She had been born on the tenth of July. It had been a long birth full of painful contractions, growls of pain, and worried immediate family. She was even called Shizo, if only for a small amount of time before another more hefty name was bestowed upon her like a crown of thrones.

Now usually this wouldn't be a problem, she actually found the name - both of them - rather cute. It wasn't exactly bizarre that there had been a change of choice in matter of what her official title would be, because parents made snap decisions like that all the time. Mom's and dad's, no matter who they were, named and then renamed their children in all sorts of situations.

See, the issue was comprised of so many layers and so many levels that it was hard to express why it was so wrong.

It wasn't her parents that bugged her, in fact, she already liked them. They seemed fun and kind and well, that was rare for her. It was the alarming fact that these people weren't her first set of parents!

And yes, she said that correctly and she meant exactly what she said. Completely different people from before and that thought disturbed her to no end.

Ironically enough, the very first thing she noticed when she had been born was red.

Bright burning red just...floating there. And it wasn't that awkward ginger color that paled or brightened depending on the light exposure. It was hemoglobin red, the color of fresh-from-the-vein blood. It clouded her vision, and she was equally fascinated and rubbed the wrong way by its vibrancy because a color like that just wasn't natural. So like any fuzzy minded, slightly dazzled person would do, she reached out and grabbed hold of it.

Now the issue here wasn't her figuring out it was hair. No no no, it was her catching sight of the hand clutching said hair.

Her hand.

Her now smaller hand

Her now miniature hand.

Her now infant hand.

For a moment all she could do was stare with a blank mind until common sense caught up, told her to panic and she screamed.

Loudly might she add.

Her ringing cry wasn't how she remembered it, not with it being high pitched enough to shatter glass, and it was beginning to make her head hurt.

A hiccup caught in her throat at the feeling of a finger curving around her cheek, and she could feel her tantrum shrink into a frantic whine.

Opening eyes she didn't realized were closed, she was met with her blurry surroundings and immediately curled up within herself.

The last thing she remembered was bright flashing lights and pain. She had been shot, that much she was sure of. Some radical idiot had brilliant idea to rob the bank she had on a whim decided to visit. She could have - should have - gone to her own but she had been hard pressed for time.

But shit, if she had known she would have been fucking murdered she wouldn't have bothered filing for her student visa that day.

A long story short, the guy didn't have a plan, she got chosen as the hostage probably because she was the only ash haired, half gaijin in the middle of Japan, and got shot in the process.

It was just her luck that the one time someone approached her without the intention of being a racist or a purist bigot, was when she was going to die.

Still, none of that explained her current predicament.

Had she suddenly regressed to an infant or been sent back in time? But if either of those were the case, then the woman holding her wouldn't be a redhead, she would be a brunette. So that left her with another plausible yet seemingly impossible option. One she didn't want to consider but honestly had no choice.

Rebirth.

Thank whoever she had a rather loose definition of religion and thought anything after death was a possibility, or she would have just died a second time from shock. Although don't get her wrong, she was still flipping her lid at all of this because come on! It just wasn't done!

"Look at her Mizo, a beautiful baby girl just for us." A soft sounding female voice cooed, dragging her from her slightly dismal thoughts.

"Just like you Hisagi-sama." Another female voice piped up and a few others hummed in agreement.

"Do you want to hold her Mizo?" The woman, Hisagi, her new mom - a very awkward thought for her to think - asked even as she already pressed her smaller body into another person's arms.

Turning her head, she locked onto a hovering tanned face with red hair and indistinguishable features that were painstakingly buzzing into view.

"She seems very attentive." Mizo hummed as he rose to a stand.

"Of course our little Shizo is smart! After all, she is my child!" Hisagi exclaimed, as the new infant was left to wonder why she now had a Japanese name? They looked to be European, unless they were mixed like she had previously been - and wow that felt strange to say!

"So she's not mine anymore?" Mizo raised an eyebrow in question and Hisagi puffed up her cheeks.

"Not if you're gonna doubt her!"

"Now, now little Shizo-sama has two parents," The other female voice placated. "and you two fill those roles quite nicely."

