Two days later Gai, Lee, and Neji were sitting in Naruto's room, looking for any sign of consciousness from the young genin. Little did they know that inside Naruto's mind, he was about to face his demon for the first time.
Naruto woke up in a sewer. His body hurt all over, and the hatred of the villagers was still fresh on his mind. He managed to get up and start walking down the hall. He noticed several doors along the walls and, curious as to what they were, walked over to one and opened it.
"Stay away, demon!" Instantly Naruto slammed the door shut. So, these were his memories. Not the most pleasant things in the world to be sure. He remembered they weren't here when he had visited last time, and concluded that that guy with the weird Sharingan had drug his memories closer to the surface. "If I ever get my hands on that guy, I'll shove Black Lightning up his ass." While he was inventing numerous slow and painful ways to torture the guy, he failed to really watch where he was going. He was dragged out of his thoughts when he realized he had walked up to a large cage. A pair of great, glowing red eyes appeared and Naruto immediately understood what that meant and hurled himself away from the cage just as several giant claws came hurtling out at him in-between the bars of the cage.
"I want to eat you, but this damn seal always stops me."
"So you're the great Kyuubi, hmm. You don't look like much."
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Why don't you come close to the seal and we'll test that bravado.
"No need. I mean, how scary can a stuffed animal be?" With that the cage turned into a babies playpen, with Kyuubi being in the pen with several other cute animal toys. To top it all off, everything was pink. The change only lasted a second, but when it ended, Kyuubi was shivering. Naruto smirked at Kyuubi's obvious terror, and as the great demon began to regain composure it spoke in a voice that could freeze hell over "DON'T EVER DO THAT AGAIN!"
"What will you give me?
"ARE YOU THREATENING ME?" Kyuubi roared.
Naruto calmly replied "If I am, what are going to do about it."
"OUT, OUT, OUT, OUT, OUT, OUT, OOUUTT! Kyuubi screamed as he shoved Naruto's mind out into the real world.
Naruto woke up laughing his ass off. Gai, Lee, and Neji were all shocked to say the least. Here was a kid who had been subjected to the ultimate torture of the Mangekyo Sharingan, and he wakes up laughing. Gai was afraid that the Tsukiyomi had somehow permanently damaged Naruto's mind. Lee's and Neji's thoughts were running in the same direction. After calming down Naruto told Neji about the Kyuubi and explained what had happened. They all shared a good laugh at the demons misfortune before Neji went off to find a doctor.
When the Hokage heard that Naruto had woke up, he rushed to the hospital to find Naruto explaining what had happened to Gai.
"…then I looked up, and you, the Hokage, Kakashi, and some other guy I've never seen before drop down in front of me. Then that guy turned his eyes into something weird and I'm tied to a post while he stabs me."
The Hokage cleared his throat and as Naruto and Gai's attention focused on him he began to speak. "Naruto, I would like you to tell me everything from when you found the man near Zabuza's grave until you just woke up." Naruto nodded and began his story.
"So you now have a sword that is the equal of almost any sword in the world, and you need a good instructor to help you learn more swordsmanship?" Naruto nodded. No matter how good your instructor, there's only so much you can learn in two weeks. The Hokage leaned back in the chair he was sitting in and sighed thoughtfully. "We don't have many swordsmen in Konoha, never have really. We're not like the Mist with their huge sword tradition. We used to have a fairly good swordsman named Hayate, but he was killed shortly before the Sand and Sound Invasion. I believe the Mitare's have a weapons shop and their daughter Tenten is a weapon specialist. She may be able to help you out."
Naruto nodded, he had seen the girl fight in the Chuunin Exam Preliminaries, and while she preferred thrown weapons, she was supposed to be no slouch with melee weapons either. Naruto made to get off the bed, but was quickly made to lie back down by the Hokage, who ordered a day of rest and observation to make sure there were no lingering effects from the Tsukiyomi. Naruto protested, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.
The next day Naruto was released and went straight to the Mitare's weapon shop. After receiving the usual cold glare he was asked what he wanted. When he replied he wanted to see Tenten he was told she was training with Neji. Naruto thanked them and left, their glares boring holes in his back.
After several days of training with Tenten, Naruto's sword skills had noticeably improved. He knew more complex techniques and was smoother in his execution. During training one day they were interrupted by a messenger telling them to come to the Hokage's office. When they got there they found their respective teams already waiting for them.
"Ah good, you're all here. I'm assigning you two teams a C-ranked mission to take care of some bandits on some outlying trade routes. Any questions." When there were none the Hokage told them exactly where they were going and the estimated strength of the bandits. They were said to have a chuunin level missing-nin among them, but with two jounin's, even if the missing-nin was stronger than chuunin, they should be able to handle him.
