The Weakness of Childhood

AUTHOR'S NOTES; Sup y'all? It's actually not been that long since my last chapter, huh. I'm on a roll, lol.

I don't really have much to say this time, so I'll keep it short. Feel free to check out the rest of the series if you want to read about the MC's interdementional cycle of reincarnation, but all installments can be read separately.

As always, I am overwhelmed by the support I get on each update from you fabulous folks! So, without further ado, I give you the next chapter. Thanks so much for reading and commenting!

Discord!

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"So, you're graduating," I note neutrally.

"Yup," Kakashi mumbles, and I feel him press tighter to my side. "I'll be a genin during war time, but I'm still a clan heir and son of the Hokage, so I probably won't see much action for the first few years, but who knows."

"Are you scared?" I ask, feeling Shisui, who is resting his head on my shoulder as he's splayed across our torsos, blink big black eyes at me, silently listening as he fiddles with a sliver chink of my hair.

"Ninja don't get scared," Kakashi says a bit sharply.

"Don't be stupid," I snort, hoping that both Shisui and Kashi will take my words to heart. "As much as Konoha, and all the other villages, too, like to shove the idea of Shinobi being tools down our throats, it's not true. Yeah, we fight for our home, but emotions are not useless and shameful. Hell, rather, they are what makes us stronger."

"What do you mean?" Kakashi asks skeptically.

"Fear keeps you alive and cautious. Regret makes us strive to be better. Happiness keeps us from breaking. Love makes us fight harder to protect what's ours."

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"So, you're graduating," I note neutrally.

"Yup," Kakashi mumbles, and I feel him press tighter to my side. "I'll be a genin during war time, but I'm still a clan heir and son of the Hokage, so I probably won't see much action for the first few years, but who knows."

"Are you scared?" I ask, feeling Shisui, who is resting his head on my shoulder as he's splayed across our torsos, blink big black eyes at me, silently listening as he fiddles with a sliver chink of my hair.

"Ninja don't get scared," Kakashi says a bit sharply.

"Don't be stupid," I snort, hoping that both Shisui and Kashi will take my words to heart. "As much as Konoha, and all the other villages, too, like to shove the idea of Shinobi being tools down our throats, it's not true. Yeah, we fight for our home, but emotions are not useless and shameful. Hell, rather, they are what makes us stronger."

"What do you mean?" Kakashi asks skeptically.

"Fear keeps you alive and cautious. Regret makes us strive to be better. Happiness keeps us from breaking. Love makes us fight harder to protect what's ours."

"What about sadness?" Shisui asks. The toddler, only a year younger than me, is already showing signs of being a prodigy like Kakashi and I, and could not only speak in full sentences, but like now, displayed an unusual level of comprehension.

"Sadness means we're still alive, I suppose. Emotions, especially sadness, are what make us human in the first place. If we were emotionless, if we didn't love or fear, could we even be considered truly loyal to anyone or anything? Sounds awful. What's the point of living like that?"

I tug on Shisui's curls, making him giggle. After a moment, Kakashi curls even closer to us where we were tucked under the kotatsu's blanket in my sitting room. Quiet, like he was worried someone would hear, Kakashi whispers. "I'm… a little scared."

I nod. "That's okay. So long as you can control it, it's normal. I'm a bit sad that it will be a few years before I can become a ninja and can fight with you. I'm worried I won't see you as much. I'll be lonely and I'll miss you."

It's quiet for a moment before Kakashi bumps our heads together. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving you behind." He smiles, tiny fangs showing over the edge of his scarf, something I know despite not being able to physically see them right now. "I'm not leaving you either, Shisui. Sheesh, how'd I pick up so many stray Uchiha."

"We Uchiha out number you Hatakes. it's we that picked up you and your father, not the other way around," my father states entering the room, grumbling good naturedly.

"Fair point, Fugaku-Ojisama," Kakashi snickers.

"Congratulations on graduating, Kakashi-kun," my mother adds, also entering the room with a tray of tea, Orochimaru slithering in behind her being uncharacteristically innocuous. This is the first time my parents have met Orochimaru since he became our sensei, the snake usually having preferred to not interact with… anyone really, but they'd finally cornered him and forced him to come for a visit. They've spent the last hour talking with him in the office, privacy seals enacted, but I'm not too worried. Orochimaru likes to be menacing and creepy, but once you get past his mask, he is just… kind of awkward.

