Uzushio

by KitsuneNarou

Summary:

She isn't a stranger to reincarnation. First a life on Earth and a second life as a waterbender, she isn't too thrilled to learn her third life is in a different Elemental Nations, and in the middle of wartime, at that. Born here as Uzumaki Unagi, she needs to learn to navigate a world bent on killing everyone or die once again.

Chapter 1

“Do you really have to go away, Kushina-nee? Can’t you stay?” Hisao asks, tugging at the hem of our cousin’s shirt with pathetic teary puppy-eyes. He spent at least three days this week practicing that look specifically for this question.

Kushina’s shoulders slump for a moment before she forces herself to look cheerful. “Don’t give me that look! It’s my duty, y’know? I can’t just flake on Mito-sensei. She’s counting on me!” She jabs her thumb at herself in emphasis.

Hisao’s lip wobbles. I prepare for the crocodile tears by slowing my steps and wandering to the side of the bridge to watch the whirlpools spin below. The bridge connecting the two halves of Uzushiogakure was my favorite part of the whole village and I intended to make the most out of Hisao’s act while we were here.

Predictably, Kushina stops walking and waves her hands in front of Hisao’s face to try and delay the inevitable waterworks display. “H-Hey, don’t cry! It’s not like I’m never going to come visit, y’know? Maybe I can talk Mito-sensei into letting you come see Konoha too, yeah? It’s not as cool as Uzushio, because duh, nothing is, but I mean it’s not all bad. They have a huge mountain and lots of forests, ‘cause it’s all hiding in leaves and whatever and—”

She keeps rambling about the things she’s seen in Konoha and the stuff we could all do together once “Mito-sensei hears how great you are, y’know?” and she convinces her mentor to let us visit.

It’s a solid attempt. Four out of five, maybe, but once Hisao sets himself on something there is no stopping him.

He starts bawling.

The distraction gives me enough time to slip away. I carefully coat my hands and feet in chakra and climb over the side of the bridge, manifesting my inner Spider-Man to crawl across the bottom. If my control slipped I would plummet into the waves and likely get pulled into one of the whirlpools to drown or have my skull bashed in by rocks.

It might be preferable to watching this village get annihilated by the coming shinobi forces. Kushina just turned nine and is leaving the village, which means the end is nigh, so to speak.

It’s alright, I suppose. I’m only two years old, physically speaking, and I’ve managed not to get too attached to anyone in this world yet. Uzushio really is one of the prettiest places I’ve seen though; Kushina is right about that. White sandy beaches, a warm, sparkling blue ocean with beautiful reefs under the waves and lovely rocks dotting the waters above, colorful buildings, friendly and generous people—it really is a paradise.

Well, a paradise that trains child soldiers, but I suppose there’s a flaw in everything.

I’ll still miss it, whether I die and get reincarnated into a fourth life or whether I somehow survive and end up somewhere else, but I’ll be able to dull the memory of it. Two years isn’t a long time.

I make it to the other end of the bridge undetected and pull myself back on top of it. Hisao and Kushina’s chakras haven’t budged, so at least they still haven’t noticed I’m gone yet. I weave around the lunchtime crowds with ease of practice. It’s telling that no one worries about an unaccompanied two-year old wandering around. Uzushio is not a dangerous place, not to its own people.

Once I reach the market I’m subjected to various stall owners pinching my cheeks and “sneaking” me treats. I’m technically fifty-four years old, if you count my two previous lives, which means I’m no fool: I absolutely play it up and get extra sweets from women who believe they’re old enough to be my grandmother.

By the time I’ve wandered to Tou-san’s stall my pockets are bulging and my cheeks are too stuffed with pastry to greet him. Instead I pat his good knee and offer him a candy. It’s plum flavored, his favorite.

“Unagi-chan, what are you doing out here by yourself?” He accepts the treat with a chuckle, picking me up to sit on one of his shoulders while he works. “I thought Kushina-chan was supposed to be watching you.”

I swallow the last of my pastry. “Hisao’s crying.”

He snorts. Uzumaki Miwa is a good-humored man. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him angry and today hasn’t changed that yet. “Ah, that explains it. He’s trying to convince her not to leave, is he?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And how long did it take you to sneak away?”

I gave him a look.

“That quick, huh? Kushina’s slipping. She ought to know better than to take her eyes off you by now.”

I huff. One of Tou-san’s customers tries to hide his laugh as a cough.

“I suppose you’ve finished your sealing practice by now,” Tou-san says rhetorically, handing the man his wrapped fish with a nod and a grin. “I have your next one in my bag there, if you want to start.”

I hold out another candy and he opens his mouth obligingly for me to pop it in before I hop off his shoulder and dig through the bag. My trusty dictionary, which I have needed to consult less and less as time goes by, is sitting at the top. And below that… let’s see… hm, sealing scrolls again.

“Don’t give me that look, Little Nagi,” he laughs, “Read the next scroll before you judge.”

Oh, altering sealing scrolls? That’s more interesting. I pat his knee approvingly and hand him a pastry next.

He laughs again. “You’re going to turn me into a ball at this rate! Speaking of, hold off on the sweets for a bit. Chiharu-oba-san is bringing bento soon. She made one special for you.”

Hell yes! Tou-san’s aunt was a fabulous cook. She was also one of the few who didn’t tease me for having my favorite food be the same as my name. Another point to Uzushiogakure: seaside village meant unlimited eel sushi.

“Miwa-oji-san! I’m so sorry, Unagi-chan wandered—hey!” Kushina skids to a stop, a wide-eyed Hisao hot on her tail, and points accusingly at me. “You!”

“Me,” I agree, flipping through my scrolls.

“How’d you get here before us, huh? We ran all the way here!” Hisao pants, leaning his hands on his knees while he tries to catch his breath.

“I walked.”

“Little Nagi has been here for a few minutes at least, you two.” Tou-san wraps another fish and exchanges it with his other customer before putting his hands on his hips and laughing boisterously at the pair of them. “You really ought to pay more attention! She’s quick and sneaky. If we lived anywhere other than Uzushio you two would be in big trouble right now, you know.” He pauses and puts a hand thoughtfully on his chin. “Or if she was a different toddler, I suppose. Your cousin Hideki would have found a way to autodefenstrate himself, I’m sure.”

“That’s not even a word, Tou-san,” Hisao groans. “You can’t make it one just because you use it all the time.”

“How does he manage to use it so often?” Kushina wonders aloud, before shrugging it off and deciding to become a busybody by reading over my shoulder. “Eh, alteration already? I didn’t learn that until I was five, Oji-san!”

“Like I said: if she were anyone else. Our little prodigy here finished the last of her scrolls this morning.”

I’m no prodigy. Just an old and bored bookworm.

