AN: Happy New Year!

There's not much room for jokes, (and a review expressed concern) so the genre was changed. Sorry for the delay!

Chapter 4

"Reason, I sacrifice you to
the evening breeze."

Drip.

It didn't take much to figure out where he was.

Drip, drip.

It wasn't the first time Naruto had been in the sewer that was his mindscape, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Huge, thick and rusted metal bars hung before him. They stretched from the floor all the way to an unseeing but inevitable ceiling. It would be too dark to see anything at all if it weren't for the mass of scintillating orange sentience on the other side of the cage. As the only source of light, his eyes were instinctively drawn to the sleeping beast as soon as they'd opened.

"Kyuubi… what's your stupid orange ass want now?" Naruto asked, somewhat peeved. The seal made for a dreary place, and just being present swiftly gave him a migraine. According to Jiraiya, it had something to do with the intensity of the sealing array, but he couldn't confess to understanding or even remembering the details. If he had to describe it, it would be like a thin screen of static existed behind his eyes and between each and every thought. It was easy to let it aggravate him.

Growing up, the fox had been terrifying. The sheer size of it, the emotions the mere presence of the biju's chakra provoked… those disgustingly fierce and intelligent red eyes. It used to seriously raise his shackles, and he'd absolutely despised it. Even now, years later, after pushing past the nuances of the beast's power and having trained in its use, being in this mindscape made him uncomfortable and the migraine would never help matters.

He crossed his arms and waited as the fox, several hundred times his size, stretched. It was never quite ready to receive him, but yet, it was usually what called him here. He didn't have a choice in the matter, and the few times he visited for his own reasons he hadn't bothered waking it up.

The beast yawned, and Naruto strained to leave his ears uncovered. It was a ghastly sound, one that his instincts yelled at him to flee from, but showcasing weakness to the fox always ended in humiliation. It was just a yawn, and the fox couldn't hurt him. Relax. It was literally more harmless than his pillowcases.

Finally, the fox sat on its haunches and focused its vivid red gaze down to the blond. He gulped inaudibly, and the orange mass grinned.

"You are a fool." The voice came snarled, harsh and loud; fitting for a bellow from a great beast. Its voice fit the fox well, and while it seemed like it would be terrifying – with hearing it, came an odd sense of fulfillment. It just sounded exactly like you'd think it would, and that was oddly satisfying.

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Uh-huh." The fox was rarely forthcoming, but he had practice with it by now.

"You have no idea what you've done, do you?"

He exhaled. "Are you referring to the war?" Being general was typically the easiest way to draw out an answer. The fox couldn't necessarily keep him here – and he was kind of sleeping anyway – but it would call him back if it wasn't satisfied with teasing him. Was it right to call it teasing? Probably not, but it wasn't wrong either.

"No. Your human death parties don't concern me in the slightest."

"Death parties?" Naruto muttered. It was apt in its own way. "I don't know what you want then." The last couple days were nothing but traveling, and nothing interesting – especially to the fox – would've happened. The day before that was his inauguration. The day before that was the invasion, where he fought summons, and… the Ichibi.

Right, he'd killed it just now, hadn't he? His memory regarding it was a bit foggy because his mind was recuperating – most of his body was sleeping. It was a common side-effect of delving into his seal, but it thankfully didn't extend inversely.

"Then you called me here because I killed the Ichibi?"

If he didn't know better, he'd think the fox laughed.

It cocked its head. "Do you truly believe you killed a tailed beast?" Naruto frowned but gave pause to merely dismissing the words. He knew that if he died, the Kyuubi would die too – it was a spectacularly prominent facet of his seal. It was likely why the fox had put up as little fuss as he did with him taking its power. That was not to say that it eagerly gave it up, and it did in fact fight vehemently, but if the fox absolutely tried its hardest to refrain from giving him power then he'd have a mere fraction of what he did have available.

Then, given the fox's words – which he had to give a sprinkling of salt – was Gaara's seal not designed with the same intentions? It wasn't something he'd considered in the moment, and judging by Jiraiya's actions he hadn't either, and the man was a seal master. Had he killed another jinchuuriki for nothing?

