The Fourth Shinobi World War had raged on for a year before its climax against Madara. Despite it all, the man had ensnared the entire planet in the endless bliss of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Team Seven had avoided the illusion and fought Madara endlessly. The fight went on for days, shattering the very continent itself, severing huge portions of it due to the scale of the attacks from Madara, Naruto and Sasuke in particular. Nature itself seemed to shake at the might they displayed.

Kakashi had been killed after two days, unsurprisingly. As much of a resourceful genius though he was, there was only so much Naruto could do to bolster his stamina with shared chakra. The remaining three members fought on and finally managed to get a serious opening on Madara, allowing Naruto to play chakra tug-of-war when the Uchiha temporarily lost control of the beasts he'd stolen. Using the portions of their chakra he already had in him, Naruto yanked them out and pulled them into his seal. As he died, Madara tried to persuade them not to end the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Ignoring him as he died moments later, Sasuke tried to kill Naruto while he wasn't paying attention, making sure Madara was actually dead. Naruto didn't notice until the body of the woman he loved slumped against his back, murmuring that she really did love him with her last breath, succumbing to the Chidori-made hole in her chest.

In a fit of blind rage, Naruto hit Sasuke with an enormous Rasenshuriken, which tore through even the Perfect Susanoo his former friend tried to erect. The explosion destroyed the Uchiha's chakra network, leaving him feeble, decaying and dying not far from Madara's corpse. The Uchiha clan had now truly gone extinct.

He managed to undo the worldwide genjutsu with the power of all nine Tailed Beasts within him, now bearing the same power Madara had. Had that worked without error, Naruto thought he might have found something to heal the shattered remains of his heart. But it all went to shit.

Oh the technique ended, people were released from their endless dream. But soon afterwards they began to keel over, evidently dying from what Naruto could sense. The God Tree's invasion of their chakra network was not intended to be removed, not so soon after it had been applied. Those who had trained to use their chakra - ninja, namely - all died within days as their bodies went into shock and began producing less and less chakra until they died. In spite of his power, even Tsunade died after a few weeks. She speculated that the sudden end to the technique acted similarly to removing a Tailed Beast. Death was a guarantee.

Some scattered remnants of the civilian populace survived, though many seemed to have been driven mad at having been snatched from a dream world constructed to be their ideal reality. They were crushed at having it taken from them, huge numbers of them refusing to believe it had all been an illusion. Many ended their lives to try and escape the illusion they believed reality to be in hopes of returning to that perfect world, others just lost the will to go on.

Naruto couldn't watch it. He wanted to end his life but it would have been cruel to the Tailed Beasts, who placed their faith in him to guide them as the Sage wished. He wasn't even sure he could die now, Madara suggested the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki was immortal unless they removed the demons sealed within them. However, they couldn't blame him for losing hope. Everything Naruto had believed in, everyone he had loved and cared for, were gone like the wind. Nothing and no one worth living for anymore. In his naivete, he had boldly declared to Nagato that he could withstand what was to come.

"Dying like trash, never ending hatred and pain that never heals. That is war, Naruto. This is what you must face in time…"

And that was what broke him. Nagato's prediction proved truer than even his blessed eyes could have foreseen. The ship of Naruto's foolish ideals were crashed against the merciless cliffs of an unforgiving reality.

It was months later that Naruto came into contact with the Moon Spirit, Tui, the being who helped the Sage of the Six Paths seal the Ten-Tails into the then-new Moon when he was ready to join his deceased wife. Ninja almost never dealt with spirits, preferring to leave them to the priestesses and monks. They had their own weirdness to handle and couldn't be bothered with helping wayward spirits or mollifying those who became angered. This one had been woken from its slumber when Madara cast the Infinite Tsukuyomi using the Moon as a medium for the illusion, though it needed to rest after having been used to hold the moon seal for the previous thousand years.

The Moon Spirit offered him a kind of solution once it understood the state of things. Naruto might not be able to die, but he could enter a sort of hibernation until the world needed him again, if it ever did. It was as close to an afterlife as he could get and the Tailed Beasts didn't mind it either, as they would be put under along with him. Naruto couldn't agree fast enough. Experiencing the occasional dream while the world passed him by didn't bother him, there was nothing and no one out there for him.

