How does one define a conversation when it does not involve the spoken word, just the suggestion of an exchange within the busy chaos of a persons mind? Labels are dangerous things and should not be used lightly. However, something that may very well be close to a conversation did occur at one point in the recent history of a certain individual and it is the duty of the chronicler to record it, regardless of its dubious nature. With that said, let us take a trip into the submerged darkness that is currently this girls' everything. Not black, but the deepest shades of blue, just the maddening little hint of colour that has become ingrained into her vision, the symbolical branding of her underwater hell. Seconds drag on like an eternity as the stabbing pain that she has come to associate with consciousness drags itself across her neck on its slow descent down her body. The clinging cold is momentarily kept at bay by the warmth of agony.

"Is this…death?" her thoughts begin as they have for days, the question quickly lost to the consuming darkness. Again, it goes unanswered, but only for a time. There was no voice, but the knowledge that the words had been said became a red hot spear, consuming her thought processes

"Of course it isn't, child"

Even without the benefit of a voice to associate with the reply, the girl knew that it was condescending. She was not as desperate for company as one would expect and sorted through her limited memory of responses until eventually one came to light

"Kill …Kill you"

It was not long before the memory of a reply manifested itself

"Why, child? Why kill yourself?"

"Want to kill…someone" Uncertainty clouded her thought and the girl focussed, trying to think of a face to match with the desire. Recollection failed to provide and she was forced to move on.

"Kill you…Kill me…Just kill"

"If you put enough effort into it you can make me stop. Silence me. But you will know that you didn't kill me. It'll eat you up until you have nothing left."

Anger added a few more options to the psyche.

"You…Hate you…Burn…you"

"Keep that fire burning inside you. I may need to use it"

Memory added colour to the darkness, the fading image of azure skies tipped with the light earthy tones of the cliffs, growing ever steeper, faster and faster as she plummeted with naught but the reflection of blue flames flickering in her eyes.. She was suddenly acutely aware of how alone she as.

"Need…help"

"Do not worry child. My gifts will help you."

"…help?"

"What would I be if I did not help my child? Just a beast in a mask."

Suddenly every nerve was red hot, probing for a word, any word, to fill the gap. Unfortunately, in its desperation it found one.

"…Mother?"

"Let's Wake up together, Tsukiko"

Light, burning neon brightness invaded every sense, sudden and unwanted. Every inch of her body cried out in pain, drowning the distant sound of voices. Then darkness overtook, uninterrupted by the pain of consciousness. Then, only the distant panic and crackling of fire remained.

Filled with a newfound purpose, Tsukiko dreamed.

------

"Damn it, Tsukiko, can't you show a little restraint?"

The mingling scents of dust and sweat were pretty much the norm for the small area of cleared Cliffside that so often substituted for an actual training area, but it always had that extra edge when Tsukiko was using it. Currently she was abusing the surrounding rock-face. It was clear that abusing was the right term, as the wall was covered in deep gashes and scars, forming a random criss-cross pattern which stretched across its entire length, the depth of the wounds betraying the extra taint of a sadistic showmanship, the kind of mindset which would translate into all kinds of interesting mutilation on the real battlefield. There was little doubt that it would be reduced to rubble under such pressure. This was likely Tsukikos' intention, as she would certainly like the little notch to add to her reputation. In reality she didn't need it, but those at the top of their game crave attention over anything else and Tsukiko Hoshikira was indeed at the top of her game. What she hadn't done was becoming exceedingly easy to turn into widely believed rumour. It was something to do and Tsukiko was always looking for something to do. If only within the confines of the Village hidden in the mist, she was the rising star, the genin among genin, effortlessly breaking records that had stood for years untouched. If you believed the endless hype that she was adept at generating.

"I don't need to, Kama. Restraint is a word that only works when it makes me look effortlessly powerful." All this said in tones which one might call mischievous were it not for Tsukiko's air of restrained violence.

