Author: Wow...Okay, I guess I deserved that. I can't help but feel I've been kicked in the balls by about 60 people or so, one for each person who has me on Alert for this fic and didn't read/review. Well...guess I'll just have to earn some new readers, and maybe re-earn the esteem that others have in me.

Also, I could use a Beta...but I'm really picky. If anyone is interested, send me something that you wrote so I can see how well you do. Yeah, it sounds pompous...but there's no reason to send the original draft to someone if they'll catch even less mistakes than me.

Cobra-100 - Wow...>.> That's a really good idea...however it is not the direction I was planning on going. Though you should probably write that, since I can see that being a whole fic. Thanks for the review and the idea tho..

Kaekeo - :sighs: I am not turning my back on Sasuke...some things were just necessary for the direction I've taken him in. He is still my 2nd fav character...don't forget. And no...the doctor is no Shino's dad...else I would have let you know...as important as Shino's dad is...

Donut-nin - Let me take this moment to remind you of Naruto's density...even if Hinata told him herself that she was in love with him...he probably wouldn't realize it until after she had left. Don't get me wrong, I think Naruto is uber cool...that's why he's my fav character...but he is still an idiot...period...(or at least in some things lol)...Okay...he's not that dense...but still...Hinata never actually said she loved him...she just said that somebody did. That's the reason he hasn't hunted her down and clung to the attention he would get from her...so yeah.

Chapter 5:

A cold shiver ran down Naruto's spine as he looked around him, his vision showing him nothing other than immediate darkness with glints of dull crimson light in small spots. Curiously, he looked around a bit more, standing completely still andtwistinghis neck from side to side. His eyes narrowed a bit as he began to feel a bit anxious, having no idea where he was, or how he had gotten here.

'What the Hell?'

His thoughts boomed as if played through a loudspeaker, bouncing and reverberating ni the darkness only to hit him with a powerful echo that made him immediately duck and cover his ears. He felt the shockwave hit him as another thought passed through his mind.

'Did I just say that aloud?'

His eyes quenched as the longer thought hit him full force, a physical push from it's strength causing him to twitch in pain as uselessly tried to block it out. He shook his head, forcing his thoughts to still themselves until the echo stopped assaulting him. When he no longer felt the push of the invisible force, he slowly pulled his hands away from his ears, and tried again, this time, forcing his thoughts to be slower and much quieter in his minds ear.

'Ok...'

He heard it aloud again, the echo coming back through the darkness though not nearly as loud. He managed to suffer through it, not needed to cover his ears, but none too pleased at his situation.

'Where am I?'

He looked around again, and upon seeing nothing in the darkness, he attempted to move about the room. His foot only moved a couple inches before hitting a solid object that he didn't notice.

'What the...?'

He looked down at where his foot was pushing against whatever object it was, and was surprised to see that there was nothing at all. He continued to try and step forward, though to no avail, whatever it was, he couldn't sense it, see it, or seem to get through it. After only trying for a moment, he put his foot down and reached out with his hands, and was only mildy surprised when they met the same invisible force at chest level.

He frowned and felt along in front of him, tracing out an invisible wall as if he was pantomiming. He grumbled, half-confused and half-frustrated as his hands felt corners that gave him about 6 inches of free space on each side. He looked around again, his vision passing through the invisible barrier and his anticipation grew.

With an agitated cry, he threw both his arms out to the right, his fists connecting with the force at once but doing no more. He felt no pain, other than the echoing from his shout, but that he ignored. His eyes twitched slightly as the first signs of panic began to overtake him and he turned and swung at the wall to the right.

As with the first, his fists landed harmlessly on the invisible barrier with no more than a dull thud. His breathing quickened slightly as he realized that there was probably no chance he could break through it in his current position. His mind raced with options for only a second before he came upon one that he liked, and with a small smirk he turned his palm upwards at his side.

His hours of practice showed fruit as he began to feel the chakra build up in his palm and he placed his other one above it, ready to begin forming the Rasengan and break out of his confinement. Just as the chakra began to take form however, he heard a voice amidst the darkness, dark enough to chill his bones and distract him long enough to break his concentration.

"That won't work you know..."

Naruto looked around again in the darkness, trying to decipher the source of the voice. Even though it spoke only a few words, it filled him with a feeling of dread deep in his stomach. It sounded calm, though it gave off a sense that so much more was being held back. He shudders as he started to get the feeling like a caged animal, and the deep voice from the darkness was a hungry predator.

"Far more powerful assaults have been repelled by those walls."

