In her first life, she graduated medical school at 25 and joined Doctors Without Borders as soon as she could.

Joining the organization had been one of the riskiest choices she had ever made, her work taking her to war-torn nations in Africa and Asia. Some of the hospitals and clinics she visited would later be closed due to attacks by local militias or air raids, and one man she worked with ended up getting kidnapped. More than once they'd been been questioned about whether they "sided" with governments despite the organization having no official ties to any country.

At one point she'd been part of a mission to a small island town after an earthquake—one of many towns affected by it—and arrived to find the results of a massacre. The town had been harboring some members of a rather unpopular faction, and a rival militia had taken advantage of the chaos after the earthquake to deal what they believed to be justice to the still-recovering populace.

Some of her colleagues had doubled over and vomited on the spot at the sight of the children, so still and lifeless with faces mangled beyond recognition. Others had to go back to the ship midway through just to take a moment to decompress. Even her supervisor, a surgeon who had been to the Middle East countless times as a US Marine, had to pause and take a moment to absorb the devastation.

She had just taken one look at the carnage and gotten to work, checking the bodies for pulses and rallying the others to administer aid to those who remained alive.

"How can you stand it?" someone asked her later, once they'd finished work for the night and had holed up in their temporary quarters. She had just smiled thinly, her eyes hollow as she hefted a mug of beer provided by some grateful local for saving his daughter.

"Some people are just permanently screwed up, I guess," she replied, and took a deep chug. She'd seen much worse than the horrors they'd witnessed today, this had just been on a larger scale.

Sute didn't know why she was here.

The older Mist ninja hadn't explained anything to her, just let her tag along and left her in a different area of the cavern while they got to work. Once they'd finished they'd stuck her with the barely conscious girl to monitor her over the night while, quote, "it settled." They did not elaborate on what "it" meant, but the way they phrased it was ominous enough. At one point she caught snatches of whispers, "use her to our advantage," and Sute did not know which "her" they meant, but she decided it would be safer not to ask.

Monitoring the girl over the course of that night was stressful enough on its own.

Her screams echoed through the cavern as she writhed on the ground against the steel shackles binding her limbs to stone pillars, ink markings converging upon her partially-exposed stomach and filling her with acidic chakra. Sute had to cover her ears as she sat huddled against the far wall, wishing ever so desperately the silencing seals could at least muffle the screams inside too. Part of her wanted to say those were the most gut-wrenching screams she'd ever heard, the kind that would haunt her nightmares, but they weren't.

They really, really weren't.

Every so often the girl's shrieks would taper off to pained sobs, and at those points Sute would crawl over to run a brief examination. Each time the other girl would wince and recoil, nearly launching into a panic attack as if expecting her to launch a physical attack on her. Sute knew she had a horrible bedside manner (Utakata would vehemently attest to that), and she silently cursed that particular trait as she awkwardly did her best to reassure her she meant no harm.

A few hours before dawn the girl seemed to finally believe Sute, because she stopped flinching at her every movement and instead took to babbling. "You," she started, her voice breathless and rushed. "Do—do you know what, what's going on?" Her eyes seemed to bore into Sute with an intensity that she had only seen on people in the gravest of situations, even as fear gleamed in them.

"Not... really?" Sute replied hesitantly. "I'm just..." She trailed off, not sure how to finish. "I'm just... following orders." The girl's throat bobbed as she swallowed harshly, giving a small nod.

"R-right. You... Y-you don't know..." She trailed off, her labored breathing stretching in the silence for a few moments as she tried to collect her thoughts. "You're—you're Sute, right? We—we met once, remember?"

"Yeah, I do," she confirmed with a slow nod. "You were with Kakashi-san, and that Uchiha."

"R-right. My name is, Rin. Nohara Rin." Rin offered a smile, weak and shaky and full of anxiety, but still trying to be reassuring. "And my t-teammate's name is—was, was U-Uchiha Obito." Her face twisted slightly as she fumbled with tenses, grief flickering in her eyes, but she quickly shoved it away. "Y-you, you saved him. K-Kakashi, I mean. You—that antidote. It, it saved him."

