Disclaimer: Seriously how many times have I seen it. There is no way Naruto belongs to someone else than Kishimoto
"SASUKEEEEEEE!"
"NARUTOOOO!"
They screamed for the last time before their respective jutsus hit each other. A gaping hole in one's chest with the offending hand still inside though one thing was amiss. The body it should've been connected to wasn't there but a few meters away with his chest mangled and distorted into a spiral pattern. The conclusion was simple, the final battle ended in a draw, Kaguya was dead but at what cost? The end of all humanity since the two heroes have killed each other.
Naruto collapsed to his knees, as his vision was getting blurry, he let his last words flow on the wind "Ero-sennin you were right, some people are unsavable. I will meet you shortly Mom, Dad, sensei." A small tear flowed down his cheeks as his limp body fell to the ground.
How much time has passed? A second? A minute? A month? Or more? He couldn't tell as he regained consciousness blinking his heavy eyelids trying to adjust to the dim lightning around him. "I didn't die?" he thought to himself as he found himself on the wooden floor of a shrine like building. He looked downward to his chest only to still see the hole his 'best friend' gave him. "Nah, I'm dead just alright. Anyone here?! I'm waiting here to be judged!" he raised his voice trying to get someone to talk to.
"Ask and ye shall receive." Said a voice coming from the center of the room after which candles all around began lighting up illuminating the room and showing a black-haired woman, dressed in a white kimono and with a straight sword in her hand. Her powerful aura making Naruto kneel in front of her on instinct. "Lift your head Naruto. You were not summoned here to be judged by me, Amaterasu, whether you will end in heaven or hell."
Hearing the name of the goddess in front of him Naruto gulped, she was the head of all deities of his world. "Don't make her mad, don't make her mad, don't make her mad…" he repeated this mantra in his head.
"Don't worry Naruto, you won't make me mad. Yes, I can read you mind. No, I won't go into your secret memory stash." She said making him blush and scratch the back of his head
"Excuse me, Amaterasu-sama. Did you just say that I'm not here to be judged? I'm dead right, right? Impossible even for me as a jinchuuriki to survive a huge hole like that."
"Not in order but, yes you are dead, but you aren't here to be judged. There were some mishaps along the way in your world that ended with a result that even we the gods did not predict."
"Mishaps?"
"To be honest we don't have a fucking clue as to what happened or how it happened. Your world was created with the idea of a shinobi as a stealth master and not what happened during the war with kaijus fighting, three headed humanoid foxes throwing house sized Rasengans at the edgelord who is wearing another overpowered shit." she continued to rant for at least five minutes how Kakashi was a role model they made for the elite just below the Kages themselves etc etc. "Hufffff, much better now. I'm sorry I had to externalize a bit. Now where was I? Ah yes there is a problem, every simulation we made ends with that overpowered state because at some point Madara just gets out of the simulation parameters and the simulation tries to accommodate for that by giving the opposing forces some cheats as well. The same has happened in your world."
"Wait, wait, wait, are you saying my world is also a simulation for you guys? Like we don't have free will and such?"
"No Naruto, those things are two different matters. The simulation is for us a test ground when in the real world something just doesn't add up, it lets us look at the problem over and over again to find the solution before it causes some consequences on the large scale. We never interfere with your world in any way that strips you of the free will. You see there are some things that are just bound to happen, sticky points that just happen in your life no matter what kind of simulation is done."
Seeing that Naruto was just intelligently bobbing his head up and down not understanding a word of what she was saying, Amaterasu developed "For you Naruto one of those sticky points is Kurama's attack on the village. Or the mission to the waves where you met Zabuza and Haku. I've seen countless alternative universes of you, and it always happens if you're born Naruto. In some you would die by three years old, in some you were given an overpowered power breaking the world entirely and living with your harem. And in every one of those Kurama's attack happens, and even if you are dead, Tazuna still comes asking for help to Konoha."
"So, in every one of them Zabuza and Haku die inevitably?" asked half knowing already the truth waiting for the grim answer.
"Nope, the sticky point in this case isn't Zabuza dies, it's Tazuna comes for help. Outcomes are as varied as you can imagine. Do you understand now?"
"Yes ma'am!" he said loud and clear
"Now, there is one problem, the most important sticky point during the war didn't happen because of the whole system failing because of Madara. You and Sasuke were supposed to first liberate the whole humanity and only then you could've fought or not. But it's not possible since the two of you are dead now."
"Does it really pose such a problem? You know dying isn't such a big deal for me since I could finally pass some quality time with my parents."
