I remember the first time I saw a reflection of myself. We had a mirror hanging in the hall that faced the entrance to our house (which I didn't find out until later was there because ninjas are paranoid as heck, and it allowed the adults to see behind them as they came in), and after I had "learned" to walk I had found it while I had given Haruto the slip one afternoon. To say that it was a surreal experience was an understatement. It was the first time I knew what I looked like. By that point, I still wasn't named, and had nothing to really use as a baseline of establishing an identity for myself. But, there I was in all of my chubby, toothless, infant body.
As confounded as I was with Kaa-san's green hair, it only seemed fitting that the universe gave me the exact same color of lime-ass green sprouting from my little toddler head, as well as the same electric blue eyes that my brother and Kaa-san had. It was hard to determine any defining facial structures because, well, I was a baby. My defining characteristics were my chubbiness and the cute little dimples I got when I smiled because Haruto did something funny.
Haruto found me eventually, and laughed at how fascinated I seemed to be with my reflection. My eyes trailed over my tiny body, noting the muted brown shirt that covered my arms and most of my small frame, with green socks completing the ensemble and covering up almost everything that the shirt- more of a smock really- didn't. I hadn't worn gloves yet by that point because I was growing too fast for something so fitted, but I did have a pair of mittens that were shoved onto my hands whenever we went out, partially due to the cold, mostly because of the weird thing my clan had about clothes.
It didn't bother me a whole lot, because it was getting close to the "shortass winter" part of the year, and the temperatures were starting to drop, so the layers were appreciated more so than in the summer months.
Haruto was similarly dressed to me: oversized shirt, long socks, but with the addition of actual gloves and actual pants. His short brown hair was haphazardly sticking out in all directions, giving him a rather cute "I'm a kid and don't have to conform to beauty standards yet" look. His grin was blinding as he made eye contact with me, obediently picking me up as I tugged on his clothes. He laughed and spun me around, causing a peal of laughter to escape my smiling face.
"Imouto, you shouldn't wander off like that," he said as he brought me back to the kitchen. "I think that you need to learn to stay where I can see you, yeah?"
I raised a little eyebrow at him, showing how unimpressed I was with his talking at me. I didn't quite have the brain-to-mouth coordination to respond to much beyond something that could be passed off with a one syllable answer, but Haruto was acutely aware that I could understand him almost perfectly well, and knew that my inability to communicate properly was frustrating for me.
He plopped me down on the floor and sat in front of me. "Do you know how I'm gonna make you remember to stay where we can see you?" His voice was teasing, but I had absolutely no idea where this was going. I had wandered off before, and I personally didn't think it mattered as long as I stayed in the house, so I didn't really see a problem. Hesitantly, I shook my head 'no' at him.
His grin turned mischievous as he bent over slightly, his eyes suddenly parallel to my own. "Get ready to be TICKLED!"
He suddenly launched at my tiny body and relentlessly tickled me until I was laughing uncontrollably on the ground. He soon joined in the laughter and we were both just laying in the middle of the kitchen laughing at each other for an unknown amount of time.
That was how Tou-san found us. He looked confused for a moment as he walked into the kitchen, but soon smiled as he set down his backpack and pulled us both into a quick embrace. I was able to smell sweat and something vaguely metallic on his clothes, but was pulled away from his arms by my Kaa-san, who propped me on her hip as she placed a kiss on Tou-san's cheek. Haruto was being held under Tou-san's arm and was half heartedly trying to escape from his grip, which Tou-san ignored.
"Welcome home, dear!" Kaa-san's voice said happily as she smiled, trying distract from the concerned eyes that swept over his form. I think that she had smelled the metallic scent on him, too.
Tou-san sighed and lightly smacked Haruto on the head to get him to stop squirming. "It's good to be back. The job thankfully went rather smoothly considering the rising tensions between the neighboring clans."
