Disclaimer: All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites.

Warnings: Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else.

AN: This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Confession

October 11, 0295 AtD, 9:22 AM
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni

Eleven year old Ni'i Yugito tried to ignore the fear that was tangling her insides into knots as she followed her masked savior down the stairs leading into Konoha from the top of the Hokage Mountain. She wasn't stupid, she knew that her very presence in Konoha was going to cause huge problems and that her deflection from Kumo would have hundreds of negative political ramifications. She also knew that she couldn't have stayed in Kumo one minute longer; not without sacrificing far more than she was willing to give to the village that hated her almost as much as they hated Kiraa Bii. She had tried for years now but she could not ignore their hatred and their insults the way the older man could.

Yugito knew full well why she was hated. It was the same reason that Kiraa Bii was hated too. They were both hosts to one of the nine bijuu. Specifically, she was the host of the Nibi while Bii was the host of the Hachibi. The moment she had been deemed old enough to understand the concept of fuuinjutsu (shortly before her eighth birthday), she had been told the truth about the demon that had been sealed into her on her second birthday.

Yugito had been mostly resigned to her fate as a village pariah by the time she was admitted into the academy not long after her eighth birthday and learning about the burden she carried. At the same time, she had firmly believed that she could one day earn respect from her fellow shinobi, if not from the civilians. After all, Bii was both respected and feared on top of being hated and reviled. Unfortunately, there was a huge difference between the two of them; Yugito was a girl.

Women, while not exactly looked down on, were not exactly respected in the same way as men were in Kumo; kunoichi even less so, since most civilians believed kunoichi to be women of loose morals. There were a handful of kunoichi that had earned respect but that was mostly because they had gained the notice of a powerful shinobi. That was particularly true of those kunoichi that earned the notice of the Raikage. Yugito had not enjoyed having the Raikage's attention on her because when the Yondaime Raikage looked at her, he saw her as a weapon rather than as a person.

And weapons were designed to be used and discarded (something she had learned fairly quickly).

Still, Yugito had thought that if she did her best, she would be acknowledged. And so she had put forth her best efforts in the Academy; she had pushed her body to its limits and studied every text book and scroll she could get her hands on in her free time. All she had done was further alienate herself from her peers though and maintaining the top grade in her class had only made her instructors eye her with suspicion as they automatically assumed that the bijuu was responsible.

Things only got worse on her tenth birthday when the Raikage decided that it was time for her to start learning how to harness the Nibi's power. That was also the day that she'd had a Limiter Seal inscribed in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades. The only time the seal was deactivated was during her nightly training sessions because her trainers feared she would unleash the bijuu's power within the village now that she was learning how to use it. The rest of the time, the seal cut her off from all but the barest trickle of her chakra and completely cut her off from the bijuu's chakra bar what chakra the Containment Seal siphoned from the bijuu and fed into her coils.

That seal was part of the reason that the two pedophiles had managed to catch her on her way to the Academy that fateful morning. If not for the Limiter Seal, she would not have had any problems fighting back or escaping despite being outnumbered two to one. Just thinking about those two men made Yugito sick to her stomach as she felt the phantom touch of their hands on her body once more.

A brief mental nudge from the bijuu inside of her drew her back to the present and Yugito immediately glanced at the young man walking beside her. The Nibi nudged her again until she took the smallest step closer to her savior. A rumbled purr seemed to echo through her soul in response to her proximity to the green eyed shinobi beside her and she wondered again what it was about the boy that the Nibi found so fascinating. It was actually the Nibi's prompting that had seen her leaving the only home she'd known.

The instant that the teen had first approached her, the Nibi had sat up and taken notice of the boy.

From the moment that Yugito had first come into contact with the demon inside of her, Yugito had known nothing but the Nibi's rage coupled with a caustic tongue. The demon had hated her with a passion because she was nothing but an unwanted prison in the eyes of the Nibi. Each time that she had made contact with the beast during her nightly training sessions over the past year, the Nibi would (without fail) insult everything about her, threaten her and the village, and fight her for control.

