voice in their head that begged them to flee.

“Children, don’t intervene in this fight, okay?” Kakashi ordered without looking back at them. “You are no match for him. I trust you to watch over Tazuna; it’s teamwork, just like I taught you.”

“Ah, Kakashi… Such a pleasure it will be to beat you. Did you know that, in the Kirijin Bingo Book, they say you have mastered over a thousand shinobi techniques? It’s an honour for me to be the one to end you.”

“Now, now, Zabuza, don’t sell the bear’s hide before you’ve killed it, alright? They mention you in my Bingo Book, too. They say your assassination techniques are perfectly silent. Let me warn you, they won’t be any use to you today.”

Hitomi, when listening to tales of older shinobi, had realised such behaviour was common when two enemy shinobi met. Unless it was a secretive or urgent mission, ninjas liked to chat before they tried to kill each other, to compare their respective strength and reputation for a bit. It was a way to show mutual respect, and to acknowledge the honour it would be to win such a fight. The ninjas had long ago walked away from the samurai lifestyle, when chakra had appeared in the heart of the world, but they hadn’t forgotten everything about what they used to be.

“Enough chit chat then. Since you won’t let me have it my way, I don’t have a choice, Kakashi.”

And in a blink, he disappeared from the tree he had been perched on, his huge sword gone with him. Standing on the water of the river that ran a few meters away from the road and that the team had planned to cross, he formed a hand seal and thick mist started to spread around him. It was colder, more oppressive and more opaque than the one Hitomi could create. She couldn’t see more than three meters away – even sounds seemed to be muffled in it.

“He disappeared!” Tazuna choked.

Hitomi herself was staggered. If the mist was that different from hers, what else changed in his version of the technique? In Zabuza’s hands, it seemed to exceed its D-rank with laughable ease.

“Don’t panic,” Kakashi intervened. “I’ll probably be his first target. Stay focused and remember the assassination techniques I mentioned earlier, but remain in control of yourselves, alright?”

How could they even have the slightest chance of seeing it coming? Zabuza was a Jōnin, for fuck’s sake, a former member of the Swordsmen of the Mist, and they were mere Genin – better than average, but still… He had power of life and death over them, and they all knew it.

“Eight possibilities,” a discarnate voice whispered in the mist. “The pharynx, the spinal cord, the pulmonary artery, the liver, the jugular veins, the collarbone, the kidneys… And the heart, of course. Which one to pick, hm?”

The killing intent intensified, screaming in their veins that they had to run or die there, now, a quick and clean death to avoid the terrible pains to come. The kunai in Sasuke’s hand slowly rose to his neck.

“Calm down, Sasuke-kun,” Kakashi ordered without looking back at his team. “I’ll protect you, even to the cost of my life. I’m not the kind to let my teammates die.” Only then did he slightly turn his head in their direction, and the Genin could see that strange smile he could make appear only with his eye. The two boys relaxed a little, but Hitomi didn’t. She knew what was coming next.

When Zabuza appeared between Tazuna and them, she reacted, not allowing fear to paralyse her body. She fell on her knees with a snarl, crawled between the nukenin’s legs and tackled the bridge builder to the ground just in time to save him from a decapitating blow. In the same movement, she extended her leg and managed to kick the deserter, who clearly hadn’t expected to miss, so close to the balls that his air of surprise and eyes blown wide for a second almost made her laugh.

He immediately got over it and changed target, focusing on Kakashi instead. They exchanged a few hits and, as the sensei almost had his opponent where he wanted him, a second Zabuza appeared behind his back, holding a kunai to his throat. The Copy Nin’s own blade stabbed the clone in front of him, making it dissolve into a puddle of water in the grass. A second later, Kakashi was cut in half… and dissolved too. The original appeared behind Zabuza, another knife already making its way to the deserter’s throat. “Don’t move. It’s the end.”

The whole thing had happened so fast Hitomi had only really seen half of it. Next to her, Sasuke had activated his Sharingan and probably followed everything better than she did. As for Naruto, he seemed astounded and maybe a bit afraid too, his shoulders tense and his eyes wide.

“Hehe… The end, uh? Do you really think you can beat me by copying my techniques with your stupid eye? Come on, Kakashi… I admit it was well done, taking advantage of my mist to clone yourself. And those words, so convincing, perfect to attract my attention while you hid and tracked me. Clever. Alas for you, I’m not quite done yet.”

One more Zabuza appeared behind Kakashi’s back as the Konohajin killed the clone in front of him. This time, the Copy Nin dived to dodge Zabuza’s sword, probably realising it was the real one this time. They engaged in a brutal taijutsu fight, both moving so fast Hitomi couldn’t track their movements. Suddenly, Zabuza managed to kick the sensei so hard he sent him flying into the river. Hitomi, terrified, watched her fears become reality, powerless.

In an instant, Kakashi was held prisoner in a chakra-infused bubble of water.

Chapter 42: Water, Iron and Mist

Powerlessness was probably the most intense feeling saturating Hitomi’s limbs, overshadowing even her fear, as she watched Zabuza capture Kakashi in his Water Prison technique. She hadn’t mastered this technique yet but knew how it worked and the power a shinobi needed to use it. She wasn’t there yet, and even less so for the version Zabuza was using, with pressure so intense inside the liquid that any movement was impossible.

“Ah, what a fool you are, Kakashi! You shouldn’t have allowed me to throw you in the water. Breaking out of this prison is impossible. Everything is gonna go smoothly now that you can’t intervene.” The renegade closed his eyes for a moment and composed a one-handed mudra, his other hand keeping the Water Prison active. Between the Genin and the riverbank, where Kakashi had banished a clone just moments before, another one formed slowly. “I’ll kill you later, Copy Nin. First, I want you to watch as I massacre your brats.”

It was the clone who spoke next, his voice just as cold and animated by scathing irony. “So, kids, you want to play ninja, with the forehead protector and all that stuff, uh? But, you know, a real ninja stands alongside death all the time. As long as you’re not in the Bingo Books… Well, we can barely call you ninjas. For me, you’re just as weak and useless as civilians.” The clone then moved, faster than their eyes could follow, and suddenly Naruto fell, hurled over more than three meters away by a fist that split his lip open. Hitomi knew Zabuza was toying with them or holding back big time. He could have just killed them, there and then, with less effort than what it took to wield that damned sword of his. Under his foot laid Naruto’s forehead protector, probably his most cherished possession, already stained with dust.

“Kids, listen to me now!” Kakashi commanded from the Water Prison. “Take Tazuna and run! You don’t stand any chance against Zabuza, but he can’t move as long as he holds me in the prison, and he can only control his clone over a few meters. Leave me behind and run, now!”

For a second, Kakashi’s words and the killing intent that was drowning the area as surely as the mist almost got the better of Hitomi. She felt so weak, so insignificant, so conscious of her own mortality and filled with the need to survive that, for a moment, she considered following Kakashi’s orders, considered leaving him behind, taking her brothers and Tazuna and run as fast as she could. Then shame invaded her at the idea of abandoning a teammate, the scathing feeling fighting off her fear with merciless efficiency. Slowly, she straightened up and tightened her grip on her sword’s guard.

“Kakashi-sensei, you’re giving up too soon. Sit back and watch the show, we’re coming for you.” Her voice’s firm, tranquil tone seemed to give back courage to Sasuke and Naruto. The latter formed the Cross Hand Seal and formed his own clone, who quickly took Tazuna with him out of sight – Hitomi felt his presence even through the mist as he stopped several dozen meters away, to safety. Now the Genin could fight without worrying about their civilian charge. However, Hitomi didn’t summon her cats: they were mortals in this world, even if they were hard to kill, and she didn’t want to risk them. They were far too precious to her. Besides, she knew she didn’t need them for this.

When Naruto smiled and ran straight to Zabuza’s clone, Hitomi and Sasuke followed, their swords, tarnished by the mist, raised in menace. The girl took the lead: she was the weakest, but also the fastest of their trio, and she was the one to engage with Zabuza’s clone to create a diversion while Sasuke attacked on the flanks – Naruto would get his forehead protector, and they would be done with that particular threat.

For a moment, it looked like they were going to get the upper hand, but in one move the clone overwhelmed them, shoving Sasuke away as he kicked Hitomi hard enough to make several of her ribs crack or even worse. He then sent Naruto back to them with a careless push of his arm, as if he was just an annoying fly. Like a meagre victory, the blonde’s fingers were tightened around his forehead protector and he quickly put it back on, his knuckles skinned and breathing too quick.

“You can write my name down in your book, shitface!” he grinned. “I’m the future Hokage. I’m Uzumaki-Yūhi Naruto, from Konoha!”

It wasn’t the first time Hitomi heard her name added to Naruto’s, but it moved her as always. Even here, in this dire fighting situation, the small spark of pride and joy warmed her up like a hug, reminiscent of calm and peace, of the reason why she was fighting. That simple push allowed her to lock the pain in her ribs deep under the surface, where it wouldn’t bother her. “Sasuke, Naruto, I have a plan. Come here.”

They obeyed and Zabuza’s clone let them. Despite the bandages covering half his face, amusement and curiosity appeared clear as day on his features. He obviously wanted to see what the brats were capable of, he who thought of himself as invincible – and he wasn’t so far from the truth on that account.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kakashi yelled from his prison. “Now that I’m his prisoner, the fight is over, you have to flee! Our mission is to protect Tazuna, remember? Run, it’s an order!”

“Ah, shut up!” Hitomi snapped, her voice whipping through the heavy air, through the killing intent and mist, effortlessly. “Hatake Kakashi has the reputation of always taking his team home. We won’t shame our sensei by leaving him behind, so shut the fuck up and let us work on saving your sorry ass!”

She had never dared speak like that to an adult, but she was reaching her boiling point. She had lived too much, in too few days, to tolerate an added pressure if she could make it stop. She glared at Kakashi then turned to Naruto and Sasuke to explain what she had in mind. She was happy to have this knowledge of the canon, because she wasn’t sure she would have had this idea on her own, and she knew this one would work.

“To say that when I was your age, my hands were already soaked in blood… You Konohajin brats are so mellow!”

Hitomi turned her glare to Zabuza, not even trying to hide her disdain. Her fear, by disappearing, had allowed her other emotions to bloom like many explosive flowers inside her mind. “Massacring children doesn't make you a shinobi. It’s loyalty to the values you have sworn to protect, to your Kage, to the missions and your teammates that are at the core of what makes a good ninja, not oceans of blood you leave in your wake. If the ability to kill alone was enough, samurais would be as much shinobi as we are.”

She knew she had a point, because everyone nursed a mixture of disdain and resentment towards the warriors of the Land of Iron. They returned the favour during rare encounters with shinobi, only allowing them to enter their country at the cost of a heavy tribute. Still, traditionally, the Gokage Summit, which had only been organised once in the history of the Hidden Villages, was to be held there, no matter the price to pay. It was the only perfectly neutral land in the known world. They had that power over the other nations, one that could stop them from uniting against a common enemy.

And then, Zabuza, as if refusing to tolerate that insult, charged and attacked them. Oh, he didn’t target Hitomi, but Sasuke, as if he knew that going after one of her brothers would be worse than any hit he could land on her. She shuddered as she watched the youngest Uchiha fall under the renegade’s blow, spitting a mixture of blood and saliva.

Naruto reacted immediately with Shadow Clones and ordered all his copies to throw themselves at the deserter. Hitomi took advantage of the confusion and used this moment offered to her to clone herself and metamorphose her replica, thus taking Naruto’s place in the canon plan. She had better accuracy than him with kunai, and had carefully taken note of all the little changes in this fight so far. She wouldn’t risk it.

When Zabuza rid himself of the clones and launched himself at Naruto with a snarl, Hitomi stepped in with the Ambush of Moving Water, forcing him to freeze for a second before his titan-like strength broke through the technique. This moment was enough for Sasuke, to deploy his Fūma shuriken and throw it so it would go widely around the two Zabuza, Hitomi’s metamorphosed clone in its shadow.

There, safe and unexpected behind her first real opponent, the clone snapped back to her original form and, instead of throwing the kunai like she had originally planned to do, she stabbed Zabuza in the biceps with it. Pain and surprise tensed the renegade’s arm, making him break contact with the Water Prison just before he threw himself at the clone, making it disappear in a puff of smoke. With a bestial scream, the Demon of the Hidden Mist hurled himself at the three Genin, his sword raised to cut Hitomi in half, and…

And suddenly Kakashi was there, soaking wet and surrounded by his own killing intent, his hand on the wrist that was holding the sword gripping down hard, harder, everything to stop Zabuza from harming one of his precious students. Later, he would allow himself to feel flabbergasted that his three little Genin had managed to wound a fucking Jōnin . First, though, he had to get rid of the threat that the man represented to their survival. “Well done, children. Your plan was excellent. This play with the shuriken… It was you, Naruto, right?”

The three kids nodded. Hitomi hadn’t even had time to propose that idea in particular, Naruto had had it first. She had only given them their role and handled logistics. Everything had rested on Sasuke’s shurikenjutsu, far better than his teammates’. They had all been essential to that plan – teamwork allowed them to equal or even surpass adversaries that were otherwise impossible to beat.

“I was stupid,” Zabuza sighed. “Anger got the better of me, and I forgot the Water Prison.”

Hitomi took advantage of the short break in tension to head back to her teammates, the Fūma Shuriken long forgotten in the river. She didn’t really want to go get it right now. After all, they had many other weapons left. Her features soured by pain, she stepped between Naruto and Sasuke, unsheathing her tantō again. She knew this fight wasn’t over yet.

“Admit it, they kicked your ass this time,” Kakashi nagged.

The deserter answered with a recalcitrant grunt. His dull eyes stayed on the three kids for a while, then came back to Kakashi, the main threat.

“You won’t get me twice with the same technique, Zabuza. What are you hoping to do now?”

And suddenly they were at it again, stepping away from each other in perfect synchronisation to stand, ten meters away from each other, on the river, their movements so controlled their feet didn’t even disturb the surface of the water. The two shinobi formed hand seals at the same time, faster than Hitomi or even Sasuke with his Sharingan could follow. It was the longest chain Hitomi had ever seen; when it ended, two twin dragons sprang out of the river and clashed against each other, creating a wave so strong it collided against the three Genin who were watching from a safe distance. Hitomi couldn’t stop the rush of admiration that surged in her mind as she stared, dumbfounded, trying her best to stay aware of everything around her. She could still feel Naruto’s clone, safe a few dozen meters behind them with Tazuna. If it came to it, she had to stop Zabuza from walking past the line she formed with her brothers.

“… copy every one of your moves.”

As she heard her sensei’s voice, Hitomi understood that the psychological warfare had started, and that he was leading, slowly overcoming Zabuza’s mental shields. Kirijin didn’t encounter the Sharingan often – and even if the Demon of the Hidden Mist had had any experience when it came to fighting against the Uchiha, the true secrets surrounding their eyes had been jealously kept somewhere even Sasuke hadn’t been able to find them – yet.

“Enough! I’m gonna make you shut up once and for all!” And yet Zabuza froze midway through his hand seals, which allowed Kakashi to outpace him with the Great Waterfall technique. And that technique looked like that , Hitomi definitely wanted to learn it. If only A-rank hadn’t been so chakra-hungry that even attempting it would empty her reserves and kill her… Maybe she could try it in a few years. She had a twinge of worry when she felt how much chakra Kakashi was putting into the technique, in addition to the steady stream of energy his Sharingan required. She knew to her core what chakra exhaustion inflicted upon a shinobi’s body. If only there was any other way…

As soon as the formidable wave-whirlpool was over, Kakashi threw several kunai to Zabuza, stabbing him with each of them until he couldn’t move anymore. Blood streamed down his limbs then washed away in the torrents of water that had been diverted from the river. Hitomi watched and carved that moment in her memory, unable to do otherwise.

“How is it even possible, Kakashi?” Zabuza rasped. “Does your eye allow you to see the future?”

“Yes. And I can see your death.”

He had barely said those words that two senbon seemed to appear from nowhere and pierced the deserter’s throat. Zabuza stiffened with a weak gurgle then slumped like a puppet whose threads had been cut. Hitomi understood what had fooled everyone there in the canon. He really looked dead. One more dead body in her wake. She mercilessly pushed down the anxiety that attempted to rise inside her with that thought. She couldn’t allow for the slightest distraction; the fight wasn’t over yet. And if all her opponents were to be such powerhouses… But then, Team Seven’s legendary bad luck had only started to appear during this mission. She knew there were many, many more occurrences to come.

“Ah, he’s dead at last.” The voice, soft and quiet, came from the  thick foliage of a tree a few meters away from the place where Kakashi was standing over Zabuza’s limp body. Hitomi looked up and finally discovered Haku, one of the first characters from the canon she had really connected with, in the Previous World. He was slender but taller than she would have thought, his stature enhanced by the black wooden geta he wore instead of the open boots ninjas tended to prefer. His face was hidden behind a white mask decorated with Kirigakure’s emblem and a red swirl, his long black hair kept in a tight bun covered by a cream-colored little cap. He didn’t look like a typical threat. Hitomi didn’t let that fool her, however: he was dangerous, perhaps even more than Zabuza had been. “Thank you,” he continued with a subtle shade of respect in his voice. “You have been a precious help. I’ve been hunting Momochi Zabuza for a long time, waiting for an occasion to kill him.”

“That mask, it’s from the Kirijin Hunter Nin Corps, right?” Kakashi drawled. His question seemed a bit ridiculous, now that Hitomi was witnessing the exchange for real. He knew the answer to that question – he had the same kind of mask at home, probably in a drawer or a chest under his bed, or even a secret stash. Hadn’t he been called the Hound? He was one of the very few amongst the ANBU to have acquired a worldwide reputation, and to have survived said reputation.

“Exactly,” Haku said with a slight nod.

“What’s a Hunter Nin?” Naruto prompted.

Sasuke was the one to answer his question, a gleam of reluctant respect in his eyes. Hitomi remembered he had studied the subject at the Academy, when he was still very young, before Itachi had betrayed the village. He had wanted to walk in his brother’s steps. “It’s a brigade in the Kirigakure ANBU division, tasked with hunting down rogue shinobi from the village and killing them before destroying the bodies.”

“Eh? Why destroy them?”

“Because a body,” Kakashi stepped in, “is full of secrets and information about the life a shinobi has lived. For example, if I came to die, people would fight over my corpse to dissect my Sharingan and try to decipher its many mysteries, or even just attempt to get all the techniques I know into their hands. Each village has medics whose only job is to read the meridian web of the bodies that are brought into their care.”

Hitomi knew a Nara who was working in that division in particular, an impossibly tall and thin woman whose pale grey eyes seemed to examine everything as if she could discover their every secrets, destroy their surface and reveal their core. Since she had learned of that woman’s job, she stayed at a respectful distance, just in case. If the creation of her Library was visible on her meridians… It could become a problem. A problem she wouldn’t have to worry about since she would be dead, but still.

“B-but I…” Naruto stammered. “But… How… How can that guy be so strong? How could he kill Zabuza, who seemed invincible to us?”

“I understand it’s a lot to take in, Naruto,” Kakashi said in a soothing tone, “but things have always been this way. In our world, there are children younger than you and yet stronger than me. There will always be someone, somewhere, that will be better than you.”

That shard of truth could be deeply unsettling for shinobi, often confronted with their own mortality. In this world so prone to quarrels, a stronger opponent often meant a meeting with death, and even ninjas cultivated, somewhere deep below the surface, a fear of their own demise. Without that fear, after all, they wouldn’t have any survival or preservation instinct, and a lack of those would have been a real nuisance to their missions. Even at the Academy, children were taught that their life was precious – but that the mission was even more so.

“Your fight is over, you can rest now.”

The masked boy shunshined from his branch to a spot next to Zabuza’s lifeless body. Hitomi really wanted to learn that technique. If she could use it in combination with her other skills… She would be worthy of the unofficial title of pain in the ass to fight she proudly held in the Fellowship.

“I’m going to destroy this body. Thank you again, Konohajin shinobi.” On those words, the masked shinobi disappeared, taking Zabuza with him.

Hitomi had thought, at length, about what she was supposed to do about this. She could have alerted Kakashi before Haku left, but it would have meant the two deserters’ death, and the young Yūhi still hoped to change that. She was sure that man and child could play a major role in future events if she played her cards correctly. That was why she had decided to let events unfold for now, even if it meant another terrifying fight was to come.

Tazuna and Naruto’s clone came back, then the blonde puffed out of existence. The bridge builder seemed a bit shaken, but he didn’t even have a scratch on him. Kakashi watched him approach impassively, pulling his forehead protector back over his Sharingan. “Well, we still have to escort Tazuna-san to his place. Let’s get moving.”

“Yeah, you’ll be able to rest soon, we’re almost there!” Tazuna grinned.

Even Hitomi, who knew what to expect, barely reacted in time when Kakashi fell, cushioning him with her back. She moaned, the pain in her own body awakened by the end of her adrenalin rush and the sudden impact. Her ribs radiated a furious fire and breathing didn’t seem worth the suffering it provoked.

“Aah, Kakashi-sensei, Hitomi!” Naruto jumped, fear unmissable on his features. “What’s happening?”

“Ngh… Kakashi-sensei, chakra exhaustion, I’d say. Me, ribs, Zabuza’s kick…”

“Hand him to me,” Sasuke ordered. “You’re wounded, which means you don’t get to carry the other wounded. Come on!”

The girl obeyed and took a few steps on the road, arriving at Tazuna's side. He looked at her with worried eyes, as if she was in charge now that her sensei had dropped unconscious. The sigh that almost escaped her hurt enough to make her swallow a pained sob. Even if the house was as close as the bridge builder had said, it would still seem stupidly far away.

Chapter 43: Forced Convalescence

When Team Seven finally reached Tazuna’s house, Hitomi had grown sickly pale, her forehead covered in cold sweat, and seemed ready to pass out. Tsunami, the bridge builder’s daughter, didn’t let that happen: once she had Kakashi laying on a futon in the living room, she approached the young Yūhi with a serious and severe look on her face. Her movements, with the Jōnin, had been direct and sure, showing an experience in healing. A nurse, maybe? She put a hand on Hitomi’s shoulder and inspected her from top to bottom with a stare. “Ribs?”

“Hm hm. A mean kick. But you should have seen the other guy…”

The woman had a brief, dry laugh, still with a trace of humour, then had her untie her kimono and helped her out of her steel fishnet shirt. Hitomi had long ago lost any notion of modesty, a luxury no one could afford during a mission except in very rare occasions. Anyway, she lived with Sasuke and Naruto. They had seen everything there was to see and hadn’t manifested the faintest interest.

Tsunami’s fresh and inquisitive fingers started prodding at her ribs. On the right side, an almost black bruise had bloomed under her skin and, when the young woman brushed against it, Hitomi couldn’t help but stiffen with a pained moan, half-choked before it reached her lips. After a few moments, satisfied, Tsunami wrapped her ribs in bandages and helped her back into her kimono. She left the steel fishnet untouched, since the wounded girl would probably have a whole lot of trouble putting it back on. “Absolute rest for a few days, just like your sensei. Dad, go get her another futon in the attic! I’m gonna bring your meals here, and until I give you the okay, I don’t want to see you train, alright?”

That no-nonsense tone wasn’t the kind you disobeyed, so Hitomi nodded docilely as Tazuna unfolded a comfy-looking futon at her feet. Naruto and Sasuke helped her lay on it and made sure she had everything she needed within easy reach. Okay, she couldn’t do much while staying in bed, but at least she could read. She was a bit jealous that her brothers were free to move and train, since they hadn’t been wounded during this fight. With a quick gesture that lit up a fire of pain along her ribs, she stopped Sasuke before he left the room. “Train when Tazuna-san is home, but follow him everywhere. We have beaten a powerful opponent, but… Something isn’t quite right here. I’m gonna try to understand what the matter is while I’m stuck here.”

“Okay. Keep an eye on Kakashi-sensei and don’t worry too much about us, Hitomi-nee. If we have a problem, Naruto will send one of his clones and ask that you summon your cats. Deal?”

Hitomi nodded and let him go, her eyes staying for a moment on his silhouette as he walked out of the room. She would have far preferred being amongst them, but she was paying the price of her own recklessness. If she had been quicker, or if she had fought better, she wouldn’t have been wounded, it was as simple as that. She still had to train. She had survived Zabuza, but the next event in the canon, the Chūnin exam, would be far more demanding.

A small, muffled noise, close to a moan or a whine, attracted her attention to Kakashi. Under his blanket, he was shaking, and his only visible eye, still close, was twitching in pain. His hair was damp, probably in cold sweat similar to the one she had known so well in such a state. After a moment of hesitation, Hitomi put one of her hands out of her own blanket and extended her arm until her fingertips touched the naked skin of his wrist.

Ensui had explained how chakra transfusions worked. It wasn’t very complicated to do, but missions rarely made that gesture doable. She had to mobilise pure chakra, not tainted by affinity nor Kekkei Genkai, and make it flow slowly from her Gates to the skin of the person she wanted to help. It was as simple as activating a seal. She closed her eyes and focused for a moment, just enough for the flow to start circulating between them. She could only help him a little – despite her training, her reserves were still too small to fill even a quarter of his – but it was still better than no help at all.

The man opened his eyes two hours later, and his first reflex was to clasp his hand around Hitomi’s wrist in an iron grip. She let out a pained little whine in protestation, caught by surprise. The procedure was monotonous, repetitive, so much so that she had started to slip into a daze, pacing in her Library while still maintaining the transfusion. She hadn’t expected him to wake up yet.

“What are you doing ?” he growled.

“I-I didn’t use a lot of chakra during the fight and you were almost dried out, sensei. You’ll be on your feet sooner if I help your reserves.”

A heavy silence fell between them for a few seconds then he let go of her wrist and, when she saw him relax instead of sliding out of reach, she touched him again and resumed the transfusion.

“Where are the boys?” he asked after a while.

“Training. Tazuna and his daughter Tsunami are preparing dinner.”

“And what are you doing here?”

“Zabuza cracked my ribs with his fucking kick. Tsunami said I was bedridden for a few days.”

“I see,” he said in a softened tone. “I’m sorry, Hitomi-chan. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“Come on, sensei. We all know the risks we’re taking when we go on missions. Zabuza is a formidable adversary. If anything, I should be proud I survived his kick. You did your best and you still won the fight. Without you, we’d all be dead.”

“Is? Not was ?”

“Err… Yeah. That’s bad news and I’m sorry, sensei, but I really don’t think Zabuza is dead.”

“What’s making you think that?”

“Well, the boy who stepped in… He’s a Hunter Nin, right? But, in general, according to Ensui-shishou, the hunters destroy the bodies on site, so as to minimise the risk of being intercepted by enemy forces. But he took the body with him, which is the first inconsistency.” He didn’t protest so she continued, keeping her voice as low as possible so the civilians wouldn’t hear. No need to frighten them. Fear was a shinobi’s business. “Then, there’s the problem of the senbon. You know I use them, and they are not commonly used for the killing blow. I would need an anatomy treaty to be sure, but I think… I think the shot could have made us believe Zabuza was dead and, in that case, it means the boy is really his ally and wanted to stop us from killing him for real.”

Silence took back its place between them, this time tense and nervous. Kakashi seemed aghast to have missed something that big. He was too hard on himself, Hitomi couldn’t have reached that conclusion for a long time if she hadn’t known about it beforehand. She too needed time to put her finger on the inconsistencies of a situation when she was confronted by it, a weakness Kurenai had exploited mercilessly when she had taught her daughter to notice and break out of genjutsu when she was subjected to it.

“Fuck, I think you’re right,” the teacher sighed after a few minutes. He seemed so exhausted she wanted to hug him but refrained. Somehow, she doubted he would know how to react to a hug, even though he could definitely use one. Or ten. Or a thousand. “In that case, he’ll need the better part of a week to get better. As for my own recovery… It should be faster, if you continue to help me.”

“Do you want us to work on something during that period?”

“Sasuke and Naruto will have chakra control exercises. They aren’t quite at the level I want to bring them to. Since you’re bedridden, our options are limited. I think I’m gonna have you work on your fūinjutsu, maybe look at what you have been trying to create lately and see if I can help, or maybe give you symbols you don’t know about yet, if such a thing even exists.”

The girl nodded, a surge of warmth and excitement washing over her at the idea of working on her favourite subject. That choice was the best Kakashi could possibly have made, and not only because it made her absurdly happy: working on seals didn’t require a lot of physical effort or chakra, which would allow her to transfuse to him more.

“You need rest as much as I do, perhaps even more since you’re so young. Close your eyes and focus on the flow of chakra between us for a moment. I’ll take control of it so it continues while you sleep, and I’ll cut it when your reserves are half-emptied. Sounds good?”

She hummed in affirmation and obeyed his orders. She was tired, just as he had said, and the pain was slowly starting to dull, leaving her sleepy and numb. She only took a few minutes to fall asleep. Immediately, her mind floated to one of her nightmares. She dreamed of Kirigakure in the time of the Great Purge, of a woman with long, long black hair, crying and begging a man to let their son live. Hitomi only understood who said son was when ice spears pierced the house in all directions, leaving only him untouched, and the man and woman in pools of blood on the floor. Haku.

She woke up with a start, Kakashi’s hand pressed on her mouth to muffle the cry of distress she was letting out. Their eyes met for a moment then he carefully let go of her and sat up. He had left his futon, but she could still see exhaustion hanging heavily off his shoulders.

“Those nightmares, you had them for how long?”

“Since… I’d say since the Uchiha Massacre? Anyway, that was the first to really hit me.”

“Why that one in particular?”

“I…” She hesitated and let her voice dry out. Could she tell Kakashi about it? It was… It was dangerous, but then, she had learned to trust that man by spending so much time with him. She had never told anyone in her family; only Ensui and Gaara knew, because they had been together in Sunagakure and putting it in writing had seemed so much easier. “In that dream, I was Uchiha Mikoto, Sasuke’s and Itachi’s mom, and I was speaking to Hokage the Third. Fugaku was beside me. The Hokage refused to grant us guardianship of Naruto despite me being his godmother and was accusing us of the Kyūbi’s attack on the village.”

She saw the spark of alert in Kakashi’s eye. Had he been part of the ANBU team guarding the Hokage’s office that night, even as his sensei had been killed a few hours earlier? She hoped not. Even ANBU needed time to mourn.

“And you had other dreams like that after that one?”

“Sometimes. Most of the time, my nightmares are just typical nightmares, but sometimes… I find myself in other people’s bodies. Some of them I can identify, some of them I can’t. It’s always during a significant event in their life. In one of those dreams, I was Uchiha Shisui and I was signing the Crow Summoning Contract, for example. I know I was him, because I introduced myself to the Crow I summoned. He was one of Sasuke’s cousins, before…”

“I knew him, yes. And today?”

“Today, it was… I think I was on an island because there was a lot of mist and the smell of salt in the air, just like here. I saw a woman begging for her son’s life. A man stabbed her to death and, as I saw her draw her last breath, I did something with ice that killed the man too, and I realised I was the little boy she had attempted to save. It was terrifying…”

“I can imagine. Do you think those dreams bear any significance?”

There, Hitomi shrugged, feigning a dismissal she wasn’t feeling at all. “Those dreams with the Uchiha happened the night of the massacre and just after I got my tantō from Sasuke. It belonged to Shisui before his death. There’s a connection, no doubt about it. But I think it might be my mind making it all up on its own, even though there’s a chance something bigger is at play here. I really have no idea.”

Kakashi nodded, a thoughtful expression on his features. He didn’t look surprised about the whole thing. In this world, there were things far stranger than possibly prophetic dreams. Deep inside, Hitomi was relieved that she could tell him about it while keeping control over what she was sharing with him: she had just planted a seed that would, later, strengthen her so-called intuitions, a complex move she hadn’t dared try until now. But Kakashi, who had once been a ROOT operative, wasn’t very likely to spill the beans to Danzō.

“I want you to tell me about those dreams if they happen again. They could become useful.” He sighed and visibly relaxed, a spark of pain gleaming in his eye for a second. “Well, since you’re awake now, tell me where you keep your fūinjutsu work, I want to see what you’re trying to create these days.”

Hitomi gave him that information without a fuss, and infused her chakra into the storage seal when he handed it to her – it was one of the several she kept locked from any chakra but hers. After a puff of smoke, around a dozen books and notebooks filled with her neat handwriting piled up on Kakashi’s lap. Not willing to wait anymore, the teacher took one of them and started reading in silence.

“Sensei?”

“Hm?”

“I wanna read. Can I have Icha Icha Paradise, please?”

She was delighted to see Kakashi choke on his own spit and lose himself in a coughing fit, his only visible eye damp and his face an interesting shade of red. When he calmed down, she hit him full force with the Stare, which she had practiced a lot to strengthen it on the very willing victim Ensui presented.

“A-alright. But please don’t tell your mother. I don’t want her to slit my throat and bathe in my blood.”

She beamed at him and nodded as enthusiastically as she could as he handed her the first volume. A few moments later, they were both deeply immersed in their own reading, and Hitomi discovered why Kakashi loved that book so much. From the very first page on, she was drawn into the scenario and attracted by the female main character’s charisma like iron to a magnet. Her eyes devoured page after page – she had always been an incredibly quick reader.

“D’you think Jiraiya-sama would be interested in reading what I write?” she asked after an hour of silent reading, her voice quiet and soft.

“You write?”

“Hm hm. Well, not erotica, but stories that are on my mind. I’ve already completed three novels and I started a fourth a few days after the Academy ended.”

Thanks to her eidetic memory, she only had to go look for the books she had read in the Previous World and work on adapting them to the codes of her new society. She was still deeply convinced that literature shouldn’t be exclusive to one universe, and if she could help it navigate her new world freely, it was a pure delight. For the time being, only Ino and Sakura had read the novels she had written, their favourite being a contemporary romance between a daimyō’s daughter and a nukenin.

“The master isn’t in the village right now, but I could ask him for you, if you want. I’m sure he’d be eager to discover a new Konohajin writer before anyone else in the industry.”

“Thanks, sensei,” she smiled before going back to her book.

Tsunami found them still reading after the sun had set, him sitting on the ground, his back against the cushions of the settee, and her still lying on her futon, the arm of her non-injured side holding the book to her eyes. The woman smiled with satisfaction as she contemplated this quiet scene, she who missed her work so dearly. She had had no choice but to quit when Gatō had started threatening her family. One day, maybe, she could get back to it, but for now this make-believe was good enough. “Dinner is ready,” she announced as she stepped in the room. “Stop reading for now, I’m gonna bring you your plates. Sensei, you can help your student to sit up, but go slow and easy.”

The man obeyed without objections, closing the book on the Reduction Theory heavily annotated in Hitomi’s handwriting that he had been reading. His movements slow and careful, he supported her to a sitting position just next to him, her back against the settee as well. “What you wrote in your notebooks is really advanced. Your seals are Chūnin-level at the very least, which is surprising for someone as young as you are and will probably draw a target on your back if shinobi from other villages notice.”

“Because Seal Masters are so rare?”

“Yeah, and because you have the potential of becoming one. You’re not there yet, though, and that means I can still teach you a few things about fūinjutsu. Soon enough, however, you’ll become far better than I or Ensui are in that field.”

When Tsunami brought them dinner, they were busy discussing the very complex Reduction Theory, which allowed someone to create very small seals that were almost impossible to decode if they weren’t safely expanded. It was the kind of seals the ROOT operatives had on their tongues, but Hitomi didn’t bring that up, since she wasn’t supposed to know anything about a rogue organisation inside the ANBU. She was attempting to go around the lack of stability that seals bore once that theory was applied to them, for a design she was working on that could be useful in battle. She didn’t want it to fall into the enemy's hands, so she had to reduce it.

When night came, Hitomi was still exhausted enough to fall asleep almost immediately. Sasuke had insisted on spending part of the night in the living room with Kakashi and her – well, especially with her. He told her how he and Naruto had met Inari, Tsunami’s son, and the certainty in the child’s mind that the shinobi were going to die rather than successfully accomplish their mission. Hitomi was happy she hadn’t interacted with the boy herself. She probably wouldn’t have reacted well to such a discourse, and pain had always made her short-tempered and snappy.

The next day, she already felt better and well-rested, even if another nightmare had disturbed her night. It had been about her B-ranked mission this time – she couldn’t wait for Kakashi to take her to his therapist. If that woman could help her get rid of her nightmares, she would be a hero in her eyes. She hated the moment of terror and confusion she had each time she woke up. The compassionate stare Kakashi had had for her that day, as if he knew exactly what was on her mind, had made her want to burst with shame.

The next two days were spent training and working. Naruto and Sasuke were trying hard to make a kunai stand up on their open palms, and Hitomi was working on her seal. It was almost done now, tested again and again on the rabbits Sasuke captured for her. At least, this way, Tsunami never lacked meat for dinner – her failed seals had a propension to burst aflame.

Five days after their first battle, Hitomi and Kakashi were back in good shape, even if Tsunami had ordered the girl to take it easy and to be careful of her ribs, still quite tender. After researching the topic at length in medicine treaties, the Yūhi heiress had discovered that chakra and convalescence were tightly linked: a shinobi with full reserves could get better up to five times quicker than a civilian, while a ninja in a state of chakra exhaustion healed at the normal speed and even risked getting sick or his wounds becoming infected, which never happened when chakra was present aplenty. By transfusing her chakra to Kakashi, Hitomi had known she was slowing down the process a bit for herself. Worth it.

When she was allowed to stand up and even leave the house, Hitomi went into town with Tsunami to protect her and help her with the groceries. She had reluctantly left her forehead protector at home: shinobi, in this little country without a Hidden Village, were rare; she didn’t want to get noticed. Her Konohajin insignia made her proud, but pride couldn’t justify putting a civilian and her mission at risk.

What she saw in that town shocked her, even though she had known what to expect. Misery was everywhere, carved onto the bodies of frail children whose bellies were distended on delicate bones, branded on the adults whose faces were wrinkled with worry. There were more beggars on the streets than she had ever seen, including in the Previous World. Somewhere before the horizon stood Gatō’s manor, and Hitomi started to hate him, a sweet and quiet feeling that burned through her veins and weighed her mind down. Without any hesitation, she opened the purse attached to her obi and started giving money to everyone around her without them noticing, dropping it in their pockets with a brush of their fingers. She couldn’t do anything more and it pained her. She prayed to the Hermit and all the deified entities the ninjas honoured that, once the tyrant fell, the country would stand back up.

Since her mood was gloomy when she came back, she decided to seek comfort in summoning her team of ninja cats. She was relieved to see that Haīro was better, the wound he had gotten against the Demon Brothers reduced to a red line under his pelt, which was already growing back. However, this wasn’t her greatest surprise: a little bundle of dark grey fur was hiding between Hoshihi’s paws. The girl questioned her fire-pelted familiar with a look.

“It’s my new apprentice, Hai-chan,” he said with a gleam of pride in his eyes. “Aotsuki-sama gave her to me yesterday. When I sensed that you were summoning us, I decided to take her with us so you could meet her.”

Hai was tiny, with the scruffy pelt of a kitten and big, pale blue eyes. Hitomi extended her hand to allow her to sniff the smell of chakra, steel and ink that always mingled with her own. After an understandable moment of hesitation, the little cat rubbed her head against the offered fingers, a faint purr in her throat.

“Hello, Hai-chan. Welcome to the family.”

The five other cats went to rub against the youngest to congratulate her in their own way under Hitomi’s affectionate stare. Her heart did need that kind of cute scene. Even during her convalescence, she had constantly been anxious – at least her plan was ready now.

“Hokori? I’d like you to go somewhere, and for Sunaarashi to stay with me at all times. The others told you about the fight against the Demon Brothers, right?” The pair nodded and she continued. “It was just the beginning. Another powerful ninja, Momochi Zabuza, attacked us after we made shore at the Land of Waves. I was really afraid he would kill you all if I summoned you.”

The cats sobered up when they heard the anxiety in her voice. Kurokumo stepped towards her then pressed his whole body against her in a gesture of comfort. He had grown, too, but he was still a bit lighter and thinner than the other, as if to mingle better with the shadows.

“Those shinobi were all hired by a man called Gatō, who oppresses the whole country, to stop the construction of a bridge between the main island of the Land of Waves and the coast of the Land of Fire. We have defeated Zabuza, but we weren’t able to kill him, and there’s a good chance he’s gonna attack again soon. Hokori, I need you to find and watch Gatō, and to warn Sunaarashi as soon as he gets close to the bridge. Can you do that?”

The pale brown cat nodded and a knot of anxiety eased in Hitomi’s mind. With the help of her trusted companions, she had a chance to prevent one of the macabre events to come. A chance was maybe all it took.

Chapter 44: Meeting On The Bridge

On the seventh day after their arrival in the Land of Waves, the sky was incredibly clear and the sun reflected on puddles everywhere with cheerful insolence. Hitomi had told Kakashi about her surveillance of Gatō and kept Sunaarashi with her at all times. The cat kept her updated on the tyrant’s movements, which could become useful. When the man wasn’t busy threatening or blackmailing people, he had a boring life.

This time, the whole Team Seven went to the bridge to watch over Tazuna, except for Naruto, who stayed home to protect Tsunami and Inari. After a moment of hesitation, Hitomi left one of her water clones and Haīro behind as well. She didn’t like dispersing her forces like that, but cat and boy got along well and Naruto could order the clone around if he needed to. With the bridge builder’s family as protected as possible, she felt more at ease.

Even if she knew what to expect, a ball of anxiety and shock alike formed in her throat when she saw the bridge littered with inert bodies. She walked to the closest man and took his pulse: he had only been knocked out. The needles sticking out of his limbs told her it was Haku’s work – Naruto had told her he had met ‘a boy who was even prettier than a girl’ the previous day, during his morning training session, and it could only be him.

“Hitomi-chan,” Kakashi ordered, “summon two water clones and send them to evacuate the civilians. This is a diversion, which means…”

“That the welcoming committee is already there,” Sasuke finished.

After obeying her teacher, the girl sliced her thumb open and summoned her other two fighting cats, trying very hard not to worry about them. Hoshihi and Kurokumo had promised they would be very careful, and that they would go to the spiritual world immediately if they were wounded, so she had decided to trust them. The ginger cat and his black-pelted companion appeared in a puff of smoke, Sunaarashi joining them at their summoner’s feet, obviously ready to fight.

All of a sudden, a thick blanket of fog fell over their group. Sasuke, Hitomi and Kakashi surrounded Tazuna in a triangle, swords and kunai unsheathed, as soon as the teacher gave the order. Behind Hitomi’s back, the Uchiha seemed to be shaking, but she could almost feel the anxiety turn into jubilation inside him – maybe because the same was happening in her own body.

“Yo, Kakashi,” started a deep, well-known voice in the mist. “Still dragging those brats around, uh? Look like they’re shaking, the poor little things.” And suddenly a dozen clones were surrounding them, all terribly threatening – and yet Hitomi wasn’t afraid anymore. She even felt serene, as if nothing wrong could happen to her.

“Now, Sasuke-kun!” Kakashi ordered.

The Uchiha heir started moving immediately, his silhouette fading in the mist as he ran to one clone after the other to return them to a liquid form, his katana never stopping in its deadly dance. Water fell around them in a perfect, supernatural circle, and Sasuke stepped back to his place, in a defensive stance once more.

“Ooh, you beat all my water clones, eh? You’ve done some progress, kid. They are dangerous opponents, aren’t they, Haku?” Even in compliments, his voice was still biting with irony, but Hitomi didn’t let that get to her. No, she couldn’t, not when she was hearing the masked boy’s name for the first time, his identity hammering one more nail into the coffin of pressure and stakes Hitomi had engrossed herself from the beginning of this mission.

“So Hitomi-chan was right, and this boy is your accomplice. At least, this time, it’s obvious.”

“Let me handle him,” Sasuke growled.

Hitomi didn’t need to ask him why he wanted to fight Haku. She knew how important honesty was for him. She just tightened her and her cats’ position around Tazuna to fill the void her adopted brother left as he stepped towards the adversary he had chosen for himself. Her eyes didn’t leave Zabuza for a moment. She didn’t have the Sharingan that was turning Sasuke’s eyes red, but she wanted to be ready when the deserter attacked.

The two teenage boys collided in a clash of steel against steel. Sasuke seemed to have an advantage with Shingi to Giri, the katana he had inherited from his father, but Hitomi knew how fast Haku could be – she knew this advantage wouldn’t last. She couldn’t stop a rush of worry from washing over her, even knowing Haku loathed killing and would try to knock him out, to neutralise him.

“Hitomi-chan! Leave Kurokumo and Sunaarashi to protect Tazuna-san. You and I are fighting Zabuza. You’re only doing support if you can help it, is that clear?”

“Yes, sensei!” Hoshihi following her like a shadow made of fire, the girl stepped toward the renegade. The gentle warmth of adrenalin was brushing her fears off, making them slide along her limbs and pool at her feet like a cloak she had shouldered off carelessly. She felt calm, focused, and in her dark red eyes laid a strength, an intensity that maybe hadn’t been there a few days prior. She knew what was going to happen, and everything would be okay. She held on that truth like she would embrace a loved one, allowing it to slow her heart down and sing the melody of battle under her skin.

“Can’t do anything without your brats, can you, Kakashi? Afraid you can’t win without them?”

“Aah, you’re so wrong, Zabuza. See, Sasuke is the best Genin in Konoha, and Hitomi is just behind him. And then, of course, there’s Naruto, who’s so unpredictable it becomes a strength of its own… Anyway, just to say that I don’t need their help. I’m just using you as a training dummy.”

The deserter seemed a bit offended by Kakashi’s words, and Hitomi could empathise with that. She, too, would have felt insulted if she had been a Jōnin and one of her opponents had used her as a dummy for their Genin. She shifted nervously, tightening her grip around her tantō as she waited for Kakashi to act first. It happened in a flash, in the clash of steel against steel, her teacher’s kunai against Zabuza’s monstrous sword. She had to stay focused on her goal.

As he parried with an easy move, Zabuza laughed. “Did you hear that, Haku? Those kids are so strong.”

“Yes… We have to be wary of them.” There was no mockery in his tone, Hitomi realised as he formed a hand seal that turned water into ice. Hitomi’s distraction would have cost her her life if Hoshihi hadn’t jumped on Zabuza’s arm from below to deflect the blow that would have cut her in half. The hit went over her head, so close it took a strand of her hair with it.

“For fuck’s sake!” Kakashi groaned. He ran towards the other fight, Hitomi behind him, but Zabuza stopped them, standing in their way as mirrors formed a cage around Sasuke and Haku, hiding them from view. The smile on Zabuza’s face, perfectly visible despite the bandages hiding the bottom half of his face, made Hitomi bristle. She snarled, killing intent blooming by reflex on her skin like its own kind of fog, invisible but toxic.

“Not so fast, you two. I’m your opponent.”

Sasuke screamed in pain behind the mirrors and Hitomi’s anxiety came back with a vengeance. In answer, from beyond her killing intent that had never been stronger, a soft, cruel and enchanting voice started whispering and crawling under her skin, all bloodlust and promises of massacre. Her pupils contracted extremely in the centre of her dark red eyes as Hitomi forced the voice to retreat so she could focus on the fight. She couldn’t fail.

“Come on, think about it, Kakashi. If you go help your student, I’ll kill the girlie and then your client, but you can’t let her go alone for fear that she’d be trapped too.”

The teenage girl could see the moment her sensei decided not to risk helping Sasuke. Just like her, he prayed that the young Uchiha handled it on his own, for his skills to be enough. Zabuza and Kakashi picked up their own fight, Hitomi taking the opportunity to throw a kunai towards Haku in the hope of distracting him. She wasn’t surprised when he dodged, but the big puff of smoke appearing before the mirrors did surprise her – until she understood it was Naruto, Haīro in tow. With an affectionate smile, she let the boy sing his own praise as he saw fit while her cat walked to her – and then the blonde entered the circle of mirrors and Sasuke and he started arguing immediately.

“Boys!” she called in a light, almost playful tone. “If you don’t start focusing on the enemy right now, I’m gonna have to punish you!” They immediately obeyed her and she could feel Kakashi’s approval of her. They could now concentrate their own efforts on Zabuza and pay him back.

“Tell me,” Kakashi started, “where did you pick up that boy exactly? Weren’t the Kirijin clans massacred?”

“It wasn’t easy, let me tell you that. He survived one of those massacres and he was begging in the streets like a mutt. I waited for him to kill another beggar over a slice of bread before taking him with me. I wanted to be sure he had what it took.”

For a second, Hitomi allowed herself to feel immensely sad for Haku, who had to have been broken-hearted to have to kill that unnamed person. Then Naruto howled in pain and part of that feeling disappeared deep inside her. She parried a hit from Zabuza, rolled under his huge sword and replied with a kick that totally missed its target. She wondered if he had had a bruise, where she had hit him during their last fight. Part of her hoped so.

“Sorry, Zabuza, but this time I’m the one with no time to lose.” Kakashi was tugging on his forehead protector when the nukenin attacked. His sword in one hand and one of the strange Kirijin kunai with only one cutting edge in the other, he rushed towards the teacher and stabbed his hand so deep the blade clicked against the metal plate on the Copy Nin’s glove, on the other side. It had to hurt like hell, but Kakashi didn’t even blink. “Not so eager to see the Sharingan again, are you?” he taunted as he finished his movement.

“Hmph. You should know that a ninja only uses his best weapon with parsimony.”

“And you should feel honoured! You’re the first of my opponents to see it twice. There won’t be a third, though.”

“And? Even if you beat me, you can’t win against Haku. I taught him everything I know, forged him like a blacksmith forges a sword, until he became the perfect weapon. His techniques are even better than mine, thanks to his Kekkei Genkai! He’s nothing like those weaklings you drag around.”

Once again, Hitomi allowed the insult to fly over her head. He wasn’t wrong, after all, when he said Haku was more powerful than they were. His knowledge of death had probably made him tougher, and his ice techniques were incredible. But the Yūhi heiress wasn’t to be overlooked either, and she was lucid enough to know intimately each one of her strengths and weaknesses. She shuddered when she felt the Sharingan awake.

“You’re making a mistake,” Zabuza continued, “by showing me your precious eye again. Like you said last time, ‘you won’t get me twice with the same technique’!”

Suddenly, the mist thickened and Zabuza vanished into it. Hitomi closed her eyes for a second, just enough to focus some chakra in her nose and ears. When she’d come home, she’d ask Kakashi for senses enhancing training, she felt terribly exposed in this situation, even with her meridians. She needed to get better. She moved, reflexes taking over her body, and five shuriken fell to her feet, parried with a slash of her tantō. She saw a shadow in the fog then heard multiple clashes of steel against steel that told her Kakashi had faced a similar attack.

She remembered what was coming next, and Kurokumo’s cry of alarm gave her the impulse she needed well before Kakashi understood Zabuza’s next move. Already she was standing between Tazuna and the deserter’s blade, and a line of fire and blood slashed across her torso, from left shoulder to right hip. If Hoshihi hadn’t stopped the renegade by biting him behind the knee as hard as he could, she would have died, disembowelled, but she was lucky: the wound was impressive but superficial. It still hurt like a bitch, though, a burn that awoke in Hitomi’s body and spread to each and every nerve. The pressure and whisper under her skin crawled in response, stopped at the last second by a surge of pure will.

“Hitomi!” Kakashi had just arrived, too late to protect her.

The girl’s breathing was heavy, laborious, but got better when she forced the pain to retreat in a dark corner of her Library, ignoring the feeling of blood rolling down her body and staining her clothes. If she stopped to think about how the fabric clung against her skin, she’d be sick, and this definitely wasn’t a good time for it. She clenched her teeth and attacked with her tantō, forcing Zabuza to parry and step back. Hoshihi joined her, while Tazuna and Kurokumo walked out of reach. “I’m okay, Kakashi-sensei. I have a plan, follow me! Haīro, Hoshihi, you know what to do!”

They had repeated this manoeuvre over and over, often on poor Ensui who hated playing the training dummy. Hitomi had evoked the possibility of using it against the swordsman, because it worked particularly well against taller and heavier opponents, just like he was. Ignoring the pain like it was just a phantasm, a product of her mind, she danced around Zabuza, Hoshihi and Kakashi helping her force him to parry from every side, while she closely monitored Haīro’s position. As soon as she sensed him in place, she slid under the nukenin’s sword, as fluid as the water under the bridge, and hit his torso as hard as she could with her open palm reinforced with chakra, leaving her blood on his naked skin. Totally taken by surprise, he couldn’t stop the impulse she had given his body and took a few steps back, tripping on Haīro, who was waiting behind his legs.

Thus the big swordsman fell; before he was over his surprise, Hitomi was sitting on his torso, her tantō against his throat, while Hoshihi bit the hand he was wielding his sword with hard enough to stop him from using it, his heavy, ginger paw immobilising the man’s shoulder. The girl was shaking, weak, out of breath, and yet she fought with all her might to keep the renegade submitted to her will, her knobbly knees pressing hard against his ribs. Soon enough, Kakashi came to her help, putting his foot on their opponent’s stomach, his Jōnin strength managing to pin Zabuza to the ground. The two men looked equally as dumbfounded, and Hitomi had to admit she herself was astonished to have succeeded. She had expected Zabuza to dodge, but now she would be forced to…

“Step aside, Hitomi-chan, he won’t move. I’ll kill him for you.”

Reluctantly, the girl started to obey, but froze mid-move when she heard Sunaarashi’s voice, clear and firm in the mist. “Gatō is approaching, just like you said, Lady Summoner! He plans on killing Zabuza so he doesn’t have to pay him, and he has a little army of civilian mercenaries with him.”

Everything went still around them. For a second, Hitomi wanted to collapse in relief, but she resisted that impulse, preferring to stand up slowly, her tantō still threatening Zabuza just in case he tried something.

“It’s… It’s a lie,” the man growled.

“What would my cat gain by lying to you now ?” she challenged in a harsh tone. “I was expecting something like this to happen, that’s all. I heard whispers in town, when I went there with Tazuna’s daughter, and I decided to send one of my cats to spy on him. He wouldn’t have any reason to lie, and especially not now that you ceased being a threat to me.”

“Do you have any shred of evidence to support your claims, girl?”

Hitomi had to think about it for a moment, then a terrifying, probably quite cruel grin slowly stretched her lips. “Actually, I think I have exactly what you want, Zabuza-san. Kakashi-sensei, is your genjutsu good?”

“Well, quite, wh- oh, I see. Let me handle it.”

She was beaming, almost as bright as Naruto, because she had succeeded . Neither Zabuza nor Haku would have to face the destiny that had been theirs in the canon, except if something went horribly wrong from this point on. As the buzzing of a genjutsu surrounded them, she kept the deserter under close watch, her sword still grazing his throat, and her cats acted accordingly, even if Hoshihi had stopped chewing on his sword hand.

A few minutes later, trapped in the illusion that was showing Zabuza’s defeat, his now useless arms dangling along his flanks, Gatō stepped on the bridge, his group of mercenaries in tow, and started to mock the swordsman, boasting about the plan he had conceived to use him without having to pay for his services – after all, a shinobi as strong as he was, even a nukenin, was worth three times the army the man had behind him. Still hidden by the genjutsu spell, Zabuza exchanged a look with Kakashi and spoke in a voice full of muffled anger. “You can let me go and call your fluffballs back, kid. We aren’t enemies anymore. Haku!”

As if he had heard everything – which was probably the case, he was a genius, after all – their other opponent ended his Demonic Mirroring Ice Crystals technique, revealing Sasuke and Naruto standing back-to-back, their swords raised in front of them like shields. They were both wounded, but nothing too worrying. Even from where she was standing, Hitomi saw that her adopted brother’s Sharingan now had two tomoe each. “Zabuza-sama, your orders?”

“One does not get away scot-free after trying to ensnare me. Gatō is dead, and his small fry with him. Kakashi, girl, will you help me?”

Taken by surprise, the teenage girl looked to her sensei before giving any answer. When he nodded, she squared her shoulders and nodded, too. “I will, and I’m sure Naruto and Sasuke won’t want to be left out of it.” Just as she said that, her brothers arrived next to her, looking absolutely fuming, like they had just heard the whole conversation. They looked well enough, and it was all that mattered. As for Hitomi, she was starting to feel her strength leave her body. She reinforced her limbs with chakra, still enough at that stage to chase her exhaustion. After signing for them to get ready, Kakashi interrupted the illusion.

“You’re dead, Gatō!” Zabuza screamed as he charged, sword first, at the flabbergasted tyrant. Several mercenaries immediately stepped before his target, and it was the moment the Konohajin shinobi chose to join in. Hitomi’s blood sang in her ears, the voice whispering more seductively than ever its promises of death and agony, but she resisted it with dignity, her sword hitting and parrying again and again. Twice, her cats saved her by diverting a mortal blow – nothing could make up for the blood she had lost and was still losing. In one instance, it was Haku who saved her by running a spear made of ice through the torso of a man who had attempted to jump on her from behind. After a second of shock, she thanked him with a nod and got back to the battle.

It happened in a flash, the flash of her blade on an exposed throat, and the cold reflection thrown by the sun on the blood that suddenly splattered her face. Her eyes open wide in shock, she watched the man fall at her feet, the taste of his life dripping on her lips, her cheeks, between her lashes, and in her eyes. She had just taken a life, all by herself, with her own hand, without the intermediary of one of her summons. A killer.

For a short, very short second, the voice that was whispering terrible oaths in her ear took over, pushed back the remorse that was suddenly choking her, burning it until only bloodlust and violence remained. When she took the upper hand again, Hitomi wasn’t paralysed by the consequences of her actions anymore. Her heart was beating fast in her chest, her movements were muddled, rendered messy by exhaustion, but one after the other the men surrounding her fell.

She raised her head just in time to see Zabuza break Gatō’s neck with a careless, effortless swipe of his arm. It was over. They had… They had won. She had succeeded .

Suddenly reaching the end of her strength, she fell to her knees in the sea of corpses and hid her face in her hands to cry over her innocence, murdered as surely as she had just murdered her first human being.

Chapter 45: The Two Nukenin

As soon as Tsunami saw Hitomi, in Kakashi’s arms and covered in blood, she ran to the girl to examine her, frowning and cursing in a particularly creative way. She ordered the Jōnin-sensei to take his student to the living room, without a look at the two shinobi with a Kirijin forehead protector who followed the Konohajin team around like lost puppies. One problem at a time.

The girl was unconscious and the wound barring her torso provoked several shocked exclamations, from her adopted brothers and Tsunami herself. With the tip of her cold fingers, she assessed the injury to determine how deep and serious it was, then decided stitching was the best course of action. The kid was lucky she was already unconscious… “Dad, go fetch my first aid kit. Sensei, take everybody out, I don’t want anyone to distract me.”

She bossed everyone around like a head surgeon would, which made people obey as quickly as they possibly could, leaving her alone with the passed out young girl bleeding on her sofa – which she didn’t care about one bit. Stitching was a long, repetitive and laborious process, especially when it wasn’t done on a flat patch of skin. At least her patient wasn’t moving around. She tied the last stitch, bandaged the wound and stood back up, her spine creaking in protest. The girl would have a scar, but maybe the medic nin she had heard about could erase it, or maybe the kid would wear it as a mark of pride, a trophy. You never knew with shinobi.

In her Library, Hitomi was hiding under a reading table, drowning in a fear beyond words. The pale, usually so clean ground of her dear sanctuary had disappeared under several centimetres of fresh blood. Even from where she was, she couldn’t escape its metallic smell and sticky feeling against her curled-up shape. She couldn’t help but sob, her shoulders agitated with spasms and her throat constricted. She didn’t understand what was happening and that was enough to terrify her. Usually, a mere thought allowed her to adjust the appearance of the place, to control it down to the last detail, but it didn’t seem to work this time.

She knew the reason behind such a mess, but she should have been able to control it. Killing wasn’t supposed to be such an ordeal for shinobi, she should have been insensitive or close to it. Besides, it wasn’t fair, she had done her job, she had behaved well, this man would have gutted Tazuna without breaking a sweat if Gatō had paid him to do it. Anyways, she had been paid, or would be paid, for that mission, for the life, lives, she had taken. It was the same, just the same, so why did the thin line between intentions and actions make her feel like she was slowly dying?

And she’d still have to kill in the future, she knew it, knew it couldn’t be helped. Maybe she’d have to do it as soon as the Chūnin exam, or even earlier, if a mission required her to do it. Despite all the reproaches she could have towards her village, Hitomi was loyal to it, not out of patriotism but because so many of her loved ones would have given their lives without any hesitation for Konoha. She couldn’t allow herself to be weak, not now, not in front of the very first threat to her mental stability.

Her throat constricted, she left her hiding spot slowly. Her hands and legs were covered in blood. The frown and incredibly hard look in her eyes were like a scar in the middle of her exhausted features. She breathed in deeply and raised her arms, mobilising chakra and pure power to bend the place to her will. Several meters away, like a spark in the shadows, a door appeared. It was such a pure white that looking at it hurt, locked with barbed wire ready to bite the skin of anyone trying to approach, or leave the room it was guarding.

A bitter crease on her lips, Hitomi grabbed the book that contained her memory of the first murder and what it had made her feel. She tore out the page that contained the act itself, cold and free of any emotional reality, and bound it to the book containing the previous memory. The rest of that damned book, she took it to the white door. The barbed wire retreated before her, but still scratched her arms as she pushed the panel made of light open. A simple emotional wound – nothing serious. It was just the first of a very long series. She had chosen this path, this life, she knew what it cost.

Behind the door was a small, dark room. On a bookshelf that seemed ready to collapse, dozens of used books piled up. The cover for one of them was a face in relief, silently screaming. Another was bleeding, the thick red liquid dripping along its pages to pool under its spine. After one last look at the book she had taken there, she tossed it on the table in the middle of the room, grabbed a length of chains and wrapped it around the book until it disappeared under the iron.

When she left the room several minutes later, the floor was clean once more. The white door closed silently behind her and disappeared into the shadows, where it could lay forgotten. Even if her mind didn’t allow for forgiveness.

Hitomi woke up as the sun was setting, in the orange and red light flowing in the living room. She tried to sit up and hissed as pain bloomed where Zabuza had wounded her. Carefully, she relaxed her muscles and let her body go limp against the cushions. She felt tired, but relieved that this crisis was over, at least until Kakashi took her to his therapist. Her hesitations on that matter had thawed like snow under the sun. She needed that help, she knew it now. She just hoped that the woman his sensei was consulting would be as efficient and good for her as she had to be for him: the Copy Nin wasn’t the kind to waste time with a useless doctor.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Kakashi said as he popped his head through the window. Don’t move, I’m coming.” At least he had the decency to go the long way, through the door – Tsunami probably wouldn’t have liked it if shinobi had left scratches and footprints all over the frames of her windows by going through it carelessly. Anyway, if she had been a civilian, Hitomi was sure she would have been pissed about such a thing.

“Zabuza and Haku?” she asked when he entered the room.

“In the garden. Haku seems fond of Naruto and Sasuke, and Zabuza stands watch and glares at everyone. Don’t tell anyone, but I saw him pet Sunaarashi.”

“And she didn’t claw his hand raw? Surprising!” Hitomi snickered weakly.

“I heard that, Lady Summoner,” the she-cat remarked from outside.

Teacher and student shared a look then started to laugh. He approached and, carelessly leaning over the back of the sofa, gently messed with her hair. “You’re in for one more week of bedrest, maybe one or two days less if you don’t use too much chakra. Fortunately, this time you don’t have to transfuse your poor old sensei, hm?”

“No, but I do have a good excuse to read the next Icha Icha. Can I please have it?”

He obeyed with a sigh and she soon enough got the red book between her hands. She had come to really like the characters she had discovered in the first book. Without any actual reason, she had always thought in the Previous World that Jiraiya’s novels were a bit like the 50 Shades of that universe, but it wasn’t the case at all. The Sannin knew his craft. He had a real talent for character development and the emotional scenes he had written had, more than once, made her eyes shine with unshed tears.

“What’s gonna happen now, sensei?” she asked, resisting the urge to open the book and start reading immediately.

“This night, I’m going to the headquarter of Gatō Corp to dismantle the part overseeing the Land of Waves. It’s an A-ranked mission of its own, so no way I’m taking any of you kids with me. They’re gonna try to gather their assets and reinstall themselves in the area, but the Land of Fire will have more than enough time to place one of their men at the head of the company in the chaos that will ensue. The Land of Fire will still profit from marine activity, but its politic will be a lot softer on the people than Gatō’s and they’ll be allowed to live their lives in peace.”

“What about Haku and Zabuza?”

“Part of the loot I’m gonna get tonight will go to them for their role in the battle against the mercenaries. They decided to stay with us until Tazuna finishes the bridge, then we’ll go back to Konoha, and they… I guess they’re gonna go back to Kirigakure to try and stir up a new rebellion, now that they have the funds to do it properly.”

Hitomi needed time to digest all that. She didn’t dare go back in her Library yet, not since it was still adjusting to the presence of one more book in the forbidden section, but she was wondering how the future would be affected by all those changes from the canon. A spark of euphoria brushed against her mind – so it was possible to make things better, nothing was carved in stone, she was finally sure of it. How many other tragedies could she prevent? For a second, she felt almighty.

The following days were peaceful, especially for the wounded who took a well-deserved rest, read with all her might and slept enough for four. The meds Tsunami had procured her, paid with Kakashi’s money, made her sleepy and probably a bit loopy – Naruto and Sasuke had looked aghast when she had told her first smutty joke ever in front of them and she had been wheezing in laughter, almost falling of the couch in hilarity. She’d pay good money to see those faces again.

And then there were the other, darker moments, when Kakashi muffled her nightmares with a hand on her lips as she woke up jumping in fright, and listened to her retelling them in silence, not caring a bit about his own tiredness. In the morning, everything was brushed off by a cheerful sun pouring its light in the living-room that was temporarily her whole world; if forgetting wasn’t a possibility for her, she could at least keep her mind busy with sealwork.

She had just finished the seal she had been working on with Kakashi when Tsunami cleared her for training. The first thing she did was to run along the beach, with her cats like ducklings behind her, for hours on end, without any chakra to support her muscles, until she couldn’t even put a foot in front of the other. Then she had let the sea take her and floated until she felt ready to walk again, and then come back home, exhausted, happy and whole once more. People often forgot that physical exercise wasn’t only a necessity for ninjas, but an outlet as well.

Her first confrontation with Zabuza happened that very night. The deserter was standing watch in front of Tazuna’s house, titan-like and vaguely threatening – he probably couldn’t tune that down no matter how hard he tried. She stopped in front of his tall silhouette hidden in shadow, reassured by the presence of her cats behind her. They had all spent quite some time with the deserter while she was healing, and none of them had been harmed in any way.

“I wanted to tell you, girl… Nice fight, on the bridge.”

She froze, astonished, her eyes slightly wide. For a moment, she thought she hadn’t heard him right, because the Demon of the Hidden Mist wasn’t the kind to hand out compliments. He stared at her, almost challenging her to protest, his shadow wavering over her. She had to fight her instinctive desire to capture that shadow; she had learned her lesson with Kakashi, and Tsunami would gleefully behead her if she injured herself again. “Thank you, Zabuza-san,” she said with a small smile. “It was an honour to get to fight against you, and with you as well.”

He nodded, his eyes never leaving her, then extended a hand towards her. “Hand me your sword,” he grunted.

It was an order and Hitomi had learned the importance of obedience, so she did as he said without question. Her fingers wrapped around Ishi to Senrigan’s guard and she unsheathed the blade slowly, each inch of freed steel catching the weak light of the moon. She couldn’t suppress a small twinge of reluctance as she handed the tantō to Zabuza, staring at him as he studied it closely.

“Very good blade. Forged by the masters from the Land of Iron?”

“I don’t know. It’s a gift Sasuke gave me. It used to belong to a member of his clan.”

“Hm. And you can fill it with chakra. D’you know the trick?”

Hitomi shook her head, the few strands of hair escaped from her ponytail cheerfully following the movement.

“I’m gonna explain it to you, to thank you for the lesson you gave me on that bridge. I won’t neglect the people who look weaker than I am anymore, and you’ll be able to tear through your enemies with what you’re gonna learn. However, you train on your own, I’ve no fucking wish to become like your old sensei, dotting over brats. Deal?”

“Deal!” she beamed with something looking like frenzy in her eyes.

He raised the tantō so she could see it up close. The sun had set long ago, so only the moon was throwing its light over the edge, as perfectly sharp as it had been the first day, beautiful and deadly. A spark of chakra tasting like ocean floated in the air, and suddenly water surrounded the blade, compressed to an incredibly thin flow and rotating like a chainsaw along the edge – even though such tools didn’t exist in this world. It even had teeth, for fuck’s sake. Hitomi’s eyes went wide. Even without seeing it in an actual fight, she understood how much damage this could do to any target.

“See, girl, water is the hardest nature of chakra to infuse in a weapon. In Kiri, we even decided to go with creating legendary swords rather than teaching it to all our young, and yet many decided to learn, because it’s worth it. If you do this correctly, a simple brush against an opponent’s skin will tear away whole chunks of flesh.” He looked absolutely over the moon as he was telling her that, and Hitomi had to admit that she was in turn fascinated, her red eyes never leaving the blade of her sword. Since the memory of her first kill was locked out of reach, she wasn’t so appalled by violence anymore. If such barbarism was what it took to ensure peace and happiness for her loved ones… She wasn’t sure she would refuse to join in.

“First, you have to call upon your water chakra, gather it in your arm, then compress it far beyond the pressure real water could bear. The coat you cover your blade with can’t be any thicker than half a millimetre on each side, and even thinner than that along the edge. Basically, the thinner it is, the more it cuts, and the more damage you can cause. Mizukage the Second was able, according to the legend, to reduce the thickness of his bladecoat to a single molecule. For that, you have to compress the water chakra between two masses of pure chakra as hard as you can.”

Hitomi didn’t need to put his instructions into practice to know it would require a strength she didn’t possess yet. But, like everything that was part of the shinobi arts, she could work on it, and she would . She was sure she could master this skill if she put enough effort into it. After all, she was really good with control, precisions. What she lacked yet was the raw strength, a bridge between muscle, power and will that she didn’t know how to build and cross yet.

“Then,” Zabuza continued, “you have to add the rotation. Once your chakra coat is in place and as compressed as possible between your two masses of pure chakra, you have to give the coat rotation, and maintain it indefinitely. You have to find a trigger in your mind to make this automatic or the technique will be useless in battle. That way, you won’t even have to focus on it. Any question?”

After half a second of hesitation, Hitomi shook her head. Zabuza’s explanations were rough, abrupt, but clear. They made sense when one knew how chakra worked, when it became an additional limb, and that was a feeling the Nara shinobi were very familiar with, thanks to their Kekkei Genkai.

“Good. My debt to you is paid, then. Take back your sword and train.” He handed her her sword, dripping water on her hands by accident, then went inside the house, leaving her alone on the porch. At first, she simply tried to infuse water chakra in the sword. It was easy, no more complicated than activating a seal. A blob of water surrounded her blade, utterly useless. Before trying the next step, she practiced several kenjutsu katas to make sure the mass stayed in place without any additional effort. As long as she didn’t interrupt the flow of chakra, it worked like a charm.

When she started to compress, though, things got far more complicated. Creating neutral and water chakra at the same time wasn’t something that was done often by shinobi. In fact, she hadn’t ever tried, not even once. All her techniques required either one or the other, and that was it. There, she had to cut her focus in at least half, something she would need time to get accustomed to. She would be able to reduce the part of her mind dedicated to that task in particular until it became second nature, just like Zabuza said, but she would need time for it. Time, time… Time was always the matter – and the unavoidable toll to pay for knowledge and mastery.

She went inside the house after two long hours of repeated failures and tentative progress. She had started to get the compression thing, but couldn’t maintain it for more than two seconds before the water collapsed to her feet or returned to its original shape. She had persisted until she got pins and needles in her hand and decided not to push to pain. Harming herself wouldn’t help her get where she wanted quicker, but it did risk upsetting Sasuke and Naruto who hated seeing her in pain.

In the kitchen, Haku was busy doing the dishes. Without a word, Hitomi stepped next to him, grabbed a towel and started drying what he was washing. They exchanged a look then went back to their own task, a kind of quiet camaraderie floating unsaid between them. Sasuke had explained to her how the situation between the young deserter and his mentor was very tense. Hitomi hadn’t expected that problem to arise. How easy had it been to brush off that, in the canon, Zabuza’s epiphany about how precious Haku was to him had only happened after his student had died to save him! She had to fix this shit.

During the following days, she spent a lot of time with the boy, one year older than she was. He was incredibly kind and sweet, starving for affection and knowledge. Hitomi had loads of both and gave them to him without holding back. They had started the habit of going to lay down on the roof at night to watch the stars. The sky was usually clear in the Land of Waves these days – the warm season was growing near. During those astronomy sessions, they often discussed things they didn’t necessarily bring up with their respective teammates. Sometimes, Haku’s quiet presence and his warmth against Hitomi’s side made Hitomi think of halcyon days, when everything was simpler, easier.

The idea came to her one afternoon, while everyone was gathered on the beach. Tazuna and Tsunami had decided to throw a barbeque there, to Naruto’s utmost joy. Hitomi was happy too, but she longed for different parties, with her friends in Konoha, in her garden, under Kurenai’s supervision. After graduation, those gatherings had become rarer. They didn’t have so much time on their hands now, and not all at the same time. She still had to learn how to find home in herself, in her team, rather than in places and in people who couldn’t be with her most of the time. Ensui had assured her it would come. She believed him, of course. How could she not?

She watched Zabuza sparring with Kakashi, and wasn’t the only one doing so: not too far away, Haku stared at his mentor, his eyes filled with such loneliness and reservation it made her heart ache. The teenager’s dependence on his master wasn’t healthy, but it would get better, without a doubt, if the man learned to treat him like a person, with his strengths, weaknesses, and his own mind. Her face empty, Hitomi interrupted the spar between Sasuke and Naruto and attracted the latter in a hug. There, her mouth against his ear, she whispered a few words that made him blink in surprise then frown.

As soon as she let go of him, he walked to the other spar, yelling. “Oi, Zabuza! It’s more than time that you stop treating Haku like a weapon! He’s a person, too, and he loves you enough to put up with you behaving like a asshole, and you, you’re giving him nothin ’ in return!” As the others watched, dumbfounded, the young jinchūriki threw himself in the spar and grabbed the swordsman’s shirt with his little fists, all but screaming his mind nose to nose with him.

A wily, maybe quite proud smile slowly stretched Hitomi’s lips. Sasuke walked to her, as surprised as the others. “What did you tell him to get him to react this way?”

“This, my dear brother, is a secret I intend on keeping to myself. Just remember I can do this at will.” The look he threw her was made of pure fright, making her throw her head back and burst in a wild laugh, as beautiful and tempestuous as the sea. She rarely laughed like that, with such abandon, such delight, and this touch of cruel joy that made shivers run down people’s spine if they weren’t sure to be safe by her side. In that laugh, there was a hint of the redoubtable opponent she would one day become, when there would be power and strength in her to back up her endless plotting.

“You’re fucking terrifying.”

“I know, Sasuke, thank you. I call that the Peace, Love and Ramen Bowl technique.”

“A… fitting name. Thoroughly ridiculous, but fitting.”

“I know, right?”

During the following days, Hitomi was able to see her plan bear its fruits. The tension between Zabuza and Haku started to ease as their bonds became gradually more natural. One night, after they had gone up on the roof, the teenage boy hugged Hitomi for the first time, whispering thanks in a choked voice against her ear. His eyes shone with tears in the dark, but his beaming smile could have lit up the whole sky. “Zabuza-sama asked me to stay with him after training, today.”

The girl nodded: she had noticed the two deserters’ absence during dinner. They had only come home when she was doing the dishes after the meal, so she had silently heated up two plates of food for them then cleaned those as well when they’d been done rather than going back to her book like she wanted to.

“We… We talked a lot. He said he loved me dearly, even if he didn’t know how to show it, and he’d try better in the future. He even promised that, when things will get better in Kiri, he’s gonna officially adopt me.”

“That’s awesome news!” she tried exclaiming while keeping her voice down.

“Yeah,” the boy whispered in a trembling voice. His tears started running then. Hitomi couldn’t see them, but she felt them dampening the fabric of her kimono. Without a word, she wrapped her arms around the teenager and started cradling him gently. She understood how happiness could make him cry, understood that a page of his story was done and how going to the next one frightened him. Yes, she understood.

“You know, Haku, we should do something a bit crazy to celebrate,” she said after a few minutes.

He raised his head and met her eyes, surprised. “You have something in mind?”

“Actually, yes. Come with me!” As soon as the words left her mouth, she stood up and jumped off the roof, Haku just behind her. The boy in tow, she ran to one of the cliffs, not so far away, where she liked to go to write her letters since she was allowed to leave the house. The marine air eased the words she bore so close to her heart and helped her put them on paper. When they arrived, only the moon and stars watched them, their reflection dancing on the sea far below.

“I wanna jump,” Hitomi announced without any hesitation, “and I think you should jump with me.”

“Aren’t you afraid of getting injured? It’s quite the fall.”

“Pff, we’re ninjas, such a little dive won’t hurt! And where will I find cliffs like those in Konoha, anyway?” She let out a little giggle, raising her chin to look him in the eyes. “Tempted?”

She saw Haku think about it, weigh the pros and cons carefully. She waited, tuning down her own eagerness, because she knew that, in his shoes, she would have done the same. Finally, he nodded and started undressing, peeling off layer after layer of clothing until a simple piece of fabric shielded his modesty. Hitomi mimicked him, leaving her grey kimono, legging and steel fishnet in a little bundle at her feet, only satisfied when she was only wearing a thin sports bra and a pair of panties. They exchanged a look and started running towards the edge in silent concert.

It was glorious, an exaltation beyond words. Hitomi screamed her joy and freedom as she fell, the body perfectly prepared for impact. Said impact happened in a tremendous splash but without any pain, just like she had predicted, her chakra rushing to reinforce her limbs and protect them against her spark of folly. She went down, down, far below the surface, her laugh muffled by the sea making her swallow big gulps of salted water, and suddenly Haku’s firm, gentle hand grabbed her wrist.

With his free arm and legs, he made them go up again, and soon enough their heads broke through the surface. Raised in the Land of Water, he was probably a better swimmer than she could ever dream to be. Hitomi was still laughing when she started breathing air again; he laughed with her, his cheeks red and eyes gleaming with sheer pleasure. Then their laughs died out, their hold of each other turned into an embrace and they edged closer. Hitomi laid her head against his shoulders and took a deep breath, confident he would keep her above the surface.

For the first time since she had killed, a knot inside her eased.

They went home long after midnight, so soaked they had abandoned the idea of putting their clothes back on, even if they had indeed been back to the cliff to get their gear. Fortunately for the Yūhi girl, it was Zabuza on watch that night, not Kakashi; the swordsman only smirked when he saw them and sent them to bed with a firm nod towards the bedrooms. Not once had Haku let go of Hitomi’s hand since they had found each other in the sea, but he had to when he left her at the door of her room – being the only girl, she slept with Tsunami now that she was back in shape. The two teenagers stared at each other for a long time. Hitomi had to raise her head for that – Haku wasn’t so tall, but anyone except for children looked tall next to her.

“Thanks for tonight, Hitomi-chan. I’ll miss you dearly when it’s time for us to go our separate ways.”

“Oh, Haku,” she whispered with a smile. “I don’t think your ways will be as separate as you think.” With those words, she tiptoed to his level and kissed him, chaste and gentle, just a brush of her lips against his, before disappearing to the other side of the door. After a moment spent frozen in amazement, she went to lie down on her futon, her heart racing so loud it was a wonder Tsunami didn’t hear it.

Chapter 46: The Path To Fire

Soon, too soon, Tazuna was done building his bridge, and the two teams, Kirijin nukenin and loyal Konohajin, stood side by side on its stones despite the differences that should have pitted them against each other. The bridge had been named in Naruto’s honour: Hitomi had heard that, before joining them in battle, he had gone door to door in the city to give the people their courage back, in a way only Naruto could. They hadn’t forgotten and didn’t want to forget it.

The Land of Fire’s representative who had just taken the lead of what had once been Gatō’s company had arrived three days prior, escorted by a Chūnin team Hitomi didn’t know. He had a redoubtable kind of cleverness in his eyes and, when they had been introduced, he had told her he knew her uncle quite well. She would have to ask Shikaku if she wanted to learn more about him, which she did, just in case. She knew she’d have to swim in political waters if she wanted to destroy Danzō completely, if she wanted his fall out of grace to be unquestionable and unquestioned.

She never quite lost sight of that goal.

Haku and Hitomi had decided to keep what had started to grow between them secret. It looked like a relationship, but they hadn’t dared name it that. Hitomi wasn’t emotionally ready to love someone fully and she knew it. She loved, yes, Haku’s kisses and his surprisingly strong hands on her hips, the sweet smell of his hair, the tender music of his voice when he whispered her name in a sigh brushed against his lips like her fingers would. But this was nothing like loving him the way she wanted to, the way she was reading about in novels. She couldn’t, not so close to her break-up with Hinata, not when she was due to go back to the Land of Fire, where he couldn’t follow.

So they settled for seeing each other in secret, holding hands when they watched the stars on the roof, often after a midnight dip under the moon and stars’ benevolent watch. Kakashi suspected something: one morning, he had caught a strand of Hitomi’s hair and taken a good whiff of hit, before watching her with a false severity in his eyes. However, he hadn’t said anything, and she preferred for things to stay this way – for her link with Haku to stay theirs, and theirs alone.

He was there, of course, standing on the bridge next to his master. Just like Team Seven, the duo had decided it was time to go back home – if there was even a home for them. They had received funding, probably from Jiraiya, to launch a new coup against the Mizukage in place and bring someone else to power. Had the Hozuki brothers fallen into Orochimaru’s hands yet or did they have time to join the rebellion? Kisame, Hitomi knew, had turned rogue years ago, several months before Itachi. The adults hadn’t wanted to talk about it in front of their children, but Shikamaru was a master eavesdropper and had heard his father discuss the matter with his former teammates. The Seven Swordsmen of the Mist were no more.

Sasuke’s farewell to the two deserters was quiet but warm; he didn’t quite know how to tell people he was going to miss them, or that he was going to worry about them. As for Naruto, he didn’t have that problem and hugged Zabuza with all his might – the swordsman looked like he needed rescuing, but Hitomi and Kakashi were too busy snickering to help him.

“Hitomi-san?”

A faint blush on her cheeks, the teenage girl turned to Haku. She walked to him – he had stepped away from Zabuza and Naruto’s effusive farewell with a grace that only he possessed – and stopped at a polite distance from him. Now that they were leaving, appearances didn’t matter that much anymore, but it was hard to change a habit. “I’m gonna miss you, Haku,” she said with a sad smile. “But, first, I have a gift for you.”

He looked at her curiously as she unrolled a tiny storage seal, not larger than her little finger. She had worked hard on the compressions as Kakashi tried, without knowing the proper vocabulary, to explain how they added up to what she had already mastered. A spark of chakra and one of her communication notebooks appeared between her hands. For him, she had picked one with a dark blue cover, his name engraved on the spine in silver-foiled kanjis. She had had a hard time finding a craftswoman willing to do that work on such little notice, but a heavy purse of ryōs had been enough.

“What is it?” the teenage boy asked.

“It’s a way to stay in touch. I left you a letter inside to explain how it works. I’ll write so I can tell you what’s happening in Konoha and, if you want, I’d like for you to write back.”

The boy was clearly dumbfounded by such a gift. The last Seal Masters had disappeared very long ago from Kirigakure and, unless a miracle happened, the art was forever lost to the village. Even an ally village wouldn’t offer its own Masters, if it even had some, to an entity that could one day become an enemy once more. Nothing could compensate for such a risk. He shook off the surprise and smile, his brown eyes softening as he stared at the girl he liked so much. “Thank you, Hitomi-san. I’ll take great care of it.”

She nodded in approval and watched as he put the notebook in one of his pockets then fidgeted, for once unable to keep his nerves in check.

“I-I have a gift for you as well,” he finally said. From his other pocket, he took a little pendant on a steel chain. The pendant itself was a delicate-looking flower in whitened silver, with a transparent jewel in its centre. Hitomi had never received a piece of jewellery before in her life. She couldn’t help but blush when Haku walked the polite distance she had left between them, so close she wanted to kiss him. “My clan once lived at the base of a mountain that was renowned for its chakra stones. I got a little reserve of those, just in case Zabuza-sama or I need money urgently. Those stones absorb chakra, no matter its nature, and preserve it for later use. They can’t store much, however. I’m not sure you could use it in battle.”

“I won’t want to use it in battle, silly,” she said tenderly, trying to overcome her astonishment. Those stones had to be very rare for her to never have heard of them. “If your chakra is inside this stone, it’ll be like you’re never too far away from me.”

He made her turn with a small touch of his hand. She had to suppress a shiver when she felt his fingers brush against her neck, his breath caressing her cheek. A moment later, the silver flower and its chakra stone rested against her skin, catching the sun’s light delicately. Haku’s fingers lingered on the nape of her neck as she turned back to him and, suddenly, as if he had decided something, he pulled her in an embrace.

The kiss he gave her was nothing like the ones they had exchanged until then. This one tasted like farewell, tenderness, hope, and the smell of Haku’s hair as a few strands escaped his bun and rolled on gentle waves along his cheeks. When Hitomi parted her lips to give him access to her mouth for the first time, he let out a hoarse moan and that sound intoxicated her with power. When they separated, they were both breathless, their cheeks red and eyes gleaming. Behind the young Yūhi, Kakashi was firmly gagging Naruto, his infamous eye-smile flashing.

Their hands brushed against each other for the last time, then Hitomi forced herself to turn away from him. Haku and Zabuza would go by the sea to Kirigakure – the swordsman would have probably been able to make a boat obey him in his sleep with that uncanny mastery of water jutsu of his – but Team Seven couldn’t afford such a luxury. The representative from the Land of Fire had ordered them to go back by the bridge: this symbol would be very strong for the people they had contributed to save by killing Gatō. Hitomi just selfishly wished she could spend a little more time with Haku.

“Don’t look back,” Kakashi ordered gently as she stepped next to him. “You have to appear strong and proud. Don’t forget how important symbols are.”

She obeyed him, her heartache soothed by his quiet, assured voice. She fought her desire to look back, to see even one last glimpse of long black hair or dark teal fabric, focusing on one point on the horizon instead. In the Land of Waves, she left the delicate shadow of a burgeoning romance, around a litter of blood and the memory of an exalted jump off a cliff. Her adopted brothers, by her side, gave her the strength to say goodbye, to renounce without bitterness nor distress what had defined her life on those beaches.

For a long time, the quartet stayed silent. They didn’t feel the need to fill the void with words, which, considering Naruto was amongst them, betrayed a particular, shared mood. They had all left some piece of themselves behind. Hitomi worried it would be this way each time they went on any mission outside the village, at least for her blonde brother. He was so quick to create friendships everywhere he went, and at least out of Konoha no one knew he was a jinchūriki. Without that stigma, he was just an adorable bundle of joy. Alas so easy to hurt.

“I’m sure we’ll see them again,” she said after a while.

“You can’t wait to see Haku again, can you?”

Hitomi couldn’t help but blush. She knew she couldn’t deny it, not after the show she had put on for her teammates with the boy. “I wouldn’t have anything against it. At least I can keep in touch with him through the notebooks.”

Silence came back then, for a long time. Naruto was the one to break it, by asking Hitomi about a flower he thought was pretty. Hitomi answered his question, Sasuke added something she didn’t know about and Kakashi confirmed. It happened several times: they were now free of a client to protect, which allowed her to share her knowledge about the Land of Fire without a risk of distracting the boys from their task.

Night found them at the border of a lake. They took some time to reaffirm the team dynamic they had carefully built through training and previous missions, now that they were on their own again. Quickly enough Sasuke got them two rabbits and Kakashi joined in with a pheasant he taught them how to prepare. Hitomi added that knowledge to her Library, a shudder running down her spine. She hadn’t spent any more time than necessary in her mental sanctuary since her first murder, but she missed it dearly. She had to trust herself; her mind wouldn’t betray her again and, even if it happened, she knew how to handle it now. She had grown, she had learned.

She took the first watch that night and no one disputed her claim this time. Sitting next to the fire, she created a shadow clone that kept its eyes open and took her notebook out of her pocket. She wanted to write – she knew which one of her pen pals would read her letters no matter how late the hour was.

Dear Gaara,

We’re heading home. I told you about our mission when I had time to write, but there are things I didn’t put in my previous letters. I didn’t feel ready then, but I think I do now. Remember Haku, the youngest deserter of that team we fought against then bonded with? We spent a lot of time together during the last days of my stay in the Land of Waves. I really like him and I think he likes me back. We even kissed a lot.

Despite that, despite how cute and gentle and easy to talk to he is, I don’t feel really open to the possibility of another romance, and especially not a long-distance one. I don’t even know when I’ll see him again. He understood, as you may have guessed, and didn’t try to force me or even to convince me. He just kissed me harder when it was time to say goodbye.

I don’t think I have a right to be sad, because I made this separation happen, but my intellect doesn’t seem able to make my feelings bend. I can’t stop touching the necklace he gave me, just to feel the chakra he left for me there. I really wanted to allow myself to fall in love with him; it’s like something could have happened but didn’t, and I’m left to wonder. I know you’re even less experienced in relationships, but would you have any advice to give me?

Kisses,

Hitomi.

After sending her letter, she stood up and walked around the fire to stretch her legs. She was hungry again, so she snacked on some leftovers while lost in thoughts before going to see her clone, who confirmed with a nod that everything was alright. She should have been tired after such a day of traveling, but her heart was beating fast and her mind was alert, no matter what she tried to appease it. When she sat back next to the fire, her notebook got cold between her hands.

Dear Hitomi,

I can’t tell you I understand what you’re going through, but Temari is standing over my shoulder and she told me to repeat this to you: in Suna, and probably in Konohagakure as well, shinobi live their love stories as if tomorrow didn’t exist. They decide with their hearts rather than their brains, because they know death is never very far and don’t want to have any regrets when the time comes. I have to say I agree with this vision. It’s too late to go get this Haku but, if you meet again, you should make sure you don’t have any regrets.

I can’t wait to see you again.

Love,

Gaara.

No matter how concise this letter was, it gave Hitomi a lot to think about. The morality she had followed so far on the subject of love and relationships belonged to the Previous World, even if she hadn’t ever experienced them there. She had wished for someone to love until the end and hadn’t had any interest whatsoever for temporary arrangements.

But this world was different, so different from the one she had lived a whole and yet short life in. She couldn’t bring herself to see her few days with Haku as bad or even futile. Their stolen moments mattered to her, as if she had loved, even though she knew it wasn’t quite the case. She had liked being in his arms, having his lips on hers, and she knew that, if they had both been older, they wouldn’t have stopped at kissing. Could she forget the morality that had guided her, admit that the principles she had followed so far weren’t coherent with the world that was now hers, and could she find new, better fitting ones? Was she capable of that form of forgetfulness? She hoped so. It would make her life easier.

A faint smile on her lips, she stared into the night. The kind of agitation that had hunted her since her feet had left the Land of Waves wasn’t totally at peace yet, but progress had been made, she couldn’t deny it. She could now sit still, her eyes lost in darkness quietly tracking any disturbance without finding any. When Naruto took her place next to the fire and she closed her eyes under her blanket, sleep found her easily.

Going back home was far quicker than going to the Land of Waves had been, now that no civilian slowed them down. In merely two days, Team Seven had covered almost all the distance separating them from Konoha, and Naruto was starting to show serious signs of impatience to the idea of seeing his friends again. Hitomi had heard that he had become friends with Hiruzen’s grandson, Konohamaru, and that the kid was developing, towards his self-assigned mentor, feelings of rivalry and admiration. The whole thing was putting a smile on the lips of any tough and experienced Jōnin who saw them interact and plan pranks.

In the morning of the third day, Team Seven finally walked through Konoha’s gates. Izumo and Kotetsu were standing watch in the post that had almost become their second home. Their faces lightened up when they saw Kakashi, who greeted them with a nod. The three Genin learned to file the appropriate paperwork for the end of an out-of-village mission, Kakashi patiently guiding them through the process. Hitomi didn’t have much trouble with it: no matter the subject, paperwork was paperwork, it worked all the same. Once they had signed and completed all the necessary documents, they were free to go. Despite that, Kakashi held the young Yūhi back with a hand on her arm, stopping her from following Naruto and Sasuke right away. “I’ll come and get you at 4PM for my session, you’ll take my spot today and then make your own appointments if you like her. Be at home at that time, I don’t want to have to hunt you down through the village.”

She nodded and only then did he let her go, watching her walk away until she disappeared in the flow of civilians who were roaming the streets, busy with their own problems. He was relieved that things had mostly gone well during this mission, even if the lack of information about the politics in the Land of Waves had almost cost them their lives. He would have to dig up some dirt on that. It wasn’t normal for shinobi to be put in such situations for a lack of information – they provided the intel, for fuck’s sake! No, Kakashi was afraid it had been done on purpose, and in that case… In that case, he could only hope to be a match for the threat.

Without even needing to think, Hitomi took the path towards training ground number six. She knew that, at this time, she would find her mother and Team Eight, immersed in their morning training session. Kurenai believed in the importance of a healthy routine for her students, and even more so when they weren’t working on a mission – Hitomi missed her dearly. Yet, when she arrived at the training ground and saw the four silhouettes of her mother and peers, she didn’t go to them, content enough with sitting against the fence and watching them.

Shino and Kiba seemed to have teamed up against Hinata. Hitomi knew that, in the canon, the mere idea of fighting them both would have paralysed the girl with fright, but even from where she was sitting, Hitomi could see the determined crease between her eyebrows and the power in her stance. She got Kiba in the sternum with the Gentle Fist, eased her shoulders to dodge an attack from Shino and took advantage of his momentum to make him trip. The rhythm of her movements looked perfect; the fact that Hinata didn’t rush to her teammates’ side apologising was another sign of her immense progress since their first year at the Academy.

She had only been gone for a month and yet everything seemed changed, her former girlfriend as well as the pain she had expected to feel upon seeing her. The feeling was still there, but numb, more melancholia than real sadness. Maybe the mission in the Land of Waves had happened at the perfect time, after all. Without looking away from the fight that was starting again, she took one of her notebooks and started throwing ideas for a seal on the paper.

“Like what you see?”

Hitomi looked up with a jump, her left hand ready to unsheathe her sword, then relaxed. It was only her mother, staring at her with obvious amusement. The young Yūhi had known, of course, that she couldn’t go under the radar, not with a Jōnin to stand watch. It was her fault, for letting her guard down. “I missed you, Mom,” she said with a smile.

“I missed you too, sweetheart. How was the mission?”

“Hard. The intel we had was completely wrong and we ended up fighting ninjas several times. I think the whole mission will be upgraded to A-rank.”

“Oh, fuck! And you and your brothers are fine?”

“Yeah, we were lucky. I was injured twice and the boys got a few scratches and bumps, but we had time to heal.”

“I’d like to know more. Report to me, please.”

Since she wasn’t in the habit of disobeying her mother, Hitomi did report to her. She started telling her about the Demon Brothers, and how Hoshihi had killed one of them without hesitation, then she talked about the first fight against Zabuza, and then the second one. She told her about Haku, too, blushing and hesitating all the while. Kurenai’s eyes on her were gentle and understanding the whole time. When she was done, the woman wrapped an arm around her shoulders tenderly.

“I see… I’m relieved to hear that nothing too serious happened. I took Team Eight on two C-ranked missions, true ones, while you were gone. We didn’t have any problem, but perhaps it was because we didn’t leave the Land of Fire.”

“Hinata has made a lot of progress. The others too.”

“I know, right? They’ll be awesome ninjas when I’m done with them, it already shows. I’m particularly proud of Hinata. I thought your break-up and the circumstances surrounding it would break all her confidence, but it was the opposite.”

“It’s the best thing I could wish for her.”

On those words, mother and daughter went to meet up with the Genin of Team Eight, who were enjoying a well-deserved break from their unending spars. Akamaru yipped happily when he smelled her, attracting the three ninjas’ attention on her. She smiled and waved at them, suddenly intimidated. Why did she feel so shy out of nowhere? She couldn’t think about it further: Kiba was hugging the living hell out of her, strong enough after a month apart to pick her up and make her yelp in surprise when her feet left the ground. The sound was so piercing it made poor Kiba whine as the others laughed. At least, it made the damned boy release her.

“Hum, welcome back, Hitomi. Do you feel good?”

The girl answered Hinata with a grin and a nod. She wasn’t even lying, not really: with her family and friends, safe behind Konoha’s walls, she could pretend to forget what was to happen in the days and weeks to come and, for once, she felt really at peace.

Chapter 47: Healing For The Soul

Apparently, there were engagements Kakashi didn’t dare being late for. Was he afraid she would run if he didn’t show up at the exact time? Sure, she was nervous, but she knew how to ignore or overcome that feeling, depending on the situation. The way she preferred was simply to keep busy, in a pertinent way if possible. She had discovered, when she had gone home as Team Eight had to go fulfil another mission, that Shikamaru had left a note on her desk. There, he had regularly noted the stocks of seals and gear for his own team as well as Hinata’s, thus telling her what she needed to craft for them. After taking the time to put order in her own gear, she had gotten to work, and Kakashi found her in the middle of it.

“Are you ready?” the teacher asked in a surprisingly gentle tone.

The question took Hitomi by surprise. She didn’t answer for a few seconds, staring at him silently. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn’t any louder than a whisper. “I’m not sure.”

“You’ll be when you get there, Hitomi-chan, trust me.” He watched as she put on her shoes, easily noticing the tremors going through her fingers stained with ink, as well as the way her knuckles went white when she tightened them too much on her tantō’s guard. “Come on, follow me.”

No one really noticed them in the streets, with the exception of a Chūnin who greeted Kakashi and stopped to exchange a few words with him as Hitomi waited politely, a few steps away. It didn’t stop her from hearing every word they said; she smiled, almost tenderly, when she understood her teacher was firmly rejecting the other man. No, he didn’t want to go get a drink to catch up, not now nor in the future, and he was busy, so… “You’re more popular than I would have thought, sensei.”

“What’s making you say that?”

“Well, I’m old enough to understand that man was hitting on you, sensei, and it didn’t seem to be the first time.”

Kakashi answered her words with a low chuckle, his right hand patting her gently on the head. He usually kept that gesture for Naruto, or, more rarely, for Sasuke. They were, in their team, the most susceptible to say something surprising to their sensei. Hitomi was in no way predictable, but she didn’t pry where she didn’t belong, and her sensei’s personal life was something she usually stayed away from. “Happened a few times since I became a sensei. Maybe they like the responsible ones? Who knows, thanks to you, I could perhaps find myself a nice ninja to take care of me!”

“Sensei!” she shrieked, blushing furiously. She wasn’t exactly embarrassed by what he had just said, it was more the fact that Kakashi was telling her that, he who was so reserved he didn’t even show his face. Her cheeks burning, she looked away, staring at her feet like they could take her far away from him.

“And that, my sweet Hitomi-chan, is a lesson you’d do well to remember: you don’t toy with someone that can toy right back with you if you’re not certain you can get the better of them.”

With a false huff of anger and a pout, the teenage girl picked up the pace, trying to put some distance between them. He didn’t let her, of course, with those stupidly long legs of his. She couldn’t even run, because he would have started running too. Or he would have used the Shunshin to appear just in front of her and put dead leaves in her hair, perhaps. She never knew, with him.

“Come this way. And stop pouting, or Fukuda-sensei will think I’m being mean to you.”

“Fukuda-sensei?”

“My therapist. Didn’t I tell you her name? Hm, weird.”

Hitomi shrugged but didn’t answer. They both knew that, if he had told her, she wouldn’t have been able to forget. They stayed silent until they arrived at a little house with a cute porch painted in spring green and invaded by so many flowers Hitomi thought, for a moment, that she was in front of a Yamanaka shop. Kakashi held the door as she stepped inside, then went to the secretary to explain the appointment was under his name but he wanted his student to take it, and wanted a new one for himself as well. Hitomi was surprised by how casual the whole affair was but, after all, someone who worked with ninjas had to be quite flexible with schedule and appointments.

“I’m gonna leave you here, Hitomi-chan. When the lady calls your name, you go through that door and you explain to Fukuda-sensei that I’m sending you here. You’ll see, I’m sure it’s gonna help you.”

Her expression serious, the girl nodded and let him go. Suddenly, she felt nervous, thrown off-balance. She had learned more meditation exercises than she could count to enhance her chakra control, but none seemed to work now, as she tried to regain her internal balance. After a few minutes, she decided to give up and open a book. She hoped Jiraiya would finish his third novel sooner than in the canon: his stories always helped her relax. Since she couldn’t read more from him right now, she settled for the poetry collection she had taken in one of her seals.

“Yūhi-san? It’s your turn.”

Her nervousness came back with a vengeance, unsettling and vicious, but she pushed it back like she’d just slammed the door in its face. She didn’t want to play mind games with herself right now. She put her book away in one of her seals and walked the short distance between her chair and the door with the impression that she’d never manage to reach it. She put on a trembling smile for the secretary and walked through the entrance of the office.

The afternoon light poured inside the office. There was a walnut wood desk in the centre of the room, so clean and neat it could have been an exposition model in a shop front. In the pool of light were two shapeless poufs and a big sofa. Oh, to be a cat and lie there without a care for the rest of the world… A dark-haired woman in her thirties was sitting at the desk. When the woman looked up, Hitomi saw black eyes behind her red eyeglasses and a kind smile of her soft features.

“I’m sure I had an appointment with Hatake-san and he wouldn’t be foolish enough to use a transformation jutsu again in this office. Who are you?”

“One of his students. We had problems during our last mission, and I was… I was more affected than my two teammates. He said you’d be able to help me.” She could barely whisper the last sentence, with all the uncertainty Hitomi never dared to show. She lowered her head, anxious and ashamed at the same time.

“I see. Very well, come in and close the door. You can sit wherever you’d like.”

Hitomi obeyed, choosing one of the poufs to sit. She had almost tender memories of the Previous World, of the hours spent reading sprawled on a similar thing, sometimes until she fell asleep in a position that wasn’t exactly comfortable.

“Okay, young lady. Before I ask you to introduce yourself, I’m going to start, if it’s okay with you.” When Hitomi nodded, the woman continued. “I’m Fukuda Aemi. I’m from a family of doctors, but I decided to learn psychology rather than medicine. I’m bound by professional confidentiality, of course, but since we’re in a Hidden Village, my oath goes further than that.” Slowly, the woman rolled up her sleeves, exposing seals around her wrists that Hitomi recognised immediately. “I have one on my tongue, too. They stop me from repeating what my patients tell me, even by accident or under torture, in writing or speech. You’re safe here. What you’re going to tell me is not going to leave this office.”

Hitomi nodded but didn’t speak right away. She knew those seals could be broken. There was always a way. A determined enemy could also put listening devices in this office, there were so many possible hiding spots for a tiny bug… No, she couldn’t tell her about everything . But maybe she could tell her enough to feel better afterwards. “I’m Yūhi Hitomi. I’ve been a Genin for two months and, a little over a month ago, my sensei was ordered to bring me along during a B-ranked mission, so I could watch. I think everything started to go wrong that night.”

For more than an hour, the woman and teenager talked. It was a dialogue, really. The therapist didn’t just ask questions or guide her in a specific direction, she spoke about herself too, in discreet little touches that helped Hitomi relax and open her heart. She spoke about her first kill, but not only that. With shy, hesitating words, she confided in the woman about her relationship with Hinata, and then about her brief fling with Haku in the Land of Waves. When the session was over, there were traces of tears on her cheeks, but the weariness washing over her was healthy, healthier than she would have thought, as if she could just fall asleep and in the morning all her problems would have disappeared.

“It’s time to go, Hitomi-chan. So, do you want to see me again?”

She nodded without the slightest hesitation. She finally understood what Kakashi had tried to explain to her, and knew she needed this in her life if she wanted to stay stable enough to take the punches the future had in stock for her. She dried her cheeks with a firm hand and left the pouf she had sat on until then.

“Very well. In that case, you can come back next week, same time. Would it be okay with you?”

“Yes, sensei. Thanks a lot.”

“Thank you for your trust. Take care of yourself until next week, alright?”

Still quite emotionally fragile, Hitomi left the house. The sounds and colours seemed slightly dulled to her, as if someone had put a filter over her senses. It was almost soothing. She took a few unsure steps, breathed in, then jumped on the roof of a shop. After all, she was allowed to travel above the ground, now. A few blocks away, she saw Morino Ibiki, walking towards the Torture and Intelligence building. Wasn’t he done with work already? She knew he could tell she had cried, but she still waved to him. He replied with one of his weirdly cute smiles, so surprising on his scarred face, then continued walking without looking back. Hitomi decided it was the best thing to do and acted the same.

Sasuke was cooking when she arrived home. He greeted her with a nod and she did the same before heading to the office, where she could feel her mother’s chakra. This time, she was alone, and Hitomi thanked the kami for this little blessing. She knocked and, when she got an answer, entered the room. Kurenai was sitting at her desk, bending over some paperwork, probably for her team, and fidgeting with a pen.

“Hitomi? Is everything alright, sweetheart?”

“Uh… Not really. But I’m working on it. Kakashi-sensei took me to see his therapist and… I mean, I’d like to continue seeing her until I get a bit better. C-can I?”

“Sweetheart, you’re practically an adult in the eyes of the village. You know you don’t need my permission.”

“Yeah, I know, but… I dunno. I just wanted your approval.”

“You have it. Of course you have it. Everything that can help you heal is a blessing to me.”

A relieved smile appeared on Hitomi’s lips; her mother smiled back with that tenderness only she could show. She gestured for her to approach and, when her daughter obeyed, she wrapped an arm around her thin waist.

“I really missed you. How are your wounds?”

“I’m probably gonna have a scar where Tsunami stitched me up. The Land of Waves doesn’t have any medic nin so I was lucky she had medical skills, even civilian ones.”

“Can I see the scar?”

Hitomi untied her obi without hesitation and folded it carefully before putting it on the desk. She did the same with her steel fishnet shirt, keeping only her sports bra. She didn’t need to take it off for the scar to be visible, from her right shoulder then down in diagonal to her left hip. The thick skin was already turning white, the places where the stitches had been easy to spot. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but scars rarely were, and ninjas weren’t supposed to be vain.

“Looks like it hurt a lot,” Kurenai whispered as she brushed her finger against her shoulder.

“Right then, not really. Adrenalin was pumping through my body, and I was focused on my plan. Smelling my blood made the cats furious, stronger and… maybe it allowed us to win. If it was the price to pay, I think I can accept it.”

“Oh, sweetheart… You’re far too young to think that way. Sometimes, I forget you take after your dad too… Take care of yourself when you’re on a mission. If you’re wounded, your teammates will be upset, and they could make a mistake that could be deadly to them because of it. You’re as important as they are to your team. Do you understand?”

“I… Yeah, I think I do.”

“I will only be at peace when you’re sure you understand, but you still have time for that. You should go take a shower before dinner, if you don’t want Sasuke to take all the hot water. See you downstairs?”

Hitomi nodded and, after kissing her mother’s cheek, left the room. She put her latest advice to practice, locking herself in the bathroom for some time alone, and understood that Kurenai had been right once more. When her hair was clean and smelled of the flowery shampoo she only used when she didn’t plan on leaving the village, when her skin was damp and warmed up by the shower, when her crimes and worries had all washed down the drain, she felt lighter, softer.

Hitomi had learned in the Academy that shinobi who left for missions longer than three days were granted a certain number of holidays directly after the end of the mission. Outside of wartime, they were even forced to take those holidays, because an exhausted shinobi would be useless for his village. It was when weariness reached the body and mind, when it impregnated every movement, every thought, that a ninja made mistakes that could mean death. When war happened, of course, villages couldn’t afford such a luxury, but why go without when they had a choice?

After their month-long mission, Team Seven had to take four days off work; they couldn’t go to the Mission Attribution Bureau without getting chased away by one of the paperwork Chūnin working there – and terrifying people with their nervous tics when someone handed them messy papers. Even Kakashi didn’t dare challenge them, but Hitomi supposed that, as a member of the ANBU, he could still go to the ANBU Commander to keep busy.

However, he didn’t have that option anymore, not with a Genin team to supervise. Every morning or afternoon, the team met on training ground number three and practiced old or new skills depending on what the teacher had in mind. Ensui, upon hearing about their return through the communicating notebook Hitomi had given him, went with them when his other obligations with Shikaku allowed him some free time, and was often very insightful to both teacher and students.

Hitomi continued working on her water jutsus. She was now very good with her whip and had started working on the Shield, the variant of that technique that could deflect most projectiles effortlessly. In parallel, she was still trying to bend the chakra blade to her will, dutifully following Zabuza’s instructions. She had finally understood how to create both neutral and water chakra at the same time, but she was still working on making it an reflex.

Naruto and Sasuke had decided to focus on taijutsu. It was a field Naruto excelled in when he put his head to it: he had incredible strength and stamina, and his speed only needed a little work. As for Sasuke, he was taking advantage of his own speed, Sharingan activated to try to overcome his limits. Such an incredible eye was useless if he couldn’t exploit it fully. Most times, Ensui was working with Naruto, and Kakashi with Sasuke. It was an obvious and easy way to organise their training. Sometimes, however, to throw the students off-balance, the two men switched places.

