Madara stood atop the still-incomplete Shinju, scowling at the ninja that stood between him and his goal. The reanimated shinobi had realised that he had no chance of extracting Kyūbi from its jinchūriki quite a while back and was racking his head for ideas.

He could not just let all his efforts go to waste like that just because some pitiful excuses of shinobi stood in his way! An idea suddenly sprouted in his head as a proverbial lightbulb lit up in his head.

Madara laughed maniacally as he shouted, "Ha, you pitiful shinobi have no chance of stopping me now!"

"Kuchiyose: Edo Tensei!" Madara shouted out his technique as he completed the hand signs.

A puff of smoke appeared before him as Kinkaku and Ginkaku, the infamous Gold and Silver twins of Kumo were revealed.

The three ninjas, noticing his plan, dashed forward trying to stop the crazed Uchiha.

"Rasenshuriken!" Naruto yelled as he tried to hit Madara with the spinning chakra.

"Amaterasu!" Sasuke shouted at the same time, adding to the blonde's technique with the unstoppable black flames of hell.

Their efforts were for nought as Madara sidestepped the deadly attack and quickly extracted the Kyūbi's chakra from the two confused reanimated ninjas before they could regain their bearings.

This was enough to fully awaken the Shinju into the Jūbi as the massive creature roared loudly enough to shake the very earth.

Noticing this, Uchiha Obito cackled at the look of shock on his opponent, Kakashi's face. He smirked at him, giving the silver-haired male who had once been his comrade a long monologue about how Madara had saved him, how their actions would bring about peace as well as how Kakashi should give up and accept his own weaknesses.

This only caused Kakashi to shake his head sadly at his ex-teammate. This was until a fire suddenly started burning in his eyes.

"I'm not letting you degrade yourself any further, Obito! It's time to open your eyes to the truth!" Kakashi declared before charging at Obito with his Raikiri active, only for him to use Kamui to phase past the attack.

"Kakashi, it's hopeless! Humans are incapable of achieving peace! I have to make sure that you insolent fools see the light in our actions!" Obito stated as he started getting frustrated at the stubbornness of the man he once called his rival.

"There is no need for him now that my goal has been accomplished... He is just a weak fool anyway..." Madara murmured as he started moulding chakra.

"Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku," Madara blew out a wall of flames that rushed at Obito, who was too distracted with Kakashi to dodge the fatal attack.

Obito screamed when he noticed that he was burning, only to be burned to ashes before he could fully process what was going on. Kakashi had noticed the flames rushing toward their direction and used shunshin to quickly move to a safe spot, only being able to look on in horror as his corrupted childhood friend was burned to a crisp. He barely noticed when his chakra began to escape wildly from his body in visible tendrils, in amounts beyond any he had ever unleashed in his entire life.

"I'll kill you!" Kakashi bellowed as he charged Madara while his students were still too stunned by the fact that Madara had killed Obito, who they assumed was Madara's ally, to even try to stop the enraged man.

Madara merely used Hashirama's Mokuton to stab the ninja in his heart before stating cooly, "What a pesky fly."

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura and Naruto wailed as they realised that their old sensei was killed by Madara while Sasuke could only gape as he started to curse his own weakness, blaming himself for not being able to stop the man from charging to his death.

The golden sage cloak that covered Naruto flared slightly as he roared, "How dare you?"

His voice had mixed with Kurama's as his eyes filled with such malice that even Madara had to fight the urge to shiver.

That was when the full force of the Jūbi's chakra suddenly crashed down on all the members of the shinobi alliance.

The Jūbi had fully awoken.

Madara smirked victoriously as he mentally commanded the beast to release a bijūdama at the army that was fighting the reanimated ninja while they were all still paralyzed.

The three remaining members of team 7 could only watch helplessly as their friends were blasted into oblivion, still slightly stunned by the loss of their teacher and father figure. The three incredibly powerful ninjas lost it at that point, starting to release massive amounts of chakra.

"You will pay for that!" all three ninjas shouted as they felt every single chakra signature within the vicinity vanishing simultaneously in one fell swoop.

Sakura released her Yin seal as she started cracking her knuckles, blinding waves of energy coursing from her body.

Sasuke released his curse seal to stage 2, having been released from the side effects of Orochimaru's curse seal.

Naruto just created a chakra body for Kurama and was glaring at Madara heatedly.

Just then, both Sasuke and Naruto were pulled into Naruto's mindscape.

"Welcome, reincarnations of Ashura and Indra," echoed a powerful voice.

Sasuke and Naruto heard the jingle of a shakujo as they swivelled their heads to face the owner of the voice, only for their eyes to widen as their eyes landed on an unusual-looking man who seemed to radiate power. The man had grey skin, faded red hair, Rinnegan and was wearing a sage cloak. The shakujo was clasped in his hand as he smiled at the teens.

"I am known as the Rikudo Sennin or the Sage of the Six Paths. My name is Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki. I have been watching the two of you from the day you were born. You are different from the rest of Ashura and Indra's descendants. You do not seem to be blinded by the curse of hatred and have overcome all your differences to stand here together today, no matter how beaten down you got. I admire your courage, Naruto. I admire your perseverance, Sasuke," stated the man In a booming voice that hardly matched his calm countenance.

"How do you know our names and what do you want from us?" Naruto and Sasuke demanded at the same time, to the surprise of both individuals.

"I want nothing from you. I'm merely here to grant you power. Madara, the shadow of the previous incarnation of Indra, has to be stopped. I am merely here to grant you the means to do so," the sage replied calmly as amusement seemed to glint in his eyes.

"If you are powerful enough to grant us such great power, why do you not take care of this problem by yourself?" Sasuke asked him suspiciously as he eyed the sage's clothes, searching for any possible weapons.

