I've written this whole chapter in one damn sitting and it's 4:30 am. I'll just- I'll edit it tomorrow if I see any typos. Sleep now.

/WARNING: Gore, Death and all the stuff that comes with it.

"Again."

Reishi forms the seals again, concentrating her chakra around her throat and focusing her mind in one thing: fire.

A giant cloud of black smoke comes out of her mouth, covering her head and its surroundings.

This is not what was supposed to happen.

"Again," comes Fugaku's voice from somewhere to her right, a little further away she hears someone snickering. She can't tell if it's Katsuo or Masato, not that there's a difference between the two, they're both equally insufferable.

The two Uchiha started joining her for training two weeks ago (and she has hated them ever since). Apparently, Fugaku thought it would be good for her to have some notion of how to work with a team. He seems to be considering arranging the genin teams so she ends up in theirs, if she has been reading the clues correctly.

If she ends up having to deal with those two every day for the days to come she's going to instigate the Uchiha massacre herself. The sooner the better.

Winter came and went, and with it, her birthday. She's had Fugaku as a shishō for five months now and he seems to think that she's prepared to learn her first jutsu. The fireball jutsu, no less. And she's failing miserably.

To be fair, her principal affinity is lightning – fire being a close second – so it was obvious she would have more difficulties learning it than someone with a fire affinity. That said, for all her chakra control she sucks at ninjutsu. Mostly because of her small chakra reserves.

When it is obvious that they won't get any progress during that day, Fugaku makes her join Katsuo and Masato, who are focused in throwing practice. Katsuo had decided to specialize in kunais, while Masato preferred Shuriken, they both had sneered at her choice of weapon, as it doesn't really do all that damage unless it pierces a very specific point.

That wasn't a problem for Reishi now however, because Fugaku has been training her relentlessly until at least nine out of ten senbon hit the bullseye, and has now moved to using moving targets with the help of some sort of contraption based on flywheels that she doesn't quite understand yet.

(It had been hilarious to see him put it together, it was like seeing your father wrestle with Ikea furniture).

She still isn't as good as a so-called-genius should be, but she's slowly getting there. Fugaku, for all his stern composure and Spartan training, is turning out to be a very patient teacher. Not as kind and encouraging as Ryouji had been, but he knows not to discourage and slowly guides her in the right direction, which is something Reishi really appreciates even if she doesn't let him know.

"Hey, nuku, your loser boyfriend is coming today to pick you up, right?" Katsuo whispers this so only she and Masato, who is at his other side, can hear it.

"Yeah, he always picks her up on Tuesdays," quips Masato, "why don't you marry him already? You only want him to get into our clan anyways and you make a nice couple of idiots."

Reishi grits her teeth, reminding herself sternly that she's an adult and she shouldn't be affected by anything two snot-nosed brats have to tell her. Besides, if she wants to kick their ass she just has to store all that pent up anger and keep it under lock and key until Saturday, which is the day they use for sparring.

At first they usually won their matches, but as her stamina kept getting better and better, she started to be able to stand up to them and now they're pretty even in their abilities.

She ignores them for the rest of the day, focusing instead on throwing, and watching from time to time with satisfaction how their weapons fail to hit the bullseye. She's not better than them because she's a genius like everyone thinks, she has no delusions of grandeur, but she does take training more seriously than them. If they also knew what was to come in the future they would be training day and night like her, no doubt. Well, probably. But they don't, so they mostly fool around and it shows.

The sky gets darker and, as every Tuesday, Obito appears at the entrance of the training ground, silently watching her until Fugaku considers she's done for the day. It amazes her the punctuality he shows, knowing his proclivity to be late, and she is kind of touched about it. And also a bit weirded out because she doesn't remember him ever being late to an appointment with her, well maybe for ten minutes but when it comes to him that's nothing. Has she changed his core so much that he's not the same person from the Naruto series she remembers? He's still late for class now and again, which makes everyone groan as the teacher pauses his lecture to send him to his seat, so she's sure that he's still chronically late...

