"You'll be born in the Terumi clan in Kirigakure," 'Morgan Freeman' told the young man in front of him.
"Really? The Naruto world, and I'm not part of the 'good guys' in Konoha?"
"I could chuck your soul in what you know as hell for some eternal suffering if you want? Or, just become a village traitor or whatever."
The young man in soul form quickly shook his non-existent head and hands in denial. "Nope, that won't be necessary. Guess I'll just go die as cannon fodder in the bloody mist. Who knows? Maybe I somehow luck into two or three kekkei genkai like Terumi Mei? Or maybe get something on the level of dust release due to a mutation of my bloodline?"
"No worries. I'm eager to see something else. You get a few freebies that I think might be entertaining," the godlike being in front of him waved away as he saw the soul body in front of it fish for benefits.
"Oh? Like what?"
"Well, they did gang up on Uzushiogakure, no? How about they actually succeed in stealing a few people for breeding purposes?"
"Sounds disgusting and like a pretty common trope. So I'll be half Uzumaki like the world's chosen one?" The young man who had just died a ridiculous death in a kitchen accident shrugged.
"Yep."
"Can I choose to have dead parents so that I won't be raised by someone impregnated against their will or someone who raises me despite having done unspeakable things to my mother?"
"What if it was a talented male Uzumaki who had his pick of the litter and enjoyed the debauchery?"
"Then I want to meet him even less. But I guess I'll reluctantly accept having a mom... uh, if I am allowed to choose, of course."
"That can be arranged. I'd have thought you would want to get taught fūinjutsu by an Uzumaki. Interesting choice to wish him dead..."
The young man perked up and quickly asked, "Oh? Can I still change my mind? Wait, will I even have fūinjutsu talent?"
"Nope, your choice is locked in now because I'm feeling petty. And yeah, you do have increased fūinjutsu affinity like every other Uzumaki. But no adamantine sealing chains, healing blood, or the mind's eye. You'll just get the comparatively overwhelming chakra reserves, incredible vitality, sensor talent, and a good boost to your water affinity."
The young man furrowed his brows and asked, "Water affinity? Didn't Naruto have only wind affinity?"
"The clan did choose to live surrounded by water for a reason. And Naruto was taught by morons and slackers. Kudos for not asking about the sealing chains by the way. Yeah, they are as much a jutsu as they are a bloodline ability. If you don't have the talent for it, you won't ever be able to use it unless you spend your entire life deciphering the clan's scrolls. If you do have the talent for it, you might even be able to instinctively know the technique without reading the instructions. It's classified as a hiden – a secret technique like the Nara clan's shadow jutsus in the parallel world I will send you to. It's there and known among the clan, but it's just that not every clan member can learn it realistically," Morgan explained with a small shrug at the start before he continued, "Now, I will grant you some other boons just to see what you will do with them. I have been on a bit of a cultivation novel binge read, so I'll make you an alchemist."
"You were on a what?" The young man incredulously asked as he brushed over the explanation about the sealing chains.
'Morgan' shrugged again and continued, "I said what I said. Now, imagine the alchemists from novels like AgainstTheGods or BattleThroughTheHeavens. Making pills to heal, strengthen, poison, or even completely change the fate of a person. But instead of giving you a heavenly flame or something otherworldly, I'll just give you a particular gift for chakra control and crank up your fire affinity. No need for a hint of wood 'chakra' like in BTTH, though. I won't make you another Hashirama just for the sake of it. Just think of the Second Hokage's water chakra talent but a level or two above that for your fire affinity and that'll be enough to get you started. Additionally, I'll give you a yin and yang affinity on the same level as Tobirama's water affinity, so create your own special kekkei genkai fires from there if you feel up for it."
Looking at the soul in front of him for a moment, the god added, "You do know that nature transformation kekkei genkai don't come from nothing and are written into a descendant's DNA because someone with good talent created the nature transformation in a freak coincidence or through sheer dedication and talent first? In the good versions of that universe, anyway..."
"I mean, it had to have come from somewhere? The kids of Indra and Ashura didn't fuck everyone to give the world's population kekkei genkai..." The young man pondered out loud, feeling a little overwhelmed.
There was still a chance that all of it was simple mutations designated by nature after the chakra fruit granted humanity chakra. Except, of course, those few bloodlines that come directly from the kids of the sage and his brother. Like the Uchiha and the Senju.
