A/N: Guess who's back (back, back, back)? Back again (again, again, again)?

Hello beloved readers! Thank you for your patience these last few months. University has been crazy with assessments and the like, and I've only now been able to get back to fanfiction. If I had it my way, I would live in a house alone and write fanfiction and fiction and screenplays and create far away worlds with dragons and magic and (figurative) shit. But alas, that is not to be.

Now read this chapter and drop me a review if you'd like. I really appreciate them!

Chapter 15: Look Upon My Ruined Face

I stumbled after the Madam as she dragged me by the hair into the adjacent chamber that had the great swirling Seal painted on the floor. The Seal looked old—ancient, in fact. The paint of the Seal was chipped and faded with age and it swirled out to form a closed circle about three or four metres in diameter, with additional lines spreading out and crawling up the walls.

Five additional and smaller Seals, only about a metre in diameter, were evenly situated around it. Four of the Madam's acolytes were crouched in four of them, kneeling on the floor and pouring chakra into the Seal. Shin was among them, his empty eye-sockets closed and his face still scarred with the burns I'd inflicted on him.

Several more acolytes followed us into the room, lining up along the walls.

The thing about fūinjutsu—the art of sealing things—was that you could essentially seal anything. Objects, weapons, living beings… even chakra. It was a technique that relied on mathematical formulae, kanji and other symbols building upon each other to exert a very specific effect on the physical world. It was perhaps the most difficult jutsu to use, especially in combat, but also one of the most powerful.

In the Academy, they only taught us the theory behind the most basic of fūinjutsu—so we could seal weapons into scrolls, making our backpacks lighter for long distance missions. But I had already learnt that there was a kind of language to fūinjutsu. Just like a sentence, any alteration to punctuation, spellings or nuanced errors in kanji, could alter the meaning of the overall Seal. That's what made Seals so dangerous. If you didn't know what you were doing, you could easily change a sealing fūinjutsu into an exploding fūinjutsu.

Despite knowing this, I had always been interested in Seals. It seemed insane that by sealing a kunai knife into a scroll, I was actually tossing the kunai into a pocket dimension outside of our own. And all it required was a little chakra and a whole lot of math and words written on a scroll.

But this Seal was unlike any I had ever seen before. I couldn't decipher any of the symbols. They weren't in Japanese. Or if it was, it contained kanji that I had never seen before.

The Madam threw me down into the centre of the swirling pattern making me fall to knees. My scalp hurt something fierce and I could still taste blood in my mouth from when Shin had punched me repeatedly in the face earlier. Suddenly gagging as something tickled the back of my throat, I fell forward onto my hands and spat out a glob of blood onto the floor.

My arms trembled beneath me violently, and for a moment I thought that they would collapse, but they steadied as I stared at them. My body was feeling the full effects of weeks of malnourishment, adrenaline rushes and a thorough physical beating. Yet my mind felt oddly numb. It was difficult to describe. I knew I should be terrified. That I should be wailing and screaming and begging to be let free. Explaining that I was just a kid. That I didn't belong here.

Maybe it was because I wasn't just a kid.

Maybe it was because I did belong here. That I somehow deserved this.

The Madam knew that I was reincarnated. But she had called me Kyūna, not Chelsea. Could it be-? Was it truly possible that I had originally been born as someone named Kyūna? That I was originally born in this world and not on Earth? If so, then… that meant that my reincarnation was not an isolated event. It meant that I was a part of a pattern of death and rebirth.

And patterns didn't just occur spontaneously. They generally had a cause.

But what caused it?

My brain ached and I pressed a hand to my temple, wincing as I found it to be tender and puffy. If I lived through this crazy cult shit that the Madam had going on here, I was going to have one hell of a bruise.

"Containment Barrier: Sealing Jutsu!"

I looked up wearily.

A blue wall of chakra rose up around the perimeter of the Seal I was inside. Reaching out, I touched it, finding it solid and unyielding.

I closed my eyes again in resignation. Now I was truly trapped.

