Before entering the world of Naruto, my life was pretty crap. I was stuck in a dead-end job, my relationship between my wife and I was on the rocks, and I felt lost.
I'm not one to place full blame on my circumstances as a child, but I firmly believe they mould you as a person so they can take at least partial blame. My first life started from where everyone's did, birth.
My birth didn't have any extended family or even a father there, just my mother, the nurses, and the quick beeping of monitors around the room. I was born in Australia and grew up along the coast, playing on the beach with my friends.
Early on when I was just a baby, my mother would take me into her work where I would sit on the bench while she served drinks in a bar, often getting shitfaced herself.
When I was 3, most of the responsibility around the house fell on me after I got home from kindergarten, chucking a preheated meal in the microwave or having a glass of water ready for my mother when she returned.
When I entered primary school, my responsibilities took another step up since I was just quiet enough to hang around her work for the friendly aesthetic, learning about how people acted and reacted to each other inside of the workplace environment. So now, I was cooking food and cleaning around the house, while on a time crunch because of her work.
Due to my circumstances, I didn't get to make many friends but that didn't matter to me. From my view, mum was all I needed, she paid for the food we ate, the house we lived in, everything I needed to live.
Life stayed like this until I could serve drinks, illegally of course, but with my recently found, photographic memory, I knew most if not all of the recipes for the drinks around the bar. At 14 I started as a bartender, serving drinks to none the wiser patrons.
At 17, I started to get paid. Still under the legal age but the owner didn't seem to care, especially since it was under my mother's name anyways. At 18, I had to retake my classes due to poor grades, I didn't have the books or the material or the attendance to learn.
That all changed when I met Hanako, we got attached quickly, and I learned she was a student from aboard, she was a year younger than me but that didn't matter, we entered a relationship soon after meeting.
I used some of my funds saved up to move back to Tokyo with her during our last year of schooling. Our relationship grew closer, and I learned the language quickly, when we graduated, she went to a university, and we moved in together while I started to work around the place to build money.
That's when I learned about manga, my favourite pass time on breaks and at home while not on the job. Hanako wasn't so keen on the art but was too focused on her courses to complain about my hobbies.
In my opinion, there was no problem with keeping doujinshi and manga on bookshelves in your bedroom. Since we shared one, I should have thought of her before doing that, but its moot point now.
I got to work at a big software company at age 22, and that's where I would stay until my untimely demise at age 35. This company was a part of a certain group of businesses, called 'black companies.'
Black companies are businesses that force employees to work egregious amounts of overtime without pay and receive bullying from superiors. This put a great amount of stress on me, and with Hanako becoming more infuriated with my growing collection of literature some unsavoury, our relationship started to deteriorate.
We fell into the stupid mistake of thinking kids were a great idea to rebuild the relationship, but that just wasn't the case. I loved them dearly, but my time had to be spent in other places, like working.
I wish I could have spent so much more time with them, my sweet little kids. I came home one day to find the house clear, my books inside of the rubbish outside and my kids disappeared.
A note left on the kitchen counter alerted me to the situation. Hanako had found another man that could satisfy her needs, unlike me, and didn't have 'perverted' hobbies.
I fell into a depression for a while, going to work, coming home, what was even the point anymore? That all changed when I tried to help a man on the side of the road.
He looked to be ill and was clutching something in his hand, when I reached to help, he stabbed me in the throat with a razor. My body ran between cold and hot flushes, I looked at the crimson liquid spilling from my body, this is where I would meet my end, I knew it, but it still didn't stop me from hoping I could see my kids one last time.
Their smiling faces would be worth any hell I was going to be sent to. I sank through my body, falling below the pavement and into the deep dark void below me. I saw my neighbours crowding around my body, and the perpetrator running down the rainy street.
I ignored my body in exchange for focusing on the window appearing in front of me.
"Michael Sandro, you have been selected by the higher beings of this plane to relive your life based on a fictional series of your choosing. Would you like to accept this offer?"
The quiet hum of the depths called out to me, I had a feeling I couldn't waste any more time choosing and hastily pressed yes, a collection of my achievements was collected in a list with a grade and some sort of currency displayed to be used for perks.
