Unknown day, month, and year, unknown location
I woke up, which was a rather strange thing to do after such a spectacular death, especially when I had taken a whole pile of enemies with me. I had never been to the Pure Land before... Still, no. This could not be the Pure Land. It was too cramped, too dark, and the smell was rather distinctive. And there was such a disgusting emptiness inside me. I could not feel Ku, and apparently I was seriously hungry.
I moved my tongue around my mouth and realized that I was not me. More precisely, perhaps I was still me, but somehow very small. Some of my front teeth were missing, and everything felt unfamiliar and childish. I could transform into anyone I wanted, and shadow cloning required a flexible mind and imagination, just like all shinobi training, so I only felt mildly confused. Then I formed hand seals and tried to turn back into myself.
It did not work. My fingers were not very flexible either. That was bad. Perhaps I had somehow ended up in the past. Things like that happened in our world all the time; it was full of temporal cavities and different dimensions. In the past, I had not been able to use chakra... But where could I be? Was this some alternative past? Another reality? Either way, I needed to get up and go scout the place.
When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out thin strips of light on the slanted, uneven ceiling and a door leading out of this little cubbyhole. Had I hidden here? The last thing I remembered was the Last Breath seal, and then... It was hard to think on an empty stomach. I needed to find food. And if I found a mirror, it would be good to take a look at myself.
I carefully opened the little door and slipped out of my shelter. I found myself in a fairly large, bright house, while the place I had emerged from was a cupboard beneath the stairs. The building seemed to have two floors. It was quiet. Grayish light seeped through the translucent fabric over the windows. A wall clock showed five, so I decided it was morning. I looked outside and confirmed my guess: dawn was breaking, and the sun would rise soon. The street, lined with identical pale-brick houses, neatly trimmed lawns, and trees, was completely deserted. The area looked vaguely familiar, but it was definitely not Konoha. I had seen something like it somewhere before. My vision was also wrong; everything looked blurry. Apparently, I had been seriously concussed.
My stomach growled invitingly, so I decided that eating came first. I could figure out my location a little later. A quick circuit of the house led me to what was obviously the kitchen, where I found a refrigerator.
There was plenty of edible food inside, though some of it was unfamiliar. I chewed through five sausages, drank two raw eggs, and finished the meal with a yellowish chunk of something resembling firm, salty tofu.
"W-what are you doing?" a woman's voice sounded just as I looked into the refrigerator again to put the remains of the tofu back.
Interestingly enough, the question had been asked in... English!
I turned around and saw a thin, fair-haired woman of about thirty staring at me with her mouth open.
"I was hungry, so I ate," I answered in English as well.
So I was in England again?! That was why the view outside had seemed familiar! In that case, where was Harry? Had he summoned me again? Then why was I in a child's body, and where was my Ku?
"You ate?" The woman sounded so astonished that I began to suspect she was insane. "You're being punished! Vernon sent you to bed without dinner yesterday!"
Hmm... Strange. I did not remember anything about 'yesterday'. My yesterday had been on a battlefield... Wait. Stop. 'Vernon' was a very familiar name. I had definitely heard it somewhere. And something about punishments...
"Why are you standing there in silence, Potter?" The woman shoved me away from the refrigerator, looked inside, and gasped. "You ate the sausages!"
Yondaime take me by the leg! Had she really called me 'Potter'?!
"Am I Harry Potter?" I asked the woman timidly, going cold inside. Of all the ways to get yourself into trouble!
"This is no time to pretend you don't understand, Potter," she snapped. "March back to your cupboard, and I don't want to see you until Vernon leaves!"
"I need the toilet," I snorted. "Or am I supposed to do my business right there in the cupboard?"
The woman began breathing furiously through her nose, grabbed my forearm, and dragged my childish little body into a room beside the kitchen.
"Quickly!" she commanded.
