Chapter One:
First Breath After Coma

The day was ending, darkening the skies. Streetlamps and car headlights provided the only useful light. If it wasn't enough that I worked for a factory where even in the administration workers started before the sun rose and finished after it set, it was also raining today. The windshield wipers of my old car beat back and forth as fast as they could to try and keep the rain from blocking my view. A podcast played over the speakers of my car, providing a replay of a news segment which I missed every day while I was in the office. I listened idly, trying to take note of what they were talking about. Why I lived as far from my work as I did, I wasn't sure, but it required something besides just music to keep my mind engaged so that I didn't start to drift on the long drive. After one too many close calls where I found myself dozing off while driving, I had to figure out a way to keep myself alert. Podcasts seemed to do the trick.

Two sedans sped past in the next lane going far too fast in the heavy rain. They could have been racing one another, I wasn't really sure. To be honest, most of the traffic was going too fast for how heavy the rain was. The Interstate was notorious for jamming, and they would be hard-pressed to stop fast enough if we came up on one. An eighteen-wheeler rig in front of me was going slower than the rest of traffic, so I tabbed the blinker on my car, getting ready to pass.

The rig twisted to the side, jackknifing so that the cab was faced the wrong way as it forced to the side by the momentum of the trailer. It slid off to the side of the road. I panicked and stomped my foot down on the brake of the car, watching in front of me as what the rig was trying to avoid came into view.

A glowing black and yellow sphere, at least twenty feet tall, cast its own bright yellow light across the highway. The sphere was yellow on the outside, with tendrils twisting like a spiral in the darkness of the center, devoid of color.

The bald tires of my car failed to grip well on the asphalt, hydroplaning my car closer and closer to the sphere. I watched in horror not able to control my body as I overcorrected the steering in terror trying to avoid it. The old sedan swerved to the side and my car stopped sideways in the lane, just feet away from the sphere. I had only a moment of relief before movement to my right side caught my eye and a car which had been behind me slammed into the right side of my car. I didn't even have time to scream as my body jerked violently – seatbelt locked, holding me in place – from the momentum as my car was propelled the last few feet, pushing my car drivers' side first into the sphere. The last thing I was blinding yellow light consuming me from the left.

Unknown Date, Unknown Time
Unknown Location

'What is going on?'

No other thought flew through my mind. Cold air buffeted me, howling in the black darkness of night. I was on a ledge, maybe six feet across, and beyond it was an inky darkness.

'How did I get here?'

Nothing.

Blank.

Nothing was coming to mind. What had I been doing before this? No. it's not possible. A sinking feeling started to crawl up from the pit of my stomach threatening to choke me. I can't remember anything. What's my name? How did I get here? Where is here?

My neck hurt, the muscles sore and locked into place. My chest burned with pain when I breathed in and out.

My vision started pulsing with little black dots as I leaned forward onto my knees and started hyperventilating. A few moments later my stomach roiled, and I leaned forward and vomited.

I looked over the side of my little ledge, glanced, really. The wind clawed at me and made my eyes dry and start to water. As my eyes adjusted, the pitch blackness of night turned slightly, and I started to discern light. There was a city below me sparkling and shimmering with thousands of little lights, each one blurring together with the tears filling my rapidly drying out eyes. My head felt light and packed full of fluff. I was scared to move an inch; the ledge was so small. I screamed for help but the wind caught my words and threw them away. I screamed again and again. No one came. No one responded.

I felt the world tilt as my vision bled fully into black, the shimmering twinkling lights of the city below disappearing.

It was still dark when I woke up. My eyes were sealed shut and it took a few moments to them open. My eyelashes brushed uncomfortably against rough fabric. I was slowly beginning to realize, panic rising in my stomach, that I was sitting in a chair with my hands tied behind my back, wrists and fingers numb, and a blindfold covering my face. The thick rough feeling in my mouth wasn't a severe hangover, it was a gag.

I moved my head slightly, regretting it almost instantly as I felt the soreness in the muscles. I groaned at the feeling.

From behind me, I heard a deep rough male voice. I couldn't understand what he said.

Footsteps sounded as they circled around in front of me. The gag was roughly yanked out, dragging against my teeth and leaving a bad taste of rotten eggs.

I cracked my chapped lips. "Water, please," I moaned out softly.

My cheek stung and my head snapped to the side. They, whoever they were, had slapped me. I felt nauseous and I could feel the blood rushing through my temples and my smarting cheek.

Several voices spoke around me, one shouting. I cringed into the seat. A more menacing deep voice started talking and saying what sounded like questions.

Then repeated again. "Anata deska?" A large hand roughly grabbed my chin. "Anata deska?" It repeated louder this time.

I started crying. "I'm sorry," I whimpered. "I don't understand you."

"Anata deska?" Louder again, bordering on a shout.

"Please, I don't understand you," I pleaded. That just earned me another blow to the face and a punch to the stomach. The air rushed out of my lungs and I doubled forward as far as my bound arms would let me, unable to breathe.

"Anata deska?" Was repeated once again, a shout this time, and accompanied by someone kicking over the chair I was in. A lot of other words were repeated but I only recognized those two as they were the most repeated.

I was crying; I didn't care. I kept begging them to let me go and they kept screaming at me in that foreign language of theirs. At times they would hit me, kick me, I wasn't sure. A knife was held to my neck. I felt the razor sharp edge slice into my bare skin in a long thin line as whoever held it questioned me again. My wrist snapped as they hauled me back up into a sitting position but it only joined the rest of the hurt I was feeling. Blood pounded in my ears. I couldn't think.

Sometimes when they asked a question it would be delivered in a soft tone of voice, like they were merely asking about the time of day, or if I would prefer spaghetti or pizza for lunch. Sometimes they would scream at me like they were about to put a bullet in my head. Every question was accompanied by a blow.

Always.

I almost broke in that place. I still wonder how I didn't. Maybe I did. I'm really not sure of much anymore.

A/N:

I originally got the idea for this story from The Witcher 3 from the scene when Ciri is telling Geralt about all of the strange and different worlds she traveled to. It's even canon (with some additional fan speculation) that Catriona Plague is actually Bubonic Plague that Ciri spread from our Medieval Europe to Cintra when fleas hitched a ride back to her world on her jacket. So, suspending disbelief for a moment, what if there are infinite universes and our stories, and theirs, are all really different overlapping universes? Where is the dimension that Obito's eyes access? Where do summoning seals grab creatures from? What happened in those dimensions Kagura sucked Naruto and Co. into during their epic battle? Did they exist before or did she create them?

The AU: Okay, so this is where the story is going to start going AU. For one, I have never like the reasoning of the Uchiha clan's 'curse'. I always felt like it was a cop-out explanation for why Sasuke and Madara were so fucked up in the head. Instead of just saying those two were crazy, Kishimoto had to make up this whole thing about how the whole Uchiha clan is inherently unstable and that they'll all fly off the rails eventually. The Curse of Hatred was a little much for me. That's just not how people work, and while mental illness can run in families, that profound level of mental instability? In a world as brutal as Naruto? They wouldn't have made it far enough to become a clan, much less the founding clan of the first hidden village. They'd have kamikaze'd themselves to death first. Also, how in the hell did the Senju go from being such a prolific, powerful founding clan to just Tsunade? I honestly just get the feeling that Kishimoto made up a lot as he went along and didn't create enough backstory beforehand.

So, in How Strange, Innocence, the Senju are still around in force. Significantly, since the Uchiha aren't psychos here, Madara and Izuna are still around as crotchety old men who advise the Uchiha clan and the village at large.