Fanfic #211 The Undesired Second Chance by poplasia(Naruto)

This fanfic follows an oc thrown into the world of Naruto during Minato's era. I really like this fic because it has a unique start with the mc being thrown into Naruto with his original body and it develops the world really great from there.

Synopsis: Axel Brandt is a highly intelligent but overall normal guy. He lives a normal life, has a normal engineering job, has normal friends, so on and so forth. But then he died… or not. Displaced and still very much alive, now he's found himself in a distinctly abnormal situation. Ninja are not something he wants to deal with.

Rated: T

words: 154k

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12489598/1/The-Undesired-Second-Chance

Here's the first chapter:

Jet lag, Axel decided, was the absolute worst feeling.

Well, jet lag after several sleepless days working to wrap up a project, presenting said project, and then immediately taking a plane back home to Germany from the opposite side of the world probably broke his scale and scattered its shattered pieces on the wind, so he had to settle with 'absolute worst'. Not to mention that his tired, short-circuited brain was more likely to fall apart than think up a more eloquent gripe.

He resisted yawning for a grand total of maybe three seconds and then almost fell asleep when his bleary blue eyes briefly blinked shut. Sleep had been in short supply lately. Non-existent during the flight, in fact, since he had been stuck sitting amidst an overeager Japanese tourist group that, apparently, didn't need to sleep. Thus Axel had the dubious honor of spending most of the flight answering a veritable barrage of questions about Europe and Germany and München specifically, asked rapid-fire in a language he was only two steps above familiar with. How the insistent bunch could notice enough about his features to correctly peg him as a German but skim over his obvious exhaustion and attempts to evade conversation was beyond him.

He just couldn't, for the life of him, get them to shut up!

And he had tried. Several times, in fact. Some of his later attempts were almost blatantly rude, but all were unsuccessful.

Looking back, he really should have just pretended that he didn't understand Japanese at all. Shame he hadn't thought of that at the time.

Nothing against the Japanese in general, of course. Axel hadjust spent the last few months in their country for work, not to mention the time he had spent learning enough to be halfway decent at understanding the language. But right now, looking back on the flight as he stands dizzily sleep deprived at the airport baggage claim amidst an uncomfortably dense crowd and still at least an hour away from the comfort of his own bed, well… he wasn't feeling very charitable.

Yawning again, Axel scrubbed a hand through his short straw-blond hair and tried to rub the sleep from his face. It didn't work. Next time, he promised to himself, don't count on sleeping during a long plane ride. And, since he was thinking about it, probably not a good choice to pull all-nighters right before either. He had no idea why he had ever thought that'd be a good idea.

Readjusting the straps of his backpack and rolling his shoulders had him feeling somewhat more steady on his feet, though it was probably just wishful thinking: the world still seemed to spin when he moved too fast. If he looked as bad as he felt… Well, judging by the condition of his scarf, wrung out and wrinkled after hours of fiddling with it as he talked with the excitable tourists, he probably looked a hair shy of 'walking corpse'. On that note, he eyed a nearby vending machine; perhaps he could buy something caffeinated in an attempt to resurrect his sleep-deprived self.

But no, as much as he wanted another burst of artificial energy, it definitely wouldn't be the best idea. A full 24 hours running on chemicals is already more than enough.

He was broken from his musing when he finally spotted his suitcase round a bend on the baggage carousel, grabbed the closest handle to heave it off, and finally began making his way to the exit.

Axel walked out of the terminal and toward a less packed area of the concourse, looking around and just taking in the fact that he was finally back in München (even if just in its airport). The ceiling arched overhead, mid-afternoon light streaming through its clear glass panels. He basked in it for a moment—and he hoped it was just a moment and he hadn't been standing there like a dunce for minutes on end—before reluctantly turning his attention from the glorious almost-warmth of the sun. In his defense, the past week hadn't left any time to just have a quiet moment.

Weaving through the rest of the waiting crowd and onto an escalator down to the S-Bahn platform, he heaved an exhausted sigh. Then his bag got caught on something and he had to tug it free, which nearly sent him falling down the steps. The sigh changed into a muttered curse.

