I should say that trying to juggle the Naruto timeline is giving me a migraine so characters will not correlate to their exact age. Case in point Yagura, my Yagura is probably much older than canon Yagura. I can barely parse out his timeline due to us never getting his age so I'm just throwing out the small details and saying that he looks young in canon because he's short and has a baby face. Don't even get me started on the Seven Swordsman, they will be very much involved in this fic later but there is NOTHING ON THEM, and so to prevent OC spam I'm going to be manipulating a lot of their ages.

Speaking of OC's, I only plan for two major ones (and a few minor ones) in this fic, one of them is the Head Matron and it will become very obvious who the latter is in a chapter or two. They will be very prominent in the Academy Arc but they'll only be making brief showings afterwards.

'Thinking'

"Talking"

I do not own Naruto, obviously.

It figures that the first class I have ever had the pleasure of attending at Kirigakure Academy involves swords.

Kenjutsu Basics with Akebino Jinin.

The man himself I do not recognize, even if he was in Naruto he would have probably played an unimportant role based off his facial features being generic as fuck. He introduced himself as a jounin though so I am not going to ignore or belittle him (more). Even a generic jounin is a god of death at my current stage.

Jinin-sensei appears to prefer a hands on approach to teaching, or maybe Kiri academy itself does, since this is my first class it is too early to tell.

That is how I found myself in my current situation.

*Swish* *Swish* *Clang!*

Sword fighting YAGURA. What the hell sensei, I know this is Kiri but having three year olds sword fight on their first day of school is a little extreme don't you think!? The only good thing about this is that Yagura seems just as new to this as me so I still stand a chance, nonetheless that is a quickly changing fact.

Yagura's learning speed is simply unreal. After sensei showed us the first sword stance and had us try it out for ourselves, Yagura picked up his practice sword and fell into a pretty good stance, way better than me at least. BUT THEN he got out of it and fell into a near perfect one, where is the justice in this universe?

'I refuse to believe that Itachi, ninja Jesus himself, is better than this.' I risked impalement thinking as I blocked yet another one of his merciless blows that came too close for comfort.

I say risk of impalement instead of bruising for the simple fact that we are FIGHTING WITH REAL SWORDS WHYYYY!? As the lesson began with practice swords I figured that Kiri wasn't so bad, Jinin-sensei was a slave driver, granted, but as we went through forms at lightning speed, him popping up from the void to smack you into correcting your stance; I thought that this would be bad but within expectations. My expectations decided to jump into a dumpster fire as soon as he pulled out real swords and had us pick partners. And Yagura himself picked me.

"We learn better with the risk of death" my ass you sadistic fuck' I vented as I parried Yagura's surprise thrust that almost got my kidney. I only realized too late that he purposefully let me parry him so he could step into my front and shoulder check me. I tripped over his leg that was entangled in mine while his sword made a deadly arc towards my neck.

My world froze as the adrenaline pumping through my veins turned into pure ice. I could not even scream out in fear for my imminent death made me unable to manifest a coherent thought.

*Tink*

The universe decided to spare my miserable life as the greatest sound I had ever heard graced my ears. Jinin-san appeared from nowhere with the ninja swooshy technique to block Yagura's fatal sword with a kunai.

"Damn, for a kid of that bastard Karatachi, you displayed the finest bout of beginner swordsmanship I have ever seen. Based on your performance alone in this class I can already tell you're well on your way to surpassing your father. Go over there," He pointed to an empty part of the room with his chin "none of these other kids will even begin to give you a challenge. I'll spend the rest of this period personally training you and then we'll see about bumping you up a few levels."

"Thank you for your praise Jinin-sensei." Yagura replied before moving to that part of the room.

Jinin-sensei turned down to look at my pale countenance and smirked.

"You know, if you were fighting any other beginning swordsmen in this room and got taken down in two minutes I would have let that fatal blow land. Lucky for you though kid, you were fighting that little monster, you even lasted two minutes. I would say that puts you firmly ahead of the pack here. You should feel a little pride cause of it; geniuses on his level are unassailable in this world. The only way to beat them is to just be born first, I honestly feel bad for you all being in the same generation as Yagura Karatachi, I've only been around him for three hours but I can already tell you all are doomed to live in his shadow for life. Tch, I'm feeling merciful today, go to your next period, you're dismissed." With that he swooshed off, presumably to block another fatal blow.

Amidst his impromptu speech all I did was lay on my butt, breathing heavily. The near fatal encounter still robbed my mind of thoughts minutes after it passed. Slowly coming back to myself I was...overcome

'How many? Grr, how many times am I going to pathetically fall on my butt!' ...with rage.

' "Unassailable" huh? "Doomed to live in his shadow"? No, I refuse. I refuse. That isn't true.' I thought of one person who Jinin-sensei had no knowledge of. One person who could fight the greatest existence on the planet with a smile. One person who never gave up and prevailed in the world despite not possessing any bullshit hax this universe is built upon. He was just a regular Guy at birth but could still hold his own against the man who possessed every unique power of note in the world, and my memory of him is what has staved off the creeping despair that keeps me up at night.

Might Guy could fight a genius of Yagura's level in his prime and have a decent chance of coming out on top. I have promised myself that I would one day get to his level and surpass it, for anything below that guarantees death. I have to.

Standing up and fixing Yagura with a look of determination unnoticed by all, I made my vow.

