Akiime was born to be a failure. She didn't realize it until much later in life but watching her daughter's progress had confirmed what she suspected for years.

The doctors had pronounced her stunted at birth. Her chakra coils had never properly developed in the womb. It left her control shot along with smaller reserves than any ninja she had run across. Not that it mattered much in the academy. She grew up with a family engulfed in the will of fire. You weren't born a shinobi, you were molded into one by determination and hard work. And work hard she did.

Her parents had supported her the entire way. They ran her into the dirt to make sure she could keep up with her classmates. Every day she would work herself to the bone physically and mentally. She worked on developing a semblance of chakra control constantly. In class, during training, after school runs, and towards the end of the academy she would keep a leaf attached to her while sparring. It wasn't enough to make her a force to reckoned with. All of the technique in the world didn't matter if there was no substance behind them. She graduated a stone's throw away from dead last in the year.

She hated it. The failure, the sweat, the blood, and the tears. Barriers that took months to clear would only trouble her classmates for an afternoon. It was all she could to keep from being drowned in the shame of being left behind. Akiime would gladly give her life for Konoha. But she wasn't even good enough for cannon fodder on the front lines.

Ironically it was Akiime failures that kept her alive. The Ikeda family had never produced an exceptional shinobi. The closest it came was a cousin of hers who had made it to Tokubetsu Jonin a week before the first shinobi war. They had all celebrated like he had been elected as the future Hokage. The joy of it all had infected her. She wanted to be the one being celebrated more than she needed to eat or sleep. That night had left her with a dream. Not that it mattered, in a few short years everyone who celebrated that night would be dead, and she'd be left behind to try and salvage something out of her ninja career.

"What's next mother?" Rinko interrupted her thoughts with a cheery smile. She was sweaty and tired, covered in dirt from practicing in the yard. Akiime couldn't imagine a more perfect child. Rinko thrived everywhere that Akiime had fallen. Hard work had kept her afloat until the waves finally took her under. But hard work had made her daughter thrive.

Akiime knew Rinko could do much more, would do much more than simply excel. Her daughter was going to soar higher than any of their family could have dreamed. Akiime would make sure of it.

The hospital had seen better days. At the very least, it had smelled better days. The antiseptic was heavy in the air and death lingered right behind it. Before the destruction of Uzushiogakure, seals placed throughout the hospital would have stopped the smell if it even dreamed of spreading. Fuinjutsu masters had placed them at the hospital's founding, and their disciples had made a pilgrimage every few years to upgrade and repair the seals.

They had already been behind by the time Uzu crumbled into the water. None of the disciples had survived and the few fuinjutsu users left in Konoha had been sent to the front at the start of the war. Years of disrepair had taken their toll even before the war started. The fact that they had lasted as long as they did was a credit to the dead.

The hospital itself was fine. Well cleaned and well maintained, but it had lost an edge that separated Konoha from the other major villages. The seals had been the oil keeping a massively complex machine running smoothly. There wasn't another village that could keep their shinobi alive and keep putting them back together again like Konoha. Even without the seals, they were still better than the other nations. But they weren't beyond reach anymore.

It irked Arako beyond words to be a part of the slow decline. Then again, it also irked him to see a cluttered office or poor bedside manner. Arako had learned to live with the things he couldn't control long ago. So he kept his complaints to himself like he kept most everything else. However, the recent casualty reports were pushing his patience far past its limits.

The first year of the war was a stream of injured occasionally marked by floods. The second had been looked to be the same but when Sunagakure pushed harder, so too did the deaths. Men and women would return from the front feverish the first day only to die horrifically the next. Lesions, boils, and the color of their skin would dance around the hospital as part of an unholy act. It seemed each day a new poison crawled out of the desert and into the forest. They couldn't even treat patients the same way day-to-day. He had seen a wave of poisons kill everyone over the age of 24 in a ward, all the same symptoms, and all the same traces. Then a month after that same poison ran through and only killed those under 25.

He didn't realize how good they had it then. At least poison was an enemy the med-nin could fight. Now the hospital staff rarely got a chance to try. The wounded stopped making it back home to Konoha once the main front had settled in Amegakure. Arako talked more than he had in years to try and find out why. He asked doctors, nurses, the wounded, and even any ANBU he could find. None of them gave a satisfactory answer. Arako heard plenty of theories. He heard that the war had gone on long enough to sharpen each nation's kunai to a deadlier sheen, or the constant rain had led to a general weakness in those fighting. Once, a kunoichi younger than most academy students had told him it was the pressure of the front. The threat of death had grown so large and constant that you could see it clinging to the wounded through the rain. She told him that men and women on both sides had just collapsed from what others had shrugged off months ago.

