The young kunoichi awoke from her slumber and gazed up at the ceiling above her contently. If she was correct, today was December 8th, which meant it was the day she turned 18. It wasn't a special birthday, but one she thought was worth celebrating at least. Last night after a long day of travel, she had rented herself a costly suite at the inn in the small town between villages and made up for several nights sleep.

She gracefully popped out of bed and headed for the shower, a spring in her step. She stopped before getting in and glanced at her reflection. Her long onyx hair hung straight around her face. Her soft hazel eyes relayed a warm look. She glanced at herself dully. Not that it was really important to her, but she found there was nothing particularly attractive about her. She found her face plain, boring, and as for her body, she never really found anything extremely 'sexy' about it. It was only then that she noticed the smudge of dirt across her cheek, and she chuckled to herself as she wiped it off.

After her warm, relaxing shower she headed down stairs with all her belongings ready to set out for the day. "Ahh, you must have slept well, its nearly noon!" She turned toward the inn keeper with a warm and friendly smile.

"You're correct about that." She replied sweetly.

"You really ought to take better care of yourself, you looked half dead last night! I'll tell you right now that youth doesn't last forever, ninja or not. What's your name anyways? If you don't mind me asking," the short elderly woman asked the young kunoichi kindly.

"Kyra Yuki, of the Yuki clan."

"I see, well take care of yourself." The young girl, Kyra, waved and smiled kindly towards the elderly woman as she left the inn. It wasn't that the young kunoichi was antisocial or didn't like the company of the old inn keeper, she was certainly warm and kind towards most but not necessarily that talkative. She always made it a habit to try to keep the people around her smiling.

Kyra pulled up her face mask gracefully before heading off towards the land of waves at a lightning speed. Speed was her talent. She had never met another shinobi who could match her speed.

She leapt from tree to tree in a light footed manner smiling the entire way. Today was the day she would return to the land of waves, fulfilling her contract and having a chance to stop at her favourite sweets shop, her treat for her birthday she decided.

She didn't necessarily like working as a mercenary, but she put her heart into it. She often refused contracts that required her to kill, as she was not fond of doing so, but from time to time she did take them. Although she didn't like to admit it, she was a shinobi, and killing was without a doubt necessary sometimes. The contract she had just fulfilled was an easy one. She was required to steal back a secret scroll from a rival clan and return it to it's original owners, a clan of extremely skilled medical ninjas.

Hiring a mercenary gave the clan the benefit of not being known as the ones to commit the crime. Kyra smiled at the thought that the easy infiltration mission had not required her to kill anyone, and she had slipped away with the scroll probably completely unnoticed.

She hadn't been travelling long before she sensed two incredible chakra sources up ahead. She came to a sudden stop and frowned. With the movement of a single hand, she skillfully formed a hand seal and summoned a water clone. The clone continued on ahead while Kyra sat upon the branch she had stalled in, head lazily resting against the tree. She awaited to see what her clone had found.

In another part of the ever green forest, two shinobi travelled quickly along the forest floor."I've never even heard of this girl, why is she of such an interest to the Akatsuki?" Kisame Hoshigaki questioned his partner casually.

"Her ice release ninjutsu is formidable, as well as her medical jutsus. She is extremely fast, and a master of the body flicker and silent killing techniques. She also has a rare summoning power." Itachi Uchiha replied to his partner nonchalantly. The Akatsuki didn't allow just anyone to join their organization, and they became well acquainted with their candidates' abilities before actually approaching them, sometimes spying on them in secret for months on end.

"Hmm? What summoning power would that be?" Kisame replied curiously.

"She has the power to summon wolves." Itachi replied. The two continued to travel through the forest at a fast speed towards the target. They both stop suddenly when she appeared before them.

Kisame chuckled. "Well that was certainly easy, we didn't even have to chase her down." He pulled his sword Samehada off his back and pointed it towards the kunoichi menacingly. "We've been looking for you, Kyra Yuki." The young kunoichi narrowed her eyes towards the blue shinobi. "We've come to relay a message." He waited for a reply, but her prying gaze towards him indicated that he wasn't going to get one. He grinned and continued anyways. "You've been invited to join the ranks of the Akatsuki. If you refuse, you will die." He snickered at the end of his invitation.

