Tiny time skip here! Still trying to make things move quickly and still introduce characters without seeming forced. Enjoy!

Edited: 10/13/18

The academy was a pain. As a first year I was expected to do tons of reading and theoretical work. It was bothersome. Or rather troublesome. Oops. Apparently I was getting the family motto wrong but bothersome stuck with me rather then troublesome. Shika, my lovable older brother considered this mistake to be very troublesome indeed. I told him I'd had years without anyone to correct me so I was probably stuck with it, but I'd try my best.

In my new life, I didn't enjoy doing work. Any work at all really.

Apparently it wasn't just idle childhood dream to always take naps. I was super lazy in this new life. I continued to blame my brain but honestly I think I was perfectly in my right to sleep. With my toddler brain, I could think three or four times as fast as I could when I had died. In medical school. As an adult.

Thinking that fast was mentally exhausting. And the best way to recover? A nap of course. Unfortunately, my teachers didn't agree. Shika and I were constantly being woken, rather rudely I thought, and given detention for not doing our classwork.

But honestly the work was easy. I was able to do the katakana worksheets when I was still in the orphanage. I just didn't want anyone to know that I was capable. I'd seen them pile more work on other students for succeeding

No way was I gonna give up precious nap time for extra worksheets. Shika met my gaze and agreed silently; we both dropped our heads to the desk. Choji munched on his chips with one hand and worked on his worksheet with his other. I snickered when I noticed he was using his dominant hand to eat the chips because of course his eating dexterity was more important then writing with his dominant hand. Shika blinked at me glanced at where I was looking then smirked.

'This is why I love him' I thought happily 'He's smart enough to just put it together.'

Truly there hadn't been any issues when I came to Konoha with Shikaku. Shikamaru was too lazy to get jealous of or fight with a new sibling and I was too lazy to try and stir up trouble. The only rough patch in my immediate family was my use of 'bothersome' instead of 'troublesome' but mom thought it was hilarious. Yoshina was technically my adopted mother but to separate the two, I generally called her mom and reserved the term Okaa-san for my birth mom, if not just outright referring to her as my birth mom for clarity.

Mom was scary sometimes but that could sometimes be a good thing. It meant no one bothered me because they were worried about Yoshina's wrath. And she also was an amazing cook and a dedicated mother. I could appreciate her and respect her while still running away when she tried to get me to work. Between her love and my Nara relatives being like male versions of me, I was happy to be in my new home. The only thing I missed from the orphanage sometimes was the constant activity. I didn't want to move, but I found background noise relaxing. It was a minor complaint, all things said and done.

But I'm getting distracted: other then using bothersome instead of troublesome, my family had taken to me like a duck to water. Or was it the other way around? Either way we just clicked. My uncles, Inochi and Chouza were kind and, not one to rock the boat, I got along with their kids.

Inoichi hadn't lied; he did have a daughter my age, who was just as platinum blonde as he. While she didn't appreciate Shika or my being lazy during class, I was friendly enough outside of the academy that she didn't really try to do anything to change us. I was happy that she left us alone because she was a force to be reckoned with when she made up her mind. The Ino and I bonded over little kid stuff like playing ninja and flowers.

Choji had been Shika's best friend before I came to the village. Now he was both of our friends, but still closer to Shika. I think it was a guy thing. And then of course there was Shika.

Dear Shika was my favorite person in this village. He was a month older then me and he was more intelligent then anyone I'd ever met, maybe dad included. Certainly smarter then anyone from my past life.

Sometimes, I could have a discussion with him in just looks that transcended any kind of words. And yet he understood my deep seated need to take naps and joined me. He liked lazing around even more then me and he still went out of his way to find me when he hadn't seen me in a while in case I got lonely. Yes, Shika was one of my best friend here. He was a genius that just wanted to be a kid and I respected that. After all, wasn't I lazing about in this new life too?

At the moment Shika and I were fighting. Not angry fighting. More playful competition then anything else. I had been in the village for 4 years now and our first year at the ninja academy was coming to a close. And I wanted the bottom spot. I was aiming to be dead last.

And for some reason Shika was working twice as hard as normal to beat me. Dad had never been more proud of us. While mom was constantly on us to try harder, dad humble bragged to his friends that we got every problem wrong. He seemed to get that we had to know the right answer in the first place to get every answer wrong. What was making Shika stand out was he lack of care for hiding the obvious. To not be noticeable, we had to be just off enough to seem almost right. It was an art. A Nara art.

An art that Shika didn't seem to care about as he just failed everything.

