Seeking a Center

By Smertios

Author's Notes: Not much to say here yet. I know a few people caught my big fuck-up a few chapters back where I reversed Sakura and Hinata. I'll go in and do necessary edits after I finish my first run through this story, but I'm gonna try to keep forward momentum for now. As I said before, I'm writing without a Beta, so errors will occur. I do my best, but I'm only human, and most of these chapters get written in random time-slots where I'm not busy with anything else, so finding an extra time-slot to do a really high-quality read through could require multiple extra weeks on each release, and I really don't think that anyone would appreciate that. I'd get bored of the story if that happened, probably, and then it would never get finished.

And now:

- - - - - - - - - -

Chapter 10: Stand Up

'But if I do fight

Nothing to fear

'Cause I know

My friends are here'

Minor Threat: Stand Up

- - - - - - - - - -

Ping

Ping

The repetitive rhythm of a pebble striking a brick wall echoed through the halls of the jailhouse. Naruto, who was tossing the pebble against the wall, gave a great sigh. He had never been so bored and lonely before in his life.

"Monster!"

Was he a monster? He certainly hadn't felt very human when he had attacked the assassin. He had been out of control. He could practically taste the blood of his prey. Maybe the Daimyo was right. Maybe he really was no better than the Kyuubi.

At the monastery, Naruto had been cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded by monks who's whole lives were spent trying to let go of worldly prejudice. But here, in the real world, he was quickly finding that worldly prejudices might have more substance than he thought.

A rumbling laugh interrupted his train of thought, reminding him that he was no longer truly alone, in his mind. 'Stupid brat. If you were me, I'd probably kill myself. Honestly, you're sitting here contemplating how wrong it was to defend your teammates. Who cares? It felt good.'

'Shut up, furball.' Naruto thought, his face scrunching up into a furious glare. 'This is all your fault. If it weren't for you…'

Again, the rumbling laugh echoed through Naruto's brain, and he stopped tossing the pebble against the wall to press his hands to his ears. It was a futile gesture, but at least it made him feel better. "If it weren't for me, your teammates would be dead, and you would be going to whoever hired that assassin. Show a little gratitude, Kit."

It was true. Kyuubi had awoken him from unconsciousness, and given him the ability to defeat the woman—Yurika—with little trouble. Still… He felt like he had somehow got the bad side of the deal. "Bad side of the deal? Well… If having me stuck up here in your head is significantly worse than the fact that I gave you a direct line into my chakra, that would be true. Honestly… You'd think you'd let a demon into your soul or something."

That was it! Kyuubi's mocking joke held a grain of truth in it. Naruto knew from the monks that even a lesser demon, an oni, gained power by disrupting the natural balance of a person's soul. Was he somehow corrupted? "Corrupted? No, your idiot father would never have sealed me into you if I could corrupt you. His original seal left me some room for tampering, but even those avenues were closed to me by those damn monks.

To be honest, Kit, the only downside to this deal for you is that you're going to have to deal with me up here in your head. All the damn additional seals that got tacked on to the original seal by those meddling monks mean that you get all the benefits, with none the costs. Hell, they're even trying to turn me good. It's disgusting."

Naruto felt a satisfied smirk settle across his face. He couldn't imagine a greater irony than having Kyuubi reform himself into a force for good, rather than evil. 'Aw… Does the irony hurt?'

The beast didn't respond for a moment, and Naruto felt it's temper flare up. "I really, really hate you, kid. Or, at least, I would have really, really hated you, if this damn seal would let me."

'Well that's a relief. Here I was thinking you might say mean things about me or something.'

"Listen, brat, I may be being forced to turn good by this stupid seal, but that doesn't mean I'm just gonna let you taunt me. I'm a demon. Pride is in my nature, and even meddling monks with delusions of moral grandeur can't change that. If you want access to any of my power again, you'd better be damn respectful."

'Whatever.'

'Don't make me come out there.'

'How? In case you hadn't noticed, you've been trapped in there for over a decade.'

'Seriously… Just shut the fuck up.'

