Disclaimer:
I do not own Naruto. Naruto is owned by Masashi Kishimoto and associates. I do not make any money from this fictional series. 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 for giving us this wonderful story world to enjoy.
Chapter 2: Like a Phoenix He Rises from the Ashes!
Naruto opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was the stench of spilled blood. He had known that originally, the small Uzumaki boy never saw past this day. Naruto then notices that he was being held by someone, when he looked closely, he could see that the lady holding him was most likely the boy's mother. Naruto knew that the warring clans period was full of strife and hardships nevertheless, the sight of a mother, dead over her son's body did nothing but hammer this point home. Naruto then tried to pry away the hand of the mother that was holding him almost painfully in embrace. Judging by the stiffness due to rigor mortis he adjudged the time of death to be about a little more than half a day. Soon, with some effort he makes it onto his feet. Before he moved to start his new mission, Naruto tried to connect with Kurama. "Hey Kurama, you there?" He heard his lifelong friend give a rumbling growl as a response. Naruto felt relieved that Kurama too made it safely.
Naruto wanted to find Hinata first, but he had a gut feeling that their meeting would happen in due time. "Naruto, the Shinigami explained everything to me" said Kurama. Through their mental link, Naruto could feel the weariness in Kurama. He asked, "Hey Kurama are you alright? I can sense that you are very restless and in pain". "Yeah Kit, since I am a being of chakra, my older consciousness was superimposed on to my past self. It's not a joy ride I can tell you. My emotions are all over the place" said Kurama. In concern Naruto asked, "How can I help?" to which Kurama replied, "Nothing Kit, I'm in a cave near the sea on the north western part of Kumo. I do not sense anyone around me for miles. Keep the link open, I will be taking a long nap". Even as Naruto gave a mental nod, he could feel Kurama slipping into unconsciousness.
Naruto's focus came back to the world around him. He gave a weary sigh and decided to at least bury the woman who was trying to protect him even through her own death. It was not easy, his mobility, strength and chakra stamina had reduced greatly. He first had to take stock of his abilities. He tried sending chakra through his coils. To his relief, even though the kid was only three years old, his chakra network was active. Naruto found that his own spiritual energy from his timeline was completely at his disposal, however, since his physical energy was minuscule comparatively, his total chakra capacity was drastically reduced. Currently, he roughly had high chunin level chakra. He could feel the chakra in his body, it was all him. There was not a wisp of chakra from the boy. The Shinigami had done a good job with housing his essence, soul and chakra into this body. He didn't feel as if he was trapped in this body. It felt good to have two arms of his own. Even though Tsunade Baa-chan did a splendid job, deep down in his mind he knew that it was not a part of him. It was as if the body was his own. When he thought this, he gave a shake of his head and thought "It is time that I think this body as my own".
Naruto flooded his body with chakra to see how much he had. It seemed that his sage of six paths chakra and the seed chakra from all the tailed beasts had truly melded with his own chakra. It seemed that the combination of his own formidably large and potent chakra, the sage of six path's chakra and the seed chakra was stable, more so than how it was in his own timeline. Due to this, Naruto had a much denser and potent than normal chakra now. Once he focused, he realized that he could sense for at least a decent number of miles all around him. Currently, he couldn't sense anyone nearby. However, through his negative emotion sensing, he could feel the uneasiness of those who were of this era. There was a general sense of overwhelming fear and unrest. This, rather than making him uneasy, made him remember his purpose. He knew that in his second lease of life, he needed to be calm and think out his actions as he needs to correct a lot of bad decisions without generating more negative impact.
He continued with his self-assessment. He could feel that somehow, he retained his muscle memories. However, to regain his speed, reflexes and power he needed to train. He went through his mental repertoire of jutsu and was satisfied to see that he could remember all of them even if he couldn't use some of them right now. He then went over the basic chakra control exercises to look for his control. He was surprised as he easily had mid to high chunin level chakra control. He next saw if could use all of his nature transformations. He first started with wind. It was easy for him to split a piece of parchment into two. Next he concentrated on the two pieces and made one crumble into dust and the other to burn to ashes. He then took a piece of compacted clay from the floor that must have been blasted inside during the attack. He then passed his water chakra through it. The clump of clay immediately became mud. Lastly, he took another piece of parchment and channeled lightening chakra through it and watched it crinkle and slightly catch fire. He had a satisfied smile on his face as his nature transformations were strong enough to work on parchment and clay rather than chakra conductive paper. It meant that going forward, he could rely on the strength of his ninjutsu when he was fully trained to stand up against the likes of Hashirama-jiji and Madara-teme.
