Disclaimer: Naruto is the work of mangaka Masashi Kishimoto, the Marvel Comics characters beginning with Kang are the property of Marvel Worldwide Inc. The author makes no claim to ownership of the aforementioned works and no profit from this fanfiction.

"I am Kang, The Sage of Six Paths. Hear me, my descendant. I am your past, you… you are my future... Let the cosmos tremble at the sound of our footsteps."

-Earth, Native Reality Indeterminate-

John Logan Howlett MD PhD. That was what his name tag said as it hung from his jacket while he shut the door to the therapy room. The old man looked like some manner of owl wearing his thick horn-rimmed glasses and a graying shock of hair that surrounded a thinning bald spot on his crown. A closer look would reveal a strong jaw not quite hidden by the sagging flesh of his throat and that the eyes behind his glasses were still sharply intelligent in spite of his astigmatism and admittedly advanced age. Dr. Howlett was an old man, old enough to remember storming the beaches of Normandy.

Old enough to be retired…

But this case was a favor to a friend. Susan had been his nurse during His War and she'd been married to his best friend Steve. They had both separately saved his life once, each in a different way, so he'd come when she told him her grandson was having a spot of trouble with his wife. He'd been called in as a consultant on this case as a psychoanalyst and after meeting his patient, a stunning red-head named Mindy Webb nee Eisenhardt, he'd understood why. Sadly, this was not a simple marital dispute as he'd first hoped. Mindy was highly delusional and after half a year of meetings there was still little progress in getting at the heart of the matter.

This, John thought. Most likely revolved around certain abandonment issues dealing with the girl's father, unfortunately Mindy's family was no longer among the living, save for an itinerant twin brother that no one could get a hold of. He had very little information to go on and most of it was provided by his friend Susan's grandson, Nathan Webb, Mindy's very-blond, whiskered husband. For a lack of facts, he instead carefully investigated Mindy's delusions, exploring reality as she saw it. It was a tricky task as he had to take special care not to reinforce the poor girl's fantasies nor antagonize her into unhelpful silence by forcing a confrontation, yet.

Fortunately this last meeting had been promising, after seeming to fall more deeply into her illusionary world, Mrs. Webb seemed to be gearing up for a definitive confrontation with her father figure in the delusion, the astonishing master of magnetism Magneto. It wasn't surprising the way that Mindy had seemingly established herself and 'Magneto' as figures of power within her delusion. They were the keys to the source of her mental turmoil after all, analogues representative of the very issue that had caused the young woman to retreat from reality… while ironically in her mind, Mindy was the Scarlet Witch. A mental analogue empowered with the ability to alter any aspect of her reality at will, yet paralyzed by the seemingly great malleability of that self-same reality.

Nathan had been quite upset on learning that she had killed off his own analogue in her delusion, along with analogues of several other important family members. His agony on learning about the fate of Wanda's children had required that John remove the distraught husband from future meetings for the time being. Mindy had suffered a miscarriage, losing her twins, which seemed to be the trigger for her breakdown.

Still the upcoming confrontation engendered by whatever aspect was represented by 'Dr, Strange' was potentially happy news. He was just about to tell that to Nathan when a light shone from under the door that he'd just closed. The entire frame was outlined by the light by the time he'd noticed it. Dr. Howlett had just an instant of thought to himself before the light consumed his squat silhouette. He thought to himself…

"I've never seen such colors before…"

-Earth, Reality #616-

Her Present

James Howlett, commonly known as Logan, is, was or might have been, depending on one's perspective. The X-Man code-named Wolverine. He was a mutant with a number of both natural and artificial improvements to his physiology, Wolverine's primary mutant ability took the form of an accelerated healing factor that regenerated damaged or destroyed tissues of his body at a rate far beyond the capabilities of any ordinary human. In addition he possessed keen senses, enhanced physical abilities and three retractable bone claws on each hand. His entire skeleton, including his claws had been molecularly bonded to Adamantium, an indestructible metal alloy.

