Naruto: A Red Eye Hidden by Shadow

Prologue

"Mama, why are we out here in the forest?" the little Uchiha girl asked as she walked next to her mother. In response to her honest question, her mother smiled down at her and poked her forehead before continuing to walk in silence. The poke eased her nerves slightly, but the young girl still sighed in defeat, submitting to the fact she wasn't going to be getting any information out of her mother until they reached their destination…wherever that may be.

Today was clearly going to be a drag. It had already started strangely with her parents waking her up earlier than usual only to then inform her she was staying home from the Academy today. After coming to grips with her loss of sleep for apparently no reason, the strangeness continued when her mother decided they were going to go deep into the Nara Clans forest together.

Why? The girl concluded it was either to collect deer antlers or for some sort of special Nara Clan training. There were two separate problems with her two conclusions, though. Firstly, her mother never brought her to collect deer antlers. Unless she spontaneously decided to teach her the responsibility, which she doubted, it was unlikely that it was their reason for being out here.

That left the special Nara Clan training, but that conclusion also didn't make logical sense. Her mother had taught her Clan jutsu at home before, so why would she decide to teach her out here?

The jutsu could be something her father wasn't allowed to see. He wasn't a Nara by birth so perhaps that negated him from being allowed to see how this particular jutsu worked. Then again, the seven year old wasn't even sure her mother was still even considered a part of the Nara Clan after marrying her father.

It wasn't that her father was a bad person. He was one of the nicest people in the entire village as far as she was concerned, but he was also of the prestigious Uchiha Clan. How marriage affected Clan status was an unknown to the child, and to be honest she didn't really care to find out.

What she did know, however, was that she had family within the Nara Clan in the form of a blood uncle, his wife and their child that was her age. She had never met them, partly because she was too shy to ask to meet new people. The possibility of meeting them also just never came up in conversation. Her mother rarely visited them as it was.

"Only when things aren't too troublesome," she would say.

Maybe there were problems between her mother and the rest of the Nara Clan that she simply didn't know about or wasn't old enough to understand. I don't see why Mama would be at ends with them. She's too nice. The young girl decided to let it be. Without any information to work on, thinking too hard about the subject would lead her to dead-end after dead-end.

Clan politics were just too troublesome.

She twirled a few strands of her long, wild blue hair around her finger as they walked and let her thoughts wander to what her father was doing right now. When she had asked him what was going on, he had given her his loving smile and told her she would understand the point of why she had to come out here one day.

His onyx eyes had been abnormally saddened behind his smile, but the young girl didn't push any further on the subject. Silently, though, she wondered if something bad was going on. A few weeks past she noticed the same look in her cousin's eyes when he was hanging out with his friends, but he had easily switched the subject on her.

The change of subject was done smoothly and might have fooled anyone else, but she had noticed it from a mile away. She chose not to call him on it. Despite her age, she knew that sometimes adults had to keep secrets for the safety of others. Whatever he decided not to tell her must have fallen into that category otherwise she was certain he would have told her. They had made a promise to each other to never lie, and they kept their promises no matter what.

He was still out on a mission right now and wasn't going to be back for a while. It was something he had to do to make sure the village and his "favorite little cousin" as he called her would be okay.

The young girl had to remind him that she was his only little cousin and that to her he was more of a big brother than a cousin. That was when she had seen the saddened look behind his onyx eyes. Now that she thought about it, his smile seemed rather sad too. Whatever is going on with everyone is starting to freak me out. Part of me wants to know so I can try to help. Yet, at the same time, the other part of me really doesn't want to get involved.

Eventually, after what felt like miles of walking, her mother came to a stop and turned to her. "Okay, it's time for you to train." She disappeared in a blur of speed then returned with a leaf she had plucked from the canopy of one of the several trees surrounding them. "I want you to keep this leaf stuck to your forehead using only chakra like we practiced back home," she explained as she handed the leaf over.

Chakra control training had been one of the things her mother had been teaching her over the last few weeks to help her conserve chakra when she used the Shadow Possession Jutsu and for when she finally learned the Fire Style: Fire Ball jutsu.

The latter jutsu was a coming of age for Uchiha's or something of that sort from what her father had explained to her. He didn't want her to be upset if she didn't get it right away, though. He wanted her to move at a pace she felt comfortable with and supported her desire to study the jutsu and work on the basic steps a little longer.

