...

Naruto was blabbering happily in the state that the fox was beginning to identify as the substitute for dreaming that existed in this place. A few hours each day saw the boy stripped of his intelligence (and the Kyuubi cringing with annoyance), before he regained consciousness, refreshed and active.

Ignoring the mindless chatter, the Kyuubi began to reminisce. The Fox had had one of the most interesting conversations in its life the day before. Not that it was exceptionally deep or anything; the deepest Naruto could get was to the bottom of his ramen bowl, but the severe lack of conversations in the Demon's life made it qualify. It wasn't so much a conversation as a 'listen-to-the-brat-rant' session during which the Kyuubi occasionally commented on a few things.

It was enlightening.

The first time he used my Chakra was inside the 'Demon' Ice Mirrors, the Kyuubi thought sardonically.

And it was troubling.

There was an Uchiha on the boy's team. He was the 'last' one, to be exact, and one that was quite revenge driven by the looks of it.

Nothing good ever came out of associating with those Red-Eyed freaks -The Kyuubi's eyes were most definitely crimson, not red- And something had to be done about it.

The fox was already planning several ways to make sure that its container remained safe from now on. It might've appeared to be unusually benevolent of it to think about someone else's safety, but it knew its intentions were purely selfish.

The eyes that had vanquished the bijuu's free-will were still out there, and inside this body, they could not affect the Kyuubi in any direct way. It was the only reason why it'd even considered helping the brat out with its chakra when he'd asked for it the first time around, the fox told itself.

And so, The Kyuubi had formed an agenda of sorts, a set series of tasks to accomplish with its container in the shortest amount of time possible.

The first one, of course, was to examine what had happened with the blond jinchuriki that had caused his consciousness to manifest in his mindscape for such a large period of time. Such a prolonged mental imprisonment was bound to debilitate the mind of any sane individual –the fox didn't count as sane- and even now, the boy's stretches of inactivity had been getting longer.

The second was to exploit this in the fullest manner possible. Which might involve a lot of talking with the Brat. Sigh.

The third was to secure a foothold in the back of the boy's mind so that the Nine-tails could monitor the boy's surroundings actively, and nudge his attention to the 'right' things.

The immediate result would be an able container that would be conducive to its tenant's cause.

The end result should be the demise of the foul Uchiha, and the achievement of permanent freedom for the Fox.

A small ember of guilt made itself known to the Kyuubi during its musings, however. It had no idea about what would happen to the boy as a result of his plans. For a brief second, the Fox hoped that nothing would happen that would make the Demon look like a betrayer in the eyes of the boy.

Hmmm… One way to certify that would be to inform the boy of my unshakeable resolve to gain freedom. Then maybe later on-

A slight shuffling noise made its way to the Fox's ears, and it shifted its gaze to the outside of its cage, its stream of thought interrupted. The boy was pacing back and forth again.

The Kyuubi's Eyes followed his form, watching and moving like one's eyes would if they were looking at a pendulum.

"If the ground under your feet was a true surface, it would have worn away by now."

The boy stopped, looking upwards with a small smile.

"Hey Fuzzy. I thought you were sleeping," he answered.

It wasn't very noticeable, but something was wrong. The fox knew that the blond was not averse to holding eye-contact; he did so with the air of one challenged. But his head drooped downwards, and he resumed his pacing, though he was slower this time. He started to trip over his own feet as his gait devolved to a shuffle.

Concerned, the Kyuubi raised its head, its expression inquisitive, but the boy did not look up. He spoke instead.

"Something feels wrong, Fuzzy. I can't see straight. It's like there's a bunch of flies swimming around in front of me. And I feel like I'm gonna be sick."

The boy stopped walking, waving a hand in front of his eyes. Then he moaned, grimacing, and he resumed his pacing.

Sickness? In one's own mindscape?

"Maybe all the Ramen I've been eating has finally caught up to me, huh?" The boy half-heartedly joked, chuckling.

