Chapter 1: Bending the Rules

He'd lost. Finally, utterly lost.

Naruto sighed to himself, looking around into the darkness between worlds. He floated on nothing and saw nothing, but he wasn't without sensation. He hurt, profoundly. Every fiber of his being hurt, and at first it had been crippling. The whole of existence had been pain, and he hadn't even been able to think. But that was past now, he seemed to have gotten almost used to it. It hadn't quite dulled, but it was further away from him. Or perhaps his consciousness was further away from it, not that it really mattered.

He could think again, and that was the problem. He could do nothing but reflect on his failure. Madara had captured him and started the extraction. Naruto had lost.

And it didn't surprise him, not after everything that had happened. He'd failed everyone, lost so much. First Sasuke, then Jiraiya, then Tsunade, Kakashi, Konoha, everything. It was about time that he finally...

*SMACK*

He cringed and covered the back of his head as the sudden shock more than the pain snapped him out of his line of thought.

"No child of mine is gonna think like that!"

Naruto spun around to face the feminine voice and found himself face to face with a pretty, red haired woman with a scowl on her face. He opened his mouth to speak-

"I mean, OK, so things kinda suck now, but they'll get better! You have to believe that! No Uzumaki goes around moping like some... Uchiha. We don't do that! We work and make things good! Just... gah!"

- and snapped it shut as the woman's words sunk in. Child of hers. Uzumaki. That would mean that she was his...

"Mom?"

She stopped ranting and looked at him sharply for a moment before the expression relaxed and a small smile stole over her features.

"Yeah, that's me," she answer in a quiet, almost shy voice. Naruto simply stared at her for a moment before springing forward to scoop her into a hug. After a moment of hesitation she returned the hug, and the two of them embraced in silence.

After a moment they broke apart again and stood staring at each other, both waiting for the other to speak while not knowing where to start.

"I'm not normally this quiet, you know. I just had this whole speech ready and now that I see you it all seems silly," she spoke.

"Yeah," Naruto agreed, "I really don't know what to say, I mean, I know nothing about you." He paused for a moment, trying to come up with something to say. "I don't even know your name..."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "That's right, you don't." She paused for a moment, then gave him a small wave and said, "Hi, I'm Uzumaki Kushina, it's nice to meet you."

Thoughts and questions raced through his mind, all vying for his attention and combating over control of his mouth. "You have pretty hair," he blurted, and then cringed when he realized what he'd said. She stared at him for an instant before bursting out into laughter.

"You reminded me so much of your father just then, he was all blurted compliments and awkward admissions," she stopped to sigh in remembrance. "He should be here soon. Until then, well, there are some things I want to tell you..."

And they talked. She spoke of her youth, and her destroyed home. She explained her status as a jinchuriki. She told him of his father, and of their first meeting. Their love, marriage, and untimely deaths.

Naruto mostly sat in silence, letting the information flow through him while he considered it. It explained so much. How Madara knew so much about him when no one in Konoha did. Why no one seemed to realize that the Fourth had a kid. How few people connected Naruto with his father despite their obvious similarities in appearance.

...Why the fox wound up in him at all. Why his father appeared in his mindscape during the siege of Konoha. This revealed so much, and yet there was more that he was no doubt missing. Not that it mattered, now that everything...

*THWACK*

"None of that! I could see it in your eyes. No matter how bad things get, an Uzumaki always keeps going! You don't get to give up."

"And this is as good a place as any for me to step in," said a new male voice. Naruto turned to face it and saw his father walking towards them. "There is yet a way to win, you know. It's not over."

"What kind of crap is that? It's over! I lost! Madara is extracting the damn fox as we speak, and there's nothing I can do about it!" Naruto shouted. He stared at his father for a tense moment and then deflated. "I'm sorry, I just... I can't get my hopes up again. I've failed enough." He looked up at his parents. His father seemed understanding and somewhat chagrined. His mother seemed to be unable to decide between sympathy and annoyance.

His father spoke first. "Look, Naruto, I know where you're coming from. Believe me, I do. But I'm serious. You can turn this around. You have to make a choice, but if you're willing to fight then you have a serious chance of beating Madara, of saving them all."

