A/N: Thank you for the reminder on dialogue deanine :) I've been edging around it but ultimately, yes Naruto has found himself in an alternative universe as well as a time-shift to his natural one. Any differences in characteristics are a sign of the AU trying to adapt to Naruto's alien presence- kind of like throwing a pebble into a still body of water, he's making ripples with every action he takes. Of course he won't really catch on to that just yet.
Thank you Adventure Writer 28 :) Hey, take your time getting a review in. I'm kind of used to delayed responses from my other fics here and elsewhere so I don't mind it greatly.
And one more Thank You to all of my subscribers and those who have added this story to your favorites list!
Naruto blinked at having his father's name applied to him in place of his mother's.
I suppose he would have been one of the few to know about that, he conceded after a moment, maintaining his combative stance. He didn't know much of what the old council member could do or how he would react, only having heard bits and pieces from Sai on occasion over the months when they had worked together before the Fourth Shinobi World War, and that mystery unsettled him a little now that he had to confront the man. If he had had his way, they would have never met face to face until after things were well and truly underway, after having a chance to actually find out more about the council as a whole to see if they too would react as the Hokage had after learning about him.
A faint niggling on the back of his mind told him to just burst through Yamato's Mokuton contraption sealing up the doorway and make a break for the village proper, but he ignored it for now - even if he did get through it quickly, the rest of the hidden Root would be waiting for him throughout the base, to say nothing of Yamato himself, who was likely stationed nearby even now. He stepped away from the door and glanced at the screens again.
Danzō took his silence in stride. "As I was saying, then," he began neutrally. "I've heard the truth of your situation and you make no motion to deny it. I admit my curiosity over your fate, and our respective desires to protect the village may differ in their execution, Namikaze, but that you were so easily ambushed immediately after your arrival here proves that I made the correct decision in having you brought before me now." He paused to give Naruto a chance to respond, but at the further silence he continued, "Were you captured by Kumogakure, or even Iwagakure in my stead, it is probable the Nine Tails would return to wreak havoc upon our village yet again in short order, to say nothing of the information they would have extracted from you before your execution. It would be an utter disaster not unlike the day of your birth, and this time there is no Fourth Hokage to sacrifice himself for our greater good."
The barb made his hackles raise. "So you weren't planning to harm me, but to test my mettle and teach me a lesson?" Even as he said it that sounded absurd in his own ears. "If it was anyone other than Yamato that had tried to capture me today, tomorrow, or next week, I could have broken free with little trouble and alerted the ANBU trailing me to the situation."
The elder man inclined his head, closing his eye in thought. He spoke up again after a few seconds. "Ah. I see," he stated softly, then reached over to lightly drum his fingers across the metal container over his other arm idly, seemingly shelving the matter for now. "Tell me then, Namikaze. What would you desire to do with the knowledge that you have? I have heard some part from Hiruzen already, but elaborate for me. Perhaps we can come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial; with what you know of to come, and what I already know of what is, our village would be better protected than any other in the elemental nations."
Naruto blinked again. For a moment he seemed thrown by the subject change as much as the more welcoming tone of voice compared to before. His arms crossed over his chest as he thought about it - it did sound reasonable to him, for some reason.
And what Old man Hokage had said earlier on about how certain events could be and already were slightly different in this timeline compared to those that had come to pass in his original one meant that Danzō was probably right - maybe by sharing his foreknowledge he could better help to defend Konoha from Orochimaru; from Nagato; the Akatsuki; and of course, Madara Uchiha. All of those threats he would have to track down on his own as it was if he wanted to do something about them, for it seemed clear that the Hokage would not willingly aid him. But if he had an ally in the endeavor, particularly one in position to convince the Hokage to go along with things, then it might very well be possible to fix what he wanted to fix and ensure the village was completely safe from the trouble to come. The ANBU would know to be wary at all of the right times, the Hokage prepared to directly intervene, the council alert for misinformation flowing in from their scouts abroad.
