Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(Trigger Warning)

Dying sucked. Like, a lot. 

But it was also kind of peaceful? In the end, fading away wasn’t so bad. One moment he’s sitting there and the next the darkness that had been creeping at the edges of his vision is suddenly all encompassing. So really, it’s a relief if he had anything to say about it.

It was just the pain that sucked. The pain and the blood. The blood that coated his arms like he had shoved them into a lake filled with blood and didn’t care to wipe them off.

Like he said, dying sucked. But coming back to life? Well, that happened in a flash.

Well, not really a flash per se. But more of a slow blink into startling awareness. 

He’s in a bed, staring up at a raggedy ceiling that looks like it hasn’t been tended to in years . And he knows it hasn't, because he doesn’t remember ever thinking about fixing them up.

‘What the fuck?’

Memories flash before his eyes and it makes his brain hurt. He’s an old man, twenty-six years old and his knees already creak when he tries to stand up. But he’s also twelve and he’s got energy to spare. 

He’s twenty-six and he’s bleeding out on the ground and he’s so, so cold. 

But, he’s also twelve and he’s still alive. Still breathing steadily. There’s no blood leaking out of him. And he’s warm, body relaxed under the comforting weight of his blanket. 

He sighs, world-weary and exhausted. Of course it didn’t stick. Only he would manage to screw up death. Again.

His eyes flicker around the small apartment. Though calling it an apartment is rather generous. It’s more like a single room that has living necessities crammed into it. There’s a sink and stove over in the corner furthest from him. A shelf that looks like it’s on its last legs, with a few books scattered on it. And two doors that spread across the far wall. One of which is open, showing the insides of a small bathroom with a shower. The other can only be the exit.

He knows it’s the exit, he’s walked through that door hundreds of times and it led to a long hallway on the third floor of his apartment building. An apartment he was shoved into the first week he joined the academy because the orphanage didn’t have the space or resources to continue supporting him. 

Such is the way for shinobi in the village. 

‘Shinobi? Holy shit, why? But that would mean…’

Sitting up to look out the window above his bed, he feels his heart stutter in his chest when he sees the four giant heads that adorn the mountain a good distance away. You know, the giant heads of the previous Hokage. 

‘How convenient that I can look out my window and find proof.’

He wonders for all of a few seconds who the current Hokage is when a flash of a memory shows that the old man is Hokage once again. That the fourth died twelve years ago fighting a giant fox demon. 

Kyuubi. Naruto. Ugh.

There’s a steadily building ache behind his eyes that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. He closes his eyes and flops back down into the bed. Pulling the blanket up over his head to block out the early morning light. 

Great. So he’s dead, right? Maybe this is all just a giant hallucination or something. But no, he doesn’t think it is. Because while he’s hallucinated before, they’ve never felt more real. The blanket is rough and itchy to the touch and it’s taking everything he has to not toss the thing off him in a flurry. 

He’s hiding right now, thank you very much.

He takes a moment to take stock of his new situation. Where is he? Konoha, his apartment. His? And who is he supposed to be? Because he certainly would know if he was living in the world of tailed-beasts and magical eye bullshit before now. 

Rei.

The thought pops into his head and it’s deafening. It echoes inside him like a gong. Okay. He’s Rei. Rei who? No last name. Orphan. No family of his own to call upon. Left at the orphanage twelve years ago with nothing. Not even a name of his own to write on his nametag. 

He sighs again, feeling like he needed a very long nap. 

Usually, when one is reborn, there are benefits that come with that. You know, like family. Close friends. People who are to care for you. And yet, as he sifts through his new memories, he knows he has no one. 

Rei the orphan is a nobody. There’s nothing special about him. He has no family, no friends, nothing. 

‘Very much like my last life also.’

And if that ain’t the most depressing shit.

It takes him an annoying amount of time to take the blanket off his head. And when he does, he flings himself out of bed and stumbles his way over to the bathroom. Cursing the fact that he feels way too close to the ground than he’s used to. 

When he reaches the mirror in the bathroom, he’s barely tall enough to see himself in it, but the person in it is a stranger. 

Fair skin, dark black hair that seemed tinted blue when the light caught it just right that hangs down to his chin on both sides in a way that screams unkept and a striking set of dark green eyes that had flecks of honey brown sprinkled in them. His features where alright to look at, he guessed. They could be considered handsome, or good looking. Maybe. He didn’t know. It’s not like he spends a lot of time wondering about the attractiveness of other men. His body slender in a way that screams malnourished. His wrists are so tiny, what the fuck?

Especially doesn’t look at children as anything other than snot-nosed brats until they are tall enough to reach past his waist. And he’s currently occupying the body of one such snot-nosed brat.

He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. He’s too tired for this shit right now. He just freaking died , he needs a few hours before he’s able to process anything right now. 

‘Now that that is out of the way, now what?’ 

Sleep. Bed. He stumbles back to the bed on unsteady feet. His mind whirls. He throws himself into the mess of blankets and sheets and pulls the itchy blanket back over his head. 

He’s going to sleep and then he’ll deal with this shit later. 

He doesn’t know how long he sleeps for, but when he wakes up the sun is high in the sky. It’s damned beams hitting him directly in the face, his blanket of protection having been kicked off sometime in his slumber. 

He lays there for a long time, eyes closed in an attempt to squeeze out as much sleep as he can before he has to be responsible. 

He’s still in the bed he fell into. That itchy blanket is mercifully nowhere near his skin and that’s a win if he ever heard one. 

Memories of his lives swirl around inside his head. Mixing together and adding more years onto his already exhausted life. 

Memories of the man, who hated life so much and didn’t have the patience left to keep hoping for a better future. The man who had no one and nothing and decided it wasn’t worth it to keep on suffering in the silence of his own broken brain. 

Memories of the kid, who didn’t hate life quite yet but had nothing and no one and couldn’t wait to get a team soon so he could finally have friends. Could have a sensei that would take them under their wing and it would finally be like having an actual family. A kid who wanted to make the world see he wasn’t just nothing. 

The memories mix together and merge, leaving behind a boy who was an unholy combination of both sets. Exhausted, but with the strong urge to be strong so he could build a family of his own one day. But still a boy with nothing and no one to call his own. Nothing to protect quite yet. 

Eventually he has to get out of bed. He uses the bathroom quickly, does not think about it too much, please gods why is he a child, and then finds himself standing in the center of his small studio apartment wondering what he’s supposed to do now. 

What is he supposed to be doing right now anyway? 

Memories flicker to life behind his eyes and he sighs in slight relief. It’s the weekend, he doesn't have to be anywhere right then. The only thing he had planned to do today was get some food from the local grocer. 

He sighs at the weirdness of it all and glances around the room for things he might need to make a trip into town. He’s still in his sleep clothes and his wallet is somewhere in the dirty mess that is his apartment floor. 

Maybe he should clean up a bit first. So that’s what he does. He spends the next hour cleaning up the small room. Tossing things into the trash and putting dirty clothes into a hamper basket to be washed later on. 

‘Jeez, this kid is a mess and a half. Was a mess? I don’t know.’ 

He damn near stabs himself on a few stray kunai that he finds tucked away in the mess. Luckily, they seem to be in a poor state and are rather blunted. Which sets off a few bells in his mind. 

He wanted to be a strong shinobi and he couldn’t even take care of his weapons?

Whatever, problem for later him. 

Once the floor is cleaned enough that he can actually see the damned thing, he plops down onto the bed with the wallet he found and sorts through it to see how much money he has. It’s not much really, just enough to cover some groceries. He wonders at it all before the memory of receiving a stipend from the orphan fund comes to him. He’s due to receive his last payment soon. 

And then he’ll be expected to find his own income. 

Such is the stipulations to the fund, seeing as he’s meant to graduate the academy a month from now, Konohagakure would only fund him until he was made a ninja. Then he’d be on his own. 

And that brings up a whole new set of problems. He’s supposed to become a ninja in a month and all he knows are the academy's three ninjutsu and some basic taijutsu. What was this damned kid thinking? Didn’t he know that he needed to be at least chunin level at graduation in order to survive this shitty world?

Especially as a no name orphan brat in the world of Clan Kids™. Clan Kids ™ that all have some sort of cheat code embedded inside them from birth. 

Honestly, he doesn’t have any faith in his ability to make it as a ninja. 

He sighs. 

He hadn’t watched a lot of the anime. Barely made it past the Wave arc and then kinda skipped around whenever things popped up. No, most of his knowledge of the Narutoverse came from things like fanfiction. And that sucked, because who knew what was real anymore.

He should be freaking out right now. Should be having a panic attack or something and hiding under his bed. But all he can feel right then is tired. So very tired. This isn’t what he had in mind when everything started fading to black. 

But there is nothing he can do about it now. So, he might as well make the best of it. 

Later, after he has groceries.

Walking through Konoha is a trip and a half. 

Everything feels so much more lived in than what he’s seen in the anime. And while fanfiction is great and all, it doesn’t do it justice in words alone. There’s an undercurrent of something nostalgic that wafts through his nostrils. He can’t pin it down, but it smells sort of safe . But also not at the same time. He doesn’t know how to describe it really.

And the people. Oh my, there are people everywhere. Every once in a while, he’ll get a flash of someone who looks familiar, and it’s the oddest feeling in the world. Like he knows who they are but doesn’t know why he knows. In the faint way of how you recognize a regular at a shop you frequent but don’t know anything about them besides what they look like.

It’s honestly vaguely annoying.

As he walks, he delves into this new set of memories the best he can. Trying to figure out his new circumstances. 

His new name is Rei. Just Rei. Because apparently he doesn’t even warrant a family this go around. Which is fine. It’s fine. He’s twelve years old, born some time in during the summer month of August. The matron at the orphanage wasn’t sure of the date, just that he showed up as a newborn sometime in the middle of the month. 

In his last life, he was born in August also. Maybe he should just use that date and go from there.

So, orphan. And for the last four years, he’s been living alone in that tiny apartment he now calls home. Somewhere he was stashed when he joined the Academy and started training to become a shinobi. 

He doesn’t have any friends. Like at all. None. Zip. Zero. He’s a loner loser in this life too. Though not for lack of trying, he just doesn’t seem to fit in with any of the other cliques in school. Which isn’t all bad. At least this way he won’t have anybody he has to worry about fooling. 

Seeing as all his relationships are of vague acquaintances, he won’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not.

He’s not very skilled in comparison to the others in his class. In fact, he’d say he’s below average all around. That’s not to say he’s not intelligent, it’s just that he hasn’t put very much effort into his classwork. And because of that, he’s fallen behind the curve. 

It’s hard to keep up with Clan Kids™. They have so much more help in the ways of being a shinobi that regular kids like him naturally fall behind. 

Half of his class is filled with the damn buggers. All the major clans represented in it. Which is mildly annoying, why does he have to be mixed in with those people. The Rookie Nine. They are all insane. 

Half his memories of the classes he shares with them is just those nine brats interrupting class like their all characters in a sitcom or something. They're supposed to be ninja, not actors taking part in a play. 

Anyway, he needs to get stronger if he’s ever going to do anything in this life. The only problem is that he doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to do that. As far as he knows, he’s just some civilian kid with no ninja background to give him a surprise bloodline limit or something. And, it’s not like he can remember a lot of the training they did. 

He can’t just spam Kage Bunshin and have them train for hours on end like they do in fanfiction. He doesn’t even know the hand signs for that, let alone have the chakra levels for such a thing. 

Maybe when he’s done shopping, he can try to mold some chakra or something? He thinks meditation is involved, but he’s not sure. And then he’ll try some things out and hope for the best. He shoul-

He blinks and finds himself at the entrance to the grocers shop. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but a building that looks kind of like a mini-mart isn’t it. 

Huh. Don’t think too hard about it.

The next hour of shopping is a task.  

He doesn’t get a lot in the end. Simply for the fact that he doesn’t recognize a single damn brand in the store and had to spend way too much time trying to figure out what everything is. Luckily, the instant ramen is something that seems to be universal. Dimensional? He doesn’t know anymore.

He was feeling cheeky, okay? It’s the land of Naruto, he’s allowed to indulge a bit, thank you very much. 

So anyway, he got some stuff to eat and some stuff to drink and that’s that. 

Hopefully his fridge works right, he didn’t check it before he left. 

The trip home is just as weird, but he makes it home with little fuss. He locks the door behind him when he steps into his apartment and sets the groceries down on the countertop next to the sink. 

Was he supposed to announce his presence back home or something? This is so weird.

“Yo, I’m back or whatever.” His voice startles him. It sounds like a child. He sounds like a damned brat. What the hell.

His heart drops into his stomach at the thought that rises up soon after.

He hasn’t gone through puberty yet.

His shoulders slump in defeat, and all he wants to do is crawl back under the blankets and hide. Not that itchy blanket, but something softer thanks.

He had gone through puberty once before and now he has to do it all over again. Kill him now. Please, please save him from the despair. 

The random boners alone are going to haunt him every hour for who knows how long. Not to mention the high pitched voice that irritates his damned ears. 

Ugh. Best to not think about it for now. He’s already messed up and traumatized, no need to go making it worse quite yet. 

The groceries are put away quickly, and thank god the fridge works otherwise he’d be upset. He searches the apartment for a notebook and finds one that he remembered tucking away on the rickety shelf earlier. A pen is harder to find, but he does it. 

He sits on his bed and just kind of brainstorms . Writing down whatever comes to mind about the world he’s found himself in. In the end it’s a giant freaking mess of shit that he doesn’t know is real or not. 

He doesn't know, okay? He’s trying his best.

Everything he writes down is meaningless though. Because there is nothing he can really do about it. Certainly not now, as he is. What is he supposed to do with the fact that Obito is part plant? He thinks. Or that Kakashi Hatake - is it Hatake Kakashi? This is weird - is the most thirsted after fucker in the entire world. Good god, some of the things he’s read.

Also, Bijuudama Rasenshurikan ? Really? What the flying fuck!

He needs to take a few breaths to calm down. Otherwise he’s going to go even more insane. How in the seething hells is he supposed to be as strong as that shit? 

It’s not fair. 

He sighs, rubs a hand through his hair and then flops back onto the bed. Staring up at the ceiling as he tries to figure out how he’s going to survive the coming weeks, let alone years until the next war. 

He needs to get strong. Fast. Fast as in yesterday . 

Glancing out the window to see it’s still light out, he sighs one more time before burrowing himself into his bed as much as he can. That is a question for tomorrow.

In fact, he’ll go out and train tomorrow. He’s sure he can find an empty training ground to practice in. He’ll figure things out then. 

As he lies there, he tries to figure out the chakra thing a little bit. Searching his memories for how he’s supposed to find it. He doesn’t have much luck, until it hits him all at once how to mold it. 

His body tenses as he feels an energy rise up within him. A tingling under his skin that sends shivers down his spine. It’s strange. Odd and terribly foreign in a way that almost scares him. It’s like a fire has lit up inside his chest and is circulating within his blood stream. Racing through his limbs with little warning.

Almost like getting pumped full of narcan. If you know, you know. I’m sorry.

He marvels at the feeling for a bit before he slumps in defeat. The power within him fading away to a dull thrum under his skin that doesn’t seem to go away. 

There’s not much of it there. But it’s there and that gives him some hope. Maybe he can do this. 

Maybe.

But it’s going to be so much work that by the end, he might have just wished he was a simple merchant or something. Maybe he could open up a shop? Come up with some new idea to make bank in a world that’s half backwards?

No, no. He’d die within the first few months. Murdered by a stray kunai because one of the little brats jumped at their own shadow. 

He sighs and rolls over, mushing his face into his pillow. 

Tomorrow. He’ll deal with that tomorrow. 

Chapter Text

Waking up the next day sucked. 

The grip of panic that shot through him when he awoke to unfamiliar surroundings was embarrassing. So he’d rather not talk about it. Nor about the several minutes he sat huddled under the blanket trying to get his breathing under control.

That damned itchy blanket, he really needs to get a new one.

Once he gets himself settled, he slinks out from under the blanket and goes about his morning routine. Only to stop when he gets in front of the bathroom mirror and reaches for the toothbrush. His fingers freezing before he can make contact with the dull-red plastic. 

Que existential crisis. 

It’s his toothbrush, but it’s not . Do you use the same toothbrush as the body you overtook? Or does the weirdness of it all prevent you from doing so?

Needless to say, a few minutes later he’s writing a list of things to get and a new toothbrush is on the damned list. Along with a new bar of soap so he can take a freaking shower later. 

Breakfast is quick and dirty. Some toast. That’s it. He has a toaster, yay!

And then he’s searching around the room for some shinobi gear, coming up with sorry excuses for equipment. Half the kunai are blunted and chipped, his clothes are all rather flimsy, and he has nothing for protection. 

The sigh that escapes him could have been a low-level Fuuton jutsu with the way it left his body. Looks like he needs to do some more shopping, but he doesn’t have much in the way of money. He’ll figure something out. 

In the end, he throws on some dark pants and a dark long-sleeve shirt. Straps a weapons pouch to his thigh and slips on some ratty old sandals that look like they might have once been blue but are now not blue . And then he grabs his wallet and keys from the counter and slips out of his apartment. 

His mind searching for any place he could train that was open to Academy students. Most of the training grounds where only open to actual shinobi, Genin and up. And the few that catered to students where near the Academy itself. 

Unless, of course, you were a Clan Kid™. Then you could train anywhere you damn pleased.

‘Ugh, this kid had a Grudge™.’ He thinks and tries to shake the sneer that has twisted his lips. That can’t be good. For some random orphan to hate children from the clans like that could have only preempted danger. Searching through his memories, he doesn’t find any one event that could have twisted the kid so harshly, but a series of events that just kind of messed him up a bit inside. 

Which is fine, he guessed. He’ll grow out of it eventually. 

Maybe.

Looking through them though, is a bit enlightening. The Clan Kids ™ were basically treated like royalty in the Academy. They got away with a lot of stuff because they had the backing of names with history behind them. And being kids, and being heirs to those clans, they’d allowed their perceived superiority to go to their heads. 

Not all of them, of course, but enough. And the few that are loud about it overshadow the ones who aren’t. 

So, hatred. Seeing as Rei is an orphan with no name and no one to fall back on, he was naturally jealous about it. There’s yearning there too, but he stamps it down as far as he can. Rei isn’t worth anything to anyone.

It’s not really healthy, but it doesn’t really matter anymore anyway.

‘Did I kill the old Rei when I overtook this body? Did he even exist before then?’ He doesn’t know and at this point, worrying about it will only give him gray hairs.

It’s remarkably blase about him, but he’s turning over a new leaf. Ha, get it?

Anyway, he wonders his way to the Academy and doesn’t run into anybody noteworthy. There’s also no one in the small training ground that he quickly finds himself in. He doesn’t know what he expected, but he figured there would at least be a couple students training. But nope. Not a single soul. None that he knew where there anyway.

The training ground isn’t much. Just a small field with a few training dummies in one corner and that’s about it. There are a few targets along the edge of a fence. It’s surrounded by some trees, but everywhere in Konoha is like that. 

Now that he’s there, he finds himself stumped for a moment. Unsure of what he’s supposed to do now. He has the memories, and his body is sure to remember how to do things, but there’s a nugget of doubt that itches the back of his brain. He’s never learned how to throw a knife. He doesn’t know how to fight using preset forms from katas. He certainly never used chakra before.

He closes his eyes for a moment and refuses to let out the sigh that builds in his chest. He’s being ridiculous. He just needs to stop over-thinking it all and simply act. 

He blinks and then he’s a dozen feet away, his chakra having reached out and switched with a nearby dummy. His hands folded up in a seal. Snake his mind provides. Blinking again, he drops his arms to his sides. Staring in bewilderment at the dummy he just switched places with.

‘Huh, that was….easy.’ 

He doesn’t even remember if he’d done the other four hand seals or not. He doesn’t think he had done them. 

Shaking himself a bit, he scrunches his nose and brings his hands back up again to attempt a Bunshin. Ram. Tiger. Snake. 

A copy of himself springs to life beside him and he nearly startles. He’d thought, briefly, that it would turn into his former self. But he guessed wrong. Another copy of the brat stands next to him, placid. 

He sighs and twitches when the copy does the same. He swipes a hand through the clone and relaxes when it disappears. That was kind of trippy. 

His hands flash through the seals for the Henge . Dog. Boar. Ram. And he feels his chakra slither out to coat his skin. He looks down to see-

Blood. Blood. His arms are covered in bloo-

His hands flicker and the illusion disperses, leaving behind long black sleeves. His heart hammering in his chest. 

Closing his eyes, he tries to shake himself out of the sudden funk. Okay, maybe next time he does the Henge , he has a clear form he wants to change into. No need to scar himself anymore than he already is. Or others. 

When he opens his eyes again, he glances around the training ground with a sigh. His vision flickers back to the dummy he’d displaced before he’s standing right where it was a second ago. His fingers molded into the Snake seal like earlier. 

Turning back to look at the now replaced dummy, he thinks about this new development. The Kawarimi no Jutsu was a simple technique. E-rank if he remembers correctly. But there was potential there. 

Theoretically, it was an instant teleportation jutsu. And in a world of magical eye dimensions and freaking super speed, he needed every advantage he could get. He remembers, vaguely, that after a certain while, he never saw the technique ever again. And it makes him wonder why. Surely someone would make great use of it?

If he’s going to make it work though, he’s got to be able to do it without the hand seal. The only way he knew how to get to that level though was constant use. 

Unless? 

Maybe he could just brute force it? Maybe….

Reaching out with his chakra, he feels it coat the surrounding area. Blanketing the area to the point that he can feel everything . He can feel everything that he could switch places with. 

It’s unnerving. Unnatural. Freaking awesome. 

He flickers from his place and winds up across the grounds. He stares wide-eyed at the targets he’s suddenly found himself near. And then he’s back to where he was a second later. His hands clutching the fabric of his pants. 

Okay, so he has that figured out. Now he just needs it to become second nature. No biggie. He takes a deep breath and eyes the nearby trees with something akin to rising excitement. Tree-walking was something that everyone did in the anime. Walking up surfaces and being able to walk across water was a stepping stone to getting strong.

Cool. Cool. Cool. Walk up the tree. No big deal.

He walks over to a nearby tree and stares up at it. There’s a branch about fifteen feet up that looks like an excellent place to see out across the grounds and he suddenly wants nothing more than to reach that branch.

Looking at the trunk of the tree, he places his foot against it and starts to channel chakra into it. He feels the chakra swirl inside him before it goes steady. Shaking his head, he shifts his weight and goes to bring up his other foot. 

Only for his foot to slip and send him crashing down into the earth. He stares up into the canopy of the tree and feels stupid. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

Nonetheless, his eyes narrow at the tree. It’s still early and he has all day. 

He’s going to walk up this fucking tree. Even if it’s the last thing he does.

Good news, he made it up the tree. 

He made it to the branch and had a good time surveying the grounds. Feeling like he could see everything and feeling untouchable because of it. 

Bad news, he rolled his ankle when he hopped down from the tree. Exhaustion weighed down his body and he felt sluggish and slow. His clothes had a few rips in them, so he would need to replace them soon. And somehow, he’d lost a few of his kunai. 

Don’t ask him how, he wasn’t using them in the first place. They just disappeared .

The walk back to his apartment was awful. All he wanted to do was shower and climb into bed after he ate. And it was halfway to said apartment that he remembered he needed to go to the store to get a new toothbrush and some soap. 

Meaning he had to turn around and walk a few minutes in the other direction to get to the store. Finding the needed objects freaking sucked, he doesn’t know any of these brands. And one of the store clerks was watching him with narrow eyes the entire time he was there. 

He was too tired to care what they thought of him though, so he must have come off as rude when he didn’t speak to them at all the entire time he was checking out. His eyes half-lidded as he stared through them. 

Leaving the store and walking home went by in a blur. It was only as he was climbing the stairs to get to his apartment that he realized he could have just climbed the side of the building and went in through his window. Or taken the rooftops to make his trip quicker. 

Whatever, it didn’t matter. 

Unlocking the door and slipping into the quiet apartment was a blessing in disguise. He slipped off his sandals and carried his new stuff into the bathroom. 

Showering was weird. The shower head was so far away. He had to stand on his tippy toes just to reach the damn thing. 

The less he thought about it all the better.

And then he was wrapped up in the fluffiest towel he owned and drying off. Slipping on his sleep clothes, he padded his way into the kitchen area and warmed up a packet of ramen. 

Making sure to put water in the thing. He’d forgotten once and he’d never lived it down for as long as he lived. 

When the food was done, it vanished into his belly with remarkable speed. So fast, that he felt a little ill about it. Luckily, it didn’t come back up. So he stumbled his way over to his bed and sunk down into the cushion. 

It was a western style bed, thank god. He couldn’t even think about sleeping on the floor right then. 

The sky outside had already gotten dark by the time he’d gotten home, so it was easy to see the stars out his window.  He didn’t recognize any constellations from his old life but then he didn’t expect to. The moon high in the sky. Shining like a beacon for the world to turn to in times of darkness. 

The….moon. His eyes widened. A whimper escaping his lips. 

He’d forgotten. 

There’s a goddess in the moon that’s going to be released in a few years. 

‘Great. Just. Fucking. Great.’  

The next day was a monday. And monday’s meant class. 

Class with a bunch of noisy ass preteen brats. School, that he hasn’t been in for nearly a decade by now. 

Naturally, he was half-way to the Academy building when he said no thank you, and turned his ass around. He’s not ashamed to say that he freaking booked it as far away from the building as he could. Going so fast that his surroundings blurred and it felt a bit like he was flying. 

He was across the village before he stopped to catch his breath. He didn’t recognize the area he was in and that was okay. He’d figure the rest out later. There’s a hazy memory of the academy sensei chasing after brats who skipped class without a note allowing them otherwise and he feels himself groan in despair. 

He needs a place to hide. Stat. 

Eyes flicker around him, taking everything in. He seems to be in some sort of residential district. Which is a bad place to be as a wayward student. One concerned parent and his ass is being chased by some rabid chunin. 

He snarls under his breath and searches for a nearby tree to throw himself into. So he can get up a bit higher and see a way out of here. Finding one, he switches with a rock at the base and runs up the side of the tree as fast as he can. Hopping onto a branch that’s high enough up and covered by leafy debris to hide him.

He scans the area, trying to see a way out of the district and into somewhere he can better hide. He doesn’t see much, while the tree he’s in is placed remarkably well to see over the entire district, the district itself is large and hides the potential hidey-holes. 

Maybe he needs to- 

A chill goes down his spine. And his head turns slowly, very slowly, to his side. There, perched on the branch next to him is another ninja. They wear grey body armor, metal arm guards and a porcelain mask that resembles a…an animal of some kind, with three red stripes on it. 

Their head is tilted to the side, long dark-purple hair hanging, as they stare at him through pure black eye holes. He can’t see their eyes, but he feels them all the way down to his very bones. 

‘Ah, the shadow ninja. ANBU, was it?’

His heart thumps in his chest loud enough that he’s sure the other ninja can hear it. He’s a fool. A right fool. And now he’s about to be merced by a shadow in the trees. 

He closes his eyes, and sighs. “Do what you gotta do.”

Nothing happens for a long moment and he thinks he hears a soft sound coming from the ninja, but then the chill that sits in his spine lifts and disappears completely. Cautiously, he peaks open one eye to see the ninja hasn’t moved from where they’re crouched next to him. 

Their head tilted even further to the side and for some reason, he can feel an air of amusement coming from their side of the branch. 

He closes his eye again and sighs, again. This time in a mix of embarrassment and resignation. Right. ANBU didn’t murder people for no reason. He thinks, please don’t quote him on that.

They sit in silence for a few moments. Moments that feel like they stretch well in the minutes territory. The panic that had risen in him started to lessen, but there’s an urge in his throat to make conversation. To try to make things less awkward for him.

He digs through his brain for something to say. Anything really, that won’t make him sound like a scared little brat who stumbled upon the wrong tree. When he can’t think of anything, he just wings it. 

“Crazy weather we’re having, huh?” 

The comfortably warm breeze glides through the cloudless sky, dancing beneath the sun’s pleasant warmth and brushes gently against his skin like a lover’s kiss. 

You know, to spite him.

The ninja’s head tilts even further to the side, and the urge to run away intensifies a hundred fold. He’s absolutely pants at making conversation, okay? He didn’t do much talking in his last life and that is his default. Preferring to simply listen and speak when necessary. 

“Indeed.” The ninja intones and he startles a bit. It was a woman's voice that came from behind the mask, muffled slightly, but unmistakably a woman’s voice. “Horrendous.”

The branches of the tree rustle softly in the wind, a calming, soothing sound that has no place in this standoff. No sir. Light twinkles in between the gaps in the leaves and leaves feather light kisses of warmth along his exposed skin. 

He suddenly wishes for the ground to rise up and swallow him whole. He could be a ground dwelling creature of some kind. A mole maybe? Or something that makes a den, like a fox. Or a rabbit, like how the woman is making him feel at the current moment. 

The pitch black eye holes are soul consuming and he can’t look away from them. He won’t look away, it would admit defeat. 

He thought these ANBU or whatever where supposed to be the village shadows? That they didn’t usually show themselves to the population unless the situation was drastic. So why is this one here?

“So….you come here often?” His hand twitches. And that’s the only movement he shows that he just stopped himself from slapping himself in the face. 

Please, let him curl up and hide. But, seeing as he is currently unable to do so, he hopes his panic is less noticeable.

The woman ninja - Kunoichi, that’s it! - makes a humming sound behind her mask and he’s not sure if it’s amusement or something worse. “No.”

“Ah…” He doesn’t know what to say to that. “What-uh, what brings you to my tree?”

She makes that humming sound again and turns away to look up at the sky, he can see a bird of some kind circling above them. “Was here first.”

“Oh.” That….makes sense. He didn’t see her when he dashed up the tree but why would he? She’s an elite shinobi who has years of experience on him. He’s sure he could have stepped right past her and never known she was there. 

Which is freaking terrifying and absolution freaking cool. Will he learn that?

She turns back to him and the urge to flee reaches a breaking point. “Ill-uh, I’ll leave you to it then?”

She tilts her head the other way, before it tilts back again and it takes him a stupid amount of time to realize she was shaking her head at him. “It’s yours.”

And then she’s gone. Like, gone. There’s no poof of smoke, no slow fade away, no nothing. She’s just there one moment and gone the next. 

It’s the coolest thing he’s seen since he got here.

“Thanks!” He chirps, mood rising. He doesn’t get a reply but that’s okay. He hadn’t been expecting one. Sitting in the branch, he wonders what he’d been doing in the tree to begin with. The encounter with one of Konoha’s shadows leaves him coming up with a blank. 

He can freely admit that there’s a blossom of hero worship rising inside him. For the shadow he just met. It was the first real shinobi he’s met since waking up in this new world - memories not withstanding -  and she was freaking cool. Scary as all hell, but cool.

He wished he knew what kind of animal her mask was supposed to be though. It would make referring to her in his head much more simple. Oh well, he’ll just have to decide on something. 

‘Purple Shadow.’ 

Good enough. Is he supposed to add an honorific to the end of it? Cause that’s going to be all sorts of weird to get used to. Searching his memories, he decides that yes, he is supposed to add honorifics to people’s names. Ugh. It’s one of those.

‘Purple Shadow-sama.’

What was he doing again?

Oh, right! A place to hide. Where would be a good place to hide in a village of ninja? Someplace so obvious that no one would think to look there. Or, someplace so ridiculous that the same thing applies. 

He slumps down on the branch. Why is he hiding anyway? 

Some of those Chunin are rabid. The Inuzuka ones bite. 

Well, yeah. But it’s not like anyone besides the Academy sensei cares if a student doesn’t show up to class for the day. And even then, most of them probably don’t care all that much anyway. 

There’s a startling feeling of freedom that builds up within him. The memories of the brat come to the realization that all adults eventually stumble upon. Teachers, no matter the dimension, are over-worked as shit and underpaid to do so.

No one is going to come looking for him today. Not after one day of missing class. He’s not even a major character, so he’ll probably fly under the radar completely. 

The old couple taking a leisurely stroll underneath the tree startle violently when it starts to cackle like a horrible goose. They pick up the pace and disappear rather quickly for their advanced age. 

‘I’ve got two, maybe three days before anyone comes looking for me.’

So much to do and so little time. 

But…what exactly is he supposed to do with that time?

He slumps even further into the branch this time. Trying to merge with the wood under him. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. He needs to train, and while not ideal, the Academy is currently the best place for him to learn things. 

‘Maybe there is a library or something?’

Not thinking it would be that easy, he searches for any memory of a library of any kind that would cater to shinobi. He searches and searches. And he comes up with…nothing. Not a single freaking clue. 

Wait, what was that building that Suzume-senei brought them to in their second year? 

It had book shelves and tables for them to work at. They had been doing an essay on the different ninja villages and had gone to the building to do research. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time, he had been too caught up in bemoaning that he needed to write a few hundred words to meet the requirements. 

‘That’s a fucking library. This stupid fucking brat.’

He didn’t remember if it had a shinobi section or not. With a sigh, he stood from his crouch and ambled his way to the base of the tree. 

He might as well go check it out. 

News flash. It wasn’t that easy. 

Yes, Konoha had a public library. No, they did not have any shinobi techniques hidden away in the plentiful shelves. 

He didn’t know what he had been thinking. That he’d walk in and find a goldmine of shit he could use. But he found nothing. Nothing of use. Besides the presence of a medical section in the far corner, he didn’t find anything even remotely related to shinobi skills.

Sure, there were some survival skill books sprinkled about. But those didn’t count for much. No, the only things related to shinobi in the entire library were in the romance section. The less said about that the better. 

Walking out of the library, he was sure his shoulders couldn't slump any further lest they fall off. 

If he was a Clan Kid™ he wouldn’t have this problem. They gave those kids jutsu like they were candy. 

He sighs, for once agreeing with the little shit’s old thoughts. It was so unfair to the rest of them that they didn’t have access to skills they would need to grow strong. It seemed that this world relied on a special brand of nepotism that just kind of grinded his gears. That the only way to grow strong is to have someone allow you to. 

Well too fucking bad. He’s going to get strong anyway. Even if he has to steal techniques to get there. 

Too bad he didn’t have one of those magical bullshit eyes. Then he could just camp out at a training ground and rack up the techniques. 

He glances up at the sky to see the sun and realizes it’s still pretty early in the day. Noon at the latest. He has a whole ass day he’s gotta get through yet. He’d thought he’d waste the day in the library having a blast learning stuff, but no. 

He got stiffed. 

With a sigh that has seemed to become his mantra, he tries to decide what he’s going to do. He has tree-walking down now. Sure, he could get better at it to the point that he doesn’t have to think about it. But he’s got time for that. 

Maybe he should try the water version? There’s a few water ways that he could try at. Yeah, that’s what he’ll do. 

He lets his mind wander as he walks through the streets. There’s so much that happens in the show, and then all the stuff he’s heard about later on. He doesn’t know where to start. Does he even want to change anything? 

