So, it's been a month. Just a little less than, actually... Also, in case you couldn't tell, I am terrible at scene changing and general story togetherness. And this chapter feels terribly filler to me... Seriously, I had all of these things planned, but then Reika decided she wanted to get lost, and then Iera-sensei butted in, and... none of them happened. So they'll probably end up in the next chapter. Whenever I have the time to write it, anyway. Because, for the past couple of weeks, I've decided 'I'm going to write over the weekend!' and then I see the things that I need to do and I never get around to writing. This time, I wrote anyway - but I won't make any guarantees for the next chapter. Also, I think probably chapter 8 will be, finally, the canon storyline. Of course, I said a couple of chapters ago that 5 or 6 would be, and see how well that worked out.
Enjoy, I hope, even though I don't really like this chapter myself.
Chapter Six:
"No."
The blunt answer made me huff angrily. I glared at the middle-aged woman in front of me. She twitched slightly, but didn't give in. The day after I'd talked to the Hokage, the assigned guardian had shown up. She was a civilian bureaucrat, of all things, and she refused to let me leave Sasuke's and my temporary apartment alone. Which was logical, I suppose, since I was five and 'traumatized' (and my ninja stalkers wouldn't interfere unless I was in real danger), but that didn't stop it from being annoying. Due to this annoyance, I'd vindictively forgotten her name.
Instead of shouting at her like I wanted to, however, I took a deep breath and composed myself. "I understand, Ma'am," I said meekly, hanging my head remorsefully. "I'll stay here."
"Good." the woman nodded sternly. She softened slightly, apparently affected by my – totally on purpose – kicked puppy look. "It's for your own safety, Reika-chan," she said gently, bending over to be closer to my level and just barely brushing her hand against my shoulder.
I nodded in response, but didn't say anything or look up, and the woman sighed slightly and stood up. It was almost hilarious how nicely everybody treated me because I was 'traumatized' sometimes.
The woman strode purposefully over to the door. With her hand on the door, she seemed to realize that she couldn't just leave, and turned back. "Okay, Reika-chan, I have to go now, but I'll be back later this evening, okay?"
"Okay," I said softly. Really, it was a lot of fun to pretend to be a typical, meek little kid. That didn't change the fact that it was irritating that I needed to at all.
"All right, well, see you later," said the woman awkwardly. "Stay here, okay? I'll know if you don't!" She nodded to herself uncomfortably and fled out the door.
Finally. I turned, wandering aimlessly into my bedroom, and sat on the bed. A count of sixty seconds later, I jumped off the bed and knelt next to my bedside table, opening the bottom drawer. It took a moment, digging through the stuff I'd put in there previously, but I soon extracted my goal – a box of chocolate pocky. Personally, I found the stuff disgusting, but I didn't intend to eat it anyway.
Having acquired my prize, I jumped back to my feet, barely remembered to kick the drawer closed, and walked – even though I wanted to run – back out to the main room of the apartment. Once there, I very decisively placed the box of pocky on the coffee table. And then I left it there in favor of hurrying – without making it look like I was rushing – over to the door.
After putting on my shoes, I was finally out the door. I felt a little bad about leaving when I'd told the woman I wouldn't, but I needed to train, and I couldn't do it inside. The five years I'd tried to hide it from the Uchiha had proven that. Once out of the apartment building, I gave up on looking leisurely, since it would take far too long to walk everywhere where I wanted to go, and broke into a run. I needed to practice running anyway.
I got a fair few strange looks – a lone young girl running as fast as she could was rather uncommon, I suppose. None of them did anything, however, a fact which I was grateful for. I didn't particularly want to talk to them. It did amuse me, however bitterly, that they probably would have stopped me if they'd known who I was – but none of them had ever seen me before, so they didn't recognize me.
There was something I had forgotten, though; I didn't actually know how to navigate the village. Before the massacre, I'd only really left the compound a couple of times, and always with another person. Stupidly, I'd never paid attention while they were navigating. After the massacre, I'd mostly stayed in the hospital and in the apartment. I'd found the compound from the apartment once, but apparently that was luck.
Because, of course, I got lost. I must have taken some wrong turn somewhere, because I quickly found myself in a place I didn't recognize at all – from this life or my last. After realizing that I had no idea where I was, I stopped quickly. A distant part of my mind admired the fact that, after several minutes running at my max speed, I was only breathing a little bit hard. It must have been anime logic, or maybe Uchiha genetics, because I hadn't run much in this life and I would never have been able to do that in my last.
