"The first time I weakened the Kyūbi's seal, I remember clearly. I hadn't even been aware of what was happening: all I knew was that we had been captured, and my brother was being beaten by boys, most of them genin, but one chūnin, tortured, and jeered at. I had been pinned, entombed in a water-like prison, and I couldn't move while my brother was being hurt. Burning hot anger overwhelmed me, anger that leached off me in waves, eating at me. My thoughts became narrow-minded, focusing only on my brother and how to get to him. Thinking back, those boys were lucky I had learnt how to contain my anger to some degree- had I not, they wouldn't have gone home. Do you know what Naruto said to me when I woke upon the floor, half lucid, his head on my chest, tears in his eyes, and my chakra depleted? "It's alright, Mitsu. I don't expect you to be perfect. Nobody can be."

Mitsuo jumped in first, landing the first attack, trying to protect his brother above all else. That was all that mattered. He ran through the shortened hand-sign that he'd been practising, flexing his chakra to summon six clones, ever-translucent and ever accompanied by the howling of the wind.

"Wind Style: Fūton Bunshin."

They went forwards as Mitsuo stayed back, Naruto's small form clinging to his side. His chakra flared angrily, in response to his hidden emotions, as he carefully picked Naruto up, the boy staying silently against his side, folding against his shadows. He took a deep breath, as he became accurately aware of everything that was happening around him, his clones fighting, dissipating in a war of slashes, leeching at the skin.

I need to get Naruto away from here before they get past me. Pressing his hands together, he made his way through the hand-signs for the latest Jutsu he'd added to his repertoire. Ox. Snake. Ram. Bird.

"Wind Style: Nóngwù no Jutsu!"

The air around them became heavier almost, denser. It was able to be seen by the naked eye, not that Mitsuo hung around to watch. He temporarily got one of his clones to henge themselves into a more solid-looking Mitsuo, as he used the cover to disappear into the woods surrounding the training ground. The henge that was in place by the clones would only last a matter of minutes as the clones were unable to sufficiently meld chakra for long amounts of time without disappearing, but it was only to hide his escape. He placed Naruto down in the grass, in the comfortable shade of the tree, obscured from plain sight, trying to let the trees cover him.

"Naruto. Wait here. Do not move until I come and get you. If they get past me- run. I'll find you."

Upon Naruto's nod, he shunshined back over to the battlefield just as the fog began to thin, and the henge dropping on the wind clone as it dissipated thanks to the lack of chakra. The clones hadn't been much of a waste, with at least one of the boys unconscious on the rough dirt, the rest looking mildly exhausted, apart from Kasuhiro, who looked unruffled.

Mitsuo was all too aware that Naruto was an easy target, and that it was questionable- rather, highly unlikely- that Naruto could get away. Mitsuo settled down into a defensive stance, taking stock of the battlefield around him.

His chakra reserves were simmering, not quite empty, not quite full, but he knew that he wasn't going to be able to pull off some giant jutsu. Not one that would affect a wide group of people anyway. Mitsuo's reserves were huge, and only growing larger: but practising Hiraishin, he wasn't the best at chakra control.

Chakra control wasn't just something he could observe and learn.

"It doesn't matter where you hide your brother, Yako. We'll find him eventually: it's not that hard to follow his chakra."

Kasuhiro barked, as three of the genin surrounded him, throwing a fast flurry of shuriken. He blocked them all with practised ease and poise, moving from a defensive position to an adjusting one as they jumped towards him, each one going through a flurry of the same hand-gestures. But Mitsuo recognised the gestures for what they were: the clone jutsu.

That advanced warning gave him enough time to think of a counter and prepare for the incoming attack. They don't work as a team. Or they aren't used to one another. Each move they make is actively avoiding the other two. I can take advantage of this.

"Bunshin no Jutsu!"

They each summoned one clone, meaning there were six people on the field. They've not thought this through… I know who are real and who the clones are. It's not much of a distraction if the true person is obvious. Drawing small shuriken of his own, he threw them out in front of him in a fan-like motion, the attack coordinated.

The three who were real disappeared, leaving the clones to disappear in a puff of smoke, as all three shunshined over to him, attacking from the left, the right, and above. It took him a matter of a few seconds to replace himself with a log, as the three genin crashed into one another, with a series of yells.

"Mako, Haku, Tsuna! Are you really going to let the Yokai get the better of you?"

He taunted, as they quickly straightened themselves out, ready to launch into another fight. He raised his fists defensively, guarding the main areas of his body against the blows, pushing down the Kyūbi's chakra that was far too tempting to give in to.