"Exactly. Nature itself is just as powerful as one Sage of the Six Paths. You'll fit right in with the Terumi clan with their water and fire release ninjutsu. And I know you already know Terumi Mei with her lava and boil release. In time, you can create those, too. Though, you'll likely already have the boil release since birth. That's 'just' water and fire. If you work on earth and wind release, your fire affinity should make it possible to create lava and scorch release, too. Your lightning affinity will likely be too bad to create blaze release unless you steal a rinnegan from somewhere or make a pill for it. Nobody in the Terumi or Uzumaki clan has a particularly high lightning affinity. Most of them trained hard for their lightning jutsu."
The recently deceased young man just stared at the seemingly omnipotent being in front of him in silence for a while, totally overwhelmed with all the information he received. The silence was only broken when the godly presence clapped its hands.
"Now, chakra sadly didn't create many treasures of heaven and earth that would allow you to create reality altering pills. Because of that, I'll give you your personal sage dimension on par with Shikkotsu Forest and those other two areas shown in the manga. With enough of my influence, some time dilation, abundant nature energy and chakra, even common weeds will mutate to become some Heavenly Star Gazing Grass or whatever. It will start off tame and slowly ramp up until you're in your 20s. No training inside for decades and hiding from the Otsutsukis, Madara, Obito, or other overwhelming enemy attacks, though. You'll be kicked out if you go inside with the wrong intentions. Only crafting, storage, flower picking, experiments, and the occasional nap allowed," the god explained as he shook his finger at the future Terumi clansman for thinking of exploiting this particular gift that sounded like it was a surefire way to making him a sage.
"And, uh, recipes? Techniques? Soul perception? Uh, a furnace?" The young man asked with a mischievous smile on the inside. One avenue of getting free benefits was banned, but it wasn't like it was his only chance.
"Oh my, read a few cultivation novels in your time as well?" 'Morgan' asked with a lifted brow before it got him thinking. 'God' eventually reached a decision and explained, "No recipes. Make them on your own based on what you find and plant in your dimension. I will give you a pill creation technique that you can work to improve, though. Your dimension will also come with a furnace made out of pure chakra metal, because why not. Lose it, and you'll have to have another crafted. Soul perception is a bit tricky... eh, you're an Uzumaki. Most of them are natural sensor ninja even without the mind's eye. Let's make you a sensor with high talent. That, plus your yin and yang affinity, should do the trick. You'll need something to work on, after all."
"Sounds fair, sounds fair," the young man agreed, though with a small frown slowly forming on his ethereal soul-face. "How will I know what a pill does if I have no recipes, though? Do you want me to just litter the ninja world in corpses as all my test subjects die from exploded chakra pathways or poison?"
'Morgan' narrowed his eyes at the soul before he sighed and conceded, "Okay. You'll more or less instinctively know what a pill does and what level of quality it is if you make it inside your own dimension. Can't have you neglect the alchemy part of this arrangement or what will be the point of all of this?"
The young man nodded with a pleased look. This was going somewhere.
"Cool. Will there be pills that need inscriptions at higher levels? Is that where my fūinjutsu comes in, and it works for that, or do I need to invent a new fūinjutsu language for my high-level pills?"
The god scoffed and looked at the soul in amusement.
"It's cute that you're trying. Okay, minor sealing knowledge that you'll need to create those 'pill inscriptions' will be added to your brain upon birth. Gives you something to think about until you no longer shit your diapers and before you finally unlock your chakra."
Seeing that he was wearing the god's patience a little thin, the young man smartly kept quiet and waited for what was to come next.
"Alright. See you later," 'Morgan' concluded, stood up, and flicked the young man's head.
Immediately, the soul was no longer where it was before the finger connected with its soul body. Instead, the boy, now a newborn child, screamed his little lungs out.
—————
[POV 1st person MC]
Many things went very wrong for me, Terumi Yoshihiro, upon my rebirth.
The worst thing that happened to me was very clearly that before the jinchūriki of the six-tails was able to become a missing nin or even grow up to attend the ninja academy, the clan head of the Terumi clan conspired with others to have Utakata killed by having the tailed beast harvested when he was still a young child my age and the absolute madman of a Terumi clan head made me the new jinchūriki for Saiken before I was old enough to protest or fight back.
