The only thing stopping me from losing it was… a lot of things, actually, and said things were staring at Ino in various degrees of shock and horror because she’d screamed herself hoarse before passing out. My first order of business was getting her help for whatever the Nine-Tails had done to her, so I extracted my hand from her limp one and picked her up, walking to Shikamaru, who was sporting a quickly yellowing bruise from where I’d punched him.

“Here. Take her to the memorial stone. I’m going to go get Kiba.” He nodded, looking a little dazed as he picked her up. “Actually, no. Give her back; you’re concussed. Sasuke, you take her.”

Sakura circled Shino and Sasuke, her brow furrowed. Concern for Ino morphed into hostility towards me. “What did you do?”

Taking a deep breath to calm myself while I transferred her unconscious friend to Sasuke, I held Sakura’s gaze and kept the anger out of my voice—I wasn’t angry at her. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know why she screamed, but she passed out from chakra exhaustion. Earlier, we caught her using a bird to track us and that was before we all fought.”

“She used the Mind Transfer Jutsu twice afterwards,” said Sakura, biting her thumb. Her gaze flitted back to Ino and the sight of her limp body had obvious worry crawling all over Sakura’s face. “The chakra cost from her scouting and then taking over our bodies…”

“Exactly my point.” I stepped around her. “Training’s over everyone. Get Ino to the jonin so they can take her to the hospital. A medical ninja will look at her and see what’s up.”

Sasuke was the first to go, hoisting Ino onto his back and sprinting into the forest. Shikamaru walked after them at a slower pace but was quickly overtaken by Sakura and Shino and now that I didn’t have to keep up a front, I sat down in the grass and groaned.

The sheer mental exhaustion from the past… actually, I didn’t know how long my first interaction with the Nine-Tails lasted. It could’ve happened in an instant for all I knew but regardless, dealing with Ino while talking to the Nine-Tails had sapped me of a lot of my usual mental clarity.

“Are you okay?” Choji asked. “What happened when Ino used her jutsu on you? That reaction can’t just be because of chakra exhaustion.”

Hinata opened her mouth to say something but then decided otherwise. I raised an eyebrow and she looked away almost guiltily.

…She’d had her Byakugan active the entire fight, but none of the Nine-Tails’ chakra had leaked out of the seal, had it?

“What?” I asked.

“Ino—when she used her jutsu on you, I saw a different kind of chakra enter your chakra network—a dark chakra. Then I saw the seal on your stomach. It’s where the chakra came from… isn’t it?”

“It’s not me you should worry about,” I said. “Ino saw… it first. I arrived afterwards.”

“Even then,” said Hinata. “You’re the—”

“I’m alright” I insisted, smiling tiredly at the two of them. “But you’ve got a point. Meeting it for the first time was intense.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Choji asked.

I barked out a laugh. “Something tells me I’ll be talking about it a lot today.”

“You know what I mean,” he replied, folding his arms. “Knowing about something and seeing it are two different things, man.”

“I won’t lie to you, I’m not okay.” I smiled wryly, spreading my arms out. “Unfortunately, there’s not much either of you—or even I—can do about it.”

Just thinking felt like wading through a river of syrup and I was moments away from genuinely snapping at the two people closest to me. Instead, I tried for a bright smile, but it didn’t make me feel better, nor did it convince Choji and Hinata.

“I’m not mad at either of you, I just need some time alone to get my thoughts in order, alright?”

Choji folded his arms, looking like he might say something, while Hinata pursed her lips. Eventually, they walked away. They weren’t happy about my decision, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with their endless questions right now—and even if I was, I didn’t have the answer to their questions.

I remembered the dark chuckle shaking the prison walls as Ino screamed. My chest swelled with a targetless anger and with nowhere to direct it, I expelled it with a massive sigh. If what Hinata had said was true, then the torture the Nine-Tails put Ino through had inadvertently—or purposefully—injected more than the usual amount of Tailed Beast chakra into my body.

Enough that it was distinct from my own.

It wasn’t enough to do much to the seal but when my father freed it from Obito’s control, it wasn’t like the Nine-Tails stopped killing and eating people so it really could have been nothing more than sheer maliciousness.

I trusted my firsthand experience when it came to dealing with a monster that had taken more lives than I could fathom and firsthand experience taught me the Nine-Tails desired two things: carnage and freedom. If I had anything to say about it, that monster wouldn’t get anywhere near another human being ever again.

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But I didn’t have a say—or rather, what I wanted fell short compared to what I needed to do. The Nine-Tails’ power would make it far easier to fight against the coming future threats—and by training to control its power, I’d be able to see my mother again.

Giving that thing any leverage over me turned my blood to acid… but the facts remained despite my feelings.

Kiba ran into me about halfway towards the clearing where I’d left him earlier. Like Shikamaru, he was also pretty concussed, so I didn’t have to fight him into submission or anything. After I explained things to him, we travelled in silence since neither of us were in the mood for small talk, emerging a few metres away from the memorial stone.

Kurenai raced towards us, crouching on a knee and looking at Kiba with pursed lips. “You’re concussed.”

“I also took a food pill,” he said.

She sighed. “Then I’ll be taking all three of you to the hospital.”

