Title: Walking the Razor's Edge

Summary:"Life as a shinobi is like walking on the edge of a knife. It's not just because the slightest slip will cause death, but also because any move you make, forward or back, just makes the blade cut deeper." When you're reborn as an Uchiha, you don't get to just let events pass you by. You have no choice but to make your moves... and hope you don't die in the process. OC Self-Insert.

Author's Notes: Yes, it's another attempt at a "realistic" self-insert. Allow me to point you towards Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine and tactfully say "thank you for giving me ideas and some wonderful reading material." I will also point out Vixen Tail's Déjà vu no Jutsu as the number-one example of what one of these fics should strive to be. By far my favorite fan-fiction of all time and the true inspiration for this story.

Now, this is going to take a different direction from the "world-building" style of DoS, much closer to the "change things enough to keep your friends alive while keeping the timeline somewhat recognizable" (dang that's a mouthful) style of DvnJ. I'll still be doing a good bit of world building and trying to expand on things that I believe need more expansion, but the main point of this story is to overcome the challenges and survive the failures that inevitably bar the path to a better future for the Narutoverse. Don't worry. You'll get your fill of twists and turns.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. If I did, it'd be a lot easier to understand and the 4th Great Ninja War arc would not be taking place over a span of days.

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"People don't just live one life. They keep coming back until they get it right."

― C.R. Strahan

When I died, I didn't really have any expectations of what lay beyond. Not because I didn't believe in the afterlife or anything, but because my death was so unexpected. It literally took me until well after I was reborn to realize that I had died once, as somebody else.

Yeah. I'm not joking. My name is Uchiha Kouken, and I'm the reincarnation of Vincent Davis, a college student from northwest Ohio.

Of course, as I said, it took me a long time to realize that. When I died and was reborn, there was little pause. One second, I remember seeing the out-of-control mass of the bus that killed me barreling forward, and within the next five, I was aware of darkness, silence, and pain. This was quickly replaced by light, screams, and even more pain.

That was when I was born Uchiha Kouken, on December 28th in Konoha General Hospital. And as you've probably realized by now, I'm not from the Naruto universe originally.

I've often wondered why I was the one who was reincarnated here, and with all my memories to boot. The simplest answer I can come up with is that I was simply a cosmic accident. A single life, unimportant in the grand scheme of things, slipped through the cracks of whatever barriers kept my reality separate from this one, and ended up on the other side. Honestly, I figure it's better if I just believe that. Getting too philosophical will only serve to drive me insane.

Well, more insane. I think anybody who remembers the moment of their own death before their own birth probably qualifies as slightly crazy.

Needless to say, I qualify in spades.

I'm not sure, really, whether this life is better than my previous one. Yeah, the ability to breathe fire as easily as I do air is cool, not to mention everything else people can do with chakra. However, it's also filled with hardship. The life of a ninja is never easy, and life as an Uchiha is even less so. Especially since I was born just four and a half years before Uchiha Itachi; only seventeen years before the Massacre.

Granted, I had been born to a good family, in the safest and most prosperous of the Elemental Nations. Even being an Uchiha didn't mean that I was sure to die by Itachi's hand. I had a chance to make something of my life, and maybe to better the lives of others as well.

Remembering that I had died young gave me a drive to make up for lost time. Remembering a life wasted and with nothing achieved gave me a drive to succeed. And the memories of my past life, combined with the knowledge that I had lost everyone and everything I loved gave me an edge no other Uchiha would be able to surpass. The edge I needed not to merely survive, but to make up ground against the looming shadow of the Uchiha Massacre.

I awakened my Sharingan from despair… when I was less than six weeks old.

It was, no-holds barred, the worst feeling I had ever experienced. You see, the Sharingan doesn't simply awaken from feelings of despair; it magnifies them a dozen times over when it first awakens. Imagine feeling like you're drowning, suffocating on black hatred and loss. Imagine burning thermite in your veins, stabbing daggers in your eyes, and smothering pressure in your head from the reactions taking place in your brain. Imagine every negative thought you've experienced, every injury you've felt, and every painful memory you have rendered in perfect clarity like some sick horror movie inside your head.

Now imagine being less than a year old… and unable to do anything more than scream.

I'm amazed that I didn't go insane. To be honest, I think the only reason that I didn't is because I kept consciously trying to find good memories to counteract the bad ones. Even with that, I nearly killed myself with chakra exhaustion a hundred times over when I was a toddler, trying so hard to find memories that I could cling to in order to keep me from giving into despair that I would instinctively use my Sharingan to give me the clarity I desired. I clung to my parents (a pair of Chunin named Uchiha Kaida and Uchiha Daisuke, both members of the Konoha Military Police) with a ferocity that surprised even me, and constantly tried to keep my mind off the bad memories.

It wasn't perfect. I still woke up some nights, sweating and clinging to the sheets hard enough to tear them apart. My nightmares were probably going to haunt me for the rest of my life, and would only get worse as I start adding more and more dead loved ones to my tally. Fortunately, those nights were few and far between, at least for the time being.

If I had anything to say about it, they were going to stay that way.

