Red, black and white. Three colors flashed in my eyes quickly in succession accompanied by searing pain before a light blinded me. My eyes slowly adjusted, allowing me to see the blurry outline of… holy crud. A giant? No. Wait, that's a person. I think.
Maybe I should back up. Hello. My name is Rachel Rernon. Or at least, it was. I know, I know. The alliteration is intense. Anyway, I am your average language student in their sophomore year of college. I was studying Chinese, Spanish, and French, having mastered Japanese and German. I was in the middle of a school year when my body decided it would be a good idea to develop a heart condition and up and die.
Heart attack. It's such a wonderful way to go, I know. I'll spare you all the bloody details and move on to my family and friends, or lack thereof. The only person I considered of any value in my 'past' life was my little brother, the cutie patootie he was.
Yeah. So. I died. And was… reborn! Surprise, surprise, because apparently, I have the luck to get reborn into a new life! Go me! Where my new life was? I had absolutely no clue. However, if I got lucky, then I would be reborn into the U.S. again, get raised by some wonderful parents, grow up, and forget this whole ordeal. But of course, no. I've never been that lucky.
So, back to the present, now that I've gotten over the shock of all the implications of being reborn, I'm honestly kind of excited to see where this leads and what my new life will be like. As long as I don't die of something stupid like a heart attack again, then I should be good.
Oh! A thought just occurred to me! What if I'm now an alien spawn! That's so cool! If only I could actually see my new… parents… ok, that's weird. New parents. I hope I can get used to calling them 'Mom' and 'Dad'… wait. What if we're not in a country whose language I know? That'd suck. I'd have to learn a new one. Not that that'd be so bad. Just expanding my knowledge is all.
My vision cleared and I saw my new mom, and even though the edges of her face were still pretty blurry, I could see one thing; she had glaringly bright red hair. 'Wow… Look at that! I hope my hair's red. Always wanted red hair.' I smiled brightly at her and tried to touch the beautiful red mop on my new mom's head.
She laughed. No, I don't think you get it. She LAUGHED. This woman, my new mom, was flipping BEAUTIFUL when she laughed. I gaped at her, and after a moment of her beautiful laugh, I joined in with the tiny voice I carried.
"Ne, Ne! Kei, we should name her Hitomi! She's got your left eye, ttebano!"
Japanese? No, wait, rewind, ttebano? Red hair. Brown eyes. Ttebano. Ttebane… Ttebayo! Holy Meep I'm in the Narutoverse. Crap. Crappity crap, crap. BUT THIS IS SO AWESOME! No! Wait! Crap! I'm going to be raised as a child soldier! Wait! But I get to have superhuman levels of strength through chakra, possibly meet some of my favorite charact- wait, they're people here… People all time, and just do some all around awesome crap. Deep breath. I can do this.
There. Much better. Ok. So, this is officially the most awesomely shitty thing that I have ever lived through (even if I technically died). Awesomely shitty. Yep. I'll go with that.
Oh. The entirety of what my mom just said hit me. SHE'S AN UZUMAKI! I AM NOW RELATED TO KUSHINA! WHOOHOO! (I think? Wait, but how does that make any sense? I thought the majority of them died...? I'll puzzle it over later.) Ah, what about my dad? Can I see him?
I twisted myself around in my mother's gentle yet firm hold to see my dad's face about a foot and a half away from my own. He had shaggy white hair with one teal blue eye and one light orange eye.
'Oh. My. Gosh. What have I done to deserve such beautiful parents? I hope I get at least half of each of their genes. My mom's hair and my dad's eyes. Hm. That'd be pretty cool, but blue eyes are a recessive gene. I've never seen orange eyes, but who are we kidding; this is Naruto!'
I smiled and reached out to my new father. He grinned and took my chubby, minutes old hand, and kissed my forehead. I bubbled happily. These were good people. I could make it through the hell-hole that this world was as long as I had someone on my side, and I got the feeling that these people would never be leaving as long as they had any say about it.
