N/A: Yay! Almost done!!

Sitting on top of the airstream, Moriko soared over the silently burning village, conjuring shots of water to cool down the fire. As she felt the wind hit her face, her thoughts ran wild with her emotions. She just killed the second last member of her clan and felt just as bad as the one who had betrayed the Intou village. Her throat tightened and she shook herself. Shut up. Don't think, just act. Right now, focus on finding Hayato ...

Moriko let out a yell in pain as a shurikan sliced her left shoulder open. She ignored the blood and looked at who threw it. It was Hayato sitting calmly on top of his hawk. She growled. Before she could say anything else, he spoke, "Don't think I didn't see it," he began to soar closer. His face was emotionless, his tone ice cold. "You killed him."

The girl clenched her fists. "And is that all you care about? That I killed him? Don't you even care that he died?"

Hayato shrugged. "No. Who gives? It was either me or him."

"So you set him up."

The topaz eyes narrowed. "I wouldn't stoop to such disgusting methods." he spat.

Her fists clenched as she swooped in towards him. "How can you talk about disgusting when you don't care about the people you're killing off for land?!" Darn it. Don't loose control of yourself ...! Calm down ... breathe ...

"I'm just doing what I think is best."

Moriko's voice shook. "So you think the best is to massacre villages that you think have no important in this world and use their village area as land to nurture your clan that now only consists of two people."

There was a silence. Hayato looked down, as if he had nothing to say. Moriko was almost sick and tired of even asking the question – she had asked it so many times already.

"Everyone at our village almost always had two or more spirits when they were kids,"

The sudden change in topic alarmed the girl. His voice was quiet, matching the crackling of the wood below them. At the mention of multiple spirits, Moriko's attention was focused once more.

"As they grew older, their personalities and attributes changed, so it limited their spirits and they would end up with one." Hayato said quietly.

The girl's hostility went down as she asked her question. "Were there ever incidents where someone had one main spirit, but had signs of other spirits?"

"One or two, but usually their sealbreaking was too powerful for them and they never survived."

Moriko paused, digesting the statement he had so casually made. "Usually?," she replied slowly. "So what about others? I thought you said before that those with multiple spirits were weapons of war."

He shrugged carelessly. "I assumed; I never talked to other people, so I wouldn't know." His voice instantly changed into an almost sober tone.

Moriko narrowed her eyes. No more lies ... "Tatsuo said you had some sort of secret that you never shared." she said. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have bothered to relay information like that, but it was bugging her. Her airstream swayed gently from side to side, as if wanting to fly her away.

Suspicion immediately showed up in the young man's eyes and he ignored the question. "As an answer to your question earlier, massacring the villages was a chance to test out the summoning technique and, like I said before, it was to find you."

The girl began to feel the familiar rage well up inside of her. "I still can't believe you did all that just to find me." I can take him. It's one on one ...

"I had to."

"Was finding me such a priority that you placed ONE life over two hundred other ones...?!" she yelled. "If that's what being an Intou means, then I don't want to have anything to do with the clan!"

Hayato's turquoise eyes blazed. "How dare you say that! After all that I've been through, you dare tell that to me?!"

"And what is it that you've been through?!" Moriko demanded. She felt her lungs burn with anger.

"I betrayed the village!"

For a long time, there was nothing but the pounding of the girl's own heart, the burning fire below them, and the repitition of the four words over and over in her mind.

Hayato repeated it, his voice shaking. "I betrayed the village."

The second time he said it, the girl's world shook. The betrayal, the anger, the ferocity, escaped her in a torrent of red chakra. The raw scent of wild chakra filled the air once more and birds flew from the trees as the fire flared.

Hayato guided the hawk to fly in a circle, watching with amazed eyes as the chakra covered the girl, forming the shape of a tiger. The stripes on her back were a crimson, identical to that of a pool of blood. The fire below them flared once more, threatening to lick the bottom of his summon.

There was a low growl as the topaz eyes of the tiger looked straight into his and he felt a rush of energy through his own veins. This was true power. This was what he was searching for.