The village's foremost fūinjutsu master had only just cracked the Uzumaki sealing technique needed to successfully create a jinchūriki that survived longer than a few years. As revenge he implemented a flaw in my bijū seal that I had to correct myself.
I spent most of my childhood years secretly trying to create a pill that would ensure my survival once Akatsuki came knocking to extract the tailed beast from me. I succeeded, eventually, to create a pill that was more or less able to reconstruct a person's chakra pathways from scratch if they hadn't withered for years. It was my understanding that a jinchūriki would die after the beast was extracted because of the broken pathways and subsequent 'leaking vitality'. I also managed to make a lucky pill that would more or less be able to raise the dead - but I only had one of those and didn't want to waste it if I could help it.
But even with these reassurances about my survival, I still secretly killed my clan head out of petty revenge years later despite my success and gave my fiancée Terumi Mei the clan head position before the reign of the Fourth Mizukage had even started. She became a jōnin in her early teenage years, same as me. The strong were revered here in this world, doubly so in Kirigakure, so even with some dissent from the older generation, Mei held the clan head position firmly.
One might think 'wow, one of the hottest characters of Naruto is your fiancée? Sick!' and they'd sadly be dead wrong.
For a woman who was so in love with love originally, Terumi Mei hated the fact that she was forcefully betrothed to me by the clan despite my talent and passable looks after I show-cased my frankly ridiculous fire affinity by accident. During my chakra awakening as a toddler when my mother taught me how to make chakra, my chakra almost by itself showed a feat that was pretty much peak Avatar-fire-bending level where I turned the chakra in the air with my own into fire chakra and controlled it without hand seals. A maid who had since died tragically had told the clan head of what happened and started my suffering.
At this point, a small part of me still hoped Mei's dislike was linked to me being a jinchūriki since the Fourth Mizukage Yagura, also a jinchūriki during later parts of his life, was making our village a real hell on earth starting our later teens. Obito taking over influencing the new kage instead of Madara fucking around with the old Third Mizukage had accelerated the suffering of everybody in Kiri quite quickly.
The fact that I helped only hastened the process - but I was raised with psychopathic, bloodthirsty killers and my ethical threshold for murder was pretty low in this new life.
I couldn't say no anyway. My life was on the line, too.
Yagura and Madara's puppet before that were no slouches and while I was firmly a kage powerwise, I didn't like my chances fighting off the entirety of Kiri.
In any case, word about my fire juggling got back to the clan head, who plotted to have a tailed beast sealed inside of me, arguing that Konoha used the Uzumaki lineage for such things, too, and then he finalized my suffering by giving me the hand of his own niece Mei, who was a year younger than me, against her express will two years later.
I was a perfect gentleman every single time we interacted, but I wasn't too keen on marrying someone who despises me so much, too. So, I started looking for other companions a couple of years down the line. Something the clan head used to encourage greatly before I scorched his brains. I found a few, and Mei only started disliking me more for it.
Some would say rightly so… not that I felt very loved by any of them and gained more than simple physical release.
"A few bastards with your lineage would make great shinobi for our clan and for Kiri," the clan head had argued during clan meetings, much to Mei's chagrin.
Personally, I was partial to my own attendant and bodyguard, not that I needed one, Pakura.
Thanks to my vague understanding of the plot and a very lucky coincidence, I learned as a young preteen that the hero of Suna was on her way to Kiri as an ambassador to broker an alliance during the early stages of the Third Ninja World war, and I connected the dots.
With chakra rivalling a jōnin's since I was 7 because of my first few pill creations, my Uzumaki blood, and the six-tails sealed inside of me, I was able to leverage my sensor abilities to find Pakura of the Scorch Release as she was fighting off the ambush that killed her in canon. She won, though not without sustaining lethal wounds that would take her life soon enough.
With my appearance as a young kid and her being so close to death, I got the woman to trust me - or pretend to trust me - and eat one of my healing pills as I worked to fix her most immediate wounds with the six-tails chakra.
Since I still wasn't a master alchemist at that time, the pill didn't fully heal the woman right then and there, but she did survive because the pill closed the wounds and bought her body time to heal itself. Her getting fully healed and truly becoming stronger than she ever was originally only came after I turned 13 and decided to trust her with more power after I had a breakthrough of my own.
As for my upbringing and the academy years I should have dreaded as a Kiri nin, I was allowed to opt out of the bloody mist tradition of slaughtering every other classmate of mine to become a genin because of my status as a jinchūriki with the overpowered, then publicly-known boil release at jōnin-chakra-levels.
