The academy is interesting, annoying, and boring all at the same time.

When I returned to it after the massacre, I wondered what exactly was taught in ninja school. Was it history? Politics? Combat?

As it turns out, the answer is all of those, but mostly math.

They teach us a lot here, from the history of the shinobi wars to the relations between the nations to economy and management. They taught us stuff that would allow us to fill pretty much any position in the village decently, from a desk worker in the Hokage tower to a diplomatic escort to another nation's nobles to even noble etiquette for the daimyo's court.

Yet for some reason, they teach us a lot of math, I've been doing middle school level math and I'm 8, and from what I've seen of the curriculum it will only get worse from here.

Those are what we call the civilian classes, mostly because civilians tend to drop out of the program after we stop having them next year. As it turns out there isn't a separate program for civilians and shinobi, there is only the academy and every child has to go through it, officially it is to make sure even orphans have some education and can find a job instead of being a drain on the village's resources.

Unofficially, they are the emergency reserves, if the graduates that pass the jonin exams and get a sensei are the future elites and those that fail or just don't qualify for the jonin program and instead join the genin corps are the regular cannon fodder, then the dropouts are the emergency supply in case the village has to just throw bodies at a problem.

Any citizen of the village can be drafted into the genin corps in case of an emergency, it is one of the basic rules that comes with living in the village, no matter if you are a retired shinobi or a fat civilian that sells baked goods and hasn't touched a kunai in years, if the village calls you have to answer.

It doesn't happen often, as a matter of fact, the only time this happened was during the 3rd shinobi war when news of Iwa's massive push reached Konoha and it was implemented to try and match their numbers before it was proved unnecessary when Minato went from a skilled jonin to an army killer after he learned the Hiraishin.

Anyway, after those classes we have more shinobi-focused classes, target practice, physical conditioning, taijutsu practice, we will start with chakra control soon but I'm still ahead of my peers in that regard.

Well, I'm ahead of my peers in every regard thanks to the Sharingan, but that is not the point and isn't as impressive as it sounds when you consider that my peers are a bunch of 8-year-old children. An adult from my previous world could take most of them as they are now, only Kiba and I can enhance our strikes with chakra and his chakra control is bad enough that the results are negligible.

Mine isn't that much better, but at least I can see a difference between when I enhance my blows with chakra and when I don't.

I've been soaring above my classmates for three reasons, the first is that I just have good genes, it shows that the only two people in class that can keep up with me in physical conditioning are Kiba, whose clan is focused on taijutsu, and Natsumi, who has so many advantages in that regard that if she properly leveraged them she'd beat us both effortlessly.

Seriously, her form is bad, she's got the power to spare and stamina that even I'm jealous of, but not any technique whatsoever.

The second reason is that I have an adult's work ethic. Don't get me wrong, training here is literally a matter of life and death so while not everybody is Rock Lee or Might Gai everyone does train pretty hard, but children are easily distracted and their innocence works against them.

Most see being a ninja as something cool to do and their training as a chore at the best of times. So my ability to focus and actually do something without being distracted by every little thing is massive advantage.

The third is my Sharingan, I wasted no time making full use of them and so far I've yet to find a single thing in the academy that they don't let me become really good at. Taijutsu? My katas are exactly as good as Iruka-sensei's. Shurikenjutsu? Same. Obstacle course? I got chewed out by Iruka-sensei for completing it without being touched once by copying his lap, with him saying that I wasn't actually working on my reflexes if I just repeated what he did.

It isn't perfect, it took a little while to adjust people's moves to my physique and get enough confidence in performing them that I could modify them to better suit me, but it helps massively.

Not just physical training, my idea to use them to study was a massive success and while I need to go over the books in my mind a few times to properly comprehend them it was still a lot faster than regular reading, not to mention I could basically have an entire library in my head if I wanted to.

In just two weeks I went over the entire material for this year, I even got bothered by Iruka-sensei when he thought I was sleeping in class, only for me to solve the problem he had presented with a formula he wouldn't teach us until the next month.

So yeah, the academy was pretty interesting.

But it was also annoying, when I first opened my history book and saw enough pro-Konoha propaganda to make Stalin blush I was pretty pissed off.

I mellowed out considerably in the following weeks but it quickly went from being annoyed at them using propaganda to brainwash small children to being annoyed that it was everywhere.

