Out of the Ashes

Chapter 1

Into the Flames

I'm just going to cut to the chase. I died. I died a horrible death that happened because my brother was angry at me and locked me in my room from the outside. Our kitchen had caught on fire and I was left in my room due to my brother forgetting his anger at me and forgetting he locked me in there. My body had been too large to fit out my window as I had been a lazy pudgy teenager.

In the heat and burning pain of the fire, the feeling of all the oxygen around me burning my lungs, I didn't even notice the blackness of death come for me. I was stuck in the eternal burning forever. I had left the world screaming in pain and agony with tears cascading down my cheeks. I didn't notice at first the difference between burning and gentle warmth. All I felt was heat and that terrified me. I couldn't breathe anymore and my lungs were fighting for that air I desperately needed. There was suddenly an odd pressure on me that was demanding my body to bend to its will and then there was a freezing touch as something beside me was suddenly gone.

Then, from the embers of death I was reborn into the frigid air, screaming and crying. It was ironic how I had gone out screaming and crying with the little burning oxygen I had, only to come in and my lungs almost reject the freezing air. All around me my senses were still burning despite the cool air. I had no idea what was going on at that point in time, everything was dark and I couldn't get my eyes to open themselves. There were loud noises that were slightly muffled and I couldn't make anything out.

I had been wondering if I was in the hospital and if the firefighters got me out of the burning building. Of course, I learned later that wasn't the case. I had come to figure out when my arms and legs refused to move how I wanted them that I wasn't as large as I used to be. I had been suddenly brought to warmth and there was a beating that was so utterly calming despite how muffled it was. I stopped screaming, only because my body started to accept the air around me. But there was still a distinct burning around me and inside my body.

I figured out I was a newborn infant through my eternal burning when I was continuously lifted and manhandled by many hands. Not to mention I was fed only milk. My taste buds hadn't quite come in to service yet, everything tasted burnt and tasteless to me, but through that charcoal flavor I could taste the slightest hint of milk. It didn't taste entirely like milk, not the milk I was used to anyway.

I couldn't open my eyes for what I later learned was two months. In that time I had learned that I wasn't somewhere that spoke English, rather I understood the language to be Japanese. I wanted to groan at that upon hearing the good morning that I remembered from watching many animes and the welcome homes and the I'm homes and so forth. Japanese would be a bitch to learn considering I already knew English. English I had used my entire life, I wouldn't forget it after two months of not reading it.

By the time I opened my eyes I had learned my mother's name was "Mikoto" and that I wasn't the only baby in the room. I must have had a brother or sister, maybe a twin as they didn't sound any older than myself. After being born I never cried or screamed again, of course I couldn't entirely control a baby body and the fact that I shit myself made me want to cry. Being a baby was also incredibly boring, although it didn't help that I didn't open my eyes. But I couldn't, it felt like they were glued together. I now understood why babies cried so much.

When I finally did open my eyes, everything was extremely blurry for the first few minutes. It was either dawn or dusk when I opened my eyes, orange light spilling in through the strips in the blinds. They painted the ceiling and I stared up at it until I could move my eyeballs and look around. With this new determination and the knowledge that I was at least a month, I started my campaign to roll over and move my head. I managed the latter as I had moved my head often during my blind days.

I managed to roll over after what felt like hours and wondered if no one would notice but highly doubted it as we were carefully monitored babies, someone was always in here. It wasn't that they made noise, no they were almost always silent. Rather, with my sense to the burning that still contaminated the air and my body, I could almost feel them. They didn't feel like burning like the air did, there were three people who visited most often.

Most often was Mikoto, my mother. What I sensed from her was a certain soothing warmth, something that made me so happy and feel so safe that I wanted to open my eyes to look at her and call her over.

Second only to Mikoto and only by a slight bit, was someone who I heard coo to us with a boy's tone. I assumed he was an older brother and I dubbed him as what could only be a spark. He was warm like mother but there was a strange apprehension I had about him. He made me feel so safe but at the same time there was something about him that made me feel like everything would go horribly wrong.

Lastly was a man who came usually once a day and I assumed this to be my father. I didn't hear his name yet, similarly to how I hadn't heard my brother's name, but he felt like wood. He was grounded and unmoving, often silent but when he wasn't silent his voice was deep and rustled like a tree's branches.

There was also my tiny baby sibling. He felt bright, like a light. And through the taste of burnt everything I could almost taste something sweet. Perhaps cherries? It was pleasant, to taste something other than charcoal.

I felt out of the corner of my burning senses, which was evidently a far enough distance to be outside our door as that door opened a moment later, and a spark was coming near me. It was my brother. He peered over the edge of the crib and I got my first, still somewhat blurry, glimpse of my brother. And in glimpsing my brother I suddenly was able to see my future as well. Dark hair spilled around his head and big obsidian eyes stared down at me with a childish wideness to them. Deep in the dark pits though there was a serious understanding already.

Uchiha Itachi leered over me, and I think that was the closest I came to crying since I had been born. I didn't cry though, I took control of that damn baby body and I stopped the tears before they came.

