Mizuki Shiga

[walkerm]

Name: Mizuki Shiga

Age: thirteen

Gender: female

Village: Sunagakure

Rank: Genin

Nature Manipulation: wind

Appearance:

Mizuki is rather short for her age, standing at just barely four feet eight inches. What she lacks in height, though, she more than makes up for. She weighs about one-hundred and fifteen pounds, most of which is muscle, which makes for packing quite a heavy punch, and her physical characteristics are striking enough that people notice her, if only to do a double take.

Carelessly arranged on her head is a mop of unruly red hair - a brilliant bright red, mind you, none of that orange stuff - that can be found in numerous arrangements, from hastily bound back into a ponytail to stuffed into a bun on the top of her head. Her bangs, which are just short of being long enough to be bound back in most instances, usually just hang down and frame her face; if she really wanted to spend the time to clip them back or otherwise move them away from her face, she probably would, but as it is, she likes them hanging there. They serve quite handily as something to hide behind, should she feel insecure.

Typical for red-heads, Mizuki's skin is pale, though she was fortunate enough to be born and raised in the desert; her skin is now a light tan, with her arms and face being a little darker than the rest of her body. Her clothing of choice run towards pull-on dresses, shorts underneath, and jackets on top that emulate the flak jackets that Chuunin and Jounin wear. Her footwear of choice started out as ankle-high sandals, but over tim they've gradually increased in length, and they now cling to her legs at just an inch above the knee.

Personality:

When Mizuki was a child, she was innocent, care-free, without a singe worry in the world. As she grew older, and lived her life, she experienced and grew from these experiences. She developed into the person she would become, and even now, as a genin, she is but a mound of clay, partially formed and fairly pliable.

As a genin, for all that she's still cannont think back on her mother or her brother without feeling crippling pain, Mizuki is energetic and generally full of cheer. She's reserved, make no mistake, as she's afraid of connecting and getting hurt, but she's very much a social butterfly when you get down to it. She doesn't make friends easily, as she has trouble reaching out and meeting other people half-way, but once she does, she's as loyal as they come. Mess with her team, and you mess with her.

She's incredibly self-conscious when it comes to speaking around others, and she tends to worry about whether or not she's saying something appropriate. Due to her nerves, she's developed a habit of messing around with her hair; she might twirl her finger in a bang, tug on a small handful of hair, or fiddle with the arrangement - hair up, hair down, hair back up, hair put into a bun, etc, etc, etc. Her hair is used to express herself, as well; the girl is wary of connections, and she uses her bangs as something to hide behind, never mind the fact that it gets in the way of her vision when she allows it to fall forward and act as a curtain.

While this habit harmless enough right now, Mizuki does it unconsciously, and though she's noticed it before, the girl has found it very difficult to eliminate this habit. It's like biting your nails - you can quit, but eventually, it comes back with a vengeance. In Mizuki's case, it's a major tell, and she may not be able to succeed as a shinobi if she doesn't make changes in her behavior.

Mizuki probably would be able to quit fiddling with her hair, but she's not all that motivated to do so, actually. In fact, she's really not all that much of a motivated person; throughout the Academy, she became a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, wanting to learn anything and everything, in the process discovering that she's got a little bit of everything. Rather like most genin, Mizuki is undecided in what she wants to do, as far as being a shinobi goes.

Her chosen fighting style is currently heavy ninjutsu and light taijutsu, though she lacks the physical strength and the drive to seriously be worth anything in the taijutsu area. Mizuki actually had an equal level of skill distribution between the three main ninja arts, but she has, at best, only a mediocre level of proficiency in any of the three. She was actually the most skilled at genjutsu, but she chose to for the most part ignore that aspect of her training and pursue taijutsu and ninjutsu.

Not only was genjutsu very difficult to succeed in, but the girl saw it as something less than honorable. It was all mind games and tricks, and she liked to be in the thick of things, duking it out and winning by way of brute strength and flashy chakra manipulation. Fo while she was reserved in everyday interactions, come the moment where the Shiga girl is in a fighting situation, and Mizuki let's loose a savage little girl. Little does that little girl know, that abandoning such a valuable skill is going to come back to bite her in the ass at some point. One can only hope that she's not too badly bitten by the time she finally ceases to be so stubborn and pig-headed.

Jutsu:
E: Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Technique)
E: Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Technique)
E: Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Technique)
E: Henge no Jutsu (Transformation Technique)

Various other taijutsu maneuvers that are, for the most part, created on the spot.
__________________________

History:

• Michio Shiga - father - douche
  
• Yukiko Shiga - mother - deceased
  
• Junichi Shiga - brother - douche
  
• Hayashi Shiga - brother - decent
  
• Minoru Shiga - brother - deceased
  

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, a little girl was born to the Shiga clan. Her father, Michio, was just relieved that the delivery was safe and successful and over, and he was fully prepared to welcome the newest addition to the family. The girl's mother, the fiery Yukiko, was more so relieved; never again, she vowed while still in the birthing bed, her newborn daughter in her arms: this would be the last child she ever bore.

For once, the woman was right. Her little daughter, lovingly named Mizuki, was indeed the fourth child, and would indeed be the last child; she technically wasn't supposed to exist, either, as a vow very similar to the one said over her head had also been uttered the previous child, the youngest of the three brothers that had preceded Mizuki. For a while, Yukiko had been tempted to name Mizuki Ihyou instead, but in the end had opted to give her a stronger name. Indeed, Mizuki had been an initially unwelcome and unplanned for baby, though once on the way, she'd been most eagerly awaited. Her parents would never tell their daughter that, at one point, they had not wanted her, and they had sworn the family to secrecy as well.

