Chapter One


Three minutes to one in the afternoon gave me just enough time to stuff my notes back into my bag and dart up the stairs to my assigned examination room, the other students in the corridor catching sight of me and yelling good luck wishes after me. This test was the last of the CSEC subjects I had signed up for in order to graduate from secondary school, by far the easiest, and I should have been there eleven minutes ago, but I'd gotten sidetracked reading the latest updates on all my favorite manga series. Luckily, History was just a lot of textbooks and a lot of notes, despite being a favorite of mine. Nothing practical, just ingest and regurgitate on the paper.

It would be a high grade for me.

One and a half hours later caught my head nodding over my completed paper and wishing the damn clock would hurry up and hit three already, or that the invigilator would call time and put me out of my misery. I wanted to go home and sleep for a year.

I looked around the class, rubbing my eyes and yawning into my hand. Students were either scribbling frantically trying to beat the clock, glaring at their papers trying to find a mistake or sleeping, heads resting on folded arms. I yawned again. When I opened my eyes every color, shade and hue had been washed out of the room and everyone in it. I looked down at myself and choked. I still looked normal. I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes and watched the sparkles for a few minutes, then lowered my hands and looked around again. Everything was as it should be. I closed my eyes and inhaled, concentrating.

On exhaling I opened my eyes again, and looked with both physical and aural senses. To my enhanced sight, each individual in the room now emitted a field of energy, defined by at least two primary colors and extending almost a foot beyond their body. Emotions swirled, streaked and flowed through the energy and thoughts flickered swiftly and disappeared in staccato bursts or lingered to blossom like flowers in the morning.

Just when I had decided that there was nothing wrong and my eyes were playing tricks on me the physical colors faded out again and the auras I was watching exploded in brilliance like miniature novae, and pain screamed behind my eyes until I doubled over silently, seeing nothing but white and grinding my teeth so I wouldn't scream. After a small eternity the white receded enough that I could sit up and open my eyes again.

The examiner was bent over me worriedly, her hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed her there, not to mention every student in the class staring at me. I blinked at her for several seconds, then rasped, "I've finished the exam, may I hand up my paper please? I'm not feeling very well."

She nodded and picked up my booklet. Tearing off the student slip she wrote her signature on it and gave it to me. "Just fill it up quickly and go home okay? Get some rest."

I mumbled something in agreement, took the slip and wrote my name in block letters; "MATTHEWS, DIANA. A." and then scraped together my things and left the room. My head was throbbing in a way that told me get home fast. Halfway down the stairs I felt the need to vomit and stumbled to the washroom and into a stall, falling to my knees and hanging my head over the bowl.

My stomach heaved and emptied into the toilet until nothing else would come up. Shaking, with tears in my eyes, I leaned back against the cubicle wall. My face felt warm and I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead, then neck, and finally blew a long breath on my wrist. Hot hot hot. I was getting a fever, and it seemed to be increasing as I sat there.

I slowly got to my knees and leaned up to flush the toilet and then pulled myself to my feet and locked the stall door. I picked up my bag and set it on the ledge over the toilet's tank and took out the clothes I'd stowed that morning along with my notes. Originally I'd brought them to change into after school to go to the shopping complex in town with a few friends but instead I was changing my plans. I would change and immediately after getting home, I would go to bed.

After struggling out of my school clothes and into the black jeans and sleeveless blue tee shirt, I packed the uniform into my bag and let my hair out of the double tied pony tail it had been in. I shook it out and it tumbled around my face and down my back almost to my waist. Replacing what I had taken out the uniform pockets into the jeans or bag as necessary, I gave myself a quick once over. The fever was still there and seemed to have stabilized, though now my skin felt hot even when I just hovered my hand over it. It was a strange sort of fever, because I didn't feel the least symptom of anything aside from the vomiting.

I left the washroom and went out to the road, flagging down a car after a few minutes and stealing the front seat from a pimply faced boy who came running up when the driver stopped. It took fifteen minutes to get home and I fell asleep on the way, but because I traveled with this particular driver on a nearly daily basis he roused me after pulling up in front of the long winding driveway of my house.

