A/N: hello peeps to this lovely 'little' experiment... where does this come from? long ago i got sick and tired of the tried-and-true generic 'time travel' fics, always following the same plot of Naruto's future life bites and because of Kyuubi-demon-magicks he goes back in time to fix it... so i came up with a bit of a 'quirk' to that mix, just for giggles, and decided to throw a whole other monkey wrench into the mix... again, for giggles... if you've read any of my other works you'll probably notice i have a rather warped sense of humor...
also, this is a bit of an experiment in how well i can do first person, i much prefer third limited but eh, this was screaming at me to start this way -shrugs-
Dis: Kishi is a rich mofo who's got all this shenanigans... i'm just adding more shenanigans...
ENJOY!
Naruto's Story:
This is the second time I've watched my world die.
The first time I barely had the time to live, really, what the hell is living 16-17years worth if I'm just gonna get sucked up into some giant bijuu machine and die? Well, not quite that way I suppose, its kinda hard to remember fully. I remember dealing with the old Madara, fighting alongside the old resurrected Hokage, it was like something straight out of one of my childhood dreams. There I was, leading an army of the world's entire forces of shinobi at my back with the Shodai on one side and my father, the Fourth Hokage, on the other, with the Nidaime and old man nearby too. All my friends were watching, cheering, fighting… everything was going so-so right… but what the hell happened? I got beat, Madara using his own tricked out eyes screwed everything up… killed most of my friends… killed Hinata… I was only 16, about 17, and the only girl that'd ever sincerely told me she loved me had just died right in front of me. It felt like a spear went straight through my gut when I felt her connection severed from my Kyuubi cloak… just what the hell, WHAT THE HELL?! I'd lived this long just to lose everything when it fucking mattered?
Fuck that!
After squeezing the un-life out of that bastard and watching his stolen Rinnegan bleed out as his mighty tree of death burned to the ground I cried. Not like when Ero-Sannin died, or Kakashi-sensei, or Baa-chan… no, somehow that girl had made more of an in pact in my life then I even realized. So at the end of my enemy, I sat down and cried, wrapped up in a ball of misery as I watched my mind play games with me, showing every time I was down and how she just happened to be there to help pick me up, how small gestures and kind words had done more to make me into the mighty shinobi I became then all that other bullshit I tried. I'd completely forgotten about Sasuke at that point, he'd helped in the war, but once it was over, it seemed he'd chosen to just finish our little feud. I didn't even fight him, I was too wrapped up in my visions of the past to care about the Kusanagi replica shoved in my throat. I almost died bleeding out on the top petals of that death tree…
Luckily I had Kurama, and he'd given some damn about me, and taking in my misery and consent he'd used whatever demon arts to send me back. This time I had him at his full ability, his 'light side' sacrificing itself to send me back so his 'dark side' that my dad gave me during the fight joined me and melded back with my old self's light half. It's all really weird, I was both my old self and new self, with both the yin and yang of the Kyuubi, all one big scary bijuu. I was a goddamn powerhouse at age five, it was pretty sweet.
Well, probably not so sweet, as I had the full Kyuubi, I had more problems, and he was more of a dick, or she… it's hard to tell with demons, they like to flip-flop genders like a coin, depending on mood, or maybe it was just the fact I had both sides so now the Kyuubi was actually 'complete', sort of… but still, a total dick… I ended up killing Haku on the bridge because of my overload of power, ripped off one of Sasuke's arms during the retrieval and, well… let's just say that masked dude that was supposed to resurrect the 'real' Madara never got the chance. So, pretty sweet, good and bad mixed into one this time around, I got to stop Madara's plan from the get-go, Sasuke didn't get a chance to 'leave' the village this time due to the missing arm… and I actually paid attention to Hinata, even started dating her before the culmination of all this crazy. Life was good…
But like I said, living to 16-17 is bullshit, as you have no idea what's what at that age, hell your brain isn't even fully developed if I'm to believe what Sakura told me once. By twenty I was the new Rokudaime Hokage, Baa-chan having sacrificed herself during one of those fucked up missions in the war that broke out between us and Kumo, which sucked because I liked that Killer-Bee dude when he was training me, and my meddling had saved that Nii Yugito chick, but no, fuck that, cause I blew up one too many bases near their boarders they kinda went nuts and saw it as Konoha expanding and threatening them. Fuck politics man, fuck politics. Throughout my second life I managed to get Kyuubi, this time 'Yoko', as she preferred to be called, like I said demons are weird, came on my side, even supping up Hinata and the two of us were like a duo of Bijuu on the battlefield. We ended up winning that war after I beat the old man Raikage in an arm-wrestling contest, it was NOT easy mind you, that guy is ripped, but during our time away stopping a war Danzo, still being a-fucking-live in this timeline let out Sasuke, whom he'd been secretly training instead of having him buried in the darkest pit ANBU had to offer. Quite a few good people lost their lives, Anko who'd become the head of T&I and got married to Iruka-sensei, seriously that was about as freaky as Kyuubi deciding to be 'female' this go around, and had twins with him was one of the people who'd tried holding back the newly Ne trained and mecha-armed-out Sasuke. I specifically held a ceremony for her, not just for Iruka-sensei and his girls, but because even though she knew she couldn't beat the bastard she'd died trying to save her home and family. The woman and 13 other ANBU at her side earned all the respect I had that day.