Once safely on the escalator, he took the chance to just stop and listen as the intercom made an announcement about the arriving trains. Hearing German spoken again by someone other than himself to himself in cases of extreme annoyance had been a much greater comfort than he had expected. Axel couldn't help but smile at the fact that, for the first time in as many months, he was back in his home country and just a shortish train ride from his bed. His bed, and wasn't the thought just wonderful? The novelty of temporary accommodation wears off rather quickly, he had learned.

He stumbled off the escalator, nearly face-planting on unforgiving concrete, before somehow recovering. However, he did step out of the way to take a moment and re-orient his sense of balance before setting off again.

Barely avoiding collisions with all the people rushing into or meandering about the platform was a miracle in and of itself, but Axel managed to reach one of the ticket machines without too much trouble. Tapping through the options as quickly as he dared, he found the one he needed and made his purchase. And then almost left it behind in the machine: thankfully the person behind him was more aware and caught his mistake. Reasonably sure he had everything he needed, Axel finally wandered off to find somewhere to wait for his train to arrive.

It was only when he heard the intercom make another announcement that he realized he had zoned out again. More alarmingly, he had drifted dangerously close to the edge of the platform while distracted.

A train swept through the station, tossing his short hair out of his face and filling the concrete hall with a symphony of whooshing wind and singing train tracks.

He took a huge step back.

It's a good thing he wasn't driving, since in all likelihood he'd end up getting himself killed by his own scattered attention. Walking even farther away from the edge, Axel leaned back against the side of the escalator. There were benches, but he decided to avoid them for fear that he wouldn't be able to get up again if he sat down.

Axel resisted another yawn and blinked his eyes back open when he realized they had shut at some point. He checked his wristwatch, worried that he might have missed his train and would be forced to wait another grueling quarter-hour-or-something before beginning the last leg of his journey. Another grueling quarter-hour-or-something-plus-train-time before glorious, stress-free sleep. But no, thankfully his lapse had only lasted two minutes.

A train whooshed in on the other side of the platform, stopping to let off its passengers. It wasn't the one Axel was waiting for.

And another, but this one was the one he wanted. He got on with only minimal issues—his bag snagged again, this time in the gap between train and platform. In other news, he felt a bit less tired. Adrenaline does that.

"What, are you trying to get me killed?" Axel hissed at his luggage after arriving at an available seat. One of the other passengers chuckled quietly at something, and he was abruptly reminded that here and now, being back in München meant other people would be able to understand him when he grumbled to himself in German.

That didn't really matter though, since there really wasn't much difference between getting weird looks for what was said and getting weird looks for the language it was said in. What did matter was that he had almost half an hour until his stop, and that meant one thing: nap time. Maybe after a bit more rest he'd stop accusing inanimate objects of attempted murder.

He pulled out his phone, set five or six alarms, sat down backpack-and-all, and was awake for all of maybe two seconds before conking out.

Axel slept like the dead, and when his alarms went off he certainly felt like the dead.

He thought naps were supposed to help with exhaustion. After catching sight of his reflection in one of the train windows, he grimaced. 'Walking corpse' indeed.

After a halfhearted attempt to piece his face back together, he had to call it a lost cause. In a move of great foresight, he hadn't brought a comb with him to deal with his short hair that had somehow worked itself into even more disarray during his nap. And of course there was nothing he could do about his scruffy face; even if he had a razor, his hand was so shaky that he'd be more likely to slit his own throat than successfully shave.

A few minutes later and it was finally his stop. He trooped off with a few others and took a deep breath.

It was good to be back. He smiled and, for the nth time in as many minutes, yawned hugely.

He walked the rest of the way since it was fairly likely—nearly guaranteed—that if he sat down again he wouldn't be getting up for at least a few hours. Besides, München's cobbled streets called to him, and if a few of those calls nearly led him into oncoming traffic, well… He'd just need to forgive and forget.

And finally he was back: standing in front of his small apartment building, walking to his front door, unlocking it and shouldering through, seeing the familiar furniture, posters, books, and even the questionable reddish stain on the flint-gray carpet (it had been there since he moved in). Everything was such a welcome sight: even the stain, though Axel did set his baggage down over it to cover it up.

Taking in the familiar sights of his empty apartment with a happy (albeit sleepy) smile, he sat himself on the ground with his back against his bed. It was more comfortable than one might expect.

