Chapter Text
Naruto woke up on the cold tiles of the hospital. He grumbled, cracking open an eye to glare at the bed, to find that there was no bed. More importantly, he was in a hallway. Groaning onto his knees, Naruto looked one way, then the other. It looked like the hospital, certainly, although not a part of the hospital he was familiar with. Most suspiciously, Naruto didn't spot anyone else in the hallway, or even a bed he could have fallen out of.
“What the hell,” he muttered, getting to his feet. He walked over to the nearest door, sliding it open. Naruto frowned at the supply closet, shutting the door. If that side didn't have a window – and he was pretty sure supply closets weren't put on the side of the hospital that had windows – then it stood to reason that the other side had a room with a window. If he knew what part of the hospital he was in, then it would be easy to find reception. Naruto felt great, ready to leave and go on that training trip with Pervy Sage.
Just as soon as he figured out where he was.
Naruto walked over to a door, the panel beside it numbering it as 643 (he glanced back and bit back a curse when he saw the door he'd opened had a sign labeling it as a supply closet), and wondered if the hospital even had a sixth floor.
Shrugging it off, because who had time to think about those things when there was training to be done, and Sasukes to be retrieved – okay, just the one Sasuke, because the idea of there being more than one Sasuke was so, so creepy. Now he had the image of a forest full of Sasuke's all giving him that same sneering look.
Naruto shuddered. What was he thinking about before that? He couldn't remember.
He slid the door open, squinting a little as his eyes adjusted to the afternoon light.
His first thought was that this was some sort of dream, but then he dismissed it. His dreams usually weren't this strange. Hokage mountain had extra faces on it – Granny Tsunade's, then Kakashi-Sensei's next to it (with both eyes, strangely), and... Naruto squinted. It... was that... him?
The awesome that was him as Hokage almost made up for the creepy pillars of glass stretching into the sky atop the mountain. Or the fact that the entire village was made up of those kinds of buildings, styles that he expected to find in a civilian town. Naruto barely remembered some class on how civilian tech didn't react well in hidden villages. He couldn't remember what it was about, exactly, but he did remember that these kinds of buildings, this kind of tech, couldn't be in Konoha.
Which meant this wasn't Konoha.
Naruto slowly backed away from the window, much more aware of his surroundings than before. He was unarmed, in a place that looked like some disturbing copy of Konoha. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep in a hospital bed in Konoha.
If it was a dream, then how could he wake up? And if it wasn't a dream, then what was going on?
Shikamaru's retelling of his battle made Naruto pause. He recalled his friend talking about fighting someone who used genjutsu. Whatever he needed to do to get back to reality, it would have to be a way to wake up, either out of sleep or break out of the genjutsu, or both.
Naruto groaned, gripping his head, and pressing against a side wall. He was terrible with genjutsu! He couldn't even break out of that one that had been used during the invasion, how could he–
Shikamaru!
Naruto recalled the broken finger, and Shikamaru's chuckle as he said that pain was a surefire way to break a genjutsu when in a bind. Pain would break a genjutsu, and it was also a way to wake up!
Holding up his right arm, Naruto opened his mouth. Teeth stopped inches from his hand. If this was a genjutsu, then he would need both hands to fight with. Even more if he was awake.
He moved his arm, and bit down, hard, on his forearm. He tasted blood, and pulled away. His arm hurt, but nothing changed.
Naruto unwrapped some of the gauze on his chest, rewrapping it around his bleeding arm, a frown on his face. So. Not a dream. Which left a genjutsu. Probably scary powerful, if pain wasn't enough to break it. How else could he break it?
Naruto slid down into a crouch. “Genjutsu. Why did it have to be genjutsu.” He sighed. “Pain didn't work. Alright, so... genjutsu works by messing with your chakra. It uses your own chakra to power it, which means...” Naruto smiled. “I can just channel all my chakra! But then I'd die.” His smile fell away. “I need a lot of chakra, enough that I might die, but without– that's it!”
Naruto jumped up, hands forming the Rat seal as he closed his eyes. He managed to draw on it before, and now that he knew where to search inside of him, he could get it faster. He just needed to pull on Kyuubi's chakra until he managed to overload the genjutsu and have it break all on its own! Simple.
He felt chakra building up inside, more and more and more, until it began to hurt. He dug deeper, searching for the sea of red underneath all the yellow. He pushed more and more chakra to the surface, past the point of pain, and felt like he was about to die.
The red chakra was like a breath of fresh air, supercharging the air and blowing out the lights. The windows cracked, as well as the floor beneath Naruto's feet, and he held onto it for as long as he could. The sheer power he was wielding was drowning him, and for almost a minute he held his breath. The need to breathe gave way to breaking the genjutsu, and Naruto's legs buckled as his chest heaved. He felt shaky, but not from exhaustion. It was energy, excitement, a surplus of energy that needed to be burned off.
The door opened, and Naruto was too late in getting back to his feet. It was a woman, lines on her face, dark hair streaked with gray. Naruto knew this woman, although she hadn't been quite so old (a horrified part of his mind figured she was as old as Tsunade was supposed to be).
Shizune gasped. “Boruto? What are you doing? How did you get here? And... what are you wearing?”
Naruto frowned, standing as tall as he could, as proud as he could. Well, as proud as he could, given that he was wearing a hospital gown and covered in bandages. “Who the hell is Boruto?”
Shizune put a hand to her face, letting out a horrified gasp. “N-naruto?” She shook her head. “I– someone needs to get Sakura! Get Sakura!” Shizune called out behind her, and Naruto took her divided attention as his chance. He leaped toward the cracked window, hands forming the seal for shadow clones.
Naruto would leap out the window, covering his landing with at least a dozen clones heading out in as many directions. He would regroup in an alley a couple blocks away – there was a family with a genin kid his age about five blocks south; it wouldn't take much to snag some of the son's clothes, dump the bandages and gown, and then decide if he wanted to try to leave this place, or go for the Hokage tower. If there was gonna be an evil boss somewhere in this false Konoha, then it would certainly be there.
Or at least, that was the plan, if there hadn't been a flash of light and an arm wrapping itself around his chest.
Squirming in his captor's grip, Naruto was lifted off the ground and came face to face with the new person. Blue eyes met blue, and Nanadaime Hokage Uzumaki Naruto frowned. “It's me. A little me.”
“Naruto!” Shizune squeaked, looking from older to younger. “But– but he's–”
“Me?” The older Naruto finished – Naruto mentally dubbed him, in whatever part of his mind wasn't blanking at coming face to face with an older version of himself, with his title of Hokage. Hokage nodded, giving Naruto a once-over. He put a hand on Naruto's jaw, turning the teen's head one side to the other. “A younger me, probably when I was, what, thirteen? That is weird. Guess I figured out what that Seal does.”
“What's going on here?” Naruto asked, confused about what just happened.
“Well, little me,” Hokage began, waving a hand at the cracked windows. “Welcome to the future.”