When he turned back to the dead woman, he was saddened once again. He augmented his strength using chakra and carried the body in a reverse fireman's lift. Because of his height or lack thereof, the lady's feet were dragging behind him. Naruto then moved the lady's body to a relatively clean place on the floor that was not touched by fire or buried in rubble. Naruto then looked around for information to identify when and where he was with respective to the timeline and his location. The house was almost destroyed. Most of the furniture was placed against the door in the hopes of delaying the attackers. It looked like it was a doomed approach as the furniture was almost in splinters. As Naruto moved onto the next room, he saw a red headed man on the floor with a beautiful but simplistic katana by his side. "Looked like he was blocking the door to the next room" deduced Naruto. When inside the next room, Naruto saw a portly looking man slumped over his cushy chair with his throat slit. The man's expensive kimono was drenched in his blood. His face had a fearful expression on it.
On the man's desk were many documents. It looked as if someone had rifled through it to look for important documents. Naruto quickly went through the documents with efficiency born from doing never ending paperwork and mission reports. After his search Naruto thought "As per these documents this is the 121st year of the warring clans' period. That means I landed roughly 27 years prior to the formation of Konoha".
From what he had learnt from Hagoromo-jiji, it was Hagoromo-jiji who had awakened chakra in humans using Banbutsu Sozo no jutsu. Utilizing his Rinnegan, the sage of six paths had forcibly opened chakra pathways so that the spiritual energy can be combined with the physical energy to create chakra. It took roughly close to a thousand years for chakra to stabilize in the elemental nations.
Naruto had also known that on top of the people whose chakra was activated, the original line of Otsutsuki Kaguya had continued. Kaguya's formidable physical energy was split equally between Otsutsuki Hagoromo and Hamura with Hamura gaining the latent potential for Shikotsumyaku. In terms of spiritual energy, Hagoromo-jiji had gained the Sharingan where as Hamura gained the Byakugan.
The sage of six paths himself sired two children, Indra and Ashura, who were the forefathers of the Uchiha and Senju clans. Even though Indra had gained his father's Sharingan, he didn't have his father's physical energy. Because of this, Indra's descendants were not strong enough to fully utilize their birth right. Indra's descendants couldn't support the Sharingan because of their reduced physical energy, this led their Sharingan to degenerate with use especially in their Mangekyou or awakened state. The only way the descendants of Indra to fully utilize the Sharingan was to merge their awakened eyes with a close kin to stop its degeneration.
Ashura was known as the forefather of the Senju clan. What was not commonly known was that Ashura was also the forefather of the Uzumaki clan. Ashura had two offspring further splitting his powers, one gained the raw physical capabilities of Ashura with excellent chakra control and the other gained Ashura's spiritual prowess. The eldest son created the Senju clan and the younger created the Uzumaki clan. The only way for the Rinne Sharingan, which had the combined power of the Sharingan and the Rinnegan, to awaken was if there were a union between the Uchiha, Senju, Uzumaki lines and the chakra of all the tailed beasts. The union of the Uchiha and the Senju will only evolve the Sharingan to the Rinnegan with the ability to use either one at a time.
Otsutsuki Hamura also had two offspring. The eldest son had gained the Byakugan and the youngest apparently hadn't gained anything. But Naruto knew different. He knew that apparently since the younger son didn't gain anything from Hamura, he adopted the name of his grandmother as his clan name and departed from the Hamura household when he was still a child. What the younger son did not know was that the Shikotsumyaku was a bloodline that was recessive. After many years, the older son created the Hyuga clan and the younger son created the Kaguya clan. Thus, Otsutsuki Kaguya had five bloodlines originating from her. She was the progenitor of the Uzumaki, Senju, Uchiha, Hyuga and Kaguya clans.
In his own timeline, Naruto knew that both he and Sasuke had obtained power from the sage of six paths. The sage using Banbutsu Sozo no jutsu had altered Naruto's and Sasuke's very DNA to gift them his own power. However, at the time, Hagoromo had sensed the negative intention of Sasuke and had gifted him only a part of his power by withholding most of his spiritual power. Since Sasuke had already strengthened his Sharingan by merging his own with that of his brother, this led to the formation of a mutated version of the Rinne Sharingan that could use the powers of both the Sharingan and the Rinnegan in a limited form unlike the true Rinne Sharingan. Once again, since Sasuke lacked most of the spiritual force, only one of his eyes were transformed. Additionally, since Sasuke was not a sage himself, his sage chakra had mostly dispersed with only a fraction remaining within him due to his Rinnegan.
