Disclaimer: I don't own it. Just wish I did.
Author's Opening Note: Hey, everyone! To those of you who read my other works on this site regularly, I hope you like this one as much as my others. To those of you who are reading any of my writings for the first time, I hope you'll enjoy reading this at least as much as I enjoyed writing it. Now onto what you all clicked on this thing to read - the story.
Chapter 1: Memories
Naruto sat there, stunned, in the middle of the forest clearing where he had just finished learning the kage bunshin no jutsu. Before him sat a fully unrolled Forbidden Scroll, which he had unrolled to see if he could learn another jutsu. The last jutsu on the scroll, having been placed there by the Yondaime Hokage mere hours before his death, was before him. It was labeled Shusei Suru Shiki Fuuin (1), and it mentioned his name several times, but what exactly the description said was the most noteworthy part of all.
I, Namikaze Minato, also known as the Yondaime Hokage, am writing this technique down despite the hope that the situation that would require its use never arises again. The reason that the Shiki Fuuin had to be altered for this circumstance in the first place was because of the nature of the target it would be used on. First, when summoning the Shinigami, one must give him a minimum of two souls, oneself and one's target - which in this case would be the Kyuubi no Kitsune. Second, without a soul or mind to bind it, a demon's power and body would explode violently as they tear out of control. Due to the size and supposedly infinite energy of the Kyuubi, the explosion resulting from the tearing of soul from flesh would level a good portion of Hi no Kuni, Konoha included. Even if I simply asked the Shinigami to immediately seal the power and body of the Kyuubi inside the body of a newborn, it would still explode and probably be even more damaging due to having infinite power focused at a single point like that. The whole of the Elemental Nations would be hit by that blast. So a standard Shiki Fuuin was out.
However, I managed to find a loophole in the system. By modifying the seal on the infant whom would hold the Kyuubi's body and power, I could make it so a half of that infant's mind and soul were bound to the Kyuubi's body and power inside of him, and the other half remained bound to the host body. As long as there was 'more than none' of soul and mind bound to the Kyuubi's body, it wouldn't explode. Of course I couldn't slap such a seal on instantly, so for the sealing I'll have to use the one baby I have unrestricted access to - Namikaze-Uzumaki Naruto, my own newborn son.
One would think that this was what would have Naruto in shock, but such was not the case. He got out of that shock fifteen minutes ago and continued reading. It was what came next that put him in his current state.
This modification to the seal does a good number of things. First the seal filters memories and emotions so that only the half of Naruto inside the seal keeps the majority of the strongest negative emotions and memories as he goes through life. (2) Since the seal will prevent the half inside of it from directly influencing the half outside of it, this should keep Naruto from snapping if the people don't follow my last request - to see him as a hero. This mean that both halves experience the world but only the outside half can interact with it. Second, Naruto would, under extreme situations, be able to use some portion of the Kyuubi's power, which is only possible because the being inside the seal is a part of him and lets him use the power to help his own preservation or because he desires the same things. Third, if anyone were to attempt to extract Kyuubi from Naruto, it wouldn't work. If they fail to break the connection between the soul halves - which only the Shinigami or Kami could - the part of soul bound to the Kyuubi's power and body would be able to hold tight into the seal. If they were somehow able to break the bond, both halves would fade into the afterlife to rejoin, and without any soul or mind, Kyuubi would go boom on the extractors like said above.
The final effect of the seal is potentially the most dangerous of them, but is inherent in the seal's design and structure and I simply don't possess the time to find a way to remove this potential flaw. At any point after Naruto is capable of entering or being pulled into his mindscape, he is capable of removing the seal - at a cost. Doing so would have two major effects. First, his two halves would rejoin and become one. Depending on how bad Naruto's life has been up to this point, he could become insane with pain and rage in the surge of a return of negative memories and emotions or he could be just fine. Second, since he is no longer separated, Naruto would only be able to have one body as his own. Since Kyuubi's body and power are no longer sealed within him, and they demand a mind and soul more strongly than his true body, his complete soul and mind will bind to them. Which is fortunate, since if he doesn't bind to the former body and power of the Kyuubi no Kitsune, it would explode - right after it pops out of his stomach. Obviously, that would kill him, so not good. Hopefully Naruto never discovers or decides to use this piece of information, but since it is unlikely that he will ever look into this scroll - unless he becomes Hokage, in which case the people must have listened to my wishes and we have nothing to worry about- then this possibility must be recorded here.
