Disclaimer: The reincarnation in this story is not from any one real religion. I borrowed from a bunch and made up a whole lot more.

Trigger warning: brief stalking

Useless

I carefully spun around, letting my wide sleeves flutter lightly as the screams echoed around us. "What do you think, Captain?"

"Husband, soon," came the gruff voice as his brawny, scarred arm wrapped around my waist. "Anything you ask, my butterfly, shall be yours."

I turned in his arms to face him, so that he could look at the eyes I had spent an hour painting for this moment. "How about a fleet, darling?"

Ino wasn't speaking to me, and it had been two weeks. Apparently, she had taken my three days of absence as an affront to her personally. Every time I walked into the classroom, she turned away from me with crossed arms and flipped ponytail.

I felt badly about it, but I didn't have time to solve this particular schoolroom squabble. I'd apologize to her later. However, Ino's newfound disdain had given Sakura a reason to suddenly try and become my new best friend.

"Hello, Mimiru-chan," the pink-haired girl was entirely too happy for the hour of the morning it was. As always, she was coiffed and polished to perfection - how much time did she and Ino spend on their appearance in the morning?

"Hello, Haruno-san," I said politely. We weren't close enough for that sort of familiarity yet.

"I was wondering if you wanted to go to the tea shop after class?" she asked. "It has a great view of the supermarket."

So I can watch you stalk Sasuke? I would rather drink cyanide, I thought. "As fun as watching the supermarket sounds, I have work to do after class," I said. "Maybe another time?"

"Ooh, how about the weekend? There's the best garden by my house." She clasped her hands in front of her. "My mother will make dinner and her cooking is the best! Oh, please say you'll come."

I stared at her incredulously. "Um."

"I'll take that as a yes!" she squealed. "See you Saturday, at four!"

She really creates her own reality, doesn't she. I shuffled towards the teacher's office, where I should be left alone.

Iruka let me in. "Remember, don't touch anything," he said. "And the cabinets are securely locked, and I will know if you mess with them."

I raised my hands. "Don't worry sensei, I won't touch anything."

The teacher's lounge was an interesting enough place, with its stacks of paperwork nearly touching the ceiling, with kunai casually used as paperweights. There had to be some jutsu involved for balance.

I looked at the unstable rolling chair for a moment, with its squeaking wheels and rusty bolts, and decided against it. That thing looks like a death trap, I thought, touching it with a hesitant hand. As always, the seat actually tipped toward me without turning on its wheels. How is this thing attached anyway?

Instead I settled on the floor, tucking myself into the leg space I had found most comfortable below one of the teachers' desks. The wood against my back was cool and human to the touch, and I focused on that sensation as I lulled myself into a trance, using the general hubub from the classroom to keep myself anchored. This was the key to keeping the trances mostly pain-free, but dipping a proverbial foot into the memory pond and not diving all the way in was awfully difficult.

I still wasn't getting a complete sense of self from Katherine's life. Or in my own life, let's be realistic here. Still, painless memories were the easiest way to search for her trigger.

Sitting in a classroom was a kind of torture. I stared at the clock and watched the seconds tick by, trying to keep my eyes open. Since first grade, I hadn't been subject to the slavery of school, and now, after ten years…

Sometimes I really regretted cheating enough to get kicked out of homeschooling. Under my breath, I hummed a few bars from "Defying Gravity", singing the lyrics in my head.

"Katherine! Come up here and solve the question on the board," came the heavily accented voice of my math teacher.

I jerked out of my reverie. "Sorry, Miz." I slid out of my chair, acutely aware of all the eyes fixed on me. I wanted to shrink in my chair.

I stared at the problem on the board. I hadn't paid attention to this formula in class at all, but I understood enough about how math worked to figure it out anyway. To be fair, I was sure the other guy who was called up didn't understand any more than I did.

I had learned my lesson, though, and made sure that it took me a long time to get the right answer. Too fast and I would be a target for bullying again. I had only just escaped that.