I paid him groggily and climbed out, my stomach now hurting from hunger, shut the door and walked up the driveway. Once inside I locked up, ate an early dinner, took some medicine for the fever and then crawled thankfully into bed, falling asleep almost as soon my head hit the pillow.

===

A dream came.

I was in a great, dark forest. A place that was quiet and cold and said silently that I shouldn't be here be here get out out now not your place not yours leave. Something small and black flashed by me and scratched my leg—

A flash of bright light, a squeezing sensation across my chest and the feeling of being trapped. I struggled wildly and squirmed my way out from under a burning wreck. I stood there whimpering. My mother was trapped in there and I knew I had to get her out. I stepped toward the wreckage —and a burst of laughter froze me in place. Gibbering and shrieking in between those horrid giggles it continued, coming toward me. Closer and closer, and I realized there was a high-pitched keening in my ears. It seemed to come from both the flames of the wreck and my own throat. I don't know which scared me more, those giggles, or the sound I was hearing. Tears began to stream down my cheeks and I tried to wrench myself out of the paralysis I was under, now too terrified to do anything, think of anything but running away as far as I could.

Please please someone help me help me don't let it get me. Warmth began to creep over me radiating from my right leg, sinking down under my skin rapidly. The fever was invading my dream world. The flames rose higher, the mad laughter came closer and I trembled and keened in terror. The keening rose to wailing because the giggling, gibbering thing was right behind me and I turned around to see, no choice at all. The moment I saw it fully the warmth blazed into flame and I was shrieking right along with it, flaming bits of stuff sloughing off and splattering on the ground about its feet as it leered at me making those terrible noises.

I opened my mouth wide and screamed... and I was burning from the inside out. I was being consumed by fire. Pain not localizing but equally distributed around my body. I screamed... screamed and screamed and screamed and the creature screamed right along with me, the flames around us rising rising rising until we were consumed.

Each and every nerve felt like it was being given special attention, immolated in gleeful flame. The creature staggered forward, still shrieking its head off and lunged for me. Still frozen, I could only screech helplessly as it wrapped itself around me and added outer fire to the flames already searing me from within. The fire began to move through me, it didn't lessen, but it began to flow as though pouring through my veins in place of blood.

My screams began to echo in that place, until they rebounded again and again to make an entire choir that reverberated in my head, clamoring and roaring. The fire kept moving through me. I began begging, someone, anyone, to make it stop. I cried for my father, and the mother I had lost in that long ago accident, the mother I no longer remembered. When I called out for my mother, somehow I think she heard me, because that pain slowly, delicately, began to fade away and soothing warmth mercifully crept over me, enveloping me gently in oblivion, pulling me sweetly into oceanic dark.

Sometimes I surfaced dimly for a few seconds or a minute or so from that blackness. Once to the sound of concerned voices, another time to the feel of something damp and soft rubbing over my skin. Someone must have been cleaning me up while I was unconscious. This time I came to numbly in a bright light shining down into my eyes. There was no place on my body that did not feel like it had been seared so badly that all sensation had been lost. There was a beeping noise coming from one side that I vaguely realized must be medical machinery. I lay there, unfeeling and uncaring, even when people came in and upon realizing I was awake, attempted to get me to talk, move, react in some way.

I didn't and they hurt me. That terrible fire came back when one put their hands on me. I opened my mouth and screamed until they pulled their hands away and then let myself slip back into the sweet, dark ocean.

Ages passed. The pain went away and the numbness came and faded away until I could feel my body again, my skin became hypersensitive and nearly everything hurt, I had so much trouble just breathing, but I didn't move. I didn't want to move. Too scared to move. Because I was convinced that the person with the pain in their hands would see me moving and hurt me to make me keep moving.

But eventually I decided that thought didn't matter after no one came and held their hands over me, because it might not make any difference. The one with pain in his hands might hurt me even if I did move. They came, usually when I was asleep, cleaned me and put something in my arm and stomach. The next time they came, I waited, listened to the dead quiet until I was sure there was no one else in the room but me, and opened my eyes.

====

A bright white ceiling stretched over me, paneled and with an unlit light fixture positioned not directly over where I lay but slightly to my left. Shadows and beams of light played over the white surface and I turned my head to see where the light came from. There was a set of medical machines not very far from my bedside against the wall behind the bed. A small barred window was set in the wall to my left about two thirds of the way up. The sunlight gleamed harshly through the glass panes and hurt my eyes so I turned away from it.