Naruto sat, staring at the scroll, trying to wrap his mind around the facts presented to him. The seal he bore stole memories and emotions from him, a part of who he was - even if it was an unpleasant part - and the only way to become his true, whole self was to become the being the villagers had always claimed he was.
In his office, the Sandaime Hokage was ready to freak out. He knew exactly what that part of the Forbidden Scroll said, and he knew it quite well. He knew that eventually Naruto would need to remove that seal, but had plans to completely solidify Naruto's loyalty and love to Konoha solely before he informed him of the necessity and possibility (3). Since Naruto had learned on his own, however, Sarutobi would have to do massive damage control to prevent an early removal of the seal. Then Sarutobi watched as things, from his perspective, went rapidly downhill. Iruka's presence wasn't so bad, but then Mizuki's arrival, revealing of his treasonous plans, and his breaking of the S-class law all seemed to bring Naruto dangerously close to a mental breakdown that could result in him removing the seal. Fortunately for the health of Sarutobi's heart, Iruka performed very well with 'damage control.' Seeing Naruto starting to come back to the Hokage Tower with Iruka, Sandaime felt both relief that the danger of an early release had passed and apprehension that an early release could still come about. In his eyes, he saw only a single solution to this mess. A memory alteration technique that would suppress all that had to do with what Naruto read on the scroll after the kage bunshin no jutsu up until Iruka arrived in the clearing (4).
Unfortunately for the Sandaime, he never could have predicted the series of seemingly unconnected events that would happen over the next several months. During Naruto's fight with Haku, 'Kyuubi' (a.k.a. Naruto's other half) pulled the seal suppressing the memory into a piece of Naruto's mindscape right next to his cage, but by the time he got it there, Naruto had stopped channeling his power - which effectively cut off his ability to effect anything not inside his own seal. When Naruto fought Orochimaru in the Forest of Death, using 'Kyuubi's' power, Naruto's other half tried breaking the memory free with raw youkai. While he failed, the addition of the Gogyo Fuuin in the middle of this process had the unexpected affect of fusing the memory's seal with the Gogyo Fuuin. As a result, when Jiraiya removed the Gogyo Fuuin, he unwittingly removed the memory alteration seal. Naruto doesn't instantly remember the event that was suppressed (5), but when he got pulled into his mindscape and came face-to-face with the 'Kyuubi' after Jiraiya tossed him down that cliff, he remembered.
"So... you're my other half, huh? What should I call you, or does it even matter if I'm gonna just rip off that seal right now?"
"Do not remove the seal yet, my lighter self."
"Why shouldn't I?" Naruto's hands had paused over the seal, ready to tear it off and reclaim himself.
"I'll give you several good reasons to wait to do that, if you'll sit down and listen..." Naruto moved a few steps back from the seal and sat in an area the water felt most shallow. "Good. First off, you're not ready for all that removing that seal will entail."
"Whaddya mean, I ain't ready?" Naruto crossed his arms and looked like he was halfway pouting.
The massive silhouette of 'Kyuubi's' body laid down and faced Naruto through the bars. "Emotionally... mentally... physically... you aren't ready in many ways. But given the time, I can help make you ready."
"What exactly do you mean? And how could you help me become ready?"
"Emotionally, if you pulled off that seal right now, you'd be hit with all of our suppressed rage, pain, terror, and despair from the past twelve years in a single second. Mentally, we would relive the past twelve years worth of memories of torture, beatings, hatred, and... unmentionable acts committed against us, in a single second (6). These two combined would break your sanity and spirit, rendering us either an insane killing machine or a comatose giant fox. Neither of which strikes me as a very good option for us."
Naruto nodded, understanding what his other half meant so far. 'No point if reclaiming myself means losing myself to madness.'
"Physically, I don't mean your body itself so much as your capability to control and effectively use youkai as well as your skill and coordination with your body. Unless you plan to leave human civilization completely behind and never assume a human form, you need to learn how to effectively fight in a human form, both with and without weapons."
"But why should I fight as a human if I can just turn into a towering behemoth that can annihilate my enemies with a slap of one of my tails?"
