5 No way. Definitely not drawing Sasuke.

Mum quickly realized why I was pointing at Itachi and asked him if he needed help, he was shy at first and hesitated a little, but perhaps since he'd seen my mom talking to Mikoto earlier in the village he quickly voiced his concern, in the most Uchiha way possible, by pointing at the glass of water in mum's hand and then at Sauske who was warped in a bun sleeping silently in Mikoto's arms.

Mum quickly nodded at Mikoto and got up and went to the food and water stall, got a little bit of gruel in a bamboo cup along with little water with which she walked over to Mikoto along with Itachi and handed them over carefully.

Both Mikoto and Itachi thanked my mother almost in tears and quickly began to feed baby Sasuke, after which Mikoto also feed Itachi a little, though he didn't want to be feed so publicly so he kept trying to take the food from Mikoto's hands to which she gave a harsh glare which immediately stopped him.

For some reason at this moment I felt my body grow less tense and felt a wave of pleasantness wash over me.

Looking at my mother, a few other mothers also walked up and started to talk to their friends in the Uchiha Clan and a few mothers helped other women with babies so that they could free up and help their other family members with food and other necessities.

A few men who recognized their Uchiha team mates and started showing their concern for their well being.

A lot of other various other people who had been wanting to help looking at the pitiful condition of the Uchiha and could momentarily keep their hatred at bay also tried helping in any way they could.

"&!#$ KYUBIIII #$*!+!!!!!!!"

Surprisingly or not so, a man from the Hyuga clan shouted something I couldn't understand after pointing at the people of the Uchiha clan causing the air to get a little tense, bringing back the suffocating feeling that was present before everyone had started talking.

I assumed he was trying to blame them for the death's of the people who died because of the Kyuubi being controlled by the sharingan looking thing.

I saw a number of Uchiha wanted to argue and even fight with the man and shout at him, but they were all silenced before they could even say a thing by Fugaku rising his hand.

Seeing this the man tried to shout even more trying to vent his frustrations but no one in the shelter spoke a single word as Fugaku slowly walked towards him.

Most people expected a fight to break out at any time as a few more Hyuga clan members including someone that looked like Neji's father who died in the series, Hizashi, stepped up behind him to protect him in case Fugaku tried to do something to him.

Fugaku remained silent as he approached the man not acknowledging the people gathered behind the man.

The Hyuga clan member's voice only grew louder as if he felt that Fugaku was the embodiment of all the hate and evil in the world that caused the death of his loved ones.

Unexpectedly for me and surprising everyone present in the hall he pulled out a kunai an held it by the blade and offered it to the Hyuga clan member after saying something and bowed his head after which the Uchiha clan members began to shout and Mikoto beside mum clutched baby Sasuke tightly, her lips quivering, her eyes watering.

Fugaku turned towards the Uchiha clan and raised his hand and turned back to the Hyuga clan member who was clearly stunned for a second but furry soon took over him as he lifted his kunai and was about to stab Fugaku's eyes but a hand held him.

It was a woman who seemed a little older than mum who was bandaged around her head just like mum and was tearing up and shaking her head indicating to the man she didn't want him to do such a thing.

Seeing the woman crying the man could no longer hold up and dropped the kunai and began to hug the woman and sob with her.

Mikoto hurriedly ran over to Fugaku and began to berate him in front of everyone holding and showing Sasuke to him which caused the sobbing couple's eyes to soften after which they retreated slowly and went back to their Hyuga friends for comfort.

Although everything seemed all fine and dandy on the top of it all, I couldn't get rid of the stinking suspicion that it all seemed like a great play, like a political play aimed at fooling everyone else and funnily enough their own hypocritic selves.

Looking from a different view I realized that there was never really a chance the Hyuga clan head would ever let a branch family member harm Uchiha Fugaku as in time of such turmoil in the village it would destabilize the situation further and could lead to many internal conflicts that although would allow the other villages to take advantage off and attack Konoha, would also show the other clans in the village that the Hyuga clan can get away with killing the clan head of a prominent clan, making them a target for political isolation.

The woman seemed to have realized what would've have happened if the man from the Hyuga branch family attacked the Uchiha clan head and decided to stop him just in time so that she could at least keep his life safe, since to rid of this troublesome political stain the clan head might sacrifice the guy, after all he was just a branch family member as apparent from the seal on his forehead.

And so I conspired that Fugaku really did it so that he could show to everyone present that the Uchiha clan wanted to take responsibility of what ever had happened and was willing to pay the price so that it could tone down their hatred towards the clan.

As I observed Mikoto worry about Fugaku, I could faintly see that he did look at her with worry and wanted forgiveness for what he did but it still seemed that her place was beneath everyone else. I could recognize that in his mind the village and the clan came first before anything else, not the people in it or even his own children and family but the idea of the village and the idea of the clan.