Naruto looked around again as he attempted to steady his nerves. His shaking hand reached for a kunai and retrieved it, though he could hardly keep from dropping it. He gulped once before forcing his fear out of his voice.

"Who are you? And where am I?"

From the darkness there was a sinister and low laugh, halfway between sinister and amused. Naruto continued to look around hesitantly, his shaking kunai being his only lifeline at the moment.

"Funny how you don't recognize this place...but then again it does look different from that side..."

The panic began to ebb into confusion as Naruto heard the voice speak and realized something shocking: the voice seemed familiar...

"...Kyuubi?"

There was another loud laugh as the darkness around him began to be illuminated by a dull red aura that just seemed to permeate from the walls. Small puddles of water could be seen and the sound of dripping water could be heard in the distance. Before him, the invisible wall slowly changed to rusty looking bars, and on the center of it, right in front of his stomach, was a small white piece of paper attached to two bars that were right next to each other.

Naruto looked around confused at the room as he began to recognize it, memories flooded him as he realized how many times he had been here before. His confusion began to slowly turn to anger as realization hit him, and the angre only peaked before him when a shadowed silhouette began to appear in the darkness.

Without thinking, he lunged forward, his arm managing to pass through the barrier before him between the bars, though no more. His eyes wide with fury as his fingers stopped just short of the shadow before him. His eyes twitched in anger as the shadow began to take both form and color, starting with a head of blonde hair, passing closed eyes and going down to a tanned face with whiskers, passing a closed mouth and going down to a bright orange jacket and matching pants, ending at the royal blue shinobi sandals.

Naruto stopped for a minute, his eyes wide in shock as he took in the vision of his own self with his head bowed.

"I'd say in the flesh...but I don't think that'd suit me quite right."

His image looked up, opening feral red eyes and opening his mouth slightly enough for a sinister smirk to show off a single fanged canine. The whiskers darkened slightly as the image continued to taunt Naruto, goading the last of his confusion back into anger.

"What the hell is this fox?"

"What does it look like whelp?"

In his frustration, Naruto threw the kunai he had been holding onto, only for it to pass right through the image and cause a grunt from the young nin. The image merely chuckled deviously and continued to look at his host.

"This is the mental incarnation of the seal you idiot."

Naruto grumbled to himself before answering.

"Then why am I in here and your out there?"

"Doesn't matter."

The fox's incarnation merely shrugged and turned around, he walked only a few feet then stopped, placing his clawed hands in the jacket pockets.

"Don't you walk away from me you damn fox! Why am I in here?"

It wasn't until he finished that the echo hit him full power, and his body froze up again as the power of the sound wave racked his body. He fell forward onto the bars as his eyes squeezed shut.

"Be careful not to shout, it's not very good for you."

Naruto couldn't see his mirror's smirk, but he didn't have to to know it was there.

"You're there simply because I put you there."

Naruto shook his head for a moment, trying to clear the constant ringing he was hearing before answering.

"You can't do that though..."

His voice was slightly weakened from the recent blow he had just taken, and it quivered a bit as he tried to speak.

"I can do a lot of things whelp..."

Naruto looked up just in time to see the fox's image raise his clawed hand out of his pocket above his head. His thumb and middle finger came to together, and he snapped, letting the sound fill the dim room.

Just as he heard the light sound, he felt the bars that supported him give out, and he fell forward. By reflex he caught himself and stumbled forward a few steps before standing to full stature. All at once his eyes were filled with shining light and he had to shield them with this wrist.

As he slowly tried to blink his eyes into, his nose picked up the scent of fresh water, and in the distance he could hear what he could've sworn was a small stream. He breathed in deeply as his eyes finally became accustomed to the light, and he slowly looked around.

He found himself at the edge of a forest, green trees behind him as far as the eye could see. He stood on the rocky edge of a small brook, periodically glinting with light as the fish breached the surface. The sound of the running water soothed him and he breathed in the fresh scent of the water and trees again, feeling very much at piece and instantly forgetting the everything else that had happened to him.

He leaned his head back and simply enjoyed the feel of the sun on his face, and the cool, misty air in his lungs. He let out a long sigh with a smile on his face when he heard another snap pierce the open air. All at once, the feeling stopped, the warmth on his face vanished, replaced with a chill that seemed to affect his soul more than his body. The air in his lungs just seemed to disappear, and though he tried to breathe, he never felt them fill back up. His eyes shot open to find himself back in the dimly lit room and he looked around again, knowing what he'd find, but quickly growing anxious again.

His lungs still didn't fill with air, though they didn't ache from the lack, it wasn't until now that he realized that he hadn't breathed in the seal before. It also wasn't until then that he realized how cold the room was, how odd it felt. Nothing seemed real other than the barriers before him and the thoughts in his head. The chill, the red aura, none of it, and he began to wonder why he felt it at all.