Sure, some things are objectively bad. But everything seems to work out in the end, doesn’t it? From what he could remember, mostly all the main characters had a somewhat happy ending. Sure, some people died along the way that didn’t have to. Like the Pervert Sage, Jiraiya? He didn’t know. 

Others too, but they weren’t as prominent in his memory. So who knew for sure. 

He guessed Itachi counted. Maybe? The kid did kill his family, so who knew if he was worth saving anyway. To him, it seems like the kid took the easy way out of a mess he could have changed. But, maybe that is too much pressure to put on a thirteen year olds shoulders. Not to mention the mindfuck he did to his own brother. Who was, theoretically, an innocent at the time. 

So…uh, fuck Itachi?

Not his problem.

His only major threat right now was that old coot that advised the Hokage. What was his name? Danki? No. Dango! No, that’s a sweet. He thinks. Bandage man!

Hmm, whatever. Dango it is. 

From what he can remember, the old man had a habit of kidnapping children and using them in his Super Secret Totally Not Root Ninja Group . He just needed to keep off the guy’s radar until someone could kill the bastard. 

Easy, don’t act like one of those stupid Clan Kids™ and he won’t even glance in his direction. 

He nods, simple but effective. Don’t act like the world is his stage and he’ll be fine. Mostly. Hopefully. 

‘Man, that grudge is bad.’

Before he knows it, he’s found himself at the edge of a small river. He doesn't know where it even leads, but it’s small and shallow enough that he doesn’t care. And, it has the unique position of being hidden in between the backs of a few taller buildings. Meaning he won’t have an audience to his future mishaps. 

Stepping up to the edge of the water, he hesitated for a moment before letting his chakra roll to life under his skin. Taking a breath, and making sure he’s only in a few inches of water, he took a step out onto the water. 

His foot met resistance for all of a second before it sunk down and splashed into the water. Soaking his foot and his pant leg up to his shin. 

He sighs. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.

He could go completely in depth on how he’s supposed to do this. How he’s supposed to know exactly how his chakra moves and adjust it correctly to match the energy flow of the water or something. 

But honestly, that’s too much work.

In the end, he simply believes he’ll walk on the water. And then, he does. Easy.

It’s an hour after he made the first attempt, and he's soaked and exhausted. Give him a break. 

His chakra levels are low and he’s never felt more tired in his life, but he can walk on the surface. A win is a win.

Sleep comes easy that night. And if his shoulders are a bit more confident, and his mood lifted just a bit, then who can judge? He still has to worry about going to class and dealing with all those little brats that he’s supposed to call classmates. The main character of the show is bound to be an annoying little shit himself, and the world might end in a few years. But he feels good. 

And all that shit is a problem for future him. 

Right now, he’s going to sleep. Please, don’t bother him.

Chapter Text

Waking up early to go to school again sucked.  

Thankfully, he had a relatively full night's rest due to his adventure in water walking the day before. He actually slept through most of the night, which is a huge plus. 

Anyway, waking up early sucked. Why did people do it? He needed some coffee otherwise he was going to be useless for the rest of the day. And he needed it for sure if he was going to suffer the indignity of being twelve years old and being surrounded by immature brats. 

He had decided the night before that he was going to make an attempt at the Academy today. According to his memories, he only had like a month left of classes anyway until he would graduate. So it only made sense that he would make sure he passed. And to do that he needed to be present at the school. 

Despite the fact that according to canon, only those Rookie Nine brats actually graduated. 

Which means he has his work cut out for him if he was going to make something of himself. Is the Genin Corps a thing? He doesn’t know. 

There is a lot he doesn’t know damnit. It’s getting annoying. 

If it is a thing, maybe he could go there? But if he knows anything, the people in charge are probably just as over-worked as the academy teachers and will have no time for any individual training with brats like him. 

‘Problem for later.’ 

Anyway, his morning goes something like this. Wake up, fling the itchy blanket across the room, stumble into the bathroom and close his eyes while doing so. He’s not ready to deal with that shit yet. Finish up, throw some bread in his toaster, dress himself in a long sleeve shirt that doesn’t smell too bad and some dark pants, and then throw himself out the window after grabbing his toast when it dings. 

And then threw himself back into his room when he realized he forgot his keys. And his wallet. And his weapons pouch. And then threw himself back out the window a second time. 

The three story drop is scary as fuck. Heights and him do not mix well. Then he’s off to the academy before he can think too much about it. 

He weaves his way through the early morning foot traffic, and makes it to the school in record times. He’s early. By like, a lot. Half an hour at the least. But that’s okay, he wanted to get a lay of the land so to speak. Figure out where his class is and not feel foolish later on when he’s accidentally late or something. 

He finds the classroom quick enough and there’s no one inside it. Which is a relief, but instead of dropping into a seat and waiting, he wanders off in the direction he knows the teacher’s lounge is. He bets that out of everyone in the village, second only to the Hokage tower, that they have coffee in droves. 

‘Hmm, coffee.’ 

The door to get in is one of those sliding doors, so with a deep breath, he slides it open and peaks into the room. 

He sighs when he doesn’t see anyone inside. His eyes flick around the room until he sees what he was looking for sitting on a counter in the far corner of the room. The coffee machine beckons him forwards with whispered sweet nothings. It’s dark liquid gold enticing him to come take a cup, you’ll feel so much better.  

“Thank the gods.” He mumbles and skitters over to the holy grail. Searching the cupboards above the machine, he finds one with a few coffee cups inside it. He reaches blindly in, and grabs the first one his fingers make contact with.  

A cup is poured and brought to his mouth before he even blinks. The enticing smell of liquid gold fills his nostrils like some sort of love potion from Harry Potter . Taking a sip, he burns his tongue and slumps in defeat. 

Whatever, he ambled his way out of the room and made his way to the classroom. When he gets there, he just kind of stands there. Wondering where he is supposed to sit and if he can pick the right spot to be as far away from any of those brats as he can be. He tries to think if they had assigned seats but it doesn’t look like they do. 

He sighs, and picks one completely at random. The back corner, closest to the back door and furthest away from the rest of the crazy brats. He slinks down into the chair, hands wrapped around the warm mug of coffee and tries to not think about how much he wants to throw himself out the window. 

He doesn’t quite manage it. The window looks so inviting.

He’s halfway through his cup when the door at the front of the class slides open and Umino Iruka walks into the room. The man’s dark eyes scan the room before they land on him in the far corner. And he feels his shoulders slump at the way the man’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

“Rei-kun,” He can see Iruka’s eyes glance to the clock on the wall before they turn back to regard him with a weird intensity. “What a…surprise.”

“Sensei.” He slumps even further into his seat. To the point that he’s practically laying across his desk. He knew it, he should have waited a bit longer until he came. Made sure there were some other brats in the room before he came in. Then he wouldn’t be forced to go through the conversation he sees building up within Iruka’s eyes. 

“We missed you yesterday, are you well?” Iruka sets the bag he’d been carrying down on the front desk, but his eyes are staring up at Rei. Dark and calculating, like he’s sizing him up for a fight. 

He should probably apologize for that. Right? That would be the respectful thing to do. And it’s not like he’s very aware of the customs around here. Maybe he’d violently insulted someone by not at least preparing a note or something? 

“I’m sorry, Sensei.” He sighs, glancing at the window and wondering if he could get to it fast enough before Iruka caught him. “For missing class yesterday. I fell ill and didn’t think I could make it in.”

There, that should cover his bases. Ugh, when was the last time he’d had to do that? Lie his face off. 

‘Last week.’ 

Ah, so it’s not that hard after all.

Iruka seems to buy it, maybe, seeing as the man only sighs and nods to him in understanding. “Did you see a med-nin?” 

Shit. Caught in a trap. How does he get out of this one?

“I-” 

The door slams open with a thunderous clash. A rolling mist of dark haze erupts from the opening. From it, he can see two shining lights that he can tell are eyes. A creature glides through the haze, stiff backed and an aura of murder radiating from them. 

“Umino.” The name is hissed. Venomous and deadly, the creature ready to rip something to shreds.

‘Jackpot. Crisis averted.’

Iruka only seems to sigh and turn slowly to the creature at the door. “Suzume-sensei, to what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“You know what you did.” Another hiss and the figure of his second-year teacher Suzume-sensei glides into view. Her glasses glinting in the low light of the morning sun. 

“I really don’t.” Iruka sighs and Rei feels an unaccountable sense of camaraderie with the man. This is a tired man. And Rei knows a kindred spirit anywhere. 

Maybe he should do something nice for the man? 

“Every morning I come in, you know what I do first?” Suzume-sensei has gotten close to the other man. A few feet being the only thing separating him from the irate woman. 

Iruka sighs again, and oh my god that guy might just be his spirit animal right now, “You drink some coffee?”

“Yesss.” She hisses and uh oh. Rei blinks and feels a little, tiny bit of dread pool in the bottom of his stomach. “And do you know what I use to drink that coffee?”

Iruka’s eyes flicker over him and the oddest sense of oh fuck runs down his spine. “Your favorite cup.”

“My cup!” Steam escapes from Suzume’s nostrils like a bull about to charge. “You know the one, pink, with hearts and the words ‘Best Sensei Ever’ on it? The one Iwana-sensei said you were going to toss in the garbage because it had a chip in the brim?” 

The cup that’s sitting in Rei’s hands. Proudly displayed on the desk in front of him. 

His hands move to his lap as inconspicuously as possible. The cup clutched between white-knuckled fingers. His eyes narrow down at Iruka as the man glances at him again. 

‘Don’t you fucking snitch on me.’ 

“I was joking?” Iruka hesitantly offers, eyes twisting back to Suzume-sensei. And if anything, the woman’s rage rises tenfold. 

A pressure blankets the room. A cold, uncomfortable feeling washing down his spine. And oh, this is killing intent. Huh, he thought it would be worse.

More…debilitating or something. It must be some sort of chakra technique? Blanketing the room with your chakra and spiking it with deadly intent? He didn’t know. 

Hmm, maybe he can practice later and see what comes of it.

His hand starts to rise to sip the coffee before he freezes. Stuck in a conundrum. If he sips, she will see the movement and turn her murderous aura on him. If he doesn’t sip, he’ll feel itchy until he does. And who knows how long until the woman decides to leave the room.

Maybe he could use a Genjutsu? Something low-powered so he doesn’t spike his chakra and alert the raging beast? 

Only problem being, he doesn’t actually know any Genjutsu. Besides the Henge , but that doesn’t really help him right then. Or does it? What if he layers a Henge on himself to block the movement of his arm? Is that possible?

Theoretically, from what he’s learned of the art of Genjutsu in class, he just needs to project the illusion he wants by exerting his chakra into being. Such is the Henge technique. So maybe, he just kind of does…

His chakra thrums to life under his skin and he hums inaudible under his breath. His eyes flash over to the two sensei, one of which is still fuming, and doesn’t see either of them react. 

Cautiously, he raises the cup up past the desk. When they don’t acknowledge his movement, he brings the cup to his lips and takes a sip of the rich, black liquid that is like nectar from the gods. 

To the outside world, he should only look like he’s sitting there with his hands in his lap. Back straight as he watches wide-eyed at the two teachers in front of him.

He’s unhurried in his movements, taking the time to simply relish in the moment. When the cup reaches his lap once again, he cuts off the use of chakra and waits for any sign he’s been caught. 

‘Nothing.’ He sighs. Good.

The killing intent cuts off rather suddenly and the room goes quiet. After a moment, his eyes flicker up to the front of the room to see both sensei staring at him. One in amusement and another in what seems to be embarrassment. 

Suzume-sensei raises a hand and adjusts the glasses on her face. An awkward cough to clear her throat. “My apologies, Rei-kun. I did not see you there.”

Ah. Shit, they’re both looking at him. Quick, say something cool. 

“Maa,” He tries to squint his eyes like Kakashi does in the anime and he’s not sure if he does it right, but at least he can’t see their reaction with his eyes closed. “No need to stop on my account.”

Iruka snorts, and Rei feels a part of himself slump in embarrassment. He said the wrong thing, didn’t he? 

He sighs, glancing at the closed window and debating the merits of jumping through the glass to make a dramatic exit. Maybe he could just switch places with something outside the window? Make it seem more mysterious than what it is.

Suzume-sensei clears her throat again and offers him a rather tense smile. Then she shoots Iruka one last glare. “This isn’t over.”

Rei watches her leave through the door, sliding it softly closed behind her. Her murderous aura disappears like a wave during low-tide. 

He sighs again, and feels way too old for this shit , and it’s not even eight in the morning. His eyes linger on the door for a bit before they slide over to where Iruka is now taking papers out of his bag. He can’t tell what they are from his spot in the back of the room, but he gets the sense that they are some sort of test or something. A quiz maybe?

And he feels his shoulders slump. He’s not good at quizzes. Never has been. 

He closes his eyes and wishes for the ground to open its maw and swallow him whole. So he could be embraced by the bosom of mother earth and not be burdened by things like surprise quizzes and annoying brats. 

The sound of a paper landing on wood comes from right in front of him and jolts his eyes open. There is a sheet of paper sitting before him. And, Iruka is standing before him and he hadn’t heard him move . The man is staring down at him with raised eyebrows. 

Rei sighs. Eyes half-lidded. He’s tired of the theater of it all already. “Yes?”

Iruka hums, “That was a neat trick, with the modified Henge to hide your drink.”

‘Fuck.’

He sighs again, oh my god, “How’d you know?”

Iruka shrugs, a hand going up to rub at the back of his head. There’s a lopsided grin stretching his features. “Ah, well, I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t sense the spike of your chakra.” 

It dawns on him suddenly, that there is more to the teacher than he ever thought of before. “You’re a sensor?”

Iruka shrugs again but nods his head in confirmation, “One of my many talents. Now, that Genjutsu . I didn’t see you do any seals?” 

“Ah,” Rei glances away, eyes darting everywhere but the man in front of him. It would make sense that the man had great eyesight if he could tell he didn’t do any seals. He’d have to in order to teach a bunch of children how to be trained killers. “I didn’t do any?”

He needed to keep a low profile from now on. He’d forgotten how perceptive shinobi were. 

Iruka’s eyebrows raise in surprise, before they narrow at him. “No? Does your new technique have a name then? It kind of looked like something I’ve seen some Jounin do when they want their privacy.”

‘Shit shit shit shit. Do I lie or do I come clean?’

“Really?” He feels a bit of excitement rise within him. Excitement that can be fully attributed to the fact that his subconscious - is it that or something else? - is that of a twelve year old boy who thinks ninja are cool. “I…uh, just made it up.”

Come clean then. Fantastic.  

“Oh?” Iruka lights up like he just said the magic words. “What was your process in it?”

Right. Okay. Think. How did he do it?

“Well, I just kind of thought about what I wanted to present to the world and…uh, projected it? With my chakra?” 

Iruka opens his mouth but before he can speak, a stampede of pre-teens come stomping through the door at the front of the class. And maybe that’s an exaggeration, there’s only like five of them max, but it doesn't stop the building sigh from escaping into the world. 

Iruka echoes him, but gives Rei a look. “We’ll talk about it some other time.” 

“Yes, Sensei.” He intones. Convinced he’ll never speak with the man about it ever again. 

Iruka half-turns before he stops and glances down at Rei’s hands. “Do make sure Suzume-sensei finds her cherished mug before the end of the day, will you?”

Rei nods, and the man leaves him alone. He watches him go, before his eyes flicker over to the children that start filling the room. 

He sighs. Again. For fuck’s sake. And takes a sip from his mug.

It’s going to be a long day. 

The day goes by in a simultaneous blur and crawl. 

It’s as eventful and chaotic as one would expect from a shounen anime. And he could tell you all about how seeing the characters in real life was a fucking trip . They look so weird as real people, oh my god.  

But he won’t. Because this shit ain’t about them. 

His life isn’t a plot point for some main character bullshit. Thank you very much.  

Anyway, it’s a long day. He needs two more cups of coffee before the day is done and oh boy , let him tell you. Getting into the teachers lounge to steal said coffee is a right pain in the ass. He did it. Somehow. Through copious amounts of trickery and one instance of inciting a riot amongst the younger classmen. 

Read: He made a racket down the hall and then Kawarimied with a rock he tossed in through the open door when they went to check it out.

Overall, it was not a very productive day. They spent most of the time doing mundane things like history work and a crash course on how to topple a corrupt criminal regime. 

Mundane things.

Anyway, when the final bell rang and all the little ninja-chan’s - ugh - sprinted out to greet their parents and guardians, Rei slipped out the window and leapt down to the ground. Using chakra to bolster his limbs, something he’d practiced after he rolled his ankle that first time training. 

Then he got the hell out of dodge. 

His walk home was filled with a bunch of new information he needed to parse through later on. For one, those marks on Naruto-chan’s cheeks looked rather pinchable. And if that didn’t make him feel like a grandma, then seeing how thin and malnourished the Uchiha kid was made him want to bake the kid a fucking meal. 

‘Does nobody know how to take care of children in this fucking village?’

He doesn’t think they do. 

Anyway, gods. Like he said, this shit ain’t about them. It’s about his slow descent into madness, clearly. Why else would he be forced to sit through eight hours of school once again?

And, and, the coffee made him a little antsy. The first two cups did nothing, but the last one set his veins alight with energy he needed to burn off. He needed to move, like a lot. 

He switches direction with little thought, letting his feet take him to somewhere he could run around in. Curse this little body and its insane amount of energy. 

He glances at the rooftops before deciding against it. He wasn’t truly a ninja yet and he was sure the ANBU wouldn’t take kindly to a non-headband shinobi running amidst. But then again, maybe he’d get confronted by Purple Shadow-sama and he’d be able to actually speak to her this time. You know? Like a normal person. 

No. Best not tempt fate or whatever. Just his luck he’d get gored or something before he could do anything in this world. He’d rather not do that. Thanks.

He didn’t know what he’d expected from this world, but seeing things is believing. Except it isn't because illusions were commonplace. Seeing Uchiha Sasuke look like he would snap like a twig with just enough pressure was kind of demoralizing. Seeing the girls in the glass barely eat anything at lunchtime and then go on with the day hungry all in the name of some bullshit diet was infuriating in its own way.

Half the stomachs in the room were growling, he was sure.

Wasn’t the whole point of forming a village so the children didn’t have to go hungry? Why are they all half-starved? Do any of the orphans know anything about nutrition or are they just winging it like everyone else?

Not to say that he knew anything about proper nutrition. His meals left a lot to be desired. And his new body - regular body? - was too thin as well. Though he did seem to be on the taller side of things amongst his peers. So it wasn’t all a loss.

There’s something rotten in the village if things are so bad. Even the civilian kids look on the thin side. The only kid he saw that had any real fat on their cheeks was the Akimichi kid. And they basically grew that way. So they didn’t count.

‘Not my problem right now, focus.’ 

Right, anyway, what was he doing again?

Going somewhere to do something. 

And trying not to think too much about how cute Suzume-sensei is.

That's the old man talking. He doesn't need that shit right now, thank you. He’ll take part in that moral dilemma at a later date.

For now, he must focus. Focus on not running into any old ladies as his feet take him somewhere mysterious. He could search his memories and find out where he's going, but what's the fun in that?

He should really check, walking in blindly is a stupid way to die.

No. Nope. Just keep on walking. Where was he? Who knows, somewhere in Konoha. Wow, such pretty trees. They sure are big. 

Is that a roar he hears? None of his business. 

He walks past an alleyway and stops at the muffled grunts coming from within. It sounds like someone is getting their ass kicked. 

Don't look inside. Don't look inside. Don't look-

“Oh hey, Purple-sama! Fancy seeing you here.” 

The purple haired ANBU turns to look at him from her spot standing over a man wearing a mask. The man, who is clearly not a Konoha shinobi groans and tries to crawl away. Purple Shadow-sama stomps her foot on the man's back to stop him and tilts her head at Rei. Curious, like a cat.

Rei waves and offers a grin, “This is awkward.” 

Purple-sama, as he just shortened her name to, waves slowly back at him with the hand at her hip, blood dripping from the metal arm guards. 

He should be feeling something like fear right about now. He really should be. But honestly, it's a toss up between hero-worship and faint attraction. 

Don't give him that look, he died remember? Things are going well in comparison.

Purple-sama is so badass, and he gets to see her in action. Though…looking at the sad excuse for her opponent, he feels kind of cheated. 

Though, a strong woman who could kick his ass? Wife material if he says so. If she can also allow herself to soften in his presence and look at him like he's worth something? He'd propose right then.

‘Wait. Why do I think she has a boyfriend?’

Nevermind, it's not important at the moment. 

“Boy!” The man groans, his hand reaching out to him with broken fingers. “Tell Oroc-ack.” 

The man's head bounces off the ground in a rather dramatic spray of spittle and blood. Rei’s brain aches in sympathy. He's going to feel that one when he wakes up. 

Poor guy. 

Why isn't he freaking out? Who knows honestly. Something is wrong with him.

A blink and then three other masked ANBU are scattered around the alley. They communicate with the oddest sets of sign language, taps and whirs that leave him wholly confused. Which he assumes is the point. Before they truss up the unconscious man with ninja wire, toss him over one ANBU’s shoulder, and two disappear. The man who held the captive and another as escort. 

Purple-sama is still there, along with what he can only assume to be a subordinate? Maybe? He doesn't know, it's impossible to read their body language correctly. So it could be the big kahuna boss man himself coming to check in and he'd never know. 

Anyway, ANBU Number Two, as they are now dubbed, tilts their head in his direction before they too vanish into thin air. Leaving only Purple-sama and him in the alleyway. 

Purple-sama wipes the blood off her fists and tilts her head at him questionably. Maybe.

“Oh,” He shoves his hands in his pockets and glances away. Privacy, right. People don't like to be stared at. “I've interrupted your work. My apologies.” 

She hums and points a finger at him, “You never saw him.” 

“Saw who?” He grins, mildly freaked but not sure if it's in a good way or not yet. “All I saw was you.”

She hums again and tilts her head, curiously once again. She stays there for a moment, and he can feel her eyes staring into his soul. And then… 

“Good boy.” 

‘Uh-oh.’ 

Then she's gone, a mere whip of the wind brushing his cheeks. Cheeks that suddenly feel like they're a thousand degrees hotter than they were before. 

‘I think I just hit puberty.’ 

Chapter Text

The next few days sucked. 

If only for the fact that nothing of interest happens during them. In fact, the most interesting part of his days is his adventures in stealing coffee in the morning. Adventures that get almost pathetically easier as the days go by. 

He’s almost tempted to steal Suzume-sensei’s cup again just to see her confront Iruka about it. Terrifying women activate his monkey brain for some reason. 

Anyway, he suffers through the days of long classes and loud students with minimal complaints. He needs to be there in order to graduate, doesn't mean he needs to get invested in any of the characters right then. Even if it would be smart to get on their good sides before they become ninja. 

‘They’re Clan Kids™, it might come in handy to know a few of them.’

He’s got a whole ass month to try to make new friendships or whatever. He’s allowed a few days to get used to this new routine. And it’s only been a few days too. Since he woke up in this new world with a lifetime of memories crammed into a preteen body. 

He’s lucky if he even manages to take a shower most days, let alone try to build a new life for himself.  

Luckily, he’s found an outlet for his frustrations and other annoying feelings. Everyday after class, he spends an inordinate amount of time training. Burning off energy as much as he can. It’s gotten to the point that he can do a lot of things with only a thought and some molding of chakra. 

Tree-walking is second nature, due partly in fact that he spends the first half of his time training, doing everything on the sides of trees. It’s honestly quite nauseating, standing sideways while gravity tries to pull him down to the earth, but he powers through it. 

First time he did a Kawarimi on the side of the tree he nearly fell out of the damn thing, only his quick actions of landing stomach first on a lower branch saved his ass. 

Kawarimi also became nothing more than a thought before he could switch positions with things. He’d toss his chakra out to sort of feel things around him and he could make the switch happen with only a thought of doing so. He practiced it enough that he could switch half a dozen times before he needed to stop and take stock of things again. 

Speaking of feeling things. He’d found that he could use his chakra as a sort of probing sense. He could, for lack of a better term, reach out and poke things with it. Brush his chakra against something and feel it in the back of his mind. 

“It’s trippy as all hell.’ 

He could feel things and switch places with them even if he couldn’t see them. Just as long as they were within a certain vicinity. The first time he did it to a bird, the bird tried to kill him with its beak. So, he assumed it must be unpleasant for other people too and never tried it on anyone.

He’d only use it if he needed to switch places with someone for whatever reason. 

No need to brush his chakra against people on the regular. The whole thing felt rather intimate, and he didn’t need that kind of scrutiny. 

He didn’t do a lot of walking on water though, which was something he planned on doing more of soon. He simply didn’t have enough time to go to the river once he was done training. 

Rei spent all his free time training or sleeping, there was no inbetween. Hours of simply re-learning his body to the point that he didn’t feel so awkward in it. 

He spent way too much time re-learning how to throw kunai. That first time he’d grabbed a kunai from his pouch and tried to throw it was embarrassing in its failure. Years of not knowing how to throw knives of any kind besides just sort of chucking them mixed rather pathetically with this body’s years of training and muscle memory.

It took him a few tries before he could hit the target and then another few before he hit the target with the pointy end instead of the handle. Needless to say, he spent a whole freaking day just throwing kunai and trying to get used to how it felt. 

Which brought up the sudden conundrum that he found himself in. Weren’t shinobi supposed to have kunai and shuriken? You know, the spinning ninja stars?

Rei only had kunai. 

‘This kid was a disaster.’ 

He didn’t have enough money at the moment to do any shopping for shinobi equipment and he didn’t know if the academy had any free bins he could find some at. All he knew for sure, was that the academy provided students with a set of equipment at the start of their second year and they were expected to take care of them until they graduated or bought their own things. 

He distinctly remembers the gear he got came with a set of shuriken. 

‘And this dumbass kid lost them a year ago.’ 

He’d been relying on the sets the academy had for training during any field exercises. The ones they had out for practice use only. He didn’t know how he’d survived this long honestly. 

Luck seemed to favor him though, seeing as he was due his allowance from the orphan fund and he could do some shopping then. All he had to do was go pick it up. 

From the Hokage Tower.

The one place in the village that is sure to give him a giant fucking headache with its bullshit. Government buildings seem to have that effect on him. The amount of bureaucratic bullshit and endless paperwork that resides within those buildings had a way of driving him insane. 

‘Last time I went into a government building it took three hours before I could leave again.’

He had better hopes for this life, seeing as it’s shinobi he’s dealing with, but those hopes don’t count for much these days. 

Which is why, on Friday afternoon after class was over, he found himself trudging his way towards the Hokage Tower at a snail’s pace. The distance between the two buildings wasn’t far, a five minute walk in between the two at most. But somehow, he managed to stretch it into a fifteen minute trek. 

What can he say, it’s a talent.

It was the last day before the weekend that he could get the damn stipend before he’d have to wait until next week. And he was running low on food and other things that he needed. 

Plus, he’d gotten a note slipped under his door in the night - which holy fuck that was a security breach, what if it had been an explosive note? - saying that his rent was due next Tuesday. And he’d rather make the payment over the weekend and then figure out how to budget the rest until he can start taking D-ranks or something. 

And he was going to need a few days to get that shit figured out. He wasn't the greatest at math, okay? It just took him a little longer is all.

Anyway, despite his reluctance, the Hokage Tower loomed in front of him like a beacon of despair. His feet dragged, like he was a zombie raised from the dead at the will of some nefarious evil-doer. 

He had to step around some old ladies that exited, chatting like they just came from a book club or something, and then he stepped into the void. Back straight as he could get it in the face of certain doom. 

The lobby was…quiet. So quiet that he felt rather foolish for a moment. Maybe he had been worried about nothing? 

He searched his memories, trying to get an understanding on if it was normal behavior and came to the conclusion that his evidence was inconclusive. He’d never been in the building on a Friday afternoon before, maybe it was normal?

His shoulders slump and he’s sure his posture is going to be permanently slouched by the time he’s eighteen, but he walks up to the front desk. 

There’s a woman behind the desk, and she’s a cute thing. Definitely would be talking her up, if he did that sort of thing. No, his flirting is sending glances across the room and hoping she’ll notice and come speak to him. She’s got blond hair that seems familiar and features that seem effortlessly beautiful. He can’t see her eyes, seeing as she’s looking down at her desk, so he can’t tell what they look like. But the blond hair is rather identifying in itself.

He steps forward and green, pupil-less eyes flash up to scan him at the door. And yep, that’s got to be a Yamanaka.

‘A mind-reader for a receptionist? Kind of overkill don’t you think?’

This is a shinobi village after all. He was sure she probably worked in Torture and Interrogation as well. She must be a strong shinobi if she was the first line of defense for the Tower.

Hmm.  

Or an average one, because any shinobi worth their salt isn’t going to attack through the front door.

‘Light bulb.’

Note to self: Attack through the front door and surprise everyone involved with his sheer gall. 

He blinks and the woman is still staring at him, but her eyes seemed to be narrowed at him in consideration. With a sigh, he steps forward to stand at her desk. Dredging up the memory of the last time he was here.  “Ano, Student Rei here to pick up my stipend for the orphan fund?” 

“ID?” Her eyebrows are raised in a way that does funny things to his insides. 

Curse you puberty. Why must it haunt him so?

“Ah.” He pats his pockets until he finds his wallet in his front pocket. The place he put it when he left his apartment that morning. The place it hasn’t left all day long. And then pulls out his ID card. Specially designed for orphans like himself who did not have any birth certificates or other equally easy forms of identification. Like parents to vouch for him. “Here you go.”

‘Don’t look at the picture, please. I look like a child in it and it’ll ruin any cred I’ve got going for me.’ 

She looks at the picture. He can tell by the way her eyes light up and her lips purse in order to stop the coo from escaping. He stamps down the sigh that wants to come out. He’ll admit, tiny Rei was a cute little bugger. All wide-eyed and fluffy hair. He has various memories of older women trying to pinch his cheeks when he was just a lad. 

Memories that seem to continue on well into his age in the double digits. 

Now though, it only makes him tired. It’s exhausting being this cute, thank you very much. 

He was a man. Grown and rugged. He had a beard!

A breeze slides off his bare chin and he just barely stops the groan from leaving his throat. 

She glances back up at him and he offers a lazy grin that feels more sarcastic than anything else. She looks back down at his ID before she reaches for some papers at the end of her desk. Once she hands back the ID, she shuffles through the papers before finding one that she is looking for. 

“Everything looks good,” She hands him the paper and points down the hall. “Third door on the right.” 

He nods, and lets a small smile slip onto his lips. “Thank you, nee-chan.” 

Was that right? He didn’t know. Isn’t that what Japanese children call older women who help them? Fuck if he knew. He didn’t exactly deep dive into the culture, you know?

The woman turns an alarming shade of red in the face, but he turns away before she can reply. No need to get murdered or something. 

He’s not fleeing. Just following directions. 

He’s down the hall in a blink and knocking on the third door to the right before he has a chance to hesitate. Getting a muffled call from inside, he cracks open the door and slips inside the room. 

It’s not much of a room really. Basically a small office with papers and filing cabinets piled high to the ceiling. Behind the desk is an old man, grey haired, glasses and pocket marked cheeks. He’s peering at Rei over the rims of his glasses, as if he was personally offended by the intrusion. 

“Ah, Rei-kun.” The man sets down the papers in his hand and waves Rei forwards. His other hand went into a drawer in his desk to pull out a slip of paper. The man’s eyes dart around the room before they settle on Rei. “I trust you have it?”

‘What?’ 

“What?” 

The man - Oku Yoshimoto his brain provides -  lets out a sigh like Rei just told him the world was ending. “The paper Toku-chan gave you?” 

Was that her name then? Odd. 

He shows the man the paper and hands it over when he makes grabby hands at it. The old man looks like he’s seconds away from sniffing the damn thing in order to find the residue of the pretty woman who had held it earlier. Or maybe that’s just his imagination. 

“Oku-san?” He questions and the man huffs before shoving the paper he’d grabbed from his desk at Rei and expecting him to catch it when it falls. 

“You know what to do with it, find the treasurer and get your pay.” The man starts to giggle and Rei decides it’s best to make a break for it while he can. 

He’s out the door so fast he might have been the second coming of the Yellow Flash. Once the door closes behind him, and the inane giggling muffles mercifully, he stares down at the writ in his hands. It’s a money order, basically. That he has to cash in with the treasurer to get his money. Ryo, it's Ryo. 

With a sigh, he digs deep within his mind to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do now. This was a whole lot more complicated than he’d thought it would be. He should have expected something like this. 

A few ninja walk past him as he stands there, but he ignores the odd looks they send him. It’s none of their business if he’s completely lost. 

The Treasurer's office is on the second floor. Which means he needs to find his way through the swirling mess that is the Hokage Tower and make his way up a floor to find his destination. 

He sighs and heads further into the building. He should have waited until Monday.

Two hours later, he manages to stumble his way home with a raging headache and new hatred for all things paperwork. 

Maybe he should just become a civilian. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with all the paperwork involved in shinobi life. 

No, no. He’s too invested already. 

Good news, he has money now. 

Bad news, more than a quarter of it is going to disappear into the pocket of his landlord come tomorrow afternoon. He’s wiped out from the experience of getting said money. And he didn’t know if he was going to get a chance to train at all that night. 

He checks the clock - the only clock he has and it’s a small alarm clock near his bed - and sees that it’s quarter after five and lets out a sigh he can feel all the way to his toes. 

Sitting down on his bed, he curls up on the cushion and sorts through his newfound riches. Taking the moment of calm to count how much money he actually has. It’s not much. After setting aside the month’s rent, he divides the remaining Ryo in half and feels disappointed in what remains. 

The next month’s rent and the half of the rest are both set aside. The half for food later on and the rent is self-explanatory. The rest, he stuffs into his wallet with the leftover Ryo from last month’s stipend, to use as spending money. 

There is still a lot of stuff he needs to get and it seems he’s going to have to neglect some other things to do so. He still needs a set of shuriken. Needs some better shinobi clothing that is made from sturdier material, possibly some new sandals. He also needed a few house supplies. Like dish soap. And toilet paper. 

But those things don’t hold the same gravitas as the pointy objects he needs the most.

‘Why couldn’t I have a convenient house of some kind left to me by my dead parents?’ 

Ugh, that felt wrong to think.

With a sigh, he glances morosely around the studio apartment and decides he’s going to try to get some training in before the night falls. It’s better than staying there right then. 

He just needs to put the money somewhere safe until he can transfer it the next day. His eyes flicker around the room until a faint memory tickles the back of his brain. He rolls off the bed and half-climbs under the bed. There’s a loose floorboard under it that he can remember using to stash stuff before. 

When he pries it up, there are a few things inside that were once very important to him. And still are but like, differently than before. There’s some ninjutsu scrolls, the academy three that all students are given. A book that looks suspiciously like a scrapbook. Some kunai in mint condition and a dark blue piece of fabric. 

Grabbing the fabric, he slides out from under the bed and unravels what he has in his hands. It’s a blanket. A baby blanket. The one he showed up at the orphanage swaddled in.

‘Oh.’ Sadness seeps into his bones, startling in how much it drowns everything else out.

