Notes: The title is from "Building A Monster" by Skylar Grey.

01.

She is ten years old when the memories return, now a boy with a plain name born into a plain family, utterly civilian and unremarkable, and she understands why she has never felt like she belonged. She comes from a world of magic and wonder, heroes and villains, death and destruction, and there is nothing for her here.

Even so, she lives.

She doesn't accept the name they give her, has never liked how it rolls so disdainfully off her mother's tongue, loathes how common and unoriginal it is. At ten and three months, she chooses her own name, whimsically and impulsively, makes it ridiculous and morbid and one people will undoubtedly remember. Skull DeMort.

Her mother hates it, and her father assures her it is simply a phase and that it will pass. It doesn't. She absolutely refuses to answer to anything else, not even when her father lectures and her mother screams and all her toys are taken away. It's a battle, the first of many, and she won't lose. Eventually, they give up. Eventually, they always give up.

Skull grins to herself as her mother grits her teeth and calls her by her new name. The venom underlying her tone only makes the victory sweeter.

Her mother is weak-willed and dainty, disapproving and haughty, forever disappointed in her son who likes make up and flashy clothes and jewelry and not 'manly' things. As if these things have gender. As if Skull even cares about this world's limited and obtuse view of gender roles. She is a woman in a man's body, and this has never bothered her. She is a medic and field ninja, a professional and a warrior, and such concerns are trivial at best.

Skull delights in the unpleasant expression her mother makes when she catches Skull applying eyeliner in the bathroom mirror. She cackles inwardly when her mother gasps oh so dramatically when she spots Skull bedazzling her entire wardrobe. She winks and waves cheerfully when her mother walks in on her kissing another boy.

It's childish and petty, but Skull spent years trying to be something she was not, chased after a boy who - while he ended up being one of her closest friends - never looked at her and saw anything of worth, not until she worked and trained and clawed her way to the top, made herself the best and learned self love and confidence. She knows better now. She won't settle for anything less than she deserves, and she deserves more than this world can offer.

She does not settle. She bides her time. She waits. She works part-time jobs, baby-sits, saves money from her allowance, and when she is sixteen, she packs up her things and leaves. The world is at her fingertips. All she must do is reach out and grab it.

-o-

There is chakra within her. She can find no trace of it anywhere else. She tests out a henge when she is eleven, curious and hopeful, and the expended chakra does not disperse into the air as she expects - it returns to its original source inside her, as if she had never used it in the first place. She works herself to the brink of exhaustion, tries out as many jutsu as she can without destroying her backyard or drawing unwanted attention, and she realizes a few things.

As far as she can tell, her chakra will forever replenish itself. She is the only living organism in this world that can hold and withstand chakra, and so it will always return to her. However, she can still suffer from the symptoms of chakra exhaustion, despite not running out, and she can overwork her coils with too much use too fast.

The drawbacks are more than worth the benefits, and she spends her second childhood testing her limits, perfecting her already perfect chakra control, and mastering her arsenal of jutsu.

When she leaves home, she makes full use of her abilities to obtain this world's currency, which she spends on transportation, necessities, and sleeping arrangements. Illusions make her appear older or younger when need be, change her face and voice, make it easy to slip past borders and security and police. She visits museums and landmarks and monuments, amusement parks and circuses and concerts, libraries and cafes and flower shops. She watches movies and plays and musicals. She listens to music and sings and dances. She trains and teaches herself new languages and never stops for anyone or anything.

-o-

She is seventeen when she first rides a motorcycle. She falls in love with the speed and the danger and the sleek, sharp design. She buys one and flies as fast as it will take her, laughs wildly as the wind whips past her face and the world passes by in a blur. Finally, finally, something exciting.

-o-

Sakura Haruno was pink and pretty, soft and petite - until she wasn't. She cried a little too easily, wore her heart on her sleeve, and always, always overlooked the important things - until she didn't. She was strong and intelligent and gave as good as she got, and truthfully, she shouldn't have died so young. But she does not regret it. The same strike that took her life saved her teammate. She could never regret it.

