Note: I wasn't sure if I wanted to include the bit with Genma at the end, but I ended up just throwing it in since this chapter was kind of short without it (In comparison). I feel like I've spent a tad too long on building up Kana and her relationships with others, though. Whoops! But I just finished writing the Konoha crush bit and I think y'all are going to like it. Hopefully.

I think I gave myself too much shit to juggle XD

Maybe it was just the stress of everything that had been going on, but watching Neji walk onto the training grounds only seemed to mentally exhaust her as her mind flashed back to what Kakashi had told her the day before. She knew full well that Neji hated the main branch, and Hinata by extension, but the idea of him intentionally using the exams as an excuse to murder his own cousin…

Kana kicked off of the branch she was perched on and focused chakra to her fingertips; he barely had time to notice that she was attacking him, never mind to make an attempt at properly dodging. Neji didn't want her to hold back, right? She extended her arm at the same time the boy realized what was happening, her fingertips encased in pointed cones of chakra that tore through his shirt. He was able to twist his body so that Kana wasn't able to stab the kidney she was aiming for, but her fingertips still ripped through his skin.

Her bloodied fingertips marked the ground in strange loops when she caught herself. Using the remaining inertia from her initial attack to spin herself around; Kana curled her body in and threw out her leg in a kick. Neji was still stumbling from the stab and didn't have time to register what was happening so the foot solidly connected with his rib cage; bursts of chakra spiked out of her tenketsu and Neji cried out as droplets of blood splattered over her ankle and calf.

"What's wrong, Neji?" she shouted as she sprung off of her hands, "Isn't this what you wanted?!" Before she even landed she was signing for her chakra senbon. Even as she told him she wasn't holding back, she made sure to only use her light attacks so she wouldn't seriously injure her friend. Kana threw her hands out to launch ten black spikes from her fingers as she landed. At the same time, Neji flung a kunai that embedded itself into the underside of her forearm. She tore it out and launched it directly into his thigh.

This was too easy. She was aware of how outmatched the genin was – she didn't need to watch him scramble to regain his footing to understand that. Still, Kana wasted no time in continuing the assault. "I'm sorry, are you realizing that it may not be your destiny to win?" she spat as she charged towards him, "Is fate so unkind to you?!" She punched him in the center of his stomach and raised her knee to his nose when he doubled over. "Maybe you understand that you don't have control over this so you should forfeit!" Chakra coned around her fingertips again and she grabbed Neji by the throat. "Or should I just kill you since you're too weak to fend me off!" More blood splattered across her hand when she jabbed her fingertips at a vertical angle into his soft belly, thought it was still nothing more than a superficial wound.

Kana threw him to the ground. She was only wearing her normal jonin outfit so when she stared down at Neji she knew he was able to clearly see the disappointment in her glowering face. "How does it feel," she hissed, "To know that I could kill you right here, right now? Do you feel powerless?" She kicked the spot she first stabbed, doing her best to ignore his agonized cry, "Like garbage?" The jonin stepped over his squirming form and knelt down.

"I have never been so ashamed to know someone, Neji," she growled, "There I was a couple of weeks ago talking about how proud I was of you. How you had 'Grown up' into a 'Fine shinobi' and my colleagues said you were going to excel in the exams and make your clan proud to have someone like you in the branch family." Kana punched him directly in the face and she wondered if he knew how lucky he was that she had such self control over her body as he stared up at her in horror.

"But then you go and attempt to murder your own cousin in a childish fit of rage," She grabbed his forehead protector and pulled, her brute force tearing the fabric, "Because she only confirmed what everyone else is entirely aware of?!"

The seal on Neji's forehead was fully exposed and she pressed a finger directly into the center, leaning down so that her mouth was next to his ear. "I never let your hatred for the main branch bother me because I knew it was a driving force for your progression as a shinobi but let's make something perfectly clear, punk. You spout on about fate as a safety blanket for your own insecurities, because you don't want to have to face the fact that you feel you were born into the wrong branch. Because you can't control that part of your life."

Kana pulled back to glare into his wide eyes, "And you know what the worst part is? You attempted to murder Hinata in cold blood for that same reason. Because she couldn't control what branch she was born into."

A sharp and sudden pain sparked in her chest as soon as she finished her sentence; it wasn't her ribs, though they did ache from moving too much. Kana clutched her chest through her green flak jacket and gasped. Unless it had some sort of gestation period that had just timed out, she assumed the mark triggered when her emotions became too intense. She was upset at the situation, yes, but she didn't feel the emotion was so great to cause this.

The pain spread across her skin. She looked down to see strange glowing markings travel down her arms, where the stitches in her arm had torn open. As the gash began to weep the kunoichi rolled off of her friend, thankful that she didn't harm Neji too severely in those few minutes of battle.