Coming to terms with the possibility, Naruto visibly paled. "What are you saying?"

The fox lowered its awfully human-esque forelegs and rest its head on them, for the sole benefit of being closer to eye-level with its container.

"I would enjoy the death you've brought upon yourself, but you're taking me with you. That is unacceptable." The red eyes narrowed against his blue, and the blond gave pause.

He wanted to rebuke but hesitated to respond. The tone was resolute and as serious as he had ever heard it from the fox, whose voice would usually hold a snarky or sarcastic undertone that simply wasn't present.

If the fox were to be believed, and the Ichibi was still alive… that was a full-blown biju, a being that, without a container, held unlimited power. The biju of old, before they were sealed, were likened to that of a natural disaster capable of leveling cities in moments. The fourth hokage's battle against the Kyuubi twelve years prior was the greatest victory humanity had against the beasts since the times of the first hokage, and before that – the great battle that brought an end to the ten-tails era and created the moon.

A common consensus drawn was that the biju had killed more men, woman, and children than all of the wars between clans combined.

The power Gaara's facsimile of the Ichibi used against him in their battle was just that – the power of a copy. The true Ichibi would be something Naruto could never scratch, unless he were to someday ascend to godhood with the likes of the rikudou sennin or the first hokage. Sealing was the only way, but nobody was prepared for that. There were always signs when a biju were approaching – they were colossal in size and their presence was impossible to miss. It was possible to momentarily overcome them with well-prepared fuinjutsu, but there were no other methods. There was a reason the fourth hokage's victory against the suddenly appearing Kyuubi was the stuff of legends. It was the reason many considered him to be the most powerful kage of his time.

"What do you want from me?" he had a vague idea of what it wanted, but he shivered at even the thought of offering it.

The fox's ear twitched. "Can you feel that, or are your senses too dull?"

"I-I can't sense the outside while I'm in-"

"Self-imposed ignorance," the Kyuubi muttered, "it does not matter." The fox rose to its full height and Naruto was once again struck by the majesty of its size. "We may die here. Your healers will certainly die here."

"What?! What do you-"

"Our chances of survival are slim. It is dependent on the whims of circumstance and human mentality, which I am disinclined to place my faith in. I hope you are aware I've resented you every step of the way, child."

Naruto sighed and shook his head. He was more concerned for his death than he was about the fox's pettiness.

"What's happeni-"

He was abruptly thrown out of the mindscape with such force that he thought, for a moment, that he was dead.

"The Ichibi… fuck!" Jiraiya growled, rushing to the field hospital behind their front line.

They had been drawing a new treatise with the sand – it was truly a pretence for the sand's total dissolution into the leaf, but it required drawing up nonetheless – when the unwelcome waves of corrupted chakra began weaving through everyone present. Each individual could feel it grasp onto their own chakra and nobody was comfortable with the slimy sensation, or the very slight draw on their chakra that was nothing if not a bad omen.

The shivering of the desert left no doubt in anyone's mind as to the cause.

Hence, Jiraiya swiftly left Shikaku's side. While it would be seen as him seeking to add to the hokage's protection, he would have done it even if the boy was still a genin – like he should be.

The man knew exactly who the Ichibi would target first, and he had to do his damndest to protect his godson. That's what he had signed up for when he agreed to be the brat's godfather.

The blond was practically his legacy and represented over a decade of his work on sealing. Working on the death god's seal pushed him far above the echelons of other sealing master's, and Jiraiya himself had invented many new sealing arrays just as an aside.

One such seal was a large proximity ward around the encampment that prevented the use of shunshin, and such was why he was running as opposed to being there already. He regretted its placement.

In the distance, but large enough that it may as well have been beside him, the shattered remains of the facsimile of the Ichibi stirred. With each step Jiraiya took, the sand beneath his sandals seemed to growl and shimmer. Strong storms began their reign around the expanse of desert, whipping sand through the air and tearing down their carefully constructed encampment, and Jiraiya's heart clouded with a thick swamp of emotions.

