WARNING: Brief mentions of necrophilia. It's purely mentioned in conversation, no actual action involved, but trigger warning anyway. (For the record, I'll never fully portray ANYTHING sexual, not even "vanilla" smut. Sex is just not my cup of tea.)

Chapter 5

At eight, Sute was easily one of the younger people on the front lines, and definitely the youngest member of her platoon.

Sute did not know how typical her experience was for Mist genin, but she had no formal team with a jounin sensei and a couple of other genin like canon Konoha. Instead she got slotted into one of the smaller platoons which had been tied to the Seven Swordsmen as support, and sent straight to the front lines. The closest thing she got to a regular sensei was probably a blue-haired guy with an eyepatch named Ao.

Ao was gruffer than some of their comrades, and he was a classic example of the Bloody Mist mindset, often complaining about coddling children too much. He and Sute got along well enough though because of their shared knowledge of human anatomy. After acknowledging she had a pretty good understanding of vital points (and also some less than vital but still freaking painful), he decided to teach her to throw senbon.

"This is simple," he told her gruffly. "This is one of the most basic weapons to use, and you have the anatomical knowledge to back it up. So why are you failing?" The training dummy he'd set up had been littered with senbon, but they had largely missed the marked vital points. And in some cases, the dummy in general. She did manage to skewer a bird though, purely on luck, so at least they'd get an actual dinner out of it.

"They're too light," Sute mumbled, her cheeks puffing out as she crossed her arms. "Not my fault I want to throw them like knives." Ao scoffed, crossing his arms with a stern frown.

"Don't use that excuse. I've seen you throw kunai, you use the wrong technique for that, too."

"Throwing away weapons feels stupid though!" she protested . "You use weapons to boost your fighting ability! It's like you're leaving yourself unarmed!"

"If you have good aim, you won't need to be armed because your opponent will be dead."

"But if you miss or they dodge it won't matter! I'm totally fine with just a combat knife!" Rather than respond to the childish outburst, Ao stalked over to her and lifted her by the scruff of her shirt, making her yelp and flail her limbs in surprise.

"Brat, right now you're tiny and weak," he growled lowly. "You might be vicious and able to tear off people's toes, but if you fight someone bigger in a close range fight, you're shit out of luck. Combat knives have too short a range if you don't throw them, your best bet is to hit them with poisoned kunai or senbon. I've seen the poisons you make, half the platoon uses them. Just a nick with those should take them out. Right now, you're wasting them."

He dropped her and she landed with a small 'oof,' scowling up at him as she sat up and rubbed her sore side. He met her gaze with a stony one-eyed blue stare of his own, folding his arms over his chest as he peered down at her. "Pluck out those senbon and start over. You're not eating until you can hit three vital points."

Needless to say, they had a lot of arguments, and he was the main reason she didn't actually join any fights until a month into her deployment.

As her unit was technically tied to the Seven Swordsmen as support, Sute also spent a good amount of time with them. Sort of.

Most of them still didn't particularly care for her so she didn't interact with them too much, but they mostly tolerated her presence. Mostly. She quickly figured out that Kushimaru and Jinpachi would probably kill her at a moment's notice, and she still avoided Raiga like the plague. Aside from that, they didn't really care that she spent most of her time around them and their apprentices during downtime. She usually just pestered Juzo since he seemed to be the most laidback outside of battle and thus least likely to maim her, along with their apprentices.

Actually, about half the motivation for not murdering her came from the amusement those interactions provided.

"Oh, you're still alive," the eight-year-old greeted Juzo when he returned from one scouting expedition, before turning her attention back to the bingo book she'd scrounged from a corpse. Nearby his own apprentice and Sute's appointed babysitter for the day, Momochi Zabuza, snorted in amusement but kept his focus on maintaining the giant water sphere floating in front of his extended hand.

Murderous intent rippled from Juzo in waves as he planted the Kubikiribocho in the ground, and to his satisfaction the girl gave a small flinch.

"Why do you always greet me like that?" he growled, and the child glanced at him briefly before quickly averting her eyes with a shrug.

"Because you're not in my old memories and Zabun has Kubokiricho?" she suggested meekly, raising the book a little closer to her face like a shield.

"Kubikiribocho," both swordsmen corrected automatically. Kids tended to flub long and complicated names like that, and if they got mad at every little kid who mispronounced the sword's name there wouldn't be any kids in Kiri.

