Naruto tugged off his sweat drenched shirt and looked at it glumly. His last clean shirt was torn up and reduced to little more than rags at this point. His buckled sandals weren't faring much better.

He thrust his hands into the stream and splashed water onto his face, rubbing his hands over his cheeks and forehead. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling the water rinse away the sweat and grime.

More water splashed over him when someone suddenly and brashly shoved her legs into the stream and sat herself down. Natsumi continued to kick her legs and set the waters into turbulence.

Even under a blazing sun, she didn't sweat a single drop. If anything, her skin was still too cold.

"How... much more?" Naruto could barely get a word out from his dry and crumpled lungs.

There wasn't a part of his body that wasn't aching and sore. It was a training that could make a person delirious. He had been running through the village, the buildings, and the woods the entire day from morning to afternoon.

All he wanted was a sip of water and a bite to eat.

Every time he had tried, he had found himself flipped upside down and thrown somewhere else. Whenever he stopped to catch his breath, a foot came from nothing and left craters where he had barely jumped and stumbled out of the way.

And all the while she was smiling and laughing.

Fighting her, running from her, hiding from her... none of it worked.

There was no way he could overpower her with brute force and she treated his attacks as if they existed in frozen time. She hounded him like a tiger when he fled, appearing the instant he thought he was going to lose her. Hiding was about as helpful as the fighting.

She bit her thumb and thought to herself. "I forgot? If you're hungry you can go eat."

At this point, he was too tired to get angry.

Natsumi held up three fingers, "Now that we're done playing around, here's a surprise test. Why do you keep getting beat up in fights? Is it cause you're little or cause you're slow?"

"Cause you're being a big jerk," Naruto sassed.

She flicked his temple, "It's cause you got nothing that can be called a fang. Whenever you get in a fight, you just rely on the little things you picked up with no sure way to end it. A good fighter needs their ace in the hole to have any edge in a fight."

This finally caught his attention.

Without meaning to, Naruto scooted closer to Natsumi without any of the usual grumbling.

"So because I'm modest and giving, I'll hand this breathtaking edge over to you." Natsumi cupped her hands in front of her and breathed out softly.

Beautiful flames that could have been born in heaven or hell gathered in her hands. Blue wisps of fire swirled around a white hot core. Red, orange, and yellow flickered and crackled like a raging tempest. It was a creation destined for destruction. The fire was being held by her palms as if it were something harmless.

The raw power before him was sending the wind itself blowing past.

All this light was reflected in his eyes. He wanted to hold it.

Natsumi pressed her hands together and made the flames vanish. Her smile was fierce and prideful. "If you can master it, you'll be able to destroy anything in this world. That's my promise."

He felt a tingle rush down his spine. 'She did all that without hand seals? I can do it too?'

"Let's start the training!"

After giving him a wool shirt, water, and some jerky, she sat Naruto down beneath the shade.

"Here." Natsumi passed him a small candle red in color. "Light this on fire. You can use your breathe, but it's probably better to start with your dominant hand if it's like this. The reason I made sure you would be exhausted was so that you'd be able to focus a little more on your inner energy. Don't just focus on your body. This isn't a muscle. It's more like blood."

Naruto pinched the wick between his fingers and concentrated. He gathered his chakra as best he could and directed it towards his fingers. His arm stiffened. His breathing became erratic. He had never been taught a jutsu that could be used as an attack. Only the students with shinobi parents would've learned somethin like that. Naruto wanted to surpass them with this. He was being given a chance.

Sitting across from him, Natsumi rested her head on her hand. She watched him struggle with the task.

An hour passed, and all he had managed to do was smush up the soft wick.

'Not even a puff of smoke, huh?'

With a little huff, she got up and walked over to him, rubbing his hair carelessly, "That's all for today. It's getting late. Go home. I have my own things to take care of."

Her easy going smile was filled with sharp teeth like a demon.

Naruto shook his head, "Not until I figure this out!"

Natsumi's mouth twisted into a scowl as she flicked a stream of flames towards him. It barely missed his head before it continued forth to burn through the trees like a sword through water. "If it was something so easy, I wouldn't bother helping you. Go home."

He looked behind him and found that he couldn't see where the flames ended.

Looking back at her eyes, Naruto could tell she wouldn't change her mind.

"I'll be gone for a month or so. You'll have until then to figure it out." She wasn't from this village. Just a traveler if anything. It made sense that she would continue to wander from time to time.

"You'll be back, right?"

She touched her lip and hummed, "Mmmmaybe..."

Naruto skipped school the next day. All they had were mostly history lessons and book stuff that day anyways.

'Come on!'

He focused on the thought of fire. He thought of what heat felt like. He remembered the flames Natsumi created. He tried using his breath, his dominant hand, both hands, but nothing seemed to work. In the first place, he'd never heard of a jutsu that didn't use hand seals. There were times when he thought he could feel the chakra gathering, but it never ignited.

The apartment was silent, save for his erratic breathing.

This was the first jutsu that was given to him, him personally, not like the jutsu every training shinobi in the village was taught. Only the kids with shinobi parents or the kids born into clans were taught any special jutsu.

