Soul One

The beginning was disorienting at best and insufferable at worse. Admittedly there had been more than one passing thought of taking the kunai her father - Ichiro - was training her to throw and shoving it deep into her eye socket. It's funny how many inhibitions about suicide death takes away.

When the Buddhists and whatever other religion told tales of reincarnation, they made it seem as if it was a relatively normal circumstance. You just repeated your life on earth until you could get into Nirvana. Fairly simple, all things considered - at least from an agnostic's point of view. Therefore this whole 'alternate dimension that was in actuality only an anime in your past life' thing was sending her into a tailspin.

The fact that she had a vague recollection of how events came to pass was great, but it was also terrifying because she was in the thrice-damned shinobi world and people were basically superhumans here. A perk of the memories was that she was smarter than a normal child - nineteen years of memories tend to do that to an infant's brain - and thus she was able to understand what her parents really were trying to teach her. It was a survival tactic: train your offspring to the best of your ability so that they, in the end, could have a better life than you.

It's why she never put up much fuss about the kunai and shuriken training (she had been enthused by them in her past life anyway). However, she had been plagued by laziness and procrastination consistently in that past life and they were hard habits to break out of. The morning runs with her mother - Takara - meant that she couldn't spend her nights as the nocturnal being she was used to. The after-exercise calligraphy classes were only taken because they were for Fūinjutsu, and what kind of idiot would refuse to learn that kind of skill? Had it not been for her mother patiently explaining after about a hundred 'why?'s, she would have pitched a fit expected of a three year old.

Blessfully her dad took her after lunch, though she soon learned to regret his turn at teaching. Both of her wrists were usually already aching (because good shinobi are ambidextrous) but that didn't stop papa from his daily target practice and taijutsu combo lessons. It was ironic, really, that her parents were considered civilians. Her father had married into the Akiyama clan - the symbol of which she rather proudly displayed on her clothing - due to a marriage contract with his own family. The Akiyama were a merchant clan in Kawa no Kuni, but they were the merchant clan, one of the most renowned merchants in the country. After his marriage he had been trained in basic taijutsu like every other clan member, though he was exempt from the calligraphy and more-advanced Fūinjutsu lessons that she would be facing. The Fūinjutsu were Hiden, secret techniques used only by those with Akiyama in their blood.

Thus came the humor in their civilian clan status. The Akiyama were related to the Uzumaki - vaguely, faintly, only one member a few generations back. The Uzumaki genes were rather dominant though, as seen in the Akiyama clan's standard blood red hair (which I was happy to inherit, along with papa's teal eyes). Seeing as the Uzumaki had been wiped out due to fear of their Fūinjutsu skills, the Akiyama had made their relation secret, though it was a clan joke at this point. The red hair, the above-average (though not as massive as the Uzumaki) chakra reserves, even the above-average life spans? How nobody had realized yet, she could only guess.

Regardless of the humor of their clan's shinobi status, her childhood wasn't the one expected for civilian children. It was more like being raised by (extremely specialized) shinobi. That wasn't even broaching into the Akiyama's other tradition.

It was only vaguely labeled as a Hiden seeing as it had absolutely no qualification for a normal shinobi. To put it simply: all the females in the clan crossdressed as boys. It was yet another survival tactic so far as she saw it. In this day and age, women were manhandled, raped, and generally taken advantage of by most of the male generation. Thus the clan found a solution for that: start rumors that all females from the Akiyama clan were restricted to the clan compound, and then send out those very girls as males. The slender build and androgynous features common in the clan were only beneficial to this facade.

Thus amid her new parent's shinobi-esque lessons, she also took part in the clan's own 'school'. The basis of anatomy, male and female characterizations and quirks, pretty much anything that would assist the girls in putting on their lifelong public front. It was taught to them as soon as they could read and write and continued until they reached an age where they could help with the goods the Akiyama clan traded throughout the Elemental Nations. Considering her past memories, she was considered quite a little prodigy when she mastered both skills by her second birthday. She would have beat that by six months if it wasn't for having to learn a predominantly new language she had only heard in subbed episodes or anime or the various terms that the manga translations didn't change. Add in the fact that Japanese (or at least a practically similar language to it) had three different alphabets and she had been suitably challenged.

Unknown to her parents, she had been plotting here and there throughout the years on how to make the plot of Naruto better. At least as much as she could, anyway. One part of her plan was that she actually had to become a shinobi (would she be a shinobi or a kunoichi? Would she still have to uphold the male facade? It wouldn't be much a problem if she had to).

Although not common, the Akiyama clan did have a few members that would be inspired by the Fūinjutsu and the chakra exercises needed to craft their above-average reserves into the precision needed to use such a skill. Those that did pursue the life of a shinobi actually had a choice of which village to turn to: Konohagakure, Sunagakure, or the lesser known Tanigakure. Considering the latter wasn't that prosperous or well known for their strong shinobi, it was usually a choice between the latter two.

When she was seven - and wasn't that an early age to start listening to the whims of children? - she politely but pointedly drew her parent's attention during dinner. That night she laid out her dreams: becoming a shinobi, maybe even a Jonin, and helping people (though unspecified just who would be her main priorities). Her parents took it surprisingly well, all things considered, and it was the next day when they approached the Akiyama clan head for permission. Sometimes it paid off to be the only child to two doting parents.

When they got approval she was loaded down with journals upon journals of what she would've been learning at the Akiyama clan's school - because there was no way in hell she would be breaking their tradition - her mama and papa sat her down in front of a map. They then spent the rest of the day (and a few days afterwards) highlighting the perks of her choice of villages.

While Sunagakure looked only vaguely promising (come on, has anyone looked at Gaara?), it came down to what was the only real choice: Konohagakure, the village where most of the plot is centralized.

A month later they packed up our rather small if attractive home in the clan compound and hitched a ride on the next caravan headed towards the Akiyama's Konoha store. Sure they were traders, but they were businessmen first and foremost. Of course they'd establish a store within Hi no Kuni's shinobi village.

Thus began a new adventure, a new life, and a new existence. One that would hopefully end with far less people dead or her (new) name wasn't Akiyama Shun.