Misplaced Timing

Well, this is about who is more likely to have an answer to our question. It's unlikely that Hiruzen knows about our little time travel, but the Kyuubi may have been transported from the present along with us.

Thanks for reading and voting you two. Any one else want to give the tie-breaker? I know the beginning is somewhat weak, but I'm still getting used to writing in this kind of perspective again.

B. That was great.

Thank you for the patience, guys. I know it's been way too long, and for that I apologize. I had mostly given up on this to keep up with the normal fic format elsewhere, but with so many votes I can't just abandon this any longer.

The most of the Kyuubi section was written back on March 1st and saved for later. Hope its worth the wait.

---

A few more moments pass in silent contemplation and confusion before you feel an uncomfortable sensation creeping over your spine, and turning your head to look shows a few bubbles of thin red chakra seeping up to the surface slowly.

"Of course! If I'm somehow in the past, then the fox is still sealed inside of my body-- I'm still a jinchuriki!" at that proclamation you can 'feel' the chakra beast consciously acknowledging you for what should be the first time, and most certainly sooner than it had been originally.

But perhaps, being of the nature it is, you might be able to draw some answers out of it; afterall, you should still have the strength and skill to dominate it again if that becomes a necessity. With a tired grin you close your eyes and focus intently on that feeling and soon collapse physically back into the couch.

Mentally, your feet are soon standing in sewer water.

---

A single flared and massive red disk looks out from behind the cage doors as you approach, and a low growl stirs from within the shadows around it with enough force to leave ripples in the murky water coming up to your ankles.

What... changed within you, boy? the voice of the Kyuubi filters through the air with a sense of foreboding to it, and as you draw closer your eyes pick up that the fur nearest the cage is standing on end.

For a moment you would almost say the nine-tails is concerned, and a brief smirk stretchs your face. "I've had some training." you answer its question when your feet are less than a yard away from the large bars, looking in on the massive creature not particuarlly fondly, but most certainly pleased to host it again for the benefits your body once more now has.

A rough rumble escapes it before in what seems like a moment the maw is pressed right up against the bars, fangs exposed and snarling with a fierce display of killing intent released. The wind generated in the motion and intimidation tactic blow you off your feet at this size before you can put up enough resistence to hold your ground.

Wiping the muk off your face you sit up with a grimace, clenching one fist tightly before letting out a sigh. The Kyuubi slams its tails against the cage once before slowly settling back down, watching you darkly, but you ignore it for just a few seconds more before rising.

When you do your expression is remarkably calm, eyes turned to gold and highlighted by orange along the outside rims. The senjutsu chakra isn't exactly comfortable in this place, but you have little doubt that it will obey your will nevertheless.

The Kyuubi growls low in its throat at the change. In a moment you henge into your older form and walk closer to the bars once more, arms folded across your chest and posture steady in preparation for another wind-filled howl or sudden movement.

"Listen. I'm obviously not the eight year old brat you used to be contained within, and going by the reactions so far I don't really know if you have changed much either, but what memories do you have of the outside world? Do you even recognize this form?" you both explain to and question the massive chakra beast.

The pair of massive red eyes scan over your form slowly. It can physically sense the power at your helm and understandably is agitated by the seemingly instant change invoked in the process.

... I do not. I demand once more to know what has occurred within you, boy. its voice growls warily at you. Letting out a slow exhalation you nod your head equally warily.

"This will take a while, then." looking around at all the water, you find as comfortable a position as possible to sit down in and begin to talk with and explain things. It's better to start off on a better foot with the Nine Tails' if you truly are in the past than to gather it's ire and opposition like before.

---

Ichikaru's Ramen Stand
After what seemed like a small month you departed the mind scape with a loose agreement brokered with the Kyuubi. It won't hinder you and will indeed provide it's raw chakra as needed, at least until the greater threat of Madara and his Akatsuki is dealt with.

Apparently getting torn from the host was as much a bitch for the bijuu as it was for the jinchuriki.

As well neither of you were able to precisely pinpoint how you were expelled backwards in time roughly eight years, but the chance provided by this is one you intend to put to good use. Friendships to be started early, vengeance's to stub before they spiraled out of control, and enemies and goals alike to do something about.

But first? Grab a bowl or ten of preciously missed Ichikaru's ramen. Kami, how I've missed this place. you think with a bright smile as the man in question serves you another round.

It was to your surprise to pick up the heavy footsteps of another, and with a quick glance before you can stop yourself, your eyes take in the sight of the Hokage striding calmly over toward the stand with a slightly puzzled looked on his face.

