Kei breathed deeply. Keep it together, Kei. Keep it together. If she panicked here, it would be the end. She knew that being a missing-nin did not render her inherently dishonourable. She simply had to find, very quickly, some way of convincing Pantsā of the same.
She needed her bloodline. There were too many possible answers and not enough correct ones. She began to sink into the Frozen Skein. In her mind's eye, the future fractured into a crystal with a thousand cracks networked across it, all leading in different directions. Most of them cut off very sharply.
To complain that she had been sent on a suicide mission would be ineffective. A military leader would believe in the necessity of suicide missions. To speak of betrayal by a superior officer would be dangerous. He would ask why she did not seek to return to Mist when she discovered Shinigami-sensei's deception. To argue—
"YOU DARE BRING THAT HERE?!"
Kei's clarity vanished as if it had never been, as something wet lashed out and wrapped around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides, and yanked her sharply upwards. Before she could react, she was being held tight in one of Pantsā's claws, the pressure just barely light enough to allow her to breathe. He lifted her in front of his eyes.
"Your trial is over, Mori Keiko," he said in a heavy voice that lacked some its earlier relaxed majesty. "Your sentence is decided. Make your final prayer to the Pantokrator."
Time to panic. How had Pantsā known she was using the Frozen Skein? How could he, who had never heard of the Mori, even know what it was? Why was he about to kill her?
Instead of her life flashing before her eyes and adding insult to imminent injury, a sudden flash of insight filled Kei's mind. Was Pantsā… afraid of the Mori bloodline?
How... pathetic. He was the same as the others. He feared her, the others feared for her, but it was all the same in the end. All were convinced that she was unworthy to be a true Mori, that her power was too dangerous for her to wield. Now, Pantsā was treating her as if her mere possession of the bloodline made her a threat even to her potential allies.
A cold anger began to burn within Kei. She would be the first to admit that her life was a morass of failure. Never strong enough, never intelligent enough, never social enough, making only poor decisions—and that was if she managed to make decisions at all instead of clinging to others who would make her choices for her. Most mornings she awakened to wonder why she was still alive, why she should continue to disappoint both herself and those around her, knowing that it was futile to hope for herself to change. And now she was about to disappoint them again. Jiraiya, the living legend who had taken an incredible chance on her. Takahashi-sensei, who had accepted her and worked hard to fan the flames of her hope. Mari-sensei, who had seen the full depths of Kei's weakness and, impossibly, stood by her anyway. They would look at her, if she somehow survived, and they would be kind, and forgiving, and there would be nothing she could say to make them understand how much that hurt.
But for all that, Kei knew, despite every way in which she had failed to live up to everyone's hopes, including her own, one thing was hers.
It did not matter that she was only half-trained in her clan's secret arts. It did not matter that there was only one thing she could do well, only one contribution she could make that somebody else could not do better and faster. This one thing was hers.
And in that moment, Kei did not see the ancient patriarch of a warrior race. She saw only an ignorant accuser with the temerity to question the core of who she was.
"No," Kei said, in a voice filled with ice that was not borrowed but all her own. "I am Mori and I am in control.
"Wherever the other Mori may be. Whatever they may believe of me. I am Mori, and even if you fear my power, I do not, because I am in control."
She looked up at Pantsā defiantly, the anger just strong enough to suppress the absolute terror that her situation deserved.
"Interesting." The danger in Pantsā's voice was softer, with more curiosity and less rejection. "You are a missing-nin, yet you claim loyalty to the clan you left behind?"
That was not quite what Kei had done. It was difficult to speak of loyalty towards people who might desire her death or who might have long since forgiven her, or even both, with no way for Kei to know which. Was her mother praying for her safety, or cursing the day she had been born? Was her ex-ANBU grandfather hoping that she would stay out of the hands of T&I, or wishing he could bring her to them himself? Did Ami hate her now?
No. She could not afford to start spiralling. Her relationship to her family was warped now, a wire puzzle too complex to unravel. But if there was such a thing as loyalty to the Mori ideal, beyond the individuals comprising the clan, then yes, Kei was as loyal as anyone could be.
"I am Mori," Kei said again. "Before anything else. And part of being Mori is mastery of the bloodline. If I have given offence by using it, I apologise. But to think that I would permit it to endanger my allies is offensive in its own turn."
Slowly, carefully, Pantsā lowered his paw to the ground and allowed Kei to step off. For the second time in one hour, Kei could feel her knees about to buckle, but she miraculously kept herself standing.
"Interesting," Pantsā repeated. "You remind me of Sannō Ranka, the summoner before Ui. She had abandoned her clan when they forbade her to marry the man she loved. I believe her exact words to me were, 'If you keep sticking that snout of yours into my love life, I will tie it shut with your tongue and set it on fire.' She made an excellent summoner, once she was taught her place."
Kei gritted her teeth and attempted not to look desperately afraid as the anger drained away, leaving only the awareness that she had just rebuked a being vast beyond her comprehension, and one who had already expressed a preference for her death.
"It has been inconvenient for the Pangolin Clan to be without a summoner for so long," Pantsā mused. "Our enemies have been able to manoeuvre unrestrained on the Human Path, and our arts of warfare grow stagnant. Are you an opportunity or a liability, Mori Keiko?"
Without the Frozen Skein, and with adrenaline washing her power for rational thought away like a raging river, Kei did not know how she could make her case.
But Pantsā did not demand an answer.
"You will never call upon what you call your bloodline again while you are on the Seventh Path, the place you call the Summon Realm. On pain of death. Is that understood?"
