New one. Again. Viola.

"Human tragedies:

We all want to be extraordinary

and we all just want to fit in.

Unfortunately, extraordinary people rarely fit in."

― Sebastyne Young

The Kageyama were an interesting sort. Contrary to what their name might suggest they did not have any techniques that moved shadows or twisted darkness. That was left to the Nara. There were few to none that used flashy techniques or loud voices or even anything special that would put them on the radar of others. No one had bright hair or interesting eyes, skin was a shade between tan a pale, sometimes sprinkled with freckles and the occasional small scar. Hair did not spike wildly nor did it fall in perfect waves or even straight chops, instead being a perfectly average type that twisted halfway down the neck and floated around the bottom. There were no crazy madmen in the family, not any malicious, boisterous or brooding members.

The Kageyama were, in the eyes of the world, normal.

Except there was one little, teeny, tiny, difference from them and, say, the Kurotsuchi, an equally plain family of merchants. That difference was the small fact that on occasion the Kageyama turned invisible.

This would have made them excellent ninja.

If the Academy registrars noticed their trying to sign up.

Not that many ever did, of course. Invisibility was developed for self-preservation, a carefully cultivated skill that many ninja did not have. This skill, one that was as much genetic as the clans transparent state of being, was one of the reasons that their numbers were of such average size. Not enough of them died to make them small but not enough of them were seen by people to keep their numbers in the range of large.

So you see, whenever there was a Kageyama who was a ninja they were unlikely to die simply because few people remembered that they were there in a fight. This, unfortunately, also meant that the number that was mostly the fault of people not realizing that they weren't dead from their injuries and needed help, which they never got.

This was a known fact to the clans people, so the amount of Kageyama stayed at approximately 130 individuals, give or take five. They lived in families of two, three, and one, rarely more than four, in a little district on the edge of the village that was all their own. It was well kept though for some reason most people assumed it to be haunted, possibly because the inhabitants sometimes forgot to let other people see them, leading to floating grocery bags, bodiless hats and mouth-less voices.

It was for this reason that trading with families outside of their own was nearly none existent, the exception being the Hyuuga, who still forgot them often enough, and the Aburame, who understood their plight. So from a young age Kageyama children learned to be self-reliant when it came to anyone outside of their family. Sometimes this meant using petty theft to get what they needed, always leaving money behind for it.

No one really knew where the money came from because no one really knew who the Kageyama were. It was just one of those funny village oddities that everywhere seemed to have, like the never ending supply of ink that the people with their head in the Clouds had.

The family wasn't really okay with it, but as they learned at a young age complaining didn't help, largely because no one ever heard their complaints outside of the family.

This was the family that she was born into.

When she was born her father fell in love all over again.

Tiny, pink, screaming her lungs out, that's what his daughter was. She was also slipping right out of sight. With a quiet laugh, the only one his family could make, Akio accepted the little pink bundle from the nurse, one of his more vibrant and outspoken cousins, pulling her towards him.

"Remember, store bought clothes only for the first year," Miyuri reminded him, smiling down at the screaming little one. She had a pair of lungs on her!

"Yes," Akio agreed, walking to sit by his only partially lucid wife. "We remember."

Assured that they would be okay Miyuri exited the sterile room, the one that was actually taking up the back half of her house. It was that way with most Kageyama, they might as well have had their own village inside a village, tucked against the great mountain and the forest together.

"What will her name be?" Akio questioned, turning to allow his wife to see the little girl, or at least where her outline appeared in the cloth.

Ryuko opened her tired eyes, the bright blue rolling to find her daughter. A smile crossed her face. "What will we name her?" she repeated, "We had it down to your mother's name or my grandmothers, didn't we? I think that she would make a better Kageyama than Imaishi, don't you?"

Akio smiled at his tired bride. "Akira, then."

She nodded firmly. "Ah. Akira Kageyama. She'll do great things."

Akio didn't have it in his heart to tell her that Kageyama never did.

Akira was a bright girl in terms of her mind. She learned quickly, comprehended things such as eating, vocalizing complaints, and her family, though the first time her father had seemingly materialized out of thin air she had begun to scream her little lungs out. Akio hadn't really been able to tell her that her screaming sounded like it came from nowhere too. That would come with time.

She learned to talk and walk at ages a little earlier than average, roughly around eight months, which was normal for their family. Grace and coordination came as naturally as invisibility. Talking came long before that, before she had even crossed the threshold of half a year.

Ryuko couldn't have been more proud. As soon as she was able she started teaching their daughter hand games, patty-cake, ball rolling and grabbing, and so on and so forth. The woman had been a ninja for years before she had retired, and it was clear to any that she wanted her daughter to pick up where she was forced to leave off.

Akio let her. He knew the risks of being a ninja, his part of the family was largely responsible for funerary arrangements after all. In spite of this he saw no reason not to. She would be in danger but she would have an advantage. He worried, naturally. The fact still remained that a decent number of their clan had died because no one noticed them on the street and bowled them over with rushing ninja or stray cart.

There were a few oddities to her daughter, Ryuko knew, aside from the whole invisibility thing. She picked up on things faster than most children, she struggled to speak properly and sometimes threw her hands up in gibberish, she was jumpy and easily frightened, she learned things just watching people.