Kiba tried fighting her on that but I’d walked too far out of earshot to hear what she said in reply. Whatever it was, he dropped his shoulders, clenched fists, and sat down with everyone else. Kurenai’s face looked furious, swivelling left and right until she saw Shikamaru.

He blinked and stood up, meeting her halfway as she launched into a tirade.

Instead of joining the rest of my class, I went to Asuma. He and Kakashi stood under a tree, carefully watching over my eight ex-classmates. This was just a training exercise but some of them had gone to life-threatening lengths just to win. That said, we were training to take missions outside the village and none of us had ever left the Leaf’s walls before.

The fact that they weren’t looking at them in concern showed they approved of their drive at least.

It wasn’t all a result of determination, though—there was a degree of nervousness involved that no one wanted to admit to even if its effects were clearly showing. Kiba had downed a food pill without a second thought and Ino… I looked back but turned away before the pity overwhelmed me.

Thanks to my parents’ seal, she was never going to die but she’d still had an encounter with a Tailed Beast and coming out of those unscathed might as well be a pipe dream. Least of all the most hateful—not to mention the most powerful—one of all.

“Your insanity has rubbed off on the rest of these lot,” said Asuma with a smile. “Two are seriously concussed, one’s driven herself into serious chakra exhaustion, and the rest are well on the way there.”

“Kiba’s also eaten a food pill,” I said, the ghost of a smile flickering over my face, “and speaking of…”

I tapped my ear and turned my head slightly to face him, waiting for Asuma to catch onto my meaning, but he didn’t. Kakashi figured it out instead. He drew a pen and notebook from his flak jacket. I ripped out an empty page on the back and then passed it back. Asuma’s eyebrows surged up and Kakashi’s single grey widened.

They looked back at me simultaneously and I grimaced, breaking eye contact with their hands pressed against my shoulders.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” said Kakashi. He gave me another firm pat. “Asuma, I’ll deal with the kids and set things up.”

He nodded and walked down the small decline to the memorial stone. Kiba was the first to make a fuss, rocketing to his feet before stumbling, his ass slamming to the ground. The more level-headed people out of the group looked at him with concern, eventually heeding Kakashi’s orders to go home for the day.

Kurenai departed, carrying Ino on her back and ensuring Kiba and Shikamaru were in front of her. The less-injured lot shuffled away in a disorganised clump with their feet dragging behind them. I caught Hinata and Choji’s concerned looks and fished through my pockets, tossing them my house key.

The meaning was clear enough and I followed up the gesture with a firm nod, watching them walk away and disappear around the bend.

Asuma and I stood alone under the tree. “So… this is the part where I’d offer you a cigarette to take the edge off life.”

I levelled a dry look his way.

“But,” He grinned, slightly denting the cigarette between his teeth, and started his lighter, “the responsible adult in me says no.”

“Sorry, haven’t met him yet but I’ll let you know when I find him.”

“Nice one.” He exhaled the thick smoke with a chuckle, pulling the cigarette from his lips. Beneath the amusement, I saw a wary concern in his brown eyes. “How are you holding up, kid?”

I inspected his face and then the forest across from us. “Pretty alright. I have to be the worst-kept secret in this goddamn village. I figured it out before even meeting the monster because of them.”

Asuma snorted.

“I’m serious. Hinata and Choji know because I told them a few years ago.”

“That’s a pretty big assumption to make,” he said, taking a drag. “Even if you had suspicions, there was no way for you to truly know.”

“...It wasn’t a sure thing until today,” I said, measuring my next words carefully. “And does it even matter? The way they treated me made it obvious something was up in the first place. “The Fox brat”, isn’t exactly subtle now, is it?”

He didn’t say anything for a while. I could see the words settling in his expression, sinking beneath the surface. His usual easy-going brown eyes were careful and calculating; he opened and closed his mouth a few times, not speaking until his voice croaked through parted lips.

“Does anyone else know?”

“No, it’s just them.”

“Not the Nara kid?”

“Uh,” I paused. “ Shikamaru and I weren’t on speaking terms when I told them.”

“So, they’ve known about you for two years?” Asuma rubbed his chin. “Okay. But how about you? Sure, you had your suspicions but you never had them confirmed until today—how do you feel?”

I shuddered as I remembered the night of my birth… the blood, their words. “...I don’t even have a word for it. Part of me can’t believe I’m saying this but I understand why everyone hates me.”

“Kid…”

I raised my hands. “I know I’m not the Nine-Tails. That’s not the point I’m making. You understand me, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied, laying a heavy hand on my head. “It’s the shit you’ve been saddled with as its Jinchuriki and for all the grieving people, that makes you a target. Not that it’s fair, but it’s just the way things are.”

“…I know.” Sighing, I let my hands fall. “So, what now? Are we going to report this to Lord Third?”

“We need to grab Kurenai’s genin first—the one who entered your seal—because your situation’s technically taboo to talk about.”

Despite my trying, I couldn’t hold back my laugh.

Asuma let go of my head after ruffling my hair and laughed. “No one knows how it got leaked to the villagers, but my old man made spreading it taboo and… well, you know how that turned out.”

With nothing more to say, we left the training grounds.