Where am I? Naruto blinked, his eyes sore and aching. He rubbed his eyes, only to earn him a few winces from the tender skin of his sockets, his eyes not opening at all. Am I blind? He wondered absently, turning his head, tuning his ears out to the sounds around him. There was nothing to hear either.

And then he heard it.

"NARUTO!"

It all came back to him at once, and his eyes flashed open in alarm, ignoring the head-splitting pain from his eyes.

What was he doing here? He was fighting Kaguya nearly a second ago, along with the rest of Team Seven beside him. After he had pulled that amazing Sexy Jutsu, his momentary happiness had been obstructed by Kaguya body slamming into Naruto from behind and placing her hand on his forehead, her red sharingan spinning to life. His eyes had turned dull and heavy, and the last thing he had heard were collective screams from Sakura, Kakashi, and Sasuke.

"NARUTO!" Their voices rang in head collectively as one.

What the F was going on? Where was he?!

He looked around. In front of him there were large sand dunes rising up and into the sky like sloping mountains of pure gold. He pushed through the sand, to try to feel it, to make sure it was real.

Dammit, he wasn't supposed to be here. Where had Kaguya sent him?

Was it a dream?

"Sakura! Sasuke! Kakashi-Sensei!" Naruto shouted. "KAGUYA!" he roared.

He plopped himself back on the ground, trying to make sense of everything around him.

He felt weird… The scenery, he could see it, but it was almost like he was boxed in somehow. Like he was a spectator watching a movie.

Like a voice. Like something that speaks in your mind.

Like Kurama speaking in his mind.

Then before, with his hands and eyes… had he imagined it?

"Alright then." He growled, snapping out of his shock. "Kurama!" He called upon the tailed beast that was sealed in his stomach and appeared in the swampy background that was his mind.

Naruto swiveled to Kurama, who was looking at him expectantly. "Kurama… the dream…"

Kurama snorted. "It wasn't a dream kit."

"Then where the hell are we?!"

Kurama looked around, ignoring Naruto's little burst of outrage. "We're in a seal Naruto." Naruto looked at him in disbelief.

A seal… that made sense. The way everything looked around him made sense, he meant. Not the actual situation.

"Like the Reaper Death Seal?" Naruto questioned hesitantly.

Kit glared at him. "Not like that."

"Then we can break out, right? I'll just use my chakra and push it open."

"It's not that simple, kit. This seal… it may as well as be as strong as the Reaper Death Seal. Or stronger." Kurama growled. "I hate saying anything compared to that… But you remember the last thing that happened right?"

Naruto nodded. "Kaguya."

"Well, she's trapped us somewhere with her sharingan."

Naruto's eyes widened, his mind going through a rapid series of thoughts.

"What? How is that even possible?"

Kurama stayed silent for a few moments before speaking up again, changing tracks. Naruto understood why. Nothing Kaguya did ever made sense. Nothing Kaguya did was supposed to be even possible. But it was just the way it was.

"This doesn't look too good for us Naruto. She didn't just seal us somewhere… she sealed us in something."

Naruto said nothing.

Then it dawned on him. The way he felt like he was watching something made sense now - it must be like the way Kurama felt from Naruto's body. Kurama was right… they were locked in something.

The feeling made him nauseated.

"There must be some way." He said slowly.

"Any way." He looked up at Kurama, who was staring at him. "Kurama?"

"I don't know Naruto." His deep voice echoed throughout the mindscape.

"How far are we from home?"

Kurama's throat rumbled in thought. "The largest chakra infested city is about two thousand miles away… but it's not the Hidden Leaf Village."

Naruto growled. "Well, now that we're missing, Team Seven will send an alarm for us. There has to be at least some Shinobi from the war site that'll find us. Right Kurama?"

"Right Kurama?" Naruto echoed again, looking up at the nine-tailed fox when he had said nothing.

"There's also the 'when' Naruto."

"Whaddaya mean 'when'?"

Kurama's eyes narrowed as he looked away from Naruto. "I mean that we're not in our present time. I sense another nine-tailed fox."

Naruto's eyes widened.

"Kaguya sent us back in time."