Not completely dissimilar to an Uchiha actually, especially because he also respected power above all.

I note the sneaky snake's introspective and subdued manner and sit up, nudging Shisui towards Kakashi and going to plop myself at Orochimaru's side, tucking my cold feet under the sanin's leg casually. He glares at me for a moment before huffing and turning his head to look elsewhere, but he doesn't push me away and I smirk at the small victory.

Little by little, he's opening up.

That dark rage and hopelessness that was hanging over him like a cloud has slowly started to clear. It isn't yet a massive difference, but compared to when we first met, it is progress, especially because it has only been months.

It's all good. It's not like Orochimaru being a tsundere is a huge problem in the grand scheme of things.

"We were discussing your current training. It seems you have made plenty of progress." My father's voice is steady, and nothing he says is a compliment, but I can feel the way his chakra swirls with pride, and I have to force myself not to preen.

"Right. Since I'm graduating, we won't be training together anymore," Kakashi states blandly, but even though he was just reassuring me, I can feel the disappointment in his chakra signature, and the confirmation that he cares as much about me as I do for him makes me feel better.

"Foolish brats. Of course you will," Orochimaru sneers. At our confused looks, he heaves a put upon sigh. "Due to a combination of factors, including your status and age, you will be apprenticing around the village with various jonin rather than being put on a team and being sent out. Some of those jonin will be myself, Fugaku, and even your father, whose the only person who can teach you your clan techniques."

I stare for a moment, realizing that canon Kakashi was thrown to the wolves at the age of five, going directly into action all because Sakumo was disgraced and dead and no one was there to protect him. "So… nepotism."

Orochimaru gives me an incredulous look. "You realize you are just as much of a nepo baby, right?"

I shrug. "Never denied it. Most of the village is built off of nepotism because our politics is clan based. That's not a secret, nor am I going to pretend like I won't be willingly abusing the hell out of it in the future. Also, Orochi-sensei, I know you're not talking. Cough, student of the Third, cough." 

Orochimaru's eye twitches and he promptly grabs my ankle and flings me out of the open shoji door, but as I'm flying through the air I manage to connect my chakra strings to the door frame and sling shot myself back inside the sitting room, landing with a flip, much to my parents relief. He hisses even as I throw myself directly into his lap this time with stubbornness. "Brat!"

"Well, at least we know you're learning," Papa states darkly, glaring fiercely at our sensei, much to my amusement.

Orochimaru sniffs imperiously before snatching me by the scruff of my shirt, standing and striding out, grbbimg Kakashi aa he goes. "Come, it's time for training."

Clearly, the sanin was done with socializing.

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There are too many things that complicated training for me. Firstly is taijutsu, something my age majority messed up for me. Since my muscles are still developing, weight training is out. I can still do some sparring and turn katas into muscle memory, but it has to be carefully regulated if I don't want to stunt my growth. That meant taijutsu isn't something I can really focus on yet, although I did spend a fair amount of time adapting the fighting style I'd used in my past lives, a sword style primarily, to my dojutsu and empty handed fighting. Integrating it with the Uchiha clan style was also time consuming, and I had to get help, but it had been worth it. Orochimaru had been highly intrigued, as he always is when he finds something he's never seen before. I ended up spending days just teaching it to him, and Kakashi by default, with the promise that they wouldn't pass it on to anyone else.

Ninjutsu is somewhat out, too. See, there are many different types of chakra. There are, of course, the five elements, known as nature transformation, but there is also yin chakra, spiritual energy, and yang chakra, physical energy. Typically, when chakra is in its passive state inside the body, it will present itself as a relatively even mix of yin and yang with a tinge of natural chakra, (which is in anything and everything by default), and elemental affinity since affinity is the elements your body's predisposed to producing the chakra of when active. Additionally, not every jutsu requires an element, but all of them require at least a bit of yin and or yang.

My reincarnator status inevitably gives me a massive boost in the yin chakra, which is very good news since, as a result of our ancestor, Indra, the Sharingan is powered on chakra that's mostly yin in nature. In fact, my massive yin reserve is the only thing keeping my Mangekyō from fucking killing me by draining me dry. The problem is that my tiny body has no chance of making enough yang, or physical chakra, to balance it, or even enough to perform more than a few very minor jutsu. Shit, I barely have enough to tree and water walk. 

