A/N at bottom

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Warnings: T for swearing and violence(?)

Anon replies:

Ellie: Yup, she'll be a troll when she needs to! Her blanking out though, is due to her young brain finally being put into to a more restful state after maintaining a seal-based genjutsu.

Thanks for all of the Reviews!

Chapter 10 Wishing for (Peace) Impossibilities

I flopped over gracelessly onto the sand and groaned, careful not to fall on my snake pal.

"Why kaa-chan, whyyyy." I whined, every inch of me sore like a ballet dancer decided to do the weird (but graceful) spin things on all of my nerve clusters. Elephants stand no chance against ballet dancers, I tell you.

Meanwhile, Orochimaru was just clapping joyfully on the sidelines, basking in his older sibling's suffering. That little shit.

I'll teach him to laugh at me when it's time for me to demonstrate to him how to throw a kunai.

It's the only thing I can throw...

First of all, shuriken are weird as heck. It's all in the wrist they say, all it needs is a little spin!

Um, no. They are pointy objects with eight curved edges that fit in the palm of a toddler's hand and used to stab and maim fellow organic beings. That's not even taking into account the hole in the center, what if some arrogant kid decided to show off by spinning a shuriken on their finger and accidently launched it?

Second are the senbon. Yes, I can understand the discreteness, the ninja-ness of using thin metal needles to kill your enemies. Just take Haku for instance, despite him demonstrating that the senbon can be non-lethal, his precision allowed him to place Zabuza into a fake state of death. Like, he also peppered the two males of team 7 with senbon and they were up and running a couple days later. That amount of pointy metal stuff inside a body is not natural.

The fact that I am incapable of throwing senbon also may or may not be due to my not being able to grip it properly, or due to the kami-damned flick of the wrist. For some reason the senbon always spin when I chuck it, like what a shuriken is supposed to do when anyone other than me throws it… It's pretty funny until I realize that no matter how I angle my throwing, the senbon always smacks the training dummy.

In the face.

At least it leaves a dent?

My accuracy with a kunai is decent though, but compared to prodigies like the Uchiha and etc., I'm but a bumbling fool that can only hit the target eight out of ten times. Which is very sucky apparently for a five year old kid who should've just started learning numbers and not have the first fifty or so elements of the periodic table memorized out of boredom.

(Hopefully tou-chan, wherever he is, is proud of me, cuz now that I count to ten to calm down via elements, I feel like a very pale and short (ha) Edward Elric.)

Footsteps sounded by my head and I resisted the urge to open my eyes. Kaa-chan was definitely coming to torment me with weapon practice again, I could just feel the muffled glee in her chakra.

"Stahp, me need water–" muffled gurgling clawed its way out from my thoroughly abused stomach, "–and food."

Loud guffawing laughter sounded by my ears and I felt myself being picked up by the back of my tunic. I could tell that Dōsukēru was getting the same treatment from Manda after uncoiling bonelessly from around my waist. Fair enough, she did her share in our spar (one-sided beat-down) against my mom and Manda. Even if she was careful to not use any venom in her bites, being accidentally bit by any snake is a good deterrent against trying to restrain a Kinme's arms.

Granted, most of my clan members are perfectly capable of slipping out of a hold after using chakra to alter our skeletal system or something, but the children who aren't allowed to use clan jutsus have a sneaky advantage lots of shinobi don't. However, if the clan was breached to the extent that even the children were needed to fight back, being constrained would probably be the least of our problems.

So, yeeaaaah, sparring with dulled weapons and fangs it was.

Life was pretty simple at the moment, and I never noticed how learning orientated our clan was. In the morning, I would do whatever is required (brush my teeth, wash my face, figure out what the ever-loving heck I'm supposed to do with my hair and so on) before proceeding down to breakfast at the mess hall.

Orochi is a picky little eater so we would need to head there early to claim some hard-boiled eggs before the rest of the sleep-deprived-coffee-deprived scientist zombies come stumbling down. Then the morning is a matter of learning in a stable, non-hostile environment where kaa-chan or Yasu obasan would pull favours or create some to get Hikaru and I some education while one of them may go on a mission. Lunch is whenever we agree on the urge to eat, and we'll head back to the mess hall where the chefs may or may not be concocting edible matter. For the sake of our sanities, I'll just assume they were.

The afternoon would then be filled with physical training, Orochi sometimes watching from the sidelines while learning how to read via the partner of whoever was pounding Dōsukēru and I into the ground. Sometimes it would be sparring (like today), sometimes it would be throwing practice, and sometimes random other stuff like strengthening exercises or speed runs.

