The air was unusually dry, almost arid. That was the first thing he noticed.
It was not the dense, suffocating city smog he was used to that choked him, neither was it the biting cold brought on by winter frost. This environment was utterly unlike anything he had ever known.
The grit-filled air scratched at his throat. Every breath carried fine dust, and every blink fought the grainy itch of windblown sand. The sandstone walls around him were bleached pale by the relentless sun and felt coarse and flaking to the touch, the heat of the day still clinging to their surface.
Overhead, cracked slabs of clay served as roofing, the only shelter in this desolate place. Somewhere in the distance, a kettle shrieked, its ear-piercing cry cutting through the stillness like a wail of retribution.
As he slowly sat himself up from his recumbent posture, the straw mattress let out a faint groan, the brittle stalks scrunching beneath him like fragile parchment that might crumble with one wrong move.
This wasn't a hospital... and it definitely wasn't his world, either.
Then the memories hit. Like a sandstorm. Blinding. Violent. Unrelenting.
He'd been hit by a car. Morning commute. The horn. The screech. The pain.
And then… nothing. Until now.
His throat was parched. His head felt too light.
"Where the hell am I?", he whispered softly, shocked at how soft and kid-like his voice came out.
Around him, the children were all stirring softly in their sleep, some of them tucked tightly into snug little balls, others flung about in restless abandon, unable to settle. The room was cold and dry, an almost bare space, lit only by the shimmering strip of moonlight which filtered through a rice-paper panel door, casting a gentle radiance in the gloom.
He glanced down at his hands, tiny and suntanned. A child's hands. He was in the body of a child, perhaps six or seven years old.
A woman stepped in, her silhouette softened by the flickering glow of a single candle atop a shallow ceramic plate. Her face was etched with sun and time, deep lines like dry riverbeds running across her features. She wore faded robes in shades of ochre and earth-brown, her presence quiet but authoritative.
"Isan.", she said softly. "You're awake."
That name. Isan. He had heard it in pieces, whispers under his dreams. He did not recall deciding on it, but it was his now.
"Yes, Obasan.", he replied instinctively, his voice younger and lighter.
She offered a brief, worn smile. "You gave us quite a scare. Collapsed in the market... heatstroke, most likely. You're safe now. Harsh weather, harsh place. Sunagakure is always the same."
Sunagakure
Although the name felt distant at first, it suddenly dawned on him, hitting like a punch to the gut. He didn't need any more information or to see a map. He knew exactly where he was.
Sunagakure no Sato. The Village Hidden in the Sand.
One of the five great shinobi villages. The desert fortress. The unforgiving crucible.
He was in the Naruto Universe.
He had been an avid watcher of the anime. And now, somehow, impossibly, he was part of it. Even more in one of its most violent corners, at that. Sunagakure and Kirigakure were well-known for their cutthroat settings and cruel traditions.
His mind raced. This world was dangerous and brutal; it was in constant war and filled with death, schemes, and betrayal. Children were trained and made into soldiers. Power dictated survival.
He took a slow breath, brushing aside the storm in his head. Then he stood and bowed slightly to the old woman.
"Thank you for taking care of me."
She raised an eyebrow, then chuckled softly. "Such manners. Maybe you'll grow up to be a noble shinobi, eh?"
Weeks Later
Isan was slowly but surely making the appropriate adaptations to his new life situation. Initially, it had been very difficult for him, but gradually he was starting to get his bearings and adjust to the new things surrounding him. He had spent some time carefully studying and taking a good look at this new body that he now found himself in; as he looked himself over, he observed that he was at a fairly average height for a person of his years, since he didn't know for certain how old he was.
His build, though, told a more alarming and troubling reality that could not be ignored. He was lean, and alarmingly so, in a way that gave cause for concern. His arms and legs looked wiry and weak, his shoulders were disappointingly narrow, and his ribs were faintly, almost painfully, discernible under the rough linen of his worn hand-me-down tunic. It was the sharp, lean shape of a boy who had gone to bed hungry more times than he could ever hope to remember, painting a stark picture of his situation.
His naturally fair skin had long since developed the subdued bronze of daily sunbathing. Small scars marred his flesh like phantom lines on his arms, legs, and even his back, the kind that were caused by very old cuts, scrapes, and scratches that never healed properly. New cuts met them daily, pink and scabbed, torn from stone floors, roughhousing, and cruelty from other kids.
His cheekbones were high and angular, too sharp for the face of a child, with the pale shadowed hollows under his eyes revealing the price of long-term malnutrition. The flesh was thinned and darkened there, so that he had a haunted look in the poor light of the dormitories.
Isan's hair was jet black and unruly, a tangled mess that refused to be tamed. It often stuck out in wild directions, matted with dust or dried sweat, cut in uneven chunks by the caretakers with dull scissors. He never seemed to care. It was just hair, and in a place where food was scarce and beatings common, vanity was a foreign concept.
The only feature that truly stood out were his eyes.
Green, piercing, and unsettlingly focused. In a village where most children bore dull eyes, Isan's gaze was alive. Not with innocence, but with calculation, memory, restraint. He watched people the way a hawk watches prey, quiet, analytical, waiting.
