"Am I dead?" Naruto spoke as he found himself standing in a pool of darkness, not an ounce of light could be seen in any direction that Naruto turned.
"No," A voice spoke up. Their voice was soft and held a twinge of sadness to it. "You stand between the gates of life and death once more." Naruto turned to the direction where the voice was coming from, only to see nothing but the empty abyss he currently resided in.
He knew what the voice was talking about when it said 'again'. He had come close to death once during the 4th War where he met the Sage of Six Paths and gained his Six Paths Sage Chakra. He had almost died while losing Kurama and was saved by Sakura, who had manually pumped his heart to continue on.
He snorted at the thought. He had failed, her saving his life was nothing but a useless endeavor. He had still died along with everyone else, Sakura saving him did nothing but delay the inevitable.
"Why am I here?" Naruto asked the darkness.
"To learn," The voice answered. "To collect, and to repurpose yourself."
"My purpose in life is simple!" He shouted loudly.
"Is it? You wish to change the future, but what was your goal before that? What did you yearn for more than anything else before the war? Before you died?" Naruto was quiet. "Peace, right? You wanted to bring the peace that Jiraiya had envisioned, you swore to Nagato that you would bring peace, right?"
"I failed," Naruto whispered bitterly. "I failed Nagato and I failed Jiraiya."
"And whose fault is that?" The voice whispered as if right in his ear. Naruto's fist tightened as he felt his grind against one another.
"Mine."
"Correct," The voice said as a hand grabbed Naruto by the shoulder from behind and pulled him back, causing the blonde to lose his balance and tumble backward into the floor of nothingness. As he hit it, the world around him shattered as a mirror would to a hammer.
He fell through the abyss and into a plane of white. He hit the ground with a thud though he wasn't hurt in the slightest. He quickly sat up but the plane of pure white was now gone, replaced by grey smoke.
"You couldn't save them," The voice spoke as the smoke suddenly cleared, revealing a battlefield. Naruto's eyes widened suddenly.
The corpses of his friends and comrades littered the ground of the battlefield, their bodies covered with cuts and holes, motionless on the blood-soaked dirt. "What is this?" Naruto whispered in a horrified tone.
"A reminder," The voice spoke. A pair of arms wrapped seductively around Naruto's neck, but the arms were just that; arms. No body or owner of such arms, just the two appendages. "Of what has happened before."
"Stop it," Naruto whispered weakly as he watched Madara clad in his white Sage of Six Paths cloak stepping on his friends corpses, an evil smirk on his face as he did so. His Rinnegan eyes glowed brightly as they met Naruto's own blue, paralyzing the blonde as he found himself in darkness again.
"He will rise again. . ."
"NO HE WON'T!" Naruto shouted, gripping his hair as tears streamed down his face. "I won't let him kill those I care about anymore. I won't let him ruin my life!"
"You are truly a selfish being, Naruto Uzumaki!" The voice exclaimed in a twinge of amazement. "You're a tragic, selfish hero. You want everything yet so far you have saved nothing. Everything remains the same except for one thing and even then you know that wasn't the root of the problem."
"Shut up," Naruto whimpered as the bodies of his old friends shifted into the ones he had now. Obito laid next to Sayuri with several holes poked throughout his entire body as if someone had used him as a pincussion while Sayuri had a single sword going straight through her heart.
Naruto's breathing pace began picking up as he clutched at his heart. "Don't show me that."
"Oh? What if I show you this?" The bodies were now gone, replaced by what Obito had worn during the 4th War. As the mask cracked, Naruto felt his body go numb as it revealed Kakashi's face. "What if they had switched sides? I mean, Obito is the sensei, so maybe Madara took Kakashi?"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Naruto screamed at the top of his lungs, tearing himself away from the arms as he ran aimlessly. Kakashi couldn't be the one pulling the strings behind the curtain, he just couldn't!
"There is no escape." The voice rang out. The ground shattered beneath Naruto causing him to plumet down, only able to look up as a pair of dark blue eyes glared at him from above. "There never is."
Naruto's eyes fluttered open, his vision slightly hazy. He looked to his right and saw Sakura standing there with a kunai in her hand, shaking slightly. He ignored the pain he felt as he slowly sat up, alerting Sakura of his being awake.
"Naruto!" She whispered. "You need to be quiet! Sayuri is fighting!" Naruto shook his head, ridding himself of the haze as he peered through the tiny roots that made the tree up and saw Sayuri bleeding as she stood in front of an injured Lee.
He stood up and walked over to Sayuri and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "That's enough, Sayuri." He looked at the unconscious teammate and the dead teammate of Kabuto. "I apologize for the mess I put us in, I had hoped to avoid it." His gaze shifted to Kabuto, a glare moving itself onto his features. "Now it's your turn to die!"
"Is that so? And you're the one who is going to kill me?" Kabuto asked arrogantly, a smirk playing on his lips as chakra scapels appeared in his hands once again.
"Yes," Naruto replied in a quick whisper. He turned back to Sayuri and Sakura. "I'm sorry for lying to you both all this time." He then gave them a genuine smile.
Sayuri and Sakura were taken aback by the words and the gesture. What did he mean? Did it confirm that he was hiding his strength or was it something more? But that wasn't the only thing. . .
Both Sakura and Sayuri agreed in their brains that Naruto's smile, while genuine, held an immeasurable amount of sadness and pain in it.
