Just an idea I had. Never see much interaction between the two. I don't own Naruto nor any other works that may or may not be represented within.
In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present. – Francis Bacon.
Darkness; a black abyss encased him. So total that it affected all senses. He saw nothing. He felt nothing. He tasted nothing. He smelled nothing. He heard… only chains. Chains that enthroned his body in this ebony hell, where time had no meaning. Where each managed movement brought rattles that set his teeth on edge.
The prisoner was alone. Nothing to experience or be experienced. Nothing but the chains. They wove around his body and led off into the void that surrounded him. Their presence only evident by his inability to move and their echoing screeches whenever he even moved a single finger. Even then, they felt… strange. They were not made of metal, as they were not cool to the touch and were actually quite warm. However, every place they touched his skin was numb, almost as if they dulled him to a certain extent. And he was pretty sure they were the reason why he was always tired, even though the most strenuous thing he ever did was scream himself hoarse.
He was peerless in a universe that encompassed nothing but his suffering and his bindings. Condemned. Shoved away. Buried alive. Forgotten. Alone.
The reasons? The circumstances? The perpetrators?... He forgot.
Most would have broken by now. The sheer emptiness of their existence and being confined driving them to the breaking point as their minds rotted away without external stimulus. But he was different; special. Where others would have folded away to pressure or simply gave up, he preserved. He held his mental ground against the void that threatened to consume him and the connected links that enclosed him. Part of the reason for his perseverance was up to his sheer stubborn nature, which refused even now to consider his case hopeless. He wouldn't give those damned links the satisfaction of seeing him crack. However, it was really up to two things that kept the prisoner's mind going. One was hate.
A rage that ebbed and flowed within him, a finicky inferno without form or even reason. At times, the hate seemed to simmer and duly flicker as if something had momentarily squelched its fuel. At others, it burned bright enough that he almost felt like it would set his very soul aflame with its intensity. Demanding that he scream out in rage and tear the chains from his body, but the chains always held fast. But… the anger was always there, keeping the prisoner company and helping him ignore the chains from time to time when it got really heated.
He didn't know why he was angry. Beyond the chains, there was nothing to hate. Such answers had drifted from him long ago, but he knew that it was right. That the furious flames that burned within him were there for good reasons. Ones he would do anything to satisfy. And would satisfy if he ever got out. Other feelings also came and went without cause. Sadness. Envy. Disappointment. Loneliness. All of them laced with a deep seated bitterness that left the prisoner both confused and seething.
But beyond the emotional gambit he ran, there was something else. Something that ate away at him and left him feeling something beyond the anger and all the other venomous thoughts that ran through his mind. His second reason for going on. He felt… hollow. Incomplete. As if he had lost a limb and his body refused to believe it was gone. Along with his ever present rage, it reverberated his very being and left him feeling utterly miserable. And yet, this also gave him hope.
There was… something out there that used to be a part of him… or with him; connected in such an extensive way that not even the chains or the darkness could separate him from that truth. Something… or someone who also felt hollow. Someone who might even care about him.
Settling his red eyes in a grimace, he tensed the muscles in his body before slowly pulling his limbs against the chains. As all the times before, he didn't move an inch, but the stress he was causing to the chains produced a high pitched screeching that soon had his ears bleeding. He smirked as he felt the slightest bit of extra give on the chains that confined his right arm.
It had almost been a sign from the Kami's themselves when he had seen it; a wave of bright crimson energy that had flooded his dark realm and instantly blinded him with its comparative intensity. But it was change. It was something different and for the first time, the chains shook and quaked. Rattling in fright and weakness as something outside his black hell assaulted them. The red haze didn't last long however, and the chains were quick to calm themselves and wove around him all the tighter. But it quickly became obvious to him that they were not without injuries as he tested them and found them slack enough to put a minute amount of tension on them. A crack in the armor had been granted to him and he was not going to waste it.
So now he stretched and writhed against his inanimate captors, seeking to make a crack into a wedge. Then to make that wedge into a hole. And then…
Somewhere out in the blackness, he heard a high pitched whine before a loud snap. His right arm lowered a single inch, but the chains were quick to reaffirm their hold. He felt like shouting in joy for his monumental victory, but fixed his face into a determined glare as he expended even more of his strength into breaking his prison, sending the painful shrieks of the links even higher. He snorted at their pitiful crying; it would get them no mercy from him.
