Shinako walked down the cliff-face and towled her hair off. After a long morning of training she liked to bathe in the tributaries of the Naka as they flowed downhill. Returning home dusty and sweaty always ensured that Shinako would be in a bad mood for the rest of the day. She had changed into a short red kimono and a pair of shorts. After all these months of training, she had gotten used to her new tom-boyish attire. There was a time not so long ago when she would have been mortified at the idea of showing her legs in public.

As she passed she spied a young boy alone, peering out over the railing of the memorial. Stopping in her tracks, Shinako's motherly instincts kicked in. She scanned the area for an adult that might have been looking after the boy, but found no sign of one. He seemed distracted by something, and Shinako could think of nothing other than how close to the edge he was standing.

Throwing her towel over her shoulder, she approached, putting a warm smile on her face. Her hair was tied back in a pony-tail, and her father's prized earring dangled from her ear.

"Hello there!"

She greeted the boy in a soft and soothing voice, preparing for the possibility that he would be upset, or lost. She leaned down and and tilted her head around his shoulder, letting her presence be plain.

"You're standing awfully close to the edge there, little friend."

As the youngest child in her family she had never gotten very many opportunities to take care of children, but she had been told many times how good she was with them. In fact, since enrolling in the ninja academy, she had been spending far more time with people of this boy's age. She had learned very quickly not to under-estimate them, as they could be quite fierce with their skills as shinobi.

Placing her hand on the railing to the young boy's left, she leaned on it as well, subtly checking to make sure that he was not slipping or situated dangerously. After a few moments she was satisfied that he was relatively safe, or at least that she could catch him if he began to fall. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she realized that she was most-likely being overly worrisome. She gave a warming laugh.

"My name is Shinako. What brings you out here all alone?"

She noticed an intensity in the boy that was not common in people his age. There was something intelligent in his eye beyond the average inquisitive spark that was common in most children. Shinako had been meeting many interesting people recently, and was not about to rule this boy out as one of them.She looked off into the distance before looking back down at the boy, trying to pinpoint exactly what it was that he had come here to stare at.

501/501

Shinako's heart nearly leaped out of her chest as the boy jumped atop the railing, betraying to her better judgements that he was, in fact, a shinobi. At that age, it would have been hard to say that he was any higher than an academy student or a genin. With a slight gasp, Shinako reached out her hand to grasp at anything that she could; an arm, a sleeve, a belt. But her attempt was to no avail, as the boy slipped and began to fall.

Time nearly stood still. If asked about it later, Shinako would not have called what she did in the moment thinking exactly. If she had had to venture a guess at what had happened, she would have said that some part of her, however small, had wanted to fall too, and so was ready to leap over the edge in pursuit of Uchiha Susumu, the sad child that she had no business caring about.

In the space of a single breath, Shinako dropped her towel and shed her pack from her back. Susumu had gone over the rail, but also had a head-start on her. At any rate, she needed to make up time. Placing her left hand atop the railing and dropping all of her weight, Shinako swung under metal piping 'monkey-bar' style, making a partial revolution so as to place her feet on the underside of the rail and push off, down after the child, hoping that this initial burst of speed would close the distance between them enough for her to do something. As she did, she almost immediately passed Susumu as he waited just below the sight-line of the edge.

Eyes wide in astonishment, Shinako looked back at the boy as she passed him, the puzzlement plain on her face. Her diving maneuver had sent her into a much wider trajectory than Susumu had taken, and she found herself too far from the cliff-face to catch herself as he had. Twisting her body and spinning around in mid-air, she looked up at the boy before once again turning to face the daunting amount of space beneath her.

She was quickly approaching the spiky expanse of Hatake Kakashi's hair, and recognized that it was the final hope of catching herself before a deadly fall to the ground below. She estimated that almost three seconds had passed, and she was falling at over twenty meters per second. Reaching into her tool-kit, she grasped the single kunai knife that was secured there and drew it in a flash just as she passed the first rocky lock on Kakashi-senpai's head. Holding it in her right hand, she drove it forcefully into the stone.

