Shifting Sands Chapter 1


Her name translated to 'vegetable mountain'. The first bit of indignation Hina suffered in this new life of hers was the kind of irony she would find funny if it wasn't related to her previous death. That's right she died choking on a vegetable whilst hastily slurping down ramen late for work. The world had to be playing one massive joke her, she thought with a growing incredulity. Of course this revelation came after her first 3 months of living with her new family, in a newborn babes form. And the memory of her death stood out to her, leaving her with only vague impressions of the previous events in her life. Still she knew quite a bit about the human anatomy, and her thoughts could play chemical formulas on repeat with quite a bit of ease. Had she been a steam-girl in her previous life?

Those thoughts were all she had as a baby, only occasionally overwritten by the biological instincts of her tiny body. Every scent, smell, and sight felt intense in this form, and she cried at the smallest of things. If she felt hungry, she cried. If she felt bored, she cried. If she couldn't feel anyone around, she cried. It wasn't her choice really. She was certain her brain didn't have the necessary number of neurons to control motor functions and accommodate for longer periods of complex thought, so sometimes she thought in very simple, childish and abstract terms.

Three years passed rather quickly in this mind-fog. Slowly pieces of her life came to her. She had been a successful biochemist, a renowned scientist in her field of genetics, specially targeted to curing auto-immune disorders. She had been someone, with people she should have remembered enough to miss. But the fact was she didn't remember them. A feeling of loss hit her every time her thoughts spared that way, and it was only alleviated by the presence of her current family, one she cherished.

Hina turned to her brother who entered her room with steaming hot buns.

"Nii!" she said excitedly.

Taichi was her older brother by three years, but the six year old felt less like an older sibling than he did her baby brother. Her brother had inherited her father's side of the genes, with a large stature, kind brown eyes and wavy brown hair. Hina adored him still, and he adored her, throwing her into the air with every given opportunity, and making her small flower crowns. He picked her up like he enjoyed doing, being rather tall and chubby for a boy his age. He was also naturally very strong.

"Hi-chan you're out of your crib," he said, looking around to see how she may have come out.

Hina sent him an innocent little look. She figured where-ever she was, she must have had superpowers or something. From the moment she was born there was something warm inside of her, something she could move around her body at will. It had been a small flame at first, but the energy had grown, buzzing at the edge of her skin in recent months. Whatever it was felt like it would burst unless she expended it. And so she did, by pushing it into her arms to cling to surfaces easily, which allowed her to climb out of her crib.

"Up?" Hina asked.

She expected to be thrown at least once a day. There wasn't much in the way of entertainment in her body, and Taichi always provided. So he threw her a few times, laughing as he humoured her demands. She had the cutest older brother hands down.

"You having fun Hi-chan?!"

"Yes, yes!" she squealed in delight.

Apparently having the memories of an adult did not negate the childish instincts of her body. She blurted out things, didn't have the capacity to plan as calmly as she once did, and altogether felt more impulsive in her current state. So the idea that Taichi could very easily drop her didn't cross her mind at all.

Like always the fun was stopped by her mother. Brilliant green filled her vision, as her mother picked her up from Taichi's hands. Hina always fixated on her mother's hair and eyes, having been told by many people that she had the same shade, if not a little more vibrant. Her mother was a paranoid woman, one who barely let her out of her sights, dropping on her like one wrong step and Hina would die. She didn't fault the woman, after all she died choking on a vegetable before. If such a mundane thing could kill her, who knows how she would die here.

"Taichi, you know how I feel about you throwing Hina," she chided, straightening out Hina's now messy hair.

"Sorry kaasan," he said, looking down.

"Kaasan~" she whined, giving her mother the biggest teary eye she could muster.

"No young lady, you're going to sit here until lunch. Here play with this ok."

Hina was a little insulted that her mother had given her a broccoli chew toy like she was a dog. It didn't help she had a bad habit of chewing on things, and a toy was a better habit than biting her own arms. Still outside of biting something out of sheer boredom, she wanted out of this prison. As she watched her mother shoo her brother out of her room, she felt indignantly bored. And in a fit of childish rebellion, she decided to use that energy to climb out again. This time she climbed higher than normal, scrambling out just before her mother could close the door.

"Oh Hina, I'll give you a—ahhhhh!"

