I wake up mid-breath, like I've been dragged out of deep water.
Air scrapes into my lungs—tatami, stale incense, someone else's cheap soap. My cheek sticks to a thin pillow. When I sit up, the room sways: paper screens, low wooden beams, a cracked mirror propped against the wall.
Not my ceiling. Not my life.
Outside, metal taps metal. Kunai on a post. A child's laugh. Footsteps on roof tiles with the easy confidence of people who grew up knowing the sky is a road.
My hands are wrong.
Smaller. Rougher. Knuckles scabbed like I've been training badly and often. There's a fading bruise on my wrist, the shape of fingers. I don't remember earning it.
I lurch to the mirror.
A boy stares back at me—dark hair cut without care, face too ordinary to hold a camera's love. No whisker marks. No Uchiha eyes. No clan crest.
Nothing.
An extra.
A body the story would erase without hesitation if it made the real scene sharper.
My mouth opens. A voice comes out that is mine and not mine.
"No."
Saying it doesn't change anything. The boy in the mirror still blinks too fast, pupils blown wide with panic.
I clamp my fingers around the mirror's frame until pain anchors me. Pain is honest. Pain doesn't pretend.
Naruto.
The name rises automatically, a reflex carved into me by years of reading and watching. Naruto Uzumaki—the chosen center. The boy the world bends around.
The moment I reach for canon—dates, episode beats, the tidy sequence of "this happens, then this happens"—a hot lance stabs behind my eyes. My vision shimmers. I hiss and shut them.
Not a headache.
A warning. A penalty for touching knowledge that doesn't belong in a nobody's skull.
I breathe slowly through my nose. Panic wastes air, and air suddenly feels precious.
If the timeline is intact, then I woke up right before the first domino that matters.
Graduation exam.
Mizuki.
The Scroll of Seals.
Iruka in the forest, bleeding, choosing Naruto anyway. Naruto learning shadow clones and stepping into the role the world carved for him.
And me—no name, no protection, no place.
I slide the screen open and stare at Konoha in daylight.
It's beautiful in a way that makes my stomach twist. Warm wood, tiled roofs, laundry lines, market stalls. It looks like peace until you remember what its children are trained to do.
No system. No glowing numbers. No voice congratulating me for being "special."
Just a brain full of future scenes that hurt when I try to hold them.
---
The Academy smells like chalk, sweat, and impatience.
The classroom is louder than I expect, messier than animation ever allowed. Children talk over each other. Chairs scrape. Pencil wood snaps. Kunai pouches knock against thighs when kids shift.
I take a seat near the back because my body seems to understand what I am: background.
Faces still spark recognition—Shikamaru half-asleep, Ino shining, Kiba vibrating, Sasuke quiet as a knife.
Then I see him.
Naruto Uzumaki is exactly as irritating as canon promised—and exactly as sad as canon tried to laugh off. He's grinning too wide, shouting too loud, daring the room to look away first.
I feel it before I can name it: a weight in the air.
Not chakra in the way shinobi talk about it. Something denser. Like standing too close to a current you can't fight.
Protection.
Fate. Narrative gravity. The story's insistence.
He turns his head, eyes sweeping the room, and for one heartbeat he looks straight at me.
Blue. Alive. Twelve.
My ribs tighten, not crushing yet—just the reminder of a hand that could close.
I look away first. Not because I'm afraid of Naruto.
Because I'm afraid of what stands behind him.
Iruka walks in and the room settles. His scar is real; his eyes are tired in a way that doesn't translate through a screen. He's young, but he already carries the exhaustion of trying to keep children alive inside a machine built to turn them into weapons.
He announces the graduation test. The class reacts as expected. Naruto boasts. Sakura snaps. Sasuke doesn't move.
Canon lays itself over the room like a net.
Every time I try to think three steps ahead—Mizuki's lie, the theft, the forest clearing—the pain behind my eyes flickers again, sharp and corrective.
My knowledge is here.
It isn't safe.
The exam comes.
Students make clones. Pass. Pass. Pass.
Naruto goes behind the screen. I hold my breath like it matters.
His clone collapses into a pathetic half-formed mess. Laughter bites into him. Naruto's grin twitches wider, brittle enough to shatter.
Iruka fails him. His voice is firm, but his eyes aren't cruel. They're conflicted—duty wrestling pity.
Naruto storms out, loud and furious and wounded.
My fingers dig crescents into my palm.
If I do nothing, Iruka gets hurt but lives. Naruto learns shadow clones. The plot moves.
If I interfere, something pushes back.
