I hate rain. I really do.

  You can‘t escape it. It is everywhere. It goes everywhere. The steady drumming of raindrops pelting the ground never stops: drip, drip, drip. It drenches your clothes and seeps into your skin. Making you forget what it ever felt like to be dry.

  It had been hours since I left the village I had woken up in. I likely would have been safe to stay longer, but I physically could not bring myself to. Not when the floor was still slick with the blood of my dead family and the corpse of the man I had killed remained there, unburied. I would rather try my luck out in the rain than stay inside that abandoned, haunted village for a single minute longer than I had to.

  All I took with me was an empty bag and stuffed within it the meager amounts of food that I could scavenge from the kitchen storage. After hours on the road, there was not much left of that food.

  Not like there had been a lot of it in the first place.

  I suspected that Nagato’s parents had been starving themselves to allow their son to eat. Given the state of their emaciated bodies compared to my relative health, that conclusion seemed likely.

  In my hours of walking, I had seen no sight of Amegakure. The only place in the Land of Rain that could credibly be called a city. I supposed my temporary home had been very remote and out in the sticks. I was glad that that was the case. The last thing I currently needed was to meet another Shinobi. Konoha or otherwise.

  With that in mind, I took great care to avoid any obviously well traveled path that would inevitably lead me to a human settlement. The Land of Rain had the incredible misfortune of sharing a border with three of the great villages.

  Of course that meant that when war was declared, there was only one battlefield fit for said war to be fought.

  My homeland.

  I knew that at any point I could be dragged into one such battle. A battle that I had no confidence in surviving. Not as I was now.

  The relentless rain poured down on the signs of devastation all around. The ground was muddy and I left behind footprints that filled with water as I walked aimlessly.

  I felt numb. Utterly spent from the extremely emotionally taxing experiences I had just gone through. It had been one thing after the other since I arrived into this world.

  Seeing dead bodies for the first time and then realizing who those bodies belonged to. Burying my new biological parents. Walking alone across the landscape of a country torn apart by war.

  It had been a lot.

  I was torn out of my downward spiraling thoughts when I felt something strange. Something I had never felt before. It felt like…life. A welcoming sensation after encountering only death for the last couple hours.

  What is this feeling?

  During biology class, I often wondered what it would feel like to have a sense separate from the conventional five. A true sixth sense. To sense the magnetic field of the planet like birds, or to use echolocation like bats. How did those animals perceive the world?

  I suspect I can now guess the answer to that question.

  In a moment of rash foolishness, I closed my eyes and focused on the spot inside me where the Rinnegan told me that my chakra was behaving in an unusual way while using this new sense.

  What I did next truly was not one of my proudest moments. I took a look at that spot and, without hesitating, tore it wide open.

  The next moments were pure agony. I could suddenly feel…everything. For kilometers in every direction. The worms slithering in the ground. The Shinobi moving past the edge of my senses with enormous speed. The insects making themselves at home in the dead childish bodies scattered across the land.

  It was too much. Whatever this new sense was. It was nothing like the Rinnegan. My eyes only showed me what I wanted to see.

  This was too much information.

  While enduring the throbbing headache that followed, I swiftly shut close the lid I had so rashly opened. I took a few breaths to collect myself. Once I felt ready, I slowly began opening it again. Only so far that I could just about sense the life I had perceived earlier. A life that was fading.

  Anything smaller and farther away than those couple dozen steps I did not want appearing on my radar. Not until I had more practice with this dangerous ability.

  I headed towards the place my new sense was leading me to with hurried steps. I walked around the small hill that stood between me and my target and was immediately confronted with a sight that broke my heart.

  It was a small brown dog, lying down on the rocky floor, collapsed in exhaustion.

  I carefully closed the distance separating us. The dog raised his head warily and I could almost taste how scared he was. It did not take me long to realise where that sensation was coming from. It was his chakra.

  That poor thing must not have had the best experience with humans before.

  I walked closer and gestured with my hands that I meant him no harm. He assessed me quietly and I seemed to pass some sort of test, because he slowly put his head back down onto the ground and let out a pitiful bark. A feeling of helpless surrender radiating out from his chakra. Clarifying to me the true meaning of his actions.

