"Kanji! How are you doing!" A loud voice next to me shouted.
As I resisted the urge to punch whatever microphone of a human shouted at me, I looked to my right, and at some outlandish person, a girl with whisker marks and deep red hair, and just sighed.
"So it's one of those days?" She asked again.
I should just play along with it then, because I have no clue what was happening. I merely cocked an eyebrow, as if to say 'What do you mean?'
"Every once in awhile you act like you are right now, all gloomy and stuff."
I shrugged my shoulders and put my hands up to both of my sides.
"Whatever. When are you gonna start talking?"
It took a few moments for me to think of a reasonable time, and then I put up 1 finger. The middle finger, to be precise.
"Real funny."
By then, a kid with dark pineapple shaped hair that was sitting to the girl's right had woken up from a nap, took one look at them, and just muttered "Troublesome."
While the girl started one-sidedly talking to the boy, I kept to myself, thinking, where the hell was I?
Last I remembered, I... I….. what was I last doing? I thought about it, and my mind had no conclusions. I didn't even know who I was when I had thought about it.
The tomato called me Kanji, so I should probably pay attention to any times that was mentioned. Scratch that, I should pay attention to everything, in order to familiarize myself with my surroundings, and then...
Ask for help or something, I guess.
I felt something in the air, but I couldn't really describe in words what it was. Whatever it was, I could also feel it in my body. The stuff in my body felt, no, was warm and comforting while the stuff outside it was indifferent. It was just… there.
I could feel the stuff in everyone, but theirs varied as far as I divulge. The black-haired boy next to me had a calculative yet bored stuff. The tomato had a, holy dickballs, her stuff seemed scary… I ain't looking at her shit again. Everyone else had stuff that mostly reflected their moods. There was another black and spiky haired kid whose stuff was noticeable despite him being surrounded by a bunch of girls and had a semi-murderous stuff, but it was nowhere near the horrors of tomato's stuff.
Regardless of 'the stuff', I still didn't know where I was.
I could strangely enough understand what they were saying, I couldn't trust myself to know how to speak that language that they were speaking.
Did I mention that my body itself felt different than… before, if that was a thing...? I could feel that it was smaller now, had sharper senses (as far as I could tell), felt much stronger, and when I looked at the window I could see a slight reflection that showed me as a kid with cyan hair and two light purple eyes.
Somehow, that freaked me out more than the fact that I knew nothing.
This was confusing. Like, really confusing.
Regardless of su- "Oi Kanji! Stop daydreaming in class and pay attention!" A deeply-tanned young man that appeared to be in his twenties and had quite the scar horizontally across his nose. It looked like someone slashed a knife right across his face, but I'd definitely seen worse.
A few snickers were heard from my classmates, and I had the decency to look sheepish.
"Sorry!"
Oh shit. I spoke. It seemed to sound like their language though, and my brain agreed with what I was saying.
"Make sure it doesn't happen again." He said to me and then turned his body to the entirety of the class. "One month from this day, there will be graduation exams that determine whether or not you become a Genin. If you fail it, you will not be allowed to become a ninja. For the next three weeks, I'll be focusing mostly on your academics just to make sure you remember everything taught in the curriculum, of course. Then, for the last week, we will have taijutsu sparring for the first half of the day and you will be advised- but not required to stay for the second half of the day unless you need to relearn anything you didn't understand about the ninjutsu and academic work." He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and then asked: "Am I clear?"
He was responded with a loud chorus of hai senseis and the class was in session.
After class was over I walked up to Iruka's desk. I had learned the man's name during class, and that made so many things clear for me. Like where I was.
Apparently I was in what seems to be a city known as Konoha. Tomato girl was actually the current leader's daughter, and her name was Naoko. The pineapple boy went by the name of Shikamaru. I learned names, places, things, stuff, and whatnot. But I did not understand it. Why was I here?
This was as confusing as fuck! Ah yes, Iruka.
"Oi, Iruka-sensei." I stood in front of the man, and looked him dead in the eyes. He was the sensei of the class, he should know what to do.
"Mr. Sho, what can I do for you?" He flashed me a small smile, and I started talking again.
"I can't remember anything. I don't have one single memory of a day before today, or even walking to class this morning. Do you know where I live? Or anything that can help me, really?"
"If this is some prank Naoko roped you into, you'll be getting detentions for the rest of the year…" I shook my head worriedly and he continued. "Do you have any proof?"
"I can't prove anything if all I know was learned after Naoko shouted in my ear like some sorta beast. Maybe there's something you know about me that'll elicit some sorta reaction?"
"I have a better idea. Why don't you go see the doctor?" He said with a little bit of anger.
"But I don't know where the doctor is," I pleaded. "Could you please show me?"
He just gave me an examining look, stood up out of his chair when seemingly satisfied with the answer, and held out his hand for me to grab.
"Why am I grabbing your hand?" I said. I was a bit worried that he'd do something to me with the aforementioned 'stuff'.
"You'll see."
I gave a shrug to that, and grabbed his hand.
