Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or the rasengun, but I own my original plots and canon divergences.
AN: This is an idea I've had recently while listening to a Harry Potter time travel fic Backward with Purpose I: Always and Always. I thought of a way for Naruto to come back that doesn't go completely out of the realm of credibility, and I thought that the memory transfer of the shadow clone would be a good way for Naruto to prevent his timeline from happening.
Basically Pain destroyed Konoha and killed everyone, Naruto went 8 tails, Pain killed himself trying to capture the Kyûbi, Naruto went back into base after Pain died and stole his eyes in the hope to do something impossible, learned that he could cause a spacetime rift and that his clone could travel back in time to dispel and transfer his memories to his past self, and he did it.
The shadow clone technique doesn't exist in the alternate timeline, which will solve the power curve issue of Naruto using shadow clones to speed up training by a hundredfold. He will get the memories but not the practical skills of the future Naruto, he remembers them but has to work to get them by himself. His chakra nature will be more consistent with his personality.
Exploration and rewrite of the magic system (and type chart) to be more consistent, expansion of skillsets (everyone relevant to this story), trying not to bash but with memories of the future, a younger Naruto would be pissed about a few things about his childhood and he won't be a doormat about it. More mature Naruto but still his younger self so he won't behave like an adult from the get-go.
Some characters will be queer, don't like don't read. It's not chosen randomly, but rather by expanding on their canon quirks, behaviour, character design, on the unsaid parts of their character. For example Haku in canon is queer and in this story so is Neji. There are more but after deleting an entire paragraph worth of them I decided not to expand on it in this AN.
Danzô isn't a thing in this story. Obvious scapegoats like him are not the way I portray the shinobi world. Take responsibility, Hiruzen. By the way, the old fart will be much more gray.
Speed tiers are down to earth, no speed of sound feat in p1. No need to move at mach 1 to be impossible to follow in short movements in bursts of speed. Going from 0 to 60 km/h in an instant makes one impossible to react to already. If ninjas were moving at mach 1 in p1, they would travel from Konoha to Suna in a few hours maximum, yet in p2 it takes them 3 days. A plane flies around mach 1 (and probably a faster plane than the ones that carry hundreds of passengers). No ninja moves that fast with their entire body until maybe the very end of the story and only thanks to high speed techniques.
Chara design will tend to go back in time as the story progresses, using traditional Asian armor because if we have Madara, Hashirama, 2nd ninja war and other chara designs like that, I'd like to see the main characters in a more Warring States period style.
NFM
Chapter 1
Naruto was on his way to the meeting point with Mizuki when a guy that looked like him but older appeared out of nowhere. A burst of smoke blinded the boy and he thought he would ram into the guy, but he appeared on the other side of the smoke screen without hitting anything.
He looked back, but there was no one there. Was it just in his head?
Suddenly, a headache forced him to his knees, his head in his hands from the pain. He passed out.
NFM
When Naruto woke up, he remembered four years of another life. Experiences he had never lived, techniques he had never seen, friends he had never had, and all of that lost, taken by some guy with a god complex and divine eyes he had probably pulled out of his ass, because Naruto doubted chakra could do what that guy had been able to, and what his alternate self had done.
But something was positive. He knew a lot more than before passing out, he knew he would make friends, he knew he would become strong and he could prevent that story from happening. He would gain Konoha's respect, if only out of spite. He would train his ass off and become stronger than Pain when he would meet him.
He also knew about the Kyûbi, about the danger of using its' power, about the consequences of letting it take over. He could lose everything if he let the seal weaken. Everything his parents had died to protect. It would make their sacrifice pointless.
This meant that Naruto was gonna learn how to be a sage again. He would learn to control his emotions and to be at peace. He wouldn't use a power meant to destroy, but a power meant to be in symbiosis with nature. He knew that sage mode was what chakra was supposed to achieve, that it was the goal of a shinobi to become able to use senjutsu. Senjutsu was the natural state of chakra, and the ninjutsu used by shinobi was a watered down, unnatural way of using it. That's why it was so weak. A senjutsu enhanced fireball was thrice bigger than a normal fireball, a senjutsu enhanced person was thrice stronger than a basic chakra enhanced one.
