The summer heat radiating off the Uchiha clan lake was oppressive, but it was nothing compared to the frustration boiling inside Uchiha Itsuki.
He looked no older than seven. His black hair clung messily to his forehead, damp with sweat, while his onyx eyes stared blankly at the sky in pure exhaustion. His pale skin had taken on a faint flush from overexertion, and his simple dark blue, high-collared T-shirt and black shorts were wrinkled and dirt-stained from repeated failures.
Collapsing onto a patch of scorched grass near the water's edge, his chest heaved as he glared daggers at a row of perfectly intact water balloons sitting a few feet away. The damp fabric of his shirt stuck uncomfortably to his seven-year-old frame.
"Fuck my life... the Rasengan is way harder than that spiky-haired blonde dumbass made it look," Itsuki muttered, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He looked down at his small, calloused palms. He had spent the last two hours trying to make the water inside the rubber balloons swirl in multiple directions at once, but all he had managed to achieve was a collection of mild ripples.
It was maddening. The technique wouldn't technically be invented by a certain future blonde menace for at least another decade or two, but Itsuki had hoped his extensive Naruto manga knowledge would give him a legendary head start in this world. Instead, he just had a painful cramp in his hands, an aching chakra pathway, and a severely bruised ego.
Being a degenerate otaku in a past life really fucks up your expectations, Itsuki thought, sighing heavily as he glared at the glittering surface of the lake. You read a bunch of chinese trashy fanfics where the MC gets dropped in with a massive cheat, a harem of girls with giant boobs flock around him, and learns the Rasengan in five minutes. Then reality comes along and bitch-slaps you right in the face.
Nine months ago, he had been a completely normal guy on Earth. Then, the infamous Truck-kun paid him a visit, and he woke up in the Naruto world as a kid with the classic Uchiha starter pack: pale skin, onyx eyes, and pitch-black hair.
I didn't even get a proper isekai introduction, Itsuki thought, staring up into the blue expanse as if expecting some cosmic entity to drop answers from the heavens. No glowing room, no benevolent god looking like Morgan Freeman granting me three wishes, no cheat ability tailored to my desires… just straight-up reincarnation into a clan doomed for destruction.
But his new life did come with a massive twist in the family tree. His mother wasn't just any civilian or generic clan ninja. She was Uchiha Naori the legendary, badass kunoichi who literally invented the Izanami to stop her clan's internal madness.
She's gorgeous, she's strong, and she is out of her goddamn mind, Itsuki thought, shivering despite the oppressive heat as he recalled his training.
Naori possessed striking dark purple hair and a gaze that could pierce through steel, though her left eye was permanently clouded and blind the steep price of using the Izanami. She gave off major dommy-mommy vibes with her cool, fiercely independent aura, but her teaching methods were straight out of a nightmare. To teach Itsuki evasion skills, she had casually thrown several sharpened kunai right at him. When he had mistakenly voiced an interest in learning water-walking, she didn't bother guiding his chakra control she just picked him up by his collar and chucked him straight into the deepest part of the lake. If he hadn't known how to swim in his past life, he would have met the Sage of Six Paths right then and there.
Yet, despite her Spartan methods, she loved him fiercely. Every single day without fail, she would return with a bag of his favorite sweet dango in her hand from her grueling patrol and clan duties to spend some time with him asking about his day and training him well her training methods were like she taking out her work life frustrations on him.
As for his father? Itsuki had never met him. The house was filled with framed pictures of the man, but only one featured Itsuki a slightly faded family portrait of a stern-faced man gently holding a newborn baby. Itsuki had a strong theory that his mother had awakened her famed Mangekyou Sharingan precisely because of his father's tragic death.
I can't afford to slack off, Itsuki thought, his expression hardening as he crawled over to the shade of a nearby willow tree. The timeline here is a ticking time bomb.
"Let's take a break. I am dead tired and can't refine any chakra now," he muttered. Deciding to recover, he reached into his bag and pulled out a modest bento box. The smell of salted rice and grilled fish instantly made his stomach growl. He picked up his chopsticks and began to eat, his mind racing through the future events he was desperate to survive.
On the bright side, he had been born in the same generation as Minato Namikaze. This meant he had a massive buffer before the infamous Uchiha Clan Massacre. The bad news? To even reach that future genocide, he first had to survive the meat-grinder of the Second and Third Great Shinobi Wars.
"Fuck it, if I'm going to die in this world, it's not going to be as some nameless background extra killed by a stray paper bomb," Itsuki said through a mouthful of rice, his onyx eyes narrowing with fierce determination. "Well I prefer not dying at all but If I go out, it's going to be in an epic, world-shaking showdown. Like Gojo versus Sukuna. Or me taking on Madara, Kaguya, or at least the Six Paths of Pain. No lame deaths allowed."
He chewed slowly, letting the cool shade soothe his aching muscles. He knew he couldn't refine any more chakra for time being. For now, he just needed to rest, recover, and slowly prepare for what was coming in future.