The next morning, Naruto sat meditating in the training hall. He hadn't made much progress with the Sage training, but that didn't stop him from trying. No matter how long it took, he was determined to get the hang of it before going back to the past.

The door to the hall slid open, and Naruto's concentration wavered at exactly the wrong time. His arms, legs, and face puffed up at an alarming rate.

"Ahhh! Help!" he shrieked, waving his webbed hands.

"Naruto!"

Someone hit him in the back, hard, making him fall forward and faceplant into the mat. The hand rested on his back and… felt like it was pulling all the energy out of him?

Naruto sat up and saw that Nagato's arm was turning into stone. He shrieked again.

"Relax, it's alright," Nagato said. He coated his other hand in sharp-looking chakra and cut his arm off before the energy could spread to the rest of his body. The arm fell to the floor and crumbled. Shortly after that, Nagato rolled his shoulder a few times and twitched, and a new hand appeared from his sleeve. He flexed it experimentally and Naruto screeched a third time.

"That energy is impressive, even now," Nagato mused.

"W-what are you, anyway?" Naruto accused, pointing at him. Hearing about Nagato's abilities didn't quite measure up to seeing them in action.

Nagato patted him on the head with his weird new hand. "I didn't know you were doing Sage training already. It's dangerous to try it by yourself, you know. Not even Jiraiya-sensei mastered it completely. Though, your older self did, so I shouldn't be surprised." He glanced at the floor suddenly. "What is that?"

Naruto looked down and saw a small black creature near his foot. It looked like a mouse, except it was completely black and looked oddly two-dimensional. It looked sort of like…

"Oh! It is one of Sai's ink animal things!" Naruto took the scroll Sai had given him out of his tool pouch. "I guess I'm supposed to hold this thing out?"

He unrolled the scroll and held it toward the mouse. It scurried onto the paper and flattened out into a message.

"What is this?" Nagato asked, looking at the scroll.

"It's my friend, Sai. He has the ability to send messages to people like this. He said it would find me as long as I kept this scroll with me." Naruto bent over the scroll and started to read it.

Naruto,

The idiot older you has escaped, and he convinced everyone to let him fight in the war. He has been asking about you incessantly, so I told him about the scroll I gave you. I hope you still have it.

Anyway, he said he wanted to write to you, so expect another message shortly after this one.

Sai

Naruto drew in a sharp breath. A message… from his older self? He caught motion out of the corner of his eye and saw another ink mouse coming toward him. He held the scroll out to it with shaking hands, and the ink flattened itself out on the paper.

He almost felt too nervous to read the message. He still knew almost nothing about his older self, after all. What would he be like? What would he say? Naruto took a deep breath and looked down at it. He felt an odd twinge at the sight of his own sprawling handwriting on the paper, alternated with neat, perfect lines from Sai's hand.

'Um… what do I write?'

'I don't know. This was your idea, dickless.'

'Uh... hey little bro, how's it going 'ttebayo?'

'You know he can't answer us back, right?'

'Shut up! I'm trying to think of what to say. This is really strange.'

(There were several unintelligible, crossed out lines.)

'Hey, little bro. I've heard that when you were brought here, it was in some kind of weird body that keeps Madara from trying to use you for his stupid moon plan. I'm glad about that. But some other people don't feel that way. They want to try to argue that just because the enemy brought you here, you must be on their side. I know, it sounds really dumb, right? If I know you as well as I think I do, you're trying to think of a way right now to come and help out the war. I'll be waiting for you. Give 'em hell!

#1 Hokage Candidate, Uzumaki Naruto

P.S. that's my special signature. You're not allowed to use it until you get back to your own time, sorry.'

By the time he finished the message, Naruto was grinning so widely that his face started to hurt, but he didn't care. He hurriedly wiped away the tears that had somehow crept into his eyes, and started laughing.

"Well?" Nagato said with a smile.

"He said… he's waiting for me to come fight in the war!" Naruto gave Nagato a thumbs-up and laughed again. His older self wasn't like the others at all. He seemed awesome.

"It won't be long now. Konan is meeting with civilian leaders to address their specific needs. They don't know about us, but the threat Madara poses is understood enough for everyone to…" Nagato trailed off, frowning suddenly. He paused like he was trying to hear something.

"What's wrong?"

Nagato stood abruptly and ran to the door. Naruto was caught off guard by the sudden exit, but he quickly collected his things and followed. Naruto saw Itachi come running from a side hall and match Nagato's stride.

