"Over the hill the soldiers come,
Some are slow and some are dumb,
Some are dumb and some are slow,
Here they come and here they go,

Beside the brook the soldiers rest,
Cloud tells us they sent their best,
They sent their best, so says Cloud,
Men who never fields have plowed,

Through the trees the soldiers walk,
They're fighting men, by their talk,
By their talk they're fighting men,
Never shall they leave again,

'Neath our feet the soldiers lie,
Bodies stack up six feet high,
Six feet high the bodies stack,
Men who won't be marching back,

Graves of soldiers grow good crops,
Grain for baking, grapes and hops,
Grapes and hops and good rich grain,
'Neath the sun and wind and rain,

Sons of farmers, tall and strong,
Who ne'er did a person wrong,
Stand in fields and sing this tune,
For we shall not forget it soon."

- Over The Hill, a folk song popular in the Land of Fire. Written after the complete destruction of an army from Cloud, it is unusual in that it glorifies the farmers whose lands became battlefields rather than the ninja who did most of the killing.

-O-

"Do you think Naruto is alright?" Sasuke asked Sakura.

Kakashi's fist tapped the end of Sasuke's nose. "Your guard is weak. Also, Naruto will be fine. Stop distracting Sakura, she needs to work hard if she wants to be ready in time – and so do you."

Sasuke scowled. "I still don't see why we couldn't wait for Naruto to be discharged this morning."

It had hurt, seeing Naruto in a hospital gown, confined to a bed and wearing a wan smile. Sasuke had never seen anyone die of anything slow, but something about the grim medical bay brought bile to the back of his throat. He couldn't lose anyone else.

"Worry more about yourself, Sasuke. You look like crap," Kakashi said, and for once he was close to losing his temper. "You're not paying attention and you're going to hurt yourself at this rate."

"Whatever." Sasuke rolled his shoulders and braced himself for another beating. "Let's spar another round I guess. Unless you want to wait until you're old and decrepit?"

They were in Team Seven's regular training ground, but it felt empty with just the three of them. Naruto should be prancing around and shouting about his great new technique, or a fiendish shuriken throw he'd managed that morning. Instead there was only Sakura, practicing some chakra exercises on a nearby bench. Kakashi set a gruelling pace and Sasuke had stopped paying attention to anything outside his small patch of grass.

"Let's take a break. I'll work with Sakura some more – you keep hitting that training post. Maybe next time we spar, you can stay focused." There was a trace of spite in the last sentence. And with that Kakashi left and Sasuke sank to the ground, feeling sweat trickle down the nape of his neck. Kakashi had become a man possessed, and he was working them both into the ground.

After his short breather, Sasuke set to punching the training post until his knuckles bled. His heart wasn't in it. Naruto had still been asleep in the hospital that morning, and any moment now he could be waking up, all alone.

Sasuke hadn't expected Kakashi of all people to drag him away from his team-mate's bedside. But their teacher had been stern and entirely unyielding.

"You chose to take part in this tournament," he'd reminded Sasuke. "You fought a fellow ninja of the Leaf for the honour. I won't let you enter unless you're as prepared as can be."

If he was honest, Sasuke had no idea how the fight between him and Neji was going to go. Naruto had almost beaten the Hyuga, and Sasuke liked to think he was the strongest member of Team Seven, but then again Naruto's clones were a good counter to the Gentle Fist. And the Uchiha had been wary of the Hyuga clan going back to the founding of Konohagakure.

Kakashi tapped him on the shoulder and Sasuke realised he'd been spacing out again. "Are we sparring some more?" he asked.

"No, you're finishing for the day," Kakashi said. "You're in no state to practice anything dangerous. Go visit Naruto and take some time to rest. Oh, and let him know he's banned from lifting anything heavier than a fork until I come fetch him for training. You'll have to get back to work first thing tomorrow morning though."

Sasuke nodded and scooped up his kit, stopping to wave goodbye to Sakura.

She looked up from the tangled mess of threads in her hands. "Are we leaving already?"

"Just Sasuke," Kakashi said.

Sakura's brows rose as she whirled on their teacher. "We've just been through a brutal exam and I don't get even one day off? I know I didn't fight in the preliminaries but I'm still exhausted!"

"It's not about the preliminaries. It's about your opponent. Temari is a ninja from Sand." Sasuke imagined he saw a flicker of fear in Kakashi's eye.

