Actual awareness took a while. I think I was subconsciously in denial. My new name though was a dead giveaway. Hikaru Uzumaki. Uzumaki. It could be coincidence but the blond baby beside me was pretty destinctive. Ok, deep breath. I've been reincarnated or whatever you want to call it...I was HIS twin. I had to make a choice. Was I going to be strong for the both of us...that poor boy who doesn't have a clue how hard our lives are going to be. Or am I going to man up ( figuratively ).
I made my choice. I started concentrating. Kakashi graduated when he was 5. Nothing is impossible. I started meditating. Or rather tried. As a baby it's hard to focus. I kept at it though. By the time I was 2 and had long learned to walk I finally unlocked my chakra. I was ecstatic. No time for a fan girl moment though. I had to focus. I tore a page up out of 1 of our books and broke it into small pieces. Then I concentrated. I was obviously trying the leaf sticking exercise but with paper as a substitute. It took a week before I was able to make it stick to my hand. Success! Ok next. Over the following months I starting sticking the pieces of paper all over my body. From my forehead right down to my toes. I honestly tried to teach my brother but he didn't have the patience or focus and preferred to play with our few toys. Yep. For those that probably guessed it, we're in an orphanage. Now before your imagination runs away with you, we weren't abused. The caretakers mainly left us to our own devices. The only times we interacted with them was when it was bath time, eating time or time for lessons. Naturally I excelled at the latter. When I was 3 I secretly started wall walking in our room. I waited till my brother was asleep. I did this for 2 reasons. The main one is that I wanted to keep my abilities a secret for as long as I could and nothing good came of being a child prodigy. As much as I loved Naruto he didn't understand the concept of keeping secrets. The second reason I chose to do it at night is because the caretakers never entered our room at night. I had to be careful though. It took me 2 weeks of careful practice regulating my chakra before I attempted it. It was a success. I spent the rest of the year running around our room's roof to build stamina. Not that I apparently needed it. Now the only reason I got away with it was because my brother slept like the dead and because our room was isolated from the others. By the time we turned 4 we were allowed to leave the grounds of the orphanage and go to the village parks. Not a fun experience. Everyone stared at us. Some cold, some fearful... understandably we didn't leave often. I was enough to entertain my brother for the time being and he wasn't as attention seeking as he was in what I could remember of canon. When we turned 5 though is when the real changes happened. " Hikaru, Naruto come here please. Here's someone who wants to meet you " said the matron. We looked at each other. Nobody ever visited us. I had a pretty good idea of who it was though. Sure enough as we were led to the receiving room, an old man with red and white robes awaited us. Matron left us alone with him. " Hello Hikaru , and young Naruto. My name is Hiruzen Sarutobi. I'm the Third Hokage ". Naruto looked confused so I took the lead. " Excuse me sir but what's a Hokage and why did you want to see us ". He smiled at me. " Well the Hokage is the leader of the Hidden Leaf Village which is where we are. And as for why I'm here I'm wondering if you two would like a place of your own to live in? "
Our new apartment has 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a lounge/kitchen combo. It's small but it feels more like home than the orphanage ever did. I've been thinking for a while now. I remember many techniques from the anime I watched but it's not as if I could just use them. I needed a plausible excuse as to how I came about them. I think I know what to do. I'll have to " accidentally " see shinobi using the handsigns. The only problem that comes to mind though is how distinctive my features are. I'm the only redhead I've seen so far in this village. Still... deception is a ninja's greatest tool and seeing as I don't " know " the transformation jutsu, that leaves me with doing things the old fashioned way. Fortunately I was a girl in my previous life as well. It's simple enough to ditch Naruto at the park and escape through the trees. I cover my hair and the lower half of my face with a scarf. And no, I know what you thinking but no I don't have Naruto's whisker marks. Finding chunin training is easier than I thought. It also seems like sensing is a rare skill so they never notice. Over the course of my 5th year I've " learnt " the substitution, transformation, and 3 water style jutsus. They are the water wall, water bullet and the most useful water clone. I decided there's time so I don't rush myself. I know next year we'll start at the academy. I've finally managed to get my brother to focus long enough to use the leaf sticking exercise. I've progressed to and mastered water walking. I figured just to be on the safe side I'll wait till I'm 7 to use shadow clones.
When we turn 6 it's as I predicted. We get enrolled in the Academy. For those who are wondering, we learnt basic reading and math in the orphanage. Turns out chakra has a noticeable effect on how early you can learn in this world. When we got our apartment the Hokage assigned us a tutor who taught us further. I took it more seriously than my brother because I knew what good handwriting was the key to. Yes you guessed right. Sealing. It is in my opinion the most powerful of the shinobi arts. After all, it's what was used to defeat Kaguya. I knew my brother would receive a massive power up from Hagaromo in the future and I was determined that unlike Sakura, I was not planning to be left in the dust. Peace, as my brother would one day believe in was an impossible dream. Lasting peace that is. I wasn't bothered with following " canon ". I had already determined that Naruto made a poor Hokage. I KNOW I'd do a better job.