So she was understandably shaken when nearly all of the two-tailed cat's violent rage had vanished without any warning the moment her eyes had looked into the deep, green eyes of her savior for the first time. Looking into the teen's eyes had been like stepping out of a hot spring and jumping into a pool of ice water; shocking and exhilarating all at once.

Yugito hadn't known what to think at the time and the Nibi's behavior had been both frightening and confusing because the bijuu had been urging her to trust the teen. And while Kiraa Bii had told her that she would have to learn to trust her bijuu if she ever hoped to create a working partnership with it, the sudden change in the demon's attitude had not inspired trust. The teen, however, had. His low, quiet voice and his gentleness had calmed both her and the Nibi and the sincerity she'd seen in his eyes had touched her deeply.

His words had touched her just as deeply. The fact that he had called himself a friend when they had never even met before and that he'd claimed his only desire was to help her had appealed to the innocent little girl that surprisingly still lived inside of her. She had so wanted to believe him and at the same time that desire had frightened the hell out of her. It had made her feel vulnerable. That was part of the reason she'd been so confrontational at the time.

The fact that he had not ridiculed her for allowing herself to be caught by two civilians had been rather surprising. As had the words of wisdom that he'd imparted to her the moment she'd blurted out her insecurities. She could clearly recall those words even now…

"There will always be others out there that are stronger than you but that doesn't mean that you aren't strong as well. It just means that you have to keep training and keep improving so that you continue to grow stronger."

She hadn't understood what he meant at the time. She'd been too startled by the loud rumbling purr that the Nibi had let loose the moment the teen had touched her for the first time. It had been the Nibi's unpredictable reaction that had prevented her from slapping the teen's hand away from her face out of habit since touch usually equated pain in her mind. Once she had finally realized that he was touching her, his gentle ministrations had been such a stark contrast to the bruising touches of her attackers that she'd not even attempted to interfere at that point.

The moment he had finished and moved back out of her personal space, Yugito had felt an urge to run away as far and as fast as she could in order to escape the confusing and conflicting feelings he invoked.

Only the Nibi had had other plans; plans that didn't involve running away from her green eyed savior.

Yugito had tried to ignore the two-tailed cat at first but the bijuu had been insistent. She knew she was weak for giving into the Nibi's demands but she couldn't deny that she was just as curious about the boy that had protected her. So, she had made a quick side trip to her boxy little apartment to grab her survival kit before she hurried back to the alley where she'd been attacked so that she could track down her savior and his companion.

She had thought it rather odd that they had loitered outside of the Library until it opened. She had only grown more confused when she'd watched the librarian lead the pair towards the section that held the comic books since in her limited experience, the only thing boys their age were interested in were flashy jutsu. And she could have sworn that the two of them were either Genin that had taken off their hitai-ate for some reason or Academy students that were slated for graduation soon because of the way they carried themselves and how easily the one boy had taken down her attackers.

Watching them that first day had her wondering if they weren't actually civilians or maybe Academy dropouts. That belief had disappeared the instant she'd watched them walk through a rock cliff as if it wasn't there. She'd even snuck up to the cliff and pressed her hands against the wall to confirm that it wasn't just a genjutsu covering a tunnel or something. The Nibi had even deigned to inform her that there were no barriers protecting the outside of the wall and that it could sense the chakra of the green eyed teen and his companion within the wall.

The true shock hadn't come until she'd followed the pair back to the Foreign Quarter because she had been one hundred percent certain that they had been natives to Kumo or that they were citizens from one of Kumo's closest neighboring villages.

She had stopped fighting the Nibi's persistence in keeping an eye on the pair at that point and determinedly watched both their unconventional entrance point and the main entrance to the hotel that they had led her to. Seeing two completely different boys exit just a few hours later had confused Yugito until the Nibi had told her that they were in fact the same two boys the moment she had gotten close enough for the Nibi's limited ability to sense chakra through the Limiter Seal to pick up their signature.

