You are Uzumaki Makoto, daughter to Uzumaki Naori and Ryūzetsu of the shinobi village Amegakure. It’s a comparatively small village in what has until recent years been a war-torn and under-developed nation, which lies along the shortest overland route between three much more powerful nations that have long used your homeland as a middle ground in which to settle their own petty grievances.

Shinobi raised in such an environment tend to have two options before them – to grow strong or die young. That’s why Amegakure has historically produced a long list of some of the strongest shinobi of their respective eras. These names which have shaken the world include your mother Naori-ue along with her (and more recently your own) mentor Konan-sensei, and somewhat predictably the environment you and your brother grew up in severely skewed your perception of what a shinobi can and should be.

Shiki has shown an aptitude for Ryūzetsu-ue’s kekkei genkai, which lets them separate parts of their own souls for various purposes – Shiki likes to use his as an invisible, mobile, intelligent hiraishin target, for example. But your proficiency is actually quite different. Like Konan-sensei, you have a true, inborn talent for paper ninjutsu. This has let you use a technique for that style that not even Naori-ue has ever attempted: the dance of the shikigami.

But in an era of peace, techniques like these actually have a hidden flaw.

As if to illustrate the point your parents have been making for years, you just solved a problem by transforming your entire body into paper, flying out a window, and using the paper to smother an intruder affiliated with the criminal organization Kara. With even most jōnin who came up through the ranks since the last world war having had far less battlefield experience, the average level of skill and ability to be found among the great nations is lower than it used to be. This means that a shinobi with one especially absurd ability could easily leverage it to their advantage in almost any situation they face.

But if you spent too long solving all your problems by smothering them, that would create its own problem. If you’re not careful, the fact that you’ve grown so strong and developed your techniques to such a degree will actually dull the sense of urgency and the drive that led you to do those things in the first place. In essence, your own strength would end up making you weak.

Of course, despite these thoughts having come to mind during and after your (laughable) fight with the Kara member Garō, you don’t share them at the moment. Now is hardly the time. Instead you silently interrogate something that the guy Shiki brought with him, Kawaki-kun, said to you: that Garō was once his “handler”.

“Please clarify something for me, Kawaki-kun,” you quietly insist. “Who exactly are you, that you would require a ‘handler’ within Kara?”
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