A/N: Ho boy. This has been plaguing me for months now, and I finally decided to write it up. Updates will be slow (for now) since I'm on the cusp of finishing school, but I just had to put this out because it wouldn't stop bugging me. Hope you enjoy.

Also, I'm not trans, and while I've done some research, if I write anything that seems inappropriate, let me know. It's not a major part of the story, but I don't want to offend anyone.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

— Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Rights

There's something terrifying about being launched into the unknown, whether it's a country, a relationship, or even a new café. Her problems however, lay within a much bigger area.

Reincarnation was one thing, but this? This... world, this society, this story?

If it were any other world, she thinks she could handle it, but the Shinobi world? In fanfiction, when she still read it daily before the duties of responsibility caught up to her, people only focused on the ninja aspect, on the killing and murder and morality, and while that plays a pretty huge fucking role in her new life as well, she's concerned with the bigger picture. The much bigger picture.

The picture of society and how fucking dumb it was.

Forget the cycle of hatred, this world's main problem was its contentment to perpetuate the cycle of stupidity that had plagued the countries for decades. No-one was spared from idiocy, it seemed like. Not the geniuses, not the clans, not the most overpowered bastards this world had to offer. She was the only logical person walking amongst fools. And maybe it was arrogance, maybe she was thinking dangerously, but nothing, nothing had convinced her otherwise. The main reason she had never been able to actually read or watch the series was the fact that watching it was bad for her blood pressure. She couldn't handle the stupidity. The sheer ignorance and lack of critical thinking that everyone seemed to have skipped over in their developmental ages. That and how almost every chapter she could name at least three human rights abuses. If anything, it was good for revision and how humans should not act.

For God's sake, literally every problem, every death and war in this world could have been prevented with just a little bit of logic, a pinch of diplomacy, and a heavy removal of every aspect of mindless rage that seemed to possess the population at random moments. And a huge overhaul of the system, because Jesus Christ, how has no-one realised that military dictatorships are a major cause of war?

She blamed the ineffectual and frankly, unbelievably unsustainable political, economic and social system that everyone insisted they use, because no-one seemed to bloody realise that that was the root of all their problems. Of course there were going to be wars if you sustained your entire country off fucking murder and assassination! Who the hell came up with this? Who thought this could possibly be a good idea? There was a reason most military or violence based societies did not last long.

And yet... and yet it shoddily worked for a society that had never known anything else. Very, very badly keep in mind, really, really shittily, but they somewhat managed to truck on. Barely. The seams of society were hanging on by threads though, hastily covered up with promises of greatness and strength and whatever other spoon-fed bullshit they fed every child the moment they were able to understand. Her supervisor would have a goddamn heart attack, because the bullshit she'd had to wade through in textbooks made her nauseous in disbelief.

Education wipes out ignorance, but for some reason, the entirety of the Shinobi world seemed to be ridiculously happy to continue the circle of stupidity. The problem with knowledge, in her view, was that people in this world were either too dumb to use it, or too greedy for it to have any outcome other than tragedy.

And that was the crux of her problems. Knowledge. An abundance of it, despite every facet of it coming from fanfiction and whatever discussion boards took her fancy. She had read enough fanfiction to understand the plot, to get angry at it, to know what happened and how it ended, but the details, the intricacies of it were lost on her. Too infuriating. Too time-consuming for a fandom she barely dipped her toes in.

And then she became a lawyer and all semblance of interest had fled her in favour for work. Sure, she kept up with some of her favourites from time to time, would reread the ones she saw as 'classics', but what little investment she'd had in the beginning was all but gone.

Still, she'd read enough fanfiction to know about her situation, as un-fucking-believable as it was. She didn't understand why some divine being thought the best thing to do with her consciousness or soul or whatever it was was to shove it in the main character of a series she barely had anything to do with. Surely, surely there had to be someone better to do this to? A lesbian human rights lawyer was, in her opinion, the absolute worst person to put into the world of Naruto. Seriously.

