A Shinobi's Guide to the Multiverse

It was the sound of a bell, shrill and obnoxiously loud, that forced my eyes wide open. My hand instinctively went for the battered kunai that I kept beneath the pillow on my futon, wrenching it out from beneath the threadbare cushion and, in that same jerking motion, flicking it swiftly towards that damnable noise. My eyes were still blurry with sleep, my heart hammering in my chest from what could only have been some sort of odd, sake-empowered dream, so the throwing knife only skimmed the side of the alarm clock, scratching the plastic and clattering uselessly against the floor.

CRUNCH!

My follow-up hammer punch didn't miss.

"Shittt." I groaned beneath my breath, feeling just how thick and dry my tongue felt inside my mouth. I wiped my eyes clear of last night's crust, clearing away the blurriness, before throwing my thin blankets aside to roll out of my futon and prepare for the long day ahead-

And promptly fell flat on my face.

My body felt… wrong.

I grimaced as a pounding headache, entirely unrelated to my fall, ripped its way through my skull. Flashes of scenes from that weird dream that I'd had - the one where I was a teenager named 'James', living the boring life of a high school student in a place called 'America' - flickered through my brain like a playback reel. Another groan escaped my mouth, this one thick and shaky with pain, and I forced myself to my hands and knees.

"… What the hell is going on?"

The flashes came faster, now, and there was an undeniable feeling of familiarity so deep in my gut that it may as well have been my soul. I staggered to my feet, a sense of purpose and determination cutting through the horrible migraine in order to force my body to move. My eyes wandered the messy, cramped space of my apartment room, searching for evidence of poison or foul play, but other than the rice sake bottle that was still half-full, there was nothing.

My feet took me to the closet-sized bathroom, whilst my brain struggled to grasp what I was seeing in my mind.

I saw visions- no, that feeling in my soul corrected me, memories of another boy close to my age, maybe a little bit older. He had a dusky complexion just like mine, only in his life, there had been no Kumogakure to claim descendancy from - he'd actually known his parents, and hadn't been left inside of a village of men, women, and children who'd consider him an outsider. 

This boy, this James Beckham, lived a life of relative mediocrity. He was thin and sickly, with a nerdy disposition that often alienated him from his peers, but his heart was good and he did his best to enjoy life. He had a couple friends just as nerdy as him, and his parents supported his dreams of becoming a writer, even if they were less tolerant of his interest in 'waifus' and smut. His life had been going as well as it could've been for such an unimpressively average boy before it was all taken away from him in a heartbeat in the form of a school shooting.

One of his friends, a quiet boy named Dave, had warned him not to go to school that day. He'd assumed it was a dark joke, like all the other dark jokes they'd throw around in their group chat. That day, he'd fucked around and found out.

The memories began to end with this James boy standing in a void of black, staring down at a single notebook and pen that was floating in front of him, the only other thing in that blackness other than him. James had looked down at that notebook, saw the CYOA scribbled over the top of the loose leaf paper, and had grinned a buck toothed grin. The last thing I saw was him checkmark an entry that said 'Reincarnation' before the void swallowed me whole, and I was blinking wigglies out of my vision.

I was in the bathroom now, my body seemingly having moved on autopilot while I was distracted with James Beckham. The migraine hadn't stopped - hell, if anything, it had gotten worse with all of the knowledge and memories that were flirting through my brain - and I ceased all processes of thought in order to stare at the boy glaring back at me in the smudged mirror above my sink.

I blinked, and he blinked luminous, sky blue eyes right back at me.

 "Wha…" I breathed, raising my right hand to feel along the smooth, unblemished skin on my face. The Ryoto Igarashi of yesterday's depressing solitary bender hadn't been necessarily ugly, but he hadn't been handsome, either. Definitely not in the leagues of people like the scion of the Uchiha Clan, Sasuke, who almost the female entirety of my graduating class had been wildly obsessed with. My supposed Kumo heritage had gotten me second glances due to the exoticness, but it had been a toss-up on whether or not those glances were positive or negative. Most of the time, they were just neutral, like someone briefly glancing at a particularly unusual looking cat.

Now, though… I felt like I could give Sasuke Uchiha a run for his money and whoop his ass if it came down to a battle of looks.

What little remaining baby fat that I'd been possessing before had all but melted away, seamlessly sharpened into an angular jawline that seemed sharp enough to cut through loaves of bread. My eyes, one of the few things that I'd been proud of before, were set into their usual stoic glare - something I relaxed into a more neutral look once I realized just how striking the expression appeared now. Long, silky locks of silvery white hair fell over my forehead and upper back, tangled and messy from sleep, and quite a bit longer than I'd remembered. 

