Chapter 5

Naruto sat in the middle of the fuin, while Sasuke completed the hand seals for the time travel jutsu. During this time, Naruto meditated without a word.

Over the 5 decades of time it took to perform the jutsu, Sasuke noticed some small differences that accrued over time. With the power of the Rinnegan, Sasuke’s perception was unrivaled, however, around the ten year mark, Sasuke noticed that Naruto’s presence had started to fade.

Sasuke made no comment at the time, and observed with patience. By the 25th year, Naruto’s presence had shrunk to the equivalent of a small frog or reptile.

In the 45th year, Naruto’s presence disappeared completely. Sasuke was about as surprised as he could be, which is to say, not that much, but an idle amount of curiosity floated around his mind.

To Sasuke, Naruto was there before him, and he could be easily seen with the naked eye, but Sasuke could see no energy flow within him. Naruto had not had chakra since Kaguya had ripped it from him, but following his removal from the God Tree, he had possessed the normal physical and spiritual energy that all lifeforms possess, it simply would not mix and form chakra.

When Naruto became the jinchuuriki of the God Tree, life energy was added to the mix, and Sasuke could easily identify their flows during the time period when Naruto was purifying the life energy of negative emotion.

But now, there was nothing. To Sasuke, Naruto was devoid of all energy, as lifeless as the rest of the planet. Sasuke would assume that Naruto had died, but even a blind man could hear the deep breathing of Naruto during his meditation.

Naruto would breath in, pause, and breath out. It was normal beyond description, but Sasuke couldn’t quite put his finger on what was special about it. It wasn’t a perfect rhythm, and there were no phenomena associated with it.

The best Sasuke could do to describe it would be, “It’s never out of place”. A/N Whatever that means.

So there he sat for the last 5 years of Sasuke’s jutsu, an breathing corpse, in Sasuke’s eyes.

Sasuke faced a similar dilemma. The jutsu he was performing was incredibly taxing, and his immense chakra reserves were slowly dwindled over the 50 years of hand seals.

Sasuke was finishing up his jutsu.

“Ne-Ushi-Tora-U-Tatsu-Mi-Uma-Hitsuji-Saru-Tori-Inu-I.

Naruto, the jutsu is activating.”

Naruto opened his eyes for the first time in five decades and looked around him and Sasuke. The fuinjutsu that covered the planet glowed into life, burning bright red.

The fuin pattern started glowing at its center, surrounding Naruto and Sasuke, and wuickly shot out in every direction, tracing the lines of the array.

Within seconds, the fuin array was completely lit within eyesight.

Sasuke spoke again.

“The jutsu is activating. It will send us back in time when it finishes lighting up the entire array.

We are currently aiming for the exact moment of your birth.”

Naruto went bug-eyed.

“WHAT!? Could you pick a shittier time?!”

Sasuke calmly replied.

“With the sheer scale of how far we have to travel back in time, the error on my time estimation is plus minus 5 years, and you should be ecstatic I could get it that close. Had I not a watershed moment in the development of my Rinnegan 25 years ago, we would have to aim 50 years before your birth to ensure that we traveled to the right time.

I did the best I can, but the accuracy is limited. Its the nature of the beast.”

Naruto had calmed down a little bit.

“Still though. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth to aim directly for the day my parents died.

I’ve just got this bad gut feeling that isn’t going away.

Call it instinct, but be prepared for things to go south.”

Sasuke shook his head, and sat down next to Naruto.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m completely out of chakra. I won’t be able to recover for several years. Its all in your hands, dobe.”

At that moment, Sasuke’s Sharingan and Rinnegan turned off, and that was left were the normal black eyes of the Uchiha.

Naruto smacked his forehead.

“You gotta be kidding me. OK, teme, well, here’s the plan, the second we get back…”

Sasuke interrupted him.

“No time for plans. We travel in five.”

Naruto’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Five minutes is enough for a rudimentary plan though.”

Sasuke replied.

“Not minutes.”

And the entire world shifted.

The two of them had experienced a lot throughout their lives, but they were not prepared for this. Their bodies were thrown, and they spun like a hard thrown shuriken. That would be disorienting enough, but it felt like they were teleported between outer space and the bottom of the ocean one hundred times a second.

It was over quickly though, and the extremely disoriented duo found themselves on their backs.

The pair both had their eyes screwed shut, and for several seconds, they simply laid there moaning.

Naruto spoke first.

“Urrgh… Good thing I haven’t eaten in a while.”

Naruto took a deep breath, and that is when it happened.

