Chapter 11: Time only goes one way

I felt like tearing my hair out. "Come on, work!" The innocent looking paper in front of me did not react in any visible way to my yelling, but I could feel it mocking me. My fingers rested on the edges of the paper, a solemn promise that I would rip it apart if it did not follow my wishes.

Chakra flashed through it again, touching pathways that were already there but somehow… lacking.

I lifted my fingers from the paper and tried to remember the sensation of chakra and how it had felt. I had had my difficulties with picking up the Henge, since hands seals did not have the same effect on my chakra pathways as it did for others. I had discovered the solution by accident, and had started hitting myself mentally seconds after since Kakashi would not have approved of me doing it physically in his presence.

My work with seals should have prepared me for the problem. If I remembered correctly I had even thought about the possibility of the problem, when the Hokage had gifted me with my first storage seal.

I could not perform hand seals.

The act of mimicking the right gestures was within my abilities, off course, but it was just as rewarding as picking my nose, just a lot less gross. I had to do anything manually. Memorizing the way my chakra pathways should move to get the sought effect was exhausting, and the manipulations needed changed a bit according to what I wished of the technique. The advantage of being able to do the Henge hand seal free, did not lessen the problems I would face by trying to perform any ninjutsu of genjutsu with my shoddy mental reaction time. I would even have to account for the changes in my chakra pathways if I decided to use any jutsu while still under the Henge, since there was a vast difference between my natural state and the Henge induced state of my chakra pathways.

My future in this world was looking somewhat bleak.

I would probably be able to memorize a few jutsus and how I should manipulate my chakra in order to produce them, but any thought of a big arsenal to the point of paranoia would have to be forgotten.

Perhaps I had damaged myself by experimenting with chakra early on. It was either that or my weird status, which I could not think too deeply about without going into full out depressive mode.

Due to my problems, gaining either sage-mode or bijuu-mode would strip me off all my jutsus while using them unless I had time to train and adjust myself to the changes. That was the biggest 'screw you' this world had given me yet, and there was seemly no way to overcome it.

Relying heavily on Fūinjutsu seemed like the only way I could survive the future.

That was why I was now looking down at one of my many failed seals entirely in English. The enemy would have no idea what they did, and I refused to believe the language of this world was the only way to connect to chakra.

The heat coming from the paper supported my notion.

I twirled the ink brush between two fingers on my left hand and tried to figure out what I was missing. The seals of the Naruto-verse looked like artworks, beautiful and structured like a grand pattern lay behind each and every one of them.

I studied at my English letters and it slowly dawned on me how much space there was between each word. Roughly I connected the words and filled out a bit of the blank space in order to get a clearer network, and in the end my flower seal felt done.

I reached for its heat and took a shaking deep intake of air, when I felt it respond to me.

The next moment the paper rose from the table, almost tearing itself apart when the ribbons of words twisted themselves to form a perfect dome around the paper slip. I poked it curiously with one finger and almost found it going through some of the gaps between the inky black ribbons.

Concept proved as acceptable, but improvements were needed before use.

·

It was a bright day, the sun high in the sky and spring in full bloom. I had waited until a visit from Kakashi to test my new appearance for the first time in public, and the man had taken one look at me with knitted brows before turning passively silent. I had expected a bit more from the copy-nin, and only regained my thunder when muggle after muggle passed by me without a glare or hateful comment directed my way.

The results seemed promising.

No one even turned around, when I started talking to myself while being seated on a random bench by the marketplace. "Log 6033, experiment successful." I muttered, leaning over the long scroll to ease my writing position. "No one suspects a thing…"

My companion proved he had some care for the world around him hidden in the depths of his heart. He drily voiced his confusion. "Why have you brought a journal to write in?"

Such a genius question required an equally brilliant answer. "The funny answer would be 'because that's what crazy scientist does; document everything'!" I replied cheerfully.

"And the true?"

I raised my head to meet his eyes and grinned. "I like to make you uncomfortable. You have such funny reactions, which is a bit weird since I can only see one fourth of your face. I still haven't figured out how you make the mask work."

He stared at me for a while before turning away. Not giving any reaction to the obvious bait.