In his memories of the alternate future, he had bodied almost every path of Pain like they were nothing, and this was after only a few months of training to attain sage mode. He hadn't had the time to complete his training and master it perfectly. He had had to rely on the shadow clone technique to gather natural energy and dispel them to refill. In this life, he would make sure to master it.
For now, Naruto remembered the things he could already get better at immediately in order to beat Mizuki's ass. That traitor would get what he deserved. He had tried to kill him and Iruka the first time. Naruto wouldn't let him live for this offense. He had been too kind in the other life, he realized this. Some people were redeemable, others weren't. Mizuki was an adult, not a child. He had already made the wrong choice and had tried to put the blame on Naruto for betraying the village. This was high treason and any other shinobi would kill Mizuki for that, after asking him who he was working for. Jiraiya had taught that much to his future self, even though as a whole, the training period had been a serious waste of time for his skills, as he had realized when Sasuke had put his entire team to shame in a few seconds the first time they had met again.
Naruto reached the meeting point and prepared the area to eliminate the enemy before looking at the scroll.
Said scroll was not the same as in his memories from the future. It was a blank summoning scroll, like the one with red lining on Jiraiya's back, but without any customization. Remembering how to summon from his memories, Naruto bit his right thumb and placed his hand on the open scroll, wondering what would come out of it.
NFM
Naruto had let the beginning of the Mizuki events happen, Iruka saving him and escaping from the traitor. But during the hunt, instead of kicking the traitor with his knee, the boy sent his new summons after the blue-haired teacher.
As Mizuki jumped to kill Iruka, three figures jumped from the shadows, ramming into him and encircling him. He looked up to see what had interfered, only to be faced with three velociraptors, orange monstrosities with blue feathers hanging from their forearms. They were part lizard – dinosaur –, part bird, with small round eyes with slit pupils. They looked at Mizuki like he was prey. He understood it very well.
He tried to flee, but velociraptors are group hunters. They hunt their prey and tire it, bite it, bleed it, and when their prey tires, they jump it and eat it.
Naruto went to assist Iruka, putting him on his shoulder. The shinobi was bleeding out, there was no time to waste. He brought him to the hospital. People were suspicious of him but the chûnin was taken charge of by a nurse. An ANBU appeared and summoned Naruto to the Hokage tower.
NFM
"Naruto!" welcomed the Hokage when the boy entered his office. "I expect a full report from you. Why did you steal this scroll? What happened? Why is Iruka hospitalized?"
"Old man…sorry for stealing the scroll… Professor Mizuki told me to steal the scroll, that it was a secret graduation exam. Then he told me about the fox…why didn't you tell me earlier? Don't you think I deserved to know why no ones wants to have anything to do with me? It's unfair!"
"Sorry, Naruto, but I anted you to have a normal childhood…"
"Well, great idea, but it didn't work out like that… Whatever, Mizuki was a traitor. I wanted to interrogate him but Iruka was too injured. I had to bring him to the hospital and I let my summons deal with the traitor who was already incapacitated."
"I will ask the same to Iruka. I hope your report is accurate, Naruto, because this is serious. You could be branded as the traitor yourself if this is a lie. And you mentioned summons, what are they?"
"Oh, I can summon dinosaurs. For now I can't summon anything big, just velociraptors as high as your shoulder when you're standing, but I'll master it and learn to summon bigger dinos! Velociraptors were the best for this though, they hunted Mizuki down and ate him while I brought Iruka to the hospital. They hunt in groups and tire their prey by biting it until it can't flee and then they jump it and eat it. I wonder what other dinos I'll be able to summon…"
"Interesting…dinosaurs…this kind of summon has never been seen as far as I know," commented the Hokage. "Can I see one?"
Naruto bit his thumb and slammed his hand to the ground, summoning a raptor.
