"I see..." a trainee monk nodded his head with an affirming conviction.

"So am I going to become an awesome ninja monk?" Meiko wondered. She opened her eyes, got out of her slouched and tense stance, and bent her arms up in excitement as she awaited the answer of the helpful trainee monk whom she was having a blast training with so far.

"At this rate, you will merely move all your effort through your bowels and right into your underwear. In my entire life, I have not met a single person with as little reception to the Gift of the Hermits as you, Meiko." The trainee admitted with a shake of his head, about as confident as his previous nod.

Meiko's hands weighed down and she slouched her entire body in disappointment.

"Do not fret, young lady. While Kirume's words are harsh, they are truthful. They do not wish you harm, they merely wish to tell you that this path is not for you." Another trainee monk stepped in, trying to brighten Meiko's mood.

"Asaruda is right. It is sometimes a good thing to know which things are not worth wasting one's time on. One thing is sure, spend a hundred or a thousand years on this and that time will be wasted." Kirume corrected his own words by elaborating on their context as well.

"Oh, yes. In fact, your connection to the Gift of the Hermit is so loose that it may be proper to inform elder Seishiri of this." Asaruda raised a point and his index finger to gesticulate his suggestion.

"A fair idea. Perhaps this revelation means that the connection of humans to the Gift of the Hermits is slipping in general with each passing generation. It is a matter worth looking into on someone's pilgrimage." Kirume scratched his chin.

"Pilegremage? What is that exactly? I think I've heard that word but…" Meiko scratched her own head in confusion. She was not glad hearing that the Gift of the Hermits was forever outside her reach but the sentiments of the monks did make sense as well. At least it told her right where to focus her efforts.

"Oh, it has plenty of different meanings. That may be why you are confused thusly. Our trainees leave on a pilgrimage to investigate certain matters, such as this one, or on a mission they must complete. It is the final task one has to accomplish before becoming a real ninja monk." Asaruda explained.

"Oh well, either way, I guess I can train in solitude now." Meiko shrugged finally putting the matter of this Gift of the Hermits to rest.

"Oh? Perhaps we have been somewhat harsh on you with our words. Forgive our rudeness and allow us to aid you with your own training, Meiko." Kirume nodded his head submissively while Asaruda rushed off to speak to the elder monks.

"Do you know anything about imbuing weapons with chakra?" Meiko squinted one eye in suspicion. Given their diet and weird training, the blacksmith felt quite skeptical about their odd approach to everything. The two simply appeared too different for them to be able to help each other at all.

"Why certainly!" Kirume smiled, extending his hand aside as if asking his fellow trainees to toss him a weapon. Within moments, a battle-worn and bloodied staff was tossed at him and at the very instance of it touching the monk's fingertips it ignited with blue, neutral chakra-colored glow.

"I… I would like to learn that. I was practicing for too long and I just cannot do it." Meiko admitted. She dragged her arm over an armor piece and pulled out the aid weapon of her father that was supposed to help make mastering the technique easier.

"Hmmm… It is a moderate difficulty technique. If you have so much trouble with it, perhaps you simply do not belong on this step and must tread backward to learn the lessons you have skipped?" Kirume closed his eyes.

The monk charged at Meiko with exceptional speed. The blacksmith did not take her eyes off of her opponent for a moment and was in the midst of raising her sword to defend against her opponent. That was when she recalled that non-imbued weapons have no chance to survive even the weakest clashes with imbued weapons. The blacksmith leaned aside, gently and swiftly she danced around, to the sides, over and under the staff, no matter how fast or skillfully she was attacked.

"Oh, in terms of armed combat you have me completely beat!" Kirume admitted. The man stopped in mid thrusting motion when he realized that any kind of assault on Meiko would be fruitless in his current level. "Your speed is also remarkable. You certainly cannot lack the strength of your chakra to imbue your weapon. It must be a spiritual element that trips you over."

"That was the least mean thing you told me today." Meiko grinned like a little monkey.

"Sometimes being angry and wishing to prove oneself above the mean things said about them is what drives a person beyond their self-imposed limits. It is a fruitful approach to training, I found in my experience." Kirume nodded before stepping out of his staff-wielding stance and tossing the weapon off his hands and into a steel ring that held all the staves in the room. Right after leaving his touch, the blue flame coating the staff diminished and faded away like all oxygen was taken from an ordinary flame.

"I thought it might be a spiritual thing… It usually is with me." Meiko grunted, feeling a bit hateful towards how sloppy she was. "I always had trouble with ninjutsu, even the basic ones. Took weeks for me to learn what others mastered in days."

"It takes remarkable willpower not to kill oneself when one fails so much at such simple things." Kirume nodded as if what he had just said was in any way similar in terms of wisdom as the things he said to encourage Meiko in a more psychologically healthy manner before.

