xl note: This story is a slow starter as is the romance.

Anyhow, I will do my best to stay as true to the manga as possible, but expect some liberties. I failed to add the angst and suspense genre, but expect plenty of it in the future chapters, and lastly, expect some tragedy. Enjoy. :)

Warning(s): Violence and suggestive themes. Other warnings, non-rating related, include a large cast of OCs (to fill in the gaps), a future love triangle, among other things.

Redesign | Chapter 01 | Half Moon Imprint

"Someone cursed me."

Uchiha Mio stared up at her father, yawning. She didn't need to ask why, but he was fishing for it. She could tell by the antsy look on his face that he was looking for any excuse to embark on some nonsensical fantasy story made up of his own experiences and horror stories meant to scare her.

"Why?" she asked, earning a disapproving grunt from her mother Kikyo by the hearth. "Why are you cursed?"

She listened to her mother, Uchiha Kikyo, sifting through pages in front of a shelf of educational books. She was in the middle of preparing for their memory game, where Mio recited whole pages of information she'd learned the day before as a way to hone her gift of memory. It came naturally if she paid attention, so on a personal level she never considered it a gift (although it was unusual for her to concentrate long enough to recall a thing unless she felt it important). It fell under the chore category since it required taking hours of her free time to hone it. In her opinion, the word honing was a stupid explanation to what her mother made her do, but she never argued. Even though she felt her insides corrode at the idea of being unable to correct what she viewed as her mother's mistake, she learned at an early age that she would never be the current pushing forward, rather the stone, unmoving against the current's efforts.

"Why?" asked Uchiha Genji, incredulous. He placed a hand to her back and guided her towards the entrance of their cottage. Once at the threshold, he pointed to the bulbous clouds crowding in the darkening sky. "That's why!"

"Mio, come inside," said Kikyo, brushing back the curtain of black hair that spilled down her shoulder. "If you give him too much attention, he'll become clingy."

"Do not think to turn our daughter against me because I invited her outside and you are stuck there, fishing through books on plant life."

"To talk about superstitions?" Kikyo scoffed. "I am green with envy, Gen, green."

"Sarcasm looks terrible on you."

"As stupidity does on you."

Genji laughed, clapping a hand over Mio's shoulder. "That's why I married your mother," he told her proudly. "She's all bite."

"Have some shame. That is your only daughter learning your vile preferences."

"Only?" he challenged.

Mio wondered if a sibling was an option and turned to her mother fully. "I want a sister."

Kikyo zeroed in on her. "That wasn't an invitation, Mio."

She grabbed the bottom of her father's dark shirt and gave it a hard tug. "Father, I want a sister. Please get me a sister," she said immediately. "I will take a brother if a sister is unattainable. I promise I'll take care of her while you're gone. I'm almost ten."

Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. "This is not up for discussion; there will be no more children in this house. Please finish feeding her your superstitious drawl and send her in, we need to start practice for tonight."

"I still want a sister, mother. I want her to be called Ume," she decided in her excitement. "If by some off chance your wife brings forth a male, he will be named Ringo and you are not allowed to disagree."

Genji stared at her, astonished. "You are definitely mine."

"What part of this wasn't up for discussion did neither of you understand?" snapped Kikyo from inside.

Her sharp interruption went on ignored as the quickly darkening clouds drew their attentions skyward. The ever-darkening cloud came rushing forward, heralding a storm and violent winds that shuddered against tree limbs and cast a cape of moss green leaves into the air until the pull scattered them.

"I saw bandits ravish a village, tortured the men and raped the women," Genji began, the humor drained from his face. She sensed he felt horribly about what he bore witness to, but in war, evil reigned and nothing could be done about such tragedies. "An old man begged me to save him and for duty, I watched three bandits beat him purple and kill him. I saw the village burn to ashes and thought nothing of it, but I can't stop thinking of it now. I should have taken a second to help him."