He opened his mouth to answer and that niggling sense on the back of his mind redoubled, a faint howl radiating up from the depths of his mind. He recognized the sound after a moment as being the voice of the fox growling at him, and it instantly brought back memories of their irritation and struggle against one another throughout the years until finally culminating in the encounter where he had defeated the Kyūbi and gained full access to its chakra. He pushed the Nine Tails' quiet threats to the back of his mind and tilted his head up to stare at the older nin, momentarily shaken. "How do I know you won't misuse that information?" He asked. "I know Old man Hokage wants to do what is best for everyone, and so would you."
Danzō drummed his fingers more heavily against the metal shell, the sound reverberating like a steel drum. "Be that as it may, Namikaze, would you rather not attempt to convey a sense of impregnable defense and strength about Konoha first and foremost, so that when our envoys are sent out to work on a peace treaty some day with the rest of the hidden villages, they know that they must take our offers seriously?" Naruto began to speak, but he was cut off as Danzō continued. "You need look no further than the Hyūga incident four years ago to see how they view us now, Namikaze. We have been humiliated too often in the past, and will continue to be in the future, of what I have heard."
Naruto sighed, an abrupt tiredness coming over him. He felt like he wanted to trust the old shinobi, but at the same time as if he knew that he should not. The fox's howls had diminished when it became clear that he would not answer them, but they still rippled against the edge of his attention span, refusing to vanish altogether. It was an annoyance that, when coupled with his unease, was getting under his skin. Danzō only exacerbated the issue with that constant drumming of his fingers in an almost-irregular rhythm of taps and pauses.
I need a few moments of quiet, he thought, rubbing at his forehead wearily, as if to sooth a headache. Without even quite realizing it, he had slipped out of Sage Mode.
"Well, Namikaze? Will you honor your father's name and efforts to defend Konoha by working with me, and the hidden Root, in the shaping of the coming future?" What had begun as an even, perhaps even grateful tone of voice, took on an edge of steel as he uttered, "Or will you squander your wealth of knowledge and leave our borders undefended from the many menaces lurking ahead?"
Of course he wanted to protect Konoha, that was part of why he even wanted to start working on things now, such as going out to Suna to try and calm Gaara, to find someway to work with Nagato before he was immersed in his Pain alter-ego, and to put a stop to Orochimaru's experiments before he could come after Sasuke again one day. What cinched the matter for him was what Danzō had said near the start, that the Hokage had confided in him about the information Naruto had already shared - a fact that almost made him frown.
"Alright," he said, sitting down on the floor and closing his eyes to concentrate. By the time he had sat down the distrust was gone, as if it had never been present on his mind.
He spoke about what was nearest then, at least what he intended to start upon; infiltrating Sunagakure and putting a stop to the life Gaara had lead, else he would become a pawn of Otogakure, Orochimaru, and the Kazekage during the invasion several years later - but Danzō waved a dismissive hand and interrupted him.
"No matter Suna for now, Namikaze. Tell me of all the traitor Sannin, and Amegakure in particular."
Not even shrugging, he adjusted track and spoke of seeking out Jiraiya and Tsunade in their distant locations so that they could be brought back to the village, to help in putting a stop to their wayward teammate's actions. The older man asked for location names, but all he had were faint ideas. The same for Orochimaru - even the Hokage might not have the pertinent information regarding better-than-remote guesses for where Jiraiya himself was, let alone the other two.
But as his words turned to the Toad Sage, the memories of Jiraiya's training and their two and a half year journey together began to filter to the surface, quick flashes that brought up the different emotions ingrained within them before they were stifled. His features turned into a pained grimace as his mind warred with itself, trying to suppress something.
When at last his thoughts settled upon the moment when he learned of Jiraiya's demise in Ame, however, that something seemed to stir and cut off the flow of words past his lips. A throb developed behind his eyes as the pupils abruptly became jagged, and the old whisker-marked scars along each cheek took on heightened highlights. His incisors sharpened and he felt the fox's voice echo inside of his skull, too far away to make out the words at first but growing in strength with every beat of his heart, until he had unconsciously henged into his older, sixteen-year-old body and clothing again.