With such an auspicious beginning, Mizuki began to live in the outside world, which was a very scary place, indeed; it was quite a stroke of luck that the little girl had such a loving family. During her early years, Mizuki lived in the nursery with Minoru, who was three years older than her. Initially, when Mizuki was first brought home, Minoru was full of resentment, and viewed his younger sibling as a rival, something to be reviled and eradicated. In fact, his first encounter with Mizuki hadn't gone well; he'd been misplaced from his crib at this time, replaced by something else, and while the toddler and the babe were meant to be sleeping safe and sound, the little boy had instead climbed up the walls of the crib and peered down. Imagine his surprise when he found a tiny, doll-like creature all cozied up in his sheets; his reaction was... well, to make a long story short, he ended up waddling into the hall with his little sister firmly grasped between her hands by the neck, proudly announcing his deed with, "Mommy, Daddy, look what I found!"

Needless to say, the Shiga couple were horrified to discover the purple face of their newborn hanging above the fists of their second youngest child, and whilst the mother quickly snatched her baby from the clutches of Minoru and saw to it that she was already, Daddy Dearest swiftly took aside his son and gave him a stern talking-to. Thereafter, Minoru tread around his rival with the utmost care, and it wasn't long before his feelings of indignation and rancor turned into feelings of love and respect, and by the time Mizuki was able to walk, Minoru had come to feel that it was his duty to protect his beloved little sister from any and all things that might come to hurt her. They established a strong sibling bond, and they were most definitely closest to each other; Junichi was so vastly older than them, and Hayashi was too busy alternating between trying to establish his own identity and trailing after their oldest brother with eyes full of hero-worship to take much notice of his younger siblings.

It's not to say that the four weren't all close to each other, because they were; though Junichi adored his younger siblings, he suffered from delusions of grandeur. He believed that he was far to grown-up to really associate with such children, and besides which, he was under pressure from his peers; it really wasn't cool to hang with snot-nosed brats. One must keep in mind that, at the time of Mizuki's arrival into the family, she was a squalling babe, and he had just reached the profound age of ten. He was in the academy, whilst she hadn't even begun to wear diapers yet. He had his priorities, of course.

He was also the dutiful son and eldest brother, and over the course of his young life had already developed a deep sense of family duty and loyalty. For all that he grew distant and too otherwise occupied to play with them, the kid still managed to keep them in order and look out for them when need be; if there was a bully picking on any of his younger siblings, their lives somehow became quite miserable: glue on their seats, roaches in their lunch boxes, a foot that magically appears just in time to send them flying to the floor, and no culprit to be found.

Hayashi, now, Hayashi was perhaps the most distant of all. Not the youngest, not the eldest, a full five years older than the next sibling, destined to always walk in the shadow of his older brother. He followed Junichi when he could and took his word to be law. When he was with Minoru, he pushed the little boy around. In the beginning, he doted on Mizuki, looked after her properly, as a big brother should. When she reached the age of about two and was able to understand what was said to her and was even able to string together full sentences of her own, everything changed, and Hayashi began pushing her around, too.

The change was gradual, of course, but she was so young and innocent, so gullible and trusting, that she'd do and believe just about anything that she was told; it took her a very long time to wise up to her beloved brother's designs. "Go do this and that, Mom said you had to." Naturally, if Mother said so, then it simply had to be done, no question about it; whatever task the boy had cooked up for her to accomplish, she was there seconds later, futilely toiling away with all the strength and determination that her little body could muster. "Let's play a game! Let's see who can be quiet the longest!" This was very difficult for her -- she'd only just discovered the magic of words, and it's so very hard to live without something that just positively fills you to the brim with a sense of empowerment and a feeling of such utter happiness and joy. The little Shiga girl, however, was already competitive and determined to keep up with her brothers, and thusly, whenever the game was played (which was often) she would tenaciously clamp her mouth shut. She never did win, but it was the thought that counted. Right?

Like all blood-bonded siblings, be they natural or adopted, they had their ups and their downs, their moments of the best of friendships and the worst of hatreds, of petty squabbling and idiotic insults, but all the same, they shared and intense bond built on camaraderie and love. Fight amongst themselves, they would, but if an outsider dared to lay a finger on another, be it real or proverbial, that person would soon come to regret it. Oh, the children would actually brawl with the perpetrators: they usually left that for the child that was being bullied. They would, however, maintained the tradition that Junichi began, with the exception of Mizuki; she was more likely to challenge them head-on rather than sneak-attack them.

For all that they were siblings and had bonded because of that, the glue that really held them together was their mother, Yukiko. She was the light of their life, and as far as they were concerned, the sun rose and set on her head. It could have shone out of her fanny, too, and they still would have thought it was the most wonderful thing. The children's father, Michio, thought much along the same lines; his lady wife was the most precious thing to him - she was the love of his life. She was also, much to his despair and their children's' consternation, afflicted with a deep sense of duty and a great love of the shinobi life, of fighting for her village, her adopted clan, and her precious family. She could have retired when she first got married and begun bearing children, but she chose not to, opting instead to juggle the needs of her children and the needs of her village; from an early age, the children grew accustomed to the absence of their mother. Though at first it was difficult for the children to adjust, they eventually learned that Mother always came back.

Michio, on the other hand, had never been a truly constant presence in any of the children's lives, and as such they were conditioned from an early age to know that their father came in and out, that it was just what he did. For all that the man loved his children, and that they loved and respected him, there was never any real special bond between any of them; Michio was the distant, mysterious head of the household.