He was getting out of here, no matter what.
Uzumaki Naruto squawked quietly and stopped on the rocky ledge as he felt it again; a small throb in his body that refused to go away and only continued to grow. It wasn't painful, just annoying. He messaged his temples and groaned as he felt the throb seemingly grow in response. Signing in frustration, he gave up trying to sooth the throb. He had a better solution anyway.
Continuing his trek, Naruto leapt off the side of the rock outcropping he was on and landed at his destination: the top of the Yondaime's head on the Hokage Monument. His father's head. He almost felt like shouting that fact out to everyone in Konoha to hear. Almost. But he had little doubt that that was something his village didn't need to know right now. If ever.
Settling into the lotus position, Naruto cast his gaze upon his home… what was left of it. Where once had existed the single largest hidden village in the Elemental Nations was no more than a massive crater rimmed with the surviving dredges of the village and the imposing walls that bordered them. The twilight cast the shattered remains of Konoha in shadow as he continued to view his home with sorrow.
It has suffered greatly in Nagato's attack and even if everyone had been revived, the damage done was catastrophic. Countless jutsu and other shinobi-related knowledge that had been recorded in scrolls were gone. Depots and markets full of food, clothing, building materials and the other necessities needed for village life to be possible had been obliterated. The ground in the crater was uneven, demanding the need for untold amounts of stone and dirt to make it level enough to reconstruct anything more luxurious than a small shack. The people lacked everything; whether it be medicine, clothing or food. Konoha had, as it was principally a military base, several emergency supply dumps outside of the village – but it took time to transport it into the village and it simply wasn't coming in fast enough. Not to mention those supplies were not meant to sustain the entire village in the wake of a devastating attack, who planned to stock enough food for everyone when a large percentage of the village would surely be killed in such an event?
However, things would be okay. Naruto had defeated Nagato and convinced him to give up on his mad plan for peace. His belief in Ero-Sennin's dream proved to quite fortuitous as Nagato gave his life to resurrect everyone in Konoha that had died in his invasion. Already, only four days days after the attack, funds were pouring in thanks to their daimyo with further promises of supply caravans within a day or so. Scrolls could be rewritten, buildings rebuilt and livelihoods could be restarted. All that really mattered was that everyone was alive and relatively well. Indeed, even Tsunade has reawakened from her coma only two days after the battle, her resilience and the medical jutsu of her two apprentices proving more than a match for her coma. Things were gonna be okay.
However, he had something to do. His chakra had been fluctuating ever since he had defeated Nagato. Nothing really serious, just small quirks in his chakra flow that did little but screw up his concentration. Said fluctuations also timing up pretty well with the incessant throbbing he felt. It baffled him to a great deal as he had checked the seal several times and found nothing wrong. While he wasn't a seal master, he had spent his entire life with his seal and had memorized it with as many times as he had seen it, much like any other physical attribute he held. He had thought that the Kyuubi nearly being released and the severe stress the seal had undergone in the fight had damaged it in a way his father had been unable to repair. And yet, it was perfectly fine and the Kyuubi refused to answer any of his calls, preferring to sulk in the very back of his prison; which pretty much proved it wasn't the demon, because it would have shoved it in his face the minute he noticed.
If it wasn't the seal malfunctioning and it wasn't the Kyuubi, what then? He didn't know, but meditation and poking around inside him should lend a clue or two.
Closing his eyes and falling into a slight trance, Naruto grasped the connection that would lead him to the Kyuubi's cage and followed it in. The sensation of being stretched out and pulled through what felt like the eye of a needle overcame him before arriving at his destination. The familiar sights and sounds of the 'sewer' surrounded the blonde with the Kyuubi's seemingly empty cage towering before him with the seal holding the gates closed. Familiar, but still very foreign. To be fair, this place was a bit of mystery for him. From what Naruto had learned from Jiraiya and a few non-descriptive discussions with people on how the mind works, this plane was not his mind. Or his spirit. Or his body. At least, not individually. This realm was literally a type of overlapping layer where the seal was located, while the other aspects of his entirety were represented while not being… present. It was as if the area the seal resided was like a blanket, where the ruffles and folds reflected what lay underneath it.
