1 The Most Important Meal of the Day

I kept hyper focus on the river's edge and the enormous bull elk who's spotted form barely entered into the perceivable by the unaugment human eye in the minor shafts of dawn's light breaking through the dense canopy. My partner Baru and I remained perfectly still as we waited, watched, our muscles tensing for action as we clung to the moss covered trunk of a gargantuan partially fallen tree. And there it came in the form of a great crocodile launching itself like lightning at the antlered megafauna.

In each of my hands rested solid steel javelins. Tremendously heavy, and far beyond the means of a mere man to hurl over the distance between us and the river below. I hurled both of them like a pair of streaking comets as Baru pounced, an oversized black and cream Malamute juvenile. The spears struck first, both taking the great beasts through the neck, the crocodile through the base of the skull even, and Baru bit into the darkly colored aquatic reptile's arm, pulling the creature to land with his supernatural strength.

The elk tried to leap away with the javelin in its neck and almost wrenched its head off for the trouble, collapsing bonelessly upon landing. Atop the fallen tree my hands came together with fingers entwined beside the fully extended indexes and thumbs, and in a blur of speed I arrived next to it. I hauled the great elk over my shoulders and Baru and I pulled the pair a few hundred yards from the water's edge.

Not that any location in this unnatural forest provided anything approaching safety, but the river cutting through it always trafficked both predators and prey, as our brief engagement proved. After depositing our spoils, I pulled the steel javelins out of them and stabbed them into the dirt for quick use on the scavengers undoubtedly on their way.

With a quick series of five hand signs, my palms ignited with blue chakra. These scalpels required no fine sharpening and honing, only precise focus, and cut only what I intended to cut. A hunter's dream tool. The energy blades sliced open the animals for field dressing with ease and peeled the hides off them. With some cable run through the ring pommels of my kunai, I got the enormous beasts strung up for a quick butchering.

A pack of lean wolves came to the party first, and I threw them the offal, only keeping the brains, livers, tongues, and hearts for my own use. They happily took the offering and left to dine in peace. Filthy fucking animals. Anyone ascribing 'nobility' to wolves deserves the terror they inflict on them.

Super strength, speed, dexterity and the monomolecular sharpness of my scalpels rendered the elk and croc down in short order and I stretched out a wide scroll with many storage seals drawn onto it. Unrolling to an unused section I carried my kills over and sealed them up while adding several designations such as muscle meat, organ meat, skeleton, and hide. I left out a generous portion of liver and back strap and from a much smaller scroll I unsealed a portable grill and cast iron frying pan.

Baru dug us a nice fire pit and ringed it with river rocks before filling it with kindling and wood. I set up the grill and lit it with a single tiger sign and the Fire Spit Jutsu. I oiled up the pan and a second before loading up the pair frying the meat in one and chopped potatoes, onions, and mushrooms in the other.

I ran a slightly clawed over Baru's ears as we watched our fresh kill turn into breakfast, but a scent carried on the wind broke the fascination. The beast swaggered into the clearing just after everything finished cooking and we pulled the pans off the fire.

"You're not even going to last long enough to waste time for the food to cool." I told the polar bear sized tiger that sauntered up like he owned the place.

A remarkable attitude for a creature inhabiting the Forest of Death, though considering the amount of chaff that gets separated from the wheat in this particular location, fear of shinobi never set in like it should.

Over my shoulder I pulled a long club of steel from its harness, the studded metal octagon wielded traditionally by Oni and by Samurai that really want to smash people to death rested on my shoulder as the tiger pounced, its face full of fury and its clawed paws outstretched.

It flailed in the air as Baru and I leapt to the defense of our breakfast, trying to get its claws dagger like claws on target to shred us, but Baru slammed into one arm, knocking it into the other as I brought the kanabo crunching down on its neck, snapping the every bone it came into contact with and slamming the beast into the ground.

Baru and I landed and examined our kill and I ran my hands over its luxurious pelt before pulling the beast's lips back to see its fangs better and hefting a paw to check its claws.

