.

Be the heroine in

your life, not the victim.

I shoved one hand in the pocket of my shorts and raised another to my forehead to block out the sun.

The marketplace was crawling with people out for an evening in the village.

Shops fronts sparkled in the light, freshly cleaned and polished, and a litany of new stalls lined the streets, most with cheap food and trinkets that could be peddled off at a breakneck pace. ninja, placed in strategic but inconspicuous places, watched the goings on of the street with hawk eyes. Foreigners caught the brunt of their attention. More and more of them had poured into the village over the last week. They were easy to spot amidst the general populace from their gawking and frantic hand waving in an attempt to ward off the staunch late-summer heat, their clothing ill-suited for Konoha weather.

The village was abuzz with activity; something was going on.

I jerked my chin towards a man whose kimono was every shade of blue on the spectrum. "What's with all these people?" I asked, just to be certain.

Maen took a bite of his chicken skewer. He side-eyed me and the man in the kimono, and put his attention back on his food. "Specifics, kiddo."

"Foreigners, patrols running around, people freshening up," I said. "Enough?"

"Sure," he said over his food. He chewed and swallowed. "Chunin exams are coming up."

A litany of emotions charged through me, dread paramount to them all, standing on top of the mountain that was my mind and shoving its black flag into the depths of my brain.

I was ill-prepared for the chunin exams.

Most of the last few weeks were spent getting back to a normal after Wave. Getting back into a regular training schedule with a Kakashi who had a purpose, getting back into training with the boys and their not quite different but not quite the same dynamic, getting back into taking missions. The chunin exams were there, but they were a destination at the end of a road which I wasn't nearing the end to—or, that I didn't think I was nearing the end to. I expected more notice before it arrived.

Now it was less than a week away, and I had absolutely zero idea of how I was going to try and handle everything around it.

My hands bunched up in my pockets.

I forced my feet to keep moving steady on our path through the village even as a cold rock hit my gut and creeped out into my appendages. "They are?"

Maen nodded. "I figured your sensei would tell you that they were coming up."

"No," I mumbled. "He hasn't mentioned anything about it—he didn't even show up for training today."

I expected the usual annoyance that Maen showed whenever Kakashi did things like this, but none came—Maen shrugged it off. "Either way, all the jonin had a meeting for it earlier today, probably where your sensei skipped out to." Maen tossed his skewer into the air like a senbon and it arched into the nearest alley. "Konoha's hosting the exams this year. It starts in a bit less than a week; all the guest ninja are going to start arriving tomorrow."

Less than a week away.

My mind rolled over that date and what threads of the timeline were holed away in the back of my head.

In the time since Wave, Kakashi made no mention of the Chunin exams—meaning that he also never gave us our forms to enter the exam. There was no concrete amount of days in my head around when we should have gotten them, but something didn't sit right, sent that cold feeling creeping further through my body.

I bit my lip. I felt the sting of my nails in my palm, my knuckles growing tighter.

I dropped the thought—later, later, it would be dealt with later—and latched onto something else.

"Were you tapped to help with the exams?" I pulled at a faux thread on his shirt, over his bicep and about where his ANBU tattoo sat. My finger poked it.

Maen looked down at my hand and where it was. He frowned a little; the underlying meaning of the question wasn't lost on him. "Somewhat," he said and gently flicked my hand from his arm. "It hasn't been fully hammered out."

"Ah."

"It'll only be a few days here and there. Not full time."

Not a regular rotation. Likely just for the actual tests themselves, then.

I leaned into his side and he moved his arm to accommodate. "Okay," I said.

His ribs expanded against my head, a sigh. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are."

.

.

The sky cried from sunny eyes outside, and I watched the water fall upside down, head leant back against the mat, and listened as Shikamaru's snores accompanied the pitter of rain against dirt.

I pushed my shoulder further into his side and pulled at the blanket strewn over the two of us. "Hey, Shika?"

