Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter One

Dying is painful, shocking and all together rather unpleasant. She had just been minding her business, walking across the street; her whole goal just trying to get an actual interview for her first job. It was bright out, and hot too. She had already participated in her three college classes for the day which resulted in a paper which would be due the next Monday. Her grandmother was helping pay for classes, as long as she didn't fail a class, but getting a job to try paying for her own classes and books would help relieve the financial burden off her grandmother.

In her hand was the résumé which she had spent hours poring over to get it just right. On her back was her backpack filled with textbooks and binders full of homework and class notes. She was dressed nicely, since she had always thought that a person should dress to impress even when in school, so she was dressed in slacks and a button up shirt.

Personally, she thought she wasn't too pretty. In fact, she was quite envious of other girls with their perfectly curled and styled hair or make-up. She had plain blond hair that didn't do what it was supposed to most of the time, and a face that just couldn't wear makeup without breaking into acne. Plain brown eyes and glasses made her a plain Jane all the way around.

She had never had a boyfriend and only once did she ever have any sort of sexual experience but she was too embarrassed to go all the way without being married.

She waited at the street corner, waiting for the light to turn green, impatient and huffy from the weight of her backpack and the heat of the sun glaring down on her head. Finally, when the light turned green, she walked across the intersection, her eyes glued to the phone in her free hand. She didn't even bother looking in both directions as she had been taught as little kid.

Not even halfway across the road, a sports car came barreling down the road having taken a turn on two wheels. The car swerved drunkenly so she picked up the pace in her nice, high heeled boots while trying to run across to safety, and the car didn't even stop at the obvious red light.

Whoever was driving only put on the brakes as he was already halfway across the intersection, probably just having spotted the girl in whatever drunken haze he or she was experiencing.

She shouldn't have moved at all, but continued trying to get to the other side of the intersection. The whole fight or flight mentality had her running with her metaphorical tail tucked between her legs in fright, but the car swerved. Right. Into. Her.

You know, when they say that you can't feel yourself dying because the shock is so abrupt that you literally can't process it in that moment? Wrong. She could literally fell the impact as her hips shattered; legs were turned to paste, ribs and spine snapping like brittle twigs. She could feel her skin shredding as she rolled across the street, wonderfully patterned road rash on what skin hadn't been pulverized and pulped.

It was at that point that shock set in as blood rapidly drained from her unmoving, paralyzed body.

She could suddenly hear everything; birds chirping, the guy driving getting out of his car and throwing up all over his feet, and a minute later the sirens wailing since the police/fire station was only a hop, skip, and a jump away. Everything was so hyper clear though she couldn't think a single thought among all that information that her senses tried shoveling into her brain.

Blood bubbled from her lips, her lungs convulsing as blood filled her right lung as the left one had collapsed. She got really cold as a pool of blood surrounded her, the ground seemingly started to soften as she lay upon it. She didn't think of anything really, nothing but half nonsense such as how she knew she missed a question on a recent test, how she forgot to do one of her chores, how she really enjoyed her lunch made of chicken and tomatoes with some ranch dressing.

The last thoughts she had were, That red paint is really pretty. Obviously that meant she wasn't thinking coherently at all as she was commenting on her own blood splatter pained the road.

Next thing she knew, she's having a really odd out of body experience. She was practically a ghost with absolutely no cares in the world whatsoever.

These fleshy beings scurried around like ants, but she had absolutely no cares. Seeing her family crying over her flesh body produced an uncaring shrug as she knew they would eventually ascend to a higher plain compared to being confined to a bag of flesh; so there was really no need to mourn.

She floated around, enjoying herself. She had no time constraints, had no need for money or food or other fleshly worries. She enjoyed natural beauty and anything else she had enjoyed when she had been confined to a physical body. She was proud to visit every single country she had ever wanted to visit, which consisted of most of the world, and she enjoyed relaxing without question as she no worries that plagued her mind.

Enjoying herself, doing absolutely nothing and without many coherent thoughts save for the most simple of emotions such as joy and happiness, which she achieved through visiting new places and 'learning' new stuff.
That was until she became listless and fatigued.

It started out slow, unnoticed, until she was too tired to try traveling to new places and seeing new things. It was also very odd, especially since she had been a ghostly being that nothing seemed to touch or change. However, eventually, she just seemed to stop completely, and her energetic being just seemed to pop… like a shiny little soap bubble.

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Chapter Two

When her ghostly just seemed to give out, popping much like a really shiny soap bubble, waking up was really odd.
She didn't actually wake up but kind of became coherent.

It was warm, there was a constant pulsating beat, and she was really comfortable. It was calming, just existing. She literally couldn't think any higher thoughts, her brain only computing varying impressions which currently consisted of warmth, content, and love. That was it for a long while.

She rarely awoke with any actual thoughts on her situation and even these little spurts of lucidity were rare and far between. However, they began happening more and more often as she seemed to grow bigger and her body seemed to develop further. It wasn't too difficult to just fall asleep, but there was definitely one point where she remembered panicking because she just knew she wasn't actually breathing.
Then she just fell back asleep not even a quarter of the way to working herself into a panic attack.
Whatever.

However, she woke up again and she really, really comfortable so she ignored all these instincts blaring in her small little brain that practically screamed at her to get the hell out of whatever cramped place she was sleeping. She basically just told her body to fuck off and she went right back to sleep. Annoying thing was, was that when she rolled over to get back to sleep, something got wrapped around her. It just made her want to glare, already in a slightly bad mood from the horrible wake-up call from her senses, but she just went right back to sleep.

She slept in this warm, comfortable place for a long while. She was calm and content; no higher thoughts, no worries, and no memories of much save for interesting snippets that floated around like dreams whenever she was coherent enough to actually think. She was perfectly fine with sleeping, especially since nothing seemed wrong with that one single bit.

It was some time later, when her comfortable resting place was getting a little too snug, that she suddenly felt a slight panic around her. It was as though she was no longer wanted in this warm place and was therefore rejected.

Now, the really uncomfortable bit was becoming squashed through a really weird tube, after being bumped awake by something on the outside of her really comfortable home. It was painful, since whatever tube she was being squeezed down didn't seem to understand that her skull didn't actually want to fit.

Next thing she knew, it was cold, she couldn't breathe as something was choking her, and these lights were driving into her eyes like fucking needles. She tried seeing what was going on but her eyes seemed to be working even worse than when she wore glasses. That thought barely made her pause since her little mind couldn't actually remember wearing any sort of glasses before the idea slipped from her thoughts like water through a sieve.

Whatever was wrapped around her neck was quickly unwound and removed before someone stuck their meaty fingers in her mouth to dislodge her unresponsive tongue.

Then, with a firm smack on her bottom, a smack with shocked her, she cried.

She screamed, she cried, and she even had a mild panic attack before she was wrapped like some sort of freakish pink burrito.
Sometime in the middle of her panic attack, she fell asleep.

Fucking weird. No other way to put it.

It's all panic, panic, pani… sleep.

She crashed and the next thing she awoke to is blurry vision, though she was somehow used to it as she had always needed glasses (though she couldn't quite remember what glasses actually were), and naked boobs right in front of her face.

She gaped in shock, couldn't really help herself because there were suddenly these tits just all of a sudden in front of her face. Then, she shut her mouth and absolutely refused to do anything but scrunch up her face in preparation to cry.

For some reason, though she couldn't actually remember why, there is just some sort of massive instinct going off in her head that screaming "NO! Do not put that it your mouth!"

At this point, she's already figured out that she must be some sort of baby because she was wearing what she could tell was a diaper and she was being rocked by a giantess. After her panic attack that she crashed in the middle from, she wakes up to see giants holding her and a room that could only hold giants.

Whatever, she's as cool as a cucumber (though she really can't seem to remember where these little thoughts keep coming from); ignoring the panic attack she had when she was first born. That is until someone undresses her and shoves what she suspects is a thermometer up her butt.

She was not a happy camper and she made damn sure that everyone else knew as well.

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Chapter Three
(Three Months Old)

She had to admit, being a baby kind of sucks.

No, let her rephrase that. Being a baby really, really sucks.

She has to wallow in her own filth unless she cried for help, she slept all the fucking time and barely finish any thoughts before she's sleeping again, she always felt hungry but she could only seem to eat a smidgen of food which all tastes crappy anyway, she could only see so far before everything gets blurry, and she couldn't understand a single word that her new parents said.

Whatever.

Though, she had to admit that her mom was awesome, or should she say Kaa-san.

Originally, she only knew a spattering of Japanese from watching anime she used to watch (especially as her memories seemed to organize quite quickly once she was actually born), but her kiddy brain just seemed to be a fucking sponge. A really, really dry sponge that can grow from the size of a dime and explode into the size of a watermelon.

She also finally learned her own name… Kazeshini. She had literally been named the Wind of Death because of the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, which was normally a death sentence for a newborn and because of the powerful winds and storms that had happened during her birth.

Over the next few months, Kazeshini learned everything she could. However it annoyed her that she still had to cry for her dirty nappy to be changed as Kazeshini refused to lay in her own filth for more than a minute. She wanted to scoff, no wonder no one could remember being a baby, it is mentally scarring.

Still, her Kaa-san is awesome. The woman had bright red hair that just totally draws the eye, and she's also the one who seems to wear the pants in her parent's relationship though that is only when in private. Other than that, it seems that everything is all patriarchal. All these guests that came to see Kazeshini as her cute drooling and pooping baby self, all deferred to Tou-san.

Still, he's nice when he's around but it isn't too often.

Kazeshini suspected it's because he has to fight or something because she has always seen him in this odd Japanese samurai armor/ninja outfit that's actually pretty cool to look at. However, if she was in the main room when her Tou-san got home, Kazeshini could sometimes see a little bit of blood splatter on his clothes and armor.

However, she was cool with that. She died and she could totally remember her last thoughts of thinking that her blood had been pretty, pretty paint.

Though, she was definitely not going to around cackling like the mad hatter while killing people. It also helped that Kazeshini heard that her Tou-san was one of the guards of the clan head, and that meant he was a protector and not any sort of gangster of mass-murderer.

~˜~˜~o0҉0o~˜~˜~

Growing up went by quickly since it seemed like she slept most of the day away. However, Kazeshini was bored of doing nothing all day but bash blocks on the tatami mats and gum on her white and black stuffed tiger while staring up at the circular mobile hanging above her head.

The first thing Kazeshini did when she could finally stand up, which was only within a few months as she had constantly been trying to become slightly independent and not totally dependent on her mother, was that she went to the bookshelves. These massive monstrosities of sturdy wood that towered over her small, chubby body were filled with scrolls and books. With fumbling fingers, Kazeshini gripped what was obviously a picture book in grabbing distance and dragged it over to her Kaa-san so that the woman would read to her daughter. This started the stage that Kazeshini would constantly nag at her parents to teach her to read.

Hiragana, katakana, and kanji were the three written languages that Kazeshini needed to learn; hiragana and katakana having thousands of symbols for different meanings and kanji consisting of only around a hundred that could be fit together to match spoken word.
Luckily, she had her stupidly elastic and sponge like child's brain and it went by faster and faster, especially since Kazeshini had the patience of a young adult compared to an actual child. Her reading was also drastically sped up when she found a kanji dictionary to help with the memorization of the three different written languages.

Also, despite any worries her parents might have expressed, Kazeshini refused to speak. She daren't speak since she didn't want to seem freakishly smart speaking words that she had not ever heard before and freak out her new parents so Kazeshini stayed silent. She was also afraid of being considered some sort of prodigy, especially since she was a fake and only smart by a baby's standard because of her previous memories of a twenty year old college student trying for a degree in art.

It didn't matter that she didn't speak since she followed her Kaa-san's commands quite easily as Kazeshini followed her Kaa-san around trying to help. Though, Kazeshini was pretty sure that she was just a nuisance. Kazeshini also explored her home as much as she could, getting into anything and everything but wasn't let outside without supervision.

As she grew taller, Kazeshini could reach the books and scrolls on slightly higher shelves in the library compared to just the books and scrolls off the ground floor, and that was where she learned that she was in the world of Naruto.

Kazeshini had just found a scroll on how exactly one should mediate for the beginning steps of chakra control.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four
(Six Months Old)

Kazeshini could swear that she just sat in shock, on her fat little diaper clad bottom, until a grin formed on her cute little chubby cheeks. Thinking it through, she was quite excited about learning chakra, the mystical magical energy that could do nearly anything as long as you had the imagination to try and the patience to practice.

Then, without further fanfare other than a wide, shit-eating grin decorating her face, Kazeshini read through the scroll and put it away quickly, not wanting to be caught with it.

That very same night, she practiced meditating for the first time, and she felt absolutely nothing.

She had always thought that being born into the Naruto world would mean that she would magically know the magical energy of wizardry known as chakra. Come on, obviously she had to have this mystical energy that can allow ninja's to bend the space/time continuum, throw fireballs, run faster than a cheetah, create a tidal wave to surf on, and summon animals from an extra dimension. She had thought that because she had spent twenty years in a world without chakra, that being in this new world would allow her to cheat.

Then, she remembered that girls were expected to be ninja's as well, and she shivered in fear. It suddenly wasn't as fun as she had been thinking, sitting there daydreaming of all the cool things a person could do with chakra.

Kazeshini was perfectly alright with getting hurt, it happened naturally by falling down or accidentally cutting a finger. However, for a whole lot of things she would be expected to bite her own finger to draw blood or even stab herself if she couldn't release a genjutsu with chakra.
Purposely hurting herself was almost a deal breaker for Kazeshini, but she had also always wanted to be the master of the elements like the avatar from The Last Airbender. That would be awesome.

So, after that thinking session, Kazeshini fell asleep to prepare herself for the next day. Every day, and with any free time she could find when she wasn't following her Kaa-san (which was quite a bit), Kazeshini practiced meditating.

It took her weeks to actually understand what chakra was supposed to feel like, and all of the sudden it was so freaking obvious that she couldn't understand how she couldn't have felt it before.