Naruto felt that moral victory was his, for the moment, and he decided to let his tenant have a moment of peace to lick its wounds. He was relieved to hear that the monks had modified his seal (it occurred to him that there was a reason that he had been asked to take part in so many rituals). After all, even if he was, as the villagers said, the Kyuubi, before, the monks would have never let him remain that way.

- - - - - - - - - -

Uchiha Sasuke awoke to the sounds of an argument. "Sarutobi-san, I appreciate your concerns, but you must understand that I cannot let the mo- er boy, that is, loose. He attacked an innocent party-goer!"

Sasuke cracked his eyes open, and found himself in a sterile, white room. On his left, a large cloth screen divided the room in half, and on the other side of the screen, two men were arguing. 'Huh… A hospital?'

"Daimyo-sama, that was no mere party-goer. Sado Yurika is one of Kusagakure's most feared missing-nin. She is wanted for the murder of three Konoha genin and two Kusa Chuunin. If anything, Naruto did us all a favor!"

Sasuke remembered. The fight had gone badly. Whatever poison the woman had used had left him entirely devoid of strength, and he had passed out. What had happened?

The arguing voices move further down the hall, and a small noise to Sasuke's right almost made him jump out of his skin. "S-Sasuke-san"

Hyuuga Hinata was sitting, looking very pensive, in the corner of the room. Sasuke looked at her, puzzled, and asked, "What happened?"

Her eyes seemed to him to be haunted (if, indeed, such a thing was possible for blank eyes to appear), and when she spoke, it was without her normal stutter. It was as if she was too worried to remember to be nervous. "Naruto-kun… He's been put in jail."

"Wait. What? Back up! How did that happen?"

The Hyuuga Hinata that Sasuke remembered would have cowered away from his interrogation, and flushed bright red. To his consternation, she just nodded. "You had passed out by the time we arrived on the scene. The woman who was attacking you, Sado Yurika, was about to kill you."

He nodded. That much made sense. "What happened to Naruto?"

"Well… He jumped in to defend you. I really don't know what happened in the fight, because I was trying to keep the poison from killing you. Eventually, Naruto-kun must have ended up being defeated, because she attacked me. I was in real trouble, but somehow Naruto-kun got back up. But there was something wrong with him."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. He had always been of the opinion that there was something wrong with Naruto, but he didn't think that Hinata meant that quite the same way he did. "Wrong?"

She paused. For a moment, Sasuke was afraid that he'd scared her into silence. "He… He seemed like an animal. His eyes were red, and he was fighting without any restraint. He seemed to want Yurika to suffer. It was like a predator had replaced him. She had no chance. He was choking her before I had a chance to blink."

"Naruto?"

"Yes."

"What happened next?"

He could understand why she looked haunted. Naruto was tough, but he should have been that tough. Hinata, however, wasn't waiting for Sasuke to ruminate upon the subject. "I… I shouted at him to stop, and it was like he was waking up. His eyes went back to normal, and he looked really scared. Before I could say anything else, the Daimyo had him arrested for attacking Yurika."

"That doesn't make any sense." Sasuke felt a rush of indignation on Naruto's behalf. "I smell a rat."

Hinata nodded. "That's what Kakashi-sensei said when I told him what happened."

"Kakashi's back?"

Another nod. "Yes."

"Was it him who was arguing with the Daimyo out there?"

She shook her head, looking more impressed than anything else. "No. That was the Hokage. Apparently there were no teams free for action, so the Hokage came here to back us up until a team was freed up. I-it's a good thing that he came, too."

"Hn. Has he had any luck yet?"

"No," she said, her face displaying an utterly uncharacteristic scowl. "The Daimyo is c-convinced that Naruto-kun started the fight, even though there are witnesses saying otherwise."

Sasuke frowned, and tried to get up. However, as he tried to lift himself up, his arms gave out. With a yelp, he fell back down onto the hospital bed. Hinata said, "Kakashi-sensei says it will be a couple more days before the poisons fully wear off. For now, you should just rest."

