"Holy hell, finally. This shitty thesis should not have taken me this long" I sighed as I rubbed my dried out and way too tired eyes, "procrastination is a bitch."

I was annoyed but damn if I wasn't happy. 4 years of university, learning about a subject that I was burned out on after only 2 years. I couldn't give up though could I? Even if getting a job in a place that asks for an International Relations degree was going to be hard, I had chosen this path, no backing off now.

I checked the clock, it was pitifully late, going to bed was the only thing on my mind right now. Hopefully the professors would find this final version acceptable because I was not going to touch this absolute hellhole of a thesis again.

Time to sleep, I got out of my chair, turning of my computer, the quiet hum of the fans that I hadn't noticed while writing slowly going away left me alone with my thoughts like no other night before, this was nice. Being finished and finally looking forward to your next step in life was nice, and this silence was just perfect.

I got out of my clothes, and just crawled inside of the bed like someone coming from a two day party would, head pounding, exhausted and content.

It's gonna be uncomfortably hot tomorrow, oh well, at least AC exists.

I jolted out of my bed. What a strange dream, people talking in a language that I have yet to hear, even more so considering that I usually don't dream. They did wear strange clothes as well, what's up with the vests brain? Is there a kind of military fantasy thing awaking in me?

I was so preoccupied with my thoughts about the strange dream that I hadn't noticed the fact that, I was not in my room. Excuse me? I'm not a child any more who falls asleep in the car only to be woken up in their bed like magic. Where the ever living fuck am I?

My head starts to whirl with a thousand different thoughts and emotions, if I was moved in my sleep at the very least someone should've left a note right? I looked around trying to find a note somewhere, but to no avail. My next thought went about guessing where I might be right now. There was a small window which was open at the other end of my room, it was directly in front of the bed and I could see rain falling onto the wooden floor.

The floor, no actually, the whole architecture was yet another curiosity, in all my life as a 21 year old student, I had yet to come upon a house like this in my country. Where the hell was I? Add to that the fact that rain and the damn cold was entirely unusual as its supposed to be summer right now.

Did I… wake up from a coma? I looked at my hands to see if they seemed older.

You know, I thought that waking up in a foreign room in a foreign bed was going to be the shock of the day. Oh how wrong you were, me from 2 minutes ago.

"WHAT THE FUCK" I exclaimed, I would say particularly loudly. My hands were not my hands, or were they? I don't know, but what I do know is that my hands did not and should not look like a 7 year olds hands. Maybe not exactly 7 but my hands were definitely smaller than expected and they were for sure similar to that of a small child's. My mind went into overdrive trying to come up with a reasonable solution which would at least sort of make sense, but it was difficult to say the least.

More difficult than coming up with a solution was trying to wrack my brain and come up with my memories, I know that I was a 21 year old person, about hand in his bachelors thesis on the rise of far right parties in the EU. But now I was not certain of anything, my memories seemed blurred, I could remember details, facts and knowledge of my life yet they were interspersed with memories of another life. One I do not remember, or do I? Oh gods, my head is hurting already.

The solution my brain came to was that this was either an incredibly detailed dream, which while possible, also seemed like it was unfounded hope than anything else, because I definitely pinched myself multiple times and no lucid dream I have had was this realistic with smells, sounds and everything. The other possibility was that somehow I lived through 14 or so years of my life in my brain and those events were just a figment of my imagination.

I'd rather that also be false, but I could not yet prove that it was.

I tried to calm myself down and look around the room, it was simple, small, actually very small now that I think about it. My bed was In the corner, and I was looking directly at the window at the other end of the room, the window was at most a metre away from the foot end of the bed. There was a small drawer right next to the bed, and a very small table leant up on the right hand side wall just next to the drawer. Beneath it sat a pillow of sorts and that was basically it, next to the table was a door.

The room was basically entirely made out of wood, and quite strange wood as well, the colour of it was, different somehow, darker than any I had previously seen, but not quite black. The table was a welcome contrast to the rest of the room, being made of quite light wood.

