The pain came first. Not the sharp, definitive pain of the sword's blade digging into his ribs, but a dull, penetrating pain that coursed through every muscle as if he were being torn apart from the inside. Kenji "The Hawk" Tanaka tried to open his eyes and only managed a blurry burst of light that made his skull recoil.
Hospital? Prison? he thought, his mind clouded by the last memory: the warm blood gushing from his chest, the smiling face of Sugimoto, his second-in-command, and the cold concrete against his cheek. Betrayal. A fucking stray bullet, but with a name.
But the smell… that smell wasn't of antiseptic or cell sweat. It was metallic, thick, sweetish. The smell of blood in bulk. He knew it all too well.
He forced his eyelids shut. The light from a split paper lantern flickered across a dark, beamed wooden ceiling. He turned his head, a movement that sent a terrible crack through his neck. And he saw him.
A man, with the same dark, straight hair that now fell across his own vision, lay beside him. His throat was slashed from ear to ear, his glazed gaze fixed on the ceiling. Beyond him, the silhouette of a woman, sprawled in a pool that slowly spread across the tatami mats.
A hit. Clean. Professional. Two targets, neutralized in their lair.
The Yakuza's instinct assessed the scene before terror, or compassion, could even take root. But something didn't add up. The dead men's clothes… were strange, like a casual yukata. And the proportions of the room, of his own hands raised in front of his face… were tiny. A child's hands.
A brutal dizziness shook him. A torrent of ghostly images, without order or context, flooded his mind: a red and white fan, red eyes swirling with black, the empty gaze of a young man with scars on his cheek beneath a full moon. A name whispered with reverential fear: Itachi.
Naruto.
The word, plucked from the memories of a past life spent more devoted to anime than to business in his spare time, resonated like a gong in his head.
This is… the Uchiha clan massacre.
The revelation didn't come with panic, but with a cold calculation that gripped him. If this was the night of the attack, the assassin, Uchiha Itachi, the Kage-level monster with that damned Sharingan, could still be nearby. And Konoha, the village, would be about to send in its cleaners, the ANBU.
Move. Now.
Ignoring the pain that screamed in every nerve, he tried to get up. His body didn't respond like that of a 28-year-old man, muscular and weathered. He was weak, small, clumsy. When he tried to push himself up with his arm, it gave way and he collapsed back onto the cold, damp tatami.
Frustration, an old acquaintance, gnawed at his insides. Then, from the depths of that dying body, something responded.
It wasn't muscle strength. It was something deeper, a warm current that surged from the center of his stomach, flowing along invisible pathways beneath his skin. He felt it burning in veins that weren't veins. Chakra. He recognized it instantly, not from experience, but from a thousand hours of episodes watched on a screen. Physical and spiritual energy combined.
So that's what it feels like? he thought, with a flicker of macabre fascination.
He focused all his willpower, the same will he used to remain impassive while collecting a debt, on guiding that heat to his arm. It wasn't a molding, it was a brute command, an injection of pure willpower.
A crackle of raw energy, invisible but distorting the air like the heat on asphalt in summer, enveloped his member. The pain lessened slightly. With a grunt that came out like a child's whimper, he pushed himself up and managed to stand, wobbly like a fawn.
He looked down. He was wearing a short T-shirt stained with red. He had no visible injuries. A non-lethal blow, or poisoning. The boy died of fright, or the shock stopped his heart. And I… restarted it.
There was no time for anything else. He heard distant noises in the silent street; they weren't shouts, they were stealthy, quick footsteps, multiplying. The cleaners were arriving.
His gaze swept the room. In a corner, next to a kotatsu, he saw a small backpack and a canteen. Treasures. He pounced on them with the desperate clumsiness of his new body, filled the canteen from a still-dripping tap in the tiny kitchen, and slung the backpack over his shoulder.
One last look at the bodies of his "parents" in this life. He felt nothing. Only a professional appreciation for Itachi's work. He cleaned the house. I am the trash left outside the bin.
The bathroom window was small, perfect for a five-year-old. He opened it with sounds that seemed deafening and slipped out into the cold Konoha night.
The air stung his face. The Uchiha District, usually proud and bustling, was a silent graveyard. Streetlights cast long shadows in shapes he didn't want to identify. From his new, smaller stature, the world was a canyon of dark alleyways and closed doors.
He ran. Or tried to. His legs had no stamina. The chakra he had used was already dissipating, leaving him even weaker. He knew, from memories of the anime, that the village barrier was impenetrable. His only chance was to hide inside Konoha, in its depths, until he understood the rules of this deadly game.
After what felt like hours, but was only minutes of agonizing progress, he found what he was looking for: a warehouse area near what, in his memories as a spectator, had been the market. A half-collapsed shed, with loose planks. He squeezed through an opening and plunged into the darkness, amidst the smell of rotting wood and earth.
The canteen was his first loot. He drank greedily, the cold water partially cleansing the taste of blood in his throat. He took a deep breath, suppressing the tremors of shock, fatigue, and lingering adrenaline.
Here he was. Kenji Tanaka, former low-level Yakuza, now a five-year-old Uchiha child, the sole unwanted survivor of Konoha's greatest internal purge. He had the knowledge of an anime fanatic about a world that had suddenly become terrifyingly real. He had a weak, damaged body. And he had chakra.
He raised a trembling hand to his face. In the gloom, he tried to focus again. Not in a jutsu, that was ridiculous. In its most basic sense. Control. The chakra responded, a faint thread of heat coursing through his palm, erratic and unstable.
A crooked smile, too mature for that childlike face, touched his lips.
In the Tokyo underworld, he had risen from nothing with cunning and violence. Konoha was simply a new district, with different rules. And chakra… chakra was the ultimate weapon. He didn't need to be a hero. Not even a loyal ninja.
He just needed to be the last man standing.
Outside, in the distance, the wail of an alarm siren was heard for the first time. The village had just "discovered" the tragedy.
The Ghost of the Yakuza had arrived. And Konoha had no idea of the kind of infection it had just incubated within its very core.