Author's Note: This story was my very first attempt at writing, and I literally cringe when I look over it. But still, it remains on this site as a reminder of how far I've come as a writer and of all the people who've helped me along the way.

Read at your own risk, but feel free to leave the occasional flame. The story certainly deserves it.

EDIT: If you're reading this despite the summary telling you not to, I hate you. -_-

The Clan Wars

Prologue

Naruto stepped away from the smoking carcass of the Juubi. It was finally over. After years in the chaos of war, they had finally prevailed. The 'Eye of the Moon Plan' had failed at last. Madara had been killed.

Then he groaned as a spike of pain ambushed him, grinding his nerves mercilessly. As he dropped to his knees, he heard someone cry out.

His chest was a landscape, littered with cuts so deep that if he didn't have the healing powers of the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, he would have died. As it was, Naruto was having difficulty staying awake. He was kneeling in a pool of his own blood.

"Naruto!" Naruto squinted through his pain to locate the source of the voice. He heard the voice again, this time sounding slightly more desperate.

"Naruto!" Naruto's eyes narrowed momentarily as he searched in his foggy mind trying to place the voice, and then widened as the realization dawned upon him.

"Sasuke…" he murmured. He tried pushing himself into a standing position with his hand, but pain lanced up his arm, effectively immobilizing him.

"Gaahh!" Naruto screamed as a new wave of pain raged through his ravaged body. Kurama was far too exhausted to aid his healing now. It had taken almost all of Kurama's strength to defeat the Juubi, and even then they could have easily lost.

Suddenly Sasuke appeared beside Naruto, lightning arching all over his body. Sakura followed suite moments later. "Naruto!" they both cried out in alarm. Their teammate looked like he should have been dead!

Sakura pushed Naruto down onto his back, ignoring his tears and protests while Sasuke dispelled his lightning. Covering her hands with glowing green chakra, she cut through Naruto's orange bodysuit and began a full-body examination.

"Oh, hold still!" she snapped at Naruto who was still struggling to get up. As painful as it was for him, Naruto would only injure himself even more if he tried to struggle. "Sasuke, hold him down," Sakura ordered. The Uchiha complied while Naruto shut his eyes and let out a slight whimper.

Sasuke looked down at his teammate and smirked. "The Juubi really did a number on you, huh Dobe?" Sasuke said as he tried unsuccessfully to hide the worry in his voice.

Naruto gritted his teeth and opened his eyes momentarily and found Sasuke's blood-red Sharingan gazing down at him. His glare intensified immediately.

"Teme," he growled in warning. "What are you trying to do to me? Why is your Sharingan active?"

Sasuke dropped his smirk. "This is to help you Naruto. This is too much pain for anyone to handle, even you." Then he closed his eyes and inhaled.

When he opened his eyes moments later, his three-tomoed Sharingan was replaced with a red series of loops against a black border. The Mangekyō Sharingan blazed to life in front of Naruto.

The blond nodded in acceptance and relief. "Do it." he said. Man, he needed to be out of it right now. The pain was excruciating...

"Hurry up!" the pink-haired medic urged, "He's running out of time, and I need him knocked-out to start the operation!" Sasuke gave her a slight nod, and then he stared into Naruto's azure-blue orbs. "Tsukuyomi," he whispered, catching Naruto's head as he slumped back down into the ground unconscious.

"Good, now help me take his shirt off." Sakura ordered as she ran her chakra-cloaked hands down Naruto's chest. Sakura grimaced as several of Naruto's cuts squirted blood when she ran her hands over them.

It was a miracle that Naruto hadn't died already with wounds like these. Hell, she doubted that Tsunade-sama could survive what he had been through, even with her mitotic-regeneration. But then, Naruto had always had healing powers worlds apart from anyone else.

She closed her eyes and began to probe Naruto's wound with Sasuke on standby. Sakura frowned. Nearly all of his internal organs had been ruptured. The Kyuubi was helping, but it could only do so much in the end. She began to pour chakra into Naruto's wounds, reaching for his organs first.

As Sakura's green chakra passed through her teammate's organs, his cells revitalized instantly and began dividing at a dizzying rate. This kind of healing was effective, but risky because it shortened the patient's lifespan.

Cells had a set amount of times that they could divide and there was no way to get around that. However, it was preferable to heal in this way if the wounds were serious, as the revitalization of cells worked extremely fast and could save precious seconds— seconds which other techniques often lost. In other words, medics in general chose to shave off a few months of a person's life in favor of saving them from an assured death. It was simply in the patient's best interest. Better a shorter life than no life at all.

Sakura concentrated and placed her hands on Naruto's chest just below his heart where the damage was the most extensive. She began pumping chakra into Naruto's cells in an effort to banish his burns and cuts. It truly amazed her just how much Naruto could take without collapsing. Then again, he always was an idiot who never knew how to give up. He never quit, even when Sasuke went rouge for four years or in the final showdown against the Juubi.

After his first confrontation with the tailed-beast in which most of the Shinobi Alliance had perished, Naruto decided to face the Juubi alone. All to protect everyone. By himself. Baka!

But Sakura gazed fondly down at Naruto's now-relaxed face. He always tried so hard. She sighed in relief as she felt his organs knit themselves back together under her hands. She looked up into Sasuke's anxious expression and said, "He'll live, but I'm gonna need to keep going for a few more minutes just in case."

Sasuke nodded in silent relief and glared down at the blond-headed dobe. Like hell Naruto would die here. They had so much that they still had to do. Konoha was in ruins and the rest of the elemental countries weren't that much better off.

