Summary: She was quiet, but her actions were loud. She was small, but her
determination was larger than any of those around her. Borne in a world she knows
will be falling apart at the seams, she strives for the power to change it.
Largely inspired by KannaKyomu's 'It Ends At Dawn'.
[FEM SI-OC, Verges from Canon]
Akiya- bright night
Soft violet eyes gazed down upon a small town, the morning sun casting long shadows to stretch into the dirt streets. The older population was stirring, making their way to their daily jobs. Lights flickered on as the town awoke with the dawn, and the doors to local restaurants and shops opened to sell what little they had. Children burst from the homes dotting the small village, laughing and talking as they took off towards bakeries for morning sweets.
Akiya sat silently in a tall oak tree, light brown hair taking on a reddish tint in the rising sun. Next to her sat two books, balancing precariously on the high branch. In her hands was another book, opened and currently being read. On her shoulders, a too-large hand me down reddish brown jacket hung loosely, sleeves empty. Underneath, she wore a plain white tank top. Covering her thighs and stopping before her knees was a pair of black shorts, the several sizes too big waist secured by a white drawstring.
Her hair was secured in a sloppy ponytail, a developing side fringe covering part of her forehead and the eyebrow of the left side. The book she held was titled Kanji, Grade 2- a simple book of what she had always referred to as the Japanese language, but she had discovered was simply called common tongue in this world.
There were many things different in this world, she thought morosely.
"Akiya-chan, breakfast!" Sasami, the blonde woman who cared for them, called from below.
Said girl closed her book, slipping an origami flower in to save the page. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear before picking up her other books, holding them close to her chest. She slipped off of the branch in a practiced motion, bare feet landing steadily on the green summer grass with an elegance she'd never been capable of in her last life. Perhaps if she had tried harder, she may have acquired something similar.
She hadn't, though. That was over, and she really needed to stop thinking about it.
"Hai, Sasami-san!" She replied in her high pitched four year old voice, lightly jogging over to the slightly raised wooden platform of the back porch. The woman looked down at her and ruffled her hair affectionately before walking inside, Akiya closely following and closing the sliding paper door behind her. As Sasami walked towards the adjoining kitchen, Akiya slid into a seat next to a black haired boy named Ryushi.
"Did they say what was for breakfast today?" Akiya questioned the six year old, her voice a low mumble as her eyes swept over the forms of her fellow orphans.
"Mm, miso soup." The boy replied, dark green eyes glancing at her for a moment before facing the direction of the arch leading to the kitchen. They never did seem to look at her for very long. She distantly pondered that.
She mentally groaned- she was getting really tired of miso soup. She reached out towards the fruit basket in the center of the long wooden table to grab a red apple, placing it in front of her and wordlessly claiming dibs. Sakura, a brunette five year old, gave her the best puppy eyes she could muster. They had a silent conversation as they valiantly battled for the much sought after fruit.
(Akiya had to wonder why she hadn't just gotten it earlier if she had wanted it so bad. Did she just want to mess around? Perhaps that was a personality quirk children have that she had long forgotten.)
The girl gave her wide eyes. You know you want to give that to me.
Akiya raised her right eyebrow. Oh, really?
The girl's eyes widened. Yes, of course you do.
Akiya's eyes became half lidded as a lazy grin grew on her lips. I'm immune to your feared puppy dog eyes.
Sakura's brown eyes narrowed as her face went from begging to tired defeat. You win, my great lord and forever winning senpai.
(Akiya knew that wasn't what the other girl was thinking, but she could dream.)
Akiya's face brightened in a smug smile as she took a bite out of the apple, the crunching sound it made filling her with satisfaction. She had fallen victim to the puppy eyes many times, and had only recently grown an immunity to such a dangerous tactic. That girl would be impossible to deal with when she was older.
As the miso soup pot made a dull thud on contact with the table, and the other eleven children began to dig in with gusto, Sasami raised a hand in an action meant to bring attention to herself. The clanging of spoons and bowls quieted as several children turned to look at her. Akiya was sure that the others were listening in some sort of form- usually, if either of their adult overseers asked for attention, something entertaining happened.
Sasami gave them a tight lipped smile, trying to appear cheerful. The other children hadn't seemed to notice that she was faking it. Maybe that was something only adults were truly aware of.
(Akiya had noticed many things in her childhood this time around that she hadn't in her last. Perhaps it was because she was an adult in her mind.)
"Well, kids. Exciting news!" Though her face kept the smile, and her voice was steady, there seemed to be a foreboding undertone to it that spoke of something that she was uncomfortable with. "Some shinobi from Konohagakure will be coming by within the week! If anyone shows any potential to be one of our country's ninja, you'll be permitted to move to Konoha and join their Academy."
Several children broke out into excited murmers and bright grins, but Akiya was frozen.
Konohagakure. Shinobi. Japanese language, but never referred to as such. Children playing a game called ninja. Why did this all sound so famili- oh, no.
Oooh, no.
