A/N: Hello, and thanks for taking a look at Trial By Fire. This story is a huge mesh of several scrapped ideas, and I'm not sure which direction to take it. I've read quite a few reincarnation/OC-insert stories, which made me want to try my hand at an original character. And though I have drafted about seven chapters I make no promises with this.

Oh, and of course this is inspired by the many great insert/reincarnation/OC stories already out there. If you haven't already read them you should leave this story at once and check out "Bloodless" by Tavina, "Catch Your Breath" by Lang Noi, "Lines in the Sand" by EndangerMuffin, "Pinwheel Madness" by Loeka, not to mention the ultimate character insert story "Dreaming of Sunshine" by SileverQueen and so many other wonderful stories that are engaging reads.

Warning; this is not beta'd and English is not my native language, so please forgive the mistakes.

Trial By Fire

The Before and After - Part 1

If it looks real, acts real and sounds real, I should be able to trust it, shouldn't I?

That would become the question of my life.

The effects of genjutsu are sensory illusions, it tricks a target into believing a deception, and my clan was both feared and admired for our proficiency with this specific ability.

A successfully cast genjutsu targets the chakra flow of the cerebral nervous system, which means it effects the five senses. The feared Uchiha genjutsu stemmed from those of us who awakened and mature our bloodline dōjutsu, the Sharingan. They are afforded perfect vision, perfect recollection, and the ability to predict the immediate actions of those within our range of visibility.

Is it therefore any wonder that those with the Sharingan can be pretty adapt at casting illusions?

Our minds were optimized for memorization and reaction.

We had a superior cognizance written into the makeup of our genetics, and from there we had a much shorter path to cross before we could literally make people see things from our perspective. No matter if they wanted to or not.

The Uchiha - we who could make dreams reality.

And why am I mentioning this? Well, I thought it pretty relevant to the topic.

Because when I couldn't even trust my perceived reality as factual it added another layer of unbelievability to the hypothesis that this may not be my first life.

Sometimes, mostly when I was especially vulnerable, tired or emotionally unstable, I would wonder if my entire life was unreal. That I'm in a coma somewhere and everything around me, this entire second life, is an illusion inside my head.

After all, according to the set rules of this world that was very much possible.

Though most of the time I believed the opposite, that the lie was that other life.

Then it's those moments when we are aligned, where I accept that there was a before, but that this is the after, and though we are not the same, we are united as only one soul in two bodies can be. We are both the dream and reality at once, and those moments are always the clearest.

You see, I wasn't always who I am now.

I was once a normal person, with a normal job and a normal life. I was happy and content, until I very suddenly wasn't.

That life ended, and this one took its place.

Now I am Uchiha Junko, and I was born on a cold winter day at Konoha General Hospital. Not that I remember that, but my birthday is the 3rd January and that day is statistically pretty chilly, so I've always assumed it was a nippy stroll for my okaasan to make while being in labour.

It was at the tail end of the Third Great Ninja War, months before its conclusion and at the height of its intensity. So understandably my otousan, Uchiha Fugaku, as a high ranked soldier in the ninja military, was away fighting when all this went down. Leaving my okaasan Mikoto and oniisan Itachi in the village to welcome me into the family.

I don't remember those days. I was a baby, my mind was mush and like all infants that period of my life is completely blank. The fact I had a second hand soul didn't take away the fact my body was brand new and undeveloped.

Even if I was an old soul in a new body, the physical limitation of my infantile brain wasn't able to recognize this. The brain and body aren't separate after all, and just as I had to train my body to sit, stand, talk and walk, my mind too took time to grow enough for me to realize I wasn't the same as my peers. And by then I had come to the conclusion my oddities weren't handicapping me, and accepted it as a part of me the same way I accepted I had two arms, two legs, had two brothers, two parents and – apparently - two lives.

As such there were no singular event that stood out, no horror filled revelations of; "Oh my god! I've been reincarnated!" at all.

No. I was a baby. My brain was literally incapable of holding on to a thought. I had yet to develop a working memory, which is the ability to hold on to information long enough to make anything out of it.

So even if my soul was aware something wasn't right, my consciousness didn't get the memo.

I'm pretty thankful for that actually. Being aware of that while stuck in an infants body is probably a form of torture.

No, fortunately the understanding came to me gradually, and my first clues came in the form of dreams. Both my most horrible nightmares and sweetest dreams had always been eventful, colourful and vivid in a way that stood out to the members of my family. Filled with strange and alien concepts I unassumingly shared with my immediate family from the earliest days of my baby rambles.

Perhaps the fact that I had never bothered hiding the images in my head was a blessing in disguise too. Like a lot of children I trusted my parents implicitly, there was nothing to hide from them and I didn't imagine a scenario where I'd need to. My okaasan and oniisan were well used to hearing and had long since accepted my strange dreams. In fact they fostered it by making me tell them as much as I could recollect and comment and even laugh at some of the things I shared. As a result I was proud of it.

I'd often try to explain to my exhausted but kind okaasan how fast a car moved, or tell my stern and focused otousan of metal birds flying into the clouds. "With people riding inside!" I would insist, and he would let me ramble on despite being so busy he rarely had enough hours in a day to eat and sleep, far less raise his children. Yet when he came home exhausted he'd still allow me to chat his ears off while trying to make me sit still long enough to give me an evening bath.

When I was a year and a half we were joined by the youngest and final member of our family, my otouto Sasuke, and he grew up with tales of a village that never slept, a clock named Ben and a really long Great Wall as night stories.