"Intruders," Nagato said in a clipped voice. "At the tower. They got up here so quickly, they must have known exactly where they were going."

"If this place is their target, it must be Madara, or Orochimaru."

"Someone is on the outside, heading up here. But it doesn't feel like either of them. I can feel…" Nagato stopped suddenly. "No. No, they wouldn't dare." Nagato's face pulled into an ugly snarl that didn't suit him. He took off again, and Naruto pushed himself to run as fast as he could.

They reached the end of the hall and the balcony in almost no time, and Naruto arrived shortly after, bursting into the falling rain with a kunai already in his hand, looking around wildly for the danger.

Naruto's eyes widened and he stared at the scene in front of him, frozen in place as effectively as his companions were.

There was a tall, orange-haired man standing at the edge of the balcony. In front of him was a kid Naruto didn't recognize, one with scruffy brown hair and an even scruffier face. He thought they looked like a girl, and only a couple years younger than him, but both were hard to tell. Everyone was getting drenched in the rain.

"Let me go!" the girl tried to twist away, but the man had a grip on her shoulder. Then he drew a kunai, and she stood very still.

"Do something!" the orange-haired man said unexpectedly. He was looking at Nagato. "He's got me in some kind of—I can't control my movements! Nagato!"

Nagato didn't seem to take in the words. He was frozen, staring.

"Yahiko?" Naruto guessed. Nobody answered him.

"We were summoned back somehow," Yahiko said. "I can tell whoever did this is looking to get to you. You have to do something. I can't…"

Yahiko grimaced, and the girl flinched as his hand shook.

But then his face smoothed. He looked at Nagato with a cool-eyed gaze. "I heard you were no longer in the business of weighing lives."

The voice coming out was no longer Yahiko's. It sounded like…

"Orochimaru?" Naruto growled. He was still standing at the ready, tense. He glanced from Yahiko to Nagato.

"Personally, I doubt that. But I'm not here to argue the point," Orochimaru said. "It's fair to assume you still care for the people of this village. Tobi thinks we simply don't have the resources to fight the war and pose enough threat to Ame. But I don't think that's necessary. After all, if we're not weighing lives now, shouldn't one be plenty?"

Itachi stepped forward but someone dropped down right into his path and slashed at him with a short sword, forcing Itachi to block the strike with a kunai.

"Itachi!" Naruto shouted.

"Sorry about this, cousin," the newcomer said, his eyes blazing Sharingan red. "Guess you're gonna have to deal with my company for a little bit."

"Shisui," Itachi breathed, his own eyes activated as they pushed against each other.

"This is not the time to be getting sentimental. These guys want something. They're after Sasuke, as well. He's another one they plan to use if this little stunt doesn't work."

"Sasuke is safe," Itachi said quietly. He said it like a mantra.

"There's more at stake here than his physical well-being, bro." Shisui shook his head, even as the rest of his body pushed the blade closer to Itachi. "Word is little Sasuke-chan is about two steps from the deep end, and I'm not sure what these guys are planning is going to help."

"What do you mean?"

"The clan." Shisui scowled. "That creepy snake-loving bastard somehow got his hands on almost all of them. And I don't think he intends to use them to give Sasuke a happy family reunion." The balance of colors in his eyes started to shift into a different pattern, melding into the shape of his Mangekyou. "He'll do whatever it takes to get the truth out of you about the Rinnegan, whether you want to cooperate or not."

He pushed Itachi back. There was a clash of metal on metal.

Meanwhile, Naruto was looking between Nagato in front of him, and Yahiko near the edge of the balcony. Everything seemed to have gone still except for the falling rain.

"Why're you just standing there?" The question bubbled up in Naruto's chest until it spilled over. "If you're not gonna do anything, I will."

Orochimaru made Yahiko tilt his head and smile. "What I'm doing is no different from what he did in the past. That's why."

Anger at Orochimaru pulsed through Naruto, making him clench his fists. "Taking the worst thing that ever happened to them, and throwing it back in their faces—that is beyond low," he growled, stepping up beside Nagato. The redhead looked down at him quickly, seeming to wake a little from the paralysis that had come over him.

"Naruto—" he started, but Naruto started charging toward Orochimaru-Yahiko, letting out a long battle cry.

