Journey To The Past
The six-year-old ravenette was staring at her nii-san with awe. He was standing on top of a huge and beautiful hawk. While Akira had both heard and read about summoning's, this was the first one that she had ever seen.
"Really? You'll let me sign your Hawk Contract?" Akira asked Shisui in shock.
"Yeah! Then you'll be almost as cool as I am!" Shisui bragged and jumped down from the hawk with the scroll that had been tied to the neck of the hawk. "You can go back now, Kaze."
The hawk disappeared in a large cloud of smoke, leaving only Shisui, Akira and the large scroll. Shisui opened the scroll dramatically and led Akira over to the spot where she was to sign her name.
"Bite your thumb and write your name in the blood. You'll need to use your real last name though, unfortunately by the clan laws, your name is Uchiha Akira." Shisui explained, ignoring the flinch from the younger girl as he pronounced her real name. "Then spread the blood to all of your fingertips and mark the spot under your name."
"Like this?" Akira asked and followed his instructions carefully.
"Exactly! Now the hand seals are…-" he started explaining only to be interrupted by Akira doing them perfectly, having already copied him when he summoned his hawk.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" she cried out and slammed her still bleeding hand onto the ground. In a poof of smoke, another hawk appeared. This one much smaller than the one Shisui had summoned previously.
"Seriously? First try? What's the deal with you and Itachi?" Shisui moaned and face palmed. "The two of you are both exceptional and soon I'll have nothing more to teach you…"
"Nii-san, you're already a Jonin… You can't really complain about Itachi and I being smart when you graduated at 8." Akira stated and crossed her arms childishly. "Besides, I can't help it if I'm awesome! That's just who I am!"
"Cheeky little brat…"
Both Itachi and Akira sat in front of their teacher with their expression completely empty of emotions. Being told at seven that they were graduating was not how they expected their day to go. On one hand, it was great that they finally got to start their real ninja carrier, on the other hand Akira was pissed that this meant their last test scores would be the one determining their places in the graduating class and Itachi had beaten Akira with half a point.
"I won." Itachi stated once they were allowed to leave. "Regretting slacking off in your kenjutsu test now?"
"Shut up, Tachi, I still won our last spar." Akira shot back with a glare. "And we still beat Shisui-nii-san. He was eight when he graduated, so that's something."
"That'll only make him go into another rant of how exceptional we are and how he feels like he has nothing left to teach us when he's the nii-san out of us." Itachi commented with a smirk.
"Oh Kami, that's true." Akira realized with a frown. "He's a bit weird."
Akira was panting heavily while having her gaze fixed at Itachi. The two eight-year-olds were in yet another of their spars. The current score in their rivalry was 34-35 with Itachi leading, and Akira was determined to catch up today. Unfortunately, that was far from an easy task. The two were practically evenly matched as ninja, with Akira being better at kenjutsu and having slightly stronger skills with genjutsu and Itachi being the better at taijutsu and bukijutsu in general. Akira was slightly faster, but with Itachi's strong Sharingan that didn't really help her much. No, the only way one of them could defeat the other, was by tricking the other. It was 50 to 50 which one of them won. But Akira had decided to win this match. Suddenly she got an idea. It was one more thing she was better than Itachi at, and that was pranking. 'That's perfect, if I can get behind him and use my paint once he turns around, I'll get rid off his eyes for the two seconds I need.' Akira realized, but kept her expression neutral. 'Time to see if my Shunshin is working.'
Akira quickly pulled out another bunch of Shuriken and Kunai, Itachi mirroring her action perfectly. Akira threw hers first and used the time Itachi needed to throw his weapons to use the Shunshin and appear half a meter behind him. Just as she'd predicted, the boy spun around with a Kunai ready only to be hit in the face with orange paint. Akira used the second with him being distracted to get her Kunai to his neck, effectively winning the match.
"I believe this one goes to me?" Akira said with a happy smile.
