And come they did.
"Bitch! We'll show you what Grass is worth!" one of them screamed, his voice hoarse with rage before a storm of shuriken came slicing through the air. The killing intent in them wasn't subtle — these weren't disciplined assassins; they were angry, vengeful fools.
I smirked and let my hair rise, the long white strands lifting as though alive. The shuriken met the shifting wall of bone-hardened hair and ricocheted away with metallic clinks.
"Show me, will you?" I said, tilting my head, voice calm and cold. "Perhaps I should show you something instead."
He had given away his ambush with that shout. I didn't have to. My Byakugan was already watching everything — the tremor of chakra in their lungs as they breathed, the twitch of muscles before each strike, the flow of chakra forming in their hands as they weaved signs.
To them, it would look as though I was reading their minds.
To me, they just looked slow.
Another flare of chakra above me — two attackers on the roofline, one setting up an explosive tag, the other preparing a wind jutsu to blow debris my way. The plan was obvious: detonate the tags to stagger me, then trap me in the blast zone.
I sighed. Predictable.
I raised one hand lazily, my sleeve hiding the slight twist of my wrist as a single bone bullet launched forward. To any onlooker, it was a dismissive gesture.
To the man on the roof, it was the last thing he ever saw.
A crack like snapping wood — and his body dropped limp, tumbling down into the dust. A thin white spike jutted from his forehead.
The others screamed.
"You monster!"
"She killed Genri!"
"Don't just stand there — get her!"
The courtyard erupted with chakra flares. Fire, wind, and earth styles roared to life all around me. I watched the attacks forming long before they were unleashed — the surge of heat, the spinning air pressure, the grounding pull of chakra through soil. They were throwing everything they had, and still, it wouldn't matter.
"Kill her! No — cripple her! We need her alive!" someone barked. A woman's voice this time — sharp and commanding, but shaking with barely contained hatred.
"She's a Kaguya, same bones as the old stories! That bloodline's ours now!"
"Once we break her, the elders will breed her like the rest — finally make Grass worth something again!"
That earned them a brief silence from me.
I had suspected their motive, because I knew of the Uzumaki pair of mother and daughter, and I knew of the dark fate that awaited them.
Still, I hadn't expected them to be this brazen about it. Should the truth be known, the Kaguya clan would raze the entire country of Grass to the ground; they would slaughter everyone in their madness.
And worse yet, they would likely be allowed to do it — as a warning to all who wanted to steal another village's bloodlines. If they couldn't handle the heat, they shouldn't even dare think about it.
Even then, just because I expected this didn't mean it didn't rub me the wrong way; the very idea of them treating me like some kind of broodmother was something that caused real anger to fill my veins.
They thought me prey. They thought me a tool to chain, to use, to breed.
How small they were. How pathetic.
"...Breed me?" I repeated softly, my voice low enough that the wind nearly swallowed it.
For a heartbeat, the battlefield held its breath. Then I smiled — a slow, sharp thing that didn't reach my eyes. "You should have kept that thought to yourselves."
I blurred forward.
The woman who had spoken first barely managed to raise her hands before I was upon her. Her chakra surged — earth style, defensive, a slab of stone rising between us. I hit it with a single palm strike, and the entire wall shattered like glass.
Bone spears burst from my arm, threading through the dust and impaling her mid-scream. She hung there for a second, impaled like a butterfly, before the bones retracted and she crumpled to the ground.
"Next."
Two men charged from opposite sides, blades coated in wind chakra. Their coordination wasn't bad — for bandits masquerading as shinobi. I pivoted between them, one hand catching the first blade on my forearm. My bone hardened instantly, sparks flaring as steel met calcium. The second attacker came in from behind, aiming for my neck — predictable.
I spun, elbow-first. The joint split open as a jagged spike erupted outward, catching him through the ribs. The breath left his lungs in a wet gasp.
"Why… why won't you just die!" the first one roared, drawing back.
I almost pitied him. Almost.
"Because you're weak," I said simply, before flicking my wrist. A shard of bone slipped from my sleeve and buried itself in his eye.
He dropped without a sound.
Around me, the fire and smoke thickened — one last desperate barrage.
"Burn her!" someone shouted. "Now!"
Dozens of tags ignited at once, fire roaring from every direction. The ground cracked beneath the pressure, heat and smoke swallowing the world.
When the flames cleared, I was still standing.
My clothes were untouched. The air shimmered faintly — chakra still pulsing from the thin dome of bone I'd raised around myself.
Their expressions shifted from triumph to horror.
"My turn."
I extended both hands, fingers snapping outward like claws. From the ground around me, ivory spikes erupted — bones bursting through the soil in jagged lines that spread like veins. The trap they'd meant for me turned into a slaughter.
Screams echoed as bodies were skewered, the earth itself betraying them. Blood painted the dirt.
When it was done, I stood amid the silence once more. Only one of them still clung to life — the leader, half-buried under rubble, his chest crushed and his eyes wild with fear.
He tried to crawl away. "P-please… we— we were only following orders—"
"Then follow this one," I said softly. "Die." I willed my bones to move, and a spear rose from the earth under him, impaling him, lifting his body up into the air.
