Itsumade, Itsumade.
She's born a nobody — one more civilian orphan, funneled through the academy, one more piece on the board. Her name is Itsumade. She has dark brown hair with just enough curl to give it a perpetually messy look. Her face is plain.
A quiet child is a blessing to the orphanage. There are very few who remember her when she graduates.
By the end of the war, there will be none at all.
The second shinobi war is on, and clanless shinobi are a dime a dozen — shields for the precious, irreplaceable clan children. Itsumade, eight years old, is placed on a team with an Aburame and an Uchiha. Their Jounin sensei has dark circles under his eyes and carries the faint smell of blood with him. His mouth pulls down at the sight of his new soldiers.
"Well. We'll work on it." He says, not specifying what 'it' is.
He never looks twice at Itsumade.
Itsumade's team is not on the Jounin track. They are not expected to be anything other than part of the numbers game. He's not a good joinin. Wartime promotion lowers standards quite a bit.
Contrary to Itsumade's memories, there is no genin test in wartime. The only criterion is this: Will you survive your initial service?
Itsumade passes. The rest of her team does not.
They last for almost three weeks. Then comes a disastrous courier mission, ambushed by Iwa Ninja. The jounin dies first. Itsumade witnesses, the color of his guts against the muddy soil is far too bright.
The Aburame is swallowed into the earth and crushed.
The Uchiha loses his legs at the knees to a chakra blade. His eyes are pinwheel bright and spinning. Itsumade drags him back to Konoha, nursing her broken arm. When his clan comes to collect, he flinches back from the look in their eyes. He glances at her with, something like fear, like pleading. His clansmen do not look at her at all.
(Useless shinobi do not deserve the Sharingan. They take him with ungentle hands.
Itsumade will never see him again.
It would've been kinder to leave him among their team, bleeding out in the dirt.)
Itsumade, sitting in the reassignment office with her sensei's blood still warm on her face, knows there is nothing she can do for him. She turns away.
A tried chunin rubs his face. "You don't have anyone at all who can take you on?"
"No, Chunin-san," Itsumade says, and nothing else. Her hands are folded neatly on her lap. The paperwork stacks are higher than she is tall.
The chunin is not interested in her. She is not smart enough to be labeled a genius, not valuable enough to balance out her civilian birth, not talented enough to get special treatment. She's just another headache.
"Did your jounin at least teach you water walking before he croaked?" He asks. He is another clan child, and his milk-white eyes look right through her.
"I can water walk, Chunin-san." She says. It's not a lie. She can. She didn't learn it from her Jounin, though.
"At least there's that." The chunin shuffles his papers. "Alright, I know where to put you. We don't have the resources to saddle another jounin with a student, so you'll be assigned to a squad of chunin. You have three hours to visit the hospital and gather your things."
What he means: You are only a genin. He means: You didn't have the decency to die and spare me the trouble of figuring out what to do with you.
He means: I am busy and you are inconveniencing me. This is worth your life.
Itsumade says nothing. Neither do any of the other shinobi in the room.
She is assigned to the front lines, to run messages. She will likely die, like ninety percent of the clanless genin.
She is seven years old.
Itsumade learns: She is not even worth malicious cruelty. It's sheer indifference that seals her fate. This Hyuuga doesn't care if she lives or dies, so long as she is not his problem anymore.
There is no point in protesting — Itsumade packs what she can carry and leaves in the morning with a small contingent of replacement chunnin.
It will be ten years before she sets foot in Konoha again.
War is messy; not just the blood, not just the fighting, but the sheer unrelenting grime that comes with being too tired or far away from water to keep clean. The camps smell like old sweat and pain, the shinobi smell like stress and worry.
Itsumade takes to wearing a mask; simple black cloth pulled up over her mouth. It rarely helps, but it keeps blood out of her mouth at the very least.
The bloodline kids on the front are all twelve or older. She is by far the youngest. The clans look at her and wonder what she did wrong, to be assigned out here. The clanless shinobi look at her with grim acceptance.
(They already know what she did.
Existed.)
"What did you do to get assigned to the front?" One Inuzuka asks, carding a hand through his ninken's fur. His name is Juro, and his ninken is Ran. He misses home and never shuts up. "You ain't some genius, that's for damn sure."
Itsumade doesn't look up from attempting to bandage her leg with one good hand. The other is broken. Again. She barely feels the pain anymore. "Wrong bloodline."
"Huh."
"I was assigned out by a Hyuuga."
Juro snorts. "Say no more. Hyuugas' are all bastards."
He doesn't offer to help with her bandages, and Itsumade doesn't ask.
(Healing is reserved for important shinobi. Leaders. Bloodlines. Clan heirs. None left over for Itsumade, who's only a genin and not even a talented one at that. Perhaps if Itsumade had a Jounin, he'd be able to teach her a few chakra healing tips that shinobi use.
Probably not, but it's nice to pretend sometimes.)
"Want to hear something funny, kid?" one of the clanless shinobi asks, face white with pain. He is dying and Itsumade doesn't know his name, knows nothing about him except he caught a chakra blade to the gut. Itsumade of his blood under her hands while she tries to keep him from bleeding out because there are no healers with this squad.
She doesn't ask. Doesn't waste good air on a dying man.
"Kohona loyalty," The man says with a chocked laugh. He was cut by wind chakra. Kohona was fighting against Iwa. Not a lot of wind-natured shinobi over man's breath rattles - and stops.
The air is still.
Itsumade slowly takes her hands away and wipes them on her uniform. She rolls to her knees in a crouch over the man. She closes his brown eyes.
"It was a pretty good joke," She says to the corpse.
Then she sighs and goes to search his pockets. Wasn't like he needed his kunai anymore.
Itsumade learns: There is no one out there who will help you.
So she helps herself.
This one is pretty interesting. I might expand this in the future. she's probably going to end up with Orochimaru. this isn't where i'd start the story if i was going to write out the whole thing.
