AN: Inspired by Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine. I don't own the Narutoverse. I am officially crazy for making a self insert.

Lesson Number 1: When in doubt, shut the hell up.

Chapter 1

If there was one thing that I had learned in life, it was that I was an anomaly. Not the kind like extra-terrestrial or trans-dimensional or any of that crap, but the mentally off kind. I wish that I could say that I was completely sane. Or that I was completely normal.

But no, my truthful gene holds me back, and finding myself in a different, allegedly fictitious world, threw the thought of sanity right out the window. Not sure if I minded.

I guess I could be considered an anomaly in the Narutoverse; appearing out of nowhere and knowing so many S-ranked secrets and all. I definitely didn't want to end up in another world when I dreamt about an ominously echoing voice that may or may not have been some omnipotent being.

Just my luck that I would end up actually in the Narutoverse when I woke up. I am epically unlucky on a scale that would rival Tsunade. But maybe I should start at the beginning. It will begin to make sense from there. Probably.

I wasn't that old when I was transported into the Naruto world. I was sixteen, a nerd, a musician, an older sister, a recently turned junior, and an art lover. I was a gamer, one of the few female varieties, and was a fan of simplistic things. I liked darker colors, wearing long striped socks, loved hoodies and scarves, and absolutely hated the color called pink. I kept relatively good grades, had a knack for understated sarcasm, and a lazy demeanor.

I was committed to any group or club I joined, but didn't take on any extra jobs or leadership roles if I could help it. I always said that the effort wasn't worth it, but it was more like the stress would make me go gray early. I had a small group of really good friends at school that often teased me about being like Shikamaru; a lazy genius. I definitely didn't agree with the genius part, and I told them so. They said I was in denial; I didn't know whether to deny it further and prove them right or say nothing and admit they were right, which they weren't.

My life wasn't complicated or busy. I went to school, I had a good family, I had a little brother, I read books a lot and learned the art of multitasking by running into several doors, poles, people, and walls while reading. I tend to do that on a regular basis, though. It's not like I don't walk straight either. I just end up misjudging my distance between a door and my arm or a bench and my leg, but I could definitely read and keep up a conversation at the same time.

Dedication to my super-nerd status has helped me achieve that.

As a super-nerd and a less-than-rabid fangirl of the Naruto franchise, I often dreamt of randomly entering the universe with no problems whatsoever. So when I came home after a music gig I did with some of my friends and crashed on the couch and dreamt of falling into Konoha from the fucking sky, I paid no particular attention to it.

Big mistake.

The first thing I saw in my dream was a bright white expanse of absolutely nothing. I was standing but not really standing somewhere in or on the white area and I probably should have started panicking when an ominous echoing voice spoke to me suddenly.

"You must choose."

'Eh? Choose what?' was my immediate thought.

"Between fiction and reality."

'Oh, shit this thing can read my thoughts!'

"What is your choice?"

"W-well, I like fiction more than reality." I said aloud thinking about nonfiction versus fiction. "But I prefer reality over fiction though I really don't like it all that much." The voice was quiet for a while.

"What do you choose?" Whatever it was sounded slightly impatient. Maybe.

I sighed. "Real fiction or fake reality. Whatever floats your boat." I answered sarcastically. It was both specific enough to answer and vague enough to not answer the question. It also served me two purposes; it allowed me to gauge the Ominous Voice's intentions and stall the situation slightly. I don't know why I did that, but I did.

I don't think the Ominous Voice appreciated being messed with though.

"So be it. Human. Your new reality awaits." 'Say WHAT now?' I thought panicking slightly. It was too late to question aloud as I was thrown into another room, er... expanse and three images appeared before me. A stylized 'A', a dragon-like thing, and a swirly spade symbol. I immediately was drawn to the swirly spade as I recognized it as the symbol of the Hidden Leaf village and I reached out to touch it.

Another bad idea.

As soon as I touched it I was spiraling downward towards the earth like a dead bird. When my brain caught up with what my body was telling me, I realized that I was really falling, really fast. My stomach jumped to my throat and I did the only thing that came to mind.

I screamed.

I flailed my arms and legs trying desperately for some semblance of control as panic ran through my bloodstream like an adrenaline rush. Soon though my fear overrode my mind as I began to see spots and I felt myself lose consciousness.

That was when I expected to wake up. I fully expected to scream and practically jump out of my bed and onto the floor to my chaotically organized room. I would then slap a hand onto my blaring alarm clock and begin the day.

Logical right?

Well, I did wake up screaming. The pain was horrible, like being run over by a truck, burned all over and then frozen like a popsicle all at once. I was cold but my skin burned and I felt bruised down to the bone. I didn't realize what had happened right then, but I knew something had changed about me.