"It's not much fun is it?"

Kyuubi's voice came through the darkness as it had before, but this time, Naruto didn't feel himself filled with rage or fear for his thoughts weren't murderous ones towards the fox any longer, at that moment all he wanted to do was get out of the cage again. Hisgaze fell towards the ground as he started to panic and become anxious again, he wanted to be free, but he knew that he couldn't free himself in by his own strength. His body began to shake from the coldness his soul felt as he realized the only way out of the seal.

"Let...Let me out of here..."

His voice was so low and quiet that he scarcely heard himself, it didn't sound like the demand of a confident young ninja, but the desperate cry of a scared thirteen year old boy. The sound made a smirk form on the image of Kyuubi as he crossed his arms and walked right up to the invisible imprisonment.

"What was that? I didn't hear you..."

"I...I said let me out. Get me out of this thing again...I...I hate this place..."

Kyuubi reared his head back and let out a bellowing laugh which seemed to shake the halls. After letting his laughter shake the defeated child, he turned back his gaze to Naruto's form which was now leaning against the bars of the cage, looking exhausted and beaten. He reached past the bars, and with a clawed hand grabbed Naruto's chin and pulled it up to meet his burning gaze. He leaned so that he was right up against the cage, only an inch from the boy, Naruto's fatigue being evident in his half closed eyes and the quikly growing bags under his eyes.

"No...I will never let you out."

Naruto looked confused as he stared at the fox, because this time when he spoke, it wasn't Kyuubi's voice he heard come out of the fox's mouth, but his own.

"...I'm not joking with you...I want out, I mean it..."

He stuttered a bit as he spoke, but he felt that he had heard what he was saying before, somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt a sense of déjà vu...

The fox smiled before speaking again.

"Why? I'm not going to let you make another pass at Konoha again, you tried to use me before, I won't let it happen again."

Naruto's eyes went wide as he recognized what the fox said...he had said the same thing to him in the hospital just the day before...in his confusion, he shouted at the fox, his strength beginning to return.

"Idiot!"

"It's not like those people care about you! I don't understand why you don't slay them all yourself."

Naruto was taken aback, he had no idea why he had said that, it had just came out...

"No!"

"That's not true you damn monster, there are people who care about me here, I just didn't realize it before...I won't let you deceive me again."

"So you think that some lie that some woman fabricated means that people care about you? I didn't see them jumping out to help you back there..."

"Maybe not...but everyone makes mistakes...all that matters to me is that I know they really care..."

"Ingrate..."

Naruto's voice dropped as he forgot about the fact that he'd already had this conversation. Everything else falling from his mind as his thoughts fell back to the brook and forest he had seen only moments before.

"You don't understand do you..."

"No, no I don't...nor do I care..."

If Naruto had seen, he would've seen the fox's smile grow larger as the moment he had waited for was coming up before his eyes.

"That's not what I'm talking about anymore...You don't understand what its like to be trapped in essence form for 13 years kid...you don't understand how much I miss actually breathing, feeling air go in and out of my lungs...This damn village doesn't matter to me anymore...I want out because I can't stand to be in here for so long now that I remember how good it feels to be out..."

Naruto heard, and registered that this time, it was not his own voice that spoke...but the fox's that came out his mouth...all at once, he felt overwhelmingly guilty. He had denied the fox the simple luxury of living for so long...and it was true, he himself harbored to anger for the creature at the moment and thought of only running free...he had never believed Kyuubi before...but now he was starting to see that demon or not, even Kyuubi had certain needs.

'I still don't care...'

With his plan completeled, Kyuubi's voice rang out of the mouth of his image once again as he looked at the beaten boy again. He could see in the far off look in the kid's eyes that he was thinking it all over, and seeing what he needed to see. He smirked to himself as he dropped his chin and turned to walk away.

"You...you what?"

Naruto's voice was slightly panicked again.

"I said I still don't care..."

"How could you say that?"

"Because...I couldn't get you out of there even if I wanted..."

"What? But you just...what do you mean?"

The fox's image walked off, disappearing in the shadows, his voice being the only thing left of his presence.

"I can't help you...if you want out...you have to...

"Wake up sir."

Naruto felt himself get shaken awake, he was suddenly overcome with groggy-ness as he lifted his head off the softness below him.

"What?"

"Visiting hours are over sir, I'll have to ask you to leave."

Naruto sat up and blinked his vision clear, turning and seeing a nurse who was holding a clipboard close to her chest. Brown hair, amber eyes, she seemed a bit normal so Naruto didn't even bother to remember her.

