Naruto - Oblivion: Another You
This is the main story of "Oblivion". I'm actually very interested in this idea, even though I haven't visited it in a while. The main problem I'm having is how to continue on with the story. I don't know what should happen. I know how I want the characters' relationships to develop--I just don't know how to get there. I'm also concerned with overpowering Naruto. There are a whole bunch of other issues, but I'm still a little bit in love with the story. Maybe one day I'll figure it all out, probably while in the shower.
I must warn again about the fragmentary nature of this piece. There's a lot of jumping in time, since I wrote some later scenes before filling in the blanks.
Title: Oblivion: Another You
Fandom: Naruto
Summary: He wanted to drink himself to oblivion. He just didn't know he'd actually reach there.
Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Neji, Nara Shikamaru, Hyuuga Hiashi, Hyuuga Hinata, OC
Genre: Action, Adventure, Family
Warnings: Time travel, alternate realities
When Naruto walked into the bar that night, he wasn't thinking about anything other than getting wasted. He chugged down cup after cup, but even after what felt like his hundredth cup, all he could feel was a light buzz.
"Stupid fox," he muttered under his breath as he downed another cup, waving the empty bottle at the bartender.
"Young man, haven't you had enough for the evening?" the aged barkeep asked, replacing the empty bottle with another.
"No way. I'm not even close to reaching my goal yet," Naruto replied, filling his cup once more. If only Tsunade-baachan could see him now. He was setting a freaking world record.
"And what goal is that? Liver disease?" the bartender snorted. Naruto cocked his head, squinting at the barkeep. The bartender cleaned a glass, waiting for his reply.
"Oblivion." Having answered the question, Naruto went back to his self assigned mission, the freshly filled bottle of sake depleting within minutes. At this rate, he was going to be bankrupt before he could reach his goal.
A moment later, the barkeep set a tumbler of a purplish, brownish liquid in front of him. It was a strange color, but surprisingly beautiful. The scent was sweet without being cloying, and hinted at a more bitter flavor lying beneath the surface. There was something in that cup of alcohol that mesmerized him.
" 'Doorway to Heaven.' Be honored to get this, kid. Not everyone has the chance to even see it." Naruto bristled at being called a "kid", but the drink was really too tantalizing for him to get too worked up about it.
" 'Doorway to Heaven,' huh?" he chuckled. "Nice name." Now if only it really were such a doorway.
He drank it slowly. The taste was indescrible, but subtle. He felt himself truly relaxing for the first time in what seemed like years. He also felt like he was finally reaching that oblivion that he had yearned for when he entered the bar.
"Thas some goo'shtuff..." he slurred, before letting the welcomed darkness embrace his senses.
----
"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" someone said cheerfully, before flinging all the blinds open. Naruto buried his head into his blankets, trying to ignore the light that was stabbing into his eyes.
"Come on, we have a lot of errands to run today. Unless you want to forgo ramen for the next week, I expect you to be ready in ten minutes," a woman's voice said. A woman's voice that he did not recognize.
He burst from the blankets, looking wildly at her. A slender woman of average height with beautiful black hair laughed at him. He didn't... They weren't... He hadn't been that drunk, had he? There was no way they could have--
On his second evaluation of the situation, he realized the woman was older than him. Probably by a decade, at least. So even if he were dead drunk and delirious, surely a woman of her esteemed age wouldn't have acted so irresponsibly?
"Quit staring and start getting ready. I'm not going to wait for you, you know," she teased, turning around to head into another room. He gaped at her for a few more seconds before untangling himself from the blanket. That was when he discovered it.
"What the hell? I'm tiny!"
Before he had a chance to fully process what he said, the woman stormed back into the room with a furious expression on her face.
"What did you just say? Where did you learn that?" she thundered. Naruto backed up against the wall, feeling unexpectedly timid all of a sudden. Learn what? Was this the part where either someone laughed, "surprise!" or he got impaled by a kunai?
