Three advantages.
I stand in the legacy of Uchiha Itachi. The night was quiet when he struck, and it remains so—keening and sour in its sepulchral silence.
Uchiha Obito was gone by now, no doubt in celebration after the solemn butchery of kin.
I walk down the red-soil street, the tang of blood hanging on my tongue, intent on the home of Uchiha Sasuke and the decaying vestige of his family.
I had never visited the Uchiha compound—I am no Uchiha, after all. Even so, I can point to every wrongness, things made distinct by absence.
It's as if I slipped down the rabbit hole, existing liminal in a place inhabited by sheer emptiness.
I find my destination by virtue of waning sobs. The door is left open.
Paranoia builds, ratcheting as a shiver crawls down my spine. I feel the gaze on me; the quiet accusation, the anger—fixed to a point and drilled into my back.
I turn, and the moon stares back.
I shut the door.
Fucking Uchiha.
Yes, I have three advantages.
I glide through the house, following ashen red trails, and fumble with my pouch's latch.
My magnum-opus—the cumulative sum of over four years of dedicated fūinjutsu study, compressed to a scroll—is three-fingers wide, and not yet twice long. Uncomfortable, but workable.
My first advantage: my mind.
I glance at the slumped form of Uchiha Sasuke, and scrunch my face as the sting of viscera invades my nose.
My gait is careful as I move towards the corpse of Uchiha Fugaku. His exploits are relatively unexplored in the context of the show, and for good reason—contrasted next to the true monsters, they aren't necessarily impressive.
That doesn't preclude the fact that he was considered for Fourth Hokage alongside the Yellow Flash himself—and everybody knew it.
To the citizens of the Leaf, he was a living legend in spite of the discrimination the Uchiha faced. That included my six-year-old war orphan self.
Now, my sandals are slick with his blood, the blood of his wife, and the blood of his extended kin.
My hands shake as I shuffle closer, my breath catches in my throat as if hooked. Bile roils in my stomach, and shadows twist, coil behind me.
My work—the scroll in my hands—unravels.
Indistinct scrawl, a painstaking fifteen-thousand hours condensed into a single work of fūinjutsu, is delicately rendered as inch after inch is revealed.
My miniaturised stasis seal.
Derived from what little I managed to scrounge, its significance lies not in efficacy, but in the creation itself.
From malformed mule seals, and thieved instructional manuals. To what precious little I could glean in secrecy, crafted into disparate pieces and distilled into something surpassing the efforts of dedicated novices.
Horribly inefficient, but functional.
Uchiha Fugaku, candidate Hokage, S-class ninja, corpse, disappears with naught sound nor sight, tucked safely and eternally inside my work.
One breath, two.
I place the scroll in my mouth, and after a horrid second of hesitation, swallow.
Like ink, parchment, and snakes it slides into my stomach with marginal assistance from my chakra.
The standard diagnostic jutsu should be unable to detect it—whatever miniscule contusions slipped by would be healed within minutes, and I was quite thorough in my assurance of intestinal-friendliness.
Besides, I can always play the fool and have it blamed on Itachi. He does have an inclination towards oesophagus storage methods, after all.
My second advantage: age.
I scramble towards Sasuke after setting things crooked, intent on leaving appropriate evidence of mania. Genocide is not an everyday sight for children—in the Leaf, at least.
It takes a few more minutes, but the ANBU eventually appear. A conveniently inconvenient response time.
They find me curled next to Sasuke, tears and snot dried to my face. We're taken side-by-side to the hospital, and my story remains consistent: a lost child who wandered too far, drawn towards the screams of Sasuke who I found alone and quite comatose.
It was just poor luck that allowed me to slip by, the assigned ANBU patrols suffering scheduling and logistical issues that night; problems no doubt perpetrated by the nefarious machinations of Uchiha Itachi, cursed be his name.
The doctors and nurses and not-interrogations pass in a blur.
I'm written off as one of many smaller tragedies resulting of the Massacre; an unwitting but lucky victim of Uchiha Itachi's barbarism.