"The innocent people that die during our missions and our wars are necessary a sacrifice," Mio recited as her mother taught her. "Avoid the nonsensical, obey power, and erase the unnecessary."

Genji mussed her hair with a bitter smile. "The mission objective is always priority, I know, you don't have to make that face." He gestured her indoors where it was warm and wandered to the axe cleaved in the wide stump. "I'll cut firewood. Go read to your mother. We will talk later."

She stayed at the doorframe taking notice of his somewhat frantic shuffling through the logs stacked up the side of the house. He announced at the top of his lungs that he wanted to stock up on firewood before it was too late and seemed to have no shame in coming across like an idiot.

Kikyo shouted at her to hurry inside and she began her last lessons for the day. Her mother flipped through a stack of seven books at random dishing out numbers. She would start with page number and line number from top to bottom.

Once Mio recited everything her mother threw at her, she realized she wanted to watch her father panicking outside. As the only human alive able to combat her mantra, she felt he needed the observation. Whenever Genji ended up in some emotional tizzy, he adopted a deep wrinkle on his forehead and frown lines that made him look much older than he was. He filled his home with laughter, saying it was therapeutic for his "overworking" gene so it was odd to see him serious or worried.

Outside their home, in the field, Genji was fierce—a force of nature in his work as a spy. He needed his physical strength, agility, and iron will to get him through half the assignments provided by the Uchiha clan without having to criticize their way of life. He was as much an Uchiha as his wife—swift and cold at heart on duty, and off it, they were the epitome of normal. They were the sort of individuals that never brought their work home and in the instances they did, it went towards her training.

She would become like them, an Uchiha shadow.

Genji stepped inside, lugging firewood under his arm, when he came. Kikyo sat up, immediately alert, having been prepared to ridicule him, but the stranger was already holding a kunai at the base of her father's throat and Mio stood frozen in the middle.

Before the events registered in her mind, it was over in a cloud of red mist and shadow with only the scar marred against her tormentor's back, a slash crescent, blinking back at her behind closed eyes. The darkened veil fell across her eyes and distorted her sight, leaving her fumbling through smog with her other four senses there to memorize what she could bear to see.

By the time help arrived from the Uchiha compound, their bodies had grown cold and the murderer had taken two more lives before escaping.

An older woman leveled with Mio's blank stare, hindering her view of the blood oozing from the walls, probably expectants of tears, sobs, and wailing—crying's horrific affair. A gentle reassuring smile appeared on her lightly wrinkled face, dark eyes crinkling, as if sympathy was enough to encourage the emotion Mio knew played no role in the deaths of her parents.

Mourning and understanding were two opposites of the same argument—of a war she could never win. Shedding tears and acknowledging the bubbling repulsion clawing at the pit of her stomach was expected of any nine-year-old girl forced to witness the grisly deaths of her family, but she only felt the pain of digging into her palm until she drew blood and the smooth surface of the paper crushed inside her fist.

It seemed pity was expected to shock Mio into submission, a right dose of empathy to explore the reasons as to why this event spelled out tragedy even though people died every day, and in overabundance sometimes. The feelings were complicated, but it meant plenty of things to Mio. However, she stuck to the mantra she remembered her father reciting. Avoid the nonsensical. Obey power. Erase the unnecessary.

It was useless to burden another with reasons they wouldn't understand, as was the importance to express the emptiness eating away at her from the inside out because even though everything happened quickly, the sequence of events stayed fresh on her mind. Everything that had happened thirty minutes ago replayed in her head as she stared absently into the older woman's face. The weight of her mother's body across her lap lingered, though it had been removed several minutes ago, the feeling of her warmth turning cold seeped into her flesh, informing her of her death.

Mio's mind thought no thoughts, her body felt no touch, and her ears heard only the muffled distorted voices ringing outside in protest.

Maybe the emptiness was her form of expression. So the smothering adults probably felt cheated.

Genji and Kikyo had been great shinobi and acquiring information had been their forte. Nobody quite managed to excel as they had, but nobody did challenge them. They tested one another, enjoyed plenty of evenings overindulging in the factual and consulting ways to improve their skills.