Coughing up another glob of blood, I spat it out onto the ground again, not caring how uncouth I looked by doing it.

Then I sat up.

"What are going to do to me?" I asked the Madam as she reached her own circular Seal in front of me. She turned to face me in a swish of blue fabric, her veil still upon her face.

"I already told you," she said, clapping her hands together. I could feel her beginning to collect her chakra inside of herself, readying it for use. "You stole something. I am going to find out what."

"A mind-reading jutsu?" I inquired tiredly. I gestured to the Seal on the floor around me. "This Seal seems a bit overkill for a mind-reading jutsu."

"It has worked just fine in the past," the Madam said smugly.

"On who?" I asked. "Were they like me?" Were they someone who had past lives too?

The Madam did not reply as she reached her own Seal in front of me. It had a slightly more triangular design than the others. I could only assume that it was because it served a different function than the four Seals that the acolytes were using.

"I don't remember stealing anything! You're not going to find anything in a mind-reading jutsu." I was aptly aware that I was trying to distract her. Trying to slow her down so that—

So that what? No one was going to rescue me. Who was I hoping would come and rescue me at the last moment?

"Then I suppose that we're lucky that this is much more than just a mind-reading jutsu."

"What kind of jutsu-?"

The Madam's chakra surged and she began making hand signs. "Hebi, saru, inu, tora, hebi…" She muttered.

The acolytes in each circle around me did the same, echoing her incantation as they made the same hand signs, bringing a jutsu to life.

Beneath my feet, the great swirling part of the Seal began to spin. It moved slowly at first, so slowly that I thought I was imagining it, but then it began to gain speed. Spinning faster and faster, I began to feel sick within the pit of my stomach and I could feel a slight pressure forming between my eyes. I blinked a couple of times and rubbed the spot of pressure on my head, hoping it would go away.

It didn't.

"What… what is this?" I gasped. Sweat began forming in beads as my skin grew feverishly hot. "What are you doing to me!?"

The Madam clapped her hands together, and the swirl in my Seal snapped to a halt. I staggered to the side of the Seal and leaned against the chakra wall heavily, feeling dizzy and nauseous. I couldn't stand up straight. I could barely even see straight. My vision was blurring and the pressure in my head was increasing to the point that I now had a full-blown headache pounding away at the inside of my skull like a drum.

Then I felt the Madam's chakra, reaching out and prying into my mind through the Seals at my feet.

The Seal and symbols around me began to glow blue. Brighter and brighter they shone; drowning out the light given by the lit sconces on the walls. The air was thick around me with chakra that the Seal was emitting, and my hair floated around my head as if I were underwater.

I couldn't see anymore, as the Seal grew so bright that I had to close my eyes. I wasn't sure if I was even touching the ground anymore. It felt like I was floating.

The blue light faded from what I could determine from my closed eyelids and the chanting around me grew quieter and quieter. I felt like my head was being wrapped in wool as my senses numbed to the point that everything became muffled… then silent.

My feet touched the ground lightly and I opened my eyes.

I was inside… a hospital room?

It wasn't the hospital in Konoha though. No. This one was infinitely more terrible. I remembered the ugly, plastic blinds on the windows. The harsh, sterile smell. The hard, cold and unforgiving floors on bare feet.

This was Earth.

And furthermore, this is where Chelsea had died. At the age of twenty-seven.

The world twisted, and suddenly—

I was in the hospital bed, lying limply as Shane chattered inanely about the news and some of the TV shows we had watched together as a couple. Back when I had been healthy. Before the cancer…

He was better off leaving me. Jumping from the sinking ship before it went down with him still on it. But he refused. He was stubborn like that. It was why I loved him. It was why I resented him.

I blinked blearily as a nurse entered my room to check on me. She was kind enough. Always remarking how lucky I was to have a handsome young man like Shane staying by my side even as I had been admitted to palliative care. But it was what remained unspoken that bothered me. The sad, pitying looks she sent Shane and I. The way she didn't even bother to read my charts anymore. She was a sweet woman. And she meant well. But her kindness wasn't what I wanted.