"Oh! What a strange creature…!" exclaimed the Hokage. "I think this is Mizuki's arm in its' mouth…"
The dinosaur went back to chewing its' meal, enjoying it while looking around curiously, tilting its' head sideways like a bird.
"You can send it back to its' home," said the old man.
Naruto canceled the summon.
"It's awesome, isn't it?" he asked, excited with his new skill. "With this summoning contract, I'll become Hokage in no time! Keep the seat warm, old man, 'cause I'm gonna take it in a few years, I'll show you!"
The old man chuckled while Naruto walked around the office, looking at the walls. He spotted a photo facing the wall. He turned it to see it and smirked.
"Hey, old man! Who's this guy with the same hair and eye color as me and the same spiky hair but longer? Could be my dad, maybe?"
He looked as all color drained from the old fart's face.
"This, Naruto, is a picture of my former student's own apprentice."
"Why is it in your office? Looks like he's wearing some custom Hokage robes."
"…You should meet my former student soon. He can tell you about him better than I could. He was his master, after all…"
"Cool! When can I meet him? Is he in Konoha?"
"No, he is on a long term mission outside the village. He never managed to settle down. Quite the trouble maker and he likes living like a hermit."
"Hermit…do you mean the Toad Hermit? I think I heard about him in class…"
"Indeed, I did not think you listened to your classes, Naruto."
"Well, it was about him being an awesome shinobi, I had to listen a bit just to learn how he became awesome. He and his two teammates were quite the trio, they fought that super strong Hanzô guy from Ame and survived. I think they were the first people to get out of a fight with him alive, so he named them the Sannin in acknowledgment of their skills and teamwork."
"You really listened well this time. Indeed, this is the story of my former genin team, Jiraiya, Tsunade and…Orochimaru. The pervert, the drunk gambler and the mad scientist. I hope you never meet Orochimaru."
"He sounds like the kind of guy I don't wanna meet, you're right, old man. He escaped Konoha after being caught doing illegal research, right?"
"Exact. I will not tell you what he did precisely, you would be horrified. When you become a chûnin, you can learn more about all this."
"When I become a chûnin…is that when you wanted to tell me about the fox?"
"…Yes. Right now, you are too young and not ready to learn about certain things. There are secrets in every shinobi village, if these secrets are told to untrained shinobi, it would be easy for foreign villages to extract this information from them. This is why information is given on a need-to-know basis. Only a few people are told the most important secrets."
"Then how did Mizuki learn about the fox? And every adult in Konoha?"
"I…made a mistake. When you were a baby, when the Kyûbi was sealed into you, I hoped that by revealing it to the jônin, they would be satisfied. But there was some discontent and the information leaked. I made a rule to forbid to talk about it in order to make sure that the children, at least, would not know about it and that you could make some friends. It did not work out as well as I had hoped…"
"Why me? Why did the Fourth Hokage choose me? Did my parents do something bad? Did they not want me?"
He knew the answer, but he was digging for the Third Hokage's answer, to see if he would be honest or throw him a big lie.
"I do not know why he chose you. You were probably the first baby he could reach in the clinic."
"Where does my name come from? Uzumaki? I've never met another one in the whole village. Maybe he chose me because I was from a certain family?"
"As the host of the Kyûbi, you were named after an old ally of Konoha. The Uzumaki clan used to live on an island and their village was friendly with ours. They were attacked by several enemy villages after the Second Shinobi War. We could not help them in time due to their location, the Land of Fire does not have a good navy and one of the attackers was the village of Kiri, from the Land of Water, with the best navy in the Elemental Nations. Your name is an homage to this clan that was massacred long before your birth. The spirals on the chûnin jackets were their clan symbol."
This was news to Naruto. He had been digging for something about his mother, and instead he had learned about his clan's history. He was annoyed that the old man kept lying to his face, but he understood that he'd need a higher rank to be trusted with more information. His parents were very secretive people and his father was a major figure in recent Konoha history, after all…
"Thanks for the info, old man. Since I beat Mizuki's ass, am I promoted to genin? He was a chûnin, and I turned his plan against him on top of stealing a secret scroll!"