"Not so fast," Orochimaru's voice hissed from the orange-haired man. He held the edge of the kunai back up to the child's throat. "Would you throw someone's life away so easily? I'm surprised at you, Naruto-kun."

Naruto stopped in his tracks, grimacing, frustrated. "You don't even care about the Rinnegan, so why would you go this far? Why are you even helping that guy, when you know what he is trying to do?"

"Volunteering to be next? This isn't something that concerns you." Orochimaru looked up at Nagato. "What will it be, then? It isn't as though you need them anymore. Surely that information isn't worth—"

"Don't you dare." Konan materialized in the air above them. She looked eerie, half-formed.

"Konan!"

"Konan-nee!"

Yahiko-Orochimaru hissed and made to slice the girl's throat, but the knife only cut into paper. There was a split second when his borrowed eyes widened, before a powerful explosion tore through the small space between them. A wave of light and sound flung sharp raindrops into Nagato and Naruto's faces, and they threw their hands up reflexively. The balcony under their feet gave a crack that was nearly loud as the explosion itself.

There were too many sensations to take in at once in that moment. Everything came to a crawl. Naruto felt the skin on his arms burning and peeling away. Turning his face away from the blast, he could see Itachi and Shisui. A large, ghostly skeletal figure hovered around Itachi, and Shisui jumped back, his eyes burning in their sockets with black flame. All sounds became muffled, save for a ringing in his ears. Naruto felt a terrible pain in the back of his head, and he only vaguely noticed the balcony crumble and shift under his feet. He felt detached from himself, like in a dream.

Turning his eyes upward again, he saw Nagato yelling something, with his hand extended out toward him. Naruto wanted to reach out and take his hand, but it was as if the strings connecting his mind to his body had been cut. He couldn't move. He realized he was falling, but it didn't feel real somehow.

The only thing that stood out from the fuzziness was a feeling like Orochimaru's sharp yellow eyes staring through him.

Now what? was all he had time to think before blacking out.

Naruto didn't think he had been unconscious long. To his mind, it felt like it had only been a second since he was beside everyone else, fighting against Orochimaru.

But for some reason, his body felt so heavy, like he had been sleeping for years, or worked his muscles to their limits in a fight. It was difficult to breathe. The air he pulled in tickled his lungs, and Naruto fought the urge to cough.

He opened his eyes blearily. No wonder—there was some kind of breathing mask over his nose and mouth. Naruto tried to reach up and take it off, but his arms still weren't cooperating. He looked up and around, taking in the surroundings.

It looked like he was back in the hospital again. Naruto's heart sank. Again, he'd failed to help when it really mattered. What happened? Where were Itachi and Nagato, and Konan? Were they able to beat Orochimaru?

He moved his eyes to the side, trying to see more of the room, but blinked in surprise when he saw a pair of light green eyes staring at him.

Sakura-chan! he wanted to shout, but it came out as more of a dry croak. "Sak…"

Sakura screamed, and there was a loud clatter as her chair fell to the floor. Her voice seemed weirdly high-pitched.

"T-Tsunade-sama!" she shouted, turning and running to the door, sandals slapping against the linoleum. She made it to the door and out into the hall before Naruto realized what exactly was wrong with this scenario.

Sakura-chan! he tried again, but his voice didn't work any better than before.

Everything was gradually becoming fuzzy and distorted again. Naruto struggled to stay awake—with a great effort, he barely managed to raise one of his hands and curl it around the bed's railing. But it was no use. His consciousness was pulled back out by some irresistible force.

"…Naruto, can you hear me?"

Naruto blinked in the rain; his eyes were already open when he came to. Nagato and Konan were hovering over him. Konan's hair was unkempt, the paper flower she usually kept in it drooping, and her face was scuffed. She was singed, but alive. She held the sobbing girl protectively in her arms.

"I went back to my time!" Naruto gasped, jolting up. He looked around wildly and saw that half the balcony was missing. Someone must have caught him while he was unconscious. The clash between the two different realties was disorienting.

"What?" Nagato's one visible eye widened. "Are you sure, Naruto? What did you see?"

"I saw Sakura-chan… I was in the hospital—"

Naruto didn't get the chance to finish. The Edo Tensei body of Yahiko finished re-forming from pieces scattered by the explosion. Naruto caught sight of the movement and shouted out.

