Ensui didn't want to get anywhere close to a Hidden Village before going back to Konoha, and was careful to avoid the River Country's, which separated Suna from Konoha. To do so, as soon as they went out of the desert, he led them south and after a day and a half of travel they had reached the sea. He watched with a tender eye Hitomi marvel at this new sight.

This sea couldn't be more different than the dirty, gray waters she had known in her first life. Here, the blue of the sea was clear and pure, reflecting a cloudless sky. The waves didn't carry any filth but instead gently rolled the pebbles they reached rhythmically.

Delighted and with her master's approval, Hitomi wandered at length on the pebble beach, playing with the tiny waves that licked her bare feet. The water had been warmed all day by the sun and was almost lukewarm, and wonderfully see through. She would tell everything she had seen to Gaara and would take him one day on a beach, maybe this one. She already dreamt of his wide eyes, filled with wonder, and of his soft smile.

When she had played enough, she obediently went back to Ensui. He had started to make them a camp, sufficiently far from the beach so they wouldn't sleep on pebbles. He had gathered driftwood to show the green and blue flames to Hitomi, taking the opportunity to slip a small chemistry lesson in. That evening, they both hunted in the undergrowth, about a mile away from the beach. Hitomi caught a rabbit and Ensui two birds, which they ate in silence, warmed up by the flames.

Hitomi had to admit that despite how much she liked Gaara, she had missed being alone with her master. Oh, the little boy hadn't been around all the time, but in the hotel, the relationship between Ensui and his pupil had not been the same. They had had to adapt, to include a third party in their dynamic, because Hitomi would not have tolerated excluding her friend and Ensui would have been disappointed in her if she had done so.

Hitomi's birthday came a few days later, while they were going up the seaside to get into Fire Country. The weather was only starting to get colder: in the south, winters were shorter and even more moderate than in Konoha. The little girl hadn't expected any present. She knew her master had other priorities than to buy her a gift since they were so remote from any civilization.

And yet, on her birthday's morning, he had something to give her. While she finished greeting the sun, he held up to her with both hands a long package, carefully wrapped in red silk. Adults seemed to determine it was Hitomi's colour and she wasn't about to disagree with them. Suddenly breathless and nervous, she took the package with both hands to show her master her reverence and respect.

Once she had removed the silk that wrapped her present, Hitomi found herself holding a tantō like the ones which were displayed in noble mansions in the Fire Country. Almost trembling, she stroked with her fingertips the smooth black of the sheath. Over the black leather was a herd of deer and does that ran all the way to the guard. Slowly, she unsheathed the weapon, a movement she had practised a thousand times with her wooden blade. This blade was lighter, and so clean, so shiny, that she could see her reflection in it. Eyes watering, Hitomi had to swallow the bubbles of emotions that had appeared in her throat.

"You like it," said Ensui in a deeply satisfied voice.

"It's... It's..."

Unable to find words to express how she felt about it, the little girl tore her gaze away from her new blade and raised her definitely wet eyes.

"Thank you, shishou. I will treat her well."

"Her? Do you have a name?"

"Not yet. I'll tell you once I find it."

Still with reverence, the little girl sheathed the blade back and let Ensui help her hang it to her belt. Seven years would have to pass and go before she would graduate and think about a battle outfit, but he had a few ideas for her, ideas he would walk her through once they would get back to the village. After all, he had plenty of resources at hand. The others wouldn't know what hit them, once she would join Konoha's forces.

The next days were a bit more relaxed. Finally, they crossed the Fire Country's border, but Ensui didn't want to go to Konoha just yet, since he wanted to make sure his apprentice knew the place like the inside of her own pocket. Now she was able to run for hours without getting tired, even though she wasn't as quick as experienced ninjas yet. She hadn't learned how to strengthen her muscles with chakra, and he wanted to correct that.

