I closed my eyes, feeling my last breath leave my lungs. Well, check-out time had arrived. I'd hoped for a couple more decades, but what can you do when you didn't know you had cancer until you were already stage 4? I'd checked straight into a hospice, wasn't going to have my family blow through our savings trying to fight the inevitable. And now, here I was, my system shutting down. Time to see what comes next…

I opened my eyes, feeling incredibly weak and desperately hungry and thirsty. I tried to get up, but I found myself swaddled, practically mummified in blankets except for my head. I tried to call out "Help!", but all that came out was a wordless wail, as if the message got scrambled from my brain to my mouth.

A woman came into my view, and I became aware of an important fact: either I was much smaller than I remembered, or this woman was a giant. She was dressed in a white uniform, and my first impression was she was some kind of nurse. Though the uniform was in a style I'd never seen, in person or in popular media for any kind of nurse in the world. She spoke something in an utterly foreign language, chuckled, and reached down to pick me up. I fit in her hands like I was no bigger than a loaf of bread.

Okay, I was officially confused.

The nurse unwrapped the blanket slightly, and I realized I was naked but for a diaper. She checked that I wasn't wet or dirty, then nodded. She spoke again in that unintelligible tongue I had no hope of understanding. She rewrapped me and set me back down. She vanished for a minute and came back with a bottle full of a white liquid. She picked me up and pressed the teat of the cap near my mouth.

Embracing the insanity, I latched on and began to drink. When I was full to bursting, I stopped and turned my head to try and tell her I was full. She nodded and set me back in what I realized was a plastic cradle like you'd see in a hospital. She vanished from my sight, and now that I paid attention I could hear the coos, snores, and cries of newborns in the room. The obvious conclusion was that I was in some kind of nursery.

I closed my eyes and took a second to order my thoughts.

I had died. Of that, I was certain. I had felt all the strength leave my body and I'd sunk into a deep, dark, perfect stillness. But now I was alive, in a very small body, by all appearances a baby again.

I hadn't been overly religious, but I'd taken the existence of some form of afterlife for granted. Apparently, the Hindus had been the ones on the right track. I had, based on all the evidence of my senses, been reincarnated. Why I still remembered my first life, I had no idea. But then, how did I know it had been my first life? Maybe it had been my 17th and this was my 33rd, for all I knew. Through a divine clerical error or some other reason, I retained all my memories of a life in this current new one. How or why didn't really matter, I decided. All that mattered, I decided, was how I was going to work this to my advantage.

But there wasn't much I could do as an infant, so I had a few good years at least before I could leapfrog off my past life in this new one. And with my belly full of formula, I was suddenly seized by the overpowering urge to take a nap. So I closed my eyes and sank into the arms of Morpheus.

Shinobi Singularity

I was taken home from the hospital by my new parents a day after I woke up. My new father was pale, dark-haired, and wore glasses. My mother was petite, and was unremarkable in looks apart from the fact her hair was indigo. And I'm fairly sure it wasn't dyed, she somehow just had it as a natural shade.

If my new mom's hair color wasn't enough of a clue as to the fact I wasn't exactly in Kansas anymore, the day I saw my dad wearing a metal-plated headband with a very familiar symbol on it drove it home.

The Konoha leaf, complete with the Uzu spiral in the center.

Well… that was interesting.

I had been operating under the assumption that I was still on Earth, if not necessarily in the same time or country as I remembered. But seeing my dad wearing a ninja forehead protector made it very clear that I hadn't just reincarnated, I'd transmigrated. Into the world of Naruto, apparently, though whether it was the manga/anime version or one of the infinite alternate realities in the vast multiverse was anyone's guess.

This had its pros and its cons, and I had nothing but time to think on them when I was awake, which sadly wasn't that often. My newborn body had a pathetic amount of energy, I got exhausted after less than an hour of just lying there. But that would pass eventually, so I focused on strategizing.

So, my dad was a shinobi of Konohagakure. This told me I at least hadn't been born in the Warring Clans era. But until I got a look at the Hokage Mountain, I had no idea if I was in the same generation as Hiruzen or Naruto or Boruto's great-grandchild. It also meant I was, you know, living in Konoha, the first and arguably strongest hidden village.

On the plus side, chakra. Unlike Earth, which so far as I was aware was purely reliant on science and technology, the humans in this reality could harness the mixture of their Yang and Yin energies to do Jutsu, or magic spells, potayto potahto really when you got down to it. If I so chose, I could enroll in the Academy and learn how to harness this energy myself and become, by the standards of my past life at least, superhuman.