He spared a glance to the sand behemoth, only to regret his moment wasted. Already, it was a dozen times larger than it had been under the jinchuuriki's control. The Ichibi swung its arm in what might have been curiousity, and the entire wall this side of Suna – natural or otherwise – collapsed, broken and swallowed by the shifting sands.

Thousands of lives must have been lost.

The tailed beast turned its head, and for just a moment, Jiraiya could have sworn that it matched its eyes with his own. A smirk, if it may even be called that on such a monster, burst onto its face and he paled. Less than a step later, and Jiraiya burst into the tent of the temporary hospital.

He quickly swept the large open room with his gaze and found himself regretting that everyone here would probably die. He couldn't see it, but even those barely conscious would sense the unholy concentration of chakra outside. The Ichibi was assuredly preparing a bijudama with the ultimate goal of annihilating the Kyuubi, and Jiraiya rushed to Naruto's side, mind racing, even as his body screamed at him to flee.

There could be no escape from the personification of the desert, not while they were all stuck in the middle of it. A jinchuuriki was something they could deal with, and bringing the sand tanuki's container wasn't something Jiraiya made a fuss over. It was a decision made in an ignorance that could have been overcome if he'd just looked at its seal.

Instinctively, he knew he had only seconds. At least, his godson looked to be recovered from his fight with the previous incarnation of the Ichibi. Jiraiya had to refrain from summoning a toad as a meat shield, or to transport them to Mount Myōboku. There wasn't even close to enough time for the latter, and he knew enough that any toad foolhardy enough to help with the former would just be one more to the death count.

Ancient sites of battle against the biju showed that their bijudama could create craters the size of Sunagakure itself. It was said that the higher a biju's tail, the more powerful they are – but with even half that distance there was just no way he could get away from that without shunshin. If only he had learned the hiraishin…

There was only one thing he could do really, something anyone could do - and if it didn't work, well, it was better than living and knowing he did nothing. Ignoring the slight protests of the hokage's medical officer, Jiraiya swept the blond into his arms and dived to the ground.

If anyone could survive the full brunt of a tailed beast's most destructive power, then it was Naruto; an Uzumaki with the gift of the Kyuubi's innate healing and his father's hardy constitution. Even so, Jiraiya hardened his hair, and struck with an epiphany, quickly removed his summons' contract and held it between the two.

He was vaguely aware of others diving to the ground around him – and at least two that moved to cover him – when in an instant everything unravelled.

"Ugh…"

His gaze was horrendously blurry, but where he had expected perhaps a doctor or even just the roof of a tent – he only saw red.

Naruto shivered. His sense of touch was okay. His hands grasped something familiar enough, it felt like an inordinately large scroll, and he could feel quite the weight on top of him.

He realized his eyes had been stuck shut, and he pushed forward to give himself space – or he tried to. He couldn't move his right arm. Don't panic. He quickly used his left to wipe his eyes, though he had to push something light out of the way and ignored what he knew to be on his hands as he was finally able to see what was holding him down.

He promptly turned his head and threw up, and he noticed immediately that much more blood than food left his stomach.

Panicking, the blond pushed the weights aside and kicked out from beneath them. He finally realized a horrific pain in his legs, and released a squeal of pain. But, he was free to look around.

He was in the middle of a crater, surrounded by illegible bodies.

Jiraiya is dead.

His only family apparently died while he was wasting time talking with the Kyuubi. He couldn't even begin to identify any of the other corpses, but the white mane of hair, and the unique hitai-ate the man wore proved enough.

He couldn't see anyone, but that had to be because he was below ground level. It had to be. Even so, he could spy the ridiculously large form of the Ichibi over the precipice of the destruction. It wasn't looking in his direction, but if he had to guess, it was probably about to destroy Sunagakure.

"I…" Naruto shivered and spat out a thick and disgusting glob of blood and saliva. "I did this."

The fox knew what was going to happen, and he supposed it warned him in its own way.

He could hardly move, nor did he even want to, so he didn't lift even token resistance to the Kyuubi's effort to pull him back into the mindscape.

The blond was no longer in the mood to waste time with the fox and was even less enthused to muster thoughts against an ever-ailing migraine.

"What do you want now?" he snarled, crossing his arms shakily. In here, he didn't suffer from the wounds he carried in the physical world. He exchanged pure physical pain for a migraine and some mental anguish. It admittedly could be worse.

