Chapter Text
Naruto banged his fist on his desk. “We’ve beaten him before. How hard can it be to do it again?”
Sasuke did not share his optimism. “He plays the long game. It will take years before he makes another move and there is no telling what it will be.”
“We are working together with the other villages to find him. He may have convinced the universe to make him immortal, but he is not… not… impotent? Sakura, what’s that word you were using last week?”
“Omnipotent. But I’m pretty sure you heard me say it less than two hours ago.”
“Yeah, that. Look, Sasuke, I really don’t like ordering you around. You know I don’t. But I’m going to have to order you to drop this. We have a butt-load of problems to fix that are a lot closer to home and that require our attention a lot sooner.”
“Fine, Hokage-sama.” Sasuke shook his head. “I’ll leave Madara be. It’s not like one man could destroy the world all by himself.”
~*~
Breathing was difficult. He did not used to have trouble breathing. Though his eyes had shot open, he could not see right. His fingers were shaking as he reached for his forehead. His chest contracted suddenly. The contents of his stomach were splattered over the floor before he realised it was happening.
The world was blurry, just vague impressions of shapes around him. Sounds were muffled, but he could hear it when he moved a blanket off of him. This was not death, which was a surprise by itself. The technique they had used was fundamentally experimental and it had been a long shot by any measure.
He steadied his mind so the dizziness would stop affecting his judgement. The pain and disorientation were pushed aside. His laboured breath would still kill him if it did not recover, but the panic affecting his judgement was gone. He was not getting enough oxygen into his system. A quick estimate told him he had about three minutes before he would pass out if nothing changed.
He counted down ten seconds and made his chakra settle around his heart to let it measure and gather information. He was glad to find that, though his body was failing, his chakra obeyed him perfectly. His heart rate was dangerously high, but it was slowly coming down. The O2 saturation in his blood was dropping, but was starting to level off. Both his body temperature and blood pressure were much higher than they should be, but these too were coming down.
He was not in extreme danger. Presuming the trend continued until normalised, he had at least ten minutes before he would pass out instead of three. While passed out his body would recover on its own and he would wake up fifty to seventy minutes later. If he let it get to that, he projected damage to his muscle mass, chakra pathways and brain functions to be at most around five percent.
He would not die from whatever was wrong with his body. Which meant he was ready to check for other dangers. If he was going to spend an hour passed out, he needed to be sure there were no enemies around. None of his regular senses were fully reliable against a ninja able to hide themselves, but they were not useless. He had not seen any shapes. He had not heard anyone approach him. Even if a ninja as inexperienced as a genin was able to sneak up to him in such a state, he could rule out any civilians coming to him. Wherever he was, he was at least a little isolated.
He took a deep breath and focused on his chakra senses. He had to be in a ninja village. There were vague impressions of genin and chunin all around. He could even sense some jounin. They were relaxed enough to turn off their suppression, which suggested a peaceful surrounding. That by itself was unlike anything Sasuke had grown used to.
He let thin layers of chakra stream from his body, creating a webbing that grew until it had expanded to two feet around him. There were a few spiders under his bed and a few more insects under the floorboards. No ninja.
He would now know if anyone got too close, but he was still unable to fight them.
To fix himself, he had to know what was wrong. He had ideas, but without certainty he was more likely to do harm than good. He took another ten seconds to shape medical tests with his chakra. Four hundred small tests which he had performed so many times they had become routine. The results did not need analysis. He recognised the pattern of successes, inconclusive results and failures.
This is what his body went through when another ninja donated too much chakra for him to handle. The body he was in was not used to such reserves. Could he count this as evidence of the time travel technique working, or was that just wishful thinking?
In any case, he was not in immediate danger, internally or externally, and he had a way to fix what had happened to him. He focussed his chakra on his lungs and heart first. It took thirty seconds before the pathways were healed from tearing and another thirty to clean up the piled-up chakra excesses that had leaked into the organs. He fortified his chakra stores to isolate them from the rest of his body, preventing further problems.
No longer in danger of passing out, his eyes were next. The Sharingan was his most important weapon and it was his greatest chance to defeat a ninja who wished to take advantage of his weakened state. It took a few minutes before he could see.
The room looked like his old bedroom. Every single detail was as he remembered it. There were kunai marks on the wall from when he got too frustrated. There was an ever-growing pile of laundry in the corner. His desk was cluttered with discarded drafts for assignments.
It was dark out. When he had emptied his stomach, he had thrown up his dinner apparently. Judging by the state of digestion of the food, it was currently around midnight. He could make out some of what he had eaten. Nothing unusual for his childhood diet.
It was hard to tell anything apart in the distance with this little illumination. Buildings in the distance were lighted, but too irregularly to tell their shape. It felt familiar to him, like it could be Konoha, but it was too early to tell for sure. Travelling through time had been the intended effect, but what were the chances it had actually worked?
