What went through a kid's mind? Hell, what went through any of their minds at times like that?

Setting the Nara and Akamichi documents aside, her fingers hesitated over the remaining scrolls. There were two.

Both for Yamanaka.

She opened Inoichi's first. The dossier was current, listing his most recent missions and commendations. Personal and family information was toward the end and Tsunade hurriedly flipped there.

A daughter.

Inoichi had a daughter.

Of course she'd known that already, having caught a glimpse of the girl in the village and thinking that she'd seen a ghost.

If Shikamaru Nara was the spitting image of his father then Ino Yamanaka bore an eerie resemblance to Inoichi's sister.

Aya Yamanaka had been the most breathtakingly beautiful girl Tsunade could remember. She was a few years older than Inoichi, perhaps four years older than he. She had been an intelligence agent, specializing in espionage using Shintenshin no Justu.

She was particularly adept at using the jutsu to control animals, notably birds in her surveillance efforts.

Aya was indispensable to her companions in intelligence. And to her brother as well since their parents had both died when they were younger. Tsunade, having raised Nawaki, had felt a certain kinship with the girl as she brought up her own younger brother. The two of them were a striking pair around Konoha, both tall and blond with those piercing blue Yamanaka eyes.

When Aya had been about twenty, Inoichi sixteen, tensions between Konoha and Kumogakure were heating up. Aya was pressed into service more and more. All shinobi in the village of course were called on for more missions than usual, but the strain on Aya was intense. Knowledge of enemy movements were paramount and aerial surveillance was best for keeping them informed.

Aya spent hours at Intelligence headquarters. Long nights stretched into early mornings and when Tsunade would occasionally catch sight of her coming or going out of the building she looked more and more haggard. Tsunade wasn't the only one worried about her, Inoichi finally had to drag his sister in to the medical center out of his concern for her.

The younger woman had seemed more than just exhausted, she was distracted, hardly aware of her surroundings at the time and frequently losing track of the conversation. Inoichi had had to keep calling her name, catching her attention again in order to get her to answer Tsunade's questions during the exam.

Tsunade had wanted to admit her for a day or two but Aya had managed to wave it off, merely asking for a supply of soldier pills and assuring Tsunade and Inoichi she would rest.

The strangeness of her behavior troubled the golden-haired sannin so once again she had resorted to the medical library. She'd read up on all she could about documented dangers of shintenshin no jutsu. The slowness of the jutsu was one well known problem, it could take a long time for a user's spirit to affect the target or conversely to return to their own body.

Less prevalent but still a danger however was something known as fractionation of consciousness. The wielder's conscious mind could be split into smaller and smaller fragments as they cycled through more and more targets, not only taking longer to return each time but also returning as less and less of their own self.

Finally, one day Aya simply did not come back.

She'd received an urgent request to report to the intelligence center and had been led through hushed hallways to the room that Aya had been working from. The girl's body was lying on a cot. Her heart and pulse were near normal she just wasn't conscious. Attempts to rouse her failed and Tsunade had her transferred to the medical center.

There had been a heated battle between the medical center and the intelligence officers getting her access to Aya's mission logs. Finally she was given grudging access to a heavily redacted version. Tsunade didn't give a whit about what the girl had seen, she wanted to know how often and how far and how long she'd been out.

The results were astonishing. Apparently Aya had perfected her technique to the point where she didn't need just line of sight to a target herself. From one direct target she could use its line of sight to acquire the next one and so on and so on. She had managed to work her way into an unprecedented level deep into Kumo territory. The danger to her being that 'she' was spread thinner and thinner each hop and the further afield she went, the greater number of steps she'd have to retrace to find her way back.

She wasn't dead. She was just...lost...fractionated. Call it what you would, the girl was gone and she wasn't coming back.

Her condition caused an appalling medical dilemma though that soon turned into its own horror. Since her consciousness wasn't transferred into one single target's body she wasn't in any immediate danger of dying if that host's body were to die as can be the case when shintenshin is used normally. But she wasn't really there, there was no person called Aya occupying the shell of her own body anymore.

Her case become somewhat of a cause celebre among factions of Yamanka clan members as well as within the broader community of Konoha itself. People became highly polarized over whether she was "alive" in any meaningful sense of the word or should be allowed to "finish" dying with "dignity". It was further complicated by the fact that when she'd first been admitted and the true extent of the damage was unknown, a feeding tube had been inserted. Now there were those who argued that removing it was tantamount to murder.

