Chapter Two
You call me Weapon
A Kaa-san calls me daughter
I call me adrift
Nanami was a good daughter, if not a little odd. Chiyoko often joked, in the way the listener could tell was not really all that joking, that raising Nanami was more like living with a roommate than a growing child.
She had stopped crying around eight weeks old, and while Chiyoko at first had been thankful for the sleep she was getting, she began to grow alarmed by the silence. She started waking up to phantom cries, or became griped with fear of SIDS at all hours of the night, rushing to Nanami's bedside, only to see the baby sleeping, or blinking up at her with placid, saucer eyes.
An appointment with a medic yielded no answers. They simply told her there was nothing wrong with Nanami, and to be thankful she didn't have a fussy baby. Then again, Mist wasn't exactly known for their healthcare.
I was just trying to be helpful here. Maybe she'll feel better if I'm a noisier baby? I'd do it if it means not going to that terrible doctor again. Why are sharp teeth a thing here? Do they file them down? Are they actively trying to look like villains? To each their own, but honestly, no thank you.
She toilet trained early. Chiyoko nearly had a heart attack when she found her eight month old daughter, ass stuck in the toilet, legs folded to her chest, babbling to herself in some sort of baby language in a way that somehow sounded self-deprecating.
She had to get moving. Not because of any innate need to be active, but for lack of anything better to do. That mobile over her bed that had slowly rotating kunai and shuriken (which would become the topic of a serious talk with Kaa-san once she learned Japanese) might have done the job for an actual baby, but not for her. The lack of mental stimulation was nearly crushing. So she flexed her baby feet, and moved her baby arms, and got herself crawling as early as possible. With freedom of movement, of course came her need for freedom of privacy. She was determined to check that potty training milestone off the list as soon as possible. Nanami couldn't take the mortification of lying there with her legs in the air as her ninja kaa-san wiped her ass any longer. Vanity seemed to transcend reincarnation. Shame that lack of spatial awareness had seemed to follow her as well.
With a child crawling at six months and walking at eight, Chiyoko hid all of the sharp, pointy things lying around the house (and there were quite a few). Nanami toddled around the tatami and slid open the shōji with alarming awareness, in a way that seemed oddly determined for a baby. She looked out windows with a mien of distaste, and blinked passively at clan members who stopped by the house, doting kisses on her, or running a hand through her wavy tufts of hair.
They would comment on how pretty she was, all those resigned people who looked like her and Kaa-san. They'd say how fortunate she was that she looked like an Izumi, all dark skin and bright eyes, and not that Sano boy. In the beginning, she couldn't understand the words, but was versed enough in meddling families to understand the meaning. She'd see Kaa-san shoulders stiffen, then forcibly relax, so she'd walk over to her mother, and snuggle into her lap. Chiyoko would kiss the crown of her head, and absently tap the aquiline nose Nanami was keen enough to notice no one else in the family had.
The first road block Nanami met was language. At 5 months, she had been mimicking the noises from Chiyoko's lips, diligently trying to form her own heavy, unskilled tongue around the words. While there was something to be said for total immersion, do or die language learning was exhausting. This wasn't the ease of French, there wasn't language transference with borrowed words on which she could rely. A baby learns the language of their parents' as their first, but Nanami was comparing this language of her Kaa-san to her old. This was the first time her previous life got in the way of her new.
At 2 years old, Nanami had sat in a medic's office yet again, sniffing in disdain at the crinkling of the paper under her, swinging her legs back at forth, hoping someone would give her a lollipop if she looked cute enough. Overhead, Kaa-san asked a medic -more sharpened teeth, bleurgh- what could be done regarding her daughter's speech impediment.
It's an accent, not a speech impediment. Nanami thought sullenly, terrible at receiving criticism. I can't help it.
The emphasis on syllables was different in a way that meant Nanami would never be able to speak Japanese like a native. She had spent too long speaking English, which stressed the second syllable to not automatically do so in Japanese as well. While Nanami was often told it was pleasing to listen to, it made her difficult to understand at times. Her accent or "speech impediment" would fade in time, but never go away completely.
Of course, the medic simply told her if it doesn't get in the way of daily life, it didn't matter. They also told Chiyoko to get out, and stop wasting their time, which Nanami thought was pretty rude. Chiyoko was just trying to be a good mom. So, she had shoved the entire jar of cheap lollipops under her baggy mauve sweater, when the medic had stepped out, and shared them with her mom when they reached the fog shrouded streets.
While Nanami spoke with an accent that had never before existed, learning to write had come easy for the girl, at least the mechanics of it; and the old woman who visited every Tuesday and Thursday to teach her crooned her praise. Her characters were easy, and graceful, and even at such a young age, showed promise. The old woman she called Oba-san lamented that Nanami's path was already chosen for her. She could have been a calligraphist.
