After picking up her book, Suzume turned her feet toward the door and placed her hand on the handle.

"Are you sure you want to leave?" Toru's dispassionate drone caught her in her tracks. "Temari-sensei will be expecting you."

A beat and Suzume was closing the door behind her, leaving Toru to stare on after her.

"Why was Otaki so worked up?" one of the students' whispers caught his attention. "And all that talk about sending people off to be killed. It actually sounded like he had a conscience."

"Y'know what? I think I know why. I heard a rumor a long time ago about how Otaki-san's older brother was a—"

"Oi." The ice in Toru's voice silenced them. "You want to continue that conversation?"

The pair shook their heads and took up a different conversation about a new film coming out.

_ _ _

Otaki was staring at Kankuro with pigheadedness.

Kankuro crossed his arms. "You're a horrible people person, jan."

He snapped. "If it wasn't your sister—"

"My work here is strictly professional," Kankuro said seriously before cracking a lopsided grin. "Not really. But, if Suzume were acting like you are now, I assure you I won't be as nice as I am to you."

Otaki grumbled, "Yeah, whatever."

"If you have something to say, say it to our face." Kankuro leaned back into his chair. "Don't bring Suzume into it."

His student hesitated. "It's... this crap wasn't your idea. She's just convinced you, somehow, to do it."

"Nah."

"Huh?"

"I mean, Suzume's kind of a dork." Kankuro snorted. "This one time, I caught her squeezing the dish soap bottle so the bubbles would fly out! She looked so happy! Oh oh! Then there was another time where she wore the strainer as a hat! And another—"

"A dork wouldn't be able to do the things she's done," Otaki spat out. "Her idealistic ideas will get people killed—"

"Otaki," Kankuro cut in sharply. "Do you really think we'd let just anyone be a shinobi? The same qualifications and protocols apply. Every rank is given missions that suit their ability and experience and people are promoted when they're ready."

"I don't trust your protocals." Otaki's mouth stretched until he bared all of his teeth in a spiteful smile.

"Okay." Kankuro's good-humored tone surprised his student. "Fair enough."

Otaki blinked. "The fuck."

"You don't like how we're doing things. I respect that."

Otaki's eyebrows were traveling further up his forehead. "Say what?"

"You make a good point. There's a lot of flaws in our thought process," Kankuro got up from his seat and went around his desk to stand in front of Otaki. "Therefore," he clapped a hand on his shoulder, "you will attend the Educational Reform conference with me and Temari and Gaara."

A few moments later, Otaki was under the intimidating gaze of Gaara and Temari in front of the meeting hall with Kankuro being all smiley by his side.

Otaki rounded on his teacher. "You were serious?!"

"I was seriously serious."

"But I'm not allowed to be here!"

"What's this about, kid?" Temari asked while Gaara kept eyeing down Otaki.

"Don't ask me!" Otaki flailed.

"He's just here to observe, jan. I'm sure the others won't mind."

"I fucking mind!" Otaki appealed to Gaara, ironically the most rational of the three. "I'm not going in."

The way Gaara stared at him reminded Otaki of the freak's stare—but, no... Her stare wasn't as analytical as Gaara's was. They both felt like they were x-raying him, opening him to them just as easily as peeling a tangerine. But, Gaara's stare was more... complicated, while the freak's was—

"The meeting's starting."

Otaki felt himself being swept along and dumped in a seat. When he snapped out of his confusion, he found himself surrounded by teachers who were sitting around a long narrow table. He recognized most of them (forgot their names though) and they all seemed to lock onto him with a scandalized horror threatening to explode out of them.

"Of all the things you three have done," the Concepts and Principles teacher gritted out, "bringing a student to a meeting! It appears your life goal seems to be to ridicule our very status on every miniscule level!"

"But isn't this a meeting about improving our students' school life?" Temari asked. "So shouldn't it be obvious to let a student be involved with the discussion."

"They wouldn't have any significant input!"

"Excuse you?" Otaki said, offended. "I have a lot of things to input, whoever you are."

"I'm your Concepts and Principles teacher, Ammon!" the man shrieked. "And I'll give you a check for 100 ryo if you can give us even a single contribution with substance!"

Otaki cracked his knuckles and his spine and his neck then stretched before diving into it. "The course is too strict on first and second years, we need to build the children up instead of making them crack under the pressure and shitty standards. Half of them drop out because of the homework quantity alone and the other half establish unhealthy habits such as only getting a few hours of sleep per day as well as eating less because they need to study. However, unlike the first and second years, the third and fourth years have abysmal instruction and are left to do crap with busy work being their only responsibilities.