I still looked like me, in a very distant, distant way - maybe a noble cousin half removed who served as a courtier for the Lightning Daimyo's palace. 'Bishonen' was a term often used in the anime community James Beckham would often dedicate his social and personal time towards. Handsome, but pretty, in a princely sort of way.

I hated it.

Or, well, hated was a strong word. Who hated becoming more attractive? But it was fucking unsettling to see this hotter caricature of who'd I been before just staring back at me like this. Not because I was scared or horrified by the thought of my face changing, but because it only solidified the slow realization that I'd been coming to ever since I'd seen the memories of James Beckham flash through my mind. Waking up with a headache was one thing. Getting a kid's entire life shoved into my brain was another, because I could've at least pretended that it was some sort of supremely creative dream, or a mental break.

But no… I wasn't stupid, and I refused to be willfully ignorant when I saw an entirely different world in those memories. There were more than just one, even - countless worlds, all out there in their own universe, mine included. How could it have been a dream when I saw the local knuckleheaded prankster himself, Naruto Uzumaki, grow up to one day battle a Goddess alongside his team? When I saw my village be destroyed, my Hokage killed, my entire world banding together to fight one crazed madman obsessed with forcing the entirety of the human race into an eternal genjutsu of 'peace'?

A shudder ran through my body, and I clenched the bathroom sink hard enough to fracture the porcelain. It would come out of my safety deposit, but I found that I didn't rightly care at the moment. My brain began moving a mile a minute, as my body turned on the tap and began my usual morning ritual - brushing the teeth, washing the face, and combing the tangled mane that I called hair.

'I won't rely on Naruto and Sasuke to save me. The odds of everything going the same as 'canon' ended the second he- or I chose an Alternate version of the world...' 

That was my first thought, as I shoved my toothbrush into my mouth and began vigorously scrubbing. I should've been surprised at the speed and force in which I drew that conclusion, but as my headache lessened and I began to sort through everything that I'd seen, my mind's eye remembered flashes of that CYOA document James had so eagerly filled out. There were some portions that I couldn't bring to mind no matter how hard I tried, but the entries that I did remember were fairly promising. 

There were perks like Invictus, which filled my spirit with an unwavering and unbreakable will, drive, and patience, just as there were drawbacks like Poor, which explained why I only had a couple thousand ryo to my name. The annoyance I felt towards that particular choice was cold and sharp, lancing up my chest like an icy snake, but my newfound patience and willpower was more than enough to gird the Wrath and shove it back down into the pit of my stomach. 

James Beckham, the naive boy I'd been before being offered the chance to reincarnate, had clearly made a lot of these choices with an obvious sense of detachment from what would quickly end up his reality. Either that, or he did it all with his right hand in his pants. A handsome face and gaining a talent for dramatics and cooking wasn't worth it in the world that I lived in. It honestly seemed like he made a lot of choices for the distant possibility of amassing some sort of multiversal harem - which, knowing him… fuck, knowing me, had definitely been a main goal. The current me would not have made some of the choices he had made. 

But then, I got to the memories of the powers, and all of a sudden I found myself interested.

Becoming a shinobi, like most orphans, had been more of a necessity than a choice for me. When the Third Hokage visited my orphanage all those years ago, giving us six year olds a speech about how he could see the Will of Fire in the chests of every single one of us, I'd eaten up the propaganda with gusto. Even at such a young age, I'd known that I was an outsider, and would continue to be one, until I proved myself - and joining the Academy had been step one in my ultimate plan to truly become a part of Konohagakure. 

I simply had to become an awesome ninja, and everything else - respect, money, friends - would come along with it.

Only, I had no talent for the craft.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't the worst in my class. That had always been Naruto Uzumaki. But I was decidedly below average, and no amount of extra curricular training could help that. I was an orphan with middling talent, and so I was trash. There was no one to train me outside of the academy, my diet was stale bread and lukewarm water, and I just didn't have that diehard drive to overcome my unfortunate origins. I'd been weak.

James Beckham changed that.

Knowledge is Power was the foundational glue that held everything together. It basically allowed me to, with time, training, and effort, learn anything I wanted to - with no limits, other than the aforementioned time, training, and effort, and teach the same to any prospective student.

Anything.

