.

Blessed are the hearts that

bend; they shall never be broken.

I got my first glimpse at how our lack of involvement in the chunin exams would change things when I found Lee in the training grounds.

He, Tenten, and Gai were gathered on the dirt—no Neji. A cloud hung over them, their eyes all dulled of life like the sky after a vicious storm. Lee and Gai were quiet. Tenten had red-rimmed eyes. I fought off the unease and walked over the dew-dampened dirt towards them, the light smell of petrichor in the air; all of a sudden, the pleasant weather around us felt like a lie.

Lee was the one to watch me approach, and he gave me an oversized, unconvincing smile. "Ah! My Spring Blossom!"

"What's going on?" I asked. "You guys looks like—" somebody died.

I cut myself off because I realized, at that moment, that somebody could have actually died, and without more information that joke was in poor taste, even for me.

"Ah. It is… it is Neji," Lee said. His eyes fell. "He's in the hospital."

"What happened?"

"There were a lot of us who got through the Forest," Tenten said. My gaze snapped over to her. She stared at the ground and her voice wavered on each word. "Too many, they said. So one person from each team was picked to fight in a preliminary round. Neji… he got picked from our team… and he…"

Her voice choked off, and she hissed a breath out between grit teeth. A cold fury turned her gaze to ice and froze her tears in the corner of her eyes. "He fought one of the Suna genin. That monster ripped his… his… Kami." Tenten gave her head a sharp shake but didn't finish the sentence.

"Neji lost one of his hands in his fight," Gai said, picking up where she trailed off. "The other was rendered near-useless, crushed by sand, but they do not think it will be removed."

Monster from Suna that uses sand when he fights.

Gaara.

"I'm…" I tried to conjure up something to say, but all I had was, "Shit."

"His life is not at risk, but there were more critical injuries outside of his hand that require treatment. He will likely remain in the hospital for the next month while the exams continue on."

"I know that he will pull through!" Lee said. "And he will be back, stronger than ever!"

Tenten looked at Lee with a resigned and almost condescending look, like she was watching a five-year-old blabber about politics. Gai looked between the two of them but didn't say anything more. He lacked the false cheer of Lee and the bitterness of Tenten—he was closer to numb.

Gai would have stood there and watched the match unfold. When Neji lost his hand, Gai heard the scream, saw the panic and terror and pain that must have flooded Neji's face. If anybody stepped in to keep Neji from being killed, it was him.

I wonder how that felt, to watch somebody you care deeply for experience that kind of pain and suffering while you're helpless to step in, not because you're not strong enough, but because you simply aren't allowed to intervene.

Tenten balled her hands into fists and muttered, "I'll kill him."

I felt like I was intruding, at that point, so I bade them goodbye and headed back into the main part of the village. As I walked, the weather pulled its mask away and the sky began to drip rain onto me, first a few stray drops of water that quickly turned into a torrent.

Rather than head home or find a different place to train, my feet carried me in the direction of Konoha General Hospital.

.

.

I breezed past the guy manning the desk once I entered the hospital.

He started to say something, but I cut him off with a wave, following my chakra sense through the hospital. I knew Neji's signature. Interestingly enough, his wasn't the only familiar signature in that room.

Neji was staying in the critical care unit. There were medic nin buzzing around the halls, in and out of the rooms, charging through with tables overflowing with supplies, and I found myself bobbing and weaving to keep from being run over. Most of them ignored me, including the medic that charged out of Neji's room as I approached, her eyes locked on the clipboard in front of her instead.

I slipped in past her and closed the door behind me.

Hinata looked up, startled. "O-oh—"

"Sorry," I said. "I just… I heard, and I wanted to visit."

"N-no, ah, it's fi-ine. I don't m-mind."

I walked over and grabbed the clipboard from the foot of his bed.

Neji was out cold. A litany of machines were hooked up to him, their beeps echoing in the background like some twisted orchestra. One seemed to be helping him breathe. Another, pumping blood into his system to make up for what he lost. I had no idea what the other two were for. The sight of Neji was off putting—obvious, given his state and what put him there, but there was something about it that seemed incongruous.

It took a couple of seconds, but I noticed that outside of the sheets laying flat against the bed where his right hand should be and some minor bandaging on his other arm, Neji didn't have a scratch on him. All of it had been healed.

"He's g-going t-to be… be f-f-fine."

"Yeah, that's what Gai told me."

Hinata looked at me, looked at Neji, and lowered her gaze to her lap, where her hands shook against her leg. She whispered, "I'm really glad."

A scowl threatened to darken my features but I stamped it down, keeping my expression clean. "Doesn't he hate you?"

