Tokikage
by Lord Dragon Claw
Disclaimer: Finding the space-time coordinates of least resistance is like looking for a needle in a haystack... in a quantum singularity.
Chapter Six: Zeal's Legacy
Shizune was a beautiful woman - there was no doubt about it. It would be less annoying if he didn't find her mind to be attractive - much less annoying if Lavos would stop needling him about it. The major problem was that Naruto's heart was fairly dead-set on Hinata.
At least Jiraiya hadn't really bothered the bronze-blonde about it - though he had written some scenes based off of his interactions with Shizune. And Tsunade thankfully pretended that she didn't notice. One must count their blessings after all.
Well, wasn't that interesting? The Namikaze Estate was actually separated from space-time via a blood seal hidden under the pavement of the (apparently) empty lot. The clones hadn't been able to see it until they were literally standing on it.
"The real us is going to want to see this," commented one shadow clone to another.
"Agreed," replied the other before dispelling.
The first clone went back to 'searching' the area for anything interesting before its ANBU Ne tail managed to find it again.
"Sorry I had to dispel on you Morino-san."
"Quite all right. I don't think I'd have the ability to sustain a shadow clone at that distance and fight such powerful adversaries at the same time."
The Naruto clone paused. "I dispelled the clones to reabsorb their chakra, not because I couldn't keep them going."
Ibiki dropped his clipboard in shock.
The clone scratched the back of his head. "I suppose I've done the impossible... again."
Naruto left a clone with Jiraiya, Shizune, and Tsunade when he had the chance. The discovery of the Namikaze Estate was a huge find and deserved to be explored by the rightful heir in person. All of his father's research, the artifacts that his parents left behind, everything that was his inheritance was sealed into a pocket of space-time separate from the continuum and there for the taking if one could unravel the seals.
Or travel through time.
It took a simple gate to get into the mansion, bypassing his father's immensely complex and hidden seal array with but a flexing of his chi.
He was able to see everything but the interior of the vault attached to the back of the place as soon as he arrived, including one of Jiraiya's older novels, containing a character named Naruto - Lavos brought that to the forefront of his attention (the old eldritch horror was a big softie at times). His mother's things were well-preserved, and there was even a nursery set up for for baby Naruto after his birth. These brought tears to Naruto's eyes.
The family he had never had... they had wanted him. They had been excited to have him. They had even expected to give him siblings if all the books about increasing fertility were any indication.
Naruto cried for what must have been days in that timeless place. He mourned the loss of his family and the things never to be.
Eventually, he got up and went to find a way into the vault, the obvious location of his father's research and jutsu library.
"Halt!" commanded one of the guards to the Hyuuga Clan Compound.
The Naruto clone bowed.
"What business do you have here?"
"Is Neji in?"
"We are under orders to not allow you within the Compound in any way. You have brought enough dishonor to the Hyuuga Clan as it stands."
The shadow clone shrugged and walked off, his job of distracting most of the Hyuuga with his presence done while another one gated Neji out.
"I see you wished to speak with me, Naruto-san."
"Obviously, else I would not have kidnapped you. Did you know that everyone is under orders not to let me near Hinata or you, or be near the Clan Compound?"
Neji nodded before taking a sip of his tea. "The transfer will be difficult if done on foot."
The shadow clone nodded. "That's why I'm going to do what I did with you just now. Do you have a comprehensive list of those going with us?"
"Just eleven names so far," Neji replied, handing over a privacy-sealed canister normally used for intelligence dead drops.
Naruto nodded as he took the canister. "Keep me posted. I will contact you again in two days."
The door to the vault took him days to crack, but the passage of time within the seal was distorted. Outside of the seal, only a few minutes had passed.
Naruto had to make more than a hundred clones just to memorize all of the scrolls, notes, and diagrams. Lavos kept busy trying to sort the information and organize it into memory packets which could later be sent to his host in small bursts.
Very soon all of his father's knowledge was his, or would be in the very near future.
He also knew that the Hiraishin no jutsu was one that would remain unique to his father, as Namikaze Minato had a knack for connecting his spirit to the specially-attuned kunai to allow him to reverse-summon himself. But Naruto didn't need to do that as he had the ability to gate; he just needed the theoretical knowledge for what he was planning.
Shikamaru seemed to know that it was a Naruto clone that was lying on the ground next to him without having to check. Both of them had been staring at the clouds in the sky for a few minutes before Shikamaru broke the silence.
"Only a few of the Yamanakas are going to go with you, Naruto. None from my clan, and none from Chouji's."
The clone grunted to tell him that the message was received.
"YOSH! TEAM GUY ACCEPTS YOUR YOUTHFUL INVITATION!"
"Agreed," Tenten concurred. "With the condition that Tsunade cures Lee before we go."
"I'll get her to work on that as soon as we get back to Konoha."
