Ami could see golden evening light filtering through her eyelids, and felt the fading heat of sunshine on her face. She was lying on something soft, and in the background the sound of low voices rumbled beneath the chorus of dusk birdsong. Her face felt hot, and her hands felt stiff and leaden, the skin of her palms tight and itchy. Her eyes flickered open weakly, and she looked around.

Ami was in an apartment, large and expensively furnished. One wall was given over to a large window which looked out over an attractive view of the Konoha skyline, behind which the sun was slowly setting, becoming a band of liquid fire as it passed beneath the dark tree line beyond.

"Hey, she's awake!" A woman's voice said. "He-ey, Ami-chan, how're you feeling?"

Ami looked over to see a brown haired woman in her early twenties approaching her from a doorway which looked like it led to a kitchen.

"Who- the hell are you?" Ami croaked weakly.

"I'm Inaho. I'm your sensei's special friend," the woman said, smiling and wiggling her pinky finger.

Ami sat up dizzily, looking around the room. "Where am I? Hey, is this sensei's place?"

Ami gave the room a cursory inspection before looking down at her hands, finding them tightly wrapped in bandages. Thin wooden splints had been worked into the bandages over the back of her hands, which stopped her from moving her fingers or bending her hands at all. On a low table behind her was her belt pouch, besides which was the 'victory' kunai from her test, still bearing its paper tag.

Tsuzumi arrived from the kitchen, smiling and drying his hands on a towel. He'd traded his blue jumpsuit and flak-jacket for a formal brown shirt and close-fitting pants, and his ordinarily spiky hair was hanging loosely across his forehead.

"Hey, Ami-chan, you're awake! Welcome to my home," Tsuzumi said, tossing the towel over the back of a wooden chair. "You were pretty out of it after your test, so I brought you here to rest - and make you dinner!"

"Uh, that's great, sensei," Ami said, rubbing the palms of her bandaged hands together to try and address the intense itching.

"Your hands were pretty messed up," Inaho said, catching Ami's hands and pulling them apart. "I gave you a painkiller and healed the cuts up, but I ran out of juice, and there's still some deep damage. You'll have to wear the splints for tonight, and I'll fix the rest up tomorrow, okay?" Inaho cocked her head and gave Ami a friendly smile.

"Uh, sure, but shouldn't I be... you know- in hospital!?" Ami said.

"Ah-ha, no, no," Tsuzumi said, scratching his head as he forced a smile. "It's really only a minor training injury, no need to make a fuss. You can sleep here tonight on the couch, and Iny-chan will fix you up in the morning. Tonight, just lay back, and enjoy the famous Sarugaku hospitality!"

"Stay here? I can't!" Ami said, sliding her feet off the couch. "My kaa-chan's expecting me home! I've got to go, it's late already!"

"No, no, I won't hear it," Tsuzumi said, wandering back into the kitchen and shouting through the open door. "Tell Iny-chan where you live, she'll go tell your mother that you're staying over with your sensei, to get a head start on training."

Inaho shot the empty kitchen doorway a severe glance. "Yeah, sure, where do you live Ami?"

Ami hesitated for a moment, but the smells drifting from the kitchen promised a meal more magnificent than anything she could expect at home, and it could be argued that it was already too late to go walking back alone through the poorer parts of Konoha. If anything, her mother would applaud her decision to avoid the risky journey. She'd probably call Ami a responsible young woman.

"Hmm-hm. Okay," Ami said, and began to give Inaho her address, and some directions on how to navigate the narrow streets of her home district.

Inaho pulled on a Konoha hitai-ate, adjusted it so that her bangs fell loosely over the metal plate, and nodded. "Back soon," she called, before stepping out of the apartment.

Tsuzumi could be heard humming idly for a minute in the kitchen, before he began speaking, wandering back into the room, idly stirring a metal pot. "Oh, and you know Ami-chan, you probably shouldn't tell anyone about what happened in your test today," he said with a smile. "You passed it in kind of a dumb way, you don't want anyone to think you're dumb, do you?"

Ami's eyes narrowed at the sensei. "You weren't there."

Tsuzumi looked up from the pot, his eyes wide. "Uh, what? Of course I was watching, Ami-chan."

"You went away somewhere," Ami said, trying to point accusingly, but instead just waving her mummified hand at him like a lumpy club. "Were you getting drunk!?"

"Ah-ha, what! No!" Tsuzumi said, wandering back into the kitchen, and continuing the conversation through the open door. "What a terrible thing to say to your sensei. You've hurt my feelings."

