Published: 3/30/2015

Editrd: 11/2/2015

LAND OF A THOUSAND RISING TIDES

PROLOGUE

Whirlpool is a beautiful, terrible place.

The rivers glisten. The air is fresh. The hills roll in green splendor and the beaches seem to go on forever. The sunsets are stunning, dyeing the ocean a brilliant deep red… its hue is just like that of the blood being spilled all over the country.

Once upon a time, the people here got along well. Well enough that our government had been closer to a democratic republic than a military state, actually. Even though—or maybe perhaps because—we lack a daimyo and our Hidden Village is supposedly in charge of everything, Whirlpool had once enjoyed impressively amicable domestic relations. While the shinobi of the village had drawn the line at matters of national defense and foreign policy, they'd left things like commerce and labor to the hands of the common folk. Things had been pretty prosperous; as a nation of merchants and artisans, supported by home-grown farmers and fishermen, we had really been able to thrive. In those days, my mother once told me, people had been both wealthier and wiser, not to mention a whole lot friendlier. Very much the opposite of the way they are now.

Now... well. I don't know who started it, really, since it was before my time. The civilians began to riot; the Hidden Village put down martial law. Half of the people want to throw the shinobi out of power, claiming that the country is governed by the people, and the other half say the Uzushio-nin have always been in charge—they were just kind enough to let the civs have some power over themselves. But either way, no matter who is really in charge, it's a coup.

Either way, it's civil war.

It's all because of the Uzumaki clan. Everyone knows it. Both the Hidden Mist and Hidden Cloud are getting ready to destroy them, and it goes without saying that when they fall, all of Whirlpool will fall with them. The people are already suffering; with both Kiri and Kumo enacting embargos, the only thing keeping us afloat is our connection with Fire Country. It's a substantial one, to be sure, but it's not nearly enough to sustain the whole island. This, the rebels assert, is also the fault of the Uzumaki. They're too brash and they're not diplomatic. This souring of relations has come about because of their lack of political savvy, their childish displays of power, and their unwillingness to make compromise. They should have known better than to antagonize two of the Elemental Nations, especially when tensions are running so high with the threat of another world war. That's why, they say, Whirlpool should do everything to expel the Uzumaki. It's the only way to save the rest of the country. We'll be spared destruction so long as Kiri and Kumo get what they want: the end of the fuuinjutsu masters.

Obviously, the Hidden Village has a problem with that. Uzushiogakure was founded by the Uzumaki, after all. None of the ninja have any intention of letting them get their way.

And so Whirlpool stands, divided in two. The shinobi and the civilians who support them against the ones who call for their deposition. The latter of the two groups has taken it upon itself to use every opportunity to drive the Uzumaki out: interfering with missions, refusing to trade food and clothes, making lynch mobs and chasing whatever red-haired shinobi they come across. Or, well, they try. Ninjas are quite hard to kill, so the rioters usually settle for burning down houses and murdering their wives and children instead.

I know this first-hand. My father had been born and bred an Uzumaki.

My dad hadn't lived with us and he hadn't married my mother—they'd only been lovers—but he'd been kind to me. He'd supported us financially, and when he'd been able, he'd visited and played with me. He'd sent presents and souvenirs when he was on trips overseas and he'd never stayed away for too long. For a twenty-year-old, barely an adult, he'd been surprisingly responsible.

Uzumaki Haruo. That had been his name.

Every now and then, I like to stop and thnk about him. Then I quietly imagine what life would be if we were all still alive and together. He'd keep up the routine we'd had, visiting and sending money, before he would finally decide to come and take us to Uzushio. We would pack up our belongings and move to the Village Hidden in Whirling Tides; I would go to school, make friends, and he would teach me to be a kunoichi. He would finally work up the courage to propose to my mother, too, and then they would get married. Maybe they would have another baby. A boy, perhaps. I would play with him in the afternoon and he would call me oneesan. Or maybe I would be an only child and my parents would spend all their time doting on me, buying me things and playing with me and giving me hugs.

But I try not to daydream about it too much. It's depressing to think about things I can't have and it's not good to zone out for extended periods of time. Someone might mug me. Or rape me. Or maybe even just murder me.

My hair gives it all away, after all.

I usually try to keep it covered, but kerchiefs aren't foolproof and mine is rapidly becoming threadbare. Even though I've chopped most of my hair off, too, you can still see it in the front. The only reason I'm probably still alive now is because I inherited more of my mother's features than my father's—my hair is darker and more auburn-colored than the usual Uzumaki fire truck-red. Other children with more prominent features have a much harder time than I do, and I have seen many of them die for it.

Though, well, I suppose I have more going for me than just auburn hair. A lot of people don't believe it when I say I've been on my own since I was four. Ten-year-olds, twelve-year olds, teenagers and adults—everyone has a hard enough time already, surviving in the Whirlpool that is today. Sucked in by the crime, the poverty, the desperation... you could say we're already barely living at all. There is no way a four-year-old could have borne it long enough to see her eighth birthday. No child like that exists.

No, really. She doesn't.

When they shake their heads and say it's impossible, I agree with them. A four-year-old who could survive the murder of her mother, escape a burning house, and avoid the trickery of the countless scummy bastards looking to cheat everyone and anyone to get ahead, doing so for four whole years? With no support, mentor, guardian, or guide? No. No such girl exists. The only one who comes remotely close to it is me, and I am not four. I am twenty-six.

