Time is an elusive thing.  Many things depend on it, and yet there is so much in our world that is beyond our control.  Opportunity is everywhere, and yet as we attempt to gather it for ourselves, we make mistakes and consequences mount.  If the definition of madness is doing the same with the expectation of change, then I’ve taken it as a calling.

The story I wrote many years ago is still developing.  Both my own world, and my interpretation of this universe.  The story of Naruto is just one among many, and I am grateful for the opportunity to try my hand with the story world.

Thanks again to all the folks who have thrown their two cents in, have opened their doors and shown me out of my hole in the ground.  Here’s to courage, and here’s to the attempt.

===Prelude===

On October 10th, beneath the light of a full moon, a child was born.  Hidden away from the world of man, old demons found him all the same.  A history of war and massacres caught up with his parents, and cut a deep groove in their power.  The world they watched over began to unravel, and yet with all their strength they fought to provide a modest gift.  A single new life.

With the alignment of the nine tailed fox torn from her body, Kushina’s chakra was exposed, draining her life force in an effort to seal the gap.  For hours, her spirit bled away, and her body withered.

I have one rule.  Souls are not allowed to expire.  One cannot kill, one cannot die.  For all the faces that it takes, what became and what becomes of them will endure.  All that claims otherwise acts under the banner of chaos.  The very chaos that founded life.

Within the cave, within the home, within the heart of the ninja corps, a sphere formed.  In the calm before the explosion that gutted the mountain, In the murmurs that rallied ninja the village over, in the shadow of the nine-tails.

Red chakra drifted across the village, and within, as fine and obscure as a human hair, a spirit wandered.  Extending my hand out, I grasp a sphere.  With a pulse of intent, the past, present and future are made one.  A presence detonates from each location, and a river is cast.

The blast echoed with unsung stories, memories of their past.  Before the first wave reached her, Kushina’s chakra reacted violently.  A spear of intent that cut deeper than any knife, unmaking her body.

Pain consumed her, and brought the kunoichi to her knees.  Minato moved to break her fall, reaching her side in an instant.  A dome formed around them both.  Sparks floating in the air as he examined her.  His eyes widen as war tempered awareness checks grief.

The yellow flash flickers to the nearest seal, his wife alongside.  The seal appears nearby, as it should, but the barrier doesn’t move.  The world beyond the barrier hasn’t moved.  Eyes widening in alarm, The Hokage instinctively reaches out with his senses.  Skin prickling as seal after seal appears with their cardinal heading.  Pressure builds within his skin, as each of these connections become saturated with chakra.  A yellow flame appears around his body, as focus bores through wave after wave, tugging his concentration in all directions.

It wouldn’t have been half as terrifying if he’d done so intentionally.

Bleeding through the swell of chakra, a person stands on the other side of the barrier.  Between the two parents and the child.  The figure is only there for a moment before Minato can rally his senses, and then the eye of the nine tails is gazing down upon clearing.

Dread tears its way across his lips, and Minato raises himself unto the balls of his feet, preparing to vault to the infant’s defense.

Unbeknownst to him at that time, a dome was conjured around each of his markers.  Each placed in time with his carrier, dotting the world he shared with his other half.  Some saw them both together.  Many at separate times.  A few saw her only in his mind.  All at once, the called on her spirit, on the chakra that once responded with her will.  Thunder echoed across the land of fire, beyond her borders and behind enemy lines.

Verdant roots tinged with demonized chakra spread the world over, and slowly converged on the spot of one.

Kushina gasped as fairy lights appeared and entered her body.  At once relieving her pain and dissolving her physical body.  Her eyes opened to find Minato aflame with a look of fierce determination.  A flicker of distress pulled at her heart.

A thought of self-deprecation gave way to pleasant surprise.  Her hands and arms responded without pain, and her chakra flowed easily.  Her body flickered beneath the flaming shadow lord.

Suddenly the world was a sea of stars, racing by.  The fairy lights struck her like hot coals and icy barbs.  A cradle appeared through the edge of the barrier and her heart melted at the sight of her baby.