At last, the Kyūbi's voice growled inside of his mind, a single slitted orange eye glaring at him therein with venom. You have been under his genjutsu mind-control, you little fool! Stop speaking before you reveal everything to him!
Naruto blinked his eyes back open and shook his head, trying to clear it. As soon as the thought occurred that he was being manipulated, the niggling in the back of his mind surged to the forefront and overwhelmed his senses, a foreign chakra standing out now that he knew it was there, and he knew that he had indeed been tricked into speaking precious secrets better kept under lock and key. It felt like a fuzz had lifted from his thoughts and eyes and revealed the truth standing before him once more.
"Hello, Naruto Namikaze. I see your actions speak far louder than the words I've overheard this afternoon."
Overheard?
Danzō's very first words to him, which had been dampened by the genjutsu, rang now with an echoing clarity over and over again as he looked back at that moment.
The Hokage wouldn't have risked alterations to the timeline so soon by confiding in the council - that was why he had said to wait, to get time to think and ponder the information and how it could play out, rather than allow him to rush off and begin implementing his knowledge.
"You lied to me..." Naruto said slowly and quietly, his head dropping down into one hand as he fought to control his overbearing emotions. The enforced calm from their discussion was disintegrating beneath the maelstrom evoked at his time spent with Jiraiya, the good and bad together bleeding into one, and as Danzō's genjutsu was forcibly strangled and destroyed by the Kyūbi's malicious chakra flowing though his veins, giving him strength, a whispered anger that he had been manipulated in such a way started to encompass it all.
Danzō's own eye opened in full, watching him with a hint of contempt even as his fingers continued calmly dancing over the metal shell in what was clearly morse code, sending out messages to whomever was listening beyond this room.
"Perhaps I have, but I told you at the start that my desire to protect this village may not be agreeable from your own point of view. My offer remains to aid you even now, jinchūriki. Join with the Root and share your knowledge freely and you will always be protected, and perhaps even allowed some measure of freedom to roam the various districts of Konoha still when its borders have been proven beyond foreign access." His voice was no longer even the slightest bit pleasant. It came out clipped, hard, giving no compromise, and he reached into a pocket to draw a single kunai for defense.
Naruto lifted his head and stared at the other man with something akin to heated malice etched into his gaze, slowly rising to his feet. It was returned with cold indifference, and then a slow and weary sigh emerged from the older man.
"I see now that you are the same as all of the rest born to this village besides myself, the Second, and Orochimaru," he began. "So willing to succumb to your base emotions rather than execute your duty to the sake of Konoha! You are a shinobi; a tool to be wielded in more-capable hands, cutting only as directed, and yet as a weapon you are blunted by your inability to act only as told; you are little more than a liability to us, jinchūriki, exactly as the others I have seen throughout my life." He scoffed, lifting the kunai to his mouth and exhaling a swirl of molded mint-green chakra along its blade. In a moment what had begun as a small knife had become a small sword, and Danzō Shimura looked back at him steadily. "I would have yet had you prepared to aid us rather than risk opposing us in the hands of Kumogakure; Iwagakure; Kiwigakure; Sunagakure; or Amegakuri, but you would take that chance, just as the Second did. Now you will be subdued and subjugated until my will is your own."
"I already told you I won't be made into anyone's pawn!" Naruto bit out around clenched teeth. "And I won't allow you to take advantage of the information you stole from me, either!" His fingers began to twitch as bubbling vermilion chakra bled up from his pores, ensconcing the younger shinobi in the old, well-familiar chakra-cloak of the Nine Tails. Only two of said tails flicked back and forth from just beneath the base of his spine, slapping against each other in agitation and scraping rents in the stone floor, but he did not need them all to subdue and capture his opponent before he could do anything.
A moment later, the wall of overlapping roots exploded into motion behind Naruto's back.
"...And that's it." Kakashi finished explaining what all he had gotten out of Sasuke. The young Uchiha looked uncomfortable to be in the Hokage's office yet again, glancing around at everything in muted curiosity even though he had already seen much of it several months ago in the wake of his family's massacre.