"Michael Sandro
{Click here to view achievements}
Total score is: 24 points
Grade: C-
Please select some perks to make your next life interesting!
Gamer: Add an RPG system to your next life (6 points)
Regressor: Remember all of your memories, experiences and keep your points for any future lives you may accept. (9 points)
Prodigious: All sources of experience give 50% more experience towards skills if you have chosen the gamer perk. Skills come naturally to you if you have not selected that perk.
Pick and choose: Select one special attribute for your next life. (6 points)
Charismatic: People are more inclined to like you off of first impressions, however you may act. (4 points)
More selection will be available after more lives have been lived, and also with a higher grade.
I picked the pick and choose, gamer, and regressor perks, saving the rest of my points for the next lives I would live. Another screen popped up after I confirmed my selection, a list of my favourite series.
I picked the top one, Naruto and the world flashed white. I was floating up in the air now, above a continent with a selection of villages in front of me. I tried to pick the leaf village, but it was denied due to too many participants choosing that option.
"Please select a name, your surname will coincide with the clan you select."
I was getting more excited as time went on during my selection. I could become an overpowered ninja, with a system, a cool name and fuck around with canon characters?
"My new name is… Shin!" I pressed accept and chose my next favourite village, the cloud. The final message appeared when I landed inside of my new body.
"Please select a clan to be born into your options are:
Chinoike: A clan recognised for their genjutsu and visual prowess
Yotsuki: A clan that focused on a special branch of the lightning release, storm release
Armada: Hailing from the land of iron, and specialising in all sorts of weapon related techniques
Zin: A clan that moved from the land of water, specialising in their special blood limit, the swift release"
There weren't many options, but all of them had their perks. I only recognized 2 of the options, Chinoike and Yotsuki and between them I wanted Chinoike far more.
What I remembered from the Sasuke novels was some jutsu form their blood manipulation were able to crack Sasuke's Susanoo. That was ludicrous in itself, without thinking much I picked that clan and opened my eyes to the new world I was in.
I was cradled inside of a blanket and being held by someone; I couldn't see anything from how close I was being held. There was some shouting, but it was all fuzzy.
Footsteps were sounding out all around the room in a frantic pattern, the slow soft beating of a monitor held my attention. It got slower, slower, then the grip on me softened, then the sound stopped.
I got picked up and my eyes tried to adjust to the light, there were already system notifications above me, but I couldn't really read them.
I wasn't so dumb to not realise what had happened while I was being shuffled around. My mother had just died giving birth to me, my father was probably distraught, and the nurses were scampering around with me in a bundle.
After being carried through the hallways, our trip was interrupted by a deep voice, booming down the hall.
"Please drop that child. It has been decided by the Raikage that the Chinoike clan will be removed from this village for safety concerns."
"Yes sir!" The nurses responded, placing me on the ground and moving back several steps while a man in jonin attire stalked towards my body. My life was already going to end, I wouldn't have any extra points, wouldn't be able to remember my other lives, I didn't want to lose that. But I had no choice, there was no way of me surviving this situation, some would call it hopeless, for my track record over the past couple of years, I'd say its run off the mill.
He stopped in front of me and grabbed me by the head, hoisting me up into the hair and looking straight into my eyes. "We should have never held your family here. Let alone anyone from that place, say hello to my parents for me over the other side."
His eyes were dull, but full of a burning hatred I couldn't even start to understand. A blade was unsheathed and slowly brought up to my neck, before the hand was cut off and I was caught before hitting the ground.
"MY HAND! YOU… DEMON, THIS IS AN ORDER FROM THE RAIKAGE B, DO NOT INSULT HIS INSTRUCTIONS!"
"Hey fool, I'm not letting a tool without rhythm like you hurt a friend's kid ya fool." My saviour rapped, moving his hands in several quick gestures before placing them back under me.
"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU ARE SO ANNOYING, JUST DIE ALONG WITH HIM THEN SEE IF I CARE!" The jonin grabbed his sword tightly and swing downwards, being stopped easily by a tentacle sprouted from B's back, before it shattered the katana and knocked the shinobi out cold.
