Akira’s morning started out bad.
It was the day of the academy entrance exam, the one day he dreaded since arriving in this world.
At the breakfast table, he had a look of despair on his face, completely contrary to Kushina’s.
She was looking forward to school life with both Akira and Hana, and she was also eager to make new friends.
Unfortunately she didn’t know that discrimination was basically the norm here at Konoha.
“Hey, hey Akira. Do you think there’ll be people with different hair colours like ours? Or will there be people with different eyes like Hana. Oohh or maybe the teacher will look like a toad, where pink and have a high pitched voice!” Kushina said, all in one breath.
‘What’s up with that last one?’ Akira thought, caught completely of guard.
“Yeah.” He answered half-heartedly, weakly stabbing his fork into the eggs.
“Hey, are you even paying attention?” She asked again.
“Yeah, yeah, pink toad right?” He answered.
After breakfast, they both took Mito’s homemade lunches and headed out to meet Tsunade and Nawaki waiting for them.
Mito accompanied all her children and grandchildren when they had the entrance exam, and since the four of them were her last family, she made it a priority to spend time with them whenever she could.
Before anyone could day anything, Mito gave Akira a look.
“Akira, you better bring your main body here or I swear to the Sage I’ll spank you.” She said
‘Tch, she’s unnecessary perceptive in times like these.’
Under the confused gazes of Nawaki and Kushina, the ‘Akira’ that was next to Kushina burst into smoke.
“What! He was a shadow clone! Wait, you can do that!?” exclaimed Kushina.
Even Nawaki was surprised, then he had a look of realization and slapped his forehead.
‘I could have just used shadow clones to go to school.
What a missed opportunity!’ He thought regretfully.
Nawaki was already 11, so he only had one more year in the academy.
Recently his training has been going well, mastering both Tobirama’s water style and earth release, though he could have gotten alot more training in if he used shadow clones to come to school.
The front door opened, revealing an even more depressed Akira.He gave a long, resigned sigh.
‘Well, let’s just get this over with.’
Along the way they met up with Hana, who was with her parents.
“”Mito-sama.”” They greeted respectfully.
Kushina, quickly greeting Hana’s parents, locked arms with her and pulled her next to Akira to talk. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
“Come, let’s walk together.” Mito said, inviting them along.
“Hana, are you excited to go to the academy? I know I am! Spending the whole day with you and Akira sounds like so much fun!” Kushina said, practically jumping from excitement.
“Yes, I am. But I think your forgetting the studies we’ll also be doing in the academy.” Hana replied.
“Kushina has a selective memory. Anything that doesn’t include fun gets automatically filtered out.” Akira chimed in.
“Hey, I do not! I’m just really looking forward to school with you guys.” She said, sheepishly.
“”Yeah,yeah.”” Akira and Hana both replied, as they were both accustomed to Kushina’s personality.
Kushina was undoubtedly a genius, especially when it came to fuinjutsu, and given that she awakened the Kagura mind’s eye recently, an amazing sensor in training.
Both Akira and Hana knew just how hard Kushina worked even though it didn’t seem like it.
They also knew how much she liked spending time with both of them, so even if they teased her, they couldn’t help but feel warm in their hearts.
The academy was crowded, a clear divide between two groups.
Civilians, outnumbered clan kids by a large margin.
Because of the Senju clan mixing with the civilians, and Tobirama introducing the ninja academy, alot more civilian ninjas were popping up.
Despite that, only a few civilians stood ever stood out.
Even though they were taught chakra and had access to ninjutsu, the civilians still couldn’t match up against real clans.
The ninjutsu that they received were only the academy ‘three basic jutsus’, and if they were lucky enough to get a jonin teacher, whatever they taught as well.
Unfortunately jonin were important in any village.
They couldn’t be spared to guide children when there were more important tasks to do.
Only Naruto’s generation, which consisted of mostly clan kids and a few genius civilians, got jonin teachers, earning the name ‘Konoha 12’.
Even then, that period of time was arguably Konoha’s most peaceful.
At least externally, the Uchiha massacre didn’t count.
Upon arriving, the crowd parted like an ocean being split, for Mito.
Being the wife of the first hokage, even if she rarely leaves her home, Mito was well known, even among the civilians.
‘What a shame.
Looks like I won’t get the chance to humble some arrogant young masters here.’ Akira thought, sighing internally. Get faster updates on g.com.
Though he did wonder if Kushina would still get bullied like in canon.
Her starting early, and being brought by Mito personally, was a huge change to the timeline, one that hopefully was for the better and definitely not dangerous.
Seeing Shikaku and his group, Akira started going towards them, followed by Kushina and Hana.
“Hey, you ready to start school?” Akira asked.
“Not at all, school sounds troublesome.” Replied Shikaku, sighing slightly.
Inoichi and Choza however, seemed a bit more eager.
“I look forward to working with you, Akira.” Said Inoichi, with a smile.
“Yeah, me too. We’ll share lots of snacks.” added Choza.
While talking to his friends, Akira was simultaneously scanning the the other kids to see if there was anyone else he would recognize from canon.
He easily spotted Minato, the golden hair and sunshine personality were hard to miss.
Minato was a part of the civilian group, talking among the orphanage kids.
Akira still wasn’t fully convinced that Minato didn’t come from the Senju clan that disbanded, but he didnt dwell on it.
Since he had a surname, Minato likely had parents, or at least a guardian, who might have died leaving him in the orphanage.
Another person Akira recognized, one that he was somewhat confused about, was Mikoto Uchiha.
The face that looked about seventy percent like Sasuke in his academy days, just with longer hair, was a dead giveaway.
What Akira was confused about was why she was in this batch of kids.
Mikoto was supposed to be older than Kushina, despite them being friends.
‘This is either an A.U, or just another result of Naruto’s past timeline being weird.’ Akira mused, not giving it much thought.
The timeline before Naruto’s birth is notorious for being innacurate, meaning Akira wouldn’t waste time over small details like these.
Mikoto was accompanied by her father only, but it looked like they weren’t getting along with the other Uchiha.
Even though they stood with the Uchiha group, they were clearly isolated, and they both looked like they could care less.
The Uchiha clan was mainly divided into 2 groups.
The hawk faction, who were the most arrogant bunch and the ones that plotted the coup, and the dove faction who were less arrogant and wanted peace.
Given the treatment of Mikoto, she was probably a part of the dove faction along with her father.
After a while, a teacher came out to escort everyone to where the Hokage was waiting atop a podium.