The one who suffered most of my stories was - without a doubt - my okaasan Mikoto, but my brothers were frequent victims as well.

To them I was Junko the storyteller.

Jun the dreamer.

Jun-chan the imaginer.

Those were all lovely titles bestowed on me from my family.

The fact I could recall another life, another world, was mostly dismissed and explained away, and even I myself believed it. That it was simply a product of my overactive imagination, and even now I can't say for sure if it's true.

To me I had always remembered that other life, it was part of me, it was who I was and the fact this was my second life didn't feel off. It was all I knew, and so to me it seemed perfectly natural.

It took me a while to realize no one else could recall being anyone else. Being anywhere else. By then the two parts of me, an old soul and a fresh body made up the total sum of what I had become.

I was Uchiha Junko - just with a little extra.

When I walked by the lake in the district and caught my reflection I wasn't looking for anyone but the black eyed child who stared back. I never saw my parents and thought them replacements. My brothers weren't in anyone else's stead.

I guess the only thing I was missing was a dog, but I'm not sure I can blame that on rebirth.

In that other life there had been others, and I talked about them a lot when they showed up in my dreams.

My family probably thought them my imaginary friends, and let me share while listening patiently. But the memories came to me gradually over a period of several years, and so I myself didn't connect the dreams and their content with any sort of loss.

Though at times there was an emptiness in my heart, a hole that never quite healed or let me forget something was marred, something was gone, and I would never get it back.

My parents were busy people, though it took me a while to realize why. My otousan was also the Head of the Uchiha clan and Captain of the Military Police, and his work took a lot of energy and time. So my first few memories of this life is from the age of one and up, and they mostly included my okaasan and brothers.

The first vivid one that truly stuck with me was the night of the demon fox attack.

Our parents were out, and so only my five year old oniisan Itachi had been there to look after us that evening. When the nine tails was set loose on the village Itachi had gathered us both up, me sitting at his right hip while our three month old otouto was screaming in the sling he was strapped into. Itachi was just a child, but even grown people were acting less reliable than him that night.

I was crying too, but Sasuke's wailing drowned my own whimpers and silent tears. My terror was too great for volume. I wanted to hide, and so did my best to be quiet, but my body betrayed me, and I was shaking with stifled sobs the entire way to the shelters.

The trek through the village had been petrifying and scary, the screams and cries of the village a background chorus of desperation. It contrasted with the soothing words of my oniisan who cooed and reassured us the best he could.

"Don't cry." He hushed, clutching my body closer to him and giving me a small smile as I huddled my head into the crook of his neck. "Your oniisan is here to protect you, no matter what happens." He promised.

With the way I clung to Itachi I must have been strangling him, but he never scolded me, never let me go and got us to safety.

The memories of that night was vividly patchy because of my panic. In the years to come I would mostly recall a large monster towering over the rooftops, roaring so loudly my ears hurt, the feel of fear and hate in the air, and my oniisan humming a familiar lullaby in my ear.

My family was very lucky to make it out of that calamity alive. Though I would forever remember my okaasan's relieved face when she found us in the shelter the next morning.

But that terrifying memory aside, my childhood was a very happy one, filled with family, friends and lessons.

I was bright, talented, privileged and probably a bit- okay, a lot, spoiled. Not in the way I associated with my old life though. I didn't expect anything for free. I was hard working, disciplined and focused, but I also expected to win. I wanted to be the best, and with the exception of my oniisan, I didn't see a reason why I shouldn't be.

As you can probably guess I was "a bit" competitive, and only "a tad" arrogant about it.

I can't say when and where I learned certain things. As a child you just swallow up information and tidbit from your surroundings which are seen as indisputable and absolute.

My name was Uchiha Junko, I was the second child and only daughter of Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha, sister to Itachi and Sasuke, we lived in Konohagakure no Sato and when I grew up I would be a ninja.

There was no doubt about any of those things. They were facts of life, and nothing could change it.

My parents started training us as early as possible - it was our way.

In my previous life it might have been called irresponsible parenting, perhaps even abusive, but in this life, this culture, it was a parent's duty to prepare their child. They proved they cared about me by making sure I could defend myself and those I loved against what would come for me in such a harsh and cruel world.

It also has to be said that my new body was more durable than the previous one. It developed faster and was a lot more sturdy.

In a way I was an entirely new humanoid species. It certainly would explain how someone could be born with naturally green hair or eyes without pupils, something I couldn't remember being possible in that other world. But the fact I was something different here meant I couldn't hold it to the measures of what my old body could deal with.

If I used games as a simplified analogy, I could say my first life was something like Chinese Checkers, but after being reincarnated I had switched boards, and was now playing chess.

If my new world was a game of chess I couldn't just apply the rules of Chinese Checkers and expect it to end in anything but a spectacular loss. And as an Uchiha losing was unacceptable.

Before the Kyuubi attack I was already being conditioned for my future occupation. My childhood games were all, in one way or another, applicable for basic ninja training. Memorization puzzles, hand to eye coordination, balance, strength, stamina and flexibility. It was all part of the games I didn't think twice about. It came in the shape of challenges from my oniisan to race him back and forth in the yard until I tripped over my own feet, or okaasan making me train different hand positions with strands of strings to keep me distracted so she could finish the latest clan budget after mission prices had been adjusted now that the war was over.

