Amaya Mizuno

Amaya Mizuno (水野アマヤ, Mizuno Amaya) is a from, former heiress to the Mizuno Clan, former member of Team 9, and the current host of Yamiyoryu, the Moonless Dragon. She is also known by the moniker Konoha's Warrior Princess (木ノ葉の戦士姫, Konoha no senshi hime) by the people of. She becomes a shinobi in order to go against her clan's views on women and their uselessness on the battlefield and to grow strong enough to protect those she cares about.

Heiress Years
Being the eldest daughter of the head of the Mizuno Clan, Amaya was taught the basic mannerisms of being a lady. Her days were often spent learning how to speak, eat properly, and how to keep her own appearance to a high standard as well as the condition of her future home and husband. These standards were upheld in the hopes that Amaya would manage to secure a suitable husband that would bring money into the clan. Oftentimes her aunt and teacher would suggest that Amaya should talk with due to his clan's standing in the village at the time.

Becoming a Ninja
Around the age of eight, Amaya fled the clan's compound along with her younger sister Kaori Mizuno to live with their aunt Suzuki due to the men of the clan constantly tormenting Kaori because the young girl had the. While living with her aunt, Amaya became close to Suzuki's fiance, Haru Tansho. Haru was the one who initially introduced Amaya to the shinobi world, teaching her some basic skills as well as talking about the various missions he went on. Amaya often credits her status as a ninja to Haru, referring to him as family.

By the age of nine, Amaya was enrolled in the ninja academy. Despite her late entrance, she quickly advanced through the primary classes of her education. The teachers then decided to asses her current skills in order to place her in an appropriate class for her level. After the evaluation, she was placed in 's class, where her younger brother Toshi Mizuno was also placed upon his own initiation.

During her early years in Iruka's class, Amaya became friends with and, developing what they soon called the S.A.I. trio. However, little of the friendship the three girls shared is known. From what is presented it can be inferred that Ino was the confident one of their little group, often protecting Sakura and Amaya from the other girls who wished to bully them. Additionally, Amaya gained her current level of confidence because of observing Ino, wishing to be somewhat like her, since before their friendship Amaya was a rather timid girl but afterwards she gained an enormous level of confidence. However, after Sakura and Ino discovered that they both had a crush on Sasuke Uchiha, the two girls stopped speaking to one another. Leaving Amaya in very awkward situations between the two girls. She soon stopped speaking to them as well and began to berate them for being girly and caring more about boys than training, vowing to herself that she would never act like that.

Due to her personality shift to a more tomboyish nature, the other girls in her class started to avoid her, calling her several names for her changed appearance and attitude. Seeking for some new friends, Amaya began to try to play games of 'ninja' with the boys in her class. Unfortunately, the boys did not let her play with them since she was a girl.

Sometime during a class, Amaya was assigned to spar against. After losing the match, Amaya began to train harder and made Kiba her rival, often challenging him to a fight after classes or during recess. At some point during her challenges the two of them became close friends, often skipping class along with, , and. These four boys became some of the closest friends that Amaya ever had. She secretly dubbed their motley group as "The Five Misfits" due to Iruka constantly keeping them after class.

Personality
As a child, Amaya was very timid and shy, tending to keep to herself whenever possible. Whenever someone berated her for doing something wrong, or in any other situation, she quickly apologized and said that she would try harder next time. Many of her actions were centered on making others proud and living up to the high expectations they had for her. Many described her as being a people-pleaser since she gave little thought to what she wanted in comparison to what everyone else wanted of her.

However, sometime after starting at the academy, Amaya underwent a dramatic personality change due to the influences of Ino as well as Naruto. She admired the confidence that both of her classmates had and desired the same thing for herself.

Currently, instead of being shy and girly, Amaya has become a very outspoken, tomboyish, and energetic girl. She will often argue with others if they do not see her point of view on a matter, sometimes to the point of yelling at them until they gave in. Oftentimes people compare her to her aunt, Anko Mitarashi, as well as Naruto Uzumaki due to her boastfulness.

