I spent many hours sitting in my dads lap, finger tracing under the words as he read, trying desperately to associate the symbols with specific sounds. It was about this time that I began to suspect that being reborn had changed me - I doubt very much I would have ever been able to succeed at this before. I had been smart before, yes, but never to this degree. I think that this was another instance of my body affecting my actions - simply, the brain I was using could compute so much faster than the one I used to have.
It was a little disconcerting. It made sense, yes - the mind wasn't a spiritual entity tenuously tied to the body, it was formed by thousands of interconnecting neurons in the brain, which somehow or other lead to the higher conciousness we call 'the mind'. Realistically, it made perfect sense. That didn't mean it wasn't unnerving.
In the end, I accepted it as something useful that would help me here.
Once I could read, it was like the whole world opened up for me.
My parents must have thought I loved history, with the fevor that I read the books. To be fair, it was fairly interesting, especially given how short it was. History in my world could be measured back tens of thousands of years, not even considering archeology which could trace back several million years. Here, records were sparse before the formation of villages and practically nonexistent before the Sage of the Six Paths.
But I was researching.
I wanted to know about this world. I wanted to know if it matched with the show, however ludicrous the idea seemed. I read, struggling through children's books, then ever increasing books of difficulty. I wrote notes. I drew up timelines that were a mess of connections between this event and that. I began to understand.
(I also took note of any techniques mentioned, either basic or advanced, to look up later. To find out what was possible and what was exaggerated. Sometimes it seemed that everything was possible.)
History, especially shinobi history, wasn't really something that there many books on. It probably had something to do with the secretive nature of shinobi. Likely there were many classified events that would fill in the holes of my timeline. What I did find out was clearly written with propaganda in mind.
It took many months, and of course it was interspersed with other activites. I couldn't devote all my time to it, even had I been able to force myself to focus for so long. In that time, I also developed an interest in codes and ciphers. The ones available in the library were so low level that a ninja would laugh at them, but the puzzle to them caught my attention immediately. Also, the thought of being able to write secret notes, but I was far too impatient for that to be a true goal as I knew it would take years to create a code safe enough to trust even the basest of secrets to it. There were fantasy books and adventure books and the series 'Ranko the Rogue Ninja' which was funny, entertaining, informative and just a little disturbing, if you looked closely.
But it did prove, to me, that this world was as similar to the show as I could manage to remember.
Which lead to the condrum, what was I going to do now?
If, as it seemed, this world was the Naruto-verse, then I knew the future, or some of it. Was there anything I could do?
The answer appeared to be a staggering 'no'.
Who would believe a warning from a child? I had no method of giving warning in secret, nor would I be confident in my ability to do so. I most definitely didn't want to see what they would do to me if I came out and said I remembered a previous life. A mental institution would be the nicest of several unpleasant outcomes.
What were the big events? The important ones. The invasion of Konoha. The Akatsuki. Pein's attack. The 4th Shinobi War. Could I stop those? Realistically?
The 4th Shinobi War was caused by Madara and Kabuto. If they were removed… Maybe, maybe they could be taken out before it got to that stage. The same with Pein.
Orochimaru's invasion? I had no clue.
I needed to be strong. It wasn't an impossible goal. After all, at fifteen, Sasuke had killed Deidara and Itachi, Gaara had been strong enough, without the Ichibi, to be General Commander of the Shinobi Army and take out several past Kage. Shikamaru had taken out Hidan. S-rank didn't mean unstoppable. It was possible. But it was going to take a hell of a lot of work to get me there.
I couldn't do it alone, I knew that without a doubt. But getting the others to trust me, when I couldn't tell them why? That would be tricky.
But apart from that daunting goal, those first years of my new life were pleasant. The only time I recall the shinobi world intruding on my quiet life was when I was, maybe a year and a half old, maybe two, and Shikaku came back from a mission with two livid scars across the side of his face. He was rather lucky, one arched above his eyebrow, the other curved below his cheekbone; both missed his eye. A missing eye wasn't an insurmountable problem for a skilled ninja, but no one would argue that it was a problem.
He hadn't been gone for that long, but the scars were mostly healed, just a livid red. Either base healing rates were faster here, or they had been chakra healed. Maybe a mixture of both.
I think he was a little worried about how we would react to them. Yoshino didn't react to them, other than to maybe hug him a little harder than normal. Maybe she thought 'close call'. We, on the other hand, were too young to really understand and they did make him look rather fierce. And maybe he could be, but I'd never known him as anything other than kind and gentle.