Kazeshini felt as though her chakra was like warm, melt in your mouth chocolate and yet at the same time it was like the cool shade under a tree and a warm pool on a cool day. It was hot and cold and warm and cool, and she loved it.

The first thing Kazeshini did was call it to her chubby little fingers and make her fingers glow with a pretty blue color. It was like trying to hold water, willing it to come to her fingers and manifest in a glow, and it was amazing. Kazeshini couldn't help but release the cutest little giggle; that cute giggle that only the most adorable of little kids can produce.

Kazeshini quickly toddled to her Tou-san's office and grabbed a piece of paper from his trash bin to try sticking it to her fingers once she got back to her room. She called upon her chakra and tried making it attach to the paper like glue.

It didn't work the first time, nor did it work the second time. However, with some practice, Kazeshini made the paper stick to her fingers. It worked as though she had made her chakra some sort of magnet and then looped her chakra through the paper like sowing string that were pinched shut to hold the paper.

It was exhausting.

The paper fluttered to the ground as Kazeshini sat on her child's futon, panting like she had run a marathon with sweat pouring down her chubby little face. She gasped for some air and just sat there for a while before grabbing the piece of paper and hiding it under her pillow before falling asleep.

Kazeshini slept like a log and when she woke up, she knew her Kaa-san had been slightly worried since the woman knew her child was quite an active little baby. For dinner, Kazeshini enjoyed her apple and carrot mash which got all over the place as she practiced her hand-eye coordination by using her own spoon, before getting cleaned off. Then, with a hug to both her Kaa-san and Tou-san, she toddled off to her room.

One more time, Kazeshini tried sticking the paper to her fingers. It was hard and exhausting as her chakra permeated the paper where her fingers touched and kept the paper on her skin as if a magnet. It worked just as well and she lasted for about a minute before her chakra just seemed to flicker out and the paper dropped.

She was exhausted once again.

So, she lay down on the child sized futon, which was easily unfolded and refolded for storage purposes, and fell asleep.

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Chapter Five
(One Year Old)

Time flew by fast when one is busy. Kazeshini had progressed with her chakra control until she could stick paper on the bottom of her small feet as well as sticking paper on other parts of her body. Then she had progressed to sticking little bits of her clothes to her skin on and off throughout the day so she wasn't constantly carrying a stack of paper wherever she went. Kazeshini was also old enough to be let outside in the back garden where she could explore all on her own.

That was mainly because of how advanced she acted even though she still didn't try speaking, not even that cute baby babbles most children started.

Kazeshini also suspected that she kept getting underfoot while trying to help and it had started to annoy her mother slightly. Meh, whatever.

She had also begun practicing her letters by painting on some really smooth river stones with water. She used an old and worn out brush that had been in her Tou-san's trash bin. This helped mainly with trying to relearn writing as well as heightening the dexterity within her still chubby fingers.

It was a tiring process to relearn to write but Kazeshini remembered going to college and she had remembered taking art classes galore. She had remembered wanting to become an artist and a fashion designer as it was where her passion was. So, Kazeshini wanted to draw more than stupid scribbles or finger paintings.

She practiced with her beat up brush anytime she was outside and too tired to run around; she mainly ran around like a squirrel on crack as it seemed the more chakra she practiced with, the more it grew, and the more energy she had which consequently had to be burned off when not being used. Whenever she was inside though, she snuck into the library to read whatever she could get her hands on, which consisted of only the scrolls and books on the lower shelves.

Her stupidly spongy, soaks up everything, elastic toddler brain was like a man dying from thirst. Kazeshini just couldn't get enough knowledge and she was absolutely interested in everything she could find in what she had believed to be a fictional world.
She had also thought that as an adult in a child's body, she would be totally serious all the time compared to an actual child. No, nope, not at all.

Kazeshini was controlled by her toddler body as much as she was controlled by her adult memories. The body was energetic and sometimes she could get distracted by something interesting or shiny and be occupied for minutes playing or chasing whatever had caught her attention; that was until she remembered what she had been doing before. She also struggled to sit still after a while as her energy just seemed to want her to continuously squirm before her interest was caught on something.

Just the other day, there had been this really pretty butterfly, and each time it came close and caught her attention, her whole focus would suddenly be completely zeroed in on the little butterfly. Kazeshini had chased that bug for hours like she had blinders on and the focus of her entire world had been on catching that damned butterfly. It finally flew away and Kazeshini had actually burst into tears before calming down from her seesawing emotions to realize she had been acting like an actual toddler.

Ugh, that had just not been her day.

Kaa-san though, had begun waking her daughter up early in the morning to do these really interesting morning games. Kazeshini would clap her hands along with her Kaa-san and she had figured out early on that it was improving her hand-eye coordination. Then they would begin stretching.

Kazeshini would never get over how flexible she was now as a small toddler. It's like her bones were made of rubber and they don't freaking exist. As a college student, Kazeshini had been about as limber as a log. She could reach the middle of her shins when bending over but no farther. Now, she could place her hands flat on the floor and still go just a tad bit further.

Though going too far with stretches often caused Kazeshini to lose her balance and fall over. She blamed it on the fact that she was still a cute little ball of chubby cheeks that still waddles everywhere because her legs don't want to work like she wanted them to all the time.
At least, she thought with glee, she was out of her everyday diapers as she had potty trained herself as soon as her bladder could actually physically allow her to go when she wanted. Though she was still forced to wear a diaper during the night as accidents happened which Kazeshini couldn't physically help.

For now, she was just trying to forget all the embarrassing accidents she had caused as a baby because her body couldn't actually physically hold anything in, everything just seemed to happen.

Getting away from those scarring memories and thoughts, Kazeshini dragged her stuffed tiger which she had dubbed as her "Albino Tigger" outside to lay in the warm sun for her nap. So, laying Tigger down on the ground like Trafalgar Law and Bepo, she fell asleep warm and happy.

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Chapter Six
(Two Years Old)

Kazeshini was finally shown a small little dojo area in the small house that they lived in and her Tou-san began showing her beginners kata's that Kazeshini practiced religiously. She hadn't done anything like it before because she already had things to occupy her time and now she actually knew what she was supposed to be doing.

She was slightly annoyed however, that her Tou-san wouldn't allow her to handle any of the weaponry no matter how much she pouted. Though, she did understand that a deciding factor was because she still hadn't spoken a word to her parents. Truthfully she hated speaking because her tongue didn't want to properly cooperate and anytime she tried speaking when in private, it came out with some sort of annoying lisp or she fumbled the words. It annoyed Kazeshini enough that she had decided not to speak until she could speak correctly without any sort of childish lisp.

Also, Kazeshini was old enough to actually help a little more with her Kaa-san around the house instead of being underfoot all the time. Her mother, Kazeshini had to admit, was pretty awesome at giving a dozen little tasks that could be performed by the growing toddler.
With this, Kazeshini also allowed to stand on a chair to help while in the kitchen. Kazeshini was allowed to stir and measure foodstuffs though she still wasn't allowed near any knives, which was smart if she were an actual toddler without the memories o a young adult. It was awfully annoying for Kazeshini sometimes that her new parents were so responsible that they didn't hand a small toddler and sort of sharp weapon.

This also started the point where Kazeshini had grabbed her little ink brush and some old paper to come give begging looks at her mother. The woman had gotten quite good at deciphering such needy looks and understood what Kazeshini was trying to get without ever speaking a word.

She gushed over her daughter's adorableness and sat down with Kazeshini to go over some letters. With her help, Kazeshini's progress with writing sped up exponentially now that she had a teacher to tell her how all the brush strokes were supposed to go. This in turn made Kazeshini's writing much neater and her characters began looking like little pieces of art instead of simple scribbles.

For writing practice, Kazeshini was given a blank scroll to be used however she wanted. With the scroll, Kazeshini began practicing her writing that got better and better the more she practiced. In the margins, however, Kazeshini began writing in plain English exactly what she remembered from her previous life about the manga Naruto along with anything else that she had thought interesting or would be helpful.
She knew that various make-believe techniques from across the different manga's could most likely be replicated because of the magical energy that is chakra. She just had to write down the techniques and what they accomplished so she could try replicating them.

Her days blurred together with only slightly harder kata's and more difficult and complicated chakra exercises that she made up. With chakra, she began growing the difficulty of sticking her clothes to various parts of her body to sticking her feet against walls in a modified tree walking exercise and trying to split leaves, crumble rocks, manipulate water, set tinder alight, crumple regular paper, and separate her chakra in its yin and yang equivalent before meshing it back together.

Once her hand grew even steadier, Kazeshini began drawing ink tigers. The more she practiced, the more her parents figured out her absolute fixation and obsession with the graceful animal that Kazeshini had never actually seen before and only had a single stuffed animal of, Albino Tigger.

As a gift for being so well behaved, especially as Kazeshini's parents had heard horror stories of some of the children of other families, she was given an even larger stuffed tiger. The gift was given also impart because they had seen their cute little daughter more than once napping against her smaller stuffed tiger.

When Kazeshini had received her new stuffed toy, one of the few she had received since they had gotten rid of most of the toys she had never actually used nor needed, Kazeshini nearly hugged the stuffing out of it. In her thoughts, the toy was just too adorable, soft and cuddly to not be hugged to death.

Kazeshini was constantly rubbing her cheek against the super soft fur and her mother though her daughter was quite adorable as Kazeshini dragged that stuffed animal with her practically everywhere.

With this, a small collection of stuffed tigers began growing and Kazeshini was quite happy with it. Her drawings also grew progressively better until they easily resembled the tigers she admired so much.

Kazeshini was very happy with how well she was progressing; there were no dangers and no conflict as of this moment in her life. She only needed to focus on the future troubles that she would only be able to deal with once she was older so there was no point in borrowing trouble. Even with all her training, Kazeshini wasn't really bored because it was always interesting.

She suspected that it was so interesting because she had lived another life without any sort of chakra energy that allowed for mind boggling feats that were possible in that life. Here, she was constantly entertained because the thought of doing superhuman feats was like finding you could be rich for life, except that it was so much easier to attain than trying to win any sort of jackpot from the lottery.

So, Kazeshini practiced almost religiously with her writing, reading, chakra manipulation, and with her kata's so that she could not only survive in the future, but thrive.

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven
(Three Years Old)

"Good morning Kazeshini-chan." The girl's mother said as Kazeshini was awoken from her sleep as the older woman patted the small futon to help shake the small girl awake. Kazeshini grumbled a bit as she had been quite comfortable as she was curled up against her numerous stuffed tigers which had accumulated into quite the collection.

"Good morning Kaa-san." Kazeshini said, finally having begun speaking a little after her third birthday though only with simpler fraises as she could still stumble over her words which greatly annoyed her, before she got off her futon and began dressing for the day and folding up the futon.

Kazeshini walked outside, a yawn still on her lips, as she began her morning exercises with her mother. These exercises had grown progressively harder, especially as Kazeshini's balance had gotten better compared to when she had first started these exercises. They stretched, bending their bodies in odd and sometimes complicated configurations, before doing simple exercises to gain strength in the limbs. Kazeshini enjoyed these sessions, she loved moving in set patterns so early in the morning that brought up a sweat to her brow and reminded her of a slow dance.

After the morning exercises, Kazeshini bathed with her mother and was helped into a cute little child's yukata before her bright red hair was combed and tied up. Once dressed, Kazeshini helped her mother with making breakfast which her father complimented after eating. Once the dishes were washed and put away, Kazeshini began the few chores she helped with every single morning such as helping her mother with the laundry by scrubbing any soiled clothes with soap and a washboard.

Once the few chores were completed, which went quickly as Kazeshini wasn't expected to do too much as she was still only considered a toddler, she was given some free time which she used to practice her kata's which was supervised by her father. To go along with the progressively harder morning exercises, the kata's also grew progressively harder but not so much that she could hurt herself.

Before lunch, which Kazeshini was required to wash her hands and face before attending, she sat down with her mother to practice her kanji. Writing practice paused for lunch before picking up again after words and Kazeshini was forced to write a set of characters down at least twenty times and one wasn't to her mother's satisfaction, Kazeshini would be forced to write that same symbol another thirty times.

After writing practice, Kazeshini was whisked away by her father and forced to practice her kata's again while learning new forms. It was around this time, that Kazeshini was finally allowed to practice with weaponry, though it was all in the form of wooden practice weapons which she was forced to practice with for well over two hours each day.

To her enthusiastic grin, Kazeshini's father had given her a bokken, a wooden practice sword, and she was required to do a certain sword set a hundred times each. This meant that Kazeshini would stand in the middle of their small dojo and she would whack at the air in several repeated motions for a hundred times each for as long as it took her to finish practice.

At the end of practice, Kazeshini was usually so exhausted that her limbs would tremble from fatigue.

However, just from the thought of being able to use a sword in the future, Kazeshini felt it mandatory to continue practicing no matter the fact that she always felt like nearly giving up more than a few times from the absolute burn she felt in her muscles during and after practice. Along with practicing her kata's and sword forms, Kazeshini practiced more with her chakra. She hadn't progressed too far on the elemental manipulation but she had begun balancing sticks on the tips of her fingers and trying to create chakra strings. In conjunction with practicing her chakra, Kazeshini had also begun practicing the cat's foot technique to learn to walk silently and it had made her mother giggle before offering little tips and advice.

Kazeshini's days blurred past as she enjoyed herself while learning something new or interesting every single day.

She was also constantly sneaking into the library to read something new, especially as she had grown tall enough to reach for more books and scrolls. Kazeshini was also being taught more feminine practices like proper kimono wear, flower arranging, poetry, music, and tea ceremonies.

Though she thought of herself more of a tomboy who liked dressing nice, Kazeshini was enjoying all the feminine activities she was learning at her mother's knee.

Everything was enjoyable and fun to do which was in part because her mother was constantly giving Kazeshini something new to do so she was never bored.