Sakura was also a casualty, but for a slightly less honorable reason… I let her body remain buried under the rubble of Ne headquarters when I ripped the place out of the ground.
Danzo escaped… so did Sasuke by the time Hinata and I got back. The younger part of me wanted to bring him back… the older part of me, the one that remembered him stabbing me through the neck after we'd just saved the world, did not. I sent teams to track him but they were nowhere to be found. Danzo's body turned up pretty quickly, or what was left of it and thirty some odd Ne operatives. It didn't take a genius to figure out what happened.
It was quite a number of years later, after Hinata and I got married, with extreme opposition by her old man, let me tell you Hyuuga Hiashi is not a guy to piss off… also it may have had something to do with the other Kage, Raikage included, being at my wedding, but, uh, details… so we'd got married and had a few kids, both of us training our own teams and Konoha and the other villages basically living more on the barrowed time no one would ever learn about. Hinata knew, of course, I couldn't keep anything hidden from her, and it was just another one of those reasons she loved me, I gave so much for the entire world she said, and looking at her and the kids I would always wonder how far I would go for that now? I mean, I wasn't that stupid 16-17 age I'd been when the world ended, I wasn't 20 when I became Hokage and reality started to sink in, I was in my thirties with her, my own family and village to worry about, nothing was 'new' anymore and when I really thought about it, they, her and our kids, would always be more to me than anything else this world had to offer.
And it wasn't long after I finally understood the full implications of those thoughts and Sasuke's words from long ago.
I didn't know… I really, truly, didn't know a damn thing about how it felt to lose everything important…
Sasuke had come back, only this time he'd taken over Madara's original plans somehow, raising his Zetsu army, having the perfect Mangekyou that he could switch to a Rinnegan and back with ease, even a fully formed Susano'o. He had everything his traitorous clan had to offer… the cheeky prick. His army swept through the elemental nations like a plague, destroying Nami, Kiri, Kusa, Ame, and working his way into Hi no Kuni to destroy Konoha. The man was insane and obsessed, and honestly I don't even know if it was 'really' Sasuke.
The first thing he did entering Konoha was to kill my wife and kids… then my students and hers… than anyone else he could get his hands on that meant anything to me, including Iruka and his girls… I don't want to think about what he did to those girls, Kami bless Anko's soul if she ever forgives me for what I let happen to them… Iruka too…
Why was I so powerless? Why was I so weak? Why could that bastard cut me off from Yoko? Why did I allow myself to become so complacent and stagnant… why did I let myself have a happy life?
The moment all the atrocities he was committing, the boy I had considered something like a brother once was doing to the people of my village, had done to those I loved… the moment I could get a hold of Yoko I let her go… I just let everything go…
Hate, anger, rage, pure unadultered wrath and rancor poured out of me, so much that even the mighty Kyuubi could not contain… I took her power, all of it, the yin and yang and combined it with my own power and I just lost all sense of control…
I burned the world to ash… and I don't even remember it…
My hand still shakes from the rampage, the feelings I get from what I'd done… and I don't think any part of me isn't glad for it. Kyuubi, Yoko or Kurama or whatever they want to call themselves brought me back from the brink of insanity… one hundred years after I'd lost all sense of time. I spent an entire century as a demon of destruction just killing and burning the world… I'd become everything everyone had ever feared from me… and I didn't care.