Further tests of the technique’s effectiveness had to wait. He started healing himself fully. His organs were important, as were his senses. The muscles in his legs were needed for mobility. He needed the muscles in his arms for offence and defence. He needed all his joints to tie it together. He needed his bones for proper structure. He needed his blood vessels to fuel his body physically. He needed his chakra pathways to fuel his body spiritually.
The acid smell of vomit reached his nostrils. It was unpleasant, but he needed his nose. He turned off the part of his brain that responded with disgust and let only the information remain. It was the same techniques he had used to get through tortures. It separated his mind from his emotions enough to stay rational.
It had been decades since he had last thrown up. Usually his body told him it wanted to gag, which Sasuke then promptly ignored. His body obeyed him. As a ninja, he ruled his own reactions. He was careful about what he ate and he knew that the feeling of getting sick was an evolutionary by-product that was no longer useful to him.
Yet he had not succeeded now. He wondered how much of it was the attempted jump through time and how much of it was the gruelling ritual to achieve that result. He had needed to shut off most of his brain to get through it. He locked away the emotional aspects of the memories of pain and screaming before they could distract him. Until only the information remained without any of the attached feelings.
He took a few deliberate sniffs. His scent was all over the room. Nobody else’s.
When he was finally done, it was time to fully take stock of his surroundings. He structured his chakra further into the room. It took a lot of work before he had a proper net that let him know of any ninja within ten meters of him. There was nobody in the house but two ANBU agents hiding in the crawl space between the ground floor and the first floor. They were slightly agitated from Sasuke’s behaviour and were watching him closely. Bodyguards. He never knew the surveillance had started when he was this young.
He dragged his now responsive body to the bathroom and threw some water onto his face. Staring back at him from the mirror was a much younger him than he was used to looking at. No scar on his forehead from the final battle with Naruto as a rogue ninja. No grey streaks in his hair from the stress it took to be a consultant to an Uzumaki Hokage. No bags under his eyes from the countless sleepless nights trying to keep his platoon save from harm.
It had worked. He was actually back.
Now what?
He had started the ritual with the assumption it would fail. Seals were more art than science, after all. He had never dared to hope it would succeed. There were general ideas, of course, fantasies of fixing the past. Nothing specific. Even now his mind stubbornly refused to plan. Just in case it was still fake.
Sasuke was a ninja though. He would not stand still. If his mind could not picture long term goals, Sasuke would start with short term ones.
There was sick staining the floor. He gathered up a mop and cleaned it.
Some had gotten on the bed. He changed his sheets.
He still felt dirty. He showered and got dressed.
He was not sure when exactly in time he had turned up. He did not have his forehead protector though, so he had not graduated yet. He checked his desk. Very few papers had been dated and those that had, were in the middle of the stack. At least he had a lower bound. It was no earlier than October of his final year in the Academy. He knew the graduation exams were in January. He was somewhere in that three-month space of time.
He needed much more information. He could not help but feel that Sakura and Naruto would have been better suited for this task.
Sakura would have been more optimistic time travel would be possible. She would have gathered every single record of the past and then memorized her entire youth and the village’s complete history. She would have done it as a hobby in her spare time. A fun little activity to lift her mood in the middle of the apocalypse. When there was nothing left of her own childhood to memorise, she would have started on the records of her classmates so that she would have been able to save the world even if the technique accidentally dropped her into another body. She was thorough like that.
Naruto would have understood the time travel seal much better. He would have instantly determined whether it would work or not and would then have been able to intuit the exact date where he would show up. He would also have devised some elaborate prank to pull, achieving all of his goals without ever getting serious.
The problem was that neither of them would have made it through the ritual. They would have stopped it before the end. Sakura liked to say that each of them had different strengths. Sasuke did not feel strong for this.
History would have to do with Sasuke. The last survivor of the Uchiha clan. History could do much worse for itself.
And not like there had been much of a choice. Sakura had died in an ambush. Naruto had died in the attack on Konoha. With them, most of Sasuke had died as well. But this was before all that happened. Naruto and Sakura were alive again.
Sasuke’s heart skipped a beat. They were alive again.
He focussed back on his notes before he would become completely undone. Looking through the most recent ones, he determined Iruka was currently working on some physics theory about calculating the trajectory of a thrown kunai. It was the preliminary work, stuff that students were supposed to learn before moving on to practical exercises. That material was covered in the third year of the Academy and revised a few weeks before graduation.
That was his best guess for now. He knew there were no calendars inside the house. His younger self had no use for them. For the old Sasuke, there had only been school days and training days. They had all blended together and he had preferred it that way. He had not wanted to count the days until he graduated. He had not wanted to plan a realistic course and face how far behind he was on the big brother he wanted to destroy in retribution for the genocide of their clan.
Even graduation had been just a formality. He had needed to become a jounin as fast as possible. Graduating the Ninja Academy had been such a tiny step on the road he had been walking.