There was something distinctly satisfying about still being able to outrun Hikaru despite his longer legs, even without chakra-enhancing all and sundry.

Dōsukēru wasn't able to out speed Kuroryuu though, a fact that the black serpent never let her forget with his overly-polite jabs at her speed.

I think she evens out all possible odds when she's allowed chakra though, her wall-crawling is the fastest in our group of kids and snakes.

After a clan supper, announcements are made by our leader and whoever wanted to show off something that they found relevant, then we all head back to our chambers to rest off our meals. I just end up meditating or trying out various chakra control exercises under the hawk-like glare of kaa-chan and Yasu obasan, I think they want to start me on chakra strings after I can rotate senbon without touching them.

Of course, those are the days where the clan wasn't on the road and was in the clan compound, underground in all the stone tunnels sealed within scrolls specifically packed by our leader and every individual member of the clan.

Right, there was also gag training before breakfast, when I didn't have stuff in my stomach other than some mouthfuls of water. Fun.

Swung onto kaa-chan's back and out of my mental wanderings, my grip remained tight on my twin daggers. Perhaps my hands were clenched so tight that by the time the one hour of hell was over, I couldn't open them anymore? That would be the logical assumption as the same occurrence has happened daily for the past couple weeks. At least, they were held in my hands until I channeled what I hoped to be a semi-decent amount of chakra needed to activate the tattoo of a snake spread across the tops of my palms. The smoke that was released rather blatantly told me that I still plugged in too much chakra.

Oh well, with nearly none of my physical yang chakra left, my yin was overbalanced anyways. Perks of being a soul that's living a second time I suppose, I get a brain working in overdrive (coughveryveryscatterbrainedcough) as soon as my yin chakra is a certain threshold above that of my yang chakra. Thankfully the meditation exercises prescribed to me by our clan's resident chakra master, aka one of our paranoid/mad medic-nins helped me expand my yin chakra in a way that could actually help. As in, meditate and try to gradually modify my mind-scape. If not to help, well, plugging in too much chakra into seals like storage seals just result in chakra smoke, so why the hell not?

Originally my mind-scape was just a tiny grove of midget trees surrounding an even smaller, still-water pond, an abnormally large pile of water-proof papers filling up the pond in place of silt and fish or other aquatic life. Meditation somehow allowed me to grow the trees so now instead of saplings up to my waist, they became young trees that can just barely clear my head. Not much considering I wasn't even a meter tall, but progress is always made of small steps and a lot of (perhaps) metaphorical fertilizer.

The pages upon pages of paper in the pond, however, I'm not gonna touch with a ten-meter pole, or at least until the water stops trying to drag me under everytime I try to approach. If my mindscape is the thing that kills me a second time, then I'll be spending the entirety of my third life in embarrassment.

I shook thoughts of meditation out of my mind, it can be un-ignored later when I actually do need to do so. Which is not now.

Hands finally empty, I twitched my stiff fingers and mused how handy it was that the tenketsu at the base of my four fingers can be linked up to power this seal. I'll never understand seals, but tenketsu are effing amazing.

True, seals can alter reality (hello storage seals, I'm doing fine, why didja ask?) but the tenketsu contained within all sentient creatures can pretty much take the icing on the cake. Last life, there were always these occasional reports of "oh, this dude can bend a spoon with his brain" or "massages are good for your chi/qi" whatever, but they were all based on superstitions and hearsay, if that. Now, humans are born with the capability of defying physics by channeling (and isn't that an interesting word?) chakra into feet and walking up walls.

It's granted that without a stabilized, working chakra network all of that isn't possible, but even hiring a genin team in a village, or asking your adult ninja neighbor can ensure that a civilian can experience what is considered "flying" or "moving at the speed of demons" or of the like.

Basically everything is possible with seals and chakra, but to use chakra one has to have developed and trained tenketsu.

Guessing from some fragments of memory, I suppose the leaf exercise done by ninjas in academies and such are all to strengthen the chakra pathways and to, in a rather elementary way, teach the students how to channel chakra into the outside world where it would be then swayed to try to return to nature. Then the tree-walking exercise is just the next step, where the genin are to learn how to judge the amount of chakra required for any and each step. Water-walking would be the final mandatory (and disguised) test, where the children are to grasp the connections between just sticking oneself onto a surface with passive circulation of chakra outside of tenketsu against the needed chakra that is to spread out via feet to, for better lack of a word, "bind" the water under one's feet so as to stay standing.

All very basic chakra manipulation outside the body, and completely unlike the chakra one uses to enhance muscles (can't have muscles sticking together, or can we?).

