A/N Significant Characters:

Haruno Daisuke. Also called Haru. Son and student of Sakura. 17 years old. Tall, brown-haired. Dreams of Heroism

Yuuhi Satoru. Son of Yuuhi Kurenai. Looks like her, with brown hair. 20 years old.

Toshi: Looks Identical to Sasuke. Has Rinnegan. Said to be an Uchiha-Senju hybrid. 19 years old. Never far from Satoru's side.

Nara Shikami. Last of the Nara clan. Student of Sakura, former friend of Haru. Fell apart after death of her family. 16 years old

Yuichi and Yuka: Male and female twins. Twelve years old. Mature for their age.

Raiden: Immature. Fourteen years old.

Sarutobi Hiro: Konohamru's son, Satoru's cousin, and Haru's friend. Looks and acts a lot like his father. Five years old.

Unnamed pale girl: Is often with the children. Very pale and sickly looking. Described as eerie.

I think that covered all the bases. Again sorry 'bout the OC overload.

Chapter 2: In which the most powerful characters are useless, Satoru has far too much fun, and we meet the weirdness that is Nao. Also, death and destruction for all the nations!

Below her there was nothing but rubble. No living thing survived her bijuudama. It seemed even her Zetsu disintegrated. On some level, she understood what she'd done was wrong. She needed to absorb all those people's chakras. Even if she lost control of the Tsukuyomi, she didn't need to kill them. After all, what harm were they to her? She could've found another way to gain the rinnegan in time, and then just taken all their chakra then. Instead she wasted it in petty rage.

But the rage didn't feel petty. It was as strong and potent as a poison, swirling in her mind and soul. There was her anger, from her sons' betrayal, from her eternity sealed away. But there was more betrayal, more hate than any could know swirling inside her head. Thousands, and thousands, and thousands of years of it. A part of her recognized that there was more than the hatred, but it was negligible. For a mad moment she considered ending it, the world, that vermin called humanity. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind did she dismiss it. She would not lose control, not after being bound for so long. She had a goal, a purpose. This world was her nursery, and she must let her children grow. First, she must start by learning to absorb chakra herself. So far she had done it through a proxy—the Shinju or Zetsu. Then she would absorb any errant soul that dared try to stop her. Eventually, she would grow a new rinnegan, even if it took the thousand years it took Zetsu (but somehow, Kaguya doubted she would be so inefficient). In the meantime, she would rule this world as God.

Below her, she noticed a strange entity. Within a second she recognized him. Again, that swirl of emotions that was hers but not overwhelmed her, but she hid it behind a stony face. Slowly, she floated down to stand face to face with her son, her Hagoromo.

"It hasn't ended here," he said, his voice so wizened with age it honestly startles her. A familiar concern rushed forth, only to be trampled by the reminder of what he did to her. I loved you, she thought, I loved you both so much.

"I know," she answered. "But nothing changes." Her son shook his head.

"Don't you understand? They will never submit, just like Hamura and me. If anything, they're resolve has gotten stronger over the years." He paused, looking into her eyes and gauging her reaction. Seeing her as unmoved as ever, he continued, "Humanity is not something one can control. I've tried, my sons tried, but never succeeded. They resist or subvert expectation or end up using us for their own ends."

You are all children. I am God.

"Mother," he whispered, voice cracking, "please. It is time for us to leave this world."

For a moment, she sputtered. What arrogance! Cruelty! To think he could manipulate her, with soft, affectionate words, with childish pleading, after everything he'd done!

"Yes," she said, her vicious tone betraying her anger, "It is time for you to leave." With that, she dug into the world, opening a portal to the land of eternal peace (the place she would never go). Hagoromo didn't even offer a resistance as she thrust him in.

"Your children will follow you through," she hissed.

"I hope so. We've lived too long," he responded as the portal closed. A feeling of impotency overcame her, temporarily blinding her judgment. Hence, her next act.

