Prologue
People tend to stereotype a lot of things, I’ve noticed. Gothics are evil, devil worshippers. Blondes are dim witted. Females, especially young ones, are weak and helpless in most instances.
I love proving them wrong. Nothing about anything has a set standard or normal, for there is no normal. We are all different. I even find it hilarious that I shock people by not being your typical fourteen-year-old blonde girl getting started with the life of a Hidden Mist ninja.
In the beginning, it was ridiculous. People doubted my abilities and were reluctant to trust me, and then they were stunned when I completed missions with more proficiency and accuracy than my fellows. I proved to be a quick thinker, a fast reactor, and a team leader. And this surprised them!
Gradually my abilities became more recognized and acknowledged. Villagers asked me to go on errands and missions more often, or they just wanted to talk to me about my progress. Younger students and ninja looked up to me, following me and trying to be like me. My peers and teammates wanted to be my best friends and work with me. I actually became popular.
But life is not simple. Imagine reaching such a level in your life, and then it’s shattered. Imagine having all that’s good taken from you in a single day, a single moment. Imagine losing everything. Imagine living in a world that bows to being normal, but then murders anything outstanding and different.
I have a special power, one only I can control. And this ruined my life. Me, being able to control fire, and my reputation and future, were shattered like glass. I was sentenced to die, and my life as a ninja was to be forgotten; to get to me and to wipe out the origins of my ability, my family was also to die.
But all I had the guts to do was run.
Shameful.
Chapter One – Lost
She was perched and alert, studying her surroundings. Ever since that day, she’d been hunted. Ever since she ran, it seemed she had to keep running. Even on the mainland, she was hunted. She had to run and fight to survive.
It had been a month. It was no longer early January, but early February. Hard to believe. She had gone a month so far, living on her own, family dead, and targeted.
She looked across the terrain. The beaches had disappeared. The island had long since vanished. Tropical forests had begun to give way to more temperate mountains. Pines, oaks, and many hills covered the land, occasionally cut into sheer cliffs and deep gullies by a passing river.
So beautiful a place, but so confusing. Winding roads intersected innumerable times. Villages were identical in composition, general location type, and culture. Back roads, which were merely game trails, led to nowhere. Literally.
This girl had come a month’s trip only to be lost in the heart of the continent? What a deal she’d made.
Movement below her drew her attention. Were the bandits still following her? Hard to say. She was absolutely still, absolutely quiet. The source of the movement came closer, closer, closer… She held her breath.
A deer stepped out of the shadows.
She relaxed, releasing her breath in a sigh. She had left her pursuers behind again. She was safe. She was still free. She dropped from the limb, startling the deer. She watched as it ran off, scattering the leaves and snow flurries as it went.
She walked for hours, heading nowhere. She only knew that she was moving west. Constantly. She had kept going, day after day, ever since she landed on the mainland’s shore. She followed the same general path, but to where?
That night found her at the mouth of a cave. It was desolate and secluded. Further inspection found it to be completely deserted and unused aside from occasional squads every few months.
She entered it, setting her pack down near the back wall. The cave was of decent size: bigger than her old home in the Land of Waves. She explored it, discovering a small dip in the center of the floor. It was smooth and lined by a fine black dust, soot. Stones circled the space, creating what was obviously a small fire pit. She nodded to herself, and set to work.
An hour later, she was sitting beside the small fire, limbs burning with the golden flame of her kekkei genkai. She was not able to create fire out of thin air; she used a metal blade against the stone to create spark before using her ability to turn the sparks into fire.
She sorted through the pack’s contents again, looking at the collection of items. All of it had been stolen at some point; being an orphaned runaway, she had no money or family to get things from.
The items included rusted, bent, and dull ninja tools, such as a kunai knife and several shuriken; there were mismatched clothes, either too big or too small for her somewhat curvy fourteen-year-old frame; a discarded journal and pens were stained by age; an old quilt was all that kept her warm in this winter; a wooden comb did not tend to her hair, long and golden, as a brush would.
