Prologue

"Hotaru! Wanna go practice with our shuriken jutsu?" called a young Sasuke one afternoon to his friend. Hotaru smiled and nodded, and then rushed into her room to grab her bag. It held all her supplies: shuriken, kunai, the kind of things a young shinobi-in-training would require. Then she headed out to the training field with Sasuke.

Sasuke and Hotaru were both from the Uchiha clan- a very well known clan across the Hidden Leaf Village. They were best friends eve since Hotaru was born, shortly after Sasuke. Both of them admired Sasuke's older brother, Itachi, and were always happy on the rare occasion he would help them practice their jutsu.

"Is Itachi busy?" Hotaru asked Sasuke as they walked to the field. "Maybe we should've invited him."

"Nah…" Sasuke replied glumly, "he never wants to come. He's gotten so boring to be around lately…"

Hotaru sighed. She looked up to see the training field. To their surprise, Itachi was there, throwing shuriken at a small pillar with a target. There were already several kunai in the bull's-eye.

"Look! It's Itachi!" Hotaru exclaimed happily, pointing.

"Huh?" Sasuke responded, looking up through his big, keen eyes to see that his brother was indeed there. "Why's he here?"

The two children ran over to Itachi with smiles, calling out his name and waving. Itachi looked away from his training to see the two that admired him heading his way.

"What are you two doing here?" he asked them.

"Well, we were coming to practice OUR shuriken jutsu." said Hotaru.

"Looks like you got here first, Big Brother." Sasuke added.

Itachi's gaze fell on his little brother. Sasuke noticed once their eyes met.

"What's wrong, Big Brother? Don't you wanna help us with our shuriken jutsu?" he asked with a bit of a whine to his tone.

After a moment, Itachi leaned over and poked at Sasuke's forehead once. Sasuke winced and swatted his hand off.

"Stop doing that." he mumbled.

"Not right now, Sasuke, Hotaru. I'm busy." Itachi said lowly. And with that, he vanished, leaving his weapons embedded in the target.

Hotaru grumbled and stomped her foot once. "What's his problem, huh?!" she growled.

Sasuke sighed. "Aww, I dunno. Let's just practice." he said sadly, pulling a kunai knife out of the holster on his leg. Hotaru walked over to the pillar and pulled all the kunai and shuriken out, tossing them on the ground.

"Your brother has really good aim." she commented. "And he's only 17! I didn't think people got that good until they were a lot older or something."

Sasuke tossed a shuriken, which landed a few inches from the bull's-eye. "Itachi's been training real hard lately." he stated proudly.

"Yeah. But why would he be working so hard all of a sudden?" Hotaru asked, walking over to Sasuke.

"He keeps a lot of things secret. And not just from us two- EVERYONE. Maybe I'll ask him about it later." said Sasuke.

"I'm gonna try to just forget about it." Hotaru sighed, throwing a kunai at the pillar. Sasuke and Hotaru gasped. The kunai had hit the center of the bull's-eye.

"Whoa, a bull's-eye! Way to go, Hotaru!" Sasuke cheered as his friend jumped up and down with joy.

"A perfect shot! A perfect shot!!" she cried happily. But suddenly, they noticed the sky growing dark. A clap of thunder sounded. Hotaru felt a drop of rain fall on her tiny nose as she sneered up at the approaching storm.

"Aww, man! Not another storm!" she whined.

"Come on, we should go home…" Sasuke sighed.

So, Sasuke and Hotaru quickly gathered their things. Sasuke noticed the weapons of Itachi's that Hotaru had thrown aside. He smiled and stuffed them in his bag as well and they rushed off to his house.

"I should go home, too. We'll probably eat soon…see you." said Hotaru, sadly watching Sasuke kick off his shoes on the rug.

"Okay. If the storm passes, you wanna come back later?" he asked with a warm smile.

Hotaru giggled. "Sure!" she replied. Sasuke waved goodbye and shut the door, the last thing he saw being Hotaru smiling and waving her farewell in return.

That evening...

"Mother, Sasuke invited me back over after the storm. Can I go?" Hotaru pleaded her mother that same evening following supper.

"That's fine," she replied. "Just be back before it gets to be your bedtime."

Hotaru dashed out the door, excited to see her best friend again.

"I wonder if I could get another perfect shot on Sasuke's practice board again…" she wondered.

Suddenly, Hotaru spotted something as she plodded along down the empty road. There, scattered all over the ground in an alley, were most of the members of the Uchiha clan. But something was wrong. They weren't standing- not even sitting. They were lying. And they were all dead. Covered in many lethal cuts and surrounded by blood.

"Wh-wha…what happened?!" she gasped, trembling. Every single person from their clan was there, with the exception of her mother and father, Sasuke, Sasuke's parents, and Itachi. A million thoughts raced through Hotaru's mind right then. How? Who? Why?

"Wait…" she muttered. "Is Sasuke okay?!"

Hotaru ran as fast as her young legs would go to Sasuke's house. But then she stopped, eyeing a dark figure standing in the moonlight. She recognized the figure as Itachi.

"Itachi!" she cried, running to him and grabbing his legs, burying her face against them. "Itachi, it's horrible! E-everyone, everyone in the clan's d-dead! I-I saw them b-b-back there! In an alley! There's-there's only a few people l-left!"

Hotaru kept sobbing. But Itachi just stared down at her.

"You…fail to understand." he said, and suddenly his eyes changed into a blood-red color. It was the Sharingan, the special dojutsu of the Uchiha clan.

"Huh?"

"Sasuke has left you. Forever."

Hotaru gasped and stepped away from Itachi.

"N-no…he-he wouldn't!" she protested, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. "Itachi, y-you're lying!"

"He wishes never to see you again. He left this place, only to be far away from you." said Itachi with a low tone. He reached behind his back. "Foolish girl. Hehated you."

"B-but that doesn't make any sense! He's my-my best friend! Why would he wanna leave me, why is most of our clan dead, and-" Hotaru was cut off when Itachi suddenly grabbed her by the neck and slowly lifted her up off the ground.

"I…ta…chi!" she choked, squirming around in Itachi's tight grasp.

"This…was MY doing," he said, closing his eyes. A moment of silence. Then he began to open his eyes, whispering, "Mangekyou Sharingan…"

Itachi's eyes flew open, revealing a different kind of Sharingan that Hotaru had never seen before. Suddenly, a devastating sensation filled her mind. As soon as she looked into Itachi's cold gaze, everything became dark.

But then she could see it. Itachi, brutally slaughtering every single person that she had seen back in the alley. And she wanted it to stop. But one by one, they fell to their deaths.

Hotaru began to scream as she was forced to watch so many deaths all at once- from her very own clan.

"Please! Don't kill me, Itachi! NO!!" she begged persistently. Just then, her eyes opened. It had ended. But what she saw was Itachi holding a kunai knife right in front of her face. "I-Itachi…please, don't kill me!"

"You will survive. But…" Itachi started. His knife slowly edged closer to the little girl's face. "You will live on…with nothing. Only loss. Only pain."

Hotaru began to whimper her eyes squeezed shut in fear. Then, Itachi's knife was thrust forward into her left eye, forcing her to shriek. She was dropped to the ground, the wound causing such unbearable pain as Itachi left the scene. Her world became dark once again as her blood spilled all around her.

"S-Sasuke…"