And with it came an innate sense of understanding for all of my powers, just in case I wanted to try and teach them to anyone else. 

The Chad Grindset Enjoyer granted me this intrinsic, subconscious sixth sense of how best to improve upon myself in whatever manner I saw fit. Breaker of Chains removed the ceiling to my potential growth, allowing perseverance and time to blast through any limitations that would hamper my growing abilities. Additionally, I was now immune to the grasp of destiny and fate, and no seal, chain, or binding could ever hold me down. Broken Limiter was an upgrade only obtained through combining the other two powers, and what it did was…

Well, the name explained it best. 

The more I grew, the more I progressed, the faster and more exponentially my power advanced forward. There was no limit to what I could eventually become, and with what I'd seen, what had only been stories for one James Beckham, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would need every single advantage I could scrounge up.

I dunked my head beneath the hot water, feeling its heat sink deep into my scalp and tingle against my skin, as memories of an alternate future flashed through my head. 

I saw Naruto Uzumaki standing tall in the skull of a giant golden fox, several other clones floating on either side. I saw them shooting enormous balls of purple and blue chakra - bijudamas - while Sasuke Uchiha fought against them inside the core of a towering, glowing blue construct in samurai armor. I saw mountains get demolished, miles of forest erased in an instance. I saw Pein reaching out a hand and wiping Konohagakure from the map, leaving nothing but crumbling dirt. I saw Madara dropping a meteor on the heads of the Shinobi Alliance, their struggle to contain it, and then his subsequent smirk as he dropped a second one on top of the first and taunted the world.

These were the future foes and rivals I would have to contend with if I didn't want to leave the chances of my survival up to chance. Right now I was the weak-link, but when the theme of my new abilities could be summed up as 'Learn and Ascend', what else could I do but listen? It was impossible to predict my future, but I felt infinitely more confident in my ability to shape it favorably. It would simply take dedication, willpower, and patience - three qualities I now had in abundance.

All that was left was to reach out and make it fucking happen.

I turned the tap off, turning around and grabbing a towel to dry my hair off with. It was about 7 AM, considering I set my alarm to ring at 6:45 AM for training. I'd been planning to try my hand at a D-rank mission today for the rent money, but with a new body, new powers, and a new lease on life… I'd be a fool not to familiarize myself personally with everything that I'd gained.

It only took me a few minutes to dress myself in my usual fare - worn, dark navy pants taped off at the ankles, sandals, a mesh long-sleeve, and a loose black shirt with a slightly flared collar. What used to be baggy clothes were now significantly more form-fitting due to my overnight growth spurt, but I neither had the ryo or the fucks to go and buy a completely new wardrobe right now. 

My headband, acquired only a brief two weeks ago, was the last accessory to complete the ensemble, cinched tightly around my forehead to keep the bangs out of my face. Fully dressed and nearly vibrating with anticipation, I opened my bedroom window and darted out onto the low rooftop right beside my apartment. My body felt light - far lighter than it had been before tonight, and I allowed myself to enjoy the sensation of air flowing through my hair as I made a bee-line for my training ground of choice - Training Ground 36.

< … >

_______________________________________________________

< … >

It didn't take too long to arrive. 

For the past couple weeks, ever since my teammates and I had failed to make a half-comatose Hayate Gekko unsheathe his sword and I'd been transferred to the dishonorable ranks of the Genin Corps, Training Ground 36 has been my personal hangout spot whenever I wasn't struggling to complete solo D-Rank missions in time. It was within roof-hopping distance to my apartment, placed in a dense copse of trees near the southern edge of the village, so the traffic wasn't as dense as some of the smaller training grounds closer to the Academy. For someone like me, who had slowly learned to enjoy the solitude, it was the perfect place to train.

And it beat hanging around the Red Light District, sad and ryo-less.

The grassy clearing was free of other shinobi as I leaped from the treetops, landing lightly on the balls of my feet. I moved purposefully, mindful of the way my sandals pressed against the dew-covered blades of grass. Another power Ja- I had given myself was Stealth Mode, which made every movement of mine significantly quieter than they'd be otherwise. It was a smart purchase, considering my choice of profession, and one that jived well with my other two minor powers: Multitask, and Gut Instinct. What shinobi wouldn't benefit from an inner lie detector, and the ability to do several tasks at once?

