Title : A Lesson Of Common Sense
Summary : Being reincarnated as Naruto Uzumaki had its perk, and Alex, our new protagonist, was going to use them to its advantage. Weak to OP!Naruto-SI. Pairing up to vote.
|~-X-~| ALOCS |~-X-~|
Chapter 1 : Being a Reincarnate Sucks
The shuriken came out of the dark like a thought someone else had.
Alex moved before he understood why, his body dropping into a sidestep that his conscious mind hadn't ordered, three metal stars cutting through the air exactly where his head had been a half-second ago.
One of them clipped the fabric of his collar, his orange collar, because apparently the universe had decided that this situation wasn't indignity enough and he heard the thunk of it embedding in bark behind him as he winced.
"NARUTO! RUN!"
He ran.
It wasn't a difficult decision. Iruka Umino – the anime character that taught Naruto in the series, was somewhere behind him, locked in the kind of close-quarters exchange that produced very unpleasant sounds.
He could hear the scrape of metal on metal, sharp exhalations of effort, the wet sound of a Kunai connecting with something that was probably a rib. Alex had already done a rapid threat assessment that concluded he was only a 22-year-old Computer Science graduate who did Muay Thai three times a week, not a trained ninja, and the man currently throwing weapons at him had been doing this professionally for years.
So he ran, taking what he could describe as a big fat scroll on his back and rushed out of the way of the two real fighters.
The scroll was unbelievably heavy for something that was, at its core, just paper. He'd had both arms wrapped around it since he'd grabbed it off the ground during the initial scramble, and it kept trying to unbalance him, shifting its weight with every step like a passenger who'd never learned to lean into turns.
He spotted the tree he needed, old and enormous, hollow at its base where two roots had grown together and left a cavity just large enough. He angled toward it without breaking stride.
He shoved the scroll inside. Grabbed handfuls of moss and loose bark and stuffed them on top of it until the opening looked, at a glance, like nothing in particular. Then he straightened up, caught his breath for exactly two seconds, and turned back toward the sounds of fighting.
'If this is a dream' He thought 'Then I'm going to do this properly and teach that bastard a long-lasting lesson on common sense' He finished with a grin as a plan had formed in his head.
|~-X-~| ALOCS |~-X-~|
He'd been thinking it was a dream since he'd opened his eyes.
The last thing Alex remembered with any clarity was his apartment, the specific quality of light through cheap blinds at 2 AM as they strolled around to find an open Kebab kiosk to satiate their hunger, the ceiling he'd stared at a hundred times as he half-listened to his friends arguing on who between Saitama and Goku would win in a 1vs1, the tail end of a very good night.
They'd just graduated. All of them, finally, after four years of angry-looking algorithm problems and annoying group projects and the particular existential misery of debugging code at 3 AM the night before a deadline. Pizza, drinks, the kind of easy collective happiness he didn't let himself have often with his strict regimen.
He'd drunk more than he meant to, he always did, ever since his last real relationship.
He remembered taking a number of a pretty blonde girl during their brief outing in a club. Her name was Sarah, or was it Lisa ? He genuinely couldn't remember and had stopped caring about those small details approximately 20 months ago when his high school girlfriend had introduced him to the specific way that betrayal felt from the inside.
In resume, that bitch cheated on him.
The breakup had been the making of him, in the way that painful things sometimes were. He'd gone back to Muay Thai. He'd trained from age five until sixteen, quit for the girl as she complained about not having enough time with him, which said everything about his priorities at the time and thrown himself into it with the focused misery of someone who needed something to hit.
3 years later, he was in the best shape of his life and had a Computer Science degree and a comprehensive inability to trust anyone he was attracted to.
Going back to topic, the last thing he truly remembered was coming back to the rented apartment he shared with his bros, saying that he needed a bit of rest and gone to sleep in his bed whilst his friends were trying to seduce a few girls that they took up with them on the way back home.
After that, he'd woken up here, fighting for his life as he smelled the mix of blood, mud and sweat.
Here, being a body that was unmistakably thirteen years old, in a jumpsuit that was unmistakably orange, carrying a scroll that was unmistakably the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing, in a village that was unmistakably the Hidden Leaf, being attacked by a man who was unmistakably Mizuki from the first episode of the Naruto anime, his first thought had been : I'm drunk and dreaming.
His second thought, as a kunai sparked off a rock two inches from his foot, had been : This is a very detailed and vivid dream.