That knowledge also told the eleven year old that the two boys were at least Chuunin level shinobi and that they were far more skilled than she had originally believed. It also didn't take her long to realize that they were not Kumo shinobi. They were paying too close attention to the layout of the village, visiting too many key locations, and listening too closely to the conversations and rumors floating around the village to actually be natives. The one thought that had run through her mind at the time was; how the hell had no one else noticed two foreign spies wandering the village freely?

She got a partial answer when she eavesdropped on a pair of Jounin on October third after following the two teens to their hidden base. The only foreign shinobi currently staying at the hotel was the group from Konoha that had shown up at the end of August and according to the two Jounin she had listened to, the only time any of the Konoha shinobi left the hotel was when they were escorted to see the Raikage. That meant that the two teens had managed to fool their guards.

It was also a confirmation that they weren't just mere Chuunin either. It took some serious training to fool the veteran shinobi that stood watch over the more dangerous guests staying in the Foreign Quarter.

Shortly after learning that her savior was from Konoha, her unsuspecting information sources had gone on to mention that the Raikage was kicking the Konoha shinobi out of the village because of some emergency that had cropped up. It hadn't taken Yugito very long to realize that the emergency most likely revolved around her. She had, after all, ditched both her Academy lessons and her evening training sessions every single day since she'd run into the pair (something she'd never done before). She'd also ditched her handler again; something that had also attributed to her getting caught by those two civilians that day.

She hated her handler though. The guy was a complete and utter ass. He was also a pervert. She couldn't count the times the man had purposefully walked in on her while she was in the shower after a training session. He had often gloated about how he was the one that had been selected to 'cure' her of her virginity the moment she had her first menstrual cycle (an act that all kunoichi were ordered to go through the moment they began menstruating due to the high chances of being raped if caught by the enemy while on a mission).

Thankfully, the guy was an idiot as well, since he'd never once noticed that she regularly ditched him every twenty-eight days in order to keep him from learning that she had started menstruating shortly after her tenth birthday.

Upon learning she was a host, Yugito had learned everything she could about what she could expect as a host. One of the first things she learned was that bijuu containers unfailingly developed at an earlier age; especially females. One reason for that were the unnaturally large chakra reserves that all Jinchuuriki gained due to the demon's chakra mingling with their own to some degree (the amount varying based upon the Containment Seal used). Another was because of the direct (if limited) influence that the demons had on their host's physical body on top of the mental influence they could exert.

The reason that it affected female hosts more so than male hosts was because of an inherent weakness in all Containment Seals that could be readily exploited by the sealed demon during pregnancy. The explanation she had found on why that specific weakness was only present in female hosts had to do with the seal's basic function, the purpose of a woman's body, and the nature of a pregnancy. The seal was designed to keep an entity contained within its host while a woman's body was designed to bring forth new life that would be expelled at the end of her pregnancy.

What that basically boiled down to was that at the precise moment of birth, the woman's body and the seal were in direct conflict; allowing for the demon to potentially force its way out.

Kumo's solution to that sticky problem was to render any female hosts sterile the moment they finished going through puberty or upon reaching their fifteenth birthday (whichever came first) in order to make certain that she would never become pregnant and therefore endanger the village. She was certain they would do it far sooner if it wasn't for the fact that doing so could potentially create future problems and stunt the host's growth.

Yugito wasn't certain just how she felt about the matter because she wasn't really sure whether or not she wanted children. It's not like she had any experience with babies or children in general either because no one had ever trusted her enough to let her get close to any child (her classes had been the only exception and the other kids had avoided her like the plague anyway).

Yugito shook away those useless thoughts before she focused again on the decision that had brought her to Konoha.

After learning that her savior, whom she was ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain was one of the Konoha shinobi, would be leaving the village, Yugito had had a small panic attack. She feared she would be left open to another attack the moment her green-eyed protector left the village. It had not taken much for the Nibi to persuade her to leave the village with her savior at that point. The presence of her attackers loitering outside of her apartment building when she'd gone home to collect the rest of her things right after the Jounin she had been listening to had gone back to work had only firmed up her resolve.

