According to the reincarnation trope, I was supposed to panic when I was reborn. I didn't. I'm not trying to make myself out to be a hardass or anything like that, it's just the truth. I realized what was happening to me pretty quickly and just rolled with it.
I was being reborn. It meant that I would not be able to meet my family again or complete my past life goals but It beat being dead, so why would I complain?
I was born in Konohagakure to Megumi and Hana Nara, two loyal chunin who served the village hidden in the leaves. In other words, I was in the Naruto universe, the land of magic assassins and giant, super-powered kaiju.
Being in the Naruto verse was complicated.
On one hand, this world was objectively terrible for anyone with basic survival instincts. Children trained to kill before they learned long division. Wars happened so often they were numbered like sequels.
Healthcare was questionable, therapy did not exist, and the phrase "child soldier" was treated less like a crime and more like a career path.
Also, everyone ran everywhere. No cars. No bikes. Just sprinting and roof-hopping which felt like a drag.
So yes, being born into Naruto was bad.
However. It was also fantastic.
For starters, I had chakra. Actual, honest-to-god magic stamina that let people breathe fire, walk on water, and punch holes through mountains if they were angry enough.
And Compared to places like Marvel, DC, Attack on titan, Warhammer, Jujutsu Kaisen or Demon slayer, Naruto was practically a wellness retreat.
There was food. Civilization. Festivals. Actual villages with schools instead of eternal battlefields. And if you were lucky, really lucky, you could grow up, retire, and complain about paperwork like a normal adult.
While I didn't hit the Uchiha lottery when born here with their absolutely absurd dojutsu, I had managed to land in a very influential and powerful clan all the same. And the clan did not come out with the Uchiha problems which included Obito, Zetsu, Danzo and the root of all problems of Uchihas, Tobirama Senju.
The Nara clan was one of Konoha's greatest. The Nara were known primarily for their intellect and their secret techniques that used chakra to manipulate shadows. That and their laziness.
With their intelligence and techniques, Nara had the potential to be powerhouses, but the vast majority would rather enjoy the little things in life than go out on missions every waking hour. My parents were strange in that regard. They were actually serious shinobi.
Speaking of my parents, I never really got to know them that well. They were nice enough while I was an infant, doting on me and cooing at all the cute things I did, but they were around less and less as I got older.
First it was my father who went back on missions when my mother had recovered from delivering me. Later, when I could walk and cook, they both started going out for missions. I wasn't sure if they were going together or if they were on separate teams, and I never really cared to ask.
I didn't really mind it. They were responsible enough when they left. The Nara clan had a day care-esque building set up specifically so parents could leave their child to be cared for while they were out on missions.
An entire civilization centered around sneaky magic assassins made such accommodations commonplace. The day care also gave me an opportunity to take off the childish mask I wore around my parents. I really didn't have anything against them. They'd brought me out of death's embrace and into this world, but it was weird for me to have to call a man and woman who were technically both younger than I was 'parents'.
Now you might argue that I was in a newborn body and I was starting a new life but I still remembered my past life parents and I loved them so it made it difficult to see them really as parents.
My daycare years were more or less uneventful outside of a singular event. There were few other kids in the facility with me, and even then, they only stayed for a day or so at a time to wait for their parent's missions to finish while I was there for weeks at a time.
Even when I had company, I kept to myself, primarily because I was scared for the first year or so because of the dreaded 'Danzo' that always cropped up in the fanfics I read in my first life. I'd thought, 'Ah! I'm in a Nara day care! This is his hunting ground!'. I'd leapt at shadows and made myself small until I realized the Nara clan had a rotating guard that kept a close eye on their clan's children. On top of the loyal Nara ninja, there were also the deer that lived in and around the Nara compound – powerful chakra creatures dedicated to protecting the Nara clan.
All of this wasn't to say it would be impossible for Danzo to grab me, but it would be far more effort than normal. Why steal a clan kid protected by super deer when he could go for an unguarded civilian orphan? Or maybe I just lucked out and he wasn't in the market for a Nara while I was in 'day care'. I wasn't really sure of anything.
In my first life, I kind of skipped through Naruto. It was a fun show, but there was just so much of it. I didn't have enough time available to sit and watch it all the way through, so I watched what was interesting and kind of skimmed the rest. I knew the important beats, but I was fuzzy on the more obscure details of the world. I knew that Danzo forcibly recruited for Root, but I wasn't entirely aware of how. I was cautious, never leaving the Nara grounds without my parents and being sure the Nara guards and deer were surrounding the day care whenever I was there.
The worst part, though, was being a baby again. Not the "fresh start" part, the loss of dignity part.
I couldn't walk, couldn't talk, couldn't even scratch my own nose without adult supervision. My brain was running at full speed while my body was basically a very loud, very useless potato.
The moment I needed food, my only option was to scream like I was being murdered. Sleep was mandatory, random, and enforced.
Everyone talked about me while standing right in front of me, and I had to just lie there like, "Yes, I hear you. No, I cannot respond. Please stop pinching my cheeks."
Reincarnation sounded cool on paper but someone should have warned me that it came with being permanently stuck in a crib.