Title: May you Live in Interesting Times
Author: Aoichibi
Beta: xl3utterflyx (revised by CrownsofLaurels)
Disclaimer: I do not own any Naruto copyrights. (;.;)
Summary: Life as a ninja should be full of awesome kill-you-with-a-touch jutsu, powerful friends, and awe inspiring battles where the good guys always win, right? Wrong! It has a deceased mother, suicidal father, a rule obsessed bastard of a brother and the war looming over our heads is not helping matters. Survival is the key. Self-Insert.
- Go read, 'Top of the Tree' by CupcakeLoopy (It's has a very interesting story line) and 'Pulling The Strings' by Hubris Plus (this one happens in Suna which is quite different as most S.I tend to focus on Konoha).
Author's Notes: Hello everybody! I would like to thank those who favorite and followed, and to send chibikisses and hugs to the ones that reviewed.
Edited in: 27/09/14
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May you Live in Interesting Times
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Chapter 02:
A Hatake life II
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Life as a baby in the Hatake household was both terribly aggravating and unbearably funny. Between my mother hen of a father (he probably thought that I was made of glass or something…seriously), the awkward questions and crazy stunts of my genius brother, the boredom so prevalent in my early infancy quickly faded. For example, once father caught the kid hanging upside down on the living room ceiling glued by the soles of his feet.
'Dad, look what I can do!' Kakashi said. The poor man almost had a heart attack right there and I laughed so hard that I barfed… (eew). I seldom lacked entertainment.
I think that father took leave of his shinobi duties or something, because he was at home every single day, which had never happened before the incident with mother.
It was now father's thankless job to change my diapers (oh, the indignity), he put them on backward more times than I cared to count. This made me wonder who changed Kakashi when 'mother' was not around the house, the man should have this down to an art by now. The diapers would promptly fall off, baring my baby butt proudly to the world. I would crawl naked all over the place until Sakumo noticed, looked bewildered for a moment and scratched at his head, and then shrugged and changed me again.
I had nap time in the afternoons when Kakashi was away at some sort of class for baby ninja geniuses, or father just wanted him out of his hair for a while. Probably the latter. No worries about food, just one little cry and father would come running, literally. Usually armed and twitching. Fun times.
What was not funny was father's fascination with my feet. Three days ago I was minding my own baby business in the living room, which seems to be the most used room in this house, lying on my belly looking at a picture book (joy) with my little legs bending and swinging in the air; and out of nowhere came that, white-ish, silver haired devil of a man, snatching a cute and innocent little foot and holding it hostage. He then proceeded to tickle me to death.
My feet!
The hell man?!
I made a point to barf on him that time.
I don't think he quite got the message, though, because he keeps doing it.
Another crazy situation occurred when father came out of the kitchen humming a tune along with the music coming from the kitchen radio, the only radio in the house, more like an ancient record player really. He picked me up and promptly started to dance around the living room, twirling every now and again making his way back into the kitchen where he stopped, looked at my 'WTF?' face, grinned and stuck my newly filled milk bottle into my mouth.
Sakumo had been hit one too many times on the head.
I swear.
There was that one time when I was (stubbornly) trying to walk and lost my balance. My legs gave out on me and I ended up hitting my chin on a small, decorative table that held a flower vase. The vase fell off, thankfully not on me, but I had a brand new cut on my upper eyebrow from my collision with the table. Sakumo was there in a flash, alerted by the noise. His expression when he noticed the blood running down my chubby face was so horrified that it made me instantly cry. He cursed and carried me to the hospital, all because of a small cut (the hell? I hadn't cracked my skull open again, ya know). The next day all the vases in the house mysteriously disappeared and the poor table was nothing but charred remains in our backyard.
Yeah, talk about overprotective.
-XXX-
The variety of baby friendly food was quite low in this house, and I hated that mushy baby stuff which masqueraded as food, but looked like squished poop and tasted even worse.
I made a point of throwing that at Sakumo's face whenever he tried to make me eat the damn thing.
But, as this further limited my already limited food options, milk, I came up with a little plan.