"Oh, so that's how you want to play it, hmm?" she said, her voice becoming deceptively light. "It was that idiot, Yaro, wasn't it? When I get my hands on him..." she muttered. She gave a sharp glance in his direction. "I never want to hear such filthy language come out of your mouth again, understand?" He nodded meekly. "Good. Now get ready. We still have lots of things to do today."
When the woman finally left for the other room, Naruto breathed a sigh of relief. He stood around for a moment, trying to sort his confusion, but he didn't want the woman to come back and yell at him, so he started getting dressed. It was strange, seeing such small and chubby hands attached to his arms. It was strange, but not wholly uncomfortable, kind of like regaining the feeling of a numbed body part.
He entered the adjacent room and saw that breakfast had already been set up. A small bowl of miso was accompanied by white rice and some pickles. He sat down, wondering if he should start without her when she sat down across from him.
"Itadakimasu," she said, and he followed her after a beat. He started with the miso, and gagged.
"None of that!" she warned sternly. Naruto could feel his eyes watering. That was some of the most disgusting shit he had ever had the misfortune of tasting in his entire life. The woman had to be some sort of masochist if she could drink that crap without choking.
"Come now. It isn't that bad," she commented, making him stare at her incredulously. She started to look a little annoyed. "Okay, so maybe adding that bittermelon was a bad idea, but it can't be much worse than usual, right?" Naruto didn't answer. He was afraid of what the "usual" might consist of.
They continued their breakfast in silence, with Naruto trying not to make his digestive track go the other way while the woman was lost in thought. When he finally finished the last grain of rice (he swore the rice was terrible too, but tasted heavenly after the miso), she cleared the table and made sure he got ready to leave. After inspecting the two room house to see if she had forgotten anything, she gave him an empty basket to hold, while she tucked a bigger bag under her arm.
"All right, Na-chan. Let's go." She took his hand--his very tiny hand--and started off through the forest.
To say Naruto was confused would be a gross understatement. There was no way to describe the state of his mind at this time. All he knew was that he wanted his money back from that barkeep, because this was no "doorway to heaven." "Hell" was more like it, if the food was anything to go by. If this was oblivion, then maybe his vocabulary was worse than he had thought.
"Time for a little quiz," the woman said suddenly. "Name the major elemental countries." He frowned at her as he tried to remember his academy days. He listed off the countries, at first hesitantly, then a little more boldly as she smiled and encouraged him. The woman might have sucked at cooking, but she was a very nice and patient teacher.
He still didn't have a clue who she was though.
As they went through the marketplace, he began to piece things together little by little. The first was that everyone was familiar with him and the woman. The second was that he was even younger than he initially thought he was, perhaps around three years old or so. The third, he didn't quite believe until he caught a reflection of himself from a bucket of water.
That weird, black haired woman was his mother! And he, somehow or other, had changed his hair color and become her son!
Okay, perhaps that was a little misleading. Apparently, he had been born with black hair and light violet eyes and had never been blond haired, blue eyed all his life. He felt like he was in a permanent transformation technique.
====
He never opened the floorboard to confirm if the equipment was there. He never even tried to look for it. All he did was try to get through his daily exercises like normal, making sure he was keeping himself fit like his mother wanted. But the silence was deafening. It felt strange to train, and not feel her familiar chakra nearby. It felt weird to perform the Hyuuga techniques without her there to correct him. But most of all, it felt wrong to wake up in a house without her overly cheerful voice declaring good morning every morning.
He missed her. He missed her amazingly disgusting dishes, and her terrifyingly delicious ramen. He missed the way she would stroke his hair, or hold him close to her when he did a good job or was just plain upset. He wanted her back so badly that it was driving him mad just trying to stop himself from thinking about it.
He let out a shuddering breath, and rested his forehead against the tree. It was always like this. His precious people always left before him, always left him behind to pick up the pieces. He had never dealt with it well. He supposed he should thank the heavens for even having seven years with her.
