Swirling Chaos (Naruto)(discontinued)

Hokage Mountain. A monument carved into the rock face of the large mountain that Konoha was nestled into. The Village Hidden in the Leaves had a case of hero worship concerning its Hokage’s a mile long, and that expressed itself in the crafting and care that had gone into Hokage Mountain.
 
Even still, every single face that Naruto had ever seen on the mountain before now had the same expression. No matter their disposition, they all had the same serious look on their stone features, their lips tightly shut even as their eyes watched over the village they’d helped build up.
 
Which was part of the reason that the Fifth Hokage’s face was so surprising to Naruto. Because her lips were not closed. Instead, she was grinning this massive, shit-eating grin that showed off every single one of her perfectly carved teeth. It was only a face, but Naruto could almost imagine the rest of her body’s pose from that big grin alone, with her hands planted on her hips and her legs apart.
 
Still, it’s not a face that Tsunade would ever make. The blonde was more reserved than that, her smiles much smaller in nature and usually not so open-mouthed. But then, that didn’t really matter because the Fifth (and current) Hokage up on the mountain wasn’t Tsunade Senju. It was his mother, Kushina Uzumaki.
 
Stumbling back from the window, Naruto flops back onto his bed and stares up at the ceiling in sheer disbelief. What the fuck? His mom was Hokage? His mom was ALIVE?!
 
Kurama’s snickering in the back of his mind has Naruto scowling something fierce. Where did she get off making fun of him like that? But more than that… tch, how the hell had this all happened?
 
Luckily, he doesn’t just have to sit there wondering. His younger self’s memories might still be assimilating, but the Naruto that’s not an amalgamation of both his younger self and older self can… speed up the process a bit if he needs to. His older self might be wondering how the hell he still ended up the Jinchuriki of Kurama if Kushina had lived, but his younger self didn’t know that. All he knew was that he’d grown up with a mom… and not just any mom, but a mom who was also the Hokage.
 
A low, shuddering breath makes its way out of Naruto’s lungs as he considers that for a moment before grinning a goofy, boyish grin. Memories of growing up with an actual mother flit through his head one after the other. It’s so easy to draw upon them, and he feels tears coming to the corners of his eyes as he sniffles a little bit in pure happiness. His mom is alive. Close by too, more than likely. He could go and talk to her…
 
… But best not to do that just yet. Not when he’s still getting his bearings under him. As he’d told Kurama, it would take a few more hours for his two halves to finish assimilating. But he’s no longer willing to let it happen on its own. He needs to speed up the process so he can figure out just what the hell is going on and not make a fool of himself going forward.
 
Working his way through what his younger self versus his older self believes to be true, Naruto quickly discovers another massive discrepancy. His younger self, despite being fairly capable in his own right… doesn’t actually remember ever graduating from the Academy.
 
Still getting used to his younger, ganglier body, Naruto realizes he’d made a misassumption before. He wasn’t even a genin yet… and yet, he was the same age he’d been after getting back from his three year trip with Jiraiya. A frown spreads across Naruto’s face at that, confused as to what the hell that even meant. Luckily, his memories were there to tell him.
 
Apparently, in this universe there had been sweeping reforms across Konoha, presumably thanks to Kushina though Naruto couldn’t say for sure. Either way, aspiring shinobi and kunoichi remained Academy Students quite a lot longer than they had in his older self’s timeline.
 
They also learned a lot more to be fair, being taught techniques by the Academy like tree walking and water walking that Naruto hadn’t learned until he was in Team Seven under Kakashi. And that was just the tip of the iceberg… the Academy Curriculum was so much more streamlined and actually focused on extracting their true potential that it wasn’t even funny.
 
Comparing his older self’s Academy experience to his younger self’s was like night and day, and not just because his older self was being sabotaged while his younger self was being pampered for being the Hokage’s Son or something. No, rather, only now that he had an example to look at did Naruto realize that all of his fellow classmates had been sabotaged right alongside him. The Academy in his old timeline… it was a shitshow where they were taught practically nothing but the basics, and even those standards were incredibly low.
 
