Yoshiki stood in silence, staring at the empty training ground.
"What now?"
He glanced around at the vacant space, then down at his bag. Should I just practice with the shuriken? He mulled it over for a moment before reaching a conclusion. "Since I'm already here, I should at least try to recall what Yosuke taught me yesterday."
He pulled out his shuriken and walked toward the nearest target.
He tried to replicate the stance Yosuke had shown him — feet apart, weight balanced, arm angled just so — and throw.
The shuriken missed spectacularly.
He didn't let it bother him. He picked up another, took his stance, and threw again. Then again. Then again, until he had exhausted every shuriken in his bag. Then he walked over, collected them all, returned to his mark, and started over.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, something began to shift. The stance started to feel less foreign, less like a pose he was consciously holding and more like something his body was beginning to remember. His throws grew more consistent. Not precise — not even close to the center — but they were hitting the target more often than not, and that was more than he could say an hour ago.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
When his arms finally protested enough that he decided to stop, he gathered his shuriken, slung his bag over his shoulder, and started the walk home.
"Damn it," he muttered under his breath.
Even if the stance felt more natural than it had yesterday, that didn't mean it was correct. He had no mirror to check himself against, no trained eye watching for mistakes he couldn't see. For all he knew, he had spent the last hour drilling a bad habit deeper into his muscle memory.
This is exactly why people need instructors, he thought with quiet frustration. Without a second opinion, you can't even tell whether you're doing something right or wrong.
He sighed and kept walking, his fingers already moving on instinct — weaving through a sequence of hand signs as he went, running through the familiar motions in the fading afternoon light.
Elsewhere in the village, Misato stood before a tall building with a red roof, the kanji for fire imprinted above its entrance. The Hokage Office.
"Misato!"
She turned. A familiar figure was waving at her from the gate — the scar across his nose unmistakable even from a distance.
Iruka-sensei.
"Is Sasuke not coming?" he asked as she approached.
"No, Iruka-sensei. He wasn't feeling well," Misato said, cursing her brother internally for putting her in a position where she had no choice but to say something like that with a straight face.
Iruka looked at her for a moment.
"You know you don't have to pretend in front of me," he said, his voice gentler now. "But he can't keep avoiding things like this forever, Misato."
She didn't meet his eyes. "Yes, sensei."
Iruka seemed to notice the shift in her expression immediately. He cleared his throat. "I'm not saying this to blame either of you. I just want you both to know — if you or Sasuke ever need anything, you can ask. Lord Hokage, myself, the village — we're all here. Konoha owes a great deal to the Uchiha clan. They protected this village since its founding. That isn't forgotten."
Misato was quiet for a moment.
The words were kind. She knew they were meant sincerely. But there was something hollow about them that she couldn't quite name — something that sat uncomfortably in her chest without fully surfacing.
"It's alright, sensei," she said finally, already moving toward the entrance. "We're already late. Let's go."
She knew Iruka-sensei meant well. That much she didn't doubt.
But she couldn't help questioning whether the village — whether the Hokage himself — truly felt the same way he did.
Sasuke had been young when it happened. Young enough that the politics swirling around the clan had passed over his head entirely. She had not been so fortunate. She had been mature enough — and aware enough — to hear it in the voices of the adults around her. The disdain. The suspicion. The way certain conversations would stop when children entered the room. She had watched it quietly, year after year, as the distance between the Uchiha and the village's upper echelons deepened from tension into something colder and harder to name.
And then the massacre had happened.
She didn't know why her kind, gentle elder brother had done what he did. She still couldn't make it fit together into something that made sense. But she was certain of one thing — he had not acted alone. Someone in the upper ranks of this village had known. Maybe they had done more than know. And whatever their involvement, it had been enough to ensure that no help reached her clan in time.
These were thoughts she could never share with anyone inside these walls.
The only person she might have trusted with them was Sasuke — but she had seen what lived behind his eyes since that night, and she knew exactly what he would do with that information. He would not grieve quietly. He would rage. He would storm whatever gate stood between him and the truth, and if her suspicions were even partially correct, it would be the last mistake either of them ever made.