Thankfully, everyone in the village agreed that me obliterating a bunch of kids who were less than cannon fodder to me served no purpose. Instead, they had me murder a bunch of prisoners, mostly weak rogue nin, in cold blood to see that I had what it took to be a Kiri nin.
Subsequently, I became an actual, certified jōnin at 13 after my fellow jinchūriki, Karatachi Yagura, the Fourth Mizukage and puppet of Obito, made me his personal guard after I presented the village with one of my pill creations in the first year of his reign once Madara stopped influencing the Third Mizukage, chose the fourth, and gave the keys to our village to Obito.
Nobody truly knew Pakura was still alive and living with me as I had managed to smuggle her back to the Terumi clan in my plant dimension and dyed her beautiful hair pure copper brown instead of green and copper with a pill. She looked like a bastard of one of my clansmen with that hair color.
Additionally, Pakura was made to suffer as my personal attendant, which she only endured because I promised her sufficient power to deal with Suna through my pills. Plus, I also made her secretly care for all the children I stole during the time when Kiri enacted a policy of wiping out all the bloodline clans that weren't fiercely loyal to the Third and Fourth Mizukage.
Pakura liked kids and childlike innocence. And I merely needed to put toddlers and little academy children into a genjutsu and place them in my plant dimension before putting them in a secret courtyard in the Terumi clan that was protected by Uzumaki seals my late father erected. Nobody could get in or out... without sufficient force or Uzumaki blood. Nobody had reason to assume that countless children lived there either.
My father used it to have sex without getting bothered, I didn't judge. I just used it differently.
These kids were in a prison in all but name, but at least they had abundant food resources grown in my dimension, and I created countless card and board games to ease their boredom and my own. And, of course, they also had one of my fiercest loyalists... my mom, to teach those kids to think of me as their savior.
Another gift my fiancée didn't truly deserve for when Mei stepped up in the near future and would take up the mantle of the Fifth Mizukage. A stronger village with deeper foundations and stronger ninjas.
I still pondered over whether or not I'd give her the pills I mass-produced over the years once she came into power. Sure, I gave her pills regularly to improve my image in her mind, but I made it sound like they came at great personal cost when in reality, all it took was time and a smidgen of effort. For some of my simpler recipes, even a simple Fire Clone could produce hundreds or even thousands of pills before running out of chakra. And my proficiency only increased.
That, too, was relative, though. Because, when I or my clones made pills in my dimension, one day outside equaled two days inside the dimension at this point. A sharp downturn from the years that passed every week that I didn't spend inside. I tested it with wine I stored inside to get an estimation since there was no system screen to get a precise answer.
So far, the pills I presented to Mei were a little less than half of what I had successfully created in various degrees of quality and potency. I showed her cleansing pills that made her chakra usage, as well as her already flawless skin, even more smooth.
Healing pills that would reknit flesh, mend bones, and even put organs back together as long as it was all in one place in a matter of minutes if the wound was fresh, far surpassing anything a medical ninja not on the level of Senju Tsunade could ever hope to achieve.
'Realm expansion' pills that helped grow chakra reserves during growth and helped with the increase in reserves during training.
Talent pills that increased nature transformation affinities. Though they were sadly too weak to help someone as overpowered as me when I invented them.
Strengthening pills that multiplied any physical conditioning efforts for a duration.
Stamina pills that replenished and eased any and all forms of exhaustion, even mental strain.
And not to forget so-called soldier or ration pills. Pills that allowed you to go without food for extended amounts of time because they slowly nourished a body over a brief period where you couldn't eat - like on certain missions or during war where cooking wasn't feasible for many reasons. The pills I created far surpassed anything Konoha's Akimichi and Nara clans had in their stores because, in all honesty, my alchemy and my ingredients weren't even in the same realm as whatever they did. In the case of my ingredients, quite literally.
I released those last pills to the village for the sole reason that I didn't want to fight in the Third Ninja War as much as was expected of me.
Who would send someone to war, who on paper was barely a genin despite his fearsome strength, but also the person who made pills that reduced the strain on the logistics and war rations massively?
Not even Madara's puppet kage was the answer at the time. Sure, I was a weapon to them and Obito later wanted to weaken us, but Kiri only sent me out less than a dozen times because I was still young and proved that my time was better spent making pills.
