Trapped in an endless cycle of reincarnation, this being is reborn into the Naruto-verse. Ensouled into a newborn baby and given the name Shima, what will happen?
Warning: Eventually it will get rated M for Blood, Violence and maybe a few other things. I mean, the Naruto-verse deals with war so be warned that warlike themes will eventually be introduced.
Note: This is an AU story inspired by Naruto. I'm a human being and it's been a little bit since I've read the manga, so my personal knowledge of canon is flawed. Furthermore, this story will be changing some things from the canon lore, the canon storyline/history, and the canon magic system. Therefore, it won't follow all the beats of canon, and there will be things that are true in canon that won't necessarily be true in this fic.
"I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing but the winning. Even winning means nothing."
-Durzo Blint, The Way of Shadows
I've long since come to the conclusion that death (or rather, my death) is an inconvenient occurrence. It almost always happens without warning. Imagine my plight: suddenly, you're stolen away from your life, your family, your friends, your culture and country --and above all: those few whom you love and are loved by in turn. Just to face it all over again.
Truly, death is a forced separation, though I've heard some call it a temporary parting of ways.
I know that I shouldn't scoff at the notion... It's a pretty hope, if nothing else. I can see where some might be comforted by it. And who knows? For them, it might even be true. But personally? If that possibility exists, it obviously doesn't apply to me.
I can't help but wonder, here in this grey fog of potentiality and possibility, the murky unlife and notdeath between lifetimes, if there was ever a time when I truly believed that? I think that during my first life, I might have --it's a wonderfully saccharine idea, after all. And I suspect that if there ever was such a time when I was young enough to have believed that, then it had to have been then.
The memories of my first lifetime are few and far between, but from what little I cling to, it was a carefree life of indolent luxury. I can't recall all that much of it, but I'm confident that it was my most peaceful life. I doubt that I'll ever have one like it again. War follows me… or maybe I follow war?
I once knew a boy who chastised me for being too reckless with my life. The genuine concern in his azure-sky eyes makes me want to smile, even now. Had I lips to smile, I just might. He didn't know about all the lives I've endured, and the many more I'll come to face. During one lifetime, I was a poet of moderate renown who died in war, and before that I was a child soldier who dodged puberty before it could damn me with acne. What my name was that time escapes me --it was one of my shorter lives, and the minute little details can blur together sometimes.
At one point, though, I distinctly remember being a xenobiologist. That was one particularly interesting life. I died while working with my peers to try and recover after a disastrous First Contact scenario. Humanity had been well on her way to being the only intelligent species in the Milky Way. She ensured it. The interplanetary ban on biological warfare was deemed not to extend to aliens; human rights were human rights, they preached in the streets. I don't remember where I stood on that divide, and I try not to linger on that life's memories, clear though they are, on the off-chance that I might remember.
Because I don't think that I've ever really been a kind person. I've been courteous and polite, of course. Even generous wherever I could (this affliction of mine makes martyrdom a bearable option, if no less painful). But kind? I haven't been genuinely kind in a while. This existence of mine simply doesn't allow for it.
The most recent kindness I can recall is the time I was a frontline soldier who fought on the Terra side of the Earth-Mars civil war. It was so many lifetimes ago, but I think that I had volunteered for war, the faint melodies of liberty and songs of freedom urging me and spurring me to action from the hazy recesses of my first life. By then, Earth had changed into something far from the one I had held loyalty to. I wouldn't find out until it was too late.
My participation in that particular military campaign is… not something I'm proud of. I had been doing so well before that! However it might have started, I can't find it within myself to regret pushing Victoria --who was little more than a child with a child's zeal and a child's recklessness --out of the way. She had her life to live, and I could always move to the next one.
Because if there's anything that I can count on in this weird life of mine where eras and gender are as fluid as the names I wore, it's the fact that (no matter what) my life will go on. I'll wake up at some point in Earth's history with a new body and a new name… It's almost as nice as it sounds.
Still. Trapped as I am in the wheel of samsara, all things seemed to take on a particularly… skewed look. The longing for knowledge and the desire to understand became my hunger and thirst. I crave intellection like a Haze addict craves their next fix and I want to hoard wisdom like I imagine a dragon would hoard gold.
Slowly, people are becoming less important. A few tensofdozensofhundredsofthousandsof lifetimes will do that to you, with faces and names mixing and misting into one another. That's not good, I know. I want to stop this seed of apathy from growing, but it seems like this… disease of mine is catered to nourish it to fruition. I fear for the day where I stop caring about it. I've seen too many horrifying things happen when such a mindset is encouraged.
Luckily, I still care about the younger humans, beastly though they may be. Children and babies make my heart smile and I'm almost tempted to have my own. But I can't. I can't allow myself to have children. I just wish I could remember why.
OH! The grey fog's turning black, and I can feel my consciousness merging with crude, infantile flesh. Ensoulment isn't a pleasant process, I assure you. The nerves flare with sensation and the greymatter pulses with pain at the strain of stretching to contain... well, me.
All the same, I feel restless. Had I a mouth to smile with, it would be smirking a monstrously toothy smile of eager anticipation. I can't wait to learn everything that this lifetime --this world --will have to offer me.
===
I felt weak and cold --so very cold. My frail, newborn limbs responded poorly to my demands. That's okay. Aggravating, yes. But okay. Given long enough, this body will mature to meet my mental demands.
Warm, rough hands lift me and I open my eyes to a world of bright, blurry colors. Like a kaleidoscope just out of focus, I couldn't begin to hope to make sense of my surroundings. But judging from the lack of white in that kaleidoscope, I… don't think that this is a hospital. Perhaps a homebirth or--
Oh. Oh no. This isn't another pre-medical care era, is it?
A thick, coarse cloth was wrapped around my tiny body --rough on this body's red, sensitive skin --and, involuntarily, I mew in protest. Cool air caresses my face as I was placed in a second person's arms.
This person's arms were warm and damp with… sweat, I think. Ah, this body's mother? I relaxed in her embrace as she spoke to the one who held me earlier.
Their chatter was unlike any of the languages that I've encountered before. It didn't seem like one of the variations of English that I'd been raised with during my last few lifetimes. Their words and style seemed almost like twenty-first century Japanese, but the words were too different for that. Maybe it's an offshoot?
"Shima," I heard my mother coo softly as she gently pressed a kiss into my forehead. Lulled into sleep by the metronomic beating of my mother's heart, I drifted to sleep.
Hey all!
This is my first Naruto fanfic and I've decided to do a sorta new take on the Reincarnated Self-Insert idea. My own twist is mostly because I don't think that I could do it anywhere as well as Miss Nanami-chan or Silver Queen over on FFN.
Please leave a review and let me know what you think about this!
I mean, if nothing else, it's definitely a start…?
Have a nice day,
Disclaimer: I own neither Naruto nor my heart (my S.O. and I have shared custody over each other's hearts) xD
Warning: Rated M for mature themes, so be careful not to prick yourself on all this edge. Also unbetaed, so it might be a little rough.
"..because the only kind of love I have to offer is stupid and blind and so deep and powerful that I feel like I'm cracking just to hold it in."
-Kylar Stern, The Night Angel Trilogy
"Just what're you doing, my beautiful boy?"
I looked up at my mother, my chubby four year old face arranged in a picture of innocence that belied my inkstained fingers that held the scroll's thick paper. "Trying to copy you, kaa-chan?"
