"The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so" - Ennius
As he stood atop the high ground overlooking the battlefield, Naruto Uzumaki felt the last bit of his energy leave his body. Madara Uchiha stood there victorious.
It all happened so quick. Despite the Sage of Six Path's aid, Madara was able to over power them all. Sasuke fell first, shielding his comrades with a Susa'no, taking the force of several Truth Seeking orbs before falling, devoid of any chakra.
Then Kakashi, Sakura, Gaara, Lee, all fell one by one.
"Naruto ! "
Minato's voice seemed to bring Naruto back to reality.
The one armed hokage hadn't fallen yet due to his Edo-Tensei form.
"We need to stop the Ten-Tails at all costs! I will hold Madara off, you go and hel-"
Minato was hit by a chakra rod by Madara flunging the ressurrected hokage backwards.
"Not so fast." Madara said while sneering.
"You! " Naruto shouted at Madara.
The Ghost of Uchiha simple smiled and said, "Do you see now boy?" pointing towards his fallen comrades across the battlefield. Allied forces were nowhere near to stopping the Ten-Tails, while every second their numbers were wittling down.
" Wake up to reality boy. You have lost."
Naruto shouted back in response, " I will take defeat you Madara!" while producing a Rasenshuriken in his hand. He then flung it at Madara who was slightly pushed back but ultimately survived the jutsu. Before Madara could counterattack, Naruto found himself somehow teleported to the other side of the battlefield.
After being teleported, the young shinobi found the Sage Of Six paths hovering in front of him.
"What is the meaning of this Super gramps! why did you teleport me! I need to fight Madara and stop his moon plan! "
Sage replied in his booming voice, " Young Naruto, even if you can stall Madara for a while, he will eventually out last you as well due to his ten tails chakra. This battle is already lost. now there is only one thing we can do."
Naruto saw around him that his dad, Hashirama Senju, Tobirama, and several other of what seemed to be spirits levitating around him and the Sage in a circle.
Hagoromo continued, " Eons ago when I first fought my mother along side by brother Hamura, I had sought out a technique to reverse time as an insurance in case we failed to overpower our mother on our first try. I have decided to send you back a few years into past and try to stop the fallout of this world."
Naruto was surprised. Time travel to fix the future was the last thing he had hoped to be the last solution for this mess. Then he asked, " What about you all? What will happen to this timeline? "
"Erased from existence" replied Hagoromo.
Naruto thought it was akin to running away. It is cowardly, he thought to himself.
"Naruto."
Minato's voice came from behind.
"As the Sage is said this is our only hope. The sage has already briefed us on our part in this under taking. All them you can see? " Minato gestured towards all the spirits gathered around.
"They are the Kages of the five great villages from the days gone by. We will help the Sage in performing the technique. "
Naruto was still feeling like a coward for escaping alone. He was simply going to be sent back alone while his comrades perished.
"Kid." The Kyubi called out to Naruto in his mind.
"Don't worry, for you won't be alone as due to you being my Jinchuriki i will accompany you through this journey as well."
"But Kurama, I can't just leave like this, it would-"
" Before you say it's cowardly, you need to realize that to win certain battles you need to take some steps back. I want to tear that damn Uchiha down to shreds as well, but for now we need to follow the old man's plan."
Naruto sensed truth in his friend's words. Without Sasuke it was not possible to seal ten tails anyway.
Naruto then turned to to the Sage and said, " Super gramps, I accept your plan and vow to protect the shinobi world this time, without fail."
The Great Sage nodded and as he was about to signal the other sages to start the process, Minato once again called out to Naruto.
"Naruto wait."
Naruto turned to see that his father had sunshined to near him.
" What is it dad? "
"Show me your forehead."
Minato then put his palm over his son's head.
After a while Naruto could feel a plethora of info enter his mind, specifically, the way to use the Flying Raijin Jutsu.
" I am sure this will help you out in your mission Naruto.I always wanted to teach you this jutsu. I didn't leave behind any detailed records for how to perform it back in the leaf afterall."
Naruto gave a small smile and said to his father,
" Thanks Dad."