"Oh, but the scroll you stole was a blank summoning contract, not the secret scroll. And I saw you, I just decided to wait and see what would happen, wondering what you were up to. That is the reason I let you go with the fake scroll."
"So you knew something was gonna happen, played a prank on me and waited to see the result? And is this examination satisfying?"
"I will talk to Iruka tomorrow morning, when he wakes up. I will decide on what to do with you from that point on. You should go home, Naruto. It is late and I would also like some sleep now that I know the culprit has been retrieved…or what is left of him. The ANBU found his carrion before summoning you to my office."
"Alright, I'm waiting for my headband! See you soon, gramps!"
Naruto left running out of the Hokage tower, laughing at the glare on the old man's face for calling him that. He didn't want to be completely antagonizing to the old fart if he was gonna die less than a year from that point. Even if he told him that he knew more than he told, the Hokage would never believe him, and some things were fine the way they were in the alternate timeline, Sarutobi trying to make up for his shortcomings like letting Orochimaru escape after his human experimentation on children, or what Pain had told him about Konoha's responsibility in the war in the Land of Rain during the Second Shinobi War while he was down after failing to kill the guy with a god complex.
NFM
Naruto was entered the classroom with his brand new, shiny headband with the Konoha symbol engraved on it, hiding his discontent at the fact that the old fart had put glue on it as a revenge for his pranks. He smirked at the surprise of the other graduates upon seeing him.
"Hey losers! Surprise! I passed too!" he exclaimed, laughing at their doubting faces.
"You failed the exam, Naruto, everyone knows it," Shikamaru replied in an uninterested way.
"Yeah, the only loser here is you," added Kiba. "Is that your new prank? Trying to make us believe you passed?"
"Ha! Nope, I did, got this shiny headband, see? Got it from the Hokage himself five days ago! See how shiny it is? I polish it every morning!"
Ino and Sakura entered and rushed to get their seats at each side of Sasuke, who bumped his head on his desk in dread. The idea of Sasuke saving him and then betraying Konoha felt weird, and understanding that Sasuke had never had any reason to like this village was even weirder.
Naruto went to sit at the row behind his probably future teammates and sat more calmly than he usually did. Iruka entered the classroom and shouted for silence. He started his speech about how great it was to serve the village and bla bla bla.
"The teams are…"
He announced the same teams as in Naruto's memories, to the boy's deception. Kakashi wouldn't help his team get any better and wouldn't put any effort in training them in any way. They had been to the Wave mission completely unprepared, fresh from the academy after six month of nothing and they had nearly all died multiple times. Which meant that Naruto would have to find external help and use his memories to train himself and help his teammates get better than they were in his other life.
While they waited for Kakashi, Naruto spiced up the trap and replaced the chalk eraser with indelible orange ink he had prepared in advance.
"Hey, Sakura!" he called her after waking up from a nap.
"What? Don't ask me out again or I'll punch you!"
"What kind of kunoichi do you want to become?"
"Huh?" she was surprised at his question and wondered for a moment. "I don't know, I never really thought about it…"
"You should. Being a ninja is not about fawning over your teammate, it's about going on missions, collecting intel, serious business. If all you think about is how to date Sasuke, you'll be seriously in trouble when you have to fight another ninja."
"Says who? The boy who thinks he's gonna be Hokage without doing his homework and after skipping classes more often than he's attended them?"
Naruto thought that he should start with the basics to get his team to understand he wasn't a joke and to peek their interest. He jumped to the ceiling and stuck to it with chakra.
"Who needs useless classes and exams on paper sheets when the job is mostly field work? Practical applications are more important than the crap you graduated with. Not to say you're bad, but what you pride yourself for is pretty useless on the field. See? I can already walk upside-down sticking with my feet. That's more useful than theory grades on revisionist history."
"Revisionist? How do you even know this word? Did you randomly open a dictionary yesterday and find it funny?" Sakura asked while trying not to gape at his chakra control feat.
