AUTHOR'S NOTE: So first off, this story has undergone a bit of a re-write over time. I've recently had some more inspiration for this story and, taking into consideration ideas or things pointed out to me by reviewers, I've mostly just tried to alter a few finer details and alter the plot a bit. It's still mostly the same story, just with: some limitations on Hidan/Naruto's power, hopefully a bit more mystery about Hidan's past and how the whole 'Time-Travel' scenario occurred, etc. Again, sorry this took so long but I've never really tried to write anything of this length before and I personally find it distinctly difficult to stick to the one idea. Hope this update/re-write helps.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Naruto.

SUMMARY: When Naruto wakes up in some alternate timeline decades before he's born, he is obviously confused. Of course, when he realises he's also living in someone else's body as well, naturally, there aren't even words to describe how he feels. AU, Time travel, OOC-ness... M-rated for screaming, swearing and over-the-top violence. Reader discretion is advised.

CONTENT ADVISORY: Contains 'bad words' and descriptions depicting and/or advocating suicide, violence, sadomasochism, sexual activity in a violent context, murder, morbid violence, use of alcohol, homosexuality, more violence, voyeurism, revenge, maiming, gouging, skewering, the undermining of authority figures, lawlessness and human rights violations and/or atrocities…

EXPOSURE WARNING: Exposure to content for extended periods of time and/or during formative years in children (i.e. individuals under the age of 18) may cause delusions, hallucinations, decreases in cognitive and objective reasoning, and—in extreme cases—pathological disorders, hatred, violence, bigotry and (surprise, surprise) more violence again.

You have been warned!

Enjoy.

PROLOGUE
Black Holes And Revelations

Sometimes knowing something doesn't change can be comforting, Naruto decided.

Eyes closed, lying flat on his back, he instantly knew where he was. He could feel the murky water at his back as he floated on its liquid surface in silence; could smell the acrid salty scent of the sea and the familiar woody odours of the forest. So at peace was the usually energetic jinchuuriki, he could swear he heard the slow pounding of his heartbeat—even over his own gentle breathing and the incessant drip-drip-drip of water off in the distance. The endless stray droplets echoed just as they always had; their constancy as they penetrated the vast expanse of water covering the floor of the large cavern just another reassurance that, no matter how insane the outside world got, Naruto's mind was still the same as always…

Sadly, this peace could not last forever.

Already remembering in vivid detail exactly which events had preceded this impromptu trip into his own mind, Naruto in turn noted a rare sense of numbness entering his body. He felt nothing as his thoughts caught up with his current predicament and processed the fact that he had, in all likelihood, just died. Given this potentially unpleasant information, it may not have seemed like something to be pleased about but for a shinobi (someone who should at all times know where he was and how he got there according to one Kakashi Hatake) it was everything. So it was with duel dread and relief that Naruto could still remember, quite vividly mind you, his last days on this earth.

How he'd entered the war with Killer Bee after facing down the fourth Raikage; fought off Edō Tensai zombie-ninjas and Zetsu-clone tree-people alike by the droves before finally coming upon the resurrected forms of the other jinchuuriki with Bee, Kakashi, Gai and later Kurama at his side. The ensuing battle between the still-living duo of jinchuuriki and their enslaved bijuu counterparts raged for what felt like hours, only to end when Naruto managed to free and befriend those aforementioned bijuu. He'd then descended into that shared psychedelic dream-world, learnt the names of the bijuu and their respective jinchuuriki. He even managed to bump fists with Son Goku, and later Shukaku and Matatabi respectively, before they and the rest of the tailed beasts were forcibly dragged away from the mindscape and afterwards, the battlefield… only to be shoved back inside that Sage-be-damned statue! This signalled the beginning of the end as far as Naruto was concerned when another battle with Tobi—who they'd since found out was actually Obito Uchiha, Kakashi's (mentally reta-I mean, 'afflicted') former supposed-to-be-dead teammate—broke out. By the time the Edō Tensai-ed Madara Uchiha finally bothered to show up; Naruto, Bee, Kakashi and Gai were all just about dead on their feet.

Understandably, everything kind of snowballed from there.