And, oh, wow. The whole third paragraph of the alteration scroll is repeated warnings not to use it to seal your own chakra into it without supervision, because apparently someone killed themselves by accidentally sealing all of their chakra at once.

I lower the scroll and stare thoughtfully into space, the rest of the conversation catching up to me. “Words are communication. We understand what he’s communicating when he says ‘autodefenstrate’, therefor it is a word.”

“Ha!” Tou-san laughs triumphantly as my brother and cousin groan simultaneously.

“Don’t agree with him, Unagi-chan, you’ll give him a swelled head,” a new voice says.

“Chiharu-oba-chan!” Hisao rams into her legs to hug her. If she hadn’t been a shinobi she probably would have fallen over with the force of it. “Thank you!”

“You’re pretty spooky for a toddler, y’know?” Kushina says with a dramatic sigh.

Then she ruffles my hair hard enough that it comes loose from its tie and the hot-pink strands block my view of the world.

“Kushina,” I whine.

She laughs. “That’s better!”

I part my hair long enough to glower at her.

“We were out of noodles, so I picked up some takeout from the ramen stall by the tailor’s. You like that one, don’t you, Kushina-chan?”

“You are my favorite person in the whole world, Chiharu-oba-chan.”

Chiharu chuckles. “You don’t say that when I make you clean your room.”

“That’s then, Oba-chan. This is now.”

Chiharu proves that she really is the best person in the world by handing me my bento and pulling my hair into a pair of buns while I eat.

“Tou-san, can we go visit Kushina when she’s in Konoha?” Hisao asks through a mouth full of food.

“Maybe once she’s gotten settled in a bit,” Tou-san says, “You can’t miss too much of the Academy and my stall won’t watch itself, you know.”

“Aw, guess I’ll have to take Unagi-chan with me until you’re a genin, Hisao-kun,” Kushina teases in a sing-song voice. I eye her.

“Would Mito-sama have time to teach us both?” I ask Kushina in a solemn tone, knowing full well she had a hard time differentiating between when I was teasing or being serious.

She freezes, eyes wide. “Uh, I mean—Mito-sensei is awesome and definitely could teach two students, but, uh, I don’t think—” She turns pleading eyes onto Tou-san, who definitely can tell I’m messing with her.

He lets her suffer for a moment before reaching out and giving her a noogie. She squawks, somehow flailing away without spilling a single drop of her ramen, “Leave my hair alone, old man!”

“Unagi-chan may be learning fast, but she hasn’t finished her mother’s scrolls quite yet. While a chance to learn under Mito-sama is nothing to scoff at, she’s not ready.” A somber expression graces his face for the briefest of moments before he plasters another smile over it.

She won’t be ready before Mito dies, goes loudly unsaid. Officially, Kushina’s training is migrating permanently to Konoha as opposed to her semi-frequent trips because she’s reached a high enough level that self-study and tutoring in other clan arts in her home village is no longer sustainable. Officially, Mito-sama has requested personal one-on-one time with her student to fine-tune the last few years of her sealing training. Officially, Mito-sama has at least another ten years in her before anyone even needs to start thinking about the demon inside her.

Officially.

Hisao and I aren’t supposed to know about Kushina’s secondary reason for training under Mito. Hisao’s the only one of us that actually doesn’t, unless he’s suddenly developed a professional poker face and the willingness to use it. If I didn’t have the foreknowledge of my first life to clue me in, I likely wouldn’t have figured out the exact reason either, although it’s obvious something is going on besides what we’ve been told.

The week before Kushina goes on any Konoha training trip, our small immediate family takes a day to hang out at a little lagoon not far from our home. We tend to spend the whole day there, doing everything from playing to training to fishing for our own dinner, before heading back at sunset and having a packing party, where Hisao and I will create the most ridiculous travel pack for Kushina and try to rationalize our absurd choices while she, Tou-san, and Chiharu pretend to be afraid of offending us while they politely suggest other reasonable items. The game goes on until either the pack is packed the way it should be or Hisao and I get too tired to continue.

Nothing about my foreknowledge suggests that tomorrow will be any different, but bits and pieces of conversations I shouldn’t have overheard tells me that our ‘week prior’ trip is going to turn into a ‘day before’ trip. Someone, somewhere, has put together that Kushina has been groomed to be the Kyuubi’s next host. Now that it’s gotten out that this particular trip to Konoha is going to be one-way, the chances that someone is going to attack her and her entourage on the road has skyrocketed. Better to mislead people about the when she’s actually leaving.

I let the rest of the family’s conversation roll over me, hardly tasting my sushi as I thought. If my suspicion that the destruction of Uzushiogakure is tied to Kushina’s role as future jinchuuriki is correct, then the attack on Uzushiogakure will take place in about a week. I could be wrong—I hope I’m wrong—because I vaguely recalled something about Uzushio’s fearsome reputation as fūinjutsu masters as the main reason a couple of villages decide to tag-team the place.

Any concern I’ve expressed about Uzushio getting attacked has been met with ruffled hair and reassurances. The village is out of the way, protected by seals and whirlpools, and is full of shinobi. All I’ve gotten have been various variations of, “Don’t worry, Unagi-chan, the war won’t touch you here. You’re perfectly safe.”

I finish my sushi and sigh, leaning against Tou-san when this body begins to remind me of my physical age. Kushina and Hisao playfully argue about whether ramen is better than udon.

My eyes drift close, the familiar debate like a lullaby.

 

 

I dream about my previous death, that life’s mother screaming that life’s name. The terrorist burning me alive smiles vindictively.

“You’re perfectly safe,” he says with Tou-san’s voice.

 

 

I wake at the house, tucked into my futon, and stare at the evening sunlight breaking through the window blinds. The dream is too familiar to break through my general apathy once I’ve fully crossed the threshold between sleep and wakefulness.

I should go. Pack up a bag and find a nice bit of forest to go live out the rest of this life. No one could argue the logic in giving up a bad job and hiding somewhere.

I push myself into a sitting position, my stupid hot-pink hair freed from its buns, now loose around my face, and look beside me.

Hisao is sprawled all over the place, his mouth hanging open, snoring softly. He’s four years old. He’s not likely to make it to five. I should take him with me.

Those thoughts are just as familiar as the dream. I’m not going to follow through with them, I already know. Assuming I could even sneak out of a shinobi household, brother or no brother, and then somehow sneak out of a shinobi village that’s parked in the middle of the ocean, I really just didn’t care enough anymore to try. Leave, lose everything here. Stay, lose everything here. What difference did it make, despite the second option potentially being a bit more physically painful?

I get up and head to the bathroom and then make my way downstairs. Chiharu is sitting cross-legged on the floor, oiling her weapons while Tou-san makes dinner in the kitchen. He’s yammering on about something that happened at the dock the other day. Chiharu hums and nods at appropriate times. When she sees me she winks in way that lets me know she hasn’t been paying him much attention.

