Cho walked out of the woods victorious, swinging her legs out with each step of her tough leather boots and holding onto the straps of her backpack with a happy grin. On this camping expedition, she'd found multiple wasp nests, an empty bird's nest, marmots, a bear, and several sets of courting squirrels. And that was just what she took the time to conduct a behavioral observation on. Her population counts for this week stretched almost to the Forest of Death, and she'd figured out how to use a plumbob to get even more accurate coordinates for each sighting. Soon, she'd have enough comparative data to begin studying the so adorably named 'Forest of Death' against a less chakra-infused baseline.

As she hoisted herself by sure hand and steady foot over the rotten, worn down fence at this edge of the Uchiha land, Cho giggled lightly. If she was lucky, her relatives wouldn't even spot her and she could get to her hidden treehouse unimpeded by the short-sighted ideology of her clan. No one here recognized her vision, always so obsessed with her failure to become a human weapon, a domesticated predator. She was not that sort of animal, no matter how many times her relatives nagged her to aspire towards Itachi-san's ideal. This fence was like her marker for the divide between herself and the other Uchiha. Her relatives would not want her to jump over it, would not want her to explore the wondrous world out there. Yet all they could do to stop her was put up a few flimsy, ancient pieces of splintered yellow wood and fail to realize how moss and pollen were slowly reclaiming the border.

As she reached the top of the fence, Cho moved some chakra into her palms to help her stick to the smooth wood until she'd swung both her legs over. Then, she let herself fall back, twirling head-over-heels once only, and landing on the forest floor with a chakra-cushioned thud.

She'd give one thing to the shinobi arts, they made her work so much easier. She'd never have reached that bird nest if she couldn't walk up trees.

Cho turned back to face the compound and took up her stride once again. She hated running anywhere, and her well-practiced hiker's step proved it. She could feel more dirt beneath her boots, see the things around her, breathe in more air. Rushing about just interrupted her connection to her forest. And really, she was in no rush to get home. If she could she'd resupply, write up her notes, get to the library, and be gone again by the end of the week. She may be ten, but she needed no one!

Cho reached the tiny trail down the hill that she'd adapted from a deer-trail some five summers ago when she'd first begun her studies. It was barely a path, so full it was with bushes and ferns and tree roots. That's what made it perfect. Cho took off her backpack and put it back on backwards, so that it hung onto her belly like a baby skunk clinging to its mom. Then she plopped onto all fours and gently crawled through the tiny tunnel marked only by the hairsbreadth of space where she could squeeze through the branches. This was her self-made portal to and from a more fascinating, beautiful world. Every fifty meters or so she would come across a sharp turn, sending her back the way she came at an ever subtle incline, and this way she safely plodded down the steep, forested hill. The sun filtering through the leaves dripped over her face in little splotches, and she made a game of planting her dirty, cracked palms into the golden puddles as she crawled down the slope.

She reached the bottom in, based on the shadows, near abouts an hour. The first few houses of the compound were just in sight at the forest's edge. Her 'house' was a bit further South, as far as could get from the main house. Her Okaa-san always complained about that, how Uchiha-sama didn't even know their family existed and how Otou-san needed to work harder on the police force to gain status for their little unit. Cho stuck out her tongue and made a 'bleg' sound. It melded well with the wind-rustle and bird-chirps. Her 'bleg's were a hybridization of several animal calls she'd learned. They were much less obtrusive than human-yelps.

Cho frowned as she reached the tree edge. Given it was such an annoying sound, she'd expected to hear some human-yelps by now. But the compound sounded more like nature than like the bustling suburb it usually was. Except, it was too quiet for nature. It sounded like nature when something big was coming. Or when a human was coming.

Cho broke into a run, and then dove into a bush as soon as she saw the nearest house close-up. It was spattered with blood. The windows were shattered, the door hanging open and creaking with the wind. Cho stayed still in her bush, keeping as quiet as a fawn on the forest floor. Several minutes passed with nothing appearing, nothing happening. The blood looked days old. Every so carefully, every muscle tensed to run, Cho slipped out of the bush without making a sound. She crept forward down the alley and peered around the corner to observe the row of houses.

They were all the same. Shattered eggshells, bloodied in a way that screamed egg-eater. Something, something almost certainly human, had come here and cracked open the Uchiha homes and devoured the people inside.

Cho was just readying to crawl under the nearest porch and make her way towards Konoha when a massive hand scruffed her like a kitten, dangling her in the air. She squeaked violently, grabbing her knife and swinging it up at the arm while simultaneously using her other hand to try and get another knife into the man's gut. The hand clenched down and did something that rattled Cho from top to bottom, and the knives clattered to the ground.