He fished his phone out of his pocket and turned off airplane mode. After a moment the device went crazy with buzzes, updating all the texts he had missed during his flight: two from his parents, a couple from friends wanting to meet up now that he would be back in town, and eleven from his little sister. That's pretty much what he expected.

Tapping back a few short messages to friends promising drinks and stories, followed by one to his parents saying he had gotten home safely, he shifted into a more comfortable position on the floor. One person left. His sister's name glowed at him from his phone's screen and he couldn't help but smile. Honestly, Adriane could be such a doofus sometimes.

Did he need someone to send the occasional text counting down to his arrival back in Germany? No.

Doesn't mean he didn't appreciate it.

He called, but she must have been in class since it went straight to her answering machine.

"And now we finally reach 'zero'," he said, finishing her countdown for her. The sharp edges of the German words were blurrier than usual due to his jet-lagged exhaustion. "Looks like I made it back in one piece, Adri. The flight was a nightmare even though I didn't even get any sleep, but I'll tell you more later. Want to get lunch? You can tell me how your first year's going. You've been in Uni for one whole semester right? You have to have some stories by now; we can do a trade! Anyway, I need some sleep so… See you tomorrow, hopefully!"

For a moment he just sat there staring up at the ceiling with a small grin. His own first year felt like ages ago… and wow he felt old when he put it that way—he was barely twenty, come on! Not nearly old enough to be nostalgically reminiscing about the 'golden age' of his university days. Sure, everyone else was at least five years his senior at the time, but he was still good friends with the other members of his old club: a medieval recreation group called the Society of Creative Anachronism, or SCA for short. He had joined to find an outlet for his interest in blacksmithing, since just because he had majored in metallurgical and materials engineering didn't mean he had a valid excuse to forge swords and stuff.

Plus, despite graduating from university and going their separate ways into the workforce, his friends and he all tried to schedule their vacation time around the larger events so they could go as a group. And they still occasionally pestered him to make armor or weapons or just generally help them with their medieval personas or…

Axel realized that he must have fallen asleep at some point during his recollections when he woke up to darkness and an empty stomach. His next realization was that he definitely wouldn't have any food in his fridge. Or the pantry. And he was fairly sure he had eaten all of his flight snacks. He then realized how uncomfortable it was to have slept sitting up against his bed frame rather than in it. While he had been planning on relocating to the mattress before conking out, clearly his brain had had other ideas.

"Aua…"

Pushing his reluctant body upright and stretching out the worst of the cricks, Axel forced himself to walk back to the door. He made sure to grab his backpack on the way—he'd left his wallet in it and was too tired to fish it out. God, he really needed something to eat. Thankfully there was a convenience store down the block that should still be open.

Good enough for now.

And he was outside again, the crisp night air maybe doing the slightest bit to rouse him. Stepping onto the sidewalk with a deep breath, Axel began his slow trip to the store. He was waiting at a crosswalk when he heard…

He turned to the street and was blinded.

Axel wasn't tired anymore.

Adrenaline does that.

His could see the truck, even the driver at the wheel, slumped over on the horn and probably unconscious. He ran a few split-second mental calculations: probable mass, velocity, trajectory, distance…

There was only one conclusion, and he thought he might have cursed out loud but he didn't really notice because, well… there was no helping it.

He was dead.

Axel's world knew white, then red, and pain, then darkness.

=X=X=X=

And then, somehow, white again.

He blinked up at the ceiling—clean and clinical, though the lights were oddly outdated—and some part of him was collected enough to guess he had somehow gotten to a hospital. Glancing around the plain room didn't tell him much else: it was very white, undecorated, and generally very hospital-like. No wait, there was some decoration: an oriental-looking scroll hung up right by the headboard, which struck him as kind of weird. But then, he'd never been in a hospital before so he wouldn't really know. A soft knock at the door startled him slightly.

"Ja?" Nobody came in for a moment, so he added, "Sie können rein kommen."

Another moment passed before the door finally swung open to admit a slightly confused-looking elderly Asian gentleman. Axel took note of the older man's appearance—clean professional clothes (if a bit old fashioned and also distinctly oriental)—and decided he seemed pretty trustworthy.

And then the man spoke and Axel's mind might as well be flatlining for all the help it was being.

Because, just… Japanese!?

His thoughts stuttered to a halt, sure that his observation was correct but drawing a blank as to how it was even possible. Though his brain was still catching up to the language shift, he was able to catch at least some of it.

