The world flickered in Kei's mind as she plummeted into the ice, throwing memories and thoughts into it with reckless speed. No time to prepare, to brace herself. One thought: keep her team alive and unhurt. Mari-sensei would accept no less.

Possibilities and probabilities tumbled through her mind, borne up on the winter gale of the Voice.

Kagome would strike first. Surrender. Hazō would manage it.

Fight? No point. Easier just to give up. No. Confined space, boxed in front and back. Leap clear? So much effort; what's the point? The voice of Funaki-sensei from the Academy echoed in her mind: Ballistic target, easy target.

Memories of the Academy crowded in. [Needing family to protect her from bullies, always in the shadow of Ami's sunlit brilliance and easy charm.]

She rammed the memories out of the way, froze them in the ice and ground them to dust. Fighting wasn't a survivable option. Physical evasion wasn't either. Kawarimi? [Forty-six attempts before success. Ami needed three.] So exhausting. No targets. PMYF? Too slow at this range. Mist? No protection against bombardment. Enemy wouldn't care about hitting the clan across from them.

Can't run, can't fight. Alternative? Role models? Kagome: explosives. Mari-sensei?...supreme excellence: defeat the enemy without fighting. [Shaming yourself with infantile, impossible love and then losing control to the point where you admitted it? Idiot. Worthless fool.] Emotions, people, struggle...so exhausting. Sleep would be easier. Lie down, embrace the emptiness at your core. Will is struggle. Will is anger, suffering, and failure. Step aside from the world and know peace. Know the comfort of oblivion.

The Mori Voice shivered and retreated slightly as anger and self-loathing wound tendrils of hot fury through the cracks in the ice. [I bragged to Pantsaa about being in control, but where was the control when I blurted out those words and shattered the team?] The Voice returned, whispering louder, its seductive syllables gliding through the ice to wrap her in comforting arms that promised freedom from the self-contempt, from Noburi's still-angry eyes, from Akane's grating cheerfulness.

She dove deeper; was she fleeing the anger or driving forward to her goal? Either way is effort and misery. Give up, lay down the burden, be at peace in the ice. Oblivion is so easy, so comforting. She ignored the whispers and went deeper still, her thoughts speeding up as she went.

Can't fight, can't run, must break the enemy with words as Mari-sensei has taught. How? What do I know? The ice resisted her as she forced her brain to shift from the effortless analysis of probability into the churning mud of human modeling. [Your team dies when you get it wrong. And you will. Useless. Worthless. No self-discipline. Ami would be ashamed.] Sleep. Surrender. Let the world go on as it will. No one needs to know. It will all be over in moments if you simply do nothing.

She pushed past the Voice, pushed the memories aside, and forced her brain to go on, shackling it to her will and driving it mercilessly forward, always forward.

The enemy are arrogant, feeling in control. We must shake them. Bad cop / good cop. Noburi for good cop. Bad cop? Akane? {laugh} Hazō...no, Hazō must restrain Kagome.

From behind her she heard Hazō's voice. "Hold up, sensei. Let's see if we can talk first." Good, he had done the analysis. The raspy sound of his thumb scraping along his henged form's beard stubble said he had gone the rest of the way: Earthquake Black, the team's pre-arranged battle plan that meant 'hold for now, on the command kill anything that moves and demolish anything that doesn't.'

The clan ninja might not have understood the gesture, but they definitely understood the words. They immediately shifted into combat stances; empty hands conjured weapons or moved into handseal positions. It was going to start in seconds and there was only one person to do what was needful.

As deep in the ice as she was, as loud as the Voice thundered in her ears, the other voice still reached her. The inner voice that had nothing to do with her bloodline and everything to do with her endless string of failures. Worthless fool. Loser, clumsy, failure, just like the other children had chanted, their remembered laughter raking at Kei's memory with molten claws that made her want to curl up in shame. Now everything was depending on her to do the one thing no Mori could do: talk. Understand people, be confident and bold. So much trouble. The gears of fate are stronger than you; isn't it exhausting to resist them? Oblivion will come eventually...was it really worth all this effort to buy another few hours or days? [You'll listen to the ice, of course. Might as well, you weak-willed no-control idiot. You'll fail anyway, just like always. Your teammates will die because you're too useless, too stupid.] Let go. Let the world spin on, vast and uncaring. You are nothing but a speck; what does it matter if a speck vanishes? The battle between the shame of the voice and the contemptible apathy of the Voice threatened to shatter the ice around her and leave her defenseless.

The self-loathing blazed up. Contemptible. That was exactly the word for it. Would she fail? Perhaps, but the self-pity was a failure in its own right. Who was she to give up and let her friends die? Surrendering to the ice, that was the ultimate failure for a Mori. Generations of her clan had fought against it, and the ones who gave up were a stain on their family forever. They were whispered about, children were mocked for having a great-grandfather who had surrendered and their parents blushed in shame. No. She would never surrender to the ice. That was one failure she Would. Not. Allow. She was a Mori, and she was in control.