The nine-tailed fox - large as a commercial building - struck down.  His claw blasted against the edge of the barrier.  Kushina’s chakra seized as acidic feral energy laced her body.  Her visions swam and - for a moment - parted with her physical form.

It was at that moment that she realized she was dying.  That the life as she knew it was fleeting, her last moments before her eyes.  A jinchuriki - the human host - could not survive having the brunt of a tailed beast’s chakra extracted.  Her family needed her strength now.

At that, one final dome appeared.  The ancestral soil of the land of whirlpools.  Hundreds of years of chakra steeped in her bloodline rammed into the barrier.

Kushina extended her palm.  From her fingers, eight chains sprung out and nailed themselves to the ground around the child.  The seal across his navel blossomed, and an iridescence cascaded to the ground, swirling around the eight points.

Minato glanced down from where he frantically tried to deflect the beast's claw with a kunai.  The owlish look and futile gesture almost made her laugh on the spot, and would send tremors through her frame forever after.

A pulse thundered through the air around beyond the dome.  One by one the other imploded the world over.  Veins of lightning snaked through the air and coated the Nine-tails in a cobweb like structure.  Within the dome, the seal hazed the air until light could not penetrate it.  

A pulse rent the sky, the beast swept away in the blink of an eye.  A second erased the cracks, and a third caused the barrier to hum, melting away until the cradle and child were all that remained.

When the third Hokage found him, the cradle was sundered, and the ground rippled in a wreath around him.  The eight element seal was set.

===

The ground shook from the force of the attack.  The wisest and most informed barely had time to watch the teacup crack before the Biju appeared upon the village walls.  A living avalanche that bore down on the metropolis.  Though powerful - honed by countless wars and tempered in years of peace - the shinobi corps had little to no room to breathe.  Defenses had collapsed before they could be named, and the very walls they swore to defend splintered from the aftershocks of the fox’s attacks.

The nine tails swept the forest like tempests possessed, sundering trees to the root and stripping the surface like sheers to wool.  The land beneath their feet disappeared beneath their feet, and the few that managed to float between chunks of shattered earth were rewarded with the awesome sight of a walking fortress.

The air glowed orange, warm as the summer sun, and not a scrap of fire to its name.  The very essence of the earth kowtowed beneath the paws of the fox.  The chakra that gave them power over the elements was mute in the hands of the average shinobi.  It was all the strongest could do to buy time, and yet everyone down to the children were prepared to pay that price.

The fox ground through the scant meters between him and the village proper.  Crops withered, buildings decayed and civilians grew ill from the chakra called to bear.  The air before the beast shimmered hot, for spirit and intent twisted beyond reason.

It was there that the monkey king appeared.  A graying old man at his side.  Even in old age, the two bore the strength of a thousand horsemen.  They lanced the veil, and struck the beast with speed and surety, nearly doubling the ground the beast had taken.

The ninja had their breathing room, but so did the beast.  The nine tails roared, bitter and determined.  He summoned a meteoric power to his jaw.  The forest wept as it would beneath the sheer force of a monsoon.  The nine tails spat with the report of a thousand cannons.

The bomb carved a furrow through the earth, and it was all the monkey king could do to clear the path.  Windows shattered, rooftops caved and walls crumbled.  The bomb sailed toward the heart of the village, where her people amassed.

With a flicker of yellow, the leader of the village appeared, resolved with every fiber of his being to see that no power the fox could muster would harm the leaf.  He raised a single kunai knife toward the orb, but before he could perform his technique the sky bent.

Shadows snaked in from every direction.  The night sky descended, reducing the street lights to distant stars.  Void met void like a fist meets palm.  Vast ribs of darkness clamping down on the bomb.  A red glow from where they ground the sphere down.

