Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Katekyo Hitman Reborn
The newborn mentally sighed as it was birthed.
...
"It's a girl!" Someone announced.
"Hikari. Yes, I'll call you Hikari." A female voice softly told her. She felt a hand stroke her forehead. Great, she was still blind. She hated being a baby. She paid no mind to the fact that her gender had been switched... again. She let out a scream to express her annoyance, and was quieted by the gentle rocking.
"Can I hold her?" A voice asked. It sounded young.
"Just don't bite her." The female voice, presumably her mother, told the other. She was passed to another set of arms, one that felt smaller.
...
What did her mother mean by bite?
"She's tiny." The voice said.
"You were like that too when you were a baby. Your sister is going to grow up in no time."
So she had a sibling in this world. This was new. She had a mother and a sibling. But where was her father?
She let out a low whine and grabbed a fistful of her sibling's shirt. It took a lot of effort. And it seemed that she would need to train herself up from scratch again. How troublesome.
There was some cooing, most likely from her mother. She yawned loudly, and lost consciousness to sleep, still in her sibling's arms.
Hikari sat in the mindspace alone. The darkness shifted to the little garden that had always been her mindscape. Entaka sat under a tree, reading a book. Takao was sitting on a bench, one arm supporting his head, and the other on his sword. Mukuro was tending to his illusionary plants.
It was interesting, how each life had affected her so differently. Entaka had been her seventh reincarnation, and was the first of Mukuro's reincarnations to form a permanent subconscious in their shared mindscape. Takao had been the second, and thus had plenty of help from Entaka. It was probably somewhere around then where Mukuro's personality stopped heavily affecting them- his reincarnations.
She was Hikari now. Hikari was a newborn, but with over a century of mental experience. Hikari shifted into the body of a teenager.
"Let's start."
Hikari yawned once more as she woke up, finding that this time, she could see. She felt someone watching her, and slowly turned to look back at the watcher.
The boy had blond hair and bluish-grey eyes. He was standing over her crib, his hands on the railing, and were those mouths on his palms?
This wasn't her first time being reincarnated. But this was her first time being thrust into a story she had read before, three lifetimes ago, when she was still a bitter male with nothing better to do.
This was her brother? An insane antagonist was her brother in this life. Hikari steadily ignored the fact that technically Mukuro was also an insane antagonist. She stared at him and he stared back at her.
Slowly, she smiled and reached for him, making grabby gestures with her chubby hands. He leaned closer to her. She tugged at his long blond fringes. He grinned back and lifted her from her crib. Sure, he would probably turn out to be a psychotic bomber, but he was still her brother, and for now, she thought as she cuddled into her brother's chest, she was very much content.
Three lifetimes in different realms and one with a certain Sky had mellowed her. She no longer wanted the world to burn to blood and ashes. No, she would burn those who dared to hurt her loved ones to blood and ashes.
Hikari sucked on the milk bottle her mom was feeding her. Her mother had long blond hair that reached to her shoulder blades. Her grey eyes were accented by the pale skin that she had. Hikari looked at her reflection on the bottle, going cross-eyed in the process. She had the same blond hair as her mother, and probably the same heart-face shape too. Her eyes were a bright blue, reminiscent of her life as Mukuro, even though they were more of a dark indigo then.
Hikari experimentally waggled her fingers and toes. She stuck out her tongue as she reached to dismantle her crib, only to be stopped by an unfamiliar person. He had reddish-brown hair and bright blue eyes.
"Tou-san!" Her brother shouted and ran towards their father.
This was their father? Hikari tilted her head to study the man. Huh, she could tell where her eyes came from at least.
Her brother looked more like their father, she concluded.
"I'm sorry I missed your labour, dear." Their father lowered Hikari back into the crib.
Her brother mimed gagging behind their parents' back. Hikari cackled, though it was more of a high-pitched squeal on her baby self. He grinned at her, picking her up and rushing from the room so that she wouldn't have to witness anymore of the mushy scene.
Damn did she like her brother. Somehow, Hikari had a feeling that for the first time in all her lives, she was going to be pampered as a child.
Deidara was four. He knew that he was known as a genius to many, entering the Academy at the start of the year and was due to graduate in a year or two. He loved his parents and his little sister, Hikari. But while his sister had proved to be smart, probably smarter than him, Deidara knew that she wasn't in any way just a genius.
Hikari knew things that he didn't, that even Mama and Papa didn't. She set off his ingrained 'danger' senses ever so often. He loved her, but she was scary in a strange 'I can ruin you' kind of way.
This observation of Deidara was further cemented a year later when he had accidentally bitten off the wing of her owl plushie, Mukurou. Mama had brought Hikari out into Iwa one day, and for some reason, Hikari had been attracted to the white owl that had been sitting on display. Given that Hikari was usually 'good', Mama had bought it for her. Hikari had then affectionately named it Mukurou.
