Chapter Eight: Vespers
Evening
The Boy goes with them quietly, and they lock him in a separate room below the arena. It is empty and windowless; there is one door, and he can sense at least ten ninja standing guard outside of it.
The Boy's wounds have all healed by now, but his hands are still smeared with dark blood. He goes over to one of the blank walls and places his hand against it. When he moves the hand, it leaves behind a red stain in the shape of his hand. He giggles.
"They're really underestimating us, aren't they?" he says in a sing-song voice.
"Or are distracted," the Voice answers.
The Boy draws his hand back again and punches, blasting a hole through the stone wall. He hears people begin to yell, and when the dust clears, he sees the masked jōnin waiting for him. The Boy notices that he is not holding his customary book in his hand.
"Naruto," says the jōnin quietly.
"Who is that?" the Boy says, cocking his head. The jōnin's eyes narrow.
"Kyūbi...are you controlling Naruto?"
The Boy blinks once – and then letting his head fall back, he guffaws.
"The Voice doesn't control my body unless I let it," he says in between laughs. "It's me...'sensei.' Have you found out the meaning to life, yet?"
"Who are you, then?" the jōnin asks instead.
Before the Boy can answer, he senses movement to his left – and dodges just in time to avoid some kind of net being cast down on him. He lashes out with a hand and stabs straight through the responsible ninja's chest. The ninja's eyes bulge. The Boy pulls out his hand with a squelching sound, and as blood spurts out, the ninja falls to the ground.
The masked jōnin looks pained. Then without any warning, he moves in a flash across the stone floor, reaching out to grab the Boy. The Boy ducks and kicks out, adding a burst of wind chakra to his feet; the jōnin flips back defensively. Taking advantage of the split second, the Boy turns around and begins to run in the opposite direction.
With the Voice's chakra running as a strong current through his entire body, his senses have never felt so alive. As he runs through the hallway, the Boy can sense every single being in that arena. They have not halted the third exam, it seems – in the middle of the arena, he can sense that the boy with black hair is fighting with the boy with a gourd on his back. The bloodlust is thick, reaching all the way to where the Boy is.
The pathway quickly slopes up, and the Boy jumps out to smell fresh air. He takes a swift look around, and finds himself just outside the arena. The backs of the stands reach upward in front of him.
"The man with the key is not here," the Boy notes. His eyes flicker downward, but the jōnin does not emerge from the pathway after him. It seems that for some reason, he is not being chased.
"Then we must find him," the Voice says impatiently. "And get the key from him."
"How?"
"We can't kill him, but we may be able to force the key from him." But it sounds uncertain.
"And if we do get it...then what?"
"Then we will be free," the Voice says simply."We will be able to do anything we like, go wherever we want."
"Wherever we want?" the Boy repeats. He tries to think about what he likes to do that he'll be able to do outside of the village – but then he stops, and then turns to look at the arena. The commotion has stopped, and the arena is wrapped in silence.
And then suddenly, with an ear-splitting booming sound and an explosion of roiling white clouds, three gigantic snakes – exactly the same kind as he'd faced off against in the forest for the second exam – appear just outside the village walls.
The Boy cocks his head curiously.
"Is that from the same dangerous thing you told me not to fight in the forest?"
"That seems to be the case. Don't go near it," the Voice warns him.
Soon, a barrier is erected on top of one of the towers, and to his glee, the Boy can sense both the dangerous presence and the old man inside it. That, at least, means two fewer things to avoid while searching for the white-haired man.
Meanwhile, it is chaos in the village. Several ninja from other villages have climbed over the walls along with the snakes and are wreaking havoc. There are fires everywhere, and the village people have split into groups that are either fighting against the enemy ninja, working to actively take out the fire, or evacuating civilians and children.
It is the perfect time to take advantage of – but despite the Voice urging him to start his search, the Boy can't help himself. He revels in his freedom.
While taking in the various battles occurring throughout the village, the Boy jumps up to his feet, excitement bubbling in his throat. He looks around – and then experimentally, he throws himself into the air with a loud whoop. He soars through the air and then lands down hard on the terracotta tiles of a building's roof, sending pieces of it tumbling over the edge. But of course, nobody pays him any mind. For the first time, the ever-present feeling of being watched is gone, and he jumps to the next roof with another delighted whoop of laughter – and the next.
