"Are you okay?" Rin asked. It was the day of the mission, and both teams were preparing to leave. The truth was, Fumiko was nervous. Sure, she did well on the training, but she lacked the experience that the others' had. She shook her head.

"What's wrong? Is it about the mission?" Rin looked concerned for her.

Fumiko didn't say anything. She just nodded her head. She was quiet like that sometimes.

"You'll be fine," she said. "Besides, me and Obito will be here to protect you."

"Yeah, that's right!" Obito said energetically. He gave her a thumbs up.

Fumiko smiled at this. "Thank you," she said.

Was she actually making friends? She never really had any friends at the academy. The boys in the class were only interested in her because she was "popular," and the girls were all jealous of her. Neither of them genuinely wanted to be her friend.

Fumiko looked over to her right. Taishiro and Kakashi were talking, which they seemed to be doing a lot recently, when Akemi and Taishiro weren't arguing.

Kushina and Minato then called out to them that it was time to leave, so they packed up their things and left.

Everyone had already head out on the journey to Sunagakure, which would take at least 3 days. Because they were getting tired and it was already late in the night, they took a break in the clearing of a large forest, where darkness was beginning to lurk. Everyone had begun to fall asleep. At this point, Akemi noticed that something was missing, and that's when he realized that he left it when he accidentally dropped his bag earlier.

"Fumiko, I think I left something back in the forest. Tell Kushina-sensei I'll be back," he said.

"You can't just run off like that. That's dangerous!"

"But, it's something important..."

"I still don't think that's a good idea. What if you get hurt or something?"

"Fine then, I'll just go by myself."

Akemi then left to go retrieve what he had lost. Fumiko stayed behind, but after he fails to return back, she regrets this decision. She then awakened her Byakugan. She needed to find out where he was at, and when she did, she found him surrounded by 2 other Sand Village shinobi. As she realized he was in danger, she rushed to go find him.

"Akemi," she called out. "Akemi!"

Just when she arrived, one of the Sand shinobi tried to attack him. She lunged towards the shinobi and struck him with gentle fist. He collapsed onto the ground.

"Akemi, go! I'll take care of this."

"But—"

"Go get Kushina-sensei. I'll hold him off for now."

"But why?" Akemi asked. He looked full of regret. "I was always so mean to you, so why would you save me? This is all my fault anyways, I'm sorry."

"Because your my comrade... I will protect you with my life if I have to, I promise."

Akemi didn't want to argue with her, so he left after she insisted on this. The truth was, although Fumiko was able to get one of the shinobi, the other seemed to be much stronger. She wasn't sure if she would be able to hold him off long enough. Besides, she wasn't nearly as skilled as everyone thought of her to be. Although she could easily learn the basics during her training, she lacked experience.

Her moves became repetitive and almost readable. Compared to the other Genin, sure, she was exceptional, but to other Jonin she was still just a kid. More so, her Byakugan was still underdeveloped. She still had a lot to learn. But she made a promise, so she had to fight with all she had, no matter what.

The shinobi made his first move. He got out a puppet which he controlled with chakra threads, but it was not an ordinary puppet; these puppets had small, sharp, miniature sword-like edges on the palms of their hands, coated with poison. Just one tiny scratch from this would be enough for the poison to take effect. But these puppets are controlled by chakra. If I could find a way to avoid the puppets and go straight towards the actual opponent, I could disable his chakra flow with 32 palms.

Fumiko lunged straight towards her opponent.

The puppet was then tugged with the chakra threads, controlled by the opponent. The puppet then outstretched its arm, attempting to strike her and stab her with the blade. Fumiko easily ducked to avoid this, due to her age and size. She struck the puppet with a sudden blast of her chakra and destroyed it. She then head towards her opponent. She tried using gentle fist, but her opponent was faster than her though, and she could not land a single hit. Finally, she was able to catch her opponent off guard. She realeased a sudden burst of chakra from her palms to strike the opponent. Her opponent was knocked into a nearby tree. She saw this as her chance to use her most advanced gentle fist technique, 32 palms. And he was perfectly in range. As she set herself into the 32 palms position and used the byakugan to envision herself towards the center of the eight trigrams symbol, the opponent quickly caught on to what she was doing.

"It can't be," he said.

Eight trigrams: two palms

She struck him 2 times, with chakra coming out from the tips of her fingers

Four palms

She then struck him 4 times, with more striking speed and agility than the last.

Eight palms

This time, she struck him eight times. He tried to escape from this jutsu, but he was already too weakened.

Sixteen palms

She struck him 16 times, increasing her striking speed with every hit. At this point, the opponent could barely stand up.

Thirty-two palms

Finally, she struck him 32 times, and at this point the opponent had collapsed, with blood gushing from his mouth. It was over. She deactivated her Byakugan and was about to leave. Then, suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her leg. But how? What could have happened? She then felt her muscles becoming numb, and she collapsed onto the ground. Then, she gasped as she realized that the opponent that lay in front of her was merely a shadow clone, and with a puff of smoke, the clone had vanished and dispersed. She had fallen perfectly into his trap.

The real him stood right behind her. "You were too busy focusing on avoiding the poison that you didn't even notice the trap I had set up. That's one of the weaknesses of the Byakugan; you can see so much that it becomes hard to process everything thing at once, and when you're too focused on one thing, you become much less focused on your surroundings. You may be a skilled ninja, but you're quite inexperienced." He grinned. "Why don't you take a look at what you're stepping on," he said. Fumiko looked, and gasped. She had stepped on a trap, coated with poison. The poison was now circulating through her body, and she could hardly move.

"Now, die!" he exclaimed, striking a sword at her face. But before the sword could even hit, he came to a halt, with the edge of the sword just inches away from her face. He suddenly became numb as he collapsed onto the ground, dead. Someone had thrown a kunai tinted with poison, which had pierced through his heart. The poison was so strong that it had killed him instantly. As she looked up, she recognized her face immediately. It was the girl she had known from the academy; it was Ozaki Kozakura.

"Don't worry," Kozakura spoke. Fumiko was about to pass out at this point; her eyelids became heavy as she struggled to stay conscious, and the voice of the girl had become echoed and distorted. Before she passed out, she heard her say, "You're safe."