Tell me if you’ve heard this story before. Some dude dies (doesn’t matter how) and somehow finds himself in a place that’s supposed to be fictional.

  I’ve certainly read my fair share of those. Mostly to pass the time. Never because I actually wanted to experience it.

  Yet, here I am.

  No, I’m not going into the whole ‘getting squeezed out between my new mother’s thighs’ schlop. I was born, I grew up, and now I’m learning to be a ninja.

  Dear god, I still flinch when I think that word.

  ‘Ninja.’

  Before you start reaching for those pitchforks, I’ve got nothing against anime enthusiasts. I watched a few, myself.

  I’m what you would call a ‘filthy casual’ or something. Fanfiction and web novels were as far as my ‘nerd cred’ extended. What can I say? They helped stave off boredom.

  But, back to the main point: Inexplicably finding myself in Konoha.

  My status? Civilian. My parents owned a store selling general goods. Nothing exciting.

  As for my (ugh!) ninja abilities – until today, I had none. No, seriously, I was painfully average.

  Even with my retained mental faculties, I had absolutely zero luck with gaining any kind of advantage expected of someone in my situation. To a certain degree, I understood why a lot of the fics I used to read exaggerated crucial details. If they made the main character’s life too hard, it wouldn’t be fun.

  Unfortunately for me, this isn’t fanfiction. This world had actual rules and imposed serious limitations.

  Take chakra, for example. Some stories made sensing and using it sound simple. As a newborn, you had all the time in the world. So, it should be easy to focus on finding your chakra, right?

  Wrong!

  I spent months trying and all I managed to do was scare my parents into thinking I had severe constipation. This didn’t change until I got into the academy, where chakra use was strictly regulated.

  Yeah, who would have thought that teachers wouldn’t want to just hand little kids a live grenade before sending them out to play? Well, when there wasn’t a war going on, that is.

  Different times, different rules.

  And I’m getting off topic again. Where was I?

  Ah! Chakra, yes. So, no, I couldn’t use chakra until I got to the academy. I could, however, start preparing for my inevitable entrance into ‘child soldier university’ in several ways. Namely, exercise and reading.

  By now, some of you might be wondering why I would want to be a ninja in the first place. I’m not the main character. There was no clan name or great legacy forcing me down the path of blood and violence.

  My family wasn’t rich, but we were fairly well off. I could have gone to regular school (yes, they have those here) and helped out with our store. If I were an actual native of this reality, I might have done just that.

  But I wasn’t. I knew stuff. Stuff that would inevitably find me, even if I didn’t go looking for it.

  To my admittedly limited knowledge, Konoha would be attacked twice. Once by Orochimaru and then by that Pain dude. Or was it Pein? Never mind, doesn’t matter.

  Why not just leave, you ask? How? How would I do that?

  Even forgetting the fact that I had parents who had built a life here, there’s no internet in this world. No convenient transportation systems, either. The most advanced form of widely available mode of mobility is the steamboat.

  You know what else is here? Bandits. No, not just bandits. Ninja bandits. The kind who reduce civilian caravans into slurry on the regular.

  How do you think hidden villages pay their highly skilled, highly trained cannon fodder who never got any screen time? Escort or guard detail, that’s how.

  Living out in the boonies isn’t any better, either. Bandits attack smaller towns and villages too.

  Ironically, Konoha is one of the safest places to live in if you were a civilian. Until it isn’t.

  So, where does that leave me?

  Well, if I can’t count on others to protect me and those I care about, I’ll have to do it myself. Problem was, I turned out to be supremely untalented in all things ninja.

  Hear me out before you start calling me a lazy bum, making excuses, and never putting in the work.

  I’m not saying that I’m completely hopeless. That would be Naruto (relax, we’ll get to him later). But for all of my perceived advantages and preparations, I was still completely outclassed by some of the kids I got to school with.

  A few names are fairly obvious, with Sasuke being right at the top of the list. But Kiba, Shino, and even Hinata were all kicking my ass.