I had this white dog plushy with floppy ears and fluffy fur since the day I was born. I think it was 'mother' who gave me that one (I named it Sesshomaru, but nobody needed to know that) but I'm not really sure. I started to drag it around for an increased cuteness factor when I was fucking tired of milk for breakfast, milk for second breakfast, milk for lunch, milk for second lunch, and for dinner, and for second dinner and for my little snack at ungodly hours of the night and I wanted a piece of Sakumo's yummy, tasty food that was not milk. I would point at his food and then open my mouth all the while holding one of the dog's plushy paws and open my baby blue eyes wide for more of the cuteness effect. He would 'aww' at me and give me tiny little pieces of whatever he was eating at the time. It wouldn't fill my belly, but would chase away 'the milk curse'.
Always worked.
Every. Single. Time.
Heh, I was Daddy's baby girl alright.
Frankly Sakumo's 'keep going' attitude amazed me. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks since his wife died in the line of duty and the man was playing about with his children and dancing around with the biggest smile I had ever seen. Sometimes I would catch him watching Kakashi and I play about with toys, soft rubber shuriken and kunai, (Yeah, I got the hint thankyouverymuch) or just running around. Well, he watched my brother walk as I crawled after the kid, with such warm, loving eyes that I couldn't help but to love the man right back. Hatake Sakumo was just that lovable and sweet. He would give me diabetes one of these days.
I never, ever, wanted to lose him.
I never had a father 'before'. I mean I had someone, I wasn't created through cloning after all, but I didn't grow up with one present. The guy paid for my up keep and sent me presents on birthdays and holidays and took care of the traditional financial obligations that came along with having offspring. He had a peaceful understanding with my mum and his other family. But he was never there for me. Not like Sakumo was at any rate. It was just mum and I most of the time, and one of her odd boyfriends or another, until I got myself run over by a bicycle (I will never live it down) and ended up here. Poor mum, I wonder how she is holding up without me.
As far as fathers go, I think I got the best one out there, this time.
When I master my finger dexterity and find some scissors, I'm going to make one of those obnoxious 'bestest daddy in the world' cards for father's day. With lots of glitter, hearts and badly draw pictures. When I learn how to write that is. Do they even have Father's Day around here?
One of my biggest problems with being a baby was not the lack of freedom or the embarrassing moments, it wasn't even the boredom. Rather, it was the war that raged on between my mind and body. At times it would feel like there was an alien entity with me in this body, seriously. If I was spooked my first reaction was to cry. My mind didn't even have the time to process what had just happened, I was already crying or barfing or squealing. I'm not even going to touch the subject of incontrollable bowel movements. If the body wanted to pee, it would pee, the end, no questions asked, no matter how much the mind protested.
How embarrassing.
Shame.
If chakra is a balanced combination of physical energy, that is produced by our bodies through bazillions of little cells, and spiritual or mental energy which is gained by experience, I wonder what a mess my chakra circulatory system was at the moment and what kind of consequences I would suffer from that. Because with my 23 (24 now, I think) year old mind and my baby body, balanced energy was something that I definitely didn't have. And perhaps wasn't capable of achieving. And in a world of violent chakra wielding ninjas, if I had trouble with mine I would be defenseless, a sitting duck. It was troublesome. And very worrying.
After my 1st birthday on the 22nd of November (whee a whole finger of age! Progress!) Somehow Kakashi got it into his, crazy, prodigious head that as he was the oldest, by two whole years, making him three, (almost an adult, he was, I thought cynically) it was his job to teach me everything there was to know about the world. That was when the learning games started.
My starved adult mind almost cried in happiness.
If I knew what kind of trouble Kakashi's 'teaching ideas' would give me on down the line, I would have made myself look like a retard.
Word games with Kakashi were an interesting activity, we would sit on the floor in front of each other and he would pick up wooden blocks and form the chosen word of the day. Then the silver haired boy would point out the object or mimic an action, like eating, and then he would mix up the blocks again and sit back. I then had to pick the correct blocks and put them in the right order, which was the most difficult part of the game, and point out the correct object or do the mimic. If I did everything right we would proceed to another word and if I was wrong we would repeat the whole process. This game could go up to 5 words or more per afternoon. Also as we went through our day, brother would point out things and say their names aloud and then try to make me repeat the phrases. The first few tries got me so frustrated with my uncooperative vocal cords that I cried and sulked. Poor Kakashi. I think I scared him with my little temper tantrums. He almost gave up on the exercises.