Abruptly, Naruto stopped walking and looked at the Kyuubi, eyes squinting as if he was glaring into the sun.

And the Kyuubi almost jumped back when the boy's edges began to evaporate.

The Kyuubi watched the boy disintegrate before its eyes, his body melting away into wisps of blue, and the Fox, gripped in urgency, shouted out a final instruction to the boy – "Check your seal for any differences in its structure!" – before he vanished completely.

The Kyuubi stared at the spot where the boy had stood in disbelief. All those plans, all those thoughts, all dashed for no discernable reason.

It's present container had the most whacked up mind the Kyuubi had had the misfortune to know.

Moaning dejectedly, the Kyuubi curled up again, looking forward to some long, unproductive years of imprisonment with bleary eyes.

"No! Forehead, I'm just going to see Choji, and that's it! Stop dragging me!" A piercing voice squealed out.

"Just come on, Pig! It'll only take a second. It's not as if Choji will be awake, anyways, and I really need to know what's going on!" The voice's tormentor had put her figurative foot down.

"But why do I have to do your dirty work?" The victim whined. "Couldn't you just get Hinata to watch his chakra if you're that curious? Why get me to infiltrate his mind? Besides, he's sleeping, or unconscious, or whatever! My jutsu probably won't work!"

"Ughh…" Sakura growled out, frustrated at all the theatrics her friend had to go through. "At least give it a try!" She huffed, giving a particularly vicious tug to the arm she was holding.

Oh, something was going on with Naruto, alright. He'd managed to get even with her for all her punches without having to move! And he'd done it when she was trying to be affectionate! How dare he!

Besides, the fact that a Sannin was covering up for him meant that something fishy was happening, and she intended to get to the bottom of it.

"And besides, can you even imagine Hinata trying to watch him with her byakugan without fainting?"

"Hmm, I guess so," Ino agreed, her index finger rubbing her lip in thought.

"Look, Sakura, I just don't get why you think I can help. Why are you so sure that I might be able to tell you anything about this? My jutsu works by overshadowing a conscious mind. Ok, even if we assume he's conscious, it's possible that his chakra spikes will keep interfering with the jutsu and I'll be forced out anyways. There's so many things I don't know about this…" She muttered, annoyed and fidgety.

"Ino… Just do it, Ok? If you manage to gain control, all you have to do is recall what he's been doing!" Sakura pleaded.

"You do realize that's spying right?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"Oh, okay, just checking," Ino smiled.

They walked into the ward, completely ignoring the 'Do not enter: Critical condition' sign hanging from the doorknob, and found it devoid of hospital personnel. Again. Ino immediately went over to the side of Naruto's bed, where he still lay, more or less undisturbed from the last time Sakura had seen him.

"He's so different when he isn't screaming around, isn't he?" Ino remarked with a giggle.

Sakura only grumbled, clutching her right wrist with a scowl.

"Wait, I'll just put this basket here… Okay, step back Forehead-girl. This is gonna be very impressive." Ino drawled out in a monotone, her tone laced with sarcasm. Sakura only rolled her eyes and positioned herself behind her friend, ready to catch her when she fell. If she fell.

Holding her hands in her unique hand-seal, Ino performed her jutsu, whispering its name out (Mind-Body Switch Jutsu!).

Five seconds after staying stationary, she released her handseal, puzzled.

"Sorry Sakura, it's not working. It's almost like I'm not targeting anything alive at all. I guess that's what happens when you target sleeping people…"

"Sigh… Well, I guess there's no use in staying now…"

She was walking over to Naruto's side-table to put the rose she'd brought for him on it when Ino saw Naruto's eyelids twitch. Alarmed, she forcefully whispered "Sakura! He's getting up! Run!" and hightailed it out of there, completely lost to the rush of adrenaline. Not that she was scared, the feeling that she was going to be caught pranking someone had overwhelmed her, and the urge to run was irresistible. She kept running quickly in the direction of Chouji's Ward, stepping almost noiselessly, and soon enough she was followed by Sakura.