He is currently on the island of Genosha, he's also in the fight of his life against… Well, hell... Everyone apparently, friends, enemies, family, everyone and anyone else he can care to name, is here and battling each other in one massive charlie foxtrot of a battle royal. Their fighting over a cause few remember, for a reason even fewer people realize they should care about. It's a battle to right a wrong perpetrated by a single person. A wrong that most people don't know is in need of being righted, or want righted.

Mutants have become the dominant species on Earth. Mutants rule Humans… and the House of M, led by Max Eisenhardt also known as Erik Lensherr or Magneto, Master of Magnetism; rules mutants. This is the world as most people know it.

But it's a world that's not the way it's supposed to be, reality as he knew it has changed. People who should be alive are old or dead and people who should be dead, now live. In the world that he remembers Magneto was an anachronism, a murderer and mutant terrorist living in exile on Genosha, now he's the ruler of most of the world. The only possible explanation for this discrepancy lies with Magneto's daughter, Wanda Maximoff. Also known as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda is a mutant with the ability to alter reality itself. The girl's a pretty little cutie with more power than she knows what to do with... Which was apparently a bad thing since she wound up busting a nut and killing off a bunch of her fellow Avengers when she boarded the crazy train.

In the end she was subdued by Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, who used the eye of Agemotto to put her to sleep. Her father Magneto showed up and took Wanda away to Genosha where he appealed to Charles Xavier for help restoring her mind. It was a task that Xavier was unable to accomplish and the X-men along with the New Avengers were trying to find a way to help her, or failing to do so, find a way to stop her from going on any more murderous rampages… even if it meant killing her.

They were traveling to Genosha to see what the Scarlet Witch wanted but when they got there Wanda, Magneto and Peitro were gone. There was a flash of white light, the world turned sideways and everything changed. Now the whole world thinks he's gone mad or is a terrorist, he's fighting people who should be his friends, alongside people- some of whom in another life- were enemies and he doesn't want to think about what's going on with Mystique... In other words, it's Tuesday.

He's just watched an enraged Magneto beat his son to a pulp with an I-Beam and pieces of a destroyed Sentinel when the Scarlet Witch appeared. She put the voodoo of hers on Daddy-dearest and now the battle's all but stopped to watch the family drama on display as Magneto's daughter chews him out in front of the entire world. It's a heart-breaking scene, it really is, Magneto's been a crap father to all his kids, Wanda has every right to blame him since he's always treated her more as a pawn than a daughter. The thing is. The hair on the back of Logan's neck has been raised ever since she showed up and he reeeally doesn't like where the conversation he's listening to is going…

"Daddy… No more mutants…"

Logan's world went white and turned on its side again.

-Earth, Reality #627886-

From the Personal Chronicles of Kang the Conqueror

How long have I been here? Three years I think… yes. It has been three years since I descended upon this world, this barbaric, backwater planet. In that time what few base primitives, barely worth at most my even fleeting regard, have finally learned to avoid the vicinity of my base of operations. I have claimed the northern peninsula of one of the larger continents as my own domain. Prior to my coming it was a fearsome land populated by all manner of flora and fauna in conflict with a few outposts along the coasts populated by bands of dirty, dark-skinned savages.

This state of affairs was one that I simply could not accept! Within a day of my arrival these crude outposts were obliterated, reclaimed by the forest. Their population suborned to my will as slaves, test subjects… raw materials. Humbling the land itself was an even greater challenge than conquering a band of disorganized primitives. Nonetheless it was a task hardly worthy of me attention. The jungle was kept as it was, simply held at bay by an anti-material shield and chronol screens. The fauna within were sampled, catalogued and modified to suit my designs. In another time and place, on a different Earth, this warning would have been placed on maps as a euphemism for undiscovered country. In this Earth's timeline, that saying is slightly different and much more literal.

'Here, there be Monsters…'

End Entry

His Past

My shoulders shook with poorly suppressed mirth. "Ah, it seems that I was chuckling to myself again." There I was, standing alone in my laboratory, laughing for no reason at all. The sound of softly beeping, whirring mechanisms operating in the background was an undertone to my mad fit of giggles, "Giggles..." Specimen containers of varying sizes, ranging from rows of test tubes to floor to ceiling tanks, dominated the room where I stood. Distorted reflections looked back at me. An apt representation for the state of my mind, metal masked men dressed in green armor with outlandish-looking purple gloves, thigh-high boots and helmet; warped and twisted in disturbing ways as they laughed with me, "Or perhaps at Me."