"Lean against the wall, Kathy," my mother said. "Face-first. If you are breathing correctly to sing, then your stomach should push out and push you off the wall."

"Okay, Mommy!" I said cheerfully. I felt so adult. Finally, I could learn to sing pretty like Mommy and Grandma and all my Aunties.

"Here, Kathy, look." Mommy was leaning against the wall, and I watched her stomach push her off the wall with wide eyes.

"Wow. Let me try!"

The hubbub outside quieted. With a slip in focus, I slid onto the floor, no longer hearing the noises around me.

"Hey, baby! Hey, hottie! You gotta come with me, you can't believe what I'm going to do to your pretty little ****" came the strange voice from the corner.

My heart was beating so fast I was sure it might beat out of my chest, and strands of hair were sticking to my sweaty cheeks and neck. "I told you to go away," I shouted. "Leave me alone!"

The creep approached me, and I pedaled away as fast as I could. Thank God I was on a bike. The sun beat down like an unforgiving god.

But then he was on the next corner.

And the next.

And the next.

Panic exploded inside of me, covering my insides with tiny hot shards of fear. I turned the corner into the metro station, running straight into the arms of the security guard. "I've been followed by some creep for over 100 blocks," I said, finally bursting into hot, sweaty tears.

And like a vengeful ghost, he was there again, his ghastly pale cheeks spreading into the slimiest of smiles.. "Sorry, officer, she's my girlfriend, we've been fighting," he said.

"I don't know him! I've never met him before," I half-screamed, positioning my bicycle in front of me like an impenetrable wall.

"Call the police," the guard said seriously, staring suspiciously at the man in his raggedy shirt.

The man ran.

"Wake up! Mimi-chan, get up!" Naruto's voice was like a cheese grater to the brain.

I blearily opened my eyes. My throat ached. "Naruto? W-what?" My vision spun into focus, and I realized that half the class was standing over me. "What the hell?"

"You were screaming," came the concerned voice of Iruka-sensei from behind the throng.

"Oh god," I muttered, sitting up to bury my face in my skinny, freckled arms. This is so embarrassing. My head pounded with the now-familiar pain of a raw memory. I always preferred medium-rare. Ha. This is the most embarrassing moment of my current life. I hate everything.

Ino shoved her face in front of mine. "What the hell are you doing, Mimiru-chan?" She began to check me over, like the busybody she was. "Are you hurt?"

"Just my brain," I muttered. I wish everyone would stop staring at me.

"Are you doing a mind technique?" Ino proclaimed loudly.

My head snapped up. "Uh, um, maybe?" I said. I didn't deeply want to let everyone in on this secret. "It's clan stuff," I defended. That usually shut everything down.

"The Uzumaki are a clan?" came an unidentified shriek from the throng of students, many of whom were losing interest in the local drama and filtering back to their seats.

I cocked my head to the side, genuinely confused. Umi had implied that the Uzumaki were a very influential clan, before they were decimated. "Um, yeah. Of Uzugakure?" I said. "They- um… We were the ruling clan before Uzu was destroyed."

The remaining students were staring at Naruto with a dumbfounded look on their faces. "The dead-last is part of a clan?" came a dry voice from the back of the clan. Sasuke, probably.

Naruto's chest puffed up. "You betcha!" he cheered. "And we do awesome stuff! Like-"

"Naruto," I warned, suddenly panicked. "Clan secrets are secret." Not that I know a ton of Uzumaki clan secrets anyway, but I'm not sure what I can and can't say...

"-Like super secret awesome stuff!" he finished. "So eat it, bastards!"

I could practically feel Iruka facepalm behind me.

"I believe it's time to get back to class, bratlings," came Mizuki's voice, laced with annoyance.

"You're not hurt, Mimiru-kun?" Iruka said, once the students began to leave.

"No, this is a side-effect of my terrible meditating skills," I said with a roll of my eyes.

