On the exact same day that he had gone to the past in a previous timeline, Naruto smiled as he looked down over the crowd that had gathered for his inauguration. He'd sworn up and down that he would become Hokage for almost as long as he could remember, and now he'd finally done it! Thanks to the fact that Tsunade had told the Sandaime exactly where he could shove the hat and how when she returned to Konoha a second time, he was Godaime Hokage, meaning that his face would be on the Hokage Monument next to that of his father, and that Gaara couldn't tease him for being one ordinal number lower than him on the Kage count. Turning away from the balcony and the cheering crowd, he motioned for his Council of Advisors to follow him.

Though it was probably stupid of him, he'd decided to follow tradition and make his teammates his Advisors. Sai still had absolutely no idea why he had been invited to stand there alongside Sasuke and Sakura, seeing as he'd only subbed on the team for a week of D-ranks while Sakura was out with the flu in this timeline. Upon first meeting his would-have-been future replacement, Sasuke had scowled and stormed off. A bit of prying when he had attempted to learn the reason for this reaction had netted a heated comment of "I was going to be replaced by someone who looks like me with a different haircut!". Deciding that it would be best that Sasuke not know considering, he didn't mention Sakura and Ino's fights over Sai in his former timeline.

"So, are you ready for the party?" he asked Sasuke who was still a little sore over Sai's presence.

"Of course I am!" Sasuke replied, turning to follow him inside.

Several hours later, after a great deal of partying during which he'd received a number of congratulatory handshakes and pats on the back and a few propositions from people of both sexes, a warm and happy Naruto who had drunk practically everyone but the Godaime Kazekage under the table returned to the Tower for his first night there as Hokage. Crawling into the bed that he'd ordered prior to moving in and had delivered shortly before the massive feast which had put most of the village's catering companies in the black for the rest of the year at the very least that had celebrated Konoha's survival as much as it did his ascension, he closed his eyes and went to sleep. As he slept, he dreamt that he was standing in front of a familiar cage that shouldn't have been there since Kurama had been given different accommodations thanks to a series of unusual circumstances that had allowed him to meet his mother as well as re-meet his father who had received a punch to the nose this time instead of a punch to the gut.

Thought you could leave me to rot in the future did you? Kurama rumbled in a tone that Naruto hadn't heard in a good while. Well, guess what brat. That wasn't the only Time Travel Jutsu I know, just the least time consuming one.

After making that somewhat ominous statement, Kurama started spinning around in circles as if he were chasing his tails. With each revolution, he increased his speed, going faster and faster until he was only a reddish-orange blur. After about fifteen minutes of spinning which had begun to make the blond Godaime Hokage feel ill just watching, there was a bright flash.

Naruto woke up.

Upon smelling the faintly moldy pillow he'd gotten rid of ages ago, he sat up faster than what was normally humanly possible. Looking around, he found that he was in his apartment, but there were a few things missing, namely a couple of his plants. He brought his hands up to rub his eyes in disbelief. Upon catching sight of his hands, he screamed.

They were tiny!

"It's not fair!" he yelled when he finally stopped screaming.

It wasn't fair. He'd defeated the bad guys, and he was supposed to be living out his Happily Ever After as Hokage as his reward. Unless this was a bad dream, he would be forced to live through the days when he was all alone and just about everyone hated him instead.

"Please be a bad dream. Please be a bad dream. Please be a bad dream." he chanted as he curled up into a little ball in the corner.

He'd put up with people finding him like this, if only he'd wake up in his new room in the Hokage Tower where he belonged in the morning.

Here goes nothing. Uchiha Sasuke thought as he poured enough Chakra to cause himself to pass out into the seal he'd just completed and quickly placed it on himself before the darkness of unconsciousness took him.

He snapped awake seemingly moments later and grinned evilly when he saw the date on the calendar that was tacked to the wall of his childhood bedroom. The incomplete seal he'd found when he'd gone scrounging around one of the storerooms of the Hokage Tower rather than attend a boring budgetary meeting where he would've been stuck standing behind an increasingly bored Hokage who had to be prevented from nodding off by Sakura had worked! Now he could dick around all he wanted without that massive weight called Responsibility trying to crush him every hour of the day.

He wasn't even twenty yet, and he had been stuck doing old man stuff instead of going on missions just because he'd liked the title of Advisor to the Hokage. At least he didn't have to do all the paperwork poor Naruto was stuck with...

Aside from some crappy Academy assignments that he'd be able to blow through in about a minute, he didn't have to do any paperwork whatsoever anymore now that he was in the past.

Heading downstairs as early morning sunlight streamed through the windows of the house, he smiled when he encountered Itachi in the kitchen. After years of therapy, he had managed to get a handle on his complicated relationship with his brother who had died before he could say everything he had wanted to say to the man who had dominated his life practically since the instant he was born. Though he hadn't noticed it on that day all those years ago, Itachi was looking seriously distraught in the almost serene way that only Itachi could.