Hiruzen grimaced. "Do you think you can identify the ANBU member based off of what scant details you have?" He questioned.
Kakashi closed his normal eye in thought. Not many would willingly choose the unofficially-retired fox mask for this task, for obvious reasons. Dog masks on the other hand... after running through those he remembered from a few months ago when he left the group, Kakashi nodded his head. "Yes, Hokage-sama. Unless you've signed orders to promote any other Jōnin to the ANBU squad since I left it should be possible to narrow in on a man." He stated.
Hiruzen nodded his head and gestured to the child standing off to the side, an inquiring look in his eyes. Kakashi nodded his head again in understanding. "The Uchiha heir has agreed," he said in a neutral tone.
"Very well. As I said before, dredge up the paperwork and bring it here. But that must take a back-seat to confirming which ANBU has kidnapped Naruto and why."
Kakashi glanced down at Sasuke and recognized the body language he was using with a frown. "Yes, Hokage-sama," he agreed without turning toward him. "Do you wish to remain here or follow me and help confirm the mask features, Sasuke?" He asked the child.
Sasuke hadn't expected the question and started, looking up at him. "Do I have to?" He asked softly.
Kakashi shrugged.
The boy frowned but nodded his head, wanting to get this whole process over and done with and get away from the place where he had been taken to so soon after losing everything, where the memories of that night were more easily refreshed. He had gradually gotten used to seeing the empty streets and remnants of the Uchiha Compound, but here he was brought back to the blood and the bodies scattered everywhere...
Kakashi reached down and snagged the boy again, jolting him back to the moment and making him shake his head violently to clear away the lingering dead ingrained in his mind's eye. "With your leave, Hokage-sama?" He asked.
Hiruzen watched Sasuke for a moment in concern, then waved a dismissal at them and turned to go back to his desk and stack of unfinished paperwork waiting to be signed and dealt with, knowing that he would likely ponder the youngest Uchiha's fate the same as he had Naruto's prior.
Kakashi nodded and dashed off toward ANBU headquarters. There was a traitor in that midst, and his late mentor's son may not be the only one subdued for the unknown events playing out.
Danzō flashed across the distance even as Naruto spun about in alarm, momentarily taken off-guard by the barrage of wood that surged toward his position. A momentary glimpse of white porcelain revealed itself as Yamato's mask behind the shuffling chaos. One of his chakra-tails spun upright and shielded his neck by instinct as Danzō's wind-blade struck at the base of his spine, aiming to temporarily incapacitate him, but he had no time to retaliate directly, forced into slashing at the roots with the suddenly developed chakra-claws over his fingernails as his secondary tail snapped out in an idle pot-shot toward the Root leader's gut.
The first batch of bulging tendrils were cut to ribbons and fell apart hissing where the fox's chakra had touched them, but two and three more burst forth and rushed through the opening to replace them, and he fell back and leaped across the wide room, unconsciously reaching out and catching Danzō's next blow aimed for his head across his upraised right arm instead. The weapon bubbled and grew pockmarked initially at the contact, disintegrating the edge, but the elder shinobi simply released it and drew another kunai, expertly dancing amidst Yamato's Mokuton assault as if they had trained for this very operation day-in-and-day-out.
I need back-up, Naruto realized. He bared his teeth and slammed his hands through the ancient hand-seals of the Shadow Clone jutsu, and two nearly-identical imitations appeared from smoke next to him. They lacked the same degree of bijū chakra and thus held only a single tail, the fox unwilling to share its strength any further, but it was enough to grant them some measure of a chakra-cloak and the enhanced durability within it.
The next moment they were swarmed again; Naruto was able to dedicate some attention to countering Danzō directly while his clones shredded the roots around them, lunging forward and blocking the second wind-enhanced knife with his hand even as he brought the other up and slashed at the council member's torso. He had no more success now than when he had tried before, as Danzō slid back and vanished amidst the wood, only to reappear from another direction.
