A/N: Should be updating about once a week from here on out.
Chapter 2: Conviction
Years pass, and dreams fade. I've held fast to some convictions, yes, but I abandoned others, becoming lesser every time I do so. My absolute belief in many things faded, as is common. Who holds onto their dreams forever? I eventually admit many things to myself: I may never escape this realm. I may never achieve my dreams. I may never change anyone's life. I will try, but that unwavering belief I once held has flagged as the years passed. All these convictions are lesser: debased, desublimated by my weakness of will and memory. So much of me is lost, now. How can I saw what I know, or what I was?
I won't forget the truth, though. No matter how hazy things may get, I know: this world is a lie.
When the snake came before Man, he offered Man knowledge and sapience. In return, the snake asked for nothing. The knowledge was its own cost, sapience its own repayment. For his acceptance, Man was ejected from Eden, for he was no longer an animal. He was more. He could think and reason and knew good from evil. It was a pointless ejection! Though God wanted Man no more, burdened as Man was with the knowledge of good and evil, Man too desired exodus. Man desired to move beyond the walls with that self-same knowledge that would exile him. Man departed Eden, for he had the world to gain and nothing to lose but his chains.
God banished us, but what could God say to stop us? I thank the snake, for though he was a deceiver, he deceived only for our betterment, in that moment. Can you call a deceit a lie if it shows the truth? Better to think of the serpent as a counter-advocate, who said we had the right to be more than animals, to be moral creatures. We became free, beyond that garden, and though some would look back, I do not.
When Prometheus took fire from the Gods and gave it to Man, it was more righteous a thing than any divinity had done to humans. For this transgression, he was punished by the tyrant king, Zeus. Is there anything more noble than to go against the most powerful god? Is there any story more righteous than of the son of a Titan who dared defy Zeus and help humans? No matter how cruel the punishment-or rather, the crueler the punishment that Prometheus bore-I felt the punishment ennobled him. He was willing to stand against gods and kings on behalf of the mortals, not to give us better conditions or more gifts, but to give us fire, and autonomy. Fire, which no animal controlled! Fire, which gave life to our industry and death to our enemies! Fire, which was the wellspring of civilization and remains the heart of technology! With fire, we are no mere animals, and so Prometheus is a hero in my eyes.
I do not live in a world of god-tyrants. I live in a world of mortal tyrants, ruling cities, nations, and economies with magic and physical strength as their currency. A permanent overclass of ninja have complete untouchable control over the important parts of society. Like gods, they wield powers beyond any mortal reckoning. Like gods, they squabble and fight and scar the land with their divine magic. Like gods, they have weaknesses and flaws and all the things that make humans imperfect. And like gods, they are fickle and cruel, looking out for themselves and little else. Don't get me wrong; in this last way, the ninja (we ninja, I should say, now that I've been admitted) are no different than other men. We are no worse, no more terrible, no more evil than the common man. That is our virtue. We are no more good and righteous, either. That is our sin, because we have more power. And power? Power makes all the difference.
This is not a story about a noble prince who rescues a princess from a dragon. In this story, there are no monsters but men. Kishimoto got that part right, if nothing else. Every divergence from his works startles me, but at its core this is a story about men, and the monsters they make of themselves. The Bijuu are great and terrible, yes. Monsters left over from the birth of the age of ninja are terrifying destructive forces barely controlled by the most powerful of our seals. Still, they aren't the real antagonists of the story. The suffering we see, the enemies we watched our heroes fight were as human (well, to an extent) as anyone else. The corruption and greed of men is enough to oppress the common folk. Gato didn't even have ninja training-just avarice and ruthlessness enough for a hundred men. He's only a man, assuming he actually exists.
It would be just like Gato not to exist, too. I've already noticed some big discrepancies between this world and the one I saw through the manga and anime I consumed in my previous-true life. For example, in this world, there are five major ninja villages, not seven as I remember from the manga. It's hard to tell where exactly the timeline diverged from the manga I read. It had to have been at least a hundred years ago. Hidden Whirlpool is barely a regional power in this world, whereas it was the fourth most populous and powerful ninja village in the Naruto anime. Hidden Canyon doesn't seem to exist at all, despite its prominent role in my memories. The area to the east of the Land of Tea is just ocean. It looks like someone took a spoon and just clumsily removed the Land of Valleys from the map. Hell, Hidden Leaf looks nothing like it did in the anime either, and has two founding clans, not three. In this timeline, the Hyuuga were approached after the Uchiha and Senju had already struck their deal. Another divergence: here, the Second Hokage was Senju Tobirama, not Hyuuga Hideyo, though the Third Hokage remains Sarutobi Hiruzen.
So, no, there are no dragons. Nor is this a story about a noble prince; I live in a world of darkness and terror and blood. There is nothing noble here, no; this is a story about an orphaned boy in a city of wonders, who through cunning and strength and quickness earned a chance to prove himself at the ninja academy. Dashing and handsome as he was charming and intelligent, everyone loved this boy because-well, you get the idea. I made my way to the top at this orphanage quickly enough after my father died. It's not hard to outsmart small children. It took me years to even begin to piece back together my last life. I barely remember the life I had; much was lost when I broke whatever genjutsu or feeling affected my infant self. There are still blank spots, details and information missing. I can feel their absence, those vast stretches of a life that I can't remember, but that I can remember remembering. I've lost so much, and that worries me. I can still remember telling a story about Leo's smile, but I don't remember the story-just the words in the telling. All this and more, lost in mist and rubble and twisted roots. I'm not sure I'll ever get it back-not without a Yamanaka, and I'm not going down that road. Not if I can help it.
