Right, here you all are, chapter 3 is up and running! I want you all to know that this almost was chapter 2 instead. my laptop's hard drive died on me the day AFTER I posted the second chapter, so be thankful that I didnt have to rewrite the entire thing from scratch. my hard drive failing was only part of the reason why this is a bit later than usual. I had to wait two weeks for a new hard drive, but aside from that there was a lot of personal shit happening in my family plus several money issues which caused a slight depression for me.

but alas you did not come here to hear my sob story, you came to read my story so please, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

BROKRUUSH!

An immense impact reverberated around the large cavern, kicking up a large dust cloud. After a few tense seconds, Uzumaki Naruto stumbles out of the dust and smoke. There was blood almost freely seeping down over his right eye and his right arm was hanging uselessly at his side, and at an odd angle to boot. After coughing up a few teeth, Naruto took stock of his suddenly dire situation. The right side of his upper body was all but crushed. And while the Kyuubi was doing its thing to survive (in other words healing him), it had a lot to go through, so everything hurt. But the one good thing about the pain was that it knocked everything else out of his head, clearing it of all other emotions.

This was good because it allowed his instincts to notice the slight sound behind him, triggering his adrenaline fueled reflexes. Ducking and rolling under a slash that would have freed his head from his shoulders, he came back up to his feet to find Sasuke trying to shove a sharp, pointy thing down his throat. Twitching his head to the side, Naruto lashed out with a kick, trying to catch Sasuke in his side. Sasuke, however, caught the kick with his free hand. The iron grip told Naruto that he wouldn't get away very easily.

Sasuke twisted his sword around and pumped his blade with lightning chakra. Managing to flip around, Naruto moved with the swing. He ended up with his head down and his left hand braced on the ground to stabilize himself. Because of the extreme angles, Sasuke's sword just barely nicked Naruto's throat, a small line of blood sliding up along his jaw line. Continuing with his earlier movement and maintaining his momentum, Naruto snapped his free leg up in scything kick, his knee slamming into Sasuke's shoulder and knocked him off balance.

Still using his kick's momentum, Naruto was able to get his feet back underneath him. And not a second too late, he was quickly forced to dodge a spear of lightning. From no less than five feet away, Sasuke shot a Chidori Eisou. When Naruto skipped to the side, he swung his arm after him. Instead of dodging again, Naruto brought up his left arm with wind chakra gently circling around the gauntlet. The Chidori Eisou sputtered out of existence once it came into contact with the wind chakra. Sasuke narrowed his eyes as he quickly ran through a short series of hand seals.

"Katon: Housenka no Jutsu!" he called out. Several midsized fireballs flew out of his mouth straight at Naruto. Naruto dodged and jumped out of the way of most of them. But the last two were too close together for him to dodge completely as he was still in midair. He twisted his body to the left so that the closer of the two fireballs would bypass him as he kicked out with his right leg. The fireball exploded on contact with his foot. But because of the positioning of his body and that he had gathered regular chakra in a protective shell around his leg, he got off with only his pant leg on fire.

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!" Sasuke called out just as Naruto landed on his feet. A giant golden red fireball rushed at Naruto, leaving the blonde with very little room to dodge.

"Fuck," he sputtered as he threw his body to the side as the fireball hit the ground. A roaring explosion filled Sasuke's ears as blistering hot air whips his Akatsuki cloak around behind him. Once the explosion subsides, Sasuke walked over not to the impact site but where Naruto had landed, his body a broken lump on the ground.

"That was simply pathetic, Naruto," Sasuke commented as he stood over Naruto's slightly smoldering body, Itachi's Sharingan were spinning slowly.

"As pathetic as this?" Naruto asked from behind Sasuke and suddenly a wind blade erupted from Sasuke's chest. Sasuke lurches forward, blood gushing from his mouth. He stayed on his feet but his head was bowed, his bangs overshadowing his eyes. Naruto,, from his position behind him, wasn't in any better shape. He was panting heavily from all of the exertion he did while dodging around Sasuke's attacks and his right arm was still dangling uselessly at his side. The blood flow over his right eye had all but ceased, allowing him to tentatively open his right eye to regard Sasuke.

