Natanie is a rather short girl; only just reaching 5 feet tall, however, being from a family of late bloomers, she has high hopes of that changing in time. Despite her short stature she isn’t necessarily small, with a somewhat curvaceous build, solid limbs and a decent amount of lean muscle on her frame; she’s not your average tiny girl archetype (which is the source of a little self-consciousness for her). Her eyes are large, almond shaped and coloured a bright hue that’s not sure if it’s blue or green; which contrasts quite starkly with her tan skin and black hair.

Flowing down past her shoulders in thick waves, her hair has always been a prime target for snide remarks; not for its length or colouring, but for the peculiar style in which it is cut. If someone were to throw into a blender; blunt bangs, razor cutting and inconsistent layering and hit ‘roughly chop’, the results may describe the home-styled horror that is this young girl’s hair. More specifically, she sports a thick, blunt fringe that conceals most of her forehead, with the exception of a small sliver of exposed flesh above her left eye that is maintained by a very stubborn cowlick. Rather inconsistent razor cutting of the hair framing her face results in choppy sections of varying size and length that, due to her hair’s natural wave, flick about in every direction. The body of her hair is the least maimed, and, despite the horrible unevenness of the layers there, looks almost normal at a glance as the layers mingle in her thick waves.

The origin story of this young girl’s odd locks is somewhat infamous in the family’s history. Many a tale has been told of a dreary, wet morning, when a very young Natanie found herself imprisoned by the weather, doomed to a day of boredom indoors, and in a bout of madness apparently brought on by such containment, resolved with complete positivity that she needed an absolutely awesome new haircut. She instructed her reluctant mother, who shortly thereafter unwittingly made history, with a horrific hairy mess that to everyone’s surprise, instead of immediately throwing a fit over for her poor judgement, Tani joyously celebrated, and has flaunted ever since (though now she cuts it herself); her scruffy do earning her the very flattering nickname “Rat” with her siblings.

Perhaps luckily, a great deal of attention can be stolen away from her abnormal hairstyle by the vibrant blue green peepers she possesses. Often described as a feature most striking and coveted relentlessly by her sisters (who both have their father’s brown eyes), the surrounding lighting conditions determine the flavour of Tani’s stare. With her large, bright eyes, framed by long dark lashes, and accompanied by a small, exceptionally dark freckle her mother referred to as “A mark of destined eternal beauty” under the outer edge of her left eye, Tani is most confident in the attention grabbing effect of her gaze. Just above her spellbinding eyes, it’s worthy of mentioning her angular eyebrows, dusting even her happiest of expressions with a misleadingly hard or mischievous edge.

With high cheekbones, near flawless tan skin and a softly rounded jaw, even with the remaining puppy chub in her cheeks, Tani is quite a pretty girl, despite a little quiet insecurity persuading her otherwise. The solidity of her build; a perceived oversizing, while the biggest of her discomforts in her appearance, isn’t the only one she is sensitive about. Other things that are a topical no-no are the width of her joints (which are much more solid than the dainty wrists and ankles of her sisters and even one of her younger brothers), and finger-to-palm ratio of her hands (she feels her fingers should be longer and more elegant than her roughly palm-length digits). Though the equally inelegant calluses of her fingers, knuckles and palms from rigorous training, conversely enough, join her hair on the list of physical attributes she holds pride of self in.

To her great irritation, completely covering her insecure self in some comfortably concealing clothing is impractical for Natanie. While she can often be seen wondering around in a large, baggy, fur hooded jacket with black and dull blue horizontal stripes, fishnet leggings emerging from the bottom hem and covering her legs down to her mid calves, this simply has to go in battle.

Beneath her large hoodie, she wears the aforementioned fishnet leggings with a matching fishnet top, whose sleeves hang slightly off her shoulders and cease just below her elbows. Both netted garments contain rather large holes around her elbows and knees, where the fabric has been burned away. Over her leggings she wears a pair of snug fitting stretchy black shorts, which offer beautiful manoeuvrability to her lower limbs, and hide shyly beneath a dull teal skirt with deep side slits. Both garments cover the girl’s legs down to her mid-thigh, where they meet the band of her kunai pouch, which lives on her left thigh separated from her clothing by a wide white bandage for protection from friction. Her skirt meets a black tank top and cream coloured supply pouch (tied slightly to the left side of her lower back) around her hips, the border between the two wrapped in a long crimson sash, which even when encircling her body twice and tied in a secure knot, is long enough to hang two tails down her back long enough to tickle her calves when she walks. The red of her sash is mirrored in small splashes around the rest of her outfit to try and maintain some sort of consistency; the deep red material of her konoha headband, tied loosely around her neck to sit on her collar bones, and thin red bands of material tied around her upper arms (while quite flatteringly highlighting the muscle tone obtained from the hard work of ninja life), mark the colour as her somewhat official hue for accessorising. Along with her jacket, while Natanie does often wear a pair of black strappy shinobi sandals, they too can become a hindrance in combat, and are often discarded from her person both in battle and on random occasion otherwise. All of Tani's clothing is made from fire retardant fabrics, due to her need to be as far from flammable as possible, though the repeated assault of flames over time has worn at parts of her fishnets regardless.

Also worth mention, though not a permanent part of her physical appearance, are the large raw burns covering most of her right hand and forearm. The wounds don’t occupy one solid area, rather are streaked with patches of perfectly unharmed caramel skin, almost as if they were inflicted by the path of liquid as it splashed over the limb. Odd as it is, they’re probably just from one of her katon techniques while training; Tani will get around to having her hand and arm healed later.

Having spent most of her life preferring the company of her brothers, she can be described as quite the tomboy; she’s certainly not afraid to get rough and break a nail or mess up her hair. While having her insecurities, she’s much less interested in her appearance than many girls her age, and will generally either hide what brings her discomfort when it’s practical to do so, or just shove it out of her mind and get on with things. This being said, despite her self-consciousness when dressed only in her combat attire, bringing attention to it won’t likely distract the girl in the thick of it; which is her general attitude in serious situations. Usually Tani is quite a bold, reckless and fun loving type of person, who won’t hesitate to jump on board with something stupid so long as it doesn’t endanger other people and sounds like a good time. She’s also never been afraid of embarrassing herself for the sake of enjoyment, having no shame in exercising her imagination more than her common sense. Once there’s confrontation, a mission, or discussion of a serious topic, however, that all changes; Natanie generally knows when the time for restraint and focus is. Generally, but not always; her overall lack of seriousness and tendency to be quite obliviously brash can lead to some awkward social situations, in which the other party may be a lot more worked up than Tani is or believes they are.

Most of the time, this genin comes across as something of a goofball. Almost everything gets her fired up and her default expression seems to range between a slight smirk and a stupidly dorky grin, which paired with the natural arc of her eyebrows, makes it look like she’s always got mischief on her mind. But hidden behind the rough housing rapscallion that is Natanie at-a-glance, there’s a quite considerate, responsible, and self-conscious young lady.

Tani values life very highly, and tries her best to respect it; doing everything she can to avoid killing where practical and only taking a life if letting her opponent keep it would result in further death. She will not, under any circumstances, tolerate the endangerment of the lives of innocent civilians. Her love of life extends past merely allowing its existence though, and Tani whole heartedly believes it needs to be enjoyed and spent finding, indulging in, and protecting one’s loves. The girl herself has so much love for so many things that it can be difficult to find something she considers a waste of her time, but if someone does waste her time, (by, for example, treating her to a display of pointless self-pity, or trying to convince her why killing might be a good thing) she can become quite irritable or possibly even angry.

Anger isn’t something common for Tani, and while almost everything she does is explosive evidence of her fiery personality, only on the rare occasion does one of her outbursts actually contain any traces of rage; she’s just noisy and uninclined to holding back. Now if one can mistake a boisterous Natanie for an angry one, they’ve clearly never witnessed the latter. When she’s agitated, while still inclined to raising her voice, her gaze could almost set someone alight with its intensity, and if that isn’t obvious to the subject of her annoyance; she also has a tendency to start clenching her jaw and flexing her hands and fingers, moving them between fists and tiger claw positions. When irritation grows to anger, the yelling stops, and this usually noisy girl becomes unsettlingly quiet; something her older brother referred to as “the calm before world explodes”. Signified by a low tone of warning in her voice and more jaw clenching, hand flexing, and possibly a slight tremor in her muscles; this is the last opportunity for backpedalling before Tani loses control of all her shit and flies into an all-out berserk mode rage. This berserk mode rage is extremely rare, and has only escalated to the point of breaking on two occasions in her whole life.