As he breathed, he felt the Chakra around him. It was nostalgic and bittersweet. Naruto sat up and relished the feeling and associated memories. He recalled the first time in the academy that Iruka-sensei taught him to mold chakra. He remembered his mother’s chakra, and he remembered his father’s chakra as well.

Chakra was so ingrained into his life that until he lived it, he couldn’t have imagined a life without it.

The first wisp of chakra he felt, he took into his body and slowly guided it according to the teachings of his past. He circled it thorough his chakra network, tracing each and every tenketsu, and even the 8 gates.

When that wisp reached his dantian, it catalysed something.

Like a crystal of sugar dropped into a super saturated solution to form rock candy, all the spiritual and physical energy in his body instantly melded together back into chakra.

Sasuke was still laying down beside him, but he felt it. As Naruto’s chakra reformed following his crippling by Kaguya, a blast of chakra was emanated in 360 degrees.

Sasuke actually felt it too much. The pulse was like getting hit by a bijuudama at zero distance.

The massive explosion rent everything around the two, and threw a giant dust cloud into the air.

Naruto immediately cried out.

“Sasuke, are you okay?”

Sasuke replied.

“Over here, I’m injured though.”

Naruto panicked and made his way to Sasuke’s voice. The dust had not settled, but Naruto still knelt down next to his friend.

Sasuke coughed.

“Can you get rid of this dust first?”

Naruto hesitated.

“Its been a long time since I’ve had chakra. I’m a little out of practice, so…”

Naruto then circulated his chakra a little bit, but another chakra pulse emanated from his body, only throwing up more dust.

Naruto grumbled to himself.

“This is taking too long. Just gonna use life energy.”

Naruto clasped his two hand together in prayer. A moment later, an ethereal, golden Buddha apparition appeared behind, mimicking his posture, with hand clasped in prayer.

Naruto slowly spread his hands, palms facing down, and pressed down. The Buddha followed his movements

The dust immediately settled, and Naruto got a good glimpse at Sasuke. Naruto frowned.

Sasuke broke the silence.

"I think I have a nose bleed.”

And true to his word, a couple drops of blood had come out his nose, but other than that, he looked fine.

Naruto sighed.

“Oi, teme. What your problem? I thought you were injured.”

Sasuke replied.

“I am injured. You can see that I’m bleeding.”

Naruto didn’t have a good response.

“Well, let’s figure out when and where we are first.”

Naruto helped Sasuke to his feet and the two looked around. They soon found a cliff beside them. Naruto, still supporting Sasuke, quickly walked over.

It was nighttime, but they still cast their gazes out across the horizon. The duo narrowed their eyes.

Off in the distance, they could see that Hokage Monument and Konoha.

Naruto spoke.

“Well its pretty obvious where we are. Now the only question is when?

Sasuke can you look at the stars still?”

Sasuke simply turned to face Naruto. Naruto saw that his eyes were the normal Uchiha black. Naruto reached up with his free hand and scratched the back of his head.

“Oh yeah. Forgot about the whole out of chakra thing.”

Sasuke slowly removed his arm around from Naruto’s shoulders.

“I think I can support myself bu this point. We should start making our way to Konoha, we can found out the date there.”

As soon as he said that however. A giant cloud of smoke formed in Konoha. A second later, the Kyuubi appeared.

Naruto immediately started sprinting towards Konoha, leaving Sasuke behind him on the cliff.

“Sasuke, you bastard! You said it was plus minus 5 years!”

Naruto didn’t wait for Sasuke to respond, and was quickly out of earshot of the shinobi.

Sasuke sighed and spoke to no one in particular.

“Technically…”

Sasuke was dead tired following his jutsu, and he knew that he would be of no help to Konoha, even if he could make it there in time.

Still though, he made his way home at best speed.

Naruto was sprinting his way towards Konoha when he tried to put some chakra into his legs. He immediately sped up, but at the cost of losing his balance and skittering across the forest floor, breaking trees and crushing rocks at mach speed.

Naruto was cursing at himself; the long time without chakra he had suffered had all but atrophied his chakra control. He was in a very similar position to his time as a genin, too much chakra and not enough control.

However, his speed was fairly good in his current predicament. Though he was carving a human sized channel through the forest on his way to Konoha, he rapidly approached Konoha.

He quickly found himself at the destroyed Main Gate of the village. He quickly paused, all around him were corpses. He shook his head and let out a deep sigh.

He would have time to lament later. At this point, he was more concerned with saving the living than honoring the dead. That was when he noticed, the majority of the people around him had not died from blunt force trauma, or chakra explosion, or any of the normal ways one would expect the kyuubi to kill.

