Konoha's Maelstrom

1

Meiko Uzumaki was not a normal girl by any means.

She was an orphan, not unlike others. However, what made her different was the fact that she wasn't looked at with pity for losing her parents. No. She was looked at with terror and fear.

On the streets, people glared at her, were hostile, ignored her, or outright hit her. In the orphanage, she was mistreated, made to do all the chores, secluded, ignored, malnourished, and didn't get the education the other children in the orphanage got.

Meiko learnt pretty early on that she was hated. She figured it out early. This was why she never told anyone about her little quirk, fearing people would hate her more for being a freak.

What is this little quirk? Meiko has an eidetic memory. She could remember anything and everything vividly, as if she were there in the moment and not far away. She could remember everything and anything she had seen or read perfectly, down to the smallest detail.

Meiko found this both a blessing and a curse. Why? Meiko did not want to explain.

鳴戸

Meiko is a small, four year old kid who likes to read. She can read fast, very fast, because she had to develop the skill to be able to finish books before the orphanage people took the books away.

She liked to take long walks along rooftops, or sit down and stare at the stars.

She liked to sleep peacefully, trying to wish herself to not have nightmares, and wake up calmly.

She liked to watch the chunin and jonins training.

Also, she liked playing pranks, like just now. Which was why she was being chased by two chunin and a very angry shopkeeper. Yeah, pranks were fun. The one she just pulled included a dead bird, a ginger cat, several water balloons, and a pot of red paint.

Essentially, the angry shopkeeper was opening his shop to find a dead bird (he doesn't like dead things) and a ginger cat (he hates ginger cats) right beside it. He started shouting angrily, which alerted Meiko to him finding out it had happened, and she set up the water balloon trap. The man got the cat out and threw out the dead bird, which then landed on the string Meiko had set up perfectly (she had targeted this man way too many times that she knew how good his throws were and could measure where they landed perfectly). The string led to the array of water balloons on the ceiling to fall and break on the man's head, dousing him in water. He ran out the shop and stepped in the bucket of red paint, messing up his shoes, the front step, and his pants.

Okay, not that no birds were harmed. She found the ginger cat beside the dead bird, meaning Meiko did not hurt it, it was the cat.

Meiko couldn't help but laugh and thus she was being chased.

She heard loud footsteps, alerting her to heavy footfalls. She also heard hard breathing and lots of shouting. They were tiring, but they were catching up.

Meiko looked around as she ran, and fifty feet ahead, she saw a rope. From the running behind her, she had a feeling she was around thirty feet ahead of them, and she could maintain that distance for around another twenty feet before it would drop.

Her plan formed quickly.

Meiko ran past the rope and twisted into a side alley. She knew these streets and hadn't needed to slow down, whereas her chasers had needed to slow down. Then, she circled back and found the rope only a few feet back. She climbed the rope nimbly, getting to the roof, and hoisted herself up.

Now on the roof, she had a better view of the alley below her. She smirked mischievously as she saw the chunins and the man looking around wildly. The two chunins (one woman, one man), sighed. They were used to this.