When Yukiko first had children and decided to continue working as a shinobi, she realized that she just couldn't leave such young children at home by themselves, and she took measures to find someone who was willing to look after the children This help came in the form of Shiga Mitsumoto, the wife of the clan head who had no children of her own (though it wasn't from lack of trying.). She was a kindly woman who, similarly to Yukiko, was an outsider and had not been born into the clan. Unlike Yukiko, however, Mitsumoto had originally belonged to another clan, the clan Akaname.

When Mizuki first met Mitsumoto, the woman had come to pay a visit to Yukiko and see the newborn. They'd have to be acquainted to some degree before it would even be remotely acceptable to leave them together in a home strange to the baby, the lady insisted; never mind the fact that all three of her older siblings would be there, as well. There were two first impressions that day: Lady Mitsumoto thought that the little red patch of fuzz on Mizuki's head was cute, and that she couldn't wait to get the child into her home; Mizuki thought that the woman had a pleasant voice, but she wasn't Mommy.

When Mizuki was old enough to eat solid foods and drink water on her own, Yukiko decided to wean the babe so that she could get back out into the field. The kunoichi had dithered about how and when to wean Mizuki, but when the girl began to nip at the teat with her newly-grown baby-teeth, that was the deciding factor; the youngest Shiga child was subjected to quitting cold turkey, and as one can no doubt imagine, this made for a very unhappy child. She'd developed very strong lungs by this point, and damned if she didn't use them. After a few days of screaming bloody murder and disrupting the entire family's life, the child calmed down, and it wasn't long before she was deposited at the main house of the Shiga compound.

Mizuki had been there before, of course, as part of what Mitsumoto called the "transitioning period." The girl had even spend all-nighters there; she was comfortable enough in that house that putting her to sleep for her noon-day nap went off without a hitch. The girl slept deeply, as young children are wont to, and it was several hours later when she began to stir, her family meanwhile having migrated downstairs. She woke up alone, which was no strange thing, but all the same, some preternatural instinct that all babies seem to have alerted Mizuki and insisted that something was off, that something was wrong. She was only just a little over a year old at the time, but they say girls develop faster than boys do, and perhaps that's true; for Mizuki, scaling the crib walls and dropping down to the floor was a piece of cake; she already had mad ninja skills!

She then tottered out of the room and down to the end of the hall where the stairs were. She could hear voices, and she didn't particularly like being alone. When she reached the stairway, however, she was stopped dead in her tracks. All children have their fears, and Mizuki was no exception; one of her biggest fears was that of spiders, and particularly of giant, black spiders that lay in wait in the corner of the ceiling above the stairway, hungry for the blood and flesh of little girls. For all that she wanted to find her mother, her most basic instincts had take over; it's a trap, and she mustn't pass through, her body screamed, insisting that, if she went down those stairs, the giant spider would pounce down and eat her up. The very thought terrified her, and for a girl who had had no previous experience with the concept of life or death, she grasped the idea remarkably well.

Using the profound logic gifted to small children and lost to maturity, Mizuki reasoned that, in order to get downstairs to her family, she'd have to wait until the spider grew placid and lazy with the boredom of waiting, and then, while the spider was unprepared, she'd have to make a run for it. The girl didn't actually really think it through like that, as her cognitive skills at this point mostly consisted of emotions and staccato motion picture scenes - flashes of images, really - but the end results were all the same. With a plan in mind, Mizuki hunkered down at the top of the steps and waited.

What seemed like hours for Mizuki went by, though the time elapsed was probably only fifteen minutes; her perception of time was a little bit lacking. Finally, after having steeled her nerves and lying in wait for the opportune moment, the toddler bolted up and away, stumbling down the steps with all the speed she could muster, sheer terror fueling her mad dash for safety and all the way to the play room where her brothers and 'baby-sitter' were. Amazingly enough, she only fell down twice along the way, and apart from her ashen face and the fine tremor that took advantage of her already strung-out body, the girl was visually unharmed!

What none of them could see, however, were the wounds that had clawed their way onto her psyche. Not amount of hugging of kind words would make her forget the stark, bare-naked fear that she'd felt. Even later, when Mizuki realized that the spider had in fact by a shadow on the wall, and that it hadn't even looked like a spider, she'd still remember the dread that she'd felt. She'd have nightmares about this, and forever after, Mizuki would suffer from arachnophobia.

Yukiko had not been around to witness this, and at some point thereafter, Mizuki came to realize this fact. She did not bawl her head off when Momma didn't show up, which actually surprised all involved. Instead, the girl was very subdued, and went through the entire afternoon in a sort of solemn quietude. Most of the time, she clung to Minoru, who pretty much just let her do it; the same intuition that prompted Mizuki to make her great escape also told Minoru that his sister needed him.

The other shoe dropped, however, when Mother wasn't there to take her up to bed and tuck her in. All of the stress she'd felt had simmered into a full boil. It started as a whimper, of asking for Momma, but it escalated in leaps and bounds, until Mizuki was flat out screaming, her face red and sticky with the combined streams of tears and snot. No one was able to sleep until the little queen had finally cried out and fallen into an exhausted slumber.

A few, long days later, Father came back, and a little while after, so did Mother. Nobody could have been more overjoyed than little Mizuki. Nobody was more so distraught than Mizuki when Yukiko went away a week later, either. Gradually, Mizuki adjusted, learning that Mother, too, came in and out, and that that was what she did. It was a difficult transition, but eventually, the child went from bellowing bratling to patient toddler.