And I do mean everywhere, I checked out a fiction book on children's tales and even it had some not so subtle connotations that would fly right over a child's head but that I could spot easily. It is like a hit song was just released and you heard it so much you just want to tear your ears out every time you hear the lyrics, but instead of music, it was love Konoha.

I'm half tempted to buy Icha Icha to see if at least porn doesn't have the same problem.

I used to like reading a lot, so you can imagine how annoying it is to be unable to open a book without having to deal with blatant propaganda. And the academy is worse, because unlike the book I can't just close the teachers.

It is made especially annoying because Iruka-sensei is one of those teachers where if your full attention isn't on what he is saying he takes it as a personal insult, so I can't even ignore him without being asked to answer some question or another, and while I can answer them easily it isn't exactly conducive to my idea of ignoring the problem.

If I liked Konoha I'm pretty sure I'd already be sick of hearing it, the fact that I don't makes it so much worse.

But most of all the academy was boring after a while, incredibly so.

My physical conditioning regiment has nothing to do with the academy standard one, and while I had no luck in finding Gai yet mine is still much more intense than the academy's, so trying to do theirs is more a waste of time than anything else.

My shurikenjutsu is leagues above anyone else's, even Iruka-sensei's as I copied his but modified them to make better use of my Sharingan's predictive abilities, not to mention I found a scroll on Uchiha style shurikenjutsu, and while I can't just instantly master the technique, or at least the physical movements related to it, I have achieved some success with it by just training.

My katas are already perfect and thanks to the Sharingan there is no point in practicing them further by myself because my technique will never grow rusty, if I had a sparring partner I might be able to use the opportunity to gain battle experience and develop reflexes but I had more important things to worry about and we hadn't started sparing in the academy.

Until now, that is.

"Sasuke Uchiha and Kiba Inuzuka, come to the ring." Iruka-sensei says.

Today is the first day of proper sparing and I have to say I'm excited, this will the closest that I will get to a real fight in years and while I am a bit nervous I know this will be an important step towards both my goals.

Kiba stands across me, Akamaru isn't part of this fight but I can see him near Shino in the crowd, he smirks and makes the seal of confrontation. I do the same and we both move to our stances, neither of us are using the academy standard stance and his is feral, keeping his center of mass low and his arms in position to leverage his strength the most.

Mine is more focused on agility and counters, with the few direct attacks being mostly kicks.

My Sharingan comes to life, the world seemingly becoming brighter and slower, I can see the minute twitches of Kiba's arms and how he readies to blast forward with a right hook.

"Begin!" Iruka-sensei shouts, and we move.

Just like I predicted, he goes for the hook as soon as I am in range, I back away just enough that he misses and redirect his strength to leave him open for the leg sweep that soon follows. He sees it coming and jumps over it but I still catch him in a glancing blow and he loses his balance.

I go to knee him in the gut but he blocks, this leaves his upper body open and I lash out with a chakra-enhanced fist.

The first hit snaps his head sideways, the second he manages to bring an arm up to block, I use my momentum and spin, coming around with a chakra enhanced kick that slams straight through his one-armed guard even as his own punch hits my unprotected stomach.

I take a step back and catch my breath, my stomach hurts but by the look on Kiba's face as he spits on the ground and picks himself up so does his face.

He rushes at me again and feints another right hook before going for a left kick, my Sharingan picking up his intentions before he even reaches me, I catch his leg with my arm, and with him locked in place I go for a move I could never have hoped to pull off Before, no matter how much I trained.

I use my leverage to push him back and jump, hitting him with a two-legged chakra enhanced mule kick midair and using him as a springboard to completely flip and land on my feet. I waste no time and rush him while he's down, pulling my right fist back and gathering as much chakra as I can handle to leave him out cold.

Before I can an arm grabs mine, I react and spin around, ready to kick whoever caught me, when I realize it is Iruka-sensei.

The shock snaps me out of my battle mentality and the sound that I hadn't even realized had vanished is suddenly deafening. I shake my head.

"Sorry, Iruka-sensei." I say. "I got a little too into it."

He nods and lets go of my arm, but doesn't stop frowning.

"Just don't let it happen again." He says. "We aren't trying to seriously hurt our comrades."

I nod.

"And work on your spatial awareness." He says. "Your taijutsu may be good, but that doesn't matter if you can't see the enemy coming, I wasn't even trying to hide."

I frown thoughtfully, even as I help Kiba up, fuming from his loss, and we do the seal of reconciliation.