From the tip of each of her five fingers, she created a bijuudama. She remembered the location of her targets from those two idiots that tried to control her (and from her own memories, it seemed. From nine sets of her own memories). With careless ease, she destroyed the five great ninja villages (or re-destroyed, as the case maybe). Almost as an afterthought, she made a dozen or so more to deal with the rest of those chakra thieves. A wave of her arm sent the attacks off.

Within in moments, she realized her mistake. As opposed to more anger, she simply sighed.

This was turning out to be a bad day.

….

He didn't want to, but when the jutsu ended Satoru couldn't help but collapse and heave. It was like the black sphere had been compressing him, squishing his insides into a small, compact cube. Most of others followed his example, excepting Toshi, Haru, and Chie, but they were probably unconscious.

The room around them was pitch black, the only sound them hacking. After a few moments, even that dwindled, until there was nothing but silence.

"Did it work?" one of the kids asked (Tsu-something).

"Who's to say?" the boy Yu answered (Yuichi, Satoru remembers).

"It occurs to me," Uchinuma Nao said, her voice perpetually calm and melodic. "That we could have traveled so far into the past this room wouldn't exist, and we'd be trapped under a hundred feet of rock." Satoru couldn't it help it—he laughed. Even if they had actually traveled to the past, this concern wouldn't have occurred to any of them, except the eerie, pale Nao, since she's prone to strange thoughts. Maybe Shikami too. That girl is nothing if not thorough. Mostly he laughed because he knew they hadn't traveled into the past. No doubt they were in a dimension of Toshi's own creation. The thought gave him a rush of pride for his friend. No matter what hardship he faced to get it, the power Toshi had was worth it. One day, Satoru will even make him understand that.

"It occurs to me," Shikami drawls, purposefully slow. "That if we traveled to the past, we traveled into one of Orochimaru's secret, high security facilities, full of mad prisoners and plenty of torture equipment."

"Shikami," the voice of the fourteen-year old Kumo boy, Raiden, called out. He was a gangly kid—fierce with a sword and with an impressive knack for lightning/water combo attacks. But, he thought himself the next Naruto or Sasuke, destined to fight against evil and save the world, and got pissy if anyone treated him like the brat he was. "Don't forget there are little kids here. Kids we don't want to terrify."

"It's okay, Raiden," Nao said, her voice genuinely sweet and her intent well meaning, "There's no reason to be scared. We're perfectly capable of dealing with any trouble." Raiden's embarrassed sputtering made everyone break out into laughter. Like that, the tension eased from the room. That was, until light shone from all around them and they heard a door open.

They were blinded, but he still knew every one of them shifted into fighting positions. He could hear Raiden unsheathing his sword and several of the younger kids pulling out kunai from supply pouches. One of the Yu twins cast a ninjutsu (the girl, Yuka, he's pretty sure, though the two are hard to tell apart), and the ground shifted slightly beneath their feet. Satoru considered using his trench knives, but thought better of it. They still had three unconscious bodies to worry about. Instead, he slowly shifted back, until his feet hit something solid. He kneeled down, grabbing the person to see if he could find out who they were. Immediately, and to his slight embarrassment, he recognized it as the Uzumaki. The good thing was, worse come to worse, he could carry her and run easily. She was curvy, but short. Both Haru and Toshi were taller than him and would be cumbersome to handle. The bad thing was he couldn't care less about the Uzumaki if Toshi was left behind.

By this point, their eyes were adjusting. The jutsu the Yu cast apparently created a maze of stone spikes around them making it tricky for the crowd of ninja surrounding the circle of spikes to reach them. Perhaps crowd was a strong word—their only seemed twenty-five of them, barely more than their own numbers. But they didn't have three heavy bodies to cart around. The ninja seemed to be uniform, meaning they had a ninja affiliation. Satoru squinted, trying to force the last of the shock out of his eyes so he could see their headbands. When he could finally see the symbol on the glimmering head bands, it was a musical note. Sound, he thought. That was… interesting.