Hagoromo then cut their interaction
" I don't want to interrupt your conversation but we don't have much time left, I can sense Madara heading this way, we need to act now."
Minato and Naruto both nodded in acknowledgment and went back to their positions.
The sage then said, " Good luck Naruto."
As he said that the s glowing circle was formed around Naruto along where the Kages were standing, and soon he too was engulfed in a glowing light.
Naruto looked at Minato and Hagoromo both of whom gave him a thumbs up and a nod respectively.
"Hang on tight kid." Kurama said as Naruto felt his body being pulled upward.
"Jikūkan no Jutsu : Jikan Hanten
Naruto felt himself being pulled through by the front of his face as he dared open his eyes to see his surroundings. The vortex had led him into a pathway of some kind, his past memories appearing on the walls of his surroundings.
The time he went to turtle Island.
The time he defeated Pain.
The time he heard of Jiraya's death.
The time he defeated Kakuzu.
As all of these passed memories flashed by his eyes, he hadn't even realised when he had reached the memories of his graduation exam.
Suddenly the memories stopped and he found himself shrouded in darkness, when he heard the voice
"NARUTO! WAKE UP!"
It war Iruka's voice. Almost instinctively Naruto stood up only for his feet slip and him crashing down on the ground. Then he proceeded to carefully get up and stand up.
"Yes Iruka sensei."
"Were you dozing off in the class again?"
Naruto glanced around himself.
He was at the Academy.
More specifically he was at the academy around half a year before his graduation. His classmates were in their usualselfs, for this timeperiod . Choji was smiling. Shikamaru was bored. Kiba was laughing at him. Sasuke was brooding. Sakura and Ino were in their fangirl mode. Hinata was shy as ever and finally Shino, stoic as ever.
Naruto then replied to Iruka, "No, not at all sensei."
Iruka remained unfazed, all to familiar with Naruto's antics during class. What he said was a blatant lie, it was sure. But Iruka still decided to test the boy.
"Ok, in that case you should be able to answer my questions regarding today's lesson? "
The young blonde replied, " Of course sensei."
Iruka then gave a sweet smile and asked, "In that case, can you tell me who named the Sannin by that name?"
The blonde realized that he knew the answer, having heard the story from Jiraya, a sannin himself, during their training journey.
He replied back in a sheepish tone, " The answer would be Hanzo of the Salamander, leader of Amegakure."
Iruka was pleasantly surprised. Naruto had actually given the correct answer.
Although Iruka was certain Naruto was sleeping right now, he might have just been wake at the time of him explaining that particular segment.
"Correct Naruto, just try to sit upright from now on."
Naruto simply gave the chunin a nod as ge sat down.
As Iruka continued the class Naruto's attention shifted to his tenant.
"Kurama, you there? "
As a silence lingered on for a while, Naruto was starting to afraid that he had lost his fox friend too, he heard an his voice.
"Right here Kid, just adjusting to my old quarters."
"You are okay, right?"
" I am okay kid, better than ever!"
Naruto was a bit confused by his partner's comment.
"What do you exactly mean by better than ever? "
The tailed fox replied, "Because my Yin and Yang parts are one once again! "
Naruto was a bit stunned. It was quite revelation. During the battle with Madara, Minato had transferred his bit of Kurama to Naruto, but given they were back in time, it should have been reverted back to how it was.
Kurama replied to his thoughts, " It seems like altering a time travelling tailed beast back to the place back to here it was is where the old man's technique faltered, not surprising since it wasn't made for tailed beasts after all."
Naruto was satisfied by the explanation, since there was no other, and the fact that a stronger Kurama was always better for their mission after all, as he began grinning internally.
The blonde began looking around to see his friends, whom he had seen dying a little while ago. It wasn't easy for Naruto and so he instead tried to focus on Iruka's class, and after about one minute began regretting why Super Sage gramps hadn't sent him back to past at a time when school hours were over.
Luckily, that was the last class for the day and the children were free to go.
