A/N: So.. Long time no see? Turns out I'm not dead, just unable to let myself write fanfiction when I need to write essays instead. I was taking a break from writing my PhD application today and I was like, you know what would be fun? Looking at the old fics I wrote when I was a bratty teenager. And as I was reading this story I was like huh, you know, I think I remember where I wanted to go with this. And so here I am!

Apologies for any rubbish writing, I don't think I've written anything other than academic essays or professional interpretation in almost 7 years. It's weird to think that since I last wrote fanfiction, I've completed a degree, and almost finished this Masters course. Here's a tip kids - writing lots of fanfiction helped me improve my creative writing skills immensely, and you know what? It's actually helped a lot with my graduate and postgraduate essay writing skills! So feel free to hold fast against anyone that tries to tell you that writing fanfiction is useless, or whatever. And that's coming from someone who has a high chance of getting onto a fully funded prestigious doctoral project, whose writing skills probably wouldn't be up to snuff without those years of fanfic writing experience.

Anyway, on with the update. I've planned out the rest of the story - should be one, maybe two more chapters after this, to get to the ending I originally wanted. Depends on how often I get sidetracked on different tangents!

Only A Moron

Chapter Nine

When I was finally out of the hospital, and the medics were reasonably sure I wasn't about to keel over at the slightest hint of chakra, I met my team in training ground three. I wanted to say it was a miracle that we'd all survived the Kyuubi, but really, we were just disproportionately lucky. Lucky to still be genin during the attack, lucky to be ordered to help evacuate civilians. I tried not to think about the shinobi that literally melted as they threw their all into slowing down the beast; the sight and smell of their charred, shapeless remains as I cleaned up the streets would forever haunt me.

Nakamura looked at us, and tried to smile, but I could see the soul-deep weariness in his eyes. In some ways, he'd been lucky too; the Nara forest was on the opposite end of Konoha from where the Kyuubi had struck. A lot of his clan had survived, unscathed. His daughter was safe.

His wife was still missing, presumed dead. She could have been any number of the ruined corpses we'd helped to dispose of, and he'd never know.

"Right," he said, opening up the bag he carried and staring into it. "Good news and bad news. Good news, you've all been promoted." From inside the bag, he tossed us each a chunin vest. And then his eyes softened, and so did his smile, and for a moment it felt more real. "Congratulations team twenty three, really. You deserve it."

Despite being a ninja, Takeshi didn't even catch the vest. He gaped, stunned, as it hit him in the chest and fell to the floor. "What? But - What?"

I agreed. "But the exam is next month," I said, stunned.

Nakamura sensei nodded. "Yes, that's the bad news. Too many Chunin died defending against the Kyubi. We need to fill the ranks, and Konoha can't wait a month."

"Oh," I said, and looked down at the vest in my hands. My fingers clenched; I thought the fabric would be rougher, somehow. But it wasn't - it was a weird material I couldn't name, but it felt tough and somehow slick, like it had been oiled. It was hard to grip, and my fingers slid along the seams. It felt heavy in my hands but light when I put it on, the weight evenly distributed, balanced around my soft spots. The material was stiff around my neck - I gripped around it, and it felt like the inside was hard, like metal. It looked as stiff and perfectly pressed on as it had when it was folded neatly in my hands; like there was some kind of plating all along the contours, shaping itself in stiff perfect lines.

Oh, I thought. It's not just a vest; It's armour. That makes sense.

I felt the weight of it hang, hot and heavy around my neck

The next few weeks were filled with long border patrols and even longer nights alone in the library. The city needed its shinobi out there at all times, now more than ever; we didn't want to risk any of our enemies taking advantage of this devastating attack to try to deliver one of their own, while we were limping, weak and wailing. It was exhausting, but after every shift I found myself among the books - I almost couldn't help myself; with my new promotion, it was like a whole new world had opened up to me, as the chunin section of the library finally let me through.

The library had long been a point of contention for me; I could maybe have understood If you needed special permission or security levels to access certain areas - but the only blockade was the damn Chunin exam.