I wanted my health. A future.

My hair was slowly growing back from the chemotherapy. Growing in patches and in odd little spurts every now and then. I had worn wigs for a while. But I didn't leave the bed now… So what was the point?

I looked back at Shane.

He was reading something off of his phone now, chuckling at a message someone had sent him. I wondered what, but I couldn't her him clearly. He finished what he was reading and exchanged a few words with the nurse, who pressed two fingers to my throat to check my pulse.

I was so tired I didn't care.

She frowned. She said something that I again couldn't hear and shook me slightly. I could feel my heart slowing, stuttering a little painfully in my chest. Was this it? Was I dying?

I wondered if I would go to Heaven or Hell, if either existed. Or would my existence just end, like a light bulb being turned off at the switch.

Shane's concerned face filled my vision as he leaned over me as blackness began to creep around the sides of my vision, his face blurring. He tried to shake me. Softly at first, then a little bit harder. I would have protested, but I truly didn't have the energy. I was so, so tired.

And as darkness overcame me, my last thought came out unfinished. If only…

My feet hit the stone floor hard and I reeled back within the confines of the Seal, the voices of the Madam's acolytes still going strong around me as they unanimously chanted the handseal they were forming to fuel the jutsu.

"Interesting…" The Madam intoned from her own Seal, not breaking a sweat as she moved from handseal to handseal. Monkey, dog, dragon, monkey, snake… "An interesting life you lived on… what was it? 'Earth'? But let's dig a little deeper into your memories, shall we?"

Before I could even protest, the pain in my head started up again, even worse than before. The Seal pulsed with chakra as the jutsu rallied again, throwing my hair into my eyes. The world around me began to spin, twisting on its axis with dizzying speed.

I looked around. My environment hadn't changed. I was still in the underground stone chamber that I had been in a second ago, the great swirling Seal still underfoot.

I heard a moan and looked to the door as two of the Madam's acolytes dragged in a red-haired boy. He was around eight years old, not much older than I was now.

Kito.

That was his name. I knew it because it had been my name once. This was me. I recognised him from the brief vision I'd had of him throwing rocks into the water when I'd touched the exploding piece of chakra quartz.

I frowned, thinking. He had met the Madam too? Had he escaped? Could his story help me to escape?

The pain in my head struck me again and I threw my head—

I struggled pitifully against the arms that dragged me through the double stone doors. They hadn't fed me in days; they hadn't cared enough to after snatching me from my village. So even though I struggled, there was no strength behind it. And it didn't inconvenience them in the slightest as they dragged me into the unfamiliar room.

A large swirling and elaborate Seal had been drawn onto the floor, drawing my attention. It was old. Really old. But that wasn't what drew my interest. It was elaborate. A work of genius. A sixteen-tiered Seal with five two-tiered Seals powering it? Not even my village elders – who were famed Seal Masters – could have pulled off something like that. The vast amount of information you would have to do would take years, researching the correct symbols and characters, figuring out which tiered Seals to use, and where to place the relevant Seals. Making a Seal was like writing a sentence. You couldn't just throw a bunch of letters or words on a page and expect it to make sense.

But this Seal – messy as it was – made sense. And as I was brought towards it, I began reading it. Making sense of characters, symbols and their placement in relation to each other.

Memory, death, extraction… One part of the Seal said near the centre. Which was perplexing. Usually 'memory' was next to 'extraction' for mind-reading fūinjutsu. Why would 'death' be between them…?

Unless…

I looked up suddenly, feeling cold. I had been so preoccupied with the Seal that I had missed the woman.

She wore blue robes and not a single inch of her skin was exposed, except for her hands. Her head was swathed in a thin blue veil that wavered slightly with every breath she took.

She sat atop a high-backed stone chair, her long spindly fingers tapping against the armrest irritably. As if she was bored of waiting.

She stood up as I was dropped before her, collapsing onto my stomach. In her hand, she held a rock and as she approached it began to glow a soft blue—brightening with every step she took towards me.

