Exhausted.
So tired.
Her body felt as heavy as stone, her eyelids as if someone had stitched them shut. A girl soaked in blood lay on the ground, forcing her eyes open as her small chest heaved.
Under the night, a sickle moon hung dim and powerless.
Fog pressed so thick it seemed it might harden into matter. One ordinary breath dragged the metallic stink into her lungs until it felt like drowning.
Where is this?
The unfamiliar scene snapped her mind awake.
She looked down.
Black and red filled her vision.
Blood.
So much blood.
The ground looked as if some great beast had plowed it. Red and black smeared into one. Shredded corpses lay in pieces across the earth. Congealed black blood glued fragments together. Severed limbs were past counting. Splintered skulls showed bone white, entrails in reds and greens slumped in pools as if fruit stripped and diced inside a jelly.
As clarity returned, her scalp prickled. The slaughterhouse tableau chilled her marrow. She had worked overtime until five in the morning, stumbled back to her cramped rental, collapsed on the bed.
When she woke again, it was to this.
Am I dead?
Is this hell?
Ugh... my head...
Needles of heat bored through her brain. Clutching her skull, Konome curled among the bodies, rolling as if a drill were twisting through her head and whipping her thoughts to pulp. Memory shards surfaced and sank.
When she opened her eyes again,
milky pupils caught a scatter of gray light.
A long time passed.
When the pain finally receded and the memories settled, she grasped an absurd truth.
She had crossed over. Or been reborn.
This body's name was Konome Taketori.
Female, six years old.
Of mixed blood from two places: the Taketori clan of Kirigakure in the Land of Water, and the Hyuga clan of Konohagakure in the Land of Fire.
Her mother was of the Hyuga Main House. During the Third Shinobi World War she was captured by Ao of the Hidden Mist, which led to the loss of a Byakugan. Later, Konome's father rescued her. Gratitude became love, and they had a daughter. The child inherited her mother's Byakugan, but with a faint ash-gray dot at the center of each pupil, so they named her Konome Taketori.
Hyuga? Taketori? This is the world of Naruto? Then what is the timeline... the Taketori massacre?
She stared at her small hands, sticky with blood, and felt shock hollow her chest.
Ridiculous.
Her memories made it feel as if the worldview she had built over thirty years had caved in. She pushed herself up on trembling arms. Every muscle ached with a tearing soreness, like a body that had lived at the gym for a year.
She swayed to her feet. Head spinning, she took in the headless bodies and the sea of red. The sight was nauseating and eerily familiar, like a childhood scene dredged back through time.
Stifling the churn in her gut, she slipped a hand inside a corpse's blood-soaked tunic. After a moment's searching, she pulled out a small white medicine vial.
Cold to the touch.
A red circle was printed on its surface. Two red dots sat on the circle's centerline, nearly touching the edge. In her memory this was the Taketori clan's crest. Two dots within the ring, one on each side, symbolized authority and balance.
She flicked the cap off with practiced ease. Brown pellets the size of her thumb tumbled into her palm.
She gulped.
No time to count. She dumped a handful into her mouth. The pellets were dry and hard. Saliva gathered slowly as she forced them down. Even after swallowing nearly half the bottle, she couldn't taste a thing.
Her gut churned, grinding the pills. Warmth spread back through chilled, stiff limbs.
Soldier Pills.
The shinobi world's rations in a pill, packed with nutrients, able to restore chakra. The clan's stock was limited and reserved for adults to maximize combat power.
The taste and effect settled the last of her doubt. This world was real.
She stood on the stained earth and, while the pills dissolved, sorted out her situation.
According to the memories,
last night the Taketori had fought the ANBU that had encircled their compound in the east of Kirigakure.
The original Konome, a Byakugan bearer serving as a scout, had joined the main force in a breakout attempt. They ran straight into the ANBU commander known as Fierce Fang and the large Mist force he led.
The outcome needed no retelling.
Her parents and kin were wiped out. Konome herself had been run through the chest by an unknown ANBU and died on the spot.
So...
how am I alive?
She rubbed her small but whole chest. The blood-soaked clothes and slit where a blade had passed made her frown.