Swallowing a mouthful of noodles thickly you turn to greet him with a slight shake in your voice. "Old man Hokage..." your tone carries something of the pain invoked at his loss from before and for a moment it seems as if the world has gone fuzzy. Blinking away the tears and turning to the bowl again to hide them with a sense of embarrassment you resume hastily choking down the material until you can stare at him with your emotions reigned in again.

He takes the seat next to you in a few more moments and the concern in his voice is palpable. "Naruto? Is there anything you'd like to tell me? Any... adverse reaction's you've been feeling lately?" the Hokage inquires softly.

You pause in mid-gulp and push the bowl aside. "... Ah... yeah, a little." you respond carefully. His expression remains distantly puzzled but mostly worried, and it seems like he might be worried about your seal holding back the fox. Better put a stop to that quickly. you think.

What do you say?
A. Lie and tell him something about the usual irritation regarding the villagers coldness toward you.
B. Hint that your body doesn't feel right these days.
C. Full disclosure, tell him exactly what is going on.

---

The choice you make here will hold an undeniably major chance for divergence from the normal fic, so choose carefully.

I feel like C is a boring choice, but since it's the majority, I'll vote C.

Giving a weary sigh you push up from the table and turn to face the Hokage. "I think it'd be easier on us both to discuss this back in your office." you tell him carefully, very mindful of not just Ichikaru but the occasional passing shinobi.

Talking about such things in the wide open is something you doubted even your younger, and originally too hyperactive self, would have considered a good idea.

He eyes you mysteriously for a moment and then nods his head without a word, simply rising as well. You turn back and lay a small handful of Ryo down to pay for the meal just before leaving, surprising both of the older men at the thought.

"Come on, Old man Hokage." nervous and eager to get this done with your begin pacing somewhat quickly toward the tower in the distance. His long stride easily catches up after another hesitant moment of unknown thoughts.

---

Hokage's Office
With him behind his desk and leaning over onto steepled fingers, and you standing instead of taking the proffered seat, the words tumble over and over in your mind about what is the best way to explain things.

Madara is key to all of this. If I tell him about Madara's involvement in the fox's disaster all those years ago it might help convince him-- too few people were explicitly on scene for that particular series of events that led to it's unbinding from mom. that seems to be the strongest path of reasoning you can come up with.

After that leading up to the war might help, but I still don't know what happened at the end, and if he doesn't believe me... and that thought is one that has your stomach tying itself into knots.

He clears his throat to get your attention. "I believe you were going to say something, Naruto?" he encourages you softly. Nodding you finally begin to speak.

"You know the Kyuubi incident eight years ago, where dad had to sacrifice himself to the shinigami in order to seal it away inside of me?" you ask him carefully, testing the waters.

His outward appearance hardly alters, but a brief intake of breath and the slight arching of his eyebrows displays the surprise at you actually knowing any of this, and more so that you actually refer to the Fourth as your father.

With no interruption coming you forge onward. "Well, uh... it wasn't wholly the fox's fault. I mean, I'm sure it was happy to be freed from mom for the first time in ages, running about murdering the villagers, but it wasn't exactly doing that of its own free will. Someone freed and directed it to do so." and here it comes, the moment of truth, will he accept your words or reject them?

Something in his eyes has noticeably cooled toward you. "And you know these things, let alone are able to confirm them, how precisely?" he questioned in a definitely unamused and suspicious tone.

Grimacing you answer flatly. "I kind of met the guy on the battlefield recently. Madara Uchiha." and just like that his demeanor definitely alters. Something unpleasant crosses his face as memories of the past are probably trudged up before him again.

"When?" he demands with tenseness in his posture.

Staring firmly into his eyes and resisting the urge to look away you tell him. "About eight years from now, several miles outside of Konoha, at the end of the Fourth Shinobi World War. We lost."

His eyes narrow a fraction, but he remains silent as if sensing you have more to say, and indeed you explain further. "He's gathering up the resources to trap the other jinchuriki to tear out their bijuu and reforge them into the single juubi, the Ten Tails of the ancient world, once more!" your voice gains something of an edge to it in your desire to get the point across, to make him believe you.

After another brittle silence he finally pushes up from his seat with his hands flat against the desk. "... I do not understand when the Kyuubi was able to filter through your seal in such a manner, but its lies and half-truths have clearly overtaken your rational thought if this is what you believe Naruto." He says with cold frustration clear.