Hitomi hated the twinge of jealousy she felt some days when she saw her brothers receiving Ensui’s attention. She was his apprentice, their pact still held and hadn’t ended when she had become a Genin. She didn’t doubt that, not at all. She would have just liked to spend time alone with him, like they had during their trip. However, she never voiced those feelings, because she knew it wasn’t right. Neither Naruto nor Sasuke had gotten the total focus of an adult on them before Kurenai had adopted them into the family. They were craving it, she could see it, even if the young Uchiha hid it better than their blonde brother. She didn’t have any right to envy them, she who had been loved unconditionally for as long as she could remember.

And, without her needing to ask, Ensui came back to her. It happened after a training session that had been maybe a tad too intense: Sasuke and Hitomi had sparred, less careful than usual. He hit harder, hard enough to cause bruises where he had managed to hit her, but she was more vicious as well, and the water of her whip had made his wrist bleed. They both had to go to the hospital to make sure that the damage was as superficial as it looked to be. Kakashi had taken Sasuke, but Ensui decided to ensure Hitomi went there himself, an arm around her shoulders.

He was still far taller than she was, and his smell was exactly as she remembered. As discreetly as she could, she turned her head and breathed in deeply, even closing her eyes with an expression that looked like melancholia. She quickly redirected her attention to the road in front of them before she could trip and make a fool of herself, but it was too late: Ensui hadn’t missed anything of the emotions swirling inside her mind.

“I miss it too, Hitomi. You have no idea how much I miss it. My life was far easier when I only had you and the road in front of us to keep me company. But I don’t regret coming home with you. Do you?”

“No, I don’t either,” she said with the faintest hint of hesitation.

Soon enough, they arrived at the hospital. The whole second floor was dedicated to short term healing for shinobi, and the third housed the ones who needed more attention than a quick fix-up. With a smile that was perhaps a bit charming, Ensui walked to the counter and asked the receptionist if she could direct them towards an examination room and send a doctor there for Hitomi. His charm didn’t work on the woman, but she still did as she was asked.

“Sakura?” she called out in surprise when her childhood friend stepped in in her hospital uniform, her pink hair cut at shoulder-length. She looked sure of herself and her own skills, totally at ease in that environment; her whole face lighted up when she smiled.

“Hitomi! I’m so happy to see you. I heard you had returned from your mission in the Land of Waves a few days ago but I didn’t want to come and be in the way of your training. How are the boys?”

“They’re okay. It was hard, sometimes, during the mission, but we all came home in one piece.”

“That’s the important thing! So, why are you here?”

“I sparred with Sasuke and he didn’t exactly go easy on me. Ensui-shishou is worried I could have more than bruises, especially to my ribs – I was injured there during our mission.”

“I see. Nara-san, could you please step outside so I can examine Hitomi?”

The Jōnin nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. Hitomi didn’t doubt for a moment that he was on full alert and eavesdropping, even if he couldn’t see them. She couldn’t swear it, but she would have done exactly that in his place, using her meridians to make sure everything was alright on the other side of the door. They were often very much alike, even now that they didn’t spend as much time together. Slowly, the girl untied her kimono then took off her steel fishnet. Sakura stayed impassive even as she stared at her scar and torso covered in bruises, but a crease finally appeared between her eyebrows, a sign that she did worry.

“It looks very painful… I’ll take care of it, alright?”

“Thank you. Sasuke doesn’t go easy on me, but it motivates me to dodge, at least, and I didn’t exactly let him use me as a punching bag. I think we’re getting stronger, and Naruto as well, of course.”

“It means your training regime works. Say, I was wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know how to draw a weight seal?”

“Depends. What do you have in mind, exactly?”

“I’d like a seal that adds weight on my limbs and back, to build up muscle faster. Once I’m officially a doctor, I’d like to apply for the medic nin training course. The entrance examination doesn’t only test our medical knowledge but our physical skills as well. The Academy is far behind me and it’s gotten hard to train since I’m not part of a team or anything like that.”

Hitomi didn’t answer right away, rubbing her hands together as if to help her think. “I’d have several tests to run before giving you anything but, yes, I think I can. Can you come to my place tomorrow? I’ll give you what I have then, if it works.”

“It would be awesome, thanks! Okay, let me heal those bruises now. You’ll be as good as new in a sec, I promise.”

With a little hum of approval, Hitomi laid down on the examination table and let her friend tend to her wounds. The medical chakra, fresh and sweet, kind of reminded her of the taste and smell of mint. When Sakura was done, Hitomi felt as clean as after a long shower, her relaxed muscles rolling effortlessly under her skin.

“Avoid coming here every day, alright? I like having you around, but medical ninjutsu loses in efficiency when used too often in a short period of time on the same body part. You have to dodge in priority, and only if it’s not possible you can think about parrying and taking the hits coming towards you. Got it?”

“Easier said than done when it’s Sasuke, Naruto, or even worse both of them trying to hit you, trust me! But I’ll do my best, I can promise this. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow. Thanks again, Hitomi!”

Ensui was waiting for her outside, pacing like a caged lion. She smiled when he looked at her and didn’t wait for him to move before she started walking out, forcing him to catch up to her. “How did it go?” he asked, trying to hide his worry. Unfortunately, the crease between his eyebrows betrayed him, as clear as day.

“You already know how it went, shishou. And since what Sakura asked me to research and perhaps create is fūinjutsu work, I could use your help.”

“Nothing would make me happier. Your place?”

“Yeah. Mom isn’t home and Naruto is babysitting Konohamaru or something so we’ll have the whole house to ourselves.”

They worked late into the night, absorbed into that project that probably would be useful to more people than just Sakura. Perhaps Hitomi herself would use it if she needed a boost in her muscle-building training. She was right on track so far, but anything could happen and divert her from it. And who could refuse an efficient training device? When Sakura came to see her the following day after dinner, Hitomi handed her ten pieces of paper and explained how to sew them inside her clothes and how to activate them. She was happy she could be useful to one of her friends.

The next morning, Team Seven was finally allowed to take missions again. Naruto seemed to have missed it dearly: he was hopping up and down with excitement in front of Iruka’s desk. He started pouting as soon as he heard their mission, though. Fixing the fence around one of the Yamanaka parks wasn’t exciting at all but, at least, with all the clones the team could summon, they were done in less than two hours. When they left the Tower again, their money in diverse purses, the village was sunny and buzzing with activity.

And, several steps before them, his back to them, was someone Hitomi would have spotted even in the middle of a crowd.

Gaara.

Chapter 48: Plans and Reunions

A cry escaped Hitomi’s lips without giving her any chance to stop it, attracting Gaara’s attention to her. His big turquoise eyes went wide when he saw her. They met in the middle ground between their teams, quickly hugging as intensely and naturally as they had once. The Yūhi girl was now quite a bit shorter than the Son of the Sand, the top of her head only reaching his chin. He took advantage of each of his supplementary centimetres to close up around her like a protective cocoon, his smell of sand and sun invading her nose. There, in the secret of his arms, she couldn’t help but burst into tears, clinging to his clothes like a child to a parent.

She hadn’t understood how much she’d missed him until then. Being in his arms brought it all back, giving her a piece of her she hadn’t known was missing. She cried and cried against his shoulder, soothed by the deep hum playing in his throat, quiet enough that only she could hear. Once her tears dried up, she closed her eyes and listened to the melody of his breathing and beating heart.

“Aah, Hitomi-chan,” Kakashi said after a while, “wanna introduce your friend?”

She reluctantly stepped back, staring at Gaara. He had changed, obviously, but not in the way she had feared, the way the canon had condemned him to. “Kakashi-sensei, Naruto, Sasuke,” she said in a voice that was choking with a tenderness beyond words, “let me introduce you to Sabaku no Gaara. He’s a very dear friend of mine, and I want you to treat him as such.”

Gaara smiled, an expression as hesitant as it was brief, like he was surprised by the affection she was showing shamelessly. He gestured for his brother and sister, who had decided to wait a few steps away, to come closer. “Kankurō, Temari, come. I told you a lot about Hitomi-nee, and here she is. She’s family.” His last word was full of unsaid implications, too intense for the girl to be able to fully grasp them.

Her eyes met Temari’s, which were the same colour as Gaara’s. She nodded in greeting, beaming so enthusiastically she could have rivalled Naruto’s smiles. “You didn’t say you were coming to Konoha. Had I known, I would have waited for you at the gate.”

“Well, I meant for it to be a surprise. It’s only once we got there that I realised I didn’t have the foggiest idea of where you live.”

“You’ll know soon, all three of you. My mother loves having guests.”

“Hm,” Kankurō intervened, “I think Baki-sensei has gone to fetch the key to our hotel room. He won’t like it if we stay in another part of town.”

Gaara’s eyes hesitated for merely a second before he turned his back, resolve in his stance, to the entrance of the Tower, following Hitomi instead. Not once had he stopped touching her since their hug; it satisfied her more than she could possibly tell. “D’you know if Ensui-sensei is in the village, Hitomi-nee? I’d like to catch up with him, if he has time.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s there. He’s been hella busy these past few days with Shikaku-sama, but he’ll be happy to see you three. If he hadn’t spent so much time bitching about the sand he can still find in his stuff, I’d swear he misses the Desert.” With those words, she started walking towards the Nara land hanging on Gaara’s arm, Kankurō and Temari following them without asking any question. As for Sasuke and Naruto, they seemed a bit dazzled. Kakashi was walking behind them, exposing his usual laid-back demeanour at first glance. However, his only eye gleamed with unspecified threats towards anyone looking at their group of one Genin team and one foreign team. He knew, more than anyone, how fragile the relationship between Konoha and Sunagakure was. He wanted to see a real peace appear between the two Hidden Villages, and a friendship between the Kazekage’s son and a young heiress from a Konohajin clan seemed like an excellent start for such peace.

“You’re here for the exam, aren’t you?” Hitomi asked once they were all piled up in her living room.

The room went dead silent as soon as the question escaped her lips. Traditionally, the ninjas of the hosting village for the Chūnin exam were the last to know it was happening. A Chūnin had to be able to handle situations they weren’t prepared for, and keep their wits about them no matter the adversity.

“You… do know you’re not supposed to know that, right, Hitomi-chan?”

“Kakashi-sensei, the day the village will want to keep a secret, it’ll have to try harder. I live with one of the sensei who will have to decide something soon. Or did you forget that?”

The man had at least the decency to blush and look away. She grinned as Gaara answered her question, his voice serene and as deep as an adult’s already. “Yeah, we’ve been selected for the exam. You don’t know yet if your team will be part of it, do you?”

“It’s Kakashi-sensei’s decision to make. I entirely trust his judgment.”

Her eyes met her teacher’s. He nodded slightly, as if he approved. She smiled in return, then her attention returned to her guests. She had served them refreshments and little snacks, typical of Konoha. Temari seemed to enjoy them a lot. They were all sitting where they could find room around the coffee table, except for the adult of their group, who stood alert next to the patio door. He looked thoughtful, even though his hands never went very far from the pockets where he kept his weapons.

“I’m really happy to have you here, all three of you. I missed Gaara and, after talking with you through my notebook, I couldn’t wait to meet you.”

“Do you think you could take me to see the plants you had told me about?” Kankurō asked with a grin. “I’d like to see if I can enhance my poisons, but I already tried everything in the greenhouses in Suna – in the ones Genin have access to anyway.”

“I’m not sure you can see much of them, but sure, we can do that. Oh, and I have to take you out to eat gyoza!”

“And ramen!” Naruto intervened.

“And ramen, yeah. So many things to do!”

She was hopping up and down on the couch with impatience, a big smile on her lips. Gaara put a hand on her arm and they exchanged a meaningful look, which made her relax. Then Temari spoke, and her heart started racing again. “What I ’d like is to spar with you. Just a spar, mind you, not a real fight. Would you like that, Hitomi-chan?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I’d like that! Gaara told me you were awesome with your fan!”

“In that case, should we say tomorrow at ten in the morning? Do you have a training ground in mind?”

“You can use the training ground number three,” Kakashi drawled. “In fact, I insist you use that training ground. I’ll be there to referee, with a medic ready to step in, in case of emergency. Don’t forget the exam starts soon. Trust me, you want to be in top condition when it starts.”

The sensei’s word was law, especially when he spoke with that tranquil authority that seemed able to bend steel. Hitomi answered him with a beaming smile then her eyes met Temari’s, who looked as impatient as she was. She hadn’t had a true challenge since her fight against Zabuza, and would welcome the adrenaline rush that an unknown opponent would bring her, especially since it would be a low stakes fight. She knew Gaara’s sister was intelligent, too intelligent to feel overwhelmed by Hitomi’s little tricks like Naruto and Sasuke often were.

Dinner was a particularly joyful affair that evening: the guests were so numerous that Kurenai had taken Ensui along and ordered him to bring his dining table. Shikamaru’s family had done the same as well, Hitomi overwhelming her cousin with her own excitement. She remembered acutely the time when Shikamaru and Gaara had been her only close friends; to have them meet, finally, was very precious to her. Even the adults looked relaxed as they celebrated the reunion of two teams, from two different countries yet so much alike.

The next morning, Hitomi was serene and ready to fight as she stepped on training ground number three. She had decided not to use Ishi to Senrigan and had given it to Sasuke: close range weapons were no use against Temari, she already knew that. However, she had chakra and seals in abundance, as well as help from her summons and little inventions. A vicious grin floated on her lips when she thought about the last bombs she had created. They may not be of use during this duel, but she couldn’t wait to make an opponent’s life a living nightmare with them.

Kakashi stood in the centre of the main clearing, his back straight, with a martial air about him. Temari arrived a few minutes later, her giant fan already between her hands rather than strapped on her back. Behind her, the male members of her team, as well as Ensui and Baki, settled at a safe distance to watch the show. Hitomi and Temari positioned themselves ten steps away from Kakashi, one to his left and one to his right, after forming the Seal of Confrontation, and waited for the signal while facing each other, the same impatient grin on their lips.

“Hajime!” Kakashi commanded as he jumped out of the way.

Immediately Hitomi jumped out of the way of the wind blade that slammed towards her. This spar would continue until one of them conceded defeat or was seriously injured, which meant it could last long. She sliced her thumb open on the edge of a kunai and ran through the hand seals, brushing her hand against the ground. “Ninpō: The Iron Claw Brigade!”

Her three attack cats appeared in a puff of smoke and immediately had to disperse to dodge yet another wind blade. Hitomi had decided against using her shadows so she wouldn’t compromise Shikamaru’s possible future duel against the Sand Princess, but she had many other resources, even if she couldn’t access an entire part of her skills. In a burst of chakra, she created three Water Clones from nothingness and hid amongst them. Against any other opponent, she would have spat out a big patch of mist, but she knew Temari could dissipate it with a wave of her fan.

As her clones and cats charged, she frequently used the substitutions with her copies and, wherever she landed, slammed flash bomb seals on trees, on the ground, everywhere she possibly could. Those seals were heavily compressed and would be lost between two blades of grass, forgotten until she activated them. More than once, a wind blade came near enough to tear her kimono, and even scratch her once or twice, but that didn’t stop her. “Water Style: Water Whip!”

As soon as the whip appeared in her hand, she swapped places with a clone, appearing just next to Hoshihi. Her whip wrapped around Temari’s ankle; she pulled the limb brutally, but the kunoichi, her lips in a thin line, slammed her fan in the ground through the whip, effectively destroying it. Hitomi swore and had to back away, hiding behind a tree to avoid ending up as minced meat.

Temari was powerful and clever, but she relied far too much on her fan. With a smile, Hitomi left the protection of her tree and closed her eyes, activating all the seals she had placed everywhere in a chain reaction. The flash of light was so violent that even their public let out yelps of pain. Hitomi navigated blind without any problem: locating Temari’s chakra was all she needed to know where to hit, an exalted, wild laugh escaping her as she did so.

When the light drizzled down and everyone could see once more, they found Hitomi sitting astride Temari’s torso, her left hand open on her fan. Under her fingers, five explosive seals had deployed, easy to recognise even for foreign ninjas. The young Sunajin looked quite shocked, her eyes wide and her mouth parted open, her body still as tense as a bow. She let her head rest against the grass, suddenly beaming. After a moment, she burst out laughing, Hitomi soon joining her, rolling over her to lie by her side, the sleeves of her kimono badly torn and her arms covered in little scraps and cuts that had started bleeding.

“Ah, fuck, we’ll need to do that again.”

“I agree. You’re an awesome sparring partner, Hitomi-chan!”

“Well, so are you, Temari-chan!”

On those words, they stood back up, supporting each other. They were breathless, their hair was a mess, but the same exalted expression lightened up their features despite Hitomi’s wounds and Temari’s defeat. Kakashi approached and inspected his student’s arms, frowning with worry. “Ensui! Come heal your apprentice before she bleeds half to death on my training ground!”

Soon enough, Ensui and Baki were standing next to their respective students, and Hitomi felt her master’s chakra, fresh, clean, comforting, wash over her skin. “You held back, didn’t you?” he asked in a whisper against her ear.

“Of course I did. But so did she. Her attacks can be deadly, but she didn’t want to kill me, only to stop me from running around.”

“It’s fortunate your cats could serve as a diversion.”

“Yeah. Hoshihi, d’you want me to take you to Inuzuka-san for that cut?”

“That’d be great. If Aotsuki-sensei sees me bleed when I come home, she won’t be happy with me.”

With a smile, the girl lost her hand in her familiar’s ginger fur. He was tall enough that his shoulder brushed against hers now, tall enough to be mounted. However, they had decided together that they wanted to wait for him to build a bit more muscle in his back and shoulders so he wouldn’t get injured. He was becoming quite the terrifying beast and didn’t seem to stop growing up, unlike Haīro and Kurokumo, who had reached their adult size and were just a few centimetres smaller than their ginger friend. The three cats gathered around their summoner. They were always happy to go to the Inuzuka lands, since they had overcome their fear of dogs: Tsume made the best treats for their hunter palate.

“Before you go, Hitomi, I need to talk to you and your brothers.”

“Sensei?”

“It will only take a moment.”

Without adding a word, the teenage girl followed her teacher to the treeline and waited, her red eyes still gleaming with adrenalin. Naruto looked over-excited by the fight he had just seen and would have probably challenged Temari to a spar if Sasuke hadn’t severely gagged him, a smirk on his lips. Once his three students were gathered around him, he spoke again. “As you know, the Chūnin exam is starting very soon. In fact, the first stage is scheduled for tomorrow, four in the afternoon. I put your names forward to the Hokage, which means you can register, but don’t have to if you want to wait. However, I think you three are ready.”

They all nodded without hesitation. Hitomi was still high on her victory and her brothers couldn’t wait to prove themselves. The girl too, of course, but her motives weren’t as pure as theirs. She wanted to taste her potential opponents’ strength, to find herself at the heart of the events as they unfolded, to have a chance to act . She couldn’t guess if the invasion would happen. Gaara wouldn’t be part of it, not without warning Hitomi first to give her a chance to protect and defend herself. And even with that… He was a pacifist, like Uchiha Itachi had once been. However, he had only been a diversion in Orochimaru’s plan. The damned snake could very well find another one.

“Very well, I expected that much from you. Here is the paperwork you have to fill. Take it there before four, tomorrow. Don’t be late or the exam will start without you.” Before Hitomi could taunt him about telling others to be on time, he disappeared in a swirl of dead leaves, several of which got stuck in her hair.

“… Bitch. Boys, I’d like you to take care of our guest until I’m done with my cats, if it’s alright with you? I’ll meet you at home in two hours, and then we can talk strategy and prepare.”

“No prob!” Naruto beamed. “We’re gonna take them to eat ramen and then show them places, don’t worry about it!”.

With a nod and a smile, Hitomi walked away, her three cats in tow. She had thought she’d be agonizing in terror when the time came, but it simply wasn’t the case. She felt at peace, focused, the opposite of defenceless or vulnerable. She didn’t know if it was because her mission in the Land of Waves had been hard enough to prepare her, or because she was still riding the wave of her spar with Temari. What she did know, however, was that it probably wouldn’t last. She had to appreciate the little blessings when they were granted to her.

When she came home two hours later, alone, she was welcomed by a booming laugh that could only be Kankurō’s, followed by Naruto’s yelp. Curious as to what was happening, she swapped her boots for slippers and went to the kitchen, entering in the middle of a… catastrophe. It was really the best way to put it. She didn’t know what her brothers and guests had attempted to cook, but she was fairly certain it didn’t imply making a bag of flour explode . Even the ceiling was covered in the damned stuff, and Naruto was chalk-white from hair to toe. “I… What, and I can’t emphasise that enough, the actual fuck happened here?”

“Kankurō bet he could lift anything with just one string of chakra,” Sasuke said, “and Naruto threw a bag of flour to his face. This is the result.”

The shadow of a nervous tic agitated her left eye. Her hands curled to fists then relaxed. She breathed in and out, trying not to cough as flour happily coated her lungs, then offered them her sweetest smile. “I’ll start making dinner in an hour. I don’t need to explain the consequences if the kitchen isn’t squeaky clean by then, do I?” Just to make sure they got the idea, she projected a bit of killing intent in the air, then turned away and walked to her room, grabbing Gaara by the arm as she left. He was the tacit leader of his team, just as she was the tacit leader of hers; they had many things to discuss before the exam started. Fortunately, a pair of glasses and a bottle of lemonade had been spared, being in the living room instead of the kitchen, so she took them and went to sit at her desk once they were in her room, as he settled on her bed.

“Would you agree to an alliance between our teams during the first two stages of the exam?” she asked while pouring him a glass of lemonade.

“Why only those?”

“Because the third is traditionally a tournament organised in front of the leaders of the different countries that could send us new mission orders. An alliance is impossible in that kind of setting. The two first stages, in the village’s archives I examined, are often centred around collecting or spreading intelligence for the first, and survival for the second one. In those cases, we can help each other.”

“I understand. I don’t have any reason to refuse that alliance. We’d exchange intel and go to each other’s help whenever possible. Do you want to include other teams in that system?”

“Hinata’s and Shikamaru’s teams. They could handle it on their own, just like we could, but I think they’re gonna want it. In Konoha, we learn that strength is in numbers.”

“I’m okay with that. I have to discuss the precise terms with my siblings and I think you’ll want to reach out to the two other teams to discuss it with them as well.”

“You’re right, but I can do that without stepping out of this room.” She sliced her thumb open on a kunai she kept on her desk and slammed her hand against the wood. “Ninpō: Echoes in the Field!”

Where she had put her bloody hand appeared Sunaarashi and Hokori. Apparently, she had summoned them midway through their toilet; the female licked her brother’s ear one last time then straightened up and stretched. “What can we do for you, Lady Summoner?”

“I’d like you to go bring messages to Shikamaru and Hinata. Hokori will stay with me and transmit their answers through you. Just wait, I have to write the letters.”

She grabbed two sheets of paper and a pen Gaara was throwing at her and started writing. During that time, the boy looked around the room, his eyes stopping on the notebooks she kept on one of her shelves. “So you still had some of those damned notebooks, uh?”

She looked up from her letter to see what he was speaking about and smiled. “Yeah. And many more. The ones on the shelves are the ones I filled.”

“What do you use them for?”

“Some of them are communicating notebooks I plan on giving away. If that alliance thing happens, I’ll hand one to Hinata so her team can keep in touch with me. I should have done so long ago but, after our break-up, it seemed… well. Apart from that, I have others that I use to get ideas on paper for seals and such, and the ones that are with my books are novels I wrote.”

“It’s funny, each time you tell me you’re a writer I kinda forget. It’s so obvious when you say it like that, and yet…” He shrugged, but she understood what he meant. Writers were usually peaceful people, civilians, with the notable exception of Jiraiya of the Sannin.

The girl smiled as she handed the two little scrolls of paper she had just sealed shut to Sunaarashi, allowing her to stick them to her fur with chakra so they wouldn’t bother her as she ran through the village. Thoughtful, the two teenagers watched her jump through the window then over the roofs until she was just a ginger spot on the horizon.

“Would you let me read one of your novels, Hitomi-nee?” Gaara then asked.

Hitomi’s eyes went back to the boy. At first glance, he was as expressionless as usual, but the girl knew him better than that: she had learned to decipher the almost invisible tensing of muscles on his face like they were clear, obvious facial expressions. He looked sincerely curious, and a bit impressed as well. “Let me see if I have something you’d enjoy,” she said with a gentle nod. Slowly, she stood up and stretched, Hokori purring as she scratched him behind the ear, and went to her shelves. All three were overflowing with books, far less impressive than the Library in her mind, but she loved them just as much. Her fingers brushed against the spines of the books tenderly while she weighed her choices. She ended up picking a blue notebook with a white silver pattern on its cover and handed it to Gaara.

“The Cat’s Return. What is it about?”

“It’s the story of a teenage girl, Haru, who saves a cat that is able to speak. The cat’s father is the king of all cats and, as a reward, decides she is to marry his son, so she has to seek help from the Cat Ministry. It’s more of a story for children, but it’s very sweet and I think you’ll like that. You can then tell the story to Sunajin children if you do.” Hitomi had put that movie into writing exactly for that reason: being able to tell it to young minds who craved beautiful stories. She remembered each image of the first time she had watched the movie, remembered how amazed and enthralled she’d been. She wanted other people to experience the same thing.

“Thank you,” Gaara smiled. “I’ll take great care of it and give it back before we leave Konohagakure.”

They then oriented the conversation to lighter subjects. Hitomi asked her friend if he liked her village, what he had already seen, if he’d enjoyed the ramen Naruto loved so much. She wasn’t surprised to hear that he was getting along well with her brothers, especially the sunny blonde. It was hard not to love Naruto once he started to show how sweet he was. Despite the villagers’ wariness of him, each and every member of the Fellowship loved him to bits. One day, he would become the Hokage, and his awesome personality would help him make his dream a reality. And Gaara could understand such a dream, even if he didn’t know yet that he and Naruto had it in common.

“Hitomi!” Hokori called from where he was, curled up next to the boy.

“I’m listening. Do you have an answer yet?”

“From Team Eight. Hinata accepts the alliance without any conditions. I’m on my way to go find Team Ten, I think they’re at Yakiniku again.”

“Thank you, Sunaarashi. Keep me posted.”

Finally, just like she had anticipated, Shikamaru joined the alliance as well. They all decided to meet fifteen minutes before the exam, in the exam room, to work on a strategy around what they could guess of the first stage. Only Hitomi knew exactly what that part would be about, but she had no way of explaining how she obtained such knowledge and thus couldn’t share it in any way. It didn’t mean she didn’t have a plan, just that she would have to put it in place without revealing her hand.

After dinner, the teenage girl went back to her brothers and Team Baki in the living room. Kurenai was home but had decided to leave them the space so they could work in – relative – peace. As a Jōnin-sensei with a team in the exam, she knew what the two first stages were but couldn’t say a word. She would probably watch them as well when possible, through cameras or something similar, amongst her peers, if she wasn’t part of the first stage as a monitor altogether, under a solid illusion.

Hitomi remembered that, in the canon, there wasn’t any break between the two first stages, so she wanted to plan for both. Under the pretence of wanting to be ready for anything and everything, she finished filling her brothers’ stocks of seals and weapons, then offered her guests some of her creations. Without any surprise, Kankurō was the one most interested in them, especially her smoke bombs, since they would allow him the cover to switch places with one of his puppets. When she was done, Hitomi had sore hands, but at least that part of her preparations was done.

Then, she went back to her room and coerced her brothers into helping her find anything useful and sealing them in one of her scrolls. It went from weapons to changes of clothes, including rations and even books – she never went anywhere without a few books. To Gaara’s team, she offered her resources as well: her clothes would be too small for Temari, but it was better than no clothes at all if she dirtied them. They looked surprised that she made sure they were as ready as possible, except maybe for Gaara. Finally, she picked the communicating notebook she wanted to give to Hinata the next day and felt ready, as ready as she possibly could.

Around her, the lights went off one by one. Temari was sleeping on a futon next to her bed, since she had categorically refused to take it from her host, an open book face down on her belly. She had wanted to continue reading, her hand illuminated with chakra so she could still see, but sleep had won the fight. In the next room, Hitomi heard the snoring contest going on between Naruto and Kankurō, who could both obviously sleep despite the noise they made. A surge of affection for them warmed up her chest and she smiled as she climbed on her windowsill and slipped outside.

Gaara was sitting on the roof, his eyes searching the sky. He welcomed her with a small nod upon seeing her approach; without a word, she sat by his side, looking above too. The stars were pretty that night, intimidating in all their quiet beauty.

“I think the Desert has the prettiest sky.”

“Konohagakure’s sky is pretty, too. Peaceful.”

“I-I may be nervous about tomorrow. So many things could happen, bad things… I’m happy I don’t have to face it alone. I’m happy you’ll be there with me.”

“I’m happy too. Thanks to you, I have many things that give me a reason to live today. I wouldn’t dare imagine the person I would be if you hadn’t come to talk to me, that day in Suna.”

A peaceful silence settled between them and stretched into eternity. Their shoulders were touching, their bodies relishing in the other’s warmth. The nights were a lot milder in Konoha than in the Desert, but nothing could imitate the warmth of a friend’s presence. They had confided in each other on so many subjects through their letters; it made speaking in person almost hard. How could they find the correct words, the ones they needed, when they didn’t have time to think about them and weigh them before using them?

“You were right, you know? I loved your gyozas.”

“I told you so. And wait until you can taste the Akimichi’s. I never ate anything better than that in my life.”

They continued discussing trivialities until dawn painted the sky orange and pink. Only then did they stand up, Hitomi going one way and Gaara the other, to go back to their own room. Temari had moved during the night, her book now lost next to her legs. Hitomi used her meridians to spot the page she had read last and put a bookmark there, so her friend could pick up her reading without any difficulty. In silence, she stepped over her and threw a dressing gown over her pyjama and left the room, closing the door behind her.

She went downstairs, mingling seamlessly in the shadows and silence of the morning, and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in front of her. A smile on her lips, Hitomi greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and started working on breakfast, her hands going through the routine without engaging her mind. That way she could allow it to wander, to dwell on her plans, to make sure she hadn’t left anything out.

“Are you ready?” Kurenai asked, as if reading her thoughts.

The answer came to Hitomi, so instinctive, natural and devoid of any doubt she almost laughed in relief. “Yes, Mom, I am.”

Chapter 49: The First Stage

Notes:

I'm so sorry I was away for some time. My life is a mess right now and I'm going through a lot of stuff. I'm gonna try to do better.

Team Seven arrived in front of the Academy, which was hosting the first stage of the Chūnin exam, at three in the afternoon. Their guests had decided to go there earlier, so they could find their sensei and tell him about their strategy. Hitomi expected to see them in the classroom, but they had agreed to keep their alliance a secret: seeing the nine rookies unite wouldn’t surprise anyone, but a secret pact between the Leaf and the Sand? Everyone would think they cheated, and not in an acceptable, ninja way. They wouldn’t even be that far off but, like Ensui said, cheating was practically part of the job description anyway.

Hitomi went inside the building first, her brothers in tow. She climbed the stairs, reached the second floor and felt a genjutsu pull her in that corridor in particular. A smirk on her lips, she decided to engage and followed the mental injunction. Sasuke pulled on her sleeve, as if to reason with her, and she quickly signed ‘everything is okay’ to appease him.

They heard a hit landing on flesh, someone falling, then a boy’s voice. “And what do you think you’re gonna be able to do in the exam? You’d better quit while you still can.” 

The girl elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, and there she spotted a guy on the ground who could only be Rock Lee, with his unmistakable haircut and green jumpsuit. Then, the two teenagers behind him could only be Mori no Tenten and Hyūga Neji. Silently, Hitomi watched Izumo and Kotetsu, disguised but still easy to identify from their chakra signature, mock their victim. Tenten pleaded with them – Hitomi couldn’t help the wave of killing intent that made people around her choke when Izumo punched the older kunoichi in the face. Tenten was almost a legend in the Academy, the first of the First Kunoichi to equal the Best Rookie in the rankings… Which made her Neji’s equal.

“Sasuke,” she called.

He hummed in approval and stepped forward, instantly becoming the focus of everyone. As for Hitomi, she hid in his shadow, doing her best to look vulnerable and mellow. After all, she was so tiny compared to all the other Genin, so fragile, as pale as a doll, with freckled skin and big, big red eyes. Ensui had howled with laughter the first time she had tried that subterfuge in front of him, then congratulated her profusely when she had managed to convince a Chūnin to give her a mission she preferred to the one he had wanted to hand her.

“ I ’m going to go through,” Sasuke affirmed, his tone purposefully arrogant. “It’s a nice trick you have there, but illusions don’t work on me. After all, we’re supposed to go to the third floor.”

“Oh?” Kotetsu, still disguised as a Genin, said. “You’re the only one who noticed.”

“If you say so.”

“But playtime isn’t over yet.” The guard suddenly swooped on Sasuke, who prepared to parry and retaliate, sneering down at his attacker. Hitomi could see how much he wanted to fight – part of her coveted the same thing. She made sure to step aside so she wouldn’t be attracted in the two boys’ fight, refusing to take a stupid errant hit. Anyway, Lee would soon… Yeah, there he was, standing up and stopping the two attacks with his bare hands, staring at…

Oh.

Oh no. Fuck .

He was staring at her . She blinked and looked away, thrown off-balance by the intensity with which he was looking at her. She certainly hadn’t accounted for that when she had decided to play little doll; people were supposed to want to crush her and brush her off, not have fucking crushes on her!

“Lee!” Neji snapped. “It’s not what we had decided!”

“I know, but…” The green-clad boy walked up to Hitomi, who made herself as tiny and non-threatening as she possibly could. Why wouldn’t the ground open and swallow her down? She was ready, fuck it. “Hi!” he chirped when he stood in front of her. “My name is Rock Lee. What’s yours?”

“Hum… Yūhi Hitomi. Pleased to meet you?” She couldn’t help but turn that polite greeting into a question, because he was suddenly so close, and she hadn’t prepared for her personal space to be invaded that way. At that moment, he beamed so bright he could put up with a Naruto patented smile and she relaxed instinctively, even though she just knew what he was going to say.

“Go out with me! I'll protect you until my last breath!”

“Uh… No? I’m very flattered, but I only know your name. That’s not a solid enough base for a relationship.”

His eyes went wide, as if she had just granted him with immensely wise words, and tapped his fist against his open hand, the beam coming back like the sun from behind a cloud. It was actually almost blinding her. “Ah, you’re totally right, Hitomi-san! I ought to do a hundred laps around Konoha on one leg to make up for that obvious mistake.”

“No need for that, now. How about this: when all that Chūnin exam stuff is over, we could go eat something and talk. You look like an interesting person to be around. But just as friends, alright?”

“Ah! You’re serious? Okay, I’ll come and see you for that when the exam is done, Hitomi-san!”

The girl let out an amused sigh, relieved she could navigate around that reef without wounding Lee’s self-esteem or lying: she truly wanted to get to know him. She smiled and waved at him before stepping away, without even looking back to see if her brothers were following – she knew they would. They had her back, always, just as she had theirs.

“Why did you agree to go out with that weird guy?” Naruto whined.

“Because he looked kind and genuine. If my impression of him is wrong, well, I can handle myself, now, can’t I?”

“I’d think twice before answering that, Naruto,” Sasuke stepped in with a smirk. “Not a good time to make Hitomi-nee angry. She’d kick your ass, exam or not, and I won’t help if you start asking for it.”

“Uuh…”

Hitomi burst out laughing, light and careless, then led them towards the staircase. Before they could even reach it, Hyūga Neji stepped in front of Sasuke. “Hey, you. What’s your name?”

“Politeness requires that someone introduces themselves before demanding someone’s name. Even your teammate knows as much.”

“You’re one of the rookies, aren’t you?” Neji insisted, ignoring Sasuke’s cutting remark. “How old are you?”

“Again, I don’t see why I’d answer your questions.”

As if everything had been said, the two boys parted ways, going back to their respective teams. Hitomi exchanged an amused look with Sasuke, but didn’t move. It was useless: she knew what was happening next.

“Hey, you, with the haughty look! Fight me, right here and now!”

Sasuke looked up to Lee, seeming far more interested than he’d been about Neji. The corridor was empty now that the Uchiha had unveiled the illusion for everyone, other groups reaching that same conclusion themselves. As for Hitomi, she frowned, glancing at the clock suspended over one of the class’ doors.

“Let’s spar!” Lee continued. “I’m dying to test my techniques against the infamous last Uchiha.”

“So you already know me.”

“Of course! I’m interested in the Genin who graduated this year.”

“Well, since you seem to want it so badly…”

Hitomi extended her arm to interrupt Sasuke, stopping him from taking even one step towards Lee. “Out of the question. You’re our best fighter, it would be stupid to have you injured before the exam even begins. I ’m going to fight Rock Lee.” A serene expression on her face, she stepped forward.

Lee looked absolutely dumbfounded, his eyes wide and a vague spark of fright in his big black eyes. “B-but I… I don’t want to harm you!”

“Oh, Lee,” she smiled with the air of the cat who just caught the mouse. “Why presume I’m not strong enough to handle myself against you? Fighting is just another way to get to know each other. Don’t you want to get to know me better?”

He very obviously took the bait and the whole fishing rod with him, so she got ready, her hands forming the Seal of Confrontation. Suddenly, he disappeared, incredibly fast, but she was ready: her fingers adjusted to the Rat Hand Seal, and her shadow awoke like a hungry cat, stretching brutally at her feet. Lee had no chance, he who didn’t expect an attack coming from the ground: he was instantly frozen in his tracks. He was fighting, his strength struggling against the shadow since his chakra couldn’t, but she forced him to step toward her, one step after the other, until they were at arm’s reach from each other.

Then, she rummaged in her belt, forcing him to imitate her movements against the air. When her fingers found the seal she was looking for, her predator smile sharpened and a vague expression of fear appeared on Lee’s face. Delicately, as if careful not to hurt him, she stuck the seal on his forehead and activated it with a weak spark of chakra. Immediately, the boy’s eyes rolled in their orbits and, when she let go of his shadow, she had to catch him as he fell unconscious before he could hit his head.

“Ouah!” Naruto exclaimed. “What did you do to him, Hitomi-nee?”

“I used a seal I created not so long ago. I call it the Knockout. Practical, isn’t it? You just have to put it on someone’s forehead and activate it to make them go nighty-night for five minutes.”

Her brothers stared at her for a few moments then Naruto started whining again. “You’re bloody terrifying, that’s what you are…”

She couldn’t help but laugh, flattered. “Well, thank you, I’m doing my best.” She loved the idea of terrifying people, even though she knew Naruto was exaggerating when he said that. Neither he nor Sasuke really feared her, they loved her far too much for that – and she loved them just as much. She would have given her life away to protect them. Without those two boys, her family would have been incomplete. They were part of her now, part of her most precious memories and of the hard trials she expected to go through in the future.

“What are you gonna do with him anyway?” Sasuke drawled.

“Just wait for him to wake up. I’d feel bad, leaving him like this. We still have time.”

“Poor chap, you didn’t even let him show us what he could do.”

“I have a feeling we’ll have plenty of occasions to see his skills during the exam. Why, Sasuke, jealous I stole your fight?”

“Hm.”

“Seriously, do you think you could have fought him without being wounded? Without my shadows, he would have snapped me in halves. You saw how fast his charge was, and I don’t doubt for a moment that his strength is just as good. You’re too important to get gleefully beaten up before the exam even starts.”

“I know you’re right, alright? I’ll make up for it later.”

They waited in silence afterwards, almost bursting with impatience. All three of them were eager to prove their worth. Finally, Lee started to twitch at Hitomi’s feet. He took a few seconds to understand where he was – only then did his eyes start gleaming again and he stood up carefully. “I… I made an utter fool of myself, Hitomi-san. Would you please consider forgiving me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Lee-kun. Just do your best during the exam. I’ll be watching you.”

Her words seemed to be enough to energise Lee once more: he stood back up, the Will of Fire burning in his eyes. His master would have been so impressed, but Hitomi couldn’t help but worry. He was still so young, so unprepared for the ordeals Konoha would soon face. “I’ll be watching you too, Hitomi-san, and I’ll make you proud!”

Slightly stunned, Team Seven watched him run to his own teammates. Finally, Hitomi got back to her senses, an amused smile on her lips. “Time to go for us too. The others are probably waiting for us in the examination room.”

“Ah, that’s right!” Naruto exclaimed. “With everything that’s happening, I almost forgot!”

Going to the examination room, the correct one this time, only took the better part of a minute. No one could have suspected, when they arrived, what had just happened on the second floor. The air was vibrating with a faint killing intent, which didn’t belong to anyone in particular but to at least ten different ninjas, scattered through the whole room. Hitomi didn’t let it get to her as she walked through the crowd, looking for the other rookies.

She found them close to the platform where, usually, a teacher stood in front of a classroom full of students. Apparently, the Chūnin exams always happened during the weekend, no matter which country was hosting them, so as to not disturb the life of the village around it. As for the final tournament, it happened during a weekend too, but the goal there was to allow as many people as possible to see it. A Chūnin exam often meant a lot of tourism and a lot of money for the village that organised it, so while the cooks and merchants didn’t spend the whole day watching the matches, but they often arranged to see at least several of them.

“Hello, you three! Did you have trouble finding the place?”

“Come on, now, Ino,” Sasuke drawled with a playful smirk, “you know us better than that. A little illusion wasn’t going to fool us.”

“Kurenai-sensei wouldn’t have been happy with you if it had been the case,” Shino commented in his usual soft tone.”

They continued chatting idly for a few minutes, all nine of them forming a circle with their backs to the rest of the room, so no one except for them could see the way they were really communicating, with the sign language of Konoha. Once, to cover the fact Hitomi was handing her communicating notebook to Hinata, she, Kiba and Naruto burst out laughing, as if they weren’t in danger of losing their lives during the exam – everything to appear dumb and harmless in the eyes of their potential opponents. As for the Children of the Sand, they were all sitting in the first row and watching, but they didn’t step in, following the plan meticulously.

“Hey, you! You should really keep your voices down!”

Hitomi looked up to the one who had just spoken to them in that disrespectful way. He was standing a few steps behind Sasuke, immediately recognisable with his silver hair tied in a ponytail and round glasses. Yakushi Kabuto. The Yūhi girl was unable to totally hide the disdain he inspired her, but her sneer was fortunately hidden behind her brother’s shoulder.

“You’re the nine babies who just graduated this year, aren’t you? Stop that ruckus, you’re not on a school trip!”

Ino and Hitomi exchanged a look, twin ferocious smiles on their lips. No one talked that way to anyone in the Fellowship without painful consequences. It wouldn’t happen right away, but neither of them would forget this insult. “And who are you to talk to us this way?” the blonde girl asked, looking at him like he was a smear on her shoes.

“My name is Kabuto, but it doesn’t matter. Look around.”

Hitomi instinctively did. It didn’t surprise her to see that several groups were glaring at them like they were prey, a gleam of sadism in their predatory eyes. The killing intent intensified in the air. Unable to stop herself, she answered by allowing her own to bloom, as vicious and unyielding as a storming ocean. The only students affected were the ones sitting in the first row but even they didn’t seem able to identify the origin of that cold force. It was better that way: she wanted to hide her hand for a bit longer.

“See those people there?” Kabuto continued, nodding towards a team in the third row. “They come from Amegakure and aren’t renowned for their patience. Before an exam, everyone is tense, ready to fly off the handle. I’m just warning you before another team decides to turn you into minced meat.” Kabuto sighed at them, almost compassionate, and it was only thanks to her iron will that Hitomi didn’t snarl and hiss at him like her cats had shown her. “Well, it’s normal you don’t know how to behave. It’s your first time, after all.”

“Which doesn’t seem to be your case,” Sasuke noted.

“Well spotted. It’s my seventh time this year. The exam happens twice a year, so my first was four years ago already.”

“Ooh, then you know a lot about the stages, don’t you?” Ino all but cooed. Behind Sasuke’s back, she and Hitomi exchanged an amused look. If they could get free intelligence because a stranger had decided to show off…

“You’re lucky. Since I like you, I’m gonna give you some information that could help you. Everything is on those ninja cards,” he added as he brandished a deck of cards, their back branded with the kanjis for ‘shinobi’. He showed them the first while explaining his security system and how they worked. Hitomi could spot fūinjutsu work when she saw it. As for her friends, after years of seeing and even receiving her creations, they weren’t so impressed by Kabuto.

He showed them a card with a map of the Elementary Nations and the number of Genin each had sent to the exam this year. Of course, Konoha had the most, followed by Sunagakure. Kirigakure, since the first coup, hadn’t sent their Genin to any foreign exam. Kumogakure had sent one team, just like Otogakure. Takigakure and Kusagakure had sent two each. The most surprising was Amegakure with its seven teams. As for Iwagakure’s absence, it was expected: since the last World War, the Land of Earth didn’t send their Genin in foreign countries anymore, and often the other way was true as well.

“Do you have cards on specific contestants?” Sasuke asked innocently.

“Of course. I have cards on almost all contestants, and on you as well.”

Hitomi didn’t even dare think about what he had done to obtain all this intel. She wanted to shake her friends to make them understand how worrying the whole thing was, how dangerous this young man was behind his stupid glasses and non-threatening air. Alas, she had no tangible proof, only memories from another life she couldn’t explain. She stared at the Lee card, then the one on Gaara, the pressure of her killing intent thickening the air. Gaara had spent six years out of his own village. Kabuto shouldn’t have had access to such information about him. The fact he had meant Orochimaru had already planted spies in Sunagakure – meant that the invasion would probably happen.

“Are all the contestants as strong as Lee and Gaara?” Naruto asked.

“Most of them are, especially those who come from a foreign country. They wouldn’t come here for nothing, after all. The competition will be tough this year, as always! The exam won’t be a pleasure cruise, you can trust me on this.”

“Bah! I’m Uzumaki-Yūhi Naruto, and I’ll crush them all!”

Behind Sasuke’s back, Hitomi hid her face in her hands with a long, tortured moan. She had known it would happen, he’d end up saying something that would attract the other teams’ attention on them, and not only the ones looking for easy prey like she had originally hoped. She walked around the young Uchiha and firmly gagged their brother, looking absolutely pissed. “Are you out of your fucking mind or do you want to have us all killed?” she growled against his ear.

“Hmm! Mhmmh!”

Suddenly, without letting go of him, she jumped backwards. The attack that had been meant for her only hit the air – and Kabuto, who had been standing to her right. Immediately, the Fellowship surrounded Naruto and her to protect them. Sasuke looked ready to fight, but hadn’t awoken his Sharingan – she had requested that he keep this talent hidden for as long as possible. Aghast, she watched Dosu, one of the Otojin, throw himself at Kabuto. None of the rookies went to help him: he had belittled them and mocked them, after all, and he wasn’t one of their own.

As for Hitomi, she took advantage of the chaos to slice her thumb open on the edge of a kunai and summoned little Hai, the youngest of her cats. Hoshihi had told her she was a Genjutsu prodigy, the first in the clan in generations, and had given his approval to the plan Hitomi had devised for that stage of the exam. She exchanged a nod with the tiny dark grey cat then let her disappear under the desks and sneak between the shinobi’s legs without being seen even once.

Everything was in place when the proctors appeared on the platform in a huge puff of smoke, one of them yelling for the Genin to calm down. The killing intent that had lingered in the air dispersed suddenly – even Hitomi’s bent, confronted by these immensely superior opponents. There were around fifty, almost one monitor for each team. Ibiki Morino was in front of them, his scarred face bearing an unamicable expression. His lips were twisting in a smirk, his eyes slightly more sunk in their orbits than usual, as if to emphasise the dangerous gleam that animated them. “Welcome to you all! I’m Morino Ibiki, and I’ll be your proctor for the first stage of the exam!”

In such a few words, he had already managed to set an ambiance of tension and intimidation on the whole room. He did it so effortlessly Hitomi couldn’t help but admire him reluctantly: she knew the control it required and had sometimes wondered about getting herself into the Torture and Intelligence Department for a few months after getting promoted to Chūnin to learn a few of their uncountable tricks. She still hadn’t decided if what she would have to do there was worth the knowledge.

“You, the Otojin scum! I’d better not see you disturb the exam again. If you want to be thrown out so bad, I can handle it right now!”

“Sorry,” Dosu bent, his voice just a bit too mellow to ring true. “It’s the first time we participate in an international exam, we got carried away.”

“Tch… I’m going to use this occasion to warn all of you brats: only a proctor can give you permission to fight. Do it without that permission, you get thrown out. And even with a permission, you are not allowed to kill your opponent.”

Hitomi couldn’t suppress a dismissive snort when she heard that: the second stage of the exam would have the teams fight and kill each other for damned scrolls .

“The ones who don’t follow that rule,” Ibiki continued with a voice full of anticipation, “I’ll slit their throats myself. Do you understand?” Immediately, the proctor and his monitors started projecting their own killing intent, an almost sweet, caressing force, as if they lusted for violence and blood baths. Something inside Hitomi seemed to wake up in reaction to that feeling, making her shudder with horror – and something else as well, something she couldn’t admit to.

“Good! We’re going to start the first stage then. In exchange for the registration paperwork that you’re going to hand us, one team after the other, you’ll each receive a chip with a number on it. Sit at the desk that has the same number. Then, we’ll hand you the questionnaires.”

Hitomi and her friends were amongst the first to make the exchange, since they were standing close to the platform. As she hopped the stairs to find her desk, the girl went past Gaara. Voluntarily, their shoulders brushed together, the only sign of friendship and comfort they could indulge in in this hostile atmosphere. The number the girl had received led her to a desk at the back of the room, for which she was immensely, absurdly, thankful. She had no desire to have unknown ninjas, potential threats, where she couldn’t see them.

She sat and watched as the other teams settled. To her left came an Amejin girl, to her right a Konohajin man who looked to be in his thirties – probably a member of the General Forces who had decided he wanted to be promoted. Hitomi wished him all the luck in the world, even though she knew this man wouldn’t make it to the tournament and thus to any chance at a Chūnin promotion. Maybe things had changed, or maybe he and his team would have to wait for the next exam.

Finally, the last contestants sat. Hitomi only needed a second to locate her allies, particularly the ones who could benefit from her help during this stage. She breathed in deeply, awakening her sixth sense to sense Hai’s chakra somewhere under a desk in the third row, and forced her shoulders and back muscles to relax. She was ready.

Chapter 50: A Merciless Stratagem

Before truly getting started, Ibiki explained the rules of the first stage. The ten questions system, the degressive points, nothing here was new to Hitomi. And yet, it was fascinating to watch the subtle way he applied more and more pressure on the Genin in the room, and the effects of each of his words on them. He was a master at his craft; if psychological torture had been an art, this scene would have been called a masterpiece.

Then, Ibiki started explaining the team point system. Hitomi saw Naruto shift nervously on his chair so, her hands under the desk as to not be seen, she formed the Rat Hand Seal and took his shadow in her for a few seconds, just enough time to let him know he wasn’t alone, she planned on helping him. This was a complex field to navigate, with all the other shadows to dodge without even seeing them sometimes, but she was a genius, wasn’t she? Between her sixth sense and sight, she managed. She just had to be careful and progress slowly.

Then the proctor went over the rules about cheating. The clues the man was scattering in his words were a bit obvious, but it was true that most contestants had been in school not so long ago and had learned there that cheating was bad. Hitomi couldn’t help but smile as the anxiety climbed around her, a vicious and satisfied little rictus that only her Konohajin neighbour saw, and that made him go sickly pale.

Finally, Ibiki informed them that, if someone lost all their points, either forr bad answers or clumsy cheating, their whole team would be disqualified. In reaction, the tension in the room intensified once more. Perfectly serene, Hitomi watched that unfold as if nothing could get to her: during this stage, it would be close enough to the truth. She met Ibiki’s eyes and beamed at him. She almost missed the way her sunny smile threw him off-balance for less than a second, but was glad she saw it.

When he gave the signal to start, she read each question carefully and made sure she could answer all of them without cheating. Her hands still hidden under the desk, she formed the Rat Hand Seal once more and touched Naruto and Temari’s shadows. They were the only ones in the alliance to have no way of cheating safely. One of the planted Chūnin was in front of Ino, who had noticed and was waiting for him to be done writing his answers before possessing him to steal them. As for Team Eight, Sasuke, Gaara and Kankurō, they all had means to collect the answers without being noticed.

Still calm as a cloudless sky, she picked up a pen, making her allies mimic her movements. They weren’t resisting her manipulations at all, which meant the cost in chakra for the technique was very light. Despite that, she wanted to be done quickly. The first question gave her a text to decipher, absurdly easy with her Library full of codes far above her grade, which she had learned thanks to Ensui. He didn’t believe in holding back information, to his young apprentice’s greatest delight.

The second question was about trajectory calculation. For that one, Hitomi wrote her process down, took the time to reread her work so she wouldn’t miss a writing error. The third required contestants to describe the circumstances surrounding the creation of a new shinobi clan in the Land of Fire, something she had studied with her grandfather, Yūhi Shinku. The questions continued on, one after the other, far more challenging that what was expected of a Genin. If Hitomi hadn’t been such a bookworm, she wouldn’t have been able to answer half of them.

Once she was done with the ninth question about ancient laws, Hitomi put her pen down and let go of Temari and Naruto, watching them slightly relax. She had been quick, barely ten minutes, and yet other students had started working on their cheating. Gaara had awakened his sand, while Akamaru, perched on Kiba’s head, was seeking answers for his master. A vibration in the air informed her that two pairs of Byakugan had been activated, then another one told her that Sasuke’s Sharingan was working too. Other students used a variety of stratagems, more or less subtle. A first Genin was disqualified for repeated cheating, sending a wave of anxiety through the room.

Hitomi started gently drumming her fingers on the desk, the rhythm reminiscent of morse code. She had taught her teammates to use it but, this time, the sound was so small because only Hai needed to hear it. Maybe Dosu of Otogakure could as well, but it would be gibberish to him. ‘ Begin ,’ she ordered the tiny cat who was somewhere in the fourth row. Silence floated and stretched… until a scream of terror tore away the apparent calm of the room. And Hitomi stayed there watching, perfectly still and impassive, as two monitors were forced to drag Hai’s poor victim out of the room, his teammates in tow.

A few minutes later, a girl started to laugh hysterically and was disqualified as well, then an old man broke into desperate tears. Hoshihi hadn’t lied: Hai was redoubtable and merciless. With the slightest brush of her fur against someone’s skin – so easy to reach with those stupid open boots all shinobi seemed so fond of – she was able to trap her victim in any illusion she fancied. It was maybe even more subtle: she picked the emotion she wanted to impose on her target, and their brain did the work for her, creating their deepest fear, a scene they couldn’t help but laugh at, something that made them cry… The possibilities were as endless as the range of human emotion.

Those illusions were very hard to break, since they were based on touch. Except for taste, touch was the least exploited sense in Genjutsu – and thus the one most people didn’t even learn how to defend. Kurenai would have been able to defeat those imposed emotions, but Hitomi couldn’t say the same of any other shinobi she knew. During the next thirty minutes, Hai put six other teams out of commission, bringing the total number of her victims to twenty-seven. She was clever enough to always wait a few minutes between two attacks, which made her that much harder to spot – or perhaps the monitors had decided to indulge her, deciding she was discreet enough. Finally, Hitomi rasped her foot against the ground to make Hai understand it was time to stop: Ibiki would soon announce the tenth question.

Kankurō went back from the toilet just in time. He got chewed by Ibiki, but the man told him this only counted as one botched cheating attempt. Hitomi sighed with relief and relaxed on her chair, unknotting muscles she hadn’t realised were tense. A faint smile even played on her lips as she met the proctor’s eyes once more, slowly raising an eyebrow as if to make him understand she had been the origin of the disturbance in his classroom during the whole stage. She thought she saw the shadow of an approving smirk on his lips, but it was hard to tell. Anyway, she’d be happy enough with that.

“Well! Time to go to the tenth question. But before telling you what it is, I have to warn you of a new rule.”

A perfect silence settled over them. Hitomi felt Hai freeze; the she-cat probably feared the brush of her paws against the floor would make her noticeable in this absolute absence of noise apart from faint breathing. Her summoner approved: the mix of bravery and quick thinking the apprentice was showing was very promising. She had to tell that to Hoshihi as soon as she could, and they still had to take the time for her to keep the kitten in the physical world for six moons without interruption to teach her the shinobi ways.

“It’s a rather upsetting rule, let me tell you. Well, first, I’m gonna ask you to decide: which ones amongst you want to continue and try to answer that question, and which ones want to refrain?”

“Before we can choose, you’d have to explain what’s happening if we decide to refrain!” Temari snapped.

Ibiki closed his eyes for a moment, unmistakable gravity taking place on his features like a mask he’d just put on. Oh, he was good, so fucking good. When he opened his eyes again, his will was so intensely visible it almost seemed to materialise, not exactly killing intent but intent nonetheless, crystalised enough to make chills run through the ranks of Genin. His voice took on ominous accents when he continued. “It’s very simple: if you refrain, your point total goes down to zero, and you and your team are disqualified.”

“Well, who’s even gonna want that?” a Kusajin ninja in the first row asked.

“Ah, yes, you’d think that, but you haven’t heard about the new rule.” Ibiki smiled amiably then, and it was bloody terrifying, as far from the cute beam he kept for special occasions as possible. “The ones who decide to continue but can’t answer the tenth question correctly will be banned from the Chūnin exam forever!”

Stupefaction froze the whole room. Utterly fascinated, Hitomi watched the way the proctor toyed with his prey, his whole presence so intense and crushing it was almost an entity of its own. At one moment, the impression was so confusing the girl casted a quick Kai to dissipate any eventual genjutsu implied: there was none. He was just that good. And terrifying, but mostly good, because she kinda knew him – he was the man who had lost a bet to her mother and had had to babysit her, but he was also the Torture and Intelligence Department’s director.

“Where does this rule come from?” Kiba asked. “Many here have attempted the exam more than once!”

“Ah, yes. Unfortunately for you, this year, I make the rules. But don’t complain, you still have the possibility to save your careers.”

“Oh, really?” an Amejin drawled.

“The ones who don’t feel they are good enough to continue can still decide to quit here and now, and take the exam again in six months. It’s as simple as that.” And it really sounded like it was when he put it into such short words. If Hitomi hadn’t been aware of the manipulation, she would be in the same emotional state as the others – a mess, really. Would she have been able to take it, or would she have chosen to quit? “If everyone understands, let’s get started. Those who don’t want to take the tenth question, raise your hand, and give me your seat number before leaving the room.”

Slowly, people trickled out. One after the other, contestants raised their hand, taking their team along their fall. They all looked mentally raw and exhausted, undoubtedly sensitive to Ibiki’s manipulations. Hitomi, while she observed the whole thing, couldn’t help the relief that washed along her spine: those weren’t going to go through the second stage, which meant she didn’t have to fight them.

If only she could have done anything to comfort Naruto… He raised a trembling hand then slammed it on his desk with a crash that made Hinata and several of the remaining contestants jump, making her understand that no, her brother wasn’t breaking down under the pressure. “I’m not a coward!” he yelled. “I won’t quit, I won’t back down! Go on, ask your fucking question, and I don’t give one fuck if I’m to stay a Genin my whole life, I’ll still become Hokage with my Will of Fire, believe it!” Torture master and jinchūriki stared down at each other for a tense moment as Hitomi lightheadedly realised it was the first time she heard her brother swear, Ibiki dignified and impassive, Naruto almost mocking, fuming with scorching determination.

“Think about it,” the man attempted. “It’s your life you’re bargaining here. After that, you won’t be able to retreat anymore, it’s now or never.”

“I never take back my word,” Naruto growled. “It’s how I see my nindō!”

People in the room started smiling, suddenly relaxing, as if the anguish they had felt just a moment before was just a bad dream, and just like that Hitomi knew Naruto had won. Against Ibiki fucking Morino.

“You’re brave,” the proctor sighed. “Very well… I thereby announce that everyone in this room passes the first stage of the Chūnin exam!”

Stupor came back to the room. Even Hitomi’s friends looked dumbfounded at best, so much so that she plastered an air of faint surprise on her features. The only unfazed one was Shikamaru, napping on his desk like nothing could reach him – sometimes she thought it was the case, then she remembered she couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“What about the tenth question?” a Takijin girl asked.

“There never was a tenth question! Or, rather, let’s say that the alternative I presented you with was the tenth question.”

“And what about the first nine, then? Were they meaningless?”

“No, not at all. They were a way for us to judge how you handled collecting intel and communicating without getting caught. Despite the immense pressure on your shoulders with the point system, you had to not only spot the Chūnin amongst you, but manage to cheat on them or on someone who had cheated, without getting caught by the monitors who had eyes on you at all times.”

When they heard this, several Genin let out relieved laughs, bragging about how hard it had been – and how well they had managed. As for Hitomi, she stared at the examiners. She didn’t doubt for a moment that every cheating attempt had been noticed, including her own, and that the monitors had just decided it was good enough for the grade they were hoping to get promoted to.

“Anyway… Some weren’t good enough, which means they were disqualified.” Slowly, Ibiki’s gloved hands untied his forehead protector, which he had been wearing as a bandana. He stood there, his back perfectly straight, allowing the Genin to observe what happened when one got caught outside, in real life. His scalp was scarred and burned, the skin so damaged no hair could grow there anymore. Hitomi could only imagine the pain he had had to feel between his torturer’s hands.

“Intelligence can sometimes be of the utmost importance,” he continued in a surprisingly soft tone. “During a mission or battle, you sometimes have to risk your life to pull it out of the enemy. If you get busted doing so, by the enemy or anyone, really, even a civilian, the intel you risked your life for might not be accurate anymore. Remember this! Having fake data is placing your teammates’ lives, or even your whole village, in jeopardy. That’s why we decided to make you find a way to cheat to know the answers. It was the best way to decide who has what it takes.”

“Still,” Temari said, “I don’t understand what the tenth question was about.”

Ibiki smiled, and this time it was the sunny, sincere expression that made Hitomi relax just like when she was a child, because she knew it was genuine. “The tenth question was the most important of the whole stage. You had a choice: continue or quit. A very hard choice to make, isn’t it? The ones who prefer to quit take their team down with them, but the ones who don’t answer the question correctly lose the right to ever become a Chūnin. How can one react to such a dilemma?”

Only silence answered his question. The contestants were all reliving their moments of doubts and anguish in front of said dilemma, like an echo of what they had truly felt at that moment, in the loving care of Konoha’s best torturer – which most of them were unaware of.

“Let’s put it in other terms, shall we? Let’s suppose you’re all Chūnin. Your war chief assigns you a mission, demands that you steal a secret scroll. You don’t know anything about the ninjas guarding it: their numbers, the techniques and weapons they use, their level… You know nothing. And you can’t know either if they have laid traps for you, of course. What would you do then, accept the mission or refuse it? Do you think you could slip away just because you’re afraid for your or your teammates’ lives? No matter the risks, there are missions you can’t get away from.”

Hitomi’s mind drifted off to the Land of Waves. The mission had been one of those, stuffed with unknown parameters and dangerous opponents. And yet, not even once had she thought she’d better quit, run away, and she knew Naruto and Sasuke hadn’t either. Going on had been the obvious choice, the only one they could even conceive.

“Giving your companions courage and being able to overcome adversity are some of the main qualities we look for in a Chūnin. The ones who are afraid to risk their lives, the ones who back down in front of uncertainty, the ones who quit before trying… Those weaklings don’t deserve to become Chūnin.”

All the Genin still in the room straightened as they heard those words, Hitomi amongst them. She felt proud of herself and her teammates, and her friends as well, proud of the way they had resisted and fought with their very own weapons. She wasn’t sure she was good enough to become a Chūnin yet, but that criteria at least she could say without blushing or lying that she was meeting it.

“But you have decided to continue. For me, that means you have successfully answered the tenth question. I believe you are ready to face the numerous difficulties that will await you in the following stages of the exam. You just went through the first door. The first stage of the Chūnin exam is over! The only thing left for me is to wish you good luck.”

“Great!” Naruto beamed. “You can count on me!”

A little laugh full of affection formed between Hitomi’s lips, soft and comforting like a thick blanket in the middle of a storm. Such was the effect of Naruto’s optimism and sheer will on people. One day, that sunny influence would make him an awesome Hokage. She hoped she would be there to see it.

Suddenly, a window exploded, making the monitor who was standing next to it jump out of the way. A rain of glass washed over the ground, some of the shards even embedding themselves in Ibiki’s boots – and yet he didn’t even bat an eye. A big, black banner unfolded, suspended to the blackboard by two kunai. The holes they left would probably make the teacher fume with anger during the week. In front of the banner stood a surprisingly tall woman, her violet hair tied in a high ponytail that was kind of similar to a Nara hairdo. Her coat was the coolest Hitomi had ever seen, and there was something very intimidating in her clothing, between the steel fishnet jumpsuit and the very short leather skirt she was wearing over it. She was beautiful, like toxic flowers were.

“Don’t cheer just yet, brats! I’m Mitarashi Anko, and I’m gonna be your proctor for the second stage of the Chūnin exam. No time to lose, follow me!”

A sceptic silence answered her order. Hitomi couldn’t suppress a smile but hid it behind her hand – she really didn’t want to make Orochimaru’s former student her enemy, thank you very much. She loved her life in Konoha; ending her life diced to feed a serpent wasn’t her favourite plan.

“Ibiki, you passed twenty teams?” the woman snapped. “Sixty contestants, really? Your stage was too fucking easy if that many passed!”

“I’d rather say that there were a lot of good contestants this time around,” the proctor said.

“Pff, doesn’t matter. With what I prepared for them, half of them will be thrown out before my stage is done, at the very least. Oh, just thinking about it makes me shiver in excitement… All of you! Come with me. I’ll explain what the test is once we’re there.”

Docile, the students left their seats and started to come down towards the door. Hitomi, as she walked near the place where Hai was hiding, gestured for her to jump on her shoulder. The little cat obeyed, her hop formidable for her stature, and sunk her claws in her summoner’s leather kimono to stabilise her landing. “Thank you for your help, Hai-chan. You can go back to the spiritual world. Tell Hoshihi I’ll report to him as soon as I have a bit of quiet around, if you don’t mind.”

“Gotcha, Lady Summoner! See you soon!” the she-cat chirped before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

A smile on her lips, the girl went to join her adopted brothers, who were mingling in the crowd of remaining contestants. They seemed to be talking about the first stage, what they had learned and gotten from it.

“Ah, Hitomi! You saw what happened during the test? People were doing weird stuff all the time.”

“I know, Naruto. I asked Hai-chan to put several teams out with her genjutsu. I have to say she handled herself remarkably well, I didn’t expect her to be that good already.”

“That was you? But why did you ask her to do that?”

“Because a lot of those people would have been against us during the next stages. The more people I disqualified, the better our chances became. It’s everything that matters to me.”

“But it’s cheating!”

“Ninjas cheat, dumbass,” Sasuke drawled. “It was even the goal of that test. Weren’t you relieved when Hitomi-nee cheated and gave you the answers?”

“Yeah, I was, but…”

“No buts. You’ll have to do far worse than what she did during missions you’ll be assigned once you get promoted to Chūnin. Steal, bully, kill. We have to prepare to act that way, both of us. Think about this and leave Hitomi alone.”

“O-okay, Sasuke.”

Hitomi had to admit she was relieved by the way the young Uchiha had stepped in. She knew her moral code wasn’t the neatest or the strongest, but she didn’t like the idea of Naruto disapproving of her actions. She loved him enough to want to stay on his good side. To be defended felt good, gave her a feeling of legitimacy she really needed. Brushing her shoulder against Sasuke’s, she picked up the pace just enough to be ahead of them and hide her face to them. She didn’t know if it was the dust or the sun, but her eyes… They were stinging a little.

It took them almost twenty minutes, at a civilian pace, to arrive at  training ground number forty-four, nicknamed the Forest of Death. The Genin weren’t allowed inside usually – Hitomi had tried, in the hope she could get a feel for the place and map it, and why not put a few traps in there. The ANBU on watch had dived on her like birds of prey on a poor little mouse and had made her leave. One didn’t cross the ANBU, anyway. Since they had had to take on part of the Uchiha police duty six years ago, they were all various degrees of pissed all the time. Poor babies.

The trees in the Forest of Death were a sub-breed of the Hashirama Oaks, the ones that were born from Hokage the First’s Mokuton and had reproduced. Dozens of years of careful picking and crossing later, they were recognisable by their very pale bark, almost caramel in colour, and by the abundance of leaves on their branches, perfect hiding spots for a ninja in need of one. Konohajin shinobi would have an advantage in such a setting. Those trees were endemic to the Land of Fire, and this was also the only country with such thick forests.

“Here we are!” Anko announced. “The second stage of the Chūnin exam will happen here, on training ground number forty-four, also known as the Forest of Death. You will quickly understand why, trust me.”

When Naruto started mimicking the proctor in a mocking manner, probably still high on his success in the first stage, Hitomi groaned. She stepped forwards, a hand on the guard of her tantō, ready to step in, but Sasuke stopped her by taking her arm, his eyes grave. “Stop. You’d risk being disqualified. Leave Naruto to face the consequences of his actions for once, he has to learn eventually.”

Reluctantly, she relaxed next to him, a frown creasing her brow. She watched Anko throw a kunai with incredible aim, just enough to cut Naruto’s cheek, then use the Shunshin to find herself at his back, hugging him from behind to lick his wound. When he was sure she wouldn’t move, Sasuke let go of Hitomi, but she stayed next to him, seeking comfort in his body heat and familiar chakra.

Suddenly, a member from one of the two Kusajin teams, who had gone through Ibiki’s test without a hitch, stood behind Anko, his thick, unending tongue wrapped around the kunai she had just thrown. Immediately, Hitomi’s pulse went wild and her killing intent was back. She perfectly remembered the way events turned in the canon starting from this point. She knew who was hiding under this face. This team had been at the back of the crowd, she had walked ahead of them with Sasuke. Orochimaru could have killed them at any time. Probably with laughable ease.

How could Anko not recognise her former mentor? The Yūhi girl knew the hatred the woman had for the traitor and how much she wished she was able to drag his disgusting ass back to Konoha. She should have… She should have been obsessed, shuddering with anger each time someone had even one feature in common with her former shishou, being as dangerous and unstable as the canon had painted her to be. Not standing there without saying anything as her tormentor handed her a kunai slick with his saliva, his face hidden under the features of his latest victim.

“For future reference, I’d recommend that you don’t approach me from behind with such strong killing intent. Unless you have a death wish?”

“I’m sorry. I lose control when I see blood… And I got carried away because your kunai cut one of my precious hair.” The voice of the shinobi that was hiding Orochimaru’s identity was soft and suave at first glance, like an expensive liquor, but poison and perversity dripped in the way he savoured each of his words, and it made Hitomi want to disappear, to flee like prey in front of a predator. She had to curl her hands into fists to stay where she was, face her fears until the feeling dissipated. She could take it. She had a plan.

And prayed that it was good enough.

Chapter 51: Entering the Forest of Death

Notes:

Hi! Because I'm now also working on another project (a novel!! in English!!), updates will now happen once a week, on Tuesday. Thank you so much for your support of this fanfic! It's incredibly appreciated, you have no idea.

“Good! Now, before we get started on the test, we have some paperwork to go through.” Anko opened a portfolio she had stuck the Hermit knew where in her clothes and got a thick bundle of paper from it. She handed it to the closest ninja, one of the Otojin. He got the bundle around, until everyone had a sheet of paper between their hands. Hitomi looked at her own: a responsibility discharge.

“By signing that paper,” Anko explained, “you indicate that you’re participating in this test knowing that you’re risking your life, and that I am not responsible if you die or are injured.” She said that with such carelessness, and just a touch of glee to sublime it, that several contestants stepped back. They looked surprised… And yet it was very public knowledge that people died during these exams, every year. The worst, since that system had been put into place, had been the Kirijin exam three years prior. The village had still been working hard to rebuild its reputation and had failed spectacularly: almost all the contestants had died during the survival test, poisoned and burned from the inside by toxic vapours. Since then, Konoha wouldn’t send Genin to their exams anymore.

“I’m gonna explain the modalities of the test, you’ll sign after that. Then you’ll go, one team at once, into the tent over there to hand your discharges. Let’s focus on the explanations, now. In short, this test is a survival exercise in extreme conditions.”

Hitomi heard Shikamaru sigh a few steps behind her and couldn’t suppress a tender smile. He hated that type of test since the Academy. He had no way to handle them with minimum efforts. He either had to shine, or to try triple-hard to appear mediocre. Neither of those options appealed to him.

“First, let me show you the terrain’s typography.” Anko unfolded a very rough map of the area and continued. “The Forest of Death is surrounded by a wire fence, which contains forty-four doors at equal distance from each other, all locked. The forest is bisected by a river. A tower stands in its centre, ten kilometres away from any of the doors.”

Hitomi took the time to really observe that rough draft of a map so she wouldn’t forget it. She knew the version Anko was showing them was far from the real thing, but better to have approximate information than no information at all. Next to her, she felt Sasuke activate his Sharingan.

“You’ll enter the forest and try to survive as well as accomplish the mission we prepared for you. You’ll have to use all your skills, from weaponry to ninjutsu, including everything you can possibly imagine to steal another team’s scroll.”

“Scrolls?” a Konohajin Genin asked.

“Yeah, scrolls. There are two kinds: Heaven Scrolls are the blue ones, and Earth Scrolls the green ones. You will have to fight to keep your own and get the one you don’t have. You’re sixty, which means twenty teams are present. Ten of them will get an Earth Scroll, and the ten others will get a Heaven Scroll. To pass the test, you have to steal the scroll you don’t have and take the pair, with your complete team, to the tower in the centre of the Forest.”

She allowed the Genin a moment to understand how the test worked and what it implied. Hitomi could almost physically feel the mix of excitement and terror running through her peers. Some of them seemed quite set on defeat already. She understood, even if she didn’t share their pessimism. This test would be risky, violent, and could in one second turn into a bloodbath. She herself couldn’t suppress the tremors in her hands, but she couldn’t tell if those were thanks to Orochimaru’s proximity or to the test itself.

“You’ll have to act quickly. The test will last for a hundred and twenty hours, exactly five days. Of course, you’ll have to fend for yourselves there. You have everything you need in the forest, but be wary of predators, killing insects and venomous plants.” An anxious whisper ran through the crowd but Anko blatantly ignored it. “I also have to warn you that it’s highly improbable that ten teams manage to pass the test. The more time passes, the deeper you go into the forest and the more land you’ll have to cover. And yet you’ll have less and less time to recover from wounds and exhaustion. Your enemies will be plenty, and hidden behind every leaf. You won’t even be able to sleep correctly.”

Hitomi knew all that very well, but her knowledge didn’t stop the cold sweat rolling along her spine, instinctive reaction to the subtle mix of killing intent projected by Anko and her expressionless voice, as if that kind of mission was child play for her, or even a game.

“Good! It’s now time to list the disqualification criteria. First, will be disqualified all the teams that fail to reach the tower in the allocated time with two scrolls in their possession. Second condition: teams with one or more members dead or unable to fight will be disqualified. Ah, while I think about it: no quitting halfway. Consider this as a mission your war chief handed you and treat it as such. Finally, you are not allowed to look inside the scrolls before you reach the tower.”

“What happens if we peek before that?” Naruto asked.

“That,” Anko answered with the sweetest smile, “is a surprise for those who are foolish enough to disobey. If you get promoted to Chūnin, you sometimes will have to transport extremely secret information. We have to test your integrity.” She clapped her hands, as if relieved to have gotten to the end of her little speech. “Explanations, done. The man in the tent will hand you a scroll in exchange for the three discharge papers of your team members. One team goes at once, of course, and you are allowed to hide the scroll before leaving the tent so no one knows which one you have. Then, you’ll be given a door number and wait there until the test begins and the doors unlock. Ah, a little piece of advice before we start: try not to fucking die.”

Hitomi shuddered, but as her anxiety stretched inside her to occupy as much space as possible, her determination grew. She could do this. She had thought about it. The perfect window of action would be short, but it was doable. They just had to attack the first team they would find then run to the tower. Ororchimaru wouldn’t dare attack Sasuke when he was under ANBU supervision.

With a quick gesture, she signed her paper after completing the typical information – name, village, etc. When Naruto and Sasuke were done as well, they took their place in the queue that had formed at the entrance of the room. Shiranui Genma was inside. Hitomi greeted him with a little smile, hoping to hide her anxiety, and handed him the three sheets of paper. In exchange, he gave her a Heaven Scroll, his usual senbon stuck between his thin lips. “Your door will be the number three. Good luck for the rest, kids.”

The girl nodded her tanks, then took one of her own scrolls from an inside pocket. With an expert gesture, she stored it inside, but she still didn’t feel satisfied. Frowning, she turned to Genma. “All means of dissimulation are accepted, correct?”

“Yeah, as long as you still have access to the scrolls once you reach the tower. A creative idea popped in that clever little head of yours, kiddo?”

“My head is a perfect size, thank you. And yeah, you can call it creative alright.” She sliced her thumb open on a kunai and summoned Kurokumo, who greeted her with a little wave of his tail. Without any ceremonies, she unsealed the Heaven Scroll from the storage she had originally put it in and handed the damned blue thing to her cat. “When I summon you again, take it with you. In fact, keep it on your person at all times.”

“Gotcha, Lady Summoner!” He puffed away with a new wave of his tail, leaving Genma to stare at the place. The man let out a little laugh then shook his head, his senbon lightly clicking against his teeth.

“Well played. I’d very much like to see your opponents try to get that one.”

Hitomi nodded and left the tent, her silent brothers in tow. She didn’t plan on summoning her cats anymore during the test. She didn’t want to risk their lives if her team failed to avoid Orochimaru. Her pulse quickened once more; even thinking about him was enough to bring her close to panic.

“Everything will be alright, Hitomi-chan!”

The girl exchanged a hesitating little smile with Naruto. He was always so sunny, so sure of himself and his skills. She knew what Orochimaru would do if he put his hands on him. She just wanted to… She wanted to prevent that. Was it even possible? Her lips formed a thin, hard line. She’d have to try her absolute best. For him, for them.

They arrived at their door, a little kanji for ‘three’ painted above the chains and seals that kept it close. Her notebook went cold three times in a few minutes: Hinata, Shikamaru and Gaara had just sent their door numbers and… it was the absolute worst scenario she had prepared for. They were all separated by several doors, ten at each side for Team Seven. The girl shifted nervously but pushed her anxiety down, forcing herself to focus on what she could do in that situation. She wrote down the list of doors for each team of the Alliance, including her own, then sent it to all three notebooks, since she hadn’t found a way to connect them to any other than her own yet.

Several minutes later, a whiff of chakra grew in the air like a bubble and an incredibly delicate net of seals started working, making the chains fall to the ground. The door opened then, without any hands to push it in one direction or the other, and the three Genin stepped through the opening. Behind them, the door closed, with the discreet buzzing on her meridians indicating that a seal went dormant again.

After three steps into the forest, they could already see a difference in light: the foliage was so thick that the very little light allowed to go through it was barely enough to see where they were going. The night would be even darker: no moon would be able to pierce through such dense forest. However, a good shinobi didn’t need their eyes to walk around. The mix of chakra, noise, instinct sometimes too, and even smell in rare cases was enough.

“There’s a team two hundred metres to our left,” Hitomi said, focusing on her meridians. “We’ll go ahead of them and lay a trap for them. I want to be at the tower as soon as possible.”

“You have an idea?”

“Yeah. In fact, Sasuke, you will really like this one, it’s a trap I worked on with Kakashi-sensei in the Land of Waves. I hadn’t tried it on anything but clones before, it’ll be the occasion.”

The three teenagers went from tree to tree in silence, having immediately decided to leave the treacherous ground to inexperienced teams. Hitomi was almost certain the one she had spotted wasn’t from Konoha. According to their current speed, they were still on the ground and found that terrain quite hard to go through. It was just as well. Her team stopped two hundred metres ahead of their target and Hitomi got to work, unfolding her key parchment under a blanket of leaves in the centre of a very little clearing. She knew their victims would want to go there – the hole in foliage was like a well of light, and it would attract any living being. Instinct was a marvellous thing.

A few minutes later, the targets arrived. Just like Hitomi had guessed, they weren’t from Konoha: they were wearing, on their foreheads, the Sunajin insignia, as well as typical pieces of armour for the Village Hidden in the Sand. They were three boys, around sixteen years of age, maybe older. They were probably more experienced than Team Seven, and yet they walked right into the trap, as naïve as any prey. Hitomi activated her seal with a simple thread of chakra – simple, yes, but Kankurō would have been damned proud of her.

Immediately, an almost opaque barrier in the shape of a half-sphere surrounded the three shinobi and a shock activated the smoke bomb she had planted there as well. Brown smoke rose quickly in the dome, making the target cough as they looked for a way out despite their vision loss. There was none, of course. Only brute force would break that trap, but it was particularly hard to gather chakra without being able to breathe or see. One after the other, they fell, unconscious.

Hitomi cut the chakra supply of her trap, allowing the barrier to dissolve. Already, the cloud of smoke was dissipating in the air: two minutes later, the only thing left was a faint smell of nutmeg. She chose that moment to hop to the ground and search the three bodies until she found what she was looking for. A Heaven Scroll, just like their own. She frowned, her lips a thin line once more. They would have to lose a bit more time in the forest.

“Not the one we were looking for, sorry, boys,” she announced as she climbed back on the branch where her brothers had been waiting for her. “We keep it anyway, that’s one less team in the competition.”

“Hitomi? What was that poison?”

“Don’t worry, Naruto, they aren’t going to die. It’s just gonna make them sleep for a few hours, and we’re still too close to the door for predators to notice them. They’re gonna be just fine.”

And if it didn’t end up being the case… Could she really bring herself to care? She knew that Orochimaru would target Sasuke at the first opportunity, and that the only way to escape him was to reach the tower before he could find them. She couldn’t feel the traitor through her meridians. There were too many people in the forest right now, and she knew he was probably hiding his presence. She doubted she could find a fucking Sannin if said fucking Sannin had decided to stay hidden.

“Let’s go then. Where to?”

Hitomi closed her eyes for a second, just enough to find the information he had requested. “A hundred metres to the right. We’ll have to go around them then ambush them.”

Those were a group from Konoha, she could tell without any doubts from the way they were jumping from tree to tree, their footing steady and so fast any mistake would have meant death. In fact, if Team Seven hadn’t been on a favourable trajectory, they wouldn’t have been able to trap them. It happened as easily as with their first victims, so confident and sure of their own skills they went into the trap headfirst. They resisted the poison a bit more, since its ingredients came from the Land of Fire, but finally fell as surely as the Sunajin had. Those ones, Hitomi surrounded them with a very quick protective seal, just in case. She had heard a suspect growl in the bushes as she had laid her trap, a bit too obvious to be ignored.

This time, it was the scroll they needed. As Naruto and Sasuke stood watch around her, the latter casting an illusion to hide her movements, she summoned Haīro, handed him the scroll and repeated the instructions she had given to Kurokumo. She had chosen to do it this way, to pick them, because she didn’t like to play favourites. Hoshihi was already her familiar, which the five others understood full well, but she couldn’t give him all the work.

“Time to go to the tower,” Sasuke said when he broke his illusion and saw her empty-handed.

“I agree. No need to collect more scrolls than we need, other teams will do that work for us. If we pick up the pace, we’ll be at the tower right after nightfall.”

And maybe, maybe it would be enough to dodge Orochimaru. In perfect silence, the three teenagers jumped from their tree to the next, their gait flexible and steady on the branches that were like an infinite ocean under their feet. In other circumstances, Hitomi would have enjoyed the Forest of Death. She would have taken her time to go through it, and maybe she would have tried to meet the giant predators it contained. But she knew she didn’t have such luxury.

A kilometer later, they had to take a large detour to avoid a group of giant tigers hiding in the undergrowth. The Yūhi girl swore through clenched teeth, her mood growing darker with each of the little pitfalls they had to dodge. On favourable terrain, the distance between the doors and the tower could be covered by any Genin team in less than an hour, but they had already lost twice that time with these obstacles and their surroundings seemed to refuse to leave them alone for even a hundred meters. They kept having to stop to let a threat pass, or to find a way to go around it if it didn’t look like it was moving any time soon. Deep inside, she wanted to curl into a little ball and sob her distress and terrors away.

The snake hit an hour before sunset, splitting their group in two like a prophet split the sea. Sasuke and Hitomi ended up on one side and Naruto on the other. It was a huge beast, so long and thick Hitomi couldn’t see its head nor tail. It seemed to focus only on Naruto and the girl decided to let him handle it, because she knew he could and she and Sasuke had their own problems.

on their side of the forest, a brutal Wind Release cut through the trees, slicing whole chunks of centenarian trunks. Slowly, the trees fell, in an agonising creak, as the two teenagers jumped – fortunately, in the right direction – to flee the impact. Such a technique was at least B-ranked, far beyond what Temari had in her arsenal. Hitomi’s own jutsus wouldn’t have been able to cut through it. She had no choice but to dodge and run, leaving Naruto behind no matter how much it hurt to help the ones of her brothers who, she knew, would need her help the most.

He was standing in front of them – the Kusajin man hiding Orochimaru’s soul. He seemed untouched, as if a whole chunk of forest didn’t just fall like a house of cards at his feet. He took an Earth Scroll from his pouch and made a whole deal of swallowing it in his throat, as if to tell them they’d have to cut him open to get it. As if it even interested Hitomi. She just wanted to grab Sasuke and Naruto like bundles under her arms and run as fast as her legs could go.

“Oh-oh, so the preys have some fight left in them… Very well, it will be more fun that way. May the best live to see the end of this test… And may the others die.”

As soon as the last word left his mouth, his killing intent was set ablaze and burning through the air, so thick Hitomi couldn’t breath, couldn’t bat an eye, couldn’t… live. She couldn’t… and why even try, anyway? It was useless, she was so weak, so… so… Her heart thundered in her chest, so quick and messy she felt like she was dying. No, she was dying, she was sure of it. And she had… she had to cut it short, to kill herself now so the predator couldn’t toy with her. She owed it to everybody. Sasuke, Naruto, her mother, Ensui… They would be less heartbroken if they knew it had been quick.

She didn’t even know how the tantō found itself in her hand, how she managed to raise her arm despite the unbearable pressure until the edge was against her throat, on the exact spot where, if one looked attentively enough, they could see her pulse. It was an intimate, soft spot, so fragile the slightest brush of her blade would end her life. And she had to. She had to, didn’t she? She was powerless and terrified, and yet something deep inside her revolted against such thoughts. She loved living. She wanted to live. She had a family, friends, love even sometimes to soften her pain. She was happy. Orochimaru couldn’t tear that away from her.

And yet she didn’t move when two kunai thrown by the deserter flew in the air in her direction, only watching as death came towards her without batting an eye, until Sasuke’s weight slammed against her, sending her away from the two weapons’ trajectory. He was bleeding – his leg – but it was his feverish, distraught eyes that were the most worrying, and thus what helped Hitomi snap out of her torpor. She took him by the arm and jumped on one of the trees that had escaped their opponent’s devastating strength, seeking refuge, protection – anything.

Unfortunately, danger was awaiting them there, in the shape of a serpent too big to be natural, crawling towards them above their heads. If its scales hadn’t produced the slightest rubbing sound against a knot in the wood, neither Hitomi nor Sasuke would have heard it coming. She decapitated it with one jab of her tantō, her shadow stopping the body and head from falling. The noise would have warned Orochimaru of their position.

A disgusted shudder ran down her back when a grey shape started leaving the headless body of the snake. She took Sasuke with her once more, out of reach from the deserter who was already reforming his body from the snake’s. A seal. It was a seal. She could sense it – the absurdity of that observation made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. She was going to die. She was going to fail to protect Sasuke, and to die because she was not strong enough and Orochimaru had no motive to leave her alive.

“You shouldn’t allow for the slightest relaxation… Prey should always be most vigilant when they try to escape their predator.” Incredibly fast, the Sannin wrapped his body around the branch where he had been standing then jumped to his prey. It happened so fast, and yet he found time to stop when five shuriken hit the wood, where his head would have been just a moment later. Hitomi almost burst into tears when she saw Naruto. She didn’t want him here, not if it meant Orochimaru was going to hurt him. He had never really awakened Kyūbi, he didn’t know how, he was… if she didn’t do anything, he…

“Leave my family alone, you fucker!”

“Naruto!” Sasuke yelled. “Don’t be an idiot, flee! We don’t stand a chance against that guy, go away!”

“Ooh… Congratulations, Naruto, you managed to kill my big reptile…”

Once more, tiny bubbles of laughter caressed Hitomi’s brain because it was just ridiculous , she was going to die destroyed by a serpent fetishist. She didn’t want to die, but more than anything right now she didn’t want to die against such a guy. Sasuke’s Sharingan, which disappeared, made her shudder in anguish. No, no, he couldn’t, it was a trap, he didn’t want it, but Hitomi… Hitomi was too terrified to stop her brother.

“Here, you want our scroll, right?” the young Uchiha said, brandishing the Heaven Scroll they had stolen from their first victims. “Take it and let us leave!”

“Excellent, your instinct is a good guide. The only thing a prey can hope from its predator, is that he deigns leaving it alone after getting what he wanted.”

“Take it!”

With an anxious sigh, the Yūhi girl watched the scroll fly into a perfect arc through the air and go right into the hand of the deserter who… burned it with a simple spark of chakra. Of course. He didn’t need that scroll because he wasn’t a fucking Genin .

“Unfortunately, you were mistaken about my intentions. This scroll, I could have easily taken it after killing you. But it’s not what I want.”

The man bit his thumb open and rolled up one of his sleeves, revealing a summoning seal tattooed on his skin. Hitomi had learned through her readings that some contracts were carved on the body of the summoner. Particularly capricious and independent summons, like the legendary Manda who demanded a sacrifice of a hundred human prey for each summoning, refused to be linked by mere paper and ink. Suddenly, she was overly thankful for how easy her own summons were. She wanted to hug Aotsuki herself for establishing or supporting the continuation of the rules the feline clan still followed to that day.

“In your dreams!” Naruto yelled as he hurled himself to the Sannin. Hitomi and Sasuke screamed in anguish at the same time, too slow to stop their brother from flying towards what they considered unavoidable death.

“Ninpō: The Dance of Infinite Scales!”

A huge snake’s head sprang from the ground in front of the deserter and its huge chin intercepted the jinchūriki, slamming against his torso with enough force to break several ribs – Hitomi heard the snaps from where she stood, powerless. Before the snake could dive on him again, she rushed forwards, escaping Sasuke’s fingers that had held onto her sleeve. In her mind and right under her skin, the voice that had restlessly haunted her in the Land of Waves was back, chanting promises of death, carnage – and this time, maybe she was just a bit more inclined to listen to it.

She grabbed Naruto in her movement, projected him against a tree and raised her tantō to parry one of the snake’s fangs before it hit her face. Not strong enough, not fast enough, she only had the lucky reflex of throwing herself aside, her right cheek burning. She rolled on her shoulder to soften the shock, stood back up and raised a hand to touch her face. The pain was agonising, a fire that made her feel like she was losing her other senses in a fog that was only suffering. Her fingers came back red – she already felt the liquid roll on her throat and soak her kimono.

Naruto, shielded behind her body, came back to his senses and opened his eyes. They stayed foggy for a moment then focused on her face, on the place where she could feel the wound swallow her cheek whole. His face contorted, the expression impossible to decrypt, and then… and then his eyes turned red and morbid, vicious chakra started screaming in the air around him, tearing through Orochimaru’s killing intent. The voice pulling under Hitomi’s skin jumped in answer, more sublime and alluring than ever.

And she.

She was terrified.

The Kyūbi’s chakra was unfolding around them like ribbons of smoke, almost visible, tingeing everything it touched with hatred and fury. Naruto, surrounded by a mass of orange, bubbling chakra, suddenly stood up and stepped around the protection Hitomi had offered him. His chakra brushed against her, but it was enough contact for her arm, where he had touched her, to be slightly burnt. This new pain drowned in its own insignificance, lost inside the one tearing through her cheek and rendering even her breathing difficult.

“So it’s true,” Orochimaru said in an interested tone, “the boy who holds the Kyūbi sealed survived.”

 As if the contact with demonic chakra didn’t burn like hell, as if it was easier than plucking a flower from the ground, Orochimaru deployed a tongue long enough to wrap around Naruto’s arms, stopping him mid-charge, then picked him up from the ground. Her eyes misty with pain, Hitomi saw Orochimaru forming hand seals that didn’t augur anything good. She wanted to throw senbon in his direction, stop him – as if he had felt her intent, he shifted and kept Naruto as a shield between them.

“Under the effects of its receptacle, the powers of the Demon Fox filter outside their prison… How interesting! And it looks like the seal on your belly is swelling…”

With such brutality it made Hitomi want to scream, the deserter slammed his hand surrounded with chakra in her brother’s belly, making him lose consciousness immediately. Then he threw him away like a broken toy, and Hitomi’s hands acted faster than she could possibly think, five senbon stopping his fall by pinning his clothes to the trunk of a tree. She wanted to run to him, to get him away, to make sure he was okay, but she knew she couldn’t. She still had to make destiny flip on its head to try to save Sasuke.

She unsheathed her tantō again and casted for a Water Whip. It was her most offense-oriented technique, after all. She knew she had no chance, periodically distracted by her burning cheek, the blood that didn’t seem to stop running on her throat and neck, and the tugging and pulling under her skin, but she had to try. The voice inside her became a caress, wrapping around her thoughts like a lover, trying to persuade her to let go, let her do it.

Her chakra curled like a fist inside her body, Hitomi rushed to the deserter.

Chapter 52: Of Blood, Chakra and Rage

Hitomi could’ve cried with relief when she saw Sasuke, overcoming the fear that had paralysed him up to that point, straighten up and rush to her side. She wouldn’t have to fight a fucking Sannin alone, thanks the Hermit’s bollocks, and even if they had no chance in hell, the fact she didn’t have to rely only on herself there was an unending relief. Her brother’s eyes stopped on her cheek, then the black irises turned red, with two black tomoe each. He unsheathed Shingi to Giri and stepped next to her.

They attacked in the same movement, fear forgotten in the fury of seeing their brother down, their deadly, instinctive dance more harmonious than it had ever been. Hitomi knew what the Uchiha had in mind and took it upon herself to create the openings he needed to throw his shuriken, watching him deploy metres upon metres of ninja wire to set his trap in the middle of an active fight, her whip snapping each time Orochimaru attempted to approach him. The voice under her skin insisted, haunted her movements, skinned her alive, but she was terrified of the idea of listening to it, of opening herself to its promises of devastation.

“Fire Style: The Dragon Fire!”

The ninja wire immediately went ablaze, running to the deserter to trap him in their infernal embrace. Hitomi was just as breathless as Sasuke was, her fingers turned icy cold by all the chakra she had to spend to move with such strength, such speed.

“Such a mastery of the Sharingan despite your young age,” the deserter whispered almost lovingly in the middle of the flames. “You’re worthy of your illustrious name, no one can deny it… It only confirms what I thought: I want you.”

Hitomi wanted to yell that he wouldn’t have him, ever, to spit to his slowly melting face, but she knew… she knew she couldn’t stop him. She was too weak, too powerless, not even a prey to that man who coveted her brother so dearly. Tears started to roll on her cheeks, lighting a new fire of salt and agony on her wound, and she ran to the deserter with a feral scream, her tantō raised in an attack that was as stupid as it was suicidal.

She didn’t even have the time to take five steps before she was stopped mid-charge by Orochimaru’s petrifying technique, incanted without hand seals nor enunciation. The difference in power was terrifying, his grip on her so heavy she could barely breathe, the only movement she could manage focused on the short intakes of air on her lips. She made her chakra burn high, tried to push against the limits that hurt her limbs and slowly choked her. In vain.

“No need to envy your brother, Sasuke-kun. I see in your eyes a power even greater than Itachi’s.”

Despite the technique that petrified him as well, Sasuke’s features went hard. “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled, his voice so full of fury and vulnerability it made Hitomi want to throw up in terror.

“My name is Orochimaru. If you want to see me again, and trust me, you will, give your very best during this exam. Now, my parting gift to you…”

Suddenly, the deserter’s head seemed to unhook from his shoulders and fly, fly to Sasuke’s vulnerable neck, sticking like a leech to the delicate, fragile skin. Hitomi felt a brutal spike in chakra, perhaps as morbid and foul as the Kyūbi’s, then the head went back to its body, leaving Sasuke to fall on his knees, moaning in pain. The deserter wiped his lips and smiled like he had just had the most pleasant talk. Hitomi had never hated someone so much.

“You’ll come to me seeking more power, Sasuke-kun. I know you will.” He disappeared, his last words still clinging to the air.

His hold over her broken, Hitomi rushed to Sasuke and pushed the neckline of his battle coat aside with a brush of her fingers. She had to suppress a sob when she saw the Cursed Seal on his neck. Kneeling, his whole body clenching with pain, her brother was moaning, the sound rising and rising until it turned to a scream, as if fire ran in his veins and devastated everything in its wake.

Behind the trees, the sun was setting, stealing all light away from the forest. Hitomi suddenly remembered, like a punch to the gut, that her trouble was far from over. Her fingertips found one of the vital points along Sasuke’s neck and she pressed it, forcing him into unconsciousness, where pain couldn’t reach him. In her arms, he fell like a broken doll, his forehead already burning with fever.

Her legs shaking, exhausted and hurting like she had never hurt before, Hitomi left him there for a moment and went to pick Naruto from his tree. His skin was so cold that, for a moment, the girl thought he had died. Supporting his weight with one arm, she touched his throat with her other hand and sighed with relief when she felt his pulse, slow but steady under her fingers. One step after the other, she took him to Sasuke’s inert body and laid the two brothers side by side.

Only then did she decide to take care of herself. She unfolded a storage seal and freed its content, finding a gourd of water and, in one of her pockets, a little mirror. She had to reduce one of her changes of clothes to rags in order to clean the wound on her cheek, trying not to vomit in pain. When she managed to clean most of the blood, she raised the mirror to her face and observed her reflection.

A big part of her cheek was no more than blood, flesh and… something else. If she had to guess, she’d say it was the venom of the snake that had wounded her. According to the shape of its fangs, the wound should have been thin and straight, but if that venom was an acid, it explained the way it had spread. Hitomi had to stop the process before it totally pierced her cheek.

Her hands shaking, she drew a seal directly to the ground, creating a half-impervious barrier that could contain a little fire without liberating its smoke for around twenty minutes. It would be enough. Her movements were jerky, rough, but she quickly managed to set a little pile of wood aflame. When the fire had taken, she took one of her kunai and offered the blade to the flames. The metal got hotter and hotter, until even handling it became complicated. She gripped its handle harder, forcing herself to act with more determination than she truly had in her. She couldn’t fail, and this wound needed to be stopped before it became serious.

She had to grab her own wrist with her other hand, leaving the mirror on her knees, to force the scorching blade near her face. When the steel touched her wound and started sizzling, she lost consciousness for a few seconds, her will keeping her sitting straight and the kunai on her cheek. She had to repeat the process twice, gnawing on the intact skin she still had to make sure she had burned all the acid. Little noises, akin to ones a wounded animal would make, escaped her pinched lips from time to time – she wouldn’t have been able to keep silent if her life had depended upon it.

When she was done, she stood up. She had to shelter Sasuke and Naruto. She had no idea of the time: the bit of sky she could see through the hole Orochimaru had dug into the forest wasn’t enough to give her that information. She didn’t know when the Otojin team would attack, but she had to be ready by then, she had no other choice. Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness, allowing her to notice a Hashirama Oak, titan-like and proud, its roots two meters thick above the ground in some places. It would do, with a bit of luck.

She had never missed Kakashi more than she missed him now. He would have known what to do. Maybe he would even have been able to protect Naruto and Sasuke from Orochimaru. He had the necessary power and talent, and hundreds of techniques the deserter didn’t know thanks to his Sharingan. And even if it hadn’t been the case, he would have handled himself better than she was right now, her cheek badly burned and her hands shaking with exhaustion and terror. Everything she had done, all her plans and preparations, none of it had been enough.

When her brothers were hidden from sight and potential rain, she sat for a moment, drank a long gulp of water from her gourd, then stood back up. She had neither time nor any right to rest. Rest was for deserving shinobis, the ones who had finished their mission and succeeded at it. Not for her.

The whole night, she trapped the hell out of her little spot in the Forest of Death. She didn’t have Naruto’s imagination nor Sasuke’s natural agility with wire, but her heart was crushed by hatred, a feeling that stimulated a vicious, cruel part of her mind. Those people were going to come, to try to harm her brothers; they didn’t deserve the tiniest spark of pity, only the pain and destruction she’d offer them without any reservation. Deep inside her, the voice that hadn’t gone silent even one moment since Orochimaru had left whispered its approval and tender, comforting nonsense.

They arrived at dawn, three silhouettes against the light of a rising sun, threatening and proud as if the insignia on their forehead hadn’t been forged in innocent blood and tears. She felt them before she saw them, noticed the squirrel they sent her carrying an explosive tag on its back. She chased it away with a kunai, praying for… praying… she didn’t even know what for anymore. Slowly, she rose and faced her new opponents.

“Aw, standing watch instead of sleeping?” said the one to the right – Zaku, his name was Zaku, he was the one with the holes in his hands. “Your watch has ended, little girl. Wake up Sasuke.”

“Well, well, Orochimaru’s puppets,” she drawled, hiding her pain and exhaustion as well as she could. “Did you know he paid us a visit last night? Thanks to him, my two little brothers are injured and unconscious. Do I really have to put into words how pissed I am right now?”

She saw the surprise on their faces and took advantage of it, slamming her hand on the ground in a violent shot of chakra. A whole tree exploded to their left, weapons started flying in all directions – they couldn’t dodge them all. The girl, Kin, ended up with two crossed slices under her left shoulder. She hadn’t stepped aside quickly enough, and those shinobi didn’t fight as a team. If they disturbed each other in their manoeuvres, the weakest had to take it.

“You bitch,” Kin hissed.

“Why, yes, I know, thank you,” Hitomi smiled, almost snarled in return. She was in a pitiful state, beyond any concept that her body could even have of pain, body and mind aflame, but she would get revenge from them. She had promised it to herself. Without incantation or hand seals, the Water Whip appeared in her right hand, her chakra shaped by sheer will as she unsheathed her tantō with the left. “If you want Sasuke so much, you’ll have to come and get him.”

“Like that’s going to be a problem,” Dosu smiled. As if she was a midge. Insignificant.

She strengthened her will and activated another trap with her foot. The ground between her opponents and herself opened up, roaring blue flames appearing in the hole. Hitomi had never been more thankful for the chemistry knowledge Ensui had offered her. If she survived, she had to find a way to thank him.

Kin hurled herself at her first. She was stronger, faster, probably too skilled for a mere Chūnin exam, but it was what Orochimaru had intended, Hitomi knew that. Through light touches of her shadow against the other girl’s, Hitomi started to modify her posture and tried to gain an advantage. She brushed against her in a dark whisper, raised her arms slightly then let go, the whole thing done in less than a second, before she tried to pierce her guard through the flaw in her stance she had created. She might have succeeded if her opponent had been closer to her level, but Kin simply corrected her posture again and again, parrying sword and whip like they were mere toys.

Hitomi had to roll backwards to dodge the sonic impulse Zaku sent her way, the move so close a strand of her hair was cut in the attack. She couldn’t have cared less. If shaving her head had allowed her to survive…  She pushed Kin away when she noticed the girl had followed her, snarling in exultation when her kick landed. A dark and secret part of her almost cooed when she saw the grimace of pain on her opponent’s face. Let her pay.

“Kin, Zaku, stop toying with the girl,” Dosu drawled. As if answering a signal, the three ninjas regrouped then rushed towards her again. One in front of her, one on the left and one on the right – she could only stop two of them, and allow the third to land a hit. Resolved, she turned her back to Kin, raised her sword and whip, and…

“Konoha Senpū!”

Hitomi would have never thought she’d be so stupidly happy to hear those words one day, and yet there she was, her widening eyes devouring Lee’s silhouette as he slammed his feet against her opponents, forcing them back before they could hurt her. He stood in front of her, his legs sturdy, and aura of sweet, sweet anger forming around him.

“You have no business here, kid,” Dosu warned.

“I am Konoha’s Beautiful Green Wild Beast, Rock Lee, and you won’t land a hand on my friend again!”

Hitomi fell to her knees, a sob of sheer gratitude bursting in her throat. She had consumed so much chakra during her fight against Orochimaru that shivers, the first warning before a real state of chakra exhaustion, were running along her limbs. “Thanks, Lee,” she half-whispered, half-choked, “thanks…”

“I’ll always be there to help you when you’re in danger, Hitomi-san.”

She wiped her tears away with the sleeve that Orochimaru’s first attack hadn’t torn to shreds, attempting to clear her vision. And to say that, in another universe, between the pages of a multitude of books, this devotion had been offered to another girl… She didn’t know which god or entity or whatever had looked out after her so that Lee would beam at her like that, with a sweetness she couldn’t quite qualify with words, but she was thankful for it.

In front of them, the Otojin shinobi got ready to attack once more, Dosu stepping towards them after throwing their scroll to Zaku.

“B-be careful,” she told Lee in a hoarse voice. “The two boys use sound-related techniques, and the girl uses senbon. They are far stronger than any Genin of my generation.”

Dosu jumped in their direction and Hitomi found in herself the strength to stand back up, a strength she could have sworn she didn’t have anymore. She threw kunai, shuriken and senbon in a persistent rain, one salvo after the other, forcing their opponents to step back to try attacking them from another angle. Zaku sent her a sonic wave again, forcing her to dive to the ground, and Dosu took advantage of the pause in her rain of steel to attack, his arm equipped with the sound amplifier ready for use. With his bare hands, Lee tore one of the thickest roots of the Hashirama Oak and used it as a shield.

“Your attacks hide a peculiar technique, don’t they?” the boy said with a grin. “No way I’m gonna parry them with my bare hands, especially since I saw what they could do before the first test!”

A brutal flame of chakra tore through the air – the opening move for the Front Lotus. Kin took advantage of the confusion to throw herself at Hitomi again, the impact hard enough to send another kind of fire in her wounded cheek. She wrapped her whip around her attacker’s wrist and pulled, taking a bit of her skin and blood away. Her other arm raised her tantō and hit towards the kunoichi’s throat, in hope of taking her out quickly. Unfortunately, Kin was too fast, and kept Hitomi too busy dodging and parrying to place any decisive hit.

As Lee trapped Dosu in the bandages that had been wrapped around his wrists just a moment earlier and started falling with his opponent headfirst, she perceived Zaku’s movement in the corner of her vision. Allowing Kin to stab her shoulder with one of her needles, she grabbed her arm to make her stop moving and stretched her shadow backwards… Too late. The boy had just knelt, his hands deep in the ground for a technique that turned it to sponge. The heavy impact Lee’s attack was supposed to cause Dosu was nullified.

The voice became more pressing in her ear, a kiss of tenderness and agony that hypnotised her for a second. In the time it took her to reaffirm her will against the voice, Lee fell to his knees and threw up, bleeding from the ear she could see. He couldn’t fight anymore, not without his balance, and Hitomi… Hitomi had already proved she wasn’t strong enough against those damned Otojin. She threw Kin towards Zaku and tore the needle away from her shoulder, panting.

Dosu and Zaku were focusing on Lee, boasting about how powerful their techniques were, giving away so much information on them Hitomi wanted to mock them. If she had been their sensei, she would have sealed their tongues, just to give them a lesson – oh maybe so she would never have to hear their voices again. Another attack hit Lee full force – the voice screamed under Hitomi’s skin, begging for her to let go.

And she did. Chakra exploded in scorching waves around her as she stood back up as if her wounds didn’t exist anymore. Under her skin, the complex web of meridian suddenly appeared, shining in pure blue light. Blue Rasengan, blue infinite, the true colour of chakra. Faster than she had ever been, she slammed against Dosu, her silhouette no more than a whirl of colours and exaltation. When she finally went still, she was strapping on the shoulders of the Otojin, her eyes deep in his only visible orbit red with blood.

Under the voice’s advice, she started to pull, pull, and an amazing, terrifying strength invaded her limbs, forcing her meridians to absorb it all. The pain was beyond words, far worse than what she had felt while burning her cheek away, and yet Hitomi welcomed it like an old friend, accepting it openly. She threw her head back in a laugh that was barely human and rather chakra turned into sound, then sent the power back into the man’s body. He convulsed and screamed under her, his cries mixed with the laughter cascading out of her lips like a waterfall.

When she stood up, the two other Otojin stepped back. They weren’t bleeding, neither of them, but the voice promised it wasn’t a problem, that she could still make them suffer and die, that she had power, all the power she wanted – hers, only hers. She attacked Zaku first, the boy with the perverse gleam in his eyes, her nails drawing blood on his skin. It was enough for the voice, who showed her how to pull to steal all his strength and send the fire back where it didn’t have any place to be, until his blood started boiling. He, too, died screaming and convulsing.

