"Same as the first but a whole lot louder and a whole lot worse"

First came the loud and intense ringing in my ears, then the pounding in my head. Once those finally subsided enough for me to think clearly and open my eyes, I found myself curled up in the fetal position on the gravel walkway, clouds of dust floating in the air, air raid sirens ringing in the distance.

What happened? An airstrike?

This shouldn't have happened here. We're at least a hundred miles from the front line. Technically this base is in a neutral country and owned by said neutral country, even though it's mostly occupied by American forces. What the fuck is an air raid happening here for?

As soon as I roll over onto myself and attempt to get up is when I feel it, an intense pain shooting up from my stomach. God, this has to be the most painful thing I've ever felt in my life. Even worse than the compound fracture I got in my leg three years ago.

Looking down, I see a shit ton of blood dropping down in clumps from a wound in my stomach.

Fuck, I didn't know I had so much blood in me. How am I still awake?

Seconds after my brain connects the dots of what I'm looking at, a blinding pain shoots up my spine and my forehead crash down onto the ground.

The pain doesn't stop though. If anything, it increases and I can't stop myself from letting out a blood curdling scream.

Whether it's because the air raid is finally over or someone heard my scream. I start to hear people's voices nearby. I sure freaking hope that someone comes to me soon, I can't even think about moving right now with the pain in my body.

"CAP!" I hear someone yell out in the distance. "Cap, you okay?!"

Are they talking to me? I wonder. Because it should be very obvious that I am not okay. Seconds later I feel myself turned over and onto my back.

"Hey Cap! Open your eyes!" Shit, that's the last thing I want to do right now, everything hurts too much. I slowly open my eyes and try to focus on the face inches away from mine.

Oh Shit, that's Ekels, one of the Staff Sergeants I have under me. Well, hopefully he can save my life now.

It's as I'm watching him yell to the people around him that my hearing goes in and out. Then I begin to see black encroaching on the edge of my vision. This isn't good, its a sign of losing too much blood right?

I manage to reach my arms up to my face to try and rub my eyes. Get the black dots to disappear. It's not really successful.

"Woah, Collins!" I hear another guy call out. "Don't try to move too much. You're really hurt right now." That voice sounds very nervous to me, words shaking like the person doesn't really know what they're supposed to say, I don't really blame them there.

I squint my eyes to see who it is. Leaning across me on the opposite side of Ekels is Lawrence, the brand new Lieutenant that joined us just last week. To say he looks out of it would be an understatement. He looks like he's barely hanging on and about to freak out.

I can't blame him. He's brand new here. Was only called to active duty a month ago and is fresh out of ROTC. He hasn't even been to tech school yet. Shit, I can't die in front of this kid. He'll never recover from it.

I try to sit up only to feel another shot of pain race through me and I'm pushed back to the ground. Someone must be placing gauze to my nasty wound, for I feel even more spikes of pain traveling through me.

I slowly come to the realization that I must be dying. Funny isn't it? I've survived firefights where bullets were landing inches from my head, but taking a simple walk from the gym to the base bar and I get hit in an airstrike that should have never happened. Now I have a giant hole in my chest and I can feel myself slowly dying.

This sucks. I only turned twenty eight two months ago. I don't have any kids carrying on my legacy. Freak, I'm not even married yet.

I try to open my eyes again and see Ekels's face. He looks worried, concentrated. I don't have the strength to tell him it's useless anymore.

My last thought is that I should have called my mom last night.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

I glare grumpily down at the shogi board as I wait for my brother to come back to finish this game.

When our father left for a new mission last week, Shikaku finally thought it was time for him to teach four year old me, his younger brother, how to play Shogi. And while I do usually love playing board games, the game that never made any sense to me and that I hate the most is Chess, and Shogi is just too similar to Chess in my personal opinion.

I had tried, like any good Nara when someone wants you to do something, to avoid learning this, and consequently my brother, for the past week. But apparently Shogi is the one thing Nara's aren't supposed to avoid.