So, worst case scenario was a few weeks before graduation. A few weeks of ignoring his teammates, resisting the urge to help them or bond with them. And all that time Naruto would be all alone. Sakura would be killing herself trying to maintain a persona because she was raised to shove away her real emotions. If he risked reaching out to them sooner, he risked changing the timeline and causing different teams.
Sasuke needed them on his team or they would not become friends. And he needed them as friends, or he would go completely insane. Losing his sanity once was more than enough for him.
But he could stand a few weeks of being alone. He had been forced to practise solitude. He may as well make use of it. A few weeks of additional time would also give him some more time to plan and to train. He could use the time to get used to his new body and to master both his skills and his ability to hide them.
All that mattered was that Naruto and Sakura were alive. They were here. They were breathing and thinking and feeling, so close that it was hard to truly believe. And while Sasuke might not be able to interact with them, he could watch them. He could see them again, finally.
Sasuke had his next goal figured out.
Before he got out of the house, he needed to take inventory. He grabbed his weapon pouch from his desk. Checking it, he found that it held a few kunai, some ninja wire and a few exploding tags. There were three kunai in his nightstand, which he added to the pouch. By the desk was a family scroll his younger self had been working on and a few smoke bombs. It was not nearly enough. He collected everything and went to the next room. His parents’ bedroom.
It had been years since he had seen it like this. After he had become the official head of the Uchiha clan, he had moved into that bedroom and replaced most of the furnishings. Seeing it in its original state brought back unpleasant memories. For now he pushed it all those memories aside and headed straight for the closet. There were two cases in there that he took with him after he had disabled the six trap mechanisms protecting them.
Itachi’s bedroom was next. A lot of his gear was missing or had been confiscated, but some of it remained. There was a box of blunt kunai and shuriken by the desk. A kit to sharpen weapons was by the bed. In his closet was the gear he had outgrown. There was a bookcase with technique manuals.
He brought it all to the living room and laid it out. He strapped his brother’s old weapon pouch to his left arm and filled it with blunt kunai. He restocked his own weapon pouch and strapped it to his right arm. His parents’ cases were next. They were easy to open once you knew the trick.
His mother’s case held her uniform and a white weapon pouch. Trying to open it would activate the explosive seal designed within. But sending chakra through the clan symbol embroidered on the front would summon shuriken. It held a dozen, but could easily be restocked. It had been a gift for her wedding from Naruto’s mother. As he had thought, it was bigger than the standard issue weapon pouches Itachi and Sasuke had used. He wasted no time strapping it to his left leg. It looked a little bulky, but it fitted better there than it would on his arm.
He rummaged through the pockets of his mother’s uniform and retrieved a small bracelet. He put it on his left wrist. It held a hidden container of ink and a small brush with some parchment, for writing short messages. It would also work for creating seals in a pinch.
His father’s weapon pouch was even larger. It had to be to not only contain a decent amount of kunai and ninja wire, but also a folded-up windmill shuriken. It had been his father’s favourite weapon. He used it both for close range and long range. It would do nicely. He strapped the blue pouch on his right leg.
Armed like this, he felt naked. This was not enough. It did not feel like enough. He was used to having more weapons at hands, being able to summon thousands of projectiles with the smallest movements. He missed his sword. He missed his armour. He missed his medical supplies and his emergency rations.
He took a deep breath and concentrated on the chakra of his teammates. He found Sakura’s first, just two minutes away. Her dense reserves, conditioned by her superior control, smelling of earth and sounding like dripping water. She tasted bitter and felt like fresh bandages.
Naruto was only a little further away, three minutes at most. Even as an academy student, his reserves were wild and massive. He was the feeling of sunshine in summer and the scent of spring’s first storm wind. He tasted salty and felt like a prick of static electricity.
There would be ANBU patrols in the way, and there were still the two ninja in the Uchiha compound. None of that bothered Sasuke. He opened the front door and left quickly. The two ninja tried to follow him, but a covert replacement technique had them chasing a tree log for a few hundred feet instead of the original. He would lead them to the Hyuuga clan estate. When they would lose Sasuke, they could take the opportunity to check on them.
As soon as had replaced himself, he fully suppressed his chakra signal. Then he moved as quickly as he could. His muscles were well trained for a boy his age, but there was only so much improvement chakra pumping could do. Especially when he did not want to be detected and could only sense ANBU patrols when they were within ten meters of him. At least his chakra felt normal even in extensive use. He would need to perform a more comprehensive evaluation later to determine how much of his power had survived the trip back in time.
Two minutes seemed to crawl by as Sasuke moved closer and closer to Sakura’s home. But he got there in the end. While slowing down, he made a hand seal and sent two clones ahead. Then he jumped to the first floor window and saw Sakura’s face.
He was holding his breath, until he had made sure she was not. Her chest was moving. She was okay. He took a few selfish moments to look at her face. She looked so young and innocent and frail. It unnerved Sasuke, but any Sakura was better than none.