She dyes her hair purple - because it is a dull brown and the new color reminds her fondly of an old friend. She gets piercings and wears makeup, dresses in flashy, bold colors, and when she is eighteen, she gets a teardrop tattoo beneath her right eye. Not for this society's meaning, even though it's hardly untrue. She uses it as a Yin Seal, a mark of her prowess as a kunoichi, of her perfect chakra control. Its shape is a symbol of the tears she won't let herself cry, not anymore. Its placement is a testament to her unique situation. No longer in the middle of her forehead, its moved further down and a little to the right. It may look different and have changed location, but much like her, it's still exactly what it is meant to be.

She barely resembles the plain, defiant boy she used to be nor the fierce, dependable woman she was when she died. No, she's a mix between the two, something different and better, and she thinks that maybe her boys would be proud of her. She's under no one's thumb, goes wherever her feet take her, and she's stronger than she's ever been.

-o-

She's eighteen and four months when a man flags her down on her bike with an excited grin and aspirations in his eyes. He's got slicked back hair and a crooked smile and grand ideas for her.

"Hey, kid, you ever thought about doing stunts on that beauty?"

She hasn't, but he paints an interesting picture of the kind of life she's been craving. She goes with him and meets other stuntmen and women, observes their acts and shows, and knows right away this is something she wants to do.

She signs a contract with him - but not before negotiating better terms with a smile that shows too many teeth and promises pain. She trains under older and more experienced stuntmen for a year, and she takes to it like a fish to water. Her boss - the man who 'discovered' her - simply smirks and shows her her new schedule and gear when she finishes her training well ahead of schedule. Neither of them are surprised.

She gets her own show, an entire venue to herself, and the first night, she 'survives' a fall that would have killed any average person. On top of her other daring and death defying stunts, the show is a success. On the second night, the tickets are sold out, the seats are full, and she laughs even as the audience gasps in horror and then showers her with applause.

She keeps upping the danger and difficulty, and fans come from all over the world to see her perform. The Immortal Skull, they call her. The man hated by the grim reaper himself. Maybe she is. She was supposed to be dead, after all, and yet she is instead alive in another world entirely.

She thrives on the excitement and adrenaline and deceit - no one knows she's sticking to the seat and handles by imbuing her hands with chakra or that she's landing without a scratch by utilizing barely visible wind currents. Using chakra in subtle and creative ways is another training method, and she enjoys the precision and skill it requires. She has perfect chakra control. Why should she not use it?

-o-

She is not lonely. She has friends who work behind the scenes, men and women who build the stages and set the lights and operate the sound booth. Friends who apply her makeup and create her gear and patch her up whenever she gets careless. Friends who also perform stunts, those who trained her and others she meets on the road. They go to theaters and bars and parks together.

She goes on dates with men and perhaps not so surprisingly, women. She had gotten looks as a woman herself, but she had intimidated civilians and shinobi alike. And she had been so stuck on her teammate for so long that any advances she had gotten had been ignored or dismissed, so this? This is new.

Skull DeMort is attractive, stupidly so, and she is well on her way to becoming a household name, even though the notion makes the kunoichi in her twitch. She gets many offers, and with the same curiosity she has allowed to take her around the country, she accepts some of them and takes pleasure in exploring her sexuality in a way she never would have considered before. She's not interested in serious relationships, and she makes this clear right away. The romance obsessed little girl in her cries out, but Skull wants nothing less than a repeat of the romantic drama of her last life.

She has fun and learns new things about herself. Since she woke up a little boy in a foreign world, she feels like she is always learning new things about herself. It's... good.

-o-

She is nineteen and nine months when she discovers there is another energy inside her, one that is not linked to her chakra at all, and it happens entirely by accident.

She is walking out of a cute, little cafe and towards her bike when some fans stop her and politely, eagerly ask for pictures and autographs. Amused, she obliges, posing goofily and then adopting a serious expression that makes one of them giggle and the other blush. She spends a few minutes answering questions and just generally chatting with them, and then she allows them hugs before parting ways.

She hooks a leg over her bike and reaches for her helmet as she gets comfortable on the seat. That's when she hears the muffled screams. Startled, she glances around, experienced eyes taking in and dismissing her surroundings until she lands on the three men dragging the girls she'd just spoken with into an alleyway.

She explodes into action, and before she knows it, the men are all unconscious on the ground and the girls are clutching each other and sobbing. She wonders why they hadn't run away, and then she realizes that in reality it's only been a few seconds. Another thing she realizes is that she's on fire.