"Well?" he pressed. Sasuke then slowly straightened up, showing his rapidly spinning Sharingan to Naruto.

"Yes," he answers only to abruptly break down into a flock of ravens. Naruto's eyes widen in surprise as he quickly turns around. But he was too late; cold steel suddenly pierced his abdominal muscles. Sasuke stood at the end of the sword in his gut, a small smirk gracing his features.

"Nice try—" he began. But in a small puff of white smoke, Naruto's astonished and mortally wounded form disappeared, only to be replaced by a large rock from the floor. It was then Sasuke's turn to react defensively as he spun around, quick as a flash, and brought his sword up just in time to catch a wind blade from Naruto's left gauntlet. Due to the superior craftsmanship of his blade, it stopped the wind blade where it was. But he wasn't prepared for Naruto's right fist to plow into his jaw.

Sasuke stumbled back a few steps, partially stunned from the fierce strike but still managed to block the follow-up heel kick aimed for his midsection. And suddenly their positions were reversed, Naruto was throwing punch after kick at Sasuke and the only thing Sasuke could do was retreat and defense. Which was a chore in and of itself because the replacement rock was still attached to his blade and it was throwing off his balance and power, making otherwise picture perfect blocks and parries ineffectual.

Sasuke finally had enough after a series of punches had gotten through his defenses, leaving him breathless and pushing bile back down his throat. Putting a decent amount of power into his legs, Sasuke leapt backwards, spinning in the air once and flicking his blade at Naruto. This caused the rock on the blade to slide off and fly towards Naruto at ballistic speeds. Naruto paused long enough in his pursuit to kick the rock out of the air, reducing it into dust the moment it contacted his foot. This pause, however, was enough for Sasuke to go through a short number of hand seals and activate Chidori.

"Raiton: Chidori Senbon!" he called out, raising his Chidori in the air and showering Naruto's position with dozens of lightning needles.

"Fuuton: Teikiatsu no Jutsu!" the blonde yelled after flashing through his own hand seals. Then, as he exhaled like a child blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, a roaring wall of wind rises up and surrounds him just as the lightning needles reach him. The needles fizzle out of existence like all of Sasuke's other lightning attacks. But as the cyclone dies down, it kicked up a dense wall of dust that hung in the air in front of Sasuke. Sasuke stood just a few feet away from the curtain of dust, waiting for Naruto to come charging out. As expected the thunder of charging feet had Sasuke leaping backwards as a small army of shadow clones come racing out of the dust cloud. Just before they reach him, Sasuke closes his left eye and sets his right Sharingan spinning.

"Amaterasu!" he growled, black flames engulfing the center of the clones' formation. While the majority of the clones were wiped out from the attack, Naruto had them spread out far enough that there were a few that survived the attack. These clones closed in on Sasuke, wind chakra blades extended and they were swinging with deadly skill. To say that Sasuke had to stay mobile to survive was an understatement; it was more accurate that he had to stay airborne in order to survive, that was how relentless those clones were.

However, he wasn't without his own fangs. Whenever he could keep the ground under his feet for more than a few seconds, he would take out at least one clone. But after several minutes of fighting, Sasuke was forced to the conclusion that Naruto was quietly making more clones for every one that was destroyed. Having enough of this game, Sasuke set his feet on the ground and started focusing his Sharingan. The nearest clone rushed in for a strike. But unlike previously where Naruto had gone through Sasuke, the clone was abruptly stopped by a large rib of condensed chakra that was forming from out of Sasuke's side.

The full creation of Sasuke's Susano'o ability was fast and destructive. Its sudden growth had surprised the Naruto clones long enough for Sasuke to make several exaggerated sweeps of his arms, Susano'o destroying the remaining shadow clones surrounding him in a show of mimicry. Naruto narrowed his eyes at Sasuke's defensive ability and created a fresh batch of shadow clones. However, instead of merely charging in towards Sasuke, the clones, including Naruto, closed their eyes for a brief second and when they opened their eyes they all sported the same golden, rectangular eyes of the toads.