After the fourth such bout, however, the older nin did not show himself again. The longer Naruto waited, slicing through the roots, the greater his unease rose. The Kyūbi spared a moment to answer; he is waiting for you to wear yourself out, boy. Or else fleeing even now to commit his next atrocities throughout the lands. Now stop wasting my precious strength and finish this job!
A grimace spread across his features. He jumped even further back into the open space at his back and his clones followed after a moment. Without even needing to speak, he held his hands in the motions of the Wind Release: Rasenshuriken technique, and they recognized his intent, providing the needed shape transformation and nature transformation while he supplied the chakra. Yamato's Mokuton devoured the twenty foot distance in just seconds; and in just seconds, the greater experience at his aid gave Naruto the time needed to finalize the essence of his attack. For the moment, it did not occur to him exactly what he was about to do, focused only upon catching up to Danzō and halting him directly.
He thrust his arm forward and threw the Rasenshuriken with all his might. The blue-white construct cut through the wood as if it wasn't there, eradicating every tendril in its wake, and then almost-too late, Naruto remembered that it was Yamato commanding the opposing ninjutsu. His breath hitched and his posture shifted in the next instant; his eyes flared into cross-shaped pupils, red highlights erupted beneath his eyes, and the awaiting senjutsu chakra brewing in his gut encompassed his entire body.
He felt the fox's outrage and sent a single thought across their uneasy bond even as he shunshined forward - Shut up and help me!
The edges of his vision blurred. He could see his technique approaching Yamato at a pace that the older nin had no hope of evading, especially blind by the Mokuton still obscuring the doorway. There was barely even the usual screech of noise as it flowed forward without resistance, and even if Yamato heard the quieter shriek in time, his body simply couldn't react in such a short distance. Naruto himself ducked down as he approached, right arm outstretched. He refused to be responsible for killing his future teacher no matter what Yamato was involved in here and now.
Indentations were burned into the rock and cracks spread outward from there as he drove his feet harder and harder, measuring time in half-second increments. Yamato's mask and parts of his torso could be seen through the gaps in the overlapping wood, the way his body had stiffened and was attempted to pull away apparent.
But he was closer, narrowing the distance. Another heavy step, the cracks widening, the screech louder; another, his fingers nearly close enough to shift the Rasenshuriken with frog kata; another foot of distance eaten as the first white edge cut into the doorway, Naruto nearly stumbling as his hand drove into the wood; and then, at last, his arm and upper body bursting through the surface even as Yamato's flak jacket began to shred, the slightest flare of copper scent suffusing his nostrils to signify blood, and Naruto pushed the Root ANBU down and aside with his left hand and then thrust at the deadly technique to offset it with his right; crashing into Yamato and dragging him away as his attack soared upward and to the far end of the hall, wobbling in air and carving a trench through the ceiling the whole way through.
The very air quivered in the instant before two tonnes of jagged stone fell upon them, jinchūriki and ANBU taken by surprise. And further ahead, the Rasenshuriken exploded where it finally collided with a wall, blowing out a quarter tonne of stone and streaming muted sunlight through the dust.
Hiruzen raised his head from the arch his hands had formed, elbows locked into place flat against his desk. Not only had one of his most steadfast of Jōnin unexpectedly deviated and adopted the last Uchiha in the village the same day as a timeline-displaced Naruto Uzumaki arrived, but then the wayward jinchūriki had managed to entangle himself in a scheme dating back at least a decade.
Said boy was resting up unconscious inside of the hospital at the moment with a double-duty of personally-selected ANBU to watch over him. Where exactly Danzō Shimura had vanished to in the last few hours he did not know, but injured Root personnel were turning up left, right, and everywhere in-between inside of the hidden base discovered within the Hokage Monument that very evening, which said enough.
The Root were supposed to have been disbanded long ago. He sighed warily and looked down to the open report laying on his desk from the head of the Torture and Interrogation Force, Ibiki Morino, describing the incident and information obtained from the breaking of the 'fox-faced' kidnapper, Tenzō. He glanced over the first few pages and skimmed through the report.