  It’s hard to even describe how fast these named characters were, even as children, or how hard they can hit. The first time I went up against the Hyuga girl, for example, was also the first fight of the Taijutsu class. I don’t know if I was just unlucky or if this was part of some planned match-up.

  Either way, I got the absolute stuffing beaten out of me.

  She didn’t even use her eye thing! And her attacks? Dear god, they were indescribable. Those tiny hands packed so much force that a later examination revealed microfactures all over my arms and chest.

  How did anyone ever consider this tiny terror weak?

  By the end of the day, she did come over to apologize for hurting me and I admit, it yielded some complicated feelings.

  On one hand, she didn’t mean to be so rough. On the other, I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this was the same person who showed me a glimpse of how vicious ninjas can be. The two concepts just wouldn’t merge.

  In the end, I could only give her a strained smile and tell her there were no hard feelings.

  Things didn’t really get much better from there.

  Practically all of the clan kids were better than me at fighting. I did better than the other civilians, but that’s not saying much. As for Naruto…

  Look, it’s complicated, okay?

  He’s got stamina for days and even though his technique was atrocious, he didn’t need it when facing me. The kid was a pure brawler and while Sasuke had the skills to take him down with no issue, I found the hellion a lot more challenging.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Not because he was better at combat than I was.

  It’s because He. Would. Not. Stay. Down!

  When we first fought, I moderated my strikes like I did with the other civilians. That turned out to be a mistake. When the spar finally ended with me as the victor (barely), my fists, knees, and elbows felt like ground meat.

  I’ve only fought him four times in the nearly three years we’ve been at the academy, and I thanked Lady Luck every day for this boon.

  Regarding the rest of the schooling aspects, I was doing quite well! While not exactly a genius, I was raised in a house of academics in my previous life. So, I’ve made use of a few effective methods to make studying more productive. I even shared these methods with my classmates, though, only those who didn’t come from clans.

  Those brats already had plenty of advantages. I wasn’t giving them another one.

  Did I share it with Naruto? I suppose this is a good spot in this long and winding monologue to talk about him.

  Now, we all know his story. Ostracized by people through no fault of his own, the protagonist grows up lonely and isolated. Some self-inserts then enter the picture and all of Naruto’s troubles disappear.

  Hurray!

  As with all things related to him, though, it ain’t that simple.

  Contrary to what quite a few what-if stories depict, the villagers weren’t actually cruel to him. They didn’t chase him away, form mobs while chanting “Burn the demon!” or go out of their way to make his life miserable.

  No, Naruto was ignored and neglected.

  One could argue that this was still bad and I would agree. It also, unfortunately, left my hands tied.

  Had I been born an orphan, our team-up would have been swift and legendary. But I wasn’t. Instead, I had parents. Parents who would become targets if I went anywhere near Kurama’s container.

  Not just by the other mundane inhabitants of Konoha, either. But by other ninjas, Root…Danzo.

  You see my problem?

  On top of that, I didn’t have any cheat skills or convenient gifts from ROB to get me out of trouble. I had to make a choice and I chose my family.

  This wasn’t to say that absolutely nothing changed for Naruto. At school, I could get away with giving him some assistance. I just had to frame it the right way.

  While helping my fellow civilians, I could also toss some advice or useful observation his way. It didn’t always work, but he wasn’t as bad as he was portrayed in the source materials. I also asked questions and clarifications in class as often as I could get away with. If it ended up helping Naruto understand the lessons better, well, that’s not my fault.

  At the end of the day, though, I’m severely limited in how much I can change things. Take the Uchiha clan massacre, for example. Given everything I told you about my time here, could I have done anything to prevent it?

  Don’t bother, the answer is no. I’m basically a nobody here, with all that entails.

  Or, I was.

  Which brings us to what happened today. See, I’ve been training to use my chakra for a while now. As it turns out, you really do need the assistance of an experienced teacher to even get started. By exposing us to their chakra, the academy’s instructors acted like car batteries to jumpstart our own sleeping potential.

