Disclaimer: I own only the OC's, plot, and the stuff in my house. Naruto isn't in my house.
.one.
Haruka had always been a peculiar child.
She looked, more or less, like any other little girl if not a bit thin. She acted, more or less, like any other little girl if not a bit quiet. She enjoyed things that many little girls did, for the most part, if not a bit too much.
Yes, that was it! Really, the thing that set Haruka from the rest of the little girls was the unusual passion she put into her hobbies, flower picking first and foremost.
Haruka bent down, grey eyes set on a particular bloom trembling in the wind. She plucked the small flower, so tiny compared to all the rest, from its home nestled in the grass. She examined the particular flower, running her tiny fingers over the powdery pink petals. So soft...
She had resigned herself, even at such a young age, to only being able to experience the "good" feelings in life. Haruka was "blessed" with what the doctors called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or something like that. Apparently, pain was this terrible feeling one gets when their body is damaged. Obviously however, Haruka had never personally experienced it in her short five years of life even with two of them being spent training with Father to become a ninja.
Haruka sighed and once again ran her fingers over the silky bloom. Haruka watched with hollow grey eyes as the petals of the tiny, insignificant flower were tossed about with the weak wind.
She let another small sigh escape, seeing a slow blush creep over the sky. Father will be mad if I'm late for training, Haruka thought as she began the trek back to her clan's compound.
In all honesty, Haruka was fascinated with fighting; the inner tranquility one must have while seeing and doing everything was impossible for Haruka to wrap her mind around. However, continuing with the truth, she was more captivated by watching her opponents be crippled by a sensation she had and never would feel.
Haruka was envious of their pain, however alien that seems to us. Perhaps she was just too curious, as Mother always said.
.:.W.:.
Haruka slumped over in exhaustion. Father wasn't going easy on her tonight.
Father looked down on his child with cold, critical grey eyes, the same pair he passed onto his daughter. "Again, Haruka," he spoke in a deep, commanding voice.
"Y-yes, Father," Haruka pushed herself off the ground. Father had decided it was time to teach Haruka their clan's techniques.
Of course this was a spontaneous decision!
Haruka formed the jumble of hand seals she had just learned as Father loomed over her. Once the string of seals was complete, a wind was breathed from Haruka. It was more violent than a small summer breeze but nowhere near the strength of a hurricane.
At least not yet.
Father could make his wind stronger than a hurricane. He could even make creatures dance about in his wind, the clan's secret technique.
After a time of examining, Father nodded stiffly, "Better, but you're not going to be able to perform our techniques anytime soon."
Haruka frowned at the putdown. Again and again she tried to please Father by doing good -or well as she had been told to say- in her studies of ninja arts. If only he would be slightly more agreeable.
Or just less talented.
He had such a mastery of wind that he could control all the elements (but lightning, naturally)* with wind alone. At her age, Haruka could only dream to be so skilled.
Eventually, Haruka did come to understand her clan's ability, but many trees were sheered in the process of her grasping it over the years.
.:.W.:.
"Welcome to the first day if class, everyone!" A kind looking woman stood in front of a large desk- and child-filled room. "My name is Kinko but you may call me Kinko-sensei or K-dog."
The class burst into laughter at the teacher's joke. Haruka didn't find it horrendously humorous.
"Alrighty then, class, I'm going to call roll. When I call your name, raise your hand and say 'here'."
"Akasora Aiko?"
"Here."
"Bara Chou?"
"Here!~"
The list went on from there. For some reason, Haruka's parents decided that the local school would help her hone her abilities as a kunoichi/warrior/whatever the appropriate term for that time would be. She was gifted, they would tell her.
Haruka began flipping through the book situated on her desk. There were vibrant portraits of historical figures and diagrams of the human body and food webs and lots of other textbook-esque stuff, all colored to capture her attention. None of them interested her, however.
Was it so odd she liked uncommon things?
To answer that rhetorical question, yes, yes it was.
Many of the things, even in the back of the book, Father had already gone over with her. Would this school hone her abilities or impede them?
"Yuuben Haruka?"
". . .Here," Haruka said. Hopefully not for long. . .
.:.W.:.
Haruka got her wishes granted.
In the year she spent at the school it turned out that it was even worse than she first suspected. The girls Kinko-sensei encouraged her to play with were only interested in the boys who seemed to only be interested in dirt. Haruka found that dirt was more appealing than admiring someone who could give you the deadly "cooties" if you got too close.
Haruka had no issue with leaving the school -or the country for that matter- to go to this hip place called the Fire Country barely a year after she enrolled, already a third of the way through the whole curriculum. There were better opportunities there than in the lowly Rice Patty Country. Father said that they could perhaps interact with other shinobi clans rather than just the small Yuuben clan.
