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Chapter Text

When 15-year-old Derek Moore first discovered self-insert fanfics he was fascinated. How cool would it be to die and then be reborn into universe where the world is ruled by fire-breathing ninjas? When it actually happened to him he was less amused. 

The fact that he actually got reincarnated into the Naruto universe was the funniest fucking thing to happen to him. Like yeah sure he liked watching anime but he figured when he died he’d probably go to Heaven (or hell if only the truly good people got into Heaven) and reunite with his loved ones. Being reborn into the Naruto universe had to be some higher being playing with his life. 

Whatever the case, growing up again was the most disorienting thing he had ever done in his second life. He didn’t really gain full consciousness until he was about 2 or 3. He didn’t know why that was, maybe his baby brain couldn’t handle his adult consciousness yet. One day he realized that he wasn’t just Haruno Kizashi. He was also Derek Moore.  

And with that realization came another. Haruno was Sakura’s last name in the series which meant—He looked over to his right and saw his parents holding a baby with rose pink hair. ‘Oh, I’m Sakura’s older brother.’  

Well he could’ve been Orochimaru’s illegitimate child. There were far worse possible outcomes. He was born to a nice civilian family with the option of being whoever he wanted to be. Not that he wasn’t going to be a ninja though, there was no way in hell was he going to miss out on the chance of becoming a ninja.  

He was going to enjoy this life, he wasn’t going to squander it by being a civilian. Sure, his life would be infinitely safer if he was a civilian but he really didn’t care. 

He was just a regular old civilian in his old life. It was time to make something out of himself in his new one.

Chapter Text

Kizashi was a lazy person. In his old life he never had a reason to work out or even regularly exercise. He knew wasn’t going to be thrilled at the amount of exercise shinobi due on a regular basis.  

So when their sensei announced that they were going to do some light training on their very first day of the Academy he was apprehensive.  

It couldn’t be too bad; they were only 6 years old after all. They wouldn’t be pushed very hard.  

He was only about a year and some months older than Sakura so that meant she would join the Academy next year with the rest of the Rookie Nine. Which meant that he should be in the class with Team Gai.  

He looked around the room and silently spotted them; careful not to stare at them too obviously. It was weird to see people he only knew in an anime in real life.  

Now that he looked around the class he could easily spot which kids hailed from clans and which kids were civilians. The Inuzuka in the back of the class was easily distinguished by the two large tattoos on his face. And he could tell that he was sitting behind a Nara. The droopy eyes and the spiky ponytail gave it away easy.  

His attention was pulled away by their sensei, Watari, starting class. 

“Alright class we’re going to go over the curriculum for this year and then we’re going to go outside to the obstacle course and see how everyone does.”  

That didn’t sound too bad. Their curriculum was even easier than he expected. They were going to expand on their reading and writing that their parents should’ve taught them before they came to the Academy and they had some simple ninja skills like learning how to tie various knots and when to use said knots. 

One thing was clear though, he was going to be very bored in the Academy. Besides the shinobi skills his brain already knew how to read and write. After all he did die when he was —. 

Kizashi was struck by the realization that he couldn’t remember what age he was when he died in his previous life. Or how he died at all, the last thing he remembered was his 18th birthday but anything after that he couldn’t remember. Maybe he died in his sleep? 

Agh, he was so confused. Reincarnation made no sense. Was this normal? Or was he just making a big deal out of nothing and he had just died in his sleep? 

He was pulled out of his musings by the class getting up and going outside to the obstacle course. He punted the issue to the back of his mind. It didn’t matter after all, this was his life now and the sooner he left his old one behind and embraced this one the better off he’ll be. 

He should be happy that he didn’t remember his death, no matter how it went down that could’ve been horribly traumatizing to remember. Death wasn’t pretty.  

The obstacle course turned out to be three of them. Each one more difficult than the last. Their class would only be using the first one for the time being. It was set up so that two people could use it at the same time and race. 

Watari-sensei quickly paired them off and sent them through. He looked to the right and saw he was paired with the Inuzuka. He hoped the difference between clan kids and civilian kids wasn’t too large. They were only six after all. Their clan couldn’t have trained them too hard. 

He ignored his mind after he realized that Kakashi made chunin by like 5 years old (or was that Itachi he didn’t remember) and the Hyuuga clan started their training super early. 

The Inuzuka looked at him, teeth bared into a smile.

“Race you?”  

He nodded his head and smiled. “Last one to finish is a rotten egg?” It was weird being expected to act like a kid but he didn’t find it too hard. He mostly just said whatever was on his mind.  

“It’s on!” 

There was only one more pair left before they were up. “Name’s Haruno Kizashi. But you can call me Kizashi. What’s yours?” 

“Inuzuka Hiroki. And this here is my ninken Romaru,” he pointed to the previously unnoticed sleeping puppy in his hood.  

“You two ready?” asked Watari-sensei. 

“Yeah let me just put Romaru on the ground over there.” Hiroki put Romaru on a patch of grass in the sun where no students were. 

“Ready? GO!” 

Kizashi sprinted as fast as he could noticing that Hiroki was a few steps ahead of him already clearing the first obstacle. 

‘Damn,’ he thought, ‘he’s fast’. And he was. He was steadily gaining ground on Kizashi and it looked like he wasn't slowing down any time soon. 

There was a certain fluidness or grace in his movements. Like he knew exactly what his body was capable of. He saw him trip and he ducked his head and smoothly rolled onto the ground without the slightest change in speed. 

He stopped paying attention to Hiroki and started concentrating on the task on hand. He was definitely going to lose but he could at least make it less embarrassing by catching up as best as he could. 

“HA I won! Who’s the rotten egg now?” Hiroki gloated once they had finished. He had finished about 30 seconds after Hiroki. 

Kizashi rolled his eyes and jostled him with his elbow. He was just slightly winded. “It’s not my fault you’re so damn fast. You tripped and it didn’t even stop you.” 

Hiroki grinned and made his way over to his dog. “My mom lets me work out with her sometimes in the mornings. If you think I’m fast you should see her. She doesn’t take on missions because she takes care of me and my sibling but she’s a chunin and she’s so fast like you wouldn’t believe.” 

Ah so he had had a little training. Not really an excuse for losing since Kizashi could train on his own but still, it was nice knowing.  

That did probably explain his grace while moving though, he was already putting his body through training mild as though it may be. What little training he had was loads better than the no training that Kizashi had.  

They made their way to Watari-sensei and the part of the class that had finished already. 

“Alright guys after the rest of y'all finish we’re going to eat lunch and then start working on some katas from the standard Konohagakure taijutsu." 

Watari-sensei looked at Neji whose eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. 

"Yes, you have to learn it, it’s mandatory for every shinobi to at least be familiar with it even if you or your clan has specialized taijutsu,” with this he answered Neji's unspoken question. Already Neji had his infamous standoffish attitude.  

Well, granted he would be too if he was a born a branch house member of the Hyuuga clan. Being enslaved to your own family members would make him permanently angry as well. 

The rest of the day they practiced some katas and at the end they were even allowed to practice throwing kunai, although the edges were blunted just enough to not cut them but still sharp enough to stick into the wooden target. 

This though was where the gap in skill between the civilian kids and clan kids was very apparent. The clan kids regularly hit the board even if they never hit anywhere near the bullseye. Kizashi and the rest of the civilian kids were lucky to even hit the board or get close.  

The first time he tried he missed, badly. The second time he still missed but the kunai went in the general direction of the target so he considered it a success. The third time he managed to hit lower part of the target but he didn’t throw it hard enough to stick in so it flopped to the ground with a dull thud. 

Not bad honestly. That’s considerable improvement when you take in the fact that he’s never thrown a kunai before. He wasn’t too worried, by the time he graduated the Academy he should be able to hit the bullseye ten times out of ten. He wouldn’t be much of a ninja if he couldn’t.  

After that the day was over. He said bye to Hiroki and Romaru (who was now awake) and went to find his one of his parents who would be picking him up from the Academy.  

Some days the fact that he was what appeared to be in the Naruto universe was still surreal. In his old life Kizashi was just a casual fan of Naruto. He watched the anime but most of his knowledge about Naruto came from reading fanfiction and it got to the point where he got fanfiction confused with canon events.  

He knew everything up to where Tsunade was appointed Godaime Hokage but anything else after that he wouldn’t trust his memory. 

He knew there was a world war against the Akatsuki that caused the 5 shinobi countries to set aside their feuds and work together but that was pretty much it. The whole thing with Madara and Tobi was very confusing and fanfiction made it 10x as worse.  

He knew that he was going to be mostly just another ninja from Konoha. He wasn’t going to be a main character like Naruto or Sasuke and he was kind of glad for that. The only connection he had with any of the main characters was Sakura, his little sister.  

Sometimes the enormity of the situation gave him panic attacks because he was way out of his league. He knew that someone else might’ve taken preventative measures to make sure the war never happened in the first place but Kizashi wasn’t that smart. He had no idea where to even begin with something as huge as stopping a war before it even begun.  

It was these thoughts that kept him up in the middle of the night wondering what the fuck he was going to do when the world inevitably turned to shit. This night seemed to be the worst. He couldn’t silence his thoughts no matter how hard he tried.   

Maybe he should go to the Hokage and let the Yamanakas go through his mind? He snorted to himself. Before he even finished that thought he knew he wouldn’t go through with it. He wasn’t too keen on being a prisoner the rest of his life. If the Sandaime knew he could basically predict the future he would never be let out of Konoha for the rest of his life.  

Plus, there was no way he could trust anybody shinobi with his knowledge of the future. Konoha may have been one of the nicer shinobi villages but they were still shinobi. The Sandaime would undoubtedly abuse the knowledge, he was a shinobi after all. They weren’t good people.  

Konoha did a hell of a job desensitizing and glorifying the life of a ninja but Kizashi forced himself to look past that and see it for what it was. Being a ninja was part of Konoha's culture and it was all too apparent. 

Instead of cops and robbers children played as the mysterious ninja who would take on all sorts of deadly missions. After all there was nothing not to like about being a ninja. 

You get cool superpowers and in the end, you save the day and you're the hero. 

But Kizashi knew better.  

They were murderers, mercenaries basically and in his old life the people there would see them as savages and barbarians.  

Kizashi himself was mostly apathetic about the whole thing. This was the way this world worked and despite the fact that they were all glorified murderers the people of this world made it work as best as they could. It could be way worse.  

His old world really didn’t have the moral high ground either. They were just better at hiding the bad and ugly and forcing the good to the surface. 

But Kizashi couldn’t let people die if he knew he could potentially stop it. He wasn’t a paragon for social justice and righteousness like Captain America but he did what he could. 

He decided that he'll do what he can. He may not be able to stop a war but he was certainly able to save somebody’s life if he remembered that they died.  

And with that he rolled around in his bed and finally managed to get some shut-eye. 

Chapter Text

Watching Sakura grow up was interesting. At 5-years-old she was an energetic child bouncing around the house but that was only around Kizashi and their parents. In the public’s eye she was terribly shy, eyes cast down to the ground and unable to utter a word. 

Kizashi knew that she met Ino sometime before or during the Academy and she helped her come out of her shell and into the spirited girl he knew in the anime.  

So when Sakura brought Ino home a few months after he entered the Academy he wasn't surprised, though his parents were.  

Haruno Mebuki and Haruno Kaito were simple merchants. He wasn’t sure what they sold but it was enough that they were pretty well off and didn’t need for much. They raised Kizashi and Sakura with a gentle hand.  

Kizashi and Sakura were good kids so they never yelled or raised their voices at them. 

The amount of freedom parents let their children have in Konoha was startling. Children were encouraged to go out on their own and find friends to play with as long as they were home by the time their parents told them. 

And on the likelihood that they somehow find themselves lost they were encouraged to ask anybody with a Konoha hitai-ate on for directions. He supposed your children couldn’t be any safer in a village full of ninja sworn to protect Konoha citizens but it was weird all the same.  

Not that he didn’t take full advantage of this. It was nice to be able to do whatever he wanted to without his parents shadowing him. 

“Mom, Dad this is Yamanaka Ino.” Sakura shyly said as she pointed to Ino. Her voice was meek and Kizashi had to strain to hear her voice. “Ino this is --” 

“Forehead girl speak up! I can barely hear you!” Even though he could barely recognize Ino without her signature ponytail in her hair the commanding tone in her voice even at the age of 5 confirmed it was her.  

His parents winced, they knew how sensitive Sakura was about her forehead. Any moment now she would burst into tears. But Kizashi knew better, if he was right Sakura would explode right…. now. 

“Ino-pig shut up!" she said explosively. She cleared her throat and spoke up louder. "Mom, Dad, Kizashi this is Yamanaka Ino. Ino these are my parents and my older brother Kizashi. He’s already in the academy.” Sakura huffed and rolled her eyes. He saw his parents glance at each and smile. Apparently they approved of Ino. 

“It’s nice to meet you Haruno-san, Haruno-san.” She bowed to each of his parents before turning to him. She waved to him and smiled. “It’s nice to meet you too Kizashi-san.” 

He nodded to her as his mother responded. “It’s always nice to meet one of Sakura’s friends. Are you two staying for the time being?” 

“No, me and Ino are going to the festival going on and then we’re going back to her house. Can I spend the night over please?” Sakura clasped her hands together.  

“Yeah just be back by tomorrow afternoon okay?” was the reply from his father. “Thank you!” Sakura yelled as she and Ino went upstairs. 

“And can I go to the library?” Kizashi piped up. He had been spending more or his time there than anywhere else. He couldn’t go into the shinobi section since he was still an Academy student but there was still a lot of things to learn in there. 

“Yeah go ahead, be back in time for dinner.” said his mom as she went in the kitchen, presumably to make said dinner.  

He slipped on his shoes and went out the door. He mostly used his time at the library to learn more about chakra. Not that there was much to learn, the most they had about chakra in the regular section of the library was that it was spiritual energy and physical energy mixed together, which he already knew. 

He enjoyed reading their legends and myths mostly because he knew that some of them were true and partly because he liked how different they were from the myths back in his old world. He knew that some of the stories about the Sage of Six Paths were real even if they probably weren’t accurate.  

Kizashi was very aware of his chakra. It was like having a second set of veins carrying adrenaline all throughout your body. And he was aware of all of it. He could feel it racing through his body and eventually settling in his gut.  

He didn’t have much of it, hardly any, but that was to be expected. He was young and what little chakra he did have was probably directed to keeping him alive. 

He was nearing the library when he heard the sound of fighting coming from the patch of trees on his left. He instantly made his way towards the sounds, whatever was going on had to be more interesting than going to the library. 

As he approached he saw that it was just a scuffle between some of the academy kids in his class. He was about to turn around and walk away when he saw that it was two students bullying one student he never really talked to, Rock Lee. 

He didn’t know what it was about the Konoha 12 looking so different when they were little children but it was weird. He hardly recognized Lee without his bowl cut. At this age he had his hair parted from the middle of his forehead.  

Lee was doing a pretty good job at defending himself considering it was two on one. Of course it was an Academy spat so it was just basically the three of them rolling around on the ground.  

Well it’s not like he could just stand there and not do anything. He walked up to them casually, not bothering to approach silently as he knew they would be too distracted to notice him.  

As he approached he quickly snatched the two kids by the collar of their shirts and roughly dragged them off of Rock Lee.  

“Alright you two I don’t feel like fighting right now so let me tell you something,” he said. His tone of voice brooked no argument. He pushed the two kids back on their backs when they tried to get up.  

“You two were barely had the upper hand when you were fighting against him so you have no chance with me and him working together. Now get out here before I make you.” It wasn’t his best intimidating speech but he didn’t know how to actually scare them without going way overboard. He usually let his actions state his intentions. Words weren't his strong suite. 

He hardened his features for extra measure and glared as hard as he could. “SCRAM!” he yelled in their faces and they bolted, fingers scrambling for purchase on the ground as they tried push themselves up. 

Huh. Maybe he was scarier than he thought. He watched them until they left his line of sight and turned around and faced Lee. 

He had a black eye that was just beginning to blossom and a few minor scrapes including a busted lip but other than that he looked fine.  

“You okay?” he asked. “We should go get you some ice for that eye.”  

“Yeah I’m okay I just— ouch!” Lee gingerly touched his eye, assessing the damage. His eye was rapidly swelling up. 

“Let’s go to my house, it isn’t too far from here. We have ice there and I know my parents wouldn’t mind.” Kizashi suggested.  

“Thank you for your kindness and for saving me my friend, but I can take care of myself. Thank you for your hospitality.” Lee beamed at him and struck his thumb up to show that he was okay. It only made his injuries more pronounced than they already were.  

“Dude you can barely see. I can’t let you go to the hospital by yourself. My parents would kill me. Besides it isn’t too much trouble for me.” Lee’s eyes started to water after he said that. Well one of his eyes did. The other eye was starting to swell shut at this point. 

“Thank you so much Kizashi-san! You truly are a good person! Looking for out someone you just met. Truly inspirational!”  

Lee was very emotional. Not that he didn’t know that but he had wondered if he was any different as a kid. He hadn’t met Might Guy yet so his personality was somewhat toned down but still very forceful and sincere.  

“Yeah buddy, let’s go get you all cleaned up okay? My house is just down this way.” They set off walking, retracing the path he took to get here.  

“So you’ve any idea why those two kids were after you? Or were they just being mean for no reason?” Kizashi asked. 

A look of determination crossed Lee’s face. “They told me that they were doing me a favor since nobody can become a ninja if they can’t use chakra. But just watch I’ll become the BEST ninja in the whole wide world by taijutsu alone!” 

Kizashi had no doubt. Lee was an absolute monster in the anime. Training under Might Guy made him a fine shinobi. His taijutsu skills when he was a genin were easily upper chunin levels. His fight at the preliminary exam proved that.  

He nodded his head at Lee. “I’m sure you will. I’ve no doubt about it.” He was unprepared for the sideways hug around his chest. 

“Kizashi-san you are truly too kind!!!” Lee yelled into his chest. And from this angle he could see that Lee had a long braid of hair that went down to his neck. 

He awkwardly hugged Lee back and pushed him away. “It’s no problem, really.” 

His parents were unsurprisingly appalled at Lee’s condition. They fussed over him for a good ten minutes before sending him off to shower before they ate dinner. 

The look on Lee’s face as they fussed over him reminded him that Lee was an orphan and never had anyone to really fuss and worry over him.  

His mom looked at him with a look that he couldn’t read 

“He’s an orphan, isn’t he?”

At his nod her features crumpled in sympathy.

“You tell him that he’s always welcome here okay? And bring him around more often. He’s a good boy and the orphanage can be hard.” 

While Sakura took entirely after their dad with her bright pink hair and green eyes Kizashi had been granted no luck when it came to the gene pool having black hair and brown eyes.  

It made him look adopted when the Haruno family was grouped together as all of them except him had green eyes except him and he had black hair whereas his mom had blond.  

His mom told him that he looked just like her dad, his grandfather, but she had no pictures of him so he couldn’t compare.  

“No problem, he’s a cool guy. He’s in my class at the academy.” His mother smiled and ruffled his hair before she went off to finish cooking.  

“Dinner’s almost ready. You boys can come down in about ten minutes.”  

“Okay.” He went upstairs to see if Lee needed anything. He found him in the hallway staring at a picture of Sakura.  

“Your sister is really pretty Kizashi-kun,” said Lee, his eyes not straying from the picture. 

He has forgotten that Lee had a crush on Sakura. But that didn't happen until they had first met at the Chunin exams right? 

He smiled and laughed and put his hand on Lee's shoulder. “C'mon buddy you're both too young for each other. Wait until you're both ninja so she can see how strong you are okay?”  

Lee stuck his thumbs up and smiled. “That's an EXCELLENT idea Kizashi-kun!”

He hugged Kizashi for the second time today and he tolerated it for a few seconds before pushing him off.  

“Let's go eat. After dinner we can eat dessert before going to bed. And yes, you're staying the night; my mom adores you. She wouldn't want you walking back to the orphanage when it's this dark.” 

Lee's protest died on his tongue. 

Kizashi was expecting another hug but he just saw Lee smile at him gratefully before following him downstairs.  

He didn't exactly have a reason for doing all of this for Lee. He could've easily taken him to the hospital for something as simple as ice. 

But, he looked at Lee out of the corner of his eye who seemed to be filled to the pores with happiness, maybe he didn't need a reason for doing this.  

Dinner and dessert was a simple affair. Afterwards Lee insisted on helping cleaning up and he was so earnest about it his mom actually let him instead of kicking him out like she would've done.  

Though she did kick him out when he tried to wash the dishes so they made their way upstairs to get ready for bed. 

They didn't have a guest room so they had to share his bed but they were both small and had plenty of room left over.  

“Kizashi-kun?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Thank you. For everything today.” 

He shifted in the bed taking care not to hit Lee’s face with his feet. “It’s no problem, you’re welcome here anytime. I’m serious Lee, anytime you want or need to come over here you’re welcome.” 

He waited for a reply for a long time but then he heard Lee’s soft snores and realized he had fallen asleep. He closed his eyes and went to sleep himself.

Chapter Text

Derek Moore was an awkward person. He was an introvert and he liked it that way. Haruno Kizashi was no different. So when he realized he had accidentally made two great friends he was kind of surprised. 

He knew he was a likable person. He just wasn’t very good at being social. Words didn’t come so easily to him as they did to others. 

When he had first met Hiroki he had assumed that they would become casual friends. Not too close but on good speaking terms. When he sat beside him in class the next day after that and continued to do so he kind of figured it out.  

He didn’t expect Lee to become a fast friend but thinking back on it, it was very obvious. It was very easy to be Lee's friend, his sincerity let Kizashi know what he was always thinking and his cheery personality made him easy to be around.  

Hiroki and Lee officially met each other through him and the three of them got along pretty well. All of them were pretty easy-going and their personalities didn’t clash. It was nice and normal. 

Kizashi didn’t like it. Don’t get him wrong he liked Hiroki and Lee but they were children and he was an adult. They were as mature as they could be for 5-year old boys but they were so embarrassingly children-like that it made his head hurt sometimes. 

He didn’t want to admit it but he was homesick. So homesick that sometimes he couldn’t deal with it. He missed his family so much. Haruno Mebuki was a good mother but she wasn’t his mother. He even missed his siblings no matter how annoying they were. 

And god, did he miss cellphones and advanced technology. His cell phone was his crutch in his life as Derek Moore. He never went anywhere without it if he could help it. It was hard to find something to pass the time away when he couldn’t just take his phone out of his pocket and waste a few hours playing Candy Crush. 

Though he guess he really couldn’t complain. Konoha was beautiful during the day, even the stoniest of hearts could see that. And at night the sky was absolutely gorgeous. Kizashi had been born and bred in the city and light pollution washed away most of the stars. 

Konoha made nowhere near the light pollution that a suburban city did and it made such a difference. At night the stars were clear and bright and it never failed to take away his breath. It was one of the few things he really enjoyed about being in this world. 

He was so bitter about being in this world. He wouldn’t say that he hated being here but he certainly didn’t like it. It made him furious, why him? Why him of all people? All he wanted to do was curl up in his bed in his actual room and watch fucking anime or something. He didn’t want this life.  

But he forced himself to let go of the hate and bitterness. It would serve him no good in the long run. He had to let go of it. This was his life now and he had to accept that. 

He started recreating the things he loved most about his world. He attempted to recreate pizza (How hard could it be? After all it was only dough, tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni, right?) and while it didn’t turn out to be the best it was close enough that he had to stop himself from crying right there on the spot. 

He very shoddily rewrote Harry Potter the best he could because it was Harry Potter and who didn’t like Harry Potter? 

So yeah, he was doing the best he could. 

He didn’t know how old he actually was collectively but damn if he didn’t feel every single year he had ever lived.

Kizashi picked his way through the forest not really having a destination. He was skipping the Academy currently and was staying away from the main part of Konoha lest he run into his parents or into somebody he knew. 

He didn’t skip class very often. Not enough to make his grades suffer (not that he really didn’t care about them, he knew the material and that was enough) and not enough to cause people to wonder why he was skipping so often. 

But he needed these days, being a child was more exhausting than he had thought and he needed time to be himself before he drove himself crazy acting like a child all the time. He had to remind himself that he was at least 18 years old. Not the 6-year-old he looked like. 

The worst thing about being a kid? No fucking cursing. God, it was annoying to be told to watch your language. He tended to let himself go a little around Lee and Hiroki but that still wasn’t enough. Having to watch what he saying before he could say it was taxing. 

He wouldn’t normally care but the first time he had accidentally cursed in front of his mother was going down as the funniest and scariest moment of this life. Man, the look on her face as she watched her 6-year-old curse like a sailor was priceless. He had all but two seconds to find this funny before she went to town and started lecturing him like she never had before. She even raised her voice at the end of her tirade. 

He smiled and kicked a pinecone with his shoe. That was a good moment. 

He was settling, he supposed. He couldn’t wait until he was older and was finally able to act relatively close to his age. 

He heard a branch snap and leaves crunching behind him and he spun around searching for the person he knew should be there.  

His heart started beating rapidly and he didn’t know why. At most it was probably a random Konoha ninja and he’ll have to explain why he was skipping. Hopefully his parents wouldn’t figure out the extent to which he had been skipping. The worst that could happen was that they wouldn’t let him walk to school alone and while that was disappointing (he had fought hard to convince them that they didn’t have to do it) he could easily get over it. 

“Just c’mon on out, I already heard you.” To his exasperation both Hiroki and Lee came out from behind a tree, embarrassed smiles on their face.