Uchiha Fugaku's missing body is not commented nor asked upon.
I'm discharged not two days later, and, after a quick conversation with our Lord Hokage, given leave to write an application to the Academy, two years early.
I was automatically slated to join anyways given orphan status, but I'm a proactive person and the Hokage praised my initiative besides.
Besides, who knows what a traumatised child would get up to unattended? Not me, certainly.
Academy legislature codified rules regarding early entrance and graduation not long after.
These changes weren't made retroactively—it wouldn't do to alienate your future soldiers by kicking them out, after all, even ignoring the additional bureaucracy—so my timing was made auspicious. Joining Naruto's graduating class was a mere coincidence.
Regardless, my third advantage is that I know the future.
Like I said. Coincidence.
If Fugaku didn't have the Mangekyō before, I was near certain the wholesale slaughter of his family at the hands of his son would do the trick.
Presumptuous? Maybe. Canon was extraordinarily inconsistent, and the Uchiha were a particularly egregious example, so I have no way of knowing until I become the Leaf's most renowned optometrist.
The path to power is a strange one indeed.
Magic eyeballs and the medical presence needed to use them is a long ways away however, and I'm in the present.
I examine the seals beneath me with a critical gaze.
Fanfiction would have you believe that fūinjutsu is the be-all end-all of jutsu, the interface required for editing reality's source code.
Frankly, it's a load of bullshit. It does what it says on the tin; that's it. Sealing stuff.
Well, that's not entirely accurate—fūinjutsu can still do some pretty crazy stuff. Now that I've gotten a good look at it, I'm pretty sure that Minato wasn't even considered that good at it—by true masters of the art, at least. Flying Thunder God is a sort of amalgamation of space-time jutsu and jutsu shiki, so that doesn't count.
Ignoring barrier jutsu, we only see him perform the Eight Trigrams Seal and the Reaper Death Seal. Fūinjutsu is left rather vague, so we don't exactly know how complex they are other than 'hard'.
Though, Orochimaru didn't recognize the Reaper Death Seal when it was cast, but that only qualifies it as absurdly obscure.
I'm actually sixty-forty on whether the Reaper Death Seal summons a Shinigami. Personally, I'm of the opinion that it's an advanced, interconnected cyber cloud-equivalent created by the Uzumaki, and supplemented by other chakra bullshit.
But you never really know. Maybe I could apply similar concepts to recreate the Flying Thunder God? Seal myself one place, unseal it another?
More esoteric applications can have you sealing concepts. Granted, I have zero fucking clue how I'll get there or how it works in the first place, but still.
One of the tamer examples I've seen referenced is a seal designed to extract heat from an object, which I'm damn near sure functions by sapping kinetic energy away from constituent atoms.
Which, to my modern sensibilities, is pretty fucking wild. Atomic manipulation as an intermediary benchmark.
I'm not close to something like that, unfortunately. What I can do is create over-complicated weights.
As previously stated: fanfiction has no goddamn clue how seals really function. Resistance seals? Maybe if I was an expert, I could create a heat-seal on a macroscale to seal away kinetic energy from my limbs. Induce a larger energy requirement for the same result. Which, now that I think about it, is just a shitty restraint seal.
If I was even better, I'd be able to seal the concept of gravity and constantly apply it counter to my movements, even if it would be a complete waste of such an incredible seal.
As it is, I'm an amateur, and have to make do with amateur means.
So, the question is: how do you make a resistance seal if you suck at seals? Well, you don't create a new seal, you just mutilate an existing one so badly it loses nearly all of its original functionality.
A mule seal functions by sealing objects in a pocket dimension. Near every seal is derived from that—my stasis seal works by disconnecting time flow inside to the nth degree. A simple difference, but impossibly more complicated.
I nod; everything looks to be working in precisely the wrong way. The pile of rocks, composed of the heaviest I could find, disappears with a neat puff of smoke.
Just like that, I can no longer move the seal.
You see, if you dissect the seal in just the right way, cutting out just the right things, the pocket dimension within intersects with true reality with just the right abuse of physics.