"Y-yeah, I guess so," Sute muttered, nodding slowly. She recognized this for what it was. Rin was trying to build up a rapport with her, establish some sort of bond and commonality between them, no matter how small and fragile it might be. Serial killers and kidnappers did not often think of their victims as expressly human, but as something else, something other. Very few people were truly capable of shutting down all emotions to kill another human being without any remorse. Sometimes, they just needed a little push, the tiniest common point between them and their victim, and they'd be reminded of the person's humanity and lose their will to kill.

She had seen it in action countless times before, heard countless sob stories from people silently praying for some sort of mercy. It always made her a little sick because at the end of the day she was powerless to change their fate, no matter what they thought.

(Part of her wondered if this life would be the same, if this would just be the first in a long chain of trapped people desperately bargaining for their lives.)

"Min-Minato-sensei," Rin continued, and paused to lick her lips, her mouth overly dry after screaming so much. "He—he regretted it. Trying to, to attack you. He said—he thought you, p-poisoned Kakashi. After that, h-he wanted to—to apologize. H-he, he didn't—" She stopped, taking a deep, shuddery breath as she tried to organize her thoughts.

Eventually, she resumed, "He asked us to—to bring you back."

"What?" The word came out as a breath, short and full of terror as Sute felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Minato, the Yellow Flash, wanted to capture her? As her mind began racing with the implications Rin shook her head, grimacing at the pain the motion likely brought.

"No, no! N-not as a prisoner, as a—a guest."

"A guest?" Sute repeated, her mind reeling even more from Rin's attempt at clarification. What the hell?

"I—I don't..." Rin bit her lip, pinching her eyes shut. "He... Minato-sensei—he and Kushina-san—they said, you're f-family."

"Kushina? Family? What?" Sute was just staring at her wide-eyed at this point, her mind racing as she tried to process the sudden influx of information. If Rin was still trying to build a rapport... well, she couldn't say if it was working, but she at least had Sute's attention. "But—how? Look at me." She grabbed a strand of stringy, muddy green-brown hair and held it up, her apple green eyes glinting with confusion. "The Yellow Flash has blond hair and blue eyes, and our facial structures are totally different. I'm—I'm probably not family."

The words felt unexpectedly bitter on her tongue as she spoke, her chest aching inexplicably. Truth be told, Sute had no idea of her heritage. She was a battlefield brat, an orphan who'd wandered across at least three countries before getting picked up by a kunoichi hailing from the opposite side of the map. She had never given her birth family much thought, but she knew intellectually that she likely had no birth ties to Kiri. If anything, she'd be more likely to be related to someone from Suna or Ame than the village whose emblem she wore now.

And Minato, the Yellow Flash, was one of the greatest heroes in the manga and anime she'd loved so much in her last life. The possibility of being related to him would be amazing, it would change her life forever, but the odds of that happening were astronomically low.

Rin just nodded, seeming to grow more determined now that she obviously had Sute's attention. Her eyes flickered to the doorway to the chamber which had been sealed with a boulder. "N-not him," she whispered, pitching her voice low to avoid being overheard by the Mist ninja undoubtedly stationed outside. "H-have you ever heard of, of Uzushio?"

Sute frowned and shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing as she leaned forward. Rin smiled at that, a bit sadder this time. "I—I never saw it. It, it fell, a few years before we were born. But Kushina-san, she—"

Whatever she intended to say next got lost as a resounding boom suddenly echoed through the room, the boulder vanishing in a puff of smoke, and within seconds Sute found herself violently slammed against the stone wall with a startled cry as fingers wrapped around her throat.

"You," a voice hissed, pure venom and ice, and she could only choke for air as she stared into a pair of mismatched red and black eyes. She barely had time to register the fringe of silver hair hanging over them before gasping for breath as the fingers squeezed, cutting off her airways and leaving her choking. Spots started to creep into her vision and she could distantly hear Rin shouting something, but she couldn't hear what and it faded as her consciousness started to flicker.