She is still in her battle mindset, and so she does not panic. Instead, she calmly notes that neither she nor the men nor girls had used or initiated the fire, and there isn't anything in the alley that could have created them.

The fire is purple, and it doesn't burn. It's not even giving off heat, and now that she's focusing, she can feel that it's tugging at her in much the same way her chakra does. But - and this is strange - it's not chakra. There is no chakra in any part of the flames.

She takes a deep breath and lets the anger fade. The flames flicker, but they don't die. They recede into her body, curling up and resting right next to her chakra core, and she's surprised by how familiar they feel. She tries to call them up again, but they don't react. Another try and still nothing. Hmm.

She tucks that away for later, intrigued, and turns toward the frightened girls. She crouches in front of them, soothing smile in place and body language radiating comfort and support. She's well versed in proper bedside manner and dealing with civilian patients and clients.

"You're safe now," she says, reassuringly.

But they're clearly terrified, likely going over the what-ifs and maybes. She doesn't blame them. So she puts them to sleep with a genjutsu and then implants an illusion in their minds that overwrites this attack, a memory of their earlier conversation taking longer to cover the gap in time.

She's found that since her unsuspecting victims have no chakra to push back against hers even on a cellular level, she can plant false memories such as that one, and the mind has no way of knowing the difference. It's a heady ability and one that would never work back in her world. Genjutsu this strong would require constant maintenance, even if it was years apart. That being said...

They don't have chakra, but there just might be some other energy or special power in its place. Because she didn't have purple flames like that before arriving here, and she's sure it has more to do with the body she's in than her soul. She knows it.

-o-

She spends much of her free time attempting to manipulate that ball of fire in her core, almost-but-not-quite frustrated that her perfect control doesn't extend to this - whatever 'this' is.

She's forgotten how to be patient and how to problem solve. She's sure her old sensei would cheerfully and obnoxiously point out this flaw while her old shishou would run her into the ground for forgetting something so basic. She contemplates the idea wistfully.

Still, it's never too late to relearn lessons, and she supposes she should be grateful it wasn't over something dire. She doesn't particularly fancy the idea of dying a second time, especially not so soon.

She goes back to the fundamentals, recalling the training she received while in the Academy and Shishou's drilled in knowledge during the two years her team spent apart.

Meditating is a simple first step. This at least she has not forgotten. She sits legs crossed and arms relaxed, lets her mind clear and the outside world fade away. She locates the warmth at her core and merely studies it for a while, the minute differences between it and her chakra, the few likenesses, and she eventually concludes that these flames are akin to her life energy.

Her chakra is a power source, a reinforcement, a mix of spiritual and physical energy, but it is not sustaining her life. She carefully notes that the flames are naturally coating her organs, bones, and veins - and even her chakra pathways, protecting them in the way her chakra would do only upon command or should the areas suffer any damage.

There are no pathways for the flames to travel - unless of course her chakra pathways were originally designed for their use, but she doesn't think so. Her gut tells her there's a different explanation. Perhaps it has to do with why the fire was visible outside of her body? Maybe it instinctively moves through her pores - much like sweat - and coats her outer body as a defensive measure. It's as good as guess as any, so she makes a mental note of it.

She also jots it down in one of her many journals. She's gotten complacent, and she doesn't like it one bit. She even had trouble recalling her chakra control exercises at first, which is completely unacceptable, so she buys tons of journals and writes down everything she can remember - jutsu, hand signs, regulations and rules, people, places, and personal accounts of her last life.

It hurts, but it also soothes a large part of her that had been terrified she would reach for faces and names and find nothing. Instead, she finds her mom and dad. She finds Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-shishou and Shizune-senpai and Ino and Hinata and TenTen and Lee and Neji and Kiba and Akamaru and Shino and Shikamaru and Chouji. She finds years of missions and campfires and team training and girls' nights and hospital shifts and bar romps. She finds Sakura Haruno and fits her life onto as many pages as it takes. It's painful and cathartic, and she doesn't cry, but she wants to.

She doesn't remember everything, but she remembers enough. She remembers what matters, and that will always be enough.

-o-

She is twenty when a child with a fatal illness makes a last request - to meet Skull DeMort. An organization reaches out to her, the media blows up, and there was never a chance she would say no.