"It's a huge problem Naruto. Those fixated points in time must happen or this entire reality may collapse entirely, human world, us the gods, heaven, hell. Everything will just disappear until there is nothingness."
"Please tell me you have some kind of plan. I don't want my whole life to just serve for nothing like that. If heaven disappears then I will never be able to meet my parents again." Naruto said and a pleasant smile appeared on Amaterasu's face.
"He he he, of course I have one, but I, no everyone needs your help Naruto. Once again you were chosen against your wish for great deeds and trials, for which I'm sorry." She closed her eyes and it almost seemed like she bowed a fraction of a degree.
"I have a feeling I won't like what you will tell me…"
"It's simple, what I want to give you is what I call New Game Plus!" she exclaimed excitedly
"New Game Plus?"
"Right, the technology able to sustain any type of game wasn't developed in your world yet. To keep it simple, you retake the same challenges and keep your old powers, but everyone will be scaled as well, every opponent you fought will be much stronger. Any questions?"
"Yeah, only one. Why do you have to make everyone stronger? Can't I just go back overpowered as I am now, clean the floor with every bad guy and finish the whole story in a week?"
"Because it would derail the whole world once again, your presence would be the same as Madara. Listen, I will use numbers, not hard but still numbers." She said making Naruto groan in his spot, he wasn't that bad at math, right? "Let's say the cap for every human born in the human realm is one hundred, for benchmark a fresh genin is around twenty, Kakashi when you first met him was around seventy five to eighty, Sandaime was eighty-sevenish, Itachi a good ninety-three or four. Meanwhile Madara during the war was over a hundred and seventy, Sasuke and you around one sixty. During our simulation without any type of a cap for strength nobody went over three hundred and we will use that. Once you are sent back, the cap for power will be eradicated making it impossible to destroy the system. Though the problem is that it will leave a huge power gap and the world itself will want to scale it higher, and this is always a random number between twenty to fifty."
"Twenty to fifty? That means that Sakura will have her monstrous strength from the get go?" he remarked with a shiver going down his spine
"Yes, and no? She will be as strong as when she was training under Tsunade though it will be much more spread out between her stats since she didn't have any kind of superhuman strength training. Just imagine that everyone who exits the academy is the most unrecognizable chunin in the whole world."
"Please make the planet sturdier then, or else we will end up destroying it with a Bijuu-dama."
"It was already thought of, you don't have to sweat the hard stuff, you just need to go there and make the world take some better choices. Any more questions?"
"Just out of curiosity, if a human is a hundred then how strong are you Amaterasu-sama?"
"To be honest? I don't know, it's not like we are fighting against each other often in gods' realm, but our fights are around six thousand I think, though since we are the supreme beings, we don't have a cap to be honest if you think about it. After all, we can change the entire universe if we need to after all. That reminded me about one thing though, like you said it before you have already completed most of the challenges the world has thrown at you and now we need you to go and take them once again. Because of that, five of us decided to create a power up of some sort for you to make it easier for you. This way when Madara will reach the top of humanity you will be sure to beat him because of the power given by us, and its name is Golden Threads, sorry for intrusion."
"What do you mean by sorry for intrusi-." he was cut short by a feeling as if someone was putting a toad down his throat again. Shortly after he was seeing inside his mind images of different people fighting using what looked like steel threads to fight different enemies, from a butler fighting nazi zombies to a young man who was apparently an assassin. "Fuck… What was that?"
"A simpler way to show you the basics of the basics of what you can do with your new power. Like I say it is just the beginning of what you will have to learn to do."
"The basics huh? And then what? Someone else will teach me about a power that doesn't exist in the whole world?"
"Don't worry so much Naruto, it's already in the plan for us to stay connected for the many years to come. Now at last I will be able to tell you what will happen now. The time will go back until you are around five years old, once you are there I will contact you and I will tell you which fixated point will happen next."
"That's all? No training? No grandiose speech how I must save the world? Just that, go back in time, learn to use your power and mop the floor with everyone?"
"Nothing of that, just go back in time and repair the world. Good luck Naruto." She said and snapped her fingers sending Naruto back to the human realm.
There he stood atop of Konoha, on his favorite spot of the whole village that was dead silent as every person was still in their respective cocoons. He took a deep breath and sighed, every moment he struggled to this point would be reset and he would have to once again prove to this village that he wasn't a monster. "If that lets me save Sasuke, Neji, Sandaime and Ero-sennin maybe it's all worth it."