"I don't get it," I'd said, when I was six and still attending the academy, trying to find more books about chakra theory so that I could get some greater understanding of what was happening in my body, and in this strange world around me. So after school I'd gone to the main shinobi library, and was uniformly denied.

"Sorry kiddo, no can do. Can't let you in, you're just an academy student."

"But I'm learning to be a shinobi? We've already had some lessons on Chakra. I just wanted to find another book - I've already read all the ones in the school library."

"Not until you're Chunin, sorry."

And - not until I was Chunin? That didn't make any sense! Maybe I could understand waiting until Genin. But not even then?

It turned out, it wasn't about ability, or security clearance, or anything else like that. No, at the end of the day, it was about the same thing that the whole system was reinforced around. It was about loyalty.

"When you're a genin - that doesn't mean much, in the scale of things," Nakamura sensei explained to me not long after I'd joined his team, when he realized that as a clanless orphan, no one had gotten around to telling me yet. "It means you have the basic skills, that you can be a Shinobi. But a genin is a genin - whether you've just graduated or been one for six years, it's the same position." He took a drag of his cigarette, and let it out slowly. The smoke mingled with the shadow of the tree we sat under, taking a break from our morning training. Smoke danced among the flashes of light that slipped through the leaves.

"When you're a genin, you're still a student. You're either in a team of three with your sensei, or you're in the corps, with your team supervisor." The smoke lingered. "There's a reason we don't just promote someone to Chunin based on skill alone, you know. You need to demonstrate other qualities; leadership, teamwork, creative thinking." He took another drag. "Chunin means you're not just a student anymore. You can take orders, and give orders. And Chunin, ultimately, means loyalty. It means you've proven yourself, in one way or another, as strong, capable, and loyal to Konoha. To be a Chunin - that's when you're a shinobi of Konoha."

"But we get our headbands when we graduate, when we become Genin. They told us we were shinobi, then!"

Nakamura chuckled. "Yes, and then you were given a jounin to babysit you. What does that tell you?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Oh," I said, as understanding dawned. "Genin - that's an apprenticeship title?"

"Exactly. Some Genin go to jounin sensei like you, when they show not just promise, but compatibility - when it seems like you'd benefit more than others from one on one tutoring at a specialized level. Other Genin go to the Corps, we're they're managed in greater teams at first, before interning at different key departments around the city. Either they find a position they excel at - or a department that just needs their assistance - or they prove themselves in other ways, and might later even be taken on as another Jounin's apprentice. Either way, the key thing about being a Genin - all Genin - is to be given more specialized training."

"And when you're Chunin? Why does that mean you can suddenly use the shinobi library? Why can't I just look at the lower level stuff, when I'm a Genin?"

"Ah, when you're Chunin - that means independence, that means you're really a Shinobi now. You're trusted to be able to train yourself - to continue your own training, find your own specialization; to seek out the additional resources or teachers you might need. Inside the library, there aren't any restrictions, Rijii. It's not like missions - they don't classify jutsu scrolls or history books by rank. What would be the point? Why would Konoha limit her forces - stop shinobi from learning what they can? No, that wouldn't benefit Konoha. The Shinobi library is the ultimate compendium of the knowledge we either created or stole - it's there to benefit everyone; we want all our shinobi to improve as much as possible. So when you're there, you haven't just proven that you can be trusted with the information; you need to have also proven your ability to critically self analyse - you can't just blunder about, declaring you're the best, and going straight to learning S-rank level techniques. If you were always demanding to learn high level jutsu before you were ready - well, then you wouldn't be a Chunin."

I thought about it. "So If I am Chunin, I can just - go up there, and start reading, I don't know, the hidden secrets of sealing from Uzushio?"

Sensei snorted. "Would you?"

I grimaced, and thought about all the math involved in sealing. "Uh, probably not."