At the same time, since Hagoromo-jiji had seen the purity of Naruto's heart, had gifted him his own physical and spiritual powers. Thus, through the blessings of the sage of six paths and the Biju, Naruto within him had the power of the Uzumaki, Senju and the seed chakra of all tailed beasts. Since he was a sage, Naruto had subconsciously merged the sage of six path's chakra and the seed chakra from the tailed beast into his own formidable chakra. He knew that this was the reason why in his prime after the fourth war, his chakra was much denser even when compared to behemoths like Hashirama-jiji and Madara-teme, it was even comparable to the tailed beasts themselves. However, all this was moot point since he had to retrain his physical energy to utilize his full powers.
"Boy I sure went on a tangent there!" thought Naruto. He needed to identify the time he was presently in. From what he had known of history, after the initial millennium since Kaguya was sealed, many clans were established, and chakra had spread throughout the elemental nations. Once there was a form of stability in terms of chakra and jutsu among the masses, conflicts started becoming frequent leading to a general sense of unrest among people. Events started coming to a head when the Daimyos of Earth and Wind countries were assassinated by a coalition of their respective power-hungry courts so that a Shogun could be elected. The leader of the coup, a powerful retainer to the ex-Daimyo of Earth, bribed the court of the Wind Daimyo to overthrow their Daimyo. He intended to unify the Earth and Wind nations to strong arm the other nations into submitting to his rule. His ambition was to become the first emperor of the elemental nations. Though his ambitions could potentially unite the elemental nations, his greed led to his downfall.
The warring clans' era truly started about 121 years ago when the self-proclaimed Shogun of the Wind and Earth coalition fought with the then Daimyo of the Fire country. The Fire country Daimyo had retained both the Senju and Uchiha clans to fight against the forces of Earth and Wind. The war was fought by shinobi clans of each respective nation. The initial war was relatively short but immensely brutal. Clans native to both Wind and Earth nations faced severe losses to their numbers due to their fight against the Senju and Uchiha. This led to them revolting against the Shogun and killing him when the Shogun had berated them for their loss and disrespected their dead. However, the Senju and Uchiha did not fair any better. Though they didn't loose as many in numbers, there rose a dislike between the clans due to their differing values and clan policies.
During the conflict between the Shogun and the Fire Daimyo, many of the smaller nations lying in between them suffered as their lands served as the battle ground. Seeking an opportunity to destabilize the fire nation who were the winners of the short war, the Daimyos of the smaller nations between Earth, Wind and Fire bribed one of the senior court officials of the Fire Daimyo. With the help of their mole, the smaller nations marginalized the contribution of the Uchiha clan in the war effort. Thus, when the clans were compensated by the Fire Daimyo for their efforts, the Uchiha clan felt insulted as their efforts were marginalized while the Senju's were extolled and was offered a permanent retainer for their services. This greatly widened the rift that existed between the two clans. Meanwhile, the Daimyo's of the Water and Lightening nations were showing aggression towards the recently weakened Fire nation. Their respective thoughts were to conquer the Fire nation to subsequently gaining a strong foothold on the mainland. Both Wind and Earth were seen as easy pickings as they were currently destabilized.
Naruto was not sure of what happened next in history. Someone had assassinated the Fire Daimyo and mobilized multiple clans to take over the Fire nation. There were no clear indications as to who was allied and who were enemies. Many Daimyos, noble families and even a few shinobi clans themselves conscripted different clans to fight against each other. With this, the building tension and overwhelming fear among the people came to a boiling point. From then on, the warring clans' era had truly started.
This year had marked the 121st year of the ongoing war. Many clans rose and fell. In many battles heroes and demons were born. A few years prior, the family of the Fire Daimyo, through their retainers the Senju had finally brokered an alliance with the Water Daimyo. The essence of the alliance was that the sister clan to the Senju's, the Uzumaki, would in part become retainers to the Daimyo of the water nation. The proposal was accepted by the Water Daimyo as they did not have many strong shinobi clans within their lands, and it was getting progressively more expensive to conscript clans that were not settled in Water nation. The proposal gave the Uzumaki clan the right to the islands between Fire country and Water country. The Uzumaki clan head had asked a part of his clan to move to the islands and make them habitable and self-sufficient. These men and women were to be at the beck and call of the Water Daimyo as retainers.