Having not expected the scream or her mother to come back in again, Hina lost concentration and dropped from the wall. She gasped as she got a good look at the floor coming fast towards her face. Then a body crashed against hers and Hina gasped in shock to feel her mother's arms stretched around her. They were both sprawled on the ground, and as Hina scrambled to her feet, she saw the carpet burn on her mother's arms. Guilt overtook her, and she hugged her mother crying, overtaken by the surge of adrenaline.

"Oh Hina… how did you…"

"You're hurt," Hina said, hiccupping.

"It's just a little scratch Hi-chan. Come here. I got you, I got you. Hush."

Feeling incredibly immature at her actions wasn't helping the constant stream of tears. Hina was reminded of why it was so frustrating to be a child, and to feel things so deeply.

"Yuyu, what happened?" her father's voice called out.

Her father rushed into the room to see both his wife and child on the floor, one crying and the other hurt. Hina didn't even need to blink before he was kneeling down checking for injuries.

"We're fine Nori dear… but Hina was…" Yua began.

It then it came to her that her mother had found out about her secret. She was very much alarmed. She had read manga and comics before, enough to know that she could be in one of two scenarios. The ideal one was where she wasn't the only one with powers and it was widely accepted, or she was one of few which would mean they'd need to keep it secret. There was also the third option where she was delusional, and imagining all this up.

"She was climbing on the walls," her mother said, choking up at the mention of it.

That tone of voice wasn't reassuring. Hina hoped to god it wasn't like an X-Men situation where the world hated her or something.

"We can't tell a soul Nori! If- if they find out now— I can't lose her too!"

"We… we have to. Hina learnt to do the wall climb thing when she was twelve. Hina is just a toddler—" Nori began.

That confused her somewhat. Was there someone else out there named Hina? Was she maybe named after them? This whole situation was concerning to say the least.

"—That's exactly why we can't tell anyone. She may as well be dead if they find out."

"Kaasan," Hina said, sending an alarmed look at her parents.

"I-It's okay. Hi-chan, I'm going to need you to promise never to tell anyone you can do that. Never do it in front of others okay?" she said.

"Why? Is it bad?" she asked, hating that she didn't know the word dangerous in this language yet.

"It's not bad okay, but people can do a lot of bad things with it, and they might want to make you do it too," she said, rolling her fingers through Hina's hair.

Hina began wondering if her mother's paranoia was there for a reason. She nodded, figuring she would have to find out exactly what was going on. She knew very little about the world she was in, only briefly going to a nearby park, and sitting to colour downstairs in their family bakery. She suspected she was in Japan somewhere, but it certainly didn't feel like a time period she could remember. Maybe the late 1900's early 2000's. Which meant she travelled back in time when she died, or maybe this was an alternative universe somewhere.

"Yua, she could get hurt. I've heard stories about chakra opening early in children... some of them were paralysed forever," her father said.

Hina only caught half of that, but she was pretty sure it wasn't good. She couldn't stop the nervous way she bit her lips now. Seeing her expression both the adults stopped talking.

"Nori, let's discuss this after we put Hina to bed. She looks scared."

She was given a kiss and put back into her crib. They mumbled sweet words to get her to sleep again, and while Hina was exhausted from the crying, she closed her eyes and didn't sleep. Too many thoughts ran through her head.


Days past into weeks, and weeks into a month, and Hina had not touched her 'chakra', which she suspected wasn't the Indian concept she was very familiar with. She focused her efforts into learning how to speak and read to stave off boredom. When she wasn't reading she watched from her seat as her parents kneaded dough and baked bread. She loved the smell of freshly baked bread, so it wasn't unpleasant to sit down and study in silence while they worked in the little shop above their house. Many of the customers also came to pat her on the head and give her and her brother compliments for being cute.

All the while the energy inside of her seemed to tap at her skin, making her uneasily energetic and lethargic in tandem. She had been sick a few times in the past month, feeling her body heat up, flaring uncomfortably before receding for a while. Feeling unusually hot and jumpy today, she left her little table in the shop and moved outside to feel the cold wind. She sat by the corner of the bakery and began tapping her chalk on the ground outside with an unusually violent edge. She frowned as pieces of it cracked away, ruining her terribly done artwork of a stethoscope. Her tapping must have caught someone's attention, because Hina looked up to see an unfamiliar adult over her wearing particular clothing. Seriously who wore bandages around their leg as a statement piece? Normally, she would have made a sound of surprise and scurried on back to her parents, but today she nearly jumped out of her skin. She pushed away the adult with a force that sent them backwards as she gasped away.

