Mirai shivered, barely-there goosebumps forming on her skin at the slight chill in the air. Golden strands caressed her flushed cheeks, unbound and lifted up by the gentle breeze, and grass tickled her knees where she sat, crosslegged and leaning lightly against a tree. Her hands quickly folded into a ram seal, tiny features falling into a slight frown. Too slow. Her fingers were stiff and slow in this newer, younger body. They didnt move as deftly as they had Before, when her hands were rough and calloused, scarred by too many blades and too many mistakes.
Her hands were soft now. Soft and pudgy. Small. The hands of a murderer shouldn't be so small. It felt so... wrong. She felt wrong. Deceitful. Every step that she took was a lie to Minato, to Kushina and Kakashi, and--
'Breathe,' she reminded herself. Closing her eyes, she focused her attention inwards, tuning out the sounds of clashing kunai and pounding dirt from Obito and Kakashi's spar, and Rin's soft, quiet humming. She withdrew her senses from the calm waves of her fa-- Minato's chakra, and her teammates.
Deeper. She dove into her conciousness, careful to avoid disturbing Kurama's rest, and grasped the bright, fierce and untamable ball of energy that is her chakra. She tightened her hold on the energy, refusing to let it slip from her grasp, and gently, every so slightly expanded it, manipulating it outwards in every direction. There. The first blip of chakra lit up in her senses, small and barely a meter from her person. The chakra signal crawled just above her head, higher and higher, and a ghost of a triumphant smirk curled at the corners of her lips. A squirrel.
Another appeared within a few feet of the first as she extended her range wider, honing her senses to trace even the tiniest sparks of living chakra, down to the smallest of plants, instead of feeling only the brighter and more powerful signatures that belong to her teammates and sensei. Those - that is, the chakra signatures of people - were a near constant to her, always grazing at her senses even if she wasn't focusing or searching for them. They were too strong for her to not feel them when they were close in relation to her rather touchy senses - Mirai was far more sensitive than the average sensor due to Kurama's influence, which posed as a strength and sometimes even a weakness depending on the circumstances.
Now, though, she was so, so grateful for her heightened sensing abilities - because she could feel life.
She could feel Minato's chakra radiating from him like a calm breeze, one that carried the scent of the forest, oak and pine.
She could feel Kakashi's, steel and electricity, strict and disciplined. (Spice and smoke, scarred beyond repair, but warm. He was always warm, and he felt like home. Kakashi-sensei was a pillar of strength, one that would never bend beneath strain. He would always be there for her, he would never leave her--)
'No,' she shook her head roughly. That Kakashi was dead. Warm spice and smoke had been replaced with cold steel and sharp static. Strength and home had been ripped jarringly from that familiar signature, and apathy had replaced it. Cold, unforgiving.
Mirai shifted.
Rin's chakra was much like Hinata's, she noticed, the sharp stab of pain in her heart dulling into a deep throb as she focused adamantly on the differences rather than the similarities. It hurt less that way. Rin was not Hinata, and Mirai never wanted to willingly search for things that would match between them. Hinata could not be replaced.
YOU ARE READING
Drifting the Temporal Dimension
General Fiction"It's... incredible, the things that humans can do when you push them hard enough. What would normally be considered impossible could be made possible with willpower alone." "...And is that what led you here? Willpower?" She laughed, hysteria and he...