After a moment, I realize it’s the same story he’s been telling for a week to just about anyone who stands still long enough to listen. The somewhat humorous story about one of the other sailors who got into it with a particularly intelligent sea turtle. Or, well, it was amusing the first couple of times.

He hasn’t noticed me yet. I turn around go right back upstairs, leaving Chiharu behind to muffle her laughter at me.

Kushina’s door is open. She’s at her desk, inkwells and scrolls all over the place, mumbling to herself. She wrinkles her nose at something on the scroll in front of her, sighs, and then leans her cheek on her ink-stained hand to frown at it.

I leave her be and return to my and Hisao’s room. Quietly, so I don’t wake Hisao, who’s drooling all over his pillow, I start my stretches and begin running through my katas.

I don’t intend to become a shinobi. Not a chance. I’m not killing people because a bunch of old bastards in funny hats decided they needed money more than they needed peace. No thank you.

My studies of the shinobi arts were solely because I desire to learn anything I can to defeat the ultimate enemy: boredom. Not to mention I enjoy the exercise. And Uzumaki-style katas are fluid, making it easy to slip into a meditative state, where I can just exist and not ruminate on my imminent demise.

I kept at it until Tou-san hollers about dinner, stopping to wake Hisao and head downstairs. We all eat and listen to Tou-san tell his stories, Kushina interrupting him here and there for no purpose other than to be a brat.

After we finish, Tou-san claps his hands and announces it time for the packing game. I solemnly pull out the candy wrapper I saved for the occasion and present it as object number one.

The rest of the night is a blur of teasing and good-natured bickering until Kushina’s bag is properly packed. It ends the way most of my days end, with Tou-san picking me up and tucking me into my futon. My eyes are heavy with sleepiness, but it still takes me a long time to fall asleep.

I wake intermittently throughout the night. The sun rises more quickly than it has any right to. Tou-san shouts his morning greetings with far too much vigor. I’m tired and crabby and intend to spend the day at the lagoon snoozing on a beach towel.

Tou-san rounds us up. I sit on his shoulders and use his head as a pillow. He chuckles knowingly.

“Now, now, Unagi-chan, don’t be falling asleep. I’ve got a new jutsu to teach you. It’s a good one. Ever wanted to breath underwater?”

I peeked open one eye. Despite not being able to see my face, Tou-san laughs again.

“Thought so.” He pats my leg. “Look there, we aren’t far now. You ready?”

“Yeah,” I mumble into his hair. Nap, sweet nap, our love is not meant to be. I force myself to sit up and think awake thoughts. Too bad no one would let me touch espresso yet.

Did they even have espresso in this world? They had regular coffee, which I was not allowed to drink.

I spend the rest of the short trip ruminating on lattes and whether or not I should open a coffeeshop if I didn’t die horrifically in the next week or so. Oh, maybe a book café. I’ve always wanted to run one of those.

Tou-chan takes advantage of my distracted thoughts to grab my ankles and use them to swing me upside down. He grins at me.

“We’re here, sleepyhead.”

Ah, so we were.

Tou-san sets me—thankfully upright—on the white sandy beach. Kushina zips past us, hollering at the top of her lungs about how slow everyone is, and leaps into the water, Hisao close behind her.

I take my time adjusting my towel just so, settling on it and giving Tou-san my undivided attention. He grins.

“Handsigns only,” he says, fingers twisting into the correct signs. He goes slowly at first, giving me time to copy him, and then goes progressively faster the next few times.

How did shinobi not all have terrible arthritis? Medical jutsu? Had to be.

 Once Tou-san was satisfied with my signs he allowed me to start molding chakra too. More yang than yin chakra, hold the last sign for a split second longer—two hours later and I had it. The effect once the jutsu was active was… interesting. It made a bubble around my mouth and I could feel air expel from the sides with each exhale. Gills? Probably like gills.

The moment Tou-san saw the jutsu take effect he chortled and mussed up my hair. “Good job. Now go practice in the water. Don’t swim out too far.”

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Something about chakra made animals smarter. Nothing else explained this octopus’s attitude.

Tou-san could poke fun at me all he wanted: I was going to catch this thing, stick it with the kunai it stole, and then eat it for dinner.

I pour as much chakra into my limbs as I can manage without hurting myself and take off after it. Unrepentant, it leads me on a merry chase around coral and rocks, even darting through a school of nursing sharks to try and get me off its trail.

I wasn’t having it.

My muscles burn. The octopus looks back at me, triumph in its gaze as if it knew.

In return, I grin ferociously, releasing a storm of bubbles, and pull out my trump card.

I reach deep into that slumbering part of myself I’d been avoiding since my second death and bent the water surrounding me.

No way, reads the octopus’s face.

My maniacal grin widens. Way.

It seems to reach inside itself as well, pulling out all the stops for an extra burst of speed.

Oh, yeah, that sucker definitely used chakra just now.

I chase it into a tangle of coral, grabbing rocks and using them to propel myself forward. It weaves and feints, but it fails to shake me.

At long last the octopus comes to a stop, trapped in a dead end cave with only a tiny crack in the roof to let in sunlight.

We stare at one another for a long moment. Defeated, the octopus chucks the kunai in my direction. It settles on the cave floor with a tiny puff of sand.

“Alright, you,” I say, putting my hands on my hips. I expel bubbles with each word. “I won’t eat you, but only because you didn’t make me wrestle you for my kunai.”

The octopus appears surprised, as if it hadn’t considered it may end up on a menu for its antics. Or maybe I’m just reading into things too much. Octopodes didn’t really have facial expressions.

It edges around me cautiously before taking off out of the cave. I swim down and pick up my kunai before taking time to examine the cave. It’s not very large—though for someone the size of a two year old it’s decent enough—but it is pretty. The rock walls are dotted with coral and glimmer as if made of crystal. For the briefest of moments my apathy is washed away by awe at its beauty.

I swim back to the surface. I’m not terribly far from my family; the octopus had led me on a mostly circular chase. I swim back to them and trudge out of the ocean, plopping down on my beach towel with a sigh. Time for my favorite activity. Napping.

҉

By the time I wake up, Kushina is already gone.

҉

Most people didn’t start their children on ninjutsu until they were at least five or six years old. Even then they stuck with little tricks, like sticking a leaf to one’s forehead or creating a spark by snapping one’s fingers. Children usually didn’t have the chakra capacity for anything more than that, not unless they wanted to die of chakra exhaustion after using a single jutsu.

Uzumaki parents, on the other hand, had the opposite problem. Our clan’s unnaturally large chakra reserves left children with too much chakra, which mostly manifested as hyperactivity. Hisao was no different. He practically bounced around the walls, barely managing to finish his homework in time, causing a ruckus everywhere he went. Tou-san had an abundance of patience, but even he had to draw the line somewhere.