"Rasen Chou Tarengan!" the clones all cried as they charged at Sasuke. As they ran, motes of blue light formed in their hands which grew to preposterous sizes. Sasuke clenched his teeth and again swung his arms, having Susano'o smash the invading army of clones once more. He was only half successful. With the clones enhanced by nature energy, they were that much more agile and powerful, making them that much harder to disperse. Sasuke had scored a number of hits, but for every clone he destroyed, another would get through his defenses and strike Susano'o.

While the supped up Rasengans weren't able to break through Susano'o, they were powerful enough to create a feedback for Sasuke, manifesting as a headache quickly growing in its ferocity. Then he heard the sound, a high pitched whirring sound that grated on his already frayed nerves. He turned towards its source and saw that he was nearly too late.

"Fuuton: Rasenshuriken!" Naruto yelled, swinging his arm forward and releasing the spinning discus of destruction. Sasuke was barely able to raise the Susano'o's bow-shield into a defensive posture before the attack hit him head on. If Sasuke thought the Sage mode-enhanced Rasengans were bad, then he wasn't prepared for the Rasenshuriken. It was like his entire brain was vibrating inside his skull. He fought to keep control over Susano'o as the pain mounted inside his head.

But then the Rasenshuriken expanded. When Naruto threw it, the Rasenshuriken was only two to two-and-a-half meters across. But when it suddenly expanded, it increased in size to five meters across. And it broke through Susano'o's shield. Once it shattered Susano'o's shield, it continued onto the chakra construct like there was never an obstacle in its path before. Sasuke let out an agonizing scream as the Rasenshuriken tore through his defense, blood beginning to flow from his nose. Then, without warning, the two high-powered abilities erupted at the same time, kicking up a high wind that knocked Naruto flat on his ass.

"Chidori Eisou!" Sasuke shouted from some distance away just as Naruto was picking himself up. He dodged to the side as a lance of pure lightning energy speared its way through where he was a mere moment ago. Sasuke then came charging out of the smoke cover, the left side of his face bloody and his lips peeled back in an angry snarl. His sword flashed forward, a cascade of lightning as it collided with Naruto's left gauntlet.

Naruto pushes the blade aside and strikes with his right elbow, aiming for Sasuke's throat. Sasuke's free hand catches the elbow as he drives a knee into Naruto's gut. Despite the air being forced out of his lungs, Naruto managed a perfect head-butt into Sasuke's nose ridge, breaking the sensitive cartilage. As Sasuke stumbled back, Naruto lashed out with his right foot, aiming for Sasuke's abdomen. But Sasuke saw it coming and attempted to jump further back. He avoids the initial physical attack but then suddenly it felt like a metal pole was driven into his ribs, two of them snapping out right. Sasuke sailed for a few feet before landing roughly on his back, coughing flecks of blood as he tried to pick himself up.

"You don't look so good, Sasuke," Naruto said, who was also looking only slightly winded from all the fighting. Not believing in defeat, Sasuke snarled in rage and leapt to his feet, ignoring the agony in his chest as best he could, with a Chidori igniting in his fist as he once again rushed towards Naruto. Naruto said nothing, simply creating a Rasengan and rushed towards his friend. As they raced toward one another, Sasuke's mind raced, thinking what he could do to change things into his favor when an idea hit him. It was such a painfully stupid idea. It was something that Madara would probably beat him senseless for doing, once Sasuke regained his senses anyway. But he figured that the benefits outweighed the costs and risks so he did it anyway.

Poor, foolish little Sasuke.

"Kamui!"

Flashback two years ago

Sasuke sat on a fallen log in some nondescript forest that Madara had chosen for his training. His elder sat across from him, his new white and grey mask covering his face, revealing both eyes instead of only his right. Sasuke was curious about how Madara had come into possession of a Rinnegan, obviously the only one available was from Nagato and he heard that he had died because of his battle with Naruto. Sasuke couldn't deny that having both an eternal Mangekyou and a rinnegan would certainly not hurt the man's chances of success, but why throw away a good eye? Unless that eye wasn't good anymore, in which cases why wasn't it good anymore? Sasuke pushed those thought from his mind, focusing on his elder who had called him here.