Time passed, mostly me sleeping and trying to stay comfortable, even though I wanted to scream in frustration. I loved my new parents, sure, but being a baby is infuriating. I couldn't do anything without assistance, I couldn't voice my concerns due to my voice being under developed, and every time I went to the restroom… well. Let's just say it's not the best feeling or smell. I can totally understand why babies cry so much. I however, managed to keep myself from making my parents too miserable. That… wasn't exactly something I could say I'd done in my first life. I had been an awful baby. My parents always said that I never would shut up. I made sure to change that this time.
Anyway, aside from my initial revelation that I was in the NARUTOVERSE OF ALL PLACES, I had received four confirmations of this now prevalent fact. One of them was chakra. My chakra was developing. I was about three weeks old when I felt a VERY uncomfortable feeling. It only got worse after a few days, and I bore the pain until I couldn't anymore. Then my parents took me to the doctor in the compound, and guess what? I was chakra hypersensitive. Not only to my own chakra, but to others' as well. It was handy to have, honestly. I could always tell where my parents were, and after the pain was over, I began working with my chakra. Plus, it made me pretty much immune to genjutsu.
Now, playing with chakra is fun. It's also a bit like playing with fire. One misstep, and you're screwed. I made sure to be very careful when working with it, and made sure I never became chakra exhausted. Because that sucked. Just being told about it was enough for me. I really didn't want to deal with something like that. Moving on, one day I managed to ping my mom with my chakra.
She rushed into the room and stood at the door, staring at me with wide open eyes. I smiled and tried to say her name, which, by the way, was Takara. Instead, all that came out was, "Ka!"
I frowned, but decided to use this to my advantage. I could say Kaa-chan now. Which I did.
Her face lit up like the sun when I called it out, and she came running over to me, picking me up and swinging me around. I got dizzy really easily, still developing and all that jazz, but her mood was infectious. She was laughing as she called my new dad in.
"Ne, Ne! Kei! She just said Kaa-chan! She just said her first word, ttebano!" Takara crowed.
Kei's surprised shout resounded from another room, "Already?"
He ran into the room and stared at me. I grinned at him, thoroughly enjoying their reactions.
He shook his head, "Smart girl! Can you say Tou-chan?"
"Ta… Tu… Tou… Tou-chan!" I replied, making sure to stumble a bit.
Takara nearly dropped me in her happiness. Both of us were laughing. She then said, "Good job, Hitomi, ttebano! Kaa-chan's proud of you!"
I beamed. Already making my parents proud at the grand old age of 3 weeks old, and I had no intention of stopping.
A few days later, my mom took me for a walk through the compound. Compound might not be the right word, though. It was more like a beautiful little city. As Takara walked through the streets, she got stopped and congratulated frequently, people constantly asking to see me. I grinned at the big, still sort of fuzzy faces, and babbled some gibberish, laying on the baby cuteness thickly. And I was a pretty darm cute baby. I had my mom's hair, just like I wanted, and it was already down to my shoulders (though Takara usually pulled it up into pigtails. She would always squeal that I was too cute for my own good, and I must admit, I agreed), and had my dad's orange eye. I was officially a fall-colored baby.
Walking through the streets in this manner, I soon learned that my father was the patriarch's brother, and that the clan I was born into had a kekki genkai. What the kekki genkai was, however, I wasn't sure, as no one seemed to have it. Not that that would ever stop me from finding out. The majority of the clan was either Uzumaki or Kanashimi. My parents had decided to hyphenate our names, so I was officially Kanashimi-Uzumaki Hitomi.
I also gained a new nickname. 'Tomi-chan'. Honestly, I had never had a nickname before. Rachel just didn't work as well as most names for nicknames. Honestly, I quite liked my new nickname, and decided that it suited me well.