Most all of this Akio assured her was simply because she was their daughter, and with their combined genes it was easy to see where she got it all from, except maybe the fright.

Akira was soft spoken for all the words that passed her mouth, and very, very small, like the rest of the Kageyama. She smiled slowly, dimly, and never screamed for anything after learning to talk. She might squeak or yelp when frightened but that was all.

To Ryuko this was strange. The children she knew were fearless, shiny and loud as all hell.

When she told this to her husband she had laughed the quiet laugh she was in love with and smiled at her in a way that was both sad and patronizing. Only the Kageyama could convey their emotions so perfectly without saying a thing.

"It's how we are, Ryu," he told her.

She prompted him with a frown, knowing he would say no more if she didn't. "Explain."

He didn't sigh. "Kageyama are quiet, quick, we jump easily. It is as genetic as your hair," he inclined his head to the blue mass that her mother and sister had once shared. "We lived through the Warring States not because we were strong but because we went unnoticed. Down to the last child. Going unseen is as easy as breathing, remaining unnoticed as unchangeable as a heartbeat."

That was the most she'd gotten him to say since their wedding vows.

Assured that he daughter was perfectly healthy Ryuko nodded, looking back at the two year old little girl who was stacking blocks higher than her head.

"Alright. If you're sure."

"I am."

He took her hand, she squeezed his. The tower fell over.

"What are we doing out here?"

Akio looked down at Akira, and her cousin Hideaki, who was only a year older, was to her left, and her other cousin, Kouki, to her right. All around them were plants, mostly ramie and cotton, with an assortment that included Butternuts, Rubis, Honey Locust, Red Mulberry, Butterfly Milkweed and Elderberry, as well as an assortment of Chokecherry trees bordering the land. The three children looked up at Akio, who had brought them to the small water tower that drained out into the fields every two weeks. The rest of the water came either from the sky or the regular hoses.

"We're learning," Akio explained. "Our clothes are made from these plants. They can disappear with us. This is why."

The man pulled out a thin knife that he had brought with him from the house, watching his daughter eye it wearily. The boys were doing the same, showing themselves to be true Kageyama. Be careful of everything.

Akio held up his other hand, drawing a thin line across the back of his hand. "Never cut your palm." There were too many nerves and tendons that went through there for it to be a good idea. The man let the blood well up on his skin before plunging his hand in the open top of the tower, swirling it around. The water around his limb turned pink, twisting his blood around. Akira's face scrunched up and she leaned back.

"Is that sanitary?" she questioned incredulously.

Akio gave a quiet laugh, pulling his hand back and wrapping it in the red towel he had also brought along.

"Kageyama don't get sick," he told them, stowing the knife. "Clan lesson dismissed," he announced. The children lingered before leaving him, one by one, disappearing into the dye and fabrics.

The realization of who and where she was did not strike Akira all at once, it was not a freight train or a bulldozer of even a pile of bricks. It came slow, in clues and occurrences that could only lead up to one conclusion.

That conclusion scared her to the very core. Once was enough of a reminder of her delicate mortality, thank you. She would be quite happy to live her life out as anyone else did.

Sadly, she sometimes forgot to let people see her. So the life of the norm was not for her.

A shame, really, but one she could deal with.

Her biggest problem was trying to get the woman in the store to see her and accept the money she held. She didn't, didn't even see the child holding a candy bar in one hand and a fist of carefully counted cash in the other.

"Miss." She hated sometimes the inability she had to raise her voice now, "Miss. I'm finished shopping."

Akira pursed her lip. "Lady, I've been standing here for five flipping minutes holding out currency, are you going to take it or not? I really have better places to be than standing in your store waiting around for a candy bar. I'm supposed to be home in a few minutes and I don't want to be late because my mom gets pissy when she can't find me, which is most of the time so she's always mad, now take the money already and let me go."

The received no response, the clerk instead focused on someone standing in the aisle behind her. Akita sighed quietly, laid the money on the counter and slipped the candy bar into her pocket. She turned to the door, feeling the cells in her four year old skin shimmer in the light to drag her into nothing that was what she knew.

She had to get home quickly, her mom was making dinner tonight so she needed to stock up on snacks before then.

She was five, standing in the registration office of the Hokage tower. Her mother stood beside her, hand on her shoulder as they waited in line. There were lots of kids around her, most of them accompanied by parents but a good number either on their own or in the group that had formed around a woman with greying red hair. There was something dull about the way some of them looked around the room, eying the adults. Thoroughly creeped out Akita pressed against her mother's side, fading from what little sight had been on her.

She had grown so used to having no attention paid to her it was unnerving, even frightening to have any eyes on her at all.

Ryuka Kageyama patted her head without needing to look, stepping forwards in line. Her cane thumped softly on the wooden floor.

"I'm here to register my daughter," she announced to the young man behind the desk. Akira squinted up at him, trying to place where she knew him from. Background, she assumed. There were a lot of Background people. No doubt she would also be one.

Name, age, height, weight, and blood type were all taken down. The man was handing over the registration papers when the door behind them burst open. On instinct Akira shoved herself into her mother's leg, completely transparent now.

"The future Hokage has arrived!"

Mentally the child cursed, outwardly she whined.

This wasn't going to be fun.

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