Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any affiliated franchises or copyrights. All names and people are products of imagination, and any similarities to real-life persons are coincidental.

Chapter 1: Death and Rebirth

Kyle Walter's day couldn't get any worse.

His day started normally. He was awoken at 7 am by a blaring alarm on his phone. "Ughhh..." he groaned in response, silently begging for the alarm to shut itself off. Unfortunately, it did not. He reached to the side table next to his bed to shut it off. Reaching with his eyes closed, his hand was searching for his phone to stop the horrible noise from ringing in his ears. His hand brushed the back of the device, trying to rotate it to access the screen. In his sleepy state of consciousness, he dropped the phone onto the ground, hearing a slight crunching sound when the phone clattered to the floor.

"Great, just great!" he thought angrily. His anger managed to rip any sleepiness away from him. Getting out of bed, he leaned down to pick up the phone to inspect the damage. His worst fears were confirmed when he saw the shattered glass and bleeding LCD that was the screen of his phone.

Kyle, having shut the phone off with a hard shutdown, set it down on the bed. It was something to worry about later, considering he had to be at work in about 45 minutes.

Kyle is a young man of 21, living on his own in a small town in Indiana. His life is honestly quite boring, if he does say so himself. Ever since he lost his parents a few years back, due to a horrific car accident, which he managed to survive with nothing more than a few cuts and broken bones, his interpersonal relationships had deteriorated, and he found himself constantly trying to numb himself by escaping reality by watching anime and reading books and manga.

He had been interested in them for quite a while but didn't have much time to indulge himself due to his part-time job and friends he hung out with regularly. But that all changed after the incident. After hearing the news of his parents, he had shut down for about a week before speaking to anyone. Shortly after he was released from the hospital, he holed himself up in his room at his parents' house, now his.

His parents weren't rich by any means, but they were on the higher end of middle class. With their house fully paid off, Kyle only had to worry about utilities and such bills. His parents were co-owners of a small restaurant chain within Indiana, and the stream of income meant for Kyle's college fund now became a way for him to make a passive income from his deceased parents' company.

So, for a year, Kyle rarely left the house, only going out to the gym and the grocery store. He still wanted to be in some shape instead of getting fat and lazy. Most of his time was spent watching anime and reading manga. Having read through the entirety of Naruto in three days, he decided to try to watch the anime but couldn't help but get annoyed by how much filler content there was. By the time he got to the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, he just wanted to turn it off and look up a list of episodes to watch in order to skip the filler on Reddit.

He managed to find one and then resumed watching the anime before moving on to its sequel series, Shippuden. It took about two weeks of watching it on and off for him to finish it. After that, he watched and read all kinds of different series in the four years after the incident.

Back to the present, with his phone broken and his already annoyed attitude, he decided to get ready for work. About a year ago, he decided that he needed to move on and started by trying to find a job. After about a month of constantly applying to jobs and getting rejected, he almost gave up. His uncle, who came by once in a while to check up on him, now owns the restaurant chain that was his parents', offered him a position as a part-time cashier.

He had been there for about a year now. He didn't make much, but he didn't need to. It was a distraction from his thoughts, which were much needed. If he wasn't thinking about his parents and how much he missed them, he was thinking about power scaling in media, or placing himself in the place of fictional characters, seeing what he would do to change the outcome of events.

Getting into the shower, his mind drifted to exactly that. After about 20 minutes in fantasy land, he brought himself back to reality to dry himself off and get dressed in his uniform, consisting of blue jeans, black nonslip shoes, and a black and orange shirt with a logo on the back. The logo itself was of an oval shape with a green landscape, the sun setting in the distance, glowing orange, with bold lettering on top. The American Dream.

Skipping breakfast, he headed out to his car in the driveway, hopped in, and tried to start it. Unfortunately, it made a sputtering sound and went quiet again.

"God damn it! Not this shit again! Not today!" he shouted angrily. He slammed his hand into the middle of the steering wheel, causing the car to honk loudly.

"Fuck!" he spat, cursing his horrible luck so far.

Checking the time on his watch, he started to think. "Well, my car is useless at the moment, and my phone is broken, so I can't call for a ride. I guess I'll have to walk. I don't want to be late again. Mr. Parker will be so pissed, considering I've been late quite often recently."