I stand anyway.
The instant I decide to move toward the story, cold tightens around my chest.
---
Later, outside, Naruto sits on the swing.
The swing isn't symbolic here. It's worn wood and frayed rope and dirt under his sandals. He drags his feet through dust as if he can erase himself from the ground.
Mizuki approaches with the soft posture of a friendly teacher. His smile is practiced. His voice is warm.
My skin crawls.
He leans close, murmuring. Naruto's shoulders lift—hope flaring fast and bright, the kind that burns because it's built on desperation.
I take a step toward them.
Pain detonates behind my eyes. White floods my vision. My stomach lurches. I catch the fence to keep from folding.
A wordless order hums through my bones:
Don't.
I try anyway—because knowing you're leashed doesn't stop you from testing the chain.
"Naru—"
My throat clamps shut.
Not nerves. Not fear.
Invisible fingers pinch my windpipe until sound dies. Panic spikes. I claw at my neck like an animal. The grip tightens until spots dance in my vision.
Then I stop trying to speak.
Air returns instantly, cruelly generous.
Mizuki finishes feeding Naruto his poison and walks away. Naruto bolts off with purpose, grinning like he's already won.
The air around Naruto feels warm and dense, like the world leans forward to watch him.
The story will not let him miss his mark.
So I pivot.
If I can't warn Naruto, I can warn Iruka.
That isn't stealing the spotlight. It's damage control. It's trying to keep a good man from walking alone into a betrayal I can see coming.
---
Iruka is in a corridor, sorting papers with tired efficiency. He looks up when I approach, and I can see him searching his memory for my name.
He doesn't find it.
Of course he doesn't.
I swallow and force the words out.
"Mizuki-sensei—"
Pain snaps through my skull. My knees hit the floor. Heat surges up my neck; my stomach flips. For a second it feels like my brain is being squeezed in a fist.
Iruka is there instantly, hands on my shoulders. "Hey—what's wrong? Are you sick?"
I try to answer. The invisible pressure brushes my throat again, a gentle threat.
Fine.
I snatch a scrap of paper from his stack, grab his pen, and write with shaking hands:
**MIZUKI LIES. NARUTO WILL STEAL SCROLL. FOREST. DON'T GO ALONE.**
Iruka reads it once. Twice. Confusion hardens into alertness.
"Where did you hear—"
I open my mouth and only air comes out. My throat won't cooperate.
Iruka's jaw tightens. He doesn't waste time interrogating a child who's clearly terrified. He moves like a shinobi, like a responsible adult—like someone who will take the risk himself if he has to.
"Stay here," he orders, already turning.
I grab his sleeve.
He looks down at my hand, then back at my face. His voice softens—just a little.
"I'll be careful."
It's meant to calm me.
It doesn't.
Because canon Iruka says the same thing to himself, and canon still bleeds.
He runs.
His footsteps fade.
Dread settles in my gut like wet stone.
I changed the timing. I changed his awareness.
Butterflies don't always make things better.
Sometimes they just redirect the blade.
---
Night wraps Konoha in lantern light and false normalcy. The village smells like dinner and river water and smoke. People laugh. Doors slide shut. The world pretends it isn't made of sharp edges.
My feet take me to the forest anyway.
Not because I'm brave.
Because sitting at home while knowing what's coming feels like a sin I'd never wash off.
Trees swallow the lantern glow. The air cools. Moss and damp earth replace cooking oil. Crickets pulse like a nervous heartbeat.
Voices cut through the dark ahead—angry, sharp, familiar.
I crouch behind a trunk and look.
There they are.
Naruto stands panting, headband in hand. The Scroll of Seals lies open nearby like something alive. His hands tremble.
Iruka stands between him and Mizuki, shoulders squared.
Mizuki's smile is gone. His eyes are flat now, predatory.
"You're the demon fox," Mizuki says. "The Nine-Tails that killed the Fourth Hokage."
Naruto freezes.
The words hit him like a slap you can't dodge. His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
Iruka's voice cracks with fury. "Mizuki!"
Mizuki laughs. "Still protecting him? Even after what he is?"
Naruto's gaze flicks to Iruka, begging for denial, for rescue, for anything.
This is the hinge.
In canon, Iruka takes the hit. The wound becomes proof. Naruto learns what it means to be chosen by someone's kindness, not just the world's cruelty.
I watch Iruka's back.
I watch Naruto's frozen terror.
And I move.
I break cover and sprint into the clearing.
The world reacts like I stabbed it.
