I don't own Naruto.
This has been re-written (sort of) as I've gotten slightly better at writing, and wanted to edit some of my earlier chapters. This is basically a few added details, and sprucing up the whole of it.
The story picks up around chapter 7. I've been told that the first few chapters don't really grab the reader, so just stick with it for a bit. The chapters aren't too long.
So this is a semi-SI OC fic. This is my first thing on this website, but I've read a good bit of what's been posted here and I wanted to try my hand at it. This story has been influenced by a huge number of writers on this site (one of the largest being Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen), so I apologize if I accidentally steal anything from your stories. I'll try to cite where I get ideas if I realize that what I'm writing isn't an original thought. So please let me know if it happens and I'll either take it down, or include a line like, "This is from BlaBla's story 'StoryName' and I liked this idea enough to use it here, and guess what? BlaBla thought it was awesome that I liked it so much and was happy to let me use it!"
Now at the same time, a good bit of this story is original thought. So please don't assume that everything was taken from something else. Some of my ideas might overlap with other writers, and it is very possible that it could be a coincidence.
Please do not read if:
1. You are uncomfortable with blood and gore. I promise nothing about holding my imagination back.
2. You are expecting tons of romance. As far as I've thought ahead, there might be a few pairings, but they are by no means major plot points. There will be no harem. I mean jeez, most of this story will take place when the characters are children. Cooties were a real thing back then.
3. You have a problem with certain four-letter words. I will try to make parts of this story fit a war-torn theme. People do not usually care about the chosen vernacular of another in the midst of battle. Also the main character might not be able to hold some of it in.
I don't need a new asshole, so please don't rip me a new one. It works just fine, thank you. I will gladly accept constructive criticism, however. I'm not dumb enough to think that I'm awesome at this yet, so if you don't like how I'm writing this and can't be bothered to help, please just stop reading.
Please review. I would also greatly appreciate ideas, so if you have an idea and want me to implement it, I make no promises, but it might influence what I put down here. And of course I will give you credit in an author's note.
Oh and I suck at making up names for OCs. So if you want to help with that, it would be appreciated.
Anyway, enjoy.
So my life had been pretty boring.
I had a good job, close-ish family, and no notable enemies. I've never broken a bone in my body, never been arrested - shit, I've never even gotten a speeding ticket. I've gotten a couple parking tickets, but… who's counting those?
I think I did a pretty good job at being normal, so I'm not entirely sure why I ended up in Hell.
Hold on, I'll back up:
My name is Alex, or that used to be my name. Anyway, as I said before; I've lead a pretty normal life. I'm a pretty simple guy with no real motivation, so I just slide through life. Granted I've had my troubles. I wasn't some kid who had everything handed to him on a silver platter, but I wasn't wanting for much either. I did my best to be independent; supporting myself whenever I could to take some of the load off my parents.
My story starts around six in the afternoon on a colder than usual day in the city. It stopped snowing about twenty minutes before I walked out of the store, but a thick fog still hugged the ground. All of that together basically meant that visibility wasn't that great.
When I said that it was snowing, it was more like an ugly sleet - you know, the kind that sticks to your jacket and no matter what you do, you can't warm up.
I'm not sure why I was waiting outside, instead of inside where it was warm, but I found myself looking at one of those fancy street lights. It was one of the ones that used actual fire to light up the area, and looked kind of like a Victorian era lamp. Though now it was covered with ice to the point where the fire-light coming from it fractured and flickered like an optical illusion on the fog.
"What are you staring at?"
I turned around to see a cute, long-haired brunette wearing a grey beanie, thick purple scarf, and a peacoat. She was bobbing up and down, rubbing her purple mittened hands together in an attempt to warm up.
"Eh, nothing in particular."
The girl 'hm'ed. "Well come on. I still need to get a present for my sister."
"Come on, Emily." I sighed. "I thought you got something for her at the last place?"
"Yeah, but that was small." She puffed out her cheeks adorably.