When we arrived in front of a hospital, I was pretty impressed. My stomach, however, was not.
Despite this, we walked into the building, and Iruka motioned for me to sit in the lobby while he went to go talk to the receptionist.
A few minutes later a doctor came out of a hallway and brought me into one of the rooms. He asked me basic stuff about myself, and wanted to see if I was able to answer any of it.
While I could talk about it, the whole thing was pretty boring. He said it was unusual to get amnesia without an injury, and that I'd need someone to tell me basic things like where I live, who I'm supposed to know, what responsibilities I have, et cetera. They had no way to give me memories back currently, so I basically had to cram for an entire month in order to pass the aforementioned examination, if I wanted to take it of course.
After it was over, I went back to Iruka and told him the situation. He just gave me a sad smile and told me where my apartment was. Before we left the hospital and parted ways, I asked him about many important things.
"Will I be able to take the exam still?"
"Yes."
"How can I relearn all of those jutsu?"
"Everyone was given scrolls at the beginning of the year. If yours aren't at your home, you can go to the library and borrow scrolls from there."
"Is there any kind of extra help I could get after school?"
"Usually, there is no extra help until the last week of school, but I'll make an exception for you. And before you ask, I won't give you any right now. I think you should get some rest and see if you remember anything in the morning."
"Do I have family?" I was a bit curious about this, because I was an orphan in my last life and didn't want to be one again.
"You have a brother, but he's out on a mission, and I don't know if you two are related to be honest."
"What's he look like? I need to know in case someone barges in or something."
"Same as you, but with a darker hair shade."
"What was I like, before I got amnesia?"
He stopped for a moment, and just looked at me. He seemed upset over the whole ordeal, but regardless of that, still opened his mouth to speak. "You were a normal kid. You hung out with Shikamaru and Naoko a lot, acted like a class clown despite being a genius, and a good person overall. I hope you get better, even if you're acting more serious in class now."
That upset me a bit, to be honest. I knew that whoever Kanji Sho was is gone, because I was Kanji Sho now. Even if I tried to imitate him or whatever, it wouldn't be genuine and it'd feel plain wrong.
"I'll see you tomorrow Iruka-sensei."
"Same to you, Kanji."
When I got home from the hospital I was a bit tired but didn't go to sleep.
What was I going to do here? I didn't understand why I was in this world, but I had to do something about it.
Not literally do something about my existence, per se, but what to do with it. The current line of work I was about to partake in involved being a mercenary. A ninja, to be precise.
At the basic stages of work, I'd have to perform simple tasks, but after a while I'd be forced to kill for the sake of the village, assuming I survived that long.
It confused me, really. Why would anyone attack anyone willingly? It would work out better in the end if everybody got along.
But that didn't seem to matter, because the line of work paid well. Was I going to do it? Or would I become one of many street urchins in this city?
The choice was obvious, really. I opened up one of the scrolls neatly arranged throughout my apartment. The words on it said Kawarimi no Jutsu, and when opened up and read, the effect seemed to replace yourself with an object.
Time to master it.
I sprinted to my classroom the next day with a speed to my steps. That speed involved moving the circulation of my 'stuff' to my feet. I learned yesterday that 'stuff' was actually an energy known as chakra, but there was a little bit of a perverse side to my brain that kept wordplaying with stuff, and as such I sometimes referred to chakra as 'stuff'.
It was fun to use my special stuff, because I learned that I could do many things with it. Such as the aforementioned Kawarimi or the Henge, which enabled you to transform your appearance into anything you wanted. According to the scrolls Iruka had already given to me, chakra could do many things for you, such as enhancing your muscles, allowing you to walk on many surfaces water and walls, et cetera.
Because of continuously pumping light doses of it to my brain last night, I was able to pull an all-nighter. The previous Kanji seemed to have expertise in stuff, because I was pretty good at utilizing it in numerous ways. I was able to pump the right amount of chakra in my feet to walk on the ceiling and walls, easily at that. The scroll had described being able to do it as mildly difficult, but I immediately adjusted the amount of chakra I used to stick my foot against the wall as soon as it touched it.
After five minutes and two wrong turns, I was at the building I needed to be at. It was impressive to look at from the outside, although mainly because of its' size.
I walked into it, and went to a classroom that was referred to as my class on a worksheet that I had already filled out.
The second I stepped in, I could feel something was off. I immediately diverted some of the chakra in my body into my foot, and jumped backwards into the wall behind me.
A paint bucket and five glitter bombs were right where I was just standing. I raised an eyebrow at that, and looked into the room. Everyone was laughing their asses off, while Naoko held a glitter bomb in her hand.
I got an idea from it, and jumped over the puddle. I then did a mid-air Kawarimi with Naoko. She landed face down into the paint and glitter while I was where she was previously sitting. The glitter bomb in her hand hit the ground when she fell, and blew up in her face.
Everyone in the room started roaring with laughter.
She gave me a pissed off look, stood up, and gave me the middle finger.
I just shrugged my shoulders and said "You tried to get me with the prank, not the other way around."