"I bet I wasn't supposed to get hurt in my test, and if I tell, you'd be in trouble," Ami guessed, the sweet scent of potential blackmail mingling with the hearty aromas of food.

"I swear, I was there in those woods all afternoon! I just thought you were doing okay!"

"Sure. I bet you were making out with your girlfriend," Ami said.

"Ah-ha. Say Ami-chan, do you like bonito?"

Ami sniffed. "I don't know."

"Okay, lets try it," he called, and the sounds of shifting pots and the use of mysterious implements continued.

"You can't buy my silence with food," Ami called.

"I can't?" Tsuzumi asked, his shocked face appearing at the door to the kitchen.

Ami closed her eyes and shook her head resolutely. "No, I want you to teach me a jutsu."

"Okay, okay," Tsuzumi said, disappearing back into the kitchen.

"A-and, how to walk up poles," Ami added.

"Sure, sure."

"And..." Ami paused, racking her mind for something else to add to the extortion. "And you'll get me a cool mission."

"Yeah, yeah."

"You better not just be saying 'yeah, yeah'!" Ami shouted.

"Huh?" Tsuzumi asked. Ami ground her teeth.

After several minutes of silence, during which Ami frantically rubbed her bandaged palms together to no effect, the door to the apartment opened, and Inaho walked back in, her face glistening with a thin sheen of sweat. She closed the door behind her, pulled off her headband, and collapsed onto the couch beside Ami.

"Mother notified," Inaho said, pushing the loose hair out of her eyes.

"You met kaa-chan?" Ami asked. "You were so fast!"

"Little house with a red door, woman with brown hair? Yeah I met her, she was nice," Inaho said. "She offered me tea, wrung her hands a little when I said you were staying over, made me promise to stay over with you."

"Yeah, that's kaa-chan. Huh, wait, you're staying over? Where will you-" Ami turned to look at the other door from the central room, leading to the apartment's only bedroom. "Uhhh!"

"That's right, Ami-chan," Inaho said, wriggling her little finger again.

Ami seemed to sulk for a moment, before pointing her club hand at the brown haired woman. "Okay. But no funny business!"

Inaho raised a hand solemnly. "I swear on my honour as a ninja."

Soon Tsuzumi had finished with the meal, and began carrying dish after dish from the kitchen and placing them on a low table in front of the couch. Ami had never seen such a rich and diverse spread before: almost a dozen bowls, with fish, meat, rice, vegetables, all mixed expertly into dishes she didn't even know the name of.

Inaho helped her overcome her awkward lack of functional hands by binding a spoon to Ami's fingers with medical tape, and it was enough to clumsily stuff the delicious food into her mouth - though she had to suffer through the gentle mocking of the sensei and Inaho to do it. She was soon full, and very soon after that, falling asleep in her corner of the couch.

Her last memories of the night were of Inaho pulling a blanket over her, turning out the light, and tip-toeing into the bedroom.

The following morning was overcast, and Ami woke to a cold living room, and the sound of clattering coming from the open bedroom door. Moments later, Inaho emerged from the bedroom, pulling on a long white coat over a blue undershirt, her forehead protector already in place.

"Hey Ami, rise and shine," Inaho said, sitting beside the girl on the couch, and taking Ami's hands in hers. The woman seemed a little less friendly in the early morning light, clearly in a rush, her tone all business as she began to unwind the bandages.

Ami yawned, exposing Inaho to her morning breath, feeling only momentarily guilty she had no free hands to cover her mouth.

Inaho leaned back, away from Ami's face. "Ehk, poison cloud no jutsu. Next time bring a toothbrush!"

Ami smiled drowsily. Looking down at her hands as they were unbound, she got her first look at the new scars that criss-crossed her palms.

"Cool!"

"Hmm, you're young, and you've got a lot of growing to do," Inaho said, moving her own hands to hold above the girl's right hand. "They'll probably fade as you grow older, but not for a few years. I hope you're not one of those preening pretty-type kunoichi."

Ami shook her head. "I beat people up."

"Uh-huh." Inaho's outstretched hand began to glow faintly with ghostlike green light, and Ami was suddenly staring intently.

"What's that technique?" she asked in awe.

"This is medical chakra, I'm using it to heal the deep damage to your hands," Inaho said, passing the green glow back and forth across her palms, accompanied by freshly intense itching. "You're very lucky you didn't damage your ulnar artery or median nerves, but you nicked some of your tendon sheaths, and I need to heal them up so you can bend your fingers properly. I think you should buy some gloves in future!"

Ami nodded sagely at the explanation, giving no indication to the fact that she understood very little of it.

