"I can't believe you actually went on and gave it a shot," Kiyomi said. Meiko showing her face at the Standby Station and asking around for Hanshin didn't just impress her, everyone she asked was just as impressed.

"Yeah, well… Fat good it did me. That jerk's out on some mission and nobody even told me where." Meiko sighed. "They probably don't even know. I bet that's what it's like to be on that level, you're out changing the world and nobody even knows where you are and what you're doing."

"You gave it a shot, that's more than most people commit to." Kiyomi shrugged.

"You treated me to lunch that time, pretty much bullied me into it, you meanie. You know that I never say no to free food…" Meiko beamed red lightning bolts at her friend.

"You're the one to complain, I'm the one paying up twice, aren't I?" Kiyomi raised an eyebrow. It was true that she was buying again. Even if she was the heiress of the Yamanaka clan, every time she paid for Meiko's lunch she applied respectable pressure on her sizeable wallet. It was because of that reason that it wasn't every day that Kiyomi treated her teammate to lunch, it was a special occasion, though, as Meiko has already caught on, it was also a switch to have the redhead completely under her control as well.

"Why are you all dressed up? You don't have any missions? Do you plan on getting into a fight on our way to Yakiniku?" Meiko pressed her knuckles to her hips while beaming back at Kiyomi with a worried look. For a complete oaf that she was, even she noticed Kiyomi's attire which suited for combat.

"Maybe I'm just planning on doing some training later on?" Kiyomi looked away with a flush of red on her cheeks and a squint that tried to hide away her nerves and replace them with an attempt to look angry. "You should try it too, your opponent might not be on the caliber of mine but it's not enough to just win, you've got to excel. It also wouldn't help if you dressed up right at least once…"

Meiko looked away as well, although she did so without a worry in her eyes, there was not a hint of defensiveness of leaving her home in a red shirt with edgy manga supervillain etched onto her chest in white scribbles.

Yakiniku Q was full at the time of the early evening, there was little surprise there when one thought about it though both of the girls were used to see it significantly emptier. Both of them realized something that scolded them deep down – with a large attraction being gone from the village, vacating a whole handful of everybody's free time, people found other ways to entertain themselves.

Meiko rushed to the nearest open seat and dropped her behind with an air-raid like slam. Without waiting for a special welcome, she rubbed her hand and flapped her tongue around like a wild dog. Her eyes scrolled through the menu as if looking for something, switching in between the childlike wonder of a toddler in a candy store and a hardcore war veteran scanning the battlefield for his next victim. Kiyomi just couldn't pull her eyes away from her partner, despite how silly she was acting and the supposed embarrassment she was mean to feel by merely being with her.

"I think this Choji guy, who's a friend of Naruto's, mentioned that they've brought over forty-eight new gyutan recipes over from their universe in exchange for three of ours. I wonder which one we should try first!?" Meiko slammed the menu down on the table and beamed her eyes at Kiyomi while she explained something she clearly felt passionate about and then returned to her menu, taking extra time to return back to the spot she was at before slamming it onto the table, suggesting that just dropping it was not such a bright idea in retrospect.

"I'm sure you'll try them all anyway…" Kiyomi shrugged and slipped off her black jacket off her shoulders. She was glad that Meiko felt so overjoyed, it took a whole bunch of time and effort for the Yamanaka to muster up and gather the vitality to break down to her friend what she suckered Meiko in here to tell her so it was for the better that the blacksmith didn't even approach the territory of boredom while Kiyomi got herself together.

"I will? Awww, you're being way too nice!" Meiko pumped the air with a fist, looking all too oblivious to any possible nefarious purposes that Kiyomi might have had, softening the blow with free and plentiful food.

Should she have just gone on and told her? Break it down and be done with it? If it flies, it flies and then maybe Kiyomi will feel overjoyed too and maybe even stomach eating one of those salted cow tongues herself? No. If it doesn't fly, everyone's evening will be ruined, she couldn't think about ever looking Meiko in the eyes after saying it and then just… Being rejected.

Damn this brick wall of a person! Never has Meiko expressed any significant signs of affection toward anything living. Not a drool over a pretty guy or a curious flush on her cheeks when a pretty girl spoke to her, not a hint which way she swung. This obliviousness… It made it just that more difficult, a secondary enemy to confront on the lines. Meiko spoke how Kiyomi dressed up for a mission and, for all intents and purposes, this was like a mission, hell, she hadn't felt butterflies such as those she felt right now when her life was at threat since she was a newbie just out of the Academy.

Kiyomi stretched out her hands and unzipped the collar of her sleeveless top some, just to let some air in, make herself feel more comfortable. She needed to just ease it out, wait for the right moment, just when it felt natural… It was just a normal thing to say, admittedly, a bit odd thing for a girl to say to another girl perhaps but… People said and did those things, it was nothing unusual. It was fine. It was fine!