“What’re you guys doing here? Y’all should be in school right now. And why are you following me?” he asked, more than a little demanding. They stared at him shocked at the barrage of questions and the fact that it was clear he was more than a little angry. 

It was Lee who replied first. “We were worried about you Kizashi-kun! You didn’t show up for school today so we came to find you!” 

Kizashi tried his best to suppress his anger at the two. He really wanted to be alone but they were probably worried about him. And while Lee and Hiroki got along well enough, enough time hadn’t passed for them to be comfortable around each other without Kizashi there. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply. How did they even find him? He left home and came straight to here; the Academy wasn’t even in this direction. “How did you even find me?” 

Hiroki smiled, his sharpened canines showing. He pointed to Romaru who sat on top of his head.

“Romaru sniffed you out,” he said proudly. Romaru barked happily.

“Now what’re you doing out here? You should be in school as well you know.” He glared at Kizashi as if he could get him to spill all his secrets. 

Kizashi rolled his eyes. “Well I wanted to be alone but you can see how well that worked out.” He saw Lee frown at that.  

“That’s crap, we know that you always skip school about every three weeks. We’re not dumb you know, we notice when you don’t show up. What’re you really doing out here?”  

Clearly Hiroki was not dealing with his shit this morning. They were smarter than he had thought though. He had thought that they would think he was sick or something and not think twice about it.  

“Kizashi-san we’re just worried. We are friends, right? You can trust us with whatever secret you’re keeping.” Lee’s face was shadowed with worry.  

Irritation sparked in his chest. He just wanted to be alone dammit!

He ruthlessly pushed it aside, he was not going to lose his temper at two kids. He was better than that.

“What do you guys think I’m doing? Sneaking out of Konoha to go fight missing nin? The only thing I do is come to this damn forest.” 

Hiroki opened his mouth and judging from his expression he was about lay into him but Lee held up a finger and stopped him. They both looked at him expressions totally opposite. Hiroki’s angry and impatient and Lee’s calm and patient. They stared at him for a few seconds before he relented.  

He sighed and threw his hands up in the air. “Look I’m not saying that I’m not hiding something but if I do decide to tell someone I promise the two of you will be the first to know.”

And that was the best they were going to get. They could take it or leave it. 

Apparently the expression on his face conveyed that and they relented and nodded. He sighed, feeling drained.

“How’d you figure out I was hiding something anyway?” 

“You don’t act like a child,” came Hiroki’s blunt reply. “You’re super smart, you ace nearly all of the tests at school and if you didn’t suck so much at throwing kunai I would’ve thought you were some type of prodigy ninja disguised as an Academy student.” 

Well, fuck. Clearly his acting skills were not as good as he thought. 

“We wouldn’t have figured it out if we didn’t hang around so much. To everybody else you’re just a super smart child. You just let your guard down around us.” Lee smiled widely at the end of his sentence, happy to know that Kizashi trusted him even a little bit.  

“So what do y’all wanna do now? We can’t go back to school and we still have the rest of the day to kill.”

Kizashi still wanted to be alone but he knew that after the conversation they just had he wouldn’t be able to find any peace in the forest and that’s even if he managed to convince them to leave him alone. He’d rather save himself the argument. They were both immensely stubborn in a way only kids can be.  

“Oooh! Do y’all wanna go to ……” started Lee. Kizashi tuned them out and followed them out of the forest his mind going a mile a minute. 

Chapter Text

Graduation. It was finally here. Kizashi knew he was probably more excited than anybody else in the Academy about graduating because once he became a genin, once he put that Konoha headband on, he was legally recognized as an adult in the law’s eyes.  

He was more than ready, he was able to perform all three of the jutsu that they taught in the Academy; Henge, Kawarimi, and the basic Clone jutsu. He had taken the written test yesterday and it was ridiculously easy.  

He wasn't sure if it was because if he was an adult or if it the test was actually that easy but either way he was ready to be a ninja of Konoha.   

"Haruno Kizashi."

Finally, his name was called by their sensei. He was nervous even though he knew he would pass the exam with ease. The freedom this exam would give him would be well worth the six years he had spent in the Academy. Becoming a genin was literally the fastest way to adulthood in Konoha. 

Though he knew that he wouldn't do much with the newfound freedom that fact that he had it would go a long way to making him feel better. It was always nice to be independent.

The exam was easy and as far as he could remember the exact same one Naruto had took in the anime. He performed all three jutsu admirably and at the end he was presented with his very own shiny Konoha hitai-ate.   

He tied it on his forehead and thanked Watari-sensei before he left the exam room. The man had had grown on him in his years at the Academy. He supposed that after spending so much time with him it was only inevitable.  

He smiled at his friends and pointed to his headband as he exited and watched as Lee and Hiroki smiled back and congratulated him. Lee was a little less enthusiastic than normal but that was understandable.  

Even though Lee would be a kickass ninja in the future he was currently the lowest ranked shinobi in class due to his inability to use genjutsu or ninjutsu. Lee would have to do his very best to impress Watari-sensei with his taijutsu skills if he wanted to pass.   

Kizashi knew that he would pass though and not just because of his future knowledge. Lee was very dedicated to his training and his taijutsu skills were already upper genin and that was just in the basic Konoha taijutsu style. Once he got Might Guy as his sensei and learned new styles his skills would further improve. He would be contesting with Neji for rookie of the year if it wasn't for his deficiency.   

He patted Lee's back as he sat down beside him.

"Don't worry Lee, you're gonna pass. You're the hardest working student here, there's no way you're not getting in." 

Hiroki nodded his agreement. “You’re nearly as good as me when it comes to Taijutsu. Once you start training with weapons you’ll be on your own way to becoming a Taijutsu master.”

The light reflected off of Hiroki’s own Konoha headband, proof of his success. Lee was the last to take exam out of the three of them and he was getting more anxious with every passing minute. 

After a couple more people went after Kizashi it was finally Lee’s turn. “You’ve got this Lee, break a leg.” 

By this point Lee and Hiroki were used to the strange idioms and phrases he used but this one caused both of them to turn their heads and look at him strangely. 

He blushed and hurried to explain. “That’s not what I meant, it’s just a saying— look, just go Watari-sensei is waiting for you.”

He half-heartedly pushed Lee out of his seat to get him to stand up and Lee, bless him, went without saying anything. 

He looked at Hiroki who was staring at him like a particularly difficult puzzle. “You know, we are graduating right? Now would be great to finally tell me and Lee your secret,” he said. 

Kizashi was hoping the two would forget their little encounter in the forest 6 years back but apparently he wasn’t that lucky. After that he had done his best to appear as the child he looked like and he had succeeded for the most part. 

He was thankful for Lee and Hiroki as all he had to do was emulate their behavior while making sure it wasn’t too out of the norm for how he had already been acting. 

If anything at least it helped him with his acting skills. 

Kizashi looked around the room casually noticing that most of the class were engrossed in their own conversations; nobody would be paying attention to the one he and Hiroki were having.  

“I was kind of hoping you had forgotten about that,” he said. He had no intention of telling them at all if he was being honest with himself. It was too weird, too unbelievable to even fathom and that was without the whole ‘this universe was essentially a comic book in my original universe and I know the future because of that,’ deal going on. 

Things with him were complicated enough and he doubted that letting two other people know would help him. 

Hiroki looked at him like he was stupid. “Of course we still remember, or at least I do. I’m pretty sure Lee remembers but I don’t think he cares anymore.”  

“Well I’ll be happy to tell you all about my secret life as an ANBU agent in the future when we’re older. I wouldn’t want you to faint after I told you about one of my missions,” he teased. 

Hiroki spluttered indignantly. “First of all, I’m a shinobi,” he said, putting emphasis on each syllable of the word shinobi.

He further drove the point home by pointing at his newly minted hitai-ate.

“And holy crap are you really ANBU because I’ve heard rumors that they actually do recruit Academy students and —” 

Kizashi started laughing. “If I was actually ANBU do you think I would be telling you? Isn’t that the first rule of being ANBU? Never reveal your identity?” He cracked a smile at Hiroki who already slightly scowling at him.  

“Dude it’s been 6 years, I am dying of curiosity; you’ve got to at least give me something to go on. Throw me a bone here.” Romaru, who had grown slightly over the last six years, barked his agreement. Or maybe it was because he heard the word bone. 

 Kizashi opened his mouth, to say what he didn’t know, and was cut off when he heard a yell. 

“YOSH! THANK YOU SO MUCH WATARI-SENSEI!” He heard a grunt and a muffled “please stop hugging me Lee” before Lee busted out of the exam room with the widest smile on his face. “I PASSED!” 

“Of course you did!” Hiroki exclaimed. Kizashi high fived Lee and congratulated him. He was genuinely happy for Lee. He knew in the anime that Lee had a strong dedication to his training but witnessing it firsthand was something else entirely. 

Watari-sensei came out after Lee and addressed the class.  

“After teaching you guys for 6 years I can finally say you’re ready to become shinobi and kunoichi of Konohagakure. Congratulations on becoming a genin. Report to the hospital for your registration number and a mandatory checkup before coming back here in 3 days for your team assignments.” 

Huh, he never heard of the checkup happening in the anime but he supposed that you couldn’t fit every small detail into the anime/manga. Konoha had to run somehow. 

The class dispersed after that, each going their own way to no doubt celebrate their graduation with their respective families.  

Kizashi wasn’t expecting his parents to celebrate his graduation from the Academy. They strongly wanted him to continue the family business of being a merchant and to not risk his life being a ninja. They didn’t try to force him to be a merchant but they made their displeasure known when they realized he was fully committed to being a shinobi. 

He wondered if they were like this with Sakura in the anime. But he wasn’t even sure that Sakura’s parents were shown in the anime so he had no clue.  

But that was fine with him, he didn’t need a celebration party. He was technically in his upper 30’s and though it didn’t feel like it at times he was mature enough to not feel bad about not getting a party thrown. 

“Alright guys I gotta go. My mom promised me to show me a new technique today since I graduated,” said Hiroki.  

“See you later.” 

“Bye Hiroki-kun” 

Lee looked at him expectantly. “You have to go too?” 

“Nope,” he said and didn’t elaborate why. 

Lee didn’t question why his parents weren’t celebrating his graduation and just looked grateful for the company. 

“Wanna go to the hospital and get our checkup out of the way?” he asked.  

“That’s a good idea Kizashi-kun.” 

They slowly made their way to the hospital taking their time as they weren’t in a rush.  

“Do you think they’ll put us all on the same team?” Lee asked him. 

Kizashi knew that Lee would be put on a team with Neji and Tenten but he had no idea where Hiroki and himself were to be placed. And there was the small chance that him being in the Academy had fucked up the rankings so that Lee wouldn’t be placed on Team Guy. 

Though Lee would still probably end up on Team Guy because of the Rookie of the Year and Dead Last combination. And Kizashi had no idea what he wanted to specialize in but Hiroki was a solid close-range ninja. 

“I don’t know, maybe. If they wanted a strong close-range team then yeah. But don’t they try to balance the teams out?” he asked. 

But again, he thought of Team Guy. All of them were taijutsu specialists which made sense why they were handed off to Guy. He was a taijutsu master after all. Maybe they were handed off to people who could best help them hone their specialized skill? 

He continued before Lee could say anything. “Though I do hope that they do place us on the same team. I’d rather be on a team with the two of you than with anybody else in the class.” 

He didn’t talk to anyone in the Academy other than Lee and Hiroki so having the two of them on his team would be ideal. He didn’t know how much Lee not being placed on Team Guy would affect the future but it couldn’t make that big of a difference.  

Lee raised a clenched fist in the air and sharply brought it back down. “It would be extremely COOL if we were to be put on the same team Kizashi-kun.” 

Kizashi nodded. “It would be pretty cool. We already work well together; we would make a great team.” 

They talked about team placements the rest of the way to the hospital. He may have not talked to the rest of the kids in the Academy a lot but he spent the most of 6 years with them in the Academy, he knew all of them by their faces.  

They entered the hospital and approached the front desk. “Hi we’re here to get out shinobi registration numbers and the mandatory checkup please.” said Kizashi. 

The nurse who was manning the desk looked at their headbands for confirmation. “Your names?” she asked.  

“Haruno Kizashi.” He pointed a finger at himself. “And Rock Lee.” He jerked a thumb at Lee. 

She checked was seemed to be list and said “Okay the both of you two go to room 210 and wait there. Someone will see you in a few minutes.” 

They found room 210 quickly and entered it.  

“Woah,” he said. There were seals spanning every surface of the room. Like everywhere he could see there was a seal on it. All over the ceiling, floor, and walls. They all seem intertwined with each other and they all eventually led to a large circle in the middle of the room devoid of any writing in it.  

“I guess we’re supposed to stand in the middle of the circle. I wonder what all of this is for.” said Kizashi.  

“It’s a sealing room,” said two voices behind him, one of which was Lee’s. 

He turned around and saw a man in a lab research coat enter the room behind them.  

“Specifically, it’s a sealing room that allows us to see a person’s chakra network.” He nodded to Kizashi. “My name’s Fujikawa Akira. If you could stand in the middle of the circle then we can begin.” 

Fujikawa looked at Lee and smiled softly. “It’s nice to see you again Lee. Congratulations on becoming a genin. You deserve it.” 

Lee stuck his thumb up and grinned, his teeth pearly white. “Thank you so much for believing in me Fujikawa-san.” 

“Wait how do you two know each other?” Kizashi asked.  

“I was brought here when the instructors at the Academy realized I couldn't release chakra from my tenketsu,” Lee explained. “The researchers here tried to fix what was wrong and had me come in a lot of times.” 

Lee shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Eventually I just realized that nothing was going to work and I decided to focus on my taijutsu only.” 

Fujikawa looked at him and said, “When the seals start glowing mold as much chakra as you possibly can and then hold it for a couple seconds. That's all you have to do.” 

“Why have,” he gestured to the room and started walking to the circle, “all of this when you could just find a Hyuuga and ask them to take a look?” 

Lee started to leave the room and Fujikawa started after him.

“This allows us to take an x-ray of the chakra network to study later if we need to and it has a few other specific uses. There’s not always a Hyuuga available also.” 

Fujikawa shut the door after him and Kizashi was alone. He tried to study the seals but he couldn’t make sense of them. He could read and understand the kanji but the way they were strung together made no sense. And there were some parts he couldn’t understand and just seemed to be a random slash of ink. 

The seals started glowing softly and Kizashi clasped his hands together into a hand seal and began to mold his chakra. The glowing stopped after about ten seconds and he let go of his hold on his chakra. Then after about 30 seconds it started glowing again and didn’t stop glowing for a full minute. 

This happened a few more times before the seals went dark again and Fujikawa popped his head into the room. “Haruno-san can you perform the henge jutsu please?” 

“Yeah,” his fingers started to go through the hand signs needed for the jutsu. “Is there something wrong?” he asked. 

Fujikawa shook his head. “No, I just want to check something,” he said and then closed the door again.  

Well if that wasn’t the biggest indicator something was wrong. He wondered what it could possibly be.  

He finished the hand seals and thought of his dad, Haruno Kaito, and pushed his chakra through his tenketsu and completed the jutsu. 

He couldn’t see himself but a near perfect image of his dad now framed his features.  

He saw the seals glow a few seconds after he completed the jutsu. This time they kept glowing for at least 5 minutes before finally shutting off.  

The door swung back open and Fujikawa beckoned him out. “You can come out now Haruno-san.” 

He stepped out of the circle and towards the door and released the chakra necessary to maintain the henge.  

“You can call me Kizashi.” He never got used to the tradition of people going by their surname. Every time he heard someone call him Haruno he always thought of his mother or father. He typically told just about everyone to call him by his given name. 

Fujikawa nodded and led him to the next door over, room 211. To his surprise the door opened up to a small narrow staircase that led up. Fujikawa went in first and he followed up after him. The staircase wasn’t even big enough to fit two people walking side by side.  

He went up the last step and saw the stairs had opened up to a small little research lab just wide enough for three people to stand side by side with their arms extended. 

It had electronic panels covering the left side of the room and above the consoles was a large window that allowed him to see down into the room he had just been in. Fujikawa sat down in one of the chairs. 

He saw Lee was here and when he arrived he stood up from his seat. He couldn't tell but Kizashi thought he was looking at him kind of worriedly. 

“Okay, I’m not dying or anything am I?” he asked.

Fujikawa snorted. “God no, just some weird irregularities in your chakra.” 

Fujikawa beckoned him over to look at what he supposed what his chakra network on a piece of paper. “Good news is that all your tenketsu are working properly and there’s nothing wrong with your actual chakra network. The problem is with your chakra itself.”  

“Now usually I wouldn’t have caught something like this. The seals just allow me to see and record my findings. But if you switch the settings you can actually see the chakra itself. We usually just have instruments monitor the chakra output and ratio but I wanted to see for myself.” 

Fujikawa cleared his throat and looked at him. “First thing I noticed is that your tenketsu were a little bigger than normal for someone your age but that wasn’t too odd. When I looked at your chakra itself I saw it was terribly imbalanced. Like massively imbalanced. “ 

Fujikawa took a strip of paper from a machine he couldn’t identify and showed him it.

“Your chakra is roughly 70% spiritual energy and 30% physical energy. Technically speaking you have the spiritual chakra of someone who is in their thirties. 

Spiritual energy grows as you gain experience and wisdom so it’s not too odd for someone to have their spiritual energy outweigh their physical energy provided they aren’t that proficient in taijutsu. But nowhere close to how your chakra is divided. It should be like a 55% - 45% ratio.” 

Fujikawa pointed to another part on the paper like he could understand what it meant and continued. "Now your physical energy is about what I expect from someone your age so your fine on that regard." 

Fujikawa grabbed another scrap of paper from another machine and took a moment to catch his breath before he started again.

“But that’s not the only thing. Since your chakra is so horribly imbalanced your chakra control should be absolutely abysmal. But it’s not. Your henge was very good and your chakra control is perfect enough that you don’t need to train it anymore.” 

Fujikawa scratched his head. “You never had problems with your chakra before? No abnormalities?” he asked. 

Kizashi shook his head no. He knew for sure that his reincarnation was the cause of the imbalance but there was no way in hell he was telling him that. His near perfect chakra control was a mystery to him though. 

Fujikawa hummed at his response.

“That’s what confusing though. Somehow, you’re able to perfectly separate any excess spiritual energy you have when you mold chakra. And you have a lot. The fact that you’re able to do it every time you use a technique is impressive. The more I think about it the more unbelievable it sounds but that's the best I can come up with without intensive studying." 

“Is it dangerous?” asked Kizashi.  

“As far as I can tell it’s not. If anything, it’s kind of a boon. The reason your tenketsu are larger than normal is probably because of the excess spiritual energy you have. The larger your tenketsu are the more chakra you can channel at once meaning more powerful jutsu. And if you ever learn how to consciously control how much spiritual energy you let in your chakra you can probably be able to use Yin Release techniques more proficiently.” 

Fujikawa looked at him sternly. “But we’ve never seen anything like this in Konoha so there may be some side effects that we’re unaware of. The properties of spiritual energy are vast and wide and mainly unknown. We don't know what copious amounts of spiritual energy will do to a person." 

"That being said, you are fit to go on missions as for now it's not proven to affect your ability as a shinobi but this is going on your official medical record. And I’d like you to come back here once a month from now on so we can learn more about this and see if anything changes.” 

Kizashi nodded. This was odd but his life was odd as well so he could roll with this. 

He looked back at Lee who was still looking at him worriedly. 

“Here you two go.” Fujikawa handed him and Lee a slip of paper. “It’d be best if you memorized it eventually.” He looked down and saw his name with a string of numbers after it. His registration number. 

“Thanks. See you later Fujikawa-san.” he said. He saw Lee bow to Fujikawa and follow him down the steps and out the door.  

“Kizashi-kun are you okay?” 

He looked at Lee. “Yeah I’m good. We both have weird things with our chakra but I got off way easier than you did.”  

“I gotta go now. See you tomorrow?” he asked.  

Lee nodded. “I should probably start training. See you later Kizashi-kun.” 

He knew that he had all but ran out of the hospital but he needed to reflect on what he had just learned. 

He made the short trip back to his house and was surprised to see his mother waiting for him on the couch.  

He saw her lips purse as she saw the headband on his forehead. He did not feel like having this conversation with her right now. But judging from the look on her face it was bound to be a weighty conversation.

“Mom, I…” he didn’t know what to say but she cut him off by standing up and giving him a tight long hug. 

“I never wanted you to become a ninja,” she said and he could hear her voice cracking as she started to tear up. “You grew up so fast and by the time you were three it was like you were already a grown man. You seemed so independent and mature at times but then… I don’t know. I just thought I would have more time.” 

“Mom you make it sound like I’m dying.” he joked.  

His mom squeezed him fiercely. “This is no joking matter Kizashi! You’re a ninja now, don’t you know what that means? It’s not the safest job. God knows why you and your sister were dead set on becoming one from a young age. I just wanted a safe life for the both of you.” She pulled back and her eyes were red from the crying. 

Damn, he felt guilty. Here was this woman, his mom, crying over him and his safety and he was joking about it. She may not have been his real mom but he realized that she loved him just as much as his original one did.  

He opened his mouth to say something but again she cut him off. “Look, just promise me you’ll do your best to stay alive. I don’t care what happens but as you come home safe and sound everything will be okay.” 

The guilt was really starting to hit him now. He walked around in this world with the impression that no one cared about him because no one really knew the actual him but he was starting to realize that he actually had a great deal of people who cared about him. 

That thought was terrifying for some reason. 

“I promise,” he said, solemnly. 

She searched his face before putting her palm on his face to cup his cheek. “I love you Kizashi,” she said and went upstairs. 

Fuck that was a heavy conversation. He stayed in the living room for a few minutes and then went upstairs into his room. After that conversation he just wanted to relax for the rest of the day. But on his way to his room he saw Sakura in her room looking visibly anxious and distressed.  

He really just wanted to relax but he found himself saying, “Sakura. Are you okay?”

She looked surprised at him asking which made him feel like an ass but she quickly said, “Yeah I’m okay it’s just…” she trailed off.

He stepped in her room and sat across from her on her bed. He nodded for her to go on. She hesitated before continuing.  

“It’s just I like this boy a lot but Ino also likes him but I know she’ll be mad at me if I date him and I don’t want her to be mad at me.” 

Oh. He had forgotten she had a crush on Sasuke. How long had she liked him? “How long have you liked him?” 

“I’ve had a crush on him ever since we first joined the Academy but I didn’t say anything about it because I was really shy back then.” Sakura did used to be shy but nowadays she anything but. Slowly but surely she was growing into the girl that he knew from the anime. 

“And then Ino told me she liked him and I didn’t say anything so she just assumed I didn’t. I just don’t know what to do.” 

Truthfully his first reaction was of disbelief. He had to remind himself that Sakura was a kid, it was normal for kids to worry about trivial things such as this. Though she was long over being shy she still had some of the same nervous habits as she started fidgeting with her fingers. It was kind of amusing to see her so troubled over this but he knew in the anime that she and Ino actually fell out over her decision over this. 

So he seriously thought about it for a second before he responded. 

“Well I do think you should tell Ino you like him because it’s not fair to you or her. I bet if Ino had known you had liked him she wouldn’t had said anything about liking him. And Sasuke’s just a boy. Friends are way more valuable than any boy could ever be.” 

Sakura looked at him questioningly. “How’d you know it was Sasuke-kun?” 

Oh fuck. That was extremely sloppy of him. 

“We may not be in the same class but I go to the Academy too. Well I used to. I’ve heard of the Uchiha Sasuke fan club and I know that Ino started it.” 

Sakura’s eyes flicked up to his forehead. “Oh my god! You graduated today! I totally forgot, I’m so sorry! Congratulations!” She leaned over to give him a hug.

“It’s okay, it wasn’t that big of a deal honestly. It was easy,” he said.  

“Wow, I can’t believe you’re a ninja now. I can’t wait to become a kunoichi.” Sakura gushed.  

They talked for a little bit more before they drifted off to a comfortable silence. 

“Kizashi? Thank you. For all of this. I think I know what I’m gonna do now.” They both stood and she gave him another hug. “You’re the best big brother I could ask for.” 

He was floored, he didn’t think she thought of him that way. “No problem, Sakura.” 

Yamashita Rukia and Nakamura Ren. He didn’t know them too well. None of their social circles had collided in the Academy so they had no reason to talk to each other other than the occasional group project. But he was placed on a team with them so he expected to get to know them better. 

Rukia was of average height for someone her age and had medium-length dirty brown hair with the brown eyes to match. 

Ren was a little small for his age and tended to not talk that often. He had black hair that went over his forehead and blue eyes.   

Yamashita Rukia, Nakamura Ren, and Haruno Kizashi under the jonin Fujimoto Sojiro.   

They were currently sitting in the twelfth training ground when the man appeared. 

Fujimoto was kind of short but only to people who were really tall. The man was probably around 5’7 and he had the muscles you usually would find on a shinobi. He had brown eyes and brown hair. 

His features were very non-descript. He looked exactly one of those background ninja you seen in the anime. Totally and utterly just a random stranger you would see on the street. 

“Yo,” Fujimoto waved his hand at them. “I’m Fujimoto Sojiro and I specialize in stealth, espionage, infiltration and the like. I’m your jonin sensei if you manage to impress me enough.” 

Ren and Rukia looked up at that.

“Wait you mean we don’t automatically get a sensei? What was the whole point of graduation?” asked Rukia. 