It was a struggle at first, for me to remember what it was that I was doing. Standing where I was, mirthful, "It must have been something good." The light produced by the computer display bathed the surface of my armored visage and after a moment too long I gathered enough focus to read the dizzying array of calculations scrolling down the hololith.

"At last!" I breathed, struggling to avoid doing something as unbecoming as to laugh maniacally again. Instead I merely continued to whisper hoarsely, "At last, at last, at last, at last, at last, at last…" Oh how the mighty have fallen. Imagine that I, Kang the Conqueror, a name feared, hated and revered across time and space am reduced to this semi-addled shell of what I once was. Surely I can come up with something more eloquent than murmuring, "At Last!" like some silly dolt. Why I c-could s-say... "At last?"

It is only with that thought that I realized I have been ranting to myself aloud for the better part of… three hours?

"Kang the Conqueror! Pwhah! Perhaps Kang the Mad would be a more suitable moniker!"

Yes, it is I, Kang the Conqueror, or perhaps more accurately. A Kang the Conqueror.

My studies into the mysteries of time eventually yielded the ability to traverse alternate realities in addition to past and future times. It was this discovery that allowed me to finally enter Temporal Limbo, an achievement that became my undoing. My undoing, for what should I encounter but an alternate version of myself, gibbering madly, dying. At first I merely gazed upon this sight with a tinge of slight horror. I watched as a version of myself faded from existence. At the time I felt no pity for that other me, concluding that he was simply too weak and that I would merely have to overcome whatever challenge it was that my counterpart failed to conquer.

All too soon I would come to understand the plight of that other Kang. Perhaps due to my proximity, I found the essence of that dead Kang flowing into me. Not one mind but many, many thousands of Kangs, each having lived out a lifetime of trials and tribulations. Were it not for TOBI, the synthetic intelligence I long ago devised to act in the event of my incapacitation. The mental deterioration that had somehow been passed onto me by my counterpart would have continued unabated. Now here I am on this dreary and primitive version of Earth struggling to rid myself mind of the creeping madness that was afflicting my thoughts and tainting my every endeavor with insanity. Only the techno-organic bionic interface grafted to my being holds true madness at bay.

Alone aboard my time ship I labored toward a cure. TOBI provided me with priceless aid by minimizing the damage and setbacks caused by my increasingly frequent bouts of insanity. The Intelligence was not without its limitations. It could not for instance, prevent me from experimenting on captured specimens, nor did it catalogue whatever chain of events led to my granting the local fauna sentience. The best that I could do during my more lucid moments was lock those creatures away within a pocket dimension for later examination.

Most distressingly of all, is the evidence that I have found to suggest that there may be a second personality within me, one that is seeking a way to achieve true godhood, "The nitwit!" TOBI was only authorized to prevent me from causing myself inadvertent harm should my mind or body ever become incapacitated. I fear that should my orders seem logical enough, it would not discern between personalities. I can find no definitive proof that there is something going on, merely allocations of certain psychokinesis-enhancing compounds and mutagens that I cannot recall requesting. Yesterday a file on the human genes that control the expression of the various forms of the energy manipulation was accessed. Interrogating TOBI revealed nothing that I did not already know and if the culprit is truly myself as I suspect, then the Intelligence may be obstructing my investigations as per my own orders! "Gah! Kang! You brilliant, sexy, imbecile. you! Now I know what my enemies must think of me!"

…

The world stills as I pause, my thoughts pause, my body pauses, everything about me comes to a stop.

…

My mutterings cease and my eyes became dilated.

…

I don't remember just how long I stared at the holographic display. Long enough for drool to dry on the edges of my mouth apparently. It would have been mortifying if this had happened before an audience. These fugue states were becoming more and more frequent as the personalities within me battled for dominance. Fortunately none stood witness to this sight of sights. Of how the mighty had fallen, that I, Kang the Conqueror am reduced to a pathetic, drooling lunatic.