The world was charred black and covered in a permanently raining ash… nothing was alive, I know so as I attempted sage mode and felt nothing… absolutely nothing…
I'd truly lost everything, and not just because of 'one man' but because I myself had let it happen…
So much for 16-17years of ignorant bliss…
I take it back…
I take it all back…
Hinata's Story:
What should have been the end of my world was really only the prelude…
I remember being 13 and getting news that the great Toad Sannin master Jiraiya had been captured by some foreign nation. I didn't particularly care about the old Sannin one way or the other at the time, the only thing I knew about him was he had taken Naruto-kun off to train. So if the Sannin was captured, more than likely Naruto was too… I surprised everyone in my class by immediately going up to the Godaime Hokage and demanding to be on a team that helped search for them, if not actually help in their retrieval. She gave me one look and immediately denied my request; I was just a genin and had no idea what I was talking about.
So I tried training harder, tried getting chuunin faster, tried proving myself capable of more than just being a waste of space so I could go out there and look for Naruto-kun.
That bitch Sakura made chuunin before me, same with Kiba-kun and Neji-nii-san. They were sent to join the search, I was still stuck trying to get my vest. By the time I achieved that they'd managed to find Master Jiraiya, dead, tortured, but no sign of Naruto-kun. There was absolutely no sign of him, not in the bases they'd checked, no word from the country, absolutely nothing. I tried harder.
I eventually found my way into ANBU, a special division called Ne, I'd never heard of it and didn't care about its sketchy practices, I would do anything to find Naruto-kun, anything at all. I often felt like I was the only person that cared what happened to him, the only one that remembered his bright smiles and promising eyes, the only one that remembered he did his best for this village that never liked him, even as a kid. I remember people calling him the Kyuubi brat, and while I'm not a Nara, I'm not an idiot either, he was born the night the Kyuubi attacked, he looks strikingly like the Fourth, and always has this abundant energy… if he wasn't the Kyuubi reborn he had it sealed in him, joining Ne I found it was the later and even still it didn't change my opinion of him, he protected us all, since the day he was born he was a hero.
My father disapproved of my choices for some reason, but as a konoichi he had no real say in what I did, once I figured that out, had the confidence to use that to further my goals of finding Naruto-kun, I didn't let anything he or the clan said stop me. I didn't even let Danzo-sama stop me once he started going on his shpell about how 'weak' Konoha's become for losing its Jinchuuriki, I would get him back you fucking gimp, just you wait.
When I was 15 I was the equivalent of a jounin, but ANBU, especially Ne didn't care for actual rankings, just that you were strong enough for the job. I got a job stating only I was to retrieve a sample from an island near Kiri… I had no idea what I was doing and now I can't believe how stupidly naive and driven I was…
I'd managed to surpass my cousin in two years but I'd not gotten any smarter…
On that island was a lab, I don't know what exactly it was for or what exactly they were doing there, not even exactly WHO owned it, but the moment I noticed who the sample was… I lost it… I used my training and took out anyone that wasn't Naruto-kun in that place, I just didn't care, he was alive, I'd found him, that was all that mattered. By killing them I'd inadvertently released him… I released the single greatest natural disaster our world had ever seen because I was too young to truly think…
15 is an age for hopeless romances, for dreams, for thoughts of love but having no real idea what any of that actually means…
I wanted to find him and free him, so I did, not caring about my orders and I'd slaughtered everyone there not caring who they were… come to find out it had been a secret base for Konoha. They'd found him years ago, my cousin, my teammate and that bitch, and not one of them told anyone. He'd been found where Master Jiraiya had been found tortured and dead, only he wasn't the Naruto everyone knew. His mind had been wiped, and samples of all the other Bijuu had been forcibly placed in him, altering his mind and forcing his body through changes he could not comprehend. So instead of bringing him back, they'd kept him in stasis as his body adjusted to the process forced upon him in the hopes he'd come back to who he was one day…
And I just came in here and fucked that all up…
Why? Because I was blind, because I was young, naive, a plain stupid easily manipulated idiot…
They had been keeping this from Danzo, and I'd given him the one thing he needed to not only find it but to blow it all open… why was I such an idiot… why was I such a failure…
Naruto's pale white skin and blank blue eyes stared at me for all of a moment before he screamed in an unholy fury and all the power of the Bijuu exploded forth turning him into some kind of demon I can't fully describe. I'd let him out, I'd caused him the greatest pain, and now he was out wreaking havoc on the world because he knew nothing beyond instinct and pain…
I can't explain how I got out, because honestly I don't remember, just that one moment I was staring at him as he transformed and the next I was waking up on a beach on the mainland as typhoons raged in the distance. I could see Kiri burning from the shoreline… and I'd caused all this…