I smiled down at her. Behold, my weak point: cuteness. "Alright alright, but you owe me coffee or something. I'm the one who has to drive in this crap."
She beamed at me. "Deal."
We started walking down the street, as if some cue was given to begin our journey.
We didn't get too far.
The screech of tires never came. It was too icy out to actually have contact with the road, apparently.
Emily didn't seem to notice. I was walking just slightly behind her as she bounced around on the sidewalk. She was the type of girl that absolutely loved to shop.
She gave out a little squeak as I grabbed the back of her collar and yanked her backwards in a feat of strength that neither of us really expected. She landed on the ground about a yard behind me.
I only registered that the vehicle coming for us was one of those smaller box-trucks as it clipped the lamppost that I was examining earlier and smashed into the store next to us, right through the spot that Emily had been standing in.
The truck started to tip over immediately. I tried to get out of the way, but my foot caught a patch of ice. Half a second later, I found myself facing the foggy sky and forced to watch as the truck crushed my legs beneath its weight.
It didn't even bounce.
It was then that I heard the creaking of metal - the tell-tale sound that meant 'Get the fuck out of the way.' I looked over to see the lamppost crashing down.
Towards me.
I knew I was in shock as I couldn't feel the glass from the lamp shatter around my right arm, leaking out whatever flammable liquid was inside and shredding my jacket with the broken glass. I couldn't feel it.
Yet.
The fire licked at my jacket as the surrounding snow and ice melted. I could vaguely see blood seeping from the glass shards around my arm.
"Alex!" I heard Emily scream. Then I could only think about how that probably hurt when I pulled on her coat like that. I imagine that she couldn't breath for a couple seconds.
What would her reaction have been if I did that for no reason?
What would her reaction have been if I wasn't on fire?
Irrelevant thought, I know, but it still interested me, even as the fire crawled over my torso.
"Alex!" She started to shovel some of the snow onto me. Probably in an attempt to put out the fire, but there was a flammable liquid that had soaked through my clothes at this point.
She probably would have dumped me if I'd done that for no reason.
It was starting to get pretty hot. I knew my brain simply wasn't letting me experience the myriad of sensations that I should have been feeling, but a dull ache in my legs did begin to make itself known, and the world also started to heat up exponentially.
I looked over to Emily, who had her hands covering her mouth, crying and staring at me. With the fire, still spreading, she simply couldn't get close to me. That was fine. It was getting pretty toasty, anyway.
I reached out with my left arm; my only limb that wasn't pinned under something. I giggled to myself at the thought.
"E-ly." I choked out. I blinked. Why couldn't I talk? The fire shouldn't have- Oh. Part of the lamppost had impaled my chest. Why didn't I notice that before?
I looked back at Emily. All I wanted to do was tell her where I hid her Christmas present.
If I couldn't do that, I'd do the only thing I could.
I smiled at her.
Then, strangely, with the flames blazing upon my body… I felt…
Cold.
I wish I could tell you that what happens after death is interesting, but it's not. It's just dark. You close your eyes for that last time, and it's like going to sleep. The pain slips away and you're left with a sort of half-consciousness; a dream state of some kind. I couldn't really freak out about the fact that I was probably dead, but I could think about it. I could analyze it and come to terms with it all. My emotions seemed to die with my body.
I just floated in nothingness.
Time didn't feel fluid in the darkness. It felt like it does when you're sick and you keep falling asleep. You have the feeling that time is passing, but you have no real concept of keeping track of it. It could have been days, months, or even years until I heard the voices.
They were muffled, but definitely people's voices. I could also make out a steady beat that seemed to reverberate in my surroundings. I likened it to being inside a base drum as the drummer lightly tapped on the pedal. I could also feel a sort of warm tingling sensation starting from my stomach and slowly spreading through my limbs as I passed in and out of consciousness. It burned at first, but soon that tingling sensation brought a comforting warmth with it.
