One of the more tragic pieces I have written. Not every love story has a happy ending but I hope you enjoy it. I lived a whole new experience writing this because the style was so new to me.
-0-
The place where I was born lied just within the border of the Earth country. I lived on a small farm. We weren't isolated, only a few miles away from a small village called Kokkyō ni. Many of my cousins lived there while the others lived on separate farms like I did. Kokkyō ni was known as a farming village and we supplied a lot of food for Iwagakure since it was so close. Kokkyō ni meant 'on the border'. Guess why.
My close family consisted of my father, my mother and my three younger brothers. I was the eldest, the first child. That's why I had to take care of all of them.
I was twelve when the famine struck. Our farms stopped producing and the little we could salvage was poor in nutrition. We barely had enough to feed ourselves, let alone sell to afford other things we'd need to survive.
I was helping out in the fields with my father, trying to find corn in the corn fields. My brother, eleven at the time, was further away in the orchards. Two of my other siblings, eight year old twins, were out in the other fields. My hands, rough from work, skimmed over any slightly-healthy looking stalks I could find, searching for the food. Once in a while, I would find a small cob and put it away in my basket.
When we came home that evening, we spread our pitiful findings on the table. My mother didn't say a word but, even at my young age, I could see the worry in her eyes. As she prepared our dinner, I wrapped bandages around the twins' hands. Their large gray eyes were filled with tears as I wrapped the linen around their painful blisters. I didn't put any on my own hands, even though they hurt because my father hadn't put any on his. I desperately wanted to be like the large blond man that fathered me. For now, I was the center of his attention, but only because I was older. When my brother, Elliot, grew up more, my father would bring him out and leave me inside to help my mother.
I loved my mother and everything about her. I loved her sweetness and her curly brown hair but I strived for my father's attention. I didn't want to be a wife. I wanted to be a farmhand.
As we ate, my father told the humorous story of the younger of the twins, Chikyu, running into the side of the barn and Tochi being attacked by the chickens. The stories lightened the mood and made the twins turn a deep red. For the moment, it seemed like everything was alright.
That night, I was kept awake by the baby. He was crying because my mother didn't have enough milk to feed him.
-o-
The next day, I went to Kokkyō ni with my father and boxes of old stuff we were going to try to sell for money. My arms were already burning from the pain of carrying the heavy box down the four mile road. My father sent me towards the blacksmith as soon as we got there. My box was the heaviest as it was filled with scraps of metal but I didn't envy my father, who was carrying three boxes by himself.
I carried the box the remaining distance with great difficulty and only put it down once I was inside the blacksmith's. I sat down on the box and tried to catch my breath. The smith didn't mind me and continued his discussion with the man that was already present. The smith had a great fondness for my family. According to my father, he was some distant uncle.
He finally turned to me once I was breathing normally and the other man was inspecting various weapons with interest. My eyes trailed to the weapons. I recognized kunai, sebon and shuriken, from when I had last been here and question my father about them. Baru, the smith, asked me what I was doing here. I opened my box and said, "Otou-san sent me here to sell you this." He nodded and inspected the metals. Little piles of were made. Suddenly, he pulled out a long piece of metal and called to the other man. "Sondo-san, was this not the metal you wished your katana to be made of?" The man turned towards us and approached to inspect the metal further. I looked at it closely and tried to see the difference between this piece and the other piece, but to no avail. They all just looked like gray metal pieces to me.
"Great," said the man named Sondo, "Now I won't have to wait as long." He smiled and winked at me. I blinked owlishly at him, staring at the forehead protector tied around his head. He looked behind me and saw the large box filled with metal. He raised an eyebrow and looked back towards me with a different look in his eyes. I suddenly remembered what my father had told me about the people with those symbols around their heads. He said they were dangerous and I should avoid talking to them if I could.
Remembering this now, I avoided looking Sondo straight in the eyes, looking at his nose, rather. Still, I saw the stare he pointed at me, the horrible analyzing stare I hated. A small, faint smile flitted across his face as he bent down closer to me. My shoulders tensed. I despised it when people made me feel small, despite the fact that I was very tall for my age. I was nearly as tall as him, in fact, not that he was very tall, but he seemed to bend down and think I was smaller simply because I was a child. He probably did it unconsciously, but it annoyed me nonetheless. I was also considerably more muscled than most girls my age, because of my long days working in the fields.
The smile on his face became more pronounced, "So you carried that box here yourself kid?" he asked. I pretended not to have heard him and watched Baru. The smith, however, pitched in for me, "Yeah, she's a strong girl alright. Lives a few miles out of town too. I'm not entirely surprised that Rinri made her walk the whole way carrying this." Rinri was my father. He had the reputation around here of being a tough farmer and father. True, he was tough, but I was so used to it I barely even realized it most of the time. Sondo laughed and ruffled my pale blond hair. "We could use a few more genin with this kind of strength." He said as a new glint appeared in his eyes.
He looked back at me in a whole new light as I flattened my hair, scowling. "What's your name kid?" he asked when he caught my eye, so I couldn't ignore him this time. "Kara Halliella." I said shortly, still flattening my thin hair and becoming annoyed with him calling me kid. Baru looked up with a guarded expression that I didn't completely understand at first. At the moment, I only knew that Sondo was no longer welcome to questioning. Next Sondo asked me, "How old are you Halliella-chan?"
