Another nin-bunny

[classicdrogn]

One of the current fanfitcion staples seems to be sending a character back in time to do things over differently, and in Naruto this is often done via some flavor of doubletalk by Kyuubi after all or most of Naruto's friends have bought it... but really, why would Kyuubi do such a thing the way these stories all seem to suggest, when she could aim it so SHE's sent back into her own body, shortly before being sealed, and escape that battle to take revenge another day? The challenge would be to make a story of it... and what happens to Naruto anyway? Is he stuck in a newborn body, possibly without even knowing until its brain developes enoguh to host an older mind? does he physically travel to that past, but with it altered no longer has his passenger? Does changing the past not even change his present, so the kitsune who was trapped is still trapped, and hella mad about it, while Naruto has to explain why he fell out of the sky and knocked Yondaime off Gamabunta's nose just before he could fire up the sealing jutsu he'd invented? I think I kind of like that last idea, actually... not that I have any concept of where it could go.
Beesides, I just managed to get a tiny bit of TXY mojo rising again, so I'm not going to start anything new.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[The Wanderer]

(Please ignore the esoteric paraphernalia in the background. Necromantic rituals tend to come with certain requirements.)

An alternate way to begin to make it into a story: for whatever reason (perhaps because they're too tightly bound together by this point to avoid it, perhaps just from sheer bad luck), the trip back deposits them both in the Kyuubi's body - neither one under seal, and presumably neither one willing to just sit back and let the other have free rein... and a fight for dominance quickly ensues. (Which, just as something to consider, might look rather odd from the outside.)
Naruto may not have ferocity to equal the Kyuubi, and he certainly doesn't have comparable levels of chakra - but you'd have a hard time arguing that he doesn't have the strength of will to hold his own in a battle like that.
So, when it's all settled out, you have the two - presumably rather uncooperative - minds in the body of the demon, neither one able to definitively wrest control away from the other for any long period... and then you begin to deal with the consequences. Which could be quite varied, depending on exactly how far into the battle things had been when the minds from the future arrived - or even whether the attack had begun at all.
Possibilities?

[Sirrocco]

*hrms*...
to take it back a step further, just for the mindwarpiness... Naruto and/or the Kyuubi try to get it to kick back before the sealing ritual... and succeed in kicking it back *just* before the sealing ritual... so now Naruto has *two* of the things inside him. Interesting variations could be drawn on whether or not the elder Kyuubi has his own chakra supply, how well the elder gets along with Naruto, and whether or not the seal is weakened as a side-effect of the jump.
Of course... if you think about it, *Naruto* really isn't the one who would be most motivated to make a time-jump. At least, getting him to the point where he *would* requires a bit of doing. *Sasuke*, on the other hand, has all the motivation int he world already. Better yet, there's all *sorts* of ways you could take it. My personal favorite has Sasuke jumping back in time shortly before the Uchiha Massacre, killing Itachi, and then running some sort of high-end alteration jutsu to take his place... at which point a combination of the (previously warned-about) time-travel jutsu, the final opening of his Sharingan, and perhaps some negative side effects off of the bodyshaping jutsu takes him to the Bad Place... and he massacres the Uchiha, before saying the correct cryptic and creepy things to his "brother" and leaving town. Mind you, it's my favorite for the sheer wrongness value, but I'm like that sometimes.

[ECSNorway]

Most of those I've seen send Naruto back to his Academy days, with some random spiel by Kyuubi about how if he tried to go back before the seal it might kill them both.
One that handles things a bit differently was Crimson Skies' This Time Around, in which (thanks to Weird Fu from the battle at the Valley of the End) both Naruto and Sasuke are sent back, to when they were six years old, and have to come up with a plan to prevent the Uchiha massacre...
Also, Two Steps Back, where it's an older, possibly wiser, Sasuke, who goes physically back to the past...--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

...wrote this a while ago...

============================================================================
Uchiha Sasuke knew he was about to die.
It was a curiously peaceful feeling, grey and cold and quiet and as inevitable as the frost just before dawn.
Six years isn't so long a time to say, but when it's half as much life as you'd had at the start of it, it's a very long time, indeed, to live. Long enough that even the quietest, most subtle whisper would come clear, even if only by its constancy.
Subtle, Orochimaru was -not-.
When he was twelve, his brother's frozen face and hateful eyes had lurked out of the darkness every time he closed his eyes. When he was twelve, anything he could do, anything at all to make that monster -pay- for what he had done to their family had seemed needful and more than. When he was twelve, he hadn't known how rare it was to friend a friend as loyal as Naruto, or a love as pure as Sakura's. When he was twelve, he had still been able to remember his mother's face.
When he was twelve, Sasuke had realized long ago, he had been a fucking -idiot-.
He had known this day was coming ever since the moment when he took the fruit from the devil's hand, and known even then that it was a step he could never take back, never avoid.
In retrospect, the manipulation was obvious - every word, every action carefully calculated to draw the greatest response from that stupid little boy's gaping wounds, and the seal's poison drowning everything good and blocking every path that led away from the abyss - but the worst thing was that, when he lay in bed waiting for sleep, he could never escape the knowledge that none of Orochimaru's manipulation had been neccessary.
If his eyes had been wide open, he would still have made the same mistake.
A Leaf raid and an ill-timed mission had brought him another three years - but now that time was up, and the twisting ropes and whisps of chakra snarled and danced around his body and Orochimaru's current shell. The intensity of the ritual was enough to disrupt the iron control the second-level seal had held over him the entire time since its activation, but that had been anticipated and he was bound tightly, far too much so to have a chance to disrupt the ceremony.
But that was all right. He hadn't planned to, anyway.
Despite all its power, the curse seal was not, in and of itself, intelligent. It did not know treason or rationalization, did not truly sift its victim's thoughts - it could only view, and react to, its wearer's own awareness of his orders.
And Orochimaru had forgotten to forbid Sasuke to booby-trap his own body. The complex web of ninjutsu he had woven through his own body over the last four years was only barely stable - the shock of the power involved in his 'master's' transfer would disrupt the balance and start the cascade into ruin. At the very longest, the process might take six months, more likely four.
He had wanted to revive his clan. He had wanted to kill his brother. He had wanted to see Sakura's smile again, or hear the Dead-last's whining voice.
But he'd seen the wreckage his former teammates had left behind in their other confrontations with the Akatsuki, and knew that Itachi's obsession would inevitably make the nukenin doom himself to the same end. He knew that they'd be happy with each other, even if he couldn't be there to see it.
It wasn't what he would have picked for his life - not even close - but he supposed that, given his sins, what he'd done would be more than enough.
Sasuke smiled as the ritual came to an end.
Blackness.
...needless to say, waking up again afterwards was something of a shock.
==================================================================================

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[ECSNorway]

Hmmmm. Innnteresting. Do continue. --
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Sirrocco]

Indeed. Please do.