Three weeks after Kushina left for Konoha, Hisao’s antics had Tou-san leading Hisao and I out to the training grounds next to the Uzumaki compound.

“Okie dokie, you two,” he says, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “We’re going to learn a jutsu today.”

Hisao practically vibrates with anticipation. “What are we gonna learn? Something cool, something cool!”

“You aren’t ready for the super cool jutsu just yet, Hisao. Don’t think I don’t know about what you and your friend Suzuko Suki did with the last jutsu I taught you!”

Hisao’s face turns beet red. He mumbles something under his breath.

“Today you are learning how to turn into a puddle of water,” Tou-san says solemnly, as if bestowing us with the greatest of gifts.

Hisao deflates. “Aw, really? That’s it?”

“That’s it? That’s it? This is one of the best surveillance jutsu around. People don’t pay attention to puddles after a rain or the water in a vase. As a matter of fact, one shinobi I used to know used it to hide in a cup, waited until his target drank him, and then released the jutsu to kill her from the inside out!”

I stood there in horrified silence, fighting to keep my expression neutral, while Hisao began to exclaim and bounce around.

Normal, I remind myself, people think this is normal. No one questions telling toddlers and children these things in this world. It didn’t even cross their minds that there was something wrong with it.

I dutifully copy Tou-san’s handsigns, forcing my mind to become blank. Breathe in. Breathe out. Boar, monkey, rat, snake. Rinse and repeat.

Neither Hisao and I got the jutsu right the first few times. Contrary to popular belief, there is actually more to jutsu than just hand signs. You had to twist your chakra just-so, sometimes adding more chakra during a particular sign than the others, or swirling it clockwise instead of counterclockwise, or adding more yin or yang, and so on. Some jutsu, like the Bubble Breath jutsu Tou-san had taught me, came easily. Others, like this one, not so much.

By the time the sun began to set, Hisao was able to transform his legs into a puddle and I had made zero progress whatsoever. Tou-san ruffled my hair.

“Don’t worry, Little Nagi, you’ll get the hang of it.”

I clamber onto his shoulders and rest my cheek on his head. “What would your friend have done if his target only took a sip of water? How big was the cup? Did she just chug the whole thing at once?”

“Very good questions. One’s we may never have an answer to.”

Translation: hell if I know.

My dreams that night were filled with drowned ghosts who burst apart into bits of flesh and bone.

҉

The invasion happens on a otherwise unremarkable night in June, a mere three days after Tou-san began to teach us Hiding in the Puddle. I wake to the sounds of screaming. Something explodes in the distance. The ground shakes.

Tou-san bursts into our room, face tight and serious in a way I’ve never seen on him.

“Hisao, Unagi, put your shoes on. We have to leave. Quickly.”

The house shudders on its supports as another explosion rattles the world. Tou-san had his mission pack strapped to his back and shoves some of our clothes in hastily.

“Stay close to me,” he says when we’ve finished putting our shoes on. He rushes to the window and opens it, checking outside before letting out a breath. “They haven’t made it this far in. Come on.”

I’ve barely strapped my kunai holster onto my thigh when he grabs each of us under an arm and leaps out the window, hitting the ground at a run. People are rushing this way and that, armed to the teeth with expressions of rage. Chiharu-oba-san is one of them. She is holding a tessen in one hand and a smoke bomb in the other. She barely slows enough to nod at us before joining one of the groups heading towards the explosions.

In my heart I know this is the last time I’ll ever see her.

Tou-san sets us down and ushers us to one of the other groups, this one with a bunch of children flanked by two adult shinobi and a handful of civilians. Tou-san pulls out a kunai.

“Hiroko, Jin, what’s the situation?” Tou-san barks. Despite the fact he rarely leaves the village so he can care for us and run his stall, Tou-san is a Special Jounin. Uzumaki Hiroko is a career Genin and Jin just received his field promotion to Chuunin six months ago. Odd as it is to think of it, cheerful Uzumaki Miwa is one of the highest ranking shinobi around.

“Iwa and Kiri. Two Jinchuuriki, one on the east side and one on the west side. Heavy casualties. There are fewer hostiles on the south side of the other island; that’s where we’re taking the civvies.”

“Understood. Hisao, look after your sister. Both of you listen to Hiroko and Jin. I love you.” He hugs both of us before turning and running to join the fray. I watch his retreating back, my heart sinking. Tears prick at my eyes. I blink them back. Damn it all.

More shinobi attach themselves to our group the closer we get to the fighting. The south side of the other island held the Uzukage Manor, the most heavily defended part of both the islands. There were emergency bunkers under it. My heart sank. Heavily defended or not, those bunkers are a death sentence.

We’ve just crossed the bridge when Son Goku’s Jinchuuriki goes all out on the island we just left. On the island we’re just arrived at—on the south side, of course— Isobu’s Jinchuuriki answers in kind. The earth quakes beneath our feet.

What happened to them being on the west side?

“Jinchuuriki!” Hiroko curses, abruptly ushering the group to change course. “We’ll have to go around it.”

I didn’t see how we could go around the monstrosity currently tearing the village to shreds. Massive isn’t a strong enough word for how large Isobu is. Enormous. Titan-like. Kaiju-level five or some shit. If he decided to just start rolling he could smash all the buildings on the damn island. There are shinobi hounding him from all sides. He swats at them like they’re flies. His chakra, red and corrosive, so powerful that you didn’t need to be a sensor to feel it, makes my heart stutter in my chest.

All the shinobi save Jin and Hiroko splinter off our group to go help. Or, more likely, to go get themselves killed.

Son Goku’s jinchuuriki lets out a howl and something explodes on the other island.  I use the distraction to grab Hisao’s hand and slip away from the group.

“Unagi, what—”

I slap my hand over his mouth. “I have somewhere to hide. They’ll never find us. We just need to wait it out.”

He shakes his head, frustrated, and glances back at the group. “Tou-san told us to go with them.”

“I know, but…” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “They’re going to die. The bunkers aren’t going to work. We have to hide.”

“Unagi—”

I pull his arm, heading towards a familiar path. He pulls back.

“We’re going to be fine, Unagi. The bunkers are safe!”

“I’m going, with or without you, Hisao,” I hiss, “but I would much rather it be with you.”

Tears slide down his cheeks. He grits his teeth. “You are going to get us into so much trouble. Fine, you stubborn eel. Lead the way. I’m telling Tou-san it’s all your fault.”

No, I think sadly, tugging on Hisao’s arm again, you won’t. We aren’t going to see Tou-san ever again.