She decides that overthinking it will lead her nowhere.

They leave together as Katsuo and Masato make kissy noises behind them, which are interrupted with a dull slap, probably due to Fugaku smacking one of them. It doesn't bother her too much but when she looks at Obito he's flustered and pointedly not looking in her direction.

She flicks him in the arm and he turns to look at her, startled. "Don't pay attention to them, Bito, they're just messing with you."

He nods and flicks her back absent-mindedly as retaliation, though he still looks annoyed by it. Katsuo and Masato are his main bullies, if she has guessed correctly, and they seem to have a special ease to get under his skin. They've never tried anything with her being present, but that's probably because Fugaku is also there, she's pretty sure that words aren't the only thing they've ever used to hurt Obito. As it is though, every time she tries to broach the subject Obito clams up and refuses to answer, and with the things as they are between them now she doesn't want to press too much.

Their relationship has been steadily eroding ever since that Sunday months ago and, whatever she tries, it doesn't seem to get better. They still hang out and she has kept her promise of having dinner/lunch with him twice a week, but that apparently isn't enough.

"So, how was training?" Obito says, trying to spark a conversation.

"You know, as always. First two hours went well, Fugaku started teaching me the fireball jutsu but I'm terrible at it, I can't seem to put enough chakra into it." Reishi frowns. "I was making progress until the double trouble showed up and fucked up my focus. What about you?"

"Language," Obito scolds, only by force of habit, he gave up that long time ago, "you'll get it in time, don't worry. You're a genius, after all. As for me, I've been trying the transformation technique," he sighs, "but I'm no good at it."

"Fugaku has been teaching me that one before the fireball one, if you want I can try to help you this Sunday? Don't ask me to help you with the clone technique though, I still haven't practised that one once."

"Cool, let's do that then."

They soon arrive at Obito's apartment. They stopped having dinner at Reishi's house a few weeks ago, tired of Fuhaku's silent displeasure and icy glares.

It's a small place, but it's enough for one person and Reishi envies Obito's independence. She's been itching to finally live alone, not that Fuhaku's presence on the house is very noticeable, as lately she's been staying at her family's place more and more, but she'd like a place to call her own. That, and she hates that someone else is supporting her economically.

His apartment consists on one principal room that ties with the kitchen and a bathroom; the living room becomes the bedroom by pushing the table to the far corner and unrolling a futon. Obito seems ashamed of it the first time he takes her there, probably not having thought of what she would think about it until that moment. But she tells him that she thinks it's cozy and that she likes it.

It's a pigsty though, so she sets to tidy it despite Obito's protests until it looks like a decent enough home. From then on Obito tries to keep it clean and tidy, either for fear of her tidying up again or because he doesn't want her to worry about him, she doesn't know.

He starts to add plants to the lone balcony too. The first one was a small succulent she brought him one day – he named it Hiru, because she brought it at lunchtime and he's that original –, and now his balcony looks like a small piece of jungle, she can tell that he's proud of his plants. He told her the names of every plant as he added them to his balcony collection, but she can't really remember.

Today he made some omelets before going to pick her up, rather than waiting for her to cook dinner together, and the smell reaches her through the open balcony. Knowing him he probably did it thinking that she would be tired from training and wouldn't feel like cooking, but she's a bit disappointed that they can't cook together today.

Somewhere between the day she started coming to his house weekly and today he purchased a TV, it's not in the best condition and she suspects it's second hand but it works and that's all that matters. The table is already set and they sit to watch a movie in a companionable silence while having dinner. Reishi doesn't have a curfew, so movie nights have become a habit by now.

Once they've finished dinner, they clear the table, cleaning the dishes while the commercials act as background sound, and then huddle together under a blanket to watch the rest of the movie.

It's not unusual for Reishi to fall asleep on Obito by the end of the movie; the first time he woke her up, red as a tomato, but now he's used to it and usually lets her sleep until the movie finishes. On the rare occasion that she visits on a Saturday he just lets her crash at his place, she doesn't have to get up early the next day and her only appointment is with him, so it doesn't matter anyways.

