Author note: I'm not writing this chapter in third person… well not for most of it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Chapter Seven: Us Who Are the Thing That Is We

The sun crept up over the horizon, its first rays cast a gray glow throughout the household. It woke a blonde ninja to a zombie-like stupor. Said ninja pulled out a fresh set of clothes and a blank scroll and brush. Sitting at a table he wrote out in a horrid chicken-scratch some advice and an apology. That finished, he left the house and ran at a considerable speed away from the village, and the country.

His chakra-boosted legs pumped furiously over the water, the sea itself as the shore became distant behind him. Demonic chakra pulsed out from each footstep in all directions, the chakra touched and corrupted or twisted life it touched as the blonde subconsciously gave Wave country the exclusive market on rare and exotic demon-fish.

As the slimy grasp of sleep fell away, Naruto looked around, still on the water, wondering where he was. There were canyon walls on either side of him, he turned and looked across the seal that kept pace with him and to Kyuubi on the other side.

Naruto's POV

Am I in the Valet still? I looked around a bit, concentrating, there were no canyon walls, well there were but they were superimposed on the sea all around me… My eyes went back to Kyuubi and I folded my arms over my chest giving him a disbelieving glare.

"You don't have the time for that look, you have to make it there" he pointed at the sun, setting on the horizon still "before the seal goes out. Now hurry yourself, just focus on getting there. Nothing else matters, alright?" I wanted to insist, to keep saying that he needed to explain it to me, but damnit, he was just that little bit smarter than me and just that little bit stronger. I turned my back on the seal, and channeled that; I didn't know that it was demonic chakra then, I just used it.

My legs moved, I don't remember if I was running, but Uzumaki Naruto was moving at pace, and I kept my eyes fixed on the sun. Just staring at the tarnished gold disk I started picking out details of it, it was mostly golden yellow, like my hair, but there were so many bits of dark orange, red, even black that blurred through it that it looked like it was almost bronze. As I looked closer, the thin white clouds that pulsed behind the sun seemed to draw off the black blurs, and siphon them away into the web of the whole sky, whenever it happened I felt a cold, hard ping in my heart and the back of my mind, and Uzumaki Naruto ran a little faster, a little harder.

I stared a little closer each time too. And I started seeing things in those blurs of color across the bright gold disk. A flash of red came through the sun, and time slowed as I saw it happen again; Haku prepared another volley of needles, Sasuke had been standing over me, protecting me, then Sasuke was down with the needles in his neck and over his torso… Rage from that welled up in me, and it built and built and built, then the blur was gone again, replaced by a streak of pure white: Shizune-neechan and I were walking side by side again a little behind Ero-sennin and Baachan, I was telling her about catching that stupid cat again and she was smiling and laughing with me… I laughed out loud at that even as I was frothing, shaking with rage from the previous emotion. I laughed and growled so powerfully at the same time I almost cried, I did cry actually as a black spot crossed by the sun, and I saw Sakura for the last time again… Just before I went to beat down Sasuke.

I remember feeling all of that while I stared, I needed to stop to cry and laugh and claw at the earth until I could feel again, but Uzumaki Naruto kept running, wouldn't stop despite my constant calls for rest. I felt water under my feet while I saw trees creep through the superimposed sealscape in my peripheral vision. I felt liquid on my face, rolling down my cheeks when another memory came by, I don't recall what it was, I touched the tears, but they felt… wrong, so I held my hands up to see what was on them.

My eyes were bleeding, but I couldn't take my eyes off the sun, not even for a moment, I didn't want to, and I knew it was all me, not Kyuubi making me look.

And the most important memory right then, because it provided a background noise while everything else went on in my head, seemed to be the day I left Konoha. I had gone to Ichiraku Ramen right after I met the Kyuubi that night, I took out my frog wallet and sat down as I talked to the owner. I had been the only one there again, as usual, and he seemed to notice my strange mood then.

"Say Naruto, what's up? You've normally ordered your fifth bowl by now." The owner looked at his number one customer as if he were ill. Naruto looked back to him and gave him a broad smile as he emptied out his Gama-chan, splitting the pile neatly in half and pushing one towards the elderly proprietor.

The old man looked at it curiously and then back to Naruto, requesting an explanation without actually speaking. "Ramen until that's all gone, Ichiraku-oyaji, I'd order more but I don't know how long I'll be able to make the rest last." The old man immediately set to work making the noodles and broth while Ayame went to work on the other ingredients, she was the one who cut into the conversation next.

