"So, how exactly did you get into this state?" The doctor questioned with an arched eyebrow, looking over the charts in his hand.

"What state would that be?" The patient asked with a faux smile on her face.

"The one where you have four cracked ribs, a punctured lung, a dislocated shoulder and a broken femur, not to mention the countless bruises and cuts," the doctor said with a sigh, the name on the chart was Jizouko, a name that was not entirely unknown in the hospital.

"Oh, that one…" Jizouko's smile immediately dropped. "Occupational hazard?" She tried, a sheepish grin now adorning her features.

There was another sigh from the doctor, the chart said that she was only 13; most girls that age were attending the Academy and getting broken hearts instead of limbs.

"I'm going to have to speak with your legal guardian, Jizouko. This is getting out of hand," he was too old to deal with this, and she was definitely too young to have this happening to her.

"Uh… Yeah, about that…" She started reaching to rub the back of her head but the tugging of the tubes she was connected to halted the motion. If I tell him that I don't have one then they'll put me in an orphanage for sure… But who can I get to be my guardian?

The doctor looked like he was about ready to call the Hokage about this, not a good sign for Jizouko. "He's out of the village right now!" She blurted in an attempt to buy time.

"And who might 'he' be?" The doctor asked skeptically with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Uh… Moriyama Takeshi…" Does he even still remember me?

"Is that so?" The doctor's eyebrow was raised once again questioningly. "That's funny; your last names don't match. In fact, you don't have a last name at all."

"Uh… Yeah!" Light bulb! "He's my mom's brother's cousin's uncle's aunt's nephew's adopted son." Please buy it, please buy it, please buy it!

The doctor must have heard her silent pleas because even though he obviously didn't buy the story, he said "Very well, if Mr. Moriyama isn't in Konoha at the moment then I'll just have to talk to your sensei."

"Have fun with that!" Jizouko called out as the doctor turned and walked out of the room.

"Wakey-wakey!" A voice called out obnoxiously throughout the quiet hospital room.

Jizouko groaned as she cracked open a gold-flecked purple eye. "Unless you're here to tell me that I'm able to leave now, I'd suggest you leave, Jiro," she grumbled upon recognizing her visitor.

"Don't be absurd!" He scoffed, "You've only been here a day and you got a hole in one of your lungs! There's no way that they're gonna let you leave!"

"My point exactly…" She muttered, turning her head away from him.

"Takashi told me what happened…" He started again, all his humor from before gone. "You do know that you could've died, right?"

Tattle tale! Jizouko accused in her head as she winced slightly, but made no other acknowledgement to the statement.

"Please stop," Jiro pleaded, causing Jizouko to snap her head in his direction. "Before you get hurt any worse."

Jizouko continued to stare wide eyed at her visitor, trying to absorb what he had just said.

"I…" She tried to protest, but the words died on her lips when she saw the look on Jiro's face. "… Okay" She conceded after a few moments.

"Thank you," he said, giving a sigh of relief. "I'll see you when they let you out!" He called out was he left the room, his good humor had returned.

The longer that Jizouko stayed in the hospital, the more her small white room seemed like a sterile prison cell. Her doctor refused to release her to anyone that wasn't Takeshi, much to her dismay.

That was definitely not the best idea that I've ever had… She thought bitterly as she stared out the window of her room.

On the bright side she was getting her cast off today and her arm was already out of its sling so all she had to worry about was her ribs and lung, which were healing nicely according to her doctor.

Her brooding was interrupted by the door opening, which she didn't acknowledge because she thought it was a nurse coming to take her to get her cast removed.

"Girl, I am surprised that you're not covered with burns, because you are lying through your teeth!" A voice stated from the doorway.

Jizouko quickly turned to look at her visitor. It was a tall, muscular man with messy brown hair and emerald green eyes dressed in the standard ANBU uniform and a mask in his hand.

"What? No greeting for your obscure relative? I'm hurt, Stripes," he said with barely suppressed laughter.

Jizouko's eye twitched slightly at the old nickname at referred to her purple streaked brown hair, but remained silent none the less.

"Or maybe I should call you Piercings…" He mused, stroking an imaginary beard.

Jizouko just turned and gave him a blank look.

"I'm serious! I could lead you around the village with a magnet! How much metal did you get put into your ears since the last time I saw you?"

Jizouko lifted a hand to feel her ears. Her fingertips were met by a small thick hoop followed by a thin small hop and a tiny gauge on the lobe, her digits reached up farther to her cartilage and felt two thick small hoops.

"The last time you saw me I was seven, Takeshi…" She reminded him in a soft tone.

"Yeah…" He said, looking almost ashamed. "But I'm here now and apparently your legal guardian, so we get to catch up on six years of lost bonding!" He said over enthusiastically, clapping his hands for added affect.

Jizouko just stared at him unbelievingly. Did he really just do that?

"Come on, let's get that cast off and put some real food into you, not the slop the hospital feeds you." Takeshi grinned, earning a small smile from his new charge.

"So how did you end up in the hospital?" Takeshi asked as he sipped his green tea.

"Your doctor said it was because of a training exercise that got out of hand, but your injuries were much more serious than that scenario would cause," he said with a slight frown as he observed Jizouko carefully.

"It was exactly that, a training exercise that got out of hand," she explained with a wave of her hand through a mouthful of soba.

"Mhm…" Takeshi hummed, taking another sip. "And when exactly did you decide that things were out of hand? After you broke the biggest bone in your body? Or when you started breathing blood?" He accused in a harsh tone.

"Cut the crap, what were you really doing? Trying to kill yourself?" He demanded, setting his cup down with a definite thunk.

Jizouko stared down at her noodles as if they held the answer that she needed.

"A few months back, on our last big mission…" She started haltingly, still staring at her food. "I got this feeling in the pit of my stomach..." She placed a hand on her abdomen. "It's hard to explain, but… It was like… Tension, you know? Like a rubber band that's about to snap…" Her hand clenched, grabbing a fist full of her white tank top.

"And then it snapped… I snapped…and this feeling washed over me… It was like all the wind from a hurricane came coursing through my veins…" Takeshi raised an eyebrow at this, but she didn't notice. "And then… Nothing." She said, releasing her grip on her shirt and looking up at Takeshi who had regained his composure.

"Mirai and Takashi told me that I screamed… And that a wave of chakra totally destroyed everything in a ten meter radius." Her grip tightened around her chopsticks. "I want to know what that was, not because I want to use it, but in case I have to." There was an almost unreadable light in her eyes, a mixture of need, curiosity and maybe even fear.

She moved her hand to rest beside her bowl as she began toying with her noodles. "We were trying to recreate what had happened… Me and Takashi…" She admitted looking back down at the noodles she was pushing around with her chopsticks. "Mirai didn't want us to… But we did anyway. And that brings us to the part where I claimed we were remotely related and, well, you know the rest…" She said, looking up with a sheepish grin on her face.

Takeshi looked into her eyes for a long moment before taking another sip of his tea. "You should've looked in the library first."

"What?"

"You should've looked in the library first," he repeated slowly, "they have all kinds of manuscripts and scrolls on jutsu and kekei genkais, they probably have on describing something like what happened to you," he explained, leaning back in his seat.

"So you're supporting my potentially self-destructive goal?" Jizouko asked with an arched eyebrow.

"No. I'm merely offering an alternative solution that you didn't think of, difference," he corrected, taking another sip of his tea.

Slowly a grin broke out across Jizouko's face, "I'll take that under advisement." She said as she took another bite of food.