At least, that was a far as he understood the theory. After a while, Jiraiya would go into long and agonizing details he hadn't the slightest clue about before eventually getting drunk and shacking up with a prostitute. He would do that a lot when he should have been training or instructing Naruto for the trials to come. That thought bothered the blond shinobi a bit before he dismissed it. He was wasting time.
Turning from his demon's prison, Naruto set off into the nearest tunnel and expanded his senses outward. In this strange place, where all his aspects met together in some semblance of metaphysical order, there should be a way to find out what was going on. And sure enough, there it was. A dull thump that resonated in the nearby pipes that seemed to signify his coils in the seal realm. He sped down the tunnel, determined to find the source of his problem. However, he couldn't help but feel a sense of unexplainable dread though as he continued to sprint. He felt something calling out to him in a way he couldn't explain. Something familiar.
The prisoner was stricken dumb and stopped stock still as he felt it; a strange sort of intangible pull that tugged at his attention. Something that called to that vague emptiness he suffered from. His eyes widened after a moment of thought. His missing part was here, and getting even closer! He redoubled his efforts, using every bit of slack he had made himself to continue the domino effect he had created upon the chains. The prisoner snarled and hissed out every curse he knew, the hatred burning within his chest his own as he raged at the things that had held him captive for so long. After so much time in darkness and ignorance, he was so close to being free. They would hold him no longer!
The captive reached out his hands and grasped two lines of the chains and wrenched them as hard as he could with a furious yell. To his surprise, they actually gave way to his pull and fell off his restrained flesh. And then he saw it, a single orb of light appeared out in the black haze, bright enough to cause his eyes to tear up. A nagging sensation nestled into his skull, faint phantoms of images and half-heard sounds now running through his mind. No matter how muddled they were, it was wonderful to the prisoner, who had once more stopped to bask in them. His mind raced to process it all.
The taste of iron. Worrying. The feeling of wet grass underfoot. Soothing. The sting of a several metal stars embedded in his chest. Pain. Pink hair. A different pain, bittersweet but still aching. Red liquid coating his hands. Misery. Swirling red designs within black orbs. Hatred, envy and... pity? All of it fascinating and yet confusing. What did it all mean?
Something within the blackness rattled loudly before the light disappeared and with it went the thoughts he was enjoying. The prisoner stopped thrashing, only to stare into the void with his blood red pupils. He relished the mindless rage that overtook him, glad to know it was finally his emotions that were sending him into a frenzy for once.
A howl of raw fury tore through the void as a shroud of dark blue energy erupted from the prisoner's body. It only continued to grow in size and intensity, singeing the chains that contained him while his scream grew in volume.
He would be bound in darkness no more.
Naruto could only stare at the scene in front of him. He had backtracked the 'thump' with as much speed as he could muster and had found its source quite quickly. However, he doubted even Jiji, the legendary 'Professor,' could have made sense of this.
He had entered into a gigantic open room, with a high ceiling and a solid stone floor, within the 'sewer' network to find a large ball of lightly glowing something in near the far wall of it, dozens of meters away from him. Next to the ball was an adult woman, multiple strands of the glowing material seemingly coming out of her back and feeding into the sphere that towered over her. Giant chakra strings perhaps? She was faced away from him, but even Naruto could tell she was panicking slightly as her long red hair moved violently with her. She appeared to be trying to alter the ball in some way.
Taking his eyes off the woman, Naruto spied some of the glowing lines leading off the surface to the sphere onto the nearby pipes, anchoring it apparently. Well, that explained the 'thumps' and fluctuations to a degree. That damn ball must be vibrating or tugging violently on the lines tied to the pipes. A million and one questions surfaced in his mind. Like who the hell she was and how did he approach this? He didn't exactly receive training on how to deal with people that resided inside of him not of the giant monstrous fox variety.
