thanks so much to everyone who read and/or followed this story last chapter! pretty excited for all of to keep experiencing nagisa's story together :)) since this is my first fanfic ever, ive been taking it slowly in terms of writing and editing, but it definitely has gotten easier as i spend more time writing. although im still very much struggling with formatting. i started this chapter as soon as i finished finals since i havent had much to do over break. hopefully this semester went ok for everyone here who may be in university too! its a difficult time to be a student so im hoping yall pull through as much as you can. and happy 2021! 2020 was probably the worst year of my life and my mental health has really suffered, but im a little optimistic about this next one.

take care ❤️

if you'd like a song to go with this chapter, i listened to "the voice the calls you" from the fe echoes soundtrack while writing it haha

italics = thoughts/foreign language/emphasis

Chapter 2 - Strangers

I made two discoveries in my first year in "Konoha".

One—we were at war. It wasn't only happening in our old home, or in the new one. As it turned out, every country on the continent had been fighting each other for years now. And two—mother had some sort of superpower, which she wanted to teach to me as well.

I remember distinctly how I found out the first fact. How I learned about the war. Looking back, it made sense. I had wondered, back when we lived in the old house, why we sold so many weapons. Here was the reason; why people went through weapons so quickly.

One clear day in the early fall, I was out in town with Mother, picking up groceries. We walked down the streets together as usual, hand in hand. The town was still disconcerting to me, too crowded, too vast. At least in this life, I had never seen so many people in one place. We followed dirt streets, passing wooden buildings on either side with various storefronts.

But despite the sheer number of other families going about their days, I noticed that they all still looked different from my mother and I. Lighter skin, bright hair, different eyes, strange clothing. It was an oddly familiar feeling—back at our old home, we hadn't fit in either.

When people looked my way, I could see disgust, anger, and discomfort on their faces.

My chest was tight and uncomfortable, thinking about it. I wasn't sure what that meant, anymore.

It wasn't as if was unaware that people who look different are discriminated against. But that didn't explain how widespread, how intense the reactions were. How emotional strangers who saw us would become.

I decided that it would be beneficial to find more information on our situation if it was within my abilities.

And I would get my chance after one particularly vicious stranger screamed at us, waiting in line at a store.

I felt spittle land in our direction and flinched away from it. Her voice echoed off the hard flooring. The people nearby nervously shifted their eyes away, and nobody spoke up or attempted to talk down the person. They walked cautiously away, hiding behind shelves to avoid the scene. But the shelves were empty enough that I could still see stripes of their clothing behind cans and packages, all of them still staring in our direction. I fixed my gaze on a meager pile of rice and hoped to block out the noise.

I caught one last look at the woman as Mother pulled us away. The yelling woman looked like all the venom had been pulled out of her, now that we were gone. Hair pulled into a tight bun, thin face, deep greenish shadows under her eyes.

We walked outside. Mother had said nothing the whole time. She composed herself outside, taking deep breaths.

"Mother," I asked, with careful precision. "Why?"

I wondered if my confusion would translate across the few words I knew. And would she bother to explain anything, knowing how young I was?

She gazed down at me, together under the shadow of the awning. With eyebrows slightly drawn together, she glanced around to both sides of us before finally speaking.

"Nagisa, we will never be the same as everyone else here." she said, looking off somewhere into the distance as she spoke, instead of at me. Her voice was low, not carrying anywhere, just floating in our small pocket of air. Maybe her words, despite being for me, weren't supposed to be understood.

"It is not simply that we look different, but more than that. And it's not a bad thing to be different. However, people will always be protective of some things. You know, where they live. What matters to them—what keeps them safe and well and happy. People hate losing those things.

Right now, they have already lost many things. Just like I have. Just like your father has. Everyone around the world has. Because we are at war, and the only result is more pain and loss. They cannot do anything personally about those losses. So, when they see us, and we appear different, we seem to be a part of what is hurting them. The enemy. They cannot reach the enemy themselves, so therefore we are the closest thing in their minds.

