Darkness. Nothing but darkness. Not even a thought or an emotion, no feeling, just darkness. No sense of time either, it could have been a millennium or 5 seconds, you would not know. That's how Nick spent his 'days' in the void. He was in the void and he was the void. Then it happened, a spark of consciousnesses. And like a fire, it spread throughout Nick's mind, wherever that was located. It was a simple thought, a sentence, 'Where am I?' incredible basic.

He began to panic, feeling like he couldn't breathe like he did not even have the lungs to do so. Nick was certain he had died, there was even a dramatic flashback! After what seemed like hours, he calmed down. Maybe he was in a coma, maybe this is the 'peaceful afterlife' he wished for. Either way, he settled for his new life in the void.

"Wow, you gave up just like that, eh?" a deep voice thundered out. The melodious sound seemed to bring life to darkness, all of a sudden the void of sheer blackness turned into a blinding white light. Nick was terrified, the calmness from before vanished into nothing. The speed of his thoughts accelerated to a nigh impossible speed. But soon he calmed down, this must be a dream in his coma, nothing more.

"Stop fooling yourself there, my child." The impossible loud voice chided.

"You can read my thoughts? Eh, of course, you can, don't know what I was expecting."

"Of course, I can my child, I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the-"

"Okay, but how does that concern me right now?"

"..."

"I don't care if you're the burger king mascot right now, I'm dead, and assuming you are who you say you are, YOU'RE responsible for my death, so excuse me if I don't want to concern myself with you right now." It was such a random sarcastic outburst that even the voice was not expecting it. The 'voice' was dumbfounded for a brief moment, before letting out a sigh.

"You have every right to be angry at me, it was through my meddling that caused your poor soul to find its way to my abode. You were so stubborn about getting a job that your father prayed to me, prayed for you to find a job so you would finally stop embarrassing them."The 'voice' stopped its short speech to let Nick soak in the information.

"What do you mean by 'embarrassing them'?

"Well...through your ways of applying, getting rejected, and doing it all over again. It was the talk of the town, and so your father cried out to me in shame and it sounded so earnest...stuff. SO, I MAY and I repeat MAY have manipulated- not even that, I-I gently nudged, your manager into- uh hiring you... and get you killed..."

Silence. Even with the blinding white light still there at full brightness, the feeling of the void crept in. Nick took a deep 'breath' in and out, trying to rationalize everything with the coma story. But he couldn't, not even in his mind could he accept that this 'entity' pretty much got him killed out of pity and that his parents were the source of the problem. He could only chuckle, in seething anger. It felt as if the light was choking him senseless.

"But don't you worry my child, I have compensation for you. You may be reincarnated back onto earth-"

"No."

"...What?"

"I don't want to go back in time, nor do I want to be reincarnated again on earth. Let me go to the afterlife in peace, please it's the least you can do."

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Okay, okay well yeah but uh there is a problem with that...my child."

"What problem?"

"Well considering...I was the one who killed you, it might be a bit awkward for you to be in heaven or hell, you know talking about me."

"So you want to reincarnate me to shush me up?"

"Well, y-yeah b-but this is also an opportunity for you. You uh like those, what do you call them uh ISEKAI novels right? Where do people get reincarnated in anime or some fantasy world with elves yeah? I can do that."

"Really? With an OP-ass system yeah? With me beating the hell out everyone like som- I don't care, I just want to go to my afterlife and relax, I will talk about whatever I want."

"I can reincarnate you in Naruto."

"...Really?"

"YEAH, I have reincarnated people in anime worlds before. There are an infinite number of universes, as I leave them on auto-pilot, so plenty of anime worlds are in there. AND you get an 'OP ass system', you are excused for cursing in my presence."

"Hm..."

"So... can I?" Nick did not answer. The pause felt like an eternity for the 'voice', if this one human spread the news that it had killed him by mistake, its reputation would be ruined. It could hear the struggle in Nick's mind.

"I... accept-"

"GREAT! Let's get you started. Right off the bat, from your thoughts, I know you want to be Naruto Uzumaki, no need to tell me. We'll start you right at the beginning of the story, no questions asked. AND you get that super op system in a jiffy. Well BYE."

"Wait what, THE HEL-" was the last sentence Nick could manage to say before the portal that seemed to contain the universe opened up from behind him and pulled him in. The 'voice' could finally breathe a sigh of relief, if God found out he mistakenly killed a human before it's time, the 'voice' would be the next one to die.

Nick felt as though he was inside a vortex. He just felt his 'body' spinning through the portal at high speeds. Then he felt it, his mind-stretching and reforming, it felt as if something was...attaching itself to him. After what felt like 11 years, Nick opened his eyes.

His body felt battered and bruised. Nick could only groan in pain and rollover. 'So I was in a coma after all' was what he was thinking at the time. Eventually, after rolling slowly for a while, he fell to the bed. After staggering up in agony he looked around the room. It was a simple room with bronze-looking floor tiles, an open frame hospital bed with a window to the right side. Nick could only joke in his mind about how the room looked shockingly similar to the hospitals in Naruto.

There was a small desk to the left side of the bed with a mirror on top of it. Nick slowly approached it and picked it up intending to look at his wounds. He automatically brought it up to his face out of habit, and lo n behold his new face. Yellow hair and eyebrows with blue eyes, and 3 'whiskers' on each side of his face. Nick paused, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. Same face, his favorite anime character.

The mirror slowly dropped from his hand and shattered on the ground with a loud bang. Nick looked down at broken glass pieces in utter shock before someone came running in. A nurse came in all flustered, and after finding the glass pieces, shouted at 'Nick' for a solid 30 seconds before grabbing him and storming out. After pushing him out of the hospital the nurse turned him around and sneered

"Since you're well enough to break mirrors, you don't need to be in the infirmary anymore." She then snapped around and entered the building again. 'Nick' stood there from shock, but after a while, he began to walk around the village soullessly. People looked at him in scorn and disgust, they avoided him like the plague. He could only contemplate the events that had happened to him, trying to desperately make sense of everything. All of a sudden, memories began to flood his mind.

The reason Naruto, the OG Naruto, was in the hospital, was that after spray painting the Hokage monuments, as usual, some ninjas of course came to stop him, this was the beginning of the pilot. But this time, from Naruto's memories, it seemed this occurred before the pilot episode, not to mention this time the ninjas caught him. They seemed to be possessed as they began to beat the living hell out of Naruto to the point of him passing out. They soon came to their senses and sent him to the infirmary.

It was obvious that 'voice' was the one who 'gently nudged' them into beating Naruto to enable Nick to enter his body. Even with 'Nick' reviewing and pondering all of this, he was still walking. In his stupor, he wandered into the woods. He somehow managed to get on a small hill-esque mountain. He finally came to his senses, taking the air in trying to calm himself down. 'If this is real, there is only one thing to do.'

"My name is Naruto Uzumaki, I'm alive! Believe it!" {System Download Complete}.