It had taken some time for Naruto and the Kyuubi to come to terms with their surroundings: they were sealed in some type of sword, which was currently sitting in the middle of a desert with nothing near them for miles on end.

After Kurama had explained everything around them some more, Naruto had proceeded to try to do anything possible to burst out of that damn seal, even if Kurama had told him otherwise.

But the darn fox was right.

"Damn it Naruto! I tried, I tried to tell you it wouldn't work, and I tried to respect our relationship but why the hell do think bursting out would work on a Reaper-Death level seal, when even I couldn't burst out of your father's seal? HUH?" Kurama roared.

When Naruto had sunk to the ground and instead let out tears in response, the nine-tailed demon fox softened.

"Stop crying damn it. It's not like you." Kurama sighed.

"I know. I can't believe it Kurama… if we were at least sent back in time, couldn't we have not been sealed in anything? Now we're just stuck here, forever." Naruto chuckled. "I can't believe you could stand this for this many years after you were sealed into me."

"I can't believe it either." Kurama said dryly.

The fox sighed and knelt down, placing his head on top of his arms. He turned to Naruto, his eyes glazed over in thought.

"Hmm… You know how I took control over you when you were younger?" Kurama started. Naruto nodded."Well I can try to do the same thing here. The more time we continue to seep our chakra out, the easier it is to eventually break out and take over the seal."

Naruto grinned, his optimism coming back slowly. "Yeah!" He frowned a little. "But wouldn't it be easier for someone to find us? And just kinda, I dunno, fool around with the seal?"

Kurama looked at him. "Do you really think that's going to happen?"

Naruto shrugged. "Come on. Maybe it will."

He exited his mindscape and looked in silence at the desert. Kurama was right: the chances of anyone coming and finding them was close to zero. The thought of that itself was enough to send anyone into near depression…

He sighed. What he was really worried about wasn't any of that… how were Sakura and Kakashi faring? Was Sasuke protecting them? Did he ditch them? Were they ok?

He had voiced his concerns to Kurama before, but Kurama had told him not to worry. As long as they were in the past, the future could be changed back to normal- if they ever got back to where they came from in time. That was almost in 200 years or so though… at least according to what Kurama.

But Kurama's hopes weren't that high either.

He sighed again and stared at the bright blue of the sky and large sand dunes. Thank god they could see something… Naruto didn't know if he could take just lying all around in black forever. At least they had something, right?

"Kurama?" Naruto asked suddenly.

"Yeah kit?"

"We're gonna be okay."

He really hoped so.

200 years was going to be a very long time, Naruto had learned. They didn't really age in the seal… there was some type of protection against it.

He didn't really do anything in the seal… but if there was one thing Naruto learned in that seal, it was patience.

The first few decades, Naruto had spent fluctuating from one mood to another. Sometimes he would go into near depression from the loneliness he was overwhelmed with, while some days he had undergone unlimited positive enthusiasm about getting out, which had led him to try to break open the seal any way he could.

He never could.

There was a time where he had painted bomb seals on the walls. Then the time he had used a tailed beast bomb (the one time Kurama had begrudgingly agreed). He had even tried everything Jiraiya had taught him with seals. Again, nothing worked.

He started losing track of time after the first few decades. Days turned into months, and months turned into years. Which year, he never knew.

He also started spent a lot of time thinking about his life. It was something Naruto never really had time to do before he was sealed. With the war that was going on, and Kaguya and Madara, it had been nearly impossible to go back to the old days where he could just lie on his bed and think. He didn't like it very much back in the academy… even if he had a lot of time to himself, it was mostly because no one wanted to be friends with him. But now, it was different.

His thoughts would always drift to his team and his friends, Sakura and Sasuke in particular. Was Sasuke ever coming back to the village? Sasuke had even said he wanted to become Hokage. He had a chance now, Naruto reckoned, since he wasn't there anymore to stop Sasuke.

Then there was Hinata… he was seriously worried about her.

Neji had been like a brother to Hinata, especially after the chunin exams. Seeing how close they had grown through the years was a good change for them. And now, Neji was gone.