The Madam pressed her spindly fingertips to my cheek softly at first, and then harder so that blood dribbled freely down the side of my face as she knelt down before me, holding my head still so I couldn't pull away. "Oh, my sweet child," she said. "I have finally found you, Kyūna."

I froze, my eyes slowly sliding up to the veil that covered that once familiar face. "Y-you!?"

"Oh? You remember me?" The Madam queried, pleased. "Good. That means we can… skip the pleasantries."

"Please. Please! It's not too late. You were a good person once. I remember that!" I pleaded. "Kimi wouldn't want this-!"

The Madam's hand lashed out and struck me across the face, sending me crashing backwards. "Do not speak that name! Never say her name!" The Madam shrieked. She seemed to take a deep, cleansing breath as she stood up, the aggression seeming to dissipate from her body whilst my head spun from the force of her strike. "You are the evil one here. Not me. You ruined me. You killed Kimi, and you ruined me. There is a balance to everything in this world, and I am yours. You must suffer for what you've done to me—to everyone whose life you've ruined in your many, many lifetimes."

An acolyte grabbed me roughly and forced me to me knees before the Madam as she approached again.

"Don't. Please. You can move on from this! Move past this."

The Madam knelt in front of me again, holding my chin in a harsh grip. "Move on? How could I possibly move on with a face like this?" She hissed. Reaching up, she pulled the veil off away from her face and I recoiled.

Now I knew why she took away the eyes of her acolytes.

Her face was intolerable to look at. I could handle ugly—ugly was fine. But this—this was the very epitome of ruined. She had been beautiful once, of that I had no doubt. But her face had been deformed in ways that I could not even fathom. Half of her face was covered in substantial burns that had blistered and scarred her face from chin to scalp, leaving a patch of her head where no hair had regrown. The burns had twisted a corner of her mouth so it appeared as though she was perpetually sneering. One of her eyes was missing too, a hideous scar stretching over her cheekbone all the way up to her hairline.

"Look upon my face. You did this to me," she said, her twisted mouth pulling up at the edges. "You may have been able to escape my revenge last time by dying, but you are going to have to wait a long, long time before death visits you in this lifetime. I will make certain of that.

Her sole remaining eye gleamed feverishly as she began torturing me, laughing her delight as she did so. My screams bounced along the thick, stone walls but never through them. No one outside the room would be able to hear me, and those few loyal to the Madam that did hear, did not care. No one would come to save me.

And no one did.

This time when the memory ended, I fell to my knees. If I had had anything left in my stomach I knew that I would have vomited it up by now for sure, the memories of what the Madam had done to Kito – to me – still fresh in my mind.

It played over and over in my head, no matter how much I tried to think of something else. The trauma just kept reliving itself in my head.

She had literally torn me apart…

I shuddered again.

"I'm growing tired of this, Kyūna," the Madam said. Her voice oddly hoarse from the memory she had just witnessed. "Tell me where you hid the statue and I will kill you quickly in this life before your master arrives. If what you think I did to Kito was bad… well, your master puts my work to shame."

"Statue? What statue?"

"The statue you stole from your master! Where is it?"

This was all over a statue? I closed my eyes, resigning myself to more pain. "I… don't know."

"Very well," she snarled, her veil moving slightly in response to her agitation. "Let's move onto Kyūna's lifetime then."

The Seal gave another violent pulse, lifting my hair into the air. I gasped as the air was forced from my lungs and the pain hit me over and over again, allowing me no relief. Drills burrowed into my mind and I viciously clawed at my skull with my hands, screaming and drawing blood as I tried to find some form of reprieve.

Darkness lunged in and filled my world once again, making my surroundings distorted and blurry. I threw my head back, continuing to claw at my face as my eyes rolled into the back of my head.

As the darkness closed in around me, I braced myself for another memory. Another vision of how I died.

But wherever I surfaced next was no memory.