I gave the scroll a lovingly stroke before closing it up. It had taking an exceptional bit of work to make it look like I really kept a journal for my work, and Kakashi dared to ignore it. I considered my options while biting the inside of my cheek. The man was a hard nut to crack at times, but not impossible if you went about it the right way. I had figured he would react weirdly to my different appearance and would start avoid me again, so all this planned silliness was really just to nip the problem in the bud.

What to do, what to do. So many options, so few generally accepted.

My grin widened a bit. I jumped from my seat and in front of him, before starting to jump up and down like an overeager puppy. "Now, how much practice do you need think I need to disguise myself to look like a realistic corpse, nii-san?"

The man was surprisingly dull that day.

·

A redheaded girl with short spiky hair watched me from the mirror. Dark blue eyes stared back instead of cerulean, and my cheeks were missing their signature marks. I had based my new appearance on my memories of Kushina Uzumaki, and I think I pulled the look of decently.

Even if I had been sourly tempted to just give myself dark brown hair, paler skin and eyes so dark they looked black, I had resisted changing my appearance to match my real one.

I would have gained nothing from being constantly reminded of what I have lost every time I caught a glimpse of my own reflection.

"Naruto Uzumaki." I muttered, touching a spiky strand of red hair which defied gravity. "Uzumaki Naruto." I was not sure what exactly I was trying to do; whether this was a way to convince myself of my current identity or just me wondering how the hell I ended up here. My new appearance did at least lent credence to the origins of my surname.

I wonder if it would change anything. Only Nagato and Karin were shown in the manga as being remaining members of the scattered Uzumaki clan, but my status as a Jinchuuriki kind of predetermined my relationship with a least one of them.

Obito Uchiha, Black Zetsu and Nagato, the Big Three, they were the ones I needed to kill in order to prevent the whole disastrous moon plan, which freed the equivalent of a crazy goddess.

I wondered if it would do me any good to mumble their names before going to sleep. Arya had had great fun with her hit list. I cracked a smile at the thought before moving on to another more concerning subject at the moment.

My problems with chakra manipulation had one clear advantage, which had been revealed after a discussion with Kakashi about the limits of the Henge. For most users of the Henge, they lost their current form if they were hit and thus lost control of their chakra. It was sort of like shadows clones, since they also dispelled when hit with enough force.

My manual manipulation of my chakra made it so I was sort of stuck in Henge-mode until I returned my pathways to their original layout.

Any chakra sensor or person possessing either the Sharingan or the Byakugan should be able to see through it if I remembered correctly, but since the only purpose behind utilizing the jutsu was hiding from the civilians, that little aspect should not give me any problems.

It also helped I had convinced the copy-nin, and to an extension the Hokage, of my great need for matching hair dye and plasters in case the jutsu failed while I attended Academy. Until then I had been advised to avoid getting hurt in a way which would dispel the jutsu.

I had an excellent failsafe, and no one who knew of my special circumstances. Everything seemed to go perfectly.

Only a few months were left before I could start at the Academy.

·

The door was opened before I had finished knocking.

"Good morning, nii-san!" I stared smugly back at the copy-nin who was sporting a case of periorbital dark circles, and danced around him before the door could be smacked in my face. " It is such a lovely morning, no? Birdsong and everything." I said cheerfully while marching to his kitchen, where the smell of freshly made bacon was coming from.

There was a tired grunt from behind me, which indicated he strongly disagreed. "How did you know I was back?"

"Why, nii-san, are you telling me your so vigilant eyes could not even see a detection seal made by a small child had been placed in your doorframe?" I clicked my tongue and shook my head slowly while nearing the pile of thinly sliced and roasted pork. "Are you beginning to slip in your old age?"

His gaze turned back towards to door, and he took the time to smack my fingers as they reached for the delicious food of the gods, before he checked whether I had told the truth. I glared at his back and managed to snatch a piece of bacon before the man returned with two slips of paper no larger than my pinkies. I had darkened them to a point where they weren't quite as obvious against any dark surfaces, such as Kakashi's front door, and it seemed to have worked.

I wondered how big a part, his exhaustion played in that.

"They alarmed me this morning, so I guess you used a window to get in tonight..." I tilted my head and swallowed the rest of my stolen piece of goodness before continuing. "Unless you came back barely fifteen minutes ago."

