Chapter Text
Prologue
The world was cast in red and looked as if it was on fire. No, it wasn’t on fire—it was just ending and there she towered over it all. Her and her children—a veritable sea of white cruel faced monsters—were consuming the entire world. Naruto glanced to the side where Sakura’s husk of a body had been left crumpled on the ground.
Sasuke—no Orochimaru—was down an arm and bleeding profusely from his eyes. Naruto gritted his teeth at the Sannin who stole his friend’s body. He couldn’t help thinking that if Sasuke was still in there, they’d have had more of an edge in this fight.
“This is a nuisance,” Orochimaru hissed. “I wanted to pursue my studies in peace yet here I am,” he growled using Sasuke’s vocal cords. It left Naruto seething, but no, Orochimaru was helping them.
“Maa, world ending events will do that,” Kakashi-sensei chimed in. He was breathing heavily. Obito’s eye was destroyed at this point, so blood fell from the socket in rivulets. “At least…” Sensei’s voice waivered with ill restrained grief. “At least Obito’s sacrifice has given us a breather,” he finished firmly, but Naruto saw the anguish in his eye, nonetheless.
Orochimaru cursed through his teeth and shot a glance over to Naruto. “If I’d known what Akatsuki was planning this whole time…” he muttered before a pensive look came over Sasuke’s face. Naruto just clenched his fists and felt his nails break the skin.
“What, you Sanke-Bastard?!” Naruto snapped.
“I can tell we’re all prepared to fight to the bitter end, but what if…” the Sannin who had stolen his friend’s body trailed off. Kaguya was approaching again.
“Get to the point, Orochimaru,” Kakashi warned as he began to go through a series of hand signs and buy them time.
“If I couldn’t cheat death by jumping bodies, I had a back-up plan,” the Sannin replied but his eyes were focused solely on Naruto. The blonde raised an eyebrow before he sent out a wave of shadow clones.
“And what’s that? Steal more kids, use their life force or some shit?” Naruto snapped.
“Maa, Naruto, pointing out crimes of the past won’t help right now,” Sensei chided as he sent an elemental technique toward some Zetsu-clones approaching them.
“I’ve never stolen—” the sole surviving Sannin cut off his offended response with a shake of his head. “That’s beside the point. What if you could change this all? Keep this from happening?” Orochimaru used one of the mangekyou abilities to create an arm of wind that swiped through the approaching onslaught.
Both Sensei and Naruto gave derisive snorts as they focused back in on fighting. “How’d you do that, huh? Time travel?” Naruto sneered the last bit. “Maybe you could go back and stop yourself from killing my best friend!” he snarled this last bit, and Orochimaru made some hissed comment about brats with a grudge. “Oi!” Naruto protested after throwing a Rasen-shuriken at their enemies.
“Yes, time travel, and no, I couldn’t do it. I need significantly more chakra for it,” he said this last bit rather pointedly toward Naruto.
Tailed-beast chakra, why did it always come back to that? Naruto rolled his eyes. “Right, so you’re gonna siphon mine and Kurama’s chakra to send yourself back in time, huh?” Kurama’s chakra cloak was good at protecting them from many things, but a Zetsu still got a good hit on Kakashi. The gray-haired man hissed in pain but quickly disposed of the plant monster.
“No, you impatient—” Orochimaru cut himself off with another shake of his head and sighed as if to collect himself. “The one traveling back in time needs to have significant chakra. The soul and consciousness transfers through that chakra back to person’s younger body, but that younger body also needs to have significant amounts of chakra to hold that soul.”
Naruto blinked as he processed what the Sannin was implying. “So only a jinchuuriki could do this?”
“Exactly,” Orochimaru replied as he used more of Sasuke’s techniques to hold off the onslaught before them.
“What are you two waiting for then?!” Sensei shouted from further up. “The world has gone to hell already, what’s there to lose?” He threw an eye-smile over his shoulder. “I’ll hold them off, alright?”
“Sensei!” Naruto started to protest, but Orochimaru was already grabbing Naruto and hightailing it further away. “Let go of me, you Snake-bastard!” Naruto hissed.
“You do this, brat, and none of these losses would have happened. Just do me a damn favor and comply, and maybe show me how stupid I’ve been while you’re at it. This clearly was the wrong way to achieve immortality.”
Naruto felt an incredulous laugh bubble up in his chest. “Oh, so now you admit you were wrong.”
Orochimaru cursed through his teeth again but eventually set Naruto down once they seemed a safe distance away. Naruto’s body was thrumming with anxiety and the desire to be with his Sensei to the bitter end.