After all that, the girl, the weakest, was easy prey. She died quickly, begging for her life before the Yūhi heir ended it like she had done with her teammates. Hitomi stood then in front of this carnage, her body more saturated with chakra than it had ever been, her eyes veiled by the power the voice held over her. She listened to her meridians, seeking more prey, no matter what kind. The hunt wasn’t done, enemies were still standing.

He appeared in front of her like a mirage. Shikamaru. With a messy ponytail and eyes filled with terror and nervousness. Hitomi fought against the hold the voice had over her. Her cousin wasn’t prey. She loved him. She scratched, hissed inside her mind, battling for control. Outside, her body had started raising its arm and Shikamaru didn’t do anything to protect himself, to dodge or step aside. Hitomi’s bloody nails brushed against his skin, ready to draw his blood because the voice demanded it.

A wall of sand suddenly formed between them. She spun around. Gaara. Another beloved face. She didn’t want, didn’t want … She took a step towards him, then another. The sand became a dome that closed over her, immersing her in darkness. The voice screamed, furious, and Hitomi took over immediately, like a rubber band snapping after suffering too much tension. She collapsed on the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, breathless.

She burst into exhausted tears then, her body seething with pain from hair to toes, her Gates so full of chakra each movement made her feel like they were going to explode. Waves of chakra were still radiating off of her, giving her the impression that her skin was turning to smoke. The sand collapsed around her and, before she could react, Gaara was kneeling by her side, his fresh, soft hand brushing against her neck. She felt her own pulse beating against his fingers, quick and messy. She met his eyes then closed hers, the massacre she had just committed dancing behind her eyelids. It was… It was her. She had done this.

“Shh… It’s okay, Hitomi. It’s over now.”

She almost laughed, a sound between distress and hilarity, confronted with the absurdity of his words. No, it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. She had a monster under her skin and couldn’t resist it when under enough pressure, and Sasuke… And Naruto… She jumped back up, ignoring the pain blazing through her body. She took hesitating steps towards her brothers, almost falling down again. Gaara wrapped an arm around her shoulders and supported most of her weight, helping her move.

“You look at the end of your rope,” he remarked with worry. “You should rest, we’ll stand watch for you, my team and Shikamaru’s.”

“How…”

“When we saw they were the closest from our position, we decided to find them and help them collect their scrolls. It was easy. Then we started looking for your team, but none of us had any tracking skill. I’m sorry we took so long, Hitomi-nee.”

“Y-you’re here now. It’s the only thing that matters. Can you help me go to Sasuke and Naruto, please? They need me.”

Probably hearing the urgency in her tone, the boy nodded and, one step after the other, led her there, until he could help her sit next to her brothers. Shikamaru was there too, his face a mask of gravity and worry. Around them, Temari, Kankurō, Ino and Chōji stood watch, each at a cardinal point.

“Hitomi,” her cousin started, his voice hoarse, “what happened here?”

As she cut through Sasuke’s steel fishnet shirt, she explained, busying her hands so as to not think too much. “Orochimaru of the fucking Sannin, here’s what happened. The bastard attacked us out of nowhere, disguised as one of the Kusajin. We were… we were wiped out. He toyed with us, Shika. I couldn’t do anything to stop him from marking Sasuke, which looked to be his main objective. I-I have to see what I can do against the seal he put on him.”

The Nara boy, aghast, lowered his eyes to the unconscious body of the last Uchiha. Surviving an encounter with the traitor of the Sannin, it was… It was either dumb luck or the sign one absolutely deserved the Chūnin promotion. Oh, Shikamaru didn’t doubt for a moment that his cousin deserved it, but she looked so thoroughly exhausted, with that hideous mass of burned flesh where her cheek had been smooth and perfect the day before, and in her eyes a haunted gleam that made shivers run down his spine… He was sure it was dumb luck, just because of that look.

“And the three bodies over there?” he asked gently.

“Orochimaru’s subordinates. Otogakure… I think it’s him, his village. They were ordered to kill us, our whole team. For Sasuke, it might have been planned as a test, but for Naruto and I… Lee stepped in when I was almost ready to give up because they were too many, too strong, but the one with the weird thing on his arm, there, broke his eardrums and then he was powerless. I’ll see if I can help him after I’m done with Naruto and Sasuke. They need me the most.”

Her voice was hard, distant, cold, as if what she had just been through had happened to someone else and she had just watched – she wanted to collapse and cry, wanted to disappear where no one could find her ever again. Finally, she sliced through Sasuke’s whole shirt and saw the place where Orochimaru had bitten him. The place was red, inflamed and burning under her hand, like an infection. The seal was a shock of absolute black on his pale skin, far above Hitomi’s fūinjutsu skills.

And yet there was something she could do. It wouldn’t hold long, but maybe… Maybe it would stop the Cursed Seal from extending its influence in Sasuke’s mind, maybe it would be enough to stop her brother from following in Orochimaru’s steps. She took a moment to calm the tremors in her hands then drew a brush and a little bottle of ink from one of her seals.

Drawing a seal on skin was no harder than drawing it on paper. What separated a simple drawing from the true corporal seals was the way it influenced the body: a corporal seal took power in its wielder’s chakra system. Here, it would be Hitomi’s chakra maintaining the seal in place rather than Sasuke’s like it was the case for the Cursed Seal. Half-lost in her Library to keep her wits about her, the girl drew strokes after strokes on her brother’s skin, slow, steady and careful. When she was done, she allowed herself a moment of rest, closing her eyes to strengthen her will.

Her hand slammed against the spot where the Cursed Seal rested, a shock of chakra activating the seal she had traced. Without waking up, Sasuke started screaming and struggling under her hand, his bucking so violent Gaara had to step in and keep him pinned to the ground. It lasted for long, long minutes, his cries so full of pain and anguish that tears came back to Hitomi’s eyes, rolling down her cheeks and falling on the sick boy’s hair to lose themselves there, finally.

When he calmed down, she could inspect her work. It was done and would hold at least until the end of the exam, if she gave it chakra regularly. She inhaled deeply, held her breath for a few seconds then slowly exhaled before going to Naruto’s side. The boy hadn’t moved in the slightest since Orochimaru had disturbed his jinchūriki seal. With Shikamaru’s help, she took off his battle coat decorated with flames and the Uzumaki emblem, then his steel fishnet shirt. The seal on his belly was visible, a true masterpiece. Over Hokage the Fourth’s work, Orochimaru’s alterations appeared, vicious and painful looking. Hitomi weighed her options, then got to work.

It took her long, anxiety-filled minutes of perfect silence to reduce the influence of the alterations over the seal with little touches of her brush on each of the five impacts left by the Sannin’s hand. Gaara was staring at the seal without a word. Hitomi knew he had a similar one, and that he understood what he was seeing. Maybe… Maybe the two boys could talk, before the selection phase began. Maybe Gaara would have answers Hitomi couldn’t give to Naruto.

The activation of the seal had immediate effects on the boy as well, but they weren’t as hard on her nerves. He opened blurry eyes, then seemed to recognise his sister over him. He raised a hand that was still a bit too cold, brushed it against the wound on her cheek then let it fall back on the ground. She allowed a little smile to appear on her lips. It was fake, but what harm could a smile do? Slowly, she helped him to sit up, addressing thousands of thankful prayers Ensui’s way. Wherever he was, the knowledge he had given her had saved her brothers.

“Hitomi… Where’s the snake?”

“It’s gone, Naruto. Everything will be okay now. We just have to wait for Sasuke to wake up and then we’ll be able to go to the tower. Can you stay with Shikamaru and Gaara for a moment, please? I still have one person to check on.”

She kissed his forehead then, as he nodded. Still so obviously, painfully weak, she stood up. She didn’t stagger as much this time, despite the ordeal she had just been through her body was already recovering. Lee was still lying where he had fallen unconscious. She knelt next to him and took his pulse. Just passed out. She allowed herself to sigh in relief then started cleaning the blood that had dried around his ear, on the lookout for a sign that he was ready to wake up.

“Let me help,” Ino offered in a soft voice.

Dumbfounded, Hitomi watched her kneel and extend a hand coated with minty chakra to Lee’s ear. She was treating his internal injury with a gentleness and delicateness the young Yūhi would probably never have in her. The fact Ino and Sakura were spending a lot of time together suddenly hit her. That was probably how her blonde friend was learning medical ninjutsu. A useful, life-saving skill.

Since Lee was in better hands than hers, Hitomi stepped back and looked around. Shikamaru was standing watch where Ino had been just a second earlier, his shoulders tense. Naruto and Gaara were whispering together, the blonde’s expression grave and distressed. She would have to talk to him, later, to tell him that it didn’t change anything for her, that he was still her brother, that she still loved him just as much.

She was the first to feel Tenten and Neji approach and to spot them, their silhouettes easy to notice against the tree they had just gotten down from. Chōji let them in, because it was their teammate laying there, unconscious. Distractedly, Hitomi put a hand on Lee’s shoulder, smothering a fold on his dark green jumpsuit. He had saved her life, without expecting anything in return, just because he thought she was kind of pretty. And now… She touched her injured cheek. It still hurt, despite the cauterisation, but at least the acid had stopped devouring her flesh.

“What happened to him?” Tenten asked.

“He came to my rescue against the Otojin team. They’re dead.”

“Lee… Lee killed them?”

“No, I did.”

The two Genin watched her for a few moments, evaluating the threat she represented. At that moment, it was very clear: none. She was as fragile and exhausted as a day-old kitten. “I see,” Neji said. “We’re gonna wait until he wakes up and then take him with us. We still don’t have our second scroll, but I spotted a team.”

“Very well,” she whispered, looking away from him.

Barely a minute later, Lee started to stir and ended up opening his eyes. He took a moment to realise where he was but, as soon as he could, he jumped on his feet, searching for a threat. Only when he didn’t find one did he take Hitomi’s face in his hands, mindful of her injury. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m okay, Lee-kun. I’m okay.” She felt numb, as if the adrenaline that had forced her to keep going until then had started to wear out. Her limbs felt heavy – she wanted to curl into a ball under a tree and sleep until next spring. If only she could afford such a luxury…

“Hitomi! Sasuke is waking up!”

Immediately, the girl forgot her tiredness and jumped to the Uchiha’s side, thanking Naruto with a nod.

“W-what happened?” the dark-haired boy moaned as he regained consciousness.

“Orochimaru. He left a seal where he bit you. I-I added a barrier to stop it from accessing your chakra, but it’s only a temporary measure. You’ll have to see Kakashi-sensei and Ensui-shishou as soon as you can. They will be able to help you, far better than I can.”

She saw her brother slowly overcome his panic and assert the scene around them, from their friends surrounding them to the three bodies he could distinguish from where he was laying. Slowly, Hitomi helped him sit, her hands supporting his back to give him the strength his muscles seemed to have forgotten they had.

“W-we have to go to the tower. That bastard can’t attack us there.”

She could have told him that the man wouldn’t attack them for now, but how was she supposed to know that? Besides, she had to admit she, too, wanted to reach the end of this test. At least, in the tower, she wouldn’t have to fight for her life and could rest a little – or even consult a medic if she could find one. She doubted it, but one could dream. “We’re going to go, as soon as Naruto and you can walk.”

“What about you?”

“I… I can still go on for a bit longer.”

“And we’ll go with you,” Gaara assured, “to make sure nothing happens to you.”

“So will we,” Chōji added. “After all, we’re allies. We have to watch out for each other.”

“Thanks,” Hitomi whispered, unable to hide the relief in her voice.

If they travelled through the forest in such numbers, no one would dare oppose or attack them. And even if someone was that desperate, Gaara was, without a doubt, the strongest Genin in their alliance – which didn’t mean his siblings or Team Ten were weak, by any means. With them around, she was allowed to feel safe.

They left at the end of the afternoon. Team Gai had taken off soon after Lee had woken up, guided by Neji towards the victims that would allow them to pass the test. Sasuke and Naruto felt well enough to travel again, but the recent ordeals were making them slow. Their faces were a mask of determination, so similar they could have been brothers by blood. In front of them, with the two teams escorting them, predators, prey and enemy teams alike were fleeing like frightened birds. For the first time, they could advance in a straight line, without any precaution, and they were soon under the shade of the tower, in front of its north entrance.

There they were. They had survived, after all. Her hand on the tower’s door, Hitomi lowered her head and took the time to pray, no matter who listened up there. Her whole body hurt, she felt like some parts of her were slowly dying, but her brothers were alive and so was she. As long as they lived, she still had hope, hope for better days and a happy end to her own story. She could cling to that hope, use it as fuel to keep going. Yes, she could work with that.

Chapter 53: A Breath Of Fresh Air

Notes:

Hi! I had a little problem with AO3 when posting this chapter, I hope it's resolved. Could you please leave a comment so I know it's visible and the problem was only on my end?

The ground floor of the tower was a big circular room that could have welcomed all the Konohajin Jōnin for their monthly meeting. Next to each door, she saw the ninja precept about the relationship between body and mind. ‘If you do not possess Heaven, gain knowledge and be prepared. If you do not possess Earth, run through the field and seek strength. If you open both Heaven and Earth scrolls, dangerous paths turn into safe ones. This is the secret of [ ]. It shall lead you on your way. — Hokage the Third.’ Hitomi watched the precept for a moment then raised her hand and brushed her fingers on the empty space in the sentence, almost intimidated. “I think it’s time to open our scrolls,” she said gently.

The two other teams then revealed the hiding methods they had chosen: in his gourd of sand for Gaara’s team and in a secret pocket of Shikamaru’s uniform for Team Ten. For Team Seven, the solution was a bit more complicated, but she had been the one to choose this option, so she was the one to face the consequences. Focusing what chakra she had left, she sliced her thumb open, formed the hand seals and pressed her fingers to the ground. Hoshihi, Hai, Haīro and Kurokumo appeared. She hadn’t planned on summoning the younger one, but she had probably been next to her master, since she was currently on his shoulders, licking the back of his ears.

“Haīro, Kurokumo, the scrolls please,” she asked in a weakening voice. Her ears had started ringing, her whole body protesting the strain her chakra reserves were going through. She stumbled, Naruto wrapping an arm around her waist to stop her from falling. She gave him a thankful look, then took the Heaven and Earth scrolls. They seemed so small, suddenly, so insignificant. All this hardship for such small things… “I think we’d better open them in pairs. Together?”

The other nodded in approval. Hitomi handed one to Sasuke and another to Naruto then sat down, hoping it would help her nausea go away. It didn’t seem to work, but at least if she fell now it would be from a lower height. She closed her eyes as her friends started counting, then felt the snap of six seals activating on her exhausted meridians.

“Throw them to the ground!” Sasuke yelled. “Those are summoning seals!”

They barely had the time to obey that Iruka, Ebisu and a Chūnin Hitomi didn’t know appeared in a big puff of smoke. They evaluated the group of Genin with a look, obviously a bit at loss to see three teams together, then a grin appeared on Iruka’s face. He stepped forward, looking down to where Hitomi was sitting, her back to the wall. “That’s your idea, isn’t it, Hitomi-chan?”

“What can I say, sensei, an old dog doesn’t learn new tricks.”

Only then did the young man realise in what state the three teams were: virtually untouched for Shikamaru’s and Gaara’s teams, which had been protected by conscious sand, and to the end of their rope for Naruto’s. His brown eyes stopped on the scar on Hitomi’s face, larger than a fist. He seemed to want to say something but decided otherwise, breathed in and then started speaking. “I see you had it rough… However, I congratulate you for coming this far. Traditionally, the Chūnin from the host village welcome the contestants at the end of the second stage. I don’t think my companions would mind if I handled it for your three teams.”

The two other men nodded and he seemed to feel it, since he continued. “In addition to my congratulations, I have a message to give you. First of all, very nice time. It’s rare to get teams within the first twenty-four hours. It’s a sign of talent, potential and tenacity.”

Hitomi had to swallow an icy laugh. Talent? What talent had she shown against Orochimaru? The same could be said of the other qualities he had enumerated. She had been terribly defenceless, there, outside. It couldn’t happen anymore. She had to do something to prevent it, anything. However, she had to acknowledge that the others deserved those compliments. Sasuke hadn’t allowed Orochimaru to terrify him for long, and he had even managed to land a hit. As for Naruto, he hadn’t been afraid, not for a single moment. She wished she had been that brave.

“I think I just understood something,” Sasuke said. “Say, Iruka-sensei, what would you have done if we had opened our scrolls before arriving here?”

“Still as canny, Sasuke. You probably have understood that this exam tested your behaviour in a real mission situation. In other terms, if you had broken the rules and opened the scrolls, I’d have appeared in front of you and knocked you out until the end of the exam.”

“Isn’t it dangerous, though?” Naruto asked. “The Forest of Death isn’t exactly a nice place to take a nap.”

“Don’t worry, Naruto-kun, the technique was paired with a compulsive barrier. Anything walking towards it with bad intentions would have been under stronger and stronger suggestions to leave the place where the team would have been asleep.”

“And the mission words on the precept, sensei?”

“Yes, I’m here to explain that too. It’s one of the Chūnin precepts Hokage the Third decided to leave for the future generations. The heaven is a soldier’s mind and the ground their body. Take it like this: to be a good Chūnin, you have to have a sharp mind and strong body. You’ll need those for the missions you’ll have to accomplish but also to gain the respect of the people you’ll have to lead in some missions.”

“And the missing word?” Naruto asked.

“It’s the word ‘men’, the one that was the centre of the summoning scrolls. Take it as a synonym of ‘Chūnin’ in this instance, of course. During this survival exercise, the basic skills of a Chūnin have been put to the test, and you have succeeded.”

Once more, Hitomi had to bite her lower lip to stifle a cold laugh. Was surviving an encounter with a fucking Sannin included in the requirements to be promoted? If so, Konoha was bloody demanding. But Iruka didn’t seem to be aware of the deserter’s presence in the village, nor of his actions during the exam. The information was probably reserved for Jōnin and ANBU only. If he had known, the young teacher would have been far more concerned with their wounds, he who had always been so fond of his students – and especially Naruto.

“The Chūnin is a leader. One of his responsibilities is to lead a team during one or several missions. You’ll face the next test for this exam soon, but please remember this precept: the systematic combination of knowledge and physical prowess is necessary to succeed. There… That was my message.”

“Thanks, sensei!”

“Haha, you’re welcome, Naruto-kun. The third and last stage of the exam is the most dangerous. Please be careful.”

This time, Hitomi couldn’t help but roll her eyes. More perilous? She’d exchange her encounter with Orochimaru for any fight against her peers any day.

“Naruto-kun! I’ll see you at Ichiraku’s in a week, at noon. Don’t be late, okay?”

Before Naruto could answer, the teacher disappeared in a puff of smoke, the two other Chūnin with him. The blonde child was hopping up and down in excitement, obviously over the moon. It was so easy to bring him to that state of mind. Hitomi would have protected him and his joy no matter the cost. She tried to stand up but fell back immediately, pain creasing her features. Her cats approached, worried, Hoshihi sniffing her neck, looking for traces of sickness or injury.

“I-I’m okay. I just really need to rest.”

“I understand, Lady Summoner. You’ll have all the time in the world to tell me what put you in such a state while I take you where you need to go. Can someone help you get on my back?”

Gaara ended up doing it, his hands firm but gentle, making sure she had a good grip on Hoshihi’s fire-coloured pelt. He started to walk to the only visible flight of stairs as if she weighed nothing. The other Genin and cats followed, as if they often let a feline lead the way and decide where they went. After a few minutes walking up and down the corridors and stairs of the tower, they found the floor where the teams that had passed the test were settled, a room for each team. They found Team Eight easily – they had apparently finished the test in six hours, a record time. Quick enough, twelve Genin and four cats piled up in a small room with naked walls.

Hinata let out a choked exclamation when she saw Hitomi’s injured cheek. The Yūhi girl looked away, her face burning with shame. She hadn’t seen her reflection since she had burned her own flesh to stop it from being eaten away by acid, but she knew the result couldn’t possibly be pretty. Scars weren’t meant to look nice, but to tell a story, the life tale of the people wearing them like an affront or a trophy. She hadn’t yet decided which one hers would be.

“Woah, you look like you went in the loving care of the Torture and Intelligence Department for a few days, you three.”

“Delicate as ever, Kiba,” Shino retorted, his voice full of reproach. “Do you want to tell us what happened?” he added, looking at Team Seven.

All the eyes fell on Hitomi. She was the only one to have been conscious through the whole thing, after all. Reluctantly, she started telling them about Orochimaru attacking them – and too bad if it was Jōnin-only intel, Jōnin had done absolutely nothing to help them. She told them about the Cursed Seal, too. It had no business being a secret, not when most people in this room would probably have to risk their life in a few months, when Orochimaru would send his Quartet to collect Sasuke.

She told them how the deserter had attacked Naruto, leaving the Kyūbi out entirely – it wasn’t her story to tell – then what the man had done to Sasuke, what his snake had done to her. She told the anguish, the terror, the impression – no, the certainty – that she was going to die alone and defenceless in that forest. She told the agony and the decision she had had to take to stop her injury from progressing, all in a distant and tired voice.

Then she went to the Otojin team attacking her. She told her friends how Lee had stepped in, saving her from a certain death, and had paid a heavy price for that, how she had lost control and how much the voice inside her terrified her now that she knew what it meant, what it did. Gaara and Shikamaru, who had arrived before her mind was clear, gave several clarifications. When she finally stopped talking, she felt like she couldn’t say even one more word without collapsing from exhaustion.

A heavy silence settled on the little overheated room, only interrupted by the soft brush of Hoshihi’s fur against the naked stone floor when he stood up and cuddled her cold body, his head on her knees. She drew avid comfort from his contact; if he felt the faintest pain in the way she clung to him, he didn’t say.

Finally, someone helped her on the cat’s back again and he transported her to the room next to Team Eight’s. The following room was taken by Team Ten, and the Children of the Sand took the one after that. Hitomi witnessed all those decisions in a kind of fog that grew thicker by the minute. She had been placed in a sitting position on one of the three beds in their room, Naruto promising to come back with something to eat very soon. She hadn’t dared to tell him she wasn’t sure she could eat anything.

He ended up being right, in a typical Naruto way: as soon as he came back and she breathed in the smell of the instant noodles he had prepared for her, her stomach clenched around its own emptiness. Chakra exhaustion was very taxing for the body, but it also awoke and exacerbated its needs. Once the nausea passed, one needed to eat, and to eat a lot. She inhaled three complete noodle cups before she was sated, or perhaps too tired to eat anymore. During her whole meal, her brothers had made sure she was never alone. Finally, she let the wooden chopsticks fall into the plastic cup and put it with the two others on her nightstand.

“We still need to talk, don’t we?”

The two boys exchanged a long look, then Sasuke nodded, giving his brother the first turn. The blond boy put a hand against the seal on his stomach before he said anything. “W-what happened in the forest…”

“The Demon Fox. The Kyūbi. It’s a S-ranked secret in the village, Naruto. I’m not supposed to know – no one is supposed to know, but I’m sure Mom told you about it when you graduated. She promised.”

“Yeah, she did, but… How do you know?”

She sighed, an almost reluctant smile on her lips. “I know because many villagers, and especially our dear Jōnin, can’t keep their mouths shut. I’ve known for years. I knew even before meeting you, before leaving the village with Ensui-shishou. If I had had the slightest chance of telling you about it without the ANBU taking me into custody, I’d have done so, I swear. I just want you to know, right now, that it doesn’t change anything for me. In fact, I’d be delighted if you started making friends with the fox or the Hermit knows what. If we have to encounter enemies like Orochimaru, we have to get stronger, and fast.”

Naruto’s face had relaxed along with her little speech and, when she finished it, he was beaming again, radiating confidence as warm as sunlight. “You’re right! We’ll kick his skinny ass next time, believe it!”

She smiled too then turned to Sasuke, who sensed it was his turn. “Orochimaru. I want to know what he has done to me.”

“I-I don’t exactly know. Corporal seals are far above my current fūinjutsu skills. What I can understand from its appearance is meagre, but here goes: it’s a three-parts seal, it’s linked to your own chakra system and draws from it, although I’ve frozen that part with my own seal, and it contains some of Orochimaru’s spiritual energy. That part pushed me to act right now, I didn’t want his seal to develop any further inside your body. That measure is very temporary, though. Tomorrow and all the following days, until someone can do something more permanent, I’ll have to fill my seal with chakra to keep it active.”

She folded on herself then, because she knew what came next. It still hurt, despite steeling herself, to see her brothers look at her like she was broken – she felt so close to broken.

“Hitomi, your face…”

“I know, Naruto. I didn’t have any other choice, believe me. The snake grazed its fang against my cheek and venom got in the wound. It was very acidic, and already eating my cheek away when I cauterised to stop it. It looks more serious than it really is. I can still be a ninja, after all. And did you even see Ibiki-san? Does he look like he pities himself for having scars on his face? No. If he can endure, so can I.”

“O-of course you can! You’re so strong! And it doesn’t make you any less pretty, believe it! I saw how Lee-san looked at you before he had to leave.”

A distracted smile on her lips, Hitomi allowed Naruto’s words to comfort her. She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but, like she told them, it did not matter. It was just a scar, and a scar didn’t matter. If she repeated it often enough, she’d end up believing it too, hopefully. She couldn’t waste time crying on something as insignificant as a smooth cheek, not when she foresaw much more important and urgent matters on the horizon.

The night was hard. Sasuke startled her awake with a nightmare, interrupting her own. She had a bit of her strength back, so she left her bed and went in her brother’s, caressing his naked back with her fingertips until he calmed down. Dawn found them cuddling, just like when they were children and their nightmares focused on one subject each. Things had been so much simpler then. Now, there were many things outside they had to fear.

She was the first to leave her room. The doors of the others were still shut, which didn’t surprise her: it was still early and many were still exhausted from their journey through the forest. She was too, if she was being honest. Her chakra levels still left much to be desired, despite the meal and sleep. Wounds and chakra formed a vicious cycle, one of the ninja’s sworn enemies: if one was injured, weakened, they didn’t get their chakra back as quickly, but low chakra reserves also meant that recovering from the injury took way longer. This cycle had cost their lives to many shinobi, without distinction of power or rank.

“You look better than yesterday, Hitomi-san.”

The girl spun around, her whole body tensing. Then she recognised Lee and slowly lowered her hands, trying to control the fear he had unwittingly provoked in her. “I do feel better,” she said after a moment. “And you look well too. How are the ears?”

“Almost as good as new! I’ll have to thank Yamanaka-san for her efforts. Tenten told me she had used medical ninjutsu to mend my eardrums.”

“She did. We have a friend working in the hospital as a doctor who’s also getting trained to become a field medic. She started the Academy with us but decided to get into med studies instead when she saw what the medics were able to do. She and Ino are very close.”

After all, in this world, Sakura had never had a crush on Sasuke, which meant she and Ino were never rivals. She mostly spent time with her colleagues and Hitomi had heard she had been going out with someone from the hospital during a couple of the summer months, her first crush. It had ended when the boy had decided to follow his parents, who had moved to another big city in the Land of Fire. Anyway, at their age, none of her peers were really interested in long, intimate relationships like adults were. By making things official, Hinata and her had been sticking out.

“You reached the tower during the night, didn’t you?”

“Yes! Neji-kun told me he had seen you arrive with his Byakugan at the end of the afternoon, but we were still tracking our target by then, and we still had to fight for the scrolls. A very youthful fight, I can assure you!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hitomi smiled. While still talking with Lee, she started walking towards the little kitchen the monitors had prepared and left at the disposal of the Genin who passed the test. Everything that could be used as a weapon, like knives, had been replaced by plastic replicas. A creative killer could still use them, but such amorality wasn’t expected of Genin. Distractedly, the girl started preparing tea for two, answering Lee’s questions and comments without fully putting her mind to it.

“… and I found the first test particularly well-thought!”

“Same,” she admitted. “My mother is a friend of Morino-san, she even managed to have him babysit me once when I was younger. I didn’t expect him to be this… intense, in a work setting.” With a hint of a smile, she handed one of the mugs to Lee and took hers between her two palms, as if to warm them up. Soon enough, the bitter-sweet liquid was on her tongue, quite the meagre comfort in comparison to the ordeals she had been through and that was still haunting her – and yet she’d accept just about any source of comfort, no matter how futile it was. Side by side, the two Genin sat on the ground, their back to the kitchen’s wall, cross-legged. Lee could be calm, when he wanted to. Maybe he felt that was what she needed.

“Your cheek is healing nicely,” he said after a while.

Hitomi nodded, her eyes lost in the contemplation of her tea. Water was as flexible as it was fragile. She’d have to spend quite some time meditating on its nature, its strengths and weaknesses, if she wanted to get better, to get stronger. She felt that she was onto something each time she learned a new technique. The ninjas with a water affinity were particularly rare in Konoha, where most shinobi had fire or earth affinities – and sometimes even both. Hitomi couldn’t think of any Jōnin with a main affinity with water.

“Hitomi-san?”

“Hm?”

“You did your best, you know. Of course, you still have many things to learn, but those Otojin ninjas… They weren’t at Genin level. I discussed it with my teammates and they agreed. It was normal for you to be in a tough spot against all three of them.”

The image of the bodies she had left in the forest, probably already ripped apart by the predators that had turned that place into their domain, came back at the front of her mind. In answer, the voice responsible for the carnage purred in satisfaction. Horrified, Hitomi pushed the feeling down as hard as she could. She didn’t want to be that kind of person. Violence was a means, yes, a very useful and often necessary means, but she didn’t want to take any pleasure in the bloodbaths she’d have to cause in the future. What would Naruto say if she became such a cruel person?

“Thanks again for coming to help me,” she said when she was sure the voice wouldn’t come back right away. “You could have just looked the other way. One less opponent on your way… It would have been understandable.”

“I would never have done that. I couldn’t stand looking at myself if I had let those people hurt you when it was possible for me to step in. Gai-sensei taught me precious values, an honour code, and I intend to live by it until the end.”

“Kakashi-sensei tries to teach us values too. Teamwork, that’s his big thing. You know what they say in the village, right? He always brings his team back alive.”

“He’s very strong. Do you know that he and Gai-sensei are rivals?”

“Of course I know. I don’t think anyone in the village can be unaware of their competition. Your sensei is leading currently, isn’t he? He’s very strong, I’m sure.”

“He’s the best! He’s kind and passionate and no one seems able to beat him. His energy is limitless!”

“Looks like you form quite the pair. I don’t know you well yet, Lee, but it seems to me that those qualities are yours as well.”

Lee’s eyes went wide, as if he had a hard time believing that she would even compliment him, then he smiled so wide it had to hurt his cheeks, and she smiled back a bit more shily. She hadn’t expected to appreciate his company so much, but his voice was soft when he didn’t shout, and he had in him the same kind of sweetness Chōji had – the kind that often ended up crushed after a few hard missions. It didn’t seem to happen to either of the two boys, and Hitomi was glad for it.

They continued talking for a little while, until Gaara and his siblings came to join them. Immediately, the jinchūriki walked to her, his face almost impassive, trying not to show in his gait the urge that was pushing him towards her. He took her face in his hands, brushed her cheeks with his fingertips, then hugged her fiercely, offering her the embrace she had been too exhausted the previous day to tolerate. “You’re gonna get stronger,” he growled in her ear. “I don’t want to see you in such a state ever again. I’ll do everything in my power to help you, absolutely everything.”

In his arms, the girl smiled. He had found the words she needed to hear. She didn’t want pity or carefulness or delicateness, not when she still had so much to do, and so much uncertainty paving her path. Encouraging words, promises that she could get better and offers of help when necessary. She didn’t want to feel beaten – the enemies outside wouldn’t wait for her to get better, to get her strength and determination back, before they attacked. They would hit no matter if she was ready or not, willing to face them or not.

“I’ll remind you of this promise later. But first, we still have to finish this exam.”

The Children of the Sand sat around Lee and her on the ground, imitating their relaxed stance. Hitomi didn’t doubt that others would join them soon. Eight of her friends were, after all, still asleep in their room. Those eight shinobi, despite their young age, had learned how much power was laid in numbers. ‘Alone, I’ll beat a regiment, but give me ten men and I’ll beat an army,’ Hokage the Second had said when he was still the village’s war chief.

“Do you know what will happen next?” Kankurō asked.

“I can try to guess. We already know that the third stage is a tournament that will be turned into a spectacle for dignitaries of many countries as well as wealthy civilians – all in all, potential clients. We’re already fifteen to have passed the second stage, only counting our five teams, but I can’t imagine that we are the only ones. That means the organisers will try to cut down this number before the tournament. In the archives I read, when such a thing happened, they organised preliminary matches directly after the second stage.”

“That means we have an advantage over the people who will clear the second stage closer to its end,” Temari concluded.

“Indeed. I think those three complete days of rest will be decisive for some of us… Myself included. If I had to fight immediately upon my arrival in the tower, I wouldn’t have lasted long, and I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom it is the case.”

She was thinking about Lee, whose eardrums were torn the day before. Yes, Ino had healed him, but medical ninjutsu wasn’t miraculous and the process, which was only accelerating cell regeneration, was very taxing on the body. That was the reason why ninjas spent days and days sleeping after being healed for serious injuries.

“In any case, preliminaries or not, we’ll have a month to prepare for the exam. Some will stay in Konoha during that time and will get assigned a training ground they’ll use how they see fit. Others, the ones who want to go back to their village or simply train in secret, will take a risk by leaving. They could get attacked during the journey, and the days spent walking can’t be spent training.”

“We’re staying,” Gaara announced. “Baki-sensei said that, if we came this far, it was out of the question to go back to Suna only to stay there three weeks before coming to Konohagakure again. I don’t think he likes to travel much.”

“And making you lose a whole week of training would be stupid, yeah. But they won’t all choose to stay, I think.”

She didn’t mention the eventuality that most of the tournament will be centred on Konohajin Genin. In the canon, it was already the case, but she had killed the Otojin team. She didn’t dare think about how this divergence from the canon would impact the future.

“Do you know when we’ll see our sensei again?” Lee asked.

“I have no idea,” Hitomi said with a shrug. “They aren’t allowed in the tower during the test because they can’t get in here without crossing the forest and they’d risk interfering with the whole thing whether they want to or not. I guess Mitarashi-san will take them with her when she comes back to announce the end of the test.”

“I miss Gai-sensei,” the teenage boy muttered. “I need to tell him about what happened in the forest. I can’t imagine how I could have beaten the Otojin team, but he surely knows.”

“I don’t doubt it. He’ll make you train twice as hard and, next time, you have to fight against such opponents, you’ll win, I’m sure of it.”

“Yes! Gai-sensei conceives the best youthful training regimens!”

The girl let out a little laugh and the discussion continued, shifting from the exam to the differences between Konoha and Sunagakure. Hitomi could see Temari’s influence on Gaara: he was silent, yes, reserved, without a doubt, but he participated to the conversation quite easily, giving away little jewels of knowledge about his village – the best place to go stars-watching, the best restaurant in the Academy neighbourhood, the animals that his people raised in the Desert. All could see how much he loved Suna, how he cherished it and wanted to protect it.

The other teams joined them as they woke up. Shino decided to prepare entire thermoses of tea so everyone could have their fill and get a new cup when they wanted. Shikamaru, decidedly not a morning person, loved that initiative. Hitomi was relieved to see them all in good health. The previous day, she had been too exhausted to check up on them, but she was happy and proud that they all came out of it in such a good state.

Soon, Hoshihi joined her, sneaking between the shinobi who were drinking their tea without a care for the giant cat amongst them, until he could cuddle with her, despite his stature that made the operation rather complicated. The previous day, her other cats had decided to go back home so as to not exhaust her chakra reserves even more, but Hoshihi was her familiar. This special bond allowed him to spend his own chakra rather than hers when he wanted to stay by her side no matter how exhausted she was. He had been a great source of comfort for her during the evening, patiently licking away the tears running on her smooth cheek and purring the whole time. That sound, so soft and deep, had lulled her to sleep.

During the day, the Genin made sure to rest. Lee ended up joining his team, which didn’t wish to mingle with the group – probably because of the resentment Neji had for his cousin Hinata, a sentiment that hadn’t disappeared when her father had made her younger sister, Hanabi, his heir instead. Hinata was still a Sōke girl, a daughter of the main family. It was enough for her cousin to hate her.

Hitomi would have loved a way to prevent the disaster to come between those two, but she had already done her best by making sure Hinata was strong and determined during all those years they had spent training together, and she couldn’t find anything more to push her in the right direction. At least, she was almost sure she had been able to prevent the deadly injuries Gaara inflicted upon Lee in the canon, even if that change had been unplanned.

She, too, couldn’t wait to see her sensei once this test was over, she mused as she watched her friends talk around her. She needed to tell him about Sasuke and Naruto, urgently, so he could devise a plan to help them. As for the help she needed herself… It could wait. Inside her, the voice purred with approval.

Chapter 54: Without Any Hesitation

“First,” Anko said, her voice made louder by chakra, “I want to congratulate you all for passing the second test!” She was standing on the stage, next to the Hokage. Behind them were all the Jōnin-sensei for the teams that had passed or hadn’t, as well as Ibiki, probably because he was the proctor for the first test. At the end of the line, Hitomi noticed a man who could only be Gekko Hayate, with the deep shadows under his eyes and his weak cough. As for the Genin, they were standing in one line per team, eighteen in total, all satisfied to have come this far. Kabuto’s team had arrived last, barely a few minutes before the end of the test, probably because they had combed through the forest in the hope of finding Sasuke and Naruto. The Yūhi girl was darkly glad that they had worked so hard for nothing.

“Hokage-sama will now share the modalities of the last test! Listen carefully, all of you. Hokage-sama, if you will…”

The man, fully dressed in ceremonial robes, nodded and stepped forwards. “Ahem. First, let me explain, in the clearest way possible, this exam’s true goal. Did you think about the reason why the examen gathers Genin from the entire Alliance?”

A whisper ran through the crown and Hitomi couldn’t help but roll her eyes, her tiny silhouette wisely hidden behind Sasuke’s back. Yes, this was the perfect moment for one more serving of propaganda, just a flourish to decorate a test during which they could all have died. Joy. Exultation, even.

“If you think it’s to strengthen the friendship bonds between our countries or improve the global level of our shinobi, I regret that you’re wrong. We hold them as a miniature war.”

“What does that mean?” Tenten asked.

“In our short history, we saw a long succession of conflicts happen between countries for domination. If we hold these exams the way we do, it’s to spare our villages the cost of a useless war. That’s the idea behind the Chūnin exams.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Naruto intervened, frowning.

The people that didn’t know him much stared at him, bewildered to hear him speak so disrespectfully to his Hokage, but Hitomi and Sasuke only smiled, just like their close friends did. They all knew how close the child and elder were. Until he was adopted by Kurenai, Naruto had projected his need for a loving family on the man. Since Hitomi’s mother had given him everything he could dream of in that field, Hiruzen had kept an eye on his former protégé, but he refrained from putting his nose in the Jōnin’s business. He didn’t want to have her angry at him again.

“Of course, the exam also serves the purpose of evaluating our ninjas, but it’s primarily for their country’s prestige that shinobi come here to fight at the risk of their life.”

“The country’s prestige?” Ino interjected.

“Yes. The daimyos of the Alliance’s countries and the most eminent members of their government and court will spectate the last stage of the exam. They are our main employers, as you well know. Perhaps you even accomplished a mission for them in your short career. Besides, the leaders of various merchant guilds and high-ranking officials of other Hidden Villages will be there as well to see you fight.”

Another whisper, nervous this time, ran through the room. Most of the Genin hadn’t been there when Hitomi had explained what she knew of the exams, and she could almost physically feel Hinata’s nervousness at the idea of fighting in front of such a crowd. For an unbelievable second, she wanted to run to her and hug her until her anxiety disappeared. Such impulses belonged to the past.

“How you perform will have an impact on many parameters in your respective countries. The missions will inevitably go to the strong countries in priority, while the weak countries will have a hard time finding contracts. By the same reasoning, a country that is certain of his military superiority could threaten its neighbours with weaker Hidden Villages. In other words, there will be consequences on foreign policy.”

“What?” Kiba said. “We risk our lives for that?”

“A country is only as powerful as its village is, and a village is only as powerful as its shinobi are. As for the true power of a shinobi, it reveals itself in a fight where their life is at stake. That’s why we come and watch you. That’s why you have to shine. This exam only makes sense if you fight at the risk of your lives. Your predecessors fought, exactly like you, to become Chūnin and step closer to their dreams.”

“But why do we say we’re allied with the other countries, then?” Tenten asked.

“I thought I had been clear. Don’t fool yourselves: this tradition maintains the balance between countries at the cost of lives. It’s a form of alliance like any other, and it has maintained peace for years now.”

And yet war wasn’t so far behind. Hitomi saw it sometimes in Ensui’s haunted eyes, in the way Kakashi’s posture tensed in the rare occasions when he was taken by surprise, in a million other signs dispersed through the village like a powder trail. It was because war was still breathing down their necks that Danzō could exist, his rotten roots growing in the blood and memory of a terror that slowly strangled the old generation.

“Your dreams and your village’s honour are at stake during this last stage of the exams,” the Hokage concluded.

A whisper of approval ran through the crowd of Genin, carefully dodging the place where Hitomi was standing, stiff and bitter. She had to admit that the Hokage was a master in the art of spreading propaganda. He had probably learned tricks from his predecessors as well as Danzō, his old friend, and his two former teammates, both descending from noble families in the court of the Land of Fire. And the contestants were mostly children, young and so easy to impress. Manipulating them was barely harder than toying with the mind of first year students in the Academy – which the village did as well, of course.

“Well, time to talk about the next stage then.”

As if he had been waiting for this signal, Gekko Hayate stepped forwards. Despite his frail, tired appearance, there was something dangerous about him, in the way he moved maybe, or in the focused gleam in his eyes, as if he didn’t miss anything. “Forgive me for interrupting, Hokage-sama,” he said as he knelt respectfully, “My name is Gekko Hayate. I’ve been designated as the referee for the matches.”

“Good. I’ll let you explain the next steps then.” The Hokage stepped back and Hayate, after standing up, took his place at the centre of the stage. He was taller than Hitomi had imagined, as if the manga’s drawing had been a relevant reference by any means. He watched the Genin gathered before him with dark, piercing eyes, as if he could guess their potential just by looking at them.

“Welcome to all of you,” he started. “Before the third stage of the exam can begin, we have a detail to fix. Hm… It’s the preliminary phase that grants access to the stage itself.”

“Preliminaries?” Ino muttered next to Hitomi, looking gloomy.

“What?” Shikamaru snapped. “What’s that about? Why can’t we all get to the third stage?”

“Well, it seems that the first two stages have been too easy, which means there’s a bit too many of you left. In such a case, the rules say preliminaries can be used to cut down on the number of contestants. As Hokage-sama said, numerous esteemed guests will spectate the tournament. We don’t want them to sit there for hours on end.”

The information obviously didn’t sit well with Hitomi’s peers, just as she had expected. Shikamaru was grumbling in his shadow of a beard – he’d have to learn how to shave very soon, no doubt about it – and she heard Tenten mutter something several ranks to her left. At least, the girl thought with a grim smile, her friends had been granted time to rest. They were all in good shape, as good as they could be so close after the debacle of violence the Forest of Death had been. They could fight. Each day, she had made sure to give chakra to the seal that blocked the Cursed Seal, fixing its ink when necessary as well, and she had done the same for Naruto’s tampered jinchūriki seal.

“Now, those who feel they can’t fight right now, and the ones who simply prefer to stop here, you have to decide right now. The preliminaries will start in a moment.”

“Err… I abandon!” Kabuto’s voice sounded loud and clear in the silence that united the other Genin. Hitomi slightly turned her head to watch him without looking like she was. He seemed at the end of his rope, leaves still stuck in his ponytail, his clothes torn in some places, scratches and cuts on his face and arms. Oh, he was good. She saw him exchange a brief look with the only person she had carefully ignored since Anko had gathered them in front of the stage. Orochimaru, disguised as an Otojin Jōnin. She didn’t get how no one saw through it, especially the adults standing so close to him. Maybe they thought it would be too obvious. Hitomi didn’t want anything more than to scream for her mother to step away from him.

“Yakushi Kabuto from Konoha, right?” Anko said, checking a list. “You can go.”

The young man left the room, no one crying over his departure. Hitomi felt a fierce joy in the idea that he hadn’t had an occasion to grow close to Naruto – that way, when his true allegiance would be unveiled, her brother wouldn’t suffer.

“No one else?” Hayate called. “I forgot to say; you’re going to fight in single combat. Raise your hand if you want to go.”

Nobody moved. All were ready to fight, even Hitomi despite her criticism of the propaganda orchestrated by Hiruzen. She understood that propaganda was necessary, but she only had distaste for the way it was done here, without patience nor subtlety. That minor inconvenience didn’t stop her from wanting to prove herself – but maybe not to the same people as her friends did. It was Kakashi, and the report he’d give Ensui, that mattered.

“Well, since you all decided to continue, let me explain the preliminaries. You will fight in single combat, in real fighting conditions. The winner moves to the third stage, the loser is eliminated. Since you’re seventeen, it’s going to be eight fights, and one lucky person will automatically advance to the third stage. No techniques or stratagems are out for these fights. They end when one of the two shinobi dies, passes out or admits defeat. If you don’t wish to die, I heavily advise you to promptly acknowledge defeat. If I judge that the end of a fight is obvious, I can interrupt it, since we don’t want a pile of corpses at the end of this. And now, to know where your destiny lays…”

In the noise of a well-maintained mechanism, a wooden panel between the two balconies that would later allow the Genin to watch the fights slid up to unveil a huge screen. Hitomi’s heart missed a beat then quickened in her chest as she put a hand on her tantō’s guard.

“Look at that screen. Two random names will appear for each fight. With no more delay, I call upon the first pair.”

For a few seconds, the screen stayed blank and then, suddenly, two names appeared. Yūhi Hitomi vs. Nara Shikamaru . The two cousins’ eyes met. He tensed, opened his lips – she was quicker. “I yield!”

“Hitomi!” Naruto yelled.

“No. I refuse to fight Shikamaru. I yield.”

“Are you sure?” the proctor asked.

“Certain.”

“Okay… You can go up with the others, both of you, in that case. The ones who are called now, you stay, and the others go up to the balconies. Your Jōnin-sensei will join you there soon.”

The girl nodded, her expression sombre. In her mind, the voice groaned in unhappiness. It was one of the reasons she had forfeited. She wasn’t sure she could control that new, terrifying power. Anyway, if she had fought against Shikamaru, she would have forced him to show the wide variety of his techniques. He could still have beaten her, if he had decided it was worth the effort; he was an excellent strategist, far better than she was. But when she fought seriously, she was clever, vicious, even with him. She preferred for him to keep his advantage for the tournament to come.

When she thought about it, she had to admit that that choice – she doubted it was as random as Hayate pretended it was – from the examiners made sense. The higher ups wanted to prepare a great show for their future guests. Few people knew the full extent of her skills, but it was public knowledge that she was part of the Nara clan and trained in their way – Shikaku, like all the other clan leaders, had to report such things to the village’s archives.

The second fight popped on the screen. It would oppose, like in the canon, Sasuke and Yoroi, one of Orochimaru’s plants in the exam and Kabuto’s teammate. Hitomi didn’t doubt the outcome of that fight for a moment. With his Cursed Seal limited and three days to rest, Sasuke wasn’t too far from his top shape. His eyes were proud, full of determination. He stepped towards his opponent as all the other Genin went to the stairs, like Gekko Hayate had ordered them to.

Hitomi leaned against the railing, her features darkened by a feeling she didn’t quite understand yet. She knew her choice had been the correct one, she had done it without the slightest hesitation, would do it a thousand times over if necessary. She wanted Shikamaru to get promoted. He stepped to her right, Naruto next to him, and Gaara leaned to her left. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing her meridians to open and seek meagre comfort in the presence of her friends’ chakra around her.

“Yo!” Kakashi greeted behind her.

“Sensei! See how far we got?”

“Of course, Naruto-kun and I’m very proud of you three. I heard you had it rough?”

Hitomi grumbled, still looking down. “Orochimaru. Fucking Orochimaru.”

“Yeah, I heard… You’re lucky you’re still alive.”

“He didn’t want to kill us,” Hitomi asserted, her voice hard and bitter. “If he’d wanted that, we’d be dead, all three of us, without a doubt. We couldn’t do anything against him, he was too strong. We weren’t… We couldn’t… We weren’t a match for him.”

“If you’d been strong enough to resist a Sannin, Hitomi-chan, you'd have been promoted years ago, far before you were ready for all that implies.”

She turned her head and met his eye. She understood what he meant by that – it had happened to him, and she knew, better than any of her friends, how heavy the consequences of his past were for him.

“Anyway… Do you know what he wanted? Did he say?”

“Sasuke. He wanted Sasuke, sensei. He marked him with a corporal seal that I… I don’t understand much of this seal, but what I understood in the forest worried me, so I decided to add one of my own seals, a normal one of course, to block it. It’s only temporary. He’ll need you to do something more permanent about it.”

“I see…”

“That’s not all, sensei. He attacked Naruto too. He did something to his seal, something that deeply disturbs the flow of chakra in his body. I managed to limit the damage but, once again, it’s temporary.”

“I’ll get him help for it then. What about you, Hitomi-chan? Are you okay?”

“I do not matter, sensei,” she answered, her voice drier than she’d wanted it, as she looked down again.

Below, the fight had just started between Sasuke and Yoroi. The young Uchiha had used the classic opening move for his clan, the Great Fireball Technique. Hitomi couldn’t remember one time, even in the canon, when that technique had actually done something – it was too slow, too easy to dodge – but couldn’t deny it was intimidating. Even from where she stood, she noticed the sudden tension in Yoroi’s posture.

The two fighters seemed to have equivalent speed, but Sasuke was clearly more aggressive, be it in his technique choices or the way he moved, his dodging always followed by brutal retaliations that often landed. Despite that, the slightest brush of Yoroi’s hands on the young Uchiha was stealing a bit of his chakra, a low, determined and unfortunately very risky drain, thanks to the Cursed Seal. Sasuke had to land a decisive hit as soon as he could.

Despite the distance, Hitomi felt the Sharingan activating and let out an encouraging exclamation, followed by Naruto and, a moment later, the other Konohajin Genin. Now, Sasuke dodged Yoroi’s jabs without getting even brushed against, but the strain on his chakra reserves was constant, even if it wasn’t as demanding as it was for Kakashi, whose body hadn’t been genetically adapted to dōjutsu before he received his transplantation.

Suddenly, he moved and something whistled through the air with a little mat sound to finish. Ninja wire war cutting the arena in half, the two extremities stuck in the walls by kunai. Before Yoroi could react, the Uchiha moved again, three times more, each time reducing his opponent’s space a bit further. When Yoroi attempted to cut a wire, he was pushed away from it with a Fire Release technique, which forced him to stay in the centre of the little space he had left.

With a darkly satisfied smile, Hitomi relaxed against the railing. Sasuke had won. She could see a dozen of ways he could end that fight now and he, in the eye of the storm, could probably see an even larger array of possibilities. For the time being, the teenage boy was content enough with meticulously trapping his opponent, one wire after the other, until they formed a complex and unavoidable web. Only then did he put a hand on one of the wires, pouring his chakra inside. It turned to flames that were crawling towards Yoroi, growing fiercer and faster by the second.

“If I continue this technique, you’ll be burned alive,” the Uchiha stated. “Yield.”

Despite the black sunglasses and all the fabric hiding his face, Yoroi’s hatred was almost tangible. For several  long seconds, he stayed there, glaring at Sasuke, until he realised the annoying brat in front of him wouldn’t back down. “I yield,” he growled.

The watching Genin cheered their friend’s victory, Naruto undoubtedly leading. He was probably exalted to see his brother win without any difficulty; Hitomi didn’t doubt that he’d win his own match too, when it would come. She was particularly satisfied by the fact that Sasuke had only shown a small part of his skills. He hadn’t touched his sword, hadn’t used genjutsu or even taijutsu. The medics went to fetch Yoroi, who had been cut in several places with the wire and burned when he hadn’t dodged some techniques quickly enough.

Suddenly, Kakashi grabbed Hitomi’s arm and, before she could react, she found herself down, next to her brother, the Jōnin’s Shunshin having taken her in. She stumbled then grinned at Sasuke, so infinitely proud of him, as Hayate, Anko and Ibiki were unpinning the wires and kunai to prepare the arena for the next fight.

Medics stepped towards the young Uchiha, but Kakashi stopped them with a look. “He doesn’t need your help right now. I’m his sensei, and I’m going to take care of him with his elder sister. If we have a problem, I’ll send a clone to fetch you.” Based on his hard tone, Hitomi understood he wasn’t so fond of the medic corps. Was it because they reminded him too much of his former teammate? In his place, she would struggle just as much if each visit to the hospital reminded her of people she had lost. She put a hand on Sasuke's arm and pressed it gently, as if to make sure he was there, healthy, alive. When they left the room where the fights were occurring, Shino and Chōji had just been called for the next fight.

Kakashi took them underground, hopping down the stairs while the two teenagers almost had to run to keep up the pace, until they reached a deserted wide circular roomt. A smaller circle of pillars supported the ceiling, each a meter away from the wall and from each other. Torches were hanging on the walls between each pair of pillars; the teacher lighted them up with fire chakra, until the whole room benefited from an orange, steady light.

“Sasuke-kun,” the sensei ordered, “go sit in the exact centre of the circle of pillars and take off your coat and shirt. Hitomi-chan, you stay with me. My peers would agree on the fact that you’re far too young to learn the basis of corporal seals, but I think you can handle it and I’m not about to waste a perfect teaching opportunity with useless carefulness.”

The girl nodded, her expression serious and enthusiastic at the same time. She was always eager to progress, and the possibilities opened by corporal seals made her dizzy. They had been considered an aberration for a long time, forbidden to all but the Seal Masters themselves because of the sheer danger they represented. The best of them, the ones that had made Hokage the Fourth look like an amateur, could, according to legend, kill with a brush of their fingertips, mixing corporal and contact seals in a macabre masterpiece.

Since then, necessity had made the law bend. The Masters had grown rarer and rarer, killed one by one in unending conflicts that had stretched their skills thin. The fact that their knowledge had survived time and massacres was a miracle. It wasn’t without cause that the only country to have any active Seal Master at all was the Land of Fire, with Jiraiya. Tsunade was a more complicated affair.

“In general,” Kakashi started in a self-assured voice, “corporal seals require blood. When it’s not the case, then it’s a special ink that you have to infuse with chakra and leave to mature for months before you can use it – not many people use that option, but you will always have at least a litter of that ink in your storage seals just in case blood isn’t an option. For some seals, a mix of the two is necessary. As for the Evil Sealing Method, you use the blood of the drawer but, sometimes, just like for the Cursed Seal, the blood of the recipient is needed.”

She nodded, her eyes already gleaming with avidity. Ensui had told Kakashi about that look, about the way it made something between his ribs clench, and the teacher had to admit that his elder was right. He had to hide Hitomi’s talent with seals at all costs if he didn’t want Danzō to appear one day in her room to kill her; or take her away if he still thought he could manipulate her, bend her, shape her.

The student, unaware of her sensei’s worries, watched the way he sliced his palm open and folded his thumb, ring finger and pinkie on the wound to control the flow of blood. With his middle and index fingers, he started drawing the seal on Sasuke’s torso and back. The boy sat perfectly still where he had been ordered to, the long strokes of blood running over his upper body then on the ground, to the pillars where Hitomi felt a strange force buzzing.

Drawing the seal took more than ten minutes, the Copy Nin working in silence as Hitomi memorised each and every one of his moves. Would she have the opportunity to work on this seal? It could still be useful, since Orochimaru wasn’t going to drop dead the next minute. Her palms tingled with longing and she rubbed them against her obi, trying to muffle the feeling.

“Tomorrow, I’ll come to see you with deer skin that has been prepared for you to practice a variety of corporal seals on them. You’ll start with easier pieces, of course. You’re very talented, but this one isn’t for you quite yet. Besides, seeing that this field of fūinjutsu is dangerous in new hands, you will only be able to practice if I or Ensui-san are there to supervise and correct your mistakes. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sensei,” she whispered with the faintest hint of disappointment.

She understood why he was taking such precautions, of course, but she was the student here, which meant she was allowed to pout. That didn’t stop her from observing closely as Kakashi put the finishing touch on his seal, tracing beyond the pillars the external circle necessary to activate the seal. He hadn’t used his Sharingan, and yet his circle was perfect. Hitomi wanted this level of mastery for herself. One day, she would have it, and far more beyond that.

“Are you ready, Sasuke? It’s going to hurt. A lot.”

The teenager groaned his understanding and the sensei formed several hand seals before slamming his other hand, the one that wasn’t bleeding, against the seal. A shock of chakra and it activated. Long chains of characters retracting over the ground and his skin, leaving it painful and red. Sasuke clenched his teeth, but even that couldn’t quite muffle his long moan of pain. His whole body was tense and hurting, until the moment Kakashi separated his hand from his shoulder, revealing the thin red chain that now surrounded the Cursed Seal. The characters weren’t distinguishable anymore. It was an excellent compression work, far above anything Hitomi had used to create her Knockouts.

“If the curse tries to awaken, the seal will keep it restrained, but only as long as your will doesn’t break. Your determination will allow it to hold strong enough to protect your mind against the effects of the Cursed Seal. If one day you stop believing in yourself, if your will flickers, the seal will break and the Curse will devour your mind.”

The Uchiha heir barely had the time to nod before his eyes rolled in their orbits and he collapsed, unconscious. Hitomi immediately knelt next to him, checked his pulse then laid him as comfortably as she could on the ground, taking his coat to put it over his torso. She’d ask Kakashi to take him home, in his own bed, protected by the Nara guards who fiercely protected the clan lands, where he’d be sa…

“Hun hun.. I see seals no longer hold any secret for you two.”

Pinching her lips together to swallow a curse, the girl jumped back on her feet, unsheathing her tantō, her face a mask of anger and determination. Her killing intent exploded in the room, thickening the air to the point of making it barely breathable – yet, Orochimaru, as he stepped in the light, didn’t even seem to notice it. A rush of panic washed over her when she saw his face, his cruel eyes and avid smile. She remembered the terror and pain he had carved into her bones, her flesh, in the intimacy of her Library where no forgetfulness was allowed. She remembered, and hesitated between the desire to die and to kill, as if either of those options was even within her reach. Shaking, she forced herself to maintain her defensive stance despite the fear that creeped up inside her.

Chapter 55: Fire in Her Soul

“So much time has passed since we last met, Kakashi-kun. I heard you were dragging those kids everywhere with you, especially the little fairy hiding behind you. Worried, aren’t we?”

“Don’t talk to my sensei like that,” Hitomi growled despite the fear strangling her.

“Don’t talk to your elders at all if you don’t want to eat your own tongue!” Orochimaru snapped. “You’re lucky I’m not here for you, little fairy, but for the boy behind you.”

“What do you even want with him?” Kakashi asked, his voice hard.

“Come on, Kakashi-kun, you’re in the best place to understand what I want. You don’t really want to keep the powers of the Sharingan all for yourself, do you? It would be so selfish of you.”

“What are you preparing this time?”

“Oh, Kakashi-kun, if only you knew… I founded Otogakure. And I see you understand now…”

“Those damned ambitions again.”

“Of course! And for them to become reality, I need several pawns… Including your precious little Sasuke.”

“You won’t have him,” Hitomi managed to hiss. She was terrified, her shallow and itchy breath burning her lungs like acid, but she would have damned herself a thousand times rather than leaving Sasuke to fall into Orochimaru’s net. She met his eyes, cold and mocking, then fell to her knees under the violence of the killing intent he focused on her, still smiling as if murdering her was as easy as batting an eye. And it was, for him – that thought filled Hitomi’s mind with despair.

“Step back!” Kakashi ordered the deserter when he moved towards Hitomi. “You might be one of the Sannin, but I’m strong enough to fight you now, and I won’t let you touch my students.”

He tensed, falling into a fighting stance, and the piercing noise of the Chidori tore through the air. Inside Hitomi, the voice buckled and screamed, begging her to let go, promises of devastation, suffering and protection filling her thoughts like drugs. For a moment, she staggered on the edge, her eyes filled with panic. Kakashi’s silhouette, standing in front of her like a shield, stopped her from falling into the abyss.

“Ooh, poor little hound. Everything you do is so pointless. The seal you put on the boy won’t help him at all. He craves revenge, you see. His heart darkens which each step he takes towards his goal. He’s perfect…”

“Do you really think you can play him? Sasuke isn’t…”

“He’ll come to me. You can’t change that. He’ll come seeking power.”

As if everything had been said, the deserter turned around, took a few steps towards the door, then, as if he had just remembered something, he stopped. “You were saying you could fight me, Kakashi-kun… Would you want to try? Do you really think you can, and could you bet your students’ lives on it?”

Suddenly, the killing intent he had allowed to drop came back, wrapping around Hitomi’s neck like barbed wire. She collapsed on her belly, unable to inhale even the smallest breath, her body twisting in pain. Long, long after the deserter was gone, she continued convulsing on the ground, despairingly searching for air. She barely noticed Kakashi kneeling next to her and tearing the sword away from her grip before she could hurt herself with it. She felt like she was drowning, her heart thundering in her chest – each beat was an explosion of panic and agony.

It took Kakashi several minutes of genuine comfort and subtle genjutsu to have her back to her senses. She was drenched in cold sweat, her clothes clinging to her skin uncomfortably, and she felt like she had been through a week of unyielding fever. A hand against her back, he helped her to sit up, carefully avoiding her eyes. He was ashamed, she realised. When she was again able to speak, she put a soft hand on his shoulder to get him to look at her. “Thanks for being there with me, Kakashi-sensei,” she said, her voice hoarse and tired. “I was terrified but, thanks to you, I… I didn’t want to die just upon seeing him.”

He stared at her in silence for a long time, his black eye stopping a few seconds on the scar she hadn’t had before the exam. After a moment of hesitation, he brushed his fingertips against it, as if to estimate the damage and the pain that had come with it. “You’ll learn to resist by yourself. You have no idea how lucky you are to be alive… But luck won’t be enough in the future. I’ll tell Ensui about it and see what we can do to seriously step up your training regimen.”

“K-Kakashi-sensei. I didn’t tell you everything about what happened in the forest. I didn’t… I didn’t want to have to repeat it after telling Naruto and Sasuke, but I think it’s gonna be necessary after all.” Her voice subdued and full of hesitation, she told him about the voice that was haunting her regularly since the battle on the bridge in the Land of Waves, and how she had given in when the Otojin had attacked her in the Forest, desperate to save her teammates and friend. She added the observation Shikamaru and Gaara had given her, especially the one about her meridians visible under her skin. He listened to every word without judgment nor anger and, when she was done, he smiled under his mask to appease her.

“I’ll research this, Hitomi-chan, I promise. If we can turn it into an advantage, we will, and if we can’t, there’s still the option of sealing it away. Maybe Ensui-san will know something…”

“I hope so, sensei. I-I don’t want to be afraid of giving my best in a fight because I could kill my teammates. I really thought… I thought the thing would attack Shikamaru, when the Otojin fell and he left the thicket to help me. For a second, I…” She closed her eyes, pale and horrified. There was blood on her lips, where she had bitten down to try and resist Orochimaru’s killing intent.

“I understand. I’ll do my best to find what it is and what we can do with it.”

The girl nodded after a second. She had to admit her teacher had reassured her a bit. Unlike her, he knew what to do, and wasn’t intimidated by the pure power and violence that had emanated from her during that ordeal. He had, besides, planted a seed that could maybe help her. If the voice could be mastered…

As he stood up, Kakashi created a clone that took Sasuke’s inert body in his arms and started to walk out, while the original explained to Hitomi he was taking her brother home and would request an ANBU team to watch over the boy. The girl would have preferred for him to refrain on that point: she didn’t trust the secret organisation, not with Danzō scheming in the shadow, his puppet scattered all over the village. The only two clans he hadn’t ever dared touch directly were the Inuzuka and the Nara, the former because they were too fierce and wild and the latter because their intellect alone made them too dangerous to cross in the face of the village. Having one or several of their sons killed away in secret missions was fine – it was a shinobi’s duty to be ready to die for their village, after all – but the Councilman seemed reluctant to have any kind of direct confrontation. How long would that protection against him even hold?

They went back to the other Genin just in time to see Kankurō break his opponent’s bones. Since the man was Kabuto’s last teammate, Hitomi didn’t in any way feel sorry for him. It was supposed to be Ino’s turn after that, if the canon was to be trusted. Yet, her name didn’t appear on the screen. After all, they were an uneven number. She would probably be the one to go on to the next round: she wasn’t very impressive as far as ninjutsu went yet, but the audience would like her.

Hitomi stepped next to Gaara and pressed her arm against his, greeted in return by a nod. The Sunajin obviously realised Sasuke wasn’t with her anymore but he didn’t say anything, and she was thankful for it. She didn’t want to tell anyone about what had happened in the Seal Room yet. Anyway, her friend looked more interested in the fight that was going to start, opposing Temari and Tenten. She understood. He was worried for his sister, even if he didn’t know how to show it.

That match ended quickly. No matter how strong Tenten was as a Genin, she was still too focused on using her weaponry, and Temari could make it all go away with a swipe of her giant fan. However, the Sand Princess was gentler with her opponent than she had been in the canon, settling with a gust of wind that slammed her against the wall hard enough to knock her out. No bragging or cruelty, just the quiet assurance of a kunoichi who was conscious of her own worth. In a respectful – and probably disappointed from Lee’s side – silence, medics came to pick Tenten up as Temari climbed the stairs to go back to her brothers.

Before the next match was called, Hitomi heard that Shino had won his match against Chōji by methodically draining him of his chakra through his insects. Before collapsing with chakra exhaustion, the Akimichi heir had shown surprising tenacity according to Kankurō. Hitomi knew how her friend hated fighting against his comrades, even for a friendly spar. He was too soft and gentle for that. He had become a shinobi to protect and serve, not to kill. As for Shino… Shino was a good soul too, but inside him was a mix of hardness and detachment that made him a redoubtable ninja despite his grade. He was the only one in the Fellowship, except for her, to have already killed.

Then Kiba and Naruto were called. Both let out enthusiastic exclamations, making Hitomi smile. They were friends, of course, far closer than they would even care to admit, but they were rivals as well, and so similar, with their energy and sunny behaviour. Akamaru yipped happily, a wolfy grin on his cute face. Soon enough, the two boys were face to face, beaming at each other with anticipation. Hitomi was surprised she couldn’t guess the way this fight would end. She believed in her brother, of course she did, but she had seen Kiba fight. He wasn’t to be brushed off lightly.

As soon as Hayate gave the signal, Naruto unsheathed his titan-like sword, the one Sasuke had given him years ago. He had become very proficient with it, and his taijutsu skills weren’t lacking either. Kiba and Akamaru seemed to take a moment to estimate how long his reach was with the blade, the time it would take him to strike with it. Without even looking at each other, they rushed towards the blonde boy, one at his left, the other at his right, so fast their silhouettes became blurs of white and grey.

The crash would have been painful, if Naruto hadn’t jumped to dodge it. Master and dog had to change directions in extremis so they wouldn’t bump against each other and the jinchūriki took advantage of the very brief gleam of panic and surprise in their eyes to create seven clones amongst whom he hid himself. It was at that moment that Hitomi saw her mother, standing on the balcony at the other side of the room. Their eyes met, Kurenai’s going wide when she noticed her daughter’s scar, but she seemed to see something new in her daughter’s demeanour, a kind of steel that stopped her from rushing to her side. She focused on the fight below again and Hitomi did the same.

“Do you think Naruto will win this fight, sensei?”

“He could. He’s not as fast as Kiba, but he has stamina and strength in abundance and he doesn’t know how to quit. Those are good qualities for a spar against an Inuzuka.”

Down there, Kiba had just found the true Naruto. His nails, turned into claws, dug lines of fire in his shoulders. The jinchūriki shook his opponent off before his wounds became too serious and slashed a circle around himself with his huge sword, forcing both master and dog to step away from the deadly-sharp edge. Suddenly, Hitomi wished he had at least one elemental jutsu. Clones and swords could only take him so far.

But Naruto was even more clever than she gave him credit for. In just a second, the arena was full of a thick dark grey form that she identified as a dozen of her homemade smoke bombs, probably planted there by clones. It was still the best way to get rid of an Inuzuka’s senses, and Naruto knew how to navigate mist, Kakashi had made sure of it after the battle on the bridge.

For a few minutes, Hitomi couldn’t see anything happening down there. She ended up closing her eyes and focusing on her meridians instead. Then, she discovered Naruto had already handled Akamaru, who was lying still and seemed exhausted, unconscious. The jinchūriki was now targeting Kiba, who was trying to fend him off. Hits landed on both sides, but Naruto was the last one standing.

She opened her eyes, a knowing smile on her lips. Gaara smiled back at her and she leaned against him, comforted by his presence, by the quiet power laying in his chakra brushing with hers. Finally, the fog cleared up, the dark grey smoke pushed away from the arena by a weak explosive seal, another gift from Hitomi. The blonde boy was beaming harder than he had in days, since they had gotten into the tower. Kiba was lying unconscious, at his feet, and Akamaru was a bit farther away, just as still.

“Uzumaki-Yūhi Naruto wins this match!” Hayate announced.

The boy’s friends clapped warmly – even Kakashi, looking immensely satisfied, joined in for a few seconds. Naruto was still smiling when he came back to the balcony and hugged Hitomi, as sunny and bursting with energy as ever. She let out a gentle laugh next to his ear, put her head on his shoulder for a few seconds, then let him go. “Congratulations, Naruto. You have progressed so much since the Academy, it’s impressive!” She would have loved complimenting him endlessly, but the screen’s buzzing stopped her. She turned her eyes to it and whined with anxiety when she saw the two names written there. Hyūga Hinata vs Hyūga Neji . She didn’t want to see this. She had to but didn’t want to, because she knew what was going to happen. Hinata was too kind and gentle to go at her own cousin with the intention of crushing him. He would have no such hesitations about her.

“Our paths meet once again, Lady Hinata,” Neji said, his voice almost gentle.

“Neji-nii.” Her own greeting was quiet, respectful. Naruto, who had been Hinata’s friend since childhood, had learned, through lengthy discussions, about the complicated history of her family and the worsening gap between the main and secondary branch of the clan. He even knew about the way the Byakugan worked. His lips a thin line, as if he knew, too, what was going to happen, he didn’t say a word, looking down in the arena.

“Hajime!” Hayate demanded.

Neji immediately started to talk, trying to convince Hinata to yield, to let him win. Shame spread in Hitomi like wildfire, because she, too, wished for her friend to step down from this fight. She didn’t want her best friend broken by the boy who had been raised to protect her. Far above the ground, powerless, she bit on her lower lip so hard she tasted blood.

“You’re wrong, Neji-nii! I-I really want…” Hinata choked halfway through her plea as Hitomi felt the characteristic buzzing of a Byakugan activating. She clenched her hands on the railing so hard the steel protested then started to bend, slowly, a millimeter after the other. The thing inside her, suddenly interested, stretched and whispered in her ear, using its sweetest words to say how killing Neji would protect Hinata, that they could make the girl safe, together.

“Don’t listen to that jerk, Hinata!” Naruto yelled. “You’re talented and strong, you can kick his ass! Don’t yield!”

One after the other, their friends joined in, even the Children of the Sand who barely knew the young heiress but could see how important she was to the Fellowship. Hitomi’s voice soon mingled with her friends’ and, if her encouragements were hoarser, more desperate, no one seemed to really notice. Hinata, as if strengthened by her friends’ support, slowly straightened up, her posture getting as fluid and precise as the Hyūga had taught her it had to be.

Her Byakugan appeared too, which Neji seemed to take offense to. Even from where she was standing, Hitomi saw the teenage boy’s face twist with distaste and anger, as he mimicked her by falling in the opening stance of the Gentle Fist, the taijutsu form their clan had mastered. Furious, Hitomi made sure to observe his every move, the thing whispering promises of revenge and rivers of blood in her ears.

The first clash wasn’t decisive, the two teenagers separating before they could land a real blow on their opponent. Hinata wasn’t the most aggressive kunoichi, but her dodges were a true masterpiece for her level. She wasn’t that fast, when compared to Sasuke and Kiba, but her defensive instinct was flawless and she only moved as much as she needed, not a centimeter more, for a hit to go past her. When they had still been recurring sparring partners, there were whole days when Hitomi couldn’t touch her even once, no matter how hard she tried.

The second time, though, rather than accepting a mutual retreat, Neji pushed her to continue defending herself and pushed his advantage by picking up the pace of his blows. Hitomi could feel her friend’s tenketsu shutting down one after the other. The sensation was horrible, as if Hinata was slowly dying. She could see how brave and proud she still was, a fierce fire lit in her eyes by their friends encouraging her. Hitomi had no choice but to resist the double calling of her instinct and the voice, both pleading for her to stop that fight, to step in.

“We believe in you, Hinata, continue!”

Hitomi was torn between the compliments that endlessly rushed to her lips and the truth of what this fight was, the ending she foresaw for it. She started shaking with anger, the voice growling and roaring in her mind with all her might to push her to violence, to revenge, to a litter of blood to soak the ground for each injury on Hinata’s vital points. Coming from her cousin, her shadow, it was… Even if he hadn’t chosen this position, he had no right to put the blame on Hinata , who hadn’t had any say in the matter either.

She let out an anguished cry when Neji’s open hand slammed against Hinata’s heart, the fingers of his left hand shutting down the tenketsu along her brachial artery. Hinata’s lips parted and, even from where she was standing, Hitomi could see the blood staining her chin. The Hyūga girl staggered, found inside herself a new energy and hit, slamming close points on her cousin’s shoulders. With a brief look upwards, Hitomi prayed the unknown strengths above to grant her friend a different result for that fight.

The hits inflicted on the tenketsu with the Gentle Fist were ten times as concerning as normal impacts, and yet Hinata straightened and got back in a fighting stance. Hitomi couldn’t hear what the two cousins were saying now that her friends were roaring and cheering, but she didn’t need to. Those words were carved into her memory, in a book of her Library. She had reviewed that damned book so many times in hope of changing this whole debacle. In vain. She couldn’t stand against a whole clan alone, especially one so close-minded.

“You can do this, Hinata!” The words escaped her as half a sob, half a cry. She wasn’t ashamed of her emotions, for once so obvious, wasn’t ashamed of the tears on her cheeks, wasn’t ashamed of the way her hands were crushing the railing that stood as a barrier between Hinata and her. She heard Kakashi sigh, as if he too, understood how this fight was going to end, as if it was too late already. She didn’t dare wonder how right he was.

They went at it again, Hinata managing to close shut several minor tenketsu until Neji hit her under the chin. The thing screamed in answer, so loud Hitomi’s ears were deaf for a second – maybe she had screamed too, maybe it was the cause of the torn gleam in Shikamaru’s, Gaara’s and Naruto’s eyes. Without even noticing it, she was weaving around herself a killing intent that was perhaps even more intense than what she had managed to produce facing Orochimaru. Terror had fuelled her then, but terror for herself was nothing compared to the anger blooming in her heart on Hinata's behalf. That feeling alone, as scorching as lava, could take a life.

Then Neji managed to make Hinata collapse by hitting her on the heart again. She stood back up, like she had done every time, her eyes sometimes gazing to the balconies. What did she hope to see there, if not her friends yelling their support? Did she even hear them? Hitomi’s heart broke, she clenched her teeth and the railing snapped, useless. Now she had nothing concrete to stop her. She needed something, though, anything, or she would…

Hinata articulated something, her lips barely moving, and everyone felt the killing intent Neji emitted at that moment. The Jōnin acted so quickly they were invisible to the eye, Hitomi just behind them as chakra exploded in her limbs, allowing her to reach an impossible speed. In less than a second, she was down there and, if the adults were focusing on Neji, she ran straight to Hinata.

When the Hyūga girl staggered, she rushed to stop her fall, laying her down on the ground as gently as she could. The teen’s half-opened eyes were foggy, filled with exhaustion and unbearable pain. Like everyone, Hitomi heard the wet sound of a muscle tearing and the words exploded on her lips before she could even think them, making her beg for a medic in a voice filled with despair. She had no medical jutsu, she had sworn to learn and pushed it back to the next day again and again. Maybe she could have done something, maybe, maybe…

The Jōnin let Neji go, Kurenai rushing to her student’s side as medics took her away on a stretcher to attempt to save her life. Slowly, Hitomi stood up, her hands drenched in her friend’s blood. Her eyes were as hard and sharp as the edge of her sword, but it wasn’t the most worrying thing about her demeanour. No, the most worrying thing about her was the killing intent exploding around her, so strong and merciless it had Neji uttering a choked sound. She took advantage of his surprise to hurl herself at him, pinning him to the closest wall. He tried to defend himself but already she was there, her shadow stealing away any control he had on his movements. He was struggling, but anger made her so much stronger she was almost another ninja altogether. The thing screamed inside her, furious and thirsty for the boy’s blood, ordering her to make it paint the whole arena red.

The two Genin were staring at each other. Slowly, Hitomi unsheathed, her right arm keeping him in place. She could have killed him there, now. It would have been so easy. He was mimicking her movements, yes, but he wasn’t armed, and she had watched him enough to understand he was right handed . She snarled like a furious cat. If possible, her killing intent grew stronger.

“You dare,” she growled, her voice terribly low and her nose almost against his. “You dare take it out on her, even though she suffered just as much as you did in her father’s hands. In another world, I’d have forgiven you, I’d have understood, but hurting her, when talking to her would have been enough for you to understand…”

Neji had turned white, his widening eyes allowing her to see several burst veins in them. The fight hadn’t been that easy for him, Hinata had fought back, so brave, so strong, so sweet. The edge of Hitomi’s tantō pressed against the Genin’s throat, leaving a thin, thin line of blood on his pale skin. One dark red drop rolled to his clavicle – the voice inside her screamed for more.

“Hitomi-san!”

The girl turned her head towards Lee, who was now standing next to her. He stepped closer, put a hand on her left forearm and slowly forced her to take her blade away from Neji’s throat. She resisted for a few moments then gave in, her eyes never leaving the teenager’s. His face was grave, almost severe.

“I understand your anger, trust me, I do. But Hinata-san wouldn’t want you to kill her cousin, you know that just as much as I do.”

She breathed deeply once, twice, then took a decision. Her hand tightened around the tantō’s guard, the blade inched a bit more towards the fragile skin, then she let go, stepped back and sheathed the weapon again, without separating their shadows. Slowly, the killing intent around her dissipated. “If you raise your hand on her again,” she whispered in a terribly sweet voice, “I’ll come back for you.”

On those words, she took her shadow back and spun around, Lee by her side. She would have liked to follow Hinata, to run to her and hold her hand, to pray to the gods to let her heal, but she couldn’t. Kakashi wouldn’t have allowed it, not in her state, not when he knew about the thing inside her. With the eyes of every Jōnin in the room digging in her back, she went back to her friends, her expression hard and still thunderous.

Chapter 56: When To Quit

Notes:

I'm so sorry for the long time you had to wait since I posted the last chapter. I was going through a rough patch - if I'm being honest, this rough patch isn't quite over yet. Still, I hope I can go back to posting regularly.

Silence weighed heavily on her group of friends when Hitomi came back to them. Naruto, his features darkened by anger, took her hand without a care for Hinata’s blood on her fingers. He was tense, as if he too, was hearing a voice telling him to go back and avenge their friend, to make blood run, to deploy a carnage worthy of this offense. It wasn’t impossible: now that he knew the Kyūbi was inside him, maybe could he hear its voice… And the fox didn’t want anything more than an opportunity to take control and destroy Konoha, which had dared chain him again.

The screen between the two balconies buzzed once more, two new names replacing the Hyūga’s. Sabaku no Gaara vs Rock Lee . Hitomi breathed in deeply, her mind clearing from part of her anger. She trusted Gaara with her life. She knew this fight would go okay for both of them. And if it really wasn’t the case… She could still make them both see reason. She allowed a smile to reach her lips when she saw them go downstairs side by side, like they were allies. They weren’t as close as the Son of the Sand was with her friends, but Gaara knew she liked Lee and that was enough to treat him like a friend.

“Hajime!” Hayate demanded when they were facing each other.

Lee rushed towards Gaara, who didn’t move at all. His attacker’s movements were incredibly flexible and fast, as elegant as a dance. Each of his hits was stopped by a wall of sand that was always just a bit quicker than him. Maito Gai, standing in the balcony opposite from Kakashi’s spot, waited for his student to be perched on a statue of the Tiger Hand Seal to speak, his booming voice filling the whole room. “Lee, take them off!”

“With all my respect, Gai-sensei, I’m only allowed to take them off when I protect several important people!”

“No problem, you have my authorisation this time, my boy!”

Lee’s face lightened up with a mix of incomprehension and delight that made Hitomi’s heart ache in a strange way. He sat on the fingers of the statue, rummaged under his gaiters and took two wrappers of weights from it. They looked to be maybe a few kilograms each, but the girl knew the truth, remembered that moment like she’d already lived it. And yet, like everyone else, she jumped when the weights fell to the ground, digging deep craters at the point of impact in a deafening noise.

“Now go, Lee, give your very best!”

The boy obeyed, so fast he disappeared from sight and turned into a vague green blur. Suddenly, Gai appeared next to Kakashi and the two men exchanged a half-proud, half-amused look. Hitomi had to admit she had jumped again when she had felt him appear, but at least she hadn’t threatened him with a weapon. When he introduced himself, beaming as usual, she answered without meeting his eyes. She had just threatened and almost killed one of his students. He probably disliked her.

Her breathing stopped for a moment as she thought about Hinata. She’d been so pale, so pale… She gulped nervously, rubbed her damp palms against her kimono and tried to focus on the fight in the arena. Gaara’s sand was struggling to follow, and yet Lee was constantly picking up the pace, as if there was no limit to the speed his body could use. He managed to hit his opponent once, twice, bruises blooming immediately on the Son of the Sand’s pale skin as Kankurō and Temari let out exclamations of disbelief.

“He hasn’t ever been hit before, has he?” Hitomi asked them, leaning against the – somehow repaired – railing.

“Nope, never!”

“Hm hm. He leans too heavily on his sand for defence. He doesn’t dodge, doesn’t even attempt to parry… Against Lee who’s just a Genin, it’s not too preoccupying, but if he had to fight against a far more powerful opponent one day, an opponent who’d notice this weakness immediately and decided to take advantage of it…” She let her voice die out, her tone a mix of thoughtfulness and worry. Maybe it would  be enough to plant a seed of doubt in the siblings’ minds, maybe they would help him to find a way to overcome this weakness. She hoped so. How would he manage against Deidara otherwise? She was still working on that, though, and the fact that Kakashi-sensei had finally explained how corporal seals worked opened a whole new field of possibilities for her.

“He used the Sand Armor!”

“The Sand Armor? What’s that?” Naruto looked as perplexed as he was amazed. For him, who was leaning so heavily on his taijutsu skills, Lee’s proficiency had to be fascinating. And yet, this subject was the only one he couldn’t become better at by using his clones, since one hit would dispel them. Hitomi smiled as Kankurō explained the Sand Armor. Maybe she should remind him of the common memory his clones and himself shared, since he didn’t use it to train faster. What a pity… He’d be incredible with Wind Release paired with his sword.

Suddenly, Lee totally disappeared for a second. He had unwrapped the bandages on his forearms. Hitomi knew what it meant; she grimaced at every impact and stiffened when the Konohajin caught his opponent in his deadly embrace, falling with him headfirst towards the ground at a breath-taking speed. For a second, she thought Lee had won, thought Gaara hadn’t had time to switch places with some of his sand… But when the dust fell down, she saw the Sand Armor falling to pieces, empty.

This time, Gaara was the one to attack, exploiting the repercussions of the Front Lotus on Lee’s body to send his sand to him. The Konohajin couldn’t run anymore, his limbs exhausted after the forbidden technique. Hitomi feared he would open the Gates and injure himself even more, but suddenly the sand dived on him like millions of birds of prey and the fight was over, Gaara’s chakra wrapping around him almost like an embrace. “I could pursue this technique and crush him alive,” the Sunajin stated in a loud, expressionless voice. “However, I do not wish to draw blood from a worthy opponent when I can avoid it.”

Hayate, the proctor, seemed a bit dumbfounded, like all the Genin who knew how good both the fighters were. “Sabaku no Gaara wins this match!” the man announced.

When he heard those words, Gaara let the sand relax around Lee and drop him carefully to the ground. He approached, one of his rare, discreet smiles on his lips, and the two boys shook hands, going back together to the balcony where Hitomi was waiting for them. “You were both amazing,” she said gently.

The compliment seemed to pick up Lee’s spirit, according to his beaming smile. “You’ll see, Hitomi-san, next time I’ll win, promise! If I fail, I shall crawl two hundred laps around Konoha!”

“I’m sure you’ll succeed. I’ll be there to watch when that day comes.” And she believed in those words. She had grown quite fond of Lee during the three days they had spent with their friends in the tower. Every morning, he had been there to welcome her and talk. He had even comforted her several times when her nightmares had been so unbearable they continued weighing on her after waking up – yellow eyes and a never-ending tongue. He always seemed intimidated when he touched her, but he did so with respect and delicateness, despite the terrible strength in his callused hands. He was patient, tender, attentive to the littlest detail, and his passionate temper had strung a chord in her. She was always looking for peace and quiet, but, with him… “Lee? This dinner we planned on having once this part of the exam is done… I’d like to make it a date, if you want.”

He looked on the verge of tears all of a sudden, as if she had proposed to marry him. He beamed even brighter, if it was possible, his cheeks blushing intensely, then vigorously nodded. “Alright! I shall pick you up at your house. Would tomorrow, six in the evening be okay? Thanks for giving me a chance, Hitomi-san!”

“You deserve it, Lee. You’re very brave. I can’t wait for tomorrow.” She smiled then turned away, blatantly ignoring Kakashi and Gai, who seemed to hesitate between cooing – Jōnin and their gossip, really – and strut about to protect their respective student. She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide how cute she found them. She sought refuge next to Gaara as Ino was declared winner of her match by default, and thus qualified.

She brushed her fingertips against her friend’s bruised cheeks. “Those are your only injuries, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When we get home, I’ll ask Ensui-shishou to heal them, if he’s home. If he’s not, then Yoshino will do it. Shikamaru’s mom, remember? I don’t want you to go through all the colours under the sun until it heals up, it clashes with your whole though silent guy thing.”

“It was weird, taking hits. I’ll train with him in the future.”

“He’ll be delighted, I’m sure. Thanks for not harming him. I know you could have… It would have been easy.”

“Yeah, but why draw blood when it’s not necessary? You know… I talked a lot with Naruto, while we were waiting for the end of the exam. About the demons inside us and… other things. He told me of his dream to become Hokage, and I think I’d like to succeed my father in leading Suna, one day.”

Hitomi’s eyes went wide. She hadn’t expected this, and yet it made so much sense, it felt so natural. Gaara and Naruto could only get along. “I’m sure you’ll make an extraordinary Kazekage once that day comes.”

They exchanged a look then focused on Gekko Hayate again; the man was calling all the qualified Genin and asking them to come down. Hitomi stayed on the balcony, surrounded by Gai and Kakashi. As for Orochimaru, he had disappeared the Hermit knew where. He hadn’t come back after their meeting in the Seal Room, which relieved her beyond what she was comfortable admitting. She had never had an anxiety attack as violent as the one she had gone through there. She would have to spend a lot of time with her therapist to heal from the abject terror invading her each time she even thought about seeing the Sannin again.

“You’ve qualified for the third phase of the Chūnin exams,” the proctor said down there. “One is missing, but still, congratulations! Hokage-sama, the room is yours.”

The old man took Hayate’s place and cleared his throat before speaking. “I’m now going to explain the final stage of the exam in more detail. Just like I explained earlier, you’re going to fight in front of the public. As representatives of your countries, you’ll have to give a worthy show and your very best! For that to happen, the tournament will only happen in a month.”

None of the qualified Genin showed any surprise, which seemed to annoy Hiruzen. Did he think the young generation was too impatient and impulsive to go rummage through the archives? For Hitomi, that place was an echo of paradise. If only she could have access to more sections of it…

“I think it is a reasonable span of time to get ready. First, we’ll have to share the program with all the esteemed guests coming to see you perform, as well as the date, time and place. But for you, it’s mostly a personal training time. You’ll need it to get to know your opponent, analyse the information you gleaned during the preliminaries, and evaluate the best course for success. Until now, you have fought against opponents you didn’t know anything about, or close to it, like in a real mission. This is different. Some of you have already revealed their secrets to their rivals, others have been wounded fighting against worthy adversaries… We want the tournament to be fair, and that’s why the month-long delay has been imposed.”

Approving nods ran through the gathered Genin. No matter who their opponents would be, they knew they were going to give their best, and that required preparation.

“You’ll be dismissed in a moment. There’s still one last formality to take care of.”

“What now?” Naruto exclaimed. “We have to go train!”

Hitomi muffled a little laugh as Kakashi shook his head and rubbed his face with a pained groan.

Down in the arena, Anko stepped forwards, a blind box between her hands. “Calm down, kid. All of you, you’re going to pick a paper from this box. I’m coming to you, so wait for your turn.” One after the other, the contestants announced their number. Hitomi had already deduced that most fights would be similar to the canon, a few details aside. “Dear contestants, here are the first opponents you’ll have to face!”

Upon hearing Anko’s words, Kakashi activated his Sharingan so he could read the names. He repeated the matches out loud one after the other for Hitomi’s benefit. “Naruto versus Neji, Gaara versus Sasuke, Kankurō versus Shino, Temari versus Ino versus Shikamaru.”

“Ouch, that last match is gonna hurt. I can see Ino kick Shikamaru’s ass when he’s being too lazy for her tastes, but Temari is a whole other problem.”

Down there, the Hokage was explaining the tournament to the contestants. Hitomi had to admit she liked the idea that winning the whole thing wasn’t the only way of getting promoted. She would have really liked to be a part of it but, apparently, some things were more important than a promotion in her eyes. Maybe did she still have some morality. That thought reassured her, but just a little bit.

When she saw the others scatter around, she left too. She wished to spend some time alone, perhaps to meditate inside her Library, shaken since her meeting with Orochimaru. As for Kakashi, he had gone down to congratulate Naruto and tell him about a training regimen. She knew her brothers wouldn’t need her for the month to come. Shikamaru and Ino would be trained by their fathers, and the Children of the Sand would be in Baki’s very capable hands, perhaps with specialists that would travel from Suna to guide Temari and Kankurō in their respective fields. As for Gaara… The only person he shared skills with was his father, and he would die rather than ask for the man’s help.

That meant that, for a whole month, Hitomi was free to train with Ensui, when his duties for Shikaku left him with free time for his poor apprentice. She also had to find time for Hai’s training, which had been postponed long enough, and she wanted to see Yoshino about medical ninjutsu. She also had to get her pawns moving to prepare for the next several obstacles in her way, analyse what the canon gave her information-wise about them; she had to plan and think, two things that hadn’t exactly been her strong suit these past few days. Hadn’t she allowed Orochimaru to mark Sasuke even though she knew it was going to happen?

When she arrived home, she found her brother asleep. Kakashi had taken care of tucking him in and had even put some of his gear from the exam away in neat piles. Sasuke would be absolutely pissed to learn his teacher had dared put his hands in his package. With a little smile, she left the room, keeping the door ajar so he would be able to hear her presence downstairs once he woke up. She settled in the living-room, sitting in seiza on the thick rug.

Her Library had suffered from the night in the Forest of Death and from her meeting with Orochimaru in the Seal Room. The bloodstained ground was back, just like the door at the back of the room. Several shelves had cracks on them, as if they had been violently shaken. With a heavy sigh, Hitomi got to work, cleaning one space avec the other until her mind was in a satisfying state. She had an appointment with her therapist in two days. Fukuda would know how to help her further.

After an hour of hard work, she was done. When she opened her eyes, the sky was turning to dusk colours, even if the sun wasn’t yet on the horizon line. Neither her mother nor Naruto were home yet. For the blonde, she guessed he was looking for a training supervisor and Kakashi would probably place him soon in Jiraiya’s capable hands, without trying Ebisu – not when his seal was damaged. As for Kurenai… She was surely waiting for news about Hinata. Hitomi’s breathing itched. Her hands shaking, she summoned Hoshihi, who had been enjoying a well-deserved rest in the spiritual world.

“Lady Summoner?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I-I’d like to spend some time with you, if you have nothing important to do.”

“Don’t be a mouse brain. Of course I always have time to spend with you.”

Later, after a thorough cuddling session on the couch, which was almost too small for the giant cat, she cooked enough food for her whole family and ended up eating alone, dropping pieces of fish to her feline companion when he gave her the puppy eyes. She had found a book that would keep her occupied, but her brain registered the words without investing in them. Hinata’s pale, pained face danced in front of her tired eyes, leaving a bitter taste of failure on her tongue.

Finally, she heard steps on the porch. With a little distressed and anxious noise, she ran and hid in Ensui’s arms before he was even done taking off his boots, which almost made him fall. Without question, he hugged her as hard as he could. He was hurting her, just a bit. It was perfect that way. She gripped his clothes until her joints turned whine, breathed in his smell like a drug, hid her face against his neck, where she could feel his pulse and heat, so necessary to her well-being.

He ended up picking her from the ground and taking her to the living-room. He put her on the couch Hoshihi had left free for them then sat so he could still hold her in his arms, his calloused thumb brushing against her new scar. His features were creased with worry, the dark grey eyes deeply set in their orbits and haunted with a vague, bitter gleam. “Kakashi and Gaara told me everything,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and hard. “I’ll kill the bastard.”

Those words filled Hitomi with a violent distress. Ensui was amazingly strong… but he wasn’t a Sannin. No matter what he did, no matter the progress he could still make, he wouldn’t ever be a Sannin. “You’ll die if you go after him. I have no need for a corpse. I need you ,” she growled, her tone fierce and fervent. “I need you to make me stronger, as strong as you can. I need you to train me.”

Ensui sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the worry hadn’t left their depths, but they had softened. “I know you’re right. But, maybe, one day, if I have the opportunity…”

Oh, she would do her best for him to have one. It was time one of her plans succeeded, and one of them was ready to unfold. Just one thing was amiss for it to begin: the invasion. But Hitomi hadn’t done anything to stop that event from happening. Orochimaru could still take control over Sunagakure by impersonating the Kazekage, he just had to find something else to use as a diversion. If the invasion happened without a major change… Then maybe she would be able to have Ensui by her side for what would come next.

She’d thought about it at length during her work in her Library. She would ask Haku and Zabuza if they could spend some time in Konoha without being noticed – they were still deserters, after all. If they could train her, make her Water release better, then there was a strong chance they would still be there when she’d need their help further.

“Have you already thought about what you want to do? What do you want to train on?”

She snapped out of her thoughts and nodded. “Mainly fūinjutsu, with you. Kakashi-sensei gave me the first clues for corporal seals, so I want to work on that and maybe create some of my own invention. I already have ideas… But I’m not sure what will be possible.”

“And for Hai-chan?” Hoshihi asked. He was sprawled on the rug at her feet, purring gently.

“I doubt my mother will be busy during the month, not when Shino will rely on his whole clan for training on his techniques and individual skills. I’ve no genjutsu skill, so Hai-chan will mainly work with her, although I’ll still spend time training her to work with me, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah, it is, but I’d still like to assist with the training sessions. Hai-chan can be a bit lightheaded and she hasn’t been an apprentice for long yet.”

The girl nodded in approval, a thoughtful expression on her face. “And then, there’s medical ninjutsu. I want to learn the basics at least. I know you mastered the first-aid techniques, shishou, but I’d like to ask Yoshino if she could teach me. I heard she was terrifying in the field when she was still part of the medic corps.”

“You heard that right. Yoshino was, and still is, an excellent medic, but what made her incredibly precious to her teammates was the fact that she could handle herself in battle, even halfway through a medical procedure. I think some veterans from Iwagakure still have nightmares about her.”

“Good. That’s what I want. Oh, and I’d also like to work on kenjutsu and ninjutsu. Having those skills is useless if I can’t land a hit, am I right?”

“Hm, I’ll make up something for you. I see you have a very full plate once more… I’ll get you tomorrow at dawn and we’ll start working on all this.”

“I can’t wait. I… hum. I’ll have to be home at six in the evening tomorrow, though, exceptionally.”

“Oh?”

“Would you be terribly shocked if I told you I have a date, shishou?”

He burst out laughing, the sound like a balm on Hitomi’s wounds. Fascinated, she watched the way his face relaxed, how he threw his head back to free his hilarity – a habit she had adopted as her own. “Oh, no, young lady, I wouldn’t be shocked. Kakashi told me about your little romance in the Land of Waves. Haku, right?”

“Yeah… But I think it’s going to be different with Lee, if we decide to pursue this further than just one date. We’re both Konohajin shinobi, which means we have time to decide if we really want to have a romantic relationship, and if it’s gonna be serious or not.”

“The only thing that matters to me is your happiness. I don’t care about who makes you happy, but if that person hurts you, trust me, I’ll suddenly have plenty of compromising intel about them.”

This time, it was Hitomi who burst out laughing, which seemed to put Ensui over the moon. How much had he worried upon hearing what she had faced with her brothers in the Forest of Death? Kakashi and Gaara weren’t the kind to minimise such things.

“I’m not forgetting your other problem either,” he said gently. “Kakashi told me about a voice you were hearing?”

She sobered, lowering her gaze to her clenched hands. “Yeah… It tells me things. Things I want to listen to. It’s what I did in the forest, I was so desperate I gave in. The voice took control, massacred the three Otojin by doing weird stuff with their blood and chakra, and when she was done, I thought she was going to make me attack Shikamaru who had just arrived. He told me, after that, that during all the time the voice was there, my meridians were visible through my skin.”

“Worrying indeed. Like your sensei, I’ll do some research. I’ll talk to your grandfather to see if he has access to your clan’s archives and, if I don’t find anything there, I’ll go to the ones the village holds. I thought about taking you to the hospital for tests but…”

“I don’t want rumours.”

“Me neither. We don’t want some people to hear about what you could do, now, do we?”

After that, they shifted the discussion to lighter topics under Ensui’s influence. He would have walked on his hands and juggled with his feet if it had made his apprentice smile, but he knew it was useless. Holding her against his chest, with his chin on her head, the noises of his breathing and beating heart to comfort her, would have far better effects on her than a simple laugh. Later, when she was closer to peace, more focused, he knelt in seiza in front of the coffee table and unsealed a bundle of blank sheets, a brush and a bottle of ink. “Why wait until tomorrow to get started, hm? Come here, I’ll show you some patterns that you’ll use in corporal seals.”

Fascinated, a sweet and peaceful smile on her lips, Hitomi did as he asked. The smell of ink, the song of brush against paper, so slight, comforted her greatly, above what words could even start to explain. Soon enough, she was allowed to draw the patterns herself, one after the other, until her fingers were stained by ink, her wrist aching, and the clock in the living-room announced it was two in the morning.

“Don’t you want to go home and sleep, shishou?”

“It’s the last thing I want when my apprentice is unwell. Make your movement more rigid when you draw that spear. Look, it’s not exactly that shape…”

For a moment, Hitomi thought she was going to cry. With her shishou by her side, she felt bright enough, prepared enough, safe enough to accomplish everything she wanted, and everything she didn’t even dare dream of.

Chapter 57: Corporal Seals

Ensui woke her up at dawn, just as he had promised. She had fallen asleep on her work, judging by the ink stain on her intact cheek. He had, though, decided to move her at one point, since she woke up laying on the couch, Hoshihi half-sprawled over her like an oversized teddy bear. He moved when she let him know she wanted to stand up, but his tail twitched unhappily, as if she had bothered him halfway through a comfy nap.

“Can you go fetch Hai-chan, please? I’ll summon you both in half an hour, I want to take a shower and change first.”

Hoshihi perked up and rolled on his feet. “No problem!”

The cat disappeared in a puff of smoke and she went upstairs, an amused smile on her lips. She heard Ensui getting busy in the kitchen, Sasuke next to him. Her mother still wasn’t there, or she had just come and gone back to the hospital. That hypothesis was worrying for Hitomi – it meant Hinata’s state was really serious.

She thought about it and other matters for a long time while showering and dressing. She had to send her battle kimono for repairs, since her sleeves had been torn in the Forest of Death. At least, she had several training outfits that would do the trick in the meantime. She used this opportunity to choose her outfit for the night’s date with Lee. She didn’t want to put on her best clothes – it might intimidate him if she appeared at her prettiest – but, thanks to Kurenai, she had a lot of options to make someone want to look at her.

When she went downstairs again, her still damp hair tied in a ponytail, her brother and mentor were at the table already. Her own breakfast was waiting for her in front of her seat. She settled, thanked them and started eating, taking pleasure in each mouthful. The food from home had a particular flavour, a unique identity that always made her feel better, safe. During the meal, she summoned Hai, who greeted her with enthusiasm. She was as cute as usual, between her big blue eyes and puffed-up pelt.

“So, Hai-chan, did you like your mission during the first stage of the exam?”

“I loved it! Will I do a lot of stuff like that with you, Lady Summoner?”

“We’ll train so we can work well together, you and I. I also want to introduce you to my mom. She’s an Illusion Mistress, it’s a very important title here. It means she has truly mastered genjutsu.”

“Woah! Your mom sounds so cool! Do you think she’ll agree to work with me?”

“I’ve asked her about it in passing and she seemed intrigued by the idea. I have no talent whatsoever in genjutsu and I think she always wished I did, even if she never showed it.”

When everyone was done with breakfast and Kakashi had taken Sasuke and informed Hitomi they wouldn’t be back in the village before the tournament, Ensui decided it was time to pick up where they had left off during the night. He showed her a way to add chain reactions and countdowns to her seals, especially the ones she used for traps. They worked on it for four hours, sitting in the shade of the patio, while Hoshihi made Hai work on her defensive stances.

And finally Kurenai came home. She looked exhausted, her eyes red and puffy like she had cried, her hair a mess. She immediately rushed to her daughter when she saw her and hugged her like she hadn’t seen her in years. Hitomi was happy to hug her back. She was so worried, and had so many questions… But this wasn’t the time. When her mother let go of her, the girl led her to the kitchen and prepared a plate of the leftovers from the breakfast and the previous day’s dinner, then she asked Hoshihi to fetch Asuma.

The man arrived a few minutes later, with the dizzy look of someone who had used a succession of Shunshin to make it as fast as possible where he was needed. Cute. From afar, without interfering, Hitomi watched for a few minutes as the man comforted her mother, trying not to hear the sweet words he was whispering into her ear – it was their intimacy. Still, she heard enough to learn that Hinata was alive. The worst was behind her, but she still wasn’t awake. The medics said it was normal, but still…

With a worried sigh, the girl went back to the patio, where Ensui was waiting. She didn’t need to say anything: just by looking at her, he understood she needed to move, needed a true tiredness to dig and coil in her muscles. He moved to the garden and gestured for her to join him. Slowly, he unsheathed his katana from its sheath adorned in the Nara clan colours – brown and dark green, deer and forest.

“I heard you were learning to infuse your blade with chakra. Show me what you can do with it.”

With a nod, Hitomi focused. Slowly, too slowly for any fight, her tantō’s blade got wrapped in water chakra, thinning it progressively until it was sharp. Only then did she make it rotate like the chain of a chainsaw. She couldn’t yet add the teeth, and even the stage she was at wasn’t good enough to be used in a real fight. It had taken her almost a minute to prepare her blade. An opponent could kill her a hundred times in that span of time.

As soon as she was ready, Ensui attacked. They exchanged a few passes, just enough for the man to gauge her exact level. He then adjusted his own and adopted the strength, speed and reaction time of a good Chūnin, superior enough that she couldn’t wound him but still learn something. He dodged her blade and retaliated with a hit towards her knee that she only avoided by stepping backwards. Nobody liked that in a fight. It was like stepping forwards, but with a blindfold.

“Faster,” he ordered in a voice that didn’t leave any room for disobedience.

It was so natural for her to follow his instructions that she did as she was told, her blade whistling in the air a mere millimetre away from his arm. She took advantage of his dodge and adjustment to try to swipe his legs, but he pushed her away with his free hand on her shoulder, throwing her slightly off-balance. He took advantage of her loss of focus and put the edge of his blade on her shoulder, close enough to her neck for his victory to be clear.

“You progressed a lot, Hitomi. I still want to improve your legwork. Drink something first, though.”

She laughed and obeyed once more, going back to the patio to wipe her face clean and empty a big glass of water. While he barely seemed affected by their spar, she was out of breath, covered in sweat from head to toe. Her cheeks had reddened from the effort, her eyes were gleaming, and a broad smile played on her lips when she didn’t try to stay impassive. It was the reaction Ensui had been looking for, but this was only the beginning.

When she came back to the garden, he had swapped his katana, carefully sheathed, for an iron-shod bō . Hitomi had seen shinobi specialised in bōjutsu, but she hadn’t thought for one moment that her master was trained to use that weapon. Was there even one thing in this world that he couldn’t do? She hopped up and down on the grass with impatience, eager to discover the new idea he had decided to apply to her training regimen.

“Legwork, then. I want you to fight against a shadow clone around your level, with your sword only. I’ll intervene from time to time… Your goal is to stay standing as long as possible.”

The man straightened up, stuck the bō under one of his armpits and formed the Cross Hand Seal. A spark of chakra and a clone appeared next to him. He made it shorter and turned its weapon into a tantō so they would have the same reach. With a nod, he ordered his apprentice to attack. While she was fighting against the clone, she couldn’t hit – the opposite was true as well, fortunately – Ensui was pacing around them, a thoughtful expression on his face. Soon, she forgot about him, focusing on his clone instead.

The first blow hit her in a blind spot, swiping her ankles hard. With an almost outraged exclamation, she collapsed and barely had the time to parry the blow the clone had tried to deal before rolling out of the way, looking as pissed as a cat that had just been showered. “Shishou!”

“Well? I told you to stay standing, didn’t I? You’re supposed to see it coming. If you have to step back and there’s a root sticking out behind you, what will you do? You have to be conscious of your surroundings at all times, even when they change.”

The whole afternoon continued on that tune. After the fight, Ensui made her an obstacle course then had her do push-ups, skip, and practice katas. She never stayed up more than ten minutes in a row, but each blow landing made her better. She could now anticipate the bō one time out of four – her master didn’t tell her how good of an average it was for a Genin. When it was five in the afternoon, he made her sit in the grass and meditate for fifteen minutes. He dismissed her when she was done, so she would have time to prepare for her date.

Thankful, she rushed to her second shower of the day, dried her hair with a bit of chakra – it was just so convenient – then got dressed. She had decided on a black knee-cut pleated skirt and a white tank top, as well as a lace shirt of the same colour that showed off her shoulders, its wide sleeves making her hands appear small and delicate, with white ballet flats her mother had insisted she took during their last shopping trip. She put her hand in a Nara ponytail again and wrapped a red ribbon around her rubber band. For the first time, she asked her mother to do her makeup.

Kurenai seemed delighted to have such a distraction. Asuma kept an arm around her waist when he could, and her eyes were still puffy, but when Hitomi went downstairs with the makeup bag the woman kept in a drawer, she got to work immediately. She put eyeliner on her daughter first, the wing sharp and clean, then showed her how to apply mascara on her lashes and gloss on her lips. When she saw herself in the mirror, a strange sensation bloomed in Hitomi’s stomach. It was as if, for the first time since she had this obnoxious scar on her cheek, she felt like herself again. If it was the power makeup held, she’d learn to use it in her everyday life very quickly.

Lee arrived a bit early, so Kurenai decided to let him in and invite him for tea. He blushed up to his ears when he saw Hitomi, and even more if possible when she kissed him on the cheek. He had come bearing two bouquets of flowers: a pretty little thing of lavender, irises and dahlias for her mother, tied together with a lilac ribbon, and another, a bit more imposing, for Hitomi. Three white roses, four pink roses and one yellow rose, a composition that was probably signed Ino. Each of the two Yūhi took their bouquets, thanking the anxious-looking teenager.

Hitomi wondered if he had asked someone – Tenten, maybe? – for advice. It was probably his first date, after all. The girl was almost certain Lee hadn’t ever worn this white shirt before; it was too perfect, too smooth. However, it looked very good on him, hugging his limbs just enough to highlight his muscles. He had paired it with night blue pants that looked just as good. The effort was touching and worked very well, even if Hitomi would have been just as satisfied if he had shown up in his battle outfit.

“Okay,” Kurenai said, “I’m going to let you go in town soon, but first, Lee, I know you’re a very nice boy. I trust you to have Hitomi come back home before midnight, alright?”

That curfew could seem too lax for an not yet fourteen years old girl, but one couldn’t forget she was a shinobi. Rules applied differently to them: if a teenager was old enough to kill, it was complicated to make them follow a strict discipline. Kurenai, very conscious of that paradox, preferred to have her daughter live her life with as little barriers as possible. Ninjas tended to hate those, anyway.

“I understand, Yūhi-san. Don’t worry, Hitomi-san will be back here on time, I promise. If I fail, I shall do a thousand push-ups on my fingertips!”