Now, one might wonder how Konoha maintained it’s position as one of the strongest villages if it refused to field ninja at too young an age, but Naruto’s new memories had answers to that too. Even if his younger self hadn’t fully understood how it all worked together, Naruto’s older self was able to take the information his younger self had and parse what it meant.

 
Put simply, Academy Students did the D-ranks. ALL of the D-ranks. It made sense, after a fashion. There wasn’t a single D-rank mission that took you out of the village. They were all about fostering teamwork anyways, more than actually honing ninja skills most of the time. This in turn left Genin to train with their Sensei more one-on-one, and only handle C-rank and up.
 
By the standards of the rest of the Elemental Nations, Konoha had actually done something rather sneaky in plain sight. At first, the other villages had scoffed at Konoha’s soft-heartedness. There’d even been some probing attempts to check if Konoha really was as weak as it seemed because of this new policy. But that’s just it… they weren’t.
 
Konoha’s Genin were graduates of a Ninja Academy that actually taught them shit. They then had months of specialized training with their Jonin Sensei to fully elevate their individual potential. In the end, Konoha had pulled a fast one. Their Genin were now the equivalent of Chunin without having to take the Chunin Exams. Their Chunin, meanwhile, were the equivalent of Special Jonin.
 
The Special Jonin rank itself had been abolished, because to be Chunin now meant you were already specialized in some way. Jonin were still the cream of the crop though, the shinobi and kunoichi who could rise above their specialization to become a terrifying all-arounder that could dominate almost any battlefield. Or whose specialization made them SO dangerous they didn’t need to be an all-arounder to be terrifying.
 
… Naruto’s mom was scary. That’s the thought that rings through his head, his blue eyes wide as he stares up at the ceiling of his room. Seriously. Kushina Uzumaki had managed to turn Konoha into an even more dangerous powerhouse. So much so that some of the other villages were considering adopting Konoha’s new methods, especially after every Genin Team that Konoha sent to each of the last few Chunin Exams had completely dominated the competition.
 
As for himself? Well, he was well on his way to becoming a Genin, even if he was years older than he’d been when his older self had become one. His younger self was definitely more well-rounded than he’d been when his older self had finally passed the Academy Graduation Exam… however, his younger self was NOT as capable as his older self had been when he’d come back from his training trip with Jiraiya.
 
But then, that was fair. From what he could glean from his new memories, Naruto had been a strange mixture of a mama’s boy and wanting to do it all himself. He loved his mother with all his heart, but he had also rejected her attempts to personally train him. He’d even rejected her attempts to give him his father’s old techniques ahead of time.
 
Younger Naruto had wanted to pave his own way. Given he was the son of not one but TWO Hokage, that was probably more than fair. Still, it was a little surprising that he’d passed up the chance to leave the Academy and apprentice under Kushina early. He must have had good friends there among those Naruto knew from his previous timeline…
 
… Wait, what was this? Blinking owlishly, Naruto’s eyes cross as he feels another weird sense of jarring dislocation due to the difference between his two sets of memories. Yes, Younger Naruto did have friends at the Academy. But at the same time… they were, none of them, the friends that Older Naruto was expecting.
 
In fact, Older Naruto only recognized one of his current timeline’s classmates… Hinata’s sister, Hanabi Hyuga. They were, somehow, in the same year together. Meanwhile, people that he’d known from his previous timeline… some of them DID feature in Younger Naruto’s memories, but as Chunin. His old teammates, Sakura Haruno and Satsuki Uchiha, for instance… were older than him and already Chunin. And they weren’t the only ones. All of his former peers were several years older than him.
 
“… What the fuck, Kurama?”
 
There’s a snickering purr in his ear, as the fox woman metaphorically nuzzles against him as best she can through the bars of his cage.
 
I know that it’s quite different from what we intended, but I did what I had to, Naruto. We truly miscalculated in assuming that you could be sent back with your level of power to such a young body the equivalent of your younger body. This body is much better, as you well know.
 
It was, yes. But at the same time… the whole point of going back in time had been to change things for the better. Now? Now Naruto couldn’t even begin wrapping his head around the changes that had already BEEN done to this timeline. He would probably be spending weeks just figuring out what the fuck his precious foreknowledge actually helped him change, and where it didn’t.
 