Knowing this, one would think that their friendship is at its best, and they would be wrong. Even though they are undoubtedly more comfortable in each other's 'personal bubble', Reishi can tell that there's still something bothering Obito, though he refuses to give her a direct answer when asked about it and Reishi keeps growing frustrated.

Today's movie is about a samurai princess, Reishi isn't paying much attention, to be honest, and she can feel her eyelids already closing. Ninjutsu always leaves her exhausted, more than normal, that is.

"Oh, come on, don't split!" Obito's shoulder, who has been acting as her support throughout the movie, jerks as he speaks, startling her. She looks at him reproachfully, still somewhat dazed, and he smiles apologetically upon noticing. "Sorry, it's just, you know, they always do that."

Reishi grumbles something unintelligible under her breath and settles back on Obito's shoulder, letting the sound of the movie lull her back into a state of half-sleep.

When the movie is over, Obito nudges her to wake her up and she grumbles some more, snatching the blanket from him and rolling herself in it like a ninja burrito. Obito huffs and begins to painstakingly pry it from her to send her on her way home. She whines throughout the entire process.

She walks home more or less awake, she's pretty sure that she looks like a zombie, pale in the moonlight, and has a small moment of amusement before she notices that there's something wrong.

The street lamps in the zone she's in don't work, save from the rare flicker of one in the distant. The council has been wanting to fix that for months now.

Reishi presses to one side of the street, hoping that the shadows will hide her, though she's still not sure what she's hiding from. She scans her surroundings, it's very late and there's nobody else here except for her, at least, nobody that she can see.

She tries to calm down and closes her eyes, searching for a chakra signature nearby. She's not sure if she wants to find one.

Sure enough, she feels someone coming closer, running through the rooftops at high speed, alone. The chakra feels agitated, hostile, and she gets a bad feeling from it. The signature isn't like any other she remembers from any ANBU she has previously sensed; it's true that she hasn't memorized every signature in the village, so it could be anybody that's in a rush, but she can't help but be suspicious.

Whoever it is seems to feel her suspicions, because they're heading her way, and fast. Suddenly an alarm pierces the night air, and she recognizes it as the warning for 'enemy within the village's walls', then everything gets out of control.

Another two signatures appear on her radar, running after the first. The first one she noticed reaches the street she's in, frantically looking around for something; it's a man in his thirties, his clothes are torn in some places and she can see bandages under them. By the difference between the clean bandages and his dirty clothes, she deduces that whatever wounds are under those are recent. He's wearing an Iwa hitai ate.

Her breath gets caught in her throat, suddenly aware that there's an enemy here, in front of her. A dangerous one that for some reason has managed to infiltrate the village, and she tries to make as little noise as possible.

Her efforts turn out to be for nothing though, because the man practically materializes in front of her in the blink of an eye and hoists her up in front of him with a kunai on her neck, a second later two ANBU land on the street.

"Stay back, or the kid dies!" His voice is rough, like he's been screaming continuously on days on end up until now.

The ANBU seem to hesitate for a few intense seconds, in which Reishi fears they will choose to kill the intruder over her life, after all the safety of the village is more important that a single kid with no clan to complain about her death.

To her surprise, the ANBU jump back to a roof a little ways farther on the street, as if to give space to the man, and he takes this chance to run, taking her as hostage.

The shock of everything happening so fast keeps her from trashing or trying to escape, though a tiny part of her mind that's still able to think rationally tells her that trying to escape would be a bad idea.

The man surpasses Konoha's outer walls without trouble, getting lost in the forest. His footsteps are silent.

When he deems it far enough for a break, he stops and unceremoniously throws her at the ground. She rolls until her back hits a tree, then slowly sits up, never taking her eyes away from the man, who has started to pace and mumble in the meantime. If she wants to escape, this might be her only chance, she's not going to wait for a rescue that might never come. On the other hand, if she makes a run for it, the man will see her and most likely kill her instantly. If she wants to escape, she has to incapacitate him somehow.