Naruto with the help of the newly befriended nine-tailed fox, Kurama, attempted to attack first the resurrected Uchiha and later the still living—and much more annoying, he later decided—Uchiha. However, to the dismay of both beast and its host, every attempted tactic inevitably failed. Naruto could remember the growing sense of hopelessness that plagued him as Kakashi and Gai were batted away like flies while Bee's wound from his earlier skirmish with Kokuo, the five tails, began to reopen and pain him greatly.

When Gai used the Final Inner Gate of Death to become 'Night Gai' and took out Obito, it was both a relief and a tragedy considering Gai later died due to the strain the technique had on the spandex-wearing jonin's body...

After that, Naruto had thrown himself at Madara, tossing everything from Rasenshurikens to Tailed Beast Bombs at the bastard in some vain attempt to at least pin the monster down. In return, the Uchiha patriarch shrugged it all off and came at Naruto like an unstoppable force of nature. It was after that bloody battle that Naruto, completely exhausted and without an inch of his body that didn't scream out in pain, finally collapsed. However, even in his exhausted state, he had been conscious enough to feel Kakashi pick him up and flee the battlefield, all the while muttering something about not dying yet.

Naruto had been sent back through to Konohagakure as far as he could tell and was for all he knew dying with all the technical mumbo-jumbo medical terms he had people screaming at him. After that he sort of floated in and out of consciousness for awhile before the details got a little fuzzy. He knew that he somehow ended up in a medical tent set up deep in the Nara Forest, one of the remaining outer regions of Konoha that hadn't been as badly affected by Pein/Nagato's earlier invasion on Konoha. After that, Naruto could only recall vague voices muttering more rubbish words he couldn't for the life of him ever hope to comprehend. The last thing he could at least in part recollect was a blood-curdling scream and a loud BANG followed by a strange tingling sensation all over his body…

"YOU!"

It was Kurama's sudden screams of fury that finally broke Naruto from his musings. Pushing the mental manifestation of his body up into a crouched position on the water—never noticing that the lightning-like speed he used in the manoeuvre should have been beyond his capabilities without the use of Sage Mode—Naruto immediately turned his attention to the nine-tailed fox. The great creature was once again trapped behind the bars of its cage, its slitted red eyes filled with a fiery hatred as it clawed and attacked the interior of its prison.

Naruto in response to the bijuu's distress and rage spun on his heels, crouched into a defensive position so he'd be ready to intercept the apparent enemy should he/she/it decide to attack. As such, imagine his surprise when he saw… no one. Feeling confused, Naruto turned back around to the giant growling fox, about to tell it off for scaring him, when movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention.

However, it was not a person exactly as Naruto had expected. It was a reflection.

Mirrored on the water's surface was the image of a man who stood just a little under Ero-Sannin's height, the jinchuuriki estimated. He looked lean and well-muscled with smooth pale alabaster skin, long silky silver hair pulled back into a ponytail that cascaded down to his mid-back and distinctive purple eyes. Strangely enough, the man wore a black cloak with red lining and a high collar though from what Naruto could see he wore no shirt underneath, only dark pants. It reminded Naruto of the Akatsuki cloak just without the red cloud pattern on it.

Black shinobi sandals adorned the reflected stranger's feet, his ankles wrapped tightly with bandages for extra support, and around his neck was a round pendent with a triangle in the centre—a Jashin amulet? His finger nails were painted black with nail polish, Naruto noticed mindlessly, and on his back was what appeared to be a black and crimson Three-Bladed Scythe.

All together the man looked rather imposing and Naruto recognised him easily from Shikamaru's recollections, regardless of the slight variations in his appearance.

Hidan the Immortal, former Akatsuki member, stood there in all of his glory. He was alive and judging from the position of the reflection he was…

He was also standing exactly where Naruto should be.

Now, Naruto would be the first to admit that he wasn't exactly the sharpest kunai in the pouch. Even then however, it didn't take a genius to figure out that the reflection of a possibly younger Hidan no Fumetsu[1] now belonged to him. Looking down at himself to confirm the theory (whilst silently dreading the results), Naruto came face to face with a black and red cloak and an extra several inches of height, not to mention the ungodly amount of chakra—even by his standards—he finally noted circulating his new leaner body.

Trying to stay calm, Naruto decided to take a page out of Shikamaru's book and go about this logically… especially when he looked like an old enemy with Kurama only a few yards away, unaware that he was actually Naruto and not a crazy sadomasochistic psycho with wet dreams about mass murder. Shit. Okay, maybe it was time to go with the basics.

