Kitsune Foxfire again, obviously. Once again, "Thanks and thanks again!" to all my wonderful readers, reviewers, alerters, c2ers, and favers...you know what, even the lurkers. This chapter is a little shorter, but worry not, the next two, which I remind you are the last(!) chapters, are written and waiting.

Question of this chapter is: "Do you ever find yourself looking at a book or a live action move and go, "oh man, they TOTALLY got that idea from this manga/anime!" It's happened to me a few times, actually, and sometimes I read or watch the movie anyway, though other times, I get pissed and walk away. I wanna say, I DO read and watch normal non anime related stuff, people.


_*&*&*_POV KAKASHI_*&*&*_

It was cold. Kakashi had foolishly thought that Briggs was cold, but this barren place, barely a half a day's trek from the fort, the temperature had dropped drastically. His conclusion as he looked at the group of tents huddled together in the blizzard? These people are either insane or stupid. Possibly both. On the other hand, it had made tracking down these people, the ones responsible for pulling his student as well as Killer Bee into this world, that much easier. Not too many tent villages out in the middle of the mountains in the dead of winter, after all. The whole job was made that much easier by Olivier's rather impressive information network on Drachma. For a woman who swore that she had no spies sneaking across the borders, she was surprisingly well informed. He'd only wasted a few days instead of the week he'd been expecting to be out in this god-forsaken wasteland thanks to her.

For an experianced Shinobi, it was ridicously easy to sneak into the small tent-town and verify that these people were in fact the guys they were looking for. Kakashi briefly concidered taking out everyone on his own. They were woefully unprepaired for a shinobi-attack, that much was painfully obvious, particuarlly one of his level. In reality, it just made him angry at Killer Bee, since the fool had been called right into the middle of this bunch of idiots and had apparently done nothing to them other then push a few around. The silver-haired man squelched the earge to rectify this obvious mistake on the Kumogakure shinonbi's partm reminding himself that if did so, it was competely possible both jinchuuriki would become permanently trapped here. With things rappidly deteriorating into a massive battle back home, he couldn't risk it. He sighed as he helped himself to some of the enemies food, making sure to spoil the rest.

Olivier had apparently known that he'd consider finishing these guys off, she'd been quite specific in her orders, after all. Of course, now that he'd found them, the hard part was going to be moving the much slower Amestrian troops into place for an attack. That was going to be a miserable experience, he was sure. Then again, that really wasn't his problem. His job had been simple, find the bad guys. The joinin marked the location on the map he'd been given, silently debating the wisdom of just taking care of the problem on his own. With a slight shiver he turned away from the mostly barred camp and headed back towards Briggs, wanting a hot shower more than anything.

_*&*&*_THE GATE POV ROY_*&*&*_

Roy warily eyed the blond boy seated on the ground. Neither he nor Bee had moved for hours, basically leaving Mustang alone with Truth and the giant Bull-ocupuss for company. Frankly, the Flame alchemist was freaked out. For a while, he'd done his best to ignore the being known as Truth, and the tactic seemed to work, or perhaps it could actually see what was going on inside Naruto, because now it was intently watching the teen. At least, that's what he assumed it was doing. Roy had then spent an hour studying Hachibi, but really, the beast was frightening and creepy, as well as reminding him greatly of the few chimeras he'd seen. The creature, for its part, mostly ignored him, other then asking him politely not to try lighting him on fire. At least this one hadn't tried to eat or squish him.

Suddenly Bee lept to his feet, "Damnit!"

"What? What happened?"

The man pointed to Naruto, "I lost him, that's what."

Roy stared at the blond, who was still sitting there, calmly meditating. He raised an eyebrow, "Oh?"

"Don't go 'Oh', this isn't some lame show! Kyuubi chased Hachibi and me out before we could even shout."

"Sorry, Bee," Rumbled the giant ox-apus, "that fox has gotten tricker since the last time we fought."