He found a huge deposit of iron and used the Four-Tails's Lava Release and his chakra arms to shape the mass of metal into a cubical shape. Part of the cube was detached and made into a door that would rise upwards with the application of a specified kind of chakra. Naruto used the incredible strength granted by Sage Mode to lift the cube of iron and walked the continent until he found a place himself in stasis. He knew his battle with Madara had split the continent into separate chunks, but he still found himself surprised by where everything was.

The people seemed to be borderline feral, in extreme denial and confusion or else making mad grabs for power as normal society had broken down. Those that saw him traveling while holding up the enormous metal construct with his bare hands were in awe. Some saw him as a god - which Naruto supposed he technically was now - and wished to worship him. The fact that a translucent fish-shaped spirit was accompanying him solidified that image. It only got worse when a thunderstorm occurred one day, forcing Naruto to use a large scale Lightning Release jutsu to protect his 'followers' from harm as his cargo became the target for numerous lightning strikes, leading to prayers to the 'Thunder God'. Naruto ignored them until he could get away, thanking any deity who'd listen that he was the only one who could walk on water now.

But after a few weeks he found a place where, had life been wildly different, he might have grown up with his family. The Land of Whirlpools, off a ways into the ocean, had been untouched by the war as it had been destroyed and abandoned when his mother was a child. The ruins of his people's land, destroyed before he was even born, didn't help his somber attitude. He'd lost so much now that he didn't want to think about what else he never had a chance at.

With an Earth Release technique of a huge scale, Naruto constructed a deep network of tunnels and criss crossing paths beneath him. It would decrease people's interest at going down there for awhile, he hoped. Once completed, he opened a large hole to the bottom of his temporary tomb and dropped the iron cube into it, following behind it once he heard it hit bottom.

Once down there, the Moon Spirit, who had been mostly quiet company for going on three weeks as they traveled, finally spoke. "Are you certain this is what you wish to do? The world needs its Sage more than ever. Madness has taken root in the land, Naruto. You can guide them as your predecessor did."

He shook his head. "Even if I wanted to, I'm not in the right mind to help anyone." While he was talking, Tui and Naruto were inscribing a Fuinjutsu onto the door of the cube that would act similarly to the seal placed to keep the Demonic Statue sealed in the Moon that kept Tui in stasis, fueling the seal until Madara had undone it. With the application of the right kind of chakra, the door would open. Of course, everyone with any knowledge of how to use their chakra had died when he'd undone Madara's Genjutsu and those that remained scarcely did more than hunt and forage to survive in small groups. However, Naruto saw that as a benefit. Even if he was awakened eventually, surely he'd get at least a century of time away from it all. Maybe eventually the world would right itself and he could fade from history.

"Tui, you can select the element that opens the door. Just place the element's character here," he gestured at the empty circle in the middle of the seal array on the door. "Once the door is fed enough elemental chakra of the one you select, my stasis will end."

As Naruto ended his Sage Mode and sat in a meditative position within the cube, Tui spoke to him one last time. "I know reality seems cruel and bleak now, Naruto, but when the opportunity presents itself you must be willing to grab the happiness you deserve," the spirit said. "Eventually, someone will appear that can give you the spark you've lost, but you must give it a chance."

"What's this, a prophecy?" he asked with a snort.

"Nothing so concrete," the spirit replied. "But my, ah, spiritual intuition is telling me this isn't the end of your tale. You've the capacity to change so much for so many, you just require the right influence. In spite of all the ill, never forget the Light you hold inside as well."

Rather than answer and risk replying with snark, Naruto took a deep breath and nodded for Tui to close him in. As the light faded, Naruto couldn't squash the hope that it would never open again…

Naruto's consciousness slowly came back to him after something hit his forehead. His stasis-induced trance faded, and he saw a beautiful girl saying something to him, but it was incomprehensible. He didn't recognize the language she spoke. However, his mind was suddenly pulled into the seal containing the Nine demons sealed within him.

They were arranged in a circle around Naruto, and while they were all beginning to stir, only the Nine-Tailed Fox had fully awoken. Naruto said, "Hey guys. Looks like we're finally awake, but I don't understand anything that girl is saying. This bites."

Kurama snorted and said, "She's demanding you train her. Uppity, but I admire that sort of fire - as long as it isn't directed at me."

"Wait, how do you speak her language?" he asked.

"Demons are blessed - cursed, I'd say - to understand any mortal language," the Fox demon said. He raised his fist to Naruto and said, "Just bump fists, I'll transmit the knowledge to you, but then you need to scram so I can make sure these guys don't forget where they are and flip out. I think we've been out a lot longer than you expected."

