CHAPTER 1

It's not exactly set in LOTR universe, rather a quite diverse fantasy world with magic, dragons and adventures. Instead of being a full chapter, it's a quick preview as to what this fic will be about :) Enjoy!

The last thing Naruto remembered was a loud explosion and bright colours flashing in front of his eyes. Then - all-consuming darkness and complete silence.

It was unbearable for his outgoing and ecstatic persona, to say the least, and he wasn't sure how much time passed before he finally felt something.

Wind blew his hair as he slowly opened his eyes and gazed up at the bright-blue skies with only a handful of clouds floating around, looking all inviting for his sleepiness.

'When was the last time I had a normal eight-hours sleep?' he wondered off-handedly, checking for information at the back of his mind. 'Eh, it seems I slept just fine a night ago. I bet Sakura didn't even close her eyes and was probably worrying the whole time... Sakura!'

Suddenly, the memories came back at a full blow, making him gasp for air and swiftly sit up. Wasn't he in the middle of fight with Kaguya? Well, him and that Uchiha baka...

As he looked around, Uzumaki's eyes fell upon four familiar figures that laid around him, all seemingly lifeless or at least completely unconscious. He jumped up without thinking and ran towards them without a second thought.

"Kakashi-sensei! Sakura-chan! Oi, teme!"

None of them responded and Naruto bit on his finger, his mind racing of what to do next.

'Well, it's worth checking if they are actually alive, damn it!'

He squatted down in front of Kakashi that happened to be lying not two meters away from him and it took him good twenty seconds to finally find pulse on his wrist. Sighing, he walked towards his teammates, just to make sure they were alive, too, and finally flopped on the ground when the other two turned out to be alive and breathing.

'Do I wake them up now? But then Sakura-chan will probably hit me in the head... Besides, how would they know where we are?'

Only then did Naruto noticed that something was off - that is, besides seeming endless field around them and unnaturally blue skies; their clothes weren't the same as when they fought against Kaguya. Oh no, it wasn't only that they weren't the same - they were nothing alike shinobi's attire, no matter how weird it seemed at times.

Instead of his ordinary attire, Naruto didn't fail to notice that he now wore brown boots, somewhat dirty green trousers, rather heavy hauberk and seemingly leather gloves (but what would he know - he never wore clothes that weren't made from cotton!).

His teammates were still unconscious and, after resisting from drawing something on Sasuke's face simply because there was nothing around to draw with. Pondering for some time as to what he should occupy himself with in the meantime, Naruto decided that there was no harm in walking around and looking out for... something.

As he stood up with a heavy sigh - for some reason his bones felt much heavier and he sensed the beginning of a huge migraine at the back of his mind - he processed to turn around and squint his eyes due to the bright sun up in the skies.

Nope. Nothing within his field of vision. Only green fields, boiling air... Did he just hear some splashing?

He abruptly turned around towards the source of that sound and, upon hearing some more splashing, ran through the grass that almost reached his belly like crazy. Boy was it hot in this ridiculously massive hauberk - why the heck was he wearing it in the first place?! Not stopping for a second, he lifted it up and off himself, throwing it to the side and not caring what's gonna happen to it.

He had some more important things to think about.

"Yatta!" he shouted happily; a slim brook that was hidden behind the tall grass finally appeared before his own sky-blue eyes and he couldn't help jumping due to his fit of excitement at the pleasant sight in front of him.

Without thinking much, he fell to his knees and drank right from the brook, giving out a pleased hum. Slightly icy and extremely refreshing, it streamed down his face and he beamed at the thought that, unlike some of the guys of his age, he still didn't even have a resemblance of a beard or moustache, hence water wasn't just... stuck there.

Naruto shook his head as he sat back and looked around with a small smile, pondering over where can this beautiful place possibly be. Judging by the fact that it was immensely hot, he suspected it was somewhere in the Wind country, yet the grass beneath him didn't seem dry at all and the small brook was quite cool to touch.

So... where the heck were they?

Some time passed by and he realised that he didn't hear any sound; no birds' chirping, no rustling leaves... the place would be heavenly for meditations, if only it wasn't so freaking boiling!

He shrugged at his thoughts and ducked down for another gulp of refreshing water...

"Bakaero!"

BAM. SLAM.