She was intricately familiar with death and crime, after all, her job literally revolved around the worst aspects humanity could throw at her. After almost fifteen years, she liked to think she'd seen it all. She could unflinchingly stare down the most horrifying war criminals the world had seen, was able to push down the disgust and violent shock that hit her the moment she came home. She'd reviewed cases that would give people nightmares for years on end, and pushed through until they could put the bastards in the hands of justice.

She had been thirty-something when she died, and hadn't really expected to live much longer, because hey, being a human rights lawyer is unsurprisingly absolutely awful for your heart, particularly when your heart is already kind terrible. Of course, the kind of cases she was faced with on a near daily basis certainly didn't help. She'd seen lawyers come and go out of the profession, unable to handle the type of shit she waded through for years. She didn't blame them.

Her death wasn't anything to write home about. Nothing like the fanfiction she would read in her spare time, no big dramatic exit, no murder or car accident. Her already shitty heart just gave out one day, unable to handle the stress, the high pressure, the violent aftermath that plagued her dreams at night. The pain came, sudden, strong, harsh, so she'd looked her wife in the eyes, kissed her on the lips, and died.

Except something had decided: fuck that, here's a new body, good luck.

And maybe she would have been fine with it. Maybe she could have built a new life.

If there hadn't been several major problems.

First of all, as she slowly grew, it became obvious that her new home wasn't her old world, didn't have the laws and rules she was used to. Instead she had been dropped in some fucking fantasy world from a comic she hadn't even read. Oh she knew the plot and the main characters, but only due to fanfiction and the wiki.

Again, she maybe could have lived with that. She could've stayed a civilian or something, tried to advocate for rights in her own, subtle, not dangerous way.

But then she was faced with a dilemma that ripped out any chance she could have at slipping away unnoticed. One that automatically changed her path onto an already set one, and took away any freedom she might have had.

She was the main fucking character.

She was Naruto.

And unlike in fanfiction where the character's gender is ever so graciously changed to fit your own, real life was not like that. She was in a male body. But honestly, she had bigger problems. While it made her uncomfortable, she was sure she could find some HRT or do that weird transformation jutsu or whatever and be done with it. (If there was one good thing about this world, it was how things like these could be easily dealt with with magic, chakra, whatever the fuck it was.) She had worse problems to deal with, and being a woman was not one of them, thank you very much.

This was where the third reason came in.

She hated Konoha. Hated the entire world she was forced in, because it was a contradiction to every single one of her morals.

Konoha was shit. The people within it were shit. Their policies were shit. They treated her like shit.

The whole world was really shit.

And while she was used to unnecessary hostility and sub-par treatment in her old world because of her sexuality, her situation in Konoha was completely overkill. At least she had support groups in her old world; with people who were like her or who just didn't give a shit about those sorts of things. At least she'd had her wife in her old world.

But here she was, stuck in a world that wanted to make her kill while trying to kill her and that was before she remembered the prophecy.

Fuck that.

She was not going to live out the rest of her days doing work that went against her values, her ideals, her very life blood.

No, she was refused to dance to the puppet strings that Kishimoto, the Hokage, Danzo and so on wanted to place on her. She refused to follow the road of murder and crime that she had fought against in her last life.

She would have to be subtle, be cautious and careful, but the first chance she got, the moment she was strong enough to leave, she would bolt.

Hopefully, it would be before she had to decide between her life or her morals.

It didn't actually hit her until she was four years old, plonked in the middle of the garden and watching a bunch of grubby kids run past her. It was like... going on a bender and then waking up, kinda aware of what happened last night but not really, not until you fully woke up and went oh shit, did I do that? She had been grumbling about the unfairness of Hana one moment, before suddenly going, oh yeah, that happened.

One moment she'd been a sticky, dirty three year old, sat in the mud, before suddenly still being a sticky, dirty three year old, except with the knowledge and experience of a fully grown adult who viewed both this world and herself as fictional and really ridiculous.

