Well, if you're here, I just want to say that I do have every intention of finishing this story. I guess I've just taken a bit of a roundabout way in doing it... So I understand that a lot of people, myself included, get apprehensive when an incomplete story hasn't been updated in forever... but if I can just ask for a bit of patience, I promise it will get done. ...Eventually.

I am going through (yet again) and revising my earlier chapters. As my writing style continues to improve, it becomes harder for me to leave some of my earlier writing the way it is, especially when the story itself is incomplete. The first chapters are a reader's introduction to the whole story. It doesn't matter how much the writing improves in later chapters if new readers can't get past the beginning. So that might also stunt my updating time a little.

But for now, I hope you enjoy what I have.

Chapter One

To the current Hokage,

This letter is being written in the likely event that my children's fate will soon fall into your hands. I am literally pained to say that my health is failing, and they have no one left to care for them. Your village is big and thriving. I hope that they will also thrive under its care.

-Zion Sohma

Satisfied, I sat back in my chair and looked down at my work. It was very fancy penmanship. I'd probably never be able to rewrite anything this neatly ever again.

Now let's get something straight. I am not, have never been, and do not ever plan on being Zion Sohma. I don't know anyone who goes by the name. Perhaps there isn't one anywhere in existence. My name is Carly Elizabeth Sparks, and I am your average, everyday otaku. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, an otaku is basically anyone who's obsessed with manga and/or anime. For those of you who don't know what manga or anime is... you are far beyond my help.

I let my head fall back and closed my eyes. The chair wasn't exactly comfortable sitting in it this way, but this was the most relaxed I'd been all day. There were so many productive things I should have been doing at the moment... Homework, mostly. Yet here I was, crafting fake letters to fictional characters in their imaginary worlds. All my real-life responsibilities were pressing like a weight on the back of my mind, but it had just gotten so hard to motivate myself lately. I hated to think what any one of my many childhood therapists would have deduced from this.

I heard a snort from behind me and opened my eyes to see my brother looking over my shoulder, reading the letter that was still sitting in full view on my desk.

"What is that?"

Sadly, he does not share my love of anime, though he has seen the random episode every now and then, courtesy of me. I looked up at him, knowing he was only teasing but a bit embarrassed at being caught all the same.

I covered my embarrassment with a smile. "Hey, a girl can dream, right?"

My smile slowly faded as I took the time to observe the familiar appearance of my twin, but he didn't seem to notice. I took in his dirty blond hair, which was much shorter than my own yet constantly falling into his eyes. My eyes found his own hazel ones, speckled green today, that were skimming over my fake letter once more. And finally, I mentally traced a few different patterns of the freckles that were spattered across his cheeks and nose, very similar in position to the ones on my own face. We may have been born fraternal, but had I been a boy, or Luke a girl, we would have no doubt been identical.

He smiled too and said in an amused way, "Good luck with that. It does kind of look like Dad's handwriting, though..."

He left it at that and walked out of my room. (Which he had entered without my permission, I might add.) I had to say, I was a little flattered, and I couldn't help wondering if he had been lying just to diffuse any lingering uncomfortableness. Our real father (whose first name really had been Zion) had died when we were just six years old. I highly doubted Luke could recognize his handwriting on sight. I could only remember little snatches myself. Weird, specific things, like the exact pitch of his voice or the way he'd brush his fingers, almost compulsively, over the top of every flat surface he passed...

I stood up very abruptly and stretched out my stiff muscles. There was no use in lingering on the dead. I chose instead to linger on cartoons and books. ...Which probably wasn't much better.

Perhaps it made me a bit of a cliché, but I loved nothing more than to immerse myself in a fictional world. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Just another socially awkward anime fan who's out of touch with real life. I was the type of girl the cool kids laughed at in the hallways. The type of girl who would much rather spend her time barricaded in her room, rereading her favorite manga than go to a party and waste the night away with other living, breathing human beings. I was friendly with plenty of my classmates; I just wouldn't consider many of them to be true friends. I've found that the average person can only last so long into my ranting about fictional people and happenings before they run for the exit. And honestly, I wasn't missing the human contact that much. So yeah, maybe I was a little out of touch with real life. But to be fair, real life had never given me much of a reason to really appreciate it.

As I reached the top of the stairs, my mother's voice reached my ears. She sounded sad, which wasn't too unusual. I slowly peeked around the railing to take in the sight of my mother with the telephone pressed to her ear. Her hair was more of a golden blond than ours, and her eyes were a solid light brown as opposed to hazel, but they were tired eyes. My mother had experience more in her adulthood than anyone of just thirty-six years should have had to. Her physical appearance hadn't actually suffered much, but in certain aspects, especially around the eyes and the way she carried herself, Mom didn't look like a woman in her mid-thirties. She looked about a million.