Not a moment later a punch sent him flying over the brook and right into the grass beyond it; well, he had to admit that it was a good five meters away from his original position and, owching and wincing, he looked over his shoulder with a guilty smile, "Sa-akura-chan."

"When you are in the middle of nowhere do you always just go around, looking for trouble and completely forgetting about your teammates that can die while they are lying unconscious on the ground?!" she growled and he could just feel her left eyebrow twitching in annoyance.

"Um-m, no," he answered truthfully and scratched his head, getting up. He then proceeded to swipe off some of the dirt from his trousers, but that didn't seem to work all too well. "Are Sasuke-teme and Kakashi-sensei awake?"

"We are here, dobe," came a gruff reply as the two man came closer. Sasuke seemed to be rather pissed off with the unnaturally tall grass, all the while Kakashi turned out to be completely unfazed, giving out a friendly, "Yo."

Naruto couldn't hold back the laugher at what his teammates turned out to be wearing and was met with somewhat bemused and annoyed gazes.

"We know we are wearing something extremely weird, Naruto, no need to point it out," Sakura said exasperatedly, although she stepped closer to the only source of water around and looked at her reflection. She then squinted and looked back at Naruto. "It's weird that we are wearing same boots and gloves, you know. And anyway, go pick up your hauberk - it may save your life in future."

Naruto shrugged and did as he was told - there was no reason for arguing with her anyway and they all knew it.

"So, does anyone know where exactly are we?" Kakashi mused as he, too, looked down at his reflection and appeared to be happy with the long blue cloak that covered most of his body. "We fought with Kaguya and then we wake up here. Genjutsu?"

"I would know if it was one," Sasuke stated coldly and Naruto couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes - not that he wanted to, anyway.

"And if it was, why would she do all this?" Sakura wondered aloud. "Create these fields, change our clothes... What purpose would it serve her?"

"If only we knew," sighed their teacher and all four of them began thinking.

About five minutes later they gave up, not having a single clue as to what was going on, and decided to find some shadow as, quite strangely, there were absolutely no trees around - hence the lack of birds, as Naruto supposed.

When his two loud-mouth students got into a fight as to which direction they should go in (obviously, Sasuke just stayed silent and looked around for any sort of danger), Hatake tugged onto his ear and pointed at a random direction, claiming that his ninja senses tell him it's that way.

Obviously, he lied, and strangely they actually believed him without questioning.

Good half an hour later they finally encountered a cart with hay; its owner - an old man with an incredibly large beard (in fact, it was so long the man placed it on the mount of hay for it to stop disturbing him) - was carelessly whistling something under his nose. That is, until he saw a small group of strangers that looked extremely lost.

"Hey ya, do ya need any help?" he asked upon stopping his cart and grinning at the group.

"Oi, old man, do you know where the closest city is?" Naruto loudly asked and jumped forward, his eyes full of hope and desperation - if he had to live any more without proper food he was going to simply break down and never get up again.

'No wonder Shikamaru once called me a drama queen,' he chuckled in his mind.

"Ay, that's exactly where I'm goin' now, young lad," cart's owner replied and scratched his moustache. "But that's gonna cost ya a pretty bunch of fifteen silver pennies."

Naruto hummed and dugged hands into his pockets, looking for at least something. As he expected, it was pointless - the same was with his teammates.

"Sorry, but we don't have any... silver pennies. We can give you something in return, though," Sakura mused and looked down at her gloves. "See, those are leather - and my teammate has a pair of those, too."

The man snorted and his accent was suddenly gone, "And what good would those do? Leather is rather cheap in my city and if I were to sell it for something more, I would have to travel for a good five days. Now, give me something good or I am leaving."

"Hey! I am Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo, and the inchuuriki of a Nine-tailed. You don't want to deal with Leaf's Hokage," blond growled, loosing all patience in seconds.

"Jin-what? Never heard of that before!" he smirked. "Some nine-tails and hokages you are blabbering about... Maybe, sun got to you."

After a moment of confused silence, he added, "But I am willing to take that nice hauberk you seem to own."

Naruto looked down and sighed, "Well, it seems Sakura-chan was right. Here, take it." He quickly raised his hands and threw said hauberk into man's greedy hands; the latter one swiftly checked if it was indeed metal.

"Hmm, seems alright. Get on, all of you."