Of course, she promptly passed the fuck out. The overload of information, the pure shock at being fully aware of who she was and her surroundings was too much for a young, pretty undeveloped mind. And just like going on a bender, she woke up with a splitting headache, the faint feeling of lost dignity, and the awareness that she was probably gonna die.

Because for fuck's sake, she was Naruto, and Naruto already had a hard enough time surviving without being screwed over with the morality and knowledge of a human rights lawyer.

This entire world was a walking human rights violation, a contradiction to every one of her morals, of her goddamned job. And she was going to have to be one of them.

Yeah, fuck that. Absolutely fuck that.

She only panicked vaguely afterwards, in the sense that she knew that her situation was completely fucked up and outside of the realms of possibility, but was reassured by the fact that she (kinda, not really, oh God what was she going to do) knew what would happen and would do everything in her power to stay the fuck out of it. And she would start by making changes. Serious changes to herself, the supposed 'canon' and the absolute load of horseshit that was Naruto's future. She couldn't give a shit about 'changing the story' and 'not staying true to what happened' and all those other things self-inserts seemed to worry about. She was gonna get strong, get out of Konoha and open up a flower shop or something in the ass end of nowhere, and stay the hell away from plot shenanigans and human rights violations. She would let herself die again before she did any of the shit they expected her to do, that the plot expected her to do. She may be desensitised but her morals were her life, her job was her life, and she refused to go against them. She refused to become one of them for the sake of the story.

But... the questioned blared in her mind. How much should she change? She was determined not to become a tool in the hands of old warmongers who really should have retired and died already, not when she'd dealt with them for so long in her last life. She knew what that kind of service did, saw the impacts and trauma those fuckwits caused in their quest for power and superiority. It was disgusting. It was so deeply and fundamentally wrong and-

No-one here had an issue with it. No-one saw a problem. Well, no-one except for those insane fools at the Akatsuki, and they really weren't prime examples since they were using the exact same tactics as the system they wanted to eradicate to achieve their bullshit idea of peace.

God, this world was a fucking mess.

Did she hold some responsibility to change the system? To fix it, to... make it better? Could she even do that? Did she have the right to do that? Because Jesus, it would take a ridiculous amount of work, and it raised ethical questions as well. Was it even, fucking hell, culturally appropriate for her to do this?

Or was she just making excuses?

She decided to shove those thoughts away to think about when she wasn't a drooling toddler.

First things first though, she absolutely had to change her name. It was getting confusing. And annoying. She might be Naruto, but she wasn't really, and since the actual Naruto wasn't actually the reincarnation of a disgruntled lawyer who was a woman, she decided 'fuck it' and started racking her brains for other Japanese names. Those two years as a prepubescent weaboo really paid off, was something she never thought she'd say ever. Eventually she settled on something similar enough to the actual name, something that was both pretty cute and a nice big fuck you to canon.

Thus, she became Nana. It was simple, adorable and if she remembered correctly, meant seven in Japanese, which was a nice allusion to her future team number. (It also reminded her of the absolute insanity that would be, thank fucking god she didn't give two shits about canon, because that was one clusterfuck she wasn't gonna touch with a 3 foot pole.) She proudly announced it at dinner time with a tone that said she didn't care if people didn't like it, it was her name now, and if someone wanted to say anything about it, then she'd tell them they were a rotisserie shithead who could fuck all the way off to Kiri.

Weirdly enough though, it wasn't that hard to enforce the others to call her by that. Maybe it was because the orphanage was practically run by the older orphans. God knew the Matron didn't give a shit. Her vague memories reminded her of her carers, children barely older than thirteen who had changed her diapers, fed her bottles and sung her childish songs. Of course, all of the orphans older than ten had to pitch in, which meant everyone knew everyone, and that left them as close as family. These orphans couldn't care less about the fact that people cursed her, spat at her, called her a demon, an abomination, because they were used to it happening to them. In their eyes, she was just another orphaned child, another shunned and rejected member of society. She was one of them. And in order to survive the wretched world that had it out for them, they needed to band together.