He rarely had a smile on his face. Yet, in those few instances that he did it was a small and calculated smile, a fleeting glimmer of something old and deep within a face that was much too young to contain such a sense of peace.
Even the other kids who lived in the orphanage were not oblivious to this idiosyncrasy. Isan had a strange aura about him. He moved about with an inordinate amount of care, enunciated his words with exceptional clarity, and incredibly, he never cried, not even when he felt the sting of bleeding.
Orphanage life was simple, yet harsh. Food was a luxury item, and even when it was available, it was served in meager portions of, for the most part, dry rice and flatbread. Cactus fruit, if they were fortunate. Water was strictly rationed, particularly during the warmer weeks.
There were no toys. No soft and warm beds. No comforting lullabies.
The matron, Obasan, as they called her, was stern but fair. She made no promises, offered no false kindness, and never sugar-coated the truth.
"If you want to live long,", she once said, while handing out chipped bowls filled with watery soup, "you'd better learn to be useful."
It was the kind of lesson that stuck.
Most of the other children had grown numb. Their play was rough and dangerous, their laughter always edged with a kind of meanness, an instinct born of scarcity. A dropped piece of bread could start a fistfight; a stolen water cup could get a child left out during mealtime.
Brawls were frequent. The majority were war orphans. Remnants from the Third Shinobi War. Fatherless. Clanless. Unwanted. Another reminder of the violence and cruelty of this new world.
Yet Isan stood out.
He learned to read and write the local language faster than anyone expected.
He didn't laugh along with them. Didn't play or wrestle in the desolate ground. He observed.
Ever vigilant.
He watched as the shinobi slipped in and out of view, their brown cloaks flowing behind them with a fluid elegance. Their faces hidden behind cloth veils or masks, fashioned specially to protect them from the constant barrage of the sand.
He crept behind the laundry hut, painstakingly replicated the motions he was able to remember from his past doings: the basic hand seals that were widely utilized, although his fingers were still clumsily small and awkward as they tried to create the complex forms.
He devoted himself to attempting to control his chakra to the best of his abilities, trying his best to sense something, anything at all, under his skin, in an attempt to access the energy that was inside him.
At night, when the winds outside howled and the candles burned low, he would lie awake and gaze at the cracked ceiling.
"I don't know how much time I have,", he thought, while staring at the cracked ceiling, "but I'm not going to waste it."
He obsessed over the timelines. The Third Shinobi War was over, that he had already caught wind of. But when? Was Minato still Hokage? Had Itachi joined the ANBU? Was the Uchiha Massacre imminent?
The uncertainty gnawed at him.
Other orphans started to take notice of him. Some with interest. Others with bitterness. He was odd. Too quiet. Too polite. Too calm.
One of the girls, Daiana, gave him a nickname.
"Little Monk."
Still, not everyone found it charming or endearing.
One night, after lights-out, Isan was cornered by two older boys beside the water barrels.
"You honestly think that you are better than us?", the taller one snarled in a low, threatening voice, his arms folded tightly across his chest, making him a larger figure as he towered menacingly in the darkness.
"With your big words like you're some shinobi already?"
Isan didn't answer. He knew their type.
Not cruel because they enjoyed it, cruel because it made them feel less powerless.
The smaller boy stepped forward, his breath reeking of spoiled food and rot. "What, too good to talk to us now? Or are you just scared?"
Isan's eyes flicked between them. One was taller and heavier. The other is quicker, more impulsive. He was cornered, outnumbered, and smaller.
The smaller one grabbed at his collar. Isan reacted immediately.
He quickly and forcefully jerked the boy's arm ahead as he twisted his own body to the side, using the boy's own momentum to slam him face-first into the solid wood water barrel. There was a sharp, wet crunching sound as his nose made contact with the unforgiving surface of the wood. The boy collapsed immediately to the ground with a cry of shock and pain as his hands reflexively shot up to his face.
The bigger one lunged.
This time, Isan didn't sidestep.
He stepped into the attack.
He ducked low, wrapped and grabbed with both arms around the boy's outstretched limb, and dropped his full weight while twisting and pulling hard. There was a sickening crack followed by a howl of pain.
The boy collapsed to the ground, clutching his arm and writhing in the sand.
Isan didn't say anything. He stood over him, breathing heavily, eyes cold.
There was no satisfaction and no anger.
This world rewards strength. Kindness without power is just a target.
The perfect example of such was the little boy known as Naruto, bullied and isolated when young and powerless, but surrounded when he sacrificed himself to protect the same people that once bullied him.
The smaller boy whimpered from behind the barrel, blood trickling from his nose.
"You try that again,", Isan said quietly, "and next time I won't stop at your arm."
He turned his back and started walking away, his heart still racing quickly in his chest. He had not wanted to hurt them or make them suffer. But he had needed to show them something vital. The next morning, the mood within the orphanage was electric with a buzz of whispered and muted conversations. One boy was in the infirmary with a dislocated shoulder, and another boy was wearing the evidence of a recent fight in the form of a swollen nose and two clear black eyes that contributed to his apparent misery. Even though nobody called him or punished him, the other kids kept their distance from that day forward, not because they respected him but because they feared him.