He set Haruto down, who immediately left the room to go lord knows what. The bastard was probably putting bugs in my bed or something… It seemed to be an unspoken rule in the house that once the adults began talking about work, children needed to make themselves scarce. I couldn't presently because Kaa-san was still holding me, but I wasn't complaining.
I had gathered that we were a ninja family, but I really had no ideas what that actually meant, so this was a rare opportunity to learn about it.
Tou-san ran a hand over his face and tiredly sat in a nearby chair. Kaa-san pulled up another chair and moved me to her lap from her hip as she looked at him expectantly. I, meanwhile, was really playing up the baby behavior so I wouldn't be kicked out of the room to be with Haruto.
"Dear, please. What happened?" Kaa-san was suddenly serious, no longer needing to play at being relaxed. Her hands tightened minutely around me as I pretended to take an interest in her yukata sleeve, stuffing it into my mouth.
"The Senju are becoming bolder in their advances against the Uchiha, and I was pressured to convince our council to pick a side in the war. It is difficult to do a job with Butsuma when he has his men watching me every second or is asking me about Taijima and his people. I honestly think I prefer the Uchiha to the Senju in that sense. They still watch me but they know that I can't break my vow of neutrality, so they don't pester us about it nearly as much."
He huffed in frustration, his brown eyes going dark for a moment before returning to the normal, cheery eyes that I was familiar with as he gently pulled Kaa-san's sleeve out of my mouth. "Some Senju brat was on my mission this time- I swear they keep getting younger and younger- and the kid was completely unprofessional about the whole thing. He had mood swings like you wouldn't believe, and I ended up taking a kunai for him before he finally got it through his skull that this life isn't a game."
"What?! You got hit? Where did-"
"Never fear, my love. You know that the Senju are the best healers. Didn't even leave a scar on me after they were done!" He smiled pacifyingly at her, gently taking me from Kaa-san so that I could sit in his lap as she began to fret about his physical condition.
"Anyways, turns out the kid is the heir to the Senju, so now they're probably gonna be more trusting of us in the future due to the debt that they feel they owe to me."
That got my attention. So, Hashirama was on the battlefield already? That didn't quite help me in knowing exactly when in the Narutoverse I was, but it helped narrow some stuff down. So the Konoha founders were only a little older than Haruto, and Tou-san had had dealings with both the Uchiha and Senju on his missions. Interesting…
Nothing much of consequence was said after that, so I'll spare you the details about the growing harem of our Daimyo or the developments that someone made in exploding tags (they could now blow up three at once, wow!). Not long after that night, Kaa-san caught me trying to talk to myself in the mirror, which apparently meant that I was too old to be able to innocently listen in on my parent's jobs.
Kaa-san put something in front of me that I had never seen in this lifetime. It was a sleeveless shirt and shorts. I blinked at the clothes in her hands, before I hesitantly reached out to get a closer look at them.
It was actually a sleeveless shirt. My eyes were not playing tricks on me. "Kaa-san…?" I asked in confusion and a hint of wonder.
"Put them on Hiroko, but put your coat over them. You don't need your socks, just your sandals." With that she left me alone in my room to change, but not before looking back at me with some kind of… sadness? Regret? Frustration? It was hard to tell, but whatever it was wasn't a positive emotion, of that I was certain.
Today was the day that Kaa-san had said that I could learn about the clan's Kekkei Genkai, which was really exciting, but I was suddenly feeling rather nervous. All morning Haruto had kept sending me concerned looks, and Tou-san gave me a hug before leaving for his patrol shift which really freaked me out. We weren't the most touchy-feely family, so when someone gave an unprompted hug out of the blue it was reason for concern.
I changed into the clothes, feeling almost naked without the layers covering my little four year old frame. My arms were bare- aaaaaaannd now I'm cold. What the fuck?! It's June! I quickly grabbed the coat that hung in my closet, but it didn't do much to cover my pale legs, which also felt unusually bare.
