"What're we gonna do today?" Hayate asked on Sunday morning. After omurice and tea, the day was theirs. And perhaps feeling generous after the sleepover, he even did the dishes.

"I thought about visiting the beach," Kei said, holding up her shinobi sandals. "What do you think?"

"Sure!"

Dagobah Beach Municipal Park had apparently been completely trashed before Kei moved into town. Whether due to ocean currents or people being jerks, the accumulated wreckage and waste electrical appliances of an entire civilization ended up on one poor stretch of beach. But over the course of ten months, somebody or something had stealthily removed all the trash and cleared the beach from one end to the other.

It was also within walking distance, since Hayate had gotten fairly burned out on trains the day before.

…Wait a fucking second.

Hm?

Dagobah. Uh, that's…a planet. In Star Wars.

I do not understand the reference.

It goes…um… "Go to the Dagobah system." Something, something, Yoda. It could be a star system, I guess?

Isobu sighed deeply, which was impressive for someone without lungs. Kei.

Yeah?

Please go to the beach. I need to see a real one again.

Kei and Hayate made it to the park pretty damned fast after Kei explained that.

In mid-spring, the ocean was still cold as all get out. Isobu wanted to head in and have Kei lie down in the surf, but she sharply vetoed that plan upon putting a toe in to test the temperature.

Meanwhile, Hayate darted down the beach with no difficulty, kicking up plumes of sand as he went. Though it probably wasn't obvious to onlookers, Kei could feel the little pulses of chakra being emitted as her brother prevented himself from sinking too far. He wanted to goof off, not work out.

"Hey, if you want shaved ice, only one of us has money!" Kei called after him, but that was really an afterthought. Kei was still barefoot and walking in the surf, instead of living up to Isobu's wish of swimming in the ocean at nine in the morning.

Besides, Hayate was already happily running loose at the water's edge, arcs of spray following him as he went. The sand, apparently, wasn't his first love after that whole Chūnin Exam incident in Suna.

It took a little longer before, belatedly, Kei realized Hayate had never seen the ocean before. With Konoha as deeply inland as it was, only shinobi tended to get out often enough or range widely enough to see all kinds of cool climates and piss off the indigenous wildlife. Hayate was still a typical curious kid in some significant ways. Kei had been to plenty of strange places, both on missions and when she counted her previous lifetime, though this gravel-free sand was still novel.

How spoiled she'd become. Not just by her opportunities here, but by what knowledge she carried in her soul.

Isobu gave a deep sigh of contentment, though Kei hadn't rushed into the sea. He seemed to be okay with the results of today's morning adventure.

"You can see forever like this!" Hayate declared to the sea and the encroaching gulls.

Kei called back, "Try skipping rocks! My record's five skips!"

Hayate flashed her a breathless smile, then promptly ignored her idea to try and snatch the miniature fish lurking in the surf. To be fair, this world had more interesting things going for it than Kei.

Hayate did eventually get bored, but it took a few minutes. He also managed to feed the seagulls his tiny haul of fish fry, which made him a troop leader in their eyes for the next few minutes. Perhaps it was youth, hidden viciousness, or just pure silliness that kept him interacting with the seagulls long past the "Mine!" stage.

But once they discovered he did not, in fact, have any more food, they all abandoned him in favor of a man eating takoyaki.

"I feel like I've accomplished something," Hayate said, while the poor guy was being chased to the other end of the beach.

Kei didn't have it in her to criticize much. Instead, she said, "So, after all that training with your team, how's your taijutsu?"

Most bladed implements bigger than kitchen knives were highly regulated in Japan, so Kei hadn't actually been able to spar with her full complement of melee skills. On the other hand, Hayate hadn't specifically stated that he was training with, say, Gai on weekdays. Iruka and Yūgao were perfectly nice kids, but neither was a melee powerhouse just yet. Hell, Kei had been teaching Yūgao how to use her katana before this mission cropped up, so it was hard to tell if Hayate was getting rusty.

Rust. For a kenjutsu specialist. Isobu snorted. Hah.

A pun for all occasions.

Hayate blanched. "Um…"

A not-so-nice smile stretched across Kei's face before she managed to hide it. "Lucky for you, I think public fighting is illegal. But you're gonna catch hell later."

Hayate seemed to consider this, but Kei felt the spark in his chakra in the split second before he threw a punch.

Kei instantly caught his wrist and judo-flipped him into the surf for being a brat.

