For the first few months of my new life, my primary modes of expression were screaming, pooping, and sleeping. It was a hell of a regression for a literary god, let me tell you. But mostly, it was screaming. I screamed because I was hungry. I screamed because my diaper felt like a swampy biohazard zone. But most of all, I screamed because my entire existence was now a ticking time bomb with a big, fat Uchiha logo plastered on the side.
My new mother, Natsuki, was a sweetheart. A sad, beautiful, walking tragedy, but a sweetheart nonetheless. She would hold me, rock me, and hum lullabies that sounded like they were written by someone who'd just had their puppy run over by a caravan of misery. I'd be wailing about the impending slaughter of my entire clan, and she'd whisper, "Oh, does my little Raikou have a tummy ache?"
It's not a tummy ache, woman! It's existential dread! My entire bloodline is slated for extermination by my brother's best friend! Also, I think I need a new diaper.
Then there was him. My brother. Shisui 'The Walking Death-Flag' Uchiha.
He was… a good brother. Too good. He'd come home from the Academy, already a prodigy at the tender age of eight, and peer into my crib with those unnervingly perceptive eyes. He never treated me like a dumb baby. He'd just watch me, a thoughtful frown on his face, as if he was trying to solve a particularly difficult bit of jutsu theory that just happened to have soiled itself.
"He watches me a lot," Shisui noted to our mother one evening. "It's like he's trying to understand."
You're damn right I'm trying to understand! I thought, glaring at him from my swaddled prison, which I'd come to call my Burrito of Despair. I'm trying to understand how someone so talented, so kind, and so goddamn important to the timeline ends up as a footnote in a suicide plot orchestrated by a man who collects eyeballs like they're trading cards!
My parentage, as I'd suspected, was a bit of a local scandal. I pieced it together from hushed whispers when clan members would visit. My official father was Kagami Uchiha, a hero who had died years before I was born. You don't need a Sharingan to see the plot hole there. My mother, in a moment of grief and questionable judgment, had a tryst. The result? Me. A walking, screaming, pooping testament to her infidelity.
This explained why we lived in a slightly smaller house on the edge of the Uchiha district. We were the black sheep. Or, more accurately, Natsuki was the black sheep, Shisui was the golden child trying to hold it all together, and I was the weird, illegitimate lamb who wouldn't stop screaming about the coming apocalypse.
Life as an infant genius is, without exaggeration, the worst. My brain was a supercomputer trapped in a potato with limbs. I had brilliant insights into chakra theory and could have written a treatise on the geopolitical failings of the Hidden Leaf, but I couldn't even roll over without assistance. The sheer indignity of it all was enough to make me want to cry, which, conveniently, was one of the few things I could actually do.
One afternoon, a particularly gossipy aunt was visiting. She was cooing at me while simultaneously talking trash about my mother to Shisui, who was trying his best to ignore her.
"It's such a shame," the aunt sighed, poking my cheek. "After a hero like Kagami-sama... And Shisui, you're so good to him. Taking on such a burden."
Shisui's jaw tightened. "He is my brother," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "He is not a burden."
The aunt just hummed noncommittally. "Well, let's hope he doesn't turn out to be a dud. The clan needs strong shinobi, not... reminders of indiscretion."
That was it. That was the moment the screaming stopped.
Lying there in my Burrito of Despair, listening to this old bat call me a 'dud,' something in my fanfiction-addled brain snapped. The panic, the fear, the endless, screaming dread—it all crystallized into a single, hard, diamond-sharp point of pure, unadulterated spite.
A dud? A burden? A reminder?
Oh, you have no idea who you're dealing with.
My past life, I was a writer. I pulled strings. I controlled destinies. I decided who lived and who died in a blaze of Fiendfyre over a lemon drop. I wasn't some background character destined to be another casualty in Itachi's worst-day-ever. I was the protagonist.
My enemies list was long and terrifying. Danzo, Obito, Black Zetsu, the entire Akatsuki... but this gossiping hag was now number one with a bullet. I swore a silent, infantile oath that one day, I would find a way to replace her prized bonsai tree with a plant that screamed insults at her.
But first things first. To survive, to thrive, to get my revenge and maybe, just maybe, acquire my dream team of waifus (Kaguya, my queen, I'm coming for you!), I needed power. And to get power, I needed a teacher.
My gaze drifted over to Shisui. The prodigy. The genius. My brother. He was already a formidable shinobi, and he was the only one in this entire cursed clan who looked at me with something other than pity or suspicion. He saw me as a brother, not a burden.
He was also marked for death. Danzo wanted his eyes. The clan wanted his loyalty. And the plot wanted his life to give Itachi a power-up.
Screw the plot, I thought, a feral grin spreading across my baby face, probably looking like a bad case of gas.
My new plan was simple. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plan that was almost certainly going to backfire spectacularly.
Step one: Get Shisui's absolute, undivided attention. Step two: Convince him I'm not just a baby, but a super-genius baby. Step three: Make him my teacher, my ally, and my co-conspirator in the grand mission to completely derail the canon timeline.
I was one year old. I couldn't walk, couldn't talk, and had the upper body strength of a wet noodle. Revealing my intelligence would be the single most dangerous gamble of my new life. If it went wrong, I'd probably end up in a lab somewhere, getting dissected by Orochimaru.
But if it worked? If it worked, the story of Naruto was about to get a whole new author.
That night, as Shisui was practicing hand seals by the light of a lantern, I watched him from my crib. He moved through the twelve zodiac signs with a fluid grace that was mesmerizing. Ox, Rabbit, Monkey...
He paused on Tiger. Tora.
I focused all my energy, my frustration, my spite, into my undeveloped vocal cords. I took a rattling breath. He was my only hope. My warden, my brother, my first and most important target.
I had to take the shot.