There’s so much baggage inside him. Two lives filled with pain and loneliness that have no outlet. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it all. His nights are filled with blood and pain and his days are achingly lonely. 

Maybe he should try to make some friends? 

Put aside the fact that they are little brats and try to be friends with them? So he’d have people to talk to and fill up the silence in his life. They wouldn’t always be little brats and he would need friends his own age. Ugh.  

Two steps forward, four steps back. 

The blanket in his hands is heavy. A weight that is more burdensome than he cares for. He’d stolen this life. And whether or not the kid would have done something with it, he still took the chance from him. Even if he didn’t have much choice in the end. 

And that makes him feel like shit. 

He didn’t account for much in his last life, but he still had morals. And taking a kid’s chance of a good life away from him went against them. 

With another sigh, he folds the small blanket back up and just holds it in his hands for a moment. While it is heavy and burdensome, his heart feels a bit fuzzy while he holds it. Because it’s proof. 

Proof that someone, somewhere, had loved him. Even if it was only for a moment. 

After a few minutes, he grabs the money from the bed and crawls back under it to stash it away. He ignores the scrapbook for now, and when he slides back out, he leaves the blanket on his bed. Just for the night, then he’ll put it back. 

Glancing at the clock, six ten glares back at him in harsh red lines. Damn, where did the time go? He’s got maybe an hour and a half until it’s dark out and if he’s going to do any training, he needs to leave within the next five minutes. 

But, glancing back at the blanket he just set down on the bed, maybe training can wait until tomorrow. He was rather tired, and…he just wanted to relax for one night. Was that such a bad thing? 

With a sigh, he set about getting ready for bed. He probably should eat first, but he can’t find the energy to make anything. Changing into his sleep clothes, some shorts and an old t-shirt, he made his way over to the bed and sat down. His hand reached out to grab the baby blanket next to him. 

He curls his fingers into the fabric and lifts it up to shove his face into it. Taking a long moment to just exist with it so close to him. To feel some of the love he imagines is radiating from the blanket. Leftover from his parents before he lost them. 

Which is wishful thinking. If anything, his parents were probably the ones to dump him at the orphanage steps because they didn’t want him. Just like everyone else. 

‘I need to get some therapy or something, damn.’

Both his selves needed some therapy, and if that wasn’t just the worst. 

The rest of the night was spent in a daze. His hands wrapped around the baby blanket like it was a lifeline he couldn’t bear to lose. 

It was all rather sad and pathetic of him, but hey, that was his new life. 

The next day he barely manages to peel himself out of bed. If it weren’t for the damn itchy blanket that he was forced to sleep with every night, he probably would have stayed in bed most of the morning. 

As it was, he didn’t truly wake up until around ten in the morning. A bit late compared to what has become normal in the last week, but still in the morning. 

He went through his morning routine and tried to think about what he all had to do that day. It was Saturday, so he had all day to himself. No responsibilities of any kind to drag him down. 

He needed to do a bit of shopping. He needed things, like a set of shuriken and some new clothes. And home things. The home things he could probably get at the convenience store down the road, but the shinobi gear needed a specialty shop. 

And so brought up the first problem of the day. He had no idea where he could find such a shop, nor what one would be the best one to go to. 

He’s never been to one before. Everything he has gear-wise is from the academy. 

He sighs into his toothbrush and stares at the child in the mirror. He looks tired. There are bags under his eyes that look awful and his eyes themselves look dull and bland. The night of relaxation did little to stem the flow of nightmares. 

They weren’t bad really. It’s just that he shoots awake feeling like he’s on fire and his arms are covered in blood he can’t wash away. 

His hair looks rather greasy and unkept too. Which means he needs to buy some shampoo as well if he’s going to have any chance of saving it. There doesn’t seem to be many split ends, so thank the gods for that. But the midnight locks hang down to his chin in a limp way that itches when he least expects it. So he needed to do something about it or cut it off completely and he didn’t really want to cut it. 

Rei had worn his hair long for the last few months and cutting it off seemed like a disservice. He wanted long hair.  

After a sigh, he spits out the toothpaste and quickly washes his face. Then he leaves the bathroom to make something to eat. His plans of making some eggs are dashed when he realizes he doesn’t even have a pan to cook them in, nor the eggs themselves to be cooked. So he settles for some toast and decides to get some takeout or something for lunch. 

He’s got to remember to eat more. He burns through the calories so fast because of training that if he doesn’t start watching it, he’s going to be short forever. 

The next thirty minutes are just kind of spent…staring…into space while he mindlessly putters around his apartment. Cleaning up a bit where he can, but otherwise just sort of wandering while he comes out of his slumber. Mornings have always sucked for him and letting himself sleep in wasn’t helping much. 

Finally, he eventually dresses himself in something presentable and grabs the rent money from under his bed to give to his landlord. Then he leaves the apartment - through the door this time you savage - and makes his way down to where he knows the landlord lives. 

Akira-san is an older woman, at the tail end of middle-aged, with brown hair and brown eyes and remarkably plain in a way that would make her deadly as an assassin. But instead of using her appearance to blend in with any crowd, she instead uses it to run an apartment building like a tight ship. Granted, there’s not much correlation there but it’s not his fault. 

He doesn’t know much about her besides the fact that she lives alone and has two cats to keep her company. That, and she always treated him with stern kindness during their interactions. 

After dropping off the money and speaking with the woman for a few minutes, he makes his way out into Konoha in search of a weapons store of some kind. He had all day to find it, but he wanted to get some training down at the river later. He still needed to learn to walk on water without needing time to prepare himself for it. 

And the only way to do that was through exposure therapy. Do it so much he could do it in his sleep if he had to.

It took him a while to find a shop that looked vaguely like it sold shinobi gear. It took so long in fact, that he had considered multiple times if flagging down a passing shinobi and asking for directions was something he should do. 

The shop was in one of the nicer districts of the Konoha market. The outside of the building looked clean and inviting in a way that hinted at money. Hinted in a way that made him hesitant to enter the building in fear of what kind of stuck-up snob would be behind the counter. 

Shaking his head, he let out one last sigh before forcing himself to enter the shop. Once inside, he let his eyes glance around the room and he was pleasantly surprised. It looked like a weapons shop. Racks on racks of swords and other edged weapons of all kinds lined neatly around the store. He could even see some blunt weapons in the far corner. 

There is a man behind the counter to the left of the door. Dressed in a fine kimono that looks like it cost more than his allowance and a narrow-eyed look that said he was being judged and had been found wanting. The rest of the man’s appearance meant nothing the second he caught sight of the look. 

Ignoring the man as best he could, he made his way further into the store. Wandering the makeshift isles of weaponry that towered over his tiny body. All the weapons looked like they were crafted by the best blacksmith money could buy and the first price tag he looked at had him freezing in surprise. 

Everything in the shop was expensive. Absurdly so. 

And the products told him why. Many of them had tags on them that read things like Chakra Conducting and Elemental Infused. And other things that meant nothing to him at the moment. All way beyond his current skill level. 

With a sigh, he wandered some more just trying to find some regular ass kunai and shuriken. And even those were freaking expensive man what the fuck? A set of two dozen kunai alone would take out a huge chunk of his current spending money. The sets of shuriken weren’t much better. 

Closing his eyes, he turns around and heads for the door. He can’t afford this stuff right now and would need to take a few missions before he could comfortably make such purchases. Hopefully nobody would notice his equipment was subpar before he could get new stuff. 

He could just-

‘Oomph.’

He bounces off a hard - but also surprisingly soft - body and nearly falls over. He would have anyway, if it weren’t for the strong, slender hands that grabbed him by the shoulders to prevent him from falling. The hands are warm , and he can feel that warmth through the thin fabric of his shirt. 

Hesitantly opening his eyes, he’s met with a chest full of mesh armor that is covered by a long tan coat. A rather naked chest. With soft looking large swells that try to enticingly draw him in. 

“Usually I wait until the second date to get so close, brat.” 

‘A test of will so soon? It’s not even noon yet.’ 

His eyes wander up to a smirking face that is topped off with dark purple hair. Oh my god is it her? He stares up into her narrowed eyes and feels disappointment rise within him. 

It’s not her. 

He’s not sure how he knows, but he can tell this is not Purple-sama. There is an aura about her that feels way different than what the ANBU made him feel. Or maybe it’s the hair? It looks more black in appearance than anything else.The purple had been a trick of thee light. Plus he recognizes this woman. And he doesn’t remember her being anything other than an interrogator and eventual…sensei?

“Ah,” He looks away and relaxes a bit when her hands leave his shoulders. Though they leave behind a scorching feeling. Like her hands were made of molten lava and she just left some on his body. She didn’t even touch his skin, but the phantom feeling lingers. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.” 

‘Man, this body is just as touch-starved as the last one.’ 

Mitarashi Anko makes a sound in her throat that sounds like a laugh and leans forward to tower over him. Things… jiggle in front of his face with her momentum. His eyes flash down for a millisecond, he swears and he knows instantly he’s fallen into her trap. 

“I could see that.” She’s close. Too close. He can see the dark flecks that rim the edges of her brown, pupil-less eyes. “You weren’t watching at all with those peepers of yours closed shut.”

She’s smirking down at him - holy shit why is he so small - and it would do things to him if he wasn’t stomping them harshly under a metaphorical boot. With spikes on it. Very harshly.

Don’t blush. Don’t blush. Don’t. Blush. 

He doesn’t blush. Merely stares up into her eyes like he’s a dead fish. It’s easier to ignore it all that way. 

“What’s a brat like you doing here anyway?” She asks when he takes too long to answer. Her eyebrows raised in interest. 

“Trying to shop.” He sighs, glancing around past her generous…. assets to spare the incredulously priced kunai a baleful look. 

She follows his gaze and lets out a chuckle. Then, she stands up straight and claps a hand on his shoulder in companionship. “Expensive place, isn’t it?”

He nods. The place is too expensive and he’s going to have to find another shop. He just doesn’t even know where to look. You’d think a ninja village would have more weapon smiths or something. On nearly every street even. But no, they don’t. 

“I pay less for food every month than what I’d pay for some of this stuff.” He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. It might be an exaggeration, but it didn’t feel like one. And that turned him off of this store better than anything else ever could. 

“Yep.” Anko nods and smirks down at him. “This place usually only suckers the desperate, the foolishly optimistic and the clan folk who can afford to spend.” 

He raises an eyebrow back at her, “Oh? Then what are you doing here?”

It’s only after he says it that he realizes his words might have offended her. He’s not supposed to know anything about her. And he doesn’t really, but still. She could be part of a clan or something, he didn’t know. He didn’t know much about her at all. 

“I mean,” He winces and grabs the fabric of his pants to calm his sudden nerves. “Not that you’re-” 

She barks out a laugh and stops him from apologizing further with a waved hand. “Cute. But no, you got me. I only come here to check out the new weapons that come in every month. Nobari-dono is a master craftsman and his work is always excellent.”

“Oh.” He had seen the name stamped into the hilts of various weapons. He didn’t realize they were made by someone who was so well known. Or that was what the kanji meant. Plus, reading kanji is hard on his westerner brain. Even if it isn’t his brain anymore. Ugh. 

“Question is,” She taps a finger to her lips and crinkles her eyes down at him, “what brings you here?” 

He sighs and gestures towards where the sets of shuriken sit prominently on display. “I need some shuriken, I ran out.” 

‘More like I never had any to begin with.’ 

“Academy then?” She asks and hums when he nods up at her. Which is whack. He was tall in his last life. She’s barely five nine at the most. “Did nobody tell you brats where to get your equipment from?” 

He sighs. They might have, but he’s only been here a week now. But he can’t tell her that, he’d be in T&I before the end of the day. “Half of my class is Clan Kids™. ” 

She snorts and he can feel the wave of sympathy that comes from her. “Ah, that makes sense. The capitalization on those words is well earned.”

He nods and lets out a long sigh in agreement. They made him tired just thinking about them. Didn’t he say he was going to give them a chance last night? Ugh. 

She hums and puts her hands on her hips, “Tell you what, I’ll tell you where to go for some cheap gear but you gotta do something for me in return.” 

He lifts an eyebrow in response, weary but ultimately curious. “What kind of something?”

She smirks and leans forward, shoving her chest into his face. Don’t look. Don’t look. And tilts her head to the side in a very dangerous way. 

‘Why do dangerous, attractive women keep looking at me like that? Like I’m prey or something?’ 

“Will you do it?” She asks, her lips tilting wickedly at him. And he notices she didn’t answer his question. Which means she could ask him to do anything and the knowledge of such things was completely at her mercy. 

He weighs the pros and cons and finds it completely useless. All he knows for sure is that this could go badly for him. Bad enough to end with bodily injury or worse, embarrassment. 

But she’s looking at him with those glinting eyes of hers and finds he is a complete push-over when it comes to women. 

He sighs. “Okay.” 

She lights up like a christmas tree and then proceeds to try to squeeze him to death in her excitement. What has he gotten himself into? He doesn’t know this person. 

‘Stranger danger is a thing for a reason, dumbass.’

He sighs again, but it’s muffled by her breasts in his face. Not that it’s very comfortable, the mesh slash chainmail shirt kind of ruins the moment for him. 

‘What does she want from me anyway?’

The answer is dango. 

That’s it. Literally just dango. 

Once they left the weapons shop together, she grabbed a hold of him and did a Shunshin across the village. Which was trippy, thanks. Once he got his bearings, she pointed down to a sweets shop across the road and tossed him some Ryo with instructions to get as much as he could for her.

“Why couldn’t you do that yourself?” He questions and gets a rather large pout pointed in his direction. 

“I’ve been prohibited from entering for a certain period of time.” 

He raises an eyebrow and she glances away sheepishly, a hand rubbing at the back of her head. “Why?” 

She squints her eyes across the street and scowls. It makes her look young in a way he’s uncertain about. And then he’s suddenly reminded, violently in fact , that he is technically older than her. By a few years and change. 

‘Ugh. This is so weird.’ 

“Some people got handsy and needed to be taught a lesson. Never interrupt Dango Time.” 

He nods slowly and figures that lesson involved copious amounts of property damage alongside it. 

“Okay.” He sighs and hops down from the roof. He makes his way inside and waits in the small line to the counter. The room is spacious, with chairs and tables nearby for a seating area. He can see other sweets behind the glass counter, so it’s not just a dango shop like he feared. It seems like a regular old bakery, if he’s honest. There’s not much to it. 

Though, he can see a few cracks in the flooring tiles and some of the tables look like they had been freshly sanded and restained to their current dark brown. So it must have been a rather messy ass kicking she’d dished out. 

When he gets to the counter and orders as much dango as the money can provide, he gets a shrewd look from the baker behind the counter. The woman’s eyes narrowing down at him before they dart to look out the window. When no sign of her assumptions shows itself, she reluctantly goes about getting him the dango. 

It’s…a lot of dango. Two bags full. 

He smiles up at the lady. Is everyone taller than him around here? And makes a quick exit. He walks across the street and into an alley besides the building he left Anko on, before he leaps up with a chakra enhanced jump that takes him half-way up. Sticking to the side of the building - which is awkward as shit with bags in his hands - he quickly makes his way up the building to the roof. 

When he gets there, Anko is perched on the edge of the roof staring down at him with raised eyebrows. Shit, right. Academy kids didn’t know how to walk up things yet. That was usually reserved for later on, when they are serious about ninja life. 

‘Whatever. Roll with it.’

“Two bags of dango, as requested.” He says, holding the bags out for her to take once he gets settled on the roof. 

Whatever questions she might have about his abilities seem to vanish in a blink, just like the way the bags do from his hands. He can only sigh and lament the fact that he didn’t even see her move. He was so outclassed that it wasn’t even funny. And if he remembered correctly, Anko wasn’t even a full Jounin yet.

What has he gotten himself into?

He watches her shove a stick of dango into her mouth and strip it clean in a few seconds. It’s honestly rather cool how she does it. It must be a talent of some kind, for her to do it so effortlessly. 

His brain itches to go somewhere else with it and he kills it with fire before it becomes a full thought. 

He respects women in this house, thank you very much. 

Anyway, she tosses the empty dango stick away and he watches it soar through the air and nearly hit a passing bird. When he glances at her for it, she’s pouting about it. Clearly annoyed she missed. 

He clears his throat when she goes to grab another stick of dango and her eyes lock on to him with laser-like focus. Right, Dango Time. But she only sighs and doesn’t merc him for the presumption. 

“Alright brat, I’m going to let you in on the greatest secret in Konoha.” She pats around at her pockets - in a show he assumes - before she reaches into her coat - that goes dangerously close to revealing things - and pulls out a slip of paper and waves him forward. 

Her hand reaches out and the slip of paper is resting in her palm, awaiting him to grab it. He looks at it for a moment before he sighs and reaches out to grab it. Just as his fingers touch the slip, her hand snatches a hold of his. Trapping the paper between their hands. 

He startles and looks up at her in askance. There’s an intense look in her eyes as she stares directly into his own. He wonders what she sees in his dark green eyes. What she is searching for. 

“Kid, you should be more careful with who you interact with.” Her eyes are hard and while he’s not the greatest at emotions and conversations, he thinks he sees something close to vulnerability inside her chocolate eyes. 

He shrugs, but doesn’t break her stare. “I trust you.” 

She scoffs and if anything, her eyes harden further. “I could be a traitor. I could follow you home and gut you while you sleep.” 

“But you won’t.” He squeezes her hand to try to reassure her. All at once remembering a part of her history that was rather prominent. Was this about Orochimaru? The traitor bit seemed centered around the man anyway. Maybe she had her own insecurities to deal with? “I trust you not to.”

Who knows how long she has felt isolated in the village. Just because of who her teacher had once been and the mark that blights her neck. 

She tilts her head at him and something lightens inside her eyes. “Why?”

He shrugs and squeezes her hand again, wondering if she needed a hug or something. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to tell her that he knows she is not a traitor. That in a previous life he watched her fight a man she once looked up to in proof of such a thing.

So he goes with something truthful instead. “You didn’t have to help me, but you are. And that makes you the first person to do something kind for me in a long time.” 

“Kid.” The ice in her eyes disappears completely. She sighs and gives his hand a light squeeze before she lets go. His fingers curl around the paper before it can fall. 

She looks vulnerable at that moment. Like he had said something that resonated with her for some reason. Her eyes seem to be looking right through him in a way that tells him she isn’t seeing him at all at that moment. She’s somewhere else. Trapped in a memory that probably haunts her. 

Damn tragic backstories. Always ruining the good times. 

“What’s written on here anyway?” He prompts. Hoping to break her out of whatever is haunting her. And lets out a little sigh when her eyes focus on his own. 

He’d like to say it’s an address written down, but it’s really only a set of directions pointing him to a location somewhere in Konoha based on a series of landmarks. And the landmarks don’t even start anywhere nearby. 

“That, my cute little friend.” She points at the note and cocks her hip. “Is how you find the best weapons shop this side of the Land of Fire.” 

He hums and scans the note another time. Alley next to the red fern? What? “They cheap?”

She nods and reaches into her bag for another stick of dango. “As dirt. And good quality to boot.” 

“How’d you find it?” He asks and tucks the paper away in his pocket for safe keeping. 

She shrugs, eyeing the dango in her hand with a hunger . “Knew the guy before he retired to open up his shop and raise his kid.” 

“Oh.” Which meant he could be anybody, but his money was leaning on the guy being someone from T&I. Great. “How good of quality?” 

“Top of the line. Everyone goes to him for things they need.” The dango is gone in a blink and the skewer is once again flying off into the distance. This time, he sees it bounce off the headband of a passing kunoichi. The kunoichi takes one look at Anko, her bag and the third stick of dango already in her hand and flees across the rooftops with an increased speed.

He hums in admiration and shoves his hands in his pockets while she eats. Their deal is completed and there is nothing keeping him there. But leaving right then seems wrong for some reason. 

He should probably thank her, right? That was something that was done in such situations? Hmm, being an adult is hard. And conversations are harder. 

“Thanks,” He glances away when she peers at him over her dango. “For helping me.” 

She huffs and flings the skewer away with barely a flick of her hand. A squawk follows in the direction it went and he doesn’t turn to see if she got that bird or not. 

“No problem kid, I needed your help too anyway.” She grins at him and he doesn’t blink this time but she’s just suddenly there, in front of him. Her hand reaching up to ruffle his midnight locks. 

“Still.” He doesn’t pout or dodge her hand. It feels kind of good, okay? “And my name is Rei. What’s yours?” 

He might as well ask her so he has an excuse to call her by her name. No need to give away his hand of cards by saying it prematurely. 

“Rei-chan,” She coos and he wants to slump. She sees him as a child, great. Then she puts her hands to her hips and snaps a pose. “Anko. Mitarashi Anko.” 

He grins up at her and very slowly slides into her personal space. Wrapping his arms around her in a quick - but slow, remember slow, this is a snake after all - hug. She tenses up in his arms despite him choreographing the thing a mile away. 

“What’re you doing?” She croaks. And he feels like he’s won a small victory in getting her off balance. The hug wasn’t even planned. He just kind of had the urge to hug her and so he did it. 

He didn’t show much affection in his last life and in this one he rarely had the chance to. He had a new lease on life. No need to make it suck worse by not doing the things he wants to. 

He steps away and smiles up at her again. Throwing his chakra out to feel everything around him. “Thank you, Anko-chan.” 

She sputters and her face tints pink. “Why so familiar?” 

He just lets out a small laugh. Grins. And then switches places with a rock on the road a ways down the street. 

People around him stop and look up at the rooftops at the squawk that follows. The grin doesn’t leave his face for a while after that. 

Chapter Text

Let him just say, Anko’s direction giving skills kind of sucked. 

What followed his quick escape was a wild goose chase across the streets of Konoha. By the time he found the first landmark he was looking for, a half-hour had passed and he was tired of sliding his way through the foot traffic.

The next half-hour was spent following the directions as best he could. The trip could be summed up in a few words. It was stupidly stupid. And he ended up not far from where he had left Anko sputtering on the rooftops. 

He really needed to think about things more, or at least learn to notice things better. The trip could have been cut short if he didn’t think about the directions in such a linear way. 

Nevertheless, he soon found himself walking into a rather dark alley. And the red fern he was supposed to turn by? It was a bar. Not an actual red fern like he’d been expecting. Like a dumbass, are red ferns even real things? 

He didn’t think they were. 

But the Red Fern . A rustic looking bar that looked more like something he’d find in a small town in his past life than anything else. Already he could see people making their way into the establishment. Making him wonder if they served food alongside the booze or not. 

At one end of the alley sits a shop hidden by the midday shadows. Only the hanging sign above the door with the logo of a kunai and shuriken on it gave it away. The building didn’t look like much. There was nothing besides the sign that said it was anything other than an abandoned building. The shop didn’t even have windows. 

With a sigh, he shoves the slip of paper back into his pocket and makes his way to the door. He hesitates for a moment before cracking the door open enough for him to enter. A bell jingles over his head when he enters. 

The inside of the shop is lit by lanterns spread around the room that send the corners of the room into deep shadows. There are rows of weapons that fill up the room, kind of like the shop he was at earlier, but while there it felt more showy and expensive, here it was done in a cluttered, homey kind of way. He didn’t know how a weapons shop could be homey, but this one managed it somehow. 

Despite Anko’s words about it being popular, there doesn’t seem to be any other customers inside at the moment, but he takes that as a win. People made him anxious.

“Be there in a minute!” A woman’s voice from somewhere in the back of the shop startles him. His eyes flicker around the room and he realizes there’s nobody in the main part of the shop. The counter at the front of the store is empty of its clerk. Behind the counter is a wall filled with what looks like scrolls of some kind and he wonders what’s in them. 

Shaking his head, he steps fully into the shop and starts to wander the aisles. Weapons are clustered together in a way that seems like the shop is overflowing with the things. And yet, somehow they are all evenly spaced enough to minimize the potential for accidental damage. 

Every kind of weapon seems to line the shelves. Swords. Small swords. Large, unwieldy swords. Long sticks with pointy bits at the ends. Just straight up pieces of wood, what the hell? That’s a two by four. He comes across a section that is literally just metal pipes. That’s it. Pipes. The kind you would see at a construction site.

He doesn't know the names of things, okay? Give him a break.

The craftsmanship looks nice, but he doesn’t know much about weaponsmithing to have a defined opinion on the matter. What he can tell you though, is that nothing about most of the weapons looks fancy like the shop earlier. Everything he comes across looks like a tool to be used instead of an art piece for decoration. 

And the prices match that aesthetic. Anko wasn’t lying when she said dirt cheap. Most things he looked at would only cost him a fraction of what he feared it would. 

‘The possibilities.’ 

He glances around the room with new eyes. There were so many options he could choose from. He could buy any weapon he wanted as long as he had the money for it. 

Things were cheap, but still would cost him a good chunk of his budget. These were weapons of war, not kitchen aids. 

He shook his head and kept wandering. He needed shuriken only right then and anything else would have to wait until a later date. He couldn’t afford to get lost in the delusions of grandeur and glory. He wasn’t strong enough yet to allow himself such a thing and who knew if he would even graduate yet, let alone live long enough to get there. 

He finds the kunai and shuriken easy enough, the display offering all sorts of regular looking weapons that are a fraction of the price the other shop had offered. But, all he can see is a few sets on display and they don’t seem to come with any containers. He looks around and sees what he was missing. There’s a note on the display, telling him to see the clerk to get a premade batch at the counter. 

Hmm. 

Shrugging his shoulders, he walks around the shop some more. Just kind of browsing the selection of weapons and tools he sees around the shop. There are things he thinks he could use. A lot of things he thinks he could use, but his need for them is not urgent like the shuriken are. He could come back later on and splurge when he had the money for it. 

With a sigh, he resigns himself to only getting some shuriken at the counter when he stumbles across what seems to be a training section. Weapons of various forms that come in either wooden or blunted versions of themselves. His eyes alight on a wooden sword that seems to draw him in. 

He raises a hand and grabs the wooden sword from the shelf before he can stop himself. It’s heavy in his hands, but it feels comfortable. Soothing in a way that makes no sense at all. He runs his fingers along the wooden blade and finds his will crumbling.

So much for only getting shuriken. Curse the cool-factor of swords and his obsession with them. 

Checking the price tag, he lets out a sigh of relief. It’s not too bad. In fact, it’s cheaper than he thought it would be. Basically the equivalent of like seventy bucks. Ryo is hard to quantify for him. Let him make it simpler. And that would leave him with around the equivalent of a hundred and eighty out of the two-fifty he’d left his apartment with. 

Plenty enough to make his other purchases and have money left over. He’d just have to find some training material to help him get started.

He makes his way to the front of the shop and steps up to the counter. There’s still no one behind it, so he wonders if the woman from earlier forgot he had entered. He sets the wooden sword down on the counter - Bokken! It’s a bokken, - and glances around in confusion. 

On the counter is a sheet of paper with the prices of premade sets of kunai, shuriken and senbon. Along with a few specialty packs that look more like combo deals than anything else. Buy this, and get these things for a cheaper price. Next to the sheet of paper, is a metal bell with the sign ‘ding for a surprise’ under it. 

‘That’s just asking to be touched.’ 

His hand twitches and he lets out a sigh. Whatever. He goes to press the damn thing and braces for a surprise. He presses the bell about halfway down before his hand stops moving. The reason? There’s another person's hand holding his still in a tight grip. The hand is covered in small scars and a bandage or two, and when he follows the hand up to the face that it belongs to, the owner is glancing around the room with wide, frantic eyes. 

‘Why the hell do people keep popping up from nowhere?’ 

It’s a face he recognizes. And not just because he has memories of it from a previous life. 

There’s a girl in the orphanage that spends her free time roughhousing with the boys. She’s young, barely five but she hit like the second coming of Tsuande of the Sannin and the entire time she was there, she had been his friend. They’d grown up together in the orphanage. Just two little orphans with nothing but the names given to them by the matron. 

Then one day she disappeared and he was sad about it. He didn’t see her again until he’d caught a glimpse of her years later at the Academy. She was a year ahead of him, and she didn’t seem to remember him at all. 

It hurt, but he understood. She had a family now. And he was just the same old orphan he’d always been. 

She moves his hand away from the bell and lets out a sigh when it doesn’t make anything louder than a dull clank. Clearing her throat, she lets go of his hand and clears her face of anything but mild pleasantry. 

‘The customer service smile. Familiar.’

“Welcome to The Sharp and Pointy , I’m Tenten. How may I help you today?”

There’s a bandage across her nose that scrunches as she blinks her wide eyes at him and he feels his heart stutter a bit in bewilderment. The back of his neck feels weirdly hot under his collar. 

‘Great. The boy had a crush.’  

He glances away and wills the embarrassing feelings away. He didn’t want to deal with this right now. His day has left him socially exhausted. 

He clears his throat and nudges the bokken with the hand she had let go of. Ignoring how the touch lingers on the back of his skin like a phantom ache. “This, and two dozen-packs of shuriken.” 

She smiles at him and nods, turning around to grab a scroll from the wall behind her. She looks much like his old life’s memories of her. Her hair is done up in the signature two buns on her head and a headband across her forehead. 

She sets the scroll down on the counter and smiles at him again. “Two dozen shuriken.”

He looks down at the scroll and raises an eyebrow. It’s just a scroll. He doesn’t see any metal bits attached to it. Until he remembers that seals were a thing and he’d just freaking forgotten somehow.  

The shuriken must be stashed inside a seal written on the scroll. And oh boy, does that open up a whole new avenue of thought. Sealmasters where valuable in this world. Prized in a way that could be beneficial to him later on. Not to mention that most of them were super strong and feared. Who knew what could all be done with seals. 

Tenten must read something in his face, because she looks sheepish. “Oh. Would you like me to show you how it works?” 

He nods and watches her grab the scroll and unravel it in front of him. There’s some kanji written in the center and he has a hard time understanding what it says. He thinks he could mean several things, but he thinks he sees the kanji for storage written in dark ink.

“This is a basic storage scroll. All you need to do is add some chakra.” She puts a finger over the seal and it flashes blue before it releases a puff of smoke. Once the smoke clears, a bunch of shuriken sit innocently on top of the piece of parchment. “And boom , instant stuff from inside.” 

He hums and picks up a shuriken. It’s lighter than he was expecting, and that’s really the only observation he has on the matter. He sets it back down into the pile. “Nice.” 

“Yeah.” She nods and then gestures back to the pile before her. “And to put the stuff inside, you just repeat the process while the thing you want to seal is on the parchment.” 

A flash of chakra later and the shuriken are tucked back into the scroll and she’s rolling it back up. She sets the scroll near the bokken and ducks down to rummage under the counter. He can just barely see the top of her head before she’s popping back up with a pamphlet in her hand. She sets it down on the counter and then starts to ring him up at the register. 

“Two dozen shuriken, one bokken and a basic training manual to go with it. Is there anything else I can help you find today?” She asks, peering at him through long-lashes. 

‘Ah.’ He’d wondered what the pamphlet was for. Good to know. 

He shakes his head, and she lets out a hum as she presses on the register. 

“That’ll be thirty-one thousand, four-hundred and forty-three Ryo.” 

He lets out a sigh and digs out his wallet. The insane number caused him to feel off-balance. But it wasn’t worth dwelling on. Despite the frankly ridiculous number, the price really only came out to about a hundred bucks in USD. And he had about two-fifty in total to spend on shit. 

Still, handing over the money felt like giving up a part of his soul. It sounds so expensive but it’s not. Not in the grand scheme of things. 

Once he hands over the money, the register clicks open with a whirl and he can see various seals decorating the machine. He can only assume it’s a marvel of technology that he doesn’t have enough time to dedicate himself to. But it tickles his brain, something fierce. He glances up at the wall of scrolls and feels questions rising within him. 

“I thought sealing was supposed to be rare?” He asks. Pointing towards the various scrolls and the register when she looks up at him. 

“It is,” She clicks the register shut and waves her hand over at the wall behind her. “But Kaa-san has a lot of time on her hands and we needed the space to store everything.” 

He raises an eyebrow, “Are all those scrolls filled with weapons?” 

She nods vigorously, a grand, genuine smile springing to life on her features. “Tou-san got a lot of orders when he first set up shop, so he came up with a system to make sure he wouldn’t run out. He makes the standard stuff in bulk and often goes overboard while he’s smithing. So we needed a way to store it all while keeping it accessible. And Kaa-san is amazing, she knew just how to do it without making a mess.” 

“How do they make so much of it all?” The wall is filled with scrolls. Hundreds, thousands maybe. And he can see them stuffing out of cupboards behind the counter as well.

Her eyes light up in what can only be hero-worship. “Tou-san and Kaa-san are really strong! They can make Kage Bunshin like they’re nothing! And they’ve been teaching me how to smith since I was young, so part of this is my work as well.”

“Really?” He asks and she seems to get a bit shy at the question for some reason. 

She nods and makes a shy gesture towards the scroll he had just bought. “Those are from a batch of mine.”

He raises an eyebrow and hums a bit, eyes glancing down at the scroll still sitting on the counter. He hadn’t realized she was already making weapons. He couldn’t tell the difference between her shuriken and the ones from the shop this morning. 

She must be really good already. Maybe he could come to her for any other gear he might need? If she was already making such fine weapons, maybe she would make him stuff in the future? 

“A-ano,” He twitches and snaps back to awareness to find her looking a bit red in the face. Her shoulders slump a bit at the ends. “O-or I c-could get you some from Tou-san’s batches if you don’t like them?”

He smiles and pulls the scroll to his chest alongside the bokken, “No thanks. These will be more than perfect.” 

She beams at him and his stupid heart does a flutter. Damn brat and his stupid childhood friend crush thing. Her hand slides the training pamphlet across the counter for him to grab. “Great!” 

‘Did I just get swindled? I’m not sure.’ 

Her turn around had been rather abrupt. 

He sighs and glances at the door. He still had some shopping to do and he was no closer to finding a shop that sold shinobi clothing than before. He tucks the scroll and pamphlet into his pants and tucks the bokken under his arm. 

“Did you want the scroll returned?” He asks. Figuring something so valuable would be wanted back. 

But Tenten shakes her head and smirks at him. “Nope. It’s all yours, free of charge.” 

“Thanks.” He nods and turns to the door to leave but stops before he can take a few steps. “Ne, you wouldn’t happen to know any good outfitters that sell shinobi-grade clothing, would you?” 

She tilts her head and puts on a thinking face. Her eyes light up and she ducks down under the counter again. By the time he steps back in front of it, she pops back up with a piece of paper and a pencil. She jots down something on the paper and hands it out for him to take. “The Fawntastic Hide is a Nara-run shop on the edge of the clan district. They sell good armor at a cheaper price than most. Plus, some of their clothing is laced with genuine deer hair.” 

“Isn’t deer hair rather itchy on sensitive skin?” He asks. Memories of a past life flashing before his eyes. He lived in the midwest of the United States for twenty-six years. He’s felt a few deer under his finger tips. Make of that what you will.

She shrugs, dangling the paper out in front of him with a little sway back and forth. “I heard they soak it in a solution before they work with it.” 