On the negative side, ninja. Kishimoto hadn't really delved into the civilian military, if there even were any. But for the most part, every war in this world's history was fought by mercenaries. The hidden villages had brought in a degree of government oversight by involving the Daimyo of the host countries, but the fact of the matter was that this was a world where people who could make dragons out of water and summon meteors from space got their bread and butter by selling their services to rich civilians. And until the existential threat of the Akatsuki/Juubi had come along, the hidden villages themselves were as likely to slit each other's throats as look at each other, from what I remembered.

And then there was the whole cluster that was the Akatsuki and the convoluted conspiracy behind it. Depending on when I was in the timeline, I might live to see a true-blue apocalypse. And I wasn't exactly eager to end up just another White Zetsu in Kaguya's army. To say nothing of being just a statistic in the Konoha Crush, Pein's attack, or the Fourth Shinobi War leading up to Kaguya's resurrection. And that was just if I was plus/minus 5 years from Naruto's birth. If I was earlier in the timeline, I might have to deal with the Shinobi Wars, of which there'd been 3 before the events of Naruto had even properly started.

But I could worry about all that when I was ambulatory. And had learned the language of this world, that was very important too.

I lived each day as best I could, staying awake longer and longer and able to do more and more while I was awake. Toys were fun distractions, but I mostly focused on learning to crawl and trying to decode the language my parents and presumably everyone else in the Narutoverse used. Learning to read and write was a challenge for the future, I had to start from the bottom and work my way up. My mom seemed to be a housewife, she never left the house except to go grocery shopping or occasionally to visit friends, and everytime she left she brought me with her. My dad was at least a Chunin, he had the flak jacket. And Minato's face was on the Hokage Mountain, I saw one day when my mom was pushing me in a stroller. Which meant I was born after the end of the Third Shinobi War, though whether I was before or after Kurama's attack was beyond my ability to deduce.

I got my answer when I was a little over a year old.

I was awoken by a truly deafening blast of noise, louder than a jet engine. It physically hurt my ears as those sound waves assaulted them. But more than just the volume, it was a bestial cry of rage, like a starved, abused animal finally broken free from its cage and hungry for blood.

Then the killing intent hit.

You know when you've stayed up all night, and you haven't had any caffeine, and you start to forget how to open your eyes again when you blink? That pressure on your mind, like gravity has multiplied, and it's a conscious effort to stay awake, to resist the pull of sleep, to not just pass out?

Killing intent, at least Kurama's killing intent, was like that. Only instead of having to fight to stay awake, I had to fight to keep breathing and not just suffocate under that unholy weight on my mind and body. It was a struggle to keep my heart beating, to not just give in and let that unnatural power snuff out my young life like a candle in the wind.

I'll admit, I thought about just quitting and dying and seeing if I'd wake up again. It was just that fucking hard to resist a pissed off Bijuu's killing intent. But I'd made plans, and I knew that my mom and dad would be heartbroken if I died. So I fought and clawed to stay alive, though it was a herculean effort just to inhale and exhale while Kurama's KI was pressing down on me.

Time ceased to mean anything for a while, as I focused on just breathing. Then, mercifully, the killing intent vanished. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Minato had teleported Kurama away from the village, at least that was what I assumed had happened. I had to remind myself that I had no guarantee that this wasn't some kind of AU of the Naruto I knew and loved.

It was maybe 10 minutes later when it occurred to me that Mom should have come to check on me by now.

With a sense of dread in my guts, I climbed out of my crib and toddled to my parents' bedroom. My dad was gone, I remembered he hadn't come home yet before the attack started. My mom's body was on the ground, unmoving. I went over to her and knelt next to her head. I brought my hand to her nose and mouth, but I felt no movement of air. She wasn't breathing. A check of her pulse confirmed it. She was dead.

I sighed. Well, shit. I'd really liked her. She was a sweet woman, always smiling and laughing, and Dad made moon eyes at her all the time so I knew he'd be crushed by her death.

Unless Dad had been one of Kurama's casualties, in which case I was an orphan.

I reminded myself not to jump to conclusions.

I fell asleep on the floor next to her. I woke up to find the sun shining through the window. A check of the analog clock on my parents' dresser confirmed it was 10:00 am.

Okay, yeah, pretty sure I was an orphan.

