A/N: It would appear I have made a triumphant (not) return to fanfiction and this is only because a) I have a bunch of ELA projects due and this is my way of procrastinating b) It is three in the morning and I am quite the night owl and this is apparently a great way to stay up c) I have realized just how horrible my last fic was and this is my attempt to correct it.

This is a rewrite of Seiten no Heki Reki and I certainly hope it was better than the last one. This is set in the future and I hope you will give it a chance.

Summary: Sasuke's oldest daughter tries to become the 'only poker player in the world.'

Disclaimer: I own nothing.


INTERCEPTED MESSAGE

WARNING: CORRUPTED FILE

018: …

019: Hello?...(fizz)

018: Yeah, I got you over here. (fizz) Can you hear me okay?

019: Man I hate this walkie-talkie shit. What was wrong with the messenger pigeons?

018: Apparently they're too easily recognizable. Suna-nin started tracking them after a while.

019: Ha, recognizable my ass. We never had any issue when Tobi was still around.

018: Hey, careful. You know these messages can be tracked?

019: Tch, I wouldn't be surprised. This new guy comes in here thinking he's top shit and telling us to 'modernize' or whatever. Stupid fuck threw down generations of Akatsuki tradition.

018: Keep your mouth shut or you're gonna get it, I swear.

019: Why should I care? This guy waltzes in right as Tobi goes down and says he's gonna take control of Akatsuki and doesn't even bother to show us his face? Doesn't even bother to tell us his name or where he's from and we have to call him 'Master'?

018: Look, it's probably for the best. We don't have to know everything about him. We agree with his ideals and that's all that matters. I trust him. And he's proven to us more than enough times he's powerful enough to lead us; maybe even more than Tobi was.

019: The guy's a dreamer.

018: You are too, though.

019: Yeah, I am.

018: (fizz)

019: Sorry, what was that? Static blocked it out.

018: New mission.

019: Haha, finally some exciting shit. Where we headed?

018: Konoha.

019: Ooh, Hokage assassination anyone?

018: Nope. And don't kid yourself, we're not good enough to take down Uzumaki.

019: I kid, I kid. Tracking mission?

018: Looks like it.

019: Of?

018: Uchiha.

019: Sasuke?

018: No. His daughter.

019: Kami, I didn't even know he had kids.

018: Me neither. We have express orders not to kidnap, though.

019: Why not?

018: Master says this one's not ready to be captured yet. He says keep an eye on her and he'll give the signal.

019: Send over the information.

018: ….

019: (laughs) Oh my, not exactly taking after her father, huh. Lookswise, at least.

018: I'm confused though.

019: As to why he'd wants someone like that?

018: Yeah. Her sister and her brother are apparently prodigies, but we're not supposed to go after them. Just her.

019: Still believe in 'Master's' genius? (cough) Wasting our resources on losers, I swear.

018: Orders are orders. Move out.

019: Yup, see you in a bit.

Naruto pressed stop on the tape recorder and folded his arms across the desk. He sighed and rubbed his temple.

After a few minutes, he looked up, staring seriously at the face of the man across from him.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke stood and breathed through his nose, carefully. "I know."


My mother used to say we all get dealt different hands in life, with different strengths and weaknesses, but this is a lie. We all begin the same, no matter what anyone else tells you.

In any given game of poker, I will be given five cards. If I have two 2's and a 7 of hearts and an 8 of spades and a 10 of clubs most people would say I would not win. But this is not true. I don't know what the other people have in their hands. Maybe there's some unlucky person who also has only a pair of 2s. Or maybe even something like a 9 high or something horrible.

And even if I lose this game of poker, it does not mean I am bad at the game. Maybe the person who wins this game has lost every other game of poker in his life.

A side note: The truth is I could win if I killed all the other people in the room. Or if I killed anyone who ever played poker. This would mean I am the only person in the world who could play poker because all the people who knew how to play would be dead. And from then on the only people who could play poker would be me, and I would win every game since I'm the only player.

On a further side note: This would also mean I'd lose every game.


