Just outside the Village Hidden in the Leaves, along an unused dirt road which lead to a dead end, through a pair of large beaten gates, in an overgrown courtyard stood a young girl with a determined look on her pretty face as her chest heaved in exhaustion. Her fists were clenched through her black Anbu gloves from whom noone really knew where she'd got, her eyes fixed on a point on the opposite wall as she screwed her face up again in pain, watching a huge pylon of fire lifting out of the ground in front of her, singing the front of her face as she closed here eyes tight against the heat.
Mika Tikaake let her arms swing back down at her sides in tiredness as the fire withered and disappeared leaving behind a small puff of smoke. She was shattered. She had been training hard ever since the day she had seen her old home for the first time since her clans death about four years previously, trying to uphold her family's honour and pride. She had found it surprisingly difficult since she had nearly killed Itachi, finding that what she couldn't repeat what she had done that day and finding that she had to start right from the beginning, the same way she had had to do with her own power which still came naturally to her.
She fell to her knees panting with the simple effort of staying upright. She looked up again at the opposite wall she had been staring at every time she came here to train, finding strength in what she could see. But this time it seemed to seep what strength was left in her, making her head flop and her chin press against her neck as her eyes screwed up against the emotion. She looked up again and took in the faded chalk outline of her beheaded brother who had been hanging on the wooden wall opposite her, his arms hanging beside him and the blood trailing from his neck down to the floor. She opened her deep hazel eyes again in time to see a transparent tear seeping down her flushed cheek and splattering lightly on the earthy ground below her.
She watched in silence as a thick root pushed itself slowly through the soil and lifted itself towards her before tenderly wiping away the dampness below the girls eye, trying to comfort her young grief. Mika knew her mother was still watching her, watching her toil with her new powers, trying to force the elements to do her bidding… and usually failing miserably. Every now and then some form of energy would do something of it's own accord, like the root wiping a tear away. It had been three weeks since she had recovered her memory, and in that time she had seen a bolt of lightening stab down from the heavens and leave a tiny heart shape on the ground in front of her, almost making her die of fright, but she understood what her brother was trying to get through to her; she had watched a sudden gust of wind blow a stray piece of newspaper towards her and after inspecting it noticing the words: "hang in there." singed onto the other side which made the tears leak from her already puffy eyes.
She looked over to the door of her old home which she knew led to the kitchen where she knew her mothers last breath had been released from her dieing body, the large saucepan still sitting on the stove as it boiled the supper which the family would never eat and which waited still for someone to eat it. Mika highly doubted anyone ever would and smiled at the thought of feeding it to Sakura who hadn't become any nicer after their ordeal.
She brushed her plum coloured hair out of her face and took a deep breath, noticing the root slowly receding back into the earth, and stood up again to face the wall with her beloved brothers last position before he was released and taken to be buried