Kaa-chan raised a single eyebrow at my answer, not falling at all for my deception. Still, when I discovered chakra –literally fucking magic –how could I not want to learn as much as I could? Especially if you can code it through ink and paper! Honestly, the fact that I get to learn something as new as magic (or "chakra," as kaa-chan stubbornly corrects) will probably make this my favorite life by far!
Unfazed by my unimpressive pout, the young woman giggled with delight and uncrossed her arms, swooping down to pluck my frustratingly-small body off the ground –she gave us a little twirl that had me (reluctantly, I assure you) laughing aloud at the spin in my stomach. Really, my mother was so kind to try and make my childhood one of love and laughter.
She swirled me in the air for a few more rotations before plopping down at the well-carved table (she's gotten really rather good at that) with me in her lap. The scroll before us held my childish attempts to recreate her alphabet –my own sort of training this body's fine motor control and learning the new language of the land.
Honestly, for how closely the language sounded like Japanese, it sure didn't look like it.
"Hmm. Pretty close, Shima-kun. You need to correct a few things, though…" Kaa-chan then proceeded to mercilessly (though not unkindly) point out each and every mistake I had made. I loved every moment of it.
===
This mother of mine is certainly in the top 10% of mothers I've had. She's scarily attentive to this body's needs –often knowing when I was hungry only moments before my body deigns to inform me of its demands –and attentive in a way that most of my parents weren't.
Once my muscles developed enough to allow me to walk, kaa-chan allowed me near-free reign of the house and its immediate surroundings under her watchful gaze. A gaze that held a fierce love that I recognize all too well. Woe to the fool who dared to endanger her loved ones.
I knew there was a reason that I like kaa-chan.
Perhaps, in the earliest lifetimes of my existence, there might've been a time where her attentiveness would make me feel trapped or claustrophobic. But I've lived too long for such a minor annoyance to bother me overmuch.
And this is a young, single mother with her first child. I can't exactly blame her for her overzealous care… It'll ease up once I'm not a defenseless four year old. Besides, from the very first week of this body's birth I knew only my mother's love.
Her expressive violet eyes reminds me the post-terraformed martian sunset and her deep auburn hair helps me remember Ireland's expansive hills and dales. Pale, alabaster skin hosts a sea of freckles that've been kissed into existence by the sun.
Kaa-chan's freckles made me a little jealous. At least I had her hair, though.
One day, she mentioned offhand that I look a lot like her, but with my father's tanned coloring. She froze immediately afterwards, a moment of stoic stillness before she immediately immersed herself in her calligraphy. It was the only time that she's mentioned my father and she hasn't mentioned him since. I don't particularly care though, since I'm not really the four year old she believes me to be. Besides, I have her and she's doing a far better job of "raising" me than most people have. To comfort her, I crawled in kaa-chan's lap and pestered her with an unending stream of questions about her calligraphy and fuuinjutsu.
===
I stare at the redheaded woman above me, enraptured by the smattering of freckles that decorate her porcelain pale face. With all the overflowing anticipation of a new mother, she's repeating herself slowly, the flowing syllables drawn out in a sing-song rhythm.
It was endearing to see this young woman –who couldn't have been much older than twenty –try to impart her language to me. The word itself she seemed to place so much stress on was easy enough to say, but this body's muscles hadn't developed enough for it.
Still, she was a kind mother with a patience far surpassing many of my mothers before her. So I reached up and placed my pudgy hand on her cheek. Gurgling incoherently, I looked into her wisteria-purple eyes and tried my best to emulate her words.
It would be good practice, right?
Besides, it made her glow with ecstatic joy, judging from the silly little dance she performed in the middle of the cabin's room.
===
Kaa-chan didn't mark time very well, but I think that I had lived through at least two winters when I noticed it. There was a pool of warmth behind my stomach that suffused through my body like a warm cup of coffee on a cold icelandic morning or the first gentle caress of the sun after a dark alaskan winter. It felt kind and safe in a way that I couldn't remember feeling ever before.
I… loved it. It was a panacea for my soul. A comfort that bypassed the soul-worn scars that littered my psyche and soothed the aches and pains I carried.
It would only be a few weeks after my initial discovery (tied to this body's development, perhaps?) when I noticed that this feeling wasn't just in me, but it was in everything. It was in the safe-sturdy-welcomingembrace stone cabin of our home, it was in the grow-wild-sunlightbright glade that our humble home resided, it gleamed with a hidden potential from within the ink that my mother fiddled with and glittered dangerously sheathedclaws-hiddenfangs-unlitfuse in the tattoos that whirled and swirled in intricate, circular designs –spiraling up kaa-chan's arms from her wrists to underneath the lip of her sleeves.
"Kaa-chan" I fumbled awkwardly. This mouth's shape is more than a little different than my last one, making learning a whole new language from scrap into a harder endeavor than it really should've been. But my mother seemed to think that I was progressing well enough, occasionally calling me her little prodigy –always followed by a flare of deep horror within the depths of her eyes, smothered by a mountain of almost fatalistic determination. "I feel...warm. In me and outside me."
"Well, it is getting warmer," kaa-chan mused thoughtfully. "Should I make another window, little one? It might make for a nice little cross-breeze."
"No, not heat," I denied, screwing up my face to try and conjure the right words, sifting through my newly-limited vocabuary. "Warmth. In my stomach. In the house. In kaa-chan's ink."
"My ink?" Her eyes lit up like a started deer. "You can feel that already?"
"Yes," I nodded, curiosity burning within me. Kaa-chan seemed surprised, so maybe I wasn't supposed to feel this? But it was something new, something different. I had to ask. "What is it?"
"That… my beautiful boy," she hedged carefully, picking me up into her arms. "Is chakra."
Chakra. Like in hinduism? That had never held any weight in reality during my previous lives, but... if reincarnation is possible, then maybe I shouldn't judge too quickly.
She then proceeded to tell me very carefully about this mix of spiritual and physical energies, how it influenced the world and everyone in it. All living things had it and relied on it –and in certain circumstances, it could even be utilized if you were careful enough.
That treasured bit of information led to questions about my mother's fiddling with ink. She always makes her own, picking a carefully measured ratio of strangely specific berries and distilled treesap before gingerly mixing it with a dosage of her own blood ("to combine it with my chakra, and bind it to my will").
Apparently, this was what allowed kaa-chan to do her calligraphy.
Emboldened by this knowledge -that it was possible to learn how to manipulate this… magic, this chakra –I began to watch kaa-chan carefully each time she sat down to fiddle with her scrolls, her "fuuinjutsu."
Eventually, she huffed and simply sat me down beside her at the worktable, teaching me the first steps of Sealing. "Better to learn the basics and understand what you're doing than to try to copy an exploding tag and mess up," my mother explained with only slightly deadened eyes.
At the time, I didn't understand what dangers she implied, but I would. And when I learned enough about sealing to understand her concerns, I would once again be reflect of her lovingly watchful gaze and how she indulged any question I had.
I think that I could grow to love this mother of mine.
===
Thick stone walls surrounded our little hideaway, lightly blanketed by a camouflage of forest growth kept us safe from the wilderness –my mother had inscribed a swirling script that purred and growled at the edges of my consciousness.
Hand in hand with my mother, I waddled out of our stone home and into the meadow. Impossible flowers of every color imaginable gleamed in the morning sunlight like a pastoral painting of rustic paradise. I stumbled through it all with a genuine glee, relishing in the loamy dirt between my toes as I made sure to stop by every flower I saw –loudly demanding "name!" from my mother, feeling very much like the child that I should have been.