He had told her once that his father had forced him to learn faster than everyone to live up to an impossible standard. In the process of doing so, he had missed out on some important lessons, both of the life variety and jutsu based. Once he slowed down and took the time to study everything in a greater depth he became stronger and better than he had ever been.

"Living in a shadow and trying to live up to a narrow sighted man's idea of what I should be hindered me significantly, and I want you to learn that lesson now. Having a strong bloodline means nothing if you live under so much pressure that you can never actually access that potential. You have an amazing gift locked within you, a gift only you can unlock and give to yourself. No one else can give it to you, and forcing it open will never let you achieve true greatness. Your path to achieve your potential may be difficult and take years to walk, but I know without a shadow of a doubt you'll reach your destination and unlock the power to surpass your mother and myself."

His lesson had been followed by one about the journey to becoming stronger and not seeking the strength for the simple want of power. Power led down two roads, one being a dark road that was hard to get off of and the other being a lighter path that was by no means easy and had many points where one could turn off onto the dark road.

While the young girl had learned that shadows and the dark weren't bad, she understood that a dark road was not something she should seek out.

Her mother leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead, which was covered by the purple bandana that her cousin had given her. "I'll be back later tonight. The deer may be curious about their new visitor, but they shouldn't bother you. If one of the Nara's find you let them know I sent you here to train." She gave her forehead a poke with a loving smile pulling onto her lips. "I love you, Haya. Make me proud."

She too had a sad look in her eyes but Haya gave her a closed eyed smile in return. "I will, Mama. Love you and don't be troublesome and forget me out here."

Her mother gave her a soft laugh, ruffling her hair as she did. "I won't. On the off chance I do, consider it survival training of finding your way to the ramen shop from here."

With her instructions given, Haya sat down on the grass to begin her attempts at keeping the leaf connected to her forehead. Her mother turned to leave, but stopped halfway. "Haya?"

Haya quirked up one of her blue eyebrows and tilted her head in question at the hesitation in her mother's body language. "Yes, Mama?"

The older woman walked back over to her and crouched down to her level to wrap her up in a warm embrace. "Train hard and never forget that your father, your cousin and I will always believe in you," she said quietly.

Haya returned the embrace and shut her eyes as she did her best to return the love she was feeling from her mother. "I'll train extra hard for all of you, and I would never forget that," she responded softly. She wasn't sure why her mother was acting so strange. Maybe she was worried about her lack of confidence and the bullying getting to her. Regardless, she hoped her words reassured her that she would be fine.

"I know. I love you, my little shadow. No matter how difficult training or life gets, stay strong." Her mother released her and smiled down at her. "Your family walks with you wherever you go, whether that's in here." Her mother tapped her head. "Or in here." She placed a hand over her heart. "So if your strength seems to fail you, just remember that we're with you and push on."

Haya gave a sharp nod and a confident smile. "Right!"

Her mother gave her one last peck on the top of her head then bid farewell with a reminder about the deer and Nara's possibly finding her out here. It would be easy enough to distinguish a Nara considering they practically all had the patented ponytail her mother still flaunted proudly. It was one of the things her father loved about her mother besides her personality and naturally beautiful looks. Her ponytail was something everyone saw her with but he was the one that got to see her without it, and he believed that was special.

The young girl couldn't help but wonder why her own father didn't ponytail his own wild black hair. She had his hair except colored blue, which was somewhere in her mother's genes a few generations back from when one of the Nara's married someone outside of their clan. Then again she didn't wear a ponytail either because she enjoyed the feel of her long hair being free so maybe that was his reason too.

She had a lot of mixed traits from her parents, she had both of their intelligences, or at least that's what they told her. Haya personally felt like she was still behind them, but they told her that her perfect grades and ability absorb text information like a sponge and turn it into action after a little while begged to differ.

Other than that, though, she had inherited her parent's expression filled eyes that were "mirrors to her true feelings" as her father had told her. According to him, she had gained her mother's smirk when she outsmarted him and had his broad smile when she smiled fully. The latter was a rarity due to her shy disposition, which made it all the more special in her parents' eyes.