Cold crushes my ribs. My skull screams. The edges of my vision brighten. Every step feels like wading through resistance that hates me for trying.
Still I run.
Iruka turns, shock flashing across his face. "You—!"
Mizuki's eyes snap to me. Surprise sharpens into delight, like he's just been gifted an extra corpse.
He throws the giant shuriken.
It spins through moonlight with a hungry whine.
I hurl myself into its path, aiming for Iruka's back—trying, stupidly, to buy him a second.
For one fraction of a second, I believe I did it.
Then reality corrects me.
The shuriken's trajectory *adjusts*—not by wind, not by luck, but with clean subtlety, like an editor nudging a line back where it belongs.
It angles just enough to spare Naruto entirely.
And just enough to find me.
Impact is wet and final.
Pain blooms so bright it empties my head. My left arm goes numb, then *light*, as if it has ceased to belong to me.
I look down and my brain refuses the image.
My hand lies in the dirt a few feet away, fingers curled as if still gripping air. My forearm ends in red. Blood spills out fast, hot, impossible.
A sound tears out of my throat—small, animal, humiliating.
Iruka catches me as I crumple, hands slamming down on the wound. "Why would you—?!"
He sounds horrified. Not angry. Horrified that a child just paid for a choice he was supposed to make.
Naruto makes a choking noise. His eyes are wide, locked on me, then the severed arm, then Mizuki.
Mizuki's expression twists—pleased for a heartbeat—
—and then he hurls a kunai straight at Naruto's throat.
Time stretches thin.
Naruto is still frozen. Still twelve. Still human.
The kunai should end him.
Instead, it hits something invisible—like the air has curved into a shield—and skitters away.
It slices across my ribs.
Fire blooms under my skin. My breath becomes a broken gasp. Blood warms my shirt.
Naruto isn't touched.
Not even grazed.
Because the plot won't permit it.
The air around Naruto surges—warm, roaring, protective. I understand it with terrifying clarity:
This isn't luck.
It's law.
Weapons don't reach Naruto Uzumaki when his story needs him breathing.
They find something else.
They find me.
Naruto screams, raw and feral. Chakra spikes. Shadows split.
One Naruto becomes ten. Ten becomes dozens. The clearing floods with him—an army made of grief and rage.
Mizuki's confidence cracks into panic.
Iruka's hands stay on me, trying to hold my life inside my body. "Hold on. Don't you—don't you dare—"
My vision blurs. The trees smear. The sky tilts.
The last clear image I catch is Naruto stepping forward through his own storm of clones, eyes bright with pain and determination—protected, yes, but also moving under his own brutal will.
Then darkness closes over everything.
---
I wake to antiseptic and bitter herbs.
Hospital sheets. A slow drip somewhere nearby. White walls that are never truly clean.
My body is heavy and wrong.
I try to sit up and pain nails me down. My shoulder burns like it's packed with coals. My ribs throb with each breath.
I turn my head under the blanket.
My left side is flat.
No arm.
Bandages wrap my shoulder in thick layers, brutal in their honesty. The absence is louder than any sound in the room—a hollow ache my mind keeps trying to fill with phantom fingers.
I stare at the empty sleeve and something inside me goes quiet.
Something irrevocable has happened—something the story won't undo for me.
A shadow falls across the bed.
An ANBU stands there in an animal mask, posture still as a blade. I can't see his eyes, but I feel their weight—measuring, cataloging, deciding.
His voice is calm. Professional.
"You were found beside the Scroll of Seals," he says. "Bleeding out."
My throat is dry. Swallowing hurts.
"And you attempted to warn Umino Iruka," he continues, as if reading from a report. "With information you should not have."
Cold crawls through my stomach.
I try to speak—deny, explain, beg. Anything.
Only a rasp comes out.
The ANBU's gloved hand closes around my remaining wrist. Not gentle. Not cruel. Certain.
"You're coming with us," he says.
A pause—just long enough for the next words to land like a sentence.
"The Hokage has questions."
Another pause.
"And so does Danzo Shimura."
My blood turns to ice.
Danzo doesn't ask to learn.
Danzo asks to own.
Outside the window, morning light filters through leaves, soft and indifferent. Somewhere out there, Naruto Uzumaki is alive, already being pulled forward by the world's insistence.
Here, in a hospital bed, I'm a nobody missing an arm—noticed not because I mattered, but because I bled too close to something sacred.
The ANBU lifts me with practiced ease.
And I realize with brutal clarity: I'm evidence.
And evidence doesn't get plot armor—only ownership.
Whose hands will claim me first?