Nobody pays us any attention, too focused on the chaos wrecking the islands. I weave us through trampling feet, taking the back alleys I’ve become familiar with during my frequent escapades.

There are corpses everywhere, both Uzushio’s people and our enemies. Hisao and I duck behind some barrels while a pair of Kiri shinobi hassle a man wielding a katana. We wait, trembling together, until the katana shinobi is beheaded and the Kiri shinobi move on to their next target. Hisao’s hand is slick with sweat as I pull him out of our hiding spot and back onto the roads.

We make it to the market, which is on fire and full of people. Our small statures give us the advantage as we weave through stalls and feet. We pass Tou-san’s stall. It’s partially smashed and completely aflame.

We have to duck into a side alley when a dozen shinobi start throwing around big jutsu. A water dragon collides with a barrier of stone, hastily erected. The resulting splash of water douses several stalls, but doesn’t touch Tou-san’s. It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s not going to need it anymore, now is he?

The small forest of palm trees is in sight when it happens. I look at Hisao, grinning madly. We’re almost there.

A stray shuriken slices his throat open.

He doubles over, hands on his neck and, oh, how accusing his eyes are. Your fault, they say, as his legs give way, his breath turning into gurgling. I fall to my knees beside him, wavering. As quick as I can I bend some of the water left over from the dragon. I pull Hisao’s hand out of the way with my free hand and bend the water over the wound.

I know it’s hopeless even as I start to heal him. Water healing takes time, time that we don’t have. Still, I try, hoping, praying, that I can fix this.

The light fades from his eyes as I work. He topples over, boneless. The water falls from his throat into a useless, bloody puddle on the ground. I sit there beside him, heedless of the battle around me. This is what attachment leads to. I promised myself I wouldn’t get attached. I promised. I knew how this was going to end.

It is different to understand intellectually that everyone you know is going to die than it is to see it happen in person.

It takes a long while before I can force myself to stand. I take a few steps back, eyes still locked on his corpse. My bloodstained hand covers my mouth to muffle my ragged breaths. My legs are weak and wobbly. Tears blur my vision. I turn and run, leaving him there, cold, limp, on the ground.

By some miracle I make it to the lagoon. I stop just before reaching it and hide behind a tree. There is a shinobi there. He is wearing a bandana over his head with the Iwa hitai-ate stitched onto it. He leans casually against a boat, passing his sword from hand to hand, looking bored.

There are several corpses laying in the sand surrounding him. He must be stationed here to pick off anyone who tries to run. I glance to the side. Dotted along the beach are shinobi. Some are fighting but most are just standing around.

I stand, frozen in fear, for a long time. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to die, not again, not really.

I get my opening when a young woman stumbles out of the trees and onto the beach. The shinobi’s eyes lock onto her and a slow smile stretches across his face.

“Hey there, pretty thing, you shouldn’t travel alone at night. It’s dangerous.”

She grimaces, lifting her tanto, her arm shaking. She is favoring her left leg, which is soaked in blood. She doesn’t have much fight left in her and they both know it.

I use the distraction to dart to the water, running through the handsigns for the Bubble Breath jutsu as I go. Someone shouts behind me. I submerge myself and bend the water around me to shoot off to my hiding place. A kunai cuts through the waves. It slices my shoulder and continues past me to imbed itself into the ocean floor. I scream, releasing bubbles, but don’t slow down.

I pull myself through the coral and into the octopus’ cave. The octopus looks startled to see me. I ignore it, pressing my back against the wall furthest from the small opening, my eyes locked on the gap in the ceiling. Shadows pass over it as someone runs across the surface of the water. Searching for me.

I shake and shiver, crying for Hisao, guilty for leading him to his death. Red drifts past my face, leaking from the cut in my shoulder. I bend the blood back into my wound, closing my eyes to concentrate. I have to stay hidden for a long time, which means I might bleed out if it’s deep. I use my kunai to cut a strip off my nightshirt and bite my tongue to keep from cursing as I tie it over the laceration.

Small, cold, and wounded, trapped in a tiny cave with only an octopus for company, bending my own blood into a clot to keep myself from bleeding to death. This is how I spend the next several hours before I run too low on chakra to keep up the Bubble Breath jutsu.

Once I feel myself reach that low point of chakra, I force my stiff limbs to move. The octopus watches me curiously. I bend the water around me to make it past the unusually abundant amount of sharks looking for an easy meal and drag myself out of the ocean. There are far more corpses on the beach than there had been last night. Far, far more. But there don’t seem to be any enemy shinobi around, which is the important thing.

I feel too exposed on the beach to stay. For lack of a better option, I head back to my house, careful to avoid the place Hisao had died on my way back to the streets. It’s eerily quiet. My footsteps feel too loud, as if I could attract the attention of any living thing still on the island.

The village is a wreck, buildings torn and blasted apart. I can hardly tell where I am, familiar landmarks now reduced to rubble. I refuse to look at all the corpses laying around in case I might see a familiar face.

The great bridge that connected the two halves of Uzushio has been reduced to nothing. I have to ration out some of my remaining chakra to leap from each part sticking out above the waves to the next, pausing frequently to make sure no one could see me.

I wasn’t the only one walking around. Once across, I was forced to duck under some upturned pavement to avoid being spotted. There were still shinobi prowling, searching for survivors. I kept low, hands over my mouth to muffle my breathing except for when I needed them to climb, until I reached the remains of my house. I crawled into the rubble, finding a dark corner where hopefully no one could see me. The voyage had reopened the wound in my shoulder and I tore another strip of cloth free to rewrap it, keenly aware that some shinobi had a heightened sense of smell. My soaked and torn nightdress did little to warm me and I quickly found myself curled into a shivering ball.

That’s where I spent the next forty-eight hours.

҉

I blink sleep from my eyes, unsure when I had fallen unconscious, to find someone staring at me through the hole in the rubble. I shriek despite myself, flinching backwards and knocking my cut against a chunk of the ceiling.

Tears stream down my face. I made it this far just to die in a hole. How did I think this was going to end?

“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” the stranger says, waving his hands frantically.

Uh, no. It is decidedly not okay.

“I’m not going to hurt you. See?” the shinobi stills his hands so I can see his lack of weapons. I blink back tears and stare at his headband until the familiar swirl of a leaf stares back at me.

“Konoha.” The name feels like lead on my tongue. Konoha, here at last. Far, far too late.

“Yeah, that’s right. Why don’t you come out of there so we can take a look at you, alright?”

His nose twitches. I see a furry creature sitting next to him. A huge dog. That must have been how they found me. Ironic. I had just been thinking about that earlier. What was Kiba’s clan again? Inuzuka, I think.

I crawled out from the hole.

“Survivor!” howls the Inuzuka’s dog. “Medic!”