They throw their pain and anger and hate at us. When we exist, to them that means they do not exist.

I am not able to do anything about it personally, other than perhaps prove them wrong. Unfortunately, they must figure out their problems themselves. I am not in their head.

Therefore, Nagisa, I hope that when you are older, things will be different."

She had slipped into a more formal manner of speaking as she continued to talk.

"Your father and I both want you to not have to fight to be the same as everyone else—to be recognized as equal.

We make choices so your own life will be better. But..." she sighed slightly. "I do not know if it will ever even matter.

I don't know. I must have hope that..." a second of silence, "everything, every choice will have been worth it eventually.

You are our sun, Nagisa. Our light and warmth."

I reflected.

I understood most of her speech. It was odd—despite how bothered she appeared, she still spent so much time talking about others' feelings. If she knew the anger wasn't her own fault, then why did it bother her? She couldn't change it. That woman would continue to act as she always had, and Mother would continue acting how she did herself. What did it matter if other people were bigoted? It shouldn't hurt her at all.

Was Mother the one trying to reassure herself?

It didn't make much sense to me. I cut off the exhausting train of thought and moved on instead of dwelling on it.

The war she had alluded to briefly—how long had it been going? when she said across the world, was it a world war? Had we come from the enemy side or from an ally to Konoha? How many deaths were there, how much destruction?

The yelling woman's face was stuck in my mind, green and dangerous.

.

.

.

That night, sleeping in my tiny bed in our new house, I dreamt about hands wrapped around my neck.

I continued to wake up from these nightmares for months. Tangled in sheets, sweating in the early fall heat but somehow still freezing, my hands would shake. I stared listlessly at pale walls until I caught my breath.

What am I doing? I asked myself over and over again, in the haze of sleep.

The empty room had no response for me.

.

.

.

My second big discovery happened months later, when the trees around the village carried bunches of flower buds, not quite blossoming yet. It was chilly, but nothing close to my half-remembered impressions of real cold.

I went on walks with my parents now, wrapped up in a light coat, and had the chance to explore new places. We would see spots of greenery under the high-up red walls, calm wooden bridges over rivers, and small back streets with restaurants. If we stayed away from the crowded center of the town, our walks were quiet and peaceful.

We lived close to two buildings that seemed to be shrines, too. One that we visited somewhat regularly, and one smaller shrine with a red and white symbol that we never entered.

I liked watching the fish in the rivers. They reflected glints of light in the sun and hid away like shadows during rainstorms.

When we came back inside, we always had the same routine. Father would get to work in the forge and Mother would sit down with me and work with me on... something. I understood all her words now, but I was still unsure what we were doing. I wasn't even certain, again, if I was supposed to understand her instructions.

"Look for the heat inside you," Mother repeated to me quietly, "and try to pull it all together."

"Look heat?" I parroted.

"Yes, close your eyes," Mother said. She gestured at me with hands over her eyes.

I put my small hands over my eyes too, then closed them. My breath steadied into a regular pattern, out of some long-buried habit.

Oh—could we be meditating, maybe? It was a possibility, although I didn't think that people tried to teach their kids meditation very often.

I had my eyes closed. I could feel my body heat, but I had no idea how to gather it up, or what I was looking for. I hadn't gotten anywhere in the past few times we tried it, so I wasn't expecting anything new.

Either way, I would be fine. It didn't matter if I succeeded or failed. Mother only wanted me to try, and if nothing happened, then nothing happened.

I focused on the heat, and imagined it coming together. As usual, nothing happened, except I maybe felt a little calmer. I had no idea if that was the goal or not.

I opened my eyes and blinked a few times, stuck. Mother looked at me with a patient smile.

"Watch me", Mother said, bringing both hands to her sternum. She brought one of my hands to touch her own. I felt a large amount of heat and pulled my hands back on reflex. Her hands were extremely warm all of a sudden.

"Just like that," mother said. "Watch again."

