Satan's name was Shuji.
It didn't suit him. Like, at all. Shuji was the kind of name given to a particularly loyal dog, not the Demon King.
Not that anyone ever asked Kyou's opinion on the matter. On any matter, really.
Babies weren't exactly fonts of knowledge, after all.
Normal babies, anyway. Which she wasn't. She sure as hell didn't have the self-restraint necessary to pretend, either. She'd consumed reincarnations comics with an avarice which negatively impacted her studies, filing her head with all sorts of fancies. Now, presented with an opportunity to be the world changing genius she'd so enjoyed reading about, she found herself discouraged.
The comics had always glazed over how long everything took.
Everyday, left alone beside her mother in a dimly lit home, she babbled. Babababa, mamamama, tatatata. That sort of thing. Anything to build up her lingual dexterity. Whenever her caretaker or Shuji the Demon King were home, she listened in perfect silence, grasping onto the few Japanese words she knew and slowly but surely growing her vocabulary. She wanted her genius debut to be spectacular. A full sentence, said with perfect diction! She'd settle for nothing less!
Well, publicly. If her babbled "kaachan" went unacknowledged by the woman by her side, well, no one had to know, right?
Physically, she was still abysmally weak. What were the baby milestones, again? Now she was wishing she'd paid attention during her cousin's baby rants, as off putting as they'd been. Tummy time! Wasn't tummy time a thing? Why wasn't she getting any tummy time? Did these weird Naruto wannabes not know about tummy time?
Even she knew about tummy time.
Kyou added basic stretches to her training regimen, trying valiantly to roll over, reach her toes, etcetera. The day she finally succeeded in pulling herself up into a sitting position using her mother as a support, she cackled with glee.
Soon, she'd wreak havoc on this weird nightmare Naruto world.
Soon.
😈😈😈
Shuji glared down at his one year old daughter. She glared back, his own scowl—once endearing—mirrored back at him.
"Kyou," he growled. "Speak."
That annoying twinkle entered her eyes again, and she turned her head away in a blatant rejection of his command, straight black hair swishing around her ears.
Rarely did Shuji have cause to be angry with his daughter. She was a model child, never crying or screaming like all other children her age. She took her first steps at six months of age, firmly establishing her place in the Clan as a genius. She could grasp wooden kunai, though she showed no interest in throwing them, and he knew she could understand what he was saying.
She just wouldn't speak. The silence he'd always been grateful for was now the bane of his existence. If one more person expressed their condolences for the 'poor boy'—.
No, no, he couldn't afford to lose his temper. This was only the first set back. Kyou was still so far beyond her peers in all other aspects, taking a little longer in this one skill would prove inconsequential in the long run.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, running a hand through his short black hair. He watched as Kyou used his leg to pull herself to her feet before tottering off to the other side of their home where she kept a small pile of stones. He'd learned a while back that they were off limits, the echoes of her first temper tantrum still fresh in his eardrums.
Fine. If she wanted to take her time with this one thing, he'd allow it. For now.
😈😈😈
Kyou sat in the dirt outside the village walls, dragging a stick along the ground between her spread legs. Her hands were still chubby and her coordination wasn't what she wanted it to be, but at least she could move. The Demon King had taken full advantage of that, placing all manner of sharp objects into her hands and correcting the way she stood every chance he got. Ah, the ninja life.
She wasn't sure where she stood on the whole ninja thing, to be honest. Child soldiers were bad, one hundred percent, but ninja powers? Pretty cool, man.
She could still remember the awe and terror rising up in her like twin beasts when she saw her first fire ball. It was that kid, her cousin, Izuna, and the look of total superiority he'd thrown at her had set her off like nothing else. He was so lucky he was important to the plot, or else she'd...
Nothing.
It was then that her helplessness really set in. In the face of people with magic eyes and giant pet toads, her superior brain was nothing. That brat could kill her so easily, and the only thing stopping him was the barest thread of human decency shinobi life allowed children to keep. If they weren't family, Kyou had no doubt she'd be dead.
He really didn't like her, for some reason. Every time she happened upon him, he glared at her. She had no idea why, considering how smiley he'd been back when she was itty bitty, but she didn't care, either way.
She wanted to breathe fire, dammit!
That meant actually listening to Shuji, though. And, worse, talking to him.
She'd kept her silence this long, and she really didn't want to break it. But fire breathing~.
She huffed, scratching at the ground with her stick until her name stared up at her. A box with an x in it. Real simple. Thank God. So far, it was the only kanji she knew and she balked at the idea of learning more. Shuji had shown it to her on multiple occasions while trying to get her to speak, and it had stuck. She had no idea what it meant, yet, but she would. Eventually.
"Hey, what are you doing out here?"
Ugh.
