"Shinto!"

"Ah!" I bolted up from the improvised notebook pillow on my desk, looking up at my teacher with a bright, innocent smile. "…I mean, yes, Suzuki-sensei? What can I do for you?" The woman was glaring down at me, her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned over my desk and bore down on me with her presence.

"I seem to recall telling you sleep is important, Shinto."

"Yes you did, Suzuki-sensei. That is why I was sleeping right now. Because sleep is important." I said too quickly for my common sense to stop me. I'd stayed up all night reading tree walking and water walking books. I wasn't all there mentally right now. If my reason was intact, I probably wouldn't have so brazenly signed my death warrant.

Sensei smiled serenely at me as she leaned down close, the murderous feel in the air at odds with the bright smile on her face. "You're right, Shinto. Sleep is important. If you have trouble getting to sleep at night, I'll make sure you have no issues after today. What do you say to your kindhearted sensei?"

"Um… I'm sorry?" I tried.

Sensei laid a hand on my desk; the wood cracked under her palm. "Nope. Try again."

"Thank…you?" I said, leaning as far away from her as I could.

"That's much better!" Sensei proclaimed, clapping her hands together happily. "Now class? Let's all go outside. We're all going to run fifty laps around the school grounds for conditioning. If anyone finishes faster than Shinto, then Shinto has to go around an additional time."

I winced and smiled weakly at the death glares my classmates were shooting me. They didn't want to run anymore than I did, and they all seemed to blame me for their misfortune.

"I'm sorry, students. Was I not clear? GET MOVING!" Sensei roared.

Everyone exploded out of their seats and scrambled for the door. Someone tripped me as I tried to get to the front. There were too many bodies for me to see who had done it, but they'd accomplished their goal of making me start slower.

An Uchiha kid beat me in the first lap. Then a Hyuga. Then an Inuzuka. After that, I realized the students were working together, alternating who would sprint ahead and beat me while giving each other time to rest. When all was said and done, I ended up having to run one-hundred laps. Some of the jerks in my class ran extra laps after they were done just to make me run more. By the end of it, I was sticky with sweat and felt like my lungs were going to burst.

"Sooo…" Sensei drawled with a cruel smile on her face as I collapsed in front of the school. The rest of my classmates had already gone home. "Are you going to sleep tonight, Shinto?"

It was far too difficult to turn my head to look up at her. I took several deep breaths to get my wind back before speaking. "If I get a friend to obscure my sleeping like Ido does, can I sleep in class? I'm so far ahead that paying attention is pointless. I know everything you're teaching. It would be more beneficial for me to study on my own during the night and sleep during class times."

Sensei's face fell into her palm. "Shinto, you are a ginormous pain in my ass, you know that?" She sat down on the ground in front of me and picked me up by my shoulders so I was sitting across from her. "Shinto, Ido gets to sleep during class because he knows everything, trains on his own, and takes care of himself." She stressed the last part. "You have yet to get a single question wrong, train more than most chunin do and do not take care of yourself. Kid, you're young. Your body is still developing. I get that you want to get further ahead, but if you keep pushing yourself like this you're going to really screw yourself up. I don't care how efficient you think it'd be otherwise, you will sleep during the night. When you show up for class, feel free to bring outside books and completely tune me out to study on your own if you want, but if you come into my class so tired you can't keep your eyes open, we'll do this again. And again. As many times as it takes to sink in."

Well now I felt like I'd kicked a puppy. I thought she was just irritated I wasn't paying attention to her, not that she had justifiable concerns for my continued physical development. The worst part was, I couldn't really argue with her. She was right. If I made sleepless nights a common thing, I'd have physical problems later in life.

I sighed, mentally revamping my entire schedule to work in seven hours of sleep during the night. That would still give me enough time to work on my chakra control techniques and work with Aika at the Nara library.

"Okay, Suzuki-sensei."

Sensei smirked and patted me on the head. "Good. Now go home. I don't get paid overtime to watch you after school." She hopped to her feet and strode away from the school, pulling her flask out of her jacket and taking a swig as she went.