(Social Services would have a fucking field day here. Seriously, it was worrying. Actually, every court in the world concerned with human rights would be aghast at the conditions here. She was aghast and she'd seen it so many times before, in her old world, but to actually experience it was a completely different thing.)

It seemed like gender and sexuality was Not A Big Deal here. In the orphanage alone, there were several people who were similar. Haru and Kyoko preferred neutral pronouns, Kanna was also a trans girl and gladly took her under her wing, and just last week, Ryuu announced that he wasn't always a guy, and would let people know how he was feeling. And that was the end of that.

After all, she still had to come up with some shoddy plan of survival.

Nana is six when she meets the Sandaime Hokage for the first time, and the entire experience is... uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and eye-opening, because it hadn't completely hit her before. She's dealt with war criminals before, glimpsed at military dictators several times, but she's never liked it. She can school her face into neutrality, into distant acknowledgement, but inside, she's trembling as she stands before a man so revered by his subordinates, even as he sends them to their deaths with a smile. It was easier before, seeing those criminals, because they were locked up in shackles, and didn't really have any magical ninja powers that could kill her with barely a flick of a finger. She's not in a courtroom, not in her territory. This is the enemy's land, and she's nothing more than a tiny child caught in the politics of death and dictatorship.

Here is the man responsible for making her life hell, who lets his old friend kidnap and torture children, who trains children into soldiers and lets them run to their death, who acts a kindly old man but holds the final word above all. There are no laws in the shinobi world, only Kage.

Her past and knowledge gnaw at her mind, burning and itching against her skull as it whispers about duty and promises, hisses deaths that will happen and that have already happened due to the system. A soft guilt wells up in her chest, because she has never run before, never ran in her old life, would face her cases stoically and strongly, determined to see justice but-

She is nothing more than an ant swept in centuries of militarism, of dictatorship and tradition. She may have sworn an oath as a human rights lawyer to bring criminals to justice, but how can she do the same here, when every adult, even every child she meets should be locked away for war crimes? She is one person, just a single person in a flood of killers, of a society that has been allowed to continue for far longer than it should have, and deep inside her she knows that there is little she can do. It doesn't matter that she's the protagonist, that she has unlimited power hidden beneath her fingertips. The only way to change this world is through death and destruction and-

She can't do it. How can she uphold her oaths in a world like this? How can she fight for justice and equality when Ninjas have no concept of such a thing, no laws to keep it in check? Violence and death is the currency here, not diplomacy and justice, not communication and betterment. Power is absolute here, and it has turned this world into a rotten husk.

But in the moment, she can't let those feelings matter. Can't let the Hokage see her thoughts, see who she is, see the hatred she holds for everything around her. The Hokage is smiling gently at her, bowed slightly to match her tiny tiny height, and she hates.

"Hello there young one. What is your name?" He asks kindly, warmly, his eyes soft and grandfatherly. Of course, he knows who she is, had summoned her himself, but he's giving her a chance to introduce herself, some illusion of control. He can see the way she fidgets, the discomfort in her position, the wariness in her face, and offers her some measure of control to calm her down. There is no way Nana can hide the roiling unease in her posture, not from a man like him. Whether his actions are sincere or a ploy to get her guard down, she doesn't know, but she sees him wait patiently for her response, sees the warm interest hiding the truth, and she swallows.

"Nana, I'm Nana." It sounds like a promise, like a stone tossed against water making the first changes to an already changed world, and she wants to vomit. Maybe she should have said 'Naruto', it would make it easier for her to change her name and disappear later on, but she's called herself Nana for years, can't betray who she is, not when she's absolutely sure that the Hokage already knows her name.

