Summary:
Waking up looking like a younger clone of Jiraiya in a time where the Third Shinobi World War is still going strong isn't fun, especially when you had to deal with being mistaken for the man's son. Maybe Naruto should have been a touch more careful with the seal he'd been working on...
Chapter 1: Accidents Happen
When Naruto woke up it was in gradual degrees. His nose twitched at the metallic tang in the air and he grimaced as the coppery taste in his mouth registered, peeling his eyes open he coughed painfully. Blood… It was all over the ground around him and drying on his face and flaking away in small pieces as his fumbling fingers probed blindly for any injuries, the red flakes floating to the floor in a grotesque parody of snow. His movements felt slow, heavy and deadened, as if someone had drained the life out of him. And in a way they had…
His sluggish mind was slowly catching up to him, the boy pushed himself up to his knees another scent hit his nose and nearly started gagging, burnt skin. That wasn't the only thing that had burnt, Naruto discovered as he put a hand to his ash blackened arm and bunched the sleeve of his shirt in a fist, grimacing as it crumbled underneath his fingers. His skin had obviously been burnt at one point and, judging by the blood on and around him, he'd been injured pretty badly too. He'd been sleeping long enough for him to be healed completely but the evidence was still all around him.
He was in the process of fully waking up when he discovered his clothes were a complete write off, turning to dust at a touch with the remains of what looked like a scroll wrapped around him! Letting out a rough squawk Naruto went to cover himself with it and startled with shock when it crumbled under his hands, turning into a pile of ash. Hastily covering himself in a discarded and rather rough sack lying nearby, obviously something that had once been thrown in the bin he'd been sleeping near, Naruto held back a shriek as he looked down at himself, his face morphing into a look of complete shock.
"Oh my god!"
Pulling himself to his feet using the nearby wall for balance Naruto freaked. He'd been turned into a kid! It took a while to calm himself down and the only thing that was keeping himself from freaking out even more was the small hope that whatever he'd done to himself was hopefully reversible, Sakura or Tsunade would probably be able to turn him back to normal. Naruto carefully inched his way out of the alley way he'd ended up in, his hands busy with keeping the cloth sack from slipping off him as he staggered, the overlarge and singed sandals on his feet tried to trip him up. Kicking off the useless footwear the boy shivered and swore sharply to himself when his ankle twisted, making his already difficult walk even harder.
Naruto made slow and limping progress towards the mouth of the alleyway, pausing only to adjust the fit of the sack he was using as a sheet, he was small enough that it wrapped around him completely with room to spare. He felt like he'd tripped face first into the twilight zone, there was no way he was in a Genjutsu because prior to this rather unfortunate circumstance he'd been alone, training and trying to figure out a way to get around Madara's time-space Ninjutsu. At this point in his training he would have felt it if someone else's chakra intruded on his own.
'Am I dead?' the boy thought to himself as panted, his back braced against a wall. 'Is this the other world? Though what a way to go, and seriously you'd think it would hurt less…' Naruto thought to himself sarcastically as he fought his way back to calm. No this was something else.
Shivering into the rough material of his sack Naruto couldn't help but think back to what he'd been doing before he'd woken up here in this weird situation. He'd been trying to figure out a way to defeat Madara, unable to keep up with him regularly Naruto had turned to the toads for more training, not in the Sage arts but in Fuinjutsu in an attempt to come up with a way to defeat the rouge Uchiha, maybe even try to recreate his father's technique. Apparently that had backfired… rather spectacularly if his current situation was anything to go by. A sick feeling crept up his throat as he took another peek at his hands, he had a feeling that he'd just done something completely impossible…
Navigating through the unfamiliar city unnoticed was surprisingly easy for Naruto, especially when you took into account that all he was dressed in was what basically amounted to an embarrassingly patterned pair of boxers and a rather worn, and filthy, sack. He'd been running rings around Konoha's ANBU since he'd been six years old so it wasn't particularly difficult, it was just annoying. Then again who in their right mind would want to get caught nearly naked and wrapped in nothing but an over-glorified garbage bag?
He managed to filch some clothes for himself, a pair of shorts and a shirt that was just a bit too big for him. Shrugging into the clothes Naruto gladly abandoned the sack in the first bin he came across and was currently wandering around the city in a near daze, wondering how he was going to explain this to his friends. Staggering weakly Naruto managed to guide himself to the nearest public rest room and blindly wandered inside with his head spinning. He'd somehow managed to drop himself into a completely unfamiliar city, he had no idea exactly how far away from Konoha he'd landed and he was obviously in quite a bit of danger, the fourth world war wasn't exactly a safe conflict to be wandering around looking like a lost kid in.
Dizzily weaving over to a sink he grabbed at the ledge of the long sink and pulled himself up with a bit of effort, managing to sit himself with his feet in the sink without falling off. He reached for the tap, using the cool water to clean off the worst of the ash and blood himself and shoved his head under the stream a moment later, hoping the steady water would soothe some of his stress. Resurfacing feeling a little more stable Naruto turned the tap off, shook out his hair and ruffled the wet spikes to get rid himself of most of the water only to freeze as the motion brought something to his attention. Eyes widening for the umpteenth time since he'd woken up Naruto dragged a strand of hair in front of his eyes to get a better look at it.
He breathed in a few deep breaths and carefully turned himself around so he could lower himself down out of the sink and to the floor. He moved to the wall length mirror near the door and stared in stunned disbelief. The boy looking back at him from the mirror did the same. Naruto raised a hand to touch one his unmarked cheeks and collapsed backwards hyperventilating. Wide charcoal colored eyes stared out of a pale face surrounded with wet and dripping spikes of white, chin-length hair.
'Maybe using Jiraiya's left over ink when I ran out of my own wasn't one of my brightest ideas…' the kid thought faintly to himself, reaching out a hand to touch the cold surface of the mirror and bracing his suddenly weak body against it.