When my mind finally decided to reconnect with my surroundings, and I finally stopped screaming, I found myself lying in a small garden with a Japanese style pond complete with the running water bamboo contraption. I also found myself stark naked in the middle of a house that was clearly inhabited. My screaming brought attention to the residents of the house and soon I hear footsteps coming towards me.

Despite the aching pain in my body, I quickly and efficiently curled up on my side into a fetal position to save myself from total mortification and tried to collect my scattered thoughts. What had happened? Where was I? How did I get here? Was I in danger? What was I doing before I got here? Anything that could have helped me figure out what the hell the situation was.

Fear gripped my entire body tightly and I began shaking violently, my mind going into shock as the door directly in front of me slammed open to reveal a dark haired woman and man. A third voice came from inside the house but the man yelled back at the boy to stay inside. My mind was at a blank, purely operating on instinct and torn between two choices; fight or flee. Meanwhile, the woman approached me slowly, like an injured animal. I might as well have been.

"Shikaku, get a towel or something for the poor thing, and be quick about it." she said over her shoulder without breaking eye contact with me. My eyes darted to the man as he backed away inside cautiously before disappearing out of my sight. The woman stopped about two feet away from me and crouched down closer to my eye level.

"It's okay. No need to worry." she said gently with a small smile on her face. "We want to help." She extended her hand out towards me very slowly and I watched her every move without blinking. Just before she reached me I closed my eyes tightly and waited. And waited. And waited.

When I dared open my eyes, she was still there, unmoving. She just stayed there until I looked her in the eyes again. They were soft and comforting and I instinctively began to trust her. When she placed her hand on my arm, I flinched but I didn't pull away from her. I stared at her right in the eyes as she gently pulled me to my feet and blocked my exposed features with her body.

The man, Shikaku, walked into my view and I immediately tried to hide behind the woman without taking my eyes off of him. He walked up to the two of us calmly and held out a knit blanket to me. I hesitantly reached out and then quickly snatched the cloth away from him and eagerly wrapped it around my cold body.

He smiled a kind, crooked smile at me and then spoke. "You'll be alright. Let's go inside and get you some tea." I nodded silently, still trying to process what had happened when it hit me. Instantly I froze and looked up to the sky. It was dark, with stars twinkling brightly in the black expanse. I remembered dreaming of the Ominous Voice, then touching the Leaf symbol, spiraling downward and then... nothing.

'Did I just...?' I thought to myself. The woman and Shikaku looked up towards the sky when I stopped and then glanced at each other before nudging me inside the house. It was practically ten degrees warmer in there than the ice-world outside. I then spotted a roughly ten-year old boy, presumably the one Shikaku had yelled at early to stay indoors, sitting on a couch. He looked up at me as soon as we walked in and stared slightly in shock. I tightened my hold on the blanket uncomfortably.

"It's rude to stare, boy." Shikaku said. "Do something useful and go and fetch Inoichi for your old man." The boy looked at Shikaku, then back at me, then back at Shikaku and nodded.

"Y-yeah. Okay." he said.

I was then ushered away by the woman to a bathroom and given a bar of soap.

"We'll get you some clothes by the time you're done, sweetie. My name is Nara Yoshino. What's your name?" She asked.

I didn't know what to answer. I was no expert on making up names on a whim so I just ended up mashing together a new one that might not have made much sense.

"A-Ameko" I ended up stuttering out. Since I knew little to no Japanese and I didn't want to stand out horribly, the first thing that had come to mind when making up my fake name was 'rice candy', which translated to botan ame. Ame meant 'sweet' as well as 'rain' in some cases and I added ko, which meant 'child', on the end just to make the name seem more traditional. I just mashed the two together and hoped that I wouldn't seem too foreign to be thrown out. In any case, if Yoshino thought it was odd, she did nothing to show it. She just nodded sweetly and closed the door on her way out.

I ran the shower as warm as my body could stand in its popsicle state and my mind began to slow down enough for me to assess the situation clearly enough.

I began a step by step analysis of what had happened while mechanically washing up. I went to sleep on the couch. I dreamt of a white room and an echoing voice which I probably pissed off with my non-conclusive answers. I then was in a room with symbols. I touched the Leaf one. I was falling down, towards the ground. I woke up naked in a Japanese style house. Yoshino helped me into the house. Shikaku gave me a blanket. The boy, probably their son, ran out to get someone called Inoichi-

My thought process froze there as the names began registering in my mind. Yoshino. Shikaku. Inoichi. They were characters in the Naruto anime. And they were currently helping me out by getting me clothes and giving me shelter.