While she holds a lot of love for a lot of things, Tani does have her dislikes. The biggest of these would be her hate for people who use fear or force to control the weak and innocent. She also rather dislikes when people take the small things too seriously or get hung up on things they can’t, or won’t be bothered to change. Some other things that she’s not particularly fond of are shallow judgements, her insecurities, wasting time, bureaucracy, being unhappy, dwelling on the past, genjutsu, comments about her physical appearance (favourable or otherwise), doing “girly” things, missing training sessions, opponents holding back on her, having to hold back on opponents, having to learn by reading or being lectured, the level of her medical capabilities, the idea and act of taking life and discussion about her personal life.

Among some of the many things she likes are; ninja arts of every kind (yes, even genjutsu, contradictive as it may be), training, seeing improvement, her family and comrades, meeting people and making friends, kung fu and other good taijutsu, being unrestricted, combat (expect to be challenged to spar or twenty), learning by doing, adrenaline, exploring, acrobatics, trying new things, being reckless, the sash/scarf her brother gave her, fire and everything it symbolises, a challenge, food of any kind (seriously, she can eat anything, hence “The Iron Stomach”), cooking (which she does absolutely horribly in everyone’s opinion but her own), meditating and playing her duduk (does this shock you? :O), animals (though she tends to scare them off most of the time), everything about the sky, and so much more you could die before finishing a complete list.

When it all boils down to it, Natanie is a seemingly carefree girl who’s filled with passion for life, determined to protect it, with strong morals and few inhibitions. She still has some growing to do, can be quite immature, her temper isn’t completely under control (though hard to draw out), and she has a tendency to supress things she feels only inhibit the continuation of life at its finest rather than the more time consuming and painful course of action of dealing with them. She loves being a shinobi, lives to protect people and can have a blast in almost any situation. Ladies and gentlemen; this is Tani, she’s fired up to meet you.

Tani favours an “up close and personal” form of combat and isn’t averse to getting quite rough. If asked to sum up the way she fights in few words, one might offer terms like ‘intense’, ‘swift’, ‘noisy’, or maybe even ‘monkey-esque’ in the bobbing and weaving of her dodges and counter strikes, but one word you simply cannot describe her technique without is ‘aggressive’. And boy is she. With a fighting style somewhat akin to a mix between Hung Gar Tiger Crane style Kung Fu and Northern Shaolin, often including katon elements, and rarely without the accompanying roars, growls and kiai; it’s not hard to believe that this girl never goes into a fight without intending to inflict some degree of damage (which she’ll more than happily give first aid to most opponents for, if she can afford to). Even when sparring, Tani holds a ‘tough love’ approach, and while very reluctant to kill even in serious confrontations, doesn’t ever pull her punches or fear inflicting pain (even on herself). One of her favourite responses to being confronted on this issue is “You’d be surprised what you can live through.” and believes becoming somewhat accustomed to pain is helpful for a shinobi’s survival.

When it comes to her strengths in combat, Tani certainly benefits from a close range encounter and any opponent without the quick mind or body to react to the aggressive attacks that she initiates (“Never waste an opening, or chance to hit.”). She also puts a lot of power and judgement into her strikes, aiming for weak points or to unbalance, while having the fluidity of mind and movement to adapt to sudden changes occurring in a fight. Elementally, being an enthusiastic katon user (especially using Searing Touch & Burst), she has a certain degree of obtained heat endurance, though only to the point of reducing discomfort; nothing that would be significantly useful when faced with an offensive katon technique.

On the flip side, despite her secondary chakra nature being suiton, Tani is somewhat less well off against a decent water user. She’s also quite unfortunate when faced with most genjutsu, as she tends to get quite involved in the physical aspects of a confrontation, easily slipping into ‘the zone’. Unless caught in a genjutsu that painfully obviously distorts reality, given nothing else to focus on (and probably copious amounts of time), or a comrade to bail her out; this could quite likely have her defeated.

Natanie was born just another civilian in the village of Konoha, preceded by her eldest brother and two sisters, and followed, shortly after moving to a secluded house in the forest outside the village, by two younger brothers. Tani was only five when she parted with the great shinobi village, but her three older siblings had spent 11, 9 and 7 years respectively with their birthplace. The choice to move, made seemingly so lightly by her parents, was not supported by their then only son, Konna, who was studying diligently at the Academy. He stayed behind to continue his training, while a very young, very tomboy Natanie begrudgingly submit to her new life away from the excitement of the shinobi with her two prissy, nauseatingly girly, poophead sisters, Saikiko and Shirami, as her only source of sibling entertainment.

After spending her early childhood running amok in the house and around the village with Konna, playing pretend ninja with origami shuriken and wooden swords, arm wrestling and copying the sweet moves he always seemed to be repeating, so she could be an even cooler shinobi than him someday; maintaining normalcy without her brother proved difficult for the young girl. In his absence she became the bane of her sisters’ existence; crashing noisily through their quiet, polite conversations with imaginary noblemen in her attempts to escape imaginary pursuers, dirtying their beloved kimonos saving them from imaginary bandits and eventually being banned completely from playing around them after perfectly executing an assassination on Lord Pinknose; ruler of the land of Fluffstuffing and guest of honour at one of the more lavish tea parties held on their living room floor. It wasn’t as fun without Konna; when he was around it was less obvious who was responsible for the deaths of stuffed animals..

He’d taught her so much, like the importance of balance, of hard and soft, of strength and flexibility; the principals of yin and yang by which he strived to live his life, as well as the basics of his kung fu style of fighting. Without his ever-guiding presence, Tani felt she had little choice but to grab what he’d taught her so far and see how far she could run with it. It certainly beat joining her sisters in their silly tea parties and boring games of playing nobles. And she couldn’t play with her parents; her Father always seemed to be cranky and shouting and when he wasn’t, even if he was being perfectly friendly, she was a little scared of him anyway, and her mother was a gentle soul who’d rather teach her to cook. It was that realisation at five and a half years old, of how she wouldn’t even consider doing anything else, that her interest in the ninja life was hers for good and not just from being with her brother, that really started the young girl’s journey on the shinobi path.

Natanie began to spend her days with a more serious attitude to what she did with her time, trying hard to recall the movements of her brother and working persistently to replicate his balance and grace, training the technique of her paper shuriken throwing until she could bop an unsuspecting sister from outside her parentally enforced buffer zone of play, and disappearing for hours to run around the woods, or think, or meditate and play the strange wooden flute she’d got from a foreign merchant at a festival when she was young (which she found just as meditative but less boring than sitting around emptying her mind). When her brother came to visit, Tani made the most of such limited time with him; her most valuable avenue for obtaining knowledge, instead of playing, they talked more, explored the woods together and found challenging ways to manoeuvre the terrain. He watched with amusement and pride as she showed him her progress and gave her some tips to improve her technique. Shortly after his visit, Konna graduated the academy and became a Genin. With his new workload, another visit wasn’t something anyone could foresee in the near future.

This was remedied a few months later, however, when for her sixth birthday Tani made a special birthday request (her only one) to go to Konoha and visit her dear brother. Her mother convinced her reluctant father and the five of them packed a week of clothes and made the daylong trip to the village. They only had a day and two nights with a delighted Konna before he had to leave on a mission, but the birthday girl had a brilliant time with him nonetheless. He showed her around the village and she rediscovered places she could half remember from her childhood, they basked in the wonder of the hokage monument and Tani was absolutely ecstatic when they visited the ninja academy. The night before he left, Konna spoke to their mother in private about enrolling his youngest sister in the academy.