Well… c'est la vie. Now, how to get to the orphanage?

Shinobi Singularity

I was awoken by a knock on the door. "Breakfast time!" called the matron, before she moved on to the next room.

The bedroom was roughly the size of the room I'd had to myself when I'd been living with my parents. However, 3 bunkbeds had been shoehorned in, so it felt very cramped. I maneuvered to the ladder and climbed down to the floor. I ducked my head and checked on the boy who slept in the bed directly beneath me. "Oi, Naruto. Wakey-wakey."

The blond boy with whisker marks on each cheek just kept snoring.

I rolled my eyes and reached out to pinch his nose.

His eyes flew open, a rich cerulean, and his arms began to flail. I let go of his nose and he sucked in a breath.

"Damn it, Shon-aniki, I told you to stop doing that!" he griped, sitting up and swinging his short legs to get out of the bed.

"It's that or tickling you, it's too much effort to go get a cup of water to dump on your head," I shrugged as if this were an everyday occurrence. Which it was, in our case.

"Why do I put up with you again?" Naruto asked with a grumble as he got changed into his day clothes.

"'Cause I'm the only one who puts up with you," I fired back, and I hated how true those words were.

They'd gone door-to-door after Kurama's attack, so I was found before I had to worry about dying of hunger or thirst. I'd gone straight to the orphanage, and I'd adapted to my surroundings as best I could. And my self-assigned duty had been to be the support system of one Uzumaki Naruto from the moment I'd spotted the newborn in the orphanage nursery.

For all that it was such a popular trope, I always hated when the protagonist of any story suffered abuse in their childhood. I'd had a blissfully happy childhood in my past life, and my brief time with my Naruto Mom and Dad had been very pleasant as well. Being an orphan all on its own sucked, at least in my opinion. But while the exact degree of Naruto's abuse was more fanon than canon, the fact remained that he would be ostracized by almost all those in the know for the sheer fact he was a Jinchuuriki. And while I couldn't wave a magic wand and pull the Kurama haters' heads out their collective ass, I could do my best to be a positive influence in Naruto's life.

So, I stuck to him like glue. Even when we were toddlers, I shared my toys with him and we had baby-talk conversations with each other. As we'd gotten older, the orphanage staff had tried and failed to drive a wedge between us. They told me all sorts of lies to try and convince me that Naruto wasn't a good kid and I should avoid him like the plague. Some of the pettier staff even assigned me extra chores or punishments when I defended Naruto from bullies or spoke up in his defense.

The other kids, being both innocent little angels who trusted in the authority figures that were the staff and ignorant of the motivation behind all the vitriol, had all followed the staff's example. Naruto got tripped, his stuff went missing, shit like that. I did my best to try and mitigate the negative treatment, but reporting bad behavior when the target was Naruto usually led to the staff being selectively deaf to my words or even getting me punished for 'bad-mouthing good kids'. Gotta love irrational hatred and the twisted logic that led to making a 5-year old a scapegoat for Kurama. Who was himself not even at fault for, like, 90% of what happened that night, it was all Obito. But I couldn't exactly explain any of that without getting thought crazy at best or mind-raped by a Yamanaka at worst, so I just tried to deal with it.

Oh, and my new name was Shon, did I mention that? No clan name, both my parents had been war orphans themselves, as I learned by asking the matron to check my records.

Naruto, I, and our 4 roommates all went down to the dining room. We got our plates and I guided Naruto to our usual corner. If Naruto sat at the end of the row and I sat next to him, he only had to pay attention to the kids at his 12 o'clock and 10 o'clock.

"So, today's the day, huh?" Naruto said after a few bites, looking like a kicked puppy.

I sighed. "I enrolled in the Academy, yes. Today's the day I get moved to the Academy dorms they set up for orphan students. Classes start in 2 days. We've talked about this a million times, Naruto, nothing's going to change."

"Everything's going to change!" Naruto fired back, actually tearing up. "You're going to go off and become an awesome shinobi warrior and I'll be stuck here all on my own!"

I bonked him on the head, not hard enough to bruise but enough to make him feel it. "Would you calm down and use that thing between your ears for once? I'll come visit you every day, I swear. And this time next year, you can enroll in the Academy and move into the dorms yourself. We'll be in different years so we won't see each other during school hours, but we can study and do homework and train together after the Academy lets out. Like I said, moron, nothing's going to change."