"Gah… Stupid Kakashi-sensei. I need to help that dumbass before his big mouth gets him killed."

Hinata looked more pensive, and Sasuke immediately felt a rush of contrition. "Hn. Sorry. That was unnecessary."

She said nothing, looking paler than Sasuke had ever seen her. Eventually, he relaxed back onto his bed completely and stared at the ceiling. They fell into an uneasy silence, both consumed in worry about their teammate.

Sasuke hated the helplessness that bubbled up in his stomach, powerlessness consuming him. 'Naruto… You'd better be alright, you bastard.'

- - - - - - - - - - -

One of the things that was taken for granted in Konoha was that Hatake Kakashi's patience was almost infinite. He, and he alone, was able to sit and listen to Maito Gai rant for hours without batting an eyelash. He, and he alone, could sit out of vision of whomever he was currently supposed to be meeting with, and wait for them to become fed up without giving away his location.

The key word was almost infinite. It had now run out. It was unfortunate for Lord Oshima that he was the first witness to such an event. "Really, Kakashi! Do calm down. Surely the Daimyo has made a simple error. It will be corrected shortly, no doubt."

'If I kill him and get myself stuck in jail, maybe I could break Naruto out with me… Nah. Gai would never let me live it down.'

He continued to pace, but he turned his good eye towards his client, all levity or amusement vacant from it. "Kindly sit down and shut up. As long as I remain within the terms of my contract, which in no way requires that I follow your orders, I will act as I please."

Oshima huffed and sat down, a sulky glare on his face. Kakashi resumed his pacing, fists balled at his sides. 'I hate being stuck in the middle of these politics. Power always means that the little guy gets overlooked. There's a reason that they wouldn't make any of the Fourth's students Hokage. Rin's not got a use for the villages at all, Obito… Well…. And I would rather put a hole in a noble than bother to negotiate with him. Poor Naruto.'

Kakashi didn't know what the Daimyo hoped to gain by holding Naruto. The boy was too irrelevant to be held as a hostage (besides which, shinobi had a habit of eliminating leaders that held their comrades hostage), and too sullen to be made into an ally after this. Short of turning the boy over to some power-hungry missing-nin… 'No…'

That was too farfetched. The Daimyo knew better than to provoke the Hokage like that. Sure, there were new organizations like… Akinichi, was it? No… He was sure it was something like that, though. But none of them could ever get close enough to the Daimyo to con him into one of their plans.

Before he could chase that train of thoughts any further, Sarutobi entered the room, and sank into a chair with a sigh. The old man seemed more tired than usual, and his eyes blazed with anger and frustration. Kakashi carefully picked his words, and queried, "I take it that the Daimyo was unwilling to let Naruto out?"

"That would be an understatement," replied the Hokage, with a hard edge to his voice. "The Daimyo had the courtesy to inform me that he would not let me shelter my ninjas from their actions any longer, and that I was his subordinate, and so I had best leave the issue to him."

In the past, that might have been cause for a coup, then and there. The Kages of the great nations were the real powers behind the thrones. For the most part, they left the day-to-day operation of the great nations to their Daimyos, since their first duty was to their shinobi. To inform one that he was a subordinate to the Daimyo would have been to place the Daimyo's neck in a noose, in past years.

However, it was a new era, and the nobles had to be convinced that they had power, so that shinobi could continue to function under the radar. The secret wars had left countries so ravaged that, in order to keep citizenry from revolting, the Kages had to keep the Daimyos on their side, so that they had a sympathetic figurehead.

Kakashi still could not restrain his hiss of disapproval. "Are you absolutely sure we can't just blow the damn jail up and high tail it out of here?"

Sarutobi shook his head. "There's something wrong here, and I need to figure out what that something is before we can do anything else."

"Has the Daimyo ever shown any signs of acting this way in the past?"

"No." The Sandaime replied. "That is exactly why I want to find out what is going on before moving forward. The Daimyo has always contented himself to sit on his throne and deal with domestic issues. The petty nobles have, occasionally, given him more control over our Shinobi, but we have always told him that we will not submit to those powers, and he has not been bothered."