I'm not really sure I believe Shikaku on that, and if it's true then I guess I'll be the one Nara this rule doesn't apply to.

That doesn't change the fact that eventually, Shikaku found and caught me. A four year old can only hide and evade people twice their age for so long, amateur ninja skills or no. Now I'm currently tied to a kitchen chair, with a Shogi board on the table in front of me. At least Shikaku left my arms free, but that's probably just so I could move the Shogi pieces.

I sigh loudly and cross my arms as I wait for Shikaku to come back so I can just purposely lose again and he can give up and let me go. Speaking of which, Shikaku left to answer the knock on the door a while ago. What's taking him so long? Don't tell me he forgot about me, now.

As I am trying to shimmy out of this contraption that Shikaku has me tied up in, I remember just how I got into this situation, not the 'tied up in a chair as my brother teaches me Shogi because he needs someone to play Shogi against' situation. But the 'I've been reborn in the Naruto world after a violent death in my past life' situation.

To be honest with you, it probably took me longer than it should have to figure it out that I was in Konoha of all places.. With whatever weird mashup of technology that exists in the Naruto world, I thought I was simply living in an old house out in some small scale suburban town in Japan. Back then I was more mad that I was born in a Japanese speaking family than I was anything else.

It seems my years of learning to speak and read Korean were only useful for the one year of my life that I was stationed in Korea. Seriously though, I'm going to have to learn another alphabet. One which is ten times more complicated than the Hangul and the Roman alphabet. That's just another thing I'm going to put off doing for as long as possible.

It wasn't until Shikaku had taken me out to the market one weekend and I saw many people wearing the Konoha leaf headbands that I made the connection (And even then for a couple hours that day I thought we had walked through some weird pop-up anime convention.)

I guess I'm lucky that when I was a kid my little brother and I would watch the Naruto anime when it was on TV, and the fact one college night after I finished my last final for the semester I decided to finish watching the Naruto series. If it wasn't for that I'd probably be screwed now, even though I'm currently in a period that was lightly touched upon in the series. I guess I'm lucky that I know future events, that certainly would have been good in my Last Life.

So yeah, I have no idea how or why I ended up reincarnated here. And to be honest, I don't want to know why, nor do I want to be one of those characters who decide to "Save everybody" Because if life taught me anything, that's impossible. And to try that will only lead to you seriously being burnt out in life. And I can't be the only person this has happened to. I'm nowhere near important enough for me to be the only person to have been reincarnated. You can leave the 'saving the world' crap to them.

For now though, I'm probably going to live this life the same as my last one. Go down whatever paths I find the most interesting, and eventually have a gaggle of kids large enough to make up a basketball team.

Once I'm finally free of the trap Shikaku put me in, I make it my mission to find him and interrupt his nap (because the only reason he'd leave me tied up this long is that he forgot about me and decided to take a nap). And once I find him, he will be very sorry he left me here.

As I turn down the hallway leading to the entrance of our house and suddenly feel like I am in my iLast Life/i and twelve years old again. Walking inside from playing with my dog in the backyard to find my mom talking to two army officers in their service dress. Although this time instead of my mother it's Shikaku, and instead of army officers it's two shinobi. They're bringing the same news we were given back then though, our father's dead. (Although I'd later find out that instead of dying in a freak training accident miles away from our house, my father in this life was killed by a knife to the throat courtesy of a Kumo spy as he slept in his tent.)

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Standing before our father's grave next to my brother, I know I should feel something, sad, grieving, mad? But the truth is that I just don't feel any of those.

In the four short years I've been alive in this world, I can't say that I've developed any sort of parent-child relationship with the man. It's not even like one could say it's because the guy was fighting in a war this whole time. For even when he was at home he would actively ignore me and push me off to other people to deal with.

Apparently it had something to do with the fact that I 'looked like my mother' or what the other women in the Nara clan would say. I wouldn't know, she died around the time I was born. Hell, the man probably thought I caused her death. Even if her death happened a couple months after I was born, it wouldn't be the craziest thing I've heard.