He had ignored her words at first. Compartmentalized it in the dark part of his mind that seemed to grow each day. Arako would have broken down years before the war even started if he allowed the realities of shinobi life to cripple him, much less the superstition fools used to deal with it. Though he did have to admit, death's grip had reached home in ways he never expected. At first, the village would gather once a month to bury and honor the dead. Somber affairs, but ones that reminded him of how vital his duty was. They were burying heroes of the leaf. Shinobi who truly embodied the will of fire. That was before it turned into a weekly affair. Then the grief of it all started filling him until numbness took its place.

Arako found his solace in the routine. He would never be a frontline medic. Not with a leg that never quite healed correctly. But he could still make a difference in Konoha. Each life he saved was a name left off the stone and a family free of grief. Though more than that, it was the children that had kept his spirits up now. Even during war, kids needed checkups. He had started working with them to help pick up on work his younger colleagues had slackened on. But before long, helping young parents and their children became the only time he could truly relax.

Although a sudden knock on the door reminded him that some patients were more relaxing than others. Before a word passed by his lips the doors swung open, revealing a frazzled mother carrying an unrepentant child. "Helllllooooo again doctor-saaaaan," chirped the tiny girl, grin evident regardless of her mother's worry. Arako could only let out a soft sigh as Akiime bowed perfectly, just as she had done so every time before. "We suffered another accident while playing today Arako-san," if it had been his first time hearing the slow soft-spoken voice Arako might have believed her. It had taken him months to recognize the little lies and hard steel underneath the soft exterior Akiime showed the world.

He had seen the pair weekly since Rinko-chan had been born. The nurses believed the girl suffered an affliction similar to her mother. The imbalance between her yin and yang chakra had strained her coils to the breaking point. Arako had seen it before with incredibly gifted ninja children that were incapable of exercise. Aside from the previous youngest, the then eight year old Nara heir who suffered from a particularly acute level of laziness.

They were wrong. Her chakra had stabilized even if the imbalance remained. But each checkup, including today's, had shown a narrowing in the gap. If that had been all he would be happy to keep it quiet as Akiime requested. But shortly after she turned six months old, Rinko had started showcasing a pattern that made his stomach churn. Almost weekly, she would come in with a minor injury. A nick on the arm a touch too deep, a muscle strained or sore that should've caused tears instead of grins. And sometimes it was like today. A sprained ankle that had happened that morning but had continued to be used until the sun started to set.

Arako wasn't a genin lacking everything but water behind his ears. He was an old man in a young man's profession. He knew the toddler was being trained, and by all indications she was being trained hard. Rinko's chakra growth made it obvious before he even factored in the injuries. He often treated overstressed clan children with the same injuries. But they were at least academy age. Rinko was too young to even be called a child. He didn't deserve to pretend that the cruelty of it mattered. Arako's silence made him as guilty as the mother. It is his greatest shame that it was the toddler in question who kept him from reporting Akiime to the Hokage.

He had finally decided to put an end to it after the first time Rinko was brought in with a sprain. It was early in the day, almost first thing in the morning when she'd been brought in. Akiime had been anxious in a way he'd never seen from the dark-haired woman. She was worried, but there was an undercurrent of annoyance. As if the time they lost from training was ticking away in the back of her mind. Rinko had barely been a year old, yet her mother wanted her out of the hospital and back to the grindstone. Arako couldn't keep his hands from shaking out of anger. Then fingers that could scarcely reach all-around one of his own reached out and grabbed him. Rinko just looked at him and smiled before she lifted a finger to her lips and winked.

The fight had dropped out of him then along with any resistance. He just reasoned the guilt away as best he could. The pair clearly loved each other. And Rinko had been the happiest child he had ever dealt with. She always wore a lazy grin that grew wider each time he announced her chakra growth.

Today was no different. She sat in her chair humming along, swinging both legs the moment he had finished healing the sprain. "I'm sorry," Arako had said the words before he was conscious of his lips moving. Rinko merely cocked her head at him and said, "What's wrong doctor-san? I feel great!" with a swing she hopped down and grinned at him, "I bet I feel better than an old man like you anyways. Are you sorry for not being able to keep up with me anymore?" His response was to gently smack at her with his clipboard, only for her to dance out of reach with a laugh. Her evident cheer only darkened his mood.

How could you protect someone who found joy in their own abuse? He didn't even know if it could be called such. Rinko was more intelligent than most of the genin he dealt with daily. She had made it clear to him multiple times that she was a willing participant in the training.

Rather than let it trouble him more, Arako pronounced a clean bill of health along with instructions to rest the ankle for the next few days. The only concession to his conscience was a call on their way out the door, "Be careful and remember you can always find me if you need me." A stubby thumbs up was the only answer before they turned the corner.

Hin was worried. No worried was too calm of a word. Hin was scared shitless that she was about to commit treason and become a missing-nin at the ripe old age of 27. The traitor to be was parked in front of Ikeda Akiime's home. She couldn't remember the last time she was this nervous to open a door.