Both of them were breathless, which was weird considering how much more exerting activities felt like nothing comparably. They stopped against the banister of the stairs, grasping onto the edge. And once they saw each other's faces, they started laughing. Uncontrollably. A nurse passing by wondered why two head-cases were running free from their ward in the psyche department.

"Oh, that was fun." Ino admitted, wiping an imaginary teardrop off of her cheek.

"I know!" Sakura gasped, calming down slowly. "But it's still disappointing, all the same."

"Why don't you ask him what happened now that he's awake?"

Crickets chirped in the background, and Sakura's grin faded away while Ino's turned into a frown.

"You didn't think of it, did you?" Ino asked with a huge sweat-drop behind her head.

Sakura looked completely ready to argue vehemently, but after failing to formulate a single denial, she just hung her head, sighing.

"It's not like I can be sure that Naruto's going to tell me anything. He's been quite secretive lately; I hadn't seen him much since the preliminaries, until he came to 'hug' me a few days ago…" She shuddered, now climbing the stairs that led to wherever Choji's room happened to be. She'd dragged her friend over to her team-mate's ward, it was probably fair if she went along with Ino now.

"Then I'll possess him later when he's walking around! You worry too much, Forehead," Ino reassured, wearing a mischievous grin.

They kept walking onwards, bickering back and forth, their attempted intrusion and narrow escape from Naruto now forgotten as they reveled in the feeling of insulting each other.

On the floor below them, Naruto woke up after a three day long sleep. He blinked, dislodging the accumulated debris in his eyes, and sat up, rubbing his forehead. Opening his eyes blearily, he found himself in a crumbly hospital ward with the sun coming in through some broken blinds on the window.

Ero-Sennin really came through…

He was worried he'd find himself in the forest with insects crawling all over him.

Then he looked at his side-table and found his forehead protector, and a single rose flower, still fresh. And looking at the floor in front of it, he saw a basket of fruit with a 'Get well soon!' card in it.

The sight of them made his mouth erupt in a heart-felt smile. People had been visiting him! And they'd left him food too!

He sat back on his bed, grabbing an apple in his hand and munching on it while he twirled the rose between his fingers. Revelling in the plethora of sensations he was now feeling, in the flavour of the apple, in the texture of the rose stalk, in the linen of his bed sheets, he subconsciously compared it to the relative numbness of his mindscape, something he was only able to realize now.

It felt good to be back.

He's late. Again.

He took a kunai from his pouch and started to gouge out random scrawls in the rock, driven to art through boredom.

After a while, he grew tired of the meaningless lines he was starting to etch and he sat on a huge boulder, looking across at the wide and bright view that his vantage point facilitated. He could see trees stretching out on either side of the road to the village in every direction, lit up in a startlingly shiny green and white. The afternoon sun, while blinding for the first few moments, faded after a while and his eyes relaxed enough for him to stop squinting. The beauty moved him, and he thought to himself: Hnn.

He'd been climbing this small plateau of rock to train with Kakashi everyday, starting from his old room in the Uchiha compound, the place that his Sensei had insisted that he stay in instead of his apartment, and ending up here using nothing but his feet. It was considerably harder to climb a broken and unstable pile of boulders with your feet and your chakra, as he'd noticed, and Kakashi had been adamant that he wasn't going to teach Sasuke anything until he could climb without dislodging a single rock from the cliff.

Nobody needed to know that the first five days of his month of preparation had been wasted.

And once he was ready –according to Kakashi's expectations- the good part had started. The part where you learned jutsu that destroyed boulders and reduced them to rubble. And where you used your dojutsu-eyes to guess what Kakashi was mouthing from beneath his book and his mask. It was harder than it looked, and Sasuke had to rely on the rest of his sensei's facial muscles to divine the truth.

Kakashi said it was to hone his Sharingan, but Sasuke knew that the asshole was only trying to creep him out.

Like, seriously, every single word that Sasuke had seen him utter was from a passage from that damn porn book, and Sasuke could swear that he'd been corrupted beyond recovery by now.