“Graduation was testing to see if you had the skills to become genin. Most of the genin that graduate from the Academy get shelved to reserve forces as they won’t likely ever rise above the rank of genin. Those that show promise but don’t have high enough scores get to be active genin and still are able to take on missions. Only the students who really show promise get to have a jonin sensei and even then, we’re allowed to turn them down if we want to.” 

Well damn. Why didn't they just tell them that? He knew that jonin were able to turn down having a genin team but he didn’t know that some people didn’t even get the chance to have a jonin sensei. He definitely would’ve made sure his grades were better. 

Rukia’s mouth opened up in shock and he could sense Ren’s disbelief. He was a little surprised himself, the anime had made it look so easy in getting to be genin but he was a little scared. What if he wasn’t good enough to become a chunin? 

He didn’t want to be a genin for the rest of his life. He wanted to be better; he didn’t want to be mediocre. The three genin took in this information and glanced at each other in unison and nodded. They would do their best to impress Fujimoto. 

“Alright, what do we have to do?” he found himself saying. 

Fujimoto looked at each of them and slowly grinned. “Alright, get up! They say that three genin working together can bring down a jonin. Show me what you got.” 

They lost, predictably. But damn if they didn’t try their hardest. Ren, he discovered, was faster than average and Rukia was pretty handy with senbon. And well, Kizashi? He was pretty sure he was stronger than the other two but that didn’t help much against a jonin. So he played dirty. 

Granted, the most useful thing he did was throwing dirt in Fujimoto’s eyes but right before the dirt hit him he substituted away to avoid the spray. 

He toyed with them until they had shown just about everything they could do and depleted nearly every weapon they had on themselves.  

He called it off when Kizashi thought the burn in his lungs couldn't get any worse and he looked at Rukia and Ren who were in a similar state. 

How long had that been? 10, maybe 15 minutes if he was being optimistic. The way his heart was hammering in his chest made it feel like he was running nonstop for half an hour.

“Alright guys, sit down and catch your breath,” said Fujimoto.  

Kizashi gracelessly sat down on the ground besides Rukia who eyes were slightly red and watery from the dirt that had accidentally flown into her eyes.

“Really Kizashi? Throwing dirt? Very shinobi-like,” she said.  

He scoffed and winced at how wheezy his voice sounded. “Says the person who hit me with a senbon,” he said without any real heat. He concentrated on his breathing. 

Ren snickered exhaustedly and Rukia glared at him. 

“Please like you have room to talk. You kept bumping into me every time I tried to attack,” she said. 

So yeah, maybe their teamwork sucked ass.  

“Alright, alright settle down.” Fujimoto brought his hands down in a placating manner. 

“You guys pass,” he said with a smile. “We’re officially Team Sojiro now. You can call me Sojiro-sensei from now on.” 

“YES!” Rukia yelled. He saw Ren smile softly and Kizashi smiled widely and said, “Fuck yeah!” 

Sojiro smiled at them and sat down on the ground with them. 

“Now that we’re a team why don’t we get to know each other a little? What’s your reason for becoming a ninja?”

He pointed at Ren. “You go first.” 

Ren shrugged his shoulders a little and grinned. “It’s good money,” he said. 

Sojiro-sensei laughed. “Fair enough. Rukia what about you?” he asked.  

“I didn’t want to be in Konoha for my whole life. I want to travel and ninjas travel a lot.” she said. 

Sojiro-sensei nodded his head. “Kizashi?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. His original reason for wanting to be a ninja was partly because some part of him lit up in glee at the thought and partly because what else would he do? He did not want to be a merchant for the rest of his life. How boring.  

But now it had changed a little. 

“I didn’t want to be a civilian for my whole life. I wanted to make something out of myself,” he found himself saying.  

He grimaced. That had been surprisingly deep compared to Rukia’s and Ren’s answers.  

Sojiro only nodded thoughtfully and went on.

“I guess it’s only fair that I tell you my reason even though there’s not much of one. Although there isn't much to it. I became a shinobi because my dad was one and I thought it was cool growing up.” 

Sojiro-sensei stood up and looked up at them from above. 

He grinned and cheerfully said, “I say you guys are well rested by now. Get up and do 20 laps around the training field and then 40 push-ups after that. And no using chakra either. After that we’ll stretch and then training is over for today. We’ll start doing missions tomorrow.” 

Ren and Rukia perked up at the last bit but unfortunately Kizashi knew better. Not that he was gonna tell them or anything. It’ll be amusing when they found out that the missions they were going to do were glorified chores that civilians didn't feel like doing.

That’s probably why they never tell Academy kids. Purely for their jonin-sensei’s amusement when they tell them. 

He got up and started running slightly behind Rukia and Ren. He didn’t say anything to him as he knew he was gonna need his breath.  

He looked at them two and decided that he was pretty lucky when it came to his two team mates. Yeah Lee and Hiroki as team mates would have been awesome but he knew from the start that Lee was destined to be on Team Guy. He had been hoping for Hiroki but didn’t put too much faith in it.  

Besides, Ren and Rukia weren’t that bad. Ren was a little quiet but he preferred that over having someone talkative and annoying and Rukia was pretty nice and easy-going.  

And Sojiro-sensei was nice as well. He wasn’t late like Kakashi was and he seemed pretty serious about training them. 

He had a pretty good team overall. He was happy with them. 

Chapter Text

Kizashi was not feeling good. It was one of those days where he wanted — no needed — to be alone. 

But he had training with his team today and there was no possible excuse he could use to get him out of that. 

He rubbed his forearms to generate warmth and sighed and made his way to their designated training ground. 

Konoha had the standard four seasons and they were a few weeks into fall currently. Which meant that it was cold in the mornings and hot by the time the afternoon rolled around. He was dressed for the afternoon which meant that he suffered in the mornings. 

He was… agitated he realized. Antsy. It was just one of those days where he was pissed at the world and didn’t want to see or talk to anybody.  

He forced himself to get over it. Nothing was wrong and his team would surely notice. Hopefully they didn’t take on a boring ass D-rank today. Being a genin wasn’t all that glamorous. 

If they weren’t taking on D-ranks they were training. If they weren’t training they were taking on D-ranks. It was a never-ending cycle and Kizashi didn’t mind at first because they were getting paid for the missions on top of their bi-weekly stipend that every Konoha shinobi got. 

But eventually even he tired of babysitting and dog-sitting or whatever the citizens of Konoha needed that day. 

It was amazing though; getting so much money at the age of twelve. As Derek he didn’t get a job until he was 16, almost 17. And his job then didn’t pay as good as being a genin did. Their stipend they got wasn’t a lot of money. And the pay was adjusted based on numerous factors. 

Age, rank, whether you were active duty or retired, if you have children and a bunch of other things. But the pay as a Walmart greeter wasn’t as good as being a genin.  

His parents didn’t ask him for money so anything he earned he saved. He had only been a genin for about almost two months now but he already had a decent amount of money. He typically only used it to buy weapons, food, and clothing. 

He walked into the clearing and saw that Ren was the only one there. He walked over and sat down on the wooden stump beside him.

He saw Ren turn towards him. “You think we’ll do any missions today?” he asked.

Kizashi shrugged. They had taken D-ranks back to back every day for the past month but recently Sojiro-sensei had been training them more instead of doing D-ranks. 

“Maybe? It hasn’t been that long since we last did one so I hope not.”

The last thing he wanted to do today was paint someone’s fence or god forbid find Tora again. He was a dog person and that was once vicious cat. He still had scratches on his arm from the last time they were assigned to find her. 

He couldn’t tell but he thought that Ren looked a little put out that they weren’t. 

Ren didn’t say anything after that, which he was kind of grateful for. He wasn’t in the mood to be social. 

Rukia and Sojiro-sensei entered the clearing at the same time. Rukia waved to him as she approached but he didn’t have time to say anything to her as Sojiro-sensei started talking. 

“Alright guys you know the drill. 30 laps without chakra and 50 push-ups. We’ll talk about what we’ll do today after you’re done.” 

The three genin dutifully got off their stumps and begin to jog around the clearing. Sojiro-sensei had been slowly upping the amount of laps and pushups they had to do as they improved. 

Kizashi didn’t mind the laps, he had discovered that while he liked running, the push-ups sucked ass. By the time he finished the laps he was almost too tired to do them and the burn in his arms afterwards always made his arms feel like jelly. 

Sometimes he wondered why he choose being a ninja because the amount of physical activity they did made him sick. 

Sojiro-sensei was a friendly guy but he took his job as their sensei seriously. Since they had been assigned to him he had put them to work to get them at a physical fitness level he was satisfied with. 

So that meant endless speed and strength drills. He had them do just about every workout he could imagine and while Kizashi knew that he was only doing his job he couldn’t help but curse at him inside his head. He was tired of being sore all the damn time.  

By the time he was done his head was a little clearer and he was feeling much less agitated. Working out did wonders for clearing his head and it had the benefit of warming him up. He hardly felt the cold now.  

Rukia groaned and finished her last push-up. “Oh my god, I’m gonna die.” She rolled around onto her back and motioned to Kizashi. “Can you hand me my water bottle?” 

“Yeah.” He had his back against one of the wooden stumps so it was only a matter of reaching behind him to grab it. He picked it up and was unsurprised to see his whole arm was shaking. 

He steadied his hand and chucked the bottle in Rukia’s direction. “Thanks,” she said and proceeded to chug about half of it.

He chuckled and looked over at Ren who was about finished. He had finished his laps before anyone else but Kizashi and Rukia were quicker in doing their push-ups.

Ren finished his last push-up and collapsed.

Sojiro-sensei clicked his timer. “Just under 35 minutes. Congratulations, that’s the shortest time yet."

Ren groaned at that. “Please tell me we’re going to do an easy D-rank instead of more training.”

Sojiro-sensei chuckled. “Well I was going to start you guys at tree climbing but we can go clean out the Inuzuka clan’s kennels instead?”

Rukia glared at Ren. “I am NOT smelling like dog poop again.” 

Kizashi agreed. “I’d rather do tree climbing than do a D-rank.” He was excited. He distinctly remembered that Team 7 had learned tree climbing and water walking on their first C-rank.

Ren looked like he wanted to push the issue but he agreed nonetheless. “Sure, that’s fine with me,” he said.  

“Great! Follow me then.”

They pushed themselves off the ground and followed their sensei who led them to edge of the clearing. 

“This is one of the most important basic ninja skills you’ll ever learn,” Sojiro-sensei said. “Tree climbing isn’t typically that hard and it's one of the best ways to practice chakra control at the level you guys are at.”

He walked up the nearest tree to demonstrate. “The only thing you have to do is channel chakra into your legs and feet and hold it there. The tricky part is finding the balance of how much chakra you need to use. Too much or too little and you'll slip off.” 

To demonstrate he slowly started slipping off the tree until he fell off and landed on the ground.

“Now while you guys are doing this I’ll be pulling one of you at a time off to the side to discuss your ninja career.” 

That was gonna be interesting. He wondered what exactly what he meant by that. 

“Alright, get started. Use a kunai to mark your progress. Ren you’re first.” He beckoned Ren to back to the middle of the clearing. 

This was gonna be fun. He already had an idea on how he was gonna do this.  

He molded chakra to one of his feet and tried to push off the ground with his other foot to see if he could move it. 

Nothing. It was stuck fast. He toyed with the amount of chakra he put into his foot until he got it to stick it to the ground but not so sticky that he couldn't pull it back up with ease. 

He eyed the tree and decided it was best to go at it with a run. He pooled what he thought was the right amount of chakra and ran at the tree. 

His momentum carried him two, maybe three steps up the tree before he feel his grip on the tree slipping. Panicking, he increased the amount of chakra he was channeling and was viciously separated from the tree when the bark under his feet exploded. 

Surprised by all of this he didn’t have the time to land safely and his back the ground with a big thud. The air in his lungs was forcefully expelled and he started wheezing. 

God, he was so dumb. He should have known that the amount of chakra needed to stick to the ground would be different than the tree.  

He heard Rukia burst out laughing and he ignored her. He was too busy catching his breath to feel embarrassed.

He got up and looked at Rukia who had tears in her eyes. “I’d like to see you do any better,” he said.

“Probably not but it was still funny. And I’m not gonna be the idiot who runs at the tree instead of walking.”

She flipped her hair and stalked over to one of the other trees. 

He rolled his eyes but knew she was kind of right. He should’ve tested out walking before running. You can’t run if you don’t know how to walk.  

He walked up to the tree and placed a chakra covered hand over it. It was easier to hold the chakra in his hand than it was for his feet and he vaguely remembered the anime saying something along those lines. 

He repeated the test he had done with his feet and pulled back when he was done. Very carefully he brought his foot up to the tree and started channeling chakra through his leg. 

Once he felt his grip was secure enough he spread his chakra to his other foot and slowly brought it up to the tree until he was crouching perpendicular to the ground. To his surprise he actually stayed put. Once he stood up he started wobbling as it was kind of hard to hold the chakra in place and orient himself but he managed. 

He took a few hesitant steps forward and then more confidently as he realized he wasn’t about to fall. After learning how to keep the chakra there it was up to how good your chakra control was and practice. 

This was pretty damn cool. After learning the three Academy E-ranks he was mostly over his excitement that he essentially had superpowers but sometimes it still took him by surprise. He could walk on walls. He was basically Spider-man.  

He walked up to one of the lower branches of the tree, which was still a little high off the ground considering they were Hashirama trees, and was surprised to see a bird in its nest. It screeched in his face and he jerked his head back and swore as the chakra in his feet dispersed due to his lapse in concentration. 

He closed his eyes and swore as he began to fall. He wasn’t that high up from the ground that the fall was gonna seriously injure him but it was still going to hurt like hell. He lifted his head up to make sure it didn’t hit the ground and braced himself for the pain.  

Right before he hit the ground he was caught by his sensei who happened to be right under his tree.

“It’s the birds you have to watch for. Nasty little things they are,” his sensei said with a chuckle. It was clear he had seen the whole thing. 

Sojiro-sensei lowered him to the ground. 

“Uh, er— thanks.” Kizashi said, embarrassed.  

“It looks like you nearly got the hang of it. Keep practicing and it’ll become second nature to you.” 

Kizashi nodded and saw that Ren was now talking to Rukia. “It’s my turn now?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” sensei replied. He walked over to the wooden stumps and gestured for Kizashi to take a seat. 

“Okay so when you graduated from the Academy did you have any idea on what division you wanted to work in? Or any specific skill you wanted to specialize in?” Sojiro-sensei pulled out a scroll and started reading over it. 

“Uh no, not really. I always figured I’d be a regular ninja, you know?” said Kizashi. His sensei hummed slightly at this. 

“There’s nothing wrong with being a regular ninja but it’d be prudent to have something you’re really good at just so you can have an edge against opponents. Most skills you have to start learning really early to get any good at. And there’s a lot you can learn from the various divisions Konoha has.” Sojiro-sensei gestured at the scroll. 

“It says here you have pretty good chakra control which was clear from how quickly you managed to figure out tree climbing. Easily good enough to be a medic-nin if you wanted. And your test scores are pretty high so I know the Research & Development division would take you on. There’s the Torture & Interrogation unit and if you really trained hard ANBU might decide to take you on.” 

That was a lot to take in. “It’s not necessary to join a division but it’s something you might want to think about. You don’t have to choose now but for your specialization you’ll need to choose soon so I can start gearing you towards that roll.” 

Kizashi pulled a face. “I mean I don’t really know. I’ve been kind of interested in sealing?” he said that last part hesitantly. “The academy never mentioned it outside of exploding tags and storage scrolls and I could never find much about the subject.” 

Sojiro-sensei frowned at that. “Sealing’s a difficult subject and there’s not much known about it. You’ll have to do a lot of self-studying and there’s no guarantee that you’ll make any headway. I’ll see what I can do but I suggest you choose a backup. I wouldn't recommend it personally.” 

Kizashi envisioned himself as an adult ninja. “Kenjutsu?” he asked. He always wanted to wield a sword. “I know it’s not traditional but…” he trailed off. 

Sojiro-sensei waved him off. “That’s a little more doable than sealing anyways. I only know a few things about kenjutsu so I’ll have to send you off to someone who knows more but I can get you started. Is that it?” 

Kizashi opened his mouth to say no but stopped and considered. “I wouldn’t mind learning about espionage. It is what you specialize in and it can’t hurt to learn it.” 

The more he thought about it the more he liked the idea of all the things he said. Sealing and kenjutsu just seemed to be right for him and even if he never managed more than a modified explosive tag when it came to sealing it was still going to be useful. Not many people encountered seals other than explosive tags and storage scrolls. 

And being stealthy and knowing how to sneak into places was a must for a ninja. Best to learn from the best. 

Sojiro-sensei grinned. “Ambitious, aren’t you? I can get you started on my specialty and the kenjutsu but listen to me Kizashi.” He looked Kizashi in the eye. “You’re gonna have to really want this and be dedicated to achieve all of this. That means training outside of team meetings. This is your career now and you should take it seriously.” 

Kizashi nodded. He knew he should’ve been training outside of their team meetings but there wasn’t really a need to and that’s all it took for his mind to accept not doing it. But he could do this, he wanted to impress his sensei. He wanted to rise to the plate.  

“I can do this.” he said, eyes full of resolve. 

“Alright.” Sojiro-sensei put his hand in Kizashi’s hair and ruffled it. “I believe you. That’d be all for now. Go see if Ren needs help on the exercise and send Rukia over here while you’re at it.” 

Kizashi nodded and went to go get Rukia.  

He made eye contact with Rukia and jerked his thumb behind him. “It’s your turn now,” he said.  

She nodded and smiled at Ren before leaving. Kizashi looked at Ren who was watching Rukia leave; his cheeks were red from blushing. He had the dopiest smile on his face and Kizashi could swear he could see the stars in his eyes. He stifled a laugh.  

“You need any help figuring out tree walking?” he asked Ren.

Ren waved him off absently. “No, I’m good.”  

Kizashi rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything else. Ren was completely infatuated it seemed. He went back to his tree to perfect tree climbing. 

Kizashi browsed through the ninja shop and smiled in glee. He had mostly saved his money for this shopping spree and he was excited. 

This particular shop was more for ninja supplements (soldier pills and storage scrolls) than it was for weapons but they still had the common shinobi tools like kunai, senbon, and ninja wire. 

He grabbed a kunai holster and a bunch of kunai to go with it.  

And then some shuriken and smoke bombs and storage scrolls and well, you get the idea. 

He was debating on whether or not to get makibishi spikes (metal cloptrops you throw on the ground to prevent passage) when he heard a small laugh. 

"Really Kizashi?” asked a voice in front of him. He already knew who it was before he looked up.

“What're you gonna need makibishi spikes for? And geez, what country are you planning to invade?” Hiroki eyed the small collection of weapons in his basket.  

He made a derisive sound. Honestly Hiroki was being overdramatic. It was hardly that much in his opinion. 

“Listen, I like to be prepared,” he replied. He dropped the spikes and moved on. Any skilled ninja wouldn't be hampered by cloptrops. Not when they could easily jump buildings.  

"Hey Romaru.” Romaru, who was on Hiroki’s head, barked back in response.  

Kizashi looked at Hiroki. “At least somebody was kind enough to say hello. We haven't seen each other since graduation and the first thing you do is accuse me of invading a country.”  

He tutted in fake disappointment and said, “Didn't your mom ever teach you manners?” 

“Bullshit, you met my mom. And it’s kind of hard not to when you’re buying a shit ton of explosive tags. Seriously, why do you need so much explosives?”  

“Language Hiroki,” he admonished and had the small pleasure of seeing one of Hiroki’s eyes twitch in anger.  

“Fuck you! You curse way more than I do and you’re probably the reason I curse so much now. My mom heard me say “fuck” and decided to give me some ‘special training’.”

Hiroki’s grimace was all he needed to know that his mom had proceeded to kick his ass under the guise of training. 

He stifled a laugh but wasn’t successful as Hiroki slightly glowered at him. “I’m gonna need all of this stuff in the future so why not get it now?” 

It was partly true. Most of the stuff he had got was because he was going to need it but the exploding tags was to see if he could eventually learn to make his own. He had already found some sealing paper so he was pretty set on stuff he needed to start practicing sealing. 

He saw some chakra paper and was about to get it but drew back once he saw the price. It was ridiculously expensive. He couldn’t afford it if he wanted to get all of the stuff that was currently in his basket. Finding out his elemental affinity could wait for another day.  

He made his way over to the cash register as he figured he had more than enough for now. He didn’t foresee himself using much of it in the next few weeks. It should last him for a while.  

“...lately?” Hiroki asked. He was apparently done with his shopping as all he had in his hand was a case of soldier pills. 

“Wait, what did you say again? I wasn’t paying attention.”  

“Have you seen Lee lately?” Hiroki said patiently.  

“No, why? Have you?” he replied and started taking his items out of the basket and onto the counter. 

Hiroki closed his eyes and shuddered. “Our teams ran into each other at the mission assignment desk and I didn’t think Lee could get any sincerer or louder but he managed to do both. And his sensei is just as weird as him. Just— you’ll see.” 

He paid for his stuff and said thank you to the cashier before stepping to the side to let Hiroki pay for his soldier pills. 

Now that he had met Lee before his placement on Team Guy it was gonna be interesting to see how he was gonna change.  

He and Hiroki left the store and stood outside.  

“Alright man, it was nice seeing you but I got to go,” said Hiroki.  

Kizashi nodded. “See you later then.”  

Fujikawa muttered something to the radio in his lab coat and slapped a paper seal on his back. They were, once again, in room 210 except this time Fujikawa was in the sealing room and someone else was in the control room.  

This was his third time here and he was, embarrassingly enough, clad only in his underwear as clothing would disrupt whatever Fujikawa’s seal was supposed to do.  

He heard the radio reply but couldn’t make out what they were saying. A few seconds later he felt a flare of chakra from the seal and the lights rapidly dimmed.  

He drew his back in surprise as lights began to glow underneath the skin and after a few seconds he realized it was his chakra pathway system.

“Woah,” he breathed out. “Is this what a Hyuga sees whenever they look at someone?” 

Fujikawa didn't answer him and started checking things off of his clipboard. A couple of times he asked Kizashi to mold his chakra in different places but other than that he was silent.  

He couldn’t tell what he was looking for but Fujikawa appeared to be getting more confused the more he looked. 

Eventually Fujikawa stopped checking things off of his clipboard and told him he could put his clothes back on.  

“So, what's the news doc?” He said after he had finished with his clothes. He kicked the legs of the stool he was on. He wasn't expecting bad news but there was clearly some types of news if Fujikawa’s face was any indication.                 

“Hold on, let me run the results through one of my colleagues to see what they think.” Kizashi nodded. That was smart, a second opinion was always a good idea. 

He waited for an uncertain amount of time before Fujikawa came back in, another stool in hand. 

He set the stool in front of Kizashi and sat on it. “Ok so most of the stuff I told you the first time you were here was wrong. Your chakra is massively imbalanced, yes, but upon further studying we figured out the reason for your perfect chakra control.” 

"You remember the last time you came here and we took a sample of your chakra?” Kizashi nodded. It was very quick, he had been there for all of ten minutes before he left. They had him mold chakra in his hands until it was visible and took a sample. 

“Yeah,” he said.

Fujikawa continued. “So we took that sample of chakra and compared it to the chakra already running in your body. The results were what we expected, the molded chakra was evenly divided between spiritual and physical energy and the chakra inside was imbalanced. “ 

“I had first theorized that you were shaving off the excess chakra subconsciously but that was foolish of me. After looking at your chakra pathway we found something interesting.”

“Right here.” Fujikawa lightly jabbed his pen into the left side of his chest, right where his heart was. “We found a great pool of spiritual energy sitting in your tenketsu. More specifically, the tenketsu in which the Eigth Gate of Death resides.”

Holy fuck, maybe this was bad news. 

Fujikawa noticed his alarmed expression but continued on. 

“Now it doesn't seem to harming your body at all and it’s not reacting to anything. But it's odd, you see it’s affecting your body by making your chakra imbalanced but it's not affecting the pool of chakra you take from when you mold chakra.” 

Kizashi pushed through the shock and caught the last part of what Fujikawa said. So that's why he had perfect chakra control. 

Fujikawa pulled a frustrated face. “It doesn't make any sense at all. How can it affect one part of your body and not the other? Chakra doesn't work like that. It's almost like the energy is sealed into the tenketsu since it doesn't disperse but it's not since it's affecting your body.” He muttered that last part but Kizashi managed to catch it. 

Fujikawa shook his head and continued. “Anyways further studies show that it's been there ever since you been born so the chance of it causing you harm now is slim but still a possibility.” 

Kizashi ground his palms into his head. This was a lot to take in. He had so many questions he didn't know where to start. He knew for sure that being reincarnated had something to do with this but he didn't know how.  

He ground his palms harder and decided that he could think later. “What are the possible ramifications of this, how could this even happen?” 

Fujikawa hummed. “Not to be unhelpful but we simply don't know. Best care scenario? You're a newblood and this is a harmless symptom.” 

He had learned about this in the Academy. Newbloods were people who first showed or developed a kekkei genkai. 

“Worst case scenario? It's a dangerous chakra mutation that could kill you.” 

All of a sudden he was exhausted. This was a lot to take in and right now the only placed he felt like being was in his bed in his room. He squashed that feeling in its place and focused on what Fujikawa was saying. 

Fujikawa must've seen it on his face and stopped mid-sentence. “Why don't you get some rest Kizashi-kun? You're not in any danger currently and we could talk about the specifics later.” 

