Chapter 1: Limbo (whishing it was the game)

If anyone asked someone who knew Cassandra Cassidy what she was afraid off the person would scoff and say that if that woman feared something then they would run for cover for the world must surely be ending.

Cassandra was the daughter of Cleon Cassidy, an ex soldier part of the Bravo Company of the First Battalion on the Special Forces, and Rei Cassidy, a kind hearted medic. They met when Rei worked at the medical facilities on the Torii Station. Cleon fell in love with the half Japanese doctor when she was stitching him up and he was half delusional because of blood loss, he would say that to him she looked like an angel.

Cassandra grew to be a fearless woman, she could beat any man twice her size without breaking a sweat and patch him up just as easily… to beat him again if she so wanted.

Even so this wouldn't help her at all this time…

After all the training I went through, all the blood, the tears… I knew I should have said no to this stupid camping trip! But no! We graduated from The Academy and we had to celebrate! And we couldn't celebrate like normal people do and go to some bar and get drunk! Nooo! That's for losers! We are so bad-ass that we go to extreme camping trips to celebrate! Yeah! Extreme!

That's it until a bear eats you…

Not so extreme then.

Cassandra Cassidy 30/10/1994 - 24/05/2015

Mauled by a bear

Lived to the extreme

Died also to the extreme

XXX

Year 1

I'm not gonna talk about my brief and un-documentable time in the no-where/no-when, as I like to call my pre-re-life. Yes, it is all very confusing. No more confusing to you than it was for me, that I can confirm. Nor am I going to talk about what came to be my re-introduction to life. That is, without resetting the hardware. Or would it be the software? I have after all a new body, yet my time as Cass is still fresh in my mind.

My time as a baby was confusing and painful. Very painful. Whenever I started thinking it would be like self-combustion. I recently have been able to curb the need to scream my head off. The only way to release some of the pain was blanking my mind. So instead of the screaming pudgy ball of horror, what my parents were probably expecting, I was a zombiefied baby with random moments of hysterical screaming. Blanking my mind was seriously hard, especially when they insisted in communicating with me. They spoke Japanese! I mean I can talk Japanese; Mom would have killed me if I didn't, but my brain was wired for English and translating what they said wasn't therapeutic for my mind.

So, I tried to ignore them as much as I could. Some things would stick though. Like I knew that my new name was Naomi. My new mother's name was Nana. My new father's name was Shin. The name Nanami was often said but I haven't been able to tie it to someone, yet. My mother was a beautiful woman and disturbingly cheerful persons. My father was … a rather sad man. Or at least that was the impression he gave me. Now that I think about it my new mother also had sadness surrounding her.

Oh, well. It's not like I can do anything about it. It's enough that I must control the urge of screaming all the time. Cheer is not in my vocabulary for now.

XXX

Year 2

I'm a little ashamed. I made a huge misinterpretation. Apparently Nana is not oka-san but oba-san. The illusive Nanami was my mother and also Nana's sister. Her late sister. Apparently she was a rather fragile woman and the pregnancy was too hard for her. She died during the delivery.

How do I know all this? Because Auntie is now pregnant and worried about her possible death. Dad has tried to console her but he's not helping much. Her husband is off on another country and that makes her even more stressed.

I'm not really sure how to react to this. I know I should feel worried and what not, the woman was the closest thing I had to a mother!, but I'm rather numb. I have theorized that's a side effect of all the meditating I did/do so my brain doesn't fry itself. I might have a dissociative disorder. That's kind off messed up.

Yet, I would rather have that than a head on fire.

The pain that comes with maintaining my faculties hasn't abated at all. I don't really think it's a fair exchange. There is literally a fire burning constantly inside my head. If I let go of my control over my mind then I fear I will die. I'm now able to think …somewhat.

My mind has always been overactive. Various thoughts going around my head without rhyme or reason were the norm. My attention span has always been a struggle for me. I prefer to let my mind run wild, I'm smart enough that it never caused much of a problem academically, some extra hours of studying to review wouldn't kill me.

Problem is that if I let myself loose, it burns. If my emotions go above indifferent with a slight edge of emotion, it burns. If I try to think about multiple points of view, it burns. If I try to divide my attention in more than one thing, you guessed it, it burns.

This isn't exactly healthy. At least not for me. I have to always maintain a single thread of thought while always being as objective as possible and not let anything distract me. If I have to exchange to another topic I have to cut my thoughts and start the new one after. This also includes language. I had to force myself to only think in Japanese, to think in English and then translate it or in reverse hurts like hell. So no English for me. Not much of a problem since I don't talk at all, I prefer to just listen. Even so I do practice making sounds and inarticulate so I don't have a problem if I do decide to speak.

Auntie and Dad were rightly worried about my behavior and took me to several doctors. I was misdiagnosed with autism. The general consensus is that I probably have a mild Asperger Syndrome at the very least but too young to properly test.

