New chapter 1: The first life!
It all happened so fast. One moment, there was life. Filled with laughter, warmth and the mundane comfort of existence. Next, it was filled with pain as it was all ripped away. The last thing I saw was the headlights of a truck, twin suns of white light expanding until they consumed everything...
The darkness that followed the paid should have been terrifying. Instead, it wrapped around me like a blanket, soft and endless. For a moment, just a moment, I felt peace.
Then the interface materialised.
A somewhat translucent screen hummed to life before me, glowing with an otherworldly light, its mechanical purr disturbing the silence like nails on a chalkboard.
"Umm... hello?" My voice came out small, almost childlike, as I spoke into the void.
[WELCOME, USER. PLEASE SELECT YOUR ORIGIN.]
The words slammed into me. Cold and real.
I blinked, or at least tried to. Did I even have eyes anymore? My mind felt sluggish, waterlogged with the memory of those headlights. The crunch of metal. The moment of impact I shouldn't remember, but did seeming to drown everything else out.
"O-origin..." The word fell from my lips like a stone.
No. No, no, no. This was... I knew this. I'd read about this. Fantasy novels. Fanfiction binges at 3 AM. Power fantasies for people who had been reborn into another world!
"This can't be happening." My laugh came out strangled, manic. "Can it?"
But the interface hung there, patient and merciless, offering me choices I wasn't ready to make. Clans. Abilities. Jutsu. All laid out in a large and what seemed in-depth character creation system.
"Jutsu... Clans!" The recognition hit like the truck all over again. "Is this—is this Naruto?"
My hands... Did I have hands? Trembled as I read through the options. Uchiha. Senju. Uzumaki. Names I'd obsessed over as a kid, characters I'd debated with friends, powers I'd dreamed about having.
This was insane. This was impossible...
But the options stared back at me, indifferent to my disbelief as I read through each of them, one after the other.
Uchiha clan: Become a member of the Uchiha clan, gaining the bloodline, which will grant the user the sharingan and the ability to use fire style ninjutsu right away.
Senju Clan: Inherit increased strength and endurance, giving a boost to HP and life force. 50% Chance to use wood style.
Uzumaki Clan: Gain distinctive red hair and dramatically increased chakra reserves and life force. Also, start with Shadow Clone Jutsu.
Hyuga clan: The user will become a member of the Hyuga clan, getting the byakugan right off the bat. However, chance of being born to branch family 50%.
Nara clan: The user will become a member of the Nara clan, having access to the Nara clan techniques. They will also gain a larger boost to their intelligence.
Akimichi clan: The user will become a member of the Akimichi clan, having access to the Akimichi clan techniques. They will also gain a larger boost to their strength.
Yamanaka clan: The user will become a member of the Yamanaka clan, having access to the Yamanaka clan techniques. They will also gain a larger boost to their genjutsu ability.
Aburame clan: The user will become a member of the Aburame clan, having access to the Aburame clan techniques.
Inuzuka clan: The user will become a member of the Inuzuka clan, having access to the Inuzuka clan techniques. They also gain a large boost to their senses, such as smell and hearing and are granted a ninja hound companion.
No clan: If the user picks no clan, they will just be a normal shinobi with no special abilities. However, they will be given an extra skill at random.
Random: Leave it up to the system to decide an option for you. This option can be chosen upon death, regardless of whether it was chosen before.
System rules. Can only pick one clan at a time. Upon death, options will be locked for a length of time. Clan options are limited for now. Complete challenges to unlock more options.
Each description felt like a taunt. Like someone had reached into my memories and was dangling my childhood dreams in front of me while I stood at the edge of an abyss, trying to contemplate what was happening.
"I can only pick one..." My voice cracked. "And if I die, I get to pick another?"
The words tasted like ash. Die... But I'm already dead! And now this thing, this system, was talking about death like it was a game mechanic.
"What the fuck is going on here?!"
But there was no answer. Only silence. Just the hum. That awful, indifferent hum.
"This has to be some kind of sick joke!" I was shouting now, my voice echoing in the void. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with all of this?! It's so fucking random! It doesn't make sense! How is this even possible?!"
I wanted to pull my hair out. I wanted to scream until the darkness swallowed me whole. The information was too much. Too overwhelming, like a tidal wave of choices when I couldn't even process the fact that I was dead.
[TIME IS UP... RANDOM HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR YOU...]
"WHAT?!" Ice flooded my veins. "No! I didn't—I didn't want that!"
[RANDOM GENERATION IN PROGRESS... ENJOY YOUR GAME...]
"NO!" I lunged at the interface, but my hands passed through it like smoke. "I didn't pick that!"
[SELECTION CONFIRMED. INITIALIZING WORLD-DROP...]
"Please!" The word ripped out of me, raw and desperate. "I didn't choose! I need more time! I need to—"
[SELECTION COMPLETE. DROP LOCATION: KONOHA. RANK: CHUNIN. SPECIAL ABILITY: FIRE STYLE. STATS COMPLIED.]