In the years I had been in the village, I had remembered some things from Kayla's favorite tv show but nothing concrete. Often, I tried to use mediation and yoga to bring memories to the surface. As the years passed, I remember less and less, so I tried to solidify what knowledge I did have. Every morning I started with yoga and deep breathing trying tp pull up memories of long forgotten clips of a television show playing in the background. It was mostly bullshit but sometimes i felt like I remembered something more. Besides, it made mom happy to see me start off my morning with stretches. She said it made me more flexible.

What I did know was that only a few things really happened in childhood. I had mostly noticed the characters when they were older. I also now knew that I was in the age group that dealt with the most shit. Still it wasn't all bad -yet. Emo kid wasn't even moody yet.

Instead he was a model student. Blonde loud kid-maybe demon boy, maybe not- wasn't in our class. He was two years above us, having started the academy early. Pink haired girl was here but she didn't seem like a badass who could break the ground open with her first. Which I was totally waiting for because she was one of Kayla's favorite characters. So I remembered she would be awesome with healing. Eventually anyway.

For now, she was painfully shy and nerdy. Still, I trusted the naruto-verse to be similar enough to not cause me any long term issues. After all I wasn't trying to change everything. I was just trying to change everything in my favor. A slightly different way of handling it that made all the difference in the world.

When the academy school day was finally over I stretched in relief, ignoring sensei's glare. These desks were not made for sleeping, let me tell you. I bade goodbye to Choji, promised Shika I'd be home in time for dinner, and hastily gathered my things, leaving the stuffy classroom at last.

When I had first came to the village Dad had immediately brought me in on Shika's clan training. I needed to catch up. I'd found that there were different styles of the kage-no-mane, our family techniques and while we couldn't use them yet, we constantly sat practicing the seals over and over again until they were as familiar as breathing.

While Shika was probably going to fight similar to dad, moving to immobilize the enemy, dad had picked up on my hero worship of Okaa-san. He showed me pictures of her, gave me her old books, and most importantly, taught me to fight like her. It was simple manipulation, but I knew what I had signed up for.

Now that I was finally beginning to practice some of the family jutsu-barely because Shika and I were just children- I could understand why dad had always beat Okaa-san. Her style of fighting was quick.

Like almost all Nara's, she had almost no chakra signal to sense. Our natural chakra was beneficial for sneaking and hiding as, like the shadows, we were hidden from everyone, even the best of sensors if we learned to suppress out chakra well enough. And she had been quick. Rather then moving to immobilize, she struck with shadows all at once; fast, and to do that, she had to physically move even faster.

However, if you were caught before you could start your technique, say your dad caught you in his shadow and stopped you from retaliating, it didn't matter how fast you were, how un-sensible, how good at wielding the shadows like knives. Because you were stuck.

Upon realizing the flaw, all I could do was practice. How could I avoid being caught? Well… I suppose the easiest and the hardest way was the same: be faster. I mean I could start over and focus more on dad's style. But I wanted to be like my Okaa-san. And I was stubborn. So I worked on speed.

In a very un-Nara like fashion, after school everyday I tried to run. I kept light weights on near 24/7, but I didn't feel them quite as much anymore, didn't notice them, until I was running. This wouldn't really help my speed in the short term but it would help my endurance and the better my endurance, the better my sprinting would be. Moving from the streets outside the school towards the forests by the training grounds, I didn't slow. I weaved my way through the trees, finding myself ducking into shadows on near instinct now, always eager to keep myself near advantageous ground. Dad stressed how much my smaller frame would need to rely on my surroundings for shadow supply.

With the wind on my face and the dark forest around me, my chakra singing as I tried to cycle it into my muscles, there was no better feeling the world.

Dad approved; I knew because after I told him what I was doing, he gave me Okaa-sans old diary. Again classic, but appreciated ninja manipulation.

It was sparsely filled; clearly she'd been to lazy to put in detailed entries. Still it was a piece of my mother, and I treasured it. I loved it even more when I realized she outlined her early training schedule in it. The weights had been her idea. The shift from running in the woods freely to workouts with weights was difficult, but I stuck by the same plan that my okaa-san had gone through. I didn't follow all her training plans, not yet because I was too young. But the running I could get behind.

'I'm even earlier then her' I thought giddily 'Okaa-san wasn't using weights till 9 and I'm only 6!'(almost 7 but not quite yet) While the thought would've once disturbed me -come on even wanting to survive and all, child soldiers were just not cool-by now, I was accustomed enough to this world to simply shrug off the thought. 'As they say' ('said' I mentally corrected my internal monologue) 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do.'

I was full in with the indoctrination. Sign me up for the next will of fire speech, HOO RAH.