"Naruto, we will begin shortly. Some words of advice, you will probably feel nauseous." He heard a voice speaking directly into his brain and he nodded. Slowly but surely the wound in torso began closing and he could swear he could see the sun going from west to east, then came the moon. The cycles were becoming faster and faster. His hands becoming smaller and smaller and his clothes baggier and baggier until they changed all together going through every outfit he had until he was probably one meter tall.
"Fuck me, I'm gonna puke. I swear I could feel the earth rotate just now." He said a bit loudly. He shot a glance to the right and left hoping that nobody heard him swear like an adult would. Thankfully there was no one but he spotted a charred circle near the Yondaime's head. "Huhhh, based on that I think we are around October the twelfth since we had a bonfire with Sandaime on my fifth birthday."
"Good deduction, and you are right to the date. This way you have until your sixth birthday to plan for the academy and the next sticky point. What do you think it is huh Naruto, as a clue I will tell you that it culminates during the third year of academy."
"When I was, will be nine. Uchiha massacre is the next sticky point?"
"Almost, it's the motions of Uchiha's coup d'état, though I don't know if ever seen a simulation that didn't end with the Uchiha being exterminated. It will be up to you how you want to proceed."
"Great, well at least I've got some time to think about it."
"At last, a few words of advice Naruto, since the cap on the humans was lifted the cap on everything else was lifted as well. That means there will be monsters in this world you haven't seen before, some may not even look animal anymore. We even caught a few times during a simulation something as strong as the Bijuu themselves but much fiercer and without any trace of intelligence. Second beware of the people living here, your old life without killing anybody won't work anymore, everyone here is ruthless now because of the increased strength. That's all for this time, I will contact you in some time and if you need to contact me just think about me real hard. Goodbye Naruto."
The once again kid Naruto nodded his head and stretched making a few loud pops "Now talking about Bijuu, are you here my friend? Please tell me you are still your old-new self and the seal is already taken off. Imagine if we had to explain to anyone why I want to set you free."
"I can hear you loud and clear, Naruto. Talk about a clusterfuck, at least this time my time in here won't be as smelly as the last time. And don't worry the seal is broken already. Feel free to use my chakra while I do some remodeling here."
"Not a good idea to use your chakra for now until I'm sure I'm not followed by any thing or one. Let's see if I can still use it." He responded to his friend who was making his not so much prison anymore less hostile. Meanwhile Naruto closed his eyes to meditate for a second, first he assessed his own chakra reserves, and they were almost as massive as when he was killed, maybe he would need to retrain his paths to let such huge rivers of energy flow freely but for now it was okay. "Stage one check, time for stage two." There it was, the energy that circulated everywhere yet no one was able to feel it, let alone harness it.
Breathe in and breathe out, he was slowly gathering the natural energy transforming himself into a natural sensor type. Luckily for him he didn't sense anyone in the close vicinity and continued his experiment until he entered the Sage Mode "Sage Mode at five years old, what a riot! But something just doesn't feel right, like when you think you've finished pooping, you wipe and then you must shit again after getting up. Anyway, let's test it."
He closed his eyes once again and chose the best route for him to use to evade any possible type of shinobi "Are we even still shinobi? If everyone is overpowered then do we still do stealth and assassination? Or we are now just a walking artillery?" The natural geolocation was set and Naruto sped past the trees with his small body almost getting bent from the accelerations and forces induced by the Sage Mode. "I can do everything I did before but I still came back to this body, I will seriously need to train it into shape worthy of a shinobi." He told himself as he lowered his speed until he finally arrived at the little pond he used for training years ago or in a few years he wasn't exactly sure.
He came closer to it to inspect himself and he was right, something wasn't the same as before, his eyes didn't resemble the usual toad he wore every time but this time they were pale green. "What the hell? Not my usual blue and no orange around neither. I guess I will be contacting her sooner than expected." And so he did as was instructed and thought about her until she responded.
"Calling me already, Naruto? So what's the problem?
"My Sage Mode is different, it feels different and the telltale signs about it are different as well. Wasn't I supposed to keep every power I had?"
"Ah right I forgot about this, in very short it has probably gotten better for you. Like you know every Sage Mode is different based on the summon type, well it's not only based on the summons themselves but their elemental alignment as well since the natural energy is composed of the five elements as well. The toads are aligned mostly with earth and fire, snakes with water and wind etc etc. The perfect solution would be to find a summon that has the same nature type as your own. But it's rare that you get to choose based on that."
"Let me get it straight, based on the summons a person using their sage mode won't boost them in the same way. That's why Jiraiya-sensei had a better power-up, it was because he had the chance to get the perfect match, meanwhile I had the complete opposite."