She had it for about a month, even going to great lengths to keep Mukurou clean, when Deidara accidentally bit it while holding on to it, and in a rare moment of clumsiness, ripped the wing clean off.
There was a moment of silence. Hikari went shock still. (She still had the ingrained instincts of a one-year-old, damn it.) Then she pitched what Deidara would call a Nightmare of a tantrum. She wailed, even breaking out the waterworks. Deidara stumbled back nervously, still holding onto her owl.
Then, she threw seeds at him. Seeds that quickly sprouted into large plants the size of his head in mere seconds. The plants had mouths with sharp teeth, and had acid dripping out of the openings.
Deidara would swear in the future, that they were definitely not Genjutsu. He had a very healthy respect for his baby sister though, and it took him a solid week to stop cringing at the sight of her.
Her illusions were different from this 'genjutsu'. 'Genjutsu' affected the senses, a bastardised version of illusions. Her illusions affected the body entirely by tricking it to believe that it was there. That was how Mukuro had managed to convince Chrome's body that there were still organs in her body. In other words, her illusions differed from genjutsu as they could directly affect the body, something the ninjas in this world had yet to find a counter to. Honestly, ninjas were so caught up with their chakra that they forgot the most important thing: willpower. If you believed that her illusions were not real enough, they wouldn't affect you.
With that conclusion, she realised that in this world, she had absolute power; she was its God. After all, as Mukuro had once said: the whole world is an illusion. She just had to find a way to twist it to her liking. Ever so slightly, ever so subtle, until it was in her complete control. What could these shinobi 'illusionists' do that a real illusionist couldn't?
She smiled inwardly and began planning. To learn how to deceive, to pretend not to know, to trick others right under their noses, to know, observe and alter the world around you such that no one could know what was real and what wasn't. She knew these simple rules of being an illusionist.
How could those 'Genjutsu Masters' call themselves illusionists, when none of them knew that illusionists were meant to be utter realists that could never wallow in denial; that illusionists were always meant to downplay themselves from a ferocious beast to a harmless insect, that illusionists were not meant to be seen or known.
She had let her first brother naively believe that she could conjure plants out of nothing. He had believed that it was an illusion at first (rightly so), but was soon aware of how 'real' those plants could be. She had left it at that. He didn't know that she could summon armies of them. He didn't know that she could alter reality by just casting a simple illusion. And for all that she felt undeniable love to her brother, he would never know that she could coerce and make anything with a mind believe and follow her to her own whims.
At the end of his fifth year, Deidara proudly showed off his hitai-ate to his baby sister. Hikari looked up from the history book she was engrossed in and up at him when he had come barrelling home. (Which was pretty impressive given that their village was an hour's walk from the gates of Iwa, and that he wasn't panting at all.)
"I graduated! I'm a genin now, imoto." (Given the fact that he hadn't actually paused to think about bragging to his parents, but his one-year-old sister, it actually showed how close they were and how much Deidara actually respected her.) Hikari left that though process for later.
"That's great!" Hikari beamed at her brother proudly. And wasn't it? When they were five, Mukuro had been experimented on by his own parents, Entaka had been sold into slavery, beaten into submission, and Takao had been a starving street urchin busy learning how to wield a sword to defend himself after losing his family and almost dying himself to hundreds of near-fatal attacks. (Probably not the kind of 'great' Deidara was taking it, but learning how to kill people willingly, he had it good.)
Their parents would later come in sometime in the late afternoon, coming back from some shinobi/ kunoichi mission, congratulating Deidara, who was still proud of himself of making his sister proud of him.
Hikari had laughed at that thought, startling her entire family.
It was screwed up. Hikari admitted to herself. She was fucked up.
She had spent her second birthday refining on how to kill people in her mind. She practised her katas in the safe walls of her home, unknown to both of her parents. Deidara had an inkling, because he was smart. He had always been intelligent in that way. He paid more attention to her. He loved her, and respected her in turns.
She knew that he knew that she was more than just a child. Even the most realistic child genius wouldn't have the experience that she had. The experience in running an underground syndicate, the experience in hidden politics. A child genius wouldn't have known all the ways to kill someone. Neither would the child know how to manoeuvre someone into revealing all their cards unknowingly.
A life of a shinobi was dark, filled with all shades of grey.
But no shinobi had ever been her. No shinobi had ever singlehandedly destroyed an entire organisation, albeit a small one. No shinobi had ever stained their hands with the amount of blood she had. Her kill count from all her lives reached thousands. Hundreds, perhaps, but not thousands. Never thousands.
Hikari was twenty-five months old when she met a man. He was just sitting there, the only person in a small stall in her little village. She loved small villages. Everyone knew each other. Need to fix something? Go get that man three houses down the street. Want some good gossip? Visit that woman next door to have tea.
