The Real Life (II)

But I woke up to the real life
And I realized it's not worth running from anymore
When there was nowhere left to hide I found out
That nothing's real here, but I won't stop now until I find
A better part of me

I let those hard days get me down
And all the things I hate got in my way
I could've screamed without a sound
I found myself silenced by those things they say

Three Doors Down

She was nine years old, a wet-behind-the-ears rookie fresh out of the Ninja Academy. The Hidden Mist village wasn't fond of the three man teams espoused by so many of the other villages, but they were often required for the exams, so they made a half-hearted effort. It was rare to send a full team to an exam, though, and candidates from different groups were simply lumped together based on who was ready.

Still, there were only so many jonin instructors for all the genin, so some kind of grouping had to be done. The problem for Kasumi was that no one wanted a nine year old girl with hardly any chakra and a tendency to burst into tears at the sight of blood. Why, she'd been sick for almost a week after she'd killed her opponent in the Academy's final exam.

"You were afraid of blood?" Naruto asked, incredulously.

Kasumi rolled her eyes at being interrupted so early in her story, but was careful to keep the irritation out of her voice. "What is it like for you after you use the Kyubi's chakra, Naruto-kun? That's what I thought. For Ryuu to take control of my body puts me under immense strain, and even more when he channels chakra. It takes less out of me now, but if he had used any more that first time, the shock might have killed me. Now, will you be quiet and let me finish?"

"Sorry, onee-chan."

The Misokage didn't particularly care about the preferences of the instructors, though. The rules were the rules, and they said every instructor needed at least three students so that the numbers would balance out. Even though she was a rookie, Kasumi was put on a team with a pair of older shinobi, whose third teammate had been killed in a recent chuunin exam.

Gozu and Meizu, the 'Demon Brothers,' had little time for their young teammate, and the jonin instructor even less. He would normally meet his team before dawn, and set Kasumi a training task, such as throwing kunai at targets. When he returned after sunset, he would expect to find her still practicing. He would spend his days training his two more promising candidates.

Still, those days training alone were not wasted. Had anyone cared to watch, they would have seen Kasumi talking to herself for most of the day, fumbling through strange jutsus according to the instructions of a teacher no one else could see or hear. She practiced the standard jutsus, too, in an effort not to raise suspicion.

You're ready for the chuunin exam¸ Ryuu told her one day about ten months after she had become a genin. As far as Kasumi was concerned, she could have stayed a genin for the rest of her life. But being an underling was not something Ryuu would tolerate, and so Kasumi went to her instructor and asked to be allowed to test.

He wanted to say no, of course. But as with the Academy exams, there were spaces to be filled so that more promising young shinobi's could have their chance. It was the Misokage who made the final decision, looking down on the young genin and her teacher from his throne-like seat. "Kasumi-chan, listen to my words. You go to this exam not as a candidate for the Hidden Mist village, but as a third member of a team. You will stay alive and make it through the tests for as long as your teammates need you, and then you will have the decency to die an honorable death. Your lack of power is an insult to the Village of the Hidden Mist. You now have the opportunity to give something back to the village. Anoshi-san will instruct you so that you will make it as far as you must."

She bowed, and accepted his words, and with Anoshi-sensei and his team she traveled to the Thunder Country where the exam was to be held. To say that Anoshi-sensei was pleased to have her would have been a complete lie. He was the kind of man who cared for nothing except the rules, and sending this little girl to her death offended his sense of what a shinobi should do. It was not so much the likelihood of her death which bothered him as the idea that someone who was unworthy was being allowed to take the chuunin exam. In contrast, there could be no one worthier than her two teammates: the Hidden Mist's number one rookie and his best friend, the son of the Misokage himself.

But worse than a shinobi who was without honor, to Anoshi-sensei, was one who did not follow orders, so he instructed Kasumi in the ways of the chuunin exam, its tricks and quirks and psychological games. She had only to survive until the end of the second round: her best course of action would be to be mortally wounded in the second test, so that she could not interfere with her teammates in the third.

When the first test came, Kasumi was terrified. She was the youngest in the room by three years, and there was not a ninja in the room that did not stand a head and shoulders taller than her. Their glares told her that they did not appreciate being grouped with someone like her, and the look the examiner sent her was the worst of all: it was like she didn't deserve to exist.

But it didn't matter how scared Kasumi was. Ryuu was there every second, coaxing, encouraging, bullying, and generally pushing her through each terrifying moment. And it didn't matter at all how much the other candidates glared, or the examiner used his psychological techniques against her: there was not a human born who could scare the dragon even for a moment. It was his bloody-minded determination to show them all, more than anything else, which got Kasumi through that first test. Without Ryuu, she knew she would never have managed the last part.

The candidates were called, one by one, out of the general testing room and into a small, dimly lit cell. Four masked jonin waited there, holding bared katanas, and the dark-faced examiner with an injured bird. Kasumi walked in, shaking so she could hardly stand. But something of the dragon's spirit had leaked through to her own, and when she faced the examiner it was without flinching or looking away.

"Kill it," he told her, as the masked jonin spread out to surround her.

It was a tiny bluebird which the examiner could have held cupped in a single hand. It took both hands for the little girl to lift the bird and cradle it to her, heedless of the blood that stained her shirt and hands.

The bird screamed in pain and terror as she held it, but gradually quieted as it was handled gently and carefully. Kasumi put her head down to it, allowing it to rub its tiny head against her cheek. When it was finally calm, Kasumi kissed its tiny head, and flooded its little brain with water. The bird was dead in half a second, too quickly for it to suffer.

It would have been harder if the bird had been healthy, if those men hadn't hurt it and others just to test the emotional strength of children. It would have been much harder if she had been a healer, and could have saved it. But the only thing Kasumi could do for the tiny injured creature, which would die before the day was through regardless of what she did, was offer it love and care in its last moments, and a swift and painless death.

She wanted to scream, to cry, to hurt these men as they had hurt the harmless little bird. But the ageless killer inside her refused to give these men that satisfaction, and as Kasumi always did when she didn't know what to do, she trusted Ryuu.

She put the little bird gently on the table and looked the examiner in the eye with a gaze as cold and merciless as that of the beast inside her. Inside, she was a wreck as she turned and walked away. She was angry at the examiner, at the ninjas of the Hidden Mist, at the little bird that hadn't been clever enough to avoid the trap. She was afraid, sad, a hundred other things which she couldn't have put a name to… but all anyone saw was a tiny, plain little scrap of a girl with blood on her pigtails who walked out of that dimly lit room with her back straight and her head high, her earlier fears forgotten.

When the Mizokage's son commented that it was a good thing she hadn't chickened out and messed up his chances, she walked past him without even a glance.