The elder Uchiha sat observing their surroundings for a few moments, seemingly at peace with everything. Sasuke felt that this was a rather perverse sort of peace. The man wanted to control everything worth controlling by forcing an illusion on all living and thinking things, thus bending them to his will. Sasuke didn't care though, so long as his vengeance as appeased then Madara could do what ever he wanted.

"Now, Sasuke," Madara began, making sure he has Sasuke's attention. "Before we begin your training, there are two things I need to explain first." He was silent for a moment, gauging Sasuke's response. Sasuke neither moved nor spoke, so Madara continued on. "The first thing is training, naturally. You need to get used to Itachi's eyes and you have been recovering from the surgery for a decent amount of time, so you may be out of touch with all of your current skills." Sasuke nodded to this. It was only logical that he should get back up to par with his previous abilities before going beyond them.

"The second thing I need to explain is that I will be training you in two abilities that only Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan like ours are capable of," Madara said.

"And those two abilities are?" Sasuke asked.

"Jikukan Ido and Kamui," Madara answered, almost reverently. Sasuke merely raised one eyebrow in question. Was he supposed to be impressed by their names? Madara chuckled and went on, "Jikukan Ido is my ability to phase through objects and people and is relatively easy to learn and master." Madara illustrated this ability by sweeping his hand through a tree.

"And Kamui?" Sasuke pressed.

"Kamui is the ability to create an inter-dimensional wormhole through which you can suck in objects and people, even yourself, to a small pocket dimension of your own creation," Madara explained. Sasuke blinked for a moment before his face morphed into a 'what the fuck?' expression. "Yep, I felt that exact same way when I discovered their potential," Madara said, chuckling at Sasuke's expression.

"Why are you explaining them to me now, why not wait until you actually begin teaching me?" Sasuke asked. Madara nodded at the question like he was expecting it.

"I am telling you about these two abilities because I want to make it extremely clear, right now. They are incredibly powerful but unless you can express the most absolute perfect control over them, you will die," Madara said, his entire demeanor deadly serious. "I nearly killed myself several times in learning these techniques," Madara continued. "The only times when you may attempt them are when I am present. And you are not to use them in battle until I tell you otherwise. Clear?"

Sasuke nodded that he understood but he still had to ask, "Why?"

"Why? Because do you want to fall through the world?" Madara posed back at Sasuke. Sasuke blinked.

"Is that bad?"

"Yep," Madara answered while standing up from his log. He made a motion with his hand, expressing his desire to see Sasuke stand up as well. Sasuke stood as well as Madara walked several paces away from him. Suddenly the man turned around and declared, "For now, no more questions. It is time to spar, little Sasuke-chan." The man then immediately leapt back towards Sasuke, his fist cocked back for a punch.

End Flashback

As Sasuke initiated Kamui, he forgot one minor medical fact about shinobi and concussions. Concussions have this tendency to mess with people's heads. Sometimes causing outright short-term memory loss of the events leading up to the concussion or worse. But for shinobi, the effect is compounded. Concussions adversely affect the control the shinobi exerts over their chakra, often times causing high maintenance techniques, like a genjutsu for example, to go haywire and completely out of the user's control in some cases.

When the wormhole appeared, Naruto was all but two meters away. He had just started to thrust his right arm, containing his Rasengan, forward. Sasuke focused on Naruto's hand, trying to entirely neutralize the threat of his Rasengan. Everything had started off swimmingly. The hole had formed and was spinning in accordance with his wishes but then a spike of pain slammed into him from behind his eyes. He reacted reflexively, bringing one hand up to his eyes. Before he consciously realized it, his chakra had gone through a wild shift in that split second.

Naturally, this is when shit hit the fan.

The first thing he noticed was that the wormhole changed colors; the holes had always been black. Madara said that this was because they were also sucking in the light around the target. But this hole went from black to white instantaneously. Sasuke had very little time to guess what exactly that signified, for in the next instant white arcs of energy that looked like electricity (but he knew deep down that they weren't) suddenly leapt from the now white void.