His third thought was in progress now, as he circled back toward the clearing with a length of orange fabric in his hands and a plan he was already revising on the fly.
'Did I just become Naruto Uzumaki out of nowhere ?' He thought with a strange twisting sensation in his gut as he dashed faster toward his target.
He shook his head "This is just a dream. This is just a dream. This is just a dream." He repeated to himself like a mantra.
|~-X-~| ALOCS |~-X-~|
Mizuki had Iruka pinned.
That was the situation when Alex came back through the tree line. Iruka was down on one knee, one hand pressed to his side, his vest dark with something that wasn't shadow. Mizuki stood over him with the particular posture of a man who was enjoying himself, which Alex found he disliked intensely, even more so then when he saw that traitor act on the first episode.
They'd watched the whole series with his bros, from start to finish, he was looking forward to tell them all about this as soon as he'd wake up because this was the strangest dream he got so far.
The traitor hadn't noticed him yet. He was building to something, the way sadists built to things. Slow and deliberate, wanting the audience, wanting the fear first before finishing their opponents. Alex had met people like that, more tame than this, but they still existed in the world.
The thing was, they were almost always easier to deal with than they thought they were, because they needed you to play your part in the scene they'd written.
But if you flipped the script –
He moved.
He came at Mizuki from behind and slightly to the left, which was the angle that would put Iruka's position behind the man's focus. Almost imperceivably, he could see his muscles twitch at the sudden movement and slowly turning toward him.
He got his jumpsuit across Mizuki's throat before the man registered his presence, locked the grip around the fabric, and used his weight, as small as it was, infuriatingly small, he filed that under problems for later, to drag him backward and down.
Mizuki's hands came up immediately to claw at his arms desperately and he grunted.
He was stronger. Of course he was stronger, he was a trained Chunin and Alex was inhabiting the body of a child.
But he was also starting from disadvantage, and the instinct that took over when your airway was compromised was not the instinct that made good tactical decisions. Mizuki pitched forward, got his feet under him, and threw Alex over his shoulder as he'd clearly intended from the start.
Alex landed badly and rolled with it, coming up with the jacket still in his hands, breathing harder than he wanted to.
"You brat –" Mizuki said. His hand went to his throat, reflexive. His face was already reddening. The genial mask was fully gone now, replaced with something that was much easier to work with. There was genuine and personal anger in his eyes.
He smiled, the kind of smile that preceded something ugly and turned to face the boy who'd just tried to strangle him "Naruto, do you want to know why everyone in the village hates you?"
"Mizuki, don't –"Iruka started, and then made a sharp sound of pain as Mizuki's heel connected with his wounded side. Naruto/Alex winced at the pain etched on Iruka's face 'It's just a dream' He repeated himself religiously as Mizuki went on.
Alex let him talk.
He used the time to work his fingers carefully into the fabric of the jacket, it was cut in a few places. He kept his eyes on Mizuki. He kept his expression appropriately wide, appropriately stunned.
The role was familiar enough: the audience. The target. The person to whom the reveal was being delivered. He had to play the ignorant kid who just discovered something big about himself. Open and vulnerable at an attack.
Mizuki was warming to it. He had clearly rehearsed this in his head before he came here or was eager to display his small victory. He recounted it all. The Kyuubi, the Attack, the Sealing, or at least the version most people were told about.
He laid it out with the confidence of a man delivering information he believed would destroy the recipient, not knowing the recipient not only knew all of it but more. He had the knowledge of who was Naruto's parents and why they forced to do this 'Obito. The Original SIMP' He thought amusedly as Mizuki finished his speech.
Mizuki then pointed and said the thing he'd built his entire speech to "You, Naruto, are the Kyuubi !" as he took out his big ass Shuriken and started to roll his shoulder. He was using this momentary shock to kill him and flee.
Alex blinked 'He really said that in the anime ? It was a long time ago so maybe I forgot' He thought as he looked at the traitor with something akin to disappointment.
Then he tilted his head as he replied with a frozen smile "Do you know how a Storage Seal works, Mizuki-sensei ?" he asked simply as Mizuki froze in his steps, the Fuma Shuriken halted in the air as his user stopped dumbfounded at the reply.