“Thanks.” He takes the paper, brushing his fingers against her own and grinning when she blushes a bit at the contact. He’s about to say something else when an oppressive aura emanates from the back room. Pitching the entrance into darkness as a soul-sucking void whips out in shadowy tendrils. 

Tenten lets out a groan and hides her face in her hands. “ Tou-sannn.” 

“Hime,” A creature of the void lurks in the doorway. He stares into the void and the void stares back. Two pinpricks searing into his soul. “Hath this fiend tried to sully thou?” 

Rei blinks. And then realizes the creature known as her father had seen his grin at her blush. Great, just what he needed. An overprotective father. Though he doesn’t know why he’s being glared at so much. Tenten is technically older than he is. 

And what’s with people using doorways as an intimidation tactic? Was it a genjutsu or something? 

Tenten huffs and stomps her foot, a kunai materializing in her hand. “What did Kaa-san say about you talking like that!” 

He should probably leave. 

“I be only looking out for thy innocence.” The creature hisses. And somehow, it sounds wounded . The words are followed immediately by a yelp when the kunai disappears into the void. 

“I’m gonna go?” He gestures to the door and inches away as Tenten lets out a rather loud shriek. 

“Tou-san!” 

Right. Time to go. 

He doesn’t look back as he leaves to shop. Infinitely glad for the escape. He has more shopping to do yet today and there was no need to be skewered before he was good and ready to be. 

He stops for lunch on the way to the Fawntastic Hide . 

The place he picks is a small mom and pop shop at the edge of the Clans District. It gave off the same appeal as a small town diner he’d occasionally visit in his last life. The menu is simple and easy to pick from. And it’s cheap too. A plate of Tempura and an Onigiri, chased down by two cups of coffee is less than twenty bucks. It’s the equivalent anyway.

He didn’t really know what he was ordering, but the guy in the booth next to him ordered it and it looked good, so that’s what he ordered. He probably could have searched the kid’s memories for his favorite dish or something, but he didn’t know if the taste buds would be the same or not. 

They should, but food has a way of changing a soul. 

Anyway, he eats quickly and makes his way back into the world. He wants to train later and so he needs to finish up shopping soon. He still needed to visit the convenience store as well, damnit. 

The trip to the store is uneventful. And when he gets there, there is little fanfare upon his arrival. The shop is rather large, and through the windows he can see several people inside doing their own shopping. 

With a sigh, he makes his way in. The inside is rather simple. Looking more like a small clothing store than anything else. There are clothing racks spread around the room. Unlike his last life however, there are no convenient signs above the sections to tell him what is the men’s side and what is the women’s side. 

Or the child’s section for that matter. Considering he’s so small. 

Like he’s done for most of the day, he resigns himself to a period of meaningful wandering as he browses the aisles. The walls are decorated with various pictures of deer doing all sorts of things. There are small statues of deer spread around the shop made of an old wood that he can feel the chakra in when he touches one in curiosity. And hanging from the ceiling are multiple chandeliers made of deer antlers that have candles flickering inside them. 

‘Man they really went all in on the deer theme.’ 

The clothes themselves are good quality. And because of that, they are still rather expensive. They are thick and sturdy, weaved in a way that has the shinobi lifestyle in mind during creation. 

There are armor sections. Ranging from a steel mesh all the way up to steel plates that are meant to go under your clothing for protection. Despite that, there are no big pieces of armor that could inhibit movement too much. They were ninja after all. And all the armor is expensive. He‘d known that going in, but to see it really drove it home. He would have to do a lot of missions in order to afford some of the stuff in the shop. 

Finally, he manages to find some clothes his size and feels his wallet wail in protest. 

With a sigh, he grabs two long-sleeved shirts, one in a off-white grey and another in a dark blue, and continues his trek around the store. The shirts are sturdy and don’t seem likely to rip easily at the seams. Plus, they have the benefit of being a size too big so he can grow into them. 

On his way to the counter to pay for the shirts, he stumbles across a section of the store that has his interest caught within the second. 

Black fabric peaks out at him and he feels a grin tug at his lips. Eyes lighting up at the thought. He sees that there is a deal on the fabric, three in a pack, and says screw it. Grabbing the pack and heading off to the counter. 

He pays for his prizes and dashes off back to his apartment. He still wanted to train and carrying around his purchases was only asking for trouble. 

Half-way to the apartment, he stops at the convenience store and picks up the miscellaneous things he needs. Penny and diming it in an attempt to save some of the money he had. He got some dish soap and toilet paper, and immediately forgot what else he needed. 

He felt rather awkward then, standing in the line to the register with a pack of toilet paper, soap and a wooden sword in his hands while people gave him weird looks. He ignored them the best he could though, so whatever they were thinking meant nothing to him in the end. 

There was only like seventy bucks left in his wallet by the time he made it home. And maybe he shouldn't have stopped to eat because he now needs to stretch that seventy dollars for the rest of the month. 

He’s such a fool. But the excitement of it all got to him and there was nothing he could do. Never let him go gambling.

Once back at the apartment, he stashed his purchases away and then lingered in the doorway to the bathroom. His eyes locked on to the innocuous pack of black fabric. 

Minutes later found him standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, a black mask covering his nose and the lower half of his face, running down under the collar of his shirt. 

“Maa,” He squinted his eyes up, trying to eye-smile in the way he’d seen Kakashi always do it. He’s not sure if he manages it, seeing as he can’t really see anything. But he thinks he gets it down. 

He felt ridiculous and was insanely glad no one was around to see him right then. But the mask was comfortable on his face. And it hid the fact that he had a baby face. Or it would, if he wasn’t such a short little shit.  

Maybe he’d take to wearing the things? 

Less than an hour later he found himself down at the same river as earlier in the week. Face bare and a wry twist to his lips. He’d left the mask back at the apartment after a bit of a debate. 

Well, not really a debate so much as he’d gotten nearly out his door and felt absolutely foolish with the mask on his face. He’d never worn one before and it would seem weird if he just started wearing the damn thing out in public. Especially as an orphaned academy brat. 

Maybe he’d just wait until making Genin before he started wearing them? Then maybe he wouldn’t feel so weird about it. 

Anyway, now that he was down at the river, he took a moment to stretch his limbs a bit. Sure, he’d been walking all day, but it never hurt to loosen up a bit. 

He eyes the river in contemplation and reaches into his pants pocket to pull out the small training manual Tenten had given him. He’d brought the bokken and he figured what better way to work out his chakra and water walking skills than to learn sword kata’s on the surface at the same time. 

It felt a bit ambitious of him, but he had literally nothing better to do.  

Opening the manual, he sees the paper is decorated in little pictures of some basic forms. Nothing very advanced really, basically just the bare-ass basics. Meant for literal children with how simple they looked. 

Good thing he was a child then, wasn’t it?

He memorized the forms to his best ability, taking the moment to force his stance into a mimic of what he sees. It’s awkward to hold and try to mimic at the same time. And he tries to think of a way to look at the manual and practice at the same time and comes up with a blank. 

If only there was some way he could hold it in front of him without using his hands. 

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. 

‘Humming isn’t going to do anything, dumbass.’ 

And then, in a rather rare flash of genius, he has an idea. He studies the manual intensely and then summons his chakra to the surface of his skin. Then, with barely a thought, a simple Bunshin pops into being beside him. 

It’s holding the paper up in its hands and showing it towards him. And he can see the forms on it plain as day. A smirk twists at his lips. 

He didn’t think it would work. Best not question it too hard.

With a sigh, he shoves the paper back into his pocket and wraps his hands around the bokken. It feels comfortable in his hands. Like it belongs there and he feels himself relax a bit. A part of himself connects with the wooden blade in a way that just feels right . 

He shakes himself and focuses back on the clone holding up the forms. He cycles through the forms as best as he can. Taking his time but not too long in doing so. He didn’t know how long the clone would last and it was best that he got used to things quickly. 

The bokken swings through the air with an ease that seems unreal. His body is basically moving on its own. And he could probably attribute that to the body’s previous Taijutsu training. 

Once he feels comfortable switching his stances and adding the swings and swipes, he dismisses the clone with a swipe of his hand and steps out onto the surface of the water. He sinks in a bit for the first few steps, but otherwise doesn’t fall in and get soaked. He gets to the middle of the little river before he stops and takes a breath. 

It’s not really deep, maybe four to five feet at the deepest, but it still causes an awkward feeling to rise inside him. He is barely taller than that anyway, so he didn’t really want to fall in.

Once he calms himself, he slides into the first stance and raises the bokken in a defensive hold. Then, with another breath, slides into the second stance. Bringing the blade before him in a slow swipe. It’s awkward and he doesn’t think he does it right, but he continues on with a single-minded focus.

He lets himself continue to move until his mind is numb with focus. His only thoughts on sliding into each move and not letting anything distract him. His feet sticking to the surface with nary a thought. 

It’s calming. Almost like mediation in how it relaxes his body. He thinks he could get used to this. 

The breeze ruffles his hair gently, and the sun kisses his cheeks with feather-light tenderness. And for the moment, he can pretend. 

Pretend that he doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

That he has a chance at survival. 

That it’s not all completely hopeless-

“Oi!” An annoying voice interrupts his calm. A voice that is coming from the edge of the water. “How are you doing that, nee-chan?”

He feels an eyebrow twitch in sudden irritation. There should be nobody else around him, which meant the brat was talking to him. He turns to scold the kid and finds himself stopping rather abruptly. There at the edge of the water is a whiskered little boy dressed in bright orange. 

Naruto. Ugh, what is he doing there? 

He sighs and goes back to slowly moving through the stances. Whatever he’d planned to say had left his mind the second he saw the main character of the show. “Doing what?”

The kid squawks, sure as shit. And he can see him doing a wiggle of frustration out of the corner of his eye. “That! What you’re doing right now!”

“I’m practicing with my bokken.” He purposely misunderstands the question and continues his movements. 

“Not that!” The kid groans and damn, his voice is loud . “The water, nee-chan! How are you on the water, dattebayo?” 

He hums and throws in a slow spin into the next move so he can see the kids face. The boy looks awe-struck and it makes something uncomfortable rise up within him. Naruto should not be looking at him like that. 

Quick, deflect. 

“This is special water,” He hums and does his best to keep the grin off his lips. “For one night a month, it becomes consistent enough for a person to walk on.” 

Naruto gasps and seems to light up. Unfortunately gullible. “Really, really, really? Sweet!” 

He watches the kid take a hesitant step at the edge of the river and sees him soak his pant leg up to his ankle. The kid’s pout is monstrous. “Oi! Nee-chan, I thought you said it was special water?”

He sighs and spares the kid a tolerant glance, “Only the middle is special. If the whole river could be walked on, then it wouldn’t be very special, would it?”

Naruto squints at him from the shore and it looks like the kid finally caught on to his deception. He should have known better, the kid was training to be a shinobi and who knew what his life had been like up to this point. 

He slides through the next few movements in the resulting silence. He felt kind of bad, messing with the kid. But he’s had a long day and frankly, kids were annoying at the best of times. 

“Yosh!” He turns just in time to see Naruto take a running start, leap through the air and splash rather impressively in the center of the river. And then sink to the bottom of it. 

His heart sinks into his gut. What was he thinking? Did he just kill the main character? 

Before he can fully panic, the kid comes up to the surface with a sputter. And he lets out a sigh as he walks over to stand over the kid in the water. Naruto looks like he barely touches the bottom with the way only his head is visible. 

“You tricked me!” Naruto scowls at him with squinty eyes. The kid ran a hand through his wet hair to keep it out of his eyes. 

Rei sighs again and crouches over the kid to pat him on the head sympathetically, “I'm sorry. I didn’t think you would fall for it.”

“Nee-chan!” The kid whines and scowls up at him. “That’s not funny!” 

He crushes the next sigh that wants out. The river echoes with the absence of any laughter. “It’s not.” 

Naruto pouts, cheeks puffed up in a way that makes him look more like a fox than ever. “That’s mean, nee-chan.” 

Why does this kid keep calling him nee-chan? He doesn’t even look that much like a girl! Does he? Sure his features could be considered a bit soft, but he just hasn’t grown into his manliness yet. He’s still a mere twelve years old. “I’m a boy.” 

“What!?” Naruto squints up at him and tilts his head questioningly. “Are-are you sure?”

“Tch, brat.” He flicks the kid in the forehead and feels such immense joy at the resulting offended squawking. 

‘Serves him right, damned brat. Do I look like a girl now?’ 

Naruto rubs his forehead and peers up at him through squinted eyes, “How are you doing that anyway? Is it a chatora technique?”

He tilts his head at the brat and wonders if the kid was really that forgetful or if he simply didn’t know anything about such a massive part of being a shinobi.. “A chakra technique?” 

“Yeah, yeah. A chakra technique! Is it a jutsu?” The kid looks way too excited despite the fact that he is neck deep in water and soaked to the bone. He gasps rather suddenly, eyes lighting up gleefully. “Can you teach me? Can you, can you, can you?” 

He sighs and stares down at the kid blankly. Mind running miles a minute. Should he? He could probably teach the kid but didn’t he have like a whole ass arc surrounding surface walking? Sometime during the mission to Wave?

But the kid is looking at him so pathetically and it tugs at his barren heartstrings. He kind of wants to pinch the kid’s cheeks. He squints down at the kid and the kid squints back. 

With a sigh, he tucks his bokken under his arm and strengthens his arm with chakra, then he grabs Naruto by the scruff and pulls the kid from the water. Ignoring the kid’s squirming, he carries him to the edge of the edge of the shore and sets the kid down gently. 

Naruto shakes himself like a dog, sending droplets of water flying everywhere. Rei sighs and wipes a drop of water from his cheek. 

“So will you?” Naruto asks again, eyes wide as he pleads his case. 

He doesn’t sigh, but it’s a near thing. At this rate, he’s going to be all out of air. Peering at the kid, he slowly shakes his head. “Not yet, I can’t teach you-” 

“What! Why?” There’s genuine outrage in the kid's face and it looks like he’s gearing up for further persuasion. 

He raises an eyebrow and the kid falls blessedly silent. “As I was saying, I can’t teach you to water-walk until you learn the technique that precedes it. Tree-walking.”

Oh god, what is he doing? This is going to fuck with canon, isn’t it?

Naruto looks like he’s seconds away from vibrating in place. And he wonders if the Kyuubi plays a factor in the seemingly endless energy. It would sure explain a lot. 

“Really, really?” The kid throws a fist into the air when he nods at him. “Yatta!” 

Rei sighs and tries to think of a place he could bring the brat to teach him. A place that wouldn’t make it seem like he was about to attempt murder. And the only place he could think of was the academy training ground that he had learned in. 

He glances at the sun and thinks it was probably only around three or four in the afternoon. “Do you know the training ground near the Academy? The one with the big Hashirama trees in it?” 

The kid nods and so he mimics him. “Meet me there in a half-hour, I’ve got to get something first. And you need to change into something dry.”

Naruto squints at him suspiciously for a second before he nods, a beaming grin springing to life on his features. “I won’t be late, believe it!”

He watches Naruto bound off, still dripping wet and feels himself growing weary. What has he gotten himself into now? He didn’t even need to grab anything. He just wanted a moment of calm before the storm. 

How was he going to teach this kid how to walk up trees when he himself barely knew what he was doing? He doesn’t think stubbornness and desperation will work for Naruto and his abysmal chakra control. Stubbornness sure, but desperation? Not as much. So he needed to come up with a way to break it down to its easiest form of understanding. And then somehow apply it.

With one last sigh, he laments another lost chance to practice his water walking and heads away from the river. He’s not sure what he’s going to do. 

Hopefully it comes to him on his walk through the village to kill time. 

“The key to walking up the tree is patience. Patience and careful control of one’s chakra.” 

Naruto is looking up at him in wonder. And Rei feels a bit ridiculous because of it. He’s standing on the side of a tree in the training grounds, staring down at Naruto as he gives the kid a basic lecture on how to do so. 

He doesn’t know why he’s still on the side of the tree, but Naruto had asked for a demonstration when he’d arrived and Rei couldn’t think of any excuse to not do so. 

He crosses his arms, bokken tucked under one, and narrows his eyes down at the kid. Pushing past whatever embarrassment he can feel rising within him. “Too little chakra and you won’t connect to the tree. Too much and the same applies.” 

“Ne, ne?” Naruto raises his hand. Legit, like he was in a fucking classroom. “How do you know how much chatora to use then?” 

“ Chakra. ” He sighs and feels a headache start to throb behind his eyes. He gestures at the base of the tree with a lazy wave. “Try it.” 

“Yosh!” Naruto backs up and then takes a running start at the tree. 

He can see the exact moment the kid starts molding chakra to his feet, because he’s suddenly surrounded in an impressive light show of swirling energy. And he knows the kid is going to fail because of that alone. That was way too much chakra in use. The kid barely gets one foot on the tree before he’s being blasted backwards ten feet through the air.

“Too much.” Rei sighs and watches the kid thud against the ground. Though, it doesn’t keep Naruto down for long. The kid hops back to his feet quickly, a fire in his eyes.

“I’ll get it right this time, believe it!”

He rolls his eyes as the kid makes another attempt that results in the same thing happening once again. “Too much, again.”

Naruto squints up at him and Rei feels himself wilt a bit inside. He didn’t know how to explain it properly. Or at all really. Certainly not in a way that would help Naruto understand it better. From what he remembered about it, it still took the kid like a week to do it in canon. 

‘Maybe some motivation might help?’ 

With a sigh, he reaches into his weapon's pouch and pulls out a kunai. Then, he crouches on the side of the tree and scores a slash mark near his feet. “Tell you what, you make it to this mark before nightfall and I’ll buy you a bowl - a single bowl - of ramen to celebrate.”

He was only like ten feet up the tree, so maybe he would be buying the kid a bowl later anyways, but he couldn’t stand to see the put upon look that had adorned the brat’s features.

He tossed the kunai down and it landed at Naruto’s feet. He nods at it. “Use that to mark your progress.” 

Naruto glances at the kunai, but soon goes back to squinting up at him. And he feels himself slumping in defeat. Why did he think he was going to be able to teach this kid anything? He barely knew anything about chakra himself, let alone enough to teach someone who struggles so badly with it. 

He sighs, again. “You’re using too much chakra, that’s why you’re being sent flying. You need to limit your output by a lot. ” 

Naruto scowls but bends down to pick up the kunai at his feet. He watches the kid inspect the knife for a few seconds before he’s being squinted at once again. “How am I supposed to do that, dattebayo?” 

“Mold some chakra and when you stop seeing the swirly lights surrounding you, you’ll know you’re on the right track.” He glances up at a branch further up before he grabs the bokken in one hand and starts making his way towards it. Might as well get some training in.

He walks his way up to the branch and steps out onto it. Only, instead of standing on the top of the branch - like a normal person - he walks along the underside of it. Hanging upside down, he sets his feet and slowly starts working through the kata’s as best he can remember.

Thank the gods for chakra, otherwise this would mess up his brain.  

He was sure there was some medical reasoning why his blood didn’t flood his brain and mess him up inside. But the best he could come up with was that chakra was magical and that was that. No need to go searching the universe for answers. 

Underneath him, Naruto scowls but starts to mold his chakra while still on the ground. Once again, the swirly lightshow springs to life causing the poor kid to scowl even harder. He leaves Naruto to it and focuses back on moving through the stances he can remember. He still pauses in confusion between every movement, but those pauses are getting smaller and smaller.

Why did he agree so quickly to Naruto’s plea for training? He wasn’t much of a social person by nature and his day has been a long one. His social battery has well and truly run out and it would take him the rest of the weekend to recharge it to the level of tolerance he needed for his classes come monday. 

He could have blown the kid off and went about his day. Could have sent him to someone else even. But no, he made the spontaneous decision to spend time with the kid. Why? 

‘Because Naruto’s the main character and I’m a sucker who felt like I resonated with him whenever I consumed the media.’ 

Oh, that’s why. The mild, mild, hero-worship and the fact that he could so easily put himself into Naruto’s shoes and empathize with him. 

He felt that same empathy twice-fold now. Due to his orphan status and general loneliness he’s lived through in both lives. But the hero-worship?

Glancing down, he watches Naruto get sent flying once again, though this time with less accompanying lights to go with it, and he sighs. The hero-worship has pretty much flown the coop. And good riddance, Naruto - though an inspiration to all - wasn’t really a figure to look up to, ability-wise. The kid was born with cheats written in his DNA and is literally favored by the gods. 

‘The Chosen One.’

He would need to do a lot in order to even have a fraction of the power that the kid has had within him since birth. From everything he’s seen and read, the kid is basically the reincarnation of a demigod. 

It’s hard to compare as a mere mortal. 

And yet, there is a part of him that still thinks he could get that strong. Foolish, but-

“Oi!” He lazily turns his head to stare down at where Naruto is crouched on the ground. The kid is tilting his head up at him, a furrow in his brow. 

“Yes?” He raises an eyebrow and wonders what the kid wants now. He didn’t really have any other observations for the kid’s technique quite yet. Granted, he wasn’t watching too hard in the first place. But whatever.

“What’s your name anyway/” He can only assume it's the lack of tact that has made the kid’s manners so bad. But then, he’d be ignoring the giant problem he knows exists in the kid’s life. Lack of actual guidance and care. 

“Rei.” He ignores the kernel of disappointment that rises within him. Disappointment that comes solely from the twelve year old version of himself that has spent the last few years in the same class as the loud-mouthed blonde. “And your’s?”

Naruto shoots to his feet and strikes a pose, why are people posing around here? “Uzumaki Naruto! Remember it, I’m going to be Hokage one day, believe it!”

“Yes, I know .” He grumbles and ignores the tiny part of him that kind of, he said kind of wants to be a Kage in his own right. “I’ve heard you scream it once a week for the last four years.”

The paperwork alone would drive him to an early grave.

“What?” Naruto’s eyes get wide as he yelps, pitch rising with the finger he points up at Rei. “A-are you stalking me!”

“No.” He sighs and asks the world to give him patience. “We’ve shared classes for the last five years. You’re loud.” 

“But-but you look so young!” Naruto flounders on the forest floor. “How’d you get so strong already?” 

“I’m older than you are.” He grumbles. By nearly fifteen years, thank you very much. 

Damn this small body. 

“Eh? But I’ve never seen you- wait.” Naruto snaps his fingers and points up at him accusingly again. “You’re that weird kid who sits at the back of the class! I remember you now.”

He slumps in defeat. 

‘Here lies Rei, killed by the main character. Orphan, Loner, Weird Kid.’ 

“Gee, thanks.” He mumbles, suddenly feeling less empathetic than he was before. Hero-worship, gone. 

“You’re just like me!” Naruto crows. “We’re both orphans.” 

“Yeah.” He sighs, sympathy trickling back alongside in the despondence the subject brings to life inside him. “But we’re not the same.” 

“We are!” 

“Not really,” He sighs and just gives up on the conversation. “Your parents at least gave you their last name.” 

Technically. 

Naruto scowls and wow, why is he so scowly all the time? “Jiji won’t tell me who gave me my last name. But I think he just says that so he doesn’t have to admit that he gave it to me himself.” 

He scoffs and feels like he’s years older than what his body is. He was, but still. “Why would your Ji-san give you the name of a near extinct clan?” 

“What?!” Naruto squeaks rather loudly. “What do you mean by clan?” 

He scoffs and ignores the jealousy that sits low in his gut. Burning like it would continue to smolder for eternity. Sue him, the Uzumaki were freaking cool . And he would have rather been born as some unknown Uzumaki before their village was destroyed than as some no name brat destined to be forever unknown and unloved. 

“I mean that the Uzumaki clan has-” A sudden chill runs down his spine. Like someone was broadcasting their killing intent right through him. He glances around and sees a shinobi perched in a tree nearby. It's an ANBU, but it’s not his ANBU. The shinobi’s mask looks more like a bear of some kind than anything else. 

The ANBU raises a finger to where the lips of the mask and shakes their head, killing intent rising just enough to make their point. 

‘What the fuck. Are those guys just on-call all the time?’

Does the ANBU and the Hokage have the name of the Uzumaki clan cursed like a taboo from Harry Potter or something. Damn ninja. 

“The Uzumaki clan what?” Naruto protests from below. Unable to see the ANBU agent lurking in the foliage of the nearby tree. Nor able to feel the pointed killing intent. 

He sighs and shoves down the scowl that threatens to overtake his lips. “That’s something you’re going to have to find out for yourself.” 

“Rei! Why!” Naruto’s pout is massive.  

“Because that damn Panda is going to get me if I say anything else!” He points right at the hidden ANBU and feels an intense amount of satisfaction at the way the shinobi freezes . 

The ANBU stares at him for the audacity and then disappears a second later.

Naruto glances wildly around the training grounds before he takes a huge sigh of relief. “Don’t joke about panda’s, Rei. They’ll get you when you least expect them.” 

His brow starts to furrow, but he stops it half-way. Killing the rising questions violently inside his mind. He didn’t need to know. He might just live longer that way.

“Are you sure you won’t tell me?” Naruto asks, and he notices that the kid has been standing in the same place for a while now. Training being the last thing on his mind. 

“I’m sure.” He sighs, wishing that an adult of some kind would freaking step up to the plate in Naruto’s life and actually be one. “Sorry.”

He was barely a functioning adult in his last life, how is he supposed to be one in this one too?

Give him a few years and then ask him again. 

Naruto sighs and stares at the trunk of the tree, stuck in deep thought. He lets him be, choosing instead to focus on the feel of the bokken in his hands. Like when he first held it, he can feel himself connect with the wooden sword in an odd way. He doesn't know why, and he’s not in the mood to have it answered quite yet. 

It’s quiet for a few minutes as he moves through the kata’s. His legs start to ache at the constant use he’s put them through. And he can feel his chakra levels starting to drop. When he glances at Naruto, he finds the kid seems to be going through an internal crisis of some kind and leaves him to it. 

No need to get involved in whatever that was.

“Why?” A quiet voice comes from below him after a little bit of time. He glances down to see Naruto staring up at him, goggles glinting in the light atop his head.

“I told you,” He sighs and straightens from his stance. “The Panda will murder me in my sleep.”

“Not that!” Naruto sighs explosively. A hand rubbing at his head in frustration. “I meant why…why are you helping me?” 

‘Because I don’t want you to accidentally murder me on your rise to power.’ 

He shrugs a negligent shoulder, “Why not?”

Naruto huffs and fiddles with the kunai in his hands. “Why not? Because why would you? What do you want?” 

He rolls his eyes, “You have nothing I would want.” 

But, this line of questioning is making him a bit weary. What is the kid aiming at now? He wasn’t about to be made fun of again, was he? 

“Then why?” Naruto squints up at him. 

He shrugs again, “Because I want to?” 

And that’s what it came down to, wasn’t it? He wanted to help Naruto. He had plenty of reasons why he would want to do such a thing. Whether it be the hero-worship, empathy, or just straight up novelty of it all. He wanted the kid to grow strong. 

He also wanted to live long enough to see that, but that was a whole nother issue that wasn’t related at the moment.

“But-but,” Naruto groans and frantically runs his hands through his hair, knocking his goggles askew. “No one helps me!” 

“Then everyone sucks and should be ashamed of themselves.” 

Naruto freezes and stares up at him in wonderment. “Wha-what?” 

Rei sighs and lets himself drop from the tree. Pushing chakra into his legs to soften his landing. He stands before Naruto and crosses his arms to tuck the bokken in his armpit. “Look, kid. One day, you’re going to stand before this village and no one is going to question your place in it. The road there will be long, but when you get to the end, everyone is going to regret their bullshit.” 

Naruto opens his mouth, but he puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “They’ll regret it, so there is no point of giving a flying fuck about it right now. They’ll see their folly and hate themselves enough for the both of you.”

“I-,” Naruto cuts himself off, his head tilting down to shadow his eyes in the low light. He squeezes the shoulder under his hand in an attempt to offer comfort. A low sniff causes him to snatch it back like he was almost bit by a snake. It’s followed by another sniff and then little glints of light fall from the kid’s face. 

“Are-are you crying?” He asks hesitantly. 

“N-no.” Naruto rubs his eyes quickly. “I just got some tree bark in my eye.”

Rei raises an eyebrow, but calms himself at the denial. “In both of them?”

Shit, he hadn’t meant to do that. 

Why was he having such a deep conversation right now? He didn’t even know this kid besides what he had in his memories. 

‘This is the second heart-to-heart today, what the fuck?’

The shinobi of this village need therapy . Fuck.

Naruto nods and shoves his goggles down over his eyes. No doubt as a way to mask the sudden tears. “Y-yeah. Stupid trees and their sneak attacks.” 

He barely said anything, why the hell did he start crying?

He sighs and tilts his head back to look at the sky. The sun was starting to get low and he guessed there wasn’t much sunlight left for the day. 

“How about we get that bowl of ramen?” He pats his pocket and slumps. He didn’t have a lot of money and this would cut into what he had left. But, looking at Naruto, he feels like he might as well. 

It’s alright to indulge a bit in this new life of his. He could die within the week, or worse. No one would begrudge him enjoying this life a little bit. 

“What about hitting the mark?” Naruto asks, pointing at the tree. The kid only got about half way up to the ten-foot mark, but it didn’t matter. He’d learn it eventually. 

He shrugs, “You can work on it at any time. As a matter of fact, keep the kunai. You’ll figure things out and you can use the kunai to help you.” 

Naruto glances down at the kunai and then lays a rather deadpan look back at him, “But Rei, not even my kunai are in such bad condition. You can have this back.” 

“Tch,” His eye twitches. Damned brat. “Brat. A souvenir then.” 

Naruto tilts his head, “Why would I want such a chipped and ugly looking kunai?”

‘This damn brat.’

They made it to the noodle shop eventually. Rei bought the kid only one bowl and no more. No matter how much little Naru-chan pouted at him.

Chapter Text

It was the waiting that sucked. 

Day after day, he’d wake up and force himself to move. To go about his new life and force himself to interact with the world around him. All the while ignoring all the major problems that he had no idea of how to take care of. 

He’d had the thought - while struggling to fall asleep one night - that maybe he could come up with a plan of action. A plan he could start to follow in order to start getting things done or something. Or maybe something as simple as a code of ethics for when he ran into situations that involved canon. 

And then he promptly ignored that line of thought the next morning when he crawled out of bed and wisened up. 

Changing canon was a fools crusade. One that he didn’t want to even begin to entertain. Life was already hard enough as it was, no need to start trying to play god. Not that he necessarily could, seeing as he wasn’t very strong. Certainly not strong enough to do the things that needed to be done. 

And he might never be strong enough. Not for many of the things that needed doing. And not for a long time. 

Which sucked, but shy of becoming a Jinchuuriki or stealing some Uchiha eyes, it was something he needed to deal with. 

Something he needed to plan around if he was ever going to make it past twenty-six in this life. 

And all that meant nothing when he barely knew anything about canon at all. Being strong enough to change things is good and all, but when he couldn’t remember everything that would need changing? That made things nearly impossible. Especially when he couldn’t predict when things would happen outside of the big events. 

He can’t change things if he doesn’t know when they occur. He didn’t exactly have a calendar he could reference. 

Plus, things worked out in the end. Didn’t they?

From what he could remember, the shinobi nations had a real shot at lasting peace once the war finished. If the war didn’t happen, who knew what would occur. Who knew if his changes could accidentally form a rift big enough that everything goes south. 

So to summarize, going into things with the intention of changing canon was stupid. And he was trying to be less stupid. 

Needless to say, his mental health took a bit of a dive in the following week after teaching Naruto the basics of tree-walking.

He tried to focus on other things. Like training, pushing himself everyday on the river and in the trees trying to grow his chakra reserves and his control of them. Going through the kata’s with his bokken until his arms ached and sweat soaked his clothes. He practiced with his kunai and shuriken, throwing the weapons around at all kinds of angles and distances to familiarize himself with them. 

One day after class, he literally just ran around the edge of Konoha for hours. He could say that he was building stamina, but that had been the result of waking from a rather ugly nightmare and being unable to forget about it all day. He’d needed to run, so he ran. 

It did allow him a chance to see the walls of the village up close. And he had to say, they were mighty. The sheer size of them left him a bit in awe. And to think, the Kyuubi had towered over them.

There was one thing that wasn’t so bad. And that was the constant appearance of Naruto during his training sessions. Despite alternating his days between the river and the training ground, the kid always seemed to know when he would be working in the trees that day. 

More like the kid spent all his time at the grounds trying to get tree-walking down and didn’t think about him at all.

Which…was also true. 

Anyway. 

He wanted it to be known that Naruto didn’t understand the meaning of silence . As such, he found himself being reluctantly dragged into several conversations during that time. Mostly on meaningless things that weren’t worth dwelling on.  Like which flavor of ramen was best - Miso for Naruto, regular old Beef for him . Or if Mizuki-sensei really dyed his hair that color or if the man was just unfortunate.

It wasn’t all that bad if he was being honest. Once he got past the novelty of it, he found himself slowly getting used to being in the kid’s presence. Slowly, the whole thing kind of freaked him out a bit.

Despite that, the waiting still took its toll on him. He was starting to feel restless, doing the same things over and over again without things even truly having started yet. He was two weeks away from the start of the show. Two weeks away from graduation and still not having any clue as to how he’s supposed to make it onto a team of his own. 

Only nine would become genin out of the entire class. Nine. At least that’s how it went in canon. And he could only assume that was because the rest of the class wasn’t ready to become ninja quite yet. 

He didn’t feel ready yet, how the fuck was he going to change things enough so whatever team he lands on will make it through their Jonin-sensei’s tests and pass? He didn’t even know who he would be paired with, let alone how to work together with them well enough for it to matter. 

It was driving him spare, thinking about all the what-ifs and maybe’s. There was too much that he couldn’t account for, too much he would need to come up with contingency plans for. And he wasn’t that smart. He was still a normal ass person, even if he was thinking clearer than he ever did in his last life.

‘Why couldn’t I have been a Nara? I could take up cloud watching, I swear.’ 

His plan for when the day came - his only plan - was to hope he could adapt to whatever the sensei came up with and drag his team through it with him. Best he could do until the time came was train to exhaustion in hopes that it’ll be enough when the time comes.

Until then, he would train. And if Naruto was around for some of it, he wouldn’t complain - much.

Exactly one week after teaching the kid how to tree-walk, Naruto finally gets it down. Rei just wished it had happened in a more momentous way.

“Ne, Rei?” He glances down at Naruto to see the kid biting his lip in thought. They’re in a mimicry of the first time they did this. But this time, he’s sitting on the branch taking a break instead of training on the underside of it. Naruto is standing on the ground under him. 

“Yeah?” He hums and leans further into the tree at his back. There’s a breeze that glides across his skin in a cool dance. It makes the sweat sticking to his skin feel less irritating.

Naruto spins the kunai he gave him around his finger and tilts his head at the tree in consideration. “Why are clocks called clocks?”

He sighs and closes his eyes, letting out a small hum as he considers the question. “I don’t know, because of the sound they make? ‘Clock, clock, clock.’ ”

“Really?” Naruto lowers himself into a crouch, setting his feet under him in preparation to run. “Wouldn’t they be called Ticks then? I always thought they sounded more like ticks. ” 

He shrugs and watches Naruto in his attempt at getting up the tree. The kid makes it up to about ten to twelve feet before he is flipping backwards to land down below. “Are you sure? It sounds like a ‘ clock’ to me.” 

