Dawn came quietly to Konoha.
The first light of morning crept over the Hokage Rock, washing the carved faces in pale gold.
Mist lingered low along the streets, dissolving slowly as the sun climbed higher, and the village stirred back to life like a sleeping beast stretching its limbs.
Nothing looked unusual.
Vendors opened their stalls. Shop shutters slid upward with familiar clacks. The smell of grilled fish and fresh bread drifted into the air.
Children ran down the streets with laughter that carried across rooftops. Shinobi leapt between buildings, beginning their daily patrols.
Inside Naruto's 'house', the first sign of morning came when sunlight slipped through the curtains and landed across his face.
In the next instant, Naruto kicked his blanket halfway to the floor.
"…Ramen… I'll eat… Sasuke, don't steal…"
He mumbled incoherently, drool threatening to escape from the corner of his mouth.
Then his eyes snapped open.
"Ah!"
He sat up suddenly, blinking in confusion.
"…Huh?"
Naruto scratched his head, looking around the room.
For some reason, his heart felt out of place, like something was missing.
Usually, mornings started with restless energy, hunger, or annoyance. But today, everything felt strangely smooth, like his thoughts were flowing in a straight line.
He tilted his head.
"…Did I sleep too well?"
He shrugged, then jumped out of bed.
"Whatever! I'm hungry!"
He dashed out of the room, completely unaware of the subtle change within him.
--
The training grounds near the forest outside Konoha were still quiet in the early morning.
Well, quiet until a white flash of light suddenly appeared in the sky.
Then, from that burst of light, two figures dropped straight down.
"Ahhhhhh!"
One of them immediately went pale with horror as he saw the forest rushing up to meet him. Knowing full well this was going to hurt, he screamed at the top of his lungs.
A second later, he crashed into the ground, rolled several times, and slammed face-first into the grass.
"Ow… that hurt…!"
He pushed himself up while rubbing his head, blinking rapidly.
Beside him, the other figure landed far more steadily and immediately scanned the surroundings.
His posture was tense, alert, and ready to move at any moment.
The first boy had blond hair, blue eyes, and a black jacket lined with pink. He looked around in confusion.
It was Boruto Uzumaki.
The second man, wearing a black cloak with a sword at his waist and one visible eye sharpened by vigilance, was none other than Sasuke Uchiha.
Then, all of a sudden, Sasuke dropped to one knee, clutching the eye hidden beneath his hair, his expression grim.
Boruto noticed immediately and asked with a worried look,
"Sasuke, what's wrong?"
"My chakra… I used all of it."
Sasuke glanced at him before lowering his hand.
Boruto instantly became more alert and looked around as he said,
"I can't sense Urashiki's presence anymore."
"So where are we?"
"We'll check the surrounding area first and figure that out," Sasuke replied.
Boruto fiddled with the turtle-shaped device in his hand, the one that had allowed them to travel through time.
"Damn it, this thing's not doing anything…"
He looked up at Sasuke and tilted his head, still shaking the turtle in frustration.
"Do you think this thing is why we ended up here?"
"Probably," Sasuke replied.
Then he started walking forward, with Boruto quickly following behind.
Before long, the two of them stepped out of the forest.
Boruto looked around and said, "Hey, it's a town… no, wait. This is the Leaf Village."
"Guess I got worked up for nothing."
His tone relaxed as he placed his hands behind his head.
Then both of them suddenly stopped in their tracks at the sight in front of them.
Sasuke's eye widened, and even Boruto froze.
"Those… are the Hokage Rock faces, but my dad's face…" Boruto trailed off in confusion.
"No way…" Sasuke muttered.
In the next instant, he vanished from where he stood and leapt onto a rooftop to get a better view.
"Hey, hold on! Wait for me!"
Boruto quickly followed after him.
"Why'd you run off like that?" Boruto asked as he landed on top of a tall building and looked out over the village.
"Uh… Sasuke?"
Getting no reply, Boruto turned toward him.
Sasuke was staring in one direction with a serious expression on his face.
"Boruto…" Sasuke said slowly, as if even he found it hard to believe. "This is the Leaf Village… in the past."
Both of them fell silent for a moment.
Boruto swallowed hard, his eyes widening as he stared at the Hokage Rock in the distance.
"There aren't enough faces on the stone monument… Dad's isn't there, and neither is old man Kakashi's."
He looked around again, confusion growing stronger by the second.
"And the new city is gone too… The whole place looks completely different."
Sasuke narrowed his eyes, and a certain memory surfaced in his mind.
Right before they entered that strange dimension, Urashiki had said something.
"I'm off to harvest the Fox's chakra now…"
Sasuke could still remember the wicked grin on Urashiki's face when he said it.
"So that's what he meant…" Sasuke muttered under his breath, finally understanding the meaning behind those words.
"Warning. Warning. We have deviated significantly from the intended coordinates of the temporal transfer."
The turtle Boruto was holding suddenly spoke in a robotic voice.
Boruto nearly jumped out of his skin.
"W-What?! It talked?!"
Sasuke immediately crouched down and fixed a sharp gaze on the turtle as it continued speaking.
"We did not arrive at the exact temporal coordinates designated by Master Urashiki Ōtsutsuki."
"You said temporal transfer, right?" Sasuke asked calmly. "Then does that mean this is the Hidden Leaf Village in the past?"
"The past?" Boruto echoed in surprise.
"Correct," the turtle replied without hesitation. "This is the era when the Fifth Hokage, Tsunade Senju, had just taken office."
Boruto blinked.
"Wait, seriously?! You're not messing with us?"
