Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine. I make no profit off of this, and should anyone who has rights to Naruto ask, I will remove this story immediately.

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The dreams began shortly after I became a genin, after I learned the truth of who, and what, I am. Or rather, when I lost that awareness, when I first began to question my true identity. Confused? So was I. I still am. It is not pleasant, wondering day after day if you are the person you grew up thinking you were, or if the entirety of your identity is to be found in the monstrosity that was sealed inside of you. Little has changed since those days. I still wonder, and fear to know, who I truly am.

Yet it all began with the dreams.

I used to dream of different things; I dreamed of being acknowledged, of childhood crushes, and even of ramen. In retrospect, after everything I have experienced, they seem so very childish to me, the idle fantasies of a foolish boy. There is a part of me that recognizes that such dreams were meant to end, that such innocence was never meant to last. After all, I am a ninja now, and ninja do not have time for such... diversions. And yet, if I could dream, even once, and see Sakura smiling at me with love in her eyes, or of Iruka-sensei beaming proudly at me, it would bring me such joy.

My dreams now are ones of death and destruction. The images and actions that I experience in them are terrible, both in the scope and depth of their depravity, and the equally disturbing emotions that they evoke within me. There is no sense of outrage, no feelings of anguish or of grief. No, instead they stir something far more terrible within me, a horrifying rage, and worse... a fierce sense of satisfaction.

Through my dreams, I have fought a hundred battles; I have slaughtered countless thousands. I have laid waste to proud kingdoms and mighty empires, crushing fell armies as though they were nothing more than insects.

And that is how I see them in my dreams. The roiling masses of humanity are nothing more than pitiful insects, annoyances who are too pitiful to understand just how insignificant they truly are. And yet.. I feel this savage glee in reminding them, a cruel need to put the wretched fools in their place.

That is perhaps the worst part of these visions, the fact that there is nothing of me in them. The feelings, the emotions that I experience, they are so strong that it seems as though they wash away everything that I am, leaving behind nothing more than the depraved monstrosity that my dreams would have me be.

These dreams, they terrify me, for I know that they are more than just dreams. They are memories, the memories of the kyuubi no kitsune, the monster that savaged the world. Yet, every image, every scent, and every sensation, I can remember them even now as clearly as though they were my own. There are times when the line blurs, when dream and reality mesh together and I can hear that siren's call, and feel the kyuubi's hatred welling up within my soul.

Yet, is it his hatred, or is it mine? The line blurs further, until I sometimes wonder if I am the boy, dreaming I was the monster, or the monster, dreaming I am the boy.

I do not know anymore, and that realization sends shards of despair into the depths of my soul. I have changed since that night in the forest, that night when that bastard Mizuki told me the truth. I have changed, and continue to change with every night, with every dream that I experience. Demon or human, I do not know which I will eventually become, which side of me will show itself to be the true one.

Until I know the answers to my questions, all I can do is keep moving forward, and pray that I am human.

-exerpt from Chapter 9, Of the Youma and the Bijuu of The World of the Shinobi by Uzumaki Naruto

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It was not a gentle awakening.

Naruto gasped as he came awake, his back arching in his bed as his hands clawed the air. He rolled, tumbling head first onto the floorboards of his apartment, his legs still trapped in his thick blankets. He reached out with his hands, pushing himself off the floor as he-

-licked the blood off of each of his fingers, savoring the metallic taste. For such wretched insects, these humans tasted so very good-

-gagged, choking until it hurt to breathe, yet wishing he could do more, wishing he had eaten something if only so that he could feel better after throwing it up.

He coughed, eyes watering from his exertions as he spat on the floor, hoping to clear his mouth of the awful taste. It didn't, and he was left with the bitter taste of acid in his mouth, mixing together with the phantom taste of blood from the dream. He coughed again, wondering if he was going to start dry-heaving again, wishing that he would, if only to have something to focus his mind on, something other than the images that were still burned into his brain.

"What the hell was that?" he asked, speaking aloud if only to reassure himself that he was here, on his floor, and not off terrorizing some human village.

He already knew the answer to that question. He had been having the same dream, if it really was just a dream, for the past week, ever since that fight in the forest, ever since that night where Mizuki tried to kill him, and Iruka acknowledged him.

Ever since he had learned that he was the container for the nine-tailed fox.

While initially exuberant over having been granted the rank of genin, now he felt something different creeping its way through his mind, a sensation that snaked its way through the confidence and bravado that was his normal routine. While it was certainly not a new emotion to the young ninja, never before had he felt it so strongly as he did now.

Terror.

He tasted the world in his mind, his thoughts feeling it out as one would a painful injury, his thoughts skirting around the concept, testing it, feeling the borders of it, yet too uncertain of the wound to confront it directly.

He had thought about telling Iruka-sensei about the dreams, but something always stopped him. There was a voice within him, the voice of a small child who had never been loved, never been wanted, and who was very terrified of returning to that dark world. Even though Iruka-sensei had acknowledged him, had praised him, the sensation was too new, too raw to risk endangering it. While he genuinely liked the man, Naruto couldn't help but wonder if the his teacher would continue to acknowledge him if he knew he was dreaming about the kyuubi.

Naruto frowned, the thought of Iruka-sensei sparking something in his brain. Something that he was forgetting... Something about class...?

"Ack! I'm late for the graduation!"

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Author's Notes: Based upon a passage in the Zhuangzi

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."