My okaasan and Itachi made it look like fun and a challenge, and in many ways it was. It was a part of our culture, the same way doing chores and going to work had been in my previous life. It needed to be done, and we did it together.

From my earliest years I would join my family for training. We were a ninja family, and everyone needed to train. Our okaasan had retired from field work to look after us full time, but that didn't mean she didn't keep in shape, and she had found a lot of ways to include and encourage us to stay active.

Anything and everything could be a test.

One time when I was three years old and Itachi, only seven and yet only a few month off from graduating the academy, our okaasan had us make dinner. She provided us with all the ingredients, but instead of helping out she was busy distracting a fussing Sasuke.

Instead she instructed us from a chair, explaining step by step how and why we were doing certain things as we prepared the meal together. Itachi handled the sharp tools, and I was sat on the counter with the chief task of stirring whenever okaasan or Itachi told me to.

It turned out pretty well, but the twist came a couple of days later when our okaasan turned the game on its head. This time she had Itachi and I occupying our otouto while she made the dinner according to our instructions alone.

The dinner was edible, but not nearly as good as when okaasan had been instructing us, so both Itachi and I realized we had made a mistake at some point when directing okaasan's actions.

It was just one example of an exercise disguised as a game. To hear and follow orders, memorize them and implement them at a later date, but that was just one of countless little details.

okaasan did a lot of physical exercise, and we were always included whenever it was possible.

She would do pushups with me sitting on her back, and once I grew older, standing on one foot and training my balance. Then switch to situps, where she would have Sasuke cradled in her arms and laugh as she made funny noises. She could do a ridiculous amount of them too. She would bring us to the training fields and run lapses and do acrobatics, Sasuke and I clumsily following whenever we could until we collapsed of exhaustion. Sometimes Itachi would join in too, and even rarer, but more exciting, otousan would come along.

Whenever things became too complicated for me and Sasuke to follow they always made sure we were kept busy anyway, either with simple katas, stretching, strength or some other physical activity.

They didn't see a problem with making a two year old toddler sit down and stretch.

The argument? Babies are naturally flexible, and if you didn't maintain it you grew stiffer. The earlier you started stretching the more likely you were to reach your maximum potential later down the lane. In my previous life I had started with gymnastics at age eleven, and though I had been very flexible and able to do most yoga poses and a lot of acrobatics with training, I had still started "too late".

I had been good, naturally talented which had allowed me to at least keep up, but never the best. That had been those kids who had basically grown up in the training halls.

In this life I was one of "those" kids.

By two years old I could slide into all three splits seamlessly and was more interested in cartwheeling down the street than walk.

By three I was doing katas, handstands and backflips.

By four I was practising with wire, wooden kunai and meditating.

I couldn't do it nearly as perfectly as Itachi or my parents, but I gave it my all, and I was still a lot more physically active than I had been at that age in my previous life, and I'd been a hyperactive little brat then too.

As the daughter of the head of the Uchiha clan and the spare heir there was definitely pressure on me to do well and live up to my oniisan example, though I didn't really see it that way in those early years. It was just how our life and community functioned.

And that was just my close family.

The Uchiha clan as a whole was large. My neighbourhood was one with spacious houses with individual yards for the more well established clansmen of various importance, which to me as a young child meant they all seemed old and boring. Though I only had to walk a couple of streets to find someone my own age.

My best friends were Uchiha Yoko, who was funny and optimistic, and the other was Uchiha Taiko, who was hot headed but unfortunately had the skills to back up his bravado.

I called all of my friends in the clan "cousins", though I didn't know how I was related to a single one of them. But we all shared the name Uchiha, and they were all part of the clan.

When we got together we were usually watched by someone able to make sure we didn't cause too much trouble, often my okaasan or someone else's parent, but it was always a lot of fun.

There were races and games of hide and seek, we played detective vs infiltrator, the Uchiha equivalence of ninja vs samurai.

There were always people coming or going from our house too. My okaasan was the clan matriarch, and even retired from active duty she had many responsibilities to make the daily life of the clan go around.

She was the one who ordered supplies and distributed it to the right members, which included weapons, gear, medicine, special orders and maintenance. When she wasn't buried in paperwork she also made sure every member fared well, checking in on those sick or injured and keeping tabs on the happening in everyone's life. It wasn't a small task by any means. Before the Third War broke out The Uchiha clan had counted over four hundred members, though with the warring years that number had dwindled to the mid three hundreds, and she knew and cared about every single one of them.

Through running the military police otousan made sure the village as a whole was safe, and though he was the figure head in name, in practise it was okaasan who made sure the Uchiha clan kept running smoothly. Anyone could come to okaasan or otousan with a problem, and they would be duty bound to assist. It was their responsibility, and as a result I knew a most of clan too.

They showed up at all hours of the day. If they wanted to speak with otousan they usually went to the station, but okaasan's base of operation was our house.

Other times okaasan would go to them instead. Like when cousin Aiko ended up in the hospital, or when uncle Naka died leaving his nine year old twin sons orphaned and in need of new living arrangements.

They said Mikoto had been an active field ninja of jōnin rank that had to retire when she married to start a family, but that was a gross simplification of the situation.