It was black. Pitch-black darkness was all I could see. I couldn't hear anything. It was like a blanket of darkness had fallen over me, blotting out the light and sounds of the world around me. I couldn't see anything, except my own body, which was oddly illuminated in the darkness. Was I standing, or falling, or floating? Or none of them? It was unsettling after all the pain I had been in to suddenly be left in the dark with nothing. How had I gotten here?

"Oh good. You're finally here."

I turned. The speaker was a freckled blonde woman dressed in familiar yet outlandish clothing. The clothes of my old world. Her hair was golden and seemed to glint as if it was being touched by sunlight, hanging in loose ringlets over one shoulder; and her Old World clothes were smart yet casual, consisting of form-fitting black pants and a plain white blouse. She wore a white lab coat over the entire ensemble.

It took me a second to recognise her; she was so different from the pale, broken creature in that hospital bed dying of cancer that I had seen.

"Chelsea...?" I breathed, not believing my eyes. One minute the Madam was standing before me, and now it was Chelsea. How was this possible? "How are you here?"

"I thought experiencing Kito's and my death was enough," she said. "So I pulled your conscious mind from having to relive the memories that the Madam is going through."

I frowned. "Okay… But how are you here? In front of me. I thought that you were me?"

"Yes, I am you. But you developed a dissociative personality disorder earlier in life, which has pushed aspects of our psyche – namely, me and all other past lives– out of our conscious mind and into our subconscious," Chelsea explained, smiling.

"What?"

Chelsea sighed patiently, as if I were a small child. Well… I was a small child I suppose. "It's really not that surprising, actually. It's hard having the full experiences of an adult when you're a child. When the world expects you to be a child and you have the body of one, your mind naturally tries to dissociate from any adult experiences. I only took a few classes in psychology but it probably has something to do with defining ourselves by what society expects of us and what we expect of ourselves. Society expected you to be a child, so most of our adult memories were pushed to the side in favour of a more innocent persona."

I took a moment to consider. "I remember things."

"But not everything."

"No," I agreed. "Not everything."

"That's probably for the best. Knowing too much about the future can be a curse, and all that," Chelsea chuckled, shaking her head. "It's about time you got here."

"Got where? Where are we?" I asked, looking around again.

"We're inside our mind," Chelsea answered easily, calmly even, as if it were no big deal.

I glanced at the vast blackness of our surroundings. "This is our mind?" I repeated, with an air of scepticism. "Wow. It's so depressing in here."

"This is, you could suppose, a waiting room of sorts. I didn't want you getting distracted while I was talking to you."

"I can't see anything, that is distracting," I muttered.

"Really? I suppose so… Here, we'll move to the subconscious where I reside," Chelsea said.

The blackness around us began to fold, as if made of paper. As it folded into itself – growing smaller and smaller – it revealed a long, white corridor lined with doors. Lots of doors. Separated by only a few feet of blank wall before the next, and the corridor stretched on for as long as I could see. The corridor could have ended in one hundred metres, or one thousand metres, and I had no idea because all I could see was the white of the walls in the distance converging together into a single point of focus.

The doors themselves were armoured like the door to a solitary confinement prison cell. On each door was scrawled a name. Chelsea, Kito, Kyūna, Shyuu, Suzaku… Those were the names of my supposed past lives. Was there a door with my name on it? Or would that only appear after I was dead?

The thought made me shudder.

"Better?" Chelsea asked.

My response was a non-committal shrug. I almost preferred the blackness to the sight of those doors.

"Right, so as I was saying," Chelsea continued. "We are inside our mind. When the Madam activated that Seal, she shunted our conscious mind to the side. So whilst we're talking right now our physical body is still in that Seal and the Madam is searching through our memories."

I nodded. "She said that someone named Kyūna stole something from someone."

"Yes," Chelsea said. "She's looking for something that Kyūna stole from the Grinning Man."

"So the Madam was right? Kyūna is real? I—we were Kyūna in a past life?" I asked.

"Yes, she is real," Chelsea replied, solemn. "And yes, we were her. Many years ago."

"So then where is she? Why isn't she here?"

