Chapter 4: Five Tails

The noisy sounds of a zipper being pulled and heavy footfalls awoke Sakura. She turned slowly onto her side, opening her eyes, and saw a familiar blonde figure stumble painfully towards a gnarled oak tree. An unsettling aura fell upon the area, making Sakura shiver involuntarily, and she quietly slipped out of her sleeping bag.

Naruto dry heaved, a hand pressed against the tree trunk for support as his seal wreaked havoc on the rest of his body. It brought him to his knees and his expression contorted in agony as his stomach twisted like a serpent with twice the venom. When Sakura placed an inquisitive hand on his broad shoulder, he jumped as though a gun had been fired. When he realized it was her, he absentmindedly leaned his head back. It rested against her shoulder sloppily and he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain subside.

"Is it your stomach again?" she asked him and he managed a small, hoarse sound of confirmation in the back of his throat.

She tried to ignore the fact that her heartbeat had suddenly accelerated to the point that, had it been a car, she would probably have been in prison for life. Lowering herself to the ground, the blonde repositioned his head so that it rested in the crook of her neck. He had already opened his jacket and Sakura's fingertips pressed gently against the hard muscle of his abdomen.

A gasp escaped her mouth as she found he had a massive stomach infection that must have been absolute agony. Her chakra quickly seeped through his skin in an attempt to kill the infection but she realized that it would be too tiring for her if she tried to get rid of it all at once.

"Naruto, you've got a really bad stomach infection. It must be all that instant ramen you eat," she told him darkly.

"Eh, don't go insulting ramen," he rasped out indignantly.

She simply shook her head with a slight smile. At least he didn't have cancer or a terminal illness, she thought. The infection would eventually come to pass. As she soothed the pain, Naruto let out a breathy sigh of relief.

Silence stretched over the area and she found herself thinking back to their impromptu kiss a couple of days ago. Her face tinged pink and she became infinitely grateful that it was too dark for either of them to discern colours very well.

"Sakura?" the sound of his voice dragged her back to the reluctant world of the present and she blinked in surprise, glancing down at him.

"Yeah?" she acknowledged him and his eyelids slowly lifted, revealing an intense gaze.

"You know…two nights ago…" he trailed off.

Her head was suddenly spinning and she found herself inwardly cringing. She had been hoping to avoid a confrontation about the kiss but if Naruto wanted to talk about it, they were going to talk about it. He deserved an explanation, though she wasn't really sure if she had one ready.

His question wasn't the one she had been expecting, "Were you thinking of Sasuke?"

Thinking of Sasuke? After the initial shock, she felt anger begin to cloud her vision and wondered where the hell he had come up with a stupid idea like that. As the Sharingan wielder's face flashed in her mind, she felt another constricting lump form in the back of her throat.

"What do you mean thinking of Sasuke?" she asked, her voice weaker than she had intended.

He hesitated before rephrasing his question, "Was I the…replacement for Sasuke?"

"No!" she burst out before she could help herself.

He seemed as though he was awaiting an explanation and suddenly she was babbling, "I didn't like Sasuke, no, I mean I didn't like Sasuke in that way but I would never be so awful to use you as a replacement for him even if I did like him because that would mean and low and when we kiss-"

She came to an abrupt halt. Saying that they had kissed seemed to finalize everything and it was an even bigger shock to her. She couldn't bring herself to say anymore and turned bright red, looking away from the dumbstruck blonde. This was so awkward! She might as well have just told him that she loved him straight out, she was such an idiot!

Silence fell over them. Naruto took time to digest this new, startling piece of information and as the intense relief subsided, a sly grin stretched across his face.

"So…does this mean you like me?" he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She began to stutter, "I-I-"

"It must be my manly charm. I'm irresistible, you were bound to fall for me sometime," he said with a smirk.

In an embarrassed huff, she tried to shove him off of her but he pressed harder against her front. She snapped at him hurriedly, "Naruto, only an idiot would fall for an idiot like you."

"Then it looks like we can be idiots together, huh?" he teased, his wide smile lighting up his eyes.

She began in a huff, "Shut up, if I fell for a guy he would be more charming, better looking, smarter-"

However, she was silenced by a pair of chapped lips.

To present a balanced argument, one must show both the negatives and the positives to combat against them. In her mind, she inwardly went through all the points she had summed up in her head.

She began with the negatives. His lips were too dry, he was pressing too hard, the position they were in made her neck hurt, he could have been spreading whatever the hell was in his stomach and Sai and Kakashi could wake up any minute.

Then came the positives.

He was kissing her.

The positives far outweighed the negatives.

