Leaving Sunshine

Summary: Death can mean a shift in worlds. Some are better than the last, some are worst. The ones that involve magical ninjas are terrible for everyone involved. OC Self-insert set in Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe.

Author's Notes: Yeah, you read summary right. This is a fan-fanfiction. What a world we live in. Big props to Silver Queen for being okay with this! If you don't know about it already, read Dreaming of Sunshine for a much better fanfic.

Prologue

So I'd discovered what happened after death. Wasn't really my aim to, but it was still an incredible discovery. I'd maybe even land a spot on Conan if I was lucky. That'd be difficult though, considering I was in an entirely different universe.

My name was Colin, but is now Rin Kazama. If you'd care to listen, I have a story to tell.

It's nothing quite as lame a legal name change to fuel a destructive fascination with Japanese culture. It's because I couldn't quite claim to be someone dead in a motel some few realities away.

Sure I was an orphan, so my background is a bit tentative, but that's somewhat of a stretch. The orphans at my old Orphan Block will say that Rin Kazama was that odd girl who wanted to become a ninja, and not a 19 year old college drop out. They'd also probably call you a weirdo and ostracize you for asking such strange things, but they always were a bit judgmental.

I'd like to say I was reincarnated, and I wasn't just conjuring up an entire world with a literal planet's worth of new personalities and faces. First of all, the brain can't actually come up with new faces or personalities. In dreams they're a mix and match of ones you've already seen. Secondly, if I was, I wish I'd figured out I could do that sooner. I could've made a buttload of money off some sort of series of novels or something. Would've probably even avoided my death entirely! But this world feels real enough, and a dead man doesn't lose much in indulging in a second chance to live, real or not.

The particularly odd thing about this world I reborn into though, was that I'd read about it and watched it on my computer in my previous life's childhood.

I was reborn into the Naruto-universe.

I was pretty pissed off at that revelation. I only had recently before my death somewhat gotten back into the series, and had forgotten most of the fine details since I was a kid. Jeez, aren't most of those self-insert fanfics usually in universes the author has a competent understanding of? How could I romance my favorite characters and defeat all the villains like I was taking an afternoon stroll now? Though I suppose that somewhat fits with that Hindu karma reincarnation thing. How much bad karma do you need to get "reborn in the universe of show you forgot about"?

I wasn't sure what atrocities I'd committed that warranted experiencing being literally born. It'd remove the concept of nostalgia entirely if everyone could remember that oh so wondrous journey. I'd thought the afterlife was a dark, warm, and comforting tenuous consciousness at first, but then some jerk pulled me out of that sweet gig into bright, cold, and harsh reality. The person did a dreadful job with the umbilical cord too! I was an outie now. Gross.

When I was yanked out I'd cried out initially out of fear and confusion but slipped back into silence. That had always been my response to negative stimuli and situations in the past, so I wouldn't be a bother to others. I had that behavior so hardened and practiced it was easy to slip back into old habits.

I was generally a quiet baby because of that, and I'm sure I terrified my birth parents. Babies usually cry because of a situation their extremely underdeveloped anatomy is literally incapable of doing itself. Like needing to be burped or hunger. They've had a fairly successful survival rate because of it. But I was steadfast in my silence, not crying in hunger until I couldn't bare it, oddly complacent with dirty diapers (even I'm surprised at my resilience looking back), and not even fretting about this alien energy that I later learned was Chakra; appearing and waging battles as its Coils formed inside of my growing body.

A silent baby gave way to dread rather than the typical sleep-depriving irritation. It usually means something is wrong.

There was enough wrong with me, I suppose, that I was abandoned. I couldn't discern an accurate reason, as my senses developed closely to the time I was left to the orphanage, and my understanding of Japanese was miniscule as well. Maybe it was the fact that I was a strenuous responsibility my birth parents weren't ready for, maybe there were a wide selection of factors that all spelt 'Grade-A messed up home'. In any case I could at least tell there were many very intense emotions in my former household. There was lots of shouting, crying, the breaking of glasses every now and again. When I could finally open my eyes, the first thing I saw in this body was my birth mother's gaunt, sobbing face.

I wished I could've gone back to the darkness.

