The day after the deserters arrived, Shikaku, Ensui and Shinku gathered in the living-room, Hitomi in front of them. They all seemed serious but not worried, which was a good sign in the girl's book. She knew how hard they had worked for her during their free time. Were they there to give her their findings or to inform her that they needed more time? She sought the answer on their faces, without success.

"Hitomi-chan," Shinku started, "we found something in the most ancient Yūhi archives. I'd like you to demonstrate this power you have, if that's okay with you, so I can see for myself if the text speaks of the same thing."

A surge of anxiety ran through Hitomi. She found her master's eyes and relaxed when he nodded. He'd stop her if needed. She closed her eyes and searched in herself. The voice was never far, excited by the slightest spark of anger, adrenalin or even joy sometimes. It seemed to wait for any strong emotion to remind her that she was there. The girl only had to think about Hinata, who couldn't be woken yet according to the doctors because it was too risky, for the voice to growl in her mind and start to cloud her thoughts. Her posture shifted as she focused on memories that would better support her anger. The voice became stronger, steadier, sang promises of blood in her ear.

She opened her eyes and found the adults so astonished they couldn't hide it. That strange view helped her to keep the upper hand, to push the voice down, where it couldn't hurt anyone. She stumbled when she managed to make it shut up, her thoughts clear once more. She let out a long sigh and allowed her muscles to relax one after the other.

"I… I knew it," Shinku said in a strangely choking voice, "and yet I didn't dare believe. My dear girl, you really are the one who is going to bring our clan back to its past glory. I'm so proud of you."

She frowned, even though the compliment made her straighten up in pride. Shinku was a demanding man, hard to satisfy. He had never openly criticised her skills or efforts but, most of the times, he kept a very neutral stance towards her, so different from the way Kurenai treated her that Hitomi often didn't know how to handle it. Ensui gestured for her to sit and, before the two others, sat in seiza on the other side of the coffee table. "We found something very peculiar. There's a letter, buried under hundreds of other files, that describes the Kekkei Genkai once held by all the daughters of the Yūhi clan."

"I… I beg your pardon?"

Shikaku stepped in, his voice as serious as it was appeasing, his eyes set on his niece as if he wanted to reassure her, to prevent her from panicking. "All clans started developing around a Kekkei Genkai, you know that. And you know as well that the Yūhi clan had their own once."

"But…"

"The matriarchal structure of your clan comes from the fact that only the women could awaken that power. The Inuzuka had a similar limitation before Konoha was founded. In their case, their Kekkei Genkai ended up being able to pass to men, but the women stayed the leaders of the clan."

"But why is it so hard to find traces of the Yūhi Kekkei Genkai?"

"Everyone forgot, Hitomi," Ensui answered. "I gave you enough History lessons for you to understand how time undermines memory. My hypothesis is that the memory of your power was held a secret in the village once it was founded, and lost altogether shortly after Senju Tobirama died and Konoha underwent so many reforms. Our village is young, but that still makes three whole generations between the last Yūhi with any secret power and yourself."

"But…" Hitomi rubbed her face, perhaps hoping to chase her sudden weariness. "What am I going to do then? What do I do with it? I can't… I can't just unleash it when needed and pray it doesn't slaughter my friends. It almost targeted Shikamaru last time."

Despite their efforts to keep her calm the girl couldn't suppress the wave of fear biting her mind. She didn't want to face that kind of ordeal alone, not when so much was at stake. If the power was as strong as Shikaku had hinted, she couldn't ignore it; it was a chance to become strong enough to beat her future enemies and the ones she had already been crushed by. Maybe she wouldn't be defenceless anymore. But, without anyone to guide her, to help her bend the voice to her will, what could she make of it?

"We have a few ideas," Shikaku affirmed. "We thought about it before coming to see you."

"I think the best bet would be to call on our contract. Our cats are too young to have known someone with this power, but I will talk to Aotsuki and ask her if one of the elders can help you. It's special circumstances so, if they indeed know something, I don't see them refusing."

"My plan," Ensui said then, "is to draw a constriction seal around the garden, where you'll be training. It's not very complicated, as you know, and I have enough chakra to maintain it for hours on end."

"And, if there's a problem, I can still stop you with my shadows and give you time to come back to your senses," Shikaku concluded. "You won't be in any danger, nor will you be a danger to anyone, I promise, Hitomi-chan."

