AN: This happens in the Kazama Naruto verse.

The Unglamorous First Meeting

….Ow. Why am I hurting all over so badly?

Naruto could barely move from the tremendous agony shooting in his nerves. He also had a huge throbbing headache that almost put to shame the mother of hangovers he'd once experienced during the three year training stint with Jiraiya. For a moment, he couldn't recall why and how he ended in this situation before it all came rushing back in epic Technicolour. He was silent for a few seconds before explosively yelling, "FUCK!"

He'd been sucked into a dimensional rift that formed as a result of Obito's final action. That bastard had pulled him along for the painful ride and the last thing he'd seen was Gaara trying to rescue him with his sand. At least, that fucker was dead now, a grim satisfied smile forming on his face as he recalled how he had finished him off in the strange in-between place. Then all too quickly, his smile fell as Naruto realised his situation.

He could never go home.

After moping for a good hour, Naruto forced himself to get a grip. He was still alive. He needed to find out where he was and get somewhere safe. He was Uzumaki fucking Naruto, number one unpredictable ninja who would be Hokage one day! Well, being Hokage was probably moot now in this dimension especially if Konoha never existed (the horror).

After reassessing his current possessions; a dozen kunai and thirty shuriken, a coil of ninja wire, exploding tags, some coupons to Ichiraku's (oh, that's where they went!) and of course, Tsunade's crystal necklace around his neck, Naruto then tried to transform into his perfected jinchuuriki form but the process was more sluggish than usual as though Kyuubi's energy was rapidly draining away from him at the same time he was trying to channel it. It was weird but nothing too alarming for now.

Glowing like a supernova, Naruto was immediately able to sense a fierce battle taking place a distance away. Among those fighting, there was a person whose chakra presence was incredibly bright, signifying a Kage level ninja. That same person's chakra signature was also very familiar... But that was impossible. Unless…he'd also been sucked in as well, somehow still whole? In fact, did he actually purposely get sucked in just to save his ass? Whatever it was, Naruto definitely had to meet up with him.

Engaged in bloody combat, Minato's squad was severely outnumbered by the Iwa nin. They had been unwittingly led into an ambush and Minato now suspected that there was a traitor in their ranks – how else could the enemy have known that they were travelling this way? To top it all off, the Iwa nin seemed to be targeting him… Side-stepping a earth spike that threatened to eviscerate him, Minato commanded, "Men, continue the mission without me! I'll hold them here."

One of his squad-mates shouted, "Are you nuts?!"

Minato smiled thinly and retorted, "Who do you think I am? Besides, we're on a time-sensitive mission, so we have to hurry."

"…Fine! You better meet us back at camp. Don't be a martyr."

"Go!"

Utilising a flash-bomb, his squad-mates fled the battlefield, hurrying towards their destination. Facing twelve Iwa nin alone, Minato readied for another battle. The odds were mounted high against him; his chakra was already running low and he could barely perform his hiraishin or rasengan. Instead of despairing, he smiled. Was it time for him to die yet?

At an unspoken signal, an Iwa-nin slammed the ground, sending forth earth spikes to impale him. He jumped and zig-zagged, bringing him close to another Iwa-nin. Slamming his kunai in the Iwa-nin's throat before he could respond, Minato grabbed the dying man's body and quickly spun around to use it as a meat-shield as kunai and shuriken impacted it. He immediately pushed his temporary shield in the direction of the second Iwa-nin rushing towards him as he quickly unsheathed his ninjato and thrust it through the body and the surprised Iwa-nin.

Kicking the dead duo off his weapon, Minato rolled to the side to narrowly avoid evisceration by a rock spike. He saw that five Iwa nin were running after his comrades and he couldn't let that happen. Thinking quickly, he wrapped an explosive tag around a kunai and flung it accurately in the midst of the pursuers. Too slow to react, the Iwa nin were unable to get away from the explosion fast enough. Two of them were killed immediately while the remaining three sustained fatal injuries; having had their limbs blown off.

Five more to go…

Super-charging his ninjato with wind chakra, Minato slashed towards the closest enemy; an invisible blade of air speeding towards the ninja who barely managed to raise an earth wall in the nick of time. Unfortunately, the hurriedly erected earth wall was too thin to block the razor-thin and highly-pressurised wind blade. A spray of crimson blood splattered against the brown dirt.

