Haruno Sakura had been the tender age of seven when it happened.

She recalled being in the academy classroom giggling and passing notes to Ino when a ninja she didn't recognize burst into the room and discreetly said something to Iruka-sensei before darting off in a flash. She hadn't heard what had been said, but she felt stones drop in her stomach at the way Iruka-sensei's face drained of all it's color, his eyes flashing wide as they shot to the window overlooking the school yard.

He quickly flicked off the lights and instructed all the students to line up single file, follow him, and not utter a word.

He offered no explanation, but what scared her the most was he didn't even offer any offhand positive remark about how everything was going to be ok.

Iruka-sensei was nothing if not kind and reassuring; the absence of that reassurance made Sakura fear the worst.

She and Ino were grasping each other's hands so tight, their knuckles were white.

"What's going on?" Her blonde friend asked, worry etched in her tone and confusion swimming in her cerulean blue eyes.

"Quiet!" Iruka hushed, and the urgency in his tone effectively silenced the usually boisterous young Yamanaka.

A sniffle was heard from somewhere in the back of the line.

As the children all slinked down the dark hallways of the academy, Sakura recognized they were heading in the direction of the basement- one of the most accessible bunkers for the students if a natural disaster were to suddenly occur.

Her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as they passed one of the front offices with wide windows.

Just as she had thought- there wasn't a cloud to be found. What kind of event would cause this kind of evacuation then?

Another thing caught her eye through the glass however- it was her mother, standing outside the locked gates of the academy, her eyes wide with worry as they simultaneously darted all around her and searched the academy grounds.

She was looking for her…?

Just then a scuffle broke out closer to the front of the line, causing the dirty blonde boy in front of her to fall back into the pair of girls and forcing their hands apart. Ino took the brunt of the boy's weight and fell to the floor with him.

Sakura took the opportunity to dart behind one of the office desks.

As Iruka struggled to straighten them out and hurried them along to the basement, the rosette child waited until the last of her classmates rounded the corner before moving to open one of the windows and scramble out.

As soon as her mother laid eyes on her, her body rolled in relief.

"Sakura! Hurry!" Her beckon was nothing more than an urgent whisper, and Sakura did as she was told, her slim body slipping between the iron bars of the gates only to be engulfed in her mother's embrace.

Slim fingers brushed through her short pink locks- a gesture that usually hinted at her mother's anxiety.

She broke apart abruptly when a pained scream sounded from somewhere not far off.

Large emerald eyes looked out to the distance, searching for the source of the sound, before flicking back to her mother in search of answers.

But her mother only looked down at her with hard eyes and a finger raised to her lips. She grasped Sakura's small hand in hers and began running. The duo ducked into alleyways and behind vender carts. Sakura could see flashes of shadows above her as shinobi scoured the rooftops and there was a never ending sound of metal clashing against metal. She could hear the hard scrape of sandaled feet against the cobblestone streets and couldn't distinguish if the frequent sound of heavy thuds was the pounding of her heart or something else entirely.

Desperate to make sense of what was happening, Sakura tried inching her way around the wood of a fruit stall to get a better look at the main street.

A hard tug at her collar and she found her field of vision surrounded by only the turquoise of her mother's blouse. The arms around her were tight, and she could feel a slight tremble in her mother's embrace.

"Don't look, Sakura." The woman's tone was iron, and Sakura felt it was all she could do to oblige, snapping her eyes shut as Mebuki picked her up and continued to run.

Tiny fingers grasped the cool satin of her mother's shirt as her small body was jostled with every haphazard movement her mother made. She could hear the sharp whizzing of metal bypass them and realized her mom was actually dodging attacks.

It took everything in her to keep her eyes scrunched tightly closed as she buried her face in the cool fabric and tried to make herself as small a target as possible.

Sakura could feel the flurry of panic begin to stir in her chest. Her breath hitched as she fought back tears.

"Shit!" An abrupt halt startled Sakura enough that her eyes snapped open against her will, but all that met her gaze beyond her mother's shoulder was the dark brick of an alley. She was gingerly lowered until her sandaled feet hit the ground and looked up at her mother with wide eyes full of questions.

"Stay here, Sakura. DO NOT move. Do not make a sound. And for the love of Kami, do not look out beyond the alley." The warning in Mebuki's voice had Sakura nodding her head in acquiescence, even as a single tear rolled down her plump cheeks.

"I love you, Sakura." The words were a mere whisper and soft lips met her wide forehead. And then her mother vanished into the daylight of the main street and Sakura was left with nothing but dirt and brick to comfort her.

She pushed her back against the cold wall behind her and slid down into a crouch, embracing her own legs and hunching her back, wishing herself to disappear within the shadows.

Just what in the world was happening?

Her hand reached up to feel the still warm spot where her mother had kissed her. Why… had that felt like a goodbye?

A bloodcurdling scream sounded from beyond the alley and verdant eyes snapped up and towards the mainstreet.

She couldn't make out much from here- the ground was littered with kunai, shuriken, and what looked to be wooden debris. But she saw no people. Then movement drew her eyes to the very left of the entrance to the alley where there looked to be liquid pooling.

She squinted, trying to block out the intense light and get a better look at what it was seeping around the corner.

It's blood.

The realization hit her just as fast as she realized she could not keep her word to her mother.

Heart pounding hard against her chest, she stood on shaky legs and made her way to the mouth of the alley. The young girl stood just within the shadows, dragging air into her lungs as she willed herself to keep moving yet equally as terrified at what would be awaiting her just around the corner.

