Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto

Inspirations: Iryo-nin Kasa by Vaengir and Reminiscence by PONPONnyan. Haven't read yet? Go check them out..

Warnings: AU – canon divergence (like really early on, don't be surprised), violence, deaths, Danzō's ruthless scheming, my take on chakra and how it affects the body, angst of unrequited love (depends), plus the main character going off the deep end. The AU of this story, Rotten Apple where Mirai has been genderbent will be posted on a later date.

.

.

.

-BAD APPLE-

1. Review Your History

I both hate and love history.

I'd never understand why I was blamed for everything that went wrong in the history of Konoha. My bafflement aside, I was damned proud of myself to have made history—even though you won't see or hear anything remotely nice being written about me—because history had painted me quite the glorious reputation.

(This depends on your definition of glorious.)

Namikaze Mirai—that's the name you can look up if you're curious about history. The earliest history books would have my name under a subtopic of the Yondaime Hokage's chapter, naturally as I was his son. Later, I'd have an entire chapter—or book, if I was lucky—dedicated to me.

It's funny—history I mean. It brought me ironic amusement that no one would know true history as I knew it. The people I see every day would have no idea that I, perhaps generations younger than they, am walking history on the topic of reincarnation, that I was a shred of history of another world. A world where there were no shinobi or chakra; a world where their world was fictional.

I had never met another like me. Maybe how I was portrayed set them off, they didn't dare to approach me for fear I'd hurt them.

Pity. But I was used to it.

Different people will tell you different things about me. If you ask me, the world I'd use to describe myself was adaptable.

~{I}~

I was a special needs child for the first years of my life.

Hah. Lots of people didn't believe my medical records either, so I fault no one for thinking this was faulty information.

My disability had nothing to do with my body as much as it had to do with my mind and chakra. In the world of Naruto, everything counted on chakra—the very lifeblood of every living creature, no matter how insignificant. In humans, chakra network was more complicated and more intricately connected to your life. Bottom line: dysfunctional chakra can lead to, say, dysfunctional digestive system. (Being a competent medic-nin must be hell there, there was so much more to learn.)

Me, I couldn't move my legs; my hands were weak, my body fragile as a bloody leaf.

This was because my spiritual energy was too much—so much that it swamped my physical energy. Physical energy was the potential, the capability, to move; to allow a shinobi to leap into the sky, to fly, to run quicker than the wind. As an infant up to my toddler years, I had very little physical energy as the body I was reborn into was young, and had virtually zero stamina. I'd need shinobi training to increase the amount of physical energy my body could create, to balance the proportion of energies in me, and right this disability.

Spiritual energy was the stuff your mind makes; study more and you'll have more. Fact was, the body and mind usually mature together, thus maintaining the balance and a functional body that could grow stronger.

But you have a reincarnated baby—a teenager's mind and an infant's body? No wonder the kid was fucked up.

How could I train when I could barely move as it was?

That was a question that tormented my parents: Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina. What made me love them so much, what made me completely and utterly devoted to them was—they never gave up on me even when a fussy, disabled child was the last thing you need during a time of war. This was a lot more devotion than my older set of parents had. I had been a perfectly healthy and capable kid back then, yet they dumped me in an orphanage and went their separate ways. But enough about them, they're probably dead and largely unimportant.

I barely moved as an infant due to the lack of energy. My parents immediately noticed something was wrong when I couldn't even roll around, much less push myself up. I could barely turn my head to the source of noises as it was.

I couldn't remember much of the world around me then, months after my birth, except for the permanent haze of terror. I was scared of my lack of mobility, I was scared of the strangers around me, and I was scared of this foreign energy within my body. Yes, I think I cracked after living in terror for so long, fearing every hitching breath would be my last.

Did you know how long it took for my eyes to finally adjust?

Seven months, give or take.

That was when it finally sank in my new set of parents meant me no harm. They were a beautiful couple, big hearts and they absolutely loved me, their firstborn. While haggard at first glance, they looked at me with love. They weren't going to harm me.

I calmed. Their emotions reached, conveyed even without words.

…

Yes, I'm sure you can guess too: it was the work of ninshū.

~{I}~

My infanthood could be seen through the shutter-clicks of a camera: snap—three months old—snap—seven months old—snap—a year old. With the aid of someone, I could sit up but otherwise, I remained stationary and quiet. I recalled clearly the time I'd been discharged from the hospital because I was so sick of white and the home I'd been brought to was a refreshing mix of warm colors.

For my sake, my mother retired from life as a kunoichi.

