Title: The Cassandra Effect

Summary: A child of the green, with roots deep and strong, holding the past and future in either hand. She will make them listen to her, and shake the world as they know it. (A summary that's not really a summary.)
Spoiler Warning: This story is set pre-series, so it's likely everything will be spoiled.
Disclaimer: Does anyone do these anymore? I don't know, but better safe than sorry. I don't own Naruto or any other fandom I reference.

Prologue: At Least the Water's New

What happens when a life ends before its time?

Who knows? You never really know when someone dies. They're dead and you're not. All you're left with are "what if"s built up on what you knew of them. What you think they could have done if they were still alive to live out their potential.

Let's take a look at a life. Just to make things interesting, how about we take a look at mine?

Here it is in a brief introduction:

My name? No one really needs to know that. Not anymore. My likes? My mother, cool TV shows, sleeping in, receiving letters, and spending time with my friends. My dislikes? My father and brother teasing me, thinking about my sisters, missing out on opportunities, and people who hurt others. My hobbies? Reading, writing, and going out to movies. My dream? I wanted to be a great teacher who would help children find their own dreams. It wouldn't hurt if I was remembered years down the line as that teacher to them.

Kind of boring right? Still, I had potential. I thought I was going somewhere.

By the time I hit twenty, I was pretty damn close to achieving my dream. I'd gotten into a school I really liked and was learning what I needed to start teaching. Sure, there had been obstacles here and there. Mostly, I had to face and overcome my own failings since I wasn't always the best or most motivated student. When it came down to it, however, I worked for my accomplishments. My efforts looked like they were paying off, since I felt smarter and more confident every day. I felt like my dream was close to being real.

Life went on, and I continued making progress.

That was, until I hit an obstacle I couldn't overcome.

Death.

So I died.

It's better for me that I didn't remember anything about the event. Dying is probably harder than it looks. And I had enough presence of mind to realize that I was well and truly dead. It's easy to come to that conclusion when you're standing a couple of feet away from your fairly lifeless looking body.

(No chain of fate. Heh.)

There are all those clichés about what happens when you kick the bucket, and well, it was a letdown to see there was a tunnel and light waiting for me. Even now, I'm still not totally convinced that's the way everyone sees death.

(I had kind of wanted it to have been a train station. At least a bus stop.)

When I saw that tunnel and understood what it meant, I admit, I hesitated. I didn't like that I had died. I promised my mom I was going to be a teacher. That I was really going to do something with my life. It didn't feel right that I was leaving things unfinished. Was this really where things were supposed to end? Was I really supposed to walk towards the light?

(Game over man, game over.)

I stopped. I stood there for a while, trying to pick between walking towards the tunnel or walking back to my body. Maybe I could be resuscitated or something, if only I stuck with my body long enough. Maybe I could overcome this.

But...

Even though I didn't believe in any one particular religion and what it said about the afterlife, I stood there thinking about it at the end instead of anything else. My family, my friends, my life; they all kind of faded into the background as something else came to the forefront.

Maybe this wasn't something to be overcome.

I could be moving on to something better. Peace. Or reincarnation. Once I let go of this life, I could possibly be walking into a whole new one that I might like better. One with new possibilities, and new dreams. I didn't know for sure if that was what was waiting for me, but I wanted to find out. Life would go on without me in this one.

There was a flutter of guilt in the back of my mind, knowing that I was leaving people who would miss me terribly. A bit of regret over a dream unrealized. It was too late though. I wanted to push forward and see if there was a next adventure. As I walked towards the tunnel, I took a moment to pray. I hadn't been much of prayer, but I doubted it could've hurt me. I prayed for someone, something, to take care of the people I was leaving.

Then suddenly, the ground under my feet crumbled away and I fell. As I fell, I watched as above me the tunnel and the light got farther and farther away. I wondered at first if this was what it was like for Alice to fall into Wonderland. Then I wondered if the tunnel was a test. A test I had failed and was then sent to hell for or something. That would have been unfortunate. I'd been confident I hadn't done anything in life to warrant hell in the one after.