"Yes… Then we're tied again." Itachi stated and wiped the paint away from his eyes. "You got your Shunshin perfected, I see."
"Not yet, it's still far to slow, and I can't do more than two consecutively." Akira stated and crossed her arms in slight frustration.
"You'll get there." Itachi said with a smirk. Akira glared at him; he was obviously enjoying her difficulties.
"How are your Raven Clones coming along?" Akira asked with a raised eyebrow.
"When is your team leaving for your next mission?" Itachi quickly changed the subject earning a laugh from Akira.
Akira had considered the last two days very frustrating. Itachi had been recruited to the ANBU, making their rivalry score equal again at 47-47. Obviously, he was a more obvious choice for the organization, with his constant bastardly attitude. But still, Akira hated it when he beat her to anything.
"Nakamaru Akira. Our Commander wants to speak with you." A voice called from the ally to her left and the eleven-year-old spun around to see who was talking. The male was wearing a boar mask, covering his face.
"Lead the way." Akira said emotionlessly. 'Hah, it took me two days, Tachi. They couldn't ignore my awesomeness.' She mentally cheered while keeping her expression neutral and hurried after the ANBU. Shisui had not been happy when Akira returned with an ANBU uniform and a fox mask. Akira on the other hand had told him straight up that he joined ANBU at the same age as she did. That shut him up nicely.
After only a few weeks in ANBU, Akira had proven herself perfectly capable of completing missions both with and without a team. Her skills in genjutsu being almost unrivalled and therefore the best in all of ANBU and her kenjutsu being the third strongest in all of ANBU. It was therefore no surprise that she was promoted to ANBU Captain at the mere age of thirteen. Captain Fox, Second-in-Command Tanuki and Team Chi quickly proved to be an excellent combination. Akira had skipped happily into the normal meeting place of Shisui, Itachi and her after receiving her promotion and smiled so brightly both boys had wondered whether she and her sensei had been on another pranking spree.
"Guess what, Tachi!" Akira said in a sing-song tone as she approached the two males. Itachi merely raised his eyebrow in question, not saying a word. "I just got promoted to Captain."
"Oh… Then the score is 61-60." Itachi realized that Akira was once again in the lead.
"Wait really? Who thought that was a good idea?" Shisui snorted and ruffled Akira's hair. "Proud of you, imouto."
"Run." Akira hissed at him. Both insulting her and ruffling her hair? That meant death. Shisui took her suggestion seriously and quickly started using his Shunshin to get away from the angry teen.
"He's going to end up dressed as a clown, isn't he?" Itachi asked rhetorically as he saw Akira pull out her feared pranking scroll. "He's a bit stupid at times."
With all of her friends being on missions, Akira only being in the village because of a twisted ankle, the thirteen-year-old had taken to walk through the woods. Her ankle was almost healed, and she mostly stayed back to be on the safe side, so she had no problem going on a walk. It was lucky she did too, she realized once she noticed a seven-year-old Sasuke all alone in the woods. The young Uchiha was working on his Shuriken Jutsu, and by the looks of it; failing.
"Want any help, Sasu-chan?" Akira asked, genuinely worried that he would end up hurting himself with how horrible his stance was. Sasuke jumped in shock and turned around to see her.
"Kira-nee-chan, aren't you on a mission?" Sasuke asked her, pouting slightly at the work 'mission'.
"No, I'm having the day off. Want me to help you a bit?" Akira once again offered the younger boy.
"You will? Really? Nii-san always tells me that he'll help me, but then he just pokes my forehead and leaves." Sasuke complained about his brother and Akira almost cooed at how adorable he looked.
"Nee-chan will help you, and then you can impress Tachi when he returned." Akira smiled and ruffled his hair affectionately. "Here, let me help you with your stance first."
Akira patiently helped him with his stance before letting him try throwing the Shuriken again. This time all of them hit the target, one of the five even hitting the centre circle.
"Did you see that?" Sasuke called out excitedly.