It’s not ideal, but this world can still make use of your skills, Naruto. And… it’s filled with plenty of women who love you very much.
 
Kurama’s purring, knowing voice makes Naruto blush as he finds himself involuntarily drawn to more of his younger self’s memories. There’s not just the memories of growing up with a mom, nor just the feel-good memories of growing up as the Hokage’s Son rather than the village pariah. There’s also memories of an Auntie Mikoto. Of Satsuki Uchiha playing the role of his older quasi-cousin instead of his treacherous teammate.
 
The Uchiha Massacre had still happened in this timeline, but things had gone quite differently thanks to Kushina being in charge. For one, Danzo had died for his part in everything, never to manage to get ahold of all of those Uchiha eyes he’d wanted to graft into his body. And while part of the Uchiha Clan HAD died and Itsuki Uchiha, Satsuki’s older sister, was still on the run for her part in it… plenty of the Uchiha still lived, with Mikoto taking over for her late husband as Clan Head.
 
Naruto would almost even be willing to say the Uchiha Massacre was a GOOD thing for both Satsuki’s Clan and the Village in this timeline, if it weren’t for how it had clearly still hurt Satsuki directly. Still, the Konoha Police Force was still under Uchiha Control but no longer so restrictive… and the remnants of the Uchiha Clan now lived in the center of the village on Kushina’s orders, their old clan compound turned into apartments for civilians.
 
Naruto had plenty of memories of the pain in both Auntie Mikoto and Satsuki’s eyes after the massacre… but he also had memories of moments of happiness that Mikoto wouldn’t have ever had the chance to get to have if she’d died that night, and that his older self’s Satsuki never would have been capable of experiencing in a million years.
 
It was all a lot to take in though. His mind was a whirlpool of swirling chaos as he tried to get on top of things. The assimilation was continuing apace though, and from what his younger self’s memories showed him, Kurama was right. Naruto COULD be of use here. He could help out in lots of ways. Already, he found himself making plans even before the assimilation was complete. He wanted-
 
Heh, so quick to forget me, are we?
 
Naruto blinks, startled by Kurama’s voice suddenly in his head. He gets the impression of the Nine-Tailed Fox stretching behind the bars of her prison.
 
You did promise to free me, Naruto. And now that you have most of the immediate surprises out of the way, I’m ready. You’re a lot less likely to get distracted from your task by some stray memory smacking you in the face at this point.
 
He can’t help the wry grin that spreads across his face at that. Of course. Kurama was still Kurama after all, and he should have known from the beginning that her reasons for having him hold off on trying to free her initially were at least a little self-centered. Still, she was right to do things the way she had. If he HAD tried to delve in immediately and free her from her cage, he might have fucked things up and gotten distracted by all of these discrepancies between his two sets of memories.
 
Now? Now he was standing on a more solid set of foundations, rather than the shifting sands he’d been unexpectedly atop when he first woke up.
 
Letting out an explosive breath, Naruto nods his head and lifts himself up into the lotus position. Once his physical body is situated properly, he delves within, almost instantaneously appearing inside of his own mind. Or maybe it’s his soul. Truth be told, Naruto has never fully understood where Kurama’s cage was located, just that he could go there if he meditated properly. Or if he was in life-threatening danger like had happened multiple times in his older self’s timeline, but that seemed unnecessary to duplicate right now.
 
Appearing in front of Kurama’s cage, he can see the full form of the Nine-Tailed Fox prowling back and forth behind the seal his father had put in place. Naruto frowns as he steps forward, inspecting the seal. Luckily, it’s still the same between the two timelines. Except it is missing a little something… the imprint of his mother, he realizes.
 
Not relevant though. He’ll just modify the seal like he did in his previous timeline and grant Kurama what is essentially freedom. She’ll still be bound to him, but she’ll no longer be trapped in his body. It was the same arrangement his older self had with her and while Naruto was now an amalgamation of his older and younger selves, he wasn’t so different from who he’d been that he would go back on his word…