Both had raised her right, they had taught her morals and had surrounded her in love, but most importantly, they had taught her how to kill—to become an Uchiha shadow like them. The Uchiha were proud about natural ability, skill, and a one-of-a-kind Kekkei Genkai—bloodline limit—so she had large shoes to fill. Every child did, especially with ongoing rivalries with clans like the Senju, which only meant the amount of capable shinobi had diminished alongside never ending skirmishes and brewing shinobi wars. Call it stress born from pressure. It butchered hopes and dreams, relinquished the ability to view beyond the bloodshed to the potential of a flourishing world. One became narrow-minded and self-reliant and soon a burden.

It scared Mio to see beyond the bloody walls knowing that and more.

"Mio," the old crone spoke, gentle but insistent. Even crouched in front of her, Mio could see she was a tall gangly woman weathered with age who dressed as elegant as she looked, but nevertheless, displayed a youthful spry and a particular shrewdness besides her comrades in the heat of battle. Her dark hair grayed a long time ago, but her eyes remained cutting black stones. "You will come with me."

Mio stared at her listlessly—hoping, wishing—wanting to see the final trickles of crimson drizzle to the wooden floor. The blood fresh on her clothes seeped into the absorbent fabrics, dripped between her thighs, and sat slapped across her face like black to a stark white canvas. Her mother's dainty perfume sunk into her skin, the scent of peach and sweet grass clung to the air almost overpowering the metallic smell of blood. Almost.

The stranger's lips were moving but there was no sound.

Mio's heart thumped lightly in her chest, as if returning to life, and her savior's features begun looking familiar.

"I am going to take care of you," continued the woman, taking her silence and eye contact as an invitation. "We will go to the Uchiha compound for now."

The humming in her ears grew louder, drowning out her noisy heartbeat.

Mio's body was picked off the red river of her family's blood, held up in strong arms offering the succor she might associate to a mother's love. How it happened was unknown to her, she was lost in the red world. She was dead weight, stones in human skin, but this woman was full of strength. She wanted to be like this woman carrying her out of her family cottage.

The change in scenery brought her back to strong winds that pushed hard against her and a flood of moonlight as the forests' greenery invaded her periphery. Her numb fingers twitched to life as she blinked, using her gift to memorize the final details of her wrecked childhood home, a tiny cottage surrounded by wildlife.

Her mother's voice still whispered in her ear, but the body holding her up was warm unlike hers.

"Breathe, Mio."

She breathed.

"Come on, Mio, in and out."

She breathed again.

"Slow and steadily, Mio."

She saw her in the distant, the ghost that smiled back at her, the last drop of sweetness in its expression. "That's a good girl. That's my girl," it said in a voice that tightened around her neck like a noose, like the rough hand that wrapped itself around her neck as green eyes bore down on her. "We love you so much, Mio."

Each time she repeated the endless cycle of death in her mind, the cottage shrunk—smaller and smaller in her squinted, blurred vision. Pink peonies waved in the violent winds as if saying their final goodbye and the axe hewed into the ancient trunk winked at her in the stream of moonlight falling across it assuring her the world had not yet ended. The door clanked noisily, echoing like muffled laughter. It was the warning bell in the opening chapter, speaking of the grim reaper that swept in to claim the lives of her loved ones to pave the fate that awaited her.

None of that mattered. Mio wanted to disappear unable to will her mind to remember the tiny structure fading over a canopy of trees. She wanted to go into nonexistence with her parents because she didn't want to feel anything towards their untimely demise. Fear swarmed her bloodstream.

Without her parents there to shield her from the critical eyes of the Uchiha, she was useless—a girl taught to kill without the skin and emotional stability to see it through. She wondered what use came out of preserving her life. The answer she wished for was, "nothing," but as her eyes fell to the paper clutched in her hand, it comforted her to know otherwise.

There was something she could do.