"Where's the sensei?" Ami asked as Inaho moved onto her other palm. She flexed the freshly healed hand experimentally. Bending it hurt, but it was a dull, bearable pain. Not the fiery shooting pains of her bloody climb.

"Someone kicked him out of bed early, so he could prepare to atone for his crimes against students," Inaho said.

"Yes! I get a jutsu! High five!" Ami said, raising her hand.

Inaho looked up and raised an eyebrow.

"Ahh, maybe not," Ami said, lowering her hand back to her lap.

Inaho finished the rushed treatment and gave Ami's palms a final inspection, deeming them to be healed enough for day-to-day activities.

"That should be good enough for training," she said, standing and picking up a belt pouch to fasten around her waist. "Just don't let him get you punching trees or something stupid like that. Come on, let's go, I have to lock up."

As Inaho pulled on a pair of open-toed boots, Ami untied the 'Victory' tag from the kunai and used it to tie her unkempt hair back in a pony-tail. She dropped her sensei's kunai into her pouch, noting it was much higher quality than her own pair, and pulled on her sandals.

Inaho ushered Ami out of the apartment, handing her a pair of bento-boxes full of leftovers and turning to lock the apartment door. Ami was led down six flights of stairs to the ground, and then out into a familiar district of Konoha, close to the village's commercial centre.

Inaho began walking quickly towards the Konoha general hospital, and Ami followed, her two lunch-boxes swinging beside her in a string net. Catching sight of Ami from the corner of her eye, Inaho stopped and turned to the girl.

"Oh, right. Tsuzumi said you were to first go visit your mother, give her the spare bento," Inaho pointed at the net bag. "Then go to meet him at the sixth watchtower on the Western wall. Got it?"

"Kaa-chan, sixth tower, Western wall, got it," Ami repeated.

"That's right," Inaho said. She ruffled Ami's hair, drawing a scowl, before starting off back towards the hospital. "I've got work now, it was nice to meet you!"

"Bye!-" Ami called, as the brown haired woman rounded a corner and disappeared out of sight.

Ami wasted no time in heading first for home, where she caught her mother leaving for work. Ami handed over the bento of leftovers and walked with the woman for a while, giving a highly edited version of events of the previous day, omitting the injuries she'd inflicted on herself, and repeating Tsuzumi's excuse of early training as her reason for staying over. Her mother seemed pleased to see her daughter after their night apart, and when her path took her east towards the Konoha service district, Ami broke away to head to the wall.

The morning sun was just peeking over the far side of the Konoha wall when Ami made it to the foot of Watchtower Six. Ami craned her neck upwards at the watchtower, looking for any sign of the sensei.

"Hey! Sensei! Where are you?" Ami shouted. Her voice echoed around the wall and across the grass, carried by the cool morning air.

Only a moment passed before Tsuzumi appeared at the top of the wall, looking down. He hopped off the edge, slapping a hand and foot against the stone as he fell, and sliding the rest of the way down at a safe pace.

"Morning Ami-chan," he said brightly, clapping the stone dust from his hand as he landed gently on the grass.

"Sensei, why are we at the wall? Are you going to teach me a wall jutsu?" Ami asked.

Tsuzumi forced a stern expression onto his face, and began to shake his head. Then paused. "Actually, yes! Remember the post-climbing technique I told you?"

"'Use chakra'?" Ami asked, her heart sinking. "It didn't work!"

Tsuzumi ignored her. "Well, I was up early this morning getting you the best D-rank mission they had. We were the first rookie team to even request a mission, so I managed to get a good one."

"Sure. What is it?" Ami asked.

"I'll tell you," he began, swivelling to point upwards at the nest of the watchtower, "When you can walk up this tower and meet me at the top."

Ami followed the man's pointing finger, her mouth agape. "But I couldn't do it! It didn't stick at all!" she complained.

"Hmm, let me see you try," Tsuzumi said, taking a few steps back. "And tell me what you're doing."

Ami reluctantly walked up to the wall, lifted her leg, and placed the sole of her sandal onto the smooth stone.

"I gather chakra, and I send it to my feet," she said, concentrating, then pulling at her leg. Her foot came away from the wall without resistance.

"Okay, the secret is to keep a constant amount of chakra in your feet, and hold it there. Don't let it escape," Tsuzumi explained. "And you have to use the right amount! Too little, and you won't stick. Too much, and you fly off."

"Constant?" Ami asked. She placed her foot against the wall again and concentrated. This time when she tried to pull her foot away, it gave a moment's resistance.

"Heh heh heh," Ami chuckled dangerously, placing her foot back against the wall. She tried to lift herself off the ground by her adhered foot, but it just slid downwards along the wall.