Truthfully, Kazeshini blamed her spongy little brain for being so hyped up. Kazeshini constantly fed her little brain new information and she constantly wanted to learn more, never stopping as she went about her day.

Luckily, Kazeshini was perfectly alright with doing chores compared to her previous life. This was in part by the fact that she knew that any sort of temper tantrum over doing her chores would be followed by a beating that would be deemed abusive in her previous life but was viewed as perfectly acceptable in this life.

Kazeshini also knew that she was already slated to be a ninja, especially with all the preparation that had gone into her trained so far. This decision was also aided by the fact that Kazeshini knew that it would be near impossible to do anything as a civilian. Being a civilian in this world, a world where ninjas could accidentally sneeze and set a forest alight, would mean that she would be useless and helpless. So really, she had no other choice; not that she was all upset by that choice.

So, she practiced every single day without break, knowing currently that she would only be a fly buzzing annoyingly in the ear of a monster like Uchiha Madara or Senju Hashirama. She focused on repeating her kata's until they were practically second nature and her chakra exercises until she collapsed each night on her futon in exhaustion.

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Chapter Eight
(Four Years Old)

Kazeshini was growing up faster than her parents would have liked. They had known she was quite smart already, though she hadn't spoken at all until she was three years old unlike any other child they knew. However, they hadn't figure out exactly how smart she was until a few months after her fourth birthday when she actually began speaking instead of the short clipped words when she had turned three.

Kikyou and Ukitake Uzumaki had been married for three years before finally trying for a child, having been in an arranged marriage since Kikyou had turned fifteen and Ukitake had turned eighteen. It took another three years after they began actively trying for a child before they succeeded, however the pregnancy from the very start was difficult and dangerous for Kikyou. For some reason that the medics couldn't figure out, the pregnancy lasted three months more than the average nine month pregnancy and Kikyou could barely stand up for fear of falling over.

The birth had been even more difficult for Kikyou as she had stayed in labor for thirty-four rigorous hours with nothing to show for it. She had been exhausted and yet the baby still hadn't been delivered. The midwife was forced to call for help as Kikyou gave permission to perform a caesarian section as the midwife had determined the babe was in distress.

Right as a medic was going to cut into Kikyou's abdomen, the midwife found the child's head crowning.

The babe was born with the umbilical cord wrapped tight around its neck, but the midwife soon had it breathing and crying out and in no danger of suffocating from the cord.

Kikyou and Ukitake were proud parents, though the difficult birth had Kikyou labeled as sterile because of the major bleeding right after the birth.

They raised their daughter, who was quiet most of the time and only cried when she needed something. They knew she was already quite smart when she had begun crawling and walking within only a few months.

However, Kikyou and Ukitake had worried because their daughter hadn't spoken a word until her third birthday, and even then it had only been a few specific words.

It was a few months after Kazeshini's fourth birthday when she truly spoke while going over calligraphy with her mother, "Kaa-san, when are we going to work on chakra? I read a scroll on it already, and it seems quite important."

Kikyou and Ukitake had looked at each other in shock, Ukitake having stayed home for the day, and it was up to Kikyou to reply. "Well, my little Tora-chan, what do you want to know?"

Kazeshini just controlled her brush, continuing to practice her strokes, and only spoke when she wasn't concentrating on the character she was trying to complete. "I was just wondering when we would begin practicing with it. I know a lot of the process and I can already use a little of it, but I don't know a whole lot. I was wondering if I could get help with sensing with it, I can already use it pretty well but I can't seem to figure out how to sense anything very far away."

Ukitake was surprised and asked, "How far away are you trying to sense?"

"I can't seem to sense anything outside the house, but I can normally find both of you very easily."

Again, Kikyou and Ukitake were surprised, as it was quite a feat to sense anything with chakra; especially when she had no prior instruction on the process. That was also not included on the fact that their daughter apparently had already found her chakra and could call upon it if her words were to be believed.

Kikyou nodded and went back to her own calligraphy, like finding out that the fact her daughter could talk like an adult was perfectly normal and nothing to worry over. "Well, after practice with your father, I will set you down and we can practice for a while before your other lessons. How does that sound?"

"Thank you, Kaa-san." Kazeshini replied with a smile up at her mother before continuing to practice her calligraphy without even fidgeting.
Ukitake took his cue from his wife and just went back to read from the scroll in his hand while occasionally sipping from his tea cup, not seemingly bothered at all by his daughter suddenly speaking like a miniature adult.

That night, Kikyou beamed at her husband from their room where they were getting ready for bed, "Oh, I can't believe this! She's just so smart!"

Ukitake smiled warmly at his wife and gave her a hug, "Well, I guess there was nothing truly to worry about, now we just have to add some chakra control exercises to her already busy schedule. Though I am worried that she doesn't seem to want to play but instead train or practice your arts."

"Shush you," Kikyou mocked frowned at her husband and gave him a teasing smack on the shoulder, "We have nothing to worry about, she can always ask for a break if she wants and we can let her have as much time as she wants, however she constantly wanted to practice with me in tea ceremonies or train with you in the dojo no matter what we suggested. Just be proud that she's talking and not sticking to the same few words."

Ukitake nodded and kissed his wife's brow before guiding her to bed, "Well, I'll see if I can add some chakra exercises to her training."
Kikyou smiled widely, "That's the spirit, husband of mine! I'll even start a little on her fuinjutsu training once I see how good she is with chakra. Now, husband of mine, let's get to bed and think of how to best help our little Tora-chan tomorrow."

"Of course, wife of mine. Though little Kaze seems to be very diligent with practicing with that bokken of hers, I wouldn't be surprised when she turns out to be the best swordswoman in the entire clan."

"Well of course she'll be the best; she has you to train her!" Kikyou smiled warmly at her husband and gave him a kiss before getting in bed. "Now to bed with you, husband, and we can begin her new training in the morning."

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Chapter Nine
(Four Years Old)

Kazeshini finally felt that she could speak up without being looked at as a total genius, though she suspected that her parents thought of her as a genius anyways. Truthfully, Kazeshini just really didn't want the moniker of 'genius' attached to her name though she didn't mind being thought of as smarter than average.

She could clearly remember the genii in Naruto and how they were treated. She knew that every single one of them had something horrible happen to them because people thought they were smart and grown-up adult in children's bodies but they were still children which was always forgotten. They were always pushed to start fighting sooner than any other child, usually only taking a year in the academy before being shoved off to war such as Uchiha Itachi and Hatake Kakashi.

The first thing she asked was the one thing she would probably always have undying curiosity for, chakra. So, during calligraphy lessons with her mother, Kazeshini had asked for help with her chakra sensing abilities.

Kazeshini had continued drawing her little kanji symbols, always being careful because too much ink caused the ink to bleed, too little ink caused the lines to breaks, while too much pressure and the lines were too thick, and too little pressure caused the lines to be too thin and not look correct.

That next morning Kikyou was prepared to ask her daughter various questions at breakfast, not interrupting their morning exercises since it was a time for relaxation and peace. "So, my little tigress, what can you tell me of chakra?"

Kazeshini swallowed what was in her mouth before speaking, "Chakra is our life force mixed together from our spiritual and physical energies. Balanced and used correctly, chakra is what is used for varying techniques commonly referred to as ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu techniques. This is further spread to different techniques such as Iryo ninjutsu, fuinjutsu, nintaijutsu, kekkei ninjutsu, and nature transformation which is all performed when using chakra."

Kikyou just nodded, enjoying her own breakfast while listening to her daughter; however, by the end of Kazeshini's little speech, both Kikyou and Ukitake were reeling from the shock of their daughter speaking so articulately and with a perfect definition of chakra and what chakra could be used for.

Then, from their resulting conversation, Kazeshini was introduced to a whole slew of new chakra exercises. She was also forced to begin meditating with her father for an hour each day even though Kazeshini already meditated for a little while before bed.

Having remembered how Naruto gained mastery over Senjutsu, or the sage arts, Kazeshini didn't bother even thinking of complaining and just took to meditation with her father unlike any other child would probably ever have the patience for without falling asleep. Though it did irk her quite a bit that she would periodically fall asleep, which was a bad habit she must have acquired from meditating in her bed when she was supposed to be going to sleep.

When Kazeshini had asked her father if he was disappointed in her for falling asleep and not meditating properly, he had only replied with an indulgent smile, "The key to meditating is relaxing. By the way you were snoring; I at least know you were relaxed."

Kazeshini's education was heightened as they learned exactly how smart she was and how far she had already progressed with trying to control her chakra, which she had been practicing for two years already. So her parents began cramming in lessons on etiquette, music, geography, mathematics, science, chakra, fuinjutsu training, weapon training, cooking, survival lessons, herb lore, medical training and gardening.

Every morning Kazeshini would wake up, do her morning exercises, take a short bath, do some of her chores which included helping out in the garden and herb garden, help with breakfast, clean up after breakfast, work on calligraphy, learn the basics of fuinjutsu, and then she learned some geography and mathematics. For a break, she was guided through a tea ceremony at lunch time with her mother and father while having everything explained to her.

After that short lunch with tea, Kazeshini was taught more of the womanly arts at her mother's knee and medical arts where she was tested on the herb lore she learned earlier that morning before breakfast. Then, she went outside with her father.

Under Ukitake's guidance she did a warm up, practiced her kata's, ran for an hour, practiced with her bokken, and practiced with her new shuriken and kunai before she was allowed to cool down then take another bath.

After dinner, Kazeshini sat with her mother to practice with the instruments she had chosen: the biwa, the koto, the sanshin, and the flute. She was then given some free time to do what she wanted which usually had Kazeshini asking her mother for more fuinjutsu lessons until it was time for bed.

During the weekend, Kazeshini went out into the small wooded area behind their home to camp for a night or two with her father. There, she learned new things for survival out in the wild. When at home, she performed various tea ceremonies for her mother as well as practicing to walk, run, and even fight while dressed in kimonos and other heavy garments. Though even while practicing with her mother, Kazeshini was forced to do her various exercises every day which now included running and practicing with her new weapons.

Kazeshini enjoyed learning all the womanly arts, having been fascinated by them in her previous life. However, it struck her that it seemed like she and her mother always had to serve her father without complaints while he just sat at the table working on paperwork or fuinjutsu seals whenever he wasn't out guarding the clan head. It annoyed her that she was being forced to mend and clean his clothes, alongside all their other chores, while he was usually at the table drinking tea and doing paper work. It irked her to no end because he used his time at home to catch up on any paperwork since he had clan training with his fellow guards.

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten
(Five Years Old)

Kazeshini was practically exhausted, she actually felt lucky now that she already knew a good portion of any theoretical work that her parents gave her. Though it seemed because she already knew it, that she sped through the work and therefore she was given even more work to get through. However, no matter how fast she went through the easier work, it always seemed as though she could never meet her parent's expectations when it came to physical standards.

She would be the first to admit that in her last life, Kazeshini wasn't the most physically fit person out there. She detested working out on her own, seeing it as a waste of time when she could be practicing her art or practicing on her cello. She hadn't been overweight or anything, since she didn't pig out on food, but she wouldn't be running any sort of marathon.

Now, Kazeshini had to exercise every single day, and while it was interesting to learn new kata, she hated having to run since it got so boring just running without doing anything else. She found doing such activities boring beyond belief. Therefore, she resolved to cheat.
For the boredom during the exercise itself, Kazeshini had devised a way to practice her chakra manipulation to create specific chakra burns on paper. She had to be very, very careful to not burn all the way through the paper but she could write like this without having to worry about unsteady hands while running. It doubled as a chakra control exercise since she had to carefully manipulate her chakra into a specific configuration before burning it on the paper but not so that the character was seen on both sides of the paper.

Also, to cheat with running so she wouldn't have to run and run and run, she turned to fuinjutsu. Having been studying under her mother for a year now, Kazeshini was well on her way to understanding the basics of fuinjutsu and even some intermediate fuinjutsu. It just seemed to make sense to her. Fuinjutsu was described as many different things in the different pages she had read on narutopedia or even in the stories on fanfiction. But to her, it was like symbolism and a tiny bit of math made into art.

Fuinjutsu was an imprint of her soul on paper, what symbol meant most to her inked down on paper. Each symbol was part of an 'equation' which flowed from what how she wanted something done to what the output would be. Her best example would be X-number + N-number had to equal Y-number. However Y could be something as simple as storage, or it could mean something as complicated as transportation from place to another. While X and N would always have multiple symbols to get to the answer of Y since creating a closed fourth dimension connected to paper for a storage scroll isn't as simple as drawing a few squiggles down.

The real kicker was that the chakra you added to a seal had to agree with how the X+N equaled Y or the seal could blow up in your face. Chakra was like a really strict math teacher: you had what you wanted (though sometimes what you wanted had to be changed anyways because it had too complicated of an equation) and if all your work to create the equation didn't match up exactly to what you wanted as the outcome, it failed.

If that wasn't bad enough, because nothing was too simple, seals were also based a lot on symbolism. You could have twenty different symbols meaning nearly the exact same thing however each symbol could also have another meaning that could unbalance the whole equation. Through this, all those dozens of other near identical symbols (like a blue dot outlined with azure or a blue dot outlined in sapphire) were all created from dozens of other fuinjutsu masters. The way to become a fuinjutsu master was creating your own soul language to put on paper as fuinjutsu. This meant that while you're memorizing the thousands of other fuinjutsu symbols created by previous fuinjutsu users, you were creating your own fuinjutsu symbols and symbolism to help create what you wanted on paper.

Creating your own fuinjutsu language helped to compact large scale fuinjutsu works, and since only the creator knows exactly what a certain made up symbol means to them, then it was nearly impossible to plagiarize seals that had been compacted unless you knew what the compact seal was actually supposed to be when enlarged.

Luckily, Kazeshini was able to have help when first learning seals since Kikyou helped to show generally how everything could and couldn't be linked together. It just didn't help that one symbol could be linked with a hundred other symbols but when two symbols were linked they could only linked to category A symbols but not category B even though when separate, the two symbols could link together with both category A and B symbols.