It's why I have taken to chakra strings as my primary weapon. They required a higher ratio of yin chakra to yang and don't require an element, or much chakra in general to make or control. More importantly, though, rather than creating a single short string and exhausting myself before letting it disperse, the first thing I did when learning the technique was force myself to figure out how to keep the string from disappearing even while I sleep, meaning I keep them active 24/7 and can just keep adding to them and strengthening them, allowing me to bypass my chakra issue.

Technically speaking, genjutsu is my next best option since they were yin based because illusions aren't physical. Theoretically, it should be the perfect weapon to take advantage of my outrageous yin reserves. Only, it isn't because fuck me, aparently.

I am absolute trash with any visual illusion. 

Genjutsu that affected other senses? I can already easily produce low to mid strength ones and Mama-sama and Sensei say that my talent is overwhelming it it, but anything that affects the eyes and visual perception, like most fucking genjutsu, goddamnit, I am hopeless with. Unnaturally so, to the point that my mentors spent weeks trying to figure out the issue and coming up empty. However, I wasn't really surprised and while everyone else is befuddled, I know exactly why I can't do it.

Indirectly, it's because Fate's a lil bitch.

The limitations Fate, (-that camel toed, belly button lint eating, toe jam sniffing, crusty motherfu-), puts on me in exchange for being able to alter destiny dictates that I spend most of my time in this life blind, and several past lifetimes at least severely visually impaired. While I currently have the Sharingan that gives me perfect eyesight and visual recall, those few memories are nothing to the centuries I've spent with poor vision. 

That's probably why when I try visual genjutsu, they come out wonky. The caster needs to be able to perfectly imagine the illusion they're casting, but because of the way I'm used to seeing the world, when I try, they're blurry or the colors are switched. Sometimes they simply don't work at all, and genjutsu are only useful if you can't tell if you are in one or can't break out. That said, I've been able to learn some non visual genjutsu that are pretty useful, even if they don't really work as more than a tiny distraction on literally anyone I train with, except, occasionally, Kakashi.

I've taken to putting noisy hair ornaments into braided chunks of my hair, using the sound and my Sharingan to cast disorientation type genjustusu to create an opening in fights and Mama-sama is planning to teach me our clan techniques for pain genjutsu, or illusions that fuck with your brain's connection to your nervous system. When I get better at it all, I'll use my shitty visual illusions and disorientation genjutsu to trick people into thinking they're poisoned so that they won't try to dispel the illusion, as a special fuck you to Fate for thinking I can't turn even the side effects of her meddling to my advantage.

Iryo-ninjutsu… has the same problem as ninjutsu. I'm already highly educated about the human body, having been a healer multiple times before, and my peepers having photographic memory makes any form of studying basically cheating since I only need to read it once. However, the actual techniques are yin or yang based, but mostly a mix or just yang, meaning I can't spam that shit until I have yang chakra to spare, which I goddamn fucking don't.

I can do the yin stuff just fine, like diagnostics, separating fluid, poison extraction even, a hilariously complex and difficult technique that requires precise chakra control that very few medics are capable of, (something that had my parents, Sakumo-ojisama, and Orochimaru unanimously deciding to keep top secret). At the same time, I don't have the goddamn energy to heal a broken bone by myself.

It is all fucking bullshit.

Even my shuriken jutsu is sketchy, since I can only aim at things with chakra signatures I can track. I can't consistently deflect other weapons thrown if they don't have chakra, although luckily most were imbued with it when thrown. I am fantastic at feeling anything in my direct vicinity through the ambient chakra in the air, so dodging is easy enough, but that's a lot of things to keep track of in a fight, and there are a lot of stationary objects I just can't hit, Sharingan or not. My eye hand coordination just isn't easy to rely on for me, so I am better off using my other senses and chakra radar. Once again, I can't do something simple, but I can do something stupidly complicated.

Fuinjutsu is really the only thing I don't have any major disadvantages in right now, and I still need time to develop that skill enough to use in a fight.

So fucking ridiculous.