"Baka. What if you're trying to protect someone and transforming would kill them, like in an enclosed space? What if you want information from your enemies and needed to disable them instead of killing them? What if it's a single enemy surrounded by hostages or innocent bystanders? You need to be able to effectively fight for situations like these, or else you'll just wind up doing more harm than good."
Naruto gazed at his other half, uncertain of what to respond with. "...so how am I ever going to be ready to remove this?"
"Did I not tell you I would help prepare you for it? If you give me permission to, there is much I can do to help you. Like when you heal, I'm able to do that because you want to heal, you want the pain to end, and so the seal will allow me to heal you. Since the seal will let me do anything you want me to do for you, here's what you need to want me to do for you: open the valves. Whenever you channel the energy from my half, allow me to vent some of these pent up emotions. The main reason they're so bad is because I have no outlet for them, but if you'll let them out for me, we won't have to deal with as much in a sudden rush when the unsealing happens. As for the memories, let me give them to you as nightmares as you sleep. The only memories you'll need to deal with when the unsealing happens are the ones that I have that you don't, so the more memories I can transfer to you during your sleep like that, the better it'll be." 'Kyuubi' noticed Naruto's fearful face and nervous stance at this. "What's wrong?"
"Does that mean... I'll have constant nightmares for years?"
"No. I'll still allow your natural dream flow to happen in between bad memories, or else your mental and physical health would begin to suffer from a lack of sleep. And not all of the memories I have that you don't are directly bad memories. Some are actually happy..."
"How's that possible? I thought the seal only took away bad memories... Is something not working right with the seal?"
"No... The seal also blocked out memories that would have made you remember those bad memories. For example... you can't remember most of your first year in the academy, can you?"
"Huh? Yeah, why is that? What was so bad..."
"It was one of the happiest times of your life." Naruto's eyes went wide at that. "One of the children of that class became very close friends with you. Their parents were civilians who had moved here after the Kyuubi attack was all over with, mainly because their little girl wanted to become a kunoichi and they lived in Hi no Kuni."
An image flashed in Naruto's mind, of a little blond haired, blue eyed girl with her hair in two high ponytails. For some reason he couldn't understand, he felt a sharp pain in his heart at the image.
"The reason you had so much trouble in the academy classes after that, was because you had blocked out the foundation all further lessons were based upon. And whenever anyone would try to re-explain those lessons to you, the seal would make you block it out so you wouldn't remember..."
FLASH
"Naru-kun, explain what chatra is to me again, please?"
Naruto looked at the little blonde across from him, both of them studying their academy textbooks for the exam tomorrow. They were at the little girl's parents' house, at the kitchen table.
"It's chakra, Takara-chan. Chakra is what ninja make when they mix their spiritual and physical energies in their body and then they mold it to perform jutsu. Since spiritual energy is part of-" A younger Naruto sat talking to the young girl, explaining yet another part of the ninja knowledge to her. Near the door to the kitchen, her parents looked on.
"I don't know why all the neighbors keep trying to tell us the kid is some kind of trouble," said the man.
"I know, he's one of the sweetest boys I've ever met. And he isn't just sucking up with it either."
FLASH
Naruto felt tears stinging his eyes, still confused why he felt so much pain with such happy memories.
"Despite the block, some influences couldn't be thrown off..."
FLASH
"Naruto-kun, you look great in that orange shirt! You got one I can wear?"
"I'll get a whole bunch of orange we can wear with jiji's next batch of money for me, believe it!"
FLASH
The tears began to run down Naruto's face.
"And the last happy moment, one of the happiest of our life..."
FLASH
"Otouto! Look!"
Naruto looked toward the familiar voice, confused why the only child was calling someone 'brother'. When he turned to look at her, he saw her running to him and pointing to her face. On which some carefully drawn whisker marks were made with markers.
"Hey Takara-chan, nice job on the whiskers! What's up with calling me 'otouto' though?"
"Whoops. I wasn't supposed to tell you that. Too late now."
"Tell me what?"
"Mom and dad are gonna adopt you! They're at the adoption office right now, filling out papers, and they were gonna tell you when you come over but it's supposed to be a surprise so I didn't tell you nothing and we're gonna be brother and sister and ain't it great!"