She flushed bright red and didn't answer.

Smooth, Kasumi. Smooth. "Sorry," I said. "That was… a bit uncalled for, huh?"

Figuring it was about time for me to go, I set the clipboard back in its holder. I'd stuck my nose in other people's business enough for that day.

I was halfway out the door when Hinata said, "He's… h-he's family."

I looked at her over my shoulder. There was an unquestionable determination in her face, a kind of stubborn kindness that reminded me of Lee.

It was a shame Neji wasn't awake to see that expression.

Unable to conjure a proper response, I nodded and walked back out the hospital.

The rain kept falling on me the whole way home, but through the clouds, through the rain, the sun appeared again and a rainbow glistened on the horizon.

It was an odd turn of events, to know that Neji lay in the hospital that was supposed to hold Lee. How would that affect things? Would Gaara still attack the hospital in a bit less than a month? Probably. Would Gai still jump in at the last moment to save the day?

I frowned. My feet slowed as I thought it over.

I couldn't say one way or another. I didn't remember why Gai was there in the first place. Visiting Lee was the logical thing, but the flash of the event playing through my mind showed me Gai swooping in at the last moment, after Naruto and Shikamaru were in the room with Lee. It was possible Gai was there for a visit and coincidentally happened to show up in time to save the day. Coincidences weren't unusual in this world. But if this was the case, would he visit Neji in the exact same way he would visit Lee?

A groan left my lips and I rubbed at my temples, a headache forming. Neji losing his hand and how that would change the chunin exams wasn't a conundrum I planned to contend with. Hell, I hadn't thought the preliminary fights would happen at all, without the Rookie 9 to clog up the second exams, but I was wrong there.

It was the type of twist that couldn't be anticipated for.

Still, I expected to feel guilt or sadness or something like that over Neji losing his hand, even though it was an impossible thing for me to predict. The butterfly effect traced back to me, to Wave, as so much had since then.

I didn't feel bad about what happened to Neji.

There was a smidge of guilt buried in there in amongst my other thoughts, but I forced myself to remember that not all of the blame was on me—Gaara did this. Gaara was the one who took Neji's hands, not me. Gaara, should he continue the same path he did in canon, seeking to finish the job, would be the one to make another attempt on Neji's life, not me.

And it wasn't as if nobody would have gotten hurt if things went as they were supposed to. It was just somebody else on the chopping block, somebody who deserved the shit end of the stick more than Lee did—so long as he didn't die, which I didn't plan to let happen.

Neji had the potential to be a good person, but the same could be said for anybody walking through the streets of Konoha. As it was, Neji wasn't a good person. Neji had experienced trauma in his life and was twisted and bitter from it. Anybody would be. That didn't change the fact that if everything had gone how it was supposed to, with the Rookie Nine in the prelims, Neji would have been perfectly willing to kill Hinata with the hands he lost, somebody who dutifully sat at his bedside and showed him kindness that he never thought to show to her.

Now, Neji would never have a career as a ninja, if he made it out of this alive.

I'd read what that clipboard said. His remaining arm wasn't torn off by Gaara, nor was it amputated, but the coils within it were crushed into dust and the muscles were too damaged to contort his fingers as he needed to for hand seals. He would never channel chakra with it again, much less use the jyuuken. His future was shot. He could learn to fight only using taijutsu in his lower body, and he could see success with it, but he'd never be the sixteen-year-old jonin he was supposed to be.

I pitied Neji. His situation was awful.

But there was a cruel little voice in my head that, try as I might, I couldn't stamp out. It whispered in my ear with its impish little voice, Maybe this is for the best. Having to lay there while somebody else comes to his rescue, live his life without his ability to function as a ninja. Things that'll humble him.

Only time would tell.

"You want to fight using… this."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Look at it. Just look at it. It's insane, why wouldn't I?"

Kakashi looked down at the sword spread out on the ground in front of us. He had his book open in one hand but the cover of it rested against his thigh, his other hand empty and limp at his side. His eye roved over the whole length of it, then up and down my entire body from where he stood across from me. "That sword is bigger than you."

I was covered in sweat from the two hours I'd spent working on my kata and conditioning while Kakashi gave Naruto and Sasuke their personal lessons. We were well into the morning. The grounds around us remained empty and the skies above us were clouded, but there wasn't any potential for rain.

I shrugged. "Not by much."

"You can't lift it."

"But I could."

"It doesn't fit with anything I've been teaching you over the last few weeks."

"Look," I said, arms crossed over my chest. "I'm a simple person who simply wants to learn how to use a giant fucking sword. I have it either way because, for whatever reason, Lord Hokage never took it back from me."

