Mizuki seemed totally unaware of the danger Hitomi was to her opponent; Iruka, in his place, would have stopped the fight, and the previous one too, just to make sure his students were safe. An icy wave of fury surged through her mind, quiet and violent at the same time, blooming like a flower in her chest tightened by anger. She had never felt so calm, so detached.
Suddenly, she let energy explode inside her and leaped toward Aimi, feinting with her right hand before slapping her with the left, probably twice as hard as the bully had slapped Hinata. Aimi attempted to counterattack with a knee strike but Hitomi simply faded away from her strike's path, long black curls floating in her wake until she was behind the bully. A solid kick to the small of her back made Aimi fall to her knees, and Hitomi knocked her unconscious with a hit to the neck. The whole thing had happened in barely more than a second.
She wasn't even sweating. Her breath was still regular, calm, as if fighting at this speed was natural, as if the blows she had dealt to her opponent had been effortless. It was at least partly the case: Hitomi had sparred against a clone of herself controlled by Nara Ensui, Strangling Shadow of Konoha. A cruel, brutal, crude civilian girl wasn't the slightest threat to her.
Without even looking back at her, Hitomi jumped down from the stage before Mizuki's clone could even call on her next opponent. "Sorry, Ino," she said as she stepped toward her, "I'm gonna take Hinata to have her wounds looked at. We'll spar next time, okay?" Her tone was still stiff with anger. A few girls whispered as she walked past them to kneel in front of a still groggy Hinata. Slowly, as to not hurt her more, she helped her stand up and guided her out of the Academy, one step at a time.
"N-not the hospital," Hinata groaned, leaning heavily against her.
"I know. Don't worry, I have a plan." If she took Hinata to the hospital, it would be written down in her medical file and her asshole of a father would use this incident to further destroy his daughter's self-confidence. That was out of the question, and the reason why the girl was leading her friend to the Nara lands instead. Hinata was a few centimetres smaller than her, but she was still heavier than what her still young muscles were used to. Without another word, she strengthened the most solicited parts of her body with chakra and only stopped when she arrived in front of Shikamaru's house.
There, she released a spike of chakra in the air without letting Hinata go – the girl would have fell if she had had to stand alone. In a short distance, chakra spikes worked a bit like a distress flare, but one only shinobi could sense. A few seconds later, Nara Yoshino threw the door open, a kunai in her other hand. She only needed a second to understand what her niece and the Hyūga heir were going to ask her. She negligently threw the kunai on a wall behind her back and took Hinata in her arms, lifting her up effortlessly.
During the following minutes, Hitomi didn't say a word, only watching with a slight air of anguish as her aunt healed Hinata's bruises and wounds. When she was sure her friend would be okay and all the traces of the fight would disappear, she went to the kitchen, still moving on autopilot mode, and prepared tea for all three of them. She slept over often enough – her cousin and her always tried their best to fool Yoshino's vigilance so they could play shōgi until dawn – to know where everything she needed was.
When she came back, a tray in hands, Yoshino and Hinata were talking softly. They stopped when they saw her approach. With a little smile, Hitomi put the tray on the coffee table then went to face her friend, who was still sitting on the couch. She raised her chin with the delicate pressure of two fingers so she would look at her, then her red eyes searched for any trace of damage. When they didn't find any, she let her expression soften and hugged Hinata, pressing her forehead against her friend's shoulder. "We're gonna make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again, okay?"
And, the following weeks, she focused on that goal. She talked about it with Sasuke for hours, seeking his help to find a way to train her best friend. Obviously, Hitomi didn't at all function like Naruto: she had a formidable will, but this quality was hidden deep inside her, and pretending she wasn't up to the challenge would only break her, not motivate her to prove them wrong.
The solution was more complex than it had been for Naruto, because Hinata was a really good fighter. Her taijutsu was far better than average. What she lacked was the aggressiveness to use it, and this, she wouldn't learn in her clan. To develop that characteristic in her, the children decided to put her in carefully controlled situations of danger, under Kurenai's ever-watchful eyes.
Hinata needed time to adapt but, once she started to progress, she didn't have any more problems during the sparring matches Mizuki organised several times a week at school. As for Aimi, she was keeping to herself now. She had lost a lot of her popularity after her match against Hitomi, whose win had been painfully obvious, and she seemed frightened by the Yūhi girl… rightfully so. Unable to forget, Hitomi maintained a stubborn grudge against the opponent she had already beaten.