His chakra sharpened, the way it does when people are on the verge of consciousness. He grunted. One eye cracked open to look at me, and when it closed, he went to face the other way, his hand reaching out to make a feeble grab at the blanket.

I held the blanket further away. "Shika, come on."

Another, sleepier grunt. I was losing him already.

"Shikamaru."

"What?" he groaned. His arm, draped over his eyes, flopped onto the floor beside him with no drama spared.

"I wanna ask you something."

"Uh huh."

"You can go back to sleep right after."

"Or you can wait until I wake up," he mumbled.

"It'll take a second. It's an easy question." I paused. "Please?"

He whimpered, pathetic and small like a wounded animal or a newborn kitten, and rolled over to meet my eye. "Yeah, yeah. What's goin' on?"

"Did Asuma enter you guys in the chunin exams?"

"Nope."

"Did he even bring it up?"

"Nah." He squinted at me. He was more awake now, and squinted at me. "Why?"

I looked back out the glass door to the porch, distracted. "Nothing. Thanks—go back to sleep."

I felt him wait. Then, he turned back over and murmured, "Sure."

Shikamaru went back to sleep; I lost myself in my thoughts.

A rainbow formed in the sky at the line of the horizon, but I could only see a sliver of it peek above the Nara forest as the rest was obscured by clouds.

I flipped the page of my book from my seat on the steps of the mission tower, eyes roaming over the words without really reading them. It was some novel I grabbed from my shelves on the way out, a product of habit.

A light breeze rolled over the area. It tousled my hair and sent the dirt at my feet dancing.

More of my attention was busy watching the signatures of the various ninja around the village—the foreign ones specifically who had been arriving since early in the morning. I could pick the important ones out of the crowd because each had a cluster of ANBU trailing behind them.

Though, even if I wanted to read the book, whether or not I could do it over the bickering of Naruto and Sasuke on either side of me was questionable.

"I wonder what we're gonna be doing," Naruto said from my left. "Maybe gettin' cats outta trees, or something… or picking up garbage again. If we go on a garbage mission, I bet I'll collect the most garbage like last time!"

A scoff from my right. "Whatever."

"It's true! I'm totally going to do it!" Naruto near shouted.

Without looking I reached out a hand and pressed down on the top of his head, planting his butt back down onto the ground on reflex.

"Sure," Sasuke said.

I heard the fart-like sound and felt bits of spittle hit my arm—Naruto blew a raspberry at Sasuke. A fleck of spit landed on Sasuke's chin. An aura of "I can't believe we breathe the same air" washed over Sasuke and the whole of his expression shifted to match his disdain. Eyes narrowed, eyebrows knit, nose scrunched, mouth turned down.

I moved my hand from Naruto's head and dragged my arm over his shoulder on the way to wipe off the spit. "That's disgusting," I said.

Naruto tore his eyes from Sasuke. He looked down at my arm, the streaks it left on his shirt. Naruto cleaned off the remains from either side of his mouth and laughed, blushy and sheepish. "Sorry Kaka."

"It's fine."

Sasuke muttered something under his breath.

"Eh?" Naruto shouted, leaning around me to glare at Sasuke. "What was that, you—"

From behind us, a voice cut him off and drawled, "What wonderful sounds to hear first thing in the morning."

Naruto screamed and Sasuke's eyes bugged from his head, his shoulder stiff.

I turned the page of my book. I watched the entrance of the village, waiting for a specific signature, the one I was confident I'd be able to pick apart from the rest as soon as I caught a hint of it on my radar. "It's two in the afternoon."

"Yes," Kakashi said. "First thing in the morning. A perfect time for a mission."

"Sensei! Stop doing that!"

"Doing what?"

"Sneaking up on us!"

"You're a ninja," Sasuke scoffed, as if he hadn't been startled. "Don't let him sneak up on you, then."

"I suppose both of you are going to need more enemy identification training, then," Kakashi said. I looked up from my book and could see the outline of his grin beneath his mask, though I couldn't tell whether or not it was genuine. "The dogs will be thrilled to hear it."