He looked at me with one dead eye, before going back to his kitchen counter and continuing making breakfast. I watched him in silence for a minute, while seated by the dining table, before I started quipping about his panda eyes.

The ninja paid me no attention and just went about his business like I did not exist.

I began to pout and was handed a mug of undetermined fluids in return, as either a peace offering or a way to shut me up. My mind had little concern towards the fluid's origin, since the fox in my gut would hinder any form of poisoning, so I just lifted the mug to my lips and started drinking.

I was so dreadfully wrong.

Liquid sprayed across the table, and Kakashi took a step backwards to avoid getting hit by the flood of dark fluid. I wiped my mouth with one sleeve while staring in shock at the innocent little mug. "Oh, my poor mouth's virginity…" Black liquid was fired off beside of me, a choking noise following. "It's been ruined forever!"

I glared at the mug. "What the hell was that? Rotten milk taken from the snake of pure evil?"

His shoulders were shaking like he was laughing but I was unable to see his face since he had once again turned around to face the counter. Not to mention the mask would have been in the way anyway, but at least I would have been able to check for 'eye smiles'.

"Do you have to be this sadistic in the morning?" The empty mug was pushed as far away as I could. "… Should not be allowed this early…"

Mumbling came from the counter.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, not willing to let the evil thing out of sight. "Hm, what?"

"It's coffee." A sound suspicious close to snickering reached my ears. "Or it was."

The mug was still standing innocently in the middle of the table in a puddle of black liquid. "I refuse to believe that." I was experiencing an increasing need to scrub the inside of my mouth with cleaning agents. "The day that becomes coffee, is the day this world starts to make sense."

"I think you misspoke, Naruto." He said in his best deadpan.

"I know what I said." I glowered. "And I stand by my words. This insane asylum does not need to suddenly start running on logic, it would hurt my brain."

That sound was definitively snickering.

"Oh, just laugh it off already. It's your table which has been ruined." I sulked, feeling a bit offended at the continued sound of his mocking laughter.

His voice was annoyingly calm. "And who was guilty of that?"

"You did your own spit take" I argued, given the accused mug and the man alternating glares. It was hard to decide who held most of the blame.

Kakashi cleared his throat loudly, and my gaze locked on his back. "That could be said to be entirely your fault. "

"Very mature, nii-san, I think I have heard a saying going kind of like this; 'don't blame others for your own actions'." I smirked. "Hearing some unmeant insinuations in my words, you dirty minded old man?"

A plate of bacon was sat in front of me. I stared wide-eyed at the prize, water already dripping of my teeth. "Just eat and be quiet."

I saluted him before digging in. My eyes closed in bliss and I moaned slightly at the perfect crispy consistency and taste.

Such yummy goodness.

I glanced at the ninja when he seated himself opposite me with another filled mug of so called 'coffee', apparently completely disinterested in saving his table from strains. My lips pinched together, and I tried to ignore the growing feeling of guilt from the bottom of my stomach by taking another large bite of bacon.

Wonderful, now he had ruined my porky bites of heaven.

I pushed the plate towards him and into the pool of spilled coffee. He lifted an eyebrow and I scowled at him before jumping down from the chair with direction towards the sink. Somebody needed to clean the mess up.

"So… why did you really come here? There's easier ways to test your Fūinjutsu and you're not usual this keen on company, Naruto, especially in the morning." You had one bad day, and your surroundings would never let it go again.

"Perhaps, I thought it had been too long since your last visit." I wrung the water out of the cloth with forceful movements. "That hypothetical could have been the case."

"But it is not."

He was kind of pushy this morning. Then again, the fact that something was bothering me and I was using him as stress relief could not be clearer. He was good for that.

"Well..." I turned away from the sink and towards him while biting my lip. "Academy is starting soon…"

"Yes..." There was an unspoken 'and?' behind that affirmation.

"I've just realized I have no idea how I should act in order to not come across as creepy or weird to them." My eyes narrowed at a suspicious movement of his shoulders. "This is not funny. It's a really, really serious matter, which will hunt me…"

"You're starting tomorrow, right?" He was pointing out a whole lot of unnecessary things today. Such a stupid question really did not deserve a serious answer.