Then, all at once the pressure ceased and she collapsed to the ground with a gasp, her hands already alight with healing chakra as she clutched at her aching throat. Her vision still spun but the world gradually came into focus as she repaired her damaged airways and allowed sweet oxygen to flow freely once more, and as it did she could now hear Rin talking to the newcomer in hushed tones, too quiet for her to hear.

As she struggled to her feet the silver-haired youth spun to face her, his eyes narrow and radiating anger. "Don't stop us," he hissed, and then grabbed Rin's now-free wrist and dragged her through the door. Sute could only stand there in silence for a moment, her mind still reeling as she leaned against the wall, but soon enough she took a deep, painful breath and staggered after them.

Maybe it had been her conscience, suddenly rearing its head after a lifetime and a half of apathetically standing by doing nothing.

Maybe she got tired of dealing pain and suffering with her own hand instead of trying to ease it.

Or maybe she just didn't want to be even partially responsible for one of Kakashi's many tragic losses.

Whatever the reason, all that mattered was that she was now on the run chasing after two should-be enemies with shinobi from her own village in hot pursuit.

"Shit! Dammit! Too close!" Sute hissed curses under her breath as she dodged a kunai, defaulting to her native English in her stress. Ahead of her Kakashi dragged Rin along at top speeds, gripping her wrist with a vice-like grip even as she yelled something that Sute couldn't quite hear. Her attention was too focused on the Mist ninja that had been her allies up until half an hour ago, and who now wanted her blood.

"Are you freaking kidding me!" she screamed as one of the Mist ninja spewed a water bullet at her, grimacing in disgust as her hands flew through seals to return it with one of her own. Ninjutsu? Not her strongest suit. She still had minimal training in it compared to her other skills, mainly because she had a natural affinity that happened to include it, and she really did not want to accidentally use that particular affinity while training.

That, and the water bullet felt like glorified spit. She might be okay with blood and torture and all, but she had to draw the line somewhere.

That said, she also didn't want to get doused by someone else's glorified spit, so she finished the seals and spewed out her own powerful spray. The two streams met head on, seeming to fight for dominance, and with an intense burst of chakra on her end her bullet overpowered the other one and blasted the man back. The second he recoiled she spun forward and raced after the others.

"—kill you!" she heard Kakashi retort just as she caught up. "There's got to be some other way!"

"Is it seriously just you two?!" Sute hissed before Rin could respond, cutting into the argument. "What the hell is Konoha thinking, sending kids into Mist territory!"

Apparently her words caught the pair by surprise, or maybe it was just her presence, as Rin snapped a startled, almost fearful look her way. Kakashi, meanwhile, just shot her a deadpan glare, made much more intimidating by his mismatched gray and single Sharingan eye. "You're what, eight?" he countered hotly, and she scowled at him.

"I'm ten." Or maybe she was thirty-eight, since she'd been twenty-eight when she died in her last life (probably, the details were fuzzy and she didn't like to dwell on it for obvious reasons), but that was beside the point. Hissing under her breath as she turned to deflect yet another kunai, she tore the kunai pouch off her leg and thrust it towards Kakashi's free hand. "Forget it! Hurry up and throw these!"

The order was so abrupt he actually seemed taken aback, just boggling at her wide-eyed. "What? Why would I—"

"My aim sucks and there's no way I can hit a bunch of ANBU while running! Everything in there is poisoned so it should at least slow them down!" Kakashi just stared at her, taking far too long to process her words for her liking, but then he shoved the pouch back at her.

"They're your weapons," he growled. "You use them."

"I just told you, my aim sucks!" Sute snapped impatiently.

"And I have no reason to trust you!" Kakashi roared back, his voice filled with enough venom to make her recoil. "You're one of them! There's no reason to believe you're actually trying to help!" Sute flinched, not expecting so much anger, but... Maybe she should have. It wasn't like even she understood her own reasoning at this point.