"Nah, I just don't care about school since I can find everything I need outside of it anyway. History books are biased towards the faction that wrote them. You can't find something like Konoha's war crimes in Konoha's history books, yet they probably exist. A ninja from Konoha looks for food in a house in a foreign country during a war, the owners surprise him, he kills them, realizes they're civilians and covers it up because he doesn't want to be accused of war crimes. The child survives and becomes a sworn enemy of Konoha and contributes to the next war against us. See? That's so easy, yet it happens all the time. If we were the good guys, no one would oppose us. That's all I need to know, with the names of the key people who run the world. The rest is all practical skills."
"When did you gain so many brain cells?" asked Sasuke, which stung a bit.
"I was never stupid, moron. I just don't like to sit on a chair all day while I could learn something useful, become strong, do something interesting. Prof Iruka's nice, but he's really boring. So, how about I tell you how to walk on walls while Master Kakashi wastes our time so that we can surprise him a little?"
At the sparkle of interest in their eyes, he knew he had caught his teammates' attention.
NFM
Introductions to an orange tainted Kakashi were funnier than he had expected. It took him a lot of focus to stop laughing manically at his team leader. His own introduction had been less goofy and showed some professionalism, which should give Kakashi the will to do a bit more. Sakura's had been uncertain, since he'd pushed her to think about her job and not just about Sasuke. The avenger's introduction was the same though.
NFM
The bell test had gone better than in his memories. He'd brought food with him and told the other two that they should always eat before a test or mission. Kakashi was a ninja, and ninjas were good at deception, plus he would try to take revenge on him for the orange ink.
He'd gone to his teammates at the beginning of the test and they'd come up with a plan together, which hadn't succeeded but had satisfied the jônin due to their teamwork. They had seen through his deception with a little help from Naruto's memories, which he used to give them a hint.
As Kakashi left them to go read Make Out Tactics for the millionth time, Naruto had started them on water walking. Sasuke was still getting the grasp of wall or tree walking, but this was simply the next step in the same exercise.
"Sakura, you're really good at chakra control! You should try focusing on genjutsu or medical ninjutsu, they both require your kind of natural talent!" he encouraged his pink-haired teammate.
"Thanks Naruto, you're right, genjutsu requires precise chakra control. I pick up things like the clone technique and chakra control exercises very fast, I should focus on that."
"Sasuke, your clan has the sharingan, right? It can copy hand signs, analyze details and cast super strong genjutsu, right?"
"How do you know that?" asked the boy, falling due to losing his focus and catching himself with some acrobatics.
"It's not exactly a secret in Konoha or any shinobi village… Whatever, you should focus on ninjutsu and genjutsu. If you have some ninjutsu books to share, I'd be glad to learn some techniques. Do you guys know about chakra paper? It reveals your elemental affinity, really useful, but it costs an arm and a leg and I'm kinda broke with the orphan's funding as my only source of money that just got canceled since I'm a genin now…"
Sakura's eyes widened in realization.
"What? You mean you don't have any money now that you're a ninja?"
"I don't have a family or a legacy like you guys, I'm literally living on ramen since it's the cheapest food I can buy and I've spent my last coin yesterday for the food I brought this morning to share with you…"
He saw his teammates feel bad for him.
"I don't want your pity, guys, just some solidarity would be welcome since I'll be penniless until our first mission. Well, I can always go to Teuchi's, but I already owe him like a year worth of ramen bowls, so I'd rather not keep abusing his generosity. He's been helping me throughout the academy and I have to start paying back at some point…I'd have asked Kakashi, but the asshole left before I got the chance to tell him…"
"Of course we're going to help you!" exclaimed Sakura. "I won't let you starve! And this explains why you're so small, you can't eat proper meals… What a nightmare! I can't imagine eating ramen for every meal for years… I thought being an orphan was cool because you didn't have parents to tell you what you do, but I didn't realize that it meant you had to do all your housework by yourself, manage your allowance, and all the things parents do…"
"I don't want a malnourished teammate," declared Sasuke. "Come to my house for meals until you've got enough money to pay your bills and food and your debt to the ramen guy. I've learned to cook and I've got funds to cook proper meals for a whole family. And from your habits, I guess there's other daily stuff you'll need some assistance with. Come to think of it, I'll go with you to your place to see how you live. If you're gonna be my teammate, you must have a clean place, be in good health and look better than…a cartoon character. No, no, this isn't good enough. You're gonna follow me for a full makeover, I'll make sure you look like my teammate and not some gutter punk. Not to offend you, but even Kiba looks less like a gutter punk than you, and he has the dog and the smell."