"Naruto."

His cerulean eyes flashed open instinctively and he propped himself up on one elbow. He was lying down and for a moment, confusion hazed over him before he realized that he was in the pale yellow place somewhere in the depths of his seal. At least he thought it was somewhere in the depths of his seal…

"Where the fuck are we anyways?" he asked, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

Suddenly, Naruto became very self conscious of his little slip. Somehow, he felt the Yondaime would ridicule him for his language or something but on the contrary, a small amused smile stretched across Minato's face. The Fourth walked towards him and sat down, bending his knees. Atop his knees he rested his elbows languidly, leaning forwards slightly, and Naruto let his eyes rove over the strange looking place. He couldn't call it a room, there were no corners and no doors, no walls and no ways out. It was just endless colour.

"This is the other side of the seal, away from the Kyuubi," he explained matter of factly.

Naruto put his hands behind him and pressed most of his weight on his palms. He lazily bent a knee and questioned in surprise, "I thought the tunnels lead to Kyuubi?"

"Well, have you gone the other way before?" Minato inquired with a smile.

Naruto found himself struck speechless. He had been in the seal countless times before and had never bothered to go anywhere but the Kyuubi's cell. The knowledge that he had just done something extremely stupid washed over him and he began to flush in embarrassment, avoiding Minato's teasing gaze. He just sort of presumed that the seal was only for Kyuubi.

"Congratulations by the way," the man beside him commented offhandedly.

He now had no idea what the Fourth was on about. "Huh?"

"Sakura," Minato smirked the telling smirk of the all knowing.

"H-How the hell do you know about that?!" Naruto blurted out indignantly, feeling as though his privacy had been horribly invaded.

"Your emotions affect the seal a lot and depending on how strong a feeling is, the seal will change drastically. If there's a really big change, then sometimes images of what you're thinking about crop up and lately Sakura's face has been all over the place," he explained.

"Oh. So that means…" Naruto trailed off. He had been about to say that for seventeen years, Minato had seen all of his greatest emotions. Then he realized that Minato had been in his seal for seventeen fucking years.

"Wait, why haven't you ever come out before? Why is it only now?" Naruto asked warily, his brow creasing in suspicion.

"This side of the seal used to be locked so I couldn't get out. It could only be opened either by an outside force or by you, but since you never wandered down this way it stayed locked," he began another tiresome explanation.

Naruto was still confused. He pressed Minato for answers, "Wait, but I never came down this way so how come it's suddenly open?"

"When I met you that day when the Otokage used his Edo Tensei jutsu, the seal was forced open so that my soul could be called out for the jutsu," he answered.

Naruto flinched involuntarily at the painful memory. He looked away guiltily and Minato watched him indifferently. He said nothing, he simply let Naruto get over it, and Naruto found himself grateful that Minato had not pressed the matter any further than he had needed to. Suddenly, overwhelming pain washed over Naruto's stomach and he contracted violently, gasping for breath.

Two warm hands steadied his swaying shoulders and his heavy head sagged forwards until his forehead came into contact with a thick green vest. He shut his hazy blue eyes, trying to control his breathing. The man in front of him stiffened in surprise at the contact before instantaneously relaxing a moment later. He placed a hand atop Naruto's messy blonde mop of hair and suddenly, it felt as though nothing could harm Naruto.

Indescribable calm and security washed over the boy who had always been a pillar of strength for others, but had never himself had any steady foundations. It felt as though even if the world was falling down around them, as long as he was with Minato he would be fine. This man was slowly building up the forgotten foundations without him even realizing it and the pain subsided until it was nothing but a dull memory.

"Sakura says I've got a pretty bad stomach infection," Naruto explained and lifted his head from Minato's chest.

"The Kyuubi's chakra is causing it. It's leaking out of the seal and damaging your stomach walls. As the seal grows closer to breaking point, the pain will get more intense so you might want to hang around Sakura a bit more. Not that you'd mind, would you?" Minato couldn't help but throw the last sentence in for good measure.

It was worth it because Naruto went a vivid crimson red that made Minato laugh, a warm rich sound that filled the emptiness with joy. The seventeen year old looked away indignantly, muttering an incoherent, rude argument that probably made no sense anyways.

The laughter died down and Naruto was torn between leaning his head against Minato's shoulder or if that would be was crossing a line that he wasn't meant to. He was too comfortable around this man and couldn't help but feel that if he did overstep the line even the slightest, Minato would disappear and Naruto would never see him again. For a fleeting moment, he found that Minato disappearing scared him much more than the breaking seal.

"You know…" Minato began awkwardly and Naruto glanced at him inquisitively.