What people ignored when they summarized things in such a way was that the last Uchiha clan head, our ojisan, had died the same year she fell pregnant with Itachi, and so she and otousan had been tasked with both the sudden responsibility of the Uchiha clan, the military police, the Third War breaking out and starting a family all within a few months. Was it any wonder otousan had developed stress lines the last few years? The fact our okaasan hadn't collapsed from overtaxation was a miracle. I had no idea how either of them made things go around, only that both of them were professional multitaskers, as even with so many responsibilities, they made sure we were taken care of. Even if they themselves couldn't be the one to do it, we were never forgotten or ignored.

It was the best about being part of a clan, because just as surely as Fugaku and Mikoto was there for the clan, so were they there for them, and when things became too hectic we were taken care of by one of several candidates. If it was grouchy Yashiro ojisan, playful Koji ojiisan or welcoming Uruchi obasan could change from day to day, but there was never a lack for candidates.

Though admittedly things calmed down for okaasan once the War ended and otousan was able to stay home on a more regular basis. Even if he still had to work long hours, it was only at the police station a few streets down from our house - not on the boarder or in another country.

The Uchiha were a tight knitted bunch, and it showed most of all in how they raised their children as a community. Even if I didn't personally know everyone in the clan as well as others, I had at some point interacted with them all. The youngest ones most, as we were often pushed together.

We played together, bought senbei and ate lunch together, and most commonly of all; we trained together.

In the summer of my fourth year I was deemed old enough to participate in the half yearly Uchiha assembly. An event for the benefit of the younger Uchiha and a part of the clan educational system.

The first time okaasan brought me along I was extremely nervous to enter the largest Uchiha dojo in the heart of the compound. It was one of those places that seemed awfully grown up to toddler me, as it was the main dojo only the best in the clan used frequently.

Like our home it was a traditional building but slightly more extravagant in its decoration. It was very impressive, but unexpectedly crowded too.

"This is a congregation we hold twice a year. You will be asked to match up against another around your age. It is a friendly spar, though we expect you to do your best. Throughout the assembly I want you to pay attention. Some of the kids have awakened their Sharingan and you will be able to observe those more experienced than yourself." Instructed okaasan.

Itachi had come along for this, and seemed well used to the setup which to me was new and overwhelming. I had trained since I could walk, but never in front of so many people. Of course everyone in the hall was familiar to me in one way or another, they were all clan members, but this seemed more like a performance than a normal training session.

There was an open space in the centre of the room where we would be fighting, and okaasan went to sit down by the sideline and gestured for us to follow suit.

Compliantly I sat down and searched out the kids in the room. I waved to Yoko, who was sitting with her parents and Taiko. I could see Shisui with Yashiro-ojisan's children, Seiji and his younger brother Kenjiro.

In total I could count sixteen children and teenagers. The rest were too old to be part of this and mostly consisted of parents or older siblings who'd come to watch. There were also several of the Uchiha elders, including Setsuna-sensei and a group of officers from the police station.

As the last of the audience entered the dojo, I was asked to stand up along with Taiko who would be my opponent. We got the dubious honour of starting the entire assembly, as it was our first time attending for both of us.

Taiko, usually boisterous and confident, was obviously uncomfortable with the many eyes observing us. We had never really been pitted against each other either. When we trained we worked side by side, we practised throwing wooden kunai and rubber shuriken. We did yoga and ran lapses, but it hit me then that we had never actually fought against each other.

I had ever only sparred with okaasan, otousan and Itachi, and that couldn't really compare. The skill gap was too large between us for it to be more than me haplessly charging someone who only blocked, ducked and redirected while being mindful not to hurt me.

Though the training had desensitised me to the idea of attacking another human being, I was now unsure how to go up against someone at my own level. No matter how hard I attacked I had never stood a chance of hurting my oniisan or my parents.

That couldn't be said for Taiko, who was actually a couple months younger than me.

But I knew what was expected of us, and as Taiko was so hesitant to attack, I had to be the one to engage the confrontation.

It was over surprisingly fast.

Not even half a minute after engaging I had Taiko restrained on the ground, his arm twisted up his back after I'd swept his feet away from under him. Soundly defeated. Perhaps he had been nervous?

While I helped a red faced Taiko up, my okaasan gave a small but proud smile from the side line. There were no applause, no pat on the back or verbal acknowledgement of my win. Instead it was just barely there in the nods and recognition in the eyes of the spectators. In true Uchiha fashion our feelings were understated and subtle, but it didn't mean it wasn't there.

Next Itachi was asked to go, and I gave him an encouraging smile which he returned. He was up against Izumi.

I eyed Taiko as he went and sat down with his parents, noticing he was scowling and avoiding eye contact with me.

Of course I didn't know it at the time, but that spar would be the start of our rivalry.

Right then I was too distracted at getting to watch Itachi fight.

The spar was much more advanced, and though lopsided in terms of skill – Itachi was visibly better than Izumi from the very beginning, it was still educational for me to see what I would be expected to learn within the next few years.

But my oniisan was so incredibly good, he made it look effortless. I won't lie, I was a bit starstruck. It was the first time I truly realized that the bragging about Itachi's skill level was well earned, and not just the indulgent musing of our parents.

Most seemed to agree with me too. People watched Itachi as he sat down again.

The two to go next were some of the younger cousins, namely Kenjiro against Yoko, both of whom were close to my age and level. I silently cheered for my best friend, but Kenjiro won, though it had been a pretty well evened match.

In this fashion all the participants were made to fight and demonstrate what they knew and how they applied it. The assembly was a clan tradition held often enough that it was a familiar concept, yet not so strict it was mandatory to show up. If something came up no one would force you to participate. However, to do so without cause was kind of like skipping someone's birthday party without a reason.