She pushed her hands outwards and suddenly, the coolness of our living room was replaced by warmth. I watched, trying to make sense of the connection, take everything in. It was as if she had sent a pulse of heat out through the air using her hands.

Again- something inexplicable had happened. Unscientific.

What am I doing? my half-buried consciousness repeated.

I pushed it aside. I was trying to focus, and it was distracting.

"I'll show you again," Mother said. Standing back up,

I followed her into the forge, which I had never actually been inside before. I walked carefully, staring up at the walls and shelves. I could smell the heavy scents of charcoal and iron, with sweeter undertones of wax floating through. It was smoky, too—my throat burned slightly, unused to dirty air. Father, from the other side of the room, waved at us with a pair of tongs in one hand.

Mother grabbed a hunk of metal from one of the tables. It looked unfinished, a vaguely shaped blade only half visible in the metal. She held her left hand over the metal, and it gradually changed color, becoming bright orange, and rippling heat into the air around it. she turned back to me and gestured at it.

"Heat," she said. The metal didn't cool at all as it sat there. Again, she changed the temperature of the shop. Father barely looked up from his own work before continuing to hammer something in the corner. "Chakra," Mother explained.

At the word "chakra", I grappled with a strange sense of deja vu—like when I had seen the heads on the mountain. Every day now, I saw the heads, and the deja vu had vanished eventually, replaced with my new memories of it.

Again, I tried to "pull the heat together", but I felt zero difference. I decided to sit down, since it wasn't working, and my legs had gotten tired. I could figure out the... Magic? Superpower? some other time.

So, the second discovery happened that afternoon: my mother had some sort of power, and she thought that I also could use it. I knew nothing about it, other than the fact that it was called "chakra" and produced heat. It seemed like in the future, I would continue being taught this skill, along with more normal things, such as words from books my father read to me and learning to use chopsticks. My clumsy hands still dropped the chopsticks more times than I could count.

I caught myself trying to use the "chakra" a few more times, but each time nothing happened. So, I reminded myself again to not expect anything.

Waking up from nightmares, I was as cold as usual.

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.

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One weekend, my parents were both in the smithy. A map sat on the living room table, unattended.

My eyes scanned across its surface. Its focus was one large landmass, which crept towards the edges of the map. It might've been part of a continent. Markings of several symbols covered the map, along with scribbled notes I couldn't read. To the west, what looked like many smaller countries were visible. To the east, a body of water was dotted with archipelagos.

Arrows ran from the direction of a country in the top right towards the country in the middle, with X's marking several locations along the border. Battle locations?

It was a shame to not understand the details of the map. I committed those bright red lines to memory, placed them in the back of my mind somewhere in between the dusty spaces I had only recently begun to revisit.

Someday I might get around to putting the pieces back together.

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.

.

I'm lost, I had to admit to myself. Resigned, I sat down in the dirt under a bare tree next to me.

The way I had ended up alone outside, hands on my neck and shivering, was a mystery to even me. My memories of the morning were missing, like loose page slipping out of an old book.

I had woken up in a haze. I went through the motions of our family's morning routine with weightless arms, getting dressed with my mother's help, and feeling my hair be pulled into tight braids on either side of my scalp. Then, blinking and finding myself in front of our table, I ate soft banana slices and couldn't understand any of my father's voice in the background.

I remembered seeing a cracked open door, too, that wasn't supposed to be open. But there it was in the back of our home. I saw pale green through the door to outside and wondered what the fish looked like that day.

Now I was stuck outside. No coat, no scarf, no outdoor shoes.

There was an unfamiliar road on my right, connected to the dirt one I was on currently. A stream flowed in front of me, holding no fish, only overgrown grass. Otherwise, it was only broken-down structures and a few telephone poles surrounding me.