I groaned as my muscles screamed at me. I forced myself to my feet and began slowly walking home. I really needed to do more conditioning training. The list of things I wanted to work on just kept getting longer.

I limped to the front of the school and was surprised to find someone there waiting for me.

"If you are too tired to tutor me today I would be content to wait for tomorrow." Misaki said, taking in my disheveled appearance and pained grimace.

I shook my head. "No. I can still tutor you today. Once I sit down I'll be able to focus. Come on." She fell into step beside me silently and we walked back to the Nara compound together.

It took longer than normal to make it to the compound with my sore muscles, but we arrived all the same.

"Hey, troublesome." One of the guards greeted me, his head laying on the table of the guard post in front of him as his eyes lazily tracked to Misaki. People around the compound had taken to calling me 'troublesome'. It was a recent thing. While I didn't know exactly how it started, I was blaming Shikaku. "This the girl you're tutoring?"

"Yes." I confirmed.

"Neat." he closed his eyes and shifted around to get more comfortable. "Introduce her to the deer so they don't think she's an invader then go home."

I shook my head at the lax ninja that could probably turn me to paste with his pinky as I led Misaki through the gate.

"I get to meet the Nara deer?" Misaki asked, a trace of excitement in her tone.

I smiled at her and said, "Yep. I need to show them that you're a friend or they might act rashly."

The Nara Clan Forest hosted a large population of special deer. Unlike the usual game hunted outside the city, the deer in the Nara forest were more akin to the creatures summoned with the highly coveted summon contracts. I hadn't spent a large amount of time around them, so I didn't know if they could use chakra or could talk, but the few interactions I had with them led me to believe they were highly intelligent. I was introducing Misaki to them so they wouldn't attack her. While they didn't often tread into the living quarters of the compound, it was known to happen on occasion, and the deer were quick to attack anyone that wasn't a Nara, perceiving them as threats.

I noticed the veins at the corners of Misaki's eyes bulge as we walked into a small grove in the Nara compound. I didn't know she was already able to use her byakugan. Was learning to use it so young common among the Hyuga? I'd assumed it was like the Uchiha's Sharingan in that they had to unlock it. I could ask Misaki later.

Misaki gasped as her enhanced vision saw something hidden to my mortal eyes. I assumed she'd spotted the deer I came to introduce her to.

Sure enough, just a minute later a trio of deer approached us through the trees. While the majority of the deer resided in the Nara Clan Forest, a fair number of them hung around the outskirts of the compound or in this grove to be near us. My dad had explained it to me as them enjoying our presence. I took that to mean, 'shut up and stop asking questions I don't know the answer to and making me look bad in front of your mother.' Maybe I'd ask Aika later tonight.

"Hello, deer-san," I greeted, bowing my head. Misaki immediately copied my movements. "This is my friend Misaki. She will be coming to my house regularly. I wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think she was intruding."

"Deer-san." Misaki greeted, her head still bowed, not that that meant much with her byakugan active. Damn cheating hax eyes.

One of the deer slowly walked forward. Misaki froze as it stopped a short distance from her. It huffed, and her shoulder-length hair was blown back. The deer touched its nose to her head, then turned around and walked away, the other two joining it.

"They know you're a friend now. They'll tell the others and you'll be able to come and go without issue." I said.

Misaki swallowed heavily as she stood up straight. Her eyes were wide, her byakugan still active as she watched the deer long after they'd left my sight. "Thank you for this, Shinto."

I smiled and said, "You're welcome." It was easy to see why she was so enthralled. Chakra creatures were the stuff of legend in this world. I may as well have just introduced her to a unicorn. "Come on. We've got tutoring to do." I led the way back to my home and the two of us set up on the kitchen table to study.

Misaki was very intelligent for a seven-year-old. She picked up everything I was teaching her quickly, needing only a few examples and clarification questions. It was so easy to teach her I began to wonder why she wasn't already high in the rankings. Maybe she was focusing more on the physical aspect of being a ninja?

