Death is strange, I thought.

Everyone's thinks you will go to some version of heaven or hell, some religions have reincarnation but I was christian. So... I don't think option three applies to me.

Either way, when I died I didn't find myself burning or standing in front of the pearly gates, no, I was floating. Oh I did panic at first, I knew that if I was feeling something then that meant that I was still alive. I panicked because the last living memories I had were of me being crushed as my car was hit and folded over by a 40-ton semi truck.

Then I thought i was still alive and my body was in so much pain that it's simply made me go numb to the point where I wouldn't feel the folding agony. But then I realized if I was numb then I shouldn't feel warmth, have the sensation of being suspended in an unknown place.

That was when I started to believe that I HAD died and was simply a consciousness floating in the void, waiting till I made peace with my death and passed on.

I continued to believe this till I started to feel others around me. Not in a physical sense but simply as an awareness of there being life forms other than my own around me. I tried to look for these lives but panicked again seeing only black, I feared I had gone blind or lost my eyes.

After I calmed down again, I discovered that while focusing slightly on that sense I could see a humanoid shape in the same location that I sensed the life-forms.

They were just human shapes, most of them giving off a simple glow like soft candle lights. Others had purples, reds, and blues mixed in. there was also a repeated pattern of yellow, and a good number that had a harsh white light surrounding them.

As if answering an un-asked question, my brain told me one word.

souls

I was seeing peoples souls.

I tried moving forward as if to make contact, but was restricted buy something I can only describe as being similar to a rubber ball. Upon closer inspection of my strange prison, I found myself to be inside the soul of another, and based on my position... It came as a horrible realization that I was inside a womb, in other words I was being reborn.

With all adult memories intact apparently.

Seeing as I never really did keep track of time, the only way I knew that I was going to be born soon was the fact that my current living-space was slowly getting to be too small.

I tried not to think about it, what would have to happen to be born.

However I could not stop the tightening of my temporary home nor the VERY uncomfortable feeling of being pushed through a rubber tube.

It was traumatizing.

It was actually remembering the genuinely terrifying experience of being birthed. Add in the fear of suffocation as well as being squeezed to the point of pain which reminded me of my death.

That made my own soul take action, because apparently I could do that. Not that I realized this at the time, seeing as I just experienced the miracle of life from a baby's viewpoint.

I couldn't see where I was but that was a given seeing as infants are basically blind right after birth, but there was no mistaking the blindingly bright golden aura around the person I can only assume is my mother.

She was afraid, genuinely terrified, of what I couldn't tell but, I would not lose my mother again if I could help it. Even if the first time wasn't actually my fault.

Thus my desire to insure my new families survival, made a large dome-like shield around the larger body holding mine.

The shield i learned later in life was actually my soul, being...projected?

And just in time apparently because shortly after it went up, my Dome of protection was assaulted.

That is the point where I passed out.

Hatake Sakumo

As a successful jounin of the Hidden Leaf Village, Sakumo can say that he is quite skilled at problem solving. However the dilemma he was currently faced with was not something easily dealt with, no, this issue would not be resolved in a normal fashion. Sometimes obstacles in life can be removed with a quick knife thrust, or a well- timed Jutsu. However problems that fall into an area where the moral compass is necessary, are a lot more difficult to bypass.

This was the scenario he was currently watching from afar.

There appeared to be a full Squadron of chunin level Ninja, with at least four jounin mixed in the ranks. All the Shinobi currently engaged in battle, we're attacking a large golden sphere with what might be a woman inside.

No progress was being made on destroying the protective orb, but the attacks still persisted.

Sakumo did not know who was inside the sphere, but he didn't think it was fair for anyone to be ganged up on by this many skilled Shinobi.

The fact that he didn't want the Iwa-nin to get their hands on what they obviously wanted desperately, was irrelevant.

The woman was special so he decided to help her.

By the time he dispatched all enemy nin, and the shield actually lowered, he realized it was too late to save the new young mother.

And she must have just given birth to the infant she was holding, if the fatigued look and suspicious lump of something was anything to go by. But although he didn't actually know any details about childbirth, he knew that losing that much blood was not good.

And by the look on her face she knew she wasn't going to make it.

The next bit is the real issue however.

Here he was ass-deep in Iwa territory, just coming back from spying, being begged by an Iwa shinobi to take her child and bring it somewhere safe.

Among her desperate pleas he heard that the child apparently had no father, or at least none alive he assumed, and that her name would be tamashi.

From what he could sense there was barely enough chakra to keep the infant alive, so there would be no benefit to the hidden leaf on a military standpoint. Even though the woman had a fairly large reserve in his professional opinion.

Taking everything into consideration, he should just turn and leave. Because really, why should he help an enemy from the village his own is at war with.

However he cannot unsee the sheer desperate look in her eyes, as she begged him to save her child.

In the end his heart won out over his head, and he walked from the dead woman in the clearing with a child in his arms. Mentally deciding what his story would be to the Hokage, once he got the hell out of stone country that is.

Thus the image of Hatake Sakumo, respectable jounin of the leaf. Returning from a mission with an infant wrapped in his jacket, was not one the gate guards would soon forget.

Neither would anyone who saw him on the street as he walked towards the hokage tower.

Apon reaching his esteemed leader, he spun the story of finding an abandoned child on the borders of the land of fire while on his way home from a mission.

Which resulted in the infant promptly being dumped into konoha's sadly filling orphanage.