Full summary: My sister and I (CarnivorousOak) were discussing a possible OC and we happened to start writing two very different stories about the same girl around the same time. Two different stories about the life of Maiko will bring her to greatness and to find her place in the world. Two different stories means two very different stories, though the writers are sisters.
Disclaimer:None of the recognizable material is ours. This goes for the whole story.
Dreams
By CarnivorousOak
A farm life in its cycle of plowing, planting and harvesting was the one Maiko knew and her hopes of learning anything else were small. She lived with her father and his mother. Maiko knew no mother of her own because she had died of disease and her father refused to remarry. As a result, from the time she could hold a needle she had constant work around the house under her grandmother's watchful, kind eyes. In time, she was big enough to join her father in the fields, sowing behind his plow in spring and plucking what weeds escaped his hoe in summer. They weren't rich, but no one in their farming village was.
It was a matter of family pride that Maiko's father never hired himself out as a farm hand to work another's land. In part, this was pride at his family's history.
Five generations ago, there had been a great kekkai genkai in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. That family was able to control fire through movement. The bloodline had gradually faded and disappeared when the family refused to constantly strengthen it with arranged marriages as Hyuugas and Uchihas did. Those five generations ago Maiko's ancestors – really only a branch of the family – settled down to farm and forget.
It seemed to some, like Maiko's grandmother, that perhaps Maiko had some of the old bloodline. She loved above all other things dancing. The Nukumori bloodline was controlled by movement be it a favored taijutsu, dancing or, most often, sword fighting. Maiko's rare spare time was spent in a fallow field dancing as only a young person could: with joy enough for three hearts.
Once when she danced, her grandmother watched and suddenly cried "I see it now! This! This is the legacy of our great clan! The kekkei genkai is born again!"
Maiko stopped and wondered if her grandmother was going senile and eccentric as all of her age mates said.
"What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.
"Why, you can dance the flames! Come inside Maiko. We must tell your father that you must go to ninja school and I'll read you some of your clan's history. Why, I haven't read you those stories since you were so very little…"
Bewildered by the older woman's sudden outburst, she did as she was told.
"No. she will not go to ninja school. That's final."
"Daddy, please? Grandma read me some of the stories – about Hinote no Haigara and the others. Hinote is really cool! And I want to go see the city."
"Listen to the child." Maiko's grandmother urged. Someone comes by every half year to pick up any farmer's children who will go to Konoha for apprenticeships or school. She can go."
Mr. Nukumori sighed. "No. I'm sorry, but I need her here for harvest time. I don't have a wife to help do housework and you are too old, mother. You are putting too much into these legends. I know how you love them, but no one has shown any ability to dance flames for 300 years. Why should my daughter suddenly be able to? Her dancing, even if it imitates flames, means nothing."
His mother nodded. "Bloodline or not, you will not remarry. If she becomes a ninja, she will benefit our family more than three more sons would. Ninja get a high pay and especially ones with such power. I'm sure she'll send her old dad some money some time. Enough to buy another field and three good farmhands and she'll act like it's pocket change."
Maiko wondered why the older woman was exaggerating so much.
Her father wondered what he would do when his mother won the argument.
His financial worries were very much real. Keeping a farm with only two people would be extraordinarily difficult, and he would have to send all of his money with Maiko so that she could live in the city. He wanted a new plow and needed a new mule. What would he buy them with? He was no fool. It would be a long time before Maiko would make a lot of money as his mother said she would. Finally he made his decision.
"Maiko lets go out to the fields. I want to see you dance." He figured with some strange logic that he, as a member of the long dead clan, would at least have some idea of what fire dancing looked like if he saw it.
She danced for him and he saw the same that his mother did. Maiko moved with grace and spontaneity. He felt vaguely as though he were watching a hearth fire after a long day. It was warm, inviting, and pretty. He had decided even before he watched her. She could go. He would manage.
He could not bring himself to deny her dreams.
Prologue
by Bloody-Battle-Bunnies
It was early morning when she heard it.
"Why can't you just go on missions later?" a woman's voice yelled.
"Well I can't just leave my work for you everyday." A male voice replied.
"Try! I'm just fed up with you coming home not able to pay rent because you used you paycheck on some fucking injury bill! You got me fucking pregnant so you had better take responsibility for your fucking actions!"
That comment was definitely about her. Her mother and father had decided that if they were going to take care of a kid they had better do it correctly, in the same house. She cringed into the covers of her small futon. This was all her fault! If she didn't exist her parents wouldn't be trying and failing to live together. They wouldn't fight and probably wouldn't even remember each other's names.
When they fought like this it scared her. They would yell and scream at each other while they thought she wasn't listening then when the fight cooled down she would get up and ask what was wrong. Hiding this from her didn't help; you could probably hear it from a mile away.
All of this fighting all of the unhappiness was because of her. There was nothing she could do about it, not even a little.
Then something happened, something she had never heard before. It sounded like shattering glass, lots of glass. Soon after the tinkle of broken glass had ended a screech of rage ensued like the howl of an angry monkey. This she had heard many a time.
Fear slowly crept into the pit of her stomach as she realized what her parents could be doing, fighting; not the verbal kind but the much nastier kind, the physical kind. That fear had then turned to worry when she thought of what would happen to her parents then rage at her parents for being so violent.
The fear quickly followed the rage when clanging metal on metal took place. She started to shiver and became aware of how strong her body felt. She felt like a raging fire, flickering tongues of flame lapping up the delicious taste of wood. With that, her body edged off the futon and down the hallway while her mind raced with fear in the bed; they were separate.
What she found was horrifying, but her mind couldn't focus. Her shaking had still not ceased one part fear the other courage. The two emotions made a strange mixture and gave her some encouragement.
"Please stop." Was her feeble response to her mother smashing another bottle into her father's body. The shards bit deeply into his skin embedding next to the others that had come for a taste earlier. Her mother's hands were slashed up from the hungry glass breaking and attacking it's freer. The woman's arms had cuts opening the once sealed skin like oblong holes.
Again, "stop it!" but it was no use. Her mother screeching as her father cut along the wrinkles of the older woman's face made sure of that. The gush of blood that dripped from her mothers face is what woke her up and brought her mind back into focus.
"Stop it Now!" This time it was loud and forceful, enough that both adults froze; the only sound left was her mother whimpering and weeping in pain. After awhile, that stopped to. Then simultaneously, her parents turned to look at her small figure at the door to the almost non-existent hallway. The shaking from all the excitement of the morning had not stopped yet in fact it got worse, it started to make her move mechanically, pulling her from here to there like a dance. Flames erupted from the petite form as if from a volcano.
The flames wanted more than the glass had ever craved and soon consumed both parents, and the beginnings of the apartment. Alarms began to sound and people were swallowed by chaos just before they could have been eaten by the ravenous fire.
As people streamed into the street like water from a stream, you could see the building topple as if a toddler had pulled a support from a play brick tower. Down it went and some of the inhabitants with it.
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