Matins
Midnight (pt.3-1)
"Good" End
"The body," the Boy replies to the Voice's question. Casting his eyes around, he climbs up the nearest tree, making each step with practiced surety.
As he climbs, all sorts of images flash through his mind.
He thinks back to the time when he was released from investigation, when autumn leaves rolled past like waves on the pavement and when white masks blinked out of existence like dying fireflies.
He recalls the Academy instructor who tried to trick him, but who ended up dangling like a puppet from a tree. He remembers the sound of the irregular pulse rate of the girl holding rabbits in her arms, and the sensation of thick snake blood in his mouth, the iron aftertaste stronger than any bowl of ramen he's ever tried.
The banging of a fish against a boiling vat lid in its final death throes. The smell of antiseptic. The sound of his knuckles cracking against a mass of flesh and muscle and blood. The sensation of wind on his face as he stands atop a burning world.
But as he has come to realize over the years, this world he knows is surrounded by walls. It is but a small piece of a bigger world. There is more out there.
I want to see it, the Boy thinks to himself.
The pink-haired girl's mangled body is midway up the tree, hanging dangerously over the edge of a flattened branch. He picks it up, haphazardly throwing one of its arms around his other shoulder.
On his way back to the village, the Boy passes by several others, who are apparently combing the immediate vicinity in search of any injured who may have been left behind. One of them is the masked jōnin. When he sees the girl's body on the Boy's shoulder, he grows very still.
"Was it Gaara?" is the only thing the jōnin says, and the Boy nods somberly. He hands the body over to the masked jōnin, who holds her to his chest the rest of the way back to the village.
"So you're back," says the white-haired man. The Boy notes that he looks more tired than he's ever seen the man before – not just physically, but mentally.
To the Boy's surprise, he does not ask him how it went. On the way back, he had been piecing together a plausible story for why the girl died and thinking of a way he could come across as genuinely remorseful. But it appears that his rehearsal was in vain.
"Before Minato died, he inscribed the key to your trigram seal on the stomach of a scroll toad, which is now in my possession. It has the power to both release or reinforce the seal. However, Naruto, there is one thing that you were probably not aware of about your seal." The white-haired man pauses. "Over the years, it has been gradually weakening by itself. If left alone, the Kyūbi will one day break completely free, and gain complete control over your body."
"Is that true?" the Boy asks, while keeping his face blank.
"I do not know," says the Voice. But the Boy does not know if it is telling the truth.
The white-haired man takes the Boy outside of the village. They travel a long way away, moving without pause for several hours while the remaining light in the air seeps away like acid into darkness. The Boy has never been to this area before; it is in the opposite direction of the island nation he and the others visited before.
When they finally come to a stop, they are in landlocked wilderness, a mass of barren land so expansive and empty that it could be a mere extension of the sky. It is cold.
"Are you ready?" the white-haired man asks with his arms crossed and his hair flapping restlessly with the wind. "I'm going to restore the seal to its original strength now."
"Yes," the Boy says.
"The moment when he touches the seal will be when it will be at its most vulnerable," the Voice growls.
As the Boy watches, the white-haired man raises his hand.
"If we time it correctly, we should be powerful enough to overcome him for an instant."
A deep blue flame flickers into existence on each finger. A complicated pronged seal appears on his palm, followed by a long tail-like seal that extends fully along the underside of his arm.
"And once I am free, no one will be able to stop us."
The white-haired man thrusts his glowing hand toward the Boy's exposed abdomen. The Boy can hear the rough, anticipatory breathing of the Voice in his ears. It is so dark, it feels almost as if the Voice is right there behind him.
The eight trigrams seal has appeared on his stomach.
His mouth drawn back in his concentration, the white-haired man rotates his hand.
And at the exact same instant, from somewhere in the darkness of his mind, there is a deep, guttural roar and then an immense, ear-splitting crash.
A hot, electric shock runs through his body and the Boy's vision splits in two.
The Boy is distantly aware of his body falling to its knees. His blood feels as if it is boiling, steaming out straight through the pores of his skin. His hands are turning into claws as they've done so many times before, but it has never hurt the way it does now.
Through fragmented, faceted vision, he sees masses of dark red chakra shooting out of his body, forming what look like tails. The earth around him is trembling, sending out out wave-like shockwaves across the barren plain.
The white-haired man is shouting something, his face contorted in determination as he struggles to complete the lock. The Voice is howling in his head – and with another crashing sound, something massive throws itself against something again, so loud it feels as if his brain has caught on fire and is melting away into nothing.
"Naruto!" the white-haired man shouts. "You have to fight it!"
"Attack him!" the Voice roars. "Distract him!"
Everything is a haze. The Boy feels as if he is being torn apart at the seams.
Images flash haphazardly through his head again. Except this time, all he can see are dimly-lit windowless rooms – white coats, white masks – "Naruto!" – white hair – "Let me out!" – white walls –
And suddenly, everything snaps into one and the Boy finds himself in front of an immense cage, suspended in nothingness.
It is the same cage he found himself in when the Voice took over his body, but this time, he is outside of it.
There is something gigantic behind the bars of the cage, throwing itself against it. The bars have managed to hold, but they are beginning to crack. Crumbling pieces of rock tumble down from the ceiling of the cage, disappearing into nothing as it hits the floor.
This is the first time the Boy has seen the Voice. It had always hidden itself in deep darkness but for the first time, it has revealed itself.