"The girls in our year have been complaining about how the school board doesn't give a shit about their biology at this age and I damn right agree because they bleed out the Red Lake out of their butts and they're still required to do the strenuous routine during Body Building during such times. The boys, on the other hand, have voiced how the equipment have rusted and are dysfunctional, and this is dangerous because we don't want weights to dent our bones and skulls in.

"The textbooks for the History of Shinobi are outdated according to the press from both Konoha and Mist as well as our own, and if Mist is saying our way of teaching is outdated then we have a problem. There's not enough course material on understanding the traditions and cultures of other nations, if we're going to work with other shinobi we need to be able to understand them. The window on the fifth floor of the main building is broken—"

"Wait, why is it broken?" Masaru-sensei asked.

"—why is it still broken, you mean. Excellent question, because the staff isn't on top of things. And I believe I proved my point." He twiddled his fingers at Ammon. "Cough up my dough, sen-sen."

Ammon's face was on fire and the rest of the board was silent, their arguments rendered useless. Otaki turned to Kankuro who had a smugass look on his face and wiggled his eyebrows at him. Otaki scowled and twisted around to face the other way. He felt like he lost somehow.

"I'd like to hear one more thing from you, Otaki."

The voice sent shivers up the student's spine and he slowly looked over at Gaara who had his green eyes seeing through him again.

"Yes, Gaara-sensei?" he gulped.

"What is your opinion on the recent reform?"

"Gaara," Temari said out of the corner of her mouth, almost inaudibly, in warning.

"Yes," Ammon resurfaced, almost sparkling. "Yes, what do you think, Otaki?"

"I think..." he said slowly, feeling everyone's anticipation. "I think... it doesn't matter if we have it or not."

Gaara's expression shifted slightly.

"The concept exists even if we don't give it a name."

Otaki left the meeting without saying a farewell to his teachers. He shoved his hands in his pockets and pushed his way through streets.

The way Gaara's eyes looked after he said that still prickled his skin.

It's true, isn't it? There will always be aces and lows in the world. And while the aces stand a chance against other aces, the lows will just be throwing their lives away.

So he just needed to stop them before that happened.

"I'm fighting for our village!"

"You'll die."

"I might not be the best but if I keep trying, something will come out of it."

"You'll die."

"I'm going to be gone for a few days. I'm working under a great jonin captain and this mission is an S-rank! Pretty amazing, huh?!"

"See," Otaki ended up on the top of a tower along the border wall and saw someone familiar there.

Katsuo walked to the edge of the tower and stepped up onto the parapet.

You died.

"Katsuo?" Otaki called out uncertainly over the wind coming in from the darkening desert.

His peer turned around to see him there and fear shot through his face. "Stay back!"

Otaki comprehended what this was and quickly stepped backwards, "Okay, okay." He didn't blink, because if he didn't keep Katsuo in his sight, he'd fall. "You wanna tell me why you're doing this?"

Katsuo turned up his nose at him. "Like ya care."

He swallowed thickly. He knew he deserved that hatred. "Can't hurt to tell me?"

Katsuo seemed to consider him for a moment before he placed a hand over his eyes and his mouth turned down in a scowl. "I just... can't stand it anymore. I can't stand bein' useless. Bein' a shinobi... was my last chance. Y'know how they pay ya allowance if ya attend the school and then ya get all of those privileges after ya get out like free hospital charges, my family wanted that."

"Yeah," Otaki took a step forward.

"I mean nothin' to 'em if I can't become a shinobi and I'm nothin' at school anyway. People only talk to me to get somethin'. Ya threatened to hurt me so I'd help ya hurt Suzume-san and I still feel horrible because of that. I don't know why I'm doing anythin' anymore."

"Don't do it." Otaki said without thinking and when Katsuo looked up at him with red eyes he sputtered, "Uuuuh-um... ah... y'know... the wonders of life and all of that. What am I saying? Uh, ah, em, huhm... Please, don't do it?"

He looked at him in suspicion. "Why're ya tryin' so hard?"

"Because we're talking about a life here!"

"But ya never cared before."