Kyra studied the two before her. One had pale blue skin and apparent gills on his face, while the other one, although young looked mature beyond his years. He had dark eyes and black hair like her own, and a devilishly handsome smirk upon his lips. They both wore long black flowing cloaks decorated with crimson clouds, and both of their head bands displayed a scratch through the centre of their village symbols, indicating they were rogues. They also wore nail polish, which she found odd and each wore a ring. She studied the ring more closely realizing she had stolen a similar one from her past tutor many months ago. Their appearance was menacing, and they definitely gave off a dangerous aura.

She looked back to the shinobi and chimed,"what is it that the Akatsuki can offer me?" There was no immediate response. "I'm a missing ninja constantly being hunted by the ANBU, I have more than enough money to support myself, and I believe I'm plenty powerful enough to take care of myself." Kyra replied sternly. She was testing their patience. However, the offer did interest her. In order to reach her goals, she needed to test herself. Fight and learn under someone with powers superior to her own, test her limits, and become the strongest shinobi she could be.

"The Akatsuki are going to change the world." And with that, the shark like shinobi launched towards Kyra at a blinding speed, sword ready to strike. Kyra smiled and leaped back gracefully, admiring her opponents speed. He may have been fast, but nowhere near as fast as Kyra. She twisted and twirled almost as if she were dancing through the air as she dodged the ninja's powerful blows. She smirked at her opponent who was now becoming slightly agitated.

Kisame stopped and formed several hand signs at an alarming rate. Kyra watched in fright as Kisame summoned an enormous wave that over shadowed her, and crashed upon her clone making her vanish. Kisame chuckled and then looked around in confusion staring at the water, searching for the young kunoichi. Surely she couldn't be defeated so easily.

In her original body, Kyra smirked. These shinobi appeared quite powerful, and the thought excited her. She had heard a lot of rumours about the group, and had gathered a lot of Intel about the organization while working for certain people. If she assumed correct, the Akatsuki were a formidable organization she had heard whisperings about across the various countries she had travelled between. If they were truly as powerful as they were said to be, there was definitely value in showing an interest in their group. She knew she was strong, but the fact remained that there was still always going to be somebody stronger than her somewhere.

However, they were still criminals, wanted by many countries and hidden villages. The Akatsuki's goals were unknown to her. She frowned at the thought, and considered running for a moment, but the thought that there was someone there that could help her become stronger stopped her from doing so. Even if nobody was willing to train with her, there was the indefinite fact that such powerful shinobi would be executing missions that would push her to her limits, inevitably helping her grow. That fact, was too irresistible to her. Kyra needed to become stronger. She smiled and got to her feet and bounded off in the direction of her water clone, truly determined to test the skills these shinobi had herself. She took a deep breathe and mentally prepared herself for the oncoming battle.

"A clone?" Kisame questioned his partner on the sidelines with a frown. Itachi Uchiha only nodded, glancing around the landscape with his sharingan activated. With a flicker, the kunoichi suddenly appeared across the now soggy clearing, standing expressionless in a tree branch.

She studied her opponents. Her face showed no expression, something she had trained herself to do at a very young age. She glanced towards the shark like ninja. "Your water jutsu and chakra levels are impressive," she complimented her opponent, cocking her head to the side innocently. "But I doubt that they're much of a challenge for my kekkei genkai." She leaped into action without hesitation. With one hand Kyra gracefully made a hand sign. "Secret technique: thousand flying water needles of death." As the words escaped her soft pale lips, thousands of icy spears appeared above Kisame in all directions, ready to strike. He smiled, and as the spikes made contact with his body it melted away into the water. Another water clone. As expected of such shinobi, Kyra thought.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she gasped quietly, jerking her head around to see Kisame about to swing his large bandaged sword through her gut. She flipped off the tree branch she had been sitting on and soared gracefully through the air, landing a few feet away on the ground silently.

"You were right about her being fast, Itachi." Kisame glanced back to his partner with a grin on his face. "Samehada is getting excited." There was no reply as Itachi continued to glance at the kunoichi casually. Kyra took in the information, and stood ready for his next attack. Kisame rushed forward again, Samehada in hand, and Kyra back flipped out of the way. The way she moved was completely silent, her feet touched the ground without a sound and even her small quiet breathes could not be heard as she moved around the field effortlessly.

The two fought each other for the next twenty minutes, Kisame unable to score a blow to the kunoichi, and Kyra scoring a few minor hits along the way. The frustration in Kisame's eyes was becoming apparent to her and she smirked. Evasion and speed had always been her best allies, and it wasn't often that she found herself injured too badly, or injured at all in fact.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that she glanced over at her other opponent, and mentally slapped herself. She had completely forgotten about him, and to make matters worse, she had been too preoccupied to identify the crimson eyes glaring at her.

