Hi guys, I haven't felt the urge to write in some time and now am just starting to get back into it.
I wanted to test out this story after a dream I had to see if it catches any interest.
Just a little warning though it heavily contains spoilers so if you're new to Naruto or haven't known about the undercurrent of Konoha then please do not read! Watch the show or read the manga then come back to this!
Also if anyone is willing to become a beta for me that would be great as I often miss the silliest spelling mistakes. Just inbox me if you're interested.
Enjoy! (Also disclaimer this story is based on the brilliant work of Masahashi Kishimoto which I do not own in any way.)
Prologue: The Awakening
No one remembers much of their own childhood preceding a certain age. I always thought that this is because they hadn't quite formed an identity for themselves yet or perhaps they were simply too busy working out how to be people to store memories yet.
My first true memory was when I turned two and my mother made a giant chocolate cake so when I had my second birthday again surrounded by my family at a small gathering I worked out that something wasn't quite right. The house I was seeing was wrong, the small hands I suddenly had were wrong, the faces that smiled at me, the smell in the air, the salty food I tasted and little pieces of my life that I hadn't noticed until they were changed were wrong. My perception shifted and when I raced to my bedroom that was not really my bedroom I came to the realisation that I wasn't the me I had been yesterday. I was someone else and I was in great danger, for I lived in Konoha under the rule of the third Hokage. The honourable Sandaime who was rumoured to be retiring soon and passing the hat to the war hero The Yellow Flash. This meant that the Kyuubi incident had yet happened but that is not what truly put lead into my heart. I knew that I probably could survive the Kyuubi attack since my compound was seen to still standing in the aftermath, what scared me was what was going to happen years later when my cousin grew into his legacy. For I was Uchiha Akiko and if I didn't prepare, I was going to be executed.
Memories were like a slow tide. They made themselves apparent then shifted to the back of my mind until the next memory floated forward. If I hadn't been an Uchiha I might have gone crazy. The bloodline limit in the family allowed easy compartmentalisation for when we received the Sharingan and so the influx of information I was receiving was accepted and sorted.
Officially, during this period after my second birthday I had developed a head cold and was out sick for a couple of days which my mother and father gave sympathetic looks and placed cooling cloths on my forehead. What was really happening was I was learning of a life that was mine but not mine. Of a girl who lived an average life in an average world and died and unfortunate death. She grew up happy if not a little lonely, she tried hard to make herself and achieved all she did through hard work, she aged and when she was 25 she made a mistake that cost her everything.
She wanted to be fast, surely it wouldn't hurt to speed up a little, she couldn't be late again...
SNAP! My eyes had flown open at my final memory. Everything was bright and clear. The memories I had received shifted and clicked into place in my mind. The final moments of a life I had seemed to have lived shifting back leaving a slight echo on my psyche. Tears began streaming down my face as I recalled the moments of her-my death.
A quick impact, a shattering of glass, a broken body...
I sat up and placed my hands over my eyes, which were stinging with my tears. Several moments passed and the stinging in one eye became a burn. Suspicious about what was happening I walked to the bathroom to see a red Sharingan with a single tomoe staring back at me. My other eye was still the dark Uchiha brown that almost seemed black and it was disconcerting to me to have what seemed to be a demon eye staring back at me through my childlike face.
I was slowly freaking myself out though as I could not for a fully recognise myself at all in the mirror. I was Akiko but I was also a full-grown woman in a world where shinobi were just men of in age past in a country that had moved on. I touched my straight black hair and remembered a softer brighter colour that hung lower and fuller. I smoothed a hand over my red eye and remembered lashes that weren't so thick and eyes not so slanted. Raising my arms I remembered a reach that would exceed that of my parents of this body. Lowering them again I stood back from the mirror and just examined the tiny body I was in. In doing so the red in my eye faded into a russet brown then faded to black leaving a pale girl-child with dark features and tear tracks down her cheeks. It registered that I was two but also twenty-five. I had a life of knowledge of which some would be inapplicable to this extraordinary world but it did leave me with the huge advantage. I also knew this world. This world that had been recorded in my other life. This world that I knew the future of. This world where I knew the treachery of my family but loved them all the same. My stomach churned and my eye burned red again, the tomoe inside spun lazily.
A shifting in the hallway snapped me out of my thoughts. I couldn't hear footsteps but that meant nothing in a shinobi family. Going to the sink I patted water on my face from the faucet and willed the red in my eye to fade. Nothing good would come out of an early activation if it were to be discovered. Take for example what will happen to cousin Itachi.