"You know what?" replied Naruto. "I don't even want to know. Just do whatever you want, you've overloaded my brain with this long ass speech about my habits and clothing. Brains off, lead the way, Mr Makeover. Just don't try to make me wear girls' clothes. I've seen you look sus at times."
'In the future timeline, sure, but hey, gotta take root somewhere, or maybe it's Orochimaru's influence?' thought the blonde.
NFM
Sasuke's eyes had seemed to burn when he looked at Naruto's place. There were a few dirty clothes not in the dirty laundry box, but it wasn't like it was a complete mess either… He had also looked at the trash bin at cringed at the sight of ramen wrappings. Then he had looked into his closet and cringed at the clothes.
They left for a food store and the black haired boy picked vegetables, fish and rice. Naruto was contemplating the choice in ramen under the glare of the clerk. Sasuke seemed to notice it and quickly went to pay in order to leave as fast as possible. He noticed the glares everywhere they passed and seemed to wonder what was the reason for them.
The Uchiha clan grounds were like a ghost town. The wind was literally moving creaking shutters, slamming them shut before they opened again, leaving a really creepy feeling.
'No wonder Sasuke's so edgy when he lives in such a place… Must remind him of his family and clan being slaughtered by Itachi all the fricking time… No way in hell I'm staying here for the night, I bet there are ghosts and zombies at night… This place is a creepy cemetery of a district… Maybe Sasuke is a vampire? He bought a lot of red vegetables after all, he must like red juice… I should stop thinking about silly things, this isn't a movie…'
After walking for fifteen minutes, they reached the only house in a good state of care. It looked like the odd one out in the middle of this creepy place, like the owner was in complete denial of their surroundings. Sasuke entered and removed his shoes to put on his slippers before going any further.
"Take off your shoes and put on the spare slippers in the closet. I've cleaned yesterday, I'd like to keep it clean two more days."
"What? You clean more than once a week?" wondered Naruto.
Sasuke looked at him with a raised eyebrow as if he was asking something stupid.
"I clean twice a week. Uchiha can't live in a dirty place."
"You're a clean freak, no wonder you were cringing all the time in my room…"
"My father wanted the house cleaned daily. I'm pretty casual about cleaning."
"Wow, that's some next level obsession…"
'Especially when there are skeletons in the closet…' he thought to himself.
Sasuke washed his hands and started cooking, perched on a large stool to be high enough. He used the knives and other cooking stuff like a chef. He put the dish in the oven and went to take a shower. After that, he held out a set of clothes for Naruto, who looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Go take a shower and put these clothes for now. I'll wash and disinfect your clothes before handing them back to you."
"Thanks, I guess, although I wonder if I'm supposed to feel insulted or glad…"
"And use my shampoo, your hair needs a cleaning too. I've left a clean hair brush by the sink for you."
"What would I do with a hair brush? I'm not a girl."
"Guys also use hair brushes, and not only when they have long hair. No wonder your hair looks like a porcupine has settled in if you never brush it."
"Alright, I'll brush my hair, but it won't change my spiky hair. Dad had the same problem…"
"Did you just say something about your dad?"
"What? No. Absolutely not. I've never known my parents. Guess they died before I was born, or maybe they didn't want to raise me…"
"There's something different about you. You're not the same as the Naruto at the academy and it was only a week ago. What happened?"