…

I dismiss the notion that I have thought this before, "Déjà vu…." Yes... That's it... "It is merely déjà vu. Heh..."

I stare at the display with frustration. "Argh!" This is the thirtieth time so far that my work has been disrupted by reams of gibberish. Hmm, what is this? It seems to be some sort of mechanism for partitioning memories and personalities. That might actually be useful to me. Yes, it seems that my brilliance remained undiminished by these bouts of delirium that I suffer. I began to frame a query for TOBI and then remember that I had shut the thing off. The Intelligence had actually refused to erase the work done during my more fevered moments and now it appears to have been the correct choice. Humility does not come easily to me at all so I merely congratulated myself for having created TOBI in the first place.

"Yes, it seems that my mad ravings may be useful after all."

I walk through the dark and empty halls of the time ship coming to a room that I have taken great pains to lock myself out of during my bouts of insanity. There I find a full record of the alterations thus far made to the customized x-gene I am crafting. I have over time, sampled the genetic data of some of the most brilliant and powerful beings throughout the multiverse. Most were mutants but not all. Each has been a piece of the puzzle leading to my final goal, a perfect form to bear my intellect! My goal is a body that grows and adapts as I do to meet new challenges as I face them.

Behind me in a sealed container is the result of my latest experiment. The pile of cancerous flesh that at one point had been a human was slowly being devoured by writhing spectral leeches that rose from holes within base of the device. It is a failure, but a failure that brought me valuable insight. Combined with the data regarding the partitioning of memories, I now have the answer to the creeping madness that afflicts me.

"Déjà vu…"

I am not unaware of the risks involved in this mixing of mysticism and science. Were it not for my great need for a body capable of handling the excess of experiences and personal power that had come from assimilating my alternate selves, I would never have even considered such a desperate undertaking. However, I am Kang the Conqueror! The lengths that I would go through to make myself whole are far beyond such pithy labels as 'atrocity', 'dementia' or 'utter madness'.

"I will be a god…" I caught myself muttering wearily. "But first…sleep."

I idly wondered when last I'd slept to feel so tired, "Gods don't need sleep." A voice whispered in the back of my mind, as I lay down within an empty augmentation capsule. I wondered if it was TOBI speaking to me and then remembered that I'd switched off the Intelligence some time ago.

As I tugged the cover of the capsule closed it triggered some mechanism deep within the facility.

Initiate Augmentation Protocols?

Y/N…?

Blearily, I fumbled for the meaning within the words floating before my eyes and with a sigh I will them away. The faint stirrings of panic I feel fades away and one of the Others slide into place takes control of my mind. What was I worried about? No matter sleep is more important.

…

The worlds stilled as I paused, my thoughts paused, my body paused, everything about me came to a stop.

…

And then the beast in me grinned…

…Y

Years after the first sighting of the Juubi, a man wandered into the Southern Lands coming from the Northern wilds. He was dresses in simple garments rendered by his own hand. Some say he was a yamabushi, a wandering warrior monk who lived in the wilds seeking enlightenment in contemplating nature. It helped to explain the strangeness about him.

Some tales say that he was a blind man with ringed eyes that were a metallic grey. Yet these same tales spoke of a man who moved through crowds with utmost confidence. When he spoke, it was with the authority of a king to such a degree that men and women of all stations and walks of life paused to hear his wisdom. It helped that what this monk preached was a message that the inhabitants of the war-torn southern lands greatly needed to hear.

He talked of peace.

He spoke of balance.

He taught the ancient arts of heaven and earth. He taught them of the Chakras.

Word spread as he moved through the lands and as some sought to learn at his feet, others confronted him with bared weapons

It is said that at one point, when challenged in a village by jaded and hungry soldiers turned bandits, he defeated them all handily using nothing but his monk's staff. Then with a clap of his hands the holy man caused the barren land to grow so fertile that fruit trees grew from rock and wheat rose from stone.

Laughing gently. The Sage led them all in harvesting the bounty together.