I dragged my mind back to the current issue – I was lost, for the first time I could remember in either life, and there was no one who would come looking for me. Granted, there were my ninja-stalkers, but they almost certainly were under orders to only reveal themselves if absolutely necessary. 'Absolutely necessary' was probably things more along the lines of me being in immediate, fatal danger than me being lost.
Not only was I in a place I didn't recognize, there didn't seem to be any people around. It was incredibly creepy, somehow, though the streets weren't old or rundown, and there was no fog. I paused, thought about it for a minute, and then gave an epic facepalm. Of course it wasn't enough to be reincarnated into an anime world – I had to get myself into a horror movie-esque situation as well.
Well, whatever. I spun around, figuring that my best bet would be to go back the way I came. The situation could have gone even more horror movie on me, and had the way back be blocked off. Thankfully, it refrained, and I was able to go back that way. Unfortunately, I had idiotically not been paying attention to the turns I was taking, and so had no chance of being able to navigate them backwards.
The first split I came across, a four way crossroad, I was able to remember where I'd come from – the last time I'd turned had been to the left, and I was pretty sure it had been at this intersection. So I turned right, and hoped that going right was, in fact, right. At the second split, however, I had no idea, and ended up picking one at random.
Several minutes of this later, I was even more lost. And there were still no people. Seriously, how many people-less streets can there be? Apparently many. Actually, thinking about it, there were a lot of shots of the characters on otherwise uninhabited streets – it had just never mattered, because they actually knew where they were. But I still didn't recognize where I was, even from the show, so there are a lot of empty streets in Konoha, apparently, even though I read somewhere that the Leaf Village has the most civilians of any ninja village.
I shook my head, trying to stop getting distracted. I really needed to find a person to ask for directions from, because I – felt like an idiot. In looking around, trying to find anything that looked familiar, I actually had; the Hokage Residence. Which was just about the tallest building in the village, and accordingly was just about always visible. My face soon found itself buried in my hands, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry at my failure. I soon decided on neither, however, and meandered towards the Hokage Residence. I couldn't take a path straight to it, of course, but I tried to find streets that seemed to lead closer. At least I had a target now.
It took several minutes more, and a rather twining path, but I did manage to get to the Hokage Residence. And finally, there were people around. Except, I was rather loathe to ask for directions to the Uchiha Compound, since it was still technically off-limits. Not to mention the inevitable reaction anyone, civilian or ninja, would have if they found out who I was. While Sasuke had been in the hospital, I'd asked for directions from there to the compound, and the person had seemed shell-shocked enough that they told me, but I didn't think I'd be so lucky a second time.
However…
"Excuse me," I said timidly to one of the passersby. I really, really hated talking to strangers. That was, unfortunately, one – of many, probably – personality trait that being born into a ninja world hadn't gotten rid of.
"Hm?" The person turned to me. He smiled easily, seemingly unbothered by being stopped. "Oh, are you lost, little girl? Do you need help?"
I smiled at him, hiding my annoyance at being called a 'little girl', since I actually was one. "Do you know how to get to the hospital from here?"
The man took a moment to respond, apparently startled by my articulacy. I couldn't be bothered to care. "Oh, yes – you just have to go," he pointed at one of the streets, "down that street for, well, until you get to the third left, okay?" I nodded, since he seemed to expect an answer. "And then you take the first right and you'll be on the correct street."
"Thank you," I told him, bowing, and quickly slipped off into the crowd. I didn't want to give him a chance to ask any awkward questions.
The man spluttered for a moment, but didn't follow me.
I dodged through the crowd, attempting to not get run over or stepped on – I wasn't that small, but it felt like I was – and cursed my five-year-old body. In my last life, although I had been on the small side, I'd never been alone outside until well into my teens. Due to this, I was a little more used to being noticed – though, because I was so accursedly timid, I'd usually been the one moving, others hadn't so completely disregarded my existence. It had been much less annoying to navigate large crowds.
Irritatingly small or not, I quickly found the hospital, and from there the compound. Unsurprisingly, there was no one around the compound – even when the Uchiha had been alive, everybody else had avoided it, and there were probably a bunch of ghost stories about it now.
I shivered as I walked through the abandoned compound – I wondered vaguely if I'd ever get used to it – and tried not to look in any windows. I didn't want to see the bloodstains and chalk outlines. I had further to go than I'd gone since the massacre, since I'd only ever gone as far as my house. Granted, the house of the Clan Head was directly in the middle, but the library was further in, and so further from the gates.
As I walked into the library for the second time in my life, I reflected on how different the two entrances were. Sneaking in, hoping nobody would see, to walking in knowing that there was no one to see. It was a sobering line of thought, and instead of looking through the shelves, I sat at one of the tables and rested my forehead on the smooth wood.
