The forests surrounding Kirigakure were not unlike those of any other village. Of course, they resembled marshes more than they would an actual forest. They were partially covered by soggy ground and tall weeds that likely held the typical wildlife of a swamp – Gin could already see several alligators by the nearby stream that surrounded the clearing. She had considered trying to wrestle one just for the hell of it but soon decided against it. There were other things that she could do to train and other objectives on her mind. There were two particular ideas for jutsu that had haunted the former Kazekage in her sleep for a couple of nights in a row. She thought she might as well put them into practice now that she had the free time for it. Her back up –the other member of the Aoi Bara that Tsuyo had sent her way – had yet to meet up with her and tell her what it was, exactly, that their glorious leader – there was always a mildly sarcastic undertone to this title in Gin’s thoughts and even when she spoke of Tsuyo Hyuuga out loud – wanted her to do. She assumed that she had broken some fundamental rule of the organization by heading out on her own and was therefore being sent a companion to hang around her for the duration of her stay in the Hidden Mist. A useless waste of time and resources – Shinobu, the alias she went with nowadays, was not in anyone’s hit list or bingo book. In fact, hardly anyone knew that she even existed. Shinobu was a ghost, and the former Kazekage planned on keeping it this way.

But if it appeased the glorious leader for her to have someone with her, then so be it. It was better than having to deal with harsher consequences when she got back to Iwagakure. She wondered if Tsuyo would dock her pay for this… In any case, the waiting left her with a fair deal of free time on this little spree that she had decided to take. Training had always been a pastime that the former Kazekage favored. And recently, she had taken the habit of teaching an array of very different genin and chuunin. It was something that she had sworn that she would never do again after Jezzi’s death and Kaizen’s incapacitating injury so many years ago. And yet here she was, taking on a fair amount of people under her wing. Maybe it was because of the motherly instinct that she could no longer satiate without the presence of her dearly beloved children. Maybe she had some subconscious desire to somehow fill that void that Chie, Reiko, Shinji and Kiku had left behind when she decided to leave Sunagakure no Sato.

Curiously enough, there were already rumors going round about her. Gin had even received a nickname that she personally found rather flattering. The young genin referred to her as “The Bringer of Doom who Destroys the Dreams of All Genin.” And, of course, there was a funny story behind that, which involved a somewhat drunk Gin in the recent Naemahage Festival and a young Genin that had decided to come to her poorly set up and improvised booth for a little training session. Of course, this same thing happened several times, namely with the young Yuki named Reina, but the even that had garnered her this new title had a little bit more to it than that.

You see, Gin had always been the curious type. Ever since she was a young child, she had been open to experimentation. Sure, the word “experimentation” soon gained a different connotation than trying to see what random bugs tasted like or what would happen if she pulled on a cow’s tail. It soon turned into spending a few nights with members of other genders, trying out different mixes of alcohol and getting herself into potentially life threatening situations during missions just to see what the result would be. And even after this curiosity of hers arguably led her to become a mother for the first time, her old habits were still as alive as ever. So there she was, with a group of spirits that she had hastily befriended at the festival, heading over to a bar where not so legal things tended to happen.

But Gin had been fine with it at the time and had only been planning to drink anyways. But then the spirits started lighting up and passing around a strange pipe with rainbow colored smoke coming out from it. And suddenly the thought crossed Gin’s mind for the briefest of seconds: What would happen if a human consumed these types of things? And then the idea was stuck in her head for the rest of the night until the point where it consumed her. So the former Kazekage had inhaled from the pipe only once and that had proven to be more than enough. She walked back to her post feeling reinvigorated, though actually barely able to walk in a straight line. So when a random Genin came to her asking for help, she was more than happy to provide her expertise on all matters of shinobi life.

This particular young boy – she forgot what his name was or what clan he was from – wanted to learn how to wield a sword. And Gin had thought, what better way to teach him than to show off everything that I can do at my full potential? When standing in front of a Genin, this was obviously a bad idea, especially knowing that he was a recent graduate from the Academy and had only been on a couple of D rank missions thus far. But for Gin, that was more than enough at the time. Her sober self would have submitted the young boy – full of hopes and dreams of someday becoming a Kage – to a much milder training session. Of course, it would have still been considered harsh by normal standards, but nowhere near as much as what actually happened that night. So with her training seals placed on her arms, the Head of the Kuroka Clan developed a jutsu that would soon set the entire area on fire and traumatize the poor child for the remainder of his life.