Well, technically, back then I'd been twenty-two. But either way that's why I'm still alive. A twenty-two-year-old, no matter how pampered and sheltered she'd been growing up, has significantly more existent chances of surviving a civil war. The fact that her body had been that of a four-year-old's had only been a handicap. Mind over matter, as they say. It was hard, but I made it work. I lived despite it all. I've died once before and it's too soon for me to die again.

It doesn't matter that it's in a different body. It doesn't matter that it's a different life, in a different world, or even a world of fiction and imagination. All that matters is life. The sensation of life: of breathing, of eating, of talking and seeing and hearing and laughing and crying. Of anything but endless darkness. All of the questions like why and how cease to matter in the face of that endless abyss. The only thing that matters then is the because.

So yes, that is it. The four-year-old survivor doesn't exist, but I do. Blessedly, I do.

And I will do anything to keep it that way.

I grimace as a spray of blood splashes onto my shirt, splattering red drops across its already filthy threads. The man across from me gasps and rears back, dropping his knife so he can clutch his leg and curse. I quickly throw a kick between his knees and cuff him across the face before sprinting away, wiping my rusty kunai on my sleeve.

Violence is a staple of this country nowadays. It was like this even when my mother had still been alive. But despite that I usually try not to stab people in vital places if I can help it. Killing people is really only a last resort; the country is already shitty enough without me throwing dead bodies around.

Not that my contributions would make much difference. There are piles of corpses already. It's not really uncommon to duck into an alleyway and find that you're stepping on a dead man's face anymore. The first time it had happened to me, I sat next to the poor bloke's body and cried for near a half hour, but nowadays there's nothing to do but jump over him and go on your way. You can't help those people anymore. You're better off saving your energy; then you can spend it on someone who's alive, be it yourself or others. In fact, one of my first friends has been the one to tell me that when she'd found me weeping over that stranger's corpse: "Get a move on, unless you love him enough to be to be buried with him."

Her name had been Sayaka. Yamamoto Sayaka of the Uzumaki clan. Like me, she'd been the love child of a civilian woman and an Uzumaki ninja; he'd died in battle a few months before we'd met. We'd only been together for a single evening, Sayaka and I, but even today I find myself still thinking of her. She had run all over town with a Uzushio hitai-ate, obtained from a mass grave while scavenging, strapped over her flaming red hair. Ah, what a kid, so incredibly bold and foolhardy. I remember her very fondly. She'd been a filthy, lice-ridden, bastard Uzumaki child, and she'd been happy to let the world know it. I have no idea if she's still alive or not. Probably not.

Beyond her, I've mostly been on my own. I've had a couple of temporary partnerships, and there was even one point in time where I lived with five other kids in an abandoned shrine. As I duck under a chain-link fence and grimace when my bloody shirt smears red onto the bottom of my chin, I think of all of the things I learned from them.

Three of the five of them had actually been full-blooded Uzumaki with proper ninja training; of those three, only one had grown up in Uzushio. Fourteen years old, he'd been the boy in charge of all of us, and I can honestly say we wouldn't have lasted without him. Not only had he been mature and level-headed, he had known a boatload of ridiculously useful seals, and he'd made sure to teach us each of them. One for storing large amounts water that would otherwise be too heavy to carry, one for producing flameless heat that you could use in the winter, storage seals for clothes and for food... things that can really make the difference between life and death when you live this kind of lifestyle. He had also taught us how to defend ourselves, how to hold knives and what spots to aim for when someone wanted to hurt us.

After two months, though, he'd moved on. He had been a proper Uzushio ninja, after all, and he'd needed to return to the village. After being injured and separated from his squad, he'd holed up with us only as long as he'd needed to get into traveling condition again. I think he might have wanted to take us with him, but transporting a bunch of small children across the country had not been in his ability at the time.

In the end, he had left us with as much of his extra weaponry as he could have spared and bid us to come and make our way to the Hidden Village if we could. These days, he'd told us, they're taking in any refugee children who can prove heritage to the Uzumaki clan. "If you can make it to Uzushio," he had said, "you'll be saved. And if luck is on your side, you halfies may even find a parent in the village."

That had been two years ago. I take a deep breath as I finally emerge on the far side of town, the eastern edge that stops dead at the beginning of the Yuzu Foothills. The sun is finally beginning to rise and the sky is slowly lightening with shades of pink and orange.

I exhale.

Two years to drag myself across the whole of Whirlpool. Two years of squinting at a faded map with torn edges and running ink. Two years since Kenma had drawn it for me, and two years of dodging death and disease at every corner. Two years to make it to the final stretch.

Somewhere in those hills there is the Village of Longevity, Uzushiogakure. Somewhere in there there are hundreds of ninjas, watching over the country and waiting for stray Uzumaki children to come running home. Somewhere in there is safety. Somewhere in there is freedom.

I step forward and begin the climb.

A/N: In-depth information on LTRT is in my profile! Make sure to check out the poll!

Well, this is my first time trying out a proper story (as opposed to a one-shot or a sidestory) in the present tense. It's kind of strange; I can't count how many times I lapsed into past, and let me say nothing of my was/had been struggles. Still, it was a good break from tearing out my hair over writing the Kyuubi attack in Glory. It's refreshing to agonize over something else for a change.

Fun fact: LTRT's prologue is nearly twice the length of Glory's.