Fell From My World (A Naruto Story)

Chapter 2: The Aftershock

"Came where?" I asked back, out loud, praying for some type of answer.

I looked down at the forest below me, but for some reason, I didn't feel scared that I was so high up. It felt...almost natural all of a sudden. That was weird. I was scared of heights. Or used to be, anyway. I steadied myself on the branch, twenty feet up, and felt relatively stable.

"To the world in which you began in. It's too complicated to explain now. Your name is Tasura Ai. This is the key to unlocking the memory you have experienced here."

Tasura Ai. Something about that name seemed oddly familiar. Ai meant "love," this I knew for certain. Then I knew it was mine; the name belonged to me. But how? My name was Megan Killian... But even saying it my head, it didn't feel quite right anymore. Megan Killian...Tasura Ai...

Memories were passing through my brain, but it was this strange sensation where I recognized them, but didn't know if they were mine or not. I grabbed both sides of my head and squeezed hard. I closed my eyes, trying to understand what was happening.

A little girl with bright red hair with parents...parents that didn't look like me but loved me...training in a forest...this forest...I was running around, kicking and punching, and my parents were laughing, praising me. 

Those were my parents? That was me?

How could I look like a totally new person? How could I be...seeing these memories of someone else inside my head? Who was speaking to me in my mind? And for the love of the God, why was I sleeping strapped down in a tree?

"Did I...Megan...die?" I asked to whoever had spoken to me. "Kick the bucket? Peace out? Bite the dust? Pass my expiration date?"

"No. But you were hit by lightning in that other world. Right now you are experiencing the aftershock." 

I took a deep breath and searched my brain for all of the information I had on myself, organizing it into bite-size pieces to understand.

My name was Tasura Ai. I had red hair, blue-green eyes, and was often complimented for my exotic beauty, much to my own chagrin. I had no known family. I had been found alone in the middle of nowhere as a baby by an older ninja couple from Konoha. They had brought me back with them and raised me in their village. The Tasura couple that had raised me had been the last ones of their clan, and had never been able to bear children. So when they found me, they named me "Ai" because they vowed to love and raise me as their own blood.

As soon as I was old enough, I enrolled in the ninja academy in Konoha. Determined to become a strong ninja and make my adopted parents proud, I became the top of my class. But the day of my graduation, the day my parents were supposed to return from an A-rank mission, the Hokage told me they had died, murdered by a powerful ninja named Orochimaru.

I had been crushed. My whole world broke apart. Left all alone, I had decided to leave to set out on a journey to find something, something that might tell me about my past. The Hokage told me that in a year, if I returned to the village, I could become a Genin and join a team of three.

So I went...the last year I had been traveling and training my skills, practicing my fire and water jutsu, developing my taijutsu skills, meeting incredible shinobi from other villages...and even though I hadn't found any clues to my past, I was ready for whatever my future held. I realized that if I couldn't figure out my past, I needed to completely control my future. To do that, I had to become the strongest ninja I could be.

And that's why I was here in the forest, sleeping in a tree, ready to return to Konoha at daybreak for the next season of new Genin, to continue my adventure and climb the ranks. Prove to Konoha that I belonged there, even with the new absence of the Tasura clan.

"Do you see?" the voice whispered softly. "This is your destiny."

"Who, um, are you?"

The voice no longer responded. Maybe I had imagined the voice the whole time. I shrugged. Not like this could get any weirder, anyway, right? Sunlight suddenly streaked through the trees, low, illuminating the ground of the forest. A bird in the tree next to mine started singing. Dawn was breaking.

I knew it was time for me to return to Konoha. A wave of excitement came over me for multiple reasons...going back to the village I grew up in and seeing familiar faces after a year of being away, and also going to a village a part of me had never seen before but was somehow home.

Struck by lightning, huh? Sorry, Megan.

But Ai? Bring on the aftershock, baby.