Tsukiko stood out against the general uniformity of most mist village genin. Long pants, each leg split down the centre, one leg emblazoned with the letters GRU, what appeared to be the top half of a jacket and patterned bandages to cover the rest .Her headband was tied lazily around her left palm, her signature kunai concealed underneath it. The only concession to practicality was the standard side pack attached to her left leg, a pale white like the rest of her outfit. For anyone else it would be devilishly impractical but she rarely ran into any problems. The girl inside it all was hardly physically impressive, a slight figure, pronounced in enough ways to be attractive but not alluring, long black hair and a penetrating blue eyed stare. We're it not for her outfit she wouldn't stand out at all among the far more stoic genin of the mist, but the same could be said of the other two kunoichi present with her. The one referred to as "Kama" was lounging on a portable deckchair, a gaudy thing covered in a spray of mismatched colours, slowly devouring a small punnet of assorted berries. Those aspects of her personality not made obvious by the deck-chair were summed up nicely in the lazy action of tossing the small fruits into her mouth. Her attire was largely normal, save for her cloth robe worn lazily over a standard survival vest, the fabric covered in seals used primarily in warding off spirits. She wore a cap, the black brim strung over her eye. It was an odd shape and gaudy to a fault, expanding to a large flat peak, her headband sewn into the brim next to the letters GRU. A steel scythe lay at her side, the blade shaped like a serpentine head in a way that would no doubt impair the already low effectiveness of the eccentric weapon tenfold, but at least it explained the nickname. The girl had messed red hair and a soft face stained with the occasional remnants of juice. There's really nothing special to say about her figure, so those noblest (and commonest) of fiends, the perverted reader, shall have to do without for the moment. With barely a conscious thought, Ceyla Kitsuraiga tossed another berry towards her mouth.

It didn't make it there.

Much has been said about the effectiveness of needles in combat and, specifically, their general ineffectiveness at landing a killing blow. But they certainly had the benefit of speed and the process of one spearing the blue orb from Ceyla's hands, ricocheting off the rock wall, ricocheting of another needle which had been thrown almost immediately after the first, and landing in the outstretched hand of a pink haired kunoichi, the needle sliding through a crack in her fingers and leaving the sweet morsel behind, happened to fast for Ceyla to notice. It was debatable wether Tsukiko would have noticed it either, but at the time she was admiring her work on the wall and thinking of how she could play it off as something epic when asked what happened. Some kind of ogre would no doubt be involved.

"For the love of… La-fens!" Realization lead, predictably, to anger. Ceyla pointed accusingly at the perpetrator "What the hell are you doing?!"

"Eating." The pink haired girl wore a simple uniform, though with more pockets than one would think necessary. It seemed every inch of her uniform was devoted to thrown weapons and the occasional cross bow, her shuriken shaped more like bladed gears than the traditional four bladed design. As you have no doubt foreseen, she had the word GRU about her personage, tattooed on her left cheek. That cheek would have been met firmly with the less than amicable Ceyla's fist were it not for the fact that doing so would involve Ceyla getting up. Effort and comfort cannot coexist however and the girl remained sprawled on her chair, letting out little more than a grunt of irritation. Getting stuck with two egotistical show-offs like La-fens and Tsukiko was not what she had imagined her first genin team would be like. It could have been worse, admittedly, but this was the village hidden in the mist, so it was only a matter of time before it would be anyway. After all, they still had to be assigned to a jonin and Ceyla mused that it would be just like her father to assign her team the worst jonin possible, just to spite her. Spite was, it seemed the greatest recourse available to the mizukage. But at least there were some advantages to being paired with the two most proficient genin in the village. Tsukiko "Angel blood" Hoshikira and Levine "bombardier" La-fens. Under normal circumstances they would just been admired for their talents but they'd gotten bloody nicknames. Titles. It was the same story every time. Too many missing nin from the mist were running around these days. Even The legendary seven shinobi swordsmen were a joke, with most of the villages now having running bets on which will defect next. It was damn predictable who would be filling the vacancies too. Heroes in production, her father had told her once. The future, being pre- packaged as legends to help the laughingstock of the five great shinobi villages get back on its feet. Marketing the next generation of killers.

Ceyla wished she had a nickname as well.

She turned her attention to Tsukiko, who was now annotating a small book. Even that simple task looked dangerous in her hands. She had a habit of twitching at just the right moment to give her the illusion of constant movement. Tsukiko gave the impression that at, any moment in a friendly conversation, she would happily pull an elongated knife from the recesses of her sleaves and lob it at your face. Ceyla may have despised her fame, but there was something truly terrifying about that girl, though it may just have been the memory of her constant…outbursts. It would be wrong to call them violent. But any time when something got out of hand in class, or someone insulted her there would be this little metallic scraping sound, dulcet tones reverberating off the edge of steel and all eyes would turn to her as she penned a little extra note into her book. Whoever had caused a stir would quietly return to their seats and hope that the scar they had been left with wasn't noticeable. It usually wasn't. Tsukiko was very pedantic about aesthetics.

