PART VI
The Shuriken
"Uncle." Gohama whispered firmly as she sharpened the edge of a kunai against a whetstone.
Uncle Hideki jumped down from where he was hiding on a tree branch and she didn't spare the energy to look up at him.
"The Chunin Exam is in a month." He growled, he always seemed to growl when he spoke to her, making sure his resentment was marked in every word he said to her.
It was a mutual sentiment, but hers she usually showed through indifference and disregard, knowing it would pinch him more than any anger or hatred could.
So, Gohama continued to work on her kunai, her head tilted nonchalantly to the side.
"You know that the host this year is Konoha. I have no doubt that you will pass the Exams, your rank isn't what is at stake."
Gohama chuckled, curt and dry, it never was about her.
"Our diplomatic relationships with the other Hidden Villages are… strained."
Gohama's ears perked up at the information, even if she continued her show of sharpening the kunai as if Uncle wasn't there. She hadn't known what had been causing Father's constant travels for the past few years, nor the late night councils, even the clan reunions in their own home as she slept above them, but it seemed it could be related to Buki's lost place at the Great Nations Council after the war.
She made a note to herself about secretly borrowing one of Mother's scrolls about sound-cancelling seals, so she could eavesdrop the next time there was a Kyura council in her home.
"Your presence in the Exams is about boasting your power."
"Nothing I wasn't planning on doing before this talk."
"Damn, you're still a brat, a fucking crucial brat, which makes it even worse. Look at me, Gohama."
And she did, because he had actually complimented her. This wasn't about their resentment and petty conflicts, this wasn't just about Uncle bickering over every error in her posture, over every choice of her personal life, over how she had missed that one note when playing koto for some guests of the village. This was about Buki's position in the shinobi world.
His green eyes were narrowed at her, stout and lethal, as he pointed a finger and waved it at the rhythm of his words. "When I speak of power, I speak of all of it. You go full out, no pulling punches, no stopping mid-fatal blows, no hiding the big jutsu, nothing. You fight as mercilessly as if those shinobi were fighting inside this very village, trying to pierce a knife through everyone you care about."
Uncle Hideki's sneer made the scar running from the bridge of his nose, down his mouth and neck twist. He didn't have any of Mother's beauty. He blamed it on the scar that warped his face, but it had always been that sneer which twisted his expression. His decorum was on point, his poise and his charm, but those who knew him could see it, the mad greed lurking behind his eyes, as a furious wolf, hungry and desperate.
And it worked, Kyura Hideki had his flaws but he was a great shinobi, commander of the ANBU forces, and brutally efficient in protecting Bukigakure.
"You want me to unleash Seiryu's chakra." She stated, before turning her eyes back to the movement of her hands. "I'm not ready for it, ask Osamu-hanshi."
"But could you do it if you wanted to? If the circumstances were desperate enough for it?"
Gohama shook her head. "I can't control it. It would mean a material cloak and I would go berserk." Then she lifted her gaze to him again, eyes narrowing. "But that's what you want."
Uncle was definitely mad. He had seen it once in her training with Osamu-hanshi, four years ago. If Mother hadn't been close by to contain the seal with fuinjutsu who knows when she would have stopped and how many people she would have killed. After that, there had always been a fuinjutsu specialist watching over her jinchuriki trainings.
"There will be other villages there, including Suna." The sneer widened, mocking. "Dear Father may not have told you, but these Exams are your presentation day. You are to show the shinobi world the full power of the Shuriken of Bukigakure. You already know that, don't you, Gohama? You already know you're the next Shuriken."
She did know, had known for a long time, even if no one had informed her explicitly. The Academy history classes spoke of the great battle and mission deeds of other Shuriken, most of them jubi jinchuriki in their prime. Grandfather had been one, Uncle Katsuo before he died in the war, one of Haku's, her best friend, great-grandfather.
She still remembered the curious searing looks of her classmates, all older than her, as the sensei spoke of it, how they made her heartbeat speed and hands dampen at the expectation there, the accusation.
"Your hitai-ate, look at it." And Gohama looked, the light reflecting on the carved edges of the metal, flickering on the sharp sides of the four-pointed star of death. "The Shuriken is in the frontline. The Shuriken is the symbol of the Village's skill, its own supreme weapon of defense and attack, the one who rules death, and its place is outside Bukigakure, in the filth of the battlefield.
"The Yukikage is the leader. The Yukikage is the hand and the Shuriken is the weapon, the most important, most deadly weapon."
Uncle crouched before her, his rough hand snapping to grasp onto her face and bring it in line with his.
"You are our Shuriken, Gohama. And you need to start killing like the ruthless glorious weapon you were always meant to be."
His hand released her as if she disgusted him and he stood up.
"Don't humiliate the Kyura."