[Word Count: Heaven Style: Searing Inferno 1056/2250]

The unsuspecting Genin stared at the woman that he called Shinobu with a mixture of admiration, curiosity and pure awe. And of course, the young woman reveled in it. He asked that Gin wait for his two teammates that also wanted to train and learn more of the ways of the shinobi and Gin obliged, deciding to sit in the clearing where they now were and stare at the spinning little dots and squiggles of color in her vision. It made everything brighter and more cheerful, not to mention entertaining to the young woman. She was sitting there peacefully when two equally young and inexperienced children walked into the clearing and greeted her current student. So this was the team! Excellent. They could get things started now. The children were mumbling happy and talking amongst each other while sharing the same look of sheer admiration that the other kid had given the former Kazekage before. It was actually quite adorable, especially when accentuated by the current state of Gin’s distorted vision. The poor ten year olds didn’t even know what they were getting themselves into. They went through the trouble of introducing themselves and explaining what they wanted from their careers as a shinobi – to be a Kage, to save humanity, to be like the Legendary Naruto and to have their names basically carved into every corner of their villages. It was after that that the actual training started.

Now, the way that this particular session initiated wasn’t much too different from the way in which Gin started training anyone else. She placed the same seal that she had on her wrists on each of the children, thus weighing them down considerably in order to train their physical bodies more effectively. They were struggling under the weight and were none too thrilled by it, but they all still had that clear look of determination and hope in their eyes that would be crushed mere hours later. As a warm up, Gin had them split up into the woods and hunt for their dinner without the use of any weapons or jutsu. As a special requirement, the dead animal that they had to bring was to be bigger than a large dog. So that basically left each ten year old child hunting for a wild bear in the forest on their own – something that would have at least been considered a C rank mission under most villages’ current parameters. But did Gin take that in mind? Nope, not at all.

So it was honestly a surprise and a disappointment when they all came bearing large scratches about two hours later. Their wounds were somewhat deep, but nothing that the former Kazekage would have stopped training them over under a more sober state of mind. Besides, the blood they were oozing from their wounds appeared to be pink mixed with orange. Gin rather liked that combination and stared at it for a while before snapping out of her reverie. Only two of them – the original student and the girl that had come along later – had managed to actually catch something while the third carried a sack full of rabbits that collectively could have amounted to the size of the animal that Gin was looking for. So she let it slide for the moment. So now she had dinner assured for the next week and it had only taken her almost maiming three Genin in order to do so.

The young woman took the necessary measures to preserve the food while the Genin rested. Apparently, one of them was a medic and had decided to clean and heal their collective wounds as best he could before the second round of training began. And thus, all three of the members of the group were slightly more refreshed when Gin came to offer them their next challenge. Again, the premise wasn’t too extraordinary. They had to collectively fight Gin. If they landed one strike on her each, in succession during the next two hours, they would be granted the right to sleep and eat. It was something that Gin had already done before, albeit several years ago with her original team back in her home village of Sunagakure, may they all rest in peace.

With an air of pure determination, the three Genin came up with a fair amount of tactics that Gin would have let hit in any other circumstance. But now… the little kids looked like colorful comets dancing about around her, which was much too entertaining to stop. The former Kazekage would periodically giggle at them, much to their anger. The kids thought that this was some way in which the great master Shinobu was taunting them so that they would take this more seriously or develop some sort of patience or immunity against enemy tactics. And maybe this would have been true in another circumstance, but again, not in this case with Gin high as balls. The tiny part of her brain that still remained rational wondered when the effects of this drug would wear off and even panicked momentarily, thinking that maybe it wouldn’t wear off at all. But that was drowned out by the other constant thought in Gin’s mind: OMG COLORSS!!!!!!!

If Gin had to pinpoint when, exactly, it was that everything went wrong, it would have been a few minutes later when the colorful figures of the children began to morph and change into what seemed to be tiny little demons. It was at this point in time that Gin thought it to be an excellent idea for her to whip out her katana – fortunately not Soul Cutter – and instinctively cover it with a coat of pure heat that began to set everything it touched on fire as if by product of spontaneous combustion. It was then that the children began to panic at the madwoman’s sudden outburst. They tried to run away, but the entire surroundings of the clearing were now set on fire. Any attempts at water jutsu that the children came up with to create an opening in the deadly fumes that now covered the area were rendered almost useless by the pure heat emanating from Gin’s weapon. Water sizzled off of the metal and evaporated on instant.

It was at this point, with the supposed demons cowering around her and crying out for help that Gin stopped the jutsu that had coated her blade momentarily, only so that she could turn to the heavens and shout “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds!” repeatedly to some cosmic force that she was seeing around her. In desperation, the three Genin decided to run through the flames, ignoring the third degree burns caused to their tiny bodies, in order to escape the demon that was now Gin Kuroka. A few days later, once she had fully recovered from the ordeal, Gin heard from some bystanders that the three Genin had gone to the hospital immediately after their near death experience. They were rendered almost catatonic for several weeks after that and would shout something akin to her new title whenever they were questioned about what happened. And thus, Gin started to be known as “The Doom Bringer who Destroys the Dreams of all Genin.” Fortunately, though, she got a new technique out of it, so at least there was that.

[Word Count: Heaven Style: Searing Inferno 2282/2250]