Transposition

Prologue:

It's a generic Naruto- Time- Travel backstory. It's not really necessary to read so feel free to skip it. 

continue at your own risk.

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Somewhere, in a world of soldiers and mercenaries, of unsteady peace and war, there stood a man. Perhaps "man" is not quite the word that should be used to describe him, for despite being 23 years old, he could still be taken for a teenager, if you discounted both his demeanor, and his chosen profession.

Regardless, the man-who-was-at-some-point-a-boy stood alone.

 He was of average height, a little short maybe- though malnutrition could be blamed for that, as opposed to genetics-, possessed a lithe, muscular build, and hair that possibly could have been a shade of blonde, underneath its blanket of filth. The man was covered in an array of scratches, dirt, and blood; a mixture of his enemies and his own, along with the blood of his friends and comrades.  

This man's name is Naruto Uzumaki.

At this point in time, he was staring out across the battlefield- at the land that was so bloodied with gore and corpses strewn about  it was almost unrecognizable to him. Where there should have been a warm sense of familiarity, of comfort, Naruto felt nothing. 

 This place used to be his home. It was his village, the place where he used to laugh, yell, and live  with his teammates ( his family). Where was the bridge where they would yell at their teacher for being late? Where was the little old ramen stand he used to frequent, where he would endlessly brag about his future as village leader? Where was the Academy, with the tree-swing he would sit on as he watched people, families, mingle?

( he told himself that he didn't care anymore )

( despite what some would think, Naruto had always been a liar )

 Not for the first time, he struggled to fight back warm tears that were threatening to fall. His throat hurt because of the sulfur in the air, his eyes stung due to the smoke.  

He would not cry. Shinobi do not cry.

Naruto admittedly had not assumed he would be able to protect all of his friends, but he would never have considered it naive to think that is would not come to this.

(friends. 

Something he had thought he would never have. He finally understand how Sasuke must have felt.

"How could you know what it's like to lose everything when you never had anything to begin with?!?"

)

Neji, Lee, Tenten, 

Shino, Kiba, Hinata,  

Gaara 

The Ino-Shika-Cho trio, 

And then Sakura, own teammate, and Kakashi, his shitty teacher. 

( Kakashi who they had found chained  up inside a cave- a torture chamber they didn't say- corpse so bloody it was almost unidentifiable, sans the mop of gravity defying silver hair that lie flat, adorned with red flakes atop his head.

Naruto had kept Kakashi's book. The orange Icha-Icha novel his teacher had carried around almost everywhere was now his, despite the fact he had sworn he would never own anything pornographic after spending too much time with the toad Sannin.