Naruto nods and brushes some dust from his pants, then readies himself for another go. “Yeah! It sounds like a tick! So why would they be called Clocks if they don’t even sound like that?” 

“Grudging point.” He tilts his head and ponders upon the dilemma. “What about alarm clocks though? They don’t make any sound, so theoretically they should have been given a new name?” 

“That-that’s a whole different thought.” Naruto crouches and takes off running towards the tree. “I don’t know if you get what I’m trying to say, dattebayo.”

He sighs and prays for patience, turning to ask the kid what he meant. He meets a set of wide, blue eyes that are next to his face. “Maybe, but you’re the one who started this conversation.” 

Naruto’s eyes are wide and he gets the urge to put his hand to the kid’s face to shove him out of his personal…space. “Naruto?” 

“Y-yeah?” His eyes are still wide, but there’s a sense of accomplishment and pride rising under the surface. 

He smiles and pats the kid on the head like a dog. “Good job.”

“I-I did it?” Naruto stares down at his feet. 

He nods and resists the urge to pat the kid on the head again. He also valiantly ignores the strum of pride that takes up space on top of his lungs. “You did.”

Naruto does a shuffling little jig and raises a fist into the air in triumph, “Yatta- ack !”

And then falls from the tree.

The consequences of teaching Naruto how to tree-walk came in various different forms. But oh boy, come they did. 

Naruto almost instantly started pestering him to learn how to walk on water. In between the loud shouts of exclamation and the near endless energy, the kid somehow mustered the energy to plead at him with the widest set of eyes he’s ever seen. The eyes were deadly to his grandma-like soul. 

Gods damn it all, his fingers twitched with the urge to pinch the kid’s cheeks and coo. 

The kid had a persistence to him that was annoying. And he knew, he knew, that he should have said no the first time the kid asked. But no, he ‘d made the mistake of making a noncommittal noise that the kid took as a challenge. He’d been trying to stall, to come up with a way to explain that he didn’t want to teach the kid to water-walk because his future sensei would do that. And there was something significant behind the training. It was an acknowledgement that they were going to train them how to actually be shinobi. 

But Naruto wouldn’t accept that and thus, he had no real defense to the puppy-dog eyes. 

Stuck and unsure how to come up with an argument, he gave mostly senseless noises in answer whenever the kid asked and that seemed to be enough of a deterrent to buy him some time. 

In the meantime, Naruto’s pranks seemed to sky-rocket in frequency. The kid’s new ability gives him the confidence to attempt the more risky pranks that he always had planned. He writes them down in a little book, he swears. 

Most of the pranks were harmless and didn’t affect him at all. Until one did. And it wasn’t a harmless one at all. 

He had been sitting in class one day, minding his own business at the back, when a feral Naruto appeared through the window. Cackling and wiggling his body around in some dance while he pointed at a flustered looking Mizuki-sensei. 

Then the kid, with a shout of pure unadulterated maliciousness, threw some tiny capsules of something liquid around the room. The sound of glass breaking echoed in the cramped space and wafts of smell rose up from the debris. 

For a moment, all was calm. And then pandemonium. Chaos when it became clear that those had been stink bombs . And not just any stink bombs, but Naruto’s Stink Bombs.  

In the resulting mass attempt at fleeing the room, he had nearly been trampled to death, his nose burned like he’d snorted a line of chili powder and his eyes watered so bad he could barely see, and there was a lot of screaming. Followed by a lot of hacking, crying and sneezing as well. 

Needless to say, it was a shitty way to find out his new senses where a bit more heightened than they had ever been in his last life. He could only assume that the presence of chakra played a part in the increased awareness. So he only grumbled about it a little bit. 

The classroom needed to be fumigated. And even two days later, the smell still lingered. Naruto got a week of detention but otherwise got off scot-free. 

The detention meant that the kid would miss a few training sessions. Which was a blessing in disguise for Rei. He still didn’t know how to tell the kid no and it was getting annoying. 

A side-effect of the Stink Bomb incident was that he had started wearing the masks all the time. His nose had burned for two days and he didn’t want to have a repeat, hence the mask. An attempt at protecting himself from future attacks. 

Nobody said anything about the mask. Which made it feel rather anticlimactic at the end of the day. It was supposed to be a momentous moment in his life, but no. It’s regulated to Naruto prevention and not worth even a blink of surprise in his direction.

The consequences came in other forms also, but not as big or significant in the grand scheme of things. Like the fact that the academy teachers kept a stricter eye on their classes, meaning he couldn’t get away with stealing a cup of coffee every morning. Or the fact that Naruto always seems to be pouting in some way or other. 

And the last consequence. The biggest, most annoying consequence that ruins his day? He is confronted soon after by a skinny little brat with a weird ass hair style and a complex a mile wide.

He’s taking a break from training when the kid shows up. He notices him the second he makes his way into the training ground, shoulders stiff and a haughty look in his eyes. Like such a place was below him. 

Uchiha Sasuke stops a few feet away from the tree he’s sitting under and just kind of stares. He stares back and wonders what the brat wants. 

It’s silent for a long moment. Nearly reaching two minutes even. The kid looks more and more uncomfortable the longer the silence stretches and he wonders why the kid couldn’t just speak. Obviously the kid wanted something, otherwise he wouldn’t have stepped foot in the grounds, let alone walked up to him. 

The kid looks pale and thin. He’d almost say sickly if the kid didn’t also have a wiry strength under it all. His black hair is done up in a rather unflattering way. It is a duck-butt, no shit. And his dark eyes look tired and haunted in a way that spoke of trauma .

All in all, the kid looked like he needed a warm meal and a hug. And it looked like nobody had given either in years . 

Finally, after the time gets closer to Five minutes of silence, he breaks the staring contest he’d unwillingly found himself in. “Need something?” 

Sasuke seems to let out a little sigh before his back straightens, coal eyes narrowed down at him under the tree. “You taught the dobe to walk up buildings.”

He tilts his head and gives the kid a deadpan look in return. “How’d you know?”

Sasuke tilts his head down and gives him a blank look. A single eyebrow raised. 

“He told you?” He sighs and then sighs harder when the kid nods at him. “He was gloating, wasn’t he?”

“Hnn.” Sasuke scowls at the ground like it had offended him. He’ll take that as a yes.

‘These damned brats are going to drive me insane.’ 

He rolls his eyes and then levels a raised eyebrow back up at the kid, “So, what do you want?” 

The kid glances away, arms tense at his sides. “Would you…teach me?”

“Hmm,” He feels surprise rising inside him. From everything he knew about Uchiha Sasuke, the kid rarely ever asked for help. At least, that’s what his memories of the kid said. For him to search Rei out just to learn something?

He’s read enough fanfiction, he was surprised the kid wasn’t making demands of him.

Sasuke looks constipated, his face scrunched up as if he’s in physical pain. “...please.”

He decided right then, that whatever opinion he had on the kid and his character would need to be tossed into the garbage. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a moment where Sasuke had asked for something so nicely before. The ceiling wasn’t high, but still. 

With a sigh, he stood and leaned against the tree with his arms crossed, “Do you got a kunai?”

“Hnn.”

He gave the kid nearly the same explanation he’d given Naruto. And then sat and watched as the kid struggled to control his chakra each attempt. Unlike Naruto, Sasuke had the issue of sometimes not using enough chakra in some of his attempts, meaning he wouldn’t have enough to connect with the tree and would slide down. 

Where Naruto could only seem to overpower his chakra output, Sasuke only had the problem of finding a balance between too little and too much. Despite the seeming simplicity of it, Sasuke still had a hard time finding said balance. 

Factoring out Naruto and his insane chakra levels, Sasuke had some of the most chakra in their class. And it seemed to be dense in a way that made small increments hard. A symptom that could be attributed to decades of selective breeding, the damn magical eyes he’d inherited, and the fact that he too was a possible demigod in the making. 

Oh, and luck. Because sometimes people just don’t have a lot of chakra to begin with, no matter their birth status.

He spent the next few hours doing some training of his own. Going through the kata’s of the academy basic taijutsu and trying to incorporate his kunai into it to add some reach and a more fatal attack. He wasn’t great at taijutsu, and whether that could be attributed to his new body’s reflexes or his old life’s memories causing him hiccups, he didn’t know for sure. 

If he was going to do any fighting in hand to hand combat, he needed a way to create more space between him and his opponents. So he could have more space and time to limit the damage he would take. 

His only solution at the moment other than a potential sword, was to use his tools to make his opponents weary of getting too close. Hence the kunai. 

After a few hours of occasionally giving a few observations when the kid needed them, he was half-way through a kata when Sasuke flipped off the tree and landed into a tired crouch. Body slumping in exhaustion and no doubt low on chakra. 

“...how?” 

He tilts his head and gives the kid a lazy glance as he slips out of the kata on fairly shaky limbs. “How what?”

Sasuke scowls up at him, but it looks more like an angry kitten than anything else. “How long did it take the dobe to get it?”

He sighs and debates the sudden conundrum he’s found himself in. On one hand, Naruto and Sasuke’s rivalry had been somewhat good for them. It pushed them to each get stronger. But it did so in a rather toxic way that involved various shows of one-upping each other. They got better, but they never really bonded in a way other than rivalry before Sasuke left the village.

And pitting one kid against another didn’t sit well with him, even if the results were evident. He was under the firm belief that children needed to be guided , not pointed in a direction and given expectations to meet lest they wish to be embarrassed by their peers.

‘I’m too soft for this shit.’ 

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

Sasuke scowls - pouts - even harder and glares at him. “Why not?”

He sighs. Feeling way too old and way too young all at the same time. Weren’t twelve year old kids supposed to be less antagonistic? More focused on childish things like playing games and having friends? 

“Because,” He watches the kid climb to shaky feet, maybe that;’s enough for the night. “Then you will have expectations on how long it should take you and I don’t want them to burden you.” 

Sasuke scoffs and in a rare display of emotions, runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I need to get stronger! If I can’t even do it faster than the dobe then…”

“Sasuke-san.” He sighs. What the fuck? He ignored the whine inside his head and tried to give the kid a reassuring look. “You need to learn to live for yourself. You don’t need to live up to anyone’s expectations.” 

“Hnn.” Sasuke looks away and he doesn’t think the message quite lands the way he wanted it to.

It’s nearing night time and the low light sends the training grounds into stark shadow. He still needed to eat and shower. His face felt sticky with sweat from his mask. 

He needed to get used to the feeling if he was going to wear masks all the time. The confidence it gave him and the cool-factor outweighed the mild uncomfortability by tons.

With a sigh, he slips his kunai back into his weapons pouch and decides to wrap things up. “You want to get stronger, I understand. But don’t let your obsession with killing your brother be the only reason you gain strength. It won’t mean anything when - if - you get there.” 

Sasuke snaps his head to glare at him. Dark eyes glinting red in the low light. A vicious scowl on his lips. “What do you know about that?” 

Again, what the fuck?

Red eyes with a single tomoe in each iris glare at him. Despite the aura of murder the kid is staining the air with, all he feels is tired. 

‘That can’t be good.’ 

Wasn’t the Sharingan only supposed to awaken in the event of extreme emotional distress or something? Or near-death situations in which the user feared for their life? So why the fuck was Sasuke now the proud bearer of his family’s renown bloodline?

Just, fuck canon then, won’t we? Who needs to know how things will go. Not him. 

He’s not making it to twenty-six this time, is he?

He can only assume that the kid didn’t have much experience speaking on the topic of his brother. Not for a long time and that was a damn shame. Because that meant the village was incompetent and didn’t even offer to help the brat.

“I know that if I was in your position, I would probably be doing the same.” He sighs and ignores the part of him that wants to offer the poor kid a hug. Red eyes watch his every move, “But I also know that I would sacrifice everything to get there. And I would hate myself for it. Would hate myself and hate life just as much as I did before.” 

Sasuke doesn’t say anything. Just glares at the world with spinning blood red eyes.

He sighs again. He’s going to wear out his lungs with the amount of air he keeps expelling. He’s sighed more in the last few weeks than he has in a long time. 

“Go home, Sasuke. Take the night and think about a goal or something to have instead of killing your brother. Fuck, find some hobbies or something, I don’t know.” He waves a hand and starts to make his way out of the training grounds. Unwilling to play therapist or sounding board any longer. 

He was tired. And it seemed like his time in this world was out to test his empathy and conversation skills. Why couldn’t people just communicate with less talking? He didn’t talk much in his last life and the people in this one seemed bound and determined to force him to despite his wishes. 

He left a red-eyed Sasuke in the training ground with a lead weight in his chest and a feeling of dread to go with it. Things were changing, he could feel it. 

And that scared him more than anything.

Teaching Sasuke to tree-walk presented a rather irritating problem to plague him. 

So far, he has taught two-thirds of Team Seven how to tree-walk. And that left one-third of said team, unknowing. Creating a moral-dilemma.

It didn’t sit right inside him. 

He debated with himself for a few days on whether or not he was going to teach Sakura on how to do it. He wasn’t really the best person to teach these brats anything, but at the same time, it felt unfair of him to not make sure they were all somewhat ready.

During those few days, he tried to come up with a plausible excuse to teach her the exercise. And he couldn’t come up with a single way that would be natural. 

Sasuke didn’t return to the training grounds after his words. So he couldn’t use her stalking of the boy as a tie in. And walking up to speak with her gave him hives just thinking about it. She was a teenage girl, with a group of teenage girls she surrounded herself with.

All of which where fangirls.

They would pick him a part and chew on his bones when they were done with him. Girls were vicious, and he had enough self-preservation to know a pitched battle when he saw one.

It was during one sleepless night that he came up with the solution. He had remembered, rather vaguely, that Sakura was damn near a prodigy in chakra control. And had gotten tree-walking down quickly and with an annoying amount of ease. She just didn’t have a lot of chakra to use at the moment and needed to build her reserves.

As such, he didn’t really need to teach her at all. All he needed to do was provide some information on the subject and some instructions for her to follow, and she could do it herself. No need to subject himself to the whimsical mercy of a teenage girl. 

Was she even a teenager yet? He thought they were all twelve years old. 

Whatever. This resulted in him writing down how to tree-walk - with proper warnings to know when to stop and rest - on a piece of parchment and sneaking the parchment into her bag one day at school. 

He felt nervous going to class that day. Feeling like he was embarking on his first ever shinobi mission and it was life or death. It kind of was, sneaking into a girls bag as a boy was just asking for trouble. 

In the end, he was left rather underwhelmed when it was all easier than he thought it would be. Nobody noticed him and his satisfaction was dampened by the fact nobody knew to acknowledge his skills. 

Not that he needed acknowledgement or anything.

He slipped the parchment scroll in and then spent the rest of the day doing his best to be normal. And that was that. 

Chapter Text

The week leading up to graduation sucked. 

He was tired of waiting and the suspense was killing him.

He filled the time as best as he could. Training everyday until his body ached, paying diligent attention in class the best he could, and trying to meditate as an attempt on focusing his chakra better. In fact, the only time he wasn’t training or doing school work was when he slept and ate. And he sometimes still trained while doing the latter. 

His chakra reserves got larger. Though the size of which and its equivalent was lost on him still. He didn’t know enough about chakra to know what was good and what wasn’t. He’d thought to try doing some research on the matter, but found that he didn’t know how to dedicate enough time to the subject to do so.

Time management was one of his failings. He was working on it.  

All he knew was that there was more of it there than there was before and it took him longer to get tired.

He pretty much pulled away from everything during the week. Locking up parts of himself behind his new mask so he didn’t have to focus too hard on things. 

It was easy, being a blank face amongst the crowd of over-eager students. And he would have thought it would make him stick out more, but somehow the opposite seemed true. No one bothered him during class. No one searched him out for training. 

Though, Naruto’s reasoning might have been because the kid painted the faces of the Hokage monument and had his own shit going on because of it.  

Rei didn’t know and he didn’t ask. He was too busy being surprised that the kid did it so soon before graduation. Granted, he didn't really remember much of the timeline anymore, but he had thought it was like a day or two before graduation. Not nearly a week before it.

It was easy to wear a blank face when nobody could see your grimace. Thank the gods for masks, otherwise he was sure to be looked at funny. 

The mask hid the fact that he was always stuck in thought. Trying to figure out how he was going to pass his potential Jounin-sensei’s test and get on a team. 

He didn’t feel like he was strong enough to become a shinobi. Sure he could do some tricks , but how much would those tricks help when it came down to life or death. And would he be able to go through with it? The actions he would need to take to survive?

Would he be able to purposely hurt and potentially kill another person? A person who was just like him. Who had thoughts and goals and feelings the same way he did?

He didn’t know. He would like to say he could.That he would be able to muster up the will to do so. But he didn’t know, wouldn’t know until the time came and he needed to make the choice. 

If he wasn’t killed before then anyway.

The nerves and anxiety sucked, so he worked his body to the bone just so he could sleep a bit at night. For a few days, he did things rather mindlessly. Going about his days with very little deviation from his rigorous routine. 

Until one day, after training most of the night, he trudged through his front door in an exhausted slouch only to freeze the second he stepped through the threshold. There was something off about his apartment. He had trouble putting his finger on what until he heard the sound of purring coming from near his window. 

There was a cat on his bed. Curled up in a sprawled lump atop his itchy blanket. The fur was a dark brown. And he could see markings of some kind on its head and a ribbon attached to its ear.

‘Cute.’

He glances around the room in confusion. Wondering just how the cute little thing found its way into his apartment. He had locked his door on his way to class that morning, so unless someone entered while he was gone and locked his door on their way out, he could count the front door out. 

Glancing at the window, it becomes obvious that it is the suspect. It’s cracked open a few inches and he had obviously forgotten to close it when he left in the morning. 

The clearing was small, but he had seen cats get through smaller openings before. So it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that it snuck in through the opening. Though, he didn’t know how the cat got to the window itself. Seeing as he resided on the third floor and there were no balconies nearby.

With a sigh, he closes the door softly behind him and digs his keys and wallet out of his pants. Tossing them onto the counter, he turned back to see the cat now had its eyes open and was staring at him with an analysing gaze.

“Hey there buddy.” He inches his way over to the bed. The cat looks remarkably unbothered by his presence, but its eyes don’t leave him as he moves. 

He liked cats. The perfect predators in cute little bodies. With cute little mittens of murder. He just wanted to hug and squeeze them all the time. Pat them on their chubby little bellies and dodge said murder mittens for his presumptions.

“How’d you get in here?” The cat lets him get to the edge of his bed before its ears flick back into airplane mode. He raises his hands in surrender when a low growl comes from its throat. 

With a sigh he glances at his small fridge and tries to remember if he has anything to feed it. But he doesn’t think he does. Looking back at the cat, he wonders who it belongs to. He didn’t recognize it, so it couldn’t be one of his landlady’s cats. And he didn’t know if any of his neighbors had cats or not. 

He was tired. Too tired to deal with it tonight. It was late and he still needed to shower and shove something down his throat for sustenance. 

He takes off his mask and gives the cat a look , “You can stay for the night, but that’s where I sleep. So you’ll need to move or share once I’m done.” 

The cat blinks at him for a long moment before it lowers its head back down and closes its eyes. Taking that as confirmation he was heard, he went about getting ready for bed. 

He showered quickly and ate just as fast. When all was said and done, and he stood before the bed in his sleep clothes, the cat was watching him with slitted eyes. He only raised an eyebrow back down at it. “Move over then.”

The cat flicked an ear, blinked up at him slowly, and then by some miracle , actually listened to him. It stood in a lazy stretch and padded over to sit closer to the edge of the bed that was under the window.

With a sigh of relief, he slipped under the covers and settled into a comfortable position. It took him a bit, but he eventually fell asleep with the cat watching over him. 

His last thought before sleep took him was something along the lines of, This was how he died. Killed by a cat in his own bed. 

The cat was gone in the morning. 

He didn’t think too much about it, but he did leave his window the way it was in case the thing came back during the day while he was in class. He had a soft spot for the little demons and wouldn’t mind if it came back and graced him with its presence. 

So he was happily surprised that night when he got done with training, to arrive back to it sleeping on the itchy blanket once again.

The damned thing seemed to like that blanket. He would always find it trying to meld with it.  

From then on, he came back to the apartment a bit earlier in the evening. The cat would be there when he got back and he would take his time earning its trust. He offered it food and gave it soft pets when it finally let him touch it. Playing with the little thing each night before bed. 

It continued for three days until his conscience caught up to him. Someone could be looking for the cat and he wasn’t doing anything to help them find it. It was obviously well cared for, with its ribbon and clean fur. 

The few nights of easy rapport was the only thing that allowed him to pick the cat up and carry it. Though it didn’t like being held, preferring to ride around on his shoulders instead. And rode it did, all the way through town and to the missions desk. 

He brought it there because out of everywhere else in the village, the missions desk was the most likely place for a notice to be sent. A mission even, to find it and return it home.

The walk through the village was long, seeing as he needed to go slow to keep the cat steady on his shoulder. And he had the oddest feeling of being watched the entire time. Everytime he turned to check out what could be watching him, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just civilians and ninja alike passing by.

By the time he made it to the academy and the missions desk that resided within it, he was feeling rather antsy. Like bugs were crawling under his skin. 

A shinobi exiting the building stopped in the doorway the second he caught sight of Rei and his precious package. He smiled at the man and thanked him for holding open the door as he made his way inside. Though his mask probably made it look funny to the other shinobi. Any ninja he passed by seemed to move out of his way and he started to get a little paranoid that something was up. 

He made it to the desk soon enough. The room was half-full of shinobi of all kinds. Most looked like they were just coming back from their own missions. Packed as it was, he needed to slip in at the back of a line so he could speak with a ninja running the desk to ask questions. 

He nodded at the kunoichi in front of him when she turned at his presence behind her. Her eyes went wide before she let out a sigh and turned back around with a word muttered under her breath. He didn’t know what she said, but he wasn’t exactly in the habit of paying too much attention to strangers and their quirks. 

While he waited, he took the time to glance around the room and take in its ornate decorations. It was all a bit ostentatious for him, but then again, he lived in a studio apartment. So it didn’t exactly say much for his tastes.

He only needed to calm the cat down twice. Reaching up to give it a scratch under its chin and around its ears. Other than that, it sat rather contently on his shoulder to watch the room move around them. Its tail wrapped around his neck to hold itself steady.

It took a few minutes of waiting before he could get to the front of the line. And when he got there, he stood in front of a shinobi that had his head stuffed in a mission report of some kind. Interest taken by something he was reading. 

“Yes?”

Rei sighs and stamps down the mild irritation of being so wholly ignored. “Ano, Shinobi-san? I’ve found myself in a bit of a situation and was wondering if you could help me?”

“On with it.” The man’s head doesn’t move from where it’s bent over the paper. But he does wave a sarcastic hand at him. It’s annoying and demeaning and maybe he should have gone to someone else for help. But it’s too late now. He’s made it this far, he would see it through. 

“I’ve found this cat, you see.” He gently grabs the cat from his shoulders and sets it down on the desk before him. Right on top of the paper the man was ignoring him for. He feels a thrum of gleeful satisfaction when the man jerks back in his seat like he’d been stabbed. “I would like some assistance in returning it to the proper owner.”

The man stares at the cat sitting contently on his desk and pales to a drastic color. The cat lifts a paw - the man flinches - and starts to clean it with a few licks, ignoring the man completely. The shinobi snaps his gaze to him and stares at him with wide eyes. “W-where?” 

“Where did I find the cutie?” He tilts his head questioningly. The shinobi still looks rather pale and he wonders if the man was feeling okay. Maybe the guy ate something that didn’t agree with him?

The guy nods shakily and he feels bad. He must really not be feeling well. He squints his eyes in an attempt to smile. “Ah, well it was more like it found me.”

For some reason, the guy gets even paler. He didn’t even know that was possible, but the guy managed it. Hopefully he didn’t get thrown up on. That would ruin his day. 

He reaches forward and gives the cat a quick scratch behind one ear and smiles when it whirs and leans into the touch. He needed to be close to the cat in case the man lost his lunch. So he could snatch it up and away from the danger zone. 

“Tora!” The shinobi yelps and then freezes when the cat turns to look at him. The rest of the room grows quiet at the startled shout, all eyes turning in their direction. And he is thankful for the mask, lest they see the way his cheeks flush at the sudden attention. It was embarrassing, having so many people looking at him. 

“I-i m-mean.” The poor shinobi coughs and then clears his throat, eyes flashing over to stare at one of his co-workers. The kunoichi glares at him but makes her way over to them with slow steps. Her shoulders slumping further the closer she gets.

The kunoichi has her lips pursed when she gets up to them, looking like she swallowed a lemon and was regretting her life choices at the same time. He does notice that she keeps a good amount of space between her and the desk the cat sat on. Her eyes flicker between him, the sitting shinobi and the cat before they lock onto his own.

“You found Tora?” She’s peering at him with a calculating gaze and it makes his fingers itch. “How did you catch her?”

“Is that her name, then?” He tilts his head at the cat and feels a nugget of something itch the back of his brain. Why did that name sound so familiar? “Maa, what a distinguished name for a cute little lady. Ehh, Tora-chan?”

He scratches Tora behind the ears again and smiles when she starts to purr. It’s a loud purr, sounding almost like a small engine of some kind. It reminds him of the cats he used to have in his old life. Their loud purrs always seemed to lift his moods and the feel of their little bodies vibrating in happiness was soothing to his soul.

For some reason though, both the ninja in front of him flinch at the sound. 

As he watches the kunoichi pale alongside her co-worker, the nugget that had itched before blooms into a full on thought. Wasn’t there a cat that haunted the shinobi of Konoha? He didn’t watch every episode of the show and certainly didn’t remember every little detail of canon, so he couldn’t remember what the cat’s name was. Only that it was the cat of the daimyo’s wi-

“Indeed,” The kunoichi nods like he just forced her to at knife-point. “Madam Shijimi named her herself.”

‘Ah. That’s unfortunate .’

His head tilts of its own accord, staring down at Tora. Searching the cat for any signs of the trouble maker she was supposed to be. But all he saw was a regular cat staring up at him with squinted eyes. 

He hums and pets her softly when she bumps his hand. Surely this couldn’t be the same scourge of Konoha? Maybe the media he had consumed was just an exaggeration? She had been nothing but normal the entire time he was around her. Besides the getting into his apartment bit. 

He still wasn’t sure how she got to his window on the third floor.

“Like I told the Shinobi-san,” He squints at them with his Kakashi-eyes and smiles under his mask. “She found me.”

They stare at him for his words, eyes wider than before. He scratches his cheek in a subtle attempt to see if he had anything on his face. When he doesn’t feel anything besides his mask, he resists the urge to slouch in on himself. The attention was making him anxious. He didn’t like it.

Slowly, the noise around him starts to pick back up again. People going back about their day. He sighs in relief as the many eyes he felt earlier slide off of him completely. Tora’s fur under his fingers is grounding in its familiarity and he feels himself start to relax a bit.

The two ninja before him turn to each other and begin to confer quietly between the two of them. Their eyes flickering back at him and Tora every few seconds. He’s not sure what they are saying, their voices are in a soft whisper, but by the looks on both faces, they’re in an argument of some kind. 

He sighs and glances down at Tora once again. If he had known it would be so much trouble coming here, he would have let Tora sleep on his bed as long as she wished. Even if it ended with a Jounin-sensei knocking on his door in the night on behalf of their skittish team.

“This is above my pay-grade.” Shinobi-san bursts out and the kunoichi gives him a dirty look in response. But when she turns back to look at Rei, he can see the grudging agreement in her eyes. And in the nervous twitching of her lips as she glances at him.

“There seems to be an issue that we need a superior to resolve,” She holds out a hand and gestures towards a door at the end of the room. One with a bored looking shinobi guard playing with a senbon between his teeth. “If you would follow me, we can find someone to get this figured out.”

He sighs and picks Tora up to let her curl around his shoulders. He might as well see where this went. He didn’t have anywhere to be until later and that was only because he had a date with his bokken at the river. He was taking it dancing and was looking forward to twirling it around all night under the beautiful colors in the sky.

He’d bought it a new sheathe just for the occasion.

He follows the woman to the door and is stopped by the shinobi standing guard. The man looks familiar, but he can’t pin down a name at the moment. And the man’s appearance didn’t really help much in the way he would expect it to. It would seem that the people in this world were not, in fact, two dimensional pictures whose features where unblemished by things like the elasticity of skin around bone. 

If it weren’t for the distinct features that were staples of many characters' profiles, he would have a hard time knowing who was who.

The guard, who looks familiar and yet not at the same time, blankets him in his chakra in an overt scan that made no sense to him just what it actually did. They stand there for a brief moment before the guard sends him a lazy smirk and steps out of the way to allow them through. 

He follows the kunoichi through the door and into a spacious room. Around the walls were various posters with kanji written on them. At the far end of the room, sat a raised platform with four old people sitting upon cushions on the floor. The old people were people that he had no trouble recognizing. 

Well, two of them anyway. He didn’t know who the other two were.

‘Why am I standing before the fucking Hokage right now?’

One was the Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen. Red and white Hokage hat on top of wrinkled and liver-spotted features. His frame was much smaller than the other three occupants. Dark eyes staring at the ceiling through a haze of smoke coming from the man’s pipe. 

The other was Bandage Man . Wrapped up in his mummy cosplay, one eye glaring out at everything around him. An arm held to his chest by a sling and back straight. 

Dango, was it? Donzi. The Don. Hehe, get it? Cause he’s the leader of an organized criminal cult of mind-controlled fanatics that do his every bidding. 

He didn’t know. The other two where both the same age as the two men, and he couldn’t come up with a name for either one of them. The man wore glasses and the woman didn’t.

Whatever conversation they had been having abruptly stops when he and the kunoichi make their entrance. Two and a half pairs of eyes alight on them with a stern glance. The Hokage simply sighs and peers down into his pipe. 

“Yes?” The woman snaps out. 

“Hokage-sama.” The kunoichi takes a few steps forward and bows to the four before them, the Sandaime’s eyes finally flickering up to contemplate them. “Esteemed Elders, I come before you seeking guidance in resolving an…interesting dilemma.”

The Mighty Don-Dango, lets out a gruff sound and narrows his one eye down at the still bowing kunoichi. “What could be so confusing that you felt it prudent to involve the Hokage in such matters?” 

He was sure if the man had a sharingan in his one visible eye, it would be spinning wildly at them in intimidation. The other dozen he had on him probably were, and that opened up a confusing question in his mind. Could the man feel the eyes spinning in his arm? Or did they not move at all and were only like…aesthetic?

He shivers and tosses the thought from his head. No need to dwell on it.

The kunoichi straightens and he finds most of his view blocked by her back. She was taller than him and he had followed her into the room, he couldn’t move out from behind her without dragging undue attention to him.

Then, the kunoichi turns and grabs his wrist. Pulling him to stand before her and putting him directly in the line of fire he had hoped to avoid. Seven known eyes - and several more he could only feel - lock on to his masked face and he tenses under their stare. 

Tora hisses from her perch on his shoulders.

“Hmm,” The Hokage finally breaks his silence, eyes narrowed down at him. “So, you finally decided to show your face?” 

He feels Tora bristle around his neck, but he’s too focused on the blanket of murderous intent that suddenly covers the room. He was getting cold. So cold , and his lungs felt heavy. Like it was getting harder to breathe.

“A-ah?” He croaks but the words don’t get far.

Sarutobi’s eyes hardened, “Did you truly believe that I did not know everything that happens in my village? Your time here, while short, has come to an end.”

He clenches his hands around the fabric of his pants, wondering briefly if he could make a get away before deciding it was a lost cause. He wouldn’t even be able to mold chakra before he got skewered. “I-”

“Your actions while here have caused me a great deal of annoyance as of late, and my esteemed advisors suggested I be rid of you.” Sandaime puffed on his pipe and waved a gentle hand towards Bandage-man. “Danzo here suggested I merely eliminate you and be done with it.”

“Ma-a,” He tried to smile and deflect, eyes squinting up as he tried to come up with a way out of the certain doom he’s found himself in. “Sur-surely there's no need for that?” 

Guy with glasses sighs and mutters, “Great.”

The old woman sighs alongside him and rolls her eyes up to the ceiling. “Not another one.”

“But no,” The Sandaime Hokage sighs and shakes his head softly in disappointment. “I fancy myself a benevolent leader. And as such, I will merely send you home with minimal bloodshed.”

He didn’t have a home to return to. He had died, there was no going back. Konoha was his home now and the only other choice was death.

He took a deep breath and darted his eyes around in search of a quick exit. He wouldn’t get far, but maybe he could make the best of it? His eyes alight on Bandage-man and he tenses as a hair-brained idea comes to mind. 

Maybe he could sneak attack the man before they could do anything to him. Cut off his sleeve or something and have the other ninja gut the man after his death once they see the sharingan embedded in his arm. 

It was risky and would surely result in his death, but if that was all he amounted to in the end, then that was good enough. He wasn’t going to live very long in this world anyway. So why not go out by at least attempting to change things a bit?

“You should be ashamed of yourself, dragging this poor boy into your mischief.” The Hokage scolded the cat on his shoulders. And Tora bristled like the demon it was thought of.

The Hokage scolded the cat. The Hokage scolded the cat. The cat.

“A-ah, what?” He murmurs and glances around the room when the pressure on his lungs lifts and he can breathe once again.

The two other elders look like they are contemplating if a nap was warranted at the moment, Danzo was still glaring but it was directed at the Hokage. And the Hokage? He was having a stare down with the cat on Rei’s shoulders. 

“Honestly Tora, have you no empathy in that shriveled cavity you call a heart?”

Tora hisses at the offense and flicks her tail against the side of his head.

‘What. The. Fuck.’

This was all about the cat? The fucking cat? His heart was beating harshly against his ribcage and it felt like any moment it would burst free and start dancing in front of him. The urge to flee made his legs thrum with an intense burning of restrained energy and he needed a nap.  

And it was all about the cat. 

“Hokage-sama.” The kunoichi steps up next to him and waves a hand at the cat on his shoulders. “As you can see, things have taken a drastic turn, but have been contained.” 

Sarutobi breaks his stare with the cat and huffs on his pipe, “And the issue?”

“This…boy,” She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and he’s not sure whether to be offended or not. “Caught Tora-shi and returned her to the missions desk before any other team could achieve it.” 

“Get to the point, Chunin-san.” The old woman snaps. And he wonders what her name is. He couldn’t remember it for the life of him. 

The kunoichi, whose name he also doesn’t know, stands up straighter at the reprimand. “He’s not a shinobi, Hokage-sama. We were unsure if he was to receive payment or not for completing the mission.”

He didn’t even know there was a mission for it already. He had thought coming here that he would be the one to prompt one.

“Hmm, you were right to bring this to me.” Sarutobi blows some smoke into the air and it takes the shape of a… swirl as it glides through the air. “Interesting.” 