"Your face is twitching, Riri-chan." Kashi says, poking my cheek. "What's the matter?"

"Just realized how much my character was nerfed this round," I growl. I swear I can hear the kami laughing at me.

"What?" He asks, confused.

"Hn," I dismiss, not wanting to spend energy to explain. "It's going to be a while before I'm strong."

Orochimaru snorts. "You're already strong for a pre-person."

I roll my eyes so hard my whole head moves, the bells in my hair chiming softly. "Children aren't pre-people, sensei." I cut him off as he goes to open his mouth. "And don't call me a crib midget, a crotch goblin or fruit, a spermling, a semen demon, or, kami above, a fuck trophy, again. At least not to my face."

The snake man flips his glorious waterfall of hair over his shoulder with a sneer, his snake earrings jangling ever so gently. "Don't presume to order me, Mini-meatbag."

I share a heavy sigh with Kashi. Sensei really has no business being around children. Thankfully, Kashi and I could take it, though. "Anyway, it's not other children who will be trying to kill me, is it?"

"No one should be trying to kill you yet." I give Kakashi my flat estimate look, making him backtrack. "Yeah, okay, you're an heir, a female one with a kekkei genkai, even if not many know yours is usable, so you're a prime target for kidnapping or killing, yada, yada,-" I almost wince at the fact that such a young kid understands those horrific implications. "-but, surely you're relatively safe in-village."

"We're at war," Orochimaru says carelessly, but I can feel the stiffness in his aura, the forced casualness. "No one's safe. Hey, spawnling?"

"Yes?" I reply, resigned to the snake's futile, subconscious way of trying to stay unattached to us.

"You promised me some information when I agreed to train you, but you're yet to pay up." The sanin flashes into my space, gold eyes inches from my silver ones, a useless effort even if I wasn't wearing a blindfold, but whatever.

"Hmm, so you want to know what happens when you die, huh?" I fold myself down onto the grass of the training ground we are using, cupping my chin in a hand. 'And are you planning to run off as soon as you get what you want?"

Orochimaru bears his teeth in a mockery of a smile. "As if I could avoid you little heathens."

"Hn, fine. I'll take your word for it," I smirk. "The answer is that it depends."

"Explain," Orochimaru demands, sitting as well, unsealing a notebook and pen from the snake earrings Kakashi and I got for him. Unattached my ass. This lonely, overgrown reptile is wrapped around our fingers.

"It depends on the soul. If you were shitty, you'll have to pay for it, but good or evil, those are completely determined by the whims of the gods. It's beyond mortal understanding, so don't go thinking your subjective ideals are anything like the justice of the gods who can weigh your every thought, act, and sin on the scales of their making. Once the purity of the soul is determined, you receive punishment or reward. Sometimes you're only punished for a bit and then you get paradise."

"Huh," Kakashi murmurs, looking only vaguely surprised. "Then what?"

I shrug. "Depends." Orochimaru pauses his scribbling, and I get the impression he's considering violence because I'm not being straightforward enough. "The afterlife for most of this world would manifest as the Purelands-"

"This world? Wha-" Orochimaru actually sputters.

"-but it really depends on the person. There you can meet your loved ones when you die, or at least an aspect of them."

"What do you mean an aspect of them?" Orochimaru growls, snatching me by the collar and shaking me haphazardly. I scowl and try to stab him with a kunai in retaliation, getting him to unhand me even as I struggle to find the words to explain metaphysical, existential shit that mortals won't be able to comprehend until they experience it themselves.

"Well, the idea that you always carry a piece of those you love with you is true. The bonds we hold with our precious people are very real, and even if you can't see or feel them, your souls are connected. In this life and the next."

"The next? You mean-" Kakashi perks up in understanding.

"Reincarnation. If a soul reincarnates, they will forget everything until they die again." Unless, of course, the gods choose otherwise. "This explanation doesn't really do it justice, overly simplified as it is, but soul bonds don't just vanish when you move into the next life. You'll still be able to be in contact with a part of their soul, an aspect, so it's not like you'll be unable to see them and shit. But, that's assuming they even reincarnate in the first place."

