Time was a funny thing. I learned that lesson early in life. It disregarded all laws, especially its own. You can assign numbers and figures to it but that doesn't shorten tense silences or leave time for happier memories. It works in its own special and unique way, just to ruin your day.

Nine.

I was nine short years old when my life was ruined, blessed, cursed, and saved. From an outsider's standpoint, I should think I'd be grateful for what I've been given. Looking back, I lost count of the times I wished that I'd been left for dead.

I was born three years before the Third Great Shinobi War, a series of bad news and fear that dragged on for four years of my life. The next year, however, went by in a blink. Later I discovered why that was: everyone was happy. The Yondaime Hokage was a war hero and kept us all safe from anyone who'd attack. People were getting married, industry was growing, our allies were thriving; it was a great year. Then another dark memory when I was eight years old. I still remember the icy heat of the demon fox's chakra from the night of its attack.

"Rei! Leave her behind!"

I growled at the invisible voice, carrying on with what I was doing.

But then time moved on. I started to grow. My parents both survived the fox's assault and we were happy for a time, one year to be precise. Although my aunt and uncle, the Yondaime and his wife, did not survive the Kyuubi's attack, the little boy they left behind became my little otouto.

Two weeks after my ninth birthday, men from Kumo came to finally end the long standoff between Kumo and Konoha. There had been no official treaty that resolved our issues from the Third Great Shinobi War; the only thing keeping even a semblance of peace were squads of guards protecting the borders every day and night.

The Kumo men arrived to a festival thrown in their honor. The treaty was signed, allowing for an eye for an eye type of agreement that would, in theory, have been the most lenient deal Konoha could have made. We had the better quality forces, even after the Kyuubi attack. It would have cost us lives, though, to win the final battle and lives weren't something the reinstated Sandaime would risk.

He was too kind, too optimistic.

That night, the Kumo nin broke into two very specific homes and took two very specific girls. One girl was spirited away cleanly; the other alerted her parents to the danger. Her parents were swiftly killed and she was taken away, none the wiser.

One girl was Hyuuga Hinata, just two years old at the time. The other was me.

Why was I so important, to be abducted alongside the shy Hyuuga heiress? Because I was the last known child of a dying line: the Uzumaki line.

When Uzushiogakure was targeted and destroyed during the third war, there were very few survivors, with only four known to Konoha: my father, Uzumaki Kushina, Aokawa Renji, and Matena Riku. My father's name was Uzumaki Jun, a cousin of Kushina's. Even so, Kushina became my aunt and was named my godmother. Her Aemi, though just seven months older than me, was my neechan and, when she died alongside her parents during the Kyuubi Attack, her little brother became mine to protect. He became untouchable. Naruto was almost constantly guarded by an ANBU, not to mention my parents. I was the weakest link, the only one they could target.

"Nee-chan, just leave me," a faint voice said. I didn't spare a glance to the small girl on my back. Rather, I ducked down to avoid a new wave of senbon. They glistened slightly as they passed by. Poison.

"Not a chance," I dismissed. "You know what happens if you get left behind."

"But you know what happens if you don't let me go... You'll only be disciplined." The last word was hardly a whisper. We both knew that to call 'supplementary training' what it really was- punishment- only scheduled another three hour session.

"I can handle it," I insisted, tightening my grip on the small girl lest she decide to be selfless and throw herself off. "If you don't manage your time... You won't be able to take it."

I wasn't exaggerating. The point to this exercise was about timing. If you didn't beat your average score from the last two runs of the course, you went for 'medical training.' What that really meant was forcing you to watch as the on-duty medical nin all but dissected a living human without anesthesia. I had seen it twice, once when I was nine and again when I was eleven, and I wasn't letting my naive imouto face that. She was five. Five years old.

If I had access back then to what I know now... I would have bitten off my own tongue when they found us. Dark shadows, that was all the were. I knew that they were shinobi, of course. I had aspired for as long as I could to be a kunoichi, so I could be a sealer just like my father and my obachan or a master with lightning-based techniques like my mother. But I hadn't known. I had seen the Konoha emblem on their masks and assumed they'd take me back home and I'd discover that all of this had just been a joke, that kaa-san and tou-san would ruffle my hair and send me off to bed with broad grins and laugh about how they'd tricked me...