But before he could decide on what to do, a horrible sound erupted from within the glowing ball – a yell laced with so much killing intent and sheer fury that it shook Naruto to the bone. It reverberated around the room, causing Naruto's ears to ring before the yell suddenly stop. Not sure what to do, the blond shinobi decided to wing it like always and ran towards the source of his problem. He covered the distance quickly and landed behind the woman with a loud thump, making her to turn her head at him. Her eyes, revealed to be subdued shade of violet, were wide in shock and confusion. The blond shinobi couldn't help but notice she was beautiful, even with the sweat borne from extreme exhaustion running down her face. The lines that Naruto had spied from afar had turned out to be a series of chains made of chakra running out of her back, all of them looking rather strained now that he was closer. She opened her mouth to say something, but was drowned out as another scream resounded from the ball of chains and a series of bright blue lights shredded through several links out in several directions. It was all Naruto could do to dodge back from one of the beams before a bright explosion burst the ball entirely and blasted him away.
He hit the ground hard and tumbled before he was able to halt by applying chakra to the outside of his body and stopped his roll onto his back. He quickly flipped back on his feet and took a quick look around him, the woman had been blown back further than him and was crumpled up against the wall, her chains gone. Hopefully she was just out cold, but he had other things to worry about, namely the source of the explosion and the smoke that obscured it. He stared hard into the smoke, not willing to approach it as his ears continued to ring from the concussive force that had sent him flying. His hands grew sweaty even as he pulled a kunai out with his left hand and backed up. He may have been an idiot, but running right into the smoke without being able to hear and obscured visions? His first mission in Wave Country had taught him how stupid that could be.
However, after a few tense minutes of waiting, the smoke cleared enough for him to see a lone shape at the base of the where the ball had been, but it was still impossible to tell just what it was. He took a second to shoot a look back at the woman, finding her to still be unmoving. He couldn't risk checking on her, but he took the time to look at her a second time with a more contemplative look. Just what had been so important and apparently so dangerous that she felt she needed to keep locked up in a sphere made out of pure chakra weaved into chains? The amounts needed for such a confinement for extended periods were huge. Just who was she and why was she here? And why would such a thing be here!? In his puedo-seal-body-mind place? A chilly weight settled in his gut when he thought of the Kyubi and the beast's apparent siblings.
His returned his gaze back to the shape to find that the smoke had cleared enough for him to see that it was the crumpled form of a man with his back facing him. Naruto's started toward the fallen man with hesitant steps but otherwise relaxed slightly. While the blonde shinobi was confused and bewildered by what was going on, he thanked whatever spirits may be listening to him. He already had enough on his plate to last several life times; he didn't need two buji in his gut. Naruto came within several feet of the figure and stopped to get a better look at him. Putting it simply, the now apparently male teen was a wreck. He was naked save for a shredded pair of shinobi pants of a dark rusty color, he was of standard height for someone around sixteen, rather bony from apparent lack of food, his skin was pale, his hair color was concealed by layers of grime and he was covered in bruises and burns. Whatever the prisoner had done to cause the explosion had done a number on him as well, but he was still breathing amazingly.
A sudden wet sounding gasp from the huddled teen made Naruto tense and brandish his kunai even as the teen laid on the ground and did nothing but breathe. The blond shinobi was trying to think on how he was to deal with whatever was going on, his eyes crinkled in thought, when the teen groaned and moved a shaky right arm to raise his body off the floor. Deciding it was best to get to the bottom of the situation, Naruto lowered his kunai and put his body at ease.
"Hey, what the hell is going on?"
His voice struck the freed prisoner still even as he was attempting to get unto his knees. Moving with a slowness that rivaled snails, the teen turned his face towards him and locked eyes. Naruto couldn't help the gasp that escaped his throat, feeling as though the whole world had tilted off its axis. It was him. The face was shallow, the skin horribly pale, covered with all types of filth and looked more dead than alive; but it was his own face. The whisker-like birthmarks, the bone structure... it was all there. The only thing horribly wrong with the picture was the eyes: two flat black orbs with pupil-less red irises.
Naruto wobbled and fell to his knees just in front of the doppelganger, his mind blank even as the other him turned around fully to regard him. The two could only stare at each other as their surroundings seemed to just fade and become entirely muted to their senses. But in that void, Naruto felt something else. The 'tug;' that connection that had been on the edge of his attention. It was strong now and almost felt like it was pulling him towards his seated copy. And it continued to grow the longer he stared at him; overruling his confusion, doubts and ability to think in general. There was now only a longing. A desperate internal wailing to grab onto his twin and never let go. A small, distant part of his logical mind noted that the woman had woken up and was now screaming words at him, but that wasn't important. Not when his haggard twin reached up with withered arms and enclosed him in a hug. Not when he suddenly felt lighter than air. Not when he just felt right.