"You're Mile's kid, right? Get ready cause you're gonna be seeing light, we are running away from any fights!" I was already starting to get tired of his stupid rap gimmick, I loved it in the show, but here in front of me? Hell no.
B brought me back into the room with my father, but he wasn't there, neither was my mother's corpse. B clicked his tongue but jumped out of the window and landed on the pavement outside, breaking into a full sprint towards the largest building in the middle of the village.
"You don't need to go all the way there B. Just hand me the child and we can move onto the topic of your mastery over the eight tails." A gruff voice said from behind us.
"Mister Raikage, you know I can't let you kill my friend's kid hey." B said, bringing me into a tighter hold against his armour.
"It was brought to my attention from the council that there have been several accounts of assault on teammates during missions and unnecessary violence against citizens from the Chinoike clan, as of today, they are no longer apart of Kumo's military force because they are just that much of a risk. I know they won't go back to the valley of blood willingly, so we are giving them mercy through a quick and painless death, like what I did with Mile."
"You-you killed Mile?"
"Not personally, but I was there to watch the finishing blow be dealt. He accepted without problem, so please B, just put yourself in my shoes, I need to look out for the safety of the entire village, I can't have a ticking time bomb placed with our younger generations. This is for the greater good."
"NO, YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE THAT DECISION. On the stake of my own life, I will raise this child using my own hands for the betterment of Kumo."
"Those are large words B, but because of your position as jinchurikii AND only because of that. I will allow you this one thing, bring Shin to my office within the next 10 minutes, and I shall sign your papers."
The Raikage disappeared from in front of us with a gust of wind, leaving B to his own thoughts. After about a minute of standing there B used a body flicker to bring us in front of the Raikage tower.
"Hello miss, the Raikage is expecting us."
"Oh, so you're back, can't say I missed you, demon."
It made me feel pity for my newfound guardian that everywhere he went they wouldn't even use his name; the original story made it seem like B was always loved, maybe that wasn't true until after some time.
B didn't respond and merely walked up the stairs to his right and entered the Raikage's office with a polite knock on the door, interrupting his leader's paperwork.
"Good, at least you have some punctuality. I ask again, are you sure you want to do this B?"
"I am sure, sir."
"Fine, that is Shin. He is under your responsibility now so look after him well, see to it that he becomes strong to support the village."
"Okay, mister A. I understand and will raise this boy by my own hand."
"Shut up dumbass, get out of here and grab supplies for the child."
B quickly vacated the room as not to incur the Raikage's wrath and soon I was being placed on a couch within a house far outside the village among the mountain ranges.
It was a humble home, only having a dining room, living room, master bedroom and guest bedroom, the guest room being locked for some reason. But the small size of the house was made up for by the acres of land surrounding the property all for training purposes.
"I'll be back little kid, going to go get supplies!" B disappeared while I just sat there gobsmacked. 'Did this guy really just leave a newborn, fresh out the mother, inside of a house, alone?' I thought, he couldn't have possibly been that irresponsible and stupid, right?
My assumptions would soon be proven correct when he didn't appear for another 6 HOURS.
B kicked back open the door of the house with several bags hanging off of his tentacles, obviously full of 'supplies' needed for my survival.
I flipped my body over to see what the commotion was while B placed down bags and began to unpack them, watching me with one eye from around the wall. Did he think I was some terrorist or something?
After that I wasn't really sure what I expected, B was a pretty chill person when not rapping or reading out of the orange books he kept inside of his flak jacket. A chill person, a horrible parent. B sucked at everything that required an ounce of responsibility and it wasn't uncommon for him to call in favours from the Nii family for a rundown on how to do certain things.
It was incredibly funny watching him learn how to change diapers, especially considering I could make it as hard as possible on him, and he wouldn't be any the wiser to the soul of a 30-year-old man inhabiting his adoptive son.
In my opinion though, it was fair game, I had to listen to him rap his new song to me while waiting for responses while he had to deal with me making his life hell. Even deal, a not so much win-win for everyone.
1 and a half years later
I had grown quite used to living with B, I had my cot in his room and listened to his garbage raps constantly, He would leave for missions every once in a while, and I would sit there staring at my status screen. It was nice to look at I guess; it was hard to explain it but being a baby gets boring after a couple of days.