As the classic saying goes: when life gives you a sword as big as most adult men, you learn to smack people with it. It would be a waste to let the thing rot inside of a scroll.

I knew there was nothing reasonable about learning to use Kubikiribocho—I just didn't care.

"They don't want to give it back to Kiri. Lord Hokage doesn't know you have it."

"But he asked Shikaku—"

"He asked Shikaku to look into it, but he didn't want to get the answer. If they ask, he can truthfully say that he doesn't know where the sword is, and that he can't even take a guess since he doesn't know whether or not we took it out of Wave in the first place."

"Smart."

Kakashi eyed the sword again. "You're going to keep going until you learn how to use it with or without my help," he said.

"Probably, yeah."

"You already use chakra to enhance your strength as it is, which you're going to have to do no matter what—you're too small to ever build the required muscle mass to wield it without chakra assistance," he said. He rubbed at his chin. "You still need more natural strength to enhance, though."

His expression brightened, and I got the feeling I was going to regret involving Kakashi in this. "I think Gai probably has some old weights that'll be strong enough," he said. "The seal on yours won't hold enough chakra for what we need."

"These… these go up to ten kilograms."

And that was ten kilograms per limb. It was rare I put enough chakra into them for that kind of weight. Mostly, I let it sit at something close to five or six, and raised it up to ten for more intensive training.

The numbers sounded absurd, but I had the odd thing that was ninja biology on my side. From the years and years of chakra running through ninja, most descendents of long-running families are able to put on muscle mass at an expedited rate. That, combined with a constant thrum of chakra that ran through my muscles to keep them at an enhanced level and alleviate some of the potential damage, was what allowed me to run around with a little under half my combined body weight strapped to my limbs at any given time.

Kakashi propped one hand on his hip and tucked the other in his pocket, putting his book away along with it. His expression shifted.

I saw it then, in his eye, a sadistic glint that made me feel like I'd just stared into the void, and the void stared back. "That'll be fine for everyday wearing," he said. "But nowhere near enough for what you're going to need now. You'll need at least twenty kilograms for that."

My eyes widened.

On the average day, I only weighed fifty kilograms. Thirty kilograms didn't sound like a huge amount until you remembered that it was thirty kilograms worn for a two hour training session, while other exercises are being done.

"You're going to kill me," I muttered.

Kakashi just smiled.

.

.

I lifted my arm from over my eyes and watched the edge of the training grounds as Jiraiya approached our group. I felt him there over the last half an hour while we did our group training, and even before that, as he travelled through the village, his signature was a constant blip on my radar, bright enough that it was impossible to ignore.

Naruto, Sasuke, and I were splayed out on the ground, all of us exhausted from training. Kakashi sat up against a tree behind us with his book out, but his attention was focused on the same place as mine.

"So," Jiraiya said, swaggering into the grounds, "these are your brats."

"This would be them."

Naruto groaned and opened his eyes, his face strained as if doing this was the most difficult task he'd done in his life. "Ehh? Whaz goin' on…"

"What an impressive bunch," Jiraiya said.

Sasuke opened his eyes long enough to glare at Jiraiya before he rolled over and curled in on himself—he didn't like to be woken up for anything, not even an emergency, which this wasn't.

I expected Jiraiya to hone in on Naruto, and he did at first, whatever tumult of emotions simmered at seeing Naruto remaining well hidden. But his eagle eyes didn't remain there. They turned to me, and I couldn't help the wave of unease that ran through me when they did. Konoha ninja or not, drunkard pervert or not, Jiraiya was an intimidating person.

"Well, well," he said. "Who's this?"

I sat up. "Kasumi Kurosawa."

He watched me in silence. The wide grin that was on his face regressed into a more subdued, closed smile, an almost wistful look on his face.

I frowned.

Naruto rubbed at his eyes and pulled himself up, too. He stared at Jiraiya with narrowed eyes and a scrunched up expression, full of petulance. "Hey… who're you and why're you buggin' us?" Naruto asked.

"Who am I?" Jiraiya shot back at him. His chest puffed up, his entire demeanor taking on a smug air to it. "I'm Jiraiya of the Sannin, the Toad Sage and one of the most skilled perverts you've ever met in your miserable life, brat. You best show some respect."

"Pfffffft. No way."

"You doubt me?"

"Duh. Ebisu's a giant pervert, and Kakashi reads porn like… all day long."

"Yeah, and you know whose porn he's reading?" Jiraiya jutted a finger at his chest. "Mine."

"He borrowed it from ya?"

"You idiot. No, I wrote it."

"Oh. Whoa…"

"That's more like it!"