First and foremost, it told him they had, indeed, traveled into the past. Even if Toshi had welded some Tsukuyomi type genjutsu into his dimension, they would never be hostile like this. And Toshi would never include anything related to Orochimaru. He hated the man even more than Satoru. Perhaps he would marvel on their grand feat later. Secondly, if he remembered (if? What was the point in false humility?) correctly, then they were somewhere between one to eight years before the war. At the sound of footsteps, Satoru's attention was drawn to his right, where the entrance to the chamber was.

There stood a young man, approximately his own age, with silver hair and round glasses.

"This," he began, "is very unusual." Satoru put on his best cheeky smile. He had a feeling who this was, and felt almost excited to speak with him.

"Quite. I'm used to introductions involving tea." The man who was probably Kabuto narrowed his eyes, clearly not amused.

"How did you get in here?"

"Teleportation?" Satoru offered, shrugging. "We clearly didn't use the entrance."

The man walked forward, passed the circle of ninja, and eyed their group critically.

"Teleportation would require a seal in this room to access. Have you been in here before?"

"Aren't you getting ahead of yourself?" Satoru asked. He was circling them now, eyeing them up individually. He evidently had no interest in this interrogation—no doubt he expected to get more honest answers from the lab table. Satoru spared Toshi a glance. Luckily, he had fallen face down with Haru and Chie on top of him, obscuring most of his face. Still, Most-Likely-Kabuto didn't seem to be the type to be satisfied without sizing up each and every one of them. If he caught the resemblance between Toshi and Sasuke, then their stay here would get too complicated to fast. Desperate, he made eye contact with Shikami. Her eyes held an edge he hadn't seen in years. Well, well he thought, it seems the doe has a plan. The least he could do was be a distraction.

"Look," Satoru started over, putting a tinge of fear and desperation in his voice. That attracted Kabuto's attention, drawing his cool gaze back on Satoru. He made a big show of seeming nervous "We're just innocent, innocuous, inexplicably well-armed travelers. We were being hassled by some fearsome bandits and I, desperate and afraid for the children," he emphasized this by grabbing one nearest to him and tenderly patting his head. The boy growled at him and pulled out another kunai. "prayed upon a shooting star to the great… rabbit goddess, Kaguya, to lift us up and place us somewhere safe. And here we are. How am I supposed to explain divine intervention?"

"Kaguya?" one of the shinobi whispered, sending a murmur through the rest. How odd. They weren't supposed know about her, not enough to elicit the fear he recognized on a few of the men's faces. Satoru looked back at Kabuto.

"Interesting name for a goddess," he said, seemingly intrigued.

"She wasn't always a goddess," Satoru responded, letting his voice drop into a whisper. "She was once a mortal, like you or I. Yet, with the purest of intentions, she ate what was not meant to ever be eaten, and gained power beyond your wildest imaginations. From her children and her children's children, we gained a fraction of her power, but" at this point, Satoru slid his eyes over the various shinobi, making eye contact with each one. And he may have cast a slight genjutsu over his eyes to make them appear a crimson red (as opposed to their usual dark red). And gleaming. "But her pure soul had been corrupted into something violent, monstrous. She will awaken one day, soon, and take back what was hers. She'll creep into your beds and dig her hand into your heart to suck you dry. She will drain the blood from your children, your lovers, your leader, leaving them empty husks. She steals the life from the grass and trees and turn everything into dust. All that will be left of this world is a barren wasteland." He turned his gaze back to Kabuto, who looked more irritated then disturbed. How to correct that? Without warning, Satoru jumped across the unconscious bodies and pulled himself against the stone spikes, looking straight into Kabuto's eyes. The twenty five shinobi all moved to attack, only to be stopped by a motion of Kabuto's hand. Satoru grinned, teeth gleaming. He would like to say the manic bloodlust behind his smile was an act, but the thought of a withered and broken Orochimaru did excite him. "I quite look forward to it."