The seal loses the property which allows it independence from the pocket dimension inside, and the pocket dimension is subsequently superimposed over reality in a controlled manner.
Succinctly, it's no longer weightless.
Yes, I could just buy Shinobi weights designed for this sort of training, but fuck that. I've done everything else myself, I can do this, too.
Haphazard and dangerous experimentation is how we got the original explosive tags in the first place. Some motherfuckers just really wanted to find out what happened if you put explosions in stasis seals.
As it turned out, you got glory and a good sense of timing.
Those that didn't, didn't last long.
I'm also broke and I can't afford them, but I prefer the perspective that I'm an innovator unconfined by superfluous things like support networks.
So, I unseal the right amount of rocks for each of the four seals, and heave them into their places around my wrists and ankles.
Not that it's going to be doing much yet; even in this planet of logic-defying, head-scratching, shōnen-character strangeness, I still have the body of a six-year-old—weight training was both wildly ineffective and dangerous in my previous world, especially if you were still growing.
Chakra doesn't exactly stimulate maturation—at least, regarding brain development and puberty. It acts more similarly to an enhancement drug than anything—it's partially why Shinobi children have such a massive advantage over civilian born ones.
You know, ignoring genetic factors and specialised training.
Constant exposure at an early age enhances intelligence by a significant margin—a standard deviation of over twenty points, in fact. I.Q. tests in this world reflect this; instead of one, modular test designed for pre-pubescents, Shinobi children undergo a test a metric more difficult because the true prodigies could not be measured.
Additionally, it primes muscle development by mimicking growth hormones like testosterone—for those of a certain age, at least.
Despite the functionally magical nature of chakra, I've discovered that whatever safety features are present—designed to diminish malfunctions in the pituitary gland, and otherwise preventing early onsets of puberty—are… not gone, but severely reduced in children younger than nine—they're just too undeveloped.
That's not to say they're unable to use chakra, just that my desires of crushing jōnin with pure, physical might will remain unsatisfied until I age.
That's why peacetime Academy enrolment age is standardised across the Nations. At eight, civilian children are developed enough to comprehend basic theory, and introduction to their chakra would accelerate their intellectual trajectory to be of similar—if lesser—intelligence than their Shinobi-descended peers.
My syllabus corroborates this, as the bulk of foundational theory is taught during the first and second years, while physical conditioning, application of said theory, and advanced academia is postponed until the latter half of the second year.
It somehow makes the deployment of children during wartime even more depressing, considering they're literally unable to perform one of the three schools of jutsu to a sufficient degree.
Sure, they can still use chakra to enhance their muscles, but the efficacy of it is dependent entirely on what's already there. And chakra control, I guess, but it's not like five-year-olds are in any way comparable to veterans with decades worth of training.
Regardless, Rock Lee won't have shit on me.
Despite the years of preparation, I still only barely managed to grave rob the Uchiha (time-honoured tradition it is). By some two weeks, in fact; I had no idea of the timeline beyond Sasuke's age of eight, so shit got pretty hectic at the end.
But now, finally, I can work on projects with immediate benefits—rather, lay the foundations for them.
Things like chakra control; the intermediary step for iryōjutsu and senjutsu both.
Things like the Rasengan, one of the best control exercises in and of itself.
Things like elemental manipulation, one of few things every great Shinobi learns—even if I'm not inclined to wind.
My chakra reserves are already considerable; a result of their training being a primarily passive process. Outside of Naruto, I doubt there's a child with greater capacities in the village—I have more than most chūnin.
My Yin half is particularly potent, given the whole fūinjutsu mad-rush and the previous life of experience.
Even my Yang component is powerful, though out of sheer luck and generous genetics than anything else—my exercise regimen was stagnant purely because I couldn't afford to dedicate further effort, nor was it going to accomplish anything other than keep me in optimal condition.
Thus, four years.
Four years to abuse every bit of meta-knowledge inside my head to become as powerful as possible.