Hitomi looked down to her hands and went inside her Library to think. The space around her didn't degrade every few days anymore – at least, that pressure was gone from her shoulders. Contemplating the little core of paradise she had built inside her mind, she weighed her options. She couldn't allow the voice to reign over her emotions, but she suspected that merely controlling them would only postpone the inevitable. Neither could sheask for that power to be sealed where she couldn't access it, not when it had so much potential. She let out a heavy sigh and opened her eyes again. "I'm in. When do we start?"

Ensui's deep voice formed a cascading laugh, music to her ears, and she smiled back at him. She was trying to ignore the avidity hidden – just not well enough – in her grandfather's eyes, because she understood it. He had seen his clan go extinct. No matter the perspective on that situation, it had to be hard for him. Who didn't dream of grandeur, one way or another? He had been a legend on the battlefield. His mere name made hundreds of Kumojin and Iwajin shinobi shudder in anguish. They all remembered how he dived through their lines on the back of his giant cat, Aotsuki the Terror, who was yowling her delight to fight and toy with her enemies as if they were chiffon dolls. Shinku just wanted the same grandeur for his granddaughter, for their clan, and Hitomi understood.

"We'll come back to you in two days," Shikaku said. "In the meantime, continue to train with your shishou and our guests from Kirigakure. You're not part of the finals, but I expect great results from you on your next exam."

In answer, Hitomi straightened once more, a quiet and satisfied look in her eyes. Shikaku's expectations were always coupled with a total trust in the fact they would be met. It honoured her to no end: he was a powerful clan leader, proud, firm, severe, but when he looked at her, just like when he looked at Shikamaru, something in him turned soft and affectionate. He didn't let those feelings lower his expectations towards her, but his tenderness made the act of satisfying him incredibly gratifying.

An hour after Shikaku and Shinku had left, Hitomi was back in the garden, sparring against her shishou with blades under Zabuza's watchful eyes, while Haku worked on his senbon. He now knew how to form them with his Kekkei Genkai, which made him all the more terrifying. When the former Swordsman of the Mist had seen enough, he took Ensui's place and hurled himself at Hitomi, a wooden replica of his sword in his hand. She barely had the time to parry and step back before he pursued her with a kick to the chest.

"Faster!" he grunted. "I know you can move faster, get off your arse!"

Her breath itching in her throat for a moment, the girl obeyed, focusing as much chakra as she could in her legs and arms to pick up the pace. She had a hard time keeping track of her own movements with her eyes, but her other senses were able to compensate for that, thanks to the bō exercise. A snarl on her face, she slid under Zabuza's sword, hit a pressure point on his torso and stepped out of his reach before he could retaliate. She did it again and again and again, until it became natural. Oh, he could have turned her to minced meat even with his wooden sword if he had wanted to, but it was a spar, not a real fight, and he knew not to put his whole power into it.

Still, Hitomi got a thorough ass-kicking, so much so that Haku had to drag her away and force her to sit so he could heal her. He was strong and quick enough to stop her from going back there. His gentle brown eyes noticed the blur over hers, her dilated pupils, the red on her cheeks and the mess in her hair. If it hadn't been enough worrying signs, there was killing intent on her still, faint but unmissable. Those were the signs that a shinobi couldn't call it quits when they'd had enough, and that going back to train would only mean they'd end up injured.

"Hitomi, I will throw you into an ice cage if you don't calm down. Do you want that?"

"No, but I need to go back, okay?"

"He almost broke your arm just now! You'll be useless if you get hurt too much to stand, calm down!"

Hitomi had been surprised to hear that he had picked up medical ninjutsu from another rebellion member. However, seeing him in the act now, it seemed obvious. She wondered how important his skill set would become for the rebels in Kirigakure as he treated the big, almost black bruise on her arm. She had barely felt the blow but, now that she wasn't moving anymore, it hurt like a bitch.

"Good," he said when she relaxed and leaned her back against the wall of the house. "Now let me fix that elbow and take an hour of rest. After that, you'll be as good as new." They were sitting on the patio, the sun warming their skins, Ensui and Zabuza talking on the grass. They didn't seem to expect Hitomi to come back anytime soon: the latter had just put his sword away in a seal and was telling her master about a mission he had just completed for the rebellion.

"Say…"

"Hm?"

"Did you know that Yoshino-ba, Shikamaru's mom, is a medic? She healed Hinata, once, when she was injured and the hospital wasn't an option for her, since her father is an asshole. She might give you some advice so you can get even better. She was a field medic, according to Ensui-shishou. Fucking terrifying."