Later, I was still in that state of mind where time didn't make much sense, but I was becoming more aware of my surroundings. I still didn't have any real control over my body, and none of my five major senses were working right. I mean I mentioned the constant muffled sounds, and I could sort-of feel things to the point that I knew I was encased in a bag of wetness, but that was it, really.
I didn't have the mental capacity to realize that I had a horrible case of claustrophobia, so being in a bag of wetness didn't bother me as much as it totally should have.
At some point along the line I started to feel a squeezing sensation over my whole body. My emotions and various sensory organs seemed to be coming back in full swing by this point, so naturally I began freaking out. Something was changing and I had no clue what was happening. I could hear faint beeping, and all the sounds and voices were picking up, then a bright light flashed through my eyelids, cold air brushed my skin, and the noise level skyrocketed.
It was sensory overload, and all I could do was scream.
Then some asshole spanked me.
It took me all of a day to realize that I was a baby. That seems kind of slow, but my vision wasn't in full working order, and my hearing and touch weren't helping much. I did stop screaming pretty fast though. I had the mind of a twenty two year old, and I was finally able to start using it. Well some of it anyway, but it was increasing by the day. The brain of an infant is incredibly limited.
Stupid natural biological processes.
Anyway, I couldn't understand a damn word that anyone was saying. In my old life, I lived on the east coast of the U.S. and English was my primary language. I'd tried to learn a few others, namely French, Italian, and even a bit of ancient Greek, but that didn't help me at all with Japanese.
Yep. Japanese.
The only way I could tell that this was Japanese was because I was a bit of an anime geek, so I picked up on the way the language sounded.
In the end, that helped me out tremendously, not the language thing; the anime thing. Well the language thing too, but not as much as the anime thing.
I couldn't catch most of the conversations that bounced around me, but I could understand a few of the words: namely "Shinobi," and "Konoha." I wasn't necessarily the biggest fan of the Naruto series, but I followed it regularly, read the whole manga, and even some fanfiction. So when my new mom took me outside into the village and I saw a giant mountain with four faces on it, I started to freak out. Was this a dream? Some elaborate, imagined fantasy?
I pinched myself, shook my head, slapped myself a few times. Nada. Still here.
This was going to suck. I was probably going to die younger than I had been last time around.
That thought was solidified about a week later when a sort of pressure broke down on me when I was sleeping. I woke up instantly but I couldn't move at all. The very air had a reddish tinge to it, and I could taste the anger and hate that permeated everything. The only thing I knew at that point was that I was going to die. Again.
But then it stopped. The world went back to normal, and I found I could breath normally again.
My dad was out in the village doing errands, but my mom was home, and I found that she was holding me in her arms. I wasn't sure when she'd picked me up, but she was crying and soothing me - even though I wasn't crying - obviously scared out of her wits.
Oh fuck, Dad was out doing errands.
And that was totally the Kyuubi.
"Taichi! Dinner!" My mom yelled out from the kitchen.
"Coming!" My two-year-old self yelled back.
Ok, by all standards, I was a ridiculous kid. My first word was "Kaa-san" at four months old. I was walking by six months, and I had a working knowledge of the language by 14 months. That's a working knowledge. Not fluency. I could get basic ideas across, but that was about it. It wasn't until about now; at two-and-a-half, that I could speak relatively fluently. I'd never been good at learning languages, and the baby brain thing that helped out with learning a language didn't help much for me. I figured that was because I had prior experience with English.
I'd managed to get my hands on a few kids books early on to help with the written aspect, and mom would take me through each of them, pointing out what each little squiggly meant. Now, I was reading novels and such. I was learning. Not as fast as I wanted to, but I was learning.
I - understandably - felt restricted going from adult to toddler. I couldn't go anywhere myself, couldn't have intelligent conversation with anyone, and everyone treated me as if I was some type of clinical patient.
The first thing I did when I stood up for the first time was take a shit in the toilet. That was my whole motivator. Shitting myself for six months was horrible. I did fall in, though. That seat is not meant for toddlers.