"See, twenty-four hours is a long time, practically an eternity for anyone in my age range." I grinned at him before starting to clean the table. "What did you do to avoid appearing as an unsociable bastard?"

He gave me a long dead stare. "In your case the first step would be not talking."

"You're not being very helpful." I stopped in my work and tilted my head frowning. "This does nothing to enforce the image of you as a wise old man in my eyes. Remember, it's important to appear as a good role model to the younger generation, since we're so terrible impressionable."

"I would be happy if you stopped talking."

"See, absolutely terrible. You should never be allowed to be in charge of children. They would learn horrible manners."

·

I woke up in the middle of the night and started cleaning my apartment. It was technically not my job, since it was handled by somebody while I was out every other day, but I had stumbled upon the cleaning agents while searching around my living space. Boredom had done the rest.

And well, it felt good to have some kind of control over my environment, even if it only amounted to how my apartment looked.

I left my 'home' in an oversized jumper hiding more scrolls than would ever be necessary, wishing I owned either kunai or shuriken already, so I did not have to take small knives with me in improvised sheaths. It annoyed me a bit people insisted on sewing the symbol of the destroyed village of the Uzumaki clan into the back of every piece of clothing I owned which covered the upper half of my body, since it felt like somebody deliberate had placed a red giant target board on my back.

Walking the street alone with the insignia on my back and my disguise showing left me feeling somewhat vulnerable.

No one was glaring, but the mask I wore to deceive them felt paper thin, even knowing logically that there was no way any civilian could disrupt my Henge. I had even tried to get my first name changed and assigned a new birthday in an attempt to further the distance between the blonde whisker faced demon and the redheaded innocent Uzumaki girl. Only the last one had been allowed, and I was now proudly five in any official papers outside the Hokage office, even if my host body would first celebrate its birthday in a couple of months.

I suppose it could be argued I was a bit of a perfectionist in addition to being paranoid.

The classroom which had been described and chosen to house the new year of academy students was quite easy to find since I had already been walked there the week before. A bit under a dozen children had arrived already with their parents, and I paused shortly in the door in order to get an overview of those who had arrived.

There were plenty of brunettes and raven haired, and a single blonde girl but no sign of pink.

I had never really understood how the classes and the academy worked in the manga, considering Naruto had managed to fail two times but still graduate with the others of his age. Most likely you could get an early exam, and that was how Kakashi and Itachi had finished ninja school in a year or so each. The starting age was a bit more undefined, and looking around I found myself to be the shortest new student in the room with my height of just over a meter.

The tallest one dwarfed me by two of my old hand spans.

I frowned and turned towards the blonde girl who I guessed was Ino of the mind reader clan, finding myself a bit shocked when brown eyes stared back at me. She turned her gaze away when my lips tightened and my eyes narrowed.

She was not really a blonde; her hair had a brown shine to it which would likely become more pronounced with age. She was also at least two years my senior judging by her stature.

I had fucked up, hadn't I?

I moved away from the doorframe and tried to hide myself in the back of the classroom, while thinking my new situation through. It was not like these children would not become ninja, who had the potential of being capable, but I knew nothing about them which made any decision both harder and easier. They were cannon fodder, not really important in the grand scheme of things and getting on a team with any of them would mean one less bond with an important character which could help me in my quests to kill the Big Three.

Waiting for the rookie nine would mean wasting time, and even the members of Team Guy were not among my new classmates, which meant I had no reason to wait around before graduating.

The smartest option would be to just race through academy and start learning more effectively under a jōnin sensei, unless I utilized my time to self-learn skills but even then it was not guaranteed I would get more out of it than if I had just hurried on to become genin.

Decisions… So many variables, possibilities, different paths to take…

"…Tomato." I blinked and turned my head sharply towards two boys who stood close to me without any parental supervision. Part of me noted some of the parents where slowly leaving, while the rest tried to figure out what they hell they were snickering about. "… She has hair like a tomato…"

Please save me from idiots… Was this really happening? My brows twitched.

"Do you think her face turn the same shade when…?" The same boy continued on, before being interrupted by a nudge to his shoulder.

"Shh…she's looking over here."

"It doesn't matter if she hears. Do you see how little she is? She should not be here."

