Feel free to skip this part straight to the plot if you remember the story!
Summary of the past 22 chapters:
Age 0-3: Naka discovers she's reborn, lives in the orphanage and meets Naruto, becoming good friends. They both meet the Hokage, who suspected Naka of possibly being a spy. Naka 'accidentally' meets Shisui while lost (who is sent by the Hokage to spy on her), and trains under him. The dango shop is their sanctuary. She becomes friends with Shikamaru.
Age 4- 5: Naka comes back to the orphanage in time to take the blow for Naruto from the matron's belt, giving her a small permanent scar under her eye. Both of them are given a new apartment from the Hokage. She meets Itachi and Sasuke, introduced by Shisui. Naka decides to tell the Hokage about her knowledge of the future, describing them as dreams instead of reincarnation. She is mind read, where Yamanaka Inoichi found Julie, Naka's past life, who turned crazy after the isolation for so many years in Naka's head. Naka is assigned an ANBU to watch over her.
Age 6-8: Konoha 9 and Naka join the Academy. Hokage adopt both Naruto and Naka, and announce an arranged marriage between Naka and one of the Uchihas (not yet revealed) on Sasuke's birthday. Her new brothers are Shori and Asuma, and a newphew Konohamaru. Her new teacher is Yamada, while Naruto gets Hanako. Yamada-sensei shows no mercy when training her, and Naka is learning chakra control and chakra blades, a weapon she decides she will specialize in. She gathers Shikamaru, Sasuke, Naruto, Hinata, Choji, Sakura and Ino to form a gang of friends.
Age 9: Naka meets the black cat she saved in her past life, a summon called Mamoru specializing in infiltration missions. Meanwhile, Itachi eavesdrops on them, blackmailing her to let her summon spy on Uchiha Madara for him while he keeps the secret of her coming from two 'worlds'. Julie appears, but this time, in front of her friends, resulting in chakra exhaustion.
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The past two weeks had been rather eventful. I was sleeping for two days due to chakra exhaustion, and wasn't allowed visitors until the fifth day. Shikamaru came to visit me everyday from then on, bringing me homework and notes. Occasionally, he would bring a chess board, despite myself losing to him every time we played it.
"Hokage-sama told us it's an S-rank secret." The lazy boy had said, on the day I lost the game two consecutive times, as he packed up the chess board. "...about Julie."
He paused and looked at me, sharp eyes searching for an explanation on my face. I quickly turned to face the window, not liking the way he was trying to read my feelings. It was rather strange the Hokage- should I call him father?- hadn't visited me to talk about Julie yet, so I had no idea what the cover story was. And honestly, I didn't know what to tell Shikamaru.
Oh, Shikamaru, you see, Julie's my past life! She's me, but real mean and more than likely to have sadistic tendencies. Don't worry! She won't kill you... probably.
"I don't know how to explain it." I said softly, hoping that he would understand.
The boy looked at me for a moment longer, before he turned back to putting the chess board in his bag. Shikamaru gave me a small smile. "That's alright. I can wait until you're ready to do so."
After Shikamaru, I had to comfort Naruto, who looked torn and scared. I tried to comfort him, really, but there was really no guarantee that Julie wouldn't hurt him in the future. So I closed my eyes and smiled and whispered reassuring words into his ears.
Unlike Shikamaru, I didn't know if Naruto could understand that I could hurt him in the future. Naruto trusted me, and I honestly wouldn't know what I would do if I were to break that trust. From then on, he would visit me daily, sometimes with Hanako-sensei. She reassured me that Yamada-sensei would have visited too if he wasn't stuck on a mission.
Shori brought Konohamaru to visit, and he brought me a few books on fuinjutsu and sealing techniques, in case I was interested. Little Konohamaru gave me a 'get well soon' card with poorly drawn stick figures of me and him playing ninja. I ruffled his hair and ignored the boy's indignant cries, and kept the card in the book for safekeeping.