I got 3/4 through my normal run when something different happened. Now, I find it important to note here that I am far from a creature of habit. While deviation from the norm could be bothersome, stale repetition was so much worse. I was a budding child genius, not so much as Shika, but no one really compared to him, and it was easy to get bored. Holding my attention could be hard. Which is why tedious patterns were easy to recognize and could put me to sleep in a second.

Anyway, Like I was saying. I was 3/4 the way through my normal run when something different happened. Someone ran smack into me. Which could totally be blamed on me for not paying enough attention. But I was going to blame them instead for the same reason.

'Oof!' I couldn't hold back the exhalation air.

"Ahhh!" Cried the mass that had ran into me.

I blinked at the boy. He was older than me and he rose from the ground almost instantly. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! Didn't mean to hit you! I was just practicing and I didn't sense anyone over here!" He spoke quickly and gave a short sharp bow before smiling sheepishly. "Are you okay?"

I blinked. He looked super familiar. Unfortunately having lived in Konoha for a while now, it was getting hard to distinguish who I had actually met in person and who I was remembering from the television show of my past life.

"Mm fine" I mumbled standing up, then wincing as I felt the bruise forming on my left side. 'He was so fast, I didn't even have a chance to dodge.' The thought surprised me.

While only 6, I was faster than most of my academy classmates, not that anyone, instructors included knew because god can you imagine the extra work they'd give me if they knew I was capable of training? But I hadn't even had a chance to see him, let alone dodge.

He noticed the wince and moved closer. "Are you sure? I was moving pretty fast!" Pause then curious look, "Actually, what are you doing here in the woods? You're right on the border of the Uchiha's land."

"…Running." No point in dragging this conversation out; I still had no idea why this guy why familiar and that could be realllllly embarrassing if we'd already met and I was forgetting.

His grin lit up his face and he took in my appearance. I was slightly out of breath from my run and my weights were noticeable when you knew what to look for. Thankfully, nobody in class assumed a Nara would be wearing weights so I was safe for now, but still, now that the boy was looking for them, he noticed them, the book bag on my back and the ragged look of my pants. I had been moving around the shadows of the woods: Of course that meant bushes and brambles and other things that caught on my clothes.

"Well If you ever need someone to run with, let me know! Most ninja don't bother to put in the long runs, but I plan on being the fastest ninja ever, even faster then the yondaime, so I need to put in the extra work." I wondered if he was distantly related to Uncle Inoichi— his smile was infectious.

I grinned back— "You can try, but thats gonna be me." The two of us grinned at each other for another second before he rubbed the back of his head embarrassed. "Aw sorry for not introducing myself. My oba-san would be horrified right now. I'm Shisui. Nice to meet you!"

"Nara Kageko, but call me Kage."

"Shadow huh? That's pretty ironic isn't it?" I grinned. I found my name to be quite fitting especially considering the orphanage had named me.

"Ne, ne it fits though."

He grinned back at me then suddenly I was that nervous kid shy where I wasn't sure if we were friends or not yet.

'Maybe I should run with him? Or would it be weird?' Noting the shadows were longer on the trees, I glanced at the sun. It was almost finished setting.

"I have to go! Mom and dad are expecting me for dinner!" I patted the remaining dirt off of my clothes and moved to leave, internally deciding to simply leave it up to fate, to his choice.

I was bad at being a kid sometimes and had no idea if we had done that thing where we just introduced ourselves and were lifelong friends. So I left on an open invitation.

Shrugging my bag higher on my shoulders, I gave a slight wave to the boy, "See you tomorrow?". And then I was off again. Running as fast as I could, cheeks burning red -was I blushing? The horror. But then my head cleared from the run and all I noticed was the forest and my footsteps and the shadows.

After dinner that night I meditated. In my old life I had enjoyed yoga. Specifically hot yoga. But that wasn't really an option here, so I just used the same stances to both increase my flexibility and to help relax my mind.

While meditating, I tried to focus on the memories of my old life. Shisui sounded familiar. Maybe he was from the show? I continued with my meditation. Yes he was from the show. He was an Uchiha dude. One of the people with the red eyes. And he died. He had a pretty important death too. Sparked a whole massacre that the crow guy did.

Crow dude was Kayla's favorite character so I knew his story pretty well. Shisui must be the best friend who tragically died. She had a bunch of fan theories about him that she had forced me to sit through. She had also cried at his death scene and made me sit and watch it with her. Still this was the first major event that I was going to live through. I had missed the demon fox after all.

But I was 6. But Shisui didn't seem much older. Maybe 12? Younger even? The age wasn't quite the same. And I didn't want to imagine him dying. Because he had been so nice and so friendly.

A cruel voice in the back of my head dug into my insecurities 'and he was fast and strong for a ninja, but he still died. What chance do you have?' I ignored the voice.