"Identify yourself," ground out an entirely neutral voice. It sounded off, somehow, like she was listening to it from through a bag of rocks. The hand shook her a bit and she sucked in as deep of a breath as she could.

"Ch-Cho Uchiha!" she gasped out. The hand immediately dropped her and resisting the urge to flop over and see the man, and thus revealing her soft underbelly, she scittered towards the gap between porch and ground which may just get her out of the much larger human's reach. She didn't make it even a step before that massive, gloved hand caught her arm and pulled her upright to face him.

He was tall, at least six feet, with puffy gray hair and an ANBU mask painted with carnivorous, possibly canine features. Cho startled when, rather than ripping her arm off, he knelt down in front of her so that he was only a little taller than her rather than almost twice as tall.

"Where have you been for the past six days?" he asked in a monotone. His body language, however, was radiating calm. His shoulders were down, his tummy breathing instead of his chest, and his butt was resting a little on his heel. Cho felt herself relaxing in response.

"I was camping. I run away from my parents a lot to go play in the woods outside the property. I left last Tuesday. What…what was here? Did it eat everybody? Who got away?"

The man sighed. "I am not authorized to explain. I will take you to the Hokage." Then, the world was blurring around her and seconds later she was standing in a weird circular room made of clean yellow wood, standing in front of a desk with a very old man sitting behind it in the Hokage robe, and surrounded by more masked ANBU. The old man sat up and dropped his smoking pipe.

"Inu?" he said, "what is the meaning of this? Who-" he stopped short as he looked her over. He lingered a lot on her eyes, which made her shuffle a bit. "What is your name, young lady?" he asked more calmly.

"Cho Uchiha, Hokage-sama," she replied. She really really hoped she wasn't in trouble. The masked people in the room twitched slightly, and the Hokage himself winced and leaned forward.

"Inu, report," he said.

"During a routine patrol of the Uchiha compound, I sensed a small chakra signature at the Northeastern edge of the property. Upon investigation I located the girl behind a house. I captured the intruder and requested her identity. She identified herself as 'Cho Uchiha'. I released the target, then recaptured her when she attempted escape. Upon requesting her whereabouts for the last six days she responded that she has been camping in the woods north of the compound, unsupervised and without permission, for the last eight days. She did not resist after this point. Her questions indicate she was entirely unaware of the situation." Inu gave his report without letting go of her arm, and so Cho wriggled slightly hoping to be released. The hand unclenched and she slipped away to walk forward towards the desk.

"Hokage-sama," she said with her back straight and her fists clenched, chin up and shoulders back, "there was blood all over the place and it was days old. Also the compound was way too quiet. Where is everybody, and what attacked them?" The Hokage puffed up for a moment, then abruptly sagged. He reached for his pipe and puffed on it for a few moments. Cho enviously watched the smoke curl.

"Cho-chan," he started, trailing off to take a few more puffs, "I am terribly sorry to inform you that the Uchiha clan has been massacred. As of six days ago the only survivors are Sasuke Uchiha, the perpetrator Itachi Uchiha, now a missing-nin, and as of today, you. Now," he shuffled some papers, "beyond your existence and presumed death, we do not have any files regarding you. May I ask you a few questions, Cho-chan?"

Cho was reeling. The clan heir, the idol, Itachi-san, had murdered everyone except for his younger brother. And she had escaped by chance. She mutely nodded, numb as the Hokage made a gesture off to his side and one of the masked Shinobi brought her a chair. She mumbled a quick thanks and sat down. Then she stood back up, removed her pack, and plopped it onto the ground with her leg hooked through one strap before sitting down again. Her pack left a smudge of dirt on the floor.

"How old are you, Cho-chan?" asked the Hokage.

"Ten. My birthday was a few weeks ago." The Hokage frowned and glanced at one of the masked Shinobi by the window who jumped out into the night and vanished.

"And who were your parents?"

"Masashi and Hanako Uchiha. Okaa-san was Otou-san's fourth cousin twice removed or something." The Hokage nodded and made a quick note.

"School?"

"Homeschooled. I refused to go to the academy." At this, the Hokage looked up and frowned.

"Why is that, Cho-chan?" He glanced back at Inu-san when he spoke, and Cho turned around to see Inu-san holding her two lost knives up for the Hokage to see.

"I got bored sitting at a desk all day. Being out in the forest is better." She shrugged as she said this, then leaned down to open up her pack. Inu-san walked forward and leaned over her shoulder as she carefully removed a little clear plastic tank from inside next to her canteen. "This expedition, I found this abandoned bird nest with the egg shells still inside, see?" She brandished the little tank at the Hokage who hummed and looked it over with a single raised eyebrow. "Otou-san and Okaa-san were mad about me, so I, um, just left as much as possible. They don't like bugs or dirt or exploring. They just wanted me to be clean and good at Shinobi-stuff, so they decided to homeschool me so that when I didn't pay attention they could punish me better." She frowned down at her bird's nest. "I dunno if I can get enough food on my own to camp all the time, now that they're gone. Especially since I'll have to feed Sasuke-san too."