Apparently he was the only one. "What the fuck does that have to do with anything?" Sakura asked, bag already slung over one shoulder.

"Leaf ninja don't kill each other, except by accident. If Sasuke had a seizure during his fight, Neji would help him until the medics reached them. But Sand ninja have killed Leaf ninja before in the Chunin Tournament, deliberately. And Leaf ninja have done the same, of course. Plus, Konohagakure doesn't want to be embarrassed in front of the whole world. I'm not letting a foreign ninja beat up one of our new chunin while we have an audience full of merchants and nobles. That kind of story has a tendency to spread around." Under Kakashi's monotone monologue, Sakura wilted like a two-week-old bouquet. She pouted but there was no point to arguing further.

Sasuke left them both behind and went straight to the hospital. He flew past the reception desk and raced up the stairs, but by the time he reached Naruto's room it was empty. The window was open.

There were nurses passing by, checking on the patients in other rooms, and Sasuke cornered one. The hospital suspected Naruto had woken up and immediately fled into Konohagakure, but didn't know for sure, she said apologetically. It wasn't uncommon amongst the more highly-strung ninja. Sasuke climbed out of the same window and set out to track Naruto down.

Sasuke spent the best part of the afternoon following the trail, sometimes losing it in a crowded lane and then picking it up again on a quiet rooftop. He finally cornered Naruto in a small restaurant near the main gates.

"You alright? You disappeared in an awful hurry," Sasuke said. The stress was wiped off his face and replaced with a lofty smile.

Naruto smiled back, still ashen-faced. "Sorry for disappearing on you – I'm feeling a little better now. Neji likes to play rough, but then again so do I." There was nothing wrong with his appetite, judging by the neat pile of empty plates he'd stacked up.

"Any problems with your room?"

"The thing about the hospital is the smell," Naruto explained.

Sasuke clapped a hand on his shoulder in commiseration. Any tissues that had to be removed, any blood spilled on the operating table, any dead ninja where the medics' skills were not enough, all were full of secrets that had to be carefully disposed of. Regular incineration was the norm. Or in some cases, the rumours went, ANBU would come by for a collection. All taken together, it made for quite a stench.

"Kakashi said to give you a few days to recover, so you're officially banned from doing anything except relaxing," Sasuke told Naruto. "Sakura wanted to come visit as well, but Kakashi is training her all day today. I got the afternoon off but I doubt he'll let me go again tomorrow."

Hauling himself to his feet, Naruto forced a smile. "I'm glad you came to see me, but I'm still feeling tired. Is it alright if I head home?"

"Of course, I'm heading the same way myself," Sasuke lied.

After he escorted Naruto home, Sasuke went back to his own empty house and ran himself a hot bath. His entire body still ached from the morning's training and yesterday's fight. The scalding water soothed his sore muscles and he ducked his head under the surface, feeling the dull throb everywhere Lee had left bruises.

He'd won their match, in the end. But for most of the hand-to-hand fighting it was clear that Sasuke was out of his element. Too slow, too weak, lacking practice and experience. Clever tactics and a healthy dose of luck had carried the day. They wouldn't work against Itachi.

Sometimes he kept his brother in a corner of his mind. Not forgotten, exactly, but the pain in his past faded into the background, and he could smile and laugh for a few minutes. And then something would remind him. A crow on a nearby tree. A man with flowing dark hair walking past. A high-pitched cry of 'brother!' from a child playing in the park. Then the hatred came roaring back, strong enough to make him sick as he remembered everything his brother had done.

Sasuke knew he'd grown stronger over the last six months. But he doubted he'd grown enough. The battle in the forest against the team from Rain, where he'd beaten three genin on his own, had given him a lot of confidence. Then he'd entered the castle and lost it all again.

Somewhere out there, Itachi was still growing stronger. Sasuke was seven years younger than Itachi. He became a Chunin at age fifteen. Itachi had managed it when he was eleven. Not only did Itachi have an advantage, what with being born first, but Sasuke was slower to grow and learn. He was falling further behind, every single day.

Lungs ready to burst, Sasuke let out his breath in an explosion of bubbles. For a second he floated, suspended, in the bathwater, then he poked his head out and sucked in heaving lungfuls of air. He hauled himself onto the bathmat and dried himself, taking special care around the many bruises. Then he pulled on some clothes, picked up a set of shuriken and headed out to one of the communal training fields.

