Pairing: Naruto/Sakura/Hinata/Ino/Haku/Tayuya

Chapter One

Into the stomach of a God

Thunder cracked, and lightning illuminated the spartan cell, revealing the accumulated grime of a decade worth of isolation. The perpetual rain brought nothing but cold, as the heavens roared and the moon shifted, bathing a malnourished young man with much needed light. His harsh gulps came out as tangible wisps of air.

Once-blonde hair that shone with lustre had become a mockery of its former self; matted, uneven chunks caked with dried blood were all that was left. Cerulean eyes which once exuded feelings of love and hope were dulled beyond recognition. Uzumaki Naruto, heir apparent to the noble bloodline of Uzushiogakure and son to the Yondaime Hokage, slowly threaded his bony fingers together to sustain some semblance of warmth.

The once-tanned flesh of his shirtless body had taken on a greyish hue. Seared onto his skin were numerous black lines, intersecting and pulsating. To the uninitiated, they were incomprehensible scribbles, but to their owner, they were fūinjutsu, designed to keep him docile and subservient. The most prominent of his bindings could be found at the centre of his navel.

They were his greatest secret and his biggest burden.

For behind the Eight Trigram seal lay the most powerful of the Bijuū. The nine-tailed demon fox.

Ever since the fourth shinobi war had started, and the Uchiha regime had begun, life - if it could be called that - had gotten marginally better for the once blonde-haired ninja, but not by much. While he could relax due to the lack of inmates hounding him about his father, the world outside the prison was falling to darkness, leaving the castle as one of the last bastions of light. The Kyuubi, or as he liked to mockingly call it, his prisoner, found enjoyment in his turmoil as it supplanted the delicate connection tying them together.

A few days from now would mark his eleventh year within the castle's walls, one year more than his last prison. It galled him to think of how Konoha preached ideas of teamwork, loyalty and friendship while he'd obeyed orders like a loyal Konoha ninja, only to be callously betrayed. What a bunch of hypocrites!

He had made a grievous error in stealing the Scroll of Sealing. But he had been desperate. It wasn't fair being failed for asinine things outside of his control. It wasn't his fault his chakra reserves were more than all his classmates combined. Self-reflection in his imposed exile revealed facts Konoha had kept hidden from him.

To this day it eluded his understanding. As a ninja, he should not have fallen underneath the jurisdiction of the civilian council. The official reason for his conviction was that his multiple genin exam failures had rendered him a civilian, therefore giving them the power to send him to the hellhole he now resided in.

His brother, Menma Uzumaki, was believed to have been the saviour of Konoha and the coveted child of prophecy, but Naruto knew that wasn't true, the Kyuubi had told him as much. He also knew the Sandaime Hokage knew it wasn't true.

For some reason, the Hokage really didn't like him. When the scroll of sealing had been stolen in his short tenure as an aspiring ninja, and Hinata killed, Sarutobi had convinced Konoha that Naruto was the culprit of both crimes.

Everyone in the Elemental Nations, even his fellow classmates, blamed him - though it's not as if they'd ever liked him in the first place. Ever since he could remember, no-one had liked him much. In his four years as an academy student he'd never made a single friend. The teachers all hated him because of the burden he'd held, and the students all hated him on principle. The general populace of Konoha despised him for his occasional pranks and general sunny disposition, and his brother hated him because… he didn't know.

So instead of anyone stepping forward to defend him, instead of a trial, he'd been shipped off to Hōzuki Castle, beseeching and imploring for someone, anyone, to believe him. No one had.

The memory of the jeers from the crowd, the palpable disgust oozing from the shinobis' faces, and the smug smirk of his brother as he was bound in fetters, had fuelled his nightmares for years. The Kyuubi took special delight in forcing him to review that day in all its glory. Until he stopped caring what Konoha thought of him, stopped desiring to seek their recognition and respect. Stopped dreaming of becoming Hokage.