Kizashi nodded gratefully and beat a hasty retreat out of the hospital. 

Chapter Text

“Did either of you choose a division the other day when Sojiro-sensei asked us?” Kizashi asked to his teammates. They were currently out to eat after finishing training for the day. 

To his surprise they both nodded. ”Sojiro-sensei is signing me up to the Medic Corps when my chakra control is up to par. I already have pretty good control but the admission requirements are pretty strict.” said Rukia. 

Ren nodded. “I'm going to Research and Development after I get promoted to Chunin. Do you know they pay you just to file paperwork?” 

Kizashi laughed, “Always about the money isn't it?” That was pretty normal. Just like in his old world some people joined the military just for the paycheck. In Konoha most people graduated the Academy and retired, never making it to chunin.  

Rukia wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You want to be a paper ninja?”  

Ren rolled his eyes. “Not everyone wants to be the next Tsunade.”

Rukia blushed and stammered out an unintelligent response. Ren had been spot on with that comment. Tsunade was Konoha’s princess. The last Senju and the Shodaime Hokage’s granddaughter.

And that was the least of what she was famous for. Many of the shinobi who fought in the Third Great Shinobi World War owed their lives to her, directly or indirectly. 

She singelhandedly revolutionized Konoha’s medical system; completely overhauled it and put in place the best hospital in the five elemental nations. And on top of that she was also strong enough to fight on the frontlines when medics were usually sequestered somewhere safe.  

It was no wonder Konoha kunoichi revered her. She proved to people that not only kunoichi can stand on equal ground with shinobi but that they can surpass them.

“Besides,” Ren continued. “I never wanted to be a ninja anyway. I only did it to help my mom pay her bills.” Ren looked a little uncomfortable saying that and he saw Rukia wince out of the corner of his eye.

“Anyways, what division did you choose Kizashi?” Ren asked him, trying to change the topic quickly. 

“I didn't choose one,” he admitted. “He told me to pick a ninja weapon or art I wanted to specialize in.”

“He said he was going to find someone to teach me kenjutsu and he's teaching me what he specializes in. Stealth and infiltration.”

“That's pretty cool, do you think Sojiro-sensei will nominate us for the upcoming chunin exams?” Ren asked. 

Chunin exams happened twice every year. One in March and the other in October. Academy students graduated in July so most jonin teachers never nominate their genin for the October exams as it was tantamount to a death wish. 

The October exams had just finished so that meant Ren was talking about next year's March exams. 

Rukia shook her head. “No, probably not. One of my friends from the Academy told me that next year's October exams will be held in Konoha so Sojiro-sensei will probably wait until then.”  

Kizashi nodded. “That makes sense, home field advantage and there's a ..….” He trailed off as he really comprehended what Rukia had said. 

Sometimes he forgot that he was only a year and some months older than Sakura. He knew Sakura was graduating next year and he knew for a fact that Kakashi nominated Team 7 for the October exams. 

That was a concerning fact because most jonin senseis usually waited a year before nominating their team, some waited half of a year if they thought their team was skilled enough. 

What really had him feeling in shock was the most the important part of that particular chunin exams. 

The invasion of Konoha. 

Holy FUCK. He only had a year before shit really hit the fan. For some reason he had thought he would already be a chunin by the time invasion happened.  

And he was most likely going to be participating in them. He had no guarantee if he was going to even survive the second—. 

A voice brought him out of his musings. “Kizashi?” 

“Yeah? Sorry I lost my train of thought.” He waved his hand in a dismissive manor. He looked at Rukia who was the one who had spoken. 

“Like I was saying, there's a home field advantage and that means a better chance of survival if it's held in Konoha. Most jonin teachers will probably wait until then just to be safe.” Kizashi finished. 

He casually kept up the conversation but his mind was furiously thinking. He was panicking slightly but he stamped down on the desire. He didn't know what he was going to do but he had almost a whole year. He still had time. 

It occurred to him that there wasn't much he could really do without exposing his future knowledge. He couldn't outright stop the invasion and his memory of the actual invasion was spotty. He remembered that Naruto had fought Gaara with his toad summons and that was pretty much it. 

And fuck. He resisted the urge to hit his head, how the hell had he forgotten about Orochimaru? The kingpin of the whole invasion. With that his panic reached an all-time high and he shoved everything to the back of his mind. He could plan and plot later when he was alone.  

A few hours later Kizashi was mostly over his panicking. There was no stopping the exam, so he decided to focus on, you know, actually surviving the exam. 

Granted he had a huge advantage in knowing what exactly the exam was going to be but even that knowledge was going to be useless if he wasn't strong enough to survive the Forest of Death. 

This is why he was currently in an empty training ground fiddling around with explosive tags. 

He needed an edge over his future opponents and right now his basic ninja skills like taijutsu and ninjutsu were way too weak. 

That was what a jonin sensei was for though and he had roughly a year to fix that. 

What he really needed was a trick up his sleeve that would tip the scales in his favor, something an enemy wouldn't usually expect. 

That was where seals came into play. Seals weren't used in battle. They required preparation and concentration, things you usually don't get in a fight.  

But if used correctly seals were absolutely lethal.  

Sometimes it confused Kizashi because seals had the potential to be the most dangerous weapon a shinobi could use. 

Sure, ninjutsu and genjutsu were impressive and fast acting but using seals was like hacking into the world to bring out about a change you wanted.  

Seals used chakra as a catalyst but other than that it was just kanji written on a piece of paper. 

This confused the hell out of him because where did they get their power from? Chakra powered genjutsu and ninjutsu, enhance taijutsu, and was essential for senjutsu. But there were some things that you could do with seals that you just couldn't do with chakra alone.  

It wasn't until he found a throwaway sentence in a book from the ninja section of the library that he finally understood. 

Seals are the written form of the language of creation. 

He had nearly dropped the book once he realized the full implications of that. 

If seals could create anything what was stopping enemy ninja from making a bomb that could wipe out a whole country? 

But wait, he mentally took in what he knew about kanji and the local language. (He had no idea if it was Japanese or an entirely different language.) 

Kanji characters (and in extension hiragana and katakana) do have conjunctions but seals need to be stable so you can't just cram ‘an explosion big enough to level a country’ onto a piece of paper and expect it to work. 

Seals also need to be really descriptive and kanji characters were anything but. Most kanji have multiple meanings to the point where it was a miracle to get the effect you desired.  

Which is why exploding tags were literally the kanji character for ‘explode’ with other kanji characters specifying how you wanted the explosion. I.e. things like timers, whether you wanted smoke in the explosion and other things like that. 

Still, seals had huge potential and damn if Kizashi wasn't going to try and utilize them to the best of his ability. 

His first attempt at creating an explosive tag was horribly embarrassing. He had perfectly copied the store-bought exploding tag but he had —stupidly— not added his blood to the ink. 

It took him ten minutes of trying to channel his chakra into the note for him to realize what was wrong and once he did he was glad he was alone. 

But after that mistake the explosive tags worked flawlessly. 

Right up until the tag he was working on lit up before his eyes. Only a quick kawarimi kept him from blowing his face off. 

“Holy fuck,” he breathed out. That had been way too close.  

But what had happened though? The only thing he had done different was drawing the explode kanji first and then—.

Ohhhh. He knew what he did wrong.  

He took out an exploding tag from his pouch and carefully scrutinized it until he found what he was looking for. 

Chakra wasn't a catalyst for seals it was the power source. He would have known this if he had studied the tag more carefully. 

Seals were active and constant. Exploding tags worked by writing kanji to contain the explosion and when you channeled chakra through it, the protections disappeared and the tag blew up. 

Kizashi had mistakenly wrote the exploding part first without the protections and as soon as he had finished the kanji, it had exploded. 

He nervously wiped the sweat off of his forehead. Maybe it was best to start off with a seal that wouldn't kill him if he fucked up. 

Team Sojiro looked at their sensei in shock.

“Are you serious?” Kizashi asked not daring to believe it. After so many months of D-ranks Kizashi had given up on ever getting a C-rank mission. 

From the looks on Rukia and Ren’s faces they clearly felt the same way he did. 

“Yeah it's a relatively simple courier mission. We'll be back in Konoha by the end of next week.” said Sojiro-sensei. 

“Finally! I'll have you know there's only so many times a girl can wash poop out of her hair.” Rukia put her hands on her hips and glared at their sensei. 

Cleaning out the Inuzuka Clan’s kennels was Sojiro-sensei’s favorite D-rank mission. Mostly because all he had to do was supervise them and laugh when they inevitably got shit all over them. 

Kizashi suspected he did it on purpose.  

Ren let out a snicker and Rukia whirled around to face him. He tuned her out as she started ranting. 

Kizashi rolled his eyes and saw his sensei do the same. 

He didn't know if Rukia liked Ren back but it was painfully obvious that Ren annoyed Rukia just so he could have her attention focused on him. 

“Alright, I want you guys to go pack for the mission and meet me back here in 30. After that we’ll be going to the blacksmith.” 

“Blacksmith? What for?” Ren asked.  

“Your dog tags. Don’t worry it’s just S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure.” 

With that they dispersed and Kizashi made his way home. He still couldn’t believe they were getting a C-rank. He didn’t know if it was normal to wait so long before getting one as he remembers Team 7 getting their first C-rank pretty early. But then again Team 7 was pretty exceptional. 

He hadn’t seen anyone from the Academy since graduation besides Hiroki and even then, it was just that one time in the ninja shop so he couldn’t compare himself to the other genin teams.  

He was excited, he hadn’t realized it until recently but he had spent all of this life stuck inside the walls of Konoha and it was stifling. He hadn’t traveled much in his old life but it was enough to get a sense of what the world was like outside of the city he lived in. He had no idea what the world looked like outside of Konoha's walls and he didn't have the internet to show him. 

He stepped through the front door of his house. “Hello? Mom? Dad? Anybody home?”

Silence. Which wasn't unusual, his parents had probably set up shop for the day. He quickly wrote a note explaining that he had a mission and he would be gone for....

Crap. Sojiro-sensei hadn't said how long they would be gone but he did say it was a simple courier mission so at most 2-3 weeks?  

He finished the note and stuck it to the refrigerator door and went upstairs to start packing. He got to his room and stared at his sloppily organized supplies. 

He may be an adult but he had never quite managed to keep his room tidy. He packed enough clothes to last him a month and packed everything else just like the Academy had taught him. Once he was done he didn’t feel like he had enough for a mission but it was only a C-rank so he should be fine. 

On the way out, he spied the soldier pills he had bought and the custom made explosive tags he had made. It couldn’t hurt to bring them, just in case. He shoved them into his bag and left the house. 

It had only been about 20 minutes since he had left the training grounds so he should make it back in time. 

As he approached he noticed that everyone was already there and waiting. He noticed that Ren and Rukia had all of their equipment on the ground.  

Sojiro-sensei nodded to him as he walked over. “Lay out your equipment, Kizashi-kun.”  

Kizashi nodded and proceeded to do so.  

“Alright, now I know that you’ve been taught this at the Academy but it’s my duty as your teacher to teach you how to pack properly.” 

"Your kunai pouch goes on your left or right leg depending on the hand you throw with. It’s customary to wrap bandages on that leg in case you need to wrap a wound and you don’t have time to dig your bandages out of your pack.” 

He then went over where to put every single thing they had packed and the amount they should have packed. Kizashi was right, he definitely did not pack enough. He didn’t pack any ninja wire because bukijutsu wasn’t really his forte and his sensei pointed out that he would need it to set up traps when they went to sleep.  

He wasn’t the only one though, Ren had forgotten to pack any bandages besides the ones that were wrapped around his leg and the edge of Rukia’s kunai were dull enough that they wouldn’t cut when Sojiro-sensei forcefully pressed them against his hand. 

Sojiro-sensei, having obviously expected this, had packed extra supplies and filled in whatever they didn’t have or need. 

“Don’t worry guys, it was a decent attempt and you guys never needed to pack for an extended mission. I usually go by the rule ‘it’s better to have it and not need it, then to not have it and need it.’” With that statement he finished his lesson and they were off to the blacksmith. 

The blacksmith was a huge bearded guy who had tons of muscles. He didn't speak, merely pointed to a bag on the counter when his sensei asked for the tags.  

All in all, it was a quick affair, in and out in less than two minutes.  

After handing the tags out Sojiro-sensei fished under his shirt for his own dog tag and showed them it. 

“As you can see the default state just has your registration number on it. But once you push your chakra through it,” he then channeled his chakra and his name appeared on the tag, “your name will appear. After the first time you channel your chakra through it it will only react to your chakra from then on.” 

Kizashi channeled his chakra and watched his name appear on the tag. That was pretty cool, he wondered what kind of metal it was made out of. 

“So where are we going sensei? You never said.” Kizashi asked. 

“Really? I must've forgot to tell you guys. We're going to Nagoya no Sato. It's a small village that's near the border of Takigakure.”

“How long will we be gone?” Ren asked. 

“It'll take a week to get there and a week to get back so a little over two weeks depending on the pace we set.” His sensei replied.

Ha, so he was right on how long they would be gone.  

Ren nodded his head. 

As they entered the mission assignment room Kizashi saw that another team was there also. 

“Kizashi-kun!” yelled a very familiar voice. 

“Lee?” After a couple of months of not seeing him it was a little hard to recognize him. He had cut his long braided hair and now instead sported a bowl cut. And to top it all of he was wearing a ridiculously tight green spandex suit.

Though he distantly remembered that this was Lee’s signature outfit in the show.

“YOSH! It's so good to see you my friend. It has been far too long.” He gave Kizashi a back-shattering hug that slightly lifted him off of his feet.

This kid really forgets his own strength sometimes.

“Nice to see you too buddy.” He patted Lee on his back a few times and saw Rukia laughing at his expense. He rolled his eyes at his eyes at her.  

“How's life as a ninja? I see you got a complete makeover.” He gestured at Lee's suit and his lack of hair.  

“Guy-sensei is truly the best sensei! Already he pushes me to be the best ninja I can be.” Lee pumped his fist enthusiastically.  

The rest of Team Guy came over after Lee. Tenten walked up to Rukia and he saw Guy talking to his sensei. 

“Hello Tenten.” Rukia greeted politely.  

Tenten smiled at her. “Hello Rukia, it’s so nice to finally see another kunoichi.” 

Rukia groaned. “Oh my god same, I would kill to have another kunoichi on my team.” 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ren say hi to Neji who looked at him and nodded but didn’t say anything.

Awkward.

“Ah so this is the famous Kizashi-kun. I’ve heard so much about you from Lee-kun.” Guy-sensei said sticking his hand out.

“Good things I hope,” he joked and shook the proffered hand.

“Nothing but the best,” Guy-sensei reassured him.

He saw Sojiro-sensei coming back from the mission desk holding the courier package.

“I’ve gotta go, we’ve got a mission.” he said to Lee. “But come over and visit, my mom misses you.”

Lee nodded his head vigorously. “I’ll be sure to do that Kizashi-kun.”

“And tell Hiroki to visit too. I haven’t seen his ass in a little while.”

“Language,” Sojiro-sensei admonished. “Now hurry up, one would think you didn’t want to go on a C-rank.”

“I’m coming!” he protested. “It was nice to meet you Guy-sensei!” he yelled as he walked out of the room.

Fujimoto Sojiro was an average jonin. Nothing too special really. He discovered he had a knack for sneaking into places undetected and he built his whole career around it. 

Becoming a jonin sensei wasn’t really something he thought he would do in his career but after his cover was blown on his last infiltration mission he decided a change of pace was needed. 

Iwa-nin hated Konoha and he was lucky to be alive after being caught sneaking around Iwagakure. 

Becoming a jonin sensei was ideal. A year or two of taking D and C-ranks was exactly what he needed. 

Not surprisingly he had gotten the civilian team. Clan kids got were typically grouped together based on skill and tradition and any civilian-born shinobi who had high enough scores to get a jonin sensei were grouped together. 

Sojiro had no prejudice against civilians like some shinobi did but he knew that most of the time the civilian team wasn’t very successful.  

Most of the time it was the shock at what shinobi life truly was. Parents put their kids in the Academy thinking their kid will have a life full of glory and adventure but it was anything but. The kids, understandably, froze the moment their life was in danger and died from something they could have easily handled; civilian bandits being an example. 

And those who survived the encounter usually resigned afterwards, deciding that shinobi life wasn’t for them. 

Sojiro himself wasn’t civilian born, both his parents were shinobi, but most of his family were civilians and he was very aware of the different mindsets shinobi and civilians had.  

Clan kids typically fared better than civilian-born kids when thrust into a dangerous situation for the first time.  

Despite the danger Sojiro was actually hoping that some bandits would try and rob them. It would be best for his genin to experience danger for the first time in a controlled situation. With his skills he could easily make sure no one was harmed. 

That being said he had high hopes about his team and their survivability.  

Nakamura Ren only became a ninja to help his mother pay the bills and he could comfortably stay a genin for the rest of his life and never see the battlefield. 

Yamashita Rukia wanted to become a medic and as soon as her chakra control was up to par the Medic Corps would snatch her up. 

And thanks to Tsunade-sama’s medic-nin rules, Rukia would never be in direct combat unless she managed to become such a great medic nin that she was allowed to break those rules. 

And if that was the case, she deserved to be on the front lines. 

And then there was Haruno Kizashi. He — well that was the one Sojiro worried the most about. For all his talk about being just a regular ninja that kid had a lot of ambition and drive boiling inside of him. 

So out of all of his genin Kizashi was the one he paid the most attention to when it came to training. Not that he neglected Ren and Rukia’s training, but Kizashi’s training was going to be more intensive than the others. 

He worked on Rukia’s speed and made her study any medical textbooks he found and with Kizashi, and later on with Ren, he started teaching the basics of infiltration and stealth. 

Overall his team was shaping up nicely. They most likely won’t stay a team after any of them made chunin but his job as their sensei was to make sure they had the skills to succeed in whatever job profession they chose.  

“Hey sensei, what’s in the package that we’re delivering?” asked Kizashi.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, it’s sensitive information; we’re not allowed to look.” 

“It can’t be too important considering it’s only a C-rank.” Ren pointed out. 

“It could be important information and Hokage-sama disguised it as a C-rank to throw off people who want to steal it.” said Rukia.

“That is smart,” admitted Ren with a frown. “Crap, now I’m even more curious on what it is.”

Sojiro laughed and said, “It’s most likely border patrol information or something as boring as taxes. It depends on who we’re delivering it to.”

Kizashi’s voice was incredulous. “We don’t even know who we’re meeting?! Isn’t that dangerous?”

He raised his hands up in front of him and brought them down in a pacifying manner.

“Calm down Kizashi, Hokage-sama knows what he’s doing. Clients like this have been working with Konoha for years. Their identities are kept secret so the other elemental nations won’t target them.” 

“Right, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” said Kizashi, cheeks pink from blushing.

The rest of the day went by with no surprises and at night they set camp in one of the many forests in Fire Country.

“Hey Kizashi can I ask you something?” Ren asked. They were in the surrounding forest gathering firewood for the campfire. 

“Technically you just did but shoot,” he replied absentmindedly.

How much firewood did they need? Because between the two of them Kizashi felt they had enough already. 

“Do you think Rukia likes me?” Kizashi suppressed the urge to sigh deeply and tried to think of an answer that was truthful but wouldn’t destroy the boy’s spirit.

What was he though? A relationship guru? This was the second time he was dispensing relationship advice to someone and he was quite done with it. Granted he had approached Sakura but the point remained. They were twelve for god's sake. They shouldn't be in a relationship at this age, much less be thinking of one. 

“To be honest no she probably doesn’t,” he started to say and he winced at he saw Ren’s face drop. “But if it helps I don’t think she likes anyone right now.” 

Ren’s face lifted a little at that last part but was still for the most part dejected. “I really want her to like me but she just finds me annoying.”

‘Probably because you laugh at her and bug her all the time,’ he thought but didn’t say aloud. It was nice to know that boys in this world acted like the boys in his old world. They both bugged the shit out of the girl they liked and wondered why said girl snapped at them all the time.

“If you want her to like you try being nicer to her. Compliment her hair or something. But don’t be obvious about it,” he warned. “Just be her friend first, romance will come afterwards.”

He saw determination settle on Ren’s face and he hoped that Ren didn’t make a fool of himself. He had given him genuine advice but who knew how he had taken it. 

“Thanks, Kizashi that’s good advice. Thanks for listening.” Kizashi nodded and went back to gathering firewood. He was mentally patting himself on the back when Ren asked another question.

“So, what about you? Do you have a crush on a girl?” Ren said after a short while.  

“Boy, actually but no.” Kizashi corrected absentmindedly as he wasn’t paying too much attention on the conversation. 

Ren’s palpable shock made him playback the conversation in his mind. 

‘Wait a minute, did… did I just come out the closet?’ he thought incredulously. Oh my god. He resisted the urge to facepalm.

It’s not like he was hiding the fact that he was gay to people it was just that having come out of the closet before in his old life he had kind of assumed that people already knew.  

Which was actually dumb but in his defense his sexuality was the last thing on his mind. Coming out and dealing with the potential homophobia was such a trivial thing. He had actual problems to worry about. 

And really him being gay wasn’t even relevant in this life. He was currently in a 12-year-old body. Romance was completely off the table until he was at least 16. Maybe forever as the age gap between him and his peers were constant. He was technically at least 30 after all. 

Though he didn’t feel like he was 30, at most he felt like he was 19 or 20. 

“You’re gay?!” Ren whispered, his voice full of shock. He looked to the left and right like he was worried Sojiro-sensei would pop out from behind one of the trees and scold them. 

Kizashi grinned. It was a stupid way to come out but in hindsight it was actually hilarious. He hoped he got a reaction like Ren’s every time he came out to someone.  

“Yup,” he said popping the last syllable.  

“Boys! Is everything alright?” Sojiro-sensei yelled. 

“Yeah we’re on our way back!” Kizashi yelled back.  

He looked at Ren who was still surprised but seemed to have regained his composure. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone," he reassured Kizashi. "Thanks for telling me.”

Kizashi was touched. He didn’t really care if other people knew but that wasn’t something he had expected from Ren. “Thanks man, I appreciate it.” 

He was going to have so much fun coming out. 

Kizashi waited for the perfect opportunity that night to come out to Rukia and Sojiro-sensei. That opportunity came when his sensei was taking a sip of the hot soup they had made for dinner and when Rukia was drinking out of her water bottle. 

“Hey guys, I like dick by the way.” he said. It was a little crude and normally he wouldn't say anything so crass but the shock factor what was he was going for.  

And boy it was great. Rukia spat out her water and while Sojiro-sensei managed to keep the soup in his mouth he immediately started choking.  

And best of all, he even got Ren again. His reaction may not have been as surprised as Rukia and Sojiro-sensei’s but his soft gasp of surprise still managed to make him choke on his own saliva.  

“What?!” Rukia screeched.  

Kizashi forced down the laughter that wanted to break out and kept his cool and unflappable facade on. “I’m gay, just thought you ought to know.” he said conversationally and took a sip of his own soup.

“Thanks for sharing that with us Kizashi,” said Sojiro-sensei after he recovered, voice dry and sardonic. He looked at Kizashi and the expression on his face said ‘I know what you’re doing, you can’t fool me with that mask.'

Kizashi merely raised his eyebrows questioningly. He looked over at Ren who was giving him the stink eye but his lips were also curled up in amusement. And then back to Rukia, who was still staring at him in shock.

“What?” he asked her. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it one more time before settling on “You couldn’t have chosen a better time to say something like that?” she demanded.

Kizashi pretended to mull it over before saying “Nope.”  

Rukia looked one step away from strangling him when Sojiro-sensei stepped in. “Right, I think that was enough excitement for one night. It's time to go to sleep now.”

He gave Kizashi another look, indecipherable this time, and tended to the campfire until the flames died down to a dull roar. 

“Aren’t we going to keep watch overnight?” Ren asked.

Sensei shook his head. “This close to Konoha? We haven’t even passed the last border outpost. It would only make us tired for tomorrow and we’re safe where we are right now. And in the event of an attack our traps will alert us before they get close to us. We’ll start keeping watch when we’re halfway to Nagoya.” 

Ren nodded and they all settled down to sleep. Kizashi went to sleep with his face facing the stars and a soft grin on his face. 

Kizashi didn't expect to have so much fun during their C-rank but he was. He didn't know if he was still riding the high from coming out of the closet or if it was just being out of Konoha but he woke up in a great mood the next morning. 

All of a sudden, he noticed how green the trees were, how fresh and crisp the air was, and how beautiful the morning sunrise was. It was like waking up and realizing that you had gone from a flat colorless 2d world to a 3d world full of shape and color. 

Ok so maybe he was exaggerating a bit.  

But still, he had expected the C-rank to be mildly exciting and for the most part boring with the amount of travel they had to do. But in actuality it was like camping but shinobi style. 

Sojiro-sensei taught them a lot in the time it took to get to Nagoya. How to cook a decent meal, how to hunt and skin an animal, and how to erase your presence when leaving your camping spot.  

Bury the campfire, spread some vegetation over it (not too much but just enough to make it look natural) and bury any waste you made. 

Simple things that all shinobi needed to learn. 

He even gave them a quick lesson on water walking, seeing that they mastered tree walking already. 

“Water walking is harder than tree walking. It’s not something you can master immediately, only time and practice is going to help you master it.” he said. 

And he was right, even Kizashi with his perfect chakra control fell numerous times in the river they were practicing. You had to constantly adjust your chakra output to match that of the river’s current and practice it enough that it was second nature.  