Maybe Natsumi was doing this because she was bored.

Maybe it didn't mean anything to her.

Maybe she didn't really care.

But even if any of that was true, he didn't want to fail even a possible expectation.

What did she describe it as?... Blood?

What did she mean by that?

Naruto slumped against his bed and let out an exhausted gasp of air. His stomach growled and churned. There was still some food in the cupboard, but he felt too tired to go and get it.

'Thinking of it now, times like these were when she'd sneak up on me and force me to eat something. How did she even find out where I live in the first place?...'

It's been several seasons since he first met the girl. The sound of her voice, the color of her hair, the shape of face, he could remember these. But there was something else. There was an empty space.

'What else do I really know about her?'

"Whatever!" Naruto sprung off the bed and grabbed the candle. "I'll ask when she comes back."

"The horrors of war, one finds out quickly, extend far beyond the battle lines. Disease, starvation, crime, and madness prevail among the human wreckage of the war machine, as they did in the desolate world on which they had disembarked. As they venture farther into the rocky wilderness, people's knowledge of the war and of the outside world become vague, and they seemed not to know or even care what the reason may have been for the disappearance of order, authority, and regularity—their lives had become simply a struggle for the resources to survive."

Natsumi wound her scarf tighter around her neck as freezing winds cut past her, rebellious hair the color of cherry blossoms swayed in the dim world of snow. The visible mist of her breath blended in obscurely with the unending white around her.

She had heard before that black was the color of death, but then what is white other than the color of barren soil and hollow bones.

It was gone here, the sound of the heartbeats.

Armed men had passed by here not so long ago. Their scent had left faint trails. The bark of trees had been left with scars and marks where they had carelessly brushed past. Bushes and withered flowers had been trampled over.

Pulling her coat closer to her body, the girl continued through the thick snow. The cotton wrappings on her hands were breaking down and coming apart.

She was searching for these Daimyo-sent soldiers that had gone missing.

A cold glint of steel caught her eye. Plunging her hand into the snow, Natsumi pulled out a naginata, surprisingly intact. The handle was stained with blood.

Natsumi leaned the weapon against her neck and continued through the mountains.

Little more than a week later, she came across a small village. It all laid silently, having reached near the height of degradation. It comprised a scattering of wooden houses, the paper windows half-torn and flapping vaguely like warning hands, dominated by a hulking, half-collapsed watermill at the center athwart a filthy runnel, the corpse of a river. The fields all around were barren, and clearly had been so for a long time.

It smelled of famine to her.

Her own stomach growled.

An old woman a basket of herbs approached her. Her face was of sunken flesh and withered skin, yet she smiled. "What a surprise... Such a pretty girl coming here alone."

She smiled behind her scarf and set the naginata against the village gate. Bowing her head as her bangs fell against her eyes, Natsumi greeted her, "Hi, grandma. Didn't mean to bother you. I'm just passing through."

"How sad... this place recieves so few visitors these days. It's all so cold and empty." The old woman shuffled forward and took her hand. "Please, would you keep me company for a moment while everyone is asleep? You can leave right after."

Her grip was frail. Natsumi could feel her bones through the skin.

Natsumi rubbed her cold cheek, "Sure, I don't mind."

In her quiet cottage, the old woman poured the girl a warm cup of tea. Fumes rose up from the steaming liquid. She picked it up delicately with both hands and drank. For the past days, she had eaten nothing in these lifeless mountains.

The old woman looked content to just hold the warm clay in her hands.

"This used to be a prosperous village."

"Hm?" Natsumi looked up at her.

"Oh, yes," the woman continued. "Lush harvests every season, fragrant wood and carpentry desired by the Daimyo himself, and such beautiful and young children running around with their pure smiles as their parents watched over them."

"Sounds nice."

"It was..." she sighed. "But I suppose misfortune loves happiness too much for it to last as it did. Men from another land arrived and sought to make our village their own, killing anyone who spoke against them. They took my oldest daughter an- and..." Her voice croaked. Shaking, she reached forward and poured Natsumi another cup.

"Shinobi came and fought with each other, burning and poisoning our fields. And when the fighting was over... they left. They didn't come back." The cup in her hand slipped from her fingers and clattered against the wood table. spilling lukewarm tea over the edges.

Natsumi felt a cold breeze against her back. A door across from her rattled.

"Nothing survived through the winter. The men that still remained couldn't hunt. We were left cold and empty. Our peace was trampled over. Hunger carved its knife across all of our intestines.

My remaining daughter walked into the lake so that she wouldn't suffer any longer... And now I am alone."

The door rattled again. The candle blew out.

There was silence.

"...Sorry," she mumbled, her scarf slowly beginning to slip away from her neck.

"No, I'm sorry for ruining your mood. You have nothing to do with what happened," the woman smiled. "This old grandmother simply wanted you to understand why this is happening."

Natsumi's head slumped forward.

In the dim light, it was burdensome to see that the wood was stained purple where the tea spilled. A sickeningly sweet smell lifted in the cold air.

The old lady reached towards the girl and stroked her cheek, scraping long yellow nails across the soft skin. Her toothless mouth widened into a grin. "You who grew up so healthy, could you possibly understand what true starvation is like?"