After some very painful trial and error (and a curious, bright-eyed Orochi watching me), I was able to channel enough chakra across the top of my knuckles to "monkey-bar" my way across the ceiling. At least, I would've if Yasu obasan hadn't come in at the right time for my feet to dangle right in front of her face.

Apparently attaching weights to the ceiling when we bloody lived underground was not a wise idea. Who knew?

(Not me, according to my somewhat incensed aunt.)

"Now let's get you twerps off to supper."

With a startled squeak, Orochi was picked up by the collar of his pale violet yukata and gently tossed over kaa-chan's other shoulder. She also adjusted her grip on me so that instead of hanging like a very pale kitten, I was tucked under her arm.

Even after an hour of pound-Suijami-into-the-ground…

And thus, it is demonstrated how broken the ability to use chakra was.

I basically kept my head down the entire journey from the underground, sand covered training room all the way to the equally underground mess hall. We passed a couple people along the way, and none of them seemed really surprised at seeing kaa-chan lugging around her two kids while Manda trailed after with two other snakes resting on him.

In fact, a couple of my fellow clansmen (whether by blood or by marriage, because I'm quite sure bronze skin and white-blond hair isn't naturally native to my clan) ended up walking with us. It was time for clan supper after all, and no one is allowed to be absent unless there's a decent excuse.

The mood was more or less rather light-hearted as our group merged with another headed in the same direction, and once we arrived at the largest "room" in our compound, the crowd included over twenty people of various ages.

"Why's everyone so sad looking?" Someone needs to tell Orochi that whispering does not work when the person you're whispering to is farther than the person that shouldn't be hearing whatever needs to be whispered.

That said, I looked up at his prompting, away from my self-appointed chore of counting feet to determine the size of our supper-seeking mob, and was silently frozen by the mournful mood present.

Shit.

Orochi's too young for this.

Our crowd thinned as everyone went to find a spot to sit at one of the dozen semi-circle tables (four quarters of three concentric circles, each individual table separated from its neighbors by two meters of walking space) surrounding a large table turned central pedestal. What used to be a room large enough for a clan of over a hundred members to simultaneously free-for-all buffet suddenly seeming rather claustrophobic.

Claustrophobia is not fun when you ended your previous life in a metal box that fell from great heights, crushing and puncturing metal –

Stop. Full stop. That was over six years ago and –

Whoever the hell can get over their own death is an admirable person that is not me.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Actually, just breathe.

Either kaa-chan noticed my pause in breathing, or she just wanted to reassure her midgets, but she gave both of us a comforting squeeze before following into the room. Generally, people are frantic to get into one of the rows closer to the center, so that they could get to the food as soon as the announcements are over, or so that they wouldn't have to step around as many chairs.

Today, the rows furthest away from the source of food was occupied before the centered four tables even had a single person.

I've witnessed this happen exactly four times, the first was shortly after the ambush that ended with tou-chan dead. The second one being taken place when an entire patrol of Kinme's and all but one of their partners returning lifeless. The third, somehow just as painful as the others, occurred when one of the enfants (she was but a baby…) managed to crawl in the summons realm before she had enough chakra, the ceremony to summon her over to the elemental nations claiming all of her chakra, and when that wasn't enough, her too-young life.

The fourth was also for a mission (bounty-hunting the adults had whispered) that had gone dreadfully wrong. The clan had only found out that the assassination team was obliterated when one of the messenger summons had appeared in the compound and announced the dimming of three names on the summoning contract, accompanied by three glass oblong caskets.

Whenever the podium is situated in the center of the mess hall, it no longer can be considered a place to feast, but a private chamber of our clan (now barely a hundred strong) to mourn the dead.

(The Shinobi War had already passed, why did they need to die?)

Considering our clan and our annoying sense of logic (and practicality), there are always the exact number of chairs as there are clan members. However, when someone new arrives, they are given one by the one that invited them in. But when someone dies, none of the chairs are taken away until after everyone has had a chance to acknowledge their death.

Once everyone had funneled in and seated themselves, (I sat meekly in mine, while Orochimaru peered around in suppressed curiosity, the atmosphere must've gotten to him to not ask his 'why's).

But the two people I was waiting on never entered, my ability to sense chakra now at a radius of about twenty-five meters, far larger than the radius of the mess hall, which is approximately twenty.

No matter how I strained my senses, or how I combed through the chakras of the clansmen present, I could not feel them nor their partners.

Then I felt a spark just along my senses, pricking at the podium where a large seal for reverse-summoning had been carved.

