"C'mon Pervy-sage, when are you gonna teach me that jutsu you promised?" Naruto bemoaned to his master. He was tired. Jiraiya dragged him out of bed the moment the first ray of light shattered the lingering night. He wasn't even sure his chakra was fully replenished yet. "I took Karin on that date like you told me to and you still haven't taught me anything other than how to bite my thumb."
The Konoha Genin and The Toad Sannin were back in their agreed training area. Flat and open enough for Naruto to practice the Summoning Jutsu, and obscured enough for Jiraiya to peep on the river without being spotted.
"You'll get your jutsu when I deem you worthy of it, now shut up or the girls'll hear us!" Jiraiya barked. His newest student was starting to grate his nerves more than any of the others ever did. Maybe he shouldn't have knocked out Ebisu, would've saved himself the headaches to follow.
"If they haven't heard us by now, they aren't going to." The blond grumbled. "Why don't you just buy actual porn instead of collecting potential felonies?"
"Rookie mistake, you fool!" Jiraiya exclaimed with an accusing finger. "Films and pictures might have the appearance, but they lack substance! Once the action happens is over, nobody cares what happens in them! My novels on other hand, paint pictures and put on shows in the theater of the mind, with actual stories and characters that people connect with! To capture the spark of humanity my readers fell in with, I have to watch people in their natural states!"
"You created that whole reason to justify your peeping, didn't you Pervy-sage?" the question was rhetorical.
"You're sharper than I gave you credit for, kid. Just for that, you've earned your jutsu."
"Really?" Naruto eagerly inquired.
"No. Now get back to the summoning."
Naruto cursed a string of curses for as long he could. Jiraiya smirked and turned back to his bush. 'You have to humble the little bastard.' The sage thought. 'Gets too big for his britches at the slightest praise.'
A few minutes later, the Genin collapsed on the stone ground, blacking out from the exertion the Sannin was putting on him. Jiraiya threw Naruto over a broad shoulder and left the area, his destination already set in his mind. He exhaled through his nose about what he was about to do.
"Huh, what's going on?" The Uzumaki boy slurred half awake and stumbling to unsure feet. He looked around his new environment and beheld a maw with sharp stone teeth functioning as the entrance to a large ravine. "Holy crap!" he was definitely up now. "How come we're here, Pervy-sage?"
"Well kid, you passed out after making so little progress with the Summoning Jutsu, I started having a hard time figuring out why I even took you on as my student in the first place." Jiraiya berated, placing a hand on the boy's back. "So I'm giving you an ultimatum on whether or not I'll keep training you."
"And that is?"
"Sink or swim."
Air was all Naruto knew as he was pushed headfirst into the gaping gash of earth. He screamed.
'Yeah, Kushina's definitely gonna kick my ass for that one.' Jiraiya thought as he waited for the answer to his potentially lethal gambit. 'If that Karin girl doesn't kill me first.'
"You lunatic!" Naruto shouted as fell down the ravine. He flipped through the handsigns as fast he could and shouted: "Summoning Jutsu!" Nothing happened. He repeated the signs with the same speed and repeated the words and got the same answer. "Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!"
The bottom was approaching rapidly and there was nothing he could do.
The Uzumaki boy blacked out again.
When he came to, he found himself half-submerged under murky shallow brine that when he stood up, barely passed his shins. "Did I hit the bottom?" he pondered aloud, before seeing the hallways, pipes, and wiring everywhere. He wandered aimlessly for a brief time, unsure of where to go if there were such a place in this strange sewer system. Every hallway led him back to the same place eventually no matter how far he traveled down any direction. It all looked the same and looped back into itself and didn't make an iota of logical sense.
He shouted an angry, syllable-less shout. His voice echoed down every looping hallway into a deafening chorus of his own known tone. He shouted again, louder, and the chorus repeated in kind to their conductor.
"Where the hell am I?" He said softly. "How do I get out of here?"
In a rare, contemplative silence, Naruto thought. He came to no conclusion, scratching his head lividly and with a snarl. Then, he heard breathing. Not his own nor the sounds of animal he knew. This breathing was heavy but faint.
