A/n: I do not own any Naruto copyrights.

Ba-dump

Surrounded by water and trapped, the enclosure was dark enough for her eyes to be either open or closed. It was tight but not uncomfortable, floating there. When she'd first woken up in that place, no longer able to breath, move, or utter a word . . . well, it'd been disorientating. This was so different from the hospital room, so much a contrast to the sterile world.

She'd thought it was a dream.

Ba-dump

At first at least.

Or maybe it was a sort of coma, a disease that finally got the upper hand after all those years. Had her feeble mind conjured up distant memories to occupy the time while its body withered? Had she died? Was this what death was?

Ba-dump

A horrible thought, a shudder, and a few limbs lashing to strike rubbery walls.

Did death have limbs? Fingers? Toes? Hands?

She did. Clenched to the cord tethered to her waist. Fluttered to a beat that she could never not hear.

Ba-dump

Beat?

Ba-dump

A Heart?

Ba-dump

Did death have a heart?

No, she wasn't dead. She was something else entirely.

Something that floated, on a cord, to the endless chorus of someone else's heart.

Oh please wake up, she begged, not entirely sure as to who, please let this really only be just a dream.

Ba-dump

She didn't wake up, not to the heart monitor and IV, though on occasion there'd be a moment of drifting into a primitive version of sleep. Time passed, and as it did she began to catalog whatever she could glean about herself. As much information as possible. The end of this nightmare couldn't be a surprise.

Her birth would not be a surprise.

She'd used this tactic back at the hospital, noting things like a nurse's gossip and the number of drugs given so that she wouldn't be in the dark on a surgery day. It used to make her feel useful, all that knowing. Ironic that it could be put to so much use even after the battle'd been lost.

Still, there really was a lot to learn once one sat back and listened, even as the unborn baby she suspected she was. Small things -the heartbeat proving her ears were developed, for one- could show so much if you only paid attention. Like how it'd been at the hospital, everything that would bring her closer to the goal was added to -and then checked off- the proverbial list. Her knowledge on life in the womb was next to none, yet it was enough.

Enough to get what she needed.

Enough to know she would be born soon.

Enough to realize there would be no waking to reality anytime soon. That she'd actually have to go through with this.

Sure enough, what was guessed to be two, maybe three days later, it happened. First awoken by a sudden and painful tightening of the prison, she was unceremoniously shoved headfirst down a tube. This was both horrifying and disgusting. It wasn't even second to projectile vomiting or chronic diarrhea, both of which previously experienced during her more extensive 'treatments'.

But no matter how terrifying this feeling was, it still wasn't the worst part of the experience. Feeling like a watermelon shoved down a straw was bad. Coming out of a bloody hole screaming and coughing up afterbirth was much, much worse.

Hands caught her as she screeched and kicked, completely disgusted by what she'd endured. Voices echoed and bright lights blinded blurry baby eyes. Suddenly she stopped kicking, breath coming faster and faster as something was realized, something wrong.

She couldn't understand the voices.

Why aren't they speaking English? This is supposed to be my memories. This is supposed to be my language.

Another stream of unintelligible syllables sounded from above as she slowly sunk into hyperventilation. Almost immediately afterwards a quick but gentle hand slapped her back. Realizing she was probably scaring these people with a panic attack, the breaths quieted and the strange voices stopped sounding so harried.

The hands lifted her into a small basin, rubbing her most likely miniscule body clean. Something fuzzy and pink wrapped around her, swaddling her from head to toe in what was assumed to be a blanket.

Whoever owned the hands gently lowered her down. Down and into thin, obviously feminine, arms.

Ba-dump.

The heartbeat. This was the heartbeat.

Her mother.

She wasn't confused anymore. If anything she was calmer than before. Unlike the rest of the encounter –what with waking up in a womb, experiencing her own birth, and suddenly realizing no one spoke the language she knew- this part was fairly simple. The nurse, as that was probably who the owner of the hands was, had placed her in the arms of her mother.

Now she would bring them face to face.

There was a baby's smile as the thought of her mother. She'd been such a gentle and kind woman. Someone that'd never complained, not even when her daughter had been bedridden for years at a time. Would she look different?

Petite hands lifted her.

Would a younger her look less haggard, less tired?

A woman's face swam into view as, like predicted, a woman's hands brought her close. The blurriness faded as the distance closed. The face of a stranger came into view. Spurred by the pure shock of the moment, she cried.

This was not her mother.

Her mother had been blonde and beautiful. She hadn't possessed the thin waves of chocolate brown hair that fell so chaotically around this woman's too skinny frame. The slightly unhinged cinnamon eyes staring out at her were as far from her mother's warm blue ones as the sun was from the sea.