"Shizo?" The man asked in a distasteful tone, obviously registering the name used to address her for the first time. "Really? You wanted to name her that crazy old bat?

"What? I kind of like the sound of it. Uzumaki Shizo. It's catchy." Hisagi pouted but she wasn't paying attention anymore more focused on the red bundle in the man's arms. "and don't you call my obaa that!"

Almost immediately, she had zoned out. Her mind was set on two things, two extremely obvious and foreboding things that were in dire need of addressing.

I.e: the surname to this family she was now apart of - whether she liked it or not - and the silver plated piece of metal that was fashioned onto cloth and wrapped around Mizo's forehead.

All at once everything inside of her protested. She recognized both of them, hell every manga fan worth their salt knew at least that much

A hitae-ate with a familiar swirl and the name of a clan that by all means shouldn't exist.

She would have been a little relieved after having fully identified something familiar but there were a few problems.

Now, if the fact that she had somehow been reborn in the fictional world of Naruto didn't scare her - and it did - then the fact that her last name was the oh so very familiar Uzumaki did it in for her.

She had been reborn in Uzushiogakure where she wasn't guaranteed any survival. A place she knew next to nothing about besides the fact that everyone there had been wiped out.

She was screwed.

"Are we really naming her Shizo?" Her new father asked, tone skeptical.

"Well it was either that or my other choice." Hisagi shrugged, and reluctantly a little foreboding feeling cropped up inside of her.

"But I wasn't so sure about that one considering in the tale I was told as a child all the women with that name were terribly strong but died unbearably young," The woman hummed. "It's too bad really, Kushina is a lovely name."

And to be honest, after hearing what she had heard, she had blacked out, her miniature chakra signature pitched so wildly that she had alarmed the people in the room with her. But regardless of whatever concerns Hisagi had about that name, from the moment she woke up that was her new name and her fate was sealed.

Harazakue Naomi replaced Uzumaki Kushina and that had been that.

Even though she had the mind of a nineteen year old Japanese linguist teacher in this small body of hers, it didn't change the fact that she was a baby and she needed sleep to grow.

Though, when she was awake she made sure to pay the utmost attention to her surroundings.

After a grueling and exhausting year of denying any and everything, she had come to terms with her situation. If it wasn't the inhuman way her parents used the patented Naruto-verse jutsu, the authentic Jounin vests and weaponry around the house, or the blatant Uzumaki traits that confirmed everything, then it was all the chakra she sensed.

The air around them was saturated with it but it was so spread apart that it hardly made a difference. It was like water in her eyes, if she squinted she could see right past it.

Now actual chakra in bodies was different. It was concentrated to a single organism and much more noticeable if they weren't hiding it.

Chakra in people had a feeling and it carried a personality. Her father's was warm and calm but tended to spike at the most obscene times. It was like a hug but not quite. Maybe more similar to the way she used to wrap her favorite blanket around her shoulders whenever she got too cold.

Her mother's was expressive and very volatile. It churned and pitched to its own tempo and it felt safe. It clicked with her own easily and Kushina often fell asleep to the sensation of her mother's chakra pattern.

Thus went most of her early life. Sleeping and observing what she could as she incessantly thought on her position.

Obviously, this changed some things, but what and how much remained to be seen. How much could she prevent without messing up the timeline?

Kushina found herself coming to grow fond of her new parents, how could she not with them constantly caring and watching over her?

From what she had read in the manga, canon!Kushina's clan had been killed off but she wasn't sure if it was before or after she had been sent to Konoha with Mito.

She knew the future and frankly she didn't want to die. But what could she do? Not go to Konoha? Leave the country before Mito could find her? Then what about the Kyuubi?

Even if she told the leaf she didn't want to go, she would have little to no choice. That village wouldn't just let her damn them to death because of a little thing like her opinion.

Only an Uzumaki could hold the nine trails within themselves, as per told by Kishimoto. And she couldn't let Mito die and Kurama free, that would probably kill her sooner than the canon events.

Then what else could she possibly do? Konoha was a big factor so she couldn't avoid going. Kushina had affected a lot in her stay, some of which that needed to be affected even more. She needed to learn what Mito could teach her because her family wouldn't be here forever. The only thing she could hope to do was avoid what was inside of Konoha.