Naruto nodded and touched his fist the Kurama's, feeling the knowledge of the language enter his mind before he left the seal. Looking up at the girl, he asked her why he should do as she wished. She all but propositioned him initially, which he wouldn't turn down, but that was hardly going to make him forget the things he had been through.

"You seek meaning, don't you?" she asked insightfully. I can give you purpose. It's plain as day you lost something important so you'd rather be left in here to waste away like filth. I can return the spark you lost along the way, and provide direction and goals for you to aim for. But the decision is yours."

Naruto couldn't help but look at her with his mouth agape. Shinobi training included the ability to master one's emotions to a degree, at least to mask what their true feelings were. He'd rarely had someone so quickly and easily see right through him. Certainly not after having just met. Intrigued, Naruto followed her out the cavern he was in, ignoring the twitching body of some muscle-bound guy, as a new and unexpected chapter of his life began.

The girl had asked Naruto to prove he could create lightning. Annoyingly, that 'Thunder God' business hadn't died out immediately like he'd hoped. The girl laughed briefly when Naruto asked her why she didn't just have someone teach her the other elements. He wasn't keen on taking on a student or on anything else, really.

"Everyone knows only the Avatar can use multiple elements, much less all of them," she said matter-of-factly. A ball of blue fire appeared in her left hand while a current of lightning dancing around her right, reminding him of Chidori. "After mastering my Chi I could use two types of Firebending, but surely you must have some other abilities to teach. The scroll referred to you as a Thunder God with knowledge of powers lost to mankind. I assume you can do more than the single element you were born with."

Naruto massaged the sides of his heads, confused by the conflicting terminology and odd statements. After a moment he said, "That doesn't make any sense. Using more than one element isn't uncommon. Using all five standard elements is rare but not impossible. You just have to do all the training needed for them. You used lightning and fire, and those are different elements."

The smile was wiped from the girl's face, as she was now looking at him as if trying to determine if he was telling the truth. "Prove it."

Naruto weaved through hand signs, confusing the girls at what he was doing. He then slammed his palm onto the ground.

"Earth Release: Mobile Core!" A patch of earth behind them began rising up in the shape of a rectangular prism, pushing through the ceiling with ease. Two of the girls - the depressed looking one and the bubbly, happy-go-lucky one - looked on in shock. The blue-fire girl however looked at him with great interest, walking up to his side.

"As the Fire Nation's princess, Azula, I formally request your tutelage," she said seriously. The information of her homeland surprised Naruto. "I didn't catch your name, Mr…?"

"Naruto Uzumaki… I was once employed by the Land of Fire. I was just short of being its top general before… everything happened," he trailed off, before continuing, "What are the odds its royal family would be the one to wake me?"

Azula smirked at his reply. "That technically makes me your leader, then. Still, the niceties must be observed, and I didn't hear you answer my request." She wrinkled her nose a bit, leading to Naruto concluding she wasn't used to not being given her way upon request. "In exchange for my help resolving your personal turmoil, will you, er, take me under your wing?"

Naruto nodded his head, if a bit in resignation. "Fine, not like I have anything better to do. But I need to find out what has gone on since I've been out. I don't even know how long I was down there."

"How will you find out?" Azula asked. "I got lucky someone had translated a scroll that mentioned your location."

"The Moon Spirit, Tui," Naruto said.

"...Are you an Avatar?" Azula asked, seeming to reach a conclusion of her own. "Firebending and Earthbending… I thought there could only be one at a time."

"I have no idea what those words mean," Naruto admitted. "So I'll go with a 'no'. Not a 'firebender' and whatever. The Moon Spirit helped me in putting myself in stasis until I would actually be of help to the world after mine had been wrecked."

"But how can you channel your Chi to control different elements?"

"I'll assume you mean Chakra," Naruto said in bewilderment. "I use Ninjutsu to change the properties of my chakra - the energy flowing through my body - to let me make different effects happen depending on how I alter the chakra. Hand signs are the easiest way to change it, but with enough experience you don't need them."

"Fascinating," she said. Looking at the now cleared square shaped hole that went all the way up to the surface, Azula asked, "Do you think you could get us out of here quickly? You're likely to bring a lot of attention to us, especially with that… whatever it is you say you do."

