Ch 21
"Shiki Fuujin, Kai!!"
As soon as Naruto spoke, a massive amount of chakra exploded out of Naruto's body, flinging the snake sannin into the statue of Uchiha Madara, impacting right in its left eye. The explosion of chakra also knocked him over, and he landed on his back, as chakra continued to pour out of his body, dissolving his jacket and shirt in the process, but not harming his pants, sandals, or forehead protector, for which he was grateful. At least nobody would have to look at his naked corpse.
The chakra began to gather above him, and soon the Kyuubi's outline became visible. As chakra continued to pour out of him, Kyuubi's form began to look more and more solid. This process took several minutes, and Naruto was screaming in agony the whole time.
The chakra also woke up Hinata, and dispelled the snake holding Sakura, and both girls slowly crawled over to Naruto. They got as close as a few feet, before the amount of chakra coming out of him was too strong to push through. When it suddenly stopped, they both crawled up to him, and found that he was breathing, and his seal was glowing bright red. It then flashed once, before slowly fading out of existence, as if it were never there. His whisker marks, however, stayed.
Kyuubi took his first true breath of fresh air in seventeen years, and immediately felt better. He could sense that the kit,….no, that Naruto was still alive, and was actually relieved. Not wanting to waste any tome with the snake, he decided to use his most powerful attack, or at least a version of it. If he used the full-power version on the snake, it would kill the humans he was standing over. He let out several balls of chakra from his body, and collected them in front of him. He compressed the chakra into a small ball, before eating it. The compressed chakra reacted violently in his body, and began to expand. He slowly let it build up in his mouth, until he let it out in a devastatingly powerful beam, aimed right at the snake.
Orochimaru could only watch as his life ended, his last thoughts were of wishing he had killed Naruto in the forest of death all those years ago. The massive chakra ball completely disintegrated his body, as well as both statues, the waterfall, and part of the canyon, turning it all into a huge, smoking crater. Even the legendary Kusanagi was destroyed in the explosion.
With Orochimaru dead, Kyuubi shrank down to the size of a small dog, before walking up to Naruto.
"How is he doing?"
"Well, medically he's fine, just exhausted," Sakura said, "although now that he doesn't have your chakra anymore I have no idea when he'll wake up."
"Ano, what do you mean, Naruto doesn't have his chakra anymore?" Hinata asked, since she had still been unconscious when Naruto released the seal.
"Naruto released the seal that kept me within him. I am now free, and he is no longer a jinchuuriki."
"Oh," was all the reply she could come up with.
Masami then suddenly appeared next to them, "Umm, who summoned me this time?" she asked confusedly, since she didn't recognize the chakra signature of the person who called her.
"I did. Naruto decided to let me out, and I am free again. I must go back to Yorokori and set the village straight, and Naruto needs to be taken back to Konoha, along with the dead girl over there," Kyuubi said, pointing to the dead missing nin.
"Of course, Kyuubi-sama," Masami said, bowing low, "Welcome back."
"I must be going now, good luck to you all. When Naruto wakes up, let me know. I want to see how he's doing."
"Will do. Have fun doing whatever it is you need to do," Sakura replied, before Kyuubi dispersed back to his village in a huge cloud of smoke.
The girls then proceeded to seal the body of Yuri into a scroll, before loading Naruto onto Masami's back. They then summoned Akiko and Yukiko and rode back to the village. Along the way, Naruto woke up long enough to tell them not to say anything about the fact that Orochimaru was dead, and if they had to, to tell baa-chan to wait on telling everybody until he was awake, and to not tell anybody about Kyuubi being free, for obvious reasons. The girls agreed, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness.
Xxxxxxxxxx
When Naruto woke up next, it was early morning, so he knew that he had been out for at least the rest of the day, and the following night. Looking down, he saw Kotaro curled up at his feet, sleeping peacefully. The young fox soon woke, though, and immediately greeted Naruto.
"Morning, Naruto."
"Yeah, you too," he said, while failing to hold back a yawn, "How long have I been sleeping?"
"About a week," the fox replied, "and before you freak out, you need to be quiet. You're not the only one in this room."
"I wasn't planning on freaking out. In fact, I'm surprised I'm not dead," he told the fox, "so who are we sharing with?"
"I don't know. It's a woman, mid-twenties I think, and she smells like dango and snakes."
"Dango and snakes? Uhhhhhh, oh, I know her. She's the crazy snake lady from my first chunin exam. Her name's Anko. What's she in for?"
"I don't know. She's been unconscious since before they let me in here. Hang on, I'll go look at her chart," the fox said, as he jumped off the end of the bed. He padded quietly over to the end of Anko's bed, and looked at the medical chart that was hanging there for a short amount of time before returning to Naruto's feet.
"It says something about some kind of mark disappearing from her neck."
'She had one of Oro-teme's marks, too. Maybe that's what it was,' Naruto thought. "Can you see the left side of her neck?"
"Let me look," Kotaro said, before going back around Anko's bed. He jumped up onto it, being careful not to disturb her, and looked at her neck for a while, before returning to Naruto. "I don't know what I was supposed to find, but there was no mark on her neck."
"She had one of Orochimaru's curse marks," Naruto told him, "It must've gone away when Kyuubi killed him."
"Huh." He was cut off from further thought by someone walking into the room to check on Anko, and since his bed was the one farther from the door, and the curtain was pulled out, he couldn't tell who it was until they walked over to his side.
"N-Naruto? You're awake."
"Hi Ino. I didn't know you were a medic-nin."
"Well, I'm not as good as Forehead or Hinata, but I can do some. How do you feel?"
"Pretty good," Naruto said, as his stomach growled, causing him to laugh a little, "and hungry."