No. He was being unfair. It wasn't like any of them left because they wanted to. They all had things that they needed to do, places they needed to go. The fierce joy his mother had shown him just before she left had shown him how much he meant to them. No. He wouldn't sully their memories by blaming them for leaving. He should honor them by living his life even more joyfully.
It was hard, but he adjusted. He could wake up in the mornings without her, and he slowly improved what he knew through training every day. He didn't know why he kept up his skills, not when his work consisted of the occasional killing of a wild animal threatening livestock, or of being an unusually speedy messenger for a civilian. He didn't know, but neither did his mother, and she had kept up her skills for all these years. Maybe there had always been the hope that one day she would be able to return to being a shinobi of Konoha. Or maybe it was just for the simple reason of the joy in knowing what one could do.
He didn't know why she kept up her skills, but he did know why she trained him in his. She wanted him to have the power to protect himself and those that were precious to him, and he intended to honor that. Never mind that his one precious person was gone. Never mind that he was all alone in the world.
It was hard, but he endured. That was what it meant to be shinobi.
====
"She exchanged a cage created for her for one that she created herself."
====
He was too far away, and the kunai was moving too fast, Chouji turning too slowly, and he just couldn't make it there, wouldn't make it in time even if he were not tied up trying to keep his opponent at bay. Before the sense of guilt and terror could settle in his gut, another kunai flew out from nowhere and deflected the potentially fatal shot.
Neji? he thought, as the ninja burst forth from the foliage and engaged with the enemy that had nearly killed Chouji. He didn't have time to wonder what the hell Neji was doing there because his opponent decided to pelt him with a bunch of boulders.
"Dammit, another Konoha-nin!"
Shikamaru could hear rustling in the trees, and other kunai flew out, threatening to impale the Iwa-nin.
"If you value your life, you will leave before the others get here." The moment the Neji look-alike spoke, Shikamaru realized that it wasn't Neji. It was Neri.
The Iwa-nin was about to retort when someone in an ANBU mask appeared, landing close to Ino. She startled, and moved closer to where Shikamaru was standing. A moment later, two more ANBU appeared. The Iwa-nin decided to take their chances at running away. Three on seven weren't good odds.
Shikamaru was still puzzling out why ANBU were there in the first place when Neri grabbed him and Chouji, dragging them away from the battlefield. Without his perpetual sunglasses, Shikamaru realized that Neri was actually a Hyuuga.
"Neri-san, you're..." Ino began, but Neri cut her off.
"No time to explain. We have to get out of here," he said, pushing them farther away.
"But the ANBU," Chouji started.
"They're genjutsu," Shikamaru realized. Neri nodded. He cursed internally. They weren't out of the frying pan yet.
====
It was a surreal experience, seeing that blond hair, those blue eyes, the whisker-like marks... It was surreal seeing the body that he used to inhabit belonging to someone else. Surreal, and frankly, disturbing, no matter how much he had prepared himself for the moment. He felt like that other Naruto would pop into non-existence the moment he sent a strong attack at him. It was like looking at a mirror, only the reflection decided to do whatever the hell it wanted.
====
Then he realized that somewhere along the way, he had thrown himself away. As he stared into those blue eyes blazing with fierce conviction and determination, he realized that he may have more knowledge, more experience than this Naruto that was not him, but he did not have what had made him him all those years ago. He could claim that it was naivete, but he knew better than that. Perhaps it was when he had first compromised with Danzo. Perhaps it was in the fundamental difference of having different parents. Whatever it was, Neri finally understood that the Naruto that stood before him was more than he was right now. It was both irritating and humbling.
Naruto must have sensed something change in his expression, because the anger that had been directed at him was slowly fading away. Neri gave an irritated sigh, restraining the urge to run his hand through his hair in frustration. Had he always been this tenacious? Tch, how troublesome.
