Er...I tried my best to make this as coherent as possible. Not so sure if I succeeded. This is an explanation to a question by a reviewer on why the Uchiha clan only has 3 children. Lol. I didn't really notice the problem until then but ding! Idea! Hahaha.
Starts of with my POV but changes later. :3
There are a lot of things to learn from the Uchiha clan. Seriously, there are so many interesting things here. Being the acknowledged 'genius' helps in opening doors and I can learn all sorts of things.
Like history, and Uchiha culture, and calligraphy and making dango (omnomnom) and onigiri and somen…
Ehehehe. I'm kinda hungry right now.
But yeah, I'm learning a lot of things around here. Everyone I ask teaches me whatever I want because I'm Uchiha and I'm Uchiha Midori. Hah!
I don't have that much free time to study now though. The play dates are eating up at least an hour a day and as for training…
My mother isn't crazy.
She's batshit insane.
And demented and evil and all the other things parents aren't supposed to be.
You don't suppose she's the reason behind the 'Uchiha are evil' reputation, do you? I mean, she's definitely awful enough to perpetuate the rumour by the sheer force of her lone evilness. She is evil on an apocalyptic scale.
Well. Maybe not. Kyuubi probably wins in that area.
But still.
You remember when I said Fugaku-sama would push and push and push Itachi? Well that's what mom is doing to me.
Apparently, since I can take all the training she's been throwing at me, she'll keep throwing at me until I go nuts and murderize her, or blow myself up in desperation.
Seriously, it's like she doesn't even know the word moderation.
Since managing that Goukakyu at Itachi's bitchy cousin, she's been heaping C-rank after C-rank at me. She didn't even bother with the E or D-ranks, and now I'm training on Housenka, Ryuuka, and Endan (not to be confused with Karyu Endan), because Itachi doesn't know that and I have to one-up him. Guh.
I don't even know henge or kawarimi or bunshin. What is the world coming to? And why can't she start me on genjutsu if that's her specialty?
I'm kinda thankful that Dad gave me such a big chakra pool now. And increased fortitude. Because training all those jutsu…really wears me out.
And by 'wear me out' I mean, leave me passed out on the grass where my heartless mother leaves me to wake up alone or get woken up by frigging Shisui.
Freaking Shisui.
I think if there's one Uchiha I really, really hate, it's Shisui. He is so damned annoying and he keeps pestering me and asking me questions and trying to spy on my training. I don't know who put him up to it, but as long as I'm not the clan heir, my training is none of anyone but my direct family's business. If I find out who's been asking questions…
My Goukakyu is as big as a basketball now. I think a headshot would look pretty nice, don't you think?
Bloodthirst? Ehehehehe, nope. Silly Billy, of course burns don't cause bleeding! The wound is cauterized on impact!
Die? Hah! As if any shinobi would die from a fireball to the head. Goukakyu can't make flames that hot. At best, they'd get second-degree burns. Besides, if the person's got Sharingan, I'm pretty sure they'd react fast enough.
And now you've taken all the fun out of it. Hmph. Maybe a Hosenka will be fast enough so they can't dodge.
I'm gonna go train on my wire technique now—now that's fun training! Itachi's coming over again later and I wanna see if I remember the Ninja databook correctly and it's true that he likes to eat rabbit food instead of a proper manly meal.
xXXx
The Uchiha clan had suffered massive losses in the Third Shinobi World War, having been a favourite to send to the frontlines so as to steal as many of the enemy's jutsu as possible. It was their contribution that gave Konoha a great advantage over the other Shinobi Villages. In return, they were targeted by both people seeking revenge and coveting their abilities.
To make matters worse, they were further hit by the kyuubi's attack before they could recover.
In the aftermath, the village had been low on manpower, and thus every able-bodied shinobi was kept busy running missions and helping in the rebuilding. It was only in the last year that things had finally settled down enough for other plans.
Plans like replenishing the clan's numbers.
One of the greatest losses of the Uchiha clan to the kyuubi attack was the entirety of their next generation with the exception of Itachi, Midori and Sasuke. Being a shinobi lineage, the Uchiha boasted enhanced sight, hearing and reflex, as well as a keen chakra sense.
It was the last that proved to be their undoing.
All the pregnant Uchiha women miscarried, some of them dying from the sudden shock. Children below the age of eight activated their Sharingan and died, unable to cope with the stress it placed on their minds. Many of the below-tens suffered the same fate, the luckier ones having it forcibly sealed away by the elders or their own subconscious minds.
Many of the rest of the shinobi clans lost children too, particularly newborns or unborn fetuses. Only kunoichi with strong chakra managed to keep their babies and out of the newborns, only a few managed to survive. The Aburame had been particularly worried when their heir collapsed from the shock to his newly received hive.
However, the losses of the other clans could not be compared to the Uchiha.
Out of all the children, Itachi was the only one who should have survived. Sasuke, on a stroke of luck, had a protective seal on his cot that cancelled out the kyuubi's influence. It was safe to say that he was the only Uchiha who had not been affected by the biju's malicious chakra.