I've heard other women, usually the uninformed, look at my mother and simper that this was just the toll parenthood took on some people. Not everyone handled it as well as others. Then they'd usually go on to bitch about their own troubles, wholly unsympathetic. And these little things spoke volumes about their lives. Their ordinary, happy lives with their intact families. Of course they could judge. At the end of the day, they got to walk away from the woman with the dead husband and dying son. My mother didn't.

Sound a little bitter and harsh? Well, now you know why I try not to dwell too much on real life.

"All right... okay... yes, thank you." I remained where I was while she hung up, listening closely, but not willing to be a part of this conversation. I already knew it by heart.

Then Luke's (who was somewhere outside my line of sight) voice, "Has he woken up?"

"No."

I could almost hear my brother's nod, used to the routine. We were both ridiculously hopeful for something that may or may not even happen. At least I tied my optimism to fictional worlds with no consequences. It tended not to hurt so much when your more ludicrous dreams let you down. Luke began to head back towards the staircase.

"Tell your sister that dinner's almost done," our mother told him.

"Okay."

They both sounded so dead. It was like their insides had already wilted, and we were all just waiting for our outer structures to crumble as well.

When Luke got to the bottom of the stairs he looked up, saw me, and knew that I'd overheard everything. We nodded to each other silently, and I came downstairs for dinner. We had lasagna that night. My mother hardly touched her food.

It was only 7:30 when we finished, but I headed up to bed anyway. Even though the next day was Monday, there were just some days when I was ready for it to end all too soon. I snatched the letter off my desk, killed the lights, and flopped back in bed without bothering to get undressed.

As I lay in bed, I held the letter up in the darkness. My eyes traced the outline of the paper, just barely able to make out individual words. You can say I've been reading too much fanfiction, but I believe in all that supernatural, miraculous transportation-to-another-world stuff. I have to. There's not much else for me to hold onto.

Shortly after our father's death, my older brother, Tyler, had been diagnosed with leukemia. And by 'shortly' I'm talking a matter of weeks. We'd barely had time to wrap our heads around the death of one family member before we were facing another. Tyler and the cancer have been in a fierce battle for the past six years, but things have gone downhill recently. He's been in a coma for the past three days, and the doctors think this might be the end, that his organs are ready to quit, though we're all still holding our breath. It wouldn't be the first time he's beaten the odds, but it's getting harder and harder to be optimistic. His battle has taken its toll on all of us. My mother, who was barely holding it together before she found out her child was dying, downs anti-depressants like they're water.

I know it's selfish to distance myself from them like I have... They're my family, and if my father's death taught me anything it was how fragile family can be. But I just can't live the way Luke and my mother do, silently accepting the world's injustices as they are. It feels too much like defeat, and I don't think I could handle being sucked down into that gloom.

I sighed and traced my fingernail in little circles around the 'Z' of my father's first name. At last, I folded up the letter and stuck it into the front pocket of my jeans. It seemed a little unfair that I had no means of fleeing this world when I could honestly say that if I ever did get out, I'd be able to not look back and have no regrets.

And with that happy thought, I fell asleep.

... World Skip! ...

When I woke up, my first thought was, ugh, what the hell did I do last night? which was comical for ironic reasons. The idea that I'd been out late partying was laughable. The wildest my life ever got was staying up past curfew to marathon some anime.

I was lying on the ground with the sun shining in my eyes, my head pounding. I had to attempt opening my eyes a few times before I actually succeeded. Why was everything spinning? I felt like someone had sent me through the wash cycle. Slowly, I dragged myself up to my feet, which didn't help my headache any.

I was in a forest of some sort. The last thing I remembered was going to bed, but here I was, dressed for the day. In the front pocket of my jeans was a piece of paper that I only vaguely remembered putting there. I pulled it out and recognized it as the fake letter I'd written the night before. I glanced at my father's forged signature one more time before putting it back in my pocket, thoroughly confused.

In front of me was a gigantic wall. At the very top I could make out a few guards. The trees surrounding me also looked abnormally large. But one thing had caught my attention, and now I couldn't look away. Engraved on the wall was a very familiar swirly symbol.

"Holy shit..." I murmured. I knew exactly where I was.

Review please!

Revised as of April 5, 2016. (I swear, this is the last time!)