It was five years into the demon's reign that I'd finally figured out a way to atone for my greatest sin. Using a combination of seals, chakra, and old Hyuuga writings about demons I'd devised a way to end it, all the pain and suffering I'd let loose on the world… I was going to end it…
I was finally going to save you Naruto-kun…
With a small team of what was left of the shinobi we had one final showdown with the demon that was once the boy I'd admired most of my life… the villages had been the first things destroyed, then the major cities, now all that stood were whatever small towns people hobbled together in remote places outside the demon's rampage. I'd formed a village between what was left of Snow and Iron, even had Sasuke on my side as my second in command, he having given up his revenge once Konoha was demolished and I let him take Danzo's head, as much as I'd wanted to… but he was with us… even Orochimaru had crawled out of some hidden experiment of his and joined us, helping me with my research with his vast knowledge of forbidden techniques… and there were others… so many others, people who were feared, hated, disgusted as the worst shinobi had to produce, yet they were the ones standing… in the face of an oblivion a young blind girl released on the world, these were the survivors and honestly I had no problem leading them in the hell I'd created…
I just wish I could have died with him…
Orochimaru-sensei had died I don't know how many times during that fight, even sacrificing a piece of him to save his old student Anko, like I said, survivors, and Sasuke, not that either would thank him. Sasuke's Susano'o was integral in bringing down the Bijuu with its great power and black flames cover its body able to hold him. The Raikage, who called himself Jin when we met long after Rai no Kuni being razed and he refused to be referred to as a 'Kage' anymore, feeling he'd lost the title when he lost the village and his brother, was the only human that could punch the demon in the face and do anything. I know Tsunade would have wanted to be here, same with my father, but they were both too old or injured to help, and barely anyone else from my generation or the one before were alive or able to fight. I stood alongside Nuke-nin and once enemies fighting to take down my one regret, my once love, the person that inspired me to be strong and now drove me on with nothing but the shame for what I'd done, choosing him over the world…
Now I had to correct that, I had to fix what I'd broken in my naïve foolishness…
While Sasuke and Jin held the demon down I preformed the seals, gathered my chakra, and once given the cue they let go, allowing the ten tailed demon to charge right at me as I charged at him. With one seal I dissipated his external aura, the body, with another I ripped away the internal aura, the chakra, all that was left was the bare host body; a man my age with pale white skin and bottomless blue eyes looked at me as I embraced him… saying the one thing I'd been dying to since I started this insanity…
"I love you Naruto-kun… I'm sorry…"
And with the last seal I stuck my fingers into his brain and exploded it from the inside, preventing any form of healing, destroying all chakra pathways or seals and erasing the man I still can't believe I love…
I don't know how long I stood there; staring emptily at the headless naked body of the man I loved… his blood all over my hands and face… and just felt nothing…
Sasuke was the first to place his hand on my shoulder but I didn't feel it, Jin said nothing, while Anko was dragging what was left of Orochimaru and asking if it was finally over…
I told them it was… the demon was dead, all the Bijuu were probably gone with it… the nightmare was over, it was now time for them to start rebuilding… they all agreed and left, not saying a word, knowing there was really nothing left to be said… I'll always be grateful for them for that…
My life should have ended there, but it didn't… I went on to become the first Kenkage, steel shadow, as the remains of Iron and snow formed the new Steel country, where what we thought remained of the shinobi of the elemental nations had gathered. There were barely twenty thousand of us left, of populations of millions that was all that was left of our world after five years of that demon and they wanted me, the person that started it all to lead them.
I feel like I had no choice in the matter, all anyone cared about was that I was the one that killed it… not how I felt about it or that I'd been the one to start it…
So I played along, having Orochimaru the Immortal as my primary advisor and confidant, the man might have been crazy but he was smart and oddly decent once you got past all the creepiness… and he never made a pass at me. He looked at me and Anko like his daughters and protected us fiercely, Sasuke was his prodigal son who came and went as he pleased, and Jin… he went back home to bury what was left of his country. He came back for awhile, and I asked him about the people he'd lost and the name, he said it was all in the past, 'A' had died with them. Many of us felt like that, that who we were before the demon was long dead, with the rest of our world, who we were now had nothing to do with them… maybe that was why I could deal with people like these as the closest I let near me now…
Anko gave birth to twins within the next year, having been pregnant while we'd fought the demon and either not known or didn't bother to care. I never got who the father was and while Orochimaru looks livid someone had gotten past him, he watched those boys like they were his own.