The leader of the Irie contingent stepped forward. "You will—"

"We will do nothing," Kei said flatly. The rage at her near-surrender blended effortlessly with the ice and turned her thirty-year-old's henged voice into a frozen whip with which to scourge the enemy. Who were these puling villagers to threaten her self-control, to make her teeter on the brink of ultimate failure? The words erupted—perhaps not wise, perhaps not perfect, but needful. "You think you can threaten us? You think you can threaten me? My team killed every chakra beast from Fire's Swamp of Death to the jungles of Tea. We've crushed jōnin, fought an entire village of ninja, and faced down Jiraiya of the Sannin. I stood my ground in front of Pantsaa of the Adamant Scales, the Boss Summon of the Pangolin Clan, and made him fear me. My comrade"—she waved to Hazō—"killed three chunin in single combat when he was only a few months out of the Academy. Our leader fought his way out of a prison designed to hold sealmasters. All that, and you think we're going to back down for some pissant village nin like you? Talk to us like reasonable people and we could be powerful allies, but do not imagine for even a moment that you can take our control from us. Try it and we'll blow your little mudhole into rubble and pick our teeth with the fragments."

Noburi kept his eyes forward and a smile on his face. The rest of the team blinked in astonishment and looked at Keiko with a mixture of shock (Akane, Hazō) and pride (Kagome).

The Irie leader didn't step back, but it was a near thing. She looked at her patrol mates, then at the Hinago team. She seemed to gather strength and braced herself. "Are you threatening us?" she sneered. "The odds don't favor you."

"Odds?!" Kagome growled. "Odds?! Don't tell me the odds, you stinker! I'll show you odds! I'll show you so many odds you'll need to pick your eyeballs up to count them! Except you won't be able to because you'll be splashed—"

Hazō closed a hand on Kagome's bicep and shook him slightly. "Sensei," he said carefully. "Please breathe. We're still talking. We don't have to kill anyone yet."

Kagome turned and Looked at him, eyes wide and wild. "But—"

"Sensei," Hazō said. "Breathe." He took a deep breath as an example and let it out slowly, keeping his eyes soft but locked with Kagome's.

Kagome snarled but followed his student's example.

"Hey there," Noburi said, stepping forward towards the Irie leader and spreading his arms placatingly. His henged form's face was battered and weathered, but the smile was open and the laugh lines around the eyes invited friendship. "I'm Ajibana Akira, and I'm the calm one who doesn't go in for drama." He chuckled. "How about everyone takes a breath and we talk for a second?" He paused, turning to look back at the Hinago leader with an extended, inviting hand. The Sarubetsu ninja didn't say anything, but a tiny bit of the tension in the air seemed to dissolve.

Noburi shrugged casually. "Look, we're just here to do some trade. We've got a bunch of cash burning a hole in our pockets and a lot of stuff we need to buy. You guys are the best source of...certain medicines...for a hundred miles in any direction, and everything else we need is available as well. Were we scouting around? Yes, absolutely. We're looking for ways to E&E the city if we need to. My friend here is a little dramatic, but she makes the point pretty well: we've dealt with a lot of trouble over the years and it's made us a little jumpy. We like to know that we can get out quickly if we have to, and we don't want to fight in a city. Our fights tend to be...noisy. We don't want that kind of collateral damage on our conscience."

"Not something I worry about," Kagome grumbled. Hazō tightened his grip and his teacher went sulkily quiet.

"Hmph. That sounds unlikely to me," said the Hinago leader, obviously making a conscious effort to regain some control. "If all you wanted was safety, why didn't you talk to the Murano, or to us? The Hinago clan could have shown you the city and explained why you shouldn't mingle with these Irie dogs."

"Stop yapping or I'll come muzzle you myself!" the Irie leader snapped.

"I'd like to see you try it!" the Hinago snorted. "You Irie can't stand up to a bunch of children. You can't even—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Noburi said, patting the air calmingly. "We are breathing, exhaling stress and distraction, inhaling calm and peace. Right? Inhaling...exhaling...great. Look, we don't need to do this here. How about if we go grab a cup of tea, maybe a little ramen, and talk? You could tell us about the city, fill us in on how things work and what we should and shouldn't do. We don't want to step on any toes, we just want to buy some stuff and then we're gone and out of your hair." The smile widened and the voice became wheedling. "I'll buy the first round."

Glances were exchanged among the village nin; among their own clan questioning, between the groups glowering. Still, the tension slacked further.

"All right," the Hinago leader said. "There's a good place just back here."

"Pah!" the Irie leader said. "You're talking about Umaki's on Hinago turf, aren't you? Swill! I wouldn't feed that stuff to a pig!"

"Whoa, whoa!" Noburi said, as weapons came out again. "How about a neutral place? Somewhere on Murano territory, maybe?"

The Irie and the Hinago glowered at one another.

"Fine," the Hinago leader grunted. "We'll go to Yoichi's. But you're buying."