Hagoromo chuckled before stating simply, "My time has long ended. It is now yours. It is your turn to save the world, my children. Ninshu was never meant for war, it was meant for peace. Humans have misunderstood my gift and turned it into a weapon of war."

The two brothers in all but blood could only stare at the man in surprise. The man in front of them was supposed to be dead? He did appear rather ethereal, but he did not look like a ghost either.

The two teens contemplated his offer, pondering whether or not it was wise for them to just accept his power. After a minute, Sasuke nodded decisively whereas Naruto, albeit with some hesitation, nodded several seconds after, causing the sage to smile gently at his talented young descendants.

The Ōtsutsuki waved his shakujo, chanting something the two teens were unable to catch. They felt their bodies glow with power.

"Father!" Kurama suddenly shouted in the mindscape in realization.

"It's good to see you again too, Kurama. Farewell, Kurama, young warriors. I wish you all the best!" Hagoromo said before he faded away.

"FATHER!"

That was the last thing they heard before they were brought back to the battlefield.

The two only seemed to shut their eyes in the real world for but 3 seconds, before starting to release immense power as Sasuke's curse seal power-up dissipated. It was only to be replaced by his Complete Body Susanoo as he opened his eyes to reveal his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan in one eye and a new rinnesharingan in the other. Naruto's golden cloak was only replaced with the white sage cloak that he previously saw Hagoromo wearing as his eyes opened to reveal blue-tinted rinnegan. Although he didn't know it at the time, his eyes had the power of the famed rinnegan as well as the lesser-known tenseigan, a turn of events that even the Rikudo Sennin did not expect.

The two teens seemed to be even more powerful than before. At the same time, Madara had successfully become the jinchūriki of the jūbi.

The chakra of the descendants of the sage had risen to ungodly levels, causing Sakura, who had not been so fortunate as to receive some sort of divine intervention as well, to almost collapse under the pressure. Both boys swiftly came to the decision to combine the Susanoo with Kurama to give the nine-tailed fox impenetrable armour. They did not need any discussion. They simply acted as one.

Madara, not wishing to let the teens have the first move, quickly charged a bijūdama and fired it at his three opponents, smirking as he saw the black blast of chakra engulf the trio.

He did not expect the attack to be cut in two, crashing into the mountains in the distance and completely obliterating them, forming a dome of black chakra at the area of the explosion. He looked down at the teens, only to see the "mere children" he so looked down on smirk at him in victory.

The Kyūbi-Susanoo combination started to charge a gigantic bijūdama, Sasuke adding lightning chakra and Amaterasu flames to it while Naruto added wind chakra. When the Rasenshuriken-like bijūdama grew to the size of the kyūbi, it was released straight at Madara.

Madara, who was still trying to get used to the pain from having the Jūbi so suddenly sealed in him, did not manage to dodge the blast which had been released far too quickly for him to even attempt to put up a Mokuton barrier.

Naruto grabbed Sasuke and Sakura and pulled the two out of the blast range right before the bijūdama exploded, completely obliterating Madara, even damaging his soul severely, and destroying the body of the Shinju. This caused the chakra of the Jūbi to be sucked into Naruto, possibly because of the small amounts of chakra he already had in his body from the other bijū which he had received during the insane tug of war he had participated in with the Shinju before.

The teens panted as they watched the dust clear, revealing an enormous crater that was deep enough to reveal the magma under the earth's surface and at least ten kilometres in diameter. They could neither see nor sense Madara.

Sakura collapsed to her knees as Naruto and Sasuke deactivated all their power-ups, apart from their dōjutsu, and sat down abruptly beside her.

"It's... over... The war has ended!" Sasuke gasped out, sounding completely exhausted.

"But what's the point if no one survived?" Sakura asked in a daze as she looked around the destroyed land.

"Sai, Kaka-sensei, Neji, Hina-chan, Ino, Shika, Choji, Shino, Tenten, Lee, Gai-sensei, Gaara, everyone's gone... Only we survived..." Naruto mumbled hopelessly, knowing that his comrades heard him.

As the previously obnoxious blonde nin's words set in, it started to rain, almost as though it was crying for the three teens who have seen far too much, whose tears had long dried up.

"Kurama told me once. He said that there was a way to go back in time and change the past. Its only requirements were that at least 10 Kage's worth of chakra be used and all ten of the bijū must be present and willing to lend the user their power. This jutsu can take a maximum of 5 people back into the past, where they will return to their past bodies. I can place a seal on each of us to limit our chakra usage so as not to overwhelm our younger bodies. We only have one chance at this." Naruto said seriously, something that would never have happened before the war.

"Why not?" Sasuke and Sakura asked at the same time.

"Do we not satisfy all the requirements?" Sakura asked.

"We do. So, all in agreement?" Naruto asked upon answering Sakura's mostly rhetorical question.

"Hai, Hokage-sama!" the two teens replied to their village leader.

"I am no Hokage without my village..." Naruto protested, looking a little depressed at the reminder of the loss of his people and village.

"You will always be our Hokage. We listen to no one else!" Sasuke declared as Sakura nodded in agreement.

The three now had newfound hope.

Naruto smiled as he did the required hand signs at a speed too fast for even the Mangekyō Sharingan to follow.

"Kinjutsu: Jikan o Tsūka Suru!" Naruto shouted as they were swallowed by a bright light.

Naruto took them back into the past, back to a time when they had no worries. It was the year that the three were four-year-olds. When in that year they would traverse to, the youngest Hokage in history did not know, but he was sure that they would be able to change their fate. As the world of the past came into sight, Naruto quickly slapped a chakra-limiting seal on each of their bodies.

And the seals glowed brightly on their disembodied souls, shrinking right before they were dragged into the bodies of their younger selves.