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     IF THOU ASKETH FOR THE ANGST, THOU SHALT RECEIVE

     Shit.     She’s known this day was coming. She’s not seen someone go against the grain so fervently. Not since…him.     And she’d been the one to take care of him.     So, standing at attention where they’ve been called, she gives Natsu a flickering glance. Still so young. And in spite of everything - in spite of her own warnings, guidance, help - she’s still not quite gotten it yet.     And now, she’s about to either learn…or die.     Something about the possibility makes Mikoto’s heart race. She forces the organ to calm. She can’t present any signs - any weakness. It’s not what she’s been trained for.     It’s not what Fugaku died for.     So she stares straight ahead, awaiting their superior and his final judgment. Before now, elite officers have given Natsu her warnings.     But this time, it comes from Danzō himself.     She’s only seen the man a handful of times. And in all honesty, she’s been happy to keep it that way. Despite her self-confidence and even cockiness…this is the one person she fears.     So when the tick, tick, tick of his cane against the walkway sounds, she stiffens, keeping her heart rate in check.     Flanking him are two officers, faces blank porcelain slates. She longs for her own, but was ordered to come bare. Part of the humiliation. She’s failed to keep her assigned underling in line. And part of the punishment is her own shame.     “So…this is the little chickadee giving us so much trouble, is it…?”     No one answers.     The rugged, scar-riddled face of Shimura Danzō stares down at them. Or, rather, Natsu. Mikoto is given only a glancing pass. His one dark eye seems to probe right through her.     “We have been lenient. But for a tree to remain upright and strong…so too must its roots remain firmly planted. Any that wither…must be cut off from the trunk. Otherwise…it does naught not steal from the rest who give the boughs their strength.”     Keeping her eyes glued to Danzō’s face, Mikoto watches as he reaches up to his bandages. She’s never seen the eye bare before. The sick part of her looks on in earnest, eager to see what’s been hidden.     But when the vermillion iris glints in the sparse light of the underground…her heart stops.     Sharingan.     But not just any Sharingan. Free to see, it flares with chakra, taking in more than the darkness of its confines.     How many years? How many years since she felt that chakra slip into the void, her fist still concaving his chest and shattering his sternum, stopping his heart as he smiled at her?     She knows what he’s going to do.     And without thinking, without planning, without hesitation, she slides between them, one fist in her palm as her elbow juts into his gut.     Time seems to slow to an agonizing pace as she takes in the past three seconds.     Sharingan.     Brother.     Rebellion.     Fear echoes through one heartbeat. She has attacked Danzō. She has laid hands on the man that commands an army of emotionless, moraless, mindless killers.     All for what…?      She saw fear in those young eyes. Not his eyes…and yet so similar. Fugaku hadn’t let himself be hardened. He’d fought back as she’d bowed. Ironic. She was always the one fighting.     And until now, that fight had died.     But now that she knows…now that she knows how and why her brother died, smiling up at her as she shattered his bones…it flares back into being like a fire struck into kindling by lightning. It roars through her veins, burning away the hesitation, the defeat, the part of her that was broken…and renews everything about herself she thought had died with him.     She has only fractions of a second before hundreds of them are upon her. She doesn’t have her brother’s speed or wit…but she has her ingenuity.     Spinning from her blow, one arm slings Natsu to her back, a wall of chakra rising up over them like a turtle’s shell. For a moment she crouches, encasing them completely before a second wall expands from the first, reaching as far as she can push. Bodies are sent reeling as she shoves them back with pure energy, accentuated by anger and the war in her cry.     Something new, something buried in her blood seems to flicker, just out of reach.     As the shock wave passes over her enemies, she’s already moving, a fist reeling back and shattering the wall between her and the corridor beyond. She doesn’t need whole hallways - only where the walls are thin enough to break through to the next. Raw chakra blazes around her fists, rupturing through anyone that stands between her and the surface.     All the while, time still feels like it’s dragging.     Only once she breaches through soil and grass does she take a gasp of air, nearly collapsing. But she can’t quit now.     Not ever.     From this moment on…she runs.

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