Finding Myself [Rewrite]

ch. 19: Getting Even

Over the course of the last few days, Minaki and her team have been doing "dummy missions" with their teacher. Anything from gardening, to walking dogs, to delivering medicine, they did with Naruto complaining the entire time.

Mina was happy to do it all with her teammates, considering it's all things she'd do without it being assigned- if she wasn't absolutely horrified at the thought of speaking to someone that wasn't one of her few friends.

Well, "few" friends. There were many of her former classmates she'd regularly visit if she had the time. On her off days, she would teach Hinata how to bandage wounded animals, practice cooking with Choji because he was basically a garbage disposal, play board games with Shikamaru even though she never wins, practice taijutsu with Neji, even though he hated her, and so on.

Kiba enlisted her as his go to vet when one of the ninja hounds had some complications after birthing a litter of pups, and she almost took all of them because they were so cute. It's not as if she needed more animals considering all the strays and wild animals living in and around her home.

She even took in an injured bear and named it. Ren and his three siblings did not approve, but Sofia seemed happy enough just hanging around and eating the berries grown on the land.

Needless to say, the butterfly girl had quite the reputation, and some people just didn't like it.

In the beginning, Minaki's social anxiety was so bad she had full panic induced seizures from being in a room with more that a handful of individuals. It has definitely gotten better over the years, but something like that doesn't just go away.

Trauma doesn't just go away, and some situations still trigger it.

It's been manageable, because more so than the fear of social interaction, her fear of hurting people has only strengthed with Silver's incessant tyranny.

Silver is still a bit of a mystery to her, however, they have a sort of understanding between them. Silver couldn't stand how weak the girl was in the very beginning, she was so easily manipulated by him it was almost boring, but something about her was off from the get go.

He could see the memories of all his previous hosts, even ones they couldn't remember, but Mina's mind was nearly blank. Her memories were hidden from him, and no amount of digging would allow him to see them.

At some point, he just couldn't bring himself to hate her anymore... It always ended up like that for him though, no matter how hard he tried, he'd always get attached to his host... And he'd always regret it.

"It's her again- look at her arms, they're so gross..."

"She has all those bugs on her all the time, I bet she smells really bad."

"Eww, she did you see her clothes, there's blood on them!"

On occasion, Mina would be walking through the village and overhear the younger children talking about her. Sometimes it wasn't just children, but adults too, not-so whispering to each other about her appearance, but she was fine with that.

Naruto told her that people would talk about anything and draw their own conclusions even if they had all the facts. Some people will like a person for who they are, and some will hate a person without ever knowing a single fact about them. That's just life for them.

As much as she tried to help the village, there would always be those people that see her as an outcast.

"Hey, watch this."

Sometimes the children would pull small "pranks". They'd throw stones to see if they could knock a butterfly out of her hair, or trip her as she passed, and laugh about it.