The wall to my right had one chart with characters that were too small to read but which I nevertheless identified as hiragana and Chinese characters, and a single door with a small glass window in it. The glass hadn't any bars, but there was a small thought that even if I were seven feet tall with the muscles of Hercules I still wouldn't be able to break that glass. The wall directly opposite my feet was bare and starkly white.

It occurred to me that I had been staring around the room and not bothering to see what I was doing lying down. I looked down the length of my body. From feet to waist a sheet was drawn up, my arms resting by my sides, and above it I saw I was wearing a white garment. It looked like one of those backless gowns hospital patients wore.

I tried to sit up, but a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me so that I lay back quickly and swallowed hard and rapidly for a few minutes, trying to will myself not to vomit. If I did it would go all over myself too since I couldn't get up. My throat hurt slightly every time I swallowed. When my stomach began to settle reluctantly I lifted my head again to look. Raising my arms carefully -I saw I had lost a good deal of weight, I had been fragile before, my arms were now sticks- slowly, tremors of weakness running through them, I saw an IV tube attached to the back of my right hand.

I raised one hand to the side of my head. There wasn't anything attached there. Lowering my hand I cautiously squeezed my legs together. The resulting discomfort confirmed my suspicion that there was a catheter inserted. If there was a catheter inserted then I must have been there for some time, which now raised the question of how I got there and where, exactly, "there" was. No hospital in my English-speaking home country used hiragana and Chinese characters on hospital charts.

Maybe somebody, one of Dad's old enemies he made when working as a field agent for Interpol, had raised up an old grudge and taken me to get to him. They could have easily snuck in and done anything, either at home or school. They could have put something in anything I would use to make food at home and when I used it that morning to make breakfast I would have ingested it.

So by the chart I could be either in Japan or anywhere run by Japanese, or the chart was there for a completely different purpose altogether and I could still be anywhere. I stared at the IV and wondered what was in it. Probably just a saline drip, I thought as I looked up at the trailing tube to the IV stand, peering at the equipment in the corner.

The door opened and a person in a long white gown with a badge clipped to the front pocket stepped in carrying a clipboard.


===

I watched her warily as she said a few words to someone outside and then turned to me.

"Good Afternoon, miss," she said, smiling gently. "I'm Doctor Kanami. How are you feeling?"

I didn't answer, just kept watching her as she moved towards me. She checked the IV drip and nodded to herself as she scribbled something on the clipboard.

"This is to keep you hydrated, and to keep nutrients in your body," she explained noticing my gaze on her hands. "You were unconscious for several weeks. We inserted a feeding tube, it's why your throat is a little sore." She sat lightly on the edge of the bed. "What's your name?"

Nice try, I thought, but you'll not catch me that easily. "Where am I?" I asked, or tried to ask. My mouth moved but no sound came out. I stared at her in fright. Did she do this to me?

She frowned and moved closer. "Are you all right? Let me see please." She reached for me and in an surge of adrenaline I scooted away from her to the other edge of the bed.

She sat still, with her hand still raised. "It's okay, I'm not trying to hurt you." I eyed her carefully. Sure she wasn't trying to hurt me, but it didn't mean that she wasn't working for somebody who would. On the other hand, I was weak as a kitten and just as helpless. So if whatever she did made me stronger, then I might be able to get out of here, or try to get a message to my dad.

I relaxed and let her check my throat.

She sat back and wrote on her clipboard again, and when I tried to get a glimpse she smiled and tilted the board so I could see.

She was writing in Japanese. I frowned at the paper and lay back again.

"I'll be back in a little bit. If you need anything, call. There's an ANBU outside. He'll get you what you need." She stood up. "Try to get some rest ok?" She smiled again and went out.

I stared after her, becoming frightened again, wondering if she was going to bring the people who had brought me here. But she hadn't... I didn't know. Frowned up at the ceiling and then yawned. That burst of energy I had experienced had been more than I could afford; I wanted to sleep badly now. I closed my eyes. She'd wake me up if she had to, I couldn't keep my eyes open now.

