Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Yeah, it surprised me, too.
Chapter 2
Itachi woke up with a feeling of strangeness. It was too quiet. Normally, his sister would be up already, scribbling on a scroll, ready to greet him with a "Good morning, onii-chan!" when he got up. He looked over to her bed and found it empty. He walked out to the kitchen, where his mother was serving breakfast.
She was wearing a beige apron over a purple dress, in which he knew she was surprisingly mobile. He caught the familiar glint of ninja wire and senbon in her hair, the only visible signs that she was, in fact, a dangerous jonin of Konoha.
"Okaa-san, where is Hino-nee?" His mother frowned in that way she did when she didn't want to answer his questions.
"Hinote is resting in the guest room, Itachi. I had a sensor-nin probe her chakra earlier and it must have tired her out." His father had entered the room silently, as always. He sat at the table and started to drink his morning green tea.
He looked relaxed, but Itachi noticed the tightness in his hands and knew he was worried. That, in turn, made him worried. What was wrong with Hino-nee? He supposed it had to do with the exercise yesterday.
That was when Tornado Kushina hit the house in a flurry of noise and red hair. Itachi wondered whether she was that loud on missions, too.
"Hello, Miko-chan! Fugaku-san. Itachi-kun!" She hugged Itachi's mother one-armed, her other hand holding a cup of ramen, then walked up to Itachi, who ducked (and failed) to keep her questing hands from his face. "Now where's Hinohino?" It was a fair question. By now, Hino-nee would normally have already tackled Kushina-san.
"She's sleeping in the guest room, Kushina-san." Kushina-san sat down next to Itachi, much to his chagrin. His sister loved the woman like a second mother, but Itachi wasn't comfortable with all the touching.
"What gives, dattebane?" She asked, her mouth already full of noodles.
"Do you remember our talk last week? We had her chakra tested this morning. Just as I thought, her chakra is too volatile to allow her to activate the sharingan. I'm having it sealed this afternoon."
"Now, now, Fugaku-san, I'm not letting any half-baked seal get slapped into my goddaughter's face by some Uchiha who fancies himself a seal master. No offense", she said, when Itachi's father bristled, "but face it: you guys aren't too good with seals, for all your fancy ninjutsu."
Fugaku just nodded at that, if only because Mother was giving him a Look. Itachi knew that one—it was the one she gave his sister when she ran out of paper and started looking weird at the walls.
The next time I woke up, auntie Kushina was in my face. I had been dreaming of crimson-eyed gods and crack fics and burning leaves. So it wouldn't have been much of a surprise if I had woken with a start, right into her face… but otou-san had long since trained that out of me and onii-chan.
"Okay! All woken up? Stay very still for me, Hinohino!" Auntie Kushina had a brush in her right hand, much like the ones she used to play with me, wet with ink. Her left grabbed onto my eyelids and carefully kept them open.
The next hour would have been horrible had I not used eyeliner in my previous life. As it was, I merely got a bit stir crazy. Auntie had precise and fluid hand movements, painting around my eyes carefully. I wondered what this was for. Onii-chan watched in a daze, and I had to hold my laughter at the face he was making.
"Okay. Now I want you to circulate your chakra, very carefully, around your head. Tell me if it feels weird or anything, okay?" I did as asked. I may not know what was happening, but if auntie, okaa-san, otou-san and onii-chan were here then it must be for my own good.
"It's okay," I started, "but it's, um… not going into my eyes. Is that good?" I disliked speaking out. I couldn't articulate my thoughts well in Japanese yet, and it jarred.
"That's good, Hinote. We were worried your chakra might hurt your eyes, so we had Kushina-chan put a seal around them."
"Can I see?" I asked. I didn't quite know what I looked like, except maybe 'long haired onii-chan'. I hoped I did look like him. He was so cute with that round face and those shiny dark eyes and those rabbit pajamas!
Okaa-san brought out a handheld mirror and I looked at my reflection. I had okaa-san's black hair, shinier than Itachi-nii's (sorry, onii-chan) falling down to my chest, and her big dark eyes. I could see, however, that behind the baby fat I had otou-san's strong jaw… and his sanpaku! So much for getting onii-chan's trademark cuteness…
My eyes had thin dark outlines around them, from which simple designs trailed out in four directions: up to my forehead, down my cheeks, over my nose and towards my ears. These outward motifs seemed to fading even as I looked, however, leaving only small marks visible.