"What? You're saying they won't remember? But-" Orochimaru sounds a bit distressed, the notebook in his hand crumpling from the force of his grip. I almost feel bad since I know at least part of the reason he went off the deep end in canon was that he felt abandoned by everyone, and thought that bringing his parents back from the dead was the only way to be loved since they were the only people he perceived to have never voluntarily left him behind.

"They won't remember," I state firmly even as I feel the denial in his chakra, the stubborn twist of it. "I know you're thinking about that technique-" I snort at the way the sanin recoils at my unexpected knowledge of the Edo Tensei, but since Death had warned me about it, I had looked into it using my Mangekyo ages ago. "-but all that technique does is summon an aspect of the soul, a temporary one at that, to reanimate a corpse. Look, it's hard to explain, but surely you didn't think the gods would so willingly let a soul slip past them? On top of that it's the forceful summoning of a soul from their rest, so it probably hurts the summoned and seriously pisses the kami off. I wouldn't recommend it. There is no escaping Death, not for long."

Golden eyes narrow. "How do you know all this? It goes beyond clan secrets."

I shrug, standing and stretching. Orochimaru knows I have Sharingan, but he has yet to realize that I have Mangekyō, too. I'm not dumb enough to share that info with a sealed individual that still has the potential to turn traitor, no matter how fond I am of him. "I have no intention to tell someone who has yet to make up their mind."

"My mind? About what?" Orochimaru snarls, and I huff, tugging Kakashi up next to me even as I readjust my blindfold. 

I reach out and touch one snake earring before sticking my tongue out, making him still in abrupt understanding that I know exactly whose thumb he's under. "About which path you will walk. Will you take the hands being held out to you or will you let yourself drown in the darkness, I wonder?"

And with perfect timing, Kakashi shushins us away, leaving our astonished sensei to contemplate his life choices

XXXXXXXXXX 

"Um, Hokage-sama?"

I ignore the confused chunin team reporting in, tucking my nose more firmly into Sakumo's shoulder where I'm partially bundled in his kage robes as he works away at his desk. "Yes?"

"… Why is there a doll in your lap?"the chunin sounds baffled and I'd probably be laughing if I wasn't so sleepy. Kakashi, who is seated next to us, apparently too cool to be seen cuddling his dad in public, snorts for me from where he's studying a scroll.

"Oh, this is Uchiha-hime," Sakumo states cheerfully, grabbing one of my limp hands and waving it at them, as though that explains things.

"…and is it okay for her to be hearing the report about our border patrol? I mean, I know your heir is a genin already, but Uchiha hime hasn't even gone to the academy yet…."

"Mah, it's fine. I'm controlling what they hear with genjutsu so everything is secure," Sakumo states warmly, waving off the team captain's apologies for questioning the Hokage. This time I nearly do laugh because wow, Sakumo is a fantastic liar, his chakra hardly missing a beat, and I'm guessing Kakashi feels the same if the way he twitches means anything.

Today, we were spending time with Sakumo in the Hokage's office. Sakumo is multitasking, teaching us with clones while he works. My chakra is already drained, so I'm taking a break, but Kakashi is still reading away, his headband wrapped around his head.

It's peaceful, just as it was when I first dozed off into my nap, but for some reason, I can feel warning bells start to wring, dread beginning to pool in my gut.

I let my focus slowly expand beyond just Kakashi and Sakumo, where I restricted it so that I didn't have to feel everything and everyone in the entire freaking building. I swear to the kami if that jonin on the second floor is still taking a shit- Oh, fuck!

It is so slight, I doubt anyone else could sense it. Only an extremely powerful sensor could feel the tiniest bit of killing intent dripping from every single ANBU currently in the Hokage's guard, let alone the disgusting seal on their tongues, assuming there was anyone besides me who could feel them at all.

The Yondaime is about to face his first ROOT assasination attempt and Kakashi and I are right in the middle of it.

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AN; Well, how did y'all like it? I hope this gives you guys a better idea of where the MC currently is at power wise. She's got a lot of potential for the future, but she's still a tiny bean, lol, and she's really salty about being weak right now. Also, I freaking love writing a Orochimaru and the children. It's great.

Super excited to write Sakumo's throw down next chapter. I'm not sorry about that cliffhanger, though, because I'm evil like that. Mwahahaha!

A random question for you all; what was your favorite jutsu from Naruto, or a jutsu you want the MC to pick up?