Later, Guy found a Naruto clone to tell him that he agreed to go to the new village for a multitude of reasons, but particularly because he didn't want to see Naruto's new hidden village transform into a similar cesspool of corruption that Konoha was slowly transforming into, or that Yukigakure no Sato (Ninja Village Hidden in Snow) and Amegakure no Sato (Ninja Village Hidden in Rain) had both already become.
They discussed the ANBU Ne briefly before the clone dispelled itself.
Sixty-two years prior Lavos ceased to watch the surface world. Wary of creating a paradox, Naruto went back only sixty years to Wave to prepare for his master plan. He had to learn and experiment with a great number of seals but didn't have much time in the present to do so... In the past however…
There was a lot for him to figure out after all:
How to combine Zealian Skyway technology with seals;
How to link it to the time-space coordinates of least resistance for the local causality, known in slang as "the End of Time";
How to create a whole continent and climate for things to live and thrive;
How to apply a permanent genjutsu to make it seem like the continent existed in the sky, and received sunlight;
How to synchronize the timeflow of that place with the real world;
How to warp space and disguise the distortion around the real-world Skyway to hide it from view;
How to create a Mammon Machine to siphon power off of Lavos to sustain the whole thing;
Where to find a great deal of Dreamstone to build the Mammon Machine and several of the three-dimensional seal arrays.
Naruto's work was cut out for him.
Luckily he had the help of Lavos and the seven generations preceding him as experience in these matters. Even the memories and technologies available to the First contributed greatly.
Naruto had to work as fast and as covertly as possible, so as to avoid drawing the attention of any S-ranked opponents or, worse yet, that of past-Lavos before he was sealed.
Only two days after her inauguration as the Godaime Hokage, Tsunade already knew that things had been too quiet in regards to the bronze-blonde. Even her master, Sarutobi Hiruzen, thought something was odd in that regard.
And then one of Naruto's gates appeared in the office where they were discussing paperwork.
"Anything we can do for you, Naruto-kun?" asked the Sandaime.
"Yeah," he replied absently. "You can hammer out a peace treaty with me."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"... the HELL!"
"It has been fun working with you, Ibiki-san."
As the clone dispersed, the head of the Konoha ANBU Department of Torture and Interrogation massaged his temples. He now knew what the kid was planning. He knew it could not be stopped. And he knew the necessity of it. He just wished it wouldn't cause such a migraine in the days to come.
Well, at least he got to see what would become of the boy who had the balls to call his bluff during the first part of the Chuunin Exams when he had a blank answer sheet. Not many people got to meet someone who was going to be the Shodai Kage of a new village after all.
"You little brat!" Tsunade screamed. "I came back because of you and now you're leaving!"
Naruto raised an eyebrow. "You came back for such a flimsy reason? What if I died? What if I were to be crippled beyond your ability to heal? What then?" He grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the desk to the window. "And what about them?" He asked, gesturing towards the whole of Konoha before pointing to a specific building. "What about the Hospital?"
She spat. "Most of them are just sheep, especially because of how they treated you."
The bronze-blonde chuckled darkly. "And I suppose that I got all depressed and homicidal like the Jinchuuriki of Suna did? There are good people amongst them - some of them just don't know it. They need someone to protect them from wolves like Danzou. Tsunade-baa-chan, I'll be counting on you to protect the ideals which spawned people like the Fourth Hokage; like me; like Hokage-jiji; like many of the Inuzuka; and the Akimichi; the Aburame; and all the others."
She found herself swept up in his words and looked back to see her master smiling.
Naruto continued, drawing the older blonde's attention. "I am leaving to give myself and others whom I care about a fresh start. All the rest of the sheep need a strong shepherd to guard them. In five minutes my plan will come to fruition and the new village, Tokigakure no Sato, will be populated."
Releasing her arm, Naruto stepped backwards into a new gate. "I will be back to hammer out the alliance sometime soon. Or rather, a clone will."
"And to think…" muttered Sarutobi, causing Tsunade to turn to him. "It was his dream to be the next Hokage, and he used to be somewhat petulant about it. I never thought he'd turn out to be quite this ambitious."
True to his word, everyone whom Naruto wanted to take and was willing to go disappeared from Konoha not even five minutes after his talk with Tsunade. Only the best-trained eyes caught the transition. A gate materialized, several sets of arms belonging to bronze-blonde shadow clones grabbed the people nearby, and everything involved disappeared, all of which took less than a second. A split-second later and the belongings of everyone who was "abducted" also vanished in the same manner. The final phase of this mass exodus was a clone of the bronze-blonde standing on every corner of every building, all speaking in unison.