Tsunade noticed that the most shrill voices belonged to those who could protest when it was convenient and then go home to their own families at night. They didn't see the haggard visage of young Inoichi who spent every waking minute that he wasn't on an assignment by his sister's bedside. He himself was now as pale and exhausted and distracted as Aya had been when he'd brought her to the medical center that time. He haunted the hallways of the center like a ghost - slipping in every free minute that he had and obediently and quietly slipping out when it was time for his next mission.

And the real kicker to all of this, the thing that stuck in Tsunade's craw the most and pissed her off immeasurably was that he had no say in the matter. Since he was sixteen and not yet the age of majority by Konoha's laws, he was not allowed to decide what was best for his own sister.

He was old enough to be assigned to kill in the name of Konoha, to be asked to give up his own life in service to the village but they didn't even have the decency to let him be the one to decide what should happen to his only remaining family member.

Tsunade poured another saucer of sake and downed it quickly, feeling the heat spread from her throat to the rest of her body. She opened up the last scroll catching the pictures as they fluttered out. She spread them out on the desk. Such a beautiful girl...

The memories of it still made her shudder.

Things had all come to a head one evening when Inoichi had visited his sister. Slipping quietly down the hall he had come upon an orderly abusing...molesting...her body. Tsunade had been working late herself and had heard the shouts. She and several other staff had dashed down the hall and into the room pulling Inoichi away from the man he was beating to a bloody pulp.

She'd summoned the Uchiha police herself to have the...vermin...removed from her hospital then spent the next hour trying to calm Inoichi down, trying to convince him to at least come home and stay with her. The best she could do was agree to allow a cot in the room so that he could stay with Aya. Bringing him a tray of dinner she'd slipped a powerful tranquilizer into his food and stayed as he ate then finally drifted off to sleep.

Inoichi had a mission the next morning but he had made Tsunade swear she'd keep a Uchiha stationed by Aya's room all day until he got back that night. When he did return she was surprised to see both his teammates with him. Certainly she'd seen Nara or Akamichi with him off and on throughout his ordeal but rarely had the three of them been in the hospital together. Tonight the three were walking along, heads down, talking to each other in hushed tones. She greeted them but barely got an acknowledgment in reply.

Passing down the hallway to retrieve some medical files for another patient later that evening she saw Chouza standing in front of Aya's room door almost as if he were on guard duty himself. She thought it odd at first but since the Uchiha had gone off duty when Inoichi returned she just assumed the blond had asked his friend to stay in the guard's place. She had wondered where Shikaku was, though.

A short while later an alarm was going off and a nurse was frantically paging her, Aya was flatlining.

As she dashed into the room, she saw Inoichi's tear-streaked face with his two friends standing stoically beside him. Flicking off the incessant noise of the monitor she performed a quick exam of the girl. It was possible with CPR they might get the heart started again but...

She glanced up at Inoichi who was shaking his head 'no'.

"Inoichi, I'm sorry but.."

"I know," he had whispered back to her.

"Do you want us to..."

Biting his lip he shook his head more fervently 'no' and Tsunade nodded. "Okay, I'm calling it then." She looked up at the clock on the wall. "Time of death 12:01a.m."

She looked at him again, standing there between his two friends. Even though he was the tallest of the three he seemed very small and young now in her eyes. "You can stay here as long as you want you know," she had told him softly.

"No. No. I think I've been here long enough. I think...I'll go home with Shikaku tonight."

Tsunade nodded. "And you Chouza?"

"He can crash at my house tonight, too, Tsunade," Shikaku had answered. "My mom won't mind she's used to it."

"Okay, well, if you need anything, Inoichi, anything at all you let me know, okay?"

He had nodded, this time affirmatively then turned with his friends to leave. Tsunade watched the three boys walk down the hall together. The nurse beside her politely asked if she should prepare the body for an autopsy.

"No, that won't be necessary." Besides, Tsunade had thought to herself, she already knew damned good and well what she would find if she were to do an autopsy. Back in her office she filled out the paperwork with cause of death listed as due to natural causes without even a second thought.

She finished the last of her sake then surveyed the scrolls in front of her one last time before resealing them.

Ino-Shika-Cho. Well, if they could give themselves body, mind and spirit to this damn village could she do any less?