I pushed myself up and out of the bed and landed right on the sandals next to the bed. I had never owned nor worn a pair of sandals, but this did not even faze me after everything. After looking through the drawer for a something to wear, I was finally certain that I was a small child again. The age was yet a mystery but under 9 certainly.

The clothes were the epitome of nothing special, a simple black t-shirt and an odd sort of beige colour pants. Even the materials of the clothes was different than what I was used to but I guess not too dissimilar to the cotton and polyester pants I was fond of.

Finally dressed, I closed the window looking out into the garden and a forest behind it, it was quite lush and denser than any forest I had seen prior to this. I took a few seconds to breathe in the smell of grass mixed with the rain, it was pure bliss, and helped me calm down more after waking up in a panicked state. Deciding that if I was to understand fully what was happening going outside of the room was needed, I took the door out and was met with a hallway, in front of and to the right of my, there were at least 20 or so doors equidistant to each other. With a few more which housed obviously larger rooms.

I walked towards the end of the hallway while hearing small chatter in a language that was vaguely similar to the one in my dream, and the one that I was not supposed to be familiar with. I had never learned this language or these words, how was my brain understanding the meaning of them? More over, it was unlike any language I had ever before.

"… Are becoming so aggressive, they need to be put in their place before they do something drastic" said someone from the end of the hallway, the voice likely belonged to a middle-aged woman, hopefully she would have some answers for him.

"Its only a matter of time before someone get hurt and who knows what will happen after that." Another voice rang out, yet another woman, though her voice might've been older.

At the end of the hallway was a large room with two very long tables and benches next to them, the room was decorated with flowers of all kinds, roses, lilacs, while the walls were basically empty except for plaque inside a glass frame, the plaque had a symbol, or perhaps a drawing? It looked like it was depicting fire.

"Oh Nisuke, you're up early. How about you help us out getting these plates on the table" One of the women at the end of the hall spoke to me, she was wearing a messy apron, over her brown robes, both of which were practically overflowing with flour, she pointed me at the direction of the plates and went off to continue her work. She was quite tall, or wait I was small, had brown hair tied up loosely above her head.

I didn't try to question her orders, and did as I told, while contemplating what I was even doing and what I should be doing. I wasn't closer to any answers.

After laying out all of the plates I noticed that other children joined the room slowly, I didn't pay much attention to them at the start, I was to preoccupied with thinking about where I had ended up in. But even I could only absent mindedly not pay attention for so long, I took a good look at the children coming in, there was something different about them, as if they weren't the ethnicity I was used to seeing in my before-life.

It seemed that all the children had come into the room, there were 20 or so children, not nearly enough to fill out all of the table or the benches, but still a sizeable amount. The lady that spoke to me stood in front of the hallway facing us and told us to split into groups and then sit down on the benches according to our age, the oldest sat at the edges while the youngest sat towards the centre. I, not knowing my exact age waited for all others to sit down so I could finally know how old I was supposed to be. And not long after everyone basically sat down in their seats and I managed to remain inconspicuous while trying to stay up. There just about appeared a free space for me to take a seat in.

After a bit of time, the girl and the boy next to me started chatting to the people around them, I tried not to pay much attention, though I did overhear them mentioning their age. The girl was 7 while the boy was proudly 6 year and 3 month old. So that put me somewhere around 6 and 7 years old. As I had guessed, but more precision was always better.

The girl to the left of me ate the meal as if it would be her last, she took her time eating and was as happy as a child could be at the end of it. Afterwards she turned to me and spoke up.

"Hi, my name is Asuka, I'm 7 years old! What's your name?" She had vibrant green eyes, the ones you'd more often see on cats rather than people.

"Uhm, my name is — Nisuke, I'm… 6 years old. So, what are you going to be doing after this Asuka?" I needed to find out more about where I was, maybe her activities would give me a clue, though I basically already had guessed that I was somewhere in Japan, or a place dominated with Japanese culture and people.

