Tired!
So... so tired!
Her body felt as heavy as a boulder, and her eyelids felt as if they had been sewn shut with needle and thread. Drenched in blood, the young girl lay on the ground, struggling to open her eyes as her small chest heaved with violent gasps.
Under the night sky, a dim, sallow crescent moon offered a feeble, listless light.
The thick mist seemed almost solid. With every ragged breath, the heavy scent of rusted iron within the fog filled her lungs, bringing a terrifying sensation of drowning.
Where is this?
The unfamiliar surroundings forced the girl's mind into sharp clarity.
She looked down.
Everywhere she looked, it was a blur of black and red.
Blood.
So much blood.
On the earth, which looked as though a giant beast had plowed through it, red blood and black mud had merged into one.
Countless mangled corpses lay scattered across the surface. Coagulated black blood mixed with shredded remains to form sickening heaps; severed limbs were so numerous they were impossible to count. Shattered skulls gleamed bone-white, and internal organs—red and green—lay in pools of blood like peeled, chopped fruit trapped in jelly.
As she regained consciousness, the girl's scalp tingled with numbness. This human slaughterhouse was truly chilling. She remembered working overtime until five in the morning, returning to her cramped rental room, and collapsing onto her bed in a daze.
Now, she had woken up to this.
I couldn't have died, right?
Is this... hell?
"Ugh... my head... it hurts!"
A searing, stabbing pain suddenly tore through her brain. Clutching her head, Hinami curled into a ball and rolled among the piles of corpses. It felt as if a power drill were boring through her skull, churning her brains as fragments of memory surfaced and vanished.
When she finally opened her eyes again, her milky-white pupils reflected faint glints of grey.
After a long time, the sharp pain subsided. Hinami finally managed to sort through the memories in her mind, discovering an absurd reality.
She had traveled to another world—or rather, she had been reincarnated.
The name of this body was Kaguya Hinami.
Gender: Female. Age: 6.
She was the shared bloodline of the Kaguya clan from the Land of Water's Kirigakure and the Hyuga clan from the Land of Fire's Konohagakure.
Her mother was a member of the Hyuga Main House who had been captured by the Mist ninja Ao during the Third Shinobi World War, leading to the loss of a Byakugan. She was later rescued by Hinami's father. The classic tale of a hero saving a beauty led to love, and eventually, a daughter was born. Because she inherited her mother's Byakugan but possessed faint grey tints in the center of her pupils, she was named—Kaguya Hinami.
Hyuga? Kaguya? ...This is Naruto? And this timeline... the Kaguya massacre?
Looking at her small, blood-stained hands, Hinami made an unbelievable deduction.
It was ridiculous.
The memories made her feel as if the world she had known for thirty years had completely collapsed. Her arms trembled as she pushed herself up; her muscles ached with a tearing sensation, as if she had spent a straight year in a gym.
Staggering to her feet, the sight of headless corpses and the overwhelming crimson surrounding her felt both nauseating and strangely familiar. Scenes that should have been blurry childhood memories seemed to flow backward in time, becoming vivid once more.
Enduring the churning in her stomach, she reached into the blood-soaked collar of a nearby corpse. Soon, she pulled a small white medicine bottle from an inner pocket.
The bottle felt ice-cold in her hand.
On its surface was a red circle with two concentric dots located on either side of the central axis. In Hinami's memory, this was the unique symbol of the Kaguya clan—the two dots representing authority and balance.
She practicedly flipped open the cap, and brown, thumb-sized pills rolled into her palm.
Gulp!
She didn't have the energy to count them; she shoved them all into her mouth. The pills were dry and hard. Her mouth struggled to produce enough saliva to help her swallow. By the time she had downed half a bottle of Military Rations Pills, she still hadn't tasted a thing.
As her stomach churned to grind the pills, strength soon surged back into her limbs, bringing warmth to her stiff, cold body.
Military Rations Pills.
The "compressed biscuits" of the Naruto world. Packed with nutrients, they could replenish a shinobi's chakra. Within the clan, these were limited in number and usually given to adults to maximize combat effectiveness.
The existence of this bottle confirmed the reality of this world for Hinami.
Stepping across the stained earth, she waited for the pills to digest while silently assessing her situation.
According to her memories, the Kaguya clan had engaged in a fierce battle last night with the Kirigakure Anbu who had surrounded their territory. The original owner of this body, possessing the Byakugan, had acted as an intelligence operative. While retreating with the main force, they encountered the Anbu Captain known as "Fierce Fang" and his large unit of shinobi.
The result required no explanation.
Her parents and kin were wiped out. Hinami herself had been run through the chest by an anonymous Anbu and had died on the spot.
So...
How am I alive?
Touching her small but intact chest, the massive bloodstains on her clothes and the gash torn by a blade left Hinami bewildered.
Forget it.
How I survived isn't important. What matters is how I stay alive.