"I'll get you next time, no doubt about it." She put two fingers up to her neck, and slowly moved them across it.
"You could try."
She just grumbled to herself, and walked out the doorway, and probably to the female locker rooms.
A few minutes later, she came back in a new outfit. I hadn't really observed how her outfit looked before, but it consisted of a navy blue hoodie with a dark orange leather chest plate on top of it and had dark orange fingerless gloves. Her pants were a navy blue color, standard shinobi issue with the typical tape around the knee.
I just realized that throughout the entirety of yesterday and this morning I hadn't even thought to check what I was wearing, but that could wait for later. I moved back to my seat, with Naoko walking up the stairs to sit next to me.
Iruka entered a few minutes later and class had started.
"Can everyone open their math textbooks to page 216? Once you are on it, please do questions 1-30 on a seperate piece of paper."
In there was a bunch of equations in which we were required to find the variable of equations.
3 + x = 17
That didn't seem to hard. 17 - 3 made x = 14.
2) 12 = 4 + 2x
That wasn't hard either. 4 + 4 + 4= 12 and 2(4) + 4 = 12, so it was obvious that x had to equal 4.
The rest of the problems were similar, and surprisingly easy. Iruka went all around the room to see if anyone needed help, but I was one of the only people that didn't need it.
After we did math, we were taught survival skills. How to identify plants that were edible, plants that were deadly, how to start a fire and how to conceal it, that the safely drinkable water would usually be found not in a body of water but in the groundwater next to the water body (which was found by digging the ground a few feet), and other things.
I, strangely enough knew the info he had previously taught, and caught myself remembering other info related to it, but never memories of the lessons.
He then talked about history for like two hours or so, but I already had known the information, so I started to doze off for the rest of the lesson.
The rest of the day was easy. We learned where on the body to aim for killing blows, or crippling injuries. We learned trap formations and detections, and hand seals. After that, the rest of the day was dedicated to completing the outdoor obstacle course.
Long story short, I got second place while Naoko got 1st.
After school, I told her about my amnesia. I didn't know how to really tell someone that knew me all my life that I wasn't…. Me.
And here I was now, walking onto one of the many training grounds with Naoko, because she wanted to try and get my memories back, which I had repeatedly told her was impossible.
She apparently wanted to, and I quote, "Beat the memories into me". I somehow let her talk me into it.
"Are you ready to fight?" Naoko asked me, with a smile on her face.
"Ummm… I don't think this is a good idea. Maybe I should relearn how to fight and take a fall before you beat the crap outta me." In case I didn't say it earlier, I really didn't want to get the shit beaten out of me.
She scoffed at me, and said "You're just scared. I'm going to give you 5 seconds to prepare yourself, and then I'm going to beat you up. Sound fun?"
"No."
She just stuck her tongue out at me, and charged with a fist out.
I jumped back a few meters, and put up a guard. I didn't know how effective it would be, but it felt natural, so I had probably used it before.
She struck out with her fist, but I deflected it, and retaliated with a low sweep from my feet. Naoko jumped up a foot, and my hand grabbed her leg and swung her face into my other fist. She looked surprised, and performed a one-seal Kawarimi.
She was now about twenty feet away from me, and looked more pissed off than she did this morning. This time when she charged me, she had a few copies of herself running alongside her.
I gave a little smile, and performed a henge to look like her and a smokeless kawarimi with one of her clones. They all started beating the shit out of each other, while I stood outside the battle. After 10 seconds or so, 1 clone remained, which must've been the real one. What struck me was that she had bruises all over her, which made no sense because the academy bunshin wasn't solid unless… she must've been using a solid version, that's it.
"Wanna yield?" I called out to her.
"In your dreams!" She yelled back.
So for the next twenty minutes, we beat the shit out of each other. After awhile I started to get tired, and because of such, I lost. The girl's crazy stamina and the fact that her bruises and cuts healed during the battle was insanely unfair, but that must've been due to her scary stuff.
"Did you get your memories back?" She asked after the battle. Her gaze seemed hopeful, but something in her eyes seemed to tell me that she already knew the answer.
"No. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about it." I told her, my gaze solemn.
"Don't be sorry about it baka!" She bonked me on the head. "You can't do anything about your condition."
I still felt like shit though, because I felt like I was deceiving her.
"Yeah. Can you tell me about yourself though. And everyone else, really. I feel like I don't know you, and I'm still sorry for it."
She gave me an indecipherable look, and said cheerfully "I'm Naoko Uzumaki, and I wanna be the Hokage! I'll be the best one ever so everyone respects me!"
I smiled to myself, of course she'd wanna be like her father, and said "Once you become Hokage, I'll be your right hand man, that's the promise of a lifetime!"
She gave me a big smile, and stuck her hand out for me to shake it. I gave her a firm handshake and looked her straight in the eyes.
"Welcome to the team, Kanji."
AN: That was fun to write. Leave a follow, favorite, and review please if you want more. I'll post again in a week or two, so please be patient.