…But it got fun when Sasuke began to follow the plot, so he wasn't really complaining.

He was just a little resentful that his sensei couldn't think of anything more to read to him in the literary department.

He tossed a few rocks into the distance, trying to hit a bird he'd seen on a branch of a tree. It hit the bird, predictably.

It also ricocheted onto the head of a certain grey-haired jounin who'd decided to show up, but Sasuke couldn't see that.

Trees… So unassuming, and yet the memories he now assosciated with them were hardly benign. The forest of death was probably going to leave him scarred for eternity. The first time his eyes had been opened to the fact that the world held so much power that seemed out of his grasp was not a pleasant experience.

And to think that Naruto, the person he'd reserved a portion of his all-encompassing scorn to, had managed to turn his own taunt back at him was especially insulting.

Naruto…

Sasuke couldn't make up his mind about him. Should he feel intimidated by the way he'd improved? Relieved that the blond wasn't a liability anymore? …Annoyed that the blonde wasn't a liability anymore?

Proud? Proud of his team-mate that he managed to find his strength at the time when everyone needed it?

Proud. Just like I was proud of Itachi…

Sasuke immediately shut his thoughts down, closing his eyes and turning his face away from the sun. He would never think of anyone with pride. Everyone could be a betrayer. Everyone could end up returning the emotion with a knife in his back.

That was why he was sworn to avenge his brother, wasn't he?

There would be only one traitor, only one murderer, and only one avenger.

Everyone else was either a step on his path to Itachi's death, or a stone that had to be removed.

Great, now I'm thinking about that again…

The dark thoughts that Sasuke had more or less managed to repress during the years following the massacre were now returning with increasing frequency, and with increasing intensity. It had unnerved Sasuke, and had pushed him to train faster and harder. If this was what a slight defeat in a forest was going to do to his mind, he had to find some form of self-assurance, and right now, his self-assurance was in the form of mastering the Chidori.

If he could manage to perform the technique more than twice a day, he'd feel confident that his strength had increased by a measureable amount.

Then maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to beat Gaara and his sand.

Thinking of the red-haired boy chilled Sasuke to the core.

And he'd thought he was messed up. Gaara made him look like a psychologist in comparison.

Sasuke remembered the day the red-haired psycho had been spying on his training with his 'third eye' and the way that Kakashi had placated him (You can kill Sasuke later). Weirdly enough, the madman had left.

Although Gaara was strong to an extent that was scary, Sasuke knew that he was probably nothing compared to Itachi, and if Sasuke wasn't able to defeat the sand-nin, he might as well give up on his dream to avenge his clan.

And that was the whole reason for his training, wasn't it?

Breathing deeply and letting his lungs empty themselves, he glanced to his hand and found that he'd been drawing with his kunai again. And the top of his knife had been chipped off.

He discarded it, throwing it over his shoulder, and it soared down the edge of the plateau.

Once again hitting the same grey-haired jounin on his head, who was left wondering at the way all objects that weren't thrown with killing intent ended up on his skull.

Yawning, Sasuke saw the first hints of orange permeate the sky, and he realized that twilight was fast approaching. Grumbling about his lazy-ass Sensei, he made his way down the outcropping of rock, planning to train on his own at the clan compound. It was the last day before the final part of the Chunin-exams, and he needed to make sure that he was up to par according to his own standards too.

Fortunately, he chose to descend from the 'other' side of the mountain-hill-plateau-outcropping-thing, and he didn't cross paths with his sensei, who reached the top mere seconds after Sasuke had left.

Kakashi was quite irked when he got there. He'd cut his procrastination time by such a significant portion, and his student just decided to bail on him? He was going to make sure that Sasuke was driven extra hard right before the exam, even if that meant that he would be late for his match. Maybe his broody student should experience the joy of making others wait for once, he thought, smirking.

... No. No Sasuke/Sakura/Kakashi/Jiraiya/Anyone bashing. Grr.

X.x