She has avoided hospitals and clinics for the last ten years, unconsciously, knowing all too well that she would never be able to break away completely should she step inside one. She is not weak, but she is susceptible to the pain of others, especially children and the elderly. She can help, after all. She can heal. She does not want to return to endless shifts and paperwork and coffee addictions, the knowledge that she can't save everyone. She is not weak, but she is not strong enough to bear that. She is not strong enough to leave.

The child is twelve years old, tiny and sickly, and he screams in delight when Skull steps into his room. "Skull! Oh my god, it's you!"

She has met children before, little kids and teenagers awed by her stunts and devil-may-care attitude and easily impressed by her showmanship. This boy does not want or need her to be calm and comforting. He wants Skull DeMort, brave and fearless stuntman, and that's what she gives him.

"The one and only!" She boasts, expression cocky, posture confident. "The amazing and incredible Skull has decided to grace you with his presence!" She smirks down at him, winking. "You must be pretty special, huh?"

He nods eagerly, and she laughs.

The rest of the visit is spent with her answering as many questions as the boy can think to ask her, which is quite a lot. She performs as expected, and she manages to make him giggle too many times to count. She signs a black and purple hat with The Immortal Skull stitched across it in bold, thick letters, as well as a few posters with her face on it, and she poses for a bunch of photos.

"You're a good kid," she says, hugging him tightly even as she plots. "I'm glad I met you."

She sneaks in later that night and uses her own diagnostic jutsu on him, and she is so, so relieved when she realizes it's an illness she can treat. She had been prepared for much worse, for creating her own cure or treatment, but it seems she doesn't have to. This is easily treatable in any shinobi hospital and is only ever a problem when the patient in question either doesn't discover the illness in time or has no access to a med-nin.

This boy has her, and she gets to work. She cleanses his system of the infected cells and repairs his damaged organs, which takes a few hours, and afterwards, she leaves without leaving any indication she'd been there.

She hears about his miraculous recovery a few days later, and she doesn't have to fake the wide grin that forms on her face at the news.

After that, she visits other kids with the same illness, the ones doctors all over have given up on, and she gives them the same treatment. She doesn't dedicate her life to it, and she doesn't track down patients or hospitals. She sneaks in when she can, when she's nearby, when she walks aimlessly and her feet take her there, and this much is okay.

No one can figure out how these kids are making full recoveries, and it sparks new fervor and research into a cure. Maybe she doesn't have to save everyone. Maybe they will save themselves. This much is more than okay. She's not a hero, and she's not a doctor. She's a shinobi, and there's really nothing more to say.

-o-

She is twenty and seven months when she gets a summons to a stunt job, and the whole thing strikes her as suspicious. She's gotten job offers before, but she runs her own show and has for years. Also, the letter is just that - a summons. It reminds her strangely of mission scrolls, and that makes her wary.

The location is some cabin in the middle of nowhere, and she doesn't recognize the intricate design of the wax seal on the envelope. She knows it's rare to send letters what with the advancement in this world's communications and technology. She has her own personal cellphone and phone number, which this mysterious employer quite easily could have gotten a hold of, and she could have declined. As it is, there's no return address and no way to contact the sender.

Still, she is curious, and while it's always good to be cautious and aware of her own mortality, she's confident in her abilities and intuition. So she's going, then - but not without taking extra precautions.

She hides weapons all over her body, thankfully easy enough with her full body stunt gear. She wears specialized gloves, meant to withstand her powerful punches, and reinforced boots. She fastens a pouch to her thigh that contains a med-kit, rations, and water. She brings her phone and combination watch and compass. She researches the area, the terrain, the weather, the locals. It really is just a dusty old cabin cut off from just about everything. So, so suspicious.

The day arrives, and she is ready.

(She was not ready for this.)

End Notes: I wrote this in one sitting relying solely on my memory of both series, so there are probably mistakes regarding both canons. I think DeMort as Skull's last name is purely fanon, likely because of the various Harry-is-Skull fics, but it's not like I had a better one.

Regardless, this was a fun exercise, and there might be more if anyone's interested?

Edit: I changed a section in the middle and added a few sentences. Aisyah suggested Skull's teardrop tattoo function as a Yin Seal, and since the idea was utterly brilliant, I had to add it in. Thank you for the awesome suggestion!