Chapter 1

Birth

Arakumo Takeshi was born on the 22nd of January in 33 AF (After Founding) to a pair of shinobi parents who both held chunin rank in Konoha. Despite the tense atmosphere that hung through the Elemental Nations, their happiness was boundless at his birth… even if during it one of them wasn't feeling quite so positive.

"Daisuke you idiot! You are not coming near me with that thing between your legs ever again!" yelled an angry female voice, noticeably in pain.

"Calm down Hiromi, it's almost over" tried to placate his wife the soon to be father.

"I CHANGED MY MIND YOU BLACK HAIRED BASTARD! COME HERE SO I CAN MAKE YOU FEELTHE PAIN THAT I AM-"

"One last push," came the calm and collected command from the doctor. The other two, used to taking orders, instantly stopped arguing and concentrated on the only important matter at hand.

Hiromi quickly took a calming breath even as the sweat could be seen glistening on her arms from the effort, for even as a kunoichi, giving birth was a great ordeal. She pulled her light brown hair away from her eyes and with a low grunt pushed again, hopefully for the last time. And it was over. The doctor seemed to know his job, as it was indeed the last great push and with it a smile graced her tired features for she knew her child, her little Takeshi was born.


3 months old

"Well everything seems to be in order, young Takashi seems to be still in a picture perfect health after his 3. month" said the nurse with a smile as he gave back Takeshi to his mother.

"Yes he is quite energetic! Just yesterday he crawled from his little playing mattress in the living room, all the way to the bathroom when I was cleaning the kitchen. Almost gave me a heart attack," told Hiromi.

"Wow he is developing quite fast then, usually even shinobi children only start that around their 5. month," told her the nurse in surprise.

"Well, well, my Shi-chan is a little genius already," laughed the young mother" but anyway, I have to get going Daisuke will be coming home from a month of border patrol, so I want cook something delicious to celebrate his return."

"Go on already, I will fill in the paperwork for your checkup. And don't forget to tell me if he continues to develop this quickly, so I can add in a few tests to document early developers. One of the doctors is trying to write a paper about it" said the nurse shooing Hiromi out the door.

"Of course, of course, see you in a month!" yelled Hiromi behind her shoulders.


8 months old

"Kaattan! Kaattan! Kaattan!"

"Daisuke! Come quick, Shi-chan is saying his first words!" exclamined Hiromi. A crash could be heard from upstairs as a sleepy shinobi tumbled down.

"I am here! I bet it was Tou-chan!" said the now wide awake husband.

"Say it again, Shi-chan for mommy."

"Kaattan!"

"No way! Say Tou-chan now. Tou-chan, Tou-chan. Come one!" said in a mock despair.

"Tottan!" responded Takeshi with a gummy smile while giggling at his parents' exuberant behavior.

"YESSS!" shouted Daisuke as he started dancing in joy. This led into another laughing fit from the part of Takeshi, finding the weird moves of the black haired shinobi extremely funny.

"Our little Shi-chan is growing up so fast he is already talking. Our little genius!" laughed Hiromi. It looked as if nothing could shatter their happiness.


3 years old

"Kacchan look I did, look I did," yelled Takeshi as he run into the kitchen on his small legs with a huge smile on his face. "The paper don't come off!"

"Wha-! Is that chakra? You sticked it to your hands?" said a shell-shocked Hirmi.

"Yes, Tocchan showed to do it before cuz it was windy"

"Oh dear! Shi-chan I am so proud of me, my little genius."

At the evening of that day the young parents could be found quietly talking with each other while Takeshi was already half-asleep in his room. It was obvious from their animated movements that they were arguing quite heavily about something.

"-that's why we should start training him! Peace is already over, now the question is when the war will start? Iwa is already on the move, they are pressuring Kusagakure and Amegakure both economically and militarily. Ame has Hanzo but Kusa? It is only a matter of time before they break and the less we speak about Tanigakure's military strength compared to Suna's the better. Enemies are closing in all around us and with Shi-chan's genius he will graduate in 2 years at most even if we don't teach him a thing!" Daisuke tried to persuade his wife with quiet determination shining through his dark brown eyes.

"I will not have him thrown into a battlefield before he even lived half a decade! Is that the life you want for our child? Having the bloody fields of war as his kindergarten?" yelled Hiromi rising her voice. Tears slowly started forming in the corner of her eyes as she already knew she was going to lose the argument. Every time they had one with her husband he always won.

"We already told Hokage-sama of him, he is already expecting Shi-chan in the Academy when he turns five. Such is the life of someone blessed with talent," said the shinobi with a morose tone "Let's give him the best chance possible to survive and who knows, the war may be already over by the time he becomes genin."

"I know, I know I just…" said Hiromi as she let out a sad sigh gathering her willpower, the kunoichi in her shining through "Tomorrow I will start his training."

This marked Takeshi's start on the long road known as the life of shinobi. First they started him on light stretches and small games that improved dexterity. He took to it like a duck to water, improving at an astounding rate both in the simple chakra control exercises and the beginner katas they taught him.