What. The. Hell?

I ran through the names I had heard again and again, but I just came closer and closer to the answer I feared. I blinked as I realized in horror. 'I'm in the Naruto universe?!' I thought. I quickly finished washing and dried off thinking about how lucky I was to be in the English speaking one, that is until I looked in the mirror. I probably could have jumped out of my skin at what I saw.

I wiped away the condensation and found myself gazing into the eyes of a stranger. She was barely ten, had really short pin straight black hair, a pale complexion, freckles, and the widest, brightest green eyes I had ever seen. It took me a moment of disbelief to realize that the person in the mirror was me. I tentatively reached up to touch my face and she did the same thing that I did. I smiled to see my teeth and a full set of relatively straight adult teeth appeared in the mirror. I ran a hand through my hair and felt the sleek black strands slide way too easily through my fingers. I had been de-aged, shrunk, and forcibly transformed into a preteen that had absolutely no resemblance to me.

I might have screamed again, if Yoshino didn't decide to show herself with my new clothes a second later. I slipped on the undergarments, dull brown pants and black shirt mechanically as I recalled my former physique. I had lighter brown hair that had a slight wave to it. I had it cut short, in a modified pixie cut with layers. I was darker of skin, with a set of dark brown almost black eyes. I had no facial anomalies except for a scar on my cheek from when I fell out of a tree when I was eight.

I wasn't anything special. I had no outstanding figure or big bust. Just a glance, and no one would recognize my old self unless they spent a lot of time with me. I was one of the faceless in the crowd, and I liked that. I didn't like the attention.

Now though... my eyes alone would attract all sorts of attention with their vibrant color.

I walked out of the bathroom like a zombie; half aware of everything and half too shocked to attempt anything. I leaned my weight on the wall to my left, afraid that my legs would give out underneath me. There was a subtle weight in the air that seemed both warm and dangerous, comforting and hyper attentive, and so obviously foreign that I had to focus on my breathing just to keep myself from freaking out. It worked a little bit. But the effort and concentration it took ultimately wasn't good for my traumatized body.

"Yoshino-san?" I called out weakly. She appeared in my view and I practically collapsed into her arms, completely exhausted both mentally and physically. I vaguely remember her calling out my name several times before promptly falling out of consciousness.

I honestly expected to wake up then too. I dreamt about the white room again and I remembered calling out to the Ominous Voice.

"Hey! What the fuck is going on here?! When am I going to wake up?!" I had fallen from the sky, had my physical makup rearranged, and woken up in a different world. I had had enough. This dream was way too damn real. Way too insane. Way too scary for me. I was determined to wake up and go about having my summer vacation enjoying how anime was fiction and how falling from the sky into said fictitious world would never happen. Where I was content to know my rather bland but positively safe life.

"Heeeeeeeyy!" I yelled out into the empty white. I waited a while but no answer came echoing back to me. I slumped down to my knees and began to cry. Call me weak, call me a baby, but I was scared out of my mind, in an unfamiliar place, and I wasn't waking up.

"I want to go home!" I sobbed. I received no answer.

"Please!" My voice echoed desperately into the expanse. I covered my face with my hands and tried to calm down so I could hear anything that could have been an answer back to me.

There was nothing but silence.

When I woke up again, I was surrounded by white walls and bright lights. The smell of antiseptic reached my nose and I figured out where I was. I was in the Hospital. One thing that I knew about hospitals were that they were utilitarian and way too clean for my tastes. People didn't live in hospitals, no matter how many people came in and out of them or how long they stayed. That's how it worked. You come into the hospital half-or-so dead or alive and they turned you half-or-so dead and then left the building slightly more alive than you used to be. But no one lived in the hospital, it wasn't a place for the living.

I shifted slightly, trying to take in more of my surroundings and get my body moving. I tested each one of my limbs and joints for movement; neck, shoulders, wrists, elbows, fingers, spine, hips, knees, ankles, and toes. Satisfied, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and then sat up fully rubbing my eyes to clear away the bothersome blurriness.

"Ameko?!" I heard someone say from my left. My gaze darted up to the figure standing in the doorway. It was Yoshino. She was at my side in an instant with a medic right behind her. She cupped my face and examined me and then grabbed my shoulders and did the same. "Are you alright, child? Do you know who did this to you?" she asked.

"I... I don't know." I said truthfully.

I looked at the medic and he stared at me like I was the strangest thing.

"What happened?" I asked him. "Is there something wrong?"

"You're coherent?!" he practically squeaked. I sent him a puzzled look.