When the two teenagers were done with tea and decided to go, Asuma, Kurenai and Ensui watched them go, smiling. Their tender expressions would have probably disturbed Hitomi a little, if she hadn’t been very busy debating about the most efficient way to sharpen a kunai with Lee. After a few minutes, she decided to take his hand, making him blush again. He was really cute.

He guided her through the village, their trained eyes witnessing the sweetness only civilian life held as it unfolded in front of them. Her hand in her companion’s, Hitomi memorised the smiles, the children asking to go in their parents’ arms, the women laughing quietly and the men discussing the tournament to come. The village hosting the Chūnin exam was buzzing with activity and yet soothingly peaceful.

He took her to a restaurant she didn’t know, hidden in the shadow by a stone arch. A sign designated it as “The Desert’s Pearl”, the words pale cream on very dark wood. Hitomi’s eyes widened slightly, her lips smiling before she could even realise it. She hadn’t imagined that Konoha had a restaurant specialised in Sunajin cuisine.

The maître d’hôtel who welcomed them was Sunajin without a doubt – Hitomi would have recognised that slight accent everywhere. For a second, the illusion was perfect: she was back in the Desert, Gaara and Ensui would arrive soon and try to make her eat dishes that were too spicy for her poor taste buds, just to see her cheeks redden and her eyes turn wet. Then the spell dissipated, she remembered she was still in the village she had sworn to protect by accepting her forehead protector, and she looked at Lee, her eyes softening. “Thank you,” she whispered.

She didn’t need to explain why she was thanking him for him to understand, just as she didn’t need to know how he had guessed the nostalgia linking her to the sand and intense sun. She followed Lee to the table he had reserved – when did he find the time? – and accepted all the gallant gestures he had for her with grace. Knowing how important honour was for his sensei, Lee’s behaviour didn’t shock her: he was just showing her how much respect he had for her, and she’d follow such rituals if it allowed him to feel more at ease.

They continued talking after ordering their drinks. Hitomi couldn’t help but make sure Lee didn’t order any alcohol – she didn’t want him to destroy this very fine restaurant, after all – but he obviously knew of this weakness. Just like her, he ordered something fruity and light, not even looking at the wine menu. Ninjas had a complex status in Konoha: a Genin, no matter their age, could theoretically order whatever they fancied, alcohol included, and as soon as they were promoted to Chūnin, they were legally adults.

Not long after, their plates arrived. They started first with little bouchées of meat and vegetables they were to dip in a rich, spicy sauce. When Lee tasted it, his face turned red, and this time Hitomi knew it wasn’t something she had done. She couldn’t help but giggle, handing him a slice of bread to extinguish the fire in his mouth. The main course arrived then, a kind of couscous served with various pieces of juicy meat. Lee particularly liked the slices of grilled snake, the most Sunajin meat you could imagine. The dessert was just as good: a tray of dates cooked in a variety of ways, from caramelised to grilled and even spiced, of course.

Not once during the whole meal did their conversation die down. Lee didn’t only want to talk about their ninja careers, but also about their personal lives, which Hitomi was delighted to do. He told her he was the eldest son of his family, the only one to have become a ninja: his two younger sisters were still studying, one to become a nurse and the other to open a childcare facility. In turn, she told him little stories about her brothers, her mother, Ensui, and even Asuma who was spending more time at home since he had stopped fearing her. They talked about their hobbies beyond training and discovered they both liked reading and swimming.

And Hitomi surprised herself by really, really enjoying the date from start to finish. She could see the devotion Lee infused in his every movement and every decision – he wanted to do his very best because he thought she was worth it. She blushed, laughed without reservation, sometimes gave him a look that was more than just a bit dreamy. He didn’t wear his bandages, which meant she could see the traces of his hard training, what never-ending work had offered him and cost him. Despite the calluses and scars, they looked honourable, elegant, strong, and were very much to her taste.

After the meal, he took her to the rampart. He had chosen a spot where guards almost never went at that time of the night, as if he had taken care of studying the schedule of the guards and their patrols – again, when did he have the time? Carefully, as if fearing to be rejected, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. With a smile, she pressed herself against his flank, feeling him stiffen in surprise for a moment then relax and pull her closer.

“I’m having an amazing night, Lee.”

“Me too. I could never thank you enough for agreeing to go out with me.”

“Why would you thank me? It’s not a favour. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to.”

“I don’t know… Maybe I just want to thank you in general. Not just for the humility lesson you served me before the first stage of the exam, but for the kindness and passion with which you talk about the things you love. You make me want to kiss you, to hold you close, and I don’t really know how to react to such impulses.”

“You can listen to them, if you want. I’d like you to kiss me.”

He looked her in the eyes for a moment, his nervousness showing, then did exactly that. His lips were softer than she would have thought. His large hands cupped her cheeks, warm and gentle. It lasted a long time or maybe just a few seconds, until a group of civilians at the foot of the rampart started clapping and cheering, making them separate with a shared giggle. Lee’s cheeks were deep pink, but he was smiling like his feelings were too big for his body to contain. He took her hand and kissed her fingers, his thumb brushing against her wrist.

“D-did you like it?” he asked, blushing even deeper. “It was my first kiss.”

“Really? I couldn’t tell. It was really good, and you can do it again if you want.”

He laughed and did as he was told, not caring this time about their quite drunk audience, which was still cheering and congratulating them. After a few minutes, they decided to leave the rampart and find a less busy place to go down in the streets. They ended up settling in a park surrounded by trees that was empty, hoping for some quiet time.

Time flew by from there. They talked more, kissed a lot. Lee’s hands, sometimes, when he felt daring, brushed against her waist, the small of her back, and then he blushed and put them in clenched fists on his knees as if he hoped to control them that way. He never could for more than a few minutes. A little after eleven, he started taking her back to the Nara land, one step after the other, as if he was more reluctant to do so than he cared to admit. He kissed her goodbye on the porch and she watched him leave, a smile on her lips.

When she got inside, she immediately felt that her mother was still awake: she was in the living room, Asuma next to her. Hitomi took off her shoes, put on her slippers and went to them, on her face the light and dreamy expression of a teenage girl who had just had a perfectly sweet date from start to finish. The two adults got it immediately, exchanged a knowing smile, then Kurenai kissed her on the cheek and sent her to bed, reminding her to take her makeup off.

The house seemed terribly empty without Sasuke and Naruto to breath life into it. She hadn’t expected the blonde boy to be gone, but she had heard Kurenai tell Asuma that Jiraiya had taken him somewhere in the Forest of Fire to train him out of sight. Since his opponent was Hyūga Neji, this was a good choice. With a little sigh, the girl went to the bathroom and took her makeup off, rubbing her eyelids with the lotion her mother had given her until the eyeliner and mascara were gone. As for the gloss, it had disappeared during the meal without her notice, and despite that her lips were a bit pinker than usual – so it was true, what they said about the abundance of kisses.

When she went to her room, Hoshihi and Hai were waiting for her, sprawled on her bed. Her familiar raised his head and greeted her with a wave of his tail, watching as she changed for the night and brushed her hair one last time. He liked to watch as she braided them and said it was quite a fascinating process. Before bed, she took her communicating notebook and told Gaara about her date without getting into the details of it. She knew he was with Baki and busy training, but he’d read her letter eventually, that she didn’t doubt at all. As she went to close the notebook, it grew cold under her hand. Frowning, she opened it again.

Dear Hitomi,

I’m so sorry you have chosen to yield so close to the third stage of the exam, but I’m convinced it was the right choice to make. Fighting your cousin seriously would have haunted you for a long time. I don’t doubt for a moment the depth of the love you feel for him, and with that love comes fears.

I told Zabuza-shishou about the deserter who attacked you and the boys, in the Forest of Death. He doesn’t know much about the guy, except that he has many hideouts in the Elemental Nations. Still, he told me you’d have to be wary if he decided to target you three. Orochimaru doesn’t have a reputation for letting prey escape him.

We left the Land of Water this morning, for Konohagakure. Your Spymaster is in the country and Zabuza-shishou needs several things from him, mostly intelligence and weapons. We’ll go to the village then and stay there for a whole month, just like you asked. Could you make arrangements for us to enter without being seen? If you want, I can help you work on your ninjutsu once we’re here. I could even convince Zabuza-shishou to help us, if you know of a place where we could train without being spotted. I know what it is to feel weak, Hitomi. If I can help you overcome that feeling, I will.

Talk about it all with your shishou before writing back if you need, I can wait.

Take care of yourself,

Haku .

A victorious grin slowly appeared on Hitomi’s face. Everything was in place now. She held the notebook against her heart, closed it and laid down, soon joined by her two feline companions, who were taking most of the space in her bed but appeased her nightmares as the hours of the night left one after the other, until it was time again to wake up and train.

Ensui, as if he had never quite left, arrived at her window an hour before dawn, surprised to see her already clothed and prepared for training. Together, side by side, they greeted the sun on the roof as the sky turned pink then orange. He didn’t ask about her date, didn’t need to: he could read in her posture and relaxed features everything he wanted to know. When they were done warming up, he made her go back inside and started cooking breakfast with as much ease as he would have in his own home – it was almost the case.

“Today, I’m going to teach you the easiest of the corporal seals, the Coercion Seal. We mostly use it to bind prisoners when we don’t have any other way of doing it. You’ll learn to draw the seal on paper today, but tomorrow I will bring you deer skin so you can become used to the differences a skin surface brings compared to parchment.”

She listened to his explanations as she ate, her eyes never leaving the sheet where he showed her again and again the movements and difficulties specific to that seal. Her palms were tingling with the need to take the brush and start working, but she knew an empty stomach would distract her. When they were both done eating, she put the dishes away and went to the living room, where he was waiting for her in seiza, sheets, brushes and ink settled on the coffee table.

They worked for hours, until her body was aching and her eyes stinging. Outside, it was raining, but that didn’t stop them from going out to continue the bō exercise, which Hitomi seriously started hating. After a while, Kurenai came to sit on the sheltered patio and watched them while talking with Hai about genjutsu theories that were far too advanced to be of use to her daughter.

After a light lunch, Hitomi went back outside, her cats with her. Hoshihi and Ensui teamed up as the assailant while Hai and Hitomi were charged with protecting the house and stopping them from entering. Their opponents weren’t very well coordinated, but they weren’t used to working together either, the girl had to admit it. They worked hard until the kitten was so tired she couldn’t even lift her paws. With a tender, satisfied smile, Hitomi carried her inside, dried her fur as well as she could, and laid her on the most comfortable spot of her bed before preparing for her appointment with Fukuda.

She arrived a bit early and read a book Ensui had given her about anatomy while she waited. The book was very thorough and illustrated with many diagrams that helped her understand what she was reading. When her name was called, she went inside, nervous. She had many reasons to be: that session didn’t go so well. She started to cry barely a few minutes after sitting down, sometimes so distressed she couldn’t even talk. Fukuda listened carefully, an understanding expression on her face.

She gave her advice to go through her difficult nights, to appease her anxiety and master the flashes from the Forest of Death that sometimes came back to her, but she couldn’t do anything about the voice. Ninjas learned to meditate from a very young age – if that didn’t work, the therapist didn’t have any other solution, except for trusting the adults doing research for her young patient. She asked her to describe what the voice was telling her when she was afraid or in danger, to tell her why exactly she wanted to listen, and reassured her too: no, she wasn’t a monster. Everyone was tempted by such violence at one time or the other. Her inner demon was simply more present than others.

Chapter 58: Spirits in Murky Waters

Hitomi left the therapist’s office shaken, her eyes puffy and expression defeated. She wanted to escape the busy roads, to fade in the shadows until she was safe on the Nara lands, but luck didn’t allow her that. As she looked down to avoid making eye-contact with a civilian matron with a severe air on her face, she bumped against Lee. Immediately, the teenager put his hands on her shoulders to stop her from staggering, his dark eyes looking at her with worry. “Hitomi-san? What is it?”

Suddenly unable to talk, she could only hide her face against Lee’s neck, on the brink of tears again. She felt exhausted, raw, incapable of shouldering on the coat of gentleness and quiet she had always worn like a flag when she was with him. If he wanted to know her, then he’d learn about that not-so-nice side of herself too, and too bad if he decided that she wasn’t worth it after all.

“Tenten? Can you please report for both of us?”

Hitomi hadn’t even noticed Lee’s teammate was with him. The girl answered in a concerned voice and left them alone. Hitomi didn’t look at her as she walked away, nor did she allow the tears stinging in her eyes to run free on her cheeks. Lee’s arms were surrounding her, so strong and comforting. He cradled her gently without a care for the civilians who had no choice but to walk around them. He put his cheek on Hitomi’s head, quietly breathed in the scent of her hair, then started whispering senseless, comforting words.

Finally, when she calmed down enough to walk, he took her to a little café near the Hokage Tower. It was the end of the workday for most shops in the village, but the catering businesses were right between rush hours, so their table and one stool at the bar were the only places taken. After a look in her direction, Lee ordered hot cocoa for both of them as well as a plate of pastries. When he came back to their table, he took her hand between his, caressing the long, thin fingers that looked so delicate he was afraid he would accidently break them.

“You don’t have to tell me what’s on your mind, Hitomi-san. I won’t be mad at you if you want to keep your problems to yourself but, if you need comfort, don’t hesitate to come find me if I’m not gone on a mission. We can spend time together here, or wherever you want. I don’t like the idea of you being alone when you feel like this.”

Drying her cheeks with her free hand, the girl nodded, a twinge of shame piercing her chest. Her mood had been tumultuous since she woke up, a lasting uncomfortable feeling that had given her a vague headache and bellyache, but that didn’t explain how easily tears came to her eyes these past few days. She curled up for a moment, trying to quiet her emotions to a manageable level.

During all that time, Lee looked at her, attentive and considerate. He watched for the smallest clue as to how to help her. When their order was ready, he stood up to fetch it, subtle enough to put the plate of pastries a bit closer to her than him. Even though he had been charmed from the first time he had seen her, he was lucid enough to see how skin stretched, pale and thin, on the places where Hitomi’s bones jutted out slightly.

She was very thin, which worried him as a shinobi. Strength and speed came with stature, muscles, and even if he could see them on her limbs, he was afraid the rest of her body wouldn’t be able to follow. If his solicitude wasn’t reason enough to feed her carefully, he had seen the gleam of deep satisfaction that had illuminated her eyes during their meal the previous day. He wanted to see it again.

After sipping on her hot cocoa, its rich and sugary taste soothing her a bit, the girl decided to go for a chocolate crepe. She ate in small mouthfuls, a sign that she was definitely unwell, her eyes often lost in front of her. She held herself straight again, but her face couldn’t hide that she was still upset. “Thanks, Lee,” she said, her voice a bit hoarse.

“No need to thank me. Just like you said, I do it because I want to. Do you want the muffin as well?” He had chosen a red bean paste mochi for himself, and ate at a leisurely pace, a bit of rice flour at the corner of his lips. When she nodded, he pushed the muffin in her direction, even though she wasn’t done yet with her crepe. Under the table, their legs were still and pressed against the other’s, as if they wanted some contact that the other people couldn’t see.

“Are you gonna help Neji for his matches?” she asked a bit later, when he went back from fetching more drinks and food. She had ended up giving in to her hunger, more present than she would have thought. She always had a hard time figuring out if she was hungry, thirsty, tired, as if the signals her body sent her were stored in a part of her Library where her mind never lingered. It often created that kind of situation, where she ended up devouring anything given to her even though it wasn’t mealtime yet. The chakra her exercises with Ensui and the bō had consumed didn’t help.

“If he asks for my help, sure, but I don’t think he will. He doesn’t like me much. Besides, Gai-sensei already authorised Tenten and I to go back to D-ranked mission if we do them together and stay in the village. I guess that, since you’re the only one from your team to not participate in the tournament, Kakashi-sensei didn’t grant you such permission.”

“It’s okay. I have all the money I can possibly need and I want to train during the month, to focus on my own skills more than I usually would.”

For a few minutes, they talked about her training plan. She didn’t mention how Haku and Zabuza would help her, since they were nukenin, and Lee was too honourable and righteous to understand how she could be friendly towards criminals. Other than that, she explained what she had planned for her month in detail, aware that Lee was very interested in such topics. In turn, he told her about what Gai had in mind for Tenten and himself until the exam was over. They weren’t gonna sit around either.

“Say, Hitomi…”

“Hm?”

“Last time, when I left, we didn’t plan for another date. Would you… Would you like to go out again?”

She didn’t even need to think about it before answering. “Of course! Would you like to go to a movie? I heard that a novel from Matabishi Zoku had been adapted, but I haven’t seen it yet. Would you like to go with me? It’s the story of a shinobi who comes back to his village one day and discovers that there’s nothing there, even the buildings are gone, as if it hadn’t existed.”

“Sounds interesting! Do you want to go buy the tickets before I take you back home?”

With a surge of enthusiasm, the girl nodded. A bit of colour had come back to her cheeks, and she looked to be in a better mood as well. Deep inside, Lee patted himself on the back – he had managed to make her smile. They finished their pastries and hot cocoas, talking about movies they had seen and enjoyed that year. Lee, surprisingly, was a fan of romance and history-related movies. His favourite period was the Founders Era.

When they were both done, they left the café and went to buy their tickets for the movie Hitomi wanted to see. They picked a date three days later, at two in the afternoon. It was a weekday, which meant the cinema would probably be almost empty. He took her back to her house then, strolling through the quiet Konohajin streets. On the porch, he kissed her delicately, brushed the back of his hand against her scar then left. Like after their date, she watched him go before she went inside.

“Hitomi?” her mother called from the kitchen.

“I’m home,” she answered in a soft voice.

Kurenai seemed better. Asuma obviously had a very healthy effect on her, which her daughter was very satisfied with. It was hard for her to support the adult in her home, and even more so considering her mother was a shinobi, and thus had a pride that could make helping her difficult. Hitomi herself was starting to get like that: she told the fact but rarely put words on what they made her feel. And when she did… Well, what happened in Fukuda’s office proved it wasn’t the best of ideas.

“Ensui-san had to go to Shikaku’s office, but he left a book for you on the coffee table. He asks that you read at least the first five chapters for tomorrow. Can you manage?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Hitomi shrugged. She was a far faster reader than average, diving through pages like a bird of prey through air. She went to the living-room to get the book, a surprisingly recent index of all the different techniques to make seal ink. He had mentioned it in passing before the exam. After all, even if she always had ink on her, it could get stolen, or she could use it all during a long infiltration mission. With the knowledge contained in that book, she could make new ink wherever she was in the Elemental Nations.

In the kitchen, her mother was cooking dinner, a curry dish she had learned how to make under Akimichi Chōza’s tutelage. Hitomi had heard that she had won this privilege playing poker, and she had probably cheated her way to victory like any Jōnin worthy of their title would. After dropping a kiss on Kurenai’s cheek, Hitomi started to set the table, explaining the date she and Lee had planned for. It was different from the relationships she had had before. With Hinata, she’d had to hide, and the fear of having her clan surprise them never left. Her fling with Haku had been brief, intense, like a burst of sparks. She wasn’t feeling that intensity with Lee, but she didn’t need to.

In a comfortable silence, mother and daughter started eating. Everything seemed empty without Naruto, Sasuke, or Asuma and Ensui who were often also there for dinner. One day, not so long after their long journey together, Konoha’s Strangling Shadow had offered to pay for his share of the many meals he ate with the family. It had been the first time Hitomi saw anyone kick her shishou’s ass… and it had been magnificent.

Finally, the silence turned heavy. Hitomi’s eyes kept going back to the four empty chairs; it was like a slap on the face each time she saw them. Melancholy wrapped around her heart like a fist. Kurenai noticed something was wrong with her daughter and glanced at her often, especially when she spent too much time without eating. However, she didn’t say anything – she was sure her girl would come to her when she’d be ready.

After the meal, Hitomi did the dishes then went back to her room. She read the book Ensui had left for her so she wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore, answered the several messages that arrived on her notebook while she was busy, confirming amongst other things to Zabuza and Haku that they would be welcomed on the Nara lands, where they would be able to hide, then she laid on her bed, a mountain of untouched novels on her bedside table. She stared at the piece of sky she could see through her window rather than picking one or going to her Library like she usually would. Finally, she decided to go to bed, despite the early hour.

The following morning, she immediately noticed that something wasn’t right. Her belly, lower back and head hurt, and her whole body ached like she had trained too hard the previous day, even though Ensui had been rather gentle with her. With a grunt of discomfort, she pushed her blanket back, left the bed then started to make it and… let out a long, anguished moan when she saw the big spot of red on the sheets. Her moan was more audible and distressed than she would have wanted it to be; already Ensui was almost tearing the door open, a kunai in his hand, ready to fight the menace that surely was in the room with her. He saw the stain on her sheets, an expression of disarray and fear appeared on his face, and she… she reacted without thinking.

“Out!” she screamed. The first object she got her hand on, the notebook for a novel she had started to write several days earlier, hit the wall a few millimetres to the left of Ensui’s head, thrown so hard it left a mark two centimetres deep before falling to the man’s feet. Still as stiff and lost, he slammed the door shut and she heard him run down the stairs as she tried to calm the surge of anxiety going through her. She had been aware it would happen one day; yet she couldn’t help but feel like her body didn’t belong to her, and she hated that feeling coming right from the Previous world, and…

“Hitomi, sweetheart?” her mother’s gentle voice called from behind the door.

The answer came like a whisper, a whimper, a sob, or maybe all three at the same time. “Mom…”

Kurenai immediately opened the door, closed it after she stepped in then rushed to take her daughter in her arms, cradling her as if she was still a child who had woken up from a nightmare. She whispered that it would all be okay, that she shouldn’t be scared, that there was a solution and that she wasn’t alone, a litany of small comforts cascading down her lips, without a beginning nor an end. Finally, Hitomi calmed down, her cheeks maybe a little damp, and Kurenai held her at arm’s length to look at her.

“I’m gonna change your sheets then take you to the hospital, alright? You have to get the shot, just like a vaccine, and then it will all be over until you decide that you want children, if you take such a decision one day. You’ll have the whole day off today to give it time to go away, and tomorrow everything will be okay.”

It was a silent tradition, something that was transmitted from kunoichi to kunoichi since the miracle med had been invented by Tsunade almost thirty years prior. If a girl couldn’t count on her family to know and pursue the tradition, then her sisters from ancient families managed to find out  when it happened, one way or another, and when the time came one of them took care of her for the day, until the bleeding stopped and she was ready to go back to work and to training. Hitomi hadn’t heard of it, since for once the secret had been kept successfully, so Kurenai told her about the colleague who had done one mission with her as a Genin and had taken care of her the day of her first period, since her own mother hadn’t been there to do it.

The walk to the hospital was complicated. Sure, Hitomi had known worse pains in her lives, but this one had something different, deep, intimate and impossible to ignore, which disturbed the delicate equilibrium of her muscles and joints, her balance and the assurance in her gait – going by the rooves was unthinkable. On the floor reserved for shinobi, mother and daughter waited for a middle-aged nurse, with a kind smile and red hair in a bun that had seen better days, to take them in. The injection was painful, between the spot it had to be made in – the lower part of her belly – and the size of the needle, but Hitomi forced herself not to flinch. It would have been ridiculous. When it was done, she had to admit she was relieved, even if she didn’t feel any better yet. The woman at the counter, who knew why they were there, handed her a cookie from a jar on her desk before they said goodbye.

“There, sweetheart. Do you want to do something today?”

“No, I… I just want to stay home.”

She didn’t want to see any of her male peers – Gaara, Lee, or even Shikamaru – in fear of embarrassment. With Ensui already she had been the worst moron in the Elemental Nations, yelling and throwing books to his face in accordance with the clichés that went with her gender and their menses. She was ashamed. In this world, even if they weren’t as present as in the previous one, stereotypes against women still held some social power. Even kunoichi couldn’t totally escape it.

When they came back home, Ensui was waiting for them. He removed the coat Hitomi had thrown over the comfiest clothes in her closet that weren’t pyjamas, then took her hand and led her to the couch, putting a pillow and a hot water bottle behind her back. He then covered her legs with her favourite plaid and pushed the coffee table within arm’s reach so she could grab all the books he had put on it – romances, tales, a big volume of fantasy and her used copy of The Tale of an Utterly Gutsy Shinobi from Jiraiya. His gait nervous and stiff, he practically ran to the kitchen and came back before mother or daughter could say anything, putting a big hot cocoa mug on the table as well.

“Well,” Kurenai smiled, “it looks like you have done this your whole life, Ensui.”

The man rubbed his neck, then his palm against each other, seemingly nervous. “I knew this day would come. I did research, asked questions…”

“… made a list as well?”

“Err… Can I… not answer that?”

The young mother laughed her heart out, quickly followed by her daughter before the latter settled comfortably, since the adults had decided to take care of her that day. She sipped on the hot cocoa, burning, sugary and just a bit bitter, like she loved, then took Jiraiya’s book and started to read. She could have recited the whole book from cover to cover, but that was the case for everything she had ever read. What made this one so precious to her was the way he touched her heart, filled her thoughts with ideals, sweetness and dreams of halcyon days.

Neither of the two adults interrupted her from her reading. They were both sitting on the remaining chairs of the room, Kurenai near Hitomi’s head and Ensui closer to her feet. They were talking above her head, keeping the conversation to light subjects. A recipe they wanted to try, the wedding of a seamstress the man went to for his torn uniforms from one mission or another, the delegation from Takigakure that had just passed the border of the Land of Fire. The girl listened distractedly but didn’t pitch in their conversation. She didn’t feel the need or even desire to, and from time to time they seemed to forget she could hear and dropped a useful piece of information, so why remind them?

An hour before lunch, Yoshino knocked at the door. Ensui went to greet her and took her to the living-room so she could say hi to the girls as well. Apparently, Shikamaru’s mother was perfectly aware of the miniature event that had hit her neighbours. How, by which sorcery, that was a secret she intended to keep: Kurenai and Hitomi weren’t the only scary kunoichi in the family, after all. A rumour said that the Nara men had a soft spot for such women. Hitomi believed that. After all, wasn’t Shikamaru supposed to fall in love with Temari? Even in this different universe from the canon she knew so well, it could still happen.

Her aunt had brought gyozas that she had, ‘by chance’, cooked in a bigger quantity than she had planned to. She knew how much Hitomi loved those dumplings and gave them enough to feed a regiment – or one ANBU team. She gave news of Shikamaru and Shikaku, who were working hard for the tournament. The teenager had apparently been offended by her cousin yielding to him and was settled on paying this debt back by showing motivation in his training. The fact that he had managed to bring his father into his plans was even more surprising. The girl couldn’t wait to see his fight, if such a chance was given to her.

The meal was quiet, just as comforting as her whole day after leaving the hospital had been. During the afternoon, her pain and cramps slowly faded and, late at night, when she was on the brink of sleep, she wasn’t in pain at all. The bleeding had stopped as well, to her deepest relief. One sniff in her direction and Hoshihi had left the house to hunt all day long, explaining above his shoulder that he would come back the following morning bringing gifts.

He kept his word, waking her up the next morning by licking the scar on her cheek until she opened her eyes. When he was sure she was awake, he started piling dead prey on her bed: rabbits, squirrels, badgers and even a pair of fat pigeons. He had been careful to kill each animal by breaking its neck, so as to not stain her things with blood – she had already handled that part the previous day, after all. Her white sheets had been deemed unsalvageable and thrown out.

Perched across her mentor’s shoulders, Hai watched with enthusiasm, her round blue eyes gleaming proudly. She showed Hitomi the prey she had noticed herself but had let him kill because it had been the custom for ages now, far before the Founders Era. After all, the heads of the Yūhi clan had always been women. Yes, the scroll had once been the Uchiha’s property but those clans had been allied before Konoha was founded.

Hitomi thanked her familiar, stored the prey away to be consumed later, then her day could start, just as easily as that. She prepared with the efficiency and quickness of a seasoned ninja, her movements precise and assured from habit, by the thousand times she had conducted them, before joining her shishou. He was waiting for her in the garden. In front of them, the horizon was still dark, but the first glimmers of dawn were starting to appear. In silence, the man and his apprentice greeted the sun. Her movements were lively, inhabited up to her fingertips by her focus and will. After a while, Kurenai joined them, the ritual greeting turning into a subtle mix of dance and martial art.

The bō exercise was back, of course. Hitomi greeted the clone Ensui had just summoned with a Seal of Confrontation then slid into a fighting stance and attacked when her master gave the signal. The man’s eyes warmed with interest then satisfaction. He liked what he was seeing, the determination, the deep and firm calm he saw behind his apprentice’s young and delicate features. He exchanged a look with Kurenai then swiped the bō to strike his apprentice’s legs. Without even looking down, the girl jumped, even taking advantage of the momentum it gave her to try a particularly vicious blow.

Oh, she fell, eventually, but she had gotten so much better, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and Ensui knew she was on the correct path. Suddenly, he realised that it was the first night Hitomi had spent without nightmares since the Uchiha Massacre. He could see it just by looking at her, like a stiffness that had disappeared from her shoulders. With a smile, he helped her up and sent her to drink something.

After that, time flew by. Training was intense and liberating. Lee came to see her sometimes to take her on a date, allowing her to breathe and rest for a few hours. Hitomi saw how much Kurenai liked her daughter’s suitor. Oh, the woman had loved Hinata, of course, and still loved her. But one didn’t treat in the same way a first relationship that was condemned to fail from the beginning and what came afterwards.

Six days after Hitomi’s menstrual mishap, Zabuza and Haku arrived close to the village’s walls. Thanks to Hai, who saw that as a complex but fun exercise, they were disguised thoroughly enough to arrive in the clan’s lands without being noticed. After that, they didn’t need a disguise anymore: Shikaku himself had approved their presence on his land – they were untouchable.

“Well, girl, how is your Water Release?” Zabuza greeted gruffly.

With a predatory grin, she focused and the water coat appeared around her blade before starting its deadly rotation. The two Kirijin were interrupting her halfway through bō training. Ensui was kind enough to stop his attacks just long enough for her to show the deserter that she had mastered the technique. Zabuza nodded with approval, and the training started again, Hitomi trying really hard to land a blow against the clone without falling down in the process.

That evening, she had a lengthy conversation with Haku. They had both turned the page on their fling: it hadn’t been serious, just something sweet to make reality and obligations stop in their tracks and put their minds at peace. They had liked kissing, hugging, and a certain emotional connection had appeared between them, but it wasn’t enough to put their friendship at risk or to let go of what Lee and she were starting to build. Apparently, Haku himself had started seeing a young man from the rebellion. As long as he was happy, Hitomi was too.

Chapter 59: A Ninja's Word

The day after the deserters arrived, Shikaku, Ensui and Shinku gathered in the living-room, Hitomi in front of them. They all seemed serious but not worried, which was a good sign in the girl’s book. She knew how hard they had worked for her during their free time. Were they there to give her their findings or to inform her that they needed more time? She sought the answer on their faces, without success.

“Hitomi-chan,” Shinku started, “we found something in the most ancient Yūhi archives. I’d like you to demonstrate this power you have, if that’s okay with you, so I can see for myself if the text speaks of the same thing.”

A surge of anxiety ran through Hitomi. She found her master’s eyes and relaxed when he nodded. He’d stop her if needed. She closed her eyes and searched in herself. The voice was never far, excited by the slightest spark of anger, adrenalin or even joy sometimes. It seemed to wait for any strong emotion to remind her that she was there. The girl only had to think about Hinata, who couldn’t be woken yet according to the doctors because it was too risky, for the voice to growl in her mind and start to cloud her thoughts. Her posture shifted as she focused on memories that would better support her anger. The voice became stronger, steadier, sang promises of blood in her ear.

She opened her eyes and found the adults so astonished they couldn’t hide it. That strange view helped her to keep the upper hand, to push the voice down, where it couldn’t hurt anyone. She stumbled when she managed to make it shut up, her thoughts clear once more. She let out a long sigh and allowed her muscles to relax one after the other.

“I… I knew it,” Shinku said in a strangely choking voice, “and yet I didn’t dare believe. My dear girl, you really are the one who is going to bring our clan back to its past glory. I’m so proud of you.”

She frowned, even though the compliment made her straighten up in pride. Shinku was a demanding man, hard to satisfy. He had never openly criticised her skills or efforts but, most of the times, he kept a very neutral stance towards her, so different from the way Kurenai treated her that Hitomi often didn’t know how to handle it. Ensui gestured for her to sit and, before the two others, sat in seiza on the other side of the coffee table. “We found something very peculiar. There’s a letter, buried under hundreds of other files, that describes the Kekkei Genkai once held by all the daughters of the Yūhi clan.”

“I… I beg your pardon?”

Shikaku stepped in, his voice as serious as it was appeasing, his eyes set on his niece as if he wanted to reassure her, to prevent her from panicking. “All clans started developing around a Kekkei Genkai, you know that. And you know as well that the Yūhi clan had their own once.”

“But…”

“The matriarchal structure of your clan comes from the fact that only the women could awaken that power. The Inuzuka had a similar limitation before Konoha was founded. In their case, their Kekkei Genkai ended up being able to pass to men, but the women stayed the leaders of the clan.”

“But why is it so hard to find traces of the Yūhi Kekkei Genkai?”

“Everyone forgot, Hitomi,” Ensui answered. “I gave you enough History lessons for you to understand how time undermines memory. My hypothesis is that the memory of your power was held a secret in the village once it was founded, and lost altogether shortly after Senju Tobirama died and Konoha underwent so many reforms. Our village is young, but that still makes three whole generations between the last Yūhi with any secret power and yourself.”

“But…” Hitomi rubbed her face, perhaps hoping to chase her sudden weariness. “What am I going to do then? What do I do with it? I can’t… I can’t just unleash it when needed and pray it doesn’t slaughter my friends. It almost targeted Shikamaru last time.”

Despite their efforts to keep her calm the girl couldn’t suppress the wave of fear biting her mind. She didn’t want to face that kind of ordeal alone, not when so much was at stake. If the power was as strong as Shikaku had hinted, she couldn’t ignore it; it was a chance to become strong enough to beat her future enemies and the ones she had already been crushed by. Maybe she wouldn’t be defenceless anymore. But, without anyone to guide her, to help her bend the voice to her will, what could she make of it?

“We have a few ideas,” Shikaku affirmed. “We thought about it before coming to see you.”

“I think the best bet would be to call on our contract. Our cats are too young to have known someone with this power, but I will talk to Aotsuki and ask her if one of the elders can help you. It’s special circumstances so, if they indeed know something, I don’t see them refusing.”

“My plan,” Ensui said then, “is to draw a constriction seal around the garden, where you’ll be training. It’s not very complicated, as you know, and I have enough chakra to maintain it for hours on end.”

“And, if there’s a problem, I can still stop you with my shadows and give you time to come back to your senses,” Shikaku concluded. “You won’t be in any danger, nor will you be a danger to anyone, I promise, Hitomi-chan.”

Hitomi looked down to her hands and went inside her Library to think. The space around her didn’t degrade every few days anymore – at least, that pressure was gone from her shoulders. Contemplating the little core of paradise she had built inside her mind, she weighed her options. She couldn’t allow the voice to reign over her emotions, but she suspected that merely controlling them would only postpone the inevitable. Neither could sheask for that power to be sealed where she couldn’t access it, not when it had so much potential. She let out a heavy sigh and opened her eyes again. “I’m in. When do we start?”

Ensui’s deep voice formed a cascading laugh, music to her ears, and she smiled back at him. She was trying to ignore the avidity hidden – just not well enough – in her grandfather’s eyes, because she understood it. He had seen his clan go extinct. No matter the perspective on that situation, it had to be hard for him. Who didn’t dream of grandeur, one way or another? He had been a legend on the battlefield. His mere name made hundreds of Kumojin and Iwajin shinobi shudder in anguish. They all remembered how he dived through their lines on the back of his giant cat, Aotsuki the Terror, who was yowling her delight to fight and toy with her enemies as if they were chiffon dolls. Shinku just wanted the same grandeur for his granddaughter, for their clan, and Hitomi understood.

“We’ll come back to you in two days,” Shikaku said. “In the meantime, continue to train with your shishou and our guests from Kirigakure. You’re not part of the finals, but I expect great results from you on your next exam.”

In answer, Hitomi straightened once more, a quiet and satisfied look in her eyes. Shikaku’s expectations were always coupled with a total trust in the fact they would be met. It honoured her to no end: he was a powerful clan leader, proud, firm, severe, but when he looked at her, just like when he looked at Shikamaru, something in him turned soft and affectionate. He didn’t let those feelings lower his expectations towards her, but his tenderness made the act of satisfying him incredibly gratifying.

An hour after Shikaku and Shinku had left, Hitomi was back in the garden, sparring against her shishou with blades under Zabuza’s watchful eyes, while Haku worked on his senbon. He now knew how to form them with his Kekkei Genkai, which made him all the more terrifying. When the former Swordsman of the Mist had seen enough, he took Ensui’s place and hurled himself at Hitomi, a wooden replica of his sword in his hand. She barely had the time to parry and step back before he pursued her with a kick to the chest.

“Faster!” he grunted. “I know you can move faster, get off your arse!”

Her breath itching in her throat for a moment, the girl obeyed, focusing as much chakra as she could in her legs and arms to pick up the pace. She had a hard time keeping track of her own movements with her eyes, but her other senses were able to compensate for that, thanks to the bō exercise. A snarl on her face, she slid under Zabuza’s sword, hit a pressure point on his torso and stepped out of his reach before he could retaliate. She did it again and again and again, until it became natural. Oh, he could have turned her to minced meat even with his wooden sword if he had wanted to, but it was a spar, not a real fight, and he knew not to put his whole power into it.

Still, Hitomi got a thorough ass-kicking, so much so that Haku had to drag her away and force her to sit so he could heal her. He was strong and quick enough to stop her from going back there. His gentle brown eyes noticed the blur over hers, her dilated pupils, the red on her cheeks and the mess in her hair. If it hadn’t been enough worrying signs, there was killing intent on her still, faint but unmissable. Those were the signs that a shinobi couldn’t call it quits when they’d had enough, and that going back to train would only mean they’d end up injured.

“Hitomi, I will throw you into an ice cage if you don’t calm down. Do you want that?”

“No, but I need to go back, okay?”

“He almost broke your arm just now! You’ll be useless if you get hurt too much to stand, calm down !”

Hitomi had been surprised to hear that he had picked up medical ninjutsu from another rebellion member. However, seeing him in the act now, it seemed obvious. She wondered how important his skill set would become for the rebels in Kirigakure as he treated the big, almost black bruise on her arm. She had barely felt the blow but, now that she wasn’t moving anymore, it hurt like a bitch.

“Good,” he said when she relaxed and leaned her back against the wall of the house. “Now let me fix that elbow and take an hour of rest. After that, you’ll be as good as new.” They were sitting on the patio, the sun warming their skins, Ensui and Zabuza talking on the grass. They didn’t seem to expect Hitomi to come back anytime soon: the latter had just put his sword away in a seal and was telling her master about a mission he had just completed for the rebellion.

“Say…”

“Hm?”

“Did you know that Yoshino-ba, Shikamaru’s mom, is a medic? She healed Hinata, once, when she was injured and the hospital wasn’t an option for her, since her father is an asshole. She might give you some advice so you can get even better. She was a field medic, according to Ensui-shishou. Fucking terrifying.”

Pairing Haku, who was sweet and quite frightening, with Yoshino who was the same but with twenty more years of experience, probably wasn’t the best of Hitomi’s schemes. She liked, however, to surround herself with people who were as deceptive as she was. Ninjas were built to live in the shadows and in the mist, to fool their opponents while they avoided the reeves and traps on their paths. It was probably a good thing that some of Haku’s sweet nature was an illusion, in the same way that the Yūhi girl looked like a cute little doll when only part of that was true.

During her resting time, she worked on corporal seals. Ensui had brought her the promised deer skin so she could practice. The first seal he had shown her was a variation of the restrictive seal Fukuda wore on her wrists and tongue, only hers kept her from repeating secrets, not from moving altogether. It was a low-level seal, with several weaknesses, but Hitomi was only a Genin. Experienced shinobi weren’t supposed to find themselves on her path for a long time. If only they had gotten the fucking memo.

Sometimes, when there wasn’t anything to keep her busy, her mind drifted to her friends, each of them so dedicated to their own training regimen. Was Naruto remembering to eat? Had Sasuke managed to refrain from gutting Kakashi, or die trying anyway? Was Gaara resisting the cold wind that sometimes swiped through the region at that time of the year? Those times of loneliness, she spent them curled up inside herself, as if to wrap her thoughts around such sparks of suffering and fear – of being abandoned, of becoming useless.

Each week, she dutifully went to see Fukuda for an hour, sometimes more, and opened up little by little to the therapist. She told her about senseless things first, ephemeral little pleasures and hurts that had rhythmed her days. After fifteen minutes or so, the psychologist managed to make her way through her emotional reserves, and they faced the real problems: her feeling of powerlessness, her fears, her anxiety, the twinge of bitterness she felt when she thought about not being able to participate in the tournament.

And how ashamed she was of that one. She could have been asked a thousand times and yet choose the same outcome every time without the least hesitation. And yet, the consequences of this decision, the fact that she had to stay a Genin until the next exam where Konoha would send people – the next host wasn’t yet known – made her bitter. A conceited harsh part of herself rebuffed against the wait, beyond all rationality. Fukuda explained that it was normal, that the correct choice wasn’t always the easy one, and that she had to accept the consequences anyway.

Hitomi always left those sessions either at peace or distressed, without nuance or middle ground. Lee had gotten the habit of coming to get her from the building afterwards. Before taking her home, he led her into town and always picked a place that suited her mood – once, it had been a cat café that had just opened in one of the touristic streets. He had fawned over the way the felines reacted to her. They smelled something on her, perhaps an echo of her pact with her summons, that made her a bit more like them and a bit less like a human.

One morning, it was Yoshino instead of Ensui who welcomed Hitomi in the garden. A table had been prepared in front of her, supporting several seal scrolls. Intrigued, the girl walked to her aunt and greeted her, her cats in tow. Shikamaru’s mom looked as severe as usual, her noble features accentuated by the stern crease of her mouth. For people who didn’t spend a lot of time with her, she looked out of reach, intimidating. Fortunately, Hitomi knew the truth.

“Since Tsunade-sama left the village,” Yoshino started, “the rule about the presence of at least one shinobi trained in medical ninjutsu in each ninja team isn’t followed anymore. Because of that, your comrades, your friends, your teammates, will die one after the other around you. The only thing you can do to stop that from happening, to fight against destiny, is to learn. If you’re the medic of your team, even if you only know the first aid jutsu, you’ll save some of them. Is it motivation enough for you to learn?”

Taken aback, the girl stiffened and looked down to the table. The scrolls looked so plain, so harmless. She felt the twinge of chakra and tingle in her palms, that always meant a seal was close, coming from them. For once, though, she didn’t get any comfort from that feeling. The images Kakashi had involuntarily carved into her mind months earlier, when he had trapped her into an illusion during the bell test, danced in front of her eyes. She had never told the teacher what he had made her see; she didn’t want him to feel guilty. However, that horror scene often wiggled its way into her nightmares.

“I… Of course it’s motivation enough,” she sputtered. A bad feeling was weighing on her these past few days, as if her mind tried and failed to attract her attention to one particular detail, something important, but not crucial enough for her Library to do the work for her. She had told Ensui how important she thought medical ninjutsu was, and he wholeheartedly approved. She wouldn’t ever be a true medic, she didn’t have the profound and instinctive chakra control required, nor the time to go around that requirement. But if she could learn first aid and thus make sure her friends didn’t die… Yes, it was worth it.

For several hours, Yoshino quizzed her relentlessly on human anatomy. Hitomi had read a lot of treaties on the subject and had knowledge from the Previous World as well, which meant she could handle it. Her meridians gave her information too: since she could feel chakra, she could feel the way other people’s meridians wrapped around their organs and have a good map of the human body supplied to her that way.

Things got harder, however, when Yoshino taught her to create neutral chakra. Neutral chakra was different from pure chakra, which could be used for transfusion but not for healing. Where pure chakra was untainted by affinity or Kekkei Genkai but still contained dormant forms of it, neutral chakra was totally devoid of it. It was compatible with all living systems, with meridians and Gates of all types. To create it, Hitomi had to detach from her chakra anything that characterised it, and particularly any potential for elemental affinities. It was a difficult, conscious process, whereas pure chakra was the energy circulating through one’s meridians at all times. While she learned to do that, Hitomi discovered she had a weak secondary affinity for lightning, just enough to make learning techniques from that element a tad easier than for the three she didn’t have any affinity with.

She was still trying hard to master that technique when Ensui, Shikaku and Shinku came back to her. They looked as serious as the last time, but something in their demeanour was more relaxed, so Hitomi started hoping. The voice had spoken to her several times during the past two weeks, as sweet and wild as a lover, seeping deep into her mind – and she always noticed a bit too late, when she was angry or afraid.

“I won’t keep you in the dark any longer,” Shikaku said when she had settled them in the living-room. “We found a way to train you.”

A hesitating smile on her lips, she sat in seiza at the other side of the coffee-table. “How?”

“One of the elders amongst our ninja cats agreed to teach you. She’s old enough to have been part of the team of a clan member with the Kekkei Genkai. She remembers.”

Ensui edged closer and Hitomi focused on him, finding in his eyes the warmth and confidence she needed to remain calm. “I found a seal that will work in the archives only the Jōnin have access to. I’ll show it to you as well, so you can use it if needed one day. You never know.”

“And I’ll be there,” Shikaku added, “to stop you if the seal isn’t strong enough. I doubt I’ll have anything to do, really. Troublesome…”

Hitomi giggled, her thoughts drifting to Shikamaru. He was working so hard for the tournament, which would happen in less than two weeks. Even now, with Shikaku away on another task, one of the most powerful members of the clan had turned her back on her other duties to train him. No one spoke about it, but the Nara hoped he would shine for them in the arena, in front of foreign nobles and dignitaries.

An hour after that, Hitomi met Kibaki. She was a very imposing cat, built like the toughest warrior, her pugnacity beyond words and yet perfectly readable in her yellow eyes. She was taller than Hitomi and dominated her physically, her grey, mingled fur making her look even bigger than she really was. When they saw her, Hoshihi and Hai let out delighted meows and rushed to greet her.

“Shinku-kun explained why he needed me,” Kibaki said when the cats settled down. “Emiko, my Lady Summoner, didn’t live long, but I remember what her mother taught us about her power. She was incredibly powerful. If the war hadn’t killed her so young, she would have been an amazing sensei. It was her dream. My knowledge isn’t free, Hitomi-chan. You’ll honour her memory by taking students when the time comes, and by teaching your own young about your Kekkei Genkai, no matter if they awaken it or not. Are those acceptable conditions to you?”

The cat’s voice, as cutting as it was, couldn’t totally hide the melancholy she felt, speaking about her summoner. Hitomi thought about the deal she was being offered. Students… Yes, she could imagine that without problem. She had loved helping her friends get better at the Academy and missions in the school never bothered her. It wasn’t exactly the same thing as becoming a Jōnin-sensei one day, but she could imagine herself in those shoes without any trouble.

As for having children… She wasn’t sure if she wanted some. Her grandfather hoped she would – enough children for their clan to be truly reborn, stronger and healthier – but did she want to become a mother? She was afraid she couldn’t be as good as Kurenai in that role. Besides… What if she left on a mission and never came back home?

Was she ready to seal her destiny for knowledge she coveted? It wasn’t a moral way of taking decisions – no one broke a promise offered to a ninja animal, she knew that. But she sincerely needed that knowledge, and she… she could imagine herself in the future Kibaki wanted for her. Slowly, she bowed, her left hand forming the Reconciliation Seal. “I accept, Kibaki-sama.”

She hadn’t spoken lightly. It was a ninja’s word, one that couldn’t be broken without bringing shame on her whole clan, on her two clans even. She would have students. If she had children, she would teach them about her Kekkei Genkai. Her fate was sealed.

Chapter 60: The Whisper

Kibaki didn’t want to teach Hitomi right away. She first wanted to get a feel for the girl, to understand her better. She wanted to understand where the drive in her large red eyes was coming from and to where it could lead her. Such a gleam in similar scarlet depths had led more than one Yūhi woman to their death. Would this one end up just like the others? She had already made powerful enemies, if what Aotsuki said of that disgusting serpent-face Orochimaru was true. Snakes had a strange status in the cats’ eyes: not quite prey but not quite predator either. They were enemies now, that was for certain. Cats followed the Lords and Ladies Summoners and took their adversaries on as well.

After a while, Hitomi left her guests in the garden to go get refreshments. Her gait was both lighter and more self-assured, as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She stretched in the living-room and started humming a tune as she prepared lemonade for the humans and filled a bucket of fresh water for the giant cats. Her mother, who was coming back from one of her daily visits to the hospital, found her there.

“Ah, Hitomi, perfect! I wanted to see you, sweetheart, I have wonderful news. The medics say Hinata will be able to receive visits from tomorrow on. They aren’t waking her up yet, so her heart can rest and get better, but she doesn’t need to be in a sterile room anymore! Could I take some of your novels to read to her? They aren’t sure if she can hear us, so, just in case…”

“Sure, of course you can! I’ll prepare some for you to take tomorrow.” She relaxed and let her mother catch her in a side-hug as she finished with the lemonade and bucket. She had been worried for Hinata, even though she had known – read – that she would pull through. Doubts had never left her: she had changed so many things in this world already, and she didn’t understand how most of those changes had even happened in the first place. Who was to say that she hadn’t changed the duration of Hinata’s life already? Certainly not her.

“I… I guess no one from her clan will go see her…”

“Your guess is correct, alas. I was there every day and I didn’t see her father even once. Only her sister, yesterday, and one of her cousins stopped her before she even reached the corridor where the sterile bedroom is. We couldn’t go in, only see through the glass pane, but she looked like she really wanted to see her.”

“Those bastards… What about Kiba and Shino?”

“Kiba was with me most of the time. Shino came twice but, since he’s in the tournament, I told him to go train with his clan. His little brother, in Hanabi’s class, came often too. A really cute boy.”

Hitomi had met the kid, Sugi, and she wholeheartedly agreed. She had spent a lot of time with Shino on his clan’s lands because he had a great garden, quiet and fresh, where they both liked to study. Before her generation united, it had been rare for members of one clan to welcome members from another on their land – only the Nara, Yamanaka and Akimichi were close enough for that. The Aburame were particularly secretive and had always been, but they hadn’t been able to refuse anything to their heir, who had seemed so overjoyed to have friends in his group, too.

“I’ll see her soon,” Hitomi promised. “I don’t think Kibaki-san will give me a lot of free time the first few days but, after that, I should be able to negotiate.”

“Not if Ensui requires you then!” Kurenai teased.

Mother and daughter had a moment of shared hilarity then Hitomi went back to her hostess duties. She was right, predicting that Kibaki wouldn’t give her any respite: the she-cat demanded to be summoned before sunrise so she could get to work with Hitomi as soon as she was done greeting the sun, until far after dark. When it wasn’t Kibaki, Yoshino or Ensui got their hooks into her. She didn’t have time to stop, didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to breathe. It was perfect.

When she had time on her hands, dark thoughts came back like irons around her wrists, their acrid and bitter taste at the back of her tongue as constant as the discouraging song in her ears. She would feel the need to curl up in a corner, to be alone, but her training didn’t allow for any of that. She had to be open, to communicate again and again. Her mind constantly busy, she was able to ignore her problems just a bit longer.

“Do you know why your Kekkei Genkai is called the ‘Whisper’? Your ancestors called it that, because they didn’t know any better word to describe the word guiding them into battle. You can only ignore its pull up to a point, right? You already lost control over it, I see that in your eyes.”

Hitomi thought about the Forest of Death, about Shikamaru and the terrified look on his face, about Gaara and his sand dome. She didn’t want to be reminded of it but couldn’t help it, not when Kibaki was putting such precise words on what had happened to her.

“There’s no miraculous way of keeping the upper hand over it. The only way you can manage is by having a stronger will, and I think you have this strength in you, or I’d have asked your shishou to seal your Whisper forever. The first step is to understand how your power works. Once your opponent is wounded, you can access their meridians through their injuries and steal their chakra. You’ll have to enhance your speed and strength to use it in battle, of course. Then, after stealing even a little bit of chakra, you have two choices: send it back through their veins to kill them quickly, or keep it for use it later.”

“I… I think I understand. Yoshino, who teaches me medical ninjutsu, taught me the differences between neutral, pure and normal chakra. It’s the pure chakra that is stripped from the victim then sent to their veins, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The affinities and other particularities in that chakra, like the potential for a Kekkei Genkai, are dormant in pure chakra. When they are mixed with blood, however, these dormant elements attack the white cells inside it. It’s so violent that the blood boils right away.”

Hitomi nodded, looking down at her hands. So that was what had happened… Yoshino had taught her that chakra and blood never mixed inside the body. When a living being was wounded, the meridians sealed up immediately, an innate reflex carved in the genetic code of all creatures. Forcing chakra through the veins of a human or animal was a quick, but incredibly painful death. And Hitomi… Hitomi had inflicted that upon her opponents in the forest. That idea didn’t even horrify her, and she was afraid of what it said about her. She could only think two things about that: they deserved it, and she would do it again without any hesitation. Did that mean that she was bloodthirsty, or only that she wouldn’t let anything hold her back when she had loved ones to protect?

One afternoon, Yoshino and Ensui dove on Hitomi in concert right as she wanted to take advantage of the emergency that had called Kibaki back to the spiritual realm to take a well-deserved shower. Her master stole the towel from her hand as her aunt took her by the arm and led her back to the garden under Asuma’s amused eyes. The man was busy sharpening Kurenai’s weapon so she could cook dinner; Hitomi barely had time to glare at him with a wicked smile, just enough to make him shudder, before she stood in front of the table the medic used for her teaching material.

“No time to rest, young lady!” the woman said with an utterly energic grin. “It’s more than time for you to learn how to draw a stasis seal!”

“Hum… Okay?”

“Yoshino-sama’s right, Hitomi. You won’t ever be an excellent medic because you already have too many subjects to work on, but stasis seals will allow you to save your comrades’ lives if they are too seriously injured for you to heal them yourself.”

Hitomi immediately perked up, interested. Those words were enough to push her weariness back, to blow it out as surely as a candle flame. She looked down on the diagrams spread in front of her, brushed her fingertips against the old ink, noting how old the parchment was. Just another sign of her field dying. One day, she would find a way to revive it. She looked up into Ensui’s eyes. Her master smiled tenderly; he was the only one who understood her fascination with the subject, the only one who knew how far she wanted to go with it.

“There are two main stasis seals. You’ll learn the first, which works like a barrier around the person you want to put in that state. For the second, you’ll have to wait, you don’t have the skills yet. The first seal is called the Seal of Empty Sky, it’s halfway between basic and corporal seals. To draw it, you don’t use your ink or blood, but the blood of the person at its centre.”

Her features studious, the teenage girl listened to her master’s explanations. She foresaw the implications and weaknesses of such a seal, and yet, how useful it could be for her. She wouldn’t ever be much of a medic, her shishou had said so. But seals? Seals she excelled at. Her priority for massive injuries wouldn’t be to try and close them. It would be to stabilise and put the patient in stasis. She could leave to others the incredibly important work of saving their lives. She was so much better at bringing death than life to those surrounding her. It made sense.

During all the time she spent working on that seal, she couldn’t help but see future events dance in front of her eyes. How long before she’d have to use it? She couldn’t wait to be skilled enough for the second seal. Finally, as the sun was setting, Yoshino activated a storage and stasis seal scroll and a mortally wounded rabbit appeared on the table, slowly bleeding out from a wound on its belly. A few years prior, Hitomi would have frozen in horror. Now… Now she wasn’t troubled anymore by blood, or by the idea of testing her skills on animals. Better them than her brothers or friends. At least she was certain that the rabbit, deeply anesthetized as it was, wasn’t suffering. In silence, she dipped her fingers in its blood and started to draw her seal.

It took her ten attempts, as many rabbits and most of the night to master the seal. The symbols ran in her mind like a river, beautiful and redoubtable, full of power and wild. Each of her attempts inched closer to the perfection her mentor and aunt expected from her. They didn’t look tired, so she stifled yawns and aches until it finally paid off. She touched the blood with pure chakra then watched as long red chains wrapped around the body. The rabbit stopped breathing, everything in its little body suspended in time.

“Loosen the seal,” Yoshino instructed.

Hitomi obeyed and, immediately, life came back to the animal. With a satisfied nod, the medic put a hand on the wound she had inflicted herself hours earlier and mended it with her chakra. It looked so easy for her, as easy as breathing. Hitomi wished she shared this instinctive talent her aunt possessed, but she knew she never would. She could only work to become as good as she could, and accept that she didn’t have predispositions for every shinobi skill.

“You were very good tonight, Hitomi-chan. Go to bed and, for once, sleep ‘til noon. You deserve it. When you wake up, you’ll be working with me again. It’s more than time for you to learn the Mystical Palm Technique.”

A rush of excitement rose inside Hitomi’s mind like a tsunami and she couldn’t restrain a little tremor that made Ensui laugh. He put a large and warm hand on his apprentice’s shoulder – one moment later, she was in her room. The Shunshin was such a convenient technique. “Imma learn that too,” she mumbled.

“If you still have time before the tournament.”

“Promise?”

“Promise, sweet girl. Sleep now.”

He was still there as she fell asleep but was gone when she woke up. Hoshihi was there, curled up against her back. He had found a way to put Hai in her arms, since the not-so-little kitten was nuzzling against her shoulder when she opened her eyes. She stretched, finding solace in the little aches all over her back and fingers – the mark of a work well done. She could be proud of herself, since Ensui and Yoshino both obviously were.

Like Shikamaru’s mother had promised, she taught Hitomi how the Mystical Palm worked when the girl met her in the garden, in their usual spot. It was one of the main medical techniques. It excited the cells around a wound to encourage them to multiply and heal quicker. An excellent chakra control was required to use the technique: too little and it had no effect over the cells, too much and they burst instantly. Hitomi’s attempts that day all failed.

The next day and all the following, Kibaki took over. The she-cat trained her relentlessly with a clear goal in mind: before she went back to the spiritual world for the last time, Hitomi had to master her Whisper for good. That was easier said than done. The girl still found keeping control with the Kekkei Genkai activate to be hard, and it was even harder when she could smell blood around her. She had attacked her feline instructor numerous times – fortunately, since she didn’t belong to that plane of existence, Kibaki couldn’t die because of chakra exhaustion, nor because of contact between her chakra and blood. Apparently, it was the same for all of Hitomi’s cats.

“It’s okay,” the old cat assured her student when she almost broke down in tears after a particularly violent attack. “No one can master it in barely a week of training. You’re already far better with it than I would have thought, kit. In a few days, you’ll be good to go.”

“I’d just… I’d just like to convince it to let me keep my wits about me…” Hitomi’s voice probably sounded discouraged, but she could only hide her feelings up to a point. She was working so hard, and yet the progress Kibaki was hinting at seemed so insignificant in her eyes. The ache in her muscles and the bruises on her skin from the times when the cat shook her off didn’t help her to remain confident. She hurt and was slowly starting to feel like she couldn’t do it. Each time she gave into the voice, the rush of euphoria took over and blinded her, no matter how hard she fought in her mind for the upper hand.

“Come on, kit, stand up. I know you can do it. Clear your mind.”

She closed her eyes and dove into her Library. She built a chakra bubble in the centre of her refuge, above the cage when her meridians’ feelings floated idly. The Whisper was everywhere, in every shadow and every ray of light, in the smell of dust and old paper that comforted her so much. It slid like water in the smallest opening she’d give it, voluntarily or not and, when it reached her, it hit like a fist of killing intent, violence and exaltation. She wouldn’t do any good by opposing it with sheer will, because the Whisper knew her inner strength better than she ever would.

So she ended up trying something else. She spent long hours meditating, always on the edge of the cliff, before she finally found the deep balance she needed to open herself to the Whisper without holding back. The tempting chant filled her ears as she opened her eyes, her whole body perfectly still except for that. The effort she was producing was visible in the way her muscles coiled under her skin, by the sweat on her brow. She didn’t move, not even when Kibaki approached and pressed her nose against her shoulder. The cat breathed in deeply. Could she smell the changes and nuances in her once the Whisper awoke?

After that, Ensui and Shikaku weren’t needed in her training anymore. She could always hold the Whisper in check now, even when Kibaki made her fight under its influence. She never lost her grip, part of her own chakra constantly muzzling her own murderous impulses if necessary. The day after her discovery, the old she-cat allowed her to steal her chakra, strange and wild, consciously. That way, she could understand what her own Kekkei Genkai felt like without getting carried away by bloodlust.

Stealing chakra hurt a lot. The energy burned as it went up her arms then bloomed as a fire of agony and relief alike inside her Gates, dilating them beyond what they were supposed to contain. She lost consciousness several times, then learned to simply deal with it. With the pain as much as the shameful pleasure that followed it like a shadow, addictive, pernicious, tainted.

“I’ve nothing more to teach you for now, kit,” Kibaki said one afternoon.

Hitomi slowly let go of the rabbit she had used as a way to practice the more deadly aspects of the Whisper. The animal only had a little wound on its neck, splattering its brown fur with specks of red, but life had left it as surely as if the girl had cut its throat, all its blood boiled and chakra gone. It was a terrible way to die – but she had to train on something if she wanted to use her Kekkei Genkai in battle without putting her comrades in harm’s way.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

The cat, titan-like and yet perfectly silent, approached and took the rabbit from where her student had let it fall in the grass. In three mouthfuls, almost all its flesh was gone. It took her less than a minute to clean the bones. “Ah… Prey tastes so much better in the physical world. If only they were bigger…”

“Kibaki-sama?”

“I heard your question, kit. I can’t teach you anything more for now. There are other things you can do with the Whisper, but you’re far too young and too new at it to be able to learn them. It would be a waste of both your and my time. Once you’re older, I’ll come back to you if you don’t figure it out all by yourself. In the meantime, I’ll make sure the cats contracted to you, even little Hai-chan, are trained in the Whisper’s ways. They have many things to learn to adapt to your Kekkei Genkai and its weaknesses.”

A spark of understanding gleamed in Hitomi’s eyes. Kibaki had explained at length all the ways the Whisper could become a danger for her, especially in pitched battle. The pain as she drew chakra from her victim would most certainly force her to stay still for a few moments, which meant any other opponent would have time to kill her. Her cats would have to protect her, to defend her. They would also have to make sure, during large battles, that she didn’t turn against her allies under the Whisper’s influence. Their chakra would become a beacon for her, show her who to kill, who to spare.

Fortunately, such cooperation was instinctive. The Whisper would push her towards them naturally, their strange and wild chakra different enough from any human that she’d find them easily even in a crowd with her meridians alone. Hoshihi would be her main guide; she knew his chakra as well as she did hers. Kibaki had told her that, in ancient times, when the wars allowed it, the Nara often fought close to the Yūhi, just in case bloodlust made them dangerous to their own camp.

“Don’t summon your cats for two days or I’ll have to punish you, kit. When you call them after that, they’ll be ready.”

“So soon?”

“Time passes differently in the spiritual world, you know that already. Two days in your world is almost three weeks in ours. See you in a few years, kit. Take care of yourself.”

Hitomi docilely said goodbye to Hoshihi and Hai, who had quickly gotten the habit of watching parts of her training, lying in a patch of light. Kibaki seemed very eager to train them. The three cats disappeared in a puff of smoke, her summons waving their tails at her. She was alone then, suddenly, with only the ghost of their warm chakra as company. Slowly, her eyes looking around the garden, she wrapped her arms around her midsection. Loneliness was already bitter on her tongue and painful on her mind.

The house was empty as well. Sasuke and Naruto were still gone, probably deeply immersed in the training regimen Kakashi and Jiraiya had planned for them. Kurenai was training Shino with his clan at this time, and Asuma was busy with Shikamaru. The Sand Siblings were training as well. Hitomi had brought this situation upon herself by forfeiting the tournament in favour of her cousin. She had to face the consequences of her actions, all the consequences. To clear her mind, she cleaned throughout the house, from the cold ceiling to the dusty attic, filled almost to the brim with toys she had loved as a child. It took her thirty-six hours, and not once did anyone walk into the house.

Then Ensui came back, looking tired but satisfied. Shikaku had sent him to accomplish a mission while Hitomi was requisitioned by Kibaki. He hadn’t explained the details to his young apprentice, but she knew it was clan business. It was always clan business. She welcomed him by throwing herself in his arms and he caught her with a laugh, his large, callused hands already buried in the dishevelled mass of her hair. Her face against his torso, she breathed in as deep as she could, the scent of herbs and wood soothing her like nothing else could.

“Shikaku-sama told me you were alone in the house and had been for a while now. Wanna play shōgi?”

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with unshed tears. Master and student ignored this detail as they settled in the living-room, glasses of lemonade within easy reach. Their playing styles had evolved since their last game, which seemed to be eons old – barely a few days ago. Hitomi’s communion with the Whisper made her more merciless, quicker to sacrifice a piece if it allowed her to save another that had her favour, while Ensui’s defence had become more flexible, more adaptative. Of course, he won that game, and all the others that followed. He had almost taught her everything she knew, he knew her far too well.

He stayed in the living-room when she went to bed, giving the house a presence she needed to sleep. He ended up relaxing too: after a while, he put his weapons on the coffee table and laid down on the couch, the muscles of his neck uncoiling as a heavy sigh left him. His eyelids slowly closed down and, in his mind, he started counting seconds until he fell asleep.

It was the middle of the night when Hitomi jumped awake. Something had torn her away from sleep, and she didn’t know what. Her eyes searched her bedroom, critical. The bedroom was open, and in the wind entering through it, she smelled…

Blood.

Notes:

Hi! Thank you so much for all your kudos, bookmarks and lovely comments. If you want to read more from me, I started writing a similar fanfic in the Harry Potter fandom. Have a lovely day!

Chapter 61: Blood on Her Hands

Notes:

I'm SO sorry for the wait, especially since chapter 60 left you with a bit of a cliffhanger. I got sucked in a new shiny and had a hard time remembering to post here, but the pull is over and SESB is my priority once more, as I told you it would. Please, if you like this story, drop a comment to let me know! You have no idea how motivating it is. It can fuel me through hard patches like nothing else.

Hitomi left her bed in a jump, her hand already finding the tantō that was never too far from her. With a thread of chakra – thank fuck for puppeteers – she made the emergency bag under her bedside table jump to her right hand. She had prepared it for times when she wouldn’t have time for anything, not even dressing up. It contained throwing weapons, a medikit, supplies for seals as well as several Akimichi rations. It was supposed to be enough to face most situations – in truth, it barely was.

A spark of chakra and she flew through the window, the lilac curtains billowing behind her. Her naked feet pitter-pattered on the cold tiles of the roofs she was running over, so fast she barely touched one before jumping to another. Her nightdress was a hindrance, so she tore a length of the skirt away and let it fall on the street mid-jump, her features a hard mask of drive and focus.

Somewhere along the border of the Nara lands, she sliced her thumb open and summoned her cats, not even stopping. They had a moment of stupor before catching up to her; one look at her face and they understood there was no time for greeting. She didn’t say a word, her stomach twisted by anguish and urgency. Hoshihi took his rightful place by her side, Hai perched on his ginger head as she couldn’t follow the mad pace of her elders, so much bigger and more powerful. The other four felines deployed behind her as many shadows, their paws barely producing any sound on the roofs.

The smell came from the top of a little tailor shop Hitomi passed by every week to go to her therapist. She opened herself to the sensations of her meridians, winced in pain when she received too much too quick then relaxed. No enemy around. Only one person, one still body on that roof – Gekko Hayate, the referee who had overseen the preliminaries.

A strangled noise came out of her throat when she walked to him and saw the state he was in. His torso was cut open practically from the neck to the hip; she felt bile rise in her chest as she noticed the dark and wet shapes of his organs from where she stood, on the next roof. She hadn’t forgotten Hayate. She couldn’t forget anything. She had just… She had just found herself lost again on the messy timeline she was clinging to. She might have been able to stop that tragedy, if only she had… she didn’t know. Stood watch? But what could she do against assailants capable of murdering a former ANBU agent? Her eyes stopped on the dark little tattoo on his right upper arm, only visible because his sleeve had been torn away, and she felt sick again.

“Hitomi, look!” Hoshihi explained.

Surprised by the anxiety in his voice, she followed his amber eyes to Hayate’s mouth. She didn’t understand right away what he had seen under all the blood on his face, and then she saw it too – the minuscule bubble forming in the scarlet liquid. Her breath hitched in her chest, her heart missed a beat, and then she knew what she had to do, as surely as she knew her own chakra.

She sprang into action, opened her emergency bag and quickly thanked the Hermit for the reflex of taking it with her. Her hands stopped shaking by the time she grabbed her brush. She didn’t need ink nor parchment. Behind her, she heard Kurokumo run away, probably to go get someone – anyone who could possibly fix this mess. In silence, she got to work and started tracing the seal around Hayate’s body.

It was incredibly delicate work, barely within her skills in terms of difficulty. Despite Ensui’s recommendations, she had decided that, this time, it was best to work on closing Hayate’s wounds: there was more than enough blood around and on him to draw that seal and maybe three more. The Mystical Palm in her right hand would have made any medic worth their title pale in horror, but she knew it could make a difference, even though there were better techniques for such a terrible injury.

Somewhere in the process, her left arm twisted in a painful position to continue drawing without taking her right hand off Hayate’s insides, an ANBU duet stopped a few steps next to her. She didn’t look up, didn’t say anything, her brow damp with sweat and her muscles spasming, but she noticed the white masks with animal faces painted on them in the periphery of their vision. They could have come closer, could have interrupted her, but they seemed to understand that Hayate would die if they did. She had to finish, no matter what.

It took her ten more minutes that Kurokumo used to find medics this time – Hitomi guessed the two ANBU operatives weren’t, but they had been the first capable people he had found – to finish the seal. When she straightened up, both her arms were stained in blood up to the elbows, but the liquid had stopped running out of Hayate’s body, frozen in place by the seal like a macabre piece of art. It wasn’t Hitomi’s cleanest work, far from it, but it worked. She couldn’t ask for anything more.

She stood up slowly, sore from head to toe, and stumbled out of the circle, barely caught by one of the ANBU before she could fall. He looked at her face, noticed the strained features, the extremely contracted pupils. He cupped her face in his huge hands and turned her face to the moon, then suddenly remembered where he had seen these red eyes, this black wavy hair. “Boar, go fetch Hound. He should be at home right now. Tell him his kid needs him and bring him here asap.”

Hitomi stared at the mask above her without a word. She recognised the fox painted in red ink on the white porcelain. She had never seen the particular ANBU agent, but she felt the seal busing on his right upper arm. With a pained shudder, she closed her eyes and focused until the chakra around her stopped burning against her skin.

“Open your eyes, girl. Look at me.”

She obeyed his deep, smooth voice. It sounded a bit like Shikaku’s, but not quite the same. The eyes she saw through the holes in his mask were such a shocking shade of blue they had to be contacts. The long, dark blue hair he wore in a braid was probably a wig. She knew it was protocol to hide anything peculiar about an ANBU operative.

And why were they even there? Why had Kurokumo found them first? Her heart aching, she remembered they were on guard duty in the village day and night. That duty had once belonged to the Uchiha Clan, but the ANBU had taken over since the massacre. Most of them hated it and saw it as a waste of their talent. They were right, of course. Two years earlier, the Hokage had accepted a bill stating that the General Forces would be formed in that duty, but ANBU still had to be amongst them just in case. If a Genin had been in Hayate’s shoes against his attacker, they would have been killed in a blink.

Somewhere deep inside, beyond her ringing ears and far away from her thundering heart, she could help but feel absurd relief: Hayate’s wounds hadn’t been inflicted by a Wind Sword, only by a normal katana. She knew because the Wind Sword technique was so perfectly sharp it cut through all living matter, without any resistance. If Baki had been the attacker like in the canon, the referee would have been cut in half.

Kakashi arrived on scene in a jump. His only eye glanced over the body, the seal, the ninja cats, his comrades – ex comrades? – from the ANBU. Without a word, Fox gently pushed Hitomi towards him and she stumbled in his direction, immediately caught by his hands she knew far better, his hands which protected her, trained her. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the scent of dogs and sleep on his clothes. He was in his pyjamas, with an overly cute shuriken pattern, but his mask was still hiding his face and a black eyepatch covered his Sharingan.

“How do you find yourself in such improbable situations time and time again, Hitomi-chan?” he asked softly.

She answered with a high-pitched, quivering groan that seemed to worry the Copy Nin. His hands gripped her shoulders tighter as he drew her closer and wrapped his arms around her for a hug. She could tell he wasn’t used to doing it, from his clumsy grip and the stiffness in his shoulders, but she accepted the comfort all the same, pressing her head against his chest. His heart was quiet. So quiet.

The medics arrived then, Kurokumo in the lead. They walked through the circle of ninja cats like they did that every day, then through the red lines of the seal that was starting to dry. Only then did they get to work, kneeling on the cold, hard tiles. Maybe they knew that they had no other choice, that Hitomi’s seal was barely stable, that it would break if they attempted to move it. This wasn’t enough, she had to get better.

“You may have saved a life, Hitomi-chan. You shouldn’t feel guilty.”

Hitomi knew her sensei didn’t have the power to read minds, and yet she froze in surprise for a moment before realising he was right: guilt, indeed, was rising inside her, cold and merciless. She had known this would happen, she should have prevented it. A sort of spasm shook her body in the man’s arms, like a parody of sob. She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say anyway. She had succeeded and yet failed.

“No use staying here. I’m taking you home.”

She didn’t answer that either, only able to stare at the man as he changed his grip on her to lift her from the ground princess-style. He probably didn’t trust her to run or even walk, and he was right. She was shaking like she was in the middle of a snowstorm, despite how mild the night was. Her teeth chattered, her breathing turned shallow and irregular, lighting a fire in her chest. She was cold, then warm, then cold again, sounds muffled and peripheral vision blurry. A panic attack.

Kakashi seemed to get it immediately. He continued running, his feet perfectly silent, but, without letting go of her, he yanked on the collar of her nightdress to give her more room to breathe. The only sounds coming out of her were choked little hiccups; she didn’t cry. She felt like she was unable to, and at the same time like it would free her from the weight pressing hard on her chest. Tears had always had that effect on her.

When he jumped through her window, careful of her head and legs, she was terribly still and withdrawn. In her room, he barely stopped for a moment, forcing her stiff fingers to let go of her stuff – the tantō first, then the bag covered in blood. Behind her, barely louder than a whisper, the ninja cats entered the room one by one. Hoshihi took his usual place on the bed, Hai still on his shoulders, Haīro and Kurokumo settled at each side of the window as if to stand watch, and Hokori and Sunaarashi did the same with the door. Kakashi acknowledged them with a nod before taking their summoner out of the room – she didn’t react.

She didn’t react either when he walked down the corridor. He seemed to know the place well, since he didn’t stop until he reached the bathroom, stepping across Sasuke’s and Naruto’s rooms without hesitation. He had already come there. When? The question passed well over her head. Her breathing had calmed but she felt so numb, so cold and aching. She wanted to close her eyes but even that required too much energy, so she kept them open.

Without a word, her teacher closed the toilet seat and settled her there, making sure she wouldn’t fall before he totally let go of her. His hands finally free, he bent over the bathroom and turned on the tap. He made the current shift to the showerhead, tested the temperature on his forearm and adjusted it until he was satisfied. During all that time, Hitomi watched him silently. Her body wasn’t hers anymore. It was too small, too weak, to wrap around her anguish and guilt.

His hands, gentle and careful, pulled her between his body and the bathtub. He took her right arm first, the one that had attempted to keep Hayate alive long enough for her left to draw the seal. He placed it under the warm waterflow; pink rivulets immediately started to drip from the cold limb, washing down the drain. After a few minutes, Hitomi’s pale skin tone started to reappear. He made sure not to forget anything, from the crease of her elbow to her fragile wrist.

He worked on her hand after that. When he let go of her arm to grab a little brush Kurenai had put away in the cupboard under the sink, she stayed still, the limb suspended in the air. A brief tremor went through her shoulders from time to time, but her eyes were dull, almost blurry. Kakashi was worried. He had never seen her that withdrawn. Taking her hand between his, he got to work, washing the blood under her nails as he had done numerous times for his own.

The other arm, in comparison, was easier and faster to clean up. There was less blood on that side, after all. When it was done, Kakashi shut the tap and took the first towel he could find to dry her arms, his movements as gentle and delicate as he could, like he was taking care of a wounded bird rather than a traumatised student. Was it even the right word for it? It seemed too strong, too intense for the dull ache taking over her mind, sometimes shaken by shattering anguish. As for Kakashi, he wasn’t fooled by how quiet she was. He recognised the signs from having lived through them himself, and he heard each time she choked on the air she breathed.

Once her arms were dry, he left for a moment and came back with another pair of pyjamas of hers, an outfit composed of a white t-shirt and mint green shorts. He was careful to keep his eyes strictly on her face as he undressed her. He knew she would remember this, and he didn’t want her to think he would even watch a kid that way. He tossed her white-turned-red nightdress away and, when she was naked, he humidified a washing mitt and cleaned her skin as well as he could before helping her in the new clothes.

Not once did she move or react.

Then, still silent, he managed to hide the bloody nightdress out of her sight, lifted her from the ground again and took her back to her room, his grip almost too hard around her cold, inert body. If he hadn’t heard her breathe, he would have thought she was dying. The idea hurt much more than he could even conceive. The cats welcomed his return with subtle movements – the twitch of an ear or whisker, sometimes a nod. Kakashi knew very well that his student’s summons didn’t like him much, with his dog smell and many eccentricities, but Hoshihi shifted away to allow him to open the covers and put his student to bed. The cat was soon cuddling against his summoner, his heavy, ginger head on her shoulder and one paw across her midsection like a protective – and possessive – barrier.

Once his first duty was accomplished, the man left the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and breathed in deeply. His nose assured him that Kurenai was home, instead of at the hospital or over at Asuma’s place. He thanked the gods that he didn’t have to look for her. He found the young mother’s bedroom easily, entered as silently as he could, and yet he had to dive to dodge a kunai that ended its course deeply embedded in the door. A thin smile on his lips, he freed the weapon from the wood and noted the many impacts, similar to the ones on Hitomi’s door. One more thing that the mother and daughter had in common.

“Hitomi left during the night.”

Her child’s name immediately got Kurenai’s attention. Her acute eyes searched Kakashi’s. In a whisper of fabric, he went to sit at the edge of the bed. They were close, the both of them, close enough that he couldn’t totally hide the anxiety and fright roaring in his mind from her attention.

“Out?” she asked after a moment.

“Hm… I don’t know why she left initially, but she stumbled upon a wounded shinobi, Gekko Hayate. The referee, remember? I didn’t see much of his body, but it looked like he had fought and been left to die.”

His voice a whisper in the darkness of the room, he continued reporting about the situation, describing the seal Hitomi had drawn around the body – he didn’t need to see her do it to recognise her work. He explained that ANBU Boar had found him at home and brought him to the scene, all the while telling him about the situation. He then described how he had taken his student home, cleaned the blood away half in hope that it would help her feel better, and half in fear that there would be injuries on her body as well.

“… and I put her in bed. I don’t think she’s gonna sleep tonight.”

“Thanks for taking care of her. I shouldn’t have sent Ensui home tonight… He could have helped her too.”

“No need to thank me. She’s my student, your daughter.”

“About that, Sasuke…”

“He’s good. I’m still training him outside the village. I had a quick problem to settle tonight, but he decided he wanted to stay in the former border post we’re using. I’ll get back to him now and explain the situation. He misses you all dearly, but I make sure he’s too busy to think much about anything other than the tournament.”

Yes, the young Uchiha even missed Naruto, as strange as it sounded. They were closer than the people who knew them from Academy but weren’t part of the Fellowship could ever think. The bickering, the constant challenge, and even the food habits, Sasuke missed everything related to the blonde boy, just as he missed everything about his adopted sister and mother.

“Do you think he could win?”

“Of course!” Kakashi said with fake outrage. “Don’t underestimate how good my training regimen is. He can do it. After all, it’s not like Gaara is a raving lunatic, right? He controls his demon and he doesn’t want to hurt Hitomi’s brothers.”

“He’s a good boy. It’s obvious how much he loves her. He couldn’t even stand before her if he harmed Sasuke.”

The two ninjas exchanged a knowing smile, but they couldn’t quite hide their worry for the girl. Fortunately, she wasn’t amongst the competitors for the tournament. She had time to heal, to lock the memory far below the surface of her mind, to find back her strength and stability. And if Hayate survived, part or all of her guilt would disappear, which would only allow her to get back on her feet quicker. Just for that, Kurenai hoped the man she barely knew would live. With a sigh, she left her bed and stretched as Kakashi politely looked away.

“Well, since you woke me up, I’m gonna warn Ensui and Yoshino. They’ll probably want to adapt their training regimen for her in consequence or even cancel it for a few days.

Kakashi snorted. “Do you believe that?”

“… No, you’re right, they’re gonna think she needs everything but a break. Time for you to get out of my room now. I won’t go to my sister-in-law’s or to Ensui’s house in a nightdress.”

A faint smile on his lips, Kakashi did as he was told. Suddenly, he remembered why he loved working with Kurenai: nothing could knock her down. She always faced adversity with serenity, even when the enemy was as terrible and cruel as a trauma in a teenager’s mind. His duty accomplished, he took the time to sigh heavily then walked to the door. He didn’t want to offend Kurenai by leaving through a window when it wasn’t necessary.

In her bed, Hitomi still hadn’t moved, her big red eyes staring at the ceiling. She had heard her sensei’s and mother’s voices, without catching the words themselves. She could have, with a simple spark of chakra in her ears, but it seemed so futile, so vain. With a little anguished whimper, she finally moved, curling up against Hoshihi’s flank. The cats had stayed by her side, Kurokumo joining his friend and the little apprentice on the bed after a while. They barely fit there, but Hitomi didn’t care.

The cats’ quiet purrs didn’t calm her as they usually did. Her thoughts were running at a painful pace in her mind, guilt and anxiety were crushing and choking her, and nothing could help. The comfort she drew from the smell on their pelts and from their body heat was distant, almost meaningless. With a quivering sigh, she pressed her face against Hoshihi’s shoulder and prayed for sleep, in vain.

Each time she closed her eyes, her hands felt the wet and warm shapes of Hayate’s organs again, the metallic stench of death in waiting came back to her nose, the vision of his broken body painted itself on her eyelids. She wanted to scream, to break something, to unleash all the violence blooming in her chest like a delicate flower, and yet she didn’t feel strong enough to continue breathing.

She could help any of it, so she waited.

This too would pass.

Chapter 62: The Kusajin Genin

When the sun rose, Hitomi felt a bit better, her head barely clear enough for her to feel like an echo of herself. She slid off her cats’ embrace and watched them sleep for a moment. She didn’t want to wake them up, they needed the rest. In silence, she opened her wardrobe, put on her battle outfit, adjusted her tantō so her hand would naturally fall on its guard. The gestures were a habit, a ritual, almost comforting in a way.

She found her mother, Ensui and Yoshino all sitting around the table when she came downstairs, her hands busy twisting her hair into a messy ponytail. They looked at her with worry, which made her frown and look away. She was… no, she wasn’t okay, but she wasn’t bad either. She just needed to unwind, to put her mind to work, to exhaust all the energy buzzing in her body in the hope it would fight off the sickening powerlessness sticking to her skin – and maybe then she could feel alive again.

“It’s been a few days since your last spar with swords, hasn’t it? You’ll fight both Yoshino-san and me today.”

Ensui’s voice sparked a wave of relief inside her. He understood, and she wanted to sob with relief. Instead, she nodded and walked to the garden; it was the first time in years that she didn’t even attempt to eat breakfast, because she knew she’d vomit it immediately. The memories were still too fresh, and her Library not quite ready yet to put them away where they belonged, behind the Door, the one that had ended up with an uppercase in her head, like it was its own place.

The two adults found her there as she greeted the sun, the routine of those movements warming up her muscles as always. Her fingers and wrists were still a bit sore, but she knew she’d soon put those sensations behind her. Ensui and Yoshino were redoubtable opponents alone; together, they’d be a challenge even when holding themselves back. And she needed it.

At their mark, she took a fighting stance. As soon as Ensui moved, her shadow formed a protective circle around her feet and she raised her tantō to welcome him. She took his shadow with hers, forced him to lift his right hand then let go of him and tried to take advantage of the opening she had created in his guard. In vain. He was too fast for her.

She barely had time to retreat, avoiding Yoshino’s fist which flew only a few millimetres away from her face. Her aunt fought with her bare hands. Against a real opponent, she used chakra scalpels as weapons, but she didn’t want to injure her niece too seriously. The two adults attacked Hitomi mercilessly, forcing her to dodge, parry, step back, again and again.

They didn’t give her any respite and she didn’t land even one hit on them, collecting dozens of bruises and the taste of blood in her mouth in return. When they were done with her, Ensui’s shadow wrapped around her ankles to keep her in place as Yoshino took her neck in a solid lock, careful to give her space to breath, her whole body was shaking with exhaustion, but the ferocious gleam was back in her eyes. The two Jōnin let go of her and she collapsed on the grass, shivering and breathless.

Without a word, Ensui helped her sit, took her right leg between his hand and started working on the muscles. Yoshino would have done a better job of stretching and massaging it with chakra, but Hitomi knew her master’s hands better; she needed them most. He hoped to reduce the soreness she’d feel the next day and understood with a look on her face that she couldn’t do it herself. It wasn’t the first time he had to do it for her. They often trained beyond reason, they always had. It was what she wanted, after all, and he couldn’t deny her anything.

“I went to the hospital this morning,” Yoshino said as she came back, a jug of lemonade in one hand and glasses in the other. “They say Hayate will pull through, but they had to put him in a coma once they could cancel the stasis seal. You saved his life, kiddo. Congrats.”

“But I… I wish I could do more.”

“Most of your peers don’t know anything about seals or medical ninjutsu, Hitomi. What could Chōji or Shikamaru have done more if they had been in your place? Those standards you hold yourself to are far too high.”

“But…”

“No, Hitomi. The first life you save should fill you with joy, not guilt.”

A long silence punctuated Yoshino’s words, as if to emphasise the truth they held. Hitomi closed her eyes, rubbed her temples despite the tremors in her hands. On her back, Ensui’s long, strong fingers traced comforting swirls, reminding her of the long nights in Sunagakure, spent working on her first seal. How she missed those days…

“Will he be able to stay a shinobi?” she asked after a long silence.

“Probably not,” Yoshino sighed. “But Hayate has always been sickly, kiddo. He had to leave ANBU because of it and, in one or two years tops, he planned on becoming an Academy teacher or find work in the Hokage Tower. His life will be, in his and his loved ones’ eyes, far more precious than his career.”

Hitomi suddenly remembered Uzuki Yūgao, Hayate’s fiancée seen during a few chapters of the manga. The way she had touched his headstone, her expression as she put back her ANBU mask… Hitomi had stopped that from happening. Barely. And ‘barely’ was the problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t good enough, to barely stop events from happening. It forced her to improvise and, when she did, she had less time to think about the consequences of her actions or about the crucial little details. ‘Barely’ could get her killed.

“I’m not asking you to put your feelings behind you,” Yoshino continued, her voice softening, “only to think about it. You’re not almighty, Hitomi, you can’t save the whole world. Hero complex is deadly in our world.”

Hitomi let out a nervous laugh, her thoughts meandering to Naruto. Her adopted brother was an excellent example of her aunt’s words, with his propension for hurling himself in trouble again and again. Honestly, she wasn’t any better than him. She had been given her forehead protector three short months ago, and she had already brushed against death several times, had even looked it in the eyes when she had failed to dodge Orochimaru. Only the absurd luck that balanced Team Seven’s trouble magnet had kept her alive.

She had to wake up, to leave her torpor, because future events wouldn’t wait for her to be ready before they happened. The next reef on her path, the next turn Konoha’s politics would take, would be its invasion during the tournament. She had doubted it would happen, since Gaara, the diversion in the canon, would have refused to do it in this world. However, the attack on Hayate confirmed beyond any doubt that the invasion would indeed happen. Orochimaru would attack. She just didn’t know if Sunagakure would fight with him but what difference did it make, really?

A cold determination written on her features, Hitomi stood back up. She was hurting all over, but she didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to stay unoccupied even for a moment. Her hand firm again, she unsheathed her tantō as Ensui did the same with his katana. With a little sigh, Yoshino decided to stand back this time, so she could heal the cuts and bruises her niece would undoubtedly collect during this fight.

For a long time, the garden was full of the noise of blade against blade. Twice, Yoshino had to step in and heal Hitomi. Except for that, she held her own. Ensui was always making sure to turn dodging into a reflex for his apprentice and he didn’t spare her too much when he did so. Of course, he held back, or she would be dead in a moment, but that didn’t mean he treated her like she was porcelain.

Kurenai came to fetch them at nightfall. Dinner was ready. The young mother had spent the day at Hinata’s bedside; the girl was awake now, but wasn’t allowed to have too many visitors. Around the table, the woman told her guests and daughter how her student was forbidden from even leaving her bed without help. Hitomi bit her lips, looking down to her plate. She could go see Hinata, bring her books so she wouldn’t get bored. The Yūhi heir hadn’t dared visit her ex-girlfriend yet. They were still friends, but the shadow of their past relationship kept them apart and she had a hard time admitting how much it hurt.

The next day, she gathered her courage, filled a backpack with novels and went to the hospital before she could change her mind. She didn’t want to give even the slightest opportunity to her desire to flee to take the upper hand. Hinata didn’t deserve that. She didn’t bother stopping at the counter, since her mother had given her the room number. Contrary to the civilians huddled next to the elevators, she chose the stairs. She needed to move, anyway.

She rapped her knuckles against the doorframe and entered the room when she was allowed to. Hinata looked so tiny in the white sheets of her bed, her features creased by exhaustion, dark shadows under her eyes. Her hands slightly shaking, Hitomi approached. She felt intimidated, nervous, and her eyes glanced at the window several times as if escaping through it was acceptable behaviour. Stupid and useless. Hinata couldn’t hurt her, especially in this state. “I… Uh, I wanted to bring you books, so you can keep your mind busy if you want.”

She left the spot near the door where she had frozen and sat on the chair that someone, probably her mother, had left at Hinata’s bedside. Under her friend’s eyes, she started unpacking the books and took the time to describe the content of each one. Hinata sometimes asked a question, but she mostly kept silent. They were both careful not to speak about the shadow keeping them apart. Such wounds never completely healed. Their relationship hadn’t ended, it had been torn away.

“Please, Hitomi, don’t hate Neji for what he did,” Hinata whispered after a while. She was staring at her bandaged hands, white on white. Hitomi was grateful for it – that way she didn’t have to hide her surprise, her anger. She wanted to hate Neji. Wanted to hurt him. The Whisper shivered in approval in her mind. It would help her tear the teenager apart, make it so easy, so gratifying. “Please, Hitomi. I know you’re angry. I heard what you did to him after I w-was taken away. It’s not his fault. He’s a victim.”

And it was just so much like Hinata to describe the boy who had almost murdered her as a victim. Hitomi pinched her lips together, rubbed her thumb against the braided silk wrapped around her tantō’s guard. She couldn’t refuse this. She knew she couldn’t. “I’ll try not to hate him,” she promised, “but I won’t treat him as a friend either. Mostly, I’m going to make sure I don’t see him any more than strictly necessary. Is it good enough?”

The girl nodded, and they went back to a normal discussion punctuated with long silences. After an hour or so, Hitomi made sure Hinata was okay and didn’t need anything, then left. The energy running through her body, foul and fretful, made her want to break things again. She decided to leave through the roof and turned around, walking to the stairs. She went up and up but, in the middle of a corridor on the fifth floor, she froze. She knew the name written in red ink next to this door.

Uzumaki Karin .

Her eyes went wide and her breath itched in her chest. She rummaged through her memories but knew that nothing, absolutely fucking nothing, had hinted at the possibility of this in the canon. Wasn’t Naruto’s cousin supposed to be in Orochimaru’s service somewhere in the Land of Rice Fields? Frowning, she knocked at the door.

“You can come in!” a muffled voice answered behind it.

She walked in after making sure her features were displaying an amicable expression, and discovered the stranger putting on a jumper – thus explaining the muffled sound of her voice. She didn’t know the girl and yet she recognised her, recognised her bright red hair and just as red eyes behind her glasses.

“Hum, who are you?” the girl asked, looking her up and down. “I don’t know you. Am I in trouble?”

“Ah, err, no, don’t worry about it.”

After a moment of hesitation, Hitomi closed the door behind her and looked around the room. There wasn’t much to see: everything was white, clean, impersonal. Where Hinata had received flowers, cards, little trinkets and chocolate, Karin had nothing. Maybe it was because she wasn’t from Konoha… but then, she couldn’t have come to the village alone. Where were the people who had come with her, why weren’t they visiting? She looked seriously injured, with bandages all over her arms and the belly she had briefly seen when entering. Someone had to worry about her, but there was no sign of it whatsoever.

“Hum… I came in because you have the exact same clan name as someone I know. Uzumaki Naruto. Well… Uzumaki-Yūhi Naruto. He’s my adopted baby brother.”

A dumbfounded silence welcomed her words. Karin stared at her for a few moments, her lips parted. Her eyes were wide, her posture stiff. “A-are you sure? Are you sure it’s his name?”

The vulnerability in the other girl’s voice moved Hitomi. She nodded firmly and took a step forwards. “I’m sure.”

“I-I have a cousin?”

“I guess he’s your cousin, yes. The Uzumaki were a huge clan before they were destroyed. Many civilians from the clan and a few shinobi managed to escape the massacre. Most of them still live in the Land of Whirlpools and in the Land of Fire. Our two countries have been allied forever, after all.”

“I didn’t even know that the Uzumaki were a real clan…”

 Hitomi frowned, surprised. She hesitated then decided to sit at Karin’s bedside, like she had done earlier for Hinata. For almost an hour, she told the girl about the Uzumaki clan and its history with Konoha, told her about Uzumaki Mito, the first jinchūriki, about Uzumaki Kushina, the last to have hosted the Kyūbi before Naruto ended up as a host himself. Everything she said about the decimated clan, she had read it in the village archives. She had known about some details beforehand thanks to the Previous World, but most had been new to her. For example, the fact that no one knew who was to blame for the massacre. It seemed so preposterous to her that an attack that had wiped out an entire Hidden Village remained unpunished.

“How did you arrive here?” she ended up asking. “I’ve never seen you before and I know you’re not one of our kunoichi. The Uzumaki clan is a topic in our history class.”

“You’re right… I came for the Chūnin exam with a Kusajin team. We went through the first stage without problem but, in the Forest of Death… Ninjas from Konohagakure k-killed my teammates and I managed to escape. I don’t even know how I survived! I was so terrified…”

When she saw Karin on the brink of tears, Hitomi wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders and pulled her close. The girl didn’t fight it, but didn’t melt into the hug either, which was understandable. “Konohajin shinobi, huh? Do you know their names, or could you describe them to me?” After all, she wanted to stay far away from people who would kill for a freaking exam. Kill to survive? Yes. Kill to accomplish a mission? Yes. Kill for the hope of being promoted? Freaking no .

“T-they had glasses, all three of them, and were dressed in black. Two wore cloth over their face and hair, but the other didn’t. He had silver hair.”

Hitomi stiffened, her hand twitched on Karin’s shoulder. A cruel gleam appeared in her dark red eyes. “Yakushi Kabuto and his buddies. One of them died during the preliminaries. The others have been found guilty of treason and desertion. They work with Orochimaru. If they ever come back to Konoha, they’re dead.”

After a moment of silence, Hitomi softened again, her grip turning to a gentle rub. She was trying to imitate the way Ensui or Kakashi behaved with her when she felt bad, when she was afraid or distressed. What harm could it cause? “They won’t hurt you anymore. For as long as you’re here, you’ll be protected. The village is our crown, and the hospital one of its jewels.”

And, just like that, a brilliant idea lit up her whole Library. She offered Karin her sweetest smile and tried to appear as appeasing and innocent as she possibly could. “You might… You might be able to stay in the village forever. Your name allows you to claim citizenship, no matter how you ended up in Kusagakure. The Hokage won’t refuse a ninja willing to work and, that way, you could meet Naruto and spend time with him. He’s so cute, a ray of sunshine, and incredibly nice. He’d be so glad to have family here. Of course, he has our mother, our brother and myself, but he’d be glad to have you all the same.”

She stopped talking then, allowing the idea to wiggle its way into Karin’s brain. Her forehead protector was nowhere in sight, and loyal shinobi hated not having it on. There was absolutely no trace of anyone caring for her in the room, which meant she didn’t have a sensei. As for family… Not likely. The way she had reacted to the mention of someone sharing her name, the famished gleam in her eyes and the hope in her voice – Hitomi knew those signs all too well.

“I-I’m not sure I want to fight again, to be a ninja again. I think I’m scared…” Karin looked down to her bandaged hands, shame obvious on her features.

Hitomi nodded with understanding. If she hadn’t loved fighting so much, the fear would have gotten the best of her long ago. Karin didn’t look or sound like a warrior. She seemed shy, withdrawn. She had probably become a ninja by default rather than passion. “Konoha doesn’t only recruit fighters. You know, our hospital is one of the best in the whole Elemental Nations. Thirty years ago, these corridors were inhabited by a legendary surgeon and medic nin, Senju Tsunade-sama. Do you know any medical ninjutsu?”

The girl perked up then and nodded energetically. She straightened up on the bed, her eyes shining with pride and hope for the first time. “Yeah! I’m very good, even. I have a hidden skill that allows me to heal any wound but, since it’s chakra-expensive, I learned everything I could so I could use it only when even medical ninjutsu fails. Of course, I still have loads to learn.”

Hitomi raised her eyebrows. She didn’t have any trouble showing interest. She was interested, after all. “You mean the dormant Uzumaki Kekkei Genkai? My grandfather – my clan was a branch of the Uzumaki ages ago, long before the villages and such – told me it was very rare, only present in a minor branch of the clan that had been mixed with a clan from the Land of Iron.”

“That’s where the samurais live, right?”

“Yep! They use their chakra differently than we do, but they welcomed clans that fled the Hidden Villages because they didn’t want to go to war.”

The two girls chatted for a while, then it was time for Hitomi to leave. She promised to come back the next day with the paperwork Karin would need to file for citizenship at the Hokage’s office and decided to go to the Tower directly to get them. She joked around with Shiranui Genma, who looked half dead with boredom and had probably lost a bet to be stuck behind a desk like that. Only then did she walk to her therapist’s office. It was time for her session; something cold coiled in her belly in reaction to that thought.

Talking to Fukuda had become an obvious action for Hitomi. She just had to step into the room, sit on one of the chairs, and her tongue came undone. She told the therapist about Hayate, about the blood she still dreamed on her hands, about the feelings carved in her mind, and she cried, finally. She had expected some relief to wash over her, but it wasn’t the case. Patient and gentle as ever, Fukuda worked through the anxiety attack that was hitting her, then taught her breathing and relaxation exercises that would maybe help her in the future.

She left her appointment raw and on edge, as always. Lee was waiting for her outside, a box of chocolates in his hand. As soon as she saw him, she rushed into his arms and kissed him, neither shy nor prude. Surprised, the boy caught her and held her close. His free hand tightened on her hip and his shoulders stiffened slightly. He let out a tiny groan when she brushed her tongue against his lower lip, pressing her harder against his torso. An old man who was entering the building coughed, making Lee straighten up with a deep blush. His eyes were wide and his breath a bit shallow as he looked down to her, worrying his lower lip. “Hum, h-hello to you too. Difficult day?”

Hitomi answered with a contrite smile at first, intertwining her fingers with his. She liked the rough feeling of his bandages against her skin, the strength in his hands and the way they always treated her with delicacy and carefulness. Liked too how she could make him lose his grip on reality with a kiss. It gave her a kind of power she realised she liked a lot. As they started walking at a leisurely pace, she put her head against his shoulder.

“You might have heard about it from your sensei. Two nights ago, the referee for the preliminaries was attacked by an unknown assailant. I felt the smell of blood, I don’t know how, and I followed. I-I found him on the verge of death, but Ensui-shishou taught me a stasis seal that keeps you in the exact state you’re in until a true medic can get to you. It saved his life, but he didn’t wake up yet and he won’t be a ninja ever again.”

“You feel guilty about that, don’t you?”

She looked down but pulled him closer. “… yeah. Yeah, I feel guilty. I should have smelled the blood earlier, and maybe do better, or, I don’t know…”

“You’ll do better next time. It’s okay if your actions aren’t perfect. The important part is that you make progress.”

They arrived at the little café they liked to go to after Hitomi’s appointments with her therapist. The cosiness of the place made the girl think about her journey by Ensui’s side, and the pastries and drinks were so good she didn’t want to go anywhere else for them. Without letting go of his girlfriend’s hand, Lee ordered a wide choice then took her to their usual table, apart from the rest of the room and with him able to see the door. There were more people than usual, but the staff knew them well and made sure to keep that table empty for them once a week. In silence, the boy sat on the comfortable bench then pulled Hitomi next to him so she could put her head on his shoulder again.

“I can see how hard this whole affair has been on you. Do you have something to keep busy and take your mind off it?”

A warm smile appeared on the young Yūhi’s lips, despite the topic they were talking about. Lee was so attentive to the little details about her. They hadn’t started going out that long ago, and yet he already understood how her mind worked and what helped her go through a crisis. A little purr low in her throat, she kissed him again, her hand brushing against the nape of his neck. He shivered, his eyes closing in delight, groaned again and kissed her back.

“I’m gonna end up falling hard for you if you continue all this, you know?” she said when they broke the kiss.

He welcomed her words with a dumbfounded silence, then a smile slowly bloomed on his lips. He pulled her closer, his strong fingers toying with a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail. “Nothing would make me happier. I’d simply love you back with all my might.”

She let out a little laugh and kissed him again. Their order arrived, but they didn’t stop and the waiter didn’t say anything, used to their public demonstrations of affection. All shinobi were that way outside of a work setting. They lived fully, expected death to hit at every turn and made the most of every moment. Civilians couldn’t always understand but, in a place like a Hidden Village, they had learned to deal with it. Who could even boss a ninja around anyway? Not them, that was for sure. Even muzzled with mission orders and honour codes, the dogs were never tied up.

“Your hot cocoa won’t be so hot anymore if we don’t take a break from kissing,” Lee said after a little while.

“Oh, we can’t have that now, can we?”

“No… No, we can’t. But what we can do is spend the evening together. Would you like it?”

Hitomi didn’t even think about it. She needed this, needed his sweet and trustworthy presence next to her, his hands on her, around her, his kisses, the mix of innocence and attention he offered her without ever holding back. She drank a sip of her hot cocoa, which had indeed already started to cool down, then put their intertwined hands on her companion’s thigh. “Of course I’d like it. Something particular in mind?”

“That, my dear, is something I shall keep secret until tonight.”

Hitomi couldn’t help but burst out laughing and, just like that, it was settled. She could only thank the gods and entities and whatever, whoever was watching over her for the young man who helped her face little and larger ordeals coming her way.

Chapter 63: The Tournament's Shadow

The evening Lee had planned was pure delight. He started by taking her to a kabuki show; he had gotten tickets as well as a meet-and-greet with the actors, the Hermit knew how. After that, he guided her through the village’s streets to a restaurant Chōji’s mom herself managed, one of those where a reservation was needed. Later, he admitted one of the waiters owed him one and had placed a favourable word so they could get a table. The meal was as delicious as it always was when Akimichi were cooking.

However, Lee wasn’t done. He had purchased spots to a dance night hosted by one of the noble families that had the Hokage’s ear. They weren’t quite as dressed up as the other dancers, but the two teenagers had fun and, close to her curfew, Hitomi felt like her sense of touch was oversensitive. She knew it was a mix of hormones and attraction speaking, but still… She would have been lost if she hadn’t understood what adolescence did to her body, to her mind. When Lee took her home, with a kiss that almost swayed her on her feet, she went deep into rereading Icha Icha Paradise, so words would be put on her desires.

And she was careful to hide the book where her mother wouldn’t find it by accident, so Kakashi’s head could stay on his shoulders an’ all.

Three days before the tournament, a Chūnin came to tell Hitomi that Naruto had been brought to the hospital by a giant toad and she knew the canon was on tracks again – or as on track as it could be anyway. She went into her brother’s room and prepared a bag with a change of clothes, toiletries and a few books so he would have something to do. She walked to the hospital, found his room and paid him a visit. He looked bruised all over, his muscles twitching with chakra exhaustion, but okay overall.

“I have something to tell you,” she announced as she skinned an apple with the edge of a kunai. “There’s a girl in the hospital… Her name is Karin. Uzumaki Karin. She’s your cousin.”

“Are you…” He stared at her, shook his head, then stared again. “Are you serious?”

“Hm hm. I’m going to see her everyday after paying a visit to Hinata. She’s from Kusagakure, but she requested citizenship and the status of village ward. Her mother has been dead for a few years and her father doesn’t want her, so she doesn’t have any tie to the Land of Grass… And she really, really wants to meet you.”

“Y-you told her about me?”

“Of course I did! I told her so much about you but nothing embarrassing, promise. She’s very lonely here, I’m the only one visiting her. Are you allowed out of bed?”

“No one forbade me out of it.”

“Great! Wanna go see her?”

Of course, the blonde boy was more than happy to go and impatient to meet a member of his family. Hitomi handed him a more decent outfit than the hospital gown he was wearing – a low bar – and turned her back as he changed. When she looked at him again, she saw how nervous he was, as plain as day in his blue eyes. It was the same kind of look he had in the beginning, when Kurenai had adopted him. He didn’t dare believe someone wanted to be part of his family – for that, Hitomi despised the civilians stupid enough to refuse him any sort of affection when he had been a frightened, lonely little boy.

She took his arm and led him through the corridors, mindful of his strength or lack thereof. She held on to him as much to touch him as it was to help him walk without him noticing: she knew how proud he was, knew he wouldn’t ask and would refuse if she overtly proposed to lend him her own body as a crutch. Even with this, he tripped sometimes and, when he managed to walk in a straight line without staggering, he fidgeted with the hem of the obnoxiously orange t-shirt she had brought him. The Uzumaki spiral that decorated the back of the shirt made it particularly fitting. When they were there, Hitomi knocked at the door and opened it after a moment. “Karin-chan? I brought you a surprise!”

She gently pushed Naruto inside then followed and stifled a laugh when she saw his wide eyes and the amazement on his face as he took in the redheaded girl who was sewing two pieces of red fabric together on her bed. “Karin-chan,” she continued with her warmest beam, “this is Uzumaki-Yūhi Naruto, your cousin. I have stuff to do, so I’ll let you get to know each other!”

She left then, closing the door behind her. Her heart was racing as if she had just run twenty laps around Konoha. She knew she had done something good, just there. Karin and Naruto needed each other, even if they didn’t know that yet. She almost felt proud behind the dullness that was starting to dissipate, for the first time since the attack on Hayate. The feeling of cold and distance had never totally left her; she could put it away, but only for so long, and only when she was with her loved ones.

At the ground floor, she saw Shikamaru and jumped in his arms, hugging him with all her might. He sighed, pretending he was annoyed, then hugged her back. He tried to act like he didn’t care, like nothing could faze him, and yet he pressed his cheek against hers and combed his fingers through the ponytail that now reached his cousin’s hips. They hadn’t seen each other since the exam, even though they were neighbours. They had been so busy training they had only got news from each other through Yoshino, who wasn’t psyched about playing messenger. The communicating notebooks had helped them to stay in touch, but it just wasn’t the same as being face to face.

“Why are you here?” she asked when he pulled away. “Are you injured or here for a visit?”

“Visit. Dad finally gave me some free time and Chōji got taken in for food poisoning, the poor guy. He can only eat what they cook for him here, so I’m bringing him a puzzle book instead.”

Their arms linked together, the two cousins walked back up the corridor. Shikamaru guided Hitomi to the third floor, to a little room full of sunlight. Their friend was alone but not bored: he had an open sketchbook on his knees and was drawing the trees he could see through his window. His face lit up when he turned his head and saw them in the doorframe. Soon enough, they started chatting, finding back the comfort and friendship that had linked them even before the Academy.

Night was falling upon the village when Hitomi left the hospital. She felt quieter and more attentive now that she had been these past few days, thanks to her friends. She stopped at the market to buy ingredients then went home and got to work. She hadn’t cooked gyozas in an eternity but, once her hands got started, her mind was free to wander. She had to prepare for the invasion. Her poisons and traps were already stocked and in place, and she had a good enough reserve of them, but she wanted to sharpen her weapons once more and make sure her cats were ready for battle. She also had to replenish her medical supplies, to draw some seals and to buy ink for more if needed. Who knew how long it would be before she could buy more after the invasion?

When her mother came home, holding hands with Asuma, Hitomi told her about her date with Lee, and they both marvelled at the teenager’s gallant behaviour under Asuma’s eyes. Would he soon become Kurenai’s fiancé? Hitomi couldn’t help but hope it would be the case. They went along so well and were so good for each other. She wasn’t blind, she knew the Jōnin helped her mother cope with a lot of things these past few weeks, as destiny seemed to go after her loved ones.