The wise Sage taught his followers of the unity of mind and flesh as a means to achieve peace with oneself, one's neighbors and the world. He met a woman named Ravonna and married her. By Ravonna, he gained two sons.

In this way, the Sage of Six Paths lived his life.

Then the Juubi descended upon the south, rampaging through the land.

As armies and nations shattered, the only person willing to confront the great beast was a holy man named Kang.

After a time, even his name would be forgotten and most would come to doubt that he ever existed. Still, this was where it all began. The Legend of the Sage of Six Paths…

His Future

His unconsciousness was not an intentional mercy, but Uzumaki Naruto would remember it as the last moment of peace that he had before everything was torn away. As he awoke he remembered, or perhaps it was fair to say he learned through the inherited memories of his predecessor. Naruto's mind was well adapted, through genetics and his use of the shadow clone technique, to the flood of alien memories that entered his mind. Even so, the memories still threatened to subsume him and leave him a gibbering madman.

He somehow bulled his way through the endless stream of recollections, emotions and impressions with his sanity intact. There were many factors that contributed to this, his lineage, his training, his life experiences and most of all the sheer bloody-minded, bull-headed stubbornness that defined his nature. Let it not be said that Naruto Uzumaki was anything if not determined.

"What the hell…" He breathed, "The Sage of Six Paths, Kang the Conqueror, Juubi…."

((Yes,)) A voice answered him, ((They were all one and the same.))

"Who said that!" He whirled around, "Whoaa!"

A world floated beneath him. Having never been so far up that he could see the curve of the horizon Naruto knew not what he was looking at… and yet did.

"Earth…" He breathed.

((An Earth,)) The same voice from before interjected from somewhere over his left shoulder.

He tore his eyes from the juxtaposition of darkness and light that was the border between earth and outer-space; and spun away from the planet, looking behind him only to see nothing.

"What the-!" He began then paused as another memory surfaced, "Techno-Organic Bionic Interface, TOBI! Come forth!" He ordered.

The same orange mask with the spiral that the entity styling itself as Tobi had worn once before appeared to Naruto. The genin narrowed his eyes at the sight but relented. This was a simulacrum his new memories informed him. It would be pointless to smash it when there wasn't even an actual body attached. A flood of dread filled him as new memories, his own of the last few seconds of his life, intruded upon his thoughts.

"No!" He barked, turning toward the globe.

His perspective of the planet changed until he was looking upon a murky cloudbank that covered the majority of the Elemental Countries. Fires could be seen from space through breaks in the coverage. Concentric waves in the ocean indicated the still expanding shockwave and the tsunamis dragged along with them.

He began to descend into the image, breaking though the clouds and going further. Suddenly, with a thought, he was there and not just looking at some interactive holographic display on a timeship docked at the moon.

The fires swirled around him, but the armor that he wore, ((CLASS TWELVE LOW PROFILE PSYCHO-REATCIVE COMBAT SKIN, A CLASS FIVE ANTI-MATERIAL SHIELD AND A CLASS SIX ANTI-ENERGY FIELD WITH INTEGRAL INERTIAL DAMPENING)) TOBI helpfully supplied directly to his mind, causing the thoughts and concepts behind them to blossom through his brain like a fast-blooming flower. The armor that served to protect him from the heat would have done so in the equally hostile environment of space. The air he descended through was toxic but his need to breathe was optional now as his armor produced and filtered all he needed directly into his blood. Silently he hovered in place, a tall metal god bathed blood red by the reflected fires and lava flows surrounding him. He looked at what had been his home.

It looked like the pit of hell.

It was then that Naruto knew, as he hovered over the leveled Hokage Monument with the new knowledge being parsed by his mind. This was the weaning that Kang had devised for his successor. The means by which Kang sought to ignite the restless fires of adventure and wanderlust that would send Naruto forth into the cosmos. Nothing that could hold him back was left behind, nothing and no one.

"Damn you… Damn You! DAMN YOU KANG!"

His words triggered a pre-recorded message that TOBI, now in the form of a neutral AI dutifully replayed within the young man's head.