Chapter Two


I woke up needing to urinate, and then remembered the catheter. The light that came through the window was gone, only a black patch within the bars and borders of the opening. The light bulb shone brightly above me. I squinted at it and turned my face away from the glaring light. Dr. Kanami looked up from her clipboard and smiled at me.

"How are you feeling?"

I squinted at her without answering. She frowned. "You still can't talk?" When I didn't answer she leaned over.

"Let me check your throat again, okay?" I nodded and she peered and squinted for a few minutes, aided by a penlight produced from a pocket of her coat.

"There isn't anything wrong with your throat, so you should be able to talk. It must be mental trauma then," she decided.

Oh really? Mental trauma, huh? No kidding. I glared at her. Nearly being burned alive and then kidnapped does that to you, I thought acidly.

"Do you think you're up for writing? There's someone who wants to talk to you."

I shrugged and nodded. Why not? Finding out more might help me find a way to get out of here. She shuffled a few sheets on her clipboard around and handed it to me along with the pen, and then went outside. A big, scar-faced hulk of a man came in the door covered in dark clothing came in after her, along with two other people in matching uniforms.

The scar-faced man and the two guards... I wanted to laugh at first, until I got a good look at the big man's eyes. Abruptly I wanted to run away. This couldn't be possible but it was happening right in front of me.

The man sat down in the chair Dr. Kanami had been sitting in. "I'm Ibiki Morino, from the Intelligence Section. Would you tell me your name please?"

The urge to shriek hysterically was almost jaw breaking in intensity, rapidly morphing into an equally hysterical and intense desire to laugh. I closed my eyes and tried to hold in the laughter, my ribs immediately beginning to ache from the strain and my body shuddering.

"Miss? Are you all right?" asked the big man.

I gritted my teeth and shut him out. Hearing his voice wasn't helping my hysteria at all.

"Miss, are you all right."

No, certainly not helping. That terrible burning sensation was beginning to come back.

"Doctor Kanami!"

Won't help. I couldn't possibly be here. Not here, in some fairy tale world. I couldn't be an entire world away from home, away from my family. It should be impossible. But no, that was hypocritical. I had done many impossible things before. I knew there were impossible things which were extremely possible. I clenched my hands into fists. But how? Did they bring me here? But then why would they? How could I possibly be in Konoha?

"Miss?" Doctor Kanami's voice. She paused a beat and then the most lovely feeling I'd ever experienced began. It was like being bathed in the softest, tenderest feelings, the most wonderful energy in the world, all soft and warm and sweet. I instantly relaxed, my aura responded to the doctor's energy, reaching out further than it ever had and trying to pull her to me. But when she felt me reach for her she pulled her energy away. I nearly cried. I wanted that sweetness back because if Heaven existed then I swore, that was what it felt like.

I opened my eyes and stared at her piteously, hoping maybe she'd do it again. More impressions of what her energy had felt like came floating into coherency. I had felt her through it, her concern for me, the worry that the disease I now suffered would kill me before she could even find out the tiniest detail about me. It wasn't a conscious one, the decision not to think about the fact that somehow I'd gotten sick and the doctor believed it would kill me eventually, it was just unconscious practicality.

"Is she alright? What happened?" Ibiki's voice was gruff.

"The corruption is of the chakra network and the cells that renew it. When she got upset just now, her chakra flared up and irritated the affected areas. The Mystical Palm seemed to soothe it."

She wasn't going to do it again then, only when this thing rose up. I reluctantly turned my gaze back to Ibiki and he looked at me with intense dark eyes. Looking at him again I could feel it could be true I was in the story. I looked at him with my aura... and shrieked soundlessly as I was engulfed in pain. From top to toe I burned again.

Vaguely aware of Doctor Kanami and Ibiki shouting and then the soothing heaven came back, radiating from multiple points this time. My aura reached out instinctively as the burning faded under that sweet intrusion.
I lay gasping and shaking when the energy pulled back, running through things I'd picked up the second time around in the healing energy.

They didn't know who I was -or what I was for that matter.

I had been found in the training grounds, convulsing on the leaf-littered ground by two jōnin.

My leg had been bleeding.