Suddenly, just as he is about to jump to another roof, through the corner of his eyes, he sees a blur of movement – a ninja with his face wrapped in bandages jumps at him out of seemingly nowhere. Just before he reaches him, the Boy flips onto his hand, raising his legs into the air. The ninja slides across the roof and with a flash of metal, throws a kunai at him. The Boy twists on his hands to avoid it, and then moving faster than the other ninja can react, wraps his legs around the man's neck, choking him. The Boy lifts himself up so that he is sitting on top of the other ninja's shoulders, and then with chakra-effused hands, he twists the ninja's head. With a final surprised gurgle, the bones of the ninja's neck crack, and some of it pierces through the skin, poking out whitely under the sun.
The ninja's body collapses under his weight, and with a contemplative look on his face, the Boy remains seated on top of it with his legs crossed. He looks out at the village, the smoke-tinged evening wind blowing his hair against his face.
"Regardless of whether we can get the seal or not, we're going to have to leave, aren't we?" he asks the Voice.
"Prematurely or not, they know your true nature now," the Voice answers him in a displeased tone. "If we stayed, they would lock us up – this time in a cage you can't lie or punch our way out of."
"What's out there?" The Boy wonders, thinking back to the time they'd gone to the island nation.
"Animals you've never seen before. Fields of ice, mountains that belch fire. Secret techniques that can dismember a human into bite-sized pieces or control them like little puppets. When you're a little bit older, there'll be plenty of women to pleasure yourself with. And best of all, nobody around to monitor or stop us from doing whatever we want."
The Boy thinks it over and then stands up. He opens his mouth to laugh – but stops. What is he feeling? He doesn't know. He knows he is supposed to laugh when he is having fun, but this isn't something he would call 'fun.' It is a different feeling. It isn't bad, but it feels strange to him.
Before he can put more thought into it, he senses something nearby and looks in its direction. It is nearby the snakes – by this point, they have crossed past the walls into the village itself, sending rubble flying with every thrash of its tail.
"The man with the key is there, isn't he?" the Boy asks, but he doesn't need the Voice's confirmation. He kicks away the corpse at his feet – it tumbles over the rooftop along with several pieces of tile – and then jumps.
By the time the Boy catches up, the white-haired man has just crushed the head of one of the snakes with a giant toad summoning – and along with it, a good portion of one of the village's bigger buildings. With a loud crashing noise, the building begins to fall apart. The surrounding ninja stare up, aghast, while the white-haired man strikes a pose and roars out his name.
The Boy lands on top of one of the nearby intact buildings, and stumbles, catching the white-haired man's attention.
"Naruto?" the man says, looking surprised.
"Jiraiya-sama," he calls out, grimacing in pain. "Please...help me..."
"What's going on?" The white-haired man looks taken aback, all the cheer fading from his face.
"It won't stop...the Voice..." The Boy winces, and squeezes his temples with his hands. "It won't stop - stop screaming at me. It wants something..."
"Something? From me?"
"The...I think it's saying...'the key'..." The Boy lets out a groan and falls to his knees.
The white-haired man falls silent, and the Boy hopes he hasn't overdone it. Despite himself, the Boy sneaks a glance up at his face. The other man is still, but his face has a shadow of uncertainty, and the Boy has to hold himself back from crowing in triumph.
"How long has this Voice been talking to you, Naruto?"
"My whole life..." the Boy says quietly. He knows from experience that the best lies come from truth. "But it's never been this bad before. I can't take this much longer, my head feels like it's going to explode." A single tear begins to roll down his cheeks.
"Do you feel any remorse at all for what you did to that other boy?"
The Boy's finger twitches; that's a loaded question if he's ever heard one. His mind races through the possible answers, searching wildly for the 'correct' one, before it grasps one. If he were being questioned by anyone else, he may have tried to bluff his way out of it by pretending to be ignorant, but in this case...
"I don't," the Boy admits. "I...I know I'm twisted, Jiraiya-sama. But surely, there are many like me out there..."
"There are." The white-haired man nods. "And from my experience from dealing with such people, my gut tells me you're lying about why you want the key." Inwardly, the Boy frowns, and the Voice growls irritably in his head. But then the man continues, "However...Kakashi seems to believe in you. And I would like to believe in the son of Minato."
The Boy's head snaps up.
"Then...then you'll...?"
"Let me tell you one thing, Naruto," says the white-haired man. "The key can be used to remove the seal, but it can also make it stronger. It could even stop the Voice from being able to whisper in your head the way it's doing now. You could be free, Naruto. It will be your choice."
"Anything, Jiraiya-sama..." the Boy whispers. "Just make it stop."
"Very well...but on one condition."
The man stops talking, looking out at something for a moment. The Boy follows his gaze to see the carved mountainside behind the village.
"A condition...?"