What even was my life? To go from the first life, a perfectly normal girl in a perfectly normal American city, to the second life, born into one of the most famous – or infamous – ninja clans in a world of ninja. Not only that, but that, in my first life I'd hated every Uchiha character in the Naruto series, and now in my second life I had ended up caring about several of them as family. The fact that I honestly missed Itachi, and even Mikoto and Fugaku.
Clearly, the best course of action in this situation was to start laughing. It was either start laughing or start crying, and I'd cried enough. Laughing was better, even if I was more than aware of how hysterical it was. I didn't really care, and I refused to end up an angst-ridden preteen that moped about how crappy their childhood was – especially since I was hardly a child.
With this in mind, I sucked in shallow breaths to stop laughing and stood up. I had things I needed to do, and getting strong enough to manage being in the series' events was one of those.
Despite my determination, I soon found that I had no idea where to even begin. The Uchiha had a lot of scrolls on a lot of things, and I hadn't even thought about what I wanted to specialize in. The Sharingan, from what I had read in the scroll about it, would help greatly with Taijutsu, Ninjutsu, and Genjutsu. Anything else was possible, but not definite.
I slumped back down at the table, resting most of my upper body on it. Taijutsu was almost certainly necessary to know at least a little – a lot of their battles had a fair amount of it, and Lee and Gai, who used purely Taijutsu, were formidable fighters. Throwing weapons, like Tenten, were also impressive, but the scale she used was uncommon. Most likely, being able to throw and aim correctly, but much further and you have to specialize to be any good.
Genjutsu… was very rarely used. The series hadn't explained it at all, and I didn't know much about it – except that Kurenai specialized in it, but Itachi, with the Sharingan, had easily turned it against her. That could mean that, with the Sharingan, I could be really good at it.
Ninjutsu was one of the most common things in the show – the Academy Three, the fire jutsu Sasuke uses, the water jutsu people like Zabuza use, and, of course, Rasengan and Chidori. So Ninjutsu can be scary. It also, unfortunately, required large amounts of chakra – which I didn't know if I would have, but at the moment I did not. I was way too young to have the chakra to use jutsu like the Great Fireball Jutsu.
What else was there? Well, puppetry, which is a serious specialty kind of thing; if you're going to be a good puppetmaster, you're going to be a puppetmaster and nothing else. Plus, that was one of the things the clan didn't have much info on. The chakra strings they use could be useful, though…
And there was Medical Ninjutsu, which, if it was anything like being a doctor, would undoubtedly be extremely complicated. It also, I remembered, required very good chakra control. Being able to heal could be useful too, especially like Kabuto, who had, like, regeneration or something? I didn't remember. Either way, pretty cool.
There was even stealth, which I was kind of tempted to go for, since it would allow me to avoid combat. It was also, I admitted grudgingly, pretty fun in a heart-stopping oh-my-gosh-I-nearly-got-seen way. The problem was, of course, that I couldn't completely avoid combat – it was just not possible.
The only other thing I could think of was seals – and the show went into very little detail. The clan had more information, but still not much.
I groaned, though it was muffled by the table. There was just so much, and I had no idea what I wanted to do – except that all of it had upsides. Which didn't help at all. Taijutsu was probably the best bet to start with, but… I didn't really want to – the mindset I had from my original world still made me not want to hurt people. I didn't have a choice, of course, but…
I ended up taking the beginner scrolls for Ninjutsu – two of them, one of them a common scroll that included things like Bunshin, Henge, and Kawarimi, and the other Uchiha-specific, with fire jutsu like Great Fireball Jutsu and Phoenix Fire Jutsu – Genjutsu - I didn't know what it was about - Medical Ninjutsu – the very beginning, basically just an explanation of what it was – one on throwing kunai and shuriken, and one on seals – also a very vague explanation. I already had the scrolls for general chakra use and beginner Taijutsu.
And, amazingly, I avoided getting lost on my way back to the apartment. I didn't want to stay in the off-limits – and creepy – compound, and I figured I'd have a while before Sasuke got back from the Academy. Not only did class run most of the day, he'd undoubtedly stay after to practice.
It took a bit of maneuvering to get the door open with my arms full of scrolls – I hated being small – but I managed it, and kicked the door closed behind me. I made a beeline for my room – there was no reason to leave the scrolls out when I'd only be using one. Before I passed through the door, I noted smugly that the box of pocky had disappeared.
Generally, ninja train in official training grounds, even genin. Official training grounds are off-limits to everyone but genin and higher, however. The Academy has their own, smaller, training grounds for the students. This is so that they don't accidentally hurt anyone. Obviously, there are exceptions; whenever a ninja wants to help a non-ninja, such as an Academy student or fellow clan member, they'll go to remote forests and parks to train instead.