The chakra pulsed, once, then twice, the glows that accompanied each flash dulled by the smoke emitted by the consecutive summonings. Faint sobbing could be heard.

No. Nonononono.

Nobody disturbed the smoke, not even the clan leader. She just stood off to the side, her companion curled around her shoulders like a venomous scarf.

As the chakra-laced smoke slowly dissipated, Each of my heartbeats thudded louder and louder in my chest, until it was the sole sound vibrating in my ears.

I didn't even dare to move, not even to try to glance at the two empty spots next to me.

As the smoke finally thinned enough for sensing to not be blanketed, the sparks of chakra that I could suddenly feel could only be described as grieving. There was only two.

Then Orochi froze, his chakra twisting in a way that a once innocent child's shouldn't, and he let out a muffled sob covered by chubby hands. Knowing just enough to not crumble off his seat (or maybe it was Sugiryuu, who held my little otouto in place), he slumped into his chair.

He was only two.

And she was a mother.

Yasu obasan slept peacefully in her egg of glass, young little Kuroryuu coiled in an elegant spiral resting on her lap.

Her son sobbed along with a silently weeping snake, both curled up against each other in a mockery of the tranquil picture tucked within the glass egg.

The day that I lost my aunt and the day that Hikaru lost his partner was the day that I realized how Manda became Orochi's primary summons.

A tidbit about our clan is that we don't really give any shits about privacy. I mean, barging into someone's chambers just because they were late for supper? Seen it, also done it. Walk into a training room to practice my (dreadful) shuriken aim, I just might see a fellow clansmen on the ground, trying to twist themselves into a new pretzel (For science!). Then of course, there's the teens everywhere in the compound as they try to woo each other or something in the most scientific way as possible (their puns suck, as in 'have you been working with copper and tellurium? Because you're looking very CuTe today' suck).

The only reason mentioning the above is relevant is because everyone was with Hikaru when he grieved. Yes, we gave him space when it was needed, but he's only six, too young to witness the death of his mother (an aunt who should've come home, lighting someone's coat-tail on fire and not in a glass coffin) and who should've been his lifelong partner (too young, was this why Hashirama dreamed of peace?).

(At least they were able to come home, even if not in one piece.)

He cried on a lot of shoulders and chests and backs, left his tears in clothing of every shape and size.

A child just lost his mother and our clan is not one to abandon their own.

A week after the event that took Yasu (the kind, pyromaniac aunt who let me cry into her injured side during the ambush) from us (three children (one not) who viewed her as a /nother) mother) and stole the luster of Kuroryuu's scales, our clan leader sat Hikaru on the pedestal and asked Ume whether she would accept Hikaru as her second summoner.

The agreement was mutual. The ink lines along the insides of Hikaru's thin, thin forearms became another bridge to the cave of snakes.

No one commented on the unshed tears held by our leader's eyes.

(We respect her far too much for that.)

Unsurprisingly, kaa-chan pretty much adopted Hikaru. The three of us tiny ninja-wannabes had been raised together since the death of my tou-chan, but back then at least Yasu obasan could cycle shifts with my kaa-chan. Now that she's… gone, all the economical problems fell on kaa-chan who has to earn enough to feed three kids, their partners, herself and Manda, and provide everyone with enough weaponry so that nobody will come home in a glass egg.

I still try to sharpen kunai to earn pocket money, and Hikaru had also joined me in doing so. Orochi was the best behaved child one could wish for, sitting quietly or trying to converse with Sugiryuu, he would even stumble around to try to help us organize the sharpened kunai in bundles, me telling him a number and him trying to follow. In return, I would teach him simple kanji, hiragana and katakana, or rather just mainly the kanji that I have figured out by "testing" the newly sharpened kunai on some convenient pieces of wood. Books and scrolls are useful in this regard, and even seals with very precise kanji. (For instance, explode.)

Hikaru would occasionally try to help with Orochi's teachings, but the semi- or full-on orphans of my clan are generally passed from clan member to clan member to learn stuff. The (too-buff) chefs would teach us the basics of what is usually edible, the blacksmiths would teach us how to properly sharpen kunai and protect our weapons, the "merchants" would sort of teach us how to haggle. For a price, of course.

I suppose this is what happens when you're born to ninjas, growing up when childhood wasn't supposed to be just a dream and learning how to survive at the age of five.

Amidst all the grief and pain that spiraled into our lives like an off-kilter helicopter, I also received my piano.

Received as in the damn thing was plopped in a seal on my door.

I almost smashed it when I first unsealed it, not accidentally either.

