Naruto Maboroshi

**Naruto Maboroshi** is a Story Arc of the Exteria Multiverse. It takes place in Interra - albeit an alternate version, one where Ninjutsu reigns supreme - and follows the perspective of apprentice shinobi Kitaro Uzumaki, Himeko Otsutsuki, and [Kasai Uchiha]].

## Main Arc

### Shinobi Exams

In the **Hidden Leaf Village**, young aspiring shinobi Himeko Hyuuga and Kasai Uchiha, heirs to legendary ninja families, undertake the Chuunin exams, and are paired together alongside the careless, wandering orphan Kitaro Uzumaki. There, they encounter a variety of people, including Chiko Taketori, member of a minor family subserviant to the Hyuuga, and most noticeably Suzume Amagiri, a candidate from the **Hidden Dream Village**.

Suzume, alongside her two companions from the same village, seem openly belligerent and sabotage different parts of the exams in order to gain the upper hand. Himeko, Kasai and Kitaro repeatedly challenge their plans and end up stopping them altogether during the finals, a massive tournament. However, disaster strikes then as the exam is interrupted by an attack from mysterious, masked individuals that attempt to kill Himeko and take Kasai's eyes.

### Unveiling the Conspiracy

Intervention from Kitaro unleashing strange powers from within stops the assassination attempt, and ends the Chuunin exams. Due to Himeko's excessive emotional investment and Kitaro's lack of maturity, only Kasai succeeds the exam, causing Himeko's family to reject her openly. Kitaro attempts to interfere with that rejection, which only causes more problems for the trio and forces them to temporarily leave town to avoid repercussions from the Hyuuga.

On their way, they are joined by Chiko, then ambushed once more by Suzume, which they manage to subdue this time. They then learn of Suzume's previous problems - the Hidden Dream Village being under attack and needing political back-up which Suzume hoped to claim by becoming a Hidden Leaf Chuunin - and take advantage of their exile to visit the village, discovering that the village's leader is a member of the masked conspiracy, **Onigami**.

However, the village leader is by no means hostile and enlists the group's help against a mysterious group, the Daiten, enemy to all Shinobi. Surely enough, sooner than later, a member of the Daiten clan appears and launches a massive attack on the village by summoning a terrifying tree monster, which the group barely powers through despite Kitaro unleashing a Mystic Eye of his own, the **Rinnegan**, and Himeko unleashing powers she seems to have learned during the previous night.

### Fall of the Uzumaki

As they recover from the battle, Onigami attempts to make their move by offering safe travel to the group in exchange for some of Himeko's organs as well as Kasai's eyes. Not fond of the idea, Himeko quickly allows the group to escape using an unknown jutsu, but not before Kasai is marked by a tracer seal that allows Onigami to chase him. With help from Hachi, a member of Onigami who seems to have a special link with Kasai, the young shinobi is guided towards Kitaro's hometown.

However, the birthplace of the Uzumaki, sealing experts, is in ruins, and Kitaro's family seems to have been slaughtered. By chance and a thoughtful investigation, the group finds a collapsed building hiding away a strange seal and a woman's corpse, charred from torture. Another, non-hostile, member of Onigami appears in this room and claims that Kitaro was born there, and tasked with sealing away the **Ten-Tails**, an ancient beast, during a forbidden ritual.

Kitaro is understandably shaken, but the room also hosts a variety of sealing and unsealing techniques, freeing Kasai from the seal. The group is now free to return home, but quickly discover from Tenshi Haruno, Himeko's rival during the exams and now a hunting-nin, that due to Hidden Leaf leader and Hokage **Noda Shimura**, their group has been labeled as potential traitors due to their ties to Onigami. Tenshi is then tasked with constant surveillance of the group.

### Facing the Boneward Beast

Kasai begins suspecting that Noda is an ally to the Daiten group, and investigation quickly confirms that. At the same time, Himeko's behavior slowly changes over time, which is explained by her receiving the guidance of her real mother, Natsuki Otsutsuki, at night, and the awakening of her real abilities, not as Hyuuga but as Otsutsuki, precursor to the Shinobi. Furthermore, Himeko starts being targeted by Onigami member Shinimaru Kaguya.

With Tenshi's quick thinking and Kasai and Himeko's planning, as well as Kitaro's ability to bolster Chiko's powers, the group fights at one to neutralize Shinimaru, and learns that her clan has slowly degenerated over time, and needs the flesh and heart of a pureblood Otsutsuki to heal of this illness. Himeko performs risky, space-time-altering surgery on herself to duplicate her heart, allowing Shinimaru to feed on her without dying, and earning her loyalty.

### Sinister Revelations

The group now learns from Shinimaru that Kitaro has only inherited half of the Ten-Tails, that which is imbued with positive, Yang energy. Onigami leader, the resurrected mythical founder of Kasai's clan, Indra Uchiha, possesses the Yin aspect, and seeks to reunite with Kitaro's half to perform a modified version of the **Eye of the Moon Plan**, effectively using the Moon as a vector to deeply warp the world's perception towards his aims.