People walked past on the road to my right. They glanced at me, but none stopped or said anything, shooting a mixture of uncertain and stern looks in my direction. I watched them swim by in their own currents, shadowy to me, catching only quick glimpses. I was vaguely curious about whether my parents were looking for me. It could have been hours or minutes since I had left, and I wouldn't have known for sure. It might be dangerous in the area, too, but I just closed my eyes. Arms around my legs, I waited for someone to show up.

Eventually I heard footsteps growing louder. One heavy set, one light and unsure. I looked up from my arms slowly. A dark-eyed, dark-haired man was approaching me. He had frown lines carved into his forehead and tense shoulders, and both of his hands were full of plastic grocery bags. Following behind him was a boy roughly my age who looked like the man, even with his young features and uncertain walk. I had to tilt my head far, far back to make eye contact with the man.

"Kid. Where are your parents?" the man snapped, frowning down at me. The kid, despite looking too young to know how to fully speak, managed to radiate the same kind of disapproval as the man.

I didn't respond. Don't talk to strangers, echoed in my head. Not an old memory—one from only weeks ago, maybe.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him rolling his eyes. "My name is Uchiha Chikao, this is my son Uchiha Jun. I'm a police officer." he recited, sounding bored.

I looked up but didn't say anything again. "I think I know where your house is," he continued anyway. "Do your parents run the Kan workshop? I go there, occasionally. Ninja supplies."

Well, okay. Although—"ninja"?

"Kan," I said, agreeing to the best of my ability. "Kan home."

The kid was still staring at me, but when I looked in his direction, he turned away huffily.

"Alright, let's go."

He didn't try to grab me or pull me anywhere, which made me relax slightly. He only turned around and started walking at a slow pace. His son—"Jun", apparently—quickly caught up and walked by his side, but I had to jog a bit. There was a short blade strapped to his back, which I watched while following him. To keep myself busy, I tried to look at the handle and evaluate its quality, based on my parents' teachings.

Eventually, we reached familiar-looking streets. Instead of going through the store up front, I led him to the side entrance. He motioned in front of him at the door, so I stepped up enough to be visible.

"I'm off duty right now, so you're lucky I even stopped to help, and remembered your store," he told me.

He knocked loudly on the door, twice.

Father pulled open the door with a look of confusion, but as soon as he saw me, he exhaled quickly. "Miyori!" he shouted into the house. It only took a few seconds for Mother to appear as well. When her eyes landed on me, she lost the tension in her brow.

The man explained the situation briefly to my parents, then bowed to my parents slightly. They bowed back, thanking him profusely, and he left, son in tow.

Father wrapped me in a warm hug as I stepped towards him. "Lil' turtle, you worried us so much," he said, then chuckled at his own nickname for me and patted me on the head.

Mother, however, was glacial.

Her tone was cold, and her eyes had immediately set in a disapproving glare. I was set down on a cushion on the floor and the lecture began.

I nodded a lot and didn't use any of the few words I knew. She would stop eventually.

I chanced a glance through the entrance, wondering if I would see the man and his son walking away, I did—his son looked back in my direction, too, although when we made eye contact, he scowled. Then, his father pulled him onto his back, and jumped directly onto our neighbors' roof.

Mother tore into me for hours. And, from then on, she kept a much closer eye on me.

"She isn't even upset!" I heard her hiss to Father once.

Seeing the man's weapons, and his jump to a roof had been eye-opening. "Ninja," he had said earlier.

A question kept building in my mind. A decision: something I hadn't done for what felt like a very long time. Even if I never accomplished nothing else, I would be fine. Except for this one thing. I felt a sudden urge, a need, to understand. What am I doing?

Why am I the way I am? What happened to me, what is important enough to tell me I'm not normal?

These "ninja" could do impossible things. They used magic, like jumping up high and "chakra". Could they help with strange memories? If there were any answers to be found about myself, then—did ninja know them?

I was still shivering in the open doorway. My parents were engrossed in an intense discussion. I looked down at my hands. I called up the "heat" in them. Then, they were warm. They shook less.

I had to become a ninja. I needed their tools. I needed to understand.