Kakashi let that settle into his head. 'Stupid, useless, nobles born with a silver kunai in their hands. You'd have to take a Ninja's control away before he would betray his people.'

That wasn't really to say that it never happened. Kakashi and every other Konoha shinobi knew the tale of Orochimaru, and Uchiha Itachi's departure had left deep marks in Konoha's Shinobi-corps. 'Orochimaru… Marks… Why do those push a button?'

Kakashi was struck like a thunderbolt. "Hokage-sama, do you remember Orochimaru's curse-seals? What if something like one of those was used on him?"

Sarutobi's weathered face wrinkled in thought. "Not likely. Only a noble would be able to get close enough to the Daimyo to apply a seal to him. None of the nobles would have dealings with Orochimaru."

The Hokage's negation brought a fresh wave of frustration surging through Kakashi. He turned to ask his charge what he thought on the matter. "Oshima-sama, what do you-"

The man was gone. Kakashi blinked, his visible eye growing wide. "Fuck."

- - - - - - - - - - -

Naruto looked up as footsteps echoed down the stone hallway, startling him from a light sleep. The footsteps quickly drew close, and Naruto stood up, expecting another visit from the raving Daimyo. "Psst. Naruto."

He jumped. "Who's there?"

A face appeared in the grate in his door. "It's me, Naruto. Oshima."

"Oshima-san!" Naruto's face lit up at seeing the man who had shown such interest in him. "Boy am I glad to see you!"

His door scraped open, and the noble gestured at Naruto to follow him quickly. "There's no time to waste. The Daimyo will notice I am gone in a moment and he will know to look to you."

"Huh. Who would have thought that a useless, fat bureaucrat would do something useful with themselves?"

'Shut up, whiskers."

Kyuubi's growl made Naruto flinch. "Whiskers? Kit, I'm a fox, not a kitten."

Naruto nodded his thanks to Oshima, and they began to move down the hallway quickly. 'You're as harmless as a kitten, though, aren't you? Lord of Demons my ass.'

No growling this time. Kyuubi let out a roar of rage. "In my time I have eaten a MILLION of your people."

Naruto's stomach growled, as if in response to Kyuubi's roar, and Oshima cast him an amused look. He reached into a pocket and pulled out an apple, which he handed to Naruto. Naruto smiled in gratitude. "Thanks. Where are we meeting my team?"

The man gave him an uncomfortable look, before looking away. Naruto felt a stab of worry. "What?"

"Your, uh, team… They don't know I'm here." Oshima's eyes seemed to convey a deep and urgent pity. "I snuck you out. They left after your Hokage arrived."

"They wouldn't leave me!"

Oshima said nothing, but stared at him in sorrow. Naruto's head raced. 'How? Hinata was there. She knows that I wasn't at fault. Was it because of Kyuubi? Do they think I'm a monster too?'

Pain lanced through his heart, and he wanted to break down and cry. He had thought that the Hokage, at the very least, would stand by him, rather than leaving him to rot in the Daimyo's jail.

Kyuubi, however, was having none of that. "If they left you alone, you don't owe them any concern."

'When did you turn into a counselor?'

"Shut up and go back to brooding. You're less annoying that way."

Feeling the creature's presence as a comfort (albeit, he realized, a rather ironic one), Naruto managed to steel his trembling lower-lip, and clear his watering eyes. "Where do I go from here, then?"

Oshima patted his shoulder. "Good man. An effective leader always looks for opportunity in setbacks." He paused, clearly searching for words. "I was thinking… There are some shinobi who I know who are looking for a sharp recruit with fighting skill. I might be able to get you an introduction with them."

"Really?"

Naruto felt a spark of hope fill him. He smiled, confident that there was still a chance for him. His mentor nodded. "Definitely. I couldn't let talent like yours go to waste, could I?"

Naruto beamed at him. "Count on it!"