I looked back to Sasuke and saw that he had opened his eyes again. He looked and at Jiraiya, the expression on his face as sour as if he'd smelt three-day-old garbage. His face held more disdain in one inch of it than I'd ever seen on anybody else in my entire life.

"I can't believe somebody as powerful as this is such a moron," Sasuke said.

"Moron?" Jiraiya scoffed. "You're clueless, kid."

"Yeah! This pervert dude is pretty cool!"

"Hey, get it right—I'm a super pervert."

"I dunno. You just seem like a pretty normal pervert, right now."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

Naruto jumped up, fully awake now. "Oh, yeah? Then prove it!" His hands weaved together and he cried, "Sexy Jutsu!"

In Naruto's place a scantily clad woman appeared. Clouds covered her breasts and vaginal area, and two pigtails stuck out of her head.

Kakashi sighed. Sasuke froze. Jiraiya put one hand to his chin and leaned forward, inspecting Naruto's form.

I picked myself up off of the ground and headed towards the exit of the training grounds.

It was nice that Naruto and Jiraiya met, and better that Naruto seemed to like him—or was at least interested by Jiraiya, which would work for now. There was potential for future interactions that could blossom into the relationship they had in canon. One box ticked off my list of things that I wanted to happen.

That said, I had no desire to watch how the rest of that conversation turned out.

Seeing a naked, female version of Naruto was about as far down the list of 'things I want to do with my time' as anything could get. Instead, I would go home, curl up with a book and a cup of tea, and try my best to scrub that image from my memories.

.

.

Jiraiya leaned his shoulder on the tree, arms crossed over his chest, and watched Naruto and Sasuke bicker their way out of the area. He turned his chin down towards Kakashi, who sat back against the trunk, and said, "I almost didn't believe the old man when he said you actually passed a team."

"You say that like I could have gotten away with failing that team."

"'Course I know the old man wouldn't let you—I'm just surprised you didn't try."

"I wanted to."

"And yet, you didn't." Jiraiya clapped him on the shoulder. "It's doing you good."

Kakashi turned the page in his book, not deigning the comment with a response.

"It is," Jiraiya said. "You seem… happier. If that's even possible for you, cranky little shit that you've always been." He grinned. "And I've seen those ninken of yours following the boys around. It's cute, you know."

Kakashi sighed. Quietly, he said, "Yeah. They're good kids."

Jiraiya stretched his arms above his head and let out a long, cat-like yawn. Without ceremony, Jiraiya dropped down to the ground, and slung a lazy arm over Kakashi's shoulder. Kakashi shrugged him off and shuffled over.

Jiraiya scoffed. "Fine, be that way." He got comfortable. He sat cross legged, one arm draped over his knee.

There was a few minutes of silence. Kakashi read, Jiraiya stared up at the sky and watched the clouds drift along on their way.

Jiraiya broke the peace when he said, "She looks just like Kushina."

He didn't expect much of a response to the statement. It was an observation that bugged Jiraiya since he first set eyes on Kasumi.

Kakashi hummed. "The resemblance goes away pretty quickly once she opens her mouth."

"I was expecting it, you know, since most of those damn Kurosawa look like they came straight from Uzu, but damn." Jiraiya shook his head. "You're right, though. And she looked cranky as shit."

"That doesn't stop much, either."

"Lucky you."

"She's small and easy to ignore," Kakashi said. He thought back on what Jiraiya said. "You're familiar with her clan?"

Jiraiya grunted, nodding his head. "The old man had me look into them after she first came to the village. He tried to get some kinda investigation going in here but they couldn't get anywhere, so 'course, he had to hand it over to me."

Jiraiya trailed off into some unintelligible, annoyed mutterings, complete with an eye roll. He cleared his throat and kept going. "I thought it was a waste of time, but, you know how the old man is." He made a twirled, sarcastic motion with his hand. "Useful information, blah blah, potential allies, blah blah, you know. But I can tell you right now that there's not much interesting 'bout that clan outside of their blood limit. Buncha cranky bastards—and from what I gather, the main line all look just like her. Crazy red hair, weird eyes."

Kakashi put his book down and outright stared at Jiraiya.

"I know what you're thinking, and I don't know jack about where they came from," Jiraiya said. "Only two of my contacts—out of hundreds—had ever heard of em, and both said they'd been nomadic for as long as they'd known. They do seem to stick to the east of the continent, but that's all I got. They keep to themselves. Could've been Uzu in the real early days, could be Kiri, could be Wave—who the hell knows."

"Ah."

"Wish I had more, kid. Really do."

Days went by where I didn't see Shikamaru.