For a few, brief seconds, these arcs of energy leapt to and fro, sparking at both Sasuke and Naruto and just the air in general. But then, as one, they all struck Naruto, most of them latching onto his Rasengan. But others were attaching themselves to various parts of his body. And that's when Sasuke felt the wind. It started softly, like a tickling summer's breeze but it quickly grew stronger until it was equal in power to a hurricane. The wind, Sasuke noticed, was also coming from behind him, meaning that the hole was also attempting to suck him in as well.

It already had half of Naruto. Crouching down and latching onto the floor with both his hands and feet was the only course of action that Sasuke had. He tried to back away but that only gave him one less anchor to the floor and he was nearly swept away until he reattached his foot. All of this was happening while he observed the rest of Naruto's body being pulled into the hole until there was nothing left of the young man in this dimension. The arcs of energy lingered in the air for a moment after they had finished pulling in Naruto. Like a coiled snake striking, the arcs suddenly struck Sasuke as though they'd become magnetically attracted to him.

Sasuke lost all sense of himself once the energy arcs struck. If he could've, he would have screamed. It hurt. But the pain wasn't just physical. It went to a much deeper level than that. To him, it felt like his entire being, body, mind, and soul, were being unthreaded and cast off in several different directions. The last sensation that he felt was as if he had been picked up and then thrown directly into the hole in the fabric of space-time that he'd unintentionally created.

Outside the Mountain Stronghold

"Chikushou!" A roared, slamming his only fist down, crushing the desk that he sat at into tiny bits of splinters. Yet another team staggered back into the base camp, or should he say sole survivor? The whole operation was a disaster. Their forces were spread too thin to make a large scale attack feasible, so they had to do things with the bare minimum of supplies and personnel. And now it was coming to bite them in the ass.

Of the six teams that entered the stronghold, barely a third of them came back at all. Their man count was severally reduced, only one or two members of each of the teams coming back. The only team to return at anywhere near full strength was Temari's team but that was only because that foolhardy brat, Naruto, folded the leftovers of his team into hers and told them to go home. Not that he blamed the kid for making them retreat. They each had a severe case of chakra depletion that they would have been more a hindrance to the mission than a help.

Gaara stood some ways away from A, throwing orders around like candy at a kid's birthday party. Once all of the teams had infiltrated, he ceased his sandstorm and began directing the jutsu artillery squads. Once the squads started limping back in, he also had to direct various medic squads to their positions. At the same time, he had to have them escorted by specially trained men and women who could sense the difference between a human and the Zetsu lookalikes.

Gaara was in the process of giving written commands to a runner when a bright flash of light caught his attention in his peripheral vision. He turned towards it just as A stood up shouting in disbelief. He would have joined him if he could've. But a wall of white light rushed at them, seemingly consuming them, the landscape, and the whole world around it.

And then they knew nothing.

Half a world away stood an old man. He stood on top of a hill, taking in the spectacular view of the valley below and the land beyond it. But he wasn't looking at the view. He was standing over two freshly dug graves, the only markers were two katana, standing point down. Both of the katana were well worn from a recent battle and they would have been identical if not for the different sets of nicks and cracks in the blades. The old man moved to place a single flower, a rose, on a grave. The katana that lay at its head had a dark blue fabric woven around its handle.

"I'm sorry, Megumi," he said, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke his granddaughter's name. He moved to the next grave, the katana here had simple leather straps wrapped around the handle. The old man did not speak; he silently regarded the grave of his son as a gamut of emotions ran through his head. He had failed so many times in the past, and they all compounded each other. Until, finally, they culminated into this; a father and daughter killing each other over something as relatively trivial as honor.

"I wish…" the man began but then his voice gave out for a moment as his emotions bubbled up. With iron control, he swallowed them back down but he did not continue. Such things were pointless when the outcome could never be changed. He gave one last look at their graves and turned to watch the setting sun one last time. He gasped in terror at the sight before him.

Instead of a red sun falling, he gazed upon a wall of pure white light that was swallowing everything that it touched. He watched as whole flocks of birds disappeared into the white light, the trees they had just emptied long gone already. As the end of all things rushed towards the man, the last thing he heard himself say was, "Kami-sama…"

And like everything else before him, he knew of nothing else.

