Time, Immortality and Duty
He's been here for a very long time. Longer than most beings, less than some.
Time in itself is perhaps an easy enough concept to understand for mortals because they don't really need to understand it. Time goes in one direction. You are born into it at point and leave it at another. There is no way to go back or to go forward at a faster pace. All true. For most.
You also have those that believe that mortality is something that can be removed, perhaps in the same way that we no longer have tails, just tailbones. They might believe that immortality is the next step in evolution. After all, nowadays men live to be a hundred. Eternity might just be the next stop.
Immortality might seem like a sweet deal to you. Living forever and not having to be wary of death? Sure, just tell me how, you might say. But the consequences. Oh, the consequences…
Seeing your loved once die. Seeing your childhood friends die while you are still young and healthy and living the life. Holding the head of your dead child in your lap while you cry uselessly, asking the simple and complex question of 'why'. Standing by your grandchild, that sweet little girl with grey hair and a cane for walking, while you look like you're still twenty.
Immortality is either a gift or a curse. Pick one or the other based on your instincts. That is your truth.
Uzumaki Naruto stands on the head of the fourth, preserved through time, and gazes into the horizon. Beneath him are ruins that speak of a long forgotten past.
Once there were ninjas here. A great people with a power that almost seems lost in this era. It's not, but technology has done its job of eradicating the old traditions. Only a few people still keep it alive. Naruto is one of them.
A ninja is too weak nowadays to thrive. Guns have become something else and kunai can't stand up to it. Chakra might have had that ability but only in a great enough quantity. Quality means nothing nowadays. Strength instead of precision. The strong will hunt the weak.
Naruto has the power but in the end, even with his clones, he is still only one person and in these times lying low is the safest.
In a hundred years, maybe it will be the right time for change.
It has happened before and it will happen again. Technology will destroy its era and chakra will be revived for its own era. Then technology will catch up and the cycle will repeat.
Naruto has only been through three such cycles and he's been the so-called prophet in each of them. He's the father of chakra and he's brought hope at the end of each one. When it seems like the end of the world, his words and actions have brought new life to the world. He takes students and teaches them his ways before disappearing. He stays in the shadows watching and taking the necessary steps for everything to happen as it should.
He feels it's his duty. Only he lives through the same thing over and over again. The least he can do is help it along.
Time exists and that's all he needs to know. It will repeat and he will stay to watch it. Over and over again.
That's the price of immortality. There is no end, no rest and no breaks. Everything will continue on and on again for eternity.
Uzumaki Naruto can do nothing but stay.