True Beauty and Courage

Disclaimer: I sadly don't own the world of Naruto.

Chapter 2

When I regained consciousness, I have to say, I was thoroughly confused. I heard muted voices, but it was total darkness- I couldn't open my eyes. I felt no real urge to move, but when I tried, it felt like I was pushing against rubber.

All of this would have been incredibly frightening if I hadn't felt so safe. I was content. I didn't have a clue how I got there, and I don't know how long I had been there. I could feel a warm – best way to describe it- energy inside me and all around me. It's like that momentary warmth you get when you drink hot chocolate on a cold day and the heat spreads into your body. That sensation, but all the time. That too perpetuated my sense of comfort.

I lived in virtual bliss until one day, my world around me began to contract.

If I had ever bothered to be eaten by a snake, I can imagine this is what it'd be comparable to. My tiny space would constrict and contract in a rhythm that got exponentially faster. As soon as I was sure my head was going to pop like a water balloon, the pressure on my body vanished and I could detect lights.

I couldn't breathe, so I tried to scream. Air rushed in my lungs and I began to cry from all the stress. I tired myself out and fell into a dead sleep.

When I woke, I could just barely open my eyes, but I couldn't see anything other than light and dark shades. I figured it was because I didn't have my glasses on, so I wasn't too worried. The warm energy coursed through me, and I didn't know quite how to explain it, but I could sense other energies, all different, around me. The closest energy was familiar. Being next to it felt so safe. I fell asleep again.

Throughout what I guessed was about a week, I did nothing but fade in and out of sleep. Everything was so hazy, but I'd been in hospitals so long, I recognized the scent and didn't see any real need to do anything but let my body recover from whatever it was that I'd just been through. It helped that that comforting energy was always nearby. I still had no idea what it was, but I was grateful all the same.

When I finally came around enough to take stock of myself, I could barely move. I was so weak! The fog in my head had cleared, so I searched my mind. Why was I hurt? The memory shot through me, just like that bullet had. I cried out, startled by the disturbing recollection.

My doctor's background kicked in, and I tried to analyze myself clinically. The bullet had blown through my chest, so why couldn't I raise my head?! In fact, I should be dead. I felt uncertainty set it, but that didn't compare to the panic that started to build as I felt myself get lifted into the air.

I tried to calm myself as I opened my eyes. The woman that had picked me up was ten times as big as I was! She started humming a little tune, then spoke. The words sounded foreign, but familiar. She laid me across her chest so that just the top of my head peered over her shoulder.

The room was small and brightly lit, but had three or four infants no more than a few days old in plastic cradles. I recognized it immediately; I was in a neonatal ward. Then it clicked, like tumblers in my mental lock; I not only should have died from that gunshot wound, I HAD died. I had been reincarnated as an infant, and the woman holding me, that I briefly registered as the source of the comforting energy, must be my mother. That was the final straw on my tenuous control, and I burst into tears.

She took me home the next day. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts I barely registered anything going on around me. I could still feel the surging energies that I had learned belonged to other people, and frighteningly, in myself. I was too busy asking myself How? Why? to try to even begin to try to sort out that energy stuff.

Mourning my old life never came to mind in all my ponderings though. I had no one that I missed, and probably no one that missed me. My smarts were all had, but I had brought that with me. I chose to see this as a new opportunity, a second chance at a life that I'd been denied several times over- one with a family. And the woman holding me, she was the center of that. I had lost a mother once as a child, and lost a found family again less than a decade later; I didn't want to lose this one.

At the same time, it was beyond odd for me to have to depend on someone else again, to be so utterly at someone else's mercy. I hadn't had anyone look after me, or care about me at all really, since I was thirteen, which was a solid seven or eight years ago.

I could tell she loved me, despite only having been conscious around her for less than a day. She was constantly holding me, or within eyesight. She'd to hum to me, and her eyes would sparkle as she looked into mine. The first time I'd noticed them, I'm pretty sure my mouth had dropped open. Her eyes were the same emerald green mine had been in my past life. I couldn't explain it, but that color granted me some measure of comfort.

It was a few more days until I met my "father". When I saw him, I think I peed my diaper. There, resting across his forehead holding back his spiky black hair, was a metal headband with four waves etched into it.

I had seen it before in a show I loved, one that I had believed to be pure fiction, but had engaged my interest all the same. One that I had followed for years, entranced in the magic and excitement of it all. An anime called Naruto that took place in a world where ninjas were the norm and killing was a way of life. Dear God, I was going to die again- and that was before I figured out who my parents were.

I had determined it was Japanese my new mother and father were speaking fairly quickly after the shocking revelation that I had been reborn into what had been a fantasy universe in my previous world. From my time watching anime, I could actually understand bits and pieces of their conversations.

That said, a few hours after my father had returned, he had cleaned off and was rocking me against his chest. Looking up at his face, I could tell he was very young, probably no older than I had been when I died. My "mother" was the same. I could see the age in their eyes from all they must have done in their profession, but their faces had that vitality that only young adults possessed. He was tickling my tummy as I giggled uncontrollably when a name rang through the air that made my blood turn to ice in my veins.

"Zabuza!"

I stared up at him as his head turned towards my mother's voice that had called his name from the kitchen.

"Hai, Mei?" he asked in return.

I vaguely heard her say something about dinner past the ringing in my ears as I studied his features with growing horror. I could see it, he was younger now, but I could definitely see the resemblance. I looked over at my mother as my father carried me into the kitchen. There was absolutely no way it should be true, but there she was, also much younger than the version I was used to.

I was the daughter of Zabuza Momochi and Mei Terumi.

