"It's where you're fighting someone, they suddenly flash back to their tragic childhood, realize that they were being an idiot and why, and change the course of their life."
—Kakashi Hatake, discussing "Therapy Jutsu"
It's For a Good Cause, I Swear!
is a Naruto Fan Fic by Sarah1281 (also the author of Oh God, Not Again!).
After the events of the series, Team Seven send themselves back in time to change a moment from their past. Of course, once that's done they've still got the rest of their lives to live out and are determined to make them as interesting and convenient as possible.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: The story is a parody of the Naruto series, pointing out plot holes and exaggerating some people's characteristics for humor.
- All Is Well That Ends Well:
- When Sasuke comes back in time, he murders the elders and Danzo by poisoning their tea, then forging a suicide note for Danzo. This... doesn't really have any repercussions. If anything, it makes things better because it allows Minato to appoint a much better council.
- The third hokage's death is treated this way. Though the village undoubtedly mourned his death that day, they eventually moved on. The only side-effect is that Kakashi has to deal with accusations of murder from his own team.
- The Uchiha Clan Massacre. Sure, the entire clan are dead (again), with the exception of Obito, but thanks to Naruto posing as Orochimaru and having the entire massacre blamed on him, Itachi never has to leave the village and Alternate!Sasuke has most of his sanity spared...until Future!Sasuke comes back and merges with him, taking control over his body.
- The actual time traveling. The team members never have any epiphany to actually tell anybody that they're time travelers, because things are going so well, and eventually only confess when Naruto slips and uses Sage Mode during the invasion.note Even then, they only tell Minato, Jiraiya, Tsunade, Itachi, and Anko.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: The reason why ninjas rarely have therapy is because most if not all therapists are civilians and the reasons for ninja to need therapy are usually classified mission info and/or too traumatizing for non-hardened civilians to handle.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The conditions for meeting the Chuunin Exam's minimum sanity requirement are: not spontaneously killing allies, no maniacal laughter, not having personal issues that habitually get in the way of one's fights, and not being more youthful than Might Guy.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Naruto's impersonation of Orochimaru suffers from this. Forunately, Orochimaru is a Card-Carrying Villain, so nobody comments on how silly the attempt is.
- Beige Prose: Sadly, the fight scenes are like this, but the dialogue makes up for it.
- Blatant Lies: Naruto blames the Uchiha massacre on Orochimaru. This is Blatant Lies to everyone who knows about Itachi's mission, but the point is to convince the villagers, and it works.
- Butterfly Effect: The yondaime (fourth) hokage lives, the sandaime (third) hokage dies, and Itachi stays in the village. All of this results in Orochimaru still being in the Akatsuki which also results in them being a part of the invasion. This leads to their downfall, and the Hidden Rain gets a peace agreement with Konoha.
- Coincidence Magnet: It's implied by Obito and Sasuke that bizarre and unlikely situations frequently befall Kakashi and whomever he's with at the time. When Kakashi and Obito are chased through the village by a mob of angry women, Obito asks how Kakashi always gets them into these kinds of situations. When Team Seven relate the story of their mission to the Land of Waves, Obito remarks that it seems Kakashi can never get a normal mission. On the day of the chuunin exam finals, Sasuke tells Naruto and Sakura that although a lot of the time he's just being lazy or standing at the memorial stone, some of the bizarre excuses Kakashi makes for being late are true.
- Cutting the Knot: Instead of destroying all of Kakuzu's hearts again, they decide to just take out his brain since he only has one of those.
- Deadpan Snarker / World of Snark: The story reads like an MSTing at more than one point.
- Death by Adaptation: Kakashi told the third hokage Minato's plan to sacrifice himself to seal the Nine-Tails, so Hiruzen decided to take Minato's place.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Half the premise of "Therapy Jutsu."
- Dragged into Drag: Sort of. Naruto calls Sasuke's curse mark form his "drag form," but Sasuke doesn't think it looks anything like that.
- Especially Zoidberg:
- Temari claims it never hurts to be polite.Naruto Uzumaki/Namikaze: Even when you're about to try and beat the crap out of someone?
Temari: Especially then. - Minato doesn't want to start an incident by accusing a well-respected clan of being crazy.Kakashi Hatake: Even if they totally are?
Minato Namikaze: Especially if they totally are.
- Temari claims it never hurts to be polite.
- Failure Gambit: Team Seven's performance on each of the D-rank missions gets them banned from ever taking any of them again. Kakashi declares that they'll just have to move on to C-rank missions. They hold the record for most consecutive failed D-rank missions, which they consider an accomplishment seeing as it took a lot more effort and creativity to fail spectacularly at chores.
- Fight Scene: In the Chuunin Exam finals.
- Forged Message: Sasuke uses his Sharingan to forge a suicide note from Danzou and to later forge a will from Gatou.
- Hand Gagging: Kakashi does this to stop Naruto from drunkenly revealing that they're from the future.
- Hand Wave:
- A (physically) eleven-year-old Sasuke somehow manages to sneak in and poison Danzou and the two village elders. It's apparently a combination of bad security and Sasuke being extremely skilled due to being from the future.
- Madara shows up and is defeated off-screen up in the hokage box while the genin are down in the arena, with no information given other than that he was defeated.
- Human Shield: Naruto puts Sasuke between him and Sakura when she gets mad at him for "jinxing" her into fighting Neji. He does the same when Temari gets mad at him in the finals box.
- It Amused Me: This is the reason that Team Seven does anything in their day-to-day lives.
- Large Ham: Sakura exploits Might Guy's loudness in order to get the word out that Orochimaru killed and replaced the kazekage.
- Noodle Incident:
- Kakashi and Obito were apparently on a mission where they were attacked by an overwhelming legion of squirrels.
- Sasuke and Kakashi being late to the Chuunin Exam finals in the original timeline was because of a bizarre situation they got into on the way there. Sasuke says, "That poor tree..." and refuses to say anything else about it. It's possible Obito meets the same situation this time around.Obito Uchiha: Hello everyone, sorry I'm late, There was this tree and…well, you're probably better off not knowing.
Sasuke Uchiha: Definitely better off if it was what I think it was.
Sakura Haruno: Oh God, not another story you refuse to elaborate on! We haven't even gotten the squirrel story yet.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: None of the members of Team Seven let Kakashi forget about that time when he killed the third hokage. Then they finally reveal themselves to be time travelers and explain the changes they influenced. Guess what the first words out of Minato's mouth are.
- Only Sane Man: Tenten is considered by herself and Temari to be the only sane Konoha ninja among the cast.
- Papa Wolf: Minato. Obito remarks that Minato would kill the rival genin himself rather than let them do any permanent damage to Naruto.
- Peggy Sue: Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura arrive in the past in that order.
- Phlebotinum Overload: Yoroi's special ability is to absorb chakra. Naruto has an insane amount of chakra. When they face off, Naruto just stands there and lets Yoroi absorb his chakra until Yoroi passes out from chakra overload.
- Revenge Before Reason: Sasuke has a bad habit of doing this, which the others constantly bring up, to his annoyance. They have to stop Sasuke from going off on one when he finds out that Madara's in the area.
- Running Gag: There are quite a few.
- "Therapy Jutsu" is a recognized technique. Besides Naruto, Obito is also quite good at it.
- Naruto's puppet phobia, which he spread to, at least, Chouji.
- Sasuke calling Sakura useless.
- Naruto asks Gaara not to kill his friends in the Chuunin Exam, and Gaara asks for a list. People being on the list or not is a source of jokes later on.
- The Chuunin Exam has a minimum sanity requirement that people worry about meeting.
- Mentioning Sasuke's revenge tendencies.
- "You killed the Third [Hokage]?!"
- Ninjas should look out for squirrel attacks.
- Being hokage apparently comes with an absurd amount of paperwork; so much so, in fact, that it scares people away from the position.
- Serious Business: Team Seven has to pass this Chuunin Exam or they'll be forced to train with Might Guy for a year.
- Shipper on Deck: Kiba to Sasuke and Naruto, Shikamaru and Temari, and Ino and "that one ANBU guy" (i.e., Sai). In the final chapter he lists many more pairings while simultaneously denying an obsession with pairing up people.
- Shout-Out: A bunch. For example:
- Side Bet:
- Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke bet on what day Sakura would come back to in the past. Kakashi and Naruto win.
- Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke bet on Sakura's reaction to hearing that Kakashi's meddling led to the third hokage's death. Naruto and Sasuke win.
- Naruto and Sasuke bet on whether Minato would have the exact same reaction they and Sakura did to said news. The result is unclear, but a third party rules that Naruto wins.
- Kakashi and Tsunade bet on whether or not all of Team Seven would make chuunin in their first exam. Kakashi wins.
- Something Only They Would Say: Team Seven decide to ask each other questions only they would know the answer to rather than use a password to foil imposters in the Forest of Death. They immediately catch someone impersonating Naruto this way, when Sasuke asks him about the Accidental Kiss they had in the original timeline... not because the impostor tries to deny it, but because he didn't try to deny it vehemently enough.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Quite a few. Obito, Rin, Hizashi, Minato, Zabuza, and Haku are just a few of them.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Kakashi spread Naruto's name for this favored tactic of his when he came back in time, and now "Therapy Jutsu" is an officially recognized technique. It turns out Obito is really good at it, as well.
- Talking Is a Free Action: This is used and abused for Rule of Funny.
- There Are No Therapists: Played with. There are plenty of therapists, but they're all civilians, so most of what the ninjas would need therapists for is classified and the rest would be too much for a civilian to handle. The closest ninja equivalent is Therapy Jutsu.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Played for Laughs when Obito recalls the mysterious squirrel attack.
- You Are Too Late: Orochimaru spends so much time arguing with Minato and Kakashi that by the time he calls on his minions to put up the barrier, Itachi has already quietly killed them.Orochimaru: I may not have the ideal battleground but I still don't want any interference. Now, my Sound Four, put up the barrier!
[Beat]
Orochimaru: What... why aren't they putting up the barrier?
Kakashi Hatake: Itachi killed them ten minutes ago.