The first word out of my mouth was something like 'to-tan', not the most stellar attempt, but hey, it was my first word! Go me! Father was so happy that he swung me around the living room while laughing. I was so relieved that I glomped Kakashi, sending us both crashing to the floor. Father has a picture of this moment.
When my second word was Onii-tan, it was brothers turn to smile. To thank him I gave him a big wet kiss on the cheek. He got pink in the face and gave that boyish 'ew' look, which meant that I just had to do it again and again. Father also took a picture of this and proudly displayed it on the kitchen fridge.
Thus my new favorite hobby was born - make Kakashi go all red and 'ewy'. He was just so unbearably cute.
And that single dimple… squee!
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By the time people reach their first year of age, all babies had at least a modicum of hair on their heads, like baby chick plumage, or so I thought. What peeved me to no end was that I had none.
Not. A. Single. Hair.
NONE.
All my newborn hair had fallen off a few weeks ago and nothing had grown in its place. I was never one to be excessively vain or one to spend ages in front of a mirror, but damn it! I looked like a bowling ball with my head all shiny and round. I was starting to worry, seriously worry, that I was going to need a wig. Did ninjas even use wigs in first place? With all the transformation jutsu they had I was beginning to despair. Well, at least I had a consolation prize in the form of blue eyes replacing the hazel ones that I had 'before'. But I still despaired, I wanted my old lush brown hair, damn it.
Give it back, Gods! Gimme!
As my mouth started to cooperate with me things got way easier.
I had an advantage as my adult mind could pick things up and put them together far easier than a child's, and I had an early start as I already knew a few Japanese words that every anime fan is prone to know . Except that none of them were useful in this 23(24?) year old stuck in a baby's body situation by the way; I wouldn't be calling someone baka, aho, usuratonkashi, konoyaro or teme or any other curse word I knew any time soon. However, when I had previously been alive, I was beginning to formally learn Japanese. So I had a good grasp on the basic structure of their alphabet, the problem was that it was so complicated.
Three different alphabets: Hiragana and Katakana that were both phonetic alphabets, Kanji which consisted of thousands of different symbols, all which had many different meanings in accordance to how you combine them and in which sentence you put them. And God only knows how many different types of counting… one type for counting animals (Hikki), another for humans (Nin), another for big objects (Ma), one more for small objects (Ko), child specialized (tsu)… Gods why couldn't they be satisfied with just one type? Why complicate simple, basic things such as counting?
Yeah, I had my work cut out for me.
As I progressed with my ever growing vocabulary, and motor coordination, I could finally walk. More like wobble really, but I could move around on two legs. Freedom sweet freedom! How I adore thee! And with that neat little ability came one of the monsters of my toddlerhood.
Open toed sandals.
Open toed ninja sandals.
Jesus fuck man, give a woman a little break why don't you, they made them that small? Seriously what size was I, zero or something? They were uncomfortable, way too flat, atrocious looking, they made my feet hot and my toes cold and those dastardly bandages were squeezing my poor, innocent little ankles to death! Freedom of movement man, have they even heard of it? And I looked like a fashion disaster all around to add to my humiliation.
Why God? Why must you hate me so?
I was starting to have a little problem with whoever had their almighty hands on the game console up there.
My adorable older brother also had the brilliant idea to teach my one year old self how to do simple and easy addition and subtraction. This, of course, was way above the capacity of what a toddler my age should do, so I had the tedious and completely mind numbing task of figuring out how to mess up every single damned math problem he gave me. Having to blow two plus two was so deplorable that it gave me almost physical pain. Brother never figured out why I twitched so much in those 'math classes' of his. But if it would make Kakashi happy I would do them anyway.
Kakashi's baby smiles were something that I would kill to maintain.
I was being taught how to spell, speak and put numbers together by my 3 year old brother. Oh, the wonders of having a certified genius at home.
Joy…
I'm sorry to say that my pride did not survive. Poor thing.
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To be continued…
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A/N: Holy shit, I made another chapter without a single line of dialogue. I don't know whether to feel proud or go jump of a bridge somewhere.
So guys, any thoughts you would like to share in a review?