One day, it rained very hard, so hard they weren't able to continue walking. The master was not opposed to push his apprentice beyond her limits, but to cause her to fall ill in the middle of nowhere would have been stupid. He knew a bit of medical ninjutsu, but not nearly enough to cure illness. However, he didn't want them to lose time doing nothing, and Hitomi was deemed ready, at six years old, to perform a training that was normally for main branches of some ninja clans. Fortunately and coincidentally, the clans that had once sheltered those secrets were almost all extinguished now, and nobody would accuse them of stealing their ancestral knowledge.

"Chakra," he explained to Hitomi, "is a force that can be found in any living thing, but also in the environment. You produce chakra, but that doesn't make you any different from a civilian. What makes the difference is the ability to use it for ninja techniques. Any civilian can become a ninja, but clan children will always be better in performance. Do you know why?"

She nodded, her big eyes, fascinated and eager, tracking every movement he made. He continued,

"There are two reasons. The first one is innate; the size of chakra reserves is partly hereditary. Some clans, like the Uzumaki and Yūki — which you're part of — were known for their prodigious reserves. A long time ago, adults from this clan were called the Tailless Beasts, because their reserves, once developed to their full capacity, were comparable to jinchūrikis'.

Hitomi almost choked when hearing that and had to struggle to not spit water through her nose. Before this day, she hadn't even been aware that she belonged to a clan from her mother's side. Of course, her father was a Nara, but she had never heard anything about the Yūhi clan. On the other hand, her mother and grandfather were the only two Yūhi she knew of... The last remaining Yūhi, besides her. Ensui gently tapped her back, waited for her to pull herself back together, and continued his lesson.

"Those two clans are both almost extinct today. You're the last known heiress of your clan, and as for Uzumakis... You know the jinchūriki that wears this name by reputation, right? I can't really talk about why they have been killed, but I can tell you that their chakra reserves have contributed in making them targets."

The little girl nodded, still staring at her master. She drank his words, storing every bit of information in a new book in her Library. In reality, she knew more than he supposed she did about Uzumaki clan, but she couldn't justify her awareness of these things without admitting she was from another word, and that was not going to happen. Ever.

"The second secret of clan children is their training, which begins way before the Academy. If your mother followed her father's and Shikaku's advice, she has started teaching you things that are taught in the Academy when you were only three. This gives you an advantage over civilian children, because at most they will have learned writing and reading basics before becoming aspiring ninjas."

It wasn't fair, of course, but Hitomi was glad she was born in the side that gave her an advantage. Her plans required from her to go and stand in very powerful ninjas' ways in a few years at most, and she needed every headstart she could get. Too bad if it wasn't fair.

"Today, I will teach you about chakra control basics. Civilians don't learn anything about this before third year in the Academy, but it's fundamental that you start today."

He had a leaf in his hands, which he had carefully dried with his chakra. He held it out to Hitomi, and she stared without understanding.

"You will try to use your chakra to stick this leaf to your forehead, without damaging it. You will keep trying until you succeed or until you cannot use chakra anymore."

The little girl obediently did as she was told. She had already used her chakra for a few little things before, but only by making it flow from her hand. It was something else entirely to focus it on her forehead, to use the right quantity — not enough chakra and the leaf fell, too much and it ripped apart — and to maintain it for a long time. It took her two hours and a little pile of leaves at her feet to get the first part of the exercise right. After that, she started to feel the first stages of chakra exhaustion, even though it was nothing compared to how she had felt when she had tried to isolate her meridians' perceptions for the first time.

It was extremely difficult for her to describe how it felt to have chakra. To Hitomi, it was like feeling a delightfully hot liquid flow through all of her body, swirl around her organs, magnifying her sensations. She often wondered if the other ninjas were aware of the energy's presence inside them, of the path drawn by their meridians. She could never really forget.

To send chakra in a specific part of her body was a tricky thing; the energy kept trying to go back to its normal track, and she was probably wasting some of it while kneading it. However, Ensui seemed satisfied when a leaf stuck to her forehead for more than one minute before falling down. Hitomi swore between her teeth.

