Prologue
When he woke up he had no idea where he was. The last thing he could remember was the tearful goodbye of his surrogate grandson as he saw him one last time. Now he found himself in the middle of a desert and had no idea where he was. Without any idea of what to do he decided just to walk and find some sort of settlement. As he walked through the desert he noticed some changes about his body.
His hands weren't wrinkled from age. He gained back some of his height that old age had taken from him. His chakra reserves were at the levels they were when he was in his prime. He didn't have a mirror to look in but he could guess his face wasn't weathered by time and his hair wasnt grey anymore.
All in all he would assume he was in the body of his twenty year old self. Which in his mind was good because if there were threats in this strange place that he couldn't keep up with in his old age then he was screwed.
As the sun continued to bear down on him he thought he saw what looked like a village of some sort. He didn't know if it was a mirage or not but he was willing to take the chance. With renewed vigor he pumped some chakra into his legs and pointed towards the village. As he spinted he couldn't help but admire the feeling of running without his bones creaking or something in his body hurting. It really was great to be young again.
As he got closer to the village he noticed smoke coming from some of the houses. Well that told him it wasn't a mirage. Pumping more chakra into his legs he spinned faster to see what was happening. He reached the village within a couple more seconds and what he saw made his old mind hurt.
There were people running and screaming in some foreing language. There were men with cloth either wrapped around their necks or head and had strange weapons in their hands. The weapons themselves shoot out some sort of small projectile that killed or severely wounded the people they were shot at.
With seeing enough of this carnage he moved faster than the eye could see. Slinking into the shadow the buildings casted he moved his hands in weird hand signs faster than the eye could perceive. Once he was finished a shadow crawled towards some of the men that were standing guard over some civilians
Once the shadow connected to the shadows of the men they pointed their guns toward one another then opened fire. Flesh and bullets sprayed everywhere as the men fell to the ground dead. The civilians looked as the seen in terror. Before running away.
He looked at the scene with a frown on his face. He didn't like killing people but he would do it when necessary. So with that mess taken care of he kept to the shadows as he went looking for more of the men with those strange weapons.
The next group he came across were shooting at running civilians before his shadow connected with there's. He could see the panic in their eyes as they realized they couldn't control their movement. He made another hand sign that made a hand of shadows crawl up the mens neck and start choking them to death.
Their bodys fell to the ground with a thud and sand flinging everywhere as they dropped. Once again he traveled through the shadows of the building taking out the men with his shadow jutsu. When he was done cleaning out the village of the men he used the water in their bodys to put out the fires. He didn't have the power to pull water out of the air molecules like his sensei but he could pull it out of things that had an abundance of water like the human body or even a tree if there wasn't a large body of water around.
Before any of the villagers could get a good look at him he quickly left the scene and into an empty house. Inside there was nothing but the leftover food whatever family was here. With a haste he hasten used in years he greedily took what was left on the table. Soon all the food was gone and his stomach was full since he woke up.
He left the house and quietly made his way through the village making sure he was out of sight. He reached the outskirts and then pumped chakra into his legs shooting off like a bullet into the desert.
As much as he would love to stay in the village to help or eat more food he needs to get to a more proper civilization or somewhere with trees and grass. So with that he ran throughout the desert at high speeds with the hope of vegetation on his mind.
Hiruzen sarutobi was not the hokage of the sand but of the leaves