Go me! Great job pretending to be normal! At least if you screw up again and they think you are a genius then you have an out!

XXX

Year 3

Good news! Nobody died! Auntie and my little Itoko are fine. His name is Tsunayoshi and I guess he's cute. I had a lot of trouble choosing a nickname for him. On one hand we had Tuna-chan but in the other we had Yoshi and as an ardent player of Mario Bros that had a lot of weight. In the end it was my Uncle that made my choice easy. He loved calling Itoko his little Tuna-fish.

I detest my Uncle.

So Yoshi it was.

Fuck you, Iemitsu.

Fuck! My head is killing me! I have to cool down!

XXX

Year 4

I have made up my mind.

Yoshi-chan is cute, like super cute. Whenever his bastard of a father comes to visit he always runs and hides from him behind me. Smart kid. Any other time he follows behind me like my own little duckling. Now if only he gave me less headaches.

Itoko made me happy, too happy. Any emotion in too much quantity made me sick. That included all the others feels he gave me. Too many feels!

But I couldn't stop loving him and dammit if that didn't hurt.

I have to find a new way to lessen the burn. Or Yoshi-chan will be the death of me.

The little bastard even forced me to talk. He was reaching for a knife and Auntie wasn't paying attention. I screamed "No!" and he squealed. Dad and Auntie were overjoyed when such instances repeated themselves. The little suicidal bastard made me scream several times. After they were reassured that yes, I could talk; they wouldn't let me continue my silence.

I founded out that them annoying me was more painful than speaking.

XXX

Year 5

"I can learn more at home." This was my last chance to reason with Dad. I was in the entrance and however unlikely, there was still time to go back.

Only he was being obtuse.

"You need to socialize. Consider it practice." His smile couldn't be faker if he tried. So maybe I had been a little annoying in the way.

Whatever, I don't want to deal with this.

My derisive scoff was meant to transfer my sentiments. I had already wasted too many words and my head had started burning.

"Come on, Mimi. Nana is going to pick you up with Tsuna and will take you both to the park. Won't that make it worth it?" he was pleading with me and it made me feel mildly guilty.

I hope my headache doesn't get worse.

He sighed. "Come on, Naomi. Give me a hug and go inside" and so I did.

And faced darkness so dark that no other could match.

Kindergarten.

My horrible, sticky, screeching and highly disturbing enemy.

Will I fall? Will I rise? Will…

"Get inside already, Naomi."

And so I did. I don't want to traumatize myself further so I will not talk about that horrible, horrible experience.

When Auntie and sweet, sweet Itoko showed up I grabbed my Yoshi and marched far far away from the darkness. Yoshi couldn't be tainted by it.

Once we got to the park we played a couple of games while Nana chatted with the mothers present. We were playing with a ball, passing it around, unfortunately my Yoshi isn't really gifted in the motor-skills and the ball went behind some bushes and trees far from us.

Itoko also isn't also the brightest and didn't realize that little kids shouldn't go to dark shady places alone. Even in a family park. Yoshi was so adorable that he was practically carrying a sign that said "Please kidnap me!"

"Yoshi-chan! Wait up!" I followed but he had already disappeared behind the bushes.

I speed up and went to get him back.

Once I caught up with Yoshi he already had the pink ball in his arms but was standing still. "Come on, Itoko. Let's go back…"

"I don't think so, bambina."

The dark voice made me freeze. I slowly followed Tsunayoshi's gaze and saw a tall, tanned man in a suit. With a gun on his hand pointed directly at my little cousin.

I slid forward covering my cousin with my body. The fire in my head sparked.

"Move away, ragazza. My business is not with you." His dark eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. With one hand behind my back I signaled Yoshi to move back and hoped that he did.

"I seriously don't see how a little child could have a business with you." This was bad, very bad. I had to get Tsunayoshi out of here. And more importantly I had to calm the fire.

He had a sardonic smile at that. "Sadly his dad made some people really angry and the child will have to pay for that."

Oh hell no!

"Sorry, piccola, but businesses are business. Nothing personal."

The second he took the safety off I shouted "Run!" and hoped that Tsunayoshi had gotten far enough.

Because one second later my world was set in fire.

And suddenly the pain was gone.

A.N.: sorry for not updating Saisei but I lost my pen drive with all my chapters! I have to rewrite all that I had from my several spaced out papers with little notes and with school and exams that's getting hard. But I felt really guilty about it so looking around in my computer to see if I had anything from Saisei saved up there I founded this! It was a half made-up idea that came up when I started reading KHR and with all the fanfiction I'm reading recently from KHR I guess it sparked up my interest again. I had to edit somethings but that was quick. Hope you like it! I'm working on rewritten the chapters that I lost and hopefully they will be better and the originals. The Shun in my head is quite pissed off at me…