Orphanage-
In the most famous building of Konoha, Hiruzen Sarutobi sat in his chair, smoking with a pipe, and stared out of the window, at the face of the Fouth on the Hokage Mountain. This was exactly a year after the Kyuubi attacked the village. Konoha lost the most ninjas in the Third Great War since they fought every village, and the death of the Fourth alongside many ninjas was like salt in the wound. Now, Konoha was highly dependent on him and the ninjas who were there. Even the orphanages were overburdened and he had to build a few more wings to accommodate the orphans after the attack.
He now looked around to see the stacks of paperwork yet to be completed and sighed. This will be a long day.
A few hours later, in one of those orphanages, Ken Tadao, a five-year-old orphan, woke up screaming and promptly fainted.
He was sent to the medical wing, where he woke up a few hours later, thinking 'I should not have drunk much, now I have this damned hangover. And where the hell am I? Is this a hospital? Why is my body small? Did I travel through time? '
Just as he was thinking all this, the orphanage's caretaker came to see him awake. She asked " Ken, are you alright now? What happened? Why did you scream out loud? You are usually quite quiet."Ken saw her, and thought " I recognize her, but how? And why is my memory all jumbled up? I need to really sort this shit". With that, he feigned unconsciousness again.
After five whole hours, he managed to get track of all his memories ' So some accursed godly entity decided that the best course of action was to throw a grown man who is an avid fan of Naruto, into the Narutoverse and see what shit will happen? This is bullshit. After all, I did not even die to travel through dimensions. But that is not the point of worry. The real problem is that I entered a world filled with cunning and scheming ninjas and pedophiles, and I am in a GOD DAMN CIVILIAN of all people!'
Finally, he stopped his rant and began to formulate his plans ' Okay, I am older than Naruto's generation by four years, which means I have more time to train. So the Uchiha massacre is after 7 years, the Sand and Sound invasion after 12 years, and Pain's attack and the Fourth war is after 16 years. A lot of time to prepare. So, from now on I will be known as Ken Tadao, gotta remember that.' At that moment, he felt that something was coursing through his veins. 'Alright, pretty sure that's chakra. At least I have it unlocked. Now, I have to start training. Now, with his thoughts sorted, he woke up.
/
After getting up, he could see that it was already evening. The watch showed that it was 6:30 p.m. He also noticed that he was incredibly hungry. He thought, 'I haven't eaten anything all day, no wonder I'm so hungry. I need to grab something to eat. I also need to act like a kid. I hope no one notices anything suspicious' He walked to the door and heard a couple of noises outside. On opening it, he saw 2 kids playing with each other. He recalled that their names were Shirai Yoichi and Shoda Mitsuo. Both were good friends with Ken and also shared the room. Shirai had lost his parents in the Third War, whereas Shoda had lost his due to a mugging. Looking at Ken, their faces showed concern and quickly ran to him. Shoda asked, "Ken, what happened, are you fine now?" Nodding his head, Ken confirmed, "Yeah, I'm fine now. Sorry about that. Had a terrible headache." Shirai said, "Oh, that's a relief. We were worried about you." Right at that moment, a growling sound was heard, and all 3 kids looked toward Ken's stomach. Ken looked embarrassed and said while rubbing the back of his head, "Guess I'm very hungry" and Shirai remarked, "Figures, you've been sleeping all day". Shoda then put his arm around Ken and said, "Well let's go to the mess and see if there's anything there
All three kids started to make their way to the mess. On the way, quite a few kids gave Ken a curious look. A couple of them also asked how he is doing now. Ken analyzed, 'I guess they all heard about me screaming and falling unconscious'. Ken recalled from his memories that there were over 250 orphans in this orphanage. Ken wondered 'I wonder if Naruto is in this orphanage too'. On reaching the mess, we saw the caretaker. Her name was Chiba. She was a middle-aged woman, and also very friendly. Upon seeing Ken she quickly approached him and inquired about his health. Upon hearing that he was all right, she felt relieved. She informed Ken, "We were very worried about you. We called a doctor to check on you. But he didn't understand what was wrong with you, I'm glad you are fine, but you still have to get checked up once again." Ken nodded and replied, "Thank You. But right now I am very hungry, is there anything I could eat?" She nodded, and replied, "Yes, the dinner has been prepared. Though there's still some time for dinner to be arranged for everyone, I'll arrange the food for you". Then Chiba prepared a plate for Ken, while Shoda and Shirai went away to play. Ken started to eat thinking, "The food's okay. Not very tasty, but it's alright considering that it is an orphanage. It seems that we are given 3 meals here - morning breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Also, lots of fruits are available to eat. Sadly meat isn't provided here. Still, the nutrition provided here should be all right. So I could probably get some training done without having to worry about food. Anyways, I should fill myself up". After finishing the food, Ken retired to his room.
Falling back into his bed he started thinking, 'Well what a day. Though it's rather tough to act as a kid, luckily no one noticed any difference in me. It's good that there aren't ninjas in the orphanage. Guess I need to think about what to do now. Now that I'm here, I don't wanna be a no-name cannon fodder. And my knowledge about future events also gives me a great edge. So how exactly should I proceed forward?'. With that Ken started to think about all the possibilities for him and what he should do.