Naruto found himself hugging her and laughing with joy, oblivious of the scowling chuunin that went off to inform others. "So what's with the whiskers?"
"Well if I'm gonna be your sister, I best look the part."
Naruto laughed at that and hugged her again.
FLASH
Naruto was practically sobbing now, hardly able to put a sentence together. "What-what hap-happened? Wh-what kept me- from-from-hic-" Naruto suddenly managed to force out a scream through his sobs. "TELL ME! SHOW ME!"
"Very well..."
Several minutes in the mindscape later
Naruto sat with his head between his knees and his back against one of the bars of the cage, sobbing uncontrollably. He had already finished dry heaving. (7) What he had just remembered...was the most horrible moments of his life. On the way to his 'soon to be parents' house, him and Takara had been grabbed and pulled into a side alley, where he was held down and forced to watch horrible things happen to Takara, simply because she cared about him... they had tortured her and killed her in the most painful way he could imagine - burning her alive. They had used some kind of illusion so no one outside of them or him was aware of what was going on... and he remembered all their faces.
He had recognized the instigator almost immediately... Mizuki-teme... and two more of the adults by their traits... a Hyuuga man with a bare, unblemished forehead, and a man from the Inuzuka clan, if the face markings were anything to go by. He had no way of recognizing the rest, although most were shinobi and a few were citizens.
He remembered waking up a few days later in the hospital - with hardly a memory of the last several months accessible to him. He remembered the Hokage telling him something about Takara's parents leaving the village in despair over their own child's end, and he clearly recalled his own response, "Who's Takara?"
A new feeling arose over his own guilt and grief and despair. As he thought of her clearly unpunished tormentors and murderers - since if a clanless nobody like Mizuki-teme got away with it, the haughty Hyuuga and the powerful Inuzuka would doubtless be well protected by their own clans - a feeling of indescribable rage and hatred surged within him, and he felt the outpour from his other self's emotions at these memories.
He felt the surge as the red energy ran through him, and he heard his other half's voice speak just before he was pushed from his mindscape. "If we die, Takara's only chance of having justice done dies with us. Don't die just yet."
In the Crevice
To Naruto, the floor of the crevice didn't seem to have come any closer since he had entered his mindscape.
"That's because it didn't, by much. Time moves close to a hundred times faster in here than out there. Or at least it does when you aren't genuinely unconscious." Naruto's eyes widened slightly, and he began to perform the necessary actions to summon as the fall continued. "I can talk to you because you are willing to let me do so now that you know the truth. Just think at me to talk back"
Naruto cried out, "KUCHIYOSE NO JUTSU!" and a huge plume of smoke formed beneath him. As he bounced off the summon's forehead and landed on the toad's face, Naruto was still glowing red from having such large amounts of youkai flowing through him. As per his agreement with his other half, this meant he was feeling a small portion of the pent up emotions from behind the seal that his other half was sending him. Combined with his anger from the memories he regained of Takara and his feelings of betrayal over the memory suppression the Hokage had done, his anger was so high that Gamabunta spent a full minute in silence for fear of the killing intent he was letting off.
'It's even greater than the Kyuubi's was twelve years ago...' Gamabunta thought. Taking a breath, he noticed the youkai fading away, the killing intent going with it. "Oy, gaki. Where the hell is Jiraiya? Why'd he summon me in the middle of a canyon?"
Naruto raised his eyebrows at the question, then snorted in indignation as he put his emotional mask back into place. "That old pervert? He shoved me down here so I could learn to tap into Kyuubi's youkai on the fly to be able to properly summon. Obviously it was enough to summon you, which is good since I didn't want to wind up a pancake on the canyon floor."
If it weren't for the power that had been coming off the kid on his face a minute ago, he would have laughed at the idea of such a small human summoning himself. As it was, he just gave a grunt of acknowledgement, then said, "I'll get you out of here, but unless the member you summon feels the situation is acceptable, we'll only accept and obey you as our summoner once you've summoned us at least once with your own chakra."
Naruto nodded in acceptance then, sensing the summon's body tense, used the tree walking exercise to stick to Gamabunta's face as the great toad leapt upwards and out of the canyon they were in. It also helped him hold on when they landed and it felt like the whole world was shaking and vibrating around him.