Knowing that there would be far too many eyes on the Konoha shinobi when they left the village, Yugito had chosen to sneak out that night and wait for them at the base of the main road. It had actually been pathetically easy to sneak passed the guards; all she'd had to do was swim across the lake and slip down one of the hidden supply trails that the village used and maintained to prevent an enemy from successfully besieging the village during times of war. It had then taken her the rest of the night to reach the base of the mountain and find a secure hiding place in which to wait.

The journey alone down the mountain in the middle of the night had been nerve wracking. The unnerving journey had been well worth it though; especially once she learned that the Konoha shinobi had been escorted from a distance by a squad of Jounin; she'd have been easily caught if she'd tried to tail either group down the mountain due to the limited cover for her to hide behind. She'd half feared that the Kumo Jounin would trail the Konoha delegation all the way to Kaminari's border but they thankfully returned to the village once they'd seen the Konoha group off the mountain.

Keeping pace with the Konoha shinobi from that point forward had been rather difficult because of how fast they had traveled once they were off the mountain and if not for the Nibi's ability to trace chakra signatures (much like a dog tracked scents) she probably would have lost them fairly quickly. Each time she thought she couldn't go any further, the Nibi would coax and egg her on; the two-tailed cat utterly determined to stay close to the green-eyed teen. She had nearly cried tears of relief when the eight of them had stopped for the night.

She'd then stupidly allowed herself to grow careless in her exhaustion. It didn't help that Nibi was still so focused on her savior that it kept urging her to get closer to him. She'd been completely caught off guard by the two teens fighting out of the blue the way they had and thought they would never notice her creeping closer if they were so focused on one another. Part of her had been completely unsurprised that they'd caught her so quickly the moment she'd gotten within ten yards of their camp; she'd known they were skilled after learning they'd fooled seasoned Jounin for over a month.

On the other hand, she'd been terrified at the end of the scuffle when she ended up with a sword point practically in her eye while a kunai pricked the skin over her heart. To make matters worse, the damned Nibi had started purring like crazy again because she had ended up in the arms of the green eyed teen. She had heard her savior threaten her but his words hadn't really registered in her mind simply because the demon inside of her had only gotten louder the longer the boy held her. Oh how the Nibi had railed and wailed the moment contact had been broken.

It had been the Nibi's incessant caterwauling that had prompted Yugito to beg her savior to take her away.

The rest of that first night had been a nightmare as the adults in the party had been dead set against allowing her to go with them. There was also no doubt that they had been irritated with both her and the two teens. Her emotions had been all over the place as she was briefly interrogated by the apparent leader of the group, listened to the leader and what must have been the second in command grill the two teens over the incident, and heard the leader decide that she couldn't go with them. The Nibi's rage had returned in a heartbeat in response to that refusal.

It had been the Nibi's renewed rage that had prompted her to declare that she would follow them no matter what. The Nibi had stilled the moment her death had been offered up as a solution. In Yugito's mind, death would have been preferable to being forced to return to the village at that point and neither she nor the Nibi had missed the way the green eyed teen's chakra had faltered the moment she had calmly stated she would welcome death. It had been a shock when the leader had changed his mind about letting her go with them immediately after her proclamation and then promptly dumped her in the lap of her savior as the teen was assigned to be her new handler.

She hadn't been able to control her emotions as the tension left her body and to her everlasting mortification, she'd cried herself to sleep in her savior's arms. She half expected to be teased about that after he'd woken her up but he hadn't said a single word about it. The rest of that first night was a blur in her mind. The only thing she clearly recalled was waking up in the middle of the night that first night and discovering that her savior was half frozen. She had originally planned to just make the other boy share his blanket until the Nibi reminded her that sharing body heat was a far more effective method for warming someone up.

That had led her to curl up against the teen and share her borrowed sleeping bag.