Upon analyzing for half an hour, he finally came to the conclusion, 'Alright, though I know the future events, without having enough power, all that knowledge is worthless. Not to mention, there's no guarantee that things will progress exactly as they did in the manga. It had too many plotholes anyway. And providing someone else with this information is a strict no. They'll just throw me to the T&I department or in an even worse case to Danzo! It will also change all future events depriving me of my advantage. So I suppose planning for future events can be left to the future and will depend on how much power I have then. Right now the main focus should be on improving my power. So how to go about it… Well, for now, normal jutsus are out of the question. Normal civilians don't get access to jutsus, so jutsus could only be taken from the academy. And I can only attempt to join the ninja academy next year. Even though I know about many jutsus and know what they can do, I don't really remember the hand signs for them. The only jutsu whose hand signs I remember is the shadow clone technique. Sadly it's a Jounin-level technique and dangerous enough to be classified as forbidden. Not to mention, knowing those hand signs itself won't be enough. I guess the hand signs made the chakra move in a particular manner or display some properties that allow that jutsus to be completed. Until I gain that knowledge, attempting hand signs would be rather pointless. That said, I could try jutsus and training that don't require hand signs. Rasengan, training for elements and chakra control can be trained. Since I have unlocked my chakra, chakra control exercises would be crucial to do. The only issue is that I don't want anyone else to watch me doing them.
I guess I can try to do Leaf concentration over the next year. Tree climbing could attract a lot of attention. And with a village full of ninjas, it's impossible to ensure full privacy. Luckily, the first and second stages of Rasengan training can be done in privacy, and so can the first stage of elemental training. Apart from that, I should try to improve my body. Heck, this is probably the most critical. While my physical condition isn't bad, It's not very good either. So I should start with light exercise to build up stamina and power. I wonder if I could do something similar to MMA training, and it would be incredibly helpful if I could catch Guy's attention. Oh well, let's see what happens tomorrow. Hopefully, at least this headache will be gone by tomorrow.' With that, Ken finally went back to sleep.
/
The next day, Ken woke up to see that it was 6 a.m. and all of the orphans were asleep. He thought ' I was asleep most of the day, so I woke up this early. Gotta make it a habit if I am to become better though'
He explored the orphanage grounds and saw that there was a small forest 100 m away that could be used for some training. He ran to the forest and did some stretches to loosen up his muscles, and then started his run around the forest. He managed to run 3 kilometers on his first try. He did a few pushups, pullups, situps, crunches, rolls, and Russian twists, and ended the session with meditation. Now he practiced the leaf concentration exercise and continued to stick it to his head until he ran out of chakra. Now he headed back, thinking ' I can feel that my chakra has been exhausted. Does it grow like a muscle or does it naturally grow?' He headed back to have some well-needed rest and also to get some food.
Ken continued this routine for a month, and after that, he started to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to have a daily run around Konoha instead of running rounds in the forest. Now he would run around Konoha, head to the forest, and do 50 pushups, pullups, situps, crunches, and 25 Russian twists. He would also maintain a plank for 5 minutes.
/
Over the next 6 months, Ken followed the same routine. His physical fitness, concentration, and chakra control steadily growing. He also noticed that it also resulted in a significant increase in his chakra reserves. Sadly with nothing to compare, he had no idea how good or bad his chakra reserves were.
When it came to wind nature training, it took him 3 and half months to successfully cut one leaf, and only after 6 months of nature training, he was finally able to successfully c the leaf in one go without any issues. While it did take very long, it was understandable due to quite a few factors like Ken just having unlocked his chakra, with him not having any shadow clones to assist or a great teacher to guide him. As he couldn't cut off a waterfall to complete the next stage, he just tried cutting tougher materials to improve wind nature further. He replaced the leaf, with a small piece of wooden twig and then a branch which were lying around.
One lucky instance happened in the 5th month he was in this ninja world. An old couple visited the orphanage and distributed a lot of water balloons in the orphanage. Such instances used to happen frequently, Ken guessed that they probably were people who lost their children in either the war or the Kyuubi attack. But this time it was very beneficial for him. Since he was an orphan and didn't have any access to money, it meant that he couldn't go to the market to buy water balloons to begin rasengan's training. H took the opportunity to get a few water balloons and hid a few. With access to water balloons, he finally began stage 1 of the Rasengan training. While chakra shape manipulation was tough, recalling the way Naruto popped the balloon, Fuji was able to replicate the way to manipulate his chakra to apply pressure everywhere in just a couple of days. However, he wasn't able to pop the balloon. He thought, 'I guess my chakra reserves are too low. I should be able to pop it if I can use more chakra. Oh well, no point in worrying about it right now. But it's probably a good idea to keep practicing this as it'll help improve my skill at shape manipulation.'
A couple of months later, Ken became 6 years old and eligible to attempt entering the ninja academy. The entrance exam for the same was still 2 months away. Upon inquiring further about the entrance exam and its contents, he understood that the entrance exam was rather standard. It was mostly centered around the physical fitness of the candidates and they inspected their chakra to decide whether the candidate has the potential to be a ninja or not. Ken was rather confident in clearing both, so he wasn't much worried.
He just continued his usual routine, though he added throwing wooden shurikens to his training routine. In the afternoons, he started to go into the mini-forest, he marked tree stems and tried to hit them accurately with wooden shurikens. This was done in case they added shuriken throwing to the entrance exam. Sadly the orphanage didn't have any shurikens to borrow, and being an orphan meant that Ken had no money to buy them. So the wooden shurikens were made from small branches of trees in the forest by using wind nature to cut them. The carving of wooden shurikens also helped to increase Chakra control while using wind nature. Still, the shurikens weren't perfect, but that was the only option he had for now.