She looked up at her oldest cousin, Madara—yes, that Madara. His face was a longer, less angry version of Izuna's, his mother's looks clearly taking the reigns in his development. His iconic fluffy hair hung just past his shoulders, as black as her own but with much more volume. His skin was pale, with a smattering of freckles across his face and hands—not something Kishimoto had ever mentioned, but she wasn't complaining. He wore a dark yukata and no sandals, just like her. She was fairly certain her clothing consisted mainly of hand-me-downs from him and Izuna, anyway, so the resemblance wasn't surprising.
He was little and cute now, but she knew what he'd turn into. Still, it was a little jarring to have Mr. End the World in a Blaze of Fire™ look down at her with concern.
When she didn't answer, he squat down in front of her, his arms braced on his knees. "Hey, you're Shuji-san's son, right? He's looking for you, you know."
Ugh. Son. When she'd first realized she was being called a musuko instead of a musume she'd frantically disrobed just in case she'd somehow been reborn as a boy, but nope. Shuji was just a psychopath. Honestly, he was lucky she wasn't a normal kid or he'd be the source of a lot of issues.
Looking at Madara, she held a hand to her mouth and shushed him, channeling her inner Boo from Monsters Inc. His eyebrows rose.
"You know you shouldn't hide from your father. He must be worried."
She scoffed. Yeah, right.
"You can write?"
She froze. Shit. She hadn't meant to reveal that, yet. She reached over and rubbed the kanji back into the dirt with frantic hands.
"Hey, hey, what are you doing? That was very good!" Madara caught her wrists in his hands, expression bewildered.
"Let me go!" She demanded, pulling at his grip with futile anger. "Stop it!"
"You can talk?"
Ah, fuck!
"No, shut up! Let me go!" He did and she fell onto her ass with a whine. She clutched at her tender wrists with a hiss. "Just go away and leave me alone!"
Her cousin stayed where he was, looking down at her that that same quizzical expression. Then, he picked up her stick and wrote out her name again, adding another, more complicated kanji beside it.
"There, that's my name," he said with a small smile.
"I didn't ask," she grumbled, scooting away from him with a scowl. He sighed, falling back onto the ground and trapping her between his own splayed legs. Curses.
"Why are you pretending you can't speak?" Agh, the dreaded question. "Your father would be very proud."
"Yeah, but no one else would be," she spat back, nursing her wounded pride in the only way she knew how—sweet vengeance! "Izuna might kill me in a jealous rage."
"He would not!"
Kyou laughed at Madara's scandalized expression. "Oh, please. He hates me. The whole Clan does. They only keep me around because I might end up saving one of their useless brats one day."
"That's not true," poor kid seemed to actually believe it. "You're a member of this Clan, Kyou-kun. No one would ever wish that kind of misfortune on you."
"Izuna would," she insisted with a sniff. "I didn't even do anything to him."
Yes, that's it Kyou, play up your adorable babyness. No one can resist!
"He wouldn't!" Ah, she'd made him angry. "He-he's not-he doesn't hate you!"
"Yes, he does!" She yelled back. "He knocks down my towers and sets me on fire and hides my kunai and—!"
Madara held up a hand to stall her rant. "Woah, he what? He set you on fire?"
"Sata-Father says it's my fault for not training. If I did, I could have dodged it."
Kyou looked down, dragging a chubby finger through the dirt, sniffling miserably. Yes, yes, fall for it, Madara, you know you want to! You founded—will found?—a village for the express purpose of protecting children. Crumble before the cuteness!
"He's right."
Ack!
She looked up at him with wide, bewildered eyes. His expression was stern, but not as harsh as his father's could be.
"You should be training, Kyou-kun. Especially if you're this smart. You'd give the Clan a serious advantage on the field. I can only imagine how strong you'll be when you're my age."
He'd meant it as a compliment, she knew he did, but the idea of going to war the way the anime had portrayed it had her feeling green. "B-but, I'm so little!" She held up her little baby hands. "I can't fight!"
Madara smiled, revealing soft, barely there dimples. "Well, obviously you won't go fight, yet. You have to train, first."
No! That wasn't what she wanted!
"Hmph!" She crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't wanna fight!"
A hand ruffled her black hair and she looked up through her lashes at a chuckling Madara. "I know, Kyou-kun. Nobody does. But if we don't, they still will, and everyone we love will get hurt. As the men of the Clan, it's our job to protect the women and children, right?"
Oh, boy, how the fuck was she gonna handle this? If she revealed she was a girl, Satan would definitely kill her. No doubt about it. And if he didn't, she wouldn't be able to learn any cool jutsus because the Uchiha were sexist as fuck. Hrm.
"I am a child," she said at last, staring imploringly up at the only person in the Clan she knew might sympathize.
His smile widened. "I know. That's why I'll protect you until you can do it yourself."