Somehow, I didn't mind. Because… I didn't recognize the plants at all. There were no wildflowers, no lilies or roses. This meadow held no honeysuckle or heather. I couldn't even point and say "this probably evolved from that." Every plant was so very different than all that I had seen before. I didn't recognize a single flower and I rejoiced in the newness of it all.
But what really held a fixture in my heart were the trees that stood guard around our humble abode. Reddish grey, these trees towered even above America's gargantuan sequoia trees from Before. Unlike those familiar trees, these sylvan giants sported thick branches that looked sturdy enough to cradle a tank in its woodland embrace as one might a newborn baby. Idly, I felt a faint urge to carve the wood, to tackle the challenge that it might provide –it'd certainly be harder than carving Venus's soft Dunvin wood.
This was a whole new world, full of things for me to learn.
Please. If there's some distant god or demon out there somewhere (one who would willingly lower themselves to make a pact with me), please don't take me away from this lifetime anytime soon. I like this one.
I… I could get used to this.
===
There was a strange man outside. He was garbed in a grey-black sort of armor that's a universal signature of a black ops uniform. The Venetian mask he wore only solidified that idea, regardless that it vaguely resembled a… dog? Or maybe a wolf? I warned kaa-chan about him, and that his chakra felt like cold static that danced with a cautious curiosity.
Her face froze into a cold expression that unveiled just how damaged my wonderful mother really was. But that's okay, she's my mother. I don't mind her scars or her jagged edges. And I have too much of my own to fear my mother's protectiveness –because how could her maternal instincts be spawned from anything but love? She's too good of a person for it to be any different.
My mother's seal-tattoos began to glow an ominous blue in the darkness of our home as she stepped outside, their curling-cutting-dormant edge stirring awake. As kaa-chan's foot crossed the threshold, her household seals activated. Interlocking, overlapping seals unfurled, spiraling outward and blanketed every surface of our small stone cottage –the azure luminescence lighting up the small building like as though it was noon on a clear summer's day.
Worry for my kaa-chan flickered under a wave of admiration for the young woman. Her sealwork was a beautiful tapestry of war-tempered love and maternal devotion that I could only hope to one day replicate… I really lucked out with this mother, didn't I?
An hour of tense silence passed before the seals dimmed to blackness, furling back into themselves. Kaa-chan walked through the front door without an auburn hair out of place. That was the first day that I heard the word "Konoha."
Every full moon after that, the same man would return, trading supplies for some of the spare seals that kaa-chan had deemed lacking.
Just some basic foundational groundwork, but hey: progress, no?
Cross-posted at FFN under the same name if that's your preferred place.
Shima-kun's name is a combo of the Japanese words for "mountain" and "forest," as translated by Google Translate (so… ya know. Take that info with a barrel of salt).
Any comments, questions, concerns or ramblings you want to share? Believe me, I (of all people) won't mind
-R
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the naruto universe. All of it belongs to… well, someone I'm sure. Definitely not me, though. I'm just here playing in the sandbox, having some fun!
Warning: This fic is rated M. War is a thing that has always fostered the worst of us and BOY, does Naruto have a lotta war!
"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens"
-Gimli
It started innocently enough. I was murmuring songs from one of my previous lives under my breath as I worked on my calligraphy. My handwriting had vastly improved in this life than in my most recent one, hands steady as they held the brush, flowing from one movement to another with a surprising ease –kaa-chan always managed to find a flaw, nitpicking some minor detail. That made me all the more eager to see the day where she'd deem my calligraphy more than merely "acceptable."
My kaa-chan was a harsh tutor, demanding nothing more than my best and accepting no less. And since she knew Shima-kun well, kaa-chan would see through any attempt to pretend mediocrity. Ever since she seemed to label me a genius, this young mother of mine never seemed very surprised when I accomplished something that no child my age should have done. Or perhaps her unflappability was born more out of being a first time parent with nothing to compare my development to? Either way, it was a relief to not masquerade as just another ignorant child and be my "true" self. Well, I was free to act closer to myself than I had been in a while.
It made me feel a little closer to kaa-chan, actually.
I was working on my calligraphy –through practicing my sealwork with uncharged, unbloodied ink, because anything else would have been stupidly inefficient –when my mother swept into the room, asking what I had been singing under my breath.
I couldn't say that I had been singing along to a musical that didn't exist in a language that hadn't been introduced to this world. Fumbling, I tried to explain that I had made up a story in a fake-language for fun. Children did that sometimes, right? Hadn't that one author spent his childhood doing the very same thing? I couldn't remember.
Any experienced parent would have seen through my lie immediately, but I was also the child that absorbed fuuinjutsu, hunting, history, and every other lesson kaa-chan imparted on me with the thirst of a bored person –man, I belated corrected, since this body is distinctly male –stumbling on a lifetime's-worth of interesting things. I was the son that was a ceaseless font of questions (usually some variation of how and why) that she was both kind and patient enough to indulge.
So of course, kaa-chan took this knowledge with only a raised eyebrow of mild surprise before demanding that I teach her. "It'll be like our little secret language," she smirked, a secretive mirth alight in her eyes. "We can keep it from Dog-san and he'll never know." A delightful way to ensure op-sec, I suppose. Framed through a child's mischievousness, but that was just kaa-chan's way of trying to preserve my innocence.
I smiled at her thoughtfulness and obliged. Besides, it was nice to share something that actually belonged to me with someone else.
===
"Again," kaa-chan demanded ruthlessly.
I held my hand aloft, focusing on the leaf (the "hashirama" trees that I so adore have leaves shaped like a maple leaf, but are waxy-thick in a way that intrigued me). I closed my eyes, removing any errant sensory input and focused on the pool of chakra that sat just behind my stomach. A familiar warmth (steady-sharp-freshforestair-firm) spread throughout my body like a warm embrace, soothing what aches and pains I've managed to accrue through the day while easing the more mental wounds that my particular… affliction left me with.
I channeled the energy toward the leaf, doing my best to distribute it evenly. If I didn't, then the leaf would either rip at the point of imbalanced pressure or just fall off my hand –depending on the amount of chakra I'd filled it with.
I nodded slightly, confident. Kaa-chan tested it, channeling a light stream of air across my hand. The leaf remained stuck to my hand so she increased the airflow just a little bit. It didn't budge from my hand.
Seventh time the charm, then?
Kaa-chan yelled aloud with pride and I smiled tiredly with her joy. Training chakra was exhausting in a way that I hadn't expected, but after my first encounter with chakra exhaustion, my mother's gentle gaze kept watch over me while I practiced. Like muscles, my chakra reserves would grow with both time and effort but too much too early will damage them irreparably.
"You'll also need control, my little genius. On general, boys have more chakra than girls and our… our clan has a lot more chakra than most anyone else," Kaa-chan once warned me, when a rare thunderstorm boomed over our heads and the symphony of falling rain sounded outside our stonemold cabin. "You'll be able to do a lot more than most people for a lot longer, but Shima… you need to refine that strength with precision or you'll waste chakra needlessly. The ink I make? I shouldn't have to include my own blood, you know.
"I should be able to inject my chakra strait into the mixture without using my blood as a medium. But I can't –my chakra control isn't that fine –and when I try, the ink either becomes too concentrated to use for sealing or it slips away from the ink without leaving enough to matter."
Refine your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. A fairly common tactic for anyone in a combat role, but my familiarity with the philosophy doesn't negate its validity. I nod in understanding and I caught glimpse of a long-repressed relief shining through in the too-small smile kaa-chan gave me.
===
Once my calligraphy was up to par, my mother started me on barrier seals, rather than anything complex like a sealing array or anything dangerous like explosive tags. "If you make a mistake, the barrier will fizzle out rather than destroy what you've sealed away," kaa-chan explained, leaving unsaid what could happen to a faulty explosive tag –we both knew the obvious dangers in that particular field.
