TheDarkestShinobi: Hey, got my computer back! Anyway, this story only has a chapter left, if I don't leave it at this. I hope you don't regret taking this little journey with me.

Chapter start

He screamed when the medic touched his elbow, all he felt was pain. The medic made a few discreet hand signs and the other ninja left the room. Hayate looked up at him, his breaths were pants and the sweat gathered until it fell from his face. His eyes found the doctors and the doctor looked away.

"I regret to have to inform you of this Hayate sama."

"Tell me." He rasped out, ready for the worst.

"It seems that the neishin-"

"Kasumi." Hayate corrected. He didn't fully comprehend what the word meant, but all he felt when he thought of it was hate and disgust and his sister did not disserve it from him, or anyone else.

"My apologies," he hastily added. "It would seem that she shattered your elbow," Hayate prompted him to go on.

"It will take a while to heal."

Hayate noticed details in the man that he would not have noticed the week before, the nervous tick, the averting eyes; he noticed all of the small changes.

"You're hiding the truth from me doctor." He didn't act surprised and instead crossed his arms before sighing.

"You're never going to fully heal Hayate sama. Kasumi has crippled you and you will never see the field again."

"Never?"

Hayate tried not to seem overjoyed and the disbelief was read in worry from the other.

"I'm sorry." Was all the doctor had to say as he placed a hand on the others shoulder before walking out of the room. Hayate was left sitting alone on the futon. He smiled at the thought of never having to leave, never having to hit another or kill another. He shook, he was so overjoyed. Another thought then crept into his mind, he would never leave this village, he would never leave Japan… or see Hitomi again.

He started to cry.

She woke with her father standing in the doorway. His eyes were set in anger and his arms were crossed.

"Who did this to you?"

She shook her head and brought her legs closer to her chest wrapping her arms around herself. Her father instantly ran to her to wrap his arms around her but she flinched and hid further in herself and her father sat on the edge of the bed.

His body grew warm with rage and he almost didn't hear the whisper escaping her lips. He calmed himself slightly and listened to her body tremble and rock back and forth and finally he heard it.

"Ein…"

"I'll get him." He promised.

It didn't surprise her that they never did.

Kasumi leaned against a tree branch outside of Hitomi's house and looked through her window at the scene before her. Her brother would never leave the village; Kasumi knew that once she felt the bone shatter inside her hands. She also knew that it was the right thing to do.

The Ein in Hayate could not kill. It took a certain amount of coldness and aloofness to be able to be a ninja, a different side that one could close off permanently. Ein never developed that. Had he compromised a mission he would have died, and that right there was the reason the Mugen Tenshin was foolish to think that this second side would vanish, that Hayate was fit to lead, that things hadn't been altered.

It was one of the reasons she had to kill Raidou for her brother. He was dead; the Hayate she knew would never be back.

Hitomi never went to the police, but her father did. Kasumi shadowed them at all times, in the chance that they found something they should not have. Thankfully they never did. She stayed in the shadow like a ninja should.

Hitomi slowly recovered. She spoke after a few months, and was able to regain her lifestyle almost a year after but she was still a ghost.

Her father moved to the United States. He had asked Hitomi where she wanted to go and she picked the United States. As far away as possible from him. Would he ever come back to her? For her? She was paranoid, used cash everywhere, ready to move, checking her shoulder at every corner. Her father told her about counseling but she never went.

She stopped doing Karate as well. Her father tried to push her into it, she would meet people and make new friends but she had screamed at him that it didn't matter; she was too weak, always too weak.

"Did he send you for me?" Hitomi asked as she shut the door. It didn't sound like a threat, or anything but resignation, like she was simply waiting for the day.

"He's not coming for you, or sending anyone for you."

Hitomi's eyes narrowed and it was more emotion than Kasumi had seen in her for the last seven years.

"Why are you here?" She sheepishly smiled and scratched her head.

"I've been watching you, protecting you." She looked down. "It's the least I can do."

"For what?" Hitomi stepped forward, suddenly interested. Why had this been done to her, why did she suddenly have a guardian angel? The girl wore a black outfit that wasn't native to the U.S. or anywhere other than a ninja village, her long orange hair trialed down her back and Hitomi had remembered her from DOA, only this woman seemed so much older than thirty, and she should have been twenty something.

"My brother."

"Are you the reason he stopped?"

"Yes."

"So he's never coming back?"

"No."

Hitomi ran to the kunoichi and hugged her and for once didn't mind that her jacket fell open in the slightest bit.

Suddenly she felt free, like a butterfly out of her cocoon.