Since I wasn't even officially an Academy student yet, I was in one such remote park. It wasn't the forest near the compound that Itachi had always brought us to, though – I didn't really want to go back there. Instead it was just a fairly hard to access, unoccupied corner of a park. Finding it was really quite a pain, at least for a civilian; it was surrounded by thick, pokey trees and bushes, though a ninja could probably get in without a problem.
I would have much preferred to be in the temporary apartment, honestly. I'd never been much of a fan of the outdoors, though I supposed I'd have to get used to it, since most missions and a good deal of training took place outside. The problem with being in the apartment, however, was that Sasuke was there. And really, I do like him – now that I've put up with him for five years, I should hope so – but he can be terribly annoying.
In this case, we'd just gotten back from the funeral. It had been almost exactly the same as the one that had happened after the invasion in the series, if smaller-scale. Actually, it had only been Sasuke and me, since usually only those close to the deceased went. The funeral in the show had likely been so large because it was all of the deceased ninja from the entire village. Not to mention that since ninja are, above all, efficient, there had been one funeral for the entire clan – which Sasuke and I hadn't helped plan at all, because we were so young. It was, basically, incredibly depressing. And Sasuke had gotten the day off from the Academy.
As such, Sasuke was now moping in our shared apartment. I knew that he would just ignore me if I was there, so I'd left to find somewhere to train. Training was always – probably – a good outlet. Well, there were worse ones, anyway.
Finally untangling my hair from the branches it had gotten stuck on – again – I allowed myself a triumphant grin as I emerged from the thick brush into the clearing. I sauntered triumphantly into the middle of the clearing… and tried to decide what to do. Eventually deciding on tree-walking – over practicing one of the Academy Three and practicing taijutsu – I wander over to one of the trees. Hopefully, I had enough chakra for this.
In the series, Kakashi had told Naruto and Sasuke to practice by running up the tree. I didn't really want to try that – I didn't have nearly the chakra that twelve-year-old, ninjutsu-using genin would, and I wasn't particularly interested in getting hurt.
So I lifted one foot, balancing on the other easily, and carefully channeled chakra into it. The chakra didn't particularly want to go to the foot – as far as chakra is concerned, the feet are rather unimportant compared to other body parts. It wasn't terribly difficult, however, causing me to wonder how much more Naruto must have had, to be so bad at chakra control. I had no idea how much chakra was the proper amount, so I focused and held a fair amount by my standards, and cautiously pressed the sole of my foot to the tree.
The result was rather anticlimactic; absolutely nothing happened. I closed my eyes and manipulated the chakra out of my foot enough to cling to the tree. The chakra did cling to the tree, but I could tell that it was weak, so I – carefully – channeled more into my foot. Once I figured that there was enough, I pulled my leg away from the tree. Or at least, I tried. In reality, my foot stayed planted firmly against the tree. Wanting to jump in joy, but not wanting to lose concentration, I took a breath – had I been doing that before? No? Oops – and carefully raised my other foot. I stayed, held up by my chakra on the tree for a moment. And then my chakra gave out and I fell.
From my new position flat on my back on the ground, I groaned miserably. It hadn't hurt – I might have been a little kid, but a couple foot fall was still nothing – but I'd failed. And, I noticed suddenly, I was down a large percentage of my chakra. So much that trying again was probably a bad idea. Also enough to eliminate ninjutsu as a viable option for a couple of years – Naruto and Sasuke had been able to tree-run for hours without actually getting chakra exhaustion. I was pretty sure that the amount of chakra required to hold oneself up on a tree was significantly less than to do most ninjutsu.
Well, fine. I pouted slightly, but jumped up and back into the middle of the clearing anyway. I'd just use the time to get better at taijutsu. I quickly started the extremely beginner kata I'd learned from the first taijutsu scroll. Extremely beginner as in, it was closer to yoga than martial arts. It was, apparently, designed to help beginners with balance, coordination, and breathing. It was very slow, and there were a lot of pauses to breathe.
I knew it almost by heart, from three years of reading the instructions. Actually doing the moves, slightly less so, since I hadn't really done them much. Supposedly, it was supposed to start out agonizingly slow, and speed up each time the doer went over the moves, until it was being done quickly. I'd never gotten past the first couple of run-throughs, since I always got bored too quickly.
This time, I was determined to stick with it. I had plenty of time, after all – Sasuke's moping fits were practically legendary. He wouldn't notice my absence for a couple of hours.