The tiny bathroom contained a small shower, a toilet, and a mirror. But the person looking back at me from the mirror was not me at all. His hair might have stuck out in the same wild mess, but it was as black as Sasuke's. His eyes were not blue, but green, bright, almost like Sakura's. And there was a scar. A stupid lightning-bolt-shaped scar sat right in the middle of my forehead. It seemed I had somehow taken over Harry Potter's body. The body itself was covered in bruises and was not in very good condition. A child living with a family ought to be better developed and not so skinny. I wondered how old I was. Judging by the teeth—or rather, the gaps where some of them should have been—I ought to be eight or nine, but I looked six or seven. I was tiny again, and now I was a scrawny little runt as well?
"What is taking you so long in there?" The woman banged on the door. She was probably that relative Harry had told me about. I quickly did what I needed to do and washed my face. What was her name again?
"Petunia! Is breakfast ready?" a deep male voice from the second floor helpfully supplied the answer.
"Ten more minutes!" she shouted back, then practically threw me into the cupboard again.
Judging by the peculiar metallic clank, she locked me in as well. Someone walked across the ceiling above me. Apparently, this 'Vernon', the one who had punished me, was coming down the stairs.
I listened to the family's muttering in the kitchen. It sounded as though Vernon needed to hurry if he wanted to drive to work in London on time. A familiar place. He also seemed to be reading a newspaper and said that housing prices would fall, along with something about a bank...
"Hey, crybaby, how did you like your birthday? I heard you whining yesterday and making a wish for someone to save you. If you say a wish out loud, it never comes true, you little idiot!" a quiet child's voice suddenly came through a crack in the ceiling. It was followed by wild, thoroughly unpleasant laughter, and someone stomped loudly down the stairs, probably on purpose. That must have been Petunia and Vernon's own child, Harry's cousin. I had not heard him begin coming down, either because I had been concentrating on what was happening in the kitchen or... Most likely because this body was completely untrained. I would have to do something about that.
Oh, three tails through my liver! That boy had mentioned a birthday! So Harry had made some kind of wish? Could his wish somehow have moved my soul into him? My body in that world had definitely died, but I had already crossed worlds once before, which meant Ku and I had formed a peculiar kind of summoning contract. Perhaps Ku had helped and thrown me here so I could live? He had muttered something about our fusion giving me a chance to be reborn like a bijuu. But it seemed my soul had been carried here, to England, to help Harry again. Where was Harry himself, though? Had he gone to the Pure Land in my place? The bruises were very fresh. Yeah, what a wonderful birthday: beaten, hungry, and locked in a cupboard. Mine had not been any better, though. In Konoha, my birthday coincided with the anniversary of the Kyuubi's attack, and I had also hidden from drunken shinobi and villagers who tried to take out their grief over lost loved ones on me on the day I was born.
I sat down on the cot in a meditative pose and concentrated. My friend had told that woman writer about his life. It had not been very long ago, but there had been a great deal of information. The clone I had left here seemed to have lived for a very long time. The technique returned a clone's memories, but the longer the clone lived, the more memories were lost, and those losses grew geometrically. I would remember several hours clearly. A full day already required a special meditation together with the clone. Several days, even using that method, would leave only key information. At the time, I had merely felt in passing that the clone had completed its assignment. I had received none of the details.
I had barely begun sinking into the depths of my eventful life, trying to pull out the three days I had spent here before, when the lock clicked and Petunia-san looked into my cupboard.
"Harry, go wash the dishes," she ordered. "And why is it dark in here? Did you lie down to sleep?" Aunt Petunia tugged at something.
The bulb on the ceiling lit up. It turned out that a cord tied to the lamp switched the light on and off.
I played with the cord for a moment and noticed books and notebooks on a small table. No wonder my eyesight was bad if I had to study in a cupboard beneath a dim bulb. There were glasses too. After hesitating, I put them on. The world grew sharper, though still not as clear as it had been before.
Now I was a four-eyes too...
I did not know which of them had done me this favor—Kurama or Harry—but I wanted to strangle them both... in the warmest possible embrace.