Furthermore, while she often refrains from crying in front of others, Amaya can allow her emotions to dictate her actions. When presented with a situation, she can run solely on her feelings at that moment without completely thinking about her options. She is also shown to have a bloodthirsty nature, relishing in the thought of battle almost as much as Anko and Kiba. She enjoys a good fight with a strong opponent and can be seen grinning before the start of a battle. Oftentimes she will be the one to start several battles, even if it is not needed.

While not the most studious of her classmates, following her training with Michi Saito she demonstrates a knee sense of observation and an ability to make and execute plans quickly if needed. On the other hand, she also demonstrates an impulsive nature while in the heat of battle, able to adjust as a situation changes without considering her teammates' own actions.

By defending Naruto on a few occasions, she demonstrates a sense of needing to help others. When others berate Naruto she will often step in and threaten the attackers if they don't back off. Additionally, she also demonstrates this with her younger sister, showing somewhat of a motherly nature behind her sometimes rough appearance.

Appearance
Amaya has large teal eyes and straight black hair that often reaches just past her shoulder blades with bangs that covers her forehead with some strands framing her face. The one aspect of her appearance that remains the same is her straight hair. While the length might change Amaya always ensures that her hair is as straight as she can make it. Such a habit is one thing she has retained from her years learning how to be the proper heiress and it is the only "girly" thing she often indulges herself in. Additionally, she has slightly tanned skin with long arms and legs.

As a young girl, she would often wear loose kimonos with a pair of sandals. Her hair would often be twisted into braids or a bun at the nape of her neck, effectively keeping her hair out of her face. When not in a bun or braided, her hair would easily reach past her waist.

Once she entered the Academy, she initially retained many of her lady-like qualities from her heiress lessons but slightly changed her style of dress to better suit the training associated with becoming a ninja. She began to secure her longer hair into high pigtails on either side of her head as her bangs were swept to either side of her forehead with a few longer strands delicately framing her face. Instead of her kimonos, she began to wear a sleeveless, high-collared, lilac top with lavender trim along with a pair of lavender pants. Around each wrist she wore a silver bangle. On her feet she wore a pair of white flip-flops but would often swap them out for shinobi sandals as her classes called for in order to more effectively take part in the activities.

After her personality change, Amaya's appearance changed along with it. In response to many of the girls thinking she had a crush on Sasuke Uchiha because of her very long hair, she chopped it into a haphazard bob that reached just past her chin. She also began to wear crew-neck tee-shirts in varying colors (though mostly blue, black, tan, and purple) over a long-sleeved mesh armor shirt. She also began to wear pants and shorts made of far more durable material in tan, dark blue, or black. On her feet she wore her shinobi sandals far more often, almost completely halting her usage of her flip-flops. Furthermore, she no longer wore any sort of jewelry or adornments like she did before.

Shortly before the beginning of the events of "An Illegal Kunoichi," Amaya once more changed her appearance to reflect her soon-changing status to a full-fledged shinobi. Her hair grew slightly longer, hitting just past her shoulder blades not gathered in any sort of style with her bangs simply covering her forehead. She began to wear a sleeveless, zip-up, purple top with a slightly raised collar over a crew-neck, short-sleeved black shirt and a short-sleeved mesh armor shirt. She also wore a pair of navy blue shorts that hit just above her knees with her shuriken holster secured on her right thigh over-top the shorts. On her feet, she wore blue shinobi sandals. After receiving her headband upon her graduation, she began to wear it over her forehead and under her bangs.

After her encounter with Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, she has acquired the on her right shoulder. However, as of now she has never been seen using it, similar to her aunt. Though it can be assumed that if she were to use the seal that her body would be covered in a flame-like pattern, similar to Sasuke Uchiha. However, such an assumption can not be proved as of yet.

During the events of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, Amaya dons a sleeveless black shirt underneath a short-sleeved, purple, white fur-lined, hooded jacket, similar to the jacket Kiba Inuzuka wears. Additionally, she begins to wear black, finger-less gloves with unmarked metal plates on the back of her hands. On her feet, her blue shinobi sandals change to black in color. She begins to wear mesh armor on her legs. Furthermore, she still wears her forehead protector on her forehead and a mesh armor shirt underneath her shirt and jacket.