In Fuinjutsu, blood was unfortunately an important ingredient, without it a seal was about as useful as a scribble and unless one wanted to bleed themselves dry learning the art then mixing blood with ink was a necessity. He'd found the bottle of ink in the things the old toad sage Fukusaku had given to him along with a nice neat pile of other things that had once belonged to his white haired teacher. God, he hadn't even thought twice about using it, adding some of his own blood to the concoction without realizing it already had some of his teacher's blood mixed in with it already. Now… he was seeing the consequences. He looked so different!
Along with his hair everything about him had changed, his skin was no longer tanned and even with his face chubby with baby fat you could tell he would one day have features that were almost delicate. His cheeks were unmarked and missing his unique birthmarks and there was red lining his narrower eyes like eyeliner in an echo of his sage mode. He didn't look like a complete clone Jiraiya but it was a close thing.
Shaking as he leaning his back against a wall the white haired boy grimaced and pulled up his shirt to look at his stomach, holding the hem in his teeth as his hands formed a basic hand-seal. Channeling chakra Naruto spent a good few minutes staring at the pale and unmarked skin and promptly broke out into goose bumps. He was no longer a Jinchuuriki.
'Oh god no! Please say this isn't happening!'
Barely stopping himself from freaking out the white haired boy slammed outside of the bathroom and back out into the city, chose a direction and simply ran. He needed to find somewhere quiet so he could check for sure he wasn't housing Kurama and not just tapped out of his chakra, he needed to find out where he was in relation to Konoha to warn everyone that Kurama was free and…
"Ouch! Damn it kid, what the hell? Look what you did to my shirt!"
Naruto stumbled backwards from where he'd ran face first into the complaining guy and landed painfully on his backside. Scrambling back up onto his feet the now white haired boy mumbled an apology and made as if to walk around him, only to be grabbed by his shoulder and thrown right back to the ground. The transformed shinobi hit the packed dirt with a grunt and skidded along the street, stopping only when he hit the wall of a nearby building.
Feeling the prick of reaction tears spring up in his eyes at his new scrapes Naruto didn't even let himself rest and instead used the wall he'd hit to help himself to his feet. He didn't have the time to waste letting this bully kick him around, he needed to get to Konoha and he needed to do it fast. Looking up Naruto pinned the guy who'd thrown him to the floor with his most intimidating glare, one that was probably completely ineffective because of his current transformation and tried not to sneer, he honestly did.
"You jerk! There's nothing wrong with your stupid shirt!" Naruto growled thoughtlessly, wiping the dirt off his face, he'd gained a nice coating of road dust all over him. His hair was probably coated with it since it had been slightly damp when he'd hit the ground. There was a moments of silence in which both the man he'd bumped into and the white haired boy both paused as each of them stared at the other. The tension broke when the man started cracking his knuckles. Naruto winced imperceptibly and faintly wished he hadn't inherited his mother's temper...
Senju Tsunade was sipping at a saucer of sake and was in the middle of a game of black jack in the moments before she heard the commotion outside the bar. Her teenage apprentice was sitting awkwardly beside her at the table, waiting for her teacher to finish losing all their money so they could move onto the next town, this one was rather rougher than either of them was really used to.
When her unlucky streak broke and she actually won the game she was currently playing she frowned, dumping her sizable stack of gambling chips into the cardboard cup she'd been steadily emptying over the night. The blond got up from her seat and headed over to exchange the tokens for money, pushing the brimming cup over to the bored looking attendant and waited for her payout.
Lately she'd been noticing a pattern to her gambling, one she was slowly learning to pay attention to. If she lost money, there was a relatively good chance her day was going to be a nice and boring; if she won, some life would get a little exciting for a while. It was all in proportion to how much she won and how much she lost. Just now… she'd won more than she'd lost in the last three months.
Handing one of the suitcases filled with money to Shizune and grabbing the other, the blond stalked out of the building intent on outracing whatever trouble was sure to follow such a big turn in fortune. They didn't even make it halfway down the street.
A small form skidded around the closest corner and bumped into a man loitering nearby, bouncing off the man and over his feet to land in a painful looking heap in front of them with a wheeze. The little boy was filthy, undersized and obviously underfed, wearing clothes much too big for him and his hair was a dirty and tangled mess of spikes. A street urchin, judging by his rundown appearance.
Tsunade almost felt her heart stop when the boy looked up and an image of her little brother superimposed over the boy's features momentarily. The impression was only solidified at the boys retort at whatever the man was accusing him of.
"You jerk! There's nothing wrong with your stupid shirt!" the boy growled before pausing, an expression crossing his face that made him look like he wanted to cover his mouth with his hands.
Tsunade was never one to sit by idly when children were in danger. She also had about zero tolerance for this particular brand of yakuza. They thought they could push people around just because of their connections. Handing off the suitcase full of money off to her apprentice, Tsunade started cracking her own knuckles. No one got away with hitting children in her presence, especially the ones that looked so much like her little brother!
Batting aside the irate yakuza wannabe with a careless swat that sent the man barreling down the street, Tsunade kneeled down to get a good look at the boy who was staring up at her with wide, and strangely familiar, charcoal grey eyes. She picked him up by the back of his shirt and slung him over her shoulder, uncaring of the dirt he was covered in. She had several changes of clothes at the hotel she was currently booked in and it wasn't like she'd never get the dirt out.
Ignoring the boy's startled squeak and subsequent shaking, she marched away from the scene she'd created and called for Shizune. She'd drop the kid off at the first respectable orphanage she found, no kid deserved to try and eke out a living out on the streets, especially not a plucky little one like this. She led the way back to her hotel with the panicked little boy staring over her shoulder at Shizune and dismissed the boy's stress as having just been hoisted off the street by a strange woman who'd just defeated a guy taller than her within less than a second. It wasn't like she would have guessed the real cause for his stress even if she had known what he was looking at.
