Ninja Academy.
"Hagoromo, good morning!"
"Morning!"
He greeted his classmates with a pleasant smile and died a little inside.
Kamishiro Hagoromo's social situation at the Ninja Academy was, ironically, comparable to that of the emotionally unavailable Sasuke. Which was to say: inexplicably popular with girls, for reasons entirely outside his control, for reasons that came down entirely to his face.
The lookism committee strikes again.
Hagoromo had complicated feelings about his draws. Scratch that—his draws were a disaster, and the disaster was that they were too good.
Here's what happened: he'd died. Accidentally. In the process, he'd run into some aggressively chuunibyou transmigration god who offered him a second chance and, as a bonus, three gacha pulls. The first pull? E-rank. A character skin from some 2D visual novel. Honestly, fine. With a face like that, he could have coasted through any slice-of-life world. Worst case scenario, he ends up like Makoto Itou, dying under dramatic circumstances involving multiple girls—ahem. He means he could have had a perfectly wholesome youth romance. Sure.
But then his stupid hands pulled an A-rank skill and an S-rank talent on draws two and three.
No returns. Strict policy. Non-negotiable.
So based on his ability profile, the god shipped him off to the Naruto world. As punishment, apparently, for being too lucky.
Thing is—he wasn't even a Naruto guy. During his chuuni years, he'd been firmly in the One Piece camp. He'd spent countless hours on forums arguing with Naruto fans, writing extremely serious analytical essays like "Research on the Practicality, Destructive Effects, and Energy Efficiency Ratio of the Goro Goro no Mi vs. Lightning Release." He'd known those essays would haunt him someday. He just hadn't expected them to save his life.
At least he remembered the characters. That much had survived the transition.
"Graduation's finally here, huh..."
Staring up at the Academy gate, Kamishiro Hagoromo let himself feel something for a second. Ten years in this world. Enrolled at seven. And now, finally, the end of school and the beginning of the battlefield.
Kamishiro Hagoromo. The name his parents in this world had given him.
His parents, who were—per the universal law governing transmigrators—conveniently gone. Dad had been an ordinary chūnin who died in the opening stretch of the war. Mom was a medical ninja who got conscripted back to the front lines shortly after giving birth and never came back. During the successive Great Ninja Wars, both sides had figured out early that field hospitals were priority targets. Medical ninjas were too valuable to leave alive. So they didn't.
This was the Third Great Ninja War. People died every day. Not as a concept—as a fact, ongoing, loud and continuous.
Every Great Ninja War turned into a free-for-all between nations, and the Land of Fire, despite having the strongest village, somehow always ended up getting jumped from every direction at once. The Land of Earth. The Land of Lightning. The Land of Water. The Land of Wind. Iwagakure, Kumogakure, Kirigakure, Sunagakure. Four enemies, one Konoha, perpetually outnumbered.
With manpower stretched thin, the Academy cut its curriculum to three years. No minimum enrollment age.
Hatake Kakashi had enrolled the same year as Hagoromo, both of them five years old. Kakashi graduated in six months and went straight to the front.
As for why Hagoromo became a ninja at all?
Being alone was boring.
He was a person from another world. A time traveler and an alien, technically. He had powers. He had free time. In retrospect, he probably should have ended up in the SOS Brigade instead—Haruhi would have loved him. But no. Here he was.
"Hey, Hagoromo! Quit spacing out!" A hand landed on his shoulder. "You feeling good about the graduation exam or what?"
He didn't need to turn around to know who it was. His perception handled that.
Might Guy. Perennial dead-last, future king of taijutsu, current very enthusiastic kid with more passion than results.
And beside him—Uchiha Obito. The other perennial dead-last. Self-proclaimed elite ninja. Grades that contradicted this claim in every measurable way. Destined, in a future Hagoromo vaguely remembered and desperately hoped to avoid, to go completely off the rails over a dead girl and become one of the final bosses of the entire shinobi world.
He could not stress enough how little sense that made to him every time he thought about it.
"More confident than either of you," Hagoromo said, turning just enough to look at them with the full force of his dead-fish stare—aimed especially at Obito. He genuinely could not figure out the guy. Did he have the emotional depth to go villain over heartbreak? Based on current evidence, that seemed like a stretch.
"Worry about yourselves," he added. No mercy.
"Hey! We're totally gonna pass—as long as the exam is taijutsu only!" Guy declared, with the confidence of someone who had not looked at the syllabus.
"And your hair is so annoying," Obito announced, as if this were relevant. "It always reminds me of some smug jerk."
Sir. Sir, you are projecting.
The white hair wasn't his choice. That was God's decision. God said let there be light, and there was light. God said you get premature white hair, and Hagoromo got premature white hair. He'd tried arguing with the transmigration god about it. The god's face, it turned out, repelled complaints the way a lotus leaf repelled water. Nothing stuck. Nothing landed. He'd given up.
They headed inside, bypassing their classroom entirely—the graduation exam was being held outdoors, in the small square out front. The whole year had gathered there, students from all eight classes milling around.
Faces he recognized were scattered through the crowd. Ebisu. Shiranui Genma. Mitarashi Anko. Yūhi Kurenai. Sarutobi Asuma. Nohara Rin.
Most of them he only knew by reputation. The ones he'd actually spent time with were Guy, Obito, and Rin—and that was mostly because Guy and Obito were the type to adopt people without asking, and Obito had this habit of dragging everyone along whenever he wanted an excuse to be near Rin.
Left to his own devices, Hagoromo's social presence among the male students ranked somewhere around Hachiman. Technically there, technically acknowledged, mostly ignored.
He was fine with that.
The exam was about to start.