Hitomi was still writing every day to Gaara and Ensui – she had even exchanged a few letters with Temari and Kankurō, on their younger brother's insistence. Sasuke was used to his new life now, but still spent a lot of his free time visiting his parents' memorial stone. At least one evening a week, Hitomi joined him, bringing food as an offering to their spirits and one of her current projects. They stayed there until the sun set, soothed by the distant sounds of the village and the repetitive grating of her pen against paper.
In fourth year, the students finally heard about the shinobi arts other than taijutsu. At the beginning of the year, Iruka had started using one hour a day to teach them hand seals. It was difficult to form them perfectly, even for their hands turned nibble by dexterity games. The only one Hitomi mastered prior from the class was the Rat Hand Seal, since it was the one she needed for the Shadow Manipulation Technique. As for the eleven others, she trained every day to form them under her mother's intransigent supervision, until her fingers turned stiff and painful.
During Kurenai's unofficial class, the children had started to learn chakra control. Of course, they started with the typical Konohajin exercise, sticking a leaf on their forehead. It was highly symbolic, and yet subtle enough to blend perfectly in the village's propaganda. Since Hitomi had already mastered that exercise and a few others in that field, her mother had something else in mind for her. "You'll start with a kunai," she said after the other children had started working with their leaves.
Surprised, Hitomi looked up to her, tearing her eyes away from Naruto's efforts. "A kunai?" she repeated, trying and failing to hide her confusion. Her mother answered her unspoken question by showing her her left hand, opened palm up. In its centre, a kunai stood on its point, perfectly balanced and immobile. Hitomi raised her eyebrows and called upon her meridians to try and understand what Kurenai was doing. Kunai weren't supposed to have the kind of gravity centre that would allow them to stand like that.
"You won't understand just by looking at it and feeling it," Kurenai said with a playful smile. "This exercise is far beyond the level we ask of even a Genin, because you have to give your chakra a physical form, something that the techniques you'll learn at the Academy don't need to work. As it is now, this kunai is enclosed in a chakra cocoon, and that's what allows it to stand like that. If it moves, the exercise is not mastered. Have fun, sweetheart!"
It took weeks for Hitomi to bend that exercise to her will. She trained at it for hours every day, until her hands burned. Sometimes, her mother forced her to stop, but Sasuke knew very well that she continued once she was in her room. He didn't tell Kurenai, though – he understood far too well the need to get stronger that was pushing her forward. The first step was to apply a sufficient strength on the kunai to make it stand on its point. All the exercises she had trained on, except the throwing one, had taught her to stick to a surface, not to push it away. The reason suddenly seemed obvious to the girl: pushing constantly, and not in one quick burst like she had learned, was a hundred times more complicated, and way more chakra intensive.
After mastering that first step, she had to find a way to hold the kunai still, which meant applying an accurate and constant pressure all over it. She quickly realised that she lost her focus after a few seconds, just enough so part of the chakra cylinder she had enclosed the kunai in, weakened. Before going any further with the exercise, she decided to research the meditation methods applied to ninja arts.
Ensui and Kankurō helped her a great deal with that, giving her a list of books she would find in any library and that could point her in the correct direction. Hitomi was surprised the Sunajin volunteered to help her. One night, when her left hand couldn't stand even the tiniest spark of chakra, she wrote to him about it through the notebooks. With a reserve and modesty that surprised her greatly, he explained he wanted to please his baby brother and the only way he knew how was to help her.
She was softened by it all, she had to admit it. She spent several hours, that night, writing to Kankurō about her month in Sunagakure and all the things she had learned about Gaara during that time. She told the puppeteer about his brother's habits, his favourite candies, the sand sculptures he only showed to his loved ones when he started to feel at peace. In turn, Kankurō told her about their routine at the forgotten border post that sheltered them. They had to move three times just that year to escape new murder attempts, and that filled the girl with a soft, ferocious rage.
The books she needed found themselves a very nice place on her desk. She always had at least one of them in her Academy backpack; she spent as many breaks as she could reading through them under the benevolent and slightly amused eyes of her friends. Her Library, for once, couldn't help her to find in her inner-self the focus and detachment she would need to keep that damned kunai up on her palm. It wasn't an impossible goal, and she knew it. She had to succeed; she would need this.