"Yes. I am serious," the turtle replied in the same flat, modern tone.
"Then where's Urashiki?" Sasuke asked as he rose to his feet and turned his attention to the surroundings. "You said we deviated from the original coordinates. Does that mean he arrived at a different point in time than we did?"
He needed precise information before deciding what to do next.
This was not a situation where they could afford to act recklessly. One wrong move could throw everything into chaos.
"Master Urashiki originally set the destination to a point when Naruto Uzumaki was still a young child. However, due to a malfunction during the temporal transfer, we arrived at a slightly different point than intended."
The turtle paused for only a moment before continuing.
"Additionally, according to my calculations, Urashiki Ōtsutsuki, who was separated from us during the transfer, will arrive a few days from now."
The turtle delivered all of that information without the slightest trace of emotion.
Sasuke's expression shifted subtly when he heard that.
Urashiki had specifically chosen a time when Naruto was still just a child.
"In a few days…" Boruto muttered, his face tightening. "That's bad."
"Fortunately, we got here before he did," Sasuke said, though his tone carried only restrained relief. "If Urashiki had arrived first, things could have gotten much worse. To think he'd go after Naruto's Nine-Tails chakra when Naruto was still only a child…"
Boruto clenched his fists.
"Going after my dad when he was just a kid… That's seriously low."
Then he straightened up, the unease on his face turning into determination.
"Either way, we've got to find Dad and protect him before Urashiki shows up… Right, Sasuke?"
"Yeah..."
"Well then, allow me to explain the precautions you must follow as individuals who have traveled from the future into the past."
The turtle spoke again in the same monotone, mechanical voice.
Boruto frowned and lifted the turtle higher.
"Seriously, who are you anyway? Weren't you with Urashiki Ōtsutsuki?"
"I am Karasuki," the turtle declared. "A noble artifact capable of traversing time. Therefore, the concept of being in the same 'group' as someone is meaningless to me. I do not serve Urashiki Ōtsutsuki. My role is solely to carry out temporal transfers and relay the necessary precautions."
Karasuki's tone was so stiff and self-important that Boruto couldn't help making a face.
"…You really talk like you think you're a big deal."
"What a stuck-up turtle."
Sasuke ignored Boruto's complaint and asked the important question.
"What precautions?"
Karasuki answered at once.
"First, if you encounter people from the past with whom you share a deep connection, do your utmost not to reveal that you are from the future."
Boruto tilted his head.
"And what happens if we slip up and tell someone who we are?"
"Then it is entirely possible that you will alter the future in ways you neither intended nor anticipated."
Karasuki's voice remained emotionless, but the warning itself was grave.
"In the worst-case scenario, even a single action may greatly influence the course of history. I advise you to exercise extreme caution."
He paused again before adding,
"As previously stated, your actions may result in a person or even an object ceasing to exist in the future."
With that, Karasuki fell silent.
Sasuke's expression turned serious as he quietly contemplated everything he had just heard.
Boruto, on the other hand, grinned and pumped a fist into the air.
"Well, this sounds easy enough. I'm actually starting to get fired up!"
He looked around excitedly, as if the weight of the situation had only fueled him even more.
"I mean, we're in the Hidden Leaf Village from before I was even born!"
Karasuki said nothing, but for the first time in a very long while, even he was deeply confused.
This timeline… why is it so different from the future? The changes here are enormous, and yet the future itself remains unchanged. What could have caused something like this?
On the surface, many things still looked the same.
But Karasuki, as a temporal artifact capable of perceiving the flow of time itself, could tell that countless details had already been altered.
And yet, somehow, something had interfered and forced events back onto their original course, leaving only faint traces behind.
Karasuki chose not to tell Sasuke and Boruto any of this.
He wanted to observe it for himself.
He wanted to witness the source of this distortion directly.
I can feel it… This timeline may be hiding a singularity.
If that were true, then he would never dare oppose such a being.
Even within the Ōtsutsuki Clan, there was no one who could truly be described that way.
A being that existed only in the present, with no fixed past and no predetermined future, could be called a singularity.
Such an existence stood outside the normal laws of time.
Unbound by cause and effect.
An anomaly within reality itself.
If such a being truly existed… and if the changes in this era had all been brought about by that existence…
Then it would explain everything.
Far away, in another dimension, the sky above and the world around it were pitch-black, as though the heavens themselves had been painted over in darkness.
Below that endless black, the land stretched out in stark white, formed from countless cube-shaped structures that gave the entire space an unnatural, eerie appearance.
At the top of a high platform, a figure sat upon a throne, his left hand supporting his cheek.
His eyes remained closed for a moment.
Then, slowly, they opened, and a glint of interest shone within them.
The scene before him shifted.
What played out in his vision was the exact moment Boruto and Sasuke descended from the sky, followed by their reactions and even the conversation they exchanged afterward.
"Just as I expected…" Obito Uchiha said with a faint smile.
This time, he had once again won his gamble.
Although he could not read Karasuki's thoughts, Boruto's arrival alone had already confirmed something of enormous importance for him.
On the surface, the point in time where Boruto and Sasuke had arrived was nearly identical to the one in the original course of events from the Boruto timeline.
But Obito, the one directly involved in all of this, knew that was not truly the case.
"That no longer matters," Obito said calmly, the smile on his face deepening. "What matters is that the final restraints binding me are gone."
He slowly rose from his throne, his presence carrying a sharp, dangerous excitement.
"Now then… it is time for Time Robber Obito Uchiha to take the stage."
"Hahahaha!"
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