"She's… buried a little deeper into our subconscious than I was."

"Because you were my most recent past life?"

She nodded encouragingly. "That's right."

I frowned suddenly, remembering. "Who is the 'Grinning Man'?"

Chelsea shuddered and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the words left my lips. There was something about those two words that awakened a heavy, cold feeling of dread deep inside me.

"You're better off not knowing," she replied.

"No tell me," I argued. "Is he the master that the Madam was talking about?"

Chelsea didn't answer but her silence was answer enough. He was.

"Tell me about him. What's the point in me being able to talk to you if you can't give me any answers to prepare?" I pushed. "The Madam said that he wants me – us – dead. Why?"

Chelsea's jaw clenched. "Because that's what he wants. It's one of the few things that give him pleasure in life, I think. I don't know his real name, but he is always smiling. Grinning as he kills us—in often horrific ways. He's been the one to kill us in most of our lifetimes."

"So he reincarnates," I surmised. "He's just like us."

"He is nothing like us!" Chelsea said sharply, making me jump. "Sorry. It's just… I haven't been in touch with many of our past incarnations, but from what I know… he's a monster. He doesn't reincarnate at all. He simply lives forever, spending his days hunting and killing us."

"But not all of us," I stated, repeating what she had said to me earlier.

"He didn't kill me because he couldn't reach me on Earth… Not that that stopped me from dying young," she added the last part as a bitter mutter. Louder, she continued, "Generally, we don't die peacefully. The Madam killed my predecessor, a boy named Kito. He was dismembered while he was still alive…"

I remembered his death. The pain, the blood, the laughter and the taunts. The look of joy in her eyes as she hacked at my flesh—

I squeezed my eyes shut to try to halt the flooding onset of memories. But instead the Madam's voice rang in my head, making me shiver. And he's willing to let me tear you to pieces again once I have the information from you.

"Yes," Chelsea nodded as if she could her my silent reverie in her own head. Perhaps she could. "That's what the Madam was referring to when she threatened to tear us to pieces again. God, she's a nasty piece of work."

That's an understatement.

"And who was before Kito?" I asked, although I felt like I already knew the answer before the name left Chelsea's lips.

"Kyūna."

"The one who stole the Grinning Man's… statue?"

"Kyūna was… unique. She stood up to the Grinning Man in a way that I'm not sure that we ever have before. Mostly by luck and circumstance. She was born into a prominent shinobi family in the Land of Lightning, grew up protected by powerful people—and eventually became powerful in her own right," Chelsea said, smiling slightly. "I remember pieces of her life now, you know? Just fragments. Most of Kyūna's personality is distinct from you and I. As is the case with most of our past lives. Did you know that Kyūna was one of the founding members of Kumogakure? I always did have a soft spot for Kumo when I was watching the anime…"

"But why did she steal his statue?" I prompted.

"Because he wanted it," Chelsea said simply. "I'm not sure what she stole, precisely, or if it's related to the Naruto canon. But it must have been important for Kyūna to have stolen it. No doubt it has special properties that he had plans to use for something…"

"You're not very helpful, you know."

Chelsea chuckled. "Imagine how much more confused you would be without me giving you advice and my memories of the Naruto anime."

That was true.

"But we're not here to talk about Kyūna," Chelsea said. "Not yet. I need to warn you about the Grinning Man."

"Okay. Consider me warned."

"No, I'm serious," she said, no trace of humour on her face. "The Grinning Man has been waiting to interrogate us for over forty years. Forty years since Kyūna died. Now he knows that we're alive—and he knows where we are, thanks to the Madam. You need to get us out of there."

"I kind of have my hands full with the Madam right now…"

"The Madam is nasty. She's terrible, I know. She has her reasons. And a sad backstory to boot. But… the Grinning Man is something else entirely. You need to either escape, or…" She trailed off, biting her lip.

"Or?" I prompted.

"Or you need to kill yourself before he gets to us."

"I'm sorry—what?!"

