AN: Hi! This is my first fanfic and I'd really appreciate some feedback! I am always going back and editing, changing bits here and there, constantly trying to improve.
I have been mostly typing this up on my phone, and autocorrect is apparently not a Naruto fan, so there may be a few spelling and/or grammar errors I haven't caught. I do regularly go back and fix these when I see them but some slip through the cracks.
Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy reading as much as I'm enjoying writing!
She comes of age on a battlefield; surrounded by death, covered in the blood of her enemies as well as that of her comrades.
She ducks under a blow meant to sever her head from her shoulders, smoothly transitioning into a slash up with her wakizashi, slicing her opponent's torso from hip to shoulder. The man drops, and she moves onto the next. She dances through the battlefield, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. She cannot think on what it is exactly that she is doing, how many live she has taken. She must focus on living from one moment to the next, surviving, taking down the adversary in front of her, moving on to the next.
Her eyes bleed red for the first time.
She is nine years old, and she cannot count the lives she has taken with her own two hands.
"The war is over!" The Hokage, standing on the roof of the Tower, addresses the citizens of Konoha, ninja and civilian alike. "This is a joyous day. Our troops will all be returning home from the front."
Her mother will not come home, nor her genin teammates and sensei. They did not survive to see her sharingan awakened, to see her promoted to chunin in the field, to see the end of the war.
She is twelve, and she is alone.
"The clan began taking care of you when your father was killed in action, and provided for your mother before you were born. Since your mother's death, the clan has equipped you with a reasonable stipend for your rent and living expenses, until you could provide for yourself, never asking anything in return. Now that you have been promoted to jonin, the clan has need of you."
"A simple thing," the clan head tells her.
He asks that now that she has been promoted to jonin, she join ANBU. ANBU was what she was planning on anyway, but it would have been her own decision, not the clan's. Something to call her own. Now she doesn't even have that.
She knows what they are really asking of her. She knows they are asking her to keep them informed on ANBU matters. Report her missions to the clan. Answer to the clan before her ANBU superiors, before the Hokage.
She is fifteen, and she must choose between loyalty to her village, and loyalty to her clan.
It is not a choice she makes lightly.