"And I'm tired of your superstitious nonsense." Satoru was sure that Kabuto was going to signal the shinobi, but Shikami beat him to it. With only a murmur from the young Yuka, the maze of spikes shot up and out. Most shot into the ceiling, but enough shot out towards the walls to force the shinobi back. In her next breath, Yuka called out

"Earth Release: Heavenly Pillar!" And up they rose. Immediately, Satoru threw himself over the three unconscious bodies in the middle of them. The others bombarded the attacker below them, flinging jutsus and explosive tags.

"Fire Release: Great Fireball!" the other Yu twin, Yuichi, called out.

"Earth Release: Landslide!" Another one of the kids yelled. There were some more fire jutsus, some lightning, a few earth, and even one or two wind. After the barrage of techniques, the entire chamber was poised to collapse. Satoru couldn't help but sigh—he supposed it was up to him to teach these kids how to moderate themselves (which he had no intention of doing). He supposed it wasn't their fault—they had been tried to fight against a god, and there training focused on large area destruction or impenetrable defense. In other words, they knew how to hide, create barriers, and explode things. Only those without much power (like him, but he suppressed the thought) trained in less extreme forms of combat. At least the imagined surprise on Kabuto's face amused him.

Within moments, they were nearly crushed against the top of the chamber (a good fifty feet in the air). Yuka stopped the pillar, strands of her long blond hair clinging to her face and her chest heaving. It was easy to forget with the Yu twins, with their old, wary eyes, but they were only twelve years old. Even with her impressive chakra reserves, this would surely exhaust the girl.

Thankfully, Shikami seemed to realize this before he did, and already positioned herself behind Yuka. The Nara put her hands on the girl's shoulder, assumedly transferring her chakra. With one more haggard breath, Yuka swiftly moved through the hand seals. Meanwhile, her brother shot out another fire ball at the shinobi below.

"Earth Release:" she yelled, with more emotion than Satoru had ever seen from her. "Great Tunnel." Above them the stone split and shifted, forcing the rest of the ceiling to collapse. It didn't matter, though, they had an opening. Yuka recast Heavenly Pillar and up they went.

"Earth users," Shikami called out, looking slightly exhausted herself. "protect us."

A few hand signals and jutsu names later, a wall formed around them. They passed through several empty rooms on the way up, including some with very surprised occupants (whom the kids wasted no time trying to explode). It took three minutes until they reached the top, while each second they moved slower and slower, while Yuka and Shikami looking even more drained. Still, they reached the top.

Once they were officially outside, Satoru was struck by the changes in the environment. In the future (wasn't that a strange thought), the forest had been twisted and dead, all the trees withered and black. Lush green surrounded—green from the leaves, from the grass, from the moss that seemed to coat everything. He could even hear the trickle of water from a creek. Most baffling, giant mushrooms sprouted from the trees like weeds.

He almost wanted another moment to absorb all the life, but then the ground shook underneath them.

"It seems you caused an earthquake." Nao noted to Yuka, voice mild. The girl shrugged, her earlier rush of emotion gone. Satoru wasted no time in sitting up and carelessly throwing Haru off of Toshi. In a moment, he lifted the man onto his shoulders. He stifled a groan. Toshi was a good ten centimeters taller than Satoru and packed with pure muscle, making him a bit of a burden while running away from a cave in. Raiden, the tallest of the conscious group next to Satoru and Shikami, went to pick up the one-hundred-ninety centimeter tall Haru. Shikami grabbed the Uzumaki.

By that point, most of the kids were jumping through the trees, away from the collapsing underground base. Only Nao stayed behind, though it seemed mostly out of curiosity of what's happening below them than any concern. A loud crack resounded across the forest, forcing the three shinobi with their heavy loads into the trees. The trees started to tip over, completely uprooted by the shifting ground. Shikami and Raiden moved ahead, following the kids. Satoru paused. Nao had stayed put, standing on the edge of a giant crack.