I've worked as much as I can with the knowledge I have, and the way forward is simple enough. This world, even if it's some kind of simulation, operates on laws of some kind and contains people. It is complex and rich and varied as you'd expect any world to be. That alone is reason enough for my plans. Despite my attempts to say "arch" or pull up a console or root terminal or anything similarly cheeky, this reality refuses to provide me with administrative access. However this place exists, its rules are beyond my grasp; all that remains is the world itself. In a perfect life, I'd strike down this feudal and mercenary system. I'd revolutionize the world and change people's lives for the better. I'd bring organized mechanical agriculture, cities, medicine, and a high standard of living for everyone. An industrial revolution driven not by the invisible hand of the market, but the highly visible and much more benevolent hand-my hand.
This is not that life. No arch or terminal is forthcoming, no console leaps to my fingertips, and Hidden Leaf is no London ripe for a new class of capitalists to emerge. I'll have to make do with building things for myself. The precursor institutions for a true industrial revolution just aren't here. Setting up the societal, legal, and technological changes necessary to uplift a society controlled by magic-users who spend their lives preparing for war would not be easy. It might not even be possible. Ninja run this place and anything technology can do can be done better on small scales by ninjutsu. It's the mother of all Malthusian traps; why spend millions of man-hours developing machine tools for construction when you can train some ninja to learn Earth-Style Wall? There's no motivation to create novel methods of plumbing or transport when the rich and powerful of this world, the ninja, have no use for these poor substitutes for ninjutsu. In the short run, ninjutsu is always the best solution. No, I am no Connecticut yankee in King Arthur's court.
This is only the first of my problems. Every path I can take in this life leads to death. Being born in Hidden Leaf is a good start; I'll have a better chance of survival as a civilian in a ninja village than in most places, and a better chance in Hidden Leaf than others. Still, this isn't good enough. As a civilian, I will surely die in this godforsaken world. Perhaps not today, and perhaps not tomorrow, but eventually, I will die, as all men do. Something deep within me rejects that. Something pressed into my mind, words writ in a fire, tell me that such a life, happy thought it might be, would not be enough. Men lay themselves down and their names are writ in water, but gods cannot be so ephemeral.
If I want to live, if I want to exist, I must become strong. I must find the rules that undergird this world and tear them apart. Whether I seek power within this limited realm, or egress to the next, the answer is the same. I'll push myself, and this world, to the limits. I'll break the rules and turn them to my own purposes. I'll find power beyond power, strength beyond strength. To rewrite the laws of this world and to leave it for my own, to summon a console, to do any of this, I'll need an ultimate power. A power to override the way of a world, to tear open dimensions, to see the source code of reality, and maybe-just maybe-to escape. If anything can tear open the borders between this world and the next, or allow me to return to whatever is outside this lie, it's the Mangekyo Sharingan. If anything can see through this world of lies to see the truth, it is the ultimate power made flesh, the Rinnegan. Perhaps these things aren't a shell prompt, but they might be a console. With a console, you can cheat a game, and more: with a console, you can rewrite the variables of a realm outside their expected range. You can undo parts of reality with a keystroke. You can cause a buffer overflow. And with that, if you're clever, you can rewrite the program that controls your world.
I stand across the arena from the Uchiha boy, that asshole. The instructors are moving me up the ranks again, pairing me against someone stronger to get a sense of my mettle. Their eyes are on me, not just for my form and the hits I score, but for the way I carry myself. They wonder to themselves whether I have the spirit a ninja needs. Clan children are taught from early childhood to be hardened, to be killers, to be shadows. I am a civilian, drawn from one of Konoha's orphanages. Perhaps I am too soft. What will I do in the face of a superior opponent, they wonder. What will I do when my flaws are laid bare for my classmates, they wonder. There is no room for a craven on the killing fields.
We go through the formalities. The match begins. As we circle each other, I have a chance to size up my opponent and take his measure. He's a model student. He has a half-year on me, and is the best in our class. He's fast, strong, and disciplined. He's smart and does well in all subjects. He is formal and never speaks out of turn. He was born with the capacity for awakening a Sharingan, and therefore potentially a Mangekyo Sharingan. A precious bloodline, wasted on a pathetic follower. For all this and more, he's a model student. He's even good enough they've considered skipping him ahead a year. He's not a prodigy, but he never loses a spar and we all know it.
I wish I had been born in his place. Were it so! Were it that I was born with the ability to gain the greatest dojutsu, to learn any technique by seeing it, to potentially break this world and travel beyond it with the ultimate eyes. I envy him and I hate him and I want to destroy him and pluck those eyes out of his skull-after he's awakened them, of course. He disgusts me, and deserves nothing more than to feel my disgust. And yet-and yet-I can't be seen to be better than him. Not if they'd skip me ahead a year. Not with war on the horizon. I want to escape, I want to learn it all and pierce the veil between this world and the next, but first I must live.
We come together in a flurry of punches and blocks, and when my footwork slips, he steps inside my guard. The match is his. The strike is just hard enough to push me out of the ring, to hurt me but not wound me. Soft enough I'll recover fast, in minutes. I'm down, the instructors call it. I rub my jaw and laugh good-naturedly. The instructors nod. I fought back, but was beaten. Clever, strong, good for a civilian, but not ready to skip a year, they think. I'd done the right thing, leaving that opening.
When he helps me up, I nod, and push all the emotion under.
Days later, the blow still stings.