When she awoke in the morning, her brother was nowhere to be found; instead, lying on his pillow was a bundle of red cloth and a piece of white card. Written upon its face, in neat black ink, was “Naa-chan.”; the nickname Konna gave her before she could even remember. Curiously, she inspected the bundle before carefully picking it up in both hands. It was heavier than the soft material that appeared to be some kind of scarf looked like it should be, and after a little more handling her suspicions that it had something swaddled inside were confirmed when something heavy and metallic slipped from its folds and landed with a muffled thud on the bed. When she recognised what it was, Tani’s heart jumped right out her throat and flew away, perhaps to escape the sudden explosion of butterflies whirring around in her stomach.

When she left with her parents and sisters to go home, it was with a ludicrously long crimson scarf wrapped around her tiny neck so many times she could hardly see over the top, a piece of card with her name written on one of its sides and “Our little secret” on the other in her pocket, and her very first ever, real life, metal shuriken tucked away safe in the bottom of her bag. She wouldn’t know for another two months that her mother had left with more than what she’d brought as well. It took a bit of quiet convincing to get her father to sign the enrolment forms before sending them off to be approved, after all. Luckily, the young girl had plenty of shuriken practice to occupy her in the meantime.

From the moment Tani’s sandaled foot touched classroom floor for the first time she felt in her heart she’d found home. Her class mates felt like family she just hadn’t met yet, like the sons and daughters of cousins of aunts and uncles twice removed, or whatever words describe obscure relations. Many of the topics felt like reunions with old acquaintances she’d brushed past obliviously in conversations with her brother, now she would make dear friends of every one of them. She joined her brother in his apartment, sleeping in what used to be his home gym, and complaining about the boysmell of her new bedroom every morning.

While their daughter studied hard in Konoha, Natanie’s parents welcomed into the family their second son; Tani’s first younger brother, who she met a few months later on her first visit home after starting at the academy. The arrival of Jiiyaki seemed to change her father, who had always seemed to be a ticking anger time bomb through Tani’s childhood; he became more light-hearted and kind. Her mother remarked happily that ‘this was the man her father truly was’ when Tani commented on the change. Perhaps it was the company of his sons that softened his hard exterior; as he became the most enjoyable company his daughter could imagine after the arrival of his third son, Kayuroto, the following year.

Tani was eight when Saikiko had her accident. Nobody was quite sure how it happened, and her eldest sister either couldn’t or wouldn’t recall. All anyone knew for sure was that she’d gone into the forest sometime through the day and clawed her way out upon nightfall, eyes wide, cheeks drenched with tears and dirt, dragging her body through the dirt and roots with trembling arms. Without a hospital or health care of any kind closer, it was nearly morning again by the time the girl was carried to and got medical attention in Konoha. First thing that morning Tani and Konna received the news that their sister was at the hospital with their father, second thing that morning they comforted their distraught sister as she sobbed over the news that she would forever be without the use of her legs. When she went home it was in the seat of a wheelchair.

That incident, her sister’s wounds, inspired Tani’s first interest in medical ninjutsu. She couldn’t help but wonder if a better medic could give her sister’s legs back, give back her life. And so she charged into her medical studies, struggling through thick texts and throwing herself into bettering her chakra control. The more she learned about the body and healing, the more the young girl’s hope of helping Saikiko dwindled. It slowly became apparent that it would take a ninja of incredible skill and experience to reverse the damage in her sister’s spine and Tani knew deep in her heart she didn’t have the talent to get there; medical techniques just didn’t seem to come to her.

Despite her lack of affinity for the practice, she persisted stubbornly in her medical studies over the next two years, with decidedly lacking results. While the knowledge she obtained offered useful improvements to her fighting style and general first aid, she found her Eijutsu progress frustratingly non-existent, not even managing basic healing. Konna once commented on the situation after his sister had a particularly loud and pitiful tantrum over her lack of improvement, saying that she was a hands-on person who thrived on experience, all this book learning would just take a little longer to sink in for her; a comment Tani took to heart.

When the young girl stumbled through their apartment door late from the academy one afternoon after, her brother could not be less prepared for what she had clutched securely to her heaving chest, swaddled in the red scarf from which she was now inseparable. All the genin could do was watch dumbfounded as his sister rushed by him without a word to place her precious cargo gently on their living space floor, the injured akita inu whining as she unwrapped it with care. Before he could even open his mouth to ask for an explanation of the strange situation he was ordered to obtain the apartment first aid kit, while Tani took a few deep breaths to steady her mind and, with slightly shaking hands started to examine her mysterious furry companion.

When Konna returned with the required equipment and placed the medical kit beside his sister on the floor, he got a better look the patient. The dog was panting heavily, very scruffy, obviously old and homeless, his fur was dirty and thinning, and from the oddly rope-burn-esque marks around his neck; probably one of the feral dogs known to pillage merchant carriages in the forest surrounding the village and hunted for such nuisances. The marks on the creature’s neck weren’t its only ailments, however, and the boy soon came to the conclusion that this dog was probably baited and poisoned. Tani, with her hands pressed to the dying dog’s tattered coat, eyes scrunched shut and breathing deeply in concentration trying stubbornly to perform the justu, determined to find a way to stop the inevitable, obviously didn’t understand; hadn’t seen the futility. Konna spoke softly as he placed a comforting hand on his youngest sister’s shoulder, “It won’t work, Naa-chan, the time to pass on comes; you don’t have the power to stop it, and I don’t think this old boy has an extension in him.” It took a bit of convincing before she could bring herself drop her hands. Tears filled her eyes as she let her fingers gently comb his patchy fur and watched helplessly as the old dog heaved through numbered breaths, suddenly aware of how scared she’d be if she were laying dying in a place she’d never seen before with people she didn’t know, and brought her hands to her face to hide her sobs of guilt as she apologised to the animal for her uselessness.

With her brother’s calm hand guiding her, their unfortunate visitor was gently moved to the small grassy yard behind the building, where he’d hopefully be more comfortable, but Tani was adamant that she would not take the old dog’s life, no matter how painful what remained of it may be; she couldn’t end a life, and she couldn’t watch her brother do so either. So the three sat together as a spirit slipped away into the night and they became two once more. After Konna helped her through a short burial for their brief companion, he shared some of his views on the cycle of life and death, and after some quietly reflective cups of tea, they went to bed. Tani still carries guilt from that night, but considers it one of the most important lessons she’s ever experienced.

After that experience, the young girl’s stubborn attachment to prioritising learning medical ninjustu faded. Saikiko had long grown accustomed to and embraced her new lot in life; she seemed even more joyful than before her accident and none of the family could imagine a more inspirational person. Tani greatly enjoyed her company during visits, the three Yin daughters growing closer, despite their clashing interests, through maturity. Without her medical studies consuming so much of her time, the young ninja quickly found great success, and considerably more enjoyment, in her taijutsu and ninjutsu training. By the time she graduated, Tani had established her affinity for fire and had a number of katon and suiton justu in her arsenal, as well as a cemented new viewpoint that if she couldn’t heal, she’d just have to make sure that the people she loved weren’t hurt to start with.

Tani’s new goals of being a protector were dealt a crippling blow, however, just a few weeks after her graduation. A metaphorical bomb was dropped right in the heart of her family’s camp, and in a concussive blast of emotional devastation that tore through their lives, marked the beginning of the end. Unbeknownst to the Yin household, they’d ingested their poison; numbered their days, and their unit was only just starting to tremble with the first symptoms of their demise.

Everything seemed to change in very drastic, very sudden ways after Saikiko died. The young girl fell from a bridge into a raging river; even if she’d been able to swim her survival would have been unlikely. Ravaged by grief, Tani’s mother ceased to function normally. She closed herself off from the world and over a period of mere weeks had warped into someone nobody would guess had once been a joyous and loving woman. Her universe shrank to embrace only her crippling heartache and the gaping gorge of loss she felt inside herself; the loss of a mother’s child, and inconsolable as she was became inaccessible to her remaining children. Her father also changed; his anger returning with a vengeance that saw him exploding in a heated rage at the barest of perceived slights. Shirami assumed a more assertive role as her two younger brothers looked to her for the comfort they once got from the father they now feared and the mother they barely knew, and she was left to take care of them alone, as only months after Saikiko’s passing, visits from her other two siblings, especially her young shinobi sister, became very rare indeed.

