The morning sun rose over Konohagakure, painting the village in shades of orange and gold. Birds sang. Children laughed on their way to the Academy. Somewhere, a dog barked happily.
And in a small apartment on the edge of the village, Roku Tanaka stared at his forty-seventh Academy failure notice with the resigned acceptance of a man who had long since made peace with his complete and utter incompetence.
"Failed: Taijutsu. Failed: Ninjutsu. Failed: Genjutsu. Failed: Written Exam. Failed: Kunai Throwing. Failed: Basic Chakra Control. Failed: Walking in a Straight Line During the Obstacle Course."
Roku sighed, scratching his perpetually messy brown hair. "I didn't even know 'Walking in a Straight Line' was a graded category."
He was twenty-three years old.
The average Academy student graduated at twelve.
Somewhere in the administrative offices of Konoha, there was an entire filing cabinet dedicated solely to his failure notices. The clerk responsible for his records had developed a drinking problem. Three different Hokages had signed off on his failures—the Third, the Fourth (briefly, before dying), and the Third again (who had come out of retirement and immediately regretted it upon seeing Roku's file).
The current Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had personally written "HOW IS HE STILL TRYING?" in red ink on his latest evaluation.
Roku appreciated the old man's investment in his education.
"Well," Roku said, standing up and stretching, "forty-eighth time's the charm!"
He meant it. He genuinely, sincerely meant it. This was not sarcasm. Roku Tanaka had the unshakeable optimism of a golden retriever and approximately the same level of self-awareness.
The walk to the Academy was pleasant. Roku waved to the shopkeepers, who waved back with expressions of mixed pity and bewilderment. He'd been making this walk for over a decade. He was a fixture of the morning commute, as reliable as the sunrise and twice as confusing.
"Good morning, Roku-kun!"
The voice came from his left. Roku turned to see Ayame, the ramen girl from Ichiraku, beaming at him with a smile that could power the entire village's electrical grid. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and she was clutching a bento box wrapped in a cloth printed with little hearts.
"Oh, hey, Ayame-san! Isn't it a bit early for ramen?"
"This isn't ramen, silly! I made you a bento! For your exam today!" She thrust the box toward him, her blush intensifying. "I put extra tomatoes in it because I know you like them, and I shaped the rice balls like kunai because I thought it might bring you luck, and I stayed up until three in the morning making sure everything was perfect because I—"
"Wow, that's really nice of you!" Roku took the bento with a genuine smile. "You're such a good friend, Ayame-san!"
Somewhere in the universe, a romantic subplot died screaming.
Ayame's eye twitched. "Friend. Yes. Friend. That's... that's what I am."
"The best kind of friend! One who gives me free food!" Roku was already walking away, completely missing the way Ayame slumped against a nearby wall like a puppet with its strings cut.
"I made that bento in the shape of a HEART," she whispered to no one. "The rice balls were KUNAI because Cupid's ARROWS. How did he not—"
She took a deep breath.
"Next time. Next time I'll be more obvious."
(She would not be more obvious. She would, in fact, commission a skywriter to spell out "I LOVE YOU ROKU" over the village in three months' time. Roku would assume it was a new cloud formation.)
Roku made it exactly fourteen steps before he was intercepted again.
This time, it was Anko Mitarashi.
The Special Jounin stepped out of an alleyway with all the grace of a predator stalking its prey. She was wearing her usual mesh bodysuit and trench coat combo, and her grin showed entirely too many teeth.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't my favorite little failure."
"Good morning, Anko-san!"
"I heard you're taking the exam again today." She sidled up next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his. "You know, if you fail again, I could always... take you under my wing. Private lessons. Just the two of us. In the Forest of Death. Alone."
"That sounds dangerous!"
"That's the point, handsome."
"I appreciate the offer, but I'm definitely going to pass this time!" Roku nodded firmly. "My chakra control has improved a lot!"
(It had not. If anything, it had gotten worse. His last attempt at the Clone Jutsu had produced a single clone that was somehow inside-out. The medical ninja who witnessed it was still in therapy.)
Anko's eye twitched. "Roku. Sweetheart. I am literally offering to—"
"Oh, is that Kurenai-san? KURENAI-SAN! GOOD MORNING!"