Oh, how wrong I was.

I skidded over the finish line where an operative was waiting with a clipboard. He, at least I assumed it was a he, scribbled briefly on the paper before looking back at me. In a monotone, he said just four words.

"Zero six hundred, bay."

Internally I sighed with relief. The 'bay' was the easiest of the five supplementary training routines. The training was geared to teach anatomy and poisons to potential medical nin though everyone received a crash course to be the most efficient tool they could be. Some people, who were being trained into solely offensive units, were also introduced to the poisons in small amounts so that their bodies could develop an immunity but only three or four people in an age group went through that training, as it had a fairly high mortality rate.

I hurried my little sister away from the training course, following the familiar route to the mess hall.

The mess hall was one of my least favorite parts about living here. It looked and felt as if someone had just converted a bomb shelter into a dining room. It had low ceilings and dirty walls with an earthen floor. It was a large room, perhaps sixty by fifty yards, but the low ceiling made it cramped and suffocating. The only redeeming factors were that there were no seating charts and that the food was good. It needed to be for us, the potential recruits, to survive the training.

The room was getting close to its usual maximum capacity of about two hundred recruits. The room was a mess of people but there was a rhythm to it; there hadn't been any new 'snatches,' as the older recruits called the rookies. The youngest were around Hinata's age, just four or five years old, while the others ranged up to fourteen. An elite sect of fifteen year olds sitting alone in the corner. They were this year's graduating class. None of them spoke or looked anywhere long enough so that anyone could mistake them for interested. They were in the final stages of behavioral preparedness, a fancy term the older operatives used to refer to the series of events that would crush their personalities until they were ready tools, able to think but not question an order. I'd seen it happen in the three years we'd been here. It happened gradually with most people but, occasionally, the light would suddenly leave someone's eyes. You wouldn't get a response no matter what you did or said unless you asked the most basic of questions which, even then, were answered largely by blank stares and one word answers.

I set my sister down at one of the less crowded tables, as far away as the fifteen year olds as I could. That was a tradition of mine; I didn't want her to know what awaited us in a few long years. If we survived them, that is.

Once she was settled, I went to the far side of the mess hall and got food for both of us, ignoring the glare I received from the pale raven-haired boy beside me. He was younger than me, probably six or seven years old, so I didn't pay him much attention until he opened his mouth.

"Why are you getting two trays?" he said, crossing his arms with an annoyed frown.

"Sai," another boy, this one with gray hair and dark eyes, chided warningly, coming up from behind him. I vaguely recognized him as someone from my age group. "She's getting food for her friend."

"Oh..." Sai said, shrinking down shyly.

"I'm Shin," he introduced to me. "And you're Rei." He must have noticed my confusion because he elaborated. "I've heard you get called for training... You get into a lot of trouble for someone as strong as you are."

"I have an imouto to look after," I said, probably a bit coldly. "If getting supplementary training means that she's safe from that, I'll do it gladly."

"Even if you get endurance?" Shin asked, his voice dropped to a whisper. Against my will, I shuddered as the memories returned to the forefront of my mind, still too raw.

Endurance. The hardest of all the supplementary trainings. You were led to an almost empty room and tied to a chair. After being left alone for an hour or two, in which your own anxiety and fear threatened to overwhelm you each minute, two people would return. One was an operative skilled in T&I. The other was the Head. For the remainder of the three hour session, the operative would 'prepare' you for 'enemy' torture techniques. You learned how to keep a piece of information secret. You learned that, if you screamed, the pain got worse. This supplementary training was generally reserved for fourteen and fifteen year olds. I was a notable exception to that rule. I had my first when I was ten, after I made it clear that I'd take anything thrown at me and throw it back as hard as I could.

"Six," I said, my voice low as I forced my eyes to look up at Shin. "Six times in two years. I'll take it a seventh, and an eighth, and a ninth time if she stays out of it."

Shin's eyes took on a mournful look.

"You know what happens if you get too close to another recruit."

Yes. The graduation ceremony. Initiation. First blood. Pitting brother against brother, sister against sister. It wasn't going to happen to us, though.

I refuse to allow Hyuuga Hinata to die in this.