Canon!Kushina becoming pregnant with Naruto had led to the seal weakening, to Obito unsealing Kurama, and eventually to her death. Which then lead to leaving a child alone to be subjected to prejudice and the harsh reality of being an orphan. So really there was only one thing to do.

She would need to stay away from Namikaze.

She knew he was a persistent kid by what was said about him but so was she.

But doing that meant no KushiMina pairing and that meant no Naruto and without him, would the series even be able to go on? Naruto was important because he was Kushina's child, meaning he could hold the beast just like she could and that's what made him valuable.

Maybe if need be she could find another Uzumaki to place Kurama in? But the question was who? Karin? Nagato? Some other Uzumaki child who had been lucky enough to escape?

Whoever she chose, it would insure Minato and by proxy herself, wouldn't die. At least from a Kyuubi attack and if he lived, then so much that happened wouldn't have happened.

Grimacing internally, she pushed those thoughts aside. Ultimately that was a back up plan considering she had no intentions to let Obito unseal the Kyuubi in the first place. The pregnancy was what weakened her enough that Obito could take the biju so easily, so the only solution was to not have a baby.

Sorry Naruto, She thought. your mother's gonna have to be another Uzumaki.

Although if she wanted to be able to stop the wayward Uchiha then she would have to start training as soon as she could.

Kushina had been born into a clan with demonic vitality and a penchant for fuuinjutsu, she would use what she was being handed.

Her parents were a constant part of the war before she even took her first step. Although her mother was more behind the scenes considering she was a seal master and they were the ones they couldn't afford to lose. Her father, on the other hand, was a chakra powerhouse who could whip around canon!Kushina's chains like a pro so he was a front liner.

To fill up the space in between her free time, Kushina decided to get her mother to begin teaching her the different kanji. Though she could only receive instruction when her mother wasn't busy working and grafting her seals for the clan. In her previous life, she studied Chinese kanji so she had assumed it would be easier to learn scripting from her mother but that wasn't the case. Whenever she managed to catch a glimpse of the scrolls her mother wrote in, Kushina could easily see that the Japanese characters here were older and used a bit differently from the ones she was used to.

So immediately upon reaching the age of four where she could do more than reflect and look around, she had hobbled over to her mother who sat practicing her script and asked her what she was doing.

"Ah, so my little Shi-chan is interested in the family art, is she?" Hisagi smiled setting down her brush as she turned her full attention to her daughter.

"Pretty squiggles okaa-san!" Kushina beamed, playing her part as the young and impressionable child perfectly.

Her mother laughed quietly, an amused look taking residence on her face.

"These, honey, are not squiggles. They may look like them but these lines are what we call Kanji." She explained motioning her over to sit in her lap.

"And Kanji is used to make squiggles?" Kushina persisted, drawing out the word while leaning forward to get a better look at her mother's work.

And what work it was. Even with her budding degrees in the Chinese language she could only read few and sparse characters.

"No baby, kaa-chan uses them to write."

Deciding to dig a little more ,she posed another innocent question.

"Only to write? But mine doesn't look like yours." She hummed, flexing her tiny fingers in faux thought. It truly didn't. Whenever she practiced her writing style was vastly different since she used hiragana and katakana.

"Of course not, this writing has an unique purpose." Hisagi explained, grasping onto her extended hands.

"What is it?" Shiki inquired, tilting her head back to meet her mother's plum eyes.

"That, little Shi-chan, is not something I can tell you."

Visibly deflating, she turned around and pouted.

"But it is something I can teach you." Her mother conceded after watching her sulk for a few moments more.

"Your first lesson begins now, go pick up the brush." She instructed and quickly Kushina scrambled up and slid the writing utensil into her hands before looking back at her mother for confirmation.

"Before we can start, we need to correct your writing posture. This will be your most important lesson, never forget it." Hisagi warned before she placed one hand on the small of her back, pushing lightly as she straightened the slight slouch Kushina had taken.

"Good, remember to always keep a straight spine. A confident scribe is a successful one." Her mother told her and Kushina nodded.

"Now, relax your wrist but keep it firm. You need to be able to rotate your hand which ever way." Guiding her movements into position her mother moved to sit behind her.

