The last echoes of the mutated bear's death rattle faded, leaving a ringing silence in the ruined clearing. The air still smelled of ozone, burnt fur, and wet earth. My breath came in controlled puffs, the blue patterns on my fur dimming from a battle-ready blaze to a low, steady hum. The hollow victory sat in my gut like a stone. I'd won, but I felt more like a survivor than a conqueror.
I was about to turn and lick my wounds both physical and psychological when the silence was broken.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't a fleeing animal. This was the deliberate, clumsy, heavy sound of something bipedal stumbling through undergrowth. A branch snapped under a clear, weighted footstep. My head shot up, ears swiveling forward like radar dishes. Every muscle, which had just begun to relax, coiled tight again. The chakra in my system, seemingly bottomless, surged back to the surface in an instant.
I called out out, voice a low growl
Derek:Show yourself! Now!
My command echoed through the twilight woods. This wasn't another beast. Beasts didn't try to be quiet and fail this way. This was something else. Someone else.
A figure lurched out from the treeline, collapsing against the trunk of a shattered pine for support. A human. A young man, maybe late teens. He wore the remnants of a standard green flak jacket, a metal forehead protector with a spiral symbol glinting dully in the fading light. Konoha.
My mind, still buzzing with combat adrenaline, tried to process. A Leaf ninja. Here. In the middle of nowhere. This changed everything. The timeline, the risks, my entire strategy of hiding in the wilderness… it all tilted on its axis.
He was in terrible shape. Deep gashes crosshatched his arms. One leg of his pants was soaked dark with blood. Half his face was a swollen, purple mess, one eye squeezed shut. He was breathing in ragged, wet hitches. But even through the pain and exhaustion, his training held. His good eye locked onto me, and his hand shaking badly darted to a pouch on his thigh. It came back holding a kunai.
He didn't speak. He just stared, the weapon held in a defensive grip that was more instinct than intent. He looked like he was three seconds from passing out, but the threat was clear.
I didn't give him the chance to decide.
My tails, still extended from the previous fight, weren't just for show. They were prehensile weapons, stronger than steel cable and faster than a striking snake. Before he could even tighten his grip, four of my tails shot forward. They wrapped around his torso and legs with a whump of displaced air.
His single good eye widened in shock. He let out a choked gasp as I yanked.
I didn't pull him toward me. I threw him through the nearest standing tree.
It was a sickening, brutal sound. The old pine, already stressed from the bear's final rampage, exploded in a shower of splintered wood and torn bark. His body caromed off the trunk and hit the ground in a limp heap, the kunai flying from his nerveless fingers to skitter into the bushes.
I padded forward slowly, deliberately. My paws made no sound on the soft loam. The eerie blue light from my fur illuminated his broken form, casting long, dancing shadows. I loomed over him.
My voice was flat, cold
Derek: What are you doing in my forest?
He groaned, a bubble of blood forming on his split lip. He tried to push himself up on an elbow, failed, and slumped back. His good eye, bleary with pain, focused on me with an effort that was almost admirable.
Injured Ninja: You… you can talk?
He didn't sound amazed. He sounded… weary. Resigned. As if a talking, glowing, nine-tailed fox was just the latest in a long line of terrible things that had happened to him today. A true shinobi response.
Derek: Answer the question.
He just stared, his breathing shallow. The silence was his answer the trained silence of someone who knew that information was life, and to give it to an unknown entity was to hand over a piece of your soul.
Fine. If he wouldn't talk, I'd look.
Derek: No worries. You're bleeding out anyway.
I focused, not on destructive fire, but on the opposite. I called upon the foxfire again, but this time I willed it to mend, not consume. Tiny, cool blue flames, like will-o'-the-wisps, danced from my muzzle and settled on his worst wounds the deep gash on his leg, the torn flesh on his arm. They didn't burn. They seeped into the injury, a soothing, numbing cold that staunched the bleeding and began the slow, magical process of knitting flesh.
He hissed through his teeth, his body tensing against the alien sensation, but then he went still, watching the blue light work with a mix of suspicion and desperate hope.
His voice was a rough whisper
Injured ninja:What… what are you?
I didn't answer with words. I answered with a technique I hadn't even known I could perform until the idea formed in that moment. I locked my glowing blue eyes with his.
Echoes of the Phantom Veil.
The name came to me unbidden, something grand and fitting for a kitsune's art. It was a deep, invasive genjutsu, but not one of simple illusion. This was a memory dredge. I didn't just show him lies; I pulled the truth from him, making it manifest in the space between us as shimmering, ghostly images only I could perceive.
Derek (the question a psychic command): Who. Are. You.
He resisted. I felt the pushback, the ingrained mental defenses of a shinobi trained to resist interrogation. But my power wasn't human chakra. It was older, more insidious. His defenses crumbled like sandcastles against a tide.
The images flooded in.
A scrawny, hollow-eyed boy in a Konoha orphanage. No name, just a number for a while. Bullies shoving him, their laughter cruel. "Hey, Crybaby! Gonna run to the matron again?" The first spark: making one of them see a spider crawl out of his own mouth. The shocked silence that followed.
Academy days. Endless repetition. Failing at tree-walking, his knees scraped raw. But the genjutsu classes… there, he shone. A stern-faced chunin instructor nodding grudgingly. "Hizukari. Not bad. Your illusions have… weight." A name. Ryusei Hizukari.
Genin missions. Dull, tedious. Weeding gardens, chasing lost pets. The camaraderie of a three-man team, the shared boredom. His first C-rank: bandits on a dusty road. The panic, the smell of blood, his own voice screaming "Fire Release: fire ball !" as a pathetic little fireball flew from his clumsy hands. It missed. But the genjutsu he layered over it making the bandits see a wall of flame saved his teammate.