Natanie wasn’t sure how to react to the writhing mess of her home life. Her sister’s death had struck her like a branding iron across the chest; sudden and intense in its initial impact, only to be replaced by a duller but more persistent mix of a burning and tingling sensation that almost numbed as time went on. It was hard to believe, even after a few visits home, that Saikiko wouldn’t be there waiting to greet her with a smile. It was hard to accept that things had changed so much in the little house in the forest, which seemed so impossibly far away in its dishevelled state, yet so near in her childhood memories that she could just about reach out and encircle her arms around it. With a little guilt for what she thought must be an unreasonably well-handled response to everything, Tani felt she could just get on with things. After all, as upsetting and horrible as it was; it was reality, there was nothing she could do to fix things, and she had training and missions that required her attention.

It was Konna who first brought to her attention how little she’d been home to the family house, to which the young girl responded with mild surprise and a shrug, stating her intention to “get around to it”. It was also Konna who saw how she’d been affected, even when Tani herself couldn’t. She spent almost all of her time training, her medical books hadn’t seen the light of day in a long time, not even for skimming or her usual casual reading, and her brother suspected that maybe her sense of humour was locked away in the same out-of-the-way place. Sure, the young girl didn’t cry, or get that sad look in her eyes some days that Konna did, she didn’t find herself weighed down with the need to hold their mother tight and try just one more time to convince her it would be okay, or find her dreams being invaded by the hollow echoes of their father’s enraged screaming. But that didn’t mean she was dealing with it all. There were times when he’d see her staring into the distance with an expression of nothingness on her face, she seemed to start avoiding bodies of water (whether intentional or subconscious, Konna didn’t know), and he noticed when they sparred that there was a constant element of irritation present within her now; something that struck her brother as concerning.

Truth be told, it was around this period that, for a time, Natanie lost herself. She lost sight of her goals to heal, lost sight of her goals to protect, lost sight of what she enjoyed, instead she lived day by day in a shroud of apparent normalcy, where she woke in the morning, ate, trained, ate, trained, maybe went on missions, ate, and went to sleep, and time slipped away before she could grasp what it had encompassed or found the energy to care before she was focusing on the next task at hand. The only thing that broke the monotonous haze of what she felt was just her busy life, was the tiny candle’s fire of anger within her gut; anger at the world for being so cruel, anger at Saikiko for being so careless as to fall to her death, anger at her father for being so undeserving of his title, anger at her mother for not being able to care for the children who still lived, but most of all, anger at herself. She was angry at herself for blaming the universe, for being so hard on her loved ones in her mind, for not being more emotional about all that was happening, for not being able to do anything about any of it.. for not being there to help, for not being able to protect any of them from themselves, or their feelings, or their father, or the river. She felt useless, and she hated it. And it was that hatred that fed the fire inside of Natanie until, while fighting a particularly taunting training dummy; it erupted, spewing flame from the skin of her knuckles in the great gushes of the birth of her Burst jutsu. The scent of burnt flesh danced coyly amidst that of the wooden dummy, which now stood like a pyre consumed in flame, watching the stunned Genin as she inspected the superficial burns of one hand; caught off guard, not by the pain, but by the fact that she’d wanted it, and felt slight appeasement in her anger having inflicted such punishment on herself. But no, it was more than that. Though what had passed through her hand had been undoubtedly fire, it felt more like her fist had been a lightning rod; the flames igniting some unseen force as it entered and rocketed through her body. She brought her eyes up to the brilliantly flaming shape of a man in front of her and felt like they were actually open for the first time in months. Her heart pumped adrenaline furiously through her veins and Tani felt more like they were alight with electricity, the lifesaving kiss from a deadly force that had reignited her. She hadn’t been fine, she wasn’t unfeeling, and she had the power to change, to be useful, and walking around in that zombie haze, letting herself numb the pain, wasn’t helpful in the least; that pain gave her clarity.

This new jutsu, while already dear to the young girl’s heart and a source of great excitement and passion for her, presented the second half of the conundrum of “If I can’t heal, I’ll fight; but in order to fight most effectively, I’ll need to speed up healing”, as further practice proved that single use resulted in uncomfortable superficial burns to her own person and much repetition escalated those burns from first to second degree. She was slowly growing accustomed to the pain involved in stroking the nerves in her skin with passing jets of katon chakra, but putting herself in a position where merely moving her hands or walking on the soles of her feet, let alone striking an opponent was painful, with an average of 8 to 10 days after repeated use to recover was just too much disadvantage to make it viable for general use on missions or in combat. If she was going to run with this, she’d have to speed up the healing process or reduce the damage or discomfort. Something she just so happened to know (partially, in theory) how to do, and how about that; she even had a good guinea pig to get some practical experience on now.

As time went on Tani grew to recognise and accept her lack of ability in medical ninjutsu, though found even without it her studies improved her ability to care for injuries and aid the healing process and survivability. The improvements were not only in her training and medical knowledge, but also in her interactions and management of her mood, and she wasn’t the only one. With the support of her children, now including the youngest of her girls, their mother slowly started to make her recovery. She started to leave the house again, spoke to people more frequently, and to everyone’s delight, relocated her kind smile and soft laugh. And just like wildfire the warmth and light spread; Jiiyaki and Kayuroto felt more free to have fun and be kids, finding comfort in having more love in their household, Shirami had a huge burden lifted from her shoulders and with the return of her mother was relieved of enough responsibility to permit the 16 year old to enjoy being a teenager again. Even their father seemed to cool off a little; his outbursts decreasing slightly in frequency and intensity, though by now Tani couldn’t even imagine the man content enough to forgo his outrageous displays all together.

There came to be a kind of odd equilibrium, somewhat reminiscent of the days of the young girl’s childhood, where when their father was happy, despite the tension involved in knowing it was only a matter of time before he snapped into an angry typhoon, all was well and everyone was happy. Then when the man did break, he would soon be brought back into balance by the seemingly boundless ability of their mother to be kind while being assertive. Familiar and improved as the situation may have been, Shirami had seen too much conflict and not enough sensibility, experienced enough of her parents though maturing eyes, and, taking advantage of her newfound freedom, left to find sunnier horizons for herself. Though it was saddening for her mother to see the last of her daughters leave, she recognised that she needed to find what she wanted for herself, and supported her travels on the conditions that she be careful and make use of every possible opportunity she got to write home.

And so this is how things have been for the last two years. With their family out of crisis and the demands of ninja life, Konna and Natanie’s visits once again grew fewer and further between, but their responsibilities to the village are appreciated and respected back at the family home in the forest. The two siblings still live together and have each improved continuously through hard work and dedication; Tani holds great pride in her combat abilities and being capable of some handy first aid, and in her brother for his recent promotion to Chuunin. She’s also quite proud of her mother, who, since the last time she visited, has been writing about having had enough of her husband’s bullshit and thinking about taking Jiiyaki and Kayuroto, leaving the childish and unreasonable man and moving to Yu No Kuni; she says the people there are lovely. Speaking of her mother and brothers; it’s about time for another trip to the good old family house. Konna is away on a mission, but Tani could probably spare a few days. Time for a surprise visit!

The morning of the day Natanie had decided she’d leave to visit home, was the morning her mother woke with the crystal clear intention of leaving her husband. As the overwrought woman packed her son’s bags with trembling hands, her youngest daughter happily packed her own a few kilometres away. As the kunoichi signed out at the village gates, her mother prepared her sons to say goodbye to the old house they’d called home all their lives. While Tani flew through the seemingly timeless realm of the forest on a perfect day, in the direction of home, her destination thundered with the biggest battle of words ever seen under its roof. The rhythmic pulse of a ninja’s steps on solid wood, amidst the chirruping choir of the wilderness, was like the bass line for a more serious melody playing just out of earshot; a duet sung by two lonely parts bereaved by destiny of the comfort of unity.

It was hours later, in the late afternoon, that the young girl was coaxed from the cheerful thoughts associated with nearly being home by a disturbingly familiar smell; disturbing because the presence of fire in a thick forest was rarely a good sign. It had snuck up on her; the aroma of burning wood, initially just dusting the gentle breeze, though now grew to dominate it. Without so much as a second thought, Tani dropped all musing of her quest for home, and grasped that of a nearby fire with her full attention. If the woods were aflame or locals were burning things, she needed to investigate and somehow extinguish it before it spread and someone was hurt.