For the first time this meeting, the Hokage smiled. "Sasuke?" he asked.

Cho frowned. "Yeah. He's two years littler than me, so I've got to make sure he has food and water and shelter and is safe from predators. That's what mammals do, Hokage-sama." She thought it was very odd that the leader of the whole village didn't know that, considering he, too, was a mammal.

"Hmm," he said with a smile, "don't you think you could help your cousin better if you attended the academy? A shinobi, no matter how skilled, would have no trouble fulfilling those needs. And until you've graduated, well, you will qualify for government aid if you're attending school."

Cho thought it over for a long moment. With the situation…as it was, outside of school hours she could do whatever she wanted. And this really did seem like the best option for adequately taking over leadership of an, albeit small, family unit.

"Ok," she said with a vigorous nod, "I'll attend the academy and graduate by the end of the school year. Now take me to Sasuke-san, please."

Cho Uchiha was a punch in the gut for everyone involved. Kakashi half wished she'd just stayed lost in the woods that were clearly her element. The tiny little brat had showed up out of nowhere, covered in dirt and with leaves in her hair, babbling about birds and dressed painfully like a civilian. And then she'd told them her age and Kakashi knew that this was going to be a disaster. Because Sasuke was already chomping at the bit for revenge, ready to take on the mantle of his dead family as the new Clan head, the lone Uchiha. Only now, a feral, untrained little girl was going to be clan head instead of him based solely on an extra two years of life. Kakashi nearly chuckled. The only way Sasuke would see that power in his own hands was if he married her or she died.

The Hokage had instantly seen what Kakashi had, befitting of the Professor. The girl was pure Uchiha and everyone in the room could practically smell it. If they ignored the smell of dirt and dirty child. She had the black hair, black eyes, porcelain skin under all that dirt, and flawless symmetry. Sasuke had already been in high demand as a doujutsu stud, but now that there was a 'controllable' girl on the table? Kakashi sighed. That little brat just became the single most valuable, marriagable preteen in Konoha, and she hadn't brushed her hair in possibly her entire life. Kakashi was thrilled to watch that courting process.

On another cheery note, Kakashi was going to cherish seeing the Hokage looking so flabbergasted for a long time. To say nothing of his fellow ANBU who had actually twitched. Not that he could talk, he'd accidentally dropped the girl when she'd called herself 'Uchiha'. No one else needed to know that, though. She was just so tiny and undisciplined it was hard to look at her. He'd been there to help clean up the bodies. Girls only slightly bigger or smaller than her. Itachi had not distinguished in his killing methods. The Uchiha were so much easier to let go before one had, essentially, come back to life. Alive and vivacious and dirty and confused. When Kakashi had heard her name herself, for a long moment he thought he'd finally cracked. That the girl would turn around to reveal a corpse that had dug its way out of the ground, slashed open from ear to ear and screaming for vengeance or mercy.

So Kakashi could not help but be thankful that she was alive. She really had no idea just what a miracle she truly was, to have survived the breaking of Itachi's genius merely by virtue of being the least Uchiha-like Uchiha he'd ever met. Considering he'd known Obito, that was saying something.

'Obito would have loved her,' he thought wistfully. That alone was enough to motivate Kakashi to protect her. There was also the slim, silly hope that she'd legitimately help Sasuke. Whatever the boy wanted to choose, to do with his future, he wasn't alone anymore. And nothing Sasuke could do would change that.

Others, on the other hand, could change that very easily if they decided to make Cho into an easy target. That was the only reason he had not protested against the Hokage's manipulation. Everyone in the room knew the Uchiha were rich enough not to need orphan welfare. But, if she became a genin, then she'd be given to Kakashi as the last Sharingan wielder left in Konoha. Once she was on his team, he'd do everything to keep her alive. And with his reputation, everyone would know what they would be facing if they tried to take another team from Kakashi no Sharingan.

Itachi, out in the wilderness steadily trecking away from Konoha reached up a single arm as a crow alighted upon the offered perch.

The crow leaned into his ear and whispered, giving over the usual Hokage's report before vanishing in a cloud of chakra.

For a moment, Itachi stood still. Then he slowly lowered his arm and looked down to the ground.

"FUCK!"

Throughout the surrounding woods, many birds, none of them crows, flew up out of their trees and away from the very ruffled missing-nin.