AN: Hi guys! Sorry this took a while to post! I suppose that I could try to make an excuse about midterms and the like but they all sound kinda like bad excuses anyways, so I'm not going to bore anyone with the 'why' and instead just enjoy the chapter!

Also, props to cwrywn for getting unnervingly close to correctly guessing the Abe clan's abilities. Seriously, I think my heart stopped for a second when I read your comment for the first time! XD

Enjoy!

My brother was significantly older than I was when I was born. I wasn't kidding when I said that the child mortality rate was insane here. Between the clans killing anything that moved every other week and the lack of medical advancements that my clan had made (as much of a powerhouse that Hashirama would become in healing, his clan was hoarding any information to do with healing like selfish pricks). I found out from an off-hand comment from Haruto that I had had other older siblings, which explained the seven year age gap between him and me.

Kaa-san and Tou-san never even mentioned that there were other children at any point between my brother and I, but there were definite signs when I paid enough attention to the older occupants of the house that great loss was felt regularly. Every winter Kaa-san would go out into the woods and spend a few days alone, while Tou-san watched us. Every time one of the clansmen came by with news from the latest battle and mentioned that the Hyuuga were on the move Tou-san would leave the room, his fists clenched tightly. Sometimes I saw Haruto just looking around my room like something was wrong with it. Like there was something missing. Kaa-san once said that the mirror that faces the door was only put in a year before I was born. Tou-san mentioned that our village had been raided before, but he never gave any specific dates or elaborated on it, his eyes betraying the pain that his body language refused to divulge.

It was always hard to really compete with the memories of an unknown amount of siblings who died in relatively unknown ways, so I tried to pay it as little mind as I could. It was hard to imagine children being killed in battle or in our house without my mind escaping down a thought train of pain and sorrow that I had strived very hard to get past in my previous life. Depression is a bitch, no matter what body you're in.

One thing that did continually pop up for seemingly no reason was the topic of zodiacs. I couldn't really remember zodiacs being a huge part of Naruto, so I was mildly frustrated to be blindsided with this seemingly unimportant detail about shinobi life that took on an almost cult-like following in my clan.

Before I even had a name, everyone called me 'little serpent'. Apparently I was born in the year of the snake. Cool, I guess…? I was a dragon in my first life, so I never really considered it an upgrade to be honest. I didn't put as much stock into the whole 'birth year determines your fate' bullshit anyways, unlike literally everyone else in the clan. Like, I'm not even kidding. We don't have a clan symbol, just zodiacs. Born in the year of the boar? Well I hope that you like how they look, because a shitty pig design will literally be embroidered onto everything you own!

I was a snake, Haruto a dog, Tou-san was a tiger, and Kaa-san was a hare. I think one of the mystery siblings was a horse, but that's purely based on the assumption that someone owned the small horse toy I was given as a child before me.

It probably had something to do with the clan obsession with zodiacs that had me staring down a literal viper. My four year old body was very disjointed from my twenty-something brain as I tried to understand what the fuck was going on.

My "mother" wants me to put my hand in the mouth of a viper. Yeah, I'm gonna have to pass on that. Now to figure out how to voice that in a way that won't end with me doing chores for the next three months...

I took a step back in apprehension, "Kaa-san, I'm not going to-"

"Hiroko!" Kaa-san shouted, making both Haruto and me jump. Haruto had been quietly coming up behind me as I was having my moment, so I really didn't notice him until his arm hit me as he jumped.

I let out a squeal of surprise as his hand brushed against my bare arm, and it felt like someone was injecting hot syrup into my veins. It was straddling at first, then kind of pleasant, but then the pain hit.

Where the syrup had been inside of me, now was becoming sharper and larger, to the point that it felt like every nerve in my arm was being stabbed and set on fire. I choked back a sob as the pain suddenly stopped, and rubbed my arm carefully.

There was no physical injury, but my hand was still tingling a bit. Kaa-san looked… well she actually looked like she was purposefully trying not to react. I looked back at Haruto, who was gaping at me with wide eyes as he clutched his hand to his chest.

"Haru-nii?" I asked tentatively, mind racing to figure out what had happened.