If you use my chakra, you can defeat them all with ease. You can protect your younger brother. You can beat these imbeciles with a wave of your hand.

The Kyūbi's voice was alluring like it was trying to appeal to his deepest darkest desires. The voice, though kind in appearance, was just as fake as its offer, no more sincere than the boys in front of him. He knew very little about the seal on his gut, other than it was powered by the soul of his father and kept the demon at bay.

To undo the seal was to release the Fox, and to release the Fox meant the death of both himself, his brother, and countless innocents. To destroy the village that his mother and father gave their lives to protect. It was his and Naruto's burden to bear, the weight of the responsibility that had been given to them.

He blocked a kunai-laden fist by Mako, catching it with his left hand and gripping it tightly. He drew it across his body to block the shuriken thrown by Haku, before bending the wrist back and disarming him, turning to avoid a roundhouse kick that would have struck his head. They all backtracked, giving him ample space as they circled him, each of them staring him down, fire in their eyes.

But it wasn't the fire of a passionate fight, it was the fire of anger. Raw and unadulterated, hot and white, anger. For people he'd never interacted with before. That Naruto had never interacted with before. They all darted towards him, each one a half-step out of time with another, Mitsuo keeping his fighting style fluid and adaptive.

Out of the corner of his eye, he became aware of Kasuhiro inching towards him, ready to fight yet again. The three on one suddenly became a four on one, and Mitsuo's eyes were flicking around, his sensory abilities sweeping over the battlefield around him.

These worms would never be able to touch you if you simply indulged in using my chakra. It would burn them inside and out, till nothing but ash remained.

The images were vivid, the blood surrounding him, strewn corpses around the field. His normally young-looking face, blue eyes with round adoring pupils, his clothes neat and tidy. They were all gone. Red glowing eyes were in their place, normally blond hair sticking up as though electrocuted, arched and angry like a hissing cat. His whiskers more prominent as teeth forked out over his lips, piercing them with an ease reserved for blades. Claw-like hands emerging from the flesh, ready to carve through armour and skin.

The image sent unholy shivers down his spine, and he beat it down with a viciousness unbecoming of him, tempering his chakra back into its cold and collected chakra. I control the chakra, the chakra doesn't control me. I choose what it does, it does not choose of its own free will. I control the Fox, the Fox doesn't control me.

The mantra was one that he'd repeated many times over his training, whenever the Fox's chakra threatened to overwhelm his, to take control. Put it in the mould, temper it. It can be what I want it to be and nothing more.

With his concentration narrowed, he saw the attack by Mako coming a few seconds before it did, and effortlessly leaned out of the way, tripping him with a sweep of his leg. Ducking, Kasuhiro's fist went flying over his head, as Mitsuo quickly substituted himself with a log, narrowly avoiding the three shurikens that landed right where his throat, heart, and right lung would have been.

Kill shots. This is more than just some stolen honour. They are out for blood. Dropping from his elevated position, he buried his knees into the back of Mako, his momentum sending the two of them crashing to the ground. Slamming his hands into his chakra points, he knocked him clean out. He was no Hyūga, but he still knew where they were- the primary ones anyway. Two plus Kasuhiro left. Then I can get back to Naruto.

He used his momentum to throw himself into a cartwheel, narrowly dodging a strike from where he'd been just moments before. He grabbed Haku's wrist and used it to block Tsuna's strike, bending it back and pushing Haku in front of him, almost as a human shield. Tsuna's next punch had no choice but to land in Haku's stomach, and he pushed the two of them forward, hands flurrying through quick hand gestures.

"Earth Style: Doryūheki!"

He slammed his hands into the ground, feeling his chakra surge up as the earth grabbed around Tsuna and Haku's feet, getting into every nook and crevice it could. Closing his blue eyes, he could sense Kasuhiro in front of him, and another foreign chakra signature somewhere behind him. Opening his eyes with a dramatic surge of blue, he dropped the mud wall, looking up as he heard a familiar wail of terror.

"Look what I found here!"

Mitsuo's eyes snapped up, anger filling his body to new levels as he saw Kasuhiro holding Naruto by his scruff, his legs dangling in the air. The seal on his stomach burned with a new intensity as he made to charge towards his brother, but was stopped by the briefest flicker of chakra, which made him turn to dispose of the threat, eyes split between Kasuhiro and Naruto, and the unknown entity behind him.