Four years until graduation, until I've access and opportunity to truly begin my growth, after I've (hopefully) managed to surpass near every jōnin in the village.
I'm careful to unseal my rocks before I head to bed. Tomorrow is a big day, after all, and it wouldn't do to break my toes.
Seals are great, but they're not the path to godhood.
If Naruto was treated like a walking time-bomb, Sasuke was treated like a walking time-bomb in the shape of a wounded puppy.
A bit of an oxymoron, I know, but I have no better way of describing it.
If I didn't know any better, I wouldn't want to get close to him either. Yeah, he's an eight-year-old that lost his whole family in the worst way possible, but he's also the traumatised little brother of a psychopath, from a family of psychopaths, also training to be a killer—you get more stable results from a lit match and room full of propane and dynamite.
You can pity him, but don't get too close. He might bite. And then explode.
More than once.
Otherwise, he was within expectations. Sombre, kept to himself, and gave me a few odd looks. It hit me harder than I expected, given the knowledge that it was something I could've probably prevented.
But I resigned myself to let it happen, to further my selfish aspirations of borderline megalomania. It was strange; I didn't feel this way as I meandered through bloodied streets, past families I condemned.
I was excited, not terrified, more than anything—to finally begin my journey to greatness.
Now, as I watch Sasuke leave, his stride distant and lost, the consequences feel real, more coloured even as he looks grey. There's nothing to distract me from it.
We never saw this Sasuke, fresh from his losses, unsteeled by ambition—just a child hurt and alone, his mask yet to be forged.
Before, I was simply intervening in a play that had already concluded—repurposing props that would otherwise gather dust in Danzō's basement. Callous, but I could justify it as a forgone conclusion.
Even now, my guilt feels artificial. Reflexive. Like my brain is reading off a script, not for any profound realisation, but because that's what I'm supposed to do. That's what comes next, after what I did, what I didn't do.
I can't take solace in the fact I'm not a complete psychopath, but maybe I can take solace that this was a sacrifice to prevent further tragedy. Things I can fix if—when—I go home, even if it's not my problem. Even if it's born from a sense of 'why not?' rather than duty.
Speaking of…
I turn my head to Naruto and—yep, there's the swing.
There were few things that stood out overall—two, specifically. Orientation in any context is rarely exciting, and, apparently, that includes learning to be a super powered ninja.
A four year curriculum, where I would graduate with the rest of the class at ten compared to their twelve. We were herded like sheep and toured around campus—our instructors focused on all the cool things we would be learning.
Which entirely consisted of the training grounds, to be honest—one of the interesting subjects.
I was of half a mind that this was something of a rooting process—that the unfound talents of this generation would reverse-engineer the jutsu and chakra control methods demonstrated by our peers, and gleefully boast once successful.
It's what I was going to do, after all. I had learned damn near every Academy jutsu the weeks before, and was working on getting the Three to one sign.
It was somewhat aggravating that I'd be completely reliant on technical skill for taijutsu, but if Itachi and Minato could do it, so could I. It wasn't necessarily uncommon for precocious kids to enrol early, so it was expected that time spent on physical exercise would instead be focused towards other efforts.
Like befriending Naruto.
It wasn't an altruistic desire, I'll admit. I may have had everything I needed to eventually curbstomp Kaguya, if I even let it get to that point, but having the literal Chosen One watching your back was good insurance.
It wasn't like helping out a cute kid was an issue, either. It's a little bit manipulative, sure, but we both get what we want.
Naruto gets his first friend; I get plot armour. Win-win.
Naturally, I was keeping an eye out for the tyke. Of course, this is the second interesting subject.
"You're Naruto, right?"
Surprisingly, people from this world don't look like horribly deformed three-dimensional caricatures—the people I've seen so far, at least, have yet to enter Uncanny Valley territory.
In fact, there's a sort of… distinctiveness? When I saw the Third, I knew it was him. Just as recognisable as he was in a drawn format, even ignoring the Hokage robes.
Sasuke, Fugaku, Mikoto—just as I saw them for who they were, I even recognised familial resemblance beyond the pale skin and black hair and general Uchiha-ness.