With that thought, he got out and began to walk to his destination, which was only a 30-minute walk from his house. He let his mind wander. He was thinking about what it would be like to have chakra or Ki, imagining himself flying through the skies with incredible speed and precision, or what it would be like to be able to run and jump from surface to surface, sticking to the wall with chakra, or using the Sharingan to teleport from place to place.

While his mind was preoccupied with his imagination, he wasn't paying attention to where he was walking. In the distance, there was a car going down the street at unreasonable speeds for a city street. Not paying any attention to the car coming by, Kyle started to cross the road.

The next thing he knew was pain.

So much pain.

It felt like his entire body was burning inside and out.

His body was struck by the car, sending him flying into a nearby parked car. His head shattered the windshield, causing glass to pierce his skull and neck. He lay there unmoving, and nothing but the gurgling of his punctured lungs could be heard for a few moments. Then silence.

The last thought he had before passing to the realm of the dead was:

'I'm coming, Mom and Dad.'

————————————————————

In the Void Between Dimensions

Kyle Walter's soul drifted endlessly in a black, inky space. "Where am I?" He tried to say, but no words left his mouth. He 'looked' down, noticing this lack of a body, and like any normal person, tried to scream at the top of his non-existent lungs. After an unknown period of time, he stopped 'screaming'.

He 'looked' around him and saw nothing but the cold darkness of where he had no clue where he was. The last thing he could remember, he was walking across the street—

'Oh,' he thought. He remembered the agony flaring across his entire body, consuming his entire being. He remembered his last moments of consciousness, wanting to be reunited with his parents. That obviously didn't happen, as he was here.

Was this Hell?

To be alone for all eternity?

To sit here and constantly remember his agony and death?

"No," a soft voice spoke, coming from all directions. Kyle, still coming to terms with his death, felt surprise run through his soul. A feeling of warmth and comfort surrounded him, making him feel at ease.

"Little one," she started, "This is the Void. A place devoid of space or time. You went quite a long way to arrive here." Her voice was soft and melodic, bringing peace to his confused soul. She continued, "It's been eons since a mortal has arrived here. It's not an accident your soul was transported here. It seems that you want to do something more than live your mundane life."

'Who are you? What do you mean? Can you send me to see my parents?' he thought rapidly, hoping to understand his current situation.

"One question at a time, little one. I am the entity that resides between worlds. I monitor all of reality, including yours and infinite others."

"It seems that the Void felt your heartfelt call to be reunited with your parents and it took pity on you, deciding to give you another chance. Even I'm not powerful enough to challenge the authority of the Void."

Her statement left him feeling cold and numb. As much as a bodyless soul could, anyhow. 'I'll never see them again,' he thought sadly. Processing her answer, he said, 'Another Chance? What does that mean?'

The deity gave a small giggle, "Well, it means another chance at life, silly!" She said as if it was obvious. "You will be going to a place you are quite familiar with after all. I want you to grow strong and have fun. A place filled with power, death, love, peace, war, and imagination. It won't be completely the same, after all, I have a surprise for you in store."

While he was trying to process what she meant by that, he was interrupted. He felt a force of unknown origin gripping his soul and pulling him towards a light that seemed to get brighter as he got near it. Being pulled through the portal, all he saw was white.

—————————————————————

He awoke with a start, his ocean blue eyes snapping open, taking in his unfamiliar surroundings before he closed them again with a hiss of pain. His head felt like it was going to explode, memories that weren't his were flashing one after the other, "Demon!," "He should have finished you off!," "Hey, Jiji, I'm going to take that hat from you one day, you old fart!," "Thank you for the gift, Inu-nii!," "Thanks for the meal, Iruka-sensei!," "If you hurt Iruka-Sensei, I'll kill you!"

His mind working overtime processing the memories of who he was before he woke up, he ended up passing out with a small thud, his body once again hitting the bed.

Chapter End

—————————————————————

Hi, this is my first attempt at writing anything lol. I've been reading a lot of fanfiction here recently, and I decided to give it a try. This world will have major differences from canon. Considering our protagonist isn't aware of his current predicament, I won't spill the beans quite yet, but I did enjoy writing this chapter.