The question landed wrong. Mizuki's entire body language stuttered, recalibrating, because this was not the scripted response he'd probably expect from him. He'd expect shock, maybe crying, or anger – and most probably momentary halt that he'd use to finish what he thought was the Kyuubi's reincarnation himself. But a question about sealing ?
Mizuki took a half-step back without meaning to. "Why do you –"
"It's a pretty simple question, right ? Please entertain me Sensei" Alex/Naruto took a step forward. His voice was calm, the way it got when he was working through a problem. He was not cold, not performative, just focused, trying everything in his power to not break character.
He watched Mizuki take another half-step back and felt something settle in his chest as he repeated the question "When you store a kunai inside a Storage Seal, does the seal become the kunai?"
Mizuki stared at him. Shook his head, once, the motion seeming almost involuntary.
"Good" Alex nodded, as if this was a lesson and Mizuki gave the correct answer. He took another step and Mizuki took another back. He didn't seem to have noticed yet that he was being guided. 'Good' he thought satisfyingly as he continued "So if someone sealed the Kyuubi — the strongest Tailed Beast in existence, a creature made of pure chakra that killed hundreds if not thousands of men in a night, inside a newborn infant..." He let the pause sit. Let Mizuki's eyes track to his face. "Does the infant become the Kyuubi, Mizuki?"
Another shake. Slower this time.
"Does it look like I'm a big bad monster ?" Alex gestured at himself mockingly. The 13-year-old body, the scrawny chest visible through his tight shirt since the jacket was now in his hands. Bare his whiskers, he was looking pretty normal "Do I look like a 9-tailed Fox the size of mountains?"
Mizuki's back met a tree. He seemed to notice this belatedly and looked behind him, and that was the moment he'd lost the scene entirely and some part of him knew it, because when he turned back his expression had shifted from anger into something more unpleasant: a man recalculating his options.
Alex was already moving, continuing his verbal onslaught as he cornered the man in his own game. He smiled wildly.
"Look at the jacket, Mizuki-sensei" He said pleasantly, holding it up as Mizuki took it unconsciously and he took a few steps back as the traitor looked at him confusingly "Look carefully" He gestured to the vest as he looked at the man expectantly.
He watched the man's eyes drop. Watched them move across the fabric.
"And now Mizuki, what do you think is my plan for a traitor like you?" A vicious tone he didn't expect for sure. He flinched as he looked at the feral grin of his ex-student "Focus on the vest Mizuki-sensei" and he felt strangely complied to do so.
It was a horrible colour for sure and – wait, it was cut ? Why cut ? He didn't land a single Kunai on Naruto, nor did he cut him or was it cut prior. He looked up to look at Naruto as he gestured for him to continue his search.
Something prompted him to accept that order – maybe curiosity or the shock of Naruto's lack of reaction, and he continued his search eagerly until –
His eyes widened, the cuts on the jumper were filled with Explosive Tag Seals.
He watched the exact moment Mizuki found the cuts. And then half-second later, when he found what was inside the cuts. The paper seals, thin as cigarette paper, slotted into each gap. Explosive tags, lifted from the scroll's outer casing during those two seconds he'd spent hiding it in the tree.
He tried to throw it away before foreign hands closed on his. He tried to wiggled out of them but then other hands closed on him. Solid hands, real hands, each attached to a version of Naruto Uzumaki that had appeared from behind the tree he had his back on, and there were more of them than Mizuki could count in his peripherical vision.
More came. From every angle. From the shadows under the trees and the branches above and even below him. Arms pinned, legs locked, one hand wrapped firmly over his mouth before he could complete whatever jutsu he'd started to form to escape.
"So, Mizuki, does the jumper becomes the Explosive Tag just because he has them in it ?" Asked Naruto/Alex, and his mind had quipped a 'No', but he couldn't speak anymore as another of those damned clones had wrapped his hand around his mouth as he muffled a silent pleading "Tsk Tsk Tsk" Tsked Naruto as he looked at the defeated Chunin with a sneer.
He looked at the scene with satisfaction as Mizuki's face went white.
Alex stood in front of him. The shadow clones had gripped the man too tight for him to escape anymore as he looked at his ex-student with pleading eyes.