Naruto was stunned mute for the first time in his life. Shizune… the girl following behind Tsunade looked like the woman, her voice even sounded something like hers but the girl he was looking at was quite a few years younger than the Shizune he had known. He open and closed his mouth a few times but couldn't get anything out that was more than a squeak, his heart was beating fast and the only thing that was stopping him from passing out was his current state of denial.
There was no way this was happening, the jutsu he'd been creating… couldn't have done what he was thinking it had done. He tried to tell himself he was dreaming or hallucinating, probably trapped in a Genjutsu good enough to fool even his trained-to-death senses. It was only when they passed by the city gates that the denial was washed away by the large sign above the entrance to the city. Otafuku-gai, he'd landed himself in a city that was less than an half a day's travel away from Konoha and he hadn't recognized it, the city had been made completely unfamiliar due to one very specific reason.
He'd been thrown back in time.
Shizune gratefully dropped the suitcases full of money off in the room she shared with her teacher and raced back out so she didn't miss anything of this new development. The Chuunin locked the door behind her as she left the room and pocketed the key, heading down the small flight of stairs to the ground floor. She passed by the front desk and headed into the dining room only to freeze in the doorway, gaping at what looked like the demolished remains of several plates of food sitting around the undersized child in short stacks.
"When was the last time you ate?" Shizune blurted out, staring bug eyed and aghast at how much food he'd already packed away, he must have been starving! Small shoulders shrugged and the street urchin ignored her question in favor of pulling another plate full of food towards himself, not even bothering to reply and stuffing his mouth with more food instead.
"Sensei… should he be eating like this so soon?" the dark haired girl asked her teacher with real worry, people who hadn't eaten in a while usually threw everything right back up again within the first few mouthfuls of food.
Tsunade made a thoughtful humming noise at the question and pushed a bowl of steamed vegetables forwards, narrowing her eyes when he didn't even pause in his eating to wrinkle his nose at the food unlike every other child she'd ever met.
He'd known to go straight for the soups before eating anything else and had gradually worked himself up to solid food when it was apparent he wasn't about to be sick. He acted like he was used to moments like this. Though as a street urchin, he probably was…
He'd most likely wait until the first moment he their backs were turned before bolting, he was already subtly scanning his surroundings with those weirdly familiar eyes. He was probably somewhere around eight years old… he couldn't be any older than ten at the very most. The boy wasn't quite as scrawny or as malnourished as he could have been and his clothes were, if not new, then close enough to new that it didn't matter.
Either this kid had not been on the streets for long or he was a hell of a lot smarter than most children were at his age.
The kid also looked like he was used to keeping himself clean, the amount of dirt he was currently wearing had to be the result of the scuffle from earlier and it was just as obvious that the clothes he was wearing didn't originally belonged to him... So he was self-sufficient, used to being alone and independent enough that it probably hadn't taken the kid all that long to get used to his life…
It was a disheartening thought.
Waiting for the moment the boy cleared the last plate on the table, the medic didn't give the boy the chance to let his feet touch the floor, bodily picking him up again before he could do much more than twist around to get out of his seat, knowing that if she let him he'd bolt for the door as soon as possible.
He squirmed, testing the strength of her grip and went limp when it became obvious she wasn't going to let him go. Tsunade smirked at him and turned to the innkeeper who'd been watching the scene from a corner of the room.
"Can you show me to the bathing rooms? I think it’s time someone got cleaned up."
The boy froze stock still for a whole minute before turning utterly horror filled eyes on her, the expression tugged something at the back of her mind but she brushed it away and adjusted her hold on her now suddenly extremely difficult to hold captive.
She sent Shizune back into the city with instructions to find something for the boy to wear and wondered why the boy felt so damned familiar.
OoO
He took to being bathed about as gracefully as a stray cat; he yowled, he scratched, he growled and fought the process like it was the last fight in his life, finally finding his voice to complain loudly in a scratchy voice that screamed that 'he could wash himself, damn it!'
It took Tsunade all of her impressive strength just to get him into the large tub the innkeeper had been kind enough to show them to and even then she had to pin him with one arm while she scrubbed what she could reach.
The boy only gave in with a humiliated sulk when Shizune came back with an armful of clothes and an extra pair of hands to help with. You could practically read the 'Why me?' in his expression.
It wasn't until they went to rinse the soap suds out of his hair that Tsunade realized why the boy seemed so damned familiar to her. She'd been massaging the shampoo into the boy’s hair, working gently to scrub most of the dirt out and had huffed out a sound of disbelief as most of the brown color rose up out of the kid's hair with the suds.
"You can't be blond underneath this mess can you?" the woman laughed mostly to herself as Shizune shielded the boy's eyes. She picked up the bucket of warm water they'd saved to rinse his hair and slowly let it drain over the child's head, watching incredulously at the sheer amount of dirt that washed away with the water.
Shizune squeaked.
Moving the bucket out of her line of sight Tsunade's own eyes widened and her fingers went numb, making her drop the empty wooden wash bucket out of her suddenly nerveless fingers.
"Oh my god…"
The boy scrubbed the water out of his eyes and growled again, glaring up at her with dark grey eyes she now noticed were lined delicately with red. His chin length mop of wet spikes of wasn't blond… it was white. The same pure shade of white she'd only ever seen on one person in her entire life.
For the first time in a long while, the slug princess grinned and when Shizune reached out for a towel to dry the small boy she lost the battle with herself.
She cackled.
"Shizune… pack our belongings and settle things with the innkeeper, we're leaving."
"Where are we going Tsunade-sama?" the girl asked even as she hastily got up to do as she was told, holding the towel wrapped and squirming captive in an awkward grip.
"Isn't it obvious? We're going home!"
They didn't even notice it when the boy winced.