20 Years Earlier, Mt. Myouboku

It was a peaceful day in the legendary sanctuary of toads; the birds happily sung their songs, the few insects that were both clever and bold enough to make their homes here contentedly buzzed around, minding their own business. The Great Toad Sage sat upon his dais, looking to the entire world like he was taking a nap. He probably was. His two subordinates, Fukusaku and Shima, sat at their customary positions of just below and to the side of the elder sage, giving him the respect that he so obviously deserved.

Unlike their esteemed elder, Fukusaku and Shima were both meditating. They were too busy contemplating whatever it is that toad sages contemplate to really bother with soaking in the peaceful atmosphere. Then again, they were coldblooded amphibians and the sun was directly overhead, so they were probably just getting their blood warm. Suddenly the Great Toad Sage jerked up in his seat, his eyes shooting wide open and began to rapidly roam around, like he was trying to watch something that wasn't there.

"Honorable Geezer!" both Fukusaku and Shima exclaimed, startled by his sudden activity. They leapt from their positions to give whatever aid they could to their elder but stopped short when the great sage held up one hand, showing that while he was having an episode, he was conscious of his surroundings. This went on for another painful minute when, just as suddenly as it began, the elder sage sagged back into his seat, taking several deep breaths.

"Is everything alright, honorable geezer?" Shima asked taking a step forward to assist the great sage. The elder toad however did not answer her but instead reached behind his throne and pulled out a long dark pole as thick as a human fist. Both Fukusaku and Shima unconsciously straightened and gulped. They both vividly remember their sage training under the elder and they had an extremely rational fear of his nature energy expulsion rod.

The elder sage then turned his head to face Fukusaku and again the toad gulped. There was an almost unnatural fire in the elder sage's eyes, and it frightened Fukusaku to his core. Then the sage spoke to him, in an angry tone that neither he nor Shima had heard from him before. "Fukusaku, in two days' time, you will be summoned by a man that you do not know. And when he asks, you will bring him here."

"Honorable one?" Fukusaku asked, obviously confused. The elder sage merely grunted and sat back in his seat, his staff still held in his hand.

"That is all I can tell you for now, young one. But rest assured, when that young man gets here, he's in for a world of hurt," the elder sage grumbled, his anger clearly evident.

A few hours later, unknown location

Oh, it hurt. That was all Naruto could think about as his eyes shot open. The pain that was wracking his body was transcending every other type of pain he had ever previously experienced, and he knew quite a bit of pain. Try as he might, he just couldn't get up. Every time that he did his muscles would protest. After failing to get up for the umpteenth time he finally relaxed and decided to take several deep breaths and wait out the pain. That's when he noticed that he wasn't breathing.

Despite trying with every fiber of his being, his chest would not rise, his diaphragm would not contract, and his lips would not part. It was disguised underneath the other mountains of pain, that burning sensation in his lungs as his body rapidly went through its suddenly limited oxygen supply. It was when the burning feeling reached its peak that he knew he didn't have much time left. When his world began to darken, he started to panic. It was with a determination bordering on zeal that he ravaged his mind, thinking of something to keep himself from becoming yet another statistic of chakra depletion when it came to him. It was simple and easy to do; he was already doing half of it anyway.

Naruto closed his eyes and concentrated. With a flood of nature energy, he took an explosive breath of life-saving air. He simply lay there, letting the nature energy supplement his normal reserves (which were absent for the first time in his life) and he just concentrated on breathing. In an obscure line of thought, he found he could fully empathize with newborns. Chuckling at his near-death inspired humor, Naruto closed his eyes and concentrated once more. Instead of focusing his will outward, trying to feel the nature energy of the world around him he went inward, into his mind's representation of the seal and Kyuubi. He was honestly surprised at what he saw.

The first thing to note was that the seal was in tatters. Only one of the red gates that pinned down the Kyuubi was standing at all, and only just at that. This seal probably couldn't hold a toddler if it tried right now but what surprised Naruto even more was that the Kyuubi wasn't even trying to escape. In fact, it looked even worse than the seal. To Naruto, it was just fur and bones, its breaths were hollow and weak and it took him a moment to realize that the cool breeze that he was feeling was actually the fox's breath. Whatever the hell happened to him took the worst out of a nearly inexhaustible being like the Kyuubi, and it showed.