Itachi hadn't rested in the evenings, and so neither could Sasuke.

In the gathering dusk, Sasuke didn't see Ino until she was almost in arm's reach. "Hi," she said softly. "I was looking for you."

Sasuke grunted and threw another shuriken. Itachi had never let anything interrupt his training, so Sasuke needed to show the same focus. His wants didn't matter, not compared to the need to make a corpse of his brother.

"Please," Ino said, and Sasuke stopped as he saw the tear tracks on her cheeks.

The words escaped on their own. "What's wrong?"

"I… have a confession to make, and I don't know how you'll feel afterwards."

Sasuke almost turned his back on her. He wasn't going to waste time for some stupid romantic drama that he'd never asked for. But– Ino didn't look like she was thinking about romance.

"Let's sit down somewhere, maybe a cafe or something," Sasuke offered.

"Here is fine," she disagreed.

They stood in silence for a few moments, Ino marshalling her thoughts.

"So, um, well done on getting your hands on the Chunin Exam questions. How did you manage that?" Sasuke asked. He'd been curious about it, and perhaps if Ino got talking it would be easier for her to confide in him.

If anything, it made things worse.

Ino looked away, hair sweeping over her eyes. And then, at last, she spoke. "This, this is really hard. I know what words I can say to make this whole thing go the way I want, but I don't want to do that any more."

"You're not making much sense," Sasuke told her.

"I know, and I'm sorry. Look, maybe it's best if I start from the beginning." Ino ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at her ponytail. She paced back and forth in front of Sasuke. "Just before we graduated from the Academy I woke up with all these memories in my head. My memories, but," she paused, struggling to get the next few words out, "from the future. That's how I knew about the exam questions. That's how I knew a lot of things, like when you would find us in the forest, and that if I bought you those two swords way back when, it would lead to you picking up a spear."

"That's quite a claim," Sasuke said, mind whirling. The implications were… well, he didn't know what the implications were, but they must be massive.

Ino was trembling with nervous energy. "I know. And there are threats I know about, things that have to be done and that only you can do. I need to convince you to follow me to strange and terrible places, to do strange and terrible things."

Sasuke rocked on his heels, like he'd taken a physical blow to the face. "You need me to trust you, so you come to me with this story of all things."

Her voice was a whisper. "I know what I could have said instead, that would make you want to follow me. I didn't need to tell you the truth; it's a risk I'm taking, and I really hope it doesn't backfire."

"What would you have said?" Sasuke asked, a terrible suspicion growing in him. "What is it that you could use to co-opt me?"

There were tears glistening in the corners of Ino's eyes now. She looked him straight in the face and spoke the words that shattered his world and pulled it back together, cracked and warped like looking through broken glass. "I know where Itachi Uchiha will be and I can help you kill him."

"If–" Sasuke's voice broke. "If it's real, then I'll do anything you ask of me, anything at all. But if you're lying, Ino, I promise you as a fellow ninja of the Leaf. If you're manipulating me with this."

He trailed off, unable to finish the threat, eyes burning. He was being torn apart, torn between his brain telling him it was all lies, and his heart burning with the need to rush to Itachi's hideout and hang the traitor's guts from a flagpole. The world slowed and every tiny motion of a blade of grass was magnified as blood and chakra flooded his eyes. For the second time in a week, the second time ever, Sasuke looked at the world through the Sharingan.

And this time, unlike against the Rain team, he knew it was under his control. Not just a panicked reflex, but an extension of his will. His face split in a fierce grin as he pushed it away and felt his eyes return to normal. Then he touched the same feeling again and the glorious sight came rushing back.

"...Sasuke. Sasuke!" Ino was calling his name, and it took him a moment to realise. He looked her in the eyes and she smiled, a small sad quirk of the lips. "I know what just happened. You unlocked your Sharingan, but properly. And it was because of the emotions running through you. I know it because it's happened before, and I chose to make it happen again. And if we work together I can give you so much more, lost ninja arts from your forefathers, secrets that will curdle your blood and scar your soul."

Sasuke took a deep breath, like he was ready to fling himself into the ocean and go where the currents willed. "Alright. Alright, I believe you. Now where is Itachi, and what's the plan?"