The first time my brain managed to process her image—and my father's face—I nearly couldn't believe it. The first time I saw their faces, I laughed. I thought I'd finally gone crazy. But their faces didn't flicker. My fists brushed their faces and they remained solid; they were real.

Being carried by Kushina cemented the fact—I was in the Narutoverse—and I laughed even more.

I see, I thought bitterly, so even in another world, some other deity continues to torment me.

Give me a perfect set of parents and you're going to take them away?

What did I ever do other than being born?

(I angst about that for awhile but I think I got over it. Mostly.)

~{I}~

Of the people taking care of me, only Hatake Kakashi wasn't going to die. That should make me stick more to him so we could have something to bond together over the years of losing people dear to both our hearts. It didn't. Kakashi hated me; he did not waste any time voicing his displeasure of my birth.

"You are useless; you will not be able to contribute to the good of Konoha and yet you'd caused our main weapon, the jinchūriki, to retire.

"Sensei and Kushina-san should just get rid of you.

"Stop looking at me with those eyes, you brat! And—don't laugh!"

Of course, to add salt to the wound, it was Uchiha Obito—he who took, or will take, my perfect parents away—who defended me to the death.

"Leave Mirai alone, he didn't ask to be born like this! His birth brought happiness to Sensei and Kushina-san, that's not a useless thing!

"You're just jealous that you have no parents to love you!

"Yeah, Mi-chan, laugh at that idiot; we both know he's the ridiculous one."

Then Obito would turn around and give me the widest, most adoring grin ever as Kakashi spluttered in the background. I stopped laughing at Kakashi's stupid face when it became apparent that the people I loved will always be taken away from me in the end.

"Ack, don't cry!"

…

..

.

My excess of spiritual energy indicated—to my parents—that I might have a higher level of intellect than the brats my age. I suppose reincarnation was such a far-fetched theory that they didn't even pause to consider it and instead, assumed I would be a genius.

I saw more of Kushina—my mother—than Minato in my younger years. He, as the Yellow Flash of Konoha, had battles to win and wars to fight. My mother played with me games and trained my motor skills even though, to me, it seemed futile.

In her presence, I bit back shrieks of frustration at my own body's incapability of mobility—it would not help me at all even though I gave hell to Kakashi with tantrums as an outlet—just so I wouldn't trouble her. She was obviously concerned about my situation already; I didn't need to make her even more aware of how dire my situation was.

I had to admit, the main character—Naruto, my would-be otōto I suppose—didn't cross my mind often, certainly not when I was the hero of my own drama already. I could not see Naruto having a better life with a crippled as an older sibling. If he was under my care, I swear, he'd be even worse-off than in canon.

I had a bad temper, who knows what I'd do to the boy? Plus, it would do Naruto mental health no good when his older sibling happened to be a boy in body and girl in mind. The differences between my mind and body hadn't caught up to me yet, not so soon in toddlerhood, but when puberty comes, I know I'd be in literal hell.

I must've offended a deity in past lives I couldn't recall. I was born into a loving family doomed to crack apart, I was given a boy's body instead of one that was more suited for me, I was going to have to go through a ton of shit and whatnot.

Lovely.

And ninshū was all I had to help me.

What was ninshū to me? As an avid Narutard, I'd finished the manga before my death though I didn't know much about the future generation that encompassed Boruto's generation as the main characters. There were a lot of kids in the orphanage I'd lived in who loved Naruto. I would've gotten along with them had there not been a huge age gap and they didn't slobber all over the single copy of Naruto in our living space. Basically, I knew all about the stuff the Rikudō Sennin wanted to spread.

I was quick to realize it was ninshū—that, or I, for an absurd reason, had telepathy. Which didn't make sense, I wasn't even a Yamanaka so it couldn't even be a mutation. And my DNA was totally a combination of Minato's and Kushina's—no questions about it. I could feel the depths of their bottomless love; there was no way they'd cheated on one another. I could feel the ten months my mother kept me safe within her, I could brush the agony of childbirth coupled with the strain of holding the damned Kyūbi back.

I knew a few words but I was too young to actually speak. Before I learned the words to convey my feelings, I experienced the complete novelty of the joining of minds. I'd heard and had experienced the joining of bodies before and it was nothing like what it felt to have two separate minds connecting.

Be it adult or child, you could connect.

