I'm not abandoning WLGYL but I have put it on hold, this story is to help me work through my massive writers block on WLGYL. As for this story, updates with be erratic if not nonexsistent, enjoy.

Chapter 1

"It's just, can you believe them? I've only been back a week and their already dragging me into their problems!" cried Jamie Horwitz, before taking a fortifying sip of his beer.

We were sitting in the local VA, the only place to get liquor in a dry county, besides the moonshiner's that is. Jamie was barely 21, but he had just gotten back from his first tour in the desert so I didn't berudge him the beer. He deserved it, and I was hardly in any position to judge.

I was on my fifth burbon and it was barely eight o'clock.

"Well, no matter where you've been for the last four years, you're stil family. I reckon they think it's their right," I said reasonably, I could be very reasonable after a certain amount of alcohol entered my system.

"Their right?" Jamie screeched, I nudged his beer and he took a sip, it seemed to calm him down. "Grandad killed Doyle Franks, Bubba."

At that, I set down my glass. The Horwitzs' and the Franks' had had a long standing blood fued for the better part of the last three centuries. They were both criminal families, hands in meth, guns, weed, and prostitues, and they had been fighting over territory for as long as they'd been fueding. When the leader of the Horwitzs' clan offed a Franks there was bound to be bloodshed. Jamie had managed to stay clear of the business but he was still a Horwitz.

My connection to this was my late father had been a gun thug for Grandad Horwitz until he'd been gunned down by the late Harvey Franks over two decades ago.

I whisted, "That does make things complicated," I watched speculatively as Jamie moped. "I can't tell you what to do, Jamie. That has to be your decision."

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

I chuckled at his misfortune, "If it gets that bad you can always go back to base. You'll be safe there, and I know there's not a lot of love lost in your family." It was true, Jamie's mother had run off with a lawyer from the city and his father had blown himself up in his meth lab when he was three. He had been raised by his grandpa, and Lord knew that man was not an easy one to get along with. I had been serving for most of Jamie's childhood, but I had always made it very clear that if he needed me, I would be there for him. Even if it was just to talk, like today.

"But they're still my family," Jamie groused.

"Son, you ran halfway across the world to what many men call hell to escape that family." I was nothing if not blunt.

"That is a horrible thing to say."

"But I notice you didn't try to refute it."

Jamie took another sip of his beer, "Still a horrible thing to say, even if it is true."

I laughed quietly, "Enough about family, we have more things in common than that," at his blank look I rolled my eyes, "we're vets, dumbass."

Jamie winced, we were in the VA for christ's sake, "You want to talk about my time in the service?"

I looked at him blandly, "Not really, but I am curious if anyone else wants to get to talk." Jamie looked at me in confusion and I sighed, finishing my glass. "When I came back whenever I went into town people were always thanking me, chatting me up, wanting to talk about my time over there. It drove me crazy."

"Yeah, Francie, you remember her? She used to babysit me. Now all she wants is to get me to open up."

I waved down the barman for another bottle, "Yeah, when people come out they're usually of two minds of the experience. Some loved it, love to talk about, because that way they can relive it, like him," I gestured to Ol' Bill at the poker table, spouting off another one of his war stories. "Some can't talk about it. Takes them years to open up to their family. And some, like me, can only talk about it to other vets, because they seem to be the only ones that can understand."

Jamie nodded to his beer, "What was your time like over there? What did you do?"

I knew he was deflecting, he didn't want to talk about his issues so he wanted to discuss mine. I had had enough burbon that it didn't seem like that bad of an idea, "Well, you know I went to college," Jamie nodded. "Yeah, Marines paid for that. I got a degree in engineering, so thats what they had me do. Those terrorist might like soft targets but they didn't mind destroying some infrastucture while they were at it. So the Marines had me desiging routes for food and other supplies, make them easy to defend. They occasionally had me check out enemy buildings, find the weak point, the beam that you could place a fistful of C4 on and take down the block. But my absolute favorite part of the job were the water jobs."

"Water jobs?" Jamie asked speculatively.

I nodded, taking a swig, "In the desert there's a big demand for water so they'd either have to ship it in, which was expensive, or get a geologist and dig a well, which was less expensive. So the geologist would find the place to dig, and I'd figure out how to get to it, and then how to get it to the locals. Met a lot of intresting people, I found they take much kinder to the ones that bring them water than the ones that carry the giant guns."

"You liked them?" Jamie asked, "I couldn't even understand them."

I chuckled, "You gotta learn the language, Jamie. Or at least enough to get by. As it was I learned a lot about their culture, learned a thing a two about medicine and figured out how to fix a few of their dishes."

"You cooked with them?"

I leaned in conspiratorily, "You'd be amazed how much those Arabs like some good ol' fried chicken."

