I rested my chin in my palm and closed the file folder with my free hand. Closing my eyes, I ignored the anxious look on Yakumo's face and drummed my fingers on the desk between us. After my performance in the 'exhibition match,' her parents had tentatively agreed to give me a chance to try and help her, explicitly acknowledging that there was likely little I could do to hurt her chances at successfully graduating. Well, as long as nothing I did actively hurt the girl, but I had no doubt her mother and father would dismiss me the first time she collapsed or otherwise suffered from a serious downturn in her health.

Which, given what was in her medical records, was very likely.

Shinobi medical capabilities were extremely advanced given their relative technological primitiveness, but there were limits. A number of diseases, conditions, and problems were diagnosed based on how chakra interacted with whatever they were attempting to treat. Injuries, specifically, were child's play to a well-trained medic. Most of that was beyond the scope of the single dip I'd taken into medic-nin training, but I could pretty easily patch up most simple to moderate wounds and keep someone alive long enough to get them to the hospital as long as we were within the village walls.

The problem came when one was dealing with bacterial or viral infections, because techniques like mystic palm just didn't differentiate between tiny lifeforms that should be in the body and tiny lifeforms that shouldn't be in the body all that well. Usually focusing on relieving the symptoms offered some relief and took strain off the body, but attempting to directly treat an illness was very hit-or-miss. A lot of medical treatment when it came to these areas relied on meager institutional knowledge in the time since the Warring Clans period and traditions inherited from one's ancestors.

Pharmacology in particular wasbextremely spotty, superficially resembling eastern medicine from my previous life, butfarmore effective than I remember it being which I accredited to 'something-something-natural chakra in the herbs.' But any given drug that wasn't used in combat tended to have a not-insignificant chance of failure.

The issue with Yakumo's case was some what more complex, sadly.

The information contained in the girl's medical files attested to the fact that the Elemental Nations had a kind of rudimentary form of genetic testing that focused on bloodline traits, parentage, and a few other key factors. When one understood how important those factors could be in terms of internal and external politics, it wasn't too surprising. The complicated part came when you read between the lines a little and realized that while the medical establishment properly understood heritage, they didn't actually understand anythingabout genetics.

So when someone had a medical condition that mysteriously recurred, they knew what to expect, but not why it occurred.

I opened my eyes and stared at Yakumo. Her eyes were unnaturally yellow and her skin sickly pale. There were sketches of her blood particles on file, too. Specifically, her red blood cells. When I'd seen those, it had clicked.

"I can't get you ready to graduate in four months." I stated unceremoniously, abruptly stopping the drumming of my fingers. Her shoulders drooped, then stiffened as she realized what I'd implied. I sighed and nodded. "Sixteen months? I might be able to do that." I raised a hand as she started to speak. "The catch is that I'm going to teach you taijutsu, not genjutsu."

Yakumo snorted, scowling at me in surprise as she gestured to the folder in front of me. "If you read that, you know I'm not going to be able to do it. I can manage maybe an hour or two of form practice before the pain gets too bad to continue."

I sighed and shook my head. "When you say 'genjutsu,' someone who has no idea what that means assumes you're just talking about techniques that scare people, right?"

Yakumo's face turned fierce. "I hate it when my classmates do that. Genjutsu is so much more than that! It-"

"-is a complex and subtle art that can ensnare any or all of your senses and manipulate enemies." I paraphrased from the textbook, quieting her. "What barely anyone understands, though, is that there are just as many and nuanced techniques in the physical arts as there are in the illusionary ones."

Her brows furrowed in unspoken disbelief and I sighed as I extended my left hand. "Take it and feel my joints. I want to show you something." Her frown turned quizzical and her cold fingertips brushed the back of my hand, a symptom of poor circulation. I took a deep breath, and flexed my muscles in a way that popped the first joint of my finger out as Yakumo took in a shocked breath. Then the second joint, and the third. Then the next finger's first joint, second, third. Soon enough, each and every finger joint was dangling loosely.

Yakumo looked up at me with wide and terrified eyes only to see my blank expression. "Taijutsu is more than punching an enemy. Where genjutsu controls others' bodies, taijutsu is the control ofthe user'sbody. I control when I feel fear, when I feel pain, how the blood in my veins flows." I flexed again, beginning to pull the joints back in place, the process only taking a handful of seconds under Yakumo's unwavering gaze.

"Th-that's... I've never heard someone explain it like that." Yakumo swallowed.

"Sixteen months might not be enough time to teach you what you need to know." I stated, looking her dead in the eye. "It'll be tight, but you might be able to do it."

Yakumo grimaced, but nodded, then smirked. "Teach me, sensei."

I glared at the girl. "Let's start out with how to relieve muscle cramps."

The amusement in her eyes faded almost immediately.

…

"Shunshin?" Obito asked, frowning at me. "That's all you want?"

I shrugged. "It's useful."

"Yeah," he nodded slowly, still frowning, "but don't you want, like... some big fire technique or to learn to shoot lightning or something?"

I shook my head. "The body-flicker is fine."

Obito crossed his arms and shook his head in disbelief. "Ugh... yeah, okay, I can teach you that. I guess." He stopped and his frown turned into a scowl. "But first... I gotta' apologize."