Naruto performed a cross sign and two more copies of himself appeared, equally as shirtless as the original, leaving all three girls with equally funny expressions of shock. "Me, myself and I can get you three out of this hole in the ground," the original Naruto said as the Narutos put a hand on both of the shoulders of the girls whose names he didn't know.

"What… How..." Azula sputtered.

"The Shadow Clone technique, solid copies of myself with all my abilities. Useful, right?" he said with a slight smile. Looking up the exit he'd made, Naruto pulled a three-pronged kunai out of the pouch tied to his leg and threw it up hard. After it looked as if it made it to the surface hundreds of feet up, Naruto and his clones used the Flying Thunder God technique to instantly teleport to the kunai now above ground. He took a deep breath of fresh air for the first time in he literally did not know how long.

As he surveyed the area around him, he saw a small city in the distance. "The ruins of the Hidden Whirlpool village should have been there," he muttered, seeing the proof that quite a bit of time had passed. Even the nature around him was noticeable different. The shapes of the surrounding cliffs were different than when he'd gone in, and there was no sign of the land that had been owned by his mother's clan.

"Is this guy going to explain what the hell just happened, Azula?" said the moody girl.

"Hold on, let me get my bearings, Mai," Azula said. Naruto couldn't blame her for feeling disoriented. Teleportation caused nausea when one was starting out.

Naruto felt someone jump on his back. He turned his head and saw the energetic girl with the long braid looking at him with glittering eyes.

"Do it again! Again, again, again!" she said.

"Ty Lee, please let go of our… guest," Azula said firmly. The girl climbed off of him reluctantly, while Azula walked in front of him.

"Mai is right though. How are you doing these things? It's not like any bending I've heard of."

"It's ninjutsu," Naruto said. They didn't understand the term. "It's the same as when you made that fire and lightning, I felt you change your chakra's nature to produce them."

Ty Lee seemed confused by his words, saying, "Wait, aren't your chakras just the seven points in the body where you Chi is most concentrated?"

"Chi?" Naruto said, wondering if it was actually different than chakra.

"The energy that flows through your body. It's how benders can manipulate an element," she answered. "Supposedly opening all seven points where Chi gathers will improve a bender's abilities."

Naruto scratched his head and said, "In my time we just called that energy chakra, the mixture of one's spiritual energy and the body's physical energy. The eight points in the body you mentioned are the Eight Inner Gates, they regulate the flow so you don't use too much at once and die."

Azula looked skeptical, saying, "All the spiritual experts say there are seven Chakras, or Gates if you wish, and that opening them is the key to enlightenment or some such."

"Enough with the lecture shit, I don't want to feel like I'm in school again," Mai said in boredom. While Naruto could agree to an extent, he needed to get to the bottom of this.

"Azula, let me see your hand," Naruto said. While she raised an eyebrow, she did as he asked. "This will probably feel weird for a moment, but just trust me. This should let me figure out what's going on. But don't let the power go to your head."

Naruto began to pour some of his chakra into Azula's chakra network. As he did so, it would let him get a rough idea of what was different about the people of this time period. Talk of only seven gates, of everyone besides this Avatar character being limited to one nature transformation… It just didn't make sense, chakra was not so limited. Even if his time's knowledge of chakra had been lost, it must have been rediscovered if this bending crap was around. As his chakra progressed through Azula's body, Naruto felt it passing through her Gates, traveling down her chakra coils in the same way it did for a normal person. But he noticed something strange.

"There are blockages," Naruto said.

"What are talking about?" Azula asked, trying to mask her husky voice, not having expected the elation she'd receive when she felt the man's energy entering her. She'd never been so turned on in all her life.

"I mean I can feel that you have Chakra and I found the first seven of your Gates. But not only could I not get to your eighth gate, at heart, I felt obstructions along your chakra network. Particularly in your arms and legs."

Looking worried - both about what he was saying and about the kind of look Azula was giving Naruto - Ty Lee asked, "What does that mean?"

"Not sure, but I'm going to remove them. Just, um, don't kill me for this," Naruto said. Before Azula could understand what he meant Naruto palmed above her heart, touching her left breast. Before she could clock him, she felt his energy enter her again, only this time it felt as if a dam had burst. She felt her Chi begin to flow at an incredible rate, power she'd never experienced before today coursing through her veins. More than that, a yellow aura projected from her body.

"What… is this?" Azula asked in wonder, eyeing the power she had.