Midori, on the other hand, was the child who should have died like the rest of the children.
She'd been left alone in her cot, having fallen asleep abruptly as she was prone to do. When the rest of the children began screaming, sparking a similar reaction in their mothers who found them, Uchiha Miyuki had kicked down her daughter's bedroom door only to find her sound asleep.
It was inconceivable.
It was inconceivable because one year old Uchiha Midori should definitely have awakened her sharingan and, at her young age, been unable to bear the strain.
What a lot of people got wrong was that the Sharingan was not the hit-and-miss gene that the Hyuuga claimed it to be. For the Hyuuga, whose kekkai genkai was immediately apparent and safe to use at birth, the intricacies of the Sharingan were completely lost on them. Despite being both doujutsu, the Sharingan was very different from the Byakugan.
In comparison to the Sharingan, the Byakugan was truer to the pure interpretation of 'doujutsu'. All of its abilities dealt with sight: 360o vision, telescopic vision, increased range of sight, seeing through objects, seeing chakra in general, seeing the opponent's chakra flow and network.
The Sharingan, on the other hand, provided abilities that were related to sight, but were a step up from merely improving it.
The first part, the 'Eye of Insight', allowed the user to see their opponent's chakra flow and body language and read them. This could be as simple as reading lips or making an educated guess of the opponent's next attack to allowing the user to memorize and recreate the other's jutsu.
The second part, the 'Eye of Hypnotism', allowed the user to implant suggestions of actions and thoughts into an opponent's mind. This was the ability that perpetuated the rumour of the Uchiha being able to see the future.
Unfortunately, in order to use these abilities, one had to be able to withstand the sudden influx of information that the Sharingan provided. Much like Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, the Sharingan gathered an enormous amount of information which was then transmitted to the brain extremely quickly. However, unlike the aforementioned jutsu, the information is gathered and received at a constant rate until it is deactivated.
If the user's mind was not matured enough, or trained to withstand the shock, they would collapse under the barrage.
This would have been easily solved if the Sharingan were to be deactivated. However, with the user catatonic, there was nothing that could be done. While the Sharingan would be naturally triggered by being placed under high stress, it had to be consciously deactivated unless the situation was resolved. The children, sensing the threat of the kyuubi, had become trapped in a feedback loop of fear and Sharingan overload.
It was the first time the Uchiha realized the drawbacks of their doujutsu. Never before had the Sharingan been activated before the user was ready.
Their famed kekkai genkai, which gave them an incredible advantage over their enemies, had become their downfall.
This was why Midori was called a 'Miracle Child' despite also being a 'defect'. The only answer to her survival must be that she had not inherited the Sharingan, but how could that be so?
And now she was the only female child in the clan, until it had recovered from both the Third Shinobi War and the kyuubi attack enough to reproduce again.
And what a strange child she was.
Normally, an Uchiha child was reserved and well-mannered, having the upbringing befitting an elite of Konoha. On occasion, children like Uchiha Obito and Shisui were produced, who were rambunctious and loud and more akin to Senju children than Uchiha.
(It was those that reminded the elders of their line's roots)
Unfortunately, they had never conceived of a child who was well-mannered at times, and violently opposed the next. They were unsure if this, perhaps, was the influence of the kyuubi, this bipolar personality, but the medic-nin had assured them that it was not so.
The strangest part was how the girl seemed to understand the things happening around her. At the age of two, Miyuki had reported her daughter's astounding feat of control in molding her chakra after having sensed her mother's.
It was preposterous. It was ridiculous.
Children at two did not have the mental acuity to mold chakra consciously. Children at two should not even have the ability to differentiate between their chakra and the rest of their body.
The custom of taking away a toddler's senses in order to cultivate their chakra sense had been in the clan for generations, but this was the first time one had begun the next stage of their development within a year of the practice!
It was beyond prodigious. It smacked of the supernatural.
But still, Uchiha Fugaku went ahead with the engagement of the girl to his eldest. Midori may not have the Sharingan, but there was no doubt that she had a strong inheritance. Furthermore, until new babies were born, she remained the only female Uchiha who was younger than Itachi. It was always preferred that wives were younger, for it allowed more years for children.
Besides, Fugaku was concerned for his son. The Uchiha had produced its fair share of genii in its illustrious history and, while not expert in bringing them up, was definitely familiar with how delicate one could be. Itachi had been put under intense pressure since birth due to circumstances out of his control and he had risen to the occasion admirably. Unfortunately, this seemed to give the elders the impression that he could take on more of the responsibilities as both heir and prized prodigy.
So far, Itachi was still holding up, but even Fugaku knew that it was a heavy burden to place on such young shoulders. He hoped that, with the engagement, the elders would be appeased for some time until he was older.
In addition, Midori was another genius. One that was rapidly catching up with Itachi. One that, on the other hand, had 'proven' to the elders that she could not, no, would not be pressured into anything she was opposed to. Any attempt to involve her in clan politics deeper than 'introducing' her to cousins, would result in weapons and jutsus flying and a screaming protest.