"Nana," he sounds out, nodding slowly, as though he's weighing her name on his tongue, weighing her in his mind. The Hokage looks over her, looks at her patchy dress, her messy hair pulled back into a childish braid, the dented flower pins crammed into her hair for some illusion of dignity. Kyoko had shoved the pins in her hair this morning, worry and fear forcing their hands to tremble.

"That's a cute name," he says finally, warm smile on his face, "did you choose it yourself?"

Nana ducks shyly, hesitantly nodding her head, trying to convey an aura of timid childishness. His smile grows fond, and he places a hand on his shoulder, subtly grabbing her attention to make her look up.

"Do you know who I am, Nana-chan?"

Of fucking course she knows. Every child, no matter how old knows who this man is, how much power he holds in his hands. But it's only the orphans who truly understand what exactly he can do. What exactly, he lets happen.

Kids who catch the eyes of old men never come back.

It's why Kyoko and Ryuu and Yuji paled when they got the missive, why Kanna couldn't look at her without tears slipping down her face. They lost little Ume barely three weeks ago, so clever, so agile, her ability to sense chakra past what was usual for a little orphan girl. She showed it off during Academy Recruitment Day, and she was gone within the week.

And now the Hokage himself wanted to see Nana, wanted to talk to her, Nana who was hated far beyond the normal disdain for grubby orphans, Nana who had huge amounts of chakra and intelligence that surpassed most teenagers let alone a six year old.

Nana, who nobody but nameless, unimportant orphans would miss.

"Play it down," Yuji told her, "show you're not interesting, not anything special, even though you are." He was the one to braid her hair, hands shaking, and gave her a bigger breakfast than usual. He had hugged her tightly before they left, held on tightly and desperately, unspoken pleas between the two of them, before he was forced to let go when the ninja escort cleared his throat.

"You're just a normal six year old girl, who likes normal things. Make sure they see you struggle with words, don't say anything clever," Kyoko whispered as they tangled the flower pins in her hair. They had found them in a dumpster, bent and battered, but they had straightened them out again, scrubbed them with a rag until they shone. They fiddled with Nana's hair over and over, until there was no longer an excuse to keep her there.

"Play dumb," Ryuu demanded, her face narrowed and worried, "I don't care what they think, as long as they label you and idiot and unworthy of their time. But be subtle. Don't let them notice, don't let them know what you're doing." She grabbed her shoulders, brought her close to her face, until Nana could see the cracks in her foundation, the smears of mascara at the corners of her eyes. She had been crying. "Do you understand, Nana? Don't show off. Don't show them how clever you are. Talk slowly, be dense, have a short attention span, look away when the try to talk to you, do you understand?"

She had only released her after she nodded, after she whispered her agreement softly.

"Don't get taken." She had stared intensely at her for another moment, before giving a decisive nod, and a quiet kiss against her cheek, leaving behind smeared lipstick.

Kanna had to be pried away from her, sobbing into the scuffed kimono they were able to find, begging for her to come back, to please come back.

Something small in her broke, at the resigned acceptance in Yuji's eyes, the quiet terror in Kyoko's hands, the hidden outrage in Ryuu's words, the distraught grief in Kanna's tears. How used to this were they? How used to saying goodbye, to being forced to watch their family be torn away from them? To the knowledge that they were powerless to stop it?

She had gathered their advice, repeated it in her head like a mantra, even though she knows that the Hokage will see through it. Even though she knows that out of all of them, she is the safest one. She will never be taken by Danzo, not with her prominent status, not when the Hokage has eyes watching her at all times, trusted eyes, not faceless, nameless ANBU members. Being a jinchuuriki has its drawbacks, but it also gives her a layer of security none of the other orphans have. Nana will never be stolen away in the night, not without some seriously dedicated ninja willing to fight through several layers of ANBU protection.

(But a part of her questioned how willing Danzo would be if she let slip her intelligence. How desperate, how dedicated to spiriting her away?)

