Notes: I must first give an enormous amount of credit to Kryptonian Saiyan, who inspired this story with his YouTube video entitled, "What If Sasuke Beat Naruto In Their Final Battle?" I highly recommend any of his Naruto clips, especially the ones that deal with "what if?" scenarios.

Warning: There is character death and plenty of it. There will be no second warning.

Summary: Boruto thinks Sasuke would be a better Hokage than Naruto. So Sasuke has Boruto explore a genjutsu-based world where Sasuke is Hokage. But it may be tough for Boruto to enjoy it, since the first thing Sasuke does in this world is ensure that Boruto will never be born.

A Brief History As Hokage

A Naruto Fanfic by

Nate Grey (xman0123-at-aol-dot-com)

Chapter 1: Savior

Uchiha Sasuke would never claim to be a psychic, or boast that he knew exactly how the world would unfold. At the same time, both his mind and his bloodline, as well as his clan's bloodstained history, had afforded him certain advantages that others would never be able to grasp.

Some things were just entirely too easy to predict, either as an Uchiha, or simply as Sasuke.

Naruto's firstborn son being an idiot was not really a shot in the dark.

In Boruto's defense, his being an idiot was not the end of the world. In fact, Naruto had been one, and he'd managed to save the world a time or two. With the proper amount and type of training, and a little inherited luck, Boruto would no doubt do the same one day.

But until then, he could hardly be blamed for opening his mouth and removing all doubt as to which parent he'd inherited the bulk of his brain from. It was no different from the way Chocho was instantly recognizable as an Akimichi, or Shikato a Nara. Children couldn't help who they were made from.

The problem was, the teachers who had helped Naruto get around being an idiot weren't really an option for Boruto. Iruka was too busy, and Jiraiya was long dead. Kakashi, while he had taught Boruto a thing or two, would be the first to admit that of the many hats he wore, sensei had always been a rather uncomfortable and ill-fitting one, and it really showed in his students. And even if Naruto had the time to spare, he was, at his core, still an idiot. Though not as much of one, and far more tolerable. But Sasuke had it on good authority that Naruto couldn't help what he'd inherited, either. It wasn't exactly the Curse of Hatred, but surely it hadn't been easy, lugging around a thick head and a chakra monster his whole life.

At least Boruto only had the one. But he had it in spades.

There was some hope, though. Sasuke's own daughter Sarada had somewhat reluctantly latched onto Boruto, so he should have been limited into how stupid he could behave around her before she reigned him in. And Mitsuki, while he would not necessarily stop Boruto from being an idiot, would at least ensure that it didn't get either of them killed.

But that was the team dynamic. When not restricted by their influence, Boruto had no problem showing anyone else that he had Uzumaki brains. And since Sasuke had agreed to train him, he got to hear some choice nuggets of wisdom from Boruto. Most did not bear repeating, but there was one that nearly made Sasuke re-think the whole arrangement.

It had quickly become apparent that Boruto understood very little about his father. Part of this was by design: making a better tomorrow for the children of today involved a great deal of hiding the terrors of yesterday. But Boruto didn't even seem overly familiar with things that Sasuke expected any child to have memorized about the current Hokage. In fact, Boruto almost would have had to purposely go out of his way to possess so much ignorance on a subject which he should have nearly been an expert on. Sasuke did not expect Boruto to know something like Naruto's age when he defeated Pain, but there were many children who could recite the individual ages of Team 7 when they had first attempted the chunin exams. Boruto was not among them.

He didn't care. Or he didn't care enough, anyway. And perhaps that was a consequence of Boruto living in a peaceful time, or not growing up an orphan, or never having to survive on little more than a occasional stipend and his own wits. If Boruto had outright hated Naruto, perhaps that level of disinterest would have been understandable.

