Chapter One: A Drop In A Bucket
Kuriarare Kushimaru found Nori on the streets when she was three years old and she'd always thought of that as a mixed blessing and a vile curse. He pulled her from the muck and starvation of the slums in a no name village in the middle of no where. He'd found her and kept her when the Bloodline Purges were raging and calling for her blood. He'd closed his long fingered hand around the collar of her ripped shirt and told her that she was his now and she'd better get used to it or he'd kill her instead. She'd gone limp in his hold and let him take her away and she was never certain whether that was her worst or best decision she'd ever made.
Later she supposed it had been the blood and her feral disposition that drew him to her. At three she'd been alone for almost a year, scrounging and starving and half wild with it. She'd been fighting when he'd first seen her, a sharpened piece of metal clutched between her fingers as she stabbed at her attackers. Two men had cornered her in a back alley behind a restaurant and even at three she'd known they didn't have good intentions. It had taken her three seconds to move. She'd never even spotted Kushimaru sitting on the roof, not before or after her fight but he'd been watching. It seemed like he was always watching after that, his dark eyes always on her.
She'd thrown a brick at the first man, straining her muscles but hitting him in the face anyway. He'd gone down, blood spurting from a broken nose. But she'd known even then that he wouldn't stay down for long. She'd retrieved a long shard of metal she'd meticulously sharpened that she kept in her sleeve. The second man lost three fingers to the razor sharp metal before he even realized she had it out. Then she'd had an opening to run, she could have fled. But she'd seen what men like this could do to children so she hadn't. A red misted rage had already descended on her and she wasn't going to let these men go if she could help it. And in retrospect maybe that was what really caught Kushimaru's attention.
She'd lunged at the first man, who'd still conveniently been on his knees and in her relatively short reach. Her piece of scrap metal, at least eight inches long and narrow, had gone right through his throat and out the other side, ripping chunks out with it on the exit. He'd begun to gurgle and a hot splash of blood had poured over her hand and face. Near feral at that point she'd spun to face the second man, who'd still been clutching at his savaged hand with a gaping expression. Her improvised knife had gone right into his eye, nearly to the hilt. She'd had to kick his knees out to reach but he'd gone down like a flopping fish and her knife had gone in with not even a seconds hesitation.
A deathly silence had filled the alley and Nori remembered the way her mind had been nearly numb. The two men had slumped to the ground, almost in slow motion, and she remembered the way the second had somehow stayed on his knees upright, with the scrap of metal in his eye and his head slumped forward. She remembered blinking at the first men she'd ever killed and then reaching out to try to get her knife back. It hadn't wanted to come out, stuck in the bone, and her efforts had sent the man flopping the rest of the way over. She'd huffed, thinking of all the effort she'd put into that knife and then she'd turned away, rubbing at her face, trying to wipe away some of the sticky gore covering her cheeks.
Then the eerie sound of Kushimaru's laughter had filled the evening air. The sound was low and rolling and rough like sand, all menace and silk and dead things. That first time hearing him laugh would stick with her for years to come, sometimes haunting her very dreams. The sound of her salvation from the muck and filth and the starvation of the slums. She'd made him laugh and so he'd taken her away from the stinking rot that she'd been crawling in for most of her early memories.
She'd remember the first time she looked up at him for the rest of her life too. He'd been sitting on the ledge of the roof, his head thrown back with laughter that moved his entire body. He'd been long and lean and perched like a deadly spider, with the slender silhouette of Nuibari raised over his shoulder like an enormous needle. His blonde hair, like ashy straw, had been wild and spiky around his head and the white porcelain of his Anbu mask had been bright in the dim alley light. The four waving lines of Kirigakure marked the forehead of his mask. She'd seen ninja before but that first glimpse of Kushimaru was like seeing them all over again for the first time. He'd been the start of her life and the end of it at the same time. The start of her path to being a shinobi and the death of her life fighting for every scrap that went into her mouth.
Then he'd leaped down from his ledge and scooped her up like a kitten by the scruff. The collar of her filthy shirt had made her choke for a long moment as she squirmed. He'd been almost impossibly tall, especially to her three year old self, and he'd lifted her clear off the ground with no effort whatsoever.