As the two teams filed out of the Hokage's office, Sasuke decided to taunt Naruto a little bit. "What's with the sword, dead-last, trying to look tough?" Sasuke got angry when Naruto completely ignored him. He was about to attack him when Kakashi told him that was enough. Kakashi looked over at Naruto, wondering what else he had learned to do. He was gaining far too much power far too quickly. He wasn't like Sasuke, who both knew how to handle that kind of power and needed that kind of power to kill his brother.
The group walked along mostly in silence, until several men jumped out in the road in battle stances. "Give us all you're money if you want to live" came the threat. All of the leaf ninja's dropped into ready stances, Tenten pulling out her weapons, Naruto drawing going into a nin/tai-jutsu stance, Neji going into the Gentle Fist stance, Sasuke getting ready to use his fire jutsus, Lee getting into battle mode, and Sakura pulling out a kunai. The two jounins also got ready and for several seconds nobody moved. Then the road exploded in action. Tenten's weapons were flying with deadly accuracy, filling one man's body full of kunai, shuriken and other weapons before he could blink. Sasuke used a Grand Fireball, incinerating two more of them while Neji killed another with a Gentle fist strike to the heart. Lee crushed one of the numbers skull before he knew what hit him, while Sakura was simply standing there trying to defend herself from yet another member of the party. Naruto had created several shadow clones which were swinging their own Black Lightning's into the fray with devastating results. As Kakashi and Gai disposed of their enemies with simple tai-jutsu, they noticed something strange. Enemies were falling left and right but their numbers didn't seem to be decreasing. In fact, they were increasing. More bandit's were rushing up to join in the fray. These were the ninja members of the group. One of them used a darkness gen-jutsu on Rock Lee, effectively knocking the boy out of the fight. Another one got behind Ten-ten, and managed to slash her right arm, before she sensed him. She spun around and decapitated him, but the one she had been fighting took the opportunity and slammed his fist into her head, knocking her out like a light. Sasuke was hard-pressed fighting three people, Neji was constantly using the Heavenly Spin to keep any of his opponents attacks from connecting, and Sakura had been disabled with a slash to the knee, and her opponent was ready to kill her. Naruto growled, pulled out Black Lightning, slashed off his weights, activated the blade, and went to where Sakura was in one leap, slicing off a man's head on the way there. He pulled the sword into an upward cut, splitting the man open from waist to head. He saw Kakashi with his Sharingan open fighting off four attackers and Gai surrounded by six men. Naruto had had enough. He spotted another group of bandits coming in from the left, and started running through seals. "Earth and Fire style: Lava River no Jutsu." As the river of lava poured out of Naruto's mouth to consume them, Naruto was already moving towards Gai and Kakashi. With the jounins free, the battle would quickly turn in their favor. He again pulled out Black Lightning and the blade crackled to life. Two of Kakashi's enemies fell before they knew what hit them, and the other two instinctively turned to face the new threat. That was all Kakashi needed to ram a kunai through each of their throats. As Kakashi went to help Sasuke, Naruto was moving towards Gai. These guys, however, had already seen him coming, and two broke off to fight Naruto while the rest continued concentrating on Gai. Naruto ducked to avoid a swing from one of them and brought his sword across the man's front. Blood sprayed out as the man fell in two pieces. Naruto didn't even give him a second glance and turned his attention toward the other one. The man charged Naruto but was taken down with a simple decapitating strike. Gai had disposed of one of his enemies by now and Naruto cut one in half from behind. Gai swiftly killed the other two and went to help his genins. Naruto summoned a wolf to help in their battle and as it took off towards two more bandits, Naruto looked around. Lee had been freed from his gen-jutsu and was taking care of another one of the bandits. There were only three of them left by now. Neji had another one desperately trying to parry his Gentle Fist attacks, while Kakashi had just killed another one. The last one was dispatched when a spinning kick from Gai cracked his neck. Naruto sighed and began to make sure there were no others hiding anywhere. When he concluded there weren't, helooked back to see Sakura and Tenten being carried on Kakashi's and Gai's backs, while the rest of the two teams were simply exhausted. They cleaned up the road and cut off the ninja members heads to take back to Konoha with them. As they began to trek back home, Naruto was ready for a warm shower and a nice relaxing sleep. He hoped next time they would get better intelligence on their mission. It was sheer luck everyone had survived and Naruto was more than a little upset. However, he decided there was nothing he could do about it, and concentrated on getting home.