"Okay, look. I'm an asshole, I admit it. Totally an asshole, totally. But—" Otaki hesitated before he mentally slapped himself. He wasn't going to let someone die because of his insecurities. "I've never fucking told fucking anybody this before... my shitty, jackass older brother was a low and he damn managed to get through the crappy Institute even when there were shitty people like me. And I thought he was fucking cool, the fucking, damn coolest. Crappy people told me otherwise and then I grew the fuck up. I realized what people were telling me was shitfuck right all along. He was fucking pathetic, he had the lowest shittiest, success rate on missions. But he still tried and tried, and one day he died as a goddamn sacrificial pawn. I didn't like that, I didn't want lows like him ending up like him. So, you know what happened, and now one of my classmates is about to die because of my stupid ass mistakes. Because you know fucking shit what? You are fucking amazing because you dealt with shitty me for six years and if anything you should be damn proud for where you are now. I mean not where you are physically but metaphorically, I mean, shit, crap, uuuuuhhh... is there a better way to say this...?"

Katsuo's eyebrows were high above his head and his mouth was open in disbelief. A spurt of laughter escaped his lips and he doubled over laughing. "I ain't ever heard so many curse words together before!"

A vein protruded out of Otaki's forehead. "I opened my heart up to you! I opened! And that's what you focus on?!"

Katsuo's laughing eventually stopped and Otaki was pink in the face but he still stood firm.

"I'm sorry about your brother," Katsuo said.

He shrugged, "I could've handled it better."

Katsuo giggled and Otaki smiled and then snapped his arms to his sides and formally bowed. "I'm very sorry for treating you like shit under my sandals. I'll work hard to make it up to you."

"Thanks for the apology." Katsuo cast his eyes downward. "And I'd liketa hear more about your brother. He sounded awesome."

"Really?" Otaki straightened up and stared with a child's excitement. "I've never heard someone say that about him."

"It's about time it was said then."

The breeze buffeted around them and the sun was melting into the sand. Otaki knew his feet were numb and his head was going light. How long have they been up there?

Katsuo looked small framed in the middle of a vast desert.

"So," Otaki held out a hand, "are you ready to come down from there?"

Katsuo wavered and looked behind him at the ground below. He dropped his head and the tears came again. He turned to Otaki, who was urging him to grab onto living again, pleading him to grasp his hand.

"I-I don't know," Katsuo quivered.

Otaki didn't know what else to say but, "Please."

Katsuo was reaching out his hand and Otaki was closing the gap when a rough gale galloped past him to reach Katsuo before he did. The face Katsuo made as he felt himself teeter and fall backwards burned into Otaki's eyes.

"KATSUO!"

He only took a few strides forward before something shot up from the side of the tower and landed in front of him. A stunned Katsuo was frozen in Kankuro's grip. Safe back on the roof of the tower.

"Kankuro...sensei..."

"You alright, Katsuo?" Kankuro spoke gently.

Katsuo's eyes became wet and his face contorted as he sobbed. He hid his face in his hands. "No, I'm not!"

"Well," Kankuro squeezed his shoulder and Katsuo looked up with tear stained eyes, "you're going to be."

Katsuo nodded and kept crying. Otaki let out a relieved sigh.

_ _ _

Suzume was staring down a gecko.

It was already dark out and she's been sitting on the step of a decrepit building in the outskirts of the village where an abandoned district was planned for reconstruction. Wood chips were piled on top of the sand and the wind hollowed through skeletons of buildings.

Suzume didn't notice how much time had passed until the sun was gone.

She had a conversation with the gecko and during the conversation she came to a conclusion. She decided that as long as she had her family and Konata she can live happily. As long as they were by her side, she didn't need anybody else's acceptance because her family was worth more than a hundred friends.

She nodded at the gecko in earnest agreement. Her loyalty was to her family, not to the village.

"Thank you, Tokage-sama," Suzume said to the lizard, completely serious. "You're very wisdom-ous. I think you should go back to Yamorigakure now, they might need you."

It flicked its tongue out importantly, as if haughtily assenting, then slithered away.

Suzume got up and walked back inward toward the Kazekage's mansion with a small smile lifting her mouth.

She felt lighter on her feet. Throwing up her arms in a stretch, she saw the old eaves above her and thought about scaling the buildings and traveling by rooftop like she's seen so many others do. It hadn't crossed her mind before that she could do it now too. She's always thought it was cool how—

An arrow just missed her head and whizzed past to imbed into the house she was walking by. She hastily looked around the area where the arrow would have been shot and seeing nobody there, extracted the arrow and noticed the banner tied on the end of the shaft.

She pulled it off and saw words written there.

The arrow clattered to the ground and Suzume was bolting across the rooftops, her feet directed toward the blossoming light growing larger and larger in the distance.

From this person, this direction, and thereafter, will there be ashes. A Freak who lets fire aborn.