Leaving Shizune alone to pack away their things, Tsunade hoisted the now clean and fully dressed white haired boy over her shoulder again and marched down to the nearest police office. She stayed there only long enough to make sure the boy wasn't on the register of people living in the city or on the list of lost and missing children and swanned right back out again, the boy over her shoulder still squirming uselessly to break out of her grip.
Satisfied that she was on the sunny side of legality and happy that she wasn't about to get stuck with a kidnapping charge if she took him with her, Tsunade left the city with the boy grumbling and draped limply over her shoulder. He still looked somewhat wild around the eyes but he'd seemed to have given up trying to get away the moment they'd gone past the gates, acting almost resigned to his fate by the time Shizune caught up with them.
He remained stubbornly mute, the squalling he'd let out in the bathroom was all they'd gotten out of him despite all of Shizune's numerous attempts to assure the boy that they weren't going to harm him. They hadn't even been able to get his name out of him.
His hair had dried out into a fluffy mass of white spikes that angled downwards unlike her team-mate's hair, which spiked out in every direction. Tsunade couldn't help but think that whoever the boy's mother had been, she must have been a real beauty to have left such delicate features on her son. The boy was lucky he didn't take after who she thought his father was more than he already did.
The clothes Shizune had managed to get for him made his hair look even brighter, contrasting sharply against the simple white shirt, hooded sleeveless blue jacket and dark grey pants. The boy was a lot better looking than she remembered Jiraiya looking at that age.
Tsunade started cackling again as her mind provided her with an idea of the expression that was likely to cross the man's face when he came face to face with what had to be the result of one of the man's many drunken nights and started walking a little faster, intent on getting to the village as soon as possible.
She couldn't wait to see his reaction!
Naruto had never been so confused, flustered and downright bewildered as he was right at this moment, draped as he was over the shoulder of the woman who had become his Fifth Hokage and staring at the girl who would one day become Sakura's sempai... all the while heading to a village that, the last time he'd seen it, had been in the beginning stages of major reconstruction. He'd tried nearly every non-chakra based trick he'd ever been taught, and a few he'd come up with on his own, in a desperate bid to get away from Tsunade before she could get a good look at him just knowing what kind of conclusion she'd reach about who his father was.
Hell, if it hadn't been for his nearly empty supply of chakra he'd have been able to give her a run for her money but as it was, the effort it had taken just to run away from the civilian who'd accused him of ruining his shirt had been almost too much for him.
Naruto had taken his time eating the food placed in front of him, sweating nervously and hoping against hope that she'd get bored waiting for him to finish up and lower her guard down enough for him to slip by her. Yeah, no such luck. Even with the time he had taken to eat the food he'd been given, he still hadn't recovered enough chakra to make a successful run for it. He'd need at least a night's rest before he was back up to anywhere near full strength. He'd tried to twist out of his chair at the end of his meal but hadn't quite made it. He should have made more of a fuss when she'd first taken him off the street… it would have spared him the humiliation that had taken place in the bathroom.
At least he hadn't told them his name… that would really have cemented their opinions of who his supposed father was. God, he wished he'd had some sort of silence training or something because keeping quiet was borderline torture!
For the first time since he'd learned of the origins of his name, he almost wished his parents had chosen a different one… He was going to slip up eventually, he just knew it! He needed to think of a story before they could force one out of him and he needed one incredibly fast! He wanted to go find somewhere quiet and out of the way so he could figure out what to do with himself but it was already too late. They were already nearing Konoha's gates.
His former Hokage placed him onto his feet briefly when they got close and blithely aborted another attempt of making a break for it by hoisting him up by the waist and cheerfully tucking him under her arm. The gate guards, four Chuunin at either side of the massive wooden doors, a marked difference to what security was like in the Hidden Village during peace time, perked up at the sight of them and stared at Tsunade, shocked at her return.
Naruto discreetly pulled the hood of his jacket up over his hair and hoped he could get away before anyone else saw him. This was too far-fetched, he needed something to distract himself with or he was going to start to panic… again.
He cringed away from the attention he was getting from the gate guards and silently hoped they would protest his entry into the village but that hope was waved away the second he saw their respectful faces. No way were they going to say no to one of Konoha's Legendary Senin, especially after she'd been missing for so long. "Two years" he'd heard one of them comment.
When they were waved into Konoha, Naruto forgot he was supposed to be freaking out, he breathed out an amazed sound that seemed to amuse the two Kunoichi that had dragged him to the village and just stared, eyes looking absolutely everywhere so he could take in everything all at once.
Pristine and impossibly untouched, this was the village that had never been leveled by Nagato's devastating technique. The entire village was full of life and teeming with so many people it was hard to imagine that the village had room enough for everyone, especially considering that it was early night time and that most people were inside their own houses. This was Konoha as it had been before Kyuubi's devastating attack.
Getting even more desperate, the further they got into the village and closer to the red tower he was sure Tsunade was heading to, the white haired boy tried something he hadn't so far and, all the while apologizing frantically in his head for what he was about to do, bit down on the arm holding him hard enough to draw blood. It had the expected result, the woman swore loudly and dropped him to the ground, holding her arm reflexively before realizing what she had done and collapsing to the ground herself when she realized she had blood dripping from fingers.
Shizune tried to stop him from disappearing into the crowd but she reached forward too late. Taking advantage of the surprise and Tsunade's fear of blood, Naruto had already disappeared, melting into the crowd.
Sneaking around the village when it was already on high alert was stupidly easy, especially when you took into account that the village was supposed to be in the middle of a freaking war.
Keeping out of sight and making sure that the hood he was wearing was covering his shock of white hair, the boy thanked his early life lessons on evasion. To think he'd be using skills developed during the height of his pranking phase to keep away from the ninja of his own village... the idea almost made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Squirreling himself away inside someone's attic, Naruto looked out of the thin shutters of the dusty and cluttered room and slid down the wooden crate he was leaning against so he could sit down with an unimpeded view of the Hokage monument. Pulling his knees up to his chest, the white haired boy stared out at the three faces on the mountain and felt like he'd been punched in the gut.
