Adrift in Time

by étienneofthewestwind

Hiruzen wondered if the universe enjoyed tormenting him. First extradimensional folk fall into his domain, and now, faces out of time. Hiruzen could only hope that this would heal, not further break a talented jōnin.

At least he could re-retire soon.

This was inspired by "Glimpse of a Shattered Soul", by SilasSolarius (posted as claw06 on ) and written with permission.

I only own a copy of the books and various discs.

The minute Kakashi entered the clearing, a red-haired menace pounced. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and ruffled his silver hair as she crowed. "Way to go brat!"

"Get off." Kakashi pulled out of Kushina's grasp as Rin joined them and Minato-sensei in the clearing. Kakashi liked his sensei's wife—most of the time—but Kakashi could do without her exuberance. Kushina just laughed and reached out to ruffle his hair again. Kakashi barely avoided her.

The next minute, Obito crashed out of the woods. He landed face-first in the grass. "Did I make it?" the black-haired Uchiha asked as he picked himself up.

"No, you're late." Kakashi ignored his sensei's look. A minute late was still late. And the idiot needed all the push he could get to further improve.

Obito grimaced at his watch. He looked about to say something when Rin put a hand on his shoulder. "Do we have a mission, Sensei?" Rin asked.

Minato-sensei nodded, his blond hair dulled in the dusk light. "We leave in the morning, but before we brief—"

"WE CELEBRATE!" Kushina exclaimed as she unfurled a storage scroll on the ground. A chakra spike later and the scent of cooked beef filled the air as five plates popped out of the scroll. Kakashi wondered how many ration tickets she had to save up to get beef under the current war restrictions.

"Celebrate?" Rin asked.

"Kakashi's been promoted to jōnin," Minato announced. "It's official tomorrow."

"Jōnin, huh?" Obito murmured a frown on his face as he stared at a tree.

"Got a problem with that, idiot?" Kakashi demanded.

Obito huffed and crossed his arms. "Just don't expect any gifts from me," he muttered.

Kakashi's fists clenched as he suppressed a flash of hurt. "Like I'd want anything a loser like you would come up with," he growled.

"Good," Obito turned and lifted his goggles to wipe at his eyes.

"Now, bo—" Minato-sensei's words cut off as sound and scents switched places in a roaring maelstrom. A swirl of colors filled Kakashi's vision. Up became down while down became left. He tasted tickles— Abruptly the world righted itself. Except he now stood in a clearly battle-damaged arena. Cooked and burnt human flesh clogged Kakashi's nose as he caught sight of Jiraiya, the third Hokage and several other leaf ninjas, ANBU members included in front of him. Around Kakashi stood Kushina, Kakashi's team, and a man who looked like Kakashi's father.

Kakashi stopped and then reversed his chakra flow. When the obvious genjutsu failed to dispel, he tried again, using the release hand sign. Still no change in surroundings. He saw and felt those around him making similar efforts.

Kushina turned to Minato-sensei. "Were you messing with space/time techniques?" she demanded.

"That was not what I meant when I described my first Hiraishin failure as a psychedelic trip," Minato-sensei said dryly. Kushina's eyes narrowed. "This wasn't me."

The Third turned toward them. "Wait a moment, please," he said as Jiraiya picked up a fallen shinobi. Kakashi could only see a tuft of silver hair and an arm in Konoha attire. "I'll explain in my office. For now, transform into non-descript shinobi." Kakashi gave himself all black attire and Rin's brown hair. Rin gave herself dark blue hair and hid her purple clan markings. Obito just hid his clan emblem. Minato-sensei and Kushina turned their hair brown with the standard jōnin uniform.

And the man who resembled Hatake Sakumo gave himself dirty-blond hair and bland features.

The Hokage then turned away and gave the standing leaf shinobi a speech about valiant fights and the tree growing stronger despite the losses. Kakashi only half-listened. He had never been summoned, but his experience did not match the descriptions. And not even Obito would have failed to notice a battle in the middle of the village.

Or the entire village, Kakashi amended as the Third led them through the village. Whole blocks lay in ruins, and the occasional sounds of fighting reached the group. They moved slowly, the Hokage taking his time to give orders to various shinobi—and to be seen alive and well, no doubt. As the Hokage conducted his business, Kakashi examined the fallen shinobi. Some were leaf, of course, but the enemy corpses… While Kakashi recognized the sand symbol, the quarter note on other headbands did not match any village he had ever heard of.

"Sensei," Obito spoke pointing off to the side.

"We'll worry about that later," Minato-sensei murmured as he gently pushed Obito's arm back down. "Right now, Konoha needs Lord Third's leadership and assurances more than we do."

Kakashi frowned and turned in the direction Obito had indicated. Through the clearing smoke and dust, the Hokage monument was visible in the now-midday light. Four faces looked down upon them. The extra face bore a strong resemblance to Minato-sensei.

Sakumo stepped back from the other time-displaced people standing to the left side of Sarutobi's office. He slumped against the wall. Concern over the village had boosted his energy, but that had faded and Sakumo felt the all-consuming lethargy of late come back. So, he let the wall support him as he took in the revelations.

Nineteen years.

Given his son's leap in height, Sakumo had quickly suspected that he had somehow been summoned through time as well as space. It took longer to realize the same held true for Kakashi and his teammates. And the weight of how long Konoha had aged felt surreal—as did this meeting. It made sense that Sarutobi sat working behind his desk with minimum attention on the group—the village had been attacked and relevant reports were coming in. It also made sense to have them all examined by the medic nin who initially looked over the shinobi that Jiraiya had laid on a futon at the other side of the office. An exam from a strange civilian that involved a stick waved at each of them, made less sense.