"Huh? Well, I became a shinobi, so I'm more serious now…"
"Don't try to bullshit me. You're less goofy, less lonely, not the same kind of attention-seeking, you also seem more educated. And you definitely talked about your dad having the same hair as you. There weren't many flashy blonde haired men with blue eyes in our parents' generation. One of them was the Fourth Hokage, I know it since my mother was his girlfriend's best friend."
"What? Your mom was friends with my mo…crap. I said it…"
"How did you learn the identities of your parents?"
"I can't tell, it's a crazy story. Something something time travel something something alternate timeline and all that kind of magic bull crap that no one would believe."
"Well, as bullshit as it sounds, it explains how you learned tree and water walking. And how you seemed so knowledgeable out of nowhere. Are you from the future? Like in ten years? Came back to save the world from some great evil? Or to prevent someone from making a poor choice? Or to become the king of the world? Did I kill Itachi?"
"I'm not from the future, a clone of an older version of me popped out of nowhere and dispelled in front of me and I got all his memories from that other timeline. I know how all his skills work, all of his memories, but the skill he used, shadow clone, doesn't work in our timeline. I learned it in twelve hours in he other one to pass the secret graduation exam by Mizuki the traitor, it was in the forbidden scroll he asked me to steal, but this time it was a blank summoning contract instead. Whatever, I have to practice to learn to use any of the stuff the other had learned and the shadow clone with memory transfer doesn't work here and now. This reality must refuse me the ability to use the five hundred shadow clones training method to learn everything in one week for some reason…and I'm supposed to stop a crazy guy from Ame with a god complex from flattening Konoha with the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths, the stupid Rinnegan. Why the fuck am I telling you all that? Did you use something to make me talk?"
"I have that thing that makes people want to tell me everything for some reason. I just stare at them and they spit it out," replied Sasuke.
"Oh. Is that a pre-sharingan stage? Or an all black mangekyô sharingan? Maybe in this timeline you skipped the sharingan and got the mangekyô from seeing the massacre in your brother's genjutsu? Argh! Stop it! Stop your thing! I don't want to tell you everything! I'm not supposed to tell you or anyone at that point! It's on a need-to-know basis! It's the future, it's SSS class information! Swear you won't reveal it?"
"…I can't believe it. It's true, isn't it? You know about the mangekyô without having ever met my brother personally during the last year before he went crazy… Tell me if I killed him!"
"Uh…I dunno… Not in the memories… You were trained by Orochimaru and you kicked Yamato's, Sakura's, Sai's and my ass without any effort after I'd gone mad against your master with four tails… Shit, you're doing it again!"
"Then I should go back to Orochimaru for training…"
"Absolutely not!"
"But he made me strong."
"And completely murder happy. He turned you into a lunatic who would attack his own friends. He taught you kenjutsu and you mastered his cursed mark, which is a bastardized, toned down and corrupted version of sage mode from the pervy sage's word. Orochimaru was unable to become a sage because of his body experimentation so he found another way to use senjutsu, but he denatured it."
"And what's senjutsu?"
"The mastering of gathering and using natural energy. Chakra is like a part of a whole. When you mix it with nature energy, you get senjutsu. It's what ninjutsu should be, but shinobi have misused it and use only the easy part, chakra, to do their nasty job. Sages use senjutsu and the power you attain by mastering it is incomparable to anything else. I was special jônin level in combat after training for sage mode, even worse than that before the training despite two and a half years of training with the pervy sage while you went from best genin with Neji to nearly as powerful as any of the other kage, and with senjutsu not even fully mastered, I managed to body most of the paths of Pain, the lunatic with the Rinnegan who divided its' power between six corpses. I lost to the main body which had the magnetic power to pull and push giant summons the size of a tailed beast and to flatten Konoha in one use. This guy had killed my master with five bodies only, not using the main one, the month before I fought him. He died trying to capture the Kyûbi sealed inside me while it was raging after I got flattened. He exhausted himself after fighting Konoha alone and fighting me in sage mode and restraining six and then eight tails of the Kyûbi. My other self took his eyes and used Kyûbi's chakra to throw my clone in a spacetime rift created by overloading the village wide push and that's how I got the memories."