Kizashi never had any qualms about his genin squad but it was until this mission that they felt like an actual team instead of people he just met up with every day. Like a family. 

‘It won’t last,’ whispered the part of him that was brutally realistic. ‘You don’t belong in this world,’ it said.  

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he thought.  

‘How do you know you’re not dreaming? That you’re not going to wake up one day and discover that this whole time you were in a coma? It would explain why we can’t remember how we died.’ 

And for that he had no answer for. Because it was all too possible that he would wake up and realize that he had dreamt of being a ninja because of a drug he had taken or because he had slipped into a coma.  

It was his worst fear. 

But he did what he was best at, he shoved the issue to the back of his mind and ignored it until it went away. 

Even if he was hallucinating this world felt all too real and he had no reason to believe otherwise. 

‘Other than the fact you’re living in a show you used to watch on TV?’ 

“Kizashi, you okay? You’re looking a little tense.” Sojiro-sensei looked at him concerningly. 

“Yeah, sorry, I’m good. I think I have a headache coming on.” he lied and slowly unclenched his fists and loosened up his shoulders. Now wasn’t the time to have a mental breakdown no matter how warranted he was to one.  

His sensei thankfully bought the lie and didn’t say anything else. 

He can do this. He had to. 

As they reached the halfway point to Nagoya thieir sensei slowly picked up the pace until they were traveling the whole day and any training or lecturing was done on the water and pee breaks. By the time they reached Nagoya Sojiro-sensei had stopped teaching them at all and was actively on guard. 

It was subtle but noticeable and Kizashi and his teammates followed suit. They were still technically in Fire Country but this close to the border Konoha couldn’t station an active guard besides the border outposts. 

Missing nin often slipped through these cracks in security and while it was unlikely they would encounter any the number one shinobi rule was exactly like the boy scout’s motto. Be prepared. 

Despite their tenseness Nagoya no Sato was pretty. It was a small town and their clients house was near the edge of the village. 

It still rankled at Kizashi that they didn’t even know what their client even looked like but he trusted Konoha. They knew what they were doing.  

Before they had reached Nagoya they had taken off their hitai-ates and covered up any obvious signs that they were ninja.  

They were supposed to keep their client’s association with Konoha a secret after all and it wouldn’t do if Konoha shinobi were seen visiting their home. 

It was supposed to be a quick in and out so they didn’t have a cover story but if anyone asked Rukia and him were brothers and sisters and their dad, Sojiro-sensei, was dropping off their cousin Ren to his parents. 

As they walked up the steps Kizashi couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this was stupid and dangerous. He told himself to stop worrying, Konoha had worked with this client for years, if there was any chance of danger it wouldn’t be a C-rank.  

Sojiro-sensei knocked politely on the door. 

“Come in!” yelled a friendly voice. The client was an old male from the sound of it.  

They walked into the house and into the living room which was empty. “In the kitchen!” the voice yelled and while it was still friendly it had a tone of fear in it?  

He was probably just being paranoid. 

Hindsight was 20/20 they say. If he had listened to his instincts maybe things would’ve gone differently. But like a fucking idiot he walked into the kitchen and was only marginally shocked by the three shinobi holding what appeared to be their client hostage. 

I fucking told you so Sojiro-sensei.  

“Please help me,” the old man begged to them. The friendliness in his voice was replaced by fear and desperation.

He turned to his captors. “Please I have a wife and a child plea—.” He was cut off when one of the shinobi — no, kunoichi she was a girl — grabbed his hair, bared his throat and slit it with a kunai. 

The man fell forward onto the table he was sitting at and the kunoichi smiled at them viciously. 

“Fucking finally, you know it took you guys fucking forever to make it here. I got tired of his whining real quick.” 

He heard Ren and Rukia gasp at the quick and merciless killing but his breath got stuck in his throat and for some reason he couldn’t stop staring at the pool of blood that was forming on the table. 

What was it about that scene that was so familiar...?  

As the pool of blood got larger he felt something twinge in his mind and he could it feel something breakin—. 

“Kizashi!” Rukia’s voice cut through the haze he was in and he realized belatedly that he had missed a good chunk of the conversation between his sensei and the leader of the missing nin. 

Wait a minute, he looked closer at the hitai-ates of the ninja and he realized that none of them were slashed through. And what kind of ninja village used a music note as their symbol—. 

Kizashi’s blood ran cold as he realized what hidden village these ninjas were from.  

“Let’s go!” she whispered harshly and he realized that their sensei was frantically motioning behind his back for them to leave the house. 

He nodded and nervously swallowed. This wasn’t good, if they were lucky the shinobi were all chunin and they had a small chance of getting out of this alive.

His made sure his hands were out of sight and started drawing on his chakra. He took a cursory glance at Ren and Rukia and started forming the hand signs. 

Ram. Snake. Tiger. 

Three illusioned genin appeared and as soon as he completed the jutsu Sojiro-sensei flared his chakra angrily and he saw the three shinobi focus their attention on him. 

‘Smart,’ he thought. He didn’t know if his sensei had done that on purpose or if he was actually angry but it covered up his use of chakra completely.  

He nodded to Ren and Rukia, who were both looking pale, and they stealthily made their escape. 

As soon as they were out the door they broke into a flat-out sprint, not caring what direction they were going. 

'Fuck fuck fuck!,’ he thought. They needed a plan, they couldn’t just keep running at random. Once they exited the village and were in the surrounding forest he started slowing down. 

“We need to stop!” he yelled at Ren. With him being the fastest out of the three of them he was setting the pace. 

“STOP?” Ren yelled at him, and despite his words he stopped and stared at Kizashi like he was crazy. “We need to get as far away as possible!”  

He could tell that Ren was panicking hard, his eyes were dilated and constantly looking around for any threat and his knuckles were white because he was clenching his fists too hard. 

“Shhhh! Calm down and think! There’s no way we can outrun a jonin, we need a plan!” he whispered fiercely. He grabbed Ren by the head and forced eye contact with him. 

“Calm down.” he said slowly, his words coming out clear and precise despite the rapid beating of his heart. 

Ren nodded and he glanced back at Rukia who was paler than a sheet of snow but seemed to be in control of herself. 

Kizashi was panicking himself but he was somehow able to ignore it for the time being. He knew from experience that once everything was over he was going to have a breakdown but for now he was glad that he was able to think and act. 

Depending on what they wanted maybe they wouldn’t even bother hunting down them down. They were just genin after all. 

And for all of his talk of needing a plan he could not think of a single one. He tried to think back on what the Academy had said to do in situations like this but his mind was running too fast for him to concentrate. 

“Should we split up?” Ren asked though he looked like that was the last thing he wanted to do.  

Kizashi shook his head immediately. They were stronger together than apart and there was no way any of them could take down a jonin single handedly. 

“Maybe we should,” Rukia said. “The kunoichi did say they were after us after all.” 

She did? Damn he must’ve missed a lot when he was staring at the pool of blood. (And if they weren’t currently in danger he would be freaking out over that because what the fuck.) So much for hoping that they wouldn’t hunt them down. 

“Us? What else did she say?” he asked. He went over what he knew about the enemy shinobi. They were from Otogakure, the Village Hidden in the Sound, which meant they worked under fucking Orochimaru of all people.  

If they had been waiting for their team to arrive that meant they either forced their, now dead, client to request information or they already knew that Konoha was sending a genin team out to Nagoya. Both options were equally concerning considering that nobody was supposed to know that their client worked for Konoha.  

Rukia looked at him weirdly but didn’t say anything. “She asked Sojiro-sensei to hand us over and he wouldn’t have to die and then she flirted with him for a bit and said that she wasn’t a missing nin. That was about it.”

So not much then. But why would they want a group of genin for? And then it came to him, Orochimaru was a creepy scientist, he probably wanted them to experiment on and was probably hoping one of them was a clan kid. 

He glanced behind them, they had been here for a little while now. They could speculate later, they needed an immediate plan of action now.  

“We need to find somewhere to hide for the night. Then we can try to find a border outpost so we can get some help for sensei.”

It was a long shot and he had a vague idea of idea of where one of the outposts was but it was better than nothing and they needed to get out of danger first. 

“Sensei is probably dead Kizashi!” Ren pointed out. 

He opened his mouth to refute that statement even though it was most likely true when he heard someone laugh.  

“The brat’s right kid. Natsumi-sama is finishing him off right this second.” Kizashi turned to face the man and recognized him as one of the shinobi from earlier. 

The man was huge, his biceps were bulging and he carried a katana that looked way too small for him given his size. 

All of a sudden Rukia and Ren dropped to the ground unconscious. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a person shaped blur come towards him and he tried to turn to meet him head on but was way too slow. 

Fuck! They had forgotten abou—. 

He felt a sharp pain in his head and was unconscious before he could finish the thought. 

“Ouch,” Kizashi groaned. He brought up his hand up to his head only to find that he couldn’t as his hands were bound to his side by ninja wire. 

“What… happened?” he muttered. 

“We were captured,” a soft broken voice said. 

He jerked his head to the left. “Rukia!” And then it all came back to him. Their dead client, their escape and then getting captured.

“Fuck,” he said despairingly. He softly banged his head against the pole he was tied to. They had absolutely no chance against the two sound shinobi. Defeated before they could even move.  

He looked over to his right and saw an unconscious Ren bound to a pole similar to his. He looked back over at Rukia. “Do you know how long we’ve been unconscious?” he asked her. 

“Wait a minute, are you okay?” he asked, just now seeing her puffy red eyes and her desolate expression. 

“Yeah,” she sniffled and looked at him angrily, “it’s not like we’ve been kidnapped or anything Kizashi. Of course I’m okay.” 

Okay then. He acknowledged that it was a stupid question but she was managing well enough if she had the energy to be sarcastic.  

He started looking around to see if he could find a clue to where they were at. He couldn’t see behind himself but he was pretty sure they were in a basement of some kind. He could see rays of sunlight streaming down from what had to be windows.  

Sunlight? They had reached Nagoya in the evening so most likely it was morning, the day after. Unless they had been out for more than a day which didn’t seem likely.  

He banged his head against the pole (which really was way too big to even be called a pole) and sighed. Their captors had, predictably, stripped them of any weapons they had and nobody even knew they were kidnapped. 

(Except Sojiro-sensei but he was probably dead if the sound ninja wasn’t lying earlier and Kizashi was trying his hardest not to think about that.) 

Ren started stirring as Kizashi started hearing loud voices from above them.

“Shhhh,” he said to Ren even as he started channeling chakra to his ear. He heard Rukia start to explain things to Ren as the conversation continued. 

“We can’t take on a jonin with just us two! We’re not jonin level! If he defeated Natsumi-sama then we have no chance,” said an unrecognizable voice. 

“Yeah ordinarily but he’s probably wounded. I bet we can take him if we take him by surprise.” said another voice, this time one he recognized. It was the big buff guy with the katana.  

Kizashi’s breath caught in his throat. Sojiro-sensei was alive!  

The conversation continued. “Nah if he survived then he’ll have definitely called for reinforcements by now. We have to take the kids and go. We won’t make it to Otogakure or even one of the nearby laboratories if we have Konoha-nin after us.”

They were silent for a few seconds before the katana guy replied. “Shit you’re right, but without Natsumi-sama there’s no way we can carry all three kids without slowing down and possibly being caught.”

Kizashi froze as he knew what the other sound ninja was going to say next.  “That’s simple, we’ll just kill one of them. Orochimaru-sama won’t like that we couldn’t get all three of them but he’ll understand.”

“Best get started then, we’ve got a long day in front of us.”

Kizashi’s control over his chakra slipped and he gasped out loud. “Guys, guys we’ve gotta escape they’re going to kill one of us.”

They both gasped. “What do you mean?!” Rukia hissed.

“There’s no time to explain, we’ve gotta go!” he yelled. He started struggling against the ninja wire and the only thing he managed to do was cause the ninja to dig and cut into his skin. 

His heart started to beat faster and faster as he heard footsteps approach the basement door. He brought his knees to his chest and pushed up against the pole and managed to get to a standing position. 

He saw Rukia and Ren attempting to copy what he did just as the basement door opened. All three of them froze as the two shinobi walked in. 

“Ohh? Looks like the little genin overheard our conversation, Yasuoka.”

Kizashi got a good look on the third and final sound shinobi. Unlike Yasuoka, who was big and heavily muscled, he was thin, lithe, and had the most sadistic grin on his face. 

Yasuoka chuckled, “Looks like they did, which one are you going to kill Tokuma?” He leered at all three of them, clearly reveling in their fear. 

Kizashi couldn’t breathe, the fear was too overwhelming and he could barely hear anything over the roar of his pulse in his ears.  

“As much as I’d like to draw this out I’m afraid we’re on a time limit,” Tokuma said and looked Kizashi dead in the eyes. “I think I’ll choose you.” He stared at Kizashi and Kizashi saw visions of his death flash before his eyes. 

I’m going to die.  

Tokuma drew a kunai. 

I can’t believe I’m going to die. How did all of this happen? 

Kizashi watched, frozen, as Tokuma drew his arm back. 

I don’t want to die.  

Tokuma brought his arm down and Kizashi flinched and closed his eyes.  

But after a few seconds the expected pain never came. Confused, he opened his eyes only to see Rukia staring horrifically at Ren. 

Slowly he turned his head to the right and met Ren’s confused eyes.  

“No,” he whispered. Blood started pouring down the front of Ren’s shirt and started pooling on the ground. Ren’s arms twitched like he wanted to pull the kunai out of his throat and when he couldn’t he let out a low groan of pain. 

Kizashi, transfixed, watched as the blood started gushing out of the wound and he couldn’t help but think that something about this scene was horribly familiar. Even more familiar than what happened to their client. 

And same as before he felt a pressure build up in his mind the longer he watched and it hurt so much but he couldn’t stop watching. And it built up and up until something broke. 

And then Kizashi remembered. 

He remembered how he died, he remembered every last gritty detail and it was so fucking horrible how coul—. 

“Ren!” Rukia howled and her voice cut through the haze he was in. Ren, still staring at Kizashi with confusion, moved his lips and Kizashi didn’t know what he was going to say as his eyes suddenly glazed over and his head fell forward, body still upright by the ninja wire. 

Tokuma started laughing, a true genuine laugh and shoved his partner. “Did you see that Yasuoka? The look on their faces, oh my god it was fucking priceless.” He looked at Kizashi and Rukia and kept on laughing until even Yasuoka started laughing a little.

Kizashi, still reeling over the shock of remembering his death, stood there frozen as the two shinobi laughed. 

Tears started welling up in his eyes as he looked at Ren’s body. How dare they? Kizashi’s previously numb state broke as anger swept over his boy. What kind of monster would laugh after killing a child? Ren was only 12 years old!

He banged his head against the pole he was tied to and angrily flared his chakra. This caused the two shinobi to stop laughing and look at them.

“You fucking bastards,” he growled at them. Tears of grief and rage started spilling from his eyes as he looked at the two shinobi.

Tokuma snorted derisively. “Looks like somebody is mad. Look at this pathetic mess Yasuoka. Crying over his dead teammate. I see why everybody calls Konoha a bunch of tree huggers. They’re pathetic honestly.”

Tokuma’s tone did it for him. He channeled as much chakra as he could into his arms and started pushing against the ninja wire no matter the damage it did to his body. 

Ninja wire was tough but it wasn't unbreakable. He kept pushing even though the wire was digging into his skin and no doubt causing bloody welts to appear over it. 

“Look at him, let's just knock him out and go,” Yasuoka said.  

And then finally Kizashi felt the wire give and snap and then he was free. The surprise on their faces gave him a muted sense of satisfaction. 

Tears still flowing, he watched as the two shinobi looked at him wearily. He never wanted someone to be dead as much as he wanted these two to be and he let his anger flow freely into his chakra. 

“Killing intent? From a genin? Maybe Konoha isn't full of pansies after all. Let's see what you got kid.” Tokuma moved his hand in a come-hither motion. 

Thinking quickly Kizashi moved to Ren’s body and took the kunai out of his throat. Ignoring the blood that gushed out of the wound he took off one of his shoes and faced the two shinobi. Dimly he heard Rukia gasp but he paid her no mind. The two of them were going to die and he needed a weapon for that. This wasn't the time to be squeamish.

He looked at them coldly, his plan required them to severely underestimate him and him being only a genin certainly helped with that. Any rational ninja would've killed him as soon as he broke free of his bonds.

He looked at Tokuma. “You're going to die if it's the last thing I do.” He then rushed and jumped at Tokuma with his kunai held high but not before throwing his sandal at Yasuoka to hopefully distract him.

Generally, to kawarimi with something it had to be around the same mass or weight as you were. To kawarimi with something bigger or smaller than you you had to supplement the weight discrepancy with chakra. 

It was easier to do that with an object bigger than you as all you had to was shove chakra at the technique until it went through. With smaller objects you needed to have good chakra control or the jutsu would fail. 

The biggest problem about his plan was if he was able to perform a sealless kawarimi. He couldn't form the hand signs with a kunai in his hands. 

As he jumped he saw Tokuma smirk and draw his hands back into preparation to thrust a kunai into him and Yasuoka merely lifting his hand to brush aside his sandal. 

‘Please let this work,’ he prayed. He molded his chakra and triggered the jutsu.  

Success! He suddenly found himself racing towards a surprised Yasuoka. He bowled into him knocking him over onto his back. The kunai he had in his hand scraped along Yasuoka's collarbone and shoulder instead of plunging into his heart. 

“Ahhhh you little fucking brat!” Yasuoka said and the punched him in the face, his other arm trapped between him and Kizashi. Instantly his vision swam but he raised the kunai and shoved it into his heart. Blood sprayed from the wound, getting all over his face and clothes. The body underneath him jerked once, twice and then lay still. 

He was lying on the floor and everything hurt so much, he couldn't move he couldn't understand how he was still alive. Dimly he watched his blood pour out of his body and onto the bathroom floor where it started to pool. 

Another fist to the face brought him out of his visions and off of Yasuoka’s body, which he had been straddling. “Yasuoka you idiot!” Tokuma yelled. He turned around to face Kizashi. “I'm going to kill you and your teammate brat.”

Kizashi laughed and tried to ignore how his vision was swimming, “Oh yeah and what're you going to say to Orochimaru when you show up empty handed? With you being the only survivor of your team, I think we both know who he's going to take his displeasure out on.”

He dug his hand into the pouch he had lifted off of Yasuoka’s corpse before he was thrown off and was rewarded with 3 kunai and some shuriken.

Tokuma’s face darkened at Kizashi’s words. “You little…”  

“Brat, yeah I know.” Kizashi finished. He laughed feeling lightheaded and distantly he knew that was cause for concern but he ignored it. He was feeling much more confident about their chances of survival now that Yasuoka was dead. He tied the pouch to his thigh with the bandages that was wrapped around it.

And then his anger came back to him as he saw Ren’s body, still slumped over. “Now let's go you son of a bitch.” he said darkly.

Tokuma rushed at him, blindingly fast in his strikes. For every strike he managed to dodge two more caught him. Which was bad considering Tokuma was fighting with a kunai. He caught a kunai to the face but thankfully it was a shallow cut across his left jaw instead of somewhere more vital like his eyes. 

He was grateful that Tokuma was enraged and not fighting smartly as he could've ended the fight in two seconds with his superior speed. The only reason Kizashi was managing to stay alive was that Tokuma was telegraphing his moves pretty clearly and that allowed him to dodge or make fatal wounds into shallow ones. That and even now Tokuma was still not taking this fight seriously despite that Kizashi had killed his partner. It was hard to take a 12-year-old genin seriously even when you just saw him take down your partner.

Still as good as he was managing to defend himself Tokuma backed him against a wall and slipped past his defense.

“Agh!” he yelled as a kunai found a home in the right side of his chest. ‘Better the right side than the left,’ he dimly thought. 

“Got you know—.” Tokuma started to say before Kizashi headbutted him in the nose.

“Fuck!” Tokuma grunted before taking a few steps back to wipe the tears that reflexively formed in his eyes. And then Kizashi saw a perfect opening. Like slow motion he stepped forward, palm out, and punched Tokuma in the solar plexus in a perfect rendition of the Konohagakure academy taijutsu style. 

He immediately doubled over, not being able to breathe and Kizash froze not expecting that attack to have actually landed. 

‘Maim him!’ a voice inside of him yelled and he took one of the kunai out of his stolen pouch and before Takumo could react he thrust it into his eye.

"Aghhhhh! My eye!!!!!!” Tokuma screamed and backed up even more before he stumbled and landed on his ass.

Kizashi stared on in horror. The eyeball had horrifyingly given little resistance and before he could try to stop himself he bent over and threw up.  

He wiped his mouth and tried not to think about how he had gotten some vomit on his feet. He walked over to Tokuma whose hands were up in front of his face, clearly wondering if he should pull the kunai out of his eye. 

He looked up as Kizashi walked over, “You—.” Kizashi punched him in the chin and Tokuma’s lone eye went glassy and he fell backwards, unconscious. 

Kizashi stared at him, not quite believing it was over. He fell back and landed on his butt harshly and he began to laugh and cry, he couldn't believe he made it out alive.

He looked at Ren’s body and had to stop as the visions overtook him.

He looked down and saw the gun that was in his limp hand and he closed his eyes and moaned in pain. He had had the gun tucked up against his chin and right before he decided that no, he wasn't going to kill himself his hand spasmed and he accidentally pulled the trigger. And instead of a fatal shot to his head, he shot off a part of his neck. 

“Kizashi?” came Rukia’s meek voice. “‘'m coming,” he said his words slurring together. He got to his feet and accidentally brushed the kunai that was still stuck in his chest. 

He drew in a sharp breath at the pain. He couldn't tell how bad the wound was and he didn't want to bleed out in case he took it out. He made his way over to Rukia and cut her free. It took some doing because he had a terrible migraine but he managed.

She stood up and mutely held out her hand for the kunai. Confused, he let her have it and she made her way over to Ren and started cutting him down.

Gently she cut him free and laid his body on the ground. Kizashi looked on and felt a fresh wave of grief pass over him. It choked him up and he struggled not to sob at Ren’s lifeless face.

Rukia closed his eyes and stood up and looked at Kizashi. “We need to go,” she said softly and her expression was entirely unreadable. He nodded and she gestured at Tokuma. 

“Are we going to kill him?” she asked, her tone absolutely no help in discerning whether she wanted to or not. 

“I don't know,” he said. It would be practical and well within their rights to do so. 

She didn't say anything for a few seconds. “He killed Ren,” she said. 

Kizashi nodded. “He did,” he said softly. At his words she started to shake and silently cry. He wanted to comfort her but he felt exactly like she did.

They stood for there for a while until Kizashi walked over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

“There's been enough killing for today, let Sojiro-sensei decide what to do with him.” 

Rukia looked up at him. “Sensei's alive?” she asked and any joy she might've felt at those words were shadowed by Ren’s death. 

“Yeah that's what these two said.” He gestured at the two sound shinobi.

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Let's go then, I'll go upstairs to see if I can find our supplies and after we tie him up we'll bandage your shoulder. Stay here to make sure he doesn't wake up.”

He nodded and she went up the stairs.  He slowly sat down and without nothing to distract him he kept replaying his death his over and over.  

What had happened? He knew that he suffered from depression and that he often contemplated suicide but he had never gotten to the point of getting close to it. For him to acquire a gun and almost go through with it something bad had to have happened.

And then he accidentally pulled the trigger. God, what a dumbass he was. He laughed, a harsh self-deprecating laugh and struggled not to break out in tears again. He had accidentally committed suicide and he wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. 

He heard the stairs creak and he looked up to see Rukia coming down the steps with their supplies. He stood up and accepted his backpack and kunai pouch. He untied his stolen one and reattached his own. 

He then took out some ninja wire and started tying Tokuma down. Rukia took out her own wire and started helping and they quickly had him tied down to the best of their ability. 

“Let's bandage your shoulder now,” she said. He nodded and sat down. She took a kunai and started cutting off the clothing around his shoulder to get better access to the wound. 

“I won't confuse you with any medical terms so long story short I don't think the kunai hit anything too important,” she said and he remembered that she was training to be a medic nin. And before he could react she pulled out the kunai.

He groaned in pain. "Give a guy some warning will you?” he said.

She shrugged. “You would have tensed,” she explained and begin to tightly wrap bandages around it before he could bleed too much. 

He took stock of all his wounds and all things considered he had come out of things pretty well. The stab wound and the long cut on his jaw were the worst of his injuries and neither of them were near fatal. Other than that, he had a few shallow cuts on his hands and arms from when he had to block Tokuma’s kunai and the welts on his arms from when he had broken free of the ninja wire. 

Pretty fucking amazing considering he went up against two chunin and actually managed to win. Even if they had both underestimated him he had still won and managed to come out of it barely harmed. Pride flickered in his chest only to be dampened when he saw Ren's corpse.  

After he had taken some antibiotics (infections kill more ninja than the actual wound does Kizashi!) and Rukia had put a band aid over some of the smaller cuts did he approach Ren’s body.

“He didn't deserve to die.” Rukia said softly.

He closed his eyes and dug out a storage scroll from his pack. “No, he didn't. He didn't even want to be a shinobi.”

It was cruel, the one who never wanted the shinobi life was the one who died by it.

He rolled the scroll out, made a hand sign and watched as Ren’s body was sucked into the scroll. The scroll rolled itself back up and the kanji for ‘body’ appeared on the scroll. He tucked the scroll back into his pouch and didn't think about how fucking weird it was that he was carrying a dead body around on him. 