The kids at the orphanage don't know she's safe, don't know that Sarutobi wouldn't let anything happen to Minato's child. She shouldn't know that either, but it weighs down on her, both as a security blanket and as a reminder that escaping Konoha is going to be hell. They're not going to let someone as genetically important as her get away. Not only does she have her father's potential, but she's a direct descendent of a pure-bred Uzumaki. Any children of hers would be viable jinchuuriki candidates, not to mention the variety of other abilities they could inherit. She's an asset through and through, and Konoha would tighten their grip as much as they needed to keep her from slipping away.

And yet...

And yet, the irony lies in their unwillingness to foster loyalty or goodwill, to give her reason to stay and pro-create, to defend the village with her dying breath. It heats her blood, makes her furious at the hypocrisy, the injustice, the sheer stupidity of it all, but she tampers it down, lets her righteous anger simmer deep inside her, fuelling her determination to leave.

The Hokage is still waiting for her answer, and she forces herself to squeak in embarrassment, to nod and give a sheepish grin.

"You're the Hokage."

You're a war criminal, she wants to scream, you perpetuate a society that only benefits the powerful and tosses the innocents to the wolves you-

She clamps it down, tries to balance an aura of air-headed distraction while still showing the excited worship of a kid meeting their hero, meeting the man they've been brainwashed into revering.

"I am," he chuckles out, pleased at her response, but he leans closer, winks as though he's telling a secret, and asks, "do you know what I do?"

You send children off to die, you toss the broken beneath your feet so you and your comrades can climb higher, you pushed a child out into a sea of hatred and expect them to-

"You're the strongest ninja ever! You look after us all!" She cheers out over the bitter words rattling in her skull, in her heart. The Hokage grins, laughs a happy laugh and ruffles her hair, enthused by her excitement, her childish glee and she burns.

"I do indeed!" He's beaming, smile wide and delighted, and he asks: "Do you want to learn how to look after people as well, like I do?"

She wants to hate this man, wants to see him as the criminal he is, but... is he not a victim as well? He believes he's doing the right thing, believes he knows best-

(but don't they all? Don't they all first start out with good intentions, before the power beings to coil around their hearts and minds until they rot?)

She sees an old man over the image of a war criminal, sees a father and a grandfather smeared alongside a dictator, sees a tired, grieving, regretful man even as she imagines him signing the papers sealing so many deaths.

She breathes, and pushes it down.

It doesn't matter who he was, who he wants to be. He is a criminal, should be labelled as such, even as he stands in such a position of power. How many times did she glimpse across a courtroom and see such a familiar visage, see another mourning leader who never meant for it to get this far-

But it did. It did, and people died because of it, people suffered for it. People are suffering now, and she thinks of the orphanage, her family in everything but blood, her children who she would protect with her life if her body weren't so small, thinks of the squalor and grime they live in, the tinge of fear that coats every laugh, every smile. She thinks of her children, forced to bend and break in the face of society's dismissal, their disgust, their refusal to take responsibility.

And deep inside, she makes an unconscious choice, unknown to her yet, but the soft embers of determination are lit beneath her skin.

"Yes," she answers, still keeping her voice light and cheerful, but there's something heavier to her agreement, something sombre and unwilling, but resolved all the same.

And maybe the Hokage hears it, maybe he can feel the deeper meaning behind her words, but he gives no indication other than a gentle smile and a pleased look.

(But she has been reading people for so long, can spot the darkness within, the regret, the heavy weight of a decision. She is six years old, and they're going to prepare her for war. She is a weapon, she is their weapon but-

She refuses. She refuses. She is her own weapon, and she will do it like she did in her last life: with her words and logic, because her battleground is not a war zone, no, it's a courtroom, and there, she has her say. There, she is in charge. Because sticks and kunai can kill and bleed, but words can topple governments.)

(And they will.)

(She guaran-fucking-tees it.)