Then the Juubi had woken up from its induced slumber due to the actions of a newly risen Madara Uchiha nine years into his captivity, and all hell broke loose inside his seal.

The fox, in a fit of pique, sent all of its corrosive chakra through the gaps of his seal, and in doing so, broke the distinction keeping them as separate entities. Naruto Uzumaki merged with the Kyuubi no Kitsune.

Their insubstantial mental link was bolstered by raging, hateful Bijuū chakra, giving way to mental clarity on a level not seen since before the time of the Sage.

He'd made as much use of the connection as he could, sifting through the malevolent beast's head and wrestling with the knowledge its previous containers had amassed over their long lives. Even with all the knowledge at his disposal, Naruto could never hope to use it. The formula branded onto his skin subjected him to chakra deprivation. He had chakra in abundance but moulding it into shape was impossible on pain of a fiery death.

The Kyuubi found his rummaging a nuisance, as though he was a gnat to be swatted. The fox would grab the apparition of his will within their shared metaphysical realm, subjugate it, and show him memories he had no right in seeing. For every worthwhile memory he experienced, he witnessed five worthless ones in their place.

Years ago, he had even seen the Uzumaki matriarch reduced to a drooling mess by the Shodaime Hokage's wood release.

The most prominent of the nine Bijuū would do this often. Just when Naruto thought he'd scored jackpot with a memory containing obscure fūinjutsu knowledge, development of Konoha's political idiosyncrasies, or lost kenjutsu forms, he'd be redirected to the time his mother and father were brutally killed.

He was reaching his limit; the degradation of his seal was evident without a constant source of chakra feedback looping through the link and filtering the corrosive properties of Kurama's chakra. The darkness of his cell seemed to be getting closer every day.

His musings were interrupted as bright, unyielding light brightened his cell. Eyes unaccustomed to the light blinked as tears began to sting and pain the blonde, penetrating through the haze of Naruto's mind. Someone was here. That wasn't normal. No-one ever entered his cell. Ever.

"Uzumaki, you're to come with us. Mui-sama commands your presence."

The unforgiving cold was invaded by warmth. That also wasn't normal.

Lightning coalesced into shape as it struck Naruto's immobile body, incurring nary a flinch. "He's out of it. Get him up."

Pain shot through the entirety of his body as he was gripped from the shackles attached to his hands. It wasn't the first time someone had touched him in the last ten years. It was however the first time someone had touched him with some modicum of gentleness.

Lifted to a standing position, and then frog-marched out the door when his legs failed him, Naruto tried to move under his own power - and was dragged when unable. He wasn't given a moment of respite, as he was pulled alongside his escort. Every atrophied muscle in his body protested the movement, but there was nothing he could do to slow them, his pleas fell on deaf ears - And so Naruto Uzumaki, the Child-Of-Prophecy, walked out of his cell, and further out of the depths of Hōzuki Castle.

— DC & SK: SWTPE —

"Prisoner number 8965," said a solemn sounding voice.

Naruto still couldn't see, the blindfold atop his eyes restricting his vision completely, preventing him from distinguishing the voice's location.

"Experiment attempt 48," the voice continued.

Light suddenly flooded Naruto's world. The blindfold melted away as chakra was applied to the fabric. Naruto blinked rapidly.

A tall man stood meters away from him, cold penetrating gaze never leaving his form. In front of him was a sight that made his underused eyes widen in shock.

'The Ultimate Bliss, a box interwoven with a tremendous amount of chakra all neatly tucked inside its gap, from which legend said a wish could be granted to the user who managed to open it.' Mito herself had sanctioned its sealing preservation.

It was the Box of Paradise.

"Begin the transfer."

With nary a sound, the seal restricting his chakra melted away; bluish wisps began to ooze from his chakra points, all greedily getting sucked into the singularity of the pulsating box.