"So is that why you got kicked out? You spend so much time smoozing the locals that you turned into a bad soilder?"

"I was not a bad soilder, the only reason the let me go was that i stopped going to therapy."

"They sent you to therapy?" Jamie asked incrediously.

I shrugged and took another swig of my burbon, "They tried."

In Bulletville therapy was not considered highly, in fact it was reserved for those complete nutjobs who did something really crazy, like threatening to commit suicide and take out a couple dozen others, terrorist style. The sane ones just offed themselves. Most often in Bulletville the mentally unstable were kept out of the way or locked up for good, anyone else was just expected to 'get over it'. I went to college, I knew that probably wasn't the smartest tact, but it was so ingrained in my mind that I doubted I would ever change.

"Why would they try to get you to go to therapy?"

I downed what was left of my glass and poured another to the brim, "SOP for POWs."

Jamie choked on his drink, "You were captured? For how long?"

I looked down at the amber liquid in my glass, "Four months."

Jamie took another sip of his beer and thought over carefully what to say next, I appreciated that. "Why' they take you?"

"They thought I had some info I didn't. Wouldn't listen to me when I said I didn't know what they were talking about."

"How'd you get out?"

I took another drink, "They took me with a buddy of mine, they kept him alive because there was only so much they could torture me before I died and they knew it hurt worse when they hurt him," I stared at the table, it was never easy to talk about this. "He wasn't going to last much longer so I decided I needed to do something. I force fed him over a gallon of sand and waited until he started vomiting. When they came in to check on him I managed to get a gun. I killed my way out of there and carried him on my back until we hit a patrol. I spent three weeks in the ICU and went to two therapy appointments before I just couldn't. They gave me a purple heart and a silver star, I stuck them in the back of my closet and haven't looked at them since."

Jamie was silent, "What happened to your buddy, the one that you got caught with?"

"He lives in Seattle now, helps wounded vets with their rehab. I think he got married a while back."

Jamie nodded and we sat in silence until Jamie blurted, "I had a friend named Charlie, I went out before I was supposed to, misread a hand signal, and he took a bullet that should have been mine."

I poured myself another glass and sat back to listen.

Because that is what Jamie needed right now.

I hummed an old moutain tune as I half-carried Jamie out of the bar. He was such a lightweight, he'd barely had three beers. I was glad though, he had opened up let out his emotions and seemed to be better for it.

"Step away from the boy, Bubba. This doesn't concern you."

The pleasant haze caused by the alcohol instantly cleared as I turned to face the threat, "Dickie Franks, I heard about your brother. Terrible loss," I said with all due sympathy, shifting Jamie behind my much larger form.

"The way you talk you might think it was an accident. It wasn't. A Horwitzs killed a Franks, the Franks have to take retribution, only fair," Dickie said, pulled out a sawed-off from behind his back. "Now move, Bubba. You've lived in these hills all your life, you understand how this works."

I nodded thoughtfully, "I understand that you're trying to gun down an innocent kid for something he had nothing to do with. I think that's very clear."

Dickie snarled and cocked the shotgun, "If you don't move Bubba, I'm gonna have to shoot through ya', and don' think I won't."

I could call for help, but it would never come in time. I could try to fight, but that would mean abadoning Jamie. I could never abandon Jamie. So, in the end, there was only one thing to do, so I flipped open my phone and called voicemail on speed dail, "You're gonna have to shoot me, Dickie. Because I'm not gonna let you kill Jamie."

"Have it your way, Bubba," Dickie said, and then he fired.

I woke up naked and screaming in a place I didn't recognize.

that hadn't happened to me since my twenties so I was understandably confused.

I stopped screaming becasue when had that ever helped any? I tried to look around but all I saw were indistinct shapes surronded by lights bright enough to blind me, I closed my eyes. I tried to talk but my vocal cords wouldn't cooperate. I felt something under my naked neck and back but when I tried to move all I could manage was a weak flail. I could feel myself being wiped off and I was disgusted to find that I was covered in some type of mystery liquid. I felt the air on my too sensetive skin as I was lifted and placed against something soft and warm. I wanted to fight but all my mucles felt like Jell-O, i hadn't been this tired since basic training.

I heard a rustle of cloth and my mouth was placed on some flesh, I sucked in on instinct and my mouth was filled with a foul tasting warm liquid. I thought over what I last remembered and came to a conclusion.

Father Francis was wrong, I wasn't going to hell when I died.

It was about four months later that I decided that I might have been a little premature about designating my new life as 'not hell.'