All in all it just resulted in him, nine times out of ten, sending me off to do something else when he was trying to do something with Shikaku. Or saying he "was too busy" when I asked if we could do something. If it wasn't for Shikaku I'd probably think that the neighbors next door were my parents. They were the ones who checked in on us when our dad was away (which was pretty often) and watched me during the day when Shikaku was at the Academy.

It's not like I feel bad about it though. To be honest, in my Last Life I felt like I had the greatest dad in -the whole- any world. Even if he went on much longer deployments than this dad did for missions, and he died when I was only twelve, there would be no one who could replace him, no one else who I could think of as my father. So perhaps it works out to my benefit that this guy died when I am only four years old in this life. I would have the excuse later on to say I had no memories or feelings for the man.

Although, looking at my brother Shikaku, I can't help but feel bad. Hell, at least I was twelve when I lost my dad in my last life. He's only nine.

Only nine and lost both parents. At least when I died in my Last Life my mother was still alive. It's not often that I think about her, it's not like I have anyone to compare her to here, but I can't help but wonder what she's going through now. To lose your husband in a freak training accident and your oldest child in an airstrike, both of which happened in what were supposed to be safe countries. I can only hope my younger brother is helping her out.

I guess in this case I'm the little brother, and I'm going to need to be the one to help someone get through this. It's weird how situations copy themselves like that.

First things first, it's been a long day and judging by Shikaku's body language and facial expression, we need to get away from here and go home.

"Kaku-nii," I say as I pull on his hand and grab his attention. "My feet hurt, can we go home now?" At least that is one thing I am feeling today. As is what happens when you're family of the person who died in the funeral, your day is looong. And even though I was born into a slightly stronger shinobi body, I am still only four years old. Four year olds tire easily.

That's probably the one good thing about having to relive your childhood again. At least in my last life, for some reason I always felt like I had to be 'the good kid' and act more mature than what my age actually called for. In this life… forget that… if I have to be four years old again you bet I'm going to take advantage of it.

And hey, I'm not doing anything too bad. This is the first time I've complained about anything today. Most four year olds would be crying from boredom, and not the crying you would expect at a funeral.

"Kotaro," Shikaku says as he looks down at me. And in those eyes I could tell that he is even more tired than I am. Which is not surprising at all. I don't think he's slept in the past two days, which is probably unheard of for a Nara. "Let's go home," he says as he turns around, as he pulls my hand with his, I follow along.

Xx?xXx?xXx?xX

Looking down at the paper placed in front of me, I sigh. It's been about a month since the funeral, and just looking at Shikaku every day I could tell he is not taking it well. But could you blame him, he's a nine year old kid? Granted I am only four, and if I wasn't previously a twenty-eight year old military Captain in my previous life I probably would feel the same way.

It's weird really. Now that both of our parents are dead, the other adults in the Nara clan have been treating us… differently.

For example, the aunts who usually watch me during the day have now taken an active hand in teaching and raising me. As opposed to before, when it was quite literally only babysitting me so I didn't accidentally kill myself.

"Kotaro," our next door neighbor, Kiyoko-nee-san, who is watching after me today, scolds me as she forces me back into the seat in front of her coffee table and puts a small paint brush in my hand. "Once you finish writing these letters you can go back to playing."

This freaking sucks. And I can think of a million better things to be doing with my time right now instead of learning how to write letters. Even if it's an alphabet that will be very useful in this world. Really, these people should be lucky I can speak Japanese this well at this point.

Learning languages has never… and will never… be my strong suit. No, in my Last Life I was an engineer. A very smart and very good engineer. So were both of my parents. Instead of my mom teaching me how to read and write at home, she taught me math. And I had already known how to do multiplication and division by the time I started first grade.

But learning languages in my Last Life? It was only because of the four years of Spanish class I had to take I know a handful of Spanish words. And my old Tae Kwon Do master forced me to learn Korean when he saw how much I enjoyed Tae Kwon Do, but learning that was greatly helped by the fact that I wanted to be stationed in Korea one day. Even though I realized once there that most adults spoke English fluently enough, my efforts were wasted.

