Dreaming of sunshine

Chapter 1

Fear is the mother of foresight ~ Thomas Hardy

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I didn't exactly jump for joy when I worked out where I was. Given that my twin brother was Shikamaru I could guess pretty well what kind of time zone I was in. That didn't mean, however that the world around me was 'canon' Naruto-verse. Obviously, I was here and that was a factor that hadn't been present in the show. Many, many other things could be different.

But even if it was 'canon', Konoha had been invaded, what, twice? over the course of the show. There was the up coming war. And not to mention, on a day to day basis over half the town were highly trained, slightly unstable, killers.

I wouldn't recommend this place as a vacation, that's for sure.

This was a world where only the strong and lucky survived. The weak? Well, they choked to death on their own screams when the devil came to town.

I did not, ever, want to be so helpless again.

Like I said, the Kyuubi attack has motivated me ever since.

There was never pressure on me to be a ninja, in fact, I doubt very much that my parents even thought I would be with my 'handicap'. I could have stayed to look after the deer, I could have studied medicine, and that idea had appealed to me.

The life of a ninja was rough and dangerous. But I had played it safe before to no avail. And there was no guarantee that 'playing it safe' would save me. Civilians died far easier than shinobi, after all.

Of course, as a toddler there wasn't much I could do. I soaked up the information that was offered to me, speaking, walking, games. I don't know what I would have done during those days without Shikamaru. He was my lifeline, my measuring stick. What rate of progress should I show, could I show? What things should I be learning?

I have no doubt that I came off as an odd, deliberate child. I have the feeling that had I been born to any family other than the Nara, things would have been much trickier for me. They seemed completely unperturbed when I picked things up much faster than Shikamaru - my adult mind capable of grasping concepts easier, having much more experience learning. Given that the clan is as famed for their intelligence as their shadow jutsu, maybe it wasn't so uncommon. I tried to hold myself back, I truly did, but it was incredibly frustrating and I was desperately bored.

Of course, now that I knew that the energy I felt was chakra, I remembered some things about how it was used. The idea of being able to walk up and down walls was just so cool that I had to try learn how. Almost as soon as I started to crawl, I began to try and channel chakra to help me stick to things. Of course, I learnt quickly just how much chakra it actually took. It shouldn't have surprised me, given that I was expelling chakra through both hands and knees. The surface area of one palm alone is quite large, and to maintain a constant rate of chakra emission used up my small supply quite rapidly. There was a reason the serious ninjutsu training didn't start before eight or nine. That was when chakra reserves began expanding beyond the 'essential' chakra that fueled the body.

I spent many days napping in the sunshine after exhausting myself, learning slowly where the line for chakra exhaustion was. It wasn't, by any means, a bad way of spending my days. I most certainly didn't attempt to climb vertically. Not only would that be suspicious, I would get maybe three or four steps up before falling. That wasn't something I really looked forward to.

There were other chakra exercises that didn't take so much chakra. Anything that used chakra was technically a control exercise, and anything that was taught as a control exercise usually had other applications. Less draining than wall walking was the leaf sticking exercise - which didn't necessarily need leaves. The two exercises were opposite sides of the same coin, sticking yourself to something and sticking something to yourself. I used paper, blankets, my clothes, anything in reach. There were tiny, minute differences between the different materials and different fabrics, that required slight adjustments in the amount of chakra needed and the rate it was expelled. Once you had something stuck to you and covered in chakra, you could manipulate it slightly. There were stories of medic nin with control so precise they could fold an origami crane out of rice paper without touching it. There were chakra strings to develop control over chakra outside the body. Chakra strings were tricky in concept, but there wasn't really much difference between creating one and twenty, except in moving them after. Puppet users were masters of multitasking, apparently. Given that dozens of strings could be attached to each puppet it was no wonder that Sasori's Performance of One Hundred Puppets was legendary. I couldn't even attach two strings to different objects without getting confused, let alone start moving them.