It was the first time the fox had ever been awake and ready to receive him, sitting on its haunches.

"You're dying."

Naruto blinked dumbly. "Eh?"

The thought of death hadn't even crossed his mind. He had always been invulnerable, right? He was burdened with Kyuubi and the greatest seal on earth – his healing factor, only hastened by his heritage, was world-class. He couldn't die, it simply wasn't something he considered in his day-to-day meanderings.

Sure, a sword through the neck or a knife to the lungs – any conventional method, really – could kill him like any other, but something as passive as whatever the Kyuubi was suggesting was a ludicrous thought.

"T-there's a lot of blood, yeah, but-" he could restore blood!

"Chakra poisoning."

"That can hurt me?!" He had thought that the mere presence of the Kyuubi's chakra had strengthened his coils against the corrosive effects of any of the ancient chakra of biju.

"…It is not in the conventional sense. The Ichibi is released. Without a filter, his chakra pervades even through your coils. Blood loss will be the cause of death, but his chakra is your inhibitor to healing."

The young hokage collapsed to his knees and punched the murky concrete beneath him in earnest frustration. "That's the end of the road for us then, huh? Some fucking low-rate biju?"

He was numbed by the thought of it, but he wasn't sure there was much reason to continuing anyway. The old man was dead less than a week ago – it was still a fresh wound that he had not dealt with – and now, his godfather died protecting him… senselessly. It was a pointless sacrifice because he was dying anyway.

He frowned. But…

"-it's your job to nurture and protect them-"

There are still others that cared about him. He couldn't just abandon them like that, there had to be something he could do. Something. It was his job.

"Release me."

"What?" If possible, Naruto frown grew even more pronounced. "I'm not dying for nothing. If I take you down with me," he crossed his arms, resolute, "then I was at least worth something to the world."

That's right. With his death, one of the nine terrors of the world would be gone forever. If only he hadn't released one in the process and gotten the only family he had left killed.

The fox released what might've been a sigh, had it not almost collapsed Naruto's metaphysical ear-drums. It shook its great head and leaned down, toward the blond but still towering over him, and gave Naruto the most profound look he had ever borne witness to.

"For my life, I will be your people's salvation."

He gulped. The demon's proposition warranted no explanation, but was it truly an option? He had wound his hands so tightly around themselves that had this been real, his nails would have carved apart his palms. It was his last chance of life he was considering throwing away. It was still possible, if slightly, that someone could heal him. He could theoretically survive, though the odds were slim.

…and then what? He would just die anyway. The blond rubbed a clutched hand over the small representation of the seal on his stomach through his shirt. The only idea he could even conceive of would be to store the Ichibi within himself – but that was impossible unless he could survive the extraction of the Kyuubi. That was especially impossible because the Kyuubi was doubtlessly the only thing preventing him from falling dead on the spot, even if he couldn't be healed.

No matter how he stacked the odds in his favour, he was going to die. Whether or not that death meant something…

He stood, and glared into the eyes of the fox with everything he could muster.

"You will stop the Ichibi."

The great head, many times his size, nodded its confirmation without duress.

"You will not bring harm to the leaf."

The fox seemed pleased. "In return, you grant me my life and freedom."

"And to this end…" the blond muttered, shaking his head as he stepped towards the seal, "…I guess I'm dead, huh?"

Naruto ripped the flimsy piece of paper from the Kyuubi's cage.

Shikaku tensed as the massive conglomeration of chakra zipped towards the encampment in the distance, and even he felt his shoulders drop unconsciously as the chakra detonated outward.

The only saving grace is that most of their shinobi remained unscathed, but he knew where the tailed beast had aimed and he felt even now the hopelessness of the situation churning deep within his gut. With another dead hokage, and without their seal master, there was significantly less they could do to a fully-formed and unsealed biju.

At someone's insistence, he dispatched a pair of ANBU to the targeted locale. Small twisters of sand lay to the wayside, but they weren't particularly dangerous or bothersome.