"Kana!" Neji pulled himself off of the ground but she was too fixated on those orange marks stretching down her elbow. Using her good arm to dig through her pouch, Kana pulled out a roll of gauze. She lifted it to her mouth and used her teeth to tear the plastic wrap that kept it sterile. Another jolt of pain ripped through her body, seemingly following the patterns that trailed down her skin as they faded to black, and she moaned. "Don't worry, I'm alright," she assured him.

Kana closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath to regain her composure. Her hands worked methodically to wrap the gauze around her forearm tight enough to staunch the bleeding; red quickly stained the fabric at first, but as she added more layers it appeared to slow. 'Good, that isn't going to be something to worry about,' she thought. She needed to get to Kakashi, though, so he could use the sealing jutsu he mentioned the day before; Kana exhaled the breath she had been holding and activated her Kurogan.

Neji's bloodied face looked panicked as his childhood friend screamed and collapsed to the ground. It had felt as if someone had jammed a sword through her head and lit her body on fire at the same time; she doubled over and put her weight on her forearms to focus on her breathing. She wasn't going to be able to use her kekkei genkai until this was over.

"Neji, are you… Well enough to… Hnng… Use your Byakugan?"

He nodded, "Because you used your lighter attacks, my wounds aren't extreme." The veins in his temples bulged. "Who am I looking for?"

"Kakashi Hatake." The pain was great, and she could feel whatever this was manifest itself into her body, but she fought to keep her equanimity as she taped the bandage in place. It took him over a minute, but Neji soon took her uninjured arm and wrapped it around his shoulder to help her stand. Kana felt him wince under her weight and she swore under her breath at the awful timing. He wasn't going to be able to carry her so she pulled her arm back and forced herself to stay upright, even as the combined pain of the curse mark and her injured ribs made her feel as if she was going to collapse. "He's not too far away," Neji said in what she assumed was supposed to be a reassuring tone, "He's almost 2 kilometers north of us at the Academy."

His location was somewhat convenient; Anbu HQ was located near the Hokage Monument in those same mountains, and they could access one of the chambers there for the sealing jutsu. She turned to the younger ninja, "Get yourself to the hospital, Neji. You were... Right in saying I used light attacks but you're going to need a medical-nin to... Crap..." Kana focused her breathing through her nose, "To check your wounds for chakra burns and to make sure you don't need any stitches."Neji looked conflicted, which she expected, but the commanding tone in her voice made it clear that arguing was going to get him nowhere. He held her gaze for only a moment longer before taking off, and Kana realized that his bleeding was worse than she had initially thought.

Kana used the opportunity to sink back to her knees as the burning underneath her flesh intensified. 'What is happening!?' she screamed internally as she ran the pad of her thumb over the blood that had dribbled down her forearm. She squeezed her eyes shut against the growing pain as she channeled her chakra and formed hand signs, watching the marks glow orange again and slither down her thighs. So using her chakra was what triggered the curse, she realized as she slammed her hand to the ground.

"Summoning jutsu!"

Script spread across the ground just before a cloud of smoke appeared and burned her eyes. A small orange cat wearing a red scarf appeared before her, startled by her appearance. "Momoko, Kakashi is… HNG!" she had to lean forward and spread her weight to her hands and knees, "The Academy. Hurry."

Momoko took off without a word and Kana was glad that she had been able to summon one of the faster ninneko as she bolted across the field and into the woods within a matter of seconds. She fought to steady her breathing as the intensity of the pain lessened. Yeah the mark was definitely triggered by chakra, but was it just some sort of sick torture method? Or was there something else happening, like a chakra siphoning jutsu? Kakashi had said that he needed to intentionally activate it but she wouldn't even know how to do something like that – she wished he had gone into more detail about Orochimaru's jutsu instead of just breezing over the bare basics of the details.

Looking down at her wound, Kana realized it had started to bleed profusely in the last couple of minutes as she had been lost in her thoughts. She couldn't understand why, though, as she knew for an absolute fact that she half only cut under half of an inch into her arm. Not only that but she cut at a horizontal angle because of how arteries close up if they're cut like that, and the wound was already few days old. So why was she bleeding so much?

She used what little knowledge she had on medical ninjutsu to examine the gash, gritting her teeth as the pain intensified. Thankfully it didn't take her more than fifteen or twenty seconds to realize that her body hadn't even begun to heal itself, and when Neji's kunai stabbed her he had punctured the artery. She rolled her eyes at the irony: Even though she was beating the hell out of him, she was too afraid to go all out on him. As a result, he still managed to deal damage. Her power play backfired.