Nagato and Konan turned around quickly. Yahiko-Orochimaru threw a kunai at Nagato's head, but Nagato dodged and grabbed his best friend's arms, stilling his advance. Strong cables shot out of Nagato's sleeves and wound tightly around the Edo Tensei body. At the same time, Konan's slips of paper rushed around fiercely and lay themselves flat all over him like scales, leaving only the face visible. The Reanimation was effectively trapped in place.

"You surprised me," Orochimaru's voice came chuckling from Yahiko's mouth, the expression looking all wrong on his features. "To think you had the nerve to destroy someone you cherish so deeply. It seems even now I should be careful not to underestimate Akatsuki."

Nagato and Konan glared, a cold, sinister fury radiating off them both. As Naruto looked up at their backs, he was able for the first time to appreciate—really appreciate—that they were S-class.

They'd been so nice to him, it was hard from the very beginning to think of them as former enemies. But the sense of power and anger they could give off without any effort was chilling. Naruto was glad they were on his side now.

"I'm not the same as I was back then," Konan said coolly. "I'd rather die than see our people used as a bargaining chip again. We won't forget this, Orochimaru."

"Of course," Orochimaru said, and his gaze flickered past Nagato and Konan to Naruto. They made eye contact, and Orochimaru-Yahiko gave a knowing, self-satisfied smirk.

Nagato put a hand on the Edo Tensei's chest and pulled back with a shimmery, ghostly-looking form attached. Even as Yahiko's eyes started to shift from white to brown, they remained fixed on Naruto.

That smirk unsettled him as much as it pissed him off. It wasn't the look of someone who had just lost the fight.

"What did you do?" Naruto demanded, pushing himself up from the stonework and stepping between Nagato and Konan. "You know what happened, don't you? Tell me how I can get back home, you bastard!" He reached out to grab Orochimaru-Yahiko by the collar, but Konan laid a hand on his arm.

"He's already gone," she said heavily.

The Edo Tensei was starting to crumble as Nagato pulled Yahiko's soul out of the summon body. But in the brief moment right before it withered away completely, Yahiko was back in control of himself again.

"I knew you could do it," he rumbled slowly. Nagato and Konan didn't say anything. Or maybe they couldn't.

"Hey, don't make faces like that." Yahiko flashed a pale grin. "You two will have to be tougher than this if you want to win a war against some dead-raising psychos. I can't look out for you anymore, you know."

"We—" Nagato started, struggle evident in his voice, "I'm sor—"

"If you think there's something you have to feel guilty for, forget it," Yahiko cut in impatiently. "Damn, it would be just like you to waste your resurrection moping about old things."

"Yahiko," Konan said in a slightly reproachful tone, but she was smiling through the tears gleaming in her eyes.

"Just don't be in a rush to follow after me, alright?" Yahiko added in a more serious tone. "Take care of yourselves. We'll all be home together again before you know it."

"And Jiraiya-sensei will be there, too," Konan said softly.

A silence fell, heavy and sad. The three of them stood huddled together while Yahiko slowly crumbled and faded away. Yahiko's features peeled off and vanished, leaving behind the corpse of a nameless man; probably someone who had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nagato and Konan released their respective binding jutsus and stood there staring at the corpse left behind by the Edo Tensei. Naruto stepped in between them to look.

"What is going on?" Naruto asked in a low voice, face pulling a disgusted look. "This isn't Yahiko?" it was half question, half statement.

"…No," Nagato said after a while. "The Edo Tensei requires a body to resurrect the deceased person in. The soul is bound to the body with the summoning seal. Breaking the soul's bond with the body seems to be the best way to stop the jutsu."

"Oh, right. That's like with me." At least Naruto knew he wasn't occupying someone else's corpse. That would have made his situation even more disturbing.

Nagato looked to the side and Naruto followed his gaze to Itachi, walking toward them. The red skeletal-looking entity slowly faded away.

"Itachi! What happened to that—that other guy?" Naruto blurted.

"I tried to seal Shisui, but Orochimaru caught on to what I was doing and called him back," Itachi said, bending to pick up the kunai that Yahiko-Orochimaru had thrown at Nagato. It had a paper tag attached to it. "It's no wonder, since I used the same method of sealing on Orochimaru before, and he knew what would happen."

"Part of why he came here must have been to bring us back under control," Nagato said, noticing the kunai Itachi held.