"You need help meditating?" came Ino's voice from behind me. I hadn't realized she was still there. "I can help with that!"

"I don't need help-" I began.

"That's a great idea!" said Iruka, full of sudden, intense cheer. "For your homework, Mimiru, you should go home with Ino and practice meditation. I'm sure it will be great for your report. In fact, I'm making the Yamanaka meditation techniques a mandatory part of your report." He smiled an alligator's smile.

"Clan secrets-" I began.

"It's just meditation, right? I promise we won't ask many questions," Ino said. Her eyes sparkled. "So long as you don't ask too many about ours!"

Apparently I was forgiven. "We?" I said weakly.

"I'm gonna ask my dad to help! There's no reason meditating should hurt so much," she said, voice full of concern.

I looked helplessly around the room. I hadn't meant to get so many people invested in my problems - I was only exposing more people to Umi. There had to be some way to get out of this.

"Uh, only if Naruto can come too," I blurted out in a last-ditch effort.

"Okay, great!" said Ino, her eyes narrowing determinedly after an awkward pause. "You guys can walk with me!'

Naruto? Meditation?

This was going to be a disaster.

After school, Ino was skipping alongside me and chattering, while determinedly ignoring Naruto behind us. "So, what did Forehead have to say to you this morning?" she said with a dismissive flick of her hand.

I shrugged. "She wants to get tea on Saturday," I said in my blandest voice.

"Are you going to go?" Ino asked, and her voice was underlaid with something both sad and bitter.

"Maybe," I said, kicking a rock. "She seems nice enough."

"I think Sakura-chan is the prettiest girl in the whole class!" Naruto blurted out from behind us.

Ino turned around, her ponytail swinging so wildly that it smacked me across the cheek with an audible snap.

I rubbed my cheek. "Ow," I muttered under my breath. No one heard me.

"You think Forehead is pretty, Uzumaki?" Ino growled. "She's the worst!"

"You take that back!" Naruto said. "She is so the prettiest girl!"

"Naruto," I said dryly. "We are also in your class."

I watched Naruto stop and process. "N-not that you guys aren't pretty-" he stuttered, deflating.

I laughed. "You have a crush on Haruno-san?" I said, dropping back to elbow him in the ribs. "You liiiiiiike her."

Naruto flushed red as a tomato, reaching back to scratch at the nape of his neck. "W-well… yeah! She's so smart!"

Ino glared at me as if I had betrayed her, and I thought fast.

"You know, Ino," I began. "If Haruno-san liked Naruto, then she wouldn't be your love rival anymore." And you two could be friends again, and I can get out of this awkward friendship tug-of-war…

Ino looked Naruto up and down, critically. "Sakura will never fall for you when you look like that," she said critically, with a toss of her head.

"Whaaaaat," said Naruto. "But this jumpsuit is amazing!"

"It gives people headaches, and it clashes with your hair," Ino said firmly, finally skipping ahead.

Naruto half-ran to catch up. "What should I wear?" he begged.

I followed behind, watching in minor shock. What had I just done? They hadn't been friends before, had they?

How much was I changing?

Am I that important?

In Ino's house, her equally sassy and ponytailed father opened the door. "Ino, you've brought…" his eyes wandered to Naruto and narrowed slightly, "Friends?"

"Yes, Daddy," Ino said, flouncing inside. "Mimiru-chan is really bad at meditating."

"Ino, we can't just tell everyone Yamanaka techniques," her father admonished gently.

"Oh, no, Daddy, just basic things. Mimiru's so bad at meditation that she's hurting herself," Ino said, with her best watery puppy eyes.

I watched the tall, noble clan head melt into a soft daughter-induced puddle. "Well, I guess a few basic lessons wouldn't hurt," he said with a smile. "Are you going to introduce your, um, friends?" his eyes snapped to Naruto again.

Why did everyone hate him? It was so hurt so much to remember. Something about… his stomach? But even thinking about that hurt, so I shied away from it.