Pairing Haku, who was sweet and quite frightening, with Yoshino who was the same but with twenty more years of experience, probably wasn't the best of Hitomi's schemes. She liked, however, to surround herself with people who were as deceptive as she was. Ninjas were built to live in the shadows and in the mist, to fool their opponents while they avoided the reeves and traps on their paths. It was probably a good thing that some of Haku's sweet nature was an illusion, in the same way that the Yūhi girl looked like a cute little doll when only part of that was true.

During her resting time, she worked on corporal seals. Ensui had brought her the promised deer skin so she could practice. The first seal he had shown her was a variation of the restrictive seal Fukuda wore on her wrists and tongue, only hers kept her from repeating secrets, not from moving altogether. It was a low-level seal, with several weaknesses, but Hitomi was only a Genin. Experienced shinobi weren't supposed to find themselves on her path for a long time. If only they had gotten the fucking memo.

Sometimes, when there wasn't anything to keep her busy, her mind drifted to her friends, each of them so dedicated to their own training regimen. Was Naruto remembering to eat? Had Sasuke managed to refrain from gutting Kakashi, or die trying anyway? Was Gaara resisting the cold wind that sometimes swiped through the region at that time of the year? Those times of loneliness, she spent them curled up inside herself, as if to wrap her thoughts around such sparks of suffering and fear – of being abandoned, of becoming useless.

Each week, she dutifully went to see Fukuda for an hour, sometimes more, and opened up little by little to the therapist. She told her about senseless things first, ephemeral little pleasures and hurts that had rhythmed her days. After fifteen minutes or so, the psychologist managed to make her way through her emotional reserves, and they faced the real problems: her feeling of powerlessness, her fears, her anxiety, the twinge of bitterness she felt when she thought about not being able to participate in the tournament.

And how ashamed she was of that one. She could have been asked a thousand times and yet choose the same outcome every time without the least hesitation. And yet, the consequences of this decision, the fact that she had to stay a Genin until the next exam where Konoha would send people – the next host wasn't yet known – made her bitter. A conceited harsh part of herself rebuffed against the wait, beyond all rationality. Fukuda explained that it was normal, that the correct choice wasn't always the easy one, and that she had to accept the consequences anyway.

Hitomi always left those sessions either at peace or distressed, without nuance or middle ground. Lee had gotten the habit of coming to get her from the building afterwards. Before taking her home, he led her into town and always picked a place that suited her mood – once, it had been a cat café that had just opened in one of the touristic streets. He had fawned over the way the felines reacted to her. They smelled something on her, perhaps an echo of her pact with her summons, that made her a bit more like them and a bit less like a human.

One morning, it was Yoshino instead of Ensui who welcomed Hitomi in the garden. A table had been prepared in front of her, supporting several seal scrolls. Intrigued, the girl walked to her aunt and greeted her, her cats in tow. Shikamaru's mom looked as severe as usual, her noble features accentuated by the stern crease of her mouth. For people who didn't spend a lot of time with her, she looked out of reach, intimidating. Fortunately, Hitomi knew the truth.

"Since Tsunade-sama left the village," Yoshino started, "the rule about the presence of at least one shinobi trained in medical ninjutsu in each ninja team isn't followed anymore. Because of that, your comrades, your friends, your teammates, will die one after the other around you. The only thing you can do to stop that from happening, to fight against destiny, is to learn. If you're the medic of your team, even if you only know the first aid jutsu, you'll save some of them. Is it motivation enough for you to learn?"

Taken aback, the girl stiffened and looked down to the table. The scrolls looked so plain, so harmless. She felt the twinge of chakra and tingle in her palms, that always meant a seal was close, coming from them. For once, though, she didn't get any comfort from that feeling. The images Kakashi had involuntarily carved into her mind months earlier, when he had trapped her into an illusion during the bell test, danced in front of her eyes. She had never told the teacher what he had made her see; she didn't want him to feel guilty. However, that horror scene often wiggled its way into her nightmares.

"I… Of course it's motivation enough," she sputtered. A bad feeling was weighing on her these past few days, as if her mind tried and failed to attract her attention to one particular detail, something important, but not crucial enough for her Library to do the work for her. She had told Ensui how important she thought medical ninjutsu was, and he wholeheartedly approved. She wouldn't ever be a true medic, she didn't have the profound and instinctive chakra control required, nor the time to go around that requirement. But if she could learn first aid and thus make sure her friends didn't die… Yes, it was worth it.