My infant mind couldn't handle the stress, and I blacked out.

Opening my eyes, I found myself in a cozy library. I stood up slowly…wait, stood up? I glanced down at my legs, then my hands, gnarled with burn scars. It was me, my old body. I was so confused I wanted to cry again. I'm not usually such an emotional mess, but these past few days had hit me hard. I was me, then I was a baby, now I'm me again. Either I was delusional, crazy, or something beyond my comprehension was actually happening.

I breathed deep, centering myself. Okay, facts first. I assessed my surroundings with cautious gaze.

It was a singular rectangular room with rows upon rows of bookshelves filled with novels. The shelves were a dark wood that gleamed and had intricate carvings along the edges. They were all lined up against the right side of the room. The back of the room had a fireplace that lit the place with a warm light behind a glass screen. To the left of the fireplace, the only window in the room showed a night sky filled with stars, a small bookcase with what seemed to be random objects on its shelves sat under it.

A chair that looked exactly like the one I used to love to curl up in at the Carters' sat in front of the fire on an ornate rug. A work table stood on the other side of the room across from the intricate bookshelves. Behind the work table on the wall, two brightly colored plaques shone with their own light. In the corner to the left of me, a glass award case filled with certificates and medals gleamed. An anatomy model was between the case and the only door in the room. The door had no lock and was directly across the room from the fireplace. In the very center of the room, a silver pedestal glowed.

Having always felt comfortable around my unwavering companions, books, I walked over to the dark wood shelves. Upon closer inspections, I could tell there was a split between the shelves. Half of the shelves were filled with books that were all uniform, red covers with gold bindings except for one with a blue cover. The other half of the shelves looked like that of a normal library with books all different sizes and colors.

Opening several of the books on the side that seemed more normal, I realized they were all books I'd read before. I could clearly see the different sections that ranged from books about fantasy to history to medicine. It was all the knowledge I had ever had.

Crossing over to the other shelves, I picked up one of the red and gold books. Flipping the book open to a random page, a scene started to play itself out on the pages like a movie. It was my old self sitting at a desk going over organic chemistry notes. Shocked, I snapped the book shut. It was my memory!

I grabbed another book and wretched it open. The scene was Mr. Carter ruffling my hair as he laugher. Another page, Orrin pointing to a string of notes on a sheet of music. Another page, Mrs. Carter setting a steaming bowl of soup on the table in front of me. These books… they were all filled with my memories!

If all the red books were memories, what was that one blue book? Nervous, I pulled it from its spot on the shelf. Turning the first page of the book, I blinked down at the images racing across the surface. It was baby me, the new me, laying in Mei's arms as she cried happy tears. The blue book was my memory from Naruto's world.

Where am I?

I placed the book back and drifted over to the fireplace. On the mantle, I could see the photo album clearly labeled family and friends in decorative writing. On the shelves under the window, what I had assumed were just random things were familiar objects from my past. A cooking whisk, a sewing needle and spool, a small garden shovel, a paint brush with a few tubes of paint, and more than all that, my wooden flute. They were physical representations of some of my hobbies.

Sliding around the empty worktable, I studied the two plaques on the wall. One looked like boiling water and the other looked like what I assumed the inside of an active volcano did. I recoiled from them and continued on. I have never gotten over my fear of fire. Anything bigger than the flame on a stove or not behind a couple inches of glass had me reduced down to a puddle of shivering fearfulness. Open flames were my worst nightmare come to life.

The glass case in the corner held diplomas; my diplomas. My med school and college diplomas rested next to all the awards I'd received throughout my life. It was my personal trophy case.

Dazed, I made my way back to the middle of the room towards the silver pedestal. It was a cylindrical pole that reached up to my mid chest, and the top was slanted towards me. A glowing button laid in the middle, and inscribed around the edge was the word Mindscape.

Hesitantly, I pressed the button and a holographic keyboard splayed itself out in front of me. I had, at this point, given into the amount of weird that was happening to me, so I reached out and typed in Harry Potter. I figured that was safe enough. Several shelves started to glow, so I went to investigate. Once I reached one of the glowing shelves in the newly dubbed "Knowledge" section, the shelf dimmed and a set of books began to light. Crouching down, I read the spines. There, sitting side by side, was the entire Harry Potter collection. I glanced back at the silver pedestal.

Mindscape. Mind. I was inside my own mind.

Every part of my life was laid out in this room, and that little silver pedestal was my personal recall system. I went over a collapsed on the chair. I reached underneath the cushions to feel the small wooden chair leg. My fingers slid over the small indentations in the wood I knew spelled out my name. Mr. Carter had joked once that I sat in that chair so much that I might as well have my name on it. The next day, he showed me the inscription he had carved into the leg. Christine.

I never had time to check what was on the other side of the door because I woke up in Mei's arms. One sniff and I knew I was back in the hospital. My new parents must have taken me here when I passed out. It hit me again like a ten ton bus. My new parents. Zabuza Momochi, the Demon of the Mist, and Mei Terumi, the Fifth Mizukage. What in the world. I knew my memory was absolutely perfect, and I read and watched Naruto the entire way through; more than once. I didn't exist in the series, so how could I be here now?

I looked up into their worried faces, and I realized, It doesn't matter to me. They were my family, and with what I knew, my dad was going to die. In this world, there was only one way to protect the ones you love, and that was to be strong, strong enough to keep them safe. I know what it's like to lose the ones you love; I'm never letting that happen again. This time, I'll make sure I have to ability to keep them all safe, no matter if I already know their fates- I'm going to change that!

A/N: Hiya guys! I love any feedback y'all have got for me, so read and review!