She realised a little late that she was shivering, her hands and legs felt like jelly, and the once warm energy inside of her was blazing hot. She staggered backwards to see the man recover with a surprised expression on his face. She was just outside of the bakery so she could go in and ask someone to carry her to bed. Somehow, she didn't realise how unwell she was because the moment she tried to walk, she doubled over and vomited her guts onto the ground.

"Kid, are you alright?"

She felt a hand on her forehead, and another holding her back upright.

"M'leave me alone," she grumbled.

"Where are your parents?"

"Bakery," she said.

Hina figured she was either going to get kidnapped or this man was just concerned. Thankfully he didn't pick her up and run away. He took her back to the bakery where she saw her mother and father look up in alarm at the man's entrance holding her.

"What did the little tyke do?" Nori asked, masking his nervousness with a laugh.

"She didn't do anything, but I do think she's sick… in a manner of speaking. I would like to talk to you about it," the man said.

Her mother looked at one of the customers and smiled politely in a way that said 'sorry we're busy and this is urgent, please leave'. The women took her sourdough and left rather quickly after taking a look at the man holding her. Hina frowned at him, now noticing a headband with a peculiar symbol she very much recalled. Naruto? Her initial thoughts were confusion, because a cosplayer had saved her, and then she realised that the word chakra had been thrown around quite seriously. Her thoughts after that were exceptionally blank from the sheer outrageousness of the conclusion she came to.

"Let's take this upstairs," her father said, smile dropping.

Hina noticed the way the man very clearly didn't hand her back to her parents despite her father coming closer with the intention of taking her back. If she didn't feel so clammy and sick, she may have poked a finger into this man's nose for the audacity of thinking he could keep her from her parents. But all she could do was rest her sweating forehead against his cooler skin was any kind of reprieve. Once they were upstairs, the unknown man sat down, still holding her.

"Your daughter has opened her chakra pathways," he said bluntly.

"She has… yes," Yua said, giving her a nervous look.

"And you didn't think to take it up with an Uchiha patrol or any nearby Shinobi you could flag down?" the man asked, a hard edge to his voice.

"She was—she is fine. This is just a fever," her father said, frowning.

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt since you are civilians, and this is an unusual case. I will assume you didn't know the consequences of letting her continue like this. If she continues as, is she will die."

Hina recoiled because this whole scenario was going from 0 to a 100 right now. She looked up at the Shinobi and then at her parents who looked two shades paler.

"I'm going to die?" she repeated in disbelief.

The Shinobi grimaced and gave her a somewhat panicked look. "No, no you're not. We can fix you okay," he said in a somewhat gentler voice, although it sounded unnatural coming from him.

"What exactly is the issue?" Yua asked, unwilling to let the man hold her any longer.

She held out her hands and the Shinobi sighed as he gave Hina back to her mother. He stood up and patted down his pants.

"Chakra has two parts, internal and external, spiritual, and physical. Your daughter's spiritual chakra is through the roof, and her physical chakra while normal for her age is disproportionate in comparison. It's destroying her tenketsu system, overheating it. Leave it any longer and it'll become serious."

Hina felt her mother squeeze her in her arms. "What do we have to do?"

"My Clan specialises in Yin chakra. I'll see if one of my healers can do anything. And I do not take her there so fast lightly. Giving me your permission will give me a peace of mind before I take her," he said.

"But you would if we said no," Yua asked.

Hina grabbed her mother a little tighter. Even in her feverish haze she could hear the panic in Yua's voice. She turned to see the spikey haired Shinobi nod with a guilty look.

"Not if it weren't life or death. You must understand I cannot watch a Konoha citizen, let alone a child die if I can help it. Come with me to the Nara compound right now and we will get a treatment underway."

"And the treatment? We have little money to spare," Nori said, frowning.

"Money is not a concern. I am in fact Clan Head and can easily subsidise any treatment."

"If it'll save her life, we will do anything," Nori said.