Haya also had her father's long eyelashes and had a nose that was between the broad nose her father had and the smaller nose her mother had. For clothes she wore a purple tank top and mesh long sleeve under it, only instead of both sleeves being long she had cut the right one off to make it like a tank top on that side as well. She didn't brandish her clan symbol on her clothes since she was technically from two and was not being forced by her parents to show that she was from either.

"Define yourself as an individual instead of the crest of your clan," her parents told her. It wasn't that they didn't teach her to be proud of her origins or who she was; it was quite the contrary actually. She was proud of being the child of an Uchiha and a Nara regardless of the sideways glances she received from both non-clan members and the full bloodied Uchiha's who were really stuck up.

Not all of the Uchiha's were really happy to be around Haya since she was "the half-breed" of her class. The only Uchiha's other than her father and cousin that liked her was the Uchiha Clan Head's eldest son and a kunoichi both her cousin and the Uchiha Clan Head's son were friends with. To be honest, the boy of the pair was actually really hard to read so saying that he liked her was a guess at best, but he didn't give her the estranged looks like she was some sort of hybrid demon so that had to count for something.

The leaf dropped from her forehead down to her black knee length shorts, reminding the young girl that losing focus didn't help her training in the slightest. She readjusted her feet under her so her black ninja sandals didn't push against her legs at the strange angle they had been before then returned the leaf back to her forehead.

Hours seemed to go by in a flash as Haya, through trial and error, attempted to keep the leaf attached to her forehead for longer than a few minutes. She awoke from her meditation when a gust of wind cut through the forest. She opened her eyes to find herself surrounded by darkness, the sun having set beyond the horizon some time ago when she was focusing more on her chakra than the world around her. Within seconds of registering her surroundings, she became acutely aware of how alone she was and how troublesome her mother had to be to leave her out in the wilderness as "survival training."

The leaf dropped from her forehead as she muttered, "Troublesome," under her breath. Should have seen this coming. Mama's sense of humor can be such a pain sometimes. Clearly it was long past time to head back to the village to go to the ramen shop if that's where her mother was waiting. I hope there's a nice bowl of ramen waiting for me. She owes me one for "forgetting" me out here. Troublesome adult. If her mother wasn't there then she would head back home.

At least my near eidetic memory will serve some use in finding my way out of this maze of a forest and back to the village.

Before she could even move to get up, a figure appeared out of a Body Flicker Technique. The sudden appearance made her recoil at first in preparation of an attack. She prepared to use her Shadow Possession Jutsu but let her body relax when she was able to actually make out more than a shadowed blur. Confusion quickly replaced her relaxation when she locked eyes with the familiar red eyes of the arriving figure. "…Itachi?" Haya questioned. She looked him up and down again, checking every aspect of the boy to make sure her eyes weren't tricking her. "What are you…?"

Haya cut herself off when she noticed the tears staining his cheeks, changing his usually stoic look into one of pain and regret. His forehead protector was also on sideways, weirdly enough, but that conundrum was moot in comparison to the tears. Not liking to see one of the few friends she had sad, she poked the center of his forehead to see if he would give her the small smile she usually gave her mother for doing it.

He didn't smile.

"Are you okay?" he asked without acknowledging the poke.

"A bit cold, but I was about to head back to the village to get some ramen and find Mama. She told me if she didn't come back to get me that it was survival training to find my way back home. I kind of figured she'd be troublesome and do it," the young girl explained with a sigh.

"No one has seen you out here?" the elder Uchiha asked.

She shook her head. "No. Not to my knowledge at least. I've been trying to keep this leaf attached to my forehead." Haya showed him the leaf. He nodded shortly then cast his Sharingan ablaze eyes around in search for…something. What that something was the blue-haired girl couldn't say. "What's wrong, Itachi? You're crying."

He looked back into her eyes with an apologetic look from what she could tell. "I'm sorry, Haya."

"Sor—"

Everything suddenly went black as she was cast into a state of unaware limbo. Within her mind, however, everything she knew, everyone she loved and cared for began disappearing like they never existed. The final thing she heard was her cousin's voice in what felt like a memory being given to her.

