Time?
I don't own Naruto.
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A four year old Naruto was having lunch with the Hokage as part of their monthly ritual. Every month the old man would ask the young boy where he would like to go and tell him that he could pick anywhere in the village, yet every month the boy would always pick the same small ramen stand not far from the academy. The Hokage knew the reason the boy picked this place was because he loved to watch the older children train in the academy field. He could see Naruto developing the desire to join them. It was always a joy to see the will of fire passing to the younger generations.
"Hey old man, you're the Hokage right?" Naruto asked. Without waiting for a response the blonde hair child continued, "What's a Hokage?"
Chuckling at the curiosity of the youth before him Hiruzen answered, "Yes Naruto, I am the Hokage. The Hokage is the pillar of the village, they have to be strong in body and in mind, they have to make wise and fair decisions and they have to be able to make hard and sad choices, they are the person who is in charge of everybody in the leaf. Everyone relies on the Hokage to make wise decisions that will be for the best and in turn the people give the Hokage their respect and obedience. If the leader fails the leaf fails, but in turn if the people refuse to listen to their leader that too can bring about our ruin. There is always a balance Naruto."
After looking down at his bowl for a moment the child looked back at the old man with a new fire in his eyes, "Then I'm going to be the Hokage someday too! I want to do everything I can for the village, and get everybody to see me for who I am! I'll be the strongest ninja there ever was and then nobody can ignore me ever again!" Naruto shouted out.
The Hokage smiled a sad smile hearing that. He knew that the civilians were not kind to Naruto. He was just so proud that the young boy had not grown bitter and instead fostered a strong will of fire. "I look forward to that day, Naruto. If I'm not around anymore I hope you can find some way to come back and tell me all about it." Sarutobi joked.
"Huh? Not around? Where else would you be old man? You can't go anywhere!" A suddenly panicked Naruto shouted out.
"I'm not going anywhere anytime soon Naruto, but it's like you said, I'm an old man, old men don't last forever." Was the weary reply.
"Well I'll definitely tell you all about how I make Hokage when the day comes, it's a promise old man, and like you said last month, we should never go back on our promises!" Naruto's vow elicited a smile from the aging Hokage for a moment.
But the moment was over in a flash, when suddenly he sensed an incredibly strong chakra presence and a blue circle of chakra formed around the body of the child in front of him. Not knowing what was going on, but knowing that whatever it was did not need to be common knowledge the Hokage grabbed the boys arm and body flickered them both into his office. All this took place in a matter of three seconds, and as the Hokage was making efforts to enact the barrier and containment seal around his office, in case the demon was trying to exert an influence on the boy, the chakra presence faded away. A moment later and the seal was activated and Hiruzen was checking to see if Naruto was ok.
"That's always so disorienting." A slightly disgruntled sounding voice came from the boy. An instant later he looked around where he was then got down on one knee and bowed to the Hokage. "Lord Hokage, it's good to see you again." A smirk crossed the boys face before he threw his arms around the old man and continued, "I missed talking to you for all these years Hiruzen."
Once he heard the boy say his name Sarutobi Hiruzen was on full alert. No longer was he dealing with the four year old he was having lunch with a scant few moment ago, this was someone else entirely. "Who are you, and what have you done to Naruto?" He asked in a guarded tone.
"I'm sorry, like I said it always is disorienting to do that, to answer both your questions at once, I am Naruto. I forgot that until I tell you what's going on you don't already know, force of habit really." The child took a deep breath and stepped back. "Ok, so let's start from where we just left off. A couple minutes ago I promised to tell you all about it when I became Hokage, and that I'd find a way to come back and tell you if you weren't around any more, right?" Seeing the nod from the old man Naruto continued, "Well that's how we ended up here, I kept my promise, it just had some unintentional side effects."
"You... kept your promise… You kept your promise to come back in time, just to tell me about becoming Hokage? Naruto, if it weren't for the fact that I felt the massive chakra presence a moment ago, and that I can tell you're masking it right now, I'd think you were trying to prank me. Nobody can travel back in time, it's impossible."
"Would you like me to share some secrets only a future me should know? I'm the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox, who prefers to be called Kurama by the way, my parents were Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki and my godfather is Jiriaya, and you secretly read Icha-Icha when you think nobody is watching. Still don't believe I'm from the future?" The grin coming off the boy was radiant enough to give the sun a run for its money.
"How did you learn of those things?" The Hokage went from being tense and alert, to being battle-ready in an instant. NOBODY knew about his Icha-Icha…
"I told you Lord Third, I'm from the future. Do you need more proof? Fine, I'll try some better kept secrets. Right now there are some tensions with your student Orochimaru, someone has been kidnapping people, from young children and other civilians to ninja of all ranks, and he's suspected. I'll tell you now that he truly is responsible." As Sarutobi began to react Naruto held up his tiny little hand and continued. "But now is not the time to act Sir, there are consequences for every action, even those with pure intentions. If you go after Orochimaru now he'll escape from you, and ultimately be the death of you." Naruto concluded somberly.
