Chapter 1: Childhood arc

It may seem stupid now, but I only realised that I'd been reborn into the world of Naruto when I was around a year old.

I was considered a smart child by most. Afterall I wasn't really a child, and I advanced rather rapidly in my first few months of new-life. Especially after The Incident, when my Chakra had finally begun to settle in my body. Or maybe it was just that I had experienced something more painful than my own Chakra, and that pain drowned out my old pain. I don't know.

One of my first desires after The Incident was to walk, and something I think I accomplished earlier then was normal. After that horrible night of fire and pain, I had stretched and kicked my legs, the irresistible urge for movement taking over. I couldn't be helpless like that again. I couldn't.

So when my dad took me outside, or to Ōoji-san's house, I would be placed on the floor, and my little muscles would go to work on getting me moving.

Yeah.

Babyhood kind of sucked.

Being so small sucked royally, but an amazing thing about babies was that they were basically sponges for information. So, whilst I kind of wasn't a baby, having lived a whole other life before and all, I had a baby's brain, and god did it just absorb everything.

Language? Easy. I had to get use to a whole knew way of talking, with a completely different language with different grammar rules, but it wasn't even that hard to get. I didn't have to study or try to remember things like when I did when I learned French. It just…. Stuck.

My body wasn't particularly fit in my last life, I had been a researcher for the main part of it, so I didn't' actively use it much. Sure, I took some yoga classes a few times a week, and when I was a teenager I practised Taekwondo, and was rather good till I gave it up, but my active lifestyle was kind of basic. I was flexible and knew how to both throw a punch and block one. But I wasn't strong, or fast.

I wasn't here either. Not at first. I was a baby after all. But I was still better than I was.

Walking was difficult. Especially as a baby. It sucked. I was wobbly and could barely get from point A to point B without falling down at least once. But I managed it, before the first year was out.

After that I could be seen racing around the clan's compound. Running after butterflies, waddling along after my dad, or just exploring.

The Akamono clan was small. I think. I know that the Uchiha clan had run the police force, or did at the moment, so they had to be at least a few hundred strong, but my clan had maybe only 50 or so adults, and a handful of kids.

And that's sort of how I learned that I was in the Naruto universe. From one of the other kids.

I had just turned a year old. It wasn't a big celebration. My parents had given me a new stuffed bear, and a book, but there was no party. Not that I cared.

It was only about a week after that that I met Rannā. Rannā was a Genin. A new one at that. She, like so many before her, had failed her Jonin sensei's test, and would have been booted into General Operations, but she'd been sponsored to train as a med-nin, like most of the Akamono clan. Which she was easily identified as. Same blood red hair and eyes as well as being covered in piercings and odd patterned scars like so many of the clan.

Because she was training to be a med-nin, she was left in a limbo like state. Rannā was part of a five-year program, where she would receive training that had been designed by Tsunade during the third Shinobi world war, but this meant that for the next five years she wasn't to leave the village or take any missions.

For the main part Rannā was pleasant. She was quiet, soft spoken, and sweet. Her personality was offset by her appearance, with the red hair and eyes giving her the look of some sort of demon, and being covered in piercings, with both sides of her nose pieced, as well as her septum and bridge, and most of her ears. She was there for most of the day, from sunrise to sundown looking after. I would wake up to her and be fed by her, before Rannā would start me on reading and writing lessons. Before taking me outside and getting me to do some basic stretches and exercise. The day would wrap up with Rannā playing some games, a little akin to patty cake of my old world, with me before putting me to bed.

The reason she became my baby sitter was rather simple, but at the time I was distraught. Mum was busy running the clan, and dad had been returned to active duty after my first birthday, thus I needed a new care-giver.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Rannā. She was smart, and a rather good teacher really. She would read out the words to me in books and have me write them in my own scribble baby writing. She talked and talked and talked, about everything we did and saw, and she was a well of information. Rannā seemed to know that I understood her and was happy to have someone talk to me. But she wasn't my parents.

By this time I was talking. Maybe not in long or elegant sentences. But still. I could get the basics across.

"Rannā where daddy?" I asked her one day, a few weeks after she'd been assigned as my care-giver. We were sitting on the floor of my house alone, my mum having left earlier, with Rannā folding a paper flower for me.

"He's back on missions Kai," she answered, eyes only flicking up to me for a moment.

I frowned up at her at this. What missions?

"What missions?"

"I don't know Kai. Its classified."

"But where he?"

"I don't know Kai."

"What he do?"

"I don't know Kai."

I frowned harder at this. Rannā had moved on to another flower by now.

"What do you know?"

"I know that your father is a very talented Shinobi."

A what?

"A what?"

"Shinobi Kai. You know, Ninja."

What?

"Ninja?"

"Oh, right. You're still so young. Well, a Shinobi is a worker for the village. They do missions for it and earn an income. Your mother had to stop taking missions when she became the clan head, but your farther still does them. He took a year off when you were born but Hokage-sama has reassigned him."

