Bonus Chapters every 200 Power Stones!
"Normal Dialogue"
'Inner thoughts'
[Year X791]
~ With Shisui ~
"Children."
The shocked gasps that escaped from Ultear, redy, and Jellal seed to echo in the forest clearing long after the sound had faded. All three of them stared at Shisui with expressions of horror and disbelief as their minds struggled to process what he'd just revealed.
Children. Sent to war. The concept was so foreign, so fundantally wrong, that none of them could find words to respond. They'd all experienced trauma in their lives. Even as children themselves, they had been forced to grow up faster than they should have. But the idea of systematically sending children to battlefields was beyond their comprehension.
Jellal was the first to find his voice, though it ca out strained and uncertain. "Shisui... were you..."
The question hung unfinished in the air, but its aning was clear. Both Ultear and redy turned their eyes back to Shisui with expressions that pleaded for him to deny what they were all thinking. They wanted him to say he'd been too young, too valuable, too sothing to be thrown into the at grinder of warfare.
The bittersweet smile that crossed Shisui's lips gave them their answer before he spoke a single word. Both won recoiled slightly, their faces crumbling with anguish at the confirmation.
"I was sent to the frontline after graduating the Shinobi Academy." Shisui said quietly, his voice steady despite the weight of what he was revealing. "At the age of seven."
redy's hands flew to cover her mouth, tears streaming down her face as she tried to imagine a seven-year-old Shisui facing the horrors of war. Ultear stared at him with undisguised shock and worry, her earlier embarrassnt completely forgotten in the face of such revelation.
Jellal's reaction was different. His expression carried understanding alongside the horror, the recognition of soone who'd been forced into an adult world far too young. He knew what it ant to have childhood stolen, to be shaped by circumstances beyond anyone's control.
But none of them were prepared for what ca next.
"Shortly after," Shisui continued, his voice growing even quieter. "I spilled blood with my own hands."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the forest seed to hold its breath, as if nature itself was unwilling to break the weight of that confession. The crackling of the fire beca the only sound in their world, a steady rhythm that marked the passage of seconds while three people tried to process the unthinkable.
A child. A seven-year-old child. Made his first kill.
An hour had passed since Shisui had begun telling them the full story of his life. He'd painted a picture of a world so different from Earthland that it might as well have been another dinsion entirely. A place where villages raised children to be weapons, where war was so constant that peace seed like a foreign concept, where survival ant making impossible choices at an age when most kids were worried about scraped knees and bedti stories.
He'd told them about his first kill, delivered with the matter-of-fact tone of soone who'd long since made peace with that particular demon. He'd explained the difference between mindless killing and necessary killing, how he'd learned to draw that line even as a child and how he maintained it to this day.
The losses had co next. His parents, casualties of a war that seed to consu everything it touched. His first team, fellow child soldiers who'd died in a mission gone wrong while he survived. Each tragedy had shaped him, hardened him, taught him lessons that no child should ever have to learn.
But they could all sense that he was building up to sothing bigger. Sothing that would explain how he'd ended up wandering far from ho, how he'd eventually found his way to Ishgar and into their lives. The foundation had been laid, and now ca the mont that had defined everything that followed.
"I had thought that I was doing the right thing," Shisui said, his voice taking on a different quality. This ti, there was regret there, and pain, and the kind of wisdom that only ca from making terrible mistakes.
"That I could keep the peace between my clan and the village leadership."
He'd explained the growing tension between the Uchiha and the village authorities, the political manoeuvring and mutual distrust that had poisoned what should have been a united community. Shisui had positioned himself as a bridge between the two sides, believing that his loyalty to both could prevent the kind of conflict that would tear everything apart.
"Until I was attacked."
The words were simple, but they carried the weight of a life forever changed. Shisui's hand moved unconsciously toward his right eye, a gesture so subtle that only soone watching very carefully would have noticed it. But all three of his listeners caught the movent, understanding without being told that whatever had been taken from him in that attack was connected to his eyes.
"Shortly after, my clan was wiped out in a single night."
Another round of gasps and shocked expressions rippled through the group. The destruction of an entire family was sothing they could all understand, having witnessed similar atrocities in their own lives. But knowing that an entire family lineage was wiped out in a single night, especially a clan with the strength and prestige as the Uchiha? That was sothing unthinkable.
To this day, even Shisui found it hard to accept that as the truth.
He didn't ntion nas or specific details about who had been responsible. Instead, he painted a picture of political manipulation and shadowy figures who'd used people for their own ends. The Uchiha had beco tools in soone else's ga, and by the ti Shisui realized what was happening, it was too late to save them.
"Since then, I left my village and lived the life of a wandering shinobi." He continued, his voice growing slightly warr as he approached more recent history. "Until one day, I landed in Ishgar, and I found Ultear and redy on that road, with ten rune knights laying on the floor."
Despite everything they'd just heard, redy managed a cheeky smile through her tears. The mory of their first eting was one of her favourites, a mont of chaos and violence that had sohow led to one of the most important relationships in her life. Even Ultear's lips twitched slightly, though her gaze never left Shisui's face.
"I was given a new life here," Shisui said, his eyes softening as he looked at each of them in turn. "A second chance. Made new friends, found new family."
The word 'family' carried special weight, and both won understood that he was referring directly to them. He also gave Jellal an acknowledging nod, including him in that sacred circle even though their bond was newer and still developing.
"Even though all that happened." Shisui continued, "I still felt like I was missing sothing. And during that two years I spent on that S-rank mission, I had found it."
~ End of Chapter 99 ~
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A/N: Insert Rick Gris "I found 'em" at the end HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA.
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