This chapter is where I'm going to start putting a few explanations in… Eventually when Chidori is older and more observant I'll be able to get into some more complex topics. Sorry it's a bit late!

My life's steady rhythm remained uninterrupted up until the start of the Chunin Exam. My father's team of "genin" (the term I learned applied to recent graduates of the ninja school) was going to take part in order to go up in rank to "chunin."

Along with learning this, I had gained a better sense of the world I lived in. I was a little over eight months old and was finally strong enough (curse you baby muscle mass!) to walk around regularly. I didn't worry about seeming too advanced – in my old life I had started walking at the same time.

It was odd, just like in my old life I was extremely small for my age. Other mothers asked my mom if I had been born premature – my old mother had been asked the same thing back in that other world. I figured it was a coincidence. Though it did make me wonder about what other similarities would crop up as I grew up for a second time. Anyway, back to what I came to understand…

The world I now inhabited was very militaristic. There were normal people… and then there were the ninjas. The normal people were just like people from earth – they didn't have weird powers and they held normal jobs. The ninjas, however, were where the worlds diverged. I suppose it's because of their weird powers and abilities that the technology seems to stagnate in some areas while advancing in others. For example, if you could traverse an entire city in mere seconds by jumping across roofs with chakra, then why would you feel the need to invent things like cars and buses?

Another thing I learned is that there were "hidden villages" and that I lived in the village "hidden" in the leaves. Yeah, I still don't really get that either… Also, these villages were surprisingly cutthroat when it came to one another. They seemed overly antagonistic in my opinion, but I couldn't be sure as to why – my observations came from overhearing adults discuss their suspicion toward incoming foreign ninjas.

In all though, those things were some of the least surprising things that I learned about my new world. In a way I guess the older aspects of my mentality held suspicions, but when I had them confirmed? Surprised doesn't even to cover it!

I mean, I could adapt to the fact that there were strange powers all around me easily enough, but it was what those powers were used for that startled me. Okay, at first it was fine; throwing fireballs or brandishing swords at bandits seemed pretty reasonable to me. The spying was a bit weird, but then I remembered the Cold War and felt like I couldn't judge.

It was the shadier aspects of a ninja's life that freaked me out. I had an Ohmygodtheykillpeoplemoment after I heard about an assassination job.

Yeah… people don't really temper their words much when they think you're a tiny, uncomprehending baby.

At the time I had been rolling around on the carpet in the living room trying to build up static. I was really bored – there's not much to do as a baby. Besides, what better way to spend your day than annoying the hell out of everyone else?

Using a bit of the chakra that I held under my control helped speed the process along immensely. It took some concentration but it worked so well that I could almost feel the tingling underneath my skin. Once I decided that I'd built up enough of a charge to shock my mom with I toddled into the kitchen.

As soon as I entered I heard the following:

"-en the new guy, with the blue hair, had to go and make a racket tripping over a glass case full of antiques. Of course this wakes everybody up, including our target! Argh! I hate working with rookies."

My mom just shook her head in exasperation, "How'd you get out of that one?"

"That's the best part! He had hired a couple of ninja from Grass –which normally wouldn't be a problem considering our level – and they completely outnumbered us. I was just about to call a retreat and regroup when the new guy flips out…"

I meandered over to the kitchen table, eager to hear more.

"So get this, the target rushes out of his bedroom and his guards come in from their posts at top speed. New guy wants to play the hero and makes for the target like the grass ninja aren't even there. Then BAM! He's sent flying three steps in and his kunai goes spinning out of his hand," here she starts to laugh.

"Want to know where it ends up?" My mom nods her head eagerly and I hold my breath. "Right. Between. The. Target's. Eyes."

My mom and her friend sit there chuckling as I stare on in horror. I mean, spying and possibly killing bandits is a tad gray from a moral standpoint, but assassination?! I don't even joke about murder and I'm the one who actually knows what happens when you die!

Okay, it's not like it was all that graphic or anything, but I think I was having some issues before I heard that. I mean, I knew ninjas were a deadly force! I just didn't know how well that sat with my left over morals.

My old life's memories were vague when it came to most aspects of my actual life, but I retained a good portion of general knowledge. Thanks to that I remembered things like right and wrong, life and death.

I guess I had started to think of ninjas as something akin to police officers or government agents. I mean, I'm sure CIA/FBI agents sometimes resort to violence and spying for national security reasons.

I wasn't entirely wrong. Ninjas were a lot like that. It's just that they did a whole lot more than anything I could relate to from my old world. Being a ninja was about as varied a job as you could imagine. I'm not going to lie, I'm still not entirely aware of all that being a ninja entails, butI am now aware of one aspect of the job that wasn't condoned at all in my old world… Murder.