A very large part of him wanted to step in to protect her. It had been so long since he had last seen her outside of his nightmares. It had been so long since he had seen her without the world turning to fire as it took her away again. When the enemy had killed her, they had destroyed all of her physical body. He had only been able to identify her by the small bits of chakra that had remained.
Here, she was alive.
Her long pink hair looked a little messy from tossing and turning. His Sakura would not have cared much, but this one would spend a large part of her morning fixing it. He could see her desk, completely cluttered with books and notes. She was usually tidier than this. She had to be nervous for it to get to this state.
This was what it had all been for. Different people helped him with the time travel for different reasons, but this was why he had gone back. Because Sakura and Naruto were dead where he came from and he would have done anything to get them back. He had gone through hell. It was all worth it.
His thoughts halted as memories from his clone came flooding to him a minute later. Naruto was safe as well. He set two clones to guard Sakura’s house and then continued to the next destination.
Naruto’s apartment complex looked like a slum, and Naruto’s apartment looked like it dropped the property value of the whole block. The remaining clone had moved around the building to find guards, before dispelling at his approach. There was a single ANBU watching. Sasuke made his way over to the guard and then reached out with genjutsu. It took a few seconds, but the ANBU’s scanning eyes were replaced with a blank stare.
Sasuke took a single leap to Naruto’s apartment to confirm it with his own eyes. He was sound asleep. He was not dead. He would normally wait until he saw Naruto’s chest move, but the snoring already confirmed it.
Sasuke felt complete. Like there had been this huge hole inside that had been filled. The world had broken when those two had left and it was finally right again. This was exactly what he had needed.
Ideas started forming in his mind, slotting together to build larger plans. For the first time in years, he knew exactly what to do to get what he wanted. For the first time in years, he wanted.
He posted two new clone guards out of sight and let them slowly wean off the genjutsu on the guard. He sent out two clones to relieve Sakura’s. The ones he had posted had not seen Naruto and would become useless without the reassurance.
He sent out three more clones to do reconnaissance on the town and then made his way back to his house via the Hyuuga compound. As he entered the Uchiha compound, it felt like home. The rooms were wrong. The items inside were wrong. But it was in a village where Naruto and Sakura lived. That meant it was home.
He sat himself in the living room and started putting his organised thoughts to good use.
Sasuke’s goals were simple.
Keep that bastard Madara from becoming immortal. Destroy all of Madara’s agents and sympathisers. Keep Naruto and Sakura safe and protected.
Orochimaru was out there planning the Konoha invasion. Obito was preparing the Akatsuki for capturing the tailed beasts. Kaguya was manipulating everyone through Black Zetsu. Danzo was working from Konoha to selfishly further his own agenda.
Sasuke could deal with some of these challenges on his own, but he needed allies to face them all. He needed Naruto and Sakura to get stronger a lot faster than last time.
In order to build a brighter future, he had to use the gifts from those who had come before.
His parents had loved them, in their own way. They had seen the Uchiha name lose standing and had finally planned a rebellion to regain their power. He disapproved of their methods and he did not hold their ideals. But a strong clan had its advantages. It would help Naruto secure a place as Hokage and it was a place for Sakura to be safe.
His brother Itachi had always wanted to protect him. He cared for the village and for peace. He died without telling Sasuke the truth, so that Sasuke would not cause war for Konoha. Sasuke would find a way for Itachi to live through this all. His strong genjutsu would help tutor Sakura and his information on Akatsuki’s plans for the jinchuriki were essential to keep Naruto safe.
His teacher Kakashi had sacrificed himself to keep the village safe. He was the embodiment of what war and death could do to someone. During the war, Sasuke had seen more and more ninja take the road that Kakashi had taken. After they had been forced to leave the village, these ninja had created a new, lighter memorial stone that they brought with them wherever their temporary accommodations were located. It had been agony for those ninja. Naruto and Sakura would be happiest if Sasuke prevented as much death as possible.
His mind went to Danzo. The man who had robbed the Uchiha. If Kakashi represented those left behind after war, Danzo was the war. He was no longer human. He was a force of pure evil that needed to disappear. As soon as possible. But Danzo was not alone, and he was not the worst. Sasuke needed the traitors, the people who smashed the shinobi alliance, to die. Even when not all of them had actively chosen their paths, they had all been a part of causing the disaster that followed. They had to be removed.
His teammate Sakura.
His teammate Naruto.
How could he even start to describe how it felt to have lost his most precious people? He could not capture in a finite list of promises the infinite lengths he would go through to honour them.
His eyes burned and he rubbed at them. It was a weird sensation and Sasuke was not sure what was causing it until he realized that his twelve-year-old body had not cried since Itachi had killed his parents. The Sasuke that he had been had spent his days training to drown out the hurt, using hate to drown out the sadness.
His first life had been spent obsessing over his loss. His younger self had believed everything would be better if he had his revenge. He had believed that Itachi had done something unfair, and the world would only be right again if he could made it fair.