"Oh, I don't know…" she said sheepishly, "I hadn't thought of what I was going to do after eating."

Well, can't blame her, she's only 7 years old.

"Maybe go play out in the garden, or help Lady Oharu around the orphanage," she seemed satisfied with her own answer, she quickly jumped up from the bench, brought her plates over by the sink and called after Lady Oharu, but not before speaking to me once more. "Hey, thanks for the idea!"

Never mind that I didn't give her any ideas… I'm in an orphanage? What? How s that possible, my parents, they're supposed to be alive, they were alive just an hour ago. As was I, the real me, the bachelor student me. Where in the seven hells have I ended up?

Knowing that I was basically no closer to the answer, I decided to go outside, maybe my somewhat limited but not bad knowledge of Geography and countless hours playing a game based on guessing where you are will help me out. I cleaned up the plate, and went outside to the front, apparently my bedroom was facing the rear of the orphanage.

I stepped outside, there were still a lot of trees all around, and houses of all shapes and forms, though decidedly small, and 3 story tall at most. Though there was one quite tall building far away that I could not make out, it was quite light in colour and it was contrasted heavily by the mountain behind it, and the mountain seemed huge from where I was looking at it. I started to walk on to the street a bit more so that the orphanage building wouldn't obstruct the view of the mountain.

There was a corner shop, if it can even be called a shop, just across the orphanage where other children were running across to, so I followed them, assuming that we were allowed to go there. From the shop the mountain view was unobstructed and I got a really good look at it.

Though the mountain was humongous, what my eyes immediately ran to was the carved out… faces on the mountain. I got a good look at them for a second and in an instant I lost focus in my eyes, everything was blurry, I could feel my body getting cold to touch because of the stress, my head pounded with the knowledge of where I was.

"Just kill me now…"

My knees felt weak, and I was ready to throw up, but I steeled myself and got back into the orphanage, running past the quizzical looks that the matrons gave me, into my room. I immediately got into my bed and hid under the bed sheets.

Being under the sheets always gave me the ability to compose myself, I know that I wasn't hidden away here, but the world was hidden away from me, and I needed to calm myself down.

How in all that is holy, did I end up in the world of NARUTO?

Why did I lose the memories of my past life, the faces of the people I knew, the names, the smells, the noise, its almost like everything that made me, me was being stripped away and I was merging with another person entirely, while retaining my knowledge, not feelings, emotions, but knowledge. Cold, hard facts.

It took some time, but after a million different thoughts and minutes upon minutes of calming myself down, I ended up with few conclusions. Not answers, but conclusions.

One, I would not be able to know how I ended up in this world without expanding my knowledge in way that probably no one in this world had. Two, I am here, and unless I somehow teleport back after sleeping, there is no point in exhausting myself over trying to get back, at least not until I learn if dimensional teleportation is a thing. Three, this is a chance, an opportunity.

It was weird coming up with the last conclusion, amidst all the panic I realised that I did not have much tying me to my life as it was. Sure my parents, and my one friend, maybe future prospects, but apart from that I did not lose much, more over, for some god forsaken reason, I could not muster up the image of my parents, or that one friend, their faces, names, voices. So as bad as this situation is, at least I'm not stuck with disapproving or sad faces.

So yeah, this is an opportunity, I hated my subject, spent 4 years learning it, I was the top student, the one favoured by his professors, who all thought that I had an extreme passion of learning about International Politics of all things. If I could be a top student in that, something that I hated, I have a chance of making something of my life here, as a ninja, as a shinobi, as someone I dreamed about when I was a kid. The super powers, the abilities, it might all be a dream come true rather than a dream taken away.

Oh god, can I even become a shinobi? Do I have chakra? Please let me have chakra, don't take this away from me.

Damn, I do not know how to check if I have chakra or not, I will have to spend some time remembering the details of this world, how do kids first learn about chakra? Oh, speaking of kids…

What period am I in right now? I'm fairly certain I saw The Fourths's face on the mountain, therefore this is sometime after him becoming a Hokage, but is he alive? Or did the Kyuubi thing already happen.

