Izumi stretched with a groan. She liked her job at the hospital, but she preferred to do real missions outside the village. She wanted to feel useful and challenge herself. Because spending five to six hours straight to treat unpleasant patients wasn’t her definition of a perfect day.

Izumi opened her mouth to complain... Then she glanced at Ume, who was yawning at her and lost the will to protest. Ume, her best friend, wasn’t a fan of real missions. She was an excellent fighter, with an elegant taijutsu style that vaguely resembled the Gentle Fist. However, Ume preferred to care for, help, and protect others. She didn’t like confrontation.

However, it didn’t mean she would always shy away from a fight. She knew sometimes you had no choice. You had to be a killer before you were a doctor. And it was the reason she was Izumi's best friend. It was what distanced them both from their Jonin-sensei.

When they were Genins... Izumi, Hana Inuzuka, and Ume belonged to the same team. Their Jonin-sensei was a medic, named Rio. A beautiful woman with a stern face and attentive green eyes, with brown hair in a complex braid. She had always been firm but patient. Rio-sensei was a cold but dedicated person. She was a Jonin, an expert in Genjutsu as well as poisons. She had the potential of being a lethal shinobi obviously, but… she didn't like to fight. It went even further than that, she refused confrontation.

She was a Jonin out of necessity because she was sent to treat people in dangerous places as a medic. She had been promoted during the Third Ninja War, but she didn't have the necessary ferocity. On the contrary, she thought of retiring soon. It was a safe bet to assign a Genin team to her so that she could pass on her knowledge before the end of her career. So in creating her team, none of the students were destined for front-line action. 

The three adolescent girls had been selected to be medics from the get-go. Fighters, of course, but above all medic-ninjas. They had their share of difficult missions, some dangerous fights, and like everyone else they had to kill and even came close to death many times… But Rio-sensei had above all trained them to heal, track, and survive. Not to fight.

She had been a good teacher in her field. But she had no desire to deviate from the profession of medicine. No desire to quit being on the defensive, to go on the offensive. It wasn’t a problem at first. Izumi and Ume weren’t belligerent. Hana was a little fiercer, so Rio-sensei ignored her a little… But it was expected. Hana had her clan train her in battle; her mother would train her in parallel with Rio-sensei's teaching. So, she wasn’t losing much.

But one day, Itachi made his move. He slaughtered the Uchiha clan, and almost killed Izumi. Jun was the only person who could stop him. Izumi had been completely overwhelmed and useless. She hated it. Izumi knew she would never match her brother in terms of raw power, but at least, she wanted to stop being so weak, so useless, so helpless.

But her former sensei wasn’t a fighter. She had neither the abilities nor the ruthlessness. So Izumi sought the teachings of other people with a fighter mindset… Anko Mitarashi and her expertise in poisons, Genma and his handling of senbons, Kurenai Yuhi and her lethal use of Genjutsu, her brother Jun and his taijutsu… Izumi had been looking for ways to be more creative with her strengths to overcome her weaknesses. 

And she was proud of what she accomplished. Her Suiton, her Genjutsu, her techniques of handling poisons, her owls summoning. She wasn’t a pure fighter per se but had become more flexible, more lively, more adaptable, more versatile, more ferocious. Izumi was pleased with what she had accomplished. But it kept her away from Rio-sensei.

It wasn’t just her who slowly pulled away from their sensei, Ume, and Hana as well. Her two teammates fully supported her. And it added to the tension in their relationship with their Jonin-sensei. Hana wanted to fight from the beginning. That's why Izumi and Ume were closer to Rio-sensei at first. But suddenly, Izumi desired to become a fighter as well, and Ume was afraid of being left behind, of being a deadweight, of being weak, so Ume wanted to learn how to fight too.