  So lowering his head was less a sign of trust and more a symptom of his lacking strength. He knows that he could not fight me off in this state, even if he wanted to.

  I crouched down to his level and took the bag from my shoulder. Taking care not to appear any more threatening, I opened it. In it, I found a single piece of dried sausage. It was all of the food I had left in my possession.

  After this, I will have officially run out.

  I stared hard at the now wet piece of meat and then shifted my gaze to the pitiful looking dog. Damnit. I would not go so far as to call myself a saint, but I was not a monster.

  I would never be able to call myself a human being again if I let this dog starve to death right here. So scared and alone.

  I pushed the sausage the dog had been intensely staring at since I revealed it towards his mouth. The feeling his chakra conveyed to me was one of complete, all consuming hunger.

  ?Hello little one. I know that you want this. Don't think I did not see you looking. Don't worry, you can take it. I will not harm you.“

  The dog alternated from looking at the sausage I held in my hand to my softly smiling face.

  Looks like he still does not trust me yet. He seemed worried that all of this was some kind of elaborate trap. What a smart dog.

  Hunger triumphed over caution eventually and he snapped his jaw, taking with it the piece of meat right out of my hand. His movements were desperate and hurried, like he expected the food to just disappear right out of his mouth. He barely chewed the meat before swallowing.

  I underestimated how hungry he was.

  ?That's a good boy.“ I lowered my hand to his face and started scratching him behind his ears. ?I think I will call you Inu.“ Undoubtedly not the most imaginable of names, but I never claimed to be a fountain of creativity.

  I got up and started to walk away. I needed to find a place to stay before it got dark. God knows the Land of Rain was barely safe during the day. I did not wish to find out what transpired during the night.

  Before I managed to get far, I heard a couple of small hurried steps catching up to me. A couple of quick barks revealed their source. I looked down and saw Inu staring up at me expectantly.

  ?You want to come with me, boy? I don‘t have any more food left to offer you though?“ I considered it for a moment.

  ?Well who am I kidding. I could never turn away a cute little guy like you. Let's go, Inu. It's starting to get dark“

  Now in company, I continued my trek across the devastated landscape of the Land of Rain.

  Knowing that a country had served as a battlefield for a world war did not manage to fully capture the reality of the situation. At all. Like always, seeing was believing.

  Enormous structures of earth littered the land and wide trenches were carved into the ground.

  Inu and I walked around those new landmarks and kept on going. It did not take much longer before we found something worth taking a closer look at. A cave in the mountainside. Sure, it wasn’t my dream space to bunker in, but needs must.

  Approaching the cave, we slowly drew nearer. Were this any other place, I would be afraid that some wild animal had already made it its home, but this was the land of eternal rain. It was a rare animal that would choose to live in this country.

  The cave was empty.

  Not wishing to waste any more time, I led my dog companion inside and let out a deep breath I had been holding in for hours.

  Going into a place that was finally dry was a relief without equal.

  Inu seemed to share in my joy as he shook himself dry. A feeling of relief radiating from his chakra.

  Following his example, I took off my wet clothing and wiped the water off my skin as best as I could.

  I had noticed this before, but it was weird that I wasn’t freezing. Sure, the wetness was uncomfortable, but I knew that the cold should have been much worse than this. Another thing I would have to thank this new body and its access to chakra for.

  Absolutely bone tired, it took little more than laying on the floor with my back facing the floor to fall into a deep slumber. The last thing I felt before sleep overtook me was a small and fluffy body curling up on my chest. Sharing with me its warmth.

  ——————-

  The difference a good night of sleep could do for a person's mental state cannot be understated.

  I woke up the next morning ready to take on the world.

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  I was so exhausted the day before that I slept like a log. It might have even been the best night of sleep I had ever had.

  I sat up with my legs flat on the ground and my upper body leaned forwards. I took Inu‘s still sleeping body and placed him onto the ground next to me.

  It was time to get to work.

  The first thing I needed to address was simultaneously the most pressing.

  I have the Rinnegan.

  The famed Eyes of God. I also had chakra. And not just normal chakra. I had Uzumaki chakra.