I thought occurs to me and I activate my Sharingan again, just as I thought the sound dies out for a split second before I actively try to listen and it comes back.

Hyperfocus, or the zone as it is sometimes called.

I suppose it makes sense, the human brain can only process information so fast and while an Uchiha's is uniquely suited to it thanks to the Sharingan I can see how lack of training could lead me to focus too much on the enhanced visual input at the cost of treating the rest as background noise.

Not that it is acceptable, I had been putting off reading up on the Sharingan in favor of other subjects, thinking that my other memories already gave me an understanding of my doujutsu superior to everyone but Zetsu and Madara, but that won't continue.

There's no point in being able to see much better if anyone who stays out of my line of sight can kill me with a simple sneak attack.

I guess I'll have to add spatial awareness training to my list of things I need to do and kick it up to the top as it is too important to put it off.

The Sharingan is my greatest tool, and I need to be able to use it to the utmost.

-[TGaE]-

I have finally tracked down Gai, and he is 10 times as energetic as I expected him to be.

And his strength is ridiculous, I got to the training ground he was using and he was lifting a boulder the size of a suburban house from Before, with one leg, while he ran laps around the place with his hands.

I knew he was a beast, but that is ridiculous.

Anyway, after standing there gawking for a while I approached and he noticed me, or more likely pretended to only notice me then, he is Konoha's strongest jonin and strongest ninja overall if you count the 8th Gate.

To cut the back and forth short, I asked him to help me with my taijutsu and physical conditioning and he was more than happy to do so, mentioning something about youthful determination and hard work.

I wasn't paying attention, shocked into a horrified silence by the green spandex he offered me, both at the fact that he expected me to wear that abomination that put the infamous orange tracksuit to shame and at the fact that he already had one prepared and designed to fit me, even though it was the first time we met.

I was suddenly not comfortable with sleeping in the Uchiha compound and added a sensory technique to my ever-growing list o things I need to do.

But, after some negotiation and playing on my clan pride, I managed to persuade him into letting me tint it dark blue with an Uchiha symbol on the back. It still looked awful, but at least it was slightly more inconspicuous than the green one and at worst I could play on the pitty most villages feel for me and say it belonged to my father or something.

Gai then had a little test for me, and just as expected it was hell. He had me running a lap around the entire village, and let me tell you these tinny 8-year-old legs of mine aren't designed for long-distance marathons, especially not in the scorching sun of the Land of Fire.

You can imagine my joy when, after 5 hours of running, I completed the tests and he accepted me fully, only to tell me that the first step in my physical conditioning regimen was getting me up to a level where I could do that lap in an hour as a warm-up for our actual training.

So yeah, Gai is fun.

I can't complain about the results, though. One month has passed since the massacre and while admittedly on the first few days I didn't really train I know how important a strong base is so physical conditioning was at the top of my To-Do list and I have been keeping at it every day since I started and even then I got more results with one week with Gai than with three by myself.

And I decided to celebrate those results by feeding an urge I had since I first remembered Before.

Pizza.

I have gotten good enough at cooking that I'm now confident that I can make some good pizza, and from my trips to the market I have found that all the necessary ingredients are easily found here in Konoha.

So I decided to treat myself, and after another exhausting but effective afternoon following the training plan Gai left for me while he went on a mission and a long and relaxing soak on the Uchiha hot springs, I am going to buy some ingredients and finish the night with pizza for dinner.

There ain't no rest for the wicked, however, as even now I'm working on my spatial awareness with my Sharingan active. It isn't easy to dodge all these people while still keeping track of the information my Sharingan gives me, but I'm managing.

I have also started going over my parents' personal belongings recently, I miss them, and reading some of their journals has helped me feel like I'm getting to know them better, like I will never have a chance to personally now that they are gone.

Tou-san's journals are pretty dry, he didn't write much and what he did write was about politics between clans, for the most part. There is the occasional mention of his old genin teammates and in one of them he complained about his time dating Kaa-san, but those are the exception.

Kaa-san's journals, on the other hand, are the opposite. There are a handful of notes about jutsu but mostly they contain tales from her childhood and genin days, especially about her best friend, Kushina Uzumaki.

I wonder, did canon Sasuke ever bother to read these, and if so did he just not make the connection between Kushina and Naruto, or did he just assume Naruto knew and never brought it up because he didn't care?