"Aa. He must have known there was no way to win through sheer force, so he hoped to create an opening through emotional manipulation. Shisui tried to get me with one as well, though the aim was sloppy. Orochimaru's control seemed to waver for a moment."

"Itachi," Naruto said urgently. "That genjutsu you put on me—is there any way it would make my soul or whatever leave this body and go back to my real one, in the past?"

"I do not think so. Why?" Itachi tilted his head to the side slightly. The others also turned around to look at him in curiosity and concern.

Naruto shook his head. "I don't know. Something… something weird happened during that explosion. I could feel Orochimaru, but then I suddenly couldn't move. At first I thought he had tried to take over me, and your genjutsu stopped him—like you said it would, you know? But then I passed out and woke up again in the past! I was in my real body, I was in the hospital… I saw Sakura-chan—she was my age again."

Naruto's eyes widened as it sunk in more and more. Up until now, he hadn't really given a lot of thought as to what things were like back at home. He had just sort of assumed everything would be as it was when he left. That no time would have passed once he finally made it back. But that didn't seem to be the case.

"Are you sure that's what really happened?" Konan asked. "It could have been an illusion, or…"

"No, whatever it was, it wasn't an illusion," Nagato interjected. "I saw. His life energy nearly disappeared. The damage his body sustained from the blast should not have been enough to cause it, either."

Remembering, Naruto looked at his arms. They showed no sign of burns from the explosion, but the damage he'd felt before definitely wasn't enough to explain his soul leaving his body. He'd already endured a lot more without that happening.

"It was Orochimaru's fault," Naruto said with conviction. He didn't have any proof beyond gut instinct, but it was enough. "I have no idea how it could have been him, but… I just know it was."

"It makes as much sense as any other possibility," Konan said. "He is always sneaking around, doing something behind the scenes no one else knows about."

"What should we do now?" Itachi asked quietly. "Naruto, you said you woke up in the hospital?"

Naruto slowly nodded. "Yeah. And Sakura-chan was there, but she acted shocked I was awake. She ran to go get Tsunade-baachan."

"Then it seems time is still flowing there while you are here."

Naruto frowned. "That means… they're probably worried about me. And if I'm not there, does that mean I've already started changing stuff in the past, without meaning to? What am I supposed to be doing in my time right now?" he asked Itachi. "Will it mess things up if I'm just laying around in the hospital?"

"From what you've told me, I believe you're from around the time Sasuke leaves Konoha to join Orochimaru. You and a group of other genin go after him, but in the end you fail. Did you see Sasuke there?"

"No, but—that could've been a coincidence! There might still be enough time to…"

To what?

Just because he knew what was going to happen, did that mean he'd be able to stop it?

No. The 'how' didn't matter. He would stop it. He had to.

"Have you changed your mind about going back later?" Nagato asked. "We can try sending you back now, if you want. If I'm sealed, the contract should be nullified."

"I…" Naruto was at a loss.

It wouldn't feel right to leave this time now, before he had the chance to meet his older self or help out in the war. But every minute spent here increased the chance it was too late to stop Sasuke in his own time. Naruto witnessed first-hand where that path led for his best friend.

If it was only his life at stake… but that was what made him hesitate. Could he essentially sacrifice what remained of Nagato's life, especially after hearing Yahiko tell him to keep living while he could?

"Think carefully about it," Itachi said. "Right now, you are worried about what you 'should' be doing in your time. But the world doesn't really work that way. In life, there are no right or wrong answers, just different choices. Nothing you do is more or less valid than what the Naruto of this time has done. It is only different. Don't think that failing to follow the same path will inevitably lead to disaster."

Naruto was still unsure. This wasn't the kind of choice he wanted to have to make.

"Think about it this way, then. You said you were sure it was Orochimaru's fault it happened, right?"

"Yeah?" Naruto said hesitantly.

"Then you should be all the more careful about basing your most important decisions off it."

Silence fell for a moment. Naruto was seriously getting a headache from trying to think about all the 'what-ifs' at once. This was why he normally just acted on gut instinct—things usually came out okay, and it was a lot simpler.

"Let's just get in out of the rain for now," Konan said softly, looking at the girl who was still staring at all of them with wide eyes. She extended a hand and paper sheets wrapped around the body left behind by the Edo Tensei. Naruto felt slightly ill again at the sight of the nameless victim of Orochimaru's jutsu.

He was sure it had been Orochimaru, yes… what else could that feeling mean? But that still left the question of why.