The waitress approached. Thank goodness for her. That hardworking scout, totally oblivious to the role she was playing in Kiyomi's mission tanked all of the attention of that red-headed brute all on herself and even made Meiko more excited by engaging her in the subject she enjoyed – food. Then again, so did Kiyomi, right? She did buy Meiko food, this was just a show of good faith, why would her teammate ever get mad at her for saying it how it was? She shouldn't, she wouldn't…

"So, how's your training? You ready to kick the ass of Naruto's best friend yet?" Meiko winked at Kiyomi while bobbing and spinning around on her bottom in her armchair.

"Can we maybe not talk about training tonight?" Kiyomi faked a smile. Even though a sign of Meiko's face made her happy, she was far too nervous to make it real.

"I mean… Okay, sheesh… I wasn't aware it was that bad. I can still help you, you know…" Meiko shrugged and leaned back to flip her head back and observe the people behind her and what they were eating while she waited.

"It's not going that bad. It's just… I need one thing out of the way before I decide which direction I take my training, that's all!" Kiyomi may have made it sound a bit more uneasy than she meant it. For someone that whimpered the word "normal" in her mind at least 350 times the last couple of minutes, she was sounding like anything but that.

"Okay, fine… I get it, it's just, you got yourself dressed up for action so I thought maybe you're in the hyperactive action-girl mood or something…" Meiko shrugged after ceasing the straining of her neck and wrapped her arms over her chest while she tapped her feet waiting for her food. "Man, that smell… I can almost taste the onion!"

Hoping that Kiyomi could put anything in her mouth with her gut burning up the way it was might have been the most foolish thing she had ever thought. After the fourth time to put a chop of the cow tongue in her mouth, the deposited the chunk of meat back in the plate and gently pushed it forward up to the line where Meiko splashed the grease off of her servings while going to town on her pork.

"Hmph? What's wrong? Maybe you're sick?" Meiko found Kiyomi's odd behavior to be an excuse to not chew her food and just swallow it down, leaving it up for the grease to take the food on its fated journey through her digestive tract while the blacksmith stood up and leaned over her friend to place her hand over Kiyomi's forehead.

Even if the Yamanaka heiress did not have a single sign of a fever when she walked in the restaurant, with Meiko pressing her hand up this close, it was hopeless to try and fight it off. Kiyomi flailed her hands about and pushed Meiko back to her seat before placing her hands down on her hips and looking down. It was time, she had pushed and postponed it as long as it could have been pushed but it was time that she got herself together and taken charge. Shot from the hip and accepted the consequences.

"Look, before I tell you this, I just want to make sure that I don't want this to change anything about our relationship. You're still my most trusted ally on the field and somebody whose friendship I value more than anyone else's, okay?" Kiyomi moved the bothersome strand of hair falling over her face when she looked down, one that gone wild after she slapped around with Meiko.

"Umm… I mean… Okay…" Meiko scratched the back of her head, submerging her hand in her lengthened helm of hair while looking all too confused about what might have been coming her way. "You're not gonna admit to pulling some crime off, are you?"

"No, nothing like that… Wait, how dare you!?" Kiyomi jumped up before realizing that this outrage did nothing to help her case, prompting her to sit back down and break her offended posture far sooner than it was proper to do so, given that she needed to engage Meiko quickly before she returned to her food. "It's just that… There's something I need to tell you. The Chuunin Exams they'll… It'll be an end of something, a part of our lives and I'd rather meet that end having closed all the chapters, do you understand?"

"I don't think so but keep going, maybe I'll get what you're saying eventually?" Meiko shook her head but her kinship with Kiyomi warranted all of her patience being employed.

"Very well." Kiyomi nodded, she took a breath in and exhaled. It was the calmest that she's been that day and likely the calmest she'd get. It was either shoot now or miss the chance. "M-Meiko… For the longest time, I've had a crush on you. No. It's more than just a crush. I like you. No. That's not enough to make you understand… I love you, Meiko. I love you more than just a friend and I've been trying to show it, sometimes come as close to saying it as I could without outright saying it to your face but… You were too oblivious to see and I was too cowardly to do it right. It might be selfish, dropping this on you."

"Selfish? How so? You bought me food?" Meiko mumbled out with a face as oafish as the one she had when she started listening to Kiyomi spilling her guts out to her.

"Can you maybe just? It's been hard enough as it is…" Kiyomi almost begged Meiko to finish her off already.

"Hmm? Oh… Well… Sorry, I'm just not really looking for a relationship right now," the blacksmith grinned with a pulse of onion breath slamming Kiyomi right in the face. It was a detestable sensory tick that helped Kiyomi deal with the burn. Helped her repurpose her thoughts, lie to herself for a second that she could never love somebody with breath that stinky but… It was just her trying to stuff her guts back in at this point.