Sakura and Ino came by together to give me some flowers and we shared a small talk on friends, classes, and somehow, it ended up being a conversation of gossips and Sasuke between the two girls as I listened with an amused face. Hinata came with more flowers, which I unsurprisingly couldn't recognize.
Sasuke and Shisui visited on more than one occasion, the latter more often than the younger Uchiha. Shisui wasn't shy about smuggling dango into the hospital room for me, and I was extremely glad for the change in food. There was a reason hospital food wasn't well loved.
"Keep it a secret, Naka-chan." Shisui whispered as he forced the stick into my hands. "The nurses almost banned me from hospital the last time I brought a basket of dango for Itachi."
He then mumbled something along the lines of Itachi getting away with anything just because he had the privilege of a handsome face. The curly haired teenager then went on a full rant on Itachi popularity with the girls and how his fangirl club consisted of women of all ages attracted to his dark, mysterious presence (Really? Was Shisui oblivious to his own horde of girls trailing after him?), how Itachi had such a loving brother and he was stuck with an emotionally constipated girl (that part I elbowed him in the ribs), and somehow, the talkative teen ended up eating almost all of my dango in the midst of his rant.
Shisui was sixteen, tall and fast. He was entering the prime shinobi age, and I wondered why he wasn't on more missions. I had heard of talks of Shunshin no Shisui spreading around, and was waiting for the right time to ask him to teach me the body flicker technique. Still, the teen was old enough to be mature and I wondered if he only ranted and talked loudly to fill up the lonely hospital room with sound and excitement. Whatever it was, I was grateful for it.
Surprisingly, Itachi came to visit me too. It was right after Shisui left (thank god, he was taking forever to talk about Itachi), and judging from his amused and exasperated face, I had an inkling I wasn't the only one who heard it.
"Good afternoon, Naka-san." Itachi greeted once he closed the hospital door. He walked and gently seated himself onto the chair beside my bed. "How are you feeling?"
"A lot better," I answered truthfully. "But I would be better... with more dango?" My eyes hopefully shifted to the bag he was carrying. His lips lifted upwards for a brief second.
"I'm sorry, Naka. Shisui entrusted me with buying more dango. He said he was grieving about his lovely student hospitalized."
Huh, the brat said that? I would have believed it if Shunshin no Shisui hadn't called me an emotionally constipated girl three minutes ago. Did he really think I was emotionally constipated? I was merely introverted, and well, I didn't really have much to say. Had he met Neji? That boy was the ultra definition of brooding. Perhaps Sasuke would be too, if massacre had happened. I paused. Now that Neji's dad wasn't dead, I mused, did that mean that he was more open? Or was he still the same boy, just without the fate nonsense? Or perhaps Neji still had the fate speech prepared because he had the curse seal? I made a mental note to go check up on the Hyuuga boy.
Itachi's eyes were still staring at me in a questioning manner, and I realized I had kept quiet for too long.
"Is that so?" I humored him. "But doesn't the lovely student hospitalized also need her dango?"
"I suppose she does." Itachi noted in his dry voice. "But unfortunately, she already had one today, and I don't think the nurses will appreciate a dark, mysterious presence giving her more."
I choked back a laugh. He sure heard what Shisui said about him. "The dark, mysterious presence gets away with everything, doesn't he? Surely he could get away with giving a poor girl comforting sweets."
Itachi's eyebrow lifted. "You sure are talkative today."
I sent him a dry look. "Have you met Naruto?"
Itachi shrugged- how did he manage to look so graceful doing that?- and reached into his bag to give me a stick of dango. I did a mental victory dance.
I munched on the sweet heaven, and glanced at him from the corner of my eye.
"And I suppose you aren't here to just argue whether or not to give me dango?" I questioned, knowing fully why he was here, but still forcing my shoulders to relax to not give away my discomfort.
"No," he agreed. "Although the argument was completely justified."
Itachi's hand shifted minutely, and I knew the silencing seals around the room were activated.
"Do you have an answer for me?" Black eyes clashed light brown.