For a long time I fell, until I hit the water.

It turned out it wasn't hell. The water was the first sign. Too wet for hell.

It wasn't Wonderland either. There were no talking doors and the water wasn't a sea of tears.

I wondered for an almost timeless period what kind of place it was that I'd ended up in. I drifted aimlessly in the water, reaching and kicking out but nothing happened. Was this really what happened when you died? No reincarnation, no heaven or hell? Just water? I walked into that cliché tunnel of light for this?

Lame. So lame.

Until suddenly lame didn't seem so bad when I was sucked down into some sort of whirlpool. No amount of thrashing helped me. There was nothing to grab and hold to resist being flushed out. I didn't like this. I was scared. I had been bored earlier, but this was scary. Whatever this was, it wasn't worth it because I wasn't ready.

I screamed.

I screamed and screamed.

I screamed until I couldn't scream anymore. And that was the weird thing. My throat actually hurt. It hadn't hurt to yell things before, in what I had called Waterworld, when I got too bored. Why did things suddenly hurt again? Actually, why was I feeling things again? I felt... weak. And cold. And I couldn't see anything. Everything was too bright. Or had it been too dark in Waterworld?

Then there were sounds. Everything in Waterworld had sounded so warped. Like far away echoes. Everything here was much clearer. There was an odd beeping noise. Then there was the rustling of fabric. And most importantly, there were voices.

People.

For as long as I'd been in Waterworld, I'd been alone. Starved for human contact.

I tried to speak, tried to catch their attention, but nothing coherent came out. It was just a babble of sounds. There was... something wrong with my mouth. It felt gummy and unresponsive. My lips wouldn't form the right shapes and my tongue just lay in my mouth like a dead fish. I could make all the sounds I wanted to, but they wouldn't be the sounds I needed to communicate.

Something interrupted me during my failed attempts to speak. I was vaguely conscious of movement again. Particularly, conscious of my body being moved. My eyes had started to get used to seeing things, to the point where I could at least makeout shadows against the light. There were several ones that moved near me. At first, I was excited when they came closer. Those shadows, I had rationalized, were probably people.

Then they got too close. They were too big. The shadows reached out and grabbed for me. They were so large and I was so weak, I couldn't fight them if I tried. I was passed about and manhandled. The longer it went on, the dizzier and more upset I got, but I was too afraid to cry. I didn't want them to have a reason to do anything worse to me.

Eventually, they stopped jostling me around. I was passed to one last shadow. This shadow was the one I preferred out of all the shadow giants since it held me very gently, cradled in its warm shadow limbs. It made soft, soothing noises that calmed me.

There were... other noises. Words?

Biwako...

For the life of me, I couldn't discern any of it. Something was wrong. Not just with my sight. Not just with my mouth. Not just because of the giants.

Nanako...

Why couldn't I think?

Hiruzen...

My thoughts tried to punch through the cloud of cotton settling over my mind, tried to develop, tried for complexity. It was all in vain. I felt everything starting to blank. Start to go away.

I was going away.

AN: So I've joined the SI bandwagon. As soon as I'm done posting this, I'll probably go off to cackle somewhere. And then maybe cry. I was inspired to write this by two authors, Silver Queen and my friend ToeGirth, and their respective SI stories Dreaming of Sunshine and An Everlasting Flame. This story is dedicated to ToeGirth who has been kind enough to talk to me through my brainstorming. I'd also like to give thanks to my beta Lone Panda, who (THANK GOD) will be helping me with this story. This is my first fic for Naruto, and I'm working with disjointed understanding of the fandom thanks to my obsessive trawling of Narutopedia and Youtube for Shippuden clips. The first chapter will be up in about a week to a week and a half from now.

One last thing before I go. The many references I made to different things. Yeah. That's probably going to be a recurring thing for me. Sorry. I'm a geek.

Toodles!