They had to spend a whole week at the hotel waiting for Naruto to recover. And throughout that whole week, both Sasuke and Sakura had to keep dodging Tsunade and Jiraiya's attempts to get them to talk about themselves. They used taking care of Naruto and Kimimarou as their excuses, but Kimimarou was off of bed rest within the first day and Naruto had finally healed so now they were forced to face up to what they were avoiding. At least now they had Naruto with them. Naruto was the best at making up the stories and they hadn't really planned for this sort of thing. They probably should have. After all that they had done, there was no way that they were going to get away with not giving some sort of story, but they hadn't thought of it so they hadn't made one.

"Alright you three," Tsunade said when she and Jiraiya first saw Naruto out of bed and packing his stuff to go. "You are going to tell me what the hell is going on."

"Ok," Naruto said. "Just ask us whatever you like."

"Oh no," Tsunade said. "I'm not going to fall for that one. You are going to tell me everything there is to know about you three."

"Okay," Naruto shrugged as he sat on his bed with Sasuke and Sakura sat on either side of him. "But you're probably going to want to sit down somewhere. This'll be a long story."

"Are you really going to tell them Naruto?" Sakura asked suspiciously. Naruto had been much to against it to have suddenly changed his mind now.

"No," Naruto responded. "Just let me do the talking and I'll hopefully be able to get their suspicions off of us."

"Alright Naruto," Sakura frowned. "Just be careful what you say. If you really don't want them to know about us, we have to be careful not to let them hear anything that can be construed as something that we would only know from the future."

"Where should we start?" Naruto asked once everyone was seated. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were all seated on the bed and Tsunade and Jiraiya took the only two chairs in the room.

"Start at the beginning," Jiraiya said.

"We met in school," Naruto started easily. "We were very young, but we instantly became friends. All three of us where kind of the outcasts so it was easy for us to get along. Although, we did fight every now and again. From then on we continued to work together. We strengthened each other and encouraged each other to get better. Sakura found out about the medical ninjutsu and started spending her spare time trying to learn it. Sasuke and I were always getting hurt so she always had test subjects. Then Sasuke activated his sharingan eye earlier than anyone had expected. It was actually during a training routine with me. It wasn't great, but it was a start and he worked on that continuously until it got stronger and stronger. As for me, I accidently triggered the Kyuubi's chakra, which is actually the reason that Sasuke was forced to develop the sharingan so early. It was scary at first, but, once I had done a little more research on my seal and how to use the chakra, it didn't seem so scary anymore. I could control the chakra on my own. Of course, at the time, I didn't know how damaging it was for my body to be continuously exposed to the spirit's chakra. I did, however, realize that this must be the reason that the other kids seemed to fear me, so I made sure that I didn't use it in front of anyone else. All three of us graduated and were put into the same team, much to our delight. It was soon after that that I first talked to the Kyuubi."

"You can talk to it?" Jiraiya gasped. His pupil had never mentioned that the seal allowed the person to talk to it.

"Of course," Naruto answered. "He was actually our secret teacher while we continued to learn beyond what we should as genin. Kakashi was not happy with us when he realized that we were keeping our true strength away from him, but we didn't want people to know how strong we were because we were well aware of the questions that would be asked. Of course we knew that we couldn't avoid them forever, obviously, but we thought that we could at least delay them until it didn't seem so suspicious. Maybe when we were chunin. But then the tournament got interrupted and none of us were allowed to move up so we were now officially suspect. Anyway, in order to hide our true strength while still training to become stronger, the three of us had to train in secret. Unfortunately, since we didn't actually know how to control ourselves when we first graduated, our training sessions got increasingly more dangerous. One day, Sasuke accidently killed me." Sasuke winced at the mention of this, but he knew that, if Naruto mentioned it, it was probably important to their fake past. "That's how Sasuke gained his Mangekyou Sharingan. No matter how hard Sakura tried, she couldn't bring me back to life. But I wasn't really dead. Kyuubi brought me to his chambers to talk to him. When I got there, we were both exhausted and fading fast. I seemed to be fading a lot faster than him, though. He told me that, as I died, the seal was breaking and he would be allowed to take over my body. He also told me that he never had any intention of doing so. Apparently, when I first staring using his chakra as my own, he decided that I would be his successor. His powers would go to me when he died. The only problem was that I was dying on not him. He told me that he could save me if he gave up his own life, but that meant that I would have to become the Kyuubi at a very young age. Most people aren't forced to do that. He didn't give me much of a choice, though, because almost immediately after he told me all of this he died. He disappeared from my body and I was saved. Now I'm the Kyuubi. I haven't told anyone this yet because I was afraid that everyone would think that I'm a demon, but the truth is that I'm really just the protector of the land of fire. I'm supposed to outlive every human and I am supposed to die only when I find a good enough successor for me. Of course, there is the chance that I will die before that happens. I don't know what happens at that point."

At this point, both Tsunade and Jiraiya were completely speechless. They were trying to process all this information at once and it was not sticking to them as quickly as they would have liked. This whole story that Naruto had told them, though it made perfect sense and they did believe it, didn't seem like something that any child or teenager should have had to go through. It was almost sad that the three of them did have to go through it. And it was almost worrying that they seemed so nonchalant about all of it. How were they able to bear all that as children and still come out of it unscathed? It seemed almost impossible, but the three teenagers in front of them proved it to be possible.

"Did I miss anything?" Naruto cocked his head to the side and looked at Sasuke, who shook his head, and Sakura, who just shrugged.

"That was really good Naruto," Sakura praised despite herself. She still thought that it would have been better to just tell the truth, but at least what Naruto said sounded realistic enough that the three of them could build on it without to much suspicion arising towards them.

"Thanks Sakura," Naruto answered happily.

"And you got that strong without any help from anyone else?" Tsunade raised her brow.

"Yes," Naruto nodded. "Kyuubi helped us while he was still alive and then, after he died, pretty much all of his knowledge, not including his personal memories, were past onto me as his successor. Because of that I was able to help us continue to improve even after he died."

"Can you leave now," Sasuke said suddenly. Both Tsunade and Jiraiya looked over at him and they were actually shocked to see him somewhat tense. They hadn't noticed that before. "Now that you've forced us to divulge our private lives to you, you can have nothing more to demand from us and I must insist that you leave us alone."

Tsunade and Jiraiya he the decency to look chastised before the two of them agreed and left. They needed to be away from the amazing team for a while anyway so that they would be able to sort through everything that they were told.

"I'm sorry Sasuke," Naruto frowned when they left. "I know you don't like that story," and everyone knew which story Naruto was talking about, "but it was absolutely necessary to explain your mangekyou and my new job."

"I knew," Sasuke sighed. "I just wish that it had never happened."

"It doesn't matter now," Naruto gave a reassuring smile. "As long as the three of us are together, we'll save everyone."

"I know Naruto," Sasuke smiled back because he did know, but that didn't stop him from regretting what he had done all those years in the future. At least he wouldn't be doing that this time because he hadn't been stupid enough to follow Orochimaru. He was not going to repeat any of the stupid mistakes that he had made while with the snake man.