"Fine," he grunted, finally conceding. Naruto's face lit up, as if his words actually meant something to that dumb blond. Though he supposed that he had once been that dumb blond as well... He mentally shook himself from that line of thought. "On one condition," he said, before Naruto could lose his head. "Take me with you."
To be continued...?
I must warn again about the fragmentary nature of this piece. There's a lot of jumping in time, since I wrote some later scenes before filling in the blanks.
Title: Oblivion: Another You
Fandom: Naruto
Summary: He wanted to drink himself to oblivion. He just didn't know he'd actually reach there.
Characters: Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Neji, Nara Shikamaru, Hyuuga Hiashi, Hyuuga Hinata, OC
Genre: Action, Adventure, Family
Warnings: Time travel, alternate realities
When Naruto walked into the bar that night, he wasn't thinking about anything other than getting wasted. He chugged down cup after cup, but even after what felt like his hundredth cup, all he could feel was a light buzz.
"Stupid fox," he muttered under his breath as he downed another cup, waving the empty bottle at the bartender.
"Young man, haven't you had enough for the evening?" the aged barkeep asked, replacing the empty bottle with another.
"No way. I'm not even close to reaching my goal yet," Naruto replied, filling his cup once more. If only Tsunade-baachan could see him now. He was setting a freaking world record.
"And what goal is that? Liver disease?" the bartender snorted. Naruto cocked his head, squinting at the barkeep. The bartender cleaned a glass, waiting for his reply.
"Oblivion." Having answered the question, Naruto went back to his self assigned mission, the freshly filled bottle of sake depleting within minutes. At this rate, he was going to be bankrupt before he could reach his goal.
A moment later, the barkeep set a tumbler of a purplish, brownish liquid in front of him. It was a strange color, but surprisingly beautiful. The scent was sweet without being cloying, and hinted at a more bitter flavor lying beneath the surface. There was something in that cup of alcohol that mesmerized him.
" 'Doorway to Heaven.' Be honored to get this, kid. Not everyone has the chance to even see it." Naruto bristled at being called a "kid", but the drink was really too tantalizing for him to get too worked up about it.
" 'Doorway to Heaven,' huh?" he chuckled. "Nice name." Now if only it really were such a doorway.
He drank it slowly. The taste was indescrible, but subtle. He felt himself truly relaxing for the first time in what seemed like years. He also felt like he was finally reaching that oblivion that he had yearned for when he entered the bar.
"Thas some goo'shtuff..." he slurred, before letting the welcomed darkness embrace his senses.
----
"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" someone said cheerfully, before flinging all the blinds open. Naruto buried his head into his blankets, trying to ignore the light that was stabbing into his eyes.
"Come on, we have a lot of errands to run today. Unless you want to forgo ramen for the next week, I expect you to be ready in ten minutes," a woman's voice said. A woman's voice that he did not recognize.
He burst from the blankets, looking wildly at her. A slender woman of average height with beautiful black hair laughed at him. He didn't... They weren't... He hadn't been that drunk, had he? There was no way they could have--
On his second evaluation of the situation, he realized the woman was older than him. Probably by a decade, at least. So even if he were dead drunk and delirious, surely a woman of her esteemed age wouldn't have acted so irresponsibly?
"Quit staring and start getting ready. I'm not going to wait for you, you know," she teased, turning around to head into another room. He gaped at her for a few more seconds before untangling himself from the blanket. That was when he discovered it.
"What the hell? I'm tiny!"
Before he had a chance to fully process what he said, the woman stormed back into the room with a furious expression on her face.
"What did you just say? Where did you learn that?" she thundered. Naruto backed up against the wall, feeling unexpectedly timid all of a sudden. Learn what? Was this the part where either someone laughed, "surprise!" or he got impaled by a kunai?
"Oh, so that's how you want to play it, hmm?" she said, her voice becoming deceptively light. "It was that idiot, Yaro, wasn't it? When I get my hands on him..." she muttered. She gave a sharp glance in his direction. "I never want to hear such filthy language come out of your mouth again, understand?" He nodded meekly. "Good. Now get ready. We still have lots of things to do today."