She cleaned the dishes, went to her room and got to work. Soon, she was joined by Hoshihi, who had trained Hai the whole day. The little cat was so exhausted her mentor had to carry her on his back. Hitomi, a smile on her lips, took the feline in her arms and put her on her knees, so she could pet her as she talked. “I think we ought to work on riding maneuvers,” she suggested. “Very few ninjas fight on mounts, be they horses or summons. They think it lacks stealth, but you are very stealthy.”

“It could work, yes. Do you have any ideas?”

Her smile turned feral as she started drawing diagrams to illustrate her ideas. Hoshihi commented on them one after the other. They declared some impossible, but some others had their favour. She also decided to add his mastery of Fire Release into their pool of strategies, since he was becoming quite proficient with it. She knew that Sasuke would turn to his true affinity, lightning, now that Kakashi trained him one on one. He probably felt like he was giving up his Uchiha heritage… But such considerations didn’t count when life and death were at stake, as they often were during missions, fights and battles.

“I also want to learn several techniques during the next few months. I think I’m ready for a B-ranked Water Release, and I want to explore my secondary affinity.”

“Lighting, right?”

“Hm hm. Very deadly when combined with Water Release. I won’t always have Sasuke with me and he can’t navigate on and under water as easily as I do.”

“You… you’re sure you want to learn deadly things? You weren’t yourself after the Forest of Death.”

“I know,” she sighed. “Honestly, no, I don’t really want to, but I need to. The other ninjas, from other villages or deserters won’t go easy on me until I’m ready to grow up, they’re gonna mess with me either way, right? They already know how to kill as easily as batting a fly away.” And, she had to admit it, it wasn’t the act of killing that made her hesitate, but the power and euphoria she felt while doing so. It was so hard to resist those feelings, to stop their spread inside her mind before they turned her into a monster. She liked fighting, and didn’t mind killing. But she wanted to stay true to herself and to make her dreams reality. Bloodlust wouldn’t allow her that victory if she didn’t overcome it.

“I see,” Hoshihi said, licking his shoulder with application. “We teach the same to our apprentices, even though killing cats from the other clan is frowned upon. It can always happen, especially in the fire of a battle.”

“The other clan?”

“Didn’t I tell you about them before? I thought I had. The cats in your contract are only from my clan, the Hikari clan. There’s another one, the Yami clan. They share our hunting ground, the Nekomadake forest, but it’s cut in half so we don’t mix. We’re at peace for now, have been since the two contracts were created, but there are skirmishes at the border from time to time.”

“What has become of their contract, then? I’d know if someone else used giant cats in battle.”

“It’s been lost for centuries. They don’t know where it is either, I don’t think, but they seem okay with that whole situation. I’m not surprised. They’re very proud as a clan, they don’t like to serve a Lord or Lady Summoner like we do.”

“I see… Well, let’s come back to our own affairs, shall we?”

Hoshihi seemed relieved to change subjects and nodded with enthusiasm. He bent his large, ginger head over Hitomi’s notebook and suggested improvements and new ideas. Hitomi let a darkly satisfied smile bloom on her lips. She didn’t know if she was ready for what would happen the day of the tournament, but Hoshihi was doing his damned best to give her all the weapons she could ever dream of.

And then the day came. Hitomi was pale, hadn’t slept quite enough, but her face was set in a determined expression – some would even have described it as ferocious. She dressed in her battle outfit, since her kimono had been mended. She had grown and changed during that month of so-called rest, the fabric was tight around her chest and hips, but it wouldn’t be too much of a hindrance for one day. She made sure to have all her favourite arsenal on her. Hoshihi had gone back to the spiritual world to rest and gather their comrade so they could be ready to answer her call if need be.

Hitomi had pretended to have a bad feeling to explain why she prepared like this. Everyone, even Ensui, thought it had to do with her reaction to the attack on Hayate. They weren’t totally wrong, and it suited her plans that they thought both events were linked. Anyway, and maybe in hope it would reassure her, her mentor had followed her example: when he came to pick her up, he looked ready for battle, his katana at his side and the traits of dark green eyeliner drawn on his eyelids. He looked tough, dangerous, every bit the mentor she knew and loved.

They were amongst the first to arrive in the stadium. The only other people present were some shinobi and the parents of several contestants. Yoshino and Shikaku were there, in the honour tribune reserved to clan leaders from Konoha; Akimichi Chōza and his wife were there too. Ymanaka Inoichi arrived then, alone. Rumour had it that he had had a big fight with Ino’s mother. He looked tired, with dark shadows under his blue eyes and creased features.

Hitomi greeted her uncle and his allies with a smile then walked away, Ensui by her side. The clan leader’s eyes stopped on their clothes, their weapons, the severity in their features. He didn’t say anything, though. Yoshino had told him about Hitomi’s misadventure, and Inoichi had personally interrogated all the ninjas on watch that night, including ANBU Fox and Boar, but no one had seen the attacker. Shikaku didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have any satisfying answer to bring to the table despite his frustration, his anger at the idea that one of his children – he saw Hitomi as such and Kurenai as a sister – had once more been in danger inside their village, where she should have been safe and protected.

The seats filled slowly. Kiba ran to their side, Hinata walking behind slowly. The Inuzuka boy looked cheerful and eager to see Naruto avenge his teammate – more importantly, he seemed sure Naruto would win. Hitomi trusted her brother for that too. She had seen the muscle mass he had gained when he had been at the hospital. He hadn’t slacked off for a moment of his training. Had he gained the Toad Contract? He hadn’t spoken of it, but it was a giant toad that had dropped him at the hospital. Of course, as soon as he’d been cleared, Naruto had gone back to Jiraiya for more training. In truth, nothing could stop him. As for Sasuke, he hadn’t been seen once in the village for the whole month.

Gaara was the first of the contestants to arrive. He went to the tribune that was reserved for them, walking around like nothing could stop him. His siblings soon joined him and they started chatting quietly. A faint smile appeared on the jinchūriki’s lips when he met Hitomi’s eyes; he showed her his communication notebook and started to write. A moment later, her own turned cold in one of her pockets. Gaara had written a few sentences, promising her that everything would be alright, and invited her to go eat somewhere in town after the tournament. She had to pretend like she didn’t know what was going to happen, so she forced a smile on her lips and nodded in his direction. The smile on his lips grew wider, then he turned away to answer a question from Kankurō.

Carefully, she opened the cage where she kept her meridians in and took the time to feel the shinobi in the stadium. She couldn’t find Kabuto – she had been stupid enough not to open her meridians during the first stage of the exam or before the preliminaries, when he’d been close enough – but she knew he was there. There were a lot of Chūnin and Jōnin. How many were impostors? In the rows upon rows of civilians settling down, she noticed several of them who hadn’t been careful to muffle their chakra signature. Without her sickness, she couldn’t have sensed them, not with so many people around. When her head started to pound, she opened her eyes and left her Library.

Ensui’s hand was on her shoulder, warm and comforting. Kurenai wouldn’t join them: she was in the contestants’ tribune with Shino, a trustworthy and quiet lady hiding her ferocity under a polite smile. And if someone targeted her children… Hitomi had never seen her mother truly angry, but a lot of Jōnin were still talking about the time when she had almost beaten up the Hokage to obtain Naruto’s guardianship.

They talked about how well it had worked out, too.

Shiranui Genma arrived, walked to his spot out of the combat zone but still in the arena itself. All the contestants had arrived now, except for Sasuke and Kakashi, but Hitomi had expected it. The Hokage entered, then, followed by the Kazekage – Orochimaru? – and lords from the Land of Rivers and the Land of Birds. Everyone stood up in the stadium, even the civilians, then sat down after the leaders settled in the diplomatic tribune. The stadium’s doors were closed. The tournament could start.

Chapter 64: May She Protect You

Notes:

I'm so sorry for how late this chapter has been. Life is crazy right now and I've struggled to translate anything (translating is very different from writing, in my opinion). I feel better now and should be back on track with at least one chapter per week.

On another note, I'm looking for a beta reader! If you're interested and feel able to catch up quickly with what I've already translated and doesn't need any editing (which include everything up to chapter 85), add me on discord (.nyx#8151). Since this is a translation, what I need from a beta reader is mostly a copy edit check. My mistakes are mostly related to prepositions and vocabulary use, since English isn't my native language.

Hitomi surprised herself with how serene she felt, watching Naruto and Neji walk into the arena. Even before the fight started, her brother unsheathed his sword. The first thing he did when Genma gave them the “Hajime!” was to drown the whole space in clones and disappear in the black and blonde crowd. Everyone lost him, even Hitomi, even Kiba… Even Neji. The Hyūga boy didn’t let that unsettle him: he hit clone after clone to make them puff out of existence and, soon enough, the arena disappeared into a heavy blanket of white fog. Neji hadn’t yet activated his Byakugan. He probably thought he didn’t need it against such a weak opponent, the arrogant twat.

Naruto took advantage of this flaw. He hit the Hyūga in the back with the flat of his sword, pushing him so hard he made him trip, then hid himself amongst his clones again. It was the kind of move Hitomi liked and she couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear, yelling her support amongst her peers. All the Fellowship members who hadn’t made it to the tournament were supporting Naruto, and Hitomi saw enough of the contestants’ tribune to know that they were doing the same, even the Sand Sibling. Naruto had won their hearts. For now, they were the only ones in favour of the young jinchūriki. Civilians had to think they were mad, and the other ninjas as well. They didn’t care one bit.

Finally, Naruto was hit and Neji used that opportunity to talk to him. Hitomi heard the weak buzzing of his voice but, even when she focused chakra in her ears, she couldn’t distinguish words with the crowd in the stadium. She suspected, however, what the Bunke genius was telling her adopted brother. A fierce smile appeared on her lips. Neji didn’t know what was going to hit him right on the head, with all the strength of a demon and the innocent determination of its host.

Just like in the canon, Naruto was on a level playing field against Neji, but he had only been hit twice instead of a multitude of times. His dodges, his instincts, were far better than before the exam. He knew how to hide, mastered the timing of his permutations and metamorphoses perfectly. He was fierce, clever, his face a mask of intense focus, while his opponent was losing himself in waves of emotion he couldn’t control. Everyone could feel the killing intent Neji was sending in the air. Compared to Zabuza’s, it was almost laughable and Hitomi could free herself from it with just a spark of chakra but Hinata, two seats from her, started hyperventilating.

“Hey, what’s happening, Hinata?” Kiba, sitting at the other side of the girl, called out.

This attracted the attention of their neighbours, as well as Izumo’s and Kotetsu’s, who sat just in front of them. The two Chūnin who were almost always on guard duty at the Gates were well-known and popular, and they knew everyone, even the members of the Fellowship. They watched, worried, as Kiba passed Hinata to Hitomi, who handed her to Ensui. At the end of their row, Ino had casually straightened up and toyed with a kunai, a deadly serious expression on her face. Chōji too seemed ready for battle. There wasn’t any threat yet, but one of their own was wounded, vulnerable, and it was enough to prompt their vigilance.

Ensui’s hand started gleaming with the minty shade of medical chakra, then passed twice over Hinata’s chest. His brow furrowed in focus, he ordered Hitomi twice to hold her friend, who could barely breathe between two coughing fits. The Yūhi girl couldn’t help but worry, distracted despite herself as she kept an eye out for the moment when Kabuto would approach to try and steal Hinata away from them. The Whisper bloomed inside her, ready to strike. Not yet, she answered with a thought full of dark promises.

“She had a bit of internal bleeding going on, but I patched it up before it could become worrisome. I’ll have a clone take her to the hospital.”

Ensui left Hinata’s unconscious body in Hitomi’s arms as he summoned a shadow clone. The girl was relieved that she had her shishou with her. He knew what he was doing. He made the right decisions. With her friends, she watched the clone disappear in the crowd, Hinata’s frail body in his arms. She followed them up to one of the staircases leading to an aerial exit from the stadium then focused back on the fight below.

She did so just in time to see Naruto jump from underground in a move he had undoubtedly borrowed from Kakashi’s Earth Release repertoire – it wasn’t even his affinity – and knocked Neji out with a punch under the chin. She was satisfied: everything was set for Shikamaru’s future fight against Temari. Oh, he could have handled it without that, but it was nice to have trump cards.

A tender smile on her lips, she watched her brother take a lap around the arena as the whole crowd cheered, clapped and supported him. They hadn’t heard what he and Neji had told each other. All they knew was that the outsider of the tournament, the underdog, had just beaten one of its favourites. It was  such a spectacular turn of events, exactly what the audience hoped to see in this arena.

Down there, several Jōnin went back and forth, whispering together. One of them went to speak to the dignitaries in their tribune. Hitomi couldn’t help but shudder when she looked at the white ceremonial robe covering the Kazekage – or rather covering Orochimaru. She was certain of it now. She recognised his chakra, which meant the invasion would happen. She touched her sword like she would a talisman. She knew Gaara and his siblings weren’t part of the operation: there was no way he wouldn’t tell her such a terrible thing, so she could at least prepare and survive. He didn’t want her wounded or dead. That meant she wouldn’t have to chase him through the Fire Forest. She would be able to stay in the village, defend it, protect it.

But how? She didn’t have any idea about this yet, which meant improvisation was in order. Her face empty, she watched Shino and Kankurō go down. Genma had just announced that Sasuke’s fight had been moved to the last spot in the schedule. When she closed her eyes and focused, Hitomi felt a faint spark of Kakashi’s chakra. He was there, watching. If he hadn’t appeared yet, it was only because he wanted to make a dramatic entrance. She hid a smile. He was right.

The fight between Shino and Kankurō was a quick affair. No matter how skilled the Sunajin was, he couldn’t do much against an opponent who ate his chakra threads away. Shino, with his quiet strength and impassive features, left a strong impression in the audience, even if no one yelled with enthusiasm when he was announced winner. The clapping, filled with respect, was what he preferred anyway.

Shikamaru was up against Ino and won quickly, using a bit of Fire Release and mostly taijutsu. They had probably sworn off Kekkei Genkai during their match so whoever won would have surprises for Temari, and the Yamanaka heir was simply no match for a determined Shikamaru. She lost with honour though, no one could deny it.

Then Shikamaru went back, against Temari this time. Her hand on Ensui’s arm, Hitomi encouraged her cousin in silence. She wasn’t worried, not really. She knew how strong Shikamaru could be. He wouldn’t ever reduce mountains to dust with his bare hands like Sakura would one day, but it didn’t mean he was weak, quite the contrary. He would always find a way to go around the mountain without leaving any trace of his presence behind him.

He yielded when he got Temari in his shadow and at his mercy, just like in the canon. Hitomi heard Naruto scream his incredulity on the other side of the stadium, and she let out a little laugh, then exchanged a knowing look with her mentor. She had no difficulty imagining Shikaku’s expression right now. The proud and dignified clan leader would probably bang his head against a wall if it didn’t require so much effort.

And, finally, at the very last moment, Sasuke and Kakashi appeared, directly at the centre of the arena. The Konohajin civilians lost it, screaming at the top of their lungs for their champion, the heir of the clan they had once supported because, as the police, they had protected them. Gaara used a Shunshin with sand to go down as well. They gauged each other, everyone leaned towards them, Hitomi’s hands gripped her seat, and Genma spoke. “Hajime!”

They used pure taijutsu for the first few minutes. Despite all his efforts, Sasuke wouldn’t ever be as fast as Lee, far from it. Hitomi had seen her boyfriend in the crowd, next to a woman and a little girl who both looked a lot like him. She knew he still had family but hadn’t met them yet. Maybe she would be able to, once everything related to the exam was over.

Gaara moved in an explosion of sand that made warm wind blow over the seats, and Sasuke disappeared from sight for a second. Hitomi could only follow him through his chakra. He was sticking something on the arena’s walls… seals, she realised with a rush of adrenaline. What had she given him, exactly? Normal bombs, flash bombs, smoke bombs. Which one would he use? She shivered in excitement…

… and then remembered what she had been on the lookout for when a white feather, so soft-looking, floated in front of her eyes. For a second, she lost herself, tried to catch it… then brutally broke the illusion and went back to her senses. Next to her, Ensui was already searching for the origin of the threat, but Kiba had slumped on his seat, sound asleep. She freed him with a spark of her chakra, a hand on his mouth to keep him silent and still. Akamaru, anxious, let out a high little whimper.

“Don’t move,” she whispered in the Inuzuka’s ear. “Pretend you’re asleep, I’ll check on Chōji.” She was so little, so frail, that she didn’t have any difficulty falling to the ground and sneaking between Kiba’s legs to reach her Akimichi friend. She repeated the operation, then found Ino awake and absolutely pissed off. In front of them, Izumo and Kotetsu were looking for the enemy as well.

“Hitomi,” Ensui whispered, “send a clone metamorphosed into an insect at the other side of the stadium and wake up the contestants if they are touched by the illusion. We have to discover who…”

An explosion of smoke cut him in his tracks. The diplomatic tribune disappeared in a heavy blanket of black mist, then the Kazekage sprang out of it, holding the Hokage by the collar of his ceremonial white robes, a kunai to his throat. Hitomi clenched her jaw and breathed in and out once, as deep as she could. There she was. All the tension from the previous weeks didn’t need to weigh her down anymore; only the drive to step forward, to survive and protect mattered now.

“Hitomi!” Ensui called tersely.

“Yes, shishou.” She formed the Cross Hand Seal, her movements sure and firm, and a perfect replica of herself appeared next to her, crouching between Ensui’s feet and the seat in front of him. The clone nodded, changed into a ladybug and started crawling to the other side of the arena. Soon enough, Hitomi lost sight of it. “What now, shishou?”

“Once as many of your comrades as possible are awake, you’ll deploy in Konoha and evaluate the situation. You’ll go where you’re most needed. Try the hospital first, it’s gonna be one of the prime targets if Sunagakure and Otogakure are really invading right now.”

Down in the arena, dark shapes were fighting. Hitomi recognised Kakashi, Genma, Gai and Sasuke, but not the opponents they were fighting again, all identical with their masks and uniforms from the Village Hidden in the Sound. Ensui’s orders spread quickly to her closest friends. On the other side of her perceptions, she felt her clone wake Naruto up. Everything was going smoothly so far.

The only problem was that she would have to move soon so she could leave the stadium and, as soon as she did, she’d turn into a target. She had to risk it, though. Nodding to her shishou as he rushed to help a group from ANBU, she decided it was time. She took the lead of her group of friends and guided them through the rows of seats, trying to stay hidden and as discreet as possible. It worked for almost ten metres, then an Otojin shinobi spotted them.

“You won’t leave this place, brats,” he spat.

“Wanna bet?” she challenged with a fierce smile.

She unsheathed her sword as Kiba tensed behind her, ready to attack. She signalled for him to stay back: the ninja in front of them was barely more than a Genin, or maybe a Chūnin freshly promoted. She could see it in his way of standing, of moving. She met him in a clash of energy and steel, her blade hurting the kunai he had barely had time to raise in defence. The Whisper sang in her ears, pushing her to smile in a vaguely cruel manner. She just had to touch the boy’s shadow, to make him move his hand, and she had an opening. He fell, three stab wounds on his chest, and Hitomi stepped back and wiped her blade on her sleeve, her face an expressionless mask. “We continue,” she ordered.

Her friends obeyed. They didn’t meet any resistance until they reached the arena itself. Talk of their mission had to have spread through the Jōnin: Hitomi saw Asuma take on three shinobi who had been running towards them, a fierce expression on his handsome features. She wouldn’t have liked to fight him right now, not when his own father was missing, last seen with a kunai to his throat.

They were almost out of the stadium when problems came in the form of eight shinobi, probably tasked with keeping the spectators inside. With a heavy sigh, Hitomi sliced her thumb open and summoned all her cats. The older five were ready to fight, their hackles rising on their necks and a hiss in their throats. As for Hai, she stood next to Hitomi’s feet, looking at the eight men and women with wide, apprehensive blue eyes.

Hitomi opened her mouth to give the command, but she didn’t have time to speak before a huge wave of sand jumped above her group and collided against the Otojin, crushing them mercilessly. She turned around: Gaara was running towards them, his siblings and the rest of the contestants in tow. Lee was there, but Sasuke had stayed in the stadium with Kakashi. A sign of her hand and Ino, Chōji and Kiba relaxed, welcoming the foreign ninjas like the allies they were.

“Hitomi, what’s happening?” Naruto asked.

“Sunagakure and Otogakure betrayed the truce,” she told him, her voice devoid of any feeling. “Otogakure is Orochimaru’s village. That man is the one who attacked us in the Forest of Death. Today, it was his chakra I felt under the Kazekage’s ceremonial robes.”

“What do you mean?” Kankurō asked, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. This wasn’t the worry a soldier felt for his war chief, but the one a son felt for his father. A cruel, distant, ruthless father, but a father nonetheless.

Hitomi shook her head. “The Kazekage isn’t here. I don’t know his chakra, but I’d recognise Orochimaru’s everywhere. It changes, he did something weird to it, but it still has the same, sickening core. Besides, your father has three affinities, right? Wind, earth and lightning. The man in those robes only had wind. I never felt Rasa-sama’s chakra so I can’t be a hundred percent certain, but the chakra’s nature alone tell me it can’t be him.”

“In that case,” Gaara said in a firm tone, “we won’t be part of this attack. Baki-sensei has already joined your teachers to help them. He’s ready to turn rogue if necessary. He lost his wife and daughter to the last war. He ordered us to support you in any way possible. We’ll turn rogue with him if we have to.”

Hitomi looked at her friend for a long moment. He wanted to become Kazekage. Turning rogue would crush his dream. When he squared his shoulders, daring her to refuse the help, she softened. “We’re going to the hospital to defend it, if it’s under attack. I don’t doubt for one moment that it is. Orochimaru has always been fascinated by the darker aspects of medicine and he needs test subjects for his jutsus. He’ll find interesting things over there.”

As she relayed the rest of her instructions, she left the building, the others in tow. She looked around. Civilians were quietly walking to the shelters, escorted by General Forces and several ANBU. Would they be out of the way quickly enough? She could only pray that they would. Then the gigantic red cube above the building in front of the stadium attracted her eyes. A rush of adrenalin went through her system. She knew what she was going to do.

“Hai-chan, you come with me,” she ordered in a firm voice. “The others, you go to the hospital. I’ll join you as soon as I’m done here.”

“What are you going to do?” Shikamaru asked.

“Break that barrier. It’s a seal and I’m the only one to know my way around those. It’s very probable that the Hokage is stuck inside, so… Shikamaru, you’re team leader. While I’m away, you act as I would.”

The two cousins exchanged a meaningful look. They had played shōgi so many times together, had spared countless times, that their mind could function as one, even when they were separated.

“May the Will of Fire protect you,” he whispered, solemn.

“May She protect you,” she answered before walking away, the little dark grey cat behind her. She stopped in the shadow of another building when she spotted the shinobi guarding the one she needed to reach. She had to go through them. Putting her hand on Hai’s back, she took her in her arms and started whispering her instructions to her ear. The cat nodded, then mingled in the shadows as soon as Hitomi let her go. She reached the four men standing near the wall she wanted to use, as delicate and subtle as the lightest breeze. The men relaxed as soon as she brushed her tail against their naked heels – those ridiculous boots again.

Their faces turned amazed, almost in a childlike manner. Hitomi didn’t know what their brain was showing them. She only hoped, for the sake of their souls, that it was a good dream. She sliced their hands open one by one to steal their chakra until they fell dead at her feet. Their energy was now burning and buzzing in her Gates like lava. She wanted to scream, to sob. She didn’t have such  luxury, so she brushed the pain away.

It took her two whole minutes to climb the building without getting seen, Hai’s claws sinking in the back of her kimono to follow and watch her blind spot. She left the feline behind a statue of a roaring dragon and crawled to the next one, hiding in its shadow. Right in her line of sight was Tayuya, her hands on a seal drawn directly on the roof so she could keep it active. Hitomi watched her carefully, weighing her options. The girl had to die: she was the weakest of the Otojin Quartet in direct combat, and without her the barrier couldn’t be maintained. But she was far away, and Hitomi was hiding behind the last piece of architecture that could possibly shield her from her enemy’s eyes.

She breathed deeply, part of her mind in her Library. She had read a lot of technique scrolls collected on the Uchiha lands during the last month. It was as if a whole eternity had happened between the day she had explored the place with her brothers and now. The scroll she had favoured had been written by Senju Tobirama himself and described the Shunshin, one of the many techniques he had invented. It explained how it worked and how to use it. Hitomi knew all this theoretical stuff, she could recite it word for word, and she had the chakra to try it. Her reserves felt like they would burst any moment.

Slowly, her right hand formed half of the Tiger Hand Seal, all her willpower focused on the destination she wanted to reach, behind Tayuya’s back. She felt a tremor in her chakra but didn’t move. She inhaled, exhaled, and tried again. Once, twice, thrice. At ground level, civilians had started to die screaming, crying, pleading to  merciless attackers to let them live. She had to act. Cold sweat trickled down her neck. Someone screamed at the foot of the building. She focused, commanded her chakra.

And disappeared.

She reappeared exactly where she had wanted. She felt dizzy and disoriented, but she didn’t let that affect her. Her right hand wrapped around Tayuya’s long hair, yanked her head back, and she sliced her throat open with her blade. The kunoichi collapsed with a surprised gurgle. Their eyes met for a moment, Hitomi’s icy and determined, the other girl’s frightened and dumbfounded. She didn’t want to die, she was afraid to die. Hitomi didn’t give her any chance to fight back and maybe she would regret it later. With a jolt, she drove her fingers in the wound she had inflicted upon her target, covering them in blood, and stole all the chakra left in the already dying body.

She didn’t give time to the other three of the Quartet to understand why the barrier was failing; she shunshined away on another roof, four houses to the left, where a pair of ANBU were finishing their opponents. There were only two, but it would have to be enough. She shoved a Sunajin away, planting his own kunai in his thigh. Two Shunshin in a row seemed to be her limit for now: the nausea and dizziness were so bad she had to rely on her meridians and the Whisper to keep fighting.

“The barrier that was holding the Hokage prisoner just fell,” she informed the ANBU as soon as they were done. “Send clones to warn your peers and go help him.”

She didn’t wait for them to answer before running to the edge of the roof and jumping down to the street and the fights that were still happening there. Hai still firmly hanging onto her back, she swiped a Sunajin’s feet as he walked backwards to her, letting his original opponent stab him to death. She didn’t even look at the face of the person she had helped kill, diving under another enemy’s arm. She was at the core of the battle, probably because all the moles in the village had waited to see the barrier as a signal that the invasion had started.

She hissed in pain when an Otojin sliced her upper arm open. Taken by surprised, she raised her other arm, the one holding her tantō, to try to parry a kunai running to her throat, but she could see it was too late – something connected somewhere between her mind and body and she went flying backwards without anything to propel her, as if she had just jumped. The hold on her disappeared and she turned her head.

Ensui.

He looked pissed, deadly, his unsheathed katana covered in red. With a groan, he twisted his body, beheaded a woman who had tried to attack him from behind, then straightened up. There was a storm in his dark grey eyes, more piercing than ever. With his free hand, he grabbed Hitomi’s arm and yanked her out of the way of two ninjas trying to make a pincer attack on her. It was chaos, and the Whisper sang its exaltation under her skin.

“What are you doing here, Hitomi? Where are the others?”

“I sent them to the hospital just like you asked, shishou, but I stayed behind when I saw the barrier that was trapping Hokage-sama with Orochimaru. I killed one of the ninjas who was keeping it active.”

“Fūinjutsu?”

She dropped down and Ensui’s blade whistled above her head, cutting another anonymous shinobi’s throat open. She pushed the body away with a shove of her shoulder. “Yes, shishou. I wouldn’t have disobeyed if it wasn’t.”

Pressed by another wave of attackers, they had to stand back to back. Hitomi, at another time, would have been touched that her master trusted her with his blind spot. She didn’t have time for that now, however. She was far too busy killing again and again to feel anything. It was just so easy, the natural order of things.

“I understand,” he sighed without looking at her. “At the first opening, you’ll run to the hospital. With you near me, I can’t use my most efficient techniques. Get ready.”

“I-I can use the Shunshin, shishou.”

The nausea was gone and so was the dizziness, or she’d be dead by now. She could only thank the shinobi’s natural good constitution for that little blessing.

“Really? We’ll talk about testing techniques without supervision later, young lady. For now, it’s gonna make things easier. See that red sign, after the crossroad? At my signal, you shunshin there, then you run. Don’t look back, Hitomi. I’m serious.”

“P-promise, shishou.” She pushed down any desire to protest, to pretend she could be useful, help him. She was already wounded, no matter how superficial it was, and she was far from a match for his own skill. As he had said, her presence forced him to hold back. She gathered her chakra, her willpower, parried a blow to her throat, cut the hand that had attempted it, and waited.

“Now!”

In a second, she disappeared. She distinctly felt Ensui’s chakra explode where she had been standing. Around him, the enemy shinobi started screaming, crying, dying. Konoha’s Strangling Shadow had risen once more. A dark smile twisted her lips and she ran, exactly as she’d been told. This time, she didn’t let anything distract her from her target, not even the cornered civilians defended by a line of exhausted shinobi. She had a mission. Her other comrades, the ones who had regained strength as soon as the Hokage had been freed from the barrier, seemed to understand. They made sure to keep their opponents away from her.

The roof of the hospital had been half-torn from the rest of the building. It was the first thing she noticed; she had always thought that construction sturdy, really sturdy. Seeing it damaged in that way… it hurt. She hoped Sakura was okay. Maybe… Maybe she wasn’t working today. Without focusing on the anxious knot in her stomach, she hurled herself on a team that was approaching the entrance. Otogakure again.

She shunshined in the middle of their group and in one second the two before her fell, one with her throat slit, the other with his neck broken by the Water Whip in her right hand. The two who were still alive shook themselves from their stupor and moved to attack, but she was already catching their shadow. Her own chakra reserves were still untouched; she was using what the Whisper had given her first to make the pressure tearing at her Gate go away.

“Yield and let me capture you or you’ll die too. Your hands are empty. Look at mine.”

She tilted the sword and whip in her hands, still covered in their teammates blood, and saw the terror in their eyes. Those shinobi didn’t bear the Cursed Seal and the brainwashing that came with it. She growled, saw them tense, fighting against her shadow. She wasn’t Shikamaru. She didn’t have his intimate understanding and incredible precision with their Kekkei Genkai. And yet she knew plenty enough. Killing intent bloomed on her skin like a poisonous flower, making her seem taller, stronger, deadlier.

“I-I yield!” the soldier to her right said. The other one quickly followed, all his bravery evaporated at the same time as his teammate’s. She nodded, satisfied. A few mudras and a water clone appeared next to her then went to tie her opponents up. She made sure to bind them in a way that would stop them from using mudras or even attempt to escape. Once she was sure they were out of commission, she entered the hospital, hid them in the first cupboard she saw, and went to look for her friends.

She hoped they were all still alive.

Chapter 65: Have No Mercy

Hitomi walked through the hall, her steps strong and steady. As far as her hearing went, the ground floor was totally silent, but this was only the administrative part of the hospital: it didn’t hold any interest for Orochimaru and his troops. She walked past the body of a nurse with her neck so deeply cut she could see the white of bone. Further, she noticed one of Ino’s kunai – they all had a red handle – two insects that looked like Shino’s and a bit of sand, probably from Gaara’s gourd. She pushed the worry down, so only hope remained. Her friends were strong, every one of them.

As she ran up the stairs, she heard people fighting. She only needed a moment to find the origin of it by listening to her meridians rather than her ears, and one more to arrive there. She threw two kunai with her free hand as soon as she noticed an Otojin uniform, without pause. One hit a man in the shoulder, the other his thigh. His cry of pain attracted the dozen of enemies’ focus on her – as well as her friends’, from where they were standing, barring the Otojin from advancing further into the corridor.

They all looked okay, even though Chōji was very pale. Shino had a cut on his cheek; his insects crawled on his skin as if they tried to mend it. Hitomi greeted them with a fierce smile and helped them finish their opponents with six water clones to cut their retreat. When they recognised the scent and chakra of their summoner, her cats united their voices in a warrior cry, exalted to have her back. A few minutes later, the only ninja left alive surrendered. Kankurō tied him up and locked him in an empty cupboard.

“What’s the situation?” Hitomi asked Shikamaru.

“We had to fight our way in. We got rid of an Otojin team downstairs and captured a Sunajin team that surrendered when they saw Gaara.”

The girl nodded. She had expected as much. Gaara was a prince for Sunagakure. A seemingly terrible, dangerous, fearsome prince, but a prince nonetheless.

“Then, we helped two people from ANBU who were evacuating the east wing, with success. We have to do the same with the west wing now, but without the ANBU. As you can see, it’s harder. There are other teams in the upper floors, but only General Forces.” The Nara heir couldn’t quite conceal the twinge of condescendence in his voice as he evoked the eternal Genin of the village, but Hitomi didn’t berate him for it. She had to admit it herself: the difference in skills and strength between those Genin with Jōnin-sensei and without was ridiculous. A lot of the General Forces were going to die today. They couldn’t do anything against Chūnin and Jōnin, or even against trained Genin.

“Very well. We finish with this floor then we go to the next then, and all the way up to the roof. When we’re done with the hospital, if the invasion hasn’t been repressed yet, we’re going to the Torture and Intelligence department. The prisoners are probably trying to escape, or someone will have attempted to help them out.”

“Yes, taichō,” Shikamaru said with a slight nod. With those words, that gesture, he gave her the lead back. They found two teams, one Sunajin and one Otojin, trying to force their way inside a bedroom. Behind the door, Hitomi heard frightened whispers. Most patients in the hospital were civilians, but even they knew what to do in case of emergency, so they wouldn’t be in the way of the ninjas tasked with defending them.

Hitomi opened the hostilities by capturing the shadow of a Sunajin ninja who was going to throw himself at the door once more. When he froze, all the enemies turned to face her group. “What about harassing people who can actually fight back, you pieces of shit?” As if she was one to talk. There was no Jōnin in that group, and mere Chūnin against Gaara… She didn’t even have to break a sweat, the Otojin team was already drowning in sand while a Sunajin man pleaded with her friend.

“Gaara-sama, your father’s orders…”

“My father wouldn’t be stupid enough to put his alliance with Konoha at risk,” the jinchūriki drawled. “Did you at least check if it was him?”

As the Sunajin men froze, dumbfounded, Hitomi hid an affectionate smile. Gaara… Gaara had no proof of what he was saying. He didn’t know his father, not really, and he wasn’t yet interested in his village’s politics – that was more of Temari’s field. The only thing he supported his claim with was her words. This was just another way he trusted her – she would have hugged him if they didn’t have an invasion going on around them.

“On Baki-sensei’s order, spread the word amongst our ranks. The man who presented himself as our Kazekage-sama is an impostor. He may have been impersonating my father for months now. You’ll attack any Otojin team you find on sight. The ones you can capture, you’ll temporarily lock them in Konohajin cells. The ones who die… Leave them where they fell. Show no mercy.”

“Y-yes, Gaara-sama!”

And just like that, the Sunajin team left, invested with a mission they could actually support with all their heart. Would it really be that simple? By flipping Sunagakure to Konoha’s side again, they had eliminated any chance Otogakure had in this invasion. Hitomi snickered internally when she imagined Orochimaru’s face. It would teach him to be a disgusting asshole. Her thoughts wandered to the Hokage. Had he survived? Killed Orochimaru, maybe? She couldn’t help but hope he had, on both accounts, despite her lack of respect for the man – she was her master’s apprentice, after all. But if he had survived, she had to plan. Tsunade had to become Hokage. The village needed her.

Hitomi knocked on the door and gave the emergency code all Konohajin learned in their childhood. The wooden panel opened, and Hitomi was surprised to see Karin in a defensive position, her chakra vigorous and ready to strike. She was still weak, which explained why the Yūhi hadn’t sensed her. She had decided to protect the patients, when it wasn’t her duty or anything? Now that would help her become a ward of the village. Konoha liked bravery and abnegation.

“We’re going to evacuate you,” Hitomi said as she stepped out of the room to give them space. “Squeeze together as much as possible so the front and backline can coordinate. Gaara, Kiba, Shino, you come with me in front. Naruto and Hoshihi too. The others, to the back. My ninja cats will bring up the rear and warn us if enemies come from behind.”

She waited a few minutes for everyone to get organised, then took the lead again in a tense silence. They could hear fighting coming from the upper floors, but their own seemed deserted: Akamaru didn’t smell anything except from their group, apparently. Hitomi’s heart thundered in her chest, and yet she was more at peace than she had ever been, her thoughts clearer than ever.

Nothing stopped them as they got back to the ground floor. As the civilians rushed to the secret passage that would lead them to one of the emergency hideouts, the shinobi stood watch, but no enemy came. As she breathed in deeply, Hitomi opened up to her meridians and tried to evaluate the situation. People were still fighting outside. In the hospital too, but the Konohajin ninjas seemed to handle it. Still, they went to help, one floor after the other.

“Are you sure you don’t need us anymore here?” she asked ANBU Boar as she wiped her blade clean on her last opponent’s pants. She had found him on the fifth floor. He was alone to defend a whole troop of civilians and his hands were shaking with exhaustion when Hitomi had stepped in, slamming against the three enemy units like a fury. She hadn’t shown any mercy, protected as she was by Gaara’s sand. She was, once more, filled to the brim with chakra to the point of wanting to scream, but she feared she’d need all that energy soon enough.

“I’m sure, Yūhi-san. Take your comrades to the prison to reinforce their defence and stop the prisoners from escaping, if no new order is given on site. In any case, this is an A-ranked mission. Treat it as such and don’t die, kids.”

“Don’t worry about us, Boar-san, this is not my first A-ranked mission. May the Will of Fire protect you.”

“May She protect you all,” he answered, his voice almost soft. A moment later, he was already turning away and leading his group to the ground floor. Hitomi inspected Chōji’s wounds. He had been caught in an enemy jutsu and his right arm was torn, bloody. She tried to patch him up with the Mystical Palm, but she was so saturated in chakra that the result was mediocre at best.

“Go with Boar in the refuge,” she sighed after inspecting her work. “There, try to find Uzumaki Karin, tell her I sent you and you need this looked at. Stay there afterwards and protect them. You did good here, Chōji.”

“O-okay,” her friend stammered, his voice weak and distant.

Suddenly, Hitomi realised most of her friends had killed for the first time today. She didn’t really care anymore about the act itself and executed her opponents one after the other without the slightest hesitation. She knew her mind would struggle, but only later. In the Forest of Death, she hadn’t felt anything either before some time had passed and she was relatively safe. She had learned to temporise, to lock the doubts, fear and disgust away, where her conscious thoughts couldn’t go, but that faint blessing wouldn’t last long.

“Ino, your dad works at the prison, right?”

The blonde girl toyed with the grip of a kunai. “Yeah. I hope he’s okay…”

“I’m sure he is. Do you know about their security protocols in cases like this?”

“Only some of them. I know there’s a confinement seal that has to be activated by the staff in case of an attack or escape attempt, but it’s not the only protocol in place, and it can be broken.”

“Alright, we’re gonna assess the situation once we get there, then. Let’s get moving! Hoshihi, Kurokumo, to the front with Kiba and Akamaru. Gaara, Naruto and I then. Shino, Ino, Shikamaru, with Lee, Temari, Kankurō and the other cats to bring up the rear. Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah!”

“Then let’s go.”

Several times, they had to go around fights. This time, they couldn’t stop, even to help fellow Konohajin in difficult situations. They all knew what kind of prisoners the cells in the Torture and Intelligence department held. If they were freed or ended up in enemies’ hands… It would be a disaster. Sometimes, the welfare of the whole village required one to look the other way. Naruto had a hard time doing it, but he was surrounded by Gaara and Hitomi, who didn’t allow him to slow down or go off course.

An explosion shook the ground when they walked past the last corner before the prison and Intelligence department, the two buildings standing together, apart from the rest of the street. A house that was already half-destroyed collapsed completely. Hitomi took the time to hope no one was inside then looked to the explosion site. The west wall of the prison had blown up and five ANBU had been thrown out, their bodies as limp as chiffon dolls. Dead, or almost dead.

The Genin didn’t wait for Hitomi’s orders to spread in an arc and dive to the wall. Hoshihi stopped a prisoner by hurling himself at him, his fangs to his throat. The man collapsed, gurgling and bleeding out, but Hitomi already had to focus on her own fights. She parried a hit, dodged another, and projected a wave of killing intent to buy some space around herself. She was tired, hurt from head to toe thanks to the chakra running through her body, her muscles, her organs. She had to burn it before it burned her, quick.

“Ninpō: Shadow Clone!”

Naruto’s yell made her smile fiercely. She imitated him, creating six copies of herself, and already she felt better. Her movements turned fluid again, her brain cleared up. There was a terrible, anguished scream behind her: Hai, perched on her mentor’s shoulders, had gotten to work. If she judged by the furious gleam in her pale blue eyes, this time she wasn’t showing her targets dreams of halcyon days. Cats were extremely territorial, after all.

“Ino, what are you doing here?”

“Dad! We were ordered to come and help you!” The Yamanaka girl looked ready to cry with relief. Hitomi would have probably felt the same in her place. Fortunately, she knew where her mother, her mentor, her teacher, and her brothers were. They weren’t alone, weren’t isolated, and could count on one another. She wrapped her water whip around the leg of a prisoner and yanked before she stabbed him in the chest. No mercy.

“We can’t stop them from pouring out the cells with that destroyed wall, and none of us has a strong enough earth affinity to close it,” the clan leader said.

The teenagers stared at the gaping hole in the wall. Even Gaara didn’t have enough sand to seal it shut.

“What do we do, then?” Kankurō asked.

Next to Hitomi, Ino paled. She knew the answer to this question, but it was her father who put it into words. “We kill them all. The prisoners locked up in this prison had value alive, but we can’t let them escape. Don’t hold back, because they certainly won’t.”

“Understood,” Hitomi replied for all of them. She dodged a blade that would have cut her belly open and engaged in a fight of pure kenjutsu against one of the prisoners. She made sure not to think about the legitimate owner of the katana he was wielding in his hands; that person was probably somewhere inside, cold and still. She didn’t have time to spare thoughts for the dead if she wanted to live to see another day. The man she was fighting was stronger, faster, but he was no match for Ensui and Yoshino, the sparring partner who had turned dodging into second nature for her. Soon, her shadow came alive and mingled with her opponent’s, forcing him to open his arms wide. Kurokumo took the opportunity and tore his throat open as his summoner found herself a new prey.

It took them almost twenty minutes to get the situation under control: the prisoners had been kept, until then, in a carefully controlled state of weakness through various deprivations, but there was a desperate, feral gleam in their eyes. They would get out or die trying. Staying meant more torture, isolation, and even with a devastated mind, they could still make a choice – choose death.

The Whisper exulted in Hitomi’s head, filling her ears with a deep buzzing. The invasion had started more than two hours ago and, since then, it hadn’t stopped singing for even a moment. The girl would have prostrated herself at Kibaki’s feet for forcing her to work on the control she had over her Kekkei Genkai. Even now, she had stolen her enemies’ chakra as a reflex, far beyond what her body could hold without pain. Her fighting style was affected, despite her focus and efforts into spending as much chakra as she could without damaging her meridians.

Behind her, Shikamaru and Kankurō were fighting together. They hadn’t gotten along so well before the exam but, now, some sense of camaraderie seemed to have bloomed between the two, reinforced by the countless times they saved each other’s lives. The Sunajin didn’t have much chakra left to manipulate his puppets after his fight with Shino in the tournament, but he was very good at taijutsu and had several D-ranked Wind Release techniques under his belt. Combined with his sister’s, they became deadly.

“We’re done here,” Inoichi said as he finished an agonising prisoner in a nonchalant gesture. “Kiba-kun, what is the situation in the rest of the village?”

The boy closed his eyes and breathed in deep and slow, his mouth open so as to capture a maximum of scents. Next to him, Akamaru, still giant and red from an Inuzuka military pill, did the same. He was temporarily as big as Hoshihi, busy licking a wound on his shoulder, but seemed far bigger with all his scarlet fur.

“Hum… Looks like the last fights are ending. It’s hard to say, but I’d assess that most forces from Otogakure and Sunagakure have either been killed or pushed back. There’s still a bit of a commotion near the school, but the students didn’t have class today.”

No, they had all been in the stadium to watch the tournament, imagining themselves down there in a few years. Hitomi couldn’t help but think about Shino’s baby brother, so innocent and pure, who had yelled in support and approval when his elder had won his fight. Had he found refuge in time? Was he injured? She shook her head and forced herself to think about something else. She would have time to cry over the dead later, no matter their names or numbers.

“Very well,” Inoichi said, seemingly relaxing. “You fought very well, children. I’m going to escort you to the closest refuge. Get patched up, help around as you can, start writing your reports if you can. There’s going to be a lot of chaos in the days to come. Your recounts of the situation will be precious.”

The teenagers obeyed in silence, squeezing together behind the adult, who stood in front of them like a shield despite his own very perceptible exhaustion. Hitomi’s cats gathered around her. Hoshihi and Sunaarashi were both wounded; the injuries weren’t serious, but she wanted to have them see Inuzuka Hana later, if possible. The young sand-pelted she-cat was limping heavily against her brother Hokori, who looked shaken by everything he had seen. Hitomi petted his head and scratched him behind the ear, his favourite spot. “You fought well, all six of you. I’m very proud of you.”

“Did you see how I slammed against the woman with the spear?” Haīro piped up. “She stood no chance against me.”

The laugh that escaped Hitomi’s lips quivered ever-so-slightly. None of these prisoners had stood a chance, but it was because their chakra had been bound and their bodies weakened by hunger, thirst, and inaction. In other circumstances… She had recognised an Iwajin Chūnin amongst the bodies, a man renowned for his usage of a Wind Release technique that could cut through bones. If he had been in any shape to fight, none of her friends, nor herself, would have survived the encounter.

They stopped for a moment at an intersection, looking at the devastation around them. A giant snake had turned a bakery and the building next to it to rubble, its big glossy eyes seeing nothing anymore. She couldn’t even see what had managed to kill it – and how many had died in that fight. As they walked around it to follow Inoichi, she saw what looked like a body torn in half between some boulders. She had to pinch her lips together to push down the acrid bile rising in her chest.

Adrenalin was starting to leave her body, allowing her wounds and abused muscles to burn and ache. As she looked around, she realised that, except for Gaara and Naruto, the others were in the same situation. Her adopted brother was pale, furious, broken-hearted, but he didn’t have a scratch on him or the Kyūbi had already healed them for him. Shikamaru was supporting Temari who limped on a bleeding leg, one of her blonde ponytails untied. Despite the circumstances, the two girls exchanged a smile.

They arrived at the hideout and found it overcrowded. The ANBU on watch groaned when they saw their group arrive but let them in, and became far more amicable when they heard about Hitomi’s and Ino’s medical skills. They didn’t have any medic in their group, only a civilian neurosurgeon who couldn’t use chakra and hadn’t mended cuts and broken bones in years. In silence, the two girls got to work as Gaara decided to stand watch with the members of ANBU.

“Lady Summoner, do you want us to go? Doesn’t look like you need us anymore here.”

She didn’t answer Kurokumo’s question right away, focused as she was on the mean-looking cut on a little girl’s arm. She had to work slowly so her chakra would follow her instructions, so tense she felt cold sweat trickle down her back, but each wound she healed made it easier, either because she was growing accustomed to the pressure in her Gates or because it slowly went away.

“The ones who aren’t wounded can go, yes,” she said after wiping away the child’s tears and giving her a hug and a kiss on the forehead. “Hoshihi, Sunaarashi, I can take you to Inuzuka Hana later to see if she’s available.”

The two cats nodded and laid at her feet, ready to pounce despite their apparent nonchalance. Even if the attack seemed to be mostly over, they probably wouldn’t relax before they were sure. With the sweetest of her smiles, Hitomi promised the little girl that she was as good as new and bowed when the mother thanked her before gesturing for her next patient to approach.

There were many wounds she couldn’t treat: perforated lungs, wounds to the head that made the skull apparent, broken bones. Those, she sent to Ino, who had much better skills in that field. The Yamanaka girl was able to beam at her patients and hide her exhaustion, where Hitomi felt her temper turn shorter as time passed and she was less able to ignore her own aches. The only people she could still treat easily were the children.

A team came to announce that the village was clear an hour and a half later. Hitomi’s chakra reserves were back to a comfortable level and the burning sensation had started to disappear. Without a word, she joined Lee and took his hand. She hadn’t had time to focus on him during the whole attack; she knew he could handle his own. However, seeing him almost unscathed now felt good.

“How are you?” he asked gently.

“I’m not sure yet. I-I want to see Mom and Ensui-shishou, and Sasuke, and Kakashi-sensei. I know they are strong and they’re probably alright but… I’d like to see it.”

“That’s normal. My mom and baby sister are in one of the hideouts below the stadium. I saw them get in before I left. I don’t think anyone forced their way there, but…”

“Yeah. We can never be a hundred percent sure.”

Hand in hand, the two teenagers left the hideout. Outside, the sun was starting to set. Hitomi felt like she had started fighting centuries ago. She had been careful to keep track of the time so she wouldn’t feel lost in time. Her mind wanted to make her believe that she had killed her last opponent just a second ago and broken the fūinjutsu barrier an eternity earlier. That distortion would have frightened her if she hadn’t had facts to support her mind.

“Your clan has protocols in place for emergencies, right?”

“Hm… there’s a registry I’ll have to sign as I enter the lands, so our administrators know who’s missing. Some will be in the hospital. Some won’t.”

Silence weighed on them for a few seconds. Hitomi looked up into Lee’s eyes. The heavy meaning of her last sentence made her feel vulnerable; she wanted to flee, to deny, to hide somewhere to forget and be forgotten.

Some would come home. Some wouldn’t.

Chapter 66: After the Storm

Sasuke was the first to come back. Hitomi and Shikamaru were waiting in the kitchen, their hands wrapped around their cups of tea, a shōgi board between them. All the others had gotten home to see if their families were okay, and Naruto had joined Karin to make sure everything was alright at the hideout linked to the hospital. Several hideouts had been discovered by the enemy: just before the gates to the Nara lands, a secret door had been torn away from its hinges and the body of one of the ninjas assigned to the defence of the civilians hiding inside was visible in the gaping opening. He looked peaceful, as if he had died in his sleep. The two Nara had huddled together when they’d seen him, both trying very hard not to think about the other hideouts.

When she heard footsteps outside, Hitomi jumped on her feet so hard her chair got knocked over. This kind of clumsiness was rare coming from her. She exchanged a hopeful look with Shikamaru. They had lit all the lights in the house and made sure to send their chakra in the air despite their exhaustion so all shinobi walking around with the slightest sensor skill would know they were there, they were home. Twisting her hands with worry, Hitomi went to wait by the entrance. She couldn’t totally muffle a sob when she saw her adopted brother walk in, seemingly unharmed.

He looked surprised and relieved to see her there. They stared at each other for a few seconds, at a loss for words. “I’m home,” Sasuke whispered after a moment.

“Welcome home,” she answered, her voice maybe a bit choked. She watched as he removed his shoes covered in crusted blood and put on slippers. He walked over the genkan and opened his arms with a faint smile. Immediately, she went to hug him and breathed his scent under the blood, smoke and death sticking to his skin like a shirt two sizes too tight. After just a second of stillness, he wrapped his arms around her.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he sighed close to her ear.

“I was sure no one could land a hit on you.”

They both knew it was a lie. Orochimaru wasn’t the only outrageously powerful shinobi in this world, or even in the Otojin forces. The Sannin’s experiments were famous in the Elemental Nations, just as famous as the products of these experiments were. If Jūgo had been part of the attack, or even Kimimaro who could probably still walk and push himself… The number of casualties would have probably doubled.

Soon, Shikamaru joined them and they decided to forget the kitchen and settle in the living-room instead after they made a cup of tea for the young Uchiha. He looked exhausted, heavy shadows under his eyes. His limbs were twitching, probably because of his almost empty chakra reserves. Dry blood was making his hair stick to his head – in fact, he was almost covered from head to toe in the stuff. Hitomi didn’t seem able to walk away from her brother, so Shikamaru was the one to go in the teenager’s room to fetch clean clothes for him. Sasuke changed in front of them without any shame – they were beyond that, and constantly watching each other seemed so much more important than a bit of skin.

“How was it for you?” the Uchiha asked.

Hitomi didn’t want to tell the tale, but she understood his need to know, because she felt just the same. She didn’t flinch away from the numerous deaths at her hands, went over her mastery of the Shunshin without showing any emotion, even though only Chūnin and Jōnin could use that technique usually. She told him about the hospital and the prison. Her voice only started quivering when she told him about what she saw afterwards. The destruction, the dozens of dead bodies she sometimes had to walk around or over, the children with broken limbs and unrecognisable faces.

Sasuke listened carefully, his body perfectly still. Hitomi didn’t need him to nod or speak, only to listen, to know before she shut down, to prepare her for the report she’d have to write and hand out once her hands stopped shaking and her ears stopped buzzing. She wanted to curl up and disappear, but it was only a distant echo in her Library, a caress on the weakest parts of her mind. She couldn’t quite ignore it, but she was still able to function.

“What about you?” she asked when she was done. Her voice was shaking – by asking about him, she also asked about Kakashi, about Gai, about all the others who had stayed in the stadium to defend the civilians trapped there. She had seen Aburame Sugi and Hyūga Hanabi there. They were only two of numerous very talented students present in the building. How many ANBU had been Otojin shinobi in disguise? She felt sick just thinking about it.

“Kakashi-sensei was there with me in the beginning. He ordered me to help civilians to reach the hideouts underground. Sometimes, I got to a group before the Otojin and Sunajin… sometimes, I didn’t. Kakashi-sensei, Gai-sensei, and the referee, Shiranui-san, watched my back as well as they could while doing their part. They had to kill several ANBU operatives who tried to attack me – later, I learned they were enemies who had found a uniform.”

The teenage boy continued his recounting of the events for long minutes. He told them about the chaotic atmosphere of the stadium, about the nobles who didn’t understand anything and refused to listen to a simple teenager, and told them about the wounded, the dead. Once they had gotten control back over the place, he had been sent to the Tower to defend it. There, he had seen Kurenai and Shikaku, busy with their own opponents. He also had seen three Otojin fleeing – based on his description, Hitomi recognised the three remaining members of the Sound Quartet. From Orochimaru and Kabuto, he didn’t even see a shadow. Hitomi couldn’t hide her relief when he told her that.

Sasuke had ended up back to back with Jiraiya of the Sannin, who was desperately trying to go to the place where his sensei was fighting for his life, and had used his mastery of Lightning Release and ninja wire to give the man the opening he needed. If Jiraiya had managed to reach Hiruzen, then the old man could still be alive, but the young Uchiha didn’t know if it was the case: he had been requisitioned by an ANBU team to clean the streets of the remaining attackers. It explained his exhaustion: from Team Seven, he was the one with the weakest chakra reserves and, by the blood covering his right hand, Hitomi could tell he had used the Chidori at least once.

“The village will be an utter mess for at least several weeks,” Shikamaru estimated when Sasuke was finished with his tale. “Gaara’s order spread very efficiently through the Sunajin troops, they quickly quit fighting or even helped Konoha, but the question of their betrayal remains, as well as the one about retaliation against Otogakure.”

“And that’s not even taking into account how pissed our daimyos will be. The peace treaty after the Third Shinobi World War had to be respected at all costs, and now…”

“Yeah, we can count on problems on that front too. It’s  lucky that our own lord was in the tribune today. He saw that we only defended ourselves, and so did the daimyo of the Land of Birds and several dignitaries from the Land of Wind. We should pray that it is enough for them.”

They stayed silent for a moment, contemplating the eventuality of a war that would destroy everything they knew. They weren’t ready, they knew that after the day’s battle, but lower grades were always sent to ridiculous suicide-missions during big scale conflicts. If war started, how many of the Fellowship would survive? What would be left of their heritage, of what they had started at the Academy and amongst their clans?

“Ruminating is useless,” Hitomi sighed after a while. “I’m gonna take a shower. You should do the same when I’m done, marinating in blood and sweat is disgusting. When we’re all clean, we’ll think about eating, and then we’ll wait.”

The two boys grunted their approval. As she walked away, Hitomi heard them start talking again. She didn’t need to eavesdrop and felt far too tired for that anyway. She let out a huge sigh of relief as she stepped into the shower. Water ran pink and grey all over her body, washing blood and dirt down the drain. The memory of Kakashi, of the careful way he had cleaned her bloody arms the night she had found Hayate, came back no matter how hard she tried to push it down.

She came back to the living room dressed in her most comfortable pyjamas, a dark blue t-shirt that had belonged to Ensui and a pair of too big shorts that descended to her knees. Her master’s scent was faint on the fabric, but the simple knowledge that he had worn it once appeased something in her mind. As Sasuke disappeared in the bathroom, she leaned against the back of the couch and put a hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder. “You handled it all well, you know?”

He rested his head on the cushions to look at her from below. “Hm… I had my first kill today. I can’t forget the expression on his face.”

Slowly, the girl bent down until she was able to wrap both her arms around his shoulders over the back of the couch. It wasn’t comfortable at all, but she didn’t care about her own body. She wanted to make him understand that she was there, that he wasn’t alone, that they would pull through it together just like they had so many times before.

“You won’t forget for a while, or ever,” she said. “I can still see the faces of my first kills. And the ones from today as well. But… I think we learn to cope, to put them in a corner of our mind we rarely visit. It isn’t exactly forgetting, but it’s better than endlessly torturing yourself with them.”

“My father always says that the weight of war is heaviest on the geniuses, and today I… I understand what he means by that. When you went to handle the barrier, I was terrified that one of my decisions would get even one of us killed. I don’t know how you can even manage under that pressure.”

“Frankly, Shika, I don’t know either. I make mistakes, I regret them, I try to learn from them. I repeat that cycle again and again, until the mistakes die down to a faint buzzing at the back of my mind.”

Naruto came home some time after that, while Shikamaru was in the shower. Karin was with him. Parts of her red hair were mingled, as if someone had yanked on it. Naruto looked ready to sob with relief when he saw Sasuke alive and well. It was weird to see him, to be at his side again after a month apart. His eyes and posture had changed, but it was hard to determine if it was because of Kakashi’s training or his role in the defence against the invasion.

While the two boys compared their mentors, Hitomi took Karin to her room. The Uzumaki girl was taller, with a curvier body type, but since she was a fan of oversized pyjamas, Hitomi found clothes to give her for after her shower. They chatted as they waited for Shikamaru to be done in the bathroom – according to Karin, the hospital had started taking patients again sometimes in the evening, but only for the most serious cases. The other injuries were handled by the rare shinobi with a knowledge of medical techniques without an actual medic training. Never had Tsunade’s shadow been heavier on the village than now; the civilians were arguing that her training system should have been maintained even after she had left the village.

Later in the evening, as Naruto was piecing a meal together from what they had in the fridge, they heard footsteps in the street. Hitomi immediately recognised that chakra; with a choked sob, she ran through the living-room and the hall then almost tore the door from its hinges in her eagerness to see her shishou again.

She immediately noticed the cut on his cheek and the blood that hadn’t quite dried out from it yet. She would have inspected the wound, but he didn’t give her time for that, hugging her hard enough to make her ribs protest. She hugged him back, inhaling his scent as if to drown in it despite the overlaying smell of fire, blood and battle over it. After a few minutes, he pushed her at arm’s length, his large hand cupping her face to inspect it under the light of the moon. His dark grey eyes were piercing despite his obvious exhaustion, inquisitive even. Finally, he sighed with relief, his calloused thumbs tracing little comforting circles over her cheekbones, one smooth, one marked with the scar she had gotten in the Forest of Death and didn’t even notice anymore in the mirror.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You aren’t injured. You’re alive.” His voice was hoarse, but he could have screamed his relief to the moon and it wouldn’t have been any more obvious than this trickle of a sound. She took one of his hands between hers. His nails were nicked, his fingers covered in blood, ashes and dirt.

“Come inside, shishou. Naruto is cooking. Sasuke and Shikamaru are here too, with Naruto’s cousin, Uzumaki Karin. We’re all okay, I promise. Take a shower, change, then we’ll heal the wound on your cheek. Everything will be okay.”

They didn’t dwell on how weird it was for the student to reassure the master. Hitomi knew all too well which fear had suffocated Ensui’s heart, and why his eyes had hardened with a fierce, protective gleam when he had been able to look at her, to see for himself that she was well. He had already lost a son to  war. He was terrified by the idea of losing his student too, they were both aware of that. If she didn’t make sure to survive for herself, for her family, she would at least make sure she did for him.

Sasuke and Shikamaru seemed to relax a little when they saw Ensui, even after he went to the bathroom for his own shower. After all, he was an adult, and a legend amongst his clansmen. It wasn’t up to them, mere Genin freshly out of the Academy, to take matters into their own hands anymore. They didn’t have to decide or face their mistakes now that someone was there to do that part of the job. He was better qualified, had more experience, and was so much stronger.

When he came back from his shower, his damp hair down on his shoulders, Karin approached him, her cheeks red with shyness. “N-Nara-san, excuse me to bother you but I learned some medical ninjutsu before coming to Konoha for the exam. I could heal your wound, if you wish.”

Ensui looked at the girl then met his apprentice’s eyes and saw her nod her approval. She looked certain, at peace, so he accepted the proposal without wariness. He would ask for explanations later, when he’d be alone with Hitomi and the situation would be calmer.

“Here you are,” the Uzumaki girl said after a moment. “You shouldn’t even have a scar.”

“Thank you, err, Karin-san, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Uzumaki Karin, nice to meet you.”

The Jōnin’s eyes stopped on Naruto, who beamed with obvious happiness and pride. He was probably the only one who could smile with such purity and eagerness in such a situation but, ironically, it seemed to be what his peers needed to feel better.

“Shishou?” Hitomi asked. “What can you tell us about the current situation, about the village and Hokage-sama?”

The man seemed to consider his options for a while, his eyes staring into nothing. His apprentice, her brothers and her friends were only kids, but… they had fought, and with more bravery and determination than some of their elders. They had advanced through this whole ordeal with perspicacity and teamwork to make some ANBU jealous. The Nara didn’t believe in retaining information; they said any form of dissimulation pushed the young to stick their nose where they didn’t belong and put themselves at risk. It was better to inform them, to answer their question and make sure they understood everything they encountered. Knowledge was power, and power was to be shared so it could never be lost.

“Orochimaru managed to flee with some of his men,” he said after a while. “Hiruzen-sama was badly injured when the ANBU arrived on scene, but so was the snake. He won’t be able to come after us like that in a while, and now we’re aware of his intentions. Hokage-sama was taken to a medical team. The word in the hospital is that they had to put him in stasis so they have time to decide what to do to heal him. He won’t ever be a shinobi again.”

Hitomi’s thoughts trailed towards Hayate again when she heard that news. She had, again, failed to save a life completely. This time, however, she didn’t feel real remorse about it. Was this because she was learning, or because nothing in the world could have made her step inside the seal, where were standing Orochimaru and probably two reincarnated Hokage? She couldn’t say. “I see… Has someone been chosen for our next Hokage already?”

“Danzō tried,” Ensui said, his voice the quintessence of bitterness. “Fortunately, Shikaku-sama and Kakashi-san stopped him. For now, they share the duties of the job together. They will soon send Jiraiya-sama to find Tsunade-sama, since she’s the best person for the post right now.”

“Hm… That’s gonna be difficult, right?” Shikamaru asked.

“You have no idea how hard that’s gonna be, kiddo. Tsunade despises Konoha. Jiraiya could convince her, but only through ruse or feelings.”

Hitomi’s eyes stopped on Naruto, who listened but didn’t look away from the stove. He knew, at least, that he was too young and too inexperienced to try for the position himself. The day would come when he would put on the hat with the fire kanji but, for now, he still had so much to learn, and so much uncertainty ahead – he wasn’t ready.

“Jiraiya-sama won’t go alone,” Hitomi mused. “Orochimaru’s minions still mill about the whole country, and we can’t risk him being attacked or captured. I wonder who he’s gonna choose as an escort.”

“I was there when he discussed it with Kakashi-san and Shikaku-sama. Naruto’s name was offered. Yours as well.”

Hitomi forgot how to breathe for a hot minute. “Mine?”

“He heard about your talent for fūinjutsu. He wants to assess how good you are and maybe teach you a few tricks I don’t know about myself. I can only take you so far in that subject. He ’s a Seal Master.”

“What does he want with me then?” Naruto asked.

“Well, first of all, word in the village is that you’re his apprentice since he took you in for a whole month to train you. He hasn’t done that since teaching the Fourth. He also wants you to play on Tsunade-sama’s feelings. She had a brother who wanted to become Hokage and looked a bit like you.”

What he didn’t say but Hitomi was aware of was that Tsunade had known Naruto’s father, Namikaze Minato, and that the son bore an uncanny likeness to him. The Yūhi girl still didn’t understand why that information wasn’t public knowledge. If the civilians had known who Naruto’s parents had been, maybe they would have been nicer to him. Besides, at least he deserved to know. She would have told him herself, but she knew it wasn’t worth getting thrown in prison for the rest of her life. The ANBU really didn’t take too kindly to high treason.

“Is it still time to suggest people for that trip?” Hitomi asked with a thoughtful expression.

“I think you still can, yes. Do you have people in mind for it?”

“Zabuza-san and Haku-san. They aren’t part of the village and are currently in the Land of Waves to settle something about the rebellion’s support, but they said they were done with it. If I send them a message tonight, they could be here in a few days. Zabuza-san is really strong, and so is Haku-san, especially with his Kekkei Genkai. I wouldn’t mind having two more Jōnin with us.”

She had been sad to see them leave a week before the tournament. She would have liked to train with them more. Zabuza knew Water Release techniques she could only dream of and couldn’t find any trace of in Konoha. Even the ones Senju Tobirama had created white at his peak had been lost to time. And then there was his kenjutsu, which was worthy of legends. As for Haku… It was his quiet friendship that she missed above all, his soft voice and the unique view he had of the world. He could have helped her cope with the many corpses in her wake.

“Who knows. Jiraiya-sama has an open mind and you can be very convincing, can’t you now? Flattery is the key to make him bend, if that can help you.”

The girl beamed in thanks then lowered her eyes to the plate Naruto had just put in front of her. Squeezed between Sasuke and Shikamaru, she started to eat. Only then did the hunger roar inside her, as if all the needs she had neglected through the day were coming back to her at once. She had used a lot of chakra and, even though most of that energy didn’t belong to her in the first place, her body was showing serious signs of exhaustion.

A brutal spasm ran through her biceps, sending a surge of pain along the whole limb. With a groan of pain, she let go of her chopsticks, the shape of them deeply embedded in the delicate skin of her fingers. Ensui didn’t miss any of this and stared at her. It wasn’t the first time it happened to her that night, and she wasn’t the only one suffering from it: Sasuke and Shikamaru were almost out of chakra and suffered as well. The thing was, her reserves were okay. It was the overuse of chakra, the extreme opposite of chakra exhaustion, that was hitting her full force.

The rest of the meal was quiet. The boys were getting to know Karin. They had immediately accepted her as one of their own, encouraged by Naruto and Hitomi, both attentive and trusting towards the girl. Ensui had watched that whole affair with a mix of relief and pride. The agitated, violent instinct inside him had calmed down as simply as that, as coming home, as seeing his apprentice in good health and psychologically stable despite the ordeal she had just gone through.

He didn’t hold any illusions about it, though. The backlash would come. He could almost see the way she was keeping the trauma at bay. The fact that she looked so used to it, did it so easily, made him want to scream and sob for his girl. She was only fourteen. She was a child. In a better world, she could have focused on learning without being thrown everyday into a new danger too large for her, she could have learned to heal from her trauma with constant, attentive help, until she was able to bloom into a healthy adult, confident and at peace with herself. He could only offer her a parody of all that, and that felt like failure to him. His failure. Trying his best didn’t make this all okay.

Once they were done eating and the dishes were in the sink – washing them could wait – he followed the teenagers to the living-room. If Kurenai hadn’t liked having a house full of life so much, they would have been forced to pile over one another, but there was room for everyone. Hitomi sat next to him, at the centre of the couch, and Shikamaru took her other side. Naruto and Karin were each in a chair and Sasuke sat on the ground between the couch and the coffee table, his back against his sister’s legs. A family. Ensui breathed in deeply and felt his apprentice put a hand on his knee, as if she knew, as if she understood. With a little grunt, he wrapped a hand around her shoulders and pulled her closer. She was alive, she was well. It was the only thing that mattered to him.

“Where are your cats?” he asked after a while. “Did you send them back to the spiritual world?”

“Some of them, yes. Hoshihi, Hai and Sunaarashi stayed but, after a day like this, they preferred to spend time in the Deer Forest. They’ll come back tomorrow morning and check into Inuzuka Hana’s practice if she has room to take them in.”

The shadow of a smile appeared on the Jōnin’s lips. Hitomi’s protectiveness over her cats looked a lot like what he felt for her. His hand on her shoulder, he casually formed neutral chakra and used it to massage her aching muscles. She didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away, only slumping a bit more against him with a sigh of comfort. After that, silence united them for a long time. They had to wait… There was nothing left to do for now, anyway.

Chapter 67: Seeking Balance

Kurenai didn’t come home before the morning, Yoshino by her side. Of their two houses, the two women only felt chakra in Kurenai's. They entered it silently, removed their shoes and put on slippers as quietly as they could. In the living-room, they found a scene one didn’t see everyday: a pile of teenagers covering an adult, all snoring in concert. Ensui, at the base of this very unstable construction, lazily opened his eyes when he felt them approach. Without leaving his position, sprawled on the ground – how could he even breath with all these bodies over his? – he gestured for them to keep silent, pressing a finger against the shadow of a smile.

Yoshino and Kurenai exchanged an amused look but obeyed his silent command and went into the kitchen so they’d be free to talk in a low voice. The dishes hadn’t been done but, at least, they could see that the children had eaten. They were both exhausted after working at the hospital until dawn healing or stabilizing as many wounded as they could. Some amongst the oldest, touchiest shinobi had tried to dissuade them, to redirect their attention to younger but less seriously injured comrades, in vain. Priority rules were priority rules and grumpy old warriors wouldn’t make them go around them.

“At least they look okay,” Yoshino whispered.

“Yeah. We can’t ask for more.”

“Hm… Do you know when the list of the dead and missing will be made public? I think they will all need to see it.”

“Kakashi said that Shikaku wanted to publish it before noon. The number of casualties could have been worse… But again, it can still go up. A lot of people are in surgery.”

“That’s for sure… Our kids and their friends have played a big role in handling the invasion.”

“And those Sunajin kids too. I heard that Gaara – it’s Hitomi’s childhood friend, you saw him before the exam, remember? – managed to flip his village forces against Otogakure.”

“And Hokage-sama… I talked to one of the nurses who were assisting the surgeons. They say that Tsunade-sama could save him, but he’ll have tremors and convulsions for the rest of his life.”

In the living room, Hitomi had opened her eyes and listened, a wave of chakra focused in her ears so she wouldn’t miss anything of the exchange. She couldn’t feel guilty even if she tried. Hiruzen had had his days and clung to the Hokage position as if he was the only one fit for the job. This time, he wouldn’t have any say in the matter, he’d have to let Tsunade succeed to him, and at least he’d be alive to see her rise above her peers. It should have been a sensei’s only wish.

“Eavesdropping is very rude, young lady,” Ensui grumbled next to her ear.

She answered with a cheeky smile, a spark of ruse in her red eyes. She didn’t know how she had ended up on the ground, her head on her master’s torso and Shikamaru slumped all over her, but all these people around her had at least offered her a dreamless sleep. She had even managed to work a bit on her Library. Blood had run under the Nameless Door when she had closed it. Nothing that worrying, compared to the last time she had had memories to put behind it. Her cage had also been a bit fragilized by the repeated opening and closing of her meridians; a bit of chakra and it was good as new.

“I’d feel guilty about it if you weren’t doing the same, shishou.”

“Caught red-handed,” the man sighed with a relaxed smile. “Be careful, one could say I did a bad job of raising you.”

“If one is foolish enough to say such things, give me their names, because their knees need some breaking. No one speaks badly of you without consequences.”

He laughed, a faint and low sound in his throat, his hand lost in his apprentice’s tangled hair. He watched her escape Shikamaru’s embrace, her heart unyielding against the teenage boy’s whimper of protest, before he slid away from the mass of asleep children as well. In the same movement, master and student stretched then tiptoed to the kitchen.

Hitomi was greeted by her mother with a kiss on the cheek and a hug before her aunt did the same. She didn’t pretend that this attention displeased her, quite the contrary. She was relieved that Kurenai had simply decided to help in the hospital. Of course, she had fought, the girl could see it in the mess of her hair and the burned hem of her fighting dress, but who amongst the Konohajin force has dared stay out of the battle? Even the oldest students from the Academy had pitched in after the invasion was over to help clean the streets in the areas where bodies had already been removed by the ANBU.

“Wake the boys up, sweetheart. You’re expected at the Tower for D-ranked missions, a lot of them. You’ll help clean the village.”

“Okay. Do you want me to get Karin going as well?”

“Karin? It’s Naruto’s cousin, right?”

“Yeah. She requested citizenship and wardship from the village, as a medic in training.”

“Then she’ll be sent to the hospital, I suppose, but…”

“Ah, that’s the kid with the red hair, right?” Yoshino intervened. “I heard the doctors speak about her. She saved their lives by barricading them in an empty bedroom.”

“That’s where we found her when we deployed at the hospital,” Hitomi confirmed. “Enemies were trying to smash the door open, but she was just behind it and looked ready to fight for the civilians’ lives.”

“Konoha needs medics and shinobi, now more than ever. Send a message to Shikaku, he’ll get to her file as soon as he has five minutes.”

“It’s weird, having Shikaku-ojisan as our Hokage, even temporarily. Who’s doing the Jōnin Commander work until he can go back to his usual duties?”

“No one, sweetheart. The only fitting candidates are all sensei, or they are needed in urgent missions out of the country to gather money so the village can be rebuilt. He does both jobs.”

Hitomi frowned, surprised. It had to be a whole shitload of work. Even sharing the Hokage title and duties between Shikaku and Kakashi barely made it more manageable. They both had functions outside of that temporary role. Even if she had heard about it in class and read some more in the archives, the girl hadn’t realised how much strength her village had lost in consecutive wars and disasters this past century. Except for Kakashi, Kurenai, Asuma, Gai, Ensui and the clan leaders, who couldn’t leave the village often, she didn’t know a great many Jōnin. There was Hayate, desperately clinging to life, Genma, famous for his distaste for everything that wasn’t field work. The village needed to get its strength back, and quickly, or it would be an easy prey for other powers.

“I have to talk to Jiraiya-sama today!” Hitomi announced as she stood back up. “Do you know where he is, Mom?”

“No. Yoshino, an idea?”

“Hum… Probably around the Torture and Intelligence Department. Ibiki-san has gotten his hands on several Otojin. Jiraiya-sama will want to interrogate them himself, you can be sure of that.”

“Okay! I’ll wake the others then get going then, thank you!”

Maybe a little bemused, the adults looked at her go. Kurenai realised, with a start, that Hitomi hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and prepared her something she could eat while walking as Yoshino and Ensui exchanged an amused look. Not many people could decide they were going to see Jiraiya, but the teenager didn’t doubt for a moment that she would succeed. It was refreshing to watch that kind of unstoppable willpower as it manifested in the young.

After waking her brothers – she left them to deal with Shikamaru, who was a whole battle by himself – Hitomi ran to her room, got dressed and left. The warm sun outside was almost giving the finger to the events of the previous day. The Nara lands looked almost enchanting, a stark contrast to the destruction in the rest of the village. The enemy hadn’t managed to force their way in the clan’s lands, which were as far as could be from the invasion’s starting point. Besides, they were defended by seals powerful enough to make some masters jealous. The legend said that Senju Tobirama himself had drawn them, in exchange for the authorisation to marry the clan leader’s daughter. They both died before their wedding date.

Once she was back into the public part of the village, the girl had to take several detours to avoid piles of unstable debris. Several buildings had been entirely razed to the ground, others were still standing against all logic and some, very rare, had come out of it seemingly unscathed. The worst of it had been taken by the roofs, though: it was there that a lot of fights had happened.

Hitomi knew the way to the department like the back of her hand but, after the previous day’s battle and the slaughter of prisoners she’d been a part of, she had a hard time walking in that direction. Blood had been washed away from her hands but that didn’t make it any more forgettable. She pinched her lips to make her expression unreadable when she walked past the west façade, which was closed shut by planks. The piece of wall she had used as a shield against a volley of shuriken was still in the exact same place in the middle of the road. No one had cleaned it yet.

“Yūhi-san? Have you received a mission here?”

Hitomi spun around, a hand on her sword. She had had to clean Ishi to Senrigan for the better part of an hour last night to scrub away the blood covering the blade, the guard and the red silk wrapped around it. It had seemed so important to her then, just as essential as washing her body from battle dirt.

“Fox-san! Not really. I’m here to see Jiraiya-sama. I’m apparently going on a mission with him soon and I have suggestions to make about logistics. Do you know where he is?”

“Stay here, I’m gonna ask if he can see you now. He should be done with his meeting with Ibiki and the higher-ups.”

“Okay, thanks!”

The beam she offered to the ANBU man was fake, borrowed straight from Naruto’s repertoire, but it was the best way she knew to show gratefulness. Thanks to him, she didn’t have to walk in, to see the consequences of her actions the previous days. Some cells had probably been fixed first, so they would have secured places to keep the captured Otojin and Sunajin. Perhaps Gaara would manage to free his comrades, especially if Baki and Temari applied themselves on the diplomatic side of the situation, but for the men of the Sound, there was no hope to be found. Orochimaru wasn’t the kind to trade prisoners. He probably held many Konohajin in his laboratories, but what was even left of those shinobi, broken after years upon years of torture and experimentations between the snake’s hands? Despite the sun on her skin, Hitomi shuddered.

“Yo, kid! I heard you were seeking wisdom from Jiraiya the almighty?”

An eyebrow raised, Hitomi turned towards the voice. He was exactly as she had imagined in the Previous World, and then during her readings for the Academy. A daring smile on her lips, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Depends. Is there a book on the way?”

He threw his head back and burst out laughing, as if she had just said the best joke he had ever heard. She wasn’t joking, though: Jiraiya was an excellent novelist. She wanted to read more of his work, wanted to know what happened to the characters he had created. “Not yet, kiddo, not yet. But I’ll have plenty of inspiration material during our trip.” He scratched his chin then, his brow furrowing. “Oh, Yoshino-chan and Kurenai-chan told you, right? I’m taking Naruto and you to seek a very special woman.”

“Tsunade-sama, yeah, I know. I’m a being capable of thoughts, you now? I realised immediately that it had to be her, our next Hokage, as soon as I heard about Hiruzen-sama. Not only because she’s his only chance of survival – she’d also be a breath of fresh air to the village, a healthy one.”

“Ah, I see you understand the situation. That’s a clever little head you got here.”

“My head is a very normal size, thank you very much.”

Jiraiya continued as if she hadn’t just interrupted him. “And I heard you were quite good with fūinjutsu.”

“It appears so, yeah. I invented two or three little trinkets. I’m learning corporal seals.”

“And, say, would you have one of those trinkets that you could show me? It’s been ages since I’ve seen anyone invent a seal.”

Probably since Hokage the Fourth, Hitomi mused. She had been lucky enough to read about some of his work, including the Seal of Secrecy carved under Shikaku’s desk. It could be activated and deactivated at will and created an unbreakable privacy bubble; it was also keyed to its owner’s chakra, so it couldn’t be forcibly activated to hide the aggression, threatening or murder of said owner it a way that would leave no witness. A true work of art, if Hitomi was to give her opinion. In silence, the girl handed her communicating notebook to the Hermit, since it was the only seal she never went anywhere without.

“It’s a blend of several seals, not really a complete invention from scratch. I was able to make it better since, to use it as the centre of a communication web. There are a dozen other notebooks, all linked to mine, so I can talk to my friends no matter the distance between us.”

“I see,” the Sannin muttered as his eyes went over the seals written on the inside of the cover. He thoughtfully rubbed his thumb over the ink, which had obviously aged. “Yeah, I remember this now. I ran into Nara Ensui when he was in Sunagakure with those three kids. The youngest had a notebook like this, and your shishou told me you had created them. You had to be around six at that time, right?”

“Something like that,” she answered with a faint smile.

The man shook his head with bemusement and gave her the notebook back. “I guess you didn’t just run through the whole village to show me this. What do you want?”

As she took back her notebook, Hitomi explained. She told him about her mission in the Land of Waves and the implicit debt between her and Zabuza. He had never declared himself as her vassal, but had acted as such when he had answered her call a month ago and would do it again, she was adamant about it. He considered owing her both his and his protégé’s life. The latter was probably even more precious to him that the former. “I’d like them to come with us,” she concluded. “If we run into Orochimaru or worse, we’ll be glad to have them with us. They’re both incredibly strong.”

The Sannin didn’t answer right away. Hitomi waited for his decision and tried to hide how nervous she felt. She knew he couldn’t be only thinking about his former teammate: the rumours about the Akatsuki had to have started to spread by now; Jiraiya, as Spy Master, worked as closely as possible with Uchiha Itachi, infiltrated into the criminal organisation. The deserters had probably started to work on their plan to capture the jinchūriki, even though it would be years before they attacked any of them. She couldn’t be a hundred percent sure about any of it, thanks to Kishimoto and his lack of rigour in writing the canon she knew so well, but it would have been weird for the Akatsuki not to start moving. They could profit off Konoha’s weakness.

“You’re probably right, kid… I wouldn’t want you and Naruto harmed because I was too secret about this whole affair. You can invite your allies to meet us a few kilometres away from the village’s Gates in five days. We can’t leave any earlier than that, you and your brother are needed to clean the village, and I’m needed as well for more… political matters. But let me warn you: you vouch for them. If they betray us, it’s going to be your fault.

Hitomi paled and stopped herself from squirming under his hard stare. She knew Haku and Zabuza wouldn’t betray her, but even if Jiraiya wasn’t exactly threatening her, a knot of anxiety had formed in the pit of her stomach. That was just it: he didn’t need threats, because the mere fact of bearing the responsibility for such an event would destroy her. The man saw her discomfort and had a gentle laugh. He patted her hair with delicacy, as if he was afraid to hurt her. After all, she was a lot frailer than Naruto.

“Come on, now, kid, don’t be upset, I’m sure nothing like that will happen. You look like you have a good, and yes, normal-sized head on your shoulders. Academy teachers were talking loads about you until you graduated. Have a tendency to bring people together and lead them, now, haven’t you?”

“It seemed like a good way to handle the whole Academy thing,” she answered with a shrug. “And we did handle it, didn’t we? I heard that Iruka-sensei is trying to recreate the whole situation with the current first-year group.”

“I heard that too. We’ll see if it’s going to work as well with them as it did with you. Well, this little chat was nice, but I have to go. Shikaku-sama is waiting for my report, and it’s time for you to go get yourself a nice little D-ranked mission. No need to go to the Tower for it, though, the Gates are closer and they built a temporary post there. Seeing the sheer amount of work needed to rebuild the village, there are posts like that one everywhere. See ya! Help Naruto pack, alright?”

“I will!” she promised.

The man waved then disappeared in a swirl of dead leaves. Did all the Shunshin adepts walk around with a stack of leaves in their pockets? She knew Gaara used the sand at his feet or, when there wasn’t any, the one in his gourd. The aesthetic element was only an added flourish to the technique: it didn’t make it costlier, but a better mastery level was required to use it that way. It was in her plans, though. She couldn’t wait to see her enemies’ faces when she’d disappear in a puff of glitter.

Izumo was managing the post at the village’s entrance – it looked almost empty without his usual teammate, Kotetsu. There was a little queue in front of his desk, mainly composed of a few Genin from the General Forces seeking a new mission. After a bit of wait, Hitomi got her first assignment: cleaning the street in front of the Academy. She thanked the man with a nod then walked away in that direction. She saw Genma running in the opposite direction, probably for a mission outside the village. Konoha wouldn’t show any sign of weakness, it had to continue to provide service for as many missions as it had before the invasion, at least for appearances’ sake. Besides, the village needed the money, now more than ever.

A Chūnin Hitomi had never seen before waited in front of the Academy. It was a lithe man with long brown hair kept in a braid. When he turned his head to her, she had to suppress a flinch: it was a Hyūga, probably a member of the Bunke. With a tired but genuine smile, he gestured for her to approach. “You’re probably going to be the only one sent here. As you see, the Academy itself wasn’t damaged, but we can’t say as much about the street. Have you done this before?”

“No, Hyūga-san, but I know my way around seals. I can even draw some, if need be.”

“Really? Well, here’s how it’s going to go: you store the debris in the normal seals in that basket. Fill the scrolls to the brim and, when one is full, draw a cross over its fold, like this. As far as weapons go, keep what you want, and the rest goes into the blue scrolls. The bodies go into stasis scrolls, the green ones. One body per scroll and, to show it’s filled, you draw a line around it, like this. Then, on the label here, you write a few information: sex, approximated age, civilian or shinobi, supposed village or origin. Understood?”

“Yeah. I’m going to get started right now.”

Teenager and adult went their own separate ways and worked on their own chunk of the street without ever exchanging more than a few words at a time. Hitomi found many weapons on her way, most broken or used beyond repair. She shoved them into a blue scroll carelessly and kept the ones she could still use or distribute around her. The debris were the easiest to manage: she didn’t have the strength to move them and put them on a scroll sometimes, but she only had to use clones or a bit of craftiness to get around that kind of difficulty.

The first body, strangely, was a shock to her. She had killed so many the previous day that she thought she had lost her sensibility to death, and yet her throat was constricted and her eyes stinged. She knelt slowly in the main room of a destroyed tea shop, brushing hair away from the face of a civilian teenage girl. She was her age, and her features looked peaceful. A blow to the head had killed her. One by one, Hitomi pushed the debris covering her body, then unfolded her first green scroll over the cold, stiff body. A spark of chakra and the girl was done, the smell of her blood still faint in the air.

“Are you done?” the Chūnin asked several hours later.

“I think so.” She was shaken to her core, more than she thought possible. The nausea had passed after the first hour or so, but war took a whole new dimension, terrible and icy cold, under her fingertips. There weren’t many soldiers amongst the victims, all things considered – in this part of the village anyway. The dead were mostly civilians who hadn’t asked for anything and should have been protected by the peace treaty signed after the last war. Alas for them, Orochimaru didn’t respect anything but power and immortality. The rest, including the lives of all others around him, didn’t matter.

“You did a good job here. You should go to the Tower now. The lists of dead and missing should have been released by Shikaku-sama by now.”

Hitomi noticed how the Hyūga man didn’t use the appropriate title to speak about her uncle. It was a lack of respect, but she decided to let it go. She didn’t have the strength nor the legitimacy to correct an elder – she had had her share of conflict for now. “Thanks. Can I leave the scrolls with you?”

“Yes, I’m going to take them to the people who want them. Go now, you deserve the rest.”

She looked away from the man and did as she was told. She mingled in the crowd, finding meagre solace in the way life was back in the core of the village. People were walking down the streets again, wary and tense, as if they feared another catastrophe would hit. Their wide eyes sometimes stopped on the stones and wood remaining where a building had once been standing, but they were chatting, holding hands, living. They were only half aware of the luck they had to be still walking those streets and able to enjoy small blessings. Her face devoid of any expression, Hitomi stepped into the Tower.

She needed to know.

Chapter 68: Those Who Depart, Those Who Remain

“Ah, Yūhi-san,” Shiranui Genma welcomed her at the entrance desk. “Your uncle asked me to fetch you as soon as you arrived and lead you to his office.”

“O-okay,” she answered, a bit taken aback. She had almost never stepped into the Hokage’s office. It was now Shikaku’s territory, but everything was still tainted by Hiruzen’s many years in the seat, from sake bottles in a glass cabinet – Shikaku hated alcohol – to the bō exposed as a reminder of glorious days past. All the pictures, too, belonged to the old man, showing his Genin team, his students, his successor. Nothing could lead anyone to believe that a Nara had taken over the Tower, aside from the half-slumped shape in the chair behind the desk.

“Hitomi-chan,” he greeted her with a nod. “Approach.”

She did as she was told, her red eyes stopping on the stark shadows under his eyes and the left side of his chin, where a new scar ran. Who had managed to wound him? Probably someone incredibly strong and warped. Shikaku wasn’t the kind to be taken by surprise. “Shikaku-ojisan, you wanted to speak to me? Do you need me to do anything?”

She was standing on the other side of the desk now, her eyes nervously stuck to her hands. The waves of energy emanating from the man couldn’t be qualified as killing intent, but it was intent nonetheless, willpower turned tangible by the high concentration of chakra around his body. It made her want to bow before him, to show her throat and make herself as tiny and non-threatening as possible. She knew that he wouldn’t ever even think about hurting her, but that wasn’t enough to totally cancel the effects of his presence when war breathed down his neck.

“Yes. The lists… There are names you’ll recognise on them. I know things have been hard for you recently and I wanted to be sure you wouldn’t be alone when you learn about them.”

Hitomi’s heart stopped for a moment. People she knew. On the lists. She was afraid, suddenly, wanted to disappear again, the need so striking it made her chakra react, spring alive inside her, ready to make her shunshin away. Stupid instinct. She breathed deeply once, twice, thrice, forced the muscles on her shoulders to relax, then bent over the desk, her eyes riveted to the old, smooth dark wood. “I understand, ojisan. I’m ready for them now.”

“No, kiddo, you aren’t. It’s gonna be years before you’re ready for such things. However, we don’t have years before us. Here they are. Take your time.”

With a slight bow, the girl took the two bundles of paper he was handing her. She started with the list of missing people. Indeed, several names were familiar to her. She almost choked on her anxiety when she saw the name of a child she knew, Nara Anosuke. He was one of her youngest cousins, a first-year Academy student, in Abumare Sugi and Hyūga Hanabi’s group. The paper shook in her grip. If he had fallen in Orochimaru’s hands…

She closed her eyes for a moment so she could push back her anxiety and the tears threatening to spill from her eyes, then put the now crumpled stack of paper between an ink bottle and a photograph. Shikaku was staring at her, his eyes softened by compassion. She felt two ANBU’s chakra hiding in the shadow of the room, ready to defend their new master at the first sign of a threat. For their benefit or perhaps her own safety, she got herself back together.

“I-I’m ready for the other list now.” Her voice was a hoarse, choked whisper, but Shikaku didn’t comment on it. He held her gaze for several seconds then gave her the second bundle of paper again, since she had let go of it as she read the first. It was so much thicker than the list of missing people. Her eyes immediately fell on a name she knew. “F-Fukuda-sensei…”

A buzzing appeared in her ears and the Whisper awoke inside her like a titan, screaming in pain and rage under her skin. The killing intent she didn’t seem able to completely control bloomed, thick, foul and cruel. From their hiding spots, the two ANBU choked on their own saliva, surprised to find such intensity in the chakra of a simple teenager, then got a hold of themselves. However, even they didn’t manage to totally suppress the effect of such intent on their mind. Only Shikaku was spared, probably because nothing in the world could have made her harm him.

“Calm down, Hitomi,” he said as gently as he could. He never used that tone with anyone, not even Shikamaru. Tears started rolling on Hitomi’s cheek, staining the paper in her shaking hands. She saw other names she knew. An Academy teacher. One of the two tailors she went to for every adjustment or repair on her battle uniform. One of Ino’s cousins, who had taught her the properties of a paralytic after a bet she’d won, years ago.

Those people wouldn’t ever walk Konoha’s streets again and, for the first time, Hitomi understood the scale of devastation her village had just faced. Her breathing choked in her throat, shallow and painful. Her body was screaming in alert, to no avail. She stumbled, Shikaku’s hands caught her, and she heard his voice through a tunnel, calling for someone to go get Ensui or Kakashi, whichever was the closest. For what felt like hours, she stared at him in terror, desperately trying to remember how to breath, how to live after so much was lost.

Soon, other hands touched her, her neck then her chin, forcing her to lift and turn her head. Her red eyes sunk like a knife into one black iris and the fingers on her gripped harder. It didn’t hurt, or maybe it did, just a bit, just enough to show her the way. Kakashi’s chakra found its way inside her own, brushing against her meridians like a mirage, and forced it to run through her body peacefully. “Follow my breathing with your own, Hitomi-chan. Everything is okay. You’re safe. We’ll protect you. Everything is okay. You’re safe…”

He repeated this lie of a mantra again and again, until it reverberated louder in her ears than the buzzing and the Whisper’s screams. Slowly, as something embedded deep in her mind still fought with all its might, the killing intent receded, making the air breathable again – and just like that she remembered how to breath herself. Her knees gave way, her whole body started shaking, but Kakashi was there, imperturbable and sure, safe, as he had always been. His grip on her had softened now that she didn’t need pain to ground her anymore. He used his arm around her shoulders to help her stand and walk to the couch that the Hokage had used so many times to receive guests in his office or rest between two meetings. He helped her lay on it then went back to Shikaku, talking to him in hushed tones. It wasn’t enough to stop her from listening, even if she didn’t really want to.

“… why did she react like that?”

“Some of the names on the dead list… I don’t know which one made her go into a panic attack. Any idea?”

A whisper of ruffled paper cut through the heavy silence, then Kakashi started reading the names. He had probably been too busy, Hitomi distantly realised, to read it himself, between assisting Shikaku in his functions and the missions he had to accomplish non-stop to keep money coming to the village. His uniform was rumpled and stained in dried blood. He probably hadn’t even changed since the invasion.

“That one. Fukuda, the therapist. I took Hitomi to see her after the mission in the Land of Waves. She was… She was my therapist as well. I didn’t know she died during the attack. She was so good with her patients… It’s a shame.”

“I see,” the new Hokage sighed. “I’ll make sure to find someone who can take care of you both, but for now…”

“For now, it’s not the most urgent matter, Hokage-sama. By the way, the mission at the border went well, the Sunajin units definitely left. Here’s my report… I was finishing it when Dragonfly-san came to fetch me.”

“Hm… Thanks again for stepping in. I really don’t know how to handle that kind of stuff.”

When she heard the new vulnerability in her uncle’s voice, Hitomi forced her focus away from their conversation and cut the flow of chakra in her ears. She curled up on the couch, allowing her hair to cover one side of her face like a veil and isolate her from the rest of the room. Fukusa-sensei… She had helped her so much these past few weeks; without her, there was no way Hitomi could have put what had happened in the Forest of Death behind her. What would she do now, without her advice and her appeasing voice, without her reassurance that doing her best was enough? Shikaku had said he would find her another therapist, but she didn’t want anyone else. She wanted the one she had learned to trust.

Several minutes later, Kakashi slouched next to her, creasing the cushions under his weight. He still smelled of fire and blood, she could tell without even focusing chakra to her nose. He definitely hadn’t had time to change, poor man. The lack of tension in his limbs alone proved how exhausted he was. With a firm hand, he pulled her closer. It was weird, clumsy, as all his hugs were, but Kakashi’s embraces were so precious because of their rarity.

“I know you won’t ask me questions like ‘does it stop hurting one day?’, Hitomi-chan, but I’m still going to answer that one so you have time to think about it. No, the hurt doesn’t go away, it doesn’t ever truly disappear. It just fades as time passes until it becomes bearable.”

The Jōnin’s long fingers traced circular patterns on his student’s back, each brush pushing the anguish, incomprehension and fear knotting her belly farther away. Her breathing was still itchy, she had trouble keeping awareness of her body, as if her mind just wanted to flee from the pain. If she reacted this badly to the death of someone she knew but wasn’t close to, what would it be when her friends, her elders, would start dropping like flies around her? War wouldn’t spare her loved ones just to please her.

Later, before the memorial that had been set up under a tree in remembrance of the deceased, Hitomi took the time to contemplate her options for the next steps she’d have to follow. She wanted Orochimaru’s total destruction, but she was far from having the power necessary for such a feat. Did she have to tackle it alone, though? And if she couldn’t end his reign of terror soon, what would be his next move? He’d probably try to take Sasuke. She couldn’t… She couldn’t let that happen.

The scenery around her contrasted strangely with her thoughts. The big stone had been set up under a Hashirama Oak, in the most peaceful part of the cemetery. The funeral ceremony would happen the next morning at dawn and would be led by twelve monks from the Fire Temple who had agreed to come all the way when they’d heard about the attack. For a lot of people, it would be a form of closure, an event that would help them move forwards again. For Hitomi, it would be the opposite; like a lot of shinobi, she had decided not to attend. She didn’t want her failures exposed there for everyone to see.

But she couldn’t refrain from honouring the dead, now, could she? She thought about the ones she knew amongst the departed, the ones she would have wished to keep by her side just a while longer. In silence, she brushed her thumb against one of her storage seals and grabbed the paintbrush, paper and ink that were released from it. She wrote a few words, coming right from a novel she had read and had yet to transcribe for the benefit of her new world.

The endless pain of the one who remains,

Like a pale reflection of the endless journey

Awaiting the one who departs.

Her eyes refused for a while to detach from the words so black on the white paper. Then, under Kakashi’s attentive gaze, she pierced a little hole in the top of the sheet and used a length of ninja wire to tie it to a branch of the tree. Words were the only offering she could make to the deceased. She didn’t have the strength to do more; what energy she had ought to go towards the living, who needed her so urgently. After a minute, she spun on her heels and walked to her sensei, who was waiting for her a few steps away.

He didn’t say anything, content enough to just put an arm around her shoulders and guide her to the exit of the cemetery. They walked past several shinobi who took advantage of a break between missions to come, just like they had, to pay tribute to the dead. The Copy Nin was probably one of the rare people who hadn’t lost someone close in the invasion. Hitomi felt pity rather than jealousy for that: if he hadn’t lost anyone, it was because all the people he loved the most were already deceased. The bonds he had left, the ones he had built with his peers and students, were only echoes of the ones that had kept him alive once, except maybe for his friendship and rivalry with Maito Gai.

“I heard that Jiraiya-sama is taking Naruto and you for a mission outside the village,” he said once they stepped outside of the cemetery.

“Hm hm. You’ll take care of Sasuke, right?”

“Of course. Your mother would kill me if I didn’t.”

The girl let out a giggle that startled her more than him. She froze, blushed, then brushed her fingers against her lips, as if to take the sound back. Kakashi didn’t miss her reactions. He wrapped her hand in his, pulling her attention to him with a brief but firm press.

“You shouldn’t feel guilty about laughing or feeling happy, Hitomi-chan. Our ghosts wish for us to be happy, from where they are.”

The Yūhi girl looked away but started walking again, her teacher by her side. Several shinobi she didn’t know greeted the man as they walked past him. Sometimes, he stopped to exchange a few words with them, compassionate and quiet. As she observed him, his student realised that he wasn’t that socially inept after all. He just liked to fake it – perhaps so people would stop trying to get close to him. “Do you have a lot to do to prepare for your mission?” he asked after a while.

“Hm… Don’t really know yet. I always have my travelling gear ready, just in case. But I have to send a message to Haku to ask if he and Zabuza-san can join us, and to buy a few things. I’m almost out of ninja wire, and I don’t even use it that much!”

“Aah, that shit always disappears when you’re not looking. You think you still have enough for six missions at least and, when you’re stuck in the middle of an ambush, you realise that actually you barely have a metre left and of course it’s not enough for what you had in mind.”

She laughed again, and this time she didn’t freeze. “Sounds like you speak from experience, sensei. Would you like to tell me that story?”

The teacher launched himself into the epic tale of a mission that had turned ridiculously bad again and again in the Land of Lightning, glad that he could provide a distraction to his student. That story had become something of a joke amongst Jōnin; nothing had gone as planned during that one, to the point that Kakashi felt the need to run into a wall face first every time he thought about it. Hitomi was worth that urge and much more, though. He had sworn to protect her and to protect her brothers. That promise didn’t only include harm to the body, but to the soul as well.

That evening, Hitomi sat in her room and wrote her letter to Haku. They hadn’t even had time to say goodbye before he left with Zabuza: they had been called to the Land of Waves for a pressing matter. The rebellion was stretching them thin, and it hadn’t even really started yet. They had promised to come back if she needed them, though, and with Orochimaru on the loose, and the knowledge that he would pursue Tsunade too, she couldn’t deny how much she needed them. She just hoped they would be enough. They would have to be, and so would she.

She wrote her letter, sent it and started working on her gear as she waited for an answer. She needed that fucking ninja wire, rations and refills for several of her poisons, three elements that could be found easily in the Nara, Akimichi and Yamanaka lands. Civilians from a ninja clan tended to craft items that would be useful for their shinobi. Shikaku had put an emphasis very early on the importance of shopping in the clan lands first to stimulate their economy. They had to have their own funds, as a clan, if something happened to the village and the Nara had to leave.

The next morning, at dawn, Hitomi put on her battle gear. She felt a faint wave of comfort, as always when she put on the kimono. She would have to have it adjusted to her body soon, what with the damn puberty and all. Her heart ached as she thought about her two tailors. The brother had died during the invasion, and the sister probably would close shop. It was a very little thing Hitomi had to yield but, added to all the things that had changed during the invasion, it made her feel lost. Her village would never be the same again.

As she sheathed her sword, the girl confronted the enormity of what she was going to do today. She had counted the days carefully, without ever letting the original timeline out of her sight, and she knew what was supposed to happen, what she wanted to prevent. Her hands shook slightly during all the time she took to tie her hair in the Nara ponytail, but she made them firm once more as she drew, for the first time, a trait of eyeliner on her eyelids, like a stark, black echo of her master’s signature.

She was ready and she couldn’t push back against the huge challenge lurking in her path. She knew that Haku and Zabuza had hit the road under the moon’s gaze: in the worst of cases, Naruto and Jiraiya would at least have them to count on to find Tsunade. She left a note to her mother to tell her that she was out to train – a pious lie, and if she had any luck no one would ever know about it – then left the house and started running towards the Gate of the village.

She slid between two patrols with the help of a very well-timed Shunshin. She felt weak and disoriented afterwards, but it washed away after she stayed still for a minute. She looked around, the village’s wall at her back. She heard the peaceful lapping of the main river running through the village, not so far away. After a moment of hesitation, she walked towards the sound. After ten minutes, she stopped at the bank of the river, sliced her thumb open and summoned her familiar.

“Lady Summoner?” he asked after a huge yawn. “Do you need me?”

“I-I’m waiting for someone. I don’t want to wait alone… Would you keep me company?”

“Of course. It’s a weird place to wait, hm? We’re outside the village.”

“Yeah… You’re right. It’s a strange place, but also the best suited, you’ll see. The people I’m going to meet today are dangerous, Hoshihi. If things get bad…”

“Don’t ask me to leave you behind, silly. You know I’d prefer chopping out my toes rather than abandon you.”

“O-Okay. Thanks.”

The cat and the teenager waited in silence then, their emerald green and scarlet eyes staring at the trees in front of them as dawn slowly painted them with new, vibrant colours. One after the other, birds started singing…Then all fell silent at the same time.

A bigger, more terrifying predator than a simple ninja cat was approaching, they all felt it deep in their brittle bones, a presence probably as threatening to them as one of a god for ninjas. Hitomi shuddered then squared her shoulders, her left hand finding the guard of her tantō in faux nonchalance. The black wood and red silk were clean once more, the invasion but a memory in the weapon’s core. Even a civilian would see that this sword had served its mistress, especially with the way Hitomi’s fingers wrapped around it, loving, careful, but most of all used to holding it.

Twigs snapped, deeper in the forest. Those visitors knew to walk without making a noise; they were aware of her presence, they had felt her presence, she was sure of it. This ruckus – barely more than a whisper amongst the other sounds of the forest, despite how silent the animals had become – was a way of telling her to run if she valued her life.

She didn’t move.

She knew why she was there, after all, knew the risks, knew how her loved ones would react if they learned what foolish position she had put herself in. She didn’t intend for them to find out, or only when she’d be able to prove it was all worth it, but that was only  if she survived this first encounter. She tried to make her face an impassive mask as she shifted her position to weaken the threat she could represent – the idea that she could be threatening in comparison to them made her want to burst into laughter and tears.

Suddenly, two shadows appeared between the trees. One of them was even taller than Zabuza, and the other exuded a kind of quiet power that made her want to disappear. She waited as they approached, observing the black coats with red clouds and the large, flat hats decorated with little strips of paper covered in traditional incantations. She straightened up and breathed in deeply as Hoshihi stood up next to her, the end of his tail twitching in discontent.

“I didn’t think I’d see you here,” said an incredibly soft, detached voice under one of the hats.

“Hm? You know that girl?” the other, hoarsely amused.”

“Oh, yes… We knew each other once, didn’t we, Yūhi-san?” Slowly, the smaller of the two men raised a hand and removed the hat that concealed all his features.

Hitomi was careful to keep her eyes on the pale and smooth skin of his neck.

Before her stood Uchiha Itachi.

Chapter 69: A Risk Worth Taking

Hitomi couldn’t stop her hands from shaking slightly. No one would reproach her that sign of fear in such a situation – Uchiha Itachi was a nightmare made man for many Konohajin shinobi, even the bravest. And yet, just by looking at him, it was difficult to perceive him as intimidating. He was tall and slender, and the calm power exuding from him didn’t call for violence or bloodshed. The lines of strain and pain under his eyes had grown longer since the last time Hitomi had seen him. Had he started to go blind yet?

“I… I have the information you came for, Uchiha-san,” she said, her voice hoarse in anxiety. What good would it do to her to hide her fear as she stood in front of the two deserters? She had been hurt by Orochimaru barely a few weeks ago and, compared to those men, Orochimaru was a fucking joke .

“Oh, really?” Kisame laughed. “The little girl knows things that could interest us, now, does she? Why give us reasons to hurt you, girlie? You don’t look that stupid.”

“N-no need to hurt me. I’m ready to offer this information freely, and all future information as well. I don’t need to have conditions because I know what Uchiha-san will choose to do when he hears that information.”

She finally dared to overcome her anxiety and look him in the eyes. The Sharingan was beautiful, hard and noble in the middle of his regal features. With his eyes active, he couldn’t have passed for a civilian but, even without them, the truth of his identity would always lay in his gait, in the aura of quiet assurance about him. A lot of powerful people had bowed before him, with either fear or respect.

“And what can you tell me, then, Yūhi-san?” the elder Uchiha asked, his voice betraying the faintest trace of surprise. It had to be because she was looking at him in the eye. Not many people were crazy enough or self-destructive enough to do that – and yet there she was.

“S-Sasuke. It’s about Sasuke. I know what you came to do here. I know the truth about the Massacre.”

A wave of killing intent hit her hard enough to make her fall on her knees., her hands clawing at her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Hoshihi hissed, tried to hurl himself at the deserter but she grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, still slowly suffocating. The giant cat pressed his body against her, his fur so bristled it could have cut through glass, and glared at Itachi. Her hands were shaking as she tore Ishi to Senrigan from her obi and threw it to the man’s feet. He was probably surprised once more, because he let go of his intent and she collapsed on the ground, frantically filling her lungs with air.

When she got a hold of herself, the tantō was in the deserter’s hands. He recognised that weapon – how could he not? “Shisui… I didn’t know you had made his acquaintance, Yūhi-san.”

“I haven’t,” she said, her voice hoarse and tired, once her breath had a normal rhythm again. “I wish I had… According to Sasuke, he was incredibly kind. But your brother took me to the land of your clan, some time after the massacre. We took a lot of things from them. Archives, amongst other things. After I read them, I made sure he could never find them, for his safety.”

The deserter tore his eyes away from the tantō and looked at her, surprised once more. He probably hadn’t expected his young brother to trust someone enough to open the gates of their lands to them, to entrust prised possessions to them.

Her voice now firmer, Hitomi continued. “When we left the Uchiha lands, I was certain of two things: a rebellion against the Hokage had been in preparation inside the clan until it brutally disappeared, and the massacre that wiped it out entirely had been a direct consequence of those plans.”

“There was nothing in the archives that could…”

“No, Uchiha-san,” she interrupted him, “there was nothing. But I have a number for you, a number that you know extremely well. A hundred and forty-nine. It’s the number of men, women and children who died that night. Amongst them, fifty-three were shinobi on active duty.” She let silence emphasise those numbers, hoping that he would pick up where she stopped, but he didn’t. Behind his impassive features, she could almost see the remorse that, she knew all too well, twisted his gut. To bring peace, he had provoked war, and would live until the end of his time in this world with the weight of that choice on his mind.

“Fifty-three shinobi of all ranks, all in the village at the same time… It’s simply impossible, especially considering the fact that, since the Kyūbi’s attack on the village, our shinobi work relentlessly to maintain appearances and bring in much needed money. You’ve killed all those shinobi, Uchiha-san, and the civilian members of the clan as well, but someone made sure they would all be there at the same time to be massacred. And who possesses such power in Konoha? The answer is simple, really: the Hokage and his High Council.”

Behind Itachi, Kisame let out a rumbling laugh. She didn’t know who, between her or his teammate, amused the Kirijin deserter the most. She didn’t care either at that moment, her eyes bound to Itachi’s, the knowledge of how easily he could trap her in an illusion of endless suffering clinging to the air between them.