I looked up at my mom as I slid into the kitchen. Tomo Yamanaka. Slim build, vibrant red hair, and a burning temper. Do not cross Tomo Yamanaka. She was the same age I was when I died: twenty-two, and absolutely gorgeous. She never bothered with makeup, kept her long-ish hair in a loose braid over her left shoulder, and dressed for comfort, rather than appearance. Even so, she was the most beautiful woman in the village. Though that might be bias. She was my mom after all.
My name is Taichi Yamanaka, and yes, I am part of Ino's family. Ichi Yamanaka, my father was Inoichi's brother, so that made me Ino's cousin. We're about the same age, too, which was fortunate, because there are decidedly few children in the clans, which are pretty much the only people I've interacted with. Nearly all of my 'playdates' have been with Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji.
To be honest, Shikamaru was the only one I could tolerate of the three. I think it was because he's too lazy to annoy me with normal baby stuff.
Anyway, I like to think that I'm a pretty chill kid. I have bright red hair, like my mom, but the turquoise eyes of the Yamanaka clan. I never held my intelligence back, mainly because I couldn't be bothered to hide it. That might seem like a bad idea with people like Danzo around, but I wasn't afraid of him getting his hands on me. I had a metric shit-ton of interaction with three clan heads, all of which I made sure noticed, and liked me, so I was pretty confident that Danzo wouldn't be able to get away with a kidnapping.
I was labeled as a genius early on, but just about anyone would if they were stuck in the body of a baby. So that's not really an accomplishment. Really I just wanted my independence back.
"What's for dinner?" I asked, putting my book on the table.
"Chicken curry. What were you doing outside?" My mom asked as she ploped some rice onto two plates.
"Reading. Curry again? Mo~om," I whined, "we have curry like, every night!"
"Not every night! And why shouldn't we? It's delicious!" she said, pouting.
"You're telling me you don't get tired of it? We can't possibly get all our nutrients from only curry!"
"Nutrients? You're two. How do you even know what those are?" She looked at me incredulously while putting the plates on the table.
"I'm smart!" I said proudly with my hands on my hips.
She cooed, swoops down, picks me up and spins around, "Yeah you are! My little genius!"
"Mom sto~op! I'm getting dizzy!"
She laughed, "Sorry honey," she said, putting me down, "What were you reading anyway?"
My heart skipped a beat, "Um…" Shit.
She looked at the book on the table and froze.
"Taichi."
"Yeah?"
"Where did you get this?" Her face was blank. No expression. Holding up the book for me to see.
"Um…" Nope. Definitely can't say that I grabbed it when Nara-sama dropped it after one of the playdates. I knew for a fact that the book hadn't been released yet, so I wasn't too sure how he got his hands on it. Well, whatever.
"Taichi." Barely controlled rage.
"What's wrong with it?" Innocence. That's how I get out of this.
"Nothing sweetie, this just isn't something you should be reading. Ever."
"Oh." I shrunk in on myself. Well yeah, she was right. I didn't think that counted for me though. It was a surprisingly good book.
"Taichi."
"Yeah?"
"Where did you get this?"
"I…" Oh mischievous side, I found you. I conjured a confused expression. "An old guy with big white hair," I stretched my arms to portray the size of it all, "gave it to me a couple days ago. Said, 'It's signed and everything, kid' and told me to hold onto it because it would be worth something later." Oh yeah. I pulled that right out of my ass.
"Jiraya!" My mom screamed. All but broke the windows. Holy Hell, mom. Then she started talking to herself, "Icha Icha is not a goddamn children's book, you twit! When I get my hands on you, I will break you-" and now she's out of the kitchen.
Bullet dodged.
A/N
Well that's the first chapter re-done. I'm sporadically going through and editing these, so I apologize for any inconsistencies you might see. Let me know, and I'll fix it.
Please review! Even if you hate it. I'd like to know why.