After the toad poofed away, being polite enough to let Naruto jump to a nearby treetop from his back first, Naruto looked around for a moment. Pretty soon, he saw what he was looking for. A perverted old man in Kabuki costume walking towards him, not looking the slightest bit ashamed that he had done something that could have killed his temporary student within a week of meeting him (8).
"Don't show him too much anger yet. Remember, get strength and knowledge first, then hand out justice with this power." Naruto heard in his mind.
He sent back a, 'Yeah. There's still some things you didn't explain that you mentioned earlier that I'll want explained when I can give you my full attention.'
"Will do, but not right now."
"So, summoning the boss toad on your first real summoning, eh, gaki?" The old pervert looked smug. "Must feel pretty big right now, huh?"
"Not really," Naruto was already frowning, and his words made Jiraiya frown in slight disapproval. "He said none of the toad summons would follow me unless I showed I was able to summon them under my own power." Jiraiya looked surprised at this, but then nodded his head in understanding.
'The test is different for every summoner- and every summon. His is to grow strong on his own power and hard work, not the kitsune's... I'll have to take a different approach to training him the rest of this time.' It was then that Jiraiya noticed something off. Before this event, the gaki's eyes had a light and innocence to them, one that had become dulled when... he hadn't noticed when it had dulled so much. 'It's like he lost the light in his life over a few moments... Blink and you'll miss it.'
Jiraiya took a 'thinking' pose. "Hmm... what should I work on with you next? Until we get your chakra capacity up to par, we'll put off learning more about your summons, so what should I train you in next?"
"Try getting more chakra control exercises out of him... or ninjutsu."
"How about more chakra control exercises or ninjutsu?" Naruto was looking at Jiraiya expectantly, with his arms crossed.
"...Well, I suppose either of those two would increase your chakra capacity..."
"Honestly, I think I need control more than I need capacity."
Jiraiya frowned at him. "What makes you say that, gaki? You may have more chakra than most gennin, but -"
"At full capacity, I can make one hundred plus kage bunshin at once, without winding myself, all from my chakra. Can you claim to have too much more chakra than that?" Jiraiya looked stunned, as though he had forgotten this fact. "Kyuubi isn't the only thing I have going for me. I wish people would remember that I'm not just a jinchuuriki. Could you try to remember that, Sensei?"
Jiraiya stared at Naruto, making him slightly uneasy. 'His words sound so... bitingly bitter. Why is that? He wasn't like this before... is this the influence of the youkai or something else?'
"Try not to put him off with all your biting. Remember, we need him for now."
Naruto sighs and puts on an apologetic face. "Sorry about that, it's just... when I pulled out that chakra... some unpleasant memories I'd blocked out came back... I'm a little irritable right now 'cause of it." Naruto crossed his arms in front of himself and tried to look depressed, like he was withdrawing into himself. Out of the corner of his eye, as he had turned his face away from Jiraiya while acting withdrawn, he saw Jiraiya look like he was unnerved.
'Crap,' Jiraiya thought, 'I've got to get his spirits up enough to train. Or else how can I fulfill his father's last wishes of me to train him as well as I did his dad? Maybe approaching with a "sympathetic apology" kind of approach would work?'
Jiraiya got an apologetic look on his face as he spoke, "Sorry, kid, I didn't mean anything by it. I'll try to be... more sensitive about that from now on."
Naruto put a sad smile on, and said, "That's okay... Jiraiya-sensei."
Jiraiya smiled sadly back, before getting a somewhat thoughtful look on his face. "So, kid, what ninjutsu do you know? It'd help if I knew what I had to work with."
Naruto gave a bitter smile, not having to fake it, when he replied. "Kawamiri, Henge, Kage Bunshin, Taijuu Kage Bunshin, and - technically - Kuchiyose no Jutsu."
Jiraiya looked a little shocked. "What? I can assume you learned the first two from the Academy and the second two from the Forbidden Scroll, and I know where you learned the last one from. What the hell did your jounin sensei teach you?"
