Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

One of the great challenges of any Naruto fic that takes place outside the standard timeline is what I call the "when the hell am I" situation. The problem is we only really have 3 solid dates in the Naruto universe to work with. The Kyuubi attack, the start of the series 12 years later, and Naruto's training trip which took 3 years. We don't know exactly when the 3 shinobi wars happened. We aren't even sure on the 4th. We don't know how long ago the villages were founded. So when we go anywhere, it gets really confusing really quick (or at least it does for me), how old is this person? How can that person be here, etc. So when I started this story, I built a timeline. It isn't perfect, but I plan to try and follow it.

Year -25: Senju Hashirama Born

Year -22: Senju Tobirama Born

Year -10: Hiruzen Sarutobi Born

Year -6: Senju Hashirama Marries Uzumaki Mito

Year -5: Construction of Konoha Begins

Year 0: Konoha "Officially" Founded, Senju Hashirama becomes 1st Hokage

Year 6: Uchiha Madara Defects

Year 8: 1st Great Shinobi War "The One Year War Begins"

Year 9: 1st Great Shinobi War Ends

Year 10: 1st Hokage Dies; Senju Tobirama becomes 2nd Hokage, Senju Tsunade Born; Orochimaru Born; Jiraiya Born

Year 22: 2nd Great Shinobi War Begins; Sarutobi Hiruzen Marries Sarutobi Biwako

Year 26: 2nd Great Shinobi War Ends, 2nd Hokage Dies; Sarutobi Hiruzen becomes 3rd Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto Born

Year 38: Naruto becomes a Genin

So in Year 26

Sarutobi is 36 years old.

Jiraiya is 16

Minato, is 7

Kakashi, Naruto, Gai, Kurenai, Shizune, etc are 0 give or take a year

Itachi, Deidara, Inuzuka Hana, Ayame, etc are -9 (not born for another 9 years)

The Rookie 9 (Rookie 8 now I suppose) are -16!

Rookie 9 graduation is -28!

Warning: This story may… actually it pretty much will alter events from canon; Uzumaki Kushina has already been ripped straight out of existence. You have been warned…

October 13th, Year 26, Hokage's Office

The Sandaime Hokage sat comfortably in his chair his pipe billowing smoke. He'd scarcely left or slept in three days and only his nicotine was keeping him going. Nara Four, whose name he really needed to remember, stood in front of him with another stack of papers. He'd commandeered the girl from her team to be his new permanent aide and secretary. So far she was doing an admirable job. You could barely tell she'd spent the last 72 hours with only a handful of cat naps at her desk.

"Are these the final figures?" He asked.

"We still have people scouring the battlefield but I'd call them pretty solid." She said.

"Give me the summary."

"We're doing better than everyone else. We already got a messenger from Iwa suing for peace. As far as we can tell Kiri lost almost their entire senior cadre of shinobi. Or at least according to the reports of I've read we can account for most of them. Our only wildcard is Kumo." She said. He nodded as she placed the papers on his desk.

"Have we got Tsunade's report on Naruto?" The woman nodded wearily. In addition to her thousand other tasks as his aide she'd also been tasked with taking care of the newborn, which even now was sleeping in a crib beside her desk.

"Yes," she said, "well his blood tests are completely inconclusive. She can't determine who his parents are. Tsunade does confirm that Uzumaki Mito had a baby before she died. So we can assume Naruto is hers, especially since she claimed it before passing."

"I wonder who the father is." Sarutobi mumbled to himself. His secretary shrugged.

"Well, I checked her file. Her last few children were the 2nd Hokage's…"

"Timing's a little long for that; he died over ten months ago. Possible I suppose, but unlikely." He said. She fidgeted.

"Well, what are we going to do with him? I can't raise him in your office."

"Have any of his relatives agreed to take him in?"

"No. They were quite adamant on the subject."

"We'll have to put him in an orphanage then."

October 13th, Year 26, Valley of End

"Did we have to come this far?" Jiraiya asked as Tsunade, Orochimaru, and he stood overlooking the Valley of End.

"You didn't have to come." Tsunade snapped. Her face locked in a fierce scowl. No teasing at all in her voice. No friendly undertones. There was something dark, something angry, and something dangerous. Jiraiya didn't like hearing that tone directed at him. He exchanged a glance with Orochimaru behind their teammates back. She'd been in a bad place since Dan and her kid brother died, but the last few days she'd swung from angry and depressed to murderously enraged and there didn't seem to be an off switch.