The Inuzuka sat me down on a piece of upturned pavement and fussed over me until the medic came, before leaving to hunt down more survivors. I stared at the wreckage of my home. Bits and pieces of furniture poked out here and there. Some paintings, ruined by water, likely from burst pipes. And there, in a lonely corner, sat a very damaged book.

I pointed to it wordlessly and the medic was kind enough to bring it to me, fussing that I shouldn’t be moving. It’s my dictionary, of all things. One corner is wet and it’s very torn, but mostly intact. I hold it to my chest and go back to staring at everything.

A sense of unreality follows me through the next several hours. I felt detached from my body as I am healed and wrapped in a blanket, food and water pressed into my hands.

“Shock,” tutted the elderly medic at some point.

When I finally came back to myself, I was on a boat in the middle of the ocean, heading towards Konoha. Towards Kushina.

I turn toward the nearest person, a young girl, barely old enough to be wearing the headband on her head.

“How many people did you find?” I croak. She jerks, startled, and drops the book she had been reading.

“Oh, honey… I’m sorry.” She pulls me into a hug without so much as a by-your-leave. “You were the only one.”

The only one.

Out of an entire village.

“Ah…” I knew some survivors had fled the village, in the original story from two lifetimes ago. Surely that happened now as well. I had to be the only one stupid enough to stay in the village when there were shinobi actively looking for survivors to kill.

Still it echoes in my head for the three days it takes to make it to Konoha.

The only one.

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

“Hello, my name is Yamanaka Hikari. Let me welcome you to Konoha, although I wish it were under happier circumstances.”

Hikari certainly looks like a Yamanaka. Short blond hair, pupilless blue eyes, a soft, round face. He checks all the boxes I associate with the clan.

His office is filled to the absolute brim with plants.

I mumble a hello and continue to fidget with the hem of my shirt. Only in Konoha for fifteen minutes and already I’m dealing with a Yamanaka. Go figure.

“I’m sorry, but we need to know everything you can tell us about the attack on your village. You’re the only one who can tell us anything. Will you be able to do that for me?”

My throat is tight with anxiety. I nod hesitantly.

Hikari smiles warmly. He has a soothing presence about him. Maybe it’s because he smells like lavender, one of my favorite flowers. His voice is kind. “Why don’t we start with something easy, alright? What is your name?”

I start to speak, stop, clear my throat, and try again. I can’t bring myself to speak above a whisper. “Uzumaki Unagi…”

“Nice to meet you, Unagi-chan. Are you by chance related to Uzumaki Kushina?”

“Kushina-nee-chan is my cousin.”

“I’m sure she’ll be very glad to see you. Did she live with you in Uzushio?”

“Yes,” I mumble, wishing he would get to the point so I could get out of his office. “Her room was next to mine and—and H-Hisao’s.”

“Hisao?”

“My brother. He… he… his throat…” Tears spill from my eyes despite me trying to keep them at bay. Damn it all. Don’t get attached. My one rule. Don’t get bloody attached. Damn, damn, damn.

Hikari hands me a handkerchief. “I see. I’m sorry to hear that. Do you know what village the shinobi that killed him came from?”

I shook my head. “Kiri or Iwa. They both… both were together.”

Hikari writes this down. “I’m sure our shinobi will give them hell in retaliation. Now, there was a lot of damage to the buildings. Did you see what caused that?”

“Giant monsters. Like the ones in movies.”

“Could you describe the monsters for me?”

“I only saw—s-saw the one.” I hiccup and furiously wipe at my tears with the handkerchief. “It was the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. It h-had a red body a-and—” I hiccup again. “—grey armor like a spikey turtle shell. And its chakra was e-evil.”

Probably the worst description of a bijuu ever, but I never claimed to be a professional at this sort of thing. I blew my nose and swiped at my tears with my sleeve.

“You’re doing very good, Unagi-chan,” Hikari says as if sensing my thoughts. Hell, maybe he could. I was no scholar of Yamanaka mind techniques. “Why don’t you tell me how you got away from the bad ninja?”

Blowing my nose again, I haltingly launch into the tale. Hikari listens intently, taking notes on every little detail, until I reach the end.

“—and then Inuzuka-san found me. And now I’m here.” I finally push back my tears and clear the lump from my throat. I’m exhausted down to the marrow of my bones. My eyelids felt like they were made of lead. “Can I go to Kushina-nee-chan now?” I mumble.

“You’ll see her soon. First we need to get you looked at by a proper doctor. Field medicine isn’t the best and you need that shoulder taken care of. My friend Junko here will take you to the hospital, alright?”

Someone puts their hand on my uninjured shoulder and I jolt, having not realized anyone else was in the office.

“Sorry, Unagi-chan. Someone forgets that they should announce themselves when they enter a room,” Hikari says, narrowing his eyes at Junko with exaggerated disapproval.

Junko, a tall woman with green hair, shrugs. She says nothing as she picks me up and settles me on her hip. Without so much as a goodbye she turns and leaves the office.

I fall asleep before we reach the our destination.

҉

When I wake up again I find myself in a hospital room, Kushina sitting on the guest chair, fast asleep with her head on my bed, my hand clenched in hers.

I stare at her for a long while, feeling detached from myself. The past few days seem hazy, as if they had happened to someone else. I twitch my fingers, just to be sure that I still can.

Kushina stirs at the movement. Her eyelids flutter for a moment before opening. She looks up and stares at me, still half-asleep, until suddenly her eyes widen and she throws her arms around me.

“Unagi-chan,” she wails, holding me too tight for comfort. I rest my head in the crook of her neck anyway and hug her back just as hard. It doesn’t seem right that I alone survived the carnage to make it back to her.

“I tried to save Hisao,” I say, my voice cracking, “but I couldn’t.”

Kushina shakes her head. “You’re just a baby, Unagi-chan. No one expected you to save anyone.”

“He was bleeding,” I say anyway, determined to tell her, “and I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop it, Kushina-nee-chan.”

For a moment reality crashes into me. I start wailing. Big heaving sobs with tears pouring down my face and my throat chokes up and I’m hiccupping through each sob.

“He couldn’t breathe and I… I... couldn’t…”

Kushina holds me at arm’s length, her face stern despite the tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s alright, Unagi-chan. It’s alright. You did your best. I know you did, because you always do. I’m sorry—” she hiccupped, “—so sorry that you had to go through that, but it was not your fault. You hear me? None of that was your fault.”

Oh, but I’m an old woman, not a baby. An old woman relying on a child to comfort her, when that child has just received news of her home being destroyed so utterly that no one would ever build there again. That all her loved ones save the one charlatan have died likely gruesome deaths, a scant month after she took on the heaviest of burdens and lost her mentor.

I wipe the tears futilely and squint at her. And even though I don’t believe her, I nod, because she needs to believe she helped me in some way. I need to support her. This can’t be about me. I push down my emotions as far as I can until all that is left is numbness.