It was shocking . . .

A terrifying pressure rising in her veins, like lava under her skin.

Confusing . . .

What is this? Nonononononono this isn't supposed to be here!

And horrible to see someone else in the place where only one person should be.

The pressure broke, like a damn filled too full, too fast.

The lava flared off her skin in a wave that was only tangible to her. She was no longer crying. Now she screamed.

For a second the woman only stared at the child wailing in her arms, like she didn't quite get who she was either. Then the lava came and the woman jerked like she'd been electrocuted.

She slapped her.

Or at least, she tried. She was out of her arms before she could make contact, wrestled away by familiar hands as someone shouted things in that strange language. Suddenly exhausted beyond what she'd ever been, silence fell if only because she no longer had the strength to scream. The blurry figure on the bed lay back, not nonchalantly but a collapse. As if she was just as exhausted as she was.

And afraid. There'd been terror in those cinnamon eyes.

A blink, where was her mother? Why were they handing her to such an insane woman?

Or was she insane? Maybe it was perfectly sane to be terrified of the one child on the planet that spewed lava when they freaked.

Come to think of it, she'd probably have flipped too.

Whoever had rescued her obviously disagreed. They hugged her tight to their chest, murmuring soothing words as they hurried from the woman's bed and through a nearby door. She bumped against the figures breasts as her -and it must have been a woman- walking jarred her, but that wasn't all.

There was a metal plate fastened to a cloth necklace around her neck, worn like a choker.

The strange thing about it wasn't the fact that she had it on, lots of people had jewelry. What made it strange was the vague pattern cut into the metal, one that she recognized vividly.

Who would have thunk it, my nurse is a cosplayer, and of Naruto no less.

It was actually a bit refreshing. The nurses back at the hospital would've never have watched the anime, much less actually stoop to wear merchandise from it. She'd pestered them about it all the time, especially after surgeries or treatments. If this nurse had been there, maybe those times would've been more fun.

Come to think of it, if one of the nurses was decked out in cosplay, did that mean she wasn't re-experiencing my own birth? Of course she already expected it. Even if that woman was her mother, she'd definitely never had the lava before.

And Naruto hadn't been around when she'd come into the world the first time.

Am I not in a coma at all? Is this all some sort of freaky reincarnation?

The musings were interrupted when the nurse stopped, said a few more words in gibberish, and laid her in a glass box. Careful on a nearly ridiculous level, the woman laid one of her gigantic hands on the center of her tiny chest. A moment, and then . . .

Lava, green lava.

She promptly burst into tears. Of course she did, she was a baby now.

The nurse whispered some more soothing words, only made all the more stranger by how warm the lava became. It shut her up at least, if only because the lava from before hadn't felt like that. Seemingly satisfied, the nurse wrote something on a clipboard she hadn't noticed.

Then she pulled away, said something else, and left.

The baby in the box sighed as she began to blur, becoming nothing more than just a mass of colors until she was gone completely.

Judging from the whimpers and cries around her, the room she was in was obviously a nursery. Like the womb, and even like her first sight of her supposed 'mother' –as the heartbeat marked her as-, she was pretty sure she knew how this would go. New language or not, nurseries were the same everywhere. And if they were the same here? Well she'd have a lot of waiting to do.

Again.

Just like it'd been before, and had been on countless occasions back in the old hospital, she began to listen. Now this was amazingly hard when one didn't understand a word of the conversations around them but, believe it or not, there were other things to listen to too.

Like her new name. This was, of course, said in the same gibberish that all their words were spoken in. The name they had written on the box was not only backward -it was on the other side of the glass- but also entirely in scribbles as well. At first it seemed impossible, but then she began to notice something about a couple of the conversations she could hear.

The visitors of the other babies ignored her, but the nurses talked to them all.

One nurse, the same nurse who had -and still did occasionally- used the green lava, cooed slow, obviously baby-ish talk whenever she changed or fed her. Compared to the faster gibberish that everyone else used, her words were by far the easiest to distinguish. Though she still couldn't understand her, it was enough to make out that one important phrase, repeated over and over again as she babbled.

Ah there it was, Kaori.

Or should she say Kaori-chan? Something that was not only her new name but also a huge hint as to where she was. Suffixes were only really common in one language after all.

What do you know? Not only do the nurses do Naruto cosplay but they speak Japanese as well.

Was it a coincidence? The lava wasn't the only strange thing about this new life, she knew. Besides the obvious and sudden fact that she'd been reborn, there was also the Naruto wear and her new Japanese name, apparently given by a new mother who could in no way actually be Japanese.