Luckily, for part of her own private fuinjutsu, Kazeshini could cheat and use written English. This cut out a lot of the work that other fuinjutsu masters went through trying to basically create their own written language in the form of various symbols. For her own personal fuinjutsu Kazeshini had figured out that using barcodes (like on store bought products) helped to create various specific but ultimately simple and fast fuinjutsu works with a spattering of English characters to give some definition to the seals. For more complicated works, Kazeshini was thinking of using the double helix like DNA to help create connected but very, very complicated seals.

However, learning all of this and creating her own barcode system for quick seals were all very confusing and often left Kazeshini to glare darkly at her fuinjutsu work which forever seemed to like to befuddle her.

However, with all this practice, Kazeshini was finally starting to get the gist of everything. So to cheat at the one thing she truly hated and though as a major waste of time that she could be doing something else with no matter how much it might prepare her for the future, Kazeshini started her first real fuinjutsu project. It was an actual project, not just abstract ideas with the barcode system that she could easily imprint on paper to get the proper width and pattern with chakra.

Her 'equation' would eventually equal out to .05 degrees of gravity added against her entire body every time she added chakra along with the addition to showing exactly how many levels she added as well as an easy to use activation/deactivation sequence that only she would be able to use.

It took a few weeks of finagling to finally get the seal correct. When she finally did activate it, the fuinjutsu work that took up an entire five foot scroll, compacted to a few little barcode lines and squiggles on her right ankle. It had a small little number in the middle of the compacted seal, which in turn was only two inches long and one inch tall, that was currently showing a little number one. Kazeshini used a bit of chakra to increase the level four more times and it felt like she was walking through water with how much resistance she was fighting against. Knowing it would be too much; Kazeshini released the seal twice and kept it so it was only at level two.

By the end of the day, she was truly exhausted and had almost fallen asleep at dinner. Her parents had been amused, both of them having already figured out exactly what their daughter had done since it was actually a secret coming of age ritual in the clan. They thought it was hilarious that Kazeshini was already starting to cheat so early in her life by using some sort of gravity and/or weight and/or resistance seal, while they personally had only begun figuring out such a seal when they were preteens.

Being in a society of seal-masters meant that every single Uzumaki became at least proficient in the making of seals, and using a weight or gravity or resistance seal was one all children would eventually think up to speed up their training.

Ukitake and Kikyou sent Kazeshini off to bed early and sent each other sly little smirks thinking of their fellow clansmen's faces when they learned exactly how old Kazeshini was when their daughter created the seal that marked her as an adult in the eyes of the clan as a seal master. Though they had both secretly agreed not to tell anyone until Kazeshini was at least eight so that she wouldn't be shipped off with a team to fight or do jobs that the clan was hired for so early in life.

It didn't help that Ukitake had almost been killed during a fight against the Uchiha when he and the clan head had gone to a meeting with their allies, the Senju. They didn't want their only child out fighting just yet.

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Chapter Eleven
(Six Years Old)

On Kazeshini's sixth birthday, she was finally forcibly dragged to meet the other clan children. About a dozen other children had been invited to her birthday ranging from her age to a few preteens. She was considered the proper age to truly start socializing with those of her own age as she was no longer considered a little kid who needed the full care of her parents.

She was given a gift in private which was a massive stuffed tiger, twice as big as she was, and she had bowed politely to her parents before putting it in her room and being dragged to the small party. They had obviously given her the new stuffed animal since she was growing a bit too big to lean comfortably against her other two stuffed tigers. Those two now had honorary placements on the shelves in her room. The rest of the room was decorated with little pieces of art that got replaced every time she got better with drawing and drew something she like better.

For her birthday, Kazeshini received plenty of the traditional gifts of fruit and melons along with more specialized gifts of sumi (ink sticks), high quality paper, and some new weaponry. Kazeshini thanked everyone with bows and polite smiles, before finally being moved over to have fun with the other children while the adults talked.

Truthfully, her birthday was annoying. She hated having to socialize with the other kids who, to her, acted like hare-brained twits who couldn't hold an actual conversation without using improper grammar every other word.

She had, instead, enjoyed her private birthdays with just her parents, where she was given the day off after receiving a few gifts, and she wasn't forced to socialize.

Her birthday also marked the day when other families began inviting her over for play dates. Frankly, Kazeshini knew that the other adults were trying to see if she would be worth any sort of betrothal contract to their own spawn. Even Kikyou and Ukitake invited plenty of other children, trying to see which ones they approved of over the others.

Kazeshini grew annoyed that her training was constantly being interrupted as frequently as it was, and it irritated her that all these simple minded children would gawk over how princess-like she behaved before beating every single one of them in any designated sparring match.
It also didn't help that Kazeshini began speaking slightly in third person when she was being formal, especially after having met the clan head at her birthday. The man had just exuded an aura that was so profound, so commanding, that she tried emulating his behavior. That tidbit was compounded by the fact that she had admired Sesshomaru from the manga Inuyasha, and how proper the demon had acted; though she tried to be pleasant instead of frosty or cruel.

"This girl wishes to continue her training without interruptions." Kazeshini spoke up at breakfast, speaking as formally as possible to hopefully get her way. Having had a play date the day before, Kazeshini had come home with nerves stretched thin and a very grumpy attitude.

"Well, Kaze-chan, we can see if we can stop taking as many invitations, though you must go to various social gatherings." Ukitake allowed, having seen how annoyed and grumpy his daughter had been the previous day after coming back home. He had watched as she locked herself in her room and meditated, trying to relax but always seeming to twitch and flinch at any sudden noises.

Kazeshini bowed, "This girl finds such an arrangement agreeable." She spoke calmly and politely, thanking the heavens that her father was putting a stop to the annoying play dates, and calmly sipped at her tea before leaving the table to start gathering and washing dirty dishes.
Kikyou could barely hold in a squeal at how cute she thought her daughter to be, speaking so polite and acting so graceful. Their daughter was truly trying to act like a little princess and it didn't help that she had that cute little princess hair cut with bangs just above her eyes, side bangs right at her shoulders, and the rest of her long hair put up with cute but durable hair ornaments.

Kikyou helped her daughter with the dishes before they sat at the table to work more on calligraphy and fuinjutsu. They both sat in seiza while working diligently, Kikyou writing out fuinjutsu tags for her husband and Kazeshini practicing her own fuinjutsu work.

Every week, Kikyou would challenge her daughter with something new to work on and Kazeshini was forced to work on the project until she finished it, though she was allowed to ask for help. Her geography lessons had turned into history lessons and Kikyou imparted all the history of the Uzumaki clan that she could into her daughter. Kazeshini enjoyed these times as they went at a slow, relaxing pace as Kazeshini had asked if she could draw the different pieces of history.

In the main hallway, there were now over a dozen different battle scenes drawn in ink that had been pinned up from the history lessons. Ukitake had even gifted or sold many of the extra ink drawings since Kazeshini drew at least one new painting a day.

It had embarrassed her something fierce when her family had been invited to the head of the clan's home and had seen a handful of her paintings hanging on one of their walls. The paintings themselves were beautiful with one being of cherry blossoms blooming with a traditional Japanese castle in the background, another was of a lazy kitsune laying under a tree wrapped with shimenawa (rope) and shide (white folded paper in zigzags, usually at shrines), the final piece was of a partial willow tree with two cranes under the flowing branches.
Kazeshini had created her signature marking to include fuinjutsu so that the painting couldn't be ruined or destroyed easily as well as keeping the ink from fading.

She had blushed red at seeing her ink paintings in such a position of honor and prestige, meaning that others considered them works of art and not just some little kid's work like finger painting. Kazeshini was then commissioned by the clan head to create another but this time of just a simple oak tree, a painting of a river, and a painting of a dragon.

Kazeshini spent some of her free time figuring out how she would draw these commissioned pieces, working herself into a tizzy over it, before sitting down and unfurling a piece of scroll six feet tall and three feet wide. She drew the dragon that seemed to be swimming with graceful loops in its serpentine body; she detailed the scales, the claws and the teeth so well that it seemed to disguise itself in the churning waters before finishing the dragon's head with powerful eyes and whiskers to wizen the dragon. She then drew a simple but sturdy oak on a thinner piece of scroll, though only a foot shorter. Finally, Kazeshini finished the river with the scroll at the same size as the scroll with the tree.

For her work, she was given a tidy sum of 2,500 ryo for the art work (250 US dollars) and a steady stream of commissions soon came her way as apparently her work was given to the Senju clan head as a gift.

It was all kinds of embarrassing until she got used to it with a shrug, though it was interesting for Kikyou and Ukitake to see their daughter as famous for something that wasn't actually ninja related.

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Chapter Twelve
(Eight Years Old)
Now, having turned eight, Kazeshini was finally allowed to join the other clan children in supervised training until they were deemed good enough to start going on missions. The 'academy' wasn't much of an academy as it was a group of small kids all together on a training field where they were paired up and taught a bit of teamwork. It was expected more of the parents to impart critical knowledge onto the various children while the 'academy' was used more to see how well a child was doing and see how fast they could start taking missions.

The 'academy' was more commonly referred to as a training camp, and that was all it consisted of. Kazeshini was currently running laps with the other kids of her age, though she was running laps around them as she just seemed to be so much faster even with her gravity/resistance seal on level thirty (1.5 G's higher than regular gravity).

Within the training camp, she had quickly risen in the score board compared to her fellow trainees, mainly since she saw the whole training camp as a waste of her time and she wanted to get out as soon as humanly possible. Therefore, she was running circles around other kids, throwing quicker with better accuracy (though she didn't really like throwing weapons), was proficient with a sword compared to most other kids who just swung their bokken around like sticks, and completed any written tests the instructors saw fit to give them with full marks.
Therefore, within exactly three months since entering the 'academy' she was put on a team of experienced clan members who were there to help her out in the field without getting her or themselves killed. They wouldn't be babysitting her on missions, but they would watch over her since she was still inexperienced.

To Kazeshini, who was annoyed by the sniveling and whining brats at the makeshift 'academy,' she was quite thankful for being let out early with a Uzushio hitae-ate with the Uzumaki swirl front and center on the shiny metal. The hitae-ate, Kazeshini had learned, wasn't what it was going to mean during Naruto's time, but it was instead meant as an actual piece of armor to prevent easy arrow shots to the forehead as well as identification during battle since friendly fire wasn't actually friendly.

The softer, womanly arts took a backseat as weapons training, taijutsu, and ninjutsu took precedence. Her nice child yukatas and kimonos were traded out for sturdy battle kimonos and pants while her bokken was put away as she was gifted with her very own sword set. She had been practicing with the nodachi, katana, and tanto so she was gifted with a full sized katana (which was large enough against her small frame that it acted as the nodachi she truly wanted) and regular tanto which she could grow with. She was also gifted with a child sized naginata and child sized bow, mainly as part of tradition since she had only passing familiarity with both weapons.

Kazeshini had no plans for the future as of yet, since she still had no idea exactly when in the timeline she was at save for the warring states era. She also only knew that because the Senju and Uchiha were still fighting each other so no Konoha had been formed. It didn't help that she wasn't high enough in the clan to be able to join in on any political talk so she had no idea if Uchiha Madara was the clan head nor if Senju Hashirama was clan head.

Who was she to ask about politics when she was practically a nobody in the clan hierarchy and whose father was only a guard to the clan head without any sort of influence whatsoever. She might have been smart, as well as an adult in a child's body, but she had practically no status since she was also just beginning her career as a ninja for the clan.

Instead of thinking of the 'what ifs' and planning for carious future problems she really wanted to change, Kazeshini focused on how exactly she was going to live to make those changes. She certainly didn't want to worship Jashin and become some psycho mass murderer like Hidan from Yugakure nor did she was to use the Earth Grudge Fear Technique used by Kakuzu from Takigakure (though she wasn't even sure if the technique had even been created at this point in time), Kazeshini wasn't even going to dare go down the path of the Living Corpse Reincarnation Technique used by Orochimaru.

The only thing interesting she had readily available was fuinjutsu. It was the only thing that would allow for her to live without having to be insane and totally unethical. It definitely helped that she had been practicing her chakra control for years, practically ever since she first fell for her chakra, and she was even good enough to use basic Iryo jutsu.

Her plans went slow though, since she was constantly training with her two older team members, Uzumaki Itsui and Uzumaki Yuri who were both in their teens and the team leader Uzumaki Hisane who was in his early twenties. Every weekday, they were taking small little missions, missions Kazeshini knew would eventually be classified as d-rank once Hashirama got around to creating the village of Konoha, but they were now just piled together in a group labeled as easy missions.

The group worked on teamwork plenty as well as their own individual strengths, and Kazeshini found that she was definitely the fastest in her team after one team practice.

"Alright team, I know Itsui and Yuri have already created that seal which means they came of age within the fuinjutsu circles, but I think Kazeshini-chan should be told so she won't fall behind and get hurt because she can't keep up during a mission." said Hisane early one morning at practice.

Itsui and Yuri grumbled a bit since, to them, it seemed like Kazeshini was getting special favor about being told the secret to being viewed as a seal master within the clan without having to truly work for it, but accepted anyways since they didn't want the 'baby' of the team accidently getting hurt or killed while out on the field.

"I'm slightly confused and I would appreciate it if you would elaborate further." Kazeshini asked politely.

Hisane twitched at Kazeshini's formal language, accepting it as one of her weird quirks though thankful that she only spoke in third person when trying to be overly respectful. He knew it was just a simple quirk just as Itsui always had to be chewing something and how Yuri would embroider anything anytime she was standing still. "Well, everyone on this team has some sort of gravity or weight seal on them that helps us to survive, especially as such a small clan against powerhouses like the Uchiha's. Now, I won't give you any sort of seal but I will help you create it if you ask for it."