“Okay, Kushina-nee-chan.”

“C’mon, Unagi-chan,” she says, tugging at my hand. “You know what will help a bit? Ramen.”

I choke out a laugh despite myself.

“Okay,” I say again, allowing her to pick me up and settle me on her back. She hands me my dictionary from the side table and I hold it close.

I’m incredibly thankful that Konoha hospital clothing consists of pants and a shirt and not a backless gown like in my first life.

We leave the hospital through the window, because Kushina isn’t sure whether or not I’m supposed to be able to leave at all.

The ramen stand she takes me to isn’t Ichiraku’s—I’m not even sure if Ichiraku’s exists yet—but it’s still delicious. Kushina and I eat without speaking. I’m ravenous, but Kushina still out-eats me by three bowls. When we’re finished she picks me up again and takes me to her apartment.

It’s small. A studio with a kitchenette, a kotatsu, a television, a shelf full of scrolls, and a futon.

“We’ll get you your own futon, of course, but for right now we can share.” She leads me to the kotatsu and has me sit down. I set my dictionary on the table. “I get a stipend from Konoha because I’m the—uh, I mean, I’m Mito-sensei’s student. Well, I was. She died, but I’m still her student, y’know? But, uh, ‘cause I get the stipend I can buy a futon for you. I just gotta wait until next week when I get paid again. Unless that old man Hokage lets me get it early.”

She stops and seems to consider this. After a long while she punches her palm, nodding to herself. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll ask him.”

And without further ado she then ushers me up and back towards the front door, because apparently going to bug the literal Hokage about a futon is in the realm of normal for her and it’s something that has to be done right now. My heart aches with a fondness I immediately quash down. I can’t get attached. She will die. I cannot get attached.

Attachment leads only to pain.

The Hokage’s tower isn’t too far from her apartment. We make it there in no time at all. It’s bustling with activity. People rush to and fro, both ninja and civilians alike. Some of the ninja look haggard, likely giving their reports before returning home after a long mission or the warfront. A man with his brown hair in a low ponytail sits at the desk in front of the Hokage’s office. He narrows his eyes at Kushina as she strides up to him.

“Hey, Ame, I need to talk to the old man,” Kushina says in lieu of a proper greeting.

He stares at her, unimpressed.

“It’s important,” she wheedles, widening her eyes and clasping her hands together plaintively.

He raises a single eyebrow, crossing his arms.

“It’s not about ramen this time?” she tries. Then she sighs, her grief showing through her face for a brief moment before she shoves it down. “It’s about Unagi-chan.”

Ame sighs, his shoulders slumping. “Only because he’s not doing anything important right now.” And because your village has just been destroyed, goes unsaid but heard.

Kushina beams at him, only getting a little teary-eyed. She then proceeds to tug me along after her and kick in the Hokage’s door.

“Hey, old man!” she hollers, “I have someone for you to meet.”

Ame mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “not my problem” to himself and pulls the door shut behind us.

Sarutobi Hiruzen is not sitting at his desk. Instead he stands near the window, looking pensive as he puffs his pipe. He doesn’t even bat an eye at our entrance, turning around as if this is one of his normal meetings.

Knowing the eccentrics of ninja, this probably isn’t too far off the mark.

“Kushina-chan, I see you’ve snatched your cousin from the hospital,” he says, eyes tired but amused. “Hello there, Unagi-chan.”

I nod at the God of Shinobi, my throat closing up, feeling a little overwhelmed. This is the second most powerful man besides the Daimyo in the whole country and Kushina had just kicked in his door like it was nothing.

Damn are we lucky that he really does seem as easy-going as a military dictator can be.

There’s a bit of quiet while everyone waits for the other people to speak before the Hokage clears his throat. “And the reason you are barging into my office is because…?”

“Ah, right.” Kushina slaps her palm. “I need money, old man. Unagi-chan needs a futon and stuff and I don’t get paid for a little while yet.”

Sarutobi puffs on his pipe for a moment. “You know, if you’d checked her out of the hospital properly you would have found that she is getting a stipend of her own, being one of the last survivors of Uzushio.”

We all stand in silence for a moment. Kushina rubs the back of her head. “You know, that makes sense, actually. I guess I better bring her back there and do that.”

“No need,” Sarutobi said, waving his hand vaguely at the door. “I anticipated this and had Ame-kun prepare the paperwork here.”

He rummages through the piles of papers on his desk, muttering to himself, “Now where did I put them…?”

After a minute he gives a little “Ah-hah!” and gestures Kushina forward. “Just sign here and here for me, Kushina-chan. Good, thank you.” He stamps the document and hands it to her. “Now you just need to take this to the office downstairs where you collect your own stipend and they’ll give you some funds.”

“Thanks, old man,” Kushina says, bowing. Hastily, I bow too.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” I manage to squeak.

Sarutobi’s eyes dance with tired amusement. “Of course. I do hope you get settled in alright, Unagi-chan.”

And Kushina picks me up and leaps out the window, because she can’t use the door like a normal person. I screech, holding on for deal life, until she uses the neighboring building to ricochet and sticks herself to the wall outside a window on the second floor of the Hokage’s tower. She opens it and climbs in.

The woman at the desk in the room we intrude on only sighs wearily. “Hello, Kushina-chan. You aren’t scheduled for a pickup.”

“Yeah, yeah, but my cousin is.” Kushina sets me down. My legs tremble with fading adrenaline. Kushina doesn’t appear to notice, thrusting the papers Sarutobi had given her at the woman. She accepts them and reads through them carefully, nudging her glasses back up her face.

“Yes, so it would seem. One moment, then.” She walks into another room. It doesn’t take her long to return. She makes a point to hand me the wad of this world’s paper currency and a bag that jingles with coins instead of handing it to Kushina.

Being as, to all intents and purposes, I appear to be a literal two-year old, I find this far more amusing than I should.

Kushina doesn’t seem to find anything odd about this at all and gathers me up so she can jump out the window again, calling “thanks, bye,” to the woman as we fall.

“Kushina-nee-chan, can’t you just walk down the wall instead of jumping, like you did at the hospital?” I moan, hiding my face in the crook between her neck and shoulder.

“Eh, why? This way’s faster, y’know.”

I groan.

҉

“I think you’re actually a lizard person in disguise, Unagi-chan,” says Kushina thoughtfully from her futon.

I don’t grace this with a response, adjusting my own futon so it’s more under the kotatsu and it’s lovely heat. It wasn’t my fault she was crazy and liked the apartment to be freezing.

We lie in companiable silence for a long time, neither of us managing to sleep despite how tired we were.

“I’m glad you made it, Unagi-chan,” Kushina says at last.