"When I met Mana she felt bad for me. She wouldn't admit but I saw it, she felt bad seeing me change whenever I failed at all those things so she took me in and trained me but… She never finished that training. She said that I could pick up the pieces and complete the training by myself at that point but… What does that mean? I'm not like her. I did not get promoted like she did." Meiko sighed and fell on her bottom in despair.


"Meiko…" Mana muttered softly.

"Let me finish my story, maybe?" Meiko shouted out, just barely managing to muster up the restraint to not smack her friend.


"Do you think this Mana person is smart, do you respect her?" Kirume bent his head to the side, almost like a puppy wondering just what he was looking at. He never bothered to open his eyes. He must have been meditating while he mentored Meiko. That was how little effort she must have been worth.

"Sure. I know she considers me her best friend and I really do respect her. She accepted me as a friend so simply. Crossed halfway across the world just to make me happy, saved my life a whole bunch of times… She was the only one of our team to get promoted too." Meiko smiled, looking like a shy schoolgirl telling her friend about her first love.

"Then what right have you to doubt her word?" Kirume scolded the redhead. "She said she was done with you, pick yourself up and do the rest by yourself."

"I tried." Meiko stood back up and picked her father's sword back to her hands. "On our way here we got attacked by a bunch of bandits. I tried believing every bit of Mana's words. That I was ready, that I could do it by myself and I really did believe it but… The sword just did not ignite. Not even an aid sword, I can't even ride with the training saddle on."

"Riding when one knows how to ride is overrated. It is just fun and games at that point, almost no challenge. True character is built by one who sits on an animal despite not knowing how to ride, with the will to learn it." Kirume cut Meiko down again.

"Can you maybe talk more about that cliché wisdom kind of thing and not about how I should kill myself? It kind of helps more…" Meiko grinned with blushed cheeks.

"When trying to look for faults, it is wisest to start from the beginning. Why do you want to learn this exact technique? You look strong and fast, you may achieve greater heights studying taijutsu, you know." The trainee monk wondered.

"It's just… During the Chuunin Exams, I've met this young man who was much like me. He wore a sick suit of armor and when we talked a little he told me of an interesting technique he had in his head that he just couldn't pull off. He said it may be right up my alley, both of our alleys really." Meiko recalled.

"How so?"

"Well, because we have similar backgrounds. Both of us were looked down on and both of us developed similar quirks and fighting styles. Except he has a really cool armor and I took the assignment a bit different direction… Still, the concept was so dreamy that no sane ninja with an assortment of rational techniques available to them would even attempt to pick them up." Meiko explained.

"I don't believe that chakra imbuement was the technique but… I do not feel like that is the point." Kirume shook his head.

"True. It's just that at that moment we connected a bit. He nailed right how I felt." Meiko sighed.

"Your feelings. What were they at that moment, this may be the key!" Kirume opened his eyes. The monk looked truly invested in Meiko's success. His own spiritual training success depended on his ability to help her. Or so it appeared.

"Well… My whole time training and working with Mana and everyone she gathered around her everyone looked at me as this weird monster. I guess I was not too different from Hanasaku-sensei in her own youth. I always took on the craziest opponents and I always survived the impossible odds but I was not the smartest person around, I let the others call the faces I needed to punch."

Meiko took a brief pause to catch her breath. The excitement that quickly turned to bitterness from when she spoke to Masen-Z in the caves returned.

"Then, at some point, I saw the people who were admiring me from down below step up and pass me by. It probably no longer matters how tough or fast I am, Kiyomi is pretty good at martial arts herself to make my strength work against me and Mana has so much chakra that she could most likely match me through using it all on augmenting herself… I felt so… Useless and…"

"Jealous," Kirume finished Meiko's sentence. "It would be wise to reflect on your feelings and realize if you were jealous. Lying to yourself and struggling with your own psyche may just have created the schism that causes you to become unable to ignite your sword."

"B-But that would be selfish…" Meiko looked down, at that moment she probably despised herself more than she ever did, even in her lowest moments.

"It would be what it would be. Selfish honesty sometimes makes you more spiritually at peace with yourself than trying to deny your own flaws. Accept that a part of your motivation is a selfish rivalry with your peers, do not take pride in it but accept it. Then, you shall succeed at finally being at peace with yourself." Kirume advised.

Meiko could, at long last, lift her eyes up, she no longer felt embarrassed because, somehow, Kirume made that which she felt embarrassed about feeling less worth being embarrassed over.


"Did Seishiro-san perhaps know who those people who attacked us were?" Waiso wondered while Team Hokage prepared to set off on their way the next morning.

"Seishiro does not keep a Bingo Book. Mine is a different edition and it does not have any of their faces recorded in it. I would not really know about them unless they were someone really world-threatening." Hanasaku shook her head.