"We don't have time to get to you before we gotta run to school, but today is the last day of testing then we have a whole two weeks off to work on you. You're going to be Lord Fluff Fluff." I whispered to the dead animal.

I unfolded a special section of my sealing scroll made specifically for storing the bodies of giant animals. The 'centerfold' section of my wonderous storage device.

With that finished Baru and I dug into our hearty meal, polishing it off and cleaning up to make the unfamiliar trek to the Konoha Ninja Academy, home of the lowest functioning training program in fiction. Truly the village hidden in the leaves created an artform out of poor performance in this most important artery for the Konoha Ninja Corps, as only one in three graduates from the program are deemed acceptable for further training by the elite Jonin Corps, and the historically hardest test delivered by these Jonin is a basic test of the indoctrination into the core value of the KNC, teamwork.

These children come from the ninja village with the highest population in all the Elemental Nations. The village that won three world wars against all the other villages based on the strength of its small unit tactics.

Fucking spectacular.

Not that any of them could be expected to know that given that Sakura Haruno, the top scoring student canonically did not know which countries contain ninja villages. Arguably one of the most important things for a ninja leaving the village for the first time to know by heart going hand in hand with the current disposition of these villages and historical grievances.

Just like Konoha made an artform out of failing to teach its students, I'd made an artform out of not attending the Academy. You see, I happen to be a full grown adult from another world in this body, and as such I can look at a course syllabus at the start of the year, and calculate that as long as I score above a ninety on all my end of the year exams I can pass each year without attending any other class sessions.

And so I did that. Year after year. Because I am an adult taking tests meant to be passed by barely literate thirteen year olds.

Doing so freed up a lot of time working on being a real ninja.

Baru and I arrived at the enormous white plastered Academy sat at the foot of the Hokage Mountain, a lovely rendition of Mount Rushmore containing the faces of three of the most badass men to ever walk the face of the earth… and Tobirama who did some stuff then got his shit kicked in by Kinkaku and Ginkaku, thus losing all respect accrued during his time on this earth.

I paused, taking a knee and bowing my head, sending up a prayer to the Great Dog Lords of the Past to spare me the indignity of losing my life to fucktards like Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Let me be killed by someone cool like Madara, or the Raikage, even the Sound Team in the upcoming Chunin Exams operated with a level of deadly and sinister dignity worthy of respect when compared to absolute assclowns like Kinkaku and Ginkaku.

Or worse, getting murked by some lazy bastard like Shikamaru or Darui. I worked too damn hard each day to get slain by people like that.

Also spare me from Ninja Jesus Morons like Harashima and Naruto…

Or emo wank stains like Obito and Sasuke.

God, at this point I might be the only guy cool enough to end my life.

Dearest Dog Lords of the Past, let me die from suffocation via Anko sitting on my face like a chair.

Nailed it.

My day's spiritual quota met, I stepped into the Academy and got to class.

"Kiba Inuzuka! You're late!" shouted my 'Sensei' Iruka Umino, a mid twenties man of eternal Chunin status.

A man who demonstrated the most rounded skill set among any Chunin in Naruto's run time, with search response times that put to shame any ninja hounds and 'all seeing eyes'. The man with the greatest emotional intelligence in the setting. When the whole village fails, Iruka stands up. And after all that he will forever be the guy who lost to the first throw away villain in the series.

RIP Iruka's respect, you died before we could ever know you.

"Don't think I didn't see you praying outside!" Iruka huffed, "Maybe if you spent more time in the class room you wouldn't feel the need for divine intervention!"

I cocked my head back in surprise at the man, "Iruka 'Sensei', I'd never pray for help with a test. I don't need it. I was praying for Anko Mitarashi to come sit on my face."

"Ghurk!" the man physically choked and had to pound his chest to free up the spit he swallowed from hearing my response.

"Just take a seat!" the man yelled as he finally caught his breathe then muttered under his breath, "You and me both, ya foul mouthed brat."

"Don't worry everyone! I am here!" Naruto Uzumaki shouted as he entered the room behind me.

Oh yay. Ninja Jesus is here.