"Yeah, we kind of did." Jiraiya said. Orochimaru said nothing. But he was there, which for him said something. Tsunade gave a particularly unfeminine grunt and pulled out a large sealing scroll.

In a puff of smoke the body of Uzumaki Mito appeared and Jiraiya flinched. Jiraiya had only met the woman…well not really met. He'd peeped on her once and she'd beaten him to a smear. But it was always a little rough seeing the bodies of people you knew, and Mito looked like she'd had a pretty rough death.

"You know," Orochimaru spoke suddenly, "legally you're required to bury dead relatives in Konoha. Or at least burn the bodies. Dumping them in a lake is rather out of style." Tsunade leveled a glare at him.

"I'm not burying this woman with my parents and granddad. Not even uncle Tobirama."

"…and burning her is out of the question why?" The pale ninja continued.

"She doesn't deserve it." Jiraiya and Orochimaru exchanged another glance.

"Is this about the baby?" Jiraiya asked.

"What's with you two? Why the hell are you interrogating me?"

"We're trying to talk you out of dumping your grandmother's body in a lake." Jiraiya deadpanned. Tsunade leveled another scowl at the both of them, then let out a sigh.

"Did you know she raised me and Nawaki?" Both men shook their heads. "After our parents died uncle Tobirama took us in. She never called us by our names. It wasn't a big thing, but she never did. Nothing anyone ever did was good enough. I think everything she ever said to me pissed me off. But I could have lived with that. I mean she was a bitch but she treated the whole family like that and heaven help anyone who wasn't part of the family. I figured it was tough love or something like that. Then do you know what happened?" She said becoming slightly hysterical "She pops out a bastard and is all 'oh yes this one will be worth something', and 'give him all my things' and 'don't let my deadbeat family raise him'. Like we aren't good enough for her or her bastard." Tsunade glared down at her grandmother's corpse.

"What the hell!" She yelled, raising her foot and stomping down on her grandmother's skull. Most skulls would have exploded into a shower of gore. Most rocks would have shattered into pieces. A steel plate would buckle and warp. Uzumaki Mito's skull wasn't so fragile. When Tsunade's foot hit her grandmother's head, it was pushed into the ground but remained intact. It may have been because the ground was muddy, perhaps Tsunade didn't put to much effort into it, or perhaps Mito's skull was so durable that even in death her skull could endure one of Tsunade's stomps. "Did you give a shit about us at all?"

Jiraiya and Orochimaru shared another look as Tsunade got into a screaming match with her grandmother's corpse. Their hands started flashing through Konoha hand code.

"I don't think we're going to be able to get her to stop." Jiraiya's hands said.

"I agree. We should proceed as rapidly as possible." Orochimaru's fingers shot back.

"How?" Jiraiya asked.

"Watch." Orochimaru signed before coughing a bit. "Tsunade," He asked aloud, "I've never been to a... burial… do we need to do anything? Would you like to make a speech?"

"No. We're almost done here." Tsunade said. Wordlessly Tsunade reached down and lifted her grandmother's corpse. Her throw was almost lazy but it sufficed to the task, the body was flung clear toward the center of the lake. With a splash it sank beneath the surface. Jiraiya frowned.

"She sank really fast." He said.

"I put weights on her." Tsunade said with a shrug.

And that's how Uzumaki Mito got "buried". No funeral, no wake, just dumped in a lake.

12 years later

Spring Year 38, Konoha

Hatake Kakashi sat in the far back of the classroom as Iruka-sensei droned on about different types of Kunai. He should be paying attention. The graduation exam was barely a week away. But Iruka had a magic speaking voice that could knock anyone into near unconscious. Glancing around the room he noticed most of the other students had succumbed to it. Anko was sleeping behind a book. Asuma was sharpening a kunai under the desk. Gai was drawing. Kurenai was diligently paying attention. Naruto was clock watching. Yugao was combing her hair. In short, everyone was doing anything other than what they were supposed to.

In a noble effort Kakashi tried to focus on Iruka once more as he went over the incredibly irrelevant differences between the mark 17-A and mark 17-C Kunai design and why the modifications had been made. He lasted about a minute.

In a fair world, he'd have graduated years ago. He probably could have passed the genin final exam when he was five or six. He was damn sure he could have by seven. By nine he may have been the top graduate. At twelve he'd trade his left eye just to get out of the Academy. In war, Konoha often graduated classes early, but in peace the 3rd Hokage frowned on letting children graduate any earlier than he had to. Surprisingly the village council hadn't pressed the issue. The 3rd gave the council far more leeway than his predecessors, and they'd decided that meant they could but into almost every issue.