"Mom!" I was able to make out Itachi call out, followed by a string of words that I knew none of. A moment later my senses caught the warmth of Mikoto and the dark blue haired beauty's face appeared beside Itachi, looking down at me. Her eyes widened when looked at me and she froze. I strained my eyes to peer into the dark orbs that leered down at me from two faces and I wished I hadn't. What looked back was a fragile tiny infant with skin so pale she looked sick and tufts of dark blue hair. But what was scariest was the looks of burn scars that marred up to my jaw and down my neck. It disappeared under the collar of my jumper but I was still spooked. Mikoto leaned closer and I saw what most likely had spooked her considering she had most definitely seen the burn marks by now.

My eyes weren't entirely the dark obsidian that every Uchiha ever had. They had hints of navy blue deep in them but the hues of color hidden behind darkness was lost when I took note of my pupils. My pupils weren't black, rather they were a dull dark grey that had hints of dark blue that seemed to be black. Those odd eyes stared back at me from her Mikoto's dark eyes.

After Mikoto had examined my eyes for another few moments she lifted me and at her touch the burning beneath my skin paused for a peaceful moment before intensifying. I didn't even squirm at the discomfort, the burning was a dull burn by now. Two months of it and you get used to the days of agony. I was brought into a world full of more senses for me, in which I made a game of identifying what people tasted or felt like, and eventually we reached what I concluded to be a hospital.

I was probed by doctor's and my eyes hurt after they shined a light in them and I grumbled at them with a baby's gargles. At the end of the intrusive search they handed me back to Mikoto. I found out later that this was them trying to see if I was blind as that was Mikoto's first assumption upon my eyes opening late and then looking like that. The probing was because they tested me to see what could cause that odd mutation. They didn't find that out, they did learn that I was extremely sensitive to chakra. This came when they saw the reaction I had at them probing me with green glowing hands. The green glow entered my body and it was something akin to heating a needle over a fire and then injecting lava into my veins with said needle.

I didn't cry, no. I wouldn't cry. Rather I screamed bloody murder at them for that. And after more painful examinations they apparently had concluded I was hypersensitive to chakra. And that was how I made the connection to my burning senses. Chakra was the constant agonizing fire that burned me at every step.

On the way back from the hospital Mikoto stopped and I was able to sense a chakra that tasted like milk, ramen, and something ever so deadly that it burned. This turned out to be Uzumaki Kushina. Mikoto spoke with her briefly and let her hold me and I held in my disapproval of this action (Kushina burned). She was beautiful, with wide violet eyes and bright red hair. I found that I quite liked her voice and personality, she was very vibrant. We returned home shortly afterwards and I found myself wondering if she and Minato would really die soon.

After that hospital visit I started to roll around my crib and attempt to lift myself to crawl. I wasn't able to manage this though but I could pull myself up with extreme effort and lean myself against something. It was honestly not worth it though considering my crib blocked most of my view. Mikoto started letting Itachi take us out of the crib about two weeks or so after my doctors appointment. Here I got my first real look at Sasuke. Sasuke wasn't able to roll over yet and he cried but I couldn't blame him for crying since he wasn't a seventeen year old whose mind got stuffed in a baby's body.

A cool fall night had me sitting up in Itachi's lap while Itachi held Sasuke closely to his chest. He was murmuring to us and there was unease in the air. The scene was familiar to me and I was pondering this as I watched the trees rustle. We were sitting on one of the open pathways of the compound and looking out into the night. Suddenly, Sasuke started to cry and there was a sudden-

FIRE IN MY BLOOD. ITS IN MY BODY. GET IT OUT.

A sudden wave of burning hit me. I screamed as what felt like lava coursed through my veins and my eyes caught the orange vibrations that were reverating throughout the village. I briefly, through my pain, made the connection that this was Naruto being born, but I was too busy writhing in pain while Itachi tried to calm me. The burning coursed through my veins for what felt like forever but eventually it subsided to the casual agony I usually held. Chakra was evil in my eyes so far, it had caused nothing but pain to me.

Following the end of the Kyuubi's release and then what I assumed to be sealing into Naruto I was able to calm myself. Itachi sighed in relief when I was my usual self and the nervous looks he had been sending me were gone. Itachi looked down at me with his wise eyes that were far too wise for a six or seven year old. He murmured something to me and I babbled nonsensically back at him.

"Ita." was what I was able to make with my baby body and Itachi's eyes lit up with excitement. I highly doubted a three month old should be able to talk but Itachi didn't question it.

I receded into my thoughts again and thought about the Kyuubi. The Kyuubi incident had just occurred and that meant that Naruto most likely had it sealed away inside him. Kushina and Minato were dead and the events of Naruto were about to unfold. I knew my future, in that moment just like how when I had glimpsed Itachi's eyes.

To live, I would have to strengthen myself and find a way to survive the Uchiha massacre as well as Orochimaru, the Akatsuki, and whatever ninja were thrown at me to kill me.

I would live, and perhaps, I would even change the story line to save the characters I liked. After all, they were just characters to me at that moment. But they didn't stay characters for long.

AN

I really shouldn't be doing another story. But I am. It's going to come back and bite me in the ass, obviously. But I just had to join in on the reborn idea. I wouldn't call her a self insert but she might have some of my qualities.