Its irises are red, floating in white sclera bulging with veins. It has red-orange fur that is currently bristling and standing on end with rage, two long pointed ears lying flat against the top of its head, clawed hands that are swiping at the bars, and nine gigantic tails fanning out frantically behind it. Its maw is wide open, revealing a double layer of sharp fangs.
It is from this maw, that the Voice is coming out of as it continues to scream.
There is a white tag with the character for 'seal' where the cage has been padlocked closed. It is shredding at the edges.
"Rip this seal off of me!" the thing roars at him, banging against the bars.
The Boy blinks, looking up at the beast.
"I knew you were called a nine-tailed fox..." he starts.
"What?!" it growls.
"But...for some reason, I didn't realize you were actually a fox."
"Idiot boy!" it snarls. "There's no time for this! Do it now, while the human's weakened!"
"I can't let you do that," says a calm voice.
For some reason, there is a blond man the Boy has never seen before standing in front of him. The haze surrounding the cage slowly begins to disperse around the man, and his form solidifies.
"You!" the beast snarls in shock. "Fourth Hokage!"
Seemingly taken aback, it momentarily ceases its assault on the cage bars.
"Kyūbi," says the blond man, looking up at it with distaste. "I never wanted to see you again."
"Banish him from this place!" the beast hisses at the Boy. "Or else he'll rebuild the seal!"
"As loud as ever, aren't you?" says the man. He looks at the Boy. "Let's go somewhere quieter to talk."
With a snap of his fingers, the crumbling cage suddenly disappears. It is just the Boy and the blond man, floating in an empty world.
It is silent.
The Boy winces. It has been a long time since he has heard silence. He takes in a deep breath and looks down at his hands.
"Do you know who I am, Naruto?" the man asks.
"No," the Boy replies.
"I am your father," he says.
The Boy cocks his head.
Father?
The only thing he knows about 'fathers' is that they were the ones who patted their children on the head when they built a sandcastle. The Boy never had anyone who patted him on his head. He has never had a father.
"I see," he says.
"I left an imprint of myself within you, to be activated when the seal was on the verge of breaking." The blond man pauses. "Was Jiraiya-sensei trying to open the seal?"
"He was trying to close it," says the Boy.
The blond man looks at the Boy carefully. The Boy stares straight back.
"Before I get to fixing the seal," he says. "I want to ask. How has your life been? I'm sorry your mother and I couldn't be there for you while you were growing up."
The Boy thinks it over for a few seconds.
"It's been fun!"
When the Boy opens his eyes, he is lying still in the middle of a large crater.
Gingerly, he picks himself up, brushing dirt off of himself. He looks around, but it is too dark to see more than a few meters in any direction. Offhandedly, he wonders what time it is. Is it midnight, or is it a new day?
Something groans near him.
"It's been a long time since I came so close to dying..." It is the white-haired man. From the tense note of pain in his voice, the Boy can tell that he has been hurt quite badly. There is a pause; the Boy turns to go. "You're leaving, aren't you?"
"Yes," the Boy replies. As injured as the white-haired man sounds, the Boy doubts he can kill him the way he is now. His body feels like a leaden block; it is all he can do to move.
"I won't stop you. But they'll stop at nothing to get you back," the white-haired man says quietly.
The Boy doesn't respond. Instead, with a crack of his fingers, he walks away, fading like a ghost into the darkness.
The beast has been raging inside his head for quite some time now. It growls in frenzied frustration, madly howling and banging against the bars of its cage.
The Boy pries his hand loose from the neck of the ANBU; with a gentle creaking of bone, the body slips down through the leaves of the treetop. Its white mask glints once before disappearing from view.
This is the tenth ninja they've sent after him, and it has only been a few weeks since he left, making his way south along the coastline.
The sunlight sears strongly down at the back of his neck as he surveys the stretch of tropical forest surrounding him. The wind blows against his face and as he lazily watches, a flock of bright blue birds suddenly burst out through the canopy and take flight into the air.
"Have you calmed down, yet?" the Boy asks the beast.
"Calmed down?!" it roars. "Let me out!"
The Boy sighs. The beast has been barely coherent since the blond man restored the seal. He supposes it is about time that he did something.
"You heard what that man said," he says in an appeasing tone. "The seal will weaken again gradually by itself. You can wait a few more years, can't you?"
"...what?" the beast growls.
"We have to be patient," the Boy says. "There'll be another chance again. And then you'll be free, like you've always wanted. But until then..."
"...until then?"
"We'll wait. And while we wait, we can have all the fun we want."
"Fun?" the beast says slowly.
"We'll travel around the world! We can go to another village, and I'll learn all those jutsu I wanted to know...work on my traps...and then we can go to the ocean again and catch us some sharks and...what was the other thing you liked?"
"Whales," the beast supplies reluctantly.
"And then when the seal breaks, you'll have complete possession over my body," the Boy says cheerfully.
The beast pauses hesitantly.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course," the Boy lies. He smiles. "I'm sure I'll have had my full of fun by then. I'll be so bored, I'll be begging you to take it already."
"Really?" It doesn't sound sure.
"Yes. After all..." The Boy languidly stretches back, looking up at the clear sky. "...this is just a game."
A/N: That was the good ending. If the seal in this story does not exactly follow the same rules as it does in canon, oh well. The next ending will be the bad ending.
Happy Halloween for those in USA.
Edit: Someone asked what Naruto's got planned for when the seal breaks again. Well...I don't think he really cares (at the moment). He's not thinking too far ahead long-term. I imagine he'll probably go back to Jiraiya for the key again. Either that, or he'll figure out a way to tame the kyuubi. (Or he gets screwed over by it but that's not quite a good ending).