Disclaimer – I own nothing that you will recognise in this fanfic you see. Anything you don't recognise I have either made up myself or I have taken inspiration from several sources.
Note – Just a warning, you will see ideas in this fic that you will have seen in other Naruto fanfictions… that is entirely the point. I do not claim to be the first, or even the best, writer to have used some of the ideas you will see in this work. But I have also deliberately chosen themes and ideas I know to be sometimes common throughout the fanfiction community to keep from offending anyone. If someone wants to point out the correct origin of one of the ideas I would gladly add into the disclaimer the correct credit – Don't want to step on any toes after all!
In addition, thank you to everyone who has shown support so far! Keep it up please!
The Numbness
Tsunade had to confess that once more she was confused beyond belief and this was after what had occurred at the council meeting with Jiraiya. The confusion was because there were currently six ANBU operatives within this room with her and her old team-mate. This wouldn't be too strange if it weren't for the fact that there was only supposed to be five ANBU operatives within the Hokage's office on passive guard duty.
And there was a sixth.
Not only that but this ANBU seemed to be incredibly good at stealth as only she and Jiraiya had noticed him, the other ANBU operatives showed no signs of being able to detect the hidden figure hiding amongst them. That would usually send alarm bells ringing in her head about Danzo but the old war hawk's Root ANBU were usually only on a par with regular ANBU. So either this was a new record holder for the underground ANBU or it was someone else.
Someone better.
She frowned a little bit to herself but ignored it for now to act natural, looking up to see that Jiraiya was still staring forlornly out the window over the village. It had been less than an hour since they had both stood before the council to discuss the disappearance of Naruto Uzumaki. Jiraiya had yet to even begin to forgive her for 'throwing him under the bus' with that meeting with the council but there was nothing that he would hold against her forever – she had enough cleavage to make the man's mind go blank and then reboot without memories of having ever been angry at her.
Before either of the remaining sannin could begin to speak a ruckus began to erupt on the other side of the door. It seemed that Shizune was having something of a heated discussion with someone who seemed intent on barging into the Hokage's office. Right now, Tsunade was grateful for the annoying bastard on the other side of the doors. If there was something she needed right now it was to blow off some steam and nothing was more satisfying to her than punting some annoying little wretch out of the window of her office.
Usually it was Jiraiya but with the mood he was in right now she would be lucky if he didn't hit her back. Though she was rightfully proud of her fighting abilities it was easy to see that Jiraiya had surpassed her in terms of raw physical fighting prowess a long time ago. And that was without the 'special chakra' he had mentioned while drunk a few times.
But this new person seeking to gain entrance to her office would do nicely to take her rage out on – he wasn't going to be strong enough to withstand a kick to the jewels from her.
Then things went horribly wrong.
Firstly, the doors to the Hokage's office burst open as Shizune was flung through them by an enraged male.
Secondly, the sixth ANBU operative was doing what none of the other, shocked, operatives were doing and that was speeding out of cover to stand between the Hokage and this, as yet, unknown attacker, tanto already drawn.
Thirdly, Jiraiya twitched and turned to the window to the office just in time to see the window ledge become occupied by a ninja who was radiating the very same chakra he had teased Tsunade about while drunk.
The attacking figure was the first to break the silence,
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THE THIRD HOKAGE?!" He roared, six shining metal claws bursting through the skin between the knuckles on his hands, "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO SIT IN HIS CHAIR? ANSWER ME!"
Tsunade was struck dumb.
The attacker who had thrown Shizune through the door was a teenager of average height with sun-kissed skin and bright blonde hair. Six whisker marks adorned his cheeks and he was currently scowling rather intensely right at her. It made no sense to her but the attacker seemed to be one Naruto Uzumaki.
What wasn't helping was that the sixth ANBU standing between her and Naruto was… Naruto! Sure he looked a little older, like he was in his early twenties or something, but it was certainly Naruto. There was no ANBU mask to hide his features and they matched those of the teenager attacking the office of the Hokage,
"Halt!" Naruto, the ANBU, declared with a firm and rather cold voice, "Who are you to question the hokage of this village? Stand down operative or be disposed of."
