The End (prt 1)

Everything comes to an end.

Or at least, it should. Every flower wilts, every life will one day die, - every event but a small chapter in the book of the cosmos.

Well, that is, in theory (and she does love tearing into those). 

In practicality, the flower pollinates and more flowers spring up. The chapter concludes so that you can read the next, and the corpses that were littering the battlegrounds decompose and give rise to even more life. Very Circle of Life (tm) of the universe.

Humans would like to think that this means the universe keeps its beginnings and ends separate; a strict march of causality, a never ending cascade of dominoes. No piece will be repurposed - while they may influence those that come after, they do not get to make a reappearance (usually...look ninja bullshit breaks reality a bit). It makes things easier to understand that way.

Although she has to wonder where this leaves her. Surely she's not one in a line of contained domino pieces, waiting to topple and never mean anything more. Even more so after a botched reincarnation; if that's what happened, she's still unsure of the particulars of the afterlife. She's more like a domino that, once it topples, switches to shogi and is made a game piece. 

...She's not sure that made sense, the metaphor kinda ran away from her there. But Sai's told her before that she's not really good at them, so it's not surprising.

Where was she going with this?

She never really could stop her mind from running off on tangents. Apparently waxing poetic about linear time and humanity's perception of the universe is what it decided to latch onto this time. Sasuke thought she focused on unimportant things too much. Troublesome, if he were inclined to borrow words from Shika. Naruto seemed to take everything she says to heart though, while Sai surprisingly liked to play devil's advocate to her ramblings. She makes a mental note to bring up this topic again in her boys' presence; she liked using these discussions for ideas on her sealing projects, and Kakashi-sensei always had some interesting input to offer when he wasn't egging on whatever chaos was happening.

Speaking of, she liked how sensei had put her eccentricities best, "Maa~, Your mind can never really stop running, huh, Shikako-cha -"

Oh. Hmm.

She remembered now.

On further consideration, she... wasn't going to get to do that. Ever again.

She'd died again, hadn't she.

Well, being dead might explain a few things. She was unusually slow on the uptake, feeling like her mind was moving through molasses. Her shinobi training combined with the truly impressive mental capacity she was born with in this life typically keep her from feeling such things. She does remember a little bit of what happened to her though.

And what a way to go, too.

It happened on one of those top-secret ANBU missions she's been going on recently. Ya' know, the ones that nobody outside of her team and the Hokage were supposed to know about. So, no backup (at least, none that would have gotten to her in time for it to matter).

After, uh, dispatching with the armed guards and stealing the information they'd come for, she happened upon what looked to be unfinished seal work. She had never seen a similar configuration before, and had been debating whether or not to stick around and copy it down to for later study. She had a little bit of time left before she absolutely had to rendevous with the others; she wouldn't even have to explain much of herself if she showed Hawk-taicho the notes briefly. He knew how she could get.

Of course challenging Murphy like that, even across dimensions and in her own head, would lead to...displeasing results.

Of all the things to happen, a genin showed up - most likely to check on the genin guards her team's mission target had hired to guard the lower levels. The ones that were knocked out at her feet (not literally, but you get the idea). The genin didn't really stand a chance against her, but it didn't stop them from throwing all the kunai at her they could before going down. Which was one - but that was all that was really needed to send everything to hell. 

It happened to hit the wall where the bulk of the unfinished seals were located. Which was bad, really, because she'd be the first to tell of the instability of unfinished seal work. The kunai must have been chakra conductive, too, considering the size of the resulting blast and everything. A break in one of the lines on top of being charged with chakra...well, even a novice in seals could tell you how bad that was going to go. 

There was no time for her to escape; no turning shadow or pulling a sealing miracle out of her ass last minute. She's more than likely really dead right now. She doesn't think that there's a way for Shikabane-hime to make a comeback this time (Ino would be disappointed).