We avoided each other. I either stayed in my house or avoided the compound, and Shikamaru kept to his backyard. It was fine for the few couple of days, but by the fourth and fifth, I was getting antsy. We didn't fight; there was a reason Maen was surprised when I told him. Knowing that there was tension between us gnawed at me.

And so on day six, I ended up in his backyard, standing over him while he napped on the grass. He cracked one eye open to look at me and I plopped down beside him.

"Hi."

"Hey."

I let out a breath. "We need to talk."

Shikamaru sat up and shrugged, but I could read the discomfort in his posture—he felt the tension, the same as me.

"I went and apologized to Ino," I said.

"She told me you did. She was pretty happy about it." He scratched the back of his neck. "So… thanks."

"I didn't do it for you. I did it 'cause it was the right thing to do."

His eyebrow went all the way up and I made myself breathe again. My annoyance at him was coming back with a vengeance, but that wasn't going to be useful in this situation. Stomping my feet and taking shots at him wouldn't solve this.

Shikamaru, for his part, just said, "Okay."

"Do you even like… kind of understand why I was annoyed about what you said?"

"Not really."

"Alright." I twined my fingers together and pressed them against my lips. My mind worked through what I wanted to say, how I wanted to say it. "Have you ever had a crush on somebody?"

A monstrous blush lit up his face. His eyes widened, his shoulders moved back a bit. Embarrassment and surprise—two things I rarely saw with Shikamaru, and especially not at once.

He shook his head and said, "No."

That was a lie, plain and simple, but I'd let it go. "Remember when Kiba had a huge crush on that girl a couple of grades above us during the Academy?" I asked. "Or, like… how Naruto gets whenever you bring up Sakura around him?"

Shikamaru nodded. The red faded from his face some. "Loud," he said. "They get really…" he made a face, "weird and creepy."

"Sure. So, okay. What if… I dunno… Kiba had a crush on me."

Something odd happened in his face. "He did, you know."

I blinked. "Huh?"

"Like, a year ago. He had a huge crush on you."

I thought back to my time in the Academy, but couldn't manage to sum up any memories that provided proof of this. I hadn't interacted with any of the kids in our year much, Kiba included. I stuck to Naruto and Shikamaru and Choji. "I'm… yeah, okay. Wasn't expecting that." I shook my head. "Back on topic. What if, uh… what if a year ago, when he had a crush on me, he followed me around a lot and I didn't like it. Would that be okay?"

"Obviously not."

I nodded. "Right. But… what if he did that, and I assumed that all guys who ever had crushes did that. That it was just a 'normal' guy thing to do. That if you ever had a crush on me, that you'd obviously stalk me because Kiba did it so all guys obviously do it. Clearly, that's not right, because Naruto's an idiot but he'd never stalk Sakura or make her feel weird, and I doubt you would either."

Shikamaru's face flamed again, but he nodded. "Alright, so what's your point?"

"You can't generalize people like that. That's why I was annoyed. You fucking… generalized the entire female population. Not all girls act the same way. Hell, look at Hinata. The entire village knows she has a crush on Naruto, except… you know, Naruto. But she's not loud or annoying."

I could see the wheels turning in his head. The frown stayed in place. His head tilted down, his eyes narrowed, and he moved his hand up into the telltale 'thinking position', though I doubted he realized it.

He could drag his heels on this. He could, but I knew he wouldn't. Stubborn or not, when offered a day out, Shikamaru would take it.

So I was unsurprised when he finally said, "I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

He nodded and flopped onto his back.

I found some sincerity in the apology—I knew he entered the last conversation with good intentions and hadn't meant for it to become an argument. But, given that he admitted no wrong, I doubted that I'd changed his mind. I wasn't Naruto—I couldn't convert anybody to my side with one rousing speech.

Nara intelligence or not, Shikamaru was twelve. He had some growing up to do. When he was older I knew it could be a conversation, not an argument, was when it would be constructive to bring up again.

I couldn't force him to change. I could, however, instil a fear like nothing else into him.

"But if you say something stupid like that again, I'm totally gonna tell Ino and your mom."

His eyes shot open. "You wouldn't."

I grinned. "I would, and you know it."

Shikamaru groaned and pressed his palms against his eyes. "You're so damn troublesome."

"I know."

I fell down at his side and pressed my shoulder against his. He didn't try and move away, even as he kept muttering about troublesome best friends. I closed my eyes. There was no sun to kiss my skin or breeze to caress it, but I was comfortable where I was, listening to Shikamaru.

The tension between the two of us had dissipated. That hatchet was buried—for now. I knew that I would have to dig it up again one day, but right then, I was satisfied to leave it in the dirt.