It was too negative to dwell on. And I tried to remember my promise to myself that I would change this world for the better. I was going to change it to the better for me... But...

Maybe Shisu was the start ( I was 6) and maybe if I could save him, which would be very bothersome, maybe the crow guy wouldn't kill everyone. And maybe then we'd have more ninja. And then maybe the war would be easier to fight? (I was six fucking years old; there was no chance in hell—)

I slept uneasy that night. There were few things that could beat back insecurities. The worse thing about this new brain of mine was that by being much quicker, smarter, faster, there were few scenarios it couldn't imagine. Nightmares were awful. So when stressed I didn't sleep fearful of my own mind. It was quite bothersome. I lay awake all night, lying in bed while I kept thinking over my mini existential crisis.

I was having my first midlife crisis at 6. This was tragic. I was going to have grey hairs by 10.

The next day school was just as boring as always. I continued to compete with Shika for worst student in the rankings. In Taijutsu class, I lost spectacularly and smirked at Shika as I picked myself up off the ground. Choji snorted in amusement at our antics. Sensei looked on in disapproval. He gave the whole class a lecture on self improvement and hard work while staring at me and Shika. I started back, innocently nodding along. Shika, damn him, was falling asleep while standing, which was impressive and not yet something I could match. After the lecture, sensei released us and while the boys jetted off, Shika being dragged by Choji, the girls gathered together and began to move as one to Kunichi class.

While slightly sexist in nature, I appreciated the class. Really, I thought boys and girls should take it. In a world where a jutsu existed for changing gender, there was no reason for separation of the sexes. Besides, the class was super interesting. It reminded me of my former medical school classes in some ways. The focus on herbalism was enthralling and the first aid would be invaluable in the field. The flower arrangement was new to me and, while not super interesting, as a kunoichi and a Nara there was a chance I would have to go on infiltration missions in the future. I paid decently close attention. Ino and I both enjoy working on them when we hung out considering Ino's family owned a flower shop.

Today's lesson was on tea ceremony. Something that might also be important for infiltration, but sensei said we'd be reviewing this for the next few weeks so I took some time to slack.

Waking up two hours later to the sound of my classmates leaving, feeling refreshed, I gathered my things. Sensei shot me a dark look for sleeping through her lecture, but I ignored her and slumped my way out of the classroom. Feeling her stare at me, I moved even slower. Honestly this was the one aspect where I disagreed with my Okaa-sans journal. She had let everyone know how amazing she was. She enjoyed showing off and had been something of a class clown, as well as a teachers pet. She had a crush on some kid in her class and was always trying to get his attention.

Meanwhile, I liked to be underestimated. People thought I was stupid, unmotivated, slow student. They lumped me and Shika together as failures of the Nara, proof that laziness would eventually overcome superior intellect and genetics. I was fine with them thinking that. I was a Medical student, 28 year old reincarnated Nara. I couldn't be stupid if I tried.

And while everyone thought I was one egg short of a dozen, I'd never been happier. I had no expectations except my own. I was smart, not quite on par with Shika, although I must keep stressing, no one really was.

I was motivated; l wore training weights everyday and kept up a facade to everyone without anyone ever realizing what I was doing.

I was anything but slow but everyone assumed I was lazy. They weren't wrong- but the two weren't mutually exclusive. So the moment I needed to be fast, no one would ever expect it. I was hoping when I finally needed it, they wouldn't even spot me.

It was during my snail walk out of the academy that I saw Shisui. He was the complete opposite of my current philosophy. I didn't let anyone know that I ran. He was practically vibrating with energy while standing still. He was looking around and when he caught sight of me he jumped up and waved his hand at me.

I blinked in surprise. Was he waiting for me? But he must be a genin. Why was he waiting for an academy student? Oh my god, I managed to make a friend after all.

"Kaaaaageeee-chaaaannn!" His excitement was almost palpable. A pleased grin forced its way on my face and I couldn't force it down as he made his over to me and grabbed my arm dragging my forward.

"Are you ready now? Your stupid class went on forever and I was so excited to finally have someone to run with! I'll even slow down so you can keep up." I couldn't drop the smile as he teased me.

A voice in the back of my head warned me— 'he's gonna die. You're playing with borrowed time right now' I ignored it.

I decided right then and there Shisui was my first friend- the first one I'd made on my own, not like Choji and Ino who I'd met through family. He was my first friend in Konoha. Maybe one of my future precious people, my Okaa-san was always commenting about precious people in her diary.

But even if he wasn't someone special to me, he was a fellow shinobi of konoha. And my very first friend in the village thatI made all on my own.

And he was going to live. I was going to make sure of it.

"Ah Shisui-san, I'm ready when you are." His grin was infectious and my smile grew larger.