Anko watched him jog away toward the approaching Jounin with an expression that wavered between homicidal and heartbroken.
"He's lucky he's pretty," she muttered, before vanishing in a swirl of leaves to go scream into a training dummy for an hour.
Kurenai Yuhi was having a normal morning.
This was about to change.
"Roku-san," she said, her red eyes warm but exasperated. "Are you taking the exam again?"
"Yep! Forty-eighth time!"
"That's... admirable." She paused. "In a concerning way."
"Thanks!"
Kurenai had first met Roku during one of her training sessions with Team 8. He had wandered into their training ground completely by accident, tried to perform a substitution jutsu to escape an embarrassing situation, and had somehow substituted himself with a boulder from the Land of Iron.
Not a boulder FROM the Land of Iron that happened to be in Konoha.
A boulder CURRENTLY IN the Land of Iron.
The diplomatic incident had taken three weeks to resolve.
And yet, looking at his earnest, handsome face and genuinely kind smile, Kurenai found herself saying: "Would you like me to walk you to the Academy?"
"Sure! That would be great!"
They walked in comfortable silence for about thirty seconds.
"You know," Kurenai said, "if you ever wanted to discuss genjutsu theory, I could—"
"Oh, I'm terrible at genjutsu!"
"I know. I thought maybe I could help. Privately. At my apartment. Over dinner."
"That's really nice, but I don't want to impose!"
"You wouldn't be—"
"Oh, we're here! Thanks for walking with me, Kurenai-san! You're such a good friend!"
Kurenai stood frozen as Roku bounded up the Academy steps, waving cheerfully.
"Friend," she repeated, her eye developing a twitch that would become legendary. "He said friend."
From a nearby rooftop, Anko materialized.
"He called you friend too, huh?"
"He called me friend."
"Welcome to the club. Meetings are on Thursdays. We drink heavily."
The Academy classroom was exactly as Roku remembered it.
Mostly because he'd been sitting in it for over a decade.
The current batch of students—twelve-year-olds, fresh-faced and full of potential—stared at him with a mixture of confusion and awe. Their instructor, Iruka Umino, looked like a man who had seen too much and was about to see more.
"Roku-san," Iruka said, his voice carefully neutral. "You're... here again."
"Sure am, Iruka-sensei!"
"You know you're older than me, right?"
"Respect for teachers is important!"
Iruka's eye twitched. He'd been Roku's instructor for the last six years. He'd watched this man fail every conceivable test in every conceivable way. He'd seen Roku try to do a simple transformation jutsu and accidentally create a perfect replica of the First Hokage that lectured everyone about the Will of Fire for six hours before dispelling.
He'd seen Roku attempt a basic kunai throw and somehow hit a target that was behind him, through a wall, across the street, and in the Hokage's office.
The Third Hokage still had that kunai. He'd framed it.
"Just... take your seat, Roku-san."
Roku nodded happily and made his way to the back of the classroom, completely oblivious to the way every female student (and several female instructors who had "happened" to be walking past the classroom) watched him go.
He sat down next to a window, pulled out Ayame's bento, and began eating the heart-shaped rice balls with absolutely no awareness of their romantic implications.
"Excuse me."
Roku looked up.
Standing next to his desk was a girl with bright pink hair and green eyes. She looked nervous, her hands clasped in front of her.
"Hi! I'm Roku. Are you new?"
"I'm... I'm Sakura Haruno. I'm twelve. I'm in this class."
"Nice to meet you, Sakura-chan!"
Sakura had not intended to talk to the strange old man who kept failing the Academy. She had intended to stare longingly at Sasuke Uchiha like every other day.
But Roku had smiled at her.
And it had been a genuinely kind smile, completely free of judgment or mockery.
And now she was having feelings that she didn't entirely understand.
"I just wanted to say... good luck on the exam today."
"Thanks! That's really nice of you!"
Sakura fled back to her seat, her face the same color as her hair.
What was that? she thought frantically. I love Sasuke-kun! I definitely love Sasuke-kun! That weird warm feeling was just... indigestion! From breakfast! Yes!
She glanced back at Roku, who was now attempting to eat with chopsticks and somehow failing at that too.
...He's kind of handsome though.
NO! SASUKE-KUN!