  The Clan famous for their large chakra capacity and vitality. While it was true that this world was an absolute death trap, especially in the era I was currently in, there was hardly a better set of tools I could have been given to survive this wretched place. I would not be helpless when the monsters it hid within would inevitably start to seek me out so that they could prey on me for their own ends.

  Let's get this started.

  I shifted into the lotus position and turned my attention inwards. Without pause, I began to consider everything I knew about chakra.

  In the Naruto world, every living being had the internal source of energy called chakra. Even the world itself had its own form of chakra that some people could tap into. Chakra was a combination of a persons spiritual and physical energy.

  It flowed through a number of nodes inside the body called chakra nodes. Together they formed what is called a Chakra Pathway System.

  A system my Rinnegan allowed me to see in detail, should I desire it.

  I had no doubt that the Hyuga would shake their lofty heads in derision when comparing my sight to the clarity their Byakugan gave them access to.

  However, be that as it may, I was not disappointed. The Rinnegan allowed me to see the most important parts and that was enough. Maybe my sight would improve with further mastery of them, but I could not yet confirm that with confidence.

  With some effort, I might even be able to learn Konoha's famed Gentle Fist someday. Start dancing around and blocking people's chakra points. That was for the future however. Way into the future.

  I am sure actually learning that particular Taijutsu style will be the easiest step in the process of acquiring it. Those stingy Hyuga are paranoid beyond reason.

  I wrangle my thoughts back on topic. Chakra. It could be transformed into different elemental states and take on their properties. Every person had at least one affinity with one of the five elements. Some people with extraordinary talents could even hold multiple affinities. Having multiple affinities was the bare minimum requirement to awaken a special ability called a Kekkei Genkkai. A bloodline limit that one would pass down to their descendants. Those bloodlines were the ones entire Clans were formed around.

  The best known case where an individual managed to meet all of those conditions was the infamous Hashirama Senju and his Wood Release.

  An ability so terrifyingly powerful that it turned him into an unstoppable juggernaut amongst men during his lifetime. He rightfully earned the title of god of shinobi.

  With my Rinnegan, I believed that I had potential to reach power above even the likes of Hashirama. He had the chakra of the Son, I had the eyes of the Father. I would take my chances on that.

  The Rinnegan allowed me to perfectly master all five types of nature transformation, although Kekkei Genkai would likely remain out of reach.

  I forcefully reigned in my excitement. Transforming that potential into actual skill would not be easy. Not with the way things were going. As things currently stood, I would likely never reach the heights I dreamed of.

  I observed the pool of energy inside me with a contemplative look on my face. I had no point of reference yet, but I knew that I had a lot of chakra. There was simply no way what I possessed was even close to the average. Even so, I knew that it would not be enough.

  The Rinnegan was insatiable. Hungering endlessly for more and more energy to power it. God level potential did not come without a drawback, who would have thought.

  I was suffering from the Kakashi Nerf Condition. Just like how his Sharringan did not fully belong to him, so was the Rinnegan currently in my head not truly mine.

  Although I fully planned to milk it for all it was worth, that truth would never change. The fact remained that it originally belonged to someone else.

  Madara Uchiha. The Ghost of the Uchiha. The man who gave me his eyes.

  As such, I could not turn them off. They were an ever present drain on my reserves and permanently took a section of my chakra capacity just to keep them functioning. It was far from crippling as it would have been for any other Shinobi that was not of Uzumaki blood, but it was still noticeable.

  Madara gave me these eyes so that I would keep them safe. Nicely kept warm and protected for him until he deemed it fit to return back to life and tear them right out of my skull, like lightbulbs, and reclaimed them for himself.

  As it stood, I was little more than a pawn to be used and discarded. In the eyes of Madara and that hateful Zetsu, that was all the boy name Nagato would ever amount to. Any dreams of godhood were only the delusions of a delusional child.

  And why would a man like Madara not think so? Why would an ancient schemer like Zetsu not think so? The original Nagato was the perfect victim.

  No Clan to protect him, no Village behind him, and no Shinobi parents to raise him with the knowledge of what it meant to be strong in this world. To know that if he wanted to keep himself and his loved ones safe, he would have to go out and fight for that right. The Shinobi World would accept nothing less.