The rest of Team Gai… he was really worried for them too. It was soul crushing to Lee and Tenten to lose their best friend who had been with him through everything and for Lee, a rival who brought out the strength in him. He remembered the days where him, Lee, and Neji would spar, and they way they would all banter with each other was so surreal. Naruto had considered Neji cold before, but now he knew it was just his way of showing some type of affection.

In a way, Neji was like Sasuke.

Unable to take the thoughts anymore, he sighed and rolled to his side, falling asleep.

200 years later, a rusty old sword was found in the middle of the Great Desert, a small part of it uncovered, glinting in the light. A group of merchants, escorted by ninja from Suna, had been making their way through the great desert when something had caught merchant Tazuna's eye.

With excellent taste for old vintage goods and weapons of all kinds, Tazuna had immediately picked up the sword and dusted it off.

He had taken another look at it and had changed his mind. "Eh. This sword's pretty trashy." He had said, dropping it back on to the ground.

His friend, Hachiro, had picked it up instead and had placed it in his bag, of the rare chance it might be worth something. He had hauled it back to the Land of Wind, Suna, putting it somewhere in the back of his shop.

It had stayed in the shop for a long time, until Hachiro had grown old and ripe, passing away to leave the shop to his grandchildren. One of his grandchildren, Akiko, had taken it upon himself to renovate the old shop, going through all of his grandfather's old things. One day as he was looking through a box of weapons, he found a rusty old sword with black skin lining wrapped around the handle.

Akiko had taken the rusty old sword and scrubbed and shined the rust off, revealing a very different type of design. It wasn't like anything he had seen before of his age. The blade was different, but similar to an ancient predecessor he had seen before. He had passed it off as nothing, and sold the sword to a friend for pretty cheap. At least he had made some money.

The friend took the silver sword and sold it again to another friend, this time for a higher price. That friend sold it to another friend for an even higher price.

It went on and on until the sword ended up in the hands of a weapon shop owner. Now, unlike the other people who had come upon the sword, the owner had taken one look at the silver sword, with the black skin wrapped lining of the handle, and realized it was something more than people had assumed it to be. The sword was hundreds of years old, he had realized, and he took the sword and gave it it's own case.

He eventually settled down in the village Hidden in the Mist and when he was close to passing away on his death bed, he told his granddaughter to come near. He told her of the greatness of the sword. "Keep it safe." He whispered. "It's worth much more than you might think."

His granddaughter had nodded and swore to protect it with her life.

She eventually became a fine ninja, always keeping the sword with her, but never daring to use it.

The granddaughter remembered what her grandfather had told her about weapons: weapons were meant to use, not to lie around in waste.

What's the point if I never use it? She had thought.

She ended up giving it away to a friend who would use it for many years, telling her friend the same her grandfather had told her.

His name was Katsu. He was the first one the sword spoke to. "Use it well, use it wise," It told him. Katsu had immediately dropped the sword, horrified. Thinking he was crazy, he took the sword, put it in its case, and had fled to the Village Hidden in the Rain.

He gave it to a sealer, stating that the sword was cursed with a voice from inside. The sealer took the sword and tampered with it for a bit, but found nothing unusual. It was just an ordinary sword. The Sealer gave it to another swordsman, who was happy to take it from his hands.

The swordsman used it for a long time before the voice spoke to him again. The voice had told him it wasn't evil or wrong - well, not as evil as he might have thought it was. The swordsman went along with it and used it anyway, before giving it to a shinobi who could use it better than him.

The shinobi was very happy to get the sword. The voice was nice enough to him and gave him good power - it was all he needed. It wasn't long before the shinobi realized there was something much bigger sealed in the sword - large and powerful enough to presumably take over the whole world. The shinobi tampered with the sword more than he should have, and the chakra that plagued the sword destroyed him from the inside out, burning him alive. They had found the sword in the middle of the ruins of his body, tinted a dark gray.

A relative of the shinobi took the sword and kept it for a bit, not knowing what had really happened to his shinobi cousin.

He passed off the sword to someone else, a collector, who was old and wise, and was happy to take off anything unusual from anyone's hands. The collector knew better than any of them- the sword was obviously something more than it seemed.

The collector had taken the sword and had placed it with his weapons. He moved around for a little bit, traveling the world, before opening a shop in Konoha, the Hidden Leaf Village.

The Land of Fire.