The journals tell how they met, how Kaa-san had stumbled upon Kushina when she had just arrived in Konoha and how the two quickly became best friends, how they used to hang out and how Kaa-san comforted Kushina when Uzushio was destroyed.

They tell of how Kushina kept pranking Tou-san when he and Kaa-san got engaged until he swallowed his pride and asked Kaa-san to tell her to stop, how Kushina was so jealous when Kaa-san was first pregnant, and how when she became pregnant with me Kushina was so jealous that she went and got herself pregnant too.

Strangely, there is no mention o Minato in the journals, I wonder why.

It was the last page that really got to me, Kaa-san had been discussing baby names with Kushina and they decided mine would be Sasuke. When Kaa-san asked Kushina, she said they had two names in mind.

Naruto if it is a boy, inspired by one of Jiraiya's old books, and Natsumi if it is a girl, in honor of my late mother, I want my baby girl to be as brave as my mother was, nobody could say that Natsumi Uzumaki was ever someone to run from her fears.

Stuck to the page was a photo, of Kaa-san holding a baby me and Kushina with a large belly, clearly close to giving birth, the two were smiling. On the back of the photo was a single phrase.

You have my back and I have yours.

I'm snapped out of my thoughts by crashing into something, or rather, someone.

A second time since I remembered Before, I fell in a mess of limbs, blonde hair cascading over my vision. I felt something warm and oily coating my hand and as I went to shake whatever I touched off I saw that it was a spilled cup of ramen.

Damn it, I'm still not good enough with the Sharingan to get distracted as I walk while it is active!

Natsumi groaned and held her forehead in pain, and so did I when the pain of our crash registered a moment later.

"Watch where you are going, Sasuke!" She shouted.

I scowled in annoyance.

"If you were watching, you wouldn't have crashed into me." I said.

She glares at me.

"Yeah? Well you-" She cuts herself off as she sees her ramen spilled on the floor.

She scrambles to her feet and looks at it in dismay.

It is just ramen, why is she-

The thought dies out as I hear her sniffle.

"Are...are you okay?" I ask hesitantly.

She glares at me again but this time there is no mistaking the wetness in her eyes.

"No!" She shouts. "That was my last cup of ramen and I don't have any more money and now I'll..."

She quickly loses energy and by the end, she lowers her head again and I hear a sob.

"Don't you have any more food at home?" I ask.

She shakes her head.

"My fridge broke and it all spoiled." She says. "The technician said he had other jobs and couldn't come fast enough."

I sigh, while Natsumi isn't physically abused from what I saw there is plenty of hate and fear directed her way, even the worst offenders wouldn't risk touching her but I wouldn't put it past some asshole technician to put off fixing her fridge for some petty revenge.

Not to mention that for a child and especially a little girl, the hostile environment, lack of friends, and especially the lack of a mother figure, is almost worse than physical abuse. Neglecting a child during this stage of their life can cause some pretty serious problems later on, and putting on in this situation can only be worse.

Frankly, it is a miracle that kid Naruto didn't either kill himself or become an antisocial psychopath like Garaa.

"Come with me." I say. "I'm making dinner, and it is the least I can do to pay you back for spilling your ramen."

"Really?" She asks, and I'm more than a little uncomfortable with the implications that a simple courtesy like this can put so much hope in her eyes.

"Sure." I say smugly, trying to add some levity to the situation more for my sake than hers. "I'll make you something better than ramen."

"Impossible!" She immediately says. "Nothing is better than ramen!"

I smirk.

"Don't say that until you have tasted pizza."

-[TGaE]-

Naturally, Natsumi loved pizza, I mean really, how can someone not love pizza?

She's still dragging her feet in admitting that it is better than ramen, but if pizza doesn't do the trick I have a few trump card recipes that will blow her precious ramen out of the water easily.

Watch out elemental nations, I'm about to invent hamburgers 3 decades too early.

It was also kind of adorable to see her acting like a country bumpkin when I took her into the Uchiha district, I know my clan was better off than most but it is still adorable.

She pouted at me when I told her I wasn't a fan of ramen, and if I didn't know any better I'd say Minato was trying to create a weapon of mass destruction when he had her. Seriously, her long golden hair, her bright big blue eyes, her whisker marks, that girl could bring down nations just by using puppy dog eyes.

Kushina was always in my top three hottest chicks in the verse, alongside Tsunade and ironically enough the sexy jutsu, and while she's far too young to be hot her combination of Kushina's beauty and Minato's hair and eye color makes her incredibly cute.