What the hell was going on?

Kaori was confused, not to mention curious, but had no time to ponder her questions. The moment she'd even begun to think them, something happened. Something that'd snuck in the first time it'd really gone dark. Most of the nurses had gone by that point –it was probably pretty late- and there were none at all when she first spotted it.

There, in the corner, lurking its way through the cradles.

'It' was what could only be called a tall, grey blob, description curtesy of her blurry baby eyes. The blob knew what it was looking for. None of the other babies were spared so much of a glance before it strolled over to stare at her. Kaori felt more than a little nervous, just watching him watch her, but she really shouldn't have bothered. The grey blob stared, read the clipboard, and then stared some more. Nothing else, not even a courtesy pick up to give her a clue as to who the hell she was dealing with.

After some more ogling and a noise that sounded oddly like "Hn", the grey blob turned around and left.

Um . . . What?

Later, after a long doze that most likely made it the next day, her rather disgruntled nurse came in to pluck Kaori from the box for good. The lady didn't sound very happy as she carried her down to who knew where. Not that the girl had to wait long to find out why. The moment they entered the lobby -or at least that's what it was assumed it to be- Kaori was unceremoniously shoved into a woman's arms.

A blink later and the face of a woman had come into view, bringing with it the urge to panic and scream all over again.

Only there was no lava this time, no sudden feeling of 'ohmygodicantbreathwhatisthis'.

She felt fine.

Well as fine as she could be, all things considering. It was no wonder the nurse had been upset. She had been ordered to hand a baby over to a mother who had already tried to hurt it. Hell, Kaori knew about the lava and was still pretty upset by it.

Then again, that made sense too, after all, she was the baby that almost got slapped.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

After a very tense walk through the very loud streets of wherever they were, the woman took Kaori to a building that could've only been her home. Or at least part of the building was her home. From the sheer amount of steps there were to climb, it didn't take long to peg the place as an apartment complex.

There was a moment of stillness before the sound of a door opening registered to baby senses, the faint jingling of keys identifying it as her door. Kaori nearly sighed with relief at the sound; glad that the journey was almost over. She was tired, hungry and -embarrassing as it was to admit- a little wet. All she wanted was to be out of the woman's arms and into the arms of someone who actually cared. Someone who wouldn't look at their child with those terrified eyes.

A maid maybe, or a live in relative? Someone to rely on for the necessities at least.

For the first time since the hospital, gibberish floated through the air and into small ears, this time sounding in a sarcastic voice that could only be the woman's. Out of curiosity Kaori listened to the words closely, hoping to unravel the meanings in their random syllables. It was only after a second or two of this that she experienced something rather new.

She was flying.

Little eyes widened with horror as she thumped down in a cushioned basket, the impact jarring her baby body enough for everything to rattle. Kaori could only stare as the blurry form of her new 'mother' retreated further into her home, giving not even one care to what she had just done. Hurt and confused, the girl did what her new body had wanted to do since she'd first realized what was happening.

Kaori began to scream.

And scream.

And scream.

She threw her. That horrible woman threw her. Was this some kind of karma? Had her sick and frail self before been such a bad person that this is what she got in the end, a mother who slapped and threw her child?

What was her reason? There'd been no lava this time. There'd been no warning at all.

The crying petered out from sheer exhaustion eventually, leaving Kaori to wonder why the woman hadn't come back to shut her up. The last time she'd cried in her presence she had tried to, so why not now when there were no pesky nurses to stop her?

Quiet now, Kaori waited for something to happen, waited for the woman to come back and do something about her growing needs. There really was no one else there, something she'd noticed rather quickly after her initial crying fit. No greeting, no faces eager to see her, and no blurry moving figures besides that of the woman and her own tiny self. Not that she was actually all that used to having a family. It'd just been her and her mom at the hospital. She'd still had someone though, her new life wasn't even shaping up to have that much.

Kaori hoped that woman would remember to feed her. She didn't want her helpless new body to die as soon as she got it.

That at least, the woman did do. After what felt like hours in that basket, she returned to her daughter with a bottle and a new diaper, disappearing again without a word as soon as the girl was no longer in any danger of dying. It became routine as the days began to pass, being left in that basket until she needed to be either fed or cleaned. There was interaction, but only after the woman spent god knows how long doing who knows what in her room first. She'd hole away for hours, always.

Whether it's be to give her a bath, take her along on a shopping trip, or to simply sit with her on the couch, saying nothing as they both stared at the wall. Her ritual never changed.

At first Kaori came up with wild theories, spent hours on deciphering just what this 'ritual' really was. Then she saw the shivering and the pale skin and decided she didn't want to know.