  Not the best analogy, but I’m sticking with it.

  Naturally, the clan kids didn’t need such distasteful methods since they had mommy and daddy to help, the pampered little shits.

  …

  Okay, I may have grown bitter at some point.

  Moving on, I considered my chakra awakening the true start of my journey toward power. Alas, it wasn’t that easy. Control came easily enough, but I had such paltry amounts that I may as well not have had any.

  Thanks to my meta knowledge, I was able to increase how much chakra I had through some grueling training, but the improvements were miniscule. Half a year later, my capacity was only a little above what someone from my background should possess. Not bad. But not good, either. Especially for what’s coming.

  So, there I was, in one of the least-frequented training grounds in Konoha, resting against a tree after busting my ass off for little to no gain. It was a Saturday and I had already spent hours walking up and down its trunk to hone my control and expend my store of chakra.

  Of all the options via fanfiction that I’ve tried, this was really the only one to produce measurable results. That I was able to do it at all while would have been a major accomplishment given my relative youth. But knowing what I did, it also highlighted how badly I stacked against my contemporaries in chakra capacity.

  Unfortunately, I’ve simply exhausted all other reasonable possibilities.

  And this is where the trouble started.

  It began as a stray thought, really. A spark of insight where the similarities between chakra and chi started dancing in my mind. Thinking of chi got me thinking of all the myths and legends about it back on Earth. And following that trail of ruminations somehow brought about memories of fics involving young masters, magical plants growing in random places, and flying swords.

  This then got me thinking of absurd possibilities. Ridiculous possibilities. Impossible possibilities…

  …Might have gone too far with that last one, but the point is – could it be? Well, why not? I’ve already tried everything else. This is just the proverbial kitchen sink I have yet to throw, so throw, I shall.

  Having made up my mind, I then had to consider how I would even start. Do I just…think really hard?

  Should I curse at the sky until the heavens strike me down with lightning?

  Fuck it, the KISS methodology, it is.

  Closing my eyes, I focused inward to feel out my chakra. Through constant practice, my control now allows me to move the energy through my pathways at the speed I want. What I haven’t tried yet, however, was compressing the stream of jutsu fuel in my body.

  You know, like how those cultivators supposedly get stronger while hiding in their closets.

  As I was doing this, the similarities between the concepts governing this reality and those stories I remembered became more difficult to ignore. Chakra and Chi or Qi. Tenketsu and Meridians. Chakra Coil and Dantian.

  I’m sure I got some of those wrong, but that’s not important right now.

  Not when I started noticing tangible developments with this approach. Kicking my mounting disbelief down to the abyss of my consciousness, I started putting in more effort to compress and circulate my chakra all over its pathways.

  Finally, after literal hours of me doing this, I felt a shift that was nearly impossible to describe to someone who couldn’t feel chakra. The best way I can put it would be like switching to 4K resolution after watching YouTube at 240p for most of your life.

  When I opened my eyes, I knew deep in my soul that my life was never going to be the same ever again.

  -----

  It took me far longer than I’d like to admit before I calmed down enough to go home. At that point, night had already fallen, and my folks were worried sick.

  They grounded me for a week.

  I would’ve protested, but honestly? The punishment gave me an excuse to hid- I mean, spend more time at home. I had to get a handle on this problem before school started, but I didn’t know where to even begin.

  A few tests in my room immediately made a few things clear, however.

  My chakra flowed more easily than it ever did. It responded to my wishes like an eager puppy, unaware that its very existence is putting my life in danger. While I did appreciate the difference that its new (density? purity?) quality is making in weaving jutsu, I was more interested in avoiding attention.

  Konoha is constantly being monitored. The Yamanaka clan has incredible sensors and don’t even get me started on the ninja working at T&I. That they didn’t immediately track me down after my reckless discovery was a miracle on its own.

  Still, I’ll be going back to school tomorrow and I’ll be surrounded by teachers. All of whom are ninja and are bound to notice the changes in my chakra.

