Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, I only own my OCs. I would have gotten this chapter out sooner but some things were not lining up as I had planned, pushing me to rewrite this chapter 3 times before I was satisfied, and work interfered as well.
***edit: It has come to my attention that I spelled Omoto instead of Imoto for Little sister. Apologies
Before I pieced together the truth of my birthplace I was fine. A sad baby perhaps, crying often, ruled by the impulses of my body, but not too much trouble (I hope). I had no problem keeping myself occupied and calm, playing with whatever was available.
Once I discovered where I was, not so much. My child's mind couldn't handle, heck, I couldn't even handle it! I was on the verge of a panic attack at all times trying to figure out what I needed to do and at what point of time did I need to know by when. Panic, panic, panic all the time. Night terrors, hyperventilation, anything you could name. The sheer amount of time I had alone with my overactive brain was not good for my mental health along with not being able to talk through my anxiety only made matters unbearable. Plus the fate of probably going into Kiri's child army wasn't a nice thought.
I had thought about just staying a civilian and 'playing it safe', but considering the decade of civil war Kiri experienced sometime in the future that would be a poor choice. Granted I have no idea what point in time I am currently living in, but considering in the future I wouldn't be allowed outside on my own gave me a pretty good idea of when.
My new mother was the only reason I remained sane. Whenever she noticed I was in distress, she'd hold me close in her arms and croon to me until whatever episode I had passed.
But the helplessness would always return.
Right off the bat I wanted to read everything in sight and soak up all the knowledge I could about this God-forsaken place. But not knowing a lick of Japanese verbally or read … kanji was it? The word for their characters since you know they don't use letters like America where I grew up (which has a messed up language already, seriously. There, their, and they're. All mean something different but sound exactly the same).
So that was put on hold, along with anything else I could possibly do with the fact I was 1, but as time went by I started getting better with motor skills such as crawling. Sincerely hoping that I was developing these skills around the same time as other kids my age so I wouldn't be pegged as a protégé.
Though, I guess they can't really do that until you are 4 or 5 I guess when they tend to start children on chakra manipulation. That would make more sense, since the ability to manipulate chakra and how effectively it is used by an individual is how they seemed to define a protégé.
Back to my life. The only people I was around were Kaa-san, mom, and Kiku-oba. Remember the fussy lady from before? That was my mothers younger sister, my Oba-san, a chunin. Looking at them next to each other you could tell by facial features. But everything else seemed different. My mother was shorter stature with plainer looking features while Kiku-oba was taller, had lighter hair, and her hazel eyes seemed more vibrant.
From what I know my hair is black as well as my eyes. But I don't have any grandparents in order to draw a conclusion of what my father would look like. You know, since genetics are supposed to exist but conundrums seem to occur in anime so maybe that would be futile as well.
But Kiku-oba was a glomping monster, once I learned how to waddle around I would immediately run for cover.
"Yukiko-chan~." A feminine voice crooned, closing in. I pressed myself to go faster, trying to escape my doom.
"There you are!" I let out a yelp of surprise as I was scooped up by my assailant. "You are so cute~" She said pushing the breath out of my lungs.
'I am dead.' I tried to squirm out of my attacker's grasp for a few seconds to no avail.
"No, Oba-san." I complained as I looked up at my captor, giving up on escape and wishing to melt into the floor. Kiku-oba could be professional when she needed to be, but other times… she seemed content to be the clingiest aunt in existence. Complete with glomping and bear hugs.
"Oh, you even remember me!" She squealed as she put me down and pinched my chubby cheeks.
"No!" I tried to get her to stop by pushing her hands away to no avail with my two year old arms.
"Imouto, please stop terrorizing my child." My mother's voice came from the kitchen.
"It's not terrorizing." Oba-san replied, releasing my cheeks as she tilted her head up towards my mothers voice. "It's called being an Oba-san. We have a list of things we do to make sure our oi-chan's and mei-chan's remember us." I gave her my best impression of a stink-eye with my hands over my cheeks to attempt to prevent another pinch attack. But I think I ended up looking like I'd eaten a sour warhead. Dang it.
"I don't care how you phrase it but my child is already running for cover the moment you step over the threshold. Be nice for once." Kaa-san chided.
