Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto - it purely belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

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Wh – where am I – I?
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…Father?

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Boisterous laughter, a late gasp, then silence.

Carefully treading through the gray mist, a grand hall opens up.

He sits on an iron throne of dying red petals.

Tall candles sigh dark smoke into the air, the scent is pungent and perturbing.

A red hand pierces the thick clouds surrounding his visage and come into view, they uncurl to drop a corpse onto the fallen tapestry.

The trespasser stares –

he laughs again.

The room turns dark.

"Why do you persist?" the voice rumbles –

white light pours from his pedestal.

Finally, his whole appearance comes into view.

He sits on an iron throne of dying red petals, his skin is a deep rouge, and he is blind.

"You have seen what most mortals have not, have lived and lingered on the earth longer than they have," he pauses. "Why do you persist? Why does he offer you another chance?"

The trespasser is silent, puzzled and wondering, then finally; "Who are you?"

Laughter again, but there is acid laced into the sound as fumes of purple seep from his mouth.

There are no words to describe the golden shaft materializing in his hand.

"To many, hope," his unseeing eyes lock onto his trespasser's location.

"To you, life."

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"-let me see her!"

"sir, you need to – "

"She's mine."

"Sir…"

"She's mine."

A strangled sob.

"She's mine."

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There is no memory past the warm cocoon that she remembers, but she knows that there had been a life before this one. She had died, she knows this too, and now is all but a babe again. Her mind is trapped in the body of a child, and she doesn't know if this was to be normal in the afterlife or if this was reincarnation she was facing. She has a mind of an adult but the body of a child and she doesn't know what scares her the most; her lack of memories or the fact that she had died. Within her time in the soft cocoon, she had never had the time to ponder over it. The time she had spent in there was something special albeit tiring.

There is a man insistent on staying by her bedside, and briefly she wonders if this is her new father, or if he was her previous one come to living in this strange afterlife. But until she experiences pain, until she bleeds – she won't know if this is all real or not. All she can do is mourn over the thought that she will never remember her old family, wherever they may be. This was a new world, she was a stranger, and it frightened her so very much.

"Mo – Moriko," the man stumbles over to her, hands hesitantly hoovering over her whimpering body. She's ashamed to be inconveniencing this man, but she cannot help it. The walls she remembers once building aren't there anymore, and her tiny body is too fragile and innocent to understand the concept of masks and impenetrable facades to ward the cries away. She is sorry but at the same time, she is finding peace as she mourns over the life she cannot recall.

The man constantly mumbles a name, and as she drifts off to sleep, she reluctantly buries the only piece left of her past. She is Moriko now, the girl she once was is dead – this name would be her new identity, her new person.

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This, she swears to the man who has stayed with her from the beginning.

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A/N: This will be the last story I post until I finish one of my on-going stories, but if you're new -welcome! Hope you liked the short prologue!

Now let me just say that I've been a faithful reader of Naruto since 2003 and this OC and plot had been born around 2006. This is not one of those famed SI stories (although I am itching to try one out one day) - this is just merely a reincarnation one. This is a dream that I am finally able to write down and share and am hoping that many will grow to like as well. If not, well, I tried :) Oh, and I apologize for any grammatical errors because this will also be my first attempt at writing in present-tense for the majority of a story - so not only am I fulfilling my dream, but I am also challenging myself by stepping out of past tense.

PS. I will only go by the manga as it is the only thing I've ever truly stuck by and loved completely. Except for maybe the over-the-top-power boosts everyone gets in the end.