But back to the paper in front of me… I guess the only way I'll get out of this is by actually doing the work. Although if I'm stubborn and wait long enough for Shikaku to get back, I'll be let go. But to be honest, I've done that the last two days, and it seems I have depleted my fuel meter for the time I can go between Nara-powered naps.

So, stubbornly and maintaining the frown on my face, I begin to trace the characters drawn out on the page.

I tsk as I hold my hand grips the paint brush tighter. This has to be the worst writing tool ever invented. Seriously, how did people write with these for so many centuries?

In my Last Life, by the time I was in college, I had started to use solely pens, ballpoint pens, not fountain pens. If I had to use a pencil it would be a mechanical one, I hated the feeling of wooden pencils in my hand. But I never remember using anything like a paint, or is it and ink, brush. Maybe to actually paint a picture in some elementary school art project. But after that? Never remember using it for something like writing. I was never one to get into fancy calligraphy.

It seems by the time I finished all this internal ruminating that I had finished tracing the lines on the paper. I look up at Kiyoko-nee-san. "I'm done, can I go now?"

She only ignores my question and smiles back at me. "Great job, Kotaro. Now can you tell me what that says?" So it seems like this is actually some type of writing lesson, sigh.

I look down at the paper. The three symbols written on it honestly have no meaning to me whatsoever. That's the thing about the Japanese language. At least in English and Korean, the same basic sounds are correlated to a specific symbol, one specific symbol, and those symbols are combined to form syllables and words. In Japanese however, each sound can be written as a number of different symbols, without even adding Kanji into the mix.

"No," I answer looking back up and to seem at least somewhat interested in this lesson, I ask. "What's it say?"

"It says your name," she explains, pointing down at the different characters. "Ko-ta-ro."

Oh, that makes sense. The first word kids often learn how to write and spell is their name. I should have guessed that.

"Now, how about you do this one!" Kiyoko says with a smile on her face as she puts another paper down fast enough I didn't have time to attempt to ask if I could leave.

I look down at it. It's two characters, neither of which were on the last one, which was my name.

"What does this one say?" I ask before I begin. It would be helpful to know what I am writing before I start.

"I'll tell you after you finish it," she says. And isn't that just mean? Wait to tell me something I want to hear until I do what she wants.

I let out a long sigh, before doing as she says. Once finished, I ask if she'll tell me what it says. She only smiles and tells me once I write it freehandedly on another piece of paper is when she will let me know.

"Why do I need to learn this stuff so quickly anyway?" I ask, picking at a some of the chipped wood on the dry end of the brush.

"Because, you're going to be starting at the Academy next month," Kiyoko says. "It's expected that you know basic reading and writing before you enter."

And that is news to me. Not the needing to know how to read and write going into the Academy. That's kind of expected. But the fact that I'm going to be attending the Academy so soon. Shikaku started at the Academy when he was seven (of course there are kids like Kakashi and Itachi who start earlier, but I'm sure their parents had to pull a lot of strings to allow it). I'll be just turning five next month.

"Honestly," Kiyoko continues to prattle on. "If I had known your father wasn't teaching you any of this, I would have started sooner."

That's another thing, when it comes to the basics like reading and writing and math, kids are expected to know it before they start at the Academy (of course, my father only did the bare minimum of finding childcare for me during the day. Often it was someone different every day, each person didn't watch me nearly often enough to begin teaching me). This all makes sense when they don't start until they are seven years old. If they are starting kids at five, they must be including some type of additional lessons in their curriculum, right?

You know something? I'm pretty sure the last time I was four years old I knew all my letters. No, I know that I knew all my letters back then. Now also, the only word I knew how to spell was my name. But I did know all my other letters. So… maybe Kiyoko has a point. I should probably know a majority of these letters and how to read before I start at the Academy.

The only bad thing about this realization is that I'm actually going to have to iwork/i to learn how to read. Why does Japanese have to be so hard? I'm tired just thinking about it.