Fire Red (Naruto)

Enter, Aiko Uzumaki!

Okay! Hey guys, I live I swear! Anyone who has read my Aiko story may have noticed that updates on that have kinda... died. To be honest looking back on it I just don't like any of the directions that I took. I began writing it when I was the young age of 15, and now at the age of 20 I'm a different person with different tastes. So! I'm going to try again here. I hope to not disappoint, (and to actually finish something for once). Anywho! I hope you like it!

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Smoke rose up towards an ashen sky, the dark red sun illuminating the destruction below. The usually colorful village of Konohagakure lay in ruin, the aftermath of a great attack. A great beast known as the nine tailed fox had recently been released, destroying everything in it's path, killing many. Only the fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, had been able to put a stop to it.

Hiruzen Sarutobi stood in the center of where the ninetails had once been, looking down at two crying newborns. Twins, Naruto and Aiko Uzumaki lay there with matching seals on their stomachs. The old man let out a long sad sigh as a feeling of dread filled him. These poor children were going to have an incredibly long and hard life ahead of them. He knew how the village reacted to anything different. With fear, the people of his village were scared of anything aside from what they knew, and with fear comes hatred. Letting his eyes move over to where two fallen bodies lay, he took several steps away from the babies as his shinobi came forward, scooping them up and running off to the hospital to make sure they were healthy.

Hiruzen paid them no mind, looking sadly upon the couple on the ground. Blood had pooled around them, staining the once green grass a deep maroon color. Crouching down, he closed his eyes as he felt grief hit him. Kushina Uzumaki, a young woman who had been so excited to become a mother, and Minato Namikaze, his successor. A man who had only recently been promoted to Hokage. They were dead, gone, life taken from them with a single swipe of a giant paw. The gaping holes in their torsos were horrifying to look upon.

But even so, after everything going so wrong. After their lives were stripped from them, they both had smiles on their faces. For they had died saving their children, and Hiruzen knew they would never regret their decision.

He allowed himself to smile at that, and with one final look at the two, he turned and walked away. There was much to do, and a shinobi couldn't let himself be caught up in his own feelings.

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Five years after the attack, Konoha had gone back to normal. All signs of destruction had vanished, village life bouncing back even better than it was before. The losses of that day continued to be felt though, especially for two young children already living on their own.

Aiko and Naruto Uzumaki had spent the first four years of their lives in an orphanage, but on their fifth birthday they had been thrown out on their own. No one wanted to raise two monsters after all.

They were five years old. Five. And already Aiko was beginning to close herself off to everyone. Unlike Naruto's happiness, Aiko often had a reserved, secretive aura to her. She didn't trust people, especially not after that. She had always been mistreated, her skinny body showed that, but to be alone with no one but her equally mistreated twin hurt more than anything. And so she stopped caring about what people thought. Stopped getting her hopes up. If you didn't care about people, you didn't get hurt.

One good thing that came with their ages, however, was the fact that they'd be able to enter the Academy. Already Naruto had his heart set on the position of Hokage, but Aiko's dreams were far simpler than that. She just wanted to become a powerful ninja. She wanted to.. Protect herself and her brother. The beatings she'd received only helped to solidify that desire in her. She just wanted to be good enough.