Naruto moaned in remembrance of the last time Kakashi made them do that, all the bruises and torn clothes and slobber. He fell back against the ground in typical cartoonish, Naruto fashion.

Sasuke further stiffened.

"Oh, that sounds like fun," I said.

"You're just sayin' that cause you don't have to do it," Naruto said.

"I did it once, remember? I whipped both of you in it."

"You did not," Sasuke said. "You barely beat us, and it was only because you've got chakra sense."

"I had five less hits than either of you and only two of my hits were lethal," I said. "Not to mention that Kakashi went harder on me to compensate."

Sasuke scowled, arms crossed over his chest. "No, he didn't."

"Yes, he did."

Both of us looked to Kakashi who, rather than settle anything, stood up and turned on his heel towards the stairs of the mission tower. "Come along, adorable genin. Let's go get a mission." He beckoned us with a hand waved over his shoulder.

I pulled Naruto up from the ground and propelled him forward, a hand between his shoulder blades. Sasuke walked behind us, sullen and totally-not-even-a-little-bit pouting.

Kakashi made it to the front desk first. He exchanged a couple of words with the desk chunin there. Before we could make it to him, Kakashi was on his way again with a bobbed nod and empty hands, following the chunin's gesture towards the stairs. I steered Naruto in that direction.

We were headed for the Hokage's office because, no matter what was happening, the Hokage made time to give us our missions—the trip to the desk chunin was a formality. I figured it was his own little way of keeping up with Naruto.

The door was opened for us as soon as we got up to the office.

Hiruzen nodded to us as we entered. His pipe sat in the corner of his mouth and lazy ribbons of smoke rose up from the chamber.

Kakashi gave his two-fingered salute to the Hokage. "Yo."

"Hey! Hey gramps, we're here!"

"Obviously he knows that," Sasuke muttered.

Naruto whirled around to glare at him. "Hey—"

Of the four of us collected in front of Hiruzen's desk, I was the first to bow. "Lord Hokage."

His eye twinkled. "Hello, Kasumi."

Kakashi placed a hand on the back of Naruto and Sasuke's heads and pushed them down into a bow, and followed with one of his own.

Hiruzen waved his hand. "Appreciated, but not needed." He shuffled through a drawer in the bottom of his desk and came back up with a scroll in hand. "Now, then. A mission is why you are here, yes?"

"Yes."

"Here you are," Hiruzen said.

Kakashi reached forward and took the scroll from them. He unfurled it, read it. "We'll accept this," Kakashi said.

"Hey! What is it?"

Kakashi pushed the scroll into a pocket of his flak jacket and turned to smile at us. "D-rank mission. Meet me at the park three blocks southeast of our location."

He disappeared in a cloud of shunshin smoke and leaves.

"Wait—ah, man."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Just go, id—" I glared at him, ready to lash out at him, but he seemed to catch himself first. His eyes cut to me and back to Naruto. "Naruto."

Naruto grinned at that, all his indignation evaporated. "Right, yeah! Let's go!"

It didn't escape my notice that neither of the boys were clamouring for C-rank missions again after Wave. Naruto never brought it up doing another one when he contemplated what our mission of the day might be. When we were handed a D-rank, like right then, Sasuke didn't sneer and Naruto gave no protest.

The sharp glint in Hiruzen's gaze and posture and expression as he watched the two of them shoot out of the room, near drowned out by the normal grandfatherly warmth, clued me in that I wasn't the only one to pick up on it.

I bowed again. "Thank you, Lord Hokage."

He raised an eyebrow. "Thanking me for giving you a D-rank mission?"

"Yeah," I said. "I am."

"That's quite the opposite reaction compared to what I get from young genin. Few are grateful to be doing chores."

Unable to find something to say, I shrugged.

The glint grew sharper.

Hiruzen nodded and pulled the pipe from his mouth, bits of smoke escaping from between cracked, aged lips, like the sputtering whispers of a drowned out campfire. "Good luck, Kasumi Kurosawa."