When the woman finally left for the other room, Naruto breathed a sigh of relief. He stood around for a moment, trying to sort his confusion, but he didn't want the woman to come back and yell at him, so he started getting dressed. It was strange, seeing such small and chubby hands attached to his arms. It was strange, but not wholly uncomfortable, kind of like regaining the feeling of a numbed body part.
He entered the adjacent room and saw that breakfast had already been set up. A small bowl of miso was accompanied by white rice and some pickles. He sat down, wondering if he should start without her when she sat down across from him.
"Itadakimasu," she said, and he followed her after a beat. He started with the miso, and gagged.
"None of that!" she warned sternly. Naruto could feel his eyes watering. That was some of the most disgusting shit he had ever had the misfortune of tasting in his entire life. The woman had to be some sort of masochist if she could drink that crap without choking.
"Come now. It isn't that bad," she commented, making him stare at her incredulously. She started to look a little annoyed. "Okay, so maybe adding that bittermelon was a bad idea, but it can't be much worse than usual, right?" Naruto didn't answer. He was afraid of what the "usual" might consist of.
They continued their breakfast in silence, with Naruto trying not to make his digestive track go the other way while the woman was lost in thought. When he finally finished the last grain of rice (he swore the rice was terrible too, but tasted heavenly after the miso), she cleared the table and made sure he got ready to leave. After inspecting the two room house to see if she had forgotten anything, she gave him an empty basket to hold, while she tucked a bigger bag under her arm.
"All right, Na-chan. Let's go." She took his hand--his very tiny hand--and started off through the forest.
To say Naruto was confused would be a gross understatement. There was no way to describe the state of his mind at this time. All he knew was that he wanted his money back from that barkeep, because this was no "doorway to heaven." "Hell" was more like it, if the food was anything to go by. If this was oblivion, then maybe his vocabulary was worse than he had thought.
"Time for a little quiz," the woman said suddenly. "Name the major elemental countries." He frowned at her as he tried to remember his academy days. He listed off the countries, at first hesitantly, then a little more boldly as she smiled and encouraged him. The woman might have sucked at cooking, but she was a very nice and patient teacher.
He still didn't have a clue who she was though.
As they went through the marketplace, he began to piece things together little by little. The first was that everyone was familiar with him and the woman. The second was that he was even younger than he initially thought he was, perhaps around three years old or so. The third, he didn't quite believe until he caught a reflection of himself from a bucket of water.
That weird, black haired woman was his mother! And he, somehow or other, had changed his hair color and become her son!
Okay, perhaps that was a little misleading. Apparently, he had been born with black hair and light violet eyes and had never been blond haired, blue eyed all his life. He felt like he was in a permanent transformation technique.
====
He never opened the floorboard to confirm if the equipment was there. He never even tried to look for it. All he did was try to get through his daily exercises like normal, making sure he was keeping himself fit like his mother wanted. But the silence was deafening. It felt strange to train, and not feel her familiar chakra nearby. It felt weird to perform the Hyuuga techniques without her there to correct him. But most of all, it felt wrong to wake up in a house without her overly cheerful voice declaring good morning every morning.
He missed her. He missed her amazingly disgusting dishes, and her terrifyingly delicious ramen. He missed the way she would stroke his hair, or hold him close to her when he did a good job or was just plain upset. He wanted her back so badly that it was driving him mad just trying to stop himself from thinking about it.
He let out a shuddering breath, and rested his forehead against the tree. It was always like this. His precious people always left before him, always left him behind to pick up the pieces. He had never dealt with it well. He supposed he should thank the heavens for even having seven years with her.
No. He was being unfair. It wasn't like any of them left because they wanted to. They all had things that they needed to do, places they needed to go. The fierce joy his mother had shown him just before she left had shown him how much he meant to them. No. He wouldn't sully their memories by blaming them for leaving. He should honor them by living his life even more joyfully.