I knew it had stagnated a bit during the war, it had been difficult to get people together when everything had been so unstable, but now that Konoha was at peace once more the clan was picking back up on the traditions again.

The last two to fight were Tekka against Shota. Tekka was a chunin and the oldest participant at fifteen years old, while Shota was a year younger.

Even if it was purely restricted to a ring and taijutsu alone, they fought on an entirely different level. Their hits had so much more strength, their speed a lot faster and their mentality much more competitive. It was probably the longest spar, and in the end Tekka won, but only barely.

They said their goodbyes afterwards and headed home, talking quietly with each other about what they'd seen and taken from the gathering. It was incredibly fun watching, and I couldn't wait to try out some of the evasive manoeuvres I'd seen the older Uchiha use to get out of sticky situations.

As soldiers in training discipline was a big part of our life. To get to the necessary level required of even low level ninjas you needed it to endure years of excessive training. We started as young as physically possible and never stopped. So already at four years old I was very fit. We were constantly trained, and as part of the Uchiha clan I had a lot of recurses and opportunities most others did not. Though what I appreciated the most was just how willing anyone in the clan was to assist each other.

When I was in the yard training with oniisan, Tekka stepped out of the house in the middle of a meeting with okaasan to help correct my stance while Itachi finished his jumping jack repetitions.

Another time cousin Izumi walked by the gravel grounds where my friends and I usually trained. She had been on her way home from the academy but had seen we were struggling with an exercise, and without hesitating she staid to help. Two hours later her exasperated okaasan showed up, as Izumi's willingness to tutor us had made her forget to show up for her own shuriken training.

Stern and half blind Naori obaachan always had a story for us whenever we came to her house with groceries, and we usually ended up making dinner with her.

That was my clan, my family, my heritage, and I was so proud of it.

For a second chance at life it was a good one.

There were times I would dream and wonder where that other girl had gone. That other life and world and what happened there, but somehow it wasn't a topic that came up outside my stories.

The closest I came to talking about reincarnation was with otousan. He was always busy, but did his best to take care of us. His way to do so was by making sure our village was safe and our clan prosperous. It made him a distant parent, I won't deny that, but he tried to make time for us whenever he could and it made the times he came through for us all the more precious.

One way to do that was that Otousan brought us along for tasks. As a captain in the police force that wasn't often, but there were clan responsibilities where Sasuke and I were able to participate.

We both were less than enthused about it though, because to us it felt more like a punishment or chores.

It could be to help cleaning a room at the police station or a house in the district. It could be when father went from door to door within the compound to gather none sensitive reports. Sometimes he'd take us into the village to buy groceries or pick up packages. They were tasks that needed to be done but not sensitive or complicated, and so he'd bring us along.

One such yearly occurrence was when Otousan brought Sasuke and I to the cemetery to spend the afternoon tending to graves. Though it was always exciting to walk through Konoha and nice to spend the day with otousan, it didn't change the fact we were basically weeding.

"This is so boring." Sasuke whined after nearly an hour of work. His hands were dirty from digging in the soil, ripping out weeds and crawling from one stone to the next. I was holding the bucket with the uprooted plants to be thrown away, which had steadily grown very heavy with time.

The Uchiha had their own section of the massive cemetery next to the Senju, and there were so many graves. Not all needed much attention, as they showed clear signs of someone tending it to it, but there were also quite a few in need of maintenance.

"Sasuke." Otousan scolded with a pointed glance, which had Sasuke shut up at once. "Tending to the graves of those who's sacrificed their lives for our clan and the village is not wasteful time or boring. Every Uchiha buried here spent their lives honourable and in death deserves your respect for their faithful service and achievements. We honour them by making sure they are not forgotten. That even those who has no immediate living family left is still recalled by us - their legacy."

Sasuke nodded weakly.

Otousan straighten up from where he had been working on a really old looking stone. The design was simplistic and had only a scratchy engraving of; "Uchiha Hikaku" on it, but with no date of birth or death.

He left the stone and walked past several rows, coming to a stop in the middle of a cluster of graves with the dates of deaths pretty close to one another.

"This is your ojisan's grave. He was the head of the clan before me." Otousan explained gravely, his fingers brushing over the finely polished stone. "When he left for his last mission we had just told him we were expecting a child. He never came back alive, but his actions and strength contributed to keeping his clan and grandchild safe, and so he died a hero." He bent down and looked at Sasuke. "He gave his life so we could remain safe, happy and together. Don't he deserve to be remembered, Sasuke?"

Sasuke nodded, eyes wide and earnest. Otousan glanced at me, and I replied at once. "Yes otousan."

The thing was, otousan was a man strained with responsibilities and naturally quiet. He wasn't very good at speaking to people without coming off as stern and arrogant, far less children. What he was most comfortable speaking about was ninja things, and so death was unfortunately a topic he was well practised in. It was probably why he seemed so expressive to me on that particular occasion. At any rate I thought he seemed satisfied that we had understood his lecture, and we went back to work in silence.

I moved to work on another row of graves that needed less tending, which meant someone probably came by to remember them frequently enough that I only had to throw out some withered flowers and dig out a couple of fresh weeds. I had recently learned to read, and I was trying to understand each and every name I passed. This was my clan after all, I should know their names, when I came across one that was more familiar than the others.

"Is this obasan?" I asked.

Otousan saw where I stood and nodded without having to check.