With no other ideas, he followed the breathing as it grew heavier and almost thunderous as he reached their source.
Now before Naruto was a great cage that scaled to Hokage Mountain in size with lighting that belonged in his cheap apartment. He could barely make out his own hands in here. Over the locks was a seal with symbols he knew not how to read.
"Hey kid, come closer."
That voice was not to be trusted. It sounded like evil incarnate, like a true demon that wanted nothing more to rend him into the tiniest pieces it could and devour each and every one of them out of spite and nothing more.
"N-nah, I'm good. I think I'll stay over here."
Claws the size of his whole apartment swiped at him through the gaps between the thin bars that kept the creature behind them. Naruto flinched visibly, thanking Kami he decided to stay where he did. Whatever was behind those bars laughed a burst of laughter he was sure would give nightmares to all that heard them. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard and war drum, eardrum-shattering and body shaking.
"You're the Kyubi aren't you?" Naruto pieced together.
A full grin of white razors flashed under the poor lighting. "Excellent deduction, my soon-to-be-deceased keeper."
"Soon-to-be deceased? What are you talking about?" The boy asked.
The Kyubi laughed another harsh laugh.
"As we speak, your body plummets to your death, and when your pathetic body splatters on those rocks, I'll be free to finish my rampage your precious Fourth Hokage stopped."
"Like hell you will! I'll stop you before you even get the chance!"
A solitary eye stared at him from behind the bars. That eye was massive and perpetually bloodshot, a white plane being corrupted by winding red rivers. Naruto would've freely admitted the fear he felt in that moment, except to the Kyubi, never show your enemy your fear.
"Oh, and how are you going to do that?" It was a simple question, made into a threat by the Kyubi's voice.
Naruto's mouth spoke before he did. "I'll kick your ass, that's how!"
The demon laughed once more.
"You're amusing, boy. It's unfortunate you're dying so soon." It said with another sharp smile.
"How about you pay your rent, you lazy fox!" The boy shouted back, raising a fist. "Lemme use your chakra so I don't die!"
That grin disappeared and the eye returned.
"And why should I?" Another question made a threat. "If you die, I'll be free, no longer shackled by that damned seal."
Once again, his mouth spoke before he did. "Because I've been letting you live in my body for free for too long."
That sharp smile returned.
"You got guts, kid. Extorting a Biju isn't something anyone with a brain would try." Red chakra seeped out from the cage and flowed into Naruto's body. "I'll pay my tithe for now. Now, begone."
Naruto's eyes opened and he was still falling down that chasm. He could the Kyubi's chakra almost overflowing through his nigh-barren coils. It burned an icy burn within his chakra network and felt it all. He bit his thumb and channeled that red chakra as best he could and slammed his hand on a smooth stalactite.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Karin's immediate impulse when she woke up was to vehemently vomit on her hotel room's cheap carpeting. She bit back the burning bile in her stomach until getting to the bathroom where she expelled it into the bowl of the toilet. The noodles and meat from last night's meal stared at her now in a half-digested state floating around in a mix of her stomach acid, cold sterile water, and the brown broth.
A great surge of that evil chakra blindsiding of her Mind's Eye was the cause for her waking and her sickness, she felt it the moment she woke. The over-stimulation of fear within herself slithered throughout her whole body. Only by focusing on not vomiting, and the subsequent expulsion from her room that surely would've followed, did she overpower the fear.
She couldn't go on like this. She couldn't just fold every time that energy showed up in any capacity, especially if it was tied to Naruto. If it was, and it seemed very much so, she needed an explanation. A grim thought crossed her mind.
'What if I don't like the answer?' She thought. 'Then what? I just leave and act like I never met him?' Karin didn't like that idea, not a single ounce of her wanted to follow up on the possibility. She didn't want to be alone again, the thought scared her more than the dark chakra. 'I'll be alone soon again anyway, Kusa is still expecting me back.'
She frowned.
The redhead didn't want to go back to Kusa. There was nothing there for her to go back to, at least here in Konoha she had Naruto. She sighed and on trembling legs, Karin stood. Her whole body was weak, arms and legs about to give away without a moment's notice.