You quickly deny that the fox has any control over your body or mind, but he doesn't accept your word at face value any more. "The sensor seals registered the change in your chakra levels the moment you stepped across them into the hall toward this office. It most assuredly has a hold in your presence!" he responds.

Well, crap. There has to be something you can do to convince him, since words alone are not working here, and if he felt the change in just your amount of readily available chakra instead of the actual nature of it... What should you do?
A. Go into Sage Mode. Surely he can't deny that as proof.
B. Draw forth a Rasengan. Your fathers trademark technique should cement your foreknowledge.
C. Spam your Shadow Clones. A triplicate of Naruto's should offset him if nothing else.
D. Other(Suggest something).

I would do A and B, but if we can't, then A. A is harder to do than B.

Yes, but it is also something else that the fox could potentially show us, so if we had to choose, sage mode would be wiser.

AB, and explain how we learned both of those techs.

Seeing that you only have a few moments before the Hokage settles on a defined action of his own, you drop down into the chair only a foot or so away and close your eyes as if trying to come up with another argument to his words.

"Conversing with the Kyuubi won't help you any further, Naruto!" he say's sharply and moves around the desk to stop you. The chaotic swirl of emotion begins to settle down as you force your body and mind to calm down, to remember the proper meditative state required to access senjutsu chakra.

He grips your shoulders and shakes you once to get your attention back, and not a fraction too soon, as the faint appearance of Sage Mode gathers around your face. When your eyes blink open they're once more brilliant gold with vertical slits, outlined by orange overhead.

The Hokage nearly drops you in surprise. "If I was being tainted by the fox's chakra, how would I be able to utilize the Sage Mode of Mount Myoboku?" you ask him carefully.

"That... is not possible." he responds and closes his eyes in turn for a moment, and it seems as if his fingers grow weaker for an instant on your body before the effect is over. He looks down at you again and lets go.

"..." he seems to be having trouble finding what to say as whatever he just tried to do failed to change anything, and you take the time to try and explain while the chance is still viable.

"Roughly around four years from now, near the end of the Chunin Exams here in Konoha, Orochimaru is going to attack with the resurrected Shodaime and Nidaime and you in turn would attempt to sacrifice them to the shinigami when nothing else works. The end result takes works up to Orochimaru, who only loses the ability to use his arms but costs you your life." your voice wavers slightly near the end as you remember hearing that news.

"Jiraiya was already back in Konoha at the time, but the barrier prevented anyone else from interfering in the battle. After refusing the position of Hokage again he went searching for Tsunade instead and I followed him; as one of your students I wanted to try and learn more about your own experiences and life to make up for what I had missed when you were still alive." so far nothing you've said has changed the pale and disturbed expression on his face, and he seems content to rest up against the desk rather than immediately challenge your words again.

Take that as a minor positive sign you relax a little. "We found her after a while but Orochimaru had already gotten there in the hope to get his arms repaired. Jiraiya had begun to teach me dad's Rasengan along the journey and she challenged me to finish it off in the same week of time that she had been given by Orochimaru to make up her mind." this time his eyes noticeable widen and you raise both hands slowly, concentrating intently.

The blue sphere gathers piece by piece, swirling and rotating more and more rapidly as you force your mind to remain focused on the different aspects required to create it. Within ten seconds the perfected Rasengan rests over your right palm and you breath a visible sigh of relief before glancing up to his eyes and offering it for inspection.

"Normally I'd have a clone help with the control and split the concentration between us, and together it takes maybe three seconds. I haven't tried forming one alone since that day." you offer in explanation as he warily examines the ninjutsu. At last he retreats back to his chair and rests his forehead against his upraised hands again.

"Go on, Naruto." his voice has lost its' unpleasant notes and sounds simply weary, and you notice that his age seems more apparent now than at almost any other time in memory.

Frowning you let it dissipate. "To make a long story short, they all fought and Orochimaru fled, while Tsunade accepted the offer of Godaime Hokage. After we recovered Jiraiya agreed to train me and make sure the seal wasn't in any danger of crumbling, and a couple of years later we returned to Konoha. After a time he went off on his own to resume research and upkeep of his own efforts." you tell him.

"In the end that research led him back into Amagakure and ultimately up against an opponent he couldn't win against, Nagato. In his dying moments he got a message toad out to Konoha, explaining what needed to be done and asking for me to be taught the Sage Arts. Fukasaku took me to Mount Myoboku and that's where I learned to access senjutsu chakra and this nearly perfect Sage Mode." at certain points you felt your voice dip and felt old emotions stirred up again, and at the end you can't quite manage to push them back down.