“I don’t know which one, or which ones, of them are behind that. I only know that you managed, one way or another, for those people to stay away from Sasuke. The Hokage wanted to leave him to his fate, all alone in the house where he found his parents’ bodies. My mom didn’t allow that to happen.”

“Why… How?”

Hitomi let out a warm little laugh, her features softening to an unashamed expression of love. “Oh, you would have loved it, Uchiha-san. The rumour still runs through the village today that she pinned him to a wall with one hand, all the while screaming loud enough in his face that all the ANBU in the building heard. And didn’t dare approach her.”

The shadow of a smile danced on Itachi’s lips. As for Kisame, he burst out laughing, throwing his head back, even though he didn’t know the people this story concerned. A gust of wind blew away the tension in the air, so Hitomi took a deep breath and stood back up, shifting her weight as discreetly as she could against Hoshihi’s shoulder. “There are so many things you want to know, Uchiha-san. I saw you with your brother, before the massacre. If your memory is as good as mine, you know I never forget anything. I couldn’t forget the sheer love in your eyes.”

The young man in front of her got totally serious once more. There was a kind of pining in his eyes, something that told her he would have given anything he had to take back that horrible night and never leave Konoha. Hitomi wished there was a way. She sometimes regretted having been brought to her time, and not several years before. Had she been older, she could have prevented this event – and could have had more time to prepare for the other reefs standing in her path.

“I don’t have time to give you all those answers aloud, Uchiha-san, but I can show you. I know you have a genjutsu that can enter the mind of people, I read about it in a scroll Sasuke and I got from the Uchiha lands. Please use it on me. I won’t fight it, I promise.” As if she could even do such a thing. As if she was strong enough to resist him.

It was probably the first time someone asked the deserter to be the target of any of his techniques, but a lot of Hitomi’s fear had disappeared. She kept her eyes on Itachi’s, and not on his hands that, after a moment of hesitation, formed the necessary hand seals for the technique. She felt his warm and curiously agitated chakra disturb her own, and then she was in her Library, before the cage where her perceptions floated like ribbons cut from pure light.

Next to her stood Itachi; she realised that, for the first time in this realm, she had a body too. Usually, her trips to her Library gave her a vague and certainly not human shape. But she needed a body to guide the Uchiha through her domain; that much was clear. A discreet smile touched her lips when he started looking around, a spark of utter fascination in his eyes. No one could forget that Uchiha Itachi was a genius, just as intelligent as a Nara, and it showed in the way he searched the place, and for an explanation, with his eyes.

“It’s the first time I see anything like this,” he whispered, his voice itching with bewilderment.

“I’ve never met anyone who can do this, except for myself. I’ve not talked about it with the Yamanaka, though, so I couldn’t swear I’m the only one. I think the combination of my eidetic memory and chakra gave shape to this place. Please follow me.”

Her gait almost ethereal, she guided him through the rows upon rows of shelves. Since she had realised in which world, exactly, she had come back to life, she had rearranged the place to feature all her memories about the universe she now lived in into the ground floor. She walked past the sections about politics and fūinjutsu without stopping, then she found the one about family. The higher shelves were all about Kurenai and Nara Shikano, her father, then there was Shikamaru, Shikaku and Yoshino, then Ensui, and then… Sasuke. Sasuke was there, in thousands of memories and as many books. Without a word, she pulled the first one that would interest Itachi to her hand with a mere thought. She opened it and the memory unrolled in the air between them, as shown by the pages it emanated from.

She showed him the funerals, how Kurenai had invited Sasuke to become part of their family, and all the nights he had joined Hitomi in her bed because of a nightmare. She showed him healing slowly, never quite forgetting his hatred, but never allowing it to consume him either. She showed him intelligent and lively, brilliant, First Genin in the Academy. She showed him forming a team with Naruto and her, year after year, until graduation made them official.

She showed the survival exercise during which he had awoken his Sharingan and the pride in her mother’s eyes when she had come to pick them up at the Academy and seen the forehead protectors on them for the first time. She showed him the mission in the Land of Waves that could have turned bad in so many ways but had ended up being a success on all fronts. She showed the other, meaningless and yet essential missions that had allowed Sasuke to grow up and settle in the village.

Then it was the Chūnin exam. She showed him during the first stage, as he used his Sharingan to carve his way to success, then during the second, in the Forest of Death. She showed the fear, the anguish, the despair, the crushing power Orochimaru held, the constant struggle Sasuke had opposed the Sannin with until he was harmed; she showed the aftermath, the way she had sealed the Cursed Seal with what she had on hand, terrified and wounded herself. She showed him the days in the Tower, the efforts they had both made so he would be ready to face whatever came next.

She showed him, finally, the preliminaries and the beginning of his tournament fight against Gaara, and the memories after the invasion, when he had come home safe and sound. She closed the last book and put it back in its place on the shelf. She had started crying somewhere during the memories of the Forest of Death and, when she looked up to Itachi, she realised she wasn’t the only one: thin damp lines rolled down his pale cheeks. He stumbled as he tried to step towards her and leaned against a shelf to steady himself.

“I have… I have to enter Konoha,” he said, his voice so hoarse it had to hurt. “Hiruzen isn’t there to protect him anymore, I have to…”

“No, Uchiha-san. You don’t have to do anything. Nara Shikaku is Hokage for now, until we can find Tsunade of the Sannin. You know how the Nara are about their family, their clan, their youngs, don’t you? Shikaku-ojisan considers Sasuke his nephew. They aren’t close, they don’t spend much time together, but adoption and wardship ties matter just as much as blood ones to us. My uncle will protect him, I can promise that with my life.”

Itachi’s eyes became truly expressive for the first time. He looked tortured, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, like someone who didn’t dare to believe, to trust, but wanted it above anything. Slowly, Hitomi walked to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t feel anything, since the bodies in her Library only looked solid, but it seemed to bring his focus back to her. How long had it been since he’d let anyone approach him, touch him, even in spirit? The massacre had happened almost six years ago.

“It’s okay, Uchiha-san. I took care of everything so far and I’ll continue. Sasuke found his place in the village, in the Fellowship, in our team, in our family. We’ll defend and protect him. If my peers and I aren’t enough, we’ll entrust my uncle, my mentor, my mother and Kakashi-sensei with the matter, and they’ll turn mountains to dust if it’s what it takes to protect us. Sasuke is safe, I promise.”

A long time passed in the peaceful silence of her Library. The pale light emanating from everywhere and nowhere all the same sometimes cast strange shadows on Itachi’s face, which Hitomi watched closely. She hadn’t let go of him either, maintaining the empty touch of her immaterial hand on his ghostly shadow as if she knew he needed it to anchor himself in the shaken world that she’d made his.

“I would… I would like to stay informed…” His voice was but a hoarse, tormented whisper, a strange twinge of vulnerability audible in the astonished inflexions of his tone. Hitomi smiled, as reassuring as she could feign to be. Not once had she lied to him, and yet the fear she wouldn’t be enough shredded her chest from inside.

“I planned on this too, Uchiha-san. Can you please interrupt the illusion spell? I have a way to keep in touch with you, a way that cannot be intercepted.”

In a single breath, her Library dissolved around them and the forest was back. The sun had climbed several degrees in the sky, but not so much time had passed that Hitomi’s team, friends or family would have started looking for her. Her limbs stiff with prolonged stillness, she activated a storage seal hidden in one of her sleeves. In her open hand fell one of her communication notebooks, its cover an unassuming brown – perfect for it to be hidden in plain sight.

As she handed the object to Itachi, she explained how it worked and promised to write often. For now, she wouldn’t ask for anything in return, but she let him understand that the day would come where information would flow both ways. He accepted without protest, but the quick glance he threw to her face made the girl aware that he had caught the meaning of her words. After thanking her with a slight bow that secretly amazed her – she’d made the Uchiha Itachi bow to her, for fuck’s sake – he walked back to Kisame, who had stayed a few steps behind and stood watch all this time.

“Aren’t we killing the little girlie? I thought you wanted to wreck a little bit of havoc in Konoha.”

“Not today, Kisame. Come, we have places to be. I’ll explain everything.”

A blink later, the two nukenin were gone. A few seconds passed in perfect silence, then the birds started singing again, a wild instinct making them understand that the threat that had kept them silent was just a bad memory. On the bank of the river, Hitomi fell to her knees once more, with relief this time. She hid her face in her hands, took several deep breaths. She had a hard time believing what she had just managed and oscillated between the need to burst into tears and laughter, unable to choose the one she needed more.

Next to her, Hoshihi sat down and started licking one of his paws. “Did you really make a criminal run with the power of your mind?” he deadpanned. “I can’t wait to tell Sunaarashi, she won’t believe it.”

Just like that, hilarity won; the girl collapsed and giggled like she was still six years old and just as carefree as she’d been back then. She laughed with relief and euphoria until her ribs ached, thrown back into it each time she glanced at her familiar, who did his best to look dignified. After a while, he walked away with a brush of his tail against her face to go get himself a nice fat rabbit and she was able to calm down, to wipe the tears off her cheeks and straighten her outfit. She went to get Ishi to Senrigan back from where Uchiha Itachi, S-ranked criminal , had carefully leaned it against a tree.

When she had definitely got a hang of herself, she went back into the village the same way she had left it, without getting seen. Ironically, after an invasion, patrols weren’t a priority. Watch was reduced to a minimum so all the shinobi freed from that specific duty could focus on missions. The village needed money more than it ever had before. It needed to replace the equipment, to repair the buildings and to attract civilians from the rest of the country so they could pick up work from those who had died. It was a cruel, cold-headed vision, but probably the best to follow.

After a light meal, Hitomi signalled her availability to one of the mission posts open everywhere in the village. There was so much cleaning and fixing to do that she immediately got to work, very careful not to think about the cruel fate she had just escaped. She didn’t want the anxiety to come back to her now that it had left.

She did a quick cleaning mission then was deployed to the Academy, where she was tasked with overseeing and protecting a group of first year students who couldn’t go home right away, either because their parents were away for a mission and their guardians unavailable until they were done with work, or because they had wished to stay with their friends. Amongst them were Aburame Sugi, Shino’s younger brother, and Hyūga Hanabi, Hinata’s sister.

At first, Hitomi watched the two children from afar. She had summoned her six ninja cats and entrusted them with mingling with the students. Classes were interrupted at the Academy but the parents still needed a place to put their children while they were away on a mission, or while they were working their civilian jobs. Teachers weren’t available either, since their field skills were needed. Most shinobi working at the Academy during these challenging times were General Forces and volunteer Genin like Hitomi. The officers in the mission boot hadn’t had any problem with her overseeing a group, not when her last mission at the Academy, months ago, had been so nicely handled.

Several students dared to approach her, to ask questions about the invasion. A lot of them had lost a parent, a friend, an acquaintance. She stayed evasive about the violence and the fights, but she explained the politics behind it all, why Shikaku had been picked as temporary Hokage and why he couldn’t stay in that role for long. Sugi and Hanabi were amongst the curious. Hitomi was surprised to see them so close. They exchanged long, meaningful looks and held hands when they thought no one was watching, keeping away from the other students. With a little wince, Hitomi remembered something Shino had said in the tower in the Forest of Death: Nara Anosuke had been the first friend Sugi had ever brought home. The missing boy was probably close with Hanabi as well.

After carefully considering her options, the girl decided to walk to the two kids. She crouched next to Sugi, who she knew a little better. A soft and sad smile appeared on her lips. The boy looked so much like his brother, with his dark chestnut hair and the efforts he made to hide his face. Nasty gossips said that the Aburame hid their faces because they were sly. Hitomi knew better: they were modest and shy. Neither, in her opinion, was a true flaw.

“Sugi-kun, thank you for visiting Hinata at the hospital. My mom said she sees you there quite often. I’m sure Hinata is very happy to see you.”

The boy, behind his sunglasses, glanced at Hanabi. The girl was impassive, but her big, lilac eyes didn’t leave Hitomi’s face for a moment, as if she was trying to make her understand something.

“You both know Anosuke-kun, right? Shino told me you were friends with him, Sugi-kun, and seeing how you two stick together, I guess it’s your case as well, Hanabi-chan. Did someone come to you and make sure you were coping, after the announcement that he was missing?”

She had changed the subject on purpose, to throw them off-balance. She saw Sugi shift to shield Hanabi without looking too obvious while the little girl frowned and the muscles at the corners of her eyes tightened, as if she was trying to turn sadness to anger. Hitomi had done the same too, sometimes. She shifted from her crouch to a seiza position on the ground.

“No one asked us anything,” Sugi admitted after a while. “They’re all busy with their duties, they don’t have time for us.”

Hitomi tried to soften her inquisitive expression as she turned her eyes to Hanabi, who held her stare for a few seconds before lowering her eyes and answering as well. “Same at my place. They didn’t even tell me my friend was missing, I was only told about it today when Sugi arrived. I-I just thought he was busy or maybe at the hospital, but not… not missing .”

With any other child, Hitomi would have shifted closer, offered a hug, but Hinata had told her enough about her and Hanabi’s upbringing for her to refrain. For the Hyūga, any sign of weakness was undignified. That the girl was opening up surprised the Yūhi heiress already.

“It’s terrifying not knowing what happened to him, where he is, if he’s okay,” Hitomi said. “As soon as they can, the Nara will send people to look for him. I can’t promise that we’ll find him or that he’ll be okay, because I don’t know about any more than you both do. The only thing I can promise you is that we’ll do our best, not only because he’s one of our own, but also because we’ve always pledged to protect our young and because we’ve failed him.”

The two children welcomed her declaration and the sharp edge in her voice with silence. Something uncoiled in the line of Hanabi’s shoulders, then the girl nodded as Sugi shifted towards her. Hitomi wanted to reassure them, but she couldn’t do it without lying to them. She sighed and flexed her fingers inside her wide sleeves, brushing her fingers against two storage seals. “What you can do for him right now is work, give your very best to become exceptional shinobis. If he’s found, if he’s alive, he’ll need you as strong as you can possibly be.”

“Shino-nii says you’re very smart,” Sugi said after a moment of silence. “Do you have any idea how we can do that?”

“Yes, I have. I created a card game for my friends at the Academy, one that would help them study.” She activated the seals and, when she showed her hands, both contained a complete deck of cards, bound together by a red ribbon. “I can teach you to use them, so you can spend less time studying and more time training. Interested?”

The two kids nodded eagerly. While she still kept an eye on the other students, Hitomi launched herself into the rules of the game. She couldn’t find their friend, couldn’t give them the power to do it themselves, but what she could do was push them towards progress and fulfilment. In fact, for whatever reason, she even felt as if she owed it to them.

And she always paid her debts and accomplished her duty, no matter the cost.

Chapter 70: A New Trip

In the following days, Hitomi had little time to spend with the adults. Her mother only returned home for showers and a change of clothes, sleeping when she could between missions and eating only when time permitted. Asuma and Kakashi, unfortunately, followed a similar work regimen. Even Ensui, now that Hiruzen had stepped down from power, was back on active duty, though he wasn’t sure for how long that would remain the case. His service to Shikaku, whenever that was required, still took precedence, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to serve Tsunade—the man preferred to work within the close knit circle of his clan, as much as possible.

Hitomi used the three days she had before her mission with Jiraiya to spend time with Hanabi and Sugi outside of Academy hours. The two children had begged her to teach them her katas, the same ones her shishou had taught her years ago. Even though the Hyūga heiress didn’t need a taijutsu instructor, she wasn’t content with only having the Gentle Fist in her close combat arsenal. Seeing as  both kids have expressed their willingness to take matters into their own hands should she refuse, Hitomi had little choice but to give in to their request. She started by teaching them the way the Nara greeted the sun—a foundational ritual stretch that complimented their fighting style.

In the evening, she exchanged letters with Haku about their plans for when they saw each other again, and during the trip. It was easy to convince Zabuza to hit the road again; the two nukenin only saw one place as their true home, only to find themselves chased away from there in disgrace so many years prior. Hitomi had vowed to fix that mess if it didn’t right itself when Terumī Mei set her ambitions toward taking Kirigakure back. For now, it wasn’t her priority, but perhaps one day she could direct her full attention towards the matter.

Or at least, she hoped she could.

She had started writing to Uchiha Itachi as well, a fact she kept well-hidden from Sasuke. Thankfully, with how busy everyone was, that wasn’t much of a challenge. Her brother was mostly deployed on messenger missions through the Land of Fire since, amongst their team, he was the closest to Chūnin level. However, no decision would be taken before Tsunade became Hokage. It was almost funny, the way no one thought the mission Jiraiya, Hitomi and Naruto were embarking on could fail.

Hitomi told Itachi all about little details he missed in her memories, like how his brother aced the Academy’s tests or how good he was with kids. There was always something new she could tell him. Sometimes, more rarely, they exchanged words about other subjects. He knew a bit about fūinjutsu, but not enough to create his own seals. He gave her a few pieces of kenjutsu advice and told her about Shisui, the last owner of the blade she never left behind anymore.

Then there were Gaara’s letters. He had left Konoha in a rush, without bidding a proper goodbye. His first letter spoke of how she had been accurate about the dead Kazekage in a pit not far from Sunagakure, surrounded by his dead guards. Despite that, Hitomi offered him little in the way of comfort; she knew he despised his father. What she instead offered was advice: a suggestion that he should show some sympathy towards Kankurō and Temari, since they bore at least some affection for their late sire.

She felt the way the geopolitics in the Elemental Nations shifted, day after day. Such power, in the hands of a mere Genin, was reason enough to worry. To distract herself and pass the time, she buried herself taking notes within her Library; she immersed herself in even the simplest of tasks in order to keep her hands and mind busy and trained until her body said no more. By the middle of her fourth day, she had mastered the Shunshin. Ensui had never given her that lecture after all, so she didn’t feel at all guilty about learning techniques without supervision. The delay when she used it was gone now, and she no longer felt dizzy after arriving at her destination. There remained only one element she had yet to include—the aesthetic flare of some glorious glitter… and of course, a place in her fighting style.

Both seemed equally important.

Hitomi rose before the sun on the day they were poised to leave the village. First, she had to shake Naruto out of sleep; he’d been absent the past few days, but he had come home the previous evening, Karin in tow. The Uzumaki girl was now occupying the last available room in their house, but Hitomi doubted the permanence of that; Karin had always spoken of having her own place, somewhere closer to the hospital.

After she dragged Naruto out of bed and into the shower to freshen up, Hitomi went downstairs to prepare breakfast. She found Karin and Sasuke already on the task, bickering in hushed tones about the way Naruto preferred his omelette. An affectionate smile on her lips, the girl muffled her chakra so she wouldn’t be noticed and watched them for a moment. If Ensui, Asuma and Kurenai had been there, sitting around the table and exchanging amused looks at the teenagers’ antics, life would have been perfect.

“Naruto prefers his eggs just a bit runny,” Hitomi said. She had to step in then, lest they get nothing done at all, “but he’s so impatient to leave that he’d eat anything this morning.”

Sasuke straightened with a triumphant expression as Karin winced, surprised. Hitomi didn’t know what kind of training the Kusajin shinobi received, but she found it incredibly lacking when she saw the way her redhead friend moved and bore herself. Most Genin wouldn’t have any difficulty winning a spar against her, especially those from Hitomi’s group. Fortunately, Karin would be a medic now, kept away from the frontlines and protected by stronger comrades during missions.

She sat at the table, her gait flexible and tranquil. It was mission day, and the prospect of her being on the road again never ceased to put her more at ease. The only person she’d truly miss during this adventure was Ensui. He couldn’t leave, of course. He was too essential to the village right now and, with both Haku and Zabuza waiting for an escort from them just ten kilometres away from the village, Jiraiya had decided they were safe enough. Besides, the Hermit was still a former student of Hokage the Third, and Ensui still despised the old man’s gut.

“Y-you’ll take care of Naruto, right?” Karin asked as she put a plate in front of her.

“Of course, I’ll always do my best to protect him. But, you know, he doesn’t need much taking care of. He became really strong.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Sasuke snorted. “The way he kicked that Hyūga genius’ ass… People have to take him seriously now.”

“Ah, I was sure I had sensed yours and Kakashi-sensei’s presence. You watched it all, didn’t you?”

“Hm hm. Sensei told me that a dramatic entry was a crucial part to a good show. Besides, arriving late allowed me to build tension within the public, so…”

“Oh, please don’t tell Shikamaru about any of this. He was pissed to have carefully calculated the length of shadow he’d have during his fights to have it all messed up because you arrived late. If he hears that you did it on purpose, I think he’ll find a way to kill you.”

“You mean that ’s why he glares at me every chance he gets since after the invasion? Wow. You Nara know how to hold a grudge.”

“Trust me, you haven’t seen the worst of it. Or of me, for that matters.”

Karin looked at them both, noting the gleam of horror in Sasuke’s eyes and Hitomi’s wicked smile, then burst out laughing. It was strange to see her finally overcoming her shyness, in a way that didn’t make things awkward like she had expected it to. Naruto arrived then, kissing his cousin on the cheek before settling down on his usual chair. As soon as Sasuke presented him with the plate of food, he dug in without a missed beat, much to the amusement of the rest of the table.

After breakfast, Hitomi and Naruto prepared to leave the village. Jiraiya had told them to meet him at Konoha’s Gates at ten in the morning, a fact she passed on to her favourite pair of deserters. Before she left, Hitomi took several passes at her belongings to ensure that she had everything she needed for the mission, but nothing could stop the nervousness that came back to choke her like a hand around her throat when she left the Nara lands with Naruto by her side. Sasuke and Karin had left earlier for their own duties, having expressed their apologies for not being able to see them off.

“Everything will be okay, Hitomi-nee, believe it!”

Hitomi shrugged off her anxiety when she heard the knuckle-headed boy’s voice. She looked at him, her eyes immediately softening as her body relaxed. It was hard to stay worried when he was next to her, his smile as sunny as ever and pride in his every move. “You’re probably right,” she admitted. “I’m only worried because Tsunade and Orochimaru used to be part of the same Genin team…”

“What? How?”

“You didn’t know? Hm, you don’t spend enough time in the archives…”

“Hitomi-nee, you’re the only one who likes that dusty place.”

“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring the interruption, “Orochimaru, Tsunade and Jiraiya were a Genin team once, under the Third’s tutelage. They fought during the Second Shinobi World War, in the Land of Rain, and they were so good at ninja arts that its leader, Hanzō, let them live after he beat them and named them the Sannin, the three legendary shinobi.”

“Aah, I knew Jiraiya was part of that team, but no one told me that Tsunade and Orochimaru did too! Is that why the Hermit came back to the village?”

“The fact that his former teammate is active once more played a role in that decision, yes, but I think it’s rather related to Hiruzen-sama’s injuries. They have always been close, after all.”

She didn’t tell him about Jiraiya’s other motivation to return, of course. Distributing S-ranked secrets was a severe offense that would likely land her in jail, and as much as she liked Morino Ibiki and Yamanaka Inoichi, she wasn’t prepared to visit the prison under their jurisdiction. Her secrets were far too precious, and she wasn’t sure she could protect them from the two men. They wouldn’t use physical torture on a child, a teenager, but there were many, many ways to break a mind. She was certain that Shimura Danzō had men in the Torture and Intelligence department – she would have put men there if she’d been in his place, so she wouldn’t miss any information. But then, Ibiki didn’t look like he’d tolerate secret agents whose loyalty didn’t belong to him walking into his domain. She wondered who, between the councilman and the department leader, had won that battle.

They arrived at the Gates ahead of schedule, but Jiraiya was already there, trying to convince Izumo and Kotetsu that the best oil for weapons was the one he purchased in the Lotus district. Around them, the streets were finally clear, with D-ranked missions focused solely on rebuilding. Almost all the Genin from this generation would have to learn the basics of masonry to help the workforce Konoha had barely managed to hire.

“Aah,” Hitomi drawled, her tone light and humorous, “you three are all wrong. The best oil for that is made and sold in Nara land. You only need a ridiculously little amount of it and it lasts forever. I barely touched the jar I bought when I graduated.”

“Tss,” Kotetsu answered, “not everyone can afford to buy clan goods. You’re lucky to live there, you don’t have to pay the tax other shinobi have to pay to buy Nara products.”

He was right, but this was very common practice in Konoha. Only the Yamanaka, Akimichi and Nara had derogations between their three clans. When Hitomi bought treats in the Inuzuka lands, she paid almost twice as much as she would have in civilian parts of the village. The only reason she went through with the purchase was because they were her cats’ favourites, and she had the money for it.

“Come on, now, Kotetsu-san, don’t pout. My mom taught me economics. I know how much a Chūnin is paid, even if he’s stationed at the village’s Gates. You aren’t afraid of the big bad Nara, are you?”

“No need for big bad Nara. The tiny wicked Nara in front of me frightens me just fine.”

Hitomi burst out laughing, and the others quickly followed suit. She loved to have her potential, her power, and everything that would one day make her a terrifying kunoichi, acknowledged.

“Come on, kids, time to hit the road,” Jiraiya said when they calmed down. “Izumo, Kotetsu, I’ll buy you a drink when I get back if you do the paperwork for us. Deal?”

The two guards almost tripped over themselves in their eagerness to accept. Jiraiya didn’t exactly go about his day throwing invitations to drink with Chūnin, though if it could help Hitomi and Naruto dodge paperwork, it seemed he didn’t quite mind. When it was settled, the three ninjas left the village and followed the road for ten kilometers without looking back, keeping their discussion towards lighter subjects.

Zabuza and Haku were waiting for them, just as they had promised. Hitomi welcomed them by throwing herself in the youngest’s arms. He hugged her back, pressing his cheek against the top of her head. There was still something between them, a spark that wasn’t just friendship. They both felt it with every letter they wrote to each other, and now that they could meet again, it was even harder to ignore – but Hitomi loved Lee. What she felt for Haku was longing, tenderness, and maybe something else she couldn’t quite name, but that feeling wasn’t significant enough for her to act on it.

“So, how are things in the Land of Water these days?” she asked after they hit the road again, the two deserters now with them.

“Not too bad,” Zabuza grunted. “The money your clan leader gave us helped a lot. We could equip everyone decently with it, and we all get warm meals everyday. The open fights haven’t started yet, though. We’re still trying to decide who should rule the village when we get it back. They’re hesitating between a woman, the only survivor of her clan… and me.”

“You don’t look psyched by the idea of becoming Mizukage, Zabuza-san,” Jiraiya said after a second of silence.

“I don’t want to be. The war chief’s life isn’t for me. The Mizukage stays behind a desk most days and almost never leaves the village – it’s how things are done in Kiri anyway. I like to travel and I feel trapped when I stay in one place for too long.”

Haku hummed in approval, his eyes lost in front of him. No one could deny those two loved traveling. As for Naruto, he seemed deep in thought, only turning to Jiraiya after some time. “Say, is it the same for the Hokage?”

“Hm… I’d say it’s a bit different. Okay, Hiruzen didn’t leave the village much, but he was very active inside. He went to the Academy for important events, kept an eye on the hospital and the departments, and even on the General Forces. He was very approachable. I heard that Rasa-sama, the Kazekage who died during the invasion, was very distant with his people.”

“That’s right! Even with his own kids. Gaara told me he almost never saw his dad, and not at all after he turned five. He even told me that Rasa-sama was trying to have him murdered , and that was why Hitomi-nee’s shishou went to Suna for years, to protect him and his siblings.”

“That’s right,” Hitomi sighed. “Rasa had decided that his son wasn’t a good enough weapon to serve the village and wanted him killed no matter what. If I sent Ensui-shishou, it’s mostly so he would have someone to protect him, even if he didn’t really need protection with that demon inside him. It was the intention that mattered, that helped him feel loved and supported. And it worked out well, didn’t it? Gaara has been raised by Ensui-shishou to become a fine young man, and he’s close to his siblings. It wasn’t the case before.”

Jiraiya shook his head, grinning. “So you were the one behind that whole affair, you little minx. But how could y- oh, right, your communication notebooks. Sabaku no Gaara has one as well, hasn’t he?”

“Hm hm, and Haku does too, as well as most of my friends in the village. I like to keep in touch with them. Drawing the seals for a notebook is easy and quick now that I’m used to it. The hardest part was creating the first pair, then I got the hang of it.”

“I really have to look at your fūinjutsu skills during this trip.”

“Hey, what about me?” Naruto exclaimed, indignant. “You promised me a technique, old man, you haven’t forgotten about that, right?”

“Of course I haven’t, kid! For you, I have a very special technique. One that’s meant for you.”

The man’s tone was still light, but Hitomi saw the sadness that brushed on his features like a mirage. It was the Rasengan, the technique his genius of an apprentice had invented, that he intended to pass down to Naruto. The Yūhi girl wouldn’t have liked being in his shoes, with all the painful feelings he had to battle through. For a long time, they continued talking. Jiraiya made sure to focus on light subjects as to not unnerve the two deserters who escorted them.

He didn’t know if he could trust them yet, after all.

At nightfall, they stopped in a little cave that was barely big enough for all five of them. Nights were getting colder in the area, especially as they neared Tanzaku to the south of the Land of Fire, where the weather tended to be colder. Under Jiraiya’s orders, Hitomi went to hunt their dinner. She caught several rabbits and birds, enough for five famished shinobi who didn’t want to tap into their rations if they could help it.

Later, when their bellies were full, Zabuza took first watch, leaning his titan-like sword against the wall at the entrance of the cave. Jiraiya took the opportunity then to signal for Naruto to come closer. He looked at him for a moment, thoughtful. Did he remember the father as he watched the son, like a ghost on his expressive features? Was it because he was afraid of that pain that he had relinquished his guardianship to Hiruzen? For a wild moment, Hitomi imagined her mother getting that right over Naruto by threatening the Hokage to tell everything to Jiraiya about the boy if he wasn’t put in her care. It was just one of the many, many ways that woman could have managed such a feat; her daughter would probably never know.

For long minutes, the Hermit explained how the Rasengan worked to his student. Hitomi listened in distractedly as well, just in case she wanted to learn the technique one day. She wasn’t certain she wanted to, truth be told; the Water Release repertoire suited her so well, after all. There was also the fact that she had so many things on her plate already – contact seals, most even more complicated than the corporal seals she had barely dipped into, made her shiver in anticipation. So many possibilities…

“Your turn now, young lady!”

She straightened with a start, torn away from her thoughts by Jiraiya’s gravelly voice. She looked up to him and silently obliged his gesture to follow him into another corner of the cave,  She could almost feel her shadow follow the whims of the fire, independent from the rest of her body. Ensui had told her it was the sign she was almost ready for the next clan technique, the one Shikamaru had learned during his month-long training for the tournament. She knelt where Jiraiya told her to, well aware of the cautions the Hermit was taking when speaking of something as dangerous as fūinjutsu.

“I had a chat with Kakashi before I left. He told me you were extremely advanced for your age. You’ve started on corporal seals, right? Have you made any of your own?”

Hitomi shook her head. Thus far, all the seals she had created were formed from pieces of others.

“I figured as much. I can count on one hand how many people are capable of that since the Fourth’s death.” There was no quiver in his voice nor even a trace of expression across his face, but there was something in the way he pronounced the title… something that reflected the grief he felt each time he mentioned his former student. Had he not been one of the three legendary Sannin and a notorious perv, Hitomi might have entertained the idea of hugging him. While true that she was just a teenager, she knew exactly the lengths Jiraya was willing to go to piss both her and Naruto off.

“To create your own seals, you need thorough knowledge of both language and calligraphy. Creating seals, it’s akin to creating a new element of written speech or a new meaning for words and traits. You’ll be making something that doesn’t exist yet, essentially.”

Hitomi frowned, but listened closely. Could she possibly use her knowledge of languages from the Previous World to create new seals? It was certainly worth a try. Her palms tingled with longing and anticipation, even though she knew she wasn’t quite there yet, that her understanding of fūinjutsu, instinctive as it was, wasn’t deep enough. Jiraiya had made sure to reiterate that fact to her multiple times.

Their journey continued as such throughout. During the day, they covered as much ground as they could and at night, Jiraiya tutored the two Genin, with Zabuza or Haku occasionally intervening to have Hitomi work on her swordsmanship or ninjutsu for a bit. Thanks to the Hermit, she had learned two new B-ranked techniques. The first, the Eye of the Storm, raised a very dense circle of water around her to protect her. The other, Calling to the Pack, launched five almost solid water wolves from her fingers to her opponents.

Two qualitative pieces to add to her arsenal.

“Say, Jiraiya-sama, what can you tell us about that woman, Senju Tsunade? We don’t know much about her, except that she was your teammate long ago and kind of a famous medic.”

It didn’t come as a surprise that Naruto was asking about the woman; amongst them, he was the most interested in the people behind legends. Perhaps it was due to his intention of becoming one himself that spurred such an interest. Hitomi was curious too, but much like Zabuza and Haku, opted to listen instead of asking more questions.

“Well… She has one hell of a temper,” Jiraya explained, stroking his own chin as he gazed down the path. “When we were away on missions, she always managed to get the best spot to sleep and, if we tried to protest, she didn’t go easy on us. She’s superficial too—she uses a medical technique she invented to look as young as your adopted mom, and she’s my age!”

Hitomi wasn’t sure vanity motivated Tsunade to keep herself looking young. As a kunoichi, she understood, perhaps better than boys, how much appearances mattered in their world. For herself, it translated into a show of apparent vulnerability, delicate smiles and a voice that was always soft. Tsunade had probably chosen youth—the peak of her beauty. Men often underestimated pretty things, and pretty women as well.

“She always found the most sorrowful stories to tell our sensei so he’d excuse her mistakes,” the Hermit continued. “Never had more than a tell-off from him no matter what she did. Also she’s obsessed with gambling and atrociously bad at it, I swear. She was the best of us… and the one who fell the lowest.”

Hitomi felt a tug at her heartstrings then, at the tone of his voice. It would seem even the legendary Sannin, looming like a giant above herself, was capable of vulnerability. He was a man who preferred avoiding thoughts about everything he had lost and all the things that remained unsaid between him and his former teammates… even the one that had drifted so far off the beaten path that there no longer remained a recourse for him to return. It was unfair, really. He had given everything he had to the village. Rare were the shinobi to still be in active service – or even alive – at his age. He never stopped, because stopping meant having time to think, to remember, and he had more than his share of memories to flee from.

She understood. She understood in the hollow of sleepless nights spent in her Library, when she rested her body but certainly not her mind. She understood when Haku laid down next to her without a word, his breath brushing away a strand of her curly hair that he had twisted between his fingers earlier that evening like a talisman. She understood when she weighed every word she wrote to her friends – to Itachi too, thanks to a brief break alone.

She understood, yes, but she had nothing to offer in the way of healing his wounds, just as he was powerless to mend hers. So they did the only sensible thing they could: they ignored each other’s pain and offered something to keep their mind away from it. It worked most times, and in times when it didn’t, they had Naruto and his funny stories to tell or request, or a prank to work on. There was always something he could be proud of, and he loved to share his pride.

I read that the Sharingan, after reaching a certain form, grants its user perfect recall ; she wrote to Itachi one night when she felt particularly down. Is it true? Are you, too, forced to remember your every mistake and every weakness?

He responded quickly, something he had never done before. It was as though he could perceive, in her rushed handwriting, the distressed angles and upset traits reflective of her emotions.

It’s true. I cannot forget, but I learned to lock the worst memories out of reach. You’re young, Yūhi-san. If luck is on your side, you’ll still have plenty of time to fill the surface of your strange mind with happy memories to occlude the others.

She wanted to answer that he was still young, too – he was only five years older than she was, after all – but she stopped herself. In this world, was he already sick? Even without that sword of Damocles over his head, he would soon start to lose sight, if it wasn’t happening already. Blindness was often deadly for shinobi who weren’t born with it. He was part of one of the most dangerous organizations in the world… If his so-called partners, Kisame aside, realised that he was weakening, they would tear him apart, make him disappear. She refused to let that happen.

You sound depressed, Yūhi-san. The spark you had when we met in the Fire Forest seems gone. Is everything okay?

That message arrived several hours after she told Itachi about a nightmare she’d had. Two weeks had passed since they left Konoha. Since Jiraiya couldn’t be certain that Tsunade would be in Tanzaku, he’d decided to explore all the touristic cities along the coast and all the ones that had at least a casino or gambling house. In some places, they heard about the Legendary Sucker who lost astronomical amounts of money with each table she decided to sit at, and others they didn’t. It was still enough to follow her tracks, though that meant those others who weren’t so friendly could as well.

I’m afraid, she admitted to Itachi once she could write without Naruto trying to read over her shoulder. There’s a very big chance we’ll cross paths with Orochimaru during this mission. Jiraiya-sama thinks that it’s unlikely; that he’s too badly wounded to travel, but one of his closest agents, Kabuto, is a medic. He could have patched him up enough to be fit for travel again, to seek out traces of another medic, the best one in the world… I’m terrified.

Some time passed before Itachi’s next response. Hitomi stared at her notebook for a few minutes then, supposing Itachi wasn’t any more alone than she was, decided to work on one of the seals Jiraiya had started teaching her. It contained elements she had never used with Ensui and Kakashi, the most complex ornaments she had ever seen, and, after she drew it twice or thrice, it made her wrist ache. The one he picked up was a vicious one: it trapped the victim inside a very limited perimeter and sent any attack against the barrier back to them.

Hitomi, of course, liked that a lot.

A few more days passed before they encountered their first problems. Jiraiya had taken the whole team inside a casino to collect intelligence, and split everybody up to cover more ground. Soon enough, however, a loud commotion led Hitomi to a gaming table in particular. Haku was there, as well as several very drunk players. It was hard to tell under the usual polite and smooth veneer the teenager wore like a second skin, but Hitomi didn’t let it fool her; he was pissed. She shifted to the right and saw that he had gripped a player’s hand, which was lingering close to his bum.

Too close.

Ouch. In all sincerity, she would have liked nothing more than letting Haku handle that situation like he wanted to, but she couldn’t allow him to attract attention to their group. She stepped forward, focusing on the hard and cold knot of bitterness, anger and disgust that never faded from her mind. The air around her began growing heavy, gradually thickening to a point where it was starting to asphyxiate the nearby civilians. In the middle of that wave of terror and tenseness, Hitomi let her sweetest, most harmless smile bloom on her lips.

“Please leave my friend alone, we’re going. Coming here was a very obvious mistake. Haku, we’re going.”

They took advantage of the fact that the players around them were still dazed to step away and disappeared into the crowd. It took some time for Hitomi’s killing intent to fade until nothing was left of it in the atmosphere around her. She was holding onto Haku’s hand tight – she was so tiny that it would be easy to have her disappear in such a dense cluster of people – as she weaved through the sea of people until they were back at the entrance.

Hitomi glanced at the winnings in her pocket. While they were collecting intelligence, she found some time to collect quite a bit of money as well. After all, shinobi were very good at poker, and she could count cards without looking like it.

“I didn’t know you could make it appear at will now,” Haku said, his voice still tense.

She mumbled something inaudible, bought two lemonades at a stand nearby, then came back to the bench where they had settled. With a hard, cold gleam still alive in her red eyes, she handed him the glass. “It gets easier every day. I don’t know if I should worry about it or not… It probably makes me a better kunoichi, but I’m afraid I’ll lose my grip on parts of me that are dear to me.”

“I understand. It was the same for me, in the beginning, with Zabuza-shishou. He had to make me kill more people than I could count before it became easy but, far before that, he demanded that killing became a reflex for me and… I was afraid, sometimes, that I’d lose all my sensibility. And yet, it would have made my work for him so much easier.”

“Hm hm… That’s the cost of being a ninja. In another world, we’d be too young to even think about death on a daily basis, but here, it’s become part of our everyday life.”

Silence stretched between them like a web that grew thicker every second. There was no comfort nor peace in that silence, only the faint whisper of their most torturous thoughts.

“During the invasion, I killed forty-three people. I thought it was less, but some of them died from the wounds I inflicted upon them. I checked in the registry. I can’t feel guilty but… some of them still weigh heavy on my mind. Enemies who weren’t ready to die. Enemies I only wanted to injure. It feels a bit unfair. I should be horrified by all those deaths, or by none of them, not pick the ones that get to me.”

“Hum… It’s empathy, that’s all. I understand that, and I think Zabuza-shishou does as well. Especially since the battle on the bridge, in fact. He softened, in a way. When I don’t feel like doing something and he can handle it, I’m allowed to step away from it. He says that, since we’re going to survive a while longer, he doesn’t want me to hate him.”

Hitomi snorted. There was no way Haku could feel anything but adoration and respect for Zabuza.

“I know, it’s ridiculous. Who thought the great Demon of the Bloody Mist had feelings and insecurities?”

The two teenagers let out a faint laugh and, for the first time since they had left Konoha, Hitomi’s shoulders relaxed. It was exactly why she missed Haku so much when they were away from each other with only the notebooks allowing them to stay in touch. His gentle logic worked better on her in person than through letters.

“Ah, there you are!” Naruto beamed. “We got intel! Well, the old man has intel… But I, ah, I think he’s busy.”

One look at his very red face was enough to let Hitomi know that she didn’t want to go back inside. She had a very clear idea of what, exactly, was keeping him busy. With a sigh, she got her purse, heavy with her newly acquired money. “I think there’s a food stand not so far away from here. Wanna eat a bite? On me. Jiraiya-sama and Zabuza-san will find us in no time when they’re done, err, researching.”

The other two didn’t hesitate for one moment before accepting her offer, and the three teenagers walked to their target, a famished gleam in their eyes. They had had breakfast, of course, the adults wouldn’t have let them skip it without good reason, but it had been hours ago. They could afford to have nice things, couldn’t they?

Chapter 71: The Senju Princess

After weeks of arduous travel, Tanzaku was finally within sight.

During their time on the road, Hitomi had discovered that she was decidedly more at ease during long trips if the route they undertook didn’t include busy civilian towns. The noise and crowds were too much for her, having grown accustomed to the peaceful silence that Konoha often offered. Civilians living amongst a ninja village were far more familiar with a life rhythmed by military events and found no need to make their own beat.

Thankfully, Tanzaku seemed at a tad more peaceful than the heavily touristic towns they had encountered thus far, and Hitomi wasn’t the only one welcoming the sight of empty streets in the early morning with relief. Next to her, Zabuza let out a quiet, satisfied sigh, as if he feared being noticed for having emotions. What an indignity or whatever. With a faint smile, the girl followed Jiraiya into a hotel not extravagant enough to draw attention to themselves, but comfortable enough to accommodate their tastes. The Hermit checked everyone in, with Hitomi watching in dissatisfaction by the old man’s side as he mentioned having an entirely separate room catered for her due to her being the only girl amongst them. She couldn’t help but frown as she clutched her fingers around the key; she’d probably sneak into Naruto’s room to sleep with him. He wasn’t Sasuke, but he too welcomed her nightmares with open arms when she needed him to.

Had they not pushed so hard to reach Tanzaku the past couple of days, even going as far as skipping a night of sleep to cover more ground, they probably could have resumed their search immediately. Alas, eagerness and an unquenchable desire for soft bedding and a roof over their head spurred them into the spot they were tonight. Coupled with the fact that they had grown incessantly tired of hunting a prey so good at covering her tracks despite her notorious gambling habits, they decided, after a brief discussion, to pick up the hunt tomorrow.

Hitomi should have been as gassed out as the others, but a foul, frantic energy kept chasing the coveted pull of sleep away, denying her the tormented company of her dreams. Frustrated, she decided to work on her seals to pass the time; she had almost gotten to a satisfactory level of mastery with the seals Jiraiya had instructed her to work on. The one she fancied wouldn’t be of much use in direct combat, but in an ambush… She could use it in so many ways it was almost ridiculous—for the poor enemy, that was.

The work did little in the way of beckoning sleep, unfortunately. Each time she closed her eyes, her heart throbbed with unease; irregular beats going up her throat often enough that she simply couldn’t let go and fall asleep. It was probably the most intense form of foreboding she’d ever experienced. Squeezing her eyes shut and throwing her arms over them, she laid on her still-made bed and let her thoughts drift towards Fukuda. Just a month prior, Hitomi had been consolidating mental notes about her emotional state to bring up to her in their next session. She'd been so kind, so reassuring, so patient—it felt like there was no problem the kunoichi brought up that she didn’t have a gentle answer for. She was dead now, and there was nobody Hitomi could turn to to resolve the pent-up grief welling up inside her.

Nobody to tell her all this pain would go away.

Not a sound was made when lukewarm tears started to roll from the corners of her eyes onto her cheeks, neck, turning cold by the time they reached her hair. She had never been a loud crier, but this time her silence was absolute, only parting her lips so she could breathe despite her clogged nose. She was cruelly aware of the shinobi with very acute senses in the rooms to her left and right, and was doing everything in her power to avoid alerting them to her weakness. It wasn’t that she didn’t like their company—she did, very much so, but sometimes, when everything hurt and nothing feels right, she preferred to be left to her lonesome.

It took an hour or two, but Hitomi’s mind eventually settled, allowing her to drift into a land of dreams untouched by pain and terror for once… only to have it end all too soon, by a sharp knock on her door. Behind the wooden panel, Zabuza’s gravelly voice told her it was time to get ready, unaware of the startle he had caused her. Sighing, she rolled out of bed, taking a quick read of her messages before writing a quick answer to Ensui and Gaara. Her friend had been promoted to Chūnin with his siblings—or rather, he had gone back to Sunagakure, kindly informed the Council that his whole team had been promoted and received a unanimous agreement on the matter.

She met her team at the lobby of the hotel, all seemingly much better rested than the night before. Though, in Zabuza’s case, with the bandages across his face and all, she made an intelligent guess. The gathering of five shinobi so far out from any Hidden Villages or clan land caught the attention of nearby civilians, as she’d expected; they were, after all, somewhat of an elusive legend to the people of the Land of Fire. In times of peace, most of them lived their entire life without ever crossing paths with a shinobi—or noticing one, for that matter.

“My sources have told me which gambling house she likes to spend her morning in these days,” Jiraiya said once they were back in the street.

Murky clouds loomed overhead, but they were far and few between—a good indication that rain wasn’t quite ready to fall just yet, much to Hitomi’s relief. She had a sinking suspicion of a fight coming up today, and while she had a considerable advantage due to her affinity with water, she still found more comfort in a dry battlefield. Perhaps it was because it rarely rained in Konoha—that was probably a weakness in the training of future shinobi at the Academy, but she hadn’t the capacity to come up with a solution for that yet.

The group descended the streets in silence, trying with little success to mingle into the little clusters of civilians forming at the end of the afternoon. It was a hollow time of the day, between noon’s business and the night’s feverish excitement. For their heightened senses that had been overstimulated by previous towns, the quiet conversations and whisper of steps on dirt were a relief. Keeping their attention sharp amidst the racket of tourist traps they had encountered the past few weeks had been a challenge, and unfortunately, a ninja who could not remain constantly aware of their surroundings was a dead one.

“Here we are. Let me go in first, she knows me, she’ll be less…”

“With all due respect, Jiraiya-sama,” Hitomi stepped in, “I don’t think this would be wise. She knows you, yes, but she associates you with Konoha and with memories she’d rather forget. Let me go in, I’ll convince her to hear what we have to say.”

The two adults stared at Hitomi, obviously sceptical. She reacted by squaring her shoulders and raising her chin in pride. They knew she was right. If Jiraiya handled first contact, Tsunade wouldn’t be so eager to listen to them—and no one in their right mind would anger such a talented medic. Reluctantly, the Hermit nodded. “Fine, but we’ll be ready to step in just in case, and you be ready to dodge. If you annoy her, she’ll hit you.”

And my bones will shatter into a million pieces, maybe more, Hitomi thought, finishing his sentence in her mind. With a deep, soothing breath, the girl offered a curt nod and entered the building. She was, undoubtedly, the youngest person inside, and attracted predatory glances from several older men. She let them watch as she dived into the crowd with a confidence that would have fooled the best of them into believing she belonged there. If they dared using their hands rather than their eyes, well… It would only be self-defence.

Ninja law didn’t specify that that defence had to be proportional.

Locating her target proved a simple endeavor. A stunning woman in her twenties with gentle blond hair tied up in two low ponytails which she rested on her shoulders, amber eyes that gleamed despite the bleakness of her cards, and curves she displayed without any regard for modesty—probably to throw her opponent off, one might guess. Hitomi waited for her inevitable loss at the game before approaching, wearing an innocent and shy smile on her lips.

Harmless, as always. “Ma’am, do you play shōgi? You might have more luck with that game.”

Senju Tsunade barely offered her a glance, yet it was enough to spur her into straightening up under the pressure of her gaze—the gaze of a living legend. A brief flick of the eye towards the forehead protector resting on Hitomi’s head was enough to churn a frown from the stunning woman. “Konoha’s still sending its brats to me, even now. Don’t they have anything more important to do?”

“Hum… Not Konoha, not exactly. My uncle sent me here. He told me I could get better at shōgi by playing with you.” Still looking up at her target, Hitomi smiled again, borrowing everything she could from Haku’s effortlessly cute demeanour. Plus, what she had just said wasn’t a lie—Shikaku had indeed told her that the only way to win against Tsunade was to bet on the issue, and even that didn’t make winning any less of a challenge.

Fortunately, the Sannin couldn’t resist a bargain.

“Fine kid, if you want to be crushed so much, I don’t see why not.” Tsunade shrugged, before signalling something to a nearby woman carrying a tiny, adorable pig in her arms—Shizune, presumably. Without waiting for her companion to catch up, the Sannin grabbed firmly on Hitomi’s wrist and dragged her towards a private game room. The Yūhi girl kept her eyes glued to the ground while she traversed through the row of rooms, but her heightened hearing betrayed the salacious happenings behind those doors to her ears.

“You’re a Nara, aren’t you kid?” Tsunade asked when all three of them were settled in the room, the Sannin and Hitomi around a shōgi board and Shizune a step behind her mentor.

“My father was Nara Shikano, but I’m actually a Yūhi. Still considered a Nara by the whole clan, though.”

“Yūhi? I thought that clan had phased out.”

“Again, kinda. According to Konoha’s law, we narrowly cross the threshold to be considered a clan because the kids Mom adopted don’t count.”

“Yūhi Kurenai is your mother, right? She was a very promising Genin when I left.”

“Yeah, that’s her. She’s a Jōnin-sensei now.”

The two played through their conversation, and Hitomi quickly understood what Shikaku alluded to regarding Tsunade’s skills with each of her moves a more twisted trap than the last. Hitomi, however, had learned and played with masters of the game—Shikamaru included—and such moves didn’t deter her in the slightest. She moved her knight and smiled. “Tsunade-sama, I won’t lie to you, because I respect you too much. My teammates expect me to convince you to listen to them, and since I don’t want to face the consequences of trying to twist your arm, I’m going to propose a bet.”

Tsunade and her apprentice exchanged a look Hitomi couldn’t decipher. The Senju princess leaned towards her then, a greedy look on her face. “A bet? What could a brat like you have that would be of interest to me?”

“Savings. I’ve had a lot of missions going awry since I became a Genin, so I have more money than most my age. I know money is of interest to you, Tsunade-sama. If I lose this game, I’ll give it all to you, down to the last ryō. If I win, though, you’ll follow me and speak to my teammates. Do we have a deal?”

The woman let out a dry laugh. Hitomi’s situation on the board wasn’t ideal, but neither was it catastrophic. She had voluntarily placed herself in a difficult position with each of her moves the most delicate of baits, just so she appeared weaker than she really was.

“Alright, you got a deal, brat. Now hurry up and play.”

Hitomi did as she was told, still quietly smiling. The dance of pawns on board was something she knew intimately. Most people learned shōgi by studying famous games between legendary players, ones who had won the Land of Fire’s prizes and whose games were consigned into big treaties. Hitomi had done a bit of that, but she had her own legendary players at home. Shikaku, if he hadn’t been a ninja, could have earned a very comfortable living from his feats at the game, and Shikamaru could have followed in his steps, maybe even surpassing his father, at some point—studying them and their warrior minds was better than any simulation.

A tense silence settled over the private room. Even Shizune didn’t dare intervene, standing watch next to the door and keeping an eye on the little pig sleeping next to her. What did it feel like, being a legend’s apprentice? Hitomi sometimes wondered what she would have become if she had been noticed by a Sannin, rather than her brothers. Of course, she still had to stop that sickening snake Orochimaru from taking Sasuke, but what would it have been like?

In a few moves, Hitomi had turned the dire situation she was in on its head. Just like Shikamaru, she was redoubtable with her knights and liked using them both to lay traps. Her Nara adversaries had quickly understood they had to put them out as quickly as possible, most of the time presenting as the determining factor when she played with her cousin. However, Tsunade didn’t know anything about that and just defended herself, attacking on other fronts but away from her true main pieces.

After an hour, she settled her second knight on the opposite side of the King, cutting off his retreat. A faint smile danced on her lips. She had won and beaten a legend. Now all she had to do was convince Shikamaru to play against the Sannin. He could take her. He was better than she was, and learned quicker.

“Ha!” Tsunade exclaimed as she leaned backwards with her gaze still locked on the board, still examining the results of the match. “Congrats, kid, looks like you beat me real good. A bet is a bet, then. Take me to your teammates and let’s get this over with.”

Considering Tsunade’s notoriety for her poor acceptances of defeat, Hitomi was delighted that she managed to get her way with such little resistance. She stood up then, leading her two elders out of the gambling house and into the waiting arms of her teammates. Amongst the four outside, only Zabuza remained standing, serving as a sentry to the other three lounging on benches by glaring at whoever dared approach.

Jiraya was the first one that noticed them, a beam forming swiftly across his face. “I see you managed, Hitomi-chan! Tsunade-hime, it’s been too long! Did you miss me?”

“As much as I missed having my arms elbow deep in shit, Jiraiya. I know you want to talk to me, but we aren’t gonna talk out here on the streets like idle civilians. Invite us for drinks and food, I’m hungry.”

There was a strange spark of good humour—of fondness even, in Jiraiya’s eyes as he nodded, then opting to take the whole group to a tavern. It was still a bit early for dinner, and most partygoers preferred bars, which meant an almost empty space for them to settle in. Naturally, they sat around a table at the very back of the room that couldn’t be seen from outside or just by entering the place. Ninjas weren’t just paranoid—they made paranoia into an art form.

When their drinks arrived, Jiraiya spoke, calm as ever. “Tsunade-hime… Hiruzen-sensei is badly wounded, and his prospects are looking more dire by the minute.”

At those words, the legendary medic’s expression morphed into the very definition of incomprehension—eyes wide with a twinge of fear that twisted Hitomi’s lungs. She despised Hiruzen, like her master, but she knew other people loved him, and not only because he had been their Hokage most of their lives.

“How did it happen? How serious are his injuries?”

“Very serious, I’d say. The surgeons had to put him into stasis, in hopes that you’d come back and heal him. Aside from you, they doubt anyone could save his life, and even then, no matter what you do, his career as a shinobi is over. As for the culprit… You know him, of course. Our dearest teammate.”

“So, he kept even his worst promise…”

“Indeed. He’s been injured in their fight too, or he would have probably killed our sensei. We owe Hiruzen-sensei’s life to this girl here. She understood how to break the barrier that was isolating them so the ANBU could jump in and help.”

Tsunade’s calculating eyes fell on Hitomi, who straightened up with pride. She wasn’t ashamed of her actions during the invasion, even if Tayuya’s eyes, full of terror and incomprehension, still haunted her memory.

“I see… I guess I should thank you then, Hitomi-chan?”

“There’s no need. I executed the duties assigned to me, that’s all. I saw a weakness in their seal and acted on it. I guess no one had identified how that barrier worked, but fūinjutsu is my favourite subject. I want to become a Seal Mistress.”

That had the legendary medic throwing her head back in hearty laughter. It was a lively sound, wild and beautiful, that had probably broken many hearts. Hitomi would have liked having such a laugh. “You, a Seal Mistress?” the Sannin drawled. “Girl, the last man to bear that title was Hokage the Fourth, a genius. You don’t look like much of a genius to me.”

Hitomi could have felt insulted, could have felt compelled to try and prove her worth, but that was more of Naruto’s specialty–the poor knucklehead was practically boiling on his seat on her behalf. She only smiled and shrugged before taking a sip of her scorching hot tea. “Well, you never know. Only time will tell with these things, right?”

They continued talking for a few minutes, with Jiraiya mentioning other injured people who needed Tsunade’s help. She promised to return to Konoha to see what she could do, but stressed that they couldn’t expect a miracle from her, with all the problems she had these days. The two Sannin exchanged a meaningful look then, and Hitomi knew their thoughts were lingering towards the same thing—Tsunade’s hemophobia, born from the last war.

“The injured aren’t the only reason we’re here, Hime. The High Council summons you out of exile. We need a new Hokage.”

Another bout of laughter exploded from the medic, after a brief moment of puzzled silence. This time sounded different, however; for those who knew to listen, there was almost a sob amongst the joyous sounds.  Was she thinking about her brother and her lover, both dead before they could attain the rank offered to her right now? Or were her thoughts with her grandfather and granduncle, who were claimed by war while donning the mantle, long before she got to properly know them?

The sacred hat, in her eyes, was heavy with phantoms.

“Oh no, Jiraiya, that’s out of the question. You won’t put that shit on my shoulders. Find yourself another dumb soldier, I don’t want it.”

“What?” Naruto yelled, outraged. “How can you refuse? Becoming Hokage is an honour!”

Heavy silence whipped through the group. Zabuza shifted then, clearly ready to grab his sword, forcing Hitomi to place a hand on his forearm to steady him. She knew the pressure in the air made him nervous enough to burst into flames and battle at the drop of a pin, but she was almost certain that the deserter, from another village no less, would suffer hell and back if he raised his sword against Tsunade.

The legendary Sannin might spare him, but Hitomi wasn’t ready to risk it.

“It’s the shittiest honours of all,” Tsunade spat, acid in her voice. “They’re expected to die protecting their village, and all for what? Launch the next war, stop the next rebellion, bathe in blood? I’d rather eat my own fucking hand than that!”

“But that’s just it! If someone who doesn’t want any of that becomes Hokage, they obtain the power to change things! When I become Hokage, I won’t start wars, and I’ll protect everybody, believe it!”

“You don’t have what it takes. You’re just a brat whose head is filled with dreams and not much else. You’ll die, just like everyone who had the same ambition.”

Furious, Naruto sprang out of his seat. “I’m a thousands times better than you!  You’re just an old fart who thinks she knows everything! You’d be a shitty Hokage anyway, I’m sure of it!”

Hitomi grimaced at the feral undertone in her brother’s voice—the Kyūbi was stoking the fires of anger within the him, she knew. Though, while Naruto wouldn’t know it for some time, there was some merit to the statements he made, anger or not.

“Ah, really, a little runt like you, better than me?” Tsunade drawled. “Let’s test that hypothesis, you and me, brat. We’ll see how good of a shinobi you really are. And, since I have forty years of experience over you, I’ll even be graceful about it: I’m only gonna use one finger. So, what do you say?”

“Tch, I’m gonna kick your ass, believe it!”

Jiraiya’s face contorted into a mix of something akin to concern and horror, and the two Kirijin quickly followed suit. It would seem even they had heard of Tsunade of the Sannin’s infamous bad temper and titan-like strength that could turn mountains to dust. Against someone like that, a kid with a big mouth and a tendency to hurl himself to danger would not be expected to emerge from this debacle unscathed.

With a heavy sigh, Hitomi followed the group outside. There were people filling the streets at this point, but at the slightest whiff of conflict brewing between shinobi, they dispersed like leaves in the wind. Babies.

Naruto didn’t stand a chance, of course, but Hitomi followed his movements as Tsunade toyed with him, sending him flying left and right with just her right index finger as promised. He had made a lot of progress during this trip, and had almost finished mastering the Rasengan, managing the complete jutsu one time out of five. The bit he struggled with was its final stage—the formation of a protective layer around the explosive rotation of chakra, which was no easy feat in an already complicated technique.

Tsunade’s expression when Naruto formed his kind of Rasengan was worth piles of gold. She had split the ground into two with her finger then, exercising far less control than she typically did and forcing Naruto to tumble into the gap with an indignant screech. Hitomi winced at the noise he made when he hit the bottom of the divide and decided to step in before more damage was done. Mindfully placing her own body between her brother and Tsunade, she yanked the knuckle-headed ninja out of the ditch.

“Enough, Tsunade-sama. You’ve won,” she said. “My brother’s bark is stronger than his bite, and he doesn’t know when to yield. Please forgive him.”

“Your brother? But you’re and Yūhi, and he…” She interrupted herself so quickly her teeth chattered together. Even outside of Konoha, one didn’t speak of such secrets.

“Hm hm. Remember, I told you my mom had adopted children. Well, to be precise, she adopted Naruto, and made Uchiha Sasuke her ward. There might be a third in a few weeks or months, if they both want it, but you don’t know her name.” Not yet anyway. Hitomi fully intended on introducing Karin to Tsunade, and Sakura too, at some point; the two kunoichi deserved such glory. Through the communication notebook she had given the Uzumaki girl, Hitomi had heard two weeks ago that the friend Karin had made in the hospital was none other than the Haruno heiress. They apparently formed a terrific trio with Ino and weren’t opposed to the idea of integrating Hinata or even Tenten into their group if the girls wanted.

“Don’t worry,” she continued, voice softening. “No one will force you to become Hokage if you don’t want to. We’re already relieved and honoured by your agreement to help Hiruzen-sama and our other injured people.”

Once more, her mind wandered towards Hayate, who was being monitored by Sakura and Karin on her behalf. He still hadn’t woken up and had even gone into cardiac arrest several times, but his situation had gotten a bit better over time, and the doctors were confident that he’d wake up. Regardless, a little help from the best medic the Elemental Nations had ever seen wouldn’t hurt.

That night, Haku and Naruto met Hitomi in her room. Jiraiya had taken Tsunade to a bar in hopes it would cheer her up, while Shizune had decided to follow the children and deserters. Through the wall, Hitomi heard her speaking with Zabuza, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Such a shame. Eavesdropping could be fun and yielded incredible results, sometimes.

“Do you really think you can master the Rasengan in a week?” Haku asked, as gentle as ever.

The bet had indeed been set, just like in the canon. Hitomi knew her brother would win that one. He had what it took to bend any technique to his will, even the ones that looked so out of reach it was almost painful. And he had nearly done all the work on that one already, anyway.

“No problem! I just have to get how to maintain the chakra under the protective layer…”

After some consideration, Hitomi decided to help him a little; there were, after all, no rules stating he couldn’t use his best weapon as he saw fit. “I often wonder if using shadow clones could help me master new skills faster. The new seal Jiraiya-sama is teaching me is so fucking complicated…”

“What is it supposed to do?” Haku asked.

“Store chakra. There’s a version on parchment and another on skin. It’s the passive prelude of another seal, which could allow me to directly store techniques. When I master that one, I could, for example, ask Naruto to put a Rasengan into a tattoo on my body and use it when needed. Of course, once it’s used, you have to store a new one inside it, but it’s super useful. I can’t even imagine all the crazy shit I could do with that one.”

“You’re becoming more terrifying every day that passes,” Naruto muttered.

She let out a laugh and leaned against her pile of pillows. The two boys were sitting not too far away, Haku at the end of the bed and Naruto on the ground, back against the mattress. They didn’t need to see each other to have an easy conversation. In fact, it was very common for ninjas not to face each other when they chatted; they preferred to watch out for trouble and have their friends’ backs. Her gestures almost loving, Hitomi continued to oil her loyal tantō, her fingers brushing against the kanjis written close to the guard. Ishi to Senrigan. Determination and Clairvoyance. How fitting.

“Maybe. Good ninjas often are terrifying. I wouldn’t mind being terrifying.”

“But you already are . Those kids from the Academy follow you everywhere since the end of the invasion like you’re some kind of guru, that’s scary as shit. They want to be just like you. I heard that Hyūga Hanabi had asked for a battle kimono from her father. Say, does that remind you of anyone we know?”

She giggled again, adjusting the one she was wearing. She extended her hand stained in oil and patted Naruto’s hair under Haku’s amused eyes—probably trying to evaluate how many showers a certain blond would have to take if he wanted to get rid of the very potent stuff. “Don’t worry, baby bro, you’ll be terrifying one day too! People will kneel before you in veneration and all that shit.”

“Are you crazy? I don’t want people to be afraid of me, I want them to respect me, that’s not the same! They’ll learn to do it because I’m strong, not because I’m so scary they want to run away from me screaming.”

“Hey! People don’t want to run away from me screaming.”

“Hum, I think they do. Shikamaru definitely ran away screaming last time you proposed a six hour long training session.”

The banter continued for some time, until Shizune came in to announce tht it was time for bed. The two boys gave in and went back to their room, while Hitomi prepared for the night. Once she got in her pyjamas, she spent some time writing letters, read a bit, then admitted it was time for her to sleep too, though she didn’t count on getting any real rest. Clouds were amassing on the horizon, after all, and she wasn’t certain she could face that storm.

Chapter 72: The Sannin Reunion

The next morning, Hitomi awoke to a loud crash. She wasted little time getting dressed and armed, thanking the Gods above that everything was ready during instances like these, then jumped out of the window. Her teammates were all present, save for Tsunade and Shizune, which was odd considering they had taken a room in the same establishment. A brush of her meridians informed her that there remained no trace of their chakra in the vicinity… while unintentionally opening her senses up to detect the chakra that still haunted her nightmares to this day.

“Orochimaru,” Jiraiya grunted, before she could even open her mouth to warn her friends. “Seems you were right, Hitomi-chan.”

She turned white and tore herself away from her perceptions. The mere sensation of that man’s residual chakra proved too much—that insatiable longing for carnage and blood was impregnating the atmosphere and sullying her body and mind. “H-he’s probably here for Tsunade-sama. We can’t let them…”

“No, we can’t. Let’s go.”

Silent, the five shinobi fell into arrow formation. Hitomi and Naruto —the two weakest members of the group— at the center, Jiraiya upfront, and the two deserters on their lower flanks.

Within Hitomi, the Whisper screamed its rage and bloodthirst, demanding destruction, but another more reasonable and unquestionably terrified voice begged her to turn back and flee as far away as she could before she was hurt again. She ignored them both, draping an icy cloak of determination she had prepared in anticipation of such an encounter around herself.

To her absolute horror, the infamous Tanzaku Castle was no more. All that remained was a pile of rubble, and a scurry of civilians fleeing the mess. Most had probably perished, crushed by the falling debris, but she couldn’t mourn them, not now. Right now, she needed every ounce of her time and energy poured into the battle before her to strip away even the slightest chance of survival from the monsters that did this—the very monsters that destiny put on her path.

Hitomi could see now, behind the frantic trample of bodies, the stand-off between two legendary Sannin and their apprentices. Orochimaru and Kabuto stood over their counterparts like a threatening shadow, their expressions making it blatantly clear that the Senju Princess had refused their bargain. She hadn’t been so strong in the canon; she had accepted their offer and only backed off at the last moment.

Jiraiya was first on scene, followed closely by Hitomi and Naruto, then Zabuza and Haku. Without losing any time, Hitomi unsheathed her tantō and stepped in front of the two medics—not something she would have usually done considering the sheer strength of everyone in this fight, but she couldn’t risk Tsunade seeing even a single drop of blood, lest she get petrified by her hemophobia.

“It’s been some time, Jiraiya,” Orochimaru said, his chilling voice triggering a sharp flash of pain across Hitomi’s scarred cheek, along with an icy dread that crept along her back. “Shouldn’t you be retired? You’re starting to show your age.”

Jiraiya snorted. “Still looking as ugly and evil as ever, aren’t you?”

The Hermit turned his body and lowered into a battle stance then, allowing Hitomi to properly see Orochimaru for the first time since their last encounter; what she saw sickened her to the very core and made her stomach lurch in its place. No one had been able to accurately describe his injuries to her, claiming only that his hands were in horrific shape.

They were understating things.

What remained of Orochimaru’s hands was nothing more than a mess of crushed, dead flesh, barely held together by what she presumed was Kabuto’s medical chakra. The rot seemed to creep all the way up to the middle of his forearms, which meant that while he still retained mobility of his arms, weaving hand seals was simply no longer a possibility with those miserable excuses for fingers. That said, Hitomi made a mental note not to get cocky.

Orochimaru was plenty deadly even without access to his jutsus. 

“Fighting won’t change my decision, Orochimaru-kun!” Tsunade said, still squarely behind Hitomi. “I’m not repairing your hands. Go find yourself another medic.”

“Oh, but, darling, I didn’t ask for your opinion on the matter. You’ll heal me, whether you want to or not. I have the means to make you obey.”

“You’ll have to reach her for that,” Hitomi hissed.

The Sannin turned to her then, his curious expression tainted with disdain. “You again? Aren’t you a pain, my little fairy? Maybe this time, I’ll properly take you out—that way, you can’t mess with my plans anymore, right?”

“You won’t touch her!” Naruto’s voice exploded beside her.

Oh, Naruto… If that man wanted her dead, nothing short of a miracle would prevent that from happening. Her heart thundered in her chest. She didn’t want to die, she had so many feats to accomplish yet, so many plots to undermine and so many truths to restore.

Hitomi didn’t want to die today.

Her chakra acted upon her will, wrapping her blade in its water coat. Now, everything the weapon touched would be torn to shreds. Beside her, Zabuza grunted in approval.

“Don’t forget about me, Orochimaru. You know I can take you.”

“Tch. I’ve always kicked your ass, Jiraiya. You don’t stand a chance.”

“We’ll see about that.”

A terrible rush of chakra tore through the air and a huge toad appeared from nothingness, ready to fight. Even though she hadn’t ever seen him, Hitomi recognised Gama Bunta, the king of that contract. Oh, how she wished she could call Aotsuki, leader of the ninja cats, to her aid, but she didn’t want to risk breaking her own contract. Naruto’s face lit up with something akin to relief when he saw the toad. After all, the summons and her brother knew each other, even if, in this universe, Naruto hadn’t needed to call him to battle.

That time would come though. She was certain of it.

The two Sannin launched themselves onto the heads of their respective summons with an impossible jump, clashing swords high above the ground. Kabuto, on the other hand, leapt forward towards the rest of the group, a cruel smile across his lips. Haku was sent off to aid Jiraiya with a silent order from Zabuza—he was, after all, the only one amongst the children capable enough to provide support, especially with how adept he had gotten with his Ice Release ever since their first encounter in the Land of Waves.

“Be careful,” Hitomi said, voice full of tension. “That one is a medic who uses his techniques in battle. If he manages to touch you with his hands, you’re out of commission.”

“How do you know that?” Naruto asked.

“I got my hands on Shikaku-ojisan’s files. His office is always empty now that he’s Hokage so I took advantage. I wanted to see what this bastard had in store for us.”

When Kabuto got within earshot of them, the two children went quiet and put themselves in opening stances. Naruto positioned himself up front to leverage the massive range of his giant sword while Hitomi lingered back, her tantō proving disadvantageous in the current battle state. Even with this formation and Zabuza on their side, however, they were still in for a world of trouble—Kabuto’s prowess rivaled that of Kakashi’s, and that was without taking his immense regeneration into account.

“Hitomi, Naruto, funny seeing you again!” The disturbingly cheerful medic turned his focus solely on Hitomi, his dark eyes gleaming with something akin to bloodlust. “I heard you were the little slut who killed Tayuya. Do you have any idea how much time I had to spend turning her into the perfect version of herself? I’ll have your head for wasting my efforts like that.”

“You won’t touch her,” Naruto snarled, repeating himself. He was furious, but unfortunately not nearly enough to call on the Kyūbi. Volatile as it was, Hitomi wouldn’t be at all opposed to its presence right now; having the Demon Fox himself on their side would very much tip the overwhelming odds they were facing. She had to have the boy communicate with his demon… perhaps by putting him in the path of Killer Bee or Nii Yugito’s vicinity sometime soon, seeing as the two jinchūriki from the Land of Lightning were renowned for their harmony with the demon inside them.

Well, all that fell under the assumption that she survived this fight.

With a surge of chakra and a few hand seals, she sent her new offensive technique, the Calling to the Pack, towards Kabuto. The five water wolves shot from her fingers like bullets, their graceful arc placing them right where she wanted them to be… only to be destroyed by the medic’s earth pillars. The Whisper stirred in her mind, eager to hurl itself into the fight. This time, she didn’t resist its pleas, taking advantage of Naruto’s movements to open herself to it.

Shizune let out a little gasp, much to Hitomi’s puzzlement. Was having her meridians visible under her skin really that surprising in a world like theirs?

“Can I trust you to take care of things here?” she asked her brother. “Zabuza-san, the toad and snake have stopped moving. We should wrap things up quickly.”

“Don’t worry, Hitomi-chan, I got this, bel—”

Her momentary relief turned into horror as she watched Kabuto, moving too quickly for anyone to react in time, hurl himself at her brother, slamming his palm into the boy’s chest. Naruto let out a weak gurgle and stumbled as blood spilled out from his mouth. She could feel Tsunade’s chakra surge in little terrified spikes as she froze.

Hemophobia.

“Naruto!” A spark of chakra and she was in front of him, the Shunshin twisting the air around her. She took advantage of Kabuto’s surprise and stabbed him in the chest, pushing him back for the moment being. This would be as good an opportunity as any to call upon her cats, but she was still hesitant—sending them against such opponents would spell their demise, something she simply could not let happen. With a feral hiss, she thrusted her finger in the wound she had just inflicted and started siphoning chakra, the Whisper singing in her ears.

Kabuto broke her grip then, pushing her hard enough to make her trip against Naruto’s body. He staggered away, already healing his wound. “So, the rumours about a new Kekkei Genkai in Konoha are true… I should have known you were behind it all, little fairy. Bah, I’ll still kill you slowly before your friends’ eyes and that power of yours won’t change that!”

Hitomi forced herself not to react, gaze transfixed on Naruto. She cradled him in her arms as delicately as she could and tried to ignore the gurgles in his breathing and the wheezing from his lungs slowly filling with liquid. She hurried him back to Tsunade and Shizune, refusing to meet the Sannin’s eyes. “I-I know you’re afraid, alright? But please, I’m begging you, heal my brother. He can’t die. He’ll become Hokage one day and turn Konoha into a paradise you can’t even imagine. He must live.”

There was a gleam in Tsunade’s eyes that only Shizune caught on. Careful and delicate as ever, the apprentice took Naruto’s inert body and laid him at her mentor’s feet. “Leave Naruto to us, Hitomi; we’ll make sure this boy survives. You just focus on the—Look out!”

A clash of steel against steel behind Hitomi’s back made her whirl around, breath catching in her throat. Zabuza had just blocked a blow from Kabuto that would have ended her. That was sloppy of her, not expecting the medic to have healed up this quickly. Huffing, she homed in on the chakra she’d stolen from him and rejoined the fray.

The duo rained a barrage of blows onto Kabuto—a crack of the water whip she had just conjured against his cheek, a slice of her sword into the side of his arm, a kick from Zabuza to shatter his knees, but none of the damage stuck. The medic was recovering quicker than they could injure him, and seemed foreign to the concept of pain, almost akin to the particularly vicious and clever zombie.

Hitomi could see rivers of fire clashing against seas of mud. The two other Sannin were going all out in their duel, leveraging strengths that so far exceeded her own it made her feel like laughing or crying in dismay. Unfortunately, however, she could do neither with her persistently undying opponent before her.

She managed to have one of her acid bombs explode right into Kabuto’s face, but he immediately purged the liquid from his skin, sending the tiny metallic fragments raining down his feet. Zabuza, on the other hand, was becoming more and more frustrated about the fact that he couldn’t wound Kabuto seriously enough to be able to cut him in half. Kakashi had said that medics were some of the most adept at dodging, and it seemed this one was no exception.

Something spurred her attention towards the fighting Sannins, and what she saw when she glanced forced a choking noise through her lips— Jiraiya had been run through by Orochimaru’s sword.

No . He couldn’t die. He had to… He had so many things to teach Naruto, so many life lessons far beyond her reach. He was the key to her brother’s future sanity, to everything that was good and pure in him.

He had to live, so he could be the light to her shadow.

Hitomi didn’t even stop to think about the consequences then. A shunshin sent her on the toad’s head, stopping Orochimaru from finishing off his former teammate. The combined killing intent of the two Sannin nearly choked her out completely, but, for the first time, she managed to fend the sensation off with the help of her chakra, burning high and clear to allow her to keep her wits about her. She shot her shadow out towards Orochimaru’s, trapping it and rooting the man on the spot.

She tensed immediately; muscles torn by a terrible burn. It was a thousand times worse than when Kakashi struggled against her bindings, but she had progressed so much since then, and the Whisper in her mind refused to back down. She laid a gentle hand against the spot where Kusanagi, Orochimaru’s sword, was embedded in Jiraiya’s chest, and started draining chakra from him, as slow and delicate as she could. She needed it more than he did.

From her periphery, she noticed a little, suddenly so little silhouette collapsing a few metres behind the snake. For a moment, she refused to acknowledge the conclusion that her mind had already formed, entirely focused on siphoning Orochimaru’s chakra. The thought, however, preserved long enough that she could ignore it no further.

Haku. She couldn’t let fright cripple her, not right now, but how could she not? She couldn’t keep her thoughts off Haku’s inert body—he couldn’t die, not after surviving the Land of Waves, not after finally reaching true happiness… But there was a battle to be fought, willpower and raw chakra clashing against the Sannin’s. She had to focus. Deadly pale skin, blood trickling from parted lips. Focus .

“Zabuza!” Her scream tore through the air, desperate and terrifying, filled with fear and rage.

The deserter appeared by her side, an explosion of fury and determination. His eyes stopped on his apprentice for a moment, then on Jiraiya, so weak behind her, and finally on Hitomi herself. Her pale, creased features, the sweat on her brow, her clenched teeth, coupled with the shadow connecting her to the traitor, told him all he needed to know about the situation. He knew that,  trapped in this technique, Orochimaru couldn’t move, just as he knew the terrible strain that maintaining the technique was putting on Hitomi’s body.

There was no hesitation when he raised his sword—the blade that had claimed so many lives, but never one so glorious and terrible.

Orochimaru’s head flew through the air and fell at the feet of the toad they were all standing on, just as the snake summoned by the renegade disappeared in a huge puff of smoke. Hitomi had let go of the body just before it was hit and collapsed on her knees, out of breath and feeling a burning acidic taste of bile in her throat.

She glanced at the corpse before her then… and flinched when it began to move once more. All the times he had defied death in the canon slammed back into her mind with the delicacy of a fist to the chest. With a feral hiss, she threw herself at the body and thrust her whole hand where head and neck once connected. A brutal surge of willpower awoke the Whisper, allowing her to devour every ounce of chakra within the corpse, down to the very last drop.

Her body convulsed with ecstasy and agony alike, and for one perfect moment, her mind went absolutely blank. She arched painfully and went back to her senses, welcomed by the vile, bottomless pain from emptying Orochimaru’s entire chakra reserve. She doubled over screaming and poured all the stolen energy back into his bloodstream.

The moment Orochimaru’s blood started boiling, she knew the man was no more.

For almost a whole minute, Hitomi couldn’t move at all. Zabuza had already turned to Jiraiya, but decided it was wiser not to touch the blade still buried deep inside his chest. Eventually, she found it within herself to stand, despite all her joints aching and protesting the effort. She clenched her teeth, jumping from the toad that disappeared once everyone left its head and stumbled to Haku’s still form on the ground. She burst into relieved tears when she realised he was just out cold, with a huge bump at the back of his head and one of his arms twisted to an unnatural angle from the rest of his body. Nothing too serious. He was alive, at least.

Hitomi knelt next to him, mobilising her chakra for a Shunshin—

And suddenly she was pinned down, Kabuto over her.

She cried out in pain, her nerves raw from her last summoning of the Whisper. She saw the feverish gleam in her assailant’s dark eyes as she struggled helplessly under him, as if his mentor’s death had pushed him over the edge. It happened that way, in the canon. She was forced onto her feet then, hefted up against the medic’s back by a hand around her throat.

That pulled all the attention on the battlefield onto herself. Naruto, miraculously pulling himself upright despite his severe injuries. Tsunade, pale but resolutely mending the wound of her former teammate after patching her brother up. She had overcome her fear of blood—that alone made Hitomi want to prostrate herself at her feet to thank her for saving her friends. The only one that acted was Shizune, rushing towards them… freezing only when a kunai grazed the Yūhi girl’s throat. The blade was pressing hard enough to prick her skin, drawing warm blood from beneath her pale skin.

She didn’t fight back. She couldn’t.

“Well, well, little fairy,” Kabuto crooned, licking the blood on her skin. The sensation made her so sick and aware of his body against hers that she wanted to throw up; maybe it would disgust her captor enough to allow her to break free, lest he hurt her in the way they both knew he wanted to. “Looks like I won’t be able to take my time to end you after all. Don’t worry, though; it will still hurt. Let’s keep your little friends busy, now, shall we?”

She didn’t answer, swallowing her fear so she could smile at Naruto. She wanted to tell him that everything would be okay, that it wasn’t anything serious. She always tried to be honest with him, but that lie was acceptable. She was exhausted, unable to fight back.

A little hiccough escaped her parted lips when Kabuto’s kunai sunk deep under her right breast, between two ribs.

The medic let go of her and she collapsed, her shaking hand trying to compress around the blade to stop the blood already pouring out of her. It was the first thing she had learned in first aid class, at the Academy—applying pressure to stop the bleeding, above all else. With all the willpower she had left, she managed to focus medical chakra in her hand, despite her meridians screaming in pain. The mint green energy crackled around her fingers for half a second then dissipated.

Shizune was there. And Naruto too. She blinked once, twice, and her eyes rolled back, only to be brought back to this world by a sharp pain as Tsunade’s apprentice slowly extracted the blade. It wasn’t any use, she wanted to tell her, but she couldn’t breathe anymore, let alone speak. She had accepted the idea of dying during this mission, it was okay, everything was fine and well.

She didn’t hurt anymore. She wanted to extend her hand and touch Naruto’s damp cheek; to part her lips and tell him not to cry, to focus on Jiraiya, who needed him more, to look after his own convalescence since he had probably barely been patched up. Neither her fingers nor face answered her commands.

The spasms and tremors stopped.

Was it a good sign? She blinked again, weaker this time; opening her eyelids was the hardest thing she’d ever done. So, when she closed her eyes the next time, she stopped fighting to open them, and let herself sink into a bottomless sea.

Chapter 73: By the Skin of her Teeth

Hoshihi’s screams awoke his entire clan. 

The agony in his emerald eyes, coupled with the sheer pain in his cries terrified both the young and elders alike, but only the latter knew what his suffering meant. Aotsuki herself, titan-like yet silent as a ghost, ripped through the crowd of cats and stopped in front the terrified young feline, hovering before her like a guardian angel. The almost full moon threw stark light, casting cruel shadows over their clearing, but she still saw him clearly.

“W-what’s happening to me?” he managed to whimper between waves of pain.

Aotsuki’s pale blue eye met Kibaki’s for a moment; only when she got a nod from the old medic did she turn her attention back onto her former apprentice. Watching him clench his teeth and spasm made her heart ache—he was so brave, wrestling against his own suffering, fending off those agonising screams. 

She had to say something.

“I’m so sorry, Hoshihi-kun, but your Lady Summoner is dying,” she said, gentle as she could. “I’ve never lived through this myself, but my mother, the familiar for the Lady Summoner before Shinku-kun…”

“No! No, it’s not possible, she can’t…” The young cat’s voice choked and he screamed again as his nerve endings lit aflame, all under his clan leader’s contrite eyes. He fought to stand back up on his shaking legs and glared at her. “Hitomi can’t die! It’s impossible! Send me there and you’ll see she’s okay, I…” 

He choked again, his body arching with agony, and collapsed to Aotsuki’s feet.

The clan leader shut her eyes and lowered her head until her nose brushed against his spasming shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Hoshihi-kun. You know I can’t do that. I could only send you to Shinku, and you didn’t learn to do that with her yet, so…” She trailed off. Her mother had reacted this way too when her own summoner had passed away, so she knew informing him that he couldn’t form a bridge between worlds with a lifeless body on the other end would only make matters worse.

Poor Hoshihi. He thought little Hitomi-chan was invincible, brilliant, strong enough to overcome all the obstacles on her path when in truth, hardships beyond any conceptions prowled in the dark, ready to strike when the Hikari clan cats couldn’t intervene. “Come, Hoshihi-kun. No matter what it is and what happens next, you need medical attention. Kibaki-sama will give you poppy seeds to help you sleep through it.”

The cats stepped away to let their leader and the injured cat walk through to the medic’s den. Hoshihi whimpered with each step, as if he was walking on embers. The other cats stared at him, their eyes darkened by mourning and pain, for him, for what the world had just lost. Soon enough, the other cats of that generation and little Hai, her fur bristling with fear, would untangle themselves from the others and follow the familiar to the medic. They would watch him that night and all the following day, until his heart went back to the hunt, or failed trying.

The forest would never be the same again.

 

“… waking up!”

There was a distant ruffling noise, so far away she barely heard it. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids only shuddered before they went still. She let go of that impulse when she understood it was no use. She was so, so exhausted… and why was that? She remembered dying once more. Had she been sent to another place? Through the crushing fatigue and its suffocating effect, she felt a tear roll down the side of her face, all the way down to her ear. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave the people she had learned to love, start anew somewhere else. She couldn’t.

“Now, now,” a voice said above her head. “Don’t cry, it’s okay.”

Through the heavy fog surrounding her, she thought that voice was familiar, but then she focused on it and the impression dissipated. She tried to swallow and her whole body arched in pain.

“… space, she’ll probably…”

With a weak sigh, she lost consciousness again. She didn’t want to stay, anyway. She wanted to go back to her world, Naruto, Kurenai, Ensui, Kakashi, and all the others waiting for her return. She wanted them and nothing else.

 

The next time she woke up, she was still unable to open her eyes, but her body hurt. It wasn’t the burning ache of a wound, but rather a constant, generalised, icy pressure crushing her limbs mercilessly. She groaned, struggling against the invisible restraints to escape the debilitating sensation…

And failed. 

“I know,” a voice said next to her. “It’s gonna feel better soon.” The person who had just spoken took her arm, brushed against her wrist then wrapped their hands around hers. There was a pulse of something and the pressure started to dissipate in her limbs, making her sigh in relief. “Everything will be okay, now, don’t worry, little one. Go back to sleep, go back…”

A warm wave bloomed from where their hands were linked, and she obeyed without any resistance.

 

Third time’s the charm? she mused as she woke up again. This time, she actually managed to pry her eyelids open, groan, and slightly turn her head. It was a good sign, right? She heard a noise next to her, a brush of fabric against fabric. She attempted to fully open her eyes then, but the light, too strong and stark, stabbed her directly in the brain and forced her to closed them again with a hoarse whimper.

“Naruto-kun, close the blinds!”

Her heart started racing in her chest when she heard that name, that voice. She hadn’t… she hadn’t left? Her hands twitched on fabric – sheets, she assumed. There was a strange wheeze to her breathing, stemming from somewhere within her throat. Once the excess of light was gone, she tried again to open her eyes, successfully this time. Her sight stayed blurry for a moment then cleared slowly. 

Above her was Naruto, beaming at her.

Her whole body tensed, so suddenly and brutally that a dull ache washed over her like a wave. She wasn’t gone. She wasn’t gone! She felt tears of relief form at the corners of her eyes and run in her hair. Naruto’s smile turned to a worried grimace; he didn’t understand, didn’t know what it felt like to believe that she’d never see him again.

“Tears, kid, really? You’re back, there’s no reason to be upset.” Tsunade appeared in her line of sight, glorious in the darkness of the room, a proud smile on her lips and her eyes gleaming with some deeply-rooted satisfaction. She sat at her bedside and put her hand, enshrouded in minty green chakra, on her forehead. Hitomi knew this jutsu: it was a diagnostic technique, quick and thorough, but a lot harder to learn than the first-aid version Yoshino had taught her. 

“Here,” Tsunade said, presenting a straw to her lips, “try to drink. Little sips, one at a time. You don’t want to vomit in this state, trust me.”

Little sips. She could do that. And so she did, immediately starting to feel better as the fluid doused the parch in her throat and began fuelling her body with much-needed hydration. Her furred tongue began showing signs of life, too, allowing her to actually feel the inside of her mouth with it. Around her, she finally noticed her other teammates: Haku with his arm in a sling, Zabuza standing watch, Shizune next to the window and Jiraiya, who she had thought to have been the brink of death, sitting on a nearby bed, a book between his hands, looking at her with obvious relief.

“What… How…”

She failed to formulate a thought or a completely cohesive question, but Haku stepped forward and answered, as if he could peer through the fog surrounding her mind and discern her confusion. “A week passed since our fight against Orochimaru. You regained consciousness several times since then, but it never lasted this long. Looks like this is the one?”

His last sentence was a question to Tsunade, who nodded and answered. “Yes, it is. Your heart isn’t at risk of failure again, your lungs are almost completely mended and the internal bleeding has stopped. Your meridians, however, aren’t done healing yet after what you did to them. Speaking of which, what did you do to them, Hitomi-chan?”

Hitomi looked at the Sannin hesitantly. Well… If everything went according to plan, the woman would soon be Hokage and work closely with Shikaku, who would probably disclose the information. Besides, she wasn’t Hiruzen; no way she would accept Danzō bossing her around. “I awoke the… the Yūhi Kekkei Genkai. We don’t know much about it – the only living being able to explain how it works and how to control it is a very old ninja cat I can’t summon at will and…” 

Her eyes went wide with horror. Without even a thought for consequences, she threw her blanket off herself… only to be shoved back towards the bed by Tsunade’s gentle hand.   

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? You stay in bed, kid!”

“No, Hoshihi, I have to…” She wheezed in pain, struggling against the Sannin. She wasn’t even putting much force to keep her in place, yet Hitomi could barely move an inch under her hand. 

“It’s her familiar,” Naruto said, strangely appeasing despite the tension unfolding next to him. “Why do you need him, Hitomi-nee? You’re safe here.”

“I-I was supposed to summon him five days ago to talk to him about Hai-chan. If he felt my death…” She didn’t need to finish her sentence. In their line of work, some tardiness was often expected due to the wildly unpredictable nature of missions, but familiars felt their partner die, and as it stood, her familiar had no way of knowing she was alive. To make matters worse, most familiars wasted away quickly after their partner’s passing. 

The mere eventuality of not having her cat anymore made her nauseous.

“You can’t summon him in your state,” Tsunade said, her tone firm and severe. I sealed your meridians for one more week so they could heal correctly. They were burnt , kid, you can’t fix that with a snap of your fingers.”

Hitomi slammed the back of her head against her pillows with frustration, her body a knot of pain and worry. If only her mind could work its magic and find a solution… she knew her Library was there, she was aware of it, but each time she tried to enter it she slipped away. Without it, she didn’t know how to dispel the fog of fright that slowed down her thoughts.

“Wait,” she pleaded, her hoarse voice filled with hope. “With my blood, anyone can summon him. Naruto…”

“I got you!” he beamed. Then, looking a bit skittish, he turned to Tsunade. “Hum, can I take her blood, Baa-chan?”

The medic pondered for a moment, amber eyes darting between Hitomi and Naruto as they gazed at her in almost pleading desperation. They both saw the moment the Sannin softened—when Naruto called her that cute name. “Fine. A little cut on the back of her hand, nothing more. And don’t go deep!”

Just as he was instructed, Naruto nicked the skin behind Hitomi’s hand open with a kunai.The analgesics running in her perfusion had to be some potent stuff, because she didn’t feel much more than a tingle as she watched her blood run out of the wound. Naruto collected it on his fingers while Tsunade, with a spark of chakra, sealed the cut.

The blonde boy slammed his hand against the ground, creating a plume of smoke in the room. 

When she saw her familiar, Hitomi let out a whimper of sheer distress. Horrified, she had to press her cold fingers against her lips to silence herself, her dark red eyes taking him in from the tip of the ears to the extremity of the tail. He was so thin, his bones almost jutting out of his shoulders like blades under his ginger fur, dirtier and more tangled than ever. He forced himself to stand up, battling against his weak, shaky paws. The eyes he turned towards her were a dull green, faded and lifeless, and for a terrifying second they stayed that way – then he understood who he was staring at.

He let out a startled cry and jumped on the bed with such force he almost made Tsunade trip. He didn’t care—that much was obvious. He crawled over the sheets until he was completely laying on her, his paws caging her and his head over hers. He breathed in deep, then collapsed on top of her without any regard to his weight inhibiting her breathing.

Who needed that bodily function anyway? Not her, that was for sure.

Slowly, without any reasonable control of her body, she raised her arms and petted his flanks in long, shaky strokes, drawing the deepest purr she had ever heard from his chest. “I thought… You were… I…”

“I know, Hoshihi. I’m sorry. Never again, I swear, never again…” Oh, it was so stupid to promise such a thing. She couldn’t, not with everything she’d have to face at Sasuke and Naruto’s side, with all the trouble their team attracted, like a lamp attracted moths. However, in that moment, she could accept perjuring herself – the future seemed so far away anyway, so blurry and futile.

“You were… You were dead… Everyone was telling me… You were dead, weren’t you?”

Hitomi sought Tsunade’s eyes, silently calling for help. The medic nodded and spoke, her tone professional and carefully devoid of emotion. “Your heart stopped for thirty-two seconds while I was trying to close your wounds. The bond between you and your familiar appears to run deep, so he would have felt it in the spiritual world.”

Hitomi let out a heavy sigh as she continued petting Hoshihi. She had died, of course. Her mind had detached from her being like it had before her rebirth—if only it had been briefer, such that its effects wouldn’t have rippled through their bond. 

Her failure had cost him more than it did her, and she absolutely detested that fact. When had his last meal been? She could almost see the very bone of the ribs she was brushing her finger against, at this point, and it was her fault. 

“I came back, Hoshihi. I’m okay, and I’m very sorry.”

“Please, Hitomi. Is the one responsible for this dead?”

“No.” Haku answered on her behalf, his voice soothing and gentle. “Kabuto knew he’d manage to escape if he hurt Hitomi, because saving her would be our priority. We had to let him escape. Too many of us were injured, and the only ones who could still walk around were the medics and Zabuza-shishou, who had to stay and protect us all.”

Hitomi glanced around while Haku spoke, until her gaze rested upon Jiraiya. Bandages were visible under the large and open haori he wore instead of his usual clothes, far too thick for a mere stab wound—it was clear he had suffered more than just that. Sighing, she let her gaze wander once more, this time landing on the other Sannin in the room, and also her saviour. “Didn’t you have a very bad case of hemophobia?”

“Not anymore,” the medic said, a shadow of a smile on her lips. The underlying tension in her voice told another story, but Hitomi decided to probe no further. Without Tsunade’s willpower, she would have remained dead; it seemed wise not to go around sticking her nose into her saviour’s old wounds. “Hoshihi, was it? Please jump off the bed now. My patient needs to breathe correctly if she wants to recover.”

The cat obeyed so quickly he almost tripped on his own paws. Some semblance of life was returning to the cat, though it was obvious he was still exhausted and famished. Hitomi glanced at Haku, who understood her intentions before words even left her mouth. “There are some woods not so far from here. I should find something fit for a ninja cat there. What do you like, Hoshihi-san?”

“Eh?”

“Food. To eat. You need it. It would be silly to die of starvation now that you know your Lady Summoner is alive, wouldn’t it?” he said that with his sweetest smile, but with a firm tone that wouldn’t be taking no for an answer.

The cat nodded after a moment, still a bit lost. “I like rabbit, and boar, too, since here it’s small enough that I can hunt and eat it.” He had often told Hitomi about the monstrous size of animals in his world; there, boars were almost predators to ninja cats but, in the physical world, their tusks could barely scratch his skin and he loved their juicy meat.

“Rabbit and boar, coming right up!” Haku beamed before he jumped out the window without a care for the sling that kept one of his arms pinned against his chest.

Peaceful silence settled over the room, until Naruto, realizing that Hitomi was likely still lost and overwhelmed, decided to update her on the situation with a surprisingly hushed voice. He explained that Tsunade had accepted the Hokage mantle and was roaming through every gambling house in the neighbourhood –they were in a clinic belonging to a friend of Jiraiya’s, apparently– to enjoy her freedom while it lasted, ducking out for some fun whenever she could leave her patients’ bedsides. Hitomi shut her eyes and listened intently as her brother described the past few days to her, feeling almost as if they were back home and he was telling her one of his silly stories. 

She ended up falling asleep before Haku came back. 

When she opened her eyes again, everyone was asleep, Hoshihi included. There was a little pile of bones carefully cleaned out in front of him. Based on its head, Hitomi guessed it was half a boar. Her cat was sprawled on the ground next to her bed in a way that stopped anyone from approaching her from the right side, his still meagre flank rising and falling with the deep, peaceful rhythm of his breathing. For a long moment, she stared at his ginger form, her heart beating too fast and too strong in her chest. 

She would have left him behind if she had died.

Haku, who had been sleeping in a sitting position under the window, slowly opened his eyes. A tender smile bloomed on his lips when he noticed she was awake as well. He stood up and went to sit next to her on the bed, gently petting her black curls. Her hair was probably a mess, but the boy didn’t seem to mind. They stayed silent for a while, Haku staring at her face as if her features hid the answer to a question she didn’t know anything about.

“I really thought you wouldn’t make it,” he whispered. “Your heart had already stopped once and you weren’t waking up… Tsunade-sama is incredible at what she does, and she said you were healing, and yet I was so worried.”

“I-I’m okay now, I think. I sometimes have weird feelings in my chest and meridians, but I’m okay otherwise. The analgesics Tsunade-sama gave me are so strong I’m not in pain at all.”

“Burns to the meridians... You never mentioned anything like that in your letters.”

“That’s because it never happened before, not even during the invasion—and trust me, I took chakra from almost everyone I killed back then. But Orochimaru’s… It was like poison and acid alike. I felt it burn everything it touched inside. Sending it back into his veins immediately after didn’t seem to help either; the energy he had inside him even when he was so close to death, and the sheer quantity of it… The Sannin are a whole other class of shinobi.”

“And yet, Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama don’t look terrifying outside of battle. I fought next to the Hermit and I was so out of my league, it was overwhelming. I’m kind of glad I was put out of commission before Orochimaru could kill me.”

“How did it happen, by the way?”

“Hum… The big snake he summoned, Manda… He hit the toad’s head with his tail so hard I fell. I don’t even remember hitting the ground.”

Hitomi hummed, her eyes staring into nothing. She had only survived thanks to luck and the comrades around her. To make sure Orochimaru wasn’t a threat anymore, she had paid a heavy price, but it was worth any pain she could live through. He couldn’t threaten Sasuke or her village anymore. She brushed a hand on the bandages wrapped around her chest, under her breasts. She felt a faint tingle where Kabuto had stabbed her, but the memory of the pain itself was just as vivid and real as when she was actually stabbed.

“People are going to explode with worry when I tell them, aren’t they?”

“Probably. Especially your mom. Based on what you told me about her, she’s either gonna enrol half the Jōnin in your village to train you, or wrap you in layers and layers of cotton, ship you off into the deepest part of the Deer Forest and make the Nara watch over you so you can’t leave.”

Hitomi groaned and Haku let out an affectionate giggle. He kissed her on the forehead then went back to his spot under the window. “You should go back to sleep, Hitomi-chan. You can’t heal from such serious injuries by chatting in the middle of the night.”

“That’s right,” Zabuza grunted. “And you wake people up on top of that. Go back to sleep, both of you, or I’m gonna use one to knock the other out.”

With a last snicker, the two teenagers relented. Hitomi closed her eyes and easily slid into sleep. She almost jumped back awake when she finally entered her Library, only to mentally swear when she saw the sorry state it was in. Shelves were knocked over, foul water spilled across the floor up to her ankles, reflecting the mental image of herself she used inside her mind ever since Itachi had entered it with his illusion spell. The pillar supporting the cage for her meridians was tipping off, the white stone crackled from the base up to the cat’s chin. 

With a contrite sigh, she got to work.

When she woke up, satisfied with the repairs and reorganisations she had worked on all night, the sun was shining again, its light pouring in through the large window in her bedroom. Haku had been right to convince her to sleep more: she already felt more coherent and, even if the analgesics were wearing off and allowed her to feel aches all over her body, at least she had feelings in her limbs. With a little sigh, she rubbed her face and looked around.

Jiraiya was the only one there, sitting on his own bed and reading another novel. Hitomi frowned, surprised, when she realised it was one of hers, one she had lent to Naruto. It was a collection of fairy tales from the Previous World and adapted for the Elemental Nations. She had struggled with it but was satisfied with the result, especially since it could be read by children and still hold deeper meanings for adults.

“You asked him before you took it, I hope?”

The hermit didn’t seem surprised at all to hear her speak all of a sudden. Who could even take such a shinobi by surprise? He smiled and waved the book towards her, still reading – she could see his eyes move along her handwriting. “This is really good, you know. I could send it to my publisher if you want. He’d be delighted to have such a book to publish, the tales always sell like crazy.”

“Why not,” she answered after thinking about it for a short moment. “That would be more money coming my way. I have quite a lot of it already with all my crazy missions, but I won’t refuse some more. I might need it, one day.”

“That’s the spirit! And your brother said you had other books. How many did you write so far?”

“Seven. Some are volumes for series that aren’t yet complete, others are collections like this one. I even have a poetry collection.” From Edgar Allan Poe, because she loved his writing so much. The Raven was probably her favourite piece despite its length. The delicate rhythm of the verses, the gloomy atmosphere drawn word after word… She felt it was perfect for her world as well. Bittersweet, dark and lovely.

“I’m coming back to the village with you all, of course. Tsunade-hime doesn’t want me back on the road for a while after she becomes Hokage. She wants me to help her settle in and such.”

“She mostly wants to keep an eye on you, Jiraiya-sama. She saw you with a sword through your chest, she’s probably worried for you.”

“Err… Anyway, I could jump on the occasion to read your other books, Hitomi-chan. If it doesn’t bother you, of course. I know it’s always a bit complicated to show your prose to someone new.”

The girl shrugged carefully, trying and failing to avoid spreading pain into her shoulders. “Of course you can. But don’t try to eye my mother up while you’re there, eh? She’s taken.”

When she heard the hermit burst out laughing, Hitomi finally allowed herself to relax. Everything was okay. Her friends had survived and, surprisingly, she had too. Their mission had been a success despite the obstacles they had met. She was allowed to rest…

For now.

Chapter 74: A Triumphant Welcome

The next two days were particularly quiet for Hitomi. Maybe even a bit too quiet. Tsunade only allowed her to step out of bed for short spans of time, and only if she didn’t overdo it, and threatened to tie her to the bed if she tried to start anything that looked even remotely like work. No one could forget, in their little group, exactly how strong Tsunade was. The last time she had lost a round of poker against Jiraiya, she had embedded a bedside table in the nearest wall. The Yūhi girl wasn’t crazy enough or brave enough to defy her by abusing her tiny shards of freedom.

At least, two days after she woke up, she was allowed to write once more. She wrote her messages and Naruto used a spark of chakra to send them. She told Ensui about the whole mission, who had left a dozen of increasingly worried messages in her notebook, so he could repeat them to Kurenai, who never looked at hers, and to Shikaku, who would be very interested in the tale. She then did the same with Shikamaru, so he could tell their friends about it all since she was still quite tired and couldn’t bring herself to write the exact same message again and again.

Her message for Gaara was different: she warned him about Kabuto, who had managed to escape, and told him about the almost certain future of Konoha’s politics. He had decided to walk in his father’s footsteps and to become Kazekage, but also to turn his village into a better place, more open to its allies and protective of the weak. It would take years before anything happened, but he wanted to be ready, to start working on it right now.

When she didn’t have any message to write, she focused on her own work. She put an end to the Lord of the Rings, started adapting two Italian plays she had enjoyed in the Previous World, finished editing The Chronicles of Narnia’s first volume so Jiraiya could read it. She kept an avid eye on her comrades’ activities: Naruto had won his bet about the Rasengan, Haku learned medical ninjutsu under Tsunade’s tutelage, and Zabuza glared at civilians while sharpening his sword.

Hoshihi was adamant about his refusal to go back to the spiritual world until she was back in Konoha, safe and sound on the Nara land, and if possible guarded by Ensui and Kurenai. The big cat was anxious each time she was out of his line of sight. He had even started standing watch next to the bathroom door when she had business there, and she heard him sniff regularly. In other circumstances, she’d have protested against that clear violation of her personal space, but she had been afraid too, just as much as he had, and she understood his crushing anxiety.

On the fourth day, Tsunade declared her fit to travel again, if she was being carried. The girl grumbled a lot but gave in. She wanted to go home. After a light breakfast, she let Shizune put her on Hoshihi’s back and make sure she had a good grip on his shoulders. Her limbs were still painful but the vague burning feeling that hadn’t left her since the battle was finally starting to fade.

They hit the road in an explosion of energy. Zabuza and Naruto led the way – they had suffered the most from their prolonged break in Tanzaku. After them came Tsunade and Shizune, proud and dignified like the future Hokage and her right-hand woman ought to be. Haku, Jiraiya and Hitomi on her familiar’s back brought up the rear. They ran for hours, dodging the touristic towns they had lost so much time at during the outward journey. The five Konohajin felt their village calling, like a sweet melody floating in the air.

At night, when they stopped in the first inn that looked halfway decent and clean, they all gathered in one of the bedrooms after a good, warm meal, and discussed what would be in store for them once they were back home. 

Hitomi told her war chief to be about Karin and Sakura, her two friends who worked at the hospital. She described what she knew of the rare Uzumaki Kekkei Genkai, then the talent and willpower of the Haruno heiress. She also mentioned some of her friends who were interested in medical ninjutsu – Ino and Shino – as well as Shikamaru’s mom, who was teaching her. The Senju princess and her assistant seemed very interested in all the information she gave away like candy. She could almost see their minds work and knew they’d transform Konoha’s health system like never before.

As for Naruto, he told Tsunade about Gaara who wanted to become the next Kazekage – he had been over the moon when Hitomi had repeated the news to him, and she remembered, for the thousandth time, that she had to find a way to connect their notebooks so they could write to each other without her playing messenger. Jiraiya used every chance he got to teach the two teenagers, which made Naruto calmer and more respectful of him. Under Kurenai’s tutelage, he had learned to see knowledge as a strength, one amongst many; it was his job to find others that suited him best and work on them, but knowledge was one of the few he couldn’t ever disregard.

After a week of travel, they arrived in sight of Konoha. Zabuza and Haku had left their group the previous day. The teenager had hugged Hitomi and made her promise that she would take care of herself and of Naruto, and she’d asked him to keep her posted about the situation and to take care of himself as well. Tsunade gave them money for their rebellion and promised to give them even more. She wanted to see their coup succeed just as much as they did, so they could put an ally into the Mizukage’s traditional cloak and hat.

Hitomi could have started using chakra again, but the numbness in her limbs was lingering longer than Tsunade had expected, so the medic had decided to keep her seal over her patient’s meridians for now.

They entered the village like heroes. Izumo and Kotetsu, at their usual post next to the Great Gates, jumped on their feet and welcomed Tsunade with a deep bow, far more formal with her than they’d been with Jiraiya. Before they could even reach the main street, the whole village knew they had returned. Shikaku himself waited for them in front of the Tower, the Hokage hat in his hands. He didn’t give it to Tsunade, since she couldn’t wear it until she was enthroned, but the mere act of bringing it there was a powerful symbol for civilians and shinobi alike.

Still straddling Hoshihi’s back, Hitomi headed up to the Nara lands, Naruto walking next to her. The adults had all locked themselves into the Tower to discuss serious, political affairs, and she didn’t want anything to do with it now – although she’d probably manage to gather intelligence about that meeting later. For now, she preferred to look around and take in her beloved village, which was slowly rebuilding. The west wall of the Torture and Intelligence Department had been fixed for good, like most official and commercial buildings. For the houses, though, the work was still in progress.

“Hitomi!”

The girl jumped in surprise and anticipation and pressed her familiar’s flanks as she heard that voice. The cat knew what she wanted: he launched himself in a supple, energetic run, leaving Naruto behind to reunite her with Ensui, who was waiting for her at the gates of the clan lands. He was standing there so straight it had to be painful, his eyes full of relief and inquiries alike. Without a care for the height she was at – Hoshihi was almost two metres tall to the shoulder now, as if his Lady Summoner’s return from the dead had given him the impulse for one more growth spurt – the Jōnin raised his arms and helped her down, immediately hugging her with all he had.

“Don’t you ever, ever do this to me,” he growled in her hair, his voice breaking in distress.

Her face pressed against his shoulder, she nodded. The two remaining Sannin were on her side now, so technically she could promise him that without perjuring herself. After a few minutes, Ensui let go of her and held her at arm’s length to look at her, searching for injuries. His dark grey eyes stopped on the bandages around her hands, which had been the most heavily hit by her meridian burns, but it wasn’t what he was after. Without a word, the girl brushed her fingers under her right breast. Even through her clothes, she felt the bandages and made out the scar underneath.

“That scumbag is dead,” her master hissed.

“We got rid of Orochimaru, at least,” she sighed in answer. “I didn’t think his minion would be such a threat.” This was a lie. She very much knew what Kabuto was capable of, but she had overlooked him at the time. She’d been too worried about her friends’ injuries and not enough about her own survival. She had made an almost deadly mistake and had gotten out of it with impertinent luck.

