"I fucking hate kids..."
She really did. They were annoying, smelly, and absolutely gross. Lily didn't get the appeal of children, oh sure they were cute enough when they were calm, adorable even when they giggled or were sleeping, but they were also small useless shit producing machines that couldn't look after themselves. That's not to mention how most of them turned into little monsters when they were hungry or turned into kids or teens.
Some people look fondly upon their childhood, the wonders of innocence, the lack of burdens and responsibilities, the nostalgia. Lily absolutely fucking hated it from day 1. Ever since she was mentally developed enough to have a sense of "self" and "awareness."
She couldn't wait to grow up, get a job, move away from home, and not have kids. Ever.
Which is why the fact that after she died from overworking at her hospital and found herself 5 years old again... She knew there just had to be a God, and that they had a sick sense of humor.
At least she could walk in this new life, so many everything wasn't so bad?
"Hey! Watch ou-... Whoops, too late."
The voice of the boy who tried to warn her of the incoming projectile ended lamely. She got a taste of some brat's lunch as their plate ended smack dab in her face. It seems today everyone was having mashed potatoes, again, for the third time this week. Joy.
"I fucking hate kids..."
She wasn't proud to say that she decked a kid in the face and made him cry, but she also wasn't terribly ashamed of it even if she was mentally an adult. Brat was asking for it and everybody including the workers at the orphanage knew it too.
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"Ok... So I didn't end up being reborn someplace in rural Japan, great, fan-fucking-tastic! Great, now not only do I have to go to middle school all over again next year but now instead of worrying about the economy collapsing I just gotta watch out for the WORLD FUCKING ENDING. GREAT. EVERYTHINGS HANKY DANKY. IT. IS. FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE. PERFECT EVE-"
The scream was so loud one could say it resonated across the entire village of Konoha. Even in spite of the fact it was in a completely different language, everyone within earshot could feel the hysterical rage and anger within it as if a palpable force. It was the first time anyone had ever seen a five-year-old have a mental break down because even to the ignorant observer that was clearly what it was, no mere child's tantrum could produce such visible distress.
She only took a moment's pause when an idea occurred to her.
"Status! Menu!"
Lily had to be escorted back to the orphanage by the Uchiha police force after her stunt at the local park. She quickly learned quite a few choice words in Japanese after that day. Most even a sailor would deem highly inappropriate.
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Chakra.
A mix of spiritual and physical energy. The equivalent of one's very life force. Use it all up and you die, but with control and some knowledge of what you're doing it could redefine the impossible.
Basically ninja magic, something Lily very much wanted to get her hands on, thank you very much. The only problems were that one, she didn't have any clue what it was besides vague concepts, and two she didn't want to risk accidentally killing herself.
Oh sure, kids being ninjas was "possible" but that's reserved for the cool main characters and geniuses, not a nerd like her. No fucking preteen assassin badassery for old little miss Lilith Black. Kakashi and Itachi may have been able to take down Chunins as toddlers, but Lily highly doubted she would be able to become one even when she was twice their age. 6 year old shouldn't be expected to be able to take down fully grown and trained men, no matter the world, in her own opinion.
She may have accidentally overworked herself to death, but she had some ideas of her very mortal limits.
This is why she needed to gather more information and wasn't that going to be a pain in the ass considering she barely comprehended Japanese even after over a month living here, and hopefully a good teacher.
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One that wouldn't be too bothered by such a precocious toddler, nor would they want to cut her open and study her insides like a certain snake.
Oh fuck... She was a nameless orphan. Yup, definitely not going outside these doors without adult supervision until further notice, not until she knew Orochimaru wasn't hiding outside her window ready to take her to his freaky labs.
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One should not underestimate a child's ability to pick up information. It took a lot of time but she managed to get the language down pretty quickly and with her model behavior, she managed to endear herself to some of the workers and managed to convince them to take her to the local library. Reading it was incredibly difficult but luckily they literally taught Ninja: 101 at the academy so there was quite a few children's books on the basis of it, and she could get some of the workers to read them to her like a children's story in her spare time.