Hina tried to keep the thoughts of the wild revelations at bay. She blinked to herself in her feverish haze.

Naruto… for real?

Before she could have an existential crisis over the entire situation she passed out.


Hina blinked awake to very traditional but well-maintained wooden Japanese walls, and to a fan that didn't creak. She felt hot and sweaty, but the unbearable heat from a few days ago was gone. Instead, she was met by the concerned look of her mother, pushing her sweaty hair stuck on her forehead away from her eyes.

"Kaasan," she mumbled, blearily.

"I'm here baby," she said softly.

"I'm also here! You're awake," Taichi cried. "You were asleep for 7 days and you were crying!"

"Huh?"

She could vaguely recall pretty bad pain all over, the kind one got with pins and needles but infinitely worse. She then remembered Naruto and grimaced. Had she gone insane with her fever?

"You were sick Hina. A Shinobi found you, and you're here for treatment."

"Sick?"

Yeah, she remembered the whole explanation about her chakra being off balance. Wasn't Shikamaru good at Yin release or something, she thought with a frown. Their entire clan if she recalled correctly was Yin energy-based. Hina figured either this was one terribly stupid dream, or she was in fact messed up because of her reincarnated status. Her body had yet to catch up to her mind, and her mind was being affected by her body. In a lot of ways, she was both simultaneously an adult and a child. If she had some kind of internal energy, it was no wonder it was thrown off balance.

"I can get better?" she asked hopefully.

She hadn't suffered babyhood to die when she was three again. So it was a relief when her mother smiled to hide her pain and nodded. They wouldn't lie to her about this, she concluded with uncertainty.

"Yup and you're going to play marbles with me again," Taichi said, smiling widely.

Hina chuckled. Of course, she would. After a bit more fretting on her mother's part and her brother discussing everything he had to suffer at their annoying cousin's house while she was asleep, Hina felt awake enough to shuffle out of bed. Her body still hurt, she was unusually hot and sweaty, and she terribly needed a bath, but she was alive. That was something at least.

"Where did kaasan go?" she asked.

"Went to talk to Hanami-san. She's a doctor," Taichi explained.

"Wanna spy?" Hina asked.

Taichi huffed, crossing his arms. "You always get me into trouble."

"Pleaaaaase~"

"…okay…"

And so she managed to convince her brother to sneak out of the room and down the hallway as Taichi pointed to the door they were through. Hina peaked through the corner to see the man who had picked her up earlier. He was dressed in a loose kimono here, spiky black hair tied in a bun, and his goatee a little bit tidied up. There was a woman with similar black hair sitting next to him with a cane on her lap and a large burn scar covering one-half of her face. On the opposite end were her parents who looked tired and more than a little like they needed a shower and a long nap too.

"—vitals are fine, however, this will happen again, and this time it will happen faster," the scarred woman said, the one Hina assumed was Nara Hanami.

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Nori asked.

The woman grimaced. "It took three Nara on circulation to keep her alive this last week. We cannot keep continuing this kind of service. It's unfeasible."

"Please, there must be something—" Yua begged.

The woman sighed before looking at Shikaku. "There is a possibility, but it means she'll need training. A long-term arrangement, but we cannot jump to conclusions. She may recover quickly; this is an undocumented circumstance."

Her parents didn't look pleased at all by that option. "But that means… why would a Clan invest so much into one child without return?"

Her mother's voice was bitter and resigned. Her father put a hand on her shoulder, and she sagged her face into her hands.

"My sister was a Shinobi. It did her no good," she admitted weakly.

Hina blinked in surprise. That explained a lot. Why her name was Hina, why her mother was so overprotective, and especially why she was so distraught when she saw her climb that wall. Yua never wanted her to be a Shinobi. Hina could understand why of course. She recalled enough of Naruto to understand very well what the job implied, and losing a family member to a dangerous career didn't paint it in a good light.

Shikaku sent her mother a sympathetic look. "A Shinobi's life is very dangerous, but so is any life. We do not know if tomorrow we will die in an accident outside of battle as much as the next person. We may get sick and fall ill like any civilian. There will always be risks to living, and your daughter is facing one right now. I cannot justify training a child in my Clan without promising Konoha a future Shinobi, but she will live this way."