Naruto couldn't bring himself to say anything, just stare in awe and terror at the sight of the mighty Kyuubi felled by chakra depletion. And then the Kyuubi moved. It wasn't much; it just opened a single eyelid to stare back at Naruto. It was so tired that it couldn't even manage to lift half an eyelid! Once it recognized Naruto, its body gave a light tremor, like it was trying to get back up but simply couldn't. But it did have the strength to speak.

"You're welcome," it muttered, and then its eye lid closed and to all appearances it looked like it was sleeping. Naruto decided to let it have some rest, considering that it was the Kyuubi that woke him up when he was suffocating. Closing his eyes briefly, he left his mindscape and went back to reality. At this point, the nature energy was fully circulated throughout his whole body. Instead of feeling like a million flaming needles were being slammed into his body, it only felt like 500 thousand flaming needles were being jammed into his body.

With this newly-reduced feeling of pain, Naruto gingerly lifted himself up and hesitantly rose, wincing slightly as some of the more damaged areas of his body protested this course of action. Once vertical (albeit at a slight angle due to leaning against a tree trunk), Naruto looked around, observing his surroundings with a critical eye. He was in a heavily wooded area with ever rising hills. This told him that he was in the northwest portion of the Land of Fire, a couple hundred miles away from the mountain stronghold the he and the shinobi army had been assaulting.

As Naruto looked up into the sky, he didn't find himself too overly concerned with that piece of information. He traveled greater distances when he was experimenting with the Kyuubi's chakra. It would just be a long trip home. But as he observed the heavens, that slight concern multiplied into dread quickly at what he saw. The stars were all wrong! Constellations that had been on the way out of the night sky were only just beginning to come in. And the constellations that were in full view of the night sky were the ones found during late fall, most likely late October or early November. But that couldn't be possible as it had been the first week of June when they attacked the stronghold.

"What the hell is going on?" Naruto whispered to himself, his heart and mind racing. Had he failed? Had he somehow survived the extraction only to be placed within Madara's penultimate illusion? This line of questioning, however, bred a counter line of questioning. Questions such as if the Kyuubi had been extracted, why could he still talk to it? Naruto vigorously shook his head, long golden locks splaying all over.

'Get a hold of yourself!' he thought, taking a deep breath and running a hand though his now displaced hair, 'Remember what Shikamaru always says: 'Act according to your information. If you have little to no information, find some more.' Since I don't know where I am, let's change that.' Now armed with some semblance of a plan, Naruto spotted the outlines of the mountains that began the territory of the Land of Earth and began limping in the opposite direction, deeper into the Land of Fire and hopefully closer to Konoha.

Three hours later

Naruto's situation had improved immensely. He could finally stop channeling nature energy as his regular reserves had grown enough to support him on their own. This also led to the pain in his body diminishing greatly. And although it was still present, it didn't hurt so badly. But the best part was that he finally found himself on the outskirts of a small village. It was a sleepy little hamlet with only a few guards and no night activity whatsoever. It was perfect for Naruto to sneak into.

After several lessons with Shikamaru, Naruto learned the value of discretion. As these people were currently not enemies, it would be rude to wake them all up by just waltzing into the village screaming bloody murder. So he created a single Kage Bunshin (my god, a single clone), he was somewhat surprised that he could actually feel the chakra expenditure. 'So this is what it must feel like to be a regular jonin,' Naruto thought, chuckling to himself.

There was less hassle with sending in a single clone. He could get in and out sure enough but having a clone get in, gather its intended information and then merely disperse into a puff of harmless smoke, letting him gain all its memories, was so much easier and less likely to be exposed. Its objective was simple: where and when. The where was simple enough but the when was something that was bothering him. The misplaced constellations were bugging him something fierce and he wanted to double check just to ease his mind. After several agonizing minutes of waiting, his clone finally dispelled itself.

His mind was not eased.