But he smiled at me so nicely...
SASUKE-KUN SASUKE-KUN SASUKE-KUN—
"Sakura, are you okay? Your face is doing something weird."
"I'M FINE INO-PIG!"
The written exam went about as well as expected.
Which is to say, it went terribly.
Roku stared at the first question with the intensity of a man facing his mortal enemy.
"Question 1: Explain the basic principles of chakra molding and how it relates to jutsu execution."
Roku knew the answer to this. He'd studied it. He'd studied it forty-seven times. He'd had private tutors, group tutors, tutors who specialized in teaching particularly slow students, and one tutor who had been a retired ANBU and had resorted to genjutsu-based learning techniques.
(That tutor had quit after Roku's chakra had somehow disrupted the genjutsu and shown everyone within a fifty-meter radius the tutor's most embarrassing memories. The fallout had been spectacular.)
Roku put his pencil to paper.
And wrote:
"Chakra is the combination of physical and spiritual energy, molded together through hand signs to produce jutsu. The balance between physical and spiritual energy determines the nature and power of the jutsu."
This was correct.
This was exactly correct.
Roku beamed proudly at his answer and moved on to question two.
"Question 2: What are the three basic jutsu taught at the Academy?"
Easy.
"Transformation Jutsu, Clone Jutsu, and Substitution Jutsu."
Also correct.
By the end of the written exam, Roku had answered every single question perfectly. His handwriting was neat. His explanations were thorough. His analysis of tactical scenarios was actually quite insightful.
Iruka collected the exams with a sense of mounting dread.
He looked at Roku's paper.
It was perfect.
The written exam was perfect.
"This is wrong," Iruka whispered. "This is against the natural order."
He looked closer.
In the corner of the page, Roku had doodled a small cartoon of himself giving a thumbs up.
The doodle winked at Iruka.
That wasn't possible. Drawings couldn't wink. Drawings were static images that obeyed the laws of physics and reality.
Iruka looked at the doodle.
The doodle looked back at Iruka.
The doodle gave him a thumbs up.
Iruka quietly put the exam face-down on the stack and decided he needed a vacation.
"Alright, class! Time for the practical examination!"
The students filed outside to the training grounds, buzzing with nervous energy. Roku followed along happily, completely unaware of the impending chaos he was about to unleash.
"We'll be testing three jutsu today," Iruka announced. "The Transformation Jutsu, the Clone Jutsu, and a basic offensive technique of your choice. You'll be graded on execution, chakra control, and overall proficiency."
The students went one by one.
Sasuke Uchiha performed flawlessly, his transformation perfect, his clones precise, his fireball jutsu sending a controlled blast of flame across the training ground.
"Excellent work, Sasuke."
"Hn."
Naruto Uzumaki went next. His transformation turned him into a nude woman with clouds covering the important bits. His clones were pale, sickly things that collapsed immediately. His "offensive technique" was throwing a kunai that somehow curved back around and nearly hit Iruka in the face.
"NARUTO!"
"I thought I had it that time!"
Sakura Haruno performed adequately. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. Solid passing marks all around.
And then:
"Roku Tanaka!"
The crowd fell silent.
Students from other classes had gathered. Jounin had appeared on nearby rooftops. Someone had set up a betting pool. The current odds on "catastrophic incident" were 1:3.
Roku walked to the center of the training ground with the confidence of a man who had absolutely no idea what was about to happen.
"Alright, Roku-san. First, the Transformation Jutsu. Please transform into me."
Roku nodded. He clasped his hands together in the proper sign.
He focused on his chakra.
He thought of Iruka.
He—
Later, witnesses would describe what happened next in hushed, reverent tones. Some would call it a miracle. Some would call it a disaster. One particularly poetic Jounin would call it "the moment the universe realized it had been doing things wrong and decided to overcorrect."
Roku performed the Transformation Jutsu.
And transformed into the Sage of Six Paths.
Not an illusion of the Sage of Six Paths. Not a facsimile or an approximation.
The actual, literal Sage of Six Paths, complete with Rinnegan eyes, the distinctive horn-like protrusions, and an aura of divine power that made every ninja within a hundred meters fall to their knees.
"WHAT IN THE—" Iruka started.