"Shiki Fūjin…" Naruto grinned for the first time in years, showing chipped and yellowed teeth. "For neither can live whilst the other survives." He was about to die, but he knew this was something the Kyuubi did not want, as with his death, the fox would likely follow.

His chakra was nearly empty now, as red intermixed with the diminishing blue. Suddenly, terror flooded his mind, but the raw, primal emotion wasn't his own.

A bestial roar escaped his lips, as his eyes turned to slits, his nails sharpened, an ethereal tail of frothing chakra grew out of his back - but by then, he could feel it was too late. Before the chains keeping him in place could be destroyed by his possessed body, darkness overtook him. The last vestiges of his chakra plunged into the box, and the transfer was complete.

— DC & SK: SWTPE —

Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto opened his eyes. Surprisingly, they showed a degree of clarity he'd not have expected from his decade long stint in prison. All the aches and pains his body had once suffered had seemingly been cleansed from him, as if they'd been a ruined painting washed away by a dissatisfied artist.

He rose from the ground in which he'd laid with a grace that should have been impossible. Assessing his surroundings, he was surrounded by endless white stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Greetings, mortal."

"Greetings?" His voice called out, everywhere and nowhere at once.

Hanging before him was a being straight out of a nightmare. Golden black eyes were obscured by a curtain of tresses, bleached of all colour, from which two horns of crimson peaked from. Its skin was pallid, uncomfortably stretched around its hellish visage, emaciated and exposed beneath the robe A dagger was clenched firmly between its jagged teeth, its lips pulled back in a ghastly grin. He wanted to escape the creature before him, to cast it out of his thoughts and memories, but there could be no denying it.

Shinigami.

"You're… The Shinigami?"

He shuddered as the creature answered his reply inside his head, completely bypassing the mental fortifications he'd erected from the knowledge he had soaked from the Kyuubi.

"The Elemental Nations as you once knew them are coming to an end." The Reaper's voice cut through Naruto's concentration, like fingernails on chalkboard. Its every word stirred pain behind his temples. The molten gold in the black of the reaper's eyes became incandescent as Naruto tried to squint the pain away, boring into him more deeply than any byakugan, trapping his gaze despite the growing agony. "We need to talk."

A tear broke from the corner of his eye - not entirely because of the pain, but not apart from it, either - to cascade into the white below, where it was lost to distance and oblivion. The bitterness encompassed him like poison. It was bad enough that he had to live with the Kyuubi when he was alive. But now that he was dead, he'd be forced to fight it in the belly of the death god for eternity. "Does this talk have anything to do with the fact that I am inside your stomach?"

The dagger in the reaper's mouth slipped, clattering near the Reaper's feet as Naruto's tear had failed to do. A solid band of pain crossed his brow as wheezing, mocking laughter reverberated around the expanse. "I manipulated the pure realm for you to join me on the cusp of the impure realm."

The Reaper waited, as if it was expecting a response - though it received none. Naruto welcomed the relief regardless and used it to brace himself for when it would next speak. "Had I not blatantly interfered, you would be living in suspended animation for another thousand years."

"What…?" Naruto creaked open a bleary eye, not even remembering when he'd closed them. The words sunk in, and he regarded the collector of souls with mounting shock. "A thousand years…" Shock soon turned to despair. "I don't want to stay here for that long a duration! Let me die already. I've got nothing to live for anyway… Just devour my soul…"

The Shinigami stared at him for an age, as though weighing its decision. If it was going to consume his soul, it would have done so already. Instead its gaze became detached and distant - as though it was peering at something only it could see, deep beyond human sight into the abyss.

"I did not bring you here to claim your soul, mortal. There is an inequity and this needs to change."

From despair to anger in an instant, Naruto's body tensed, his stance shifting. Everything about him became as if a maelstrom, churning and agitated - and like his namesake, this anger would stop at nothing until all in its path had been consumed. "Fuck the inequity! I'm dead, there's nothing I can do anymore!" he exhaled, pulse racing.

