A Thousand Bright
Summary: Life is a long series of rolling with the punches. Sometimes the punches come from dying, being reborn, and everything that comes after.
So I've been wanting to write something like this for a long time and I finally sat down and started it. This is going to be centered around an OC :^0
Prologue
In hindsight, she should have known her life would have been a short one. Bad luck followed her around relentlessly, to the point where it felt more annoying- like a particularly determined swarm of gnats. Rolling with the punches had become second nature, at least she got to tell the best stories. Like when bungee jumping didn't go so hot. Bungee jumping attempt was more fitting. Or when she somehow managed to trip and fall a frankly ridiculous amount of times in high school. Since that Event, she would swear up and down that someone was out to get her that year because she was not that clumsy? By the end of her time in high school, she had narrowed the elusive culprit down to a few people. Whoever they were ended up getting away with the crime, much to her endless frustration.
The cherry on top, however, was on her 19th birthday. Truthfully, the events were a blur.
A crosswalk, pain- did somebody just elbow me?, the rough texture of the street. A split second of blinding agony, a cut off scream, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Being rebirthed was probably one of the most traumatizing events of her entire life. Lives? Of course, she wasn't aware of the fact she was being actually birthed at the time, only an overwhelming feeling of wrongness and confusion crowded her senses. Nothing anybody was saying made any sense, she couldn't form any coherent thoughts, and everything seemed enormously out of proportion. Plus, she couldn't stop crying no matter how much she may have wanted to. Later, when she semi-regained her bearings she felt absolutely no shame.
I can cry as much as I well please because who cares, man. Watch me cry right now.
And she did just that when she realized that she was a baby once again. Screamed right in the huge, looming faces of her new parents.
For what felt like an eternity, but in reality was most likely only a few months, she couldn't overcome the fear of a foreign something. The air felt fuller than she remembered, something was always buzzing under her skin- itching her from the inside out. She vaguely remembers crying for hours on end when the sensations would become unbearable- which was often.
She still feels bad, but her parents were always endlessly kind and loving.
After the period of confusion passed, she finally gained control over her mind. But with awareness came the shock.
I'm dead? Is this the next life or the afterlife? Am I imagining all of this?
She spent a good while wondering about what exactly was happening. A lot of time spent aching over the huge gap between her and anything or anyone from her past.
Do they miss me? What are they doing now? What happened to my beautiful pets?
Long nights stretched into longer days as she agonized. Her parents worried at the seemingly permanent sour, scrunched up face she sported. The doctor they had called in had declared nothing was physically wrong with her. The kind woman hoisted her up into the air, looking into her face with warm eyes. She said nothing but somehow the girl felt like everything was going to be okay just from that warmth in her expression.
Ah, I've been really beating myself up over this. They've probably moved on by now and I should too. I haven't been this gloomy since...
She knew then that there would be pain in her heart and something missing for a long time- but with time the ache would heal. The girl mentally sent her family and friends well wishes and turned to her new family. Filled with a new sense of hope, she smiled brightly- baby gums and all.
At the very least, I hope I had a really bomb funeral. Beyoncé, confetti, the works. Goodbye.
So she was now a lot less irrationally terror filled, on the other hand, she could not understand absolutely anything being said.
Are they speaking Japanese? Of course it's Japanese. That's super cool and great. Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.
In her past life, she had enjoyed learning languages. Her grandmother was German, and taught her a few things from the language. She remembered sunny days and picnics- her oma would point to pictures and say the name in German. And when her past self had gotten the word right, she would shriek in delight and repeat the word to every adult in the area, much to their amusement.
In high school, she had liked taking Spanish classes. Particularly, she remembers the food days. She would have flour smeared all over for the rest of the day. Wipe one patch off, another would appear somewhere else.
She had been about to start learning Japanese. Freshman year of college would have started within a few weeks and she had fulfilled a years-long interest and enrolled in J101.
The universe sure had funny timing.
She wasn't able to understand much of what was being said to her except a few words, and phrases gleaned from the way the adults said them. Her name was a thing picked up quickly, as they started almost everything addressed to her with her name. Sen- like from Spirited Away, her favorite movie. A warm satisfaction settled in her chest when she learned this fact. Hamasaki Sen.