Being a local herself, she immediately knew that a natural fire was rather unlikely in this nick of the woods, and concluded that the most credible cause would be one of human origin. With this in mind, Tani sped off to the closer of the two manmade dwellings she knew to be in the vicinity, forcing the voice in her head that was screaming for her to ensure her family’s safety first to quiet to a dull roar. As a shinobi of Konohagakure she had equal responsibility to all of the civilians residing in Hi No Kuni, and from a purely efficiency based standpoint, she would have to wait until after checking on the old man who lived by the river before moving on to her own family’s house. Minutes later the glinting surface of the river which had taken her sister’s life all those years ago was winking at Natanie through the foliage. Chest heaving she picked up the pace, eyes wide and searching the trees ahead for the first signs of flames. When the old shack of a house finally came in to view, the kunoichi’s insides did an almighty flip the likes of which she’d never experienced before; if she didn’t have more pressing matters to attend to she almost certainly would have stopped and decorated the old man’s pristine property with her lunch as a result. Pressing matters as there were, however, she decided to save the puking for later and, maintaining her momentum, reached out with her left arm mid-air to coat-hanger the nearest tree. She didn’t even flinch as the rough bark slammed into then raked the flesh of her forearm; she needed to alter her trajectory right now while keeping as much speed as she could. With one big kick of her legs she threw herself swinging around the trunk until she was once again aimed in the direction she knew was that of home, releasing her grip on the bark and flying with renewed vigour towards the fire, the location of which she now had little doubt, to her despair.

She felt the fire before she saw it; her skin tingled and rose in goose-bumps almost as if to spite the growing heat. The air grew thicker with the scent of her childhood being consumed in a blaze, and smoke wafting leisurely amidst the trees stung her eyes and nose with every heaving breath, all confirming the girl’s fears before she saw the inferno with her own eyes. Fierce orange flames lit every window of the once beloved domicile like a many-eyed jack-o-lantern, bursting from the openings in great flurries where glass was once held, and spewing from every seam in the timber like water from an unsealed pale. Thick smoke billowed from a hole in the tiled roof that Natanie knew for certain hadn’t been there previously. The clearing in the forest canopy created to make room for the two story wooden structure (and the reason to thank for it being the only thing on fire so far), instead of offering its usual view of the now darkening sky, held that of a grim imitation; a cosmos of dirty black clouds of ash and the twinkling red stars of floating embers. Her heart heaved at what she saw, but plummeted at what she didn’t; not a single person was in sight. Either nobody was home, or they were still inside.

Before her racing mind could even fully form the profanities she wanted to exclaim at not having any suiton jutsu that would be useful under the circumstances, her hands were coming together, forming seal after seal with practiced precision as she charged towards the back of the house. As she reached the window she’d been looking for, which was gushing flames just like the rest, her string of seals was complete. Without any conscious thought or the slightest hesitation, the young girl’s hands found their way out in front of her, fingertips together pointing directly at the fire in the heart of her chosen entry point, and with a shout of the technique’s title that was engulfed in a sickening creak as the house protested its struggle to hold the second story with its deteriorating walls, dove into her parent’s bedroom. The familiar heat embraced Tani’s body as bright orange flames licked her hands and arms on their journey down the path she’d cut through them with her ninjutsu. An instant of blindly sailing through a sea of golden light later and the kunoichi emerged on the other side of the wall of flame, which was fed by the furiously burning dresser below the window and the bubbling ceiling; which also happened to be the floor of the second story. After quickly recovering from landing unceremoniously in a tumbled heap on her parent’s bedroom floor, she noticed with increasing distress that besides her and the dancing, rolling flames, the room was empty.

One good kick was all it took to completely blast the charred black door from its hinges and into the living room on the other side, spawning swarms of tiny fluttering embers at each impact, though that room’s emptiness (aside from the multitude of aflame furniture and belongings) was also immediately apparent. Access to the living room did, however, provide Tani with two important pieces of information; the first being that the only place remaining that anyone could be without having had clear access to an exit was the large bedroom upstairs that was shared by her two youngest siblings and whose purpose was originally storage and had no windows. The second was where the massive hole in the roof had come from, and why the young girl could stand inside the rapidly burning house without suffocating in smoke; the staircase was acting as a chimney, allowing the fire to burn unhampered by its by-products, which also meant that they were completely burnt to cinders by the increased heat of the a more oxygenated fire.

Natanie clenched her jaw hard and flexed her furiously perspiring hands. She couldn’t let a mere lack of stairs stop her from doing everything possible to ensure her family’s safety, and with the katon chakra still rushing over her arms, she charged once more into a pillar of fire. Pushing the incredible discomfort of being in what felt like a giant oven out of her mind as best she could and suppressing the urge to fling herself away from such danger, she focused chakra to her feet and made an all-out vertical dash up the living room wall for the hole that was supposed to have a staircase leading to it, moving her arms in great arcs to push the fire aside as she went. Upon reaching the relative safety of the not-inside-a-goddamned-fireball upstairs hall, Tani allowed herself a few struggled gasps of hot, smothering air before she made her cautious, exhausted way to her brothers’ bedroom, wary of the moaning floorboards and occasional light crunching or puff of sparking embers underfoot. When the door came into view, however, the kunoichi found herself in a moment of complete puzzlement, followed by realisation and then a horrifying loss of hope that felt like someone had emptied a syringe of liquid ice directly into the base of her spine. A preposterous number of thick black nails protruded from the door jamb at every angle, and had been brutally administered to a good foot and a half long area of the thick frame; intersecting the door and the jamb in such a way as to prevent its opening.

The roar of anger and denial that exploded from her lungs as she charged forward to send the door to oblivion was lost in a deafening crack that rocked the entire upper floor. Splinters and flying hunks of smouldering timber erupted all around her as the groaning charred skeletal structure within which she stood finally gave in, and the floor opened up as the boards fell away beneath her feet and she was sent tumbling through the kitchen ceiling in a flurry of orange sparks and flailing limbs. Somewhere in the chaos involved in suddenly being airborne in a sea of stars after establishing with almost certainty the horrible fiery death of her family, Tani’s vision became blurred with tears and her exhausted, overheated mind lost track of where she was and what was happening. Then something hard came into contact with the side of her head, and it seemed gravity had claimed her once more, her ears exploded with the shrieking of the spirits and her body slammed into the hard, tiled, kitchen floor amidst a shower of flaming rubble.

The first thing Tani felt after the shock of her landing was the hard, heated slab that had somehow come to be pressed against her face and torso. The second was the violent throbbing of her head, left cheekbone, clavicle, shoulder and hip in protest to how it had come to be there. Then the aching, burning, tingling and ringing came into focus and realisation of where she was led her to wonder momentarily just when she’d met the first story floor and which had come to find the other. Sluggishly she turned her head further to the side, where warped forms swam in the murky waters of her unfocused vision; mosaic shapes in dazzling reds and yellows, oranges and whites danced with shadows to the thundering beat of her heart and the bells in her head. Though as her eyes adjusted the forms became more defined, it wasn’t until thick black smoke filled her nose, making her cough violently and her eyes water again, that she recalled her situation. She’d fallen from the second story hallway; which meant the place was coming down, and she was in serious danger of being under it when it did. Summoning the strength she needed to move her worn body, she heaved her aching self from the floor and onto her feet. Her head throbbed and her lungs burned in objection but her tightly clenched jaw stifled any verbalisation of it. Now was not the time for groaning. A quick look around the burning culinary preparation area through squinting eyes exposed the presence of the now dilapidated back door; a vestibule more beautiful had never graced the girl’s vision, as she now shared her personal space with an increasing amount of heavy smoke and ash. The ventilation hole that was once the stairwell must have been compromised when the floor fell in.. Or roof, depending on where you were unlucky enough to stand in the situation. She didn’t let any of that hold her up though; it only gave her all the more reason to get outside faster. It only took the kunoichi seconds to manoeuvre her way around the flaming rubble between herself and the door before she’d kicked it too clear out of its frame, the black timber crumbling into chunks, revealing the fierce red glow beneath its surface.

