I knew it was all about letting go at the right moment. When my angle and speed was optimal, all I had to do was to let go.

All I had to do was to let go.

My hands left the branch, left the rugged surface they had been twirling around. My hands weren't the least sore from the abuse, the skin had hardened like the skin of the tree. Hard and unyielding without the use of great force.

I took in the sounds of the forest. Could see and hear every moment the crowd beneath me made and I was ready to face them as if my life depended on taking them down. Surely I had only one goal for this attack and it was not to save my own life. In my mind practice was all about saving my life. I knew that what I did now would help me save my life later on.

I knew I had just enough time to pull my kunais before I would land on the ground unprotected. Mistakes could cost you or your teammates lives or even worse. A mistake could cost you the mission. If you're good enough you won't get killed yourself and that was what I was striving for.

Everything was going to plan until the figure, the aim of my operation, bend over. I hadn't calculated for movement. If he hadn't moved I would have landed on his shoulders and the blades of my weapon would enter his neck, crushing bone. I would have left him paralyzed, unable to counterattack and I would have let him bleed to death. Had it been a real mission and attack.

I didn't have time to think. I had to act out of instinct. I landed on my back in front of him. The ground knocked the air out of me. The travel through the frigid evening air had become longer than planned. The fall had gathered more force and I hadn't expected it.

I had twirled in air before I had landed my head was closet him now and not my feet as it was supposed to. This had shifted my attack and it could be a great mistake. We had agreed that he would stand still as I was allowed to perfect my attack. This was not what we had agreed.

I ended up leaving my stomach and soft intestines vulnerable for his attacks, but only for a second as I gathered myself. I had come up with a new plan. The only thing I had left to protect me, besides the weapons I was holding, was my instinct. I made use of my weapons and stabbed him before he got the chance to react to my horrible mistake. Shinobi knew where to stab your guts to most efficiently harm you and I was left open for any attack. I stabbed him before he would stab me.

Just like that the man disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"God, she stabbed you in the balls."

Kakashi hadn't come over the shock of what I had done. I had aimed for the spot I would imagine he was weakest from my point. I hadn't been left with much time to plan my attack. I did what first came to mind. I would attack the spot weakest from my position. Having all male members on my team I was more than aware of their weak spot. It was the best within arms reach.

Fugaku just kept looking at him waiting for a response waiting for him to do something or say something. Frankly Kakashi didn't know yet how to respond to the change of plans. It was his job as sensei to complement and encurrage quick thinking. On the other side I had just stabbed his most important body part.

Shikadai stirred on the ground, even he looked discomforted from what had just happened. He was often busy protecting himself. He didn't mind the pain, he minded the recovery that came after injuries. The pain he could handle, meeting up for an appointment in the hospital was the hardest part. Getting up, getting there in time, looking presentable and have to spend of his precious reading and resting time.

"You bend over."

He had put that trap there for me. The deal was that he wasn't supposed to move. He was just supposed to stand there still and let me stab his neck. I still wasn't comfortable with the attack and as I felt I hadn't perfected it and he knew that. A dick move would be rewarded with such. It was cruel of him to go back on his word. He knew I didn't like to be surprised during practice. Not that it ever stopped him.

You can't be sure what's next in the field.

Expecting a punch from the right leaves your left sore.

Expect the unexpected.

It was all bullshit that he fed us. In some sense. Sure he was right, you couldn't ask someone to move a little to the right so that you could kill them during a fight. I knew that very well. I didn't need to be prepared for it.

"Is that a hint as to how far you'll go and what you're comfortable stabbing?"

Fugaku looked over at me with a sly smile. My team everybody. A collection of some of the most dysfunctional people I know. Didn't stop us from being the best team of our generations. All of us predicted to do well in each out fields. Great things and we all had to live with the pressure of it. Even Shikaku let it get to him at the time.

That was also why we were great together. We were under the same umbrella. We got each other, we understood. All of us overrated, underrated, pressured, misfits, heirs, and protégés.

Well, technically Fugaku wasn't heir to anything, didn't stop my uncle from raising him as one.

I knew very well my sister wasn't being raised as one. Father didn't give shit about it, had practically given away the role unless she claimed it. Fugaku was the Uchiha heir, it just hadn't ended up on paper. While I, I was next in line after my other.

