A young boy stared out the window at the group of children playing games. His messy black hair covered his eyes, beneath held a shocking degree of clarity at merely four years old. Daiki observed the dirty children playing silly games outside the orphanage.
Daiki wasn't a native of this world, but rather a transmigrator from Earth. It all occurred when he was spending his Sunday relaxing scrolling through the internet. Daiki had received a message with an unknown questionnaire. At the time he had answered the questionnaire without much thought.
The questionnaire asked him to create a character in the Naruto world. It gave options ranging from clans, time periods, and even cheats. Daiki wanted to see if he could give his character the worst start possible. By analyzing all the options, he had come to selecting the Warring States Period, no clan, and the no cheat option. This action was a bitter pill to swallow, but Daiki came to terms with his situation.
Now, Daiki lived as normal person in the Land of Fire during the Warring States Period. While this was bad enough, the questionnaire also hinted at the existence of other transmigrators. Daiki speculated that they also were given the same or similar options in the questionnaire before transmigration. This also meant the timeline and canon wouldn't line up given that most people answering the questionnaire would have some idea of Naruto's plotline. Thus, making any knowledge of the future canon or plot useless given that other transmigrators would interfere with it.
However, the Daiki was lucky in two aspects. The first is the location of his rebirth, Daiki was reincarnated in the Capital of Fire, the city where the Fire Daimyo lives. This gives unprecedented protection in the Warring States Period. Lastly, although Daiki selected to receive no cheat in the questionnaire, he did receive something. His soul was left unaltered before transmigration.
Daiki examined his roommate inhabiting his body. Looking inward, Daiki perceived a small ball of flame hovering in midair. Attached to it were hundreds of strands like chains that connected to a much bigger ball of flame. Upon transmigration, Daiki had noticed this newborn soul co-inhabiting his body.
Daiki's first instinct was to devour this soul and strengthen his own. But thanks to his inner scientific curiosity and willpower he stopped that instinct. The soul was so small that Daiki doubted it would benefit him much anyways. Instead, Daiki decided to keep it alive to see the differences between his and the new-born soul. After all, it is rare to be able to get a first-hand close-up view of a soul, especially a new-born soul. The soul didn't actually differ much compared to his own. The biggest difference was that this soul had a tiny blue core in its center, something Daiki's own soul lacked.
Daiki wasn't sure what this was exactly until he tried refining chakra based on memory. He knew chakra was the combination of physical and spiritual energy. However, upon trying to fuse these two energies, the energy went berserk within his body. Like water meeting oil, that attempt had actually left him nearly bedridden for an entire year. Recently though, his health has recovered enough to move around.
During that year, Daiki had been experimenting with chakra to understand why this had happened. It has come to Daiki's understanding that the blue core inside the new-born soul was a chakra seed. A new term coined by Daiki, a chakra seed is the thing that grants beings the ability to refine and manipulate chakra. Without it, manipulating or refining chakra becomes nearly impossible. Daiki himself didn't have a chakra seed which would explain why he isn't able to refine or manipulate chakra.
Without chakra many roads of power had instantly shut off. Most of Naruto's powers rely on chakra to function. Even later in the show when many chakra-based attacks became ineffective and obsolete, it still had many uses. So, Daiki sought to find another way to manipulate chakra. Taken inspiration from Sunagakure's puppet technique and chakra threads, Daiki spent a year recreating it with spiritual energy version derived from it.
It wasn't an easy process, but Daiki's memory had been enhanced thanks to being able to skim his own soul. Looking inwards to one's own soul is both strenuous and rewarding as it helped Daiki recall more of his memories. Memories of obscure scientific facts, and knowledge that helped greatly in creating the technique. If it weren't for this ability Daiki would've spent many more years trying to recreate the Sunagakure's puppet technique.
After repeated testing of the spiritual threads manipulating parts of his own soul, Daiki believed that it was time to try it on his "roommate's" soul. If his new Soul Puppet Jutsu didn't work, then Daiki would have to resort to one of his backup plans. In fact, Daiki thought of a very easy way to get his own chakra seed. That is to devour and absorb it from the new-born soul.
However, Daiki didn't want to go down that road. He even speculated that the Sage of Six Paths was able to manipulate a person from this chakra seed that everyone was born with. After all, the Sage of Six Paths promoted the use of chakra through ninjutsu. A supposed advocate of peace promoting a weapon of mass destruction? Daiki highly doubted the Sage's motives were pure in nature. So, he didn't want to leave any backdoors open to be exploited by that hypocritical old man. Daiki speculated that many of Naruto's infamous talk-no-jutsus were explained by the old Sage's decrypted hand moving behind the scenes.