Suddenly, everything went dark, and it felt as if my body was falling from the heavens themselves. The transition wasn't gentle either.
Reality slammed into me like a kick to the balls. Light seared my eyes. Sound battered my ears. Screaming, explosions, the roar of destruction. The smell hit next: ozone, burning cedar, and underneath it all, the copper tang of blood.
I was standing. How was I standing? My legs felt wrong, my balance off. I looked down at hands that weren't quite mine, dressed in a green flak jacket that weighed heavily on my shoulder. A kunai pouch hung at my hip, cold metal pressing against my leg with terrifying reality and danger.
"What... what is this..." The words barely formed.
"Hey! Sato!" A voice yelled towards me, not even giving me time to process.
The name meant nothing to me yet I turned, my body moving on instinct I didn't have a second ago.
A ninja with a jagged scar across his nose was sprinting toward me, his face twisted with urgency.
"Don't just stand there! The evacuation is falling apart! We need to move the civilians toward the bunkers before—"
"Sato?" My voice sounded foreign. "Wait, I'm not..."
It was then I saw him.
The words died in my throat. Time seemed to stop as my eyes traced the figure rising into the sky above the village—above Konoha. A man in a black cloak adorned with red clouds. His orange hair caught the light like fire. His eyes...
Those eyes.
Rippled. Purple. Deadly.
"No..." The word came out as a whimper. "No, no, no, no, NO!"
This wasn't the beginning. This wasn't the Academy. This wasn't Team 7 and bell tests and safe, predictable story start I'd read a hundred times.
This was the end.
Pain. The Six Paths. The destruction of Konoha.
And I was here. Right in the middle of it.
"This can't be..." My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might burst. "This isn't, I'm not supposed to..."
The world went silent.
Not quiet. Silent. A horrible, suffocating absence of sound that pressed against my eardrums like water at in the deep.
High above, the figure raised his arms. When he spoke, I didn't hear the words—I felt them, vibrating through my bones, echoing in my skull.
"You shall know pain... Shinra Tensei!"
Everything slowed down.
I saw it happen. The air itself seemed to ripple, reality distorting like heat waves on asphalt. Then the pressure hit—not like wind, but like the hand of God pressing down on the world. A child's foot on an ant. Me being the ant.
The ninja with the scarred nose exploded. Not dramatically. Not cinematically. One second he was there, mouth open in a warning I'd never hear. The next, he was gone—reduced to a red mist that painted the air for a fraction of a heartbeat before it too was blown away.
I tried to move. Tried to run. Tried to form a hand sign on pure instinct that belonged to this foreign body.
The building beneath me disintegrated. Stone turned to powder and the air itself seemed to crack.
Then the wave hit me.
Pain beyond comprehension. My bones didn't just break. They shattered, pulverised from the inside out. My organs liquefied. My skin tore. I tried to scream, but my lungs had already collapsed, my ribcage caved in like wet cardboard. The pain was almost unbearable if not for the momentary blip that it was.
I was dead... Again.
The village erased itself around me, stone by stone, life by life, until there was nothing but white light and agony and the horrible understanding that this was real.
Then, finally, darkness.
THE VOID...
[USER DECEASED. DEATH TOLL 1.]
I gasped, a wet rattling sound before I fell to my knees in the darkness.
The pain was gone, but I could still feel it. Phantom sensations of bones grinding to dust, of organs rupturing, of my body being unmade by sheer, incomprehensible force. The memories of what had just happened fresh in my mind.
"What—" I choked, clutching at a chest that was whole again, that shouldn't be whole, that couldn't possibly be... "What in the fuck was that?!"
I couldn't breathe. I was breathing, but I couldn't get enough air. My hands were shaking. I was shaking, trembling so hard I thought I might fall apart.
"I didn't even...I just, I was just..."
My stomach heaved. I vomited onto the dark ground, bile and terror spilling out of me in equal measure. The taste was real. The shaking was real.
But it was real... Just as the feeling of terror I knew was welling up inside of me.
The interface flickered back to life, its glow cold and indifferent.
[DEATH TOTAL: 1. PLEASE SELECT ANOTHER OPTION TO START AGAIN.]
The words hit me like a punch to the face.
Death total. One. Implying there would be more. Implying this was just the first.
"Is this..." I couldn't form the words. Couldn't process what was happening. "Is this really..."
The interface hummed, patient and merciless, waiting for me to choose again. With what looked like a clock on the side of the display, totalling only 30 seconds.
Waiting for me to die again.
"Oh god." The whisper escaped me, small and broken. "Oh god, what have I done? What is this? What is happening to me?!"
But the void offered no answers. Only choices. Only death.
Only the terrible, dawning realisation that this nightmare had just begun and if I didn't make a choice soon, this thing would chose for me...