"Shadow Clones are genuinely impressive" Alex/Naruto said conversationally, glancing at the two standing closest to him. "Solid mass, full sensory feedback, retain information when they dispel. Much better than the regular Clone Jutsu. I can see why it's in the Forbidden Scroll, even if you put away the fact that you need a comical amount of Chakra to use it"
He looked back at Mizuki "And I have lot of it like you probably know, much more than what is needed for the Clone Jutsu and that's why I wasn't able to perform it" He paused as he looked at his teacher with a knowing smile "But you probably already know all that, don't you Sensei ?" As he waved at the teacher when he started to scream, trying to wiggle his way out of the clones.
"Did you also know that you can train with them ?" He marvelled at his own revelation as he looked around him, full of his clones "Imagine if I had known this earlier" He shook his head as he looked at the traitor with a small smile "But anyway, that's not really relevant to your situation, I just found it interesting to share it with you before you die"
Mizuki made a muffled sound against the palm over his mouth.
"The thing is" Alex continued, and his voice was still calm, still even, still the voice of someone working through a simple problem. It was all an act of course. On the inside, he was shaking like a leaf "I really don't like this jacket"
He looked at the fabric in his hands. Orange, the specific orange of a traffic cone, of a safety vest, of every aesthetic choice he would never voluntarily make "I have never liked this jacket"
His smile had turned a bit more sinister "And I don't like what you did to Iruka-sensei"
He continued on as he taunted the pleading man "But I'll take good care of your fiancée Tsubaki, Sensei, for good old time's sake" He said as the man's face etched in horror
He pressed his hand in the Seal that'll activate the Explosive Tags.
"Goodbye, Mizuki" He finally said with glee as he looked at the horror etched on Mizuki's face.
The jacket blew up into thin air.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Alex had already turned away.
He heard it. Four detonations in rapid sequence, close enough together to blur into a single sustained concussion that he felt in his back teeth.
He kept walking toward where Iruka had gone down, and he did not look behind him. He didn't need to see it. He'd already decided not to see it.
The clones dispersed in puffs of smoke at the edges of his vision. The information they'd gathered. From positions to escape routes Mizuki had been calculating, the exact angle of the wounds on Iruka's side.
All this information settled into his mind in four simultaneous flashes with hundreds of different views. Each as unpleasant as the other. He filed it and kept walking as he tried not to vomit all his guts.
'This is not a dream' He finally accepted as bile pilled up in his throat.
The thought arrived quietly and without drama. He'd been holding it at arm's length since the first shuriken, keeping the possibility of dream open the way you kept a door open in a room that was getting smaller.
But now the door closed shut on him and he was forced to face it head on.
The smell reached him before he got to Iruka. He'd trained in gyms for years. He knew the smell of blood with all the accidents, but copper and iron this hot and close, never. He knew the smell of burned things, but the smell of burned human flesh was nauseating.
He could feel the back of his clothes making wet sounds as he rushed back to his teacher. The smell of blood etched on the back of his body was a reminder that this was, in fact, not a dream, and that he just killed a man.
The specific combination of those two smells, in that clearing, on that night, was something he was going to remember for a long time regardless of whether he wanted to.
He made it to the treeline before his stomach gave out. He vomited everything that his body ate that day.
He knelt with one hand on a root and breathed through it. When it was done, he breathed through it some more, and when his hands had mostly stopped shaking he straightened up and went to Iruka.
"Iruka-sensei" His voice came out steady. He was vaguely proud of that.
The man looked up at him with the expression of someone who had just watched their student do something that didn't fit in any of the categories they'd had available. His face was pale under its usual tan.
He had both hands pressed to his side and was breathing in the careful, controlled way of someone managing pain. He was not panicking, not yet, just managing as he looked carefully at his students expression to try and examine his psyche.
"N-N-Aruto" he said. And then, because he clearly couldn't help it even now, he added "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine" Alex was already kneeling beside him, already pulling the small first aid kit from the pouch at his hip. Naruto's pouch, Naruto's kit, now his, he reminded himseld, stocked with the basic supplies every Academy Student and future Rookie Genin carried.
He could not heal his wound, but he could at least try and stop the haemorrhage before it was too late.
He worked fast but steady, the way his Muay Thai coach had drilled emergency protocol into him after a sparring partner had taken a bad fall. First step : assess and then stabilize. Don't make it worse by making a wrong decision "You've got a Kunai embedded in your left rib. The kunai's still in so we'll have to make do with this" He looked at Iruka's face, gauging "On a scale of one to ten, breathing difficulty?"
Iruka blinked at him. He then shook his head as he said "Four. Maybe five" He croaked as Naruto nodded.
