At the ripe old age of five, Fū had quite confidently decided, in her not-so-humble opinion, that her home was the most beautiful place in the world.
She lived in the village of Takigakure, an abode which nestled at the edges of the roots of an ancient, colossal tree that guarded them from the rest of the world. It towered over a sparkling clear lake which was pure enough to drink directly from, and farther down, a thin but regal waterfall, the namesake of their village, tumbled down over the side of a cliff.
Fū and her mother lived together in a small, modestly-decorated house at the farthest edge of the village, but they were also the closest to the guardian tree, so Fū never minded. The other village children never liked her anyways; whenever she tried to join them as they played swim-tag through the underwater roots, they threw rocks at her and told her to go away.
It hurt, but Fū wasn't alone. She had her mother, a quiet older woman with long green hair and dark eyes. When her mother wasn't tired after a full day spent working in the village rice paddies, she would hold her hand and carry her up the trunk of the guardian tree to a faraway branch where they would sit and talk and laugh.
She also had her pets. For her birthday present one year, her mother gave Fū a tank with a colony of white shiroari, which were termite-like insects. A multitude of insects lived alongside the village people at the roots of the guardian tree, and it wasn't uncommon to adopt them as pets. Fū thought they were quite cute, with the way they squirmed around her fingers. At first, she'd had to take care of them outdoors – after all, if they escaped, they could very well eat through the wooden frames of their house. However, once she'd found that she could control them if she fed them her chakra, her mother had allowed her to bring them inside their home.
And finally, she had Chōmei, a blue kabutomushi (beetle) that lived inside her mind.
"I think I'll try adopting some kabutomushi too," she told him, stroking his green wings. "So you'll have more beetle friends like yourself."
"For the seventh time, I'm not a beetle," he said tiredly.
"Whatever you say," she said, giving him a thumbs-up.
If Fū had to decide what the best part of Takigakure was, it would have to be the Firefly Festival. Every summer, the Festival was the one night a year when everyone's houses were dark. All the villagers rowed out to the lake in their canoes with their lanterns; when the sun set and everything was pitch black around them, they opened them and let the fireflies fly out. The glowing fireflies and their reflections in the lake illuminated their boats, reminding them of all of their loved ones who had died in battle. Fū and her mother often prayed for her father; she'd never known him, as he'd died just before she was born, but she did know that he was a ninja who had fought in the war.
"How about I get some fireflies too?" she pondered, rubbing his shell exactly where he liked it.
Chōmei snorted. "They're fragile, and die far too quickly. Stick to the ones you've already got."
"I stuck some of my baby shiroari on Mushimi yesterday," Fū grinned. "He kept scratching, and he didn't know why. He thinks he has lice now, and his uncle's furious."
"Nice!" Chōmei wiggled his tail in his best impression of a thumbs-up.
When Fū's mother died when she was seven, her world suddenly grew ugly. Their house was too big for one girl, and as time passed by, mold and fungus crept into its cracks and it slowly fell into disrepair. It was alright in the summer, and there was always plenty of fish in the lake so she never went hungry. But as the cold breeze of winter began licking at her toes, Fū realized that she would have to do something. After being refused by every repairman in the village, she tried to clear away the weeds and board up the holes herself, but it was beyond her. Nevertheless, she kept at it every day, licking her bruises where she'd hammered her own fingers instead of the wood as Chōmei performed cheering routines in her head.
It was one such winter evening that Gobuki, the village leader, approached her. He was a stern-faced man with dark hair; Fū knew that they were distantly related through her father, but he had never come near their house before, so the only times she had seen him were during the Firefly Festival.
Unlike the rest of the village people, Gobuki wasn't cruel, but he was still a practical man who told her in matter-of-fact tones that Chōmei was actually a monster that had been sealed inside her, and that she was expected to learn ninjutsu and use his powers to kill the village's enemies.
"I don't want to kill people," said Fū, after thinking it over.
Gobuki paused and looked at her oddly as he stroked his beard. "Well that's what you were born for. A lot of good ninja sacrificed their lives capturing Chōmei so it could be sealed in you."
"Not my fault," Chōmei interjected in her head, making a rude gesture at Gobuki.
Fū cocked her head to the side. "Why me?"
"Your mother offered you," Gobuki said flatly. "Which I always found odd, considering your father was one of the ninja killed by Chōmei."
No, the world had never been as beautiful as she'd thought.
And so, over the years, Fū trained under a variety of teachers who made little effort to contain their hatred for her. Grudgingly, they acknowledged that she was clever and a quick learner, but most abandoned their post after several months, unable to stand being in such constant contact with the village monster. Nevertheless, she mastered all the basic genin-level ninjutsu by the time she was eleven. Then, working with Chōmei, she began working to gain greater control over the Seven-Tails' power until she could even begin to change form and adopt some of his capabilities.
The first time she managed to project two scaly wings like Chōmei's, heedless of the fact that it was nighttime and that she was exhausted, she flew up the guardian tree. Even with the temperature dropping rapidly, she flew higher up than she'd ever gone before, until she finally its very peak.
The view took her breath away. With wide eyes, Fū slowly took in the open canvas of the black sky, which reached endlessly out in every direction, ending only where it touched the expanse of dark forest that surrounded them. She'd never been able to see the sky properly before, because the tree tops blocked so much of it.
Raising a hand up, Fū marveled at how many of them there were. She hadn't realized that there were a million stars that hung like fireflies, lighting up a faraway world that was out of her reach.
One day, when Gobuki had gone away on a secret mission, the village deputy who'd been left in charge summoned Fū. He was a thin, dark-skinned man named Haike with narrow, guarded eyes; unlike Gobuki, he'd never hidden the fact that he despised the Taki jinchūriki. He told her there would be a Chūnin exam in Sunagakure in a week, and that she was to go there with one of the Taki team cells. Upon meeting her new teammates, Mushimi and Suzuru, Fū scowled. Mushimi, as she quickly recalled, had been one of her old tormenters. He was Haike's nephew, and he eyed her with intense loathing as soon as he'd laid eyes on her.
As soon as she'd finished carefully inserting the last of her shiroari and kabutomushi into a padded wooden tube which she then strapped to her back, Fū was whisked off to Sunagakure.
As expected, the Chūnin exams were a breeze. For the first exam, in which they had to break apart the opposing team's boulder, all she had to do was send over her cute little shiroari at the opposing team to distract them, while simultaneously crawling into any cracks in the rock. With a stern order to her shiroari to not eat the genin, their rock soon felt apart and they passed.
The next exam, Mushimi and Suzuru immediately abandoned her and ran off with their team plate, which was fine with her. The idiots of course got their team plate stolen by another team; she hunted and took back the team plate, and then with vindictive pleasure, frolicked around her tied-up 'teammates' as they glared at her sullenly. She then burrowed inside a dead-end tunnel near the surface to take a nap, but accidentally mistimed it. Nevertheless, Chōmei frantically shook her awake just in time to meet the exam's deadline.
Despite that tiny mishap, the remainder of the exam was also going swimmingly, when something went wrong.
Her preliminary went by in a flash – afterwards, she couldn't even remember the names of her opponents. The Ame genin had gone down with little effort, but the other genin from Konoha had proved a little bit more tricky. She'd used a long-range medium for her genjutsu, with irritating squawking blue birds that Fū had had to take great pains to avoid. But in the end, of course, it hadn't been a problem.
======================
If you want to support me, Or just want to read ahead of the public release, you can check my p atreon :
p atreon.com/sybife