She whimpered as she flipped the notebook open to the first page. Pictures had been sketched of herself, five other young teens, and three adults. All of them, except one man and the only woman, wore forehead protectors much like hers. The metal plaque had four “s” like symbols, representing the ninja community they all belonged to.
These were her friends. Her mother and stepfather stood in the background, next to her sensei. Her teammates were all locked arm-in-arm and grinning while her eight-year-old half-brother played in the foreground. All of them were smiling and seemed to be enjoying life. To think, this had happened only a month ago.
She took out a pen and flipped to the last page she had written or drawn on. She quickly wrote a small note in sloppy cursive: “Still lost. I hate my life now. Sincerely, Ayumi.”
She curled up next to the fire, beneath “her” quilt, as tears streamed from her eyes.
Dawn came again, fast and cold. More flurries had fallen outside, making the sheet of white even thicker.
Ayumi sat up, pulling her quilt tighter around her body. She shivered nonetheless; the fire was almost out. She quickly ventured into the open and retrieved more sticks, again using her kekkei genkai to revive the flame.
Dawn turned to morning, and the sun blazed. It began to warm up, soon to the point that she could pack the quilt into her bag. She withdrew power from the fire, absorbing the energy back into her body and soul, to use later on. She set her pack on her back, and finally headed out.
This trip would be different. She hadn’t gone for ten minutes when she heard whimpering and struggling. Just off the path, hidden by brush, was a puppy. It was alone, trembling, soaking wet, and caught by something. It yipped as it lunged, only to be snatched back to where it was.
“Hey, you,” Ayumi called, removing her bag. She set it on the ground, out of the way, and approached the little wolf.
It growled uncertainly, tugging at the rope wrapped around its neck and chest. The other end was bound to a tree.
“It’s okay,” she cooed, kneeling next to the puppy. “I won’t hurt you.”
Before she could do anything, though, a twig snapped behind her. She gasped, springing to her feet. A bad move. She tripped over the rope and fell back, her feet caught. It soon broke, and she kept falling… Before she realized it, she was hanging, suspended over a pit of bamboo spikes, only rope and a single metal wire holding her up.
“For a ninja, you are exceedingly clumsy,” a person spoke.
She gasped and looked up. There, his fingers closed around the metal wire, was a young man. Jet black hair hung in his face, the longer locks pulled into a horsetail. A ninja headband was tied around his forehead, the plaque slashed through the middle.
“A genin?” he asked, voice cool and soft, his black eyes emotionless.
She nodded hesitantly.
“Where’s the rest of your team? Your sensei?”
“I-I’m alone.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I ran away. The villagers tried to kill me.”
She did not know what to expect from him. Would he turn her in to the foreign ANBU? Would he make her go back? Or would he condemn her and release the wire, letting her fall to her death?
He pulled on the thread, pulling her out of the pit. She was soon sitting near the edge, struggling to get untangled. He approached her, a kunai in hand. “Be still.”
She watched as he cut the rope, unwinding it from her limbs and tossing it aside. Closer to him, she could tell he was young. He couldn’t be more than seventeen. But, at the same time, he was skilled in the art of the ninja. He was smooth, steady, and accurate as he cut the rope. He was quiet as he moved. The only sounds were his breathing, his black cloak, and the metallic ring of the kunai. Ayumi looked over her shoulder at where the puppy had been; the rope had been cut by a shuriken.
As the last strand fell away, she backed away. She cowered in the shadows, watching him intently.
He scoffed. “You have no reason to fear me, kunoichi.”
She nodded after a moment. “Thank you.”
He nodded once, stood, and slapped snow off his black cloak. “Be more careful.”
Before she could even open her mouth, he turned and walked away, vanishing down the road as quickly as he had come. She was alone again.
She whispered as a breeze blew. “Okay.”
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