It turns out the third year was the charm, for Shina and for Kei. And Iruka didn't like it one bit. Something was very off about that girl—Shina Kimino. He approached her after class, wading through her sister's congratulatory party to find her in the corner. He simply had to look at her, and she followed him back into the school building.
"Did you want something, Iruka-sensei?" She said.
"Are you always this protective of your sister?" He asked, out and forthright.
"Excuse me?"
"You failed your first two exams so you could be in the same class as your sister, didn't you?" He accused. Her gaze became icy, and her voice became cold and hard.
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Sensei. It was days before my first exam that my mother tragically passed away, and I'm sure you can imagine what it did to my chakra control. As for my second exam, my chakra is difficult to control anyhow. It takes me three times as much chakra to make one clone as it does someone else. Plus with taking care of my sister, father, the house, and myself; I am very. Busy." Iruka crossed his arms and stared hard at her.
"You shouldn't put this much pressure on yourself. It isn't good for you," he said. Shina growled and turned to leave.
"Three years as my teacher, and you just now realized that," she muttered. She made her way back out to her sister's mob of friends.
It took almost an hour for all of her friends to clear out. Shina took Kei's hand and started walking back to their house. Kei was still excited, still jazzed from passing the test.
"Why didn't you go hang out with your friends, Shina?" She asked. Her older sister smiled at her.
"They already went home," she lied again.
"Oh," Kei said, wagging her head and smiling. "Think of it! Genins, then chunins, then jonins!"
A year or so later and as chunins, it was their responsibility to take on harder missions. This time, it was a team mission. There were eight of them travelling to Suna to oversee the building of an embassy. A team of jonin had been sent already, but they were facing some unexpected complications and needed more help. That's what the mission order said anyways.
It was rough travels for the Konoha kids. It was for many of them their first mission. Shina pulled some strings, more like yanked really, to get herself on this mission with her sister. She knew that sending chunins to a recently hostile country was borderline madness, but the Hidden Leaf Village was without Hokage. It wasn't making the best of decisions.
But.
It was awkward. She was two years older than anyone else. These newly crowned chunins all thought they were the best of the best or fainted at the sight of blood. It irritated Shina, and the only one she really talked to was a boy named Shikamaru.
Walking in the baking sun was so much less than fun, but all the Leaf ninja had on black masks, hiding their identity, and masking their skin from the big ball of butter trying to fry them up and serve them hot.
"Yes, but if a little kid is raised to think that killing people with, I don't know, blue eyes is like a religious necessity, then is that evil?" Shina asked.
"Obviously,"Shikamaru answered.
"But to the kid, it's the right thing to do and not killing them would be evil."
"Then it would be good."
"No, Shikamaru. You aren't getting the point." Shikamaru huffed and turned on her, almost knocking them both over.
"It all depends on how I am in this scenario," he replied, obviously annoyed.
"Exactly!" Shina cried. "What I'm trying to say is, good and evil are in the eye of the beholder. There can really be no universal meaning of good and bad because it's different for everyone." She was looking off into space, a star-struck look on her face.
"If you already knew that, why did you include me in this conversation?" Shika grumbled.
"Because I'm usually the one being talked at," she sniped. Shikamaru shrugged and continued running through the sands.
"Then please, continue. This is actually kind of interesting," he said. Shina smiled and ran after him, having fallen behind the rest of the group.
Suna was fast approaching.
A jonin was waiting for them at the gates, as were a great many hateful glares. Shina figured there would be some resentment, but come on! If any of them had half a brain they would figure out that these kids probably didn't fight in the battle. Some of them sure, but it was their country who attacked first!
Shina sighed and shook her head. She was being biased. As the mother of her family, she always had to see both of the sides of the story, and sometimes it drove her crazy. They were shown to where they were staying—apparently all the Sand could afford was a handful of tents on the outskirts of the city. Awesome.
