The Shift
"Uhh…" Johns head was pounding like crazy; his skull seemed ready to crack at any moment.
"Argh…What a weird dream….What time is it.…Ah!" John had reached for his alarm clock to check the time, only to grasp thin air. He fumbled around for it, but he again failed to find it. He then reluctantly cracked his eyes open to search for it.
What he saw caused his eyes to resemble marble saucers.
Staring him straight in the face was a lady in a nurses' outfit, with a concerned look in her eyes. "Sir? Are you okay?"
It took John a moment to realize that she was conversing with him in Japanese. However, this fact didn't faze him; his mind was too clouded to think of anything else besides his aching body.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak Japanese, do you know English?" He responded in impeccable Japanese.
"Excuse me?" The nurse asked, with a confused look on her face.
It took John more than a moment to realize that he had just spoke Japanese to this nurse, purely out of instinct, with the same fluency as when he used English.
"I'm sorry, could you excuse me a moment?" The puzzled teen inquired.
"Yes, sir." The nurse stepped out of the room and slid the door shut.
"Alright, what exactly has happened to me? I just spoke Japanese to that lady, and now…" His voice edged away when he became conscious of the fact that the language he was using in his head was Japanese, not his normal everyday English.
"Surprising, isn't it?"
John leapt up with a start, glancing across the room, shouting "Who's there?"
"My, my. Surely you haven't forgotten already?"
"How could I forget? I don't even know who youuu……" His voice trailed off as he recognized the heavy, demonic accent in the voice.
"K-kyuubi?" He whispered, his worst doubts coming to reality.
"It's good to see you haven't been struck completely dumb."
All at once, Johns head cleared, and the events of the last couple of hours played back in his mind.
*Flashback*
"So, what do I do?" John asked the colossal image in front of him.
"First, you must grab that book you just purchased. That's your portal."
John grasped the manga he had just bought. "This?"
"Yes. Now, you must do what all ninja in my world do. Sign your name in blood on the back of the cover."
John flipped the cover open, to find a peculiar inscription on it.
"In Kanji it states: If you wish to warp, sign here. With the tailed fox, you have nothing to fear."
"I suppose by 'tailed fox', it means you?"
"Correct. Now, take a needle, knife, whatever you mortals use to draw blood, and sign your signature on that page."
Feeling in his coat pocket but failing to find his pocketknife, he did what the typical procedure for ninjas in that world was: he bit his finger to draw the blood.
"Gurk!" Feeling more pain than he had expected, he held his finger for a while in hurt. The Kyuubi had to eventually remind him that he had bit his finger to sign the page, which John gradually proceeded to do.
"Good. Now, repeat the hand seals on the bottom of the page."
"Man, this guy's starting to sound like a tutorial for a boring game." John thought to himself.
However, he took note of a series of pictures on the bottom of the page, as the Kyuubi had said.
He made out the hand seals they signified, and slowly began to imitate them.
Upon completion of this task, John peered up at the Kyuubi and asked "Now what?"
"Look behind you."
Taking the fox's advice, John gazed over his shoulder, and beheld a hole floating in midair.
"That is the portal which will take you to my realm. The book you signed was a modern day scroll, one which allowed you to summon the gap in space you see before you."
After gawking at the mysterious hole, about 9 feet in diameter and totally black, he looked up at the Kyuubi with a questioning look on his face.
"Well? Are you going to go in or not? Even thousand year old demons have tempers."
Surprised, John stepped back. "Wait a minute, is that it? All I have to do is jump in there?"
"Yes, if you want to get to my realm. But be warned, this summoning can only happen every year, after each usage it has to take time to regenerate. Attempting to re-summon it will consume a vast amount of your chakra."
"So, it's either now or next year, right?"
"Correct."
John pondered this hole in front of him, then with strengthened resolve, whispered: "Heh… Guess I have no choice, then."
He took a few steps back; and charged forward, diving into this black portal.
For a few seconds, he couldn't see anything; the darkness in the portal was too thick.
He could sense however, that he was airborne, flying straight ahead.
Adjusting to the darkness, his eyes could make out shimmering dots of light, which he took to be stars.
Upon further observation, he noticed that the scintillating globules of light seemed to be soaring quickly in the opposite direction from the one he felt he was going, wherever that was.
"Are they the ones moving super fast, or am I traveling at breakneck speed?" He wondered.
"Umm, Kyuubi? Exactly where am I going to end up? Kyuubi? KYUUBI?"
Suddenly, he had a falling sensation, and noticed solid matter rapidly approaching him.
"Ohhh, this is gonna hurt."
Then he knew no more.
*End Flashback*
"THAT'S RIGHT! WHERE THE HECK WERE YOU????"
"I was merely waiting for you on this side of the portal."
"Wait, didn't you say earlier that the portal was the way you came to my realm? So why weren't you there with me?"
"As I also told you before, the portal is a subject of mass energy. This energy is only necessary to transport someone who belongs to one realm to another one where he doesn't belong, then suspend him there. If at any moment this connection of energy is severed for any reason, the subject that was warped will automatically transfer back to his realm, as if he had never been there. That's all I did, I severed the connection, allowing me to transport to my realm faster than you did."
John lay back on his bed, contemplating all he had just learned.
"Why didn't you tell me all of this sooner?"
"I didn't find it necessary."
"But you knocked me out when I landed, for gosh sake!"
"That was an unpredicted circumstance, I forgot to position you so that you would land feet first."
"Oh, I see. So it was you that caused me to land like that."
"I could have caused you to land headfirst in the lair of Akatsuki, and see how you faired."
"Akatsuki? NO, DON'T PUT ME THERE!"
"Don't worry, I hate them as much as you do."
"What? Why?"
"Being sealed into a human is a painful process, as I found when the Fourth Hokage sealed me into the blond-haired brat. I am not willing to go through that process again, by being taken out then re-sealed. Besides, I am not a tool to be used by an organization at its beck and whim."
John raised an eyebrow in surprise. Even the tailed beasts had pride, it seemed.
"I see. So where exactly are you? I can't see you."
"Where do you think I am? Where am I usually located in this world?"
Racking his brain, John thought back to when he had read the books in this series.
"Umm… In Naruto's stomach?"
"So, you're not as dumb as I thought."
"So, how did you manage to get out of the Fourth's sealing to see me?"
"What you saw was a mere apparition of myself, formed by chakra I was able to leak a little bit at a time, so that no one would notice."
For the first time, John realized exactly how much power this demon had over him. If his apparition was able to stop time, he shuddered to think what the fox could do with full power.
With respect lining his voice drawn from fear of being obliterated, John addressed the fox:
"So, with all due respect, where and when am I?"
"You're in the Konoha hospital, being cared for under top priority. You hit the ground pretty hard."
His head still pounding, John sarcastically replied "You think?"
"I could still drop you off in the forest somewhere."
Trying hard to change the subject, John inquired "Ummm… so when am I?"
"I believe you're in what you call 'Volume One"
"W-w-wait, you mean?"
"To put it bluntly, my host is currently sitting in a class, hoping to become a Genin."
"Then that means…"
John leaped out of bed and looked outside, searching for Hokage Mountain. There, he recognized the all-too-familiar graffiti that Naruto had painted on the faces of the Hokages; with two people cleaning it up, or trying to clean it up.
Dumbstruck with awe, John wondered with apprehension:
"Am I going to live through the life of Naruto?"