"U-Um, Sasami-san." When said adult turned her gaze over to her, she asked the dreaded question. "What country do we live in?" She mentally congratulated herself for not stuttering the second time.
She gave the girl a bewildered look. "Fire, of course."
Oh, no. Fuck no. She did not agree to this.
"A-And, which Hokage is in rule right now?" She muttered, panic quickly becoming apparent in her voice no matter how viciously she attempted to hide it. Damn, usually she was pretty good at keeping up fake appearances.
"Namikaze-sama, honey. Are you alright?"
Namikaze. So Naruto wasn't born yet. If she was correct, she lived in a northern town of Fire Country. They didn't see shinobi at all, really. That may have just been because they were a small town with no trade- they had a small orchard and some farms, but they didn't get involved in much.
"How old do you have to be to join the Academy?" To her own credit, her voice barely even wavered.
"You'll have to wait until you're six."
"H-Hai. I'm just going to go eat outside," She muttered, shooting up and totally forgetting her well-earned apple in her haste to get outside because she was losing her shit.
She sprinted away like an angry shark was after her, because hell if she was going to break down in front of everyone.
She got to her regular meadow in record time, and as soon as she set her sight on the flowery grass she let herself lose it. She let out a yowl like some kind of wounded animal, grabbing her head and shaking it around as if there was a swarm of bees buzzing around her. Her hair came loose from its admittedly shitty tie, light brown locks flying around as her mind whirled.
She didn't even realize the first time she used chakra until she was too deep in.
She felt like her consciousness broke apart into a million pieces, and the sound of crinkling paper filled her ears- or whatever was her ears as her awareness spread throughout too many different parts for her to properly count and her chakra leaked into the air and suddenly she could feel all of the chakra in everything and oh, oh gods, it was too much.
And as suddenly as it started, everything seemed to snap into place with the sound of tearing and the feeling of a million papercuts.
And she saw the final piece of paper slip back into position on her left arm.
She took a sharp inhale of breath as she watched the paper settle into a patch of her arm that had been missing several layers of skin- but she didn't see blood underneath- it was paper.
"Oh, fuck," She breathed, eyes wide and panic only growing because that was Konan's ability why did she have it?!
She frantically attempted to slow her breaths and keep from hyperventilating, trying to calm herself down in any way possible because this was not normal why was she in this world she should have died long ago why her out of all people to be born in this-
She crouched down into a ball, hiding her head between her knees as she tried to stop her quickening breaths, because if she had a panic attack while no one was around she was totally screwed.
As her breaths slowed and the tears of her mini breakdown stopped flowing, she took a deep breath. She stood up shakily, arms loose. Bringing her right arm up to eye level, she silently encouraged it to do that again.
Several slips of paper drifted off of her arm, trembled in the air, and shot back into place as her already tired chakra reserves strained beyond what they were supposed to.
Without another thought, her body shut down, and she fell to the soft dirt and grass underneath her as all of her limbs ceased responding and darkness claimed her.
After that day, she began training herself religiously.
Ryushi left for Konoha, the Kyuubi was going to be wreaking havoc soon, and she lived in a country where a lot of shit went down that she had to be prepared for. She was stuck in a world where power was true safety, and she was hella determined to stay safe. She wasn't sure if the whole paper thing was a kekkai genkai or just an ingrained ability to those who loved oragami (which she did. She could control that, she could fold the paper however she wanted, and if she didn't understand something or memories from her past life came to haunt her she could give herself that feeling of control. She had a feeling it was something similar to people cutting themselves.), but it was useful, and she would learn how to properly use it.
She began simple: The leaf exercise. Doing it alone was difficult, but she managed. It helped that she had endless theories she could pull out of her ass, and also that she seemed particularly good in chakra control. It took a few days before she could do pebbles, but she was still finding it blessedly easy.
And then that led to tree walking. She wondered if there was a proper name for it in this world, or if she would forever have to use anime references.
Her face contorted in concentration as she focused a film of chakra to her hand. Carefully, she placed it on the bark of her usual tree in town. She gave it a few experimental tugs to see if it stuck, and when it did, she did the same to her other hand. She had always thought that Sakura doing it so fast was BS, but apparently that's an actual thing. She managed to do it very easily.
She wouldn't complain.
As far as she knew, she was born in a very strange spot in the timeline. Minato and Kushina were still alive, but the Third War was also over. That might have also been a reason for their towns dwindling economy. Minato had reined for what, somewhere around two years before he passed? She'd need to be away from Konoha for a while- maybe never even go. She didn't want to get caught in Kurama's problems, and she didn't want Danzo setting eyes on her because she could do something different. Because literally anyone who was different than the norm was pulled into his shenanigans.
She'd probably need to get caught up with how things worked in this world. That meant reading, more questions, and learning to fight. She'd also need to write down anything and everything she remembered from Naruto, because she doubted she would remember so many pieces of information throughout the years to come.
A year passed, and she made noticeable progress.