Bones snapped and stretched. Flesh twisted and grew. Skin ripped and coarsened.

A ghastly spine rubbed against the withered ceiling. Rotting eyes fell into their sockets. Hair like dead grass writhed like a living thing. Horns protruded through the skull. An empty ribcage split open to reveal rows of jagged teeth cutting through steaming intestines.

There was nothing alive in these mountains.

Decreprit, rotting, and skeletal, the crone's grisly hand wrapped around the young girl's mouth and pulled her closer.

Slipping out from the entrails, a long and black tongue creeped towards her face.

Devouring black eyes that swallowed even the sun itself peeked through a veil of flowery hair.

Natsumi lifted her hand and tore a gash through the cold.

Unyielding flames cut through monstrous flesh and bone, turning blood and acid alike into blackened ashes.

It fell to the floor in two halves.

Natsumi walked over to the stomach and raised her foot. She crushed it unreservedly as the cottage rattled.

She walked to the creaking door and opened the backroom. A roevolting smell curled itself into the air. She lit her hand ablaze, though it wasn't truly necessary. It was filled with half-eaten corpses. Their bellies were all ripped out. Man, woman, child, animal, soldier, traveler, there was no descrimination.

A moaning could be heard. Did it come from the walls? Or the ground? Did it come from the unmoving bodies? Or something else?

Natsumi stepped out into the snow and placed her hand on the door. Scorching fire flooded from her skin and engulfed it all, burning until there was nothing left. The snow hissed and steamed as it fell against it.

She drank what remained in the tea kettle before letting it shatter against the uncaring rocks. A puff of smoke blew away from her lips.

When she left through the decaying village gates, the place was left silent once more. She didn't look back.

It was raining in Konoha. Dreary clouds blanketed the sky.

Naruto ran through the wet puddles and pouring rain, stumbling as he went along.

He heard that a strange looking girl had passed through the entrance gates. Forty-seven days had passed. His training hadn't stopped. Not the training at the academy, nor the training on his own. Things continued as they did before.

The other villagers looked away from him when he approached, or they looked upon him with faces of scorn.

For today, he didn't pay attention to them.

He ran past the stalls and stores, past the houses and buildings, past the training fields and streets. He didn't stop running until he was in the woods.

In such a rush, Naruto couldn't help but slip on a patch of mud and fall face first.

It hardly slowed him down.

As Naruto made his way to Natsumi's cabin, he felt a feeling of anticipation grow in his chest.

'Ha ha, she'll probably be tired now.'

The little house was exactly the way it was left, only wet from the rain now. He banged on the door and waited for a response. His hair and jacket were soaked now, but his grin was insufferably wide.

'She's inside, right?'

After a few moments, the door creaked open, and Natsumi stood before him, rubbing her hair with a towel. Her pants and boots had been stripped off, but her scarf still remained. "Hn? What are you doing in the rain?"

She grabbed his collar and pulled him inside before muffling his head with the towel, drying and rubbing it down to clean up the dirt and rain. He was dripping over her floor. She ignored his protests and struggle to break free.

Naruto managed to pull himself away before gasping, "You're back!"

"Yeah? Did you think I'd be eaten?"

Naruto's face lit up with excitement. "No, no, I mean, I heard you were back in Konoha, but I didn't know when. I've been waiting for you to come back so we can continue our training!"

Natsumi raised an eyebrow. "Our training? I don't remember agreeing to that. All I did was show you how to make fire."

He froze.

'Ah...'

Naruto Uzumaki still could not create fire on his own. He couldn't say anything.

Natsumi kicked some wood into the fireplace and watched the flames rise up. This little cabin of hers smelled of spices and pine. Her toes curled against the floor as she rummaged through a basket. She didn't pay much heed to her surroundings. Looking around, one would see the pelts of many different creatures lining the walls. The quality of the craft was rather nice.

"So where did you go?" Naruto asked hesitantly.

She rubbed her neck, "I had to go take care of some personal issues."

She didn't say anything else. Instead, reaching under her bed, she pulled out a naginata. The polearm was intricately designed with carvings of tigers and dragons along a metal shaft. The forged steel blade measured nearly half a meter in length and possessed a curve and style not unlike that of a katana.

"Smash, stab, hook, throw, or cut, it's pretty much good for anything." She tossed it over to him. "Wanted you to have it. Better than it rusting away."

Naruto caught it and was surprised by its weight. It would smash his toes if he dropped it. But when presented with this thing that could be called a gift, he bit his lip. "I can't take it."

"Sure you can. It's just like those little knives you carry around, just bigger and stronger."

He hesitated, then swallowed. "I couldn't even light the candle on fire. I-I tried a lot, but I..."

"Haa? If you can't do it, figure out something you can. As long as you're alive, don't stop." Natsumi's sharp teeth peeked through her scowl. She opened her mouth and let out something between a growl and a yawn. "Anyways, if you're done, I'm going to sleep." She threw off her heavy jacket and slipped under a pile of blankets. Her breathing slowed down even more.

"Night."

His grasp on the naginata tightened. For some reason, as he looked down, his sight was getting blurry.