"So, you see, I have alot to offer you."
He admitted that he was little perplexed at what he was asked to consider. The mere possibilities of this request was endless, and if he had not earlier been intimately exposed to the majesty of the Nine, this would be something which he was not sure he was going to appriciate. "What would you gain, and for what reason did you choose me?"
The other, having the appearance of a man with golden locks and shining eyes, wasted no time thinking about the answers he was going to give, for he was a creature of emotion and always spoke outright without regard. "You're still as mistrustful as ever, Sasuke," he said and smiled, correcting his jumpsuit which had been created out of slim wood fibers only hours ago. "Well, I wouldn't like it any other way. As for my motive... let's just say balancing powers. And as for the other question - you know you're the only one I can trust for this ordeal."
Crossing his arms over his halfbare chest, still wearing that outfit he wore when he was under Orochimaru, he watched the other occupant in the room turn his back against him and walk towards one of the windows. Knowing he wouldn't go, not yet at least, he shifted his glance towards the baseboard under the transparent glass.
Looking out through the window, the solemn entity sought release of his heavy heart. "Situation's dire. Since the Event, the whereabouts of the Nine has been clouded. It was only through luck that I managed to locate Seven." Stabilizing his view, he gripped the windowsill with whitened knuckles. "I have to move soon, and when I do, I need someone to Transcend."
When the creature turned around, Sasuke tilted his head descisively upward from the baseboard, locked him with his eyes and spoke. "What do you plan on doing when I become one of the Nine? My brother is one of them, and when he's wiped out, my reason will have dissipated." The blonde smirked.
"Of course. Of course..." But he had to chance. Hopefully, Sasuke would join him in his cause, which would give him the upper hand, despite that the others would outnumber them fatally. He was more than aware of Sasuke's potential, and had no doubts there would be no complications during the Transcendence, were he to comply.
Sasuke became more and more interested of what changes his friend had gone through during the Transcendence, and what the Transcendence really was. He was no expert in the field, so he asked.
And he answered. The true theory behind the Transcendence could not be explained in human tounge, and the limits the human brain had made it impossible to even grasp a significant understanding. But he told him what he could. Apparently, more than a thousand years ago, a man named Yuuji Sajaki had committed a form of collective suicide along with eightynine others; his followers. This ritual had been named the Ninety, although there remained none who remembered its name.
It was not suicide in a traditional sense. It was instead individual suicide; for what became of the Ninety was a gathering of minds. A collective consciousness. Thoughts flowed together, opinions were shared, feelings clashed; privacy disrupted to never rise again. Years after, this shared consciousness descended from whatever plane it had been part of, and came back to its original world in the shape of a fox. It had become the Kyuubi, its tails symbolizing the number of people who had been sacrificed in the Transcendence.
Soon, others followed. After a hundred years, eight other collective minds had sprung up and found their way back to their original world, their affairs in this lower plane impossible to imagine.
"Then you are not him? You are not Naruto," Sasuke said. The blonde wiggled his/their head from side to side in a seemingly random fashion and puffed.
"Obviously." Fiddling with his (their) lower lip with the fingers on his (their) left limb, he (they) continued. "The personality of Yuuji Sajaki was supercilious before the spirit of the one called Naruto was forcefully added to the mass-mind. That, on top of Akatsuki's rough methods used in the Transcendence, stirred us rather harshly. One might say that Sajaki and Naruto are battling for supremacy, but... that would be erroneous, seeing as neither of them really exist as separate entities."
This was a rather peculiar form of existence, Sasuke concluded. He wasn't so sure that the eccentric gestures "Naruto" made during the conversation were directed at him, or if they were some intricate display of emotions and processing he could not fathom. "This could be a mean to kill my brother." Sasuke silenced. "Naruto" watched him, flexing his (their) fingers with an uneven frequency. If they (he) managed to snare him, it would surely benefit their (his) cause. "What would you like me to do?"
Naruto lit up and smiled, making his mannequin body rigid. "See, we were thinking about using this method..."
A/N: Idea totally ripped off from the science-fiction genre and made bad.