She blinks. Everything's too bright, too fuzzy. She shuts it all out.
Minato's gentle ebb and flow is a choppy sea of fear and concern; Kushina's bright and cheerful wind on a summer day is a sudden typhoon of self-loathing and raw anger directed somewhere deep inside her.
She frowns. Where did Kakashi go? He's supposed to be here.
Sensei?
Sensei is close; Sensei is an island on a lake. The surface is calm, a mirror; she can't see beneath it. She has a feeling she could dive in and find where he keeps his most secret thoughts and feelings. They would cut, most definitely, like shards of broken glass and mirror—should she try to grasp them. Maybe she'll try later, but not today. The island is quiet save for an inviting wind rustling the leaves of the trees.
She blinks. Her entire body feels like it's vibrating and it takes a moment for her to feel anything that isn't constant ringing. Pins and needles, then acid scorching the back of her throat and something that tastes like what burnt toast smells like. She goes back to the leaves and the wind.
"How long has she been like this?"
"Seven minutes."
A firm, unruffled presence. She takes a step back from the island.
"Tsunade-san?"
"Hey, kid. How are you feeling? Can you stay out of trouble for a single week, please?"
"…" she drifts back to the island. It's quieter there.
"What happened?"
"Honōka-kun sensed Uzumaki Kushina approaching and became… enthralled."
"Her eyes glowed," Kakashi provides. He sounds out of breath. His staticky presence makes her teeth hurt, almost.
"That was her pupils dilating, Kakashi-kun. It is a rather common reaction when you put her in front of something she likes—shaved ice, for example."
She laughs. Convincing Sensei to eat shaved ice was fun. The wind blows and the leaves dance on the trees, as though in agreement with her.
Tsunade-san's hand hovers over her forehead.
"Did… did someone hit her with a bloody Raiton?!"
Concern and confusion. The leaves stop dancing and everything goes still and silent on the island.
"No… not Raiton. This feels more like a raw chakra surge. Something overloaded her Chakra Pathway System, right down to the coils."
She blinks. The island is gone. She's in the recovery position, and Sensei's cool hand is on her head.
"Burnout?" Sensei whispers the word, like it's something terrifying. His fingers twitch.
"Luckily, no. Her tenketsu rerouted and released most of the surge before any lasting damage could be done. She probably has that chikō thing to thank for her body's swift reaction."
She tries to go back to the island, but it's like a dream that's ended already and it's too noisy to shut her eyes and sleep again anyhow.
She frowns. She's tingly all over, and something is still ringing way too loudly. It's her, or her chakra. It's humming louder than everything else, so she flattens it down until it's quiet and more manageable, like Sensei's.
Tsunade-san's Mystical Palm Technique is gently caressing her, but the low thrum is still obnoxiously noisy, especially after she finally got the ringing to quiet down. She pushes her hand away.
"Too loud, Tsunade-san. Sh."
A spike of playful indignation. "Did this brat just 'sh' me?"
Sensei is amused, but also wholeheartedly committed to making her more comfortable.
"Be silent for now, Tsunade. Anyone who cannot quieten their thoughts and temper their chakra must go at least two hundred meters away."
Kushina wants to leave, but Minato grabs her hand and the choppy concern and self-loathing transform into a murmur of reconciliation between the two.
After a moment of relative silence, the ringing stops, and the tingling becomes a bearable numbness.
"…" her thoughts clear and she doesn't know whether she should be horrified by what she just witnessed, or mortified by the fit she had.
She sits up. Sensei's hand on her head slips off, resting on his bent knee. She glances Kushina's way and then quickly down. Still bright, still big. Not cheerful anymore, though. Honōka feels guilty for that.
"I'm okay," she says. "Overwhelmed, but okay."
Sensei and Tsunade-san are suspiciously quiet. They're not asking her what happened, because they seem to have a pretty solid idea already. Or think they do, at least. Minato and Kushina are feeling immensely guilty—Minato because he didn't issue fair warning and Kushina because of something she probably can't even control. Kakashi's puzzling out the mood on his own, but he didn't see what she saw, so he's frustrated by his lack of progress.