As Naruto exited the academy building, he saw, after quite a while, Konohagakure no Sato in all it's glory. Naruto hadn't seen the village for a few months due to his Sage arts training and due to the fact Pain's Shinra-Tensei had destroyed it in his absence.
But alongside the view of his old village came the old hateful looks of the villagers.
Naruto had forgotten the hateful glances he would get from the parents of the other children coming to the academy to pick up their children. It was hard for him to readjust to this behavior, but it was nothing compared to other things he had faced.
The blond simply walked to his old apartment as he thought sunshining would bring about too much attention.
It was an usual afternoon at the Hokage tower.
Hiruzen was doing his usual endless paperwork on his table like always. It was the usual. Mission reports, civillian infrastructure projects, letters addressed to the hokage, ranging from being of his old acquintances, all the way to influential civillian leaders trying to butter him up. After all that were the reports from the Leaf's spy network.
The Hokage put on a serious face as he opened up an envelope addressed by one of his agents.
"Another of Weasel's report heh?", the old kage thought as he opened the letter to find it contents being a report on the bandit activity around the northern parts of Hi no Kuni. Hiruzen know it wasn't the real message as he rotated the parchment and produced a flame in his smoking pipe and put it near the it to make out the skillfully crafted code reading.
WHITE HAS LEFT THE HOLE
To anyone else, these words would make zero sense, but to Hiruzen it made all too much sense.
His spy, weasel, and himself used codes to exchange messages as to keep any espionage efforts to the minimum. Weasel couldn't just visit the Hokage like his student Jiraya or use direct means to contact him as to maintain his cover.
The 'White' mentioned in the letter was no other than the old man's other student, Orochimaru, who had defected from the village and was eager for any chance to strike it down, while the hole was refering to one of his many bases around the elemental nations, this one in particular located in Rai no Kuni, where his spy happened to pick up traces of him by chance. Hiruzen knew he had lost another chance to possibly eliminate the rouge ninja, but the lack of enough intelligence and it being located in one of the five great nations, particularly one they weren't on the best terms with certainly played a part as well. Hiruzen fell back into his seat as he proceeded to burn the letter and was happy to see that for now his paper work was done. He decided to nake himself a cup of green tea as he gazed down on the village hidden in the leaves and its citizens going on about their lives. Until he saw far away into a distance the ninja academy, a place where new shinobi were trained up until they were fit to be assigned a jonin sensei. In particular his thoughts shifted to a particular blonde troublemaker, Naruto Uzuamaki. Hiruzen was one of the few in Konoha nice to Naruto, apart from Teuchi and his daughter Ayame. Naruto was not liked by, or outright hated by the common villager of , for he was the Jinchuriki of the dreaded Kyuubi. Few knew, including Hiruzen, of what had happened on that fated October day when Kyuubi had broken free from its prison and had destroyed a part of the hidden village, killed many of its shinobi and civillians alike. What people knew, was that the Yellow Flash of the Hidden leaf, the fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze, had manages to seal the beast into a small child, that is Naruto. What people didn't knew however, was that Naruto was Minato's own son. Before dying the Fourth Hokage had asked Hiruzen for Naruto to be treated as a hero and to take care of him.
But the villagers in their hate for Kyuubi feared the child to be its reincarnation and kept themselves and their children away from the young Naruto. As for taking care of Naruto, Hiruzen's old friend , Danzo Shimura had constantly insisted for the child to be given to him, so he could train him to be a weapon for their village. Hiruzen bashed down the offer at the first try and insisted that he would take care of Naruto instead. Danzo had accused the Hokage of denying him while himself trying the same himself by keeping the boy with him. So in the end, Hiruzen was forced to let Naruto live on his own in an apartment. He still gave him amonthly allowance and paid the monthly rent for it.
Hiruzen was not happy was the arrangement but ut was the best he could do. He had in addition had enacted a decree that prohibited anyone mentioning of Naruto's Jinchuriki status in hopes of the younger generation accepting him into their ranks as time passed by.
He could only hope so much.
A.N.- Any thoughts? review if you liked it or even disliked it. I will respect every bit of constructive criticism.