The Chunin Exams. The written test, solving genjutsu traps with a smug ease the proctors noted. The Forest of Death, using illusions to make his team invisible to a prowling team from Kiri. The finals. Facing a Hyuga. The condescending smirk. "An orphan with no bloodline. This ends quickly."
The Hyuga looked down on him didn't even use Byakugan
Ryusei didn't fight the Gentle Fist. He made the arena floor seem to tilt and spin, disorienting the Hyuga's precise footwork until he stumbled, retching. Victory by disqualification. The weight of the chunin vest being placed on his shoulders. It felt like armor. It felt like a tomb.
And the present. A simple B-rank escort to the Land of Rice Paddies. Boring. Then, the ambush. Not bandits. Shinobi. Suna-nin, their faces wrapped, moving with the eerie silence of desert ghosts. Wind whips slicing through his teammates. The scream of the merchant they were guarding. A desperate fight. A kunai in a Suna-nin's throat. A searing pain in his leg as a wind blade caught him. Running. Stumbling. The forest swallowing him. The thought, over and over: Gotta report. Gotta warn Konoha.
I pulled back, breaking the connection. The phantom images dissipated. I was breathing heavily, not from exertion, but from the intimacy of the violation. I knew him. Ryusei Hizukari. Orphan. Chunin. Genjutsu specialist. A moderately talented, utterly unremarkable cog in the great ninja machine. A man who was supposed to die anonymously in this forest, his mission a failure, his death unrecorded.
And the timeline… hiruzen was Still the Third. The Fourth wasn't even a rumor yet. Tensions with Suna, but no full-scale war. This was pre-canon. Years before Naruto Uzumaki would be born. A blank spot in the history I knew.
muttering to myself
Derek: He's an NPC. A background character. And this… this isn't the story I remember.
Ryusei lay unconscious now, the strain of the memory dredge and his injuries finally pulling him under. The blue foxfire had done its work; he was stable, no longer dying.
I paced around his still form, my tails lashing.
I began to think aloud
Derek: Options. One: kill him. Clean, simple. No witnesses. But… he's just a kid doing his job. Two: wipe his memory. A deep, permanent genjutsu scrub. But those Suna-nin are still out there, tracking him. They find him catatonic or amnesiac, they'll sweep the area. They'll find me.
I stopped pacing. A third option, wild and reckless, presented itself. His memories weren't just a biography. They were a textbook. I'd seen every hand sign, felt the chakra flow for every basic jutsu he knew. The Clone Technique. The Transformation Technique. The Substitution.
My gaze dropped to my paws. Paws. No opposable thumbs. No way to form the seals required for those jutsu. That had always been the wall.
But… I had more than chakra.
I reached inward, past the warm, flowing river of my fox chakra, to the deeper, colder, more primal well. Youki. The intrinsic power of the yokai. It wasn't about hand signs. It was about will. About essence.
I focused on Ryusei's form. I didn't think of muscles and bones. I thought of the concept of "human." I poured youki into that thought, letting it overwrite the "concept" of "fox."
The sensation was violently uncomfortable. It wasn't pain, exactly. It was a profound, existential wrongness. My bones slithered and reconfigured. My fur retracted into prickling skin. I fell forward onto… hands.
Hands!
I stared at them, wiggling the fingers. They were pale, slender, tipped with sharp, black nails. I scrambled clumsy, uncoordinated on all fours to the edge of the nearby lake and looked down.
The face that stared back was alien yet familiar. It was young, maybe late teens. The hair was a shock of silver-white, messy and long. The eyes were still my piercing blue, with slitted pupils, and they glowed faintly. My ears were slightly pointed. And when I opened my mouth, I saw the hint of elongated canines.
And my tails. I still had them. Nine fluffy, white appendages that now emerged from the base of a human spine. I was a hybrid. A kitsune in human skin.
But I had hands. And hands could form seals.
Giddy, I forced my unfamiliar limbs into the sequence I'd pulled from Ryusei's mind: Boar. Dog. Bird. Ram.
"Transformation Technique!"
A puff of smoke erupted around me. When it cleared, my reflection was gone. In its place was Ryusei Hizukari, perfect in every detail the tattered flak jacket, the bloody pants, the bruised face. I held the form for a ten-count before releasing it, shifting back to my new, semi-human base form.
A laugh burst out of me, raw and triumphant.
I looked back at the real Ryusei, still unconscious under the roots where I'd dragged him. My initial problems hadn't changed. The Suna-nin were still coming. They were a threat to my territory, my hard-won peace.
But now, I had new tools. And a new face.
I said to the unconscious ninja
Derek: You rest. You've given me what I need. I'll deal with your guests.
Night had fully fallen. The forest was a tapestry of deep blues and impenetrable blacks. From Ryusei's memories, I had a direction. East. Three Suna-nin, likely a tracking team, methodical and ruthless.
I stood at the edge of the clearing, my hybrid form feeling more natural by the second. My tails swayed gently behind me. The youki within me was a quiet, eager hum.
This wasn't just about survival anymore. This was about sovereignty. They had invaded my home, threatened (indirectly) my safety. They were hunters. It was time they learned what it felt like to be the hunted.
But a cold knot of doubt tightened in my human-shaped gut. These weren't beasts. They were thinking, tactical killers. Could I do this? Could I, Derek Smith from another world, actually hunt and kill human beings?
The memory of the bear's final, soul-scorching screams echoed in my head. That had been necessary too.
I pushed the doubt down. I wrapped myself in a genjutsu veil, bending the light and sound around me until I was little more than a shimmer in the moonlight. My blue eyes glinted in the dark.
Derek: Let's see what you've got.