PART OF THE MOTLEY CREW
No one grew up with a more bizarre group of people than Myouri did. She traveled with a wandering caravan, who sold wares and services alike. There were normal people as well as shinobi from all walks of life. Kirryu putting on street performances. Stealth ninja picking pockets. Nogakujin pouring tea. Rankoro. Medics. Kuroyari and more. They were all family, when they weren't trying to outsell or swindle one another. They stayed in villages jammed into a ryokan or carried their homes as tents and wagons with them.
Myouri was an especially free spirit. As a young child, the acceptance she gained from her family was something she took for granted. She never thought of herself as different from her mother and her siblings Hana and Niro, but she was. Her father was Akuu but her mother who had married into the family wasn't. And Myouri was the only one born with the blood of her father, and the closed Third Eye.
They were different, but they loved one another just the same. That was family.
THE BATTLING BOYS
Myouri's sister Hana was clever and Myouri was smart. Hana was pretty and Myouri was wild. Hana was graceful and Myouri was strong. They were different as night and twilight, and while Hana followed elegantly in her mother's footsteps as a flower arranger, Myouri became one of the many boys in the caravan. While Hana was sweeping every boy off his feet, Myouri was kicking, punching, and biting them off their feet.
But what she loved best was the ongoing competition to see who could pull the best prank. Over half the caravan children were in on it, and there was a tale about the legendary prankster Momotarou who'd outdone the rest decades ago. He could fool the socks off a samurai or filch a hundred steaming pies at the same time. That kind of stuff. He was Myouri's hero. When her third eye opened when she was almost trampled by an oxen, Myouri lost no time in using her telekinesis to the most mischievous effect. Her father never told her, but she was following in his footsteps as a youth. He'd been quite the trickster as well, and while Myouri got regular scoldings from her mother, her father didn't seem quite as condemning. Sometimes, she even saw a glimmer of laughter in his eyes. Still, they were only pranks. And Myouri's parents were pleased their children could lead a life full of sunlight, apart from the past fate of the Akuu.
THE FATE OF THE AKUU
Myouri followed the path of her father even from an early age: a mercenary for hire. He said it was a much freer lifestyle than a shinobi, because such useless things as the "shinobi vices" and a million rules didn't exist for a mercenary-for-hire. He trained her as no one but an Akuu could as soon as her Third Eye opened. She was coming into her own at the age of eight, and leagues better within the year.
When she was young bandits attacked. It wasn't the first time bandits had tried to raid the caravan, but this one caught them especially off guard. The caravan recovered and rallied, and the shinobi in the group fought tooth and nail. In the chaos Myouri found herself knocked down and dragged off. For a long time, she thought her fate was sealed until her mother caught up and showed that it wasn't just Akuu who could rain down destruction. She returned safely with her daughter.
Yet they couldn't find a few others. For days after, they searched frantically. Some were never found. But one body was left in the open for all to see. Her father. Where his Third Eye once stared, there was only a bloody hole. And an eye-shaped scar carved cruelly on his face. He'd been mutilated and his bloodline ripped out. For the first time, Myouri felt the shadow of the Akuu Clan over her. She was eight.
KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN IN KUSA
War was brewing in the land, and the danger of traveling in the open was fresh on everyone's minds after the attacks. The caravan moved to Kusagakure to stay there, at least till things settled down. At that time, Ryota came into Myouri's life. He, too, had lost his father during the raid. He spent his days sneaking off from his family to mock her, crack jokes at her, tell her she was the ugliest girl he'd ever seen, and eventually make her smile. Myouri adored him when she wasn't hating him.
What Myouri didn't hear about was that Ryota was betrothed since birth. It was to the richest girl in the caravan, Rika, so their two families could merge their businesses together. But after he met and fell in love with Myouri, he protested against the betrothal before his family. He wanted to choose his own life. Silently and unbeknownst to Myouri, Rika began plotting the Akuu's downfall. Not because of a grudge as a shinobi, but as a jealousy of a merchant girl.
Rika tried quite a few times to humiliate her from behind the shadows, to the point that Myouri eventually caught onto her. It might have stopped at that, until fate took a hand in Myouri's destiny. Some bounty hunters had spotted the caravan. While their target wasn't Myouri in particular, when the Akuu joined the fray she was a target by one grudge-holding shinobi who remembered helping to fight the Akuu in the past. In the aftermath, Rika told Myouri it was her fault. They would never attack if not for her being there.
Myouri didn't think it was her fault, and they got in a bad argument. Myouri lost her temper and beat the rich girl to a pulp. It was fun for the minute it lasted, but she knew she was in trouble. Myouri knew Rika would blab the moment she regained consciousness. So Myouri took the initiative and confessed what she'd done to her family, and said she needed to go to Konoha to become a shinobi. In truth, she just wanted to get strong enough to come back and protect the caravan as a capable warrior, not just a victim.
The young girl left on the spot, and the rickety Masaru who was feeling too old to travel went with her as a companion and grumbler. That's when Ryota caught up. He begged to go with them, but Masaru drove him back to the caravan. "That part of your life is done, girl," Masaru said. "If he really wanted you, he'd demand to go, not ask."
For the longest time, Myouri was certain she hated Masaru for taking her away, though technically she'd chosen it (but hey, she was just a kid.) But when they moved to Konoha and he criticized her through the Academy and then as a Genin, she came to realize she needed his daily visits, even if it was just insults. She got the occasional letter from her family even, but the old man had grown dear to her as any of her family.
Myouri trained diligently to grow stronger. It was as if she had left the first chapter of her life and begun her second. She was a natural at making friends, having had no privacy or chance to be an introvert with the caravan. She worked hard under her team, and openly developed her abilities as an Akuu.