The sliding door slid open with a quiet hiss and my mother stepped through as the burning faded in my eye an I slouched with fatigue.
'Aki-chan you should still be in bed.'
She stepped up to me on silent feet and put the back of her hand to my brow.
'You are still a bit warm, why don't you go lie down and tomorrow I will wake you up for breakfast in the morning.'
'Yeth Kaa-san' I said with a slight baby lisp leaning slightly on the bathroom shelf.
My mother gave my ever increasing exhaustion a suspicious look and she checked my temperature again before hustling me to bed.
I made a couple of decisions that night as my mother left and I was drifting towards sleep.
1) I couldn't let it be known I had the Sharingan even partial as it was.
2) I had to keep my sudden adult intelligence under wraps and,
3) which, was the most painful of all, that I had to let events play out as much as possible or risk literally the entire shinobi world.
Around when I turned four my Aunt Mikoto announced she was pregnant.
I was thankful I had been sitting down at the time because suddenly the waiting game had been given a time restraint and I felt a little faint. I knew Sasuke would be a newborn at the time of the Kyuubi attack and that Naruto's birthday was some time in October so it only gave me a couple of months to enact my plan.
I had devoted myself to finding an alternative to the massacre but knowing that it was only a portion of a big pie I didn't know the ramifications if things went sour. Plus, I was four. I swiftly found that people do not listen to four year olds despite how mature they seem. I hadn't quite masked the fact I was an intelligent child but I was glad that I was soundly out shadowed by Itachi at this stage. I pre-emptively was given kunoichi training in the family style due to my apparent intelligence but without the Sharingan they wouldn't enter me early in the academy to my relief.
As Aunt Mikoto's belly grew my own churned with the knowledge of what my plan entailed. I had come to conclusion in light of the fact I could not change things in my current situation and I would not be given the chance to, as I would be killed 6 years from now simply for being an Uchiha.
I wanted to grow up so Uchiha Akiko needed to 'die'. But in a sheltered compound it is hard to put yourself in a convincing life-threatening situation but in a couple of months a giant furious chakra monster was going to go rampaging through the village. I was going to use the opportunity to just… slip away.
You might think it is the worst plan in existence but the Kyuubi attack was the trigger for years of mistrust built up in Konoha between the Uchiha and the Senju from as far back as the Sage of Six Paths. I would not have any other chance to fake my death. I would just be another casualty in a natural disaster and no one would look for me, no one would even think to look for me if I were to die there.
I swung my legs while sitting on the pier near the compound lake on a July morning and overheard the activity as the day arrived when Sasuke would be born. I let chakra burn in my stomach and seep up into my eyes. I had unlocked my left eye Sharingan after mimicking the chakra pathways in my right when I looked into the mirror with it activated. I had passed out afterwards, as the chakra drain was too much for my small body. Thankfully I had been practicing at night and my chakra was refilled to a level by the next morning that I could function despite the exhaustion and my secret was kept hidden.
Today though I was frivolous with my Sharingan as I scanned the compound. Today marked the start of the end of an age and I wanted to remember everything about it. The slight breeze over the lake, the bustle of people excited by new life, a nervous new brother banished to the front porch not knowing the price of his future. Today was a good day. Today was the last good day in a long time.
On October the 10th according to the Konoha village records I had been babysat at a friends house within the impact zone of the Kyuubi while most of my Uchiha family were out of the impact zone having been moved to a seperate compound away from the village proper.
My body was never recovered and my remaining parent mourned my death as my father had succumbed to wounds during a mission only a few months before. She was comforted by her sister Mikoto and her two nephews Itachi and Sasuke and soon resolved to live the rest of her life in dedication of the clan so that she may protect the family she had left.
Perhaps if I had understood the ramifications of this I may have not made my decision to leave so lightly. I wasn't to know that my mother was a key member of the coup d'etat and that the Uchiha was wiped out partly due to her grief over my death.
I wasn't to know and by the time I found out the Uchiha name was in shatters, my mask exposed to the world and my name was once more Akiko. But that is towards the end of the story and I'll get to that. But first I want to tell you of a lost and foolish child that bore the weight many, many poor decisions her shoulders- even some not her own. The only ambition she held was to destroy the Cycle of Hatred her family was cursed by and save as many of her clan as she could while trying to preserve the story of her other self intact. This is the story of Uchiha Akiko. This is the story of Aki-no-Shounin, This is the story of Himura Ringo. This is my story.
xx