"Like the rest of the hidden Root seeded throughout the regular ANBU troops and being recovered from their base, this Tenzō bears a Juinjutsu upon his tongue that has rendered him incapable of directly answering our questions. What little we've been able to uncover since he willingly left the hospital room and sat down before us has come only after breaking through it at the unfortunate cost of his vocal chords - his tongue remains heavily injured by the backlash of the seal failing. The ability to speak is unlikely to return even if he makes a full recovery."
That was disturbing in and of itself, but he was simply uncertain what to make of the next paragraph.
"It appears that he intervened after bringing Uzumaki to their base for unknown purposes. The diminutive roots barely supporting a couple tonnes of stone over their heads when we reached them while the rest of the base was left to fend for itself lends credence to his writing. No other signs of traitorous activity has been, pardon the pun, rooted out of his personal history so far. Hatake Kakashi and the Uchiha brat confirmed he's the one they were looking for."
So he kidnapped Naruto and delivered the boy to Danzō, and then what? Defends him from some sort of vendetta? Surely Danzō had better control over his subordinates than that. There was just too much that he did not know, and until Naruto woke up, he would have to wait to find out. But it could not be coincidence that the Root was unearthed after a decade in hiding today.
He reached down for the pipe laying unattended nearby and lifted it to his lips, taking a dry inhalation on the mostly finished tobacco. It left a sour taste down into his lungs and he grimaced, dumping the ashes into the waste bin the next moment, and refilled it from the pouch in his top drawer. Then he thought better of wasting more in idle thought and set them both aside, grabbing the report and marching out of his office. There was one other he could turn to for more answers.
Tenzō looked up as the doors of the interrogation room swung upon and admitted the Hokage himself. He tried to smile at his village leader, but his lips wouldn't quite form the right shape and it hurt too badly to want to anyway. He bowed instead and remained there, his forehead pressed to the cold steel and eyes closed, until the Hokage made an impatient noise for him to sit upright again.
A thin sheaf of papers landed in front of him. Clearly the report Morino had compiled from his agonized answers a short while ago. A pen clacked and rolled to a halt beside them. He blinked in surprise that he had been given any kind of tool, let alone one as viable as a weapon in the right hands, after what had happened so far. He glanced back at his commander.
"You seem to be changing positions very regularly," the Hokage told him dryly. "And yet I know from your files that you are not a disloyal man. Unless Danzō has reached in and replaced them as well?" If it was meant as a joke, neither man laughed. "Tell me why and what you have done today, Tenzō."
He looked back to the pen and papers, then reached out and flipped over one sheet, writing down his thoughts, actions, and reasoning behind them. It was not overtly long, simply relaying what he believed was necessary for the good of the village. He set the pen aside when he was done and turned the sheet to the Hokage for inspection.
Nothing new was there that had not already been gleamed from Morino's insights, except for the last lines.
"The boy charged into his own attack to spare my life. He could have stood back and allowed me to die, as I had been told to expect while Danzō-sama retreated. I could not have stopped that technique with any nin, ken, or juinjutsu in my arsenal, and I expected to reenter the pure world at last in the next seconds when I heard - and saw it."
"And then he appeared. Garbed in the demon fox's flesh, face a flurry of emotions; yet not one of them was anger, or hate, or a desire to see me dead. I saw only determination etched out of fear. I was reminded in those brief, eternally-long moments, that Naruto Uzumaki is not the vessel of the Kyūbi out of choice. I don't know what happened when we hit the floor together and then rolled apart, but I saw the collapse of the ceiling while he did not; I simply repaid the favor he had already delivered."
Tired from borderline chakra-exhaustion, Tenzō leaned back and waited to hear what his fate would be - execution or imprisonment? So long as they let him sleep for a few hours first, he would go without complaint.
The Hokage stared at his message for a long time, and then looked at him for even longer. Then he reached over and severed the rope binding his wrists together, and stepped back. "Very well, Jōnin Tenzō. Let me escort you back to a hospital bed until your wounds are sufficiently healed. I'll pass judgment once - not if - Naruto Uzumaki awakens."
End Chapter Four.