I raised an eyebrow at Uchiha Obito. "I wouldn't understand why, jounin-san."

Obito winced as I kept my face and tone carefully blank. Turning away from me, he looked around the clearing he'd asked me to meet him in and scratched the back of his head in awkward embarrassment. Honestly I was just happy that two weeks after the party, the call to pay back his offered 'prize' of a jutsu hadn't come with an ambush by a squad of ninja to carry me off to Ibiki. Instead, it had only been a napping jounin waiting for me at the designated time and place.

He sighed. "Okay, look, I'm sorry I pushed you into a corner like that, alright kid?" He paused, ducking his head and spreading his arms in a gesture of surrender. "Kushina-oba is really riding my ass about being rude to one of her guests. I just..."

The words hung in the air for a moment before he sighed again and dropped back onto the fallen tree he'd been napping on when I'd walked up.

I waited, not saying anything as he obviously searched for words before looking me in the eye. "Okay, you know what? I'm just going to come out and say it. You're really weird, you know that, right?"

I blinked at him, cocking my head as I controlled my facial tics. Shrugging, I nodded minutely. "You wouldn't be the first to say it to me."

Obito snapped his fingers, not-quite-glaring at me. "That! Right there! A normal kid would get angry or frustrated or something. What's with that?"

I stopped, frowning at the older man and considering the question. Judging by the fact that I hadn't been abducted by a group of ninja and shoved in a cell... could it really be that this was just somepersonal crusade for Obito? Kushina wouldn't have been irritated if he'd explained that this was for the security of the village, would she? Then again, she might have beenmore soif it looked as though Obito was using Naruko as some kind of lure for me, though that didn't track with how honest her micro-expressions seemed during the party and the Uzumaki weren't exactly famous for being able to conceal their emotions...

If I go too far down the rabbit-hole here, the only obvious conclusion will be that I'm already in the Eternal Tsukuyomi and nothing I do matters.

So my choice is whether to trust that Obito is genuinely a decent person who wants to do right by me as long as I'm not a danger to him and his loved ones... or that this is all an enormous double-think ninja mind game that could be bypassed by dragging me in for interrogation.

When in doubt, trust in Occam?

I reached up and scratched at my chin idly. "Uchiha-san... if I actually give you honest answers to your questions... will you leave me alone after this?"

The ninja grimaced and looked away, apparently uncomfortable with how forthrightly I'd addressed his stalking of me. "Ugh... you make it sound like I'm picking on a child or something."

I, very pointedly, said nothing.

Obito winced again, then rubbed at his face. "I can't promise, but depending on the answers I hear and you being honest, yeah, that can happen." He rolled his hand around in a vague way and repeated himself. "It's just... you're a weird kid. You act like a ninja, you know?" I blinked in mild surprise. "You've got thislook, like you're primed for something to happen wherever you go, even when you look like you're at ease. It's something you only see in ninja that have a few years field experience under their belt or someone who went through hell."

Prana-Bindu, but I can work with this...

I nodded slowly, then moved to his side and, after gesturing to the empty stretch of log, he nodded and I sat. "If you don't mind me asking, Uchiha-san... how old are you?"

Obito blinked, pursing his lips for a moment. "Twenty-five, what's that got to do with-"

I waved him off. "But are you twenty-five? Really? Do you have twenty-five years of memories?" Obito looked at me speculatively. "I'd guess that most people start making permanent memories around age six or seven." I paused. "Barring specific incidents like a broken bone in your early childhood or something."

"Yeah, okay. I can see where you're going with that." Obito drummed his fingers on the log and stared up at the sky for a moment. "That tracks... I think I can remember my mom singing to me back when I was five or so, but I might be just imagining it." He huffed a laugh. "Heh, I've never thought about it like that." He turned to me with a curious look. "So how long do you..."

I stared back at him, eye-to-eye. "Eleven. All eleven years. Almost twelve now."

Obito jerked his head back in surprise.

"Not... every minute or anything like that." I explained slowly, looking away and off into the foliage. "But I remember straight back to being born. It probably has something to do with the way my chakra system is messed up." The truth, yes, but not the way he would take it.

"Huh... okay, that's weird, but how does that-" Obito cut himself off abruptly, his eyes subtly widening and I was pathetically grateful I didn't have to actually spell it out for him. Even now I prefer to lie to myself about those earliest memories, using the neuro-chemical control my advanced lessons in prana-bindu leant me to cloud them andforget, at least for a time.

Yeah, I'd taken prana-bindu so deeply 'just to see what happens,' sure... not because that third expenditure allowed me to stop waking up in cold sweats, or because the fourth allowed me to fully tame my nightmares...

"So you remember..." Obito began and, abruptly, a flash of red death and flames overtook me and I wasback there, being held in a dead woman's arms. Then it was gone, as if it had never been. Even as hard as I pushed, I was still human, and the Uchiha saw my flinch and the instinctive tightening of my fists. He closed his eyes and looked away. "Sorry."

For a moment, there was silence between us.

