Chapter 1.

My name is Kurokawa Tomomi.

My name is Jennifer Addleston.

I am five years old.

I am fifteen.

My father was a merchant and my mother a librarian. Both were native to Konoha. Both are dead.

My dad is a lawyer born in Germany and my mom is an editor born in England. Neither is dead.

I am an only child.

I have two older brothers, William and Charles, also known as Will and Charlie.

I was born on the sixteenth of May.

My birthday is April, 24th.

I don't want to die.

I am dead.

Obito didn't quite know what to make of the new girl. She was just so little, and small, and tiny. She always beat him in both theory and practicals so he'd never call her weak, or stupid, or too young but still, she was so little.

They said she was a genius, which he supposed ought to be true since it turned out she was two years younger than the majority of the class and was still better at practically everything than the majority of the class, but she wasn't a jerk like that Kakashi kid who aced everything and graduated early and got a teacher and left. She was just really quiet, even quieter than the Aburame kid he could never remember the name of though he tried - honest he did! - and never spoke up or played with the rest of the class (though that probably was more because the other kids didn't want to have to babysit a five-year-old rather than because she was quiet). But Rin wasn't like that, she always tried to include her since Rin was really, really nice, almost like an angel!

Anyway, he hadn't been thinking about Rin (though Rin always deserved to be thought about) he'd been thinking about the new girl. Did he mention she was tiny? Well, she was cause she didn't even reach his nose and he wasn't even on the tall side of the class. He was going to grow taller though! Huh, if she managed to reach his nose when he grew taller than would that make her tall too? He didn't want her to stay small cause being small sucked but he wasn't quite sure he wanted her to be tall either. She had white hair and white eyes and white skin and if she dressed all in white he thought she'd look an awful lot like a ghost and he figured small ghosts were probably less scary than big ghosts so he'd rather she stayed small unless she decided to dye her hair. Though black wouldn't help much either, now that he thought of it. Now he was going to have nightmares about black-haired white-eyed ghosts sitting on the swings staring straight at him and oh, she was looking at him, should he say hi?

"Hi!"

She looked away and Obito wasn't sure, was that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing? He supposed it was bad that she didn't even bother to say hello (if his grandmother had seen that she would have been furious and would have gone on to mutter for hours about how kids these days didn't have manners) but to be honest, he wasn't quite sure what he would have done if she had said hello. Should he have kept on talking to her? Offered to push her on the swings? There wasn't a point in wondering when she didn't, though, so he supposed it was a sort of good thing.

It was kind of sad that she didn't have any friends to push her on the swings. He knows he would have been awfully lonely and sad if he didn't have Rin to be his friend and even though he never saw Kakashi playing with anyone Gai was always looking for him for a challenge so he probably counted as his friend or at least a rival, so even a jerk like him had someone to talk to but it didn't look like she did. She was always sitting alone and never played with anyone and even if Asuma sometimes said something mean like how she was a stuck-up brat and that was why she didn't bother talking to anyone, Obito thought she might just be a little shy. At least that was what it looked like to him.

He supposed he could try talking to her first, but, well, she might not want to talk to him. After all, some of the older Uchiha kids didn't like him. Even if his grandmother kept telling him it was the other kids who were stupid and fat jerks (not quite in those terms but he knew that was what she was trying to say) it didn't change the fact that they sometimes took his stuff and called him names. So maybe, if he talked to her they'd start picking on her and that would be downright mean. She's five! And tiny! Even if she could probably kick most other kids' asses, they were Uchiha's and even she wouldn't be able to kick their asses, would she?

Well, she might be able to, since Obito knew for a fact that Kakashi could and the teachers and adults said she was a genius and Kakashi was a genius, but still, Kakashi was a boy and boys were stronger than girls. At least that's what he thought since most of the time boys cried a lot less easy than girls.