Rio never blamed them. Her gaze was a little colder; she was a little less available... But she still performed her duties until they became Chunin, one after the other, each with a year interval. She had done her job. She trained and protected them. But then the relationship ended. Rio retired, even though she was barely more than forty years old. She said she was tired of fighting. Hana, Ume, and Izumi started their own careers, and their paths no longer crossed that of their old sensei. When they saw each other again, they greeted each other politely, but they had little more to say. When they ventured to discuss serious topics, disagreements quickly appeared.

Rio-sensei saw their choice to become warriors first and medic-ninjas second as a kind of disloyalty towards her teaching. And it was a point of tension that would never be appeased, because... she wasn’t wrong.

Izumi liked to treat people. But she preferred to learn how to fight, to destroy, to kill. Medical Jutsu wasn’t enough for her. She preferred the path of an assassin. How could her sensei not take it personally?

And Izumi knew it was the same for her teammates. Hana also liked to be a medic, but she liked to be a veterinarian and a tracker even more. Ume was the only one who was normal in their group. The one who loved to heal, who hated conflict. But even she understood that there were times to fight. Ume understood Izumi better than anyone. She understood that one could be afraid of fighting, but that at the same time, one could want to jump head-first into the violent life of the classic shinobi. There were times when staying in the background tended to be worse. Ume understood that while Rio-sensei was never able to.

“What are you thinking about?” Ume asked, leaning her head to the side.

“Hmm… Rio-sensei.”

Ume raised an eyebrow.

“Rio-sensei? It's been a while... Have you heard from her recently?”

Izumi shook her head.

“You know we all went our separate ways after we became chunins.”

“But still. Rio-sensei was one of the best medic-ninjas in the village, you'd think we'd run into her in the hospital sometimes.”

“I’m not surprised. She wants nothing to do with the shinobi world. She works in a civilian clinic, and I believe she volunteers at the orphanage.”

“Oh. Was she the one who told you that?”

Izumi shook her head.

“I heard it from Jun.”

“It's a pity it ended like that with Rio-sensei,” Ume whispered.

The two teenage girls began walking towards the Uchiha district. Today, they finished work at the same time, around noon. They had the rest of the day off. 

“I was thinking the same,” Izumi replied. “Most people get along with their sensei. But Rio-sensei was a little cold from the beginning, no?”

Ume remained silent for a second.

“She probably didn’t want students. It’s rare to become Jonin-sensei towards the end of one’s career.”

“Sometimes I wonder if she even wanted to be a ninja. She was so reluctant to fight, or just go on a mission. But she wasn't afraid, she was just so grumpy every time we had to leave the village. Do you remember?”

“We’ll never know for sure,” Ume replied.

“I was kidding. It’s hard to achieve Jonin rank when you don’t want to be a ninja. Don’t you think so?”

Ume shrugged as if it was not that surprising.

“I agree with you, but sometimes you have no choice. Whether because of the pressure of a clan, or to feed your family…”

Izumi suddenly thought of her brother Jun, ten years earlier when he had been the only one to bring money home. He pushed himself to work until exhaustion so that their disabled mother, his newborn brother, and his little sister all had food on the table.

“And Genin missions don’t pay much,” Ume continued. “That’s why most of us pass Chunin… because the pay is better. And then, we continue to progress. Yes, you have to be strong to become Jonin, but you don't have to be motivated by power. It is enough to be driven by a sense of duty or by necessity.”

Izumi thought about her friend’s words. For her, being a ninja had always been the obvious choice. All her friends went to the Academy. And learning new techniques was so exhilarating. Izumi had never considered a path other than this, simply because no other path had been proposed to her, and she had hardly desired another. It was simple. And suddenly, it was strange, disorienting, to think that people could take that path reluctantly. She had never thought about it.

“You seem to know a lot about this,” she said to her friend.

Ume gave a somewhat embarrassed laugh and rubbed her neck.

“My uncle, my father's brother, didn’t want to be a ninja. He was pushed by his family. He was strong and gifted. But frankly, he went to every mission reluctantly.

Ume's parents were civilians, but they were descendants of a ninja clan. Not just any clan for that matter, the Senju clan! But that did not save them, they were killed during the Nine-Tails assault on Konoha.