Chapter 1
Naruto opened his eyes to darkness.
Well, not accurately darkness. He was in what seemed to be a sewer, an exceptionally well-lighted sewer. The light was red, and gave the water and walls a sinister look. Naruto suddenly realized he was waist-deep in what basically amounted to be sewer water (surprisingly clear sewer water) and had the natural reaction.
"Ugh, what the hell?!" Naruto jumped from the sewer waters to the wall sticking there with chakra "That's just nasty!"
"Now you know how I feel." A deep voice growled.
Naruto froze and slowly turned his head.
Blood red fur?
Check.
Floppy ears that would look better placed on a rabbit?
Check.
Teeth that were about the same size as Naruto's whole body?
Check.
Killing intent that made Zabuza look like a civilian?
Big old whopping check.
The staring went on between Naruto and Kyuubi for a long time before Naruto broke the ice.
"You know I have the feeling that I am supposed to say something brash and stupid to the nine-tailed menace within visual distance of myself like 'you owe me rent'." Naruto gulped "At the moment however my mouth can't speak out the words."
A low evil chuckle came from the kyuubi "Interesting to see that fear does make you smarter."
Naruto snapped out of his shock "What am I doing here?"
"Your seal was altered by the deviant's technique. You are here because you're unconscious." The Kyuubi growled.
"Wait what?" Naruto intelligently uttered.
The kyuubi rolled his eyes "Look to the side."
Naruto did so and found himself nearly blinded by the radiance. There was a whole section of the wall which was covered by what looked like complicated circles. He could see kanji , and occasional nonsensical words printed on there.
This was nearly all blotted out by a brightly glowing pentagram. He could see the kanji for metal, fire, wood, water, and earth on each of the five points. It pulsated every now and then.
"…what is that?" Naruto asked shocked.
The Kyuubi snarled "That is what was intended to be on the cage you see." Kyuubi paused for a second "If that had occurred you would have been truly unconscious, and not simply in your mental space."
"So what screwed it up?" Naruto asked.
"The seal you see before you is one of the most complicated pieces of fuinjutsu to ever exist. It owes much of its complexity to the efforts of the shinigami-despite what that insipid town of primates will tell you." The kyuubi muttered.
Naruto wanted to interrupt but was silenced with a look "The seal due to its massive energy, has possessed a kind of limited sentience. This sentience is mostly wrapped around the concept of keeping me inside here, and has performed all kinds of tricks to keep me in here." The fox glared at the bars and hit them with its tails making the water surrounding the jail cell burst away.
The bars were unmoved.
The kyuubi calmed himself "Your fellow blonde monkey placed a few seals that were deemed unnecessary by the sentience. They weren't actively harming the seal so it left it alone. It's quite limited in that regard."
"So when the deviant did his technique, the sentience recognized it as a threat and shunted it off to the seal's more…auxillary functions." The kyuubi gestured to the brightly glowing section.
Naruto was staring at the wall "What do the unnecessary seals do?" Naruto muttered.
Kyuubi heard it with his extra-sensitive ears and grinned macabrely. Mixed in with the unnecessary seals was a seal that forbid the Kyuubi from speaking about the seal's functions to anyone (except in the most general terms). Even if the seals were compromised (as they were now) the sentience considered it a necessary function.
The Yondaime however had screwed up in an important detail.
The sentience was always secondary to the host's will; in this case Naruto.
Naruto had just said he wondered what the seals did.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
In the outside Sakura continued laying traps blissful to the talkings between her dumb teammate and infinitely powerful demon.
She would regret that blissfulness in the future.
"Do you want to know about the seals functions?" came the polite voice from the kyuubi.
Naruto looked at the fox with narrowed eyes "What do you get out of this? The more I know about the seal, the better I can contain you."
The kyuubi's grin, if possible, increased "I have my reasons. But if you really don't trust me that much I can make a vow to tell the truth for the next thirty minutes. Would that satisfy you jailer?" The voice twisted into sheer hatred on the last word and the grin changed into a hateful parody of its former self.
Naruto stared, trying to find the angle that the kyuubi was working. Finding none, he answered cautiously "Yes, that would satisfy me."