"Fine, fine. I'll take it down a notch Nee-chan." She replied, picking me up again in a friendlier manner and taking me with her to the kitchen. Settled comfortably on her hip, I started to play with her hair, carefully with my uncoordinated fingers. For being in Kiri they acted like normal people, from the series I always took Kiri as a place of little to no emotion whatsoever. Sure it was mostly ninja I saw from Kiri and there were a few touching moments, but in general it seemed like the overall population was that way.
"So you're going to work at the bar for a while?" Kiku inquired, stepping into the kitchen, the holy grail of food.
"Just till twenty or twenty one hundred, would you look after Yukiko-chan for the day?" Kaa-san was just finishing washing the dishes and putting food in our small fridge. Another thing about my mother is that she is a fantastic cook. She even made baby food taste appealing.
"Like you need to ask! She's a perfect little angel compared to the other kids I've babysited." Oba-san ruffled my hair as I kept on playing with hers. I have to say, her hair care was always on point.
"Arigato, Omouto." My mother came up to us and smoothed down my hair. "Be good for Kaa-san okay?"
"O'ay" I responded, looking up at her, which earned myself a tighter side hug from Kiku. Probably trying to hold back her fawning Oba side
"Good, I will be back soon," my mother faced Oba-san, "There are two meals in the fridge for lunch and she takes a nap right after that."
"I got it, I know the routine. We'll be fine," Kiku-oba started to shoo my mother out the door with her free hand. With that my mother gone and I was left alone with the glomper-in-chief. Lovely, at least she worked with me on my vocabulary until Kaa-san came back.
Actually that was something I worked on constantly with her. I would practically insist for Kiku, when she was out of glomping mode, to coach me when Kaa-san wasn't home. This consisted of me waddling up to her with some object, or tapping on something I couldn't just grab and trying to say what it is.
Granted after a while I would get tired and take a nap, but afterwards I would be right back at it. This seemed to amuse Kiku to no end, especially if I got frustrated and did a raspberry at the said object.
Anyway, my goal after this was to read, though we didn't have any books at this point nor did I think that was going to change.
Maybe I would start pointing at characters in Kiku's mission reports, then again that might be a bad idea.
The apartment was the only place I was for the first 2 years of my life, at that point Kaa-san started taking me out with her to the marketplace but that was it. Sure Kaa-san would occasionally chat with a vendor, and once even talked to a ninja when I was with her, but that was the exception, not the norm.
This just happened to be one of those rare days where Kaa-san decided to shake things up again.
"Is this little Yukiko-chan?" I huddled closer to Kaa-san's shoulder as I peeked at the speaker.
She was an unusually tall blonde wearing the Kiri standard uniform. With the black ninja pants, sweater, and the dark purple vest with the Village symbol on the shoulders. Her hazel eyes were sharp, calculating with every single move I made.
Definitely a ninja.
"Yes, she is, you want to say hello Yukiko-chan?" I pressed my face into her shirt in response, Kaa-san chuckled. "Still shy. So, how are your missions going Imi-san?"
I looked over my mother's shoulder at the surrounding area. We were at the marketplace, near the docks, in the early morning with a thick mist engulfing most of the surrounding area. In the port I could only see the silhouettes of ships accompanied by the occasional sway and creak of wood. The stench of fish, both fresh and those stinking of rot and decay filled the air, of course it smelled like this everywhere but it was worse in the marketplace. The first time my mother took me out I nearly threw up within the first minute. Sadly, I have since gotten used to the stench.
There were not that many people in the marketplace that morning, as usual, however there was a particular figure that seemed to look at my mother and I every minute or so. I peeked back at him again, he was currently leaning against the wall in the opening of an alley. His face seemed more feminine with his soft features and deep black eyes, but due to his short hair and his shinobi uniform he was definitely a man.
Suddenly he looked up and we made eye contact. He seemed to tense slightly when it happened but then he smiled and waved. I tilted my head and decided to do a small wave back. Yes, I know I am in Kiri and that there are likely a lot of perverted men, but this guy seemed … I don't know, different, familiar? His smile seemed to waver at my response but he vanished in the blink of an eye before I could gather any other information.
"Yukiko-chan?" I turned my attention back to my mother. "Say goodbye to Imi-san."
"Bye?" I copied my mother, Imi-san gave us a curt nod and continued on her way. After getting all the ingredients mom needed from the market we were heading home, my mind wandering back to the man in the alleyway.
I knew a character from the anime that looked like that. Not exactly, but close enough that I had a face in my mind's eye even though the name refused to unveil itself.