Then they processed what she actually said, and Juzo scowled and grumbled under his breath while Zabuza allowed the water prison to collapse so he could turn to face the girl. "Really now?" he asked, flashing a jagged smirk. "Am I better than him?" Sute paused to seriously consider it before finally bobbing her head in affirmation, and then flinched when Juzo's murderous intent flared with a renewed vengeance.

Without a second thought the child fled from the scene with her book in hand, running as fast as her legs could carry her. Of course her speed couldn't compare to a fully trained shinobi, especially a jounin, but fortunately for her the proud swordsman merely scowled and crossed his arms as she made her exodus. "The hell does that even mean, old memories?" he grumbled. "Tch, stupid brat doesn't make any sense."

Zabuza just rolled his eyes as he returned to training, feeling just a bit smug at the exchange.

His general irritation with her would soon return though.

"How did you graduate," Zabuza deadpanned, staring at the washed-out clone crumpled on the ground next to Sute. "I don't care how smart or deadly you are. This is one of the basic three jutsu. There's no way you should have graduated with that pathetic display." Sute just stared at the pathetic-looking copy of herself blankly for a moment before turning back to the irritated adolescent.

"Ameyuri-san taught me to make water clones," she informed him blandly.

"What. Why?"

"Because I can't make regular clones."

At this point Kushimaru, who had been doing warm-up stretches nearby with some of the others, couldn't help but interject. "So, just to double-check," he started, "you can perform the Mystical Healing Palm, and can use water clones, but you can't make normal clones?"

Sute shook her head, and the gangly giant of a Swordsman just cackled with laughter while Zabuza felt his eye twitch in annoyance.

However, the most memorable interaction came when the adults apparently decided that because Sute graduated so early, she likely missed some very vital lessons and that should be rectified as soon as possible.

"Okay Sute, what do you know about sex?"

Sute stared at Kisame blankly. Nearby Jinpachi and Kushimaru snorted in amusement while Zabuza just scoffed and continued his training katas. Why was Kisame asking her about sex? She was eight. She was not exactly the proper age to learn about seduction, and Kisame was definitely not suited for seduction missions. Only Mist kunoichi, well-paid courtesans and maybe Itachi or Anko would be turned on by that face.

Jinpachi and Kushimaru's presences were also questionable, since they obviously weren't planning to train and normally couldn't even stand in the same space without trying to murder each other, but... Not as weird or urgent as Kisame asking about sex.

"Why?" she deadpanned, and the teenager groaned.

"Well, you graduated before you could learn sex ed and someone needs to teach you, and I drew the short straw. So answer the question, I need to know what I'm working with."

Still not a satisfactory explanation as to why they felt the need to teach it to an eight-year-old, but, whatever. "I assume proper sex should not involve corpses or young children," she replied flatly, and heard Jinpachi outright guffaw at that.

"She's not wrong!" he called, sounding way too amused, and Kisame just scowled.

"I'm being serious here," he growled, and Sute tilted her head, strands of seaweed-like hair falling in her eyes.

"So am I," she replied blankly. "Consent requires two adult parties who can both agree to have sex. Drugs, alcohol, death and youth hinder one's ability to consent. Consciousness also must be taken into consideration, as a sleeping partner does not automatically mean they consent. As corpses are not conscious, they are obviously incapable of consent."

As she spoke Kushimaru and Jinpachi's snickers gradually stopped and even Zabuza paused in his katas to shoot her an incredulous look. "...Holy shit, you're actually serious aren't you?" Kisame muttered in disbelief, and she shrugged.

"Yeah. Why?"

"You're, uh, a bit young to know about necrophilia."

"...What the hell did you see on those battlefields?" Zabuza asked, and she turned to flash him a sweet, childish smile.

"Nothing new, just a lot more bodies than my old memories." The men fell silent at that, while Sute just smiled at them in placid surprise. Judging by their faces, her last life might be a little more fucked up than she realized. Which said a lot since even then she'd understood it to be pretty bad.

Outside the training shenanigans, Sute quickly gained a reputation for her brutality on the field.

Faced with large swathes of opponents several times her size, the small girl put all the knowledge she'd attained in Kiri to brutal use. More often than not she would appear with members of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen, and she took advantage of gaps in the enemy's attention as they faced the seven more obvious threats to launch surprise attacks of her own.

Torn tendons, severed limbs, broken bones. Complex toxins to heighten the sense of pain, strong paralytics that left chuunin and genin unable to move for hours on end and even a few jounin with an uncomfortable numbness in their limbs.

Nearly every opponent who faced Sute in battle found themselves in a world of agony. Their surprise at being felled by the small girl was only equaled by the overwhelming suffering as they bled on the ground, helpless to do anything but wait either for rescue or someone to end their lives. Usually her allies would put them out of their misery, if only because they found their moaning annoying.