Kaa-chan stressed the importance of a perfect foundation for any seal and taught me how to incorporate support-arrays to lessen the chakra demand. Eventually, I would be able to create my own Master Seals (complex displays of fuuinjutsu, written in scrolls ranging from the size of our chairs to the size of our bookshelf) that I could refer to in later scrolls shorthand-style and do a lot more for a lot less. Eventually. After kaa-chan taught me more about the theory behind crafting my own original seals. And she'd do that only after I master the basics to her satisfaction.
For now, kaa-chan hounded me about the fundamentals and their innumerable practical applications… and I know she'll keep doing it until I can answer any question she has (in detail) at any time, without warning –though thankfully, my mother still answers any sealing question I have. Even if a mere "where does a sealed object go" ended up requiring a two hour-long lecture on what amounted to the interworkings of a hammerspace. Almost half of that was me peppering kaa-chan with variations of "why" until I understood her explanations to my own satisfaction.
It was fascinating, and I committed myself to learning this art (for it was, indeed, as much an art as it was a science) with a zeal that left my kaa-chan smiling with pride.
===
I gingerly reached across the stone table (our wooden one had been an unfortunate casualty in the name of fuuinjutsu education) and tapped the corner of my sealing tag with the very edges of my fingertips. This was the fourth different iteration of this particular design for my current project.
The others had more… interesting results. Right now, all of our flammable furniture was either sealed away or stored away in the bedroom, leaving kaa-chan's workroom looking oddly barren. The small room seemed so much larger when all it held was a small stone table –really, my mother was getting rather good at shaping raw earth and stone with her chakra alone… though most of her proficiency came from needing to replace the furniture we sacrificed for the sake of my training.
Carefully, I channeled as little chakra as I could manage into the tag and felt it travel across the chakra-infused ink. A small blue-white hemisphere opened above the tag, shaped a little like a cupped pair of hands. I continued the steady trickle of chakra, and braced myself.
But nothing happened. No wild fire licked at my fingers and no ash met my face. I opened my eyes and saw the most beautiful thing in the whole world. In the center of the blue-white bowl (which was actually an inverted octagon-barrier array, bound by size-density constraints that I had worked for ages to get right) was a small flickering red flame, not much bigger than a candlelight.
"Good job, Shima" my mother smirked from the doorway. "I told you that this design would work."
She had. Though, she had also wanted to include limiting annotations to constrict the fire's maximum temperature and size whereas I... didn't. I wanted it to scale with its chakra input, even going so far as to try and have it increase exponentially with a linear input. That hadn't gone very well. The fire went from a nice, controlled stream of fire to a column of runaway destruction that had almost burned down the meadow before kaa-chan could smother the hungry flames in massive amounts of dirt. The plants haven't completely regrown, though I'm sure that they will soon enough –forest fires often end up helping the forests that they happen in. So while that iteration of the seal's design hadn't worked, the final version was still able to go from nightlight to flamethrower in a couple of heartbeats.
Eventually, I'll tinker with the design to make it more efficient and make it work immediately. But that was a task for another day. I allowed myself to feel satisfaction in my accomplishment, my lips curling in a small smile at my kaa-chan's praise.
===
Emotions are… odd. They're a product of neurochemicals that are produced and released by the brain –an organ, a crude material thing. Being reborn is always different. Being reborn is always the same. Each body that I've had has had different thresholds for each emotion. That vague biological boundary is usually ironed out through societal conditioning and personal endeavors. A human being isn't just biological in nature, but we're also not just a ghost wearing a body like my kaa-chan wears a yukata.
We are our bodies in a very real way… but we're also not just our bodies.
Maybe I'm unique in this regard, an aberration caused by my frequent reincarnations? Or maybe it's my reincarnations that make me particularly sensitive to whatever mind-body divide there might be? Either way, this body feels powerfully. This time, my emotions are unusually potent and, on occasion, I can feel myself drowning in them. Kaa-chan laughs it off as a factor of childhood and I hope that she's right. Otherwise, puberty is going to be a bitch and a half.
===
I awoke to my mother shaking me awake. There was a tenseness about her that I immediately disliked, visible in the pinched corners of her eyes and the wild, frayed look she had behind her mask of composure.
"Get up, my heart. We have to go." I immediately leapt out of bed and began to throw my clothes on with an efficiency born from several lifetimes in various militaries. As soon as I tied my boots, kaa-chan swept me up in her arms and held me tightly against her as she ran outside. I could feel hard, metallic inserts inside her kimono –I've never even seen this kimono before, the material felt a little like the spider silk bodysuit I'd been forced to repurpose as underarmor that one time during the Martian Suppression.
Looking over kaa-chan's shoulder, I could see that the house was empty. Like an empty shell of a long-dead turtle, our stone-hollowed home was empty, devoid of every sign of life –save for the seals that sparked and howled dangerously against my senses. As lively as they felt, there was no telltale azure gleam in the dark, no warning that there might be any security seals interwoven in every square inch of the building –it's a trap, someone's after us.
The realization crystallized in the back of my mind. My mother was fleeing from someone. She always had been. She fled to protect me. I knew my kaa-chan. She was a proud, clever woman with the ingenuity to supplement her already formidable skills. If she were alone, she probably would have faced this unknown danger head on with her vicious smile that reminded me of a broken bottle of beer –all sharp shards and jagged edges.
But she wasn't alone. She had been pregnant and had to think about her obligation to me first. So she forced herself to allow an enemy unpursued while she did her best to raise me. Well, it certainly explained her reaction to seeing Dog for the first time –the ANBU agent refused to give me his actual name, so I'd taken to calling him by the name of his mask. Not terribly imaginative, but he seemed amused by the moniker rather than annoyed.
My mother dashed through the canopy of trees, darting from branch to branch as though the very hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. For all I knew, they were.
I curled into her body to reduce what drag I could and to keep the cold night air from sapping my warmth. The less that kaa-chan had to worry about me, the more she could focus on her retreat –I'd had a large dinner just a few hours ago, so we should have time enough.
A quarter hour passed –judging by the count of my heartbeats –when a loud explosion sounded through the forest. A swirling mushroom cloud of smoke and ash obscured the stars, the immense thickness of it generating its own lightning. Was this the trap that she set? Even from a distance, it towered into the sky like a metropolitan skyscraper. By gods, it could've covered the meadow at its widest points two or three times over and then some. I felt a nauseating mixture of awe and horror at the destructive power my mother held even as a cold corner of my mind theorized what fuuinjutsu that crafted to get that particular effect –fire combined with wind, compacted with a chakra drain trap set to maximum withdrawal rate with the standard safety annotations replaced with a recursive catalytic acceleration support array.
And that was discounting all that my mother knew that I didn't and the house's own privacy/security seals she might've co-opted for the trap.
As we fled the destruction, Kaa-chan's already tight embrace became even tighter and she picked up yet more speed.
===
Dog looked down at me, suppressed amusement clear in his body posture –there was a minor illusion obscuring the eyeholes of his mask, but his monthly supply trips had allowed for a minor amount of familiarity to grow between us. Kaa-chan never allowed him alone with me but still tacitly allowed our quasi-friendship, so long as we remained under her observant gaze.
"Are you quite sure that you should be learning this so soon?"
I resisted the urge to snort at Dog's concern. "Kaa-chan's taught me how to tree-walk, but she can't water-walk. The clan had different requirements for their ninja, but if I don't learn how to do it now, when my reserves aren't in my way, then I'll never learn it."