The only thing I could do if I did not experiment with ninshū was to stare at the ceiling. Of course I chose to experiment with ninshū—the religion and teaching Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo spread to the world in hopes for peace but instead, his effort was desecrated and weaponized into the last thing he wanted: as a means to prolong war. Ninshū didn't thrill me. It didn't allow me to spit fire or unleash a torrent of lightning—basically, it did not appeal to me and I was sure many cynics in the world agreed with me that ninjutsu would be much cooler. Unless ninshū could allow you to read your opponent's mind, dissect their jutsu and show a way to counter it—during the heat of battle.

However, I understood, from gleaning my parents' minds, that I would unlikely be able to use ninjutsu at this rate.

It was hard to describe in words what connected me to my new parents; I saw their memories, I felt their thoughts as clearly as if I'd thought it myself, even though there was a language barrier between us. This one time I knew my mother accidentally cut herself while preparing dinner, I felt it—even though she was in the kitchen and I was in my bedroom.

I had my fears laid out before me.

It wasn't hard to think about my predicament and feel frustration and terror at my helplessness. I'd always been in control and suddenly losing a body that could fend for itself was disconcerting.

My parents didn't immediately realize they understood their son's feelings perfectly even though he never cried nor did he fuss about anything. But I could tell they subconsciously knew we were connected; I saw it in their gestures and efforts to make me more comfortable in the confines of my room and the freedom of five inches in diameter of my crib. They showered me with love and promised that as long as they lived, nothing would ever,ever hurt me.

Ninshū was almost like telepathy. But you didn't read minds, there were no whispers in your head; there was only sharing and trading between your spiritual energies—the conscious of human minds.

…

It wasn't as useless as I'd originally thought. However, as wonderful as the joining of minds—thus, no words needed—sounded, if babies didn't speak, it was a sadly disconcerting fact.

Both Minato and Kushina wanted me my first word to a term of endearment that addressed them respectively, either Kaa-chan or Tou-chan. It was tough to choose. No, rather, I shouldn't have had to choose. But I was extremely conscious about not hurting their feelings.

Ever since discovering ninshū, I suddenly realized why Hagoromo could delude himself into thinking—for his whole life—that ninshū could bring peace. If you hurt someone, you'd feel their pain acutely through the connection ninshū created.

The ultimate flaw of ninshū was its pitiful lack of a true solution. Just because you understand didn't mean you could accept it. Ultimately, I could see why ninshū fell out of use. It must've been absolutely frustrating for them to understand but not be able to accept the fact, so they turned to ninjutsu for a solution—at least, if you killed someone, that'd end the argument. There, problem solved; no more argument and subsequently, no more war—after possibly decades of fighting.

Huh. I wondered if the people of the olden days in Narutoverse were on the same wavelength as I was. Did that mean I was old?

I didn't think so. I just had a lot of time to think—ridiculous stuff, important things—as an infant with nothing to do. I suppose anyone else would contemplate about their future prospect as a shinobi or whatnot, but as I was crippled then, I was more focused on puzzling out how to bloody survivewithout my parents and how torturous life was being to me. I relied on them for everything except for breathing. It was that sad.

Anyway, my first word was compromised. I looked at Minato and said, "Okaa-san." See? Acknowledging Minato and calling Kushina at the same time.

Sadly, as my parents were less aware and not as proficient in ninshū, they thought their precious little baby was gender-confused.

What followed was an amusing conversation of the differences between female and male. No, it wasn't anywhere close to what The Talk would be like. They merely pointed out what I'd expect females to have and males to lack.

It was funny.

I like them. What I didn't like was how limited out time together would be.

It was already hard enough to spend time together in the village with the war raging outside, near the Land of Fire, reaping lives as it continued to wage. It was a few months after I turned one before I was brought out of the house Kushina and Minato shared—even though they weren't married yet, I know—and brought out to see Konoha.

Secrecy was highly prioritized due to me being the vulnerable son of two of Konoha's most powerful shinobi. Lots of people would want me to strike back at Minato and Kushina or simply to gain leverage over my parents. So I knew why they were so protective of me.

And my father was still just a jōnin—he was offered the position of ANBU but he declined. Even in times of war, ANBU only received assassination jobs—oh, they killed important personnel but my father wanted to have a more active role in defending his village, so jōnin was the ideal choice of occupation for him. Minato was not Hokage yet even though he obviously dreamed to be one. He still ran active missions with his three students—one chūnin, two genin—and I knew exactly who they were even though it'd been a while since we last saw one another.