He looked around the white room before looking down at the bed his had had been resting on.

'Oh yeah...I was visiting Oba-san...'

His gaze moved up the comatose form of Tsunade, following the frame of the covers up to the shoulders, to where her head breached the cloth. It still hurt him to see her without the genjutsu, it reminded him of how mortal she really was, seeing the wrinkles morph her face from the mid-twenties illusion she held on to. She seemed almost frail, and it seemed so wrong to see her like that considering the power of her spirit.

Naruto slowly stood up and bowed slightly as he turned to walk past the nurse and out the door, explosions of color filling his peripheal vision from the amount of flowers in the room.

He smiled to himself as he was reminded of how much these people loved her and exited the room. He turned and walked, making his way out of the hospital. It was a short walk, since she had a room that was really close to the door, and within moments he found himself outside in the cold night air. He breathed in once as his thoughts fell back to the dream he had.

Have you changed your mind whelp?

As if on cue, the fox's voice could be heard in his mind. He sighed, expecting this to happen, and looked down as he took the time to think about it.

You know how it feels now...what is there to think about? You yourself said it, you had no other intentions that being free, that's how I feel too.

Naruto shifted uncomfortably as he began to walk, his mind still turning things over as he began the walk home.

What is the matter with you? Let me out of here, I demand it!

Naruto stopped, losing track of where he was and bringing his focus back to the task at hand as he reached a decision.

'No...'

What!

The fox's voice boomed in his head, but Naruto didn't shudder, if anything, it made his reply even more fiercesome.

'No...I'm not letting you out.'

There was no scream this time from the fox, though Naruto could feel his brooding anger, and it almost seemed as if his own body shook with the demon's rage.

You disgusting, ungrateful, snivelling excuse for a sack of dog shit.

Naruto remained steady through the fox's drawl.

How can you say something like that? You only experienced a sliver of how I feel, when I showed that to you, I was merciful, I can't even move, I can hardly think. You were there for only a few minutes, I have been here for THIRTEEN YEARS!

Naruto visibly winced as the fox shouted the last of it, though it's murderous intent did not faze him.

Kyuubi was silent for a moment, still brooding, his anger being held back. When he spoke, it was closer to a growl.

Why then? Why will you deny me of freedom, when you know that's all I care about? This whole village can go to hell for all I care...

'Because you can't be trusted ouyside.

What do you...

'Last time you got out, you put one of my friends in the hospital, you saw the vision right? You ruined his future as a ninja, he can never reach his potential because you snuffed it out. I will not let you out, because I refuse to let anyone else suffer for your ucontrollable rage.'

There was silence in Naruto's head for a long time before the fox spoke again.

Fine...if that's the way you want it. Fuck you kid. Forget every favor I ever planned to do for you, I'll let us both die before I help you again. Trust me, it would be better than being stuck in here.

With that, Naruto no longer felt the fox's presence in his mind. It was quiet in his mind again, and Naruto breathed out a sigh as he continued walking down the path to his house, whispering his final words to the fox audibly.

'Fine then...I don't need you anyway...'

Sakura blinked again, trying to get her eyes to focus better. It was late, she knew that, but she didn't know how late. She looked over to her right to see her electric clock.

'11:00pm? That means...I've been at this for...'

Her mind went dull as she tried the simple calculation, and she failed miserably.

She reached up and rubbed her face with her hand, blinking some more. She looked down at the scroll beneath her, sitting on the small wooden desk, shaking her head.

She rolled the parchment back up, and re-sealed it, setting it off to the right. Her gaze fell to the one scroll she had left: the jutsu scroll. She shook her head again as she looked off to the right, at the two scrolls she had already finished looking over and learning.

'It's too late to look at this last one now...'

She pulled up her bag and scooped the three scrolls and the her project for the night into it, being careful not to damage it.

She stood up with a heavy yawn and walked over to her electric clock and set the alarm.

'4:30...that'll give me plenty of time to get ready tomorrow before practice, and look over the jutsu...I probably won't be able to learn it...but at least it'll be better than nothing. I'm sure that Kakashi was more interested in me learning from the others, considering what they were...'

She yawned again and walked across her room to her bed and began to change, her thoughts still on the scrolls as she tried to review them in her mind. Effortlessly, she changed into her pink pajamas, feeling the soft fabric against her skin. She turned off the light and pulled the covers back before slipping into the covers.

In her mind she began reviewing again, though the strain of the day finally caught up with her, and before she could even get passed the basics of the first scroll, she swiftly fell asleep.