(Minor edit)

Asuka giggles again, tossing the toy to her brother. She didn't exactly like where she was, learning a new language was hard, but she didn't have much of a choice. Giggling again, she cooes in joy, bringing her brother in for a hug. Large feet enters her vision, and Asuka tilts her head up to look at the giant. It was her mother, the one who her brother resembles a lot. Brown hair, hazel eyes, pale orange skin.

The woman says something, and Asuka picks up the word she thought of as 'good' and her brother's name 'Rinji', and something about 'happiness'.

Asuka giggles again, and crawls to her mother. Said woman picks her up, gently placing the child on her hip. Asuka grabs the long brown hair her mother has, and the two of them giggle at the action.

The mother says something, and cooes at the two children in front of her, as if to repeat the word she desires them to say. They both repeat the word, and Asuka internally hopes that her mother wasn't teaching them some inappropriate word. She, of course, knew that someone like her mother wouldn't do it, but sometimes she got paranoid. No one could blame her, right? She was reincarnated, something that was usually dealt with in religions and such, not by someone who had a relatively hard time to trust things and easily got paranoid and had a considerably amount of reasons why she couldn't trust some people she befriended.

Obviously it was the paranoia, but she usually subdued it until she thought the situation was important enough to do so(it led to many painful demises of many close relationships, also a factor as to why she never had any close, intimate relationships with almost everyone she knew). Asuka giggles loudly, and screeches out the word her mother was repeating. The small group laughs, and Asuka grins. Maybe - just maybe - she could have the family she never had.

"Up, up!" The twins cry out, pestering their father, who had faded red hair and black eyes, "Up, up!"

The man laughs quietly, although it was more of a chuckle, and replies. Asuka could only make out some words that pointed out he'd do it some other time, but the twins cheers 'Up, up!' again, but he rejects them again. Asuka felt something was wrong, that he wasn't really in the mood, so she turns to her brother and babbles some nonsense to him, rehearsing some English words, and drags him off to some other place to leave their father alone.

Asuka snuck a glance at her father, and saw him sag his shoulders. But was it in relief or something else?

Turning back to Rinji, she babbled again, and they both started to tossing random toys around and pointing to it.

Asuka hums, hands colored with paint. Rinji was sitting behind her, doing his own thing. She giggles, her hands creating a shaky portrait of something that she was trying to remember. She remembers a lot, actually, and she thinks that maybe once she's older they'll fade, but what's stopping her from trying to remember? With another giggle, she adds on some beige - to add volume to the face.

Feet echoes throughout the room, Rinji's toys clatters together as he giggles at his own devices. She heard her mother gasp, and looks up to the face.

"Ka! Kaaa~!" Asuka cries out, reaching her paint covered hands out in the air, "Kuu! Kuu!"

Her mother says something, and Asuka catches something about 'naughty' and 'mess' - and was that something about 'creativeness'? Asuka giggles again, crowing at her picture. Her mother huffs in annoyance, and picks her child up. Her mother says something again, but this time in a softer tone, and Asuka preens at herself for the creation she had made.

"As'ke-tan!"

"Rin-tan!"

Her mother giggles at the sight, holding the twins on both sides of her. "No, Rinji-chan, it's A-su-ka, Asuka." With a small bounce, she readjusts them as she walks outside around their small garden.

"As'ka-tan!"

"Rin-ch-han!"

"As'ka-tan!"

"Rin-ch-han!"

"Kaa-chan!" The twins cry out, tugging at their mother's purple qipao dress.

"Yes, Asuka-chan, Rinji-chan?"

"Walk, walk!"

Their mother giggles, and she nods her head. "Yes, we can take a walk in the garden."

The twins giggle and let go of the qipao to dance around each other. With an excited squeal, Rinji grabs Asuka's hand and softly run out of the building, and into the arched entrance of the garden from their home. With bounding steps, the twins entered the garden, and Asuka wonders why it looks so Chinese. Wasn't her mother wearing a qipao - something that was created in China? But didn't they speak Japanese? She shakes her head, and giggles with her brother. She's still young - almost three - and she should probably wait a while before asking questions.

"Asuka-chan, Rinji-chan, be careful of the water." The mother sighs, a small smile on her face, trailing behind them languishly.

The call going almost unheard as the children skipped around the garden, jumping about in their path and enjoying the smell of flowers and plants that grew there. Asuka knows her mother loves gardening, because of the abundance of aprons that was scattered around the house and how dirty and splotched with dull mud stains they were.

