Shinobi Isekai!

Displacement

Shikaku Nara never should have met her.

His darling student stared up at him with a somewhat hopeful expression—the likes of which he hadn't seen her wear in a long time. Such a shame, then, that he was looking at her ID photo and not the girl herself. He held her file in his hand as he walked through the halls of T&I, reading through it for the millionth time since her miraculous revival.

She was still small. Too small for the burden she insisted on carrying...whatever it was. Something weighed on her, bearing down on her more and more with each passing day. Shadows lingered in her eyes and her nails were bitten to the quick. He only wished he knew what was making her so anxious.

It was his own fault she didn't trust him. Looking back, it was easy to pick out the pattern of behavior which brought them to this point. Right from their first meeting, her remarkable maturity struck him as out of place. Her almost visceral awareness of her position in the Village was something he'd only seen in veteran shinobi, most of whom had served in Anbu and borne witness to Konoha's darkest secrets. What could that child have possibly seen to make her so paranoid? So desperate to prove her usefulness? So eager to be overlooked?

At the time, he'd dismissed it all as a foreign child's attempt to fit into her new home. And he, fool that he was, had encouraged her, thinking she would appreciate being praised for all her hard work.

Oh, how he wished he could go back and strangle his past self!

He was given a withdrawn, independent child and instead of teaching her the joys of teamwork as a member of Ino-Shika-Cho was uniquely equipped to do, he'd chosen the path of least resistance and let her lock herself away working on solo missions. Cracking codes and predicting trends based on compiled data could be collaborative work, but they didn't have to be. More importantly, he hadn't made them be.

He hadn't neglected his student...except he had. Teaching her only what he wanted to teach her only when he felt like teaching wasn't what she needed from him. She'd masked herself in more than just cloth and he'd allowed himself to be deceived for his own convenience.

And now, it was Hanako who was reaping the consequences.

He snapped the folder shut, cutting off the dark gaze of her photograph before it could dig any deeper into his soul. He'd failed his precious little genin—chunin now, thanks to her father's blatant nepotism—but he was still her sensei. It was time to start acting like it.

Step one: Cleaning up her messes.

He nodded to the shinobi on guard outside the interrogation room. There were medical personnel on standby, but not because Shikaku had any plans of violence. No, for once the medics in T&I were treating an illness, rather than injuries. From what Shikaku understood, the prisoner had a disease unlike anything ever seen in Konoha. Even Tsunade-hime herself was struggling to find a viable treatment plan. Though frustrating for those involved, they could only be grateful that the illness wasn't contagious. Preliminary tests indicated it was somehow tied to the prisoner's kekkei genkai, but no attempts had been made to follow up on that. To do so without the prisoner's permission was tantamount to bloodline theft. No one was willing to cross that line, even if it meant the prisoner would die.

And he certainly seemed determined to die.

Shikaku opened the door and stepped into the interrogation room. The prisoner sat with his cuffed hands clasped atop the narrow table, back straight and expression calm. He was of average height and build, though his wrists and collarbones were a little too prominent. His skin was pale with a jaundiced undertone made only more sickly by the cool tone of his silver hair. The red markings on his face stood out in stark contrast, bright and eye catching and heartbreakingly familiar. Despite his obvious ill health, there was a quiet confidence about him, a certainty of self that had Shikaku questioning whether he was really a fifteen year old boy.