"Nao!" he nearly screamed, increasingly frustrated by the dumb girl. She looked at him, her light blue eyes somewhere distant. He yelled her name again, and this time recognition lit her eyes and she jumped up. As soon she landed in the trees, he pushed forward. Just in time, too, because in that moment the ground had caved in entirely, taking the tree he stood on with it.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he hissed once she was jumping at his side. "I thought Shikami was the suicidal one here."

"I was thinking," she said, ignoring his jab at the Nara, "Uchiha Sasuke might be down there."

The thought sent a chill down his spine. Anything Sasuke could do, Toshi would do better, he knew, except Toshi would never have the ability to seal Kaguya. Satoru shook off his fear—even if the Uchiha was dead under the rubble, no one here had any intention of letting Kaguya be revived. The black Zetsu was the problem, him and Uchiha Obito and Uchiha Madara. Neutralize them, and they were golden.

"I was also thinking," Nao continued. "about the nature of earth. It seems so impenetrable and stoic, but in truth..."

Rolling his eyes, Satoru tuned the rest of her philosophical rambling out. He couldn't believe he risked his and Toshi's life for her. That kind of idiocy was usually Haru's MO. Though he did admit, he liked her better than anyone else here (barring his little cousin Hiro and, of course, Toshi). Even Shikami, despite her supposed intelligence, was only half-bearable.

It took them ten minute to reach the rest of the group, who collected in the upper branches of a particularly tall tree.

"Any pursuers?" Shikami asked. Satoru shrugged.

"Ask the sensor." He said, jerking to the still mumbling Nao.

"…their cries of agony jumbling together with the screams of the dying. It's the song of the end, the tune the world will be humming when it finally meets the Shinigami." She finished.

"What's she on about?" Raiden asked, mildly disturbed.

"Oh, just about how the fragility of stone reflects humanities own weakness, despite both appearing strong and unbreakable." Satoru answered, grinning. "We end up paying for a rigidity with agonizing death. And the end of the world."

"Nao," Shikami interrupts. "Pursuers?"

It takes her a moment, but eventually she shook her head. The entire group breaths a sigh of relief. Satoru feels it's his duty to crush their hopes.

"And if Orochimaru was the one following us, would Nao be able to sense him?" They all knew the answer to that. "Then let's keep moving. Besides, we're near a hidden village here—Kusa, I think."

"Which way should we go?" a girl asked.

A good question, and one Satoru didn't know how to answer. They usually used Orochimaru's old bases as hideouts, but that clearly wasn't an option anymore.

"The ruins." Shikami said, her voice confident for the first time in ages.

"Seriously?" he said. "I know these kids are a bunch of prodigies, but they're still kids. Isn't that place a bit dangerous for them?"

"It's the only option," she sighed. "Anywhere else is too close to ninja forces, or samurai, or Orochimaru."

He had to admit she was right, but already his muscles ached in protest.

"I doubt we can make it nonstop, especially avoiding any major settlements." The last thing they needed was word spreading around about them. They're violent introduction to Orochimaru was bad enough.

"I have a map." Nao said, removing the bag she wore across her shoulder and rummaging out a scroll. "Lord Orochimaru made it for me. We can plan our route from here." Shikami jumped down to her level and took the scroll, shifting Chie awkwardly on her shoulder. Quickly, Nao slid the girl over her own back. Satoru couldn't help but frown at that—physical endurance and muscle power was not one of Nao's strengths. She was a naturally sick girl. Shikami didn't seem to share his concerns, instead looking over the map with a furrowed brow.

"I think I know a route. Let's move—we'll rest in six hours."

And here he thought Shikami lost her strict schedules with her family. Shame it wasn't so.

With a collective groan, the young group set off east—towards Uzu.

a/n Woo! Finished Chapter 2. As always, I want your thoughts and advice. What do you think of Satoru? Nao?
Don't worry, it won't be all OCs. More canon character will come into play very quickly