He looked over at Yasuoka's corpse and left it, not bothering to seal it.

And then he turned once more to look at Tokuma’s body, kunai still lodged in his eye. “I know we said we’re taking him alive but how the hell are we going to get him upstairs?” he asked Rukia.  

They eventually settled for dragging him up the stairs after they couldn’t pick him up and with every step they took Tokuma’s head banged against the stairs and if it wasn’t for the grim situation they were in it would’ve been hilarious. 

They got upstairs and Kizashi groaned as he saw the board full of what appeared to be important information. All of it was encrypted but no doubt some of it was important.

“I’m fucking exhausted so I’m just going to seal whatever looks important into a storage scroll so we can be on our way. Konoha can come back and get whatever I missed.” 

Kizashi made quick work of that and thankfully found a map indicating their location. “We’re actually ridiculously close to Nagoya.” 

“Thank god.” Rukia said. He looked at her and she looked dead on her feet. She saw him staring and grimaced. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”

He grimaced himself, “I’ve no doubt.” It felt like he had blood covering every inch of his body. His own blood and Yasuoka’s had soaked through his shirt and he knew that his face was painted with it.

He closed his eyes and stopped thinking about it. He forced down the bile rising up in his throat and wiped his eyes as he started crying again.  

“Alright let’s go. The sooner we reach Nagoya the sooner I can take a shower,” he said and cleared his throat. Rukia looked at him sympathetically and he smiled wanly at her. They grabbed Tokuma by his legs and together they stepped out of the house, one teammate short. 

Kizashi looked on at his sensei’s prone body and sighed. The medic at the outpost they were at said that the kunoichi that his sensei had fought had used a type of poison that induced swelling in the brain.  

Sojiro-sensei had defeated the kunoichi but not before receiving a large dose of the poison. After the battle he had enough energy to send a messenger bird to a nearby outpost before he slipped into a coma. The medic had removed the poison but had said that he had no idea when he was going to wake up. 

After leaving the house Rukia and Kizashi had struck a path to Nagoya and within five minutes they encountered the reinforcements Sojiro-sensei had called. They had been shocked to see them and Kizashi would have laughed if he hadn’t been so exhausted. 

With him covered in blood and both of them dragging a shinobi with a kunai stuck in his eye Kizashi knew they painted one hell of a picture. They had apparently been on the way to rescue them and he had to bite his lip from saying they were too fucking late. 

Things after that were a blur as the Konoha shinobi quickly took over things and he remembered giving a half-assed report of what happened with Rukia filling in the things he missed. He distantly remembered the shocked looks the shinobi were giving him as he described how they had escaped and he would’ve felt proud but Ren was fucking dead and that’s all that mattered. 

After the medic healed his wounded shoulder and given him orders not to sleep for a couple of hours (he apparently had a concussion) he was allowed to take a shower. 

He watched the blood from his body go down the drain and tried to not cry for the umpteenth time that day. So much had happened in the last two days that it felt they had been away from Konoha for a month instead of a week. 

He stood under the spray of water until he was sure all the blood from his body was gone and then got out. 

He looked in the mirror that was in the bathroom and flinched at the flat dead expression on his face. He turned his face to the right and touched where his jaw had been cut. It had faintly scarred over but the medic had assured him that it would fade in a few years. 

He forced himself to smile and think, 'I’m going to be okay.’  

It was too bad he didn’t actually believe it. 

That night when he laid down to sleep he found himself in a vast grassy field with a huge oak tree in it. There was a river nearby and even though the sun was out and shining very brightly it was still very chilly.

“This is an unusually weird and vivid dream,” he said to himself. He started rubbing his hand and vaguely he wished he had a coat on.  

“Holy shit!” he yelled in surprise as he suddenly found himself wearing a black coat. He grasped at the coat and tried to figure out what the hell happened.

'Is this even a dream? But what else could it be?’ he thought.

He walked up to the oak tree and place his hand against the bark. He could every ridge and crevice of the bark and he confirmed what he first started suspecting when he woke up here. 

‘I’m not dreaming,’ he thought. 'This is too vivid for a dream.' And then suddenly it made sense. He heartbeat started racing and he throttled his chakra. He brought his hands up and loudly yelled, “Kai!” 

After nothing changed he hesitantly brought his hands down. That would break most genjutsu and if this was one his opponent had more than enough time to kill him. Just to be safe he did it one more time and wasn’t surprised when it failed. 

If this was a genjutsu then it wasn’t one that he ever heard of. The coat randomly appearing made no sense (and it did absolutely nothing to keep the cold out) and the genjutsu wasn’t even harmful. The only thing that was bothering him was the cold and even that was bearable. 

So no, probably not a genjutsu. 

‘Then what is it?’ he thought, a little bit frustrated.  

“Hello,” a voice said behind him. It was a bit familiar but Kizashi whirled around and instinctively reached down and drew a kunai from a pouch that had not been there a second ago. 

“Who are…. you?” he finished, his words coming out aggressive only to end in shock. He recognized the person in front of him but it couldn’t be possible because that was his face. The face he wore as Derek Moore. 

“You don’t know who I am? Shame, I thought it was pretty obvious.” the doppelganger, impostor, smiled wanly at him and scratched his upper arm, clearly nervous and tired.  

The doppelganger stretched out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Derek Moore. Nice to meet you.”

The grin on his face told Kizashi that he knew exactly what was going on and was enjoying Kizashi’s confusion. 

Kizashi took a few steps back and lowered his kunai. It was clear that there was more going on here than he knew and this supposed “Derek” didn’t look like he was going to attack him anytime soon. 

He brought his palm up to his chest. “That’s where you’re wrong buddy. I’m Derek Moore.” he said. 

Fake Derek laughed. “No, you’re Haruno Kizashi.” 

Kizashi’s eye widened as he was hit was a huge dose of surrealism. From one moment to the next his entire sense of who he was changed. Fake Derek was right. He was Haruno Kizashi. 

And then confusion set in. “Wait what do you mean? I thought I was Derek Moore?” If he wasn’t Derek Moore then whose memories did he have in his head? 

Fake Derek nodded. “And you are, you’re Derek Moore and Haruno Kizashi.”

What the fuck. “Then who are you!” he yelled. 

“I’m Derek Moore,” the doppelganger said with a grin. 

Kizashi’s eyebrow twitched and he briefly considered just saying ‘fuck it’ and strangling the person in front of him.

“Okay, okay let me explain.” Fake Derek said when he saw Kizashi’s expression. He held out his hands in an apology

“Let’s see, how do I want to explain this?” His expression brightened and he looked at Kizashi. “This will get confusing but stay with me.”

“Okay so this,” he spread out his arms and gestured to their surroundings, “as far as I can tell is our mindscape, our mental world.” 

“And you and I are like two sides of a coin. We are simultaneously Derek Moore and Haruno Kizashi. Except as far as I can tell you are more Kizashi than you are Derek and I’m more Derek than I am Kizashi.” 

“So we’re basically two souls in one body?” he asked. All of this was sounding impossible but he couldn’t help but believe it. 

Derek opened and closed his mouth. “Well, yes but no. You see having two separate souls would mean we’re two different people but we’re not. We’re the same person just two different facets of the same soul.”

He furrowed his eyebrows and continued. “But at the same time, you and I may be the same person but we’re not identical. We started out as Derek but now we’re Kizashi. One soul all in all but if you look closer we’re two different people.” 

Kizashi nodded. It was confusing but it made sense. “So you’re like my Inner Spirit? Like Sakura has in the anime?”

Derek’s eyes lit up. “Exactly! And instead of you having an Inner Kizashi I took up that position instead.”

Kizashi groaned. He was barely understanding the mechanics of what was going on. For so long he had thought he was Derek Moore acting as Haruno Kizashi but it turned out he actually was Kizashi. He just had a little bit of Derek in him. 

None of it made sense as Inner Sakura was never explained in the anime. She just disappeared after the preliminaries matches in the chunin exams. 

“How do we know we’re not crazy? Having two souls should be impossible, what’re the odds that all of this is just a hallucination?”

Derek shrugged and looked to the side. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it too hard. It feels real to me so that’s all that matters. And besides, if this is a hallucination then it's a very good one. Real enough for us to play along.”

It was obvious he was scared about the answer to that question and was refusing to even consider the possibility that this wasn’t real. Kizashi could relate, he didn’t want to consider it himself.

‘Willful ignorance is bliss,’ he thought. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you right?” he said.

“Yeah, exactly.” Derek said. 

Kizashi had a feeling that that they were going to be proved wrong on that. 

“So you’ve existed all my life as Kizashi right? So how come I never heard you or anything?” he asked Derek. 

“I think you know the answer to that.” replied Derek. 

Kizashi thought back to the moment he first remembered dying and how it felt like something in his mind was breaking. “You were sealed?” he guessed.

Derek nodded. “I think our subconscious couldn’t handle the memory of us dying so it repressed the memory of it along with me and the last two years of our life as Derek.

Kizashi closed his eyes and sighed. “And when we saw Ren die it broke the seal.” Suddenly Kizashi remembered what Fujikawa had said.

“I had first theorized that you were shaving off the excess chakra subconsciously but that was foolish of me. After looking at your chakra pathway we found something interesting.” 

“Right here.” Fujikawa lightly jabbed his pen into the left side of his chest, right where his heart was. “We found a great pool of spiritual energy sitting in your tenketsu . More specifically, the tenketsu in which the Eight Gate of Death resides."

And then later he had said.

"It doesn't make any sense at all. How can it affect one part of your body and not the other? Chakra doesn't work like that. It's almost like the energy is sealed into the tenketsu since it doesn't disperse but it's not since it's affecting your body.” He muttered that last part but Kizashi managed to catch it.

Derek was the pool of chakra sitting near his heart and he was more than willing to bet that now that the seal was broke, the spiritual energy returned to his chakra pool. Which meant that his previously perfect chakra control was nowhere near perfect.

But what had prompted him to commit suicide? Kizashi ran it from every angle but he couldn’t imagine what had been so bad that he was willing to die.

“Derek,” he said softly. “Why did we try to commit suicide? What happened? I remember we distinctly promised ourselves that we would never do it but something had to have happened to drive us to the edge.” 

Derek sighed and looked up and Kizashi saw tears beginning to run down his cheeks.

“I was hoping you would remember on your own. Kizashi you know how hard it was for us to stay alive. How exhausting it was for us to live and try to be happy when others did it so effortlessly. Living was so hard for us, it was like we were never meant to be alive.” 

Kizashi swallowed down a sob and silently started crying himself. He noticed that their mindscape was getting considerably colder and the sun was getting dimmer. Their mental world was reacting to their emotions. 

“But despite all of that, we were too strong to take our own life. We wanted to live even though a large part of us wanted nothing more to just sit down and die. We decided to live no matter how hard it was and for a while we managed that. We were happy and life for the most part was okay.” 

Derek locked eyes with Kizashi and Kizashi found nothing but grief and regret in his eyes. “But then mom died Kizashi! And I didn’t want to live in a world where my mom was dead!”

Derek started sobbing and Kizashi stood there frozen as tears continued to run down his cheeks. 

“Mom died?” he asked softly. And to his own ears he could hear how broken and sad his own voice was.

“She fucking died Kizashi,” and Derek’s voice held so much grief and pain that he turned his head away and closed his eyes. "I didn't know what to do," Derek said softly. "She was our main reason for staying alive." 

Ignoring how weird it was he walked over and gave Derek a hug and they held each other as they mourned for their dead mother. 

He didn’t know how long it took for them until their grief was spent but by the time it was over they found themselves on the ground and looking up into the sky.

“It’s very beautiful here,” he commented. His voice was raspy and he took a moment to clear it.

“It’s cold as hell but other than that it’s great.” He pulled the coat snugger over his body. If this was actually a physical representation of their soul then Kizashi was pleased with it. 

“Don’t bother,” Derek said when he looked over at Kizashi. “This place reacts to our emotions. You can have the warmest coat on and you’d still feel the cold in here.” 

“You’d think after what we’ve been through it’d look a lot worse in here. I was expecting a big massive storm or for the whole place to be dead. Having it just get colder isn’t so bad.”

Derek shot him a flat look and stood up. “Oh trust me it’s bad. Look,” he held out his hand and a shovel appeared in it. He stabbed it in the grass and overturned it to look at the soil underneath. He recoiled as a dark purple slime was revealed.

“This is underneath all the grass in the field. It’s eating at the roots of the oak tree and given enough time it will kill it and all the grass. The sun will stop shining and the river will become corrupt. It will sink so far into the ground that our mind will never recover. Don’t doubt, committing suicide left its mark on our soul.” Derek’s voice was deep and somber.

Kizashi looked at the purple, almost black, slime and had to suppress the urge to throw up. The slime was so invasive and the thought of it being right underneath his feet was disgusting. “It’s so deceptive. The place is so pretty but right beneath the surface lies this ugly thing. How do we get rid of it?” 

“Truthfully I’m not sure. But since this is a depiction of our soul I think it’s as simple as breaking our unhealthy habits. We need to make our life as healthy as possible. We need to get rid of any self-esteem issues we have and we mainly need to accept what happened to us. Our death, mom’s death, and us being reincarnated.”

Kizashi pulled a face. “I have accepted that we’ve been reincarnated.”

“No, you haven’t.” refuted Derek. “You’ve been dealing with it. There’s a difference. You avoided Sakura for most of your childhood and you’ve been shunning anyone who gets close to you. You don’t have any real friends besides Lee and Hiroki and you haven’t told them about us simply because you can’t handle having anyone that close to you. You need to spread your roots and call Konoha your home.”

Kizashi flinched. Every single statement of that was true no matter how hard he wished it wasn’t. “It’s not that easy you know. I’ve been doing the best I can.”

“Believe me, I know. I — I know. But the way things are going now you’re going to end up the same way I did. You know it yourself, the signs are starting back up. This isn't something we can just run away and ignore. We have to give it our all.” 

Kizashi felt a part of him panic. He never wanted to deal with the consequences of committing suicide. He died so he could find some form of peace and serenity and instead he found himself in a different world battling the same demons.  

“Look go get some rest. A lot has happened today and you need time to process all of it.” Derek said sympathetically. 

Kizashi nodded thankfully. “Thanks,” he said and the world around him dissolved into nothingness.

Chapter Text

The trip back to Konoha was… odd. With Sojiro-sensei in a coma and Ren dead, Kizashi felt very off-kilter and Rukia was only furthering his sense of confusion. Ever since they had met up with the rescue squad she had been very quiet and had a contemplative look on her face.

Kizashi wanted to help her and ease some of the pain she had to be feeling but he was going through some problems of his own. He had gone up to her and found that he didn’t know what to say and they had just stood there, contemplative looks on both of their faces. 

The shinobi at the outpost clearly didn’t know how to deal with the two genin so for the most part they were left alone. The medic-nin had waited a week for Sojiro-sensei to wake up before requesting backup from another border outpost to escort what was left of Team Sojiro back home to Konoha. 

While Kizashi itched to get back to Konoha he was grateful for the time to pull himself back together. He was very gradually coming to terms with Ren’s death and he was coping with the fact that he had killed himself. 

‘If there's one good thing about the Academy it's that they don't flinch when it comes to death and they teach you how to process and handle the emotions you have,’ Derek said (thought?) in his head. 

‘I might not be as free from Konoha’s brainwashing as I thought I was,’ Kizashi agreed. 

‘Brainwashing is a little harsh, it's just the culture of this world,’ replied Derek. 

He shrugged his shoulders and didn't respond. Ever since they had first talked Kizashi and Derek were able to communicate without him bringing his awareness down to their mindscape.  

It was odd, having Derek in his — their — head. Derek only talked to him when he was bored and spent most of his time sulking in his head. 

Which was fine for Kizashi, he was sulking himself. He and Derek may be the same person but Kizashi was still kind of blindsided that he had killed himself. Derek’s explanation was horrifying but all too believable and Kizashi was stuck in disbelief.

With both of them sulking and Kizashi piloting the body the two of them tiptoed around each other like two friends who had just made up after a huge fight. 

Kizashi walked out of the room and started walking to the kitchen. Today was the last day they were spending here as their escort was arriving in a few hours. He nodded to a guy whose name he was pretty sure was Toshiro and started making a plate of food that somebody had cooked.  

Silently eating his food he pulled out his notebook that he used for seals and tried to suppress the flash of annoyance he had at the thought of sealing.  

Besides recreating seals that already existed he had made no progress on sealing. He had lots of ideas that he tried to implement but they had proven to be incredibly complex and he had no idea where to start. 

It was like completing a one thousand puzzle piece from the inside out but he didn't have all the pieces. And he didn't know what the completed picture looked like.

He was considering dropping sealing and focusing on something else but he kept working on it whenever he had the time. 

For the past week he had been working on it because there was nothing else to do and they weren't allowed to leave the outpost. 

‘I really need a new hobby,’ he thought. 

He had picked up drawing during his time in the Academy. Maybe he should start drawing more. 

Their escort team had arrived and to his surprise he vaguely recognized one of their faces. 

By now Kizashi was pretty used to seeing characters he knew in the anime as actual non-animated people (he was pretty sure he had seen Naruto run past him one day) so he didn't let his eyes linger on who he was pretty sure was Mitarashi Anko.  

By this point in his life he barely remembered the faces of the less important characters in Naruto but Anko’s spiky purple hair and her large overcoat singled her out.  

"We'll take him from here," Anko said. Tokuma was bound and gagged and so heavily medicated that he couldn't even talk. 

One of the shinobi went over to his sensei and the medic attending to him helped him put his sensei onto his back. They sealed the rack that he was laying on into a storage scroll and they were ready to go.  

He turned his head to Toshiro and the other outpost shinobi. "Thanks for taking care of us."

Rukia silently nodded her head to one of the female shinobi she had bonded with.

"No problem kid. You keep on keeping on, it'll get better eventually." Toshiro lazily waved his hand. "Safe travels," he said to them.

Anko grabbed Tokuma and put him over her shoulder and looked at the other three members of the escort squad. "Let's get going Genma," she said and took off. 

Genma, who for some reason had a senbon in his mouth (and that was vaguely familiar for some reason) nodded and looked at Rukia and him. "Let's go." 

And they were off.

Even with half of the escort squad carrying what was essentially dead weight they had no trouble running at a pace that left Rukia and him red-faced and panting.

Anko was leading and setting the pace but at Genma's signal they mercifully stopped for a break.

Kizashi was glad that even though his external chakra control was currently out of sorts he was still able to control and regulate the chakra inside his body. It allowed him to still enhance his strength and speed. 

Back at the outpost he had surreptitiously tried to perform the Academy three and all three of them had failed to work. But back in Nagoya he had been able to perform a seal less kawarimi.

He had a theory that hand signs were just ways to help shape and manipulate chakra and after constantly using the same jutsu you're able to forego the hand signs due to either experience or your chakra remembering how to twist that way.

It was nice to know that he wasn't completely defenseless. In actuality his combat effectiveness probably hadn't gone down. He was confident he could perform each of the Academy three seal less and that was all the jutsu he knew currently.

But that would change the older he got and not being able to use any jutsu because of his shitty chakra control would get old. He didn't have Lee's dedication to taijutsu, he needed his lack of control fixed ASAP.

"How can you just go on like nothing happened?" Rukia asked him. The words themselves were accusing but her tone was listless and a little pleading.

"What do you mean?"

Rukia sat up off the ground and pierced him with a look that reminded him of how she usually acted.  

“Ever since we've came back you've just moved on like Ren never died. Sojiro-sensei is in a coma and you just shrugged your shoulders and moved on.” 

Hurt, he opened his mouth and she seemed to deflate at the look on his face.

“I'm sorry,” she said. Her face was genuinely remorseful and Kizashi felt any traces of anger at her disappear. “I didn't mean to say that you don't care, I know you care. I saw you cry.” 

She started picking at the few strays of grass that were beneath her feet. “It just seems like you're handling everything well, like a proper shinobi should, and I've been crying non-stop since we've got back.”

Damn, what did he say to that? He was terrible at comforting people. He had his own coping methods, or lack thereof as he preferred ignoring his emotions until he could better deal with them, but he couldn't tell Rukia that. 

Unbidden one of Derek's thoughts came through to him. ‘She's only twelve she's allowed to grieve for her teacher and friend.’  

That was a good point actually. “Rukia we’re twelve years old, were allowed to cry because sensei is in a coma and Ren is dead.” She flinched at that part and internally he cringed. He hadn't meant to be that blunt and insensitive. He forged on to get to his point. “Besides, I'm not as unaffected as I seem, I've been considering if I really want to be a ninja.” 

It wasn't exactly a lie but close enough to the truth. He had no idea why he wanted to be a ninja anymore. He had at first wanted to make something out of himself but he found that he couldn't buy into Konoha’s Will of Fire like he had wanted to do.  

After this C-rank his glee at being a ninja had drastically gone down. He wasn't proud to be a ninja, it's partly why he struggled at his training. He had no drive, no motive to train. No goal to attain.

He may have swore an oath to Konoha but there were things he wouldn't do if he was ordered. The thought of killing a civilian under orders rankled him and he would never kill a child, orders be damned.

"The whole shinobi system at its core is fucked. It's only been 200 years since The Era of the Warring States and there's already been three shinobi world wars.” Derek said to him. 

“The Daimyos are supposed to be a check and balance against the shinobi villages but realistically everyone knows that the Kages have all the power,”  he said back. 

Rukia had fallen silent and seemed to be pondering his words. 

He wanted to explain to her that he was technically 20 years old (or 32 if you wanted to count his time as Kizashi) and that he knew exactly how to pick up and keep going after your world has fallen apart. He had to do it when he was reincarnated.

“Alright maggots. Breaks over let's go.” Anko said to them. He wasn't sure if it was fanon but he remembered Anko being more social and out-going. He saw none of that as she looked over him and Rukia.

The rest of the day passed by quickly but Kizashi’s mind couldn't stop thinking about his conversation with Rukia. 

It bothered him that he had no reason to be a ninja. He had vague plans on how to rebalance his chakra or at least develop his chakra control so he could learn how to separately wield both his yin and yang chakra but he was dreading it. 

What was he doing this all for? 

“Be honest with yourself, you know exactly why you wanted to be a ninja. You just don't want to admit it because it's dumb.” Derek said. 

Kizashi pulled a face. He prided himself on being honest with himself so he carefully examined his feelings. I want to be a ninja to make something out of myself.

That was false. Well, not exactly. He did want to make something out of himself but that was only part of the reason he wanted to be a shinobi. 

He wanted to be a shinobi for the adventure but also because- 

‘In a way this is everything that I ever wanted to happen. I've always wanted an adventurous life like movies and books protagonist have but ever since I've got it I want nothing more to go back to my old life. But a part of me is still craving that adventure and that's why I became a ninja. And it sounds stupid but I want to help Naruto beat the Akatsuki and with my knowledge of this future I can do so.’  

He felt so dumb and naive for wanting to do so because life here wasn't so glamorous as it seemed in the anime. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows they were literally child soldiers. But the child within him still hadn't died yet and he wanted this badly. 

“And if you’re going to do something as big as taking down the Akatsuki you're going to have to give it your all. No half-assing it,” said Derek. 

“Well it looks like I found my motivation,” Kizashi said back. 

They were only a day away from Konoha when Kizashi, or rather Derek made a break on one of Kizashi’s sealing projects. 

Kizashi’s body was asleep but his two minds were wide awake within his mindscape. Kizashi had found himself summoned here each night he went to sleep. Through experimentation they had found that their shared mental world functioned exactly like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter.  

They could change their surroundings to look like anything they want with just a thought and could conjure up pretty much anything they could think of. 

There were limitations though. The gigantic oak tree was a fixture in any scene they created and if they created anything that relied on electricity to function it wouldn’t work. And when the both of them truly disagreed on an issue and their wills were pitted against each other the both of them would suffer a debilitating migraine.  

But the books that they materialized had all the correct words, provided that one of them had read it before, and the seals that he had drawn up worked. 

“You see I’m trying to make a seal that lets only me see the contents of a scroll or the writing on a piece of paper. That way I can write down everything I know about the Akatsuki and all the things I’ll forget over time.”  

It had already been quite a while, eight or maybe nine years since he first remembered being someone other than Haruno Kizashi and he knew there was a great deal of information he had already forgotten about the Naruto universe. He had a pretty good memory but after almost a decade he wouldn’t trust his memory. 

“I’m almost finished with this version but I think I’m going to have to scrap it. Theoretically it would work as intended but it would mean that anyone could just use a genjutsu to convince themselves that they were me and get into it.”

The two of them were lying in hammocks that were tied to the branches of the oak tree. The sky above was filled with the bright brilliant stars that shined over Konoha at night and the world below them was filled with cars that lined the streets and buildings that pierced the horizon. 

He raised his hand and started to move his pointer finger. In the air in front of the two of them golden light trailed in the path of Kizashi’s finger. Carefully he drew the seal and drew an arrow at what he called the ‘state of mind’ master seal. It was the security part of the seal that let only people who had the right state of mind open it up and see its contents.

It had taken him 3 months to come up with this seal and he was already dreading all the backtracking he was going to have to do. All parts of a seal relied on each other to maintain balance and ripping out the master seal was going to be difficult. And then he had to find one that worked for what he was going for and rearrange the seal until it fit that master seal.

He didn't know if Derek was intentionally sending his emotions through to him or if it was one of those times where he could feel Derek’s emotions because he was technically Derek but he could sense the confusion emanating from his other half.