"I think I like you, little badger!" He'd told her cheerfully as he ignored her hissing and spitting. It had taken her years to understand the comparison between herself and a badger, who commonly attacked for little to no reason and was known for having a particularly vicious temper. At the time, the comparison had been more than accurate.
"Let go!" She'd squealed, swiping at him with nails and feet and anything she could. She'd scolded herself mentally all the while for leaving her scrap knife behind in the mans eye, stuck or not.
He'd shaken her then, and she remembered feeling like her brain was going to leak from her ears before he was done. As soon as she'd stopped struggling though he'd stopped shaking. In later years she'd decide that he'd actually been particularly gentle, considering who he was.
"What's the name then, little badger?" He'd poked at her with his other hand and cackled when she kicked at him with a bare foot.
"Don't have to tell you nothin'." She'd spat, quite stupidly in retrospect. She'd been lucky Kushimaru hadn't stabbed her through with Nuibari. Or even worse, left her there to continue on her own.
"I think that we have to get one thing straight." He'd drawled, in the tone she'd later learn was a sign of a building temper. "I've decided I'm going to keep you and that means you're mine. You'd better get used to it, badger, or maybe I'll just kill you instead. Understand?"
"Keep me fer what?" She'd asked suspiciously, squinting at him and going limp in his grasp.
He'd tilted his head then, like a tall spindly crane or stork and just looked at her for several long menacing seconds. With the narrow slits of his mask she'd been unable to see his face. Only the blank slate of his Anbu mask looked back at her and she'd been unable to guess what he was feeling or thinking. It'd been completely white except for a dark green triangle over the chin, the thin black lines circling the slanted eye slits and the four black wavy lines for Kiri.
"Well that really depends on you, now doesn't it?" Then he'd cackled again, like he'd been struck by a funny thought. "Now, my little badger, what's your name?" She'd known with the instincts of a three year old street rat that she had better answer this time.
"Miyazato Norimasa." She'd replied sullenly, while she'd eyed this man that had claimed her when she'd never been claimed since her mother had died a year before. She'd been as afraid as she'd been hopeful.
"Hmm, a boy's name?" He'd laughed even as he'd tucked her under one lanky arm like a bag of potatoes and leaped back up to the roof.
After that he traveled fast, occasionally throwing aimless chatter at her, but mostly silent. He'd been traveling faster than she'd ever thought possible and she'd reveled in the freedom of it all while trying not to throw up with motion sickness. Covered in a child molesters blood, she'd been carried away from the village she'd been slowly dying in, and headed towards an uncertain future with one of the seven swordsman of Kirigakure.
They made it back to Kirigakure by nightfall and the simple meal he'd cooked for them was the first time she'd eaten in three days. Her hands had been shaking as she tried to eat like a human but it hadn't lasted. That first taste had broken what little control she'd possessed and Kushimaru had only laughed when she finally fell on the meal with clutching fingers and a ravenous mouth. She'd been so grateful that she would have done anything for him. Anything at all.
When she'd looked up, so stuffed her stomach felt like an awful cramping mess, Kushimaru had removed his mask and she'd gotten her first look at his face. And to her dying day she knew she would remember his face. He'd been one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen, then and for years and years to come. His eyes had been dark, nearly black, and slanted much like the eyes of his mask. His hair was wild and spiky and messy but it suited his long limbed body and his pleasant face. He'd been clean shaven with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. His lips had been full and prone to a slightly manic, but no less handsome smile. It wasn't until years later that she understood why he kept his face covered, had done so since he was ten years old and why he never removed the mask in anyone's company but her own. Why he would later buy her her own mask, when it became apparent that she would be a beautiful woman just like he was a beautiful man.
The next day began what Kushimaru lovingly called survival training but what Nori had been positive was legitimate torture. A year of the hardest training her young body could handle. Which was as it turned out an awful lot. Every day she'd thought she was going to die, run through on Nuibari's thin blade or just laying down from exhaustion and never getting up.
But despite that Kushimaru had kept her fed and provided clean clothes and let her bathe every day. He'd taken care of her when no one else had bothered since her mother. He'd been hurtful and cruel and hard to deal with but he's provided for her anyway. He'd taught her taijutsu and how to use ninja wire. He'd hired a tutor to teach her to read and write. He'd beat her to a pulp every day but he didn't let anyone else touch her, not even his fellow swordsmen and friend, Jinpachi. At the end of the year, when she was still alive, he'd cackled his peculiar laugh and told her she'd earned an apprenticeship. With it came a little miniature copy of Nuibari, only a few feet long, to practice with. That had been the auspicious beginning of her life with Kuriarare Kushimaru.