"You did great, Sasu-chan!" Akira cheered for him and handed him five more Shuriken. "Want to try again? If you adjust your hands slightly more upward, you might hit the centre circle with all of them."
Sasuke tried to do it exactly as Akira explained, and jumped in happiness when all but one of his Shuriken hit the centre circle.
Akira was frowning while listening to Shisui explaining his difficulties of finding allies. It was essential that they found allies if they wanted to have any chance at all to stop the Coup without resorting to plan B and C, plan B being Shisui using his Mangekyo and plan C being getting rid off the instigators. We were doing everything we could to avoid plan C though.
"Nii-san!" the childish voice of Uchiha Sasuke yelled loudly as the young boy came running out of the woods as fast as his small legs could carry him. "Nii-san!"
"Sorry, guys…" Itachi muttered and poked Sasuke's forehead the second the young boy was in front of him. "What is it, Sasuke?"
"Kaa-san told me to get you! It's dinner!" Sasuke exclaimed excitedly, clearly happy to see his older brother. "Hey, what were you three talking about?"
That earned him a very awkward silence as all three of us looked at each other. Shisui snapped out of it the quickest and quickly crouched down next to Sasuke and hung his arm around his shoulder and smiled playfully.
"We were discussing which one of us would win in a fight. I keep telling them that I'm the best, but they just won't believe me." Shisui explained and winked up at us. "You believe me, right Sasuke?"
"No way!" Sasuke protested and looked away from Shisui in perfect arrogant-Uchiha-style. "My nii-san would beat you any day!"
"But I'm older than Itachi, isn't it obvious that I'm the stronger Shinobi?" Shisui tried to argue, Sasuke though, looked at him as though he was a moron.
"That's not necessarily true! The only one who can beat my nii-san is Kira-nee-chan!" Sasuke insisted and smiled brightly at me.
"That's right, Sasu-chan! The ever-awesome Nakamaru Akira beats everyone!" Akira smirked in victory and gave Sasuke a high-five.
"Akira… Did you just steal my brother?" Itachi asked in slight amusement.
"I believe that earns me one point. The score is now 79-79." Akira stated looking at the other two boys smugly.
Akira observed Sasuke going through his taijutsu forms. He was doing them flawlessly, albeit a bit slow and very predictable. The genin had already proven himself a very capable individual for his age and rank, though he still had a long way to go to catch up with Itachi and Akira.
"You might want to change it up a bit, your attacks are very easy to read, even without the Sharingan. If you want to go up against Itachi, you'll need to be unpredictable." I made my presence known. Sasuke, to his credit, barely reacted.
"Help me then." Sasuke demanded, his voice slightly warmer than usual. "Please."
"I can't help you much with taijutsu. But there's one thing I've wanted to teach you for a while now. My nii-san had me sign his Summoning Contract and I feel it's only fair I let you sign it as well. After all, I consider you my otouto." Akira smiled softly at Sasuke. The boy's expression warming up ever-so-slightly. "Activate your Sharingan and watch me, okay?"
Sasuke followed her instructions and waited as Akira summoned Kaze, the guardian of the Hawk Summoning Contract. The eighteen-year-old quickly got the contract and opened it up.
"Now bite your thumb and sign. Then leave your finger-marks with blood afterwards." Akira explained and Sasuke quickly did as she told. "Now use what your Sharingan saw to copy me."
Sasuke quickly ran through the seals and slammed his hand to the ground and out of a poof of smoke, a small hawk appeared.
"Hn. Why is it so small?" Sasuke asked, looking a bit frustrated that he wasn't able to summon a big hawk like Akira had done previously.
"You'll need to use the same chakra amount of the hawk you're trying to summon." Akira told him and smirked at his expression. "When you become a bit more awesome, you'll be able so summon a big one. But for now, you did great for someone trying it for the first time."
Akira smiled at him proudly as he started going trough the seals to try again. 'Tachi, he's growing strong.'