A/N: Yet another SI inspired by Dreaming of Sunshine. Hopefully the I can shake things up enough to things interesting.
Disclaimer: I don't Naruto or any associated characters, concepts, etc. I have also failed to obtain ownership of the power of cheese. I might own myself and I definitely own my OC's.
Prologue:
Wherein a Failed Ending Leads to an Unexpected Beginning
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
- Lao Tzu
"Nothing happens without the will to begin it."
- Dad
My death, like the life that preceded it, came and went without much notice. No one was more surprised than me when I woke up dead. After hanging around long to ensure that I was well and truly dead, and not caught up a particularly surreal dream, I went to [redacted] and was greeted by [redacted]. After that I was supposed to be [redacted], but something went wrong, there was a lot of [redacted] yelling at [redacted], and I ended being [redacted]. That didn't work and the next I knew I was a being born all over again.
It was weird, experiencing my own birth. Weird and terrifying. There was lots of pain, yelling, and crying. Most of the crying came from me. At least I thought it was me. It was later after everything had calmed down, when I'd finally been handed to the woman who seemed to be my new mother, that I realized what was wrong. The fear I'd been feeling up till now didn't go away just because I'd been brought to the woman who'd carried my new body for the last nine months. But from somewhere within my new self a strange sense of joy sprang up out that felt off somehow. Disconnected? Yes, disconnected, that's what it felt like.
As the days went on two things became painfully obvious. The first was that I couldn't understand a word that anyone said. The language sounded like Japanese or Chinese. I couldn't tell which and it didn't really bother me. It'd be years before anyone expected me to talk to them after all, I'd have plenty of time to learn. No, the thing that bothered me the fact that this body…
This body wasn't mine. It wasn't very obvious at first, especially with all of the panic surrounding the birth, but there was definitely someone else in here. He wasn't much at the time. Just a bundle of instincts and emotions. Whatever it was that went wrong in the afterlife didn't simply fail to wipe my mind before placing me here. It failed to find a vacant body as well. Since there wasn't much I could do from where I was, I ended up waiting. And watching.
I watched as the boy's parents spoke to him, and each other, in whatever language they speak here: His mom had blond hair that fell down behind her back – I couldn't tell the length from my current angle – and a kind looking face. Her face was kind of rounded, with blue eyes and a nose. It was a very nosy nose, like the kind of nose you'd have if you had a nose. The baby's father had dark hair, black, I think, and dark eyes, also black, I think, a slightly pointy chin, and a nose.
I watched as the boy received what assumed to be his name: Nishimoto Shoyo.
I watched as he was taken out of the hospital and brought home: his family lived in a desert city. Their house, like the rest of the buildings here, were made of clay. Nishi's eyes couldn't handle the sunlight well enough for me to make out anything else.
I watched as Nishi's excited parents showed him around there home: it looked fairly normal, from my limited perspective. They had a workshop in the back that was interesting. I mean, normally I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but it looked like this was used to make some weird looking manikins. Some of which had blades and other suspicious things mounted on them. The tone Nishi's mother used to introduce the place had a "this-will-be-yours-one-day" vibe to it, but that may have been wishful/paranoid thinking on my part.
For his part, Nishi was hungry. While he enjoyed the feeling of being moved around and seemed to be picking on his parents' excitement about his new surroundings, he was still hungry and that took precedence over everything else. So he decided to inform his parents of his new desire and I decided to find out if I could somehow stop using his senses. The answer was yes and the silence was wonderful.
Over the next couple months, I got used to my new existence as Nishimoto's spiritual hitchhiker. While I couldn't influence anything directly, I could communicate with him. By directing my thoughts at the newborn I could a sense of confusion and fear. After my third attempt he started crying, and I decided not to try again until he was old enough to understand me.
I also managed to figure out where I was. Between the workshop, the desert town, and Nishi's mother's change into a very familiar flak vest and headband, it didn't take long to figure out I was in the Village Hidden in the Sand. The tiny puppets that Nishi's mom liked to dangle in front of him using what were unmistakably chakra strings were also a dead give-away. Not that any of this helped me figure out when I was, but that was a question for another day.
One final note before I end my turn: chakra. I didn't seem to have any of it. I mean sure, I could feel it all around me. I could feel it in Nishi as charka coils grew and started cycling it through him. I could feel it in his parents, especially his mother. I could feel in the people around the house, in the nearby animals, and, with time, I could even identify the senjutsu chakra that seemed to permeate everything. But I couldn't sense any in myself. If I had to guess, I'd have say it was because I was a purely spiritual entity. Chakra requires an even mixture of spiritual and physical energy in order to exist. Even Yin and Yang chakra, formed with uneven mixtures, still require some amount of the opposite energy.
And with that said, I guess I'll let Nishimoto tell the next part.
A/N: Well there. After lurking around for years I've finally posted something of my own.
Things should start happening soon.
Please Read & Review. I'm really interested in finding out you guys think of this. In exchange I promise to get the next chapter up as soon as I can.