"Keep trying. You're getting the hang of it."

"Yes, shishou."

Her motivation renewed by the compliment he had just given her, she picked up the undamaged leaf and glued it to her forehead with chakra again. Her hands had started shaking, but she didn't stop. She didn't stop either when her breathing became ragged, and when she started feeling dizzy. Staring at her master, she waited for his permission, and she didn't care if she had to burn all of her power before he gave it.

Indeed, he waited for that exact moment before catching her when she collapsed, breathing with difficulty and her heart beating so fast and so hard she felt like it was going to burst out of her chest. She was going to have another difficult night. Confused, she searched for Ensui's eyes, her need for an explanation clearly written on her face.

"The only way to increase your chakra reserves to their maximum potential is to empty them again and again, every day, during childhood. Just like suppleness and strength, you have to work for chakra reserves, and this work isn't free. You will suffer, maybe even hate me, but if you keep walking this path, someday people will call you a Tailless Demon too. That's what you want, right?"

Ensui wasn't an idiot. He had recognized his apprentice's thirst for power. He didn't see anything wrong with being eager for power. It was even a good thing for a ninja, a motivation that often made the difference between people who would keep their sensei and people who would have to choose between take another year of classes or reorient themselves when out of the Academy. He had never confronted her about it though and had waited for her to be exhausted to confess what he was about to make her go through.

And he didn't fail his word. Every day, Hitomi emptied her chakra reserves one way or another, often with control exercises. Once she was able to stick a leaf to her forehead for more than an hour, he added another on her right shoulder, then on her left, and cetera. He was finally satisfied when she was able to stick ten leaves to ten different parts of her body. Actually, once one had understood how to do it, it wasn't really difficult to add leaves. It wasn't difficult to change the material either. She used parchment and wool from her blankets and just had to find the right amount of chakra. The thinner the material, the more precise control was required, since she had to use less and less chakra everytime. When Hitomi reached the point where she was able to stick a silk paper sheet on her forehead without damaging it, it was time to go to the next step.

She was sick every night because of her lack of chakra, and sometimes, she had to admit she hated what her master put her through. Oh, she didn't hate him, because he took great care of her, sacrificing without thinking about it hours of sleep to comfort her and hold her hair behind her neck while she was throwing up, in agonizing pain. And she had to admit she felt her reserves grow every day. They filled quicker during the night, which meant it was getting harder for her to empty them during the day.

If she was able to go through this, it wouldn't be only because of Ensui, although he was very helpful. Somewhere in the misty fog induced by constant lack of chakra, a bright flame burned, pushing her relentlessly forward, forbidding her even the shortest break. Sometimes, even her master worried she was pushing herself too far, emptying her chakra as soon as it reappeared, but he couldn't deny this suffering would help her in the future. He could have called her burning flame Konoha's Will of Fire. She only called it her plan. Her desire to make things change for the best; the list of people who had to live and people who had to die.

Once Ensui was satisfied enough with her handling the leaf exercise, he taught her how to create and master a chakra string, in order to be able to fold origami without her hands. This exercise was trickier, since the precision it required was extreme. After a few weeks, Hitomi used silk paper sheets, without her master having to tell her anything. Her joints now ached permanently, but she refused to stop, to take the smallest break in the path her master had created for her. She would go forwards and forwards again until she couldn't make any more progress.

When she would reach the maximum of this brutal apprenticeship, she would just let time do its work. Puberty did wonders on a ninja's strength. It was one of the reasons that aspiring ninjas couldn't graduate until they were eleven years old in peace time and advised to wait until they were twelve. Children sent too early to war were just consummated physically and psychologically, and a vast majority of them never came back.

Four months after her birthday, she was ready to take another step on her path, according to Ensui. She took her first day of leisure since her birthday, feeling her full gates and reserves happily. For the first time in four months, she slept twelve hours straight like a log, and when she woke up, she was ready.