Her mind feverishly goes over all the possibilities, trying to come up with a plan. Finally she is left with one possibility; it's based on luck and the man not being a sensor, but it's the only one she can think of right now.

She takes a deep breath, and, when the man is looking away, goes through the seals needed for the fireball technique as quickly as she can. She makes a mistake on the Boar seal, and she has to wait until the man is distracted again to try once more. It's not easy, because her hands are trembling and she's starting to sweat, she has to try this four times. By the fifth though, she finally gets it right.

She feels the smoke building in her throat and visualizes it as a black mass, like ink underwater. Then she releases it as fast as she can, and she can feel some going through her nose. Her eyes grow watery as her surroundings are covered with thick, black smoke and she hears the man curse.

Two kunais find the tree she had collided with earlier, and she makes an effort to hide behind it while smoke is still spilling from her mouth. Once she feels her chakra reserves almost empty and the area around her is covered in smoke, she scrambles up the tree, trying to be as silent as possible. Under her the man is still cursing.

She can't see a thing through the smoke, but that doesn't matter; she closes her eyes and makes an effort to feel the chakra signature below. It feels frantic, the core spiking with stress. The smoke around also has traces of chakra, probably due to it having been created with it, and thanks to that she can feel that he hasn't left the smoke covered area yet. He must not be a sensor then.

She reaches with a trembling hand for the pouch where she stores the senbon, for a terrifying moment the needles threaten to fall and give out her position but she manages to get a hold on them. Her hands are so sweaty that she's not entirely sure she will be able to throw anything, let alone aim well enough to hit the target.

She readies a senbon and gets a feel of the chakra signature below, he seems on guard, waiting for her to make the first movement so he will be able to find her. Thankfully the fog-like black smoke persists.

She aims and throws, hearing a dull thud and a curse, but there's no indication of it having hit the intended target, rather, it sounded like it had it the ground.

She tries again, trying to get the feeling of the man's chakra etched in her mind's eye as perfectly as possible. She doesn't even know why she thought that aiming with her eyes closed was a good idea.

This one graces him on the arm, but it's still way off, plus the man knows the direction she's in now, and she can't get down the tree or jump to another one thanks to the poor visibility.

The man below turns so he's facing her and tenses directing chakra to his legs, she instinctively knows he's going to lunge for her and tries to pull another senbon from the pouch as quick as possible, making a few fall in the process. The man is already mid-air and there's no time to worry about that, or to aim properly, she knows that if he gets to her it's game over.

She throws and holds her breath as a body slams against her, throwing them both off the tree and out of the cloud of smoke. She stays on the ground and watches as the man gets up, the smoke still clinging to him as if it was alive.

There's a senbon protruding from his left eye.

The man looks at her, confused, while a thin trail of blood runs down his eye and falls from his chin in small droplets. Then he tentatively reaches for the needle and picks it between his index and thumb and starts pulling.

The senbon comes out of his eye painfully slow and seems to have no end, Reishi doesn't remember them being that long, or that red. She can't look away, as much as she's screaming inside at herself to look anywhere but at the man in front of her.

With a clear sound, like a bell's, the senbon falls to the ground, and after a second so does the man, face down. There's a pool of blood forming underneath his head.

Reishi waits for him to get up and attack her for what feels like hours, drawing shallow breaths while her eyes are glued to the lying body. She's afraid that if she stops looking he'll move.

Finally, she tries to search for his chakra, and finds that it's slowly leaving the body, only a few wisps remaining, not enough to support the life of a grown adult.

As in auto-pilot, she gets up, walks around the man and retrieves the senbon that fell before, then the two ones she threw first – one of them has blood on the tip, she wipes it on the leg of her pants and puts it with the rest –. She debates wether or not to retrieve the last one, but the image of the man slowly pulling it out of his eye stops her and she promptly throws up, leaning on a tree for support.

It's then that the ANBU arrive.

They are different from the ones that let the Iwa nin run away with her as hostage, and she recognizes one of them as the one that helped her clean the wine stain those months ago.