Danzo huffs and his glare on the Hokage rises in its incredulousness. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hush. Now, young man.” Sarutobi peers at him with his wizened visage and he feels himself relax a bit at the Grandfather Effect. “Tell me, what do you know about how shinobi get paid?” 

“Ah,” He glances at the kunoichi and sees that she isn’t even looking at him. “Per mission? At least, that’s what I overheard the Academy sensei say.”

“A common misconception.” The man hums and spares the man with glasses a shrewd look. “Despite what many think, it is not per mission that shinobi are paid. They would make more money than the Daimyo if that were true. Missions only give out a small completion bonus, the real way shinobi are paid is through salary .”

“O-okay?” What did any of this have to do with him?

“Sure there are extra incentives and variances based upon rank and job title, but shinobi are paid mostly by their salary each month.” Sarutobi puffs on his pipe again and the smoke dances into more vague looking shapes. “Which makes your situation all the more curious. Seeing as you are not yet a shinobi. Are you?” 

He shakes his head and barely manages to not dislodge Tora-chan on his shoulders. Though, she does smack him with her tail in retaliation. “No, Hokage-sama.”

“Hmpf.” The woman huffs and Glasses Guy rolls his eyes at her. Danzo is still glaring, but his one eye looks glazed in a way that says he wasn’t paying attention any longer.

“Curious, yes.” The Hokage hums and then nods his head. Hokage hat bouncing with the movement. “But not unsolvable. Seeing as you are not a shinobi yet, you will not earn a salary. But, you can be given money that would go towards the Tora Incentive. The bonus for each team that undertakes the perilous mission of dealing with our feline friend here.”

The kunoichi brightens beside him and looks like the Hokage just solved world hunger or something. “That’s it!”

Sarutobi gives a satisfied nod and shoots a quick smirk at his advisors. But then the woman smirks back at him with an evil little smile that spoke of trouble. “Indeed. However, in order to receive such payment, a mission report is needed to wrap things up. Make things official, you understand?” 

He sighs and glances morosely up at the leader of his village. The head honcho. The big Lebowski. The man who has gotten him assigned a punishment he didn’t deserve. “Paperwork?”

Sarutobi sighs and nods down at him with sympathy, “I’m afraid so.”

He slumps in place and wishes he could sink into the wooden floor and disappear. He hated paperwork. “...okay.”

The Hokage smiles at him and he feels himself drooping further. “Congratulations young man, I do believe you will be the first to graduate with a mission already under their belt in a few years.” 

“Thank you, Hokage-sama.” He sighs, bows and then follows the Chunin out of the room. The four elderly voices followed him in his wake.

“What was that kid’s name anyway?” The woman asks.

“Beats me.” The Hokage answers her and his shoulders slump in defeat. Wow, just wow.

Two hours later, after a long goodbye with Tora-chan that involved him blinking rapidly to stop the tears from leaking and lots of chin scratches, he left the academy building with about a hundred bucks in his pocket and a cramping hand. His feet took him back to his apartment to retrieve his bokken and a plan formed to train on the river until he couldn’t keep his chakra steady and fell in. 

He’d had a long day.

Chapter Text

Waking up on the day of graduation sucked.

He’d spent so much time dreading it, that when the day finally came, he only felt a sense of twisted relief. The wait was finally over. 

Relief quickly turned into uncertainty sprinkled with a side of fear.

There were too many unknowns in his life and he was starting to feel like he had no control over the things that happened to him. And he didn’t, not for a long time and certainly not since he found himself in Konoha in a different life.

He barely dragged himself out of bed that morning. Eyes feeling heavy and limbs achy from training too long the night before. He made his bed through bleary eyes, tucking in the itchy blanket at the corners, and then slumped his way into the bathroom to do his business.

He went about routine as best he could. Trying his best to ignore the rising anxiety that made itself a home under his ribs. He made some food, and then washed the dishes when he was done. Tucking them away in the storage cubby he had for them. He dressed slowly in a set of the better clothes he had, attaching his weapons pouch to his thigh.

He glances around his apartment before taking a heavy seat on the bed. Eyes alighting on the baby blanket he had left draped over his pillow. He’d taken it out of his hidey hole the night before, needing the extra bit of comfort to calm his nerves in the night.

With a sigh, he grabbed a hold of it and tightened his shaky fingers in the fabric. A sense of sadness lingering inside him as his thoughts turned far away.

Would anyone have been proud of him? If they were dead, were they looking down on him and rooting for the person he was becoming?

It was all rather surreal when his mind was a mixed up brain stew of two different lives. 

His relationship with his past life parents was…not the greatest. 

But his new life? Well, he could dream. And even if the reality turned out much worse than he ever thought, he could still dream for now.

He sat there for a while. Just taking in his apartment and wondering if life would ever get better. What did his future look like? Would he live long enough to live somewhere other than a cramped studio apartment that he had no company in?

He didn’t know. And he supposed it was no use dwelling on it for long. 

Glancing at his alarm clock, he sighs, folds the blanket back up and drapes it over his pillow. With one last look at his apartment, he pulls the mask up over his nose and leaves through the front door.

The walk to the Academy is slow. He takes his time and ambles his way through the village streets, looking at everything like he was seeing it for the first or last time. Anything that happened today and in the near future would be uncertain. Unpredictable. 

He didn’t like it.

He needed to get strong. Wanted to get strong. If only so he could live long enough to see how things would play out.

His current strength was unknown to him. And what he did know didn’t feel like it was enough. He knew he could access his chakra easier than before. Could switch places with a Kawarimi with nary a thought and create basic Bunshin much the same. Knew he could glide through the basic sword kata’s effortlessly. 

But knowing how to do things meant nothing when he had no experience using them. Had no practice even sparring against opponents that would fight back besides the sparring they did occasionally in the academy.

He had no real way to measure his skills. And until he had such a way, he would need to give it his all no matter what. Making sure his opponents underestimate him long enough to make a mistake.

It was a bit early when he made it to the academy. Despite that, the classroom was half-full with eager students waiting for the day to start. No doubt, all ready for the next part of their lives to begin. 

He sat at the back of the class and tried to prepare himself for the day. Tried to calm his beating heart and soothe his rampant nerves. 

Today was the day, he just hoped he was ready.

Hours later, he stands at the edge of the crowded academy grounds with a brand new Hitai-ate strapped to his forehead and watches as the other children and their families celebrate their success. All the while he tries to ignore the empty void that sat deep within his chest. A void that tinged with envy and sorrow. 

He thought he was doing a good job of doing so. Though, the ache remained. 

Graduating was easier than he thought it would have been. It consisted of a written test that was more indoctrination than it was an actual test, and testing of the basic academy three jutsu. And that was it. 

It left him a bit underwhelmed if he was being honest. He’d had higher expectations for becoming a shinobi of Konoha. But it also allowed him to understand why the majority of Konoha’s forces were merely Chunin. Why a majority of the shinobi forces across the world were merely Chunin. 

When he’d first heard that factoid, he had thought Iruka-sensei was giving them shit. That the man was playing a joke on them. Him specifically . Because it sure didn’t seem like that was true. 

Watch a few episodes and tell him he’s wrong to doubt. 

Graduating was so easy in fact, that he was entirely surprised when he turned his head and caught sight of Naruto sitting despondently on The Swing Under the Tree. Looking despondent and depressed as he watched the other children all celebrate.

He sighs and wonders if he should go say something. Try to lift the kids mood a bit or something. Only problem was he didn’t have a single clue as to what he was supposed to say.

Out of this class of around thirty, Naruto was the only one to fail. Which was a fucking feat by itself. And if the kid failed based off of just the one jutsu, then something didn’t make any damned sense. Didn’t they give out exceptions for things? Like that Lee kid that couldn't mold chakra? So why would they keep Naruto from graduating on that alone?

The kid obviously had the skills to pass - if you ignore the Bunshin - and displayed those skills a lot in the last month. Especially once the kid learned to tree-walk and started causing havoc nearly everyday.

The only reason he could think of for the fail, was sabotage. Overt, completely noticeable , sabotage. 

Well, that. Or Iruka didn’t think Naruto was ready to become a shinobi and made a judgement call. 

And the sad thing? It was probably a combination of both. 

For training to be professional killers, thieves and spies, many of the kids didn’t understand the gravity of it all. And why would they? They were just children, children who grew up around the profession and were all desensitized to its aspects. 

Fuck, it made him tired just thinking about it.

Naruto looks sad as shit, and he sighs. Feet turning to wonder over and try to come up with something to say, but he stops before he makes it a single step. 

Mizuki is standing next to Naruto, head tilted at the kid in a kind way. Traitorous way, don’t fall for it. They converse for a few moments before they're gone in a flash.

He barely manages to catch Naruto’s eyes before the kid leaves, but Naruto looks away quickly when they meet eyes.

He sighs again and tilts his head back towards the crowd of cheering students. Eyes stopping on where the Third Hokage and Iruka stand against a wall. He should say something, right? Give a heads up to prevent anyone from potentially getting too hurt. 

But, the more he thinks about it, the less he thinks he should. Naruto needed to graduate and the only way he could think of was to let things play out the normal way. Even if it pained him to not do anything. He couldn’t risk the kid failing completely and then throwing everything into question. 

He’s all for chaos, but not that much chaos.

With one last sigh, he left the Academy building without looking back. The feel of his forehead protector weighing down upon his very soul. And the sudden feel of burden was not lost on him. 

He had responsibility now. Or would when he officially registered. And it was not a feeling he liked having attached to his shoulders.

He thinks about going out to eat something. To celebrate the achievement, but he can’t find it in himself to be in a celebratory mood. There was too much he needed to think about and it was dragging him down a bit.

It was already around four in the afternoon. Graduation had taken a while to be finished up, with every student needed to be personally tested. 

Besides, there was nothing he wanted to do right then besides train. Which sucked, on a personal level, because of the things it said about his social life.

‘The terrible lack of one, that is.’

Making his way through Konoha is uneventful. Grabbing his bokken from his apartment even more so. Honestly, things are rather boring in his life. He goes about most of his days with very little in the way of engaging moments, and the trip to his apartment and then back to the training grounds is much the same.

When he finally gets to the training grounds, he finds himself stuck on what exactly he wanted to train in. He didn’t have any ninjutsu or genjutsu to practice. His katas, while mildly engaging, were progressing at a solid pace but lacked an opponent to test them against. And his chakra control was as good as it was going to get without different exercises to practice it on. 

He couldn’t remember anything else on the matter at the moment. It was…vexing.

‘Why couldn’t I have been one of those weebs that knew everything about this shit? Instead of throwing my life away, I should have been practicing hand signs.’

Fucking ugh.

He sighs and glances at a nearby tree. It looks sturdy. And there’s a limb that sticks out twenty-ish feet up that beckons him to sit on. It’s shaded from the sun and looks like an amazing place to take a nap. 

But no, he came here to train. Not to nap. That would be foolish of him. Foolish and displaying a concerning lack of ambition. He should be ashamed of himself for even thinking about it.

He ends up in the tree.  

Leaning against the harsh bark that seems to soften at his back with his eyes closed as he tries to relax his muscles. His hands clutching his bokken against his shoulder.

He doesn’t quite fall asleep. More like falling into a doze that ends up being more meditation than anything else. 

As he sits there, he feels an awareness tickle the back of his brain. A knowing that spreads through his chest and down his body. From his head to his toes. It’s chakra, he thinks. His chakra and he can feel it better than he ever has before. 

It’s most prominent in his chest. Like a ball of energy that swirls and rages inside him. It is warm, soothing and utterly terrifying. 

So he mentally pokes it. 

He waits a few moments and when nothing happens, he pokes it again. But this time, something happens. That awareness that had let him feel his body so completely trickles from outside him and spreads. 

Suddenly, he can feel everything around him. And that’s awesome and annoying at the same time. He could feel the birds in the tree above him. Feel the insects that climb along the bark of the tree. Can also, unfortunately, feel the two squirrels in the tree over having an interesting time .

But there’s something that tingles at his awareness. A thriving energy that he can feel directly next to him. Cuddled up against his very soul like a clingy lover.

He blinks his eyes open, but does not see anyone around him. And his other senses tell him the same thing. Besides the rather disconcerting feel of the sun beating down on his face but mercifully not directly in his eyes.

Thank the gods, a branch is placed perfectly in the way of the sun's deadly beams.

‘The Sun is a Deadly Lazer.’

He snickers quietly to himself and the awareness flickers before he concentrates on focusing himself.

Time passes without his notice. He’s too focused on finding that cuddly energy and poking it with a metaphorical stick in an attempt to dislodge it or get it to give him some space. It’s not a bad feeling, having it there. But he wasn’t used to having a singular chakra aura let alone another that was foreign and yet not within him. 

For the oddest reason, he thinks he can feel it from the tree under his ass as well.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, dozing and poking at the same time. But his dozing is interrupted by a loud ball of energy coming straight at him. The energy is thick and acidic, but gets warmer the closer it gets. 

With a sigh, he opens his eyes just in time to see Naruto drop down on the tree in front of him. Other than the fact that somehow it’s night time already and he’s lost his day light, the first thing he notices is that the kid looks to be out of breath. Orange jumpsuit rumpled and his appearance in a general disarray. The kid is looking around the open ground as if searching for someone to jump out and attack him.

Oh, and there’s a giant scroll slung across the brat’s back.

He sighs and Naruto nearly falls out of the tree. The kid turns his wide eyes in his direction. A strangled scream passing through his lips. Naruto clutches his chest and he thinks the poor kid is about to have a heart attack. 

“R-R-Rei!” Naruto whisper-screams, pointing a shaky finger at his masked face. Looking all around like he had just seen a ghost. “What are you doing? Are you…”

“Napping.” He squints at Naruto, hoping his eyes do the eye thing he practices in the mirror in the mornings.

‘Out of all the trees in the forest, why mine?’

He had the worst luck. He had been trying to avoid this whole debacle entirely. But no, he somehow managed to pick the one tree that Naruto would stop on. He’d thought he had been completely out of the way for this showdown, but apparently he was wrong. That, or he was just really unfortunate.

Naruto lets out an explosive sigh that seems way more dramatic than it should be, and glances around wildly for a moment. Then, the kid’s eyes light up and he takes the scroll off his back. “Take this.” 

The kid shoves the scroll into his arms and he nearly drops his bokken out of the tree in the process of grabbing it. “Naruto, what?”

Naruto summons a single clone that immediately turns into an identical copy of the scroll, and straps it to his back. “Don’t let anyone take it, or else .”

He gives the kid a deadpan look under his mask. But Naruto seems to understand by the way his face cringes and starts to look guilty. At least, until his head tilts and he tenses his body in preparation to jump.

“Naru-” He tries but Naruto is already gone. 

He sighs and glances up at the moon that’s peeking out of some clouds in the sky. “Kaguya-chan, give me some patience.”

She had endless, seeing as she was trapped in the moon and all. She could spare some. No need to be greedy with it.

He looks down at the scroll in his arms and wonders how this became his life. He didn’t know what to do. On one hand, he could take it back to the Hokage and hope for leniency on Naruto’s crimes. On the other hand, he could hunt down Iruka and Naruto and toss it at them to get rid of the burden of responsibility. 

On the other-other hand, the scroll was right there . Surely a peek inside wouldn’t hurt anyone?

He debates with himself the pros and cons of that potential action. Wondering if the crime of treason was something he was willing to risk. Willing to risk being sent to T&I and tortured until he bled from his eyes because a Yamanaka was feeling angry that day. 

It only takes him about five seconds before he opens the scroll in his lap. Laying the thing over his skinny legs and trying to keep his bokken close by so it doesn’t fall. 

‘YOLO or whatever.’

The writings in the scroll are long and hold great risk in their teachings. They come with enough warnings to have any shinobi second guessing their plans to learn them.

The writings are also complicated as shit to understand. Most involve a level of understanding that he didn’t have at the moment and the rest seemed to be written in some sort of code. 

Honestly, the only things he really recognized were the Kage Bunshin and what looked to be the Edo Tensei. And the other things he could understand didn’t mean anything to him. The techniques were not recognizable to him at the current moment. 

He sighs and takes a look at the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu . Figures he might as well learn the hand signs for it at least. It’s rather easy to memorize despite the warning labelled under it. 

Honestly, it only takes him like two minutes to have the signs memorized. Which leaves him with an unknown amount of time to look at other things. Too bad nothing really catches his interest. 

A racket down below has him rolling the scroll up quickly and casting an illusion over himself to make it look like all he had in his hands was his bokken. 

He shouldn’t have bothered however, because it’s just Naruto running through the trees. But he’s coming from the wrong direction he’d gone in and this time, Iruka is hot on his heels. The two are yelling nonsense at each other and they pass him by without even acknowledging he was there. 

He sighs and glances at the moon. If they were done beating up Mizuki, why didn’t Naruto just come get the damned scroll. 

‘Gods save me from these morons.’ 

He stands and pats himself down, stretching his achy limbs that have fallen asleep while he dozed. He hefts the scroll onto his back and takes off further into the forest in search of the duo so he can dump the scroll onto them and go home to get some sleep. 

He runs through the trees, leaping from branch to branch and trying to not think about what he’s doing too much lest he trip and plummet. As he does, he can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t come across any other shinobi. Surely, with Naruto having stolen the Sacred Scroll of Forbidden Things , they would be everywhere. Canvasing the entirety of Konoha.

But no, somehow the first ninja he comes across are Naruto, Iruka and another pale headed ninja that takes him a moment to recognize as Mizuki. Naruto is standing in front of a downed Iruka, who is leaning heavily against a tree. The two are surrounded by various clones that all seem to be eyeballing Mizuki with glares that spoke of violence. Mizuki has his back to the tree he’d picked at random to leap into.

There aren't as many clones as he was expecting. He’d thought Naruto had spammed the things for this first in canon. Produced so many it was like a wave of orange in the trees. But no, only a handful stand protectively in front of a bewildered looking Iruka.

The reason becomes rather obvious when Naruto opens his mouth and sends Mizuki a sympathetic look. “I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong. That’s why you’re doing this right, because you feel like you don’t belong?” 

Rei can’t see Mizuki’s face, but the man’s back is tense. Ready to pounce but restraining himself while Naruto stares at him with purposeful eyes.  

And oh god , it’s happening. 

‘Is he being fucking Talk no Jutsu’ed right now?’

“You know nothing, demon!” Mizuki growls, but the words sound weak. Like he’s making a protest just for the sake of doing so. 

“Naruto’s not a demon.” Iruka scowls at Mizuki. “He’s a real boy, and is just like you or me.”

Mizuki hisses something but it’s inaudible to him in the tree. He sees the man’s hands clench around a giant shuriken and decides that Naruto’s charisma isn’t going to work that night. 

The three of them continue talking, making everything seem like some giant production put on just for him to watch. And he feels himself grow bored of the waiting. Nobody is making any moves to fight quite yet and time was quickly passing by.

He reaches into his weapons pouch and pulls out a kunai. It’s chipped and scratched, but it’s sharp. Though honestly, it’s probably doesn’t mean much considering it’s the worst kunai he had. 

Mizuki is yelling something at Naruto, but his resistance seems to be crumbling. Naruto looks seconds away from tears of his own.

‘Fuck it.’

The kunai is out of his hand without a second thought. He bumps the scroll on his back with his arm during the throw, so the trajectory is a bit off, but the kunai soars true. Hitting Mizuki right in the man’s unprotected back and the man tips forward with a bit-off scream.

He watches Mizuki fall and grabs another kunai, tense and ready for the man to make another move. He waits for him to pop up and try to attack him. Waits for the poof of smoke to signal the man had switched with something last minute. And waits for the man to start gloating that he’d missed. 

He waits for Mizuki to...start cursing with his face in the dirt?

He glances at Naruto and Iruka and sees them both looking surprised at what just happened. Naruto is staring down at Mizuki with wide eyes, but Iruka is quick to send his eyes up into the trees to find where the kunai came from.

Mizuki doesn’t get up. Just kind of twitches limply on the forest floor. Kunai sticking out of his spine.

He…hadn’t meant for that to happen.

He waits for a little bit for something to happen but nothing does. So with a sigh, he hops down from his perch and makes himself known in the little clearing. Bokken tucked under his arm. 

“Yo.” He lazily waves his free hand at the two gaping shinobi. Most of his focus is on the shinobi on the ground with a kunai stuck in his back. He’d thought for sure something would have happened by now.

“Rei!” Naruto yells, eyes lighting up at his arrival. “You were supposed to stay hidden!”

“What?” Iruka looks lost and suspicious at the same time. Which makes his face look constipated. “Rei?”

“Maa, Naru-chan.” He squints at them through an eye smile. He’s practiced it, he can use it if he wants. “You didn’t tell me to hide. Only for no one to touch the scroll.”

Naruto groans and then dispels his clones, turning back to Iruka to fret over the downed man. “Are you okay, Iruka-sensei?” 

“I’m okay for now, thank you Naruto.” Iruka smiles up at the kid and waves him forward with a bloody hand. “Come here, I’ve got something for you.” 

“Ne, ne, sensei. What is it?” Naruto wiggles forward and couches in front of Iruka.

“Close your eyes.” Iruka says and reaches up to his forehead soon after. Taking the forehead protector off his own head and the goggles off of Naruto’s.

Rei sighs and looks away, no need to intrude on the moment. Mizuki is still cursing in the dirt, but he’s somehow managed to twist his head to glare up at him. With another sigh, he steps forward to tower over Mizuki.

“Of course.” Mizuki scoffs. “You damned brat. It couldn’t have been anyone else. No, I get the other freak instead.”

He tilts his head and wonders what the guy is feeling at the moment. The kunai looks like it’s rather lodged in the man’s back. He hadn’t realized he’d thrown it so hard. “That looks painful.”

“Fuck you, you stupid brat!” Mizuki tries to… wiggle , he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t do much for his situation. “I can’t feel anything!”

“Really?” He asks and nudges the man’s leg with his foot. “Did you feel that?”

Mizuki growls, “Don’t fucking touch me you fucking orphan freak.”

“Ah.” He grabs a hold of his bokken and crouches down, poking Mizuki with it like it’s a stick. “Did you feel that ?”

Mizuki screams in pain. He’d poked the kunai rather harshly after all. It looked like it sunk in a bit too. “Yes! You fuck-”

“Maa,” He sighs and scratches the mask on his cheek. “Now I feel bad.”

“Y-you,” Mizuki makes an inarticulate noise of anger. “You feel bad ? You put a kunai through my spine! I can’t feel my legs!”

“Yeah but like,” He waves a hand over at where Naruto and Iruka seemed to be crying at each other. Thick tears rolling down their cheeks and looking seconds away from throwing themselves at each other for a hug. “In an attempt to stop you from hurting them. To kill you maybe, not… this. ” 

“Oh yeah?” Mizuki scowls, eyes promising murder. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“Great.” He squints down at the man and tries to hide the sudden horror under the eye smile. 

He hadn’t meant to paralyze the poor guy. But he supposed this worked just as well in keeping him from hurting Naruto and Iruka. And wasn’t there an arc later on where the guy came back for revenge or something? Maybe it wouldn’t happen this time.

He felt bad now. Felt like shit, if he was honest. It was way too easy to ruin the guy's life. Barely a flick of his arm and the man wasn’t able to move. 

It was freaking him out. If the rest of this life was going to be the same, he was going to lose a part of himself in the journey.

Naruto lets out a cry and throws himself at Iruka. The two clutch onto each other in a fierce hug. He stands and turns his head away to give them some privacy, and so he didn’t have to look at Mizuki as well. And to ignore the panic and ache in his chest that wants a hug as well.

Only, there's an ANBU standing next to him. Her mask tilted down at him under a purple curtain of doom. Relief springs forward in his chest so fast his heart feels like it skips a beat.

“Thank the gods you’re here.” He steps towards her before he can think about it and wraps his arms around her in a hug. “Tears were falling and I don’t have a high tolerance against it yet.” 

She’s tense in his arms, but doesn’t do anything other than pat him on the top of his head. “Are you okay?”

He sighs and steps back out of her arms, lamenting the sudden lack of warmth. “Physically fine. Emotionally….eh.”

She hums and suddenly there are other ANBU around the clearing. A few stand guard while two go about checking Mizuki and knocking him out when the man starts cursing at them. A few also walk over to the hugging duo to check them over as well.

He sighs and takes the scroll off his back and hands it over to her. “I’m guessing this is important.”

“Yeah.” She takes the scroll and straps it around her shoulders. “You could say that.”

“Rei!” He turns to see Naruto scowling at him from where the kid is helping Iruka stand up straight. There’s a forehead protector protecting his forehead. So, he graduated then. His eyes glanced between him and Purple-sama. “No one’s supposed to touch it!”

“Tch, brat.” He narrows his eyes at Naruto and waves a hand at the woman beside him. “Don’t question Purple-sama like that. I trust her with my life.”

Naruto groans and even Iruka looks bewildered by it all. But for some reason, all the ANBU in the clearing have stopped what they were doing and are staring blankly at Purple-sama. All at once. In unison. 

“Purple-sama?” Iruka whispers but his voice carries across the silent clearing.

Purple-sama raises her shoulders up a bit before an aura of killing intent blankets the area. The other ANBU only tilt their heads at her for her presumption. Once again, as a whole. Collectively.

It’s trippy, but the operatives go back to their tasks before he can think too hard on it. Purple-sama puts a hand on his shoulder and nods as a few do the same for Naruto and Iruka. 

“We’re going to see the Hokage.” She speaks to the others and he watches as they disappear in a flicker of chakra and leaves. Then she leans in close to him and whispers to him gently. “Don’t tense up.” 

He nods, and then the surrounding blur until he’s standing somewhere else. Having travelled by Shunshin through the village.

They’re in a mostly empty room, but she puts a hand on his shoulder and leads him out of it soon after arrival. They exit the room, walk down a short hallway and then enter into a spacious room that seems to be the Hokage’s office. Naruto and Iruka are already there and Iruka is standing up straight but looks like he’s half leaning on Naruto to keep steady.

The Hokage sits behind a desk at one end of the room and his eyes flicker over at them when they enter. “Ah, I see you’ve brought it then.”

She lets go of his shoulder and stands before the Hokage’s desk, arms holding the giant scroll out for the man to take. “Yes, Hokage-sama.”

“Good.” The Hokage takes the scroll and sets it down beside his desk. Then he narrows his eyes up at Naruto and Iruka. “I believe an explanation is owed.”

Iruka steps forward with a wince. “Hokage-sama, this is partially my fault-”

“Mizuki tricked me.” Naruto interrupts with a squinty scowl. “Told me there was a hidden test I could take to graduate.”

“Naruto.” Iruka glances at Naruto with heavy eyes.

Naruto shakes his head and points a finger at Iruka, his eyes starting to tear up. ”No! It’s not your fault, Iruka-sensei. You were only trying to look out for me and that bastard took advantage of it.”

“If I had spoken with you about graduation, he wouldn’t have had the chance to fool you. I should have known that your struggles with the Bunshin was because of your large amounts of chakra.” Iruka looks like he’s about to start crying as well. What the fuck? Again? “I’m sorry, Naruto. For failing you.” 

“I was working on it!” Naruto looks away in embarrassment, but only to hide the vulnerability. “I was, truly! Ask Rei!”

All eyes turn to look at him and he’s glad the mask hides his flaming cheeks. Damn kid. Throwing him under the bus like that. He nods slowly and eye-smiles again to hide the way his eyes want to sweat at the attention. 

“And so an unknown in all this is revealed.” Sarutobi pulls out his pipe and lights it with a small burst of a Katon jutsu. “How exactly did you become embroiled in this incident?” 

“Ah,” He scratches his cheek and doesn’t stop squinting his eyes. This time to hide the panic. “Well, you see. I was in the training grounds relaxing in a tree when Naru-chan woke me from my nap.”

“Napping?” The Sandaime looks just done with everything. Like he was too old for this shit anymore and he probably was. Which made him feel kind of bad, but only for a moment. 

Guy might deserve it with the way Naruto grew up.

He nods and for some reason thinks the shadows are snickering at him. 

Sarutobi sighs and levels a stern gaze in his direction. “How did you come into possession of the scroll?” 

“Naruto shoved it at me and then bounced.” He tilts his head at the boy in question to see him looking a bit uncomfortable. Like he was embarrassed about it. He then expanded on it. You know, to try to lessen that. “Told me not to give it to anyone or else. But he didn’t expand on that at all before he was gone.” 

Naruto groans and tries to hide behind Iruka when the Hokage turns to look at him. The room is tense for a few seconds before the Hokage turns his eyes back at him. 

“Did you look at it?” 

“Yeah,” Everyone tenses and he feels something tingle his spine. “Kind of hard not to when it’s shoved in my face without much warning.”

“Inside.” Sarutobi sighs and puffs absently on his pipe. “Did you look inside the scroll?”

“Nah,” He shakes his head and lies through his teeth. “Why would I look inside a giant ass scroll given to me by Naruto of all people? I like my fingers attached and my skin unglittered , thanks.” 

“It was only one time!” Naruto bursts out at the offense. A scowl on his lips. “Besides, it was only one finger and the guy got it reattached just fine!”

The Sandaime sighs and gestures at him, “Very well. What happened tonight is need to know, and none of your peers have such a privilege. An ANBU will take you home. Iruka. Naruto, both of you will stay.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.” He intones and is escorted out of the room by Purple–sama. She guides him with a hand on his shoulder until they get back to the room they arrived in and he can feel her gaze on the side of his head. “Don’t tense up again?”

She tilts her head at him when he looks up at her and then hums in confirmation. 

Travelling across the village at intense speeds is disorientating. But he finds himself slowly getting used to the feeling and wonders if it’s the same when it’s only a one person Shunshin.  

When he blinks his eyes open, he sees that he’s standing in the center of his apartment. Purple-sama breaks away from him to wander into his kitchen area.

“It’s not much.” He gestures around the room and tries to not think too hard about the fact she knew where she was going. “But it’s all I’ve got.” 

Which is kind of depressing when he thinks about it, but he does his best to keep his face blank. Purple-sama glances at him before she opens his fridge and looks inside. The door blocks her figure from him, but he can hear the soft hum that she makes when she sees his pitiful fridge contents. 

He’d forgotten to go shopping, okay? Don’t judge.

“Ano, Purple-sama?” He wonders what she’s doing. “What’re you-” 

“It’s Neko.” She interrupts. Closing the fridge with a soft thump and sparing him a small glance as she makes her way over to his meager cupboards. Cupboards that he knows don’t hold anything other than instant ramen and some canned fruits.

“Is that your name?” He asks and sets his bokken down on his bed.

She hums and nods in his vague direction as she opens the cupboards and tilts her head at them. “Codename.”

He thinks about it and it sort of makes sense. The mask did, sort of, look like a cat. In an odd, abstract kind of way. Maybe.

“Neko-sama.” He tests it out on his tongue and finds it acceptable with a hum.

She echoes his hum, but somehow manages to convey a lot more with it than he does as she glances around the apartment with judgement . 

He sighs and pulls his mask down off his nose to let it bunch up around his neck. Neko-sama pauses for a moment at the action, her head tilting at him in what he thinks might be confusion. Or something, he didn’t know. 

‘You try to read a blank mask and tell me how it goes.’ 

She makes a soft noise and continues her journey around his room. There’s not much for her to see, seeing as it’s a studio apartment, so it doesn’t take her long to make a loop and wind up in front of him once again. 

Her head tilts down at him as she regards him through the pitch black eye holes. He watches as she raises a hand and very slowly reaches forward to let it sit on top of his head. His eyes closing at the feel of her gloves fingers in his hair. 

“Thank you for coming tonight.” He says. And lets out a hum of appreciation at the gentle head pat she gives. 

‘Gods, I’m such a weirdo.’ 

She makes a soft noise that sounds like a chuckle, “You did a good job, tonight.” 

He sighs and opens his eyes just to stare at his feet. “I feel bad. About what I did to him.”

“Don’t.” She takes her hand off his head and uses it to put a finger under his chin and gently lifts his gaze from the floor to look back at her. “He would have done the same to you if given a chance. Only he wouldn’t have felt bad afterward.”

“Still.” He sighs, but she doesn’t let him look away. And somehow, even in the low light, the pitch black eye holes fade away to allow warm brown eyes to peer through the darkness. 

And they are looking at him with enough compassion that it makes his eyes sting.

“Rei-kun.” She sighs and lets her thumb run softly against his chin. Despite the glove, he can feel the warmth of the action in his chest. “The shinobi world is cruel and unforgiving, but you can’t let it destroy you otherwise the enemy wins.”

“How? How do you do it?” He asks, leaning into her touch. He’ll deny it later, but being touch-starved kind of sucked.

She tilts her head. “I think about all I have to protect. And how I will use my failures and burdens to drive me so I can continue protecting them.”

He didn’t have anything to protect though. He was truly alone in this life and despite the sentiment, there was nobody he knew that needed his protection. “You have failures? Seems fake.”

Her body shakes and there is a soft huffing noise coming from behind her mask and it takes him a long moment to realize she is chuckling at him. “Indeed. I made it up to make you feel better.”

“Thanks.” He smiles and in a moment of pique, throws himself at her in a hug. Wrapping his arms around her and hiding his face in her chest plate. 

She’s less tense this time. And one of her hands even comes up to the back of his head to run through his hair. “Of course.”

He hugs her for a long moment before he steps out of her space. If she notices the small droplets of liquid where his face had been, she doesn’t say anything. And he wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand as subtle as he can.

“Get some sleep.” She points at the bed and the eye holes fade back into a pitch black void. “You have a long day tomorrow.” 

He nods and then she’s gone in a small gust of wind. He takes his time getting ready for bed despite the late hour.

Despite the tears and the feeling of uncertainty regarding the future, the small smile doesn’t leave his face until he falls asleep.

Chapter Text

He didn’t get much sleep that night, which sucked.

So, waking up the next morning was an ordeal. He managed it of course, but still. He would like it to be known that he was not a morning person. 

The morning routine went by quickly and honestly, it wasn’t really worth commenting on. It was a normal routine. What the hell else is supposed to happen when he wakes up in the morning?

He ate quickly and then left his apartment to make his way to the Hokage Tower for his ninja registration appointment. His appointment was sometime after or around nine and he needed to be there early to get his picture taken. 

He walks through Konoha and tries to not think about his nightmares. The ones that haunted him for a good chunk of the night. And he mostly manages it. Until he catches a glimpse of bright hair that looks like silver in the morning traffic and has to take a different path to his destination. 

Honestly, it’s all rather boring. His life couldn’t be all fast times and fun living. That was simply asking too much of his luck.

Anyway, the trip to the Tower goes by quickly. And when he makes it there, getting inside is even easier. There are a few people standing around the lobby. Not many, but enough that he takes note of them.

When his eyes search out the receptionist at the front desk, he finds that the same woman from the last time he was here is sitting behind the desk looking bored. Her green eyes staring blankly up at a shinobi leaning over the desk while he attempts to speak with her. His body language and gestures made it look like he was flirting with her. Or trying to anyway. 

The guy is at least a Chunin, judging by the flak jacket vest, and has a bandage that runs across the bridge of his nose.

‘Is that a soul patch?’