"Tree walking and 'teamwork', although his definition of the concept seems a little off to me." Seeing Jiraiya's confused look, Naruto decided to elaborate. "His idea is to let Sakura hit me whenever she feels like it, with no repercussions, but I know he'd never let her raise a hand to his precious Uchiha. To add insult to injury, I know he's been privately teaching Sasuke jutsu on occasions prior to this Exam, but what I just told you is pretty much all he's taught Sakura as well." Seeing Jiraiya look like he was about to boil over, Naruto decided to throw in the clincher. "I guess when he decided to throw our rookie team into the Chuunin Exams, he must have figured Kyuubi would be enough to get me through and I'd protect Sakura to make up for her weakness. Plus, if worse came to worst, he probably figured me and Sakura would sacrifice ourselves to save 'the Great Uchiha Survivor' Sasuke."
Jiraiya's fingernails were cutting into his palms, his fists were clenched so tight. He spoke slowly and calmly, ninja training allowing him to keep the anger out of his voice at least. "Kid, go do your own thing for the rest of the day, but be ready to start training early tomorrow morning and keep going till late at night. For right now, I've got some people I need to talk with."
Naruto hid his smile until he had gotten back to his apartment, glad that someone was going to finally teach Kakashi a lesson about favortism. He only wished he could watch it happen.
Elsewhere
Kakashi was in a state of shock, mixed with a touch of panic and a sizeable measure of horror. Jiraiya's visit had resulted in a punishment more severe than a beatdown from women angry about a peeping pervert at the hot springs and more crushing than a Tsukiyomi session inspired by a Yaoi-fangirl's dreams. What was this traumatizing, below the belt, despair-filling punishment, one might wonder...
Jiraiya had informed Kakashi that with all future shipments of his series of books, would be a flier that would be given to every supplier to the public that they were not to sell him those books under any circumstances. He had been told that the only way to make Jiraiya consider removing said punishment, would be if both Naruto and Sakura were to achieve a rank equal to or greater than that of Sasuke. On top of that, he was warned that should Sasuke achieve Jounin before both of the other two were at least Chuunin, Jiraiya would make certain no store in Hi no Kuni ever got their hands on a copy of his books.
Then, while the initial shock was setting in, Jiraiya had destroyed all his own books in Kakashi's house.
Being who he was, this was far worse than any physical or official form of punishment could be for Kakashi.
Back with Naruto
"Oy. Lay down on the bed, I'm gonna pull you in here so we can finish our conversation from earlier uninterrupted." Obeying the voice of his other self, Naruto went to his bed and laid down. After a minute, he felt a tug at the back of his head and gave in instantly, knowing what it was.
To all outside observers, had there been any, Uzumaki Naruto had simply fallen asleep - very quickly.
Mindscape
Naruto found himself already right in front of the cage holding his completion back. "You mentioned some thing I failed to explain earlier. What was it you wanted to know about?"
Naruto looked up at his other self and said, "Earlier, you said something about my lack of ability to 'control and effectively use youkai'. What'd you mean by that?"
The huge form behind the bars sighed, preparing itself to give a lecture. "You've basically only used youkai as a supercharger for your body and chakra. The main two problems are that you aren't controlling it to achieve maximum results, and this body doesn't possess chakra or coils like your human one does. If you want to be able to perform any ninjutsu when we're back together, you'll have to be able to perform them with pure youkai and no handseals. You'll also have to master the chakra control exercises using pure youkai before you should remove the seal, so that way you'll be able to perform them when you use your 'human' form in this body, too. The good news is that you can train to do both in here, since I can give you some of my youkai and cut of your chakra while you're in your mindscape, and you can will the laws of reality to take hold here. You'll have to practice controlling youkai before you practice using it in techniques, so why don't you get to work on it now. We'll worry about the jutsu later, but the more chakra control exercises and ninjutsu you learn from the perverted man out there, the more you can practice them with youkai in here."
"Will I be able to practice using pure youkai out there?"
"No. The only reason it's remotely safe to do this in here is because of the time difference. Remember, to do this effectively, I'm cutting off the flow of chakra through your whole body. Doing so long enough for you to gain proper control of the youkai in the outside world would result in you dying due to your body suffering prolonged chakra exhaustion. Since time is waaaaay faster in here, your body is only deprived for a couple of seconds while you get in a few days worth of training in this and then I let the chakra flow in your body for a few minutes and then it's safe to start the whole process over again. During those 'few minutes' of real world time, I'll be able to - if you're willing to let me - give you some more of your suppressed memories. This should help speed up the date of our reunion quite a bit."