"I suppose we can just stalk the paths leading up to the western black market point and capture a team of rogues heading there, assume their likenesses and hit it," Waiso suggested after finding out that they had no information about their attackers still.

"No way. We'll attack the place head-on and kill every criminal there." Kiyomi disagreed. "We've already given the criminals with the Uchiha body enough time."

"It's a very arrogant plan, Kiyomi, you do realize that you and Meiko struggled against two rogue ninja of unclear ranking in their group. If it is a large black market sale being hosted, as all clues would incline to make us believe, there may be dozens upon dozens of rogues gathering there." Waiso tried to reason with his teammate.

"Hanasaku-sensei is with us. She's a weapon of mass destruction and her reputation will scare away any weaklings." Meiko shrugged. "I also feel like just rushing ahead and hitting the point hard."

"Will you even fight this time?" Waiso turned at the Sannin annoyed.

"Sure. There is a reason why I was included in this squad. Sixth intended me to see some action at one point or another…" Hanasaku shrugged.

"Alright." Waiso agreed, perhaps a bit more suddenly than Kiyomi had expected him to. "If Hanasaku-sensei will fight with us, we can go ahead and rush it."

The snow-covered leaves blitzed past the view of the four ninja that traveled across the treetops to the west. The Team Hokage rushed straight to the black market point to interrupt the seemingly quite large meeting that was about to take place there. They would not do it to interrupt any shady dealings that usually transpired in such meetings, their mission was just a single Uchiha body, ideally, just their Sharingan eyes. The ninja traveled like lightning bolts yet they were quiet enough to not topple the snow on the branches. Had anyone walked underneath the treetops, they'd have not even noticed anyone having been up above them, to begin with…

"Hey, do you think those eyes will still be useful to Konoha? I mean the Uchiha is dead already…" Meiko raised a point.

"If we were sent out after them, that means they will be. There must be a time frame where transplanting those eyes is still possible." Kiyomi wondered about that herself.

"Not necessarily. If these rogues know what they are doing, they can preserve certain organs or body areas with a preservation seal. If any of them ever had Shinigami or Sin Eater training, they'd be able to place such a thing." Waiso answered.

"I see, so that is why there was no time limit imposed on us…" Hanasaku muttered.

"Isn't it kind of odd how we know exactly where the black market deal is going to take place? You'd think that if a village knew of such a location where dead bodies can be bought and sold on the black market, it would shut such a place down…" Meiko looked ahead with grim eyes.

"And risk losing the valuable information of where the criminals are trading their stuff? Once in a while, the knowledge of the black market points helps capture someone really important, that makes it worth letting all the small-time dealings slide." Waiso was of a different point of view. "You seem like you would agree, Kiyomi?"

"If it was up to me, I'd just keep on toppling every black market point as they rise up. Kill every criminal using it as well as the dealer." The Yamanaka replied.

"She's not very fond of criminals." Meiko grimaced with a massive smile.

"I noticed," Waiso noted.


The black market point looked just like your usual abandoned building. Located in a clearing of the massive forests that covered almost the entire Fire Country, it was perhaps a bit better preserved than most abandoned buildings but overall it reminded of a small educational building, maybe one of those schools in Konoha that taught various very specific skills for a little bit of money. Education was as much of a business opportunity for civilians than anything else.

A curious group with some familiar faces was standing about. A little dark skinned girl with a flowery headband and an overly colored coat that reminded of a bad trip. The two that had attacked Kiyomi and Meiko were present, albeit in much different and more combat-ready gear and outfits, a very skeletal and pale looking man with baggy clothing and bags for eyes as well as a very goofy puffed out haircut. One that attracted the most attention was a fatso standing behind the group because he'd have not fit with the others if standing in the line.

"Something's wrong. There are no other criminals. Just this group." Waiso noticed.

"Perhaps after finding out what these guys brought him, the dealer made this a private party." Kiyomi guessed.

"That's where the body of the Uchiha must be." Meiko pointed at a man with a poncho who stood in the center of the group with a large scroll on his back.

"You guys think you can handle those two you took on previously?" Hanasaku wondered.

"Sure," Meiko nodded.

"I think my training in the Fire Temple was quite productive. I'm not quite like I was before." Kiyomi replied.

Despite their confidence, both girls were quite serious. Waiso did not even attempt at bringing up how they could have just gotten overly confident given their performance last time. Looking at their eyes it would have been clear that both knew it would still be a tough fight but both felt like they had something they lacked previously. Even a simple look at the two could have told that these two weren't quite the same girls that left the village, it was like they were in control over their bodies and emotions much more.

"Waiso?" Hanasaku looked at the Sin Eater.

"I'm going to hide here." The boy replied. "I prefer working with dead bodies, not ones that are fighting back, thank you very much."

"Alright. Let's go!" Hanasaku issued an order, all three kunoichi disappeared from their last known positions, choosing to attack the enemy head-on as their style of approach was.