She spent a lot of her free time meditating in seiza, kneeling on the floor, her back straight and yet relaxed, hands folded in her lap, her eyes staring at nothing. She had tried a few exercises proposed by the books, but the one she favoured made her imagine herself slowly sinking into a quiet, bottomless ocean. The only sport she had been allowed to practice, in the Before World, had been swimming – then, the disease had taken that away from her, too. She had been more at ease in water than on the ground. The plenitude she had felt during those rare occurrences still lived sharp and clear in her mind.
Sasuke always came to fetch her in the garden when dinner was ready. He brushed a careful hand against her shoulder – she had long ago stopped tensing when he touched her. He was family now. Her brother. She couldn't fear him, only for him. During the meal, the two children told Kurenai about their day, then she got out again to practice the tantō katas Ensui had told her an eternity ago.
In Mizuki's class, Hinata had quickly turned into a little demon and Hitomi dreaded the inevitable moment they were pitched against each other. The Hyūga girl used the Gentle Fist even against her friends now. That style of taijutsu, unique to her clan, used chakra to close the tenketsu, three hundred and sixty-one intersections of meridians through the body. Shutting them off disturbed the flow of chakra through the victim's body. Even when it was opened immediately afterwards, a sealed tenketsu still hurt like a bitch, and her best friend often managed to hit her a dozen times before the end of a fight. Hitomi had to sweat for the first place of those tournaments now.
Ino was a difficult opponent too: Yamanaka Inoichi had obviously decided it was time to speed up his daughter's training. She got better and better at analysing the movements and intentions of her adversary. Psychology applied to fighting was often overlooked… and yet Hitomi could testify of its efficacy. She had numerous bruises to prove it.
Shino and Shikamaru had started learning more about their respective clans' techniques. It wasn't rare to see the first trying to control his bugs as the second sat in the shadow of a tree and tried to stretch his own. The two boys had discovered they got along well, in the same way Chōji and the Nara heir did.
Hitomi progressed too. She was able to keep a kunai up on her palm for longer every day. Kurenai had told her she would have mastered the first stage when she would be able to keep it that way indefinitely while doing something else on the side, and that the next levels would be easier to bend to her will.
When the fifth year at the Academy started, the two remaining class groups in their year were merged into one. Guests came to Iruka's lessons and told them about their specialities or department in the hope that the children would want to join them. Kiba's mother, for example, came to talk about the Hunting Department, which handled the most sensitive tracking missions. It had always been led by an Inuzuka, but one didn't need to be born in that clan to join their ranks. The Bunke-born Hyūga and Aburame, for example, were often good elements of that department, their Kekkei Genkai helping them to find their mark.
It wasn't the only novelty the students had to face that year: from then on, two hours a day were devoted to ninjutsu and genjutsu. Iruka had hammered on the theoretical aspects of those two ninja arts during their whole fourth year – Naruto had needed Hitomi's help for that part – and had decided his students were ready for a bit of practice. However, learning actual techniques was still out of the question – that would have to wait until sixth year.
There was something inherently cruel about the way the Academy worked, something that quickly separated the students who would be able to keep their Jōnin-sensei, and the ones who would have to rethink their future after the sixth year – either the General Forces, reorientation or retrying the graduation and the following test. Those who failed that following test but still entered the General Forces would struggle even to get promoted to Chūnin and often try out a new, more fulfilling career after a few years, while the ones who had succeeded would get a real shot at getting promoted at least to Chūnin. The best of them could even get to Tokubetsu Jōnin or Jōnin, or even be recruited into the ANBU, the service so secret civilians believed it to be a legend.
The difference between those two groups of future ninjas was made clear as early as the first year of Academy, and rare were the weaker students able to get to the better part of their year group. Even the resources they had out of school to work and train were different : the students at the top of the rankings were either from a ninja clan or a very wealthy family that could afford private tutoring. Hitomi's class was no exception: From the nine students of the Fellowship, seven were ranked in the top ten. The students ranked eighth, ninth and tenth were the rich heirs of noble families, who dreamed of adventure and heroism. They would get very disappointed very quickly.
It was unfair, yes, but a lot of things were that way in a Hidden Village, even the one most foreigners called 'timorous' and 'pampered'. For now, those injustices played well in favour of the Fellowship, so Hitomi wasn't planning on protesting. Her plans only focused on saving lives and ending others. She didn't care about justice, only about the greater good. And too bad if it was unethical. Ethics didn't win wars. One day, she would.