I do not own any Naruto characters or settings.  I only own my OC, Musei Shiro.

Warning:  This chapter contains vivid contents of blood and violence.

I hope you enjoy the story of Shiro, the Weeping Samurai of the Land of Iron!

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“Tousan...”

“What is it, my tenshi (angel)?”

“What are you doing?”

Ichiro blinked, setting down his work upon his desk as he slowly set his eyes upon his only daughter, staring up at him with wondrous round black orbs. He could only let out a smile as his gaze fell upon the said angel's face.

“I'm crafting something,” he said simply, returning back to his work. “Something that will protect you in the future.”

The girl cocked her head to the side, her chin-length white hair glowing in the golden candlelight.

“Tousan...” the young girl babbled again.

“Yes, Shiro?”

“Why do I need to be protected? Is there something that will hurt me?”

Ichiro pressed his lips into a thin line, his clear blue eyes glued onto his work.

“The world is full of strange things...” he murmured softly, puzzling his young daughter. “Those things will one day try to take you away. Whether if they try to steal you away from your mother and I, or if they try to steal your identity away from your own self, you must always remember to return to heart, Shiro; where your true self lies.”

Shiro, sucking her thumb like the child she was, gazed up at her father, who leaned in above his desk to focus on the object he tinkered upon. She blinked curiously.

“My...true self, Tousan?”

“Mhmm...”

Shiro thought for another long moment, trying to process the complicated words through her four-year-old mind. She smiled.

“I like the sky,” she squeaked.

The random comment made Ichiro burst into a light laughter, pushing his thin wire glasses back up on his slender nose. A smile made its way across his smooth face.

“Sora (the sky)?” he chuckled. “Why do you like the sky, tenshi?”

Shiro blinked again, sucking her thumb in thoughtfulness. She took a sharp breath before staring up at her father.

“I like it when the sky is blue,” she mumbled through her thumb. “When the clouds are away and when the sky is just blue, like that time when Okaasan and you and me were on the cliff that one time...we ate apples and carrots and peanut butter and celery...”

“Yes yes, I remember, my tenshi,” Ichiro laughed. “I remember when the sky was as blue as the flowers that grew on the cliffs during summertime...”

“Yeah, like that!” Shiro squeaked, a beaming smile spreading across her round face. “Like the flowers!”

“Well, why not white?” Ichiro asked his daughter, turning back to his work. “The snow here is frequent, and it's also a very nice color.”

“White...” Shiro mumbled, feeling the word roll off her tongue. “Shiro...”

“Yes,” Ichiro nodded, calm and patient. “Just like your name. The snow is white; the foam that comes in from the sea is white; and your mother's hair is also white, like your own.”

Her eyes growing wide, Shiro grabbed a handful of her own hair and tugged at it in front of her eyes, gaping at the color that lay before her. She gasped.

“Whoa...”

Ichiro chuckled again.

“Do you like it?”

“It's pretty...” Shiro sighed in awe.

Ichiro began to wrap the object in a thin black fabric, criss-crossing the cloth in an artistic way. He readjusted his glasses once more, a bead of sweat dripping from his creased brow.

“Tousan...” Shiro murmured again.

“Yes?”

“When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”

The comment made the man freeze, his eyes slowly making their way down to his daughter. There she stood, shorter and much thinner than an average four-year-old, with a tuft of soft white hair and with soft ivory skin covering her stout body. Under her arm was a stuffed gray bunny, a black button missing from its face as eyes and a threaded pink triangle nose slightly unraveling upon the gray fabric. Still, Shiro's face, a light pink dusting her sharp cheekbones, stared up at him in a strong admiration, glorious and joyous to any father.

Ichiro frowned, knitting his thin black eyebrows together as he pushed his chair back from his desk, from his work, and held out his arms. Shiro immediately jumped into them, to which her father hoisted her up into his lap.

“Look at this, Shiro,” Ichiro commanded his daughter smoothly. “What do you see?”

“A sword...” the girl said, clutching her bunny under her arm. “A lot of swords.”

“Right,” Ichiro nodded. “They are katana, for samurai. Now tenshi, do you know what I do for these samurai?"

“You make these swords for them,” she babbled. “So they can fight.”

“Exactly,” her father nodded again. “Now, here's the tricky part: What makes my katana so special? Why do samurai want me to make their swords so badly?”

At such a complex set of questions, Shiro furrowed her light brows together and pouted her lips in defeat.

Ichiro blinked, sighing.

“You will understand in time, my child.” He kissed the top of his daughter's head, stroking her soft white hair as he stared down at the multiple silver blades that lay in front of him, some of their hilts wrapped in white, some in black, and the last just beginning to be wound. “For now, you must understand that you do not want to be like me.”

Shiro lowered her eyes in shame, clasping her bunny in both of her hands as she pressed its head up to her full pink lips.

“...can I be like Okaasan, then?”

Ichiro chuckled.

“Yes, being like her would be the best thing for you.”

Thinking for a little while, Shiro scrunched up her nose in a certain disgust. Ichiro, sensing this, turned his daughter around on his lap and stared questioningly into her dark eyes.

“What is it, tenshi?”

“I'm going to have to get married,” Shiro grumbled, pouting her lips again.

Ichiro let out a light laugh.

“Men aren't so bad you know, Shiro.”

“Boys are gross.”

“You can think that...for now,” Ichiro chuckled, bringing his daughter to a tight hug.

His eyes though, stared at the multiple silvery blades that lay before him. He let out a deep sigh, kissing his daughter's head once more.

“Let me finish my wrappings,” he explained to the young girl. “And then I'll show you some magic.”