“We’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Next time you see that piece of shit, you’ll tear him to pieces.”

Hitomi knew all too well the torments that led Ensui to promise such violence. He had already lost everything once, after all. She had seen his eyes when something reminded him of Chōjirō, his son, or all the other people he’d seen disappear who she didn’t know about. She tried a reassuring smile and put a hand on his forearm. “I don’t doubt it, shishou. Can we go home now? I really want to be there right now.”

He nodded, something softening in his eyes, and knelt so she could hop on his back. She could have finished the journey on Hoshihi’s, who didn’t feel any strain even after carrying her for hours on end, but she wanted to feel her master close to her, the way his breathing deployed his large back, the indolent and constant rhythm of his heart. Her familiar understood all that and was content enough to follow, his tail held high in sign of satisfaction. Next to him, Naruto told the adult about his latest feats, his voice full of energy and enthusiasm.

Hitomi dozed off during the walk home. She still had trouble staying awake for long periods of time. Tsunade had assured her that it was to be expected, that medical ninjutsu was taxing to the body, which explained her slight weight loss and constant exhaustion. Her body would progressively regain a normal rhythm, but she had to have patience and give it time, and lots of rich food.

She woke up when Ensui arrived in front of her house. Because of Tsunade’s seal, Hitomi didn’t have access to her meridians to feel her way around. She couldn’t know if her mom or Sasuke were home, if Shikamaru and Yoshino were inside the house next to hers. She let out an unhappy grumble but let her master carry her to the couch, where she removed her shoes so he could take them back into the hall. She couldn’t wait to be in good enough shape to walk a few steps without feeling dizzy.

“Tell me everything,” he commanded as he put a glass of fresh lemonade between her hands.

And so she did. She repeated what she had already told him in her letter, with more details. She told him about what Hoshihi had gone through in the spiritual world. Her other cats had to wonder why he wasn’t home since they believed her dead. He’d have to go back soon and reassure them. The idea made her heart ache, but she knew it was for the best. She had to relearn to function without his warm, titan-like shadow by her side.

“When will Tsunade-sama allow you to use your chakra again?” Ensui asked when she was done.

“She said in three days, but not to overdo it afterwards. Same with training, by the way, but I’m gonna have to start by taking walks in the village, my muscles are very weak right now.”

The man nodded, already working on plans for his apprentice. Based on what she had told him she felt with her shadow and darkness, she was ready for the next Nara technique.

“Do we have news about Anosuke? Has he been found?”

The Jōnin’s features became serious. Like all the Nara, he had been involved in looking for the boy, but Shikaku hadn’t even had time to organise formal search parties. He hadn’t needed to. “Yes, he’s been found. Tied, gagged, and thrown in a river outside the south wall of the village. He’s still in the hospital. Let me warn you, Hitomi, I know you’ll want to visit him, but he’s not in a good shape, far from it.”

He had seen the kid’s injuries, the state his meagre, abused body was in. He would probably never become a ninja, which had been a dream for him, and had lost himself in deep mutism. His parents had died during the invasion, so there was no one to take care of him, except for Hitomi’s friends Shino and Hinata, whose younger siblings were friends with the boy and refused to leave his bedside. Ensui had also heard that the Haruno girl, the one working in the hospital, spent at least an hour a day taking care of him, but it wasn’t enough. He needed more.

“I’ll still see him, shishou. I spent quite some time with his friends Sugi and Hanabi before I left to seek Tsunade. I already feel a bit responsible for those two kids, so the third… It feels natural, you know?”

The man sighed but nodded. He’d been that way too, once upon a time, so eager to accept responsibilities that shouldn’t have fallen upon him. His hands clenched as a heavy mass of silver hair flashed before his eyes. He pushed that memory down where it belonged. No need to dwell on the past. If the two teenagers saw his turmoil, they didn’t bring it up, perhaps because they respected him too much to dare.

For the entire afternoon, he took care of them, helped them to unpack and settle back into their respective rooms, which he and Kurenai had kept clean when they’d found the time, between two missions. He got his hands on the new books his apprentice had worked on, already anticipating the quiet pleasure of a night spent reading them, and noticed how she and Naruto had grown. They needed new clothes – again. For his girl, though, height wasn’t the problem, puberty was. She wouldn’t grow much more, and yet her body bloomed and her battle outfit, like her civilian clothing, was getting too tight in places. Thinking about it made him want to bang his head against a wall hard enough to go through it.

Naruto was cooking dinner when Sasuke came back home. Her legs weak and shaky, Hitomi stood up from the couch where she had settled to read so she could hug him. He had grown taller, his shoulders larger. Girls were probably crazy about him, to his greatest displeasure – he had no interest whatsoever in romance. When he saw her, his eyes went wide then softened and he briefly embraced her, his chin on top of her head. Braggart.

“I’m glad you’re home, both of you. How is our new Hokage?”

“Violent and twisted?” Naruto suggested, greeting him with a nod and a smile.

“Ah, in that case, she probably goes along marvellously with Hitomi-nee.”

“Eh, I’m not violent!”

“But twisted doesn’t bug you? And yes, you totally are.”

“Tch, you don’t deserve me, neither of you.”

Ensui and the boys burst out laughing as Hitomi pretended to pout, her arms crossed over her chest – carefully, so she wouldn’t touch her bandages. They ate together and chatted for a while. Hoshihi sprawled behind Hitomi’s seat and gleefully cleaned the bones of a rabbit that a member of the clan had gotten for them after a message from Ensui. For a few moments, the girl stopped eating and closed her eyes. She couldn’t wait for her mother to come home, ideally with Asuma, so her family would be gathered in one place.

Karin came back then. Thanks to her skills, she already knew that Naruto and Hitomi were back, but that didn’t stop the girl from letting out a high-pitched squeak as she threw herself at her cousin for a fierce hug. She then made sure he was alright under Sasuke’s amused stare and started telling them about everything they had missed in the clan lands, including Kurenai’s decision to welcome her under her roof for at least a short period. Karin liked the matriarch but she wanted a place of her own. She wouldn’t be allowed to live on the Nara lands, of course, but there were little flats available a street away from them that interested her.

After a while, Ensui declared it was time for everyone to go to bed. Hitomi was already dozing on and off in her chair, a heavy strategy tome open on her lap. She was delighted to obey that order, and delighted to hear her brothers settle in their rooms next to hers. She let Hoshihi lie on her bed then found her own place wherever she could. A giant cat was far more comfortable than one would think, but she had had to learn how to cuddle with him without getting stabbed by his pointy, pointy bones.

“Hitomi?”

Already buried under her blankets, the girl looked up to see her shishou slide his head in. He was settling for the night too: his hair was undone and he wore a dark, shapeless t-shirt instead of his uniform.

“Yeah, shishou?”

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay one last time. Make noise if you have a problem and I’ll come immediately.”

She knew that already but understood his need to put it into words. She nodded and muffled a yawn. “I’m okay, shishou, don’t worry. Goodnight.”

“Have a good night too, Hitomi.”

He closed the door as she rolled to her side with a smile and pressed her face against Hoshihi’s flank. His deep purr lulled her to sleep quickly. The knowledge that she was taken care of, no matter how strong, merciless and dignified she was supposed to be as a kunoichi, untied a knot in her chest, helped her relax. She sighed and her hand twitched on Hoshihi’s back, as if she wanted to grab it. She couldn’t help but think about Anosuke. The expression on her shishou’s face when he talked about the boy was a bad, bad omen. She would go to see him the next day, she swore to herself.

She kept her word. Dressed in oversized civilian clothes, straddling Hoshihi’s back once more, she let him walk through Konoha, her master next to them. She wasn’t armed, since fighting was forbidden for her by Tsunade, but he was, his loyal katana hanging from his belt. He had stopped feeling at home in the village years ago; he only relaxed and let his guard down in his clan’s lands. Maybe that would change, slowly, once Tsunade took office. Seeing the cold, distant way he looked around, his hand never far from the guard of his sword, Hitomi hoped it would.

“Ah, Hitomi-chan!” Shizune exclaimed when she saw them in the hospital’s main hall. “I was going to send someone for you. You were the one to tell me about Gekko Hayate, right?”

“Yeah, I found him when he was attacked. Why?”

“He just woke up. Tsunade-sama and I worked most of the night on the most urgent cases. He was amongst those, but he’s definitely out of danger now. His fiancé is with him and she asked to see you as soon as possible.”

A knot of anxiety formed in Hitomi’s chest, making her breathing itch. She tried to hide it, as she always did, as she exchanged a look with her shishou, who discreetly nodded. With his help, she dismounted her cat, who couldn’t follow her further since he was bigger than a horse. She squared her shoulders and walked through the long corridors, Ensui supporting her with an arm wrapped around her waist. She was ashamed of how quickly she got out of breath, but she knew and repeated to herself that it wasn’t her fault. Kabuto would pay for this. She wouldn’t let him harm her, put her out of commission for so long, without retaliation.

Hayate’s room was on the third floor. Several times, Hitomi had to stop halfway through staircases and corridors, to sit and wait for dizzy spells to fade or catch her breath. Her mentor watched that unfold and reassured her, his voice gentle and tender, when he saw her face harden with impatience of self-depreciation. At this point in their lives, he probably knew her better than she knew herself, and he knew the way she turned against herself. He was probably the most relieved of them when they finally reached the room Shizune had sent them to: there, she’d be able to sit without feeling useless and weak.

“Gekko-san?” Hitomi called, her tone low and almost shy, as she entered the room. She felt the blood retreat from her cheeks when she saw the man. He had lost so much weight despite the stasis and his sickly skin tone was more obvious than ever, the shadows under his eyes almost black. She took a few uneasy steps inside as he turned his head towards her.

His face lit up with a tired smile, but he didn’t try to sit. That made him wiser than Hitomi was when she was bedridden. “Shizune-sensei told me I owed you my life, Yūhi-san.”

She opened her mouth to answer but didn’t have the time: a woman with long, dark purple hair, who could only be Uzuki Yūgao, wrapped her in a hug so strong her ribs protested. She swallowed a whimper of pain and was very careful not to fight against it. Ensui, soon enough, signalled for Yūgao to let go of her. She took a staggering step backwards and bumped against her shishou, who stabilised her with a hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t know how to thank you for what you did, Yūhi-san.”

The girl shifted nervously. She didn’t deserve any of it. The kind words. The consideration. Nothing. She should have shielded him from the event entirely, not saved him by the skin of her teeth. What use were her memories, her incredible amount of knowledge, if people continued to drop dead around her when they could be saved? “It was my duty,” she said after a moment. “I’d do it a thousand times more if I had to. You don’t need to thank me in any way.”

She stepped forwards again, steadier this time, her eyes on the silhouette she could make out under the blankets. Above his headboard, someone had put his forehead protector almost as a talisman. The Will of Fire burned bright even in the smallest details.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t get to you earlier, Gekko-san. They told me your career in the field was over. I’m really sorry…”

The man let out a little laugh that drew a grimace of pain on his face and held out a thin, pale hand until she took it. His skin was cold, in a sickly way, but his chakra felt warm and so deeply at peace it almost made her dizzy. “Don’t be silly, Yūhi-san,” he said. “I can still serve my village in many ways. Thanks to you, I’ll see my children grow up. I’ll be there for them and not a mere ghost over them.” His eyes stopped on Yūgao, who put a hand over her still-flat belly in reaction. It was probably very new. Just before he was attacked, not much more, or it would have started to show.

Hitomi allowed herself to smile and bowed slightly, as much as she could without falling over Hayate. “I’m happy then. Please rest and get well soon, Gekko-san.”

On those words, she turned around and left the room, gladly leaning against her master once they were alone. She might come back, see him again, bring him books, things to keep his hands and mind busy on his long road to recovery. She had to face the consequences of her actions and admit when they weren’t too dire as well.

“Anosuke now,” she said, her voice full of determination. She didn’t feel it at all, but she could fake it and it was the most important. Without a word, Ensui guided her to the highest floor of the hospital. Hitomi’s heart thundered in her chest when she realised where they were headed; she was shaking by the time they walked through the door that separated the intensive care unit from the rest of the corridor. They could only enter with a signed authorisation from a high-ranking doctor, which Ensui handed to the nurse at the front desk. He acted like he had spent a lot of time around that part of the hospital.

She squared her shoulders before she stepped inside the room Ensui led her in, gathering her strength in a tense knot in her mind. The first thing to shock her to her core was the lack of adults inside only Hanabi and Sugi were there, between the bed and the window, speaking in soft tones to their friend. He had his face turned to them, but even like that Hitomi could tell he’d been through a lot. He was even thinner than Hayate, the bones of his shoulders and neck clearly discernible under the pyjamas that hung over his body.

“Hitomi-nee!” Sugi exclaimed with obvious relief on his face. “Anosuke, Yūhi Hitomi is here. I told you about her, remember?. She helped us train before she went on her mission to find Tsunade-sama.”

The boy turned his head towards her and she had to curl her hands into fists to keep an impassive face. The bandages over his eyes could only mean one thing. She smiled, greeted the kid with a gentle voice and went to the foot of his bed and picked up the chart describing his injuries. Sakura had taught her how to read that kind of document. Blind, of course. His eyes had been gouged out of his head and, according to the chart, he’d been conscious during the whole thing. Page after page, she took in the list of his injuries, the description of his psychological state and the suppositions about the tortures he’d gone through. A child. Alone, fragile and terrified.

She would find the culprit and spill their innards all over the Land of Fire.

She took a deep breath, put the chart back in its place then went to the boy’s bedside and put a hand, as light as possible, on his bony shoulder. He winced when she touched him, but she didn’t mind it, giving him time instead to decide if he wanted to accept the contact or not. He finally relaxed and leaned into her hand. Only then did she speak again, her voice gentle and firm at the same time. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Anosuke-kun, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be on your own. If you still want to become a ninja or if your hopes turn to another goal, I’ll help you reach it, and Sugi and Hanabi will as well. I promise. You’re not alone.”

She saw his lips tighten and his fist curl on his lap. He had scars on his wrists, on the back of his hands. She had no doubt there were many more under his clothes. “We’ll wait for you to be ready,” she assured him. “For now, you focus on healing. Don’t worry about what will happen afterwards. If you want, you’ll come live with me. My mom would be delighted to have you under her roof. Do you know her? Yūhi Kurenai. She’s Hyūga Hinata’s sensei.”

The boy nodded, his shoulders agitated with faint tremors. Hitomi tried to maintain the mix of self-assurance and appeasement that seemed to work so well as she wrapped her hands around him, shifting her weight on the bed to hide how close to the end of her stamina she was. “Anyway, neither of us can do anything too physical for now. I’m still in convalescence after my mission. See? We already have things in common.”

Still standing at the entrance of the room, Ensui nodded with approval. His eyes, set on his apprentice, gleamed with something that looked with pride and tenderness. He had raised her so well.

 

Chapter 75: Relearning How to Live

Life carried on in Konoha. Tsunade ended up lifting the seals that stopped Hitomi from using her chakra and deemed her fit for light training. From that day on, the girl started going for long walks into the Deer Forest, with whoever was available to come along – it often was Ensui, who wasn’t needed on missions now that the village was getting better.

Hitomi managed to track Sakura down during one of her shifts at the hospital. She looked incredibly happy with her job and, according to the rumours the young Yūhi gladly listened to, she was incredibly gifted. The patients loved her once they were over the idea of getting help from a teenager. Welcomed with a smile, the Genin followed her friend to get tea in the refreshment area of the hospital.

“I’d like to talk to you about Anosuke-kun.” Was it her serious tone or the sentence itself that surprised Sakura? The Haruno girl was very familiar with the fiercely protective instinct that united the Nara, and no one could forget Hitomi’s links with that clan, between her regal features and the carefully laid out nonchalance she made sure to project most of the time like a bait.

“The Nara child… He’s a very complex case. We thought we were going to lose him several times during surgery. Karin was there with me. We had to use her Kekkei Genkai to pull through, but nothing could give him his eyes back.”

“He hasn’t spoken since he woke up, right?”

“Hm hm. Looks like he tries sometimes, but he really can’t. His vocal chords aren’t damaged, nor is the part of his brain that manages language. It’s psychological.”

“Do you have any idea of who did that to him?”

“We suspect Orochimaru. According to the archives we have on him, it was one of the reasons he got banned from the village in the first place, kidnapping children to experiment on them, so…”

“I see.” Hitomi didn’t buy it. She had compared dates and Orochimaru was near Tanzaku when Anosuke had been thrown in the river and found several hours later. Of course, one of the snake’s minions could have done it for him, but that didn’t make sense either. The Sannin simply wasn’t into the habit of wasting a body, and neither was his right-hand man. If Anosuke had been captured by them, they wouldn’t have gotten him back before destroying every one of their lairs in the Elemental Nations.

“I’m gonna take the kid in,” she continued, her tone firm and brooking no nonsense. “My mother agreed and Ensui-shishou will help me with him. Yoshino too, even if she’s gonna be way more busy now that she’s been hired.”

This was a very rare occurrence and thus had become the favourite topic of gossip for many people: Nara Yoshino, Lady of her clan, was back in the medical field, not as a shinobi but as the head of the Traumatology Ward of the hospital. The Hokage herself had asked her to do it. That kind of thing almost never happened. The spouse of a clan leader, no matter their gender, often had a lot of work to do in the clan’s affairs and rarely took a job outside of it. They didn’t exactly need it either. The last one to do it had been Kiba’s father and, considering that Tsume had gutted him with her own hands after he’d betrayed Konoha during a mission they were on together, other leaders’ spouses hadn’t been too eager to follow his tracks.

“I can’t wait for her to start! And I don’t see any problem with you taking care of the boy, as long as you do it correctly. You won’t have as much room for mistakes as you’d have with a normal child – and you can’t neglect your own problems either. Are you sure you can manage?”

Hitomi hesitated for a few seconds and considered all her other obligations, like she did every time she thought about her decision. It was true that she had to handle her own problems as well, which implied she’d have to find a new therapist – and another for Anosuke. She finally nodded, her determination back. “Yes, I’ll manage. Ensui-shishou will make sure of it, and so will the rest of our clan.”

Sakura smiled, obviously relieved. “It’s all good then! I like seeing you all so united and close to each other. The Hyūga are so divided with their main and secondary branches thing, and a lot of other clans don’t look as united…”

“That’s because the Nara kept a lot of their own traditions in addition to adopting the village’s. Our elders won’t let us forget our history, our roots, even if they don’t force us to live by them. Our duty of remembrance pushes us to protect each other, just as some of our laws do.”

“Ah, yeah, like the one that says even the civilians have to know the theoretical side of your techniques, right? That’s a very sensible rule, I don’t understand why the other clans don’t have it too.”

The answer was that most clans were incredibly arrogant. Even the Akimichi and Yamanaka, close allies to the Nara, thought of themselves as invincible as a clan. The Uchiha Massacre hadn’t even been a lesson for them: they were so sure their clans wouldn’t ever disappear. With a smile, Hitomi let the discussion shift to less risky, less political subjects. She learned that Sakura and Shino had started to grow closer, but the girl didn’t know if the feelings she had for him were reciprocated.

“Well… There aren’t a thousand ways to find out, right? Besides, Shino likes direct and upfront people, you know that. Tell him and then keep me posted, alright?” With those words, Hitomi waved to her friend and took off for Anosuke’s room. She had made progress: she didn’t need to stop halfway up the stairs anymore, but she was still completely out of breath when she reached the floor he was on. She made sure to manage it before she knocked and announced herself as she stepped inside. The boy had obviously tried to leave his bed: furniture had been kicked out of the way and his sheets were a mess. She pretended not to notice it. Wanting to get out of bed was a form of progress.

“Hi, Anosuke-kun. Today, I have something to teach you that you should really enjoy! It will allow you to communicate until you get your voice back.” She didn’t allow herself to think that it might never happen, no matter how likely that was. She waited for the boy to get used to her presence, to the brush of her chakra against his skin – she had discovered he was sensitive to it, even if it wasn’t an illness for him as it had been for her – before she got to work with him. Sitting on his bed next to him, she started to teach him the morse code used in Konoha. She would have to teach it to Sugi and Hanabi as well, so he could communicate with his friends, but she had to go one step at a time with this.

She had to admit that she didn’t only help him for altruistic reasons. When she looked at him, she saw another little girl, always sick, always in the hospital, always in so much pain, who had learned very early on that she would die young, that nothing could be done to grant her a truly happy life. She looked at Anosuke, and she saw the child she had been in the Previous World, alone and terrified, only able to hold onto her books to survive deep-rooted despair.

But altruism didn’t matter. The most important thing was that she had stepped in, and that she could spare him more pain by being there for him. Of course, her whole clan would help to raise the child, to make his dreams reality. But a child needed an adult by their side to guide them and, according to Konoha’s standards, Hitomi almost was one. Ninjas had always had a strange status in the village’s society. Even Academy students quickly stopped being seen as proper children. If they could be sent to perilous missions as young as twelve years old, then they could have younger kids under their wing.

And, once again, she wouldn’t be alone in this. She had talked about it with her mother, Ensui, Yoshino, and all the people who wanted to help. Even Naruto and Sasuke, and the whole Fellowship, were in the loop. She wouldn’t leave anyone out of it, not even her lazy, adorable cousin, who in truth loved kids, and the rest of the village, which had failed to protect one of its vulnerable people. She also wanted to find the person who had taken Anosuke away, and had written to Itachi to ask him if he could discreetly investigate. He had agreed – even the nukenin were getting their hands on deck for this one.

After an hour of practice, Anosuke made progress in his learning of the language. He still had a hard time understanding how to form syllables that were rarely used, but Hitomi wasn’t disappointed, quite the contrary: with him, any progress was huge and had to be encouraged. Day after day, the child had become more expressive towards her. He ended up in her lap, his back against her chest, her arms around him and his fingers tapping lightly against her forearm. To entertain him, she showed him how to translate nursery rhymes in that language as she sung them.

‘I still want to be a ninja’ was his first complete sentence. Hitomi whispered her approbation behind him. If it was what he wanted, she would make it happen. The world wasn’t devoid of blind shinobi… They just had to go around their disability, to find a way to compensate for it. She promised the kid she would train him herself if he wanted, until he was part of a Genin team with Sugi and Hanabi. It was his dream. She would fight tooth and nail for it to become reality, even if it implied spitting in the face of Hyūga Hiashi himself. Anyway, she still violently despised him for what he had done to Hinata and for their breakup.

“I have to go, Anosuke-kun, but I want you to continue training. I’m gonna leave one of my cats with you – she’s used to communicating this way. Is it okay?”

When the boy nodded, she stood up and summoned the cat she foresaw get along best with the child: Sunaarashi. As long as she kept her temper in check, she was very maternal with the people around her, and Anosuke truly needed that. She let the cat and the kid get acquainted – they were cuddling on the bed despite the feline’s size, barely smaller than Hoshihi – and left when she was sure everything would be okay.

Ensui was waiting for her, once again, at the entrance of the clan’s lands. He didn’t say a word when she reached him, content enough with throwing an arm around her shoulders to bring her closer. In a comfortable silence, they walked down the streets they knew like the back of their hands and loved more than was ever reasonable until they reached a little training ground. Most active duty shinobi used the ones in the rest of the village so they could train with their friends and teammates, but the Jōnin wanted to have his apprentice work on her individual skills.

He started by guiding her through a series of stretches, determining with the help of each exercise what she had lost over her long convalescence. After an hour of that, and despite the gentleness her master used with her, Hitomi was stiff and exhausted, her muscles aching and twitching. Yet, she refused to stop when he offered her to, tilting her chin as if to dare him to force her to. He deemed it wiser to simply have her push back against her limits, since she’d probably do it, and then some, on her own if he tried to coerce her.

After the stretches, he made her run laps around the training ground, whose perimeter was a bit more than a kilometre long. She was out of breath and terribly dizzy by the time she limped back to him. Since she hadn’t used chakra, she was very far from her usual speed, but, even taking chakra out of the equation… this was bad , so bad the mix of shame and horror creeping up her skin made her want to choke. Ensui probably felt it: he put a hand on her shoulder and handed her a water bottle then spoke, his voice gentle and encouraging. “You’re in good shape for someone who had no exercise whatsoever for weeks, you know? Everything will come back to you soon, and then you’ll be able to overachieve constantly like you used to. The best course of action is to be reasonable now; it’s only by not exhausting yourself to the point of injury that you’ll be back on your feet.”

Those words finally allowed her to give in. She agreed to leave the training ground, even though she didn’t look too happy to listen to her body’s tantrums – and she said so herself when Ensui teased her about her pout. Strung with pity at the sight of his beloved apprentice limping and swearing through clenched teeth, the master ended up scooping her up in his arms and silencing her weak protests with a gentle laugh. Inside, they found Kurenai, coming back from a mission.

Hitomi’s mother had been furious when she’d heard that her daughter had been injured under Jiraiya’s watch, and had made the Sannin very painfully and publicly aware of her feelings. The legend said Tsunade had watched the whole thing while snacking on popcorn, and had forbidden anyone from stepping in. Kurenai wasn’t mad at Hitomi for getting hurt again, though. In fact, she had even assured her of her love and support – the girl couldn’t put into words the relief she felt to have her by her side. However, Kurenai’s protective instincts had been lit anew towards her daughter. Hitomi pretended she wasn’t aware of the many, many new traps surrounding the house and garden.

“I’m glad to see you, sweetheart,” Kurenai said as she kissed her on the forehead in passing. “How was your visit to Anosuke-kun?”

Hitomi had been right to expect the woman to take a liking to the boy. She was a Nara in all but name, just like her daughter, but the way she acted with Anosuke was more than filial loyalty. Maybe she felt linked to him through her students, whose younger siblings were so close with the injured child, or maybe it was something else that Hitomi didn’t quite understand. Still, Kurenai was proud of her daughter, of her decision to take Anosuke home when it would be possible – thus sparing him the ordeal of being sent to the orphanage. She was already converting one of the two offices in the house into a bedroom for him.

“Not too bad. I taught him the morse code, he’s practicing with Sunaarashi right now. He still wants to be a shinobi and I think he’ll succeed. I want to see Inoichi this weekend to ask him for good therapists for children, then meet them myself. He deserves the best, nothing less, but I’m not sure I know exactly what he needs…”

“I’ll help,” the mother promised with a sweet smile. “We’ll have to seek one for you as well, right?”

Hitomi tensed, her muscles aching in protest. She couldn’t help but look away, a knot in her belly, as she forced her body to relax. She nodded, her lips pressed in a thin line. “Yes, we’ll have to see to that too. I have new nightmares.”

The two adults exchanged a heavy look. They heard her jump awake every night, Ensui slept on the couch since he’d been back and Kurenai was getting to spend nights home now that she wasn’t sent around the country for all the urgent missions arriving at the Tower. After waking, Hitomi twisted and turned for a while until she found peace again. The worst nightmares were always signalled by the noise her kunai made as it flew to the door of her room, and that happened almost every night these days.

“Don’t concern yourself with that for now, sweetheart. We can do it this weekend. For now, we can focus on a more pleasant problem: your lack of fitting clothes. Fancy a little shopping trip? It’s been a while.”

The girl hesitated a bit – she was still aching all over – but Ensui helped her make a choice. With a gentle smile, he rubbed her calves, his hands surrounded in minty green chakra. She immediately felt better, although the pain didn’t entirely fade. She nodded to her mother. “I’d be delighted. Let’s go slow, though, I’m not really in the best shape these days.”

That was the euphemism of the year, but no one commented on it. No, Kurenai decided instead to send her daughter to prepare in her room, then talked with Ensui until she got back in the living room. In the shopping street where they had their habits, Asuma found them, wrapping a hand around his girlfriend’s waist with an immensely satisfied smile. They went to drop Hitomi’s battle outfit to the tailor then launched themselves in the lengthy project of restarting her whole wardrobe almost from scratch. And she needed bras now… The prospect almost made her scream in exasperation.

“Ah, sweetheart, we also have to find you a dress for Hokage the Fifth’s enthronement and the dinner afterwards! Do you have something in mind?”

“Not really. Let’s just search for something that makes me want to put it on more than once, alright?”

The event was very private, more than the parties Hitomi had been to in the past. Only the representatives of the different departments and bureaux in the village, as well as the main family of each clan, were invited. Hitomi was already very lucky that she was allowed to invite Lee as her partner. She knew several of her friends would be there as well, which might be just what she needed to stop herself from strangling Shimura Danzō with her bare hands. Of course the old coot would be there.

It took them almost an hour to find a dress that caught Hitomi’s eyes and fit her small frame in a flattering way. It was a pretty little thing, dark red with a modest neckline, but it left her delicate shoulders bare. In it, she felt a bit like those girls from noble families who sometimes went through the village in golden-woven litters with heavy drapes held open by silky ropes in the hope they would get to see a ninja running on the roofs. For those city girls who barely left the capital once a year, shinobi were almost a legend.

Then, Kurenai insisted on finding shoes that would go with the dress, with flat heels – even though Hitomi was old enough for them, no kunoichi worth her name would have chosen precarious shoes without being sure she could handle them. During her convalescence, they were absolutely not an option. Ensui and Asuma, curiously, didn’t only sit around during the whole process: they stepped in, gave their opinion when asked and, sometimes, pointed out outfits the girl would like. It was refreshing.

Their shopping done and piled at their feet, they went to have dinner in a little restaurant nearby. This was a rare occurrence: they all preferred, except for Asuma maybe, to dine in the Akimichi restaurants, but it was rare to get a table in any of them if one didn’t book it in advance. Exhausted, Hitomi leaned against her shishou while they waited for their appetizers and half-closed her eyes. “So, training tomorrow?” she asked after muffling a big yawn.

“Of course. We’ll do the same as we did today, but with chakra so you’re not completely spent at the end. If you fall asleep on a dignitary of the Land of Fire, you’ll have a reputation that will follow you for the rest of your life and, trust me, you don’t want that!”

“Ugh, I’m glad I asked Lee to come. He’ll help me stay awake.”

“Looks like it’s getting serious between you two,” Kurenai nudged with a complicit smile.

At another time, Hitomi would have rejoiced at the approval of her mother, but it was just reminding her of the bittersweet news she had held on, because the idea of telling anyone about it made her heart ache in ways she didn’t quite comprehend. “Well… Not really. I mean, yes, but it won’t last. If he’s promoted to Chūnin in the next exam, in a few months, he’ll go with Gai-sensei on a trip around the Elemental Nations to learn as many taijutsu styles as he can… We decided we were going to split up at that time. A long-distance relationship would hurt too much.”

Heavy silence followed her words. She had done her best to appear nonchalant during her little explanation, but her hands were shaking and she was choking a bit. She didn’t know if she had fallen in love, even a little bit, with Hinata or Haku, but Lee… Lee, she loved dearly, she was sure of it. It would hurt to let go of him, of their feelings, no matter how certain they were that it was the best for the both of them. She winced when Ensui’s hand covered one of hers, absorbing her shaking as if to erase it.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. It has to be hard, especially right now. Are you okay with it?”

Hitomi willed a smile to appear on her lips, nodded and assured him that yes, she was. The three adults could see the lie as clear as day on her face, but they abided by her obvious wish to change subjects. If Lee had been unrespectful towards Hitomi, Ensui and Asuma would have probably taken Kakashi along to drink a cup of tea with what would be left of the teenager after she was done with him, but there was nothing of the sort here, no bitterness nor unease between the two Genin, only the quiet acceptance that their romance was to end, and that it was for the best. Maybe they would get back together if they were both single after all that; but so much could change in two and a half years – he would be gone that long at least.

“Let’s forget this, okay?” she exclaimed with a cheerfulness that sounded fake and empty. “We had a wonderful day, right? That’s the most important thing right now. Besides, we still have quite some time together. I plan on making the best of it, and so does he.” She looked at them intently, her big red eyes pleading for them to let go, to enjoy the night rather than crying over her soon-to-be lost love. One at a time, they did.

Their plates arrived just then, stealing the words away from the adults’ mouths. What would they have said anyway? Teenagers weren’t supposed to be that mature, but Hitomi had always been different. Only Kurenai looked at her daughter a bit longer before starting to eat, a look that the girl was unaware of, focused as she was on her own dish to turn her thoughts away from the sore topic.

Hitomi was so tired after the restaurant that Ensui decided to carry her back home. Asuma and Kurenai were walking ahead, holding hands – the mentor had decided to give them a bit of alone time, which his apprentice understood and approved of. Together, they watched as the Sarutobi heir turned his head to Kurenai and whispered something that made her giggle; Hitomi had never heard her mother produce such a sound. It was for that kind of time that shinobi fought, for the carefree memories and the sweetness waiting at the hearth of their homes.

Chapter 76: Tsunade's Coronation

Hitomi opened her eyes at dawn. Already her body moved, sending the kunai under her pillow flying to her door – where the threat had been standing in her dream. She took a few seconds to shake the nightmare out of her head, to steady her breath and her heartbeat, then she went to get the weapon back and placed it under her pillow again. It wouldn’t do to be defenceless, even in her bedroom.

Once she was dressed and ready to start her day, she closed her eyes and focused chakra in her ears. She heard Ensui’s slow and heavy breathing in the living room, Asuma and Kurenai sleeping across the corridor and, in the two bedrooms surrounding hers, Sasuke and Naruto, asleep as well. They were, just like her, stuck in the village until Kakashi came home from the A-ranked mission he’d been assigned. They didn’t like the situation, since it forced them to accomplish one D-ranked mission after the other to at least feel like they were useful.

Silent as a shadow, Hitomi left her room by the window, walked across the roof and let herself fall in the garden. She could have gone through the living room, but why take the risk of waking up Ensui? He needed rest too. He was already kind by sleeping on a couch when a bed waited for him at his house, just so he could keep an eye on his apprentice and always be nearby in case she needed him. The first days, when her nightmares had been incredibly violent, he had even spent his nights in the corridor, standing watch in front of her door.

In the fresh morning air, Hitomi started greeting the sun with grace and determination. She could thank Ensui for the faint ache in her muscles: it would have been so much worse had he not helped her. So as to not exhaust herself before her mentor could even get to her, the girl decided to focus on her Water Release practice. She started with the basic techniques – Hiding in the Mist and Hiding in Water, the clones, a few D-ranked offensive techniques she never used out of training – then focused on the rest of her repertoire.

Around her, her chakra was turning to water and bending to her will, just as intense and free as the element it was emulating. As for her, she was finding a new life, a new hope and energy, in the way her body reacted, her meridians finally drenched in true power, the power she’d missed so dearly. She was a ninja. She wasn’t like Lee, able to shrug chakra off her life for the most part; without it, she felt deprived of a limb, of a whole sense altogether.

She spun on her feet when she heard a rustling of fabric from behind. Without thinking, in the middle of her movement, she snapped her Water Whip in the direction of the noise. The weapon wrapped around the arm Ensui had raised to protect himself. There was a grin on his face. Her face aflame with shame, she broke the technique and apologised profusely. He answered with a deep, soft laugh, a gleam of pride in his eyes, and that was enough to make her understand that she hadn’t offended him.

“I see you didn’t wait for me to get back to work. Most shinobi have a hard time casting jutsus after a long convalescence, probably because their body has forgotten how to do it. Guess you don’t have that problem, hm?”

Hitomi shrugged and wiped her hands on the leggings she had chosen to wear for her training session – they were new, but she would only wear it for such activities so it was okay to stain it. The memory held inside her body worked just as good as her mind, and they both knew what to expect from it. He waved her closer, tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her rubber band behind her ear then got her back to work. While he stretched, he made sure she practiced her katas correctly. It was time for her to fight again.

The empty-handed katas were easy enough. That day, Hitomi felt particularly good, and the physical exercise was appeasing something inside her that she had to admit really needed it. Soon enough, Ensui joined her, guided her through parrying, dodging, and hitting, until they went through all the complex figures three times. Then, he went inside and came back a few moments later, a wooden katana and tantō in his hands. Docile, Hitomi untied Ishi to Senrigan from her belt and swapped it for the weapon he was handing her.

The sword kata didn’t go as smoothly. Her body remembered, yes, but her muscles didn’t have the necessary strength anymore, and she was reaching the end of her stamina. Her breathing was shallow and painful, sweat was rolling along her neck and back, but she refused to give up before she had at least done all the sword katas she knew once. Then, Ensui convinced her to go back inside and change, so he could have her work on her seals and chemistry. It had been a long time since they had studied that subject. Despite her weariness, Hitomi was eager to get on it and she ran inside to obey her master, who looked at her tenderly.

When she came back downstairs, he made her sit in the kitchen and eat the extensive breakfast he had cooked. She indulged him by eating more than she would otherwise; after all, she needed to get her strength back, and the weight loss her convalescence had induced was still visible. It wasn’t her physical appearance that worried her mentor, but what came with it: the tiredness quicker to spread and undermine her efforts, the increased fragility of her bones, the slippery slope that threatened to get her on a dark, dark path of self-destruction if he didn’t keep an eye on her. He couldn’t let that happen. Not to her.

“I talked to your uncle,” he said when she was almost done with breakfast. “He agreed to give us access to a clan lab during the afternoons, on the condition that we clean up after ourselves. That way, we’ll be able to get our hands on products I couldn’t have made you work with otherwise. Are you done with your smoke bombs for the Inuzuka?”

Hitomi had started on that project years ago, and had worked on it when she found time. Beaming, she nodded. She was proud of the solution she had found while chatting with Shizune during her convalescence. She had tested her product on Kiba, and it worked. One more success to add to her already long list of achievements.

“Very well. You’ll have to get an appointment with one of their armourers after you filed the patent for your product, so you can start selling it. There’s no source of income that is too little, right?”

They exchanged a knowing smile. Now that he wasn’t in active duty anymore, Ensui lived from the patents of his own inventions. He had done a bit of everything: weapons, furniture, chemicals – he had even invented designs for shinobi accessories, like additional pouches to tie on a Chūnin or Jōnin vest. One day, when Hitomi got tired of fighting, she’d probably do the same. It was a good life.

They talked about chemistry for a good hour before shifting to their favourite subject, fūinjutsu. Hitomi had made a lot of progress with what Jiraiya had taught her, but she was still stuck on the creation of her own seals. She wanted to use a mix of all the types of writing she knew: the kanji, of course, but also the Latin alphabet and the two rune families she had learned in the Previous World. That way, her seals would be impossible to decipher.

She had started by drawing all the signs she knew in a notebook, except for the ones belonging to Japanese. She had then written down each sign’s symbolics if they had one and left the others blank. She was working on the creation of a simple storage seal using only her new signs, but it wasn’t working very well for now. As the other people in the house were waking up and starting their own day, she explained to Ensui how to draw each sign. He… he was worthy of this knowledge, of all her knowledge.

When they were done working with that, it was already time for the family to prepare for Tsunade’s enthronement. Hitomi’s nerves made her a bit jumpy and she had to resist the urge to pace long enough to allow her mother to turn her hair into an elegantly messy bun. Then, she put makeup on, Kurenai watching her every move and giving her directions. She wasn’t really at ease with makeup yet, but she had held onto her promise to learn. At least, she had mastered eyeliner already thanks to Ensui.

She had done everything she could to look fragile, vulnerable. With her dress, her delicate pair of sandals and the dark red nail polish she had put on her nail in addition to her makeup, she looked like a civilian girl, nothing more. Only shinobi would know she was one of their own, but if they didn’t know her personally they would quickly dismiss her, which was exactly what she wanted. As long as they thought her incompetent, clumsy, vain, they wouldn’t suspect what she was truly made of.

Lee arrived a bit early. She welcomed him with a kiss and warned him that she had told her family about their arrangement about their relationship. He nodded in acceptance and pulled her closer. He understood how reluctant she was to hide things from them, after all: she was loved dearly and surrounded by people who wanted her safe and happy. He straightened his tie, its colour the exact same shade as Hitomi’s dress, then kissed her knuckles. She giggled and he smiled, basking in her presence next to him.

At five in the afternoon, they stood on a balcony reserved for the Konohajin clans as Tsunade walked down the village’s main road, her back straight and her honey coloured eyes gleaming with pride, surrounded by those who had become legends amongst their peers. Shikaku and Ensui were amongst such shinobi; their presence down there was enough to announce their support to the new Hokage after spending so much time opposing the last. The Elders, those traitors, put the symbolic hat on Tsunade’s head and stepped back while the sea of civilians and ninjas alike roared their approval.

Tsunade was a medic nin. She knew how her body worked – casting a jutsu to allow her voice to be heard throughout the village was really child play for her. She started her speech with the proud, no-nonsense tone Hitomi associated with her. The crowd was hanging to her words, moved when it was fit, yelling and cheering when they ought to. The ground vibrated with the strength of applause when the new Hokage was done – a successful communication operation, that was for sure.

The Hokage traditionally lived in a manor at the heart of the village, not too far from the Tower and better guarded than any bank or armoury. Tsunade had already claimed that manor as her lair since she had gotten back to the village, and erased her predecessor’s presence from the place. Hiruzen had woken from his coma, as crippled as the medics had foreseen. Hitomi couldn’t find it in her to feel guilty about the situation. If she had saved him, truly saved him, he would have continued to clench on power, without any consideration for the whole village’s wellbeing.

She was too busy to care about the old man. She was actively preparing for the time when Hiruzen’s machinations with Danzō and the two other Councilmen against the Uchiha Clan would come to light. If Hitomi wasn’t mistaken, the Senju princess would be pissed and heads would fall. She and Itachi had talked about it at length through their notebooks, carefully considering their options. It wasn’t time to act yet. For now, they only exchanged interesting information and waited – waited together, in more than one way.

Lee by her side, Hitomi made her entrance behind her mother and Asuma, her grandfather entering last. Ensui hadn’t been able to join them, but he was part of the Nara delegation. The guests all settled at the seats designated for them. The Yūhi and Nara clans got to share a table, next to the one where the Akimichi and Yamanaka were sitting. A wise decision, with Shizune’s signature all over it.

“Thanks to all of you for being here tonight!” Tsunade said, standing in front of her own seat at the centre of the main table once all the guests had the first course of the meal on their plate. “Dig in!”

The first mouthful of spicy soup reminded Hitomi of Suna. She and Ensui exchanged a look full of memories and nostalgia. When would she be able to go back there? She missed Gaara… And his village too. She focused on her meal but listened to what the others at her table were talking about. Shikaku and Shinku were going on about politics, a particularly sensitive subject, but they were doing it with the courtesy that came with their high standing in society. They had always gotten along, even before Kurenai and Shikano had moved in together on the Nara lands to raise their child to come.

The dishes arrived quite slowly, so the guests had time to chat and unleash their mastery of idle talk, a skill they had sometimes picked up as infants from watching their parents. Once, Hitomi tensed, her eyes on Councilman Shimura Danzō, who was watching her table thoughtfully. Under the table, Lee put a hand on her naked knee and rubbed the skin until she relaxed. She closed her eyes and focused on her thundering heart, willing it to slow down.

A short while after the meal ended, the band Tsunade had summoned for the night stepped on the stage assigned to them and started playing. The first dance was only for the reigning couples from each clan as well as Tsunade and her date for the night, a member of the ANBU Hitomi didn’t recognise – she could feel the seal buzzing on his upper-arm, the discreet spark of chakra like a spell that coaxed her eyes into looking at it.

Then, the rest of the guests were able to join on the dancefloor. Lee’s hands were deliciously firm on Hitomi’s hips. He had asked Gai-sensei for dance lessons, he told her with a smile that made her want to kiss him – if only so it’d stop her from picturing the lessons. Dance was one of the skills kunoichi were taught at the Academy, but she had made sure to practice with Ensui, and even once with Sasuke, so she would be ready for tonight.

Both her brothers were there, of course. Naruto’s date was his cousin, Karin, and Sasuke had asked Hinata – he knew she had no interest whatsoever in boys, just as she knew he had no interest whatsoever in anyone. Their choice had made the Hyūga clan very happy. All four of them were dancing on the outskirts of the dancefloor, where no one would bother them or, even worse, try to switch partners with them.

As for Hitomi, she was savouring the time she had left with Lee. The feeling of his torso against her gave her the sweetest, most delicious of chills. He was behaving like the perfect gentleman, of course, but that didn’t do anything to temper her flame. She knew it was the damned hormones speaking, in large part, because she was a teenager and it was almost a rite of passage, but still, she would have appreciated to be able to stay perfectly lucid when he kissed her, or when his breath brushed against her throat, her ear.

After a few dances, Ensui came and asked for his turn. His tone low, while they were dancing elegantly through the crowd, he made sure she was alright, had fun, wasn’t tired. He looked tense, and the girl knew why: behind her, Danzō was dancing with Shizune, who had an unreadable expression on her face. With a smile, Hitomi tried to appease her master by telling him about a spring mechanism she wanted to use for her next grenades, and he listened, seeming to forget at least temporarily about his grief and resentment.

Then it was Kakashi’s turn to ask for a dance. She was surprised to see him – she hadn’t seen nor felt him approach – but accepted his invitation then set about teasing him while he guided her through the rhythm of the music. So he had come home… That probably meant Team Seven would get back to work very soon; maybe he’d wait until they were all in top shape. He enquired about her health and looked almost sick with worry when she told him about her brush with death. She knew he would watch her like a hawk from now on but, frankly, she needed it.

Finally, she could sit and rest her tired feet. She watched Lee dance with Hinata, a surprising but harmonious pairing. Ensui had finally asked Shizune for a turn: they danced past her and she heard them talk about medicine. He had confided in his apprentice his desire to pick up the skill: except for first aid techniques, he wasn’t proficient in the field and wanted that to change. Those techniques had been enough in the past, but now that Hitomi was jumping from problem to problem, he wanted to know more. Who could even blame him?

“Enjoying yourself?” Sasuke asked as he sat next to her.

“Yeah. You?”

“Hinata’s nice. The other girls… Ugh.”

They snickered and watched Yamanaka Ino, who was dancing with an ANBU operative. Not that Sasuke knew about that bit: the ANBU had to be able to mingle in a crowd, civilian or ninja. But Hitomi had realised she could detect seals by the spark of chakra they held, thanks to a beautiful combination of her high sensitivity and fūinjutsu skills. No ANBU shinobi could hide themselves from her if they didn’t muffle their whole chakra signature. The tattoo on their shoulder was a seal, but she didn’t know what it was for. Summoning, tracking, both, something more? She would find out one day. No way she’d leave that mystery behind.

“I get it. I’m lucky: between Ensui-shishou, Kakashi-sensei and Lee, no old pervert has dared to bother me.”

“Well, technically Kakashi-sensei fits that bill.”

“What, for Icha Icha? Nah, come on. You know, those books are actually quite good. Besides, Kakashi-sensei would never think about me that way.”

“W-wait, you read those books?”

Hitomi blushed up to her hair and bit down on her tongue, cursing inwardly against her own carelessness. She didn’t think Sasuke would tell on her to Kurenai but still, she didn’t want her brothers to know what she was reading. Finally, she shrugged, a deliberately carefree expression on her face, and decided to ram the nail in. “Well, helps me with the hurdles of being a teenager… You know, hormones and such.”

It was his turn to blush, a grimace on his thin lips, as she grinned in victory. That would teach him. Teach him what exactly, she had no clue, but still, he needed some teaching. Lessons never hurt – except when Kakashi and Ensui were the ones giving them.

“Ugh, I don’t want to know about that , please! Well, speaking of… Do I need to go break Lee’s knees?”

“What, you mean breaking the knees of the most honourable young man we know? Please. He would never. And anyway…” She let out a heavy sigh and told him about the foretold end of her relationship with her boyfriend. He focused on her, but maybe that was so he wouldn’t be disturbed. He hated dancing, hated socialising… but he was the only living and legal heir of the Uchiha clan. He couldn’t refuse to come to those events.

“I see… Well, it’s good that you are clear about the future of your relationship and have decided to get the better of it while you still can. I wish it would last forever because he’s good for you, but at least you did things the clean way. I would have defended your honour, without any hesitation, but that doesn’t erase the fact that that guy is terrifying.”

“Ooh, I don’t know if this is cute or worrying. Don’t you get your knickers in a twist, alright? If a boy shows me any disrespect, I will end him. You’ll get to play with the remains if you want.”

“Deal!”

They burst into laughter, getting several adults to focus on them. Shikaku seemed to remember suddenly that he had a niece at this party; he cut his discussion with Tsunade short and came to fetch her. Fortunately, her feet didn’t hurt much anymore or she would have found a way to make him swallow one of her shoes, or even both. “Everything okay with Tsunade-sama, ojisan?”

“Quite. She’ll be a great Hokage, I don’t doubt that even for a moment.”

“Can’t wait to get back to your job, now, can you?” she teased.

“It’s almost already the case now. The only difference, and it’ll stay that way, is that I became Tsunade’s councilman.”

“Really? That’s an excellent position. Do you like that job?”

“It’s okay. A lot of paperwork but you know I don’t miss active duty. I like taking care of our troops, and this double hat gives me even more of a role in that, so…”

“I see! Say, do you know when and where the next Chūnin exam will happen?”

“Should be in Kusagakure, in around five months. You’ll be in, right?”

“If Kakashi-sensei allows it, you bet! I want to get that promotion and walk the world.”

“And see your friends from Sunagakure and the Land of Waves, right?”

“Yes, that too. The communicating notebooks are great, but they can’t replace a face-to-face meeting.”

“Don’t worry, Hitomi-chan, next time will be the one for you. I read all the reports about you, including the ones about your behaviour during the invasion. You would have been promoted if you had fought during the tournament. Speaking of which, I ought to thank you for giving the match to Shikamaru… Tsunade promoted him this morning. She still has to break the news to him, but I think she’ll do it tomorrow. He’s the only one to get the promotion.”

Hitomi looked down, her throat sealed shut, and nodded. The smile on her lips was there for his benefit only. It was still a sore point for her. That sacrifice had been so obvious at the time, but that didn’t mean she was totally okay with the consequences of it. She had to wait for her turn… But her turn should have happened already. She danced with her uncle a bit longer then went back to sit next to Sasuke, who had somehow managed to make himself unnoticed by the various girls attending.

The rest of the evening went smoothly. She got her partner back, danced, laughed, kissed him into breathlessness in a little alcove out of sight from the ballroom, and pouted a bit when he let go of her long enough to catch his breath and get his wits back. He made her happy again with some more kisses, less intense than the previous ones. When it was time to go home, Asuma and Kurenai were tipsy – and apparently alcohol made them much more affectionate in public than they would usually be. As for Ensui, he’d decided to stay sober the whole night, so he could watch over the others serenely.

The night would be long. Many Konohajin, civilians and ninjas alike, would party until morning and, this time, the Nara clan would join in.

Chapter 77: The Jashinist

“Hitomi-chan, you’re back in top shape. It’s time for Team Seven to go back on the field.”

Kakashi, Hitomi, Naruto and Sasuke were standing in front of Tsunade’s desk, their back straight and combat gear on. A month ago, to the day, the new Hokage had been enthroned. Since then, Konoha had already started to change: the Sannin’s first decision had been to reintroduce the rule about medics being present in every team. All shinobi also had to follow first aid classes. Team Seven had done theirs a week ago, taking advantage of the fact that Hitomi wasn’t ready for fieldwork yet. They now felt more confident, less frightened about the idea of an injury, and often went back to everything they had learned during those classes. They couldn’t possibly be the only ones doing that.

“What do you have in store for us, Tsunade-sama?” Kakashi drawled, an unmistakable smile under his mask. He had had time to recover from the hellish pace of missions he had been forced to follow for a long while after the invasion: one look at his face during the party and Tsunade had put him on forced vacation. To make the whole matter worse, she had put poor, poor ANBU Lion in charge of his wellbeing. Hitomi suspected that Yamato was hidden under Lion’s mask and, if he was indeed the one, then she felt a bit sorry for him. Kakashi was a difficult patient, but having to rest when he wasn’t even injured? He had probably been hell made man.

“I have a mission that will probably interest your team – especially you, Naruto.” Tsunade’s features turned hard and serious. Shizune handed a mission scroll to Kakashi, who read it in a second. His eyes widened, then he passed it to Hitomi. As the medic explained, Hitomi understood what was so peculiar about this mission: they would have to go to the rescue of a little village at the border of the Land of Fire. Half its population had been massacred. Amongst the victims was a family related to the Uzumaki clan – or what was left of it – but didn’t bear its name.

“We’re gonna help,” Naruto said, his tone hard and unyielding.

“I didn’t expect any less from you,” Tsunade answered, a gleam of pride in her honey-coloured eyes. “You shouldn’t get into any trouble there or on the way, but stay alert just in case.”

“What if we find the culprits?” Hitomi asked.

“Bring them back, dead or alive, depending on what’s more convenient for you. Of course, it would be best if the culprits are alive and can be interrogated, but your safety comes first and this is not the mission’s goal. Don’t hesitate to kill.”

“We won’t,” Kakashi said. “Children, we leave tomorrow at eight in the morning. Prepare accordingly.”

It was the signal for their team to disperse, each of them going to arrange for their departure in the way they saw fit. Naruto and Sasuke needed to go shopping for equipment, but Hitomi’s goal was different: she had to go to the hospital and speak with Anosuke. She decided to go by the roofs, walked past several Chūnin leaving for missions, waved to children playing ninja near the Academy, then finally reached her destination. When she entered the building, she didn’t stop at the front desk: she knew where she was headed.

Anosuke had made a lot of progress on all fronts during the past month. He was still mute but was now able to communicate flawlessly with morse language, which his friends had picked up as well. He had less nightmares and had formed friendships with all of Hitomi’s cats, who were always happy to have a kitten to mother. Often, the teenager watched him as he petted Hai’s back until he fell asleep, lulled by the thick purrs and soft fur under his fingers.

Hitomi greeted the nurse who was leaving the bedroom with a nod and a smile. At first, the hospital’s staff hadn’t been too happy to see her so often in the boy’s vicinity, but Karin and Sakura had spoken out for her and, as the Hokage’s newly appointed apprentices, their word had a certain weight in the village. She knocked even though the door was open – it was the polite thing to do, especially since the boy was blind – then announced herself when he allowed her to come in.

“Anosuke-kun, I’m leaving tomorrow for a mission at the border. I’ll probably be gone for at least two weeks, so I won’t be able to visit you until I get back. Will you be okay without me?”

The boy started to tap on his knee. He would soon be out of the hospital and his restlessness was painfully obvious. Hitomi wouldn’t be there to see him settle at home, but Ensui had promised he’d tell her all about it. ‘I’ll be okay. Thanks for telling me. You’ll be careful during your mission, right?’

“Of course I will. I’ll be with Kakashi-sensei and the boys. You know my sensei’s reputation, right? He always brings his team home.”

The boy nodded, a far too grave expression for his age on his face. He didn’t wear bandages over his eyes anymore, but his eyelids were always closed. His face was freckled with little scars, but no one had been able to tell Hitomi what had caused them. Slowly, the girl approached and wrapped Anosuke in a comforting hug. She stayed like that for a few minutes, her eyes closed, as if to savour the moment. “I’ll come back, Anosuke. I’ll keep my word to you. You’ll become a great shinobi, and I’ll be there to guide and cheer you on along the way, if that’s what you want as well.”

‘Can’t wait,’ was his answer on her forearm. After pulling away gently, she kissed his forehead and stood up, deciding it was time to go. In the corridor, she found Hanabi and Sugi, so she told them about her mission too. “If you absolutely need to reach me,” she added, “you can go to Ensui-shishou. Take care and train properly, alright?” When she had their word that they would do as they were told, she went home. A lot of work awaited her there.

Kakashi was only a short hour late the following morning. It was a nice surprise for the three Genin, who couldn’t wait to get back to work. The road was calm, most often totally empty, but they still opted to go by the trees, like any Konohajin shinobi would if given the choice. It was strange and comforting at the same time to be back outside as a team, complete and without any added piece, only her brothers, her sensei and herself. She knew it wouldn’t last.

At a ninja pace, reaching the border only took one day. Several miles ago, when the wind had shifted to the correct direction, Hitomi had started to pick up scents of smoke and death coming from the little village. Yet she froze when she finally saw it. She had rarely witnessed such devastation – after the Kyūbi’s attack and the invasion, that was all. The size of the village, so tiny in comparison to Konoha, only made the scene even harder to watch. From the tree she and her brothers had chosen to perch on, she observed the survivors, who erred in the ruins with haggard looks on their faces. She could almost feel how numb their minds had become to their surroundings.

Finally, Kakashi signalled it was time to move. All three of them jumped from their tree gracefully, their feet almost silent as they touched the ground. The villagers didn’t notice them for a few minutes, stopping in their tracks as the shinobi team walked along the main road of the village, their backs straight and strength oozing from them. The civilians’ eyes gleamed with a fervent light when they saw the symbol on their forehead protectors. For them, who lived so far away from a Hidden Village, ninjas were almost a legend outside of war time.

They arrived in front of the police station, which looked undamaged. Kakashi signalled for them to wait there as he went inside for information. While they waited, the three teenagers looked around carefully. They were trying to understand, to determine what had been the motivation to attack and destroy to such an extent. The stakes were particularly high for Naruto and Sasuke, but their reasons couldn’t have been more different: the former wanted to find out if what was left of his family, of his clan, had been targeted intentionally, while the latter was looking for similarities with what had happened to him.

“Okay, children, we’ll separate into two groups,” Kakashi announced when he got back. “Hitomi-chan, you come with me to examine the bodies. Sasuke, Naruto, try to find clues on what happened in the ruins. Be careful and come back here in two hours. Tomorrow, we’ll help these people to rebuild, feed and heal.”

And look for the people who did this went unsaid, hidden in the teacher’s tense tone. Kakashi had always been a protector, even though he didn’t show it much; he couldn’t tolerate such an attack on his people. He owed less of his loyalty to these villagers than he did to Konohajin civilians, but they were so painfully vulnerable, like children who’d never learned to defend themselves. He couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves.

A firm hand on Hitomi’s shoulder, the man guided her behind the police station. The death stench was stronger there – the tragedy had happened two nights ago, and it was there that the bodies were kept, hidden under long cuts of dark fabric. Hitomi knelt next to the first one and looked under the cloth, her eyes falling on the face of a terrified young woman. Her heart ached and missed a beat, her thoughts wandering to Itachi. This wasn’t him, wasn’t his work, and yet… She had to close her eyes for a moment to regain her composure.

One body after the other, she lost herself in her task. She noticed dirt in a child’s hair, which meant he had been dragged on the ground while still struggling, noticed the broken fingers of a man who had attempted to fight back, the bruises ante mortem around the delicate neck of a teenage girl. She didn’t need to write her observations down. Her mind would never forget this. Deeply immersed in the stories she was drawing from the bodies she had stopped to count, she almost jumped out of her skin when Kakashi put a hand on her shoulder.

“Time to go back in front. Sasuke and Naruto are already there.”

She nodded and slowly stood up, wiping her hands on the handkerchief he offered her. Her throat was constricted and cold sweat ran down her neck. It was discreet on the last body she’d examined, but she had seen it – she couldn’t have missed it even if she tried. Jashin’s mark, carved with the tip of a kunai. She was terrified at the idea of it being Hidan, so early , because the plan she had fashioned for him wasn’t ready to unfold yet. But with a little bit of luck… She had done research in the clan’s archives. The God of Suffering had more than one follower, and none other than Hidan was an immortal.

When she reached them, Hitomi couldn’t help but notice how pale her brothers had grown, how stiff their posture was. They were barely more than children , but the shinobi world wouldn’t wait for them to grow before it soaked them in horrors of all kinds. His tone too neutral to be genuine, Sasuke told them what he had deduced from the path the killer – just one, he was sure of it – had followed, from the way he had attacked some victims. The picture painted by the information they had all collected was grim enough to make Hitomi shiver in discomfort.

“I see,” Kakashi sighed. “When we’re done here, we’ll attempt to track this killer. He could hit again, here or anywhere else. Now, follow me, all three of you. There’s a little inn that can still welcome travellers down the street, we’ll live there until the end of our mission.”

In silence, the three Genin formed a line behind their sensei and followed him. Sometimes, they walked past a civilian with a haunted look on their face. It was almost worse than what they’d seen in Konoha after the invasion when, slowly, the civilians had walked back into the devastated streets, their houses nothing but rubble. Citizens from a Hidden Village knew what to expect. They learned the evacuation and safety protocols, knew the emergency codes, could even defend themselves against anyone who wasn’t a ninja. Here, so far from any military presence, things were different. Those people were lambs that the first wolf to come could slaughter, alone, in a mere few hours.

Silence slammed into the inn when they stepped inside. The owner hurried to Kakashi, bowing deeply, giving him ‘sama’ and thanking him for answering his village’s plea. He was right to be thankful: this village was lucky that Konoha had had a qualified team to send so quickly on site. And yet, Hitomi looked away, deeply unsettled by the gratitude on the civilian’s face. Her duty didn’t only bind her to her village. She wasn’t doing him a favour, nor was the rest of her team. Thanking them because they were doing their job felt wrong.

That night, they ate like royalty, all four of them. Kakashi had tried to dissuade the owner from serving them the best pieces of meat and the most luxurious dishes he could make, all in vain. The Genin and their teacher finally gave in and started to eat, whispering all the while about their plan for the following days. It was quickly decided that Hitomi would go help at the hospital since she was the only one amongst her siblings to know some medical ninjutsu. Kakashi would help rebuild with his Earth Release, since he was proficient enough with them to make basic buildings spring from the ground. As for Sasuke and Naruto, they would hunt for the ones who didn’t have food or were too overworked to hunt themselves, with Hitomi’s cats helping.

That night, she didn’t sleep well. She dreamed of Sharingan and a murder of crows morphing into a spearhead, then about water turning red. She woke up cranky and had to hide what she could of her tenseness under an expressionless mask. Before preparing for her day – it was so early that the sun was just a hint of light on the horizon – she wrote to Itachi, describing the mission to him. She didn’t wait around for an answer: he was probably still asleep.

Kakashi was already sitting in front of his breakfast when she finally headed down, after making sure her brothers were still asleep. He waved at her with the hand that held his chopsticks; it was only a miracle, or more likely ninja prowess, that made the move possible without him spilling the rice pinched between them. He was reading a book and didn’t look up, which she expected from him. She sat in front of him, nodding her thanks to the innkeeper, who rushed to bring her own breakfast, then started eating despite her vague nausea.

“It will be hard for Sasuke-kun, today,” Kakashi said after a while.

“For Naruto too.”

“Yes, for Naruto-kun too. But what about you, Hitomi-chan?”

“I… Well, I feel bad too, but mostly for them. And for the sheer horror of the situation.”

“Yes… Some missions get us like that, right?”

“How can we overcome this, Kakashi-sensei?” she asked after a moment of silence. “The mission won’t accomplish itself while my mind heals and stops mourning for all those people I don’t even know. I need a way to manage, and the boys do too.”

“Hm… I’d say, and it’s a bit of an empty advice, that you have to focus on the fact that what you’re doing helps the living. It’s important for you, right? And not only because this is our mission?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Then focus on that. It’ll numb some of the repulsion, anger and grief you’re going through.” He didn’t say anything about the fear, the feeling of being tiny, vulnerable, lost. He didn’t say anything about it, maybe because he didn’t know quite how, or because shinobi were used to ignoring that kind of feelings. It was easier to look the other way rather than to accept them, to have to face them. He smiled behind his mask and his book. “You’ll manage, Hitomi-chan. Your mind is strong and you’ve faced worse than that, we both know it.”

“I hope so… Thanks, Kakashi-sensei.”

“Any time. You can always come to me when something is wrong, you know that. I know Ensui is a better option in your opinion but… when it’s more convenient to come to me, just do so. I’ll always find time for you. For your brothers, too. If only they could get that…”

She snorted. “Yeah, that’s Naruto and Sasuke for you, sensei. One wears his emotions shamelessly written on his face, the other interiorises them until they devour him. They each are an extreme on the spectrum, aren’t they?”

“That they are.”

Silence fell back on their table, until Hitomi’s brothers joined them and started to bicker, just because it was fun for them. As she finished her breakfast, Hitomi wrote a letter to Gaara, who wanted to know if she was really better after her ordeal, if she needed help of any sort. According to Temari, he had been beyond pissed when he had learned about her injuries and how serious they were. She soothed his worries as well as she could, describing her latest performance in training and her physical state as well and as patiently as she could. It seemed to be enough for the Sunajin boy, fortunately.

When the team was ready to start working, Hitomi summoned all the cats she could. She sent Hoshihi, Haīro and Kurokumo to hunt for the village with Hokori as liaison – his sister, Sunaarashi, would go with Kakashi. As for Hai, she perched on her summoner’s shoulders and didn’t move a hair during the quick walk to the hospital. Of all three Genin, Hitomi had the least chances of finding trouble, but still, she didn’t like sending her familiar under someone else’s supervision. She trusted Naruto and Sasuke, though. They would make sure her cats were safe and, if necessary, they could call for Kakashi’s help through Hokori and Sunaarashi.

Most of the wounded had sustained their injuries in crumbling houses or by going to retrieve people in the rubble. If a Jashinist had been the one to harm them, only dumb luck would have allowed them to survive. The God of Suffering demanded from his followers that they finished what they started, after all. Hitomi couldn’t do much for broken bones, but she helped close her fair share of open wounds. She only allowed herself a short break at noon to eat and help her chakra reserves to recover. The precision required to perform medical ninjutsu could inflict intense mental fatigue on the caster, but she knew she could take it.

And she was right about that. Day after day, she got stronger. She didn’t fall face first on her bed as soon as she got back to the inn anymore. Kakashi didn’t have to threaten, plead, or argue for her to eat before she went to sleep. She progressed, and so did her brothers and summons. When she was in a good enough state after a day of work to listen, Hoshihi got into the habit of reporting to her, sprawled onto her bed without a care for the rest of the world. He told her how well Sasuke and Naruto behaved, how they trained and hunted at the same time.

This wasn’t a dangerous or demanding mission, not physically. The worst thing to endure was the despair of the villagers, who were so certain that their village would disappear, that they would have to leave their land and the history of the place behind to go live with family and friends in neighbouring settlements. It was often the case in the aftermath of such massacres, when there weren’t enough people to work the fields anymore. After a while, Naruto stopped hunting and went to help there. In this village, no one knew about the demon: he was just a noisy, energetic teenager with a heart of gold. They loved him to bits.

As for Hitomi, she made a reputation for herself in the hospital. Of course, she was the only one there who could use chakra to heal, so even her basic skills made seasoned civilian doctors look at her in bewilderment. She was nothing like a medic, only knew first-aid techniques and a handful of others, barely more advanced, but it was huge for them. Soon, there wasn’t any injured left waiting for treatment, only sick people she couldn’t help.

Her work in the hospital done and over with, she turned to the children, so the adults supervising them could go back to work. She taught them ‘ninja tricks’, stretching routines and ways to hide in case of danger. In the bunch, she noticed two with a real potential for the job, who were still too young for the Academy. She would include that detail in her report to Tsunade, once she got home. Konoha needed fresh blood, and the parents would probably be happy to send their children to the Hidden Village, especially if they entered the ninja force after the Academy and became able to send money home.

Soon, the village was stable again. They had been there for over two weeks and, listening to the reports of the policemen who had arrived too late on the scene – if they hadn’t been killed in the first place – Kakashi had found a lead. The culprit, according to him, was still close by: Jashinists found pleasure in other people’s pain. Observing the consequences of their cruel acts, including the distress on the faces of loved ones of their victims, was a delight to them. The man who had done this wouldn’t be happy that Konoha messed with the whole thing, and would attack as soon as he found an opportunity.

That opportunity, Team Seven gave it to him after leaving the village. Hitomi was walking ahead, cats deployed in a line behind her. She had made efforts to appear vulnerable, playing bait with her cute smiles and the soft, shining black curls of her hair like a black sky over her back. She had even put makeup on for the occasion. Sasuke and Naruto had protested that plan, then accepted it when she had proven that she could still force respect and silence out of them.

She loved that kind of trap, after all.

Behind her back, she signalled to her cats and teammates as soon as her meridians felt a dark, noxious source of chakra, farther down the road. He was standing there, his chest bare and his black eyes looking down on her. And it wasn’t Hidan . Hitomi had been almost certain of it, or she wouldn’t have suggested that plan, but she was sure now. Later, she would let the relief beyond words wash over her. Only Hidan, amongst the followers of the God of Suffering, had been graced with immortality and his blood powers. The other Jashinists Konoha had encountered in the past died when you pierced enough holes into them, like any other ninja.

“You, the Konohajin assholes! How dare you interfere in the work of Jashin-sama?”

That was enough of a confession for Kakashi. He clicked his tongue and his team sprung into action. Hitomi, who had been preparing chakra already, raced through the six mudra for the Water Whip and snapped it in the air as she unsheathed her tantō. The man’s features hardened in disgust and he grabbed his own weapon, a trident that looked about as ridiculous as it did appear deadly. She could see the dried blood on the three spikes; he hadn’t even bothered to clean it up.

“Why?” Naruto growled with the feral undertone of the Kyūbi in his voice. “Why kill all those harmless people?”

“Pfft! You wouldn’t understand, brat. My god told me to do it, and I was paid handsomely to target those people, that’s all. It was so easy, too… but you’re not raised that way in Konoha, are you?”

“If weakness is being unable to slaughter people uselessly, then I’d rather be the weakest of all than become a dirtbag like you!”

Hitomi took advantage of the discussion between the jinchūriki and their target to rush forward, Hoshihi hissing and spitting on her heels. The Jashinist dodged her blade but wasn’t fast enough to escape her whip, which wrapped around his neck and snapped him downwards, scraping skin in its wake. An expression of ecstasy appeared on the man’s features, and Hitomi shuddered in disgust.

“You hit well, girl, but what will you do when I’m the one attacking?”

She answered with a derisive laugh and moved away from his trident. Compared to her past adversaries – Orochimaru, Kabuto, the three Genin from the Sound Village, or Zabuza – it was almost easy this time. She straightened up and kicked him on the chest then stepped back to give room to Hoshihi’s attack. He barely missed, his long, sharp claws still drawing blood on the arm he had wanted to tear away.

Sasuke and Naruto joined the fight. Hitomi wasn’t worried for them: they had faced far worse than a Chūnin-level Jashinist. All three of them, helped by her cats, made the man waste his strength until a particularly nasty blow from the kunoichi hit him in the neck. He lost consciousness, bleeding from a dozen wounds. And she… she wasn’t even out of breath. She looked up at Kakashi, who had decided to stay out of it and watch – his eye gleamed with pride.

“Good!” he said with a smile. “This man will have to answer for his crimes in front of Konoha’s justice. Come, Hitomi-chan, I’ll show you a stasis seal for transporting prisoners…”

Under the girl’s fascinated eyes, he laid out a long scroll, covered with the most complex seal she had even seen. She could replicate it… but barely. “Will you teach me how to make it?”

“No, not me. It’s Jiraiya-sama’s work. Only he and Tsunade-sama know how to make them in the whole village. We usually use other methods for transporting prisoners, but this one is the most convenient by far, if you have one of these scrolls at your disposal.”

Which meant she could make a lot of money if she learned to draw them as well and decided to sell some. Would the ANBU Fox, who she often saw with Ibiki, be interested in purchasing a few of them? Or maybe the Tokubetsu Jōnin who specialised in track and capture? She would have to think about it. Still focused, she watched Kakashi put the seal over the man, make sure he was completely covered, then activate it with a spark of chakra. A flick of his wrist and the long strip of parchment was a neat scroll once more.

“There, we can go back to Konoha now, kids. Since we fought a shinobi around Chūnin level, the mission will be re-estimated to a B-rank. Ah, well, that guy was nothing like a Jōnin, after all. But that means we’ll have a whole lot of paperwork to do, I hope you’re as happy as I am about that!”

The three children rolled their eyes and groaned before glaring at their sensei. Somewhere in the cosmic order of the universe, it was probably his fault.

Chapter 78: The Serpent's Apprentice

Just like Kakashi had said, the mission was re-evaluated at B-rank once they handed their reports back. Hitomi had to explain to Izumo and Kotetsu, who were stationed at the Tower for once, why her team had decided to capture the Chūnin – because apparently he was one, a Kumojin nukenin who had converted to Jashin ten years ago and had been banned for his crime. She then told them about the fight, and insisted that, indeed, no one had been wounded, because Team Seven could be lucky too. Sometimes.

When they dismissed her, she was tired and rather cranky, so she decided to go to the public onsen to relax. Of course, the Nara lands had several onsen, but this one was so much closer and she really, really didn’t want to wait. Her feet didn’t make any noise against the tiles as she walked to a little cabin and changed, then locked it by activating a seal. Naked, a little towel folded in the crook of her arm, she walked to the women's side of the onsen.

She was very surprised to discover that the bath wasn’t empty, despite the fact that most people in Konoha were working at this hour of the day. Mitarashi Anko, the proctor for the second stage of the Chūnin exam, was lounging in the hot water, a slight smile on her lips. When she saw Hitomi, she tilded her chin and her eyes went wide after a moment – she remembered her. “Well, well. The Yūhi girl finally comes to me.”

Hitomi froze, as if under the eyes of a predator, and her hand went to her hips as if to grab the tantō she had left in her cabin. Really, she would have rather waited to be Jōnin and Seal Mistress before she had to face Anko again. She took a deep breath to gather her courage, squared her shoulders and straightened up as much as she could – right now, she hated being so small. “Mitarashi-san. I didn’t think I would see you here. Aren’t you on duty?”

“Pfft! Mandatory day off. Don’t be scared, kid, shower and come join me, I won’t eat you. Your ma’ would kick my ass too hard if I did anything to you.”

After a moment of hesitation – if she believed the gossip in the village, Anko wasn’t against getting her ass thoroughly kicked from time to time – the girl obeyed, showering quickly but thoroughly before she walked into the onsen. She felt very exposed, naked in front of the terrifying woman, but she put her towel on the edge of the bath, as the rules of the place instructed. She was about halfway sure that Anko wouldn’t attack her, which was more than most shinobi in the village could say.

“Aah, the Chūnin exam… It was intense this year, if you can believe it. In general, it’s really not that busy.”

Yeah, Hitomi could somehow guess that villages didn’t get invaded on each edition of the exam. Since they happened two times per year, that would be a real mess.

“Such a shame, that you haven’t been promoted. You deserved it, surviving an encounter with Orochimaru and all that.”

Hitomi tensed again. Hard to forget that Anko had been the Sannin’s apprentice. The circumstances in which he had abandoned her… Maybe it didn’t count, maybe it wasn’t enough to make her hate him enough to be glad for his death. She only relaxed when Anko put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer, hugging her so hard her ribs throbbed in protest.

“Thank you so much for ridding us of the dirtbag, by the way. I didn’t dare dream of the day I’d hear about his demise. It was weird at first, but then I was so relieved. Now I can really relax and stop looking over my shoulder so much.”

“Hum… ah… you’re welcome?”

The Tokubetsu Jōnin seemed particularly tactile that day: she wrapped a hand around Hitomi’s shoulder and held her close, refusing to let her go. Well, to be frank, the girl wasn’t fighting too much: she could take a hug, after all. She docilely listened to Anko complaining about her work, about being so bored now that she didn’t have an exam to organise, about paperwork, about Gemna leaving a shitload of senbon everywhere.

When they left the bath, Hitomi was a bit relieved. Anko intimidated the shit out of her, with her attitude and her techniques that relied on snake summons. It was a shame, really, that she wasn’t the main summoner for that contract, in Hitomi’s opinion, but she suspected said contract was in Kabuto’s hands. At least, the man couldn’t bar Anko from using her own pact with the snakes who had accepted to work with her, but it would have been nice to have Manda tied to Konoha once more.

Her clothes back on, Hitomi left the onsen at a leisurely pace. Since her mission had been re-evaluated to B-rank, she had to take two days of mandatory rest before she went back to the Tower for a new assignment. That meant plenty of time to train and socialise. Ensui had written her that Anosuke had left the hospital a few days earlier; she couldn’t wait to see him at home, in a new, warmer and safer environment than the hospital could ever be.

When she reached the limit of the Nara lands, she breathed in and opened herself to her meridians, sensing the space around her in the hope she would find her master. She smiled when she pinpointed his chakra, in the office of the building from where he and Shikaku, and sometimes Yoshino as well, led the clan. Once she was inside, she didn’t even knock before stepping in his office – she knew she could act here as if she belonged, because she did . Ensui had even purchased a little couch so she could have a comfortable place to sit when she came by – no, he didn’t ever use it to nap, promise. After a quick hug, she sprawled on the couch like the Nara she was and told him about her mission.

The fact that their opponent had been a Jashinist was probably being classified as a secret by the village, but the Nara had never been too fond of those ridiculous secrets, not inside the clan. Yes, they were more loyal and respectful to Tsunade than they’d ever been to Hiruzen, but the rest of the village’s high functions were still occupied by mostly the same people. Danzō was still sitting on the roots that ate away at the village. The Council was still corrupt and loyal to his cause.

“I see,” Ensui sighed when she was done. “When I heard that Tsunade-sama had authorised you to track the culprit down, I was certain you would want to do it. How is Naruto?”

“Happy that we caught the guy. I thought it would be hard for him to know that parts of the civilians left from the Uzumaki clan had died, but I think the whole massacre thing hit him the hardest, not the identity of some of the victims.”

“Not really surprising. His family is here now. You, Sasuke, your mom, Karin-chan.”

“And you, shishou. You’re part of the family too.”

“Yes, me too,” he admitted. “And speaking about family… I might have good news about Anosuke.”

That grabbed Hitomi’s attention. She sat straighter on the couch, serious once more.

“I found documents in the archives… They were encrypted, but what I managed to read of them on the fly looked promising. Here they are. Do you think it could help him?”

A slight frown creasing her brow, the girl took the papers he was handing her. Yes, it was written in standard Konoha code from the First Shinobi World War. Well, no, it was actually more complex than that, with a spiral encryption so complicated she had only managed to learn it by stumbling upon it in an old book rather than in the Academy. She got to work, one sentence after the other, and when she was done she nodded with enthusiasm.

“Yeah, I think this should work, shishou. Thanks, I’ll try it with him.”

She stayed there a while longer, working on one of her novels as he filled and sorted through an impressive pile of paperwork. She took advantage of the occasion, handing him the patent on her communicating notebooks, even though she didn’t want to commercialise them until she found a way to connect them all together with a sort of indicative, like phone numbers in the Previous World. Still, being prudent was best: if one of her friends lost theirs and it was found by someone halfway skilled in fūinjutsu, she could risk losing the money she would one day make with her invention.

“It’s getting late, shishou. Let’s go home? Mom is on a mission with her team, but I’ll cook dinner, if Naruto hasn’t gotten started on it already.”

He took several more minutes to tidy up his office and make sure everything was locked, but then he followed her, a hand on her shoulder as if to seek part of the proximity they were denied all too often by their work for the village. The mentor hadn’t been so drawn to touch before, but since his apprentice had had her brush with death… She sometimes felt his long, callused fingers stop on the inside of her wrist, where her pulse beat, to make sure she was really alive.

It was easy to overlook what he had been through until he acted that way around her. He was eaten alive by worry and couldn’t quite express it, and then suddenly Hitomi made the connection between that and his past. His son, the woman he had loved, his parents… and all the others, all the fallen whose names were carved on the memorial stele, his master, his comrades, Hitomi’s father, and all the peoplehe had never told her about in the hope he could forget them, forget the pain. She couldn’t hold it against him. She too was reassured by his touch.

Just like Hitomi had foreseen, Naruto was cooking when they arrived home. The warm atmosphere caught her by the throat for a moment before it filled her with comfort and made her relax more efficiently than any onsen ever could. She swapped her shoes for slippers, put her weapons away, then walked in the living room, where Anosuke and Sasuke were sitting on the couch.

As soon as Hitomi went around it and brushed her hand against the young boy’s shoulder, he jumped in her arms with a delighted exclamation. She caught him, laughing, then focused on what he was tapping against her neck. It was mostly excited babble, but she still cared, a lot. When he asked her to, she walked to the room Kurenai had prepared for him, carrying him around like it was nothing. Her mother had turned one of the offices on the ground floor into his bedroom, so he didn’t have to use the stairs and didn’t depend upon anyone to get some privacy.

“Are you okay?” she asked him when they were alone. “Do you feel good in this house?”

‘Yes, I do. Your mom is so nice, your master too, and your brothers too.’

“I know, right? I’m lucky to be surrounded by such amazing people. You are too, now. We won’t leave you behind, Anosuke-kun, and we won’t leave you alone except if that’s what you want.”

She looked around as he nodded. Her mother had done well with the space. She had chosen a child-sized bed made with pale wood, and dark green sheets that the Nara tended to favour because of their colour and incredible softness against sensitive skin. The other furniture was cut in the same wood: he had a desk, bookshelves that were still empty, a nightstand and a wardrobe. It wasn’t much but, in his case, empty space was better, so he wouldn’t bump into things – until she could apply her solution to him, though. Then he could have all the trinkets he wanted.

“Anosuke-kun, Ensui-shishou and I have been doing research for you since we’ve known I was going to take care of you personally. I might have found a way to infuse the kanjis in a book with chakra so you can use your meridians to read – of course, it will require a lot of training. Since that process isn’t ready yet, you have time to get to that level of sensitivity. Mostly, though, we found a way to use our clan’s jutsu to replace your eyes, in a way.”

‘Really?’ was the answer against her neck.

“Yes, really. I’m going to have to learn it first before I can let you anywhere near it, though, but your chakra reserves are too small for now anyway. When you’re old enough, I’ll tattoo a seal on you, so you can keep the technique activated effortlessly at all times. If that’s what you want, of course.”

‘Of course that’s what I want! Isn’t it a great advantage for a ninja to have a trump card like that? People will think I’m blind, which I obviously am, but actually I’ll have other ways to move around and spot them!’

“Exactly. Besides that, you will also learn to get around thanks to noises and scents. I’ll ask my cats, Kakashi-sensei and the Inuzuka clan for advice in training you to do that. By the time you graduate, you’ll be ready, I promise.”

She had done the maths, and, thanks to Jiraiya, already knew the seal she would have to use. Sure, she didn’t quite have the necessary skills to draw it or, Hermit forbid, tattoo it, but it would take some time before Anosuke was ready for it. He had big chakra reserves for a Nara, but they weren’t huge by any means, and he was past the age for the training Hitomi had gone through to stretch hers.

Ensui had never mentioned that part of her training again, but it was her understanding that he had learned the mistakes of his ways now: sometimes, when he looked at her, his eyes stopped on her clavicles, her shoulders. He gauged how thin she was. It was even truer since she had gotten back from the mission to track down Tsunade; she still wasn’t done putting weight back from that convalescence. She would have loved nothing more than to rid him of his guilt about the consequences: without her chakra, she wouldn’t have survived half her fights. Even with that, killing Orochimaru had been dumb luck rather than real skills.

When she came back to the living room, Anosuke walking behind her – and how amazing it was to see him move around all by himself! – Naruto was serving plates around the coffee table. It was rare for them to eat there because it was a bit more bothersome to clean up afterwards, but they all needed the proximity it forced upon them, the constant bumping into each other and human warmth. A widely satisfied smile on her lips, Hitomi watched as her little protégé ate with the enthusiasm only children showed, unaware of the spark of pride in her master’s eyes.

Two days later, Hitomi and her brothers met Kakashi in front of the Tower. It was time for them to go back on a mission. Tsunade had been particularly satisfied by their results with the last one; the bonus pay they were owed for the re-evaluation of the difficulty level came quickly. The Jashinist they had caught was now in Ibiki’s tender and ever-watchful care. Despite all that, when they entered her office – that she handed her the mission in person didn’t bode well in itself already – Hitomi understood that this one would be different.

“The intel we received points us to the location of one of Orochimaru’s lairs, near the strait that separates us from the Land of Waves. Team Seven, you will have to loot the place then destroy it. Our informants assure us that it’s been emptied, but you’ll have to be careful nonetheless.”

“Tsunade-sama?”

“Yes, Hitomi-chan?”

“Shouldn’t this mission be attributed to Chūnin rather than us?

Tsunade sighed and, without even trying to hide, served herself a big shot of sake. She knew neither Kakashi nor his students would be offended, and they wouldn’t tell Shizune. “It’s not that simple. Of course, the ideal course of action would be handing that mission to four seasoned Chūnin. But the aftermath of the invasion still plagues us, you know that very well. Our Chūnin are all dispatched to where they are most needed: on highly paid missions, or on guard duty inside the village or at the border of the country. It’s the same with Jōnin without a Genin team – which means even Genin like you have to follow the trend. The General Forces can take D-ranked missions inside the village, and the C-ranked ones aren’t a priority when there are so many B-ranked missions piling up. Do you understand?”

The teenage girl nodded, frowning. She knew about the village’s dire situation, of course, just like she knew that the way Tsunade had decided to do things was the most balanced option she could have picked. By sending them where they had the best chances of success then forcing them to rest, she made sure they didn’t burn out, and that was better in the long run than rushing to get all the missions accomplished. She was wise, efficient, a good leader.

“Well, since that’s settled, you’ll leave tomorrow morning. Prepare accordingly, and make me proud.”

“Thank you, Tsunade-sama,” Kakashi concluded before leading his Genin outside. For a while, they just walked together in Konoha’s streets. Hitomi and Naruto were tenser than the two others; they had seen Orochimaru’s last moments, had been the last to fight him. Indeed, they had avenged Sasuke, but the seal he bore was still a threat, a very visible one. The Evil Sealing Method was still keeping the snake’s influence at bay, but his chakra was still there, and Tsunade hadn’t found a way to remove it without killing Sasuke in the process.

“Are you wondering about what we’re gonna find too?” Naruto asked after a while.

“Probably human remains from his experiments. He was banned from Konoha because of that kind of stuff, I doubt he stopped afterwards.” Yeah, that had been a dumb move from Hiruzen, to make him leave his line of sight rather than outright killing him. Just one more to add to the already tall pile of stupid.

“If we’re lucky, notes about his work, too,” Sasuke stepped in. “If the lair has been deserted suddenly, I doubt his minions could take it all with them.”

“They might not have taken anything,” Hitomi mused at that. “If they fled after Orochimaru’s death like the mission order suggests, they probably didn’t go back there. It’s the farthest point from any safe border for them.”

“Hm… Probably, yes. The position of the lair so close to the Naruto Bridge was already risky, there are a lot of patrols in the area.”

“Ah, but don’t forget how arrogant Orochimaru was. He thought he was untouchable, invincible and immortal.”

“And what good that did him!”

After that, the conversation between the three teenagers died down. Kakashi walked them to the border of the Nara lands then went back the other way to get to his own home. The spirits weren’t too high amongst the siblings. All three of them were anxious about their mission. However, they sprang alive again when they got home, where they found Ensui teaching Anosuke to enhance his senses. The scene drew a smile on Hitomi’s lips. She decided not to bother them and went to her room.

She had a lot of work to do, after all.

Itachi-san,

Team Seven will leave tomorrow morning and travel to the strait that leads to the Land of Waves. I’ll be thankful to you if you could stay away, if possible, of course. It will already be a very taxing mission for us all… Sasuke doesn’t need a reminder of the hatred he’s supposed to feel for you. I’m making progress with him: I evoked, once or twice, the strange circumstances surrounding the massacre, just in passing. Don’t worry, I’ve always done so in Nara territory, where nobody is eavesdropping. One day, when I have tangible proof of it, I’ll be more straightforward with him. I’ll find a way to bring you home. How are your eyes today?

Sincerely,

Hitomi.

While she waited for his answer, she worked on a letter for Gaara, where she went over the two days of rest she had just gotten. She didn’t go into too much detail; since he had been promoted, he hadn’t been able to write so often anymore, but his letters were longer. Hitomi couldn’t protest that. Apparently, the missions assigned to his team were dangerous too, but rarely sent them outside the country. Suna was trying to bring peace again, which Tsunade was willing to give them, but the village didn’t have a Kazekage anymore and the Council could only do so much according to their laws.

Did you think about stepping up to that role? she asked him. You want it, you told me so, and you’re probably ready, aren’t you? Who will do it if you don’t? If you indeed are ready, here is some advice you might find useful: get the approval and support of highly respected Jōnin, like Baki-san, but don’t neglect the civilian side of the village. Make donations to the hospital, to orphanages and schools, and not just the Academy. I’d also suggest reaching out to Tsunade-sama. She’ll probably support you, with the role you played in the invasion. Peace could finally be brought back, and solidified.

This didn’t really feel like she was forcing destiny: that event was destined to happen, had been so as soon as Gaara had crossed Naruto’s path. As for his age... The first Kazekage had been around the same. He was powerful enough to lay a legitimate claim to the title,in fact he was probably the only one in his village to be able to do so. Hitomi couldn’t think of any serious opponent in that; even Baki would be crushed by his sand in mere seconds if they were to fight to the death.

After sending her letter to Gaara, the teenage girl busied herself with her correspondence with Haku, her mother, Hinata and even Shikamaru, gone for a mission the previous day. After over an hour, she decided it was time to get to more serious and more pressing problems. With a spark of chakra, she activated the safety seal that locked her door and opened one of the hidden drawers of her desk. The piece of furniture had been built by Ensui, and its success amongst ninjas went beyond all expectations. Tsunade had ordered twenty of them just for the Tower. Each piece had a different layout and different hidden compartments, which made it insanely valuable for shinobi.

In the drawer, she had put her research on creating her own fūinjutsu language. She was making good progress with it: she had managed, just before leaving for her last mission, to recreate a basic storage seal without any of the established language of the art. Now, she was looking for ways to improve it, leaning when she could on signs that were unknown to this world. She snickered when she imagined some faceless foe trying to guess what the Jera rune meant.

Until dinner was ready, she worked on the seal Jiraiya had given her, the one that would allow her to store chakra. It was the basic version of the seal, that only stored pure chakra, without its affinities, but it could already be very useful. With a sigh, the girl put her ink and brushes away and walked down the stairs, her fingers stained with ink.

Ensui was there, deep in conversation with Anosuke, who was using his own knee to answer. The boy was already looking better, now that he was fed something better than whatever that thing that the hospital called ‘food’ was. He was happier too, more open, even if sudden noises still made him jump and he still withdrew into himself for long stretches of time. That was probably what worried Hitomi the most. Cutting himself from the world like that wasn’t good – for a shinobi, it could be a death sentence.

The meal put them all in a better mood. Naruto and Sasuke didn’t look so upset about the mission anymore, if their relaxed features and playful demeanour were to be believed. After she was done eating, Hitomi leaned against the back of her chair, silent, and looked around with a mix of fascination and satisfaction. Each time she realised how lucky she was to live here, to be part of this family, her heart almost burst with gratefulness.

“Ensui-shishou? Could you come look over my research, please? I have some questions about it.”

He nodded and left the table, his tall and lean silhouette unfolding with the natural flexibility that characterised ninjas. His hair was messy, several black strands escaping his ponytail. It was a sign that he had spent many hours toying with it over paperwork. “What is it?” he asked when they were both in her room.

Without answering just yet, the girl activated her safety seal and fetched her notes once more. She handed them to Ensui and didn’t miss the spark of pride that lit in his eyes as he went over them. This was a very hard skill to master, after all, and she had managed. In that field at least, the master had to bow to his student’s skills.

“I’d like to get this tattooed somewhere so I can access it at will. Do you think I can do it by myself?”

“Hm… not if you just mastered it. Hold on, Uzuki Yūgao likes you, right?”

“I suppose she does, what with saving Hayate and all. Why?”

“She has a renowned function in the village: she’s the official tattoo artist for the ANBU. I think that, if you draw the layout of the seal where you need it to be, she would be able to make it permanent. But… Are you sure about this? Tattooed seals are very hard to break, and you don’t really need more chakra…”

“I could always do with more, shishou. Against Orochimaru, if I hadn’t stolen Jiraiya-sama’s, which could have killed him, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my grip on the snake’s shadow. I don’t want to put my team at risk again like that in the future. My Kekkei Genkai can’t be my only trump card in that kind of situation, I have to have alternatives.”

“You should at least wait until you master a superior version of this seal, Hitomi. Storing several types of chakra while maintaining their elemental properties, that would be a lot better, don’t you think? Knowing you, it would only take one more month of work, and having two similar seals would be a waste of skin.”

The girl’s lip pursed, but she nodded after a moment. She could see the logic in her master’s reasoning and, if she was being honest with herself, she had to admit he has a point. With a sigh, she got her work back and put it in its drawer again, trying to hide the way her hands shook. Ensui was a Jōnin, though. She didn’t fool him.

“Hitomi, when you come back from this mission, we’ll have a serious talk, okay? We never sat down to talk about your feelings after you killed Orochimaru. It’s time.”

Hitomi froze, her breath itching in her throat. To that too, she nodded after a moment, careful not to face her master and the worried expression on his features. She didn’t want to… but he was right. It was time.

Chapter 79: The Abandoned Lair

Most of the journey to the shore was shrouded in silence. As soon as Kakashi joined them, the Genin had been reminded of how important and serious that mission was. Another sensei might have tried to make them smile, but Kakashi didn’t. Each of his precious students had almost died against the Sannin. He didn’t feel too well about the fact that he could only get revenge in such a late and futile way.

The coordinates that the spies had given to Tsunade led to an underground tunnel that they almost missed because of the heavy fog, a constant source of trouble so close to the sea. A thunderstorm was flying over the Land of Fire, but it hadn’t yet unleashed its fury on them. Once it came, all the missions in progress, without exception, would get more complicated. Team Seven wouldn’t be able to see any farther than two meters away from them, and the thunder itself would be perfect to hide enemy movements around their position.

“I’ll force the door open on the count of three,” Kakashi said, his voice so calm he could have been reading one of his books rather than preparing to enter one of Orochimaru’s many lairs. “Sasuke, you go in first, then Hitomi, then me, and Naruto last. Be ready for everything and anything.”

The three Genin nodded and immediately focused on the task to come. If this lair was anything like the ones Kishimoto had drawn for the manga, Hitomi wouldn’t have enough space to summon her cats. That wasn’t too much of a problem, though: she had other weapons at her disposal. Slowly, she unsheathed her blade and wrapped it in water chakra without missing a beat. Kakashi kicked the steel door open, his hit so powerful it sent the metal panel flying in the corridor. Immediately, a stale, rancid smell wrapped around them, suffocating.

They deployed in a blink, trying to stay focused despite the danger signals that their nose was sending. Sasuke’s blade, Shinji to Giri, came ablaze and lit the corridor up better than a torch could. He too had mastered the chakra sheathe technique, and he managed to use it with an affinity that wasn’t his main one – impressive, even for an Uchiha.

“We’re going to go through one room at a time, together,” Kakashi instructed. “Spreading out would be too dangerous here. I can’t smell anyone alive around but, under the decomposition stench, I could be wrong.”

They found the first bodies in the first room they stepped in. Two scientists, according to their clothes; they had choked on a yellowy froth. Poison, without a doubt. Their bodies were stiff, cold to the touch. They should have probably started decomposing by now if it wasn’t for the conservation seals carved on the walls ten centimetres above the ground, all around the room. Hitomi was the one to notice those, of course. The team rummaged through the space, investigating every drawer, file, book. Thanks to the future Seal Mistress amongst them, they had all the storage scrolls they needed and decided to take more rather than less, and to go through it a second time later.

They tore through room after room, an endless succession of bodies and obvious agony. There were bedrooms, laboratories, libraries, two exercise rooms, an infirmary, and a canteen. The lair seemed to stretch for kilometres on end. Sometimes, Hitomi had to stifle her nausea. She was used to death, but the spectacle before her got to her on several occasions. She saw dissected organs, torture schematics, interrogation or experiment accounts. It was repulsive.

After a while, they reached a different door. This one was reinforced by three seals written on steel and stone. Of course, the obvious solution would have been to get rid of them the violent way, but that would have made the whole lair collapse over them. Hitomi got to work, her fingers tingling in anticipation as she brushed them against the long-dried ink. After a moment, she grabbed her brush and inkwell and started drawing.

She let out a satisfied huff when, finally, she managed to break through the safety seals. It wasn’t any more complicated than picking a lock, really, but the minutia and long work required could make the process frustrating. Not this time, though. Her blade in hand again, she pushed the door open, and couldn’t suppress a wince when she realised what she was seeing inside.

In the centre of the room was a huge tube of glass connected to both the ground and ceiling. It looked filled with water, but the liquid had to have something special: the tube was connected to a dozen different machines, which had long stopped running. Hitomi took a few steps forwards, her teammates deploying behind her.

And, in the tube, amidst the water, a pair of violet eyes blinked open.

Naruto let out a surprised yelp, but Hitomi understood the situation immediately. She put a hand on the glass, close to the emaciated, exhausted face that was slowly appearing in the water. While her teammates, who seemed to understand something was at play there, stood guard behind her, she exaggerated her articulation so the violet eyes that didn’t look away from her face for one moment could read on her lips. “I’m going to get you out of here. Now.”

The eyes went wide then closed. She didn’t wait for him to open them again, didn’t wait to see the hope and pain in his violet irises to get to work again. The glass tube was covered in sophisticated seals, but Hitomi deciphered them at a glance. She suddenly realised how far she had come in the field: she could follow the work of a freaking Sannin, and find Orochimaru’s signature all over his strokes, all over the locks he had drawn to strengthen the glass. Slowly, she got her brush and ink once more.

It took her over an hour to disable the chain of seals, one step at a time. Her teammates had gotten back to their own tasks after a while, but they stayed in the room, searching it for any document. Some of them were very well hidden, too. The eyes behind the glass didn’t leave her long, delicate, ink-stained fingers, even for a moment. Sometimes, she frowned, she mumbled, but her face finally lit up with a victorious grin. She straightened up, filled to the brim with exaltation, attracting her teammates’ attention with the sudden movement. She unsheathed her tantō and, her hand strengthened with chakra, slammed its hilt against the glass after turning her head away.

Shards flew in all directions, embedding themselves in her hair, in the tender skin of her hand, and she hissed in pain as the water slammed into her so hard she fell on her back. When she opened her eyes with a groan, a relieved and completely naked Suigetsu was laying on top of her. She blushed up to the roots of her hair but didn’t try to get away, too busy that she was fighting to get her hair away from her face without staining everything with blood.

“Oi, you pervert, let go of Hitomi-nee!”

Hitomi sighed and groaned again then glared at Naruto. “I told you, it’s rude to yell at the prisoner who just got released! As for you ,” she added, stabbing her finger in Suigetsu’s ribs, “stand up, you’re crushing me.”

“A-ah, sorry!” He jumped up, made a gesture to help her on her feet but froze when he saw the hand she had held her tantō with, bleeding profusely. She followed his gaze, grimaced and rolled on her flank to sit up with her good hand.

“Kakashi-sensei, could you please clean my hand so I can try to heal it?”

“Healing it myself is beyond my medical ninjutsu skills but yes, I can clean it, Hitomi-chan. Naruto-kun, Sasuke-kun, find clothes to put on that boy, it’s not decent to have him wander around naked in the presence of your sister.”

The two boys immediately went through their scrollpacks as Kakashi knelt next to Hitomi. He looked relaxed, but she wasn’t fooled: he never allowed the stranger to leave his sight and she felt chakra surge around his Sharingan – he was ready to use it if necessary, if it was what it took to protect and destroy. He bent over Hitomi’s injured hand and got rid of the glass embedded in her skin, sometimes with the help of chakra or even, for one vicious shard, of a senbon. Each time she grimaced in pain, he muttered apologies.

“What’s your name?” she asked, looking up at the finally dressed boy. He swam in Sasuke’s clothes, but it would have been even worse with Naruto’s. She already knew his name, of course, but how could she have explained it? She stared at him, carving his violet eyes, long white hair and emaciated body in her memory. He looked like the man she should have met years later according to the canon, but he was so thin… How long had he been stuck in that glass tube?

“S-Suigetsu,” he said, his voice hoarse. Hōzuki Suigetsu. How… What are you doing here?”

“Orochimaru is dead,” Hitomi announced plainly. “The people who worked for him here committed suicide, probably when they heard the news. No one freed you… It’s very cruel.”

“I-I thought I was gonna die here.”

Slowly, Hitomi stood up and walked to him. She remembered his first appearance in the canon, his rude, brutish behaviour, but the teenager standing in front of her just seemed overwhelmed by relief and icy fright, whose ghost still haunted him. He was a teenager brimming with dreams who had had a brush with death, barely older than she was, and so weak that without Naruto’s hand on his shoulder, he would have collapsed. As delicately as she could, Hitomi wrapped him in a comforting hug, brushing his long, tangled hair with her fingers. He would need a haircut… But there were more urgent matters on his plate.

“You’ll be okay, now, Suigetsu-san. We have a mission to accomplish here, but we won’t abandon you to your fate.”

He nodded, his chin quivering, and she let go of him. After taking a step back, she sliced her thumb open and ran through the mudras to summon Hoshihi, who appeared in a puff of smoke. He looked so much better now than he had in Tanzaku; she hid her relief, but didn’t do it so well that her familiar couldn’t notice. “Hoshihi, I’d like you to go out and hunt. Try to catch a few rabbits to feed this poor young man, alright?”

“Got it! Meet you outside?”

“Yeah, we’ll get to you as soon as we’re done here.” With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t take long. Hitomi wiped her thumb on a handkerchief then retrieved a storage seal hidden between the layers of bandage wrapped around her right wrist and activated it. A ration fell into her open hand. She handed it to Suigetsu, who tore the wrapping open with his sharp teeth and immediately started eating.

“Oi!” Naruto exclaimed. “What are you doing here, then? Why aren’t you dead like all the others?”

“As long as I’m in water, I can’t starve to death… It’s one of the things that bastard Orochimaru tested on me, I didn’t even know it was possible until then. What about you, though? If he’s dead, you shouldn’t have any interest in his business, right?”

“We have a mission from our village,” Sasuke said. “And that’s an understandable assumption, but it’s also wrong. We still have a lot of interest looking into his business. He’s dead, but his assistant, Kabuto, is still very much alive.”

Suigetsu sneered. “The one with the silver hair and round glasses? That asshole loved his experiments, the more painful the better.”

“Yeah, him. We don’t know where he is, but we hope to find clues on his whereabouts and plans in old lairs.”

“Makes sense. I’ll be happy when that one dies too. To answer the first question you asked… I was captured by Orochimaru several years ago. He wanted to experiment with my Kekkei Genkai.”

“Your body can turn into water at will, right?” Hitomi asked. “One of my friends, Yuki Haku, is from the Land of Water. You might know his mentor, Momochi Zabuza.”

“The last of the Swordsmen of the Mist? Of course I know him. Well… I know of him. The scientists talked around me, and sometimes they said stuff about my country, but I’d like to know more. It’s been so long…”

Hitomi sought Kakashi with her eyes. He nodded, giving her the authorisation to tell Suigetsu everything that had happened in the Land of Water these past few years. She told him about the slaughtered clans and the rebellion that was growing underground, told him about the ascent of a new candidate for the Mizukage’s hat. Terumī Mei had the ambition to find the blades of power again and reform the Swordsmen of the Mist. The boy seemed really interested in that subject in particular: he asked about Zabuza and Haku, and about the other surviving member of that legendary corps, Hoshigaki Kisame. She couldn’t say much about him, since she wasn’t supposed to have met him. As she talked, she continued working through her part of the laboratory – the rest of her team had gone to the next room.

“I see,” Suigetsu said when she was done. “Do you think this Mei person would accept me in her rebellion? I thought I’d be here for the rest of time, but now…”

“Now, you’re free again. I can tell Haku to ask Mei-sama, if you want. I have means to communicate quickly and without being intercepted.”

When the teenager nodded, she smiled and leaned her back against a wall, her communication notebook in hand. She only took two minutes to write her message and send it with a spark of chakra. A satisfied gleam in her eyes, she straightened up and put the notebook between two layers of her obi, where she could feel an answer coming.

“There. Around this time, he’s probably either in the middle of a mission or training. You can stay with us until he gives an answer, of course, but honestly I can’t see them refusing you. Apparently, they aren’t ready to fight yet, because they lack gear and supplies, and they won’t be ready for a long time. As for you, you’re exhausted beyond belief, but when you’re better, you’ll be a valuable asset with your Kekkei Genkai.”

Suigetsu nodded, resolve blooming in his eyes. He went to help her then, as she swiped the room one last time and focused on the walls and corners to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. When she was done, she took him to the next room, where Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke were all bent over what looked like a thick notebook, whispering between themselves with a worried expression on their faces.

“What is it, sensei?”

“I’m deciphering it… but it looks like a logbook, written by our dear friend Kabuto. I managed to decipher an except that mentioned experimenting. It looks like a personal document rather than an official one, and it was well-hidden. I doubt he had planned on leaving it behind.” He gave the book to Hitomi, pointing to a particular page. “Here, you showed a talent in decryption but you need to train that skill so it stays sharp. Decipher the entry for that day.”

She nodded and bent over the notebook, her brow slightly furrowed. The protection was quite weak. The key was the day’s date and a hiragana with a dot underneath. Thanks to her memory, Hitomi didn’t need to take notes; she read and deciphered the entry in one go, then repeated it aloud. It reported a typical day for Kabuto, and a training session with Orochimaru. Nothing too interesting at first glance, but a lot of information could be deduced from such mundane entries.

“We’re not done with that guy, right?” Sasuke asked, a cruel smirk on his face.

“I’m afraid we aren’t,” Kakashi sighed. “Other documents, as well as the first few pages of this journal, lead me to think that Kabuto is Orochimaru’s heir in all the ways that matter, including techniques and ambitions.”

“Because the world really needed another snake maniac,” Hitomi grumbled. This meant Sasuke was still a target. He had been marked , branded like cattle, and it was no mystery for Team Seven that the traitorous Sannin had had great plans for him. But the young Uchiha, in this universe, had allowed his desire for vengeance to fade a bit. He wouldn’t be a docile pet in the hands of a master bent on turning him into the most terrible weapon possible before using his body as a host. Or Hitomi hoped he wouldn’t, anyway.

“Let’s take this journal too. Hitomi, how many scrolls left?”

She counted them rapidly, sometimes brushing her hands against her pockets as if to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. “Twelve. If we still have a lot more rooms to explore, it won’t be enough, but I can make more.”

“It won’t be necessary. I sent a clone to scout ahead, we just have an infirmary and a bedroom to go through.”

They were quickly done with those two last rooms; when the team and their guest left the lair, the sun was setting over the horizon and the storm, just like the fog, had started to hover away to the Land of Waves. Suigetsu eyed the three rabbits and two pigeons piled between Hoshihi’s paws hungrily. Hitomi thanked her familiar with a scratch behind the ears.

“Well, children, there’s no use going back to Konoha so late, especially since our companion is exhausted. Naruto, Sasuke, go find wood for the fire. Hitomi, set up camp.”

The three Genin got moving under Suigetsu’s pensive stare, while Kakashi got to the task of trapping the area around their camp. Even though they hadn’t left the village too often since the invasion, the three teenagers hadn’t allowed their well-oiled routine to get lost and had trained at least once a week in the garden. Kurenai and Asuma sometimes came to observe their efforts and had started encouraging their own teams to do the same. After ten minutes, the camp was ready: Sasuke had just put the icing on the cake by lighting the fire with chakra. The flames took eerie blue and green colours thanks to the salt encrusted in and on the wood the boys had found on the beach.

“Well, Suigetsu, we’re cooking the first rabbit for you. Kakashi-sensei and I are going to share one, and Naruto and Sasuke the other. The pigeons are just going to be a bonus, to make sure we all have our fill. Hoshihi, have you eaten already or do you want to go back for a nice, fat boar?”

The cat shrugged his massive shoulders and laid down close to the flames, wrapping his thin tail around his summoner’s ankle with affection. “I stumbled upon one before I found your prey and, since I knew you would ask me that question, I ate it.”

“You did well. Now, let’s see those rabbits…”

Preparing the prey for consumption barely took a few minutes. The three Genin had had classes in the Academy about that – although Hitomi had learned it prior to that with Ensui – so it had become child play for them all. Still, Naruto had trouble with the rabbits if he looked at them too closely. His tender heart was his most terrible weakness – and his greatest strength. As she took the first one from the fire and handed it to Suigetsu, so thankful he could cry, she felt her notebook grow cold in her obi.

“Ah! I got an answer from Haku, Suigetsu. Let’s see… Hm, he spoke to Mei-sama and she says that all shinobi ready to swear an oath of fealty to her, even former deserters, are welcome in her ranks. The only entry test to show your skills is to find her camp. Well… Looks like you have your answer, Suigetsu. What are you going to do now?”

“I’ll hit the road tomorrow! My mother taught me you really shouldn’t make a lady wait, especially if she’s dangerous. And the Terumī, they make danger an art form.”

Hitomi giggled, thinking about all the dangerous women she knew. If someone dared making Tsunade or Anko wait on purpose… Oh, to be a fly on the wall if that ever happened!

“Hey, don’t you go give ideas to Hitomi-nee!” Naruto whined. “She’s already wicked enough as it is!”

“Oh, but, Naruto, you love me all the same, don’t you?” she pleaded, hitting him right in the feels with the Stare. The teenage boy choked on the piece of meat he had been in the process of swallowing when he met her eyes and nodded fervently while trying to clear his airway. How easy it still was.

Kakashi spoke once more when they were all done eating. “Hitomi, you take first watch. Wake me up in an hour and a half. After me, it’s going to be Sasuke’s turn, and Naruto to finish the night. Except for her, everyone else go to bed now. I’d like to be back home tomorrow, and it won’t happen if you’re all exhausted.”

