Panther Uchiha (2454 words)

While the third great ninja war raged on near the borders between the elemental nations two children are born in the coffins of the Uchiha clan compound.

The first one is the first son of Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha head of the Uchiha clan, Itachi.

The second one is much less important than the Uchiha clan heir as it is the first daughter of Suzume and Toshi Uchiha, a normal couple of the Uchiha clan.

But even though she wasn't born with a special status except being an Uchiha, she didn't need it to be special.

Aya Uchiha, that's the name she was given by her mother in this life, not the first life she had lived nor the first name she had gotten.

With great curiosity in her eyes, she inspects her surroundings before looking down onto her own, small human hands.

'Well, damn! Looks like I reincarnated into a human.' The realization caused Aya to curse but because she was still a baby her parents couldn't understand what she just said.

'Anyway, it's already too late to do anything about it so I will have to somehow deal with it.' Quick to accept her current circumstances Aya closes her eyes and starts to meditate.

Without any problems she entered her mindscape, which different than most people in this world didn't look like a sewer, instead it looks like an idyllic landscape with fields of high grass, clear rivers and forests.

Aya appears in midst this place, but instead of a small girl or even a human an elephant sized black panther with a long fluffy tail manifested.

Stretching her limbs in the typical lazy style only cats can do while her ears fold back and maw opened wide for a yawn Aya enjoys the feeling of her original body.

But then she freezes up and slowly turns her head to inspect this mental avatar too.

'Damn, and her I thought that only my body changed and became weak again, but from the looks of it even my mental image of myself has returned to my early days before I did all that crazy sh*t like eating a dragon for its scales.' Annoyed at the how much weaker she got after her last stunt that brought her into the current situation Aya shifted her attention somewhere else.

Golden slit eyes start to scan the night sky that hangs above the landscape and almost immediately she forgot about her current weakness as something else caught her attention.

'Hmm, this body is interesting, especially those eyes.' Her eyes stay on two crimson stars that shine brightly in the sky before once again moving.

'And then there's this.' Aya's eyes reflect a light blue sun, it is many times smaller than the normal sun, but it was also much bigger than the stars.

'I have never seen this kind of energy before, it seems to be a combination of spiritual energy and vitality.

But how can they mix like that?

Normally those two can be used separately or even combined in special strengthening methods, but this is the first time I see a fusion of them.' Pondering for a while she found the answer in another spot of the sky.

'So, its like that, thanks to those pathways and nod points it is possible to channel those two completely different energies into a common circulation system and once they arrive in the core which is located in the stomach area they fuse.' Muttering to herself in fascination Aya spends the next few hours inspecting them future.

After a while she switched from inspecting to experimenting as her attention switched to the unfamiliar energy.

Probing it with her will didn't cause much of a reaction so she starts tug and pull on it.

The light blue energy tries to resist a bit, but in the end couldn't escape Aya's grasp and was forcefully pulled through the pathways.

'Comparing the amount of energy I have, and the amount that would fit into the system it looks like I still got plenty of room to increase the amount.' With that she actively injects her spiritual energy and vitality into the core space of the system where it fuses and turns into more of the light blue energy.

Sadly, she had to stop before being able to reach the limit because she ran dangerously low on vitality.

The body of freshly born baby isn't very strong so the amount of vitality Aya could use was pretty pathetic, especial compared to ocean worth of spiritual energy that laid at her disposal.

As an old and powerful soul, even though currently weakened, the amount and recovering speed of her spiritual energy was leagues above what her newly born body could produce.

'I may have not maxed out the amount yet, but it should be enough to circulate a small amount through all the pathways and nod points.' Like that she starts to push the light blue energy in a steady stream through the different paths and nods, opening them in the process.

If any shinobi knew that somewhere in the Uchiha clan compound a not even a day-old baby was currently practicing chakra circulation, they would probably not believe it even if you showed them proof.

Like that time started to pass and in the blink of an eye Aya already became three years old.

Laying on the grass near a pond in the Uchiha compound Aya was busy to feel her surroundings.

In those three years she had continued to experiment around with the light blue energy which she learnt was called chakra.

Driven by curiosity like cats tend to do she asked lots of questions to her parents which they answered to best of their abilities even though they were a bit surprised that Aya wanted to know about such things at the mere age of three.

Aya also learnt more about the eyes she and most of her clan possessed, the sharingan.

After learning about it she tried to artificially awaken them, but her chakra reserves were way to small for that, forcing her to first increase them before she could do so.

Well, there's still the possibility of her awakening them through extreme emotions of loss, at least that's what her parents told her.

But Aya wasn't a very emotional being in the first place, so she decided to try something else.

She's already able to forcefully expand her chakra reserves by directly injecting spiritual energy and vitality into her core, this would allow her to rapidly increase her chakra capacity if there wasn't the problem of her body being so weak that the amount of vitality she could use was pathetically small.

In order to solve this problem, she needs to strengthen her body, and luckily she just got the right thing at hand.

With her senses spread out it wasn't hard for Aya to notice the small amount of energy flowing through the ground and atmosphere around her.

Natural energy tends to appear in every world where life thrives, so Aya wasn't surprised, or more accurately, she expected it to be around here as well.

For most being it is hard to sense the nearly omnipresent energy around them, one first has to become part of nature itself to sense it which is mostly achieved by remaining completely still, but for someone like Aya who for a great deal of her existence silently lazed around in the strangest of places, it posed no problem to notice it.

