Meta Monday: Iruka's Scar

How do you think Iruka got his nose scar?

I’ve had this idea for a while, that Mizuki did it.

He and Iruka were hanging out as pre-genin; and Mizuki got hold of some real weapons, and convinced him to test them out with him. Iruka thought that was a great idea; and so they went to the forest to practice, where no one would catch them. They’re having a good time showing off their skills & stuff, when finally, it’s Mizuki’s turn again; and because he has it out for Iruka, he’s looking for opportunities to discretely hurt him; and when he throws a kunai, he ‘slips’, and it slices right into Iruka’s nose. Iruka doesn’t know it’s intentional, and easily forgives him; but, given what happened years later, I wonder if he second guesses whether it was an accident or not, now…

What’s your theory?

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I don’t have a theory yet… but I just have to say, that the thought of Mizuki giving Iruka BOTH of his scars, is making me rage lmao

thank u for breaking my heart / making me feral :crazy_face:

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Eh, it fluctuates from mood to mood.

Sometimes I think he’s a playful little toddler, and got a bit too arrogant in his young age and wanted to prove that he was all grown up and could handle sharp knives - but it didn’t quite work out, plainly.

Sometimes I like the whole immigrant asylum-seeker backstory for Iruka, and that scar is something he doesn’t remember getting, not clearly - but if his parents were alive they would have told him how the forests of Konoha were foreign and dark in the night, how the hunter-nins had pursued them with deadly jutsus and throwing knives - how one of those knives had sliced Iruka right across his face, making him wail out into the rustling leaves. But they were running too fast to stop, to think about healing that wound - and by the time they got to Konoha, gasping for asylum and safety, the wound had already scabbed over and the blood had dried.

And sometimes, perhaps most of the time, I subscribe to SwissArmyKnife’s backstory for Iruka’s scar - that in a crowd full of faces, a scar across the nose would make a child very easily seen.

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OKAY. i love this rika–the immigrant asylum-seeker. wow yes.

also would you mind elaborating more on the swissarmyknife’s backstory (idek who that is :/)? because i’m not familiar with it and now i wanna know!!! <3

@ladyxdaydream Sorry about setting you off :sweat_smile: hahaha But really, Mizuki would do something like that if he had the opportunity to. At least he doesn’t have the chance to do anything else now!

@rikacain ooh, that asylum seeker one is good! I think that would make an interesting fic, too :eyes:

And oh my god, that last one would make a very good prompt - does an enemy do this to target Iruka; did his parents do that to him for some necessary reason? Was Iruka taken away from his parents at a young age, and the facility he was kept at marked all the kids they stole - did he escape before they could completely brand him with the mark? Ahh I’m getting so many ideas coming through!

@ladyxdaydream @kakairu-shrine

glad you guys like it! it prolly would make an interesting fic haha. maybe with some future repercussions with some hunter-nin recognising a child that they scarred.

Swiss Army Knife is a ffnet era writer whose writing I enjoy, though they’re not explicitly Kakairu (I think more friendship?) that friendship is very, very strong. This particular backstory comes from the first chapter of their fic collection Ripples in an Ocean, a story about the stories Iruka tell about where he got his scar. (basically this meta discussion, hah.) I’ll leave you to read it tbh since I’ve spoilt it a bit already.

I also recommend their other writings, I’m personally very fond of Mythos of a Shepherd, which is the third in a series but imo can be read standalone.

Otherwise as a prompt it’s great! Deliberate injury is very distinctive, after all. I’ve read a fic where Iruka was marked by his mother so that he’d never go into seduction corps, but he didn’t know about it. Or something like that, my memory of that fic sure is fuzzy. That facility idea is also very interesting. Wonder why people would steal a bunch of kiddos - then again, we’ve seen that with Orochimaru :stuck_out_tongue:

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