"So, before I get to training, anything else you wanted to suggest?" Naruto had already moved over to the wall to be ready to climb it when he got the youkai in him.
"Remember to ask the pervert for some taijutsu lessons. If he asks, just tell him your best usable jutsu, kage bunshin, is pretty useless as you are since they can't defend themselves from taking a hit and going poof before they can do anything useful. And your first opponent in the Finals is a prodigy from a clan renowned for their taijutsu."
Naruto just nodded at that as the wave of youkai flew into him, and he began his run at the wall.
(1) - Shusei Suru Shiki Fuuin = Modified Dead Demon Consuming Seal (rough translation)
(2) - This allowed for the 'happy-go-lucky' Naruto we know from canon to exist despite all that happens to him.
(3) - Naruto's original body is mortal and will die with time. When it does, it will be the same effect as an extraction that successfully breaks the bond between the halves of his mind and soul. The only way to prevent this (and by extension the massive destruction it would cause) would be for Naruto to remove the seal and enter the immortal Kyuubi's body.
(4) - in other words, Naruto thinks things went down like in canon.
(5) - the memory was unlocked, but nothing triggered him thinking about it strongly enough for him to recall it.
(6) - By comparison, Tsukiyomi compresses about 3 days (72 hours) of torture into a single second (up to three seconds at most, from what I've read). Even if only 1/12 of all of Naruto's lifetime was kept suppressed from him, that would still be a year straight of torture shoved into a single second, making the experience 120+ times more concentrated than a Tsukiyomi torture session. On top of that, he's hit with all the emotional negativity that was held back at the same time, and he can't tell himself 'it's only an illusion, this wasn't real, this didn't happen, etc.' like a victim of Tsukiyomi could. Overall, the brain either cannot shut down fast enough to prevent the mind from being shattered, or Naruto would be comatose for a very, very long time and would still be quite messed up when he came to.
(7) - This next section will probably get me a load of flames, but this will probably be the darkest DarkNaruto fic I'll ever write. In my mind, there are four basic kinds of pasts that can make a person capable of becoming truly dark to any great degree. (A) Terrible trauma with no coping mechanism able to handle it resulting in mental and or emotional instability (Gaara); (B) Being pampered to the point that one believes that 'I can do no wrong' because no one else seems to think one can; (C) (a) followed by (b) - or the reverse (Sasuke); (D) being raised to believe that wrong is right (virtually all Kiri-nin, i.e. Zabuza, the Demon Brothers; virtually all Oto-nin, too). At this point, I've already established that for this Naruto, B, C, and D are not the case. So the only way for this Naruto to become dark to any degree is for A to happen.
(8) - In this fic, Naruto got shoved into the canyon at the end of the first week of training for the finals because Jiraiya got impatient a lot sooner in this fic than in canon (the perv wanted to go back to uninterrupted peeking time). In canon, as I understand it, Jiraiya waited until one or two days before the finals to actually do this to him. So Naruto has roughly three extra weeks of training time from this point to train up for the Chuunin Exam's finals.
Author's Endnote: What will Jiraiya train Naruto in for the Chuunin Exams? Will Kakashi change what he plans to teach Sasuke so that he doesn't get 'too far ahead' of Naruto and Sakura? What will happen differently at the Chuunin Exams because of these events? When will be the time for Naruto to finally become his 'whole self'? And which of these questions will get answered before the next chapter is over? I guess we'll all have to wait and find out, yeah? Read and Review, please. It inspires me to write when I have an audience that wants to read, and sometimes reviews give me ideas that I would never think of.
Starting next chapter, I'll be referring to Naruto's 'other half' as 'Kyuubi', simply because it'll make the sentences far less clunky and unwieldy when Naruto converses with him and it's also the role the 'other half' is filling at this point. I believe (and hope) that this is an original take on the whole 'Naruto becomes the new Kyuubi' line of stories out there, at least enough so that you all might find it worth the time you spend reading it. Should you like this story - or any of my others - I ask you to go to my profile and vote on the poll there (although you might have to read part of my profile itself to really understand what it's asking exactly), which I'm using to get an idea of which stories you all would like me to focus on.