She had been shocked and worried when she'd first snuggled up against his ice cold body before she realized that he probably only felt so cold to her because her body temperature tended to run hotter than the average human temperature because of the Nibi's presence. Once she got used to the differences in their temperatures, it actually felt rather nice to curl up against the teen. She was certain that the Nibi was far more pleased by the boy's proximity than she was though; if the cat's incessant purring at the time had been anything to go by.

At least the Nibi hadn't felt the need to torment her dreams that night.

The method of travel that had been chosen for her had been unpleasant, to say the least. Traveling through the ground for hours at a time was disorienting and annoying. Neither she nor the Nibi had enjoyed the experience at all. Although, the times when it was the green eyed teen carrying her were slightly less annoying because she hadn't had to listen to the Nibi complain about the separation on top of the discomfort. She'd started to grow claustrophobic after the first two days though and by the time they'd finally let her up for fresh air, Yugito had started to fear she'd never see the sky again.

She felt so mortified when most of the Konoha shinobi laughed at her reaction to being above ground but she was at least thankful that her savior, his brother, and the leader hadn't laughed at her as well. She was vindictively pleased that the grown men that had laughed her had had trouble being dragged through the trees after that. Of course, her pleasure over their discomfort had been marred by the fact that she'd thrown up at the time. At least no one had laughed at her further because of that.

After the horrible experience that was traveling through a tree, Yugito had finally learned the name of her savior and she had been completely shocked to learn that his name was Tora, of all things. At least he claimed it was. The Nibi couldn't detect any lie but at the same time she knew there was something that Tora hadn't been telling her. The oddest thing, in her mind, was how well the name Tora fit her savior. He was confident and graceful like a tiger and she knew he was just as dangerous. Even his startling green eyes were cat-like in both color and intensity.

There had been times when her breath had caught in her throat whenever she caught his gaze. When he'd met her gaze after she had demanded to know whether or not Tora was his real name, Yugito had actually felt like a cornered mouse as those vibrant verdant eyes pierced straight through her to measure her very soul. She could have sworn she'd even felt the Nibi quake beneath that penetrating gaze. In fact, the Nibi hadn't spoken to her once since that moment. Not even to complain when she'd ended up spending the previous night alone in the small combination bedroom and bathroom she'd been led to by Tora's brother Kuma.

Part of that might have been the fact that the room she'd been given to use was Tora's room though.

His scent had been all over that room but it had been strongest on the strange bed that looked as if it had grown right out of the wall. She had half feared the bed would fall if she climbed up into it but she was rather surprised to find it both sturdy and comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that she hadn't wanted to get out of bed this morning.

That was when she learned that Tora had a bit of a sadistic streak; the jerk had drenched her with ice water to get her up and moving. He'd then threatened to take her to see the Hokage looking like a half drowned rat if she didn't hurry up and get herself cleaned up and dressed in dry clothes. She'd tried to kick him in the shin in retaliation but he'd easily dodged her foot with a soft laugh before he'd disappeared through the door. She would have tried kicking him again after Kuma let her out of the room but Tora's teichou, Inu, had been waiting alongside of the two teens.

Yugito felt uneasy around the gray haired man; not only had he been the one to suggest killing her rather than allow her to go with them or follow them but the man smelled strongly of electricity and dog. Dogs did not like her and she did not like dogs. Part of that was because of the Nibi and the rest was because there had been more than one villager that had set their dogs on her when she'd been younger. The Nibi wasn't particularly fond of dogs either. Nor was the cat fond of electricity due to the high number of raiton users there were in Kumo.

Tora, on the other hand, smelled strongly of ice and trees with a hint of fish, salt, and wet fur. Oddly enough, Kuma smelled nearly identical to Tora with the exception that he smelled strongly of dirt and fresh sawdust instead of ice and trees. It wasn't too surprising, given the fact that they were brothers from what she understood, but it was odd that their scents were so close when most other sibling pairs she'd met in the past only had a vague sense of similarity to them and that was mostly because they both usually carried the scent of their parents.