"I am Kang, The Sage of Six Paths. Hear me, my descendant. I am your past and you young man, you are my future..."

The devastation was total. He spent years searching for survivors manually because he refused to believe what that… TOBI was telling him was true. He had a hard time even locating their bones. Everyone and everything that he knew was gone, buried under ash and lava flows.

"What do you mean it's not possible?" He yelled at the irritating machine.

((The process of reintegrating with the Juubi has resulted in a mild chronal disturbance that is estimated to last for sixty to one hundred years in sidereal time. Combined with the numerous temporal adjustments required to bring about your existence, travelling for more than a few seconds into your own past is inadvisable.)) TOBI answered.

"I don't care!" He replied refusing to back down, "I want to change it, I will change it!"

((That is not possible Naruto,)) It replied, ((The chain of events that lead to your ascension as the successor of Kang is fixed in time, the best that you can hope to do is spawn a different, alternate timeline.))

"Then I will!" Naruto answered heatedly, "I'll make it all better I'll save them."

The entity known as TOBI chose not to comment on this statement of intent, instead simply saying, ((Given the current instabilities, I advise that you wait one hundred years before attempting to travel.)) When Naruto said nothing TOBI considered the matter settled. Given the nature of its creator, the AI should have known better.

It took Naruto roughly ten years of constant study using Kage Bunshin to learn how to operate the time ship without TOBI's input.

"Wait a hundred years? Like hell I will!"

"I am Uatu...

I am a Watcher. It is my task to note all events of significance in this region of the cosmos. This is a task that brings me great joy... and great sorrow."

In two timelines and two places, two voices speak four fateful words.

She in frustration and despair: Daddy, no more mutants!

He in defiance and determination: Like hell I will!

These four words are separated by a gulf of space and time so vast it beggars belief of even I, who have witnessed the birth of gods and the death throes of galaxies.

She looks to the Heavens for salvation.

He struggles to save a world from Hell.

And deep within the Nexus of Worlds a shadow of a shadow of the faintest of presentiments forms, takes shape… propagates.

The Worlds tremble a chaos wave is unleashed, it washes away entire universes as so many grains of sand on a beach, entire realities destroyed in the fraction of a second while others are born anew.

She says: Daddy, no more Mutants!

"There exist few entities other than myself who understand the full consequence of this anguished child's plaintive words."

At the Scarlet Witch's merest utterance, the interwoven being begins to unravel into chaotic mire. The barriers between what is and what is not fall away. Thusly, it is with a few words that the terrifying truth of reality is laid bare. This is the knowledge that drove Wanda Maximoff, known to some as the Scarlet Witch, to insanity. All possibilities that can be, will be...

All at once she is wife, mother and widow. Her children live, her children die, her friends live and her friends die. She is good, she is evil, her enemies are allies; her allies are bitter enemies. The sanity of a mere mortal mind proves fragile with nothing to dictate what is and is not real. She is adrift at sea with reality a land out of sight, perhaps paddling in one direction may take her to shore but all directions are equally valid and so Wanda is paralyzed in indecision.

Her brother lies dead in her arms, Pietro lives barely, Pietro Maximoff looks upon his sister sadly as she breathes her last. They cry together as their father laid fallen, brought low by the same folly that consumed his life, hubris.

It is too much to bear... she sees it all. Wanda wields a mystical power that she did not earn and as a result, cannot fully control. The others simply do not understand, those fortunate souls, they who see so little. She tries explaining it to her doctor. The old man crinkles his nose in good humor when she calls him, 'Wolverine' and nods placidly. He makes a silent note to find out how his patient discovered his old World War II call sign, perhaps Susan mentioned it...

She looks at all of the other Wolverines as the balding psychiatrist jots down his notes and wonders to herself. Who is real, the doctor, the amnesiac X-Man, the actor in black faux-leather, the grizzly war veteran in a ripped S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform?

Perhaps, they all are.

If she killed one of them then, would it matter?

"I am charged merely to observe, never to interfere."

He says: Like hell I will!

