Immortal Phoenix

Author: The Phoenix is Immortal

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor am I making any profit from this story.

Prologue: Rising from the Flames

I was tired of this place. This world. It was time to go somewhere else. A different world perhaps? The nine great tailed beasts had left. Perhaps I should do the same? I had grown up here in this world, but it was time to stretch my wings and test my freedom. I could not stay here any longer. The tailed beasts had left to a different world. I decided to follow. I was not a caged little bird, and I would test the limits of my freedom.

I knew that in order to leave this world… I had to learn how. And in order to learn how, I had to either learn it from someone or something. And I would much rather learn it from a something. Somebody could tell me if I was making the path to a different world correctly… but asking someone…was not something I wanted to do. Very few knew how to leave this world anyway, preferring to stay, and asking someone…well, that had the potential to blow up…and kill me. I would much rather stay alive. Being alive is good. I am not, contrary to what others believe, immortal, I am close…but still not quite. And that "not quite" was what makes the difference in my survival or my death.

Yes, here, in this world, while it wasn't exactly a free-for-all fight for survival… it seemed pretty close. What can I say… this world is dangerous. Survival is everything. The almost constant danger was another reason I wanted to leave. I knew how to fight, you had to learn and I could hold my own in a fight…but fights are dangerous. If you want to survive…don't get in a fight in the first place. You only go and pick fights if you were incredibly strong, arrogant, or suicidal. I am fairly sure I am not those…though I believe I am not weak either, I am not incredibly strong. Lesson number one of survival: Avoid dangerous situations that could potentially blow up on you and result in either injury or death.

I could ask my family…but that would be embarrassing. Asking my family for something like that? No thank you. Spare me the embarrassment. I could not, and would not ask them, unless I was dying. Not that they were a bad family or anything… but if I asked them…I would never hear the end of it. We live long lives, and I would prefer to avoid being teased for eternity. On top of that, I would still not learn anything because they would probably write it up as a joke or a passing fancy.

And so I began to search for something, anything, that could help me get out of my home world and into another. I searched, and searched. Nothing. I could not find anything. I searched and searched… but there was nothing. The only thing that could teach me how to open the path was a scroll or book or directions written down somewhere and I could not find any of that kind of thing. In the end, I had searched many, many libraries before I finally broke into my family's secret one. I was not supposed to go into that library, I was not even supposed to know about it. Normally, this would count as a dangerous situation (that could potentially blow up on me and result in injury…though I don't think death) and I would avoid it… but I had to find something to help me get out of this world.

The library was vast, as in it was the biggest room I had ever seen, with rows upon rows of bookshelves (scrollshelves?).There must have been over two or three thousand of those shelves. I didn't even know it was possible to have that much , my family is a very old one, so it shouldn't be that surprising ,I guess. I think the size was why it was so hard to keep a secret…that and the hundreds of rumors about this place. A secret indeed. Very well kept. Now I just had to look in all of the book shelves for a scroll that may or may not exist. Great. I had to look though…this was the last possible place that I could think of for it to be. If I could not find it, I would have to ask someone to help me, a path I sorely wished to avoid.

I searched…and searched the shelves. Honestly, I think it took longer than all my previous searches for that stupid scroll combined. Seriously, who organized this place? I would call it…disorganizingly organized. Does that make sense? It was organized, quite badly, in my opinion, but the vast size of this place made it disorganized. But, no matter, I would search every shelf if I had to, in order to find something, anything that would help me to find a way to a different world.

3,051 bookshelves later…

Luckily, very few actually went to the library, otherwise I would have had to hide every time someone went in. That would have been annoying.

After a long while, I found it. It was in there, in the 3,051 bookshelf. A scroll. A scroll on how to open a Portal, as the path was called, was in that shelf in the library. Of course it would be in the very last shelf. Oh why didn't I start backwards? Would have saved me forever. At least I found it…(I did say I would search every shelf if I had to). And at least my kind lived a long time. Otherwise, I think I would have died from old age…that or suffocating from the amount of dust in the library.

Since I didn't dare to take it out, I copied it instead. Once I was finished, I left the secret library. I was thrilled… I would soon get my chance to leave. I have searched for a long time, but at least it was worth it. The only problem was that what the scroll detailed was incredibly…complex. Learning how to open the Portal would be…difficult. Why could something not be complicated for once? Now I would have to dedicate years of solving the complex directions and then actually opening the Portal. I had already dedicated years on just finding that stupid thing…now I had to learn from it.

So I started.

12 years later…

I had succeeded! I had successfully opened the Portal. It took me a while to learn how to leave my world using a Portal, but when I was finished learning, I decided that I would take my chance. I would soon be in a different world, supposingly where the great tailed beast were also said to be. I wondered if I would find any of them. I would much rather not, in terms of strength…let's just say that I don't quite measure up to them, not even the one-tailed one. Not that I would say that to their face. While I was much younger (much, much younger) than them, and they had thousands, if not a millennia of experience, I still had my pride.

When I had opened the Portal to the world where I wanted to go, I had my doubts. The Portal looked far, far from stable. It was shaking… and it was a strange purple color…was it supposed to be purple? I didn't know. And it was swirling inside, seemingly leading to an abyss. Is it even supposed to be doing that? What if it's not? What if it collapsed while I wasn't done crossing? What if I had done it wrong? That last thought irked me a little. I could not have done it wrong; I would not have done it wrong. I spent years learning how to open that stupid, stupid Portal, and it had better not be wrong!

I thought of my family right before I plunged through, but I had already told them my goal…(they had thought I was joking…and didn't believe I could succeed in opening the portal, ha, I would show them) so I had no more business to talk to them about. I was old enough to leave them, and leave them I would. I had already said my goodbyes to them, and with that, I had plunged through the Portal, to the freedom that could not be found in Makai.

Author's note: Okay. I am done with the Prologue! In case you couldn't tell, the main character is a phoenix. Naruto characters won't show up until chapter 3 or so.