Ino shook her head, but a relieved smile spread across her face. "It will be months until we can strike, and you won't kill him on your first meeting. But I promise you, on my life, you will have his head on a stick inside of two years. And before the killing blow, we will drive him to ruin and despair."

In the gloom, on the parched earth of the training field, Sasuke knelt before her and pressed her knuckles to his forehead. It was an old gesture, more from fables than history, but it felt right. "If you can make those things happen, I will have everything I want from life. Anything you need of me, just ask. And after Itachi is dead I will be yours in mind and body."

-O-

Naruto didn't make it through even a single day of training. Kakashi sought him out one night and told him where the team was meeting, and to get there for six o'clock sharp. He also told Naruto off for leaving the hospital. "I won't drag you back, but next time, stay put. Alright?"

"Sure thing," Naruto said. They both recognised it for the lie it was.

Kakashi sighed. "Since I've got you here, you might as well collect that ramen now."

It was a subdued meal, not least because Naruto felt the failure hanging over him. All his strength, his courage, his hard-earned skill hadn't been enough to beat Neji. And he'd embarrassed Kakashi by losing, and lost ground to Sasuke. Even the chunin award ceremony where he received Konohagakure's signature green vest failed to lift his spirits.

And so Kakashi and Naruto sat there and ate their ramen in silence, and when they were done, they went their separate ways, brooding.

Training was strained. Kakashi had two students to prepare for two very different opponents, and Naruto felt both hurt that he was mostly ignored, and guilty for the few moments that Kakashi spent working with him on water walking. He'd missed his team and, going by the small smiles and gentle hugs, they'd missed him too. But things didn't feel right and Naruto knew what he needed to do.

During the lunch break, Naruto had a quiet word with Kakashi. "This is a waste of time. Sasuke and Sakura need your help for the tournament – I'm just moping around at the moment. Focus on them for the next few weeks; I'll find something else to keep me busy."

Kakashi took some persuading before he agreed, which Naruto found touching and annoying in equal measure. Then, with nothing to do and all day to do it in, he wandered through Konoha. It was his first holiday since becoming a real ninja, and he wanted it to be over.

His teammates were competing in a tournament he'd been eliminated from before it even began. Nobody could understand how hard that was, Naruto decided.

Well, almost nobody.

It took half an hour to find Lee, which was impressive considering the rather eye-catching outfit he was wearing. In the end Naruto asked one of the gate guards, who mentioned that Guy and Lee liked to run laps around Konohagakure. From there it was a simple matter to follow the curve of the wall until a green figure came into view, struggling under the weight of a boulder the size of a small pig.

"Hi! You're Lee, right?" Naruto shouted, jogging up beside him.

Lee stopped, still holding his rock. "Yes, that is right! You are Naruto, of course. I enjoyed watching you fight; you have the ethic of hard work, I am sure. Would you care to join me for my afternoon warm-up?"

The 'warm-up' looked harder than Naruto's regular workouts, and he didn't feel like embarrassing himself, not when he had other options. "Actually, I was hoping for a quick conversation. We're in the same situation, after all – our teams are busy and we're fresh chunin with no duties for a few weeks."

Lee might be excitable but he was a surprisingly lucid conversationalist. Naruto managed to wrangle him into a cafe, where they drank tea and compared their experiences in the Chunin Exams.

"...so they used an earth technique that worked like an ant-lion trap, sucking us in. I had to carry my team out on my back!"

"That's an interesting technique. I'm sorry I missed your fight with Sasuke, it sounded really exciting," Naruto said. He was surprised to find he was having a great time. "I was really hoping to go through, but Neji stomped all over those dreams. I guess you feel the same way about your own elimination match."

Lee shook his head. "I want to beat Neji, to prove that my philosophy is superior. Earning the respect of Sasuke Uchiha was a pleasant surprise, I enjoyed our fight, and I don't harbour a grudge against him. If I was not able to best him then I would have failed again when faced with Neji. And it is nice to have a month away from the rest of the team. Strange, but nice."

"You know, there's more than one way to best a ninja," Naruto said, the seeds of an idea taking root. "There must be some missions that two chunin can handle on their own, with no superiors."

"I do not think this is entirely wise," Lee warned. Naruto could see he was torn – there was a desperation to agree, to leap headfirst into adventure, but Lee felt he had to be the voice of reason.