The knife dug a shallow trench, seeming to catch her weight for a moment before translating all of the force of her fall to her hand. In an instant, the kunai snapped. Shinako was sure that something in her hand had snapped as well. However, as adrenaline pumped through her, she ignored the biting pain and once again contorted her body, angling herself perpendicular to the ground so as to use her surface area as a parachute. The maneuver worked well, and she felt the wind catch her and her body slow as she approached her final hope of living.

The next spike of hair approached, and Shinako knew that she only had one shot at doing this right. Her arm was not long enough to reach the salvation of the stone, so she twisted one final time, her face once again positioned toward Susumu. However, this time her eyes did not find the boy that she had rushed so foolishly to save. They remained locked on the jutting rock that was quickly passing her left foot.

Kicking the apendage out as far as she could and releasing her chakra in the supernatural walking technique, Shinako felt the face cliff. She tensed every muscle in her leg and abdomen so as not to be pulled in two by the force of her fall. Suddenly, her foot caught, and she found herself pivoting through the air. As she pulled with her left leg, her right foot also met the rock, catching hold and sliding as her momentum carried her to the underside of Kakashi-senpai's hair, bringing her to a jarring halt just beside his unblinking left eye. The Sixth Hokage had saved her life.

Shinako's entire body was sore as she walked slowly onto the Hokage's face, kneeling and venerating his forehead. She was not sure that at least one of her fingers was broken, and she may have sprained both her elbow and her left knee, but she was alive. Her thoughts went back to Susumu, and she began to climb back up the mountain, resting at the very top of Kakashi-senpai's head and looking up at the young boy, as though challenging him to explain himself.

835/1336

Shinako watched silently, cradling her right hand close to her body as the boy made his way down the mountain to join her. In the way that he approached she could see that he was not attacking her, and his words betrayed no malicious intent behind his previous gesture. Shinako had thought him to be suicidal, but now she wasn't sure. There was certainly something off about him that Shinako could not place her finger on. She watched him carefully as he closed the last of the space between them and took a seat. She took a measured step backwards before sitting down carefully as well. Getting down from the heads in her current condition would require some doing.

"I would have done the same for anyone, but tell me..."

Shinako's voice betrayed the pain that she was in, but her eyes revealed how stern she felt in the moment. Even after having seen her throw herself over a mountainside the boy seemed vaguely detatched from what was going on around him. Angling her head slowly from side to side, she relieved some of the tension in her neck. After such a spurt of physical activity she felt a head-ache coming on. This was one unfortunate reality of life as a shinobi that Shinako was not used to. She had trained sparingly in taijutsu, but no matter what she did it appeared as though her physical stamina did not increase. Her genjutsu and Inton techniques did not require much physical energy, and for that she was grateful.

"What was the purpose of that? I wonder what you were doing up there to begin with."

His behavior did not seem to indicate that his plan had been to ambush her. In fact, if he had, it would have been a good tactic. He could easily have played on her trust and then made his strike while she was weakened from her expenditure. In her current state there was no way she would have been able to form handseals. However, the behavior was so erratic that she couldn't possibly pin down a motive.

In her near exhaustion, Shinako's vision blurred momentarily and she swayed in her seated position, reaching her left hand out to steady herself. She was careful not to take her eyes off of the boy. In the few moments that had preceded, she could not say exactly when, she had ceased to look at Susumu as a child. He was something formidible and alien, contained a shroud of mystery and moved through some ineffable volition. Her shadow, slowly but deliberately, moved across the face of the rock, shifting unnaturally in the sunlight and placing itself between her body and Susumu's, a less than casual sign that Shinako was unnerved by the experience.

469/1805

As Susumu spoke, her imagination carried her to all kinds of places, most of them suspicious. This had all been some sort of test to discover the content of her character. First and foremost, Shinako wondered what it was that Susumu had discovered about her. Next, she wondered if it was what the young boy had hoped to discover. She scanned him once again, finding no sign of rank or village insignia. It became apparent to her that the boy was an intruder.