But Boruto did love his father. He would not try so hard to gain Naruto's attention if he didn't. Which could only mean that Boruto's willfull ignorance was the result of spite. There were far worse reasons to be a shinobi, but Sasuke had little patience for that type of attitude. Not after he had wasted so much time hating Itachi. Hatred was for those who deserved it. And while it was debatable how much of Boruto's attitude that Naruto deserved, what could not be debated was that Boruto had formed an uninformed opinion of his father. He didn't know enough about Naruto to accurately judge, and he was already biased by hurt feelings.

Likewise, he also did not know enough about Sasuke. Nothing else could explain the boldness and confidence in Boruto's voice when he spoke those fateful words.

"You'd make a way better Hokage than my old man!"

Sasuke's initial reaction, muted though it was, was disgust. It wasn't even so much that Boruto was wrong. No, it was more that Naruto's own son saying that, while completely ignorant of what Sasuke had once thought required to become a true Hokage, was a sure sign that they had done too good a job of protecting the current generation.

It couldn't stay that way. And Sasuke felt that waiting until Boruto became a chunin would be too late. Rather, Boruto could not be depended on to lead while still stumbling blindly in the dark. If he could not handle the weight of what Sasuke would have done, given the chance, odds were he wouldn't last as a shinobi. Or if it meant they had to find someone else to teach him, so be it.

And that was it, in the end. Boruto needed to learn, and Sasuke had agreed to teach him. That included teaching Boruto a lesson that Naruto would never.

"I have a test for you," Sasuke said the following afternoon as he and Boruto arrived at a training field. "It won't be easy."

"I'm up for it!" Boruto said at once, eager to prove himself.

"It will target several of your weak points simultaneously," Sasuke warned. "It's a very complex genjutsu, and it will exploit you emotionally. Once it begins, I will give you no help. The test will be divided among multiple sessions. I will not end a session until you reach a designated checkpoint. There will be no stopping the test halfway through. If you agree to this, we will have as many sessions as it takes for you to complete the entire test."

Boruto paused, perhaps second-guessing himself, but quickly nodded. "I'm up for it!" he repeated, almost as enthusiastically as he had the first time. But there was doubt now, Sasuke had seen it.

That was good. It didn't encourage him to make the test any easier, but there was definitely room for growth and change in Boruto.

"When you reach the end of the test, you will have three tasks," Sasuke said. "You must figure out why I gave you this test, what you were supposed to learn, and what you should do with that knowledge."

With a nod, Boruto stared at Sasuke. "I'm ready!"

"No. You aren't," Sasuke warned, even as the Sharingan appeared in his right eye.

Boruto immediately collapsed into Sasuke's arms.

"Let's see how long it takes you to figure out, just what kind of world you're in," Sasuke murmured.

The world that greeted Boruto's eyes was an endless field of white, with one immediate exception: a golden beacon of light that seemed to call to him. Because there was nothing else of interest, Boruto began to approach the beacon.

He noted at once that something was different: his movement seemed off, sluggish somehow. Almost as if he were walking through water.

The beacon dimmed slightly as he got closer, allowing him a better look at the source of light.

It was Sasuke. Sort of.

This Sasuke was obviously younger. His hair and clothes were different, and he had both arms, but it was unmistakably him.

"So what do I do first?" Boruto asked automatically, before he recalled Sasuke's instructions. "Oh, right. No helping me, huh."

It didn't matter: the Sasuke in front of him didn't respond. Not because he chose not to, but because he appeared to be incapable of action at all.

Figuring this was part of the test, Boruto reached out and poked Sasuke's arm, and jerked back when something like a static shock passed between them. His finger had actually sunk into Sasuke's arm, as if Boruto were a ghost. But in that instant, he had seen it: Sasuke had moved. Only a tiny bit, but enough to convince Boruto of what he had to do next.

Taking a deep breath, Boruto squared his shoulders, and walked through Sasuke.

That was the plan, at least. But instead, the moment he was within Sasuke, it was like someone had slammed a hidden trapdoor behind him. He was stuck inside Sasuke. Which honestly wasn't a horrible thought: if this was anything like his role-playing games at home, he did not mind playing as Sasuke for a while.

