Title: Till I collapse

Summary: The life of a ninja, a life of sacrifice, chaos and hardship. Only the powerful and the strong-willed preserve while the weak and feeble perish in despair. How would a single teenage girl manage, thrown into a world other than her own with a tricky task at hand and a great chance to seize?
Would she be able to capture it or let it slip away from her?

Author's notes: This fanfiction was greatly inspired by Silver Queen's 'Dreaming of sunshine' and Lang Noi's 'Catch your breath'. If you're reading this, I suggest you check those out. Waaay better fics.

Also, I'm new to this so your help and your constructive criticism are more than appreciated.


Prologue: My name is ...


When we first enrolled in the academy, my brother and I thought we were in for a world of joy and wonder. The academy felt for us like a new chance and an opportunity to make something with our lives; a way to escape the loneliness and the sadness that kept crawling its way into our minds and leeching into our heart.

The loneliness had kept us close company, and we were unable to act or drive it away.

My brother kept talking about the things he was going to learn and the amazing jutsus he would definitely be able to perform in no time.

And frankly, his positivity might've rubbed in on me more than I thought. The first day at school was a lot worse than I wished. The first thing we heard as we entered the academy grounds, eyes wide in excitement- having been getting bored out of ours minds for as long as I remembered - ready to get our first steps toward being ninjas, was the awful insulting words of two older students.

You'd think as second graders they'd have something, anything better to do than to spoil our fun and crush our dreams and especially since most kids were not even allowed to interact with us, but no.

A much greater effort would have been needed to crush Naruto's determination, and I wasn't going to let the words of two kids bother me anytime soon.

Yet, I didn't react kindly to that.

Naruto –always the confident, unwavering child- just stood slightly beside me, his hands clutching into mine as we both glared at the bullies head-on.

''What are the demon twins doing here anyway? This is not the place for the likes of you.'' The first smirked.

What a drag…

''If you're trying to ruin my mood, you're doing a pretty good job. I suggest you scram before you get on my nerves.'' I said irritated.

''What's that tomato? What is a little girl like you trying to do, ordering us around? Tomato...'' They snickered gleefully, clearly pleased with the nickname they came up with.

I almost laughed at the irony of it, as my memory suggested, Kushina was also given the same nickname when she was a kid, almost.

But I lost it right then and right there despite my best efforts to solve the matter calmly moments before.

No one gets to insult me that way and gets away with it.

No one makes an Uzumaki angry and gets away with it.

''M-mito... your hair...'' Naruto whispered half in awe, half in surprise.

I didn't realize what was wrong with my hair to bring about such a comment, nor did I understand what I did exactly did to cause the boys' eyes to widen remarkably, but the moment one of the more courageous of the boys closed his hands into a punch, he was scrambling away, a moment later, with a brand new bruise under his eyes which were staring fearfully at me like I was the angel of death.

I said with a half-smirk. ''Go cry to your mommy. Tell her you were being a naughty boy and Mito Uzumaki had to discipline you.''

Mito Uzumaki, that was my name. It's a bit of a surprise, isn't it? I get that a lot. Civilians would stop and stare at the sound of my name. Ninjas would blink twice and thrice the moment I pass by.

The crimson color of my hair and the violet eyes didn't help either. Their reactions were amusing if unexpectedly annoying.

I was Konoha born and raised, twin sister to Naruto Uzumaki and orphaned from birth.

That night-the night of our birth- was complete terror. An utter nightmare etched tightly into my brain and forever ingrained in my memories. It was the start of two lives but the end of hundreds.

The air itself felt evil and malicious and so extremely terrifyingly horrible that you could choke on it. I was crushed by the feeling of fear, of confusion, of 'where the fuck I am', and the sheer helplessness of my entire being as my body refused to act and something as trivial as moving a finger felt like running a marathon.

I remember that night perfectly. I remember my parents dying words if extremely unclear and utterly confusing. I remember their blurry faces as they tried to smile, their welcoming presence and their calming aura, an aura that withered down and fainted seconds later as their chakra died down and their bodies gave up.

I remember that night perfectly.

Logically I shouldn't have. Newborn babies didn't have the capacity to register their surroundings and their minds weren't developed enough to store those memories. And frankly, I was hardly normal.

The thing is even since I was in my mother's womb, I remembered a past life, in a different world, somewhere far away from the one I found myself in. There was no ninja there, no Konoha. There was nothing like chakra or anything remotely close to jutsus. For as long as I remembered Naruto was only a story. A world made by an artist and a mean of entertainment. It was not supposed to be real. It was never supposed to be anything more than that.

At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. My mind was a cluster of emotions and assumptions.

Was I Mito? Or was I the person that my memories suggested I was. Was I just delusional?

The most reasonable explanation that came to mind was reincarnation. My memories were somehow passed on with me. It sounded like the most logical justification but I could never wrap my head fully around. It was hard to believe and often I found myself doubting my very existence, doubting the experiences I had, doubting my second life, sometimes even my first one.

And sometimes I liked to believe that I was some kind of hero. A chosen one sent to prevent the destruction that I knew was coming. But that always seemed farfetched. I was hardly the one you'd want for that kind of task.

I was average at best. I didn't have any special qualities. I was neither extremely smart nor extremely determined. I ran away from responsibility and gave up whenever faced with failure.

Yet here I was, given a second life; A second chance. No one could take that away from me, and I knew that the only one standing in the way of me seizing this chance is me.

It was hard to come to terms with the fact that everything I worked to achieve in my past life had gone down the drain, the realization that I lost my friends, my family, my hopes and dreams felt like a hard pill to swallow.

In the end, it didn't matter if the memories were real or fake, because to me it felt real. I felt alive in my memories, I always notice the feeling of grief and nostalgia whatever my thoughts drift to the memories.

The connection I feel to the memories were undeniable.

But it was no use to dwell on the past and essential to focus on the future.

That's why I decided to tackle this chance head on and make the most of it, as Mito Uzumaki, sister to Naruto Uzumaki and Konoha's shinobi.