Kyuubi drew itself upright "I, the lord of the nine, do vow to tell the truth in regard to questions proposed by Uzumaki Naruto for the next thirty minutes of time today."
"So what do the unnecessary seals do?" Naruto pointed out to the wall.
"One blocks your bloodline. The others are composed of a variety of other functions including regulation of independence, conditioning and aspects of your body." The kyuubi explained sounding (disturbingly) like Iruka on a bad day.
"…huh?" Naruto naturally commented.
The kyuubi rolled his eyes quietly muttering about 'idiot containers' and 'cruel death gods' "It's a loyalty seal, and death seal moron."
'That' Naruto privately thought 'did not sound good'
"What exactly do those two seals do?" Naruto asked hoping he was wrong.
Kyuubi seemed to take great pleasure in proving him right "The loyalty seal does as it says on the tin. It commands loyalty to a concept. Naturally, even if you primates are incredibly stupid your minds are too difficult to constrain to such a concept. So the seal needs to dumb down the subject to incredible levels in order to work properly. The subject will be an incredible idiot, who will often have no impulse control and is incredibly naïve about complex concepts. Sound familiar?"
Naruto sat down hard, ignoring the fact that the water was up till chest level.
'Congratulations Naruto you are a genin now.'
'I will become Hokage and earn the respect of them'
'I want to be a shinobi Oji-san!'
'I will be a shinobi of the leaf'
Had it all been fake?
No it couldn't be. The Kyuubi had to be lying to him, in some cruel attempt to break him.
Then Naruto remembered the fact that the demon had sworn to tell the truth for thirty minutes.
For an instance, Naruto felt true soul-crushing despair. His whole life since day one had been programmed towards being loyal to Konoha. The blonde bastard had essentially created his personality to be what it was today.
He was just a puppet on strings.
Naruto cried for several minutes while Kyuubi watched.
The Kyuubi sat and basked in the despair of his host. Even if he was still imprisoned there was nothing quite like making a person break, especially with nothing but the truth, that made Kyuubi feel good. All he needed was that human food…what was it called…popcol or something.
It was ironically the one faction in Naruto's life that didn't have to do with being a shinobi that saved him.
Ichiraku.
Naruto remembered the many conversations that he had with the kind ramen stand owner. Many of them had nothing to do with Konoha. They were simple conversations on life, and how to do this and that.
That hadn't been fake.
Naruto drew himself up, drawing on his considerable will power (which also, Naruto found out pleasantly, wasn't fake). Naruto stared at the Kyuubi with impressive hatred "You are a complete bastard you know that?"
"Such lovely words you say. It warms the pit in my chest. Aren't you wondering about the rest of the seals?" Kyuubi pointed out with glee.
Naruto snarled "Yeah, you mentioned a death seal. I assume it causes my demise."
The fox nodded "Correct. To be more accurate it is supposed to cause your death when you are twenty years old. It will cause your demise by inserting antagonists inside your synaptic clefts, freezing your nervous system. Then it will make your body produce massive dosages of carbon monoxide making you suffocate in considerable agony. Finally it will mess with your lower brain preventing many of your vital functions." The fox enjoyed watching the confused expression on Naruto's face.
To Naruto most of the conversation had flown over his head, but he did understand the most important words "It sounds like he was expecting me to have the ability to regenerate. Why would he want to cause my death anyway; I'm holding back you from destroying the place he gave his soul to protect."
The Kyuubi whistled "You noticed that logical flaw. You see Naruto you are something that is completely terrifying to any shinobi who knows anything about jinchuuriki construction; which thanks to my actions and the hidden village's desire to keep it quiet are few."
Naruto waited for the answer but soon realized that the Kyuubi was dragging the moment out "Well? What are the hidden village's so terrified about a kid who couldn't even pass his academy records."
The kyuubi grinned wide, and Naruto suddenly got the uncomfortable feeling that the answer wasn't going to be nice
"Your Completion."
Sakura grunted as she did a kawarami, and switched to an above position. She lunged down to attack the cocky sound-nin with two kunai.
This would have been a really good time for Naruto to be awake, she thought annoyed.
"…."