As Mizuki grew older and matured to the point of where she could safely interact with other children her age, she began playing with the other children of the village. Even though the clan head had no children yet, or perhaps because of it, the home of Shiga Mitsumoto became a gathering place for small children, especially those that had parents that went off on missions. A good number of children went through that house, and Mizuki met almost all of them.

As children are apt to do, Mizuki often made fast friends with the other youngsters; they were so young that it was easy to see someone and instantly like them (or instantly dislike them, but that hardly ever happened in the early years.) They were so young, and their worst fights were most likely over who got to sleep where, or which toy someone got to play with - menial stuff, things that would seem so unreal to them when they matured.

The older they got, however, the more things started to change. The older kids that came in had already teased Minoru mercilessly, and this attitude toward her older sibling started to get adopted by the younger children and turned toward her. Children are cruel, really, and they succumb to the mob instinct so easily; they like to feel like they belong, and they'll use any opportunity to bond together and achieve this sensation. As it turned out, they found the perfect target in Shiga Mizuki.

She was small for her age. "Shorty! Shorty!" they would call her, even those that were younger and smaller than her; those children didn't understand, of course, they just went with the flow. They'd mock her hair, her bright, outlandishly red hair; they make fun of her, claim that maybe she wasn't really a part of the clan. Nevermind that the same red hair they needled could also be found on Gaara, the Kazekage's own son.

At first, she'd try and ask them to stop it. They weren't saying nice things, she explained, as if their feelings really mattered to her. Her requests were generally ignored. Her requests became more forceful. 'Not true!' she'd insist, 'Take the back!' she'd demand. To no avail. And one day, it was all too much, and the first person to demean the body she was born with wound up being attacked by a furious three year old. The kid was so surprised that he didn't even fight back for a few moments, Mizuki all the while wrapping her hands around his neck and making to throttle the living day-lights out of the bugger.

Thankfully, she was pulled off of the boy by one of the older kids before she could really inflict any serious bodily harm, but, all the same, she made an impression on the others. No one insults me with impunity, she informed them through her actions. It was an important lesson for the little girl: sometimes, you can't ask. Sometimes, you have to take. She'd always been taught to ask politely, to have manners, but those very same manners that'd been drummed into her head had failed her when she had need of them. A consequence of the actions of Mizuki's peers was that, as she got older, the girl would always be sensitive to insults, real or perceived. She'd be more aggressive towards any negative interactions; she'd already decided that she'd had enough, and that was that. She wasn't going to take it laying down, that was for sure.

The thing that really got to Mizuki, however, is when the others would say things about how her mom was never around, and how the woman didn't care about her. About how she practically lived in the Main House, and how she was pretty much the daughter of the clan head, Shiga Tobito, and his wife, Mitsumoto. That in itself wasn't all that bad a thought, but it just didn't jive with her vision of the order of life, and it offended her. She only had one mommy and daddy, and that was Mommy and Daddy!

It wasn't all bad, hanging out with people her age. Not all children were cruel to each other, and Mizuki actually met some children that she found to be easy for her to get along with; rather than be casual friends, they became best friends, close enough that Mizuki would even go over to their house to play when them, or they'd head over to her family home and play with her. Most of her friends were also girls, and thusly they'd make up games and play dress-up with pilfered grown-up clothes; they sometimes even feel creative, and make their own ninja weapons. They'd play at being all the greatest shinobi of the Village."I'm the lord Kazekage!" "And I'm the the Mirage of the Desert!" And why not? Whose to say that they couldn't aspire to be as great as the heroes of Sunagakure?

One of Mizuki's friends was Kuromaku Sayuki, and boy, did she have a bad influence on Mizuki. Saaya, as she was called, was a precocious little girl, and found boys quite interesting. It was under her guidance that Mizuki came to go through a period that she would always look back on as, "Oh, yeah, that." It was, simply put, at time when Mizuki went around honing her stealth and attack skills, when she would stalk a member of the opposite gender, and attack, planting a smooch sneak attack on the cheek! According to Saaya, this made that boy Mizuki's boyfriend, and as Mizuki was really too young to understand what that really meant, she obliviously went around proclaiming so-and-so to be her boyfriend!

It got to the point that, when she liked somebody, she'd go home and inform the family that she 'had a new boyfriend.' She was rather harshly corrected by a twelve year old Hayashi, who in turn informed her that she had a 'crush,' not a 'boyfriend.' Not that Hayashi really cared, one way or another. He was a genin already, and his baby sister was nothing in the face of the immense duties and responsibilities that he'd been accorded; he hardly ever thought of her anymore, being more concerned about his future, and of catching up with Junichi, who was already preparing for the Chuunin exams. Mizuki, however, took his words to heart, and shortly afterwards, she started wondering what was so great about guys, anyways. And then she decided that they weren't all that great, after all.

Life was interesting, that was for sure. The girl was growing, changing, establishing who she was, and who she wanted to be. She'd developed her own hopes and fears, and she knew that, like her brothers before her, and her mother and father before them, she wanted to be a shinobi. That was her goal! She was going to be the greatest ninja she could, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it. She was already looking forward to breezing through the Academy and becoming a genin. Despite having negative experiences from time to time, the little Shiga girl was also looking forward to hanging out with her peers; children are blessed with the remarkable ability to forgive and let things go - they never forget, though, whatever might be said of them.

And it's true. To this day, Mizuki remembers exactly what she was doing when she found out that her mother had died. The girl had been at Saaya's house. They'd been out on the roof, where they technically weren't supposed to go; they'd been talking about clouds, and what they were made of. Mizuki had been ready to refute Saaya's claim that they were demon farts when a concerned voice had cut through the air and called her name. The girl had instinctively known that something was wrong, and she'd hopped up and away with all due haste.