"There is another boy here, with a tailed beast sealed inside him like yourself. I reckon you know who I'm talking about?" The Boy nods; it is the boy with the gourd, the sand boy. "He's on the run, and from what I've heard, your teammates and some other genin have gone after him. I want you to help. When you come back, I'll give you the key to the seal." The white-haired man levels him with a knowing look. "I suppose the voice in your head can shut up long enough for you to do that?"
It is no easy task tracking them down through the thick forest surrounding the village, even with his senses magnified by the Voice's chakra. The forest is soaked with blood lust and here and there, the Boy can see bits and pieces of body parts strewn across the floor. But oddly, the Boy can sense the sand boy from all the way deep inside in the forest – it feels almost akin to his own presence when he is using the Voice's chakra. Traveling across the tree branches at an inhumane speed, he shoots directly toward it.
The desperate look on his face has long since faded. The Voice is muttering calculatingly about the white-haired man's true intentions – "This is too good to be true. He's definitely plotting something" – when the Boy senses the pink-haired girl just in front of them. He is about to pass her by without a second thought, when he remembers that the white-haired man told him to 'help' his teammates. So, he slows down and falls into place beside her; the girl jerks back.
"Naruto! Where did you...?!" The girl looks taken aback, but oddly enough, she doesn't seem too afraid of the Boy.
"I'm here to help," he says simply.
"Did...did Kakashi-sensei send you?"
The Boy is unsure of how to respond, so instead, he asks her, "What happened after my match?"
"Kakashi-sensei went with you when you were...taken away. And then it was Sasuke-kun's match against Gaara. But then someone cast a genjutsu over everyone - and then the Suna attacked us." The girl sounds upset. "Kakashi-sensei came back and helped us, and then we were told to pursue Gaara."
The Boy has to wonder at the logic of sending a group of mostly incompetent genin after such a potentially dangerous figure, but suddenly, the blood lust spikes, higher than he's ever sensed before.
"Where is the other boy?" The Boy asks.
"The other boy? ...you mean Sasuke-kun? He - he went ahead of us, Shikamaru bought us some time but - " She cuts off, as something nearby roars in an inhumane voice, the sound reverberating through the hollows of the trees. "What was that? Is Sasuke-kun going to be alright?"
The Boy, unable to help himself, turns to her and gives her a sad smile.
"It's always about him in the end, isn't it?"
"Wh...what?"
"I thought we had something, you know. I...thought you'd be on my side, Sakura," he says. "But you never were, and never will be." Her eyes widen so wide, he can see himself reflected back in their pupils. He knows that she is thinking back to his match in the arena when she'd called out to the bowl cut boy to run.
"Naruto, I - "
Leaving her faltering behind, the Boy picks up his speed, the trees becoming a blur as his sad smile gives way to a grin.
Soon enough, he sees the black-haired boy struggling to lift himself up on a wide, flat branch. Something that vaguely resembles the sand boy is heading straight for him, a long monstrous hand poised to crush him against the tree. His focus is so wholly fixated on the black-haired boy that it doesn't even notice the Boy barreling toward him.
The Boy kicks powerfully at the extended arm of the sand boy – and if it were any other person, it would have snapped it in two, but in this case, the sand boy simply falls back with a roar. The sand boy, like a confused mutt, shakes his head wildly before refocusing on the Boy's face. Recognition glints in his half-morphed face, and he growls out, "You!"
"Why does he look like that?" The Boy gazes down upon him with interest. When he uses the Voice's chakra, he knows that his features sharpen to take on some fox-like characteristics, but his body parts have never deformed to such an extent.
"That is a partial transformation." The Voice sounds also intrigued, which is rare. "Except that jinchūriki isn't using chakra. It looks like sand."
"You!" the sand boy roars again. "You're the one I wanted to kill...!" His arm extends out in anticipation and his muscles tense as he prepares to spring himself forward. The Boy reads all this and readies himself, his hands sharpening into claws by his sides. He regarded the sand boy as dangerous before, but the way he is now – practically foaming at the mouth with only half his prior cognitive abilities – he may as well be a rabid animal. "Die!"
As he predicted, the sand boy throws himself in a mad lunge toward him. The Boy waits, his claws twitching.
Then without warning, the pink-haired girl suddenly jumps in front of him, her arms spread open protectively.
"I'm always on your side, Naruto!" she shouts out, looking back at him with a fierce expression on her face.
The expression quickly crumbles, however, when the Boy's face splits into an amused smile. He hears her heartbeat momentarily come to a stop.
"I'd have liked to kill her myself but this isn't such a bad way to go about it," he remarks as he watches the sand boy bearing down on them.
A/N: One more chapter to go, and then the three alternate endings. Yes, I decided to write out all three. Sorry, I did say from the very beginning that this was going to be a short series.
Thank you all for your reviews.