Forget it.
How she came back mattered less than how she would live.
The facts were set. First she had to escape this pit and survive.
She needed to get out of the Hidden Mist.
A boom tore the air.
From the east came a thunderous blast, several screams, and tongues of fire that clawed at the sky. Silence fell again a moment later.
The battle isn't over?
She was in the Taketori compound at the village's eastern edge. Beyond it lay the ANBU cordon. Even if she broke that line, she would still be inside Kirigakure's sphere of control. To leave the village meant piercing yet another defense.
Her enemy was one of the Five Great Hidden Villages.
What did she have?
She took stock of her assets.
In this life, she counted as a minor prodigy of the Taketori.
She had drawn out chakra at three. Under her mother's guidance, she had awakened the Byakugan at five.
Now at six,
her chakra reserves were on par with a chunin. Her Gentle Fist basics were solid. She knew the three E-rank staples Clone Technique, Transformation Technique, and Substitution Technique and... there were corpses everywhere.
She ranked her assets from greatest to least.
The Soldier Pills finished dissolving. Physical energy rose from every limb into her core. It rushed along her network toward her heart. Invisible spiritual energy gathered at her brow then fell like a thread. The two met at the "chakra seed" near her heart, and a pale blue radiance bloomed inside her like dawn.
Her heart and the chakra seed pulsed together.
Strength spread with her blood.
When the weakness ebbed, Konome didn't bolt.
If she couldn't punch through the ANBU cordon, running would be meaningless. To break the line, she would likely have to fight. The priority was to enrich her assets first. Only then would she have room to maneuver.
She flipped bodies one by one.
Familiar faces were red from head to toe, glassy eyes staring at the sky. Among them were the neighbors and friends Konome remembered, and masked ANBU in standard-issue vests.
Soldier Pills, shuriken, explosive tags...
She showed no favoritism. She looted everyone the same, carefully collecting valuable supplies. The reek of blood burned in her nose as she crawled through the debris of a battlefield. She felt like a hyena on the savannah, picking a carcass clean.
Except hyenas run in packs. Alone like this, she was more like a stray mongrel by the road.
Heh.
Her own dark joke made her snort. She folded the few explosive tags with care and tucked them inside her shirt. After a battle like this, most supplies were spent or waterlogged by Water Release and blood. Usable items were scarce.
She finished sorting her kit,
looked up,
and spotted another body ahead. Its legs were twisted, and a mask marked with the Mist's crest covered its face. Delighted, Konome hurried over and reached for the tool pouch at the small of its back.
From experience, ANBU gear tended to be a bit better than the clan's.
Her small hand slipped inside.
Heat met her fingers. The pouch was empty.
Wait...
Why is a corpse warm?
The thought froze her.
Because inside the pouch, her fingers had closed around a hot, living hand.
The hand snapped shut, crushing her wrist and yanking her forward.
Konome's pale pupils pinpricked. She thrashed on instinct, but the grip on her wrist was iron, impossible to break.
Air hissed.
The "corpse" surged up. His left hand clamped her arm. His right hand came up with a kunai from who knew where and slashed for her slender throat.
The world slowed.
The mask's slitted eyeholes tilted askew. Bloodshot eyes glared murder through them. Konome snapped her head back, the kill stroke shaving scabbed strands of hair. She saw the nicks along the kunai's edge, the scars of a dozen fights.
Her dodge startled him. He kept his left hand locked on her and rolled his wrist. The reversed kunai traced a half circle through the air and darted straight for the center of her brow.
Smooth. Fast.
Every strike aimed to kill.
With nowhere to evade, Konome didn't think.
A mad light flickered in her gray-tinged eyes. Her right hand hooked his wrist inside the pouch, and her left snatched up a kunai and stabbed for his face.
In the bloody mist,
amid a field of dead,
two survivors clawed their way up from the heap, hand locked to hand, kunai crossing in a fight to the death.
A wet rip.
Steel kissed his brow. Red ran from his brow ridge in a single line that split his face.
Konome's eyes flew wide. She drove her arm forward, the kunai's tip worrying at his vest, and could not, would not, force it in any farther...