Kaa-chan's coiled chakra rippled in hidden anguish at my past tense. But it was true enough. Our clan was dead and gone –or at least as good as. I tried to ignore the glow of gentle sympathy in my gut.
"I'll talk to her about Uzu during dinner," I swore to myself. It hurt kaa-chan to talk about our village, but it was a cathartic hurt –it bypassed her walls and scar tissue, lancing though to the bottled bile she buried inside. Besides, my mother often forced herself to pass on everything about Uzu that she could manage to –from food to techniques to bedtime stories and everything in between.
Dog glanced across the clearing to kaa-chan, and when he received a jerked nod of approval, he led me over to a shallow pond –the result of experimenting with explosive seals and a few days of idle rain.
"Now, Konoha's agreement with your mother doesn't cover training, so if you want more later on, it's going to be generalized. The sort of training that anyone could learn on their own, given enough time. If you want something more specialized, then your mother's going to need to acknowledge yourheritage that I definitely don't know about."
"Why would our… ancestry matter," I hedged carefully, mindful of the mutual doubletalk.
"Because Konoha had more than just a mere nonaggression pact with a select few countries –like Uzushiogakure, for example. With that particular Village, Konoha had a mutual protection pact in case of war, at least seven separate contingencies for emergency evac –that I know of, meaning there's likely at least three more that I don't –and that's not getting into the immense amount of import/export deals that Konoha had with them."
I stare at where Dog's eyes should have been with an unblinking intensity.
"Point being, I know of two agreements where Konoha offered asylum in the case of a level eight emergency. And at least one in a number nine."
Kaa-chan cleared her throat meaningfully, a dangerous look in her eye. Volumes were given in that glare, and Dog hurried to teach me the first steps of water-walking.
===
Kaa-chan ran for several days straight, not once stopping to rest. When we got hungry, she would pull a ration bar out of one of her seals, and we would eat while she continued to run –my feet didn't meet the ground once, held as I was in my mother's arms.
Her luxurious, auburn hair had fallen out of its normally utilitarian braid and was now a rat's nest of twigs and stray leaves –after the second night, kaa-chan had decided to forgo our stealthy canopy-run in favor of a mad dash of speed toward Konoha, foliage and underbrush be damned.
I remained silent about my own minor cuts out of fear of attracting trouble and my mother only occasionally gave a whisper of reassurance through her strained breathing. She wouldn't be able to do this for much longer, chakra or no. The human body needs sleep to move, and kaa-chan's been doing a lot of running.
It was sunset on the third day when kaa-chan stumbled to a halt in a nondescript part of the forest. Really, it all looked the same to me, but apparently the undergrowth made a reasonable enough defensive position, because kaa-chan fell to one knee, using sealless, raw elemental manipulation to carve a small alcove in the dirt –it was smaller a jail cell. Still rather impressive for a woman too tired to use a proper jutsu… doubly so since Earth wasn't her primary affinity.
We slept for exactly three hours (just long enough for the full moon to rise) before we departed again. I looked up at the pale goddess in the sky and wondered what Dog would think when he saw the clearing. Sure, we were heading to Konoha (I'd long deduced our destination by the angle of the stars and a mental map of the Elemental Nations, a trick taught to me by kaa-chan through childish games) but that didn't mean we were heading along his path.
In fact, it was probably certain that we wouldn't. As an ANBU, Dog likely went a slightly circuitous route to protect his op-sec whereas kaa-chan was taking a beeline straight to Konoha.
I closed my eyes, trusting my mother to get us to safety.
===
My face slammed into the soft forest floor, not the best way to wake up. Adrenalin flooded my body, pushing the last vestiges of sleep away in a wave of alertness. I jumped to my feet, and saw my kaa-chan pulling herself off the ground near me.
Dark bags underscored her eyes with exhaustion, indignant fury and maternal determination openly warred on her face as she plucked a senbon from her calf. Standing up, she waved me over, taking off her pack with a recklessness that worried me –all of our possessions were sealed away, their scrolls held in there for safekeeping. It was an inane thing, to worry about our material possessions when our very lives were at stake.
She pulled out her sealing tools and quickly wrote seals on my skin –a onetime massive storage seal with three foundational arrays and seven support structures to ensure the seal's stability, set to fade when whatever is sealed away is pulled out. I gave kaa-chan a questioning look. Skin made was an adequate enough chakra conductor, but that was stressed whenever fuuinjutsu was involved. Factor in that she was the one making the seal and not me (though, as my mother, her chakra would be similar enough to mitigate the issue… a little bit) and that this was a complex temporary seal? This would demand a lot of chakra from her. A lot.
"Look at me, Shima," Kaa-chan commanded, her voice dangerously soft. "I'm going to give you your inheritance early, okay? Inside the pack is a scroll labeled 'Contingent: FUBAR.' It has one scroll for the Hokage and another for you. Read yours before you open anything else."
I didn't smile at my mother's horrible accent with the English language. It wasn't funny this time.
"You're fast, so keep running north by northwest, okay? Don't stop running. Eat a ration bar if you get hungry but don't stop running. I'll meet up with you in Konoha in a few days, I've just got to take care of our tails and I can't do that it I have to watch over you."
I felt a sad smile mar my face. Kaa-chan's left nostril was flaring, just like it always does when she lies. She was even going as far as to try and make me angry, to try and get me to leave her without a fight. My poor mother.
I hugged her, my small fingers holding her just as tightly as she held me. I let go and her grip tightened for a fraction of a heartbeat before letting me go. We both ignored her the clean trails her tears left on her dirty face. I agreed and (after repeating her instructions four times verbatim) she gave me our pack to seal into my forearm before turning around and running the way we came. It was like seeing a Greek throw a discus, or a hunter let loose an arrow.
I rifled through the pack, taking out what I would need before sealing the pack away in my kaa-chan's seal. With a huff, I followed in my mother's steps, using the seal I had slipped on her back as a compass. She would need my help.
Here you go, another chapter of this piece. Whatcha think?
This is my first ever attempt to write anything using first person pov, so I'm not quite sure how I'm doing, but I'll get better –if only so I can look at my work without feeling faintly nauseous!
While it is decently written, it's definitely not better than most fics on this site. Better than ffnet by a far and wide margin, but SV has higher standards in general.
With that said, it has been a good 3 chapters, so I'm looking forward to the future chapters. One thing I appreciate is the lack of focus on previous lives, and just the odd reference. It's a nice touch to emphasise that it isn't the MC's first rodeo, but that it is the first time in a fantasy world and not just whipping out skills left right and centre. The loyalty to his mother is also a nice touch, even if it may turn out poorly.
Only thing I'd note is to see what you can do to make the 'flashback' sections a little more clear regarding them being flashbacks (e.g. the water-walking training with Dog). There were a few spots where you skipped around with the timeline and it got a little confusing as to what order events happened.
Other than that, pretty good. You've done well in setting the scene. Judging by the comment about his skin taking after his Father, I'm guessing absent Dad was a Kumo-nin and Badass-Mum probably escaped from some sort of Kumo facility where they were trying to get access to the various Uzumaki bloodline effects. She manages to get in contact with Konoha at some point but doesn't join it officially (presumably due to post-war politics between Konoha and Kumo being very tense and not wanting to risk Shima being targeted).
All in all, a very nice start and I hope Kaa-chan survives because having an extra uzumaki in Konoha could be very interesting. Especially since IIRC Uzu was sacked during the 3rd ninja war which means Minato is about to/has just become Hokage and will marry Kushina pretty soon.
