A/N: This is so unbetaed man. Forgive me.

A Brave New World

"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." - Rabindranath Tagore

03. A Stranger in a Strange Land

Najmahrian summers were as hot as they were humid and Sakura was right in the thick of it living in the capital. She didn't mind so much, though her father was another matter entirely. Kenji hadn't grown up in Hadar as his daughter had and so was still quite unused to the country's sticky climate. Usually Sakura's father just hid himself away in their musty bookshop until winter came around again.

Sakura loved Hadar.

The Najmahrian capital city lay in the heart of the island kingdom, surrounded by wet jungle and towering mountains. At night, when her father closed up his shop, Sakura would wander with Nicodemus through the old winding streets of the city, streets so old she could see wagon-tracks borne into the cobblestones. Ancient temples lined the paths alongside apartment buildings and lush gardens, a queer mishmash of old and new. Sometimes Sakura would visit the market, just down the street from her house, just to catch the smells of spices and the hear the mixed chattering of Najmahrian and the Common Tongue and smatterings of completely new languages all together.

Mostly though, she stayed in her father's shop and read.

All she knew of the world came from her books. And Sakura wanted to know everything. From dusty tomes on Najmahrian history to crisp new medical texts to fantastic tales from distant lands, Sakura and Nicodemus consumed them all with the voraciousness of the starved. Over the years Kenji only continued to feed his daughter's vast appetite for knowledge, despite the fact that it was odd for a girl-child to be so learned in Najmah, let alone know how to read at all.

Sakura may have worn the customary headscarf as all Najmahrian women did and spoke their language as fluently as one who had been born there, but she was not a Najmahrian. Her pale skin and pink hair were evidence enough of that fact. But Sakura cared little for what other's thought she should be. She had no mother to emulate, only the mournful rememberings from her sorrowful father. 'Saki' and 'Konoha' was nothing but words to her. Still, she often wondered what her life would've been like if she's grown amongst her father's people. Amongst shinobi, those almost mythical warriors from her books, capable of near impossible fetes.

There were no shinobi in Najmah though. Their's was a kingdom built on wealth and trade, far from the squabbling mainland. The King of Najmah had no need of shinobi. He had an army of course, but it saw little use, his country instead preferring to settle its disputes peacefully (along with the promise of gold and trade sanctions of course). And so Sakura settled for reading about her father's mysterious people from her books.

But then, one day, Sakura met one.


Sakura had never been a particularly religious girl. Her books and her father's distinctly atheistic leanings left her suspicious of most religious ideologies. Still, she and her daemon loved Hadar's grand temples and colorful holidays. And so it was on one such holiday, a day devoted to the worship of the local trickster god which encouraged rowdy behavior and copious amounts of alcohol, that Sakura found herself climbing the steps to one of the local temples. Unlike its more important cousins, this temple stood on a high hill at the edge of the city, hidden from sight by the green foliage of the jungle. It was a quiet and peaceful place and therefore Sakura's favorite.

Nicodemus flew ahead of her as a white starling and she struggled to keep up even as her skirts tangled with her feet. She was so caught up with keeping her skirts free of her legs in fact, that she almost didn't notice Nicodemus's chirped warning.

Almost.

A man stood several stairs up from her. He was tall and dark-haired and his strange clothing staunchly marked him as a foreigner. His panther daemon stood close to his side, eyeing Sakura with fierce yellow eyes.

"I am sorry," the stranger said in thickly accented Najmahrian. "I assumed everyone was down in the streets for the festival."

"They are," Sakura replied, Najmahrian flowing from her lips far more gracefully. Nicodemus changed into a spider monkey and swung onto her shoulder.

"But you are not?" the man assessed her with his dark eyes, a curious tilt to his head.

"No," Sakura shook her head. And then, before she could stop herself, she blurted, "You're not a Najmahrian."

The man face didn't alter and yet for some reason Sakura though he looked amused. "Neither are you."

Sakura scoffed. "Of course I am!" Nicodemus's fur fluffed in an irritated fashion.

"As you say," the man nodded.

"Well your Najmahrian is terrible!" Sakura snapped childishly.

The man laughed. "Yes, I imagine it is," he replied in the Common Tongue. Sakura suddenly felt very chastened though she couldn't say why.

"I'm sorry," she said, switching to her father's native tongue.

"Ah," the man smiled, impressed. "And here I thought you were a Najmahrian? And yet you speak the Common Tongue?"

"My father taught me," Sakura replied in way of explanation.

"And who is he?"

"Kenji Haruno, of Konoha!" Sakura boasted happily.

The man's eyes flashed with interest and his daemon took a step forward…but then her ears twitched and she swung her head around to stare off into the jungle. The man glanced off in the same direction and than turned back to Sakura.

"Well it was pleasure meeting you, daughter of Kenji Haruno," he said quickly before he slipped past her gracefully, moving down the steep steps hurriedly. His daemon followed like a wraith-like shadow and Sakura and Nicodemus watched them both go until they disappeared behind the foliage.

"What a strange man," Sakura declared, resuming her climb up the temple steps.

"And dangerous," agreed Nicodemus, clinging to her headscarf. "Did you see his daemon?"

"Of course I saw his daemon!" She glanced behind her again, as if the black panther daemon were still standing just behind her.

"Only warriors have great cats as daemons," Nicodemus reminded her, strangely quiet. He was right of course. Only savage, powerful people's daemons settled as big cats or wolves or raptors and the like. Her father, ever a peaceful, learned man had a plain, ordinary duck for a daemon. She was told her mother's had been a dove, before she'd been killed. Sakura wondered what a man with such a ferocious daemon was doing in such a peaceful city.

Later, when she had reached the top of the hill and stood before the temple, Sakura realized that she'd never learned the strange man's name.


A/N: I don't think I quite caught Itachi's personality as well as I would've liked in this chapter. My excuse is that this is an AU and so he's turned out differently than if he'd murdered his family and joined a criminal organization. Now what is he doing in Sakura's hometown? There is an answer to that but it shall be discussed in greater detail elsewhere. Anyway, if you've got any thoughts, concerns, or just plain want to tell me how much you hate this story (though please give me real reasons and not just 'I hate you, you suck'), please let me know!

Character's ages and daemons:

Kenji (38) - Arihel (duck)

Saki (deceased) - Symeon (dove)

Sakura (12) - Nicodemus (unsettled)