"Do not play it down Nara-san," Yua hissed. "It is more than the mission being dangerous. You would sacrifice—"

Shikaku held up a hand and the atmosphere suddenly changed. Taichi yelped as he stumbled back and Hina shrank away slightly, surprised how even she was cowed by a glare not even directed at her.

"Please consider your next words very carefully Suzuki-san. Do not speak treason in front of a Clan Head so lightly," he warned.

Yua backed down, looking more frustrated than worried now. Hina gulped as the Clan head's attention went from her parents to her. She was caught.

"Come in Hina-chan. Sneaking around so young. You will make a fine Shinobi," he said.

Hina was admittedly embarrassed to be caught, but she stepped out and was surprised when he ruffled her hair, and whatever oppressive force he was projecting a moment ago was gone entirely. She looked at him and then her parents, and then at the woman.

"You saved me?" she asked.

"I did. For now," the woman said bluntly.

"Thanks then," Hina said, looking awkwardly at all the adults in the room whose attention was entirely on her now.

"Hina, why did you eavesdrop? You know that's bad manners," Yua said, pulling her into her lap.

Hina huffed. "I heard everything. You can't keep something as big as my future career away from me, or that I had an aunty!"

Yua winced and her father slapped her thighs lightly with a chastising look. "Hina, we will discuss all this with you later."

"She's quite articulate for her age…" Shikaku noted.

Then there was that tense silence again and Hina really wished she hadn't gotten out of bed at all. It seemed her parents really didn't want her to become a Shinobi, and it all seemed inevitable right now. For some reason, it didn't bother her as much as it should have. This… chakra as they called it, was hers. It was fascinating in a way that made her mind tumble through a million different possibilities. How was it tied to the human anatomy? Was the biology of humans here different than in her old world? Was this the Naruto timeline exactly as shown in the manga, and when exactly was she born in relation to other characters?

It was a lot.

"I can see Hina-chan has a lot to think about. Now that she is fine, you should leave her here for observation," Shikaku said.

"How long?" Nori asked.

"Indefinitely. We will see if her condition stabilises," Hanami said.

Hina should have realised the grim look on her mother's face was only the start of the strife her condition would cause.


A/N

Hello friends! Just to make it explicitly clear. This is a rewrite of my longest fanfiction, Snap Back to Reality. Instead of adding (Rewrite) to the end as is normal for authors do when they redo a story, I thought it would be better to give this story a whole new identity. Mostly because Snap Back and Shifting Sands are completely different in tone and direction. I guarantee you won't have the same experience reading one and the other. I'm not just making small grammatical corrections, but rather taking Hina in a completely different direction.

You may ask me why I didn't just start a new story with a new character then? My answer to that would be that I had quite a few regrets about how I wrote Snap Back and Hina specifically and now I want to do her justice. There was a lot of valid criticism leveled towards my writing that it was just misery porn, and I took the ROOT direction a little too hard. In the moment I was quite defensive of my work, since I put my whole heart and soul into writing it, but after distancing myself from it emotionally, I was able to see your points. Initially the story had always been about the brutalities of war, and the human struggle to overcome it, but it became a little too ROOT centric, losing some of the nuances of the earlier chapters, and I regret adding any romantic elements to the last section.

I just want to say, when I originally wrote Snap Back, war had been a kind of nebulous concept, something I learnt about in schools and that specifically stayed in the history books. It is easy to write about something this horrific when you haven't had to go through it. I recognise that this isn't the case for many of my readers now. I've looked at the demographics that AO3 and Fanfic have given me about where readers are from. I have people from Ukraine, Russia, Israel (no Palestinians so far), and a small minority of readers in the Middle East who all read my stories. To you my heart goes out. I am terribly sorry about how war and violence has impacted your lives. My story has nothing to do with any real-life conflicts, so take that as you will, but I do hope my message is and always will be that war is not to be glorified. Because I've been privileged enough to grow up in Australia, in a peaceful stable country, I'm only recently being educated about world events. So going forward, I will add a section at the start of each chapter that will give trigger warnings for those readers who wish to skip. This story in particular explores quite dark themes, so please, if it will impact your wellbeing negatively do not read.

I do hope you enjoy this new story. Please let me know your thoughts. I do understand the first few chapters are not going to be that different. I have changed the POV to third person though.