Mitsumoto had come to pick her up, her expression somber. Something about the arrival of Mizuki's foster mother and the look on her face clued the girl in. Something was very wrong. Very, very wrong. The walk to Shiga Michio's house was characterized by a strained silence, though the younger female barely even noticed it, too busy wondering what had happened. When the had arrived to the house and crossed the threshold, Mizuki encountered four strangers. Minoru was already there; one of the strangers, a man, had stooped down to her older brother and had been telling him something. At her arrival, the man straightened up, and Minoru turned to face her. A look of utter shock and disbelief was plastered across his face; his eyes were wide, shiny with unshed tears, and he never even blinked as he said the words that would rip her world apart.

"Mother… Mother is dead." Three words. Three individual words that she'd said so many times over in so many places, without so much as even a second thought. Three words that, when strung together in one sentence, shot through to her very core and threatened to destroy. She had the same look on her face as her brother: shocked and disbelieving, totally unwilling to let those words sink in. Mother wasn't gone. She couldn't be. That just… That wasn't… it's not supposed to be like that. Mother was going to be around forever, a tiny voice in the back of her skull insisted. But that wasn't quite right, either, and Mizuki knew that.

She was totally oblivious to the pitying and sympathetic gazes that watched as her mind tried to process and accept the mortality of Yukiko. It must have been a sight; she didn't want to accept it, didn't want it to be true, but, really, why would these people lie around it. Why would Minoru lie about it?

Rather than stick by to see what would happen (waterworks, no doubt), the four grown shinobi had departed in silence, leaving Mitsumoto and the two newly half-orphaned children. Even then, almost right away, Minoru was running away, scrambling up the stairs and down the hall to his room. It was the slamming of a door that jarred Mizuki out of her trance-like stance, and she followed suit, walking up the stairs carefully, calmly. When she went past Minoru's room, her sub-conscious automatically directed her to listen in and try and hear what was going on; she heard nothing. Nothing at all. That wasn't very interesting, nor was it diverting, something that the little girl no doubt could have used. Rather than linger, then, the girl walked all the way to her own room and crawled onto her bed, where the everything caught up with her, and she proceeded to have a mental and emotional breakdown.

Her mind had built a protective shield around itself, repelling the idea that Mother had passed away. But when reason finally won out, the shield fell away, and utter despair flooded through her, settling into her bones, dulling her senses, numbing her mind. She was shocked, shocked beyond all belief. She couldn't cry, though her widened eyes stung with tears that wanted out. She couldn't scream, though her throat felt raw, as if she'd already let loose. She was seven and a half years old. She couldn't even read, or write, and her mother was dead.

One could say that it was fortunate that Mizuki had already spent much of her time away from Yukiko, that she hadn't grown attached to the woman as much as she might have, had Shiga Yukiko been a stay-at-home mother. Mizuki certainly didn't think so; for all that Shiga Mitsumoto was essentially her foster mother, Mizuki had built up in her mind this image of her mother, and nothing could replace that. They may not have had much time together, but that little girl adored her mother. It wasn't quite hero-worship, but it was close.

Both children stayed in their rooms. Mitsumoto, who hadn't left, being by far concerned about the two, waited in the family room. She was unaware that Mizuki had cried herself to sleep, and that Minoru had already snuck out of the building and was running in the streets, running from things that would always catch up, no matter how fast or far he went. She wasn't home when Hayashi returned to the Main House, nor when her husband returned. They were upset, of course, but when they found out where she was, they calmed down. Hayashi immediately went to his family home.

What he found was sorrow. In hushed tones, he'd been told the news, such as it was. He, too, was shocked, but somehow, he was unsurprised. He was fifteen years old, already a Chuunin. He was well aware that the shinobi occupation was inherently hazardous, and while he still grieved, he wasn't as dumbstruck as his younger siblings were. Thusly, he was sane enough to ask Mitsumoto to please excuse them, and when she left for her home, he went upstairs and poked his head into their rooms. Minoru who had run off, wasn't there, and while that worried Hayashi, he didn't run off to find the errant little boy; who knew how long Minoru had been gone, and besides, Hayashi understood his wish to be alone. When he checked in on his sister, he found the girl curled in a ball on the corner of her bed; normally not an emotional sort, the young man was moved enough to gently slide his sister to the other side of the bed and wrap her undercover.

The day progressed into night, and late that night, a weary Junichi returned, little Minoru in tow. The man had just returned from his last mission, and he'd changed upon his youngest brother wandering about near the outskirts of the Village. Naturally, he'd seen it as his job to swoop down and return the boy to the home. He'd booked no protest from Minoru, though the boy hadn't really been in any sort of mood to talk, anyways; astute as only a shinobi could be, Junichi had noticed that his brother was quieter than usual, but hadn't inquired into it. That was private, Minoru's business; the man had figured that it was probably about something that had happened at the Academy that day. That was as far from the truth as it could get, Junichi would learn after he sent Minoru up to bed and joined Hayashi in the family room. In hushed whispers, Hayashi told Junichi of their mother's demise.

Where Mizuki and Minoru were disbelieving, and Hayashi was merely saddened, Junichi was metaphorically sent reeling back in shock. He, of all the children, knew the dangers of the shinobi life, yet, somehow, he'd never connected that fact to his mother, who herself was in the profession. It had seemed unthinkable; she was his mother, she'd always be there. And yet… in just moments, the equation was made, and he was obliged to think upon that concept for the first time in his life, something had instantly became overwhelmingly difficult; he could barely form the words in his head, let alone actually visualize it.