Now, Mustafu—how the hell had she missed that little chestnut for two months—was in the same city as UA. It was also the same city as Kei's apartment, primarily by design, but the point was that running into classmates was not the statistical impossibility it might've been if she lived, say, in Hosu. Sure, the greater Tokyo area was a big place, and she didn't really know if anybody preferred hanging around their super-special high school.

"Is that how you're training for the Sports Festival?"

Then again, Shinsō had already randomly come across her once. For a kid who didn't look like he slept much, he was up early on a weekend.

"Hey, Shinsō-san." Kei waved up at him, because it appeared her purple-haired classmate was actually a cyclist on his days off. Nobody with sense would take even a folding bike into the sand, though she could see Gai making a training exercise out of it. Thus, Shinsō had propped his bike up on a railing and was leaning next to it.

Put him a bit out of splashing range, though. That wouldn't be a problem for long, because Hayate had caught onto Kei's lack of attention.

In fact, both of the Gekkō siblings promptly trooped up to Shinsō, though Kei used the access stairs and Hayate hurled himself up and over the railing in a single leap like some kind of saltwater-encrusted kangaroo. Either because of watching Kei during PE or just being too used to a world full of Quirks, Shinsō didn't react.

"Since when are there two of you, Gekkō-san?" Shinsō pointed past Kei to Hayate, who was sizing up the newcomer.

"Since I was three. This is my kid brother, Hayate." Kei stepped neatly to the side, allowing Hayate to sidle forward.

Hayate, who was about tall enough to reach Shinsō's collarbone, sized him up like he expected to have to get into a fistfight. While Shinsō probably outweighed Hayate by a fair amount, Kei's adorable baby brother was also the next in line to mastery of their mother's kenjutsu style and had been participating in their family training since he could walk. Now a genin, he could probably take on most of the local toughs before Quirks got involved.

Then everyone blinked and the trance was broken.

Hayate dropped a fist into his open palm, as though something had just occurred to him. "Oh, wait, is this the guy with the mind control power? You didn't say what he looked like."

"I didn't?" Kei tried to think back, but they'd discussed so many things over the previous (extremely tiring) day that she couldn't remember. "Well, this is Shinsō-san. He's in my class and… You're at the top of the class, right?"

"You can't remember the name of our class rep and you can remember that?" Shinsō shook his head. "You're hopeless."

"If he's at the top of the class," Hayate said after a second, looking between the other two, "where are you?"

"Well…" Kei began, belatedly realizing that this was probably a poor conversational topic.

"Dead last," Shinsō said, throwing her under the bus as though on reflex. It was a well-developed instinct for people who hung around Kei for any length of time.

"Shut up," Kei grumbled.

Hayate very pointedly reached up and pinched his own ear. "Okay, not dreaming." He took a deep breath, then jabbed a finger into Kei's chest. "But seriously, what the hell? You were at the top of your class back when you were like eight, and Obito keeps saying you slept through everything and you transferred in late. Again, what the hell?"

Called on the carpet by her very own little brother. And with a witness! Kei jerked her head away, feeling her ears heat up under her hair. "It's different, okay?"

"I really don't think it is!"

"She makes up for it," Shinsō volunteered, after Hayate had started to build up steam.

He demanded crossly, "How?"

"Scaring our classmates to death." Kei's glare was redirected to Shinsō instead of her brother. Smirking, Shinsō went on, "It started with the scar, then they saw her Quirk, and then she's been ignoring them all ever since."

Hayate smacked his hand directly to his forehead. "You are my favorite sister—"

"Only sister," Kei muttered.

"—but you're supposed to be nice to people at least a bit, and I know you're smart enough to do well in school anywhere. Just put your back into it!" Hayate finished. Then, perhaps realizing that he was still half-soaked, he started scrubbing his hands through his rapidly-tangling brown hair as though it would remove any of the salt or sand.

Kei and Shinsō both leaned back a little from the sudden spray.

"Anyway," Hayate said before Kei or Shinsō could think of anything to say. "Mind control. How does it work?"

"…Why?" Shinsō asked, notably more hesitant now.

Kei hid her initial reaction, which was the urge to quell Hayate immediately. Though she often pretended not to know what people were feeling or disregarded it, and being unable to read any chakra from the locals made that problem slightly more genuine, she did have compassion. Shinsō didn't need an interrogation from Hayate.

But her brother was already on a roll.

"Inoichi-sensei can do something like that," Hayate said. "He just went like this—" here, Hayate made the hand seal for the Mind-Body Disturbance technique, "—and this guy punched himself in the face. It was really cool!"

