RiaN Chapter 07 (Patreon)

My mother brought me to a gathering of babies. Many other children under one year of age sat around. Most of the children weren’t coherent yet, some couldn’t crawl, and many were crying outright from the new environment. This was more for the new mothers to gossip and bond while trying to make new connections with the other parents, who knew who would get married in the future after all.

Did I recognize any of these brats? Yes, but at the same time, no. A little toddler in a green shirt started to crawl around the outside of the room the moment he was put down, as if he was doing laps. Was it Rock Lee? Nope, it was Might Lee. “Look at him go! Does he always do that?” One of the other mothers asked Lee’s mom. “Yeah, everyone in our clan is just so full of energy like that… You should see his father, one girl isn’t enough to satisfy him every night. His first wife is a slave driver and keeps pushing more women onto him to make the clan bigger.”

Was that Ino? A smaller group of girl toddlers gathered around her, she was already popular as a baby. I don’t see any others… But the number of babies here is much higher than I thought they’d be. The village wasn’t just double its size like I originally thought; it was easily four to five times as many children as I’d expect from Naruto.

One of the girls moved over and started to bite another boy out of nowhere. Her mom broke it up. “Talia, no! No biting the other kids!” A peach of an ass covered up my view of the feral girl as her mother bent over to pick her up… Then my mind short-circuited when I got a good look at her. She was Raphtalia, maybe a few decades older, but I could recognize her auburn hair and cute ears right away.

What kind of bizzaro crossover world did I pick to be reincarnated into? I mean… It wasn’t really a bad thing at the moment. I’d love to end up with one of them. Did it mean there was some half-fox girl that looked like Ahri running around? I didn’t want to jinx myself thinking about it, though. If I happen to see an Ahri lookalike, it would very much depend on the situation on whether I could make my move or not.

I noticed something else: about ninety percent of the babies were female. I didn’t think it was that one-sided in the outside world, but it was most certainly not 50/50 or even 60/40. An hour into the baby meet-up, one of the babies stopped what it was doing and tried to stand up. The women gossiping that I was eavesdropping on went silent as we all watched a little girl take her first steps.

She managed two shaky steps forward before falling down onto her butt as she began to cry. Her mom ran up and started to cheer for her. “Oh my goodness, Ten-Ten! Look at you go!” I couldn’t help but reel back in surprise. I noticed her similar hairstyle, but her hair wasn’t brown, it was blonde so I didn’t recognize her. How much had changed?... Ten-Ten’s mom is kinda hot, though. She was short and had a head full of blonde hair as well.

I paid more attention to their conversation after that and was hit with surprise after surprise. First, her name was Ami, her name wasn’t important, the point after was though. She was a student of Orochi, and not only that but she was a Senju by marriage. The final thing I learned was that Nawaki was still alive. He was Hokage at some point and had given it up to Fugaku, who gave it to Minato.

Now, I wasn’t sure who would be next. We had already gone through far more Hokage than the original world. Tsunade was fourth, so if it’s new instead of an old Kage, we’ll already be at eighth. I was worried I’d be put in the year above Naruto at this point. I was three months older than him at this point, and two of the people a grade above him were with these children my own age. 

They looked older. I was still a few months away from walking myself, and I doubted Ten-Ten was as skilled as me. I’d put her age at nine months, maybe a bit older or younger. If I only focused on walking, I could possibly do it as soon as a month from now, but it might draw attention to myself. All the cheering and clapping had shown that Ten-Ten standing was impressive for her age.

I just had to stay low-key. “Did you hear? The reason Minato died was that his wife was giving birth. Someone attacked them right after she gave birth and held the baby hostage to get a hold of Kushina. That was why the 9-tails was released.” One of the moms finally got to the best part of the gossip. I leaned my head towards them as I listened in.

All the other moms leaned in as well, and the mom whispered the next part, still loud enough for all of them to hear. “She’s still alive, but I heard that the nine-tailed fox got split up somehow. One part went to her, the other went to her son.” I was so focused on eavesdropping that I tipped over and fell on my side from the sudden shocking information.

…

It was nighttime. I was now old enough to be left alone. It was the first time I got any time to myself. I waited approximately half an hour before my eyes flew open. I had some testing to do. The palm-sized barrier was now the length of my body. I had practiced with it slightly, but I couldn’t fully test it without risking Maria finding out I had it.

I touched it, I knew I could summon and unsummon it. I wasn’t sure it took chakra because if it did, it didn’t take enough to tire me. I could also make it visible to myself and form it slightly right now. I could only bend the panel about ten degrees right now, but if it kept up, I should be able to turn it into a box or even shape it into other things in the future.

I looked at the door again, making sure no one had snuck in while I wasn’t paying attention, before I tried the first thing I wanted to since I knew about my power. I climbed on top of the panel. Sure, most would see a panel and think to put it in front to make a wall to stop attacks, but all I could see was a hoverboard. I climbed on and raised myself tentatively a foot before dropping me down again. I move forward and feel how unstable it is without anything to grip onto.

I curve the edge toward me, turning it more into a shield than a wall as it feels far better sitting on my butt than on my knees like this. I fly around the room before dropping into the chair and moving my barrier over to pick up the book I had my eye on. My room was most likely an office before it was converted into a baby room for me.

My family was rich, but the size of my family meant that many situations like this happened. Many rooms were converted into baby rooms as my father had plenty of children. All of the children lived in a separate wing from our parents when we were old enough. After finally pulling the book off the shelf, I floated it over to me before I began reading more on the history of this world.