And once she was able to sense it, she could grab it with her will and pull it into her body.

Well, at least that's how the druids, cultivators and other people did it, but how could the lazy cat, which is Aya, spend day's if not years or even decades painstakingly pulling in natural energy and refining or fusing it into her own?

She didn't, that's how, instead of following the many examples before her, she went and created a completely new method.

Reaching out with her will she grabs some of the natural energy swirling around her and forms it into a thin thread before pulling this thread into her body.

The moment the thread of natural energy entered her body it tried to enter her chakra pathways as if attracted by an invisible pull.

But under the unyielding control of Aya's will it was forced past the pathways and chakra points till it reached her heart where it was slowly and steadily injected into Aya's blood stream.

Once in the blood stream Aya's entire body starts to tense up as she manually controls each and every muscle in her body, including her heart and the muscles responsible to move her blood.

Like that she meticulously guides the miniscule amount of natural energy which entered her blood stream to each and every cell of her body.

Hours pass by and by now most of her body felt stiff and hard as if turned to stone.

Even a slight lap in concentration now would immediately turn her into stone with no way to safe herself as more than half of her body already contained some natural energy.

Without Aya's abnormal will keeping the energy in check it would already have spread uncontrollably as it wasn't contained in her chakra system where she could have used her chakra to fight against it.

A couple more hours pass and Aya finished spreading the natural energy through her entire body.

Then, in the span of not even a fraction of a second, she retracted her will back into her mindscape, leaving the natural energy in her cells free to do whatever it wanted.

The moment she did that, her skin turned grey and rough like stone while her hair grew stiff while some of them broke off.

The outside wasn't the only place where a change happened, her organs too turned grey and rough like stone while her blood grew thicker till it only barely moved like almost cooled lava.

With everything in her body becoming stiff or stone like Aya's heartbeat too slowed down till it seemingly only beat once per minute.

She remained in this borderline petrified state for the rest of the day and only when the orange light of the evening sun shone down on Aya's grey body did finally a change occur.

Cracks, big and small start to appear in her rough skin.

With a sudden burst Aya breaks free form her stone like cocoon as if she just shed herself.

'Phew, that was just as uncomfortable as I remember it being. Forcefully evolving one's entire body to adapt to natural energy really isn't something a normal person should do.' Standing up with shaky legs Aya starts dusting off the remains of her shed stone skin.

'Luckily, I only need to do it once and never again, well, at least not as long as I'm still in this body.' Clenching her small hand into fist she could feel the increase in strength.

'Now that all the cells in my body are capable to collect, store, refine and use natural energy automatically I will no longer have to bother with training my body as it will grow stronger by itself.' A wide, cat like grin appears on her face.

'Truly, it is worth working hard in the beginning so that one can enjoy the befits for the rest of one's life afterward.' Satisfied with this days progress and achievements she starts to walk back home with a small satisfied smile on her face.

A year passes and Aya turned four, through this year her physical strength almost doubled, and she could exert the same amount of strength a good trained ten year old can and that without using her chakra to strengthen herself which also has greatly increased in capacity.

Today was special, the clan head, Fugaku Uchiha, had the great idea of taking the new generation of Uchiha clan members onto the battlefield of the war.

Till now Aya hasn't bothered to make contact or form bonds with anyone, so this was the first time she actually saw, or paid attention to her fellow kids.

'Whew, what a nice bonding exercise, viewing a bloody war between two nations.' Even with her considerable different perspective about killing, Aya was able to understand humans good enough to know that showing such a display of cruelty and bloodshed between their own kind wasn't very healthy for a young and developing mind.

'Maybe he thought that showing this to the new generation would allow them to awaken their sharingan early? If that is really his reason then I can already say that I don't like him.' Letting her eyes wander over the battlefield a tiny smirk appeared on her face.

'Ignoring the effect this spectacle has on others, it is a great opportunity for me.' After making sure that no one was currently paying her any attention Aya's obsidian black eyes start to change.

With the increase in physical strength the amount of vitality she could use to increase her chakra reserves also increased, a short while ago she finally had enough chakra to artificially awaken her sharingan fully.

Two crimson eyes with a with a black pupil and a concentric circle connected to which are three tomoes, stare onto the battlefield with a cat like curiosity.

'It's really neat how these eyes allow me to see chakra, I might be able to do that too with my spiritual sense, but the sheer area I can cover with it makes it annoying to observe details.

The sharingan is much more convenient in this regard.' With her three tomoe sharingan activated Aya's eyes scan over the many people fighting each other.

Taijutsu styles, ninjutsu's and even some Fūinjutsu, Aya observed them all and analyzed them in mere seconds.

The battle soon ended and the only thing that remained after the survivors retreated is a bloody graveyard.

Deactivating her dōjutsu before someone could notice it, Aya made her way back together with the rest of the children, except or Itachi, the first son of Fugaku and Mikoto.

He stayed back but that wasn't any of Aya's concern, so she didn't pay it any mind, instead she began to go through the newly acquired techniques she got from the battlefield.

'Hehe, so many interesting things to play with, that should keep me entertained for a while.' Nothing interesting happened afterwards so she focused on understanding and mastering what the people in this world call ninjutsu.

A couple of months later the third great ninja war came to an end causing a lot of civilians to sigh in relief.

This war had many