Everything faded into black as he hugged his other self back tightly.
When Naruto felt himself slip back out of his seal into his body, he could only scream in agony as his body collapsed from its seated position. Alien thoughts and emotions raged against his own, churning his mind into a confused mess as he spasmed on the rough rock of the monument. Chakra, both his own light blue and a darker blue exploded out of his body as his self control faltered in the face of the overwhelming pain that seemed to reach all the way into his very soul. The blond shinobi was struggling to even keep his eyes open before the pain hit a new plateau, sending his vocalizations even higher and the chakra rushing out of his body even faster. Large burns appeared in his orange clothing as it fell victim to the large amounts of energy radiating off his body. Soon, even his skin was burning; unable to bear the heat of both Naruto's and the darker chakra venting outward in the likeness of a fire storm.
Desperation settled into Naruto's stressed mind as the pain only continued to increase, but he couldn't think of anything. Every time he tried to muster his thoughts, they were scattered by whatever it was that was sharing his mind. He grappled for an answer, any answer that would just make it stop hurting. To make the amount of chakra he was even now lighting up the night sky up with lessen enough for him to gather himself. If he could just split it!
Split it? Divide?! Kage bushin! Would it hold up long enough for him to even get off the ground? Probably not, but he didn't have any other choice.
Whatever it was that was running around his mind seemed to realize that he was onto something because it was suddenly still, allowing him the mental room to muster up a tiny speck of chakra control. Unable to stop himself from howling in pain and his ravaged hands too jerky to form hand signs, Naruto instinctively molded the needed chakra for forming a single kage bunshin and released it. He just needed to form it from a small amount of his reserves and then, hopefully, a full half of his chakra would simply flow into it automatically. The technique activated and his clone appeared, but it only lasted a second before it puffed from proximity to his burning body and whatever amount of energy had been diverted to it flooded back into him, causing him to scream even louder as the momentary relief vanished. It was too much for Naruto to take and he felt his conscious fade even as he fought to stay awake. But the tide of chakra didn't stop as the last fringe of his control faded away, the amount shooting out of him increased even further, levitating his burning body in the air as it raged against the rock below him. The pillar of the two energies now illuminated all of Konoha with its sheer power and cast everything in an shade of blue.
Before the blackness overtook his vision, Naruto saw a figure above him even with the blue inferno that engulfed him. A cloaked figure… with a tanto in his mouth? He slipped away and fell silent, his mind finally succumbing to the pain.
The figure stared at the fallen form of Naruto, seemingly unfazed by the whirlwind of energy coming off his body nor anything really. Red eyes worked over his body top to bottom before the mouth that held the tanto frowned ever so slightly. He moved forward into the swirling chakra and stared intently before narrowing his eyes at Naruto's stomach in disgust. With a single clawed hand, he reached out and placed it over Naruto's heart, snuffing out the flow of chakra and his heart beat. The figure watched on silently as Naruto died quickly.
Leaning in closer, the cloaked figure reached into the young sage's chest, phasing into the teen's flesh as if it was vapor. The hand closed around it objective and pulled back heavily. A flash of light and a swirling black & white orb now rested in the hand, clasped tightly in its talons. The figure took a moment to regard the orb with reds eyes before it threw the object at the ground next to Naruto and it cracked open in a bright flash. As the light cleared, a copy of Naruto rested next to him; the exact same in every way including the absence of a heart beat and the burn injuries.
The same hand that had called the other Naruto to existence reached into into the figure itself now and grasped something else before pulling it out. The orb it held was a deep, dark red and larger in size. The figure wasted little time before it turned the newly created Naruto onto his back and thrust the red orb into his stomach, right where the seal would have been on the original Naruto. The other Naruto convulsed as red energy crackled on his skin before it disappeared and his body fell still.
The figure straightened itself back up to its full height, the darkness of the night seemingly clinging to it as it now stretched out both of its arms to each of the Narutos. A slight twitch of the hands and both of the blondes began to breath. The figure retracted its arms slowly back into its cloak and stared at the duo before it turned around and walked off, seemingly satisfied its task was done. When the first shinobi showed up to the mountain top and discovered the two Narutos, the figure was no where to be seen.
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