Hikari was bored, she would admit that. But she had sensed something in that man. Or maybe he was just interesting. Who wore heavy armour in broad daylight anymore?
So she had hopped onto the seat next to the man, ordered some yakitori, and asked very bluntly.
"Who are you?"
The man turned to look at her.
"Just a shinobi."
Like that wasn't vague or anything.
"I'm Hikari. Who are you?" She repeated.
"…Han." The man turned away from her to return to his food. Hikari pouted.
"So what do you do?" Hikari persisted. She wasn't going to let entertainment go so easily. Besides, Han was… different. Like he knew how it felt to be put in a nasty light.
"I'm a shinobi." Han repeated.
"I mean whaddya do? I know what shinobi are." Hikari shot the man the cutest glare she could manage.
"I am a frontal assault fighter." He said after a small sigh.
So he was strong. Few ninjas were ever used for frontal assault. Usually, jinchuriki were sent out. Ah. No wonder. Jinchuriki were rarely put in a good light, especially in Iwa. They were viewed as weapons, and were closely monitored. It was likely that there were shinobi somewhere in the village keeping track of him.
"Ngh." She made a small noise of comprehension.
How hard was it for someone to not be treated as a human being? If shinobi were considered tools, what would that make jinchuriki? Tools that were there to be thrown away at your very whims?
Hikari speared her yakitori harder than necessary.
It wasn't right. Jinchuriki never wanted to be demon containers. They were ostracised, most likely from birth. How many people had let their prejudice get the better of them and discriminated against them? How many lonely nights had these containers spent, to never have a shred of hope?
It was like Entaka all over again. Except that Entaka had memories of a previous life, she had Mukuro to help her. The only person this Han had was probably the other container lurking somewhere around Iwa.
"How hard is it?" She asked, voice slightly softer. Han glanced at her.
"It's the only life I've ever had." Ah. If Hikari had decided to take it a different way… She mentally gave a bitter smile.
"Life isn't fair." Hikari repeated. Life hadn't been fair to Takao. Life hadn't been fair to Entaka. Life hadn't been fair to Mukuro. But for once, life had been good to Hikari. And that was scary, because Hikari had never known better. She had never been pampered.
"You got it good kid." Han managed a snort from under that armour.
"I know." Hikari smiled just a little. And she knew. Three lives of pain taught her that. And she'll be damned if she ever took it for granted.
Han just huffed and shook his head. He probably thought that she was just spewing empty words, but she knew that she had his interest.
"Life of a shinobi is hard, but life of a jinchuriki is even worse." She spoke softly, in a way such that no one else could hear her.
"Smart kid." Han commented almost offhandedly. Hikari knew that he was anything but.
"Thank you." Hikari beamed. If her smile was a tad bit less cheerful, the man wouldn't know.
"Few people ever listen to the woes of a jinchuriki." Han stated it like it was a joke.
"Is that more than people who would listen to a kid?" Hikari asked. Han was intelligent. He had to learn how to read people because of the demon in him. He didn't care about age. That was what she had managed to derive from him so far. He didn't understand her like Deidara did. But-
"You are no kid. Young, yes. But you are not a child." Hikari quirked a smile.
"Really." Hikari drawled, finishing off the last of her food, just as a devious idea struck her.
"I'm bored, Han-nii. Let's play!" Hikari announced cheerfully, completely bypassing the serious mood. That took him off guard at least.
"Wha-"
Hikari shot him her best kicked-puppy expression. Han froze altogether. Hikari took it as her win, and dragged him off. What could she say? She was bored.
"Wait, wait. So everything that lives needs chakra to survive?" Hikari asked. They were a distance aways from her village. Somehow, she had managed to strong-arm Han into explaining the basics of a shinobi for her. His watchers were amused. Very very amused, she thought as she glanced in the direction of the poorly hidden snickers.
"Then why can't shinobi absorb chakra from the plants?"
"That's nature chakra." Han replied long-sufferingly.
"Do you even want to be a kunoichi?" He asked. Hikari paused. Did she?
"…I-I don't know." She replied haltingly. No, she would never stand to be under someone's rule. She would never be able to put the village before her brother. Her parents, if she had grown a strong enough attachment perhaps, but not her brother.
She glanced up at Han, who raised an eyebrow at her internal conflict.
"I… I want to travel. I want to see the world. I want to know what sights there are in the Elemental Countries and see them all. I want to… I want to tread out of the Elemental Countries."
"That's a bold proclamation."
"I know. That's why I want to get stronger, so that I can survive." Hikari clenched her fists. She knew she was weak in this life, so pathetically weak. Mukuro was the best illusionist. Entaka perfected the art of silent killing. Takao could single-handedly push back armies given enough weapons. Where did that leave her?
Hikari considered the fact that she was referring to herself and her various lives as separate people, even though they were essentially herself.
"…I think I'm having an identity crisis." Hikari mumbled. Han raised a barely visible eyebrow.