He didn’t know, but the guy sort of looked familiar. He just couldn’t come up with a name for the man. Names. Names were one of his biggest failures. He couldn’t remember them for the life of him. 

The pretty receptionist glances over at his entrance and her eyes light up. Her hand came up to beckon him forward with a crooked finger. He hesitantly stepped forward in time to watch her turn a pleasant - fake - smile at the man leaning over her desk. 

“Apologies, Hagane-san. Rei-kun seems to require my attention at the moment.”

“Good morning, nee-chan.” He says, because he was polite like that.

The guy leans off the desk to shoot him a pout for interrupting. And he only sighs, squinting up at the guy in a tired eye smile that he hopes feels like disappointment personified. 

“Maa, morning to you as well I suppose, Shinobi-san.” He also says, less politely.

Hagane-san narrows his eyes at him before shaking his head and turning back to shoot the Yamanaka a sly smirk. “You get them young then?” 

“What was that?” Her pleasant smile doesn’t fade, but the feeling of intent to murder blankets the room. 

“Nothing.” Hagane grins down at her rather tensely. “Nothing at all, Toku-chan.” 

He snorts and scratches at his cheek when the guy shoots him a look. He shrugs and turns to look at the pretty nee-chan. “He asked if you-mmpf.”

The guy’s hand is around his mouth. He looks up to see Hagane shooting him a pleading look, eyes wide as he glances between him and Toku. Toku, whose pleasant smile has narrowed a bit at the exchange. 

“Nothing!” Hagane squeaks. Holding him still in place even when he wiggles in an attempt to get free of the man’s grip. “You know how kids are, Toku-chan. They say the damndest things.” 

He sighs and grabs a kunai from his weapons pouch, placing it perfectly behind him to make his intentions very clear what would happen if the guy didn’t let go. 

Hagane glowers down at him, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “You wouldn’t dare.” 

He just raises an eyebrow and pushes the kunai forward in a vicious poke. The guy yelps and puts a few feet in between them, a sulky look on his face. 

That would teach him to not grab him like that. 

“Kotetsu!” Another man shouts from the entrance to the building and Hagane flinches at the sound before he slumps like a child caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.

Toku-chan smiles a bit brighter at the man that appears. “Izumo-kun, come to collect your wayward friend?”

“Ah, Toku-san.” The new guy - Izumo - flushes a bit at the pretty woman’s attention. Before he lets out a large sigh. “Yeah, unfortunately. Come on then.” 

Kotetsu whines at them but doesn’t say anything in protest. The man allows himself to be manhandled out of the lobby and out the entrance with little fanfare.

He sighs and glances back at Toku-chan to see her smirking up at him. He shoves the kunai back into its pouch and steps up to the desk. “How’d you know it was me?” 

He was pretty sure the mask and headband did a pretty good job at hiding his identity. He hadn’t been wearing them the last time he’d seen her, so she shouldn’t have known it was him at first glance.

She smiles and taps a finger to her nose, “Trade secret.” 

He sighs. Right. She was a Yamanaka. They knew things. Well, not enough. Seeing as he wasn’t sitting in T&I right now, her technique wasn’t infallible.

“I’ve got an appointment for registration?” 

Toku flashes him another smile before she starts looking at a paper on her desk. He doesn’t know what she’s looking at, and he doesn’t really care all that much at the moment to find out. But after a moment, she smiles back up at him with a nod. “Third floor, fourth room on the left.” 

He offers her a small smile of his own. “Thank you, nee-chan.” 

“Ah.” She’s a bit pink in the cheeks again, but she’s still smiling. “You’re welcome, Rei-kun. And congratulations on graduating, I wish you luck going forward.” 

“Maa.” He eye-smiles at her and gives a small wave as he heads for the stairs. “Thanks.”

The walk up the stairs is not quick, but only because he spends the entirety of it behind a woman that is taking her time going up them. And he was forced to keep his eyes locked on the steps as he walked up them lest she turn around and punt him back down the steps for accidentally looking at her butt.

He made it to the third floor before he realized he could have just went around her and sprinted up the steps. But it was too late by then, so he only let out a sigh and continued on. 

He passes other ninja in the hallway, but other than a few quick looks, no one stops him as he wanders his way through the third floor.

Stopping at the fourth door on the left, he takes a breath and knocks hesitantly on it. He waits for a moment before a voice from inside shouts for him to enter. 

The room is small. Cramped in a way that says whoever he was meeting with wasn’t very important at all. On the wall are various posters and papers written in kanji that look like they’re motivational in some way. There's a single desk a few feet from the door, on it is a few stacks of paperwork cluttered with miscellaneous other desk things spread across it. 

Behind the desk is a man with his feet up on the empty corner of the desk. He’s leaning back in his chair and twirling a chained sickle thing. He has long, spiky brown hair but otherwise is dressed like a normal Konohagakure Shinobi. Flak Jacket and long sleeved shirt.

The guy glances up at him and stops twirling the sickle in his hand, leveling him with a shrewd look. “You must be my nine o’clock.”

He steps further into the room and stops before the desk, reading the nameplate he can see perched precariously in front of the paperwork. “Yes, Kamano-san.”

“Bah, call me Saisu.” Kamano-san glances at a clock on the wall and raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re early.”

He shrugs, glancing at a poster on the wall that says Don’t stop be-leafing! With a picture of a tree above the text. “I didn’t know what to expect, Kamano-san.”

Kamano-san sighs and rocks back in his chair to take his feet off the desk. The sickle thing disappears and then there’s a folder sitting in the man’s hands instead. He clacks it on the desk and then opens it. 

“Alright, brat. Let’s get this over with.” The guy takes some paperwork out of the folder and reaches for a pen on his desk. Dark eyes scanning the paper. “Do you, Rei, vow to pledge yourself to Konoha blah blah blah?”

He sighs and wonders why everyone he came across was so eccentric. He wanted a quiet life. He really did. “Yes.”

“Sweet.” Kamano-san marks down a few things on the paperwork that he doesn’t understand. The man absently reaches into a drawer of his desk and pulls out a stamp and ink set. “Do you, Rei, pledge to follow the orders of your superiors - like me - to the best of your ability?”

“I do.” His shoulders slump. Maybe he should have just stayed a civilian and became a wandering samurai or something. 

“Nice, nice.” A few more marks and then the stamp is made use of. “Lastly, do you, Rei, vow to be my cute little wingman to help with the ladies?”

“I d-what?” He narrows his eyes at Kamano-san and sees the man peering up at him with wide, pleading eyes. “What the fuck?”

Kamano-san sighs in dismay and jots down a note in his folder. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“What did you just write?” He glares at the man. Fingers itching to grab a kunai and stab something.

“Nothing.” The guy smiles and closes the folder. He grabs a piece of paper from the desk and holds it out for him to take. “Now, take this to the roof and give it to the Camera Man. He’ll give me the picture later to finish your registration.” 

He slumps and takes the note from the guy’s hand. “Is that all?”

“Yep!” Kamano-san smiles. And then the man perks up. “Hey, do you want to see a picture of me and Jiraiya the Sannin? He signed it for me when I helped him out of a jam a few years ago.”

“No thanks.” he sighs and decides he never wants to come into the Hokage Tower for anything ever again unless it was absolutely necessary. All the shinobi inside it were nutjobs. 

“Ah,” The guy slumps and he thinks that the picture was probably one of the only things in the guy’s life he was proud of. “Maybe next time.”

He leaves the room without answering and makes his way to the roof with little fuss. The mask and headband feel heavy on his face when his picture is taken, but he does his best to ignore it. 

By the time he’s done, he’s got a few hours until he needs to be at the Academy for team assignments. So with a sigh, he decides to just wander until then.

He stares down through lidded eyes as Naruto and Sasuke make out in the front of the class and wonders why he thought he could escape the stupidity that was his life. He’d paralyzed a man last night and now he was sitting front row to the antics of clueless children. 

‘I’d forgotten about that bit.’ 

As the two break apart, hacking and choking like they’d done worse than brush their lips together, he wonders if this was going to be his life from now on. Was everything going to be so ridiculous and gag worthy?

He didn’t know and he didn’t want to know.

His nerves were running through him at light speed. He was about to get his team assignments and then he would have to meet his potential Jonin Sensei. And he was worried about how it would go. He didn’t know who he would get and worst of all, he didn’t know how his presence in the world would affect the results of things. 

Naruto proceeds to get his ass kicked and it’s mildly entertaining. 

He tries to ignore it all but honestly, it’s rather interesting to see the girls in class unite for seemingly the first time since he’s been here. Even if it is to whoop Naruto’s ass for stealing the treasure they’d all hoped to be blessed with.

“Good morning, Genin.” Iruka says from the front of the class and the kids all shuffle off towards their seats. 

“Good morning, Iruka-sensei!” The class responds.

He sighs and glances out the window, zoning out as the man talks about something or other. He didn’t really know or care at the moment. Not until the man started with calling out their team assignments. 

Many of the names called are ones he doesn’t recognize. And that’s probably his fault, for not learning the names of his other classmates. But to be fair, they don’t really exist in the anime once the Rookie Nine graduate. 

He does start to get a bit worried when his name isn’t called by the time Iruka makes it to Team Five. Even more so when he makes it to Team Seven without his name being called at all.

Team Seven is the same as canon. And honestly, it seems like a freaking miracle that the team hadn’t changed because of his interference. He’d thought that teaching Naruto how to tree-walk would have had some effect on things, but apparently not. Team Eight doesn’t change either. And he’d completely forgotten about those three. Granted, they didn’t really need his help, but Hinata and her sad pining kind of tugged on his heart strings a bit. 

He knew all about watching from afar and wishing things were different. That he was different enough, better enough, to be noticed and someone would finally want him. 

“Team Nine is Uzuki Ami, Yamada Taro and Rei.”

Two kids down in the front rows both let out groans at the assignment. One is a purple-haired young girl that he thinks he knows. And it’s his younger selves memories that provide the context. 

Ami was a bully. Rough and haughty, she made it her mission to make fun of anyone who she saw as weaker than herself. Her main target had been Sakura until the girl had proved herself as the top kunoichi in the class.

He hadn’t realized the girl had a clan name and he wonders why it seems vaguely familiar.

He sighs and looks at the other who had groaned. It’s a boy, dressed in a fine kimono top and wearing a haughty sneer on his face as he shot a glance at Ami who scowled back. The boy had rather dull features, brown hair and eyes and all around plain in every way. He didn’t know anything about Yamada Taro, besides the fact he’d seen the kid get his ass whooped by Sasuke during a sparring session one day in class.

Neither kid looks like they are ready to become ninja and he feels himself slumping in his seat. 

Great. Just… great. 

The last team of Ino-Shika-Cho is announced as Team Ten and then they are all dismissed to lunch. 

He slumps down onto the desk and puts his face against the harsh wood, closing his eyes for a few moments of peace. He’d forgotten to bring lunch and he certainly didn’t want to go off in search of one. 

No, he just wants to sit there and lament his cursed existence. Of course, of course he would be paired with the two randomest kids in the entire village. He should have known better. What was he thinking? 

‘That I’d be paired with at least one of the Rookie Nine and could somewhat predict things.’

Or at least make a friend he knew would live for a long-ish time.

He sighs and wishes things were different. That something would change and he could feel like his existence meant something. That he could have some of the plot armor that came with being on a team with an actual named character.

And then someone kicks his desk.

His head jolts and he lazily rolls it so he can peak out with a bored eye. Ami stands before his desk. Her arms crossed and a scowl on her lips as she glares down at him. Yamada Taro stands next to her looking like he wanted to be anywhere else but there. 

“Get up, loser. We’re having lunch together.”

Taro scoffs at the words and aims a sneer at the side of Ami’s head. “That’s what you wanted?”

“What’s it to you, asshole?” Ami glares back. “We’re going to be a team, why not start now?”

The sneer grows substantially and Taro looks at Ami like she was something to be scraped off the bottom of his sandal. “As if I would spend my time with the likes of you.”

“Fine.” Ami hisses. “It’ll just be me and the loser.”

Taro scoffs and turns to walk off. “You’ll be in good company then, the both of you.”

He watches the kid walk off and wonders why he had to get stuck with this shit. Who did he piss off-? Shit. Did the Hokage have something to do with this? Or maybe one of the advisors? 

‘Who knew with the way this government ran.’

“What’s his problem?” He asks Ami with his face still half-smooshed on the desk.

“Tch,” Ami scoffs and turns back to level narrowed eyes at him. “Asshole thinks ninja should be like the samurai of old and only train those of Noble blood. Particularly men of Noble blood.”

“Ah.” He lifts his head and scratches at his masked cheek. “And then why does he think he is any different than I?”

Ami scoffs and uncrosses her arms to put her hands on her waist. “Have you been living in a tree?”

“Um,” He eye-smiles up at her, “no?”

“Could have fooled me.” She huffs. “Asshole’s precious Otou-san has a seat in the Daimyo's Court. He lords it over everyone he talks to.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.” He hums and glances around the room to see it has mostly cleared out in the short time. 

“Whatever, loser.” Ami rolls her eyes and bumps her foot against the desk again. “Come on, we’re still having lunch.”

“I didn’t bring anything.” He says mildly but stands up anyway. Stretching his limbs to loosen them up a bit.

“Neither did I.” She shakes her head and waves an impatient hand at him to follow. “Come on, I know a spot where we can get something quick.”

He sighs but follows after her. His hands in his pockets as they make their way through the building and out into Konoha. They don’t speak for a long time, and he doesn’t try to make conversation. Content to simply follow her through the village on the way to lunch. 

He eyes her back as she walks in front of him. She’s tense, stalking through the street like it offended her. And projecting an aura that says she was annoyed at everything and everyone. Every once in a while, she turns her head to make sure he is still behind her. 

Her lips purse when she sees him and she snaps her head back to face in front of her. But she keeps making sure he’s there until they wound up in front of a small shop somewhere in the middle of Konoha. Close to the cliff that the Hokage Monument protruded from.

He hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going like an idiot, but the area looks well enough off that anything nefarious has a low probability of happening to him.

“This is it.” She waves a hand up to a sign above the door that reads The Saucy Samurai and makes her way inside without looking back to see if he follows.

He sighs and follows her inside. Forcing himself to not question things anymore. The inside of the restaurant is spacious and well lit. Seating is separated by tables spread around the center of the building and booths along the edges. Paintings of old samurai and trees line the walls as decoration. And everything is done up in a dark red and black color scheme.

Ami is in the far corner of the building. She makes her way to a booth near a window and sits down in it. When he finally gets over to her, she already has a paper menu in her hands and is looking for something to eat. 

He slips into the booth seat across from her and grabs a menu of his own. Reading what was all available and wondering if he really should be wasting some of his remaining money on eating out like this.

They sit in silence for a bit until he decides he should probably say something. If they were going to be a team, they needed to at least be comfortable speaking with each other. He just needed to think of something easy to talk about. Something so benign that conversation would be impossible to screw up. 

“Maa, Uzuki-san.” She glances up over her menu before looking back at it. “What made you want to become a ninja?”

‘Not that.’

She raises an eyebrow and glances towards the center of the building. “What of it?”

“Just curious is all.” He hums and scans the writing on the menu, debating what he wanted to eat. Should he get the Tempura again, or maybe Tonkatsu this time. Hmm, decisions. 

The food choices were all so unique to him and he was having a memorable time testing them when he went out to eat. Some were good, others were not. 

‘Man, I wish I could get a burger right now.’

Ami sighs, sending another glance into the room. “I’m trying to repay a debt.” 

“Oh?” He tilts his head the way he’d seen Neko-sama do when she was curious.

She huffs and ignores him for a second before her eyes widen and she shoves the menu up in front of her face. He blanks on why she did it. Why was she hiding behind a paper menu when there was no need to hide from anyone here, let alone him?

“Wha-” 

A person shows up next to their booth and he hadn’t even felt them do it. He tenses and shifts his eyes up to wonder who could have snuck up on them. And finds a woman standing there. She’s…pretty. Like ridiculously pretty. The type of pretty that he’d only see working in a Burger King or a McDonalds at nine at night one time and then never see her again. 

The kind of pretty that made models look uninteresting.

Dark hair that’s black as midnight done up in a haphazard ponytail that looks sculpted by the gods and pale, smooth skin that was much the same. Bright eyes to draw them in and a smile that wouldn’t let them leave.

And smile at them she did, “Welcome to The Saucy Samurai , I’m Kiyomi and I’ll be your waitress. Are you ready to order?”

Ami is quiet, so the waitress turns her allure onto his unfortunate ass. “Shinobi-kun?”

“Ah,” He glances away, glad that he was wearing the mask lest everyone see him fluster. “I’ll have the Tonkatsu Tanto meal.” 

Kiyomi writes in the notepad she pulls from the apron around her waist and then smiles at him again. “And to drink?”

“Water.” Because he was suddenly very thirsty.

The waitress hums and then smiles down at the menu hiding Ami. “And for you, Kunoichi-chan?”

Ami makes a strangled noise and then the menu slowly lowers from her face. Kiyomi lights up in a wide smile when she sees who it is. 

“Ami-chan!” Kiyomi's smile lights up the entire room, he’s sure. “I didn’t recognize you there. How are you doing?”

Ami’s cheeks are a bit pink as she stares up at the beauty before them. “Kiyomi-san, I’m doing well. How are you?”

“Ara, that’s good.” What? “I’m doing better now that I’ve seen you, Ami-chan. You haven’t been around in a bit and I was worried.”

Ami’s eyes are wide and the blush has gotten…noticeable. “My apologies, Kiyomi-san. I’ve been busy.” 

“I can see.” Kiyomi giggles and somehow, Ami’s blush gets worse. “Congratulations on becoming a ninja, Ami-chan!”

“T-thank you, Kiyomi-san.” Ami stutters and glances out the window.

“Maa,” He eye-smiles at Ami and her head snaps in his direction like she’d forgotten he was there. A glare narrowing her eyes. “You come here often?”

“She’s my favorite regular.” Kiyomi smiles at him, unaware of the massive glare that was shooting across the booth table. “Makes my shifts better when I get to see her.”

He hums and shifts his squint to Kiyomi. “That’s nice of her.”

Kiyomi nods and beams bright once again. “She’s a good girl.” 

Ami tenses in her seat and her blush reaches a new level of red. The glare wiping off her face faster than the Yellow Flash when Kiyomi turns to smile at her. “Y-you’re too kind.”

“It’s well deserved.” Kiyomi shakes her head and then whips open the little notepad to write something down. “Your usual then, dear?”

Ami nods and Kiyomi lets out a hum before she snaps the notepad closed and slips it back into her apron. Sending Ami another beaming smile, she steps away. “I’ll be back in a few.”

They both watch her go before he lets out a hum and turns back to peer at Ami with squinty eyes. The poor girl looks a little dazed yet, and the crush is so obvious it physically hurts him to sit so close to it.

“So…” He tilts his head a bit and is rewarded with a rather vicious looking scowl being sent in his direction. 

Ami raises a stern finger to point at him. “Not…another word.”

‘How embarrassing. Glad I’m not like that.’ 

He shrugs and sets the menu off to the side. He grabs a napkin from the napkin box and unfolds it in front of him to give his hands something to do. He folds it a few times, trying to remember how to make origami.

“Why did you become a shinobi?” Ami asks after a minute of silence. And it takes him a bit to remember that he had just asked her the same thing a few minutes ago. 

“Hmm,” He tries to think about why he wanted to be a shinobi. Searching the kid’s memories to get the answer. “Well, I’m an orphan. When the recruitment Jonin came around, the offer of a place to myself seemed a lot better than sharing a dorm with twelve other boys.”

“That’s it?” She asks, brows furrowed in mild confusion.

He shrugs, folding the napkin up into a…shape. “My reasoning has changed, of course. But at the start, the offer of my own space and food I didn’t have to compete for was all it took.”

She glances away with a scowl on her face. And all is quiet for a few minutes while they wait for their food. The napkin has taken on a monstrous form that is completely unrecognizable.

He never said he knew how to do origami. Just that he searched his brain for what it looked like at the end.

“Why didn’t you stay?” Ami asks, her eyebrows once again furrowed at him.

“At the orphanage?” He asks and then shrugs when she nods. Why didn’t he? “I realized no one was coming to save me.”

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it. He’d spent long enough in the orphanage that he’d realized no one was coming for him. No one cared about little Rei-kun and his unfortunate life. Just like they didn’t care about any of the other poor orphans that had no family left. 

It just took Tenten leaving for him to realize. She was one of the lucky few, not the rule. 

He blinks and then softly shakes his head. A sense of mild confusion coming over him. 

It was getting harder to differentiate between the two lives. Both were him. He’d lived both lives and they were merging. Mixing together into a single form.

He sighs and unfolds the napkin. Laying it flat and smoothing out the wrinkles as best he can. 

Ami looks like she’s about to say something, but before she can. Kiyomi arrives with their food. Ami starts to blush again, and continues to do so until Kiyomi smiles at them again and leaves them to eat.

He slides his mask down to eat and is greeted to the sight of Ami looking a bit wide-eyed at him. “What?”

She shakes her head, but still looks a bit shocked. “I thought you’d be disfigured or something. Not that.”

He tilts his head to the side in confusion. “You’ve seen my face before though?”

She blinks, “Are you sure?”

“I just started wearing this mask like a week ago.” He points a finger at his own face. Feeling bewildered at the way the day has gone. “We’ve shared classes for years now.”

“Tch, whatever loser.” She scowls at him and then ignores him in favor of her food. 

‘What the fuck is going on with my life?’

He sighs and focuses down on his food. He had no real will power to delve into the eccentricities of Konoha ninja right then. 

He eats his food without much thought. Really only going through the motions of chewing and swallowing. He wasn’t that hungry and he had a lot on his mind. 

If they were going to work as a team, they might have already hit a roadblock. If Yamada-san couldn’t even spend an hour lunch with them, how were they ever supposed to work together for missions? He knew that it could be done, seeing as the dumpster fire of Team Seven would pass. But he’d expected more from a place so hung up on teamwork like Konoha.

Things were not looking good and he had no idea how to work with what he now has. He didn’t know anything about his teammates abilities or how they would work with his own.

He’s halfway through his meal when he lets out a hum and wipes his face with a napkin. Ami glances up at him with a soft scowl on her lips and he’s starting to think that was her default expression. 

“We’ll need to work together, if we want any chance of passing the Jonin’s test.” 

She blows a harsh gust of air out of her nostrils and glares down into her food. “Asshole is not going to be of any help.”

“How so?” He asks and is then on the receiving end of her glare.

“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.” She scoffs, looking bitter. “He’s only a ninja because he wants to be stronger than everyone else and can then lord it over them.”

He sighs and stares down at his food. Wondering if he should have tried harder in class and found a way to get on a team with one of the Rookie Nine. If he should have gotten himself noticed enough that they would have no choice but to put him with one of the clan kids so he would pass. 

“We’ll have to do it despite him then.” He eye-smiles at her to hide the way he kind of wants to cry. “I’ll have your back, Uzuki-san.”

“Whatever, loser.” She scoffs and glances out the window with a scowl. “I don’t plan on failing either.”

“Great.” He sighs and focuses back on his food. 

The rest of the meal goes by quickly. He’s treated to another round of watching Ami blush at Kiyomi when they get the bill, and they leave the restaurant while he pouts at how light his wallet now feels. Luckily, she’d paid for her own food otherwise he was going to need to rethink some of his life choices later. 

The walk back to the academy is just as uneventful as before. Ami stalks through Konoha like someone owes her money and everyone else is wasting her time by getting in the way. It’s mildly entertaining to watch. In an indulging kind of way.

Once they make it to the academy and into the classroom, he makes his way to his desk in the back and Ami follows with only a scowl to show her displeasure. He slumps into his seat and sighs when she thumps down into the one next to him with her arms crossed. 

Their third teammate - when he finally shows up - takes one look at them sitting together at the back of the class and sneers like he was looking at a Jackson Polluck painting. He then dismisses them completely and takes a seat near the front of the class.

Rei sighs and slumps further into his seat. Mentally cursing the Hokage, the academy teachers and everyone else he can think of for making him deal with pretentious little brats.

“Tch, asshole.” Ami mutters from beside him and he turns to see her glaring down at the back of Yamada-san’s head.

Soon enough, the entire class is there and then Iruka wanders in to stand at the front of the class. The man stands with his hands on his hips and smiles at all of them with a large grin. There’s a bandage around one hand and the man holds himself stiffly, but his injuries from the night before are barely noticeable. 

“Alright, Genin. Are you ready?” Iruka asks them.

“Yes, sensei!” Most of the class says, otherwise nodding at him with eagerness.

“That's good.” He smiles up at them. “Now, in the next few minutes, your potential Jonin-sensei will arrive and call your team number. From there, your future as ninja belongs in their hands.” 

Most of the children look excited at the moment, but all he feels is tired. And he wonders how Iruka can stand to smile up at them knowing that half the class probably won’t make it to be Genin or will be dead before they can grow into anything worth being. 

The next few minutes are spent feeling like he’s sitting on the edge of a cliff and is waiting for someone to push him. And every sensei that shows up has his heart spiking in anticipation. Team Eight and Ten are picked up rather quickly. Both teams being picked up by the same Jonin there were meant to be taught by. 

Both were picked up at the same time, leading him to believe the two Jonin had showed up together. 

The number of students in the classroom dwindles down at a steady rate until it’s only his team and Team Seven remaining in the room. Any hope he’d had of getting a good sensei has dwindled and then disappears completely when no one shows up after fifteen minutes of waiting. 

He would have expected this from Kakashi, not whoever was supposed to be his sensei. And it makes him start to regret choosing to become a ninja. 

Yamada-san is pacing the room at the front of the class, and occasionally stopping to stare down his nose at things. Ami looks agitated, her fingers tapping against the desk in an unsteady rhythm. 

Team Seven are doing Team Seven things. Scowling, pouting and fawning all at the same time. 

He sighs and ignores everyone else. Maybe he should just resign himself to a life of being a desk shinobi. Doing nothing important and filing paperwork all day long. But he hated paperwork and that was a recipe for disaster. 

The door clacks open softly and everyone turns to watch a man enter. He’s tall, so tall that he has to bend his bandana-covered head to get through the door and cuts an imposing figure. Broad shoulders covered by a black trench coat that stretches at the seams and falls down to his knees. And under it all is the signature gray uniform of Konoha’s Intelligence Division.

There’s a stern look to his features as he glances at them in an analysing way. “Team Nine.”

His two teammates perk up but he slumps into his chair and wishes it would swallow him whole. 

‘Fuck fuck fuck. Only I would get the fucking Torture Guy.’  

He sighs and follows Ami down the steps to the front of the class. He pats Naruto on the shoulder as he passes and quietly wishes him good luck on the way, and then stands before Ibiki alongside his two teammates. 

Ibiki stares down at them impassively before he barks out an abrupt order of. “Follow.”

What follows is a rather tense few minutes as they follow the man through the village in silence. Ibiki had taken to the rooftops the second they’d made it out the academy door and he hadn’t looked back, expecting them to follow him without question. 

He sighs as he watches his two teammates make their way to the rooftops. They had to do a few chakra assisted jumps and some parkour to get up, but they eventually got up without much fuss and took off after their sensei. Leaving him standing on the ground looking like an incompetent idiot. 

With another sigh, he Kawarimi’ed with something on the roof and followed after them. Doing his best to think of how he was going to pass the upcoming test. If it had been anyone else in Konoha, he might have been able to predict what they would be tested on. Teamwork being the main thing. 

But to get the head torture guy? Who freaking knew what was going to happen in the near future.

The population of people gets thinner and thinner the longer they roof hop until they don’t see anyone at all. They pass through a few training grounds and then Ibiki finally comes to a stop as he lands in front of a giant fence with a giant warning sign on it.

A giant forest looms behind the fence. Dark and gloomy, eerie in a way that says something dangerous lurks within. He can feel eyes staring out at them from within and slumps his shoulders as he stares at Ibiki like the man was crazy.

“This is Training Ground Forty-four.” Ibiki waves at the forest with a negligent hand, his features stern. “It is Konoha’s most dangerous training ground, home to many vicious beasts that will attempt to eat you alive if given the chance.”

Yamada-san scoffs at the man in what he hopes is false bravado. Otherwise the kid was fucking stupid. “Why are we here then, sensei?”

“I’m not your sensei, not yet. And probably not ever unless you are capable of passing my test.” Ibiki levels them with a blank look and ignores the way Yamada-san starts to look like someone just pissed in his cereal. “Same as the rest of your class, only a few will have what it takes to pass and become Genin apprenticed under a Jonin-sensei.”

“What do we need to do?” Ami asks with her arms crossed and her gaze narrowed up at the freakishly tall man. 

“I’m glad you asked.” Ibiki reaches into his trench coat and grabs some small scrolls of paper and holds them in his hands. “In the center of the training grounds sits a tower, a safe place that the denizens of the forest cannot enter. Your first task is simply to make it there.”

“That’s it?” Yamada-san scoffs again, an arrogant grin on his lips.

Ibiki smiles. And it’s not a kind one. He tosses his arm out and the three scrolls in his hand shoot at them with speed. He catches the one thrown at him and wonders what could be inside. Ami fumbles hers between her hands but stops it from falling to the ground. And Yamada-san? Yamada-san takes his to the face and is too slow to catch it when it falls. 

“These are emergency beacons that send out a flare of chakra that will call me to your location. You are to use them if things get too hard for you, but their use means you forfeit the test and fail, leaving your team to continue on in spite of you.” The smile on Ibiki’s face twists into something mean as he stares at them. “You are able to quit at any time, simply activate the beacon and you’ll be free to go home. But know this, doing so will send you back to the academy for a year of remedial work to catch up to your peers.”

Yamada-san scoffs but otherwise picks up the scroll without anything else to say. Ami glances at the scroll in her hands before she sends Ibiki a look.

“Do we at least get to know your name?” 

Ibiki smirks, but shakes his head. “Get to the tower and then maybe you’ll get to learn it.”

Rei sighs and debates the merits of simply quitting now and going back to the academy until the next class graduated. Maybe then he would get a Sensei he could predict. But no, he needed to get strong fast and wasting away in the academy for another year was out of the question. 

Ibiki spares him a look for the first time and he thinks he can see something hidden in the man’s eyes, but it’s gone before he can get an idea what it had been. 

“Good luck,” Ibiki waves at the entrance to the grounds nearby and steps aside. “You’ll need it. There’s a bet going to see which one of you quits first, my money is on the masked one.” 

‘Fucking bastard.’

And then Ibiki is gone in a swirl of leaves. He sighs and tucks the scroll into a pocket and turns to his teammates. “We’ll need a plan.”

Ami nods and tucks away her scroll as well, her face scowling in his direction. “How are we going to do this?”

He hums and shrugs, figuring that he should at least ask for their opinions. “Fast?”

Ami hums and they both turn to Yamada-san only to see him striding towards the entrance without looking at them. “Speak for yourselves. I’ll see you at the tower.” 

The boy slips into the forest seconds later and leaves them standing there watching him incredulously. Ami’s scowl reaches new levels of severity. “Tch, fucking asshole. He’s going to make us fail.”

He nods and tilts his head, about to say something when a piercing scream comes from the forest where Yamada-san had just entered. 

Ami sends him a look and takes off into the forest, leaving him there wondering why it always had to be him. He sighs, glances at the sky praying for patience, and then follows her into the Forest of Death. 

His day was only going to get worse.

Chapter Text

He had to say, having to rescue his teammate within five minutes of actually being on a team with them kind of sucked.

Bursting through the foliage to find the kid being attacked by a giant bear, even fucking more so.

Ami is already there and it’s only her presence that seems to keep the bear from advancing on a stunned looking Yamada in the small clearing. She’s got a kunai in her hand and he can see a few stuck in the ground at the bear’s paws, meaning she’d tossed them to distract it when she arrived.

He glances around the clearing, trying to find a way to get them out of this situation. He didn’t really want to have to kill the thing, even if it was a giant murderous looking bear.

“Taro, get out of there!” He barks out, drawing the bear’s eyes in his direction. But the stupid kid doesn’t move other than to curl in on himself. 

The bear turns back and charges towards where Taro is frozen. He lets out a curse and sees Ami throw another kunai out of the corner of his eye but it does nothing to stop it.

He sighs and throws out his chakra, feeling it brush against Taro for a second before he’s switching places with the stupid kid. He blinks and suddenly the bear is right there. Red, gleaming eyes glaring down into his soul. Giant, sharp claws glinting in the light as they swipe towards his face.

He doesn't think. His chakra flares and then he’s somewhere else, trying to calm his suddenly beating heart and watching as the claws swipe through a random log like it was butter.

The log clatters to the ground in a few pieces and he tilts his head at them in confusion. The edges of the logs looked too pristine and clean cut for it to have been just a random log for him to switch with. 

Before he can think too hard about it, the bear lets out a vicious roar that he can feel reverberate in his chest. Ami lets out a quiet squeak and jumps away towards where Yamada was panting on his knees.

He hears a sound rustle the bushes behind him and turns to see two bear cubs stumble out and book it up a nearby tree. 

‘Ah, so that’s why it was so close to the entrance.’

And it tells him why it had attacked Yamada-san. The kid had gotten in between the bear and its cubs. It also tells him why he suddenly feels a chill go down his spine that forces him to turn back to the bear. 

The bear that’s glaring in his direction under the tree the cubs just climbed in a hurry. 

He sighs and spreads his feet under him. Lowering his stance as the bear roars at him again and charges. He forces himself to not move. To stand there and wait for the bear to get close. And when the bear is less than ten feet away, he switches places again and lands softly next to his teammates. 

Another log had taken his place and was subsequently ripped to pieces. Ami makes a noise next to him, but her eyes are on the bear’s back as it seemingly shreds him apart. 

“Thank the gods for convenient logs.” Ami snaps her head in his direction, eyes wide before they blink rapidly in disbelief. She glances back at the bear and then turns to him with a scowl.

“Don’t do that.” She glares at him with a kunai in her hand, fingers looking white-knuckled because of her grip.

“Maa,” He tilts his head and eye-smiles at her. “Do what?”

She lets out a huff and they both turn back to watch the bear as it gets tired of ripping apart the log and glances around the clearing. It glares at them with vicious eyes before it huffs as well and climbs up the tree to follow its fleeing cubs. 

Yamada-san is on his hands and knees. Harsh sounds are coming out of the poor kid and he feels a bit bad about it. He forgot sometimes that they were just kids at the end of the day and experienced things like children did. 

He sighs and crouches next to the kid’s head. He pokes him on the back of the head and the kid jerks in place. Wide brown eyes snapping up just to glare at him. 

“You alright there?” He eye-smiles at the kid. And the kid glares harder. Yamada-san pushes himself to his feet and sets his shoulders. 

“I had everything under control,” Taro sneers, looking down his nose at him, but still a bit shaky looking. “Don’t get in my way.”

He sighs and rises from his crouch, ignoring the way Ami lets out a disbelieving scoff at the kid’s blatant stupidity. He shoots her a squinty smile and wanders into the clearing. He wanted to check out the log that had saved his life. Or at least, protected his cute face from becoming not cute.