So she said nothing.
And she kept walking to class, and speaking to her classmates, and answering when her teachers called on her — not because it came naturally, not because she had any particular desire to, but because it was the only path available to her. Only by remaining among shinobi could she ever hope to uncover the truth. Only by building trust, carefully and patiently, could she find allies willing to help her.
The family she had always wanted had been taken from her.
She intended to find out who was responsible.
And she intended to make sure they paid dearly for it.
As they entered the building Iruka took the lead, guiding her through the hallways with the easy familiarity of someone who had walked them many times before. They passed through several corridors before the hall finally opened up before them.
It was crowded. Shinobi filled the space in considerable numbers — this was one of the few village events where the broader shinobi population was permitted to attend, and it showed.
Misato took in the room quietly as Iruka led her toward their designated position.
The event itself was straightforward in its purpose, if not in its politics. Chunin with sufficient field experience were being formally promoted to jonin. Genin who had proven themselves were being elevated to chunin. The newest academy graduates were being officially endorsed as Konoha's latest generation of shinobi. And alongside all of this, the new Konoha Police Taskforce was to be formally announced — the institution that would fill the void left behind by her clan.
That was why she and Sasuke had been invited. Civilians had no place at an event like this. But the last surviving children of the Uchiha were apparently a different matter.
The political backdrop behind all of it was one Misato understood well enough. Eight years ago the Nine-Tails attack had gutted Konoha's military strength in a single night — and taken the Fourth Hokage with it. The capital had not been quiet about its displeasure. The complaints from the Land of Fire's nobility had been significant, though ultimately toothless — there was little anyone could say against a Hokage who had died protecting his village. The Third's return to the position had helped settle things further. He had history with the Daimyo, political credibility that the nobles of the capital couldn't easily dismiss, and he had used it.
But the Uchiha massacre had reopened old wounds. Questions about Konoha's stability — about whether the Third could truly maintain order — had begun circulating in the capital again. This event was the answer to those questions. A carefully staged display of strength and continuity, performed in front of the Daimyo's messenger with all the pageantry the village could muster.
Misato understood what it was. She also understood what her presence here meant — or rather, what the village intended it to mean. The surviving Uchiha, standing quietly in attendance. A symbol that things were under control. That the village had moved on cleanly and without complication.
She kept her expression neutral and said nothing.
"Misato, so you have finally arrived."
She turned at the sound of the aged voice. The Third Hokage stood a few paces behind her, white robes immaculate, the red hat bearing the kanji for fire sitting straight on his head. He looked, as he always did, like something carved from a quieter era — weathered and patient in the way old trees were.
Both she and Iruka bowed.
"Yes, Hokage-sama."
"Now, now." Hiruzen raised a hand, his expression warm, the lines of his face folding into something that might have been apology. "No need for formalities. If anything, it is I who should be grateful — you honored this old man's invitation, and I am well aware that could not have been easy."
She kept her posture even. Composed.
"Not at all, Lord Third. I should be the one expressing gratitude — being invited to an occasion of this significance, before I have even graduated the Academy." She paused just long enough to let the deference land. "It is an honor."
His eyes stayed on her a moment longer than the words required. She did not look away.
"Iruka," Hiruzen said, turning slightly, "please join the other instructors with the graduates. I will see to it that Misato finds her seat."
Iruka glanced between them — just briefly, that small hesitation of a man recalculating. Then understanding settled across his face, quiet and without comment.
He turned to her. "I'll see you inside, Misato."
She gave him a small nod. He bowed once more to the Hokage and departed.
The hall stretched ahead of them, full of dress uniforms and formal posture, the low murmur of a gathering that had arranged itself precisely. Sunlight came through high windows in long, pale columns.
"Shall we?" Hiruzen asked.
Misato fell into step beside him.
The effect was immediate. She felt it before she saw it — that particular shift in a room when something unexpected walks in. Heads turned. Conversations dipped. Whispers passed from mouth to ear in small, careful clusters, the way water finds the lowest path.
The Uchiha girl.
She actually came.
Where's the brother—
She kept her eyes forward. Her expression did not change.