I forgot to do this last chapter, but:

Disclaimer! The authoress does not own—and does not claim to own—any fictional entities associated with the Naruto franchise, apart from her OCs. That honor belongs to one Kishimoto Masashi.

All forms of feedback, especially advice, are welcomed with open arms.

Also, special thanks to sonyat for talking shop with me. She's the one who provided me with plot points and really made me think about the direction I want this story to go. She's also published a Rin SI called "Starting Out at Six Feet Under", and if you haven't already read it, you should check it out.

CHAPTER ONE

It hadn't taken me long to realize that I was in the body of an infant—or at the very least, dreaming that I was in one. For one thing, there had been the fact that my legs no longer reached as far down the bed—which was really more of a futon, though it was comfortable enough—as I remembered them to. And even back then, when my knowledge of medicine had been mediocre at best, I knew enough to know that people don't just shrink down to baby-size in a matter of a few months. Or even at all.

It didn't mean anything, as far as I was concerned. No, younger-me was all too happy to deny abject reality in favor of not having the pillars holding her world view-point up mercilessly annihilated. Looking back, I don't really blame myself. Things were so much simpler when I was that naïve. Much simpler than they are now, at any rate.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sure, I was angry, at first. I was disabled, alone—minus the caretaker who kept insisting I call him 'Papa' and kept calling me 'Rin'—and my family (that is, my mother and sister, because nobody ever knew where my father was) hadn't come to see me even during major hospitalization. Either that or they were being kept out—which I more readily believed.

I didn't connect all the dots until later—mostly due to willful ignorance. But do you really blame me? Who wants to believe that they're in a fictional universe, in the body of the person whose death was a fulcrum on which the character development of two major players—a la Obito and Kakashi—depended upon?

I certainly didn't. But that's just me.

But one summer afternoon, it happened, and I couldn't pretend anymore.

ʕ •́؈•̀ ₎

I'd been dropped off at one of Papa's friends places before my father had left on what he referred to as a mission. Everything was all good and fine, of course. The lady Papa left me with—referred to as "Mikuru-nee"—was nice enough. She mostly left me to my own devices in the safety of the gated play area she'd bought after the fifth time she lost track of where I'd crawled off to, but she changed and fed me, which was all I could really expect. Some nights, she even read me a bedtime story or two, depending on her mood.

The stories themselves didn't bother me; sure, it portrayed some pretty dark stuff in a sickeningly happy light, but honestly? That's not uncommon in any universe. I mean, "Rockabye Baby" anybody? How about Pokémon™? How is capturing clearly sentient creatures against their will in any way a thing to be happy about? How about the origins of Phineas and Ferb™?

...as you can tell, my childhood's been pretty badly mutilated. It's nothing compared to some of the other stuff that's happened lately, but...again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

This isn't even the worst of what happened. Not really.

The worst part came when Papa came to pick me up; bandaged and beat-up, with flecks of dried blood still visible on his vest and a hollow look in his eye. Mikuru-nee looked a little leery of releasing me to him, but handed me over nonetheless. His grip was just short of bruising at first, but it relaxed when he saw the sharp reproof in her gaze.

The conversation that they had was hard to follow, but the words that stood out to me most were shinobi and Konoha. Shinobi, as in "ninja." Ninja, as in mercenaries that had been around in feudal Japan. Konoha, as in the village the title character Naruto lived in. As in, either these people are all part of a really complex real-life RPG, or this is all real.

I didn't dare move a muscle the whole journey home.

ʕ •́؈•̀ ₎

When Papa set us down on two separate futon beds, I hadn't protested. I was still too in shock to even think about any of it.

I had never put much stock into the reincarnation cycle, or an Afterlife. I wasn't the kind of person to believe in fairies, or anything like that. In fact, I was one of those kids who hadn't needed to see Mommy Kissing Santa Claus to know that he wasn't real, and who never believed that person who put on the costume was really Mickey Mouse.

Yeah, I was just one of those kids.

But then, if there was no such thing as a reincarnation cycle or an Afterlife, what was this? An elaborate dream? Something my mind wanted to conjure up to entertain me as I died?

Maybe. But dream or not, it felt real. And...I didn't want to believe that it wasn't. I finally had the father I'd been dreaming about my entire life. Sure, he wasn't—and still isn't—perfect. Sure, there's a lot of things that he's done that...I'm still struggling to forget, but he's family. And that's all that really matters in the end.

And honestly, I'm not sure how I hadn't figured it out sooner. All the hints were there: Papa's nonchalance at letting me run around free-range and his allowing me to have rubber kunai as my first teething rings, and oh, the Hokage Monument, just to name a few.

...Wait. Papa had those...purple rectangle things—chakra markings, I'd later learned—which is something I'd only ever seen on Rin Nohara on the show. And even if it's all a dream, for the time being, it's shown no signs of letting up. Which means that...

Oh...crap.

A/N: And so the first technical remastered!chapter of my story is now complete. It's kind of short, though the next one will hopefully be longer. I should be posting it in...a few days, if everything goes right.

ANSWER: If I had to choose, it would somewhere like Ouran High School Host Club. Surreal enough that you can defy some of the laws of physics, but realistic enough that things like shinobi are a thing of the past and there's only real world problems to deal with.

QUESTION: Recommend SIs?