"That's good, you've got the trick, you just need practice. The awesome mission I found you expires in three days, and it will probably take a day, so you better hurry up and meet me at the top. Your reputation as a ninja is at stake!"

"Yes, sensei!" Ami said seriously, as Tsuzumi leapt at the wall and sprinted back up to the nest of the watchtower. "Wait, why does the sensei have watch duty!" She called after him, but got no reply.

"Oh Wall-san, you have no chance against me," Ami muttered, taking a faltering step vertically up the wall, before coming unstuck and dropping back down to the ground. She took a deep breath, letting her anger drain away. "I defeated your brother Pole-san before I even learned this technique," she taunted.

The wall remained impassive, even as Ami began to make increasingly successful attempts against it.

Several hours later and Ami was exhausted, shaking, and halfway up Konoha's outer wall. She'd found that by using her hands as well as her feet, she was better able to maintain her balance as she climbed - crawling up the wall more than walking. It also felt safer to her, the chakra easier to focus in her hands than her feet, more sure and stable. She felt flush with success, having scaled half the distance to the top of the watchtower, but she was also beginning to succumb to fatigue, and with it fear. She could feel the first deep pangs of chakra depletion biting at her gut, as if she'd swallowed a ball of ice.

Ami looked downwards at the distance below her, more than thirty feet to the ground. "So dangerous," she muttered, and looked back upwards. She didn't trust her control enough to relax the hold and slide down the wall, not without losing her grip completely, and so she began painstakingly crawling backwards down the wall. She made it to the ground without injury this time, and collapsed onto the ground with her back to the wall.

The sun was almost directly overhead, so she pulled the bottle and box from her string bag and quickly devoured the leftovers. After draining the bottle dry, Ami treated herself to a brief nap, though regretted it an hour later when she woke up to the hot, prickling sensation of a sunburn. She stretched and began to tackle the wall again with renewed vigour.

Fortified by the rest, Ami made it halfway up the wall without even getting breathless, and though she was panting and sweating as she neared the top, her chakra had recovered enough to keep her out of danger.

"Seh-sensei!" Ami called when she was only a few feet short of the top of the tower. "Sensei-"

She continued to climb, and finally hooked one arm over the tower's wall, then a second, and hauled herself onto the floor of the nest. Now she'd finally reached it, Ami looked around the top of the watchtower with interest. She was in a square walled area, with four wooden posts holding up a tiled roof, which kept off the glare of the sun. The floor was made of the same stone as the wall, and in the centre of the space was an open-topped water barrel.

Ami lurched towards the barrel, picking up a ladle and pouring water into her mouth and over her face.

"What!? You made her climb the wall?"

Ami dropped the ladle and looked around again. She noticed she was sharing the space with her sensei Tsuzumi, and another man: dressed as a chunin, wearing glasses and a black undershirt with the word 'Endeavour' written in the centre. It was the unfamiliar chunin who'd spoken.

"Relax Okei, she made it fine," Tsuzumi said, turning his attention from the forests surrounding the village to look at Ami. "Congratulations, you mastered wall walking in less than a day! As expected of my student."

"Tsuzumi! You're crazy! What if she fell! You weren't even looking, she could have died!" Okei yelled.

Tsuzumi waved his hands dismissively. "Eh, it's fine, she's a genin. When we were that age we were going into war zones," he said, smiling brightly at the other chunin.

"Times have changed, you should be taking it easy on her!" Okei insisted.

"I did it sensei," Ami said, regaining her breath. "I beat Wall-san."

"Yeah! Well done, Ami-chan. Now- how would you like a mission?"

Ami nodded. "Yes sensei."

Tsuzumi pulled a scroll from one the pockets of his chunin vest, and held it up out of Ami's reach. "Now, this is a serious mission! Normally an entire genin team would take a mission like this, but you'll have to do it all on your own."

Ami frowned and nodded reluctantly.

"But, that also means you'll get to keep the reward yourself," Tsuzumi consoled her. "The reward for this mission is ten thousand Ryo."

Ami's mouth dropped open. She had little conception of money, but she knew her mother would consider that a fortune.

"Here you are, and off you go," he said, handing the scroll over.

"Y-you're not coming?" she asked as she took the scroll.

"I'm stuck here for the next couple of days, but since it's a D-rank, it won't be dangerous. It'll take you a couple of miles outside the village, but you'll be fine if you stick to the road. Don't forget to take some snacks and water. Since it's getting late, you might want to go home and set off tomorrow - unless you feel like camping, Ami-chan?"

"You're really sending her outside the village on her own?" Okei asked.