When I had been brought under intense security to the ANBU post in the Forest of Death, the doctors who had examined me had been shocked into incoherency by the fact that I'd had no chakra system and was developing one right in front of their eyes.

And the developing system was rapidly being compromised by the disease imparted by whatever had bitten my leg. By using massive doses of the liquid form -twenty times more potent than the pill form- of the medication used to treat the disease, they stalled the development of the virus corrupting my chakra vessels and managed to let the system develop as well as it could naturally.

The Sandaime Hokage himself and two of the Council Elders had come to see for themselves when I had been unconscious.

Ibiki was here to find out everything he could about me.

Inoichi Yamanaka was waiting outside the room in case I turned out to be an enemy.

I turned my head and stared at Ibiki in shock. And fear. And then pure recklessness as I realized that I was really here and what Inoichi waiting outside meant for the rest of my life. Even if I went back home nothing was going to change, that I could now be seen by anyone as an enemy. I wondered if this was what the blacks had felt in slavery -if they wondered at it as I did in that instant- that something of your physical aspect was so horrifying that you were stereotyped as something to be eliminated in the instant you did not fit the pattern you were given to follow. Beyond that I dimly sensed something huge and vast that stalked humanity from the instant of birth and it vanished the moment I tried to grasp it.

There wasn't anything I could do but appease them and try to find out why this was happening to me and even then I might not be able to do anything about it for myself. I willed myself to relax, loosening the muscles slowly, evening out my breathing. Moderately calm again, I looked at Ibiki and waited. Doctor Kanami put the clipboard and the pen in my hands again. I didn't remember dropping them. I took them and rolled the pen between my fingers, knowing that I'd have to use pictures to communicate with them. I couldn't talk, and I couldn't use their writing anyway. I could copy the characters perfectly, yes, but I'd do it in a meaningless pattern unless told what each stroke, each symbol separately and grouped together meant.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Can you tell me your name, please?"

Diana, I tried to say, but the word wouldn't come out again.

"Da-aana?" asked Ibiki.

I stared at him. He'd read my lips, it seemed. "Daana? That's your name?" I shook my head and held up my hand with the index and thumb an inch apart. On the paper -it felt good, as it always did, to draw- I sketched a seed, then sketched it again, this time with the two halves separated. I could have gotten across the correct first syllable with a simpler method but with Inoichi outside the door I didn't really feel like risking it. Ibiki stared at me waiting for me to explain. I mouthed my name again.

"Daana," he repeated.

I shook my head and repeated it while pointing to the second drawing of the seed.

"A seed?"

I held up my fingers again and pointed to the two halves, repeated my name.

"Am I getting part of your name wrong?" he asked.

I nodded and mouthed my name once more. He stared at the picture for a moment.

"Di-ana?" he tried again.

I nodded at him. He'd gotten it right this time.

"And your last name, Di-ana, can you tell me that?"

I shook my head and held up one finger.

"Diana."

I nodded and mouthed my surname.

"Mat-yuuz?"

On the paper I wrote down a long algebra equation that had stuck with me and then a log with an axe stuck in the top.

"Mathematics," he said. I made a chopping motion with my finger.

"Math?" asked the guard. I nodded.

Ibiki still looked at the sketches. "Hews?" he asked cautiously. "Math-hews?"

I nodded and held up one finger.

"Mathews. Diana Mathews," he pronounced and looked at me shrewdly. "Why didn't you just spell it out?"

Well. Either I die now, or this will lead to trouble in the future, I thought. I sketched a map of the -my- world and showed it to him. The already quiet room went so still that the beeps of the machines in the corner sounded like detonations. Silently, Ibiki took the clipboard from my hands and began to sketch another map, this one a map showing the Shinobi Nations and three more continents I'd never seen displayed there. He handed back the clipboard and pen and I started sketching again.

In one of the continents of my world I drew a comic panel, with Ibiki and the guards, sitting down, talking, drinking, one guard crouched in a tree holding a kunai. In one panel I replicated perfectly the map he had drawn, and drew Hiruzen Sarutobi inside the borders of what I knew to be the Land of Fire. Lastly I drew myself lying on my bed reading the very same comic book with the same panels. I showed him the sketches and again he gazed silently from them to me.