He hesitates for a moment, seemingly torn between approaching her or the enemy ninja, but the decision is made for him with the arrival of a third person.

Fugaku takes a look at her – she's still trembling, when is she going to stop? It feels like she will keep trembling for the rest of her life. She can't breathe – and at the body lying face down a few meters away, and strides decisively towards her, only stopping a mere step away when she flinches and steps back.

He frowns and kneels in front of her, opening his arms. Reishi doesn't have to think about it, in a second she has already latched to Fugaku's neck and he scoops her up. She's not crying, but now that her body knows she's safe, she starts taking big gulps of air.

"Don't breathe like that, it will damage your lungs," Fugaku scolds her, though it lacks any heat, "breathe in, count until three, and release the air while counting until seven."

Reishi follows his instructions until her breath comes back to normal and the tremors wrecking through her body are barely noticeable. Then Fugaku starts walking away from that unholy place, back to Konoha, and the body enters her field of vision. The two ANBU are crouching beside it, they've turned it up and the man's remaining eye stares vacantly into the night sky. One of them is inspecting the bloodied senbon while the other looks closely at the damaged eye.

Standing beside them is Danzō.

The old man looks her in the eye, sending a chill down Reishi's spine.

"I think this calls for a field promotion, don't you agree, Uchiha-dono?" He says, in a tone way too smug for the situation.

She buries her face into Fugaku's neck.

"We will talk about this at a later date," he states in his formal-voice-that-also-sounds-deeply-annoyed. Then he resumes walking.

Instead of taking her home, as Reishi expected, Fugaku takes her to the hospital, where a flock of worried nurses fuss over her. Fugaku says something, she doesn't pay attention to it, but it sounds like he's scolding them for being too loud, and some of them scatter, leaving her with just two.

The two nurses, a man and a woman, lead her to a room and make her sit on a bed – everything is too white and her eyes hurt – where they examine her for injuries. Aside from some scratches from when the Iwa nin threw her, and a small cut in her neck from the kunai, she's fine.

"She should stay overnight in the hospital, though, just in case," says one of the nurses.

"She just had a traumatic experience, what she needs right now is a familiar enviroment and someone to comfort her, not a hospital bed," Fugaku argues back, he sounds annoyed, almost angry. Reishi has never seen him angry before.

He argues with the nurses some more, careful not to rise his voice but firm in his statements, and finally they let him take her to his house for the night.

There's light coming out of the kitchen's windows, so Reishi deduces that Mikoto is home, waiting for them; and true enough as soon as she hears the door open, the woman throws herself at Reishi, hugging her so tight she thinks her ribs might break.

A wet substance starts spreading on her shoulder, and she notices that Mikoto is crying, her tears staining the fabric. Reishi holds her back, trying to comfort the woman, though her body is still moving out of habit, without any thought put into it.

She goes to bed soon after, and she hears Mikoto's and Fugaku's muffled voices through the door, then footsteps going in different directions and the front door opening. She can feel Fugaku's chakra signature leaving the house. She hadn't realized that she hadn't stopped feeling chakra around her.

That night the council argues with the elders while the Hokage looks on with a defeated expression that almost resembles guilt. The council is very vocal about what they want: they want Reishi to be an example, a symbol of hope, the youngest war hero.

It's obviously a scheme to get people's spirits up and to say 'we have nothing to worry about, see? Even our young can kill their jōnin level shinobi'.

It's pure propaganda, a way to keep the population under control. The carrot on the stick, if you will.

By morning the debate has reached its conclusion and Reishi is made genin at age six.

Reishi looks at her reflection, trying to see any changes, but her appearance remains the same, even though she feels completely different than the night before.

The images keep appearing before her as if it was happening now, the incredulous face of the Iwa nin burned into her mind. The thought occurs to her, that that man is positively dead. She has killed a man.

She has killed a man.

And yet, she doesn't feel bad about it.

Shouldn't she be wrecked by guilt? She has committed the worst sin imaginable by men, she has deprived someone from their most basic right. Maybe he had a family waiting for him back home, children. Maybe there are some orphans right now in Iwa asking when is their father going to come back home, but he won't, Just like Ryouji never came back.