"Second lesson will be writing our name," Hisagi said, leaning forward so her own red tresses mingled with Kushina's. "are you ready to begin?"

"Yes okaa-san." She affirmed, ready to test her own knowledge on the characters.

Watching as her mother guided her into shaping the first symbols to her name, Hisagi stopped guiding the brush after she had their entire last name painted on a spare piece of paper.

う ず ま き

"You see this here? These symbols when separate don't mean much but when combined," Gripping her smaller hand, she wrote out them out closer together. "this comes to mean whirlpool or spiral."

"A spiral, just like our clan symbol?"

"Yes Shi-chan, like our clan symbol."

"It looks pretty okaa-san!" Kushina grinned, running a finger over the now dry characters.

Her mother smiled softly. "Thank you Shi-chan, one day yours will be just as pretty."

"Really?" Kushina questioned, making sure to inject the right amount of wonder and skepticism.

"Yes I'm sure, you're are, after all, an Uzumaki and my child to boot." Hisagi giggled, tapping the tip of her nose.

The rest of the lesson had been spent with Kushina learning the absolute basics of their ancient but oddly advanced Japanese. By the time her father had walked through the door, Kushina was covered in black ink. Her chubby little baby fingers made handling the utensils hard.

But Kushina deigned to learn and listen, regardless of the fumbling of her less than dexterous fingers.

Her father, seeing what had been going on, was eager to join in on the teaching fest and easily they had accommodated their lessons to fit. Though her father was by no means a seals master he knew enough to give pointers.

At the halfway point of a couple of months, her parents decided it was time to explain the actual use of fuuinjutsu to let her make a single tag, though they never let her detonate it without her being under a microscope. She, unsurprisingly, got mixed up every now and then and nearly set something on fire.

Plenty of times, Kushina would catch herself on the verge of writing the kanji for something explosive in the place of something extremely similar and nonthreatening. She resolved to be more careful, lest she accidentally create a nuclear type explosive tag by accident.

The first time, upon seeing her father's chakra chains destroy flying projectiles mid-air, she knew that was a technique she had to learn.

Her father had started her with some low level chakra exercises. Like sticking blades to grass to convenient and accessible places on her body. For example, Kushina was ordered to wear shorts and t-shirts outside and to cover as much of her body with the tiny green blades. And if one fell off, she was to get rid of the leftover ones and start over.

Surprisingly the grass and leaves didn't burn out because of her character but when she inquired about it from her parents, she found out that was because the entire island was practically saturated in Uzumaki chakra. So ergo, like couldn't harm like.

With her larger than normal coils and reserves, it had tired her much more later on the road than she had anticipated it would for someone of her age. But she still got exhausted far more quickly than her parents.

In between her sessions, her parents encouraged her to go out and talk to the other children who were around but Kushina steadfastly refused. Most of the kids were years older than her or much too young, and the ones that were her age weren't on her level.

Not to mention they were all going to die.

What was the point of befriending a bunch of people who she knew was going to be murdered. Kushina was already attached to her parents she wouldn't latch onto anyone else.

Which was why whenever someone did try to connect with her, she threw up her antisocial walls. She was lucky the fighting kept most busy. Their go-to personalities and sunny disposition made it really hard to resist the invitations of friendship.

About a year and some months into her training, both of her parents were called out to the front lines.

Kushina had been in the middle of a lesson when a ninja had busted in and ordered both Hisagi and Mizo Uzumaki out to the front.

Her parents were grim faced but determined, but Kushina was terrified and apprehensive.

Her mother was a sealer! They wouldn't call a fuuinjutsu master out to battle unless it was major.

Sitting alone in the house was practically torture. It was quiet and nerve-wracking. She persisted in sleeping through most of the days when they weren't there. A friend of the family was asked to watch over her and this was the only time Kushina allowed herself to receive affection from her clan.

Kushina's heart practically burst from her chest when both of her parents slunk into the house weeks later. They were scuffed and cut up but regardless they were alive.

For the second time in her re-life, Uzumaki Kushina cried her eyes out.

Edit: 3/19/16

Beta'd by CompYES.