She made a couple quick notes on his chart, before looking back at him, "Alright, I gotta go tell Hokage-sama that you're up, and I'll tell them to send you some breakfast."
"Oooh, can it be ramen?" Naruto asked with enthusiasm.
"No, baka, the hospital doesn't serve ramen for breakfast," she said, before storming out, complaining about him being an idiot.
Having nothing else to do, he talked with Kotaro about what had been going on around the village for the last week, and ate his breakfast when it arrived. There was even some for Kotaro, and Naruto ate fast, even by his standards. He had a weeks worth of food to make up for after all.
After his breakfast, he took a nap, since was still feeling tired, and when he woke up again, he realized that Anko had woken up as well.
"Anko?" he asked, trying to get her attention.
"Who is it?"
Naruto reached out and pulled back the curtain, "It's me."
"Oh, what do you want, brat?"
"How's your neck?" he asked.
She looked up at him in shock, "how'd you know?"
"I know why it went away."
"You do? How?" she asked, almost as if begging him to tell, since her biggest problem in life had been removed.
"Orochimaru's dead," he told her, "My summons killed him."
She just stared at him, trying to wrap her head around the fact that the man who had screwed over her whole life was dead now. "How?" she eventually got out.
"You know what I am, right?" he asked, instead of answering her question.
"Yeah, you hold the fox, big deal, I don't care about that. Tell me how you killed him."
"You know that I summon foxes now, too, right?"
"Yeah, I heard about it, why?"
"The boss of the foxes is Kyuubi, and I don't hold him anymore. I released him and then he killed the bastard for killing his mate and kits, which is the reason he attacked Konoha in the first place," he said quietly.
Anko went into another period of thought, before saying, "So, after making the most powerful creature in existence, which was sealed inside you at birth, you're personal summon, you unleashed said creature upon the world?"
"Uhh, something like that, yeah. He's back in the summon world right now, sorting everything out from being gone for so long."
Anko was unable to continue questioning him, because the door opened at that point, allowing Tsunade, Sakura, Ino, and Hinata to enter the room.
"Hi," Naruto said from his bed, "baa-chan."
"Nice to see ya, brat. What happened?"
Naruto thought for a moment, and then asked, "Baa-chan, is Gai's team and the rest of Ino's team here?"
"Uhh, they should be, why?"
"Ino, can you go get them? I have something to tell them."
"You mean, you're gonna tell them?" Tsunade asked.
"Yes I'm going to tell them. They deserve to know."
"Tell us what?" Ino asked.
"Go get everybody and bring them here. Hell, bring Kiba and Shino too, if you see them. They already know, but they might as well be here."
"Ok, I'll be right back," she said, before leaving to go find said people.
"Baa-chan, I'll go into more detail about it when everybody else gets here, but the reason Anko's mark is gone is because Orochimaru is dead."
"What?"
"He attacked us while we were fighting that missing nin, and it ended up with Kyuubi killing him."
They only had to wait a short while longer until Ino returned with the rest of the rookies, and they all managed to squeeze into the small room.
"Ok, we're all here, mind telling us what's all going on?" Ino asked.
"What I'm about to tell you is considered an S-rank secret here. Hinata and Sakura know all of what I'm going to say, Neji, Kiba and Shino know part of it, so please don't interrupt. What we were all taught in the academy about the Kyuubi isn't true, or at least not entirely. Yes, the Fourth fought it, yes he defeated it, but no it didn't actually die. Even he couldn't kill something that powerful, so he sealed it instead. He sealed it into his own child, me…."
"So, you're the son of the Fourth, and he sealed the Kyuubi in you when you were born?"
"Yeah."
"Mendoukusei."
He then answered everyone else's questions about him holding the fox, and then told them about his last mission, up through the part where he began to talk to Kyuubi.
"Ok, this is the part that only Hinata-chan and Sakura-chan know, because they were there, and Anko got the quick version after I woke up. The fight ended with Orochimaru dead, but none of us killed him. Kyuubi did. I know I said he dispelled, and he did, but I let him back out by removing the seal on me, allowing him to come completely out. Kyuubi is no longer sealed inside me. He is currently in the summon realm getting back up to speed on what he missed while he was stuck in my gut."
"Hmm, Hanabi-sama will not like to hear that," Neji said.
"Yosh! This is just another example of Naruto's youthfulness!!!" said Lee. He kept on for several more minutes about Naruto and his actions being youthful, until he couldn't take it anymore.
"Lee," Naruto said, interrupting him, "if you say one more thing about youth, I'm going to feed you to Kyuubi."
"That would be most un-youthful, Naruto."
"That's it!" Naruto shouted, and flashed through some seals, summoning Kyuubi.
"Oh, you're awake. How are you doing?"
"I'm about to go insane. Eat him, please," Naruto said, pointing at Lee.
"Umm, no. He looks too disgusting to eat, especially with those eyebrows."
"Please?"
"No. I don't want to get sick. Now, if you don't have anything else for me to do besides ask questions, I'll be going now. When they let you out of here, call me out again. I have some new things to teach you to make up for not having access to my chakra anymore."
Kyuubi then poofed out, and everyone in the room was shocked. Well, those who didn't know him were shocked. Naruto was on quite good terms with the most powerful entity known to man. Who would've thought?
Xxxxxxxxxx
He spent another week in the hospital, much to his dismay. Anko was there for some of it, so he at least had someone to talk to, even though he didn't always understand what she was talking about. His friends popped in randomly, to ask him questions about his life and such, which he had no problems answering. He was quite happy with the fact that none of them abandoned him, and decided that he would but his best effort ever into learning whatever it was that Kyuubi wanted to teach him.