"How can you have come back though? It's supposed to be impossible to travel back in time!" Sarutobi decided that he'd get back to the topic of Orochimaru when the matter at hand was settled.
"Well, I made a promise, and it became my nindo to never break a promise, so I found a way. Hiruzen I was a young fool back then, I made many mistakes, some of which I'm going to have to tell you about, but one thing I've never regretted was my nindo. I'll keep every promise I make, and right now I'm making you a promise that I'll bring a lasting peace to the world someday, believe it!" After grinning for a short time his expression became more serious, "I was far too young the first time I became Hokage, Hiruzen, only eighteen years old. I made so many mistakes, and regretted so many decisions I could barely live with myself. I could hardly sleep at night and I was plagued constantly by self doubt. I wanted to fix the past. I wanted to change how things were, so I began to study seals. I started by mastering the improved version of the hirashin my father used, then I moved on to stasis seals. I knew time travel had to be possible, I knew that the power of seals was only limited by knowledge and imagination and that I was definitely not lacking in the second department. Years passed without much progress, I asked Kurama for advice and he told me I should cease to dream of the past and look towards the future. I almost listened to him. I almost gave up for the first time in my life, and then that night I had a dream about today, about the conversation we were just having, and I knew I couldn't give up. I delved deeper into my seal studies. I became the first sealcrafter in an age and as a byproduct of my search for a way to undo my past wrongs I created many marvels that not even the Uzumaki at the height of my clan would have even dreamed of. It took me nearly three decades of intense study, but I finally managed to create something that would successfully send my consciousness back in time to any point in my life. It was a dangerous design, but I knew that if there was even a chance of its success I had to try. I keyed the seal to send me back to today and when I applied it to myself I was disappointed that it didn't immediately work, but two strange things happened, things that even I couldn't have predicted. There was no way for me to remove the seal from myself, and it constantly ate a small portion of my chakra away, nothing significant but still noticeable. I chalked it up to a failure and in my grief I abandoned my project. I told myself that I would return to it when an inspiration hit me, but in truth, I never drew a new seal design again in my first life, three years after that all the ninja of the world were threatened by an old enemy, and to protect the lives of those I still had left I sacrificed myself to take out the enemy. I thought it was a good death, until I found myself in your office and I found my body to be that of a child."
He was silent for a minute, not sure how to continue. He quietly said, "I was so confused that first time, being small, being alive, they were shocks to me, but the biggest shock was seeing you my friend, in my first life it had been nearly forty years between our deaths, and yet there you were looking exactly as I remembered you. Can you imagine how I felt learning that the seal worked?"
"…You tell quiet the story, but how can I trust you?" Sarutobi was being cautious, he didn't want to be lead around by the nose if someone else had actually managed to take over Naruto's body.
"In my second life, when I was confused about everything, you recalled Jiriaya to look at the seal containing Kurama, and he found something which assured you, I suggest you do the same." Naruto knew, from countless repetitions, that the only one who would convince the Third Hokage that Naruto wasn't lying was through the toad sage. "If it would make you feel more comfortable I'll stay in confinement until he gets here."
Nodding the Third seemed to accept that, as he reached for some paper on his desk to write the recall order for Jiriaya he decided to ask one last question. "So far you've told me a few details of you first life and the beginning of your second, does that make this your third? How many lives have you lived Naruto?" Sarutobi didn't fully believe him, but if he was telling the truth it would be good to know.
Smiling sadly Naruto responded, "I've lived long enough to see you the way you saw me this morning. I stopped counting the years I've lived, or the number of lives I've gone through. There's no way out for me, so I may as well focus only on the life I'm in now. Eventually I'll find a way to remove this seal, but it could be another thousand years, I spent thirty years working on creating it, and I spent ten lives coming up with a way to apply it as a one time use, but in well over three thousand years I have yet to find a way to remove this seal from my body without activating it. I can't bring myself to regret my actions though, I've saved hundreds of millions of lives because of this seal, so no matter the personal sacrifice of being denied death, it's worth it."
Hiruzen stopped writing and looked at the boy in front of him, if his words were true he was thousands of years old, caught in a repeating cycle of life and death, seeing everything he worked for erased and constantly being denied a true death. "It's truly admirable, your dedication to saving lives, but can you say you've saved any lives when the future gets erased when you die?"
At that the boy suddenly burst out laughing, "Hiruzen not even I have enough chakra to rewind the universe. What I've learned in my studies is that time within our universe is unchanging, but time in between the universes is less rigid."
"In between universes, what are you talking about!?" The old man interrupted, like a school boy unable to understand the lesson his teacher was giving.
"I forget, you don't know these things until I've told you. I'll try to begin with the basics my friend, but please ask your questions when I'm through. We live in a universe full of choices and with every choice comes a set of consequences, but for every possible course of action through all of history there is another universe. In each of these infinite universes every course of action was identical to the one you're in, up until the choice where they diverge. Every time I come back in time, it's not to the same universe I lived in originally, but an entirely different one that was exactly the same as the original, until the moment my consciousness arrived. In my original universe I died, and the world carried on. I am being brought back to the past, but I'm not bringing the world back with me."