Well, I like it. I agree that you're striking a neat balance when it comes to the focus on the Now vs. the Past, but like the post above mine said; flashback could do with a clearer distinction.
I do hope the mother survives; far to often in SI stories the parent/parents are simply killed off to give the MC more agency, but it always feel like a cop out to me. I'd rather have her remain as a character and watch as both she and her relationship with the MC develops.
Other than that, I hope you keep working on it. Naruto, for all that I'm not super fond of the source material, is undoubtedly and interesting world to explore.
something to keep in mind when writing about fuinjutsu mechanics: there's a limit on how big an explosion can actually get from currently known fuinjutsu/power source combos.
Pein's need for the Biju is to create large explosions. If they were unnecessary then his organization would not have needed to be formed to gather them.
Looks like we're at the obligatory "let's kill off the parents so the child will be forced to go to Konoha" part of the story. Still, the sealing is interesting and I'm always interested in reading peoples' interpretation of it.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the naruto universe. All that I really lay claim to is my OC, Shima. Other than that, I'm basically just playing make-believe in a prebuilt sandbox… though what fun it is!
Warning: This fic is rated M for a reason. Violence, Blood, and maybe some other stuff depending on how my outline turns out. After all, no plan lasts first contact with the writing bug!
"There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids."
–Stephen King
"Hey, what do you think a sunset on Earth is like," Victoria chirped, nodding her head to some unknown rhythm as she cleaned her gun. "Do you really think it's all orange and red like they show on tv?"
"Nah," Puvanro's sneering alto sounded from across the barracks. "Earth has too much pollution for that. Betcha that it's all computerized now. They can make anything look like anything on a computer."
I glanced up from my bunk to Victoria, her gene-spliced teal eyes cautiously curious behind a childish veneer of indifference. I sighed reluctantly.
Children.
"You know… I was on Earth, once upon a time," I began, the soft musical lilt of my voice easily carrying across the now-silent barracks.
===
I remember one time I asked my mother where she got all of these books from –and indeed, intermixed throughout the scrolls were books… apparently, Uzushiogakure hadn't really enforced a standardization about that and had simply left it up to each person's preference.
Well, it turned out that kaa-chan was the librarian of Uzu and had brought all of them with her when the Village had been attacked. And apparently fuuinjutsu had been very centralized, with Seal Masters and Mistresses depositing their own journals (often written in a tiered-style code to prevent newbies from blowing themselves, or the island, up) and never bothering to write it down again, unless it was to make an updated journal to replace the old one; the Uzumaki memory is a fearsome thing.
Because Uzu shared her knowledge so openly with her people, the sealing arts was a more communal endeavor than in the other nations; it wouldn't be uncommon for five or more specialists to work together on an array –be it the research for or experimentation thereof. If someone's sealing style was lacking in a certain area, or if they needed a sounding board for ideas, theory and techniques were discussed over tea the way that nosy neighbors would discuss local gossip.
But the Uzumaki's sealing techniques were jealously guarded against outsiders, and the librarian's role was far more than merely administrative. So naturally, when it became clear that the Village was facing a very real threat of extermination, it had been kaa-chan's responsibility to ensure the safety of their collected knowledge.
Coincidentally, my mother's title of "librarian" was better translated as "Keeper of the Archives" or "Sentinel of the Scrolls."
===
I walked across the forest floor, needing no chakra to silence my footfalls. I darted from shadow to shadow, and from cover to cover as I traced my kaa-chan's tracking seal. South. South. Then south by southeast. It only took a few minutes to find them, but by the end I was able to locate them more accurately by the feel of their chakra (numb-hollow-mutedresignation) than by the tag. Kaa-chan (bitter-primalhurt-determineddeath) was flipping from tree to tree, flinging tagged kunai at the group of masked shinobi as fast as her stressed body would allow.
As it was, she wasn't enough. I felt immensely glad that I came when I did.
Dead, bleeding bodies were scattered across the ground like pine needles in autumn, but there were four of them still alive, and only one of my mother. Sealing Mistress my kaa-chan might be, but she's utterly exhausted and facing greater numbers.
With one hand, I swiftly pulled a kunai out of the holster at my side, throwing it in a calculated arc towards my mother. With my other hand, I threw a brace of specialized senbon –engraved with a tracking seal on the metal –toward the other enemy ninja, more out of hope for a distraction than anything. Theoretically, the tag, coupled with my chakra-sensing, would let me keep track of all the enemy shinobi at once.
My kunai intercepted the enemy senbon that had been speeding toward her blind spot. No doubt it had been poisoned. The clang of metal on metal was music to my ears. Luckily, I saved kaa-chan and forced the other ninja to dodge out of the way. Unluckily, that meant I now had their attention. I heard my mother swear under her panting breath.
Four on two. Assume the worst. One of the four is probably a poison specialist. Okay, I can do this.
I darted back at a forty-five degree angle, then forward at a larger angle, leaping into the trees to avoid a barrage of… wind jutsu? Huh, that was supposed to be rare around Fire Country, right? I filed that information away for later. Judging by the angle the wind scythe had come from, the poison specialist probably wasn't the wind-natured one. Good.
Flipping from branch to branch, I pulled out one of my more… experimental explosive seals from where I was first began learning the art and wrapped it around a kunai. As kaa-chan's ferocity skyrocketed –ouch, unknown shinobi number two probably wasn't going to use that hand anytime soon –I flung my tagged kunai at the wind-user.
"Four," I shouted to kaa-chan in English.
She swore once more and immediately disengaged her opponent, getting as much distance between her and my target as possible. Good plan, I should do that too.
The wind-user tried to deflect my kunai (bad move, always dodge when you can) and bright white flames exploded from my seal. It was the result of my trying to make a magnesium torch with fire chakra. Even with the redundancies and the limiters, that seal had not one of my safer experiments… or one of my smartest ideas. Why did she approve the test, again?
The wind-user waved his war fan instinctively – tipped with metal and poison, I noted –and caused a surge of wind to spread into the blindingly white flames. Likely he thought to push it away, if he even fully registered what it was. Bad move.
Wind chakra and fire chakra are like well-applied makeup and revenge: they go really well together… maybe too well, depending on who you ask. Either way, the instinctive reaction of this ninja was going to have his whole team blinded. I screwed my eyes shut, crouching behind the shadow of a hashirama tree with my eyes buried into my forearms and my forearms digging into my thighs for any extra covering I could get.
The searing white conflagration exploded with divine intensity, leaving me half-blind with sunspots, even with my haphazard attempt at protecting my eyesight. I reached out with my chakra-sense and felt five middling lights, wavering in place; the enemy combatants and my kaa-chan were similarly indisposed. Good and bad, that.
Doing my best to blink the sunspots away, I blindly reached for a kunai and aimed using my chakra senses. I let the kunai fly and, suddenly, the enemy numbers were down to three. I think… I think that was the wind-user?
A shockwave of earth bulldozed towards me, kicking up rocks and loose dirt like a stampeding rhino across the African grasslands. Blearily, I leapt into the nearby tree. Blind as I was, I couldn't accurately get my chakra to completely stick to the tree. It was like a cat snagging its claw on a thread, but I managed to use that small amount of leverage to scramble my way up –thankfully, this body was small and thin enough that it was easy for panic-fueled muscles to lift my way onto the thick branch.