Golden eyes flared as the Shinigami's gaze once more became steely-focused, scattering the storm of Naruto's anger in an instant. "There's everything you can do. And you will do it, human."

It wasn't a command, it was irrefutable fact.

"The Uchiha's genjutsu." The name Uchiha was said with disgust, the growling tone inciting vomit from Naruto. The Shinigami turned away from him. "With so many thralls under its spell there is no duality between existence and bereavement. Mortals do not fear death. They do not fear me. Nor are there any souls for me to reap. This is a transgression that I will not allow to pass." Ethereal robes billowed in the non-existent wind as the Reaper turned to face him again. Golden eyes wreathed in flame.

"Undo what has been wrought. This is a request I ask of you, fledgling." Without waiting for Naruto's response, unnaturally cold hands grasped the nape of his neck, and heaved. He wasn't able to even protest, only gag as his soul flowed from the Reaper's mouth, and into his own. Life poured back into his body; Sensation flooded his limbs, enabling him to move properly as he wished.

The words Naruto was going to speak died on his lips as the Shinigami spoke, guttural and commanding.

"I can not return the yang aspect of your tenant. I can, however, bestow the yin, bequeathed to me by your father." The deity kept him frozen and rigid while the long-forgotten knife discarded earlier, rose in accordance to the Reaper's will. The serrated edges glistened with ectoplasmic residue before the knife was unremorsefully plunged into the Reaper's own stomach, hilt deep. Gore spurted out the wound, wrenching Naruto's stomach from within.

"W-What the fuck!?"

Naruto gasped as the Shinigami dragged out a milky-white substance from its stomach. It wriggled in its grasp, desperately trying to escape. Without a word, the Reaper draped its essence across his prone form, imbuing his body in a warm glow from head to toe. The nine-tails chakra flared around his body, only to vanish in a nimbus of light. He could feel the thrum of his tenant's power just below the surface, waiting to be circulated. The only absence was the voice that followed it.

"Your chakra has been restored. Use it well on your mission, mortal."

Expletives erupted from his mouth. "I don't care if you're the Shinigami! I don't want this chakra and I don't want to do any fucking mission!"

The Shinigami's sunken gaze captured Naruto's in their depth. The sheer intensity of its stare, the sudden ice in its expression, was enough to render the blonde mute. Nothing moved. Nothing at all. Except the rise and fall of Naruto's chest.

And then after an eternity of silence, the Reaper spoke with voice dark as sin and eyes cold as the iciest tundra, "I'm giving you the opportunity to go back and change it all. Cease your incessant whining."

Naruto lurched, eyes widening. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Direct divine intervention to change his shit life. It sounded too good to be true. His eyes narrowed. "Isn't it a bit too late?" he said, a hopeful shade of cheekiness returning to his voice. "I'm already dead."

The Reaper gave him a flat stare. "I govern the dead, mortal. I want you to kill Madara Uchiha and his contemporaries, to alter reality itself. Your wretched brother's actions worsened the timeline in ways your mind is not equipped to handle. You are the key to undo it all."

"My brother?"

"Yes. Your brother, the supposed child-of-prophecy, who once stood where you stand now, taking on an insurmountable task and failing abysmally."

"My brother was sent back in time? But Mito's formulaic studies of the toad sage's prophecy was concluded to be false, there was no distinct correlation between the prophecy being made and for the recipient of that prophecy to then go on and save the world!"

"In desiring to save the world how he saw fit, your brother ended up being the harbinger of its destruction."

His eyes narrowed, and he looked up into the Shinigami's timeless gaze. "How?"

"The first time your brother died, he had managed to defeat the puppet leader of Madara's organisation. But arrogance is the folly of youth. Lethargic and energy spent, he was soon captured and his half of the fox demon was sealed, culminating in his death."

"Hang on a second, did you say first time!?"