From what he had read from the dead man's journal, Naruto deduced that the then head of the Uzumaki clan had two sons. As a sign of good faith, the Uzumaki clan head had sent his youngest son as the personal retainer for the eldest son of the Daimyo. Naruto then realized that the man whose journal he was reading was the eldest son of the Water Daimyo. When he looked for more information on the youngest son of the Uzumaki clan head, he found a document that detailed the family tree of the Uzumaki clan that was shared with the Water Daimyo in good faith. With the family tree Naruto then concluded that he was the son of Uzumaki Haruto and Uzumaki Airi. Haruto was the youngest son of the current Uzumaki clan head and by a quirk of fate his son was named Naruto. The child was named Naruto partly in honor of the boy's father and partly in honor of the powerful maelstrom that protects the island belonging to the Uzumaki.
Thus, Naruto Uzumaki came to know his own history in this timeline. His small body now had to rest after all that he had done since waking up. Truth be told his own emotions were all over the place just like Kurama, especially after recovering his Dad's body from the entrance to the portly man's room. Naruto had placed both his parents side by side and knelt in front of their bodies to pay his respects. He may not have known them, but he knew from his heart that he was loved dearly by them. Naruto then moved to a relatively clean and sheltered room and decided to sleep. He could sense that no one were moving towards the little hamlet. Additionally, the entire hamlet was stripped bare by the attacking force. There was nothing here that was worth the time of scavengers.
The only valuable item left in the village was his father's katana. Currently the katana hung on Naruto's back on a makeshift strap he had made. Uzumaki Haruto's katana was a work of art. The katana was a thing of beauty and simplicity. The blade itself was razor sharp and the hamon was a beautiful wave pattern. It was a Shirasaya sharp sword. The sheath and the handle were made from the highest quality wood and was the exact shade of the trademark red hair of the Uzumaki clan. From his interactions with Iron country in his own timeline, though he was not a master, Naruto was quite learned in the art of sword play and swordsmithing. From what he could tell, the blade was made of the highest quality chakra conducting metal and masa satetsu. Naruto decided to keep the katana as a memento to remember his father by. He was initially surprised that the sword was left behind but then deduced that the person to defeat his father must have been a swordsman who respected his father's prowess with the blade even if he was bested and did not want to separate the blade from its wielder. Naruto removed the katana from his back and placed it by his side and went to sleep.
The next day, Naruto woke up early. He tried to clean himself as best as he could. Today he wanted to bury his parent of this life with honor. "I better start digging the graves" thought Naruto. He wanted to move on from this place in search of the main branch of the Uzumaki clan. "For my plan to work I have to get close to Hashirama-jiji. The beast way to do that would be through the main branch of the Uzumaki clan" said Naruto to himself. The bulk of Naruto's knowledge of the past was based on the Senju, Uchiha and Uzumaki clans. He knew that for the first phase of his plans to take off, he needed to be in the Fire country. Naruto dug two graves side by side and placed his parents in them. He then covered the grave and placed a headstone. With a kunai he began writing, "Here lies Uzumaki Haruto and Uzumaki Airi, together in life and together in death. May their souls rest in peace in the pure world".
Naruto then knelt in front of the graves with his dad's katana by his side and thought, "We may not have known each other tou-chan, kaa-chan, and I know that I am not your son, but I hope I have your blessings to call you that. I hope the three of you are united in the pure world. I promise to bring honor to your family and to always cherish you along with my own parents. I promise on your grave that your sacrifices will not be in vain. If there is such a thing as peace, I will find it and I will nurture it so that the next generation may not face what we have faced. Goodbye."
As Naruto finished his small prayer, he felt twelve chakra signatures moving his way. Through his negative emotion sensing he could clearly feel that the prevalent emotion among the group was of intense sadness and an acute sense of loss. Through the feel of their chakra, Naruto recognized that the approaching company was most likely Uzumaki shinobi. He thought, "Well, it looks like I get to start my plan immediately. They saved me the trouble finding them". Naruto continued to kneel in front of the graves with his head bent hoping to not arouse suspicion by showing that he could detect them. Soon he heard the thuds of feet behind him. He slowly rose gripping his katana and turned to face his brethren, like a mighty phoenix rising from the ashes, Naruto left the ashes of his own doomed world to ensure that this one doesn't fall.
To be continued.