"It's the chakra you've had all along, I let you reach it. For some reason - and I'm guessing this is true for everyone - there was something preventing any chakra in your heart from reaching the rest of your body," he explained. "The heart is the main chakra producing organ, that's why the Gate of Death is there to regulate its flow. If you were to break open that Gate completely after the other seven, you'd have incredible, unstoppable power, but you'd die after using it. Besides, your chakra is already plenty powerful, normal training would suffice for you."

Azula's aura faded, but she could still feel her new power within her. "Can I perform the skills you displayed before?" she asked eagerly.

Naruto scratched his chin, thinking. "Probably not the technique I used to transport us up here, its difficulty is of the highest degree." Noticing Azula's glare, he amended, "That's not a comment on your talent of course, I just meant you need to build up to something like that. You can already do Fire and Lightning Release, so you've a head start."

"We should start as soon as possible," Azula concluded eagerly. "Will you be able to teach me on a ship at sea?"

Naruto nodded. "As long as it's not small, it'll be a fine. I'm gonna have to wing it a bit at first, this isn't a normal thing you'd see in my time. Anyway," he began, looking at the full moon ascending in the sky, "It's probably any good to save that for the morning, tonight's a good night to call on Tui."

The three Narutos carried the girls on their backs ago they directed them to the nearest port where Azula had arranged for an Imperial-class ship to be docked for her a week previously. Oddly to him, Azula insisted Naruto take residence in an extra bed set up in her quarters. She followed him out to the deck of the ship abs he went to contact Tui.

"It's best not to speak unless spoken to while the spirit is here," he said. "Spirits get really bent outta shape about breaking decorum." Azula at least did not dispute this, settling for a nod.

Naruto sat cross-legged in the bright moonlight as the ship left the port. He felt his sense expand greatly as he drew on nature's energy, balancing with his own internal energies. Now in Sage Mode, Naruto clasped his hands together as if in prayer, concentrating on the moon to communicate his desire to speak with the helpful spirit.

About a minute later, Naruto could feel the familiar spiritual energy of the being approaching him. As the image of the spirit drew closer, Naruto noticed it no longer took on the shape of a white fish, but rather looked like a beautiful maiden with snow white hair, eyeing him curiously.

"Is it you who called out for me through Nature?" the spirit asked.

Narrowing his eyes, Naruto asked, "Tui… that is you, right? It's me, Naruto. You know, the Sage?"

The spirit concentrated for a moment before a look of shock appeared. "N-Naruto?!" she exclaimed. "Yes it's me, but… you're out!"

"Well… duh. Why do you look so," he tried to think of acceptable synonyms for bangable before settling on, "Youthful? Tired of the whole fish thing?"

"No, I… kinda died," she started, before quickly explaining the whole sequence of events of her reincarnation from the Water Tribe princess, Yue.

Naruto whistled appreciatively. "Yeah, I kinda died once too. We should start a club or something." Yue or Tui or whoever did giggle a bit. "But seriously though, what's the world like now? How long have I been out?"

The questioned sobered her. Looking at him seriously after casting a brief glance at Azula off to the side, she said, "The world has been more than a little rocky. In the middle of a century-long war right now, actually." Nodding in Azula's direction, she said, "Ask your Spark over there, she's rather familiar with that. As for how long you've been out… a long time, even longer than the millennia I was in the Moon."

"...How long, Tui?" he asked nervously.

"It's been nearly two thousand years, Naruto."

Far, far away, a young boy with a body-length tattoo of an arrow awoke with a start. A nightmare featuring a massive, monstrous fox spirit had suddenly sprung into his dream, seeking nothing but to devour him for his failure to do his duties as the Avatar.

Bending a bit of cold water from a stream to him, he cleaned off his sweating face as he calmed himself. He couldn't stop thinking of his dream-turned-nightmare.

"I can't shake this feeling," Aang said quietly. "Something's changed, but what?"

(A/N): Wow, chapter 1 had great stats. Over 100 follows, 70 favorites, a dozen or so reviews, and about 1100 views in 2-3 days. Much appreciated! Please keep those Favorites and Reviews coming! They keep me motivated.

Whew, that chapter was a bit angsty, a bit too much exposition and such, but I kinda needed to do this so I could focus more on plot abandoned character interactions going forward. Little need to explain more about Chi and chakra and such now, nor about how Naruto ended up in this world (it's his world, post ridiculous world war and a couple of millennia). Hopefully you guys didn't get too turned off by that; thanks for reading!