His dad, Namikaze Minato, hadn't been appointed as Yondaime Hokage yet.
His sluggish mind was slowly catching up to him, the boy pushed himself up to his knees another scent hit his nose and nearly started gagging, burnt skin. That wasn't the only thing that had burnt, Naruto discovered as he put a hand to his ash blackened arm and bunched the sleeve of his shirt in a fist, grimacing as it crumbled underneath his fingers. His skin had obviously been burnt at one point and, judging by the blood on and around him, he'd been injured pretty badly too. He'd been sleeping long enough for him to be healed completely but the evidence was still all around him.
He was in the process of fully waking up when he discovered his clothes were a complete write off, turning to dust at a touch with the remains of what looked like a scroll wrapped around him! Letting out a rough squawk Naruto went to cover himself with it and startled with shock when it crumbled under his hands, turning into a pile of ash. Hastily covering himself in a discarded and rather rough sack lying nearby, obviously something that had once been thrown in the bin he'd been sleeping near, Naruto held back a shriek as he looked down at himself, his face morphing into a look of complete shock.
"Oh my god!"
Pulling himself to his feet using the nearby wall for balance Naruto freaked. He'd been turned into a kid! It took a while to calm himself down and the only thing that was keeping himself from freaking out even more was the small hope that whatever he'd done to himself was hopefully reversible, Sakura or Tsunade would probably be able to turn him back to normal. Naruto carefully inched his way out of the alley way he'd ended up in, his hands busy with keeping the cloth sack from slipping off him as he staggered, the overlarge and singed sandals on his feet tried to trip him up. Kicking off the useless footwear the boy shivered and swore sharply to himself when his ankle twisted, making his already difficult walk even harder.
Naruto made slow and limping progress towards the mouth of the alleyway, pausing only to adjust the fit of the sack he was using as a sheet, he was small enough that it wrapped around him completely with room to spare. He felt like he'd tripped face first into the twilight zone, there was no way he was in a Genjutsu because prior to this rather unfortunate circumstance he'd been alone, training and trying to figure out a way to get around Madara's time-space Ninjutsu. At this point in his training he would have felt it if someone else's chakra intruded on his own.
'Am I dead?' the boy thought to himself as panted, his back braced against a wall. 'Is this the other world? Though what a way to go, and seriously you'd think it would hurt less…' Naruto thought to himself sarcastically as he fought his way back to calm. No this was something else.
Shivering into the rough material of his sack Naruto couldn't help but think back to what he'd been doing before he'd woken up here in this weird situation. He'd been trying to figure out a way to defeat Madara, unable to keep up with him regularly Naruto had turned to the toads for more training, not in the Sage arts but in Fuinjutsu in an attempt to come up with a way to defeat the rouge Uchiha, maybe even try to recreate his father's technique. Apparently that had backfired… rather spectacularly if his current situation was anything to go by. A sick feeling crept up his throat as he took another peek at his hands, he had a feeling that he'd just done something completely impossible…
OoO
Navigating through the unfamiliar city unnoticed was surprisingly easy for Naruto, especially when you took into account that all he was dressed in was what basically amounted to an embarrassingly patterned pair of boxers and a rather worn, and filthy, sack. He'd been running rings around Konoha's ANBU since he'd been six years old so it wasn't particularly difficult, it was just annoying. Then again who in their right mind would want to get caught nearly naked and wrapped in nothing but an over-glorified garbage bag?
He managed to filch some clothes for himself, a pair of shorts and a shirt that was just a bit too big for him. Shrugging into the clothes Naruto gladly abandoned the sack in the first bin he came across and was currently wandering around the city in a near daze, wondering how he was going to explain this to his friends. Staggering weakly Naruto managed to guide himself to the nearest public rest room and blindly wandered inside with his head spinning. He'd somehow managed to drop himself into a completely unfamiliar city, he had no idea exactly how far away from Konoha he'd landed and he was obviously in quite a bit of danger, the fourth world war wasn't exactly a safe conflict to be wandering around looking like a lost kid in.
Dizzily weaving over to a sink he grabbed at the ledge of the long sink and pulled himself up with a bit of effort, managing to sit himself with his feet in the sink without falling off. He reached for the tap, using the cool water to clean off the worst of the ash and blood himself and shoved his head under the stream a moment later, hoping the steady water would soothe some of his stress. Resurfacing feeling a little more stable Naruto turned the tap off, shook out his hair and ruffled the wet spikes to get rid himself of most of the water only to freeze as the motion brought something to his attention. Eyes widening for the umpteenth time since he'd woken up Naruto dragged a strand of hair in front of his eyes to get a better look at it.
He breathed in a few deep breaths and carefully turned himself around so he could lower himself down out of the sink and to the floor. He moved to the wall length mirror near the door and stared in stunned disbelief. The boy looking back at him from the mirror did the same. Naruto raised a hand to touch one his unmarked cheeks and collapsed backwards hyperventilating. Wide charcoal colored eyes stared out of a pale face surrounded with wet and dripping spikes of white, chin-length hair.
'Maybe using Jiraiya's left over ink when I ran out of my own wasn't one of my brightest ideas…' the kid thought faintly to himself, reaching out a hand to touch the cold surface of the mirror and bracing his suddenly weak body against it.
In Fuinjutsu, blood was unfortunately an important ingredient, without it a seal was about as useful as a scribble and unless one wanted to bleed themselves dry learning the art then mixing blood with ink was a necessity. He'd found the bottle of ink in the things the old toad sage Fukusaku had given to him along with a nice neat pile of other things that had once belonged to his white haired teacher. God, he hadn't even thought twice about using it, adding some of his own blood to the concoction without realizing it already had some of his teacher's blood mixed in with it already. Now… he was seeing the consequences. He looked so different!