Kazeshini gave a polite little bow but replied, "I thank you but I already have such a seal. I created a gravity seal before I turned five."

Hisane raised a disbelieving eyebrow, "Where is your seal then?"

Kazeshini raised her pant leg and rolled down her sock to show the little mark on her ankle. "I have been raising the level of the seal for years while releasing it once a week for a day to get used to the speed and strength increase. I have been doing this for years and for every level of the seal, I gain 5% increase in body weight against my body in resistance so I feel like I walk with boulders tied to my feet. This means that I do not have actual weight bearing down on my body which could be detrimental to my growth." Kazeshini showed the small little English number thirty which she translated for her team leader, "I cannot do more at the moment as I have recently added another level to the seal. I have learned that after the first fifteen levels that adding two levels at a time is much easier and I suspect I will be able to add more levels at a given time in the future but I will not for now since I will not risk hurting myself."

Yuri choked, "Yah, what is twenty extra pounds compared to eighty extra pounds. Here I thought I was super smart having figured out the secret to being considered a fuinjutsu master in the clan before leaving the training camp but you've had yours for years!"

Itsui nodded, "Well, I've had mine for a few months and I'm nowhere near fifty pounds all pressing against my body without flooding my muscles with chakra to carry such weight all day, every day."

"I have been forced to use another seal that stores yin-chakra to heal my body so that I do not hurt myself in the process. I would be severely disappointed to be shorter than average as my body could not handle such resistance or have weak bones for the entirety of my life. The Uzumaki chakra and vitality also help me to keep from remaining hurt."

Hisane just chuckled at his two younger teammate's gob smacked faces before ordering his team to release the different seals and do a hundred laps around the village. Normally, with each wearing their gravity or weight seals, they were quite close when running with only Hisane being the fastest and Itsui coming out in second which forced their two teammates to work harder to catch up. Without the seals, Kazeshini left Itsui and Yuri in the dust while just nipping at the heels of the team leader. After the hundred laps, Kazeshini was left to work on her weaponry skills with Hisane while their two teammates hurried to finish their laps.

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen

(Nine Years Old)

The entire team was out on a mission right now, and it bored Kazeshini half to death. They had been hired to help a civilian family by guarding their ship and goods. The entire team was currently guarding the ship while it was out at sea and Kazeshini was currently playing solitaire with a handmade card deck that she had created. Each card was made to be used as a weapon if needed, Kazeshini felt as though one could never have enough weapons and cards were just another weapon, she could use on the chance that it might save her life.

A sea gull chirped from high above them and Kazeshini slowly flipped a card over from the small deck of cards in her hands.
"Fuck!"

With a cry of anger, Kazeshini threw her cards up in the air as her game ended and she lost not even halfway through the deck.
Itsui grinned and came over to watch as Kazeshini collapsed on her back with a grumpy huff. "Lost again? What was that, the sixth time in a row?"

Yuri chuckled at her friends and teammates, "Nope, I've been counting her games in between watching the sea, that would be the ninth time she lost in a row."

Hisane chuckles filtered down from where he seemed to be meditating up on the crow's nest of the ship.
Kazeshini mock glared at her comrades, "So what if I have crappy luck at card games, at least I always beat you, you always lose 'cause you don't have a poker face."

Itsui clutched his chest in mock pain and gave Kazeshini a hurt look, "How could you be so cruel to me? I have excellent luck at card games!"

"Nope," Yuri mocked as she sat down on a bit of railing overlooking the side of the ship, "You're only good when you cheat, and we always know when you cheat."

Itsui went over to cultivate mushrooms on his own, a pout quite prevalent on his face, "You're all so cruel to me!"

Yuri and Kazeshini shared a look until Kazeshini collected her cards so none were lost. "So, Kaze-chan, why are you playing cards anyway? I was just wondering since you don't normally like playing cards."

Kazeshini just shrugged and put the card deck away in her pouch. "I got bored of drawing and I wouldn't dare right any new fuinjutsu while on an unstable ground, the ship rocks too much for me to feel comfortable to try drawing out experimental seals."
Hisane butted in while looking down at his younger teammates, "Which I agree with!"

Kazeshini only gave her team leader a raised eyebrow, normally during training the man was a harsh and serious taskmaster but his personality relaxed a bit when out on a mission. She assumed it was because it was how he coped in such situations, or it might be to lure any enemy combatants into a false sense of superiority.

"Well, I got tired of drawing the ocean and the ship and anything else my mind came up with, so I started playing cards. Now I'm a bit too frustrated to continue and so I'm gonna train a bit."

Itsui seemed to have cobbled together his 'hurt' pride and asked, "Train, with what? We're out in the middle of the ocean and we shouldn't really expend chakra on a mission when it isn't needed."

"I was just going to go through my sword forms."

Itsui shivered, "You seem entirely too fond of sharp pointy objects."

Yuri gave a giggle and Hisane chuckled while Kazeshini gave Itsui a well-deserved eyebrow raise which seemed to show more than enough mockery as it was more than appropriate for a shinobi or kunoichi to be a little more than fond of sharp objects. In Kazeshini's mind, one could never have enough weapons because she knew that chakra exhaustion was a very real and very dangerous thing as a ninja, and weapons could help keep her from reaching that point which could be a major deciding factor in any fight.

Kazeshini sighed and walked to the middle of the deck, a point on the ship where the sailors rarely hung around because they were always off working elsewhere on the ship. A simple cut of her finger on a small pin specially sewn onto her kunai pouch so she wouldn't have to bite her thumb for the blood sacrifice; Kazeshini unsealed her training sword as she didn't need to draw out her actual sword when training. It helped to not draw out an actual sword when on a ship around mostly civilians so as not to worry them and make them nervous of a small girl carrying around live steel.

For the next few hours, Kazeshini went through her forms, mindlessly so, and only paid attention so that her form was correct and proper. Her training sword on the other hand, without any sailors on the ship having noticed, had dropped the ship down in the water line. The only thing keeping Kazeshini from crashing through the wooden deck was the fact that she had etched seals on it before and made sure not to go jumping around with her wooden training blade.

Currently, she was swinging around a wooden blade that had been etched with seals to increase its weight until it was as heavy as an actual eighty-foot oak. Kazeshini was careful when swinging around the training sword as it was too heavy for her to control it when she was going for speed. So, she went for control while trying to build up her strength.

With another swing, sweat dripped from her brow and she gasped for air as her muscles burnt from the strain. She took a step, shifting the position of her feet, and began a new set of practice moves until she reached an exact hundred of going over the same set.

Once finished, she sealed the practice sword away and took deep gulps from a water bottle she had sitting on the floor next to where she was practicing. She wanted to get strong, and even though she was forced to use chakra to help augment her strength, it was still difficult and straining to train with such a heavy blade.

Compared to others in the clan who practiced the sword, they didn't weigh their blades more than a few pounds extra, all wanting to practice their speed and technique. However, Kazeshini had thought that there must be some method to the madness of a weighted sword and had etched seals onto the practice sword so that she could practice. It had done remarkable things to her sword play, and while her technique was still a tad sloppy in the middle of a fight, the finesse would only come with time and experience.

Taking a break, as her arms were currently shaking and the rest of her body was sore from exertion, Kazeshini stretched a bit to keep her muscles from going stiff before climbing the rigging to sit next to Hisane.

"So, Taicho, how far from Giugen?"

"Not too far, just another day of sailing. Be on the watch out tomorrow though, I have the good experience that a ship carrying merchandise such as this one, will most likely be ambushed by either pirates or other shinobi a little before we get to port. They like to hang around the area as it makes it easier to get a ship instead of having to try tracking it down which is harder to do." Hisane answered easily while looking like he was halfway to napping.

Kazeshini nodded and looked up at the seagull flying circles around the ship and the wispy clouds that decorated the sky.
She felt stretched thin, as though too little butter across a too large piece of bread. Her body wasn't exhausted, but it was her mind and spirit that was exhausted.

For a while now, Kazeshini knew that she would be forced to do something about all that she knew would happen in the future. It wasn't that she was being forced with a blade at her back or anything like that, but her conscience wouldn't allow her to turn away from such devastation. She knew that all the characters, all those people, would go through terrible circumstances if she didn't somehow step in and help. Though she still didn't know what she would be doing.

Kazeshini knew for a fact that she had no idea where in the timeline she was at save for the warring clan era. She knew that too much change could make it so that the future was completely different from all her future knowledge, but she also didn't know how time would react to her influence. She didn't know if her interference would throw things so far out to the left field that people might not be born or not be in the right place to save someone's life; she also didn't know if time was firm and that things would progress in a familiar path no matter her meddling.

It terrified her that she could cause the butterfly to create a disaster, yet she knew that she needed to help because her conscience wouldn't allow her to do otherwise.

Kazeshini sighed deeply, ignoring the questioning look from her team leader and instead pulled out a jutsu scroll that she had borrowed from her parents. It detailed a futon jutsu that would allow the user to spit out slices of sharpened wind to cut the target from ten feet away, but the technique couldn't go much farther.

Not daring to spit out copious amounts of chakra in the name of practice, which would light up the ship like the sun to any decent chakra sensor when out in the middle of the sea, Kazeshini just went over the mechanics of the technique.

Once the sun fell, the team took turns on watch and Kazeshini pulled the second to last shift. She was awoken from her sleep by Yuri who took the second shift and Kazeshini yawned a bit before getting out of her hammock, as she hadn't wanted to sleep on the deck or on a bed which Kazeshini assumed had to be infested with mites or other bedbugs.

With a yawn, Kazeshini stretched a bit and went out onto the deck to keep watch. She shivered as the cool night air chilled her skin, as she was only wearing a battle kimono with mesh armor underneath. She wasn't wearing any traditional shinobi armor like the rest of her team because she would only outgrow it within a year, and it would be a waste to have to spend money to replace it. The armor she would wear would be created by her, and she wanted it to be perfect.

At home, Kazeshini was already practicing the art of the blacksmith, which being a strong kunoichi with plenty of chakra helped immensely. In her previous life, she had loved reading and watching videos about interesting but altogether useless things. Well, the things she learned were pretty much useless in her previous life but held plenty of weight in her current one. With a bit of practice, and half remembered knowledge, Kazeshini had started building a forge in her backyard to make her own armor and weapons. It was plenty of trial and error, more error than success now and more expensive than she had thought it would be, but Kazeshini was determined to create her own personal sword.

She wanted her weapon to mean something, not to have something she bought from another blacksmith. Kazeshini knew that she could create weapons to rival the best of blacksmiths, all because she had knowledge pilfered from her previous world that could be combined to create something better than anything in use today. However, the day that she finally created a weapon that would meet her expectations was far out in the future by at least a few years even if she abused various clone techniques and abused the use of chakra to simulate the strength and endurance of a true blacksmith.

Kazeshini looked around the sea and noticed a slight glimmer in the horizon, with narrowed eyes, Kazeshini sharpened her senses and sighed as she could feel the chakra of some sort of person waiting to ambush the ship. The person trying to hide, but not really succeeding, was still a ways out but Kazeshini would have to alert the team leader if the person came any closer.

A few minutes later, she felt chakra spike in the opposite direction of the person she was monitoring, and she scowled darkly. With a quick chakra sequence that Hisane had made sure she knew and would wake up alert to, she had her entire team awake and coming out onto the deck alert and ready for anything.

"What is it, Kaze-chan?" Hisane asked but it was a redundant question since he was already using his own senses, which were quite a bit better than Kazeshini's own.

"I felt a chakra signal, from what I assume is a civilian, but I can be sure, and then a chakra spike from what I assume is a shinobi in the opposite direction. I felt it prudent to alert the team just to be safe."

Hisane patted Kazeshini's head and nodded, "Good call, alright team, prepare for some combat. Yuri, Itsui guard the ship. Little Kaze-chan and I will be going out to greet these shinobi. Let's see if we can trip this trap and turn it on our would-be ambushers."

"Hai, Taicho!" Yuri, Itsui and Kazeshini answered before Kazeshini and Hisane jumped from the deck of the ship to the sea.

"Alright little Kaze-chan, this will be your first combat and I can tell these guys aren't all that strong so it should be relatively alright. Just be careful and watch your back and you should be okay. Now, weapons out and be prepared to engage."

Kazeshini gave a short nod, nervousness making the gesture short and jerky as her muscles seemed to want to lock up. Half terrified, since she had never actually been in a fight against enemy shinobi who would be aiming to kill her, Kazeshini focused as much of her attention on her sword which she had already unsealed and was ready to unsheathe.

They ran silently across the calm ocean waters, the stars still out and the moon barely a sliver of light in the sky, until Hisane used quick hand signs too fast for Kazeshini to decipher. With a roar of water, a shinobi who was crouched low on a small raft was flipped into the suddenly churning and dangerous waters of the ocean.

Kazeshini cut the chakra to her feet and slipped silently into the waters of the sea, letting all the attention stay on Hisane as she used careful bursts of chakra to propel herself forward while underwater. It was silent while underwater and nearly so dark that she couldn't see in front of her face. The only assurance she had of being under her target was the chakra signal that had suddenly spiked as the enemy stopped trying to hide his or her chakra since they had already been found out.

With a short but strong burst of chakra, Kazeshini was propelled right out of the water with a loud splash and her ears were suddenly tuned to the sound of grunts and a few calls of the enemy shinobi trying to use some team formation against Hisane.

Kazeshini's sudden explosion from the water startled the man she had appeared behind and her sword met no resistance until the blade cut into cloth, flesh and bone.

Kazeshini flinched as she truly realized what she had done, not really realizing that she had killed another person until he was already dead and sinking into the ocean. It had all been like training and she had just reacted like she had practiced before while in the safety of Uzushio. Kazeshini gagged and nearly lost what was in her stomach.

"You bitch!"

"Kaze, move!"

Kazeshini hadn't registered the angry cry of one of the enemy shinobi but dodged at the command of her team leader.