Kana used her other hand to apply pressure to the blood-soaked bandage. 'Where are you, Kakashi?' She had no doubt in her mind that Momoko would be able to find him, considering he was the one of the leading nineko. Still, worry began to creep into her mind as she struggled to stand up; the combined stressors of heat and blood loss were starting to affect Kana and, while she couldn't do anything about the bleeding in her current state, she could at least attempt to get out of the sun. She willed her legs to stop shaking enough so that they could carry her forward.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see a figure standing in the distance, just along the forest line; she stopped moving and turned in that direction, though she couldn't make much out other than it was a man with broad shoulders and silver hair. While she didn't expect everyone in the village to be a good Samaritan, why was he just standing there? It seemed strange that someone would just watch her struggle to move. Was he from another village, and was too nervous to get involved in case she died and the blame was put on him?

The theory made sense to her – what with all of the genin staying in the village until the third stage, it was common for the training grounds to have a sort of unofficial waiting list this time of year. Why was he alone, then? Wouldn't he be training with his team?

'Or he's a spy.'

Kana had to mentally prepare herself before activating her Kurogan, knowing full well that she was going to be taking a huge risk.

The pain was just as horrible as before, her skull feeling as if it was going to split apart at any moment. The teenager forced herself to ignore as much of it as she could so she could focus on the man that stared at her.

She vaguely recognized him – she had looked at his paperwork as she assisted Genma with the registrations. His name was Kabuto, a genin from the Hidden Leaf that had failed five years in a row for either dropping out or willingly throwing matches. It looked like there was someone standing behind him, though she couldn't make him out.

A guttural scream erupted from Kana's throat and she dropped to her knees as she felt the curse mark cross over to her back and down to her feet. The pain was so intense that the kunoichi's vision failed and her legs collapsed beneath her; she hardly even noticed the throbbing from her ribs as she gracelessly fell to the ground. Though her vision was black, Kana could hear running in the distance and she suddenly felt infuriated at the situation. She wasn't a damsel in distress type. She didn't just lie on the ground and wait for someone else to save her, but she couldn't help but feel pathetic as she realized that for, the third time in a week, she was in need of being saved.

As her vision slowly returned she felt two hands on her bleeding arm, and heard the whoosh of medical ninjutsu. She felt herself being rolled onto her back and she saw three faces looking at her with strong concern.

"Sas…"

The young boy's eyes widened as she attempted to address him. "You're…"

The fact that Sasuke remembered who she was gave her a sense of validation as she struggled to speak. "I'm so sorry… I promised I'd…"

"Now isn't the time for this," Kakashi interrupted before looking up to Tirahashi, who was healing her arm, "How does it look?"

Her teammate looked concerned, for good reason, but judging by his expression she was fine. "Her body wasn't healing as quickly as it normally does, which is enough to make me nervous, but the worst of it seems to be the puncture wound that caused a vertical laceration to her artery. That opened up a lot of room in the original cut, which appears to have become deeper than before." Tirahashi's eyes locked with her own. Anbu weren't supposed to become attached to their teammates, not like normal teams. The mission always came first, so a lot of team members only associated with each other in training and on missions. But she would be lying to herself if she said she didn't see worry behind his dark eyes, and as she weakly stared back at her teammate Kana remembered that it was Tirahashi that had carried her from the Forest of Death.

"I don't understand… Why is this mark manifesting itself a second time?" Kakashi muttered to himself.

Tirahashi continued to explain that the blood loss and curse mark were the two major stressors. Kana's eyes drifted back up to Sasuke, who stood directly over her and looked as if he was staring at a ghost. "What, you aren't happy to see me?" she half-laughed, "When you were little you were always the first one to greet me at the door."

She saw his face contort into a look of shock, anger and sadness. It reminded her of just how young he really was – he was twelve now, right?

"Yeah well things change."

The harshness of his words felt like a slap to the face. Kana was well aware that he associated her with Itachi, but did she deserve that animosity? She could only stare up at him, unable to come up with any sort of response. He looked so much like his mother…

He averted his gaze from her, choosing to look at Kakashi instead. "I'm going back to train a bit more," he said abruptly. Kakashi nodded and he walked off. Kana's head lolled to the side and she glared at Kakashi menacingly. "Why did you bring him here? Are you that cruel?"

"He insisted on coming," Tirahashi jumped in as he moved his hands from her arm to her ribs, "It isn't Kakashi's fault."

Kana bit her lip and looked back to the sky. Her frustration at the situation was getting to her, and she didn't respond to the feeling of having her flak jacket unzipped and pulled back to expose her torso. "When can we perform the sealing?" she muttered, ignoring the tingling sensation of her teammate's medical ninjutsu addressing her ribs.

"Well, I was hoping to wait until you were healed up but if the Earth mark is this aggressive then it might be a good idea to do it once we're done here. Speaking of which," Kakashi looked around, "Who did this to you?"