Hand curling around the corner brick, one emerald eye peeked out and followed the blood to a lifeless body slumped against the wall.

Sakura gasped, tears swelling in her eyes at the vacant look in the still open eyes and the visage of pain and horror forever frozen on the man's face. She didn't recognize him, but she had never seen a dead body before. His stomach had been slashed open, and more than just blood oozed from the gaping hole.

The telltale sting of bile singed the back of her throat, but before she could empty the contents of her own stomach, a guttural shout tore her attention away from the gruesome scene before her.

There, just beyond her father's favorite tea stall, was her mother standing kunai to kunai with a dark haired man. Sakura immediately recognized the red and white fan etched on the back of the man's shirt- after all, her crush bore the same symbol on all of his clothing as well.

Uchiha…?

Determination etched across her face, Mebuki kicked out trying to shatter a knee, but the man was faster. He grabbed her ankle and pulled, taking her balance and forcing her to the floor. She shifted slightly to land hard on her shoulder instead of her back, and Sakura saw it had been to avoid someone else who was laying there. One glance at the long flowing blonde hair told Sakura it was Ino's mother, someone who was as precious to Mebuki as Ino was to Sakura.

The other woman wasn't moving, however, and Sakura could see that her own mother was struggling to maneuver herself back onto her feet. The arm she landed on hung at a weird angle, and Mebuki let out a shout of pain when she tried to move it.

The man standing above her smirked in triumph, the sun glinting off his kunai menacingly.

He moved to strike, but was stopped by something hitting his back, akin to being pelted by small stones.

Looking down offered him the view of three small wooden shuriken laying prone against the dirt.

Red eyes flashed over to the small girl standing only a few meters away. Upon making eye contact, Sakura drew three more practice shuriken from her pouch for they were all she had, and threw them at her mother's assailant with killing intent.

He didn't even bother blocking them with his kunai, opting to just allow them to harmlessly bounce off his chest instead.

"Sakura!" Her mother's voice was shrill with panic. "What are you doing?! RUN!"

But the girl found that she couldn't- her feet were glued to the ground, her breath held captive in her lungs. She was suspended in that moment of time, and everything stood still. The only movement was the unhurried pace of the man steadily approaching her.

She knew she couldn't win against this man- a full grown shinobi with eyes that burned red in the sunlight like fire. But she found that neither could she leave her mother, injured and bleeding as she was because she had tried protecting a friend.

So she stood her ground with her jaw clenched and her eyes hardened with determination.

"Sakura! Get out of here!" She had never heard her mother's voice so high a pitch, and it actually made her ears ring.

It must have had the same effect on the Uchiha because his face twisted with irritation as he half turned back to Mebuki.

"Be quiet." He instructed as he raised and released his kunai so fast Sakura barely had time to process the movement as it whizzed towards her mother.

But there was a loud clang and when Sakura's eyes found the kunai again, it was embedded in the ground several meters to the left of its intended target.

Another figure seemed to appear out of thin air next to the Mebuki's would-be murderer.

"You? What are-" But the Uchiha's words were cut off as he was knocked unconscious so quickly, the only movement Sakura saw was his body hitting the floor.

She took in the newcomer, donning the black and silver armored uniform of the Anbu, his mask adopting the visage of some kind of bird.

He looked from her to her mother, still half-holding herself up from the ground. To Sakura's confusion, her mother nodded forward once, twice, and then collapsed onto the ground. The stranger went to where she laid and picked her up. As he passed right by Sakura, she hurried to follow him into the alleyway.

Wide emerald eyes watched as he leaned her mother forward against his knee and extended her injured arm, straightening it gingerly before giving the limp appendage one hard tug. A sickening 'pop' echoed off the bricks, but her mother didn't even rouse in pain.

"…Kaa-san?" Sakura whispered, worry evident in her voice.

"She is merely sleeping. Her wounds are superficial- she'll be ok when she wakes up." His cool tone comforted Sakura- it had a steady authority that she did not dare to question. As he gently leaned Mebuki against the wall, Sakura caught a glimpse of a flash of color on the hem of the shirt he wore beneath the armor.

It was the Uchiha clan symbol.

Verdant eyes darted back out to the street where the other man bearing that crest still lay face down in the dirt.

Her mind scrambled to piece together what was happening, why an Uchiha was attacking her mother, and why one of his own clansmen had struck him down.

"Who are you?" She finally asked with wide eyes and furrowed brows.

He was silent behind the mask for a moment. Sakura's eyes searched him for any clues to his identity, stopping briefly on a curious metal necklace that rested against his collarbone.

"You were very brave." His voice was soft and tinged with sadness. When he turned to face her, she inhaled sharply at the sight of red eyes residing behind the holes of the porcelain mask. "Rest now." He commanded.

And as she watched his eyes spin like black koi in a lake of blood, she found she could do nothing other than comply.

xXx

I've had this idea in my head for a while, and although I feel bad starting something else when Eudaimonia is not yet finished, I feel like there's not much reader interest in the latter. That doesn't mean I've abandoned it. But I might be focusing more on this for now until I find the motivation to continue Eudaimonia. Fair warning- this might end up to be more of a slow burn. I'm basically rebuilding everything from scratch in this AU and I feel it's important to focus on the character development of all the important characters as well as any relationships that blossom along the way. I hope you all enjoyed the intro into this series, and definitely leave a review on your thoughts, good or bad! I deeply appreciate them all. ^_^