My parents were subpar to say the least, and this was coming from a kid that had been raised by criminals and watched his mother die an inch at a time from breast cancer. My father, or tou-san was a burly man with crimson hair, seemed alright, for all that I'd seen him, he was almost never home and from the abundance of scars and strange blades I came to the summation that he was some sort of mercenary, called 'shinobi', that were sanconjoned by the village I now lived in. My mother, or kaa-chan, though a pretty little thing with skin like cream and hair and eyes black as coal, was a drunk, and I was pleased that despite the lack of advanced technology in my new society, they did have baby formula, which I insisted on. I had seen too many kids with Fetal Achohol Syndrome in the boondocks to want to become one of them. I still liked alcohol, but I think I would save the consumption of it until puberty.

Speaking of puberty, I had reached an unpleasent revelation; I was a girl.

I had been a very male male in my past life, I had never been intrsted in the intricasies of female life beyond sleeping with them. I wasn't totally ignorant, I new that woman menstrated in the abstract any man knows to avoid any woman on the rag, but when it came time to deal with it myself I knew I was going to be completely unprepared.

Speaking of strange things about this new body, I was contantly itchy. The air aound me made me itchy, but that was nothing compared to the itchyness inside me. I felt like there was something going through all of me, like blood only not.

So all in all, life was pretty sucky for a five month old, besides having to learn a new language and the fact that my new name, Umeko, apparently meant child of a plum.

But all of that, was nothing, nothing compared to what happened when I was four and a half months old.

It was like nothing I had never seen before, it was worse than anything I had ever experienced, including watching a man I considered a brother to me get blown into paste before my eyes and months of torture.

The skies turned red and I felt a fear like I hae never felt before and will never feel again. Father went off to fight whatever it was, while my kaa-chan grasped me tight to her chest and down an entire bottle of sake while we cowered in the closet.

I feared that it would never stoped, that my father would never come home.

I was half right, it did stop, but my tou-san never did come home again.

The funeral was one among many. From what I could tell our village had been attacked by a giant nine-tailed fox, because that is something that exsists in this new world, apparently. The casualties were massive and on our way back from the service we passed the hospital, there were injured spilling out the front door.

Home life became difficult; my father, though absent often for work, still ended up managing my care the majority of the time, with out him there to step in or remind kaa-chan I found that if I didn't resort to crying that she would often forget to clean and feed me. Another problem were the bills, I had a stay-at-home mom and we were completely dependent on my faher's income.

The bills started to pile up on the kitchen table.

We may have not had enough money to pay for the water of heating every month, but there always seemed enough for my kaa-san to stock up on cheap booze. I knew that the loss of her husband was difficult on her, but where I came from (in my first life) when you had a child you sucked it up and you faked it until you made it.

From what I could tell my mother had come from money, but left it to pursue love with my father. It was a tale I wasn't completely unfamiliar with, my town had been poor but occasionally someone landed a high-class broad. Some made it, and some, like Jamie's ma, couldn't take the change of lifestyle and went running back to their parents, or the ex-husbands, or their new sugar daddies, the idea was the same.

My mother had left her lifestyle for love and now all she had was grief.

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have been as suprised as I was when she finally gave up.

It was roughly three months after the attack, making me aroung seven months old, when it happened. I had woken in my bed, still in my mess (controlling a bladder was harder than I thought it would be) with the sliver of sunlight comeing out of the curtains telling me it was around six am. I cried and cried and cried, but my mother didn't come. I assumed, like many times before that she was still sleeping it off. The only thing to do then was to give up and wait until later.

By the time the sun had risen to about eleven o'clock height I was even more disgusting and now I was really hungry. I had done three more crying shifts to no avail, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I used what little upper body strength I had managed to scroung up to climb the bars of my crib and slide down the the flooring called tantami (it was weird as hell, like braided wood strips, but it was common here). I managed to land without hurting myself and immediatly shucked my daiper (diaper rash was a thing) and crawled into the kitchen, it was easier to just make the formula myself than try to get her.

Thankfully, Kaa-san kept the baby formula in the bottom cupard and the bottled water next to the fridge. I had learned that there was no way for me to heat the water (I couldn't exactly reach the stove top) and (with some effort) twisted the lid off the bottle. I made a vague approximation and dumped in some baby formula power, shook well, and took a si[ (bleh! cold formula). It was vile, but I was starving.

Once I had finished as much of the bottle as I could I set it down and wento to go check on my mother.

I crawled into her room and was stopped cold.

My mother was hanging by some rope from the ceiling fan, a picture of my father at her feet.

It didn't take me long to realize I needed help. My mother was long past resusitation, judging by rigor mortis she had hung herself sometime the night before, after she put me to bed.

U had formual, and wasn't above wiping my naked ass on any availible piece of cloth, but I would run out soon, even if I rationed.

Not to mention something had to be done about the body.