"Yes." He replied quietly, eyes distant. "She died when I was young. Next to her is my imouto, she died a couple years later."

I glanced at the other grave, and suddenly found out where I got my name from.

Uchiha Jun.

I was named after my paternal aunt.

And there, seeing my name written on a gravestone, my dreams and strange visions came rushing back to me with force.

"Where are they now?" I asked quietly, my small hand reaching out to touch the letters.

Otousan's answer was a bit uncertain. "They are dead."

He had misunderstood.

"But where is that?" I clarified. "Where do the dead go?"

"Okaasan said the dead stay with us in our hearts." Sasuke piped in, nodding seriously.

Otousan's eyes brightened a little as he looked at Sasuke's assured expression.

I was frustrated, because lately I was starting to put together the pieces of my dreams of that other world and the life I kept seeing.

"Do they move on? Is that why we honour them? So they know that we remember them like they remember us? That we still care?" I asked.

I wanted that to be true. I liked the idea that just as I had remembered some of that other life and brought it into this one, the ones left behind and lost that person I had been would recall and miss her too.

Otousan actually smiled. "I hope so." He answered calmly.

"You don't know?" Sasuke asked, sounding as if he found the idea of otousan not knowing something ludicrous.

"We can only know what we have experienced, and since death comes after life we can't know for certain." Otousan explained, making Sasuke scrunch his face in confusion.

"Eh?"

"The dead can not return to tell us. They can't contact us. But the same can't be said for the other way around. There are legends and tales of people communicating with the dead. Jutsu that can bring back those who had passed in some limited forms. Souls which can separate from a living body. Which means there are strong evidences that there is something after life. Even if our bodies fall in battle, our souls do not."

I nodded. "You're right otousan." I agreed, as serious as I'd ever been. He arched a brow at my certainty, studying me with a certain curiosity.

"Come on. That is enough of a break. Get back to work or we'll be late for dinner." Otousan instructed, and we went back to weeding graves.

We finished half an hour later and walked back a little more subdued than otousan had probably intended. But at least I now had some answers. Apparently souls were a known fact and moving from bodies weren't as uncommon as I had started to believe.

Obviously I had misunderstood a few details, but at the time I was relatively satisfied with that and called it a day.

A month later I was in the yard outside my home keeping busy with Sasuke.

"Finish the story oneechan!" My three year old otouto was my most avid listener. Since we were the youngest and closest in age we were usually pushed together, me with instructions to look after my toddling younger sibling.

"Fine, fine." I answered while adjusting so I could look at him. I was sitting in a comfortable split, my upper body resting against my thigh, ear against my knee and reaching towards my toes.

Sasuke was doing his best to mimic me, but he also thought stretching was boring, and I kind of agreed with him. It sometimes hurt and could be challenging, but it was also tedious and usually long. We stretched for half an hour every day, counting seconds and minutes between stretches and poses, and to pass the time I had started telling Sasuke stories whenever he lost his patience.

"- people were trying to get to a life boat but Riko-hime couldn't leave Jiro behind. So she ran through the ship in search of him. She found the room Jiro was being held, but he had been shackled. Scared and with time running out she tried to find the keys that would unlock them, but there were so many and the water was rising fast." I tried to make my voice urgent, and as my captivated audience leaned forwards I think I succeeded.

Titanic was one of the stories I remembered with some accuracy, but while telling the story to my cute otouto I changed the details a little. Like the names, Rose and Jack sounded very odd in Konoha, and I honestly couldn't pronounce the names without butchering them horribly.

"No! But Riko-hime is a civilian! How will she get Jiro free?" Sasuke asked, honestly distraught as I hummed in agreement.

"You are right. Riko-Hime was no ninja. No one had taught her how to help in such a situation, and she was both freezing from the water and afraid." As I spoke I tried to recall the hazy memory from the moving picture feature. I dug into my mind, dragging out images of the couple being stuck in a room underneath the deck of a sinking ship.

My skin tingles, snapping my mind out of the fading memories to focus on the cold liquid underneath my legs. When I looked down water was pooling up from the ground and above us the clouds had rushed in fast to cover the sun.

Sasuke shrieked and jumped like a cat dropped in a bathtub, terrified as the yard was abruptly flooded with rising water.

My heart started pounding wildly as my otouto leapt to my side. To him I was the first line of defence and his best bet at getting to safety.

It was all so sudden and I barely had time to understand what was happening. A suiton jutsu? Flooding the yard? Why-

And then I understood.

I closed my eyes, my hands clapped together in fierce consentration on disrupting my own chakra system.

"Kai!" I grumbled and opened my eyes.

The illusion fell to pieces, and predictably it revealed cousin Shisui standing in front of me, his smile playful and his mirthful black eyes dancing.

Still cranky about the trick I turned to dispel the genjutsu on Sasuke too. Becoming even more sour as I realized the two chakra exercises was enough for me to feel tired.

For a moment Sasuke remained disoriented before he noticed Shisui too. I could see him putting the pieces together, and then his cheeks puffed as he turned red in embarrassment. "Shisui!" He whined like the three year old he was.

A small chuckle from behind us let me know my dear oniisan was here to witness our little incident as well.

"But Sasuke-chan, I was just helping Jun-chan tell the story!" Shisui protested just as Sasuke bodily threw himself against his legs, a fruitless attempt at pushing the older boy over. Sasuke would be lucky to topple the dining table, he didn't really stand a chance of getting one over prodigious Shunshin no Shisui.