The kyuubi watched in interest as Naruto patted himself. Interest became annoyance when he started looking at his mind.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking myself. I gotta tell you Kyuubi I really don't feel incomplete." Naruto commented.
The kyuubi growled "As a human you are complete. As a jinchuuriki you are not; something that you are hardly alone in. No jinchuuriki in history has ever reached the pinnacle of completion."
"What's this completion?" Naruto asked "It sounds like something really fancy and powerful."
The kyuubi rolled his eyes and wondered if he could put in for a switch of hosts "Be quiet, and listen. I'm not saying this more than once. A jinchuuriki, according to shinobi, is a human that has a demon bound inside him and can use a percentage of the demon's power. This makes sense, doesn't it."
Naruto nodded.
"It's completely wrong. A jinchuuriki is supposed to be a permanent union between demon and human. A human's intellect and ability to reason combined with a demon's power and natural connection to the elements. It was supposed to be a symbiosis; demons give human access to their power while the humans let the demons have a taste of cognitive function. Demons were formerly able to have cognitive function on their own before a certain clan sacrificed a great many people and part of themselves to chain it." Naruto for the first time in his life felt a bijuu's full killing intent. How any human could stand up to something like that he would never know. All he knew was that his legs were screaming at him to run away as far as possible from the dangerous predator.
The kyuubi calmed himself down and spotted Naruto's terrified face "The man who devised the method was notoriously a hanyou who worked for the military. Before he could show his findings to a daimyo (don't ask me which) a ninja caught wind to it and proceeded to take the plans and kill the sealmaster. The plans were by the way incomplete, and for that can be laid the imperfection within jinchuuriki."
"Seals that contain the bijuu can be categorized into two functions; containment and transmission of power. Naturally the more contained a bijuu, the less transmission there is. Most seals I have seen focus more on transmission and leave containment a second priority. You've seen what happens when they do that."
Naruto blinked, and wondered what Kyuubi was talking about.
"Gaara, Idiot."
"He has a bijuu inside him?" Naruto gasped. If that was how most jinchuuriki acted….
"You don't need to fear going insane boy. This seal focus more on containment than transmission-it has to. Otherwise your fragile body would be turned into so much ash, by my power." Naruto relaxed "Most seals only last for a short time. The demonic power is like water to metal; eventually the bars are going to rust and give way. The last time that happened they had a demon stuck inside a human's body in the middle of a hidden village. The carnage was delightful." Naruto edged away from the snickering fox.
"Your seal is unique. I could try battering it down for all eternity and the seal would still be its pristine self down to the last second of time's existence. This is NOT due to the blonde rat's genius; shinobi far more skilled and wise than him tried to contain me before him. They all failed. It is more due to the contract he executed and the being who enforces the contract. That damn shinigami." The kyuubi spat out.
"I'm pretty sure that he was horrified when he realized the only way to restrain me from destroying this delightful hovel was to permanently seal me into a human. He would be creating the one thing that was possibly every village's worst nightmare; a complete jinchuuriki. In time you would become something far more than human yet not demon. My demonic power would thrum through your chakra system and you would grow to outlive any human provided someone wouldn't kill you-decidedly unlikely considering the rate your regeneration would grow."
"To any shinobi village, a free willed jinchuuriki who is mentally stable and couldn't be sealed away would be anathema."
"So he planted the seal to make sure that you were loyal to Konoha, and to kill you. After all, if you were loyal to Konoha, they could have simply told you that the death seal was necessary to prevent Konoha's destruction. You would have cheerfully gone to your demise if you had thought it would benefit Konoha. "
"…." Naruto silently thought. He found himself horrified when he found that he would have quite happily jumped off a bridge if it meant that Konoha would never be destroyed by the Kyuubi. He quelled the bile forming in his throat.
"Judging by your expression, you have just had a thought that runs directly against loyalty to Konoha. As you can tell, this means that those seals are being blocked from working by that five-point seal. This is a truly fortunate event, and one that if you tell anyone they will seek to reverse to control you." Kyuubi eyed making sure that Naruto understood him.
"I understand; don't tell anyone about this or they will put you back under control."
"Good. I have a proposition for you that will make both of our situations more tolerable."