How wrong was he!
Haruka's first impression of the Fire Country was rather nice. There were plenty of flowers to pick even when the weather was bitter. Mother called a particularly pretty bunch of pale blooms "snowbells."
The rest of Haruka's early memories in the Fire Country were still vividly engrained in her mind, even almost 100 years later: the fear from clans clashing in her backyard she could still taste in her mouth, the pained cries of dying men still echoed in her sleep, and the fading pulse of said men as she watched them die in her favorite flower patch still haunted her now and again.
They were only a bit morbid.
Once they were settled, Haruka was enrolled in another local school for the cluster of several clans. It was just as bad as the old country, if not worse, for there were big clans, the Uchiha, the Hyuuga, and the Senju, that seemed to hold power over the less prominent ones in the form of schoolyard bullies. There also was a boy named Madara, the prodigious class clown and heartthrob.
Haruka sighed a bit, fiddling with the flower in her hand. Madara, other to-be clan heads, and she were working at the same "extraordinary" pace (it became somewhat ordinary once half the class was ahead), though they were better in all honesty, for Haruka had already completed a year's worth of studies whereas they had just begun theirs.
Still, no one but the occasional teacher even so much as acknowledged Haruka's existence -forget talent. Maybe she just wasn't pretty enough?
This would often trouble Haruka, and she would consequently spent hours poring over her reflection, trying to find her flaws, then as she grew older her features. Haruka would always see the same monotonous grey eyes -devoid of unnecessary emotion as Father had taught her-, tightly curled pure black hair -she often styled it with a flower pinning back her bangs-, and pale skin -soft from the constant application of floral-scented lotion.
That was how her one-sided rivalry with Uchiha Madara began, just a bit of troubled vanity.
Eventually, the two became slightly more than one of the competitors for the top seat in the class. A friendship sprouted between the two, well, as much as one could between two such as Madara and Haruka (i.e. mean people). Her life was not at all aided by this: Madara had loyal fangirls to say the least.
But Haruka didn't care. She was out on the battlefield before most of the fangirls could leave the house without their mothers. Yes she, along with the aforementioned half of the class, was out of the academy at age seven, just a year after most had enrolled. Haruka fretted about that, of course. She felt unworthy to begin her work as a ninja with so many other great ones becoming one at the same time.
Well, she wasn't a ninja yet, seeing as there were no hidden villages at this point, but that was approximately what it was.
Sort of.
.:.W.:.
Haruka looked back at her two best friends trailing behind her: Nara Shikako and Haruno Chika. The trio was just a few of the early graduates. Haruka would look back on these years as the golden age of the ninja, even if they didn't truly exist yet. You see, everyone was much more encouraged to be a spectacular fighter/ninja/you get the idea, for if they weren't, they'd just end up as another tick on the tally of casualties.
It could be called natural selection.
"Hurry up!" called Haruka, black curls bouncing behind her.
Chika looked up at her with nervous eyes, "Don't worry, w-we're almost there, Haruka-chan, and -uh, but- w-we're-"
"Scared?" laughed Haruka, though her eyes stayed dull. "C'mon, Chikie-chan, we can handle a bunch of thugs if we work together."
"Easy for you to say," whispered Chika as pale purple hair tickled her baby blue eyes.
Shikako rolled her eyes, "It's fine to be nervous, but they hired us knowing how old we are. Obviously we can do this."
"Yeah," Chika looked up, eyes smoldering with newfound strength.
Haruka smirked, All she needs is a bit of encouragement.
Haruka said, "Their last camp site should only be about ten minutes away."
Chika nodded, and Shikako said, "Okay, let's go!"
"Let's not make this any longer than it needs to be," Haruka muttered as they sprung into the barren treetops. "I can barely feel my nose."
By any modern-day standards, sending a bunch of seven year olds to take care of a group of about a dozen thugs was absolutely appalling. The fact that about half of them were wanted for rape didn't at all help the modern view of the mission, either.
These times were different, obviously. To begin with, no one gave a damn, not even in the homeland of the Will of Fire, whether or not anyone died. As long as there were children to continue the lineage and a head of the house, everyone was fine.
The second but more prominent reason was that everyone -men, women, and even children- were seen as equals on the battlefield. Killing a little girl was no different than killing her father. Perhaps pops would put up a better fight, but it wasn't abominable to slay children.
By these old standards, anyone was a suitable choice for any mission, seduction aside. It really wasn't so off for a child to be seen frolicking about a forest searching for a certain someone to kill.
Haruka always used her small build to her advantage, especially in dangerous situations.