"You can always come here whenever you want. The door's always open," he continued.

Suddenly, a door that Naruto had sworn he couldn't have missed caught his eye. It was a simple wooden door with a tarnished brass doorknob; a modest door, he thought, for one that led to a place the Hokage lived in. Minato waited for an answer, looking awfully uncomfortable and hesitant.

Eventually, Naruto felt a genuine smile pull at the corners of his lips.

"Yeah, sure."

They were moving much faster than Sakura would have liked, but it was understandable with the dangerous situation they were currently in.

The woman had cracked and spilled her guts out about everything under Kakashi's intense gaze. He was much too talented at interrogation to have never done it before and Sakura mused that maybe ANBU prepared a ninja for every situation. It turned out she was the daughter of a multimillionaire who had employed rogue nin to do his dirty work for him, however he had failed to pay them. This had angered them and they had decided to kidnap or maim his daughter as justified payment. Her father was an exceptionally shrewd businessman and hadn't wanted to pay an insanely high price for an A rank mission, resulting with his huge bluff.

As a tough shoulder nudged her, she glanced upwards to meet a worried cerulean gaze.

"Are you alright? You were spacing out for a minute there," he asked her.

Her muscles ached and she was suffering from severe chakra depletion. The little chakra that had been restored after having used it all up a few days prior had been drained out of her because she had been healing Naruto so frequently. She knew that if she told Naruto the truth, he would insist they stop and rest or worry about her for the rest of the trip. They had a job to do and he didn't need any distractions.

She lied with a weak smile, "I'm fine. I'm just a little bit tired."

He caught her hand momentarily in his own and squeezed her fingers in a brief show of affection. She was unable to react, shocked by the blatancy of the action, and as his hand fell away from hers her face began to flush. An overwhelming happiness washed over her and her mind was doused in fleeting euphoria.

They were roughly an hour's walk away from Suna and, at this moment in time, were travelling through a rugged pass in between two towering craggy rock walls. It was considerably darker and the lack of light set an ominous feel to the place. It was so silent that Sakura could hear her own heartbeat and each individual grain of sand beneath her foot crunching against countless others. If she looked long enough, the shadows seemed to morph into demons and reach for her with smoky fingers. She shivered inwardly.

She could hear the nin behind them, around them, and she knew that her other three team mates were aware. It was another one of the rogue nin's painful waiting games that had her palms sweating and throat clenching as she swallowed in anxiety. No matter how many times she experienced it, the wait never seemed to get easier.

She started as a rock clattered down the wall to the side of her, narrowly missing Sai's head by a hairbreadth. Naruto took her hand again quickly, hiding it behind their backs subtly, and made slow, calming circles with his thumb on its back. Sai looked as though he was itching for a kunai whereas Kakashi was walking along in his enviable fashion, indifferent and unconcerned. The world could fall down around him and he'd still look like he was going out to buy some bread.

A deathly silence followed that set even their charge on edge. The impossibly high walls seemed to be closing in on them the harder Sakura looked so she kept her eyes fixed on the path in front of them. She tried to focus on the sand while at the same time keeping her senses alert as she forced her anxiety away.

The sand crunched beneath her feet. A calloused thumb traced the back of her hand. Kakashi's eyes flickered upwards for the briefest of moments. The sand crunched beneath her feet. A calloused thumb traced the back of her hand. A painter's hand reached into a kunai pouch. The sand crunched beneath her feet. A calloused thumb traced the back of her hand. The walls were closing in on them.

The sand crunched beneath her feet. A calloused thumb traced the back of her hand and her breathing began to quicken until she could hear each ragged breath in her own ears, until she began to see white spots before her, until her heart pounded like a gong in her ears, until, until, until-

Kunai crashed and rocks began tumbling from the tops of the walls like hail upon their heads. In the span of three seconds, a glowing green dome shield of chakra formed over their heads from Sakura's fingertips. Stones clattered against it uselessly, littering the soft sand like rubbish, and when the barrage came to pass the shield disappeared.

Sai had already finished painting and a gigantic dragon soared overhead, thrashing wildly with razor sharp jaws outstretched. There must have been twenty nin at the least and with their current state of fatigue Team Kakashi would be hard pressed to come out of this fight the victors. Their enemies leapt from the walls and landed on the sand in a sloppy circle that forced the Konoha nin into a tight protective formation.

Sai's dragon roared wildly as it crunched into a man's upper torso and Naruto winced as he heard each individual bone break painfully. It tossed the now paralyzed nin into the wall as if it were kicking off its shoes after a long day at work and when he fell to the ground, he never got back up again. Kakashi's fingers began to form seals at a speed that would have made Uchiha Itachi envious and the sand beneath them began to ripple like water. All of a sudden, sand rose like gigantic fingers and dragged three men underneath the ground. They didn't come back up.