"Oh, okay! Daddy, this is Uzumaki Mimiru and Uzumaki Naruto," she said, her voice dropping slightly on Naruto. "They're… cousins?"

Ino's dad narrowed his eyes. "So you're the one who caused so much trouble at the gate a few months ago?"

I blushed almost as red as my hair. "Sorry for the trouble."

Ino continued. "Mimiru-chan, Naruto, this is my father, Yamanaka Inoichi, the head of the Yamanaka clan."

I bowed deeply, grabbing Naruto by the nape of his hair and forcing him to bow as well. "Pleasure to meet you, Yamanaka-sama," I said politely. As we straightened, I pulled the hair at the nape of Naruto's neck to remind him to respond too.

"Uhm, ow!" Naruto hissed, and I signaled toward Ino's dad with my eyes. "Uh, nice to meet you, oji-san," he said casually.

I squeezed my eyes closed. I was going to have to give him a lesson on manners. How embarrassing. Today was the worst.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. Why don't you kids run off and get a snack before we start?" Yamanaka-sama said.

"Sounds good!," Ino chirped, and raced off to what I assumed was the kitchen.

Naruto and I followed her at a more sedate pace, though I felt Naruto shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably behind me.

After raiding Ino's fridge and some friendly banter that made Naruto relax a little, we all settled into the Yamanaka meditation room.

It was an odd room, hung with rich, dark curtains on all sides, clipped back with sparkling uncut gemstones to allow plenty of sunlight that showed off the beautiful tatami mat floor scattered with large, comfortable-looking sitting pillows.

We each chose a large sitting pillow, and I snagged the one with a comfortable crushed-velvet paisley pattern. Naruto grabbed the burnt-orange one, of course, while Ino claimed a rich blue one decorated with tiny cherry blossoms.

Yamanaka-sama was already seated, legs folded neatly under him in seiza position. He looked oddly serene, so different from the hyper, affectionate man we had been introduced to earlier.

Naruto fidgeted on his pillow and I fought the urge.

"Well," Yamanaka-sama began. "Ino, why don't you instruct? I'll stop you if you try to tell them anything you shouldn't."

Ino relaxed, and I hadn't realized she had been so nervous about sharing clan secrets. "To begin, you have to get into the right position," she said, folding herself into seiza.

I followed obediently, and, to my surprise, so did Naruto. "Why is this important?" I asked curiously.

"Your mind doesn't just exist in your head, silly," Ino said. "Or else bloodlines that deal with mental stuff wouldn't exist!"

I blinked. "Okay. So… why this?" I asked.

Ino paused. "Um… I don't know." She looked at her father. "Daddy?"

Ino's dad looked at us. "You weren't kidding, Ino-chan," he said. "She really doesn't know anything."

Quietly, my hands instinctively almost curled into fists before I consciously relaxed them and curled my toes behind me instead.

Naruto, though, didn't take criticism so quietly. "Hey! Mimi-chan is working really hard!"

"It's alright, Naruto," I said quietly. "He's not wrong." I turned to him, and swallowed my dislike behind a smile. "Why is seiza important?"

Ino's dad looked me over with a more respectful eye. "Seiza perfectly aligns your chakra pathways for optimal yin chakra usage," he said simply. "Yin chakra is spiritual, and improperly aligned yin chakra is often a huge problem in the beginning. Once you are more advanced and know where your chakra is supposed to flow, you no longer need the position."

Ino paused, then crawled around to look critically at Naruto's feet. "Ugh, Naruto, you have to fold your toes over one another," she said in an annoyed voice, turning around to demonstrate. "Like this."

Naruto gritted his teeth, but, surprisingly, took a cue from me and didn't say anything. "Fine," he said grumpily. "Like this?"

Ino glanced behind him. "Yeah, that's fine," she said.

Naruto brightened. "Really?"