There were ways around that, of course. "I can't wait to see how impressed Kakashi will be when I get back. I guess Guy will be impressed too, unless maybe Kakashi has more faith in me than Guy does in you? In that case we might be better off not going."

"We mustn't be too hasty in discarding a valid plan," Lee said, brows creased. "Let us at least ask what missions are available."

With their ninja identifications in hand, wearing their Leaf headbands and new Chunin vests, the pair had no problem getting into the Hokage Tower. The mission desk was on the second floor. Kakashi had always walked up to one of the men and women on desk duty and muttered a few words, and Guy collected his missions without his team in tow, so Naruto and Lee both had no idea how to request a mission.

That meant they had to get creative.

Naruto spotted a quieter desk in the corner and dragged Lee over. This would have to be handled very carefully. "We're both new chunin and we wanted to know whether we're cleared to pick up missions?" Naruto rubbed the back of his head, a little nervous. "And how the whole system works, I guess."

The man behind the desk sighed. "They should hand out info packs. It's not part of my job, and I really shouldn't be doing this." Naruto decided he was an unimportant desk jockey, and just needed his ego stroked.

"Yeah, I wish we had some notes or something. But I suppose it's not an easy task, making sure everyone gets the right missions, and I bet you'd do a better job explaining it than some crappy paperwork could." Naruto stretched his eyes a little wider, trying to play up the 'young and inexperienced' angle.

The clerk was torn for a moment, and then his chest puffed up with pride. "Alright, I guess I can give you the short version. Chunin are cleared to take missions in groups of two or more, but you can't take any genin with you unless you have a jounin along. If you submit a request in advance then we can hold a particular type of mission for you. Otherwise you'll get something off the priority list. If that list is empty, which it never is, you get free choice from the main list. The jounin system is different, so if you're working with a jounin you should send them to pick a mission instead. They get perks."

"Thank you!" Lee said, bowing at the waist. Naruto copied him a half-second later. "If we claim a mission now, how does it work?"

"Currently that means," the man rifled through an overflowing desk drawer and grabbed a scroll, "this two-man C-rank mission to retrieve a couple of dead drops in Rice Country. You'll need to liaise with our intelligence contact in the region. Sign here and here please, and fill your ID numbers here."

Naruto and Lee did so, then scooped up the scroll and left the tower. "This feels wrong, don't you think?" Naruto asked Lee once they were outside.

Lee considered it for a moment. "We are only being given as much trust as we have earned. But it is a strange feeling, because up until this point any trust in us has come from personal relationships, especially with our teachers. Now the village itself considers us strong, loyal ninja who do not need to be managed too closely. It is odd, but it is also freeing."

"If the village thinks we're ready, I suppose we must be ready," Naruto said. After a moment's pause, Lee nodded. Naruto's spur-of-the-moment plan had worked; he had a mission and a team. "Let's get our gear, and meet back here in an hour. It's three days' fast travel there and the same to get back, so plan for at least a week's worth of kit."

It was only once they were out of the village that Naruto wondered if he'd made a mistake. They were past the safety railing now; if anything went wrong, he and Lee might be the only Leaf ninja for fifty miles around. And going by the preliminaries, the two of them were either the weakest or the unluckiest chunin in the whole of Konohagakure.

On the other hand, Naruto had passed the point where he could turn back. It was too late to stress or worry, so he intended to enjoy himself. The facts were simple: Naruto was out having an unsupervised adventure with a new friend. Their mission would help Konoha gather information on potential threats, and he was getting paid at the end of it.

Life was sweet.

-O-

Life was pain.

Sakura tumbled to the ground again, landing on her hands and knees. She'd tied her hair back but strands kept escaping and sticking to her face. "Do we have to keep doing this?" she asked.

Kakashi smiled that bastard smile of his. "Temari is carrying a fan; she's presumably a wind user. So let's keep practicing against wind techniques." He brought his hands together and Sakura sprang to her feet, desperate to dodge. "See, that's the speed we want to be getting out of you."

She bit back some angry words and rolled her neck, feeling the joints pop. "Let's just get this over with."

With another grin, Kakashi sent a gust of wind hurtling for her again. Sakura rolled to the side to dodge the worst of it, then sprinted out of the edge of the wind current before Kakashi shifted his technique and blasted her into another tree. Sakura scowled. He was having much too much fun with this.