My general knowledge of Kirigakure was Zabuza Momochi, I think he had a student, Kisame Hogoshi, Mangetsu something, Mei Terumi, Ao something, young blue haired swordsman, and the fact the Fourth Mizukage was put under a genjutsu by Obito Uchiha sometime during the third shinobi war before the country completely collapsed upon itself.
Yes I know my knowledge is pitiful, but the series didn't focus much on the history or country of Kiri itself. And to be honest, I only got up until the point where Naruto went off to train with Jiraiya. Not even the small episodes that happened before and after Sasuke's abandonment. On top of that most of the stuff I know is through my older sister who investigated this anime, among others, for fun.
God I wished she was here right now.
Three years rolled along and I could now form functional sentences but now my motor skills had improved to the point I could start attempting to write Kanji since I had nothing else to really do.
On top of that I had started to meditate in order to get a grasp on how chakra actually worked.
At least with what I know in general, I know that chakra does exist and hypothetically how to control it. Though I haven't tried that yet since I don't know how it will affect my body in the long run. The anime may show child ninjas all day long, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. That hasn't stopped me from contemplating it in the meantime. First, trying to figure out how chakra interacts with the body.
I'm not kidding, I spent countless hours in meditation memorizing just where my chakra pathways flowed while cross-referencing it with my own knowledge of human anatomy. While a couple years as an animal science major hardly made me an expert, I did learn a lot about each individual body system and how they correlate with each other. Granted, humans and animals aren't exactly the same internally, but there's a lot of overlap.
One theory I have is that the chakra system piggybacks on the circulatory system much like its endocrine counterpart. But I have yet to understand how chakra is created and filtered through the system. I've been making the assumption that it is filtered through the kidneys last as most chakra is centered at your gut between those two points. However, considering that the heart is the location of the 8th gate and the rest of them are in the spinal cord and brain it must also have a connection with the nervous system. I assume this since there is a group of bundled nervous cells called the Bundle of His that exists solely to run the heart. This may indicate that chakra has a link to the nervous system.
But on top of that it may link to the mitochondria within cells in order to produce so much energy aerobically, or stores a type of energy such as creatine kinase that can be used up really quick for jutsu.
To elaborate, energy can be defined as the intensity of heat, ability to do work, and the biochemical currency of the cell. Considering that we are dealing with human anatomy, I would assume that chakra is somehow derived from ATP Hydrolysis that only lasts for less than a millisecond.
However, if chakra is derived from this, what state is it kept in? The most common form of ATP (energy) is stored as glycogen, amino acids, and fatty acids in the dormant state in the body and drawn from when needed. But the average ninja doesn't produce chakra like that, unless they're an Akimichi. Chakra coils are a thing, but how do you fit that into the equation?
Yet again, chakra didn't exist until the rabbit gal ate a certain fruit from a certain tree like Eve in the Garden of Eden. It may be something else entirely.
For all I know I'm absolutely off-base and none of this has any validity. It makes me wish that I had been in Konoha, if only to get answers to my questions.
Anyway, back how this relates to the growing little human being, I don't know how this would affect me in the long run. Looking back on one of the research projects I had listened to that was about training young horses and how it could possibly be detrimental. In the end, as long as a reasonable amount of exercise was done routinely with young horses their bone density actually increased and they had less chance of injury as time went on. However the exercise could not be too intense because that would cause injuries and malformations of tendons and bone. That was possible to calculate in order to guarantee desirable results, but I doubted that this world had much care or information on that line of thought given its history.
Therefore I wasn't going to try and train on the side, learn and grow, yes. But sticking out too early seemed like a good way to get myself sent to 'Bloody Kiri's' ninja academy and end up dying.
You have no idea how much of a headache that caused me when I got on a roll. At times it got so bad that I couldn't function, to the point Kaa-san was concerned I was sick or something. She would use homemade remedies to try to 'treat' me, probably since she was not a ninja who could pay such bills for going to a hospital. But I was not even sure there was a hospital in general, even if there was I don't think it would accept civilians considering the state of the village itself. Maybe a doctor but those would be expensive unless you had some way to pay them otherwise.
By 4 I could speak fluent Japanese, write kanji, and was starting to dabble in a little bit of chakra due to my chakra system halting it's development for about 2 months. I took that as a sign it was safe to start experimenting.
But everything changed the day that man walked through the door.