Naruto perked up at that. "All of them? How is that even possible..."

Minato cringed. "Yeah, I guess I should explain." He sighed and considered a moment before continuing. "Before I go on, I want you to listen to everything I have to say before deciding." He looked meaningfully at Naruto.

Naruto stopped and considered. If there was a way out of this, to save his friends and comrades, he had to take it. But his father, the Fourth Hokage, seemed remarkably serious about this. He nodded. It would be far better to listen.

Minato's stance relaxed slightly at that, and he seemed to take a moment to collect himself. "As I was saying, you have to make a choice. There are two ways out of this situation. The first is to wait."

Naruto opened his mouth to object, but his father cut him off. "As I said, listen first." Naruto closed his mouth and nodded, and his father resumed explaining. "The seal I made was specifically designed to prevent extraction. I fully intended for you to be the last jinchuriki of the Kyuubi. If we do nothing, the extraction will fail, spectacularly. The backfire may even be enough to kill Madara, if we're lucky. If we're not, then it will at least destroy whatever he's using to extract and store the tailed beasts. But you will survive."

Naruto gaped at that. "But the extraction process is - it killed Gaara!" he shouted without thinking.

Kushina sighed. "Remember, you're an Uzumaki. We can survive the process, especially with the way your father designed that seal."

Naruto looked again to his father, who nodded. "Right, the seal should help you survive the process, and the fox will be sent to the shinigami's stomach, along with me." Minato paused for a moment, then let out a bark of laughter. "It's really the best solution for you. The fox will be gone, Madara's plans will be crippled, and you get a real chance to beat him for good. The process would weaken you, and there's a chance that one of the tailed beasts would try to finish you off, but you'd probably be able to get away."

Naruto stared at his father. How could he so easily offer himself to be doomed to the shinigami for eternity, alongside the demon fox? It was just, well, stupidly selfless. He turned to face his mother to see what she thought of what Minato had said, and apparently she agreed with Naruto. Kushina was glaring at her husband and looked on the verge of exploding.

Minato seemed sense her displeasure and spoke up again while waving his hands in an attempt at a placating gesture. "Whoa now, I know what you both are thinking. I don't intend to sacrifice myself forever. I mean, I would, but..." he looked over to Kushina as he spoke, and he gulped at her glare, "I have no intent on subjecting you to that, erm, again. Yes, well. Hear me out. I have some theories on how the fox works, and I think I could get back out of the shinigami's stomach again. You see, the fox is something of a nexus, and cannot be fully destroyed. With that in mind, I think I could follow him out of the shinigami. The shinigami works on contract, and, well, never mind. It's long and involved and you two don't really care. The point is, I could get out. I think."

Naruto looked again at his mother. She sighed and seemed to relax some. He gave her a questioning look, which she seemed to notice. "That's about as confident as he gets," she explained. "He may not be too confident, but history shows he's probably correct." She turned and motioned at Minato to continue.

Minato looked back at Naruto and sighed. "The other option is, well, a bit more theoretical. For you, at least. You see, the shinigami has always existed, and will always exist. That's not possible in our universe. Where we come from, everything is finite, including the very universe itself. The shinigami exists outside of that, outside of time. So there's an opportunity there. If it works the way I think it does, then you could use that. You are connected to the shinigami by your seal, and it to you. You can use that timelessness to, well, bend time a bit. You could send yourself back to any point after I sealed it to you. Well, your chakra anyways, not your body"

Naruto gaped for a moment as the implications sank in. He could go back, he could save everyone, even those already dead.

"Now before you agree to it, let me finish," Minato said. "This is mostly theoretical, and I have no way of knowing if it would actually work. It involves going with the fox into the shinigami, and then following the bond between the two halves of the fox back out. Your timing will be difficult to get with any real precision, probably to within a few months at best. And the path will be dangerous and painful. And I don't really know what will happen once you're there. The merger with your younger self's chakra could be dangerous. Fatal, even. There's a lot that could go wrong."

"But if it worked, I could save everyone. Make sure none of it went wrong. I could even save jii-san!"

