Chapter 2: In which insanity enters
Infancy was not the most interesting period of your life. Your choices of action was limited and your life controlled by the basics three needs of any living being; poop, sleep and eat. When awake reflexes takes over as soon as something triggers your senses. Something moves; you grasp. Something even nears your mouth; you get ready to suck the hell out of it.
It was no wonder those blessed moments faded away with age like fresh dew on the morning of a summer day. There was literally no use for them in the adult mind, and they were beyond humiliating.
Small victories as clearing sight and the ability to manipulate your own vocal chords in another direction than the dreaded baby cry would seem like milestones if you were trapped within an infant. For me the skill of glaring was the most awaited. That was quickly followed by pulling at the grey beard of the small man who was then holding me. The man in question was a quite frequent visitor, always popping up and disturbing any form of thoughts my mind was currently able to make. He deserved to be punished.
The first time my eyesight cleared up enough to make out his outfit, and most importantly his hat, my heart stopped for a moment. My knowledge of any Asian language was rather limited, but that sign on his purplish headgear had to be the kanji for fire.
The realization of the man's identity brought with it my first baby fuss since birth, not counting the occasionally cries for food or fresh diapers which really was normal for any infant.
The following panic made it easier to collect myself and form a plan.
My legs were technically unable to bear my own weight yet, but I was gaining control of my own hands, so the idea of climbing out of my cradle in order to escape the white room I was imprisoned in, was not completely hopeless. The brute strength of my arms, all due to the 7 I had in Strength, compared to my lithe body had to be enough. When I was out I could find a mirror and find out if my growing fear was justified.
Alternating between climbing and clinging to the wooden bars brought me to the top, before I realized I had no method of moving over the edge of the cradle, since releasing the bars with either hand meant I would fall down.
It was a minor but fatal setback.
I was not sure, where exactly my body was supposed to be compared to the normal development of a child, but my fruitless efforts in gaining some kind of reflective surface indicated I was a long way from moving around independently. My only possible option of solving my current identity crisis was therefore to examine all evidence I collected in my short life. I had very few visitors in my bare room, and except the man, who by all evidence appeared to be the Hokage of Konoha, none of them stayed very long. These other, less friendly, visitors involved woman acting and dressed as nurses coming in and out every time I cried my need for substance or cleanliness. Their faces were mainly stuck being expressionless, but some had the gall to glare at the infant they were tending, which had to mean I was connected to something which affected their opinions a great deal.
Who was I trying to kid? I had a window perfect for spying from the outside and too tan skin, considering I had never been outside. If I was not him then the world was turning topsy-turvy.
So I was the female equivalent of this universe's title character.
In a twisted way my brief insane wish of being a Jinchuuriki and an existing character had been fulfilled, and I was no longer able to just leave the plot if it got too dangerous. No, holding the fox meant I in a few years would attract all manners of nail polish wearing weirdos quite capable of obliterating me.
My brain was punishing me for being a coward. Lovely, this had to be my subconscious shouting 'I wish to be brave' in my face, which was true, but heroic and brave acts were more often than not also stupid beyond belief.
Why was I even thinking about this? If I got in trouble my mind would just grant me reality bending powers, so no use in speculating.
Except my situation didn't really allow me to do anything else.
Until my brain allowed me the power of time skips, the best I could do was trying to figure out how the magic system in this world worked. The promise of power coming with the ability to partly bend reality should keep my head busy trying to find out how chakra was supposed to work.
Less than a week after was I out of the white room. The trip involved in my transfer of bedroom revealed I had been in the hospital the entire time, a purplish building with a blue roof of all things.
It reminded me I had to get used to people with impossible hair colors from now on.
My status as a member of the human species Homo Sapiens could be questioned with the screwy genetics in this world making energy manipulation possible and pupil less eyes a frequent phenomenon. I rubbed self-conscious at my cheeks, another mark of the abnormality of this world.
My situation was getting absurd.
Now I had a nursemaid coming around on the clock, who did not seem to resent my involvement in the kyuubi's attack. My ability to distinguish tones and words had grown considerably, so the repetition of the sounds making up the name Naruto had to mean canon was still going strong at the moment. Being named 'fishcake' was not the greatest thing, but it could have been so much worse, so I was not complaining. Instead I wondered when my presence was going to change anything.
My brown haired nursemaid's name was Chika. No last name was given, but she did not seem like she was from any clan, so even if I knew it, it would mean nothing to me. She was a talkative one, soft voiced and with careful movements when handling my small body.
Most likely she did know anything about the kyuubi's connection with me yet, judging from the total lack of any negative emotions towards me.
Perhaps her payment and the constant watchers made her hide any such emotions.
Her circumstances were not mine, so I paid little actual though to her motivations in working as a caretaker for a Jinchuuriki. Those few speculations which came forth stemmed from an abundance of free time. My much nicer new bedroom contained a series of books, most written specially for children. After some weeks of inactivity in my new cradle starring at those goodies from across the room, getting no closer to unlocking my genetic superpowers or understanding the spoken language of this world, I pointed at one of them and demanded it to be read in my view.
My primary style of learning had after all always been visual. Connecting sounds with signs could not hurt.
Playing with chakra hurts.
The moment when you finally connect and feel some kind of foreign warmth from your new magic powers was evidently not the moment where you should try to utilize it. The lack of damage to my nervous system or chakra paths was probably because my regenerative abilities due to the resident fox in my gut, but it did not stop the people from fussing. If two persons count as 'people'.
The warmth following the green light of a medical jutsu was oddly more comfortable than my own. Learning healing just gained top priority on my to-do list.
Today was a day of achievements.
The extra surveillance from my failed attempt at unlocking chakra left me with very few age fitting activities to fill my time. Ranging from learning to use my legs, where the important lesson of 'learning to crawl before walking' was reinforced and forced down my throat in such a sadistically ironical way it left me seething in anger, to forcing my new vocal chords to form understandable sounds others were capable of decoding in a meaningful way. Anything else would just have been plain stupid not to mention have the chance of raising suspicion to a level where mind readers paid me a home visit.
It's a miracle they had not already done that. Perhaps that was my brain being lenient.
My first word was "Bottle." A statement of my then state of hunger and the numerous times Chika had prattled on about milk and warm bottles, and how I was a growing girl.
That was not, the before mentioned, achievement. The grand testimony to the power of human willpower almost made it earn the title of "The Achievement" with a capital a, if not for the tiny fact that I had already reserved that for when I unlocked my chakra to its full potential.
No, that day I opened the door to my bedroom for the first time by using several boxes and a book left by my cradle in order to turn the handle, and I found a mirror. A mirror not quite reaching all the way to the floor, but enough to let one see all the important bits. Starring into wide blue eyes and touching sun blond strands of wild hair, which promises to be a pain in the future, sealed the deal for me.
My mind had gone off the rockers.
Author's note: Short chapter, because nothing really exiting can happen when you can't move or understand what's going on around you. She still believes the whole experience has been conjured forth by her brain, and really, most normal people would not just suddenly start to believe they have entered some kind of game for a last chance to resume your old life.