Death wasn't supposed to be this quiet.
That was the final thought of Dr. Kazuo Minami—a theoretical physicist, molecular engineer, and part-time anime otaku—as his lab exploded into searing light during an experiment involving dark matter containment. A miscalculation. A tragedy. An accident that left behind only ashes and an unfinished anime season.
Then—darkness.
And then... screaming.
His own.
He was six years old, barefoot and freezing in the alleyways of a crumbling district within a place he immediately recognized—Konohagakure. The Hidden Leaf Village. But this wasn't the version he'd grown up watching in his old world. No, this was the past. The Hokage Monument had only two faces, and the people wore older gear—flak jackets that predated the modern ones.
Then came the kicker: his name, scrawled in neat script on the academy registry the first time he was taken in.
Hiruko.
Wait... Hiruko? As in "Dark Release" Hiruko? The Chimera Technique lunatic from the movie?!He remembered the movie well—a forgotten villain with god-tier potential that never bloomed. But now, Hiruko was him.
Only six years old, newly orphaned in this world, and yet, Kazuo—now Hiruko—felt a burning clarity: this was a second chance. Not just to survive, but to reshape the very foundation of ninjutsu with science and chakra.
Ten Years Before the Second Shinobi War
Hiruko sat in a modest corner of the Ninja Academy classroom, hands folded, posture perfect, face expressionless. But inside? He was running complex simulations of chakra circuits, theorizing elemental restructuring with genetic splicing.
He had already dissected the structure of chakra flow using charcoal, ink, and old scrolls from the academy library. His mind, still that of a modern scientist, was too sharp to stay within the bounds of basic ninjutsu.
Across the room, another boy sat upright—Orochimaru. Pale, quiet, mysterious. The only other person who scored a perfect mark on last week's written test.
The two had already earned a nickname from their instructors:"The Twin Serpents."
Hiruko didn't care for fame. Not yet. But he was watching Orochimaru. Closely. Not with envy—but with recognition. They were similar. Cold. Calculating. Brilliant. But Hiruko held a secret weapon: knowledge from a world where chakra was fiction, and science was king.
Life at the Orphanage
Hiruko's life outside the academy was far less glamorous. The orphanage matron, Old Genka, didn't care much for kids who didn't cry. Hiruko had a tiny room and a pile of used clothes.
But he didn't waste time.
At night, he used scraps of wire, paper, and chakra-conductive metal chips to recreate basic scientific tools: a primitive voltmeter. A chakra tension analyzer. He even began building a crude microscope from broken lenses.
He documented everything.
He had already mapped half of the academy's basic ninjutsu scrolls into chemical equations.
"Chakra isn't magic," he whispered to himself. "It's a bio-electromagnetic field. With intent and elementally aligned matter construction. It's code, written in the blood."
And he would learn to hack it.
Academy Combat Training – First Clash with Orochimaru
Instructor Hiruzen watched from the sidelines as Hiruko stepped into the sparring ring.
His opponent: Orochimaru.
The two prodigies had never fought directly. Until today.
Orochimaru's expression was blank. Hiruko's was unreadable.
"Begin!" Hiruzen called.
Orochimaru moved first—fast, like a snake striking. Hiruko didn't dodge. He pivoted with eerie grace, deflecting with a palm strike to Orochimaru's inner elbow, disrupting his momentum. Then Hiruko twisted, performed a one-handed seal, and shouted:
"Chakra Pulse Disruption!"
A jolt of suppressed chakra burst from Hiruko's palm like a static wave—an original technique based on his understanding of nervous systems. Orochimaru flinched.
Not enough to win—but enough to surprise him.
They separated, breathing lightly.
Orochimaru licked his lips. "Interesting…"
Hiruzen smiled faintly.
The others in the class didn't understand. But those with eyes saw the moment history bent—two monsters in the making.
Hiruko walked home that evening with a scroll tucked under his jacket—a forbidden scroll he had copied from the archive. The title?
"Cellular Adaptation through Chakra Fusion."
He grinned in the dark.
"If chakra can reshape the body... then the body is just raw code. I'll become the compiler."