Rinji's damp hands grabs onto Asuka's and he drags her to a small pond, and excitedly points to the koi-fish twisting and turning in it, the water reflecting the sunlight like milky white petals. The water reflects his happy face, hazel eyes bright and wide with mirth.

Asuka looks down too.

She stares.

And stares.

Ginger tufts of almost-red hair sticks out in all directions. Black eyes like obsidian against a white background. Pale golden-tan skin dusted with freckles and moles. Her face was round, with thin, young lips, small, narrow nose, and a constellation of freckles across her face, dusting over the bridge of her nose and cheeks and all the way up her forehead.

And her brother drags her off to the fruit tree, and she places a small(fake) smile on her(not hers) face.

Rinji squeals in delight as he spots a rather large bird in the tree, and pointing to it excitedly, his grip on her hand tightens, and she spots her(not hers) mother. Two pairs of hazel eyes look up at the bird, and the mother steadily sticks her arm out silently. The bird looks at her, then to the children, his beady eyes drifts over her to Rinji, and she feels the smile slowly slip. With one mighty heave of it's wings, the bird lifts itself from the branch it was perched on and glides down onto the older woman's outstretched arm, it's claws digging into her bicep. The bird appears to be much larger than what Asuka anticipated it to be, it had to be as large as she is! While the bird dwarfs her mother's arm, Rinji and Asuka both stare in awe.

"This is Takahiro," her mother explains, her free hand scratching the birds naked head. Asuka silently curses her lack of vision, because who would miss a vulture in a place like this?! "He is my personal summon, you will be getting your own once you are ready."

"Kaa-chan, what's a summon?" Rinji and Asuka chorus, and Asuka takes her hand out of his and let it fall to her side.

Their mother smiles sweetly, beige skin glowing in the sunlight - until a cloud passes over the sun, cooling the pressure and shading the land. "A summon is an animal that you make a contract with." She answers, then nods to the vulture balanced on her arm, and Asuka realizes how heavy the large bird must weigh, and wonders how her mother is able to carry it with one arm…. "You will be getting a contract and a main summon once you're older."

The older woman shooes them away, and Asuka and her brother both wanders around the garden for the next hour and a half.

Two tiny hands grips at the larger, rougher ones. The town was… dull. Sure, the sky was bright and clear and birds dancing and singing in the sky, but the town was almost as happy as a pile of shit on someone's white sofa. Well, as happy as the owner of that shit-stained sofa. What Asuka really noticed(if she noticed it at this stage, then something's seriously fucked up) was the starvation going on. Everyone was a either practically a skeleton or looked ready to kill someone.

As she, her brother, and her father walks along the dirt street, Asuka realizes what's going on. It clicks in her head like a light being turned on. If anything, it's a theory. One hundred percent theory, but she doesn't really care whether or not it's right. Well, it's actually more of a hypothesis, but she doesn't really care at the moment.

War. Because of the war, the economy is falling for her country, which means less imported goods and foods, which means less money, which means hunger and homelessness. She sees that she was born into a relatively rich family. That, or her family knew how to save money in case another war happened.

Did that mean wars happened often? Probably not, Maybe one war ended, and another came over here, ruined the already weak economy. Then again, this is all a hypothesis to her, she has no real knowledge as to where she is, and she isn't always the sharpest tool in the shed.

Her father tugs her arm, and she looks up at him, black eyes wide. His skin looks like fire in the sunlight, she realizes, and his eyes are as black as her, so she sees that she gets her looks from him. He's looking down at her, black eyes narrowed and a sheen of sweat at his red brows.

"Stop dwaddling, we are going to be late if you keep on slowing us down." He states, voice deep and rumbling and a kind that screams don't-fuck-with-me-and-do-as-I-say. Asuka swiftly nods her head, and lets him drag her around with a tight grip.

Honestly, she has no clue as to where they are going and why her father is taking them, it's always been their mother taking them places, even though it was always to a friends home or garden or picking out fruits or bird watching(she still has no idea what her mother needs a vulture for, though, couldn't they just use a regular pigeon or other tamable bird that wouldn't eat a deer alive? Seriously, where would you find a domesticated vulture? Where?!).

Was it because she and Rinji were already six, and they had to learn to live with whatever their father did for a living? It seems reasonable to her, the town was poor as hell, probably didn't have any educational system at all, and probably has an ass-sucker as a king or president or whoever has the most power.

Instead, she is taken to a place with a lot of brats swarming about, and she thinks she's about to have an heart attack.