Underneath the tree, I felt kaa-chan's chakra spill out of her and deliberately saturate the earth–bad move, bad move, it's a waste of chakra you can't afford, kaa-chan –and I knew, with a bitter certainty, that there wouldn't be any more Earth jutsu coming from there. The ground would be safe to fight on without fearing an enemy Earth jutsu… Unless, of course, one of them had a greater control over Earth chakra. Shit. Plan for Murphy. Always plan for Murphy.
Vision clearing, I saw kaa-chan stagger from the effort and she took a senbon right in the thigh –very not good. She snarled viciously, her face a rictus of rage and anger and the earth bubbled, boiling with her force of her fury.
As the ground itself rebelled against the remaining three shinobi (and swallowing those kaa-chan had eliminated before I got here) I took out my own seal. The candle/flamethrower one I'd worked so hard to create. My first original seal… it was far from one of kaa-chan's masterworks, but it would do.
I wrapped the paper around my left palm so that the input array was at the back of my palm and the output was on it. I shifted my chakra to my right hand and placed it behind my left in a sort of cross-formation and darted behind the poison user.
Channeling chakra, the whirlwind flames swallowed the shinobi –oh, kunoichi, I think, based on her scream. The caustic smell of burning hair and seared flesh clung to the air and I held my breath to stave of the urge to gag. But I didn't let up.
The kunoichi's screams cut short as fire swept down her esophagus and into her lungs, consuming the oxygen there. Sweat dripped down my brow and I began to pant with the effort this took. Distantly, I could sense my mother occupying the remaining shinobi –her (anxious-fury-determined-resigned) chakra darted to and fro, ensuring that she was the one who held their attention and not me.
Meanwhile, I kept funneling my chakra reserves into my seal, not letting up for even a moment. The poison kunoichi desperately hit something between her breasts as she fell to the ground, and a murky green-grey mist tainted my fire, spreading fumes everywhere. Her tainted-bittersweet-caustic chakra stilled, jerking once before finally fading away like a bonfire burning through itself after the last of its fuel has run out.
Toxic, translucent fumes hissed and nipped at the surrounding grass, causing it to wither away into dust. The fumes were spreading quickly, worryingly so. I leapt backwards, backpedaling as quickly as I was able. Shit. She knew she was going to die and did something to take everyone down with her. Some sort of seal? A dead man's switch? Fuck!
Suddenly, my kaa-chan was there, flying through handsigns at a speed I couldn't fully process before slamming her hand on my forehead.
A flash of daisy-yellow light consumed me.
And then.
And then I was back in the niche that she had made the other night. How long go was that? One night ago? Two? Or was it only a few hours? This young body of mine had trouble thinking clearly through the fog of exhaustion that clung to me.
I took a wavering step out of the little underground hovel and, as a deafening reverberation swept through the trees and shook the ground, I feel backwards and hit my head on the forest floor. Vision fading to black, my last sight was of a sky blackened by smoke. My last thought was that I had left my mother all alone.
===
"Hey kaa-chan," I asked with an idle curiosity.
"Yes, my dear," she replied with an amused lilt. My mother could probably hear the burning curiosity underneath my feigned nonchalant attitude. Her smile, as small as it was, made my heart glow with familial devotion.
I hadn't felt such a strong family bond to someone in… a lot of lifetimes. Was it a consequence of my "truer" self being closer to the surface this time around, or was it a consequence of this body's powerful emotions? In the corners of my mind and the shadows of my heart, I couldn't help but wonder… did it matter?
"Is it possible to heal with chakra," I asked straight away, knowing that any pretense at obligatory hemming and hawing would only be met with more amusement from kaa-chan. "We can build with chakra, destroy with chakra, plant flowers with chakra, and grow trees with chakra… Can we heal, too?"
My mother hmm-ed for a bit as she pondered my question. I knew then that I had asked a complex question and that she was thinking about where to start to answer my question. Most mothers in a similar situation would have dodged the question, or patted my head with a (completely unintentionally) condescending smile and promise to tell me when I was older.
But this mother of mine never did that, although sometimes she did give safety prefaces lasting several hours if something I asked was particularly… hazardous. Then again, with something as risky as chakra, it was well warranted. I may have lived many lives, but I'm not in any rush to leave this one (not with this mother of mine and fucking chakra). So I listened with all the seriousness that the topics deserved and committed her words to memory, preserving each and every syllable for the future.
"It's possible, little one. But it requires an extreme amount of chakra control, from what I understand of it. I think I read in one of our scrolls that it's something akin to stimulating and guiding the body's natural healing mechanisms? But what I do remember, quite clearly, is that if you don't have the right degree of restraint, then you'll end of causing lesions or cancerous tumors in your patient."
Perhaps she'd made her own forays into the study? I glanced to the veritable library of scrolls we had on our bookshelves, fingers twitching with the desire to pour through them for the information. Of course, that every scroll was actually a sealing scroll that had seven more inside (at minimum) only made my inner bibliophile swoon.
"If chakra control is a problem, would it be possible to make seals that do the healing instead?"
"Well, yes. But not in the way you're thinking, my clever boy. Medical chakra is a type of purified, refined chakra that's not too dissimilar to elemental chakra... in theory. But in practice, it takes a lot of chakra control to sterilize your chakra to such an extent, and even more to keep your medically-shifted chakra from straying away from what you want to target.
"It's possible to store medical chakra in a specialized chakra storage scroll… again, theoretically, at least. I don't know of anyone who's done it –though I suspect the Senju clan might've, if anyone has. But then you'd still be stuck with the issue of chakra control, my heart. Sorry, but there're no simple shortcuts or easy paths to something as complex as medical ninjutsu."
===
"Hey, Shima-kun," Dog called.
That wasn't a good sign. Usually Dog just called me some variation of "brat," though never without his an undercurrent of affection in his monotonous voice.
I walked –well, stumbled, really –over to him from where I had been practicing my chakra control. I was up to six leaves and a rock, though my next test would be to try and roll the rock from the palm of one hand, across my forearms and shoulders, to the other one without losing my metaphorical "grip."
"You know where Konoha is, right," Dog stared at me with serious intent from behind that mask of is. "You know how to get there from here, using the stars?"
I nodded, and pointed in the vague direction, rattling off distance and a rough estimated time of arrival if I ran at a moderate pace.
Dog's shoulders sagged in open relief. It was the most overt emotion that I've ever seen him display… it was a little disconcerting, to be honest.
"Good. Now, if for whatever reason you have to get there –emergency, nonemergency, whatever –here's what you do."
Dog then proceeded to flare his chakra in a unique pattern –a little like morse code, but with chakra –and then rattled off a sequence of words that sounded like an incomprehensible gibberish, notable only for its nonsensicalness. In other words, an obvious code that would be obvious to those who heard it.
Dog made me repeat it four times over before he was satisfied and with every visit, he would question me four more times before he left to ensure I remembered it.
So tell me how you feel about it, your thoughts and comments are always a welcome delight that never fails to make my heart smile!
Also: first time doing a fighting scene. What do you think? Yay, Nay? Maybe with a bit of this or a touch of that?
[...] it has been a good 3 chapters, so I'm looking forward to the future chapters. One thing I appreciate is the lack of focus on previous lives, and just the odd reference. It's a nice touch to emphasise that it isn't the MC's first rodeo, but that it is the first time in a fantasy world and not just whipping out skills left right and centre. The loyalty to his mother is also a nice touch, even if it may turn out poorly.
Thanks, I usually go over the chapter a few times once I've finished it too try and get the "voice" right. And the skills thing is kinda deliberate, since even though Shima might, intellectually, know how to do some amazing things, his body doesn't. There's also the dissonance between his current body and any other body that he might have had. Sure, he's probably trained in combat, but how would those skills scale down to a child's body? A child's body that lacks the muscle-memory and instinct created from learning the combat?