It was naïve. He had since learned to take a less extreme outlook on life. He would allow himself to be sad when his loved ones died. He would allow himself to be angry at those responsible. And, most importantly, he would allow himself to be happy when around those he loved. He would shut out only the useless emotions.
He would allow himself to be protective, if those close to him were threatened. He had a new chance to save them. He needed Sakura and Naruto to stay alive. Even if it cost him the lives of other good ninja. Even if it made the peace he was going for more fragile than it could have been. Sasuke had outlived them once and it had shattered him. Absolutely nothing was worth their death.
It was selfish of him, but if fate had wanted a martyr, it should have sent a different Uchiha.
With those goals in mind, he started planning the specifics. He knew enough about the chunin exam invasion that he would be able to use it to increase the team’s reputation. They would need to be very strong and already have a reputation for extraordinary feats. But he could take care of that. He would make sure they were at least jounin by the time Madara enacted his plans. With his knowledge of the future, if everything worked out, the three of them could form the perfect strike force and take out the members of Akatsuki one by one.
If things did not work out, there were other plans. He started brainstorming all the possible complications along the way, then cataloguing them all by how bad they would be and how much time he would have to respond to them. Someone discovering he was from the future was a big concern, but would happen gradually enough to deal with in time. An assassin being sent to Naruto or Sakura had a smaller chance of happening, but it was more immediate and preventing it needed mental attention as soon as it happened. Keeping body guards on them at all time was a precaution for most of the threats of that nature.
He registered the return of the ANBU after half an hour. He ignored them and continued his thoughts. All they would see was a teenage boy staring at nothingness. He did not move from his spot until sunlight streamed through the windows.
The ninja in the ceiling had not left yet. Sasuke stared up. An eight-hour shift did not indicate any kind of isolated surveillance order. They were not simply checking up on one of the academy students. They were guarding him specifically, the only surviving member of the noble Uchiha clan.
He had not known he had been watched that extensively during his youth. He also did not know how long this would go on. Would they monitor him until he became a genin? Until he became a chunin? Until they were fully satisfied Sasuke could protect himself?
Or, as had happened last time, until he left the village to become a missing ninja and join forces with the person whose number one goal was destroying the whole of Konoha?
At the prospect of being watched without fail, Orochimaru was sounding a little tempting.
He needed to know how far this went.
He gritted his teeth and went to the kitchen to wash his face. He dried himself off and ate a simple breakfast from the ingredients his younger self had purchased. He checked his inventory of weapons again and mentally cursed. Sasuke was well prepared for an academy student, which still felt hopelessly under-equipped for a former village leader.
He headed outside and went to the training area behind his house. Some of the chakra signatures surrounded the training area, but they kept their distance at the limit of his range. It was a relief to know they did not follow him too closely there.
He threw some kunai for a while, pretending to practice, until he was convinced the ANBU were not going to come any closer. The efficiency with which they had taken their positions indicated routine. This is what they did every time Sasuke went to train. He made clones that hid their signatures beyond normal levels. He tasked them to trail the ANBU as he moved to observe them even beyond his own personal scouting range.
Then Sasuke tried some other locations his younger self had frequented. There was a forest near his house where he used to jog. The ANBU followed him, but again kept their distance. As he went through town, the ANBU followed over the rooftops. They did not let up on him until he approached the Academy. Once they realised that he was heading there, the ninja deviated from their formation.
At the academy itself, the ANBU took up position in a large radius around the building. Though that was easily explained by the number of ANBU present there to protect the students. He knew exactly how many there would be and where they would be stationed. Heck, he had taken a few shifts himself when there were scheduling problems. It would be easy to find one of the blind spots and disappear. Among all those students it would be very hard to notice.
He was just ironing out the details of a third plan to get rid of all those prying eyes, when another student bumped into him.
“Watch where you’re going, Teme.” An obnoxious orange-dressed boy said.
Sasuke had the breath stolen from him. In front of him stood the seventh and greatest Hokage. The man who saved him in more ways than he could describe. The ninja who defied logic, the warrior that had wrestled the ten-tails into submission, the scholar that had unravelled the secrets behind the technique that had destroyed the world.
“Hmph.” Sasuke said, standing beside Naruto while quite stoically not hugging him.
Naruto seemed to take it as a question and he motioned for the gate. “They won’t let me in. Afraid I’ll wreck something if I get to the playground too early.” His cheap orange clothes looked crumbled up like he had slept in them. There were a few small stains that would go out in a wash. The stains looked old. There was also dirt on his clenched hands. He smelled like sweat and rain and forest.
“They are probably right.”
“Hey!”
“You defaced the sacred Hokage monument. Surely you do not hold the Academy’s training equipment in higher regard?”