A year before Naruto returns to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, when the events of "Desert Rain" begin to take place, Amaya is seen in a new outfit. Her raven hair has grown several inches longer and it appears as if she is trying to grow out her bangs, as they now frame the sides of her face. She begins to wear a purple-sleeveless top that exposes her midsection over a short-sleeved mesh armor shirt. Around her waist, she begins to wear a red sash with the Mizuno Clan symbol, a wood poppy flower, inside of a blue circle. Furthermore, she now wears a pair of black athletic shorts underneath a purple apron skirt that reaches just above her knees along with a pair of black shinobi sandals. She still wears her black gloves with the unmarked metal plates on the back. The fabric on her forehead protector, while still covering her forehead, changes from navy blue to black in color. Her shuriken holster undergoes a similar color change and is still situated on her right thigh. Also, after receiving a necklace that is almost identical to the one Naruto wears, she begins to wear it around her neck over her shirt.

Sometime during her stay in Suna, as her previous attire had been completely destroyed, her appearance changed once more. She began to wear and sleeveless, crew neck, black shirt and a pair of dark red shorts that went past her knees. Around her waist she continued to wear the red sash with the Mizuno Clan symbol on it. Instead of her old gloves, as those were ruined, she began to wear black, finger-less gloves that went up to her elbow void of the unmarked plating on the back. Her Konoha shinobi sandals are then switched out with a pair of Suna-style black sandals instead. Around her neck, along with the Crystal Necklace, she also wears a necklace with the symbol of Suna on it, showing her affiliation with the hidden village.

While under the influence of her beast, Amaya's eyes will become a bright gold with slit-like pupils similar to those of the Inuzuka Clan. Her teeth also come to a point, her nails will become sharper, and her normally straight hair will take on a more unkempt appearance, becoming spikier. However, what else the demon can do to alter her appearance is currently unknown.

Abilities
Amaya's techniques are centered on close to mid-range combat. As a member of the Mizuno Clan, she often employs the use of water jutsu as well as the use of swords in battle. Additionally, she is able to harness wind chakra to a small degree, performing very basic skills. She is also noted to have above-average speed.

Ninjutsu
As a student, Amaya showed skill with techniques such as the, the , and the. However, as a child she had poor chakra control and would often use up too much energy on a small number of attacks. Though with her training in her clan's One With Water Technique as well as the her chakra control has improved vastly.

Nature Transformations
As a member of the Mizuno Clan, Amaya is able to use several Water Release skills. Currently her skills do not extend past C-rank techniques though she is currently working upon improving her skills by incorporating B-rank techniques into her arsenal.

Furthermore, Amaya discovered that she has the ability to use some Wind Release techniques. She is able to use the. While using this technique, she is able to create a decent-sized gust of wind in order to set her opponents off-balance or disorient them.

Clone Techniques
With her ability to use water-based skills, Amaya has learned how to use the. She often uses them to assist her in combat situations by overwhelming her enemies with the increased numbers or distracting them while she attempted to sneak up behind them.

Sometime while training under Jiraiya to learn the Rasengan, Naruto taught her how to use the. Since learning that technique, Amaya has used shadow clones far more than her water clones, almost completely halting use of that skill all together. However, unlike Naruto, Amaya is only able to create twenty clones without reaching dangerously low chakra reserves. Due to this limitation, Amaya has learned to become resourceful in the usage of this technique. She has learned how to use the clones to gather information on enemies without having herself get too close to the enemy.

Kenjutsu
As a member of the Mizuno Clan, Amaya has some natural ability when it comes to wielding a sword. While her abilities are just slightly above average at the moment, it has been mentioned that she was working on perfecting an A-rank technique.

Taijutsu
While able to easily utilize ninjutsu during battles, Amaya will often resort to using brute force during battles instead of having to decide which technique she should use during battle. She has been noted to be proficient in hand-to-hand combat and enjoys the simplicity of it in comparison to having to weave hand signs for jutsus.