I only found Naruto because of the whisker marks, because that is not Naruto.
It was difficult not to immediately scream when I had this realisation. My 'plan' was simple by design—I'm a firm believer in comprehensible solutions, and necessity inspires ingenuity; the best of both worlds, as it were.
My 'plan' suddenly became much less practical when I found that it's based on wrong information. So, I did what I did best, and plastered a smile on my face as my hopes crumbled around me.
"Huh? Who're you?" She blinked.
Because I was in one of those worlds.
I dropped to the ground next to her. She peered over at me, grey-violet eyes meeting my own without a hint of reticence—I was mildly impressed, despite myself.
Kishimoto created a wonderful world, though he fell into—rather, proliferated—basic shōnen trappings.
Uzumaki Naruto, through the lens of overly-pretentious character analysis, was and remained a completely broken person.
The narrative didn't treat him like that, to the contrary, in fact, but how many sane, rational people construct their identity with the sole purpose of pleasing others?
Don't answer that.
Though they may be surprisingly good liars, children aren't subtle creatures. At all. And that goes doubly for Uzumaki Naruto. I'm looking at the result of a lifetime of emotional abuse and neglect, and now that someone is talking to her, it's like it never happened.
The only demonstrably obvious trait that could be directly tied to Naruto's abuse was a near obsessive desire for attention. Deeper, uglier responses reared their heads once he did get attached to someone—I doubt I need to specify—but my point is that such pervasive trauma rarely presents itself in such an… insidious manner.
Now, I get to directly observe Naruto when his—her, I suppose—actions aren't dictated or contrived by outside interference.
Maybe. I'm still a bit iffy on the gods thing.
I pull at the grass beneath me, giving her an idle look.
"Kamizuki Haruki."
"That's a pretty cool name, Haruki! Almost as cool as mine, -ttebayo!" She leans forward, eyes crinkled, flashing shiny teeth, and my hands dig into the dirt.
Good Lord that smile.
Like puppies and rainbows and gumdrops. The manga is really starting to make sense—I feel like an asshole already and all I've done was give her my name.
Fortunately, I have a plan.
"Friends?" My voice is a small thing, and I stay unflinching even as I meet the sun.
Her breath stills, and that smile, sunny and hopeful, freezes—it doesn't move so much as change, a brittle rictus, a parody, and for a small moment, a snapshot in time, her eyes bray, and beyond that shattered veil, something deep, something fundamental and crux, is missing.
Perhaps—I realise distantly—I was wrong, that there was more to Uzumaki Naruto than I ever knew.
Perhaps Kurama is not the one I need be afraid of.
I want to laugh. How can a single word, limned to a hopeful question, banish all askance? Cultivate a bond she'd fight old legends and dead gods to protect?
I'd offered the one thing she truly, desperately needed—the one thing she'd learned to never hope for.
I don't know if I can help her, if it's even possible, but I'd hope I can keep whatever that was where it belongs—somewhere it can never see day.
"Hehe, I'd love to be friends!"
"Fun day, brat?" I look up, annoyed at the interruption.
I was supposed to be working on getting the Clone Jutsu to one seal, but, I'll be honest, it was boring.
Layers of parchment were sprawled below me—in English, of course—in an attempt to reverse-engineer Shadow Clones to no success.
Honestly, the jutsu shouldn't work.
I theorised that the memory retention mechanism was a result of information 'imprinting' on the chakra make-up, then piggybacking on the integrant energy as it returns after dispersion. It feels sound—chakra is an incredibly adaptive and versatile energy.
The thing is—it should be impossible. Seriously, I have no idea how Tobirama did it. Chakra doesn't just… come back after you execute jutsu. It should diffuse into the wider environment; likely turning into Nature Energy in some obscure method.
I know Itachi managed to use it when he was around my age but I'd laugh in your face if you told me it wasn't because of his Sharingan; I don't care how smart he is.