Chelsea cringed. "I know, I know. But after what he did to Kyūna… and after forty years of waiting for another chance… Just trust me when I say that it would be better to go out another way."

"What did he do to Kyūna?"

"No. Nope. Not going there. You'll remember these things as you grow older. Maybe you'll remember that particularly terrible memory, but I hope not. Kyūna may have risen the highest out of all of us, but she paid for it many times over."

"So you pretty much want me to kill myself to escape a fate worse than death?"

She nodded. "And our next reincarnation would still be able to ingratiate themselves into the Naruto canon and you'd give them a fighting shot at life."

I frowned. "But what about my life? I don't want to die. I'm not ready. There's still so much to do."

"I know. That's why I suggested you try to escape first."

"Oh, great yeah thanks. And how am I supposed to escape when I'm trapped inside a Seal?"

"That's why I suggested suicide. You're running out of options. And time."

Wow, I thought. Chelsea is cold.

"You're insane if you think suicide is my only option."

Chelsea shrugged. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm… I'm going to live," I said resolutely, standing a little bit taller. "I'm going to fight. There must be something I can do. Some way to fight back. Will you help me? Because I am not dying today."

A slow smile spread over Chelsea's face, a look of approval dawning. It felt like I had just passed a test, distinctly reminding me of the time Papa had tried to dissuade me from becoming a shinobi several years ago. He had wanted me to be a shinobi, but had left the actual decision for me to make. Had the same thing just happened here? I felt sure of it.

"I'm glad you said that," Chelsea said, approaching me. "It's time you take the next step in becoming who you are. Who you truly are."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it's time for you to grow up." She held out her hand towards me. "You can't be a six-year-old girl and still expect to survive the things to come. You need to be more than just 'Ayaka'. More than just 'Chelsea'. We are stronger together. Take my hand."

I reached out to take her hand, but hesitated. Would I still be me if I took her hand and merged with Chelsea? Would she overpower me? Would it even matter if she did?

"You know me. You essentially are me," Chelsea said, noticing my reticence. "I know that I'm just a civilian from another world. I can't promise to teach you any new jutsu or practical techniques, but I do have a lot of memories from the Naruto anime and manga. A lot more than the few you currently have. I can help you know the future. You just need to let me in."

She was right.

I nodded and took her hand. I wasn't sure what I expected, but as soon as I took Chelsea's hand my mind just seemed to click. Everything seemed to make a bit more sense to me than it had before and I felt more like myself than I ever had in the last six years of my life.

Chelsea herself began to fade away, seeming to flow into me like I was absorbing her. In a way, I was. She tried to say something, I could see her mouth moving but the words were lost to me as she suddenly had no throat. Then no mouth. And then the rest of her disappeared and I was left alone in the corridor of armoured doors. Floating. Waiting.

Except now Chelsea's door was open.

The world jolted back into colour as my knees knocked into the floor painfully, before the rest of my body crumpled to the stone floor. I was back inside the Seal in the Madam's temple.

I could sense the Madam inside my head, still scratching away at my memories. Digging for something that I had hidden over forty years ago.

The scratching sensation reminded me of another scratching sensation that I had experienced not too long ago. Once, it had brought nothing but dread and fear inside me, but now I needed it.

I needed to summon the Hands.

Even as I thought about them, I could feel them stirring within me. Like a beast awakening from slumber. And now that I was brimming with chakra – thanks to the Madam's chakra stone – I had a lot to feed them.

The Madam may have killed me in the past. Killed an unarmed eight-year-old boy with relative ease. But she would not find me to be so helpless. I had a power inside of myself that I had never had before—in any past life. The Madam – even the Grinning Man – would be in for a rude awakening if they dared to reckon with me.

Standing up within the confines of the Seal, I fed the Hands more chakra, coaxing and encouraging them. They stretched and flexed, and then they became agitated—feeling the Madam's presence within their mental domain.

A slow, wide grin spread over my face.

They attacked.

A/N: :O OHMIGOSH WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT?! I MUST KNOW RIGHT AWAY!