My tongue still tied, a nod was all I could offer him. He responded in kind.

I fled out the window behind the Hokage and didn't look back.

.

.

"You beat us here?"

I glanced down from my spot at the top of a tree near the entrance to the park. Kakashi sat at the bottom of the same tree and took refuge in the shelter of its shade, his little orange book open in front of him.

"Shockingly, I did," I said to Naruto. I jumped down and landed in a crouch in front of them. "You two made it easier for me, with all that bickering."

It also helped that I dropped the chakra from my weights and skyrocketed across the rooftops while they ran through the streets, but they didn't need to know that.

Kakashi handed each of us a bag to put all of the garbage in.

"Hey! Look! I was totally right—we're doing garbage again!"

Sasuke took his bag without a word, as did I.

With all three of us ready, Kakashi went back to his spot under the tree and started to read again, the ever helpful sensei.

"I'm going to collect the most garbage." Naruto grinned, stupid and wide. "Again."

Sasuke set his jaw and scowled. "Not happening."

"He probably will," I said. "Unless you've figured out a way to beat his clones in the last two weeks."

They were both in front of me, staring each other down.

I blinked.

The near-empty playground, near-devoid of children who were all off for afternoon naps or in their classes, was filled with clones, and a single Sasuke darting around like a bat out of hell amidst them. I winced at the sudden burst of chakra around me.

I looked down at my bag, limp in my hand at my side, and instead went to sit beside Kakashi. Kakashi regarded me with a blank eye.

"They don't need me. They'll be done in five minutes, if even that," I said. "I'm more likely to just get run over by a clone or something instead of being helpful."

Kakashi considered this. His eye glanced down towards my wrists, where my bracelets, ever present, jangled against my skin.

He disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared again with a couple of drink containers. He pointed to a spot a bit away from him. "Sit," he said. "While they do that, you're going to practice grabbing these with your chain weapons." He tilted his head and added, "Without damaging them."

Whatever.

I sat.

Kakashi set up the cans across from me and went back to his book.

I fell into a state of concentration. All I watched was the chain. I kept my chakra sense closed, not wanting it open with so many Naruto running around—I couldn't fully cut off my awareness of them, but I could limit it. My aiming and control suffered but it was good practice all the same.

Once some of the clones popped, the amount of garbage dwindling, I let my chakra sense open up again and prepared to get back to the activity.

Except that something caught my attention—the same something that I watched for most of the morning. There were at least three signatures walking through the market street together, maybe a fourth, but I would never know that on my own. One signature far overshadowed not only the rest of the group, but a chunk of other people. Anybody within a five metre radius of the signature was blotted out by the viscous signature, swallowed up by its malicious depths.

It was big, it was angry, and it was far more terrifying than I imagined it'd be.

Naruto's signature was inflated because of Kurama. It always had been and it always would be, but Naruto's energy, cheery and kind, dulled the volatile nature of his signature even with the chakra of Kurama sealed in his belly.

The signature that couldn't belong to anybody but Gaara didn't have such a buffer around it, and was a ball of black that sent shivers up and down my spine. The thought of standing next to him spurred on another round of shivers. Zabuza and his killing intent felt like a kitten in comparison. Gaara was a blind and insistent amalgamation of rage that doled out killing intent at a steady pace. I could feel the world ripple in his wake, people skittering around him as he walked.

The sound of plastic cracking chafed my ears.

I dropped back to myself. Kakashi had his eye trained on the bottle, but I could feel him study me. "I believe I said that you weren't supposed to break it," Kakashi said.

I released the chain and it slipped back into the seal on the thick silver bangle. The bottle fell back to the grass and rolled away.

"Yeah."

All of the questions raised the day before by Maen breached my mind with renewed vigor.

Gaara was here. The chunin exams were on their way.

