I woke up before seeing my sister-oops, I mean my best friend (sorry, this alias has me confused about who I am sometimes) still asleep. In her bed, about… 2 feet away from mine? Not sure, I never actually measured 'cause I didn't think it was that important. Anyway, back to the story. I woke up and looked out of the window before walking on to the balcony. I felt like some fresh air, and I could go on a balcony 'cause the room was on the second floor. Notice I didn't say my room or her room. That's 'cause it was neither of our rooms, really. Our rooms were still in our homes, in the real world. In the log cabin and… non-log cabin house half a mile away from each other, 20 miles out of the town of Willcox, in Southern Arizona. The room we were in was in a house that didn't belong to either or us, or anyone in the dimension. The room and house we were in belonged to Anko Mitarashi (who I currently live with, but she doesn't). Confused yet? Maybe I should start from the beginning.

Alright, well, first maybe I should introduce myself and my best friend. That's what a normal person would do, right? Even though when we were in the real world, we were far from normal and often called crazy or insane. However, now we're not… guess we spent so much time obsessing over our favorite TV show, Naruto, that we came up with a pretty good background story. Anyway… First of all, I'm Dakota, but I also go... or went by various nicknames. I just turned 11 recently, on April 3rd, before the "Awesome Incident" (but I'll get to that later). I have long brown hair, down to my waist, and bluish grey eyes with gold around my pupil. I loved playing soccer and was pretty good at it, and it made me pretty strong. Also, I'm very tall for my age, standing at about 5 ft. 2 ½ in. tall. I painted my nails sometimes to stop me from biting them, but now they're painted 100 of the time, my fingernails red and my toenails purple. Don't ask, if you watch Naruto you would understand. Anyway, I don't want to go into too much detail and tell you my life story (for example), so I'll just start describing my best friend.

Her name is Amanda, most often called 'Manda for people who just… don't want to add the A I guess. I don't really know, but I always called her that, or the name she goes by now (again, I'll get to it later). Also, my dad called her Panda Bear… 'til the "Awesome Incident" happened. She turned 12 on August 21st, and she'll be an actual teen this year. I just hope we can get back, because this year would be special to her, I think. Anyway, she has dishwater blonde hair and blue eyes, standing about the same height as me, or a bit taller. The same aspect goes for the soccer thing, and I used to love painting her nails (I don't know if she paints them now, she's usually not around, trying to find a way to get back… or at least that's what she tells me). But man, how life has changed these past few weeks…

Now that you know who we are… or were… or are (see how confusing this can be?)… I'm not even sure anymore, let me tell you about the "Awesome Incident". One day Amanda and I were just walking. I imagined we were walking through the woods, even though it was just a tangled, congested part of property out between our houses, which that one day we had decided to randomly explore when we had been bored. Anyway, I had been jolted out of my daydream as something flew past us, both of us dodging it by jerking our heads to the opposite sides, her to the left, and me to the right. The expression on her face told me either she had been daydreaming as well, or she was just shocked by… whatever it was that had almost just hit us in the head (I was both). Oh yeah, then I actually wanted to know what it was. Trust me, I couldn't believe what it was when I saw it. It was a knife, stuck in the bark of a mesquite tree we had just walked around, having no clue that it might've just saved our lives until we saw the knife. Now, it wasn't a big knife, like those giant ones you see in movies when this kind of thing happens, but it was a toy/plastic knife either (I even pinched myself, double-checking to see if this was all a dream). Basically, it was just a standard-sized steak knife with a brown wooden handle. I realized it looked almost exactly like the ones that had been mysteriously disappearing for a while now, 'cept the blade on it was longer so it couldn't have been one of 'em. Anyway, we both thought this was very scary, because as I mentioned before, we both obsessed over Naruto. We always fantasized about us getting sucked into the Naruto world, which just so happened to be what I was daydreaming about. The knife had seemingly come out of nowhere, just like in the fantasy. So it didn't really make us less creeped out when a pinkish blue hole opened up… and the next thing I knew, my best friend and I were standing outside the gates of the Hidden Leaf Village. We were both in shock, having no idea what had just happened. We knew where we were, yet… we didn't, if that makes sense.

So… no one knows the real story, or our real names, or that we don't even really live here. We even somehow got all the clothes we imagined and everything else…it seems sort of like we've lived here all along. So now even though our looks are pretty much the same, she and I now go by Hoshera and Hailey Itabu, respectively. Not to mention she also got the 4 curse seals and the Eye of the Tiger and I have the Heaven curse seal on my left wrist (covered with bandages like I imagined and everything) that we always said we had. Also, she has fallen for Gaara of the Sand, and just like in the daydreams, if we stay here long enough, I bet they'll get married and a cartoon character will be my older brother. That's all I can really write for now, because Tsunade-sama is calling me for either 1)a healing class or 2) a mission. Maybe something else, but I guess I won't know 'til I get there. I really just wanna rest right now with all that's been going on, but I guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon. Still, I'm happy I can actually sleep in this world, 'cause I couldn't in the real world (ironic 'cause in this world Hoshera-ne-chan and Gaara-nii-san /can't/ sleep). Anyway, I better go because Tsunade-sama isn't one to be kept waiting, as I found out before we came here, because I watched just about every single episode. So I gotta go desperately. I'll write more later, bye!

Love,

Hailey Itabu