This was a perfect example of a dangerous situation:
About a dozen men sat around a flickering fire, all of them willing and able to kill and/or rape her. She was wedged between two large branches with no leaves to cloak her from view. She simply relied on Shikako's shadows for coverage.
Chika whispered from beside her, "How should we do this?"
"A trap for sure so we can take care of them quick." Haruka paused, distaste at her sentence evident in her eyes. She added, "-ly. . . Any ideas, Shika-chan?"
"I can trap them, but I don't have enough chakra to fully possess them. Could you use a genjutsu, Chika?" Shikako whispered.
Chika nodded. Haruka continued the whispered plan, "Once you two have trapped them, I'll make wind to blow away the tents to see if we missed anyone, then I'll go in and deal with them."
"I'll get started on the shadows."
"I'll get started on the genjutsu."
Shikako formed a seal with her dark hands, making the shadows about her twitch to life. The tendril of her shadow crept down the tree, stretching so much the contrast was barely visible.
Shikako's frowned a bit as the shadow reached its limits. "Uh, could you?"
Haruka nodded, bringing her thumbnail to her lip, a habit from Father, to send her chakra to the air, forcing several leaves from the ground. A couple formed a clump, casting a shadow just behind the men.
Shikako smiled her thanks then continued to conduct the shadow. The dark thread finally trapped the fluttering shadow of the fire. She snared the shadows, making them jerk slightly from the new authority, but had them flitting naturally without batting an eyelash.
A smirk brushed over Shikako's lips as thin threads snuck from the shadow of the fire. The morph was so gradual that none of the thugs saw the shadows before each was already caught.
The shadows swiftly swooped into the long shadow of each thug who jerked slightly at the new authority.
Thugs were no better than the shadows everyone treads on. . .
"Success!" breathed Shikako. "Go, Chika, I can't hold them forever."
Haruka snorted, "Are they fat or something?"
Shikako took a fleeting glance at the group. They reminded Haruka of laundry lines the way their clothing hung from them. "Very."
Chika pranced over to the bunch of men, genjutsu at the ready. The lavender haired girl easily slipped them into an unpleasant illusion. "Do your work, Ru-Ru!"
"Alright." Haruka brought her thumb to her lips again, conjuring a bitter winter wind from the. . . north? Meh, her sense of direction wasn't her strongpoint.
The camp was blown away in under a minute, revealing no kidnapped children, stolen treasure, other thugs, drugs, food, clothing, shelter. . . Oh, those were the shelters. . . "Alright, let's do this! Chika, can you help me put down some explosive tags?"
"Sorry, I don't have any on me."
"Good thing I brought extra!" Haruka drew a few from her bag, and placed a couple around the camp.
"W-wait!" Chika called as Haruka began retreating.
"Huh?"
"You-you're going to blow them up?"
"Well, we're supposed to 'take care of them,' and doesn't that mean to kill them?"
"Well. . ."
Shikako stepped in, "What she's trying to say is that it's that it's a bit much to blow them up."
"We need to send the other thugs a message," Haruka smiled. "Our country has enough problems without thugs like these, doesn't it?"
"Whatever," Shikako rolled her eyes. She was a dominating person but was definitely smart enough to figure out that Haruka would do things her way, supported or not.
"Let's get out of here, then," Haruka said.
"Yeah," Chika sighed.
.:.W.:.
Haruka killed a human being for the first time that day. Everyone shunned the concept. She couldn't explain it, but it gave her a warm fuzzy feeling inside that should be used with puppies and babies as opposed to committing homicide. It was her fatal curiosity that let her to commit the atrocious act, truly.
That was Haruka, though. It wasn't the beginning of her sadistic nature, but it was definitely a clear checkpoint. The Haruka that all who grew to like her enjoyed started at that moment, the frame human blood splattered on her hand the first time, figuratively speaking.
No one's the same after they kill.
Or die.
Or fast.
Each of those things happened to Haruka, and each changed her in some way or another physically and/or mentally.
A/N: I was simply in a poetic and romantic mood, and this came to be. I hoped you liked it! I apologize for the lack of humor, but even though this is a humor story, it isn't entirely focused around that. This story is more subtle, and has darker and somewhat more mature themes. You'll see what I mean as this continues. This chapter and the next are pretty much the introduction chapters, and the romance begins in chapter three. I know this because I've already written up to chapter three. I would appreciate reviews, and especially constructive criticism but please no flames. This is the first fanfiction I've written that has imagery and all that jazz in it.
Two things:
*One: They're unable to use lightning because it's just a chemical reaction, thus intangible. This will come into play later on.
*Two: Is anyone else irritated by people not indenting in fanfics? I am sometimes, but I was just wondering if anyone else was or if anyone actually noticed.
Thanks for reading!
-Uncle W.Z