Chapter One: Accidental Attack
An unintended attack which occurs without deliberate national design as a direct result of a random event, such as a mechanical failure, a simple human error, or an unauthorized action by a subordinate.
Tokugawa Saiko had always been a strange child. Even according to her own mother who had the gall to admit aloud that the little girl occasionally freaked the woman out with her blank stares and dead expressions. Every time this quirk of hers was mentioned with nervous questioning laughs of "S-Saiko-chan what are you staring at?" Saiko would immediately attempt to alleviate her intimidating gaze with a small twitchy smile. Alas the happy expression would die as quickly as it was created. Saiko countlessly failed to maintain decorum as her thoughts constantly occupied her head instead of a smile. Along the way, Tokugawa Emiko formally gave up on having a normal child and continued to let the little girl do as she pleased.
Saiko thought about many things but most of her time was spent wondering if everyone else had a voice in their head that guided them right from wrong, Saiko did. The little 4-year-old girl pondered at why this said voice was content with telling her strange stories about anything and everything. "Life ain't always easy kid, you gotta get over it eventually though." The voice would say with its weird accent when something has gone awry for Saiko. Saiko, in all her best efforts, tried to ignore the voice but it was always just there.
The voice had introduced itself to her once, a few months after her 4th birthday. "Heya kiddo, I need to talk to you." It had remarked one day with all seriousness. Saiko waited till dusk to retreat back to her room for the night. "I think I better tell you a little something about myself kiddo." The voice said. Saiko, instead of replying, stilled and listened more attentively to the voice she usually tucked away at the back of her head. "Well, where do I start…" The voice sighed, "Let's see, from what I know I'm not exactly supposed to be here, I'm not you per say, and heaven forbid you're definitely not me, but we do share the same head and I like to keep this said head out of trouble." Was all the voice explained before going quiet again.
Saiko finally mustered the courage to confront the voice once and for all, "Will you tell me your name? I can't keep referring to you as the voice." The added last bit sent the voice into a fit or chortling laughter.
"Keep that frank attitude kid, it'll get you places in life." Saiko hummed out a small 'okay', "Anyways, I never really did tell you my name did I?" It questioned, Saiko shook her head as if the voice could even see her in the first place. "Just call me Nana, that's close enough to my actual name."
"It's nice to formally meet you Nana- aneue."
"That'll work I guess."
Soon enough Saiko had grown accustomed to her little guest who continued to occupy her head with life lessons and what not. It was a symbiotic relationship, according to her sister one sunny evening, this meant that both host and guest benefit from each other without harm to either party. Saiko made a distasteful expression at this new found information, it made her feel like she and her sister were a dog and its fleas or something. Said spiritual entity had a good laugh about this.
"Hey kiddo," the woman piped once, "what do your mom and dad do for a living?" Saiko wondered the same thing for a few seconds before finally recalling the information she was told not too long ago.
"Mother is a Kunoichi for the village, I think she's at Jonin rank, and I never knew who my father was. Mother always said he was a formidable Shinobi." Nana 'hmmed' before going quiet again.
"Do you want to be a Shinobi Saiko?" Saiko nearly flinched, this was the first time she had ever heard Nana call her by something other than kid or kiddo, it was new but Saiko decided that she didn't mind the change.
"I'm expected to start Shinobi Academy this upcoming spring." The little 4 soon to be 5-year-old girl replied as she mindlessly dug though her assorted box of colors to find a green for the grass in her picture.
Nana let out a sigh, "You didn't answer my question Saiko. I asked whether or not you want to be a Shinobi."
Saiko finished coloring the last blade of grass, "I think it would be cool."
"Atta girl."
Saiko could literally hear a grin from Nana's tone of voice. "When you start academy, I'm going to teach you a few of my tricks of trade that'll for sure knock the shoes of your teach's feet." The little child felt her heart thump lightly, this was the first time someone had offered to do something for her sake. "I love you as if you were my own kin Saiko, I really do, but keep in mind that I'm also a very tough teacher so don't start complaining when I make you lift bricks for breakfast and lunch."
"I don't mind Nana-aneue, besides, I heard that clan kids get special clan training before even starting academy, so for someone like me who is not part of a clan, to be able to be on par with them will be a nice goal to reach." Nana snorted at Saiko's curt response and flimsy goals for the future.
"With my training you won't be on par with those brats kiddo," Saiko felt her heart skip another beat of disappointment, "when I'm though with you kid, you'll be even better than them."
Saiko owlishly blinked at this.
As promised, Nana had kept her end of the deal and began teaching Saiko basic exercises as soon as the girl started the academy. These exercises, the woman had told her on day one, would fill in any holes left from academy training and would probably make her one of the most, if not the most, flexible Shinobi in her class. Saiko didn't question nor complain about the slow pace of her daily routines, her sister always did seem to know what was good for her.
"Tell me a little about your classmates kiddo." Nana would say every once in a while when Saiko had finished her exercises for the day.
Saiko always frowned at this, "Nana-aneue, you're with me every single hour of the day, you should know how my classmates are."
The older woman let out a little whine, "I just wanna know what you think of 'em." Saiko sighed and silently questioned the true age difference between the two beings.
"There are some of them who get on my nerves, like the blond one and his lackeys, they're unnecessarily loud and most of them are just boastful clan kids."