As a nin drew too close to Naruto and their charge, the blonde boy whipped out his kunai and slashed it across the nin's neck. Without even a glance, Naruto threw the kunai to his left and it thudded into another nin's stomach who dropped to the sand like a stone. Sakura was on her knees, feeding chakra into the sand and began to manipulate it. When four nin attempted to rush her, it rose in a gigantic grainy wall and they ran into it before they could stop themselves. It hardened, reinforced by chakra, and the struggling shapes in the sand wall came to a halt shortly afterwards.

Sai and Sakura exchanged a look of understanding and he began to form hand seals. It was a long, complex string of seals and from her fingertips Sakura produced another chakra shield big enough to protect the five of them and a horse. The dragon began to morph and split into many different sections, one for each of the remaining nin. The remains of the dragon now resembled smoky black tendrils and they raced towards their respective targets. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut as the sound of screaming and rapid explosions began to deafen her.

A deathly silence fell over the area and as her chakra shield disappeared with a soft ping, the thick smoke eventually cleared. Gigantic scorch marks covered the rocky walls of the pass and something black and shivering caught her attention. It was two of Sai's art explosives but how could that be if every explosive had found its target…?

Then she realized that two ninja were still alive. The ground beneath Naruto's feet had begun tremble but he had yet to notice. A hand holding a kunai burst from the ground and suddenly, her mind went absolutely blank.

All she could think and feel was Naruto and an unspeakable fear that she was going to lose him. She couldn't lose him, he was hers and he had always been there, he was invincible and he was Naruto. Time seemed to slow as the ninja emerged from the sand and suddenly Sakura was moving, moving impossibly fast because he was in danger, because he could die-

Thud thud. Thud thud.

Her blood was pounding in her ears. She was in somebody's arms and was trying hard to catch her breath. Kakashi's chidori ripped into the chest of the man who had been going to kill Naruto. She glanced down at her chest and was suddenly too tired to feel surprised at the black steel protruding from it. She saw two tanned arms lock around her waist and she was pulled up to meet a pair of cerulean eyes. She had never been happier to see that colour.

Thud thud. Thud.

He was alive? That was good. She almost laughed. Relief was spreading through her like a painkiller and it drowned out the pain. She had reached him in time! She smiled blearily at him and suddenly he was angry, yelling words she could no longer hear because the blood was pounding in her ears and it was so loud. Her eyes had been captivated by the movement of his lips and she watched them open and close, amazed at such a tiny phenomenon.

Thud. Thud.

The blood pounded in her ears, louder and louder, until she thought she was going to go deaf but struggled to keep her reluctant eyes open. Her hand rose with so much more effort than it should have taken and brushed the whiskers on the side of his face absentmindedly. She watched in fascination as it fell limply to her side and suddenly she was so tired…so…

Thud.

As her vision faded to black, Naruto's skin burned like fire against her own and an evil chakra filled the air. She tried to keep her eyes open, tried to see what was happening but the blood was pounding in her ears and she was tired, so exhausted-

Next Chapter Preview: Leaf Green

Then suddenly, he no longer had any chakra.

They were the most terrifying moments of his entire life. Something ominous, something dark chilled his blood and the fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled. His breath caught in his throat and suddenly his heartbeat was too loud, beating, beating, beating…

He could still sense the Kyuubi's chakra in the depths of his seal but it was though he couldn't reach it anymore, as though…as though he had been cut off-

Minato's scream filled his head, "NO!"

Just in case you were wondering...

Shouldn't Sakura be more guilty about going after Naruto? What the hell happened to Sasuke?!
Pfft, forget Sasuke. This is narusaku, if you want sasusaku go read Little Piece of Heaven (now that is a great story). This is going to be a short story so some things will be a little unrealistic.

I thought Sai uses lions, not dragons?
Well, Sai can use anything he wants to as long as he has his ink and his scroll. Ahahaha, I just had a really nasty image in my head of Sai drawing a naked woman. Eww force it away, force it away me!

Shouldn't Minato be helping Naruto out a bit more with the seal...?
Yeah, but don't forget that Minato is Naruto's freaking dad. Minato knows that Naruto is his son in this story but Naruto doesn't, so it's only logical Minato would love to spend some quality time with his son. The real seal fixing happens in the next chapter.

Selandora (the sickeningly emotional undeniably sexy one madly in love with Hana Yori Dango at the moment)