She didn't know her chakra nature- but that was alright. Naruto and Sasuke hadn't even known theirs until they were like, twelve or something, and they were still crazy powerful. She did, however, figure out what she was skilled in in things that did not directly relate to chakra.
Her taijutsu style was focused on a sort of flexibility, speed, and fluidity- there was very little power. She targeted vital and soft spots, using jabs and elbows. Her weapon of choice would forever be a dagger- or maybe it was a short sword. She experimented with sticks, and found that her best length was about as long as her forearm. She integrated belly dancing and street dancing into how she moved- both of them skills from her last life that she had not layed eyes on once in this world.
In the mornings, she would run to the meadow using no chakra, then do a lap around its perimeter. After that, she would use complex stretches- some from her last life, some she had read in this one, and some that she had randomly made up- to warm up her muscles and adapt them to the strain she would be putting on them from now on. She would then dance on the water to increase her focus, and twice a week she would make an arm into paper and practice using it as she moved.
(Most of the time, this resulted in her cutting herself or falling into the cold water. How was the water even so cold? It wasn't even autumn yet!)
She had dove head first into a mountain of books, courtesy of the generous library of the village. They never seemed to question her odd and suggestive choice of material, which she was eternally grateful for. Explaining to people that she was training to become a ninja at the age of four would be extremely awkward.
She had to wonder if that was a normal occurrence, though. It probably was, seeing as five year old Itachi had been sent out to a warzone.
In the end, she had three books of different Naruto plots, jutsus, ideas, and theories for different things. She had always loved fanfictions, and that was really proving to be useful to her now. When she had come to such a realization, she had released a dry bark of a laugh at the thought of her mother constantly scolding her for focusing on reading more than her grades.
Just look at her now.
Time passed, and she began coming to realizations that she had never bothered to consider before. For example, she discovered that she was a sensor. That had explained the sudden and, quite honestly, painful feeling of an invisible pressure suffocating her when she had first drawn on her chakra. She was still trying to figure out why it had suddenly burst like a firework on the Fourth of July, but so far, she hadn't been able to discover the reasoning behind it. The only thing she had managed to come up with was Yang or Yin release, but that seemed extremely farfetched. The only thing she had to back up such a thought was that Konan had possessed one of those. Yang, she thought. Konan seemed like the white side of the Yin Yang.
She was making good progress for such a young age, really. It could probably be chalked up to her ability and knowledge.
She'd take what she could get.
Some time after her fifth birthday, she found herself wanting to try something she had been wanting to try ever since her first week of training.
She stood in her beloved meadow, which was currently covered in a thin layer of snow with the winter. She wore her hair in a simple, albeit messy bun, the light brown hair fading into a whitish shade at the bottom as the years passed. On the side of her head, she wore a light red origami hibiscus, three white feathers colored red at the ends sticking out from underneath. A black scarf was wrapped around her neck, and long matching sweatpants covered her legs.
"Alright, Akiya, you can do this," She muttered quietly to herself, raising her arms out to the sides.
Slowly, she allowed the paper that made her legs disperse and gather at her shoulder blades. She grabbed the paper around her waist with chakra and tentatively raised herself up, what was left of her legs exploding into hundreds of pink tinted papers like blood stains to form a pair of swan-like wings on her. She carefully tilted them slightly forward, raising them up.
She threw them down faster and harder than she had meant to, and she went soaring into the sky with a startled shriek.
"HOLY SHIT I'M FLYING!"
Her body spun momentarily, before she grabbed onto all the paper parts of her and steadied herself, giving the wins a slower flap as she wobbled around in midair.
A shit-eating grin grew so large on her face she thought that it would break.
Adrenalin flowing through her, she decided to go higher in a mighty large act of bravery. After a few flaps of her new paper wings, she looked down below her.
The ground below was like a field of white, hints of green and brown of trees showing through like unwelcome splotches of the wrong color on a painting.
As the strain on her chakra grew with the need for so much movement, she lowered herself to the cold ground. The burst of energy she had felt with her new favorite thing to do with her paper soon dwindled away as she fell flat on her face. Apparently forming your legs back with a frantically beating heart is difficult. That didn't matter right now, though.
A bright laugh, like one any her age were supposed to do, bubbled from her throat. Her eyes lit with a joy she hadn't been able to experience in this world with so many children, and it helped remind her than she was alive. There were so many things she could do!
Maybe she could just forget about this world's problems and just enjoy herself?
Yes, that sounded nice. She wouldn't become a ninja- she didn't want to serve any country. She would live on her own- do what she wanted when she wanted, explore a world where wilderness is at every corner and the air was fresher than anywhere on Earth, and see so many things!
And maybe drag in some people along the way.
Who knew?
So, there's the first chapter, I guess.
If I decide to continue this story for a while, the updates will be randomly. At least once a month, though. If that doesn't happen, feel free to spam me with complaints. They'll probably be well deserved.
Also, if you have any good ideas for the Paper ability that my OC can use, please feel free to tell me some! I can only be so creative.