His hands flicker over a control console as his will bends a nearly limitless power to achieve a nigh impossible goal. The world he looks down upon is a dead and charred husk, turned to a smoky ruin by the fires of his apotheosis. Self-recrimination will bring no surcease to his heartache. His precious people perished even before the cataclysm brought about by the forces arrayed against the Shinobi Alliance. He cannot even truly hate TOBI. The AI was bound by the inviolate strictures of programmed commands, no more responsible for its actions under the guise of a nameless shinobi than a sword in the hand of a samurai.

The one person that he can blame is Kang but if he wants to undo the chaos and death resultant of his ancestor's arrogant meddling in his life then he must utilize the very tools used to shape his world for his own ends. He will save his world even if he must move space and time to so. The threads of fate part before him as the time machine activates. He tenses with a strange instinct that was until then unknown to him. The world turns in a direction that should not exist, and with a will forged by the fires of creation he reaches, beyond.

The time ship is cast into the raging currents of a chronol storm. His instincts, long thought to be the devil's luck proved to be more than what they at first seemed. Naruto instead has manifested an innate sensitivity for probabilistic temporal fluxes. He is particularly sensitive to those possibilities that lead to a favorable outcome. It is a type of survival mechanism that unerringly defends his life time and again. He taps into it now, semi-consciously, using split-second adjustments to steer the time ship like a schooner in the midst of a storm.

But young Naruto's actions are influenced by an intellect other than his own. A deviant mind acts upon him to bring about a truly fiendish plot. With the self-serving goal of both stymieing the chaos wave before it can destroy all of his precious alternate timelines and at the same time create new ones. Mephisto watches this iteration of his time travelling device most closely. Selfish though his reasons may be, the self-proclaimed Antagonist's next action preserves the existence of uncounted legions of life-forms.

The path of the time ship through the temporal disturbance changes as Mephisto subtly overrides the vessel's commander and brings it into contact with the chaos wave at a crucial moment. It is a minute course correction that poses no harm to the time-ship and its pilot. As such Naruto's instinct give him no warning of what is about to come to pass.

What was once a crest is shifted, ever so slightly and the chaos wave's course diverts into the chronal storm. A force of destruction changes into something so unpredictable that even the impassively watching Celestials are briefly surprised. The Dark God Chthon, scheming in his Other-Realm, can only scowl in grim, bitter silence as the newly unfolding set of realities force him even further from his goal of returning to and inevitably claiming Earth as his own. The time-ship wallows briefly in a calm pocket skirting the boundaries between creation and non-being.

On an Earth beneath a starry sky, Benjamin Braddock, a man known as Captain Britain clasps his wife Meggan to his chest.

"It's beautiful…" He whispers, looking into the frothing prism of alien colors, "So beautiful…"

"It is my love." The woman in his arms responds, "It is…"

Cain Marko, also known as the Juggernaut, looks on puzzled, "How come we're not dead yet?"

The rest of Excalibur can offer no explanation.

"It's receding, seemingly on its own?" Pete Wisdom noted silently, as the tear in reality closed with ever accelerating velocity, "Did someone else stop it?"

He looks over at Meggan who had earlier been set to sacrifice her life to halt the chaos wave's progress, "Whoever, whatever did this. Did they…"

"And thus, I Uatu stand witness to an event of great significance."

Four words spoken by two voices cross into the Nexus of Worlds and intertwine, gaining new meaning.

She says: Daddy, no more mutants!

He shouts: Like hell I will!

The Cosmos sings to the tone of their collision. A wish has been made and granted.

He looks upon a world that is forsaken of all hope. It is not his own. For every action a consequence, every day a battle, the price of impatience is to live as an exile forevermore.

She awakens in her home. Two children greet her gleefully. One is young a blond boy and the other a red haired girl. Looking upon them she sees that this is her life and it is real. Perhaps in her eternal exile she will finally be happy in a reality not her own.

"I am Uatu..."

"I am a Watcher… This is a task that brings me great joy... and great sorrow."

The Time Ship was buried in volcanic soil, buried deep. For the time being however, he trusted the anti-material shield and chrono-field to protect it while he explored. The inertial cancelling fields had largely neutralized the effect of the crash upon the ship's inhabitants. Other devices of similar purpose served to leave the vessel itself unharmed even after hitting the basaltic bedrock a hundred meters below the surface.

