I hope everyone had happy holidays! I did. Except my mom got me that Tide stain pen and some cleaning wipes. She got me other stuff, too, but that was like wtf?

Aaaaanyway . . .

A lot of you pointed out that the manga hasn't confirmed that Jiraiya is dead. I really hope he's not, and I haven't decided if Dead Jiraiya or Alive Jiraiya would have more of an impact, provide more character development. All that Jazz.

This is another interlude, in the same theme as the prologue.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. :(

Interlude

He would never forget it. The feeling of the hand reaching into him, through him to the beast. The hand was a void. For the few terrible moments that it was inside him, he feared that he would be sucked into it and would fail.

Fail everyone.

But he held on. He completed his task.

He didn't fail.

Now, he felt it again.

It was that terrible void, trying to creep into him, take him over. He hadn't noticed it at first. It was so subtle, so slow. He fought for his life, to preserve himself, but the more he fought, the more it slid inside.

So he switched to hiding.

But that didn't work. The only way to hide was to blend in with it, which only encouraged the void to wrap around him more.

He shuddered as he felt the cold—it was always the cold, for him. He wished he'd been fire, to fight off the cold, but he wasn't.

He was lightning.

She'd compared him more to a thunderstorm than mere lightning. "You rush in with a great noise and fanfare, ripping things apart and redoing them as you see fit." A thunderstorm was always loud, with the smash of thunder and the roar of wind. Sometimes it was light during the day, sometimes it was dark during the night. But a thunderstorm was always, always cold.

He'd occasionally get white-hot with anger, but mostly his rage was cold, cold as ice. He'd been told that his face would get stony and cold. In battles, he would be the void. He would be silent, cold and dark. Dark with their blood, dark with the guilt.

He struggled, struggled against the void and against his own nature. But with the struggle, he turned more and more like the void.

So he thought of her. His fire, his antithesis, his everything.

She kept him warm, she made him laugh, she brought him into the sun.

He was the perfect blend of them: fire and ice. He was perfect, in every way.

The void was shoved back at the thought of him. The void couldn't handle him. He was warm, light and loud. Oh, so much. A tiny warm bundle, the brightest hair, the loudest cries in the world.

The void had no answer, no way to fight those memories.

He thought of them. The two brightest spots in his existence.

The Realm did not succeed.

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Yeah, it's pretty obvious who it is, if you read carefully.

Oh, are any of you Harry Potter and X-Men fans? If you are, I'd like to bounce an idea off of you. I asked my sister, but she's usually not a good critic. Thank you!

Happy Boxing Day!