Mai was born to Suzume, a mentally unstable daughter of the Uchiha Clan in the care of her kunoichi grandmother, Uehara. Because of her condition and Uehara's inattention, Suzume's pregancy was not discovered until the girl went into labor. By then, village law protected the child supplemental population in a time of crisis. Though the village offered to take the girl off their hands, Uehara opted to keep her in the Clan.

Her bastard heritage and outsider blood was visible on her face in the form of her blue eyes– something the Clan also took to be an indication that Mai would never activate the Sharingan. Because of this, Mai was treated as an outsider intruding on the secretive and cloistered Uchiha Clan. Her grandmother barely tolerated her presence and her mother was distant, sometimes violent, and unreliable. Mai grew up with an aching need to prove herself to be "Uchiha enough" for her family, desperate for recognition she could never get.

Genin Years

This is echoed in her style choices as a genin: a wide collar and understated navy clothing with the emblem of her Clan sewn into the back. Mai was born into the second shinobi war and was fielded far too early as a result. Against all odds, Mai survived her service. She was forced to grow quickly in order to survive. Much of her techniques were slapdash and cobbled together from what she could gleen from other Uchiha and, as she gained experience, her superior officers.

Mai's unusual dual nature chakra made it difficult for her to conquer the typical Uchiha fire style ninjutsu; her attempts tended to explode fantastically as a result of the wind natured chakra overpowering the fire nature style. While this led to an interest in and expertise in explosions later on, as a genin she opted to save this for emergencies (especially some time when she was not surrounded by vulnerable comrades whom would take the brunt of her mistakes). Instead, her style focused on weaponry, hit-and-run tactics, and stealth. She developed her skill with a bow, and then with a crossbow.

Her war fans were a gift from a superior officer at this time, and they soon became instrumental to her developing taijutsu style, an unholy combination of village standard and Uchiha Clan style martial forms she and her comrades were soon calling uchiwa no mai (fan dance).

Mai's training and fighting with her squad produced results: she grew as a weapons-master and her hand-to-hand improved by leaps and bounds. Her squad leader even discovered the reason for her troubles with fire style techniques and helped her figure out ways to work around the block. Her explosive potential became a huge asset to the team on the field and also began to earn Mai a name of her own. "Fire Blossom" made its way into the Bingo Book at this point.

Mai received her promotion to chunin on the field at age seven after her actions saved the lives of her squadmates. Though nominally a chunin, she continued under the direction of her squad leader. Mai's time in the second and third shinobi wars shaped her as a person. The people she fought alongside became a pseudo-family for her, even beyond the teambuilding the Leaf prizes. Whenever she was granted a brief reprieve from the front, the emotional war at home made her long for the battlefield again.

Although she was still burdened by the need to fulfill her family's wishes, she realized that her accomplishments would never be enough to remove the tarnish of "bastard" from her name. As Mai's fervent wishes for her family's approval started to sour, her wardrobe began to change as well: she continued to wear the colors and style of her clan, but her individuality shown through in hints of a washed-out red.

While Mai was ten, the second war had ended, and by the time she turned eleven, the third war had erupted with renewed ferocity. She continued to fight alongside her previous squad (with some changes due to promotions and the retirement of one aging medic). It was during this third conflict that Mai's sharingan awakened. Its late appearance meant that the majority of her Clan considered her bloodline-limitless and dismissed the idea of training her in its use. Too proud to beg or show off her trauma-begotten power, Mai refused to use the sharingan in combat, partly because it disrupted her practiced techniques and skills. She suppressed its activation and only trained it in secret on her own. The influx of information and the chakra drain threw her off.

As she experimented with different fighting styles and took more dangerous missions, this new factor increased the danger she faced on the field. Mai invested in a large combat jacket to protect herself and to hide her injuries from prying eyes she was sure would only see them as a sign of her weakness. She began to use opaque glasses, goggles, and visors to hide her bloodline. Her squad encouraged her choice, believing she was sewing confusion among the enemy by bearing the Uchiha crest and covering her eyes to imply she had a sharingan.

The incident that led to her development of the mangekyo sharingan was also the event that led to her field promotion to jounin. Her squad was ambushed towards the tail-end of the third shinobi war. Faced with twice their own number and already exhausted from a long mission prior to the attack, her squad fell quickly, one after another, before her eyes. Mai's connection with her team was deep and personal. When the squad leader died to shield her from an attack, her eyes and their power mutated under the emotional strain. Her mangekyo ability, generating and controlling the black flames of Amaterasu and causing flames to scatter in an explosion, an ability unique to her right eye. Her involuntary use of the Everlasting Inferno on the field turned the entire area to white ash, including the bodies of her squadmates.

For surviving and returning with crucial information, Mai was granted her promotion. The existence of the mangekyo, a closely guarded secret for the Uchiha, and the conditions for its manifestation revealed to Mai how corrupt and morally bankrupt her Clan was. She saw this ability not as a triumph over suffering but as evidence of the Uchiha's need for violence and hatred. Mai was grounded after this incident and not long after, the third war had come to an end.

Disillusioned, Mai abandoned even the appearance of fealty to her Clan. Mai had come to realize that the Uchiha Clan would never care for her. Worse, it would never care for anyone within it. The only way to escape the poison within was to escape, period. With the new privileges granted to her as a jounin, Mai moved into the greater residential area for shinobi and cut as many ties as possible from her former family. Though still technically on the family register, Mai ensured that she was effectively disowned and denied all contact with her kinsmen. Mai effectively abandoned her surname and took up her battle-earned titles as monikers instead. Fire Blossom Mai, Mai of the Scorching Wind, etc. Her independence manifested in a freer wardrobe: a sleeveless (and collarless!) tunic in her favorite rusty red. She also adopted her iconic reflective visor.

She became an ANBU agent under Minato Namikaze and it was he who ultimately allowed her to escape her family with a long reconnaissance mission.