"Inoichi," he called quietly. "Would you come in here please?"

I tried very hard not to start shaking again but the moment the door opened and Inoichi stepped in my heart leapt into my throat. Ibiki got up and gestured for Inoichi to take the chair. He sat and looked from me to Ibiki. The big man came to stand by the head of my bed and nodded to Inoichi.

"Are the things you drew true? You are from another world and in that world this one is a story?"

I nodded. My hands were trembling in spite of my very best effort. I flinched when the burning started up again. It felt like an energy had just brushed mine, only for an instant, then settled back down gently. I got the feeling that with anyone else it would have gone unnoticed but because of my ability I noticed it and felt it.

"She's telling the truth, she knows both of us," Inoichi murmured.

Ibiki stared at me appraisingly. "How did you get here?"

I shrugged and scribbled a question mark on the paper. Flicking a glance at the two ninja, I sketched Ibiki's face under the question mark.

"No, we didn't bring you here, if that's what you are asking."

Well, if they didn't bring me here then somebody had to. I could never rip open some dimensional barrier and go through myself. So who was the one who had brought me here, if not them? As a matter of fact, how was I going to find out who it was? I scratched another question mark and the burning flared up again.

"How old are you, Diana?"

16, I wrote on the paper.

"Can you tell me when your birthday is?"

I numbered from 1 to 12 and then circled 9, writing the number 15 next to it.

"September 15th. Alright. We need to report now. Get some rest, we'll be back tomorrow." He took the clipboard and pen from me. "Diana are you an artist?" he asked, sounding slightly curious. I nodded yes. "Were you the one who created that... story?"

I wish, I thought and shook my head no. He nodded and they all left except Dr. Kanami who got up and began straightening me up and fiddling with the IV. Then she went out and I was left with a burning under my skin.

Chapter Three.


I remembered lights, heat and the smell of burning meat. The sound of screaming and the crackling roar of fire. My mother pushing me away as I fought to cling to her. The smell coming from us both.

Mother's eyes widened as her right side was covered by a sheet of molten glass. She let go of my hand and immediately I tried to crawl back to her. She raised one hand and curled it into a fist, mouth shaping something I couldn't hear. Suddenly she rocketed that fist at me but it never made contact. Instead something huge hit me like a wall and I went flying out of the fire and twisted, melting metal. The fire surged up about the crumpled pile and I cried out for her, opening my eyes in a white room with harsh light in my eyes.

"-ana! Wake up! You're okay, wake up!"

Mother...! I started to cry. She had died in that accident. Pushing me out before the car blew up. In spite of that I almost died on the way to the ER. The doctors had saved my life but they couldn't save my face or the patches of skin that had seared by the fire. Dad had no choice but to send me for reconstructive surgery. Everyone in the family had pitched in to help pay those monstrous bills. Dad's old mentor and my grandmother had gotten in touch with the best of the best and as a result the scars on my face had been removed. The worst ones had been on my stomach and back and on my left thigh. The doctors hadn't been able to remove those completely. Those had been decreased so jagged scars now crisscrossed my torso and thigh.

"Diana, what's the matter?" somebody asked.

I sniffled and rolled over, burying my face in the pillow. That was Ibiki's voice. I pulsed my aura outwards, feeling the blazing pain and sensing no less than six other people in the room and nine more outside in the hall. Two of those auras felt like massive suns there was so much power contained within them.

"Diana? What's wrong?"

I knew that voice and I couldn't make up my mind if it was a good thing or a bad thing he was here. It did make sense though, I thought as I rolled over and looked up at Sarutobi. I would naturally be of great concern to him if he believed what Ibiki had reported and Inoichi confirmed. He stepped closer to the bed. Instantly everyone in the room protested but he ignored them and reached down to wipe the tears from my face.

"What's the matter? You were screaming, and Dr. Kanami said you had lost your voice." He sat down in the chair by the bed, revealing the person standing behind him. If I could have gotten up and run as far as I could, I wouldn't have gotten very far. Danzo would have caught me, or one of his ROOT members. Freakishly enough, they were the same two that had appeared in the Kage Summit Arc. I recognized them; Fū Yamanaka and Torune Aburame. Danzo's uncovered eye flicked from me to his guards and then bored into me so fiercely that I promptly looked back at Sarutobi.