Overall, Nanami was a pensive little girl, who seemed to do everything with the consideration of an adult. She was quiet, reflective, and watched her mother, fellow clan members, and Mist as a whole, with sharp eyes that were too discerning, too aware, and too jaded for one so young.
And Chiyoko was worried.
It did one no good to be a prodigy in Mist. To stand out in Mist was to sign yourself up for an early death.
Nanami had learned that strange heaviness to the air was chakra. She might not have been a genius in either life, but she was sharp enough to put two and two together when she had first seen her mother's forehead protector. That heaviness in the air, allowed for the destruction and bloodshed that she knew existed in this world. She hated it, but she was also fascinated.
At 20 months, Nanami mustered the courage to patter her way to a sequestered part of the house (more specifically the kitchen, as Chiyoko couldn't cook for the life of her) and prepared herself. She had to see if she had any control of chakra, or if it knew she was a fraud. If it knew she didn't belong here.
She was terrified of it not working. She was terrified of it working, too.
In that tiny, unused kitchen, Nanami sat in meditative pose, hand-me-down sweater draped over her knuckles and knees and timed out her breaths. She sat, trying to trick herself into tranquility when really she was searching for something, anything, that felt like maybe it could be chakra.
She sat in silence for what felt like ages. Breath in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. In...she found it. Something dense and heady filled her senses. In that small space she gasped. It was a high she had never before experienced. It filled her senses completely. This was life, the sense of being in its most basic form, and tears welled in her eyes at the feeling. She reached for it, brought it viscous and bubbling to her fingertips.
And…it blew up in her face.
Next thing she knew she was sputtering for breath, flat on her back on the kitchen floor, the lights in the room shattered, window cracked. She groaned as she felt hot, cold and nauseous all at once. The sound of glass crunching under feet alerted her to Chiyoko's swift presence. She had received a light swat to her bum, and a lecture on chakra exhaustion and misuse once Chiyoko had made sure she was in one piece.
So… power like that was alarming.
She also learned that she had no choice but to use it.
That first day she had sat in her carrier, watching in horror as Kaa-san adjusted her Hitai-ate, performed a few warm up stretches, and threw kunai with deadly accuracy at a knot in a tree trunk, Nanami knew what her future was to be. Murderer. Liar. Ninja.
She had learned more too as time went on. Chiyoko was a good mother. She really was. She did her best to show love in a world that encouraged ruthlessness and cruelty. But as much as she wanted to shelter her daughter, she knew she couldn't. So she spoke to her too-knowing baby, tidbits of truth shared like spoonfuls of medicine; bitter, and sobering.
She told Nanami of the Izumi's failings. A clan not affiliated with any hidden village that had been defeated in battle. When asked by Nanami in a hopeful tone why couldn't she write calligraphy as a grown-up, Chiyoko told her simply. She was to be a ninja. It was the Izumi punishment; the lack of choice. They were third caste ninja, their service punishment for defeat. They were the lowest on the rung in Kiri, prisoners in all but name without shackles.
She asked Kaa-san about her father. Nanami could see the pain on her mother's pretty, rounded face and the only answer she got for that query was a blunt, "He's dead."
She didn't ask any more questions.
However, it was when Chiyoko, with simply a lazy flick of her wrist, that first day, pulled a small cyclone of water from that scummy pond, like a damn water-bender did Nanami wonder if she'd even have a future.
It was the Izumi Kekkei Genkai. She found out later, as a toddler on the lap of her mother, what exactly it was. According to Chiyoko it was a reasonably modest bloodline limit as far as bloodline limits went (Nanami stopped herself from snorting at that). Basically as Nanami could fathom it, it was water bending except with enough chakra, an Izumi could cause the water to boil (Nanami would later find out that Chiyoko was exceptionally good at slinging this boiling water). Of course, this raised more than a few questions. Was this universe related to the avatar universe? Was this the Avatar's past? Nanami wouldn't be surprised at this point. Anything seemed possible in this cosmic train wreck.
Most importantly, the demanding worry that woke Nanami up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat; when was the purge?
Knowledge without understanding seemed worse than ignorance. She knew Kiri would kill off their bloodline limits, but when?
A/N: I'm definitely not saying it's 100% correct, but I've been reading up on what American English accents sound like in Japanese and on the whole, people have commented that while it sounds nice (kind of like how we view a French accent) the way we mix up stress and pitch makes it hard to understand. Also, I feel like Naruto and Avatar have a lot in common, in my head canon, the Naruto universe evolved into bending, so the Izumi are the start of water bending. Either way, let me have this because it's my silly story, haha. Lastly, thank you so much for the reviews, favs, and follows!