And those whisker marks have an appeal of their own, it is like having the combination of a baby and a golden retriever in a person.

But enough about how her cuteness soothes my soul.

After dinner I offered to let her sleep in the compound, I have plenty of beds and while I doubted I needed to worry about any mobs ambushing her I didn't mind letting her spend the night here.

She refused, saying that she needed to get home and clear her fridge or her apartment would reek of spoiled food for a week.

I shrugged and let her go, I didn't have that problem because even Before I always preferred fresh ingredients whenever possible so I never bought more than I needed but I understood where she was coming from.

Except she forgot her wallet in my house, I was doing the dishes and saw it dropped next to her chair. I don't know if that wallet being Jiraiya's only gift to her was true, it fit his toad motif and while Jiraiya didn't owe it to Minato to raise his kid, they were teacher and student, not family, if he cared about Minato as much as he claims to he could have at least checked up on his kid every now and then, so it being the only thing he ever gave her fit, but I don't even remember if that is canon and even if it is I'm not sure how wise it is to take the fictional show of another life as reality.

And that is ignoring the obvious that since Natsumi is clearly not Naruto, she's similar enough but far from the same person, my meta-knowledge is more of an educated guess than the facts.

I could have returned her wallet the next day, we would meet at the academy and she would be fine without it for just one night, and maybe I should have, I am exhausted and was ready to hit my bed and clock out.

But no, instead I decided to go after her and return the wallet.

Tracking her down wasn't hard, I didn't know exactly what apartment was hers but I knew she lived in the academy cadet apartments and she hadn't left so long ago that she would have already gotten there while walking at a leisurely pace.

The problem came when I found her halfway to her place, acting suspicious, looking for people following her, and doing something that resembled sneaking if you looked at it from a certain angle.

Odd, but while I'm no master psychologist I think I'd picked up something if she was actually up to something dangerous.

I follow her for a while, keeping out of sight and taking advantage of the fact that her spatial awareness is even worse than mine.

Instead of going to her apartment, she goes to a training ground, strange at this time of night but not overtly so.

I find a spot above a tree, tree walking is still out of my grasp but climbing it the regular way is easy, and use my Sharingan to watch her.

Her technique is sloppy, her power and stamina are great but that doesn't mean anything if she can't use them. Other than that she isn't doing anything wrong, practicing a few katas this late is definitely odd but not forbidden.

I eventually get tired of watching and drop to the ground with a thud, the sound alerts her and she squeaks.

"Sasuke!" She shouts. "What are you doing here?"

I throw the wallet at her.

"You forgot it." I say.

She takes it and mumbles thanks, when neither of us says anything it quickly gets awkward.

"Go ahead." She says. "Aren't you going to mock me?"

I raise an incredulous eyebrow.

"Why would I mock you?" I ask.

She scowls.

"You always do everything effortlessly." She says. "You never train, yet you always get everything right!"

My second eyebrow joins the first.

"Of course I train." I say. "What makes you think I don't?"

"I never saw you do it." She says. "You are always lazing off, yet you never struggle."

I sigh.

"Natsumi, I train at home." I say. "I'm better than you because my training regiment is much heavier than yours. Hell, my sensei trains harder than anyone in the entire village, and I have to at least somewhat keep up!"

"Really?" She asks. "Do you think he could train me too?"

"It won't be easy." I point out. "He trains much harder than you ever did."

She puts her hands on her hips, looking smug.

"I can take it." She says. "I will be Hokage, after all!"

Of course.

I look her up and down, she's wearing an orange shirt and black shorts.

"I can ask him." I say. "But you are going to have to wear something other than orange."

I see her visibly struggle to decide and I laugh.

"Relax." I say. "I can ask him to make yours orange, it was just a joke."

She pouts at me and again, WMD, if this is what the villains feel when Naruto uses talk no jutsu no wonder they all turn good.

"Now come on." I say. "I'll show you how to do those katas, your technique sucks."

"Hey!" She says. "Mizuki-sensei taught me those!"

Of course, the wannabe Orochimaru spy, another thing I need to do.

One thing at the time, Sasuke.

-[TGaE]-

Sorry this chapter took so long, the flu hit me like a truck and I couldn't do much of anything in the past few days.

I have a lot to do because of it, so I won't do the usual AN.

Reviews are appreciated, and see you next time!