I promptly understood why Danzo was so successful in whatever he did.

He could twist and manipulate anyone's thoughts since all of them were not devoted to the people of the village but to the idea of it that was instilled in their minds.

They were all living a fantasy that did not do something as grand as blurring the boundaries of reality and illusion nor did it take them to experience something different like a genjutsu.

Instead they were all living in a fantastic illusion where since all of them were so committed to the ideals of the village that someone not committed to them was deemed less than human and not worth their time, as long as the will of the fire burnt them they were good, if not then they did not belong inside the village.

They were the perfect tools that embraced the made up images of people and the world inside their heads instead of the people and the world outside which they were actually a part off.

A chill travelled own my spine as I realized the village and its head were the ones who controlled what the 'will of fire' actually meant so the power of their lives was not in the people's hands but in the hands of the ruler who controlled them like puppets.

Although I came from an era where information was usually manipulated to sway public opinion there was still a rather large silent majority of people who could generally figure out what was actually happening behind the scenes even if they never voiced their opinions publicly for the fear of getting lashed at.

There was at least the ability to think freely.

Here you would be brandished as a traitor to the village simply for thinking something was 'wrong' as long as you didn't have the power to stand against those you question.

There was no non-violent method that could sway someone else since they only listened to those they couldn't go against, people were not new to violence and would not hesitate to massacre entire groups of people if it meant they could continue to propagate their vision of how other people should be.

People here were in the times where as long as they had strength, they felt that what ever they did was right. It was not about the majority or the minority but about which rightly strong people they could gather to make everyone else the minority.

No one was allowed to have either an individualistic presence or the identity of a group that went against the decisions of the head.

This was not a democracy, this was a theocracy where the head was the god and everyone else were either followers lest they be found as blasphemers.

It was as simple as accusing someone of being a witch during the middle ages since, judgement for breaking the law or twisting it was not passed by a court that could try to be impartial but a single person who decided what the punishments were on a case to case basis according to his plans, manipulating and making use of the crime committed in which every way benefited him.

There was no media to report the truth or even point fingers at the head, but simple rumors that could be manipulated and twisted into a narrative that suited the head.

This was not just a problem with Konoha but all the other hidden villages, they were all a one man show villages whose plans and direction depended on whims of the party sitting on a kingly chair.

It was evident from the massacre of the Uchiha in Konoha, the genocide of Kekkei Genkai clans in the hidden mist, the torturous life of Garra or Pakura's betrayal in the hidden sand, the blatant disregard for the lives of their own people in the hidden cloud to get their hands on a byakugan and the war thirsty head of the hidden stone.

Each of them never trusted their own people's potential or even if they did it was to use them as long as they were weaker than them and finish them off when they shone more, while always wanting to grab the strength of their enemies who they seemed to think were always against what they stood for hence getting in the way of their conquest.

They were maniacs at least the situations their predecessors had created for them forced them to be so.

The first and second Hokage wanted to create a village where children wouldn't have to fight on the battle field but ended up underestimating the stupidity of their successor who instead of stabilizing the village and making it better for the people to live, focused on abusing his power to take care of his friends who were brought into power by him and then letting them run wild with it as long as he could sit on the kingly seat.

Feeling tired I stopped thinking and spent time in my father's arms as he rested his legs that had been stabbed through by a wooden stake, staring at the little kids running through the shelter playing with each other without having to worry about what happened just a little earlier.

The adults did nothing to curb them and their mischief and bouts of laughter as it seemed like the only thing that would keep alit a spark in the darkness that had set in until the rise of a new dawn, a new day.

Exhausted due to all the chaos which was masked under the laughter of children and loosing the burden of something terrifying happening and getting my family killed in it, for at least a while, soon allowed me to rest comfortably in my father's embrace while mum went to do her part in helping other people around the shelter.

****************

It has been a few months since the Kyuubi incident has finished and I haven't achieved much other than being able to finally support my own head and stand up to walk on my own two chubby legs.

It's also embarrassing now that mom gives me a bath in the tub everyday. Ahh…. how good would it be without all these embarrassing times.

Recently mum has been trying to get me to eat meat by stuffing it into the vegetables by slicing it into small chunks, but I just eat everything around it. She also tried to grind it and add it to the gravy but I just separated the vegetables and ate the food without the gravy.

Oh how annoyed she was then, I could almost see her contemplating how I knew and trying to make some other plans to feed me meat.

Haha like I'll let that happen. 

I could eat eggs though. I wonder when she'll figure that out.

I don't know if it's chakra or just me growing up as a baby that's making me feel like this but I am a lot more energetic than I used to be as an adult, but somehow my head just refused to function as an adult some times.

It felt like something was forcing me to be a child or instead of a child more not like me? Since I can feel bouts of intelligence in that other force.