Before he could answer, Kaa-san spoke. "Hiroko, I know that you probably have questions, but this is something that must happen." She held out the viper to me, hand pressed firmly against it's head so that it's fangs were flexed out as it hissed in outrage.

"Kaa-san, please," I lifted up my hands in a pacifying gesture, "you're scaring me. Why can't you just tell me-!"

She must have known that I wasn't going to willingly consent to being bitten, so as I was talking (and so foolishly held out my hands to her) she used a burst of speed to grab my left wrist and shoved my hand face up into the mouth of the snake.

I screamed as the same sensation that had happened earlier when Haruto bumped me happened, except this time it didn't stop. I could feel the pain flowing from the snake into me like a stream of white-hot knives.

I… think I passed out after that. At least briefly. Mostly because the next thing I was really aware of, I was facedown on the ground, the snake was gone, and I briefly glanced to see that Kaa-san was holding Haruto back from trying to help me up. I had to close my eyes and look away from Kaa-san, feeling betrayal and hurt welling up inside of me. Okay, I thought, just take inventory. Am I alright?

Well, my whole body ached tremendously, and I was aware of something off inside of me. Around where my stomach was, something felt… heavier…? It felt like there was more of something than there had ever been before. It wasn't a significant difference, but it was noticeable.

I grunted as I pushed myself up into a sitting position, rubbing the arm that had been bitten. I looked at my hand to inspect the damages, and almost screamed. Everything was wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong! I- I can't explain- what is this?! Just breathe and-! The air smells so bad! I can taste it, and it's disgusting! I slapped a hand over my mouth and held my breath, when my lungs began burning I tentatively breathed in through my nose. It was almost normal.

Everything was the same, but not? Underlying everything was a kind of glow, more pronounced in some places, but not in others and I just- NO! Calm down! Kaa-san said she would explain. Listen. Figure it out. Act upon the given info. Calm. Down.

I took a breath, and cautiously opened my eyes. Kaa-san and Haruto were watching me with varying levels of worry. Haru-nii was openly crying out for me, literally having to be held back from coming into the little area where I was. Kaa-san's brows were slightly creased, but other than that there was no indication of any emotion on her face. The infamous shinobi emotionless mask was much more frustrating to be on the receiving end of than giving it out.

Kaa-san let him go, and he immediately raced over to me, and almost scooped me up into a hug before stopping himself. He glanced at me and awkwardly and gently placed his hand on my head. "Hi-chan?" He took in my tired frame and got down to my level.

I wordlessly watched him struggle with not being able to physically comfort me. I- I didn't really know what to do. It had hurt when he had touched me, and as much as I loved him, I really didn't want to relive whatever the hell just happened so soon.

He took his training shirt off and held it out to me. I hesitantly took it from his hand, careful not to touch him. I quickly pulled the shirt over me and pulled my arms and legs into the too-big article of clothing. Once I was almost completely in it, Haruto pulled me carefully into his lap as I began to cry. He rubbed gentle circles on my back, murmuring soothing words.

It was… almost degrading in a scene. I was a grown woman trapped in a four year old's body being comforted by an eleven year old. I told myself that I didn't need to be held by this boy, but my younger mind cried out in childish fear.

I was different. I didn't know what changed, but everything was off. It was like I had just been shoved into another universe, and I honestly that was not something that I was mentally ready to even consider at this point, especially seeing as how I had just been born into this one only four-ish years ago.

Kaa-san slowly came forwards and sat on the grass in front of both of us. She just watched me cry for what felt like forever. I didn't look at her, but every time I breathed I tasted the faint sweetness in the air that was distinctly coming from her direction.

After I had calmed down enough that I was only hiccuping every now and then, she spoke.

"Hi-chan, look at me."

I wanted to disobey her, but I knew that it would have just made things so much worse for both of us emotionally, so I hesitantly opened my eyes and looked at her. I squinted at the odd orange and red glow that was coming from her and Haruto, and the stark contrast that it made with the significantly dulled landscape around us (almost as if the greens and browns of the forest had been diluted with bleach).

"You have just experienced our Kekkei Genkai. We call it the Goutou bloodlimit." Her voice was without nuance, as if she were speaking simply to hear herself speak. The emotionless mask that was Kaa-san was intent on giving me all of the information she had to give before involving something as pesky as emotion into the mix, apparently.