Along with his hair everything about him had changed, his skin was no longer tanned and even with his face chubby with baby fat you could tell he would one day have features that were almost delicate. His cheeks were unmarked and missing his unique birthmarks and there was red lining his narrower eyes like eyeliner in an echo of his sage mode. He didn't look like a complete clone Jiraiya but it was a close thing.
Shaking as he leaning his back against a wall the white haired boy grimaced and pulled up his shirt to look at his stomach, holding the hem in his teeth as his hands formed a basic hand-seal. Channeling chakra Naruto spent a good few minutes staring at the pale and unmarked skin and promptly broke out into goose bumps. He was no longer a Jinchuuriki.
'Oh god no! Please say this isn't happening!'
Barely stopping himself from freaking out the white haired boy slammed outside of the bathroom and back out into the city, chose a direction and simply ran. He needed to find somewhere quiet so he could check for sure he wasn't housing Kurama and not just tapped out of his chakra, he needed to find out where he was in relation to Konoha to warn everyone that Kurama was free and…
"Ouch! Damn it kid, what the hell? Look what you did to my shirt!"
Naruto stumbled backwards from where he'd ran face first into the complaining guy and landed painfully on his backside. Scrambling back up onto his feet the now white haired boy mumbled an apology and made as if to walk around him, only to be grabbed by his shoulder and thrown right back to the ground. The transformed shinobi hit the packed dirt with a grunt and skidded along the street, stopping only when he hit the wall of a nearby building.
Feeling the prick of reaction tears spring up in his eyes at his new scrapes Naruto didn't even let himself rest and instead used the wall he'd hit to help himself to his feet. He didn't have the time to waste letting this bully kick him around, he needed to get to Konoha and he needed to do it fast. Looking up Naruto pinned the guy who'd thrown him to the floor with his most intimidating glare, one that was probably completely ineffective because of his current transformation and tried not to sneer, he honestly did.
"You jerk! There's nothing wrong with your stupid shirt!" Naruto growled thoughtlessly, wiping the dirt off his face, he'd gained a nice coating of road dust all over him. His hair was probably coated with it since it had been slightly damp when he'd hit the ground. There was a moments of silence in which both the man he'd bumped into and the white haired boy both paused as each of them stared at the other. The tension broke when the man started cracking his knuckles. Naruto winced imperceptibly and faintly wished he hadn't inherited his mother's temper...
OoO
Senju Tsunade was sipping at a saucer of sake and was in the middle of a game of black jack in the moments before she heard the commotion outside the bar. Her teenage apprentice was sitting awkwardly beside her at the table, waiting for her teacher to finish losing all their money so they could move onto the next town, this one was rather rougher than either of them was really used to.
When her unlucky streak broke and she actually won the game she was currently playing she frowned, dumping her sizable stack of gambling chips into the cardboard cup she'd been steadily emptying over the night. The blond got up from her seat and headed over to exchange the tokens for money, pushing the brimming cup over to the bored looking attendant and waited for her payout.
Lately she'd been noticing a pattern to her gambling, one she was slowly learning to pay attention to. If she lost money, there was a relatively good chance her day was going to be a nice and boring; if she won, some life would get a little exciting for a while. It was all in proportion to how much she won and how much she lost. Just now… she'd won more than she'd lost in the last three months.
Handing one of the suitcases filled with money to Shizune and grabbing the other, the blond stalked out of the building intent on outracing whatever trouble was sure to follow such a big turn in fortune. They didn't even make it halfway down the street.
A small form skidded around the closest corner and bumped into a man loitering nearby, bouncing off the man and over his feet to land in a painful looking heap in front of them with a wheeze. The little boy was filthy, undersized and obviously underfed, wearing clothes much too big for him and his hair was a dirty and tangled mess of spikes. A street urchin, judging by his rundown appearance.
Tsunade almost felt her heart stop when the boy looked up and an image of her little brother superimposed over the boy's features momentarily. The impression was only solidified at the boys retort at whatever the man was accusing him of.
"You jerk! There's nothing wrong with your stupid shirt!" the boy growled before pausing, an expression crossing his face that made him look like he wanted to cover his mouth with his hands.
Tsunade was never one to sit by idly when children were in danger. She also had about zero tolerance for this particular brand of yakuza. They thought they could push people around just because of their connections. Handing off the suitcase full of money off to her apprentice, Tsunade started cracking her own knuckles. No one got away with hitting children in her presence, especially the ones that looked so much like her little brother!
Batting aside the irate yakuza wannabe with a careless swat that sent the man barreling down the street, Tsunade kneeled down to get a good look at the boy who was staring up at her with wide, and strangely familiar, charcoal grey eyes. She picked him up by the back of his shirt and slung him over her shoulder, uncaring of the dirt he was covered in. She had several changes of clothes at the hotel she was currently booked in and it wasn't like she'd never get the dirt out.
Ignoring the boy's startled squeak and subsequent shaking, she marched away from the scene she'd created and called for Shizune. She'd drop the kid off at the first respectable orphanage she found, no kid deserved to try and eke out a living out on the streets, especially not a plucky little one like this. She led the way back to her hotel with the panicked little boy staring over her shoulder at Shizune and dismissed the boy's stress as having just been hoisted off the street by a strange woman who'd just defeated a guy taller than her within less than a second. It wasn't like she would have guessed the real cause for his stress even if she had known what he was looking at.
Naruto was stunned mute for the first time in his life. Shizune… the girl following behind Tsunade looked like the woman, her voice even sounded something like hers but the girl he was looking at was quite a few years younger than the Shizune he had known. He open and closed his mouth a few times but couldn't get anything out that was more than a squeak, his heart was beating fast and the only thing that was stopping him from passing out was his current state of denial.