“Magic?!” the girl shrieked, giggling. “There's no such thing as magic!”

“That's what you say now,” Ichiro laughed. “Now let me finish so I can prove magic is real.”

“Okay!” The little girl climbed off of her father's lap, collapsing onto her bottom whilst holding her bunny closely to her lips. She stared up in wonder at her father, watching him intently as he swiftly but nimbly wound the white fabric around the blade's hilt. With such precision in mind, he finished the intricate bindings in only half an hour. An impatient Shiro interrupted him as he just set the hilt down, finished.

“Where's the magic, Tousan?”

“Come here.” The man beckoned her up, lifting her up onto his lap once more. Shiro bounced excitedly on his legs, a massive grin stretching across her pale face. “Now, watch closely...”

Ichiro held out his hands in front of him, cupping them in the air. Confused, Shiro opened her mouth to ask what was supposed to happen. Instead, an orb of wispy gas-like substance, the size of her four-year-old head, formed its shape inside her father's palms. Gasping in awe, the girl widened her dark eyes and gazed at the aura intently, eager for what will happen next.

A grunt from her father and the orb split in two, the blue gas-like energy swirling in two tear-drop-like shapes; one merged into a glowing white, while the other darkened into a deep black. All the while, a tiny circle of the opposite color floated in the each of the drops. Ichiro separated his hands, dragging one drop of aura in each palm. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath in his nose, and crushed the two auras simultaneously in each separate hand, smashing the energy into crystal wisps.

Shiro flinched from the sudden movement.

The shimmering particles collided into one another, creating a blinding light. The light was so bright the girl had to cover her eyes with her bunny, shutting her lids tightly as she clamped her tense jaws together in fear.

The light dissipated, leaving the girl to timidly peek past her stuffed bunny. Both father and daughter gasped at what lay before them.

Three of the many silvery blades stood out; two blades glimmered a shimmering snow white, while one gleamed a black dark as the raging ocean waves at night. The color of their hilts corresponded to the new hues of the blades.

Shiro gripped her bunny, which crunched like new cloth. Surprised by the sudden change of texture, the child spun the bunny around to see a new rabbit. Its lost button eye was now replaced with a white one, clashing with the black button that was still there. The pink nose's unwinding thread had been cut and a new larger nose, a blood red one, replaced it. The uneven fabric of the bunny was now a smooth gray that of a storm cloud.

“My bunny!” she squealed. She turned back to the swords. “And your katana, Tousan!”

“The yang made two...” Ichiro gasped in disbelief at the two swords that lay in front of him, the third white one tossed on top of the pile of blades. “That can't be...”

“What happened, Tousan?” Shiro murmured, staring wide-eyed at the blades in front of her.

Ichiro shook his head, clearing his amazed mind from its mistiness and gazed down at his daughter in his lap.

“Everything...has to have balance,” the man started slowly. “Opposites, like day and night, sun and moon, Heaven and Hell...black and white.”

The girl listened closely, her fingers wrapping into the fabric of her bunny as her large dark orbs stared at the three distinct blades.

“We know this connection as yin and yang. What I did was...I split my energy into two parts: One into yin and the other into yang. Now Shiro, my tenshi, these blades are made from a special metal that absorbs energy. And when I collapsed the yin and yang, the blades well...absorbed the essence.”

“Why are there two white ones?” Shiro asked, her voice high and curious.

Ichiro thought for a moment, only to sigh as he answered his daughter.

“That's what I would like to know too, my tenshi...”

~~~*~~~

The white beast barged after the fleeing men, her snowy hair whipping back behind her rampaging body in long white lashes. A nasty snarl curling back upon her pale lips, she let out a barking roar like some sort of animal. Inside her dangerously cloudy eyes, a black storm raged and swirled inside her irises, the mist of insanity seeping into her mind and severely fogging up her judgment. Her feet moved on their own, leaping from branch to thin branch and clawing her way up thick trunks to chase after the two fleeing ninja.

Itachi gripped the two thin scabbards of the katana tightly in his hand, already feeling the unstable yang Chakra desperately trying to escape the white sheaths to poison his own mind. His scarlet eyes, the infamous Sharingan eyes, were activated to their utmost power, glaring ahead and his senses wide alert as he felt the wild presence of the mental samurai charging after him, her echoing still ringing inside his mind.

This was definitely not the Shiro he knew.

The yang Chakra, an unstable energy that worked almost like an addictive drug, had already rooted itself into the young woman's mind, which had already been scarred by horrible childhood experiences. Itachi couldn't feel anything for her but pity, though his own past was much bloodier than hers. The thing that separated their two pasts though were the methods and steps in which they had taken to cope with the pain. Shiro's, in this case, was a lot more isolated and lonely, violent and uncontrollable, than Itachi's path. He chose the Akatsuki; she chose murder.

Abruptly, Itachi stopped in his tracks. His scarlet eyes, glimmering in a glowing red hue, widened in shock as he slowly turned around to face Kisame, who huffed and wheezed from running so fast and so much.

“What...is it...Itachi-san...?” the large shinobi gasped, leaning his hand against the thick trunk of the oak tree they were perched upon.

“Her Chakra...” Itachi murmured, his orbs flickering behind his panting partner. “It's...”

He didn't bother to finish his sentence as he burst forward, back towards the way in which they had came from.

“Back tracking?!” Kisame roared in anger. “Why the hell are you going back?!”

The katana in his hand clattered together as they were whisked back in the force of his running.  Itachi called back to Kisame, his usually stoic voice hardened over in a shell of worry.

“She's dying...!”

~~~*~~~

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