(Caramel hair enters her vision, and she feels happy now, she feels proud now. Children run around them, greeting their parents, their happy, happy parents. The face smiles at her, says something, and laughs. She feels so happy now that she doesn't-)

"Asuka, pay attention." Her father's gruff voice takes her out of the once distant memory. "We are at the academy, now, so don't you two get into trouble. You are of clan blood and are expected to take pride in it, no matter how small and insignificant the Enkosugi may seem to the others."

Rinji coughs into his arm. "I think we'll like it," he rasps, and Asuka really wishes she could just help her brother somehow. "I think we could really use some friends."

A few months ago Rinji somehow got sick with the same thing he had years ago, back when they were still infants. Asuka really wishes that there was a cure or antibiotic of it, because she was getting really sick of having to hear his wet coughs at night or to see him faint from whatever was getting at him at the time.

Glancing up at her father, she sees that he seems thoroughly pissed. She had never seen him this way, and wonders what he's thinking about. Smiling, she looks over to Rinji, "Yeah, but at least make sure they know what they're in for. We don't want to be soft kittens for the pickin', right? We want to be the ones with the sharpest talons, hm?"

She looks up again to see the expression on her father's face, and is happy to see he is trying to smother a smirk. Or a smile, both of them are fine.

Her father takes them both into the building, and Asuka wonders why some children have unique hair colors. Was that blue? Who the hell does that!?

They pass through beige halls with cracked windows, poorly kept doors, door-less rooms, and a poorly kept garden. The air around the building screamed 'we're poor as shit, but we will still teach our children the things they need to survive', and all the while Asuka has an air of indifference and intimidation(it was so easy mimicking her father) while her brother was all like 'Hi! I wanna be your friend! Ignore them and let's chat!'.

No one came up to them.

They enter a large room, the air was stale and smells like sweat and heat, chairs are stationed around, scattered and bent and old, and people are swarming around each other like way back when Asuka still hadn't felt death and birth and could remember clearly what middle and high school was like. She can still remember a lot of things, but it's just that she really doesn't have enough time to dwell on the ancient shit that might bring her down into a depression. The past is the past, and she has to grow up and deal with it because she won't get through a life comparing everything to something that will never be.

They take their seats, in the middle of one of the surviving sections of chairs. Asuka looks up at the windows, orange light streams in, enhancing the dust particles the fluttered around, dancing around the people that passes by them. It seems so surreal to her, before she died she had terrible vision - could barely see ten feet ahead of her - and used glasses or contacts to help her see clearer.

Someone walks to the makeshift stage, which looked like it was made out of bamboo a few decades ago. The man looks older, strict, and maybe even brutal. Short black hair, green eyes(that she can see from this distance), narrow features, and a dark uniform. She can even see the gleam of a metal-plated headband that seems oddly familiar to her. He is also wearing a large grey scarf and an obvious grey flak jacket.

"Welcome to the academy," he starts, and Asuka is slightly intimidated by his tenor voice and obvious displeasure to be there. "We are here to preview everything that, as Kusagakure Shinobi and Kunoichi are taught, is very important to become an exceptional ninja."

Asuka pauses, and her breathing halts. What. The. Fuck.

Kusagakure? Shinobi? NINJA!?

She looks at her father, and is slightly apprehensive at the thought of what he does as a job.

Is he a ninja too? Is their mother a ninja?

Suddenly she has an epiphany. That bird, the bird is what should have tipped her off, the summon-contractor ordeal, the fucking sixth sense. It wasn't that she was just born into a slightly crazy and metaphor-loving family, it's because of the fact that she's born into the fucking Naruto-verse!

Her brother coughs, and she looks over at him. He was just a child, no child should have to go through the shit that goes on in the background of the world that everyone loved back when she was alive. The man talks again, and she faintly understands what he's saying, but all she could think of was how much she must have screwed up in life to get here.

Was it because she could get really paranoid and never let anyone in her life?

I think this chapter is shit. My first real taste at a third person present-tense story, and I know all of my other story stink as fuck, but they aren't as shitty as this.

Kusagakure isn't really mentioned in Naruto, and the naruto-wiki turns my laptop to shit, so most of the research is all half-assed and probably incorrect. The pictures of them on Google are all vague and mostly OC's, so I think I'll either make something up for the reasoning behind what the Kusa-nin wore at the chunin-thingy in pre-shippuden or actually look some of it up.

If there are any OC of yours you wanna be seen in here then please comment! I don't care if it's by PMing or the comment section, I'll take them and place down their rightful owners down here in the Author's Note! :)
(^though be warn that I might change it's clothing and somethings about it if it seems too Mary Sue-ish)