Who gives a mourning family an instrument prototype?

But then again…

"So big!" Orochi clapped, eyes wide as saucers, Hikaru also having his mouth dropped open.

Dōsukēru leant over and hissed in my ear, "is this the 'piano' that you've been missing?"

She never forgot that I was reborn, despite me barely out of the crib when I first told her. Maybe it was a constant reminder when I tried to teach us (the kiddy sextet) the rest of the English language? So far, out of the six of us, Ume is the only one who didn't even have a decent grasp of the language. Well, she isn't capable of speaking anymore though… Willingly or due to physical reasons, I won't ever ask her, even if the question burns just a bit below my left collarbone.

"... Yes. This is a piano." If I sounded a bit flat, who was to comment?

The relic from my last life stood a total of a meter and a half, just a couple increments larger than what I had designed so long ago. The wood was unsmoothed, and just a bit grainier that what is normal, but when I opened the fall board, I could barely muffle the sob that nearly tore itself out of my throat. Just a bit below my eye level was in total, eighty-eight keys, most white, and some black.

How the different shades of red transferred to the colouring the piano now had, I will never understand, but I was thankful.

And so, so furious.

The relic (because it was only a relic) was solely coloured white and black, two shades of colour that cannot be associated with ninja life, and another contrast that screamed to me what I lost when I ...died. It reminded me of everything I can no longer have (a full set of parents, formal education, and the freedom of living without wondering about the deaths that the next day may bring), but it also sang out to me.

"It's beautiful," whispered a nowadays nearly silent Hikaru.

"What do these iron footholds do?" Of course Sugiryuu would ask the questions when Orochi wouldn't.

"Yeah, give it a whirl Suija-chan!" Ha, maybe my partner was a bit too eager sometimes, although she is usually a bit more composed…

I sniffled, and gave everyone present a watery grin. Gently extracting my pant leg from Orochi's grasp, I announced to my family (minus two) "why not? It's been a while."

It's been awhile since I really smiled, and realized that even if the world was no longer black and white, sound is constant, and so are the people around me. This is my world now (along with everything I was ever taught) and gods damn it, I'll dance between the flat-normal-sharp keys as much as I need to balance my family.

The piano sucked.

I can't believe I didn't take in account the physics (of all things) when I reinvented the piano. The strings are a certain length for a reason, as are the thickness and the changes in the numbers of wires. Not to mention the kami-damned dampers! I can't believe I forgot to put them in.

The first trial was a disaster, none of the keys sounded right (at least they still had seven notes per scale?) and all of the notes lasted long after I let them go (damn you missing damper).

Thankfully, it only took a couple more months to re-create an actual piano once we arrived in Uzushio. Seals are handy things, as in, they simplified so much. A base seal in the body of the piano ensured that it could continuously sap out bits of chakra to fuel itself and it was then linked to sound-muffling seals and amplifier seals. They could be activated through force by pumping the pedals and it would either dampen the sound, apply better dynamics, or just drain away notes that shouldn't be held.

Of course, the actual seals are much more complicated than that but I wasn't a seal mistress, was I?

However, a month before I turned six, the piano was finally complete and I could start to "write" music for the instrument.

Due to piano being a non-violent exercise of fingers, it took up a chunk of time before lunch. It had taken nigh on forever to figure out the sequences of the scales again but they were worth it. At least I can do some rudimentary practice before trying to transcribe any song from Before, or for now, just the most basic (and therefore most easily remembered).

But for now…

"Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday my dear Oro-chi-maru… Happy Birthday to you~"

AN: Omfg I've been trying to upload this chapter for the last TWO days and it just. Wouldn't. Save. AHHHH. And then the formatting didn't stick. Curse you document manager.

Now, rant complete, I extend mysincerest apologizes for the lateness of this chapter (which I still blame on IB). Apparently trying to juggle a chapter along with two essays, a physics test (that I pretty much failed), cadets, piano, and life in general is not fun. Looks like the rant wasn't complete after all...

As a side note, the sharp and flat keys of a piano are generally the black ones, and the normals being white, take what you will from that.

Anyways, non-anonymous reviews will be answered/replied to via pms, and I will do so, even if its a bit late.

Please also note that Suijami has an interesting way to deal with grief (humour+denial+all that lovely jazz) and that yes, she was very attached to her aunt. Who still died. Oops.

So, please leave a review on your way out, constructive criticism is appreciated, slamming not-so much, and yeah, I might not be able to update again for a while. but at least this was a long chapter (the longest so far...again?)?

~Cadriona Morningwing

Uploaded: November 19