And by 'some of it', he caught something about finally waking up and finding a forest. Then, because telling him about finding a forest makes absolutely zero sense, Axel corrected his translation: more likely it had actually been about finding him in a forest. But he did understand the whole last sentence, so he counted it as a success overall.

"How are you feeling?"

Axel considered: his right leg, he belatedly noticed, was suspended in a cast and thus was likely broken, his ribs hurt with a deep persistent pain, and general aches were everywhere. With his not-bad-but-still-nowhere-near-fluent knowledge of the Japanese language, he finally answered with an uncertain, "Better?"

It was clear by the curling grin the doctor gave him that his accent was as atrocious as he thought. He said something else that Axel struggled to catch—something about his head? Maybe hitting his…

Oh, fantastic; the doctor apparently thought he had brain damage for some reason. Then Axel remembered that he currently has no idea where he is and, in fact, had thought that he had been in his home city hit by a truck when he had, apparently, been in a forest on the other side of the world hit by a… something.

Somehow.

Alright, so maybe there's a case for this brain damage idea.

When next the doctor spoke, Axel was too distracted to decipher any of what was said and ended up just staring back blankly. The doctor, showing commendable patience, repeated himself without complaint. "My name is Kimura Shuichi. What is yours?"

An introduction was simple enough and certainly within Axel's capabilities, even as confused as he was. "I…" Yet his brain decided to prove him wrong, faltering on recalling the full phrase, though only for a moment. "I am Axel Brandt."

It didn't escape his notice that Dr. Kimura's—Axel was pretty sure that that was his family name and thus doubly sure he had just introduced himself backwards—expression became almost comically disbelieving when he finished introducing himself. Sure enough, the doctor was soon butchering Axel's name.

"Ak—" The doctor paused, considering, before attempting: "Akuseru Buranto?"

One might think that it would be easier to pronounce something correctly when it had just been said aloud, but there are some language quirks and accents that tend to mess things up. It was something Axel had especially noticed about the people he had worked with in Tokyo—'X's and 'L's tend to be an issue for Japanese, meaning his name was always difficult—so he just repeated his pronunciation slightly slower. "Ax-el Brandt."

Dr. Kimura just shook his head this time, choosing not to make another attempt quite yet. He did, however, say something about strange names: Axel didn't think he had the language skills to argue with that. The doctor did a few more doctor things, generally checking him over, before prescribing continued bed rest and leaving to check up on other patients.

Axel stared up at the ceiling, finally alone and awake and thus (presumably) able to figure out what had happened. He had stumble-asked the doctor a few things: the results were more confusing than illuminating. Apparently one of the villagers passing by had found him passed out and bleeding a few minutes away from the village in the surrounding forest and that was that. Axel found it a tad odd that Dr. Kimura didn't seem to find it overly strange to encounter severely injured people lying around in the woods, but then who knows. Maybe the woods around here are particularly dangerous for some reason.

Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that he had somehow turned up back in Japan, injured, with none of his luggage save his backpack and whatever was in it. He knew why he was injured (he wasn't just going to forget his near-death encounter), and missing luggage was fairly easy to accept, but missing out on traveling halfway around the world was another matter entirely.

"Gott im Himmel… Bin ich verrückt?" Axel groaned to himself. Well, maybe insanity was a perfectly valid explanation.

=X=X=X=

The patient in the other room must be crazy.

No, scratch that. All the circumstances around him, in additionto the man himself: all crazy.

Even before he had woken up things weren't making sense. Morimoto Kichirou, the blacksmith's boy, had found him bleeding in the forest, minutes outside of town in a clearing just off the side of the road. From his injuries—broken right leg, bruised ribs, lots of normal bruises basically everywhere, cuts, and maybe a slight concussion as well—it could be guessed that something had slammed into him with some force and more than likely sent him flying. Now Kimura Shuichi wasn't much of a shinobi himself, having studied exclusively medical ninjutsu and literately nothing else before retiring from the force to run his family's clinic, but the only thing he could think of that could cause that kind of damage was a ninjutsu. But then… the surrounding ground was completely undisturbed. Hell, according to Kichirou-kun even the thin layer of frost had been unbroken before he had trampled it when he went to help.