For several hours, Yoshino quizzed her relentlessly on human anatomy. Hitomi had read a lot of treaties on the subject and had knowledge from the Previous World as well, which meant she could handle it. Her meridians gave her information too: since she could feel chakra, she could feel the way other people's meridians wrapped around their organs and have a good map of the human body supplied to her that way.

Things got harder, however, when Yoshino taught her to create neutral chakra. Neutral chakra was different from pure chakra, which could be used for transfusion but not for healing. Where pure chakra was untainted by affinity or Kekkei Genkai but still contained dormant forms of it, neutral chakra was totally devoid of it. It was compatible with all living systems, with meridians and Gates of all types. To create it, Hitomi had to detach from her chakra anything that characterised it, and particularly any potential for elemental affinities. It was a difficult, conscious process, whereas pure chakra was the energy circulating through one's meridians at all times. While she learned to do that, Hitomi discovered she had a weak secondary affinity for lightning, just enough to make learning techniques from that element a tad easier than for the three she didn't have any affinity with.

She was still trying hard to master that technique when Ensui, Shikaku and Shinku came back to her. They looked as serious as the last time, but something in their demeanour was more relaxed, so Hitomi started hoping. The voice had spoken to her several times during the past two weeks, as sweet and wild as a lover, seeping deep into her mind – and she always noticed a bit too late, when she was angry or afraid.

"I won't keep you in the dark any longer," Shikaku said when she had settled them in the living-room. "We found a way to train you."

A hesitating smile on her lips, she sat in seiza at the other side of the coffee-table. "How?"

"One of the elders amongst our ninja cats agreed to teach you. She's old enough to have been part of the team of a clan member with the Kekkei Genkai. She remembers."

Ensui edged closer and Hitomi focused on him, finding in his eyes the warmth and confidence she needed to remain calm. "I found a seal that will work in the archives only the Jōnin have access to. I'll show it to you as well, so you can use it if needed one day. You never know."

"And I'll be there," Shikaku added, "to stop you if the seal isn't strong enough. I doubt I'll have anything to do, really. Troublesome…"

Hitomi giggled, her thoughts drifting to Shikamaru. He was working so hard for the tournament, which would happen in less than two weeks. Even now, with Shikaku away on another task, one of the most powerful members of the clan had turned her back on her other duties to train him. No one spoke about it, but the Nara hoped he would shine for them in the arena, in front of foreign nobles and dignitaries.

An hour after that, Hitomi met Kibaki. She was a very imposing cat, built like the toughest warrior, her pugnacity beyond words and yet perfectly readable in her yellow eyes. She was taller than Hitomi and dominated her physically, her grey, mingled fur making her look even bigger than she really was. When they saw her, Hoshihi and Hai let out delighted meows and rushed to greet her.

"Shinku-kun explained why he needed me," Kibaki said when the cats settled down. "Emiko, my Lady Summoner, didn't live long, but I remember what her mother taught us about her power. She was incredibly powerful. If the war hadn't killed her so young, she would have been an amazing sensei. It was her dream. My knowledge isn't free, Hitomi-chan. You'll honour her memory by taking students when the time comes, and by teaching your own young about your Kekkei Genkai, no matter if they awaken it or not. Are those acceptable conditions to you?"

The cat's voice, as cutting as it was, couldn't totally hide the melancholy she felt, speaking about her summoner. Hitomi thought about the deal she was being offered. Students… Yes, she could imagine that without problem. She had loved helping her friends get better at the Academy and missions in the school never bothered her. It wasn't exactly the same thing as becoming a Jōnin-sensei one day, but she could imagine herself in those shoes without any trouble.

As for having children… She wasn't sure if she wanted some. Her grandfather hoped she would – enough children for their clan to be truly reborn, stronger and healthier – but did she want to become a mother? She was afraid she couldn't be as good as Kurenai in that role. Besides… What if she left on a mission and never came back home?

Was she ready to seal her destiny for knowledge she coveted? It wasn't a moral way of taking decisions – no one broke a promise offered to a ninja animal, she knew that. But she sincerely needed that knowledge, and she… she could imagine herself in the future Kibaki wanted for her. Slowly, she bowed, her left hand forming the Reconciliation Seal. "I accept, Kibaki-sama."

She hadn't spoken lightly. It was a ninja's word, one that couldn't be broken without bringing shame on her whole clan, on her two clans even. She would have students. If she had children, she would teach them about her Kekkei Genkai. Her fate was sealed.