Deciding to do something vaguely productive he pondered possible team assignments and wondered who he'd get stuck with. His father may have prattled on about the will of fire and the importance of teammates but Kakashi looked at his potential teammates and just couldn't see it. Still he was going to get stuck with two of them.

Assuming everyone passed there were just enough in his class for seven full teams. They weren't the only class in the school of course; Konoha would be graduating more than two hundred genin this year. But teammates were almost always chosen from the same homeroom.

The girls in the class sprang to mind first. While he may have acted stoic and indifferent, he was a boy and girls easily sprang to mind. Even in his own mind Kakashi didn't try to deny that he paid his ten kunoichi classmates far more attention than he spared for his male peers.

Uzuki Yugao was the top ranked girl in class and consistently the second best student overall. A physical powerhouse she excelled at the physical activities and was even solid academically. Her great weaknesses were the subtler arts. Her ninjutsu were poor at best. Even her stealth skills were barely passable.

Kagura was Yugao's top contender for the class's second spot. She was also about as pleasant as a trip to the dentist. Kagura was good at pretty much everything; she just didn't excel at anything. Her only real weakness was her teamwork skills, she never seemed to be in the right spot in formation work, and never seemed to be able to communicate with her teammates well what she was doing or what she wanted them to do. And she pissed people off. She was damn good at that.

Mitarashi Anko was kind of a reverse Yugao. She did poorly in any type of combat and her academic skills were some of the lowest in the class. On the other side, her chakra techniques were near flawless and her stealth skills and trap layouts had even beat him in a few exercises. It was kind of unfair actually, now that Kakashi thought about it, how the Academy grades worked. Basically student's grades were broken into three equal parts, Combat Ability (Taijutsu, Kunai, and Shuriken), Academic Work, and Secondary Skills (Wilderness Survival, Stealth, Disguises, Traps, Ninjitsu Demonstrations, Tactics, Tracking, etc) with most of the Secondary Skills being simple pass or fail. Anko was head and shoulders better than Yugao in Secondary Skills, but do to how the system was graded she was below average in class rankings while Yugao was the second student overall.

Yuhi Kurenai was easily the smartest girl in class. She was also easily the prettiest girl in class. Her grades on the written assignments were regularly even better than his. She was pretty good at most of the secondary skills. She was terrible in the combat arts.

Shizune was like a watered down Kurenai. She was almost as smart. Her grades were almost as good. She was the absolute worst in the class at combat. Her shuriken and kunai missed the targets about as often as they hit and were almost never centered or grouped. Like Anko she excelled in the Secondary Skills but it wasn't enough to save her from a middling class rank. Her worse flaw, at least to a teenage boy, was how utterly plain she looked. Kakashi didn't think of himself as shallow but well Shizune was kind of like the class wallpaper. She wasn't ugly, if you stuck her next to a peasant girl or shopkeeper's daughter she would even look pretty. But in a room full of kunoichi she was just… Shizune.

Rin was, well, middle of the road came to mind. He couldn't recall a time where she did really good at anything or where she flopped. She was just…mediocre, he guessed.

Kaori was one of Rin's friends and a frequent member of the bottom half of the class. She'd expressed an interest in medical ninjistu once and Kakashi wished her luck, Konoha needed any medic it could get. Kakashi's dad told him that during the second war they'd tried to add an expanded medic program but it never took off. As far as Kakashi knew Konoha only had a handful of Ninja who knew any medical techniques and with Tsunade in Anbu they weren't likely to get many more any time soon.

Ibara, Suzume, and Tsubaki were… well they were there. Unlike Rin he'd seen them drop the ball plenty of times, but never recalled them doing anything impressive.

The closest person Kakashi had to a friend was easily Maito Gai. They trained together occasionally and sometimes even got meals together or talked about things non-challenge related. Gai dominated all the combat skills, debatably he was better than Kakashi himself, and excelled at any physical activity. But his grades were abysmal and most of his secondary skills were poor or worse.

Sarutobi Asuma was a spoiled brat on his good days and a mean little prick with a chip on his shoulders on bad days. Most of the time Asuma seemed happy to coast on his rep of being the Hokage's son instead of really trying to do well. Still even if he spent all of his time half-assing it and chasing girls, usually Kurenai but he didn't seem to mind trying others if she wasn't around, he stayed comfortably in the top half of the class on every subject and even threatened to break into the big 5 of the combat classes, a group that hadn't changed since the first year (Kakashi, Gai, Yugao, Kagura, Naruto). Ninja rarely physically bullied their peers, after all every academy student was trained to fight back, instead they used subtler means to set the social order. Asuma over the last few years had divided the class (and much of the rest of the year) into two loose social groups. People that got invited to Asuma's parties, events, etc, and everybody else. Being one of the people in the 'everybody else' category Kakashi had very little good to say about Asuma.