Out of all the girls in her graduating class, Amaya was easily the strongest, strong enough to fight many of the males in her class with nothing more than brute force, though most often she would lose against the stronger males in her class. Additionally, she has been noted to be one of the faster shinobi from her class, rivaled only by Kiba. Such speed is due to her racing against Kiba and many other boys from the Academy for candy. Overtime, as she kept racing, her speed gradually grew until she was faster than all the other boys in her class, aside from Kiba.

Her taijutsu style can be described as being blunt and straight-forward, as she charges straight towards her opponent.

Beast Transformations
Due to the Hyōheki Seal - which is currently being used to hold the beast inside Amaya - blocking any of the creature's chakra from merging with her own, the abilities that the beast can grant her are largely unknown. However, during her brief skirmish with, the seal weakened and allowed some chakra from the beast to merge with Amaya's. The merging granted Amaya a slightly larger chakra reserve as well as greater speed and strength. What may happen when the beast gains any more control is unknown.

Cursed Seal
Like Sasuke Uchiha, Amaya received the Cursed Seal of Heaven from Orochimaru during the second phase of the Chunin Exam in the Forest of Death. Though the mark has only been seen activated once, when Amaya briefly regained conscious after getting the curse mark. During this time, a flame-like pattern spread all over her body and her eyes turned a dull yellow color. She also demonstrated an increase in speed and strength,h as it took her teammates the use of drugs in order to restrain her.

However, since that one instance the mark has not been activated again but it has been demonstrated that the mark will start to burn whenever Orochimaru is drawing near.

Other Skills
In addition to her arsenal, Amaya has demonstrated other skills throughout the course of her life. One of the notable ones is her ability to speak with ninken who are unable to speak like humans, such as Akamaru. She was taught this skill by Kiba as he thought it would be helpful for her to know.

Part I
This section correlates with the events of An Illegal Kunoichi, which is based on the first part of the Naurto show.

Prologue
Along with the rest of her classmates, Amaya participates in the Academy's graduation exam. She easily passes the test, creating four clones of herself. Afterwards, while outside with the other students that graduated, she notices Naruto sitting by himself with a glum look on his face. However, before she can make her way towards him, he vanished with Mizuki. That evening, she celebrates her graduation with, , her sister Kaori Mizuno, and her aunt Suzuki Mitarashi. During their celebration, both Tsume and Suzuki are called away to help retrieve a stolen scroll, leaving her and Kiba to do the dishes.

When everyone returned to the Academy to receive their team assignments, Amaya was among them. After the team assignments were announced, she was thoroughly disappointed that she wasn't placed on a team with either Kiba or Hinata and was instead placed on Team 9 with her younger brother Toshi Mizuno and Ringo Fujimaki with Matsu Tanaka and their jōnin sensei. After lunch, she left the Academy with her team and soon found out about the "real" graduation test. This test was designed to see if they could work together as a team. While Amaya initially did not want to work with her other teammates, she eventually decided to do it anyway. This allowed her and her teammates to all pass and officially become genin.

Chūnin Exams
After completing a number of simple missions, Team 9 was entered into the. After receiving the form from her sensei, Amaya began to wander the village in search of a birthday gift for Kiba and Akamaru. While at a store, she notices a redhead who is obviously staring at her from across the street. Once her eyes locked with the stranger's, she suddenly froze and was unable to look away as strange feelings began to consume her. She is able to make herself vacate the area in order to stay away from the strange kid. Once she is certain that he isn't following her and manages to catch her breath, Amaya once again resumes her shopping.

Only a couple hours later, Amaya is wandering the village streets again and decides to stop at a nearby dango stand. Unfortunately, she encounters the redhead once more after noticing that he is across the street watching her once more. While trying to force herself to look away and prevent herself from letting the sudden urge to go to him from taking over, Naruto calls out to her. He quickly enters the dango stand and starts to talk with Amaya, who is still trying to keep calm. After the feeling suddenly begins to lessen she decides to tell Naruto about the strange redhead who has been freaking her out. He then only asks who she was talking about. Looking back where she knew he was standing before she only came upon empty space. She then begins to wonder who that kid was, while all the while hoping to not have a chance to find out.