"Thank you for your help, Shinto. I will see you after class tomorrow." Misaki said after we'd wrapped up. I'd walked her to the gate of the Hyuga compound because I wasn't going to ask an actual child to walk home alone. I was a fake child, so it was okay for me to be out at night without supervision.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Misaki. Have a good night." I said before I turned around and walked home. I'd recovered enough from Suzuki-sensei's hellish lesson to jog if I wanted to, but I was still tired and felt like taking my time. Having chakra made physical tasks far easier than they were in my last life, but easier didn't mean easy.

I enjoyed my slow walk back through the forest. The sun was slowly setting. Rays of orange light cut through the gaps in the leaves. The glow was akin to fire light. I frowned.

How long did I have until Pein tore through Konoha and killed everyone? I needed to be strong enough to face him by then. Failing that, I at least needed to be in a position to flee. I didn't really have much to protect right now. There were my parents, but we'd never been all that close. I didn't want to play into the 'adopt Naruto as my younger brother' trope because that felt like a good way to get all the wrong kind of attention. I didn't want to be too good too early either. Graduating from the Academy early just seemed like a good way to die.

I sighed, shoving my hands in my pockets, my shoulders slumped and head hanging. I was overthinking everything. I just needed to focus on the present. I needed to keep training, and put my Nara brain to use. I had knowledge from a far more advanced world as well as information on certain events and people from the future. I'd be fine.

X

I stuck my hands on my hips and puffed my chest up proudly. The rippling water beneath me held me aloft as easily as concrete would. My shadow was outlined by the reflected light of the sun, creating a humanoid silhouette on the surface of the water. It had rained the night before, leaving a fresh hint to the air. The leaves of the trees on the bank were dotted with dew.

Aika clapped slowly from where she watched on from the edge of the lake. "Good job, kid. I know some genin who haven't been able to figure that out yet."

I'd been training with Aika for a little over two months now. Our main focus had been getting my chakra control down so I could move on to more advanced exercises. I'd mastered tree walking a while ago and could now stand on the surface of water without falling in.

Mine and Misaki's lessons had shown similar progress. Misaki had rocketed up the academic rankings in our class, hovering just outside the top five. I, on the other hand, had risen to the middle of the upper echelons of taijutsu in our class. I was beating clan kids with ease. The only ones above me were the Hyugas and Uchihas, but I was closing the gaps on them as well.

Things had fallen into a routine. I would go to class and study on my own while Suzuki-sensei covered stuff I already knew. Then I would spar or race my classmates. Then I would train with Misaki. Then, if I had time at the end of the day I would train with Aika. My weekends were also spent with Aika, practicing my chakra control and going over chakra theory.

"I think you're ready." Aika said as I walked off of the water and back onto solid ground once more. I had yet to perfect water walking. While I could do it, it took a lot of concentration to ensure I didn't fall. I would need to be able to walk on water like it was second nature before I would feel confident saying I'd mastered it.

"Ready for what, Aika-san?" I asked, tilting my head curiously. She hadn't given me any hints that this was some kind of test.

"I told you to drop the honorifics, brat." Aika said irritably, but with a fond smile on her face. "I think you're ready to start learning the shadow imitation technique."

I froze where I stood, my breath catching. "Really?" I asked hesitantly, not sure I'd heard her right. The Shadow Imitation Technique was a great tool. It required precise chakra control and a good helping of focus, but when it was used effectively, it could be used to take out or stall entire squads of enemy ninja. Of course, it was more useful in certain circumstances than others, but I'd been wanting to learn it for a while.

"You've got the Academy three down and can treewalk without issue. If that doesn't say you're qualified, I don't know what does." Aika said, ruffling my hair. She liked to do that for some reason.

The Academy three were all very simple jutsu, though I supposed that was probably the point. They were made to help keep bulk ninja alive. They were the three main jutsu that all ninja needed to know, meaning they were the only three a lot of genin in the genin core knew. The better they were suited to keeping those genin alive, the less they'd have to be replaced.