"ATTENTION KONOHA. THE PEOPLE WHO JUST DISAPPEARED HAVE BECOME PART OF A NEW HIDDEN VILLAGE, TOKI, WHICH IS LOCATED IN WAVE COUNTRY. ANY PEOPLE LOOKING FOR A FRESH START WILL BE WELCOMED. ALL PEOPLE LOOKING TO HARM THE NEW VILLAGE AND/OR ANYONE IN IT WILL BE ANNIHILATED. THAT IS ALL."
With that, all the clones dispersed. And there was much hysteria when a sizeable chunk of the population was found to be missing.
Hiashi was honestly not surprised when nearly eighty percent of the Branch House of the Hyuuga Clan were among those taken to Tokigakure no Sato. Neither was he surprised when the Elders of the Main House wished to have a meeting on the subject.
One of the Elders got the confirmation from his sources that Hinata and Neji were among the missing. While saddened Hiashi wasn't the slightest bit surprised. And he was somewhat annoyed that the Elders hadn't seen this coming. He had a feeling that, given enough time, the rift between Main and Branch would grow too vast and that the Branch members would leave at the first given opportunity. What was more; Uzumaki Naruto probably had the means to shield them from the activation of the Caged Bird Seal, or even remove it.
Danzou was pissed. It looked like nearly seventy percent of his ANBU Ne forces had been wiped out during the instantaneous migration. It seemed that as a gift to the new Hokage, the bronze-blonde brat had killed many of his agents. And not a single person who wasn't a member of Ne had been subject to attack.
Meanwhile, back at the Hokage Tower, Jiraiya met with Tsunade and their master to give his report on the people who died during the exodus.
"Apparently," the Toad Sage began. "Naruto wanted to get rid of a bunch of ninja he was certain you wouldn't be able to trust on his way out."
The Sandaime caught on before the blonde Sannin did. "That wily prankster!"
Tsunade turned to him and gestured for him to elaborate.
"He did this as a peace-offering to start negotiations! How much have you taught him, Jiraiya?"
"Honestly?" began a bronze-blonde as he exited a newly formed gate. "Just how to lip-read, a few jutsu, quite a bit about fuuinjutsu, and some kenjutsu. Everything else was learned from books that I memorized with the activation of my bloodline."
All three older ninja jumped at Naruto's entrance.
"You've got to stop doing that!" Tsunade yelled.
"I refuse," the bronze-blond retorted. "Anyway, today I am just a clone as the real me hasn't had much time to recover from taking everyone to Tokigakure no Sato, much less building it for the past sixty years."
The Professor and the two Sannin in the room gaped like fish for a moment before Jiraiya managed to recover first.
"What the hell!"
The clone laughed. "Time travel, fuuinjutsu, and technology lost to the ages make a lot of things possible." At their stunned silence, he added: "Did I mention that I want Jiraiya to be the official liaison between Konoha and Toki?"
Backtracking to the exodus, the entire population of Wave, as well as several hundred civilians from Konoha and a much larger percentage of their ninja forces suddenly found themselves in a different place.
In the middle of the mass of people Naruto sat on a very massive sword sticking out of the ground. Most there recognized it as Momochi Zabuza's Kubikiri Honchou (which many of the Wave citizens had seen when they visited the grave in the real world and many of the ninja knew from the Bingo Book), but the more unsettling thing was the bronze-blonde perched atop the cleft between the hilt and the back end of the blade. He was older than all the attendees remembered him being. He stood at a hefty 190 cm - much taller than his undernourished twelve-year-old body did. He wore blue and white robes while wearing a Kage hat. Instead of one of the normal elemental kanjithe hat had the one for "time" on it - Toki. He had forgone wearing his sunglasses, opting instead to let everyone see his bloodline in all its glory, though they were left hanging over the neckline of his robes with one of the earpieces.
"Welcome," Naruto began, though by the tone of his voice it was obvious he was exhausted. "This is Wave as it shall be forevermore. As you are the first citizens of the newly-instated Tokigakure no Sato, you will all get first pick as to which building you will get to live in. Your personal belongings and equipment will be transported to your new abodes as you choose them. Ask a clone for specifics and what limits there are so there will be no useless squabbling.
"As you can see, I am sitting on the grave marker for Momochi Zabuza and Haku, both of whom I have moved to the new land of Wave, so they will not be destroyed in the space-time distortion that exists where the old land of Wave once was. I would appreciate it if no one desecrates their graves.
"Within a few days all the old trading and shipping businesses will be able to function at full capacity again.
"There will be no missions for a while, so all ninja are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the territory and/or train while the Council, comprised of preselected members and I, hash out the organization structure. You may stumble upon some strange creatures; those are summons called Nus, and I have invited them to live here with us. Treat them like you would another human being. Or better than you treat people, considering those among company present."
Mitarashi Anko's voice could be heard yelling something along the lines of "you're no fun".