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The years passed quickly and yet it seemed like forever at the same time. So many things happened in those years that she scarce knew where to even begin.
Training with Kushimaru. Long days filled with rigorous drills and surprise attacks and a desperate sort of exhaustion every day. Cuts and slices littering her hands from practicing with ninja wire. Bruises on top of bruises on top of bruises. Discovering her Kekkei Genkai, which she'd always had vague memories of her mother using. Seeing Kushimaru's pleasure when she showed him. His satisfaction when she surprised him. The pain that came with disappointing him.
Rebels began to pop up all over the Land of Water. Yagura wasn't liked by anyone and it was a constant battle between his loyalists and those that hated what he was doing to Kirigakure. The Bloodline Purges continued and even intensified. She'd been grateful then that her bloodline came with no obvious signs, like the Hyuuga or have any distinctive clan markings. It wasn't uncommon for the street to run red with blood as people were dragged out into the street and executed. She didn't like it, hated it even, but she learned to step through the carnage like she didn't care.
Making it to genin and then chuunin shortly after. She began to go on missions with Kushimaru, shadowing his every move. As his registered apprentice she had every right to go where he did, no matter where he went. He was often tasked with assassination missions and she learned dozens of ways to kill someone without a single sound. They did a stint in the hunter-nin division. Kushimaru liked traps and hunting down his prey, so they stayed in that division longer than others. She learned how to set an ambush and to think ten steps ahead of the prey.
Kushimaru dying three weeks after her tenth birthday, while she watched from the trees. A man named Mighto Duy giving everything he had for his teammates, so that they could escape in the fray with vital information. One, she observed clinically, that might very well be his son. This man, a proclaimed genin, giving his life and killing three of the Seven in one encounter. Kuriarare Kushimaru, Akebino Jinin and Munashi Jinpachi gone in one fell swoop, two with no apprentice to take their place. It would be a bloody field day when two of the swords were returned to Kiri with no wielder. There would be dozens vying for the rights to claim one of the swords.
From that moment on her life changed again. She'd had two ways to label her life before the moment Kushimaru fell. Before He Found Her and After He Found Her and in that moment a third label entered her life, After He Died. It was like being cut loose from an anchor that had been holding her steady for years.
She'd gathered Nuibari from his corpse, taken the Anbu style mask from his face and burned the body, the way he would have wanted her to. Then she'd turned and made her way back to Kirigakure in a fog of confusion. Her teeth were filed to sharp points the very next day, a tradition of the seven swordsman of the Mist.
There for a while she'd been in a fog. A chuunin is a civil war ridden village that wasn't particularly bloodless in the first place. She'd made tokubetsu jounin by her eleventh birthday and then been promoted to full jounin within a year after that. Missions passed in a sort of blood splattered blur, one after another with hardly any rest in between. Despite her young age she was one of the seven swordsman now and she was required to bloody Nuibari for her village every day or the consequences wouldn't be to her liking.
And then Mei taking over as Mizukage, the shit storm that was Akatsuki and the war that stretched across the nations. It really was an enormous cluster fuck and she'd managed to get herself right smack dab in the middle of it all.
She'd been warned about the Kamui's abilities. Everyone in the shinobi alliance had been warned about the Uchiha's weird space-time ability. What they hadn't said was that getting pulled into it in conjunction with a wild flare of chakra from it's user would dump her ass into another dimension with no possible way back.
She'd found herself in a world that was so unlike her own that it was frankly a little ridiculous. A different language, a different culture, a different world completely. No shinobi, no chakra users, no ninja villages, no god damn indoor plumbing. It was a feudal world, vaguely like what she'd learned about the warring eras in her own world. And demons! They were everywhere, good and bad and in between. It took her a while to adjust, to say the fucking least.
A/N: Before you panic I am still working on Wild Inuzuka Rose! I just have some rewriting to do on that fic. This fic is going to be a mix between Naruto and Inuyasha but it will all take place in Inuyasha. I'm not sure whether I'm going to keep it labeled as a crossover or not.