The clone technique was easy, but only situationally useful. The clones it made would pop after being subjected to minimal trauma and couldn't really do anything. You could program simple instructions into them when you made them, but those instructions couldn't change and the clone would follow them exactly. If you told the clone to walk in a line, it would walk in a straight line, continuing to try to move forward when it made contact with a wall.

The substitution technique was far more useful. It was basically a short range teleport that swapped your position for something of semi-equivalent mass in response to an attack. It wasn't the fastest technique and there were ways to track where the user went, but it was good if you had no other options to get yourself out of a jam fast.

The henge was the only technique I'd learned before I'd even gotten to the Academy. My parents had taught it to me after a lot of begging and pleading. I'd thought I'd be able to use it to sneak places I shouldn't be, but there were ways to see through it. Even if you made a perfect replica of whoever you were pretending to be, something I was now capable of, chakra sensors or certain kekkei genkai could still spot a henge.

Aika groaned as she reached behind herself and pressed a hand into the small of her back, her face contorting in discomfort.

"Aika-san?" I asked, walking up to her to see if something was wrong.

She chuckled at me, her hand adopting a green glow as she pressed it into her back. "I'm alright, kid. Just my old bones telling me to take it easy."

My eyes had drifted from the pained area on her back to the jutsu she was using. "What is that?" I asked.

"The Mystic Palm technique. Med-nin use it to speed up healing. I was planning on showing you how to use it once you had the shadow imitation technique down." Aika explained, sighing as her pain lessened, her jutsu canceling at her command.

I pursed my lips as I looked up at her. "Can I really learn it? I read that not a lot of people ever master it."

Aika smirked at me. "Good to see you're actually reading all those books I give you. Yes, I think you can learn it. You're young, but you already have amazing chakra control. Control is the main thing a ninja needs to learn, so I think you'll be able to learn it in a year or two."

"A year?" I asked, feeling a little dejected. I understood it wasn't all that long in the grand scheme of things, but I still wanted to make as much progress as possible as fast as I could.

Aika ruffled my hair again. "Don't you worry, Shinto. You won't be sitting around for a year. I'll start you on the Shadow Imitation Technique, then teach you some basic nature transformations as well as some low level jutsu for water and fire."

That caused me to perk up. "How soon can I learn the jutsu?" I'd been drafting various plans in notebooks I kept in my room since learning my chakra affinities. I knew a lot more about heat transfer and how water worked than this world did thanks to my first life. While my degree hadn't been in any of the sciences, I'd done chemistry and physics electives. I had some plans to use water and fire in tandem to hopefully create something amazing. If everything worked out, I would be a force to be reckoned with, but before I could try any of that, I actually had to learn to use the elements.

"After you learn the Shadow Imitation Technique." Aika said firmly, fixing me with a serious gaze. "And don't try anything on your own."

I sighed, unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes. "I know. I don't want to burn myself to ashes any more than you want me to burn myself to ashes." I understood why having someone supervise my experimentation and growth was important, but that didn't make it any less annoying. I really didn't like being treated like a child.

"Good." Aika said with a content nod. "Now run home. Your parents are probably wondering where you are."

"Bye, Aika-san. Thank you for your help today!" I said, jumping up into the air to leap between the trees.

My feet meeting the bark made satisfying clunk sounds with each step. I'd flown in airplanes in my past life, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of leaping through the air under your own power. I let out a whoop as I leapt from tree to tree. The crisp bite of the air. The sprinkles of dew that showered me whenever I brushed past a collection of leaves. It was all intoxicating.

I heard stamping sounds beneath me and looked down. I smiled wide as I saw a quartet of deer springing across the ground beneath me, easily keeping pace with me as I made my way through the forest. It appeared they wanted to run with me.

I laughed as I picked up the pace, trying my best to overtake them. But each time I sped up, the deer sped up to match my pace. It seemed to be little effort for them to keep up, but then I was a kid, they were fully matured chakra creatures. One day I would be faster than them, but today wasn't that day.

The deer left me once I cleared the forest and neared the compound, breaking off to graze among the trees. I hopped from roof to roof, only stepping foot on the ground when I was in front of my house.

"Mom! Dad! I'm home!" I called as I closed the door behind me.