I try to be glad too.

“I’m going to have to go back to class,” she murmurs apologetically after a while. “You’re going to have to go too. You can’t stay in the apartment all by yourself, y’know?”

For a brief moment, I envision myself napping under Kushina’s school desk while she attends class before my rational side catches up and realizes she means to enroll me in the Academy. I blanche.

“I don’t want to be a ninja,” I tell her.

She’s baffled by the pronouncement. “You don’t? Why not? Ninja are awesome!”

“I don’t want to kill people.”

“You… won’t have to?” she says, confused. “You could join the Genin Corps or Research and Development or become a medic at the hospital or… well, there’s a billion things you can do without being a combat shinobi, y’know.”

I feel a bit stupid for not considering this. Kushina chuckles, presumedly from whatever face I’m making. The sound isn’t close to her usual boisterous laugh, tainted by grief as it was.

I rub my palms against the fabric of my futon to get rid of the sudden feeling of blood on them. It doesn’t help much.

“I’d… like to be a medic,” I say at last. Again. That’s what I did in my previous life, after all, although using chakra will be a lot different than using water bending, I imagine. Faster, for one. I needed to be faster.

Kushina nods. “Alright then. We’ll tell them when we enroll you tomorrow and they’ll give you extra classes when you start. Oh, and the kunoichi classes. Those are fun. You’ll learn all sorts of useful stuff that you can lord over the boys, like secret messages in flowers or how to pretend to be a kabuki player or a geisha and stuff. You’ll be so busy you won’t have time to be sad. Does that sound good?”

I nod, my throat tight again. Tomorrow. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

Our conversation ends, although neither of us fall asleep for a long while. I drift off first, my tiny body making its needs known.

When I wake in the morning, Kushina is already up and about in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.

“Did you even sleep last night?” I ask. Kushina shrugs.

“Don’t worry about me, Unagi-chan!” she replies, flipping over an omelet. “It’s good practice for hard missions.”

Translation: not even a little.

Kushina ends up burning her omelets and we resort to munching on only slightly-burnt toast on the way to the Academy. There is a hush to the air, as if the whole village is still asleep. Morning frost still graces the plants that grow through the pavement or on the windowsills. Few people are out and about, mostly shinobi hopping rooftops or meandering down the streets, although an early-rising civilian pops up here and there.

The Academy, it turns out, is attached to the Hokage’s tower, which seems an odd choice. Wouldn’t stray children get caught underfoot?

“It’s the most defensible part of the village, save for the emergency bunkers,” Kushina says, and I realize I’d spoken aloud.

“I guess that makes sense.”

Kushina leads us down a maze of hallways until she finds the room she is looking for. “Ne, Suzume-sensei, I have someone here I’d like to introduce to you.”

What follows is a whirlwind of paperwork and tests in order to gauge what classes I will fit into. In the end, we find out that I’m ahead of the game when it comes to most of the bookwork but sorely lacking in the physical department.

“We’ll put you in with the second years,” Suzume decides after going through my work. It’s just her and myself now, Kushina having wandered off to her own classes while I tested. “You’ll need to work extra hard to get up to par in your fitness regimen but you’ll do fine, I’m sure. You’ll be in Satoshi’s class.”

Satoshi’s class is filled with kids three times my physical age. They all stare as Suzume and I enter the classroom. Suzume introduces me to Satoshi, who has me introduce myself to the class. I’ve never been much for public speaking, but I manage the customary “My name is Uzumaki Unagi. Please take care of me.” spiel nonetheless. I’m assigned a seat towards the middle of the classroom and then the class continues where they left off in the lesson, something about kunai trajectory. I sit quietly, ignoring the whispers of the students around me, and think about buying a notebook after school today.

I get my first taste of socialization during lunch, when I sit at the base of a tree and eat the bento Kushina had prepared for me before we went to bed the night before.

“Hey, you’re the new kid.” The voice belongs to a girl with flyaway purple hair, a tattooed stripe across her nose, and a nasty look on her face. “Why are they putting a baby in our class? Are we going to have to get a pacifier for you?”

I stare at her, nonplussed. I don’t have time to respond.

“Hey, Reiko, leave her alone. She hasn’t done anything to you!” This voice belongs to a girl with a mess of spikey brown hair and triangle tattoos on her cheeks. An Inuzuka, judging by the dog padding alongside her.

Bless that clan, that’s twice they’ve come to my rescue.

“Ugh, Tsume, you can’t be serious.” The purple girl sneers, waving a hand at me. “Look at her. She’s probably still in diapers.”

“Just because it took you forever to learn to use a toilet doesn’t mean that everyone else does. The kid’s smart enough to get put in our class, that means she’s definitely smarter than you.”

Reiko puffs up like a angry cat. “You want to say that again, dog-breath?”

The dog at Tsume’s side growls deep in his throat before speaking, “Is that a challenge?”

“Should I feel flattered that people are fighting over me?” I ask the world in general. Naturally, nobody is listening.

The two girls go nose-to-nose, snarling at each other. I can practically see the sparks shooting from their eyes. Somehow, I get the feeling this stand-off isn’t really about me; I’m just caught in the crossfire of a rivalry.

As the two launch themselves at each other and begin to brawl, I wonder if I should whip up some impressive seals to keep people off my back. Would that keep them away or would I end up fighting constantly?

The dog bites Reiko in the leg and she shrieks, trying to shake him off.

I am going to have to learn to fight. It’s an inevitable part of training to become a shinobi. Even non-combatant shinobi know how to fight. So maybe ending up in a bunch of schoolyard mash-ups would be good for me in the end.

Tsume gets her hair yanked. Some strands come free of her head.

Maybe it wouldn’t be good. Neither of these two are using kata, after all.

All three of them end up in a pile on the ground, rolling around, biting and scratching, snarling insults.

I take a meditative bite of my bento. Just because they aren’t using kata doesn’t mean I can’t. I know the Uzumaki style kata, even if I don’t know any of the Academy style just yet.

Tsume ends up in a headlock, her dog biting the arm holding her.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry,” I say preemptively, catching their attention, “but I’m curious to know if you are rivals or if students just routinely start fights with one another. Is this something I need to be prepared for? Are there any rules to it?”

The three of them stop to stare at me.

At long last, Tsume answers, “You’re a weird kid, you know that, right?”

I hum. “I’ve been called that before, yes.”

The group push themselves off the ground, their battle temporarily forgotten.

“I didn’t catch your name,” I say to the dog.

He stares at me for a long moment. “Kuromaru.”

“Ah, nice to meet you.” I wonder if it’s rude to ask to pet him. Probably.

The bell rings, signaling the end of lunch, and all of us trudge back to the classroom as if nothing had happened at all. No one answers my questions. I’ll have to find out for myself.