The only time she'd ever encountered a couple whose scents were so closely matched had been those couples that were lovers. Old married couples frequently smelled so strongly of one another that it was hard to determine where one person's scent started and the other ended. Yet she knew that that was not the case with the two teens, if only because the scents were not intermingled, they were just very similar.

Yugito's musings were interrupted at that point as their small group came to stop in front of a pair of doors and Inu reached out to knock sharply on them before he opened the leftmost door. Inu entered the room first before Tora prodded Yugito into moving forward next while he and Kuma both followed practically right on her heels. Yugito nearly tripped over her feet when her eyes landed on the man she knew was the Sandaime Hokage based upon the pictures she had seen in the Academy's history books.

The eleven year old kunoichi in training nearly peed her pants when the aged shinobi turned his shrewd and calculating eyes in her direction. The only reason she didn't was because of the comforting hand on her back that was gently steering her deeper into the room. In an effort to calm her nerves, Yugito tore her eyes from the Hokage and glanced at the other men that were standing off to either side of the Hokage's desk. There was the flame masked man from the night before, a man with a couple of facial scars and dark hair shaped like a pineapple, a man with blue eyes and long blond hair, and a bear of a man with a long scar across his face, a bandana over his head, and a permanent scowl on his face.

Looking at them wasn't much different than looking at the Hokage and their eyes were just as cold and just as calculating. Not even the lazy slouch the pineapple haired man had affected could hide the coiled power she could feel radiating from him. This time, Yugito stopped moving all together and actually took a single step backwards only to collide with Tora's chest.

"You have nothing to fear, youjiyo," Tora murmured lowly as both of his hands landed on her shoulder, "so long as you do not lie and so long as you have no intentions to harm Konoha or her people, then I can promise you that no harm shall come to you from any of those in this room. Okay…?"

Yugito gave a jerky nod in reply as she allowed Tora to give her a gentle push to get her walking once more despite the fact that her legs still felt like jelly. It was another two steps before she realized that Tora had once again called her a little girl and before she could censor her mouth or her body, she jabbed the teen in the gut with her right elbow and imperiously ordered, "Stop calling me that! I have a name, you know."

"You have sharp elbows too, gaki," Tora replied as he poked her in the side with his left hand. "And it's not like you told us your name, so what else am I supposed to call you, youjiyo?"

"I tried to tell you my name before and you said not to," Yugito pointed out as she scraped the heel of her left foot down his unprotected shin before stomping on his foot.

"There was no one stopping you from giving us your name once you learned our names," Kuma countered as he deftly lifted her up and planted her in the center of the room. "Now stop attacking Tora; it's rude and unwise to pick fights in front of the Hokage. Even if Tora was intentionally teasing you in order to help you relax a bit."

Yugito eeped and blushed bright red as she realized she'd been attacking one of Konoha's shinobi in front of the Hokage. To her surprise, most of the adults in the room were actually chuckling instead of glowering or glaring at her (bar the masked man whose face she couldn't really see and the bear man whose face she suspected might be made of stone).

"Fear not, child," the Hokage stated in a surprisingly friendly tone. "Tora tends to draw that kind of reaction from most of the people that have to put up with him." Yugito couldn't help but giggle as she snuck a glance back at her savior to find that he'd crossed his arms over his chest like a petulant child. "Perhaps, it would be best if you were to introduce yourself to us if you wish to be addressed by your name."

Yugito bit her lip as her insecurities came rushing back at that point. It wasn't until she felt the Nibi stirring in the back of her mind that she drew up her courage and complied, "My name is Ni'i Yugito."

The eleven year old knew that her name had been recognized by more than one of the adults present as the room was suddenly filled with an uncomfortable stillness and the tension that had disappeared after her bickering with Tora had returned twofold. She trembled briefly before she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and bravely met the Hokage's gaze as she desperately ignored the way her stomach was twisting up in knots once more.

"You are related to the Shodai Raikage," the Hokage stated with certainty.

"Hai, I'm the Shodai's great-granddaughter," Yugito confirmed as her voice wavered only the slightest bit.