Tsunade passed not long after Naruto-kun, probably finally just letting go…
I don't know what Sasuke did half the time, he'd wonder away for months on end, come back all scuffed up, not say a word and just sit and join us for dinner. If there was a personification for 'lost' he was truly it…
There were other people, those I had to preside over, those that wanted to stir up old wounds, things that we honestly didn't need now, that I didn't need now. It wasn't long into the second year after the demon I'd tried my first attempt at suicide… just twirling a kunai round and round feeling nothing before slitting my wrists without care…
I don't know how long I'd sat in the Kenkage chair just staring out the window as I bled out before I noticed something to my left. When I looked I thought I was hallucinating as it looked like some specter wrapped in a torn black-grey cloak and staring at me from behind an odd mask with glowing eyes. It just sat there, in the air staring at me, as if waiting…
This was one of those odd times Sasuke decided to come back, and he did so by busting down my door, staring at me with his Magekyou and shouting for Orochimaru…
The world is awfully surreal when Orochimaru is our top medic…
I must have blacked out as the next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed and that 'thing' was floating over me, just staring again. It introduced itself as an aspect of death, not quite a Shinigami as that was a god that lead one to 'death', but as a component of death itself. I just said hi.
I didn't always see this thing called 'death', I preferred to just call it Kuro for the torn black cloak it wore, but Kuro would pretty much show up every time I came close to death, either by my own hand or that of some external force. I knew to look out for things when Kuro showed up, and partially I started to wonder if I'd gone slightly insane and this was just a portion of my guilty consciousness either talking me into death or out of it… I wasn't really sure, Kuro didn't seem to feel one way or another…
I knew I wasn't crazy when Orochimaru offered it tea once… then I got an entire lecture about his experiences with death as the closest to immortal as any shinobi would probably ever get. Kuro call him a white snake and while speaking rather cordial with Orochimaru spoke of how much the Shinigami hated him with absolute delight… it was an even more surreal moment for me…
I must have been almost thirty when I finally got tired of being alone, Kuro didn't really count and as far as beyond me and Orochimaru it didn't really exist. I allowed myself to have others, I never really found love, but I had a consort of sorts, not really 'official' marriage, and the second he tried to kidnap my children Jin showed just how paternal he was and smashed the man's head between two fingers. I suppose I should find it even more ironic that the man responsible for my own attempted kidnapping years ago just saved my own children from their sire… this world I live in is far too strange sometimes I feel…
Kuro enjoyed watching him die though… and honestly, I couldn't agree more, I did as well…
I loved my children… I really did…
But they weren't his, and I never truly got to love him… and part of me never let that go…
War broke out of course; it was only a matter of time before another village started up and attacked us… I lost one of my children and I don't ever remember crying so hard. Jin went out taking down most of the army in his rage, he wasn't as young or strong as he once was, but I will never forget watching the former Raikage taking down wave after wave of those shinobi, being the juggernaut like his father, and all the Raikage before all for the sake of one of my own children… he truly was a magnificent ninja and I'm thankful for knowing him.
It seemed after that first war they never stopped. One would end, another would start, I would take out one village, two more took its place… I destroyed the man I loved to save the world, yet here was the world destroying itself for no reason… I was quickly forgetting what I was fighting for…
It got down to the point where it was only Orochimaru and myself left, and he ended up being in charge of this new village. I laughed, so did he, we both did at 'old habits'. I didn't bother fighting him, he was the Immortal Shinobi, the one that would forever exist, I was just the woman that slayed the demon of destruction and I was old and nothing like I was in my youth. I simply asked he looked after my last daughter, which he agreed as he slit my throat.
I remember seeing Kuro standing above me, just staring as it always seemed to…
Then it removed the mask and I finally got to see its face and those glowing eyes… he looked like Naruto.
I couldn't help but smile, laugh even at death's tricks…
He told me this was my greatest regret… and if I wanted, I could go back and try again… after all Kuro had seen, he thought I deserved it…
I just laughed, I was an old woman, what could I do now? The Kenkage was dead… my world gone away to war… Naruto-kun's and my sacrifice was all for nothing…
That's when he offered me his hand, the first time I'd seen anything apart from that torn black cloak and I didn't bother to say 'no' this time… I held his hand, and just let everything go…
A/N: ...
letsee, covering time-travel shenanigans, check, covering NaruHina (finally) check, first person wangst, check, more shenanigans then you can shake a stick at, check check... okay, sounds about a good place to start something :3
comments, questions, opposing views? (reviews :3)
till next -salute-waves- Sayounara, Mina!
-Ikasury