I tried again to speak. "Nightmare," I whispered.

"Can you speak up?" asked Sarutobi.

"Night...mare." My voice cracked on the last syllable.

"Of what?"

I tried to speak but nothing came out. I stared at him helplessly and Ibiki stepped forwards with a notepad and pen. I sketched a woman holding the hand of a chibi version of me and then a tombstone with a bunch of flowers on it.

"Your mother?"

"It was an accident..." I could barely force the words out. "She saved me... pushed me out of the car..."

"Car?" he didn't understand the word.

"Motor vehicle... It mal... functioned and exploded." I remembered something and sketched on the pad again. One vertical stroke down and three strokes across, each shorter than the other overlaying a infinity symbol. The pendant of my mother's necklace. It should have been lost, she always wore it, but that day she had left it in my dressing table. Jewellery wasn't allowed at my school so I always kept it in my pocket.

"Did-" My voice cracked again and I drew in a deep breath, "Did you find this... in my pocket? It was... hers."

"Lord Hokage, that symbol was recognized. It would be imprudent to return it and keep this girl alive any longer," Danzo interjected. "The Guild of Vhal are not our allies."

Well. This was new. Vhal? What was that? I'd never heard that place mentioned in the series before. And how in the could my mother's necklace be recognized as belonging to this place? I stared at Sarutobi, wondering what he would do.

"Your recommendation is noted, Danzo. The Guild is not our enemy either. If Diana belongs to them then we should make an effort to get her back safely."

What? Send me where? "Where is... Vhal? What is it?" I swallowed, trying not to grimace. My throat was drying up, I needed a drink of water.

"You don't know?" asked Danzo."Didn't you say that necklace was your mother's?"

"Yes."

"Then she must have deliberately-"

"Enough, Danzo. If her mother chose not to tell her, then it was for a reason. The Guild will inform her as they see fit."

"There is also the small matter of what she told Ibiki, Lord Hokage." Danzo's voice was colder than any I'd ever heard. "If she is telling the truth about coming from a world where this is only a story then undoubtedly she knows enough that we cannot let her leave. She does not know everything, just enough so that her fate is sealed."

"Danzo! Enough." Sarutobi turned away from his old teammate. "What do you know, Diana? You don't know everything or you would know what the Guild of Vhal is but what do you know about the Village Hidden in the Leaves?"

I thought quietly for a few moments, laying back and twiddling the pen between my fingers. My mother had been killed in that crash, so had all my memories of her past that point. When she pushed me out of the burning car I passed out after screaming for her. On waking up in the hospital I could only remember the accident and her saving me, but I did not remember that the woman in the wreck had been my mother. I had to be told who she was, and shown pictures of her and I together. The doctors hoped they would come back but they never did.

If she had told me about the Guild of Vhal I could not remember it, the memory would have been lost along with the others. So, maybe I did know, but had forgotten. That still left the question of what would I tell them. I was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy and everything I'd read said that by giving knowledge of an event would either change the future drastically for better or worse, or, leave the previous future writ in stone and create a new timeline entirely.

In my case however, I was telling them nothing of what would happen, only what they knew had happened already in order to prove my honesty. I did however, have to choose several solid events that would most likely seal my fate, to paraphrase Danzo, as a prisoner here. I now had to choose between a gilded prison or a stone cell. I didn't think I could leave in either case.

I picked up the sketchbook.

Sarutobi nodded when I showed him. "Everyone, leave the room please." He handed it back. "Danzo." The heavily swathed man stepped up close to the bed as the rest of shinobi filed out.

===

The hospital was large and white and indifferent to me. It didn't care about my situation and cared even less about the ANBU stationed always somewhere around me. They were irrelevant in light of the fact that I was someone who needed treatment. I wondered why I wasn't just kept in the ANBU base and have the same doctor that treated me first continue to do so. That might be more efficient. After all, I would have less of a chance to run away, not that I could, and they would have more opportunity to question me if and when they chose to.