"I see," the Hokage drawled in a measured tone as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his desk as he steepled his hands and tapped his index fingers against his lips. "And yet you claimed that the entirety of Kumogakure hated you."

"They do. They always have for as long as I can remember."

"And do you know why they supposedly hated the honored granddaughter of their Shodai Raikage?" pineapple hair man asked her as he shed all traces of laziness.

"H…Hai," Yugito stuttered in reply as she cast a fearful glance back and up to meet the verdant gaze of her savior.

"And their reason was…?" the Hokage prompted when she didn't immediately say anything further.

Yugito dropped her gaze to her hands as she knotted them together to keep them from trembling and desperately tried not to puke on the Hokage's floor. She then snuck one last glance at Tora before she took a seep breath, glanced back up at the Hokage, and weakly answered, "I'm the Jinchuuriki of the Nibi."

Several curses rang out through the room and the Hokage actually buried his face in his hands. Yugito tasted bile as her fears began pressing down around her over their reaction to her confession. Her knees buckled on her a moment later as she began having trouble breathing but to her surprise she found herself being swept up into a pair of strong arms before she could hit the ground. The familiar scent of ice and trees told her that it was Tora who was holding her and part of her was thrilled to know that he wasn't afraid to touch her even though he now knew what she was.

"Maa, maa, youjiyo; you have nothing to fear," Tora murmured in her ear as he held her close.

"Tora…!" the masked man snapped at that point as he took a single step towards them and Yugito couldn't help but flinch at the anger she could hear in his voice and sense in the air around him.

"Oi, don't blame me for this one," Tora snapped back without any trace of fear and more than a little irritation. "I'm not the one that was in charge of interrogating my little stalker after we caught her. Even if I had known exactly who she was and what she held, I still would have stepped in to help her. You know damned well how I feel about people abusing children."

"I'm getting too old for this shit," the Hokage muttered as he rubbed his hands over his face before he looked up once more. "Ni'i-chan, why were you following one of my ANBU Guards?"

"He saved me from the two men that were going to rape me," Yugito replied honestly as she looked up to meet his gaze through the shimmering sheen of unshed tears that had filled her eyes. "He treated me with kindness and he saw me as a person instead of a monster. And… and…"

"And what, child?" the bear man gently asked in a deep voice that was far kinder than she would have expected from him given his intimidating visage.

"And the Nibi is drawn to him."

Translations: Japanese to English

Gaki – brat
Hai – yes
Kiraa Bii – Killer Bee
Maa, maa – now, now or there, there (a phrase used to placate someone)
Oi – hey
Youjiyo – little girl

Notes:

Kiraa Bii vs. Kirābi vs. Killer Bee – the spelling of Killer Bee's name was taken from rather than Narutopedia and I use that version of his name because it is the easiest version for me to write outside of just using Killer Bee which I try to avoid for authenticity's sake much like I use Maito Gai instead of Might Guy. There's also the fact that MS Word has an issue using with me using ā instead of a or aa and I get sick of constantly having any word using the line over the vowel popping up as a spelling mistake when I know its not.

I also dislike using a single letter to represent a name. That is especially true of the Raikage's name because it is far too easy to mix his name up with the letter a when starting a sentence or writing out his dialog It was for that reason that I never once used the Raikage's name during the chapters that the Konoha shinobi spent in Kumo. It was also why I didn't write out the confrontation between Kirin and the Raikage and didn't send Kojimaru, Tenzou, or Kakashi to the meeting. Anyway, that is my reasoning behind the spelling I used for certain names.

Yugito's age – as I mentioned back when she first was introduced in this story, yes, I am aware that in canon, Yugito is the same age as Kakashi (which in this story would have placed her as two years older than both Kojimaru & Tenzou). I reduced her age by six years intentionally because I have plans for her that required her to be young enough to; not yet have earned her hitai-ate, to still be resentful of her treatment at the hands of a village that knows she carries the Nibi (which means that her loyalty to Kumo is not as steadfast as it is when she is older – therefore making it easier to move her to another village), and for one other reason that won't come up until later.

11-15-15: Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.