While I was looking at my status, a question mark appeared in the top left of the window, I focused on it mentally and a new window popped up to my right, with big text saying 'Tutorial'.
Skills
Perks
Stats
Quests
Reputation
Raids
Special Quests
Lottery
Titles
Skill tree (Blood limit and passives)
Seeing them all I decided to just go for the first option and a new window popped up with a grey background.
'This is the tutorial for the skills section. For information relating to anything other than that please return to the previous window with the back arrow in the top left of this one. If this is the information you are looking for, please press continue."
I pressed continue and what could only be described as a word dump filled my vision. Here is the concise version.
You gain skills by doing quests, special quests, raids and lotteries. To master and level up skills you need to repeat the actions multiple times. You gain an extra boost to your gains if you complete the action without using the skill. This means if you wash dishes without auto using the 'Dishwashing' skill you will gain twice the amount of experience than if you used it with the skill. There is no guarantee you will get a skill when you do an action, the more common of an action it is, the lower the chance of you getting a skill related to it. On the flip side, if you do an action that can only be done once, it will be a guarantee you get the skill associated.
Next section was perks, the passive buffs I would obtain during this life.
Perks can be unlocked in the same way skills can but at a higher rate and can also be obtained from the skill tree labelled as passives. Perks can give extremely small bonuses like 1% to chakra regeneration but the same nodes that give you the small bonuses can usually be upgraded to give higher bonuses; all bonuses were also calculated at the same time. There are also bigger bonuses that can't be upgraded or give a huge boost at once using a skill.
Stats I could already figure out and would check back on if I really needed to so I next pressed quests which was self-explanatory but if I didn't have gamer's mind I should check to see if this is different.
Quests were short term goals I could work on with bonuses for incentive. They weren't very common but had several objectives to complete for amazing rewards.
Reputation is how people see me and if they recognise me. Once you get enough reputation with a certain person or group, you can use a hologram of them in raids. It also has several levels, level 1 being 0, level 2 being 100, level 3 being 1000.
Raids were big boss fights that gave great rewards of exp and cash upon completion. I could use anyone with level 2 reputation to fight with me.
Special quests were long term goals and extremely difficult quests that affected the original timeline in some way like defeating a member of the Akatsuki or learning a secret technique.
The lottery is a monthly gift drop that can give ryo, money, skills, titles, title slots and even quests.
Titles are apparently a big thing for this system, providing several buffs towards certain groups or boosts in gains with certain skills. I could get more title slots through the lottery or special quests and get more titles from quests rarely, special quests uncommonly and lottery insanely rarely.
The skill tree is where I would end up getting most of my simple boosts from by spending skill points which I got per level. 5 stat points and 1 skill point per level up. Extras could be gotten from the lottery, special quests and raids. There are several trees I can branch off to or specialise in some examples of them being the chakra, physical, mental and spiritual trees. The chakra tree was mainly passives and applications of chakra, the physical tree gave bonuses to muscle growth and strength in general, the mental tree gave bonuses in resistance to pain and such and the world tree was hidden at the moment and all the panels were a dark golden colour.
Now that I could understand my system a bit better, I had goals to work towards. When I could move at least, currently I could only crawl, not talk or walk yet, which absolutely sucked.
B walked into the room with a solemn look on his face, he said he had a mission this morning at the Raikage's office so shouldn't he be gone? He picked me up from my crib and placed me on the bed, somehow over the past year, he was able to tell I could somewhat understand him.
"Hey Shin, this might be the last time I talk to you for a while. Some stuff has come up and I will be out of the village for a while, you've heard me talking about the Nii family, right? You will be staying with them until the battles are over." He said, not bothering to look me in the eye in favour of staring at the floor.
He didn't add anything else but placed me back in my crib and went to bed at a nice and early 4pm, completely forgetting to feed me for the entire day. I wasn't that hungry, so I didn't make a big deal out of it, especially when he felt down in the dumps like this.
In the morning he placed me in the living room and wrote out a note for the Nii family when they came to pick me up, before leaving quickly with a serious expression on his face. Something I hadn't seen since the day I was born.