“You bastard.” Naruto complained, before turning the other way in silence. It took Sasuke a few seconds to realize that this Naruto would not in fact be cheered up by bantering with him. It would take a while for things to be back to being like that again. Right now he was not talking to Naruto, Hokage of the Konoha village, leader of the Shinobi alliance. He was talking to a potential Naruto. In a way, he was talking to a million potential Narutos. His actions determined which one the world would end up with. There was a very precise path, only one, that led to the Naruto Sasuke had known. The more Sasuke changed, the more differences would accrue. Every different decision would kill his Naruto a little more. Death by a thousand cuts. Good, in a way. His Naruto had died at thirty-five. This Naruto would last a god-damn time longer. Sasuke would make sure of it.
Sasuke sighed, before knocking on the gates a few times.
“Hey brat! I already told you… Sasuke-kun?” the guard looked surprised, before quickly unlocking the metal doorway. “What are you doing here?”
“I came for training.”
“It’s a little early, but I am sure my superiors won’t mind if I let you in.”
“I will need a sparring partner.” Sasuke said, before motioning at Naruto.
The man paused, eyeing the blond boy with disgust. “A-all right.”
Naruto looked confused, but followed Sasuke onto the playground. When they were alone, he faced the blue-shirted boy. “You want to spar with me?”
“Hn.” He shrugged non-committedly, walking over to the throwing targets. Naruto was waiting for more of an answer than that, but when it did not come, he started throwing kunai.
“Why did you get here so early?” Sasuke asked, his eyes observing Naruto’s level of skill.
Naruto seemed to hesitate for a few seconds, but then continued throwing without saying anything. His accuracy was off a little more than the exams allowed. He needed the practice to get a passing grade. And this was probably the only place where he was not immediately turned away.
It was sad and Sasuke really wanted to interfere. He could offer up the Uchiha training grounds. He even had his own targets set up in his back yard. But offering them up directly would be taken as an insult. It would be taken as a claim that Naruto needed the practice, while Sasuke did not.
There were very few ways that he would be able to approach right now without being dismissed. But Sasuke was a ninja. And Naruto was not the first unwilling child he wanted to teach.
“Have you thought about what you want to do after graduating?”
“Become Hokage.” Naruto answered without delay. It surprised Sasuke a little how quickly he answered, until he realized how often adults must ask such questions from him. Nobody understood why the demon fox might want to become a protector of a village that it had tried to destroy.
“That’d take years. What are your short-term objectives?”
Naruto missed his mark by a few feet. He wielded a new kunai, which he grasped tightly. “I will graduate and become stronger. So strong that I can become Hokage and make everyone recognise me.”
“How will you become stronger?”
“By working hard and never running away.” He threw his kunai and hit close to the bullseye, making him smirk as he drew another.
“Do you know how The Fourth got stronger?”
Naruto huffed, expecting Sasuke’s question to be rhetorical. When he realized it was not, he mumbled under his breath. “Determination?”
“That was part of it. How about his predecessors? Do you know how they got to be elected the leaders of Konoha?”
“Are you trying to make me sound foolish because I do not know some lousy history?”
“No. I am trying to make you sound foolish because you think hard work is all it takes to become the strongest ninja in the village.”
“Hey! Bastard!” Naruto clenched his fist.
“People think hard work will get them anywhere. If hard work was always rewarded, you’d be chunin by now.”
Naruto’s fist unclenched. “Huh?”
“I am the best ninja in our year, but I am only the third most hardworking. First there’s you, who sleeps in class because you spend your nights on the training grounds.”
“How do you…”
“Then there’s Sakura, who regularly skips out on meals because she refuses to reward herself with a full dinner until she has memorized the material perfectly.”
“Sakura-chan is doing that? How do you know that?”
“I do not have to work as hard as you to be the best. I had very good teachers when I was younger. My father gave lectures on the ninja code before tucking me in. When playing ninja, my mother showed me when I was handling my kunai badly. They kept me from making the mistakes that they had made.”
“Your family did all that?”
“Before… yeah, they used to. They left some scrolls that help me now, but I’m not even supposed to read them without having earned my headband. Not that it has stopped me.”
Naruto tensed a little.
“The Fourth was an orphan like us. Just like you, the Yondaime worked as hard as he could to prove that he was able to become Hokage. He was a genius. If he had been born outside of the village without knowing any ninjutsu, he might have invented a clone technique, maybe even an elemental technique. Instead those things were taught to him, and he discovered revolutionary ninja techniques. It takes a lifetime of hard work to discover these things, but only a fraction of that for them to be taught.”
Sasuke looked at the Hokage monument looming over the city. Children thought those faces were carved into the stone as a reminder of the Hokage’s eternal protection. Ninja thought it was reinforcement to strive to become stronger, to dream of having your own face up there. But those faces contained a different message. Each Hokage relied on the strength of its predecessor. That is why they were depicted all together. Each hokage gave their strength to the village and it made the village grow, so that the latest Hokage contained a bit of all the ninja that came before him.
The faces next to each other in stone were a reminder all right. Fight one Hokage, and you fight all of them.
“The Yondaime got stronger by learning from his teacher, the legendary Toad Sage. He developed techniques after extensive tutoring from The Professor, the Sandaime. He became faster by reading about the techniques of his elder, the Nidaime. He learned diplomacy from the records of the Shodaime’s meetings. He worked hard all his life, but he never wasted his time trying to invent a field of study when there was a manual available. He only trained alone when there was nobody who knew better than him.”