All together, it was obvious what the previous me had been aiming for when putting together my powerset: An extremely dangerous and versatile shinobi who could adapt to and overcome any challenge, given enough time. My foundation was solid - much more solid than it had been before. My body was as hale and strong as it was swift, the result of Olympian, and as I made it to the middle of the clearing and moved my fingers into the all-too-familiar Ram seal, I prodded my chakra and began channeling it through my pathways-

"... Ha. Not bad." 

Yeah, that was definitely more chakra than I'd been dealing with yesterday. More than twice the amount if I had to give a rough estimate, chugging thickly through my chakra pathways. I didn't have a good frame of reference to properly quantify the amount, but assuming that I previously had the average amount of chakra for a fresh Genin, the potency and depth of my chakra reserves now were probably comparable to that of a low Chunin. Maybe.

I wouldn't be blasting out A-rank ninjutsu on a hair trigger or anything, but it was a significant improvement to what I'd been dealing with before. It wasn't as easy as doing the Ram seal and seeing the chakra as much as it was a matter of doing the Ram seal and blindly guessing based on how much of the energy moved through your pathway.

But that only brought me to my next question. Did my control go to hell with this sudden increase to my chakra reserves? While I hadn't excelled in any particular subject at the Academy, my mastery of the chakra control techniques taught to us - Leaf Concentration and Tree Walking - had always been on the better side of 'decent'. It had been one of the few things I'd prided myself on, even if I hadn't been as efficient with molding and manipulating chakra as the likes of Sakura and Sasuke.

Exhaling softly, I dropped the Ram seal and walked over to the three wooden posts that were embedded in the middle of the clearing. The wood was battered and chipped from countless kunai and shuriken, but the ninja tools were nowhere in sight now, leaving me with a sturdy and reliable partner to practice with. I lifted one foot and placed it against the post, patiently sliding my hands back into the Ram seal as I carefully guided my chakra back down to the tenketsu in my lower extremities…-

CRACK!

The wood splintered beneath my sandal, sending a tremor through the beaten training post. My eyes narrowed in consternation, a low hiss of annoyance emanating from my lips as I swiftly halted the flow of chakra. "Too much, too fast."

The realization was a nagging sort of awareness in the back of my head, like a slight itch that wanted to be scratched, or an annoying friend backseat gaming in the Discord ca- … okay, that one was all James. Regardless of how it felt, that sixth sense of right and wrong was just prevalent enough to gently turn me in the right direction - in this case, lowering the input of chakra and allowing it to soak down into my feet at a much slower, tempered pace. Before, I'd done it as smoothly and familiarly as always, but that wasn't the right choice when dealing with the sudden inflation of my chakra reserves.

Something, something, the turtle wins the race. Patience was the key here.

This time, I followed the subtle guidance of what had to be the Chad Grindset, and my efforts paid off. My foot stuck firmly to the training post, as if the bottom of my sandal had been slathered in a strong adhesive, and a slight pull of the leg proved that the placement was firm. In most cases, including Iruka-sensei's teachings, you would sprint up a surface whilst channeling chakra to your feet, getting as high as you can in increments as you worked to regulate your chakra flow time and time again. 

Too little, and you slipped. Too much, and your foot would be repelled. 

By getting a running start, you're able to use momentum to help you climb so that all of your weight wasn't bearing down on your feet at once. Fortunately, unlike the alternate timeline I remembered from my previous life, Tree Walking was a skill taught to us in the Academy, only one of the differences between my world and the other one. That experience helped me now, allowing me to shift my weight more easily among my lower body as I flexed and tightened my abdominal muscles and pushed off with my one grounded foot.

"Haa." Wind pushed itself out of my lungs as I stood there parallel to the ground, one foot on the post and the other pulled up to my knee, my core tense and tight. I moved my other sandal down to the wood, mindful of my chakra expenditure, and smirked as it stuck there snugly. My chakra was thicker and more potent now, sure, but the increase seemed to have been balanced all around - both my physical and spiritual energies must've stayed in equilibrium.

Slowly, I walked the short distance up the post, stretching and tensing my core muscles all the while. When I reached the upper half, I hopped up to the top, turned around, and walked back down to the bottom. As soon as my feet hit the ground again, I took a step back, untensed my body, and narrowed my eyes at the post.

'My control isn't shot to complete shit, then.' I thought, a slight smile pulling at the corner of my lips. I'd need to practice more, of course. I found my expenditure growing too strong or too weak at times while manipulating my chakra, but that didn't stem from a lack of knowledge - it was simply due to my lack of familiarity with this amount of chakra. Doubling my reserves was no small increase.