Junichi had been a shinobi, has had his mother and father, as was his younger brother, as would be his youngest siblings. He had been talented enough whilst going through the Academy, and had graduated fairly high in his class. Quite frankly, however, for all his assets, Junichi had not been a very good shinobi. He was a rather selfish person, and he hadn't done particularly well in his emotion training; he had the possibly fatal flaw of letting his emotions get the better of him. He left the home almost immediately, unable to bear the thought that, just days ago, Yukiko had been in the very house. Where he went, no one seemed to know, but he stay away for an extended period of time; he was gone when Father arrived back home.

Michio, too, had been out on a mission when Yukiko died, and as such, being the last to return to the Village, he was the last to find out about the passing of his wife. The news, frankly, was devastating, and something inside of that man was destroyed in that moment. He would never be the same, but instead would continue to exist as a broken man. The man had never really been involved with his children, save for taking each of them to their first day at the Academy and the dinners that were had when all of the family was together. He'd sired them, slept in the same home as them, and shared the same family name, but for all the interest he showed in his get, they might as well have been someone else's.

This mindset, while already severe beforehand, worsened after the death of Yukiko. The only reason he'd really been around them was because he loved the woman, and they were her children. He had gotten away with the minimal exposure he'd had because Yukiko spent most of the early years with them all of the time, and afterwords, she was off on missions just as much as he was. After she died, however, it was like the four didn't even exist. They lived in the same home, sure, but they never talked, they ate together, and they almost never even saw each other. It was if he'd departed this world for the next, as far as the children were concerned. He probably would have, too, had it been honorable to do so. As it was, the best he could do was go off on suicide missions and hope that he met an enemy strong enough to kill him - honor dictated that he mustn't just roll over and wait for the killing strike, as much as he would have loved to have done so.

When he wasn't off trying to die, the man was either locked in his study, drinking himself to oblivion, or he was out in the graveyard, visiting Yukiko's grave; sometimes both. Now, being the irresponsible father that he was, it was left to the oldest children to look after the family, such as it was. Normally, as the eldest, the job would have fallen to Junichi. The thing was, though, Junichi had been adversely affected by the death of his mother, too. While it wasn't as extreme as their father's reaction, it definitely wasn't good.

Unfortunately, when mother died, something inside Junichi shattered. As eldest, he'd known her the best, and the death had hit him particularly hard. This was most likely because he was the oldest born; at one point in his life, it had been just him, her, and his father. They were the rocks in his world, the things that anchored his life and told him that everything would be alright.It was different for Mizuki, Minoru, and Hayashi. Their older brothers had always been there, and they, too, served as anchors in what could be a very scary world. They had a buffer between themselves and their parents, Junichi, who himself lacked such a thing; for all the good that Father did to Junichi, he might as well have not been there.

The man had returned to the home perhaps a week after Michio had come back home, but he returned a withdrawn man, remote and austere, almost ascetic when it came to the rest of the human population. In doing so, he passed on the task of looking after the youngsters to Hayashi. Though Hayashi was grieving, same as the rest of the people in his family, and he wasn't particularly enthused at the thought of looking after children, he tackled this duty with the same stoicalness that had gotten him through the past fifteen years of his life. Someone had to stop the chain of failure, and if it had to be anyone, Hayashi figured that it might as well be him.

Life in the Shiga house, though vastly different than from before, went on, as was it's wont. Junichi moved out and rented a room. Minoru, at first, was absentminded and began to accidentally-on-purpose forget to attend the academy. He had lost an interest in learning things, and preferred to just wander around the Village. Hayashi, as caretaker, at first let him do this, thinking that it wouldn't last; when Minoru displayed no such interest in returning to the Academy on his own, the man took his brother aside and gave him a talking to. Soon thereafter, after having taken the time to think and re-adjusting his world out-look a slight bit, the boy returned to his learnings. In no time at all, he was engaged in his studies and excelling. He was actually able to laugh and smile by the beginning of his eleventh year.

Mizuki, on the other hand, was sullen and dour. She became withdrawn and morose. She wallowed through life, barely eating, barely socializing, barely living. It was like a a mindless clone had swapped places with the girl; she just wasn't the same anymore. Her brother tried to snap her out of it. He tried talking nicely to her, yelling at her, he tried to be harsh, he tried shocking her out of her self-made pit of despair, but no matter what he did, she remained unresponsive, an empty shell. Eventually, Hayashi left her alone, handing her off to someone else and hoping that they'd be able to make an impact on the child. Mitsumoto attempted to bring Mizuki back from this taciturn husk that she'd become, to no avail. Saaya tried to assist, and gave up almost instantly, unable or unwilling to deal with the reticent girl. Minoru, after a while, even took a shot at it, but even he, of all people, couldn't bring her out.

One would think that she'd have been able to bounce back, because children were, if anything, quite flexible in their actions and behaviors. Already, the girl was stubborn and loyal, and she just couldn't let go of her mother, even the bad parts, such as the crippling grief and disbelief. And so, despite her friends' and families' best efforts, the girl remained in her sullen state for a little over a year. During which, Mitsumoto, became the pseudo-mother that Hayashi informally consulted and relied on to help take care of Minoru and Mizuki - one had to keep in mind that Hayashi was a Chuunin, and an unmarried man besides; raising children, while seemingly effortless to outsiders, is no easy task, and Hayashi was quite thankful for the aid.