"Hey, La-fens!" Ceyla beckoned the girl to her side. Levine had the courtesy not to appear silently behind her in a display of atypical dickery, as was usually the case with any kind of high rank genin, but instead just walked over. Tsukiko probably would have tried to kick one of the large nearby rocks into powder in getting to her.

"Where is our umm… Jonin, Kitsuraiga-san?" Levine was completely formal when it suited her. All part of the mystique. She may have been quiet and studious but she was every bit as conceited as Tsukiko, Ceyla was certain of it.

"Who knows? Who cares? They'll come eventually." Ceyla said, wiping her face with her sleave to remove the excess juice. Secretly she was dreading meeting whoever father had cooked up. "Listen, is there going to be any trouble between you and Tsukiko, Miss 100? Competition, that kind of thing?"

Levine looked down in embarrassment. She was even pressing her index fingers together for the gods' sakes.

"Ummm, ah, Tsukiko-sama?" She was probably blushing as well. Ceyla hadn't bothered to look. Her voice was decidedly wispy, something that grated on Ceyla's nerves. "W-w-w-we aren't like that…"

There was a whole line of questioning that could have followed there, but Ceyla decided to avoid it entirely. They were obviously friends of some kind then. Makes sense in a way. Nothing worth questioning in that then.

It was then that the figure in black entered. An oddly plain outfit, it betrayed little about the wearers identity, but the headband was visible, as were a few long locks of blonde hair. A long sword hilt stuck out among the utter banality of what was otherwise a standard ANBU black ops uniform. The hood was an unnecessarily dramatic touch, but it was removed in due time to reveal the face of someone Ceyla knew very well. She groaned at the first sign of recognition.

"Is this…all?" Nothing better could be expected from Gentra Hentai. Ceyla waited patiently for the rest of the sentence, slowly but inevitably approaching.

"I left my work for this?" Every time without fail, someone would be distracting "the spear of the hidden mist". Her father must really believe in those two if he's already devoting one of the few Shinobi swordsman to be their Sensei. It was ridiculous.

"I'm tired. Introductions. Now." Gentra was certainly not lying about that, her eyes sunken and head drooped. It seemed she would fall asleep any second. It was something Ceyla had seen many times when with her father. Gentra may have been a xenophobic elitist but she was genuinely over worked.

Ceyla sighed and folded her chair up, knowing that she wouldn't be relaxing again for quite a while

------

"Name, goal that kind of thing. GO. now" Gentra held her head in her hands, clearly not wanting to face consciousness much longer. Her voice was breathy and harsh, advanced years beyond her body.

"Tsukiko Hoshikira, also known as 'Angel-blood'-"

"-Don't care" Gentra was clearly not in the mood for frivolity.

"…Fine." Tsukiko pouted but otherwise moved on. She got out her book and leafed through for a specific page. "Ah…. My goal is to find true love and the power needed to maintain it!" She struck a pose that probably meant something profound from the right angle, but to the three watching her just looked rather precarious. Gentra ended things quick with a lazily lobbed kunai, deflected effortlessly by a swift kick on behalf of Tsukiko. She was a showman but not an idiot and had more than a few steel reinforcements to her outfit.

"Perfect." The disdain in Gentras voice was almost palpable. "Next."

Levine stepped up to the plate next. Times may have changed but it still wasn't uncommon for a sensei to be more than a bit violent in order to encourage the students. She was still wrapped with the isea to be under the command of such an incredible shinobi. "L-Levine La-fens…I want to attain perfection of all my preferred jutsu and achieve the rank of-"

"Boring. Ceyla I know. What is your goal then?"

Ceyla brightened up. It was an odd, overpowering urge she had for a while. To find a motivation in life "To become Mizukage!"

Gentra stared at her blankly. Perfect. Just bloody perfect.

"That's enough. Tomorrow, training area next to the mizukage's office. You will be there at 6 AM for a test."

That was all that needed to be said, so she dropped a smoke bomb and disappeared. It wasn't as flashy as you'd think. This was often the effect that the clinging grey mist caused. It was depressing but realistic.