chapter 5 the next life

I was born into my second life utterly confused and disoriented. The first and only constant in my earliest days was mother, who held me even though I cried far too much for a normal baby, and whispered softly to me every night as I struggled to make sense of all the conflicting thoughts and memories, her long hair falling down around me in a protective cocoon as I bawled, gleaming light turning the black to indigo.

"It's okay sweetie, it's okay, mama's here, it's okay Genji."

And so it was that Shimura Genji came to be.

. . .

I often wondered as I grew older if my mother might not have been blessed with the gift of prophecy, for my name was spelled in a somewhat unusual manner.

Source, Heal, peace.

It was peculiarly fitting, for I never stopped moving once I had achieved some semblance of order in my thoughts. There was so little time, and so much to see and do.

I was an Shimura, and thus I was cursed. I thought myself because Born of the line of the man called the Shinobi of darkness (Shinobi no Yami), Over the years He made countless enemies through out the elemental nations. He even had a lot of enemies inside of the village as well.

The man is responsible for countless atrocities, And creator of countless villains of this world. For that reason I think my life will much shorter than I think. Damn that self styled God.

Oh well.

This was not necessarily the most terrible thing that could happen to one dropped into the Elemental Countries, certainly there were worse fates. I would be a strong ninja, at the very least, which was a great boon to one's chances of survival on this planet.

After my birth my earliest months were fairly good. It was very sheltered and I was rarely allowed to teken out of the house, because I was a baby of course. But our backyard was beautifully maintained by my mother, who filled it with lovely white and purple orchids. Our house was very large, but it would be better if it was small, because the smaller size make it cozy and it would nicely shaded by the Hashirama trees whose broad green leaves cast dappled shadows over my infant flailings in the strong summer sun, and in the fall turned orange and helped the oncoming dusk change the windows to warm fire.

Oh the trees, the glorious trees, towering against the sky, a bulwark against any threat. Not for naught were we called the Village Hidden in the Leaves, for the grand pillars of the Shodaime's bloodline were omnipresent amongst the buildings, and to a child the shade of the canopy was better than any security blanket.

There would be time later to train, time to grow. I would not slack, of course, because War might yet be looming, I could not know for sure when I was yet.

But for a time, I was content.

. . .

How foolish youth.

. . .

When I was six months old the Kyuubi broke free from its Seal and decimated Konoha.

Our pleasant house was destroyed, along with much of the Shimura quarter as my caretaker slash maid took me safety and she and I huddled in the fallout shelters under the Hokage monument, She was crouched in terrified silence with the rest of the civilians as titanic waves of malevolent energy reshaped the landscape.

When the dust settled we moved to a new house, in a new walled off part of the village, and there were no more cool summers and shady autumns in the lee of great trees, and there never would be again.

Dreams plagued everyone, the malefic echoes of the Bijuu given form in the sleeping mind, but mine were not of the Fox.

The trees rush past in the dim moonlight, shapes given definition by the shadows which the anemic silver luminance does not relieve so much as highlight. The inky blue of the hollows in their roots exert a sucking pressure and lend the grass between the wavering spaces the sickening green hue of an old bruise viewed through tear blurred eyes.

Feet pound in unsteady rhythm, a drumbeat of frantic flight warped to torpor slowness by the clutching shades of indistinct figures hiding behind the towering wooden columns. The ground turns under foot, traitor earth rushing up to blind, fall brought short at the last moment by shaking arms.

Sandaled feet appear ahead, soundless across the cold and barren clearing, flecks of ice spreading to leech color from the surroundings and leave them a tired clinical grey. A sudden flip and a cloaked figure looms, visage bleeding from black inscrutability into Itachi, face lined and pale and devoid of pity as his eyes expand and swirl, red on black consuming the moon to glower down on frozen limbs with baleful crimson disdain as it peeks through incongruously bright leaves. Steel flashes once more and the view topples in accompaniment to shooting pain- He's words were "You must pay for your grandfather's crimes".

I wake to clutch at the neck so recently severed with a silent scream on my lips.

My mother was not their to comfort me. And for some reason I never saw her again.

And later I learned she is Root ninja as well, thus she got a assignment grandpa Danjo to protect the wives the hokages. Basically spy on the jinchuriki.

Thus I concluded that she was definitely killed by Obito Uchiha.

Which raised the question about what happened to my father?