"Pull yourself together, Kaze! I can't have you freezing in the middle of combat! Get it together!" Hisane called out from where he was engaging two shinobi at once.

Kazeshini could barely bring her blade up in time to block the downward slash of the kunai that was being pressed down on her from the third shinobi that had attacked her for killing one of the group. She flinched at the killing intent aimed her way and only just dodged a jutsu that had been aimed to kill her. With tears flowing down her cheeks, Kazeshini slipped underwater and maneuvered herself to be able to slash her attacker at the hamstrings.

The shinobi collapsed and Kazeshini could only slash the man's neck, blood splattering across her face even as the man sunk into the ocean just like his companion before him.

Hisane finished off his own opponents and came over to pat Kazeshini on the head, "You did well."

Kazeshini didn't even look away from where the body of the man she had just killed disappeared into the dark waters of the ocean. Then, with a violent body reaction, Kazeshini threw up and kept throwing up until she was dry heaving with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"It's alright, you did just fine. Everything is good, and you're going to be fine." Hisane murmured even as he rubbed Kazeshini's back while trying to calm her down.

Once she was calmed down, Kazeshini wiped her mouth and looked to her team captain, "Was it supposed to be so easy? It was just like in training, I cut them down just like I do during practice. It was so easy, shouldn't it be harder? I hate that it was so easy, it should be harder; and I feel so horrible. They had to have a family! Parents, wives, children! And I just cut them down as easily as if it were a training log during practice!"

Kazeshini was working herself up into hysterics until Hisane pulled her close and looked her in the eye as he kneeled down to her level. "Killing should never be taken lightly, and you did the right thing because these men would have hurt your teammates and your own family without second thought. The men and women that you kill will always weigh down on you, and you should remember that weight so that you never forget the weight of a life. As long as you fight and kill to protect your family and others, I know that you will always be able to bear the weight of the responsibility of taking a life. You did good, you did good, Kazeshini, and I will never tell you different."

Kazeshini calmed down during Hisane's speech and sealed her sword away.

"Now, let's head to the ship and get some rest, we still have a little while before we dock." Hisane clutched at Kazeshini's shoulder and helped guide her over the now calm waters of the ocean, an ocean that looked as though nothing had changed even when it had swallowed four men down to the depths.

Kazeshini stared blankly at the dark waters, her chakra keeping her on the surface without conscience thought, and fisted her blood covered hands. She hadn't quite understood the actual weight of having to kill another person. In her previous life, she had lived as a civilian and had never even contemplated killing anyone. Now, she wasn't even a teenager yet and her hands were already stained with blood.

Determined, Kazeshini vowed to herself that no matter how many lives she had to take, no matter how many lives were cut short at her hands that she would never indiscriminately kill. She vowed that she always think of the weight of a life and she promised to herself that she would never kill just because she could or because someone was in the way.

With her determination renewed, Kazeshini's steps became a tad more assured and her confidence in herself restored. Though she was still quite a bit leery at the fact that she would have to touch the same blade that had taken those two lives, just the thought of having to clean the blood off the blade made her queasy and guilt ridden, though she knew she would have to get used to it to continue with this path that she walked. As a kunoichi and as a person who would try to change the future for the better, Kazeshini knew this was just a stumble on the long road that was her current path in life.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen

(Eleven Years Old)

Kazeshini breathed through her nose and stayed still as she watched over the client she was helping to guard. Yuri was chatting with the client's daughter while Hisane and Itsui were both talking politely with the client himself. Kazeshini on the other hand was carefully watching over everything, having a headache and not wanting to deal with anyone at this point.
Her grumpy attitude had been noticed by the others of her team and so they let her be, not wanting to make her grumpy attitude worse.

With care, she tended to her katana. She sharpened the edge and polished the entire blade before caring for the handle and guard. She was actually quite a bit taller than her sword now and as such, she was looking to buy an actual nodachi before spending the time to make her own. The blade had been useful, but now she wanted to get another blade that would work better for her and the fighting style she had been taught and been developing.

No matter how odd it was to use a nodachi, a blade that could easily be three feet long or longer with a two foot handle, that the nodachi was the weapon she had chosen to master. She understood in the conventional sense that the nodachi was practically useless and had stopped being made within only around a hundred years of service as a horse cutter sword, but with chakra it became worthwhile.

There were dozens of different weapons out in the world that would normally be useless and bizarre but with chakra, everything could be used. Madara had his giant gunbai (war fan) which would be useless without chakra, Kisame had Samehada which was pretty much useless all around without the addition of chakra to make the sword sentient as to suck out chakra, and the Rikudou Sennin's Bashoushen is a plain old feathered fan if not for the use of chakra. Please, the entirety of Otogakure is based off of sound and more than one of them must use music such as Tayuya with the use of her flute.

Now, with the use of her tanto, which was a much more commonly used weapon, she could normally hide the fact that she used a nodachi. An enemy would see the small tanto strapped horizontally on her lower back and assume that the tanto was her first weapon of choice. It would give her an edge to be able to surprise her enemies with the fact that she could draw a nodachi from storage and use an Iaido technique.

Once she finished with cleaning her weapon, Kazeshini stored it away and leaned back against the carriage in which the client had stored many of his goods which he planned to sells. She and her teammates were only there to guard the client, his family, and the goods until he got to his destination which was still another three days away.

Kazeshini could definitely understand that most of the protection details she would ever be assigned would be plenty of 'hurry up and wait' scenarios with maybe a small instance or two to liven up the experience. It didn't happen often, but bandits normally left any sort of trade wagon or caravan with a contingency of shinobi alone as they had no way to survive in a fight against chakra wielding shinobi. However those few times where the truly desperate bandits came to try and steal from a shinobi guarded caravan usually meant a quick slaughter for the bandits. On the flip side, there were the even rarer instances of enemy shinobi interference.

Normally, enemy shinobi had no need to attack a civilian group or track down a civilian target or trade goods. Shinobi were normally attracted to other shinobi just to fight them and try to kill the 'enemy.' It was annoying for the civilian travelers since without a shinobi escort, they were constantly plagued and hassled by bandits but with a shinobi escort, they were plagued and hassled by other shinobi. The only good thing was normally the attacking shinobi weren't after the civilians and so the civilians were left alone as the shinobi guards drew the fight away from who they were trying to protect.

With a quick scan of the surrounding landscape, which just happened to be rock filled forests with pockets of mud practically everywhere, and Kazeshini determined that they were alone and there weren't any human signatures anywhere nearby.

"So, Kaze-chan, you want to play a game?" Itsui called out from where he was walking next to the carriage. He had apparently stopped talking with the client whom Kazeshini could tell he was quite happy to get away as Hisane and their client had their heads together while giggling over something.

Kazeshini shuddered at the image of two grown men giggling; that was an image she never actually wanted to see.

"Sure, Itsui-san, what were you thinking?"

He gave a bright grin; his red hair just seemed to fluff up more with his heightened mood. "I spy with my little eye something green!"

Kazeshini rolled her eyes and leaned back to relax. With closed eyes and her arms folded beneath her head, she gave a quick answer, "Trees."

Itsui squawked and did a little jig where his whole body just seemed to flex and his limbs to fling about. "How'd you guess?! Your turn, your turn!"

"I spy with my little eye something red." Kazeshini didn't even have to look around to find something as she had a plethora of items to choose from. The red item was in fact the small, practically invisible red earring that decorated the curve of Yuri's left ear; the exact side of Yuri which Itsui couldn't see from where he was walking on the right side of the wagon.

Itsui guessed and guessed, and it went on for a while. Kazeshini and he had the game to where he would always, always spy something green which would always be a tree. In turn, she would spy something that only she could see and that he could not. It kept both Kazeshini and Itsui talking to each other as Itsui tried guessing items that he had seen and that would be with them only from memory. Normally, his turn lasted a good thirty minutes until he found the correct answer before it was his turn. "I spy with my little eye something green! Bet you can't guess what it would be!"

Kazeshini only smirked from where she was lying down with her eyes closed, just enjoying the warm day and the sunlight periodically peaking through the leaves of the trees. "Tree."

Itsui mock groaned and was soon having to guess for the next item that Kazeshini had 'spied.'

It took them the entire three days to get to their destination and they only arrived at the small city as the sun was setting.
"Alright team; let's go find us an inn to settle in for the night before heading back home." Hisane called out as he stretched his muscles out. He had already sealed the payment for the mission in a scroll and was now just ready for an actual bed. It didn't matter that all of them could comfortably camp out for weeks on end, but being in an actual bed always beat camping out hands down.

It was on the way back home that they were waylaid by a group of enemy shinobi. The group numbered in ten shinobi and kunoichi all with feral yellow eyes and claws that stretched from long fingers. Each of these nin were already covered in old blood, and it looked like they were more of a roaming clan than actually having any sort of compound to permanently live in.

"Lookie here, some little shinobi out for a run in our territory!" One of the shinobi catcalled; his messy dark blonde hair was flicked out of his face with an errant hand as he leered at Kazeshini and her team.

Hisane pulled out a kunai in preparation and glared darkly at the group of hostile shinobi. "We're just passing through; we had no intentions to cut through your lands."

All of the unfriendly shinobi laughed uproariously, as if Hisane had just told some great joke. "Just passin' through he says! Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!" The group continued laughing and Kazeshini could obviously tell by now that all of these shinobi and kunoichi had to be insane or high on some sort of drug to be acting the way they were.

The four Uzumaki's tensed their muscles as suddenly one of the enemy attacked without warning, though it wasn't that much of a surprise as Kazeshini had expected practically the moment these foul shinobi and kunoichi had intercepted her team. Without a moment to waste, Kazeshini unsealed her sword and swung her long katana at her opponent who had jumped for her, expecting her to be the weakest of the team. They were right to assume she was currently the weakest of the team, but that didn't make her weak or helpless compared to her teammates and team captain.

The enemy shinobi was bisected in half at the waist from Kazeshini's chakra infused swing, and that caused all the rest of the enemy shinobi to jump forward into the fight that had been started. Hisane hadn't bothered intercepting the shinobi attacking Kazeshini as he knew she would be able to easily handle the attacker, and had actually prepared a jutsu while the enemy had stood back to watch and see if their clan member could pull off a successful surprise attack.

Now with a free-for-all, Kazeshini didn't have the time to think about much other than protecting herself. She faced two more nin, all the others having split between Hisane, Yuri and Itsui. Her two attackers were obviously teammates with how well they collaborated their attacks, but her evident training by a very successful clan and with all the extra training she pushed herself knowing the future of this world allowed her to easily hold them off.

It was with slight ease that she went on the attack, blocking the thrust claws aimed for her neck with a swipe of her sword that nearly cut the man's arm in half from the palm to the elbow. A single swing of her blade cut the man's head off at the shoulder which really, really pissed off the man's teammate.

The kunoichi was so pissed, that she apparently activated a forbidden clan technique that had all the other clan members running a little ways away as if to give the transforming kunoichi some space once they heard the high-pitched yelling given off by the kunoichi as well as the sight of massive and sickly yellow chakra emissions coming from the woman. Kazeshini paused, almost unable to stomach the sight of the kunoichi's body beginning to twist unnaturally as though some sort of summon animal had been summoned under her skin and melded into her body. She looked like some sort of creature from a nightmare as she finished transforming, and the sickly yellow chakra emissions didn't help that image one single bit.

Kazeshini put her whole body into her next swing, every single muscle tensing and contracting as she raised her katana while she charged up quite a bit of refined chakra honed to a sharp edge much like wind chakra though not quite that sharp.

Her abundance of spiritual chakra from having a previous twenty years of life experience helped with learning medical ninjutsu, no matter how much she hated working at a hospital or clinic. However all that extra chakra didn't quite help with chakra control from her unbalanced physical and spiritual energies which meant she studied more on chakra control at this point in time than any sort of nature manipulation techniques. So, while she was good at chakra manipulation and chakra control, it constantly had to be worked because of her constantly changing chakra levels, both physical and spiritual.

Now, with plenty of chakra carefully balanced on the edge of her blade and sharpened as much as she was able, Kazeshini used the beginnings of a technique that she was ever so slowly trying to create. She knew she hadn't yet been able to refine the technique and make it work like it was supposed to, but some her failures were immensely helpful such as using a honed edge to cut through tough objects. Truthfully, she was aiming for something more along the lines of Kurosaki Ichigo's Getsuga Tensho, but what she was pulling off now was just enough for her to work with at this point in time to protect herself against this monstrous and insane kunoichi.

Though she hadn't been able to figure out how to properly release the technique so that it flew without losing its strength or cutting ability as it came off the blade's edge, it currently gave her extra cutting power and an explosive impact that would hopefully protect her life at this point in time. Her sword swung forward, causing it to whistle in the air as it seemed to cut between air, and the blade smacked straight into the enemy kunoichi's hip without causing a scratch. The technique still detonated however, as it always did at this moment in time, and her blade shattered in her hands even as both the transformed kunoichi and Kazeshini were thrown back by the force of the explosion.

Kazeshini rolled in a controlled pattern before jumping up to her feet and pulling out her tanto. Her hands still stung and she winced as she could literally feel the minor blistering burns going all the way up her arms and even on her face. She still didn't wear any sort of proper armor save for some smaller and mismatched pieces, which they probably saved her life at this point because of how her ribs creaked at the impact of being thrown back and how she could smell her smoldering clothes while her armor was the only thing that now protected her decency.

She had the sudden urge to cuss, but no words passed her lips even as she ran forward as fast as she was able, her resistance/gravity seal having been turned off since the start of the fight so she practically blurred forward. However Kazeshini wasn't fast enough, however, for her opponent's eyes and the creature slashed at her with clawed hands that Kazeshini barely dodged out of the way before she got hurt.