When he turned, one of his eyes caught with a raven-haired, red-eyed foe, and his gaze was fully enraptured in that of the Uchiha Sharingan, single tomoe, but still plenty powerful.

Though he did not know it yet, those eyes could control a Bijū, perhaps not in this infant stage where the power was still a fledgeling, barely alive, still needing nourishment and training, but once it hit three tomoe, or became a Mangekyō, there was no doubt about it.

As it stands, the single tomoe Sharingan of one Uchiha Taiko, slightly older then Mitsuo and Itachi, about fifteen or sixteen, was enough to make the fox inside him startle to full alert, roaring with enough intensity to shake the bars of his cage, to feel his corrosive chakra eating Mitsuo from the inside out.

Though not powerful enough to control, those red eyes were enough to break the Fox out of his slumber and to make Mitsuo delay just long enough for a double-point water prison to be made by two flanking chūnin, who Mitsuo didn't know.

Mitsuo pulsed his chakra to try and distort the water prison, to try and calm down the Fox from the rampage inside of him, trying to keep the Fox contained while trying to escape and save his brother. He threw a punch, only for it to be sluggish, the water weighing it down until it was pushing forwards at a snail's pace. Kasuhiro grinned with bared teeth, dangling Naruto as if he were nothing but a plaything.

With an Uchiha on their side, who was silent and stoic, calculating, well, Mitsuo had certainly made their job of catching him all too easy, by staring into the powerful dōjutsu. A rookie mistake, misjudging his opponents, and now he was facing the price, with a thrashing Fox and the rapidly increasing temperature of the water that scalded his skin.

"Mitsuo!"

He wailed, kicking his legs out, flailing in fear, limbs thumping uselessly against the chūnin's arms. Mitsuo's breathing began to quicken as he tried to collect his chakra and use it to burst out of the prison. But it didn't make a difference, the water prison simply dispelling it naturally. He twisted, seeing another chūnin, one who had joined the battlefield much later, the one who's chakra he had sensed a mile away.

He caught up to us so fast. How? Was he always there, just hiding? Kasuhiro dangled Naruto temptingly, like a bone before a dog, before tossing him to the ground like trash, Naruto's knees scuffed red raw as a result.

More and more chakra leaked out of the seal, ruby red, lashing out at the water prison they were contained in, not that Mitsuo noticed. His normal calm demeanour was replaced with white-hot anger, his fists clenched, his jaw set as he tried to escape the prison, wanting to get to his little brother.

"I told you demons had to get their comeuppance, Yako. I'll let you watch as we rid the village of your demon brother, and then rid of you. We will have our ranks raised for doing the village a service!"

The Uchiha, Taiko, sneered at Mitsuo, red Sharingan eyes meeting red Kyūbi-like eyes, and they didn't seem to know when to quit. The mere sight of the Sharingan again made the Fox furious, and Mitsuo could feel his control failing, no matter how much he tried to control his chakra, no matter how hard he tightened his knuckles.

This power was not one he could hold any more, and it was just threatening to burst out, to lash out at everyone around him. No thoughts of Naruto would temper the Fox, no sheer force of will could halt the Kyūbi, It was on a rampage, and a part of Mitsuo was terrified- if it got fully free… there was no Yondaime, no Kushina to seal it again- and if he died, there would be nobody to protect Naruto, nobody to save him from the angry stares of the village. There was no mistake about the meaning of the word Jinchuriki, and if he died, they would find someone else to pass the burden onto; that was no lie.

"And now, you can stop tainting the Uchiha heirs with your demonic chakra. They will be the ones to lead Konoha into a new age."

Kasuhiro drew a sharp blade, hungry for blood, hooked menacingly at the hilt. It drew closer and closer to Naruto's neck as he scrambled backwards on hands and knees, cowering terrified, calling out for his brother with sobs, hiccups impeding every word. As the blade drew closer and closer to Naruto's neck, more and more Kyūbi chakra- anger red- leaked out of the seal, the normally invisible seal becoming clear, the black lines, intricately woven, now red, arching out into the skin, tracing his veins, like some kind of poison.

The red chakra surrounded Mitsuo as he took on the demonic features that he had seen in his dreams, in his nightmares. His blue eyes turned blood red, a murderous colour. His pupils slit, black and venomous, cutting through the water cube with superior sight, blazing with the intensity, with the power, of the Fox within him.

The two whiskers that adorned each cheek turned from their usual skin tone to a deep black, looking more like his face had been clawed at. Around each gouge, there was a red outline, as if each whisker was a wound that was sluggishly bleeding, dark red blood dripping down his face.