Uzumaki Naruto did well in all the physical exercises. He was bad with thrown weapons, and his taijutsu form was subpar, but he was a freaking machine. Naruto didn't get tired, ever. You couldn't get a good hit to put him down, you had to beat him to a pulp. His bookwork was bad enough to put him below even Gai and Anko. Where he really shined though was in the secondary skills. Tracking, stealth, and traps. He practically lived in the forest and it showed. Still there was something about Naruto the adults didn't like, and you had to be an idiot to notice that you practically never saw Naruto in the main part of the village. Kakashi didn't know, and frankly didn't care, what exactly the issue was. But whatever social stigma clung to Naruto, Kakashi knew enough to know it could easily spread to his teammates and he wanted no part of it. Better a slightly less able teammate. Skill was much easier to fix than the crushing dislike of the entre village.

Gekko Hayate could have been a great ninja. If only he wasn't so sick. In a way he was Naruto's opposite, Book smart, popular, and just as capable in combat. While Naruto fought battles of attrition using his in-exhaustible reserves and stubborn resistance to damage, Hayate relied on pure skill, trying to end every fight in the first exchange. His disease was his only real flaw; it hindered disguises, stealth, and made any prolonged activity extremely difficult. If he was healthy Hayate could have possibly been one of the top students, even with it he was comfortably in the middle of the class overall.

Genma, Raido, and Aoba were Asuma's buddies, and they all hovered around the middle and back half of the class. They seemed content to ride Asuma's coattails rather than trying to pull ahead.

Ebisu was actually pretty good all around, shame he was such a know it all.

Toriichi Kumade… actually Kakashi didn't think he'd ever spoken to the boy in their entire time at the academy. There really hadn't been the need to; Kumade had been hanging on the bottom rung of the class for years. Kakashi did like his mask though, that had to count for something.

Last and definitely least was Uchiha Obito. If Kumade was consistently at the bottom of the class Obito was keeping a death grip on the dead last position. Everything the goggle wearing boy seemed to touch turned to failure. Worse he lashed out at his peers for being better than him. Kakashi, Asuma, Gai, Ebisu, even Hayate and Naruto had been on the receiving ends of the boys tantrums and the endless promises that once he got his eyes he'd show them his true potential.

…No Kakashi just couldn't see why his father kept stressing the value of teammates… or if he had a choice how he'd build a workable team from his peers.

Spring Year 38, Konoha

Uchiha Mikoto drug herself through the streets of Konoha like she was marching to her execution. Not that patrolling Konoha involved what most ninja considered much work but as a member of Konoha's Police Force, Mikoto felt that anything approaching actual work was an unpleasant task. Most officers she knew felt the same way.

Worse luck, today her patrol route took her through the merchant's district. There was always something that an officer needed to do in the damnable civilian dominated merchant district. "Officer! Officer! I need you!" Mikoto barely refrained from cursing and plastering a very fake smile on her face turned to face her first burden of the afternoon.

"Yes? Did you need something?" She asked putting some, very fake, enthusiasm in her voice.

"Thank heavens you showed up when you did officer!" The middle aged civilian woman exclaimed. "It's," she said looking around to make sure no one else was in earshot, "the demon brat." Mikoto let out a groan.

"What did Naruto do now?"

"Well he went into Ucchan's grocery store and decent folk can't get in while he's in there. So if you could chase him off or give him a beating so the rest of us can get on with our shopping?" Mikoto frowned. Naruto was, by the woman's admission, doing nothing wrong. But the police force had learned that if you left Naruto doing nothing wrong in an area filled with 'decent folk' any nearby officer, and eventually the headquarters would get besieged by 'decent people' who wanted him gone. They'd eventually settled on the, very not legal, practice of chasing him off whenever he showed up.

There was a crowd outside the grocer when she arrived. They all but cheered her on when she went into the store to collect the boy, Naruto prosecution was practically a sport in Konoha. They probably even assumed the scowl on her face was for the boy. It only took her a few moments to find him. The shopkeepers desperate pointing helped. Once upon a time they'd have banned the boy from the store or grossly overcharged him. While the Hokage tolerated the Police Forces removing Naruto from the public parts of town, he'd drawn his line in the sand and let all the village shopkeepers know that if they were caught cheating or banning the boy very bad, bad, things would happen. It was an unhappy compromise between the villagers who wanted him gone entirely and the Hokage who wanted him to have a normal life. But life was often messy.