She met his gaze for the first time and the intensity of his eyes caused her to falter in the deadly dance she had been participating in with Kisame. "The sharingan," she muttered out loud to herself.

The brief moment she had forgotten about her attacker was enough for him to take advantage of. Her head snapped back around just in time to see him swing his sword in her direction. At a last second attempt at dodging, she swiftly jumped into the air, but not before the sword could brush harshly against her thigh.

She gasped, as she landed on her feet, a few feet back and struggled to catch her breath. It had been as if all the energy she had just recovered from sleeping well over eight hours the previous night had been sapped from her body. She looked up at her opponent to see a smug look on his face. He had momentarily stopped his relentless chain of attacks.

"Feeling the effects of Samehada huh?" The blue shinobi questioned confidently. She really hated the cocky look in his small round eyes.

Kyra cursed under her breathe. She couldn't believe what had happened, the sword he was wielding had actually sucked the chakra right from her body. She leapt back into the cover of the brush silently and immediately replaced where she stood with another water clone, hoping she had done so quickly enough that the shark wouldn't notice the exchange.

To her luck, Kisame had fallen for it, and had began another rally of relentless attacks against her clone. The Uchiha however, had easily seen through her trick but decided not to interfere. He smirked to himself. She was extremely fast, like he had been informed. But to pull off a switch that quickly without Kisame noticing was quite a feat.

Turning her mind's attention to the now apparent Uchiha opponent, she decided to confront him cautiously with another water clone. She had fought the sharingan before, and realized that he would most likely easily see through her clone. Nonetheless, she was merely curious and only wanted to speak to him at the moment. She made the appropriate signs and stood with her back to the trunk of a large tree, waiting for her clones' encounters.

Itachi had been studying the fight between the two shinobi curiously. The young kunoichi was certainly a strong opponent, and seemed to base her entire strategy off evading the opponent and striking when the opportunity presented itself. Assuming she had the stamina to carry on fighting like that, it was quite a formidable technique. Itachi felt another chakra source approaching him and quickly used his sharingan to identify that it was a clone approaching. He stood readily, waiting for her to make the first move.

"You're Itachi Uchiha aren't you?" He frowned at the shinobi clone conversing with him. He was sure he had never met the girl before, and he certainly wasn't expecting her to recognize him. He looked into her eyes and saw many things. Intelligence, cunning, and a certain element of kindness. He found her quite intriguing. "I can tell by your sharingan. I've heard," she chose her next words carefully. "A great deal about you." Her voice was soft and quiet, almost delicate. It wasn't really a voice he would expect to hear from a strong shinobi.

"Is that so?" He replied in a husky tone, urging her to continue. She seemed slightly intimidated by his presence.

"Yes, from your younger brother." She paused and studied his face for any type of reaction, but his eyes only bore into her more, his face not revealing any emotion. "I knew him well. I'll make you a deal. If you can lay a hand on me, I'll join your Akatsuki organization." Kyra was confident in her decision.

She smirked to herself. She had seen the power of these shinobi, and had convinced herself that by travelling along side such an elite group she would be able to train herself and become much stronger, which was absolutely necessary to accomplish her goals. Still, she was wary of their intentions and decided to proceed with caution. She was sure she could escape the organization if she needed to, and would give it a chance. She touched the tiny stolen scroll in her pocket. It was unfortunate that she would not get an opportunity to return to the water country and collect her reward, and she was slightly frustrated at the fact that she would not be getting her sweets she had so been looking forward to. Sweets were definitely her weak spot.

Her clone glanced up towards the Uchiha standing in front of her, awaiting a response. Instead, the man who had once been there simply smirked before disappearing in a flurry of crows. She frowned.

"Wise decision." A voice came from behind the real Kyra. She gasped as she tried to stand, only to be constricted by the real Uchiha's arm with a kunai held to her throat. She turned her head around quickly to stare into the devillish crimson eyes of the sharingan that belonged to her captor.

Author's note:

I do not own Naruto, or any related media. Please support the official release. This is the only time I will say this during the story.

Anyways, thank you all for reading! I really appreciate it. I'd just like to mention that I've decided to write without using honorifics, as I don't really feel they're necessary in an English story. Feedback would be appreciated, and I certainly hope you look forward to reading this story as much as I do writing it. I've been working on this story for a while and have really enjoyed planning out the plot. Expect multiple plot twists, a little bit of fun, and an amazing three part story from me.

I love reviews. Feed me reviews.

Jacqueline.