As the boy explained these things to the leader the old man's eyes widened, shock covering his features. "How can you know these things? It seems impossible." The old man said quietly, hoping that everything said was true, and that it was all wrong at the same time. For a man who had to weigh the lives of people dear to him almost every day the thought of having made the wrong choice every single time in any number of universes was disturbing to say the least.
"There is so much I thought I knew about seals in my first life. So much I thought I understood when I created this seal, but most of it was wrong. We have been using seals for at least a thousand years Hiruzen, but not since the sage created them has anybody questioned why they work." He seemed to be choosing his words before continuing." If I draw lines in a certain pattern and infuse them with chakra something happens, that was the extent of our knowledge, the extent of my knowledge for so long, but reality is much more complex than we can begin to understand. The uses for seals are limitless, all that is required is an understanding, something we lack. You asked how I know what I know about the many universes. I can show you, with your permission." He tacked on the end as if an afterthought, as if he had forgotten that he did not currently have the full trust of the man before him.
"Perhaps another time, for now tell me what you know of the situation with Orochimaru." The Hokage had decided that no matter how fascinating the conversation was, information that was vital to village security needed to take a higher priority.
"Unfortunately he is everything you suspect. In his quest for power and his jealousy for my father he has commit heinous and deplorable crimes against not only Konoha, but human decency, and the morally just thing to do would be to execute him." The old man wilted at the statement, it seemed as if the words condemning his student had aged him another few years. Seeing this Naruto hurriedly finished what he had to say, "But ninja don't always do what's morally just, do we Hiruzen? Despite the things he's done and the vile nature of his ambitions, Orochimaru is too valuable for Konoha to lose while we're still vulnerable. I know you want to punish the perpetrator of the crimes, and that the families deserve justice, but sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
The old man didn't say anything. For several minutes he sat in silence, chin to chest, it appeared as if he was thinking of a course of action, but after over five minutes ticked by Naruto had had enough, "I suggest you ask him to meet with you here, in your office, with me present. His research could be useful to us, and having him as an ally would definitely be better than having him as an enemy."
Barely raising his head Hiruzen asked, "Why do you wish to be present for the meeting?" It seemed he didn't care to talk much right now, but at least he knew that he had to choose a course of action.
"Two reasons, he'll let his guard down around me, I'm only four after all, and he knows you'd never endanger a child's life, especially not mine, by having them present for a fight between the two of you." Sticking his hand out he asked for a piece of paper, "Let me show you something." One hand-seal and a finger touch later and one of the most dense and elegant looking seals Sarutobi had ever seen was sprawled across the paper. "I can apply this to him while you exchange pleasantries and then you can ask him anything without fear of deceit or retaliation." Smiling up at the old man Naruto realized the expression wasn't being returned. "Oh right, you still don't fully trust me. Well when Jiriaya gets here you can have him look over this seal, which he should recognize parts of, and of course assuage your fears over my identity."
"Naruto, you have truly given me much to think about. I'll summon Jiriaya immediately, until then I'll have a sealed off room in the ANBU protective custody unit prepared for your use." He then got to work, jumping into his paperwork, usually his enemy but now his tether to sanity.
Hiruzen had had enough, after a conversation that could make a man question the very definition of impossible, and a revelation that could hurt him deeper than his successors early demise, he needed a drink. He quickly filed the necessary paperwork to have the secure room prepared, removed the containment barrier around his office and summoned an ANBU captain, Itachi, to escort the boy to the room. After they both had left he filled out a formal order of recall to the village for Jiriaya and wrote a letter to go with it, after sending both documents away on the village's fastest hawk Hiruzen finally tried to relax. He hadn't had anything alcoholic to drink since the night his wife and successor died four years ago, so he didn't have anything to drink on hand, and he couldn't send someone to get it for him, that would be rude.
He took off the formal robes of state he usually wore, and in his normal battle amour he left to go to a bar. Many people greeted him as he walked down the street, but many others didn't recognize him without the robes they were accustomed to seeing their Hokage in. He always enjoyed walking the village, and seeing the villagers, but the mood he was in right now caused him to barely notice the people he was passing. He ended up at a well known shinobi bar, and, despite it only being a few hours after noon, the place had plenty of business, shinobi worked all hours after all. After ordering two bottles he sat in a corner alone and tried to meditate on the meaning of everything Naruto had said. Naruto, the child who loved him like a grandfather and hung on to every word he said, had talked to him like an equal, and even said things that the old man could barely understand. It wasn't right, not at all. That was the conclusion Hiruzen came to by the end of his second bottle. He hardly noticed the wobble in his step as he made his way home.
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A/N: I'm kinda hoping that this wraps up in two or three more chapters, cuz I don't have time to write a fully fleshed out story, sorry if you hoped it would be longer. If anyone wants to write more based on this you're more than welcome to, just send me a link when it goes up. Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing this and I hope you had fun reading it. Take care.