The shrill screech of Naruto's alarm clock pierced through the stillness of his apartment like a kunai through parchment. He groaned, rolling over in his cramped bed, one arm flopping out to smack the offending device into silence.
"Five more minutes…" he mumbled into his pillow—exactly like he had every morning for the past—
WHAM.
A sharp pain exploded behind his eyes. Naruto bolted upright, clutching his head as a flood of memories crashed into him.
A cramped office cubicle. The stale taste of instant coffee. Staying up until 3 AM, binging anime with ramen in hand. Heated forum arguments about power scaling and best girls.
"What the—?!" he yelped, then clamped his hand over his mouth. Since when did he even talk like that?
The torrent continued. Being twenty-three years old. A miserable desk job. A sudden flash of headlights. Truck-kun. His other life ended like a meme.
Naruto—no, Hiroshi Tanaka and Naruto Uzumaki—collapsed back on his bed, groaning. "Oh, come on! Of all the cliché ways to get isekai'd?!"
He stared at the cracked ceiling, heart hammering. The memories didn't fade—they merged, sitting beside his old ones like two stories woven into one. He was Naruto, the orphan prankster. He was Hiroshi, the anime fan who knew exactly how this story was supposed to go.
"This is insane," he muttered. "I'm in an anime. I'm literally in the anime I used to watch."
Then his gaze snapped to his left wrist.
The device. It had been pulsing faintly for hours—but now, in the silence of his apartment, it came alive.
With orange.
The hourglass emblem ignited in a vivid amber glow, casting strange, fiery patterns across the walls. The dial rotated smoothly, symbols flickering in and out like sparks in the dark. Naruto's heart jumped into his throat, because his other memories told him exactly what this was.
Alien DNA. Transformations. The Omnitrix.
But this wasn't Ben Tennyson's green watch. This was different. Sleeker. Sharper. Its glow burned in a hue like molten chakra, alive and dangerous.
His mouth went dry. "…No way."
The device spoke, its calm, mechanical voice filling the tiny room:
[OMNITRIX ACTIVATION COMPLETE]
[USER: NARUTO UZUMAKI CONFIRMED]
[DNA SAMPLE INTEGRATION: 100%]
[TRANSFORMATION CAPABILITIES: ONLINE]
The orange glow pulsed brighter with each word, washing over Naruto's wide-eyed face. He couldn't tell if he was terrified or thrilled.
---
Naruto stared at the orange glow on his wrist, heart hammering. His fingers trembled as they hovered over the dial. "…Only one way to find out."
He slammed it down.
A blinding flash of molten light consumed the room. Bones shifted, skin turned slick gray, and his body shrank. When the glow faded, Naruto stood barely a foot tall, his oversized jumpsuit pooling around his tiny frame. His eyes glowed yellow, sharp and calculating.
"Gray… Matter," he muttered, his voice impossibly high-pitched.
Immediately, his brain ignited. Thoughts raced faster than he could speak. Every memory, every question, every possibility snapped into focus.
"This… this is insane! My neurons are firing at twenty times their normal speed! No wonder Galvans are geniuses!"
He paced atop the desk, tiny claws tapping against the wood. "First thing… why am I here? Reincarnation? Multiverse… magic… narrative causality?! None of this is explainable!"
He stopped, crouched low, eyes narrowing at his own reflection. "Even with Galvan logic, I can't determine why a Japanese salaryman wakes up as Naruto Uzumaki in a world that looks like… an anime! There's no pattern, no precedent!"
His mind spun faster, cataloging every anomaly—the whisker marks, the Kyūbi sealed within him, the black orb in the Scroll of Seals, the Omnitrix itself.
"This device… it's not just a tool. It's a variable. And it chose me. Why me? That… I can't figure out yet."
He shook his tiny head, feeling a rare flicker of frustration. Even at maximum Gray Matter processing, some questions had no answer… at least not yet.
---
Naruto crouched atop the edge of his bed, tiny claws tapping nervously against the wood. His eyes glowed a bright amber, mind firing at a speed impossible for any human. Every memory—Hiroshi Tanaka's life, Naruto Uzumaki's childhood, every joke, every failure, every fleeting moment—raced through him in a torrent of data.
"…Wait." He froze mid-step, tail stiffening. "These memories… they're mine. Not someone else's, not echoes, not borrowed. I feel them. Every thought, every pain, every laugh… it's me."
A shiver ran down his spine. "Which means… someone deliberately sealed them. Deliberately hid my own life from me. But… who? And how could they possibly know I'd wake up here? That I'd survive being… reincarnated?"
His gaze flicked to the black orb nestled in the Sealed Scroll, recalling Hiruzen's subtle hesitation when he handled it earlier. The old Hokage's eyes had lingered, just a fraction too long, betraying something he hadn't expected Naruto to notice.
"Someone put all this in place intentionally. They predicted me… my choices, my abilities… even this reincarnation. And the Omnitrix…" He flexed his tiny gray claws, watching the orange glow pulse rhythmically. "It chose me. It's not random. It's part of the plan. Either it's a key, or a trigger, or both."
Naruto crouched lower, mind racing. Every whisker mark, every strand of blond hair, every chakra pulse—each data point confirmed the truth. These memories were his, but they had been hidden until now, unlocked only through some carefully designed mechanism.
He let out a slow, controlled breath. "I don't know who sealed them. I don't know how. But someone powerful… someone smart… engineered all of this. And now I'm part of it."
The gears in his enhanced brain spun furiously. Divergences, anomalies, potential timelines, probability matrices—Gray Matter's processing turned the problem over and over.
"Okay… so I can't explain why I woke up here yet. I don't know who did this or what they want. But I do know one thing: I have an edge. I have the Omnitrix. And with it… I can figure it out."
A grin spread across his small gray face. "If someone thinks they can manipulate me… they've underestimated me. I will understand everything. And when I do… they're going to regret it."
---