Seriously, I could not even get mad of them. This was too silly for me to handle, too much like the story of my supposed mother that it should be happening to me. My lips stretched into a wide smile and I shook my head before returning my attention to things which actually mattered.

Make no mistake, if they started calling me names in childish silliness there would be repercussions, but simply discussing their classmates using clichés and rude descriptions was not an act worth punishing.

My brows knitted together as my mind returned to speculating about my future career choices.

"Hello." I glanced to my right and found a raven-haired girl smile shyly back at me. "I've seen older ninjas wear the spiral you have on your back, and were wondering if you know what it means?"

"Well… you know how each clan have their own symbol?" The girl blinked, and I judged it to being of the understanding kind and not simply because she was completely blank. "This is the symbol of a prominent clan from a destroyed village which had a strong alliance with Konoha. The alliance in itself came into being partly because the Senju and the prominent clan of the destroyed village, The Uzumaki, shared close blood ties. This caused Konoha to feature the Uzumaki spiral on their flak jackets, which symbolizes the rank of chūnin or higher for a ninja. So while other ninjas of Konoha wear this symbol to honor the memory of friendship between the two villages, I wear it because it's the symbol of my clan. Do you understand?"

The way she gnawed on her under lip indicated she did not. "So the Uzumaki moved to Konoha after their village was destroyed?"

"No. Most of them were slaughtered, and I have no idea what happened to the other clans in the village." I shrugged. "Guess they were scattered to the winds."

Horror replaced her cute confused little expression. "I see…" She started retreating and I smirked in amusement at her clear discomfort at being even near me after that little story. "Thank you."

Then she was gone to the other side of the room.

I supposed it was time to train my own sensitiveness.

A ninja in a green flak jacket, which showed of the same symbol I had just explained the meaning of, showed up before I could get further with my speculations. My brows started twitching soon after the obligatory name round and introduction, when he started rambling about our duty to the village and the honor in being a ninja.

We are nothing more than small soldiers in training who specializes in assassination, stop deluding young minds about the grandeur of our position.

I listened for about half a minute before I took out a scroll which contained paper and writing tools.

There were a hundred better ways to pass the time than listening to this meaningless drivel.

Before the day was over I had been hugged by several more courageous females while being avoided by the majority, getting petted more than should be allowed and called tomato a fair share of times after they grew tired of calling me fish cake. Those who held goodwill towards me dwindled to a small number after I had dealt with the offenders who had taken to the derogatory term of either tomato or fish cake.

Personally I though it fair to bind them to their chairs with seals, making it impossible for them to even talk. It both showed them how insignificant they were and made it impossible for them to interrupt me while I lectured them on their grave error of insulting me to my face. They were ninjas in training, so they could at least have been discrete about their dislike of me.

I thought it was a great speech.

"Since you obvious have never been taught any manners at home, it unfortunately seems to fall to me to teach you how you treat others with respect." I stood erect before them with my glorious height of one meter. "This does not only include females, but your fellow males as well, and if I hear or see any of you showing the same disrespect to anyone around you, I swear the consequences will be more severe than a simple timeout."

Every speech needed a dramatic pause, and I used to time to check that the teacher had not returned yet.

"Now, perhaps some of you think it will be easy to beat me as soon as you gain freedom of movement again. To those poor fools there's nothing really I can say." I shook my head and pulled forth the biggest knife I had on my person. "But I can show you this." With those words I stabbed myself in my arm, letting the steel stay in for a moment so the blood could begin to drip off it. "I'm not afraid of pain."

I yanked the knife out of my arm and pointed it at them with expressionless eyes. The offenders had stilled any attempt of escaping my bounds and the rest of my audience look enraptured on in silence with pale faces.

"And do not think, even if you get me, that I'll stay down." I held my arm forth and showed them the closing wound. It would hurt and be the cause of pain for some days, but hopefully it would discourage them from retaliating in order to mend their bruised egos.

I glimpsed tears in some of their eyes, and reconsidered what had driven me to doing this in front of an assembly of six year olds.

One of the girls started weeping.

Perhaps this was not one of my better ideas.

Author's note: I have not been able to find a clear age where students start at the academy, so I went with my own notion about it: normally children start somewhere around 6 to 7. With emphasize on normally, since it's not really war times, so children are allowed to be children for a longer time.