Natanie had only just stumbled a few meters clear of the blazing wreck, deactivating her diver technique before coughing and hacking and desperately trying to fill her lungs with air when the structure behind her gave one final colossal creak. The girl wondered only briefly when the ringing in her head had dulled enough for other sound to come through before the last sickening CRACK rang out like thunder cutting through the night. She turned and watched, collapsing on the now black grass of the back yard, as what was left of the top story sunk like the sand in an hourglass. The windows and doors, and holes where the walls had been eaten away by fire, all exploded with ash and embers; it almost looked as if the biggest flock of fireflies she could ever imagine had been nesting inside, then thrown out on the black breeze to make room for the upper floor. They fluttered up to the heavens, reflected in the mesmerised girl’s onlooking eyes as carrying the poor souls of her parents and brothers on their tiny beating wings. She felt her eyes prick and soon the fiery mass was blurred with tears once more and before she knew it sobs were being ripped from her throat, though her emotional display was soon rudely interrupted by a very loud, excited whoop, which cracked like a whip in Tani’s heart.

Someone was nearby; very much so judging by the clarity and volume of their disgracefully cheerful sound, and not only had they done nothing to be of aid, but they DARE make such a call? In an instant the young shinobi was trembling from head to toe, did they not consider that people might have been hurt? Then a sound reached her ears that had her on her feet and striding towards the source before her brain could even consciously send the commands to her muscles. Her hands were busily tearing at the air in their vicious tension cycle as she followed the sickening sound of intoxicated laughter around the massive funeral pyre that was her childhood home to what had been the front, making a B line for the swaying and dancing male figure that had appeared by the tree line. She wanted to scream at him, to bellow with all the authority that being able to set his disrespectful arse alight then holler and laugh at him in return allowed her, but those were things she’d never let herself do, and it took so much control to hold on to those values that she couldn’t unclench her jaw to say a single thing. Instead she closed the gap between the two in silence, gave no warning, the obviously drunk man was spinning now; dancing with a large glass bottle in the romantic firelight. So he was completely caught by surprise when the fist of a furious shinobi emerged from the darkness and caught him on his slack jaw.

Towering over the shocked man as he scrambled to right himself after losing his balance from the strike and crashing into the dirt, Tani got her first look at his face in the dancing light of the fire behind her. Her anger wavered in the realisation of who he was and crumbled at the return of hope. ”Father?” Her voice shook with relief and uncertainty, the still trembling girl entirely unsure if she’d snapped under the pressure of her recent ordeal and was imagining the dead man’s presence. His eyes snapped up to her shadowed face at her inquiry, and widened immediately in recognition. She didn’t have time to release her laugh of relief or help her Father up, however, before he broke out in a fit of giggles that walked the border between drunken and manic. ”EhehhehNope! Sorry Tani dear- gahahaa try again~” He was clearly who she thought he was, and obviously drunk, but his crazy giggling caused the girl’s eyebrows to come together in confusion as she blinked and took a half step back. Nothing that was happening made any sense, and she was fairly certain it wasn’t just because she’d hit her head. If she’d just escaped a furious house fire (which she had), while she could understand booze being on the agenda, dancing and laughing in front of the blaze she most certainly could not.

Her father had seemingly abandoned his attempts at returning to his feet and was propped up on an elbow, trying to supress his laughter to drink from the half full bottle still in his hand. ”Father..” His gaze rose to her face from his booze at the cautious, gentle voice, as if she were speaking to a confused child ”..What happened- what are you talking about?” She jumped in surprise as his demeanour took on an abrupt change and just barely, thanks to her trained reflexes, managed to raise her arm in time to block the bottle of alcohol on its path through the air towards her head. The heavy container met her right forearm in a painful collision that sent the bottle ricocheting off over her shoulder, spilling copious amounts of its contents as it went. Cool liquid dripped down the limb as the roar of her father that had accompanied the projectile had time to register as verbalisation in her mind; ”Ask your mother”? Was that what he’d said? Did that mean that she was nearby? No.. She’d be right by her husband’s side after such an incident. ”Oh wait~” His rage was gone as quickly as it had come and again the drunken man giggled; something that was making Tani increasingly irritated. ”You can’t~!” He practically sung in conclusion before the laughter he’d been holding back burst through his teeth and the old man was once again afflicted with a fit of disturbing chortling. Then her stomach heaved as an image came back to her; that of a smouldering door frame hosting a forest of scorched black nails. She clenched her fists and took another step away from the man now practically rolling around in laughter at her feet, a sight made only more disturbing by the warped shadows dancing around the two, with the growing realisation that he’d breached the border of drunkenness and madness long before she’d reached him. The familiar tension in her jaw as it clamped shut drew the kunoichi’s attention to the quaking her fingertips had started for the umpteenth time that night and she forcibly relaxed her mouth enough to speak.

”They’re not with you.. are they?” Sudden silence met her quivering voice in response. ”They were inside, in the boys’ bedroom. Weren’t they?” Still nothing but the crackling of the slowly shrinking fire behind them. Her low voice cracked as she continued, shoulders shaking and hands tensing and un-tensing relentlessly. ”You did this? You trapped them inside..? Y-your wife... your sons..” There was an audible click when the girl’s teeth met again in the clenching of her jaw at the next infuriating chuckle to rumble from her father’s chest. ”Not mine~” He chortled as if those two words explained and excused everything he could have possibly done, ”Not my boys-“ It almost sounded as if his voice had broken then, but in the growing shadows it was impossible to see if there was any kind of remorse on the man’s face. Then faster than Tani could blink his voice was rippling with anger again ”Not my wife, not any more..” She felt a fire erupt in her stomach to rival that lighting the scene and again her hands were forming seals of their own accord as the clearly mad man before her finished his guilty plea ”After all; ‘Till death do us part’”

THUMP

The sound of a man colliding solidly with the wide trunk of a tree cut through the forest. The inebriated fellow couldn’t quite connect the dots of how he’d moved from the ground to where he half-stood now, not that he’d moved much along the vertical axis; if it wasn’t for the tree against his back and the young girl with one hand on his throat and the other firmly gripping the collar of his dirty shirt, he’d surely fall over. She must have moved him, though he didn’t have the brain-space to contemplate when little Tani-chan had gained the courage or strength to come at him, he was too preoccupied with the ache in his poor old back, the venomous blue-green gaze burning into his, and the growing realisation of another burning. ”Katon, Sesshoku Sono Yakedo no Jutsu” The words rumbled from her chest like the growl of a feral dog as the flesh beneath her right palm quickly blossomed a bright raw red. A pained grunt and more manic giggles; this man had lost his mind and it was quickly escalating the fury burning in her gut. ”Oh right-gnehehaheh I forgot..” His words pushed through choking gasps and strangled laughter ”Our little Tani-chan… is a big bad ninja now~ehaahaho-grrk” Short, callused fingers pressed firmly into his windpipe forced the cackling man to silence, allowing their owner’s own quiet words to be heard.

The kunoichi leaned in until her face was mere inches from her father’s, eyes wide with rage and teeth bared like a wild animal as her muscles jumped and trembled ”That’s right, now you’re going to tell me what happened and why the fuck it happened, and the next time you so much as snicker I set your arse on fire, you bastard.” With that promise she released her grip from the gasping man’s throat, leaving a very definitely painful hand shaped burn in its wake, so that he could meet her demands of an explanation. She ensnared his other collar in her right hand, which still slowly dripped with the mysterious alcoholic beverage, while he coughed in reunion with his air supply. ”You- You’re calling me a bastard?” He stifled another chuckle before the shinobi’s furiously unentertained gaze had him reconsidering her threat, ”You’re the bastard, kid! All of you were! S’not even me being rude; your mother was a fucking tramp!” Her balled fists tightened in the damp fabric of his shirt, the garment presumably soaked in the less coordinated depths of his drinking. She couldn’t quite make sense of what he was prattling about, there was nobody around for her mother to be a tramp with, not unless she had a thing for the cranky old man by the river.. ”You live in the middle of a forest with hardly anyone around for hours; what are you talking about?” Again the man exploded in sudden anger, his bellowing voice booming around the clearing ”What am I talking about?! I’m talking about her fucking boyfriend in Konoha, that’s what! I knew she was sleeping with that fucking dickhead when Konna was born, then again with you! She thought I was a fucking idiot and wouldn’t notice you’re not my kids, but I’ve got fucking eyes!” The words gushed from his mouth with surprising articulation for someone in such an inebriated state, though Tani had to regain a little more distance to avoid the missiles of saliva that accompanied them ”And you and yer brother, well you two have your daddy’s eyes, don’tcha? Fuck, I thought it was over when we moved away from that damned village and all its fucking dickhead ninja.. An I still took care of ya, even though you weren’ mine! Your brother stayed behind, like father like son, I thought we could set you straight, Tani, but no, you had to be like your dickhead father too.. couldn’t let the bloody place go.”