Tsunade died after healing the other kages, and the village had unanimously demanded that Naruto accept the position of the Rokudaime Hokage. The only thing stopping Naruto was that the world was about to end. Literally.

Sakura finished off the surgery by supplying Naruto's cells with one last burst of chakra. Then she closed the skin over his wounds by running a chakra-coated finger over the rupture making the cuts all but disappear.

"I never realized that you were this good" Sasuke said in his typical but-I'm-still-better-than-you-in-every-way voice. Sakura sighed.

"Well, you might have realized it sooner if you hadn't been so bent on revenge." Sasuke's face fell and Sakura immediately regretted what she had just said.

"S-Sasuke… I…"

"Save it Sakura." Sasuke snapped. "You're right. The only reason that I even returned is because I owe Naruto. There's nothing left for me in Konohagakure."

She glared dangerously at him, channeling chakra into her fist.

"Except for you" Sasuke finished quickly. "I had to at least apologize to you for leaving you."

"Good!" she chirped sweetly, her anger evaporating. "But don't forget, you owe the village too!"

Sasuke made a face. Konoha had been far less than welcoming upon his return. The only things that stopped them from outright attacking him were Naruto's support as the future Hokage and the fact that the Juubi was less than ten miles away from the village gates.

"Somehow, I don't think the rest of the village is all that accepting of my return…"

Then they glanced around them. The ground was littered with bodies. A majority of the dead bore the mark of the Hidden Leaf, but there were others from Cloud, Sand, Rock and Mist. Sakura normally would have tried to save as many ninja as possible, but that wasn't necessary here... Everyone but Naruto was dead.

After their initial defeat at the hands of the Juubi, Konoha had become the unofficial regrouping point for the war effort. Unofficial because the kages had all been killed in battle, and Command Central was wiped out.

Sakura was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. "Somehow, I think that you're the least of their worries." Glancing down at the now completely relaxed Naruto she continued. "Besides, you have Naruto's full support. The villagers follow him in everything now"

Even though Sasuke knew of Naruto's newfound popularity, this still surprised him. He had returned for barely five minutes before the Juubi arrived.

"Is that so?" he murmured in wonder. So miracles could happen after all.

He could still remember when the entire village hated Naruto for the tailed-beast inside of him. It really was hard to connect the village pariah with the hero that Naruto had become.

Without warning, Naruto bolted upright into a sitting position, nearly knocking Sakura to the ground. Sasuke jumped three yards back, not quite sure what to expect.

Naruto's eyes snapped open. Sasuke noticed that they were ringed with orange while the irises were amber with horizontal slits for pupils. He looked to Sakura in confusion.

"Sennin Mode" Sakura said by way of explanation.

Sasuke just frowned. "I know that! Why is Naruto in Sage Mode right now? Look at him. He's not even conscious!"

"What?" Sakura questioned in utter disbelief.

After multiple fruitless attempts to get a response from Naruto, Sakura was shocked to discover that Sasuke was right. Naruto appeared to have been passively gathering nature energy while Sakura preformed his surgery. She couldn't begin to wonder why, or even how.

Then Naruto stood up. He formed the seal for the shadow-clone jutsu and two other similarly inattentive Narutos poofed into existence next to him. They then began walking toward the still smoking husk of the Juubi. Now that the tailed-beasts were free, the Juubi was completely deprived of chakra and may as well have been dead.

"Sakura." She barely even noticed. Naruto might hurt himself. It was her job to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. This time Sasuke spoke with more urgency in his voice. "Sakura!"

Sakura looked up into Sasuke's worried eyes. He explained, "I have no idea what that dobe's trying to do, but you sure as hell don't want to get caught in the crossfire."

Sakura looked back to Naruto and nodded in reluctance. She wasn't sure what he would do now, but she would wait. Sennin mode was lethal for anyone in its vicinity.

Suddenly, the air was punctuated with a high-pitched screeching sound as Naruto rapidly advanced with his jutsu. It intensified to excruciating levels as Naruto poured staggering amounts of chakra out of his hand, and the two clones aiding him added wind chakra and compressed all of the raw power together into a spiraling shruiken-like rasengan.

"FUUTON: RASEN SHURIKEN" Naruto declared as he held the spinning wind-style rasengan up over his head. Then he did something new. Something completely Naruto. Six more clones poofed into existence and began working on two more rasenshruikens.

Sasuke's eyes bulged as he activated his Sharingan. He understood one rasenshruiken in sage mode. He even understood three, given Naruto's massive chakra reserves. But at the same time? It just wasn't possible. How could Naruto even have that much chakra control? By now, the shrieking noise was deafening, but he ignored it. Sakura on the other hand gritted he teeth and pressed her hand over her ears.

The wind howled along the battlefield, rustling the many bodies that it found. The Narutos paused for a moment, with three of them holding the massive chakra balls over their heads.

Then Naruto spoke, but the voice was not his own. It was as if a far older, almost ancient person was speaking in Naruto's place, his voice marred by dispair.

"With the destruction of the ten-tails, the world shall know peace once again. My mistake will forever be erased from this world."

The other clones dispelled and the remaining Naruto's launched their deadly projectiles in a simultaneous toss. "FUUTON: SANJUU RASEN SHURIKEN!" The attacks met in midair, but instead of canceling each other out, they merged.

There was now a gargantuan ball of volatile wind chakra as nearly big as a tailed-beast bomb racing toward the Juubi's husk. It hit, and the world exploded in light.

Author's Note: 'Sanjuu' means 'triple'. So Naruto's last attack was a wind style: triple rasenshuriken.