Obito sighed, then, breaking the short tableau. "Can I ask... is that why you don't want to be a ninja?" He paused, running a hand through his hair. "I mean, I know this is probably insensitive as fuck and everything, but I feel like I should go ahead and ask if you really want me to leave you alone, right?"

I grimaced and pondered how much I should tell him. "Do you remember your time at the academy?" When he nodded, I continued. "Since we're being insensitive, do you mind if I ask how many of the people in your age group are dead?"

Obito flinched as if struck, something angry and hateful flashing over his face as he narrowed his gaze at me. "Yeah, actually. I do mind."

I nodded, feeling a vague gust of what might be killing intent on the wind. "If you could go back and try to get them to train more, to push their skills to get stronger, would you?" I asked quietly, remembering the faces of the students I had shared a classroom with. As Obito frowned in regret, I sighed. "And do you think they would listen to you? When you told an eight-nine-ten year old that they were going to die if they didn't practice their taijutsu another hour each day? Or push themselves to focus on chakra control just a little longer? Would they thank you for the advice, would they listen to you, or would they just think you were a teacher's pet and a suck-up and no fun? Then go off and play a stupid game that you weren't invited to because you're a weird kid."

I told you that you wouldn't have been the first to call me that.

The residual anger that had clung to Obito's face faded now, to be replaced by something like sympathy and pity, things I had no use for.

"When Itachi-san asked, I told him I don't want to kill people." I stated, looking off into the forest surrounding our tiny clearing. "And that was the truth, but only part of it. The other part is that I can't take knowing that the people who become my friends are going to die because they're children who don't understand death, won't train as hard as they should when their lives will be on the line one day, and I won't be able to save them because I'm barely able to be a ninja myself."

My eyes burned, but I refused to cry.

"The girl Tenten, Satsuki, Naruko..." Obito trailed off. "You're giving them extra training." His voice had the breathy quality of an epiphany and I nodded to confirm his guess.

"They want to improve, they jump at every chance. Even with how little I've known Naruko..." I trailed off, shrugging. She hadn't asked for too much, yes, but she had wanted to know what I'd done to those thugs in the alley, and that had stretched into a longer and more in-depth discussion on taijutsu. She was picking up bits and pieces of the Weirding Way to add to Uzu's Whirling Fist style, but wasn't suitable for the art as a whole.

There is something I know she could use, but it's so brutally dangerous I don't think I can justify teaching it to someone with her temperament.

Yet, at least.

Obito inhaled deeply and stood, pacing with some nervous energy. "Okay, that was depressing as hell and I'm sorry I ever asked."

"There are reasons I don't usually talk about these things." I stared at him blankly, because he had asked.

"I hope this doesn't uncover another hidden explosive tag, but… what about the swords? Any explanation for those?" Obito asked with a frown.

I shrugged minutely, glad to be away from heavier topics. "That's like adding two and two to get four for me. I like swords, I wanted to make sure I could use them because my chakra is so weak. That's it."

A bit of a bluff, but if he'd believed me so far and I think he had, then it wasn't beyond belief I could do something like this.

He raised his hands up. "Fine. Makes just as much sense as anything else today.." Sighing, he nodded to himself. "Okay, yeah, that answers pretty much everything I never actually wanted to know. Whatever-" He turned away, muttering something about 'crippled traumatized genius' that I wasn't supposed to hear. "-anyway, word of advice, kid." He stated, turning back to me. "What you're doing now isn't anything super special and with Aunt Mikoto and Aunt Kushina knowing who you are you'll have a bit of wiggle room, especially if you can help that poor little Yakumo, but try to keep your head down with your skills, okay? You're weird, but tolerably weird as long as no one with a kunai to grind notices. You make too much noise or draw attention to yourself and... well, best case it's just hard for a shinobi to ignore a puzzle until they've solved it."

"I'm beginning to understand." I commented dryly.

Obito snorted and looked like he wanted to correct me, then shook his head. "Anyway, there aren't any laws or anything about a civilian having shinobi training, especially since it'd be impossible to enforce." He sounded as though he was thinking aloud now, rather than actually speaking to me. "Between shinobi who have to file section two for injury, section three for mental instability, and the rare ones who section-eight'd for old age there are probably at least a couple hundred inactive or retired ninja with full training, effectively civilians legally-speaking. The only thing strange here is that he's never been on the active roster, just the academy rolls, but plenty of the civilians are half-trained and there's no law that says youhave towear the headband if you're capable unless we're actively at war..."

Obito sawed his head side to side as he mentally chewed on the issue while I raised an eyebrow. "You seem to know quite a bit about this."

He shook his head. "Nah, just a bunch of stuff I picked up from doing paperwork for the Military Police. It can get kind of tricky when you're dealing with prosecuting edge-cases and whether someone who failed out of the academy in their last year should get an interrogation and tribunal or questioning and put before a magistrate." He turned and pointed at me. "Since anyone who does any kind of digging will figure out you know your shit, you'd definitely get a tribunal so I'd say try really fucking hard not to break the law."

I nodded gravely. "Noted."

Cracking his knuckles, Obito nodded. "Alright, that's basically all the advice I have for you. Still want to learn that technique?"