"Our village is better protected than any other fortress or ninja village, present or past, especially since I've decided to take the name of our village, Tokigakure no Sato, the Ninja Village Hidden in Time, very literally. But that does not mean that the land is without its dangers. When you find the drop-off do not try to walk down the side of it to see how far it goes. This land is literally flying above a pit of nothingness that leads back to the real world... but no living thing would survive the fall. And the bottom of this land is covered in a network of seals that would sap a near-fatal amount of chakra out of you anyway, so don't try it. And as our population increases so will the size of the landmass we live on - don't be surprised if that happens."
Pointing to a nearby mountain which had a castle/palace perched atop it, Naruto continued.
"That will be my place of residence as well as the government center of our land. The Hyuuga are welcome to live there with me."
Sighing, Naruto got down off of Zabuza's sword. "That about covers it for now. If you will all excuse me, I'm going to pass out in my bedchambers. Might Guy, I'm leaving you in charge in case anything comes up."
With that, Naruto gated to his bedroom, fell down on his bed, and passed out.
In the center of the landmass was a lake, which had a large stone structure sitting in the middle. Inside the large cavity of that was a permanently-open gate, allowing one-way access to the waters around Wave in the real world. As a law, no fisherman or merchant was allowed to sail through the gate unless at least one Nu was aboard that was capable of reverse-summoning them and their ship back to the lake.
In a field near Toki proper was a temple-like structure that the Nus called a Skyway. It proved to be a two-way portal to the Great Naruto Bridge in the real world with both ends guarded by Nus. Additionally, the side of the bridge that made landfall on Fire Country soil was also guarded by Nus. As a final defence the Skyway could be closed off, cutting off all access to the real world.
Feeling safe and secure, the civilians took to calling the old land of Wave simply Wave, whereas they ironically began calling the new land of Wave by the name of Zeal. Naruto had no end of headaches when he figured out what they were calling it, especially since Lavos wouldn't shut up about how amusing it was.
Tazuna wasn't helping either. The drunk-turned-daimyo didn't understand why Naruto kept smacking himself in the forehead with his palm whenever someone brought up the new name, but he found it to be funny and encouraged the populace to call it Zeal.
Uchiha Sasuke was not a very introspective person, and he admitted this to himself, but the events of the past week had forced him to think very hard.
Honestly, Konoha was far too weak after the Oto/Suna Invasion. Then they were weakened further by Naruto creating the new Hidden Village and spiriting away everyone that he wanted in it. Konoha simply wasn't a viable option for acquiring power anymore.
Unless, of course, he had the patience to learn from Tsunade. But he simply didn't have the empathy he thought he needed to learn medical jutsu nor did he have the inclination to learn. So that left him with three options.
One, he could run off to Oto and be trained by Orochimaru; although the thought of the snake man potentially possessing him made him rather uncomfortable. His second option was to look for the third Sannin, Jiraiya, and bribe him into training him.
That seemed to be as likely as pigs who could... as being struck by lightning twice in... You know what? Sasuke thought. Anything I can think of has probably happened or will happen if Naruto is in the vicinity.
That left him with the third option: Naruto. He'd have to apologize and beg - not exactly his modus operandi, but it beat being violated on a spiritual level by Orochimaru - but he could swallow his pride long enough to do so.
Sasuke knew that he wouldn't probably be able to kill his brother himself, but as long as Itachi died violently it didn't matter to him. And he had to seek shelter from Orochimaru soon, because it seemed like Kakashi's seal was weakening by the day. Also, didn't Jiraiya spend a lot of time around Naruto anyway? He might not be able to get any training out of him, but he'd probably do a better job with sealing the curse than the silver-haired Jounin had done.
Maybe Kakashi would like to go along. Sakura definitely would jump at the chance to go with her beloved "Sasuke-kun" if asked, but the kunoichi was stuck in "fangirl mode".
You know what? If Kakashi wants to come, he can decide that on his own. I know Naruto used to like Sakura, but he became rather distant with her after the Chuunin Exams. It would probably be best if I leave her out of it. Onward to Wave... Again.
His decision made Sasuke began packing his stuff and sealing his family's jutsu and technique scrolls, especially the ones sealed against dojutsu, into a storage scroll as a peace offering to his former teammate.
End Chapter Six.
Next chapter: Sasuke's arrival and Anko's memory.
Author's Notes
This was a pain in the butt to write at points.
Thank you Dumbledork for being my quick-draw beta reader (who also helped with the flow of the words as well as the spelling, grammar, and plothole mistakes).
And honestly, I am tired of Sasuke turning out to be either the best thing since sliced bread or an incompetent asshole. I'll go for a middle ground thing. Also, that scene wrote itself. Since it does not interfere with my plans for the story, I am not too choked up about its existence.
Merry Christmas. For those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, then I hope the 25th of December is a good day for you anyway.