Jiraiya was faced with a very similar dilemma because to him, Naruto Uzumaki was perched on the window ledge to the office in a manner that was very similar to his own manner of entrance. Of course he appeared to be his godson in every way, just like the other two, but the difference was the chakra.
This third Naruto contained, as far as he could tell, no human chakra. His entire chakra supply seemed to be nature chakra, like he was constantly using senjutsu despite that being practically impossible.
"Should have stayed at the hotsprings…" he muttered as he climbed down to stand casually by Jiraiya's side, "What's going on here Perv-sama? Some kind of audition to play the role of me, the second great Legendary Super Pervert in the icha icha movie? If so they got the eyes all wrong… and the tone…"
The eyes would be wrong seeing as this Naruto speaking to Jiraiya seemed to have the yellow, barred, eyes of a toad sage.
Tsunade seemed to find her voice,
"What the hell is going on here?!" she thundered, hitting her desk so hard that it shattered down the middle, getting the undivided attention of all three blondes in the room, "What the hell do you think you're doing Naruto?! Playing dead to scare us all? Sending in shadow clones with strange new personalities? What on earth are you playing at – if this is a prank so help me I will make it impossible for you to have children! Explain!"
The first Naruto, the decidedly more Feral one, spat at the ground but lowered his hands slightly, the weapons still attached to them,
"I want to know where Jiji is… there's a gravestone in the 'dead district' with his name on it and some old hag's face on the monument!" he growled angrily, "So I want answers! That's why I'm here!"
ANBU Naruto bristled at that answer almost as much as Tsunade did,
"Such disrespect to your kage… such disloyalty… you are worse than trash." He declared with what appeared to be the beginnings of anger behind his rather impression mask of non-emotion, "I am ANBU operative Naruto Uzumaki, codename Spider, serial number 009838, attending my post to protect the Hokage until such a time as I am given a new duty, as I have been doing for the past ten years."
Well… this was news to Tsunade and Jiraiya to be sure. It would have been news to Shizune too but it appeared the younger ninja had taken a hit to the head when sailing through the doors to land near the Hokage's desk so she was currently not in the waking world. Tsunade was already beginning to feel a headache coming on.
These two Narutos were identical in most ways but had two very different reasons for being here. Not to mention the mini-Jiraiya in the corner who seemed to be here for no other reason than to 'shoot the breeze' with them all. It didn't help matters that two of them seemed to be more than ready to kill each other at the drop of a hat.
And right now the tension was so thick you could cut it with a kunai.
So naturally kami decided to make things a whole lot more fucking tense for Tsunade because right at that moment everyone in the room suddenly felt the hair on the back of their necks stand up. It was a natural reaction of a seasoned ninja to impending danger. The fact that said danger seemed to not exist didn't matter to any of them as they all immediately dropped into ready stances.
A kunai flew through the window at near blinding speeds, stabbing into the floor in the centre of the office.
A three-pronged Kunai.
Just when Tsuande thought her own little world couldn't be tilted anymore in the wrong direction here was another twist, a twist that arrived in a bright yellow flash that was rapidly condensing into the shape of a man. Unlike the other three blonde men in the room, this one was not a teenager, he seemed much closer to thirty (the ninja version of middle aged) than anything else. Not only that but his entire being radiated not only power but experience and it showed on his face; much narrower and thinner than the Naruto Uzumaki that she was used to dealing with.
Oddly dressed too.
While the ANBU Naruto was dressed as, well, ANBU and the Feral and Super Pervert Narutos seemed to still favour the orange jumpsuit… this newcomer was wearing a black ninja outfit with a white trench-coat with the kanji for sixth on the back of it. Jiraiya was the first person to make the connection to someone else they might know,
"Minato?" he asked, whispering both in awe and with a certain amount of hope, "Is that really you?"
The blonde opened his eyes and the stunning blue eyes of Naruto Uzumaki shone back at them as he calmly regarded everyone in the office. He grinned slightly, a very small resemblance to the goofy grin that Naruto Uzumaki had worn when he left the village almost three years ago,
"You would be surprised how often I get that. I guess I got my father's good looks huh?" He joked lightly before turning to Tsunade with a critical gaze before regarding the other blondes in the room, cursing as he did so, "Damn… I guess I was right. I was afraid that I might be right but I didn't want to believe it… this is one fucked up situation."