But Sasuke was not under Boruto's control. Boruto was just along for the ride. Sasuke turned around and started to run. As he did so, various details began to surface in the world. A sprawling landscape emerged, but Boruto had little time to take it in, because Sasuke had picked up speed, and then a loud chirping split the the air as lightning filled his hand and sprang in every direction. Boruto couldn't take his eyes off of it. He had never seen the Chidori so close before.

What he also didn't see was that Sasuke had reached the edge of a cliff and jumped. But once Boruto realized there was no ground beneath them for several seconds, he trained his gaze forward.

And immediately wished he had done anything but that.

It wasn't just the ground rushing up to meet them. It was Sasuke's target.

And because Boruto was only along for the ride, all he could do was watch as Sasuke swung the Chidori forward, and plunged it deep into the heart of Boruto's own father.

Boruto opened his mouth. To scream, to cry, to curse, he wasn't sure. What came out was not his voice, but Sasuke's. What he spoke were not his words, but Sasuke's. What he delivered was not a plea for his father to live, but a command for his friend to die.

"It's over, Naruto. Just die." Sasuke gazed into Naruto's eyes, silently willing him to obey, although not with any of the power he could have used to compel.

So instead, Naruto smiled, exposing a grin rapidly being tainted by blood. Then he spoke, or tried to. It didn't matter, he said exactly what Sasuke had known he would.

Don't misunderstand Itachi's will.

Don't be swallowed up by darkness again.

Don't turn your back on the people who care for you.

Don't hurt Sakura-chan anymore.

There was more, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered, really.

Not until the voice changed.

"I warned you, boy," it growled through Naruto's lips. "I told you that if you killed Naruto, you would regret it."

"I'll be rid of him, you, and your kind soon enough," Sasuke promised.

Kurama laughed at him. "No Uchiha has ever been able to keep that promise. Do you actually think that no one ever found a way to destroy us? They could never put aside their desire to exploit our power long enough. You will fall into the same trap that Madara did: you will crave more power to accomplish your goals. We will meet again, boy, and I will have my revenge. Forget the Curse of Hatred. It's the Curse of Kurama that will end you."

He could feel Sasuke moving with him aboard, but Boruto saw nothing, heard nothing.

Sasuke had killed his father.

Like Sasuke, Naruto had been younger, but Boruto had seen enough pictures of his father to recognize him as a teenager. And Sasuke had killed him.

Perhaps the worst part was that there had been a strange fusion of Sasuke's emotions with Boruto's. So for a few horrible moments, he had wanted his father dead. Not for any deeply personal reason, but for a more general one: because it was both right and necessary, for the world to be corrected. The only sensation there had been on a personal level was a rather firm annoyance.

And that, perhaps, was the strangest part: as far as Boruto could tell, Sasuke didn't hate Naruto, or even particularly want him dead for anything that he'd done personally. Yet he felt some overwhelming need for Naruto to die, simply because he was connected to the overall wrongness that had to be erased.

Not that it mattered much to Boruto. He was in no mood to understand Sasuke's reasoning. No excuse would have been anything more than that: an excuse, and completely unacceptable. To snatch away his and Hima-

"No," Boruto whispered, his eyes widening. Suddenly, the weight of what Sasuke had done truly hit him.

If Naruto died as a teenager, he would never get married and have children.

Sasuke had murdered the entire Uzumaki clan as Boruto knew it with one blow. Even if Boruto's mother married someone else, and the resulting children were him and Himawari, it wouldn't matter. They would be different. Boruto would never have Naruto's hair or the whisker-like marks on his cheeks.

Suddenly, those mattered to him more than they ever had before.

But even as the thought left his head, Boruto pictured Himawari's smiling face, and felt ashamed of himself. No, even if she were different, if there was the slightest chance that Himawari could still be born, that had to be better than her not existing at all. For his mother's sake, if nothing else.

"We'll stop here for now."

Boruto blinked and looked up. He was back in the training field.