"That's it? You're not looking for a relationship right now?" Kiyomi exhaled while trying to unveil something that she thought she'd have to deal with underneath Meiko's shroud but something that she just couldn't find right now.

"Sure, did I say something dumb? Nah, it seems like a pretty normal thing to say…" Meiko placed a chopstick to her cheek, scrubbing grease and some spices over it before shrugging it off again.

"It's not weird to you at all that I'm telling you about this?" Kiyomi wondered, now feeling more curious than heartbroken.

"Well…" Meiko looked up and to the right, tapping her cheek with a chopstick again before intensifying her thoughts to bang on the table as if she was wielding drumsticks and, after finishing her energetic solo with one mighty tap, she shook her head. "Nah…"

"Right…" Kiyomi looked to the people having a good time along with their friends on her left and deeper in the restaurant. It had never occurred to her that the same oblivion which made Meiko indifferent to Kiyomi's advances might have made it easier for her to deal with the unorthodox confession and made it easier to swallow that pill which made her clan elders a tad uneasy when Kiyomi felt rebellious enough to let its rear peek from a corner in their presence.

A growl rumbled from her stomach. Now that she had that out of the way, she could finally have something to eat. One final breath to wash all of the worries away, a genuine smile to shut the door behind them so that they forgot the place they came from in the first place and found someone better to plague. The butterflies were gone, burnt up by the flame they rushed to maybe but…

Kiyomi hadn't noticed before how nice the leather of the armchairs felt to brush her hand over, so cool and nice. The smell of Welsh onion in the air took some getting used to but… The warmth and the cozy atmosphere would not let go of her easily that evening.


"Niece, I did not expect you here, not to mention at this hour…" the supermassive frame of Kiyomi's uncle loomed in his throne. The colossal man sat up to gaze upon his niece to take a better look at something he hadn't noticed before. It might have been something he's been looking for since she voiced her resolve to become a kunoichi but something that only showed itself in her eyes right now. "Hmmm? What's this?"

"Clearly, given how you just projected yourself to me after making me wait for fifteen minutes." Kiyomi raised her chin with a challenging gesture. "This thing you see right now is resolve. You've mentioned that the key to using your jutsu in materializing the mind is willpower. You'll find that I've settled all my matters and I've got that in spades now."

"Is that so?" Kiyomi's uncle reached out his town-spanning hand at her, he grabbed hold of her just a few twitches away from squeezing her and lifted her up only to flex his arm. Kiyomi's eyes widened in shock when an invisible barrier, a thin membrane shattered to countless pieces that disappeared into shapeless fragments of mere thought constructs they were before.

"How did…?" Kiyomi muttered.

"You thought you've had resolve, did you? Let me tell you something, brat, you wouldn't know the first thing about willpower. Tell me, what is your will truly worth? You've said that you'll kill every criminal for what they've done to Kenji and yet how many criminals did you truly challenge, how many times was it not in your benefit to do so? You've spoken much about embracing your duty as the heiress of Yamanaka and you've begun walking that path, yes, but you were always split on that decision every time you've declared it out loud." Bakuchi broke down some hard truths which led to Kiyomi kneeling before her uncle embarrassed by the failure to sustain her newest concept for a jutsu.

"Your mental armor shows promise but until your mind becomes something worth using as a shield or, better yet, a sword, it will continue breaking every time you put it to the test. Still, the fact you've materialized that armor of the mind at all shows to me that you're at last serious about it. Tell me, how serious exactly? If I am to harden you up, I need to know I'm not wasting my time here!" Bakuchi wondered.

"That Inuzuka guy you keep bringing up. The one I keep shutting down and postponing meeting. I wanna get married to that guy right after the exams. You're getting old already, it's our time now and I want to prove it!" Kiyomi put up her fist and concentrated her thoughts on it. A phantom streak extended to the right, a manifested blade of pure thought, harder than anything on the material plane and deadly to anything without appropriate defenses against this sort of power.

A smile twisted her uncle's face. Despite the massive size of the man and his construct which he projected in the temple of the Yamanaka Resort every time he decided to deal with somebody personally, Bakuchi's expressions were still tough to make out due to how distracting the rest of his features were. The giant reached to grab Kiyomi again but his hand split into two after a single slash of her mental blade.

"Oh… Now that's a sharpness of thought I am not afraid flaunting to our allies," Bakuchi Yamanaka roared out in laughter after pressing one of his arms to his exposed belly as he shook in wild laughter. His shortened arm whirled like a rustled ghost before reshaping, Kiyomi was right, back in his prime it would not have taken any time at all to repair such wounds.

With that chapter of her story closed, Kiyomi now felt free and unrestrained to look forward. It would be painful to abandon it all, Meiko, Hanasaku-sensei, the original Team Hokage but this was the cost of complete and unquestionable focus necessary to make the kind of difference Kiyomi wanted to make in this world.