"Have the Nara ready to intercept," he ordered. "Baki," he turned to the turban-wearing sand council member. The man was the closest the sand had to a kage at the moment, and Shikaku supposed he amounted to the same. While he would like to be hesitant with any dealings with the sand with their understandably tense relationship, they didn't have the opportunity for anything but co-operation, and he knew Baki understood that. "Where is your seal master?"

The man turned to what remained of the village wall, and Shikaku spied in the distance a pair of elderly making their way to them within a small guard force.

"Chiyo is the one that sealed the Ichibi into Gaara, but it was a contained sealing between vessels."

In other words, she may not have the skill or power to seal the Ichibi as it is.

The Nara sighed, rubbing his forehead into his palm. They didn't even have a suitable vessel. It was a godsend that it was a biju of the Ichibi's level of chakra, which could be sealed more freely than the Kyuubi, but it was then a terrible situation strategically to be fighting it in the desert.

He watched dispassionately as it turned its maw to face their main forces, with what could only be a greatly satisfied smile.

"Puny little humans! Are you proud? How do you feel, that it was your vaunted hokage that released me?" Its words alone were mundane, but the tone and power behind them threw minds into disarray. Biju are not feared solely for their power, but as well due to the sliver of the previous primordial deity's conscience behind them. Had they been mindless beasts, they could be tricked.

As it was, Shikaku doubted the entire Yamanaka clan's ability to hold its mind hostage, but they had to make do with a small portion of them and hope for the best. All they could hope to do against a biju is contain it until it is sealed. Any physical damage inflicted is superficial and ultimately meaningless.

When it moved to attack, the Nara among the warband would engage. Simultaneously, the Yamanaka they had with them would try to possess the beast. Again, as it was a primordial consciousness, they had little but enough chance of doing anything sustainable. Then, others would attack with any elemental skills they are proficient in. The damage would be superficial, but as long as the possibility existed, however remote, that it may be enough to distract the tanuki at the most crucial moment, then it was worth doing.

While the Ichibi seemed ready to engage in one moment, it frowned and looked away from them the next.

…and then, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end.

Another dangerous burst of chakra had been released to the world. It had everyone clutching their fists and weapons tersely. While they had been willing to fight the Ichibi, whatever was coming invoked memories of a time that all of Konoha would rather forget.

Even the Ichibi seemed aghast.

"…the child survived?"

Shikaku gasped. The seal of the Shinigami was omnipotent, and he knew it was designed with killing the fox when the container died as a vital feature. It was Minato's final gift to the world; because of the man's sacrifice, the beast would never be released to the world again. It would die, having lived its final days within his son.

But this was assuredly the chakra of the Kyuubi, the monster that ended the lives of thousands of Konoha's citizens and invoked dreaded memories none would care to recall in the rest.

He didn't understand. "Naruto released the Kyuubi," he said, even if he didn't believe the words himself. That blond kid? The one that began all of this because the man he considered a grandfather had died? His methods were questionable, but he seemed to have had morals.

He may still be alive, then. Shikaku had written him off as dead because he had thought surviving the bijudama – especially when the kid was injured – was impossible. That he had then been able to unseal the Kyuubi, the fact he even wanted to at all, was unfathomable.

The situation only grew worse as a steaming pillar of corrosive red chakra rose from the blast site, searing into the heavens and dying the sky a hot pink.

Shikaku fell to his knees and was vaguely aware of others doing so in his peripherals.

This was the end for them all. The massive levels of chakra permeating the sky drew down and coalesced around the blazing pillar. The sky remained dyed, but the Kyuubi found shape and form.

It even dwarfed the figure of the Ichibi, like that of a parent to a toddler.

Nine tails grew from its backside, and with a testing wave of one, the desert behind the demon erupted into a great blaze that soared to the heights of the clouds.

"It's about time."

AN: I was originally going to conclude the arc this chapter, but I don't think I realized just how long it was going to be. I'm sorry for the delay, but it's given me time to think this one through – so I hope you're pleased.

I actually feel bad about Jiraiya. He's one of my favourite characters in the series, but it fit the situation and his character so well that he had to go. There will be a time when this is expanded on.

Edit (5/02/19): Revised a fair bit of wording.