"…Haya…You're going to have to make your own way from here on out, forgetting everything and everyone you know until the time is right…I won't lie, it will be a hard road, one that will come with the responsibility your heritage entitles…and a lot of pain I wish you didn't have to suffer through." He took a steady breath before continuing. "I'm sorry I can't be there with you on this path and watch after you like the big brother you considered me. One day I hope you can forgive me for that, but I know you'll stay strong and never back down. If there is one thing I can give you to remember about yourself, it's this: Haya Uchiha doesn't give up no matter what. She stands strong against any storm and carries the very best of her family and Clans on within her heart…I love you with all my heart, little cousin."

The voice faded away and left the young girl floating within the dark limbo of unconsciousness. It wasn't until she felt someone flick her forehead that her eyes shot open. "Hey, look who's finally awake. Ryu! Check it out! I told you it would work!" a messy brown-haired boy called, turning away from her immediate personal space to face whoever he was talking to.

"Kasai, I didn't say it wouldn't work. I told you not to do it," a calmer voice scolded back.

A million questions were at the girls tongue. She didn't know where she was, who this boy was, why she felt so disoriented or what her own name was. The mysterious brown-haired boy named Kasai smiled a large smile regardless of the scolding he received. "Yeah but she's awake. That's what counts."

There was a sigh and suddenly another boy approached her, this one had lavender eyes with no pupils, long brown hair that went to his waist and had a calmer personality compared to his green eyed counterpart.

All the blue-haired girl could feel was fear. Why couldn't she remember anything? She should have been able to recall something, anything! But no matter how hard she tried she couldn't grasp a single memory. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.

On what felt like instinct, she tried scrambling backwards away from the two boys out of fear they were a danger to her. No one just waited around unconscious people and flicked them in the forehead. They could be responsible for this despite their innocent nature. What stopped her scramble was the sudden collision of her back against a solid surface.

Kasai noticed this and reached his hand forward with a friendly smile. "Hey, we're not going to hurt you."

In her confusion, the extended hand seemed to be a threat against her life. Again with what was seemingly primal instinct, she shot her shadow forward and attached it to the two boys. The feeling of their connected shadows was strange. She could feel their attempts to move their bodies within the new connection, yet the twitches were not enough to break free. The girl wasn't sure why she could do this technique or how she had done it in the first place, but she knew they were restrained completely. That bought her time to figure out what was going on, hopefully.

"Whoa. Ryu, do you feel this?" the boy named Kasai asked in confusion.

Neither boy could move other than the mimicked movement of her own quivering that she hadn't realized she was doing until they started doing it. "Yes I do and this is why I told you not to approach her so hastily. She doesn't look to have any idea of what is going on and appears to be operating on frightened instinct. Had this been any other sort of jutsu, you may have been smeared on the walls."

"Aw, you do care," the green eyed boy wisecracked.

Ignoring them, she again reached into her mind to try to find some kind of clue to what she was doing here or who she was. Normal people couldn't move their shadows, so that meant she wasn't normal. But what did that make her then? Was she some kind of freak?

None of her questions ever received answers. She reached and reached, trying to grasp onto anything solid within her mind. All she found were slippery surfaces that sent her falling back into the darkness of ignorance. Lacking any other options, she turned her questions to the two strangers in front of her. "Where am I? How did I get here? Who are you two?" the blue-haired girl asked.

"If you release us, I will explain what my friend did not. You are draining your chakra and if you hold this any longer, it will either end or you may knock yourself unconscious," the boy named Ryu answered.

Chakra…The familiar word flicked on a singular light bulb in her darkness. Yes, chakra is the basis for all…something. And just like that she was back in the darkness. But if I can get this boy to keep talking then maybe I can figure out more about myself. The knowledge was clearly there in her mind, she just needed help remembering it.

She didn't necessarily trust these strangers, but they were the only way to get more information currently. Maintaining her…jutsu? That's what the boy called it and it seemed to fit. Regardless, maintaining it would continue to drain her chakra until she was left in a weakened state or unconscious, an undesirable outcome overall and one that could leave her at the mercy of these two individuals. With no other options, the young girl decided to place a momentary trust in the boys and let her shadow recede back to its natural state.

Both boys reacted similarly to their returned control; they shook their limbs a bit and bounced on their toes to confirm their control before sitting down at a few feet away from her with looks of passiveness and bewilderment on their faces. "Where would you like to start? The where or the who?" Ryu asked.

"Where."

"You are in an orphanage in the Land of Fire on the edge of the Hidden Leaf Village, which is also known as Konoha," the lavender eyed boy answered.