She knew a few words and phrases from her past, but not nearly enough to live with. A few meaning she could count them on both hands only. For the amount she had heard the language, she remembered surprisingly little.
Immersion is the best way to learning, she supposed. However, a large percentage of the "learning" was actually frustration. The only actual guided learning she got was when her parents would whip out the picture cards just like with her Oma. Except when she was learning before, she had English to fall back on. Now she had nothing.
The struggle just made victory all the sweeter. Successfully learning and remembering words delighted Sen to no end. Her parents got a real kick out of the way she would clap her pudgy baby hands and repeat the word.
She realized it might have seemed odd how intensely she would pay attention whenever they spoke, but they never seemed too put off. Her personality had never been particularly reserved, maybe because of this they saw her advancement as intelligence and not unnaturally out of place. At least, she had hoped it was pride in their eyes and not suspicion.
But if she had thought speaking was bad, reading was on a whole other level with the thousands of foreign characters and symbols in the Japanese alphabets. She had years to go before she could have a grasp on writing. Oh boy.
Out of everything, the subject that interested Sen the most was the strange feel of- well, everything. It felt like something was trapped under her skin. Really, it should have been unbearable, itching and horrible. And at first it was before she became used to it. Now it felt like a constant soothing presence, a static-y white noise she could focus on. Even this feeling would most likely go away as she aged but for now, the feeling demanded her attention often.
The air itself held this energy, but different somehow. It felt almost unhurried and slow. Like nothing could disrupt its flow. Sen had the feeling that if she focused on it for too long, the energy would become overwhelming. The energy is the entire everything and she only lives as a miniscule part of it. She tried not to make a habit or having existential crises so she tended not to focus on the feeling. Focusing on herself was easier anyway, the feel of her felt more urgent and hurried than the rest of anything.
Her parents also felt different than both her and the air. She didn't notice fully at first, but as she started to pay more attention to the strange sensations of the Energy and spent more time around them, she picked up on them. Quiet and calm suited her father more. She didn't want to say less, but compared to her mother, he was a candle next to a wildfire. Mom felt sort of warm and loud. She felt bigger? If one could even apply bigger to something as abstract as what she felt.
Actually doing something with the sensations were much different than just feeling them, though. At first, she accidentally went overboard trying to flex and direct the energy.
Her parents got a good scare when she slept like the dead for much longer than usual.
After that, Sen was much more careful. She wouldn't push her limits too much and back off once she felt exhaustion looming. She found the energy endlessly fascinating, and noted the strange ways in which it behaved. When she didn't try to influence the direction, it spread out and buzzed around with it's own agenda. But when she tried to push it to a certain place in her body, it would be stubborn and seem to want to continue to go on its original path.
Sen almost wanted to say that it knew she was unaccustomed to the feeling and took advantage. In her past, she never had dealt with anything even close to the energy so she wasn't sure what exactly to do to control it. Mentally willing it to do a certain thing seemed to yield more results than anything else. But "results" were not exactly much. Yet. She had written off the lack of response as lack of practice and vowed to the energy that she wouldn't bend to it. She would get the hang of it if it was the last thing she did.
August 1st had rolled around once again, officially marking the first year Hamasaki Sen had been in existence. It had seemed to strange to her that an entire year had passed. Sometime between then and her first birthday, she had started walking. Being toted around and unable to move places had started to grate on her nerves. Running was still moderately terrifying as her legs would give out without warning, pitching her forward. Luckily, it was more hilarious instead of painful.
She barely remembers her first birthday in comparison to everything else that's happened since then, but a party definitely happened. Something about a very loud man in green, but she thinks that her brain went into shock from the sheer presence of him in general and couldn't think straight for the rest of the event.
The year had started to roll into October when a massive nine tailed fox began to lay waste to the village. Suddenly, a lot of different things clicked into place. The energy, the green man, the people wearing forehead protectors that she could only see the glint of in the distance. Sen hadn't gone into town yet as her family lived on the outskirts of the village and she was usually left at home to play until she became older.
How have I been so blind? The signs have been here all along. It's been an entire year and I missed all of the evidence that I've been reborn into… The magnitude of the thought really sank in.
I… was reborn into the Naruto universe. This is some entire other tier of luck.