"What kind of question is that?" I asked. He said nothing but opted to begin an examination on me instead. His hand glowed green and I stared as I felt the cool and refreshing feel of the medic's chakra pouring into my body. It was calming, and I was tempted to close my eyes but the anxious look in both Yoshino's and the medic's eyes stopped me.

"I-incredible!" The medic stuttered out. "Completely utterly impossible but absolutely fascinating! She went from having absolutely no chakra system at all to having a completely normal system with no irregularities within 72 hours!" He whispered half to himself. Both Yoshino and I let out exclamations of disbelief. I think they were for different reasons though. "Chakra flow is normal. Reserves are low but recovering. A-and the system is completely undamaged."

My first thought came out of my mouth without any sort of filter.

"What the fuck?!" Yoshino sent me an incredulous glare like she wanted to smack me that I just barely ignored. The cogs in my brain began turning and I couldn't help but think of the dimensional possibilities that could have landed me in the Land of Crazy full of assassins and demons and other things that probably could kill me by looking at me. Seals."Did you check me for seals of any kind while I was passed out?" I asked the medic intensely.

"W-well, I uh..."

"I need to know!" the medic looked at Yoshino and they shared a look before asking me seriously.

"Why?"

All the pent up fear and anger practically exploded from me at that.

"Why? WHY?! Because I freaking fell from the sky, woke up in a different world in a different body, and suddenly have a chakra system when I never had one in the first place!" I screamed at him. "I want to know what the fuck happened to me, who did it and why the hell it was me!"

"You're not the only one." A third voice spoke from the doorway and all three of us looked up to see the Third Hokage in all his old person glory. "We did find a fading seal that housed the kanji for transform and transfer on your back. By the second day it had disappeared and today, you are found to have your missing chakra system when the medics were positively horrified that you had no such thing during your primary diagnosis."

Again I couldn't help myself.

"Holy shit." I cursed again. This time Yoshino did smack me upside the head. "Ow..." I stated without inflection as I sent her a glare then continued. "Well this situation is pretty messed up if you ask me. I only know vaguely how I got here. And even that doesn't sound sane." I said as I rubbed the back of my sore head.

"After all this has happened I don't think anything is out of the question now." The old man said gently.

"You say that now." I growled darkly. "I haven't even told you the craziest thing yet." My voice held a slightly sarcastic bite to it that everyone but the medic seemed to pick up on.

"You'll just have to tell us, then." the Hokage said smiling at me. My mind immediately shot that down.

"I can't." I said.

"Can't or won't?" He shot back.

"Both." I answered. "Can't because the repercussions could create a nasty paradox that could ruin this dimension, its timeline, and those connected to it and won't because I'm not cruel enough to want that to happen."

The Hokage narrowed his eyes at me. "You speak of time-travel?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Trans-dimensional time-travel. Which, in my opinion, is exponentially worse than the first." I said, getting into a speaking rhythm as my anger focused into sarcastic, pessimistic logic. "But I can tell you this. The upcoming generation of ninja is going to be crucial in the events that may or may not come in the near future."

The old man considered what I had said and then said, "This is not something to be discussed here. When you are released from the hospital tomorrow, I'll have an Anbu escort you to further... negotiations." He then turned to leave.

I didn't like the sound of that. So I did something stupid and stuck my opened my mouth. "You can't force anything out of me through interrogation. Not through torture or through mind reading. I'd sooner die than damn anyone to a paradoxical oblivion. You can't do anything to me that would make me betray that information."

My last sentence got his attention as he exited.

"You would protect this world, even if it isn't yours?" He asked carefully.

"Even if it's the hardest road to take, I'll protect this reality with my life. There is only get one chance to live after all. There is no such thing as a do over after death and why would I take such a gift away from people who deserve the life they live?"

Everyone around me seemed stunned at what I said, but so was I. Where had that come from? I knew that the Hokage was thinking about it very deeply.

"So you'll help?"

"I won't breathe a word about what I know, but I sure as hell will prepare what I can beforehand. It's the only thing I can do."

He was silent for a while. "So you swear to use your knowledge to help this village?"

Instead of answering straight I spoke like I had rehersed a line of a play or something. "'Damned if you do and damned if you don't. So let your 'yes' mean 'yes' and your 'no' mean 'no'. A promise is a promise without a doubt and friends are people I can't live without.'"

The Hokage left promptly after I finished and I couldn't help but wonder what I had just gotten myself into.

AN:I was wondering how long I could get a chapter to be when this thing just kind of grew on the paper... Like a bacteria culture. Please tell me if I have a Mary Sue! 'Cause then I can rip her to shreds and try again.