Kasai nodded next to him and let his bright smile return. It almost looked like it was impossible for him to lose it, and that made her feel just a bit more comfortable. "Yup that's where we are, but how you got here is unknown to all of us here. One moment we were all asleep, the next our caretaker woke us up because he found you mysteriously unconscious on our doorstep."

It sounded ridiculous. One did not simply appear on a doorstep in the middle of the night, but there seemed to be no other explanation possible. She examined them for a brief moment, trying to gauge their honesty, but their eyes revealed that they weren't lying. "As for who we are, I am Ryu once of the Hyūga clan in Konoha, or so I'm told."

"You're eyes are kind of famous Ryu," Kasai added in.

"Yes, well I'm sorry I never grew up in the village or among my clan," Ryu responded curtly. Sounds like a tender subject. He then motioned to his partner. "This is Kasai. He's our village idiot in the orphanage, just not a complete moron in terms of real knowledge."

The green eyed boy frowned for a moment at the "village idiot" comment only to start smiling again. "Ryu, you gave me a compliment!" He hugged the boy with one arm. "I am so happy! Our friendship is finally growing."

These two were definitely quite the pair and the blue-haired girl found herself trying to stifle her laugh at the partially irritated look Ryu gave Kasai. Her stifled laugh only fueled the green eyed boy's musing. He spared her a happy glance before continuing. "Next thing you know we'll start writing each other love letters and sitting next to each other at dinner so we can share our meals an— ow!"

Ryu jabbed him in the side to shut him up but the boy continued smiling while the blue-haired girl began giggling to herself. "Aw, come on Ryu, look." He motioned to her. "I got her laughing and you had to go ruin it." Ryu shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose like he had had this argument before only it wasn't about her. "So what's your name?"

The young girl ceased her giggling at the question only to come up completely blank once again. "I-…I don't know." Both boys frowned genuinely this time. She couldn't remember anything. Not a name, not a clue of how she got here and apparently no parents that cared. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she tried to fight off her growing sadness and the tears pricking at her eyes. "I can't remember…I can't remember anything."

There was nothing, it was all black. She could remember being lost, cold and unbearably lonely but nothing else. It was like she was being told to seek something other than that, to find her own path and to find new people to call family.

Family.

The word hit the girl hard. Someone had to have cared for her. She didn't just suddenly wake up in a child's body. She had to have had a family once. So…did that mean she was abandoned like trash at a young age? Had her parents never given a damn about her and decided she was a worthless waste of space? The thought made her feel pathetic, like she was some sort of disease that nobody wanted around.

"In that case, we'll give you one. Any ideas Ryu?" Kasai asked.

"You're the one who offered, shouldn't you have a name?" the lavender eyed boy questioned in return.

"Eh, I figured you'd have something up in that genius head of yours."

Ryu brought his hand to his chin in thought. A few silent moments passed before he finally dropped his hand. "Amaririsu."

"Hanakotoba, the language of flowers," Kasai said thoughtfully. The blue-haired girl made a confused noise at his statement. "It's an old tradition in which flowers were given meanings and were used to convey feelings or other things without speaking, kind of like secret passwords. For instance Amaririsu has the meaning of shy where Shiroibara can have the meaning of innocence, devotion and/or silence."

The name felt like it fit her in more than just name. Shy…Internally she nodded at the word. Yes, that matched. She could feel the shyness inside herself, sewed into her heart along with other pieces of information out her reach. I just have to keep searching until I am able to remember everything.

Despite her initial perception of these two boys being a threat, they were surprisingly really nice. She expected to be given sideways glances from them for some reason, but maybe they each had something in common other than being orphans.

"So Amari, welcome to our cozy little family," Kasai said with a smile reaching his hand out again.

Amari looked at his hand. Family. The word was something she had a hankering for, a semblance of normalcy after this confusing wake up. She reached forward and took his hand a shy smile making its way onto her face.

This was her new family.

A/N: I do not own the Naruto series nor do I make any profit off of the writing of this fanfiction, except personal enjoyment of course. The copyrights of the anime belong to Masashi Kishimoto and Viz Media. Been working on this for about two years and am excited to finally be getting it out there. I'll be updating this story once a week. Thanks for reading and enjoy!