God there is so much I need to sort out, the timeline is so jumbled up in my brain, plus there are like a thousand questions I need to figure out an answer to. Do I change anything? Can I change anything? Can I even become a shinobi? Also, is everything as it was in the manga? Is it based on the Anime, do fillers count? I never watched the fillers, hopefully that does not bite me in the ass.

Okay the first thing I need to figure out is do I have chakra? Because if I don't, I'm as good as dead.

I lay in the bed, trying to calm myself down from all the questions, I will not remember how chakra is accessed if I continue with the barrage of questions. The least I can do is relax and let my mind wander back. I think children accessed their chakra by reaching mentally in to themselves. I'm guessing relaxing and meditation will do the trick.

As I focus on my breathing I start to feel a certain aspect of myself that I hadn't felt in my before-life. It's different, it's… locked from me. I try to tug and pull at it, I try to reach in but I just can't go the last step.

I realise that I'm still fretting about multitudes of questions, my mind is not relaxed, I cannot access my chakra this way. I need fully meditate. I had obviously read how to meditate in my life, but god knows I never actually did it.

The first thing that comes to mind is to find a comfortable position, it doesn't matter what that position is, it doesn't have to be lotus, or anything like that, more often than not lying is actually preferred. I readjust my body to lie down as comfortably as I can, so that nothing bothers me whatsoever. I then go on to check muscles from my toes to even my ears, checking every muscle so that it isn't tensed up.

I take a breath, and I try to focus on my task, by there are so many thoughts entering in my head, how do I get back? Do I want to get back? What if I don't have Chakra? How do I learn stuff? I already know the language, do I know how to read? Oh god I hope everything Is as it was in the manga. This is not working, this isn't working this isn't working…

And then, suddenly, all of my thoughts are washed away. There's only me, I'm breathing the air, and letting it go deep in my body, it goes through me. I reach in, its almost like the air is guiding me towards my destination.

Ah, there it is. The thing that was locked out before, it roams around freely now, its… strange, different, something ethereal, yet such an integral part of me. Just as blood rushing through your veins, but also as incorporeal as your soul.

What the hell am I talking about, soul? Have I gone actually insane? Well, actually, souls do exist in the Naruto universe right? That's - I don't know how to deal with that to be honest. Rather not think about it for now.

What's most important is that I have chakra, and not only do I have it, I can, sort of, control it. Without meditating! Its surreal in all of the best ways. My mind races with a thousand different applications of chakra, the ways I can use it, mold it, I remember how many ideas I had when reading Naruto, I want to make those ideas a reality now.

But the most pressing question now is, what year is this, and what is going to happen next?

I need to sort out the timeline if I'm to change anything.

A/N: Hello everyone. This is my first attempt at a SI fic, and my first attempt at actually laying out a story before writing it down. Some of you may know my other story, "World Bound by Duty" Which is on a indefinite hiatus for several reasons, chief of which is that I could not for the life of me figure where I was leading the story to, so until that bit is sorted out, it's not going to be updated.

Now, this story is a bit different, I know roughly how the story is going to go, I know roughly what I want to do with the characters. What I'm trying to convey with the story is a more realistic, yet still wondrous world of Naruto. I don't want it to be bogged down by overthinking every single detail of the world, but I will change some thing that I believe to be necessary for the sake of the feel.

The character you now know as Nisuke is not the same age as Naruto or Sasuke, but he's also not as old as Itachi. We'll get to his real age and relation with other characters soon enough. But be ready for a couple of things. This story is going to change overtime, by this I mean that the feel of the story is going to change. At first its more introspective and kind of naive, childish. But over time those themes will change, evolve as our characters do. The main reason for that choice is that the story is written in first person, and therefore I want to show the world as its seen by our protagonist and not by an omniscient narrator.

Hope you will enjoy the story.