(Privately, Fugaku had to admit that he wished he could do the same, but alas, it was not meant to be.)
Frankly, the elders were at a loss as to how to deal with this strange new version of a genius. They could not cajole her, they could not bribe her, and they could not order her. She trained diligently under her mother with an intensity that was to be admired and eagerly studied whatever subjects that had captured her interest…but could not be made to sit still at formal dinners or attend parties or 'train together' with her cousins.
The one time they had threatened to withhold lessons from her was the last time they tried.
She had thrown kunai at them, then shuriken, then whatever else was available on the ground. (Fugaku was rethinking the merits of teaching children weapon-throwing so early) And then the next day, her bed was found empty.
A frantic search organized by the elders found her in one of the training fields at the opposite end of the village, practicing her wire techniques. Went brought back, she had borne the lecture with a silent but simmering fire to the end but then announced that if they were going to waste her time keeping her 'on her knees, sipping tea and making nice with a mob of soul-sucking leeches', she would rather stop her lessons altogether. And then she let loose a blistering string of curses.
The unintentional (or perhaps intentional) innuendo had most of the elders choking on the aforementioned tea, while the rest of the rather colourful description of what she would do to said 'soul-sucking leeches' had everybody else turning green. The girl had a rather…creative mind.
Her vehemence astounded the council and when asked, the short answer she gave was proof that she was still a child.
"I. Don't. Want. To."
One of the elders protested that she should 'play' with her cousins more. He was also the one who proposed engaging her to his sixteen-year-old grandson.
Sometimes Fugaku despaired of his clan.
Midori had rolled her eyes and continued, "This is stupid. Why can't you just let me learn what I want and stop getting in my way? I'm doing what you want by training, aren't I?"
It was indeed the main thing the council wanted from the girl, and so they 'deliberated' amongst themselves and came to the 'agreement' that it was best to leave her to her learning until she was older and 'matured enough' to take on other 'responsibilities'.
Fugaku scoffed.
Actually, Mikoto, who was usually silent during such discussions as the gentle and demure Clan Head's wife, had had to muffle a snort.
The council was comprised of distinguished individuals, all jounin and thus intelligent and informed people. Unfortunately, it seemed that when brought together, they turned into a group of…not so intelligent people.
It was indeed true that a 'person' was smart, but 'people' were…otherwise.
So it was thus that Midori showed herself to be a person 'incapable of appreciating the benefits of subtlety' (she cuts through our bullshit) and 'having a fragile and unstable psyche' (will react with violence and swearing when pressed) and as such, was 'not to be pressured until such a time as she is able to withstand such stress' (we will try again in a few years' time).
Until Fugaku swooped in and seized the opportunity to steal her from under their noses of course.
Getting Miyuki to agree to the engagement was easy enough. Itachi was Clan Heir, Midori was Fourth Branch Heir. It was the best offer she could get.
Of course, having her mother's tacit approval made the agreement officially accepted. Which was technically all that was required for the engagement to go through. But Miyuki was still a mother, and she had agreed on condition that her daughter didn't violently oppose it.
'Violently oppose' was better than 'oppose', he figured. And so he enacted his cunning plan to do away with the 'violent'.
First of all, he had Miyuki inform the girl of the engagement (No way was he putting himself in the line of fire), making sure to stress the point that there he was the only boy close to her age. However, he asked her to leave out the condition and observe from the sidelines. Thankfully, Midori hadn't blown her top there and then (he had observed that she could be reasoned with) and she had grudgingly agreed to get better acquainted with Itachi.
The second phase was to get her to interact with Sasuke.
It was useful having the only children around her age in their family. True to his expectations, she adored the younger boy. (Who didn't adore Sasuke?) Sending Itachi out with Sasuke was actually a good way to get both of them to cooperate with the 'play dates'.
And finally, getting them to train together, which was the unofficial sign of a confirmed engagement.
It was easy to get her to agree to train with Itachi. He was around her age and the famed prodigy of the clan. She was downright eager to train with him.
(Itachi not so. When he returned on the first day, he complained that she had nearly burnt the ends of his hair. Frankly, Fugaku was wondering when his son would adopt a less girly hairstyle.)
Thus, his plan complete, Fugaku was able to sit back and admire the stunned looks on the council's face when Miyuki and his wife started planning family outings.
Victory was indeed sweet.
And that's the evil plan behind the engagement. Huehuehue. *Rubs hands* Damn, Fugaku, you're so sly.
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, this story is built on crack...somewhat. So there will be parts of crack but that's where the fun is, no? Hahaha.
Memory25
PS
I suspect there are confusing elements or maybe even downright contradictory ones. (I typed this half asleep) So if you would point them out, it'd be helpful!
PPS
Okay, so Hinata was born after the kyuubi attack. Q.Q So I had to change her to Shino. But in my brain it's still part of the reason why she's so timid.