"Eh, it's just down the road," Tsuzumi said. "She's a big girl, what are you, thirteen?"

"Twelve!" Ami nodded, seriously.

"See?" Tsuzumi said, vindicated. "Anyway, stop undermining my authority with my student!"

The other chunin merely shrugged at Tsuzumi's grousing, and went back to scanning the tree line.

"Okay," Ami whispered to herself, sliding the scroll into her belt pouch and approaching the wall. Okei shook his head sadly as he saw Ami carefully lowering her leg over the edge, and she began half crawling, half sliding down the stone wall to the bottom. She pulled the scroll out of her pouch as soon as she had both feet on the ground, and began reading in the fading light as she walked towards her home.

# # #

Tsuzumi made his way through the darkened bar, spotting the village elders and sliding into their booth opposite them. Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu. Both venerable, highly respected, and politically powerful members of the Konoha council itself. Tsuzumi lowered his head respectfully to each of them.

"Mitokado-sama, Utatane-sama," he greeted with a smile.

"Ah, Sarugaku-san, please sit down," Homura said, gesturing sarcastically at the already seated chunin.

"Ah-ha," Tsuzumi laughed awkwardly, giving them his best smile.

"How was your day, Sarugaku-san?" Koharu asked, raising a glass of water to her lips.

"Oh, it was fine, thank you Utatane-sama. I spent the day on watch at the walls. We spotted nothing serious all day."

"Don't you like being in the official duty rotation?" Homura asked silkily.

"I-I do, Mitokado-sama," Tsuzumi stuttered. He especially enjoyed the regular income, proximity to Konoha's commercial district, daily contact with his friends and family, and some of the safest duties a chunin could be assigned.

"Interesting," Homura continued, "Then why did you request a mission scroll from the dispatch desk this morning?" Homura pulled a copy of the mission scroll Tsuzumi had requested from beneath the table, unfurling it between the sake bottles.

"Oh- that, ah-ha," Tsuzumi smiled winningly. "I requested that scroll for my cute student, Ami-chan."

"Ami-chan," Koharu drawled dangerously. "The student you were supposed to fail, and send back to the academy?"

"Ah-ha ha," Tsuzumi laughed, scratching his head. "Well, I took her to the training grounds straight after we were assigned, and I gave her an impossible task. Well, I thought it was impossible. But she passed the test, and I couldn't fail her after she'd done exactly as I asked, and... ah-ha, she's still my student it seems."

"She completed an impossible task, well that sounds impressive! Tell us about this impossible task!" Homura said.

"Well, she- I asked her if she'd ever practised the tree-walking exercise, and she hadn't." Tsuzumi turned to Koharu, "She hadn't! And so I placed a kunai at the top of ground Twenty-Eight's post, and said she had to get it. After that, I left her alone."

"Huh, well, did she cheat?" Homura asked.

"Well, ah-ha, not exactly." Tsuzumi scratched his head with both hands, his eyes widening with anxiety. "She- she used her shuriken to make a ladder, and climbed it to the top."

The councillors exchanged a long glance.

"She climbed a ladder of shuriken?" Koharu asked, disbelieving. "Was she injured?"

"Ah, quite badly," Tsuzumi confessed. "But nothing permanent, or life-threatening. We treated her injuries, and she was fit for training today. And she did train! She climbed the walls using the wall-walking technique."

The councillors exchanged another long glance. Entire conversations seemed to pass between them in that long gaze. Finally Homura turned to the chunin.

"Does this mean you want to be relieved of your duties, to be made her permanent sensei?" he asked, his voice slightly gentler than it had been. "I wouldn't have thought a mere chunin could afford that loss of income."

"No-no, that probably won't be necessary. I think I can fit her training in around my duties," Tsuzumi said quickly. "She's quite independent."

The two elders exchanged another long glance.

"Well," Homura began hesitantly. "I suppose..."

"It would at least keep her out of the way until next year's team selections," Koharu allowed.

"And it would put her in a good position to be a spare, in the case of casualties or promotions," Homura added.

Tsuzumi nodded.

"Well, all right, it's settled," Homura said after a moment. "Nigai Ami will continue to be your student."

Tsuzumi was about to thank the councillors, grateful for escaping punishment for the girl's injury and avoiding the loss of his job, until it began to dawn on him what he had just talked them into.

"Uh, wait, perhaps there's a better sensei out there for her-" he stammered.

"Nonsense," Koharu interrupted. "She sounds like she's blossoming under your instruction. We entrust her shinobi education to you."

"Ah-ha ha." Tsuzumi-sensei's head sank slowly into his hands.