Derek sat up from the hammock he was resting in and looked at him.

“Why didn’t you just link the seal to your blood? It’s easier to do so and you wouldn’t even need to design the seal yourself. You could just steal the design from one of Konoha’s R&D departments.”

It was his turn to be confused now. How much did Derek know about sealing?  

“I wanted it to be so secure that only I could get into it. It’d be too easy for someone to steal some of my blood and open it. That’s why I made so it requires that someone has to 100% believe that they’re Haruno Kizashi to open it.”

“Well now that there’s two of us you could make it so that someone has to believe that they’re simultaneously Derek Moore and Haruno Kizashi. That’s foolproof since nobody knows Derek Moore in this universe.” 

His eyebrows shot up in excitement. “That might work!” And to his further surprise Derek erased part of the state of the mind seal that was hanging in the air and where there had previously been a straight line there was now a branched line that led into two paths. He wrote Kizashi’s name in perfect Kanji and went to right his name down and then hesitated. 

“Wait a minute,” Derek said. “Damn, never mind that won’t work. I don’t suppose you’ve ever tried to create a seal with English or had English in any or your seals?” 

Kizashi shook his head. “That won’t work. This language, which sounds remarkably like Japanese but everyone calls Common, is said to be given us by the gods themselves. There are a few other languages in the Elemental Nations but it’s usually restricted to just a clan or a village. New languages don’t get picked up as people don’t want to offend the gods but also because it’s the language of creation. Every other language is therefore inferior.”

“If it’s the language of creation then how come an apple doesn’t materialize when you say ‘apple’?” asked Derek.

Kizashi shrugged. “I think it’s either because we aren’t gods or because you need chakra or blood to activate it like you do with seals since that’s the written form of the language of creation.”

“Ahh okay I get it now. Sorry, I thought that was going to work,” Derek said.

Kizashi shook his head. “No, no that was great. You just saved me from having to go back and fix the seal. It would’ve taken me weeks to make another version. Now all I have to do is to figure out how to transcribe your name into kanji and then it’ll work. How do you know so much about sealing?”

“I have no idea. There are some things I know I shouldn’t know but I do. Like I know instinctively that you consider Lee your best friend and that our dad for some reason likes Sakura better than he does us despite never saying or acting otherwise. But on the other hand I have no idea when you were born or even where you were born.” He leaned slightly to make eye contact with him.

“Hold on, is it June eleventh?” 

“Close,” he said. “It’s July eleventh.”

“And the year?” Derek asked.

“178 PWS.”

Derek stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Post Warring States. It’s the long and violent history that came before the Elemental Nations.”

Derek grunted and laid back down. “There are some things that I automatically know about your life and there are some other things that are just out of reach. I can almost remember them but it won’t come to me.”

Kizashi nodded even though Derek wasn’t looking at him. “That makes sense, if we’re two parts of the same soul then it makes sense that what you know I know, and vice-versa. It’s probably why sometimes I know exactly what you’re thinking or what you’re feeling.”

"Hmmm, it makes sense."

The two of them sat there in silence until he heard Derek’s breathing even out and he realized that he had fallen asleep.

He materialized a warm blanket and fell asleep himself.  

Konoha. As they had gotten closer to it Kizashi felt both relieved and afraid.

Relieved because he was finally home and he could finally have the space to deal with everything that had happened but afraid because coming home meant dealing with Ren’s death and having to recount all of it when they had to report to the Hokage.  

One look at Rukia’s face told Kizashi that she felt none of the apprehension he did and all of the relief.

The seven of them had arrived at Konoha early in the morning a week and a half later than Team Sojiro were slated to come back.

Genma nodded to one of the shinobi that manned one of the two desks as we arrived at the front gate. Everyone present slid their ID and dog tags through the opening in the window.

“Raido,” he said. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

Raidō smiled and Kizashi watched as his slightly wrinkled skin that traveled from the bridge of his nose to his left cheek stayed relaxed when the rest of his face was pulled up. It was obviously a battle scar of some sort but he couldn’t tell what caused it. Probably a lightning jutsu if he had to guess.

“Not really, unless you wanna count the usual riff raff,” he said.

He checked their identification and gave it back once he was done. He made eye contact with him and Rukia. “You two have orders to immediately report to the Hokage once you’re done here.”

Kizashi nodded and stepped through the gate and into Konoha. Now that he was here he found that the only thing he could feel was anxiety. It was nice to be back in familiar territory but a part of him was stressed at the idea of being here. Being out on the road and traveling allowed him some breathing room when dealing with Ren’s death and his own suicide. But being back in Konoha meant that that breathing room was gone.

He had no place to go but home and the minute he got home he was sure to be hounded by his parents and possibly Sakura. He wanted to move out but there was no way he could swing it being that he was twelve years old and he didn’t have enough to afford a place. That and he figured no landlord would rent a place to a twelve year old, even if they were technically a legal adult.

He forced himself to think about something else and started walking towards the Hokage Tower with Rukia in tow.

They walked in silence and they passed by a children’s park that Kizashi’s mother liked to take them to when they were younger. Blinding in their brilliance, the orange, red, and yellow leaves covered the ground and crunched underneath their feet as they walked by.

They reached the Academy in no time and they walked into the Hokage Tower attached to it. The reason why the Academy was near the Hokage Tower was because in the event of an attack having the next generation of shinobi close and nearby the one place where there was guaranteed to be a numerous amount of ninja was common sense.

It also allowed the Academy kids to see what real shinobi were like and remind them of the goal they were working towards. 

It had been surreal at first to walk into the tower instead of the Academy. Kizashi had spent years waiting for the day that he was finally a genin but now that he was one it had felt like time had shot forward.

It had been almost half a year since he had graduated from the Academy but it had felt like only two or three months since he had been assigned to Team Sojiro. After the monotonic days that was his childhood this C-rank mission was a brutal wake up call. Despite knowing that this was a violent and bloody world he had been lulled into a false sense of security.

Deep down he had felt like nothing would happen to him because why him of all people? He had never thought something of this magnitude would happen to him before he was at least a year into his shinobi career.

Kizashi suddenly realized that this was exactly how civilian born shinobi felt like after experiencing the reality of shinobi life. He had thought himself above the stereotype that civilian born shinobi were delicate but he wasn’t. He didn’t even know why it existed, he was 20 years old and he felt like he was falling apart at the seams over what happened. He didn’t know how shinobi children handled it being emotional as they are at that age.

“Children are more resilient than adults when it comes to certain things,” said Derek.

They filled out the required paperwork they had to do while they waited for their turn to see the Hokage and Kizashi started reviewing the mission report he had wrote up a day or two before they had reached Konoha. The entirety of what happened since the moment they left and returned to Konoha was on this scroll and it was pitifully small for what was such a big deal to Kizashi.

“At seven a.m. Team Sojiro departed Konoha and made way to Nagoya Village with no difficulties. After approximately one week we arrived at 10 a.m. and immediately made way to our client’s house. As soon as we arrived we could tell there was something wrong as…..”

And it went on in that manner, the whole C-rank written down in meticulous detail. He was grateful that he had the foresight to already write one up as he didn’t want to fumble and search for words when he reported it to the Hokage.

Even now the two of them kept their silence, the absence of Ren and Sojiro-sensei was glaringly obvious.

The Hokage’s assistant, Akane her name was, smiled at them.“Hokage-sama will now see you two.”

“Thank you,” he said.

He looked at Rukia and found that he couldn’t judge her emotions. She was clearly in a pensive mood but whether she was thinking good or bad thoughts he couldn’t tell.

They entered the Hokage’s office and there he was, The God of Shinobi himself looking nothing more than a harmless old man.

He nodded his head respectfully and bowed slightly and Rukia followed suit. “Hokage-sama,” they murmured.

Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Sandaime Hokage and the God of Shinobi waved them off. “Please children, sit down. I know you must be weary from your travels.”

They did so and Kizashi couldn’t help but be impressed. The Hokage pulled off the ‘old harmless grandpa’ act with such skill that he couldn’t mentally link the person sitting in front of him with the battle hardened shinobi who had led Konoha through nearly three world wars.

Sarutobi Hiruzen watched on as the two genin gave their mission report. The boy, Haruno Kizashi, took lead and his voice was crisp and factual as he robotically listed off everything that has transpired since they had left Konoha. It was hard to get a read off of him but Hiruzen could tell that the boy was stressed and wanted this to be over.

The girl, Yamashita Rukia, was a little easier to get a read on. She didn’t speak and when she did it was only to help when Kizashi couldn’t remember things exactly. But her body language told him that she was expressing relief and anxiety. Her face showed her relief at being home but her fidgeting fingers made him think that she was stressing over something.

Thinking on it he decided that it was probably her worrying about her sensei. He was currently suffering from a poison that Hiruzen himself had helped Orochimaru make. If the boy hadn’t overheard his shinobi saying his name Hiruzen would’ve known instantly who was behind the attack.

The poison was a variant of the poison that came off of the Sword of Kusanagi. It had the paralytic properties of the famed sword but it also induced swelling in the brain making it an effective assassination poison. One scratch was enough to put you down and healing the brain was something only highly skilled medics were able to do. If Fujimoto hadn’t managed to call for backup he would be dead by now.

He looked on at the two genin in front of him and felt a pang of guilt. Another generation of shinobi hurt by Orochimaru. Anko, who had never done anything except trust her sensei, furiously hated Orochimaru and tracked down any leads of his whereabouts.

He stopped himself from thinking about Orochimaru. His prized pupil was nothing but a source of shame for him, a black stain on his honor. He had failed to put him down like the rabid animal he was and countless others paid the price for it.

In his office Kizashi was finishing on how he had fought off the two chunin and how the two of them escaped but not before sealing all the coded information they had found.

Hiruzen interrupted him. “Konoha thanks you for your service. If it wasn’t for the two of you returning home we would have no idea that a new shinobi village was forming with one of Konoha’s most notorious traitors leading it. We have yet to decipher the code used by the ninja but the fact that you captured a chunin allows us to save time by having a Yamanaka take the information from his mind.”

At that Haruno straightened up and the girl’s fidgeting increased. Hiruzen bowed his head a little and said, “Please allow me to apologize. Orochimaru is a monster of my own creation and I have failed you and Konoha in allowing him to run free. No genin should be put in a situation that risky so early and the two of you performed admirably.”

The two of them shifted, clearly uncomfortable with his apology. He spoke before they could say anything. “I should have known that Orochimaru would use his inside information of Konoha to strike at our sources and it’s my negligence that cause young Ren his life.”

Haruno closed his eyes in silence anguish before opening them back up again and Yamashita Rukia drew in air like she had been sucker punched. “I know it’s no consolation but the mission will go down as an low A-rank mission on your record and you will be paid accordingly.”

And then he made eye contact with the Haruno boy. “If any of the two shinobi you defeated had any existing bounties we’ll notify you and you can retrieve your prize money downstairs where the bounty posters are.”

“Due to the change of mission rank this mission will be classified. You two are to not share any details about this mission, only that the situation turned hostile and that Nakamura Ren lost his life.

The genin nodded and he was about to dismiss them when Rukia spoke up. “Hokage-sama I was wondering if you could transfer me full time to the Medic Division? I don’t want to be a field medic anymore.”

Hiruzen looked at Rukia whose nervousness was apparent. “Are you sure? If you do this it means you’ll have to transfer out of Team Sojiro. I don’t know the what the odds are for when or if your sensei wakes up but you might want to sleep on it before making a decision."

The boy looked sharply at Rukia for a few seconds before understanding flashed across his face and he deflated.

She nodded her head and her face was full of determination and not a trace of doubt was to be seen. “I’m sure. I’ve thought this over enough.”

He inclined his head once more. “Very well, I’ll see it done. The Division will contact you on when you’re to start classes.” He looked over at Haruno Kizashi, the last active member of Team Sojiro.

“Until your sensei wakes up I’m afraid we don’t have any jonin to spare to stand in for your sensei. I can put you on a waiting list for when a jonin is available but for now you’ll have to report to the Genin Corps. Sometimes a jonin will take on a fourth member but that decision is up to them and there’s nothing I can do in regards to that. You’ll have to take initiative and convince a jonin on your own.”

The boy’s jaw clenched momentarily before easing up. “And one last thing,” he said. “Since you passed your jonin sensei’s genin test it’s not mandatory for you to attend classes at the Genin Corps. There are tournaments held there that if you win you’ll be able to compete in the upcoming chunin exams that will be held in Takigakure.”

The genin nodded, “Hokage-sama,” he acknowledged.

“Is that all?” Hiruzen asked and they shook their heads no. “Dismissed then.”

The two of them stood up went to leave but not before placing two scrolls on his desk. “It’s my mission report and Nakamura Ren’s body.” The Hokage nodded solemnly and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” 

The two of them left his office and shut the door behind them.  

Kizashi left the Hokage Tower feeling overwhelmed but not very surprised by how their mission report went.

Rukia leaving Team Sojiro was blindsiding at first but the more he thought about it the more it made sense considering her recent behavior. Being assigned to the Genin Corps was surprising but again it made sense. He didn’t stop to think about what would happen once he returned to Konoha, only that they would.

But now with Ren dead, his sensei in a coma, and Rukia transferring to the Medic Division he was now the only member of their team left. As soon as he started becoming fond of his team they were brutally taken away from him.

He sighed and made his way home. After they had left the Hokage Tower he had reassured Rukia that he didn’t hate her for leaving. He understood her reasonings and she didn’t exactly owe him an apology for doing what was best for her. She had eventually planned on transferring to the Medic Corps anyways so it wasn’t like it was a complete surprise anyway.

He reached his house and he stopped before he entered. What would he say to his mother? They had returned to Konoha a week and a half later than scheduled and he already knew his mother was worried about him being a ninja. It didn’t help that his first C-rank was a total disaster and justification for her feelings.

He entered the house. “Mom?! Dad? I’m home!” No one answered him.

He slipped his sandals off and made his way to the kitchen. The note he had stuck on the refrigerator door before he left was gone and was replaced by one his mother had written.

‘Kizashi. Me and your father had to go out and restock our merchandise. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone but it shouldn’t be for more than a month. Sakura is staying with the Yamanakas  while we’re gone so don’t be alarmed if she doesn’t come home. I’m sorry we couldn’t be there when you came home. I love you and please clean your room when you get home. It’s a mess in there.’

Kizashi huffed in amusement at that last line and closed his eyes and did the math. With the date written on the note he had about two weeks until they came back.

Two weeks with the whole house to himself. Two weeks of peace and quiet. Two whole weeks to finally have the time to put himself back together and not have to pretend that he was okay.

He felt something inside of him loosen and if he didn’t have such a tight grip on his emotions he would’ve cried. This is exactly what he needed.

He rested his forehead against the refrigerator, closed his eyes, and thanked a god he wasn’t sure he believed in. 

When Kizashi woke up the next morning he was already feeling magnitudes better than he had in the past week. The fact that he woke up in his room and in his own bed did wonders for his mood.

For the first time since he had met Derek he hadn’t gone to his mindscape when he slept and instead went straight to sleep. Unfortunately this was also the first time he had dreamt since then and his mind was plagued with nightmares of Ren’s death and his own death.

He had woken up in the middle of the night from the intensity of those dreams but he managed to fall back asleep and thankfully his sleep was peaceful after that.

He allowed himself to drift in and out of sleep until he couldn’t stand to be in bed any longer. Once he took a shower and was dressed he found that he didn’t know what to do. Team training was out as there was no team left. Training would be the productive thing to do but he found that he didn’t feel like it just yet. With nothing else to do he went back to the Hokage Tower to go pick up his mission payment.

Mentally he tried to talk to Derek but found that he was still asleep. He frowned, though he and Derek had figured some things of how their, for lack of a better term, bloodline worked there were still a ton of things that needed clarification.

First and foremost was the distinction between the two of them. Kizashi knew he was Haruno Kizashi with a little bit of Derek inside of him but previously he had thought he was just Derek Moore in Haruno Kizashi’s body.

But when he had found himself in his mindscape for the first time Derek had said, “No, you’re Haruno Kizashi,” and his whole sense of self had changed.

It was a good change because now he felt more settled in this life. More connected to his surroundings. The overwhelming nostalgia and homesickness that he used to carry around him like a shroud was still there but less prevalent. It didn’t take up his attention like it used to.

Since his bloodline emerged he hadn’t time to himself to see how extra yin energy would help or harm him besides screwing up his chakra control but perhaps now that he was alone it was time to experiment.

There had to be something that was causing his mind to physically manifest as a giant oak tree and solidifying and separating the differences between Haruno Kizashi and Derek Moore.

The now unsealed Yin energy that had been around his heart was definitely Derek’s consciousness but what had caused his mind to split into two instead of him just being Derek Moore reincarnated?

Why did Haruno Kizashi exist?

He stopped because he was getting confused and without writing things down he felt like he was just thinking in circles.

But he was thinking along the right lines, if he could figure out the answers to those questions he would be one more step closer in figuring out why he was here.

“This is a lot of fucking money,” he blurted out once he saw the amount written on his pay stub. The chunin manning the desk look amused at his expression. “Is this normal for an A-rank?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah just about. It’s a little short but that’s generally what an A-rank goes for.”

The Hokage did say it would go down as a low A-rank on his record.

“Hot damn,” he muttered. And this was without the bounties Tokuma and Yasuoka might have on their heads. At least he could now afford the elemental chakra affinity paper he had wanted. It would hardly dent the small fortune he had just received.

“Thanks, man. Have a good day,” he said to the chunin. The chunin waved him out.

Hmm, what to do now? He supposed he should do some training now. He had initially planned on not doing any training for the first week that he was back as a way to relax but it felt weird not to be active after all the exercise he usually did daily.

And after that he could attempt to establish some level of control over his bloodline. It was something that needed doing and the sooner he did the better he would feel. It was better to have to control over something that involved his mind. Whatever advantages and disadvantages would only be understood through testing his limits and through that lay control.

Getting to Team Sojiro’s usual training ground took no time at all but as he arrived he noticed that a genin team was already there. That was pretty shocking, it was pretty stupid of him but he had pretty much assumed that training ground twelve was theirs. In all the time he had been on assigned to Sojiro-sensei he hadn’t seen anyone else in the training ground, even when he stayed to train after team training had ended.

Though judging from the shouts and screams of ‘youth’ he knew exactly what team was occupying the training ground.

Team Gai, Kizashi had last seen them right before they departed for Nagoya. Not the people he exactly wanted to see it. Lee would inevitably ask how their C-rank went and he didn’t want to rehash out the details of how their trip to Nagoya went after going over it yesterday.

That was a conversation that was going to quickly kill the mood and Kizashi didn’t feel like dealing with the awkwardness that came when they offered their condolences. Unfortunately lying about Ren’s death was unacceptable so he would have to deal with it, unless he managed to leave before anyone noticed him. 

He was about to make a stealthy escape when Gai-sensei noticed him approaching.

“Ah Kizashi-kun! It’s nice to see you on this beautiful day!” Guy-sensei said, his voice loud and clear.

“Guy-sensei, it’s nice to see you again.” He nodded his head at the rest of Team Guy as he approached.

Neji nodded back politely and went back to training.

“Kizashi! It’s nice to see you again how did your C-rank go?” Lee asked. Kizashi tried not to wince and failed. Best to get this over as soon as possible.  “Well let’s say it didn’t go well. I’d rather not elaborate but it ended up with Ren dead and our sensei in a coma."

An awkward silence fell over the four of them and inside Kizashi was cringing. This was exactly the situation he hoped to avoid.

“Anyways,” he stressed, managing to change the tone of the conversation through pure force of will, “that’s not what I came here for. Are you free this weekend?” he asked Lee.

At Lee’s nod he smiled. “Great, the three of us should hang out this weekend. Me, you, and Hiroki. It’s been too long.”

“Yes!” Lee pumped his fist in the air and gave him a brilliant smile. “The three of us can have a friendly spar as well!”

‘And get our ass kicked from hell to back? Yeah, no thanks we’ll pass.’ Derek said. Kizashi cracked a grin at that before saying, “Yeah that’s a good idea. Let’s see how we shape up against each other.”

“Such youthful energy!” Guy-sensei exclaimed. “I shall endeavor to match you two. I shall do 100 laps around Konoha, blindfolded, backwards, and with one leg only. And then I will do it again but with the other leg instead!”

“Then I will do 200 laps around Konoha!” Lee yelled out eagerly, his voice cracking midway through the sentence.

“Then I will do 300!” Gai-sensei declared. His voice was so powerful and commanding that Kizashi could feel the sound waves reverberating throughout his chest due to their close proximity.

“Then I’ll do 400!” Together the two of them egged each other on and on until Kizashi tuned them out when the number hit 1,000. This was his first time being hit with the sheer force of personality that Lee and Guy exuded when they were together and it was something else. Objectively it was cute, especially with the way Lee was completely captivated by Guy-sensei. Kizashi was used to Lee’s personality but seeing him hero worshipping Guy had never made him more aware of the fact that Lee was a twelve year old boy.

He looked over at Neji, who was resolutely ignoring Lee and Guy, and then over to Tenten who was watching the spectacle with the most resigned look. Kizashi grinned over her misfortune, he would’ve loved to see how Neji and Tenten had reacted when this had first happened.

Seeing as the two of them were still occupied he bid goodbye to Tenten who looked like she wanted to leave with Kizashi.

He chuckled to himself as he left, that had went better than he expected. 

Kizashi hummed to himself as he wrote down all the possible ways he could regain his control over his chakra. He had hunkered down for a few hours to work out all the kinks of his seal. He didn’t quite manage to transcribe Derek’s name into kanji but he had managed to work around that by making the seal recognize his chakra as both Derek Moore and Haruno Kizashi.

It wasn’t as secure as he wanted it as it still required his chakra to open it but it worked for now and he appeased himself by adding a self destruct part to it in case he ever lost it or it was stolen.

He wanted to solve his chakra problem without having to go to Fujikawa’s as he didn’t think he could reliably lie about why his chakra was fucked up and he didn’t want to have his bloodline known to anybody. That was probably his paranoia talking but he felt like he could figure this out by himself.

Currently his chakra was absolutely pathetic. An Academy student had better control over their chakra than he did. It was frustrating as hell considering that his chakra control had been near perfect before. Every time he tried to do one of the Academy three the result was poor despite feeling like he was doing everything right. 

The list ranged from the fastest and easiest ways to the hardest and potentially time-consuming ways. After thinking about it the whole way home to Konoha he had a few promising ideas.

One of the time consuming ideas was sealing a portion of his chakra off. If he could find or build a seal that sealed a portion of just his spiritual energy then he could seal the excess part off and see if he could feel the difference between his spiritual and physical energy. After that it was just a matter of learning how to hold back the extra chakra naturally instead of using a seal for it.

At first he had worried that if he sealed off a portion of his spiritual energy off then that would mean that Derek would disappear but he was pretty sure with the seal broken Derek had been assimilated back into the “main frame" to say and wasn’t made out of just spiritual energy.   

And if that didn’t work then maybe he could build a seal that automatically diverted the excess energy into some type of chakra storage or some type of device that ran off of spiritual energy.

That plan relied on him actually being somewhat decent at sealing and he suspected that a chakra storage seal was going to be harder than he thought considering that if it could be built that easily then someone would’ve done it by now. But he had nothing but time on his hands.

He put down his pen and sat down on his bedroom floor with his legs crossed in the typical meditative pose. The fastest and most promising of ideas on his list tied into one of his goals for the day. In the Academy they teach you that chakra is a part of your mind. Which is why control over it and increasing the amount you have can be achieved by meditation, experience, and studying. Kizashi, having near perfect control from the start had never needed to do any of that. He was starting to realize that having that if that portion of spiritual energy had never been sealed he would have abysmal control over his chakra from the get go.

But chakra was obviously the key to everything. Chakra wasn’t just a source of energy that shinobi can wield. It’s literally part of the mind itself. His “bloodline” was definitely derived from or linked to his chakra in some way. Chakra is part of the mind and his bloodline caused him to have two minds. So technically if he could control his bloodline then he could control his chakra and vice versa.

It was weak and confusing logic but something about it made him feel like he was going in the right direction.

In his mind Derek was assuming the same meditative pose as him and together they focused on their chakra. Together they shut down all distractions and immersed themselves in the feeling. 

Then, slowly, like two bubbles being pushed together and becoming one, the minute differences between Kizashi and Derek joined together and disappeared as they peered inwards at themselves. Slowly the two of them melded into one complete being. Two became one. Kizashi filled in the parts that Derek lacked and Derek filled up the parts that Kizashi lacked. Complete synchronicity.

I opened my eyes and sighed in relief. I hadn’t realized how messed up my mind was. I could still feel the differences between Derek and Kizashi but those differences now complemented each other instead of antagonizing each other. The parts in my soul that had been purely Kizashi now matched up to Derek’s parts perfectly. Like two shards of glass coming together without one scratching the other.

It was hard to describe but by combining the two shards of myself together I now had a more complete view of our mind. I knew that when the two of us separated again into separate entities that our relationship would be more copacetic. We would be able to instantly converse without words as our very minds were linked. Before we had been two puzzle pieces unaware of the greater picture but now that we had experienced this feeling of being one we now knew the full scope of what we could do.

With Kizashi’s previous experience in ninjutsu and Derek’s time spent as pure spiritual energy it was almost trivial to bring my hands up and perform a flawless henge. I laughed at how worried I had been about my control and crossed off the rest of the ideas on my list.

