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The first attempt was in the ruins outside the Village.
It was an old site left behind after the three purges, filled with broken walls, ruined remains, and overgrown weeds; no one ever came here.
Mei Terumī stood in the center of the clearing, took a deep breath, and formed hand seals.
On her left, she gathered Yōton Chakra: heavy, like soil mixed with water, carrying a corrosive sharpness.
On her right, she gathered Boiling Release Chakra: more active, hotter, like fire burning in water, ready to erupt at any moment.
Then, she tried to make them fuse.
To bring them close, make them touch, and merge into one.
Boom.
The explosion sent her flying three meters away, her back slamming into a pile of broken tiles.
Tiles clattered down, burying her legs, hitting her shoulders, and sharp fragments sliced her cheek.
Shinji walked over and pulled her up from the rubble, his movements gentle, as if handling something fragile.
Her face was covered in dust, her hair was a messy frizz, but the corners of her mouth were curved upward.
"Again."
The second time. The third time. The tenth time.
Each time ended in an explosion. A large swath of the surrounding ruins was flattened by her.
The broken walls that were still standing became fewer and fewer, and the ground was pockmarked with craters from the explosions.
She changed her clothes over and over, and the wounds on her body healed only to be replaced by new ones: burns, cuts, bruises—every day brought something new.
But she never once said, "Forget it."
Shinji didn't say it either. Each time she failed, he simply walked over and pulled her up from the pile of rubble.
Then, the two of them would crouch on the ground together, analyzing where the Chakra flow had gone wrong.
Drawing on the ground with branches, gesturing in the air with their fingers, sometimes arguing until their faces were red, and other times sitting in long, thoughtful silence.
"The Yōton Chakra is too stable."
That night, Shinji crouched on the ground, looking at the messy trajectories drawn there:
"The Boiling Release is too active. When you try to force them to fuse, they repel each other."
Mei Terumī crouched beside him, resting her chin on her hand, a fresh graze still visible on her face.
She stared at the lines, her brow furrowed tightly:
"...Then what should we do?"
"Find an intermediate medium."
Shinji looked up at the gray, hazy sky.
Hidden Mist always had fog.
It was gray during the day, and gray at night.
The mist drifted in from the sea, rolled in from the mountains, and seeped in through every crack, wrapping the entire Village tightly.
This Village lacked nothing if not fog.
He withdrew his gaze and looked at her: "The mist itself."
Mei Terumī was stunned for a moment, then followed his gaze to the ever-present gray-white mist around them: "Mist?"
"Mist is water." Shinji lowered his head and began drawing on the ground again.
His lines were clearer than hers, stroke by stroke, as if carved into the earth:
"What if you first infused your Chakra into the mist, making the mist a part of you? Then, what if you let the Yōton and Boiling Release fuse inside the mist?"
Mei Terumī stared at the lines, thinking for a long time.
Long enough for the mist to swirl around her several more times.
Then she stood up.
She walked to the center of the clearing, to the place where the mist was thickest. The gray-white mist flowed around her like an invisible river.
She closed her eyes and formed hand seals.
This time, she didn't directly gather Yōton or Boiling Release.
She released her Chakra—not in any specific direction, not condensed into any specific form, just released.
Letting that invisible energy surge out from her body and merge into the surrounding mist.
At first, nothing happened. The mist remained the mist: gray-white, flowing, exactly the same as before.
Then, the mist moved.
Not the kind of movement caused by the wind. The wind pushes it along, from east to west, from south to north.
But this movement was different; it had come alive.
The gray-white mist began to rotate slowly, forming a huge vortex with her as the center.
It wasn't fast, not the kind of speed that whips up a gale, but slow and steady, as if something within them was waking up.
Chakra flowed through the mist like blood in veins, thread by thread, wisp by wisp, connecting the entire misty area together.
Mei Terumī kept her eyes closed, feeling a connection like never before. The mist was her, and she was the mist.
She could feel every droplet of water in the mist, every wisp of flow, every inch of distance.
These things were no longer lifeless, passive existences; they were her eyes, her ears, her hands and feet.
They were waiting for her to tell them what to do.
Then she opened her eyes.
Yōton. Boiling Release.
Both types of Chakra erupted in the mist simultaneously.
There was no explosion.
Because the entire mist had become a container.
The gray-white mist began to change color.
Not all of it, but the edges began to glow with a dark red light, like the color of iron heated red-hot just before it cools down.
The mist itself didn't thicken; it still flowed thinly, but that red color moved through the gray-white, as if something were burning within the mist, or like clouds at sunset stained with the last rays of light.
Mei Terumī reached out, and the mist flowed past her fingertips.
It was warm.
Not hot. Not the kind of high temperature that would burn skin. It was a temperature that made one want to get closer.
Like a hearth fire just lit in winter, like a hot water bottle held for a long time, like the warmth when her mother used to occasionally hold her in her arms when she was a child.
She stared blankly at her hand, watching the reddish mist flow through her fingers.
Shinji stood in the distance, watching that patch of mist.
A gray-white base with edges glowing with a dark red light. That light moved within the mist, sometimes thicker, sometimes thinner, as if something living were breathing.
Wherever it passed, the grass on the ground did not burn.
There were no flames, no smoke, nothing at all.
But the tips of the grass slowly curled and turned yellow.
Not scorched. It was as if they had been dried out.
Shinji looked at her.
Standing in that reddish mist, Mei Terumī looked like someone who didn't belong to this world.
The mist swirled and flowed around her, and the dark red light reflected on her face, coating her entire being in a faint, warm hue.
"We succeeded." A smile appeared on Shinji's face; after such a long time of effort, they had finally seen results.
To strengthen the bond between the two of them, he specifically mentioned:
"We."
Mei Terumī turned around.
Through that reddish mist, her face was slightly blurred.
The mist flowed in front of her, the dark red light appearing and disappearing, outlining her silhouette in a hazy glow.
But the light in her eyes pierced through the mist and landed on him.
It was so bright it felt like it could shine right into one's heart.
"We succeeded." Mei Terumī nodded.
She also repeated it: "We."
That night, Shinji scoured through all the information he could find.
The scrolls unearthed from the notes left behind by Kisame Hoshigaki, the books brought back from missions, and the old books piled in the corner of the room covered in dust.
He flipped through them one by one, reading page by page, until dawn was approaching, before finally stopping his pen on a blank scroll.
He thought for a long time.
His pen tip hovered over the blank space, hesitating to descend.
Finally, he wrote two characters on it.
"Mist Release"
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