Heir of the clan I didn't feel like I belonged to. I'd rather be in Fugaku's shoes. I couldn't say that out loud. Couldn't let it shine through. I had to pretend like I gave a shit about flowers.

I could always name a few other, even a few more disturbed individuals than my team. They would always be my favorite. The group that had become like a family to me over the years, actually since their birth. The ones that dragged me down, pulled me up, encouraged, discouraged, built me up and tore me down with offensive jokes, insult, criticism and pure mockery. They were constantly pulling me through a meat grinder and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. It made me a better shinobi in the end. I shouldn't let feelings get in my way and I had over time become able to turn them off. Feel nothing as the world around me burned to the ground.

I got up and dusted off my outfit sending the group a cunning smile. Like I wouldn't stab them in the ass in a heartbeat given the opportunity. Now there would be such a hassle with all the treason claims and such. The price wasn't worth the fight. I wouldn't actually main them or kill them. Just let them suffer a little for fun and the establish some dominance. Perhaps the last one was taken care after I stabbed our sensei in the balls, well, his clone.

"I wouldn't test her."

Shikadai snorted trying to pull down his hair. Just like his father his hair fought gravity and there was no helping it. The poor boy was starting to look more like his mother but there was no confusion about the paternity in that case. He had his mother's eyes and it seemed like his nose grew pointier everyday. He had replaced his father's constantly bored expression with his mother's stern during practice and missions.

"Neither would I!"

Fugaku turned and smiled at his other male team member. He too was starting to change. His baby face was starting to get wiped out leaving room for a more mature face. His facial features were getting sharper.

Everyone only saw Sasuke in him. I saw his mother too. Not necessarily when it came to his looks. I saw her in his movements, always rash but also gentle. Harmer and healer. He had her hands, long and delicate, ready to punch your lip open and stitch it after. Not to mention her body. Skinny, he looked weak and malnourished now that he had entered his teens. Growing longer before he would get wider.

Always to be underestimated by others, always working so hard to prove them wrong.

Our team didn't look like much. Lazy Shikadai who couldn't even get his hair straight. Fugaku with a crippled self-esteem always looking for a match.

Then there was me.

I don't know how I could explain myself. It's a hard job. I've heard what people were saying about me. Vain like my mother and cold like my father. I didn't feel like either of those fit. I felt more like my father, the side of him I never saw. It scared me. I would never admit it, but it was in my papers. Biggest fear, becoming my father.

So many years later they had forgotten the monster they had created and when you forget history it's doomed to repeat itself in some shape or form. Isn't it?

"Good practice!"

Kakashi came to life after quickly in a sublime way checking that what had just happened had happened to his clone and not his own equipment. His hand had taken a good, but gentle pull in in crotch. I understood him, what would a dick like Kakashi be without his dick?

Kakashi, deadbeat in a midlife crisis.

Traded paper cuts for real cuts because he couldn't handle his old job. He still had something to prove. What nobody knew. He was past his prime and he wouldn't admit that. Notoriously bothersome, never willing to let go of the past. Dry, hardheaded, know it all. Should have just retired but for some reason he had to have one last go before he'd accept that he was one of the few that would die of old age. That was unless we would be the death of him, and there had been a few too many close calls.

That was our sensei.

"We hardly did anything."

Shikadai muttered and lifted his torso supporting the weight on his arms. He looked at me with those strickt eyes, his lips in a knot. He looked like he would pounce at me any minute. I would gladly fight him because I would win.

"Whose fault was that?"

I spat at him. He would always do this. He would turn down any chance to train stating he just wanted to watch and when it all came to a close he would be sour that he didn't get to practice much because I was stealing the spotlight as Kakashi's favorite. It always made my blood boil.

I wasn't his favorite. It was clearly Fugaku, a sort of desperate attempt to make up for his father, my uncle I suspected. It would make sense. I knew Kakashi felt like he let him down, should have known it was bound to happen. You couldn't change a traitorous soul by tying it down to what it's betraying. Some need to go, need to grow. I didn't hold it against them, I pitied them.

"Yours this time, you stabbed sensei's dick!"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. When did Fugkau become so phallus fixated? Ever since his hormones started flushing around his bloodstream I would take a guess at. Not that any of my other team members were better. It wasn't their fault that they were born male.