There was nothing to talk about as they got on; for some unbeknown reason, the man seemed to have no clue as to who jinchuuriki was and neither did he hear anything about Hokages. Perhaps, they really were in a genjutsu?

A cart shook as it rode over a pile of stones, which caused everyone to lean back a little. At the same time, Sasuke's hair moved backwards and Kakashi caught a glimpse of something he didn't believe at first.

"Sasuke," he began slowly - maybe his eyesight was lying to him?

"Hn."

"Let me see your ears."

He didn't miss how quickly Naruto and Sakura's heads turned towards him.

"What?! Did that snake creep do something to his ears?" Naruto asked in disbelieve and barely held down his laugh. "I told you not to go with him; although, things could've gone worse - for all we know, he could have replaced your legs with your arms and stuff."

Sasuke rolled his eyes, "Stop talking." He then moved some of the hair away, so that they could see his ears.

This time Naruto couldn't hold back his roaring laughter and Sakura silently gaped at the sight before her eyes; Kakashi only raised his eyebrow.

"At least now we know for certain that this is some sort of genjutsu."

"Sasuke-kun, you..." Sakura swallowed. "You look like an... elf."

Due to the completely disbelieving face and somewhat annoyed, "What?" she told him to touch his ears, already anticipating his outburst.

A second. Two. Three.

Sasuke finally touched his ear and, without a hush, ran his fingers over the edge of it.

Silence.

"What the fuck."

"Ha-ha-ha, I told you that you should stop being a jerkface or else!" shouted Naruto and received a loud BAM to his head. "Oi, watch it!"

"At least she didn't change anything about the rest of us," Kakashi noticed as he checked his own ear and lifted cloak to see if his legs and arms were alright. Yep, everything seemed fine - no extra arms or fingers.

"So, are we some kind of magic creatures now?" Sakura wondered aloud and she could swear she heard a murmured 'that bitch Kaguya' from Sasuke.

"Except for the teme, we don't seem any different. Oh, but does it mean we have some sort of superpowers now?!" Naruto exclaimed excitedly and got to his feet, eager to try out supposedly new abilities.

Kakashi sighed, "Not like you didn't have them after meeting the God of everything chakra-related."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

Sakura and Kakashi only exchanged glanced, sighing. As strong as he was, Naruto was never the smart one.

"Go on, try something," Sakura urged her teammate and, with a big smile, he did as he was told.

"Yosh!" the boy concentrated his inner energy and put his palms forward. "Hnnnnn!"

There was nothing. Instead of a cool burst of energy, not only was Naruto left with nothing, but, upon checking his own chakra, he realised with a startle that there was none.

No chakra whatsoever.

"Hey, old man!"

"What?" cart's owner replied gruffly without turning around.

"Is there chakra around here?"

"Chakra? What's that?"

"Um-m, it's like some special abilities. It's the kind of energy that gives you some awesome powers," he explained lamely, all the while his teammates face-palmed themselves behind his back.

"I see he remembers his lessons in Academy very well," Sakura said with a twitching eye and no one could say otherwise.

"Ah, you mean magic? Nah, not much around here. But if you go Central, you will meet a lot of magicians that are strong to no end! Damn, they can kill you with a pinky!"

"Oh, that's cool! So how do you obtain these magic powers?"

"You can't obtain them, stupid - there is so little left that magic is only placed in object. Those who have the strongest magic objects are considered the strongest magicians."

"Basically, if you are born rich, your chance of being one are sky high," Sakura said to Kakashi with a slight frown. "Patriarchy at its best."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," he agreed, scratching his cheek. Kakashi then looked at the man that was so 'kind' as to help them get to the city. "It's a shame that only Sasuke got something changed, though. I would love to have a beard."

This time all of his students turned their heads to him without a moment of hesitation.

"But, see, I can't take off my mask," he shrugged and shook his head. "Because if I do, all of you might just fall in love with me."

He smirked under his mask when Sakura and Naruto wailed at their teacher's stupidity and Sasuke just turned around, looking towards where they came from.

"You feel like something is off, Sasuke," Hatake said and it was a statement, rather than a question.

"Yeah. Something is coming."

A/N: Winter is coming!

Hehe, well, we'll see if it's actually coming.

Anyway, thanks for reading and please tell me what you think on this story so far, this will motivate me and the update will come quicker ^^