Kiri had been her home. (She never called anywhere home.) The people there had been her friends. (She never knew the meaning of "friend.") She shed blood in its name. (She shed blood to protect herself.) It was all she knew. (It was an endless unknown.) Konoha was an enemy village. (Konoha was the good guys.) She had no reason to betray it. (She had no reason to be loyal.)

She would die if she left. (She would die if she stayed.)

"Sute-chan," Rin cut in breathlessly, interrupting the ongoing philosophical debate in her head. "You—You have poisons?"

"Yes!" she replied with an eager bob of her head, thrusting the pouch towards her. "Please tell me you have good aim." Rin didn't take it though, just eyed it for a moment before meeting Sute's gaze.

"Then kill me!" she yelled, and the order was so abrupt Sute nearly stumbled in shock, her face draining of color.

"W-what?" she stuttered, questioning if she'd heard right. Next to her Kakashi growled, maneuvering to position himself between the two girls as they ran.

"Don't you fucking dare," he snarled at Sute, and to Rin he added, "And stop saying that!"

"Kakashi, stop being so stubborn!" Rin shouted back. "I told you—"

"I'm not breaking my promise to Obito!" Kakashi roared, and at that point the conversation had to stop as he dodged out of the way of a water bullet. Sute shot Rin a wide-eyed look, mouthing a silent 'what the fuck,' but quickly turned to dodge a volley of senbon. Cursing, she started flying through hand seals to spit out a water bullet which quickly took the form of three water clones, and then charged at their attackers.

One man lunged at a clone and swung a long, thin katana through it like butter, neatly severing it in half. Even as the clone collapsed into a puddle of water Sute flashed through the seals for a substitution and appeared behind him, palming a kunai and raising it above her head as he turned to face her. Blood splattered onto her as she dragged it across his face, the gouge digging deep into his skull and right through his eye. He screamed in agony, the toxins on the blade causing his skin to sizzle around the wound, and Sute wasted no time in delivering a two-foot kick to his chest to send him flying.

Even as she did that she felt another man rush up behind her, and she dropped into a crouch and rolled to avoid his blow, bowling directly into his legs. As he toppled to the ground she slashed his leg along where she knew the femoral artery would be, stabbing the blade deep into his muscle and swiping it through. People often forgot that they had a major artery connected directly to their hearts in their legs, and even without the poison he'd probably die of blood loss soon enough.

She wouldn't take any chances though, and she slammed her palm between his legs for good measure, taking a sick sort of satisfaction in the high-pitched squeak he emitted upon contact. Her victim suitably paralyzed with pain, she tossed her bloodied kunai into the air so she could jab her thumbs into his eyes. One of her clones dove above her to snag the blade before it could descend, spinning midair to slash another enemy even as it landed before lurching towards the next opponent.

As Sute jerked her thumbs out of her victim's eye sockets she distantly registered what sounded like birds chirping. A spark of light flashed in the corner of her vision, and she snapped her head in its direction to see Kakashi lunging at another one of the masked Mist nin. Lightning crackled around his hand, his left eye noticeably blazing red with the Sharingan from her current angle. The sight was enough to make her heart stop with a combination of awe and horror—awe because this was the Chidori, Kakashi's signature jutsu—

And horror because Rin was leaping right in front of it.

Time seemed to slow as Sute watched the brown-haired girl lunge between Kakashi and his intended victim, her face flickering with a mixture of horror, fear, anxiety, and cold, grim resolve. Kakashi's eyes widened as he registered what was happening, but even with the supernatural reflexes of the Sharingan he couldn't slow in time. Sute's heart thundered as she lurched to her feet and ran towards them, spying her two remaining clones doing the same in her peripheral vision, but—they were too slow.

They were too damn slow.

"Ka...ka...shi..."

The name came out as a whisper, blood dribbling down Rin's chin, and the light faded from her eyes as her body slumped around her teammate's arm where it still plunged into her chest.

When asked later, Sute would honestly respond she had no idea how things turned out that way.