"As a member of the Abe clan, you have inherited a very powerful and dangerous ability through this Goutou bloodlimit. Generations of Abe before you have used it to protect their loved ones and their clan, and it has been the reason for many battles in this part of the Fire country.

"Our chakra is unique in the fact that it is actually without a base nature, meaning that it is much easier for us to learn and master ninjutsu, but it also means that there is what would to those outside of the clan be a deadly imbalance of chakra from within ourselves and the world around us.

"Other ninja use their chakra to do things like conceal themselves by making the chakra within themselves dampen until it is underneath the natural flow of chakra in the world, or so that it harmonizes with it and is indistinguishable from it. Most shinobi cannot sense the natural energy of the world, so they think little of what they are actually doing when using their own chakra in regards to it.

"As an Abe, we must always be aware of the imbalance. Our own chakra is concentrated on the skin, but does not circulate very well within our bodies, which makes a vacuum within ourselves that outside chakra will quickly flood into if allowed, as you have now experienced in two different ways," she motioned to Haruto, who still held me in his arms.

"When your brother's skin brushed against yours, his chakra inadvertently penetrated your system for the brief moment of contact and tried to go into you forcefully, which is why you felt such pain. With the viper, it physically punctured your skin with its own body, which led to the chakra in the serpent draining into you at a much faster rate, to the point that the creature was bled dry of chakra in a matter of seconds and your own chakra and physical body took on some of its characteristics."

She paused for a moment to let that all seep in. It… Kinda made sense I suppose. The odd taste that I got could be some kind of enhanced smell, and the strange augmented vision that I was experiencing was likely some kind of heat sensing. This was what the small part of my brain that was still mostly functional was thinking, while the majority of the rest of it was trying to comprehend the fact that I had just been forced to kill a snake, and was more or less the ninja equivalent to Rogue from the X-Men.

Shakily, I took a breath. "W-why a viper?"

Kaa-san raised an unimpressed eyebrow at me. "I would have thought it was obvious Hiroko. We are distinguished by our zodiacs. All Abe must go through this ritual with their respective animals."

I flinched at her tone, then froze. My eyes widened in horror as I looked to my older brother, who was born in the year of the Dog. He smiled sadly at me and carefully rolled up his pants so as not to touch my skin. When the fabric was rolled up to his knees, he turned his calf so I could see the white scars in the shape of a dog bite. I gasped and looked away from the scar to my hand where the viper had bitten me. Two small holes in my hand were dripping blood, but it seemed to be slowing even as I looked at it.

Kaa-san scared the everloving hell out of me as she grabbed my hand to inspect the wound, seemingly just noticing it as well. Without any gloves, might I mention.

"No, don't-!" I shouted only to wince at the flick she gave to my forehead.

"Don't move while I clean this," she demanded and set out to wrap my hand. I looked between her face and her hands on my own in confusion a few times before I was bale to find my voice again.

"How are you able to touch me?" I asked in a small voice.

She snorted, and continued wrapping my hand as she responded. "Well for one, Hi-chan, I am much older than you and have worked very hard to master our bloodlimit. It takes about a decade of specialized training under the guidance of the clan elders to be able to touch others who do not have control over this ability. For another, any Abe woman who wants to bear children must go through this training or risk absorbing the chakra of the infant in childbirth or shortly thereafter when feeding it."

"Oh," was my brilliant response.

Kaa-san stood up gracefully and picked me up out of Haruto's lap. "Come," she said to Haruto as she began walking into the forest, but in a different direction than when we came into the clearing. I looked to her questioningly. She looked down at me and could apparently read my mind when she said, "We are going to speak to elder Dako about what your training will look like for the next few years. If all goes well you can work missions with your brother by the time you are seven."

I balked at her words, the reality of the child-soldier system of the Naruto universe suddenly taking on a lot more gravity than it had in the past. I tried to hold down the bile that threatened to creep up my throat. I tried to look anywhere but at Kaa-san and Haruto-nii, the knowledge that both were seasoned killers suddenly very real to me.

If my eyes stopped for a split second at the sight of a discarded snake corpse at the edge of the clearing in my search for visual comfort, I never said anything to my family about it.