The girl could hardly see straight, he was telling her she wasn’t his daughter, and Konna wasn’t his son? She wasn’t sure she believed him on that, he’d always been a paranoid person, and she wasn’t sure if she would be so much disappointed as relieved if it were so. But that seemed irrelevant to the fire that was still crackling in the backdrop and she still required answers. ”Konna and I have Grandma’s eyes, Mum always says we reminded her of her mother. Now cut the crap and tell me what happened tonight.” She spat dangerously. ”Your Grandma’s eyes, huh? Your ma’s ma had eyes grey like ice- But you wanna know what happened tonight? I’ll tell ya. That bitch said she was pissing off, taking my boys and not telling me where. Started screaming about how I’m a fucking asshole. You believe that?“ Tani’s jaw clamped shut tightly once more; her mother had decided to go through with her plan to leave, and it had led to this mess. Just how much was it possible for someone to overreact? ”After she took my whole fucking life, used me to take care of her kids and said she loved me while she fucked her boy back in Konoha.. and probably had a good old laugh about her idiot husband in the fucking afterglow.. After all the shit I been through, she plans to up and fucking leave?! Say ‘Sorry bub, I’ve had my fun, now I’m done with you’?! I’m no damn fool, I know she was going back to that dickhead, hell now I realise none of you fucking kids were probably ever mine..” He was more paranoid than she’d thought, how long had he had these ridiculous delusions? Her sisters and both her younger brothers had been the spitting image of their father; had his dark eyes and hair, attributes they certainly hadn’t received from her grey eyed blonde haired mother, or this mysterious blue-green eyed shinobi she was supposed to have had an affair with.”What did you do?” By now she had little doubt, could feel the rage bubbling away inside her and knew she was only just holding the lid down by the tips of her twitching fingers, but she needed him to say it; to take responsibility for what he’d done before she lost control. ”We had a little disagreement. She sent the boys to their room so they wouldn’t have to see us yellin’.. I grabbed a drink to calm my nerves and she lost her shit..” The anger had seeped out of his tone now to be steadily replaced by a familiar one of what she was beginning to recognise as entertained insanity, and the far off look in his eyes, which Tani noticed were focused not at her but the blaze over her shoulder, almost sent the girl over the edge, but then he was talking again and she had to stave off her own madness to listen. ”I dunno when it happened, but I clocked her over the head with the bottle. I was so pissed off, and it felt so good.. I was seeing the world in fucking red when I lugged her tramp ass upstairs with my toolbox, I shut em all in, I’d be fucked if they were leaving me.. Emptied every bottle I had around the place, well all but one, an lit a match.” He lifted his arms and made a wide waving gesture towards the flames, as if tracing their path around what was left of the house while his torso started to convulse with remerging cackles. ”Poof! You should have seen it-” Then he degenerated back into a fit of manic giggling and Tani felt herself slip out of her grip.

Natanie stood frozen, eyes wide, brow creased so deeply with anger that a vainer girl might worry about permanent wrinkling, her entire body quaked and all she could do was stare at the man still clutched in her violently shaking fists as he barked with sadistic laughter. ”You killed them..” She stated the simple conclusion to his story with an almost detached hollowness, though such was just the effect of her faltering as she tried to process facts through her fury filled brain. The man who was supposedly not her father only continued to cackle in response, a sound that met her ears as her mind shut down and left nothing but the raging fire within driving her. If he’d been paying attention he may have been able to see the exact moment when the young girl holding him up snapped, her limbs grew steady and the wild look took over her eyes, but the intoxicated man was so far gone that if she hadn’t released his clothing at the instant she bellowed, leaving him to slide down the trunk of the tree and out of the way, he would have taken a jet of fire to the face. ”I WARNED YOU!” Were the words that blasted through his mind as he fell in what felt like slow motion, his attention pulled from the liquor swamping his mind, and he watched with hazy eyes as the space where his head had been exploded into a glorious flurry of orange flames. Then time picked up the pace and he landed with a dull THUD, back on the dirt once more, groaning in pain as he rolled himself onto his front to crawl away. Tani stared at the trunk of the tree where her target, whom she could now hear slithering away with all the grace of a headless chicken, had been; the bark now black while some smaller slivers that had been in the process of falling off burned merrily. Then something else caught her attention; heat had encased her right arm, the one she’d struck out with, and slowly she peered down at the limb to see that it was engulfed in fire.

”BAHAHEHAHOO!! You set-gaha! You set yourself on fire!! AHAAHAHAW!! You’re cracking me up, Ratty!” The cackling continued on from the dirt behind her, accompanied by another creak and thud as the long burning house dropped even more of its structure, though the kunoichi felt no embarrassment or need to retaliate to the taunting, she simply raised her flaming hand steadily, clenching it into a fist as she turned her still wild eyes back to the man rolling around on the ground. ”Hey Rat, weren’t you supposed to be setting me on fire? I mean, I knew you were completely rubbish at that medical crap, but you can’t even aim a flamethrower-fist-technique at point blank?” He continued to laugh as she turned her body to face him, the alcohol on her arm had ignited; it was obvious immediately, she didn’t care, right now retribution called. With her intense gaze still unbroken the girl cocked her head ever so slightly to the side, a sharp motion that grabbed the man’s attention, before she spoke in a voice so chillingly matter-of-fact that he found himself suddenly without the urge to chuckle and unable to turn away ”You’re not nearly as frightened as you ought to be.” As laughable as the line was, something in the way she was looking at him without blinking, in the way she was completely un-phased by being aflame, in the way she was approaching him; almost completely silently though he could clearly see her take each step, all so predatory, prevented him from mocking it. Propped up with his arms out behind his back and still seated on the floor, he found himself scuttling clumsily away from her advance ”C-come on Rat, don’t be silly; you an I both know you ain’t got it in you to kill me!” He wasn’t sure if that was meant to be an insult, statement of a fact, or if he was simply trying to comfort himself, but it didn’t stop the shinobi closing in on him. Finally she blinked, but the motion was somehow even more unsettling than the inhuman stare.

”You’d be surprised what you can live though..” The words sent a shudder down his spine

”..If you’re lucky”

Then flaming fingers were thrust into his short locks, wrenching at the strands as the scent of alcohol and burning hair filled his nose before it was crushed under the impact of an incoming knee. Warmth flooded down his face and he tasted the metallic tang of blood before he was rained with more blows than he could keep track of and plunged into a world of pain far outside the numbing capabilities of booze.

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It was impossible to tell how long she spent making sure the man who was supposedly not her father suffered adequately for his crime. At some point in her blind beating his alcohol soaked shirt had ignited from that already burning on her arm; a result so fitting, the girl thought, that she relocated his precious bottle, returned the contents to him, and left him to the mercy of the fire. By the time he stopped writhing and rolling around, his pained cries had ceased and the kunoichi watching him with cold hard eyes was appeased and no longer aflame herself, only glowing embers lit the clearing. Just when the flaming house had burnt itself out she didn’t know, but now that it had she found herself immediately drawn to the rubble. She made her way through the smoking mass, stepping around nests of jagged black wood and mountains of charcoal whose original form was now impossible to distinguish, deluded and searching the darkness for some sign of life. When she did eventually spot something human amidst the ash and rubble, she knew her hope was severely misplaced. Three motionless forms mottled with black and the smell of burnt flesh; the scene would have brought up the contents of her stomach if it wasn’t long since empty, the only thing emerging from her convulsing body a flash flood of tears. Still she stumbled forward, body shaking with supressed sobs, and fell to her knees by the closest of the scorched bodies, which she immediately recognised as Kayuroto, desperately trying to control her crying so she could concentrate on what she needed to do.