It was unfair how well her day had started. If she'd woken up to a stab wound or sour milk at least things would have been consistent. Instead, she'd been granted a short reprieve from work along with a bonus for all her timely deliveries. The best bakery in Konoha had given her a discount on her celebratory sweets. Her senbon order had been completed early, and she managed to flirt with the cashier without sounding like an old woman.

Then Akiime ruined things with her bullshit ghost trick. Appearing without warning in the street, telling Hin to meet her at dusk and bring her poison. Hin hadn't seen Akiime look so pale and panicked since their first Chunin exam.

She had been stewing on the image of her for five hours now, begging the time to pass faster. Hin had just assumed that Rinko had managed to start a body count at three years old. Probably a high-ranking shinobi's son, maybe even two. By Kami, the child might have destroyed an entire family. Spiraling thoughts and hurried pacing managed to whittle the daylight away. Though now that she was in the front of Akiime's door, she was starting to reconsider. Maybe if she just turned around… " Hey old lady, get in here!" The murderer herself had caught the brave hero attempting to make a brisk retreat. With an internal mantra of you can't hurt children, Hin forced on a brave smile, turned around, and walked to the gallows. "What's with that face. are you constipated?" Her mantra was strained but unbroken.

After squeezing past the unruly kid, Hin was greeted with a disturbingly calm Akiime. "Good. Did you bring everything you needed." " I brought everything I had, but don't you think there are better ways to protect Rinko's future?" " She needs this. You're the only one I trust to do this and be discreet about it." Oh no… Oh no no no. Hin had been mostly joking to herself, but Rinko had actually murdered someone. She wasn't ready to be a missing-nin. She couldn't handle life on the road. She had failed all the survival lessons in the academy. Hin was more likely to find a disease than food out in the wild.

"Kaa-san I think the old lady finally broke down." " Rinko stop poking her. Hin snap out of it. I need you to write down everything Rinko will need for her lesson plan."

The Ikeda family home was a decent size. Once upon a time, it was small for a rather large ninja family. Today though, it was uncomfortably large for its two occupants. Akiime had an unreasonable fear that she wouldn't be able to hear Rinko yell if she was on the opposite end. Hin's screaming was quickly disabusing her of that notion. "What the fuck is wrong with you. She's three years old! She should be playing and skipping and whatever else toddlers do. I wouldn't train an academy student, shit I wouldn't train a genin." "She needs this Hin. I don't have the ability or the knowledge to teach her. It has to be you."

Hin felt breathless. The argument had been building since Akiime had opened her mouth. It had filled the air in the room with noise and slowly choked away the love she felt for her genin teammate. At this point, Hin couldn't even recognize her anymore. The world had shifted sharply for the worse. Moments ago she was prepared to kill for the woman in front of her. Now there was a monster in front of her masquerading as a friend. " No. I should have put a stop to this years ago. Now I don't care what you have to say." Hin spoke softly, the anger turning to ice in her gut, "No more. You can ruin that girl on your own. I won't be part of it anymore." Akiime looked as if she'd been slapped. The look of betrayal on her face was almost enough to stop Hin from walking out of the home. The pause it gave her was enough to ruin their friendship for good.

The panic was pushed down, but the adrenaline remained for Akiime. It forced her to fall back on training she'd been conditioned never to use a fellow leaf ninja. Use every advantage you have. A facial expression, the tone of your voice, and above all, the knowledge you have. "You owe me." Hin's face seemed to freeze along with the temperature in the room. Akiime didn't waste a moment using the chance she'd created, "Yamanaka Yunobu." For a moment, Akiime thought she had gone too far. For a moment, Hin thought that she would have to betray the leaf after all.

The silence in the room was broken only by a tiny buzzing from the light. Hin couldn't stop the clenching of her hands or the glare she wore. The anger had shot out of her once Akiime had spoken. It was replaced with a weariness that seemed to sink into her bones. Hin clicked her tongue and jerked her head in a caricature of a nod.

"You won't speak to me now or ever again. I'll teach her. I'll teach her everything I know. But when this is over consider me dead like him." Akiime could only respond with a shaky nod of her own. Hin pushed past her towards Rinko's room without a word.

The wall felt cold against Akiime's back. The slide downward did nothing to make it more comfortable. She wondered what it said about her that ruining the last friendship she had filled her with nothing but relief. Rinko would be taught. Nothing else mattered. She would have brought back everyone she had ever loved and killed them again if it meant her daughter was given a leg up.

If Akiime had lived long enough she might have grown to regret this day. If Akiime had lived long enough she might have regretted every action she took after her daughter was born. As it was, Akiime died long before she had to live with her actions.

AN:

A bit longer this time. The next chapter will be a first-person perspective from Rinko and the academy. I only plan on spending one or two chapters there before moving forward.

I hope things aren't being too light or too dark. I want to keep a nice balance of tone. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.

Update: Fixed some wording