By the way, everything I just said has nothing to do with the story. At all. It's better if you just forget it. Because remembering pointless things makes you unfocused and then you are a liability.

My name is Hanako Uchiha, and this is the story of how I tried to make myself the only poker player in the world.


This story is around 25 years long. Of course I don't think you'd stick around that long to listen to a story about someone you don't know, so I'll summarize as best as I can. Part of this story belongs to the generation of my parents and the current Hokage, part of it belongs to my generation, and part of it belongs to me.

Let's start.

The current Hokage is named Naruto Uzumaki. Five years before he was crowned Hokage at the young age of 28, he brought my father back to the village.

My father's name is Sasuke Uchiha, by the way.

The details around his return are sketchy. The details on why he wasn't in Konoha in the first place are even sketchier.

When I was very young I did try to find out why he didn't live in Konoha like my mother did or like the Hokage did. I do know that both the Hokage and my mother used to be on his genin team, but that's about as much as my parents will tell me. I know who the Haruno grandparents are and I know as far back as ten generations on my mother's side, but my father is very secretive about his side of the family. Whenever I asked him he'd get very quiet and say I'd understand someday when I was older.

I went snooping around in the attic with Seiko several times (technically it was hide & seek, but I would use this opportunity to look in the boxes while we were up there since I found it fascinating) and there was one time I found a long sword up there. I know now that it was a katana.

On the bottom of the hilt was a vivid insignia: A red cloud.

Seiko thought it was boring and tugged my pigtail and told me to get hiding since it was her turn to seek. I told my mother about it at dinner that night. Dad left the table immediately and Fugaku, my older brother, excused himself not long after. Mom was silent for a while. She slammed her chopsticks down and one of the food platters overturned. She picked up a rice bowl and threw it wildly toward me, and though it missed, one of the ceramic shards sliced my cheek after the bowl shattered against the wall. Then she screamed at me for going through things that weren't mine and digging up the past. She screamed at Seiko too. We spent half the night crying in Seiko's room. (The Uchiha complex is very large and though we each have our own rooms we shared practically everything back then and preferred to sleep together in her room since it had the better view). My parents argued that night, though you could only hear my mom's voice since my father never yells, ever.

My older brother, Fugaku, is not a talkative person, but he is very smart and I can tell he cares for me and Seiko and he would explain things to us when we did not understand. At that age we admired him greatly since he was already a genin and we hadn't even been admitted to the Academy yet. That night, when our parents were asleep, he snuck into our room and gave us two sweet, sticky rice buns – one each – that he said he picked up from the market, just for us, since he hated seeing us cry and wanted to cheer us up.

"Why," Seiko sniffled, rubbing her dark eyes with two fisted hands. "Why did Mama yell at us? I was only playing in the attic."

Fugaku ran a hand lightly through her unruly pink locks, and said gently.

"You must understand that Mama and Daddy love you both very much. Everything they do is because they love us. Sometimes they get angry and even if you don't understand now, you will understand one day."

I wiped my nose and pointed to my cheek. "Mama threw a bowl at me. See?"

Fugaku smiled sadly. "Yeah, I heard the crash. This should make it better." He proceeded to take out a small role of standard shinobi bandage wrap from his pocket and tape a small bit to my cheek.

I stood on my knees on the bed so as to be level with his sitting figure. I placed a pasty, chubby hand on the side of his cheek.

"Did she ever throw anything at you?"

"No, Hana, she never did."

I felt my eyes begin to water. "Does she hate me then? She only throws things at me."

Fugaku drew me into a hug then. He smelled of the hospital since he had just been released from the hospital after a nasty fight on one of his missions. His hair was getting quite long by now and was interspersing with my own dark hair, making it difficult to tell whose was whose.

"No, Hanako. She loves you, more than you could know. She threw the bowl at you because she was scared. Scared that you would find something that frightened you. And she thought the katana – that's what that long sword is called, by the way – would scare you."