When Mizuki reached of an age, namely about nine years of age, a decision was made by those in charge of her welfare - minus two - to send Mizuki to the Sand Shinobi Academy. Despite the fact that the girl was just barely nine, and that most children are about ten when they first entered the academy, the two felt that the girl would benefit from being forced into an environment where she had but no choice to socialize and come into contact with other people. They hoped that it would bring her out of her state and bring some light back to her life. She was a child, and she had her whole life in front of her!

They didn't even tell her that she was enrolled in the Academy, not until a day before her first day of attendance. She reacted, of course; in her mind, that was the last thing that she wanted to do. There wasn't much that she could really do, and not much that she really wanted to do, either, and so, the girl went to the Academy. It was fitting, really, that Mizuki would enter while Minoru left; he had just been assigned to a genin team. She was escorted by Hayashi, and though most of the parents were aware of the circumstances behind his arrival, most of the children assumed that Shiga Hayashi was Mizuki's biological father. He was certainly tall enough and somber enough for the roll, and Mizuki, being short for her age, made her brother seem all the more taller and older.

Hayashi brought her all the way to the front doors, but that was as far as he was permitted to go; the children and the instructors - some of of whom had been around since before even Junichi had entered the Academy for the first time all those years ago - were the only humans technically allowed to pass through the doors. As such, Mizuki was herded into the building along with all the other students, and, in that moment of being jostled through the great doorway, she began the next chapter of her life.

Mizuki's first experience in the Academy was actually rather elementary. The children were lumped together into one big room and made to introduce themselves. Some children were tentative, others were bold, while other yet were loud-mouthed and full of bluster; Mizuki was one of the few who refused to speak. She may have been forced to attend, she had thought, but darned if she wasn't going to speak. They couldn't make her! The teacher ended up just calling her name and then moving on. The first impression that she made to most was that was a troublesome little brat.

They weren't all that far off, either. After the introductions were done and over with, and the teachers had given the kids a tour of the place and numerous lectures about what was expected of them, they were sent off to the playground to get to know each other. Kids milled about, grouping together with children that they already knew. Mizuki was off to the side, just weathering through the day like a boat weathers the storm. She'd just been minding her own business when a group of the bolder children decided to mosey over and find out what her problem was.

They'd surrounded her, and she'd just quietly stood there, hoping that they'd go away and leave her in peace. She didn't want to be around anyone, and that was that. The children, however, ignored that wish and started bombarding her with questions. 'Why are you so unhappy?' 'Can you speak?' 'Do I know you? I think I do…' Throughout this, the girl was mute, but then one of the children asked, "Was that guy really your father?" It was a perfectly innocuous question, nothing antagonistic or demeaning, and yet, somehow, it served as the trigger for Mizuki. She just launched into the air and grabbled the kid, wrapping her hands around the boy's neck in a flash of fury, moving to throttle the living daylights out of him.

It took five other kids to pull the girl off of the other child, and when they did, Mizuki was a brilliant red, her expression as black as they came. The idea of her brother being her father bothered her on so many levels, and couple that with the fairly recent events that had happened in the near past, it wasn't surprising that Mizuki was a bundle of compressed energy and emotion ready to explode. She'd held the emotions in for a very long time, but they had to go somewhere, eventually.

Mizuki was taken aside and made to wait by herself until the end of the free time - not something that she minded terribly - and then, when they all headed back inside, she was set free amongst them again. The rest of the day went off without a hitch, and when the day was over, the teachers dismissed the children and sent them outside to their waiting parents. Mizuki went out, and she almost half-heartedly hoped to see Hayashi. She was sorely disappointed, however, when she saw instead Mitsumoto; she even scrolled her eyes over the woman twice without registering her presence, before she finally noticed the woman.

The next day, when Mizuki went to the Academy, she was once again cornered in the play ground by a small group, where this time they started questioning her about the woman that had picked her up. She'd looked familiar, and powerful, and what the heck was the likes of Mizuki doing hanging around such a person, anyways? Mizuki told them to shut up, but they persisted, and that left the girl little choice; she hit them. Really, she made a fist, swung her arm back, and let 're fly! The girl she hit was knocked onto her bum, a red mark on her cheek and a look of surprise on her face. The girl on the ground was just curious, and had never even dreamed that the red-headed girl would react the way she did. Of course! the day before had just been a fluke, some First Day of Academy weirdness! Right? Not. One again, Mizuki was put aside, and once again, when everyone departed to go to classes, Mizuki was allowed to mingle with them again.

Though it may not have seemed like it at first, the violence did Mizuki a world of good. It served as an emotional release, relieving tension from her body and making it feel as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She liked that feeling, a lot, and she actually began to seek it out.

The Shiga child wasn't the only one that decided that they liked fighting. There were several other children - mostly boys - that enjoyed scrapping or felt that they had something to prove; they made the most perfect of fight buddies. At first, the Jounin teachers would intervene, but after a while, they left the children along and let them sort things out themselves. It wasn't long until all of the children started to kind of get along; Mizuki actually enjoyed interacting with the students, and as a result of connecting physically, she was enabled to connect mentally and emotionally. Therapeutic fighting, who would have thought it?

Initially, as the girl had been uninterested in becoming engaged in her life, she'd avoided learning things as much as she could, just staring in the general direction of the sensei and tuning out their voices; as she started to inch back into Real Life, she became more interested in her studies, as well. She became involved with the classes, committed what she could to memory, and tried her best to absorb every bit of knowledge that she possible could. She learned about nature manipulations and the different aspects of jutsu. They were taught the basic hand-seals and how to utilize their chakra, and they learned about weapons and how to use them. Eventually, they even began to learn to use the basic jutsu.