"Hmm," the Sage said, looking down at his hands. "This is unexpected. I was enjoying my eternal rest."
The Sage looked around at the assembled ninja, most of whom had expressions ranging from "confused" to "having an existential crisis."
"I see the village is still standing. That's good. The Will of Fire persists." He nodded sagely. "Remember, young ones: ninja are those who endure. Keep enduring."
And then, with a soft pop, Roku was back.
He was still smiling.
"How was that, Iruka-sensei? I was trying to transform into you, but I might have messed up the chakra flow a little—"
"ROKU WHAT WAS THAT?!"
"What was what?"
Iruka opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You... you just... the Sage of..."
"Was my transformation off? I can try again!"
"NO!" Twenty voices shouted in unison.
From the rooftops, Kakashi Hatake lowered his book, his single visible eye very, very wide.
"Well," he said to no one in particular. "That's new."
"The Clone Jutsu is next."
Iruka's voice was higher than normal. His hands were shaking. He had the look of a man who had stared into the abyss and the abyss had waved cheerfully back.
"Sure thing, Iruka-sensei!"
Roku clasped his hands together.
The proper technique for the Clone Jutsu was simple: mold chakra, form the hand signs, project an illusion of yourself.
Roku had never managed to do this correctly.
His clones were always wrong. Too tall, too short, too purple, too on-fire, too inside-out. One memorable attempt had produced a clone that spoke only in ancient Sumerian and tried to write a constitution for a new country.
This time, Roku focused harder than he'd ever focused before. He thought about clones. He thought about making exact copies. He thought about—
The air around him shattered.
Not metaphorically. The air literally broke, like glass, and through the cracks stepped...
Clones.
Thousands of them.
They weren't Shadow Clones. They weren't regular clones. They were something else entirely—solid, real, and radiating enough chakra to power the village for a year.
And they weren't copies of Roku.
They were copies of every previous Hokage.
Hashirama Senju stood at the front, arms crossed, grinning broadly. "Ah! It's good to be back! The village looks wonderful!"
Tobirama Senju appeared next to him, looking significantly less pleased. "Brother, we're supposed to be dead."
"Details, Tobirama! Look at this young man!" Hashirama gestured at Roku. "Such potential! Such spirit! He reminds me of myself as a young ninja!"
"You were never this incompetent."
"I was plenty incompetent! Remember when I accidentally created the Forest of Death by sneezing too hard?"
"I try not to."
The Third Hokage—Hiruzen Sarutobi's clone—looked at the real Hiruzen Sarutobi, who had appeared on the scene and was now having a silent breakdown.
"So," the clone said. "We've aged."
"WE'RE THE SAME PERSON!"
"Yes, but have you considered: we've aged very gracefully."
The Fourth Hokage—Minato Namikaze—appeared in a flash of yellow. He looked around, blinked, and immediately zeroed in on Naruto.
"Is that... is that my son?"
Naruto, who had been watching the proceedings with his jaw on the ground, made a sound like a deflating balloon.
"Your... your what now?"
"Oh no," Minato said, his expression shifting to alarm. "Oh no, did no one tell him? Did my sacrifice mean nothing? Is my son an ORPHAN who DOESN'T KNOW WHO HIS FATHER IS?"
"Dad?"
"SON!"
They embraced. It was very emotional.
Iruka, meanwhile, had simply sat down on the ground and started reciting multiplication tables to himself. It was a coping mechanism.
"So!" Hashirama said, clapping his hands together. "Who summoned us? Was it a forbidden jutsu? A dark ritual? Some kind of temporal accident?"
Everyone pointed at Roku.
Hashirama looked at the cheerful, utterly confused young man who had somehow violated every law of life, death, and chakra.
"Him?"
"I was trying to make a regular clone," Roku explained. "I think I put too much chakra in."
"You think you—" Hashirama started laughing. It was the laugh of a man who had founded a village, fought a war, died, and been resurrected, only to discover that the universe had a sense of humor. "I LIKE THIS KID!"
"We should probably dispel," Tobirama said flatly. "We're disrupting the natural order."
"Oh, let's stay for a bit! I want to see how the village has grown! Sarutobi, how's my granddaughter?"
The real Hiruzen made another noise of existential despair.