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from hissing at him for calling me by my first name with the chan suffix. Instead, I simply replied, "Twelve," with the coolest gaze I could manage. He was starting to really annoy me with all the questions. I just wanted to sell the metals and get home. Baru stood up completely, "Sondo-san, leave the child alone. Iwa has enough genin as it is. We need our children." He said with conviction and authority laced in his voice. Sondo barely acknowledged him, "Not nearly enough. Besides, she's hardly a child." He said.
The smith once again shook his head, "We are already having a famine. We feed you ninja. What Iwa needs is more food, not another killer. How can you expect us to provide when you take away our children?"
Alarm shot through me as I finally realized what they were discussing. This man, Sondo, wanted to take me away from my home and teach me how to be a shinobi. I pushed myself off the wall I had been leaning against and yelled, "Stop arguing as though you can control what I will do. NO! I will not go with you!" His eyes narrowed dangerously, "I'm offering you a way to feed your family and make a steady income. This is something many would kill for. Do not turn it down so lightly." He turned and stalked out.
The two of us stood in silence for a few moments before my father walked in, wondering what was taking so long and why a fuming man had stomped out of here.
I can still remember his growl of rage as Baru told him what had happened.
-0-
My stomach felt like it was being ripped apart. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would burst out of my chest. The feeling rose up to my throat and I let out a ragged gasp and suddenly felt sick. Not even the pain of training with Sondo had been this bad. Something warm dribbled down my chin and I saw something red from the corner of my eyes. My blood. I had seen it before but this time, I felt even more sick and hazy at the sight of it. I knew something besides for me was dying.
I turned my eyes back to him as he seemed to waken from his rage. For a second, he didn't move, then his eyes widened as he realized I couldn't move.
I wasn't going to get up.
-0-
I cried out in pain as Sondo aimed another hit on my stomach. It hurt more than anything I had ever felt. I fell to the floor and struggled to get up. Just as I was wobbling back onto my feet, he sent a vicious kick to my side and I cried out again as I collapsed. Mentally, I thought of every rude exchange we had ever had.
This helped my struggle to get up once again but his time, he didn't even give me a chance and sent another hard kick to my side. I imagined myself whacking him hard in the face but even the mantal image was not motivating enough for me to get up. I simply laid there and curled into a ball, taking each kick he sent at me with a bruised pride.
The only noise I could hear was my panting and my gasps of pain. That was in the position that I fell unconscious. Sondo later told me that the only noticeable difference had been that my muscles had slackened. My panting and gasps hadn't stopped. That was how bad it was.
My father and mother had eventually discussed Sondo's offer with me when feeding the family was becoming a desperate matter, especially with winter approaching. I had agreed and Iwa paid genin in training. It had kept my family alive but now I had to keep this career. The only good point was the income going to my family.
For the next three years, Sondo trained my intensely, saying I was behind all the other genin who had gone to the academy since the age of five. I had to study ninja arts while keeping up with the physical training. All because I was raised as a stupid farm girl. Sometimes he said this out of anger at my lack of stamina, others to anger me into attacking harder. Either way, it worked and my stamina rose dangerously quickly.
It was like this that we discovered completely by surprise a kekkei-genkai. He had been attacking me and I had been going backwards, avoiding him. I had been bruised everywhere and the slightest touch hurt. I was desperate to avoid further injury. Suddenly, his arm appeared out of nowhere and my brain went into overdrive. I remember feeling like I was cutting through the air and suddenly, I was further away and Sondo was looking at me with such wide eyes, you'd think he'd seen a ghost.
He explained that I had simply disappeared for about two seconds. We explored it further and later, I was able to consciously do it for about six seconds. Apparently, it might've always been in my family line but had been undiscovered because I was the first of my family to receive shinobi training. From which side of the family, we couldn't tell. Maybe my mother's, because of her foreign origins, thus my strange name. I called it Kieru Koi no jutsu: Disappearing Act.
By the time I reached sixteen, I was an able fighter. My main strength was defensive because of my kekkei-genkai. Besides for that, I was well above average in all the other areas. I was put through the Chunin exams alone, seeing as I didn't have a team. I spent days surviving in the Forest of Death and fought numerous combatants in the arena. I passed easily and was promoted to Chunin. Sondo guessed that perhaps the fact that I started my training much later made me stronger than the other genin.
For the next ten years of my life, I served Iwa as a Rock nin. I achieved the Jonin rank and made it to ANBU. I still saw my family quite often though I think my father will often regret sending his eldest daughter away. When I was fifteen, my little sister was born. Her name was Elle. Now, she was eleven years old. My brother, now 25, was the one destined to inherit the farm form our father. The twins were still helpind around but looking into joining another trade.
I also started performing seduction missions more and more often. As it turns out, I was a great actor. As strange as it sounds, I liked those missions. Not the things I had to do, but I loved the fact that I could pretend to be someone else. Even if for only a short amount of time, I wasn't me anymore.
I had already become to hate what I was.