Obviously the stick was part of some sort of jutsu, as a floating scroll filled with rōmaji in response to each wave. When the rōmaji quit filling the scroll, the civilian tapped the scroll with the stick. It dropped into her hand. Sarutobi looked up expectantly. The woman absently brushed a strand of red hair behind her ear as she studied the contents. "Well, Hokage-sama," she said, a strange accent to her words. "Their base magic readings—"

"What's basu magicu?" Kakashi's Uchiha teammate asked.

The woman turned to him. "It's how your energy resonates with the world around you. In your case, it tells me that you are all native to this world and not one that holds alternate versions of the people in this one."

"Other mes exist?" Minato asked at the same time Kakashi said "Seriously?".

"It's a hypothesized possibility," the woman said off-handedly. She turned back to her report. A minute later, she sighed. "Unfortunately, they are all unmoored in the timestream—they have no connection to their native time. Normally for such a sizable jump, cutting their connection to now would return them to when they disappeared. In this case, there's no way to know when—if at all—they would reemerge."

"I see," Sarutobi said gravely from behind his desk. "Thank you, Prewett-san. You may go."

"That's it?" Kushina asked. "What about how we do get back?"

"I'm afraid you don't," the Hokage responded. He wrote something on the paper in front of him. "The means Prewett's people use to turn time cannot be recreated in this world. I know of no other technique to transverse time."

The weight of that statement hung in the room a moment before Minato cursed. "Our disappearance must have caused problems for the war. We were a day away from taking a critical mission."

"Won it fourteen years ago, Sensei," a voice mumbled. A second later, the same voice said "What!?"

Jiraiya helped the injured shinobi sit up, with murmured instructions to take it easy. Sakumo barely heard him as he stared at an adult, one-eyed version of his son. Face mask included.

A version of his son only seven years younger than Sakumo.

Sarutobi cleared his throat as he grabbed another report off the pile on his desk. "As I was about to say, you didn't disappear. You completed the Kannabi mission, though Obito fell in battle." The Uchiha flinched at Sarutobi's words. "All of you—"

The office doors opened, and three genin walked in: another Uchiha with spikey blue-black hair and a scowl on his face, blond boy in orange with the Uzumaki crest and a pug ninken in his arms, and a girl with her hitai-ate on her forehead, but tied under her short, pink hair, which gave it a feral look. She had white circles on her red outfit. The blonde looked about to say something, but the Uchiha nudged his attention to the adult Kakashi.

"—Bar Kakashi, have died by this time," Sarutobi continued as the genin gravitated to Kakashi's side. "Our Kakashi interfered with a jutsu intended to reanimate and control the dead. I believe it resulted in your being brought here, while another version of you stayed in the timestream."

"How can you be certain?" Kushina asked.

"It's the conclusion the evidence supports," Sarutobi said. "And while I'd normally be happy to discuss it in depth, I have to attend to the village's recovery. I'm assigning Kakashi and Genin Cell 7 to help you adjust to our time. You will stay secluded in the Hatake compound until—"

"No!" The Uchiha on Kakashi's team stepped forward. "Forgive me sir, but my grandmother has already lost my parents and uncle. I can't let her think I'm still gone."

The adult Kakashi sighed as he stood. "Obito, sit down." Kakashi walked to one of the chairs in front of the Hokage's desk.

"She deserves to know," The Uchiha ignored the adult Kakashi as he slid the chair over to him. "Please, sir!"

"Obito—"

"Damn it, Bakakashi!" Obito whirled, his fists clenched. "You don't what it's like to have someone depending on your return!"

"She's dead!" Kakashi snapped back. Obito's face paled as Sarutobi face palmed. Kakashi's eye widened. He cursed. "That's not how I should have told you. I didn't mean to—"

"She's gone? How?" Obito demanded.

Kakashi sighed. "There's no good way to tell you this, but five years ago your whole clan, except for Sasuke here, was massacred by their star prodigy before he fled the village."

Obito found himself sitting in the chair. His elbows rested on his knees as he stared at the floor. Kakashi—the one with a voice too deep and hands too large—stood by his side and talked him through deep breaths. Minato came to his other side. "Did you have to dump the massacre on him too, kid?" a voice said from across the room. "Couldn't you give him a day or two to adjust?"

"And what, Jiraiya?" Kakashi's voice snapped back in his ear. "Lie so he could have the shock of her death twice?"

"You could have neglected to mention that anyone else had been killed."

One of the genin scoffed. "With all the civies and shinobi that are gaga over Sasuke as the last Uchiha? He could've found out on our way to the compound."

"How's it even possible?" Obito croaked as the pink-haired kunoichi hissed at her teammate. "Surely some would have missions, and the commotion would draw attention. Get enough people, and even the most talented shinobi will fall."

"It is unusual, but no Uchiha were out of the village," the Hokage said grimly. "Most of the clan were slaughtered in their sleep, and we believe a genjutsu powerful enough to overcome the Sharingan was used for the rest."

"And that's it?" Obito barely recognized his voice as he looked up at the Hokage. "A whole clan gone, and no one noticed it happening?" Obito clenched his fists, his nails digging painfully into his palms.

"I'm afraid so," the Hokage said gravely. "Itachi clearly planned his strike—"

Kushina gasped as Obito's blood ran cold. "Not Mikoto's boy!" Kushina exclaimed.

"I babysat that brat last week!" Obito exploded. He stood and paced restlessly as pressure built back up in his chest. "He said he was sick of clansmen coming back dead! He—ARRR!" Obito turned and leaped out the window. He sprinted off the minute he hit the ground, heedless of where in the night he went.