So I think I might go on with this story but I'm really not sure. If I do, what time period do you think I should set it in?

It had been… confusing, I suppose. Of course it had been. I had been burning, screaming, begging for it to stop. My mother's mind latched onto mine and there was a terrible sensation of being pulled apart, of being made to nothing and everything, the Great Mind singing in every fiber of my being and every other one of my people crying out, shrieking.

And there was my uncle, laughing.

A snap rang out, not a sound but a feeling. Something cooled my searing skin and the stars went out before my eyes. I was still warm, almost uncomfortably so, but I was no longer on fire, a blessing.

There were people around me, I couldn't tell how many, but I could feel them, moving around. I attempted to reach out with a hand and found that I was trapped. It was hard, barely malleable and almost spherical in shape. I was trapped, warm, and confused. The minds around me were different from the ones that I normally felt, and I was curious, wanting to touch them and see what was happening. I dared not though. I had already lit my mother on fire. I wasn't going to burn again. I was too scared.

So I waited. The minds around me changed, though two did stay the same and one was constantly there. My prison slowly began to gain sound with it, muffled and thick, as if through a wall and it began to get smaller, more compressed.

I don't know how long I waited there, knowing I was dead and wondering when H'ronmeer, the Martian god of death, would come for me, or if he already had and this was the afterlife. It didn't seem like it would be. Months after my initial arrival I learned that no, it wasn't the afterlife at all. It was life after.

It happened on the day of August 7th.

My prison, which had been beginning to be familiar if not comfortable, started moving. It squeezed and I shifted, or was shifted, the world around me starting to grow smaller, my head pushing in tightly.

I panicked, the still tightness now broken as the walls contracted around me and I was squeezed.

In my alarm I reached out, shoving my mind against the walls as hard as I could. Panic and new terror had overridden the nearly yearlong fear of burning and I lashed out, desperate to know, to understand, to stop the choking constriction of the walls.

Well, I succeeded.

Thoughts slammed into me as I latched onto the minds around me, dragging information out of them and pushing the threat of the tightening enclosure.

It wasn't supposed to hurt that much they gave me drugs whatshappeningohgoditHURTS.

That's not right something wrong the head should be visible.

The skin is moving. It's not supposed to do that. What the hell?

Why isn't it there, what's going on, something is wrong nonono stop the beeping.

I'mgoingtodiemakeitstopgetthisthingoutofmesomeoneKATSUROUWHEREAREYou.

It didn't make sense. Through other eyes I could see a pale woman on a bed, her legs spread and her dark hair matted close to her skull. She was screaming. There were two other women with her, the one that I used to see and the one positioned between her legs. The woman, a human, of all things, had her head thrown back, her face bright red and coated with sweat. Her stomach was large and swollen, and inside something was pressing against the skin, the efforts visible from the outside.

The walls were trying close again, something I wouldn't let happen, and I threw all of my power into shoving them away. Just as my prison vanished and let me go the woman's stomach exploded with blood, blinding both women and they were thrown back into walls. Every mind in the room went black and I was left lying there, shaking and suddenly very, very cold.

Realization as well as understanding set in and I did the only thing I could.

I cried.

I'm not sure of all of the details that happened upon my slide into the next life. Honestly it made very little sense. Martians had no concept of reincarnation, as far as we were concerned death was the end of the line and we were all bound for the afterlife. The only reason I even knew the word was because I had watched Dracula a few too many times.

I assumed it was the doing of my mother, who had grabbed my mind and tore it from my body, throwing it into space before the flames could finish consuming me. I was certain that I had died. Those actions had done something that lead to my not dying, but being reborn.

It was weird. I think I would have preferred death with my family in fact. Especially in the next few years.

It was only because of my supposed father, a man by the name of Daiki Junpei, that I lived. He was a kind man, really he was. He was a fisherman in the small village we lived in, and the only person who wasn't terrified of me from the moment I was born.

I had learned some very interesting things in the first few years of my life as a human. One I had learned in the first three minutes.

Humans could not handle being hit with anything telepathic. They had no defense, no filter, and no way to stop their brains from going to mush if I struck them mentally. I learned this when I was the cause of death of not only the woman who had given birth to me, Kikyo Junpei, but also the two midwives in the room. So high levelled psionic blasts were a no go unless I wanted to kill.

I also learned that I could sift through thoughts and memories without hurting anyone, as long as it wasn't supposed to be a secret or I wasn't rummaging around like some savage I could extract any information that I wanted.

I still had my psychic powers, luckily, and I could use them without fear of ignition. This did not mean I did not fear, for the people of the village feared me and their thoughts of me were often unpleasant, leaving a lingering sense of self hatred and fright for my own abilities. So I refrained from reading minds as much as I could. I was afraid. I didn't want to know what people honestly thought when they hid so much of their honesty behind smiles and white lies. I was better off not knowing, I figured. It didn't help that when I entered a mind it left its mark on me, changing me in small, almost unnoticeable ways.

Maybe if I had looked through more minds I would have been prepared for the shock that would soon find me.

Well, shoulda woulda coulda.