So the man was found gravely injured with absolutely no signsas to how.

And then he woke up and things somehow got more crazy.

Shuichi had been hoping he could get some answers out of him once he woke up, but that clearly wouldn't be an option. At least not for a while. His speech was so rough and tinted by… something that the doctor could barely understand him. In the end all he had learned was his name. Not that he could even pronounce it.

It's not that he was annoyed that his patient was finally awake and on the road to full recovery, but honestly.

He let his head thud onto the paperwork on his desk, scattering a few by the edge, and groaned an annoyed sigh. Peeking through one eye showed him the butchered attempts at writing the patient's name down at the top of a form. It was the report he was writing up, as had to be done for any suspicious character that couldn't be accounted for, but he didn't know what to put down for most of it. As such he had ended up leaving most of it blank, save for two things: name and age.

Specifically that the patient's name was something along the lines of 'Akuseru Buranto' (but sharper somehow) and he was (probably) in his early 20s.

That's it. That's all Shuichi knew.

Part of him grumbled that he was getting too old to need to deal with these things.

At this point he hadn't even looked too closely at the fact that his patient should be dead. Should have been dead since he had first been brought in. Was dead even now, technically… but not. It was easy to see that he still breathed, that his heart still beat—he was alive—despite one glaring point that should make it impossible: he didn't have a chakra system.

Which, now that he thought about it, probably explained why it had been so hard to stabilize him; trying to use what medical jutsu he could still perform felt like trying to keep water in a strainer: the chakra he put into the technique just drained away before doing anything. Though that's not quite accurate, since he had been able to make a difference for the broken bones by shoving way more healing chakra than should be needed and directly forcing it to stay in place with every single ounce of control he had. And even then it had been slow-going, energy intensive, exhausting work that didn't fix nearly as much as he had hoped. All of that's beside the point though.

The point is, his patient has no chakra.

He has absolutely no chakra.

But he was awake in the other room, just down the hall, so Shuichi must have made a mistake. Because if it wasn't a mistake then the man in the other room just down the hall should be dead and he clearly isn't.

"I'm getting too old for this," he repeated, but this time out loud and mumbled into his paperwork. Deciding that he must have been wrong, since the alternative was literally impossible, he scribbled down that the patient was a civilian. A barely-there chakra system (and there had to be a chakra system, he told himself) could mean nothing else.

There was a sudden loud knock on his door: only one, and very heavy-handed. With yet another sigh, though this one more fond annoyance than just plain annoyed, Shuichi called, "Kichirou-kun, please. While knocking is the polite thing to do, if you could avoid denting my door whenever you stop by I would appreciate it."

"Sorry, Kimura-sensei. I'll keep that in mind." The door slid to the side to reveal exactly who he expected, though looking quite a bit dirtier than usual. Morimoto Kichirou was pretty tall for a 15-year-old, and right now most of him was covered in a fine layer of soot from his father's smithy. Even his near-black hair was several shades darker than it should be.

"All the same, given that you haven't stopped yet, I doubt you'll stop now." The doctor ran a hand through his graying hair in an exasperated gesture, but his crinkling smile said otherwise. "Though usually you do try to clean yourself up more before rushing over."

At least the teen had the decency to look a bit chagrined at that, though not for long. "Sorry, I just… Is it true he's woken up?"

Shuichi nodded. "I believe he's been conscious for nearly two hours now."

There was a pause as Kichirou-kun waited for him to say more, expectant, but his patience dried out quickly. "Well? What's up with 'em?"

"It's 'with him'. And honestly…" For what might as well have been the hundredth time, the doctor mentally ran through his brief interaction with his patient. "I have no idea."

"Didn't you ask him? You had to have gotten the guy's name, right?"

At that the doctor grinned, appreciating both the irony and the boy's increasingly frustrated expression. "Yes, I asked."

"Oh come on, Kimura-sensei! Tell me!"

"His name is—" and of course he knew he was going to say it wrong, "—Akuseru Buranto."

A blink. "Aku-what-now?"

"I know. When he first woke up he was rambling nonsense. I suspect he had been caught in a genjutsu of some sort." While there had been injuries to the man's head, there was nothing that would suggest such a loss of linguistic skill. "Fortunately he still remembers some when it comes to speaking, even if his speech is horribly stilted and the way he pronounces words…" Shuichi shook his head, at a loss. "The man made no sense most of the time."