"I was training with Neji," she mumbled, "He's getting his injuries looked at right now."

Kakashi's eye widened, "From training?"

"Well…" her head rolled to the side, "He didn't want me to go easy on him this time. I figured if I beat his ass enough-"

"You mean if you punished him for attacking Hinata, he'd learn his lesson."

Kana didn't respond.

"Hey, were you aware that if you put your first and last names together, you get 'Sadness'?" Genma casually asked, signing one of the many forms that littered his desk, "It's kinda fitting."

Kana lifted her eyes from his working hands to leer at him, face lazily pressed against the cool wood surface. "You don't say anything for nearly two hours straight and that's what you come up with?"

To be fair, a lot of the time they spent always seemed to be in silence – she enjoyed being in his presence enough where they didn't need to have long talks or emotional conversation, and he seemed entirely content with that for the most part. Kana had dropped by his office to see if he and Raido were interested in getting some lunch, since Neji needed a day off, but Raido had been sent out on a mission just a few hours earlier so it was just the two of them. Mostly, Kana just wanted to be around someone that she knew would get her mind off of the events from the day before.

His hand continued to write, the tapping sounds of the pen almost in perfect sync with the sounds of his senbon clicking against his teeth, "Well, I mean, if you don't look stoic, you look pretty damn depressed. It isn't as if you're all that open, too, so half of the time I have to go off of use that handy hair of yours. Which, by the way, does it ever turn white?"

She crossed her arms on the edge of the desk so she could cradle her head, the hard surface of the desk was finally starting to dig into her cheekbone painfully and this angle gave her a better view of his calm face, anyways. Genma's eyes flitted up to hers for a brief moment expectantly as his hands continued to work on their own – this was clearly something he had done more times than he could count, if he was able to know exactly what to write and where. He made an impatient sound at her.

"It turns white when I'm happy," she said bluntly, eyes drifting back down.

"Huh, I've never seen it get lighter than Kakashi's."

"It hasn't in a long time."

Genma's hand stopped writing and a small pool of ink formed where the pen had frozen on the paper; he didn't seem to notice, or just didn't care. His next words came out slow and cautious, "Kana, look at me… Are you depressed?"

She understood why his hand halted, and why he sounded so concerned. Shinobi that began to show signs of deteriorating mental health were considered to be unfit for duty in the elite forces, as they were considered a liability. Kana furrowed her brow. Was she depressed? She knew she wasn't necessarily happy by normal standards but, still, she felt somewhat content. "Well… I have a stable job that pays well, I have a handful of friends and a unique bloodline trait… What, you gonna push my psych eval up?"

His eyes narrowed, but they were the eyes of a disquieted friend, not those of an elite bodyguard of the Hokage. The understanding eased the tension that was starting to creep up, but she sighed and remained silent with her eyes locked on Genma's.

"Can I touch you?"

The question – abrupt and out of the blue – confused her, but the way Genma stared at her with a steady gaze, warm eyes full of concern, somehow made the request feel completely reasonable. Kana realized he was waiting on her response, so she nodded wordlessly. Her eyes darted back and forth between his face and the hand he moved towards her head; she had thought that he was just going to reach out to her hand, so seeing it close in on her face threw her off. It must have read on her expression because Genma's palm froze and hovered a few inches away from it. "Are you sure?"

Kana's eyes slanted, "I am not a wild animal, just do it already!" she snapped, leaning her body to the side and pressing her cheek into his palm, glaring at him from across the desk. Despite feeling irritation towards how he treated her like some sort of spooked horse, she took note of how warm and large his hand was against her skin, how she could feel Genma's heartbeat through the thin vein in the pad below his thumb. Her eyes fluttered shut for a brief moment as his thumb tentatively stroked Kana's temple in a steady up and down rhythm.

When her eyes opened again she saw that he was staring at her with an expression that almost came off as alarmed, as if Genma were realizing something that left him perplexed. Her lips twisted into a wry smile and Kana was acutely aware of how close the base of his palm was to her mouth when she did so.

"What's wrong, surprised that I'm actually human?" she questioned, voice taunting.

Her question seemed to snap Genma out of whatever thought he had been lost in, because the unfamiliar expression was quickly replaced with his normally confident one – his eyes revealed that whatever had been going on in his head was still there, but it seemed like he had bounced back for the most part. "You're just softer than I imagined."

Imagined? What the actual fuck was happening right now?

"Anyways, I think it's time I take a break so how about that lunch offer?" Genma stacked the papers into a neat stack and set them into what Kana assumed was the out box before scooting his chair out to stand up.

"I, uh… Genma?"

He rounded the desk and paused, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm okay. Really."

Genma smiled down at her and touched the end of her braid.