Surprisingly, my parents (and the rest of my family, to a lesser extent) weren't idiots when it came to my "development". Usually. They could tell right away that I was far more intelligent than any child my age should be.

Learning how to talk (not just babble a few words, but actually talk) within my first six months probably didn't hurt that conclusion.

The one error they made was assuming that my stupidly high learning curve was due to my Sharingan being awakened so young. Since enhanced perceptiveness often accompanied the awakening of the Kekkei Genkai, it was a reasonable assumption, and I was just glad that they never figured out the real cause.

My parents sought to teach me everything that could for as long as they could keep my attention (as a toddler with an adult's knowledge base and motivation, this amounted to roughly five minutes at a time). Everything from reading to walking was on the agenda, and I had the sneaking suspicion that they were trying to train me as a ninja much younger than should've been possible. Little hints, such as my toys being easy to aim and throw, or my language lessons being conducted in a similar method to code-breaking and cryptanalysis (which I vaguely remembered from my past life) were always nagging at me. Then again, maybe it was just a common practice for the clans of this world. The formative years were when we were most likely to learn, after all. An early start might be the difference between life and death when we came to be in the field.

Language came more easily to me than I had expected. I'd had some talent at faking a Japanese accent during my first lifetime, and I was able to pronounce Japanese words just fine, but I'd never gotten the chance to learn more than the absolute most basic words. Maybe it was just because I had experience with learning languages due to my past life (having learned German from my family and Spanish in high school), as seemed to be the norm. However it happened, I learned how to speak pretty eloquently for a kid, which was a godsend in the uptight and formal upbringing of the Uchiha Clan.

As I continued to grow and learn, I started learning some shinobi skills. Basic taijutsu and weapon use, trap making, and of course, shinobi rules and codes of conduct. Despite my Sharingan, I was no prodigy. That much was clear right from the beginning. I was quite strong physically, and my chakra reserves were especially large for my age, but I was slow by Uchiha standards and badly uncoordinated. My mind kept trying to revert to the taekwondo I'd learned in my previous life, and when I fought I was constantly overextending or placing my stances poorly. Part of it was because the Uchiha style, known as Kumataka Hisou-ryu (Flying Mountain Hawk-Eagle Style), was intended to promote speed and agility, in line with the typical Uchiha attributes of leanness and limberness. I was neither, being much larger and heavier than average at my age.

Of course, this is where my caretakers decided to be idiots. I was an Uchiha, and by god, I was going to learn the Uchiha style and enjoy it! Morons, all of them. For a clan of military elites, their pride was blinding. To hold back a perfectly capable child because he had the wrong body type for their fighting style was something that made me sick. Even my beloved parents weren't immune to it, halfheartedly promising to show me some ways to compensate and then doing nothing.

It wasn't until I was about four, and met Uchiha Kagami-sama and his son Shisui, that I started to get proper instruction in taijutsu. Kagami-sama himself wasn't built the same way I was, but he was more than willing to teach me a style that worked for me. Kowareta Shiten-ryu (Broken Branch Style) was ideal for me. It was a straightforward art, but devastatingly effective even in the hands of a child, focusing on fight-ending moves and breaking your opponent apart without any regard for their health. It reminded me greatly of Krav Maga from my previous life; though I'd never studied the Israeli military fighting style, I'd had several friends who did and had sparred against several users of it. Once I finally got the basics of it down (roughly six months before I was supposed to join the academy at age six), I was able of standing up to even the three year older Shisui. I counted that as a major win and a step in the right direction, since managing to get to that level in all areas meant that I'd have a prayer of standing up to Itachi. Granted, Shisui hadn't yet learned the Shunshin no Jutsu that would later become his calling card, but it was still impressive since he was fast as hell even without chakra enhancements or his signature ninjutsu backing him up. Kagami-sama even said that once I got proper instruction, I might qualify as a prodigy in my own right.

Of course, not everything was sunshine and rainbows where Shisui and I were concerned. Since the Third Great Shinobi World War had occurred during the time Itachi was four and likely moved close to Konoha to put him on a battlefield, I realized that I'd likely be an academy student at the time, and Shisui a genin. That meant wartime protocols, early graduation, and potentially getting shoved into battles we weren't ready for if we were too good at the shinobi arts.

You see, that's the curious dichotomy of life as a ninja. When our luck is good, it's really good. But when it rains, it pours… and raining hellfire is just as likely as the usual drizzle. I honestly think Kagami-sama summed it up best.

"Life as a shinobi is like walking on the edge of a knife. It's not just because the slightest slip will cause death, but also because any move you make, forward or back, just makes the blade cut deeper. There's no escaping death in our world. It's just a matter of how long you can stand tall and how lightly you can tread on the path."

At the time, I had no idea just how true those words were.

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Closing notes: Nothing much to say this time around. This is mainly just an intro, and a bit of setup for future twists. Expect later chapters to get much longer.

No idea when the next update will be (I'm subject to horrible writer's block and my motivation is about a stable as a see-saw in an earthquake), but I'll try to get it out ASAP. Cheers, and please don't hesitate to review!