He set me down on the floor with Seiko again, and we stared up at him. We started to hear light padded footsteps down the hall, and Fugaku said it would be bad if our parents caught him giving us sweets and talking to us this late at night, so he shimmied our window open and began to leave. He turned around one last time and smiled comfortingly at us, and I noticed his Sharingan was activated.

"It's like I said. Many things will happen that you will not understand, but you will someday."

And with that he sped out the window.

As it turns out it was Mama who had come down the hallway and into our room, and you could tell she had been crying. Her green eyes were all puffy and her hair was disheveled, very different from her usually pristine appearance. She said she was unbelievably sorry and offered to let me sleep with her and Dad that night. I didn't want Seiko to be alone either though so Mama let her come along.

It seemed as though everything was right. And for a while, it was okay, because I didn't know at the time that my father had been a part of the Akatsuki and was, technically, a murderer.


He wasn't tried, if this is what you're wondering.

The Hokage and my father are best friends, but rules are rules and if you are a murderer you typically have to suffer very harsh punishment. But the Hokage pleaded with the Council and managed to come to a compromise.

My father would be spared his life and some freedom so long as he spent the rest of his days helping to track other missing-nin. He was not to leave the village without an escort and part of his chakra was permanently taken out of him, to make him less powerful. Apparently if these conditions weren't fulfilled, my father would be a liability.

I still don't know why my father came back in the first place though. People say it's because he saw the error of his ways and wanted to be with my mother and the Hokage again, but I'm not sure. It's a horrible thought, but if you're already a murderer why go back? No one would want you there and you'd get all the power you took so long to get taken away from you.

When I once said this to Fugaku he frowned at me and told me I didn't really mean that.


I should probably explain a little bit about myself.

My name is Hanako Uchiha. My parents are Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno. I have an older brother and a fraternal twin.

My brother is eight years older than me and he is a prodigy. He is supposed to be the spitting image of my father and has tons of girls in love with him but no girlfriend. He's serious and somewhat stoic, like my father but kind like Mama. He's also pretty funny, but not everyone gets his jokes like me and Seiko do. He has dark hair and very dark green eyes. He's tall for his age, and quite lean. He got his Sharingan at the age of four which is apparently very early and is one of the reasons he's considered prodigal.

Seiko is my twin sister. She is very pretty. For as long as I've known her (which is pretty long since we have always been together except for the six minutes in between when she was born first and I was born second). She has long, pink hair, several shades lighter than my mother's, and dark eyes like my father. She's cheerful and bubbly and most of our neighbours love her. She's always been popular and always tried to include me in games with the other villagers' kids since they hated me. Seiko got her Sharingan at the age of seven when she got lost in the market and felt stressed. She unwittingly used her Sharingan to find her way home.

I am something of Seiko's opposite. I am pasty, I'm a little chubby and I have hair the colour of an old frying pan. (Mom says it's just dark like Fugaku's, but I think it's worse than his shade). I'm quite shy and bluntly honest. I also have very strange eyes, as they are neon green and can practically glow in the dark, like a cat. My mom said it was a rare recessive gene in her family and that her grandmother had it, too, and that I should feel lucky. But I don't because other kids call it creepy and I just wish I had the colour of Fugaku's hair and Seiko's eyes or something normal.

Also, I almost died in childbirth, and the resulting stress actually made me get my Sharingan about thirty seconds into my life. Therefore this would make me one of the earliest receivers of the Sharingan, but it's not good in my case, as it was for Fugaku, because apparently 'premature' Sharingan can cause eye deformities and illness, and make me a liability.

I am not good at running or throwing knives or any other shinobi things. I can't even make friends.

But I think it would be horrible to live your life as a liability, and so, I try, even if it's just a little bit.

Because we are all dealt the same hand in life, and no one is better off than anyone else.

Right?


A/N: This chapter has absolutely no plot whatsoever. It is an introductory chapter and will be the only one written in past tense. Plot will actually pick up in the next chapter so hopefully at least one of you will stick around. :)

On a side note all my A/N's make me sound very serious/angry/pseudo-hipster when in reality it's only because I am exhausted beyond words.