My eye strayed to Naruto—wasn't he supposed to have an encounter with Gaara around this point? The specifics of it were lost on me, except that Konohamaru and Sasuke were involved, along with the other sand siblings.

Konohamaru was on the other side of the village and Naruto was right by me, not in position for an encounter. It would happen later. At some point later in the day, all of them would converge.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if that sentence needed an 'if at all' tacked on to finish it.

I'd have to wait and see. Conclusions couldn't be jumped to yet.

My hand clenched and my nails, painted the dark green of the Nara forest, created a new set of crescent marks in my palm.

I had to wait.

.

.

I waited.

For the rest of the day, I waited, and never did their signatures meet.

.

.

The next day came and went.

I spent all my time watching the signatures trace their paths through the village. No meeting between Naruto and Gaara. When training came, Kakashi sent us off without forms for the exams.

The marks in my palms were beginning to take a permanent residence on my skin.

.

.

I stared at the spot Kakashi occupied seconds ago. Wisps of hair and my clothes clung to my skin, slick with sweat, and I was covered in dirt beneath the layer of mesh on my arms and legs—it didn't bother me. Needing a shower after training was normal, expected, even something I liked, because it was a tangible sign of my hard work.

The chunin exams were set to start in three days.

I stared down at my hands. They were left empty when, by all accounts, they should be grasped around a sheet of paper that marked my entrance into the chunin exams. All I saw were the marks of my nails.

Without our participation in the exams…

That was the moment where the situation fully sank in: how thoroughly I may have fucked over the timeline with my actions in Wave. Small things were expected. Small things were the point. I wanted minor adjustments here and there that resulted in improvement—specifically when I was involved.

I couldn't deny it anymore.

Without the exams…

I rubbed at my face, leaving streaks of dirt over my cheeks.

Without the exams…

My mind struggled to wrap over how the sentence could even possibly end. I didn't know what this world could look like without us involved in the chunin exams, without any of the rookies involved in the chunin exams.

Scratching the surface: Sasuke wouldn't learn Chidori; Naruto wouldn't train with Jiraiya; Gaara wouldn't get punted by talk-no-jutsu into sanity; Orochimaru wouldn't murder the Kazekage and invade the village to put a curse mark on Sasuke and wouldn't kill Hiruzen.

Though the last one could be an improvement, it had its own drastic implications in regards to Sasuke's growth as a person and the future of the village.

Improvements would be ideal. Lives could be saved during the invasion and Sasuke could, for all intents and purposes, be given a new chance at a future without Orochimaru in it, but then what about Tsunade? If she didn't come back to the village, how would the politics of the world be affected by that?

That aside, the odds of me making it through the exams without changing anything was slim anyways. Like with Wave, my presence on its own, instead of Sakura's, would be enough to change things regardless of whether or not I went out of my way to make a difference.

I couldn't say I wouldn't have intentionally made changes anyways, but at least then it would have been on my own terms. At least then I could have traced the path and pinpointed where the divergence was.

Was Kakashi not allowed to enter us? That could explain Team 7 not being entered, but what about Team 10? Did the Hokage decide that none of the rookies were ready to be entered based on what happened in Wave? Did some other jonin speak up against the rookies being involved in the exams?

Our mission had become an object of gossip amongst the ranks, leaked from the desk chunin and spreading like a spider web—everybody wanted to hear about how the great Kakashi failed a mission but earned the village a valuable trade ally, how the village jinchuriki got his client killed on his first major mission. If our team, deemed to be one of the most promising, couldn't complete their first major mission, would any of the rookies be ready to? All the missions we took as chunin would be like this—clearly, if we failed, we couldn't possibly be ready to be chunin, right?

In the back of my mind, I was aware that I stood in the middle of the training ground with Naruto hovering behind me. He was waiting for me to go for lunch. We always went to lunch together after training.

I felt myself get up.

I heard myself say, "I'm just going home. I'll see you tomorrow, Naruto."

I heard him cry protests at my retreating back.