And she doesn't feel a thing.

It had been so easy, a blink and he was gone. Dead. Just because a glorified needle had perforated his eye and most likely the brain. She had been aiming for the eye, true, but it still had been such a shock when the senbon hit just where she wanted to. A bullseye, her mind provides, and she bitterly snickers at the dark humour.

Mikoto is already up and about, and greets her with a cheerfulness too forced to be believable, but Reishi decides that it's better not to comment on it. Fugaku is nowhere to be found.

Reishi nibbles on her breakfast, not feeling hungry but also not wanting to worry Mikoto over it. She forces it down with a gulp of orange juice, and immediately feels like throwing up. Luckily, Mikoto doesn't see her gag and she is able to reign in her stomach until she is finished and goes back upstairs with the excuse of having forgotten something in the room. Once she has reached the top of the stairs she rushes to the bathroom and empties her stomach.

Back downstairs, an ANBU is waiting for her. She takes note with disappointment that it's not the one she knows.

She follows them to the Hokage tower and into the Hokage's office, receiving odd looks from whoever they encounter on their way there. News do travel fast in ninja villages.

Inside the Hoage's office, she finds Fugaku, the Elders, Danzō and the Hokage himself.

She takes in the Hokage's tired expression and the bags under Fugaku's eyes, the Elders and Danzō look eerily happy to see her.

Everything happens in a blur; the Hokage announcing to her her new status as genin, his empty words of congratulation, Danzō, intently staring her down. In that moment she knows that he had had something to do with this, that he had planned this somehow.

"The ninja you killed was an escaped prisoner," the distant voice of one of the elders informs her in a tone too sweet, "we don't know how he escaped but he had stolen a very important scroll," bullshit, he had no scrolls with him. They're making that up so she will sound like a hero, "and, if it wasn't for you, he would have ran with the secrets of the village. You have done a great service to Konoha, you should be proud."

The elders keep praising her, but she has stopped listening, looking outside the window. That praise isn't meant for her, it's meant for the persona they have fabricated. Their words are hollow. A small child might have believed them, but not Reishi.

She leaves the Hokage tower with a sensation of floating, like she's going to become one with the air around her and dissolve. It doesn't sound like a bad idea.

Fugaku guides her through the streets and keeps the exhilarated civilians that want to congratulate her away until they reach her house. Once inside, all hell breaks loose.

She has never seen Fuhaku so livid, screaming in the Uchiha's face like he's not some sort of killing machine (though she supposes she is one too now). Reishi doesn't know what she's saying, she is tuning everything out, looking at the stark white place where the wine stain had been. It's whiter than the rest of the wall, now that she looks at it well.

Fugaku makes some sort of signal with his hand and the ANBU she knows comes inside, another signal and he nods and picks her up. Reishi doesn't oppose resistance, she's too tired for this, too tired, and she has slept very little. She lets the ANBU carry her away from the house and into a nearby park. He puts her down carefully on a bench and stands guard, probably waiting for Fugaku to pick her up.

Reishi can't stand the silence though, not after that, she needs something to distract herself before she starts thinking.

"Hey you," upon hearing her voice, the ANBU turns to look at her, "what's your name? I mean, your ANBU code name, not the real one. What's your animal spirit or whatever?"

The ANBU makes a sound that can only be compared to a surprised snicker before answering in a deep, amused voice.

"You can call me Bear."

"You do look like one." This earns her a short bark of a laugh that reminds her of her father, her first one, not Ryouji. He was a monstrosity of a man with fiery red hair everywhere and shoulders wider than any shoulder should be. Reishi doesn't know what colour this man's hair is, but he's got narrowed down the shoulder part.

It turns out that Bear likes talking. A lot. So she's fairly entertained until the moment Fugaku arrives with a furious face that he's obviously trying not to make – and failing at it – and her sports bag.

"From now on you're staying at the Uchiha compound," he states with an angry undertone.