There was no way this was happening, the jutsu he'd been creating… couldn't have done what he was thinking it had done. He tried to tell himself he was dreaming or hallucinating, probably trapped in a Genjutsu good enough to fool even his trained-to-death senses. It was only when they passed by the city gates that the denial was washed away by the large sign above the entrance to the city. Otafuku-gai, he'd landed himself in a city that was less than an half a day's travel away from Konoha and he hadn't recognized it, the city had been made completely unfamiliar due to one very specific reason.
He'd been thrown back in time.
OoO
Shizune gratefully dropped the suitcases full of money off in the room she shared with her teacher and raced back out so she didn't miss anything of this new development. The Chuunin locked the door behind her as she left the room and pocketed the key, heading down the small flight of stairs to the ground floor. She passed by the front desk and headed into the dining room only to freeze in the doorway, gaping at what looked like the demolished remains of several plates of food sitting around the undersized child in short stacks.
"When was the last time you ate?" Shizune blurted out, staring bug eyed and aghast at how much food he'd already packed away, he must have been starving! Small shoulders shrugged and the street urchin ignored her question in favor of pulling another plate full of food towards himself, not even bothering to reply and stuffing his mouth with more food instead.
"Sensei… should he be eating like this so soon?" the dark haired girl asked her teacher with real worry, people who hadn't eaten in a while usually threw everything right back up again within the first few mouthfuls of food.
Tsunade made a thoughtful humming noise at the question and pushed a bowl of steamed vegetables forwards, narrowing her eyes when he didn't even pause in his eating to wrinkle his nose at the food unlike every other child she'd ever met.
He'd known to go straight for the soups before eating anything else and had gradually worked himself up to solid food when it was apparent he wasn't about to be sick. He acted like he was used to moments like this. Though as a street urchin, he probably was…
He'd most likely wait until the first moment he their backs were turned before bolting, he was already subtly scanning his surroundings with those weirdly familiar eyes. He was probably somewhere around eight years old… he couldn't be any older than ten at the very most. The boy wasn't quite as scrawny or as malnourished as he could have been and his clothes were, if not new, then close enough to new that it didn't matter.
Either this kid had not been on the streets for long or he was a hell of a lot smarter than most children were at his age.
The kid also looked like he was used to keeping himself clean, the amount of dirt he was currently wearing had to be the result of the scuffle from earlier and it was just as obvious that the clothes he was wearing didn't originally belonged to him... So he was self-sufficient, used to being alone and independent enough that it probably hadn't taken the kid all that long to get used to his life…
It was a disheartening thought.
Waiting for the moment the boy cleared the last plate on the table, the medic didn't give the boy the chance to let his feet touch the floor, bodily picking him up again before he could do much more than twist around to get out of his seat, knowing that if she let him he'd bolt for the door as soon as possible.
He squirmed, testing the strength of her grip and went limp when it became obvious she wasn't going to let him go. Tsunade smirked at him and turned to the innkeeper who'd been watching the scene from a corner of the room.
"Can you show me to the bathing rooms? I think it’s time someone got cleaned up."
The boy froze stock still for a whole minute before turning utterly horror filled eyes on her, the expression tugged something at the back of her mind but she brushed it away and adjusted her hold on her now suddenly extremely difficult to hold captive.
She sent Shizune back into the city with instructions to find something for the boy to wear and wondered why the boy felt so damned familiar.
OoO
He took to being bathed about as gracefully as a stray cat; he yowled, he scratched, he growled and fought the process like it was the last fight in his life, finally finding his voice to complain loudly in a scratchy voice that screamed that 'he could wash himself, damn it!'
It took Tsunade all of her impressive strength just to get him into the large tub the innkeeper had been kind enough to show them to and even then she had to pin him with one arm while she scrubbed what she could reach.
The boy only gave in with a humiliated sulk when Shizune came back with an armful of clothes and an extra pair of hands to help with. You could practically read the 'Why me?' in his expression.
It wasn't until they went to rinse the soap suds out of his hair that Tsunade realized why the boy seemed so damned familiar to her. She'd been massaging the shampoo into the boy’s hair, working gently to scrub most of the dirt out and had huffed out a sound of disbelief as most of the brown color rose up out of the kid's hair with the suds.
"You can't be blond underneath this mess can you?" the woman laughed mostly to herself as Shizune shielded the boy's eyes. She picked up the bucket of warm water they'd saved to rinse his hair and slowly let it drain over the child's head, watching incredulously at the sheer amount of dirt that washed away with the water.
Shizune squeaked.
Moving the bucket out of her line of sight Tsunade's own eyes widened and her fingers went numb, making her drop the empty wooden wash bucket out of her suddenly nerveless fingers.
"Oh my god…"
The boy scrubbed the water out of his eyes and growled again, glaring up at her with dark grey eyes she now noticed were lined delicately with red. His chin length mop of wet spikes of wasn't blond… it was white. The same pure shade of white she'd only ever seen on one person in her entire life.
For the first time in a long while, the slug princess grinned and when Shizune reached out for a towel to dry the small boy she lost the battle with herself.
She cackled.
"Shizune… pack our belongings and settle things with the innkeeper, we're leaving."
"Where are we going Tsunade-sama?" the girl asked even as she hastily got up to do as she was told, holding the towel wrapped and squirming captive in an awkward grip.
"Isn't it obvious? We're going home!"
They didn't even notice it when the boy winced.
OoO
Leaving Shizune alone to pack away their things, Tsunade hoisted the now clean and fully dressed white haired boy over her shoulder again and marched down to the nearest police office. She stayed there only long enough to make sure the boy wasn't on the register of people living in the city or on the list of lost and missing children and swanned right back out again, the boy over her shoulder still squirming uselessly to break out of her grip.
