A Time Apart

By dawns light
A death,
and silence.
The act begins.

Sarutobi stared out over the balcony and on to the winding streets below, alive and bustling with activity. This was his home, Konoha, Village of the Leaf. The Third Hokage took a long drag from his pipe and exhaled, allowing the rich smoke to be taken away by the light breeze. Not twenty years ago, the view below been very different. That view had been one of war. Strife. Destruction. Visions flickered through the elder's mind as the war with the Stone was recounted in his memories. It had been a struggle, but his home had survived. Regrown. Prospered, much like the leaves of its name sake.

The pipe came to his lips once more as he sighted the western village gate. A wider road bore from it, one that cut through several of the less orderly streets and into the heart of town. Beyond the gates, a rugged tree line and… Sarutobi blinked as the flashes of memory came unbidden.

Beyond that had been the Nine Tails. Konoha had been lucky that day. They had known the demon fox was coming. Even so, the Kitsune had managed to smash through their outer guard and lay waste to a third of the village before finally being halted within the Obyaa district. There, Konoha made its stand and defeated the monster.

The old man let loose the breath that he had been reflexively holding, and smoke drifted on the breeze once more.

Konoha had survived that, too. Regrown. But that event had only been just over a decade ago and the village- his home –was still recovering. Sarutobi's aged eyes began to pick out colorful banners lining the streets and building, a staccato of celebration that cumulated around Horiuchi stadium. Most would see the Chunin Exams as a sign of that growth. Konoha was not only hosting the exams this year, but was fielding some of the brightest genjin since the nine-tails incident. Indeed, the Third would be inclined to agree with those optimist, save one crucial detail…

…He was going to die.

There were those who sought to discern events beyond their kin; to perceive the currents of time before its actual passage. Both moral and immoral, those dedicated to such pursuits often employed a variety of methods by which to fathom the unfathomable, methods involving massive amounts of wealth, magic, scrolls and occasionally blood sacrifice. At best, these archaic techniques gave their users the briefest glimpse of a vague possibility, that which may or may not come to pass. At worst, the blood spilt to invoke these arcane rituals would not only taint their soul, but lead them falsely down fate's darkened path.

Sarutobi was not one of these people. Even in this dangerous hour, the Third Hokage of Konoha was not prone to divine his fate by such means. Nor was it was not for lack of ability or power that the village elder failed to consult the muse of temporal possibility in order to further clarify the final outcome of the exams themselves.

He took one last look at the atmosphere of celebration that enveloped his home and nodded, removing the pipe from his mouth before turning back to his office. Like himself, the office had seen the roll of years and after thirteen of those years, had collected enough scrolls, trinkets and items to make even the most spacious of rooms seem cluttered. The centerpiece, somehow clear of such disarray, was a small round table and a crystal ball. It was a powerful artifact in its own right, but bore no such ability to foretell the future as one might think. Instead of trying to coax an unfathomable possibility from it, the Hokage bypassed the sphere in favor of a mannequin and the gray plate of armor it bore. He shrugged off the white and red cloak he wore as a symbol of his position and fingered the smooth steel shoulder pieces. The plating itself was well over fifty years old and probably belonged on somebody a few generations younger, but it was his, the only armor he'd worn during his dual tenure as Hokage.

It was time to don it once more.

A grim smile surfaced, spreading across his wrinkled features. there was no need to guess at the shadows of the future, for he already knew it's outcome as assuredly as he knew that today's Chunin exam was little more than subterfuge in order to bring Konoha to its knees. The Hokage sighed and hefted the armor off its mount, strapping the cold plate of bracer to the black jumpsuit along his left arm. Not that it mattered.

Sarutobi pulled the bracer tight and began to position its opposite. In fact, that particular event was only hours away. The news of his death bothered him little, in reality. He knew he had been living on borough time since the nine-tails. no, it was the village that concerned him. His home. There was little he could do to prevent the invasion without damaging that which was to come, but he not let them overtake his birthplace like thieves in the night either. Select members of the ANBU had been informed. Kakashi and Gai would be on guard. But that was the best he could do… The most he could do without turning all of their existence into a wild unknown. The Third let the sleek armored headpiece rest upon his head and the neck plating fell into place, hiding both it and the armor with his white robe and hat.

Yes, today death would visit him today. Exactly how and when it would do so was a vague unknown, but it would not catch him unaware.

He would be ready.

Crapspace Notes: You could really wedge this crappaliscious intro into a number of fics, but this one had to do with timetravel. If I recall the build correctly, Naruto manages to blast hiumself int the past and become the 4th himself. For that to not be totally squicky in nature, Naruto would have to not be born from the forth and Kushina. This was well prior to the 400+ chapters that now exists and Naruto the 4th would pop out of his coffin (from some sort of stasis) during the Invasion arc and pwn snake boy before Sarutobi buys it. It could have worked, but I have better things to do. Like edit chapter 9b of Hell is a Martial Artist.

You'll undoubtedly notice the similarity in titles between this and an active fic... Yes, I said active. I recycle the titles of stories don't make the cut A LOT.