Kichirou-kun flopped himself down in the room's other chair, looking incredibly disappointed. "Dang, man. I was hoping to weasel some cool stories out of him."

An idea struck, and Shuichi's expression became slightly scheming. "Well, if you are so interested in getting Akuseru-san to talk, then perhaps something could be arranged."

The teen became pensive, clearly picking up on the older man's tone.

"Speaking lessons, then? That will work nicely," Shuichi slyly continued. "Practice holding a conversation should help my patient overcome his strange impediment: what a fantastic suggestion, Kichirou-kun! Shall we arrange a schedule for you to—"

"Wait, a schedule?"

"Of course! You'll need to come by once a day, I suppose, to guarantee progress."

"Once a day," the boy repeated under his breath. He was absolutely flabbergasted by this point. "I don't… I can't… I mean, once a day?! I already help Dad in the smithy, how much free time you think I got?"

The doctor corrected, "Come now: 'do you think I have'. And I think that if you have enough time to wander in and pester me every other day then you might as well help out every now and then."

There was no argument at that, only a defeated-sounding sigh. "Okay, fine."

"Fantastic!" Shuichi clapped his hands together, giving the arrangement a sense of finality. "Come along, let's go introduce you to him."

"You mean now? As in now now?"

Sure, he was perhaps enjoying pestering the teen a bit too much, but don't begrudge an old man his entertainment. Walking around his desk, he shepherded the younger boy out the door and down the hall. "Why not?"

Before any answer could be given, he knocked on the door to his patient's room. From the other side they heard, "Ja, bitte— Uh, ich meine… Please come in."

The doctor pushed the door open, ignoring the incredulous look Kichirou-kun shot him: it's not his fault the boy thought he had been exaggerating. Akuseru-san was sitting up, at least as much as he had been able to manage by himself, and he gave them a polite, slightly confused smile as they walked in.

"I trust everything is still fine, Akuseru-san?"

"Yes." The man paused for a moment, clearly thinking over what to say next. "Sorry. I said my name the wrong way. It is Brandt Axel."

Kichirou-kun's expression was getting more incredulous by the second and even Shuichi, who was beginning to suspect the craziness had no bounds, was a bit thrown by the name flip.

"Then I must apologize for my rudeness, Buranto-san."

There was another pause as his patient digested his words and, though the doctor didn't know it, did his best to translate. "Nein, es ist…" He paused, his expression becoming disgruntled, and tried again. "No problem. You can call me Axel, please. Who is this?"

"I'm Morimoto Kichirou," the teen replied, since clearly he was the new face. "Nice to meet you, Aku— Akus… Crap. Um, could you repeat your name?"

"Axel."

After a moment's consideration, Kichirou-kun took a crack at pronouncing the strange name. "Akser-san?"

"Fast richtig!" From the man's grin the remark was something positive, quickly proven when he added, "…er, very close!"

Kichirou-kun looked like he was mulling over the name again, before demanding, "Say it again, man!"

"Uh, Axel…?"

"Akser," the teen repeated. "Ak-kser. Aks-ur. Dang, how're you doing that? I know I'm wrong, but I just can't get it!"

Smiling somewhat apologetically, Buranto-san (Shuichi decided he'd use the man's surname, partially due to convention but mostly because it'd be easier than the other name to figure out how to pronounce) just shrugged and said nothing. He clearly didn't know how to help on that front, likely lacking the words to try and explain further.

Shuichi, however, took this lull in the conversation to state, "There will be plenty of time for you to figure out how to say his name, since you'll be helping Buranto-san regain his speaking skills."

"I'm gonna visit a lot to get you to practice talking more!" clarified Kichirou-kun, noticing the blond man's confused expression. He ignored Shuichi's attempt to correct his grammar and just continued speaking. "I mean, it'll probably be a lot of work, but at least it will be interesting, right?"

It took Axel a moment to understand the sentence and the hours of boredom between the teen's frequent visits to catch the sentiment, but in a few weeks he would come to wholeheartedly agree. By that point, however, it wouldn't be about the lessons or practicing language. No, by then it will have more to do with literally everything else.

Because really, adjusting to a new language is minor when compared with adjusting to a new world.

At least it will be interesting, right?