Shinsō looked at Kei over Hayate's shoulder as though to confirm that Hayate wasn't bullshitting him, and Kei said with a shrug, "His sensei's whole family can do something similar."

"And that's…cool." Shinsō raised an eyebrow. "Not creepy, or villainous, or dangerous."

"Of course it's dangerous." Hayate shook his head. Counting off with his fingers, he went on, "So is setting fires, being a walking thunderstorm, or almost drowning people. Any type of power is dangerous if you're an asshole about it. And Inoichi-sensei even gave us this huge talk about that like…last month? There was a lot about ethics."

Ironic, since shinobi education tended to go light on those. Then again, Hayate's batch of genin were growing up in a more peaceful era. Maybe that meant something.

"If you're trying to get Hayate to admit he thinks you might randomly go evil," Kei said in a mild tone, "even jokingly, it's not gonna work. Mind control Quirks are really common where we come from. You can do a lot of good with good intentions and strong morals."

Madara notwithstanding, the Uchiha were a respected noble clan. And, while not as rich or as popularly known, the Yamanaka clan sat proudly among the Konoha elite when they felt like putting on airs.

"Besides, I don't know you," Hayate said, "but you don't feel like a bad person."

Kei dropped a hand onto her brother's shoulder and asked in a complete conversational left turn, "Are you hungry?"

"Uh, sort of?" Hayate kept his eyes on Shinsō, however. "Do you think they have taiyaki?"

"Maybe." Kei had not exactly made a habit of scouting beaches for snack stands.

"I'll look!" Hayate said, and ran off.

Kei and Shinsō watched him go. Sooner or later, Hayate would remember that he didn't have any local money.

"So," Kei said after a few seconds. "Sorry if that was a lot to dump on you all at once."

"It's…It's different, I guess." Shinsō grabbed the handlebars of his bike and looked around for a second. "I'm going to park this, but I could…stick around. See what you're doing for training."

"All we're doing right now is getting a mid-morning snack," Kei said, and the pair of them followed vaguely in Hayate's wake.

It turned out that, much like parking spaces for cars that had timers and pay meters, Japan also had such spaces for bikes. Kei poked at the strange devices while Shinsō locked his bike in one of the empty slots, paying the fee with a few coins.

"Are you looking forward to the Sports Festival, Shinsō-san?" Kei asked, while she idly pinged for Hayate's chakra signature. Though she'd seen his reaction to the announcement, and perhaps the aftermath of everyone declaring war on 1-A for whatever reason, she still wanted to hear his answer.

As her brother's lightning signature lit up further down the street, Kei heard Shinsō respond, "Isn't it obvious?" When she glanced at him, he went on, "If I win, it's a chance for me to get into the Hero course. I can't afford not to win."

Kei blinked slowly. That was a bit more intense than she'd been expecting.

"What?" Shinsō seemed almost offended that she didn't have an immediate response.

"Good luck?" Kei tried. "Some of the kids you're gonna be up against are pretty tough, aren't they?" Kei was fairly certain Blondie McSplode would be totally okay with blowing up anybody near him, Shinsō included. Hell, his own classmates most definitely included.

"It doesn't matter," Shinsō said dismissively. "I know you don't care about this kind of thing, but…people have been telling me my whole life that I can't become a hero with a villainous Quirk." Yes, Kei had rather figured that. But she kept silent so Shinsō could continue with, "But that's my dream. I'm going to prove them all wrong."

What, exactly, was she supposed to say to that? "Okay. I mean, you've probably got a strategy and I'm sure it works for your Quirk, but do you have a backup plan?"

Shinsō clearly didn't want to listen to suggestions, but managed to grumble "I'm all ears."

Kei was game enough for it. "Learn to fight?"

"The Sports Festival is in two weeks," Shinsō said flatly.

"It takes just a few hours to learn basic self-defense." She crossed her arms. "If your Quirk doesn't cut it, that's all you'll have left. Do you even know how to throw a punch?"

"Of course I do."

They continued half-seriously arguing this way for a while, following Hayate's constant window-shopping more than anything. Apparently, in the months since the beach had been cleaned up, more businesses had cropped up to take advantage of the view than Kei had thought. Most of them didn't have customers this early, but it was actually better that way. It meant no one really had to hear Kei and Shinsō's ongoing debate regarding his fighting skills.

Hayate interrupted a round of Kei gesturing empty-handed while trying to explain the principles of punching someone in the face or the throat with, "Hey, what's the law on Quirks again?"

"I know I'm not supposed to use mine in public," Kei said, which Hayate accepted without elaboration.