Sensei nodded. "See, it's not so bad. Everything appropriate for pre-genin is in the academy library; and anything else below Chunin, that's for Jounin supervisors, or other shinobi, or your clan to teach you."

I mulled everything over. Was learning new techniques really that easy? It was hard to believe that as as basically, well, as a shady, assassin-fueled military dictatorship, that they weren't just - I don't know, hoarding their knowledge, classifying it to hell and back. Did i really only have to just - what, ask? And not be a dick about it?

"Sensei," I asked, and turned up to him with wide, pleading, eyes. One of the few benefits of being reborn - I was actually aware of just how cute I was, at my age. "When can I learn how to make an earth clone?"

Sensei snorted, and snubbed out his cigarette. "Not until you can water walk without limping at least, kid. Come on, break's over, let's get back to work."

I followed, slowly stretching, and started making plans.

Eventually, sensei dragged me out of the shinobi library by the scruff of my new Chunin vest. "Seriously kid, go home and get some sleep before you fall over."

"But there's so much to learn," I whined, desperate to get back to the books. It was more than I ever could have imagined - what the shinobi library showed me, really, was the depth of this world. The kind of stuff a kid's tv show couldn't show you; trade routes, migration history, archival documents from the founding of Konoha.

There were even notes on Tsunade's famed chakra strength technique, which i devoured with a fevered intensity. It turned out that people weren't knocking down mountains left and right not because they specifically needed to be her apprentice to learn how - and retrospectively, I could understand how silly it would have been for konoha to metaphorically shoot itself in the foot by limiting who could learn such a devastating technique; no, the fact was that it was almost too difficult for anyone to actually learn. The problem lay in the chakra control needed for the technique; it couldn't just be good, it had to be near perfect - within one percent. Because this wasn't just channelling chakra down your limbs and through your fist, but making the chakra move with an explosive force. One wrong move, and you'd blow your whole arm off.

Blankly, I thought about how long I'd been attempting to teach myself an approximation of this technique. For the first time, I felt truly grateful to Kami for my chakra hypersensitivity; it doubled as a warning for whenever my chakra reached the limit of my control, which apparently, had prematurely stopped me from permanently disabling myself dozens of times.

… This is why Genin don't teach themselves techniques, I thought with a stunned, helpless humour. Man, Genin are idiots.

Parts of the library were also filled with things I really wasn't expecting, such as actual jutsu on how to deal with ghosts, and demons, and souls, because apparently those were real, quantifiable things here? There were scrolls even talking about the afterlife! Carefully preserved copies of Nidaime-sama's notes on the development of his edo-tensei. Which, obviously, involved crossing the border between life and death - and this was the kind of stuff people in this world just knew about.

It was bizarre. I'd noticed, of course, that people invoked the name of kami, that throughout konoha there were different shrines to gods, to spirits. But when people spoke of making offerings to the dead, they meant it literally. While there might be spiritual debate on which gods were real, or mattered more, or what actually happened after you died - there was no debate about the soul, about the existence of an afterlife. It was just a widely accepted fact.

And who could argue? Demons, spirits - and Nidaime sama calling back the souls of the dead. Which meant they continued to exist, and had to be called from somewhere, where they had previously existed, whole.

My past-life atheist self found it all very hard to get her head around. And made me wonder: Was this one of the reasons people were just - ok with killing? With shinobi in general? Because death here was hardly a finite thing - it was objectively not the end. So killing was just - it was bad, sure, but it wasn't as taboo as it had been in my past life. Here, it wasn't seen as the absolute end. Not even the worst thing you could do to someone.

Or maybe I'm just too white, I thought, as I stumbled back into the orphanage. For all I knew, other cultures back in my world had equally complex and accepted ideas about death and spirits.

And - maybe it was because I'd fallen asleep thinking about death, demons and rebirth - but when I woke up, my first thought was green eyes, and i thought, oh, that baby. Her mother. And I realized that I had no idea if either one was ok. You'll look after her, the strange woman's voice echoed in my mind and damnit, if I didn't feel terribly guilty for having no idea how they were.