Several days later, Amaya is at the registration area with her team, verbally complaining about how bored she is since nothing is happening. Soon Kiba walks towards her and the two ninja begin to talk with each other. Within minutes, the rookie twelve beings to gravitate towards one another and the former-classmates begin exchanging greetings as well as insults and boasting about how strong they've gotten.

Apparently overhearing them, walks over and tells all of them to keep quite. He then gives the rookies information regarding the exam and shows them his. Sasuke then asks for individual information about and. Once Gaara's card is revealed, Amaya immediately recognizes him as the boy from a few days ago and she beings to worry about that feeling trying to overtake her again. When she notices that it hasn't, perhaps because she hasn't seen him yet, she redirects her attention towards the other genin and notices their worried expressions. Noticing that Naruto appears to be quite worried as well, Amaya also beings to worry if she will be able to handle the exams. She is pulled out of her thoughts by Naruto's outburst, which quickly takes the worry away and reaffirms herself in the idea that she will be able to handle anything the exams throw at her.

Moments later, three sound ninja attack Kabuto and while it appeared that one of their attacks did not connect, it was still able to break Kabuto's glasses and cause him to throw up seconds later. Before the situation can escalate any further, a large group of ninja appear at the front of the room, with one of them being, who will be their first proctor.

During the course of the written test, Amaya was seated next to Gaara and she found herself extremely surprised that the odd feeling from before was no where in sight. She was shown struggling to answer any of the questions on her test. However, she did manage to get the answers by "overhearing" Akamaru tell Kiba the answers. When faced with the tenth question, Amaya was determined to accept it despite the consequences. Due to this, she passed the first portion of the test along with her teammates.

After Anko Mitarashi crashed through the window and announced herself as the proctor for the second round of the exams, Amaya bolted out of her seat and began screaming at Anko, during which she revealed that Anko was her aunt. Within moments, Anko had managed to shut Amaya up so she could continue informing the remaining candidates about the next part of the exams. Once Anko was finished, Amaya walked with her aunt outside before joining Naruto and Kiba for dinner.

In the second phase of the exam that took place in the Forest of Death,

Part II
This section will be filled out as the chapters of Desert Rain  and Warrior Princess are released. The titles and order of the arcs are subject to change at the discretion of the author.

Trivia

 * The name Amaya means night rain. This can be related with the tailed beast she carries since in legends Yamiyoryu would terrorize villages on the night of a new moon, spilling so much blood that it would appear that the red substance had rained down all night.
 * In the academy, Amaya's grades were extremely varied. She earned exceptional marks in taijutus and assertiveness, being beat out only by Ino and Sasuke respectively. In ninjutsu and class attitude she earned average marks. Her genjutsu and cooperation marks were extremely poor, much like Naruto.
 * Amaya's birthday, March 21st, is the same day that the founding of Konohagakure is celebrated. (At least in the fanfiction story she appears in.)
 * She has a habit of referring to close friends as brother or sister, seen when she calls Naruto Naruto Nii-chan (Brother Naruto) or Hinata Hinata Nee-chan (Sister Hinata).
 * While they both have different skill sets, Amaya's total score in her stats always equals that of Naruto's.
 * According to the "databooks":
 * Amaya's hobbies are training and swimming.
 * She wishes to fight her father, Washi Mizuno.
 * Her favorite foods are yakitori and green tea while she hates things that are very spicy.
 * Amaya has completed 17 missions in total: 16 D-rank, 0 C-rank, 0 B-rank, 1 A-rank, and 0 S-rank.
 * Her favorite phrase is "Never give up."
 * It has been mentioned that Amaya enjoys baking and making other sweets for close friends and family.

Quotes

 * (To Matsu Tanaka) “...my name is Amaya Mizuno... and my dream is to become a captain of a team in the Black Ops.”
 * (Amaya's thoughts before the Written Exam) ...she would fight alongside the several male shinobi and surpass every one of them, proving to her clan how strong and valuable the women of their clan can be.