Now I was actually dreading the Academy. I wasn't wrong to either. Don't get me wrong, we learnt some useful things but...kids are cruel. Not that it bothered me but I hated seeing the crushed expression on my brother's face. Nobody wanted to be our friends. Their parents had warned them off. Fortunately for me there was one silver lining. The library in the Academy and the storeroom. Not many kids actually used the library which was a shame. It was full of useful jutsu. Nothing above C rank but it was still a goldmine. It confused me at first as to why we were never taught any of them but I reasoned that in peacetime there was hardly a need for super powered kids. Sigh but I digress. The jutsu's there finally gave me the perfect excuse to accelerate my training. It's in the storeroom as I was fetching supplies for 1 of our sensei that I found 2 very useful items. Blank sealing scrolls and chakra paper. They were pretty far back in the room so I figured I could " borrow " a few of each. As soon as Naruto fell asleep that night, I took out 1 of the papers and channeled my chakra into it. It immediately caught fire except for a small part of the edge that turned wet, before burning away as well. Okay. I might have did a little happy dance. This was perfect for a number of reasons. Firstly I think all chakra nature's are underutilized by shinobi. There's almost no out of the box thinking. The strongest fire style user was Madara but he had no subtlety or ingenuity. He was just plain old shock and awe. I had big plans. I recalled Fire Lord Ozai from my previous life and what he could do. In fact the fire benders in general. That's what I eventually wanted to achieve. Recreate their bending style as my own personal taijutsu and eventually using my fire style to fly. Naturally all this would require a huge amount of chakra. Something I fortunately had in spades. Yes by the way. I'm a jinchuuriki as well. As soon as I could mild chakra I checked. Anyway the second reason I was glad for my 2 chakra natures was what I remembered of susanoo and it's weaknesses. I'm talking about Sasuke's fight with the 5th Mizukage for those who are scratching their heads. I'm talking about her vapour style kekkei genkai. No I don't have a kekkei genkai but as I recall... shinobi from the land of snow can use ice style even though they lack the bloodline. That tells me with enough training it's possible. Fortunately I have the greatest training aid jutsu at my disposal. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Over the course of the year I make use of the library and copy down the info they have on the 2 steps of elemental transformation. I managed to complete the first steps of fire and water in a month. I cheated and used a shadow clone for each. Next I focused on learning actual fire jutsu. I learnt 2, the grand fireball and the phoenix flower jutsu. The latter without shuriken though. I intend eventually to turn the phoenix flower into an area effect A rank jutsu, but that's years away. For now baby steps. The other thing I worked on is taijutsu. From what I remember, fire bending looks a lot like a mixture of dance styles. Fortunately I'm a good dancer. To help me learn faster I employed 2 clones to help initially. For now while I'm only 6, 4 clones seems to be my limit. Firstly though I had to work out how long a clone could last while dancing and channeling fire chakra. After a year I rounded it out to 4 hours. Naturally by the time I was 7 I could double my clones. 4 For taijutsu and 2 for each element. Now many are probably wondering why I use shadow clones to learn jutsu while they don't help with muscle memory. The answer is simple. Familiarity. With molding fire chakra and expelling it through my hands and feet. I'm proud to say I'm probably the only shinobi in the world that can do the latter. In a few years I'd be able to use my taijutsu fully in battle.
Our second year of the academy was more of the same. I was surprised though at the fact I could recognise 3 kids in the lower class. They were a year younger than Naruto and I but they were unmistakable. Neji, Tenten and Lee. Seeing them gave me a wake-up call. It's only 5 years till things start getting put in motion and only 1 year till the massacre. I'd already reasoned to myself that there's nothing I can do to prevent it. There's too much vested interest in the Uchiha dying and I can't afford to put myself on Danzo or Obito's radar this early in the game. I was wondering though if it were possible to save a few of them though. For the sake of Sasuke's sanity. Not that I particularly cared about him but I knew my brother would eventually be sucked into the whole mess. Over the course of the year I learnt more water jutsu. There being a greater abundance of lower ranked of them in the library. Consequently I learnt the water whip, water trumpet and water prison jutsus. Well that and mastering the 2nd stage of both my elements. I knew I'd need to complete that before I could attempt to recreate the vapour style. I was worried about sealing. That I'm getting my hopes up for nothing. Fortunately even I was caught by surprise. You see, I'd discovered a book on the basics and I was flabbergasted by the fact that my Uzumaki blood ran true. It just clicked. So far though I can only do storage and explosive seals by scratch though. Don't worry. I didn't practice sealing myself. I let my clones do it. It only cost myself 1 exploding clone...hehe. I also discovered an aid to help with my speed. After all, speed more than power decides the victor in a shinobi battle. The aid I'm talking about is resistance seals. And yes I did use my clones as guinea pigs before I applied it to myself. I'm well on my way to being a bad ass kunoichi.