"This is Mirai," my father introduced me proudly. It was as if I had accomplished something grand by just being alive. It was a novel feeling. The parents in my past life had, more or less, thought my existence to be a hindrance as time passed. It was a sad thought—the worst part of it was how their love could evaporate into thin air. "In case you've forgotten. It's been awhile since you kids were in the same room as him, huh?"

"He's larger than a loaf of bread now," noted Uchiha Obito, impressed. I still didn't have a fluent grasp on Japanese yet but he was thinking of a baby and a loaf of bread—how hard was it to connect those two together?

"He's so cute!" Rin gushed, pinching my cheeks. Now that I didn't need to brush her mind to understand. I preened beneath her gushing. "Isn't he, Kakashi?"

"Hn," grunted the Hatake. Touching his mind was like sinking my hands into a bucket of ice cold water. What I saw was not the conviction to get stronger—nor did he dream of anything, unlike Obito whose goal to be Hokage burned as bright as the sun—but the bitter replay of his father's suicide, like a broken record on repeat.

I didn't completely get it now but I knew, in a few years time, when my parents would die in a battle against the Kyūbi, I wouldn't even need ninshū to completely understand what he was going through.

It was a bitter thought to swallow.

"Sit here and don't wander off, ne, Mi-chan?" Minato ruffled my hair. He didn't even need to ask. I suspected my father knew he didn't even need to verbalize his thoughts to be understood too but he didn't know how to reach out with only his spiritual energy.

Had my spiritual energy not been so excessive, I might've not known ninshū either.

But what was so grand about ninshū when I was still, by all means, crippled?

At first, I thought that if ninshū was about trading and sharing spiritual energy, I could distribute my excess of spiritual energy to my parents and anyone I came into contact with. But no, somehow, ninshū practiced equivalent exchange: if I gave that much, the recipient would return the equal amount.

I needed more physical energy.

~{I}~

"Okay, one foot in front of the other, Mirai … come on … ah, never mind … stand up—try again."

I refrained from rolling my eyes at Obito who stood a couple of feet further away. Even I knew how to walk—well, the theory behind it at least. In my previous life, it had just come naturally, seem so easy: stand and your butt will move when you just think about it.

I was around three and I—could—not—walk. Well, not as well as I would've liked. I was sure kids my age would be running around like monkeys now, but I was still stuck at learning how to walk. At least I could, y'know, crawl though not very quickly. (My main modes of transportation: being carried and rolling around.)

I put one foot forward and face-planted on the parquet floor. I groaned into the ground. "Need help to stand again?" wondered Obito. I shook my head, rolling onto my back, my front and I kept on rolling. "Kushina-san, are you really sure Mirai got what it means to walk? Because all he does is roll around like a rolling-pin."

"That's Minato's son you're talking about!"

"Aha," Obito snapped his fingers, a triumphant expression seizing his face, "so you are admitting that you're not—"

"Baka!" I pushed myself onto my elbows to see Kushina pummeling Obito into the ground. "Just because Minato's smarter doesn't mean I'm idiot! How smart are you, huh?!" Pow!

I snickered, waddling on the floor—it was relaxing after straining my limbs for one whole day trying to perfect the art of walking. Kushina acted rough and harsh on Obito but that was it—just an act; Obito was actually her favorite. Kushina was a bit of a tsundere, not willing to openly show her favoritism but opting for the violent way of loving.

I guess that's her interpretation of ninshū.

I blinked up at the ceiling. It was going to be hard to discard ninshū to accept ninjutsu but I had to: ninshū was useless in the long-run, only ninjutsu would keep me alive. I needed strength (more power) to confront the future.

My lips quirked at how aptly named I'd been.

The child who knew the future named future—it was as if my parents had seen my obituary.

…

If they did, they would've known their firstborn's moniker was Father of Ninshū—as embarrassing as it sounded.

(Even though I would've begged to differ.)

~{I}~

This story has the same review-drabble system as The Path Home. For those who are unaware, each chapter has a drabble exclusive to it and only reviewers can get it—through PM, that is. The drabbles are either subplots, contribute directly to the bigger plot, separate povs or just contain fluffy contents.

As for the inclusion of ninshū, why not? I wanted to explore a couple of aspects in the Narutoverse. Also, the chakra theory stuff mentioned above is my headcanon. Hope it isn't confusing. More will be revealed in later chapters.

Drabble #1: A look into this AU's cycle of reincarnation (N and S, remember?). If you catch my drift. This chapter's drabble is linked to the main plot.

Question: Are there other SI stories set in Itachi's generation? I want to read them but I have trouble finding such types so the help would be appreciated.

R&R