Truth smirked widely, resting it's head on a hand as it leaned in towards the teen, "Well now. This is getting interesting." Roy looked over at Naruto to see what had gotten the god-creature's attention and saw something that really gave him the chills.

"Is he supposed to be doing that?" He pointed to the red energy bubbling out of Naruto, energy that was quickly forming into what looked like tails.

"No." Bee frowned, "This is very bad."

"It looks like Mister Kyuubi is going to eat his host again," pointed out Truth, "but this time, it'll be a more permanent snack, I think."

"And if that happens?" Roy turned to Bee, "What then?"

"We're screwed." The shinobi answered.

The grin widened. "Very interesting. What will you do now, Mister Jinjuriki?"

_*&*&*_THE GATE POV NARUTO_*&*&*_

The teen cringed, waiting for impact. Braced for it, eyes shut against the inevitable, despite years of training, though when you thought about it, when a tail THAT size was whistling down at you about to flatten you and you were stuck, closing your eyes really was your only option. The moment dragged on for an eternity, and he actually found it almost troubling how long it was taking for his doom to reach him. Not that he was opening his eyes to see what was taking so long. What was really odd was he swore he could smell cookies. Who knew the fox smelled like warm chocolate chip cookies? He kinda figured Kyuubi'd smell like wet dog, but go figure.

His mouth watered, and finally he cracked open an eye. Instead of the sight he was expecting, his soon-to-be-death-by-tail, he saw a person. A person with really long bright red hair who was currently busy facing the other direction in the kitchen. Wait, Kitchen? "Huh?" Naruto blinked stupidly, noticing that he was indeed in a kitchen for some reason. Ok, now I'm really confused.

"Oh good, you've opened your eyes." The person turned, holding a plate of cookies while smiling brightly, "Your father used to do the exact same thing right before he Hiraishin'd somewhere. Drove me nuts. What if he landed over a spike pit or something?" She growled, blue eyes flashing dangerously for a second. She looked at the now very nervous teen before sighing, "But that's all in the past right, Naruto? Do you want a Cookie?"

"Who the hell are you?" The blond asked, despite the fact his stomach's opinion that yes, he did really want a cookie, thank you very much.

"Huh? Minato didn't tell you?"

"What's dad got to do with this?

She slammed the plate on the table, causing some of the cookies to scatter, "That man...When I get my hands on him...!" with a huff she picked up one of the renegade cookies and bit into it viciously.

Naruto blinked, watching the woman warily. "Wait a second...Bright red hair, and you call dad Minato, you're in my mind AND you baked cookies. I know who you are!" The woman brightened, "You're the Kyuubi in disguise aren't you! Well, I won't fall for it, you stupid fox!"

"...Excuse me?"

"You heard me! I won't come to the dark side!"

The woman sighed, rubbing her forehead while looking at Naruto with a look of pity, Finally she looked up, "That's it. I give up. My son is an idiot." she looked at the dumbfounded teen, "Yes you. Personally, I hold everyone from the third hokage on down responsible. What do they teach kids now? You magically appear in a kitchen and you think it's some plot to turn you evil?"

"Well, yeah?"

She glared at him, "You don't cook much, do you?" Naruto gulped, getting the feeling that it would be a very bad idea to tell this woman, who now that he thought about it probably WAS his mother, that he mostly lived off of ramen noodles, and the instant kind at that. "That's what I thought." She sighed, "Take a cookie, and let's try this again, shall we? I'm Kushina Uzumaki, your mother, 'tadaboyo. Though, I guess it's kind of rude of me to call myself that, since I couldn't be there for you while you were growing up, no matter how much Minato and I wanted too..." She teared up.

"It's ok! Really!" Naruto waved his arms wildly, now at a loss at what to do, "please, just stop crying!"

"It's not alright!" she sniffed, "Naruto! Listen, I need to tell you something. I need to tell you the truth about what happened on that night that you were born."