I hadn't expected that the attack would receive that much attention.

"Let's not talk about it."

Kakashi tried. I could instantly hear it on the tone of his voice. Spending hours on end with these guys had left me able to detect every change in tone and body language as well as knowing just what it meant. It came in handy too often.

He was used to our constant bickering, but this time it was a sensitive subject. He didn't mind when we fought about tactics, theories, jutsus, diets and our clan, but now he had a problem. This time his balls were the subject of the argument and I could understand why he wasn't particularly happy about it.

"Don't be a pussy!"

"You'd gladly make me one!"

I stomped my foot, there was no getting anywhere with any of these men. I couldn't understand the big deal and I didn't want to. It was just a clone, and had it been a real enemy none of them better have commented it in such a fashion. I'd rather use a low blow like that and live instead of getting stabbed in the stomach and die.

I was hoping they would grow up one of these days, not likely.

Come on, look at Kakashi. If that would have happened, it would have happened decades ago.

"I'm over this!"

I shot my hand out over the figuratively argument we were having about reproductive organs and traning. They were all being immature sissies and I wouldn't have any of that. I wouldn't stand for any of it. I was already tried from practice and the stress of everything. I wouldn't deal with two pubescent boys and a man who might as well be.

"Come on, let's go have lunch or something."

I sighed, he had no sense of time that man. It was about nightfall. I rolled my eyes and started taking off. It wasn't the day for a team meal.

"It's way past dinner time!"

"Just consider the mission!"

I knew it would come, but I had been hoping to slip away before he reminded me. The first mission I was considering to pass up, to decline. I couldn't decline it without a reason, that I sadly knew. I needed something better than, I have a bad feeling about it. My team and another were counting on me to accept and there was a limit on how long I could keep them all waiting. I couldn't let them down.

With a head filled with twirling thoughts, ideas and worries I entered my home. Growing up I had had two houses but only one home.

A home was where I longed to come back to after a mission. Where I could hide from everything from monsters to my own self. Where I felt loved and looked after. I couldn't imagine how it would be like growing up without it.

"Mother?!"

"Aiko?"

This home was empty. I already knew, still I called out their names waiting for a response that would never come because I knew they weren't there. I couldn't sense them and after searching through the house I couldn't see them either.

I wouldn't be able to seek the advice and encouragement I needed. For being such a frigid and heartless bitch I had insecurities.

It was a heavy heart I closed the door as slipped away as some desperate clan member called my name wanting to engage in conversation. Why wouldn't just a nod suffice?

The road over to my father was short and boringly enough just as it had always been. Nothing ever happened in this town. It was stagnant. It was prosperous so why change anything about it? That was the general idea. I was becoming too familiar with it all. Another mission would provide with some change of scenery even if I didn't want any of it. It was the only comfort in this town.

I sensed and avoided her. She was in the kitchen, I avoided her like the plague even after all these years. Never could stand her, the woman that stole my father away. That wretched whore. We all know why she was there, there was no love in their marriage. It was a transaction. They gave each other what they were searching for.

Father was in the back, I found him sitting on the porch, feet hanging from the edge as he kicked his feet back and forth looking into the small pond. I walked over and sat down next to him. His face blank even as I studied it, he was very much aware what I was doing. He was used to having eyes on him. He was used to being the center of attention. I had seen how the looks he always received had changed over time.

There was no doubt or fright in their eyes anymore. There was no memories of the man they had once known lingering. He was someone else now. He had grown into someone just like them and he had grown part of their group. He still stuck out. Even if he was my father I knew he was considered good looking, he was the one who had saved the town, one of the strongest there had ever been. He was also a father like them, a regular man trying to make it with his wife.

He was a hero.

An ordinary man.

No longer a monster.

"There's conflict in your face."

My mother and I, perhaps my uncle were the only one able to read my father. There was a miniscule twitch by his eye. It wasn't a nervous one. He was thinking about something, contemplating and he wasn't sure what it to think of it. He was conflicted.

"Nothing for you to worry about."

I scuffed. He should know better than to brush it off and pretend like it didn't concern me. Like I didn't already know. I had lost many of my contacts and ways in when Naruto was elected hokage. I could no longer come and go as I pleased, he had changed much of his staff.