"Nii-san!" he said, happy to see his brother alive in front of him where he could see, hear, touch, and talk to him.

"Yes Sasuke?" Itachi replied, looking as if he were going to put him off with another forehead poke.

"Well, uh, there's something I've wanted to say to you for a long time..." he started, happy to have this chance to speak with his brother who had been dead the last time he'd seen him, having given his life to protect him in the battle against Madara.

"Yes?" Itachi said, tilting his head curiously, apparently having finally noticed that there was something "off" about the situation.

"Well, it took me a long while to get over their deaths, but once I did so I started remembering all the mean shit they said and did to me since I wasn't as good as you and didn't really fit in, and how dad only started paying attention to me after he'd decided to write you off, and what I wanted to say was...They've already signed their death warrants so, can I help you kill them?" he asked, looking up at his brother hopefully.

The therapists had said that bonding activities were necessary for a healthy relationship, and what better bonding activity than taking out their clan "for the sake of the village" together...

It wasn't like he was going to be getting back at his relatives for their little passive-agressive put-downs, and all of those times they'd made him feel like shit every time they pointed out that Itachi had graduated at seven and asked him how old he was despite the fact they got invited to his birthday party every year. Not at all.

Neji smiled as he looked down at his hands. It had been a toss-up whether it would be his uncle or his career that would kill him, and the answer had been neither. In the end, his uncle had persuaded the Hokage to induct him into the ANBU, and during a mission that was a very long ways away from Konoha he had discovered a cave that had been filled with carvings that could only be revealed by the Byakugan. After using his family's ancient and apparently lost until then time-travel jutsu, he had found himself in the past.

He knew exactly what he was going to do now that he was here. He was going to get himself a yellow and green tracksuit, then he was going to buy about five pounds of green glitter, some superglue, ten yards of ninja wire, and a cat.

The best part of it all was that his uncle wouldn't be on guard, and wouldn't know what the hell had hit him.

Akatsuchi frowned. The last thing he remembered before waking up in his old apartment which he'd moved out of years ago because the pipes in the apartment upstairs had burst and flooded him out was going to the bar for some drinks to celebrate Kurotsuchi's ascension to Yondaime Tsuchikage. Upon further exploration of his surroundings, he found that his village pretty much looked the same as it always did for practically as long as he could remember, but he had a feeling that something was wrong. After wandering around for a while, he began to wonder if he was dead. Aside from a Genjutsu that he hadn't managed to dispel no matter how many discreet attempts he'd made, it was the only explanation he could find for why he was passing a sizable number of people that he knew for a fact were dead. Nervously skirting past Han who had a mercurial temper at times, he made his way to the gates, planning on going for a walk in the mountains in order to clear his head and attempt to figure out why being dead felt just like being alive.

As he made his way through the village, he passed a familiar looking blond-haired, blue-eyed shrimp. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear that the kid was Deidara.

"Hey Akatsuchi-san!" the kid called out to him.

The kid sounded like Deidara as well.

"Hey! Say hello dammit! Un!" the kid yelled, racing after him.

The kid really sounded like Deidara, which was completely impossible, since Deidara was a consultant for a demolition company the last time he saw him. The job had been ideal for the former missing-nin and Akatsuki member because he got to blow stuff up and got paid for it. He even got audiences for some of his better demolitions, so there was less blowing up of what people didn't want blown up, and less running and screaming on the part of the civilians who actually got to enjoy his "art shows".

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, un!" the kid yelled before grabbing his arm with a hand that bit him.

It was Deidara. But, why was he so small?

"What's this, un?" a grizzled and sunworn old man with long white hair asked as something skittered to the ground by his feet.

The Hidden Continent's foremost demolition expert reached down and picked up the strange object that had gone flying from his latest work of art which was going to clear the way for a rather grand shopping center.

"This wasn't part of the hillside, un." he said as he examined the rock with the unusual glyphs on it, noticing that it didn't taste the same to his hand as the local rock he'd had an unfortunate taste of earlier when he hadn't gotten clear fast enough.

That had been the third time he'd kissed the ground in the last month. He wasn't getting any younger, and his job was for the young...

The old man blinked. A moment ago, he was standing at the future site of the new Fire Country Mall, and now he was standing in the middle of the Iwagakure of his childhood which completely lacked the steel and glass skyscrapers that were de rigueur for the big five ninja "villages" in this day and age.

The man blinked again. His surroundings didn't vanish, nor did the person standing in front of him. The person who had died of a heart attack at Fifty-Seven a few decades earlier. The person who was as hale and hearty and young looking as he had remembered him being in his youth.

"So, what's next, un?" Deidara asked, wondering exactly when and how he'd died, since he didn't remember doing so.