  Do I quit the academy? It wouldn’t be strange. Civilian students drop out all the time.

  But then my parents would ask questions. The teachers would ask questions. What excuse could I possibly give that wouldn’t lead to more, well, questions? I wasn’t exactly struggling and I practically had to beg before I was allowed to enroll in the first place.

  So, what? Just go to class and pretend that nothing happened? Play dumb when the inevitable inquiries start raining down on me?

  Lying in bed, I groaned into a pillow.

  How did such a stupid test end up trying a noose around my neck? Even now, I still can’t believe that no one else has made this discovery. After thinking about it more, it’s so stupidly obvious!

  We were already practicing chakra control. Sage training existed in this world. What? Did no one wonder what would happen if you compress those energies and rapidly circulate them around the body’s local network of pathways?

  Then there are the biju, tailed beasts that are basically just masses of chakra given form. That last part shouldn’t be possible without compression. Chakra dissipated when it escaped the body. So, the biju must be drawing in their energy to a fixed point, thus making their chakra denser.

  Of course, none of this is confirmed. For all I knew, I could be completely wrong. But they are a good jump-off point to cultivation.

  There wasn’t any indication that someone made this connection, though. Not in the anime. Not in any of the fanfiction I used to read. Heck, not even in our academy books and scrolls, and I’ve read practically all of them.

  I was trying to get ahead, okay? Sue me.

  Without any point of reference, I wasn’t sure how the changes in me would be perceived. Will I be treated as a spy? Will they think that I was replaced by a foreign shinobi?

  By the end, I couldn’t think of a solution, so I went back to school a trembling mess. Naturally, my parents noticed and I gave the excuse that I didn’t get enough sleep. My mother wanted me to stay home for the day, but that would just be putting off the inevitable, so I convinced her I’d be fine.

  At the academy, some of my classmates made comments about me looking like a corpse warmed over. I gave them the bird.

  Strangely enough, classes started as they usually did. Some of the teachers did ask if I was okay, and I used the same excuse I gave my parents. I was chided for being so irresponsible, but that was about it.

  It was during Taijutsu that things took a turn for the worse. In hindsight, I should have expected it. It was always Taijutsu class.

  Expecting to get my ass handed to me, as usual, I squared off against Kiba. Cue obligatory taunts and boasting by my opponent, followed by Naruto screaming encouragement and vitriol at the sidelines.

  When Iruka gave the signal to begin, Kiba charged straight at me, fully confident that I wouldn’t be able to deal with his speed. This was certainly the case every time we sparred in the past.

  Now, though? He was much slower than usual. Not in the ‘moving through syrup’ way. More like he was just a regular kid with no special training.

  As such, he was much easier to follow and counter.

  Full disclosure: the prospect of finally winning a fight against one of the clan kids completely pushed my chakra issue out of my mind.

  He swiped, I ducked, grabbed the offending limb, twisted my hips and legs, and then threw Kiba out of the ring. From the look on his face, the Inuzuka clearly wasn’t expecting that. It would have been funny if it wasn’t for the deafening silence that followed.

  Then I remembered and froze.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Kenta.”

  I was fucked. Utterly and completely fucked.

  “Kenta!”

  Root was going to find me. Danzo will give me to Orochimaru and I’ll be dissected on a lab table, probably while conscious.

  “Shiozaki Kenta!”

  Or maybe I’ll be taken to T&I where Ibiki will pull out my fingernails and–

  Before I could spiral any further, hands grabbed my shoulders and I blinked. Iruka was there, kneeling in front of me, face full of concern and worry.

  “You back with us, Kenta?”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I jerkily nodded my head instead.

  “What happened?”

  The question was simple enough. It should have been easy to answer. But out of nowhere, all the stress, anxiety, frustration, and humiliation that I’ve accumulated over the years hit me all at once.

  “I don’t wanna die, sensei.”

  The choked sob escaped me before I could stop myself.