"Shinto!"

My mother appeared from nowhere to wrap her arms around me, catching me off guard and knocking the wind out of me.

"How was training with Aika-san?" She asked, picking me up and carrying me towards the kitchen.

I huffed at being picked up, but didn't resist because I was still her kid and wanted to humor her. "It went well. I can water walk now." I announced proudly, raising my chin a little higher.

"That's my boy!" Mom said, nuzzling me with her cheek. "You're going to be a chunin earlier than mom and dad both! Isn't that right, dear?"

"Yes, honey." Dad said. He was in the kitchen cooking a pot of rice. A small smile on his face that grew when he saw mom and I. "I heard you're becoming a proper ninja. I'm proud of you, son."

I smiled wide at him. "Thanks, dad."

"Help your mom cook the fish, Shinto." Mom said cheerfully, not really giving me a choice as she literally carried me over to the stove.

The three of us cooked together and sat down to eat. I asked mom and dad about their missions, but they deflected and redirected towards how things were going at the Academy. I took that to mean their missions were classified or gruesome and babbled about how I read the books Aika gave me in class, trained with Misaki in the evenings and worked with Aika whenever I had free time.

Mom and Dad listened to me talk with happy smiles on their faces, their hands intertwined on the table as they watched me. It was a nice evening. They'd probably head out on another mission soon and I'd be focused on training, so it was nice to get a little time with them. It was still hard to see them as my parents, but I could relate them to a fun aunt and uncle who traveled around the world all the time. Either way, it was nice to talk to them.

X

Aika Nara stared into the forest in the direction Shinto had fled, an amused smile pulling at her lips. That boy was something else. Not only was he smart, but he was also unexpectedly mature, heeding her words and warnings with only minor grumbled complaints. If only all kids were like him, then she wouldn't hate kids so much.

"Water walking already, huh?"

Aika looked to her side and smirked at the man now standing there, his shoulders slumped, hands in his pockets and a considering expression on his face. "I told you he was special."

Shikaku Nara grunted. "I wasn't expecting him to be this special. Thought he'd be best in his class, not best in the school by the end of his first semester. He's a few months in and already ahead of the class in front of him."

"The class in front of them too."

"You see the issue."

"It's not an issue, Shika. Shinto is a Nara. If anyone wants him to graduate early, they have to go through you to make it happen, and you won't let it happen, will you?"

Shikaku pursed his lips, turning his head to look at the elderly woman beside him. She was smiling serenely, her eyelids fluttering. There was a dangerous glint in her eyes that promised pain if she didn't like what he said next.

Shikaku clicked his tongue. "Troublesome woman." He sighed. "So long as you keep teaching him, I'll be able to keep him in the Academy, but he has to keep making marked progress. If his progress starts lagging, there won't be much I can do."

Aika patted Shikaku on the cheek. "You just leave that to me, Shika-chan. I'll keep Shinto engaged, though I doubt I really need to. I don't think I've ever met anyone as enthusiastic to learn as he is."

"Have you started him on nature transformations yet?"

Aika shook her head. "I want him to have good control before I teach him any jutsu."

Shikaku frowned at her. "You need to start soon. If you're right about his affinities, we need to know."

"I am right, Shika. We already know."

Shikaku huffed. "Have you told anyone else?"

"No. Just you. Shinto doesn't even know yet. I don't think he suspects either. He seemed to think it was completely natural. For as smart as that kid is, he sometimes misses the obvious."

"He is a child. A little naivete is to be expected." Shikaku stressed, then sighed, reaching up to rub his forehead. "Tell no one. This is an order from your Clan Head."

Aika placed a hand up to her lips dramatically, an amused shine in her eye. "So serious! How could I possibly refuse? Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. I'm making dumplings for dinner tomorrow. Bring Yoshino and little Shika by."

Shikaku frowned. "I won't–"

"I'll see you at seven!" Aika interrupted him, already shuffling away.

Shikaku glared at her back, his eyebrows furrowed in irritation. "Kookie old aunt." he muttered under his breath as he followed her back towards the compound.