Ino threw him a thumbs-up before settling back on her pillow. "Then, you need to practice clearing your mind."

She threw herself into it with gusto, and Naruto and I exchanged a glance. "With breathing, right?" I said, hoping to trigger a clearer explanation than "practice clearing your mind."

"Yeah, clear it with what, bleach?" Naruto said.

Ino looked at him as if she had just scraped him off the bottom of her standard-issue sandal. "No, not with bleach, dummy, you just practice trying to think about nothing."

"With breathing?" I said again, in a more timid voice. "And there's no reason to call anyone names, Ino-chan." I paused, then pulled my shoulders a little farther together to make myself smaller. "I didn't really understand either."

Again, I could feel Ino's dad look me over with a far more interested eye. Still, he made no move to help Ino teach. I guessed that he wouldn't help unless she asked him to or she led us into something dangerous or wrong.

Ino pinked a little, but I had humbled myself enough in posture that my words didn't come across much like criticism. Still, I could see her growing defensive. "Sorry, then," she said dismissively. "Anyway, if you had let me finish, I would have told you to clear your mind by focusing on your breathing."

I knew that much, so I closed my eyes and started to breathe. Like I remembered from one or two previous lives, I began to count breaths to clear my mind. However, I was pulled back to the present all too quickly.

"You have to close your eyes, du- I mean, Naruto," I heard Ino say sharply.

"Well, you never said to close your eyes!" Naruto shot back.

"It's obvious," Ino said with a roll of her eyes. "Haven't you ever watched anyone meditate before?"

"No, why would I?" Naruto said. I felt him start to amp up the false bravado that he tended to use whenever anyone pointed out his academic faults. "We never meditated in class or anything!"

I sealed my lips together and tried to focus on my breathing. I was not getting into the middle of this one. Breathe in, one-two-three, breathe out, one-two-three-four-five-six…

This was a bit easier - it felt less like I had to wrestle my mind into place.

"Everyone learns to meditate, don't they, Daddy?" I heard Ino say, her tone turning plaintive.

"Not everyone, Ino," Ino's dad said. His voice sounded so much farther away.

And suddenly I was drowning.

It was strangely calm, at the bottom of the pool. I had Conner securely latched in my own thin arms, and I could see the porch lights far away, through the many feet of water. Though I knew how to swim, the two-year-old in my arms didn't. I had gone in after him with all of my five-year-old determination and found that my arms just weren't strong enough to drag him to the surface.

As my breath began to run out, the fear started. I couldn't go back up without him, could I? Mommy and Daddy would be so sad. He was strangely limp in my arms, and I made a last abortive effort to drag him up before I decided, as my chest hurt, to try and swim back up. But as I tried to push back up, I couldn't make myself let go of Connor, and my mouth opened reflexively to try and breathe - but no air came.

Only water.

All the panic flooded in with the water, and I started to thrash. From above, the general hubbub of the party turned into panicked screams, and I heard a muffled splash above me. Strong arms went around me and Connor, and sooner than I expected, I was coughing my lungs up on the side of the pool.

Conner giggled next to me, damp curls plastered to his head. He was completely unaffected.

I could hear Conner screaming, and I was bigger now. But the water that had pulled him inexorably toward the waterfall behind Grandma's was too strong for my swimming, for all that I was nine now. But I managed to snag a skinny arm and wedge myself behind a big boulder lodged in the river. With the water doing half the work of pressing us against the rock, I began to scream for hel-

Suddenly I was in a new place. I didn't remember this place, a wide grassy plain that stretched in gentle swells and dips like the ocean. I was standing next to a well, for some reason, with the dipper touching my lips.

I?

I looked down at myself, and realized I was pulled straight from Katherine's memory - blue patterned swimsuit and skinny, soft body included. My golden hair dripped with ice-cold river water, and my hands lifted automatically to squeeze water out of it.

"Who are you?" came the shocked voice of Ino's dad from behind me.

I spun around, still dripping. I looked down at myself, but I could already see the tips of my fingers turning bluish, like light. The blue crawled up my arms and across the rest of my body, turning me from human to some sort of aura. "Um, where am I?" I said.

"You're…" Ino's dad paused, confusion working its way across his face. He fingered a paper strung hanging in midair from some invisible string. "Behind a seal." As soon as Ino's dad pointed them out, I could only see him though bars as if I was in a cage.

I approached the rusted bars, and tried to squeeze through. As I slid through the bars, every part of me that crossed to the other side turned to the now-familiar tanned-and-freckled arms of Kiyo-

Mimiru. Of Mimiru.

Soon I was through, and I could feel my familiar curly, tangled braid across my shoulder. "How are you here?" I said.

"You were choking," Ino's dad said, kneeling so that we were eye level. "And we couldn't wake you. So I had to come in and fetch you."

"Why doesn't it hurt?" I said, honestly curious. Whenever Umi came in here, it hurt like I was being flayed alive from the inside.

"Your grandmother does that to you?" Ino's dad's mouth dropped open in horror.

"How did you know what I was thinking?" I said, taking a step back from him.

He raised an eyebrow and waved vaguely around. "We're in your mind. No secret thoughts here."

I determinedly didn't think about Umi. "Can we get out of here please?"

"I'm going to need to touch you to wake you," he said gently. "May I?"

I nodded eagerly, wanting him out of my head as fast as possible. There were so many things he couldn't know-

I felt his fingers on my shoulder, and then I shot into aware-

-ness. I blinked awake, seeing rusty orange out of the corner of my eye. "Sorry," I said, sitting up and rubbing my eyes.

"Oh, you're okay!" Ino shrieked, and practically threw herself at me, wrapping wiry arms around me. "You scared me!"

Ino's dad was sitting up across the room. "Well, Ino, it's good you brought her here," he said. "She definitely shouldn't be working on this technique alone."

"I've done it before," I said stubbornly, without thinking. "Nine times."

"Nine times?" Ino's dad said.

I flushed a little. "I'm saying too much."

"And you don't want to ask your grandmother for help, I suppose," Ino's dad said speculatively.

"No," I said firmly.

"But why not?" said Ino. "I mean, if it's a clan thing shouldn't you be trained by your clan?"

"Ino, enough," Ino's dad said. "She has good reasons." His pupil-less eyes re-focused on me. "Let's begin again, and this time do not count your breaths. It's drawing you into your trance too quickly."

We all folded ourselves into seiza again, and breathed.

A week later, I was better at meditating painlessly and nowhere closer to understanding what made Katherine tick. My deadline hung before me, only hours away.

I wasn't going to be able to make it.

The aura of doom must have hung visibly around me, because Iruka-sensei kindly asked "Is everything alright, Mimiru-kun?" as he led me to the teacher's lounge.

I glanced up at his face and made a decision. "Sensei," I said seriously. "If I am not in class on Monday, don't wait thirty minutes to come find me." I snagged a nearby test.

"You're not supposed to touch-" Iruka-sensei protested.

I snatched a pen as well and turned it over to the blank side and scrawled my address. Umi's address. "This is my address," I said. "If no one answers, go through the second floor window on the left-hand side. It's not trapped."

Iruka-sensei looked at me, his eyes narrowing in concern. "What do you expect to happen?"

"If you can't wake me," I continued without answering, "Take me to the Yamanaka compound. The hospital won't do anything."

"What do you expect to happen this weekend?" Iruka-sensei asked. He used his best I-am-the-adult-authority voice, but it didn't affect me right now.

I smiled thinly. For a moment, I felt the weight of millennia, the pointlessness of life. "Go back to class, sensei."

A/N: I'm glad you guys are liking the story! Does anyone have any theories as to what the key is to understanding Katherine's life? I've been putting the clues in the chapter titles. (And, tbh, once I decided, I went back and changed one or two titles so you might want to look again! =P)