"Last? Why don't you just take some more missions? You're not quitting on being a ninja are you!" She was at this point leaning over the counter, a cutting knife in one hand accidentally pointed at Naruto. The blonde's eyes widened and he backed a bit even while his eyes were drawn (albeit more covertly than Jiraiya's would've) down her shirt.

With a titanic effort of will, Naruto kept his heart rate down enough so that he didn't fly backwards with a nosebleed while he frantically denied the accusation, his hands waving in the air and occasionally pointing to the knife. Ayame didn't catch the pointing but finally seemed satisfied that he wasn't quitting.

"Well I would hope that you wouldn't quit without giving me notice first, brat." The voluptuous blonde that sat beside Naruto had to hide a smirk at the threatening manner of the knife she'd just seen.

"Hokage-sama!" both the ramen-makers cried out and bowed in unison until she made them stop.

"Oh come on, I'm just ol' lady Tsunade, okay? At least here…" She gave the genin beside her a withering glare that he calculatedly ignored.

"Good, you're here too Baachan, then I don't have to explain this twice." The hokage's eyebrow lifted as Naruto tore into his first bowl of ramen. He drained the broth from the bowl and gave a satisfied rasp as he pushed the bowl off to the side. "I have to leave," he stated simply. Ichiraku set the bowl of ramen in front of his customer as he spoke.

"But you just got here, and you've got a lot more ramen coming!"

Naruto gave the old man a real smile, eyes still open and face not appallingly stretched out. "I didn't mean leave the stand, oyaji, I meant the village. I have to leave the village,"

Tsunade grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, glaring in his face as she hissed quietly "You wanted to tell the hokage in person that you were becoming a missing-nin!"

Naruto tried to back away and held his hands up defensively again "Th-tha-that's not how it is Tsunade-chan!" She blinked at the change in suffix and hesitantly set him back down. Giving him a look that Shino would receive not so many days later in the same spot. "I need to leave because… Kyuubi talked to me, don't interrupt Baachan, it's a weird story."

Another bowl of ramen came, as the blonde began his story, and they continued to come as he continued to tell them all how demons came to be, and what they were, how they came to be what they were now. Tsunade had interrupted him to tell him that the whole concept was preposterous, and he gave her a level look asking her 'so where do you think demons come from?' He'd had another five bowls while she thought it over. Finally she hadn't said anything as an answer, but suggested he continue his story (spoken as: "Get on with this fish story, or I'll kick you through a wall"). He did.

The Ichiraku family listened also, their attention held rapt by the blonde as he described his burden revealing his plan and intentions. The old man faltered a moment when Naruto started laughing, describing the appearance of the boy Kyuubi, and their subsequent argument.

"Kyuubi didn't really order me to go see you and ask you about this, and he never said that I couldn't tell anyone who I thought I could trust," he looked at the two Ichiraku attendants and they gave him their own, honest smiles, "But I hope that you guys won't mention any of this to anyone else… Well except Iruka or Kakashi. Baachan, I know I've got Jiraiya as a sensei now, but he had to leave again so he can't teach me. Kakashi promised he'd do right by me and Sakura from now on, and I believe him, he didn't mean to ditch either of us, he just got distracted. But right now, if I want to get rid of their," he inelegantly referenced the Akatsuki,"interest, I need to find strength from myself.

"You and the other sannin grew strong in the war, Yondaime grew strong in the war, there aren't any wars right now so if I want to get as strong as I can from… from him, then I have to have the danger and challenge that you guys all did. And most important… I believe Kyuubi, I don't know why but I do." He looked at the hokage and she gave him a guarded, worried look in response. "I know you worry Baachan, but I have to leave, I just want you to say that I'm doing it with your permission, so I can come back and take your place!" He flashed a broad, bold grin that earned a laugh from the two shopkeepers and a hug and noogie from the strongest ninja in the village.