Turning back to Kabuto, Naruto's eyes turned a crimson red. "Kurama, please allow me to borrow your chakra once more." Naruto whispered in a low tone. As if responding to his pleas, red chakra swarmed around Naruto's body before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The crimson chakra that was surrounding suddenly matted itself to Naruto's skin. Naruto opened his eyes to reveal a slightly dark orange. The red chakra immediately turned into a bright glowing golden yellow with several black markings aligning themselves onto Naruto's chest and shoulders.
"So I do still have this mode while Kurama allows me, heh," Naruto curled his hands into fists as he met Kabuto's overconfident look. "It's not perfect, but it's overkill for someone like you."
"A showy jutsu does not guarantee victory you-" Kabuto began but was already hit into a tree with Naruto standing where Kabuto was seconds before.
"I didn't even see him move with my Sharingan!" Sayuri exclaimed in amazement and jealousy as she watched Naruto.
"You're fast!" Kabuto shouted with a grin as he jumped out of the tree, no injuries visibly showing on his body. "Show me more, Naruto!"
"As you wish," Naruto spat venomously from right behind the grey-haired traitor. Whirling around and slashing at the air, Kabuto, to his dismay, found nobody.
"In this form I beat the Fourth Raikage in a battle of speed," Naruto said as if it were the most simplistic thing in the world. "And this is my second weakest form, but don't worry about that," Naruto said a bit too cheerfully from the tree branches above. Kabuto cursed as he still couldn't see the blonde.
Suddenly, a blade protruded from his chest. "You won't be seeing any of them." Kabuto coughed a little as blood began trickling out of his mouth and down his chin. His reports and data that he had on this boy were wrong, dead wrong.
This was not the loud mouth he had read about. This was not the dead last of his graduating class. This was not Naruto Uzumaki. This was someone else, someone darker.
"What are you?" He got out. Naruto took the sword out of Kabuto's chest and walked in front of medical ninja, his golden yellow form now gone, revealing the boy to be in only boxers. Naruto rose his sword above his head.
"Death." He answered before bringing it down on Kabuto, beheading the man.
"Naruto. . ." Sayuri whispered in awe as she looked at the blonde. Naruto kneeled down and pulled out an Earth Scroll from the deadman's pockets.
"There we are." Naruto chirped. He held it up as if presenting it. "We can go now."
"Wait!" Sakura called out as she quickly went to a hurt Lee. "We need to help him!" Sayuri nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, he helped us. Without him we would've died," Sayuri explained. Naruto glanced down at Lee, who had fallen unconscious due to blood loss.
"Hm." He counted to ten in his head and snapped. "No need, his teammates are here!" As if practiced, Neji and Tenten hopped into the small clearing.
"Did you do this to Lee?" Tenten accused them all.
"No," Naruto spoke, pointing at Kabuto. "He did. Apparently Lee risked his life to save my teammates, so when he wakes up please tell him I said thanks." Neji looked at Lee and then back at Naruto.
"Why don't I take your scroll now? You have both now, I checked with my Byakugan." Naruto walked right past Neji.
"You won't." Naruto said simply. "Or rather, you can't. Come on, Sayuri, Sakura, we need to get to the middle now."
"I thought you told Lee that you won because of luck?" Neji questioned. Naruto didn't respond.
'Naruto,' Sayuri thought worried for him as the boy walked in the direction to the finish line of this part of the exam, her eyes on his bandaged back. 'Please be okay.'
They unsealed the scrolls and out popped Iruka, surprising the trio as he congratulated them on passing. He was about to continue on about the point of the test and the meaning of the scrolls, but Naruto quickly interrupted him.
"Sorry Iruka-sensei, but I need to talk to the Hokage first." Naruto said seriously, getting the Umino to swallow the saliva in his mouth before nodding.
"Go ahead," He said as Naruto rushed off. He then looked at Sayuri and Sakura. "Is he okay? He's been acting different. . ."
"We don't know," Sayuri admitted honestly. "It's like Naruto changed into a completely different person when we became a team."
"Yeah," Sakura confirmed. "He hasn't been annoying too much either, he actually pokes fun at us! He's just weird. Good, but weird." Iruka chuckled nervously.
"Well, I'll probably have to ask Hokage-sama about him. I wish you two luck and good job on making it this far!"
"Thank you, Iruka-sensei." Sayuri and Sakura replied in unison.
"You what?!" Hiruzen practically shouted as he stood up from his desk, the pipe that was in his mouth falling onto his desk and causing the ashes to fall out. Naruto, who was sitting in the chair, nodded.
"Yes, I dispatched Kabuto and may have kill Orochimaru completely."
"But how?" Naruto formed a Rasengan in his right hand without the aid of a clone, surprising Hiruzen.
"In my past life, I first implemented wind chakra into the Rasengan and made the Rasenshuriken, a jutsu that you can throw and that damages on a cellular level. I was caught in the blast too, but luckily Kurama healed me."
"I see," Hiruzen spoke in amazement as he sat back down in his chair once again, a sigh of relief escaping his lips. "Well, thank you for helping save this village some hardship again." Naruto stood up and waved the Hokage's praise away.
"Meh, just doing my duty." Naruto said as he exit the office. Hiruzen looked at the door Naruto had just exited from for a moment before sighing again and picking up his pipe.
"We shall watch carefully over what is to happen next." He said in a tired voice before getting back to his paperwork.
And done. How was it? Good? Bad? Tell me!
Anyways, yeah.
Til next time my lil demons!