Trial-and-error won't work here—the Shadow Clone Jutsu is much too dangerous. The exorbitant chakra cost, messing with brain processes—hell, from the looks of things, it's almost like it was inspired from senjutsu: Tobirama saw his brother beat the shit out of Madara and thought to himself "Yeah, I need some of that."
I blink. Oh.
Really, it's almost like training wheels for senjutsu; gathering chakra from the atmosphere, except, instead of volatile Nature Energy, it's your own, expended chakra—compressed into a shell, highlighted against the otherwise invisible backdrop of the world.
Essentially, teaching you how to distinguish external chakra, and pull it into you, substituting Natural Energy for your own chakra. Still exceedingly dangerous without proper instruction, but doable for the average Shinobi.
It's incredible—Tobirama wanted something to train senjutsu, so he created one of the most potent ninjutsu in the world. And created three more.
The more I think about it, the more sensible it is.
Naruto's unnatural predilection towards senjutsu? The principles are fundamentally similar, and he's been abusing Shadow Clones his whole career. Of course he'd be familiar.
The clones that Naruto used in the battle against Pain? Of course that works, it's the natural progression of the jutsu.
Okay—I have the theory behind it.
I slam my head on the table, groaning. It doesn't solve the issue of getting my chakra back to me.
I feel some hesitant pats on the back of my head.
"Don't act so disappointed to see me."
It's nice.
"Yeah. Sorry, Uncle Izumo," I say, my voice muffled from my arms, "what'd you say again?"
He snorts.
"Kotetsu's convinced you're some kind of genius. You're just an idiot."
I move my head, one eye finding his own with suspicion.
"I just don't have time to think about stupid stuff like you do."
He swats my head. I ignore him, cackling.
"Show me some respect. I work all day, protecting the Leaf—"
"—by bullying children in the Chūnin exams?" I ask, eyebrow raised. He waves a hand at me.
"Psh, they're anything but. When I passed the exams, Itachi—"
His mouth pauses, before closing. There's an unsurety in the air, palpable and foul, any levity devoured in an instant.
He shuffles closer in an awkward sort of movement, and I'm again reminded that he's a twenty-year-old kid trying his best.
"I was asking how your day was. You're weird, y'know? I don't think I've seen a kid so unexcited on their first day," he says, tone soft. He rubs the crook of neck, the action more contrived than anything comforting.
"We won't learn much until next year."
There's a silence between us. He releases a sigh, after a moment, and pulls his hand away.
"Well… I'll fix you some dinner. Let me know if you need anything."
Resentment is an easy thing to nourish—more fire than a sapling. A spark, meagre kindle, and nothing more. It's slow, though—you don't notice it flare, as your tending grows deeper and deeper into compulsion.
You don't notice until it roars, until embers choke you and burn your lungs, until what once was huddled close for warmth, swathes you—warding friend and enemy both, burning home and forest with equal zeal.
It's what got me killed the first time around.
"I will. Thanks, Uncle. I love you."
Izumo pauses at the door frame. Every bit of superfluous movement is absent—his blinking regular, his breathing soft. I recognize it in flustered Shinobi when they overcompensate for emotional responses.
"...of course," he says, sliding it closed with a soft click.
I have no intention of repeating my mistakes, even if it's not the truth.
Why, yes, this story does have yandere elements. How could you tell?
This is my first public work, though I don't think it has that usual polish of the stuff still sitting unloved and wanting in Google Docs. It's more of an experiment for when I just… write, without really thinking about it.
Obviously, this means I'm immune to criticism, so you definitely shouldn't give me feedback.
Mangekyō:
Furukotofumi - Record of Ancient Matters
Fugaku's Mangekyō ability. The name is derived from the Kojiki, the Shinto Bible equivalent, following Kishimoto's nomenclature of Mangekyō abilities and Shinto divinity.
Hints: it isn't technically time based, and is inspired from a Worm character.
I tend not to underestimate armchair detectives, but if y'all figure it out, I'd be pretty impressed.
Fun fact for the chapter: the Shadow Clone Jutsu isn't a kinjutsu. That distinction goes to the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu.