Chapter 204 - Recap of Story so far Part 1

Notes - This is not a chapter, this is a recap, you can call it flashback or whatever, I understand new readers may not like it, if you caught up recently in the last month or so, But this is for the old readers to catch up to the story so far. In a day or two once I catch up with the last few chapters, only then even I will be able to remember what plot I had planned for this book considering it was on Hiatus for the past 2 years. I humbly ask for your understanding on the matter. Thanks and have a nice day/reading...

The following is a recap from Chapter 1 - 47

After a battle with the Otsutsuki Clan on their supposed home planet, Naruto is sent back into the past after a seal activates on Otsutsuki Shū's body.

Naruto's back in the Hidden Leaf village with his memories intact, on the day of the ninja academy final exams. After taking some time to recollect his thoughts, Naruto decides to continue living in the past with ambitions to save his friends and loved ones by taking on problems he had encountered earlier during his life with the memories from his past.

Naruto graduates the Ninja Academy exam with top scores, surprising his peers. He starts training his body to gain strength faster by using training weights, sparring with Rock Lee and taking Nutrition advice from Guy-sensei and thus slowly improves his strength under the watchful eyes of ANBUS. Sasuke becomes curious seeing Naruto with top scores and decides to find out the truth. Soon a battle takes place and Naruto now has Sasuke's cooperation. As events progress accordingly, Naruto changes his past by avoiding having his first kiss stolen by Sasuke, but ends up having Hinata fainting by complimenting her, causing Jōnins to take note of his presence. Team 7 is once again assembled. Naruto takes the lead by teaching the importance of teamwork from early on. Introductions are done, and the survival test is held.

Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are well prepared before hand, and with Sasuke's Cooperation, under Naruto's commands, the team forces Kakashi to use his sharingan. As the test progresses, the bells are taken under Kakashi's shocked eyes. Team 7 passes and start doing missions, when the first major arc of the story takes place i.e the Land of the Waves arc.

As the team and Tazuna travel to the country, they come across ambushes and particularly Zabuza, who is handled by Naruto with a KO to the temple. Sasuke feels inferior but his training is taken care of by Naruto and Kakashi. As time progresses with Tazuna building the bridge, Naruto undoes his seal and meets his mom and dad, while telling them about the past and also unlocking the Flying Raijin and Adamantine Sealing Chains. The Battle on the bridge occurs as per fate, however, due to unexpected intervention from Otsutsuki Shū, Naruto overflows with Killing intent and ends up making unfavourable decisions that leads to both Zabuza and Haku dying. Otsutsuki Shū finally reveals himself out of guilt and grants a do-over using his time-space ability to reverse the unfavourable events that happened so far, thus leaving Zabuza and Haku alive while also completely eliminating Gatō's men. The later days of the mission is spent by guarding Tazuna as he completes the bridge and training along with Haku and Zabuza a.k.a Hajime and Arata.

The Team returns to the village in preparation for the Chuunin exams. Naruto talks to Sakura so that she could become more useful but ends up being seen by Hinata who runs away when seeing the two of them together, on the other hand Konohamaru spices things up but also ends up being threatened by the presence of Gaara's team, who are cooly handled by Naruto's presence on the spot.

After the Jōnin meeting is held, Kakashi who had approved of Team 7's participation in Chūnin exams finally appears to teach Sakura how to do genjutsu, on the other hand Naruto trains Sasuke. The next day, Kakashi hands over the paperwork for their participation in the exam, following which Naruto brings along the team to meet Rock Lee and Team 10. Rock Lee spars with Sasuke which ends up in a draw. The next day the team goes to the location for the preliminary exams, where there's genjutsu to filter out candidates which is easily figured out. Naruto also takes advantage of the situation to get the genius treatment he had missed out on in the previous timeline. All the Rookie Nine meet-up with slight changes according to current timeline with them noticing something's up with Naruto and Hinata.

The written exam is on, and Naruto easily completes all his answers and so does Sakura, Sasuke and rest of the Rookies and know candidates, but the team's nerves are put to the test when Sakura misunderstands what failure means for the team as she almost gives up thinking of Naruto's future dream. Soon, Naruto uses his out of the box thinking to declare his overwhelming momentum, afraid that the tenth question wouldn't be a challenge saving the team from Sakura's blunder. The test is concluded with Ibiki being shocked by Naruto's answers being better than the decoys planted by Ibiki. The Second stage of the test soon begins, followed immediately by a battle against a sound ninja during which Sakura and Sasuke are incapacitated by fear and are then further handled by Naruto taking them to a safe spot so that he can handle the ninja alone, revealing the ninja to be Orochimaru. Naruto battles against Orochimaru during which Sasuke almost woke up but was made to sleep again by Naruto. Naruto made Orochimaru retreat in anger which was witnessed by Shikamaru, while Anko has her head spinning hearing Naruto was able to battle Orochimaru for an hour. Soon, it was evening, sasuke and Sakura wake up to Naruto eating Fish, Naruto hands over a fish to the two of them and explains the things that had happened during their unconsciousness. Sasuke suspects a few things, following which he confronts Naruto about it. Naruto then explains it in front of Sasuke and Shikamaru about the events from before while also revealing that he's from the future.

Soon Naruto and Sasuke return to their temporary hideout where Sakura runs towards them. The sound three squad had appeared who sakura had kept occupied with her genjutsu. After a quick battle, Sasuke ends up injured/bed-ridden with the sound squad withdrawing due to Naruto's strength. As Sakura helps take care of Sasuke, Naruto sends off a clone to fetch water, who then runs into Karin and helps her out after her teammates became unconscious. Karin returns along with the clone and slowly warms up to the group, she also helps Sasuke recover following which the group sets off. The exam is concluded after the group reaches the tower with only 21 genins.

The Battle stage starts off with both Sasuke and Sakura winning their matches, while Sasuke had it easy, Sakura struggled to pull off a victory against her rival using her newly acquired genjutsu technique. Soon, Karin shows up after having been eliminated from the test, she walks towards Team 7 to spectate at the battles. As she comes across Naruto and greets him, Sakura pokes her nose, only to end up kissing Naruto after having accidentally tripped by Ino. Sakura who was angered beats up Naruto, Karin offers to heal but is overshadowed by Hinata who appears right after with a Healing Ointment.

Matches continued with Tenten losing to Temari and Shikamaru winning to Tsuchi Kin. Soon, It was Naruto's turn. Naruto vs. Kiba, and only Naruto's clone was on the stage using two moves to defeat Kiba. Following which the next match was Hinata vs Neji. The fight progressed as per the previous timeline, however, as a small promise was made in a bed-time discussion in the previous timeline, Naruto vowed to catch Hinata as she would fall in defeat instead of stoping the fight, which he did, However, this only further angered Neji driven by hatred for the main clan. As Naruto was about to leave the Chūnin exam battlefield, Neji asked for it so Naruto smashed him to the ground topping it with a bit of talk no jutsu to lift his spirits. The next battle was also important for Naruto, as it was Rock Lee Vs. Gaara. Naruto warned Lee in advance about the sand clones, as the fight proceeded, Lee still ended up with the same amount of damage to his spine if not worse, as for Gaara, his Sand Spirit awakened causing the people in the battle tower to evacuate. As everyone evacuated, Kakashi was left to face Orochimaru, meanwhile Naruto was battling Shukaku. During the chaos, Hinata who was in a critical condition managed to make it to the battle tower again after the restrictions were placed once evacuation was done, under Shino's watchful eyes. In the stadium however, Shukaku had fully possessed Gaara and was engaged in a battle against Kurama who was possessing Naruto. Hinata's sudden appearance led her to being caught following which Gaara questioned his selfish belief's to Naruto's principles. Following a short talk no jutsu, Naruto takes down Gaara, saving Hinata in the process and seals Shukaku to alleviate Gaara of his insomniac condition using the adamantine sealing chains and Seals he had learned over his time as a Hokage. After the seal was done, Gaara's personality, ego underwent a huge change as well as his horizons broadened allowing him to look at things with an open mind. Gaara apologised to Kankuro and Temari mending his relationship with the duo. The battle continued with the final battle between Chōji and Dosu. Dosu won bagging his place amongst the top 10 finalists. Draws were made and matches were arranged leading to conclusion of the first round of the battle as finals were scheduled a month later. Hiruzen immediately called for a meeting with Naruto at his office which was important to Naruto who was at the time looking for a solution to house Karin as the Hidden Grass wouldn't accept her failure in the exam. As Naruto went to the office, he met Jiraiya who was updated with the current situation as well as Naruto's escapades in the past few months. Being impressed and feeling responsible, Jiraiya announced a training trip for the next three weeks, saying they would leave the same evening. Naruto being super excited immediately made arrangements for Karin's living and training while simultaneously making arrangements for Sakura's training in the medical field as well. On the way to Karin's house, Naruto healed her hands getting rid of the bite marks earning incalculable amount of gratitude from Karin who responded with a kiss on his cheek. The event triggered Sasuke who was already having tough time dealing with various memories/thoughts that made him think about killing Naruto. Forcing emotions aside, the duo went over to Shikamaru's to make a plan to prevent the invasion. The conclusion was Naruto would have to protect the Kazekage and turn him back into an ally to gain an upper hand. Naruto announced his plans to go for training to the duo, expecting the two to train as well, meanwhile Sasuke felt troubled by Naruto's existing advantage not to mention the extra training that would put more distance between the two. Shortly before leaving, Naruto made visits to the Hospital rooms of Lee, Kiba and Chōji. Hinata happened to be sleeping which meant that Naruto could only leave a letter behind as well as a get well soon basket, meanwhile Kakashi was approached by Sasuke for advanced training.