While Takeshi has enjoyed his training immensely, he soon begun to notice that his parents' faces started to be marred with stressed frowns, until one day his parents came into the living room with heavy expressions and sat him down in the living room. Tension rose in the air as the young parents gathered their thoughts.

"Son, you will be 4 in 3 months and while I know it is hard to understand at such an age: know that there is war. As we are ninjas, your mother and I are called by our duty to protect Konoha," said Daisuke in a strong voice "You will be living with one of the wartime child groups the other ninja parents leave their children in…"


4 years old

Like many other kids Takeshi couldn't really understand the true implications of the war until later it hit him in the chest in the most horrible way it could've. One day a grim faced chunin arrived to the childcare group where the clan less ninjas' children were looked after. He spoke a few soft words with the lead matron who then called Takeshi to them.

"Well little guy, I can't find a good way to day this," told him the shinobi in a subdued tone "Your parents are not coming back, they have fallen in the line of duty, protecting Konohagakure no Sato."

With but a single sentence the precious bubble of Takeshi's childhood was shattered in winds of the Second Shinobi World War. Most child would have cried for days in confusion or simply not understood what they heard or perhaps would have forgotten it. But in this situation his genius was more of a curse for even if he didn't fully understand it, he knew that he would never see his parents every again. And so it happened that Arakumo Takeshi became an orphan at the tender age of 4.

His parents' house was leased by the village to them, so with their death without any relatives the only place that was left for him to go was one of the many Konoha orphanages. The first few weeks flew by in a strange kind of numbness. It was as if he was seeing the world through and grey tinted glasses, however children perhaps because they are not nearly as set in their ways as the adults, have a remarkable ability to heal and so slowly he had begun to see the world with colors once more.


4 and a half years old

As he looked around himself months after he arrived at the orphanage Takeshi realized how the air was heavy with sadness as each week a few more orphans joined them. 'This is not right,' thought Takeshi 'even if they lost their moms and dads too, I don't want them to be so sad. Kaa-chan always said children should smile.' With determined steps he went up to one of the older boys sitting alone, Aido if he remembered correctly and mustered the biggest happiest smile he could.

"Hi! I am Takeshi! Wanna play ninja with me?" he told the boy in an exuberant voice.

"…I don't really want to" responded Aido in a soft tone "I am waiting for Kaa-chan to come and get me."

"Well while waiting we can play ninja! I will even let you be the Hokage and me the evil nuke nin!" told Takeshi.

"Sure, but remember the Hokage always wins" said the now interested brown haired boy.

Soon they were playing and the little garden once again rang from laughter as more and more kids joined in on the fun, momentarily forgetting their situation. Time passed and the war made the number of orphans swell, but the orphanage still remained a place of smiles and laughter, for Takeshi always made sure to smile, if not for himself then all the others so they would never forget how to be happy.

Yet all things must come to an end and so had his life at the orphanage after his fifth birthday. One day a jonin came and the matrons gathered some of the children including Takeshi. The youngest other than him was almost seven years old.

"Hi guys!" said the female jonin with a smile "I am Karemi Izumi, but you can call me Izumi-nee. I came here to tell that you guys have the chance to become ninja! You can ask me anything and I will answer you about all the fun stuff a ninja of Konoha does." Her smile was infectious and even Takeshi couldn't stop himself from giving her a small one.

"Ne ne Izumi-nee?! Will we learn cool jutsus? I wanna be like Hokage-sama and save princesses with super cool jutsus." exclamined one of the orphans.

"Of course, let me show you one," she answered as she made three hand seals in the blink of an eye, and suddenly where there was one kunoichi before, there were three. "And there are so many others like breathing fire, walking up on walls without hands. You will learn all those things and so much more," Izumi said while the clones disappeared in a cloud of smoke "you will also get your own apartment too! All you have to do is sign up to the Academy and start during the spring."

Perhaps it was cruel to manipulate them into become shinobi, perhaps not, yet as the war got worse and worse, the demand for manpower increased so Konoha tried to bolster her numbers with the easiest available population, the orphans who were the concern of none, simply a drain on the village founds. But could it be really called manipulation when almost every single one of them dreamed of becoming a ninja? Who knows… all that remained for certain is that with the arrival of Izumi, all 9 of the gathered kids signed up to become one of the many protectors of Konohagakure no Sato.

Author note:
Hi Gomdzsabbar here! Love it? Hate it? Just as always I welcome any kind of critic. I decided that the first chapter would be used to give Takeshi a little background by showing some interesting and important moments of his childhood and hinting a bit of his personality. While it is not a really fun and action filled chapter, I believe that it's important to get a rough picture of his background. Also before I get burned on a stake for putting a genius as the protagonist, I am NOT creating a Mary-sue story. I simply decided to try my hand at writing how a genius would realisticly live in the Elemental Nations. (poor guy doesn't even know what awaits him :( )

Anyway the next chapter will be a bit more interesting as there will be a bit more action in it so stay tuned :). Hopefully I will upload it soon as it is already finished, but in a dire need of proof reading (the woes of not having English as your 1. language).