"I'm really, really, sorry, Honōka-chan. I didn't think that would affect you so strongly." Kushina speaks clearly and bows to her. "I'll… I'll go now and try ta stay those two hundred meters away."
"You don't have to, Kushina-san. I should be the one apologizing."
"Eh, but you're a sensor! I should have known better than ta bring that guy anywhere near you, 'ttebane!"
She turns on her knees and bows to Kushina before she can protest. Then she finds her feet on wobbly legs. She feels noodly.
"Even so, I shouldn't have allowed myself to become distracted by your aura, pretty as it is. I dove too deeply into something that I shouldn't have. Can you… can you apologize to the Tenko-sama for me? I think I put them in a mood."
Tsunade-san chokes, and Sensei touches two fingers to his temple with a long and deep sigh. He combs his hair back—he never does that! Kakashi's eyes dart between the two Sannin who are very clearly distressed about something, and Minato mouths 'Tenko-sama', failing to compute.
"A-apologize ta him, 'ttebane?! You, Honōka-chan—you met him?!"
"Yes?" she thinks she did, at least. "Red eyes and orange fur, long ears and sharp teeth? Bigger than the Hokage Rock by a lot?" She wonders how something—someone—so massive fits inside of Kushina's lower dantian. Maybe it's a bit like how her weight disappears when she transforms into Madara? "I think I woke them up. They were in quite a… mood."
"The Kyūbi, in a mood?" Tsunade-san snorts. "When is it not in a mood?"
Honōka frowns at her, because it's okay to be unhappy when something upsets you. Life has taught her that much, at least. "You'd be in a mood too if you slept in a puddle."
Tsunade-san splutters, and Kakashi inches towards the safety that is the relative normalcy of Minato and Kushina.
"Is this about that secret you said you'd tell me later? Can now be later?"
Poor Kushina is bouncing between disastrously comedic disbelief and something fragile and small that feels a little like wanting to hide in bed and cry. Minato awkwardly pats her shoulder.
Sensei is feeling overwhelmed, and the more everyone bickers, the shorter his patience becomes. He frowns so hard his dimples appear, giving him a sour faced look.
"Quiet!" he orders.
Everyone shuts their mouths. Tsunade-san included.
"This is a delicate issue that I would rather not have rampaging through the village like an out-of-control animal. Honōka-kun, Kakashi-kun—this does not leave Training Ground Three. If you even hint to your little friends about today's events I will be very disappointed."
They nod. Very disappointed can mean anything from no ice cream after training to laps around Konoha until they both throw up. There's also 'have you met Manda?' disappointed. Honōka has not, thankfully.
"Honōka-kun, yes or no only. You saw a nine-tailed fox?"
"Yes."
"This was inside what you may perceive as Kushina's subconscious mind?"
"Sure."
"Yes or no, Honōka-kun."
"…Yes."
Tsunade-san and Kushina share a vaguely unnerved look with each other. Sensei and Minato are less unnerved, not wary either—but not feeling the usual academic interest about her general weirdness. If anything, they feel… troubled? What did she do?
"Yes or no. You could theoretically do this again, even to someone else."
Honōka glances at Kushina, and then at Sensei. She got sucked in watching, feeling, the spin around the stillness at Kushina's core. She'd done the same thing to Sensei right after. It looked different both times (obviously; they are different people) but she's pretty sure it was the same thing.
"Yes."
She expects intense curiosity or interest or something else intrinsically Sensei. What she gets is more akin to anxious mind pacing.
"What you did was very dangerous. You are lucky the Kyūbi was asleep, or otherwise not expecting you. Had it been awake and expecting you, it could have done irreparable damage—or have outright killed you. And the Kyūbi is not the only danger you face delving into the minds of others. There are many shinobi who are trained to counter mental attacks, to reverse mental intrusions in the worst possible ways…"
Sensei is twitchy, agitated. It's one thing for her to be a sensor, and another thing to be… whatever it is she just showed them she is capable of. Mind reading?