His whole face lit up like the damn sun coming out from behind the clouds. "Oh… I didn't think of that," he chuckled, rubbing the back of his head with an embarrassed grin.

I rolled my eyes. "You say you want to be Hokage. And you certainly got the heart and the guts for it, in my opinion. But you got to learn to take a second and think, little bro. You can't exactly train your brain to be smarter than you were born with, but by Kami you can learn to use what you do have better."

Before Naruto could respond, the kids across from us snorted. "Yeah, right, like this idiot could ever be Hokage!" the one on the right guffawed.

"He'll be Hokage the day I become the Daimyo!" the one on the left sneered.

I cupped my ear. "I'm sorry? Did someone say something? Oh, right, now I remember, I don't speak Stupid and Ugly."

"Why, I oughta!" the one on the right growled, curling his hands into fists. The one on the left stuck his tongue out at me.

"Don't start something you aren't ready to finish," I said, looking the one on the right in the eye.

He gulped, the fire leaving his eyes. The last kid to try and hit me ended up needing to go to the hospital. Was on basically house arrest and triple chores for 6 months as a consequence, but everyone learned the lesson that I was not one to fuck with.

For the record, I didn't have any martial arts training, in either life I could remember. I wasn't especially strong for my size either. But I was utterly ruthless. That fight I mentioned? I'd opened with kicking the boy in the balls and had actually torn off one of his earlobes with my teeth. In my mind, as soon as conflict started, it was me or them. And I sure as hell wasn't going to let it be me if I could help it. It was a mindset I'm sure would help the first time I ended up facing off against an enemy shinobi.

We all ate and then went to do our morning chores. I was excused, along with all the other kids who'd elected to enroll in the Academy, so I could pack my meager belongings. I loaded all my earthly possessions into a knapsack, tracked down Naruto to get one last hug, and went to wait at the orphanage entrance for the Chunin assigned to lead us to the dorms.

Two hours later, I looked around the studio apartment that was 'mine', though I was only allowed to live there with the permission of the Academy. If I ever got expelled or dropped out, I'd have to find my own housing or go back to the orphanage. It was only slightly bigger than the room I'd woken up in that morning. While not having to share it with 5 other boys was nice, the space also contained the kitchen and bathroom I was expected to use. Still, it was home.

I opened the wallet I'd been handed by the Chunin who'd led me here. He'd taken me and the other orphans to a specific building, handed each of us a wallet with our first month's stipend and a map with a highlighted route from the dorms to the Academy, then left us each at our assigned door. That was it.

Now, granted, you grew up fast in this world. But I thought it was a bit irresponsible that they were leaving 6-year olds unsupervised. Not to mention handing them a decent chunk of change with no safeguards to stop us from blowing it all on candy or games and not important stuff like food and clothing. Did they expect us to have learned all the necessary life skills from the orphanage already? Or maybe it was more survival of the fittest, those who were dumb enough to blow their money and go hungry weren't of any use to the village. That sounded a bit harsh, but I had to remind myself that it was less than a century since the end of the Warring Clans Era, where you basically were handed a kunai and sent to the front lines as soon as you could walk. I couldn't hold the Narutoverse to the standards of my past life's society.

Anyway, time to go shopping.

I unfolded the map and spent an hour just trying to memorize the layout of the village. A small fanboy part of me was geeking out that I was looking at a legitimate map of Konohagakure no Sato, but the more pragmatic part of me just wanted to know the major landmarks of the town I was living in and how not to get lost. Folding it back up and putting it in my pocket, I set out to get supplies.

I planned my route to get the lightest items first, so I wouldn't have to carry too much for the rest of the trip. I went to an office supplies store and got a couple notebooks along with loose paper, pencils, pens, and even a calculator. The last item was a stark reminder that for all the power and majesty of Jutsu and other chakra-based things, the laws of physics for this universe were at least mostly the same as those from my past life. Which meant computers were a thing, though I had no idea how advanced they were at this time. Still, one of my more moonshot ideas was based on computers, so I needed to get myself informed on the subject as it pertained to this world right quick.

After leaving the office supply store, I went to a thrift store. When I was an elite Jonin and raking in the ryo, then I could afford to wear silk underwear and designer brands. But until then, I was an orphan on a fixed monthly income and I had to favor function over fashion. All these clothes had to do was keep me not-naked for the foreseeable future.

I hefted the shopping bags from the thrift store and decided it was smarter to make a trip back to the dorm instead of trying to carry everything given my hands were already pretty full. I dropped off my school supplies and clothes and then went to the nearest supermarket.