Her small tanto clanged harshly against the claws as Kazeshini protected herself from getting her side slashed open, and Kazeshini could literally see long scratches marring the previously mirror shine of her small blade. Kazeshini scowled darkly and flipped off the enemy kunoichi's arm, using it as a platform to flip and twist out of the way of another attack that Kazeshini sensed more than she actually saw since the enemies arm passed swiftly beneath her body from where she was twisted to look up in the sky. She coiled herself in the air to land on a tree branch a dozen feet away as if she had the blood of a cat streaming through her veins, and Kazeshini merely puffed a small strand of her red hair out of her face as though she wasn't taking her opponent seriously.

The kunoichi, Kazeshini noticed, hadn't used any sort of chakra techniques save for the clear use of chakra enhancement to muscles even with all that sickly yellow chakra seeming to burst everywhere in uncontrollable patterns. Kazeshini determined that the moment the woman had transformed that she had lost all rationale and was now only aiming to try to kill, kill, kill.

"You alright over there, Kaze-chan?" came Hisane's cry from somewhere far to her left, though she didn't bother trying to figure out exactly where he was since she was paying far more attention to the transformed kunoichi who had jumped forward with the intent to rip her body in half.

Kazeshini dodged out of the way and evaded the kunoichi, though with some difficulty since the transformed kunoichi seemed to only be getting bigger and faster and even stronger as time passed. "Yah, Taicho, I'm absolutely loving the fact that I'm having to deal with some sort of transformed chakra monster aiming to tear me to pieces!"

Hisane only laughed, loud enough to sound insane if Kazeshini hadn't already figured out that he was insanely worried for her. She was only eleven, even with twenty years of previous memories, and Hisane obviously was worried about a child no matter how strong or capable.

Kazeshini continued dodging, not able to cut into her opponent's skin, and was now determined to become skilled enough to cut into solid steel like Roronoa Zoro was from the Alabasta arc and onwards. Finally, having enough of dodging as she had gotten a few cuts from the near misses and her burns were irritating the piss plum out of her, Kazeshini made like Harry Potter and thrust her short sword into the screaming throat of her enemy and up into the brain where the only place she had found to be the weak spot was easily found.

The kunoichi died swiftly, simply seeming to fall to the forest floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Though Kazeshini suspected she would someday actually be able to see a puppet fall to the ground during battle when its strings were cut since she suspected that Suna puppeteering would be created soon if it hadn't already.

With swift speed, running as fast as her still short legs could go; Kazeshini seemed to fly towards Yuri who was having to fend off another two enemy shinobi. One had already transformed and the other was taking potshots at Yuri from a slightly safer distance. Kazeshini easily snuck up upon the shinobi who hadn't transformed, as the nin didn't seem to be able to sense chakra signatures too well, and cut his throat open before she jumped onto the transformed nin's back and killed him or her the same way she had killed her own transformed opponent.

By the end of the fight against the group of ten shinobi and kunoichi, Kazeshini was quite tired and her arms hurt quite a bit along with her bruised ribs from where she had been thrown back by her own point blank explosion which in hindsight, hadn't been the greatest of ideas.

Luckily, with a bit of medical chakra, which she was adept at though she wouldn't be pulling off any surgeries any time soon, she was mostly fully healed. After healing herself, Kazeshini moved her glowing green hands to her teammates and team leader and quickly healed them of any cuts, bruises, abrasions, and a few cracked but luckily unbroken bones.

With that, they began the long run home, ready to get into their own beds and forget the nightmare inducing creatures that their most recent opponents had turned into even though they hadn't been too difficult to defeat once they had figured out a weakness.

Kazeshini was just thankful that while their enemy had super tough and practically impenetrable skin, that they were easily killed. She was also eternally grateful that their opponents hadn't known how to properly think or use chakra when transformed and acted more like berserkers than any sort of actual shinobi. Kazeshini knew with absolute certainty that if that small traveling clan actually had the ability to think and properly use their chakra when transformed, that they would have most likely dominated the fight and Kazeshini and her team might not have come out of that fight with just a few cuts.

With a deep breath, Kazeshini merely jumped from branch to branch, not bothering herself with 'what ifs' and was just thankful that they had gotten out of what could have been a potentially dangerous and almost suicidal fight without any lasting injuries.

Chapter Text

(Twelve Years Old)

Kazeshini was stuck resting at home and she was nearly bored out of her mind.

She had gotten hurt while out on a mission, her arm broke when an enemy shinobi had used a technique that had shattered her arm much like Gaara with his sand-burial technique. Her arm was shattered and the only thing that had saved it and saved her from being permanently crippled was her use of emergency medical chakra so as to keep the muscles in her arm immobile as well as fitting the shards of bone together like a jigsaw puzzle without tearing into her muscles.

Kazeshini had screamed the moment her arm had been crushed and the bones shattered, sending her three teammates into a frenzy, but she had used a bit of quick thinking to save herself the humiliation of not even defeating the man who had almost ripped off her arm as it was shattered and crushed.

With her arm shattered, and with only a small ability to properly direct her medical chakra since she didn't have the knowledge to fix herself completely no matter how good she was at using medical chakra, she could only do so much while they ran home to get her fixed by an actual professional. The medics of the clan had taken one look at her arm and declared it on the mend before releasing her to go home as long as she didn't do anything with her arm until it fully healed. She hadn't needed to stay in the clinic since the medics already had so many more ninja who needed their help that much more with more serious injuries than a shattered arm that would heal well with the medical chakra that Kazeshini was flooding though it.

Once they had set Kazeshini's arm in plaster, she was sent home for rest so as to allow her arm to heal.

Her orders to not do anything with her arm translated into not doing anything at all for her parents. Kikyou was so fretful by the fact her daughter had her arm crushed, that she didn't let Kazeshini do anything at all.

Therefore, Kazeshini was out of her mind with boredom.

So, instead of lounging around and doing nothing, Kazeshini began drawing up new seals.

She quickly gained access to the Uzumaki library and began reading through the various kinjutsus and forbidden seals, not that they were actually forbidden, but they were recommended not to be used because nine times out of ten the seal or jutsu caused death. Kazeshini was looking through these dangerous techniques and seals to see if she could mash a few of them together to come through with her harebrained idea.

Kazeshini knew that Mito Uzumaki wasn't even around yet, and Kazeshini truthfully didn't even know when the woman would be born, and Kazeshini still had to live long enough to try changing the future. Though she still wasn't quite sure what she wanted to try changing.

One thing at the top of the list would definitely be the destruction of Uzu. She was determined to stop that since it was now a matter of clan pride, since she herself was an Uzumaki and these people weren't just fictional characters in some story.

"Tadaima, haha-ue!" Kazeshini called out when she got home later that night, scrolls tucked into her obi as well as her arm sling which she was determined to pick apart and study.

"Okaerinasai! Are you okay? How is your arm?" Kikyou asked while she came out of the kitchen to worry over her only child.

Kazeshini smiled warmly and kissed her mother's cheek, "Everything's fine haha-ue, do you wish for help?"

"No, you just go sit down and relax." Kikyou threatened while waving a spatula around and pointing to the low dining table.

Kazeshini gave a little bow before setting her scrolls on the table and sitting in seiza. She immaculately began scribbling away at a blank scroll all of the little notes she was making as well as diagrams she felt she might need for her project.

"Dinner will be ready soon and your father will be home shortly so put away those scrolls and wash your hands." Kikyou stated from where she was still cooking in the kitchen.
"Of course haha-ue." Kazeshini quickly rolled up her scrolls after blowing them dry so the ink wouldn't smear, and cleared the table quickly before standing up and heading to the washroom.

As always, it was a challenge to wash her hand since her other was encased in plaster and held against her body with a sling, but she came out clean.

"Kon'nichiwa, chichi-ue." Kazeshini greeted her father politely before sitting down gracefully in her own seat.

"Kon'nichiwa, Kazeshini-chan, how is your arm?"

"Its fine chichi-ue, how are you?"

"Good, are you having any trouble with your studies or training?" Ukitake asked while Kikyou set a bowl of rice in front of him.

"Yes, chichi-ue, it seems as though I've reached some sort of plateau in my training. I've found that I have been struggling to continue past what I have already learned in taijutsu and kenjutsu, though I have learned many new fuinjutsu and ninjutsu techniques as well as iryojutsu and a few genjutsu techniques. I have also finished with the chakra nature transformation techniques that were given to me for the water element and I want to ask for some chakra nature transformation techniques for lightning manipulation."

Ukitake gave a little chuckle as he ate his dinner, "I suspected as such. Only experience will really help you with your kenjutsu and taijutsu, you sneak around so much that you do not get into half as many battles as I did when I was your age. This is the first time since you have been out in the field that you have gotten hurt enough to lay off missions for a while. I had more trips to the clinic than I care to admit and there many times that I was dragged back half dead by my teammates."

Kikyou gave a scowl which quelled her husband who seemed to be reminiscing things she would much rather forget.

"However, I can spar with you whenever we are free to help. I do not have a lightning scroll but I have a team mate who does, I can ask to borrow it for you to help with your training. However I have a handful of water techniques that I wish for you to learn before working on a new element."

"Of course, chichi-ue, thank you." Kazeshini replied politely before finishing her meal in silence.

After dinner, Kazeshini went to her room to study more on the scrolls that she had borrowed from the library. There were a few interesting techniques, and even one technique that resulted in what resembled the final, full body explosive technique used by Deidara when fighting Sasuke.

She leaned back against her various stuffed tigers and doodled a bit on a spare scroll in boredom, because no matter how interesting these techniques were, it still got boring after a while.

It was a week later when her arm had healed that Ukitake sat her down in front of him to speak. In his hands were a few scrolls that had more than a few marriage betrothals for Kazeshini.

Immediately Kazeshini scowled darkly at the table top where the scrolls were located. "I do not wish for an arranged marriage. I wish to become an elite kunoichi before I even begin broaching the subject of betrothals or children."

Ukitake gave a little nod of agreement, "Yes, you have a bright career ahead of you, and I do not wish to halt your growth as a powerful kunoichi because of a betrothal contract. However I will have you attending the various meetings and functions that this family is invited to."

"Of course, chichi-ue." Kazeshini complied easily enough, though she thought it as a waste of her time.

If she wasn't doing something such as training, or relaxing by painting or meditating, she thought it was a waste of time. It was Kazeshini's greatest trigger to set her off in a bad mood was having her time wasted by something inane. She would much rather be training since she still was barely chunin level, or what she classified as chunin because there still wasn't any sort of formal system.

It annoyed her that no matter the training, an adult ninja could usually destroy her without too much effort. In fact, compared to her father and team leader Hisane, she could be counted as an annoyance; barely noticeable, but just enough above the rest to turn a head, but not much else.

It irked her, that no matter the training, against a truly powerful opponent, she was helpless. Though she was perfectly fine with decimating cannon fodder, she wasn't yet strong enough to even consider touching A-class foes with even less of a chance against S-ranked monsters.

Kazeshini bowed to her father and left the office pleased though, because her father was laid back enough to consider her own wishes of not being sold off like cattle to the highest bidder.

Going outside, Kazeshini brought out her newly bought nodachi and began practicing while pumping chakra through the blade. She wished to create a sword technique that could cut down a hundred trees in one stroke, but all she had managed so far was a measly cut in a tree twenty yards from where she was practicing. Luckily, she no longer blew up the technique in her face ever since the mission where the explosion hadn't even hurt the enemy whereas it cracked her ribs instead.

In her previous life, she had always been fascinated by the Japanese swords, and the nodachi had been her favorite. It meant that she definitely enjoyed swinging a practice bokken around for hours and hours because there was just something so alluring about holding such a sharp, pointy piece of art in sword form.

She had actually sat down and drawn dozens of ink paintings all trying to capture the beauty of the sword.

Now, her weapon just seemed to irk her as she practiced, because she just couldn't get it to do exactly what she wanted. Half the chakra she forced into the blade dissipated before she could actually complete her technique, and when she executed her technique, it was always weak and near useless.

So, to counter this, Kazeshini was using the most basic of lightning chakra, as she hadn't been able to train her lightning manipulation very well yet without the scrolls from her father, and put a tiny bit of piercing power behind her cut as well as refining her technique again and again. She continued practicing, coating her entire blade with electricity, and swung the blade horizontally at the tree she was practicing.

Panting for breath, she heard a crack and the tree slowly fell to the ground, cut nearly all the way through from twenty meters away. Kazeshini smirked and raised her blade to practice the technique again, and charged lightning chakra through it.

Her chakra chirped and chattered as she refined it into the edge and tip of her blade before swinging once more. The wave of lightning that was released made all her hours of practice worth it as she watched it hit and cut through three more trees as the crescent wave had gone farther with more power now that she had figured out what she was doing.

Kazeshini charged her nodachi once more before it gave a sharp crackle sound. She looked down to her blade and her eyes widened as she noted the spider web of cracks that marked nearly the entire blade, before it shattered completely.

Pieces of metal just dropped to the ground, and the blade just broke in pieces. Kazeshini clenched her teeth in anger but sighed instead of screaming which she really, really wanted to do.

Today was just not her day.

With a sigh, she picked up the pieces and went inside to bring them to her father so they could go to the blacksmith and buy her a new sword since she had yet to gain the proper skill to create her own weapon as of yet.

Kazeshini followed resolutely behind her father as they walked towards a blacksmith who was a family friend. The pieces of her new nodachi had been gathered and collected with great care and set in a long box so that the piece weren't mixed in a mess, but one could still see what the blade would have looked like before shattering.

The blade itself was in so many pieces that it would be impossible to repair it, but Kazeshini wanted some way to memorialize her sword which had gone through an entire year of higher classed missions with her and saved her life more times than she cared to admit. She had meditated with her sword for countless hours and had practiced with it even more. It was safe to say that she had been attached to her blade, and that it shattered really had her in tears.

However, no matter how attached to her sword she had been, she knew that it had probably been time to upgrade her sword again as the blade had started wearing out no matter the excellent care all because of the different techniques she had been trying to create that stressed out the blade.

It would need to be something other than regular steel though, because Kazeshini was afraid of destroying her blade by channeling too much chakra through it again. The blade would then have to consist of the godly expensive chakra conductive metal.