Sasuke... the one he knew, anyway... was staring down at him.

It took considerable effort for Boruto to ignore his first instinct, which was to attack. And even then, that choice was more based on knowing he stood no chance of defeating or killing Sasuke just then.

"I said I wouldn't give you any help," Sasuke said, "but I can tell that you're preoccupied with what you saw, and not why you saw it."

"And you're saying I shouldn't be?!" Boruto spat.

"I'm saying that both are important in order to pass this test."

Boruto was not shocked when he got home: his mother and sister were there, his father was not. If not for the late hour, Boruto would have gone straight to the Hokage Tower, just to make sure his father was still alive. Just to make sure that the genjutsu had truly ended. Instead, he found himself staring at Himawari, who only minded the attention when it prevented him from passing her the bread she asked for at dinner.

Certainly, Boruto had been an only child at some point. He found it hard to recall that time, now. Or more likely, he had no desire to recall that time. He would never have selected a sister for himself, if given the choice. But given that he hadn't had a choice, Himawari was more than decent, now that she was a bit older.

Without bothering to explain why, Boruto abruptly hugged Himawari as she was helping clear the dishes from the table. Himawari stared at him for a moment, but quickly returned the hug, and didn't let go until he did. He wanted to say something, to explain himself or to not seem too weird, but Boruto's voice failed him.

So Himawari drew his head down and placed a light kiss on his cheek. "Feel better, onii-chan," she murmured.

Boruto could only stare after her as she walked away. Had he been so obvious, that she could tell how he was feeling? Or had she always been so perceptive, and he hadn't noticed until now? He was still staring when his mother's hand touched his shoulder, startling him badly.

"Do you want to talk about whatever is bothering you yet?" Hinata asked, a knowing look in her eyes.

"Later," Boruto said. "After Himawari's asleep."

Hinata frowned slightly, but nodded.

"How well do you know Sasuke?" Boruto asked.

Hinata did not answer immediately, and the expression on her face did not reassure Boruto. She was clearly trying to decide how much, or how little, to tell him.

"He, your father, and I were in the same class-"

"That's not what I meant," Boruto interrupted with a scowl.

"I know what you meant," Hinata said firmly, startling him. "I was getting there. Sasuke and your father were rivals from the start, and Sakura was in love with Sasuke even then. They know him better than anyone else in the village does. Sasuke never let anyone else here get close to him."

"So you don't know him well at all?" Boruto asked, not bothering to hide his disappointment.

"No. I can only tell you what they've told me, and what little I've seen for myself. If you want to know something specific about him, I'm not the best person to ask."

"Do you... think he'd ever try to kill tou-chan?" Boruto murmured.

"If I thought that, you wouldn't be training under him," Hinata pointed out.

"No, I mean... this isn't coming out right," Boruto groaned.

"Did Sasuke say something to you?"

"He didn't... exactly say it."

Hinata sighed. "Are you trying to ask me if I could ever imagine Sasuke trying to kill your father? Or if there ever was such a situation?"

Boruto stilled. "Was there?" he asked softly.

"There were... some."

"More than once?!"

Hinata raised a hand to silence him. "Boruto, you have to understand something about your father. He has always had this power, to turn enemies into allies. You don't see it, because you were born in a time of peace. But some of the people who he now considers close friends were previously enemies who tried to kill him. His capacity for forgiveness is beyond compare, and it has won us many important allies."

"What does that have to do with Sasuke?"

"Your father came to see Sasuke as a brother, but Sasuke either didn't feel the same way at first, or at least refused to admit that he did. When Sasuke left the village, he intended to cut all bonds he had with it. Naruto refused to let him, and they fought. Depending on who you ask, that was likely the first time that Sasuke tried to kill your father. But in the end, Sasuke was the one left standing, didn't kill Naruto, and ran away to seek power. Naruto believed that Sasuke choosing not to kill him was a sign that his friend could still be saved."

"Did you believe that?" Boruto asked.