As a rough rule of thumb, at least the one I used for myself, 10 ryo was equivalent to about $1 USD. Each orphan living in the Academy dorms got a stipend of 10k ryo per month. I was budgeting to spend 1,500 ryo each week on food, which was more than enough to get a week's worth of food if you didn't mind a lot of prep or using cheap ingredients. I'd spent 2,000 total between getting my school stuff and 'new' clothes compared to what the orphanage had given me. When I had packed away all the food in my fridge and pantry, I debated whether I should find something to spend my remaining 2k ryo on or tuck it away for a rainy day.

Well, the thing I wanted most was knowledge. And short of getting lessons from a person, the fastest way to get knowledge was to read books. Now, the important question: did Konoha have a public library?

A quick check of the map, and lo and behold, the Konoha Free Library was labeled.

I set out, noting that the sun was well past its zenith. Hmm, probably be worth investing in a watch, or at least an alarm clock. Preferably both, come to think of it. But alarm clock got priority, I decided. I didn't want to be late for my first day of class.

A quick stop at an electronics store (where there indeed was a section, albeit rather small, for computers) and I had a wind-up clock. I tucked it in my pocket and went to the Library. I walked in the double doors for the large, rectangular building and was hit with the smell of paper. With a grin, I walked up to the desk.

The middle-aged attendant looked over the desk at me with a grin. "Hello there, young man, what brings you in today?"

"This is my first time here," I explained. I made a show of looking around at the 3-story room filled with bookshelves. "You clearly have a lot of books, but what are they all about? Do you have every book ever written?"

"I'm afraid not, young man, the building would have to be quite a bit bigger. Though I hear the Elemental Archives in the Land of Iron has copies of almost every single book there is or ever was, fun fact. But we have a broad selection on a number of topics, everything from agriculture to zoology," the attendant grinned.

I nodded. "I start the Academy in 2 days. I doubt you have books or manuals on actual ninja techniques or Jutsu, but do you have anything pertaining to shinobi at all?"

"Indeed we do," the attendant nodded. "All our books about shinobi have their own section, actually. As you guessed, we don't carry anything that directly teaches the reader how to do anything a ninja can do. Those books belong in the Shinobi Library, and I'm afraid you need a Ninja ID Card just to enter that place. But as I understand it, a number of the textbooks you'll be using in the Academy are there, assuming they haven't changed the curriculum too much since my daughter graduated."

"Thank you," I bowed. "Do you happen to have any encyclopedias? I figure knowing a little about almost everything will be useful in life, whether I end up graduating from the Academy or not."

"Of course! They're all in the reference section," the attendant grinned. "My, it's always good to see people your age eager to learn. On the rare occasion I see a child enter here, they usually go straight to the fiction section."

"I certainly see the appeal of escaping into another world, but I'd like to at least partially understand this one first," I shrugged. "What are the hours for the Library and what's the policy on checking out books?"

"We're open 7 days a week, except for village holidays or in the event of extreme weather. Doors open at 9:00 am and close at 7:00 pm. You can stay and read anything to your heart's content while you're here. If you want to take a book home, you need to bring it to me and I'll mark it along with your name and address. You can keep it for 30 days, and you'll be charged 10 ryo for every day it's late. If you're more than 10 days late, we'll send a Genin to check in on you and bring it back, and you'll lose the privilege to take out books for a full year," the attendant explained solemnly. "In the event you lose or damage a library book, you'll be fined the market cost of the book itself plus 200 ryo."

"Understood. How many can I check out at once?" I asked.

"You can check out 5 books total. So you could check out 4 books today and 1 more tomorrow, but that's it until you return at least 1 book," the attendant told me helpfully.

I nodded. "Seems simple enough. Is there a map for the library, or at least a guide for how everything's sorted?"

"On the wall there, young man," the attendant pointed.

"Thank you very much!" I grinned.

I ended up checking out the first book in a 37-volume encyclopedia set, a history textbook for the Elemental Nations, another history textbook specifically about the Land of Fire, yet another history textbook that was just about Konoha, and (because I found it and couldn't resist) The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi from the fiction section. I waved the attendant, who I learned was actually one Nara Shiori, goodbye and left with my haul.

I cooked dinner when I got back and read until midnight, when I took a quick shower and then put myself to bed. Tomorrow was a free day. The day after, my shinobi education started.