Someday soon I'll find you again, Jiraiya, and make sure you know exactly what you're up against. you swear softly to yourself. The Hokage finally opens his eyes again and looks at you tiredly.

"Enough, Naruto, enough. I accept your word as truth. There are some things not even the Kyuubi could consider or know the names of. Simply say to what purpose you have come back?" he asks.

"I.. don't know. I wasn't trying to. I think it had something to do with Madara's space-time teleportation and possibly Kakashi's own Mangekyo Sharingan trying to tear me in two different directions, but I'm fairly sure I died at that point." you answer him. "But I intend to correct as much as I can before things deteriorate to the point they were at then."

He shakes his head no. "I have little enough ideas over how time travel could be conceivable, but altering the time line is a very dangerous concept to go through with. I have much to consider, Naruto, and I ask you to avoid doing anything to change what should occur until I can process this information." he tells you.

"Okay." you can at least wait that long. After all, the next nearest event of any note worthiness will be when Team 7 is gathered under Kakashi a few more years down the road.

---

Training Grounds
After that he let you go with the instruction to act as normal as possible. With nothing to really do at this point in the evening you decided to see how your younger body can handle all the training you could do in the future.

A faint thunk, thunk, thunk reached your ears as the shoddy and nigh-scrap-worthy kunai the merchants in the area had sold the natural you wobbled through the air to hit roughly in the general range of the chalk circle on a tree some distance off.

"How the hell did they even get away with this?" you wonder to yourself and send a clone off to gather the objects up. "Seriously, how could I have been so stupidly pleased to actually buy this crap? I need to look into getting a hold of some actual battle-worthy kunai before I end up putting an eye out on these things." your clone is shaking his head in agreement as one of the rings crumbles when he yanks on the end of it to pull the weapon out of the tree.

Sighing you are about to just dismiss the clone and go back to your apartment to get some rest when a silver bolt flickers into vision and stabs through its surprised forehead, drilling right to the back of the tree.

Spinning in place a fox-like face-plated figure in the usual black and gray Konoha ANBU armor and cloth steps into view. Before you can do much else wooden roots spiral up out of the ground to wrap around your limbs and bind them together, splaying apart the fingers tightly to keep from even thinking of doing any kind of jutsu.

"What--" your surprised shout is cut off as the mouth and nearly up to the nose is wrapped up by a solid scarf of wood. In moments it all settles down into a nicely portable cage, with handles from the left and right sides as well as along the top, and your blue eyes are filled with something like panic when you can't access the Kyuubi's chakra to help break free.

The rest of your thoughts are cut off before you can even try to calm down enough to enter Sage Mode as he clocks you upside the head.

---

Hidden ROOT Base
When your vision finally comes around it is to the sight of someone you were definitely not expecting to deal with for years to come, Danzo Shimura, and several of his ROOT personnel.

"Leave us." the elder shinobi orders and they each give a soft bow before vanishing off deeper into the location. Slowly examining you with his lone visible eye the man speaks. "So you came back in time."

How in the hell does he know that?! Surely the Hokage wouldn't have told him! seeing your eyes widen at his words and putting together the question, he carries onward.

"No, that fool Sarutobi would not betray you so soon after realizing what a powerful ally you could become. The same wood that binds you in place rests within that office, and through it I have heard all that goes on in that place. Political enemies too out of reach to officially sanction the demise of? My ROOT eradicates them. And now I have minded a resource far more useful than the words of a Hokage." he says in that faintly amused, readily satisfied voice.

"I failed to kill that brat Nagato once already, but with your information that can be rectified. The so-called great Sannin of Konoha, little more than missing-nin, can be found and finally murdered at last as the last living ties to the age when Sarutobi was given the position I should have held. As for Madara himself, what better insult than to slay one of his precious pieces of the puzzle and take command of another?" as he speaks a kunai is drawn from the folds of his robes, breathing wind chakra along its length, then reaches up to cut free the bindings over his face and arm.

The bandaged eye blinks open slowly and the Sharingan can be seen swirling over the surface of the pupil. "Your own mind will betray all that I must know, and then your life will be cut short at last, jinchuriki."

What in the hell do you do now?
A. If the Kyuubi chakra isn't available than you have to try to draw on Sage Mode once more; surely the wood nature of the cage could be broken through like that.
B. Retreat to the depths of your mind where the fox dwells to try and stop him from skimming through your memories; if he can't find your consciousness than surely he can't learn anything.
C. Other(explain).