"Naruto would have chased him regardless of what anyone thought. What I believed didn't matter. If Naruto had asked me to help him, I would have, no matter how I felt. But given what I know now: yes, I do think Sasuke showed mercy that day because at the time, he was not too far gone. So if ever there were a best time to pursue him, it would have been then."

"And if he had killed tou-chan that day?"

Hinata smiled grimly. "Your father had influence with the right people even then, Boruto. Part of the reason that Sasuke survived this long is because Tsunade held back the hunter-nin that would normally have been sent to claim his head. She did that for your father. So if Sasuke had killed Naruto, Tsunade would have been out for his blood, and she wouldn't have been the only one who felt that way."

"But you trust Sasuke now?"

"I told you, your father can change people. I trust that he's changed Sasuke back into someone we can trust. But I can admit that without your father, I doubt I would have ever been able to trust Sasuke again." Hinata paused, remembering something. "You really wanted to know about the last time Sasuke tried to kill Naruto, didn't you?"

Boruto scowled. "Were there so many times that it's easy to lose track?"

"No. It's just that the last time was most significant. Sasuke said out loud that he would kill Naruto. He genuinely thought it was best for the whole world."

"How could that possibly be best for the world?"

"Again, you're asking the wrong person. Given all that your father means to me, I could never think that way about him."

Boruto frowned. "If you're going to get mushy on me, I think we're done here."

Hinata laughed softly. "You didn't get the answer you were looking for, did you?"

"Not really, but Sasuke already said he won't give me any hints."

"You should try asking someone else. I don't know how willing Sakura would be to discuss that part of Sasuke's past, but you should have better luck with Kakashi. He won't enjoy talking about it, either, but as Sasuke's former sensei, he's likely to give you a more unbiased answer."

Early the next morning, Boruto arrived at the training field to find Sasuke waiting for him.

"Ready?" Sasuke asked.

Boruto braced himself and nodded.

"We'll see," Sasuke said as his Sharingan appeared.

Boruto was more ready, this time. Now that he knew seeing people he knew die was a possibility, he expected it.

That turned out to be a good thing.

It had been too late the previous night to track down Sakura or Kakashi. Boruto planned to do it today. He would go with his mother's advice and start with Kakashi.

This time, so did Sasuke.

Kakashi fell quickly, both too stunned and exhausted to resist the attack of his former student. Rather than a Chidori, Sasuke merely stabbed him in the heart with a sword.

And then Sasuke turned to Sakura, who stared at him with tears in her eyes.

Even after what he had seen thus far, Boruto felt certain that Sasuke would not kill Sakura. She couldn't be his wife and Sarada's mother if she were dead. And indeed, through the fusion of his feelings with Sasuke's, Sasuke himself confirmed that if there was only one person left in all of Konoha who truly loved him, it was Sakura.

But that was exactly why she had to die.

The sword, still stained with Kakashi's blood, plunged just as easily into Sakura's heart. And with it came a certainty for Boruto.

This test... he still had no idea what the goal of it was. But one thing was rapidly becoming very clear to him. The Sasuke he was seeing here, if he truly existed at any point, had certainly been changed by Naruto into an ally. Because if he hadn't, Boruto and most of the people he knew now either would have been long dead, or never would have been born at all.

Continued in Chapter 2: Puppets

Boruto learns why Team 7 had to die... but they aren't the only ones. A talk with Kakashi provides some major clues.

Endnotes:

One of the issues I have with Boruto as a character is that he doesn't know stuff. Now, he's young still, so there are things that he simply shouldn't know yet. At the same time, there are things that other people his age know that is news to him. Plus, he should have some interest in the pasts of the people around him. Particularly Sasuke, who he idolizes and wants to emulate. Generally, the more you want to be like someone, the more you have to actually know about them to do that accurately. So how can Boruto truly idolize someone he barely knows anything about?

This will not be a story where Genjutsu!Sasuke simply kills everyone. Although there will be more killing, the reasons for which will soon be clear if they aren't already.