Yup. Cold-blooded murder. In some respects this part of the job should have been the easiest for me to guess at, considering that was more along the lines of what I knew of ninjas from my old life. In reality, my naïveté (caused in part by being a baby again) made me oblivious to the darker side of ninja-life.

I had thought, with ninjas being so strange here, that they used the term "ninja" loosely. Sometimes they seem like the Japanese ninjas I remember from before, but most of the time they seem like do-it-all magical aides. Trust me, none of the ninjas my mom knows dress in all black or carry nunchuks (from what I've seen). I had assumed that the ninjas here were only called ninjas due to the way they could sneak around and blend in.

Nope.

I was wrong. The ninjas in my new world are trained killers. My mom carries throwing knives on her person at all times for Pete's sake!

After that conversation I picked up on the shadier side of things more and more often.

You know, I'm really surprised I got over my initial shock and horror so quickly. Yeah… I'm blaming the fact that I'm really more baby than teenager in this new life. Sure I remember a few things about my culture, even things I learned in school (sort of), but mostly all I remember is really basic rules of life.

For one, I understand that I am a small child (a baby really) and that I will grow up into an adult one day. Another thing I know is that there's a whole language to learn so that I can express myself. That must be frustrating for all those normal babies. If I didn't have the basic words and gestures down from observation and prior knowledge, I'd be a heck of a lot fussier from the frustration.

Geez! It had to suck if you felt hungry or tired and couldn't even know how to tell others yet. No wonder babies and toddlers throw such tantrums.

It's true that I didn't understand much of the language, especially when you considered its structure, but I was great with the general gist of things. That, and I was especially perceptive with regards to facial expressions and silent cues. Some things really are universal.

Not that I even know if I'm in the same universe, eh, whatever…

Okay, so I might still think of myself as a teenage girl in a child's body, but that wasn't really what I was. Most of the time I was thinking things like:

My mommy's so warm

Or

I feel sleepy

And sometimes

My toes are cute… Haha! They're wiggling!

Okay, not my proudest moment there, but you get the picture. In fact, my old life was fading quickly from even the deepest recesses of my memory. I would have been scared if I hadn't genuinely enjoyed my new life so much.

The only times it ever became clearer and my thought processes faster, was when I used the chakra of my new world. It couldn't just be the regular stuff either.

No. It had to be the electric stuff. I could speed up and slow down my blue chakra flow when I played with it, sometimes even make my hands glow. It was when I gave it that little nudge to change to the rippling electricity I enjoyed so much that my mind seemed to open.

That led me to circulating the gentle current through the chakra paths in my head one night.

…

I had, even with my increasingly infantile thought processes, noticed the memory enhancement the lighting-like chakra gave me. So at night, when my mom had me sleep in my crib rather than her bed I would experiment.

It was one week before the Chunin Exams that I made my first real breakthrough (in theory at least).

My mind was working quickly as I circulated little shocks back and forth between my finger tips. Suddenly I had an "a-ha" moment. I had taken AP courses for Chemistry, Biology, and Physics in high school. I knew that the nervous system and the brain ran on electrical impulses and I knew from experience that my brain was higher functioning when I was channeling my electricity.

Yeah… In my defense I would have noticed sooner if I weren't so busy being a baby.

Anyway, I finally connected the dots. I had noticed, when I concentrated, that my chakra tended to change on its own and continue circulating through my body in its electric form.

I didn't know why it had the tendency to do that but I suspected my death had something to do with my affinity for the element. Or, it was just a really ironic coincidence.

I came to the conclusion that the extra electricity in my "chakra system" was responsible for my knowledge from before. I figured with all the extra charge circulating in my brain that it was more active than it should be.

Have you ever heard about how much of the human brain is actually used? It's not 10% or anything ridiculous like that, but it's true that humans do not use all of their brainpower at once, EVER.

I think, along with keeping my hippocampus (the part of the brain that deals with long term memory) amped up along with any other parts of the brain dealing with memory, it also boosted other parts of my mind. Basically, my chakra prevented me from forgetting my old life and made it easy for me to pick up the language and adapt to my new one.

The knowledge was still fading, but all I had to do was charge up my brain and focus on my past to draw up my memories. Though I had less and less of a reason to do it as time went on.

I would always have an impeccable memory, speedy thought processes, and quick reflexes thanks to my weird chakra. At first I wondered if there were others like me, but I dismissed that when I was taken to the doctor for having an active chakra system so young.

Apparently, I was a downright freak of nature when it came to being able to access and control my chakra as a baby. That didn't make me feel any better at being poked and prodded at, so I bit the magic chakra doctor that had been examining me the day after my mom caught me messing with my sparks.

Yes, they have magic chakra doctors. No, I'll never believe them when they say it's not magic. Chakra is cool and all, but healing injuries in seconds? Definitely magic.

But I digress. So that night a week before the Chunin Exams I finally came up with some answers to my situation. They might not have been right, but they were all I was going to get.