His answers did little to comfort her. She watched as the boy sprawled in the sun, and thought about what any of the chunin or jounin would do in this situation. Mere caution would dictate that she attempt to capture him and bring him in for questioning. She tried over and over to remember the exact protocol for things like this, but doubted that she had ever truly been briefed on such a situation. It was her understanding that the border-guard and the ANBU were supposed to control access to the village, so the lower-ranked shinobi rarely dealt with things like this.

As he shut his eyes, Shinako sat in silence. Her shadow rose from the ground in a slow, silent rope, moving like a predator toward the boy before freezing in place and falling back to its natural position. She never moved a muscle, eyes locked on the child's face in an expression somewhere between contemplation and certainty. If she knew one thing, it was that she could not bring herself to harm him.

Shinako sighed, "I don't believe that you are a member of this village's ranks, Uchiha Susumu."

Her tone was calm, but stern, like a disappointed mother. She was not exactly angry, but sensed that she could be pushed to anger rather easily in that moment. Without knowledge or preparation, she had, most casually, and on an unremarkable day, come across a spy who was attempting to learn something or other about the Hidden Leaf Village. Her innately hivish sense of loyalty was called to the fore-front, and all of her senses were on alert.

"I cannot tell you anything about the state of the village. I would not. Please...I think we both know that you are not what you appear to be."

The young woman took a deep breath. The rock was warm beneath her knee, and her steadying hand. The sun had been beating down on it all day, and had she not been in so much pain it might have been a good place to rest. However, for now, her attentions were completely consumed with finding a solution to the puzzle in front of her.

452/2,257

"I will not stop you..."

Shinako, after having heard Susumu's speech, was still unsure about his motives. However, he gave off an unmistakeable impression of unfinished business. It continued to unsettle the young woman, keeping her mind off of the pain that she would have to deal with sooner or later. She looked at Susumu in relief against the blue of the sky, wondering what strange past had led him to this; to this moment with her atop the heads of the greatest shinobi of the leaf village. She herself had never met the Hokage, but had seen him from afar. She took Susumu at his word that there was no cause for alarm, though the part of her that did was more trusting that Shinako would have liked.

"I would appreciate a promise that you will, when your business is concluded, leave the Hidden Leaf Village in peace..."

She was unsure if her words were a question or a mere statement of fact. Her resolve had not waivered, and she knew that if she were pushed to it she could confront Uchiha Susumu, but something continued to tell her not to. She thought back in that moment to her brother making wine in the cellar of their home, turning to her and smiling as he told her that sometimes the worth of something could be determined, even before it was mature. Almost intuitively, Shinako sensed that this boy was like the wine. Though when she had tasted it she had thought it rather sour, all the family had praised her brother for the superior beverage he had crafted. Perhaps she would never know what this wine would taste like, but she hoped that she could accurately judge its value.

Coming back to the moment as quickly as she had left it, Shinako rose to her feet, keeping her distance, but letting the strength of her presence be known. It was a gesture telling Susumu that he would not be permitted to linger her for much longer. She would allow him to conduct his business uninterrupted, but he would have to do so with haste.

356/2,613

The boy's final statement shocked Shinako. She reached out her hand to stop him, but it appeared as though he had vanished into thin air, possibly using the body flicker technique. In the solitude that remained after his departure, she bit her lower lip pensively, thinking about what would happen in a possible reunion with the strange child in Kumogakure.

*Travel peacefully, Uchiha Susumu. Perhaps we will meet again under less mysterious circumstances.*

She moved to the edge to check that he had not duped her again by dropping just below it, but it seemed as though the boy really was gone. She looked out at the Hokage's tower, which she knew to be his destination. Even if she had wanted to go there and report the incident, she could not have. Now that the boy had left, the throbbing in her hand was almsot unbearable. Giving one final sigh, she departed for the hospital.

157/2,770

*Exit Thread

Training: