Fuuka’s world fragmented into a handful of tangentially associated sensory inputs. Pain dominated, a white, hot pulsating pain in her stomach that paralysed her lungs. Secondarily there was the sensation of movement: wind whipping against her back as her folded-over body punched through the air. Fuuka floated like that for maybe a second and then the ground rose up to slam into her side, tearing at her clothes and skin for an instant before she bounced back up and spun like a log caught in the current of a river.

Instinctively Fuuka curled up into a ball, protecting her head and midsection as she bounced twice, three times and then slammed into the parapet wall at the edge of the rooftop with a choking gasp. Fuuka coughed, her diaphragm twitching weakly instead of pulling air into her lungs as she began twitchily weaving a set of basic hand seals.

Fuuka knew a handful of proper water release ninjutsu, she liked to visit the archives and pick out new techniques to learn whenever she had the chance. Fuuka didn’t have any particular special talent for ninjutsu or genjutsu or taijutsu, but she wasn’t particularly bad at any of them either. It was fun to try new things

The problem with that though was that Fuuka hadn’t completely mastered any of those before moving onto the next one. There was really only one ninjutsu Fuuka felt like she could pull off even after being kicked across a rooftop and having the wind knocked out of her.

It was the first jutsu Fuuka had ever learned outside of the academy curriculum, Yoritomo sensei had picked it out and helped her learn it after they had found out she had an affinity for water release. Sensei had been all excited to test all three of them with the chakra induction paper used to discover one’s natural affinities, only to be rather put out when Yuna and Haru had both revealed their clans had already tested their affinities years ago. Fuuka had been mortified, supposing this was just one more thing she was ignorant about, but Yoritomo had actually been childishly pleased to be able to administer the test on at least one of them. He’d taken her to the archives afterwards to get a scroll in celebration.

Fuuka stayed on the ground, huddled in a ball to secretly finish her handseals and was rewarded with the familiar but still uncomfortable feeling of a dense, cold blob of water chakra forming in her stomach and then forcing its way up her throat. Water burst from Fuuka’s mouth and then slid down to her shoulder, then her arm as a cohesive, serpent-like blob that gathered in the palm of Fuuka’s left hand as she planted her hands and pushed up to her feet, whipping around to face her assailant.

While Fuuka had been flying over and then bouncing off the rooftop the black clad figure had been patiently striding over to her with the smooth gait of a natural predator. When the distance between them had closed to the striking range of her jutsu Fuuka cocked her arm and whipped it forwards, launching her attack.

[Water Release: Water Whip]

The momentum of Fuuka’s throw elongated the blob of water . Surface tension kept the blob’s form as a cohesive whole even as its shape transformed into a thin tendril that lashed out at the black clad woman with considerable speed. That considerable speed wasn’t enough however, between the folds of the figure’s mask Fuuka saw a flash as two cold, almost black eyes shifted to easily track the trajectory of her jutsu. When the tip of Fuuka’s water whip was about to cut across the black clad figure’s upper body they threw up a forearm to block the attack and Fuuka’s whip shattered as the force of the impact overcame her control over her chakra.

The impact unleashed a spray of water that washed over the figure, but concealed within the harmless droplets were the shards of a broken bottle that Fuuka had snatched up and hidden within her technique when she’d been pushing herself to her feet. It was pretty common for people to use their rooftops for drinking in Chowaku, enough so that it was actually a hazard Yoritomo sensei had warned them about, because the ninja tabi they all wore were open toed it was pretty easy to slice your toe open on a shard of glass. This had never happened to Fuuka but it was mostly because she was terrified of getting some awful infection and so was always hyper aware of the possibility. Even when being chased by a murderous jonin it turned out.

Fuuka didn’t wait around to see if her gambit paid off, she immediately turned back around and pitched herself off the edge of the roof, trying to use the distraction to put as much distance between her and her pursuer as possible. She wouldn’t be able to outrun the figure but if she could break line of sight with them it might be possible to hide.

Fuuka crashed into the wall of the next building but because she was expecting it she was able to coil up against the solid surface and pinball off it, launching herself downwards at an angle towards the open mouth of the alley. If she could just get back onto the street she could cut into a storefront or something and run through that to lose the figure. Chowaku citizens knew better than to interfere with shinobi business so they should be okay, someone might even raise the alarm and send reinforcements to help her!

Fuuka slammed feet first into the alley pavement and took off in a dead sprint. She got about five paces before something heavy crashed into her from behind, knocking her into the ground and pressing down to keep her there. Fuuka cried out but before she could even begin to struggle the pressure on her back was lifted and she was hauled roughly to her feet and then spun around and pushed hard into the brick wall behind her.

The black clad figure seized a fistful of Fuuka’s shirt and pulling it tight around her throat. Two hard, brown eyes glared at Fuuka from behind a tight, cloth mask and something sharp and cold was digging into her stomach. The mask and the face beneath it had been marred by a handful of shallow cuts.

“Okay.” said the figure in a flat, slightly gravelly woman’s voice. She smelled faintly of cigarettes and sounded... mildly annoyed, like she had stepped in something unpleasant and now had to scrape it off the bottom of her sandal. That might have had something to do with the h

“That’s enough playing around. Move and you die, got it?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Fuuka stared open mouthed at the woman, Unsure if her body was refusing to respond to her commands or her brain had frozen up and was refusing to issue any.

“GOT IT?” The woman repeated and the force behind the sharp object pressing into Fuuka’s stomach intensified and Fuuka felt the very tip slide easily through the fabric of her shirt and then sink partially into her skin. Fuuka squeaked and somehow managed to nod her head fractionally.

The woman said nothing in response but the hand gripping Fuuka’s collar released and shortly thereafter Fuuka felt it patting the tattered remains of her tool pouch, then her left pocket and then finally the right one, where Fuuka had placed the decoy scroll. The woman shifted her grip to withdraw the scroll and then held it up in Fuuka’s line of sight, squeezing tightly with her gloved hand.

The scroll emitted a sharp squeal and then suddenly became a rat, which struggled ineffectually in the woman’s grip as she squeezed harder until the rat burst in a puff of chakra smoke.

“That was kind of cute the first time,” the woman said, her tone flat again. “The second time not so much. Who has the real one?”

“...I…I didn’t see!” Fuuka choked out weakly, sucking in her abdomen to lessen the pressure of the knife.

In a flicker of motion the woman’s empty hand smashed into Fuuka’s cheek, snapping her head to the side and mashing the inside of her mouth against her teeth.

“I don’t have time for this,” the woman said, reaching forwards and grabbing Fuuka roughly by the chin, turning her head back to face the woman. “And when I run out of time, you run out of time. Understand?”

Fuuka sobbed, spitting out a mouthful of saliva and blood as she screwed her eyes shut tightly. She was going to die here. This woman had killed her sensei, had probably killed dozens of people before that and now Fuuka was completely at her mercy. Her weapons were all lost in the blast when she blew up her own pouch like an idiot and she had no secret techniques she could use in the instant it would take the woman to gut her like a fish.

Her parents would have to see her dead body, they would probably have to identify it, or maybe Fuuken would try and go instead to spare them that. Would Tomoki be able to laugh and joke again after the last thing he had told her was a careless jab?

Should she… maybe just tell the woman what she wanted to know? She would probably just die anyway but…maybe she would be let go? That would be okay right? Kaoru might have hidden the scroll, or he might have reached the listening post already? Couldn’t she just worry about herself?

“Final answer kid, who has the real scroll,” The woman said and Fuuka could feel those pitiless, dark eyes boring into her even through her shut eyelids.

“I…”

I just want to go home to my family!

I don’t want to get hurt!

I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS!

“I… I left before they split up! I really don’t know,” Fuuka said quickly, gritting her teeth and tensing up in anticipation of that cold, sharp point driving deep into her belly.

I don’t want to die being a coward either. At least this way they can be proud of me…

Fuuka heard a cold sigh. “I see,” said the woman. “I guess we’re done here.”

…

“You pass,”

What? The pressure pushing Fuuka into the wall and the sharp point on her stomach withdrew and she stumbled forwards, her eyes snapping open.

The black clad woman had adopted a casual posture against the opposite wall of the alley. She pulled off her face mask, revealing a shaggy, brown bob of hair and tanned skin.

Fuuka stared at her bug eyed, wondering why the woman looked so familiar.

“Ah!” Fuuka started, the realisation hitting her. “Shimamura Sensei!”

The haircut and build were identical to that of the corpse Fuuka had found with the rest of her team. None of them had turned the body over to look at its face but…

“In the flesh, as it were,” said the woman who might be her sensei, as she dug a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out from her pocket and began the process of lighting one. “Anyway, like I was saying, you pass. Again, I suppose, you must have done one of these with Yoritomo right? A bell test?”

Fuuka giggled weakly. She had to, the idea was just absurd. Fuuka had done a bell test before. Bell tests were fun little challenges with a moral lesson wrapped up in them that jonin used to test freshly graduated academy students to see if they were ready to be genin. Nobody knew why they were called bell tests, each sensei designed their own version and they rarely if ever involved actual bells.

Last year when Fuuka had first graduated, Yoritomo Sensei had made her, Yuna and Haru climb a sheer cliff face of the nearby Morafuko Mountain. The cliff face had been crumbling and unstable and all three of them had fallen back down to the bottom a number of times before they learned to tie themselves together with rope, so that when one of them fell the other two could support them until they recovered their footing. Like that they had managed to reach the top of the cliff face and, supposedly, learn a valuable lesson about teamwork. What Fuuka mostly remembered from the day had been getting absolutely covered in dirt and mud and an overwhelming sense of inferiority towards her two teammates. Fuuka hadn’t even known the wall climbing technique that used chakra to adhere to walls and her clan born teammates had torn ahead of her. Even when Fuuka had timidly suggested working together with rope she had been the one to lose her grip and be supported far more often than she had done the supporting. For some reason the thought of completing the challenge as a pair without Fuuka had never occurred to either Haru or Yuna, but then neither of them had really gotten along at first.

It had been an exhausting, stressful and rather humiliating day, but Fuuka had felt a faint sense of accomplishment at the end of it. There had been no dead body, there had been no terrifying pursuit by a masked killer, there had been no desperate fight for survival in which she had been overpowered at every turn, too weak to even run away successfully.

“A…test, haha,” Fuuka muttered, sagging and staggering forwards as adrenalin drained from her body, leaving an empty, wrung out husk. Had the alley always been this dark? Weren’t they actually pretty close to the street? So why was her vision so dark around the edges? Suddenly the paved ground of the alley pitched upwards, rearing up to meet Fuuka like an angry cat.

“Ah crap,” Fuuka heard, as she fell forwards only to be suddenly arrested by a firm grip on her shoulder. “Maybe I overdid it a little…”

It was the last thing Fuuka heard before everything else went black as well.