I edged out of my room, feeling uneasy at how new things were. My leg bumped into the wall, where I felt the actual wood holding up our house with my bare skin for the first time. My hands were shoved into my jacket pockets, not used to feeling air moving against my skin.
I put on my sandals, flinching slightly at the texture of them before walking out into the backyard of our house. Haruto and Kaa-san were standing just outside the door, obviously waiting for me. He moved to sweep me up into a hug, but stopped himself, looking at his also gloveless hands in frustration.
My eyebrows wrinkled in confusion, and I looked at Kaa-san. She noticed my gaze and smiled reassuringly and placed a bare hand on the top of my head. "I know that you have questions Hi-chan, but you need to be patient. All will be revealed in its time today."
… Well. That's not unnecessarily cryptic…
I silently followed them both into the woods near our house, and looked around in wonder at the mighty trees that were so prevalent around Fire Country despite the fact that my heart was pounding in my chest to the beat of my rising anxiety. I was never allowed into the woods. Ever. Tou-san said that it was too dangerous to go in there alone, so naturally I had begged everyone I could to take me into the woods. None of my clansmen or immediate relatives had relented, meaning that the woods were a no-go until I "was older".
"Oh, wow!" I exclaimed, suddenly noticing that we had entered into a large clearing with plenty of random objects strewn about it that looked like they were used for some kind of training. At the center of the field was a clean patch of land roughly in the shape of a circle with no debris in it, and at the opposite end of the clearing was a small hut with a locked door facing us.
Haruto smiled weakly at my exclamation, and Kaa-san seemed to ignore me, simply continuing forward until all three of us reached the clear part in the middle. She directed me to the center, and turned to face me.
"Hi-chan, please remove your coat and your shoes and hand them to Haruto." She said in a commanding voice, suddenly changing from the gentle and sweet woman who cared for me into a no-nonsense leader before my eyes. Her blue irises were flat, guarding any emotion that I would have normally been able to read easily. Her regal posture made her loom above me as her long green hair blew gently in the wind.
"What's going on, Kaa-san? I don-"
"Please don't speak until we are finished, Hi-chan. Do as you are instructed."
I nodded and did as I was told. Following orders blindly was definitely a trait that I had picked up in this life. I was a very politically active student back in University, so I had learned to question everything. Here you just didn't do that, which was a lesson that took a long time for my "parents" to get me to understand.
Haruto quickly snatched my clothes from my hands and laid them outside of the clearing. I watched him put down my clothes, and turned around to find Kaa-san holding a large box in her hands. I vaguely noticed that the door to the shed was open, but I didn't have time to fully comprehend that before she spoke again.
"Hiroko, you are about to learn how our clan's Kekkei Genkai works and all of the responsibility that comes with that knowledge. Do you understand that this is a secret technique that you must never tell anyone about?"
I nodded, eyes flickering to the box in her hands before going back to her.
"Good," she seemed to get more tense as she said that though, so obviously something was wrong. "It is… difficult to explain the exact effects that our power has on the body, so it has been a tradition in our clan to have shinobi experience it first before having it explained."
She opened the box, and I heard something moving inside of it as she reached into it. I took a step back in fear as she pulled out a large, bright red- and very angry looking- viper. It looked like it would have bitten Kaa-san had she not been holding it firmly behind the head. It hissed in rage and twisted its body around to try to loosen her grip on it.
"Hiroko," she said sharply, pulling my attention back to her despite the viper literally trying to kill her. "I want you to put out your hand and let the viper bite you."
Author's Note: Hi! Thanks so much for taking the time to read Make the Best of it! Y'all seriously have no idea how happy it makes me to read the reviews that y'all leave and to see that people actually like my work. This is definitely a work that is heavily inspired by all of the famous SI/OC fanfictions for Naruto, such as DoS, Catch Your Breath, Iryo Nin Kasa, etc. Please leave your thoughts, because I'm really not kidding when I say it makes my day to see what y'all think- my roommates can attest to that. XD