"Good." Saiko blanched at what came next, "I want you to become friends with them Saiko-hime." Saiko blinked before making a noise of protest only to be interrupted by her sister figure's reprimanding tsks. "Kiddo, the number one rule to being successful in life is to have good relationships with others." Saiko frowned at the thought of talking to someone other than the teachers at the academy, her mother, and her sister, the thought itself was unbelievable. "The best way to start off is by making friends at school," Nana continued talking and Saiko remembered finding herself dreading some of these life lessons, "you may never know if any of these brats will end up doing great things in the future and you can definitely benefit from that!"
The next few days at the academy Saiko had tried her best to take her sister's advice to heart, emphasis on the word tried. It was impossible the girl mentally declared. She had quietly observed them for a while, but just watching these kids and their antics gave her massive headaches and that was when Saiko decided to give up after 3 days.
There was a pair of Hyūga twins who at first seemed like promising friends until they opened their mouths and started acting like they were some kind of hotshots, the Nara heir didn't look like he wanted to make any new friends, and the Akimichi boy he always hung out with was more interested in his food than anything. Saiko almost settled on talking to the the two blonds but quickly crossed that idea off her list when the blond with spiky short hair smiled at her and the blond with longer hair looked at her for more than 10 seconds. "I can't do this Nana-aneue." Sighed an exasperated Saiko.
"You're not going to make friends just staring at them like that Saiko-hime." Saiko figured out shortly thereafter that her sister only called her that when she wanted to annoy or make fun of the little girl. Saiko huffed in response. "If you can't make friends, how 'bout you just beat them into respecting you, you kids are starting those sparring sessions tomorrow right?" Saiko frowned, that was actually a pretty good idea, "I'm sure their respect will turn into friendship as you get older."
"Only if you say so Nana-aneue."
"Of course Saiko-hime, when have I ever been wrong?"
Her sister, as it turns out, was wrong, "I'm sorry Saiko, I didn't think that throwing one of the Hyūga twins over your shoulder and knocking the wind outta him would result in this weird rivalry between the two of you." Saiko frowned because the older woman honestly did not sound sorry at all. Now she had even more problems on her plate than necessary and Hyūga Hiashi would forever be sending glares in her direction every time he saw her while his friends snickered in the background.
"It was bound to happen Nana-aneue, one can never make too many rivals." Saiko replied in a resigned voice.
"Wow, Hiashi-sama, how do you feel now that you've been beaten by a girl in front of everyone?" One of their shared classmates haughtily asked the glaring Hyūga heir once all sparring was finished and the entire class was herded back in the academy building.
Saiko felt her fists clench on the edge of her desk and promptly ignored the warnings that came from the voice in her head, "What does my gender have to do with me beating Hyūga Hiashi-san?" In one of the rare moments when Saiko decided to let her emotions steer her actions, even her older sister admitted that the little girl had intimidated her, which Saiko only replied with a few apologies and promises of doing better to calm down in the future.
The other students, who went unnoticed by Saiko in her moment of blind rage simultaneously flinched at her tone of voice, and the fact that the table she was currently gripping had slightly cracked down the middle. "N-Nothing, Tokugawa-san!" The boy squeaked under her blank stare and dead grey eyes.
Saiko released her grip on the table and gave the boy her signature twitchy smile, "Good because if you meant to say something rude about us girls, I don't know what could possibly happen when my hands decide to grab your neck and squeeze until you stop struggling." A majority of the class gulped while the rest of them looked at Saiko with some kind of twisted sense of awe and new-found admiration.
"Saiko-hime, you're scaring the other little 5-year-olds," Saiko blinked, "and you broke the table."
The little girl looked down at her handy work and slowly began rubbing the back of her neck out of habit, "Oh."
"Oh is right Tokugawa-chan." In her head, Saiko could hear her sister let out a stifled laugh at her sensei's inconvenient timing.
"This one's on you Saiko-hime; I tried to stop you but you didn't listen to me."
Their sensei, according to her sister on Saiko's first day of school, seemed like the dark, brooding type that nobody liked but later they would find out that this was mostly because he was probably just done with all of his students. Saiko quietly admitted that she would be too if she had to teach this class.
"Sensei, Saiko-san didn't mean to break the table, Shinji-san said some unnecessary things to provoke her and Hiashi-kun." Saiko turned her head towards the familiar voice and lo and behold it was the spikey haired blond who, for some reason, smiled at anything and everything.
"Minato-kun, you don't have to defend them, I saw everything and I believe Shinji is due for some laps around the academy." Shinji paled and everyone snickered.
Saiko rolled her eyes at their level of maturity even for 5-year-olds, "I don't mind joining him Sensei, it's not fair to punish just Shinji-san when I was the one who broke the table."
"I'll join too, think of this as an apology for being slightly immature about losing in our spar." Hiashi glanced at Saiko, the clan-less Kunoichi who had managed to throw him to the ground, he had some questions to ask the girl so why not take advantage of the situation at hand.
Saiko turned to their Sensei, shrugged and began walking towards the door.
A/N: Look at me not finishing/writing my other stories and diving head first into another one lol... Because my fondness for Naruto was rekindled, this story and a whole ton of ideas for others just kinda happened. I've also been reading a bunch of other awesome Naruto fics and recommend you look in my favorite stories list to read them, not that you haven't already I'm sure.
On the other hand, If you have any questions or concerns about my characters or my perception of canon characters and events, like is Saiko a Mary-Sue which I would pray to God she isn't lol or if Saiko is going to interfere with any canon relationships which is a no, feel free to ask and I'll answer it somewhere in the next chapter.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed this! Till next time, when I decide to update.