"Yes." I replied, keeping the tone of my voice as confident as possible while staring into unnerving eyes, praying that they don't turn red any time soon. "But before that, I want you to know that as much as you can tell the Hokage I am from two worlds, I can also tell him you are associating yourself with a man who claims to be Uchiha Madara." An underlying threat was there, to show that he was not at the upper hand here.
Itachi's face didn't give anything away.
"But I'll still help you." I agreed. "Not because I'm scared you'll give away my information, but because I know that the Akatsuki are going to harm my precious people, and I will not allow that to happen." Oh god, Naruto was rubbing off on me, wasn't he?
"I knew you would say that."
My head snapped to him. No wonder my threat didn't seem to unnerve him, he always knew I would agree to it. I shook my head with a smile, sometimes I really want to know what's going through that genius mind of his.
"But," I tilted my head, "I will not have my summon directly after the man himself. He is too dangerous. I will first let Mamoru trail after the Akatsuki and see what they are up to." It didn't seem like much, but it was a first step.
I took a deep breath. "And I want us to trust each other." I looked at him straight in the eyes. "I know some things people don't, and there are some things that I do that will make completely no sense to most people, but there will be a reason behind it."
The Uchiha stared at me for a long moment. "Trust is not given so easily," his words rolled out smoothly from his tongue. "I cannot say that I trust you yet...." He trailed off.
"But certainly we're above giving each other underhanded threats to get one of us to do something?" I offered.
"Alright." He agreed. "And I'll be able to judge if I can trust you or not."
"Funny," I clicked my tongue. "You were the only who said that we have to trust each other if we wanted to do business together."
Itachi shrugged. "I said we had to trust each other, but I didn't say I already did." It was true, and he could kill me in an instant if I backstabbed him, and no one would know who did it and why. I pushed away the scary thought.
The chair scraped against the floor as he stood up. "Get well soon, Naka-san."
With that, he left the room with a soft sound of the closing door.
"So..." a voice drawled from the foot of the bed. "When were you going to tell me I had to spy on someone?"
"Hello, Mamoru." I greeted amiably, looking at the cat that was lazily swinging its tail. "You didn't have to spike your chakra to scare off Itachi, did you?"
"So that's his name?" The black feline licked its paw. "Sounds like trouble."
"Doesn't he?" I asked, amused. "But he means well to the village."
"So who do you want me to spy on?" Mamoru asked curiously, and I had a feeling he wanted some action.
"A group of missing S-class ninja who wear black cloaks with red clouds. They call themselves the Akatsuki. I want you to find out what they're up to, who the members are, and maybe who the head is."
Some of the facts I already knew, but I wasn't sure what was bound to change. If Mamoru had previous contracts from other worlds, there was a possibility that someone from my world could be here before me? That, and his information could serve as a benchmark to see how reliable his skills are. He did say he specializes in infiltration missions.
Mamoru licked his paws. "Gotcha. I want the best fish in town when I come back."
"Consider it done."
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I was discharged from the hospital the next morning, and I relished the freedom. My first stop was the dango shop, where I met Shisui, Itachi, Sasuke and Naruto, and I had a feeling they knew I would be there.
We talked and laughed over the sweet dango and hot tea, my two classmates filling me in with the details I missed in school, and bragging about the training they got from their respective teachers.
Shisui, Itachi and I were stealing dango from each other in a friendly competition, though Itachi was definitely more subtle and stealthy and ended up eating the most out of the three of us, if the smug smirk on his face was any indication. We ended up chatting until late afternoon, leaving the shop with full stomachs and satisfied smiles.
The feeling of happiness didn't last long.
Two days later, Yamada-sensei died.
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Author's Note:
It's been a while, eh? So sorry about that!
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I posted a new story called Konoha High for Boys. It's modern Konoha High AU about Kojima Mai in an all-boys boarding high school, and is most likely going to be reverse harem? Or maybe not. So, if you like these stories, please check it out!
End of shameless story promo.)
Hope you guys liked this chapter!
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Kono.