ThE WHAT?

"What's Ho-ka-ge?"

"The Hokage is the leader of the village Kai. Hmmmm. Maybe we should cover some politics in some of your lessons."

So. Naruto. Real. Or, at least real now.

Shit.

It was weird after that. The creepy little things that happened now made more sense to me. Mum and basically everyone appearing and disappearing without making a sound. Ōoji-san making his hands glow green. The horrid feeling of death from months ago. Fuck.

I wasn't happy about this exactly. Naruto was a cool series, and I remember most things that happed throughout it, and while everything may have ended nicely, it wasn't exactly a nice world. My old world hadn't been either, but at the same time, we didn't have ancient gods running around trying to kill us. But on the other hand, magic powers. Hmmmm.

This would take more thought.

….

Time didn't fly. It crept slowly along. As an adult I had an infinity amount of things to do all the time. Always a dead-line, always a friend to see, always something new to learn. Now there wasn't a lot I was allowed to do. I wasn't allowed to leave the clan compound, small as it was. I wasn't allowed to be on my own. I wasn't allowed near the koi ponds, or near weapons, or other small children. I wasn't allowed to run for to long, nor allowed to climb trees. There were so many things I wasn't allowed to do and so few I was.

Reading was one of those allowed things.

So.

I ripped through the clan library. Or at least the civilian section, and a few from the Genin section. Civilian for me, and Genin as Rannā allowed it on occasion. I don't think she believed I understood what I was reading.

There wasn't a lot of information in the library that I could access. Not when I was used to having a super computer in my pocket. But I stilled read it all.

A lot of the basic info was around herbs and medicines, my clan had apparently started out as a clan of wandering healers. So, there were a rather good amount of information on varies different poultices I could make, and what I could or couldn't eat in the wild, or how long the human body could last in varies different situations with different levels of chakra exhaustion. As well as information on diseases and ailments.

There was also a lot of history. Or maybe history isn't the right word for it. There were stories, about the past, that may or may not have been true. Sort of like a there weren't any witches in Salem, but there were still accusations of witches. Folklore maybe? Myths yes, but still, a myth had to have an origin, and those were usually grained in truth to a certain level and varied in understanding based on societies understanding at the time.

So…. I guess history is a good term for it.

Anyway there were books, mainly diaries, few factual accounts, around what the world was like prior to the founding of Konoha. And reading through them, yeah, I can see why the idea of a safe, singular location backed by powerful clans was appealing to my small mainly medical based clan.

Along with this intense amount of reading, I played with my chakra. Alone. At night. When no-one could see me.

I didn't want to be labelled a genius like so many others. They lived sad lives, full of pain and regret.

My chakra was weird. Maybe it's just my own, or maybe its chakra in general, I don't know. But it was something I didn't have before and it was weird. It was hot and painful to use, and every time I called it, it hurt me. Deliberately. My Chakra deliberately hurt me. Every-time I would figure out what was wrong, like the fact that it didn't like a particular food, and every time I ate it it burned, something new would happen, and new pain began. It hurt to use, but at the same time it hurt to ignore. I don't think I could explain it.

I remember some exercises from the anime around training control of chakra. The leaf on the forehead thing was a big one. And it worked. Generally.

Calling chakra wasn't something that was easy to explain. It requires both an immense amount of concentration, along with none at all. If you're to aware of your chakra, it becomes to powerful, ripping the leaf apart. If you don't pay enough attention to it, it ignores you right back. It reminded me off a cat in that way.

There were times I could get the leaf to stick to me for hours on end before it fluttered off, my small reserves of chakra drying up. Other times, it'd simple refuse to stay at all.

A lot of my time was broken up like this. The few activities that Rannā did with me, reading, and training my chakra. The rest of the time I seemed to spend napping.

Throughout my first few years I had a lot of time to think on concepts I had never thought of before. I thought about life and death, and if this was the afterlife or not, and if the people around me could be considered alive or not. I also thought about violence a fair amount. Th world of Naruto was filled with it. It was the bases of most of their economy, with ninja's being hired out as mercenary's, and police, and assassins. As a ninja it was their job to harm others, and even kill.

I wasn't sure if I wanted that. I was raised to be passive, do no harm and all that. I didn't know if I wanted to be a trained killer. But at the same time, I didn't want to be weak, to be a victim in this new world where it was kill or be killed.

Anyway, by the time I was five I had read everything I was allowed to read and had a basic understanding of my own chakra. I could hold a leaf to my head, usually, and for the main part I knew everything my chakra did and it didn't like. As long as I kept it happy, the pain was manageable, and I was actually able to use it.

So.

First born and only heir to the clan leader.

Five years old.

I was technically meant to start at the academy.

But….

A/N please give me some feedback. If its good or if I need to work on something. Let me know.