  When it came to mindset, the original Nagato was little more than an overpowered civilian. Desperately trying to fix a broken world that had only ever given him misery.

  The only formal training he had ever received in his entire life was Jirayia playing around with him and his friends for less than three years. And all the toad sage ended up doing was bringing them up to a level where they would not immediately die the moment a random Shinobi decided that they rubbed him the wrong way.

  Nagato was a naive child just waiting for a master manipulator like Zetsu to swoop in and shape him according to its needs and forge him into the perfect tool.

  Like a puppet without agency, the original Nagato would do the bidding of schemers hiding in the shadows. Obito, Madara, Zetsu. They were all the same in the end.

  As Pain, he would gather the Bijuu in a deluded attempt at world peace that could never have lasted longer than his lifetime. Even if everything had worked out exactly as he intended.

  Of course he failed in the end. Madara would win, for a time, and become the Ten Tails Jinchūriki so that he could enact his own eye of the moon plan upon the world.

  Another insane scheme cooked up by a megalomaniac in order to fix a broken world by breaking it even further. Beyond repair this time.

  Madara was willing to end all life on the planet. His idea of an Utopia was the last generation of people living out their lives in a hyper realistic lucid dream. They would waste away inside monochrome cocoons until the time of their own deaths came and they took with them the Light of Consciousness that had previously shone so brightly on the Elemental Nations.

  That was Madara's definition of the word peace. His perfect world.

  The less said about Obito and the reason why that particular teenage boy was so quickly sold on the ?Eternal Lucid Dream“ fantasy after he watched his unrequited crush die right in front of him, the better.

  If someone ever needed evidence that raising children to become mindless tools for murder since before they can properly walk was a bad idea, then one look at this world is all it would take. It is no wonder that every Shinobi that makes it into adulthood is somehow cracked in the head.

  Suffice to say, I would not let any of that happen. If I had something to say about it, Madara would stay dead forever. The Ghost of the Uchiha would remain just that. A Ghost.

  Even if I failed and he still managed to come back somehow, I would find a way to send him right back to the Pure Lands. After all, I was not the original Nagato.

  I was not a mentally scarred and emotionally stunted orphan. Nor did I take up my dead beast friend's dream and thought that the way to bring about world peace was by traumatizing everyone so hard that they forgot about their previous misgivings and bonded over their more recent shared trauma.

  I knew what to do. I had an inkling of a plan. And that plan started with me mastering the gifts Fate had deemed fit to bestow upon me.

  I was not delusional enough to think that I could simply run away and hide until all conflicts had been resolved. I was in this game now, whether I wanted to or not. The Rinnegan would ensure that the movers and shakers of this world would never leave me in peace. Not until I made them.

  It was a lot to come to terms with, but I always believed that the average person was capable of a lot more than they gave themselves credit for. Humans could adapt to everything. I would adapt to this. I had no other choice but to.

  I began to circulate my chakra.

  The Rinnegan was a pathway to many abilities, some of them more unnatural than others, but I truly believed that Nagato had not used these eyes to their fullest potential.

  In his hands, godly powers became gimmicks. He created his Six Paths of Pain and turned them each into one trick ponies.

  I would not do the same.

  I got up from where I had been sitting on the ground and began pacing around the cave.

  While I had been busy plotting and brooding, Inu had woken up and began to shake himself awake. He looked at me with intelligent eyes and seemed to understand that I currently did not wish to be disturbed.

  What a good boy.

  The most important problem I needed to deal with was my lacking chakra capacity. Sure, it was still huge and would only grow bigger from here, but to truly reach the power I wanted, ?huge“ simply was not enough. The Rinnegan alone would make me achieve a level of power that few could comprehend. High Kage Tier at the very least.

  That was not enough. I needed more than that.

  Whether I wanted to or not I was already on the board. I did not wish to be a pawn, so I would have to put in the work to, if not a King, at least acquire the freedom that the power of the Queen piece would grant me. In the Elemental Nations, power was the only currency that mattered.

  Some things were non-negotiable. I would need a vast chakra capacity and I would need perfect control over my chakra to use that capacity most optimally.