Smiling and relaxed, Hitomi sat on a stone, her sword within reach, and surveyed the horizon while the fire slowly died behind her. As far as her meridians could feel, they were safe. It was an almost comforting feeling, despite how far she was from some of the people and places she loved above all else. With the heat of embers brushing against her back, she could almost picture them close to her, just outside her line of sight, and the idea filled her with bittersweet yearning.

Chapter 80: A Whisper Lost Beneath the Leaves

“Why is it that, when a mission doesn’t go as planned lately, it’s always the four of you that are on it?”

A terrifying Jōnin and three deadpan Genin couldn’t help but flinch under Tsunade’s golden stare, desperately trying to find what to say to calm her sudden surge of annoyance. They didn’t end up having to do anything at all about it: she poured herself a generous glass of sake, gulped it down in one go and leaned over Hitomi’s report with a sigh – amongst her team, she was the one with the best penmanship, as was to be expected.

“So… You dropped all the files and books to the Encryption and Decoding department, that’s good… and that kid, Suigetsu? Do you think he’s going to be trouble?”

“Not likely,” Kakashi shrugged. “With this Kekkei Genkai of his, it seemed pointless for us to bring him back to the village for interrogation, and he seemed genuine enough in his interest for Terumī Mei’s offer. If he’s anyone’s problem now, it’s hers.”

“Good thinking. Well, I have nothing to blame you for in this report. B-ranked mission, two mandatory days of rest, you know the drill. Hitomi-chan, your uncle would like to see you before you go back home. He’s in his office. And, since you’re going there anyway, hand him this folder too, please.”

“Yes, Tsunade-sama.”

Hitomi was the first to leave the office after a respectful nod. She was careful not to even look at the folder in her hands too closely, lest she be tempted to open it, to steal information she wasn’t supposed to have. She was almost certain that ANBU operatives were monitoring her every move, like they did everyone else’s. Information of unknown importance wasn’t worth getting her ass kicked into a holding cell.

She knocked on Shikaku’s door and entered when he called for her, looking around as she always did. She noticed the Kusajin penal code on his desk. The two villages had a peace treaty. Was it being put in geopardy? Certainly not. Kusagakure held diplomacy as its highest value. She greeted her uncle and put the file within his reach, all the while glancing this way and that discreetly. Of course, he wasn’t fooled, but he allowed it. Information was power, after all, and what Nara man wouldn’t want his beloved niece to gather all the power she could?

“Tsunade-sama said you wanted to see me, ojisan?”

He looked up from the scroll he was reading, faint cheer creasing the crows feet at the corners of his eyes. “Yes, Hitomi-chan. I wanted to ask you about your plans for the next Chūnin exam.”

“Huh?”

“Well, it’s growing near near, you see. And since Kakashi has already recommended your team once, he doesn’t need to do it again. Konoha will not host this exam, so you should get all the info about the dates and places in a month or so.”

Hitomi looked down to her hands to hide her surprise. She wanted this second chance, of course. But was she really able to do it? True, she was strong, and she could handle pressure, but what about after the exam itself? Would she have  the fortitude to shoulder the responsibilities of a Chūnin? Wouldn’t it be better to wait one more year? She frowned and immediately threw that idea away. No, she needed the promotion and the relative freedom it offered as soon as she could get it.

“I’ll do it,” she said, her tone almost hard.

“Perfect,” Shikaku said, leaning back in his chair with a smile. “I understand why you dropped out last time, but this exam will be different. Tsunade-sama is intent on sending all the teams from your generation to flood the exam with excellent shinobi and intimidate the other lords. She expects that at least one of you reaches the finals of the tournament. I myself hope this person will be you.”

The girl’s breath hitched in her chest and she winced before she could control her muscles again, relaxing them progressively. The tournament… That stage of the exam was common to all editions of it and, this time, she would have a real chance of participating in it. Traditionally, people weren’t to fight teammates, even during eventual preselections. Who could be a threat, amongst her peers? Gai’s team, maybe, but taijutsu adepts didn’t fare well against her shadow justus. She frowned again and nodded, resolve blooming on her face.

“With a bit of luck and creativity, I can do it, ojisan.”

“Perfect. There aren’t many Nara around with the ambitions you display, Hitomi-chan. We’re going to use it. Even if your name is Yūhi, I expect you to make it very clear, very fast, that you’re as much part of my clan as you’re part of your mother’s. Ensui received orders to prepare you for it physically and mentally, but the way you want to play out this exam is entirely your decision to make. You have displayed enough composure in your past missions to be trusted with that.”

“Thank you, ojisan. Will this be all?”

“Yes. Oh, wait! Can you tell Yoshino that I might be late for dinner? I don’t really have time to send a message…”

“I’ll do it, ojisan.”

She bowed slightly, turned around and walked away, her mind already going in full gear. However, when she reached the door of his office, she paused and looked back at Shikaku. “Do you think I’ll be a good Chūnin, ojisan?”

He seemed surprised that she asked such a question and thought about it for a moment, staring at her with the cunning and calculation she had come to expect from all Nara when faced with a problem. Finally, he gave her an answer that was devoid of any doubt. “Yes, you have what it takes. Unlike Shikamaru or your brother Sasuke, you have the eloquence and charisma to motivate those under your command. You keep your cool even under the pressure of being outnumbered or facing dangerous enemies, which is also necessary in a leader. You keep your individual skills sharp, which means we can also send you on solo missions if necessary. Most of all, you can work in a team. It’s a quality that you share with all your peers, which even we in Konoha don’t see too often, and you can’t even begin to imagine how precious it is. It means we can put you in any team without expecting any problem. You only need the actual title now, Hitomi.”

Being entrusted with so much did wonders for the girl’s confidence. She let a small smile appear on her lips then left, her worries pushed away by her uncle’s words. She stopped by Yoshino’s to tell her that her husband would probably be late, then went home at last. Her meeting with the Jōnin Commander hadn’t been too long, but the intense nature of their exchange had tired her out. She swapped her shoes with slippers, went to her room to change then walked back downstairs to join her brothers and her little protégé. All three were busy in the kitchen. Anosuke couldn’t see, but he navigated the space far better now: obviously, Ensui had given him exercises to develop his hearing and sense of smell, which Hitomi approved of wholeheartedly.

“Ah, nee-chan!” Naruto greeted her. “What do you want in your ramen?”

With a smile, Hitomi answered him and pitched in to help them, washing the dishes as soon as they dirtied them. The kitchen was a tad too small to hold them all, but she liked her home that way, crowded with loved ones, full of life, a bit noisy, a surprise hidden in every corner. They bantered all the way to dinnertime, then calmed down.

“What did Shikaku-san want with you, Hitomi-nee?”

“Ah, you’ll like that one, Naruto, and you too, Sasuke. He told me that the next Chūnin exams will happen soon. It’s going to be nice to get promoted this time, right?”

Her brothers exchanged a look then nodded, their grins so similar she thought she was seeing double for a moment.

“Do you think we can do this, all three of us, Hitomi-nee?”

“Honestly, Sasuke, you shouldn’t even ask. The first two stages are a formality, with how our last missions went. The third will be more complex, yeah, but the opponents who worried me the most, Gaara and Shikamaru, have already been promoted. Of course, Team Gai is still in the game, but except for them, we’ll dominate that tournament if we don’t pull our punches.”

They stayed on that subject for the whole evening. Hitomi didn’t see any reason to keep information to herself: with a bit of luck, her teammates would be by her side in this next adventure. Hadn’t she crushed the canon into submission again and again? It had to be enough. She wanted to keep her brothers close and safe.

Ensui and Karin came home together while the siblings and Anosuke put the dishes away. Immediately, Hitomi reported to her shishou as he put on slippers then went to the bathroom to change. He didn’t seem annoyed at the stream of chatter, quite the contrary: when he left the room, dressed in a more relaxed outfit, he was smiling and his eyes were gleaming with pride. To Hitomi’s relief, he didn’t seem to want to hold the conversation he had hinted at before her departure that night.

He should have.

The next morning, Sasuke was gone and Shikamaru was pounding at her door. Her heart thundering in her chest, Hitomi got ready as quickly as she could while he explained the situation, Naruto by her side. They all left together, Anosuke left under the supervision of a water clone. It was better than nothing: Ensui had left for a mission in the middle of the night under Shikaku’s pressing orders, and Kurenai was abroad with Shino and Hinata. In the secret of her mind, Hitomi was shaking in fear and the Whisper screamed its rage, but she didn’t have a right to give in. Not this time.

Brother and cousin by her side, she ran through the village as fast as her legs and chakra allowed until she reached the Gates, where Neji, Lee, Kiba and Chōji were already waiting. They looked restless, all four of them, but the same resolve was hardening their pale faces. The Will of Fire was blazing strong in them, no one could doubt it. When they were all gathered, Shikamaru repeated his explanations about the mission. The Jōnin and Chūnin were almost all gone for various missions, and the ones who were left had to stay in the village in case this event was just a diversion, which left only Genin lead by the newest Chūnin able to respond to the situation… Sasuke was gone , along with the three remaining members of Orochimaru’s former escort, now renamed the Sound Triad.

“It’s impossible!” Naruto yelled. “He was kidnapped or fooled, it’s the only way he would have followed them!”

Shikamaru’s features hardened, but he didn’t step in this argument waiting to happen, despite his obvious desire to do so. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, emanating for the first time the authority a unit leader had to hold over his men. “Maybe you’re right. In that case, the problem is even more pressing. We’re leaving immediately in any case. Kiba and Hitomi, you go first with your senses deployed as far as you can. Then Naruto on the right flank and me on the left. To close ranks and keep an eye on our backs, Chōji, Lee and Neji – with your Byakugan activated, of course. Let’s go!”

“Yes, taichō!” They all saluted, then left in an explosion of movement and chakra.

Only two shinobi noticed their departure: Izumo and Kotetsu, the Chūnin on watch duty. Their eyes were dim and serious, worried too. They stared behind the children for a long time, then the former spoke, his tone dark and desolate. “May the Will of Fire protect them.”

“May She protect them.”

Further on the road, the teenagers didn’t hear their elders exchange those words full of hope and good wishes, and yet filled to the brim with the certainty of their demise to come. If it had been the case, they wouldn’t have cared. One of their own was in danger. They wouldn’t let anything stop them, not even the odds against an enemy so much stronger than they were. Around them, the forest animals were fleeing, dispersed like dust by a gust of wind, terrified by the mass of chakra they represented. They could feel the killing intent and sheer willpower emanating from their group, so strong that the animals too slow to flee choked and sometimes collapsed, their little hearts too weak to handle the shock.

Hitomi, behind Kiba, reached a point inside herself where the darkest part of her psyche bloomed, fuelled by the Whisper and her own hatred, in a peaceful and icy space filled with promises of agony and ecstasy. Her heart slowed down despite the demanding pace of her pursuit. She couldn’t fail, not now. She had to trust herself, to trust her skills, like her uncle did, like her sensei did, like her master and all the other people who had ever watched her with admiration or respect did. The killing intent oozing out of her turned the air so thick it was almost unbreathable. Only her teammates were spared.

They stumbled upon the first traps six kilometres away from the village and immediately knew they had been noticed. Fortunately, between Kiba, Shikamaru, Hitomi and Naruto, they had no trouble spotting the traps long before they sprang them. Their opponents had lost some precious time setting those up, in vain. Inside Hitomi’s head, the Whisper sang, long and high notes of unbearable purity, and her blood ran hot and cold at the same time.

They were still quite a comfortable distance away from the Land of Sound, where they weren’t allowed to set foot no matter what, but they had to act quickly and stop their target if they didn’t want that situation to change soon. At full shinobi speed, it would be too late in a few hours. With an infuriated hiss, Hitomi gathered more chakra in her legs and picked up the pace, signalling for the others to do the same. Kiba, hearing the change behind him, adapted immediately. They flew through the endless forests they had grown up in, while Kabuto ’s agents were slowed down by the unfamiliar setting.

And, this time, they would die, at Hitomi’s hand if necessary. Her thoughts wandered towards Sasuke. If he had followed them of his own accord, like Sakura said according to Shikamaru… Then Hitomi had failed beyond measure. She wouldn’t be able to forgive herself. All this time spent soothing Sasuke’s grief, surrounding him with love and discreet support, if it was to be all for nothing… No. She couldn’t lose faith in him.

After a while, Kiba told them he smelled blood; Hitomi remembered that Jōnin had faced the Sound Quartet in the canon and were in critical condition. Shikamaru decided not to investigate, not when they were finally closing in on their target. Yes, they were close, Hitomi knew it thanks to the foul tingling on her meridians. She knew she had no way of avoiding webs dropped by Kidōmaru, the man with spider traits, but she could spot them thanks to the chakra running through them and she warned the group that they had already been spotted.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Shikamaru said. “Hitomi, Lee, Neji and Kiba, you’re the heavy hitters, so you’re going to pretend you’re the only ones pursuing. Naruto, Chōji and I will wait for an opening and deploy as a second wave.”

“Understood,” Hitomi mumbled. She exchanged heavy looks with her teammates then signalled for them to get moving. They attacked the least monitored side of the clearing where the Otojin were resting, the girl leading the charge. Before anyone could react, she lunged towards Jirōbō, who would be the first obstacle in their pursuit according to the canon – the weakest of them all. A wall sprang in between her and her target, making her hiss again.

“Water Release: Calling to the Pack!”

Five water wolves sprang alive from the fingers of her left hand and went around the wall in a heartbeat as she turned around to assist Kiba, alone against Sakon and Ukon, the twins who shared one body. Her tantō drew a line of fire and blood on an exposed leg, but it wasn’t enough to stop their opponent, who only clenched his teeth. On her right side, Neji and Lee were working together against Kidōmaru.

“ You ,” Jirōbō grunted. “Kabuto told us about you. You’re the bitch who killed Tayuya.”

Hitomi lifted her chin, a feral grin on her face. Inside her mind, the Whisper bloomed like a cruel flower, lighting the delicate pattern of meridians through her skin. “And it was so easy, too,” she drawled. “You look even younger than she was.”

“Oh yeah?!”

While he spat in rage, Hitomi signalled for Shikamaru to step in. He immediately acted, Chōji and Naruto on his heels. For just a moment, it looked like they had a chance: Kiba wounded Sakon on the shoulder, Neji landed a hit on Kidōmaru with his Gentle Fist, Hitomi drew a cut on Jirōbō’s forearm… and then they were all, the support team included, surrounded by their opponents. A dome of dirt tougher than rock trapped them, and Hitomi immediately felt it start to rob her of her chakra, slow and steady. She had to act.

“Gather in the centre, I’ll get us out!”

As fast as she could, she drew a chain of explosive seals on the walls then surrounded them with a barrier to shield her allies. She activated them both, shaking the earth and stone in a tumult worthy of the end of the world. They were free. Unfortunately, Kidōmaru and Sakon were already disappearing in the trees, the sealed tub containing Sasuke in the former’s hands.

“Tch! For bentō with legs, you move far too much! I’ll make that change fast.”

Hitomi summoned her fighting cats, who appeared around her already hissing and spitting in challenge. They didn’t hurl themselves at the threat, though: they were used to waiting for her orders.

Shikamaru, behind them, was analysing the skillset of their opponent. His features hardened, he took a difficult decision and straightened up. “Chōji, can you handle it?” The two childhood friends exchanged a meaningful look, then the Akimichi nodded, his eyes filled with resolve. “Good,” Shikamaru said. “Hitomi, leave Haīro with them, his fighting style is the best for this. Chōji, you end this quick then you join us. We’ll make sure you can find us, and Haīro can help track us anyway.”

Hitomi’s heart was thundering in her chest. Would her cat be enough to prevent her friend’s brush with death? She could only pray it would. Chōji stepped next to his best friend and handed him a little bag. “Shikamaru, hand those to the others. They’ll probably need it.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“Yes. I took the other ones with me.”

“But…”

“Shikamaru, there’s no time! Take the others and go!”

The new Chūnin closed his eyes for a moment, his features marked with a mix of worry and pain, then took the bag. It was filled with soldier pills.

“There’s no way, Chōji!” Naruto stepped in. “You’re damn strong, sure, but those guys are Jōnin level!”

Chōji didn’t turn to look at them, but Hitomi could picture his expression, the hardened resolve, and her heart broke a little. He was one of her first friends, too sweet for his own good, wonderfully shy and wholesome. She didn’t want him hurt – there was nothing she could do to stop it. “Naruto… Remember our goal? If we lose track of Sasuke, we’ll have done all this for nothing. Eat the pills. Worst case scenario, it’s my farewell gift.”

Shikamaru clenched his teeth, met Hitomi’s eyes and forced his body to uncoil. They had no other choice. It was what she repeated herself, too. They had no other choice . She stepped forwards, took her share and swallowed them all. Chakra rushed inside her immediately and her Gates filled up to the brim. The others did the same. She wasn’t worried for her cat, who could outrun Jirōbō in his sleep or just pop out of the physical world. Her human friend, on the other hand…

“Chōji, Haīro, join us when you’re done here,” Shikamaru concluded. “It’s an order.”

“I will, I promise.”

“Let’s go!”

Six shinobi and two giant cats jumped into the air, their faces similarly hardened, taking advantage of an opening their comrade was creating for them to pursue the other two Otojin. None of them wanted to doubt, but none of them wanted to hope either. Behind them, they heard Jirōbō swear he’d finish this fight quickly and come end the rest of them – and then Chōji caught him in a neck lock and ordered them to run. They all obeyed with the same rush of energy, trying to ignore the nagging feeling of failure that constricted their throat.

“Shikamaru-san,” Neji said after a while, “what is Chōji-san’s secret asset, the one he took with him? He hinted at…”

“Secret soldier pills developed by his clan and the Yamanaka, based on Nara research. They’ll give him more and more power when he takes them.”

“Hah! So that’s why he was putting on a brave face. He’s not like that, usually.” Naruto said.

“But will that be enough?” Kiba asked. “Akamaru and I can smell power, and that guy is full of it.”

“This mission isn’t a game,” Shikamaru sighed. “Our lives are at stake. The worst scenario would be to have us spread out and separated from each other. My whole plan was to avoid it, but now… Now, we don’t have any other choice. There’s no other way we can get to Sasuke.” There was a moment of silence, then the Nara heir spoke again. “Chōji is brave, but he lacks confidence in his own skills. He thinks he’s the weakest of us all.”

“Yes, I could see that in him,” Lee said. “I’m sure he’s wrong.”

“That’s probably why he stayed behind,” Kiba sighed. “He wants to make himself useful, and he doesn’t think just being with us is enough.”

“That’s probably what he thought, yes,” Shikamaru concluded, a sad smile on his lips. “Hitomi, mark this tree.”

“Got it.” She stopped just long enough to carve the Konoha leaf on the bark then caught up with them.

“Chōji has his fair share of weaknesses,” Shikamaru admitted, “but his endless resilience makes him one of the strongest in our generation. Right, Hitomi?”

“You’re right. He’ll manage. He promised, didn’t he? He always keeps his promises.”

They continued to run forwards, slowly closing the gap between them and their target. Her two remaining cats were surrounding Hitomi like two flexible, feral bodyguards, just as determined as she was even without knowing the stakes. She had done well not to call the others: Hokori and Sunaarashi weren’t fit to fight Jōnin, and Hai… Little Hai had no business being in such a situation.

“They’re close!” Kiba exclaimed.

“No trap, though. Shikamaru?”

“They probably didn’t think we’d survive. They think their comrade is the one catching up, not us, and they won’t risk injuring him.”

“Tch, they think we’re just shit!”

“It’s an advantage, Naruto,” Neji explained, his tone almost gentle. “It’s insulting, but that means they won’t expect us.”

“Exactly. Now, here’s what we’re gonna do…”

A few moments later, Shikamaru was catching up with the two remaining Otojin, using a simple, E-ranked Transformation Technique to pretend he was their comrade. Unfortunately, they weren’t fooled for long: Hitomi’s cousin didn’t react to Sakon, who seemed to be Tayuya’s rightful heir when it came to having a foul mouth, insulting him, and Kidōmaru trapped him in his spiderweb. Naruto immediately stepped in with his clones, but they too were caught by the sticky threads. Kiba took advantage of the opportunity to launch a double attack on the spider-man’s back, exposed, but he was stopped in his tracks as well, his feet trapped in the web. Neji chose that moment to step in, Byakugan active, chakra ready in his palm – he was caught too, in a complete cocoon this time.

“Let’s see,” Kidōmaru hummed, secreting little golden blades that hardened quickly, “so many little clones. I wonder which one is the real one, hm?”

Lee and Hitomi were still hidden, the two cats by their side. They were trying to gauge the situation, to find an opening. Her companion wanted to step in, but the girl forced him to stay still: she knew Naruto wasn’t really in that web. “Wait and watch,” she whispered against his ear.

His teeth clenched, Lee obeyed. Naruto, the real one, took advantage of Kidōmaru focusing on his clones to hit him in the back, but was caught by a thread on the wrist as he retreated. Neji saved him after tearing through his cocoon with the Gentle Fist then freed their teammates in a few seconds. Next to Hitomi, Lee relaxed. His teammate was an asshole on occasions, but he was reliable and tenacious. Even she could admit it.

“You!” the Otojin growled. “How did you escape?”

“Substances infused with chakra lose their efficiency against the Gentle Fist,” Neji said. “They explode from the inside with the slightest brush of my chakra.” He turned his head towards his teammates, the ones who had participated in the ambush, but Lee, Hitomi and the two cats heard him just as well. “Go now, I’ll handle that one. Shikamaru, you said we had to scatter and kill our opponents. I’ll manage. Don’t let Sasuke escape because you fear for me.”

Hitomi steeled her heart for this, her teeth clenched so hard that her jaw ached. She didn’t like Neji, and would probably always despise him for trying to kill Hinata. But he was one of her comrades, too. Her duty was to fight by his side. She hesitated for a moment, but finally decided not to leave him with one of her cats. Neither of them had anything in their skillsets that could help against Kidōmaru; Neji would have to handle this fight on his own. She closed her eyes for a moment, just long enough to send a prayer to the Hermit, then caught up with the rest of the team, Lee by her side.

The only ones left were Sakon and Ukon, now.

Chapter 81: One Last Push

Notes:

This chapter contains themes of depression, suicidal thoughts and suicidal ideation. Please, if you feel anything like the character in this chapter is describing, reach out to your loved ones. You need support, you need help and, above all, you deserve it. You deserve to live.

They ran for two additional hours without any break before they reached their targets once more. It was dawn when they left Konoha, but now noon was almost behind them. While they ran, Hitomi had warned her teammates about the second chakra system inside the body of their last enemy. She had been close enough to sense it when Kidōmaru had stopped them.

As Shikamaru prepared to launch the attack, Hitomi signalled for the entire column to stop. She closed her eyes, opened up to her meridians and deciphered the impressions as fast as she could. Her body tensed under her cousin’s worried look. He knew something wasn’t right. She clenched her teeth, suppressed a pained groan and pulled back from the cage to not suffer from her senses anymore. “Reinforcements were waiting for our last opponent and just made contact with him. Two four-men units, around Chūnin level, and one man so far above our initial target I can’t even…”

“Troublesome.”

“Shikamaru, we need a plan, now. They won’t stay there for long.”

“I’m on it.”

The Genin waited in silence as their leader thought about their possible courses of action, his hands forming the circle they had learned to recognise as his ‘planning hand seal’ during the Academy. He stayed perfectly still for a few seconds, his brow furrowed, then straightened up, resolve written all over his stiff shoulders and back.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Hitomi, Lee, Kiba, you’ll attack our initial target. Take the tub with Sasuke in it, find a way to take him out of there and lead him back to the village. If you get separated, Lee and Kiba will focus on that Otojin man and Hitomi on her brother. Naruto, you and I will stop the new ones from stepping in with your clones and my shadows. Hoshihi, Kurokumo, you’ll be with us. Don’t hold back, we’ll adapt to your techniques.”

Hoshihi exchanged a worried look with his summoner, but she nodded and took the lead of her group, Kiba, Akamaru and Lee following her tracks as Naruto, Shikamaru and the two cats left the trees’ cover. The Sand Siblings were supposed to arrive soon, but she didn’t dare count on it. She gave the enemy team a large berth, pushing her legs to their maximum speed, and cut off Sakon’s path. The man’s face twisted in an angry snarl. On his back, the tub was releasing heavy puffs of purple smoke. Soon, Sasuke would stand out of it, changed.

“Vermin,” Sakon spat, “I’ll crush every one of you!”

“Yeah, yeah, you have a very big mouth, we get it,” Hitomi answered with a dismissive smirk.

The Whisper bloomed inside her again, the water coat wrapped around her blade and, as simple as that, she was ready. She knew what to expect, but she didn’t have the analytical skills that the Sharingan granted Sasuke. Between her shadows and the Shunshin, though, she was the best suited amongst her teammates for this fight. She lunged forward, shunshined at the last moment at her opponent’s back and managed to land a hit on his shoulder, as Lee and Kiba took advantage of the opening she had created to attack from the front. When a hand sprang from Sakon’s neck to pin her to the ground, she shunshined again to safety, behind her two teammates.

When she could afford to look away from her own fight, she saw that Shikamaru and Naruto were handling their side of the battle: a sea of clones separated her from the rest of the Otojin, and the feeling of her cousin’s techniques was as familiar as her own. She felt a titan of chakra, who could only be Kimimaro, flare his chakra threateningly…

And then, finally, Gaara arrived.

She couldn’t suppress a relieved sigh as she sensed his arrival, but her attention was quickly grabbed by the tub that Sakon had dropped on the ground between two attacks. The lid was sliding aside. Petrified, she watched Sasuke stand, the Cursed Seal slowly retracting from his skin until it curled back on his neck. She took a step in his direction; the faint noise caught his attention. He glanced at her and, before she could do or say anything, started running full speed to the Valley of the End.

“Hitomi-san, follow him, we’ll handle this!”

Lee barely had time to finish his sentence that Hitomi was already disappearing. Her Shunshin put her a few hundred metres away from the fight and that much closer to Sasuke, but he was still so far away… She groaned in pain, her legs ablaze and heavy after such a long, constant effort, but pushed it all so far below the surface that it couldn’t bother her anymore. Running, maintaining her summons and fighting had put a significant dent in her chakra reserves, but she still had enough to carry on.

“Sasuke! Wait for me, damnit!”

He ignored her plea, of course. She followed as well as she could, struggling to keep up. They both had similar speed, but he wasn’t tired after hours of running and, soon, Hitomi had to use her chakra again so she wouldn’t lose him. Killing intent oozed out of her, but she wouldn’t turn it against him, couldn’t turn it against him. Not even to slow him down.

Only when he reached the basin of the waterfall that marked the Valley of the End, where the titan-like statues of Madara and Hashirama making the Seal of Confrontation, did she decide she had to stop him. If he climbed the waterfall, he would be in the Land of Sound, where she couldn’t follow. She stopped, slammed her hands in the water of the basin and projected the strongest wave of chakra she could muster, powerful enough to awake the ghost of old burns in her arms. Around her, the river exploded, the flux of the waterfall leaving its bed for a moment to pour brutally on Sasuke’s head. When he escaped the liquid, he was sputtering and drenched, an exasperated look on his face.

“I have your attention now, I see,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost lost in the constant rumble of the waterfall, as she stood back up.

“Don’t try to stop me!” He looked frantic behind the annoyance, the whites of his eyes showing stark. He reminded her of a terrified horse.

“I can’t let you leave, Sasuke. You’re my brother. I’d die for you, kill for you, burn the world down for you. I can’t allow Kabuto to steal you away from our family.”

The teenager’s features tensed, he took a shaky step in her direction, then all the anger seemed to desert him and he looked down into her eyes, suddenly exhausted and so, so vulnerable. “Y-you don’t understand. I’m just following Tsunade-sama’s orders, Hitomi-nee.”

She froze for a second. “Explain, then.”

“She… She said she needed a spy… there… that I would have to use everything I could there to become the best shinobi I could, that I was the only one…”

“She wants you to become a double agent under her command, pretending to be under Kabuto’s.” Hitomi wanted to be sick, she wanted to scream, but she didn’t allow any of it to show. What pain she felt, she knew he felt it tenfold.

“Y-yes. The documents we got from the last mission show he was planning on getting his hands on me himself in the eventuality of Orochimaru’s death. He would have done so whether I was willing to follow him or not but, this way, I might keep a bit of freedom, and…”

“I get it,” she whispered tenderly.

Relief flashed on Sasuke’s face, replaced by horror as she unsheathed her tantō once more. She took a fighting stance, trying as hard as she could to shield her mind against Sasuke’s lost and frightened expression. He took a kunai from his hip pouch and slid into position in front of her, his limbs trembling. Was she imagining tears in his eyes?

“Please, Hitomi-nee, let me go, I don’t want to hurt you but I have to… I have to… Hitomi-nee…”

“I can’t let you go, Sasuke-kun. You know that.”

She suddenly left the opening stance, explosion of willpower and chakra all contained in one movement. Her blade brushed against Sasuke’s arm. Agony and despair were as clear as day on his face. She clenched her teeth, reached the spot of serenity and determination at the centre of her Library, and traded blow after blow with her brother. With each move, she weaved her trap, lulled him into a rhythm they knew perfectly from sparring together for years. Finally, when her sword almost touched his ear, she got her shadow to caress his shoulder.

A spark of chakra and he was trapped in the Nara opening technique. It was almost done, she mused as she sheathed her weapon, forcing Sasuke to mimic her movement with his empty hand – being left-handed could be so useful. Then, she slightly raised her right arm, forced him to hold his weapon steadily and, when she was in the perfect position, lunged at her brother as he screamed, panicked.

She dropped the technique at the very last second, too late to pull away. Pain tore through her chest as the short, sharp blade stabbed her. Her sternum broke, the cracking sound loud and wet to her ears. Her blood was warm against her own skin and she shivered in agony when Sasuke let go of the handle of the knife as if it had burned his hand. In his wide eyes, the Sharingan morphed, turning into the Mangekyō form it shouldn’t have been able to reach. Hadn’t she protected him from guilt and hatred for all these years? Brushing the question aside, she smiled, her features softening as she cupped his tears-drenched cheek. “Shh… Everything is fine, Sasuke. Everything is fine.”

“W-why?”

She took a painful breath, searched for her brother’s bloody hand, already mourning his daily presence by her side, and found the strength in herself to offer him a smile bright enough to remind him of Naruto. “Who would have believed that I’d let you go without that? Run, baby brother, fulfil your mission. I’ll still be there when it ends, I promise. You didn’t hit any vital organ. Everything is fine…”

“I’m s-sorry… I didn’t want…”

“Go, Sasuke, it’s time. You can leave me here. I feel Ensui-shishou approaching, he can’t see you. Be brave. I love you.”

He obeyed, his reticence painfully obvious as he turned away. She fell on her knees, only able to stay on the surface of the running water thanks to pure willpower. One of her hands wrapped around the kunai and kept it in place. A taste of salt and steel invaded her mouth, so strong it was nauseating. An exhausted sigh escaped her. When she looked up, she met a crow’s red eyes. The bird was perched on the hilt of Madara’s sword and stared at her, so still it almost appeared made of stone itself. Behind her, she heard a worried exclamation. Ensui. Quickly, so quickly, he carried her to land. No matter how gentle he was, the smallest movement made her want to scream. She was too exhausted to do so; when he lowered her on the bank of the river, she let go of the willpower that had stopped her from losing consciousness.

Everything was fine.

She was safe.

She woke up in a hospital room, which she really didn’t want to turn into a habit. Her tongue was heavy and dry, but not to the point of turning painful, and she didn’t feel in pain, which meant she had spent less than twenty-four hours out of consciousness. She tried to sit up, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her from moving. She turned her head and met Ensui’s dark grey eyes, stormy with concern.

And suddenly everything came back to hit her, the horror in Sasuke’s eyes, his Sharingan morphing because he was sure he had killed her , his silhouette slightly disappearing over the waterfall. The air in her lungs turned to ice. What had she done? What had she done ? An earthquake rattled her Library as she forgot how to breath, her pale hands clenching on the sheets of her bed until her knuckles turned white. Worried, Ensui jumped from his chair and cupped her face between his hands.

“Enough!” His tone was so demanding that she obeyed, the panic in her eyes slowly receding. She leaned back on the bed like a ragdoll, her meridians appeased by the intense contact of her master’s chakra against her skin. This was a more efficient bond than any other he could have used to keep her still. She realised her teeth were chattering, but couldn’t bring herself to care.

She was too busy remembering Sasuke’s eyes, full of horror – and his Sharingan morphing into the Kaleidoscope.

“Shh… Everything is fine,” Ensui whispered as she whined in anguish. His thumbs stopped the tears running down her cheeks. His eyes didn’t leave her face even for a second. She felt weak, fragile, and not in the good way he had sometimes made her feel. She was going to break, she was so sure of it – shatter and disappear. He fought against the rising anxiety she couldn’t hide until she calmed down, too exhausted to let fear and despair turn into action.

“This has to stop, Hitomi,” he said, his voice gentle and yet inflexible. “You can’t go on like this. No one could.”

Her eyes still wet, she gave him a distraught glance and managed to move her hand, just enough to cling to his clothes, the dark grey fabric soft and familiar between her fingers. He didn’t stop her, caressing her arms, her face, her hair, making her understand one movement at the time that she wasn’t alone, that he wouldn’t let her get lost, that he had answers, solutions. He wouldn’t give up on her. He was there.

“That’s what I wanted to talk about, before… Before Sasuke left. I know you, Hitomi, sometimes even better than you know yourself. I saw you degrade slowly, since the Forest of Death. I thought… I thought, for a while, that you would get better on your own, that you wouldn’t need me to step in. I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

For a long time, she didn’t react, but he had expected it and waited for her. And then, finally, her reluctance showing, she nodded and looked away. She was ashamed and didn’t even bother hiding it anymore. He took one of her hands in his, staring at the paler, smoother, younger skin, disappearing under his. They had about the same number of scars on their hands, and that felt terribly wrong.

“I need you to talk to me, Hitomi. I can’t… I can’t miracle this away. But if you tell me how you feel, if you open your mind to me, I might be able to help. I’ll do my best, I promise.”

She looked through the window, her weary eyes taking in the corner of grey sky she could see between two other buildings. The clouds were heavy with rain. Were they mourning Sasuke, too, the boy he had been and the man he could have become? The dark thought comforted her somehow. Your fault, Hitomi . “Sometimes,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and thin, “sometimes I’d like to go to sleep and never wake up.”

Silence stretched between them, thicker and colder than steel. She couldn’t see Ensui’s face, only the sky. Then he slid an arm under her shoulders, lifted her carefully and hugged her, his chin resting on top of her head. She slowly relaxed in his arms, until she felt two drops of something falling on her hair.

He was crying.

He almost never cried – something broke in her mind. She had done this. Terrified, she grabbed his arm, her heart thundering and swelling in her chest. He kissed her hair, where the tears had fallen, and hugged her closer. It hurt – she didn’t care. He cradled her for a long time, soft sobs going through him like shivers and earthquakes.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I… I wish I could protect you better. I prayed that you wouldn’t go through this, but…”

“What’s ‘this’?” she whispered against his torso.

He didn’t answer right away, as if he needed time to choose his words. Maybe it was the case. “I had a friend… His name would be familiar to you. Hatake Sakumo. We were really close – he helped me to pull through when Chōjirō passed away. It was hard but, thanks to him, I survived the desire to follow my son in death. And then he came back from a mission in disgrace. Devastated. Even the men he had saved by choosing not to go through with the deadly mission they had been assigned despised him. I saw him go through the same symptoms as you did. The anxiety attacks, the self-destructive behaviour, the constant self-depreciation, the long silences. One day, he told me the same thing you just said.”

She closed her eyes, as if such a gesture could shield her against what he was going to say next, against the end of this story. She knew how it ended.

“The next day, he took his own life. I did a lot of research, after that. I needed to know how I had failed him, how I could have stirred him away from such a dark path.”

Her master’s voice was hoarse and filled her chest with grief. She wanted to take the words back so much, but erasing them wouldn’t make them untrue in any way. The pain was too raw, in both of them, and she wanted to flee, to shield herself. To shield him , although it wasn’t her role in their relationship.

“You’ll have help, Hitomi,” he promised, his voice full of a fierce kind of love. “I’ll make sure of it. You’ll heal one day, if you just find in yourself the strength to hold on for now. Dark paths don’t stay dark forever.”

Huddled against him, she burst into shaky, despaired tears. She wanted to live. She wanted … But it hurt so much she didn’t have words fit for the agony. She was so, so tired of the failures and terror and weaknesses that broke her bones and tore her heart into pieces again and again and again . She cried until her voice went hoarse, until her burning, tired eyes refused to shed even one more tear, until exhaustion roamed through her broken body and she could only breathe through her mouth.

“Shishou, I-I’m so sorry…”

“It’s not your fault. I promise. You don’t need to apologise because you didn’t do anything wrong. This will pass… This will pass.”

He held her in his arms for a long time, until she fell asleep then woke up again. Even then, he didn’t let go of her, allowing her to stare at his face and notice the dark rings carved under his eyes, the features drawn by exhaustion, the fierce gleam of love in his dark grey eyes. A warrior, and yet… yet there was something else, something she couldn’t quite explain. While she stared, he brushed her fingers with his thumb, one after the other, a rhythmical touch she found soothing.

“How are the others?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Shikamaru has sprained his ankle. Lee had cuts and scrapes on his hands, but Tsunade-sama healed them and ordered him to rest. Kiba and Akamaru have burns and lacerations, but nothing too serious. Neji… Neji had several holes drilled through his body by some kind of arrow, but Shizune-san, Sakura-chan and Karin-chan, who were part of his healing team, just finished surgery on him and are confident that he’ll be okay. Chōji had the most serious injuries. I don’t have the details because it’s a clan secret. He’ll heal too.”

“And Naruto? My cats?”

“Naruto wasn’t injured at all. Well, he had cuts when he stepped in the hospital, but they were already healing. Tsunade had to literally kick him out of here so he’d rest, shower and eat. Hoshihi and Kurokumo had burns on their back and chest, so Inuzuka Hana took them in. Haīro has a dislocated shoulder. They had to carry him to Hana, but he’s fine otherwise.”

“So no one escaped uninjured…” Guilt was already back, creeping like a cold, gentle hand around her neck. How tempting it was to give in.

“No, no one did. But no one died either, and no one will have to renounce their ninja career. You don’t seem to realise the absurd amount of luck you all had, Hitomi. If the Sand Sibling hadn’t arrived, casualties would have been impossible to avoid. You’re all lucky and, beyond that, are all very talented. Your opponents were four Jōnin and eight Chūnin, and yet you all survived.”

“How did Gaara…”

“He reached the village by a minor gate around the time when you left. He was on a diplomatic mission. Tsunade asked him if he would offer you assistance, and of course he did. Unfortunately, by the time it was decided, you were already too far away for him to catch up before the first encounter with the enemy.”

“And what about you, shishou?”

“As soon as I came back from my own mission and heard about what happened, I asked Shikaku-sama to send me to the border on another mission. In such circumstances, I can’t see him being too upset that I didn’t bring him the aconite he requested.”

The girl couldn’t suppress a startled, painful giggle. Her features tensed and she pressed her hand against her chest, where the pain was becoming all-consuming.

“What about m-me?”

“Broken sternum, cuts, chakra burns. The broken bone is the most worrying injury, of course. According to Tsunade-sama, it’s better not to heal it with chakra, so she decided to maintain the bone in place with a seal and let it mend that way. If you allow your chakra reserves to fill up and avoid spending it, you’ll be better in two weeks or so.”

She nodded and fell silent. How could she be so exhausted? It felt like even her heart had a hard time beating, and her lungs had to push painfully for the air they needed. Was it because of her wound? No, the body didn’t work like that. Her mind was just playing tricks on her.

“Next time you wake up, I won’t be there, but I’ll leave a clone with you, alright? I have to go find your mom – her mission is still ongoing – and warn her about the whole situation.”

“She doesn’t know yet about S-Sasuke?” Her voice quivered and her heart throbbed painfully.

“No, not yet. No one sent a messenger so her mission wouldn’t be put at risk, but she should be on her way back now so…”

“Shishou… Everyone knows Sasuke deserted?” She hated feeling so small, so weak.

“Yes. The rumour was already running through the village by the time you left. It couldn’t be stopped. Even the civilians know by now.”

“I… Sasuke told me a secret, shishou. I can’t… I can’t keep it alone. Please…”

“Don’t worry,” he said, bending so his ear would be next to his student’s mouth. “I’ll keep your secrets with my life if necessary.”

She spilled the secret in a choked whisper, tears stinging in her eyes. She saw his features brighten with surprise, soften with understanding. His fingers brushed against her wound, as if he suddenly realised why she had received it. “An injury that doesn’t damage any organ, just serious enough that you can’t follow him… I get it now. You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? Not even your mother or Naruto. You’d put them at risk. And not only outside the village, but inside it as well.”

“I understand, shishou.”

“Sleep, Hitomi. You need rest. You’re safe now…”

Used to following his orders, she closed her eyes and allowed her mind to follow the lull of his many promises. She trusted him to turn them into reality.

Chapter 82: Tumultuous Recovery

When Hitomi woke up again, the clone Ensui had promised to summon was there, but it wasn’t alone. Anosuke was there too, curled up against her flank and one inch away from falling off the bed. Shikamaru has sprawled on a chair, his right foot elevated and his ankle tightly wrapped. Naruto paced the room, his movements closely monitored by the clone who stood watch, a hand on the hilt of his katana. Hitomi closed her eyes for a moment, her heart aching. She wasn’t ready for this but couldn’t make them wait either. It wouldn’t have been fair to them.

“Naruto,” she called, the whisper hoarse and painful.

“Ah, Hitomi-nee, you’re awake! D’you need anything? Something to drink, maybe?” Under the worry and agitation, she saw the drive to care for his loved ones she had come to expect from him. Some things never changed, even under the worst of storms.

“Something to drink sounds amazing.”

She straightened up just enough to be able to drink and accepted the straw he presented to her lips, counting on him to hold the cup. The water in it was perfect, neither lukewarm nor cold, and she had to close her eyes when a brisk, almost overwhelming rush of relief passed over her. When she was done, she laid back on her pillows and examined her brother with an inquisitive look. How long had it been since he had last slept? She took one of his hands. “How are you?”

Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper, but he winced as though she had screamed. His eyes went wide and his whole body turned rigid; only then did he realise how intense his reaction was and forced his muscles to relax. He stepped as close to her as he could without disturbing Anosuke. “I… I can’t… What did we do wrong, Hitomi-nee? When did we fail him that much?”

The girl’s heart ached again and bitter tears gathered in her eyes. She refused to shed them: she had already cried enough, and she was supposed to be the big sister, the leader. She couldn’t show weakness in front of Naruto – in front of Shikamaru, who was badly feigning sleep. “I wish I had answers for you, Naruto. Sometimes… Sometimes, a shinobi who went through a lot loses sight of the right path and gets lost beyond any light. We’ll find Sasuke one day. I promise.”

For his peace of mind, she could risk perjuring herself. She could even believe it, if she mixed her knowledge of canon and what she knew of Sasuke after spending years by his side. If only she could tell Naruto the truth… But Ensui’s clone stared at her, like a reminder of the danger she would put her brothers in by speaking of the reason Sasuke had deserted.

“It should have been me,” Naruto added after a while. “We were always the ones fighting, not you. I should have been the one to give chase, not you.”

She growled, her hand clenching around his painfully. “Don’t say dumb shit like that,” she hissed. “If you had chased him down instead of me, things could have been totally different. They could have been better, or so much worse. I’d never take that risk. Anyway, what’s done is done. We have to move forward, Naruto. The rest of the world won’t wait for us to get better.”

He shifted nervously under the pressure of her demanding stare but ended up nodding, at peace once more. “About that… Jiraiya-sama wants to take me away from the village. He says an illegal organisation wants to harm the… the people like me, and that it’s time he trains me seriously so I can defend myself.”

Slowly, Hitomi closed her eyes. So that had happened too. She clenched her teeth to swallow the anxiety that spread in her belly. “I see. Well, take advantage of the opportunity to learn everything he’s willing to teach you. I know you’ll be strong, I never doubted that. Y-you’ll write, won’t you?”

Naruto brightened, as if he’d forgotten that she had invented a way to stay in touch. He nodded enthusiastically, beaming at her. It was like having the sun indoors. “Of course, I promise!”

“Perfect. I’ll write too. When do you leave, and for how long?”

“I-I leave tomorrow at dawn. Tsunade-sama said you wouldn’t be out of the hospital yet so I wanted to see you at least once before I leave. I’ll miss you lots, Hitomi-nee.”

So soon. Could her heart stand to be torn to shreds twice back to back? “I’ll miss you too, Naruto. I don’t know how I could bear it without the notebooks. Give me a hug, now, so I don’t cry.”

Horrified by the prospect of his sister’s tears, the boy obliged. His arms were gentle around her so he wouldn’t wake the pains and aches of her wound and broken bone, but it comforted her just as much as his normal crushing hugs. They stayed huddled together, Anosuke still happily snoring against her other flank, until Naruto stepped away and said he had to prepare for his trip. He seemed reluctant to leave, so much so that she told him to go so she could sleep. A lie. She didn’t want to sleep.

Shikamaru slowly opened his eyes and sat up straighter in his chair. His dark irises were full of torment. For him, the impact of this mission had probably been huge, in the worst way possible. The first time he ever led a mission. She extended a hand and he took it, his features an indecipherable mask. They chatted, their voices barely louder than a whisper, carefully avoiding the elephant in the room. He only stepped away to replenish her cup of water. She heard him stop in the bathroom and spend a long moment perfectly still, his breathing heavy and out of rhythm. When he came back, his eyes were rimmed with red and quite puffy. They didn’t speak of it.

When Hitomi woke up the next morning, her mother and Ensui were in her room, Asuma standing behind his girlfriend's chair with his hands on her shoulders as a silent show of support. The girl didn’t say anything, a knot of stifled sobs stuck in her throat. She settled for curling up, turned towards her mother. Kurenai rubbed a hand against her back in silence for a long time. They didn’t know what to say, because there were no words to fill the void left by Sasuke and Naruto’s departures.

Two days later, Hitomi was allowed to go back home. She was escorted by her mentor and Lee, who had spent a lot of time in the hospital these past few days between her bedside and Neji’s – the Hyūga still hadn’t woken up. It would happen soon, according to Shizune. The two teenagers held hands as they walked in comfortable silence. Often, Hitomi had to ask for a break so she could catch her breath or manage the pain that radiated in her sternum at the slightest of solicitations. She tried to hide her frustration when it happened, but she knew she couldn’t fool either of her companions. They knew her too well.

Finding a new form of balance was a proper quest and took her several days. She took Anosuke on long walks through the Deer Forest, Ensui quietly following them, worked on her seals when she was able to focus, spent an unholy amount of time curled up against Hoshihi – Hana had healed him quickly then sent him back to her – and telling him about things that were superficial, unimportant. This was on purpose. Neither of them wanted to come back to the traumas of recent events.

Then Ensui brought her the help he had promised in the form of a Yamanaka civilian, identifiable as such thanks to his striking blue eyes and long, white-blond hair, which were held in a braid that hung on his back. He had soft features, a sunny smile – and on his tongue and wrists were the confidentiality seals that would force him to keep Hitomi’s secrets even under torture. Opening up to him was even harder than it had been the first time with Fukuda; he didn’t look like her but acted in a similar manner, and was careful, gentle and understanding just like her.

“I cannot in good conscience give you any medication, Yūhi-san. Tsunade-sama’s recommendation for shinobi on active duty or who are headed back to it is to stick to other forms of healing. Antidepressants have a very harmful effect on meridians and disturb chakra control, two things that can be very dangerous in your line of work. But that doesn’t mean you won’t heal. There are other ways.”

He knew she loved to write, so he used that medium to work with her. He taught her to allow words to flow in stark savagery or gentle melancholy, always sincere, always hard to read aloud without choking. She didn’t write about the things that had hurt her, instead focusing on day-to-day events, obsessive memories, and interesting subjects. Still, it freed her a little from the weight of her traumas.

“You have taken charge of a boy, isn’t that right?”

She told him about Anosuke, about the pressing, overwhelming feeling that she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t the one he needed, and the therapist soothed her. He explained why, in her nightmares, the child had been captured once more, why she felt better when she slid in his room at night and listened to his breathing. He made sense of her irrational fears, of the deeply rooted wariness that often poisoned her thoughts.

Slowly, she got better. She found in herself the energy to work, to be efficient. She took several D-ranked missions in the span of a few days, all inside the village and mostly at the Academy and at the hospital, where she could hang out with Karin and Sakura when the girls weren’t working under Tsunade’s supervision – they had officially become the Sannin’s apprentices.

Every night, Ensui met her in her room. They spoke about their day and, while they did it, he discreetly evaluated her emotional state, her progress. Some nights, she pleaded for him to stay, when she knew she would have nightmares bad enough to make her sick. Her therapist approved of the relationship they had built – it proved Hitomi was capable of real, complete trust, despite everything.

She spent quite a bit of time on her correspondence. Her letters to Itachi progressively became longer, their exchanges more intense and personal. It was indeed his crow that she had seen in the Valley of the End. He was thankful for her actions regarding Sasuke, even though he knew probably better than anyone else how painful the consequences were. She wrote to Haku and Gaara, too. They had both been worried by her long period of silence. Naruto was a very active pen pal as well, just as he had promised, but she had a feeling that he wouldn’t always be. Writing letters just wasn’t his thing. As long as he kept her in the loop, she would be okay with it.

“You called for me, Hokage-sama?”

“Yes, Hitomi-chan. Your uncle told me you still intended to go to the next Chūnin exam. Because of the circumstances, you need a new team, so here is my decision on the matter: you’ll go along with my apprentices as a team, under Kakashi-sensei’s guidance. Do you have any objections?”

Confused, the girl turned her gaze to said apprentices, who were standing next to her in front of Tsunade’s desk. She had expected to take Shikamaru’s spot in Team Ten for the exam, but maybe Tsunade had found a better fit for them. At least, she got along well with Sakura and Karin, and she knew they could work together. “None, Tsunade-sama.”

The war chief didn’t ask the two other girls for their opinion – probably because she had already done so in private. As for Kakashi, he seemed a bit lost. Suddenly nervous, Hitomi bit the inside of her cheek to keep still and waited for more information.

“Very well. You’ll have two weeks to work on your team dynamic and various skills. You’re already aware of my expectations towards this exam, and I know you won’t disappoint me.”

The two young apprentices straightened up visibly, made taller and prouder by the weight of their mentor’s confidence in their abilities. Hitomi understood, better than she could have put into words. She had often reacted the same with Ensui, and it still happened.

Behind her, as if accepting the idea to start again with a new team, Kakashi sighed. “Well, since it’s all decided, I’ll meet you at the training ground number three for a test tomorrow morning. Hitomi-chan, you know the drill.”

“Yes, the bell test. Such good memories…”

“If you say so. Well, s–”

“Sensei.”

“Yes, Hitomi-chan?”

“If you are more than an hour late, I’ll tell Mom that you planted Jiraiya-sama’s books on my bookshelves.” Oh, she had used the sweetest tone, the most candid look in her repertoire, but the man flinched as if she had slapped him and shunshined away after swearing he’d be on time – which she didn’t believe for a second. When he was gone, Tsunade collapsed on top of her desk, howling with laughter.

“Oh, the Hermit be blessed, Kusagakure isn’t ready for your lot. Well, girls, time to go. I heard you have a test to prepare for.”

The three kunoichi obeyed, staying silent for a time. Outside the Tower, civilians filled the streets, eager to get home after a long day at work. Hitomi suggested the little café where Lee took her at least once a week, and her two new teammates accepted.

“So, what’s the deal with this test?” Sakura asked when they all had their food and drink in front of them.

“We arrive at dawn, we pray that my threat against Kakashi-sensei worked and he’s not too late, and we try to take two bells from him before noon. Last time, he had adapted his level to around weak Chūnin, so we can expect him to play it around weak Jōnin this time, just enough to be a borderline impossible challenge.”

“Do you have a plan?” Karin asked.

“Several, in fact, depending on your skills. Everything will rest on teamwork, which is what he wants to see above all else. Sakura?”

The girl understood the implicit question and started listing her shinobi skill. Her best asset was of course medical ninjutsu, but Tsunade had mercilessly trained her and she wasn’t too bad in an actual fight. She was also gifted in dodging and evasion. The same went for Karin, who also had a few Earth Style jutsus to bring to the table. Then, it was Hitomi’s turn. Of course, it took longer: she had always trained above reason and tended to diversify her skills; some of those, though, wouldn’t be usable in this situation. She didn’t want to make a real attempt on Kakashi’s life. She would have a tiny chance to succeed, and she didn’t want to take the risk.

“So it’s decided?” Karin concluded after an hour of brainstorming. “You agree with the plan?”

“No problem.”

“Me neither. Can’t wait. The one who said payback’s a bitch was right, and what better than a bitch to take on the Hound?” The three girls snickered at that and left the café.

The following morning, Hitomi was the first to arrive, her cats in tow. She was dressed in full battle gear, and even Hai had been summoned: she would work with Sakura and Hokori, since both had shown talent for Genjutsu. Karin would have Haīro and Sunaarashi, one cat specialised in close combat and another in communication, so she wouldn’t be isolated from Sakura during their test. After all, the two girls were used to working together. Hitomi, of course, would work with Hoshihi and Kurokumo, the two cats she had the best affinity with.

Kakashi had apparently taken Hitomi’s threat to heart: he arrived at the training ground late, yes, but only by fifty-six minutes. He examined all three of them, his one visible eye gleaming with approval when he realised Hitomi’s cats wouldn’t work only with their summoner. Oh, if only he knew… She had to bite her cheek to suppress the feral grin that wanted to play on her lips while he told them about the rules of the test. They hadn’t changed, which was good for their plan.

“Ready? Start!”

Hitomi’s chakra went wild and an explosion tore through the ground, shook the trees and slammed against her ears despite the protective layer of energy she had secured around them. The three girls scattered like a flock of birds, taking advantage of the sensei’s surprise to hide. Finally, the Yūhi girl could use what her master had taught her in battle: she had created these explosive seals with her own language, which allowed her to recreate chemical reactions as long as the necessary elements were stored inside the seal.

She ran through hand seals and several water clones appeared around her, then changed form to Sakura and two of her cats. After their sugary interlude, the newly formed team had decided a training session was in order, so they could see how the others fought and mimic it to an extent. While her clones went to distract Kakashi, she tracked down Sakura and found her way to her.

“You didn’t tell me the explosion would be that loud!” the girl hissed, seemingly shaken. “The ANBU will come if we continue like that!”

“Sakura-chan, I’ve been training here since graduation. Trust me, the ANBU learned to ignore any explosion coming from here. Ready?”

“Yeah, I did everything according to plan. We just need Karin now.”

“Okay, let’s go get her. She is in this direction, two hundred metres away.”

Sometimes, Hitomi’s senses really came in handy: no matter where her teammates went on the training ground, she could track them down and even, if she focused, decipher their movements and deduce what they were doing. Soon, the three girls and six cats were reunited, far enough from Kakashi that he wouldn’t notice – he was still busy fighting her clones, and she sent new ones regularly.

“Hai, your turn.”

“Gotcha!”

The young cat jumped down from Sakura’s shoulders and ran away, her feet so light they didn’t even disturb the dust and dirt on the ground. Hitomi mounted on her familiar’s back and, with a sign to her allies, launched him towards the river. Her water jutsus would be stronger there, after all. Hoshihi stepped on the moving water without any difficulty. Oh, he’d hated learning to walk on liquid, but he was good at it now.

Kakashi appeared between the tree, looking scared shitless. He was right to be: Hai had made him believe that Hitomi was being attacked by Orochimaru. It was a dirty trick, but payback was indeed a bitch and she hadn’t forgotten the illusion he had made her see during their last bell test. He didn’t have time to react to the sight of his Genin, well and ready to fight, before a huge wave of icy water turned away from the river and slammed into him. Sakura jumped, focusing as much chakra as she could in her fist and punched the floor towards Karin, who used the cracked earth for her capture jutsu, the Earth Prison. It was already too late, though: Kakashi had taken advantage of the violent impact to jump as well, high enough that the earth pillars couldn’t catch him.

Hitomi, however, had expected such a move. She pressed her legs against Hoshihi’s flanks so he would jump as well, as high as he could. When they reached her sensei’s height, trying oh so very hard not to laugh at his flabbergasted expression, she shunshined to his back so he wouldn’t have anywhere to flee to. She hit him on the hip, but she wasn’t Sakura; the kick was just strong enough to make him groan. She extended a hand, wrapped it around his waist, brushed against the bells…

He had disappeared.

She swore, sent chakra to her legs to absorb the worst of her fall, then used three successive Kai to make sure he hadn’t used a Genjutsu in layers on her. No, that wasn’t it. She found the ghost of his chakra with her senses – he was so good at hiding it, so much better than she’d ever be – and realised he was already running away.

“Well?” Karin asked when she straightened up.

“Almost got them. He didn’t hit me back, so I guess he’s happy with our teamwork. Trust me, the man can hold a grudge.”

“Tch… Are you sure you can’t use your shadows against him?”

“Too much of a power difference. The last time I tried, he emptied my reserves with an accidental twitch. I’d bear it better now, but not that much, and I haven’t reconstituted my reserves enough to compensate for it.”

Hours went by. They had devised several plans, all focused on combining their skills – once, Hitomi even used her shadows to guide Sakura’s movements from a distance – but nothing worked against Kakashi. When the alarm clock rang, the training ground was the worst mess it had ever been in Hitomi’s time. The night she had spent trapping the fuck out of it with seals and chemicals hadn’t been enough to take a Jōnin by surprise.

“Well,” he said after stopping the alarm, “for Genin thrown together yesterday, you work well together. And I can make something oit of you.”

Hitomi, sprawled against the roots of a tree since Kakashi’s last kick, lifted her head and let out a groan. He had gotten her on the thigh, just hard enough to send her flying. She would have one hell of a bruise, that was for sure. Medical chakra around her hands, Sakura knelt by her side and worked on reducing the pain. She wasn’t looking much better, her pretty pink hair stained with dirt and quite a bit of blood.

“You won’t take any mission for the two next weeks. All your working time will be focused on training. You’re the only kunoichi team in the exam, which means you’ll be a target. I’ll prepare you accordingly. Anyway, who wants to go eat something?”

The three girls exchanged glances and lifted a hand. After a night and half a day of work, they were all starving, and they needed strength for the exam to come.

Chapter 83: To Kusagakure

Notes:

Life has been a mess for quite some time now. I'm sorry y'all had to wait so long. Please be assured that no, I'm not giving up on this translation. Enjoy!

During the following days, the three girls spent a lot of time talking about Kusagakure’s terrain, weather at this time of the year, as well as the fauna and flora in the area. Their best source of intelligence was Karin, of course, since she had lived there from her birth until the last Chūnin exam. Tsunade had been the one to put a seal of approval on her citizenship request, and had been delighted to threaten and cajole diplomats from the other village to get the transfer done as quickly as possible. They also asked Shikaku, who had been deployed there for almost a year towards the end of the Second Shinobi World War, and he handed them a list of other shinobi who had been sent there more recently.

Stuck between the two powerhouses that were the Lands of Fire and Earth, the Land of Grass had Kusagakure as its Hidden Village. The weather there was humid and colder than Konoha’s. Swamps were plentiful, and so were the animals that preferred such an environment. The ground, softer than the one they were used to, often hid charming traps like quicksand, and insects could be a real pain in the ass. Ensui gave Hitomi several recipes for repellents she would be able to craft from herbs commonly found in that area, and Tsunade did the same with her apprentices. They were preparing, and not only for enemy shinobi.

Kakashi trained them mercilessly, but didn’t exhaust them beyond what they could take. He even stopped Hitomi from going further, using a delicate mix of psychological manipulation and unyielding authority. He didn’t let his successes fool him, though: he was perfectly aware that she worked on her seals when she went back home, but Ensui made sure she slept enough, and he had over her an authority Kakashi himself would never possess.

The day before they left, the three girls spent the night at Kurenai’s so they could go over their gear together one last time. They wouldn’t go back to Konoha before the end of the tournament, so they would have uninterrupted time to train after the second stage. That meant they had to take everything they thought they would need with them, and improvise if something was missing. Fortunately, thanks to Hitomi’s storage seals, they didn’t need to put a limit on volumes or quantities.

Kakashi was only fifteen minutes late the next morning, which was a very thoughtful effort. Hitomi had already said her goodbyes to Ensui and Anosuke as well as the rest of her clan. The two other teams from her generation were participating too: Hitomi almost choked when she saw Sai , the agent from ROOT, replace Shikamaru in Team Ten. Did Danzō need a spy in the foreign exam, or did he just want to promote his boy through official means?

The Kusajin exam was small compared to those organised by the Great Elemental Nations. Konoha was only sending six teams, including its rookies – Hitomi and her peers – which was a drop in the water compared to the twenty-nine teams sent to the exam it had hosted. According to Kakashi, the other villages participating were following the same trend. The intelligence collected by the village’s spies spoke of Kumogakure and Iwagakure each sending a team as a polite gesture, three teams sent by Suna, and two teams each for Amegakure and Takigakure. As for Kusagakure, the host, they planned on enrolling eight teams into the exam. Sixty-nine Genin, against one hundred and fifty-three last time.

Kakashi had explained that those smaller numbers were legally imposed by the treaty around the shared exams: for countries that weren’t part of the Five Great, it was impossible to welcome a colossal event such as the one Konoha had hosted, so various villages could only send a fixed percentage of their Genin. That meant that the general level of those exams was usually higher starting from the second task, when fights were authorised and often impossible to avoid.

When all the teams were gathered at the Gates, Tsunade came to wish them good fortune, and then they were off. Only the six sensei, including Asuma, Kurenai and Maito Gai, were escorting them. Hitomi hadn’t doubted for a second that their teams would be sent to Kusagakure: all the Genin from her generation, as well as Lee’s team, were more than capable of gaining Konoha glory at this exam. After the humiliation of the invasion, they needed all the glory they could get.

The three rookie teams as well as Gai’s spent most of their time together. Without the mission to chase after Sasuke, Neji wouldn’t have been accepted amongst them: Hitomi hadn’t quite forgiven him for attacking Hinata, and her peers tended to follow her lead. But he had almost died for her brother, without question, without hesitation, and this had mellowed her almost against her will. The two other teams Tsunade had sent didn’t mingle with them, content to sneer at them from a distance.

Reaching the border at shinobi speed usually didn’t take more than a day but, for such a large group, speed wasn’t a priority. They sometimes had to stop and find other routes that would accommodate their group and spare them from separating; at sunset, they found a prairie large enough to set camp, halfway to their destination. The sensei spread around the camp to better protect it while the Genin laid claim to the space – the Fellowship and Team Gai on one side and the two other teams on the other.

“I propose a pact of non-aggression and cooperation for the two first stages,” Hitomi whispered when they were all settled. “Neji, Lee, Tenten and Sai, you weren’t part of it last time, but I think we’ll all agree on this: you’re part of the group now.” She stared at Neji, her eyes full of a demanding severity she almost never showed to her peers. She wouldn’t forget… But she could put her grievances aside, someplace where they wouldn’t interfere with the mission, which was to shine during the exam. Tsunade wouldn’t want the Genin she expected so much from to fight amongst themselves. Her friends nodded, one after the other.

“We agree,” Kiba said for his team.

“Us too,” Ino added.

Sai hadn’t said anything since their departure from Konoha. He had introduced himself before Tsunade had come to see them off, but in such an unnatural way that no one had known how to react, aside from the polite response they had been raised to give. Even now, when his input could have been valuable, he only stared at them intently. He looked so much like Sasuke when he did that, with his black eyes, noble features and pale, perfect skin that screamed Uchiha to anyone who would listen, that Hitomi had refrained from looking at him too much. Even a glance agitated painful memories.

“So it’s settled, then. Sai-san, since it’s your first exam, here’s what we know…”

Ino and Chōji had probably already explained, but a reminder wouldn’t hurt. It was probably even reassuring for some of them, like Hinata and Chōji, who were quite nervous to take on another Chūnin exam. Under the Jōnin’s discreet surveillance, she explained once again the general concepts of the three stages, as well as the possibility of a selection before the tournament if the second stage was considered too easy in hindsight. Then, because she was really nice, she added all the intel collected about Kusagakure.

They reached the village under a cheerful sun, in the middle of the afternoon. Traveling through the prairies typical of the area around the border between the two countries had been a lot easier than through the forest. That had been a source of relief for the Jōnin, who weren’t too fond of spending time in foreign territory outside a Hidden Village if they could avoid it. Sure, the Land of Grass wasn’t their enemy, but they all had fought at least one battle in the area. This was hard to forget.

A Kusajin team was waiting for them at the entrance of the village. It was entirely composed of Chūnin, who welcomed them politely. They focused on the Jōnin-sensei, then checked everyone’s identity. The Village Hidden in the Grass was also called the Diplomatic Village. Most peace and commercial treaties were signed there, when the lords and war chiefs didn’t want to go all the way to the Land of Iron, the only place in the world where a Gokage could take place. For those shinobi who learned diplomacy from a very young age, today’s encounter was as easy as a walk in the park.

They were escorted to their hotel – traditionally, each delegation stayed at a different hotel to limit interactions and thus conflict – and their hosts explained the rules that would apply to them until they left the village. They were allowed to walk freely in the civilian districts, like any tourist or guest, but the ninja departments, the Academy and training grounds were forbidden outside the stages of the exam. They were also forbidden from fighting any Kusajin civilian or shinobi outside a training session supervised by at least one Jōnin from the village.

The list went on and on for a long time. Hitomi understood, of course: after the disaster that the last exam and the invasion had been, security would be increased. Still, that didn’t stop her from tuning out after a while. Her brain didn’t need to be actively engaged to memorise the rules. Besides, the light pouring in from the large windows at the floor level of their hotel was far prettier than the Chūnin who was listing the rules.

Each team had a comfortable bedroom with its own bathroom; it wouldn’t be said that Kusagakure didn’t offer their guests the best accommodations. As soon as she had settled, Hitomi read through the documents she had received. The first stage of the exam would happen in two days, at three in the afternoon. To her greatest – and a little guilty – delight, Lee joined her in her room when he was sure that her two teammates had gone down to dinner in the hotel’s restaurant.

“I didn’t know if you would think of it,” she whispered as she ushered him inside.

The first kiss was wild and perhaps a bit harsh. For them, the exam was also a goodbye: when Lee would be promoted, which wasn’t subject to any doubt, he would hit the road with his sensei and leave for several years. Tsunade would be ill-advised if she didn’t promote his whole team at once after the tournament: Konoha desperately needed new Chūnin. They still agreed on separating when the time came, but the idea alone hurt , and they clung to what they still had.

They had never been alone in a bedroom before: Kurenai had always asked them to leave the door open and their feet on the ground, and they had followed her instructions. But there were no adults here to stop them from falling on the bed, giggling in glee. Lee’s hands stopped on the sensitive skin of her hips – under the clothes, and what a delightful idea that was – and she let out an enchanted sigh before nipping playfully on his lower lip.

She felt in his hard muscles the desire he had for her and tried to rein in, the willpower he needed not to yield to his hormones and to hell with it. She had the same problem too, really, her head so light, and the oh so perfect shivers running down her skin and leaving it so damn sensitive . She wanted nothing more than to touch his body with hers, explore it, steal his breath away, and those tiny groans he couldn’t suppress when she kissed his neck or ran her nails along his spine. But they knew they weren’t ready for more, not yet. Their bodies tried to persuade them, with the hormones a heady fuel, but going any further than intense snogging would be a mistake, and they were both aware of it.

“I love you,” Lee whispered against her ear. “Those feelings will fade, but for now…”

Hitomi’s heart leaped in her chest, immediately calmed down by the anticipation of the pain she would be in when they went their separate ways. She tried to push it away, but it was already there, a slow, bittersweet melody in her ears. “But for now,” she said, “it’s like you can’t think about anything else, and you wish it never had to stop. I know, Lee… Me too. I love you too.”

They looked at each other for a long time without saying anything else. Never before had they put their feelings into words; they hadn’t been sure, and when their hearts had decided, both around the same time, they already knew that their relationship was destined to end. She caressed his cheek and, with a jolt of her hip, rolled them over. She was now on top of him, showered in all her glory by the golden light of the end of the afternoon. Lee looked up at her, shyness and adoration ablaze in his black eyes, and she answered with a tender smile, her fingertips tracing the line of his cheekbone. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s take advantage of this for as long as it lasts.”

He smiled back and straightened up to kiss the delicate skin at the junction of her neck and shoulder. When she shivered, her eyes closing against her will, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his body. Taking advantage of the situation, yes… They could do that. Between enamoured sighs and delighted giggles, the two teenagers made the best of their hour alone together, before admitting it was time to go downstairs and eat. Oh, Kakashi and Gai would have kittens when they saw them walk down hand in hand.

Or not. Because they were too busy stopping a diplomatic incident from happening. Hitomi frowned when she saw her friends gathered in the middle of the dining room. They weren’t turned towards her, but a surge of chakra had them parting and making way for her to step in and see what was happening. Karin was cowering behind Sakura. She had tears in her eyes and nursed her cheek. Her movements slow and fluid in the sudden silence, Hitomi walked to her and gently brushed her hand away. Her scarlet eyes detailed the mark on her teammate’s cheek, the painful-looking skin that was already swelling up. Nothing that Karin couldn’t heal, but she was obviously in shock.

Hitomi exchanged a look with Ino, who looked beyond pissed, and led her teammate to the blonde girl. The sensei were watching the scene but didn’t step in. Their hands, however, were close to their weapons. They would destroy the building in a few seconds if the situation got worse, and kill anyone inside that they hadn’t sworn to protect. Hitomi stepped to Sakura’s side. She was a good head shorter than the Haruno girl, but the contained violence oozing out of her, mixed in with threatening sweetness and pure chakra, made the others’ gazes focus on her and her alone. “Explain,” she ordered Sakura, her tone quiet and measured.

In front of them were three teenagers, two girls and a boy, all older than her group by at least a few years. The girl in the middle was probably the one who had hit Karin, and she flicked her hair back with bravado, as if to show the room that she didn’t fear Hitomi. They were all wearing the Kusajin forehead protector and, when she extended her senses, Hitomi didn’t feel anything peculiar about their chakra – they were Genin, just like her.

“This girl,” Sakura said, “recognised Karin and started insulting her for ‘deserting’. When Karin explained that the situation had been handled legally, she grabbed her by the front of her shirt and slapped her hard.”

The Yūhi girl sneered, her aura thickening a bit more – chakra was oozing through her skin, corrosive and smothering. She flashed her sweetest, fiercest smile, the one she had trained in front of the mirror to master. “Really? And here I was, hoping that the Kusajin shinobi would be better than anyone at diplomacy. If you can’t even do that, I can’t even begin to fathom how bad your other skills must be.”

Her sensei was watching, stern but clearly approving, so she took a step forward. She was a lot smaller and thinner than the kunoichi she was antagonising mercilessly, and had left all her weapons in her room, but no one right now would have doubted her ability to bring pain and agony without steel.

“For this offense,” she continued, almost purring, “I will make it my priority to personally tear you apart during the exam. And if you still haven’t learned your lesson by then… Well, an accident during a mission can happen so easily, can’t it?”

The girl in front of her couldn’t suppress a wince – Hitomi took that as a signal to open her meridians once more and make sure she couldn’t forget her and her teammates’ chakra signature – then lifted her head, looking offended and furious. “You can’t speak to me like that! You’re in my village, nothing but a guest, you should ask for my forgiveness!”

“I can’t, really? And do you think you can lay a hand on esteemed guests of your village, attack them without cause? If you think yourself above blame, then please, let’s go see your war chief. I’m sure he’ll be very interested in this.”

Her opponent deflated almost physically: her shoulders sagged, a faint blush crept up her cheeks, her features tensed in disgust and powerlessness alike. Hitomi watched that unfold, perfectly still, an eyebrow cocked as if to dare her. Finally, the Kusajin cursed and walked back to her teammates. Only then did Hitomi add insult to the injury by turning her back on the girl, who hissed, and went back to her own friends.

She weaved between her peers, finding Karin who seemed to have overcome the shock of the attack, and whose bruised cheek was only a bad memory. She made sure of it, brushing the skin with her fingers, her threatening demeanour forgotten and diluted in the ambient air. Around the group, the Jōnin relaxed slightly. The girl knew why they hadn’t stepped in: a Jōnin attacking a Genin from the host village, even in retaliation, would have been serious enough to lead to a conflict between Konoha and Kusagakure. They had had their hands tied… but they still would have considered war if the Kusajin had gone too far.

“I can’t even leave you on your own for an hour,” Hitomi sighed tenderly, wrapping an arm around Karin’s shoulder. “You know, Team Seven is said to be the unluckiest in Konoha, and you’re not exactly helping  tomake this reputation go away.”

“Honestly,” Sakura teased, “I’m relieved you weren’t there, Hitomi. If you’d seen that bitch do it, you’d have hanged her with her own intestine, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, no, of course not. Too dirty. I’d have fed her to my cats. Don’t worry, if her team is part of the exam we’ll destroy them personally.” She took the time to eye the Kusajin team as they left the building. What they had been doing here she couldn’t even understand. The hotel was booked for Konohajin, coming here and looking for trouble was already an insult to diplomacy.

The ambient tension seemed to have dissipated at first glance, but any observing party would have noticed the signs of a potential conflict brewing. Tenten’s hand was on her scrollpack, Hinata had activated her Byakugan, Ino was using a senbon to clean her nails. Everywhere, glimpses of symbolic aggression whispered like a promise how the Konohajin rookies and their allies would flatten the Kusajin Genin as soon as they could. Vengeance was serious business for them.

The meal itself was quiet. Most Genin had already had their fill, but they didn’t want to leave Hitomi and Lee alone after that incident. The civilian staff of the hotel looked at them warily, and yet ignored the much greater threat the Jōnin would become, if such an altercation were to happen again. When she was done with her meal, Hitomi climbed back to her room, her teammates with her.

Once she was in the bedroom, she worked on her correspondence. She had a message from Itachi – like she had suspected, the jinchūriki were the main topic of discussion. She had to obtain this promotion if she wanted to be free to travel – and maybe, maybe it would make the whole situation better, maybe she would manage to save or at least warn them so they didn’t fall for the traps awaiting them like lambs to the wolves.

I have started working on a plan , she assured him. I’m currently elaborating the necessary seals, but it’s incredibly complicated and I have to use a language that otherwise doesn’t exist, so I can’t promise I’ll be able to stop the attacks when they come. However, Itachi-san, if you’re so inclined, I’d like you to share with me what your organisation knows about the jinchūriki, and to warn me if you obtain new information. Can you do so without getting noticed by the others?

I’m also worried by the state of your eyes. I know you don’t like to talk about it, but, Itachi-san, I found a scroll in the archives I got ages ago from your clan’s lands. It describes this slow decay of the eyes… If nothing is done, if no remedy is found, you’ll be blind one day. I think you’re aware of this – just like you’re aware of what such disability would mean in your position.

I know how hard it is to keep fighting, Itachi-san, but please, don’t give up just yet.

I certainly won’t.

Sincerely,

Yūhi Hitomi.

She sent the message then fell onto the bed. The memory of Lee there earlier made her cheeks go warm. She rubbed her face, as if she could make the pink shade of her skin go away with a brush of her fingers. Sakura and Karin had taken their shower while she was working, so it was her turn now. She lounged under the hot water, her face tilted upwards. For once, she took her sweet time, took care of herself more consciously than she would with a purely utilitarian shower, so much so that, when she left the bathroom, Sakura and Karin were already asleep.

After a few moments of hesitation, she decided to go back downstairs. The Jōnin had taken over the private section of the restaurant, separated from the rest of the room by screens decorated with a painting of a mountain range. Almost shyly, Hitomi walked around them. The adults stared at her, seemingly searching for something. She glanced at the sake bottles, all at least half-empty, on the round table they were sitting around. “Tradition?” she asked innocently.

“Ah, Hitomi-chan! Shouldn’t you be in your room right now?”

“Kakashi-sensei, you didn’t exactly give us a bedtime. I don’t really want to sleep right now.”

She realised he was perfectly sober when he gave her a meaningful look. He had talked to Ensui. He knew, and she knew he knew – she had accepted that his involvement was necessary for her to one day get better. Besides, he was still the only one to know what some of her nightmares showed her. He signalled for her to approach and gave her a shot glass full of alcohol.

“Kurenai, I think she’s old enough to try it, don’t you?”

Hitomi’s mother looked at the glass in her daughter’s hands for a moment – she wasn’t drunk either, only a little tipsy, and it was probably Asuma’s arms wrapped around her that made her feel that way rather than alcohol. She nodded. “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” she said gently, “but you can if you want. I’d rather you try in front of me, surrounded by people who have your safety at heart, than doing it behind my back when I can’t make sure you’re okay.”

The girl looked at the shot glass too, her brow furrowed, then decided on the course of action to follow here. She took it to her lips and allowed the liquid to slide in her mouth, then down her throat. The burning feeling made her eyes sting, but she savoured it while it lasted. She lost herself in the strange pain that warmed up something deep inside her. In answer, the Whisper trilled. Her cheeks warmed up and she raised an eyebrow, staring at the Jōnin with obvious surprise. “So that ’s the stuff that puts some adults in such a pitiful state?”

Asuma and Kakashi laughed, then the two other Jōnin she didn’t know joined them. One of them, small and burly, his head shaved and skin burned by years under the sun, bent over the table towards the Copy Nin. “Your kitten has claws, Hatake!”

“Of course she does, you know I only take the top picks. So, Hitomi-chan, another one?”

Her tongue captured the last aromas from the liquid at the corner of her lips. She put the glass back on the table. “Yes, please.”

Chapter 84: The Jōnin’s Tradition

The first thing Hitomi did when she sat at the table, Kakashi and Gai on her right and Kurenai and Asuma on her left side, was shake the little bell that would summon a waiter, so she could order more sashimi. She wasn’t stupid enough to drink without eating on the side. After emptying her second shot, the move as slow and determined as the first one had been, she filled her glass with water she created from her chakra, as discreetly as she could – not a chance, of course, to escape the Jōnin’s notice. Still, her mother nodded in approval.

“So, why are we drinking tonight?” she asked idly.

They exchanged looks, their long, nimble fingers playing with the rim of their glasses, with a fold of fabric, with the stick left from a dango. She realised she had put her foot in her mouth but refused to back down: she would know, one way or another.

“It’s a tradition, just like you said,” Kakashi confirmed reluctantly.

She waited, eating a deliciously rich slice of tuna without ever turning her gaze away from him. She felt a kind of diffuse tension around the table, as if the Jōnin’s chakra had spread in the air without them realising it. At that power level, that wasn’t exactly surprising. For them, it was as natural as breathing.

“I think it started at the second intervillage exam,” Kurenai stepped in. “I heard some older Jōnin-sensei talk about it once. They knew that, two days after that night, at least some Genin would die. Perhaps theirs would be on the list of casualties. So they gathered in a Sunajin bar and drank until they forgot, just for the night, what could happen to their students.”

Frowning, Hitomi nodded. The death toll during the last exam, even in the Forest only… And the tournaments could also be deadly. The referee always tried to stop a fight before it was too late, but they couldn’t always step in in time to prevent the broken neck, the throat slit, the knife in the heart. Her hand shaking slightly, she rubbed the place where she had made Sasuke stab her. She had inflicted this wound upon herself but, for him, the consequences were the same as if he had decided to do it. She saw the way his Sharingan bloomed into a Kaleidoscope behind her eyelids as she blinked and emptied her third shot in hope it would chase the image away.

“I get it. I hope it’s not a bother that I decided to join. I don’t intend on dying in two days but, still, it’s a big event, right?”

“Right. What would you like to do if you’re promoted, Hitomi-chan?” Gai asked.

“Hitting the road again with Ensui-shishou would be amazing, if Shikaku-ojisan accepts to have his best assistant ever taken away for a long time. After all, Naruto left, so why not me?” Of course, she didn’t mention Sasuke’s departure. For all intents and purposes, he was now a nukenin. None of these Jōnin, not even her mother, knew the truth behind his choice. It was for their safety, and his as well, that they could never know.

“You play poker, Hitomi-chan?” one of the Jōnin she didn’t know asked. “We were about to start playing before you arrived.”

The teenager’s gaze went from one adult to the other. She knew the rules of poker, of course, and had played her fair share of games against Ensui without any stake, just to learn to bluff and cheat . Of course shinobi cheated at poker. It was even the whole purpose of the game for them, cheating with enough skill that they didn’t get caught. Her movement slow and deliberate so she got their full attention on her, she got a purse full of bills from her pocket and put it on the table. This was just a drop in the ocean of her savings; selling seals and explosives for the village was very lucrative, and that didn’t even take her payments from missions into account.

“I play. You’ll probably flatten me, but I play.”

She had stopped counting her shots by now, but she was a bit disappointed: where was the inebriation she had been promised? She only felt a comfortable wave of heat in her belly, something close to what snogging with Lee did to her, and maybe her skin was a bit sensitive and her neck a tad heavy, but that was all. She could still move as precisely, and her chakra system seemed unaffected. She could tell it was different for the others around the table: Asuma’s cheeks were pink, and Gai-sensei was speaking louder than usual, which was saying something.

Her movements quick and practiced, Kurenai handed them their cards under her daughter’s searching eyes. No cheating so far – yet. But when they each took their hand, the Jōnin seemed to organise into tacit teams: Asuma and Kurenai, Kakashi and Gai, and the two others, Hisakata and Fumiho, together. Of course, she was left alone in the middle of three pairs of wolves. She remained expressionless while she looked at her cards. Luck was on her side, but she had to make sure it stayed that way.

She sent chakra into her ears and heard the discreet noise of her mother’s fingers tapping on Asuma’s thigh. She was detailing her hand… Hitomi noted the information without letting anything slip. In Gai and Kakashi’s corner, communication seemed to pass through looks, and she didn’t know the two other shinobi well enough to catch anything from them. One of her hands went under the table, the thumb scraping against the edge of a kunai. A drop of blood, a spark of chakra, and it was her turn to speak through morse. Shielded from view, Hai pressed against her leg in confirmation and got to work.

The games went by, one after the other. Hitomi lost some, especially in the beginning, but her superior officers were more and more affected by alcohol as time flew by, whereas she didn’t feel anything from it. Between that and Hai under the table, she started to gather quite the fortune. Kurenai was more and more touchy-feely the drunker she got: she was now sitting in Asuma’s lap, while her daughter tried very hard not to look at them. The problem was that she didn’t have any better option: Gai-sensei was shirtless, leaning heavily against Kakashi who was reading and playing at the same time, and the two other Jōnin had stopped playing in favour of sleeping on the table.

And, in the middle of all this chaos, she smiled as if everything was alright. Because, somehow, it really was.

Around two in the morning, she left the table, her feline companion perched on her shoulder like a big, furry bird. An arm around Gai’s shoulders, Kakashi opened a lazy eye and, his movements surprisingly telegraphed for someone as wasted as he was, signalled for her to go to sleep. This time, she nodded, with no attempt to prolong her night. She took all the money she had won, put it in a storage seal and went back to her room silently. Before she reached it, she stopped in front of Lee’s door. Had she been drunker or braver, maybe she would have ignored the two other breathing patterns in the room and visited him. With a small sigh, she went back to her own bedroom, careful not to wake her teammates as she lay in bed.

She dreamed as soon as she fell asleep, unable to stop it from happening. Lost in a cloud of poison and vapor alike, unable to see any farther than a few centimetres around, she had to find her way through, to find someone dear, or something terrible would happen. But every step was harder than the last and she fell on her knees then on her flank. Her heavy, irritated eyes closed against her will. She woke up, fighting back the instinct of bursting into panicked tears.

Karin and Sakura were still asleep. Careful not to make any noise, Hitomi tiptoed to the bathroom, grabbing clean clothes on the way. Karin had told them she wanted to take them sightseeing while they still could. It seemed like a good idea. In the shower, Hitomi had to close her eyes and lean against the wall covered in white and blue tiles to push back against the memory of her dream so it wouldn’t be anywhere near the centre of her Library.

“Hitomi?” Sakura’s soft and worried voice called behind the door. “Is everything okay? I can feel your chakra and it’s not…”

“I’m okay,” she said, her voice hoarse and tone drier than she intended. “Don’t worry, I’m almost done.”

She hurried through the rest of her ablutions, dressed quickly and left the bathroom only to meet her friend’s concerned eyes but she’d regained control over her chakra by now. She didn’t understand why the nightmares plagued her that much. It would have been nice to be able to obstruct them and sleep a dreamless night, but she knew she had to bear with them. She gently shook Karin awake and spoke when the Uzumaki girl looked at her, her red eyes still foggy with sleep. “I’m going down for breakfast. Meet you there?”

“Uh… ‘kay…”

Downstairs, the Jōnin all looked very hungover, if one managed to notice the signs. Asuma’s eyes went wide when he saw her, and even more so as he seemed to realise that she was perfectly fine. He mumbled something that sounded disturbingly like ‘demon’ and attempted to drown himself in his cup of tea. He looked like he had it the hardest amongst the six adults, though Gai came close second.

“Ah, Hitomi-chan. Did you sleep well?”

“Not really, but I had fun last night at least. Thanks for letting me join, Mom, Kakashi-sensei.”

Kurenai shrugged, a smile on her lips. “I told you, I’d rather you try that kind of stuff in a safe environment with me on hand, in case something goes wrong.”

The girl nodded and went to fetch herself some breakfast from the buffet set up along one wall of the room. It wasn’t as good as a homemade meal, but the smell rising from the plates was enticing enough to make her stomach growl. She went to join Hinata and Tenten in the queue. “Did you have a good night, girls?”

“Neji snores,” Tenten said. “I had to wait for him to stop before I could fall asleep.”

“We were a bit cramped in our room, with the boys and Akamaru… He’s growing up so fast, it’s getting complicated to have him sleep on Kiba’s bed.”

Hitomi snorted. “Yeah, he’s well on his way to become as big as Kiba’s mom’s dog. What are you going to do today?”

“Shino wants to go see the botanical gardens, so we’re probably going to hang out there for a few hours. After that, I don’t know, probably tourist stuff?”

“Same kind of program here. It’s been ages since we could relax in a foreign village, and it probably won’t happen again for a while, so we want to take advantage of the opportunity today. What about your team, Hitomi?”

“Sakura and I decided to leave the planning to Karin. She’s originally from here, so she knows best. I’d like to try dishes from the region, if possible, and maybe find a bookstore with books I couldn’t find in Konoha.”

The three teenage girls continued chatting around their meal, careful to avoid subjects of interest for anyone who would dare eavesdrop on them. They didn’t really trust the two older teams sent by Konoha alongside them. The six Genin in question hadn’t done anything to close the implicit distance separating them from the rookies and Gai’s team. Oh, Hitomi wished them all the success they could bring onto themselves in the exam, but she wouldn’t go above and beyond to ensure their safety. That privilege, she only handed to her friends.

About an hour later, when everyone had eaten their fill, she joined her teammates at the hotel’s entrance. All three had chosen civilian clothes, but a few weapons were hidden in the folds of fabric, or seals in Hitomi’s case – she even had her sword strapped to her belt, just in case. They weren’t stupid enough to wander in a foreign village without weapons if they were authorised to have them. If they had been that careless, Kakashi would have kicked their asses straight back to Konoha, and he would have been right to do so.

They spent a really pleasant morning strolling through the Hidden Village, guided by Karin. The girl knew everything there was to know about Kusagakure, and then some. Talk after talk, Hitomi had gathered that her friend’s childhood in these streets hadn’t been unhappy, but very lonely. The village was dearly attached to its roots and Karin, with her red hair and foreign name, couldn’t possibly fit in, no matter how hard she tried.

They had lunch in an all-you-can-eat restaurant that had dozens upon dozens of different skewers that they had to cook themselves in a private deepfrier, carved into the table. According to Karin, that kind of restaurant was typical of the area. She advised them on the sauce choice and side dishes, so knowledgeable Hitomi sometimes stopped in her tracks and stared at her as she explained some culinary subtlety to Sakura. Karin was an Uzumaki, that much was for certain. Naruto would be so proud of his cousin when she wrote to him about this.

After a short raid through all the bookshops the village contained, the teenagers decided it was time to go back to the hotel. They were the first to arrive; it was the perfect occasion to relax in the private onsen owned by the hotel. The tension accumulated these past few weeks dissipated a bit in the hot water, in the quiet and enjoyable company.

“Ready for tomorrow?” Karin asked Hitomi when they were back in their room.

“I don’t think I could do more to prepare. If I’m nervous, it’s not for myself but for the others. They’re strong, but what if something happened, something serious and beyond our help?”

“I understand,” the Uzumaki said, sitting next to her teammate and wrapping her in an one-armed hug. Her skin was already sporting so many bite marks… Hitomi forced herself to stop looking. She was hovering on the verge of her Library, as if the answer to her dull anxiety was waiting for her in the rows and rows of memories.

“You said it yourself,” Karin continued, “they’re strong. I know our last exam went terribly wrong but the statistics say it’s almost impossible for something like that to happen to you again.”

“Yeah…”

“You’re right to worry, of course, but do so reasonably, don’t let it eat you alive. You won’t be alone, after all. We’ll watch your back, Sakura and I, and you’ll watch ours.”

The Yūhi girl nodded, allowing Karin’s very reasonable words to spark hope under her very dark thoughts. She knew, after long sessions with her therapist, that those thoughts didn’t really belong to her, didn’t reflect her views of the world. Her mind was tricking her into seeing the worst of each and every situation and possibility. She was working on it, of course, as diligently as she possibly could, but it would be a long time before she healed. This wasn’t your typical wound, after all.

The rest of the day was uneventful. By night time, the Jōnin’s hangover had dissipated, which was a huge relief for their students. The teachers wouldn’t be allowed to help their Genin during the exam, but the youngsters still wanted to shine under their ever-watching eyes, to carry and protect their village’s aspirations with pride. They wanted to get promoted but, above all, they wanted to deserve it, and wanted their sensei to acknowledge their hard work.

“Hitomi,” Kurenai’s voice whispered against her ear in the middle of the night.

Already her body was reacting, muscles taut and burning with contained chakra; her mother immobilised her against the mattress, her hand gentle but firm.

“Calm down, sweetheart, it’s just me. Meet me on the roof?”

“O-Okay…”

Kurenai disappeared in a whirl of dead leaves – and Hitomi had to learn to do that, she had six kilos of glitter in a storage seal and couldn’t wait to use them. The girl dressed up quickly in the dark, perfectly able to see thanks to the chakra infused in her eyes. She left by the window and climbed the wall rather than teleporting; she had never been on the roof of the hotel and blind Shunshin could be a bit risky. Fortunately, Kurenai didn’t seem to mind the short amount of waiting she had gone through. When Hitomi reached the roof, her mother immediately wrapped her in a warm hug.

“I’m sure you’ll do great, sweetheart. I saw you progress so much these past few months. You’ll crush everyone standing between you and your goal, this time.”

Hitomi swallowed through her tight throat. “Mom… Is it wrong for me to want victory and glory? I know that we all want to reach the tournament, to shine, to be acknowledged, but… Wouldn’t it be better for me to be hidden in the shadow of someone else, wouldn’t that make me a better shinobi?”

“The handbook says that yes, you should prefer to remain anonymous. You learned that at the Academy, didn’t you?” The Jōnin’s nimble fingers were soon buried in her daughter’s curls and started to braid a few strands of it. “There is, however, another correct answer to this dilemma. Your mentor is the Strangling Shadow, your sensei the Copy Nin. As for me, I also have a reputation, don’t I? And your grandfather was so good at terrorising the enemy during the Second and Third Shinobi World War that some Iwajin still shudder to this day when you say ‘squeaky toy’ in front of them. A famous name is sometimes stronger than secretive actions.”

A comfortable silence stretched around them, seemingly isolating them from the rest of the world. They couldn’t even hear the few people wandering up and down the street. Hitomi leaned against her mother’s side, looking down to the Hidden Village. It was so peaceful, so different at night to what it had been in daylight.

“Our best ninjas’ reputation alone is what is preventing Konoha from crumbling down after the wars, the Kyūbi, the invasion. I have no doubt whatsoever that you will join us, sweetheart, and probably before you’re ready for what comes with the fame.”

Silent, the girl pondered her mother’s words. A gentle breeze was playing with her curls, bringing to her the scents of night and something akin to rain.

“Okay, sweetheart, time for you to go back to bed. You’ll need your rest for tomorrow. Do you feel ready now?”

Hitomi didn’t answer the question immediately. She took the time to weigh her own state of mind, to let the new feeling of peace her mother had brought her spread through her library. Finally, she nodded, a smile on her lips. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Chapter 85: The Village of Peace

Just before three in the afternoon, on the day of the exam, all the participating Genin gathered inside a classroom of the Kusajin Academy. The place wasn’t as packed as the starting room of the last exam but, still, seeing that many shinobi was somewhat intimidating. Without concerting, the Fellowship and its allies formed a tight knot in a corner of the room. Their sensei had wished them good fortune for the exam a few minutes earlier, and promised that, this time, they would be able to watch them every step of the way – probably with cameras, even though they hadn’t said that much.

The Orochimaru disaster wouldn’t happen again.

The proctors appeared in a puff of smoke at three o’clock. When she saw them, with their hard features and threatening expressions, Hitomi felt her belly tie itself in knots. She knew she could do it, face adversity and leave victorious, especially since she wasn’t alone in the exam. Why, then, was her body tensing? Why was her heart thundering in her chest? Why did a small trickle of sweat run down her spine? Lee’s fingers found hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. It was enough to allow her to push panic away, deep down in her Library where it belonged. Thankful, she squeezed back.

“Hello everyone! The first stage of this semester’s Chūnin exam starts now. First of all, let me be clear: during this stage, it’s totally forbidden to interfere with the actions of other teams in any way. Even indirect action is prohibited. To make sure you don’t try to go around that rule, a proctor will be assigned to each team when you give us your registration paperwork.”

A whisper ran through the crowd of Genin: this kind of measure was rarely used – but in Kusagakure, so bent on avoiding conflict, Hitomi understood. The man who had spoken, tall, thin, and threatening like a bird of prey, took a step forwards, detaching himself from the line of other proctors.

“You’ll hand your paperwork in teams of three. In exchange, you’ll receive three sealed boxes that you will only open when the exam starts. Now get a move on, so I can give the rest of the instructions!”

Hitomi and her team were amongst the first to hand out their paperwork – they had stayed close to the stage, acting on a presentiment that the first stage would start here and not in some other place – it had happened in the past, that Genin were taken somewhere else than the local Academy for it, but it was a rare occurrence. The box Hitomi received was quite heavy, but nothing else about it was remarkable compared to the ones Sakura and Karin got. A Jōnin with sky blue hair in a braid that hung all the way to her hips, her face covered in abstract tattoos of the same colour, stepped next to them. When she focused on her sixth sense, Hitomi felt a seal on the back of the woman’s right thigh. A member of the Kusajin Special Forces?

“Okay, then!” the chief proctor said when everyone had their box. “When I give the signal to start, you’ll be allowed to open your boxes. They all contain a photograph as well as several clues. Your goal is to use those clues and all the knowledge at your disposal to find the civilian in the photograph.”

A research mission in a civilian setting? Very unusual, but interesting as well. A smile slowly bloomed on Hitomi’s lips. Her peers would have no trouble whatsoever with this task.

“This is also a speed contest. Only the first sixteen teams that manage to find their three targets, get them to sign the lid of the box, and to come back here with those signatures will be allowed to the next stage of the exam.”

Sixteen teams out of twenty-three? This wasn’t a very selective contest. Would the next stage compensate for that? After all, a survival exercise was better at cutting down the numbers… Frowning, Hitomi listened to the rest of the explanations.

“As I said earlier, you’re totally forbidden from interfering with the other teams’ work during this stage of the exam, be it to help or hinder them. As Chūnin, you’ll sometimes find yourselves in such missions, where despite the temptation, you can’t make contact with allies nor attract the enemy’s attention. We want to make sure you are capable of discretion.”

There were unhappy grumblings here and there throughout the room, including in the Kusajin team that had targeted Karin on the day of their arrival. If they were so impatient to face her, Hitomi would have to oblige… during the second stage, and only if the other team was talented enough to reach it, which she kind of doubted.

“Is it understood?” the proctor asked. “In that case, begin!”

Not a word needed to be said; Hitomi, Karin and Sakura jumped through the open window of the classroom, their Jōnin tailing them. They weren’t the only ones to seek isolation first and think after, but they were very careful to find a deserted roof to settle on. They crouched behind a big chimney, their feet affixed on the slippery tiles with chakra.

“So, which one are we doing first?” Sakura asked.

“Mine is heavier, maybe we should get it out of the way first so it’s not slowing us down for long.”

“Works for me,” Karin said.

“Oh, wait. I have an idea before we start.” Hitomi sliced her thumb open with a kunai and summoned her pair of telepath cats.

Hokori had been in the middle of a meal: he was still chewing on something.. He licked his muzzle twice and stretched before he spoke, Sunaarashi silent and attentive behind him. “Hello, Lady Summoner. Can we do something for you?”

“Yes, you can. Sunaarashi, you’re the quickest so you’ll stay with us. Hokori, do you see the window there? Enter that room, stay hidden and tell us when a team walks in.”

The two cats nodded and the male left as Hitomi wiped her hand clean.

“Why did you do that?” Karin asked.

“So we know when we should make it back. Sixteen teams, that gives us a lot of leeway. If we finish before, let’s say, seven teams are in, we should only head back at that point and not before. A good performance, but not so good that we attract attention.”

“Pfft, you sound like Shikamaru when you say stuff like that,” Sakura teased. “I’m okay with it, though. You already had your little moment in the spotlight the other day but, if we can blend in, the other teams will be all the more surprised in the later stages. What about you, Karin?”

“Nothing against it either. Now, Hitomi-chan, will you open your box?”

With an affectionate eyeroll, Hitomi obliged. The seal that kept the box closed was a simple lock. She infused chakra in it and the ink evaporated in a few seconds. She lifted the lid and raised an eyebrow when she saw the content of the box: a little bag of brown powder and a black stone the size of a fist, with the photograph under them. Hitomi took the latter and handed it to Karin. “Rings any bell?”

“Hard to say… I feel like I’ve already seen her, yeah.”

“Good. Now, for the clues…”

“Wait, Hitomi-chan, I have an idea!”

Struggling to hide her surprise, the teenager watched Sakura stand up and walk to their proctor.

“Say, is there anything we can do to convince you to help us?”

The woman laughed, a hoarse, deep sound, the corners of her black eyes suddenly marked with crow’s feet – a real, genuine laugh. “Just for this, kid, I wish I could. But no, it’s forbidden. I’m just here to watch and make sure you follow the rules.”

“That was worth a shot, Sakura!”

“Meh, if you say so…”

A playful smile on her lips, Hitomi went back to the content of her box. The powder first. She opened the bag, breathed in and had to suppress a wince when the fiery smell hit her. Careful as ever, she collected a little bit of it on her pinky then put it on her tongue. If it was poison, she had two awesome medics with her anyway. “Hot pepper,” she announced, washing her mouth with water despite knowing it wouldn’t do much to help smother the fire on her tongue. “A restaurant?”

“A few of them in the village specialise in spicy food,” Karin said. “They’re often owned by foreigners. What can we get from the stone?”

Hitomi reached for the stone and examined its pure shade of black, so intense it seemed to absorb light. She got a chemistry kit from one of her seals, so she could test its reaction to water, acid, and a few other factors before she reached a conclusion she was confident of. “This is obsidian. It’s a stone you find in volcanoes or near lava in general. Karin-chan, does it evoke something to you?”

“A restaurant and a volcano? Hm… Oh, oh, I know what it is, follow me!”

Without any more delay, the young Uzumaki started running, forcing her teammates to follow in her tracks. She guided them to an upscale neighbourhood, so peaceful that it seemed separated from the rest of the village by more than a web of roads. There, she stopped in front of a large restaurant, its frontage decorated with an erupting volcano. The photograph of a smiling, dimpled civilian in hand, Hitomi went inside.

“Hello and welcome to the Lava Plate!” a maître d’ said as soon as she stepped inside. “Do you have a reservation?”

She stared at him for a moment, noting his haughty and pinched features behind feigned affability. Her decision was made in a second. She plastered the most professional smile in her repertoire on her lips before answering. “Hello to you, sir! I am Nara Hitomi. I’m here as a vassal to the Akimichi clan, which has a proposition for one of your cooks. Here is her picture, do you recognise her?”

It was a risky bet but, should it fail, she still had other ways to reach her target. She was almost certain that the civilian she had to meet would be stationed in her place of work, since the clues had led her to it. She allowed the man to look her up and down, from her neat curls to her high-quality boots. She didn’t exactly look the part of a messenger, but she didn’t need to, not with the expensive-looking fabric of her kimono and her weapon, probably worth the whole restaurant all by itself – even a civilian would recognise that her blade was an art piece. He finally bowed to her and gestured for her to sit at the closest table.

“Yes, Nara-san. She’s here today, I’ll go fetch her immediately.”

In the privacy of her Library, Hitomi let out a victorious, fierce laugh that made the Whisper stir in her Gates. She appeased it, focusing on maintaining her impassive mask. Then, she sat at the best table instead of the one the maître d’ had offered her, with not a care in the world for the little sign that designated it as reserved. The man came back after a couple minutes, the woman in the photograph in tow.

“Thank you,” Hitomi said, her tone firm but dismissive. “You can go now, I’d like this conversation to be private.”

His eyes gleamed in anger and personal offense, but he didn’t say anything as he retreated to his position next to the door, far enough that he wouldn’t hear anything with that civilian hearing of his.

Hitomi waited for a second then bent over the table, a contrite air on her features. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m not really here in Akimichi-sama’s stead. I lied because I was almost certain this man wouldn’t let me in otherwise. This seemed quicker and more efficient. I need you to sign this, please.” She handed the lid of her box to the civilian woman.

The cook sighed but took it and signed it with a pen she had stashed in one of her apron pockets. “One of our Jōnin had warned me that a team of foreign Genin would come to me for this, so I didn’t really believe that story about Akimichi-sama, but… Do you know him?”

Hitomi cocked an eyebrow and nodded. “Well, yes, he is a family friend. Why?”

“Oh, well, if you could mention me sometimes… I’d love him to come try my food, if he’s in the area.”

“Since you were so eager to help me for this stage of this exam, I’ll put in  a word, but, let me warn you, he doesn’t leave the village much anymore. His duties as clan leader prevent him from traveling as much as he’d like.”

“Don’t worry about this, honey. I’ve stayed here my whole life, I can go on a few years longer. And if he still hasn’t come by then, I’ll have enough money put aside to open my own restaurant in Konoha and try to convince him to sponsor me.”

“I wish you the best with that,” Hitomi smiled as she left the table. She thanked the cook with a little bow of her head then walked out of the restaurant, her gait full of pride and confidence. It had been easy, after all, not much of a challenge. She met with the rest of her team, brandished the lid in victory and let them wrap her in a hug with a grin. “What do I do with the rest of the box?” she asked their proctor.

“Give it to me, no need for you to keep it. Congrats for the way you handled the maître d’, kid. Very smooth, very diplomatic.”

“My father was a Nara,” she shrugged. “Diplomacy can be the best way to avoid a war, and we hate that kind of effort.”

Once freed from one of their boxes’ weight, the girls focused on Karin’s, which contained a few strands of silk and the braided rope from an obi. Sakura was the one to piece those clues together: her parents made and sold kimonos, and she knew far more than most about traditional clothing. In the photograph, the target was wearing an badge. They could only see a corner of it, but it was enough for Hitomi to remember walking by the relevant shop the previous day. In a few minutes, they had the signature.

“My turn now!” Sakura chirped.

Her box contained a fish scale and a vial of liquid that the young medic identified as a solution used to track the flow of chakra in the brain. Kusagakure didn’t have many world-renowned medics, but one of them was a neurosurgeon and had published a paper recently where she demonstrated the use of the product in the vial to repair damage caused by a long exposure to torture and chakra deprivation after testing it first on fishes, then on primates, and finally on humans.

Sakura looked almost shy as she went to meet her target but, when she left the clinic where she worked, her cheeks were flushed in euphoria and she had a thick scroll tucked under her arm as well as her signed lid. Between two ecstatic laughs, Hitomi understood that the neurosurgeon had given her a copy of her research and agreed to start a correspondence with her once the exam was over. Tsunade would be so proud of her student – of both of them, really.

Once they had their three signed lids – it had taken less than twenty minutes, mostly spent running between the three targets – they sat on a bench, the proctor hovering like a ghost near them. Close by, in the grass, two children and a dog that looked like Bull, Kakashi’s massive summon, were playing, giggling and rolling around. So dogs weren’t too different here from the ones Hitomi had known in the Previous World: the bigger they were, the softer and mushier.

“What do we do now?” Karin asked.

“Sunaarashi, ask your brother what’s happening in the room, please.”

The young cat’s gaze glazed over as her chakra, warm and nurturing, washed over Hitomi. She got an answer immediately. “No one’s back in yet.”

“Well, in that case… Karin, do you know a good ramen place? In Naruto’s honour. Proctor-san, you can join us too, of course, my treat.”

“You can call me Emiko,” the Jōnin beamed. “I like your style, all of you. Since your offer is so kind, Yūhi-san, I’d be happy to share a meal with you.”

“There’s a nice place a few blocks from here. It’s a bit like Ichiraku Ramen.”

“Let’s go then!”

Satisfaction oozing from their group, the three teenagers lead the way. Now that they didn’t need to act quickly, they strolled through the streets with all the free carelessness of young tourists whose only preoccupation was to get a taste of the Diplomat Village. Without their forehead protectors, the fable could have rung true. They arrived at the restaurant; with its high stools and the menu as the only decoration on the walls, it indeed looked a bit like Naruto’s favourite place in the whole of Konoha, except for home. The three girls and their proctor ordered their meal as they sat.

At some point during their meal, a team went back to the classroom, then another. A third one entered by the window as they left the restaurant, and a fourth not too long after that. They walked back quietly to the Academy, their bellies full and bodies brimming with energy, while Hokori counted the teams that had succeeded in their first task. When they reached the roof where they had held council a little while ago, the seventh team had just entered through the window of the classroom they had to go back to. Without a word, they followed and gave their signed lids to the main proctor, who thanked them with a subtle nod, then went to sit on the floor, leaning against one of the walls. This was far better than sitting at a table and having opponents to their backs.

Hinata’s and Neji’s teams had been the first two to complete the task, according to Hokori. They were occupying the full last line of desks, like any shinobi worth the title would have done. Hitomi greeted them with a wave and a quiet smile, watching Lee do the same. For now, she didn’t want to go to them. She much preferred closing her eyes and allowing her head to roll against the wall. A faint smile bloomed on her lips when she felt Shikamaru’s chakra approaching but, again, she didn’t move, the perfect picture of the indolent Nara her master was. Would he be proud of her and her ploys, when he learned through Kakashi how she had handled herself?

“So that ’s all the Konoha bitches are good for, eh?” a male’s voice said above her head.

She opened a lazy eyelid. The words were coming from an Amejin Genin. So, Pain was still sending them to international exams… Yes, he needed money to keep the Akatsuki afloat, so it made sense that he looked to promote his Genin. He couldn’t only count on the bounties he harvested through the Bingo Books for killing or capturing wanted shinobi. She answered with her most innocent smile, deciding on the spot to play the fragile but enthusiastic child. The trick was in her eyes, wider than usual, and her voice pitched higher, slightly quivering with fear or amazement – or something right in the middle.

“O-oh, I… I can do a lot, you know! You’ll see, during the next stage of the exam!”

“Tch! If we fight during the next stage, I’ll be happy to defeat you bunch. In Ame, even when the work is done, Genin do not rest.”

Sakura opened her mouth to snap at the teenager, but Hitomi discreetly brushed her hand against her forearm to stop her. They couldn’t always play it by strength alone. Besides, it was so much more entertaining to play with food before eating it. “Oh, you have to be so strong ! But aren’t you ever tired?” She batted her eyelashes like she had seen girls do to seduce boys in the Academy and had to stifle a giggle at how out of balance he looked. A vague shade of pink rushed to his cheeks, then his features twisted in arrogance.

“You’ll see, all three of you! Ame will crush you!”

On that, he walked away, his two teammates behind him. Hitomi left character, relaxing the muscles of her shoulders once more to slouch against the wall. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from cackling like a maniac.

“Why did you act like you had nothing but air between your ears all of a sudden?”

“Oh, Karin, imagine the face he’ll make if he has to fight any of us during the next stage or the tournament!”

The Uzumaki’s features lit up with understanding and it was her turn to do everything in her power to stop herself from laughing. Once they had regained their cool, they looked at the other teams that were entering the classroom one at a time. Finally, the sixteenth stepped inside: three Genin that seemed ready to collapse with exhaustion. Hitomi straightened up and stretched. The second stage would begin soon.