Upon receiving and processing the information, Naruto almost fell over in shock. The date was October, 29, 243 years after the founding of Hi no Kuni, three years before he was born, and a whole twenty years before the joint Shinobi army assaulted the stronghold! Naruto's clone hadn't gone to just one house though. It had broken into several other houses as well, gaining the exact same information in every household.

"What the hell is this?" Naruto said to himself, his voice coming out a harsh whisper but then he whipped around and screamed up at the full, incredibly bright moon, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, MADARA?" Was this a sick joke on Madara's part? It just couldn't be happening, could it? Why? Why was he in the past, if he was in the past?

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" he said, and a mass of clones (a pathetic amount really, only twenty in total number) but he collapsed from the utterly unwise usage of chakra in his condition. One clone moved to help him but he shoved it off (lightly) and lifted his head to address the group of clones. "Go! Everywhere! Prove this wrong!" he ordered and without preamble the clones sped off in twenty separate directions.

It was then that Naruto noticed that he had just alerted the village to his presence, lights were turning on in the houses and at least one of the sleepy guards was looking in his general direction. "Fuck," he muttered to himself and hobbled off, doing his best in his drained state to not leave an overly obvious trail. Things were bad enough without having to announce himself to the whole world.

It was two days later and Naruto was lying on his back in some random cold, damp cave that he had found. He slept there the first night but then his clones started to dispel, slowly, and none of them had any information that helped, they only confirmed that he was somehow twenty years in the past. He had eaten very little in these past two days, merely sifting through all of the information that his clones had gathered.

What had really done his mental health in was that one of his clones actually had the audacity to check out Konoha. The basic layout of the city was slightly different as the Kyuubi had yet to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting village so nothing had to be rebuilt. More importantly was that they were only now working on the bust of the Yondaime Hokage on the Hokage Mountain. Tsunade's face was nowhere to be seen. That's when it really sunk in for him, that he was stuck in the past (or in an illusion of the past as set up by Madara).

And so, half a day later Naruto was at his wits' end, trying to see what possible options that he even had at the moment. There was no way that he could go to Konoha. There were just too many questions that he couldn't answer. Hell, anywhere that he could think to go, there would be too many questions that he just couldn't answer. But then a stray thought passed through his mind, it brought with it a small glimmer of hope that he almost instantly latched onto.

'What about Fukusaku-san and Shima-obachan?' some small voice of reason, or insanity for that matter, whispered in his head and he mulled the thought over. Fukusaku and Shima were both wise and they had helped him out immensely with his sage training. Hell, even the old geezer sage had told him to seek out Killer Bee in some sort of future vision, so maybe he could help him out or something.

There were so many uncertainties for Naruto, but so few options and he needed all the help he could get at the moment. So he shakily stood up and began forming the necessary hand seals to perform the summoning, praying that he actually could summon a toad. While Naruto had very little in the ways of food and rest of his chakra reserves continued to grow, they were still nowhere near full potency. So he should've had enough to call down at least one of the Toad Sages.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" he called out and was immensely relieved to see a seal array spread out from his hands and then a small cloud of smoke puff into existence. That relief grew exponentially when he saw Fukusaku standing before him in all his warty glory. Unlike everything else, the toad sage had not changed at all, even his cloak was the same. That relief was all washed away when Fukusaku spoke.

"Minato-chan?" he asked uncertainly, cocking his head to the side in confusion.

And there you have it, with another psuedo cliff hanger to boot. :D

translations:

Chidori Eisou: Thousand Birds Sharp Spear

Katon: Housenka no jutsu: Mythical Fire Pheonix technique

Katon: goukakyuu no jutsu: great fireball technique

Chidori Senbon: Thousand Birds Needles

Fuuton: teikiatsu no jutsu: cyclone technique

Kamui: God's Majesty

Jikukan Ido: Space-Time Migration

as always please read and review, if you flame I shall wish a 1000 horrible things to happen to you and your family. if you praise my work then I shall wish for 1000 great things to happen to you and your family. If you have any sort of advice for how I can improve my writing in any way I shall wish for 10000 great things to happen to you and your family. see you all in another 2 months :D

Update: Thanks to cmcwiki for the Jikukan Ido correction