"Okay. That means it probably missed any vital organs, especially the lung" He moved Iruka carefully into a P.L.S position, putting his weight on his right side as the man winced. He talked him through each shift of weight, monitoring his breathing with the focus of someone who was refusing, through sheer concentration, to think about the clearing behind them or the smell in the air or the fact that he had just –
"Naruto" Started Iruka before Naruto tried to stop him to talk.
"Hold still, I need to get the wrap around –"
"Naruto" Iruka said firmly and Naruto was forced to stop.
Iruka was looking at him with an expression that was tired and painful and something else — something that Alex/Naruto recognized distantly as a person seeing through the surface of a thing to the shape underneath it "You're not the Kyuubi" He said firmly as Naruto froze. A part of him, a small part of him – probably Naruto's consciousness still in there, was feeling emotional "You're just –"
"The host, I know Iruka-sensei" He affirmed as Iruka smiled painfully, coughing a tad bit of blood as the 13 & 22 year-old mixed souled man winced "Stop thinking about this, I already knew all of that"
"How ?" Iruka's eyes widened as Naruto shrugged.
It was an easy lie "The eyes, the hatred, and my birthday, it was easy to assume" He said simply as Iruka winced as a peculiar pain invaded him but he still smiled at his favourite student.
"The scroll," He changed the subject as Naruto motioned with his head to the tree he did hide it and Iruka had finally stopped talking.
The clearing was very looked at his hands, 13 years old hands, calloused in the wrong places, still faintly trembling in a way he was choosing not to acknowledge.
He felt, for the first time since he'd woken up here the full weight of what being here actually meant.
Not a dream. Not a story. Not a screen he was watching from a comfortable distance. But – 'Real. It's all freaking real' with dawned acknowledgment and fear gripped his heart.
A new world. A new body. A new life that someone had lived before him and would have to be lived by him now, pushed into an uncertain and frequently lethal future with aliens and revived legends, starting from tonight in this clearing with a wounded man and a dissipating columns of smoke he engendered to kill another man.
He shook his head, trying to focus on the task on hand as he maintained a moderate pressure on his teacher's wound to try and stop the bleeding, using his shirt – the last vestige between him and the cold air, to use as a tampering fabric for the blood.
He was naked from the torso, the cold air making him shiver in effort as he prayed that the Third Hokage was looking at them through his strange crystal and that he'd sent a group of people to save Iruka.
Soon enough, the ANBU Team arrived forty seconds later.
'Finally' He thought relieved as the five of them materializing from the dark with the coordinated silence of people who had been there for some time.
One moved immediately to Iruka's side, hands already glowing with the easily recognizable green medical chakra.
Alex stepped back and let him/her work, watching the pattern of seals they formed with the specific attention of someone filing information for later. Not that he'd be able to use it with his lack of control but it was still interesting to look at.
"Naruto Uzumaki." The ANBU at the front stepped forward. The mask was a weasel, painted white and gray. The voice was level and uninflected. "You have been summoned by the Hokage"
Naruto looked at the ANBU. He looked at Iruka, already in better hands than his. He looked at the clearing. Between the scorched earth, the scattered splinters of wood, the smoke still drifting between the trees, he preferred to be as far away as possible from this place.
He looked at his hands one more time.
Not a dream, he thought again. And then, underneath it, quiet and beginning to settle into something that wasn't quite acceptance but was at least adjacent to it 'Okay. So. What now?' He said to himself as he closed his eyes for a second to try and calm himself.
"Right" he said aloud as he opened them again and looked up. He rolled his shoulders, felt the unfamiliar smallness of them, and filed that too. Thirteen years old. A long way to go. A lot to learn, and a lot to figure out, and somewhere in the list of immediate priorities, a conversation with the Hokage that he was going to need to approach very carefully.
"The scroll is there" He gestured to the tree as one of them nodded before teleporting to the way he pointed. He did not really teleport but at the speed he was going, Naruto couldn't track his movement at all. He gestured to the evaporating smoke "And Mizuki's body – or whatever was left, is there" As another nodded and advanced to the area as he looked at the last member who stretched his hand out. He took it as he sighed "Let's go"
Before he could react, he was already out of the clearing, teleported away in multiple consecutives Shunshin.
His vision blurred as he closed his eyes.
|~-X-~| ALOCS |~-X-~|
Chapter one is done. Let me know what you think !