Satisfied that she was on the sunny side of legality and happy that she wasn't about to get stuck with a kidnapping charge if she took him with her, Tsunade left the city with the boy grumbling and draped limply over her shoulder. He still looked somewhat wild around the eyes but he'd seemed to have given up trying to get away the moment they'd gone past the gates, acting almost resigned to his fate by the time Shizune caught up with them.
He remained stubbornly mute, the squalling he'd let out in the bathroom was all they'd gotten out of him despite all of Shizune's numerous attempts to assure the boy that they weren't going to harm him. They hadn't even been able to get his name out of him.
His hair had dried out into a fluffy mass of white spikes that angled downwards unlike her team-mate's hair, which spiked out in every direction. Tsunade couldn't help but think that whoever the boy's mother had been, she must have been a real beauty to have left such delicate features on her son. The boy was lucky he didn't take after who she thought his father was more than he already did.
The clothes Shizune had managed to get for him made his hair look even brighter, contrasting sharply against the simple white shirt, hooded sleeveless blue jacket and dark grey pants. The boy was a lot better looking than she remembered Jiraiya looking at that age.
Tsunade started cackling again as her mind provided her with an idea of the expression that was likely to cross the man's face when he came face to face with what had to be the result of one of the man's many drunken nights and started walking a little faster, intent on getting to the village as soon as possible.
She couldn't wait to see his reaction!
OoO
Naruto had never been so confused, flustered and downright bewildered as he was right at this moment, draped as he was over the shoulder of the woman who had become his Fifth Hokage and staring at the girl who would one day become Sakura's sempai... all the while heading to a village that, the last time he'd seen it, had been in the beginning stages of major reconstruction. He'd tried nearly every non-chakra based trick he'd ever been taught, and a few he'd come up with on his own, in a desperate bid to get away from Tsunade before she could get a good look at him just knowing what kind of conclusion she'd reach about who his father was.
Hell, if it hadn't been for his nearly empty supply of chakra he'd have been able to give her a run for her money but as it was, the effort it had taken just to run away from the civilian who'd accused him of ruining his shirt had been almost too much for him.
Naruto had taken his time eating the food placed in front of him, sweating nervously and hoping against hope that she'd get bored waiting for him to finish up and lower her guard down enough for him to slip by her. Yeah, no such luck. Even with the time he had taken to eat the food he'd been given, he still hadn't recovered enough chakra to make a successful run for it. He'd need at least a night's rest before he was back up to anywhere near full strength. He'd tried to twist out of his chair at the end of his meal but hadn't quite made it. He should have made more of a fuss when she'd first taken him off the street… it would have spared him the humiliation that had taken place in the bathroom.
At least he hadn't told them his name… that would really have cemented their opinions of who his supposed father was. God, he wished he'd had some sort of silence training or something because keeping quiet was borderline torture!
For the first time since he'd learned of the origins of his name, he almost wished his parents had chosen a different one… He was going to slip up eventually, he just knew it! He needed to think of a story before they could force one out of him and he needed one incredibly fast! He wanted to go find somewhere quiet and out of the way so he could figure out what to do with himself but it was already too late. They were already nearing Konoha's gates.
His former Hokage placed him onto his feet briefly when they got close and blithely aborted another attempt of making a break for it by hoisting him up by the waist and cheerfully tucking him under her arm. The gate guards, four Chuunin at either side of the massive wooden doors, a marked difference to what security was like in the Hidden Village during peace time, perked up at the sight of them and stared at Tsunade, shocked at her return.
Naruto discreetly pulled the hood of his jacket up over his hair and hoped he could get away before anyone else saw him. This was too far-fetched, he needed something to distract himself with or he was going to start to panic… again.
He cringed away from the attention he was getting from the gate guards and silently hoped they would protest his entry into the village but that hope was waved away the second he saw their respectful faces. No way were they going to say no to one of Konoha's Legendary Senin, especially after she'd been missing for so long. "Two years" he'd heard one of them comment.
When they were waved into Konoha, Naruto forgot he was supposed to be freaking out, he breathed out an amazed sound that seemed to amuse the two Kunoichi that had dragged him to the village and just stared, eyes looking absolutely everywhere so he could take in everything all at once.
Pristine and impossibly untouched, this was the village that had never been leveled by Nagato's devastating technique. The entire village was full of life and teeming with so many people it was hard to imagine that the village had room enough for everyone, especially considering that it was early night time and that most people were inside their own houses. This was Konoha as it had been before Kyuubi's devastating attack.
Getting even more desperate, the further they got into the village and closer to the red tower he was sure Tsunade was heading to, the white haired boy tried something he hadn't so far and, all the while apologizing frantically in his head for what he was about to do, bit down on the arm holding him hard enough to draw blood. It had the expected result, the woman swore loudly and dropped him to the ground, holding her arm reflexively before realizing what she had done and collapsing to the ground herself when she realized she had blood dripping from fingers.
Shizune tried to stop him from disappearing into the crowd but she reached forward too late. Taking advantage of the surprise and Tsunade's fear of blood, Naruto had already disappeared, melting into the crowd.
OoO
Sneaking around the village when it was already on high alert was stupidly easy, especially when you took into account that the village was supposed to be in the middle of a freaking war.
Keeping out of sight and making sure that the hood he was wearing was covering his shock of white hair, the boy thanked his early life lessons on evasion. To think he'd be using skills developed during the height of his pranking phase to keep away from the ninja of his own village... the idea almost made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Squirreling himself away inside someone's attic, Naruto looked out of the thin shutters of the dusty and cluttered room and slid down the wooden crate he was leaning against so he could sit down with an unimpeded view of the Hokage monument. Pulling his knees up to his chest, the white haired boy stared out at the three faces on the mountain and felt like he'd been punched in the gut.
His dad, Namikaze Minato, hadn't been appointed as Yondaime Hokage yet.
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