The Hokage clones lasted for three hours. They toured the village. They critiqued the architecture. Hashirama cried at least four times. Tobirama tried to assassinate three people out of habit but was stopped each time. Minato had a long, heartfelt conversation with Naruto that left both of them sobbing. The Third's clone got into an argument with the real Third about pension reform.
Eventually, they faded away, leaving behind only memories, emotional trauma, and a VERY confused Naruto who now knew the entire truth about his parentage.
"So," Iruka said, his voice hollow. "That was the Clone Jutsu portion of the exam."
"Did I pass?" Roku asked hopefully.
Iruka stared at him for a long, long moment.
"Let's... let's just move on to the offensive technique."
This was a mistake.
Everyone knew this was a mistake.
The Jounin on the rooftops had sent for reinforcements. ANBU had been deployed. The Third Hokage was personally present, clutching his pipe like a lifeline.
"Roku-san," Iruka said, and his voice cracked only a little, "please demonstrate a basic offensive technique."
"Okay! I've been practicing the Fireball Jutsu!"
Somewhere, a Jounin whimpered.
The Fireball Jutsu was a C-rank technique, typically too advanced for Academy students. But Roku had been at the Academy for eleven years. He'd had time to pick things up.
"I'm not very good at it," Roku admitted, "but I'll do my best!"
He formed the hand signs.
Tiger. He was pretty sure it was Tiger. It might have been Horse. He always got those confused.
Ram? Monkey? Were those the same thing?
Whatever. He was sure it would be fine.
Roku took a deep breath.
And exhaled.
From a distance, witnesses would later say, it looked almost beautiful.
The flames that erupted from Roku's mouth were not orange. They were not red. They were white—pure, blinding white—and they moved with a purpose that suggested intelligence.
The "fireball" was approximately the size of the Hokage Monument.
It sailed through the air, rising up and up, and then—to everyone's relief—arced away from the village, heading toward the vast forest that surrounded Konoha.
And then it hit something.
And then the sky broke.
The white flames connected with... something. Something invisible, something that had been lurking in the space between dimensions, something that had no business being anywhere near a ninja academy exam.
A rift tore open in the sky, and from it fell a creature.
It was massive—easily fifty meters tall—with a serpentine body covered in black scales and eyes that burned with malevolent intelligence. Its very presence warped reality, causing the grass beneath it to wither and die.
"WHAT THE F—" someone started.
"FINALLY," the creature spoke, its voice echoing across multiple dimensions. "I HAVE BREACHED THE BARRIER BETWEEN WORLDS. NOW I SHALL—"
It looked down.
It saw a training ground full of terrified Academy students.
It saw the Hokage and his forces preparing for battle.
It saw a cheerful young man with messy brown hair waving at it.
"WHAT."
"Sorry about that!" Roku called up. "I was trying to do a Fireball Jutsu and I think I aimed wrong! Are you okay? That looked like it hurt!"
The creature—a primordial horror from the space between realities—stared at the tiny human who had just casually torn a hole through its dimensional barrier and apologized for the inconvenience.
"YOU... YOU DID THIS?"
"Yeah! Again, really sorry! I'm not very good at chakra control!"
The creature was old.
It had existed before the elemental nations. Before humanity. Before the stars themselves had formed.
It had consumed worlds. It had ended civilizations. It had been worshipped as a god and feared as a demon.
And this... this smiling idiot had just punched through its dimensional defenses like they were wet paper.
With a failed jutsu.
"I..." the creature started.
It thought about its life.
It thought about the eons it had spent gathering power, preparing for this moment, planning its invasion of this reality.
It thought about how casually, how accidentally, this human had shattered its plans.
"I need to reconsider some things."
And with that, the primordial horror turned around, crawled back through the dimensional rift, and closed it behind itself.
A moment of absolute silence descended on the training grounds.
Then:
"So," Roku said, "did I pass the offensive technique portion?"
The Hokage's office was silent.
Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his desk, smoking his pipe with the intensity of a man trying to achieve enlightenment through tobacco alone. Across from him sat Iruka, Kakashi, and—inexplicably—Anko, who had invited herself.
On the desk was Roku's exam results.
Written: Perfect.
Transformation: ??????
Clone: ??????
Offensive Technique: ??????