She laid back down hoping to sleep for a little while longer, silently hoping there would be no more spikes. Her eyes grew heavy. Before letting unconsciousness pull her under, she searched for that warm brightness that was her cousin's chakra and found it flush in full. Treading into it, she let the wave of sleep overtake her now.
"He threw you down a cliff‽"
Karin's ire and sheer exasperation for Naruto's master exploded. "I'm gonna kill that homicidal peeping tom!" She slammed a tight fist on the cheap table Naruto owned, almost spilling their dinner: cheap cup noodles and tea that matched their quality. All that she saw with her ruby pools was tinted a violent crimson. Fury was burning in the girl's blood.
"Hey c'mon Karin, it wasn't all bad." Naruto attempt calmed her down. "I got to meet the chief toad and Jiraiya started teaching me a new jutsu. He had to teach me about chakra rotation first though. I never even heard of it."
"There's a chief toad?" Summoning contracts were rare and the summons themselves weren't the most open of creatures. Karin never understood much about the subject outside of the basics she'd read in books, Naruto mentioning a boss toad certainly garnered her attention.
"Yeah, he's kinda grumpy though. Did y'know sake tastes horrible? It's all warm and it burns in your mouth."
"Why did you drink sake‽" She shouted. "Where did you even get it‽"
"Chief Toad gave it to me. Said we needed to share a drink to complete my contract with the toads. Don't worry about me drinking though, I hated the taste." The blond explained, face scrunching as he recalled the bitter flavor leftover in his throat.
The redhead took a deep breath, feeling her lungs expand, and released with a mute utterance. She took another bite of her dinner, wishing they'd dined out again when the taste of stringy and undercooked noodles touched her tongue. Every bit of this meal tasted artificial. Eating out every day would bankrupt the both of them, Naruto paid for her every time, however. Karin taught him how to treat a girl right even if he protested.
"So this is how I should treat Sakura if we go on a date?"
Those words stung when they reached her ears and her chest ached like her heart had been torn out. She'd forgotten that crush the boy had on his teammate. Sakura grated The Uzumaki Girl's nerves like no one else in her life, always fawning over and daydreaming about marrying that Uchiha. Karin was sure the two never even had more than a passing conversation if what Naruto told her was anywhere close to accurate.
Karin shook her head to clear out residual thoughts. Other things on her mind were a priority over petty, one-sided disdain.
"So how did you summon anything, let alone the chief toad, if your chakra was running on empty?" She asked. Perhaps it was better to ask it now that they were away from prying eyes and nosy ears.
Naruto's mood noticeably shifted. His blue eyes stared down at his noodles and stirred them aimlessly with his chopsticks. His nitid grin fell into a dour expression his face unnaturally contorted to fit and shoulders slumped to make his body smaller.
"I can't tell you that." He answered, voice devoid of any positive emotion.
"Is it related to that red chakra you have?"
His chakra flared up again.
"You know?" He asked.
"I don't know what it is." She explained. "My sensory abilities are very sensitive, it's almost impossible for me not notice it every time that chakra you have is used. And every time you use it, it terrifies me. The day I met with the Hokage, I thought it was going to drown me and if you hadn't found me when you did, it probably would've."
Naruto uncertain of what to say opted to remain silent. Karin continued.
"The day I found you with Jiraiya, I had to stop and breathe just so I didn't collapse and this morning I threw up everything I had eaten last night because it overwhelmed me."
"I'm sorry." her cousin whispered. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I can't tell you."
"I didn't mean-"
Naruto cut off her response. "No, it's okay. You just wanted to know what it was."
They sat in awkward silence for a while, the only sounds in the boy's apartment were of the two eating. Throwing her cup in the trash, Karin turned to leave.
"Wait." Naruto called as her hand reached the doorknob. "I don't want you to hate me. If I told you what it was you sensed, you probably won't want to be around me anymore."
Karin almost spoke up before he put a finger to her lip.
"But, if you really want to know. I'll tell you after I beat Neji and become a Chunin. That's a promise." His voice was back to his usual determined tone.
"I'll hold you to it." Karin smiled as she left.