Disclaimer:

I do not own Naruto. Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto and related associates. I do not make any money from this fanfiction. I am only playing around the sandbox to create a fanfiction. In no shape or form do I claim any right over the characters in this fanfiction other than the characters that were created from my imagination. All praise goes to the respective creators for these series and anime for giving us this wonderful story world to enjoy.

Prologue:

Wars change people. The 4th great war had tempered Naruto's exuberant character without compromising his upbeat attitude. After the 4th great war, Naruto had known that it wasn't enough to just spam Rasengan, sage mode, Kyubi mode or any of them combined. Naruto had stepped up his game and used shadow clones over a period of 15 years to completely master all five of the elements and a multitude of Jutsu in each element. This was possible because of his sage of six path mode. Naruto was pleasantly surprised when he came to realize that his sage of six paths mode had stayed with him since he was a sage himself and contained parts of chakra from all the tailed beasts.

The sage of six paths mode unlike his sage mode was fused with his chakra giving him a very dense chakra signature comparable to that of the tailed beasts. Additionally, he had trained intensively with Lee under the tutelage of Guy sensei to improve his taijutsu. His own chakra was on par with the Nanabi. This coupled with his Uzumaki vitality and the strength of Kurama's chakra made him ageless. However, though he was immune to genjutsu, he still couldn't cast one to save his life which he found funny.

Naruto was also a seal master that could rival any of the big names in the past and had modified his dad's Hiraishin no Jutsu to include dimensional travel in addition to space-time formula. If he had the frequency of a dimension, he could use his modified Hiraishin no Jutsu to travel there. So far, he had Kaguya's five dimensions along with Obito's Kamui dimension. Since Obito had passed away and Kakashi sensei no longer had his Sharingan, this along with the other five dimensions became his own. He had modified many of the existing seals after thorough study of them with the help of shadow clones.

Naruto found out that could still be hurt like any other shinobi; however, his regeneration factor was so ridiculously high that his cells had stopped aging and healed even the most severe of his wounds with nonchalant ease. During his early days as Hokage though he was pushing late 30s he didn't look a day over 20. Many had chalked this up to the famed Uzumaki vitality. During later years, he, however, had to put up the special henge that was unique to him so that people wouldn't freak out.

It was a major shock to Naruto when Hinata was assassinated by unknown assailants when she had gone for a mission. She could have escaped if she were to abandon her team, but Hinata being the soft-hearted gentle soul that she was stayed back to buy enough time for her team to escape. She did so because her team had consisted of fresh genin and few new chunin who were having their first C rank mission. The assassins took advantage of the mission to kill Hinata. Hinata had however put up a valiant fight and took out all seven of her attackers, but they had a failsafe seal on their bodies that sealed and burnt everything nearby. Unfortunately, Hinata was caught up in the range of the Jutsu and was killed.

Naruto was never the same after that day. The love of his life was taken away from him. Only Hinata knew the full extent of his powers and his special condition. He had always known that the shinobi way of life was always dangerous. That was why he took much effort in assigning missions so that his shinobi had a greater probability to survive. If he could have taken over all missions, he would have but he knew that it was necessary for his shinobi to take on missions irrespective of dangers for the sake of their village. After his beloved's death, he took much more care to balance his work and personal life. This led to bridging the gap that had formed between him and Boruto.

Another change was that Kurama now considered Naruto as a mix between a brother and a best friend. Naruto had opened the seal fully and as a result, Kurama could also feel, see and interact the same way as Naruto. In effect, they became one body housing two coexisting souls. It has been many years since he handed over the Hokage position to his student turned rival Konohamaru. Naruto had handed over the hat after the death of Hinata. He had then decided to join the AnBu corps under Sasuke who was the AnBu commander. This proved beneficial as he had undertaken many missions that were suicide for anyone apart from him or Sasuke which led to gaining invaluable intel which proved beneficial for the elemental nations in the long run.

Unlike the first 30 years after the 4th great ninja war, the later period was not peaceful. Though the villages had mostly stopped aggression towards each other, the Otsutsuki clan from outer space kept up their attack on the elemental nations to steal chakra. Just over a year ago many Otsutsuki members started the 5th great war to gather all chakra. Naruto and his remaining friends of the Konoha 12 fought valiantly. Naruto was the spearhead of their heavy assault team consisting of all current Kage combined with the best of the best from each village.

Once again Naruto had shown that he was the most unpredictable ninja when he showed that he was not complacent during the peacetime. Naruto was on a level of his own and was able to counter the Otsutsuki clan members effectively through his versatile ninjutsu and strong taijutsu. He had shared his Biju cloak with the allied forces that prevented as many deaths as possible. In spite of his best efforts, the death toll was still high. The battle came to a head when a new wave of support came to the aid of the few Otsutsuki members who were fighting the combined forces of the elemental nation. Though their numbers were not comparable to the shinobi forces, their strength made it so that only a Kage level shinobi could effectively fight them.

Seeing the hopelessness of the situation, Naruto asked Ino to share his mind with the joint shinobi forces. He then shared his plan to seal the entirety of the attacking forces through the reaper death seal. His children and friends raised their voice against the plan since it meant that Naruto would die. Naruto, however, gave them his famous carefree smile and shared his feelings and memories of the 4th war where he comes to realize that being a shinobi is to endure and he would die a thousand deaths before he would let his comrades die if could prevent it. Just before he started his plan, Naruto tried to release the Kurama but Kurama refused, saying that no matter what he would be with Naruto. With Kurama's proclamation, Naruto gave a caring smile to Kurama and created a six-flame barrier encompassing the entire battlefield and used his chakra cloak to teleport everyone but himself outside the barrier. Naruto then created a variant of the reaper death seal which would seal anyone's soul in the Jutsu caster's barrier into the Shinigami.

When the Jutsu was completed, the entirety of the shinobi forces saw a bright flash. After the flash one by one, the enemy forces dropped to the ground dead. The final to go was Naruto whose body disintegrated into ashes much like how Obito had died. A few moments later the barrier shattered.