"My my, you are getting smarter every second Naruto, continue like that and you will make a very fine Kage one day. Now back to the reason why it's different. In this life your body isn't trained yet, your muscles aren't powerful and the same goes for your pure chakra system. When you first began training with the toads your system was forced to adapt to their ways. Now since you just gathered natural energy for the first time without any type of external help it aligned itself directly to your nature. Congratulation Naruto, you are the second person to ever do that just after the Shodaime himself. Goodbye Naruto."
"Off she goes like that without letting me say my own goodbyes. I can't say I'm not happy to be so much stronger from the beginning, but I can already feel the pain in the ass it will be when I will have to fight my classmates. Dominate them or let them win, that is the question. Oh well, I still have some time before this happens." He said to himself expulsing any trace of natural chakra before stepping down into the town.
The route to his small flat was pretty uneventful other than the few glares he received here and there as well as people shielding their children from him just in case. "Not like they are wrong this time, I'm ninety-nine percent sure I could destroy whole Konoha in a few attacks at most. Not like I will do that but still doing that is a possibility."
"Oi Naruto, I think I destroyed the village enough sixteen no eleven no in this world five years ago, no need to add to that."
"Don't worry about that, I came back in time to save this world and lead a good life afterwards. I won't exact revenge or some shit like that, leave the revenge part to Sasuke. While we are at it Kurama, what do you think I should do first? Train my body, practice some jutsus?"
"Train with those strings of yours, you will have a lot of time to train your body and you already know all your jutsus, and we can't train with my chakra. Meanwhile this string power they gave you, Golden Threads, will probably end as your strongest tool in your whole arsenal of jutsus and chakra modes."
"Got ya, but first, I need to clean up this mess. How was I able to live like that?" he ended his conversation and opened the window in his small flat. The fresh air was a welcome smell as Naruto began rummaging around looking for garbage bags and throwing out everything that was past the expiration date. It took him a few hours until the room was ready to get cleaned out in a normal fashion, though it was too late for Naruto who decided it was time to go to the bed.
Or at least it was until an alarm rang through the entire village with the speakers ordering every civilian to go to the bunkers. For Naruto it was the first time he ever heard such a thing in the village, even during the Chunin exam invasion there wasn't any alarm or anything.
Naruto was ecstatic, something he didn't know from the past was happening and it was already a great threat since every civilian was supposed to go to the bunkers. A quick tap into the natural energy made him feel every shinobi go to west wall where something was attacking, though it wasn't human, and it wasn't alone.
He did a seal-less henge turning into the most average shinobi you could see in Konoha and got out of his apartment mixing in with the shinobi going to the wall. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop going at the same pace as everyone else until he climbed on the wall and has seen the things that never happened in his previous life.
Everyone was fighting against what looked like roach like six meter long armored bugs that were coming in masses at the wall trying as hard as they could to breach the defensive lines set by the shinobi fighting and massacring the hordes of monsters coming at them.
"That must be what Amaterasu-sama was talking about when she told me the whole world is now out to kill us. Still, what the fuck are those things? I will need to talk to Jiji about that." he said under his nose as to not be heard by anybody. He set himself with a group of similar looking ninjas until he saw a man falling on his back writhing in pain as the monster rammed straight into him and was ready to eat him whole.
Without a shadow of hesitation Naruto sped towards the man to save him albeit he remembered one thing, he may have hanged into a shinobi, but he had no weapon on him and making Rasengan like that would blow his cover on day one. "It's now or never Golden Threads, please work, please work…" he thought to himself as he was going to throw a haymaker right into the monster's eye. If the threads worked the thing would be cut in half based on his predictions, if not, then at least the eye would explode giving him enough time to help his comrade in arms.
His prayers were answered as a golden gleam appeared on his hand and in the air, if you paid enough attention you would have seen a single thread thinner than a single hair and the same color as pure gold hence the name. It went from the front to the back of the oversized bug in an instant cutting it so cleanly the two parts slid on each other with a loud thud as the top hit the ground.
The shinobi who was just saved looked at his savior and bowed his head in thanks to which Naruto responded with a smile and ran off to the next person in need of help. On the road he had to admit one thing, the people here were most probably chunins and yet their firepower and teamwork was higher than Kakashi's when he first met him. The fireballs they were chucking right and left burned their victims to ashes contrary to the past where the fire justsus never did anything more than smoke people a bit.