She'd given him a very bare-bones explanation of Quirks and Quirk legislation, but it boiled down to about the same reason non-shinobi weren't supposed to use chakra-based techniques outside of clan holdings. Hayate understood that, and then spent two hours over one summer weekend cheerfully tossing ideas back and forth with Obito and Kei about what his Quirk could be.

Hayate's decision, in the end, was based on his chakra sensor ability. Besides being the only person in Konoha who could use their mother's samurai-trained technique, Hayate didn't expect to be able to carry a sword here or even to fight. The ability to sense other people's emotions and intent was good enough for wandering the streets, and it covered neatly for shinobi hyperawareness.

"You can use them for self-defense," Shinsō put in, when Kei was going to let the subject drop. "Technically, you can defend yourself or others, but just enough to run away."

"Given the number of heroes running around, that can't be that bad." Hayate folded his arms behind his head, content to join them while they walked. "And everyone has cell phones, so contacting somebody would be easy."

"You'd think," Shinsō said. "There was a kid…last spring." Shinsō rubbed the back of his neck, though the expression that crossed his face wasn't particularly kind. "He got captured by a villain and nobody could get him loose until All Might showed up. Three heroes, and between the kid's explosion Quirk and the villain possessing him, none of them could do anything besides try to keep people away and put out fires."

Kei couldn't help but notice that Hayate's presence seemed to calm both of them down. Or rather, Kei stopped dominating the conversation and Shinsō had a chance to educate a twelve-year-old. Maybe he liked non-judgmental kids?

"Was that kid the blond jerk from 1-A?" Kei asked, unable to think of anyone else who could create explosions on demand.

"The very same," Shinsō confirmed. Okay, that was definitely a bitter sort of smirk. "Guess that fancy Quirk didn't do anything for him."

Lots of bitterness.

"We might both have to face him in the Sports Festival," Kei said, while they turned toward a shopping district instead of the beach. "Your strategy's set, right?"

Shinsō nodded. "Shouldn't be too hard to piss him off."

"I don't think I'm gonna be able to see that while it happens," Hayate grumbled. To Kei, he said, "You haven't done an exhibition match since you were eleven. How bad do you really think it's gonna get?"

Good of Hayate not to mention the Chūnin Exams by name. The death toll was rather higher than would be accepted in a peacetime society. Sure, nobody tended to die in the finals, but the Second Exam was the obstacle course round and fairly unrestrained. Certainly people tried to kill each other, with varying levels of success.

"I'll be fine," Kei said.

"I know that," Hayate griped, as Kei affectionately ruffled his hair. "But are you aiming for the top? Do you have a strategy?"

"Dazzle everyone with my skill," Kei suggested sarcastically. When Shinsō and Hayate both gave her skeptical looks—disturbingly alike, actually—Kei huffed and said, "Depending on what the events are, I might be able to just use my athletic ability to get past them. But up against people like the explosion kid…yeah, that'd be about when I should bust out my Quirk."

Kei needed to figure out what mechanism allowed Blondie McSplode to act like a walking minefield. If his Quirk was anything like the half-magic fūinjutsu explosions she favored, countering him would be harder. If he relied on a chemical balance, though…

Shinsō shook his head slowly as they passed a bank. "Are you sure you should be talking about this with me? We're going to be rivals in the Sports Festival."

"Whatever." Kei flapped a hand dismissively. "If we both get that far, then I'll worry about it."

"She said the same thing before her last exhibition match," Hayate said to Shinsō, in a stage whisper. "And then she and one of her friends beat the crap out of each other."

"It was Gai," Kei defended herself. "If I wasn't prepared to use everything I had, I'd lose."

"Shots below the belt are illegal everywhere else," Hayate muttered, while Shinsō paled.

"Hey, we both knew there weren't any rules," Kei argued.

"What the hell kind of dojo did you two join?" Shinsō demanded incredulously. When both of the Gekkō siblings looked askance at him, he clarified, "Who was your teacher?"

Kei and Hayate exchanged looks. Then, in unison, "Mom."

Shinsō's purple gaze flicked rapidly back and forth between them, and then he pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "That explains so much."

At least Shinsō knew now that Kei came by her weirdness honestly. Couldn't be anything else if Hayate was also affected.

It was at this point that the bank next to them started to rumble.

Hayate's first instinct was to pause and look at the potential problem, his eyes narrowed and entire body tensed for a fight. So was Shinsō's, but he was a bit closer to the street in comparison and didn't have any combat training to fall back on.

Kei grabbed both boys by the backs of their jackets and flung them clear before the front doors shattered.