Everyone was tired from travelling, and many of them laid down to rest. It wasn't long until their rest was disturbed.
A huge bang rocked their encampment.
"Perfect," Shikamaru muttered. They flooded the camp, circling the tired ninja.
"I told you this wasn't the east side!" One of them yelled.
"What do you want?" One of the jonin yelled back.
"They aren't Sand!" Someone said.
Everyone was out now, out of tents and out of sand dunes. Shina's group had spread out in a line covering the city, and the other ninja mirrored them. She took a closer look at them—the ninja—and almost sobbed.
They were from the Leaf.
"This isn't your fight. We came for the Sand, but we won't stop for any misguided who gets in our way," their apparent leader said. Shina cast a glance towards Kei. She was shaking.
"We aim to keep the peace here," a man said, stepping out from the Konoha lines. The rogue ninja leader scowled at him for a moment—before taking off his head.
"Hold the lines!" Someone shouted just before the onslaught began. Shina could feel the chakra in the air—so much of it in one place. It was stifling; she found it hard to even breathe. Jutsu's were being shouted everywhere, but so far, no one had broken their impenetrable line.
And that's when it happened.
Shina glanced over to find Kei, panic seizing her. Her panic eased as she found her little sister and parried another blow from an oncoming ninja. The two sisters made eye contact for a brief moment. Shina saw; she always saw everything. Kei's eye told her all she needed to know. The older girl's shout of 'No!' reached no one's ears, as she watched Kei turn and bolt away.
And the floodgates opened.
Ninja swarmed through the gap, breaking the line. Shina watched as ally after ally fell and barely noticed when a sword came across her chest. The painful graze was enough to snap her out of her trance, and she bolted after Kei.
Shina tore through the abandoned streets of Suna. No one seemed to be around. She shouted out, pleaded for her sister for what seemed like hours before the older girl found her, crying against a wall.
"Kei Kimino!" She shouted. "What in the hell do you think you're doing?!" Kei ignored her and launched herself against her sister.
"Shina there was so much hate! So much violence! I-I couldn't…" Shina's anger crumbled into the dust at her feet, and she hugged the crying girl closer.
"Hush, Kei-Kei. Hush now," she soothed. The sounds of fighting were dying down.
"M-Make it go away, big sister. Please," she said, tears smearing her face. Shina looked down at those tears and knew exactly what a big mess she was getting herself into. But at that moment, how could she do anything other than what her mother asked?
"I will, honey. Now I need you to do something for me. Tell them…" She paused. "Tell them that I was the one who broke the line. Tell them how much of a coward I am. Drag me back to the camp and blame. Me."
Kei looked up at her, shirt smeared with blood from Shina's chest wound. "What?"
"They'll dishonor you if you're caught deserting, but we're about the same height. They won't know the difference between us." Kei's face hardened and nodded grimly. Something hurt inside of Shina when her little sis just accepted the plan without protest. "Here we go. Are you ready?"
"Here you go!" A disgusted Kei yelled, dragging a dirty Shina back to the battlefield. Many ninja lay dead; Konoha's forces down to ten out of thirty five. "Here's your line-breaker."
"Shina? It was you?" An astonished Shikamaru asked.
"I'm sorry!" Shina burst into tears. "There's just so much blood and so much evil here! I can't! I couldn't…!" One of the remaining Leaf took her by the hair and brought her tear-stained face to his own bloody, raging one.
"Sorry!" He screamed into her face. "Because of you, all of these people died!" He took her and put her right next to one of the good guys. The blood still hadn't congealed, and was still pooling in the dust. "Now their blood runs through the ground, and all you have to say is that you're a coward?"
Shina did nothing but sob, finding it easier than trying to speak. She looked up at her sister and found no remorse there, no pain, and certainly no fear. Shina never really thought of her sister as much of an actor, but Kei was quite convincing. Just a little bit too convincing for Shina's tastes.
"I'll see you hang for this!"