The situation was set. Her first thought was how to escape this predicament and survive.
I have to find a way to get out of Kirigakure.
BOOM!
A terrifying explosion erupted from the east, followed by several screams and soaring flames. Moments later, everything returned to silence.
Is the battle not over yet?
She was currently in the Kaguya territory on the eastern side of the Mist Village. Outside the territory was the Anbu perimeter. Even if she broke through that, she would still be within the village's borders. To leave, she would have to break through another layer of village defenses.
The enemy is the Hidden Mist, one of the Five Great Nations. What do I have?
Hinami silently calculated her assets.
In this life, she was considered a minor genius within the Kaguya clan. She had extracted chakra at age three. At age five, under her mother's guidance, she successfully awakened the Byakugan.
Now she was six.
Her chakra levels were comparable to a Chunin. She was proficient in basic Gentle Fist. The rest was just the E-rank Three Basic Jutsu known to all shinobi... and these corpses everywhere.
She ranked her assets from greatest to least.
The pills in her stomach were now fully dissolved and digested. A massive amount of physical energy surged from her limbs into her dantian, then toward her heart through her meridians. Invisible spiritual energy gathered at the sea of consciousness between her brows and descended.
The two met and converted at the "Chakra Seed" in her heart. A pale blue chakra rose within her like a morning sun illuminating the world.
Her heart and the "Chakra Seed" pulsed in unison.
Strength flowed through her body along with her blood.
With her weakness receding, Hinami did not rush to flee. She couldn't break the Anbu blockade yet, and attempting to do so would inevitably lead to combat. The priority was to enrich her resources to increase her chances later.
She began turning over the bodies on the ground one by one.
Familiar faces, now drenched in crimson, stared mechanically at the sky with lifeless eyes. Among them were relatives, neighbors, and childhood friends from her memories—but there were also masked Kirigakure Anbu wearing standard flak jackets.
Military Rations Pills, shuriken, paper bombs...
Hinami looted them all indiscriminately. She carefully collected the precious resources; these were her lifelines. Crawling on the ground to sort through the scattered remains amidst the pungent scent of blood, she felt like a scavenger hyena on the African savannah.
But hyenas usually hunt in packs. A loner like me is probably more like a stray dog by the road.
Heh.
As if amused by her own dark joke, Hinami let out a mocking laugh and tucked the few paper bombs she found into her clothes. After the heavy battle, most resources were either depleted or ruined by Water Style jutsu and blood; very few were still usable.
She finished organizing her supplies.
She looked up again.
Ahead lay another Anbu corpse with twisted legs, wearing a mask with the teardrop symbol of the Mist. Hinami walked over with anticipation, her small hand reaching eagerly for the tool pouch at the enemy's waist.
Based on her experience so far, the equipment carried by the Anbu was slightly superior to that of the Kaguya clansmen.
Her hand reached into the pouch.
It felt warm to the touch, but it was empty.
Wait...
How can a body that's been dead for a while be warm?
The moment the thought flashed through her mind, Hinami's body froze. She realized that inside the tool pouch, her hand had touched... a warm, large hand.
!!!
Suddenly, the large hand clamped down on Hinami's wrist and yanked her forward.
Hinami's grey pupils constricted to the size of pinpricks from the shock. She struggled violently to shake him off, but the enemy's grip was like a steel vise; she couldn't break free.
Whoosh!
The Anbu "corpse" she thought was dead suddenly snapped its eyes open. With his left hand pinning Hinami's wrist, his right hand snatched a kunai from somewhere and slashed toward her delicate throat.
The world seemed to slow down.
The eyes behind the narrow slits of the mask were bloodshot and filled with murderous intent. Hinami threw her head back sharply, narrowly avoiding the fatal slash. The sharp kunai glinted as it cut through strands of her blood-crusted hair. She could even see the individual notches on the blade's edge from previous combat.
Seeing the girl dodge his calculated killing blow, the man was startled. His left hand continued to restrain her while his right hand flipped the kunai into a reverse grip, tracing a semi-circle in the air before lunging toward her brow.
The movements were fluid and fast.
The attack was ruthless, aimed directly at a vital spot.
With nowhere to retreat, Hinami didn't have time to think.
A flash of desperation crossed her pale grey eyes. Her right hand, still trapped near the enemy's tool pouch, grabbed his wrist, while her left hand mimicked his movement, thrusting a kunai toward his face.
Beneath the blood-red mist.
On a battlefield carpeted with corpses.
Two survivors, struggling to rise from the remains of their comrades, held each other's hands and lunged with their blades in a desperate struggle for life.
Puchi!
The sharp tip of a kunai sank into a forehead. Crimson blood flowed down the brow, acting like a red brush that split a face in two.
Hinami stared wide-eyed, her arm straining forward with all her might, but her kunai only snagged weakly on the enemy's collar, unable to move a single inch further...