As the darkness swept over me, I could feel my life wavering. My heart slowed until it hurt. My lungs burned with effort. My brain felt sluggish, like my thinking was going gray.

I could even feel that soft thrum of my soul flickering out.

No, I can't… I can't let my students watch me die. I focused only on that little flame of my soul. I begged it to stay alight. Please. Don't let them see this.

The dying fire in my chest was almost gone. And though I could neither see nor hear - I pushed. And the flame grew.

I could feel it expanding, stretching through my body until it almost burned. I wanted to cry out at the sudden feeling of fire in my veins, coursing them back to life, but I still laid in nothingness.

Then sounds returned in horrible booms and screams. It sounded like I was in a warzone.

My eyes cracked open, nearly blinded by light.

I'm alive?

I tried to move but the pain was too great, like every bone in my body was broken. I tried to speak but my throat burned with what felt like ash.

Oh sweet baby Jesus, this is Hell isn't it? I knew I shouldn't have cursed so much in class.

I managed to croak out a pitiful "Help," when something in the corner of my blurry vision moved. Running on adrenalin, I managed to pick my head up to look.

In front of me was a boy who, by his build, seemed to be only thirteen, or so. He had a puff of grey hair and wore a white and red dog mask. His one visible eye was wide, like he'd just seen a ghost.

Is that…. That Naruto guy? The teacher? No. He looks too young.

A few years back the kids had forced me to put on Naruto during lunch breaks. I would watch with them, but I didn't see it all. The characters' names escaped me, even if I remembered who they were.

Is my version of Hell… the Naruto world?

I tried harder to sit up, desperate to get closer to the strange boy.

Something was weighing me down though. With a grimace, I raised a hand up to feel… bodies. They were splayed over my legs and stomach, arms wrapped around me.

Now my heart was beating. Fast.

The boy leapt into action, hauling two heavy bodies off of me with ease.

I looked at one of the corpses and fear washed over me. I recognized the face, frozen in death, of the woman.

That's my mom.

But no, not my real mom. She'd been twice as old and had passed years ago. And yet, I knew this woman as my mother. A surge of memories flooded me as I stared at her.

I remembered this woman tending to a field, and handing me a knotweed flower.

I remembered her cooking thick wheat noodles in broth with an expert hand, worn from work.

I remembered her kissing me goodnight, laying me onto a threadbare mat on the ground.

I shook my head, trying to disentangle the truth. It was as if I had two mothers. But this one was younger, newer.

And I suddenly realized I was different too. In the memories I was a little girl. I lived on a farm. And everything was… wrong. My memories seemed to tell me that there was, like, magic here.

"Ack," I coughed up ash as another explosion sounded behind me.

"This one… came back to life. I'll take her to the medic tent," I heard the boy shout.

A heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, I turned to look at the other body.

My father.

I had never had a father before, and yet this man was certainly my dad. I remembered him farming with mom, and teaching me how to whittle tools from maple wood, and telling me old folk tales by the fire.

The memories felt more like things I'd read in a text book and memorized. But they were there, clear as day. Even though I couldn't quite connect to the man emotionally, I felt a tear prickle at my eyes.

My mom and dad are dead. Again. I thought wryly.

I reached out a shaking hand to his face to wipe blood from his brow. Only then did I see how small and pale my hand was.

I'm… a child?

"He's gone," the teenage boy whispered to me as his lithe arms scooped me up, bridal style. "They… they protected you."

I looked up at him, but he didn't look back at me, his eyes trained ahead.

He held me to his chest and he ran. Carrying me through a literal warzone. I could hear the explosions, and the shouts. I could feel a burst of awful energy, too, streaming through the air. It felt like the fire in my veins, but so much hotter and more vile.

The fire in my veins feels like life. That fire feels like death.

Though the boy ran fast, my body hardly bounced. It was almost like he flew.

In moments I was deposited onto a hard stretcher in a bright tent filled with other people on stretchers.

"One more." The boy said before leaving.

A nurse stood above me, waving at him. "Thank you, shinobi-san. Stay safe." But the boy didn't stay to listen nor respond.

The nurse turned to me. She wore a funny floppy hat and a white coat buttoned up to her neck.

Medical-nin. A voice tickled at the back of my memory. Whether it was from this life or the last, though, I couldn't tell.

"What's your name?" She asked softly.

I tried to think. I had been Sybil Lee. But that didn't feel right, now. That was me before. Then I recalled a second name, one that the woman had said as she laid me on the cot, and the man had said as he whittled me a small wooden horse.

"Ren." I replied in a high voice. The voice of a child no older than my own students.

"Ren. Do you have a family name?"

I tried to think, squinting my eyes, peering back into the depths of this new memory, but nothing came. I shook my head. The nurse sighed.

"I see. That's fine, and your mother and father? Do you know where they are?"

I pictured their faces, just moments ago.

"Dead," I whispered. I was vaguely aware the word I had said didn't sound like 'dead,' it sounded like "shi," but I knew it was the same. A new language. Japanese? How do I know Japanese?

"Oh dear. From before the attack? Or just now?"

I felt too tired to answer. I just pointed toward the way the boy had taken me. I looked back up at the nurse who seemed nearly ready to cry, herself.

"Another orphan," she seemed to mutter to herself as she scribbled something onto parchment. Then she looked back up with a smile. "Well, Ren. Don't worry, I'll make sure you're okay."

I blinked back up at her. I was the farthest thing from "okay" as I could imagine.

As she held her hands over me, a green light poured from them, scanning over my body.

Her magical powers were just another oddity.

I had died, and then came back to life as a kindergartener, and now was living in some war-torn Naruto world. If it was a dream, I couldn't tell. I would just have to wait it out to see. If it was Hell… I guess it could be worse.

As the woman scanned me, stopping periodically to note on the paper, I listened to the voices around us, only able to capture pieces of them.

"…Nine-tailed fox…" "…Demon…" "…Attack…" "…Hokage…." "…Casulaties…"

I tried to recall the anime I'd watched with the kids. I don't remember seeing this scene, but I remembered the story.

Naruto had just been born, right? And the fox was killing people.

Trying to remember hurt my head, however, so I tuned the voices out. Instead I closed my eyes and focused on the warmth spreading through my veins. It felt… soothing. Like something I'd always known as my "soul," but it was bigger now. More tangible. I felt almost like I could move it.

"Fascinating, The chakra levels are mature for her age, particularly a civilian, how can they…" I heard her whisper to herself, scribbling.

Chakra. I attached the word to the energy. It felt right.

I could feel the heat of the death energy outside. Also chakra.

And the cold green light that passed over me. It seemed to snake out from the woman's hands, coursing through her as well. The medical-nin's chakra.

It wasn't quite as clear in other people, not like my own, but I could sense it was there. If anything, it felt like an emotion. The overwhelming chakra outside felt wrathful. Angry. The woman's chakra felt caring and focused, but on-edge.

It was all so murky, though. I stopped paying attention and the sense left me again.

Too much was going on and I was too tired.

I let sleep overtake me as she worked: whispering, writing, and scanning.

If I sleep I might die, a worried voice in my head said. I smiled back at it, But I've already died.

What was there to be afraid of anymore?