I did not understand how to rationalize this, since if my brain hadn't developed enough then I shouldn't have been able to think like this at all, but I can and so it only means there is something more to this than I have been able to find out for now.

'It's not like there will be a baby Sakura in my body right? Haha Yeah… definitely not. Definitely did not have the strong urge to draw a portrait of Sasuke the other day.'

It wasn't like I was ahead of the curve by a lot or something like that, most kids my age began walking right after I did, and along with the special development of eyes that had allowed me to see colour so soon after being born I suspect children in this world just develop really quickly. Although it remains yet to be seen if they age mentally at the same pace as well. But I'm definitely the first one to have started speaking, even though it's just broken sentences and a few random handful of words like 'mama' or 'dada' or 'water' and such.

Now other than the time I'm sleeping I'm usually left outside my crib on the floor for me to explore around the house.

The first time I started crawling around, mum was so overjoyed she kept talking about how I was her daughter and it was obvious I could learn to do such things so quickly!

Mom bragged so much about it that even dad left the house to go spend time in the workshop instead and sleep there instead for almost an entire week.

And then in a few weeks when I began to walk she practically exploded with ecstasy and even borrowed the help of a friend who was painter to take a family portrait which she quickly got framed and hung on the wall along side my family stick figure painting.

Surprisingly most of the house is made of bricks and cement with proper plastering over the walls to make them appear smooth, and the various metallic objects also have proper welds in them. But I still haven't seen any electric appliances.

I understand that such things would've been possible even in my world without the use of any electrical appliances but you wouldn't find the products made by such a method in the house of a poor person then.

Generally handmade items would be harder to make and harder to produce on a large scale, so most of them should not be accessible to poor people.

For a while I thought mum or dad were secretly some super strong ninjas and were hiding in the village, or maybe they were related to someone powerful who gave them money for such precious items, but when I checked the neighbors houses when mum left me with them sometimes I found even their houses were the same and had all the expensive metallic hand welded things.

I was confused for a while until I thought of the possibility that ninja's probably used a lot of weapons and had to make a lot of infrastructure that was strong enough to withstand their harsh flights, so metalwork and construction were probably quite far ahead in terms of cost and quality.

To quickly replenish perishable items like kunais and shurikens they probably also learnt a variation of the assembly line technique in industrialization which is why there appeared to be such a stark difference between the pay of ninjas and civilians. It was because ninjas were doing unique jobs that nothing else could do while civilians were loosing to machines or just other civilians who could easily replace them, a sweat shop, so unless someone was a business owner they couldn't hope to be rich.

I have tried meditating in the afternoon while I pretend to be asleep along with mum who takes a break then, but I have not really felt anything different so far. I do feel all my cells bursting with vitality my body feels like a silk cloth smooth, soft, fluffy, and light, but there seems to be no such thing as chakra within it.

Apart from the vitality in my cells I can feel the presence of an intangible cloud inside my head that I feel I can control but I haven't really tried to figure out how to yet.

I've been staying awake more and more recently, at least more than a normal baby should, so I keep trying to feel chakra by meditating but it never seems to work apart from allowing me to feel these two distinct energies in my body.

I don't know if chakra is something that is present in everyone, or if you have to make it yourself. I remember in the manga and the start of the anime chakra used to be something you needed to kneed yourself, but by the end it became like a battery with a power meter that just showed how much chakra every person had.

I remember Kushina having chakra while we were at the hospital, so maybe people just kneed chakra and then store it within their bodies for later use?

If you have to kneed it yourself, is there a specific way to it? I know it was described in the anime that chakra is a combination of spiritual and physical energy, assuming that the cloud in my head is the spiritual energy and the one in my body is the physical energy how do you mix them? What does it mean to mix them? Aren't they already inside the same 'body', for the lack of a better word, so why don't they mix? Why is there no vitality to the brain? Is it because I'm dumb or something?

I sat up in my crib in the middle of the night trying to feel the physical energy around my head and decided to pull my cloud towards my scalp to mix with the feeling of vitality.

I slowly felt my spiritual energy reach the edge of my scalp on all sides but I abruptly stopped.

Naruto had a concept of chakra pathways. Why aren't there any pathways inside my body for chakra to flow? 

I felt a little confused so I decided to stop my little experiment and conduct it a little later with more care.

Leaning on the crib frame I stretched my hands in front of me and focused on the vitality in it and pushed it outward, but suddenly something inside me, the thing that kept me urging to draw Sasuke, made me feel like it was a bad thing, so did I listen to it?

Obviously not, why would I listen to something that wants me to draw Sasuke, and I just continued as it felt like I was pushing against a barrier that lined my body and was absorbing away all my strength, I tightened my muscles feeling something flowing between them and within seconds even before I could even comprehend or properly analyze what was happening I saw a faint green light flicker around my hands and then I fainted.

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Thank you for reading! 

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