Sitting cross-legged, Daiki took a deep breath and concentrated on the many threads. Hundreds of threads fluttered within the soul space. If anyone were close to Daiki at this moment, they would've felt an invisible pressure emanating from him. Hundreds of spiritual threads pierced the new-born soul in an instant, diving towards the chakra seed. The new-born soul's natural defense mechanism kicked in and began to erode the Daiki's spiritual threads.
This was unexpected, when experimenting on himself the degree of erosion wasn't this bad. At the current rate reaching the core wouldn't be possible. Another attempt might take years because of the damage inflicted in this process. Sweat dripped down Daiki's brows as he tried to figure out a way around the erosion. Many solutions came and went until Daiki settled on one that could possibly work within his short time frame.
Daiki cut off a small fraction of his soul without any memories other retaining Daiki's ego of self, split it into many tiny bits, and delivered it to the new-born soul. Daiki treated the spiritual threads like blood vessels and his own fragmented soul as blood. In essence this was a soul transfusion, except Daiki was transfusing a fragment of himself into the new-born soul. If this worked as Daiki hypothesized, his own fragmented soul should contaminate the new-born soul and shut down the natural defense mechanism.
Typically, this shouldn't work at all because contaminating a soul would take a lot out of a person. After all, it is like cutting off a piece of your own flesh and shoving it into someone else's body. Attempting this on a mature soul would require Daiki to risk his entire soul in the transfusion in order to take it over. But compared with a new-born soul, Daiki's own soul was 10 times bigger in mass. Combined with implanting his own matured ego into the new-born soul's otherwise blank ego, a hostile takeover was pretty much guaranteed to succeed!
Daiki watched as the new-born soul's resistance waned until it stopped completely. The spiritual threads split into thousands of branches, spreading into every inch of the soul other than the chakra seed. Daiki didn't want to experiment with the chakra seed just yet, in case the Sage of Six Paths left any backup fail safes. The new-born soul was now fully under his control.
Daiki took a day to get used to using the Soul Puppet Jutsu on the newly transformed soul. Daiki praised the ingenuity of injecting his own ego into the soul as Daiki doubted it would be this easy to manipulate if he hadn't done that. Now it was time for the moment of truth, to test whether this solved the chakra manipulation and refining problem. Daiki pulled on his body's physical energy and manipulated the soul's spiritual energy. It was a very slow process because he had to manipulate it through his own spiritual threads while keeping those spiritual threads away from the whole process. The two energies intertwined until, success!
The first hint of refined chakra was born within Daiki's body. At that moment, the chakra seed within the manipulated soul suddenly cracked open and spread throughout the soul. Daiki hurriedly cut off the Soul Puppet Jutsu without a second's hesitation, and he was glad he did. The liquified chakra seed even tried spreading through the spiritual threads of Daiki's Soul Puppet Jutsu. Daiki waited until the stray spiritual threads contaminated by the chakra threads dissipated before he tried reconnecting with the chakra-infused soul.
Extending a single spiritual thread towards the chakra soul, Daiki was ready to cut off contact the moment it showed signs of spreading. Nothing. It seemed that initial burst was all the Sage of Six Paths prepared. Daiki infiltrated the soul once more with his Soul Puppet Jutsu. Daiki let out a sigh of relief, his spiritual threads were still able to manipulate the chakra-colored soul.
Daiki guessed this was how the Sage of Six Paths marked those who have refined chakra. Whether it was for the Pure Land or some other purpose, Daiki didn't know. All he wanted was to avoid being marked.
His first milestone was accomplished. It took four long years, but it was worth the time. Now Daiki has a means of self-protection. Gaining the use of chakra was the first step, the next step involved a few more years of investment. Daiki looked out the window at the many kids playing with the dirt. Impressionable children, a staple military force that is cultivated in the world of Naruto. Daiki wasn't going to let go of the manpower just at his doorstep.
Daiki got up and walked towards the door. The wooden door creaked open as light spilled into the darkness, illuminating the dim orphanage. Daiki's shadow stained the floorboard, becoming the darkest creature within the orphanage. Taking one step, then another, Daiki left the orphanage. And joining him, his shadow.