Those who survived encounters with her described Sute as a demon in the body of a child, a ruthless monster with no apparent sense of mercy. Her genius did not match the levels of Hatake Kakashi, who earned the rank of Chuunin on the battlefields at the young age of six, but she proved herself deadly nonetheless. Sute knew her strengths, so she struck fast and hard, weaving through the crowds and slicing through people's tendons with chakra-infused poisoned kunai to shred their muscles while simultaneously poisoning them. She counted on her allies to take care of the bigger opponents, acting more in support than a front-line fighter.

Between fighting she would practice her medical ninjutsu, using their fallen enemies as guinea pigs as she experimented with the limits of the Mystical Healing Palm. She had already memorized all she could from textbooks; she could only work on practical experience now, and working with the Swordsmen meant their side usually had fewer casualties for practice. The others typically let her hang back after easier fights to practice on enemies while moving on, since her improvement would only help them in the long run.

It was after she encountered the Yellow Flash during one such incident—shortly after her designated ninth birthday—that they finally ended her first deployment to send her back to Kiri.

"You're part of a small group, kid," Tsurugi told her gruffly as they headed back. He was a Hunter-nin with some sort of connections to Ao, and had been saddled with taking her back to Kiri since his own rotation was due to end soon anyway. "Not many people survive encounters with the Yellow Flash."

Sute just hummed, her mind still reeling with her first encounter with the future Fourth Hokage. Up to that point, she hadn't really considered the implications of her ending up in Kiri instead of Konoha, and now the thought had wormed its way into her head and wouldn't leave. She'd probably be a villain in the canon story, an enemy to all the characters she knew. That thought should probably distress her more, but...

"He teleported," she mumbled instead, her brow furrowing. "I remember there were seals on his kunai's handle. I didn't know fuinjutsu could be used like that, I thought they were just for scrolls and exploding tags."

"Fuinjutsu can do a lot of things," Tsurugi snorted. "Storage seals and exploding tags are just the beginning. Not many masters are left though." Sute hummed in thought, her mind racing. Fuinjutsu seemed different from the other skillsets shinobi used, more intellectual than physical, and her mind seemed to jump at the idea of learning something actually new and fresh. Medicine and poisons were fine and all, but she'd been in med school in her old life, so it was more like rehashing what she already knew, just with chakra added to the mix.

Fascinating as the idea was, they were at war though, and she had more immediate priorities than satisfying her yearning for new knowledge. Meeting the future Fourth Hokage just reminded her that she had to get stronger. Survival always came first—always.

Part one of the war. Here we see the start of the rise of Sute's reputation, and her atypical experiences in war. As well as some more hints to how twisted her first life was. This chapter is just slightly wonky because originally I had Mangetsu there too, but then I realized that since he and Suigetsu are called the "Second Coming of the Demon" (as in Zabuza) it would be weird if he and Zabuza were in the same age bracket, so I wrote him out and replaced his lines with random Swordsmen. (Did I mention how hard it is to figure out the Kiri timeline? There's literally no information on Mangetsu, or even when Yagura comes into power.)

Thanks to KadeBear (mostly lots of luck and remembered survival training), Garden (or something), MorteSangriz (definitely dangerous, for both AND her enemies), Northchild (I actually have the entire thing with Zabuza written out, it's like 2000 words long, I cut it because it made the pace a bit too slow. I'll post it someday though!), CrystalVixen93, Thomas Drovin (Sute was highly aware of how dangerous the world was, she never really lived in the "bubble" most kids did), The Absolutely Mad Mage, May525, Kreceir (That... is actually a VERY good point, that might have to happen someday. Also Sute is immune to Talk no Jutsu so no worries about them becoming BFFs, though she won't exactly go out of her way to be enemies either), xenocanaan, Ori (Sute is definitely going to change some stuff from canon, a lot of it unintentionally. She's gonna have fun~), WelcomeToTheLoser'sClub, and lilith-thetiny-monster!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed. Also, a big shout out to everyone at the March for Our Lives rallies today. I watched the DC rally on TV, and that was one of the most powerful things I've seen in a while. I don't usually like to bring politics into my stories, but I think all my US readers can agree that we're sick of seeing another mass shooting reported seemingly every month. This horrible phenomenon destroys entire lives, and while I doubt the US would ever get rid of guns entirely, we aren't doing nearly enough to limit and stop these tragedies. No matter what side you're on, today history is being made.

To quote Yolanda Renee King's chant: "We are going to be a great generation."