Someone who understood the situation enough to give a judgement on it with confidence? That was exactly the kind of shit that Tsunade had been waiting for! She immediately wanted to reach for her hidden booze but it would be unwise considering the Feral and ANBU Narutos had yet to put away their weapons,
"Well if it's so fucked up maybe you can shed some light on it?" she demanded, rubbing at her eyes tiredly, "I swear to fucking kami Naruto, if this is a prank I will personally see to it that you never make it past Genin for as long as you live!"
The newest, oldest, Naruto frowned a little bit,
"Something happened… I'm not sure what just yet and I honestly have no idea who to even consult about this sort of thing. All I know is that it deposited us all in the same place, in a clearing in the middle of a forest." He declared, the sudden stiffening in the posture of the other blondes a sign that he was not the only one who remembered running away in abject horror from a patch of land. He continued, "I believe, based on the evidence provided here, that something broke the boundaries between dimensions. Advanced time/space ninjutsu theory explains that for each and every decision made by anyone, a new dimension is created that continues from that point. I believe that many different versions of Naruto Uzumaki Namikaze were pulled through from other dimensions to this one."
Silence.
"My name is Naruto Namikaze." He further explained, to highlight the differences, "I am 28 years old and the Sixth Hokage of Konoha. Born to Minato Namikaze and Kushina Uzumaki, I was raised from birth to become Hokage and received training from the Third, my father, my mother, Jiraiya of the Sannin and Tsunade of the Sannin. Before I arrived here I was… leading my village through the Sixth Great Ninja War."
More silence.
Disbelief was etched on the faces of Tsunade and Jiraiya but the other blonde males seemed to be sensing some level of truth in what was being said. The Sage-Naruto decided that he had sat on the side-lines too long and spoke up first,
"Naruto Uzumaki… I was raised by Jiraiya of the Sannin after the sealing of the fox cost me my parents. I was raised to be a Toad summoner and when I was ten there was an accident." He sighed, "I'm now 18 and I am capable of only using senjutsu after the accident meant it replaced all my natural chakra."
ANBU Naruto slowly sheathed his tanto,
"ANBU black ops member Naruto Uzumaki, Code-name Spider. I am 16 years old and have been a member of ANBU for the past ten years." He listed professionally, as if none of this was out of the ordinary to him, "I was trained at the request of Council Member Danzo and served as the personal ANBU bodyguard to the Third, Fifth and Sixth Hokages."
There was another silence in the room as even Jiraiya and Tsunade were now beginning to get a grasp on the situation. All eyes turned to the Feral Naruto, who growled deeply but reluctantly withdrew his claws into his hands,
"Naruto Uzumaki, lab-rat to the Snake Sannin… human weapon until my Jiji, the Third, gave me a purpose and a home." He spat out bitterly, "And I want to go back home. I don't give a shit about this being a different dimension or whatever the hell that was… I. Want. To. Go. Home. Got it bub?"
Tsunade was beginning to think this was all some kind of nightmare and it only seemed to be confirmed when the older, 'Hokage'-Naruto responded to the anti-social Naruto's questioning,
"There is no way to duplicate the event without first knowing what it was and we have no way of discovering it." He explained before the other shoe dropped, "And we are not the only versions of Naruto to have escaped into this dimension… there were dozens upon dozens of others who fled the same scene as we did."
Jiraiya frowned tightly,
"I only have a very loose understanding of time/space ninjutsu this advanced but… isn't having more than one of something in a dimension a bad thing?"
The other shoe dropped and Tsunade reached for her drink, regardless of how it looked or how tense the room was right now,
"It causes an imbalance across the entire dimension that can, if uncorrected, destabilise the entire dimension to the point of complete collapse."
And there you go my little biscuits!
A new chapter that was heavy on the explanations :P
It was needed but dull I agree, don't judge the story on this chapter please! The action begins next chapter I assure you! They just need to figure some basics out before they go about kicking some ass and taking some names :P