Naruto stared at the ground. “Your point being?”
Sasuke hardly seemed to move. Yet suddenly there were six kunai imbedded in the bullseyes of the three targets. “My point is that you should hold the tip of your weapons 10 degrees higher, and that you need to release them a tenth of a second sooner so your thumb does not alter the trajectory.” Sasuke held a kunai perfectly in his hand.
Naruto’s kunai changed position, and he released it a little earlier, causing it to land almost exactly in the middle of the target. “So you’re saying I’ll be Hokage someday if only I beg for your advice?”
Sasuke snorted. “No.”
The rage on Naruto’s face was making steam appear over his head. “Because I’m not good enough to ever be Hokage?”
“Because I’m not nearly that important. I’m just close and offering help. If you don’t want it yet, I’m sure you’ll learn along the way to ask it from someone else. Naruto, you’ll be Hokage regardless of my help. All I can do is speed things along.”
Naruto gawked. His mouth was literally hanging open. “You really think…”
“For somebody as stubborn as you? Anything is possible. If I pushed you off a cliff tomorrow, I am pretty confident you’d pull some miracle out of your ass even if you’d have to defy all logic to do so. And if I asked how you did it, you’d just say that you were arguing with nature about how little its laws made sense and you won the argument.”
Naruto was scrunching up the fabric of his pants.
“If you graduate, I think they will put us in the same team. In which case I want to start bragging that I was the Hokage’s teammate as soon as possible.”
The blond genin was grinning from ear to ear. “I can do that.”
“Of course, that is only if you graduate. Which means training hard these next few weeks.”
Naruto scratched his head. “Huh?”
“With only a little time to go, we will really have to put our backs into it. Obviously it would be better if we had more time, but –“
“Sasuke-kun… the examination is today.”
“Today…?”
“How do you not know that? Don’t tell me you are so confident that you completely tuned out all the reviews and lectures these past few days, cause that totally did not work out for me the last two times I did that.”
Sasuke nodded absent-mindedly. He had to fight a touch of panic as he reorganised his plans. He would not have time to review his class notes. He would not have time to slowly get closer to the other students, so that visiting them after graduation would make sense. It took a few minutes, but he abandoned the plans that would not work anymore, and altered the others.
He looked at the skyline. “We have about an hour left to practice then. What are other things you wanted to work on?”
Naruto looked at his backpack, which was filled with books he needed to study and then loudly and adamantly decided he should practice throwing kunai more.
Sasuke gave him a few more minor pointers and corrected him when his form became sloppier again. It would take a little while for Naruto to unlearn the really bad habits, but there were plenty of small optimisations that he could master in just an hour.
After a few minutes, Sasuke started throwing at the target next to Naruto’s again. Naruto mostly had it down and did not need his full attention. Besides, students would be coming soon and they would ask questions if they saw Sasuke next to Naruto without an excuse. He kept his eyes focussed on Naruto’s form while he threw, watching for any irregularities he should correct.
“So, what’s with the new equipment?” Naruto said. “You really need that many pouches?”
Sasuke gave a quick nod. “My main pouch will hold enough weapons, but you want to avoid single points of failure. If my legs get pinned, I still want to be able to get to something sharp to defend myself. It’s a good tactic.”
“It seems a little pointless to me. You’re going to practice drawing weapons from four places instead of one?”
“Got to do something to make this challenging.” Sasuke smirked, going a little slower for Naruto’s benefit as he grabbed a projectile from each pouch in turn and embedded them in the targets.
Naruto got silent again. He had to be pretty nervous for the exam to put up with an obnoxious display like that without responding.
“Were you this anxious for your previous exams as well?”
“This time it’s different.” Naruto said.
“Because this time really counts.” Sasuke finished for him. “If you don’t make it, you’ll have to wait another year.”
“Iruka-sensei kept telling me to study. I kept saying I was going to be fine. I was convinced I was going to pass three months ago. But then I failed. And I failed six weeks ago as well.”
“You know they expected you to fail.”
“Everyone expects me to fail.”
“I meant, they expected everyone to fail. There is a reason they provide the bottom quarter of the class with an early opportunity. Mock exams can be dismissed more easily by students, but failing an actual chance to graduate has more effect. They make it extra hard to really scare you. Of the exams you’ve gotten, this one will be the easiest.”
“And if I fail the easiest test?”
Sasuke shrugged. “You’ll be Hokage someday. The easiest way to do that is to become a genin today. If not, well, for anyone else it would be impossible to become the Hokage without being a ninja first. With you? Who knows… Surely failing a silly little exam won’t stand in the way of achieving your goal?”
Naruto seemed to rest a little easier with that thought. “Believe it.”
