Name: Uchiha Kenji
Age: 7
Physical Description: Kenji is a small, slight boy, even for his age, with the characteristic dark eyes and even darker hair of the Uchiha clan. His hair is a slightly unkempt, spiky mess that falls just over his forehead, in a way that suggests that he cuts it only when necessary. His skin is as pale as parchment, and he has what could only be described as cherubic features on a face that rarely shows much emotion. He is often seen in a simple, dark navy kimono top with the Uchiha clan symbol embroidered neatly on the back, paired with black shorts and standard shinobi sandals. His most defining feature is his eyes, as they are not the boisterous, fiery eyes of a typical Uchiha, but rather large, dark pools that seem to absorb light and information in equal measure. They are constantly moving, cataloging, and observing the world around him with an unnerving focus. He has a habit of tilting his head slightly when he's thinking in a very bird-like manner.
Mental Description: Kenji is a boy caught between two fires: his genuine, almost spiritual love for the art of jutsu, and the crushing weight of his father's ambition. On the surface, he is the perfect prodigy: disciplined, focused, and remarkably talented. He can deconstruct a technique's mechanics with an intuition that leaves veteran chunin speechless, and his chakra control is so refined that Academy instructors used his exercises as teaching examples. Beneath this polished surface, however, lies a child who has never been allowed to simply be a child. He craves his father's approval with an intensity that borders on desperation, and has learned that praise only comes with perfection. His love of jutsu is genuine. When he is alone, practicing hand seals in the moonlight, he feels a peace that nothing else provides. But even that pure joy is now tangled with purpose: every technique mastered is another brick in the Uchiha's rebuilding. He secretly envies children who can fail without disappointing an entire clan's legacy, and occasionally allows himself small rebellions--lingering too long at the ramen stand, or taking the long way home to watch the sunset--before guilt drives him back to his training. He dreams of becoming Hokage, but can not tell if that dream is his own or his father's any longer.
History: Nagi, Kenji's father, inherited the title of Clan Head the way one inherits a dilapidated estate: all the responsibility, none of the prestige. The clan's "compound" is a modest collection of houses in Maple Town, indistinguishable from civilian homes except for the small crest above the doorways. The Main Family, the Minor Family, the Cousins--these ancient distinctions now mean little when the entire clan numbers in the low dozens, scattered across various professions, few of them shinobi. Takeshi worked a desk job processing supply requests for the village, a humiliation he swallowed in order to provide for his family. Kenjiro was only a toddler, around three, when the transition first happened, the death of his grandfather something that he didn't understand in even an abstract way, but he understood that the people around him were sad. His father, his mother, his cousins and aunts and uncles all came to his house dressed in a dark black, and he heard them talking about scary, adult things that he didn't understand: the decline of a clan, the fading of the Uchiha, and how they were now faced with a slow, long march into obscurity within the Leaf.
Kenji didn't know what any of it meant, but he knew it made his mother upset. The quiet, dark-eyed boy clung to her and smiled at her, hoping to ease some of the pain Mikoto felt, and felt accomplished when she gave him a watery smile and hugged him back. His father reached down and ruffled his hair, and smiled at him. This particular memory does stand out the Kenji, even now: That small reassurance helping both of his parents, and him receiving love and praise for simply doing the right thing.
It wasn't much longer after that when everything changed.
When Kenji performed his first Clone Jutsu at age three--copying his father's hand seal while Nagi trained--the man wept. Not from pride, but from relief. Here, finally, was a sign that the Uchiha blood still carried fire. From that moment, Kenji's life was no longer his own. Training began before dawn and ended long after sunset. Nagi was not cruel, and he never struck his son, never raised his voice beyond stern correction, but he was relentless. Every success was met not with celebration, but with the next goal. "Good. Now do it faster." "Acceptable. Now learn this one." Kenji's mother, a gentle woman from a civilian family who married Nagi hoping to bring warmth to the fading clan, watched helplessly as her son's childhood was systematically dismantled in the name of restoration.
By the time Kenji reached 5 years old, he was already more advanced than most of the academy students close to graduation, displaying an almost-instinctive understanding of chakra control and the way that molding chakra effected the shape of the jutsu. His father called in every favor he had to get Kenji into the academy early, claiming that his son was a once-in-a-generation talent who needed to be trained right away, lest they lose precious time to advance his skills. At the Academy, Kenjiro was a phenomenon. He graduated in eighteen months, the youngest genin in a generation--and still his father insisted it wasn't enough. He had gone father, further, and faster than anyone in their family had in years, but the young Uchiha still felt like a failure.
Now a genin awaiting team assignment, Kenji spends his days in the library researching jutsu and his evenings training. His father has begun speaking of the Sharingan--of what Kenji could achieve if he could awaken it. Kenji has read every scroll on the bloodline limit that exists in the public archives. He knows what awakens it. Loss. Trauma. The death of someone dear. Sometimes, late at night, he lies awake and wonders if his father has considered that price. Sometimes, he wonders if his father has considered it too carefully.
Bloodline/Core ability: https://ninpocho.com/threads/uchiha.61608/Uchiha
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