Drat.
She squealed in protest when he pulled her up into his arms as he stood, burying her face in his fluffy hair as he laughed at her expense.
"Come on, Kyou, you should go train with your father. Talk to him, too. I promise, Izuna won't hate you."
Myeh mnyeh nyeh meh nyeh~.
She squealed again as Madara jumped straight into the air, landing on the wall surrounding the village with ease. She pulled herself away from him as she looked out over the small community with eyes so wide, she felt like they might fall out.
"Woah! Do it again!"
He laughed at her, again, but this time she didn't care. "Hey, now, if you train, you'll be able to this yourself."
She shook her head in one last attempt to charm him with her cuteness. "Nope! I want Mada-nii to do it!"
He laughed again as he ran across the rooftops, leaping down in front of her home. "I don't know, you're kind of heavy, Kyou-kun."
She smirked up at him. "Sounds like you're the one who needs to train, Mada-nii."
He smiled and set her down. "Maybe I do. We should train together, then."
Ooh, sneaky sneaky. He really had the whole big brother thing down pat, huh?
"Kyou."
Scheize.
She turned away from her cousin and looked up into Satan's cloudy face. Immediately, she clammed up, stepping into Madara's shadow. Her cousin placed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her toward the scowling baby murderer with a laugh.
"Shuji-san, I found your runaway."
Shuji was not happy, not at all. He smiled, but it was a terrible expression, already a permanent fixture in Kyou's nightmares.
"Thank you, Madara-kun. I'll take him from you."
Shuji picked her up and carried her into their home, tossing her onto the bed at her mother's feet. She lay there, refusing to look at the fuming man as he paced back and forth, running hands through his short hair as he ranted.
"I have been patient with you, Kyou," he was muttering. "I haven't pushed you as hard as I could have, I let you have your little rebellion, but," he turned on her, face red with anger. "I cannot hold back any longer! There are too many things at stake, here, Kyou, for you to be running around with that boy. Fucking Tajima, throwing his boys around like they'll ever be better than my son."
"But I'm not a son," she said angrily, feeding off his erratic energy as she made to ask all the questions she'd kept bottled up inside.
Quick as a viper, he grabbed hold of her face, fingers pressing the meat of her cheeks against her teeth as he pulled her forward until their foreheads touched. "You are a son, Kyou. You must be a son. Anything else and they'll just tie you up with a bow and gift you to the first family to whine loud enough. It that what you want? Hm? Is it?" He pushed her back, her head hitting her mother's covered shin, the frail woman not even blinking. "You are strong, Kyou, smart, too. All of that will be wasted unless you are a son. Do you understand?"
Kyou said nothing, turning her head to spit out the blood which had pooled in her mouth.
"They'll stifle you," Satan was saying, eyes manic and red with more than just the sharingan. "They'll use you to stifle me, to keep me from what is supposed to be mine—to be ours! Do you understand, Kyou?"
The only thing she understood was that this man was crazy. And strong. Too strong to fight.
"I understand."
The crazed light faded a bit from his gaze. "Ah, Kyou. Kyou, my Kyou." He reached out and took her face in his hands, either ignoring or oblivious to the violent flinch which wracked her when he touched her. His fingers ran through her hair and grabbed hold, tugging at the silky black strands mercilessly. "You're not going to run from your training anymore, are you?"
She shook her head as much as his grip would allow. "No."
"Good, good, Kyou. We have things to do."
The next day, Kyou sat in front of Satan, legs crossed as she tried to mimic him. In his hands was a wide, reddish brown leaf, all the moisture sucked out of it. There was a burning hole in the middle of it, and he was using his chakra to keep it from spreading. Now, Kyou, with her super awesome modern times brain, already knew that he was likely using his chakra as an alternate fuel source for the fire, sparing the leaf from further consumption. However, knowing how something is done and doing it yourself are two different things. Her leaves kept burning up, and the sizeable pile she'd started with was quickly dwindling.
"Concentrate, Kyou," he said with surprising patience. "Use your sharingan to see how I'm doing it."
Ah, the sharingan. Bane of her existence. She'd figured out pretty quickly that the sudden sharpening of vision she experienced was due to the whirligig of doom. Once she'd figured out how to control it, she kept it under wraps. She'd meant most of what she'd said to Madara the day before—she wasn't exactly the most popular kid in school.
She felt her eyes burning ever so slightly as Satan came into sharp focus. She could just barely make out the flow of energy around him, and the way it cycled around the leave in his hands. Looking at her own leaf, she tried to make the energy she saw there do the same.
The fire went out.
"Hmm," Shuji handed her another leaf, igniting it while activating his own sharingan. "Again."
The fire went out.
He sat back, one hand scratching at the day's worth of beard on his sharp jaw before standing. "Stay here."