No, they were killed with kunai, shuriken, or suffered from broken necks.

Naruto turned his gaze upwards, to the top of the broken gate.

There stood a masked man. Naruto jumped up to his level, a few feet behind him.

Naruto called out.

“Hey.”

The masked man immediately whipped around and threw a kunai at Naruto’s face.

Obito’s thoughts were racing.

How did this man sneak up on me, I can’t even detect his presence.

Obito looked at the man before him with a slight fear.

The man was elderly, maybe in his 50s, but he could also be in the late 40s of a hard life. His white hair was medium length, and though the man was above average height, he didn’t seem to carry much muscle. If anything, he looked like a civilian.

The scary part was that this man was a breathing corpse. He lacked the distinctive black sclera of those resurrected with the Edo Tensei technique, but as far as Obito could tell, this man contained no energy within him. He was about as alive as a rock.

His eyes though were bright blue, and ALIVE. Obito was uncomfortable when there eyes met, a unique and new experience for the Uchiha once he had developed his Mangekyo Sharingan.

Obito’s fear, at first subsided, as he convinced himself that the man before him was simply a civilian with a particularly negligible presence, but when the dead man lazily lifted his hand and snatched the kunai thrown at his face from the air, Obito’s fear surged.

Obito had thrown that kunai with full force; it would be hard for a jonin to deflect it, much less catch it with apparent ease.

The unknown is a death sentence for a shinobi, and the man in front of Obito was a complete unknown.

Obito was about to use his Kamui to decapitate the man in front of him when the elderly man spoke.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have time for you right now.”

That elderly man, was obviously Naruto.

Naruto didn’t so much recognize the man in front of him, but after combining the mask, the single Sharingan, and his familiar aura, Naruto knew that this was Obito before him.

Naruto placed his hands together in prayer, and a golden Buddha appeared behind him.

Obito saw the movements, and when the apparition formed behind the man without a single hint of energy, Obito sneered and activated Kamui to tear the man’s head from his body. There was nothing his spatial jutsu couldn’t cut.

Except this apparently. For the first time in his life, Obito’s jutsu failed to activate. Obito was panicking, and when Naruto raised his hand and slapped the air in front of him, with the Buddha mimicking his action, Obito used kamui to shift his entire body to his personal dimension.

Obito’s thoughts were racing.

Who is this man?

Why is he opposing me?

What kind of jutsu did he cast?

I didn’t see any hand seals, perhaps its from the Guardian Ninjas?

The Fire Temple? But they use seals and chakra too?

Sharingan saw absolutely no chakra.

I already checked for genjutsu.

More and more thoughts raced through his mind, but the last one was unique.

Why did he look so sad?

Obito noticed that when the man attacked him, his face was extremely conflicted, like it was bringing him great pain. Not physical pain, but inner turmoil.

It reminded Obito of when he was a young child and broke a priceless vase at home. His father had beaten for the first and only time. Before he hit Obito with a switch on his calf, he had made the exact same face towards Obito and said.

“This hurts me more than it will hurt you.”

Obito was flummoxed, and was preparing to shift back out of his personal dimension when he saw it.

In front of him, 8 golden fingers the width of tree trunks were piercing into his dimension. They quickly ripped open the space, and from between them flew out a third hand at extreme speed.

The golden hand was larger than a person, and struck with immense force.

Obito, before he could react, was launched through his dimension, colliding and smashing through the rectangular columns that littered the space.

When he finally stopped. Obito couldn’t move. It felt like every bone in his body was broken. He thought back to when he had half his body crushed.

He wouldn’t die though. He could feel his implanted Hashirama cells start to heal his body. It would take him a while to heal back to his normal standard, but he would be back.

Back in Konoha, Naruto looked at Kurama, who had already destroyed massive amount of the village.

Kurama threw his head back and roared.

“Damn you Uchiha, Damn you Konoha, and DAMN YOU KUSHINA!

I WILL DESTROY ALL OF YOU”

Naruto had suppressed Obito, and when he did, the control over the Kyuubi was lifted, and Kurama took the opportunity to begin its rampage in earnest.

Before Naruto could act though, he saw a yellow flash.

Suddenly appearing on the top of Kurama’s head was Minato Namikaze. Kurama immediately noticed and with even greater rage screamed.

“MINATOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Minato was unperturbed though.

“Let’s take our date somewhere else, huh?”

And instantly, the two of them disappeared from the center of Konoha.

Naruto sighed, turned to the west, and started traveling in a straight line as fast as he could. He hoped he would be there in time.