Into the fire

Here's the interesting thing about fire.

It hurt.

Like a lot.

So when the pain of burning to death transformed into a new type of pain, I barely noticed. Well that's not exactly true. It went from being a searing hot pain that blistered my skin and boiled my blood, into a crushing pain that pressed so firmly against my skin that I thought I would pop like a pimple.

And pop I did. Kind of.

I was born at the start of winter, on the 3rd of June, the sun had set hours before my birth, and the way my dad tells it, I was a surprise to both he and my mum. I wasn't planned for, and I came a month early, forcing my mum to leave an important clan meeting she was having, though my dad tells me he had to drag her to the hospital. Dad says the sun had just started to set when mum's water broke, and I hadn't been born until the moon was high in the sky. I like to think it was snowing, with the stars brightly illuminating the world, and the moon was full and hanging in the sky giving everything a soft silver glow, although I know it wasn't, because it never snows in the Land of Fire, and things rarely look like a Disney film in reality.

Which is an odd sentence considering I'm describing my rebirth into an Anime/Manga series, and it doesn't feel like reality but some sort of comatose dream that just wouldn't end.

Anyway. Back to the topic at hand.

That's about the extent of my memories on my rebirth, and most of my memories until I was around a month or so old. I have some very hazy, blurry background images of who I'd learn were my mum and dad, but they were faint, not tainted so much by time, but more infancy eye sight not working as well as it could, as well as my pure confusion over why I was in constant pain and so small.

I was given the name Akamono Yōkai, my mum was Akamono Suki, and she was the new head of our relatively small clan, my dad was Akamono Sumairu, and I saw him far more then my mum. My mum was important, and while she tried her hardest to be there for me, she had many responsibilities to out clan and village.

My first month was blurry as I've said, and all I could see or hear was so out of focus that I had a constant migraine, and there was this constant, fuzzy feeling inside of me that burnt, and the few moments where my head was clear, I swear I could feel my own heart beating and the blood flowing through my veins. To me it felt like I was still burning.

I was terrified. I was in pain. I did the only thing I was able to do.

I cried. A lot.

Perhaps it wasn't fair to my new parents, but at the time, I didn't care. I was so scared that I wasn't even really in control of my new body. All it wanted to do was scream and cry, and no matter how much my parents tried, they could not get me to calm down. Looking back on it I feel terrible.

Mum and dad were so young, still teenagers really, and they were so unprepared for a baby that they didn't even plan for. They had no idea what to do, so they did they only thing they could think of. They took me to one of the clan elders.

The Akamono clan has always been small, and its main focus had been on Iryō, medical, Ninjutsu. My mum and dad unfortunately weren't as gifted in it as others, and the most renowned Iryōnin of our clan was Hitorime-Ōoji-san. My great uncle.

Although my first month was blurry and I was barely there, it was this visit to Hitorime-Ōoji-san that made the world clear again.

I was only over a month old, and I had spent nearly every moment of my waking days crying, much to the exhaustion of my parents. Finally, my mum had had enough, and wrapped me so tight in my blanket that I had trouble crying.

Hitorime-Ōoji-san lived on the very out skirts of our clans' compound. His house was surrounded by trees, and in front of it was a large koi pond, where I would spend much of my childhood. The house was larger then what was needed for a single person, but he took patients from the clan in when they were ill, as well as housing his vast collection of medical books and herbs.

I don't remember my first meeting with my great uncle. Not really. But I do remember a glow, the brightest and softest green I had ever experienced, and then for the first time in weeks, calm. The fire had been dowsed and I felt like I was floating.

Mum tells it like Ōoji-san was a miracle worker, calming a raging storm. Dad tells it like it was the happiest moment of his life, the quiet. And Hitorime-Ōoji-san says that it was the oddest thing he had experienced in his 40 odd years of life. He felt so much pain and suffering in my small body, pain that he hadn't even seen od dying shinobi.

