Naruto didn't know what had happened. Last night he'd gone to bed in his apartment, and this morning he had woken up in a very comfortable bed in a room he didn't recognize. A very nice orange room that had walls that were decorated with dozens upon dozens of pictures. Curious, he got out of bed in order to examine the pictures closer to get an idea of where he was and who it was who had him. He had a sinking feeling that it might not be for a good reason, because nobody he knew would ever put him in a nice bed.

At least he tried to get out of bed. The second his feet touched the floor, he had practically tripped over them and had nearly gone down in a tangle of limbs. As he tried to get himself sorted, he noticed that his legs seemed longer, and the feet poking out of the rather nice pyjamas that he'd been wearing were far larger than he was used to. Confused, he began examining his body in more detail and noted that it was much larger and more developed than it had been when he had gone to bed the night before. It had almost been as if he'd Henge'd himself in his sleep.

After he found that he was unable to reverse the Henge that left him so off-balance, he stumbled over to the nearest wall and leaned on it for support. All along the wall were framed photographs. He thought he recognized some of the people, but more often than not, he didn't recognize the people in the photographs that ran along that wall and along the next and the next and the next. One thing that was common to many of the photographs was that there was someone in them with a face that looked like his. Same hair, same eyes, same whisker marks, same everything, except for the fact that in many of the pictures he was older.

It couldn't be him however, because he'd done none of these things. He didn't know the white-haired man who was crying while holding open an empty wallet at Ichiraku Ramen. He didn't know the silver-haired man who had three-quarters of his face covered who was practically squeezing the life out of him in just about every photograph he was in. He didn't know the brown haired man with the dark eyes who was ruffling his hair in that one picture and doing something with a tree in the next. He didn't know the strange red-haired boy with dark rings around his eyes who was standing next to him in the middle of what looked like a desert. In fact, aside from the people who looked like The Old Man, Konohamaru, Iruka-sensei and his classmates, he didn't know any of them.

Feeling like he was on the verge of a panic attack, he stumbled to the door and into the hallway. Once in the hallway, he realized he was in familiar territory as he recognized the corridor as being part of the Hokage's private living quarters. What he was doing there and why he was sleeping in a room he didn't recognize, he didn't know. As he stumbled down the hall, looking for the exit before the Old Man woke up and realized he was sneaking around his house again, one of the ANBU dropped out of the shadows.

"Hokage-sama, are you alright?" the man in the bear mask asked.

"Ho-...Ho..." he started, wondering why the ANBU was calling him Hokage.

This couldn't possibly be real.

Of course...It wasn't. It was just another one of those dreams, like the one where he'd shown up to class in his underwear, and rather than everyone just assuming it was another one of his pranks and ignoring it, they'd all laughed at him and called him an idiot. If he went along with it, it would eventually end, and then he'd wake up in time to report to the Academy and get his team assignment in the morning like he was supposed to.

"I'm fine!" he said, giving his usual smile, straightening up, and trying to walk without tripping.

Soon, he was seated at the Old Man's desk where there was a pile of paperwork for him to sort through. The Old Man had let him stamp some of his forms when he was little, but he didn't remember what else he was supposed to do with the paperwork, since that part had always been boring to him and he'd usually wandered off and entertained himself before long. Feeling self-conscious, like he usually did in these dreams, he set to reading the paperwork, skipping any Kanji he didn't understand.

He hated reading, it was just so hard...

Bear watched his new Hokage in concern. Yesterday's party had been quite the bash, and he was certain that most of the village was hung-over. If he didn't know anything about Jinchuriki, and hadn't seen his Hokage after a marathon drinking session, he would've been willing to swear that the Godaime was hung-over as well. Since he did and he had, he knew that it had to be something else, though whether it was related to the apparent nightmare that the Hokage had seemed to suffer at about 03:00 hours or the fact that the Hokage was Hokage had finally hit the Hokage, he didn't know.

He had been alerted to the Hokage's awakening by the sound of stumbling. The Hokage had then proceeded to act in a manner that seemed to suggest that he might've been poisoned the night before. When he had questioned the Hokage about his condition, he had seemed out of sorts. That was to be expected however, seeing as it was the young man's first day as Hokage. Many of the people who had heard about what the Sandaime and the Yondaime had done on their first days in office after their inaugurations had taken bets about what the current Hokage would do. The Godaime's odd behavior however had both topped and not met expectations.

First of all, he hadn't tried to micromanage everything until he found himself running around like a chicken with its head cut off and then getting stressed out to the point that he'd started snapping at everything and everyone as his predecessors had done. Instead, after stumbling down the hall, the Hokage had made his way to his office still clad in his pyjamas and had started fiddling with the paperwork on his desk in a manner that suggested that he wasn't happy to be dealing with it. Eventually, his advisors had arrived with their predecessors for a transitional meeting. After a confused "Sakura-chan?" that had the Haruno looking at the Hokage in concern, the Hokage had appeared to be listening, but the fact that he seemed more focused on the Haruno when he wasn't giving Danzo-sama nervous glances put paid to this fact.

When the meeting had ended and the incoming and outgoing advisors had left, the Hokage had looked around the room with a completely lost expression before he'd returned to the barely touched paperwork that had been resting on his desk and started fiddling with it again. Still dressed in his pyjamas, he continued to fiddle with his paperwork until the sun had set. His stomach had grumbled loudly enough to be heard across the room at around noon, but rather than ordering lunch, he had just sat there and fiddled with his paperwork as if he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing with it.

If he didn't know any better, he would be willing to swear that the Godaime didn't know what the heck was going on, and was going along with it because he didn't know what else to do. He'd gone through a period of such adaptation himself after he had been shifted from Root when it was actually disbanded rather than being disbanded on paper. Eventually, he had picked up on the social conventions he was unfamiliar with and had become less of an outsider on the teams he was placed with before he had returned to ANBU as a regular member.

His Hokage shouldn't be going through such a period however. He'd been trained for this position practically his entire life, from the day that the Sandaime had placed him on his knee and handed him the stamp. His ninja education and the brief period he'd spent as a Chunin would've given him the skills he'd needed, and he'd had the leadership part down since the age of twelve.

The only reason he could think of for why the Hokage would be this out of sorts was that he'd been poisoned as he'd earlier suspected, and he was going to find out who'd done it.

Author's Note: Sasuke will be in both Line A and Line B for a time. This is because he was with the Hokage as an advisor for a while before he went back in time to the day of the Massacre, which is the day the others end up traveling back to. Eventually, he will duck out of that budgetary meeting and go sorting through that storage room and leave everyone in Line A behind however.

This story will fill in some of the gaps between when Naruto revealed himself in Time Mix-Up and its end.