I hadn’t expected to succeed on my first try but it was a relief knowing that I didn’t have to spend months trying to create a chakra restriction seal or learning how to produce medical chakra to see if I could feel the difference between the types of chakra.

I banished my henge and started stretching.

Honestly I should’ve done this weeks ago, my mind, body, and soul were all in unison and I didn’t understand how I had been functioning before. Eventually I would leave this mindset and one would become two once more but now the divide between the two of us wouldn’t be so crude but natural.

Kizashi couldn’t and wouldn’t be the main personality anymore. At first I had thought since this is Kizashi’s body then it was Kizashi’s life and Derek was just along for the ride but Derek had a right to this life too. This was Derek’s second chance. It would be the both of them piloting this body, they would each put an equal amount of input in their life.

With newfound motivation, I slipped on my sandals and headed to one of Konoha’s many training grounds. There was no better time than now to train. For now I would work on my basic attributes like speed and strength until I could find a teacher willing to give me some pointers. 

I trained for hours. First, without chakra boosting my speed, I ran around Konoha’s forest working on my agility, speed, and dexterity. No one knew how to fight better in a forest than a Konoha ninja it was said. I felt a little silly and felt a little like Tarzan or Spiderman as I used my chakra to swing from branch to branch. It was like ninja parkour.

Once my stamina started to flag I started using my chakra to fuel myself and I kept going until my reserves were about to three quarters empty. Then I started doing pushups and curl ups and about every workout Sojiro-sensei ever had me do until my whole body ached.

And then after that I found a pond and started working on water walking. I was grateful that Sojiro-sensei had gave us a brief lesson on water walking during our C-rank. If not for that I would be flying blind when it came to water walking. Practicing water walking quickly burnt through the rest of my chakra and I finally stopped training and allowed myself a break.

During training my mind meld had been slowly wearing off and the two parts of my personality started becoming more defined. But right before they had been completely separated it had stopped and stabilized. Previously they had been like two circles almost completely overlapped but now they were a perfect venn diagram. The two personalities were perfectly balanced. 

They were separate but a part of them was still combined, they were both simultaneously in control and not in control.

“God this is confusing isn’t it?” I said. The other part of my soul glowed in agreement.

I laughed. “My life is so crazy, absolutely none of this makes any sense. If anyone could peer into my head they would be convinced that I was utterly insane. Even I don’t understand what’s going on right now. All of this is so instinctual but it just doesn’t make sense when I put it into words.”

I felt amusement radiate off of my counterpart. “Well, anyways,” I said standing up and brushing the dirt off of my jeans, "I guess it’s high time we head home now. I think we deserve to relax now. Tomorrow we can spend some of the money we’ve earned.” 

I started walking home, reveling in the peace and stability I felt.  

Kizashi couldn't help but grin as he idly spun a couple of leaves around his hand with his chakra. All that anxiety he had about his and all he had to do was meditate properly to fix it. 

It had been two weeks since the mind meld and his mind was still in equilibrium. At this point Kizashi was convinced he had an actual bloodline of some sort. Before he had been looking for a rational answer in him being born here and in a way he still was (because how is it that he's Sakura's older brother? What are the odds that he was born in Konoha, brother to one of the three main characters, instead of some random town somewhere in the Elemental Nations?) but until he got some evidence supporting that he just had to accept that he had a bloodline that was obviously mentally based.

It was obvious really when you brought up Inner-Sakura. Kizashi hadn't seen any evidence supporting the idea that Inner Sakura existed but he'd be the first to admit that he hadn't paid a lot of attention to Sakura. Though ironically, she was the one who knew him the most. Sakura didn't remember the time where he hadn’t realized he was Derek Moore. To her he'd always been Haruno Kizashi and Derek Moore even if she didn't know that Derek existed.

Well, if he was being fair most people he knew he had only met after realizing he was Derek but Sakura was different. They grew up together.

Growing up was weird. After that day where he realized that he was Derek and Kizashi he had been fine for about two weeks. He had just accepted it like it was normal but then Derek's memories had gone from a third point of view to first person. With Derek's memories in the forefront it had completely drowned out the part of him that was Kizashi.

He had tried to hide his personality changes but he could tell his parents had noticed. He was still at that age where he needed to be kept in sight all the time so he wasn't surprised. He spent most days in an apathetic state of mind until he had started attending the Academy.

His interactions with Sakura were limited then but he had made an effort to not completely blow her off and the times he did interact with her he let his true personality bleed out a little more.

If Inner-Sakura existed then it was likely the two of them had a bloodline that split their mind into halves and possibly gave the user good to excellent chakra control. And if it was an actual bloodline there was no reason not to tell her. When he had first remembered that Inner-Sakura existed in the anime he had planned on not asking about it as later in the series she disappeared. But with the bloodline manifesting in him it would be wrong not to bring Sakura in the fold.

Especially with a bloodline this wacky, he knew that his remembrance of his past life definitely affected his bloodline but his mind was stable now. He'd feel guilty if he let Sakura figure it out on her own, she might even think she's insane or something.

The only bad thing about revealing his cards was that if the two of them went to Fujikawa about this there was a good chance of him having a Yamanaka confirm their bloodline and there was no way he was letting a Yamanaka mind scan him.

Besides his future knowledge there was the fact that he had no idea what would happen if a Yamanaka tried to scan his mind. His brain already had two minds in it and he wasn't too keen on trying to fit another in it. 

Sakura was best friends with Ino too so there wasn't a good excuse he could give her on why they shouldn't go to them or not have them scan his mind. Asking Sakura would have to wait until he could figure out how to shield his mind from them. 

Chapter Text

Kizashi dodged a kick to his face and grinned. He, Lee, and Hiroki had finally gotten around to meeting up and seeing how stronger each of them had gotten in the months since they had graduated from the Academy. 

In terms of raw strength, he knew that he couldn’t measure up to Lee and Hiroki. Already Lee was becoming a taijutsu monster. The amount of training he did was insane, and Hiroki had the raw power of his clan techniques. 

Ever since Derek and him had melded their minds together he had noticed a definite improvement in his battle awareness. Usually whenever he was fighting the adrenaline caught up to him and he just reacted to whatever was happening but now with two minds in his head he was able to fight while thinking of a strategy at the same time.

Typically, whenever the three of them sparred (four if you counted Romaru joining in occasionally) Lee and Hiroki usually ended up fighting each other exclusively to see who was the better taijutsu user while he circled around them like a vulture, taking potshots and exploiting weaknesses whenever he found them.

Now though, he was forcing himself between the two of them and forcing one of them to actively engage him. His previous strategy was okay in an actual fight but the whole point of sparring was to challenge yourself and get better, so he was forcing himself into the thick of things. 

Weeks had passed since their C-rank mission and Sojiro-sensei was still comatose. Privately, Kizashi was slowly starting to accept the possibility that his sensei would succumb to his injuries or at the very least would be in a coma for a longer time than he had been anticipating. All of this meant that he had to work twice as hard in his training to keep up with Lee and Hiroki.

The fracturing of his team had stung badly but he had to keep moving forward, with or without them. He knew that genin who didn’t have a jonin sensei rarely reached the rank of chunin, let alone jonin and if he was to take on the Akatsuki he had to be the best of the best.

In terms of speed and strength he was outplayed with Lee being the fastest and Hiroki hitting the hardest. They weren’t so fast and strong that he couldn’t keep up with them but Kizashi could both feel Lee’s and Hiroki’s hard work with each blow he took.

“If you hit Hiroki hard enough near his left armpit you could probably knock him off balance. And Lee likes to approach you from behind on your left,” said Derek.

Kizashi nodded, his grin still on his face. There was something about the high pace movement of taijutsu that thrilled him. It was all about pushing your body to hit harder, to move faster, to react faster.

There was nothing more satisfying than feeling a blow land and being able to take one in turn. He could feel his blood rise higher and higher with every punch he dodged and could hear the music in his head grow louder and louder until he was almost lost in it and—THERE!

An opportunity! Like before with Tokuma, time slowed down and he acted. Lashing out with a kick to Hiroki’s left side he knocked him off balance just in time to turn around and face Lee who was approaching him from behind.

He dodged and pulled the hand that was flying towards his face only for Lee to go with the motion and somehow do a cartwheel that ended with Kizashi being kicked in the face and knocked off his feet.

He could feel Derek’s amusement as he scrambled to his feet and deep down he couldn’t help but feel impressed. He had not expected that at all. Standing up, he saw that the fight had temporarily paused.

He looked at Hiroki to find a cocky smirk plastered on his face and looked over at Lee who was panting heavily. The three of them shared a look and the fight resumed.

There was no winning during these spars, only a mutual agreement to keep going until they were all too tired to keep going. It took a while but eventually the three of them wore each other out. They dispersed not too long after that, the three of them each having things they needed to get back to, which in Lee's case was more training.

Despite the fact that he was keeping up with them a part of him could feel the gap in strength between them widen the longer he went without a sensei. Lee was already wearing leg weights at this point and he knew what that meant. 

Lee’s match with Gaara was legendary and Kizashi used that fight as a marker for how strong he needed to be by the time the chunin exams started. If he was going to be of any use in the upcoming invasion he needed to be at least chunin level if not higher. 

Kizashi had known that eventually Lee would outclass him in terms of speed and strength given the fact that taijutsu was his specialty but it still stung a bit that Lee was now faster than him when at one point they were nearly equal. 

Hiroki was easier to fight if only because his overall technique had stayed the same. He was faster and his hits were strong enough that Kizashi opted to dodging his attacks instead of blocking. But Kizashi was at least keeping up with him in terms of speed so all he had to do was keep an eye out for any new tricks Hiroki had learned.

Fighting Lee was a pain in the ass because Gai had been teaching him so many taijutsu styles that he fought nothing like how he used to. That kick was only one surprise out of many as Lee mixed and mashed the fighting styles he had been taught.

Perhaps he was being too hard on himself, both Lee and Hiroki were both taijutsu oriented fighters. He supposed he could fit into that category himself but the two of them had a focus in taijutsu that Kizashi didn’t. He was a decent ninja, his skills were slightly above average for a genin; he just didn’t have that edge, a specialized skill that set him apart from others.

He had thought sealing would be that edge but from the way things were going progressing there he had to admit that it would be two or three years before he could actually make and utilize seals that were combat applicable.

It didn’t even have to be a skill though, just a way for him to shift the flow of battle to where he could manipulate things into his favor. All he had was a stupid bloodline that gave him…. near perfect chakra control. 

Near perfect chakra control that he had done absolutely nothing with! He had been thinking that his excellent chakra control was just a blessing, an overall bonus to his skills but he should’ve been making his chakra control the forefront of his fighting style or finding a way to best utilize it within a fight.

He stopped walking to make note of this in his notebook. The obvious answer to this would be to learn genjutsu or medical ninjutsu. Genjutsu in particular had better combat applications and used Yin energy instead of Yang, which was perfect for Kizashi since he had an excess of Yin/spiritual energy. 

He had plans to learn medical ninjutsu but it was put on hold as it required a lot of self-study and Kizashi used any free time to tinker with his seals. 

They mostly boiled down to having Sakura teach him when she was apprenticed to Tsunade but there was no guarantee that would happen. And if he learned the basics now he could teach it to Sakura so she could have an early head start on it by the time she did meet Tsunade.

He nodded to himself. He would learn both but would focus more on genjutsu once he was fairly proficient at both. Teaching Sakura medical ninjutsu would allow him to spend more time with her and see if she inherited the bloodline.

That would be just a bonus though, everything he learned he planned on teaching Sakura if she was willing. He was her older brother; he had no problem paving the way so she had it easier. It was one of the reasons why he hadn’t given up sealing aside from pure stubbornness.

Sakura was intelligent. Her book smarts at the age she was now was better than Kizashi’s back when he was the same age in his first life as Derek. He was confident that she would take to sealing once he taught her the basics.

Mind made up, he unceremoniously dumped Derek in the pilot seat of their body so he could think on this some more.

Derek sent a wave of annoyance to Kizashi as he settled into their body. Kizashi had been making sure Derek took control of the body for at least a couple of hours every day. Which was fine with him but the sudden transition always took a few seconds to get used to.

Kizashi paid him no mind, not even bothering to send a wave of emotion at him. Derek stretched; he had an hour or two until he had class at the Genin Corps building. Since he passed the jonin test it wasn’t mandatory for him to attend the classes but they occasionally had useful tips and tricks to add to his and Kizashi’s repertoire even though Kizashi did the bulk of the fighting.

Kizashi usually handed the body off to him whenever they decided to attend one of the classes. Half the time they covered things he already learned in the Academy or from Sojiro-sensei. It was rare that they taught anything that was directly applicable in combat but Kizashi had polished his water-walking skills under the tutelage of the older shinobi there. 

The Genin Corps were the bulk of Konoha’s military force and consisted of all age groups. It was pretty easy to achieve the rank of genin and many did so just for the extra money that it paid. Bridging the gap between genin and chunin was where the real difficulty lay. 

As custom ever since he had control of their body, he went to the library to fill in the missing gaps of knowledge that he had of this world. The gaps themselves felt like they were decreasing each day even without the studying, which he theorized as him being more settled into the “mainframe” of their chakra/mind.  

He didn’t dawdle while he was there. He checked out a few books on which his knowledge was spotty or unclear, picked up a Genjutsu scroll from the ninja section for Kizashi and left. 

He went home, being careful to avoid his mother, and dropped off his stuff. He took a quick shower and put on another one of their shinobi outfits but this time decided to forgo the vest and put on a regular “civilian” shirt. Kizashi didn’t mind wearing the shinobi outfit most of the time but Derek usually made a point to dress down whenever he was in control.

He did seal the vest in a storage scroll since he was going to class and there was the potential that Kizashi might need it to spar with someone.

It was these minute differences between him and Kizashi that made him see that while they may have been two sides of the same coin, the difference between heads and tails was distinct. He was pretty sure he was a year or two older than Kizashi. That or he was just more jaded in general. 

He then went down to the mission desks and took on some D-ranks. They didn’t really need the money but the menial tasks helped ground him in this reality and let him get used to being a person again. He took his time, getting lost in his work and only stopping to check the time.

He finished early and he bid the old lady he was working for goodbye and went to collect his money. By the time he arrived at the Genin Corps he was technically late but “class” was a more technical term. They were practical demonstrations that any shinobi could attend and he knew that the instructors waited five to ten minutes for the stragglers to come in.

Once in, he found his way to the training grounds and found a spot to wait for the demonstration to start. There weren’t a lot of people here so it was probably safe to say that today’s lesson wasn’t about an elemental jutsu which everybody, even the older genin around his parent’s age, seemed to love. 

Derek didn’t even know Kizashi’s and his elemental affinity yet so he hadn’t been too interested in those lessons. He did attend the lessons and take notes though because he couldn’t really afford to be picky in what type of jutsu he learned. Even though any jutsu he learned here was only taught because the knowledge of them was already widespread between the Elemental Nations. 

They were taught to genin especially because genin needed the extra firepower even if it came at the cost of being predictable. Genin didn’t typically fight alone either, usually in groups of other genin or acting as backup to chunin. 

The instructor had just come up on the makeshift podium when somebody came to a stop beside him. Briefly, he looked at the guy and somehow managed to mask his surprise when he saw who it was. 

The instructor starting the class caught his attention and he was thankful for that because while he managed to hide his shock he didn’t know how long he would’ve stared at him in his stunned state.

He knew instantly who it was, fading memory be damned. Yakushi Kabuto, in the flesh. Orochimaru’s spy.

Was Kabuto here to spy on him? Or was this just a coincidence? The disastrous C-rank had happened weeks ago and was orchestrated by Orochimaru. Anko had been there as well and he knew of her history with Orochimaru. Perhaps the information they had taken from Tokuma’s hideout had been more important than he had thought? 

Internally he sent Kizashi a message to plug into their senses. He needed the reassurance that Kizashi could provide by helping regulate his body and his senses.

The familiar feeling of Kizashi’s consciousness besides his calmed him down and he started to tune into the lesson while in the back of mind he filled Kizashi in on what was going on. It took less than 10 seconds before Kizashi was fully caught up. 

They didn’t communicate in words but instead through flashes of emotion and patterns that they could both perfectly understand. 

There was still a chance that it was just a coincidence. In fact when the lesson continued and Kabuto hadn’t said anything Derek had started to relax. 

The lesson ended and Derek started to leave when a hand was thrust in front of him to get his attention. 

“Hey, I’m Kabuto Yakushi, nice to meet you.”

“Haruno Kizashi,” he replied in an even tone. 

Kabuto looked confused for a second before snapping his fingers. “I’ve seen that name before! Do you happen to be a patient of Dr.Fujikawa’s? I’m his assistant.”

Check-fucking-mate. He was now 100% sure that Kabuto was spying on him. There was no possible way that this was a coincidence. If he hadn’t already known that Kabuto was a capable and dangerous ninja he would’ve been pulled into his harmless genin act.

“Yeah, I’m his patient,” Derek said and chuckled like he was a bit embarrassed. “I guess I should be honored that you remembered my name.”

Kabuto shrugged. “Dr.Fujikawa likes to use me as a sounding board whenever he’s trying to solve a puzzle and your case has come up a couple of times. And that’s when I’m not filling out his paperwork for him.”

Fuck. The ramifications of that hit the two of them instantly. Now he was so glad they hadn’t gone to Fujikawa over their chakra control problem. Kabuto and Orochimaru were mad scientists and he didn’t want to attract any more attention than he already had just by having an abnormal amount of spiritual energy. 

Together the two of them sized Kabuto up. He had to be two or three years older than the age of their body. Derek wasn’t under any delusions that Kizashi and him were stronger than Kabuto but they did have a pretty huge piece of information on Kabuto’s psyche that was worth its weight in gold.

The details were lost to time but he knew that Kabuto was very attached to his glasses because they were given to him by his dead mom or dad. Or something like that. If he could somehow gain possession of them he could gain some leverage in a fight.

“Hey, it was nice meeting you but I have to be somewhere after this. Tell Fujikawa-san that I said hi next time you see him though.” Derek made sure to keep his tone neutral but friendly. It was getting a bit hard though, hence why he was leaving so abruptly. 

There was only so much Kizashi could do to physically calm their beating heart when the both of them were getting tense. 

“See you!” Kabuto yelled to him as he left. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll see each other at your next appointment.”

Yeah, he had no doubt they would. 

As he walked away, he realized that this was their first meaningful interaction with someone that was fairly important in canon, excluding Sakura of course. The ramifications of how he subtly influenced her personality just by being her older brother wouldn’t show for a while yet. 

Kabuto spying on them had huge implications, but it wasn’t surprising. It was a shock to realize that he had the confidence that he would get through this. He had all the cards and all he had to do was play them right. He could handle Kabuto.

He was pretty sure the only reason he was being spied on was because his high amount of spiritual energy was thought to be a potential new bloodline. Kabuto remembering his name from Fujikawa’s ramblings and paperwork was a load of bullshit even if it was technically true. Somehow Kabuto knew about his involvement in the C-rank and his interest was further piqued when he either heard or saw his name at work. 

Or perhaps it was the other way around. Maybe Kabuto was looking for rare diseases and conditions to help further tune Orochimaru’s quest for immortality. Did his abnormal spirit energy make him stand out and after the C-rank — where he had single handedly defeated two chunin — Kabuto had decided it was time to investigate?

His next appointment at Fujikawa’s was in a week so he had a little time to iron out a story on why the spiritual energy that was sealed in the tenketsu over his heart was now gone. If he came up with a reasonable explanation he could sell the idea that the extra spiritual was an anomaly and no way directly to a bloodline.

Were chakra blockages a thing? Similar to how blood clots? He’d have to do some research.

Derek went into a public bathroom and waited until he was in a stall to rudely dump Kizashi, who had gone back to working on sealing after they had left Kabuto, back into control of their body.

It was his time to think over some things.

Kizashi was quiet as he stood by his sensei’s hospital bed. His condition hadn’t gotten any better but it hadn’t worsened so the doctors were hopeful he would wake up soon. 

With each week that passed, his faith that Sojiro-sensei would wake up crumbled just a bit more. It would be a miracle for Kizashi if he woke up as he wouldn’t have to worry about his training anymore but Sojiro-sensei just laid there, still as a corpse. 

He was about to leave when he suddenly noticed someone in the corner of the room, hiding in the shadows. 

Kizashi’s breath caught in his throat and his hand grasped at his kunai pouch only to stop as he saw the Konoha hitai-ate and the signature Uzushio swirl on the man’s forearm.

The man had short brown hair and fixed Kizashi with a flat, sickly stare that was only further emphasized by the dark bags under his eyes.

“How long have you been there?” he managed to croak out.

His heart was still beating rapidly from the man’s sudden appearance and while he had stopped himself from actually grabbing a kunai his hand was still hovering above it. 

The man made a sound that was a mixture of a hum and a grunt. “So you’re Sojiro’s student?” he asked, completely ignoring Kizashi’s question. 

Kizashi nodded. 

The man looked like a Konoha shinobi but something about the way he had concealed himself made him suspicious.

“Let me see your dogtags.”

The man, seemingly amused, fished the tags out of his shirt and pushed his chakra through it. He held it up so Kizashi could see his name and rank. 

Gekkō Hayate. Rank: Tokubetsu Jonin

He tucked the chain back under his shirt.

“So you’re a friend of Sojiro-sensei’s?” he asked. 

The guy, Gekkō, shrugged his shoulders. “Something like that.”

This guy was offering up absolutely nothing. Kizashi was hoping to slowly segue his way into this via small talk but he was starting to see that the straightforward option would be more effective.

“You should teach me,” he stated. 

Gekkō-san raised his eyebrows at Kizashi. “I should?” he asked and his voice was laced with humor with just a tinge of what felt like contempt. 

Kizashi nodded. “You should. If me being the student of your friend isn’t enough to convince you then I can also pay you.”

“And if I were to agree to this, what would you want to learn?” he asked. 

“Kenjutsu,” said Kizashi, gesturing to the katana on the man's back, “and whatever technique you used to cloak yourself earlier. Nothing that Sojiro-sensei wasn’t planning on eventually teaching me or hasn’t already started me on. It doesn't even need to be often, with your rank as high as it is I know you’re busy taking missions so if you could even do a thirty minute session once a week I’d be grateful.”

He knew that Sojiro-sensei had been planning on introducing him to one of his friends who knew kenjutsu and he was desperately hoping that this was that friend and Sojiro-sensei had already brought the issue up with him. It would be amazing if he managed to get a tokubetsu jonin to personally teach him. It was even better if the skill that brought him up to that rank happened to be kenjutsu. 

Tokubetsu jonin all had a jonin level skill that set them apart from other chunin. Jonin was supposed to be the best of the best and the skill gap between chunin and Jonin was even bigger than the gap between genin and chunin. Tokubetsu jonin were chunin who had such a mastery over a particular skill that it practically elevated them to a jonin level threat.

Kizashi was prepared to dig his heels in and was shocked when Gekkō easily agreed. It felt too easy but Kizashi wasn’t going to question his stroke of good luck. 

“Hmmm, I guess you can call me Hayate-sensei if I’m going to be teaching you. Don’t get used to it though, you’ve got a great one right here who I have no doubt will wake up eventually.”

Hayate must’ve picked up something from his face because he said, “You’ve gotta have faith in your sensei. Sojiro’s strong — he won’t let this take him down, not when he’s been fighting for this long.”

Kizashi nodded. “Right,” he murmured.

In actuality he didn’t know how to feel about his sensei. He had mostly coped with Ren’s death by not thinking about it aside from the times he visited his grave and he had mostly done the same with his sensei.

He couldn’t move on and accept that he was dead when he was still technically alive so he just waited and kept his feelings unexpressed until one of two things happened — he either woke up or succumbed to his injuries.

The latter of the two things was too painful to think about and the former came with its own difficulties. How was he going to explain to his sensei that Ren was dead?

“Well, I have to be somewhere so I’ll see you later.” And with that he walked out the door.

Hold on. I rushed over to the door. “Wait!” I called after him. “We didn’t say when or where we’d meet up!”

He shouted over his shoulder. “My schedule’s pretty hectic so I’ll track you down whenever I’m free.” He turned around a corner and disappeared.

He would’ve been pretty miffed at the assumption that he would be available whenever he was free if it wasn’t likely to be true. He didn’t do much but train, take a few missions (mostly C-rank courier missions that could be done just by himself), and hang out with Lee and Hiroki.

It then hit him that he finally found a teacher. A kenjutsu teacher at that. He pumped his fist in celebration. “Fuck yeah!”

He looked down at his sensei lying prone in his hospital bed. Have faith, Hayate-sensei had said. That was hard to do when not thinking about it was so much easier. But then again, doing the easy thing was what had landed him into this world. 

Kizashi closed his eyes and prayed to any benevolent god out there to let Sojiro-sensei wake up eventually. He stood there, head bowed and eyes closed, letting himself acknowledge and feel his emotions for a few moments before leaving. It was hard after closing himself off from them for so long but he knew it was the right step in clearing the purple gunk that resided in his mind.

Both he and Derek had been slowly making progress in clearing it out. Although neither of them actually checked as the sight of it bothered both of them. It was slow-going but he hadn’t expected it to be fast. He had a lot of issues to workout and he didn’t necessarily have the time to get through them all.

He knew it was the little things that helped. Forcing Derek to take over the body, periodically hanging out with Hiroki and Lee, visiting Rukia. Spending time with all the people and friends he made in this world helped ground him in this reality. Hopefully when (if) Sojiro-sensei woke up then he could be one of those things.