Mayuri stood in her apartment. Something wasn't right. Everything was where it should be. Her bed was impeccably made, the windows were shut like every other night, and there was no sound. Well, except for the loud parties that the lady upstairs always seemed to have, and the normal street traffic. She suspected genjutsu, but there was none.
Movement from the corner of the room awakened her kunoichi instincts. More out of reflex than thought, Mayuri threw a kunai knife which hit a mouse right between the eyes.
'Stupid rodents. I will get a heart attack from one of those things some day.' She thought.
She sat down and poured herself some sake, still aware of her surroundings. Mayuri was currently living in the Waterfall village as a civilian. She wasn't a fan of it, but it was better than a rural life in the country. She worked in a bar, where she could hear rumors of other ninja and who was after whom.
But that was her day job. On the side, she was an elite jonin who only preformed S-rank missions. She was hired by any country that wanted their dirty work done fast. Mostly, that meant killing a lot of politicians.
She downed her second cup of sake. Normally, Mayuri would be relaxed when she got home, but not today. She had heard a funny rumor at the bar today. That some hunter-nin from the Hidden Leaf Village were tracking down as many missing-nin from the Leaf as possible. She knew from others that the main target was Uchiha Itachi was the main reason for the hunting party, but others that went rouge were soon to follow.
She got up and walked across her apartment to her bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. Seven years, and several jutsu, had changed her face so that almost nobody could tell the difference between her present self and past self. Her face was thinner, her eyes were green, and even her hair was darker. Her body was taller and thinner, but she had prominent muscles that were quite hard to explain to her coworkers with a simple "I work out." She looked nothing like her old self. The Mayuri of seven years ago.
'Has it really been that long? I mean, I'm only 26, but it still feels like a lifetime ago...'
She downed another cup of sake. 'Do not allow those memories to resurface.' She said to herself. 'You'll just get paranoid and move again, and then the name change and the background change, and the job change. They can't find you. You've done everything possible. You even started the rumor that she died in a fire to cover your tracks. Snap out of it Mayuri!'
By the time she realized it, she had almost gone through two bottles. To clear her head, she took a shower, her thoughts still plaguing her as she debated whether to put her hair up to make her drying hair curly or to leave it down and have it remain straight. In the end, she left it down and crawled into bed, clutching three kunai under her pillow.
'Look on the bright side,' she told herself. 'No one alive knows that your name is really Tenten.'