A year or so passed. It was my birthday. I had thus far managed to make it seem like I just picked up spoken language easily, and I was already 'learning' to write by my birthday. Not to mention, I had made friends! Well, more like crib-mates, but that was beside the point. I had never had anyone like that in my 'past' life, and I hadn't thought I would have had any in this life either. Well, looks like the universe is out to prove me wrong.
My birthday was pretty fun. Just for giggles, I decided to shove my face into the cake, after blowing out the candles and taking them out of the cake, of course, with my pudgy little cutesy hands. I still couldn't walk. My legs were just too underdeveloped. But that didn't stop me from crawling everywhere I could. I digress. The cake tasted good, and everyone got a good laugh from my antics, including me. The way the icing felt on my face was just too funny not to laugh at.
The next year went by in the blink of an eye, and I was able to walk, as well as read, and was showing off the fact that I had just managed to stick a leaf to my forehead to my dad when my mom walked out of the restroom and hugged my dad in a rib-crushing embrace.
I cocked my head at her, and wondered what she was so happy about when the very, very faint signature of chakra came from my mom's belly. I was immediately up and walked over to my mom. I poked her stomach.
"What's in Kaa-chan's tummy?" I looked at them, wide eyed, asking a question I already knew the answer to.
"Your sibling, ttebano!" Takara replied happily.
"Si… bling?" I asked, blinking owlishly as if I didn't know what that meant and wasn't internally flipping out that I'd have a younger sibling again in this life.
Kei was completely shell-shocked, so it was left to Takara to tell me what she meant.
"Ah! Like your friend, Mira's little sister, ttebano!" Takara smiled at me.
"Ooh! So, I get a little person, aa?" I asked her.
Kei laughed, and Takara joined him while I adopted another confused expression, "Nani? What are Kaa-chan and Tou-chan laughing about?"
"Just…" Kei shook his head, "Yes. You will get a little person."
"Yay! I wanted a little person! Is the little person a Tou-chan or a Kaa-chan?" I asked, cracking up internally at my use of the words.
As I thought, my oddly worded question sent the two of them into hysterics.
"Pbfht it's hahaha a girl or a boy pht, Tomi," Kei wheezed.
"Oh. Well, is it a girl or a boy, then?" I asked, having barely managed to keep a straight face.
"We don't know, and we won't know until it decides to come out, ttebano!" Takara grinned.
"Ok, aa!" I smiled, "Ooh! If it's a… boy, then can we call him Sekki?"
"Sekki? Why Sekki, Tomi?" Kei asked.
"Mm, well, because sekki is a pretty color! It's like fire! Full of lifey stuff! And fire's always moving! I like Sekki," I nodded sagely.
Takara giggled, "I think Sekki would be a lovely name for a little boy, ttebano. What do you say, Kei?"
"I like it, too. All right, Tomi, Sekki will be his name if it's a boy," Kei grinned easily.
I clapped my hands, delighted, "Kay! I'll be the best ne'e-chan ever, aa!"
"Ttebano!" Takara crowed, sweeping me up.
The due date was here! I was two and three fourths-ish, and my second little brother was here! I couldn't wait! I loved little kids. Saying I was happy was like saying Naruto was ok with ramen.
Kaa-chan's labor was a couple hours long, during which I shamelessly fell asleep. It was the middle of the night, after all. I was woken up about an hour later, and walked into the hospital room. I saw the bundle of blankets my mom was holding, and immediately ran over to see. I pulled back the edge of the blanket hiding my little brother's face from me, and grinned at what I saw blinking at me with a blue and a brown eye. The little wisps of hair on his head were white, his little baby face was wrinkled, and he was crying. But he was perfection. I looked up at my mom, wordlessly asking to hold him. She allowed me, and I made sure to hold his head properly. He was heavy for me, but that was ok. I could deal with that. I'd just have to build up muscle mass. And get bigger.
He had stopped crying when I took him, and as he stared up at me, he sniffled. I smiled at him and said, "Welcome to the world, Otouto-Sekki!"
I looked up at Takara and Kei who were smiling at me, "And to our family!"