It was hard, but he adjusted. He could wake up in the mornings without her, and he slowly improved what he knew through training every day. He didn't know why he kept up his skills, not when his work consisted of the occasional killing of a wild animal threatening livestock, or of being an unusually speedy messenger for a civilian. He didn't know, but neither did his mother, and she had kept up her skills for all these years. Maybe there had always been the hope that one day she would be able to return to being a shinobi of Konoha. Or maybe it was just for the simple reason of the joy in knowing what one could do.
He didn't know why she kept up her skills, but he did know why she trained him in his. She wanted him to have the power to protect himself and those that were precious to him, and he intended to honor that. Never mind that his one precious person was gone. Never mind that he was all alone in the world.
It was hard, but he endured. That was what it meant to be shinobi.
====
"She exchanged a cage created for her for one that she created herself."
====
He was too far away, and the kunai was moving too fast, Chouji turning too slowly, and he just couldn't make it there, wouldn't make it in time even if he were not tied up trying to keep his opponent at bay. Before the sense of guilt and terror could settle in his gut, another kunai flew out from nowhere and deflected the potentially fatal shot.
Neji? he thought, as the ninja burst forth from the foliage and engaged with the enemy that had nearly killed Chouji. He didn't have time to wonder what the hell Neji was doing there because his opponent decided to pelt him with a bunch of boulders.
"Dammit, another Konoha-nin!"
Shikamaru could hear rustling in the trees, and other kunai flew out, threatening to impale the Iwa-nin.
"If you value your life, you will leave before the others get here." The moment the Neji look-alike spoke, Shikamaru realized that it wasn't Neji. It was Neri.
The Iwa-nin was about to retort when someone in an ANBU mask appeared, landing close to Ino. She startled, and moved closer to where Shikamaru was standing. A moment later, two more ANBU appeared. The Iwa-nin decided to take their chances at running away. Three on seven weren't good odds.
Shikamaru was still puzzling out why ANBU were there in the first place when Neri grabbed him and Chouji, dragging them away from the battlefield. Without his perpetual sunglasses, Shikamaru realized that Neri was actually a Hyuuga.
"Neri-san, you're..." Ino began, but Neri cut her off.
"No time to explain. We have to get out of here," he said, pushing them farther away.
"But the ANBU," Chouji started.
"They're genjutsu," Shikamaru realized. Neri nodded. He cursed internally. They weren't out of the frying pan yet.
====
It was a surreal experience, seeing that blond hair, those blue eyes, the whisker-like marks... It was surreal seeing the body that he used to inhabit belonging to someone else. Surreal, and frankly, disturbing, no matter how much he had prepared himself for the moment. He felt like that other Naruto would pop into non-existence the moment he sent a strong attack at him. It was like looking at a mirror, only the reflection decided to do whatever the hell it wanted.
====
Then he realized that somewhere along the way, he had thrown himself away. As he stared into those blue eyes blazing with fierce conviction and determination, he realized that he may have more knowledge, more experience than this Naruto that was not him, but he did not have what had made him him all those years ago. He could claim that it was naivete, but he knew better than that. Perhaps it was when he had first compromised with Danzo. Perhaps it was in the fundamental difference of having different parents. Whatever it was, Neri finally understood that the Naruto that stood before him was more than he was right now. It was both irritating and humbling.
Naruto must have sensed something change in his expression, because the anger that had been directed at him was slowly fading away. Neri gave an irritated sigh, restraining the urge to run his hand through his hair in frustration. Had he always been this tenacious? Tch, how troublesome.
"Fine," he grunted, finally conceding. Naruto's face lit up, as if his words actually meant something to that dumb blond. Though he supposed that he had once been that dumb blond as well... He mentally shook himself from that line of thought. "On one condition," he said, before Naruto could lose his head. "Take me with you."
To be continued...?