I even gained a cool title when teenage-me burned down a few Konoha fortifications the few times I joined the efforts on the frontline. Well, cool for any edgy teen because they literally called me Red Demon of Kiri.
Anyway, I made stupid amounts of money by selling those ration pills to the clans and the village itself, despite barely asking for the same price as the shit-version of the same pill circulating Kiri. I didn't need to share the profits with anyone either. I even sold the recipe to someone who was clearly a root operative under Danzō's orders by the end of the war when my name was somehow leaked outside of the village.
I demonstrated that the recipe works during the exchange, but they would absolutely never be able to replicate it.
Not only did they lack my living fire release - a fire and yang kekkei genkai I developed that I could make look and feel like regular fire release despite having many ridiculous properties - the main ingredient was wheat that grew only in my plant dimension.
It looks indistinguishable from regular wheat and it simply would grow to be regular wheat if you took it and planted it in the regular world. A perfect cover, though I still sadly couldn't take this same deal to several people. Danzō probably spoiled that for me because I cost him quite a lot of money.
Unknown to anyone but me and the Takikage of Takigakure, I also shared pills with that small village. Initially, I wanted to see if I could yoink the jinchūriki of the seven-tails. But Fu, a small girl a few years younger than me, was well-cared for in her village. Any attempts to brainwash her were too much trouble at the time, so I instead traded for their 'hero water' under the guise of a transformation jutsu.
Originally, this 'hero water' would grant massively increased chakra reserves for a short time at the cost of the drinker's lifespan. I got a few gourds of this water for a handful of cleansing and strengthening pills. Now, thanks to God's overpowered plant dimension, I had a huge spring gushing this stuff into a small lake. Never figured out how that happened after leaving the gourds inside. I just took it as an automatic upgrade.
Many of my alchemy experiments have featured this water since then, though.
Currently, it was high time for the bloody mist era to be over. Mei was 17 this year while I was 18. The clan, my mother especially, was pressuring her to give a date for the wedding soon, but I reassured Mei that I didn't mind waiting until the dire times were over. She was clearly already fighting the kage faction together with Ao, and I didn't care much about any of it. In fact, I gave her many not-so-subtle hints that Yagura was controlled while doing jack-shit about it.
Because thankfully, Obito had a particular bone to pick with the three-tails who was inside his beloved Rin before she 'died', so he left me alone and didn't put me under the same genjutsu as my boss Yagura. But, in my humble opinion, I was much stronger than Yagura anyway by that point.
I'd love to see Obito's expression when he finds out in the future that I managed to save Rin. She was still in a coma a few years later because my pills at the time could only suspend her life, not completely save it. Reconstructing a heart, the one Kakashi had pierced, and fixing her broken chakra pathways needed pills way beyond teenage me could produce at that time.
Watching the enraged Obito who just awakened the Mangekyō obliterate the Kiri forces was probably the time I came closest to death in this world.
But, I didn't do much about Obito and his scheme with Yagura in the first place because I wanted to make absolutely sure nobody would want to make me the next Mizukage. I'd rather be her husband if it still came to that, and just silently amass more power until Akatsuki finally strikes and gathers all the tailed beasts.
In any case, I finally remembered that there was one Uzumaki clan member that I could definitely save, and it wasn't Karin who was likely still a toddler or just born. She was roughly the same age as Naruto and Sasuke, and the nine-tails massacre happened roughly two years ago.
But nope, I was going to save Karin's mom and kill my way through Kusagakure, the Village Hidden in Grass. I learned a bunch of fūinjutsu from the mentor and adoptive father of the previous six-tails jinchūriki, the village elder Harusame. But not only did he clearly dislike me because he was raising Utakata, my predecessor, as a son - I myself didn't like him either. As such, even my talent and the barebones pill-inscription knowledge I held led me to a sort of bottleneck that I couldn't cross without more scrolls or guidance in fūinjutsu. Well, in a time frame I could tolerate.
Harusame was a filthy thief who stole all his wisdom from my clan. Not that I ran around calling myself Uzumaki Yoshihiro. I didn't call myself Yoshihiro either, just Yo-kun for friends or Red Demon for everyone else. But that was beside the point. I wanted to see if Karin's mom was any good at fūinjutsu or if she was just a bloodbag for the grass nin. It didn't hurt that I genuinely cared for little kids and didn't want to see them suffer needlessly.