Kyou fiddled around with the leaves some more as she waited for him to come back. It looked like she was doing it right, but not even her super mega awesome modern world brain could help with magic.
"Hey, brat."
Sálvame, Dios.
Kyou didn't look up as Izuna blocked her sun, his shadow standing with hands on hips.
"Hey, Anija said you can talk! Why don't you ever say anything, huh?"
"Because I knew you'd do this."
"Huh?"
She looked up at him, jaw set stubbornly as she glared at Madara's most precious person. "I knew you'd start whining like a bitch if you knew how much of a genius I really am."
He gawked at her, mouth open in shock. "Wh-what?"
"I said," she drawled, a smirk climbing up her face. "You're a whiny bitch."
Izuna launched himself at her with a yell, easily pinning her down beneath his superior weight. Hmm. She probably shouldn't have provoked him like that. Oops. She smiled up at him, her sharingan stinging her eyes.
"See? I told you so."
His face twisted with more than just anger as he raised his fist. She braced herself for the hit but was suddenly free of his weight.
"Izuna!"
Aw, sweet!
"Mada-nii!" She sat up so quickly she saw spots. "I told you! I told you he hates me!"
Should she really be manipulating a pair of kids like this?
No, but it was fun.
Izuna shrank under his brother's glare, disapproval a tangible weight in the air. "Anija, I swear, he started it!"
"I was minding my own business," she countered, struggling to keep a smug grin in check. "I was training, Mada-nii, just like you told me to! See?"
She held up her leaves, keeping her eyes wide and her voice cutesy. Gotta play up that 'I'm so little what could I possibly do wrong' aspect.
"Izuna," Madara's tone was dripping with censure. "What has gotten into you? Kyou-kun is a member of our Clan, a future shinobi who will fight by our side."
Kyou nodded along. Yes, yes, tell him.
"Anija," Izuna whined. "You know what father says about him. How can I just—."
"You can." Ooh, Madara was mad, now. "If everything father said was true, we'd live in a very different world, Izuna. I expect you to make your own judgements."
"Yes, Anija."
"What's this?"
Kyou looked up at Shuji in a panic. "I stayed! I stayed, see?"
He turned his scowl on her quarreling cousins. "Is there something you two need, or can my son get back to training?"
Both boys bowed slightly to their uncle and ran off, leaving Kyou alone with the baby killer. Cowards.
Shuji sat down in his spot with a slight groan. "Kyou, what did I tell you about those boys?"
"I didn't do anything," she insisted. "They came to me. Honest!"
That crazy glint left his eyes, and Kyou let herself breathe. Jesus, he was bipolar.
"Here," he held a piece of paper out to her. "Take this. It's a paper that will tell us your chakra affinity. Watch." He tapped his temple and she focused her sharingan on the paper. That fuzzy energy flowed up his fingertip into the paper, setting it aflame. "Your turn."
She looked at the paper in her hands. What would he do if her chakra wasn't what he wanted? Would he kill her? Call her useless and bash her head against the ground then turn around and tell everyone she was sickly after all?
Swallowing thickly, she called up her own chakra and watched it fill her paper. It flopped over, soaking wet.
She looked up at Shuji with wide eyes, biting at her lip as she awaited the verdict.
He looked...surprised? Was water not normal? Sure, all the Uchiha she could remember were fire or lightning types, but they couldn't be the only types, right?
He sighed and she stiffened. "So that's how it's going to be."
"Um," she began hesitantly. "Is this...bad?"
"Hmm, yes and no." He propped his head up in one hand as he glared at the sopping paper in her hands. "No, because you're the only one in the Clan with water affinity. Yes, because you're the only one in the Clan with water affinity."
Translation: You're special because no one has it but you're boned because no one can teach you.
He sighed again, with gusto this time, and ran a hand down his face. "This will be difficult."
Blood filled her mouth as she bit at her lip. It would be, wouldn't it?
Wasn't that a good thing, though? Now she had a legitimate reason to suck at being a ninja. Maybe, if she sucked enough, Satan would give up and let her do her own thing.
Nah, who was she kidding? He was already getting that look in his eye again.
"U-um, what is the leaf trick supposed to do? Maybe we can figure something out that does the same thing with water."
The crazy left his gaze. "That's not a bad idea."
No shit. She relaxed as they began brainstorming exercises to help with chakra control and circulation, Kyou drawing on her memories of the anime for water based alternatives. Eventually, they settled on using her chakra to stir a bowl of water. Shuji used a chopstick to get it going and she tried to keep up the rotation. It was hard! The closest she got to success was a ripple or two, but Shuji looked pleased and declared it her training for the next week. Ugh. Her brain was sore.
It wasn't until much later that a life changing realization hit her like a ton of bricks.
Holy shit I'm a waterbender!