"Daizen! Daizen! Ma Ma, have you seen Daizen?!" A woman with soft wavy black hair ran through the house. It was mid-night, and another raid had started.

"No, but he will be fine! Come, Omoide! Quickly!" the old woman whispered. "They will not harm a child!" She grabbed the dark haired woman's arm, Omoide's arm, and ushered her into a removed wall panel. Daizen, the eleven month child, was on his hands and knees on the ceiling. He made no noise as men with torches and weapons broke the door down, saw the corner of a skirt sticking out of the wall. They broke the panel open and removed the women from the passage, cruelly slaughtering them one by one. The last to fall was Omoide, Daizen's mother. Landing on her back, as she bled out, she saw her little baby and smiled, the life trickling from her eyes as the blood trickled from her head. Leaf shinobi arrived in the out town near the Grass village.

"Hey, over here," someone called, "there's a living one!" A smoking shinobi dashed to the hut.

"What is it, Asuma?" a silver haired nin asked.

"It's a…baby. Kakashi, there's a baby on this wall!" Asuma picked his way through the dead bodies.

"Dai…zen…" a woman's voice husked. "His name's Daizen…" Asuma, startled, inspected the bodies, but they were all dead women, dried blood and rigor mortis settling over their bodies. He took the child off the wall.

"So your name is Daizen, eh?" the silver-haired green-eyed child reached out for Asuma's cigarette, throwing it to the floor. "Thanks, mom." he muttered, thinking how this baby was beyond a genius; taking a cigarette and putting it out around a young child and using chakra to stick to the wall. The wall!!

In the center of the village, the Leaf nin met with the survivors. Asuma located several of Daizen's living family members, and one who would take him in. He, Kakashi, and the other Leaf shinobi headed back to Konoha to report on the damage from the latest raid.

Daizen sat up in bed, thirteen years old. At six years old, his adoptive mother offered him to her own mother to take to Konoha. Two years later, she died of a heart attack. Having no one else who would accept him into their family, he lived by himself on a type of insurance. The fact that he came from a village with which Konoha was at war with recently not estranging him enough, Daizen was the inheritor of a kekkei genkai of the eyes. His left eye was a bright violet purple with a metallic gold pupil. This bloodline trait was referred to as the Shinri Me. The Shinri Me (shin-ree may) was able to see through genjutsu, like the Sharingan, but the user of the Shinri Me could also see through lies and process movements much faster. Daizen's problem was that since he was five, he had been unable to turn it off on the left eye. To cover it up, he had tried to tie a scarf over it, but had depth perception problems, causing him to run into things, and throwing his aim off. At seven years old, his grandmother had made him a mask with black blocker over the eye. It only covered the left side of his face, going around his hairline and curved toward the side of his face at the end of his nose and trailed down to his chin.

He picked up said mask and put it to his face, attaching it to his skin with chakra. It was peacock green with a lime green border around the edge of the mask and the eye. Daizen stood and looked around for his pants. He had to get up early, though he had hardly slept, to meet his kunoichi teammate and sensei. Their team was getting a new member, although it was only four months until the Chunin exams. He found his dark pine pants that came to just above the standard ninja sandals he wore. Not wanting to change his shirt, Daizen threw his dark grey jacket on over the black tank top he was wearing and grabbed a hair tie to pull his mid-back length silver hair into a low ponytail. The toaster popped up. He grabbed the piece of toast andstuck the corner in his mouth, opened the front door, and greeted his teammate.

"Yo." he said. A brown haired, dark navy blue eyed kunoichi stood, with her hand poised to knock. "You did say six, right?" Daizen chewed on his toast.

"But, but- how do you do that?!" He shrugged, and tried to rub the sleep out of his emerald green right eye.

"Daizen, Epi, let's go." A woman with long dark purple hair and a tan trench coat called. She motioned for the two to follow her.

A girl with goldenrod hair blinked her cerulean eyes open slowly. She was handcuffed to a stretcher bed. The girl studied her palms with a confused expression. They were smooth.

"These are the prisoners from the Akatsuki raid two days ago. Yes sir. Everyone." a voice from down the hallway echoed. The girl grunted in pain and tried to clutch her heart. Over the pillow, she could see the hat of a kage. The Hokage.

"Hey, old man!" she yelled. "What did they do to my hands, yeah?!"

"Kido, is that a child?"

"Yes sir. She's one of them." The Hokage and Jonin walked to the bed.

"Undo this! She's just a child!"

"What did you do to my hands, un!!" she shouted. Kido unlocked her right hand. She clutched her heart and growled.

"Kido, what does she mean by this?"

"I…I don't know, sir." The girl thrust her hand into the Hokage's face

"This is what I mean! Do you see a mouth? No? Well, that's what I'm talking about, yeah! And it seems some genius has sewn up my heart, too!" Kido stuck a needle into her neck and she crashed back onto the stretcher.

"Find out what she means. I want her transferred to the hospital now. If I find you have done anything like this to a child again, you will be sorry. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir."

Four hours later, she woke up in a hospital bed.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like I've had my heart and hands sewn up, yeah. Undo it, old man, un." The Hokage frowned.

"I don't think I can do that. Can you answer a few questions for me, at least?"

"Can you undo my heart, at least?"

"Well-"

"Come on, yeah! This is death, un!"

"I'll see what I can do. Answer some questions, and I'll talk to the chief of medical staff."

"Fine." she grumbled.

"What is your name?"

"Zakuro."

"Who are your parents?"

"My mother is Raiku Hane, Great Granddaughter of the first Beast Maiden. My father is the S-class missing-nin Akatsuki member who's gonna bomb your ass, yeah."

"And why is that?" he raised an eyebrow.

"You stole me, un. But…" Zakuro remembered her "uncle" Sasori had a sudden mission and had to leave her with her "uncle" Itachi who had let her be taken. "Hmph."

"But?" When Zakuro didn't reply, he continued. "Why were you with the Akatsuki?"

"I live with my papa, yeah. Duh?"

"Do you know where the base is?"

"Yeah, un. I live there."

"Where is it?"

"I'm not telling you." The Hokage looked strangely at Zakuro, but sighed.

"Of course. So what did you mean by the absence of mouths on your palms?"

"Well, I have mouths on my palms, yeah, and one over my heart."

"What do they do?"

"Infuse clay with chakra." Zakuro replied, matter-of-factly.

"What do you do with the clay?"

"Make bombs, yeah! What else, un? Depending on how much chakra I use, they explode on impact, or when I say 'katsu' or 'doshin', yeah." Her hands flew to her mouth. "You're using ninjutsu! Damn it, un! That's a truth seal!" Zakuro pointed to black marks on the floor. Sarutobi smiled grimly.

"Smart, Zakuro. Your father is the Iwagakure nin Deidara, no?"

"Yeah." Papa…. she thought. He probably imploded Ita-san's guts for this… Zakuro giggled in her head. I wonder if Uncle Sasori or Uncle Hidan will come…Will Leader leave me behind? What about Uncle Tobi? Or Papa… Zakuro had feared all her life that her father would leave her behind and never come back for her. It seemed to fit his personality. Leave her standing like a sculpture he forgot to explode. Maybe. She certainly hoped not. The Hokage questioned her for a while longer, before heading to find Yakushi-san. A young medical nin with grey hair and round glasses entered the room.

"My father is unavailable. I am Kabuto Yakushi, son of the Chief Medical Examiner."

"Kudos, un, but can you undo the stitching over my heart? And my left hand, maybe?"

"I received instructions to sever-"

"Great, yeah. Just do it, before I decide to blow this whole city up, yeah." Kabuto glared at her. He went into the hall to collect his medical cart.