'It may take years, it may take decades, hell it may even take centuries, but I will surpass you. I will surpass everything you throw at me, all the hardships, all the difficulties, and I will live.'

Despite looking at him, I was not referring to Yagura; I was referring to this world itself. Setting my goal as Yagura is far too low, not with alien gods running around and eldritch horrors waiting to awaken. A simple Yagura is ultimately one existence in this world, a strong existence I'll give him that, but nowhere near the top. As long as those at the top exist and plot harm on the world, I must be stronger or my life will still be in danger. But that level of strength is far, far away. Until I reach that point I must be cautious, avoid situations I know will be life threatening as much as I can; but by the Sage Satoshi, the next time you get into fatal combat don't freeze up like you did at the end. Keep fighting till the last drop of blood leaves your body.

My resolve newly formed, I left class to go to my room. There are still thirty minutes left till the next period and Yagura gave quite a few cuts.

Before walking out the door though I did wonder.

'Was that strike of Yagura's really going to be fatal or was sensei just being cautious? I need to confront Yagura about it later.'

I never did.

Walking into my shared bedroom I was able to notice a feature that I did not pay much attention to before, a mirror.

'Fucking finally!' I've been looking for one of these things forever with no luck. The rivers near the orphanage moved too much to get a clear reflection and the cutlery was way too stained to get a reflection.

Dashing forward I stood in front of the mirror to get a good look at new me in all my glory.

The first thing I noticed were my eyes, which were a shade of light violet… oh and also pupiless. 'What the fuck that's creepy. No wonder all the kids were scared of my glares; how do my eyes even work without pupils? I swear, anime logic sometimes.'

The next thing of note was my hair which was a color I hesitate to call dirty blonde. It was more like a shade of beige really. The hair itself laid down at the top while fanning out sideways into clumps of curly hair spikes at the bottom and sides of my neck. My front hair naturally went down the sides of my face so despite my relatively long hair I didn't have to brush it out of my eyes, though it was a really close call on my right side which has a portion at the top which just falls straight down for some reason instead of parting to the sides like the rest.

'I'm gonna have to cut that eventually, what a drag.' I swore like a Nara.

As for my face, it was adorable. With my dainty, rounded features I almost looked younger than three if that was even possible. I could already tell that I wasn't going to be ruggedly handsome when I grow up. Instead I would probably have that pretty boy look that Itachi has, hopefully without the stress lines though.

Rounding out my facial tour I stopped at the goddamn black eye. 'One day Horns, one day' I swore to deliver retribution for this slight upon him.

Overall, I would say no kekkei genkai for me. I look absolutely like no character I remember from the series, but who knows really. I could be related to a movie or filler character, since I have seen nothing of either in my past life it could very well be possible, but it is not something I can bank on.

"Hm, well I guess I'll just have to rely on myself instead of any birth power, too bad. Now where are those bandages?'

Patching myself up I proceeded to my next class. Kirigakure History with Aopatch-sensei

Walking in and scanning the class, I saw our young instructor writing on the board.

'Still can't read, this class is going to be a bitch.'

Dreading what was to come I looked for a seat and locked eyes with Yagura who was also in this class apparently.

'Maybe we should have compared our schedules.' I frowned as I contemplated if I should sit next to him or not, the memory of kenjutsu class still fresh in my mind.

'Satoshi, you said you would face whatever challenges were thrown at you and this is one of them. Yagura may be the greatest threat you have faced yet but you must face him for one simple reason...He knows how to read; if you get closer to him he may agree to give you extra lessons.' Making up my mind I went to the empty seat next to Yagura and sat down.

Yagura maintained his resting bitch face like he didn't maybe try to kill me last time we saw each other.

After a while of students trailing in the lesson began

Honestly the tiny bits of village history I could sift out from all the propaganda were pretty cool since I was basically learning about a magical war to unite a group of islands by stealthy wizards. Fun fact: the Karatachi clan, you know Yagura's, are actually related to the first Mizukage who funnily enough looks absolutely nothing like them. I would honestly laugh at the portrait of the Mizukage with strabismus (doctor knowledge for the win!) if I wasn't sure that it would get me executed immediately. There was also the fact that he was an absolute monster comparable to Tobirama when it came to water release jutsu but that was to be expected of the first Water Shadow. At least, that's what I'm assuming based on the stories of how he drowned the islands who resisted the formation of Kiri in a massive tsunami. Sadly, no one has mentioned a single thing about chakra as of yet.

As Yagura started to pack up his supplies, I remained put since Ao-sensei was once again the teacher for my next class. I could barely contain my excitement because this was the class I was most excited fooooor drum roll please…

Remedial Class with Ao-sensei!

In this absolutely wonderful class he will be going over such fun subjects as, basic knowledge, common sense, and addition. Hooray. I'm just joking, he will be going over that but the main thing he is going to be doing is teaching us how to read and write which are things I need, not only so I can effectively take notes but so I can go to the academy library. To start skipping grades I can't just be good with weapons though that is the most important criteria, I must also be knowledgeable.

That being said, learning start!

I don't know where to put this so I'll just say this here. Satoshi will eventually develop a kekkai genkai. It is not an original one but it will be changed from it's canon (or filler) self because it was way too broken at base and also had some abilities that I frankly don't want to write about. It is a loooong ways off from showing up, though I will try to foreshadow it.