All but one guard, the three to four shift and he was easily bought. He didn't want cash or riches. He wanted to company and attention. Someone who worked night was bound to have a mediocre social life and I exploited it. It wasn't all he allowed me to read, but it was only fair that I read the files on myself.

I knew them buy heart now. I knew the complaints, the recommendations, the physic evaluations that were all rejected and ignored. I knew the run down of all my missions. I knew all my scores on test.

I knew someone had applied for marriage.

I was still young. Too young to actually get married. There wouldn't be many years before I was expected to retire and settle down, have children. The sooner the better, I was living with a constant threat to my life through my profession. My blood was too valuable to be spilled before I had produced off-spring.

"You think it's a good idea, but you still think I should have a choice."

His lips jerked as he continued to look down in his own lap. He had underestimated my digging abilities. He always did. He didn't know the vast web I had off people who owed me and people I could buy. I knew myself I was cunning and manipulative. I knew I wasn't what civilians considered the best person.

I was shinobi. I wasn't supposed to be on the moral high ground, I should be crawling in the mud along with the men and women I protected them against.

"Some day I'll figure out where you find out about everything."

He sighed once again. Moved for the first time I had sat down. He stretched his arms before he placed them behind his head and lay down. I could hear cracks coming from his shoulders and I became aware how sore my own arms and shoulders were. I was used to them being sure, throbbing and burning.

"The same thing was bound to happen to you, wasn't it? You were arranged to marry someone, someone else than the girl from your past."

I knew that very well. I had read it in the extensive files, the Uchiha clan documented everything. My father had taken up the habit as well. Everything was written down in that book of his. Sasuke reported on Sakura and himself, Itachi on himself and his wife. I knew he tried to keep track of my too. He didn't even know half of it and if he known just an inch more he wouldn't have had the heart to write it down.

I still wasn't allowed in his study where he kept it all. It still didn't stop me. Just that now I found it more interesting. I had figured from his notes that he was fonder of my sister. That was good, I felt like there still was hope left in her. She deserved it. I knew I was something of a huge disappointment in my parent's eyes. I didn't turn out like they had wanted.

"It's okay. I understand. It's not like I have the same romantic notions and ideals like my mother."

I lay down next to my father. It was getting cold outside, he didn't seem to notice any of it. Then again he surely wasn't as exhausted and hungry like me. Practice did take its toll on my body even if I was willing to admit it or not. Mother would have to have a look on my back before I went to bed. That landing had not been good.

That was why I decided to stay put and not lay down on the hard wood like my father. He was growing soft. His activities were minimal once again as he had stopped training me. It wasn't like he was ever going to enter active duty again. I didn't even think he'd fulfill the requirements. I don't think even half of his wardrobe fit him anymore.

It was all part of aging, growing older. You stopped giving a damn at one point. He wasn't even supposed to make it this far. He wasn't supposed to grow old. I never expected my father to do what was expected and seemed the most likely anymore. He was a wildcard and I could never rely on him in that sense. I never knew where I would have him a year down the road.

"I think we all should have more romantic ideals like your mother."

It seemed like other parts of him were growing old.

He looked so calm and sincere there he lay. Claiming that having romantic notions like my mother was a positive. Where had it gotten her? What I remember from my earliest childhood was a happy family. My parents and me living together like any other normal family. Then my father let her down, essentially letting my sister and I down in the process. He had broken her heart in it continued in that pattern for years.

I wanted to throw it in his face, but it would only become a tiresome argument that would lead nowhere but to harsh words.

I had tried.

Many times before.

He refused to admit the error of his ways, own up and admit the mistakes he had done years ago. I was glad Aikoino never had felt his love like I had do, love you could only get from growing up in a home where both parents were there, working together for you, their child.

"She ran out on her own wedding."

It had been quite the scene and buzz. I still heard people mention it from time to time. Pulling the Yamanaka. Running away from your faith and duty, your obligations to your family and clan. The Yamanaka.

She had pulled Sakura's hand and ran out of the location as everything was about to commence. She had grabbed Sakura and ran laughing like she wasn't letting everyone down, like she hadn't been putting up a cold front towards Sakura for what she had done.

They had been missing for three days before Sakura appeared again, ready to face the real world and fulfill her duties. My mother had been missing for well over a week. She had never told were they had gone, what she had done when she was alone. All I remember was that she came back with a frost wound.

