"To change one's life:

Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions."

~ William James

...

Mitomi is eleven the first time she meets Gaara of the desert in this lifetime. Border patrol with her shishou finally turned up something exciting, mainly because Kurama had been yelling at the one tails since they entered the range. She needed to fix his seal, she needed to fix his seal like yesterday. He tries to kill her, it is great fun.

She has his only slightly larger body pinned under hers, she is hissing at him with a sharp glare. "Stop being an idiot!" Mitomi yells in his face because she's so done, he broke her ankle and it hurt.

He goes to growl and she headbuts him. "Enough! Shukaku stop being an asshole!" She shouts and Gaara goes limp. Mitomi eyes his seal, yup still as fucked up as it was before. Luckily she doesn't need ink or paper to fix it.

Hurry up brat, Shukaku is fighting me.

'Trying my best. I'm glad I was able to separate us from shishou and the others.'

Focus on your seal work.

Mitomi does as she is told and she works quickly, separating Gaara's and Shukaku's mind space. She's done this before, and she knows so much more now. It isn't hard to fix but it is unfortunately tedious in structure.

Mostly because Suna sucked at fuinjutsu… they really shouldn't try. They ruined such a beautiful art. Mitomi felt sad, fuinjutsu was amazing and Suna made it horrible. She works carefully and quickly. When she finishes she kindly gets off the other preteen.

He sits up slowly and blinks at her.

"What did you do?" He practically growls and she ignores the malice in his voice.

"I fixed your seal, the one tails can't talk to you now unless you want him to. At some point you should probably try talking to him, he'll get lonely but I understand if you don't want to he has been a dick to you." Mitomi smiles at him before reaching with her chakra to the seal she placed on shishous vest.

She waves. "See you around Gaara of the Desert." She's gone.

Gaara sits there for a long time, in utter silence. He doesn't know how he feels about any of this. When he finally gets off the ground to go find his siblings he decides he actually doesn't mind the silence. His brother and sister are tied to a tree just across the border.

He cuts them loose, and says nothing about his encounter with the strange red headed girl. Gaara enjoys the silence the entire trip back to their village.

…

Shishou carries her on his back as the head back to the village. "Did you accomplish what you wanted?" Mitomi nods even though he can't see it.

"Yeah… I did. I think he'll be better off now. The one tails was mad but he'll get over it." She tells him, leaning her head down to rest her chin on his shoulder.

"How are your kenjutsu lessons coming along?" Shishou changes the subject and she doesn't mind it. They'd talked about her intent with the one tailed host soon after they'd left the village with the mission. He hadn't disagreed with her and they'd been on the same page about the entire thing from the start.

"Hayate-senpai is a good teacher, I'll probably start using a real sword soon. Which is cool… I didn't know how to do that before." He hums jumping through the treetops with very little effort. Mitomi felt like they were flying.

"I am proud of you." She smiles into his shoulder.

"Thank you shishou."

…

Mitomi is riding a high when she returns to the village Naruto even manages to rope her in to pulling a prank with him. "You missed our birthday, so you owe me." He teased, Mitomi rolled her eyes but went along with it nonetheless. All of Naruto's pranks were harmless, she wouldn't get caught unless she wanted to.

Was it mean? Only slightly.

Did Jiji need to live a little? Absolutely.

Also the more she could get him out of the office and away from Shimura shady influence the better. She needed to tell Shikaku-sama about the seal she noticed on the Sandaime. Mitomi had never understood how Shimura did it before, sure there was the sharingan arm thing but that wouldn't have been enough, he didn't have it when he forced the Hokage's hand in regards to the massacre. Shimura Danzo was dirty dirty liar, she'd flay him if she could.

"Hey are you okay? You look like your contemplating murder nee-chan?" Mitomi schools her expression and beams a smile at her brother.

"I am thinking about poisoning Hayate-senpai's coffee, he's so merciless when we train. I think I'm going to die!" She wouldn't poison Hayate's coffee, because he was her friend and that was mean. Maybe she'd hide his favorite mug instead…That was acceptable.

Besides he'd accidentally broke her favorite mug a couple weeks ago when they had another incident with their third guard member. This one hadn't tried to kill her at least, but their comments had been less than savory. Mitomi grinned gleefully at the memory of their black eye. Hayate-senpai was so cool.

Naruto laughed and continued explaining the plans of his prank. Mitomi had an epitome. "Hey Naru, you want me to teach you a cool jutsu?"

Mitomi only feels slightly guilty for Mizuki's sudden departure from teaching Naruto's class last semester. She hoped he was enjoying his stay in T&I. So she should probably make sure her brother at least learns his favorite parlor trick.

"Cool jutsu?" He is eager and bouncing and she smiles at him.

"Yeah cool jutsu, will help you with training. Shishou taught me and said I could show you since we have similar chakra levels. It's a jounin technique so you can't tell anybody else that you know it." Mitomi is twelve and she teaches her brother the shadow clone jutsu.

Because she will replace every single lesson learned through pain, even if it kills her. Mitomi would protect Naruto with her very being… some things never change.

…

She is not impressed with the silver haired jounin who is her brother's new teacher. Mitomi watches the hilarity that is the bell test unfold from the safety of Shishou's back. They'd just gotten back from another one of their ever so fun runs of the border, this time she got to talk to B again. Kurama had actually informed her of his impending arrival, the Kumo nin had been slightly disappointed to learn she hadn't signed the scroll he'd given her yet.

She was too damnit! Mitomi missed the foxes, she was almost to the point of reverse summoning herself just to see them again. She missed the sisters, her three beautiful lovely girls who had been so strong and so enduring. And so ruined when the oldest died during the war. Mitomi wanted to replace all the graveyards with a new garden.

"Shishou your friend is emotionally stupid." Mitomi tells him plainly, because she is not impressed. Maybe she would talk to Inoichi-sama about Kakashi's mental health again.

"You said that about the Nara boy this morning too Mitomi." Her face does not go red at the mention of Shikamaru.. It doesn't… only slightly a little. She lightly hits him on the top of his head and he drops her. Mitomi pouts at him as she lands next to him on the branch.

Her shishou was so rude to her.

"Shika is a stupid genius. Much like Hatake-san is. Shishou fix your friend." She doesn't miss the fond smile she gets. She does pout at the head pat.

"I will when you fix your boyfriend Mitomi-chan." She stutters completely undignified.

"Shikamaru is not my boyfriend!" He chuckles at her and shakes his head.

"Sure, if you say so. Come on they'll figure it out. Genma is going to want to check you over." She huffs but nods. Genma was an obsessive mother-hen, he mothered her more than Yoshino-san did. Especially since he knew about her illness.

Hayate said that it was normal, Genma did the same thing to him too. Mitomi was still slightly affronted by it all. She was perfectly able chunin, she didn't need to coddled. Except she never really fought Genma's efforts of concerned cuddles, because secretly she liked being cared about..

That hadn't been the case before.

Although she could do without Genma's whining about her singed hair. It would grow back. It was fine! She was trying hard not to think about the several inches she was going to have to cut off the even it out.

She liked her hair long… and it would still be long after she cut it… but it wouldn;t be as long as it had been.

Mitomi loved and hated change.

XOXOX

Shorter chapter here because I didn't really want to cram anymore into this one. This is mostly a filler timeskip chapter because the next chapter starts the beginning of the actual series and well things are going to be different..

Thank you for reading!

~LaRae