All Tsubaki has ever wanted was to become a ninja. But whenever she asks her overprotective civilian parents, she's met with a resounding NO. Will she be able to become a true shinobi, capable of killing? One with friends and a team she can trust? Or will her familial ties be the one thing that manages to hold her back?

—

"But why not!?" I cry out, stamping my foot. My sixth birthday was only two days away, and yet my parents still wouldn't let me go to the shinobi academy. I'd been asking since I was first able to speak, and I'd always gotten a NO in return.

"We don't want our daughter to be turned into some mindless, killing machine!" My father yelled. My bottom lip wobbled, and I could feel the tears threatening to pour down my face. I hated it when he yelled, especially when that yell was at me. It always scared me so much. I forced myself to try to act as not-scared as possible. I knew a true shinobi wouldn't feel threatened in the slightest by a civilian, so I couldn't either.

"What if you were killed?" Mom asked me in that voice that always made me feel as if my insides were ripping out. Every time she talked to me like that, all I could think was; Not good enough. Not good enough. Not. Good. Enough.

"Look honey," she continued, and I almost started crying right there. I knew I wouldn't be able to win this fight, just like I wasn't able to win the others.

"We're not doing this because we like to disappoint you, or make you upset. We're doing this because we know this is what's best for you."

There it was. The, "I always know what's best for you, haven't you figured that out yet?" that I always managed to associate with my mother. Everything she said, every little passing thought, was filled with the I know. And it killed me a little more inside each time I heard it. Made me want to choke, and scream, and cry all at once.

"Okay, I'll let it drop," I said, my voice dead and monotone. My parents both started to say something, to try to make me see why they knew this was bad for me, but I had already made my way upstairs to hide in my room.

I closed the door slowly behind me, before locking it. Once I reached my bed, all my control left me, and I crashed onto the comfy surface, feeling the heaving sobs starting to course through my entire body. I was quiet though, so I wouldn't be heard. I couldn't let my parents, the enemy, know I was weak right then, else they would pounce and take advantage of me. I didn't think I would be able to get out of another "comforting" we know talk with my sanity still fully intact.

I stayed up there for at least two hours, wallowing in my misery, feeling all of my dreams for the future slowly melt away, into a depressing little puddle at the recess of my mind. I could smell my mother making supper downstairs, but I couldn't stand the thought of going down there and having to deal with them again. I hadn't even opened the door for my cat, and she was one of the main ways I was able to stay mentally sound in this house.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my parents, or at least I was pretty sure I did. It was just that everything they did, especially my mom, make me feel as though my throat was being eaten from the inside out, and that I was trapped in a room that was slowly losing oxygen, suffocating and dying.

I heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. Mom was probably just walking, but the echo from the empty space made it sound as though she were stomping, and I curled into a ball, thinking back to her earlier anger.

"Dinner's ready, Tsubaki," she said, after knocking on the door. Her voice made my toes curl, and I stayed where I was, minutes after she had gone back down the stairs.

I didn't want to be here any longer. I had considered running away a lot of times, but something always stopped me. It wasn't that I didn't think I wouldn't be able to make it on my own, I knew Konoha took good care of it's orphans. It was because I knew my parents wouldn't be able to make it on their own.

My mother would be heartbroken. I didn't have to try to make myself believe she loved me, because I knew she did. She just was really bad at the whole parenting thing. She would cry for days, weeks even, feeling like she had failed me as a mother. I tried my hardest to not think that she already had.

My father would be upset too, though he would be much better at concealing it. Once the ninja had gotten me back, (it would probably only take them a couple days, and that was because of the paperwork, not the actual work) he would ask me why I had run away. He would ask me over and over, trying to figure out what they had done wrong, and I wouldn't be able to tell them, because it would just upset them more. Then life here would be even worse than it had been when I left.

I decided to think of a less dangerous topic. The academy wasn't in session just yet. I knew this because it started the same day the civilian school did. Even if it didn't, I still would have known what day it started, since I was pretty thorough with anything I was this interested in. It had a couple days before it started, and this gave me time to try and figure out a way to get my parents to let me train to join the shinobi ranks.

I knew I couldn't outright ask them. I had seen just where that would get me today and many other days before as well. No, it had to be someone else asking them to let me, and someone with enough influence that even they would consider letting me join.

Maybe I could get one of their friends to think it was just a phase. Have the friend tell them that if I was signed up for the academy, I would be over it in three weeks, and they would have their obedient little girl back.

Maybe I could get Midori to try and help me. My big sister always was pretty good at getting them to go along with what she wanted. Too bad I hadn't been able to pick up on how she did it. I knew that Midori wouldn't be able to help me though, even if she were willing. My parents were set in their ways, no matter how stupid and annoying it was, and it was going to take something big to get them to change their minds about this.

Not to mention the fact that joining the ninja academy requires a ninja's sponsorship. If I couldn't get someone of at least chunin tank to say that they would recommend me for the academy, then I wouldn't be able to join, even if I did cross over to the twilight zone, and my parents said I could.

That would be first on my list. I was in desperate need of someone to sponsor me for the academy. Someone that agreed to help me buy me training kunai and shuriken, and my other ninja gear. I knew for sure my parents weren't going to by all that stuff for me. By the time they got the supply list, they'd already be trying to get me out of there.

I wasn't quite sure who to ask. I knew a lot of shinobi would laugh at the thought of some almost six-year-old coming up to them and asking them to be their sponsor. They would know immediately I wasn't from a clan. If the fact that I was even asking them for a sponsorship in the first place wasn't enough, then total lack of any sort of ninja abilities would definitely be a good indicator that I wasn't anyone worth their time.

It wasn't like I hadn't tried to get good at some of the basic academy requirements, but with civilian parents who most certainly did not want their daughter near any of that "crap", it was kinda hard to do anything. Sure, I'd meditated a good bit, since I heard that was how you accessed chakra, but I'd only gotten a small brush of something out of my reach after hours of effort.

I'd run a lot of laps, and even managed to do about ten push-ups, but I knew that had to be small compared to what the academy would want you to do. I didn't know any of the kata, so I was going to be worse than bad at taijutsu. And all the other jutsu too, now that I mention it.

I'd gone to the library a lot, looking for books on chakra control and all that jazz, but hadn't been able to find much. All the actually helpful techniques were stuck in the clans' libraries, collecting dust, because those kids already had parents that were actually willing to help them accomplish their life's dreams.

I shoved my face in my pillow, thinking of just how hopeless my situation was right then, but then I thought of something.

This was my first mission. This was a test. A way to see whether I was actually good enough to be a true shinobi, or if I was just another silly wannabe. It was a C, no B, rank mission, and my parents had already paid the money for its completion, so failure wasn't an option.

I knew that I wanted, no needed, this to work. I needed the freedom the academy would give me. I needed to hear and feel the satisfying chunk of metal finally hitting the target that all the academy kids I'd spoken to had told me about. I needed to be able to watch as the chakra I manipulated took shape, and became the jutsu I had worked so hard to learn. I needed to be at the academy. I needed this mission to be a success.

I couldn't fail.