Alternate Circumstances: That last war didn't turn out so well for their side. The Moon's Eye plan was foiled, thankfully, and the undead army and White Zetsus all but eliminated . . . but dark forces still hold the upper hand.
The majority of the Allied Shinobi Forces broke and ran, leaving their leaders no choice but to go into hiding as well. They scattered across the nations, the entire infrastructure of shinobi and Hidden Villages falling into shambles. Close friends lost touch, former four-man cells were separated, and worst of all, their would-be saviour was gone.
In the aftermath of the final battle, no one knew the whereabouts of Uzumaki Naruto.
The Rebellion
Prologue
The desert was a forsaken wasteland, nothing but sand or rock in any direction as far as he could see or had dared explore. In this place, he was loath to stray too far from the cropping of sand-blasted stone where he lived.
No. He didn't live . . . he existed.
Every day was a constant battle for survival against the heat, the sun, and any predators that lurked among the crumbled stone buildings. The man supposed it might have once been a city, filled with life, but that was gone now. The people that must once have lived here were gone, their possessions were gone, any trace of who they might have been was gone.
Gone, gone, gone.
He knew the place like the back of his hand; the twisting streets, the decrepit buildings. He knew places to hide when the wild dogs would chase him, he knew where their dens were, and the times that they went out hunting. He knew where to find water, he knew how to find food, he knew where there were caches of weapons to defend himself with.
He knew how to use the weapons, and he knew how to fight . . . that's what kept him alive in this place. He knew to find shelter once the sun went down, so that he wouldn't freeze. He knew the feeling of sleeping with one eye open, and of a scorpion crawling up his leg.
He knew how to survive.
According to the wall where he kept count of his time in the abandoned city, he had been here for exactly eight hundred and sixty days. Two years, and four months. Next to the some of the vertical 'day' marks were tiny horizontal marks. Those were the days he'd seen people, other than himself, walking about the ruins. He never showed himself, always watching from a distance, following, until they left and walked out into the desert.
He'd gone so long without human contact — exactly one year and seventy-three days — before seeing the first person in the city. He no longer craved the sound of another's voice. Silence was his life; in the silence, he could hear a threat sneaking up on him.
A total of twenty-six people had come to the ruins looking for . . . whatever they were looking for. Whatever it was, they never seemed to find it; they always left looking sad. Some had wept over damaged houses, or at the narrow cleft in the surrounding cliffs that separated the city from the desert.
The man lived a lonely existence, and a hard one . . . but he was satisfied.