She left shortly thereafter, leaving Naruto with instructions to meet her in her office before dawn the next day. The blonde happily agreed and had his last bowl of ramen before declaring he couldn't eat any more, bringing a laugh from the proprietors. He stood up on his stool as he shook hands with Ichiraku, the older man pulling him into a grandfatherly hug before letting him go with a 'good luck'. Ayame hugged him after her father and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, whispering after into his ear "If you don't come back I'll dice you up and serve you for Anko's ramen." He grinned at her joke and waved goodbye to both, feeling both warm and sad at the same time as he headed to his apartment. (1)

Closer to the surface of my awareness the memories became less clear-cut, more jumbled, more extreme in the emotions they provoked. Most of the specifics I don't remember but a few stick out. I remember the whole thing mostly, but in jumbled pieces…

I see it now again, Gaara, half-transformed into the sand demon Shukaku, his claw pinning Sakura against the tree, his eyes drilling into mine, his insane laugh just before he spoke

Sasuke's, "You okay, scaredy-cat?" because he had saved me from the demon brothers.

We cut Sakura from the tree, despite Kakashi-sensei saying we'd fail the genin exam if we did and fed her the healing ramen Hinata gave me after my fight with Mizuki-sensei.

My memories were jumbled together into a spinning, twirling mass pushing my emotions to the point where sanity and insanity weren't even questions anymore, they were things for other people to worry about. More and more the memories flowed and I watched and wondered why was I doing this and why had I chosen that? The questions kept flowing, my mind was scattering, unable to handle everything in one stream of thoughts, the emotions still crashed and raged through me all of them burning me out with as much demon-chakra boosted power as they could muster simultaneously. Even as I did that I was questioning all the choices I had made in my life, and I was questioning everything anyone else had ever done that I knew about at the same time, digging through layers and layers of possible motivations and theories.

I was shaking with the agony in my head, I was screaming, bleeding, but my body burned with demonic power and wasn't going to give out, I wanted it to, I needed it to, but it wouldn't. My eyes were rooted to the sun and they couldn't leave it, but I wasn't getting any closer to it, I shivered as I felt my throat rip and heal while I screamed and laughed and cried, frustration consumed my other emotions and then became just another one of them that battled to destroy me.

So I still ran, wondering what was the point of this? My emotions were raging and consuming but the questions became more important, the two tracks of questions became the same and then blended back into the track of emotions, my thoughts came back together again and then answers started appearing to me. Questions and answers built with emotions and disappeared from my mind-track. But the emotions kept up, staying impossibly high, they stopped hurting as they made everything else come faster, the overpowering feelings sang in concert with the other emotions and the answers. And then, I ran out of questions.

By now I saw the small island beneath the sun, the sun was burning bright in the air. It was becoming uncomfortably hot, but my emotions and the answers, which now lacked questions to correspond with, sang and I didn't care about the heat. My eyes drifted down from the sun, but I recalled everything it showed me with instant and blinding clarity, I followed the path of the burning sphere to the ground, to the disc that was diffusing light into that shape.

There was a hole in the ground that threw white, pure light into convex lens. I looked into the light and felt nothing, felt everything, it was life, Uzumaki Naruto's life, and that lens was coloring it into the sun that had dominated the sealscape. The seal was on the other side of the lens and the light, Kyuubi stood up close to the gate again, frantic and frenzied as he raved. I was dazed at that point and followed his shouting and pointing at a rather dull pace, I looked at the seal.

When I saw it first that morning it had decreased less than an eighth from the night before. I was looking at it now and all that remained was the solid pad that had kept the two sets of bars locked together, the paper still read 'Seal', the entire piece of metal was engulfed in a red glow. I looked back down to Kyuubi and decided to hear what he said, though I already knew his words before he spoke them.

"Damnit Naruto, destroy that, it's your humanity, you have to give it up or else we'll die!" My face went serious as I reached out and clasped the lens in my hand. I stared into and watched Tsunade, Iruka, Kakashi… everyone I held dear was in the lens. I looked up and the sun was still above me, even without the lens. "You have to destroy it to let us come back! If you keep it then the shinigami will devour us both!"

I looked at the lens again and started to laugh, it hurt to laugh but I had to. Kyuubi could be funny sometimes. The sun turned blue and dissolved into chakra, it wrapped around the seal and blew away Kyuubi's chakra. "Oniichan… this," I held up the lens for him to see "this is something I can't destroy. Because… " His eyes widened and the seal exploded.

It went dark.

End Chapter Seven: Us Who Are the Thing That Is We

(1): Last likely reference to the elusive chapter four. I know, its cheap.

Author Note: That. Felt. GOOD. To write. Ahh, I love that chapter, I hope you all love it too, I hope it makes up for last chapter's suckiness despite its shortness!REVIEW! VOTE! I'ma go write more.