But there's a reason Shisui was a favourite cousin. Not just for Itachi, but for Sasuke and me as well, and so playing along Shisui flopped down on the ground, pretending the three year old had actually managed to unbalance him. In a fluid motion that had Sasuke squeal with giggles he had rearranged my otouto so he was sitting in his lap.

"I'm just making the story even better! Didn't it seem more real with the flooding water?"

"Oneechan's stories are already the best!» Sasuke protested. "Don't need stupid tricks."

"Aww.." Shisui made a wounded sound and allowed the now wriggling Sasuke to be put down at his side.

Itachi came to stand next to me, making Sasuke light up like a raiton jutsu. "Ani! Ani! Tell stupid Shisui not to genjutsu oneechan's stories!"

"My imouto tells wonderful stories, Shisui. You don't need to add anything to make them better." Itachi answered dutifully, making Sasuke's smile widen with glee at having Itachi on his side. It was pretty much a default setting for Sasuke and I to see Itachi's side as the right and winning side.

Shisui crossed his arms over his chest as if affronted. He wasn't trying all that hard to be believable, but then again that was why Shisui was the funny cousin. He never minded acting the fool. "No one appreciates my genjutsu anymore. It's not fair."

There was a long suffering sigh before he brightened right up again. "But you're right, Jun-chan tells great stories. I haven't heard this one either."

"We haven't finished stretching yet." I said, partly as an explanation to Itachi and Shisui, but also as a reminder to Sasuke to get back in position.

Sasuke slumped in disappointment, he had probably hoped we could go play with Itachi-nii now that our session had been disrupted. But obedient that he was, Sasuke plopped down with a huff, stretching his short legs into a split in a mirror position of my own.

Shisui answer was to smile even more obnoxiously. "Why don't we join you? I want to hear Jun-chan's story as well."

That was all the invite either of them needed, and wordlessly Itachi followed suit, finding a spot a bit to the side to give space for his longer legs.

Itachi and Shisui were no stranger to my tales, and soon I back to describing the last moments of the unsinkable ship and Riko-hime and Jiro's story.

Though my oniisan smiled knowingly when I change the ending for Sasuke's benefit. Making it so Riko-hime and Jiro got to survive together instead of a heartbroken Riko-hime finding value in life without her love like the version I had told a misty eyed Itachi a few months before.

By the end we had gone through all the poses and was walking back in a row to the house.

Okaasan was sitting on the porch steps with several scrolls spread out around her, ink and brush in hand to fill out what looked like an order form for a shipment of ninja wire. My multitasking okaasan at her best. Always busy with one task or another, and I'm always a little startled by how effortlessly she makes it look to switch between clan affairs and childcare.

"That was a lovely story, Junko." She said when we passed by, her hand brushing through my hair.

It had recently been cut again. To my okaasan's delight and my own annoyance my hair stubbornly continued to grow both thick and quickly. It had become a frequent occurrence for my okaasan to cut it to jaw length, but within a month it would grow down to my shoulders.

Sasuke didn't seem to have the same problem, though then his hair was just like okaasan's, midnight black and a little more unruly.

"Go wash up and we'll start on dinner." Okaasan gestures towards the porch door which stood open to let in the warm summer air.

Like the dutiful children we were Sasuke and I marched to the bathroom, Itachi at our backs and Shisui remaining outside to chat with okaasan.

Soon we were all gathered in the kitchen, a gaggle of bodies trying not to be in the way of each other as we made dinner. Okaasan used cooking as a way to expose me and Sasuke to sharp tools in a controlled environment, and lately she was letting Sasuke try his hand at cutting vegetables.

It was both a bit surreal and hilarious to watch my three year old otouto try to use a knife several sizes too large for his tiny hands. Not that my own were much better, but a year and a half feels like a lot at that age. As he struggled to manoeuvre it correctly he was being watched by two jonin, a genin and me, so I was pretty confident if something was about to go wrong it would be noticed before it got too bad.

Not that Sasuke realized he was being watched. My family were good at being helpful in a very unassuming way. We pretended we weren't helping by making our actions look random instead of the deliberate reactions they were. So to Sasuke it was just coincidence Itachi needed to pick up the few cut carrots just as our otouto lost his grip on the knife, and was able to catch it before it fell to the floor. As casually as if he had just been brushing of his trousers Itachi placed the knife back in Sasuke's hand and allowed him to continue without a word. Even I had been fooled by this deception, but the effect was ruined when I was roped into the farce for Sasuke's benefit when he started needing more supervision.

It wasn't a very complicated dinner, and Sasuke, Itachi and okaasan had it finished while Shisui assisted me in preparing the table. There was a large case going on at the station, so I already knew otousan wouldn't be home for dinner.

"You disrupted that genjutsu successfully, Junko. Your clan lessons must be progressing well." Itachi stated once we were seated at the table, turning towards me with a small smile.

I had started private lessons even if I hadn't started the academy, where the focus was clan techniques. It was slow going and boring most days. But according to Setsuna-sensei, who was really, really old and grouchy, it was all necessary if I wanted to progress.

It wasn't like the training I did at home, which was mostly physical conditioning, reading, writing, maths and history.

No, when I met with Setsuna-sensei the focus of the lessons were pure Uchiha techniques, which meant chakra training.

I had been placed in Setsuna-sensei's care right before I turned four years old, and before me he had trained Itachi, and before that he had taught Shisui, so I felt I had a lot to live up to here.