They also learn that the Daiten were precursors to Chakra, the primal ki of shinobi, before it was stolen away by the Otsutsuki civilization, hence their hatred of shinobi and Otsutsuki. Daiten work with Noda in order to deprive the rest of the world of Chakra, returning the world of shinobi to an archaic, powerless state. As Himeko learns that they are backed by the Hyuuga clan as well, she devises a plan to be left as prisoner in the Leaf Village, then infiltrate it.

### Kasai's Tale of Loss

In exchange for Himeko's custody, Kasai asks of his brother, **Muten Uchiha**, a political prisoner of the village, to be freed. Noda accepts, but asks of him to be watched by special Leaf agent Ginko Hatake. Muten tells Kasai that he made a pact with an Onigami member, their mother - responsible for their father's death and subsequently missing - offering his eyes to her in exchange for Kasai's safety.

However, as they reconcile, Muten is stabbed and killed by Ginko, forcibly under the control of Noda. The trauma of losing a brother he barely managed to find again awakens Kasai's abilities, while making him and Kitaro spiral into shock. Nevertheless, they manage to go on, before being contacted by Himeko, who managed to reach a separate dimension serving as a massive garden to the Daiten, where the Fruits of Chakra are hidden.

### Himeko's Tale of Love

Meanwhile, Himeko had successfully escaped and attempted to take revenge on the Hyuuga for her mistreatment, but before she could kill its patriarch, she was stopped by his daughter, Yukiko Hyuuga. Despite Yukiko being everything Himeko envied and resented, Himeko ended up showing respect and acceptance to her, and the pair teamed up against the Daiten when they attempted to subdue Himeko by force, even threatening their own Hyuuga allies if they interefered.

With Shinimaru's help, Himeko and Yukiko defeated the Daiten and used his abilities to warp to his own dimension, where the trees are contained. However, they found themselves stranded there, and unable to make progress because of the number of guards and powerful Daiten seals. Needing the rest of the group's expertise, they called them by their side, despite Kasai's uneasiness and Ginko's numbness after being used as a countermeasure.

### Seizing the Forbidden

Now reunited, the group easily powers through Daiten and manages to seize the Chakra fruit, bolstering Himeko's powers to divine levels, as well as labeling her the world's enemy. As Himeko shares her powers with her mother, the two new deities are threatened by Noda's forces, which are easily dispatched despite their Daiten back-up. What they cannot so easily evade, however, is the Eye of the Moon Plan which Indra manages to start, even in an incomplete form, enough to subjugate Natsuki.

The group now learns of Indra's true plan: to use either Natsuki or Himeko as a puppet through the manipulation of his **Infinite Tsukuyomi** projected by the Ten-Tails, in order to transfer her consciousness to the past vessel of **Kaguya Otsutsuki**, and reshape history according to his whims, recreating the world from scratch. He is barely prevented to do so by Kasai's timely intervention, and Kitaro uses his own Ten-Tails to protect Himeko from arm.

Fighting through the entire organization, minus Hachi and Shinimaru, the group manages to corner and challenge Indra, vanquishing him despite his immense chakra resources, abilities, and the Ten-Tails' influence. In his weakened state, Indra is however killed and absorbed by Hachi, who reveals himself as legendary shinnobi **Izuna Uchiha**, the one who resurrected Indra and planned everything from the start.

### Loss from Another Time

Izuna explains that in a parallel world, he dies and his brother, **Madara Uchiha**, becomes a legendary god of shinobi, leading to an alternate timeline altogether. However, here, due to outside intervention, Izuna survived himself. His brother's loss caused him to use the Infinite Tsukuyomi in order to fix the timeline, effectively killing himself and erasing the entire world to allow his brother to live.

Izuna challenges the group, using a battery of new abilities worthy of the legendary inheritor of the Uchiha, combined with chakra drawn from Natsuki herself, but this causes her undoing as Himeko's abilities, combined with Kasai's **Sharingan**, turn Izuna's plans against himself, forcing him into an endless illusion of happiness alongside his brother. Izuna falls, defeated, and peace returns to the Hidden Leaf and the ninja world.

## Characters

* Kitaro Uzumaki
* Himeko Otsutsuki
* Kasai Uchiha
* Chiko Taketori
* Suzume Amagiri
* Tenshi Haruno
* Ginko Hatake
* Yukiko Hyuuga
* Shinimaru Kaguya
* Hachi
* Indra Uchiha
* Natsuki Otsutsuki
* Other Naruto characters

## Trivia

* This storyline quite obviously alludes to the **Naruto** universe.
* This storyline's name refers to its illusory nature in the Timeline, as "Maboroshi" means illusion or dream.