Nobody told me until I was older that Ōoji-san had diagnosed me with a chakra stutter, where my chakra often repeated through my chakra coils twice over, paused on occasion, or completely stopped, cutting off my chakra supply. It was rare, having only a few other cases, and was often lethal to children, as they needed chakra so much to live. But more importantly, it meant that my chakra was unreliable, and that on one occasion I may perform a Jutsu perfectly, while another time my chakra may stutter whilst performing it, stopping or corrupting the Jutsu.

What I did know, was that Hitorime-Ōoji-san was the first person whose face was clear to me. He had dark red hair, scars littering his face, and eyes of blood red. It was a horrifying visage, and I did as I was known to do, I cried.

But it wasn't the painful wails that I had emitted for a month, but rather the normal sounds a baby would make, and as soon as my mum had bought me back to her, I instantly calmed.

After that I wold see Hitorime-Ōoji-san daily for much of my childhood, and he would infuse my body with the same calming aura that he had upon our first meeting, as I grew I spent more and more time in or around his house, and I learnt more from him then I did from anyone else.

For a few months following this my senses began to come back to me, and while I sort of understood that I was a baby, I had no idea how or why. Hell I couldn't even understand the people around me, but I knew it wasn't English, and my best guess was Japanese, based on the honorifics that were used. I mean, I new at least that kaa-san was mum, and dad was tou-san. This helped me sort of keep them separate from my mum and dad from before. Which we will not be talking about.

In fact, we won't be talking about that at all. Period.

I didn't know what was going, my mind understood that it was an adult, but at the same time it felt like an infant's, it was very concerning knowing about all the wonders and difficulties of life, yet still finding a butterfly utterly fascinating, as well as being absolutely confused during a game of peek-a-boo with my dad.

Yet its wings were so colourful, and dad just disappeared!

Life began to become predictable for me in the following months.

I'd wake up several times in the night and be fed, which we are also not talking about, then go back to sleep. I'd be woken up in the morning by mum, who'd feed me again before handing me off to dad and disappearing for the day, from their dad would take me to Hitorime-Ōoji-san's house, where he'd do that lovely green glow on me, and the fire that had started to build in my stomach since my last visit was calmed.

Then dad would take me out, to one of the koi ponds or another member of the clan's house, and I'd spend the day being lugged around and shown off to varies people, all the while never wandering outside these towering walls that surrounded us.

It wasn't until I was around 4 months old that I left the clan compound. And not at my own leisure either.

It was the middle of the night, and I was fast asleep, dreaming dreams of butterflies and flowers, when this horrifying all devouring presence washed over me.

I had died in fire. I knew what it was like to burn to death. This, this was worse. So much worse.

I woke up and I was chocking, on what I didn't know, but my lungs wouldn't work. The burning in my own body, that Hitorime-Ōoji-san calmed daily, but still existed, was snuffed out, as this new and powerful burning feeling took over my being.

I tried to scream for my parents, but I couldn't. There was no oxygen in my lungs to use.

I don't remember my mum picking me up, nor being handed off to Hitorime-Ōoji-san. I just remember that all encompassing burning feeling, that lit my body up in a way that I can't explain.

I didn't cry that much after that.

Hitorime-Ōoji-san told me years later that no-one thought I'd live after that night, or that it was thought I had received some sort of poisoning in the body that would stunt my mental growth. My personality took a drastic turn he told me. I no longer marvelled at everything around me, nor cried when I was in pain. I sat, and I stared. Because while I hadn't understood what was happening before that night, I did after it.

I felt the intense hatred and death that had washed across the world. I didn't know what is was, really I didn't know until I was a few years old, but I did know that this world unlike my old world had something pure evil living in it.

Before that night there was a part of me that was a baby. Maybe I might have grown into it and forgotten my old life, maybe I wouldn't have. I don't know. But after that night the part of me that was really a baby, the part that stared in wonder at butterflies and was filled with happiness when my dad came back after disappearing, was gone. My mind was sharper and clearer then it had been in months.

I wasn't a baby. The world wasn't full of butterflies and smiling faces.

It housed demons to.

I woke up that night, really woke up, and I could no longer act like the baby that my family saw me as.

I died in flames. But I was also born in them.

A/N: I'm redoing this again. I've got a few chapters half written, but I thought id repost the intro chapter, and maybe the first real chapter and see what people think before I get to deep in.