One minute she'd been wrenching Rin from Kakashi's rigid arm, shoving her to the ground to pump chakra into her chest while screaming for her to stop, how dare she do that, he's suffered enough without you using him to commit suicide.

And then she was waking up miles away, her fingertips crusted with dried blood and her cheeks stained with dry tears.

When she staggered back to the battle scene she found puddles of blood which had once been human beings and two figures still on the ground, one unconscious and one dead with Lichtenberg lines staggering across her skin from a giant hole in her chest. She stared at them numbly, her mind slowly processing the scene in front of her without really registering anything. Everything felt hazy, almost like a dream.

Black flickered in the corner of her vision and Sute turned her head to look, but she saw nothing. After a long while she turned and limped away, exhaustion weighing on her and leaving her silent.

Everything still felt hazy, but it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare, the worst kind.

After one more week of trekking through the wilderness alone, Sute finally reached Kiri and got promptly tossed into T&I to go over what the hell happened. She answered the questions bluntly and concisely, offering no more details than necessary.

No, no one else from her platoon had survived. Yes, she had taken three weeks to get back when it should have taken her two, she got lost on the road of life. What? Oh, no, she meant she just got regular lost, her platoon took a lot of weird twists and turns and she didn't have the Elemental Nations memorized. Of course she looked exhausted and beaten up, she was the sole survivor of an ambush on her platoon and had to get home on her own.

No, she saw no other Mist ninja.

No, she saw no other enemy shinobi.

No, she saw no other people, just days and days of wandering the remains of battlefields alone.

After seven grueling hours of questioning they finallly released her, and she promptly went home to her bed and collapsed into a dead sleep for the next fourteen hours.

When she woke up, she found small white flowers blossoming on the formerly bare wall next to her bed. They had shriveled long before she woke up, drooping and wilting and held in place by nothing but her will.

She plucked them off one petal at a time and burned them.

(She had been three when she first donned a plain white gi with a white fabric belt.

Her old dad had her practice the kicks and punches that formed the basic foundations of taekwondo every day, motivating her to maintain her interest with the promise of ice cream. As she grew older he gave her first a yellow belt, then one split into yellow and green, and then a green. When she got two colored pieces of tape on the end used to mark her progress towards getting the next one around age five, he had her start learning judo, and soon after that she started on karate.

It got confusing sometimes, trying to keep track of all the different moves for each martial arts style. Some of them were similar so she ended up blending the styles more often than not, but her old dad never complained.

"This world has a lot of bad people in it who would want to hurt you," he told her once when she was six. "You're a little girl, so they'll go after you more. I want you to be able to defend yourself, no matter what." She nodded seriously and promised to never let herself end up in a bad situation.

After all, she only needed to look in their basement to find examples of what people might do to her.)

Here it is, Chapter 8! Sadly, this now confirms that Rin does not survive. I'm afraid that canon won't be disrupted so early. But I think this should also confirm some suspicions about Sute's abilities and her history. I have to say, she's a fun character.

At this point, Sute's official involvement in the war is over, though the war is still winding down. The next two chapters will cover the remainder of the war and Sute's training up until the Kyuubi's attack, after which we'll have a time skip.

Also, as you all know, I've been trying to reply to the reviews here. But this last chapter not only passed the 100 review mark (which, holy crap, I swear it took Echoes like at LEAST four months to reach that point!), I think I got more than 40 reviews in one chapter. Possibly even fifty. Which... DANG. That's... not exactly an easy number to reply to, seriously, I'd probably need at LEAST an hour to thank/reply to all the comments. Times like this makes me wish FF had a better comment system so I could just reply to them as they came. But in any event, at this rate replying to all comments would just take far too much time. So I'm going to have to forego responding for now. (I'll still reply to comments on EoL though, since the load there is bearable.)

That said, seriously, thank you so much everyone. I am seriously blown away by how popular this story is. I love reading all your comments, and I hope you guys continue to enjoy Bloody Oracle! See you next Saturday!