“Alright you brat, let me get to work,” The Sannin said as Sasuke’s features morphed into a determined look. Naruto sneered at the body-stealer but complied and began to help the Sannin with the complex array he was building.
“Perhaps you should invest in sealing arts when you get thrown back in time, no?” the Sannin commented. “You have a knack for it.”
“Shut up, Snake-bastard,” Naruto growled but he did feel his face flush slightly at the praise. The Sannin smirked and, for a moment, Naruto could forget the bastard had taken over his friend’s body and think this was Sasuke smirking at him again. They continued working in an almost companionable (if tense) silence.
It was as Orochimaru began drawing the necessary seals on Naruto’s body that the blonde felt his sensei’s chakra flicker out and away.
“No,” Naruto breathed as he looked out in the direction his sensei’s chakra had been. “Sensei,” he gasped as his body instinctively jerked in the direction the Jounin had been. Orochimaru had to hold him in place.
“You can stop all of this from happening,” he reminded the blonde. He had his remaining hand on the blonde’s shoulder and again, Naruto could imagine this was Sasuke and not the Snake-bastard.
Teary eyed, Naruto nodded his head resolutely. Orochimaru searched his eyes for a moment before nodding resolutely.
“I need to hold off that Goddess, but here are the hand signs,” the Sannin instructed as he talked through the complex series of signs. Naruto couldn’t help but smile at the derisive tone Orochimaru used when he called Kaguya a goddess. Orochimaru went through the hand signs again, and Naruto made the corresponding hand sign.
“Put all the charka you and Kurama have into the seal, got it?” he said before giving Naruto a final smirk (more a smile) and nod. The Sanin wearing his friend’s body dashed away and Naruto was left practicing the hand signs until they became fluid and confident.
Ready for this, Kurama? he thought toward his companion. He heard a responding rumble of agreement in his mind. Well, here’s hoping the Snake-bastard knew what he was doing, the blonde thought with a snort.
He suffused chakra into his hands and then the seal. He poured everything into the array. Light erupted from the array and the ink on his skin. It was first bright blue like all chakra and then it took on a white and blinding quality. Naruto closed his eyes and pumped all that remained in his chakra pathways into the seal.
The pain was searing, and though Kurama’s chakra was no longer caustic to him, it still burned through his pathways—scorching all in its path. His mind went blank, and he knew no more.
…
Naruto shot awake. His body was burning, his heart pounding, and his chest constricting. He struggled to breathe as he looked around frantically. It was his old apartment and there was a certain comfort in that, but his mind could only think back to the blood, dust, death. Sensei, he thought grief stricken.
His body was shaking uncontrollably. He gulped down air, but it wasn’t filling his lungs. He was going to die; he was going to die!
Just as his vision began to go black at the edges, he felt a familiar soothing chakra—Sensei his mind cried out. He made a pitiful noise and tried to get his mouth to form those words. Sensei, he thought again with relief.
ANBU clad and non-descript, a figure stood before his bed, but Naruto knew it was Sensei. Sensei, he tried to call again but just a pitiful whine came out of his throat. He still couldn’t breathe right.
Naruto’s eyes kept sliding off the figure’s masked face—a dog mask he noted but he could not seem to see his Sensei’s telltale gray spikey hair. Still, he knew his sensei—knew the lightning in his chakra, the warmth, and brightness.
Naruto reached his hands out for the man while he still struggled to breathe and kept making these pitiful whines. Sensei, he tried to say again, but all he heard was that animalistic whine. His heart was still beating fast and each gasp for air was doing nothing. Naruto thought he heard the man sigh before Sensei did some hand sign and touched his covered neck.
Suddenly, Naruto could breathe again. He thought he smelled a summer rainstorm: a mix of rain, ozone, and something innately Konoha in summer. The blonde whined in relief yet continued reaching out for the man’s white breastplate. Sensei, he thought, less panicked now.
Sensei shifted in unease but allowed Naruto to clutch the hard sides of the breastplate and bring his face against the man’s torso. The soothing smell of a summer rain flooded the jinchūriki’s senses. The blonde felt tears slipping down his face and knew he was now sobbing. He could feel Sensei’s hesitance, but then the man was carding his fingers through Naruto’s hair and…there was a low rumbling. It was different from the rumbling he’s heard from Kurama. No, this rumbling was almost like a purr.
The last of Naruto’s anxiety melted away and his eyes grew heavy. His hold on the breastplate grew lax and then his eyes drifted closed. Sensei, he thought. A small chirping like noise filled the room, but Naruto had no time to ponder where it came from for his world went black again.