- - - - - - - - - -

Sarutobi relaxed, as his seal went into effect, capturing and restraining the seal on the Daimyo's neck. The man slumped forward, eyes wide. Kakashi finished tying up the last of his guards, and gave the Hokage the all-clear signal.

Sarutobi nodded his thanks to the one-eyed jounin, and guided the Daimyo to a nearby seat. "I'm sorry that this became necessary, Takashi."

The Daimyo shook his head jerkily. "No, Sarutobi. It was necessary. Whatever that, that thing was, it was terrible. Thank you."

"How did it come to be on you?"

It was as if a switch had been flipped in the Daimyo's brain. He sat upright and hissed, "Oshima!"

Kakashi's head snapped around, from where he stood, keeping guard, his eyes centering on the Daimyo. He snapped. "How? We were guarding him closely!"

"The night before the attack. He came to my rooms in the middle of the night, begging an audience. I had to grant it." Said the Daimyo, looking sheepish. "I owe him a number of political favors, you know, Sarutobi. When he entered my rooms, he looked mildly ill, and so I gave him a moment to collect himself, and I sent my guard after water for him."

Sarutobi winced. Sending away his only bodyguard hadn't been a particularly bright decision. "Go on."

"When… when the guard left, Oshima… Changed. One moment, he was the hard-working farmer who I've known for so many years. The next. He was a monster. It was like someone had taken a human and drained all the color from them. And his tongue… It was hideous. Long. Like a snake's. His neck extended suddenly, and I felt a pain in my neck, and then I was no longer in control."

The Sandaime drew in a breath quickly. "Orochimaru."

Kakashi, looking as though one of his summoning dogs had been hit by a wagon, nodded. "He wants Naruto, then?"

The Hokage hesitated for a moment. "Kakashi. Stay here and guard the Daimyo with your life, until his guards awaken. I will trust the Hyuuga heiress to guard Uchiha-san. I will find Orochimaru and, I fear, Naruto."

"Yes sir."

No more words were necessary. Sarutobi was out the door before the Daimyo could blink.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Author's Notes: I'm gonna take the time to address a couple of questions that I thought probably needed an answer that wasn't going to come in the story eventually:

There was an interesting question about Naruto's response to killing and the life of a Shinobi. I am of the opinion that it is best to remember that for all of Naruto's training; he's still a kid. Children tend to have very idealistic views of the world. It is fair to think that he might not be horrified by killing someone who deserved it, once he had time for rational thought, but he did not. What I wrote was Naruto's gut reaction, which was fear.

Moreover, Naruto feared the loss of control, as much as the actions he committed while out of control. A large part of Naruto's psyche depends on him not deserving the mistreatment he receives at the hands of the villagers. If the line between him and Kyuubi becomes blurred, he looses that innocent standing. Beyond even that, nobody likes being totally out of control. It is the nature of human beings to seek to be in control. Heck, part of the meaning of the title of this story is that, to have control over your life, you have to have a center. Naruto's center has been drastically imbalanced by his loss of control. That is, in and of itself, a truly terrifying thing to happen.

Lastly, I would cite Naruto's response to the battle on the bridge in the original series. He is unable to kill Haku, when Haku asks him to. Clearly, Shinobi Rules aside, Naruto is troubled by the idea of killing someone. That too, is a purely natural thing. It doesn't fit with basic human instinct to want to kill another human outside of self defense or defense of an extension of the self. People, who do want to, are generally considered to be sociopaths.

And Sasuke is on Naruto's team because I felt that his relationship with Sasuke was an important part of the character that Kishimoto created, and that it was also an important part of Naruto's slow growth as a person. Sasuke's actions cause Naruto to grow up. This whole story is about growing up (once again, another important part in finding your center).

A faster update than might be wise, I'm afraid, but I'm hoping that my writing was up to the task. If things are weaker than normal, it's because I wrote this very fast, and so I didn't spend as much time thinking about it as I probably ought to have. I hope you enjoyed it all the same.

Smertios

- Hmm… wasted a page on footnotes to the story. I'll try not to do that again in the future, but I wanted to answer those questions.