"….I need more detail into this proposition." Naruto stated; he wasn't about to make a deal with the devil unless he was told everything.
"Smart decision. You will give me a connection to your senses, and change the form of the seal to something that will allow me more room than this dismal contraption." He growled, jerking his head to the cage "I also desire…parole of a sort from this prison. These are my conditions, and I will not change them for anything. There are two other conditions that are more flexible."
"What do I get out of this?" Commanded Naruto.
The Kyuubi shifted and Naruto realized that he had quite possibly taken the tone as an insult "What you get is quite simple. The amount of chakra that shifts through the seal will be tripled, further increasing your number of demonic attributes and benefits. Your chakra pool will increase from its pitiful size to something more respectable. Finally, you will get the greatest gift of all; access to the wealth of knowledge I have gathered on you primates for the last millennia."
Naruto thought for a second "Two questions: By parole do you mean permanent or temporary? Will the 'wealth of knowledge' be giving honest information?" To be honest Naruto was excited; who knew how much information a millennia old fox could have? Information was a shinobi's best friend.
"As much as I would desire it, permanent parole would be impossible from this seal. The seal would recognize the fact that I was absent for a rather long period of time and…discorporate me. It will have to be temporary; in effect I will become your familiar." The way the Kyuubi spat out the last word told Naruto how he felt about that.
Naruto did some quick calculations. Contrary to public opinion, Naruto could sense chakra. He just couldn't do it very well and didn't advertise the fact. The less the teachers felt they had to shut down the better.
What he did sense was the sheer power of the Kyuubi; he hadn't and suspected he wouldn't feel so much chakra ever again. Unless he did something stupid…like try to fight a god. He quickly calculated how much chakra a single tail would have, and how to cut it down to a sizable margin.
The figures he came up with made him shiver in raw fear. A kage had in average, 200 units of chakra at their disposal. This was typically seen as the uppermost barrier of chakra production. Naruto had broken the scale when tested in the academy (not that they would have told him how much chakra he had anyway…). So he felt pretty sure that his chakra level was at kage level or beyond.
One tail was coming up to something like 1250 units alone. Naruto then understood how, despite their elemental limitations and lack of ninjutsu, a bijuu was a sheer force of destruction.
"The energy you will have when you are on your parole will be 1% of your chakra. No more, No less." Naruto didn't want to give the Kyuubi any more power than necessary. As it was he felt that 1 percent was too much to give him.
Kyuubi growled and hatred gleamed in its eyes. Naruto got prepared to jump away in case he tried to claw him up through the cage. Finally the Kyuubi nodded tersely.
Before Naruto could speak again, the Kyuubi interrupted "Your shrill voice hurts me ears. So before you ask if the information will be honest; it will be. So I say, lord of nine."
The look in the Kyuubi's eyes disturbed Naruto; it was scheming. A scheming millennia old fox, couldn't be good for your health; especially if said fox hated you. "Given the…restriction you have placed on me I have a couple of other conditions to name. The elimination of the Uchicha bloodline, and the elimination of the Senju bloodline."
"I am not engaging in Genocide." Naruto furiously shouted.
Kyuubi sneered "You won't have to. There are ways to seal away bloodlines; besides both clans are on the verge of dying out anyway. The senju clan have two members, and the Uchicha have three members. With my power and a bit of subtle talent it is possible to eliminate them."
Naruto frowned "Tell me about both bloodlines. I need to know what I'm getting into." He was not going to step lightly into this.
"The Uchicha is a clan of arrogance and madness. Their bloodline gives them the ability to see through pitiful human illusions, copy the ninja arts provided they see handseals and body movements. It also increases their ability to perceive, allowing them to see movements of human opponents by way of chakra. They can hypnotize suggestive messages, making illusions easier for them and providing them a way for their opponent to think they can tell the future."
Naruto gaped "The bloodline sounds powerful."
"It is. However the part of the bloodline that allows them to simply copy information they see, tends to not handle information assimilation well. Their minds suffer from it as a result producing the common…Uchicha madness. There are various theories on whether the arrogance is genetic or instilled in them by people surrounding them."
"Wait a minute they go insane by use of their bloodline?!" Naruto shouted.