Oh.
Sensei must be afraid of her reading his mind. Her stomach hurts.
"I'm sorry… I just… I thought… I didn't mean to."
He rests his hand on her head again and tenses his arm, like he wants to pull her close but a gear jammed in the process. That aching fear-pain Sensei feels grows and her lip wobbles. She won't cry. She won't.
"I ask again, that you and Kakashi-kun not speak of Kushina and the Kyūbi to anyone—or even discus it with each other in private. It is not a matter that can be spoken of lightly, for the safety of the village."
They both nod.
"I also ask that everyone here refrain from disclosing the true extent of Honōka-kun's abilities."
Kakashi glances at her, and his ambivalent sense of jealousy and sometimes respect falls flat. He's afraid—about?—her. They all are.
The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.
Are they afraid of her, afraid of what she can do? Is that what they're feeling? Why does this always happen to her? First, it was her siblings rejecting her for being abnormal and now it's her friends and Sensei.
She's hyperventilating and crying. Great heaving sobs that scratch her throat and hurt her chest. She feels like running, but all she manages to do is tense her muscles.
Then Sensei is kneeling in front of her, cool hand cupping the back of her neck and pulling her in for a bone-crushing hug. She's confused, and he's panicking about at least twenty different trains of thought that are all heading for the same track, and it's already been a long day, even if it's only noon. Everyone suddenly feels guilt, guilt, remorse, awkward guilt, and some other flavor of guilt that she's just not digesting. So, she cries on her Sensei's shoulder for at least another five minutes.
It doesn't feel long enough.
"I warned you this exact thing would happen if you didn't teach her a way to turn it off." Tsunade-san sulks.
She's hiccupping now, and she still doesn't know what's really going on.
"Minato was supposed to be working on it. The Second Hokage's notes on Shōkyo turned out to be an exercise in futility, by the way."
"I said Tobi-jī-san's notes might help—not that they would. It's always hit or miss when you're dealing with natural born sensors."
Kakashi slowly turns and eye-grins at her. How he can find any humor at all in this situation is beyond her.
"D-don't you say it!"
"Hit-or-miss Honōka."
She buries her face in Sensei's flak jacket and tries very hard to not start wailing again. It's a near thing.
"Kakashi!" Minato and Kushina scold. He shrugs. Kakashi thinks anything can be a joke if you try hard enough.
"Well," Tsunade-san says, "at least we know her emotional threshold is somewhere around millennia old chakra monster of unrestrained rage and hatred. That's got to count for something."
"Tsunade, I do not think that is what actually set her off."
She'll forgive Kushina for feeling blatantly relieved.
Tsunade crouches next to them.
"What set you off then, kid?"
She clings to Sensei harder and he clicks his tongue at either her or Tsunade-san. She's not sure which.
"Really, Tsunade. You know better than to crowd."
"And you know that's more the Yamanaka's area of expertise than mine."
She's trying to muster up the courage to ask about the sense of fear she felt from them all, but she's afraid of what that answer will be, which is pathetic.
"…"
Sensei sighs. He's feeling remorseful again.
"I may have panicked her into this latest fit." He admits.
Minato scratches the back of his head.
"Don't you think we might all have panicked her? She finds out she has a dangerous ability that we all know is highly coveted and then she's suddenly overwhelmed?"
Honōka nods. Thank the gods for Minato and his wishy-washy-ness.
"So… what? We all felt a little worried about Honōka and she has a meltdown?" Kakashi asks.
"You were afraid and it really wasn't clear whether you were afraid for me, or of me!" she yells at him. "I thought…"
"It doesn't matter what you thought, Honōka-kun." Sensei rubs her back. Gosh. She's not sure which is bonier, her back or his hands. His callouses feel like marble. "Just know that your empathy can be a double-edged sword."
She sniffs, loudly.
"Can we have lunch now? I'm hungry."