One day after the biggest shouting contest yet, when all I could hear were crickets, my mother bundled me up and left with me in tow. My first view of the outside world was under the dark of night, I could make out the shape of branches and leaves, but that wasn't my main concern at the moment. Who the hell takes their babies out for midnight strolls? Was I a vampire baby? And why did my birth mother's face look so resigned, so absent of hope? It was going to be Stormageddon if I was getting ditched at an orphanage.

We had eventually passed some sort of gate, and I began to glance around at the white buildings with colored tile roofs. The architecture I could only nebulously say at the time was similar to that of a village of an anime I'd seen. I was likely from some sort of neighboring village or community, maybe even some shack in the woods. Not like I could ever confirm that, I was always poor with directions in my previous life. Having developing baby senses didn't help much either.

My birth mother arrived at the steps of a building, and I noticed by the reflective gleam beneath her eyes that she was silently crying. Damn it, she was really making it hard to demonize her! My resolve for plan Stormageddon was slipping.

She slipped a piece of paper from onto the cloth that wrapped me, placed at the door steps, knocked loudly, and was gone. I would later find out she had written the name given to me in this world: Rin Kazama. This likely wasn't my real name. I never recalled that name ever being said by either of my birth parents.

She clearly didn't want me to carry on my genetic legacy. Maybe she did it so I wouldn't have to bear whatever consequences that would entail. Maybe she didn't want to be associated with me, I might have been accidental. It was kind of her to give me a last name as well, as later I'd find out that names like Tenten without last names made it blatantly clear you were an orphan. I'd discovered there were Kazama families, but none in this village.

Regardless, I was given a clean slate. I'm pretty grateful. No baggage. No responsibilities to family, or traditions to uphold. I'd pleasantly find out the housing situation for orphans wasn't that bad either in this village. I could've dodged a bullet via a toxic family life.

I was going to try and take this opportunity to heart. Not be held down by the shackles of my mistakes of my past life, hell, try to be something I never was. Bold! Courageous! Strong! Shonen protagonist-y! I'd already seen the results of the alternative, and now was a good chance as any to see what life would have in store for me if I was a different man! Like a second playthrough of a video game!

To kick start off the obliteration of Tabula rasa, my blank slate, I was going to cry my baby ass off! When I thought I might be peckish, when my diaper just doesn't feel as nice as the last one, when an incredibly ugly person tried to touch me! Well, I wasn't going to be a huge jerk my whole life, but being a baby was the complete free pass to be one. I was going to be seizing my days, as a baby though, there weren't many other opportunities to seize.

I was living up the baby life like this in the orphanage. One night, after a day of successfully crying and drooling over all those caretakers who would dare try and get near my suspiciously awesome shuriken rattle(it wasn't sharp or pointy, and it was somewhat colorful, but wasn't it a bit heavy metal for no-year-olds?), an adult, who I'd felt but not seen or heard, entered the room and began talking to my caretakers.

After some light and amiable conversation I was taken out, and handed to the stranger. Alright, I was seeing what their game was. Trying to get me adopted were they? My caretakers should've known better than to underestimate me by now. This called for the crocodiliest of tears. I called this tantrum the: 'Guess-What's-Wrong-With-Me'! Without fail, I would always see whoever held me go through all five stages of grief.

The man chuckled softly to himself in response to my carefully calculated crying for maximum grief yield. That was a new one, usually I could at least see internal agony.

He began to gently rock me back and forth, and something similar to the energy I'd been feeling all around and inside me(but generally ignoring), slid into my system. It washed over me, feeling cold, yet strong and reliable. Like a parental or adult figure or something. It made me halt the waterworks. Who was this smooth mac daddy, and what voodoo spell had he cast on me?

I turned my gaze upwards to the man. He was wearing a mostly blue outfit, complimented with some sort of green, vest, jacket thing. What was striking about this guy wasn't his forgettable face, but the blinding piece of metal on his forehead. Upon closer inspection it was… the headband ninjas wore in Naruto.

Everyone was holding him in a high regard. Not giggling at this cosplayer at an orphanage.

That ambient energy I'd felt everywhere, and what that weirdo injected me with, was probably Chakra.

This was the Naruto-universe.

Oh, god damn it!