I couldn't open the heavy wooded door, and my father had made sure to baby proof all the windows before he passed, so I couldn't leave to get help. My mother was a very isolated woman, her absence wouldn't be noticed for days if at all. The village was still recovering, they didn't have time to check on one single mother, especially with so many orphans filling the streets.

So, I did the only thing I could, considering the circumstances.

I crawled to the window facing the street with a blessfully wide sill, bringing with me a blanket and a bottle of formula and proceeded to start screaming.

There was a study done once, a social experiment. A man had put a baby carreige with a recording of a baby crying inside a car and locked it, leaving it in a crowded parking lot. This had followed a particularily hot summer where there had been a series of deaths of children locked in cars. He wanted to see if the average person would spot the in danger child, and if they would help. He was distressed to find, that even in 90 degree weather, most people just walked on by. It wasn't that they didn't care, but that they didn't notice. 'Baby crying' is such a common place sound, and often filed under 'someone else's problem' that they didn't realize the signifigance of a baby crying in a car.

My village had been under an attack, an attack with terrorist level casualties, so you could take the average person's innatentiveness and multiply it by ten. The streets were filled with crying children, no one noticed me.

It had been a little over a week, I had finished my last bottle formula and kaa-chan was begining to smell. This might have worked to my advantage, the neighbors were starting to complain. Unfortunately my land lord was a lazy bastard, he had come to the door, shouted a bit, ignored me, and left. If he was ever stepping into this apartment it would be to evict us, but (at least in my world) an eviction took months.

I didn't have months.

If all that wasn'y bad enough I was starting to loose my voice, it turns out constant crying did a number on one's vocal cords.

I had resorted to banging on the window, but my arms were puny and hardly made any noise.

It was night, and the street below me was near deserted aside for one. It was a teenager, and only barely, with a wild mop of white (white?) hair and a back mask covering the lower haft of his face, he had one of those forehead things that meant he was a ninja. He wasn't completely alone if you counted the little pug dog by his side, and I was desperate enough to do so.

I brought up my fist and brought it the the window, I barely made a tapping sound and my arm was alredy shaking from the 'workout' I had put it through during the daylight hours.

I felt a few tears slip down my face unbidden and tried to form a word in this new language.

"Hhe-lp," I rasped, bringing up my fist again (it was so weak it almost couldn't make the trip) and tapped on the window. "Help."

Miracle of miracles the dog turned his head and spotted me, slowing his walk to get a better look.

"Help. Help!" I cried as loud as I could, my voice like sandpaper, hoping the dog would listen.

The dog stopped and the boy made a couple more steps before he noticed the absence of his companion, he followed the dog's eye line and saw me in the window.

"Help. Help. Help," I chanted, my voice getting weaker and weaker until it wasn't there at all, but I didn't stop trying to say it, praying he would listen.

The boy furrowed his brow and said something to the dog and jumped up to the front door of the apartment (30 ft, impressive).

He tried the door and found it locked, and then it exploded into a cloud of wood shards.

Kakashi had just been going for a walk, he was back from his mission in Anbu and had been put on mandatory medical leave. He hated it, and he hated sleep so he had chosen to spend the night walking around Konoha.

Finding a red-haired baby in a window had been unexpected. He could read lips, he may not be able to hear the child's words, but he knew the word for 'help' when he saw it.

As soon as he reached the door to the apartment he smelt it.

Death.

Somehting was rotting inside.

He felt the comforting presence of Pakkun at his side and tried the door.

It was locked.

He kicked it in.

He stepped over the ruined remains of the door and looked at the window. The child, a girl judging by the geinitalia, was naked, filthy, and mildly malnurished. She was looking at him in shock and then she burst into tears, holding out her tiny arms that really should have been more pudgy in the universal pick-me-up pose. He did, awkwardly, and she held on tightly, crying into his jounin vest. He looked around, the apartment was filty, food untouched on the shelves. The only thing that had been disturbed were empty water bottles with some white residue inside. Pakkun leaned down and took a sniff of it.

"It's baby formula."

Kakashi was confused, this child was for all appearences abandoned, who made the formula? And why is the rest of the food untouched?

Cautiously, he followed the smell of decay down the hallway, to a partially opened door. He nudged it the rest of the way with his foot because both of his hands were still on the baby and took a look inside. It appeared to be a woman, hard to tell with how much she had decomposed, still attached to the rope she had used to hang herself.

A child alone in a house with a parent who had commited suicide.

He was out of the apartment before he realized he had moved, flaring his chakra to alert the Uchiha patrols.

A man who name he had never bothered to learn landed in front of his thirty seconds later, he pried the child from him, despite her feverant effort to remain attached to his vest and shoved her in the arms of the police officer.

"I found her inside. Theres a body in the bedroom," he said tersly, and he was gone, not even caring it Pakkun kept up.

Screw medical leave, he needed a mission.