After that I continued my routine like normal and tried to avoid drawing up memories with my sparks. Forgetting didn't seem so bad any more. What was the point of holding on to something so irrelevant to my current life?

Instead I decided to use my advantage in ways that would set me up to enjoy life to its fullest.

I had been smart before, if a bit lazy, and probably would be again. The difference this time was that smart was taking on a whole new meaning.

I had the learning curve of a baby/toddler along with a super charged brain… I was soooo taking advantage of that!

What was doing well on the SAT compared to being a true genius? Hehehe. This world won't know what hit it.

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I spent the morning of the first part of the exam with my mom. She babbled on and on about her own chunin exam. I kept up with what she was saying by circulating some extra electric chakra in my brain.

If I hadn't been growing accustomed to this war-like world I would've been outraged at what these people expose their children to. Now, however, I was being shaped by my environment and I took the news in stride. In my head I prayed that all three of my dad's students would make out okay. They'd grown on me in the short time I'd spent with them.

The blonde was convinced I was his minion or something, while the pink girl wanted to coo over me, and the snotty brat pretended he couldn't be bothered with me (which I didn't believe, considering he watched me like a hawk while I explored and kept me away from "dangerous" things). Still, I was fond of all of them and their tenacity was something to be admired. It was surprising actually; I couldn't believe they got anything done with my dad as their sensei.

Actually, I think my presence helped some. When my dad tried to ignore the kids when I was there I would glare and point a tiny finger in his face while saying, "Play wi' team!" or, "Help brats!"

Other than grimacing when a baby called them brats, the kids though it was funny that I was repeating after my mom. She had come to get me from my dad once and saw how he didn't teach very well, or at all really.

She spent that week coaching the team herself while all the while reprimanding my dad for not helping them to "reach their potential as shinobi of Konoha."

My dad just looked sheepish but resigned. To be honest I don't think he really knew how to go about teaching. In my mind he was using his laziness as an excuse for his ignorance.

The kids certainly seemed happier when my mom and I made him take a more hands on approach. Naruto, the blonde, acted out less, while Sakura was happy that she was getting better than she thought she could be.

Apparently the pink haired girl had decided that she needed to be clever and strong enough to be a worthy wife for the Sasuke kid. She wasn't as strong, fast, or as determined as the other two, but apparently she was getting pretty good with genjutsu, or chakra illusions.

My dad seemed to appreciate the fact that while she still fawned over the moody kid, she did get some more training in compared with before.

I couldn't tell what the Sasuke kid was thinking, but he was always up for learning and mastering new skills as quickly as he could. He even seemed less annoyed with Naruto once my dad finally went over some basic skills with him that the others already knew.

With the kids acting more mature he sometimes left me in their care. Not without some death threats, glares, and creepy eye-smiles – but I'm pretty sure it was his way of saying he trusted them.

Besides, I don't think he was ever far. He was close enough to step in and help if he had to.

The kids weren't all that bad. All they ever seemed to talk about were their ninja assignments and how their teammates made fools of themselves. Most of the time a "mission" consisted of gardening or delivering messages.

It probably helped that I felt bad for them. I did a lot, and I mean A LOT, of baby-sitting in my day and I knew it could be stressful. So I smiled at them and went along with their games. I actually had fun since I was losing my adult/late teen mentality. Okay, so I might not have ever really had that in this new life, but I definitely had a mind on the same level as my preteen self on occasion (with the aid of my chakra).

I was in many ways the baby I appeared; I had the advanced learning curve that all infants and toddlers have, as well as the somewhat shortened attention span. Though as time went on I found it easier to understand more and more of the language, which helped me stay well about normal infant level. It especially helped that I already knew basic things from being reincarnated so that all my extra learning power could go into learning the language and my new culture.

So with all that coming into play I was able to use the kids to explore my new world and experience a great childhood at the same time. Unfortunately my heightened sense of awareness meant I worried excessively over whether they'd be all right in the Exam.

That's why, when my mom finally handed my off to my dad who was on the way to wish his team luck for the start of the exam I was squirming anxiously and trying desperately to keep the extra chakra flow to my brain to stay informed of what was going on.

I couldn't afford to lapse into carefree baby mode when the kids were about to go into a dangerous and possibly fatal test. Unfortunately focusing on and redirecting the electric chakra to my brain was a lot harder to do when I was worried.

Shooting sparks from hand to hand then up to my brain before going down to the original hand was easier and required less focus, but I was being carried and couldn't get my hands into position.

My dad must've noticed my agitation because he patted my head and held me a little more securely.

I relaxed a bit so I wouldn't worry him and focused on the fact that everyone else was sure everything would be fine. Surely they all knew more about this than I did?

…

Not ten minutes later and I was beginning to wonder if this world was crazy. And I thought Sasuke was the level-headed one!