Not all girls, of course, there was that Inuzuka girl that made at least four boys cry before the teachers dragged her away, but for some reason, he had a feeling she was the weird one, not the normal one.

Then again, there's Rin and Rin only cries when she's sad, and when other kids bother her or her friends she doesn't get sad, she gets angry and she's scary when she's angry. Which is why he's very, very glad Rin's his friend and plays with him during lunch and after school. Oh, his grandmother packed him sausages today! Rin liked sausages, maybe she'd want some?

"Rin, let's eat lunch together!"

Ooh, Rin's brought tomatoes. They could swap!

It was loud, dirty, smelly, and tiring.

He will turn evil. She will die. I don't even know his name - will he live? Will he die?

I'm supposed to be making friends. Suzuki-sensei said I was to make friends since being smart and clever and quick and agile meant nothing if I couldn't learn how to work with other people, but how am I supposed to become friends with children who didn't understand what it meant to be a shinobi? What it means to die?

There's going to be a war and nobody knows. They just keep laughing and laughing and laughing like everything's going to be alright but it's not, nothing's alright and most of them are going to end up as cannon fodder.

I should try, I know that, but will it be worth the effort?

Failure after putting in my best is always harder to accept than failure after barely trying - after all, it's the difference between 'my best wasn't enough' and 'I could have done better'.

I don't want to try. Trying is scary, especially when hard work doesn't automatically translate into success and I could find myself trying and trying and trying when no matter how much I try doesn't even matter in the end because what I've been trying to do is impossible.

'I could have done better' means you live with regret but 'my best wasn't enough' means you die with despair.

But I don't want to die.

I don't want to die.

So I have to try, don't I?

Will it matter?

They were graduating! They were going to be genin! They were going to be real shinobi!

"Rin, we're -"

"Graduating, yes, you've said that at least a dozen times since we got here," Rin's voice was dry, and, fine, he might have said it a couple of times (definitely not as many as a dozen though), but still, they were graduating.

"Right, right, sorry. But we're graduating."

"Yes, we are."

"We're graduating."

"Mmhmm."

"Graduating."

"Obito!"

"Sorry!"

They were graduating. Now they were going to be learning cool jutsus, like the one that let Uncle Kaien spit out boiling water, or the one that meant Aunt Shiemi could disappear so thoroughly even an Inuzuka couldn't find her. No more dead last Uchiha Obito, the disgrace of the clan. He'd be a brilliant shinobi and he'd be a chuunin and then a jounin and one day, he'd become the Hokage and show them he could do it!

(Obito ignored the small part of him that remembered the day they brought back Aunt Kaede's body. He also chose not to dwell on the whispers he'd heard around the village. The whispers and rumours about how there was a war on the horizon and that was why there was a sudden pressure on the Academy to produce as many genin as possible.

Being sent out to die they said. Too young, too little training, too little experience they said.

But he wasn't like that. He was going to become the Hokage.

If he was too young, he was going to survive until he was older. If he had too little training, well, that was what they had a jounin-sensei for. If he had too little experience, he'll just gain more.

He was going to live.)

"Obito, pay attention, sensei's here!"

Oops. Obito hastily turned in his seat in front of Rin's to face the front of the class. They were going to be assigned their teams today, and if what he'd heard from the older shinobi was true, these teams were going to be like their second family. He really, really hoped he got someone nice like Rin or maybe Gai. Then again Gai might be a bit tiring, so maybe Kurenai would be better? Though he'd never heard of a team with more than two kunoichis. Huh, why was that?

"and Shiranui Genma. Team Seven will be Nohara Rin and Uchiha Obito. You will meet your third teammate after lunch with your jounin-sensei. Team Eight will be -"

Yes!

"Yes!"

"Obito! Quiet down!"

"Sorry, sensei!"

He was on the same team as Rin! He and Rin and whoever their third teammate was, was going to be the best Konoha team ever!

I was on the same team as Gai and Genma.

But what about Ebisu?