After a moment of thinking, I nodded my head resolutely. 'I'll practice Tree Walking until lunch time, or until my chakra gets low - whichever's first. Physical training comes after.'

Somehow that felt right. Exhausting my chakra reserves meant that I'd be more tired, but any conditioning to my body meant more physical energy to work with. Outside of the Academy Three, I didn't know any ninjutsu to practice, something I'd have to rectify sooner than later, but chakra control exercises were good enough for now hone my spiritual energy. Dividing my time between physical exercise and chakra exercises, and maybe a combination of the two, would set a good foundation.

I found my smile growing, as a flickering flame of excitement and belonging began to build in my chest. As pitiful as it sounded, I'd never been a boy guided by passion. I'd never been a Naruto Uzumaki, or a Rock Lee, or a Sasuke Uchiha. My original goal of gaining the acknowledgment of my peers had slowly burned out over the years as the reality of my mundanity settled in, a talentless orphan forever cursed to look at the backs of my class of clan heirs and prodigies. I'd been bitter, quiet, and insecure, swaddled by cold hard facts.

More than that, I had been weak. Mentally and spiritually.

But now, my brain, heart, and soul all buzzed with a passion for growth. My will was a pillar so thick and strong that it may as well have been made from adamantine, and with it came a confidence and drive that made me cringe to think back on how self-pitying the previous me had been. A perverse degenerate James Beckham may have been, but I couldn't knock all of his choices. I was given the tools to potentially become the strongest shinobi in the world, and possibly even others, and I would not let it slip through my fingers.

So I got to work.

The next few hours saw me moving to the tree-line to continue my chakra control exercises. Now that I'd gotten down the amount of chakra necessary to move up and down a hard surface, it was purely a matter of keeping that output stable and consistent, even as my chakra slowly bled out and I had to account for my shifting reserves. I reached the top of the tall oak tree I'd been practicing on fairly easily, and used the height to pluck off a couple handfuls of leaves.

Those were for the next circuit.

After jogging up and down the tree a few more times, I felt that it was time to stress my body and mind a bit more, so I stripped off my shirt and began placing leaves along my body while I walked up and down the tree - one on my forehead, two more on the palms of my hands, and three on each arm. With Multitasking, dividing my concentration between all nine leaves whilst focusing on Tree Walking was easy.

It was maintaining so many different channels of chakra manipulation that was the hard part.

Several times did my concentration lapse while my attention was divided between all nine leaves, and I plummeted to the ground from over 100 feet in the air. Other times I felt my chakra get too thin or too potent in my feet, and as I went to correct the deficiency, several leaves would unstick from my body and I forced myself to leap off the tree and snatch each one out of the air. Throughout the entire exercise, the Chad Grindset never steered me wrong, my sixth sense subtly directing me to the most efficient ways to channel my chakra in order to keep the circuit going smooth.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, I was sweaty, exhausted, and bruised on my hands, feet, and ass from falling on, and sometimes through tree branches.

Even then, with my chakra reserves running low and my core and leg muscles practically begging for reprieve, I found my desire to keep going as bright and flagrant as ever. The mind and soul was willing, extremely so, but even with my upgrades, my body wasn't infallible. Physically, I wasn't any better than any other notably athletic genin. There'd be a time where I could accelerate my healing with chakra, but for now…

'Time for a lunch break.' 

I glanced up at the sky. I couldn't tell for sure, but teachings in the academy glossed over ways to estimate the time of day based on the position of the sun, and it could've been anywhere from 1 to 3 PM. I truly had been running my body ragged. 

That meant most of the restaurants and storefronts would be open, though. The thought of getting something hot and meaty instead of my usual cheap rations caused my stomach to rumble with anticipation, and I wiped away a droplet of drool.

Akimichi Barbecue sounded fucking divine right about now, and with my new lease on life, I would rather die in a gutter than continue to live poor and in squalor. Fate no longer held any power in my life, and with my potential, there was no reason to continue existing as just another eternal genin scraping for crumbs. I could climb, Jonin sensei or not. I didn't need a team

"Barbecue now, and I'll grab a D-rank mission afterwards for some pocket ryo. I can train my body during the job… just gotta choose something with manual labor." I murmured to myself as I bent down and grabbed my black shirt. It felt nice to have a set plan and the determination to see it through, and with my muscles and chakra pathway sore from exertion, I found myself walking straighter as I made my way back into the village. 

I had a lot of catching up to do, and good food was an amazing way to start.