[Naruto] Orochimaru SI

1. Tabula Rasa

Being an infant sucks.

I mean, there's not really much you can do except think, and dream.So I thought, and I dreamed, and I forgot most of what I thought up, because I had no fucking idea where I was and how I ended up here and was this reincarnation and had I died, back in my last life, or was this the thing where a mind that spontaneously comes into existence ex nihilo is indistinguishable from one that has an origin?

In the end, it didn't matter. I was a restless child, because with all of my twenty-first-century knowledge, I knew that reinforcing my neural pathways was important. I recognised the language around me as some dialect or other of Japanese, which I had never really bothered to learn properly, but I had a lot of time here and not much else to do. So Iistened, and learned.

My well-meaning but unimaginative parents had named me Yasha Gorō. I was the youngest of seven; I had two brothers (Tarō, Jirō, Saburō - died at three, Shirō - died at six) and one sister (Natsumi). We lived in some village in the middle of nowhere; definitely less technologically advanced than the world of my first life. I would come miss the internet sorely for the rest of this life, but even so - you can take a person out of the information age, but you can never take the information age out of a person.

It goes without saying that I was different from the other children, growing up for the second time. It certainly mystified my parents; that was fine by me. It took me a few months to get used to the vocabulary.

I was four months old when I spoke my first word. It was "mama", naturally. My second word was, of course,"hon". Book. It helped that I already knew most of my kana and a good scattering of kanji; I was reading arbitrary books by the time I was eight months old; I could, with effort, hold a decent conversation by the time I was one. Building up the neural pathways for manual dexterity took longer, especially since I took care to exercise both sides of my body equally - even if I wasn't naturally ambidextrous, I sure as hell was going to try to learn it anyway. I spent hours practicing simple movements repetitively. I was pretty sure it made me look weird and creepy. I didn't care. It took me until I was two until I could hold a pencil for any length of time. Writing and drawing followed soon after.

My parents were farmers; our family had lived in our village for several generations, at least; my mother, rather fortituously, was quite literate - she was our village's only teacher. She was also very literal, socially awkward, and probably asperger's. But she was the most educated person in the village, so she ran what passed for a school here.

I continued to spend most of my time continuing to learn to write and sing - I'd never gotten the hang of singing the first time around, and there was no point not trying to do it again, right? And we were pretty much in the back end of nowhere. The world was really small, here. So I was four by the time I learned seriously about the history and geography of my new world. I mean, I knew local history decently at this point, and could easily give a well-summarised accounting of my village's history. I'd gathered already that I was living in something that vaguely resembled feudal Japan, but probably wasn't actual feudal japan.

And then one day on market day, mother bought a map of the world from a travelling merchant, because I'd been curious about the matter. I was ridiculously happy, of course. Then I actually saw the map, and froze. The quality of the map was really not that good, but the general layout of the world it presented was unmistakable. It was the elemental countries, all right, and that meant ninja, and I was someone from some civilian family, and oh dear.

At least we lived in Fire Country.

I spent the next few months dredging everything I knew about Naruto out of my memory and committing it to paper. Much of my notes were in English; I kept my notes to dot-points both to save on space, and to increase the difficulty someone would manage to decipher the language. They were definitely incomplete and probably incorrect on minor points; and butterflies would probably invalidate more of them. It didn't matter; knowledge was power and I had a lot of it. I meditated every night; searching for what might be chakra. I didn't find it; I wasn't surprised. I exercised. I bonded with Natsumi-neechan over girl things. She was seven years older than me, very bright, and could keep up with me. I taught her mathematics, strategy, and the scientific method. Well, I had to work out half the mathematics from first principles again, but it helped when you knew roughly where the endpoint was. I had been terrible at maths, but even then, nobody here even knew what calculus was. It was weird.

I was I was four when some border war with Water country started up and Father and Taro were drafter - Father into the navy, and Taro into the army. I never saw either of them again. Jiro took over running the family. Our village was not far from the frontlines; Mother sent Natsumi and I away to live with her cousin Midori in the city until the war blew over. We wrote to each other until three months in, when the late reply was a letter from the village head; the caravan had been attacked at night by Kiri ninja who had slipped through the lines - a target of opportunity, no survivors. The war ended two months later.

This was the state of the world; there were those who could use chakra - the ninja and the samurai - and the religious orders, too, I suppose, but they generally stayed out of things - and those who couldn't; and knowing as I did that the inside of ninja villages were pretty safe, except future Kiri, but that would be Tobi's doing - well. I was a prodigy; Konoha would probably welcome me with open arms, and Natsumi would be safe there, probably. Immigration into Konoha was fairly limited, but I was pretty sure I could make it in - being a five-year-old with an adult mindset had that sort of effect. We went home, packed sentimental-value goods, sold everything we couldn't carry, said our goodbyes, and left.

It took a few weeks to travel to Konoha; we hitched a ride with some merchant caravan or other most of the way.

People: Yasha Katashi, Makoto; Taro, Jiro, Saburo, Natsumi, Shiro, Goro

2. Janus
In which Natsumi and I go to Konoha, explain their circumstances to the gate guards, I join the Academy, we get an apartment, paperwork is done, well, we have enough savings that between that and my orphan-academy-student stipend she doesn't need to work for a while. Eleven is too old to join the ninja stream, but joining the civilian stream is fine.

I go to the Academy, test straight through the first two years, and land myself in the first year of the ninja stream. Right next to two other prodigies - Jiraya and Tsunade. Oh dear. I'm young Orochimaru. Well, things are probably going to be better this way, innit?

As it turns out I have pretty good chakra control right from the moment my chakra is unlocked. It's really inevitable that the three of us become friends; the rest of the class looks down on us, age differences, etc. The academic subjects are fairly easy. My memory's better than it was before, and I know half the material already. Ha. I probably know more about war than the teachers, even. Oh well. We spend long hours learning the basics of actually how to ninj. The Academy Three are in place already - it makes sense, really; they are incredibly useful. Daily practice with the three, chakra control exercises - we make up dozens of those, why limit ourselves to leaves? - taijutsu practice, shuriken and kunai throwing... it's a busy year, and by the end of it we've graduated. yay. there should be a lot more detail here.

3.