While Mizuki thoroughly enjoyed learning, it wasn't all fun and games. Often, the students were made to take written exams in order to test their knowledge, and Mizuki discovered that she wasn't the greatest of readers. She struggled to make sense of the words, and took far longer than most students to complete each exam. She often only obtained mediocre grades, which was a contrast from the hands-on experiences, in which she excelled. She was never particularly remarkable even in the areas in which she excelled, however, and that - as well as a general love of learning - prompted her to try and be as well-rounded in her knowledge and skill as a shinobi as she could.

Somewhere around her second year, when she was eleven, Minoru came home in a different manner than he usually did; rather than walking, he was carried. He had entered the Chuunin exams in the hopes of ascending the ranks, and left with his life stolen away. Mizuki was, quite naturally, deeply upset over the death of her closet brother, but unlike when Mother had passed away, Mizuki had had experience with grief; she knew how to handle it, and knew that she didn't want to sink into the depression that she'd been in before. She also had a support group, which had helped ground her. There had been a moment there where the girl had considered dropping the shinobi life, but she quickly dismissed it after furiously debating with herself: she loved being a ninja too much already, even if she wasn't even a genuine yet! There was no way that she was going to quit; she's just wasn't a quitter!

Technically, Mizuki could have graduated from the Academy when she was around twelve years of age, but they held her back for a year to make sure that she firmly understood what she needed to know - her reading and writing academics were poor compared to all other aspects of her curriculum, and they were concerned about that. She prooved to be perfectly capable of doing what the others could, and they really could find any reason to not allow her to become a shinobi; worse students before her had passed the end exams.

When she finally passed the exam and obtained her forehead protector, Mizuki was thirteen years old. She had been an Academy Student for four years, and finally, at long last, throughout a seemingly long and tumultuous life, she was a genin. She was assigned to a three-man team that was to be led by a Jounin leader. She was doing what her family before her had all done. And she was doing what she loved.

RP Sample:

A brown and yellow figure darted around a corner and sprinted down the hall of the academy, the soles of her boots thudding dully on the hard surface of the earthen floor. The air inside the academy was crisp and cool in contrast to the arid land outside the halls, but even then, that wasn't saying much. She was slightly sweaty where cloth touched her skin, but she barely told head of that as she scanned each and every door, looking for the plaque that proclaimed it was, indeed, the door that guarded the entrance to where her team would meet.

Was meeting, rather. Without her. Not that it was her fault that she'd misread the details of the meeting and spent half an hour waiting for the members of her team to show up. The letters were so tricky; they'd warp here, shift there, and she'd end up reading something completely different than it actually was. All the same, she'd gotten it into her head that the meeting was at one time or another and in a different location. Boy, was it a shocker to look at the notice just to double check and attempt to quell the insecurities that she might have felt and wind up making a mad dash for the prospect of meeting her new team.

It be said, that under each and every circumstance in all creation, Mizuki hated being late. She herself hated to be made to wait, and it was a certain sort of honor that brought her to strive if possible to avoid making others wait. It happened, of course, but she followed the adage whenever she could; treat others as you wish to be treated. She didn't always follow that, naturally, but she sure did try. As of now, it was all she could hope for that she wasn't too terribly late, and that they hadn't just moved on and left her behind. If they did, though, she could hardly blame them. After all, were the tables turned and the positions reversed, she herself would have gone from impatient to pissed off in the space of a few minutes and would have just gone ahead with whatever plans she had in place. Even so, if they were gone, she wasn't going to be very pleased...

224, 226, 228, 220... the numbers kept flying by. Wait, two-two-twenty! Something about that count made her skid to a halt and take a second look. Right, tricky numbers. It was room 230, the room she was supposed to have been in. The door was closed, and as she took the few steps to the great wooden barrier, a sudden twist of apprehension took hold of her, and she was besieged by questions that fed on the small tendrils of doubt within. Were they still there? Had they left her behind. Would they shun her for being so disrespectful?

As the saying went, there was really only one way to find out; she'd have to go in and see for herself.

Notes:

NOTES: Well, first and foremost, I did it! I actually finished the app >.> Gawd, never again. Never. Never ever ever again.

Secondly, I think you'll be pleased to note that Mizuki does not, in fact, have a penis. =D

I just wanted to note that, for the history, I really struggled to make her life flow, to not have it read like a text-book, cause who the hell wants to read one of those while on here, anyways? I also had trouble including the family without making it seem like I'm writing an history for each of the characters. I also tried to avoid alluding to or outright talking about things that come from or happened in our world - if you catch anything that does so, please point it out! Two sets of eyes are always better than one =) I also got really lazy and skimped in the Academy part or her life (I wanted to finish the damn thing >.<) so if there's anything that you think needs to be added, consider it done. Well, actually, if there's anything, ANYTHING AT ALL, that you want me to tweak, throw out, or re-write, I'd be thrilled to hear it! Anything to improve ^_^

Also, I've decided to give her no upper-level jutsu, because she hasn't trained with her element at all, and she's not all that talented, anyways. It's up to her Jounin sensei to teach her <)

And hey, whoever's reviewing my app, thanks for taking the time to do so! It's not easy to sit down and actually read through, be they absolutely wretchedly noobish or works of insanely epic lengths - you wrock!

[Admin]

Name: Check.

Age: Check.

Gender: Check.

Village: Check.

Rank: Check.

Nature Manipulation: Check.

Appearance: Check.

Personality: Check. Personal note, I like how she's kind of a pure Genin in the way that Sakura was. Free to be molded by anyone.

Jutsu: Check.
__________________________

History: Check.

RP Sample: Check.

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