Kazeshini, while she was thinking on it, wanted something other than a regular sword. She had admired all dangerous weaponry and the like, but the Seven Swords of the Mist really drew her for they were practically every swordsman's wet dream. She was thinking of a sword that would cause injuries that would never heal but only to her enemies. With allies, Kazeshini wanted to heal them with a stroke of her sword.

While in the blacksmith's shop, her shattered sword was set in a mold of molten glass. Her sword came out beautiful, though still broken, and she thanked the blacksmith sincerely for his work.

Back at home, Kazeshini set her sword on a sword rack in her room with the scabbard just underneath, and watched as the sun reflected of the pieces like art. There, right there, Kazeshini knew how she was going to not only fund her new sword but make it herself.

She just had to remember that a sword had a soul and a sword was art in and of itself. Art was one thing that she loved above all else, and she would learn how to create her own sword.

Kazeshini smirked and looked outside, her shoji doors open to the back yard. She knew an old smithing technique that would be perfect. It was only theory so she would need to practice many times and change many, many things with how she was going to do this, but she was determined, stubborn enough as well to try it on her own without asking for an apprenticeship.
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(Thirteen Years Old)

It was just another mission.

Kazeshini slipped her newest nodachi in it's sheathe and waited patiently for the mark to stop throwing up on the side of the road. She was on a rescue mission/bandit elimination mission, one where a client had paid good money to have his daughter back from a kidnapping as well as wiping out all bandits who had tried to ransom their captive for money.
With relative ease, Kazeshini had infiltrated the wooded area where the bandit group lived, and had rescued the target but not before wiping out every bandit that she came across. The woman was a pathetic civilian who did nothing but cry and whine and moan about her sorry fate. Kazeshini hadn't been allowed to knock the young woman unconscious, since that could be seen as a bad thing to the client, but was so very grateful that the woman was now silently crying and throwing up at the sight of the dead bandit that had jumped them while they walked along the road.

The woman had been moaning and groaning about how she didn't want to walk, how she was hungry, how it was too hot. Etcetera, etcetera.

Then, when a bandit had jumped out at them, a bandit who Kazeshini could easily sense a long while before the filthy unbathed swine had decided to try his chance with them as a target, Kazeshini hadn't wasted a second in cutting him down. With a twist of her slowly developing hips and a flick of her wrists, Kazeshini had swung her blade forward and perfectly slit his throat without separating his head from his neck.

With a simple flick of her wrist, the blood had been swung off the blade and it was slide home into the sheathe with ease. It had literally lasted only five seconds total, easily accomplished with her Iaijutsu technique, and the man had been dead before he knew it.

Kazeshini had watched as the bandit's eyes widened in shock even as he threw his hands up to his throat to try and stem the blood flow that had suddenly erupted from his neck. It hadn't taken but a few more seconds for the man to collapse, dead, and for his now glazed eyes to stare up in horror.

The woman that Kazeshini had rescued hadn't even computed that there was a bandit trying to attack them until the man was already dead on the ground. Then, cried out in horror before rushing to the side of the road to empty out the contents of her stomach.

Kazeshini didn't speak, as she had already had her patience stretched thin because of the civilian woman. With a simple bit of compassion, Kazeshini simply handed the woman a canteen of water before toeing the dead body to the side of the road.

Once the woman had composed herself, they continued walking back to the woman's father and towards safety. It only took a few hours and it was blessedly silent for Kazeshini so she no longer had to listen to the woman's whining. Back in the town, Kazeshini dropped off her charge and hightailed it back to the bandit's camp, just to make sure she killed all of the idiots.

"You! You did this to my men!" cried out a man who was dressed in some sort of odd boiler suit in a black and white cow print camouflage.

Kazeshini raised an eyebrow, having already dropped off the captive and having already killed a good portion of the bandits during the infiltration, she was now only coming back to finish off the job without her client's daughter in the way to get hurt. "Yes, may I help you?" It was always proper to be polite, no matter if the man was yelling and screaming while smelling like the bad end of a rat's behind.

"You killed my men! How dare you! I'll kill you for this!" he screamed, his hand coming up with a horribly maintained sword in hand for an over head strike.

It was slow, and Kazeshini could easily dodge the civilian speed strike with ease. It was with a simple swipe of her own sword that she cut the bandit's in half along with cutting a through a good portion of the man's body.

Kazeshini flicked her sword out, blood splattering on the ground in an arc as the blade was whipped out to the side to easily clean off the blood, before she slid it home in its sheathe with a click.

With a hand sign, a water clone sprung forward and began rooting through the bandit camp looking for anything of use. It came back carrying money, some cheep jewelry as the bandits weren't successful enough to get the real fancy stuff, and some sad looking weapons that Kazeshini was simply going to gift to some civilian blacksmith instead of trying to sell. She didn't need the small amount of money the swords would sell for, and the blacksmith could easily give the swords to other civilians to protect themselves from more bandits if need be.

A few horses were also found and taken from the bandit camp before Kazeshini torched everything, including the bodies which she didn't want to spend the next week trying to bury since there were over a hundred men that she had killed in this extermination.

She was lucky that this mission was so easy. It was just a simply bandit extermination mission with a side of rescue operation, but there hadn't been any ninja attacking her nor any highly trained ninja clan that just happened to sense her and come attacking.

It had happened multiple times in recent history that some sort of easy, simple, run-of-the-mill mission turned into a fuck up. Her last bandit extermination along a specific stretch of highway had resulted in no less than four different fights against enemy nin, totaling in over two-hundred bandits killed along the highway that stretched a hundred miles and twenty-seven nin dead. That wasn't the only mission that had been FUBAR'ed; a search and rescue mission once, had resulted in the destruction of a drug/slave trafficking ring being demolished but not before Kazeshini had fought against a trio of shinobi. That fight had nearly cost her an arm when one of their weapons, coated in some sort of poison, had eaten away at the skin tissue and she had only been saved by the timely arrival back to the clan where the medics had created an antidote.

It seemed that most times when she went on a mission and the situation got out of hand, that the enemy nin could very easily kill her without much effort. There were multiple opponents that could literally change the landscape around them just from their techniques, not quite to the point where they created a massive canyon like the Valley of the End would turn out to be, but the land was still changed. Kazeshini didn't have many techniques that could change the landscape at this point in her arsenal. She had more techniques that dealt with the quick and fast elimination of a target while she evaded all retaliation hits.

To Kazeshini, it felt as though the clan wars era was not only about everyone fighting with everyone else, but that while everyone is fighting they also have to get stronger. This was how monsters like Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama were made. They had to fight and fight and fight against opponents who were constantly fighting to survive, and they got all the stronger for it.

Kazeshini quickly got her payment for the rescue and quick elimination of the bandit camp, and made her way home. She had taken this mission on her own, as she really had no need for a team on such a simple mission, and that didn't really bother her. Kazeshini knew that the hidden village of Konoha would eventually be all about team spirit and teamwork, but she knew that her teammates were needed elsewhere while she could take on these relatively easy missions without much difficulty.

Even when she fought against enemy shinobi who turned the mission rating from simple and routine to dangerous and deadly, she knew she was getting stronger for every fight she survived. Every fight, she could refine her techniques, try new ones in the field to assess how well they worked in a fight, and test her will to survive against all her attackers. Everything she did was so that she could survive into the future, though she hadn't quite figured it out yet, and so she was strong enough that she could fight and survive against shinobi and kunoichi who could change the very land they stood upon.

Chapter Text

(Fourteen Years Old)

Kazeshini sighed as she was walking next to her father away from a clan gathering. There had been a plethora of young Uzumaki men that had propositioned Kazeshini for a date, but she had turned them all down. Not only were they teenagers, but she was the mental equivalent of a thirty year old. Plus, she had no care to date at this moment.

It also wasn't helped by the fact that Kazeshini knew that she absolutely had to live long past any of them would be dead and buried. She had no wish to outlive her spouse, and she had no wish suddenly have to tell someone she was engaged to why she felt the need to become immortal.

Ukitake on the other hand, was slightly relieved that Kazeshini kept turning down all those offers. Not only was Kazeshini his little girl, but he had no care to see her married with children of her own. He and Kikyou had married young, and though they had waited a few years before having a child, Kikyou had nearly died. Then, the moment their daughter was born, they knew she would do great things. He was also worried that Kazeshini would just get up and leave if he or Kikyou ever tried enforcing a marriage contract on her.

So, he and Kikyou broke the traditions of forcing their daughter to be married at such a young age, though most of the eligible suitors were still lined up trying their hand at gaining their daughter's hand. However, he hoped that she might find someone she loved, but it seemed she was too mature to try for any of those that were her own age. However he shuddered at the level of maturity she might find attractive, that could easily mean she found someone twice her age or more as attractive for their maturity.

What amazed him, as he walked next to Kazeshini who was dressed in a beautiful kimono, was that she was always doing something. Most children her age, even those who are ninja, often times are immature and wish to do things such as gossip or play around. Ukitake had been watching his daughter for the last few years even create some sort of forge in which she was ever so slowly learning how to create weaponry on her own.

The clay forge was dome shaped with a massive door which Kazeshini used to clean out the forge, and a smaller door in which she used to actually heat whatever metal she was using. He had watched her create some mizu bunshin to help with the bellows and shoveling in fuel to keep her forge going as she patiently heated whatever metal she was using. Though it amazed him to see what exactly she was doing.

She had spent an exorbitant amount of money on black clay, fine iron sand, and various other tools.

He had actually sat down and watched her once, seeing how she was forging her weapons, and learning by trial and error. That day, he had watched as her clones spent hours getting the exact layering of sands, clays, charcoals, all with different types and thickness. He had watched her clones, since the real Kazeshini was actually training with her team at the moment, heat and layer and use the bellows to heat up the entire oven for half the day.

It had actually taken Kazeshini a few months to figure out how she should layer the various bits of clay, sand, and charcoal to get an optimum temperature along with a constant temperature without fluxing by trial and error.

When she came home after training, she had gotten something to eat before quickly putting on an apron. Her clones had already begun heating up exactly twenty different sand mixtures, though only the first was ready to actually begin forging. She had used water to rapidly cool the new metal, made from the iron sand, and shattered it carefully before selecting certain chips of the metal. She did that with every single mixture of metal so she had twenty piles of purified metals all slightly different from each other.

It had taken hours to finish everything and sort through the metals for what exactly she wanted, and then she began the actual forging.

Ukitake watched, with tea in hand and Kikyou at his side, as Kazeshini began heating up three different piles of metal. One was green in color, one was red, and one was simple iron. She heated them with took a few minutes, before taking what had been the green metal out to hammer it into a foot long rectangle only an inch wide and barely half a centimeter thick. She had continued flattening it and stretching it until Ukitake was sure that it was only a fraction of a centimeter. Kazeshini then folded it exactly twenty times, each time she thinned it out and folded it length wise.

She had two other clones doing the exact same thing with the two other metals.

He had been surprised when she layered the three metals together and hammered them together before folding them together again and again for exactly a total of sixty-four folds, every fold doubled up on itself as two turned to four and four turned to eight folds of metal.

At that point, Kazeshini had finished shaping the metal into what it would become, a tanto. She layered black clay onto what would be the blade and reheated the metal again before dunking it in a barrel of water which was still pretty warm from the other times she had dunked the blade in. The excess has washed off when dunked in the water but a rippling effect had been left on the edge of the blade, the entire blade had ripples because of the different colored metals that had been folded almost a dozen times.

Ukitake watched as Kazeshini then had a clone spend over an hour carefully polishing and sharpening the blade which was very, very difficult with how tough the blade was because it didn't want to change anymore at all. The clone of Kazeshini was still sitting there an hour later trying to sharpen the blade, and it was a very slow process. This just meant that the sword would take more damage and wear while still remaining sharp.

Another clone had built the saya, or scabbard, and had carefully sanded down the inside before gluing the two halves together. Kazeshini herself had painted then lacquered the saya before trying the sageo, or cord, around it so it could be attached to a belt. Another clone was creating the handle which consisted of the ho (wood handle), fish skin, tsukato (handle wraps), menuki (palm ornaments), kashira (butt cap), mekugi (bamboo pin), nakago (tang), fuchi (metal sleeve), seppa (metal spacer), tsuba (hand guard), another seppa (metal spacer), and habaki (scabbard sleeve).

It wasn't a handful of minutes when the clone sharpening and polishing the blade finished and Kazeshini began assembling all the pieces together. The blade was completed, but Kazeshini still didn't quite like how it had turned out so she merely grumbled before grouchily handing the blade to her father and left to get something to eat.

Right now, Ukitake watched her, so lady-like and beautiful, he could hardly believe all that she knew and all that she accomplished. She was strong for someone just entering her teen years, yet she was humble and not actually realizing how strong she was. Ukitake gave a little sigh and looked at the lights that lit up the village. He loved his village and clan, so much so that he would die for them. However, he knew his daughter felt slightly different. She didn't have the same ingrained loyalty that had been so ingrained into his very being. She was loyal yes, but she wasn't going to jump in front of the blade any time soon.

He thought it odd, because she had all of these ideas but he had no idea where she got them from. It terrified him sometimes that she would act on some of these ideas, ideas that no clan anywhere would ever approve of. He worried more than he cared to admit, and had literally felt the gray hairs growing whenever Kazeshini was involved while he worried, but he loved her anyways. Always would and always will love her, his only child.

Ukitake looked down at the tanto tied to his side. The same tanto Kazeshini had created all those months ago. It had saved his life already, and been the envy of many of his peers for its alien beauty and unmatched sharpness. He was proud to carry it around, something his daughter had made with her own two hands.

He looked at her, walking so calmly at his side, looking more like a delicate civilian princess than a kunoichi with calloused hands and scars to match. Ukitake was proud of her, and he wasn't willing to give her over to anyone else. Not until she wanted it, and he knew that wouldn't be for a long time.