A kunai swiftly flew at his head. Minato quickly dodged to the side but was a second too slow as the blade gouged a line in his cheek. His exhaustion was nearing its peak. Pain exploded in his leg and he stumbled. Without having to look down, Minato knew thathis thigh had been hit by a kunai. Thankfully, it hadn't cut an artery, judging from the weapon's location. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he wrenched the kunai out of his thigh and swiftly flung it back in the direction of its owner. It hit on target.

Three.

Minato steadied his breath and evaluated his chakra levels in a split second. He had enough chakra to perform just one Hiraishin and a rasengan, but even so, it was really pushing his limits. This was going to be tricky. But before he could raise his kunai, his throat suddenly constricted. Minato gasped for air as he weakly clutched his throat, recognising the symptoms of paralysis poison. That kunai had been poisoned. That was unexpected – poison was more up Suna's alley rather than Iwa's.

No. Wait. This poison was acting much slower than a typical Suna poison – Minato wouldn't even have the time to think or down a standard soldier pill to temporarily circumvent the paralysis if it was a Suna poison. This was more like Kusa's…or even Konoha's style of poison. His mission had been sabotaged. Minato shallowly breathed as the paralysis let up. He reevaluated his options – he now only had enough chakra for one rasengan and just 1 minute to kill the remaining three enemies before the soldier pill wore off and he became a very dead sitting duck.

As the enemies warily surrounded him, Minato ran hundreds of strategies in his mind. A strange tension filled the air and he raised his kunai. But before anyone could make a move, everything turned into pure chaos.

When everything finally settled down, Minato was alarmed to find himself in a completely new location. He was sitting somewhere safe up in a tree and…below, there was someone else who looked just like him, facing off with the three Iwa shinobi.

What. The. Fuck.

To be fair, Naruto was running on fumes at that point and therefore too tired to really pay much attention to the details. He had seen Minato nearly collapse in front of him with a fucking hole in his leg and looking rather pale. Ignoring the odd inconsistencies in his appearance (huh, Dad now has his arm back? He looks pretty normal now?), Naruto wasn't going to let his father die (again) on his watch!

Busting out his trade-mark shadow clones, Naruto easily overpowered the enemies and left them knocked out and tied up to a tree. Then he went to check on Minato. He never expected to be flipped and thrown against the tree trunk with their positions reversed and a kunai at his throat with his father (waaaaiiit, he looked too young and he's not a zombie?) giving him a cold look as though he was a piece of stubborn, stale chewing gum that got stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

"Um, hi?" Naruto awkwardly offered. Minato narrowed his eyes and questioned, "Who are you? I've never seen you in Konoha before…if that hitaiate of yours is even real."

Naruto blinked. He slowly raised one finger and asked, "Can you tell me how old you are?"

The kunai dug in a little deeper and Naruto winced as he started to bleed. Ouch, this was going to be a bitch. Leaning as far back as he could into the hard bark behind him, he rephrased his question, "Never mind. At least tell me what the year and date is."

Minato eyed him skeptically as though he thought Naruto was crazy (to be honest, he was feeling a bit crazy right now because…this should not be happening), but in the end, he told him, "It's Sandaime 26th Year, 10th October. Is it of any significance?"

Naruto stared at him wide-eyed. He finally said, "Fuck me."

"What?!"

Minato was so taken aback that he nearly dropped the kunai. Naruto immediately blushed bright red and he stammered, "N-no, that's not- I wasn't propositioning you, oh my god. Kill me now." A pause. "Figuratively, of course."

Minato was too confused by the odd ninja in front of him to make sense out of him. He decided that the best course of action was to take this strange man in for questioning- oh fuck. He'd completely forgotten about the poison still running in his system. Minato's vision was starting to go grey at the edges and he lost feeling in his extremities. The stranger looked alarmed and he was asking him something but everything seemed so far away.

Naruto almost panicked when Minato keeled over in a dead faint in front of him. It happened so fast that he barely managed to stop him from falling off the tree branch. When he checked Minato's pulse, he noticed that it was weakening and his breaths were shallow. Shoving all the questions and confusion about his current time-displaced situation aside, he quickly applied a tourniquet from his bandages to Minato's thigh injury. Carefully hefting the unconscious man onto his back, Naruto's eyes turned amber as he spread his senses far and wide. When he finally sensed friendly chakra signatures, he ran towards their direction as fast as he could.

Man. This is so not my day. I'm now almost twenty years back in the past…right in the middle of the Third Shinobi War and Dad is…my age right now. But oh wait, he's not my dad yet so should I just call him Minato? Yeah. That'll do. While I'm at it, I probably shouldn't use Uzumaki as my surname or it'll cause some really awkward questions. What should I use for my new name then? Hmm…

Fin.