This was truly a new gruesome world he knew nothing about other than one thing, those people deserved to live and fight another day and he did anything in his might to save the people he came to love in the past. Or future he still wasn't sure about his timeline.
It was only after three hours that the monsters were stopped and the cleanup has begun. Apparently, the earth nature users were called to dig a huge hole where all the remains were thrown and sealed. From what he heard it was to make a saltpeter pit to make fertilizer. That was the moment Naruto used to go back home and finally get some sleep in. "At least I got to use the threads directly in a battle scenario."
The next day the blond decided to go out to finally gather information on what happened yesterday. And who was a better source of information than an almost seventy-year-old man in a profession where you most likely had the midlife crisis at fifteen.
Sneaking into the Hokage tower was much easier than ever before for Naruto. Maybe it was because now he was a full fledged ninja and not a kid trying to see the only person who didn't treat him like trash. He knocked lightly on the door to the Kage office and he heard the old man letting him enter.
A tear almost escaped Naruto's eyes as he has seen who was present in the room, not only his Jiji, but Kakashi-sensei as well. "Ah Naruto-kun, please come in and sit on the couch. Is there anything else you have to report to me Kakashi?" he asked the silver haired teen
"Just one thing, there is a rumor about yesterday. I've got at least twenty-three reports of a shinobi helping out his comrades and disappearing right after just to help another one."
"And what's so strange about it? This man is the embodiment of the will of fire."
"That strange thing is that everyone said the same thing. He was able to cut the larvae with his fist and nobody was able to identify him. He was just so average he could match almost half of the force, around one-seventy-five centimeters tall, medium build, brown hair, dark colored eyes. He became like the legend in the barracks, the ghost of the unknown shinobi helping his friends from beyond the grave." Said Kakashi unable explain what has transpired just a few hours ago.
Meanwhile Naruto was on the couch pretending not to be interested in the adult's talk swinging his legs. Inside he was asking Kurama to stop laughing at the situation "Great not even a day in and I already caused an urban legend to be born."
"Let's not be stupid Kakashi, like you say it was probably a different person each time and the shock and adrenaline from almost dying makes you see things. I would swipe it under the rug as the panic of the masses."
"Understood. It is the end of my report. If you permit, I will excuse myself." Said Kakashi receiving a firm nod from his leader who took one last puff from his pipe.
The old man got up from his chair and marched towards Naruto and he sat next to the boy. "I hope you didn't get too scared yesterday when the alarm rang. Were you able to get to any of the bunkers?" he asked gently yet there was a hidden pressure behind his question since it meant 'Did the guard let you in or did he try to do something stupid?'
"Ahh right of the bat a question like that. Let's hope the bunkers are in the same spots as in the past. Okay since now the time I come from is the past." He thought to himself "Not a single problem, I went to the one under the academy, but what happened yesterday? Something about those larvae Kakashi-san was talking about?"
"It's true you've never experienced their attack before, at least not when you were old enough to understand that something bad was happening. Listen Naruto, there are things we humans named dragons. They are horrible creatures rivaling the strength of the Bijuu themselves. They look like massive insects and once every two to three years they lay their eggs. Once those eggs hatch the larvae will either eat their mother or go to the nearest human settlement." said the old sage forgetting he was talking to a child about huge human eating monsters.
"If they are so dangerous then why not send the best of the village to try and kill the mother before she lays more eggs?" Naruto asked half innocently
"It's not as simple as you think young Naruto. Even if the mother may be immobile while she lays eggs, she isn't all that alone. She keeps a few of her grown children as guards and is ready to call for help at any moment. So even if in theory we may be able to take one down it isn't worth it. We would need at least someone as strong as the Shodaime to be able to make such an attack worth it."
"Then when I will get older, I will be strong enough to kill the dragons around Konoha."
Hiruzen smiled warmly at the child and patted his head "I'm sure you will Naruto-kun."
At first to Naruto it sounded as if the old man was mocking him, yet he couldn't get any gist of sarcasm in his speech, it's as if he knew that Naruto was destined for greatness. "Not like I'm that far off from being able to reach Shodaime-sama"
"I don't want to be hurtful or anything Naruto, but you should probably go home now. I would love to entertain you some more but the attack from yesterday has left a huge pile of work for me and I like to sleep at least once a week."
"Don't worry Ji-chan, I know you are busy with helping everyone in the village, just don't forget to rest from time to time or you will collapse one day." Said Naruto leaving the office with a huge smile plastered on his face and a friendly wave.
"Well, Kurama it feels like this new game plus will be a lot of fun. Let's get some training in!"
"Oh yes it will be."
End Chapter 1