Making big changes to the world sounded fine in theory. Save lives, improve them. Leave the world a better place than it was when I came into it.

It wasn't that I didn't want to help—if I could help other people live along the way then fantastic, wonderful, I would do what I could—but my primary focus was always my own self preservation.

I was selfish and arrogant. That wasn't something new to me. But in hindsight, now fully grasping how dearly I could have cost the world with my desire to live, the blow of realizing just how selfish and arrogant my view was hit me hard.

The effects of the Rookie 9 not participating in the chunin exams could hurt a lot of people, and could render a large part of my knowledge on the universe null—and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

That was the worst part for me, as I stumbled home.

I couldn't reverse the situation. This choice was made for me, somewhere along the line, and I was left without any way to prep for it or any way to take it back. That, above all, burned.

.

.

Five hours later, sitting on the windowsill in my room with a blanket around my shoulders and a mug of tea in my hands like I've done since I was little, I could look at things with a clearer mind.

The panic receded some. In favor of it, I compelled myself—mentally kicking and screaming, but hey, I'd done it—into a fragile resignation.

It sucked. Feeling powerless in a situation where I was used to being powerful sucked. But there was nothing more I could do about it. I needed to keep moving.

Things were different and it was time to do what I should have done earlier: plan.

I made a rash decision in Wave that, understandable or not, reasonable in the moment or not, cost two lives and ruined another and I refused to do that again.

I should have planned before Wave started to avoid that position in the first place and I should have planned for the exams as soon as I got back, yet I did neither. It still burned that the choice had been made for me, but to claim that I couldn't have prepared for it didn't feel right, either, because I didn't even try to. I should have. Whether or not I could have done anything was impossible to say, but I should have tried.

I took the handle of my tea in one hand and removed the other from around the cup. I looked down at my palm. There were flakes of dried blood stuck to the skin around the marks and I rubbed them off against my pyjama pants.

Pity parties weren't going to help me here.

No use in crying over spilt milk.

That was easier, as well, after having spent five hours thinking about things. Drastic changes were possible—highly likely, even. But some events weren't as flimsy when given a bit of thought.

Jiraiya would probably still train Naruto. Even if he didn't start doing it because of Naruto needing a sensei for the third part of the exam, he would eventually do it as a way to counteract the threat of the Akatsuki.

On the flip side, Orochimaru wouldn't not come and mark Sasuke because he isn't in the exam. He could take a different route for it but, "active" Sharingan or not, Orochimaru—breathe, breathe—had his gaze set on Sasuke and one way or another he'd make a move. That would be what dictated whether or not Hiruzen died and whether or not Tsunade returned to the village.

Itachi would still come for Naruto. Akatsuki would still come for Naruto.

Neji and Gaara were probably screwed in this situation. The prior is unfortunate whereas the latter is utterly horrifying. Though, if Neji never reformed and went on to form a better relationship with Hinata, she could die later because he wouldn't be there to save her in the war. If Hinata died, would Naruto have any children? Would he get married? If he did get married, and did have kids, what would they be like? Good? Bad? Would they end up dead?

Breathe.

Not to mention the fallout of Sasuke not re-awakening and Naruto not tapping into Kurama's chakra. That was a whole other can of worms that I wasn't prepared to deal with yet.

Baby steps, right?

I set my cup down in front of me because I could feel my hands begin to shake. I made myself breathe, just breathe.

The entire situation left me feeling like an ant standing at the foot of a skyscraper that I had no choice but to climb, taking each individual step up until I could stand on the topmost balcony. I had to do it. Not getting to the point wasn't an option.

The arrogance, I supposed, hadn't left—it couldn't leave. It was too good of a coping mechanism to ditch entirely.

I would succeed in whatever the hell this situation was because failure could lead to catastrophe.

There was nobody else who understood how dire this situation could prove to be. It was me alone at ground level, prepping for the climb.

I could do it, I would do it, I had to do it.

But try as I might to squelch the feeling, I was fucking terrified.