"Yes, Naruto, you could. But you could also just kill your younger self. I really don't know."

Naruto sobered a little at that. And then another issue occurred to him. "If I go back, what happens to all the people here?"

Minato nodded and smiled at that, though Naruto wasn't sure why. "Good question. Honestly, I don't know. It would either overwrite this reality, or it would branch off into its own. If it overwrote it, then none of this would have happened. It might as well have been a dream of yours. If it creates an alternate timeline, then you'll be removed from it. It would be as if you died during the extraction. The ritual would still fail, violently. The people here would have a chance to save themselves. But you couldn't be a part of it, you'd be giving that all up."

That didn't sound too bad to Naruto. It wasn't as if he'd been too huge of a help, and with Madara set that far back, the survivors probably wouldn't have to deal with him again for a long time. Or the backfire could even kill him. It's not like his presence would help all that much, really. His track record wasn't so great.

"It looks like you've made up your mind," Minato said, breaking Naruto out of his reverie.

Naruto nodded. "Send me back," he said. "If I can save all of them, I have to try."

Minato nodded, a sad smile on his face. "I thought you might say that," he said. "Well then, here's what we need to do. The two of us will go into the shinigami. I'll handle that part. Once we're there, we need to track the Kyuubi's chakra back to your younger body. It won't be easy, and the shinigami's stomach isn't a pleasant place to be. But the Kyuubi's very existence should make it easier. We'll then use its chakra as an energy source, neither of us would have enough to power the technique without it. You'll be sent back to the time you want, and with any luck the Fox will be pulled into the shinigami. I'll still be left to find a way out, but with the temporal disturbance it should be fairly simple. Hell, I may not even have to if you overwrite this timeline." Minato paused for a moment, and then asked, "When do you want to go back to? Ideally you don't want to go back too far, it wouldn't be good to be stuck in an infant's body or anything."

Naruto considered for a moment. Earlier would be better, but he couldn't really do much until after the academy. And it wasn't like he wanted to relive it. So that left only one target. "The day after I graduated from the academy," he said.

Minato nodded. "Let's do this."

Naruto turned to leave, but choked and came to a halt as someone grabbed his collar. He turned to find his mother holding both him and his father. She glared at both of them for a moment before speaking. "This is timeless, you said it yourself. So let's just enjoy the time we do have, while we can. OK? And if you two think you're doing this without me, you're nuts."

Naruto looked to his father, who nodded. So they stopped and stayed together for a time. And for the first time in his life, Naruto truly knew what it was like to have a family. But it couldn't last. After a while, the three of them said their goodbyes in the relative calm before moving into the shinigami's stomach to start the technique.

The trip was more taxing than on Naruto than even what his father had told him to expect. The shinigami's stomach was not a place for mortals. Naruto shuddered in remembrance as feeling came back to his body. He opened his eyes and saw what looked to be the ceiling of a dungeon. He was laying in shallow water, and he heard a faint dripping somewhere nearby.

*Great,* he thought, *I'm in my mindscape.* He sat up to look around and saw the familiar bars of the Kyuubi's seal. But something was wrong. The exit from his mind was on the other side of the bars. He was trapped inside the Kyuubi's cage. Naruto's mind raced as he tried to figure out the situation. He knew he had hit about the right time, but this was something they hadn't planned for. Despite the jumble of thoughts and emotions, a single resounding sentiment summed it all up.

"Shit"

A/N: So this is it, the start of my first story. I've seen (and sometimes read) a lot of Peggy Sue stories for Naruto (and other fandoms), but most of them seemed to fall into some standard patterns. I'm trying to avoid those, and handle the time travel idea in a way consistent with Naruto's character.

For reference, the Future Naruto's timeline diverged during Pain's siege of Konoha. I'm not going to cover that directly, though I may do so in a future story. Until that happens, you'll just have to wait for the snippets of information I plan on working into the story.

Oh, and I don't really have a solid stance on when to use Japanese versus English in the story. Generally speaking, I plan on sticking to English except when the concept doesn't translate well, but we'll see how well I stick to that.