The laws of physics however still needed to be obeyed. As a result of this little fact Naruto found that he was climbing out of a bowl shaped crater a kilometer in diameter and even deeper than a certain gorge that he'd once been tossed into as a child by his old teacher and godfather Jiraiya. A moment of sadness overcame him then. A sense of longing was attached to even that horrid memory. It took a moment for him to banish his melancholy and continue making his way up the crater wall.

He was wearing a suit similar to what Tobi had worn during the war. The mask that wrapped around his head had no eyeholes and was a plain bone white, save for a red spiral enclosed within a circle that covered where his eyes and nose would be on a human face. In spite of appearances the suit was actually a form of armor created by nanites and extruded through his skin. Even the loose coat that was bound at his waist was created in that fashion.

As a shinobi, wearing clothes grown out of his flesh was hardly the creepiest thing that he'd experienced. Given that the alternative was to go naked he'd reluctantly worn the look of his old enemy. TOBI hadn't understood his hesitation, patiently explaining that that character hadn't really existed in the first place beyond solid hologram projections and a script written by Kang. The AI generated character had truly been... no-one.

Naruto didn't know whether that fact angered or depressed him more.

He kept the armor sealed despite the fact that the limited scans made by the AI had pronounced the environment to be Earth-like with a high concentration of 'mystokinetic' energy. He wasn't sure what that was exactly but he hadn't felt like talking after a rhetorical question led to TOBI relating just how astronomically bad the odds of their making it through the temporal disturbance alive and intact had been. He simply closed up his armor and hoped this mystokinetic thing wasn't as contagious as it sounded.

The detailed scientific knowledge of Kang, bereft of emotional connotations, would eventually yield an answer. Naruto however was not willing to wait for that to happen, or ask the seemingly passive-aggressive AI to explain in detail. He instead found himself clambering over the raised lip of the crater and surveying the alien world that he'd landed on. He saw a sky choking with black soot and ash, felt the rumble of distant volcanic eruptions, and with a finger traced the winding path of a river of lava across pitch-black plains sprinkled with ash.

Aside from the crater, it looked pretty much like back home, after the world had gone to hell…

The craters there had been bigger and more numerous though.

He made a note to find out what exactly TOBI thought was an Earth-like environment.

"Mystokinetic: tentative meaning, blasted all to hell." Some part of his brain rationalized.

Mindful of the barren nature of his own home, Naruto was somberly grateful that at least the tons of rock kicked up by the hard landing hadn't killed anyone. "After all," He thought to himself, "What poor soul could possibly call such a tortured land home and mean it."

It was then, that the N'Garai demons came into view, dashing madly toward his position, roaring in challenge.

The fight that followed was just the start of the many days to come during Naruto's stay in Kierrok's Hell.

AN: Credit (and blame) goes to Grumpywinter for inspiring and collaborating on this. I find long author notes at the beginning of a story annoying because they take away the option of ignoring them. Ignore this if you wish but I feel I should explain just how this story got started.

Last year, Grumpywinter poked me with a PM that said, "Have you ever considered trying an epic length powerful esque Naruto trapped in Marvel world. You are probaply one of the few Authors on the site that i know of that can pull it off.
I would gladly help with getting you the comics or helping you do research on Marvel Characters and Events"

What followed was a thread of epic proportions on the subject.

I've had little exposure to Western Comics growing up aside from the inevitable animation, toy and random issue borrowed from a friend or bought. I do remember as a thirteen year-old being the lookout while one of my friends bought an issue of Heavy Metal off of a shady comic book store clerk. One of the handful of adult NEET store-goers there tried to either pick my pocket or grope me. I still shudder at that memory.

Growing older, I just never found the interest to navigate the maze of histories and interconnecting relationships of Marvel Universe and DCU characters. I'm not saying I'm ignorant or uninterested, just intimidated and unmotivated. That said, please aim all queries about the status of the Marvel Timeline for this story at Grumpywinter.

TTFN.