"We need to discuss this," Hiruzen said.
"With respect, Hokage-sama," Iruka replied, "I don't think there's anything to discuss. He literally cannot pass. He didn't perform a single jutsu correctly."
"He performed jutsu that exceeded the capabilities of most Kage," Kakashi pointed out. "The Transformation didn't just create an illusion—it actually summoned the consciousness of the Sage of Six Paths."
"That's not what the exam tests for!"
"Maybe it should."
"The Clone Jutsu brought back four Hokages," Anko added, grinning. "That's not nothing. If we could weaponize that—"
"We are NOT weaponizing the resurrection of dead leaders!"
"Why not? Seems useful."
Hiruzen held up a hand.
"The issue," he said slowly, "is that Roku Tanaka represents an unprecedented phenomenon. He cannot perform jutsu correctly. This is established fact. But whenever he attempts jutsu, the results are... catastrophic. In a beneficial way. Usually."
"The fireball," Kakashi said. "It tore through dimensional barriers and revealed a primordial entity that none of us knew existed."
"An entity that RETREATED after seeing Roku," Anko said gleefully. "A god-level threat said 'nope' and went home. That has to count for something."
"He was AIMING for a C-rank jutsu!"
"And he got a... what would you even rate that? SS-rank? Universe-rank?"
Hiruzen puffed on his pipe.
"Here's what we're going to do," he said finally. "Roku Tanaka will receive... a conditional pass."
Iruka's eye twitched. "A conditional pass?"
"He will be classified as a Genin. He will be placed on a team. However, his missions will be... carefully monitored. We need to understand what he's capable of."
"Who's going to be his Jounin-sensei?" Kakashi asked, very carefully not volunteering.
Hiruzen smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
"Why, Kakashi, how generous of you to offer."
"I absolutely did not—"
"It's settled then! Kakashi Hatake will be the Jounin-sensei for Team 7, consisting of Sasuke Uchiha, Sakura Haruno, Naruto Uzumaki, and Roku Tanaka."
"That's four students. Teams are three."
"Consider it a challenge."
Kakashi's single visible eye conveyed depths of betrayal that poets would struggle to capture.
"I hate you," he said quietly.
"That's fair," Hiruzen agreed.
Outside the Hokage Tower, Roku was celebrating.
"I PASSED! I FINALLY PASSED!"
He was surrounded.
Ayame had appeared with a congratulatory bowl of ramen. Kurenai had shown up with flowers. Anko—who had snuck out of the meeting early—was offering to take him out drinking. A group of Academy students were staring at him with something approaching worship. Three ANBU agents were failing to remain hidden as they "casually" observed him.
And in the crowd, a woman with long black hair and pale eyes watched with interest.
Hyuuga Hinata would later insist that she had been there to observe Naruto. This was a lie. She would also insist that the warm feeling in her chest was just indigestion.
This was also a lie.
Roku smiled at everyone, completely oblivious to the romantic chaos blooming around him.
"Thanks, everyone! I couldn't have done it without all of you!"
"I literally just brought you ramen," Ayame muttered. "You literally could have done it without me."
"But the ramen was emotional support!"
Ayame's heart grew three sizes that day.
So did Kurenai's.
So did Anko's, though she would deny it violently.
So did, inexplicably, the hearts of seventeen other women who had been present for the exam, despite having never spoken to Roku before.
There was something about him.
Something warm.
Something genuine.
Something that made people want to be near him, even when he was accidentally summoning dead Hokages or punching holes in reality.
"This is the best day of my life!" Roku declared.
Somewhere in a dimension between dimensions, a primordial horror shuddered.
It didn't know why.
It just knew that something terrible was coming.
Something cheerful.
Something with really, really bad chakra control.
END CHAPTER 1
Next Chapter: "My First C-Rank Mission Accidentally Became an S-Rank Diplomatic Incident"
Preview:
"Roku, all you had to do was deliver a scroll."
"I did deliver it! ...To the wrong country. By accident. Through a method that violated three treaties and possibly invented a new form of space-time ninjutsu."
"The Kazekage is demanding your head."
"Is that bad?"
"No, Roku. He wants to give you an award. HE LITERALLY WANTS TO GIVE YOU HIS HAT."