Only probably is even weeks after attempting to unlock her Chakra, she had gotten literally jack shit done. It was too... Vague for her tastes. Meditation? Look deep into yourself? Sense for a fire in your stomach? Sorry, she didn't have time to take this slow and unlock it through the normal and incredibly long way when the world was fricking ending within the next two decades.
Which is why she took the incredibly stupid and painful, but quick method. Or rather, she thought up a half-assed theory and decided it was sound enough to give it a shot. Quick, but by no means easy.
"...I'm sorry, say what now?"
Those of the famed Hyuuga family were known for having great control of their emotions and a stoic demeanor. This was why causing a member of such a noble family to become stunned with their mouth hanging open in shock was quite a feat.
"Look, buddy, I ain't paying you to ask stupid questions. Get to the poking and the ninja magic, chop-chop!"
Lily had decided that she couldn't control Chakra if she didn't have a sense for what it was, so what better way to get that sixth sense than to literally have someone inject it into herself in a very violent and painful manner? The boy stared that the younger kid glaring impatiently at him, the little girl barely half of his size gave an audible huff at him taking so long to do something so "simple." As if going around and beating up kids was an average day occurrence for hi- Ok, so maybe he did spar with other kids which were way more violent than what he was about to do... But... Still! She was so young and small even for ninja standards. She barely reached his knees for crying out loud!
... He wisely decided not to question the antics of the village's idiot. He just mentally added another quirk on the list of the weirdo who liked to babble incoherently to herself and rage at the air. It wasn't polite to make fun of the mentally handicapped so he has been told. He wasn't getting paid enough to care, so he wouldn't.
It wasn't his place to question the masochistic tendencies of idiots after all and she was paying him good money. 20 bucks was 20 bucks after all.
That day Lily got a taste of the famed fighting style of the Hyuuga personally. It hurt like a bitch but damned if getting your Chakra points repeatedly forced open and closed didn't give one great sense for the metaphysical energy. It's not child abuse if you call it training after all. Best of all, the blows and abuse she put herself through wouldn't show unless one was a Medic-nin and scanned her. The pain was quite something else though, feeling as if she had repeatedly slammed her funny bone onto a table, except her entire body was a funny bone, and she was also being set on fire, and someone kicked her in the balls.
She didn't have balls, obviously no duh, but she could imagine. Point being, it sucked, really really bad.
Lily most definitely did not end up bawling her eyes out and she would defend that statement until the day she dies... Again.
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Being a kid in an orphanage sucked.
I mean, no shit, right?
But she didn't refer to only the whole "No parents" thing. Because apparently the Third Shinobi wars was still going on, even if she knew that it was going to end soon judging by how Cannon went, and god did she hope that was still a thing or else she was even more screwed than she thought she was, and space within the Green Grass Orphanage was quickly becoming scarce.
There wasn't a single day she didn't see a new face, and every day the walls were filled with the cries of kids asking for their moms and dads. Some were Ninjas, other simply victims of the times. She knew that war was "bad". She was an adult, after all, 32 at the time of her death, and was always one that kept up with the latest news.
She had seen her fair share of injuries and death in the emergency rooms when someone didn't make it. A car accident here and there, a drive-by shooting once or twice, but nothing could compare to what she was seeing within the "safe" walls of Konoha.
Everywhere she looked it was full of people, and yet she knew that she might as well have been alone. Most of them were unresponsive. Shock and trauma the small part of herself that took interest psychology told her.
She lived in a time of peace, so even though she knew people were dying in Afganistan or Iran it never really bothered her. Their pain? Their suffering? Something so far away in a distant land, it didn't resonate with her any more than hearing children starving in Africa or watching a horror movie.
There wasn't something quite like watching a kid who had his legs blown off by a paper bomb attempting to learn to use a wheelchair to really hammer in the reality of the situation.
She wasn't Naruto. She wasn't the main character, a hero of justice. Hell, she wasn't even that good a person honestly. She didn't become a doctor for something a noble as wanting to save people. No, it was good money and she wanted her parents to be proud, simple as that.
But, she also wasn't the type of person able to walk away and say it wasn't her problem when she was faced with something like this. She couldn't save everyone, for fuck's sake, she probably couldn't even save herself let alone anyone else... But she could still try, couldn't she?