Finding Family | A Naruto/LOTR Crossover

Prologue: Kakashi and the Art of Trolling Elves

Kakashi was confused when he woke up on the shore of a river. Less because of the river, and more so because he'd woken up at all.

The last thing he remembered was being stabbed with one of Kaguya's All-Killing Ash bones. Wincing at the memory of the pain, he peered around the place, hands shifting the pebbles upon which he sat. Water had already soaked through the bottom of his trousers – never a good thing, especially when there was no shelter in sight as far as the eye could see.

Biting his lip, Kakashi stood, blinking at the far too miniscule change in height. He stared down at his feet, confused as to why they were so small all of a sudden. They were tiny. A shudder ran down his back. Child sized, he realised with a start. "Fuck," he muttered, crashing to his knees, uncaring as the small stones bit into his skin. The lighting was dim, especially with the dark overcast and the ominous rumbles of the clouds above that promised rain and thunder. Channelling chakra to his eyes to help him see should've been easy.

Except it wasn't.

Nothing happened, the odd energy inside him remaining stubbornly inside his core. It didn't even crackle like his chakra used to, adding to the evidence that he'd wound up in something weird. Again. He'd been caught up in too much weird stuff after the formation of Team Seven, but Kakashi had to admit this took the cake. The last time he'd died, he'd met his dad in some dismal place, but at least he'd still been able to feel his chakra.

Peering into the water made him blink again, a soft snort escaping his lips as long locks of silvery hair fall down in a curtain around his face. Gone was his untameable mop of spiky silver hair, replaced by soft tame silvery locks. Large dark grey eyes stared back at him from the rippling surface, cheeks still lined with baby fat, bow-shaped pink lips quivering as he opened his mouth to scream every curse word under the sun. It was the face of a child reflected on the water. A child, not a twenty-something-old adult. His new face. And it had the joys of making him look about eight-years-old, if that.

"You have got to be kidding me," he hissed, the high pitch and squeak of his new voice making him startle in surprise, and then he falls back out of the water and onto the pebbled shore with a muted thud. Even his words sounded different, coming out in a language he'd never heard before, and yet understood almost instinctively. "Fucking dammit."

He was in a child's body, he couldn't use his chakra, and best of all, he was all alone in an unfamiliar land.

::

He followed the river until he reached the road, hands bleeding from the amount of times he'd tripped and barely saved himself from a mouthful of mud and twigs. Evidently there'd been some heavy rainfall around the area as of late, since it was ridiculously slippery, and the lack of coordination he had with his titchy body didn't help.

If Gai could see him now he'd probably laugh his socks off. If Obito could see him, he'd probably sneer and shove his adorable face down into the mud for kicks and giggles.

Cursing Naruto bitterly inside his head, because clearly this had something to do with him, he stepped onto the road, senses tingling as he walked in full view of every possible traveller... not that there were many. In fact, he was the only one there, heading east, towards the faint sounds of life he could hear with his ridiculously sharp ears. They were better than the ones he'd had as a chakra-using shinobi, so it was saying something.

Sunlight barely peeked through the clouds, his footsteps inaudible as he hurried down the road, breaking into a run as his stomach grumbled loudly. He hadn't seen a single plant or edible substance he recognised, further cementing the idea that some god out there was having fun at his expense by throwing him into a completely new world, with nothing but a pair of pants and a weird pale blue tunic that offsets his silvery hair.