As it stood I lived in relative peace. Though for me that peace was a veritable hell. The only reason there was peace was because no one would speak a word to me, too afraid of what I had done in my first few moments of life. They stared and whispered, sending the story into even the large villages with which mine traded. The only one who didn't believe them was Daiki.

"People are always going to talk, Kimi," he told me time and again, sitting on the front porch of our small house. He would sit in his rocking chair, leaning back and watching the sun dip over the horizon, glittering on the surface of the water. I would sit as his feet, playing cat's cradle with yarn while leaning against his knee. "No matter where you go or what your do they'll talk, and rumors will spread. Gossip is the life blood of this world. Lots of people are going to listen to them too. You have to wait for the ones that won't, or go looking for them, and that's how you'll find your people."

Obediently I would ask, "My people?"

Daiki would lay his hand on my head then before continuing. "Your people. The ones that will stick by you no matter what, that will believe in you instead of in the gossip about you. Those are your people. You'll find them one day, even if it's not here."

"Are you one of my people?" I would question without fail.

"Without a doubt."

There would be silence until the sun set.

It was a peaceful hell, one without fire or daggers. Or my parents. I missed them terribly, and I suffered greatly for it. Eventually I didn't enter others minds at all unless it was to extract language or reading or a definition of something. I didn't need to. I was perfectly happy not knowing what they thought of me or what their darkest secrets were. Sometimes they thought so loud it was hard not to hear though.

I drew into myself, isolated almost completely. Daiki was nice, he loved me very much I knew, but he was not my father. Always I was very well aware of what I was, where I belonged, most of all that that place was no in the little fishing village at the edge of Hi No Kuni.

I was quiet, introverted. Some I know thought I was plotting, or afraid. I don't know why, it was just a passing impression. It was a good one though, one I would later use for varying purposes.

I learned something else about humans my third year as one.

When they are afraid they lash out.

Violently.

The girl was almost four when it happened.

The night was dark, cool, quiet. She was laying in her bed, sleeping peacefully as the house, devoid of sound, seemed to do the same. Daiki, her father, was in his room, sound asleep and snoring like a lawn mower in a way that one think would have woken neighbors, had they any around that little house on the edge of the coast. The house itself was elevated, standing on tall posts that would prevent it from being pushed underwater when high tide washed in. There was a mouse that lived in the kitchen, the man noted as he ghosted inside, watching the rodent nibble on a discarded crust.

Rolling a shoulder the man set out, blade glinting in his hand and metal gleaming on his forehead.

Daiki was dead within the first minute he entered the house, moving silent as a shadow through the hallways, passing the spare room, the kitchen, the living room, and finally reaching that of his true target.

The girl was small, curled up in the thick sheets with her eyes closed. Long strands of black hair, nearly tinted green in the light bouncing around the walls, splayed out on her pillow.

The man twirled the knife in his hand, looking for the best place to strike. The throat? Probably.

Idly he wondered what she'd done that someone would pay to have the girl killed.

It didn't matter, he figured, money was money.

He slipped closer, adjusted his grip and moved in for the kill.

Or at least, he tried.

Instead he was stopped by some force he couldn't identify, keeping him frozen in place as the girls eyes snapped open, glowing bright, demonic red. He struggled against the force, freezing when he felt something ghost across the surface of his brain.

That was wrong.

That was impossible.

"You killed Daiki."

It wasn't an accusation. It was a statement.

The man realized what was happening just a little too late, throwing up the mental barrier he had constructed during his years working with intelligence, meant to prevent information extraction via torture. Surely it would work for mind reading to.

"Tch," the girl scowled, sitting, no, floating up and off the surface of her bed. She hovered a foot above the sheets, legs crossed, facing him. "So some people do have a resistance?" she questioned.

He could feel her prodding the wall as he fell behind it, intent on separating mind from body and guarding himself. He thought he had succeeded.

He was proven wrong when the barrier shattered and his mind was torn to shred, memories flashing across his mind's eye.

Mother father brother fighting graduation death bloodbloodbloodblood it so redredred its pretty mission tests chunin genin jonin mission failed failure leave gone alone traitor kill them kill her killed her mother demonic possessed shieldshieldshield.

He hit the ground, foaming at the mouth.

Kim hovered a few moments longer before lowering herself to the ground, looking down at the assailant and wiping water from her eyes. She hadn't realized that they hated her that much. It hurt.

With Daiki dead she really was all alone.

I move on from there. I packed up what little I possessed, consisting of a small bag of clothes and good deal of food before I set out a day later, leaving Daiki to rest in the ground and the man who tried to kill me comatose on the bedroom floor.

That was the day I learned that I wasn't just on earth. I was on the blue planet, yes, but not the one that I had watched in my childhood.

No, this one was much darker, much more dangerous.

This was a world of cloak and dagger, of ninja and death and war. I had been thrown into a place that should not exist. After seeing the man, the ninja, Akito's memories I learned of exactly where I was. Hi No Kuni, the Land of Fire, home to Konhagakure, the Village Hidden in the Leaves.

It was wrong.

It was impossible.

The metal plate in my bag told me otherwise.

With confusion swirling in my mind I set out for the only place I could get answers, naively believing that all would be well.