Minato shielded his brow as black spots swam across the sea of red, spiraling down, sprawling, collapsing.  For a brief moment he felt the shadow of despair.  He could stop one bomb, but if it scattered, he would have no chance to adapt his technique.  For a brief second he saw the shadows tearing the face of past leaders to ribbons, and the legacy they left to him left to ruin.

This fear merged into one point.  A girl with black hair and red eyes glared defiance - reflected in the surface now rippling like a banner.  The sky roared - a mimicry of the distant animal - as the last of the chakra vanished beneath her palm.  Shadows trailing in her wake.

“You should go.”

“Save your strength.”

“Tonight is only the beginning.”

Minato gaped, but words escaped him.  The pained shriek of the fox echoed across the village again, and this time he looked beyond the girl.

The shadows rippled.  Killing intent encroached on her, a promise of what was to come.  Few had come to draw the ire of the yellow flash personally, and fewer were still alive.  The man could taste shadows and place a mark of death upon them with the beat of a heart.  The girl did not flinch.  She sighed instead and looked to the moon, shining full over the shadow of the earth.

“Don’t thank me yet.”

===

The fox screamed again as Minato appeared riding a cloud.  Two red webbed hands emerged from within, followed by a plume of smoke and the face of a toad.  Again, large enough to swallow a house whole.

The latter grappled with the fox, not sparing him a second to recover.  Minato began forming seals when again he noticed motion in the corner of his eyes.  Only the second person that night who could float in the air.  A trait usually reserved for masters of earth.

He was wary now, and that caution consumed precious seconds.  The massive toad that was Gamabunta lurched, and Minato turned his gaze forward, where several of the fox’s tails were deflected at odd angles.  Crimson chakra bled out from them, blurring the limbs.  Minato hastened, crouching down and vaulting toward the fox.  He had to make it there, but once he made contact with the fox he could put it a safe distance from the village.

He never made it.  Minato cocked his head back and rolled across the ground.  Dust kicked up beneath him.  He came to a stop above one of his markers, and felt the flickering of candle light on the corner of his eye.  All the while, his first born child rested in his off arm.

He looked around, scanning for the mark he left on the toad.  He’d be able to sense the latter anywhere.  What he found first was the fox.  Somehow, the nine-tails had been summoned to the ritual sight.  Minato’s hand cramped, as evidence that his chakra had defaulted rather than forming the technique he intended.  If it happened many times more, he might injure himself from within.

It was a cruel irony, he mused, that he should never need to exercise his chakra another day.  He placed the baby Naruto into the cradle, and took one last look toward the fox.  Both bitter in his task, and wary for the cornered animal.  A gasp of pain, and a shout of dissent tore at his heart.  He turned his gaze to one edge of the clearing, hoping that he was wrong.

Kushina was exhausted, withered and in pain.  Anger dominated her face, but it was forged with splinters of emotion too raw to stomach.  His heart thunder in protest, demanding he make it right.  What words could justify the amount of suffering they’d been through, could make it hurt less?

She stumbled, and he rushed to her side.  It seemed the cruelty of the world would not spare them.

A green flame gazed on the cradle, as the last of the white haze that was the Hokage and first lady dissolved.  It would dent the pride of the villagers, that the tomb of their heroes would be empty.  Few could know their relationship, what it cost them.  Fewer still could affect the light that fate cast upon the child.

It was a tragedy to see the family broken.  A mask that every home would bear eventually.  One could hope that the gifts they left him would create a fine Hokage one day.  They deserved so much more.  The entire world couldn’t get enough.

A yellow flame stepped out from the forest, “The black ops are coming.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“Both.  Enigma has the former organized, so they’ll be somewhat slower.  The leaf sent a strike team ahead.  They’ll be upon us soon.”

I bite my lip, “Tch, did it never occur to me that we might pose a distraction?”

Yellow tilts and shakes his head, “We do what we can, and work with what we get.  Let’s move.”

“Aye.”

The clearing darkened in absence of the flames, caught in the deepest shadow of twilight.  The search party arrived beneath the paling ceiling of dawn, discovering the weeping orphan.