Deep down she knew it was futile, and even as she set to work checking the boy’s vitals, she couldn’t shake the damning familiarity of her position, clawing desperately to save a life that was already gone. His airway was blocked from excessive swelling, no doubt caused by the large third and fourth degree burns covering his right arm, shoulder and foot; there was no pulse. Clinging to the dregs of her hope by the skin of her teeth, she stubbornly moved to her mother’s side, the light from the embers bathing the area with their mockingly gentle incandescence as she continued the fruitless endeavour of trying to save the dead. Her vision was a murky black and orange mess as she failed to bite back her convulsive weeping. Her mother’s entire lower half was charred black with obvious eschar and she also lacked vital signs; the large oozing gash in the side of her head probably causing her death before obtaining the burns. She couldn’t give up; she’d come so far through so much painful persistence so she wouldn’t have to see her loved ones die, she refused to let them all be taken from her in one fell swoop. She whipped around to the final lifeless form of Jiiyaki, the boy was one of the most energetic and full-of-life people she’d ever known, and began her inspection. Her heart pounded in her ears; his shoulder was out of alignment and his upper arm held a number of lacerations, presumably from the fall to the first floor, but his burns were mostly partial thickness and smaller in area to the others’. She felt no pulse but quickly cleared the boy’s airways and placed her shaking palm against his small motionless chest. She could do this; she’d spent so many long hours working so hard to accomplish that. ”Come on..” The words barely audible as she calmed her gasping sobs and filled her lungs before transferring the sweet oxygen to the boy’s unmoving lungs, repeating the action again before pressing down against his sternum to depress it, again and again, counting each motion up to 30. She could do this; she had to, if only her little brother would cooperate. ”Come on!”

After what must have been nearly twenty minutes of compression and ventilation cycles sobs broke the surface again, nothing changed; the boy remained motionless, silent, deceased. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t good enough; she was a medical failure and she'd failed her family. ”Please…” Her heart plummeted and her eyebrows crinkled in emotional agony as the light levels slowly dropped alongside Tani’s energy reserves; she couldn’t carry on any longer, she was already getting light headed. She scrunched her eyes shut and shook her head to clear away the tears before reopening them to look upon her brother’s serene face. It almost looked as though he were sleeping, though the image was corrupted by his unnatural stillness; not even the faintest of flickers behind his eyelids, there was no dreaming in the eternal sleep. She let her hands fall slack from their place upon his chest as she ceased compressions and sunk from her knees to sit on the cooling black debris, looking around with heaving chest at her fallen kin surrounding her. The girl’s heart raced and her breathing quickened as she tried to process the situation. They were gone, dead; she sat alone amidst corpses and the shattered remains of her childhood. A panicked, hopeless wail burst from her chest ”Are you serious?! You can’t be gone! You can’t all leave me!” She howled into her hands as the came to hover by her mouth, she was really light headed now and knew she needed to calm down, but the prospect of that didn’t even seem possible at this point, and in any case; she couldn’t bring herself to care if she collapsed.

She’d done one thing for sure; she’d managed to show just how pitifully hopeless she really was. Weak and dizzy with exhaustion and emotional strain, Yin Natanie finally gave in; breaking down into a mournful chorus of sobbing, weeping and wailing. Her worthless hands pressed to her face as she slumped forward, her cries of pain echoing over smouldering remains and through the trees, and for the first time in her life the girl felt truly alone. As her tears continued to fall and the dull ache in her head grew to an intense rhythmic throbbing her slumped form sunk even closer to the ground, and by the time her howling turned to whimpering she was pressed to the uneven black surface below her; crushed under the weight of her devastation. She couldn’t handle this, it was too much, this kind of thing happened in works of fiction; not to real people in real life.. not to her.

When the crying stopped Tani heaved herself out of the ashes and, one by one, moved her kin from the rubble. Using the head of a shovel whose handle had been burnt away, and with numbness in hear heart and stare, three shallow graves were dug in what had been the backyard within the next few hours. Each received the precious cargo they were to embrace, and were filled once again as the very first signs of morning light touched the clear sky. That was it, the burial was done, and even though she’d spent hours putting them to final rest with her own two hands, the girl found it hard to believe they were really dead. She was covered from head to toe in dirt, ash, grass, splinters and countless nicks and burns, including a rather large minor burn covering the majority of her right forearm (which had a large area of bruising underneath it). Her hair was a complete mess; in a state of upheaval that even her usually messy hairstyle would be both shocked by and proud of having obtained. Streams of salty tears had left their tracks down her face and their clear paths told the tale of the girl’s sadness; a story the bright pink of her eyes only provided more evidence of.

Heavy steps trudged aimlessly through the far regions of the forest of Hi no Kuni as bright colours flooded over the sky. The shinobi responsible for the disturbance travelled with eyes downcast; the sky held none of its joy for her, not today. Today she was a lost, lonely ninja. Not even the usual singing birds or chattering insects would accompany her on this particular morning; all the local wildlife had fled a fire the night before, leaving the area in an eerily unnatural silence. Nothing about anything made sense. None of the previous night’s events seemed real. Her house couldn’t be gone; it had always stood very definite and strong amongst the trees. Her family couldn’t have died, they’d already suffered through the loss of a daughter; surely there was only so much misfortune destiny could throw one small group of people. It couldn’t be real; she had to be dreaming, or hallucinating.. Perhaps she’d hit her head way back by the old man’s house by the river? The river that then just happened to peek through the trees ahead of her. If she’d had any form of emotion left inside her she would be shocked that she’d dragged herself so far. She’d not set foot within sight of it since it took Saikiko’s life, now here she was again, twice in less than 12 hours. She swayed her way right up to its edge and stopped upon the pebbled bank, staring through its surface to a plane that didn’t exist, with hollow, sorrowful eyes. Her insides were a swirling, gurgling surge, and just like this river had her sister they were dragging her away while she struggled to stay at the surface.

She’d always loved her life so much, so why was she now wishing she could be absolutely anyone else? She wanted out, away from the vortex of discord surrounding her, to take on the shell of some normal person with a normal life and not have to be swallowed up by it. She wanted to forget. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment as her head span and she nearly lost her balance, stumbling gracelessly on the smooth riverbank as she caught herself and blinked a few times. Where was she? Oh right, being a normal person. So, what does a normal person do when they come to a river of no personal importance upon their travels? She glanced downstream then up it and her gaze was met by the sight of a flat bridge that was little more than wooden planks laid across the watercourse; not the bridge that would have sent Natanie into a flurry of emotion at the sight of, but that was irrelevant to a random person anyway. Onwards she shuffled, ignoring the painful heat in her burnt arm (it wasn’t there, it wasn’t there..), until her crunching footsteps became hollow thuds against wood; a regular person would find a bridge over and carry on. The sound of furiously rushing water didn’t make a normal person’s heart thunder; the light spray sent up from liquid bombarding rock beneath their feet didn’t make a normal person’s stomach churn; a normal person didn’t sway on their unsteady feet, or find white holes burning through their vision, or lose their grip on the world as their eyes rolled shut and their consciousness slipped away midstride. No random, normal person slipped to the side, legs colliding with the edge of a flat wooden bridge as their torso cleared the platform, sending them tumbling into the bubbling water below. But Yin Natanie did.



When the battered, soaked girl would regain consciousness in the mid-afternoon, washed up on a grassy bank, she’d wonder how she got there. She’d remember that she had been going to visit her parents and two younger brothers in the woods, but find a confounding blankness on details thereafter. She’d recall something, through her pounding headache, about them already being gone when she reached the house, about being upset that they’d left, and falling into a river. After a few moments of detective work on her thoughts, tiptoeing around some thought trains she just felt on an instinctive level she wouldn’t profit from venturing, she’d conclude that her mother must have gone to Yu no Kuni already; she’d remember something about confirming that. Then she must have gone by the river, to train a little judging by her burns, and fallen in and hit her head. Yes, that would all make sense of her predicament, and then she’d heave herself off on the long journey home to Konoha for medical attention she wouldn’t even think to try and apply herself; something deep inside her just quietly whispered that it would be pointless, she needed a real medic.