Setsuna-sensei was patient with me, but I already knew I fell short of his two former students.

The first seven months I had been doing a lot of meditating to find and learn how to use my chakra. It wasn't as easy as I had assumed, and I hadn't been very optimistic to begin with. Chakra was inside me, around me, and through me, and detangling that mess had been a headache. To learn how to bring something that was perfectly happy staying dormant underneath my flesh and muscles and not only make it move to my preferred rhythm but also be expelled according to my instructions was very difficult.

And just like when you train muscle mass and stamina, if you stopped exercising your chakra you would start to retrogress.

Much of what I had done so far was basic chakra manipulation with the meagre excess I was currently in possession of. I had yet to build up reserves enough to do any taxing jutsu. Which is why the focus was chakra control.

"Thank you!" I beamed at Itachi, a warm flush to my cheeks at the fact he'd noticed. Dispelling genjutsu was the first real chakra technique I had been taught, and I had worked hard on how to shake off such attacks. Exposure to Genjutsu and learning to differentiate between illusions and truths was my current field of study, and Shisui's little prank was actually the first time I had dispelled anything Setsuna-sensei hadn't put me under.

His goals with my studies would continue for however long I needed it, and would end once he was confident I could do three chakra techniques in a battle scenario. Dispel basic genjutsu, cast a basic genjutsu on an opponent and use katon jutsu.

The way he spoke of it made it sound like they were the Uchiha equivalence of the academy three.

He had started me on all three, though it wasn't necessarily his job to teach me the exact genjutsu that was deemed good enough or the fire technique.

Setsuna-sensei was there to drill in the basics. He was old, retired and had no immediate family left, so he spent the time training us kids clan techniques. My parents and Itachi weren't nearly as accessible to help me out as retired old Setsuna-sensei was.

Though it wasn't just a matter of willpower and stubbornness to master the steps.

Neither genjutsu or nature transformation were easy fields of study, and according to Setsuna-sensei they were much harder than the academy three. I don't think he was exaggerating either.

Nature transformation, the ability to mould your chakra into an element, was commonly seen as advanced chakra control. Adding that with shape transformation, which was required in even weaker D-rank katon jutsu, was seen as a solid chunin level skill.

It could take several years of hard work to master. Not to mention my small chakra reserves meant I couldn't keep it up for long at a time. I had only recently learned how to control my chakra system enough to dispel simple genjutsu, and had barely made any progress at transforming my base chakra nature into katon.

There was a list which simplified the steps on how to use elemental jutsu.

A. Find chakra.

B. Mould chakra.

C. Transform chakra

D. Shape chakra

E. Release chakra.

And I was somewhere between step A and B.

No, before I would be doing any flamethrowers I would have to make a spark to ignite it first.

I was motivated to do my best however, as I knew once I learned the basics of nature transformation and shape manipulation, otousan would teach me a real katon jutsu. Most likely the clan signature jutsu; the Great Fireball technique.

It was something everyone who graduated the academy was taught at some point no matter their affinity. Because of that we were known as a bunch of fire breathers across the nations, but what made the Uchiha feared was actually our Sharingan genjutsu.

Strangely enough, not every born Uchiha were able to activate the Sharingan, which is why the Great fireball is the Uchiha signature jutsu and not some genjutsu which several members of the clan would never be able to cast.

I learned a lot of basics from Setsuna-sensei. Not only about chakra, but about the clan as well. I learned the ancient Uchiha history, things that was considered long ago even before Uchiha Madara had been born. Setsuna-sensei would know, he was older than Konoha itself.

I would be lying if I said it wasn't useful, but Setsuna-sensei was both strict and very Uchiha. Which meant he had little patience for foolish nothings and expected my full obedience. Seeing as he was our neighbour it was pretty easy to drop by, and some days I would only be half an hour, while others I would stay until dinner to complete the task he had set me that day.

"So Setsuna-sensei is finally making sense?" Asked Shisui, his grin teasing.

At some point I had complained about how boring lessons were and must have forgotten Shisui had been around. That was the thing about Shisui, he was usually around, though I'm not always sure why.

Shisui was a few years older than Itachi and one of the promising Uchihas under quite a bit of pressure to do well. Though other than that I wasn't sure how we were related. I'm pretty sure he was closer related to us than Yoko or Taiko, as Shisui actually looked a lot like us. Though all Uchihas had black eyes, that was where most of us stopped resembling each other. The clan was too large to hold any common characteristic outside black eyes, and that trait wasn't exactly unique. Dark eyes were dominant with the Naras, Sarutobis, Akimichi, the Hatake and uncountable others. The only difference was that some of our black eyes suddenly flashed red.

"Yea..." I mumbled, timid under my okaasan's stern look from the other side of the table. "Setsuna-sensei has been putting me under genjutsu so I'll learn what it's like and how to break them." I explained.

"Good work, Jun-chan." Shisui replied, his smile crooked and friendly. He was pretty expressive for an Uchiha. "Genjutsu is detailed work, and require a lot of concentrations. When you progress to casting genjutsu I'll teach you some tricks."

My head perked up in interest, eyes going wide. Shisui was very, very good at genjutsu, even otousan had described a few of his genjutsu as "exemplary".

"You will?" I asked, not able to cover my hopeful tone.

His smile widened. "Of course! We creative types have to stick together. I can't let that imagination of yours go to waste, Jun-Jun."