"The second time your brother died was much sooner, the foolish boy divulged his future knowledge to the wrong people, the knowledge was rinsed from his noggin, and he was subsequently disposed of, by order of Danzo Shimura."

"Wow… He really messed up."

A rictus of a grin began to form across the Shinigami's face. "An apt way of putting it, mortal." The grin subsided. "Learn from his mistakes, do not attempt to arrange plots based on hindsight, the ripples in time will fracture continuity rendering your past knowledge ineffectual. You are to acquire every morsel of an advantage as you can, as quickly as possible with the power at your disposal, while exposing yourself to as little risk as possible. Whilst my powers are profound, I am unable to change what past me did to change the future. Even though I am sending you back, your brother has already gone back. That event that has become a fixture in time, so you're going to have to deal with another time traveller whose been gifted by my chakra. The life you know was in the third timeline, and when I send you back, it will be the fourth."

"If this is the third timeline, what happened to me in the first and second?"

"You never made it past infancy in the first timeline. The fox speared you through the heart. In the second timeline, Hiruzen Sarutobi convinced your brother to smear your reputation. You were sent to Hōzuki Castle, bereaved and broken."

Naruto stayed silent, anger and resentment bubbling across the surface, the nails of his hands digging into his palms as he clenched and unclenched them. It reflected a lot about a ninja when one of their students was a twisted individual. Orochimaru had seemingly gotten some of his more extreme attributes from his sensei.

"What's the plan?"

"I am going to send your soul back several years before you graduated the academy and you are going to kill Madara Uchiha and prevent his plan from occuring."

"What's to stop me from being sent to prison again?"

"You are going to save Hinata Hyuga."

Naruto looked thoughtful for a brief moment. "I have no problem with that but what's stopping the Hokage from manipulating events to send me back to Hōzuki Castle? And even if I manage to evade that particular event, he could engineer another one."

The Shinigami gleamed. "It seems you've inherited your father's intellect rather than your mother's brashness, mortal. From the memories you've obtained from not one Hokage's wife, but two, you have the tools necessary to gather political acclaim. You have the knowledge of Konoha's political and legal system - use it to your advantage, and claim your clan head status. With it, even the dictatorial regime won't be able to interfere with your business."

"But my mother was not of the main branch, I am not eligible to claim the clan headship."

"Foolish mortal. I am going to give you a gift. To contest the Hokage, you need to be above him on the totem pole. The Uzumaki helped found Konoha, with the title of clan head, you will be above conforming with the Hokage's wishes."

His eyes widened, "You're going to make me a clan head?"

"As the son of Minato Namikaze, you are well within your rights to inherit his estate, but he was not a part of any clan. The degree of relation between your mother and Mito Uzumaki isn't overt, and it's well within my power to alter your genealogy. Once I send you back, Naruto Namikaze will die, and from his ashes, Uzumaki will rise."

His resolve hardened, and the spark that he thought had long since fluttered and expired burnt once more. "I accept."

"Remember my warning, mortal: any advantage, as quickly as possible."

Naruto nodded, a foxy grin writ across his face. As the Shinigami waved him off, he could feel his soul tear from his body and transcend the plains of time and space.

It hurt.

It hurt a lot.

But throughout the pain, the sly grin did not leave the Uzumaki's face.

— DC & SK: SWTPE —

On a warm summer day, the birds chirped, and the hustle and bustle of Konoha's streets were at their peak.

In a dingy apartment underlooking the village, a young Naruto Uzumaki sat bolt upright. The Hokage Mountain barely in the fringes of view.

Across from his bed was a broken mirror, but from it he could see his reflection. Looking back at him was a face he didn't recognise. Red hair, and violet eyes. No whiskers.

"Well, fuck."

— End of Chapter One —

Special thanks to my beta's — Breathofmidnight & Strandshaper.

Inspiration: This story was inspired from Dodging Prison & Stealing Witches, by LeadVonE, the author has given me permission to write this.