Instead, they put me in a small room somewhere to the rear of the hospital. There was a window that looked out over a dusty fenced-in bit of earth with a few barrels and a dumpster and beyond the wire, a narrow street that hardly anyone used. I know, because I stared at that street most of the time. The room itself was painted a pale, nauseous shade of green. It contained a firm bed with a pillow, a chair in the corner next to the window and a blank whiteboard mounted on the wall to the right of the door.

The day I was moved to that room the sun was beating down like it wanted me to stay inside the ANBU base. I wasn't strong enough for much traveling over the rooftops and I could have passed out from the heat, so they waited until it was afternoon and marginally cooler, then put me in a small palanquin with a guard and set off. It didn't take very long to get there but I was still sick from the little motion that I could feel and the lingering heat.

We arrived and the guard with me picked me up and handed me down to another ANBU's waiting arms. This one's mask was so familiar I stared at him in panic, wondering if the Hokage had done this on purpose but no- he didn't know precisely what and who I knew, only that I told the truth. I must simply have been unlucky enough to have this man assigned to me today, and I probably would not see him again.

I dragged my eyes away from his mask as he started walking inside and stared firmly at his chest. Once we passed through the door I began looking around. On the inside it looked like any other hospital, except that the staff wore a different uniform. We walked deeper in the hospital, and higher, until we came to the room I was to stay in for the next three months. Two women and the doctor who had treated me, Dr. Kanami, were waiting.

Tenzou set me down on the bed and a nurse leaned over me, attaching an IV drip to my arm, Dr. Kanami launching into a long explanation of why I had been moved from the ANBU hospital and that I was to stay in this room until I had regained my strength. My illness would be treated with injections of the liquid form of medication every two weeks. During the second month I would start physical therapy and during the last month of my stay I would be allowed to leave the hospital for a short walk every other day. She informed me that the Hokage had made arrangements for me to stay with someone when I was well enough.

That was logical: a guardian or more specifically, a watchdog.

If there was anything I needed I could ask one of the nurses around and they would see what they could do. Here Tenzou chimed in that there would always be an ANBU stationed outside for my protection. I eyed him, pasting the most sarcastic expression I could on my face, cursing the mask he wore that shielded his expression. As if they'd do anything less.

There must have been a sedative in the IV. My vision blurred and my body felt heavy. My head seemed to be filled with cotton as I passed out.

I spent the first two weeks lying in bed sleeping or staring out the window between meals, bathroom trips and frequent doctor visits. After that I got so bored the next time a nurse came in I asked for a notebook and a pen or at least some paper and a pencil. One can spend only so much time doing nothing, even one as lazy as I could get. To be honest though, the longer I stared out that window, the more the thought of my future plagued me.

I needed something, anything to help me calm my mind and like I had for most of my life, I turned to my art. The nurse brought a small notepad and a cheap looking pen when she came back that midday with my lunch. I set them on the corner of the tray and bolted down the food, eager to start drawing. When she left with the tray I sighed with pleasure and picked up the pen.

===


The side of my right leg just above my knee had a dent in it where a portion of muscle had been removed. I hovered my fingers over it, cringing from the pain and the redness of the wound.

“Unpleasant to look at. I’m sorry,” Dr. Kanami murmured as she wrapped it up again in clean bandages.

“The bite became infected?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.” She sat back in the chair. “The animal that bit you was one we’ve been trying to clean out of the village. It’s becoming quite a problem. Its bite is extremely nasty and is as infective as a human’s.”

“Almost all human bites become infected, right?”

She smiled. “Correct. This animal isn’t particularly rare but you don’t see it that often either. It tends to keep to itself and its home, a nest deep inside one of the trees. Recently though there have been more drills being held in the forest within the training grounds and apparently they don’t like that very much. Once in a while they come over the fence and bite villagers but they rarely do it in these numbers. The last time was about fifty years ago.”

“Maybe it’s a population thing. Too many of them in one place and they’re trying to migrate?”

“Yes, that is what happens. We have treatments for the bites but in your case it wasn’t enough. Your body was resisting almost everything we tried until your chakra settled down and then the virus had spread too far. I’m very sorry, Diana.”

“Don’t be, I’m ok.”

She smiled and patted my head, then left. She knew it was a lie but there wasn’t anything to be done about it anymore. I was on a timer and we both knew it.