Sure, he might be able to pull off some vaguely-cool stuff, but it's likely to be rough and more than a little uncoordinated. I tried to impress that in the latest chapter, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded. I'm pretty new to writing and fight scenes are... hard.
Only thing I'd note is to see what you can do to make the 'flashback' sections a little more clear regarding them being flashbacks (e.g. the water-walking training with Dog). There were a few spots where you skipped around with the timeline and it got a little confusing as to what order events happened.
I shifted the font to italics to try and make it a little clearer... might go back and add something like "x amt of years after birth" or something if I need to.
Other than that, pretty good. You've done well in setting the scene. Judging by the comment about his skin taking after his Father, I'm guessing absent Dad was a Kumo-nin and Badass-Mum probably escaped from some sort of Kumo facility where they were trying to get access to the various Uzumaki bloodline effects. She manages to get in contact with Konoha at some point but doesn't join it officially (presumably due to post-war politics between Konoha and Kumo being very tense and not wanting to risk Shima being targeted).
Eh, kinda-sorta. You're on the right track but quite. She was pregnant with Shima and fled when Uzu was attacked. Gave birth in the wild and settled in the Land of Fire but away from Konoha. Anbu agents saw their cottage on a mission and reported it, prompting an investigation.
Without Shima, she would have killed Dog and then fled to another location to hide. But she needed to think about her son's future, so she made polite inroads while making her distrust known. She traded valuable fuuinjutsu (however LQ they might be to her) and maneuvered the Anbu agent into caring about her son on a personal level.
All in all, a very nice start and I hope Kaa-chan survives because having an extra uzumaki in Konoha could be very interesting. Especially since IIRC Uzu was sacked during the 3rd ninja war which means Minato is about to/has just become Hokage and will marry Kushina pretty soon.
She fled while pregnant when Uzu fell, so it's been a few years. Also not wholly up to date on the timeline of the 3rd ninja war. Didn't it only last a week or two? Or was that the 4th one? I swear, Kishimoto's sense of time is almost as warped as my own! xD
something to keep in mind when writing about fuinjutsu mechanics: there's a limit on how big an explosion can actually get from currently known fuinjutsu/power source combos.
I would like to point out that in the canon Naruto world, there's very little known about fuuinjutsu. Uzushio was feared to the point where several enemy nations joined together to lay waste to the entire country for fear of Uzu's fuuinjutsu. And that sacking destroyed a lot of knowledge, as wars often do.
Yeah, the story doesn't really go into detail about (the mechanics of) fuuinjutsu. Naruto doesn't really take an interest in the art beyond what affects him as a junchuriki. So writers basically have carte blanche to do whatever they want with fuuinjutsu. I'm just trying to shoot for "somewhat believable" and "kinda internally consistent" here.
I tried to show that it was a combo of his mom being the bigger threat and luck that kept him alive. Sure, his own efforts in not-dying helped, but between a wasp and a rampaging tiger, which are you going to focus on? The wasp can dodge attacks and (with luck) might kill you, but a raging tiger will definitely kill you and has already killed a bunch of your peers.
Sure, he's probably trained in combat, but how would those skills scale down to a child's body? A child's body that lacks the muscle-memory and instinct created from learning the combat?
I tried to show that it was a combo of his mom being the bigger threat and luck that kept him alive. Sure, his own efforts in not-dying helped, but between a wasp and a rampaging tiger, which are you going to focus on? The wasp can dodge attacks and (with luck) might kill you, but a raging tiger will definitely kill you and has already killed a bunch of your peers.
Yeah. I was hoping for that one unique story with no orphan uzumaki kid but sadly this is not it. Heaven forbid if an author introduces an older uzumaki woman into Konoha.
I know this is probably a little edgelord-y, but I've always wanted to read a refugee from Uzushio, who goes on a revenge bender and tries to wipe out Iwa/Kumo/whoever was responsible for destroying their homeland. Based on his apparent past lives full of war and horror, this guy seems like he could be the one.
Maybe? But what kind of hope? That she's kept alive to be tortured for her knowledge? Her bloodline? Is it a set up for some revenge arc later on?
I liked the first chapters because they had a relatively unique feel to them, and the relationship with the mother was a centerpiece to that. That relationship has also been what - in my opinion - held the story together and made it cohesive. Take that away and you'll have a rather jarring transition, especially when it is this sudden. Exchanging a central theme for another... well, it's gonna be a hard sell.
All in all, a very nice start and I hope Kaa-chan survives because having an extra uzumaki in Konoha could be very interesting. Especially since IIRC Uzu was sacked during the 3rd ninja war which means Minato is about to/has just become Hokage and will marry Kushina pretty soon.
No, it was sacked during the second Ninja War when Kushina was still a child in Konoha. Otherwise she and Minato wouldn't be able to be Jonin, because if we orient ourselves on the sacking of Uzu, they'd be Akademie kids by then.
She fled while pregnant when Uzu fell, so it's been a few years. Also not wholly up to date on the timeline of the 3rd ninja war. Didn't it only last a week or two? Or was that the 4th one? I swear, Kishimoto's sense of time is almost as warped as my own! xD
No, the third is where Minato massacred Iwa. The 4th was everyone vs. Tobi/Madara. The third Shinobi World War lasted multiple years. It' also where Rin dies at the end of it.
The Second Shinobi World War (第二次忍界大戦, Dainiji Ninkai Taisen, English TV: Second Great Ninja War) was the second of four great wars involving the majority of the shinobi villages and countries. Not much is known about the politics of this era, but there were known conflicts between Konohagakure...
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Also, the second Shinobi World War is where Tsunade, Oroshimaru and Jiraya fight Hanzo and get the name "Sannin".
The Third Shinobi World War (第三次忍界大戦, Daisanji Ninkai Taisen, English TV: Third Great Ninja War) was the third of the four shinobi wars that involved the majority of the shinobi villages. It took place more than ten years prior to the beginning of the series. Because of a decline in national...
I want to begin by saying that I'm very hopeful about this story, even though it's still early. There really isn't any great stories with an Uzumaki oc, particularly pre-canon. While it isn't specified, the destruction of Uzu happened either during the 2nd Shinobi war or at the very beginning of the third. I'm inclined to believe that it happened during the second, using Hear the Silence for some fanon.
This lines up with Dog meeting them. The mask, the timing, the attitude, and the chakra all point to dog being Sakumo. While his death doesn't have a date, it definitely happened before the third war. Or in the early stages. I've got this head canon where he is the reason the war started, and that is why he went from celebrity to outcast. As well as explaining his own shame.
I'm not entirely clear on how saving his comrades leads to that, but everything else lines up really well. This all means that Shima is older than Kakashi, maybe as old as Kushina. Which is a plus in my books, I vastly prefer pre-canon stories.
I also want to say some things about the fight scene. Mainly, I think it was good. Shima was only useful because of his seals, and even then he only solo killed 1 enemy that was taken completely unprepared. Pretty much everything else was momma bear.
Dayum, if only he had made a sustained electricity projection seal... Instant muscle lock + rather quick death if he manages to get the pulse hertz right.
But that would have been a bit too meta, I can see him making a seal like that that can have its amplitude changed from "stun a small rat" to "insta-fry a bull-elephant" via how much chakra you shove into it. Control would be difficult, but again, science to the rescue! Figuring out how to create a small ionizing channel shouldn't be too difficult for the MC. Maybe even making it as part of a "ninja tool" for ease of use?
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