"Well then. Now that this is done, let's get breakfast!" Auntie was a bottomless well of enthusiasm. By the time I got to the kitchen, she was already reheating her instant ramen. How she managed to pull that off without ruining it shall remain a mystery for the ages.
The rest of the week passed in a haze. I had managed to wrap my head around the whole 'fictional world' thing, or at least I thought I had. There was no way to know whether I—or at least a Uchiha Hinote—had been a character in the original story. There was also no way to tell whether I had any real freedom from the original plot.
That had been a real concern, since I took my free will and "realness" very seriously. In the end, though, I decided that since there was no way to tell, this might as well be the real world, and I intended to treat as such. Onii-chan, otou-san, okaa-san, auntie were real and I refused to treat them as less than such.
The spiritual thing I decided to table for now. Reincarnation and shinobi (and their overgrown fireballs) were apparently things in my life now, and I could deal with questions of higher purposes and entities at a later date.
Otou-san had decided to focus his teaching on Itachi-nii's ninjutsu. It made me a bit sour to be so readily dismissed, but I couldn't let some disability stop me. That in mind, on the next morning I decided to pester okaa-san.
"Okaa-san… will you teach me shurikenjutsu?" Her training had been grueling, but I had made marked improvement. I needed to show otou-san I was still good, even without fancy ninjutsu.
"Oh, so you still want to learn? I thought I had scared you off! Well, Hinote-chan, I can teach you… now that otou-san isn't hogging you anymore, you have a lot of free time, don't you?" She smiled, and I had a bad feeling. "Since you're so enthusiastic about learning, how about I teach you bukijutsu?"
Thing about the Uchiha: there were lineages within the clan, which passed down specific fighting styles and specialized jutsu. Okaa-san's bukijutsu turned out to include not only shurikenjutsu but also some adapted bōjutsu her grandfather had "acquired" from the Sarutobi clan during the Warring States period.
I soon settled into a new pace: Every day I'd wake up, train my calligraphy (and maybe draw a little—something I still enjoyed very much, although I had to hide some of the products from my family). Then I set out with okaa-san to train, just as onii-chan would be waking up.
If I'd thought her training last week had been grueling, okaa-san made it look like a stroll in the park. She seemed almost giddy to pass down her ninja techniques, a side of her I hadn't seen before. I generally returned to my bed at night completely sore and spent. It was an oddly satisfying feeling, though: who knew intense physical activity could be this much fun?
It was about six months later that mom gave me my first free day. Say what you will about the Uchiha, but we are hard workers to a fault. Well, at least in our house—I didn't really know any others from the clan.
I decided to spend that free day in the yard with Itachi-nii. He showed me all his chakra control and shaping exercises. I just watched, glad to spend time with him again.
"Look what otou-san taught me, Hino-nee!" He made the Horse, then Tiger seals, then exhaled. A two feet long, one foot wide cone of flames erupted from his mouth.
I clapped, impressed. "Good going, onii-chan!"
We compared our combat stances—mine had become a bit different from his, owing to the fact that I expected to fight with a staff in hand. We shared some bread mom had given us, climbed on trees, and competed to hit the targets on the trunks (I won, barely).
We were out in front of the house (being outside was against otou-san's rules, which made it exciting) when I gave onii-chan my surprise present present—it was christmas, though Konoha didn't observe it: a drawing of us, sitting together, much like now. He looked at me wide-eyed, then gave me hug. It was my turn to be surprised, so I just held tightly on to him.
A soft meow~ broke the moment, and we broke up. The clan kept dozens of cats in the compound, trained to find intruders and sometimes used as summons. This one, a white Angora named Haku, was my favorite. I petted him softly, and he started purring. I felt so happy, my chakra churned within me…
Bang!
The next moment, everything was red. I blinked to clear my eyes and saw Haku was gone, bits of him strewn around the street. I felt eyes on me from the whole street, and the bread from earlier was threatening to come up. And Itachi-nii was staring at me wide-eyed, making a strange face. We were covered in blood. Haku's blood. No one was moving. It was like a dream.
I reached up towards Itachi-nii, to clean his hair of gore if nothing else, and he flinched. That seemed to break the spell, because people started screaming.
A/N: Not sure what to say abou this one. Next chapter, the shit hits the paper fan. Well, more than it already has.