"Wow. This sounds like a manga."
"So yeah, senjutsu is super powerful and you asshole stop using this secret technique on me, I don't want to reveal everything to you!"
"Alright, alright. I want you to teach me senjutsu. I'll stop extracting information from you when you start teaching me how to use it."
"Damn! You can't just learn senjutsu out of your genin ass! If it was so easy, I'd have mastered it in the months of training I've had with two clones to speed up the process! It requires to meditate, to have good chakra control, to have enough chakra to maintain, you have to get the feeling for nature energy, then to pull it to you, mix it perfectly with your physical and spiritual energy, one third each, and if you move you turn into stone."
"What? What kind of super technique turns you into stone if you move? What's the point?"
"I used the shadow clones to gather energy fro me to refill. Once you have a good hold on senjutsu, you can move with it, but you only get little time. With my massive chakra pool, I could only keep five minutes worth of it at a time. With your tiny ass chakra reserves, you might be able to use it for one second after years of training. My dad never used it because he could only gather enough for a single ninjutsu. My master only fought with it once that I know of. Not that he needed it most of the time, he could body Kakashi any day of the month without senjutsu. And Jiraiya didn't even fully master it, he used his elder summons to gather and transfer nature energy into him."
"How the hell am I supposed to learn to use that? I'd rather take the eyes of the crazy guy and kill Itachi…"
"I'd rather not have to stop another murder happy Rinnegan guy who also used to be my friend because he got mad after killing his own brother for a massacre that makes no sense. Think about it, why would Itachi kill everyone but you? Why keep you alive? He could have scavenged all the corpses for their eyeballs if he wanted more sharingan, he didn't need you. There's something shady between Itachi's actions. He was definitely crazy, but not a lunatic. Most likely a sociopath raised in a bad context. Knowing that the Kyûbi had attacked Konoha right after my birth, and that the sharingan seems to be able to affect it, maybe someone in power suspected the Uchiha clan to be behind the attack and it spiraled out of control? That's what my older self thought."
"You mean someone like the Hokage could have put the blame on my clan and used my brother to kill them all? But why leave me alive? Why torture me?"
"Maybe he couldn't kill you. Maybe he refused to. And about the torture, he was crazy, remember? Maybe he tried to awaken your mangekyô by showing you the massacre? That would definitely be believable from him."
Sasuke stayed silent. They both let the silence last for a few minutes. The oven beeped.
"You should go take a shower while I set the table," said Sasuke, unfocused.
"Yeah, I'll do that."
Naruto went to clean himself, brush his messy hair and put on a dark gray undershirt with long sleeves, a blue shirt without a collar over it and white trousers, a pair of black socks and put the slippers back on. He looked weird in these colors, but he was just borrowing these clothes. It wasn't like he'd keep wearing them.
They ate in silence, Sasuke processing all the information and suppositions of the last hour. Naruto was impressed by the taste of the vegetables, he had never imagined vegetables could taste good. The rice trimming was perfect to fill their stomachs after workout.
"I think my entire life is based on lies," concluded Sasuke after finishing his plate.
"Welcome to the club, mate," commented Naruto, cynical.
NFM
AN: Sasuke doesn't have kotoamatsukami if you were wondering. Naruto just cant keep anything from him and blames a secret technique. Sasuke is just staring at him the whole time and Naruto just can't not tell everything about the topic at hand, even going off topic when he explains something as a whole (just like I do).
This is walking the line between a crack fic and a serious time travel fic. It's a serious crack time travel fic in an alternate universe where shadow clones don't work unless they come from a different universe where they work.
This was a long ass chapter and I probably won't write another one that long for a while. I find the derailed discussion between Naruto and Sasuke interesting and the characters are acting on their own. I've lost control over my own idea. They're becoming alive and freeing themselves from my influence. They refuse to follow the script. Wait 'til Sakura joins them…