In the back of a considerably large house, a young boy was on his knees with his arms inside a bucket filled with water. The strange thing about this situation was that water was going all the way from his hands up to his neck, seemingly defying all known laws of gravity and logic. Not one drop could be seen on his clothes, indicating that some hidden force was keeping the water glued to his skin.

With an expression that indicated that what he was doing required a lot of effort, the water suddenly came back to the bucket and the boy fell with both arms going to the floor to support his body. 'Uh… This is so difficult. Even with so much time invested, I can only do it for about six minutes.'

Raijin was very frustrated with his performance. The sorcery he just did was something he had created a few months before, a technique that helped him develop his control of water elemental chakra. It worked just like the leaf-sticking practice he often did, but it was much more difficult to execute.

To even get the idea to work, he worked incessantly. Every time he had free time, he would place his arms in water to think about how he could get water to crawl up his skin and glue it to its surface, much like the leaf on his nape, but not so inconspicuous. And, in a stroke of luck, he got it right after dozens and dozens of hands-on practice.

"Still, I can't be too demotivated. After almost two years, I am much stronger than before!". Raijin's chakra control, chakra pool, taijutsu, endurance, calligraphy, and much more had all been developed exponentially during this time frame.

His chakra pool was already comparable to a beginner Genin while he was five years old. Through extensive research, Raijin observed that depending on how much chakra he exhausted, his chakra pool would experience an appropriate increase. However, when studying this matter, he discovered that this growth would significantly slow down as he turned older, practically coming to a full stop at twenty-one years of age.

That was why he became desperate to put in the work now since he needed to have a large chakra pool to face powerful people in the future. He adopted the saying of hard work for ten years, and peace for sixty — even though he doubted whether that peace would be achievable considering the nature of the Shinobi world.

His taijutsu skills were also developed to a whole new level. Now, he felt that through his developed endurance and combat skills, he could seriously compete with some clan kids from year three or four in the academy — the reason for not having a bigger improvement was his lack of training partners, but even after considering that, it was a solid improvement for someone his age.

Raijin also upped his shurikenjutsu game, which had experienced tremendous development considering that he started with zero experience. By hoarding used and rusty shurikens, he found around the vacant and occupied training grounds, he amassed a good enough quantity of them to start practicing — even if not in ideal conditions.

His aim was ridiculously off in the beginning, but as the saying goes — practice makes perfect — he started getting the target consistently after some months of continuous and arduous training.

However, contrary to what anyone would think, the grind wasn't everything that settled in Raijin's mind. He also tried to see the original characters for himself, not to speak to them or anything like that, but to prove to himself that he could recognize every person of importance from the original show. 

Even after putting every cell of his body dedicated to this task, he could only do it once — in the Yondaime Hokage's ceremony. The only day where, no matter whether civilian or ninja, everyone would go out of their houses and agglomerate in the plaza in front of the Hokage Mansion to celebrate the announcement of a new Hokage, the strongest living ninja of the strongest village in the Shinobi world.

While in that event, Raijin saw basically everyone from canon — ranging from Might Guy to young Itachi Uchiha. This tradition of the village reaffirmed the union of its inhabitants, making it a great and very convenient time to spread the so-called Will of Fire created by the legendary Hashirama Senju and further developed and expanded by the great mind of Hiruzen Sarutobi. 

It was the first time Raijin could actually listen to any of these speeches made by the Hokage. Despite the high expectations, the ideals propagated by the Will of Fire didn't resonate with Raijin's purpose in life — he agreed on the part where you should feel grateful for kind deeds done to you and try to repay them, and also treasure his friends like no other people, but that was it.

The idea of dying to Konoha and Konoha alone seemed too far-fetched for the current Raijin who felt no real attachment to the village even with the relationship he built with Minko, whom he felt very grateful towards. Even though his own nature didn't match most of the things the long speech had to say, that didn't stop him from being part of the clapping the crowd issued after the end of the formalities.

Fast forward to the current day, the only thing he had in mind wasn't to practice anymore. As it was already getting dark, he issued a running pace and went to his room to gather his things in a hurry.

The calendar atop a desk in his room had a red circle on it and marked the following day: "10th October".

~~

In a strange place, water filled the entire floor. A chained woman with black marks concentrated on her belly extending to her body could be seen on top of a rocky structure with the same rocky pattern repeating itself around her. In front, a weird man with a whirlpool mask pattern hiding his face and a black coat involving his body stared intently at her.

"I'm going to pull the Nine Tails out from you and destroy the Hidden Leaf." He said in a menacing tone, his hoarse voice adding to his dangerous appearance.

The woman seemed to be in a weakened condition, but that didn't stop her from looking at the man with rage stamped on her eyes.

~~

Looking to the sky, Kakashi asked himself: 'Why do I feel like something really bad is going to happen?'. Staring at Guy, who was at his side, he promptly said: "I have a bad feeling."

~~

Itachi Uchiha, who was in the Uchiha compound and had his baby brother in his arms also had the same question: "What is this feeling?" 

~~

"Shit! I have to get there in time!" Raijin was running with a backpack he had bought with the rest of the pocket money he raised doing chores for other people. He was currently in the middle of escalating the mountain that the Hokage's faces were in.

"I've practiced going up this place several times during this year, it's not in the damn day that I'm going to mess up!" He said with an aggravated tone. He just felt that at any moment Obito could summon a controlled Kurama in the village to wreak havoc everywhere.

Huffing, he went up successfully and hid beside some bushes. After a few moments, a poof sound issued. He could finally hear the dreaded screech that caused him to have some nightmares every few days that month.

"Man… Look at the size of that thing. How can you beat that?!" Raijin, who just saw firsthand the sheer size of one of the bijuus now understood that whatever Hashirama could pull off to restrain those chakra beasts was too overpowered. And doing that to the nine of them at the same time?! That would be just insanity.

Observing Kurama destroy every building he came across and kill everyone who came in front of his path with his huge sharp nails was truly a sight to behold. Raijin was sweating cold sweat — his face, a telltale of the awestruck state he was in.

Looking intently at the creature, he waited for the events to unfold like the original show, like when Minato finally teleported the Nine-Tails to the place where he sealed him inside Naruto's body.

However, before that could happen, he could only see the perverse chakra beast loading up a giant ball of concentrated energy — a Tailed Beast Bomb. At his direction. 'What the…' Raijin could only stare in shock. Kurama had directed the Tailed Beast Bomb to the Hokage Monument.

"Oh, no! No! NO!" As the attack approached, he could only put both his arms in front of his body and scream for his life. This was probably the worst imaginable ending he could imagine to his life in the Naruto world — dying as a five-year-old without having anything to boast about in the Pure World.

After waiting a few moments, nothing happened. "Huh?" He looked left and right and no Tailed Beast Bomb was there. Luckily for him, he survived this ordeal only because Minato Namikaze could teleport the entire sphere of mass destruction to another place.

"I… I blundered. Severely so."

~~

~~

A/N:

Hey guys!

I think that I did a decent job of portraying the events. What do you guys think? I'm still improving my writing, so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your continuous support!

Getting back to work, peace!