Masaru dragged his feet on his way to the academy, rubbing his eyes and severly regretting his rash decision to stay up al night training. He sighed. "I hope sensei let's me sleep through class. It's history today, so he might let me slide since my grades are good..."
His thoughts drifted as the village started to wake up around him, vendors rising and opening their shops as more and more people appeared in the streets. His thoughts centered around his classmates.
Uchiha Izumi, Aburame Shou, Inuzuka Rena, Yamanaka Airi, Akimichi Toru-his personal bully, and Nara Ren. Those were all the clan members in his class, and including him there were sixteen civilian students that made for a full class of twenty three.
He hadn't interacted with any of them much, though he attributed that to the stress of needing to pass the exams which loomed over his head constantly. Maruboshi had given him a gentle talking to about making a real attempt to make some friends, but he wasn't really convinced.
Right now everyone was looking down on him, except for maybe Izumi but she was an outlier. That girl didn't give a single fuck about her what her classmates did and possessed a single minded drive that he could only attribute to one person: Uchiha Itachi.
The child prodigy had graduated early a year or two ago, nearly directly becoming a Jōnin. Masaru sighed as he thought of the Uchiha clan's greatest tool-the sharingan. Such an hack-like ability. 'I wish I ha-'
His thoughts and feet froze as a wild theory crossed his mind, but he forced himself to keep walking. 'I have scars all over this body, and they have obviously been there for quite a while, and they're clearly from some form of experimentation. Why else would you carve up a child's body then bother with sewing it back together?
Surgery maybe, but not to this level. Every major organ in his body had a scar over it, and they even appeared over his shoulders and down the length of his limbs.
And who did he know experiment on human subjects? The legendary Sannin Orochimaru.
The madman had tried all sorts of things, from messing with Hashirama cells to trying to cultivate the sharingan. Who could say whether or not he'd done the same to him?
But it was painfully clear that there had been a coverup. He'd been told that a Jōnin had just 'found' him in the wilderness and returned him to the village, but who knew if that was true. And he was far too weak to think about it as of now.
Plus, his eyes were a gray color, not the onyx black of the Uchiha. Maybe that would change in the future, but for now he had to accept reality as it was.
On another note, he'd been thinking of the future recently. First of all he wanted to prevent the Uchiha massacre. That event had drastically weakened the village in the future, and while they'd managed to get out of their troubled thanks to Naruto and others, it would have been much smoother if they had survived.
That was one plan of his, and another was a way to gain strength rather 'easily.'
To put it simply: Become a jinchuriki.
If he remembered correctly, the Three Tails, Isobu would be reforming in the wild in the next few years. It had been plenty of time since he died inside of Rin all those years ago. Another option was to steal the Seven Tails before he was sealed inside of Fu. And the last and probably hardest was to use Edo Tensei to revive Minato and take the half of Kurama he had.
All of those options honestly just felt too complicated to Masaru.
That left him with an even crazier idea: Kill Jigen and steal Isshiki's karma. This was more dangerous for multiple reasons. For one he was an actual Otsutsuki. Two, he resided as a monk somewhere in the mountains of the Land of Frost, which was enemy territory.
So on one hand, he had to tame a tailed beast, and on the other he had to sneak behind enemy lines, kill what was essentially a god, and escape without dying or being discovered by his allies or enemies.
Or somehow convince the elusive figure of Hagoromo to give him his Karma...
Masaru sighed, rubbing his temples. For now, those plans would have to wait. He was no where near the kind of strength he needed at minimum to do anything about either.
"Ugh, that's enough thinking for the day, let's get to class so I can take a nap." Masaru muttered, nursing his tired eyes yet again.
---
"He's asleep again?! How many times is he gonna do that?" Hanae laughed.
She was a young civilian born girl with brown eyes and auburn hair that was tied up in a long ponytail. She was one of the more popular civilian born students alongside the likes of Takuma and Daiki, who were each extremely talented.
"Oh calm down, its not like he's bothering you." Kaito chastised her. He was a little older then her, also being a civilian. He had dark eyes and shaggy black hair.
Hanae harumphed. "But he is! He's four years behind us and all he does is sleep through class! The least he could do is show Kotetsu Sensei some respect like the rest of us!"
Kaito sighed to himself, he knew his friend best and there was no convincing her otherwise. "...Even if he has better grades than us in all but practical scores." He muttered.
"I heard that!"
"So you know I'm right then?"
"You're just wrong and you know it!"
Their argument ended as Kotetsu Sensei opened the door, ending all conversations in the room. The shinobi glanced at the sleeping figure of Masaru hunched over his desk and shook his head.
Then his gaze drifted to the boy's hands, which he noticed were covered in still-bloody bandages, and he raised an eyebrow. '...I'll let him off just this once I suppose.'
Ignoring the sleeping boy, he began to write on the chalkboard. "Today we're going to be learning..."