"Because it wasn't right."

My father's smile was wide and crocked. It looked almost as if he was proud of her. I actually could see why. It must have taken guts and strength. Everyone would know what she had done and in this town people loved to gossip. Blame it on the lack of other productive activities.

"And you went through with yours."

There was a loud bang from the kitchen. I had a feeling it was a coincidence. Years of practice hadn't been able to teach Ami how to cock, and she had such a short temper. Father often had to replace furniture and equipment in the kitchen.

"I did, so it would be wrong of me to force you into this."

"Why her?"

I had always asked me that. Ami came of a family of money. Her clan, in a city she had never named, were nobility. High standing in unmentioned town, influential in politics and set the standard in the social scene. Her father hadn't fit in. He sold out and moved here.

Here they were no one. Held no power, I could only assume her father missed having something to say so he pushed his only daughter into the academy thinking strength was also power. She wasn't carved for our work, didn't have the body, mindset nor did she have the strength in body and mind. I believed you're born to become shinobi, it can't be learned.

So she was nothing in our town. He should have married someone of a higher standing. Someone that mattered, wealth, strength or political power. He had married a nobody when he could have had everybody.

"Social standing."

Social standing, it didn't bring me closer to the answer. They were of different social classes. That I already knew.

"She had nothing to lose, but all to gain going after me. So she dared to, hoping to climb the social ladder. It helped that your mother hated her and forbade me to see her. I didn't meant for it to go as far as it did."

He must have read my silence as me not understanding. I do become quiet trying to understand in my own mind. Even though he had explained it I didn't understand. All he had told me is that he had married her because he was a spoilt brat that wanted to upset my mother by going out with the first woman at bottom of the social ranking asking him out.

"Social mobility."

He added another keyword. I had heard the term before. Read about it, knew what it meant. I knew that their marriage was an example of social mobility where you could say that she had definitively married up.

"Everything was unstable after the war, like any war. To bring hope to commoners, to avoid that clans became closed and exclusive I married someone of no rank. I didn't really have the option to marry within the clan, but it gave some hope I'd like to think."

I nodded more to myself than him, he still had his eyes close. My gaze met a bug and I followed it as I finished thinking. It made sense. He was imagined as unobtainable. He was high rank, one of the town heroes, some sort of god and the best in everything he ever tried.

All you had to do to marry someone like that was to talk to them, and be kind towards them. She had always been kind and gentle towards him. Others not so much, and always behind his back.

I could see how other's might have been inspired by that.

"I don't think too highly about marrying within clans."

They were unconfirmed rumors that diseases were more common with parents with close relations. Any medical research had been closed down by the elders. They all came from clans, and they all liked for their clan members to marry within the clan to strengthen it and keep it pure as they would have put it.

I understood now that my father was humored some extra by my mother's run now. It was an inter clan marriage. It was just for show, so that the clan leader wouldn't have two bastard children. There were even some loose talk about a third one, but it had turned out to be gossip.

"Then there's some cases where it could be defended."

"Like now."

He shot open one eye to look at me and our eyes met. His were black, mine blue. Like Shikadai I kept my mother in my eyes, I had my mother's eyes. Bigger than my fathers, definitively bluer, secretly I wish I had his long lashes.

"Like now. It torments me, but if you have children outside the clan they'll only be 25% Uchiha…"

"… And no one knows what that'll do with the Sharingan."

Half blood had been done many times, like I was a proof of, with varied result. You could still awaken the Sharingan like I was proof of. Or you could not, like Fugaku so far might work as an example. Water down the Uchiha genes even more and it would become fewer off-spring with the Sharingan. It was simple.

"But I'd be the last to pressure you into a path, a fait you don't wish. I don't care if you're the last person with the Sharingan. I don't mind as long as you're happy. I hope my marriage will show a warning on how things may end up. I'm not unhappy, I'm satisfied."

His life was a warning on most matters really. A big example on what not to do. He always wanted to be this great savior, change lives for the better and eliminate the system we had. He had been given the chance despite everything that had been thrown at him, almost killed him. He had used that chance having children he hadn't wanted and marrying a woman he hadn't wanted.

"I won't mind, I think it's a good idea. When the time is right, when we're older, I'll marry Fugaku."