"Kurama, it's me! Naruto." Naruto interrupted the fox's ranting; noting absently that his voice had changed—deepened and warped—along with his appearance.

Kurama in the meantime was looking way too happy at the idea of bisecting him for Naruto's comfort though the pause in the bijuu's ranting gave Naruto some shred of hope for the future…

"HA!"

Or maybe he'd just spoken too soon.

"Yeah right; I wasn't born yesterday, you little shit! Now come over here so I can TEAR YOU TO SHREDS AND PISS ON THE PIECES!" Kurama bellowed at the top of its lungs, the harsh sound creating ripples in the watery surface they both stood upon.

"No, I am Naruto." The jinchuuriki vehemently disagreed. "I don't know how but I kind of look like Hidan I think. I'm not him though. I'm Naruto Uzumaki."

"…Tell me something only Naruto would know." Kurama replied cautiously after a moment of painful silence.

"Er, Mizuki-teme first told me about you when I was twelve after he tried to trick me into stealing the Forbidden Scroll-"

"You mean he succeeded in duping you into doing something that was so obviously stupid and a trap even an idiot would have known something was up and-"

"Okay, yes, yes, I'm an idiot. We get it." Naruto grumbled before sternly reminding himself to stay on track. "Um, what else is there? Oh, I've got it! The names of the nine bijuu are Shukaku, Matatabi, Isobu, Son Goku, Kokuo, Saiken, Chomei, Gyuki and then yours is Kurama. And you call the Rikkudo Sannin 'Old Man' kind of like I do with Old Man Third Hokage and that Old Geezer of a Tsuchikage. Although, technically–"

"Okay, I get it. Damn, even that Akatsuki bastard couldn't possibly be as annoying as you are!" Kurama grumbled, though Naruto privately liked to think that the fox looked a little bit sheepish at having been proven wrong and was trying to cover it up.

"So, any ideas of how or why I look like Hidan?" Naruto asked the bijuu.

"No... though it might have something to do with the fact that we aren't in Konoha anymore." Kurama replied.

"Wait, what! What do you mean we're not in Konoha anymore? How can you tell?" Naruto demanded.

"Simple. Unlike you, I still have access to your outward senses and I cannot feel a single familiar chakra system. So, given your obvious change of identity and a likelihood of having been dumped in a place lacking in familiar life forms for a few miles in any direction, my theory is that we have either, A) been forcibly secreted away to yet another secluded island-turtle, B) been trapped in a rather elaborate genjutsu near the power of Tsukuyomi, C) lost our damn minds or D) travelled through the very fabric of space and time into another prior timeline… or maybe it's an alternate universe. You never know with those sorts of things." The giant fox finished with a slight shrug of it's gargantuan shoulders, its very serious tone of voice leaving Naruto at a bit of a loss. "My money's on option D."

"Time travel? Alternate universes?"

Naruto wouldn't admit to squeaking the questions out through his frozen lips. Nope. Not even under the pain of death.

"Possible alternate universes," Kurama corrected the former blonde though how it knew all of this was beyond Naruto by this point.

"Holy shit, you're serious! How would time travel even work? What the hell does that mean? Am I stuck like this? Am I gonna die?!" Naruto exclaimed in an ever growing panic. His new voice only sounded strange and foreign to his ears though, further increasing his anxiety.

"Relax, brat! It's much simpler than that and not nearly as fatal as you're obviously thinking… idiot." The bijuu grumbled, "You were probably somehow sent back in time, to what period we do not know yet and for what purpose we, again, do not know. Luckily for you, I can at least somewhat figure out some of the logistics of time travel and what you should expect." Kurama said, attempting to placate the still panicking ninja.

"Okay, but how will this affect me?" An only slightly calmer Naruto asked.

"Finally, an intelligent question!" Kurama exclaimed only to receive a rather sour look from its now silver-haired host. "Anyway," The bijuu continued on blithely, all the while ignoring Naruto's chronic pouting, "since you've in all likelihood merged with, er, Ha-… Hubert? Hernandez? No, er, 'Hidan' was his name, right? Well… anyway since you've merged with… Hidan, it's probable that you've taken up his place in history and whatever future we knew is now null and void—that's where the possible alternate universe thing comes in. Basically it means that Naruto Uzumaki as we knew him will not be born in order to avoid a paradox. In fact, you're becoming Hidan and Naruto as far as reality is concerned is probably the only reason you and I currently exist as more than figments of the imagination or mindless vegetables or something along those lines."

"Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you here, brat. If you look like that, it's very likely that you will gain a few… personality traits that were particularly strong in Hidan. So, off the top of my head, it's probably safe to say that you're going to be a little more… excessively, overbearingly violent. You'll probably swear a lot too if we take into account what that Shadow kid and his team told you." Kurama explained.

"What? But I don't swear that much and I'm not that violent… by shinobi standards at least. I mean, I don't think I've even really killed anyone for no good reason or anything." Naruto frowned. He wasn't sure he'd technically killed anyone directly at all actually…

"Alright kid, how about you think about it like this then? You as in 'Naruto' probably wouldn't act like that but as Hidan… You'll be more like him personality wise and it's likely you'll pick up some of his bad habits so you'll probably swear. Hell, you could very well become a mass murdering psychopath given the right circumstances and you could end up killing a lot of people because that was such an integral part of Hidan's being! Of course we won't know to what extent Hidan's personality and any possible memories you could gain will affect you. All we can do is take note of the changes and learn to make them work for us." Kurama explained.

"Alright, I get it." Naruto sighed, unhappy but grudgingly accepting of the possible changes. There wasn't anything he could do about it so there was no use fussing over it. "What else is there? What about the timeline? You mentioned paradoxes before…" Naruto added.

"Well, the timeline isn't as rigid as most people would like to think but since we're both here and we don't remember ever hearing anything about it in our own timeline, I'd say that the timeline we were in has been wiped from existence or disconnected from the timeline we currently occupy. That means we have a fresh start beginning at wherever we are now." Kurama said before letting out a loud sigh, looking troubled. "Naruto, some things in history will have to happen like my attack on Konoha or the shinobi wars. Those sorts of world-altering events are probably fixed into the timeline to an extent and some of these fixed points will involve you and you, as Hidan, will have to let them play out, maybe even participate. You may not be aware of it at the time: you may do something that makes complete sense one day but at any other time it would be unthinkable. For example, Hidan may have to be a missing-nin at some point for another major event to occur so the universe will conspire to somehow make you a missing-nin… somehow. Just do me a favour and remember that not everything is your fault."

Naruto stared up at his friend, his brow furrowed as he thought over what the powerful bijuu had told him. And though he didn't like it, again, what was there that he could do about it? If what Kurama said was true, then this was nature's way of keeping balance and even if he didn't like it, nor did he want to admit it, Naruto knew that death was a natural process and everyone had to die somehow in some way. He couldn't truly prevent all of the world's tragedies, as much as he wished otherwise.

"Okay," Naruto finally nodded in acceptance.

"What?!" Kurama near-shrieked in shock, obviously confused by Naruto's sudden shift in attitude.

"I understand that most of the time things just aren't in my control. What is in my control is this new future. Maybe we can stop the fourth war or at least win it quicker this time. We could destroy Akatsuki or stop Orochimaru. I could save Sasuke… there are so many possibilities." Naruto said in a rush, his mind racing. "I know that I'll change a little but if the major parts of Hidan are a part of me now, then shouldn't the most important parts of Naruto stay the same too?"

"Yes," Kurama nodded carefully, seeing the logic in this idea, "I agree with your reasoning."

"So what do I do now then Kurama?" Naruto asked wanting to know what was first on the agenda.

"First on our list of things to do should be training, testing the limits of our power and then finding out when and where we are… Maybe not in that order… I don't know. We should stick as close to Hidan's identity as possible though; that means you will use his name, his jutsu and his weapons. Obviously we'll adjust any fighting styles or techniques to suit 'Naruto' too and vice versa until we won't be too suspicious. Just don't go around using things like Rasengan until we can figure out a way to explain them to anyone curious enough to ask." Kurama replied sagely.

"Okay, you've got it Kurama!" Naruto grinned.

"Good, now wake up brat." Kurama smiled, almost feral, in return.

ADDITIONAL END-NOTES:

[1] "Hidan no Fumetsu" (lit. meaning 'Scarlet bullets of immortality') is the best I could get out of Google Translate when I put in Hidan the Immortal or at least some variation of that. I don't speak Japanese so read it as Hidan the Immortal or something along those lines anyway.