  The Rinnegan already gave me a leg up by optimizing my chakra use. It allowed me to see my own chakra move and showed me where I was not being efficient. However, as it stood, that benefit was somewhat negated by the high cost the Rinnegan demanded of me.

  I would need to grind all the chakra control exercises I could think of to improve that control even further. Make it perfect.

  Then I would need to grow my capacity. I did not know my exact age, but Nagato was supposed to be Konan's age. I would simply have to ask once I finally met her.

  Anyways, I was clearly still a growing child. That meant that even if I did not train at all, my reserves would continue to grow rapidly over the next couple years.

  I would speed this growth along by pushing myself even harder everyday. Pure effort was the most effective path through which chakra grew.

  Chakra was a mixture of physical and spiritual energy. Improving in one part would increase the whole.

  The physical part of chakra was composed of everything that made up the body. It wasn't just a matter of having huge muscles. No, it was everything.

  The biggest part was undoubtedly the bloodline. That's where Shinobi eugenics came from. A clan child would always have an advantage over any civilian born child.

  The explanation for that was very simple. Just like how two tall parents were more likely to have a child that was tall as well, so were Shinobi parents with large amounts of chakra more likely to have a child that would similarly grow up to have a capacity comparable to their parents.

  That unfairness would always be there. In the Elemental Nations, nobody was born equal. Some lives were sinoly more valuable and important than others.

  However, it was not all hopeless. While yes, a clan child could do nothing but laze around their whole lives and still end up with Shinobi level chakra, that did not mean that a determined civilian child could not do the same.

  In that case, the analogy would be closer to two obese parents having a child that was almost assured to be obese as well. That outcome was not set in stone. If that child worked hard enough, it could escape its destiny.

  The most well known examples where such a thing happened were Orohimaru, Jiryaia and Minato.

  Still, the unfairness remained. A Clan child that put in similar levels of effort to those three and was just as talented as them would still end up with a vastly bigger chakra capacity.

  Luckily for me, when it came to chakra, there was no greater bloodline than the Uzumaki.

  After all, that fact was the reason why Madara chose me to be his pawn.

  That part of the physical aspect I already had optimized. What I would have to focus on instead was physical conditioning.

  To tire myself out as often as possible.

  Training alone would not suffice. Naturally, it could never be that simple. No, the greatest improvement came during battle. Using chakra was the same as growing it in that case.

  Of course physical talent was also a factor, but this body did not lack talent. Nagato could use the Rinnegan instinctively even as a child. With only a few years of formal training he managed to utterly dominate Shinobi decades his senior.

  The next part was the spiritual aspect. And wasn't that just something to consider. The spiritual encompassed everything. From intelligence to emotional maturity.

  An emotional breakthrough could increase chakras capacity as surely as weeks of physical conditioning could. I had no idea how to even begin to get started on that, so I put the thought on hold. For now.

  I stopped pacing around and turned my head to the best boy this side of Konoha.

  I crouched down before him and started to speak softly.

  ?Don't worry boy. We will not starve out here. This is just the beginning. For now, there are some people we need to go and find. They are good people. Kids with hearts of gold that deserve better than what life has given them. It is my hope that I can make sure that their lives will turn for the better this time around.“

  Inu barked at me in excited agreement. His tail wagging and chakra shining brightly. I did not think that he really understood my words exactly, but he seemed to have correctly recognised my tone of voice as encouragement.

  Putting my dry clothes back on I spread my senses for as far as I dared and walked outside the cave. It was still raining.

  I really hate rain.

  Struck by a sudden bout of inspiration, I pointed my right hand towards the sky and spoke the two famous words that, in another life, would have brought the greatest of the Five Villages to its knees.

  Shinra Tensei

  Pure gravitational force tore itself out of my palm and cleared the sky above me in a perfect circle.

  For a single beautiful moment, there was quiet.

  Then that moment passed and I was again stuck in my own personal hell of ever present, relentless rain.

  I sighed and looked down at the too smart dog next to me. He observed me with an astonished look in his cute brown eyes.

  ?Come on boy. Let's go. The sooner we find those two the better.“

  Without any more distraction. Inu and I began walking across the Land of Rain once again.