Eventually there was a signal, and they both packed up their things to head for the classroom. He saw familiar faces on the way there. Kiba looked much better with all his limbs still attached. Shikamaru seemed healthier without spikes through his torso. Hinata looked like herself again, with her eyes still in their sockets.
Then there was the final member of their genin team. He could smell her before he even saw her.
It was a perfume he had memorized by pressing an old pink dress against his face for months as he cried his eyes out. A scent that had been etched into his mind by being present in all the important fights of his live. It was a mix of flowers, easily dismissed as natural, but distinct enough that its composition would only rarely be encountered in the wild.
Then he heard her mumbling. She was reciting facts in her head. She already knew the material, but she needed to confirm it one more time. There were few people who believed in her, and it caused her to question herself. The Sakura he knew would be able to lift the entire academy with one finger, bring the entire village under genjutsu on a whim, and inspire so much fear and awe that people walked around her in wide arcs.
He wondered if he should stay out of her way for now. But she looked at him and he did not manage to avoid her gaze. They locked eyes, and he smiled. It made her blush, and they went into class together. “Any last minute tips?”
She startled at that. “I’m sure nothing I can say will help the best student in class.” She said.
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Th-then… be sure to read the whole test carefully. The exams six years ago had a trick question in it. They disciplined the creator of the test, but they still marked down all the students who had gotten it wrong. It’s not impossible that it will happen again. Not with Mizuki-sensei writing the tests. He seems to like that sort of thing.”
Some of the other girls tried to bother him, but he was in too good a mood to let them distract him. He sat down in the classroom halfway between where Sakura and Naruto would sit.
Naruto passed by Sakura as he made his way to his seat. “Ne, Sakura-chan. Do you have any advice for me too?”
“Try not to cry too much when you fail, Baka.”
He seemed happy enough that she had talked to him without hitting him.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Sakura, he’s nervous about the test. Just help him out.”
“R-right.” She said, startled from the reprimand. She took a moment to think about it. “You tend to get side-tracked when answering questions. So much so that you run out of room. Try writing your answers on a different page first. Reread the question and then only copy the parts that have to do with the question itself.”
“That’s really smart, Sakura.” Naruto beamed. “How do you even know about that?”
“Iruka-sensei complains about it enough. Honestly, don’t you ever listen to him?”
Naruto laughed it off and went to his seat in a very good mood. Sakura met Sasuke’s eyes and he nodded approvingly. Across the room, Ino’s jaw dropped open. She then tried her best to give the nearest student all kinds of tips to succeed. Sasuke ignored the attempts to get his attention.
There was some explanation about the day’s schedule, before Iruka handed out the test papers. He saw that Sakura’s eyes were closed, and she was muttering something, still reviewing the material. Naruto was fidgeting a little, but seemed rather resigned. When everything was ready, the test began.
As Sasuke read over the questions, he started to frown. Sasuke had not expected to have trouble with an academy test. He had aced it when he became genin, had taught dozens of academy students, and had marked countless tests. But here he was, unable to answer what the 42nd ninja rule was.
Naruto had tried to abolish all rules when he had become Hokage. Of course, nobody had let him do it. But Naruto was stubborn enough to at least have them changed. So many rules had been added over the year, he had said, that it was time for reorganization. Most important rules in front, least important ones at the end.
It turned out that ‘important’ was subjective. Who knew? Naruto’s list was challenged monthly, and had to be revised several times each year. The advisors all claimed that it was okay, because if there was ever a time to change it, it was now while the lists were still new.
“The life of a ninja will be short if he cares about friends too much, but non-existent if he does not care about them at all.”
“The universe works on unerring Math. People work on perceptions. Neither you nor your enemy can break the laws of physics, but anyone can be fooled into thinking someone has.”
“Everything is potentially lethal. Everyone is potentially dead.”
For a second he considered finding some way of figuring out the answers in a different way. He felt his pride bubbling to the surface. He had failed as a ninja if he could not remember something as simple as the ninja rules. Never mind that he learned them long before he had learned all the tricks to improve his memory. Never mind that even now he would not use those tricks on something as simple and juvenile as the ninja rules.
Then he took a deep breath. For the purposes of this day, pride was not a useful emotion for him. He set the emotion aside until only the information was left. His pride would have to take a hit today. That was acceptable.
Their teacher was not paying enough attention on them. It was easy to find a moment where he could make the seals and activate the appropriate technique. It was something the Uchiha clan had developed years ago for family members that had trouble activating the Sharingan and mimicked the photographic memory the Sharingan imparted.
It only took a single glance around the room and he could look at his own test while analysing all the answers he could see others had given. The image of the room stayed in his mind vividly. From this angle, he had twelve tests he had seen. Staring at any of them for longer than a single moment would be noticed. No matter how good the ninja, a glance was not supposed to be enough to cheat. Sasuke was not like other ninja.
The image lasted only a few minutes, but that was enough. Soon, he had copied the answers he could not answer from other students’ tests. Ninja had no need of pride. He did not come back in time to be a prideful loser.