Disclaimer: Naruto and all recognisable "canon" concepts are copyrighted Masashi Kishimoto and his various associates. I own only this story which in itself takes inspiration from several fanfics, including, but not limited to, the ever awesome fic Time Braid by ShaperV.
AN: This is my attempt to put some twists on a few old clichés. I love time travel and dimension travel fics, and I thought I'd give it a shot.
Please enjoy. Reviews are greatly appreciated, but don't feel obligated to do so, I'm just happy if you read and like the story.
Butterfly Leaves
Prologue
When tragedy struck; the world crumbling as an unending war released a monster of untold horror and magnitude, slowly wiping out all life; they, the only three survivors, threw the last of their hopes, life, energy and power into a desperate gamble. A technique thay may or may not work, may cost them their very souls, but they had to try.
They succeeded. Time was rolled back, events were undone, and not a single person remembered what could have, would have, HAD been. Everyone was blissfully oblivious to the horrors that may or may not be prevented this time around. Everyone except those three poor souls who had survived the apocalypse and now sought to prevent it from ever happening.
As they next woke they found themselves merged with their younger selves, personalities and memories blending, though the eldest remained dominant.
And so they set out to save not only their friends, and country, but the entire world from plunging into an apocalypse.
Avoiding suspiscion was easier said than done, and eventually others were told of the secret.
Perceptions were changed, friendships were rekindled, reinvented, or even started from scratch.
Battles were fought, enemies deafeated, but sometimes even the best fall. Though Uzumaki Naruto succeeded in taking out Uchiha Madara, he died along with him.
And so Haruno Sakura and Hatake Kakashi were left to face the aftermath without their beloved companion. A scant few years later, war broke out between embittered rival villages, who had once come together, united under the threat posed by Uchiha Madara.
War, while not an apocalypse, is still devastating, and as the last two time travelers fell, weighed down with more regrets than most could even fathom, their only solace was in the thought of being united with their lost blond friend.
It was then, that they first experienced "looping", as they were once again young and back on that fatefull day of the team selections. When the three reunited, impossibly together and alive, their bond was strenghened, and a resolve to get it right this time burned brightly.
Still, the road to success is a long and often hard one to travel, and it would be many "loops" before they got to the ending they had always hoped for. But they did get it, and as they passed, it was with few regrets, surrounded by friends and family, among them, their children and children's children.
Goal accomplished, this should have been the end. In one tale it might have been. A crueller tale might have had them looping the same world and timeframe forever until all meaning seemed lost. But that's not what happened.
While they did not get to move on to enternal rest, they were not forced to experience the same seemingly meaningless cycle for eternity either.
Instead they were thrust into one adventure after the next, as they found themselves in worlds similar to yet unlike their own. They had set out to save the world, gambled with an impossible jutsu, and unintenionally bound themselves to that role; but who says that there's only one world?