"Better," he called once she'd reached the cover of a nest of boulders. "Take two minutes to catch your breath. Then we'll go again, and this time I won't stop until after Temari would run out of chakra."

And no matter how long they went, Sakura knew, Kakashi would never get tired. The man was inhuman. Given what he'd told her about where chakra capacity came from, she wondered what kinds of experiences lay in his past to fuel his spiritual energy. He sure as hell didn't look like all that power was coming from his body.

"Two minutes are up!" Kakashi sang, despite it being thirty seconds at most, and then Sakura didn't have any time to wonder anymore, or even to curse out her bastard of a teacher.

By the time Kakashi was satisfied, Sakura had turned into a puddle of sweat and soreness, slumping down on the dusty ground of the training field. Great swathes of grass were torn up from Kakashi's exertions. It was a familiar position for her – every day for the last week had ended that way. She made her own way home, muscles protesting with every step while her mind was alive with plans and strategies. Not for her fight against Temari, but for getting Kakashi off her back.

Sasuke had left two hours early to do 'private training'. Sakura didn't know where he was heading off to, but she had her suspicions. If she weren't so tired she might even have tracked him down and called him out on it. 'Training' was the wrong word for what he and Ino were getting up to, she was sure. It was very odd that Kakashi had let it slide, though. He'd never let her slack off like that.

She set the miserable failure that was her love life aside for the moment and went straight to her bedroom. She needed a shower and a meal, perhaps two, and then twelve hours of sleep, but that could wait. More than rest, more than food and a chance to unwind, Sakura needed to get even.

Bent over her meager collection of genjutsu scrolls, she barely noticed as her parents brought up a plate. Sakura had finished mechanically shovelling it into her mouth before she thought to check what it was. After a shower she visited the kitchen for seconds; rather than plate up the rest of the food, she carried the pot upstairs.

It was late when she found something she could use. She practiced long into the night. Her technique needed to be flawless by the morning. Pulling out a half-remembered move would get her not just a raised eyebrow, but also a snide comment. She shuddered at the thought.

At last it was done, and Sakura slept. She had a smile on her face and violence on her mind.

"Sakura, your mother and I wanted to speak with you," her father told her over breakfast the next morning. Sakura grunted acknowledgement around a mouthful of apple. "We were thinking that perhaps you're pushing yourself too hard. I know you're really excited about this tournament, but you're not sleeping enough and you haven't spoken more than two words with us since before your last mission. When's the last time you met your friends?"

Sakura poured herself cereal and milk as she answered, not wanting to waste valuable time on calming her parents. "Do you know how many people made it through to the tournament?" She left them no opening to answer the question. "It's eight."

"Sweetie–" her mother began, but Sakura rolled right on over her.

"Five of those eight are from Konohagakure. One of those five is me. I'm not just your daughter now, I'm a ninja – a soldier. People expect things from me, and I have no plans to disappoint." She started shovelling the cereal into her mouth.

Her father sighed. "We know that. We're just worried that you're growing up too fast; you barely noticed your fifteenth birthday, for god's sake. We don't want you to miss out on the last few years of your childhood."

"If I'm not complaining, how bad can it be?"

Her parents shared a look and Sakura knew they were thinking about her scar, about late nights where she stumbled home black and blue, about the time she'd messed up a block during a spar and pissed red that night.

"Can we have this talk some other time?" she asked, sick of it all. "Only I'll be late for training."

Sakura had finished her cereal and downed her morning tea in a single draught. She smeared butter on a pair of bread rolls, then stuffed them into her lunch bag with a fistful of cereal bars and two pears. She twitched the slightest bit as her mother hugged her from behind. "I'm just worried about you," she said. "My little petal."

Sakura smiled at the pet name. "Don't worry about me. I'm doing everything I can to get stronger."

"That's what worries us," her father said, planting a kiss on her forehead. "But if we keep you any longer you really will be late."

As Sakura put her shoes on, she caught a brief snatch of conversation between her parents. Her mother was complaining again in that nasal voice that Sakura couldn't stand. "I don't like this at all – it's like she's not even a person when she's not a ninja."

"She's a soldier, darling. When she went to the Academy we knew–"

The door swung shut behind her and Sakura put the morning's events out of her mind as she set out. She was ready to spend the day learning to kill and not be killed.