"Hello Naruto." The boy looked up from where he was loading his handcart. It only took him a second to recognize her. At the tender age of twelve Naruto knew every cop in town.

"Officer-neesan, I'm almost done." The boy said with a pleading look.

"Now." She said, hefting her cudgel. He raced of to the cashier and she stomped after him. The store worker did the transaction at near lightspeed. In no time at all she was leading the boy out of the district.

"What have I told you? Hell what has every officer ever told you? You shop-"

"In the mornings and evenings, I know." The boy said. She scowled again.

"You clearly don't if I'm dragging you out of town this early in the afternoon."

"I do! It's just I needed to pick up some stuff for my all night training session for exams! I'm gonna show everybody tomorrow just how awesome I am!" Mikoto was skeptical. Hell she was a damn pessimist by nature. Still she doubted there were many kids in the world that needed some positive attention as bad as Naruto.

"I'm sure you will." She said. He eyeballed checking to see if she was being sincere or sarcastic. He started saying something, but was interrupted.

"He's dead! He's dead!" a boy of seven or eight shouted running through the streets.

"Halt! Who's dead?" She asked. The kid looked up.

"The Kazekage!" That got her complete attention. "Where did you hear that?"

"I was at the Kokage's tower when the news came in. The Kazekage's gone missing and they said he's dead." Mikoto frowned, that was not good news.

"Run along kid. Naruto, you go straight home, you hear me?" Naruto nodded and went off in the direction of his house. The kid went right on running down the street. Mikoto started roof hopping like mad back to the station. Like most Uchiha girls she was something of a connoisseur of rumors, and something in her gut told her this one was true.

She felt justified when she turned up at the police station and a handful of other officers were talking about it.

"So he is dead then?" She asked. Inuzuka Tsume, an officer about her own age gave a nod. "Aye," the woman spat, "and good riddance."

"Bad riddance more like," Uchiha Uruchi said, a veteran kunoichi who was putting on some pounds as she slid toward her middle years. "With him gone Iwa will declare war on Mountain Country, mark my words." Mikoto and Tsume both nodded at that. Before the 2nd Great Shinobi War Mountain Country had been part of Earth Country and they'd wanted it back before the treaty that split it off had finished drying.

"If he does we'll fight him," Tsume said. "Onoki can hardly fight us, Suna, Rain, Iron, Grass, and whoever else wants to pile in."

"Can we afford to fight them?" Mikoto asked "things with Kiri aren't looking good." Tsume looked annoyed. Uruchi looked worried. Kiri and Konoha weren't fighting a war, but they were having a border dispute. It wasn't official, but a lot of very unofficial fights between Kiri-nin and Konoha-nin on missions were happening in Wave Country and some of the last few teams assigned out that way had a lot more firepower than the missions required.

"Let's hope not," Uruchi said. Tsume scowled but Mikoto kept her face blank. It was easy for Tsume to have a go get'em attitude. She was just young enough to have missed the last war entirely. At just a year older Mikoto herself had only been an academy student when the last war ended. Uruchi had fought in the 2nd war from start to finish, if someone had a right to not want to fight another war it was her. They didn't stop discussing the possibilities of course, and more and more officers pitched their thoughts in. But more and more it seemed to come down to 'what will the Hokage do?'

Just in case you're lazy-

In Year 38

Sarutobi is 48 years old.

Jiraiya is 28

Minato and Mikoto are 19

Kakashi, Naruto, Gai, Kurenai, Shizune, etc are 12 give or take a year

Itachi, Deidara, Inuzuka Hana, Ayame, Kabuto, etc are 3

The Rookie 8 are -4!

Rookie 8 graduation is -16!

-Team building challenge-

I have some ideas on who to put on Naruto's team, but I could use some help. Please if you have any team ideas that you think are good or interesting pop them in a review. All 21 members are listed above (and all of them can be found in Narutopedia) The only difference so far is Anko and Yugao are 12 now instead of the 6 they should be.

I originally posted the team building challenge looking for advice about team combinations. Even though I've already done the team placements, I am eager to hear any thoughts you have about teams that you'd like to see, or combinations of genin that could be interesting. What team leaders would work best with different teams, etc.

If you have any questions or comments please leave a review.