His eyes were surrounded with shadows, black and wide, enunciating the eerie demonic appearance of his normally crystal coloured eyes. Teeth that were typically blunt sharpened, until they escaped the confines of his mouth, effortlessly cutting through his lips. The overhang only served to highlight how sharp they were, as blood trickled down his mouth, wiped away with the back of a clawed hand.

Mitsuo's hitai-ate dropped down to cover one eye as his hair gained a mind of its own, growing so it was more mane-like then hair-like. He dropped to all fours as the chakra stopped streaming out of him, instead covering him as if it was a cloak. It covered his hands and feet, forming red paws with lengthy blood-red claws, black pads contrasting with the cloak.

The roar that escaped him was anything but human, and Kasuhiro and Taiko looked at him with some degree of terror, Naruto escaping his attention as Kasuhiro's grip faltered.

"What in the ever-loving hell is that?"

"I can't hold-"

The water prison dropped without much fanfare, and cat-like, Mitsuo landed on all fours, chakra like fire flowing through his veins, the translucent tail behind him flicking angrily from side to side. The chūnin froze as Mitsuo turned around, hissing and spitting, lunging forwards in a series of rapid attacks that were difficult to dodge.

Right swing where the claws just barely missed, and then a left kick as he got into a standing position, clawed feet scratching deeply into the unknown chūnin's shin. Kasuhiro darted towards the possessed Mitsuo, apparently having no self-preservation. What followed was a flurry of strikes from all sides, as Mitsuo weaved in and out of attacks, blocking them with various limbs, his chakra corroding any metal that came near. Swipe. Blood. Carnage. Fear. Protect. Kin. Blood.

"Let's get out of here! It's not worth dying!"

They fled, and instincts lurching, the fox-consumed Mitsuo went running after them, the thrill of the chase flooding through him. The only thing that stopped him was the sobbing Naruto, who was toddling towards him, no fear at all. Weaker prey, easier to hunt, easier to hurt. He stalked forwards, chakra cloak flaring as he reared back onto his hind legs, clawed hands hesitating to swing as realisation dawned in his eyes, Otōto. My brother. Our brother.

He lowered his hand, the chakra cloak flickering as Mitsuo became more aware of his brother, and as his features slid back to normality, he hit the ground roughly, his limbs limp and uncooperative, his eyes heavy. Naruto crawled forwards, wrapping his scratched arms around Mitsuo's waist, holding the dead weight to the best of his ability.

"It's okay, Mitsuo."

He crooned, acting older than he was, as the Third Hokage and a squad of ANBU, including Itachi, ran to their location, afraid that the Kyūbi escaped one of their human hosts. Naruto cooed into his chest as Mitsuo felt burning, a hollow sensation where the warmth of his chakra had once been. His eyes slid shut just as Itachi, the fastest out of the ANBU, appeared, crouching down next to the limp form of Mitsuo, looking at Naruto from behind his mask.

"I've got him. He's going to be fine."

On his stomach, the seal remained the same, frozen in contrast to the fire of the Kyūbi. The seal was not so easily broken. Itachi quickly stuck several seals over his chakra points, and Mitsuo felt a trickle of fear, everything frozen in his body as he was forced to watch, completely locked out from his body, paralysed.

With one hand, he cast the hand seals for a genjutsu, staring at Mitsuo. Their eyes met, and behind his mask, Itachi dipped his head, and everything went black. There was no fading, no gentle ease into it- it went dark quickly, and then the numbness remained. I hope the seal isn't damaged. Mitsuo thought to himself with his barely lucid thoughts. That kind of power… nobody should have it. Especially not me.

The memory of the sheer hatred he had felt while the Kyūbi's attitude ate at him… well, Mitsuo knew he was going to be having another addition to his nightmares from then on.

Author's Note

Uchiha Taiko is a real character if you recognise him- he's from Tsunade's Tsukuyomi dream. Though we're not given an exact age- that I could find- I kept his personality fairly similar to the version in the Tsukuyomi dream, with the exception of being devoted to his clan to an extreme degree.

Also, no, Mitsuo cannot control the fox. There is a reason why he didn't maim Naruto- it just gets explained next chapter, I promise!

Anyway, thank you for the reviews! If anyone wants to draw any art- I have a few sketches here and there, but drawing is not a skill of mine- or write their own takes on certain scenes, please do! I'd love it- especially as I see some of you coming up with your own interpretation of what could happen.

Thanks again!

~Cait