AN: It's been a while since I've published anything. This has been a work in progress over a few busy years but I think it's decent so I'll put it out there. I'll continue to update it until I run out of new material probably, no guarantees of writing at anything but a snail's pace unfortunately. Enjoy!

Who I was doesn't matter. Reincarnation is a funny thing like that, because to everyone in the world - and a few have known me since the moment I was born - I have always been Neji Hyuuga.

There was a lifetime before that. Those memories were clear, once, but the longer I was Neji the hazier they got. I held onto only a few things, clutched onto random memories like a lifeline.

I thought it a dream, at first. Some kind of odd hallucination. Because I knew the place where I was reincarnated, had heard of it. Konohagakure, the Village Hidden in Leaves. The Shinobi Village of Fire Country.

It was a famous place here in the Elemental Nations. But in my other life, vaguely remembered, it was nothing more than a story. A magazine and a...show? Production of some kind? There were other words, specifics that I couldn't remember.

But I was born to Hizashi and Himiko Hyuuga.

Being a newborn is disorienting. There's darkness, then pressure, then suddenly you have to breathe. Your eyes don't work, and as an adult in an infant body - moments after this realization hits, your first thought is, "What the fuck?"

This comes out as some sort of cry, which is the only real sound babies can make.

Then there's warmth again as you're swaddled and held close to someone who must be your mother. You're generally tossed about to and fro to a godawful amount of relatives and you can't see a damn thing so you really have no clue what's going on.

It's vaguely terrifying, being a newborn child. No wonder the little bastards cry constantly.

For weeks, I cried. I was blind, I was helpless, and I couldn't tell anyone what I wanted. Beyond that, there was a vague but constant tingling of what I'd later learn to be a developing chakra system.

The tingling was annoying enough, but chakra is another thing entirely.

The best way to describe the feeling of chakra is that it's a combination of every drug at the same time, because it's all of that and a lot more. Extreme relaxation and aid in meditation. Mental focus, ridiculous acuity, and hyper-awareness. More energy vibrating through you than any person could possibly tolerate - as an infant I stayed up four nights on end just to see how long it took before the feeling actually went away. Later with a bit of practice, flushing away muscle fatigue and enhancing muscles so far beyond what I'd considered humanly possible that it was actually comical.

And that's just what everyone could do. What literally everyone was expected to do, as an Academy Student and genin.

I felt this new sensation from the first moment, felt it growing inside me and twisting around my body as I grew. It was something foreign to me that everyone else took for granted, but I never would. I loved it.

My chakra had stopped twisting around in me when I was around a year old. I had been moving it around inside of me since I was a baby and felt it grow and my body and chakra system accommodate as I did so, but with my memories still fresh from the past life - not the hazy few words that would become vague warnings, so many years later - I did perhaps the first extremely stupid thing of my new life.

I could walk and talk quite well for a one year old. Even though it meant learning a new language, as soon as my sight came into focus I was a damn sponge and soaked it up - and since I'd already been listening for months and repeating words in my head, I had essentially no problems with dialect.

I learned to talk remarkably well, prodigiously well, more than one person had said. I got used to hearing the word prodigy.

But by the time I was one, I knew exactly where I was - the Elemental Nations, and at the time I remembered Naruto. He was the focus of the...story. A book series, perhaps. Hard to say now, in retrospect - but so many years before, I knew.

The mere sight of my father's hitai-ate stole my breath away. I knew it meant he was in danger. My whole family was, my whole clan was.

Then, when I was a year and a few months old, the Kyuubi attack happened.

The Hyuuga were on the side of Konoha furthest from the monster, and I would later learn that the clan compound sustained no damage in the attack. Several branch members were slain, but even casualties were very light compared to what others suffered.

None of it mattered. I felt the chakra before most knew what was going on. It was everywhere, permeating and infecting everything with rage and hatred. A sick chakra, foreign and different and alien that reeked of terror.

I couldn't yell. And even though I was mostly beyond it, I couldn't cry. I couldn't breath. I know I was crying in the face of that immeasurable, oppressive chakra, but I remember little of it. Just the feeling of terror. Of knowing that my death was assured and swift.

Then it was gone. Vanished.

I learned that the Yondaime Hokage sacrificed his life to seal it away - remarkable what people discuss around a silent one year old - and knew that had to be a motivator for me.

I was a helpless infant - Point A. He was a horrifically terrifying monster-killer. Point Z.

If only the rest of the alphabet was so clear. I needed to be strong - Itachi had risen to the point at age fifteen where Orochimaru feared him as an opponent.

There were a few points between A and Z for fifteen years.

After the Kyuubi, even with the motivation it provided, I knew I was going to die. I don't know why I was so certain, now, why I knew it in my gut. But in the months that followed, I can tell you that I spent a month in deep melancholy because I knew I was doomed. Perhaps it was the long road ahead of me, or perhaps some piece of esoteric foreknowledge that I've long since forgotten. Perhaps I knew something of the dangerous life shinobi lead, and was terrified.

I needed a great deal more than to be able to walk and talk. Thankfully, my clan had a somewhat powerful secret - they were legendary for their dojutsu - the famed and feared Byakugan.

Most didn't activate it until they were around eight years old, when they began training in the Juuken.

I thought I knew better. I had the mind of an adult - even if that adult had no damn idea how to use chakra, I'd been manipulating it well inside myself. Pooling it, concentrating it, feeling it flow.

I was an arrogant little idiot.

I forced chakra into the hereditarily overdeveloped optic nerves, forcing more blood flow as well. I felt the veins on my forehead bulge and got almost a prescient sense that my brain, too, was now insufficient - I needed to process the simultaneous 360 degree information, after all.

My vision swam and went black as chakra flooded my brain to compensate. I tried to regulate it, because it was horribly dangerous. I'd heard of two young Hyuuga who'd blinded themselves doing this activation. It stabilized under my control, but it wasn't quite enough to activate.

I flooded more chakra. To my visual cortex and my optic nerve, to my brain. More blood flooded to my eyes to accommodate them and even the veins on my neck bulged noticeably with the pressure.

Too much. I had nowhere near the refined control necessary. It was out of control.

"Byakugan!" I said aloud, as some clan members did to focus themselves.

And I saw. Everything. All around, the entire compound was now simultaneously within my sight - it was so disorienting that my one year old self threw up on the floor. I fell to the ground.

My eyes bled, mixing with the vomit. I stopped the flow of chakra, and oh Kami the pain.

I elegantly fell asleep in a puddle of my own vomit. I guess that's not so bad for a one year old.