He gasped, his body giving a weak struggle before he finally went still, life leaving him just as surely as his blood ran down my bone spear.
My Byakugan swept the area again — no chakra signatures left, no survivors, no more pathetic ambitions hiding in the dark.
The villagers remained cowering behind closed doors, too afraid to look. I couldn't blame them.
It was all too easy for their kind to die in fights between shinobi, though against one like myself, I could limit the damage somewhat.
For a moment, I closed my eyes and focused on my bones underground, hidden from view. The bones of my legs had extended deeply into the ground; from there, they branched out and became the forest of spears that killed my enemies. And now, I pulled them back into my body.
The bones dissolved into pure chakra, filling up the tiny bit I had expended.
Once done, I let out a sigh and brushed dust off my sleeve. Looking down at the dead body, I couldn't help but sneer. "Your village dreamed of stealing bloodlines — now let's see how they handle my bones," I murmured before starting to walk once more.
Not back toward where I came — no, I continued forward, deeper into the Land of Grass. My target was none other than their village.
If they wanted to chain me up and steal my Kekkei Genkai — my bloodline — then it was only fair I recovered what little they had already stolen.
The Uzumaki were descended from the Senju line, which came from Hagoromo, my son. The blood of the two Uzumaki in their village was my blood, and I would see them freed — a fitting punishment for the crime of angering me.
-----
Kanna Uzumaki couldn't help but smile as she held little Karin in her arms. Her daughter was the only thing that could bring a smile to her lips these days. Indeed, life in Grass didn't give her very much to smile about.
Ever since the fall of Uzushiogakure, she had been struggling to smile, or to feel much joy at all. Everyone she knew and loved was dead — her home gone. Yet as if the world had a grudge against her clan, even that wasn't the end of her sorrow.
Seeking a new home, she had instead found a prison — one filled with pain and misery. Yet even in this darkness, there was a flicker of light, of hope — her daughter, Karin. It was for her future and happiness that she could endure the torment this village exposed her to.
Grass had welcomed her as a refugee. At first, they had spoken sweetly — of peace, of rebuilding, of giving the remnants of the Uzumaki a place to live. She had been tired, grieving, and desperate. She hadn't seen the trap until it was too late.
First, they sought her knowledge, particularly in the art of sealing. Grass didn't have many sealing masters, barely able to make a handful of explosive seals, so they had been very welcoming, polite even when it came to that.
They brought food and gifts — everything they could offer — yet in turn she had little to give them. She had never really studied the sealing art, so soon enough, they turned to other things — still polite, but less so.
It was clear they sought to figure out her value, her use for them, and eventually, due to their kindness, she had revealed her gift — her special medical chakra. They had been interested for sure, asked her more questions.
Once she had told them everything, that was when the politeness started to fade away. She was asked to help time and time again — still asked, but it didn't last long before they stopped asking and demanded.
At first, she complied. She healed the wounded shinobi they brought to her — men and women broken by missions gone wrong or skirmishes with neighboring patrols.
But it was never enough.
The shinobi she saved did not thank her. They did not even look her in the eye. They simply left once their wounds closed, and new ones replaced them before long. When she began refusing to work without rest, they stopped bringing patients… and started bringing guards.
Her "home" became a cell.
They said she couldn't move about on her own for her own safety, but she wasn't stupid — she knew what was happening. In the end, she made a deal with them: she would continue to help them all she could, in return her child, still unborn at that time, would be spared her fate and become a real shinobi of Grass.
Someone equal to the others — free, and not an outsider like her.
It hurt making such a deal. Pain became common as she kept treating everyone who needed it — even those who didn't. Something that a few days of rest could fix was still something she had to solve.
It didn't take long before her arms were covered in bite marks; the frequent use of her ability meant they didn't have time to fade. Yet she continued — for Karin.
Even when her hands trembled, even when the dizziness made her vision blur and her knees weaken, she continued.
The guards watched her with cold eyes as she worked, as if afraid she might run — though she hadn't the strength to.
It was a strange kind of mercy — they didn't need chains when exhaustion did the job for them.
Sometimes, when she lay on the straw mat they called a bed, she pressed her hand to her stomach and whispered to her unborn child.
"Just a little longer," she murmured, "just until you're born, and you'll never have to live like this."
She had believed that.
She needed to believe that.
When Karin was born, she thought for a time that her bargain had worked.
The guards who once spoke to her like a servant became oddly careful, even reverent, when they saw the red-haired baby. They called Karin "the village's treasure," and for a few fleeting months, Kanna dared to hope.
They even let her walk in the sun again — under escort, of course, but it was something. She could see the sky, breathe clean air, hear her daughter laugh when the wind tugged at her tiny curls.
Yet soon enough, when she recovered from childbirth, the patients came once more, her chakra getting drawn from her to heal even minor scrapes, all while her arms, once healed, quickly grew covered in marks once more.
She couldn't help but worry… would they really let Karin escape this fate? But in the end, she just didn't dare to think about that. She couldn't give up hope; it was all she and Karin had left.
(End of chapter)
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