Halfway through one of the more difficult moves, I lost my balance and fell, giving a rather childish squeak as I did. I let out a gusty sigh. Apparently I had more work to do than I'd thought.
"You know, you could just wait until you're eight to start," Sasuke pointed out mildly. I scoffed, staring skeptically at his reflection in the mirror.
"But I don't want to wait three years," I grumbled. Sighing, I gave up on my quest to tame my hair – it was obviously impossible. Instead, I tugged on the edge of my shirt, making sure that there were no wrinkles – even though I'd already done that four times – and brushed off my pants to ensure that no dastardly pieces of lint were clinging to them – even though I'd already done that six times.
Sasuke leaned against the bathroom doorway, attempting and failing at looking cool. "What are you so worried about?" He questioned exasperatedly.
Finally deeming my appearance acceptable, I turned away from the mirror. "I just want to fit in." I resisted the urge to run my fingers through my hair.
"You do know that you're gonna stick out no matter what, right?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You know, since you're three years younger than everybody else."
It had been nearly two months, and the Academy class I'd been enrolled in was finally starting. I was, understandably, nervous, and Sasuke wasn't helping. Sasuke didn't want me to join the Academy at all; whether it was because he didn't want me to start so young or because he was upset that he'd had to wait three years longer, I wasn't sure.
"I know," I pouted. "I just don't care."
Sasuke blinked, apparently thrown by my circular logic. He shook his head. "Whatever," he said. "We're going to be late."
"You aren't," I reminded him. The first day of a new class included the opening ceremony, so new students had to show up early.
Rather than responding, Sasuke scoffed and grabbed one of my wrists, towing me towards the door. We quickly pulled on our shoes and grabbed our bags. Sasuke made sure to lock the door behind us, even though nobody would steal from the compound.
"Do you have everything?" Sasuke asked while we walked.
I sighed. "Yes."
"Your books?"
"Yes."
"Paper?"
"Yes."
"Pencils?"
"Yes."
"Lunch?"
"Yes."
Sasuke paused, seemingly unable to think of more things. I rolled my eyes at him. "Yes, Sasuke, I have everything," I said. "It'll be fine."
It wasn't supplies I was worried about.
The opening ceremony, I soon found, was boring. I'd already known what happened during it – I'd gone to Sasuke's – but I'd kind of hoped it would be more interesting as one of the new students, illogical though it was.
Basically, we all – the new students, as well as the Academy teachers – stood in proper nine-person lines – Konoha standard Shinobi formation during formal events – while the Hokage gave a speech. After that, the teachers called us each to our classes – presumably. In this case, this being the last start of the year, there weren't very many new students, so there was actually only the one new class.
Then we were led to our new classroom, told to find seats – there was no assigned seating arrangement – and sat there while our teacher – Iera-sensei, as she introduced herself – gave another speech. Unlike during the Hokage's speech, where everybody else was perfectly silent – the new students had been too intimidated to talk during it – it seemed like all of the others had started talking at once. It was ridiculously loud, enough to make me wish for ear plugs. Iera-sensei didn't seem to notice.
After her speech, Iera-sensei went over safety protocols; evacuation, stay calm, under the mountain, etc. And then, finally, she explained the syllabus – and what the word 'syllabus' meant – as though she was speaking to children (which she was).
"In this class," Iera-sensei began dramatically. "You will learn everything you need to know as a ninja. In theory, that is. In reality, not all of you have what it takes." She looked at the room at large sternly. Incredibly, they were actually silent. "Let me tell you now: being a ninja is not an 'adventure'," her voice was derisive. "It's not 'fun' or 'exciting'. It is a mission."
Iera-sensei paused for effect before continuing. "Ninja are not glamorous. We're not honorable or even, a lot of the time, likable. Ninja are fighters, killers. As a ninja, you will be expected to follow any order, do anything for your village. Because that's what ninja do. "
Amazingly, none of this had been in her speech, which had been about the more typical stuff – a vague history of ninja, the Hokage, etc.
I got the feeling that this part was specific to Iera-sensei.
"Most of you," Iera-sensei finished ominously, "will not survive as a ninja." She smiled, a sudden three-sixty in mood. "That's what we're here for! The Academy will distinguish the capable from the inept. Sure you want to stick around?"
She raised her eyebrows, staring expectantly around at us. Nobody moved, though whether it was from determination or fright was anybody's guess.
Iera-sensei shrugged, seemingly uncaring. "Well, whatever," she said carelessly. Everybody started breathing again. "More literally, this class will teach you to read and write, history, mathematics, geography, the sciences, and, if you're up to it, ninjutsu, taijutsu, as well as other ninja specific things."
A smirk flashed onto her face. "Let's begin, shall we?"