“What do you think you were doing, asshole?” Ami says behind him and it takes him a second to realize she was talking to Yamada-san. And he only does when Taro scoffs back at her.

“Like you would understand.”

Ami makes an outraged noise but he ignores them as they launch into an argument. He makes his way towards the pieces of the log, picking up Ami’s thrown kunai on the way, and stops next to the corpse of the log. It’s cut in several pieces because of the bear, but otherwise seems like a perfectly cut log that has come out of nowhere. 

The log is too small to come from any of the trees around them and a glance up into the branches does not reveal any that look like part of them has been cut clean in the center of them. And there is no other branch debris that would have resulted in a branch being split in the center. 

He nudges the pieces with his sandalled foot and stops in surprise. An odd feeling shooting up from his toes. He could feel the chakra in the logs. It was like nothing he’d ever felt before. 

It shoots through his chakra system before it settles in his core and disappears. After a moment of waiting, nothing happens so he tilts his head at the wood and wonders what it could have been. 

It’s a magical log. Sent here by providence to protect him.

“Hmm, that’s enough.” He tells his bickering teammates and they blessedly fall silent.

Though when he turns to look at them, they are both sending him scowls for his presumption. He sighs and makes his way over to them, handing Ami her kunai when he gets close. And then he turns to Yamada-san to scan him for injuries. Taking in the slightly rumpled appearance and the lack of-

“Where is your weapon’s pouch?” He blinks at Taro in confusion.

Taro scowls at him and looks away, embarrassed and pissed at the same time. “I don’t have it.”

Ami scowls at Yamada-san like he had just told her something so stupid she had lost a few brain cells because of it. Which she very well might have. “You don’t have it?”

Yamada straightens his back and looks down at them with a sneer. “I didn’t think I would need it today.”

“You…” He sighs and cuts himself off, rubbing a hand over his eyes to try and clear some of the fog of stupidity that seems to have fallen over him. 

He was just done, with everything. No matter what he did, things were always going to suck, weren’t they?

He reaches into his own weapons pouch and grabs a single kunai from within. He twirls it in his hand and then flips it, holding it by the blade as he holds it out for Yamada-san to take. “Take one of mine then, so you’re not defenseless.”

Yamada-san scowls at him and rips it from his hand, holding up to his face to inspect it and scowling harder in disgust. “This one has blood on it, give me a different one.”

Rei closes his hand into a fist and feels a hot liquid pour out of his palm. He watches as his red lifeblood leaks out of his clenched fingers and winces as he opens his palm to check the damage. 

His other hand closes into a fist and the sudden, vicious urge to punch his teammate in the face sits heavily in his chest. He tenses as the urge gets strong but he stops himself before he can go through with it. 

Yamada-san was just a child, punching him in the face - while satisfying - would only make him feel bad later on. He should have known better than to hold the blade like that. Even if they were supposed to be trained professionals. 

“You fucking moron.” Ami looks like she’s about to stab the kid herself. “You just fucking cut him with it.” 

He sighs and pats his pockets for any bandages he could use to wrap up his hand. Vaguely aware of Yamada scoffing at them. “He shouldn’t have been holding it like that then.”

“You’re a worthless excuse of a shinobi.” He’d be more touched by her coming to his defense if he didn’t feel like she had just been waiting for an excuse to attack the other boy. 

Yamada-san scoffs and turns away with a scowl. The two of them delving into another argument that he was too tired to deal with right then. 

When he can’t find any bandages in his pockets, he makes a note to get some later and starts eyeing his shirt to tear a piece off to use instead. But he didn’t want to do that, this was one of his new shirts and while it was a bit big on him, he didn’t want to ruin it so soon after buying it. He didn’t have the money to waste on more clothing.

He didn’t know when he was supposed to get paid next or how it would work now that he was technically a shinobi. The Hokage had spoken about salaries and bonuses and incentives but no one had spoken to him about exactly how things were supposed to work payment wise. Not when nor how.

He blinks and then there is a roll of bandages in front of his face. He follows the hand to see Ami scowling at him like he was a moron as well. “Use these.” 

“Thanks.” He eye-smiles and takes the bandages in his uninjured hand. She scoffs, but otherwise doesn’t make fun of him for not having any bandages of his own.

What follows is an awkward attempt at wrapping his hand one-handed. He manages it, but it takes him a few attempts to start it right.

Once he’s done and his hand is wrapped, he looks back up at the two of them to see they had just been standing around while he did so and did nothing that would benefit them going forward. 

“We’ll need to start moving.” He sighs, glancing up into the trees and wishing he could just climb them and makes his way through the forest that way. But he can’t. Not with these two Genin hopefuls that didn’t have a clue as to how to follow him.

Yamada-san scowls at him. “Who said you were the team leader? If anyone is going to be, it’s me.”

“Says who?” Ami glares at the kid who only gets a smart-assed look on his face. Haughty and sneering like they are less than peasants.

“Says me, that’s who.” Yamada-san holds himself up in self-importance. “Obviously neither of you are capable of holding such responsibility.”

Ami growls and looks like she’s seconds away from leaping at the other boy in an attempt to kill him with her bare hands. “You’re the most insufferable maggot I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing.”

“Know your place you stupid c-” 

“Enough.” He barks. Wishing he could tape both their mouths shut and live on in peace. They were both annoying, but he’d had it with Yamada-san’s attitude and demeanor. “You want to lead, then lead.”

“I will!” Yamada-san scowls and points in a random direction. “We’ll go that way.”

Ami scoffs and shoots Rei a disappointed look. He only shrugs and hopes she’ll understand later. Later, when the moron trying to lead them messes up and will only be able to blame himself for the failure. Until then, he would bide his time until he needed to take over or give the reins to Ami to lead them. 

Yamada-san starts walking in the direction he’d pointed and Ami sides up to him as they start to follow after him. Her voice in a harsh mutter under her breath. “Know my place? My clan has been in Konoha longer than that upstart’s has even existed.” 

He sighs and whispers to her out of the side of his mouth. “Keep your guard up, he’ll realize he needs us eventually but until then we need to be patient.”

She huffs and sends him a skeptical look out of the corner of her eye. “Like that will happen, he’s going to drag us down with him.”

He sighs but doesn’t answer her. Scanning the surroundings with narrow eyes. He doesn’t see anything right then, but it would only be a matter of time before something jumped out at them and tried to eat them. 

While they walk through the forest like idiots, he tries to toss out his chakra in an attempt to sense some of the things around them. He’d done it the previous night and he was trying to copy it while he wasn’t dozing this time. If he was going to continue being a shinobi, having such a sense would benefit him immensely in keeping him alive.

He’s in the middle of trying to force it to work when Yamada-san stops in front of them with a hand up for them to wait. He scans around them to see what the other kid had noticed, but doesn’t see anything right away. 

Yamada-san crouches forward and hides himself in a bush, gesturing at them to follow. He sighs, and then does so. Crouching next to Ami as the three of them peek through the bushes and into another small clearing in the trees.

There are a few wolves sitting around the clearing. About ten in the pack, their fur is colored in dark blacks and browns. They’re large, to the point that he would say they came up to around his chest or stomach area. With sharp looking teeth as they snapped and chewed on the corpse of some animal they had killed for food.

“We should go around.” He whispers to his teammates and is glad to see Ami nod in agreement. 

But Yamada-san isn’t paying attention. No, his focus is completely on the wolves. Kunai rising in his hands as his face gets more intense. And a bad feeling rises within him. Yamada-san grows tense and then levels an arrogant smirk at them in the bushes.

“Follow me if you can.”

And then he bursts out of the bushes with a battle cry that alerts all the wolves in the clearing. Ami turns to him with a deadpan look on her face and he feels himself scowl at her in response. 

“Hide in the shadows and pick them off while he distracts them.” 

Then he Kawarimi’s up into a nearby tree and grabs some kunai out of his weapons pouch. He’s not hiding from her judgement. He’s not , he swears.

Yamada-san is snarling and growling much like the wolves as he swipes at a few that have come forward to confront him. They’re starting to surround the stupid child, but Taro doesn’t seem to realise it and continues to attack. He sighs and takes aim at one of the wolves about to take Taro by surprise when it gets a kunai to the side of its neck. Figuring it was one of Ami’s, he adjusts his aim and flings out his own, not stopping to watch as it sinks into the wolf’s skull and drops it in place. 

A second later, another kunai is flying out of his hand and into another wolf that had been getting ready to attack. And then another, and another, and another, until finally the last wolf falls and only Yamada-san remains standing in the clearing. 

The kid is breathing harshly, with his hands on his knees, but he’s looking down at the only wolf he had killed. Ami makes her way out of the bushes with her face caught in a pathetic look. Her eyes glancing around the clearing like she might be sick.

Rei sighs and hops down into the clearing. Feeling ancient as he takes in all the death he has just taken part in. A sound from nearby has his head turning in that direction.

There is a wolf still alive, trying to crawl away and letting out pitiful whimpers as it does so. There is a kunai sticking out of its back and it’s paralyzed the poor things back legs. It’s trying to drag itself away but isn’t making very much progress. 

He feels his heart sink even as he pulls out another kunai and starts walking towards it. When he gets closer to it, the wolf turns and snaps at him. An agonized growl echoing in the silent clearing. Its eyes are wild, wide and afraid of his form as he gets closer. 

It’s not going to survive out here. 

“I’m sorry.” He tells it, trying not to cry when all it does is whimper and try to crawl further away. “I’m so sorry.”

He closes his eyes and throws his kunai. The clearing goes completely silent. Nothing makes any noise, the birds don’t sing. The leaves don’t rustle. Not even the sun seems to peek in through the branches. 

The forest mourns what has just taken place and he could almost feel the trees around him wilting because of it.

And then Yamada starts to laugh. It’s low and harsh, out of breath, but unmistakable with the sense of achievement . Of elation and victory.

“You’ve lost your mind.” Ami says from behind him, no doubt staring at Yamada with a scowl.

Rei crouches and rests his hand on the wolf he had just mercy killed. Running his hands over the dark fur, giving soft pets and scratches along the neck and up the side of the poor thing’s ears. Trying to give it comfort in death.

‘May your soul find rest in the afterlife. May all your souls find rest.’

“Did you see me!” Yamada crows in delight. “Killed it like it was nothing!”

His hands continue up the wolf’s head and his fingers brush against the harsh metal of his kunai sticking out of its head. His fingers curl around the handle of his kunai and he closes his eyes.

“They didn’t stand a chance! Just like the pathetic beasts they were-”

He pulls the kunai out of the wolf and in a flash, he’s across the clearing with his arm driving towards the brat’s face, kunai poised to stab him. The stupid brat’s eyes go wide as the blade gets closer and Rei only barely manages to flip the blade last second so it doesn't stab the fucker in the face. 

His hand continues forward though and punches the brat right in the face. The force of the blow knocks the kid off his feet and into the dirt. The wound on his palm aches at the action, but he ignores it as he looms over the brat who is staring up at him with wide eyes and rubbing his cheek.

“You stupid fuck.” He growls and his chakra bursts out of him to blanket the surrounding area. The aura is thick and heavy, cold in a way he didn’t think possible. And he can feel his rage resonating through the surrounding trees and flora. They amplify it and bounce it around the clearing tenfold. 

“W-wha-” Yamada is pale enough it makes him look washed out.

“You think this is a game?” His voice is rough and raw in his throat as he tosses a hand out to gesture towards all the corpses. “You’re proud of all this meaningless death?”

“I-i-” Yamada stutters, looking seconds away from passing out.

He brings the blade in front of his face, sees the blood dripping from it and grabs it with his uninjured hand. Coating it in the blood of the dead wolf. And then with that same hand, slaps Yamada across the face. Leaving behind a dark splotchy handprint of the thick liquid across the brat’s cheek, mouth and nose. 

“Their deaths were unnecessary and I hope their blood stains you for the rest of your pathetic life.” He glares down at the stupid child and hopes his words stick. Hopes he remembers it for as long as he lives.

The forest seems to echo his sentiment and it feels like he has it’s unquestionable support.

It’s only when he glances at Ami and sees her looking pale and wide-eyed at him in fear that he drags his aura back inside of himself. The awareness it had given him disappearing alongside the heavy pressure that had blanketed the clearing.

He sighs, very suddenly feeling way too tired for this shit, and shoves the kunai back into his pouch. He sends one last glare at the brat on the ground before he starts the slow and heavy process of retrieving his kunai. Pulling them from the bodies with a muttered prayer for their souls to find rest. 

And then doing the same for the wolves that have Ami’s kunai stuck in them when she doesn’t move from her shocked stance. He had thought she wouldn’t have a problem with it, but he’d also forgotten that she was still just a child as well.

Once he’s collected all the kunai, he makes his way over to the stunned purple-haired girl and offers her kunai back. She watches him with wide eyes, but they eventually start to narrow as she regains her nerve. Glaring fully at him when he eye-smiles at her when she hesitantly takes her kunai from his hands.

He sees Yamada get to his feet and brush himself off, but there is a harsh glare on his face. A scowl deep enough that an artist would have issues sculpting it in clay.

“Who do you think you are?” Yamada growls. “You worthless orphan with no one that cares for you. You think you can lay your hands on me? Wait until my Otou-san hears about this! He’ll have your Hitai-ate for it.”

He sighs and wonders if he should punch the brat again before deciding against it. His fist hurt and he didn’t want to deal with the whining that came after it.

“If he wants it, he’ll have to take it off my corpse himself.” He eye-smiles at the brat and fucks with his aura again. Focusing it directly on the brat so only he could feel it.

The brat pales, but the scowl only slips marginally. Hmm, he’d have to work on it.

“From now on, Ami is in charge.” He points at Ami as he foists the leadership position off onto her. “You had your shot, it’s her turn now.”

Ami scowls at him but somehow looks pleased at the same time. “Why aren’t you the leader?” 

“Ugh, responsibility.” He eye-smiles at them again, and Ami looks like she wants to toss a kunai at him. Yamada is just glaring at him with a mix of fear and hatred.

Ami shakes her head and glances around at their surroundings. Scanning them for any hint of the direction they were supposed to go. She tilts her head and walks over to a nearby tree and runs her hand down the back side of its bark. Then she sticks her hand in the dirt and runs in through her fingers “We’re near a river.”

He tilts his head at her and ignores the scoff that Yamada lets out at her observation. “How do you know?”

She points at the nearby foliage and trees. “The bushes are greener here, and there’s a lot of water in this soil, it’s damp to the touch. It hasn’t rained in days, so we must be close to a water source.”

He hums and walks over to crouch next to her to look at what she was pointing out. One hand falling to the soul to feel that she was right and the soil was fairly damp. “What direction?”

Ami tilts her head again and ignores Yamada’s scoff when she points in a different direction the boy had been leading them. “That way should be the water source, and following that has a good chance of-”

“Leading us to any potential human dwellings.” He finishes for her and she shoots him a scowl. “Oh, ah. Sorry.”

They weren’t at that stage yet. But that was okay, if she stopped scowling at him so much, they might just get there one day.

He rises to his feet and waves a hand at her. “Lead the way.”

She copies him and then shoots him a smirk and starts walking in the direction she had pointed out. He watches her go and then blindly steps out of the way when Yamada tries to slam his shoulder against him as the brat goes by. 

He sighs and watches the brat walk forward with his body tense. He takes one last look around the clearing and wishes he knew a Katon or Doton jutsu to give the bodies a proper send off or burial. But he supposed leaving them would have to do. It would feed whatever predator happened to stumble across them once they left. 

Then he tries to put it out of his mind and follows after his messed up team. For some reason, he didn’t think they were going to pass and be apprenticed by Ibiki. 

It doesn’t take them long to find the river and Ami’s satisfied smirk is enough to make his spontaneous choice of forcing leadership onto her worth it. He makes a note to ask her how she knew to find the water later and then follows after the two as they begin to follow the river. 

Everything around him holds a kind of beauty that wants to leave him breathless. From the flora and the giant, beautiful trees. The babbling of the creek as water runs over rocks and flows downstream. The way the light hits the water and creates small light shows for his eyes to feast on. 

He loved nature. Loved being amongst the trees and just breathing in the world around him. And nothing could ever really take away the lightness that brightened his soul when he was in the woods like this.

They walk the edge of the river as they make their way further into the training grounds. They stop a few times and wait when they come across a few large beasts that take up residence in the forest and have to go around once when they stumble across a giant bug of some kind, but otherwise the trip is uneventful. 

At least, until Yamada decides that he’s had enough of not instantly fighting everything they come across. “The both of you are cowards and not worthy of being ninja.”

“What now ?” Ami stops and looks tired when she stares at the kid like he was an idiot.

He can’t see the kid scowl from behind him, but he sees the way the brat tenses up in preparation for a confrontation. He thinks the brat is about to start laying into them again and sighs under his breath. Wishing he could have gotten a better teammate that wouldn’t be such a little asshole. 

So he’s completely unprepared for when the kid launches himself forward and stabs Ami in the chest with the kunai he had given him.

He blinks in confusion at what he was seeing. It didn’t make any sense. His heart stops in his chest and his breath in his throat. He’s vaguely aware of himself making a choked off noise in the back of his throat, but otherwise he doesn’t notice. 

He’s too focused on Ami’s pale and shocked face. Her wide, pleading chocolate eyes staring over Yamada’s shoulder at him with fear. Watching as the light starts to fade from her eyes.

Yamada pulls the kunai out and shoves Ami away like she was a piece of trash. Her hands come up to grasp at the bloody hole in her chest before she drops to her knees.

Rei doesn’t think, doesn’t breathe. But he’s across the space in a second and grabbing a hold of Ami before she tips completely over. She’s cold in his hands already and it made no sense, because there is no way her warmth had disappeared so fast. 

“Deserved like the worthless cunt she was,” Yamada says from nearby, but he isn’t looking. His eyes are on Ami’s paling face. 

She looks up at him with wide eyes and reaches a bloody hand to his mask, touching his cheek soft as a feather before her hand drops to her chest. Leaving a trail of blood down his cheek. 

He grabs her hand and watches as whatever light remained in her eyes fades away into dull, lifeless eyes. 

“You’ll find your place next to her, dead in the dirt like animals.” 

He sets Ami down so she rests against the cool ground. Putting her hands over her chest to hide the gaping wound. He closes her wide eyes and loses a part of himself doing so. One bloody hand reaches into his kunai pouch.

Yamada scoffs and looks seconds away from saying something else, but his words are cut off with a choking noise. 

Rei holds the kunai stiffly in the boy’s throat, blade stuck in up to the handle. Having flickered behind the boy so fast that he might as well have Shunshin’ed and stabbing him with the kunai he’d grabbed in the neck. He grabs Yamada by his rough feeling hair and yanks his head back to growl into his ear. Yamada smells like sweat, sweat and fear.

“The only animal here is you.” And then he rips the kunai out with a vicious outwards tug, sending blood and viscera out onto the forest floor. The thick smell of copper invading his nostrils.

Yamada drops to the ground with a lifeless thud. 

He stands above the body with little remorse. His eyes hard as he commits the carnage to his memory. He wanted to remember this. Remember the way it was messy and disgusting and killed something inside him that had been foolishly innocent. 

He’s angry, upset at everyone and everything. If he hadn’t been sent here he wouldn’t be dealing with this shit on the daily. Wouldn’t live such a sad and miserable existence. His anger rises to new levels, levels he hadn’t thought possible before. 

He can’t look at Ami. Can’t look at her and see the same standoffish girl that had kept him company earlier when she didn’t have to. The same girl that blushed at pretty girls and scoffed when she spoke to him. 

All he can see now is a corpse. And it pisses him off even more.

Curse the Hokage and everyone else involved for this happening. Nobody saw what a loose cannon Yamada was? No one at all? 

If they weren’t so incompetent, then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. 

The forest around him is a buzz. Trees rustle and groan, animals make a loud racket all around him. And it’s almost like the earth itself is reacting to his anger. The branches curl and cut off any light from getting into the area, sending it all into shadows. 

Someone was at fault for this. And it didn’t matter who, because when they found him, it would be him they blamed. 

He glances around the forest and can hear shouting in the distance. They were coming for him. Ibiki must have been watching and sent someone to deal with him. 

His body tenses and he braces himself in the dirt, his hand clenching around the kunai so hard that he nearly winces when it makes his wound ache.  

Then, his vision blurs.  

He blinks and his surroundings have changed.

The trees around him blur and twist until they look completely different. The water of the river twists until he finds the bend in it unfamiliar. And there’s a giant fence before him that towers over him and casts him in its large shadow.

Yamada at his feet fades into the form of a battered looking log, blood and body turning into wood. Ami’s body a few feet does the same.

His feet give out under him and he falls to his knees. Hands shaking as he drops the bloodless kunai to rub roughly at his eyes in an attempt to see if they are playing tricks on him. 

Nothing changes, it’s just him and a few battered logs in the clearing. 

He puts a hand to the cheek Ami had left a bloody trail on and when he pulls his hand back to see, there is nothing there. No blood to be seen. 

But he can still feel it. Feel it staining his hands and coating his cheek like it was staining his very soul.

‘Genjutsu.’

And of course it was. A mind trick done by the most sadistic man in Konoha. To break them so they would quit. Making it clear that they weren’t meant to pass the man’s test in the first place.

He slumps and wants nothing more than to fall over and curl up into a ball. To hide away from the world. His eyes sting but he closes them tightly to stop them from leaking. He couldn’t cry now. Not while he was alone in dangerous territory without a single clue as to where his teammates where.

The forest has gone quiet and it sends a shiver down his spine. 

He needed to get up. Needed to find his teammate and drag their ass’s to the tower to get this over with. So Ibiki could fail them and then he could try to figure out what he needed to do next.

With a sigh, he reaches for the kunai before his hand stops just before he touches it. He stares down at the untarnished metal and can’t find it in himself to grab a hold of it. While not real, he had used it to kill his teammate and just looking at it had the scene flashing behind his eyes. 

He pulls his hand away and stands, turning his back on the weapon and scans the trees around him. He didn’t know where his teammates where, and going by the fence at his back, he was far away from where they had been. 

He sighs and leaps up into the trees, not sparing a single look back at the small clearing he’d come to in. He needed to find Ami and Yamada and finish this. He could fall apart later.

The search for his wayward teammates is slow. His eyes have to work overtime to scan the ground below him. Searching every nook and cranny to see if he can see them. The scroll in his pocket feels heavy and warm, taunting him with its promise of ending things. 

But he shakes his head and ignores it the best he can, he wasn’t going to go back to the academy. He refused. There was too much that was about to happen and he needed to get strong now. Not a year from now if he’s lucky enough to pass that sensei’s tests.

Besides, he needed to pay rent and the orphan fund had made it clear they were done paying him a stipend at his last payment. So unless he wanted to be homeless and have to resort to drastic measures to even get food, he needed to become a full Genin today.

It takes him a while and his legs start to get tired. His hand aches and there’s a dull throbbing at the base of his skull, but eventually a flash of purple out of the corner of his eye has his lungs breathing a bit easier. 

Ami is sitting with her back against a tree, her knees drawn up to her chest with her arms wrapped around them and a wide, blank look in her eyes.

He throws himself to the forest floor and shoots his eyes around for threats. Sighing when he doesn’t find any and rushing over to his teammate to check on her.

“Ami?” He’s so glad to see her that he forgets he hadn’t called her anything but her last name since the first conversation. Which is, you know, like a lot of character development for him.

She flinches but doesn’t answer him. Her eyes still staring blankly ahead as if she was seeing something else at the moment. He sets a gentle hand on her shoulder and her body tenses under his touch, but she otherwise doesn’t react.

He waves a hand in front of her face, snapping a few times and then sighs when she doesn't react to that either. 

She’s trapped in a genjutsu just like he had been. But how was he supposed to break her out of it? 

‘Think. Think.’

Liquid gathers in the corners of her eyes and drips down her cheeks in a slow roll. He sighs and tilts his head. Fuck it. And then moulds some of his chakra and sends it through his hand down into her in an attempt to disrupt the genjutsu. 

His hand hurts doing it and he thinks he messed it up, but when he looks back at her, he lets out a small sigh of relief.

Ami blinks a few times before her eyes focus on his face next to her. She stares at him for a bit with wide eyes before the tears increase and she snaps her eyes closed. She throws herself forward and wraps her arms around him with a sob.

“R-Rei.” She sobs into his shoulder and his arms come up to hold her without much thought. He rubs a hand against her trembling back and tries to comfort her. 

He had forgotten that she was just a child as well. And he needed to be more aware of these things seeing as all his peers were children too. As such, the appearance of tears was more plausible than ever before.

“It’s okay.” He mutters into her hair. “It was just a genjutsu.”

“I-it f-felt so-so real.” Her face is trying to merge with his shoulder and he can feel the tears through his shirt. He wonders what she had been seeing. Wonders what horrors she had been forced to endure, but can’t find it in him to ask her.

If it was anything like his, he didn’t think he wanted to know. 

He holds her for a long moment, but it doesn’t stop him from keeping his eyes on their surroundings. Watching the shadows for any threat to make itself known. Her trembling slows and eventually comes to a stop. And while the tears still dampen his shoulder, the spread of them has stopped.

She’s small in his arms. Tiny with bony shoulders and gangly limbs. She’s just a girl who is in over her head and is just now realizing it. But she’s coming back into her normal self.

And like her normal self, when she stops crying she puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him gently away with a scowl. Embarrassed at him seeing her cry.

He sighs and leans away to give her some space. “Are you okay?”

She scowls harder but nods her head. “I’m fine.”

With a tired eye-smile, he stands and brushes the dirt off his pants. His hand held out for her to grab. She narrows her eyes at it before she sighs and reaches up, grabbing onto it. He pulls her to her feet and once up, she lets out a wince and lifts her leg awkwardly.

“Damnit.” She hisses, twisting her leg so she can scowl down at it. “My ankle.”

He sighs and crouches down to look at it, feeling her hands rest on his shoulders when he gently grabs her leg with one hand. Her ankle is red and swollen, and if they didn’t get somewhere safe and get her sandal off soon, who knew how bad it would get. 

“How bad is it?” She asks and he tilts his head up at her in what he hopes is a reassuring look. 

“It’s not going to fall off,” He eye-smiles at her growing scowl. “Try walking on it.”

She steps away and tries to do as he asked, but going by the growing wince on her face and the way her leg jerked back into the air, he didn’t think she would be walking anywhere soon.

“That’s not going to work.” He sighs and stands, looking around for anything she could use as a crutch. 

“No shit.” She scoffs and leans heavily against the trunk of the tree. Her eyes are a bit wide. But they’re also tired, exhausted by what the day has thrown at them so far.

He doesn’t see anything for her to use so he debates with himself for a second before coming to a decision. He crouches again, but this time with his back to her and a hand waving at it. “Hop on then, we’ll need to find Yamada before your swelling gets worse.”

She’s quiet for a moment and he’s glad he’s looking the other way. So he didn’t have to see the scowl that was no doubt on her face, nor see the disgust she felt at the thought of being so close to him. 

Ami makes a quiet sound behind him and then he feels her hands fall hesitantly onto his shoulders. Their weight gets heavier as she shifts her stance behind him. “Don’t get any funny ideas, loser.”

He sighs and rolls his eyes. “No trouble there.”

She scoffs behind him and her hands clench on his shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

‘Classic trap I’ve found myself in now.’

“You got a Kaa-san?” He grumbles, wishing that things weren’t so complicated. “She’s probably more my speed.”

Her hands clench harder on his shoulders and he thinks they’ll be bruised later by the force of it. One hand leaves a shoulder and then he feels her flick him harshly in the back of the head. “No, I don’t.”

“...oh.” He slumps a bit. He probably deserved that then. What was he thinking being so thoughtless around other people? “Sorry.”

“Tch, loser.” But she puts her weight onto his back and slides her legs up for him to grab. He wraps his arms under her legs and slowly stands, testing the weight as she shifts on his back to get comfortable. 

They’re quiet for a bit as they get settled. But then she rests her head against his shoulder with her face right next to his ear and lets out a hum. “Got an older cousin though.”

“Really?” He asks and makes his way over to a nearby tree, eyeing it for anything that would potentially cause him an issue. “Is she pretty?”

“The prettiest.” She hums again and he feels her body relax against his back. She must be tired. “Think she’s got a boyfriend though, so you’re out of luck.”

“Maa, that’s too bad.” He adjusts his grip and turns his head a bit to send her a glance. “Hang on, things are about to get bumpy.”

Nodding against his shoulder, she loops her arms around his chest and grabs a hold of the fabric there. He crouches a bit and then leaps upwards with a chakra assisted jump. Planting his feet on the side of the tree and running up the side. Ami’s grip on him is rock solid and he hears her let out a small squeak when they are horizontal.

“How?” She breathes in his ear when they don’t fall to the ground.

“Chakra technique.” He hums at her and eyes a branch for him to climb on to. “I can teach you later, if you want?”

“Yeah,” But then he feels her slump against him. “We aren’t going to pass, are we?”

“I…don’t know.” He sighs and swings them up onto the branch, his momentum carrying him forward in a leap towards another tree branch and then another before he’s leaping through the trees with Ami on his back.

She doesn’t say anything and that’s fine. He just leaps through the trees and keeps an eye out for Yamada down below. He’s not sure what he was supposed to say anyway. Not with the way things have gone so far. And anything he might be able to dredge up seemed inadequate as reassurance.

His whole day had been ruined with the knowledge Ibiki was supposed to be their sensei. The man had never had a Genin team in canon that he knew of. Plus, the man was a hardass that had his own issues going on. There was no way he would take them on as Genin.

So he was disappointed but feeling rather unsurprised at the outcome so far. 

It made sense that things would suck for him. Ami had just been dragged along for the journey.

He runs through the trees for a while, searching for their third, when he stumbles across a break in the trees and into a large clear area. An area with a giant building at the center of it. 

Ami raises her head from his shoulder and lets out a scoff he can feel through his spine. “Of course.”

He sighs in an echo of her feelings, of course they would find the building when the team was split up and their third completely missing. He eyes the building but doesn’t see anyone outside it. There is no one in the surrounding area and it makes him feel a bit edgy.

“How’s your leg?” He asks instead of focusing too hard on the exhaustion that was creeping in.

“Hurts.” She sighs and sinks back down to rest her head on his shoulder once again. “Adrenaline is gone so it’s worse than it was.”

Poor kid. He sighs and peers at the building once again. “Okay.”

He slowly makes his way down the tree, taking care to be gentle with his passenger. His grip on her legs tight so she doesn’t slip from his back and fall. 

“What are you doing?” She asks when they make it to the forest floor.

He hums and makes his way towards the front door, scanning the surroundings for anything that would jump out at them with pointy bits first. “Nothing is supposed to get inside so it’s the safest place right now. And your leg is only getting worse without it being elevated.”

“Oh,” She huffs, but tightens her grip around his chest. “What about the asshole?”

He steps up to the door and frees up a hand to open it. Nothing explodes in his face, so he counts that as a plus. “I’ll look for him once we get your sandal off and your ankle raised.”

She sighs, “Okay.”

Stepping into the building, he’s a bit disappointed to see it’s nothing special. The entrance was a wide open space that had the same rustic look of most buildings in Konoha. One end had a few doors, but otherwise there wasn’t much inside that said people where in there very often. 

He walks over to one of the walls and crouches down so Ami can get off from the piggy-back ride. When she does, he hears her hiss in pain. She slumps against the wall and slowly sinks down to sit on the floor. 

He glances around the room and finds nothing he could use to prop up her leg for relief. He sighs and crouches at her side to help arrange her leg in a comfortable position. Only raising his hands in surrender when she scowls at him for helping her.

“Are you going to be good here?” He asks her. 

Ami glances around the room and fingers the weapons pouch at her thigh before she lets out a small nod. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay.” He pats her on the shoulder and goes to rise to his feet when a hand grabs him by the sleeve. 

He looks down to see Ami looking up at him with eyes that seem a bit wide, but are putting forth the impression of courage. “Be careful.”

He smiles at her. A real smile, genuine and soft, without the squinty eyes he uses as a mask. “I will. I’ll be back in a bit.”

He’d be able to cover more ground without her on his back. Worrying about going too fast lest he accidently hurt her more. And the faster he can find Yamada, the faster he can get back here and get her some help.

She nods, face only a little scowly but earnest anyway. “You better.”

“There’s no need.” A voice from the entrance interrupts them. They both turn sharply at the sound to see Ibiki looming in the doorway. The light from the outside casting his form into severe shadows.

He sighs and slips the kunai that showed up in his hands back into his pouch. His shoulders slumping at the sight of the man in a relief he was sure Ibiki wasn’t used to having pointed at him. 

Ibiki stalks into the entry room and regards them with stern eyes. “Congratulations, you both made it to the tower within the time limit.”

“Time limit?” He tilts his head in confusion and hears Ami scoff next to him.

“You said nothing about a time limit.” A glance at her shows a vicious scowl on her lips. And he was glad for the mask, otherwise he was sure his face would look something of the same.

“Many missions ninja undertake have objectives that are not directly stated during their briefings. Whether they are official or not makes no difference, always assume you don’t know the whole picture.” Ibiki lectures, face set in stone.

“Do we pass then?” He drones at the man, not expecting anything other than being told they were about to fail. 

“No.” Ibiki glares at them in the low-light. “You may have made it to the tower, but you did not pass my test.”

He slumps and closes his eyes. Feeling like the biggest failure in the world. Maybe he should have stayed in the forest and found Yamada before entering. Found a way to protect Ami and find the other brat at the same time. But he had looked, he promised.

“Why?” The glare Ami sends the man can be felt from where he stands a foot or two away. Scalding as it cuts through the air.

“Various reasons,” Ibiki scowls back at her and it looks more dangerous than she could manage. “But mostly because your teammate quit and neither of you were aware of his fate.”

“When?” He mutters. Eyes narrowing at the man in a glare.

Ibiki scoffed. “As soon as you were layered in my Genjutsu. Brat had enough sense left to scramble for the flare while stuck under it.”

“That was yours?” Ami growls and tries to get to her feet, a kunai in her hand. “You sadistic bastard.”

Ibiki lets out a harsh barking laugh and looks at her through narrow eyes. “If you plan on becoming a ninja, you better prepare for worse.”

Of course it was his. Who else would have trapped them like that? What was the point in all this? Did the man put them through all this just to watch them suffer?

He sighs and puts a hand on Ami’s shoulder to stop her from getting up to attempt murder. “What now?”

“Now?” Ibiki scoffs, “Now you two must make a choice.”

“A choice?” He didn’t realize that was an option.

“If it were up to me, the three of you would go back to the academy or out of the ninja program completely.” Ibiki glares at them and digs around in his pockets. “As it is, I’ve been beholden by my superiors to offer the three of you three choices going forward. The two I just mentioned, academy or quit. And one other.”

Ibiki pulls some paper out of his trench coat pocket and waves it in front of them before he tosses the paper to the ground at his feet. “The Corps always needs bodies. And they’ll take anyone with a pulse and a leaf headband.”

He sighs and crouches to pick up the paper. Handing one to Ami, he tilts his head at Ibiki. “The Corps?”