Eventually Kaori became strong enough to crawl around the domain that was the living room. There was no celebration of the new achievement of course, sans a small smile on a particularly good day. The woman rarely talked to her daughter. What she did say was either quiet or sarcastic and, for the most part, seemed to be said through rather than at.

Anything dangerous was moved out of the way though.

About a month or two after the crawling phase, right when the girl was relearning how to pull herself onto objects, she learned something about her 'mother' that threw her for a loop. Edging slowly along a bookcase, alone because the woman was in her room again, she'd swiped a pudgy hand along a shelf just out of her reach. It was all in the hopes of knocking off a book and getting some means of understanding the language. She did get something, did knock it to the ground. It just wasn't a book.

A heavy metal plate, fixed to a blue cloth, thumped to her feet.

Startled, Kaori fell to a heavy sit and picked up the plate with her clumsy baby hands. Her eyes were better than they'd been the last time she'd seen one, back when it'd been resting so snugly against her nurse's neck. She could see the carefully etched leaf now, feel the cold metal against her skin.

It was so real.

And then it was gone, if only because the woman had run out and snatched it away. Her 'mother' was nearly hysterical, holding the headband –the freaking hitai-ate- close to her chest before tossing it away like it burned. Then she began to scream, shaking Kaori for emphasis even though she still couldn't understand what she said.

Curling into a ball with tears running down her cheeks, it was a relief when the woman ran back into her room. Even when she didn't come back out till the next day. Even when her daughter went to bed hungry.

And even though the hitai-ate and what it meant left a thousand questions burning in her head, Kaori knew that, even if she could talk, she wouldn't dare to bring it up.

By the time her first birthday had come and gone with barely so much as a shaky smile thrown her way, Kaori'd already graduated to some very wobbly first steps.

Steps that, even though she'd taken a thousand once, still felt amazing to do again.

Time passed and Kaori began to listen more on the occasions the woman would take her to the market. Her little ears were strained to hear and understand what the people around them were saying. This was harder than the walking and the crawling because though the woman -practically her only human interaction- did speak to people in the shops and streets, she rarely spoke to the girl directly, not even at home.

It took longer than it had in her first life that was for certain, but shortly after she turned two, Kaori finally began to get a hang of the gibberish language that was Japanese. Surprisingly enough, this was also when the woman began to open up and actually talk to her.

Maybe she'd just never seen the point before.

Sad to say, this was how Kaori began to learn the important facts about her new life. Through the occasional complaining of the woman who had become her mother. It was how she finally gained the woman's name actually, Takayami Junko. Kaori was just relieved to actually have something other than 'the woman' -or even a tentative 'mother' on a good day- to call her. It made her feel less like the stupid child she'd come across as for so long. After all, what kind of child didn't even know what to call their own mother?

The other thing she eventually learned was only gained through the few times she truly saw Junko's face truly transform into one of rage. The expression, so reminiscent of the day she'd found the hitai-ate, made her cringe every time. There was once though, after she'd followed Junko's gaze to a pair of figures moving impossibly fast on the horizon, that she'd gathered enough courage to ask her about it.

What she'd gotten only confirmed what she'd already suspected for so long.

"Those are shinobi, child." The word 'shinobi' spitten like crap on her tongue. "They're monsters who send children to war and bathe in blood. Don't ever become one, girl. You'll die a stupid death."

And then she'd turned around and continued shopping.

Kaori probably somewhat already knew, to be honest. There were just so many hints. The lava –the chakra-, the hitai-ate, the ninja's, the freaking monument in the distance, it's only been a matter of time before the denial stopped working. No matter how impossible the truth was, it still had to be accepted eventually.

The straw that really broke the camel's back wasn't the headbands or the Hokage monument though, it was just a man. A man named Hatake Kakashi that'd once been her favorite character in another life.

It had started rather simply actually, mainly with Kaori staring her eyes out at the man at the dango stall who couldn't exist. He looked exactly like he had back then, only ten times more real because this wasn't an anime any more.

But that wasn't all, because suddenly the girl came to the startling realization that that particular moment in time wasn't the first time she'd seen him in this life.

That slouch, the startling grey hair, the way he 'just so happened' to be in the same place as she was even though there was no way it'd been a coincidence the first time . . .

Holy shit, he's the grey blob.

A/n: Hello everybody, in case you didn't know, this is a rewrite for a story I did on my sweetlilsunshine account called the 'Green Beastling'. I feel like I've fixed many of the problems that I didn't like about the original story, but if you see something confusing or have read the other story and have something you want fixed, feel free to leave a review and tell me. This is also where I'll answer all questions come next chapter. Thanks for reading!