The kyuubi glared at him "Such a powerful bloodline, especially one with infernal origins would come with a heavy price tag. The Hyuuga already suffered from a heavy streak of arrogance when they made the Sharingan; I should know. Are you aware that the Hyuuga can see chakra?"
Naruto snorted "That's their most famous attribute; of course I'm aware they can see it."
"Good. So imagine my feelings when a Hyuuga encounters me on the street while I'm in my human form, and proceeds to activate his eyes in order for me to 'know my place'. He realized that I wasn't human and called in reinforcements from his clan. Then he demanded to know what I was in the most appalling rude tone."
"Let me guess; you being the image of politeness took massive offense at their rudeness." Naruto deadpanned.
"Exactly. Who can blame if in destroying a Hyuuga outpost, I accidentally destroyed the town? I sincerely didn't mean to."Naruto snorted at the sugary innocence in Kyuubi's tone.
"Anything else?"
"Actually yes. The sharingan has a step beyond the three tomoe; the Mangenkyou sharingan. Because my infernal power was used to produce the little bastard deviants, I have a rather intimate connection to them. The mangenkyou sharingan is obtained by assimilating the soul of someone dear to you, and causing considerable damage to your soul. In essence, they need to kill their best friend/most dearly beloved relative."
"….Why the hell did Konoha let them exist here in the first place?" Naruto yelled.
"Isn't it obvious? Uchicha brought power to the village, despite their feud with the Senju. Konoha isn't as pristine good as they like to think they are. Anyway, the Mangekyou Sharingan is unique to each wielder. All of them induce blinding, and damage to the soul the more times used."
"So why do you want them dead? It can't be for the goodness inside your-do you even have a heart?" Naruto wondered.
"I am an energy being; of course I don't have any internal organs. The reason I want them dead, is because of their power over you. Their ability to hypnotize allows them to subjugate your will and by proxy subjugate my will. They are a threat; do you understand?"
"Yeah-wait, you said they were three uchicha alive. Who are the other two?"
"The brother to your dear teammate, and the parasite, Uchicha Madara. Both are dangerous, but Itachi even more so. He doesn't nearly have the overblown ego and underestimating nature that Madara does." The Kyuubi commented.
"I'm going to have a lot of history lessons aren't I?" Naruto remarked.
"True history; not the garbage they have fed you." The kyuubi growled "Of the two, the Senju are the easiest to handle. The clan was formed from former shamans who had an eternally deep connection to Nature and the elements; much the way we did. This allowed them-with suitable amplification- to control bijuu of up till four tails. Anymore than that, and sacrifices were needed to have the necessary power." Naruto stepped back from the sheer emotion that happened when he mentioned the clan.
"Ok, I take it the clan pissed you off something fierce?" Naruto dryly said.
"They were the ones who took away our cognition, by means of sacrificing thousands of people. Well, they managed to take the other eight; I had contingency plans laid. The clan suffered multiple tragic accidents in the years after that. It has culminated with there only being two left." The kyuubi smugly said.
"I didn't know you were that big into manipulations." Naruto was quite frankly, wondering what he had just gotten into.
"How do you think I stayed unsealed for so long? Unlike my former brothers and sisters, I saw the value in manipulating you primates long before they did. I even manipulated my own nature into producing non-elemental chakra so I would be able to produce all elements and elemental combinations."
"They do say imitation is the most sincere form of admiration." Naruto muttered
"The senju have two members left; one does not have the bloodline and poses no threat even if she carries the amplifier. The other possesses the bloodline, but doesn't carry the amplifier. If it isn't possible to kill the bloodline one off, you must make sure that the amplifier and him never meet."
"So in essence, you are asking for me to finish off two dying clans by either a) killing them or b) sealing away their bloodline. This two bloodlines also happen to be loved by Konoha, the village which I serve and has been subtly pulling my strings since I was born." Naruto thought for a moment "It can't be too hard."
"Do we have a deal?" The kyuubi snarled.
"We have a deal." Naruto declared.
"Now for my end of the deal." The kyuubi said gleefully.
Naruto's eyes widened when he saw a massive wave of chakra appear in front of the cage.
"This is going to suck, isn't it."
"Nighty night, Sasuke's best friend."