Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 3
Naruto woke up to a familiar wooden ceiling, the knots and lines in the wood nearly memorized.
He had felt as if he had woken up from a long dream, that he merely walked out of the forest that day and went to sleep in his own bed. But the uncomfortable make-shift cot prickling at his back was a painful reminder of reality.
A weary sigh tumbled out of him. "I think it's time to begin before it's too late."
He rubbed the crust from his eyes as he unsteadily stood up. Yawning loudly, Naruto threw on a makeshift shirt that happened to look closer to a pile of grass strewed out on the floor, his old shirt lost in the dragging years.
Vanishing with a burst of speed, Naruto scattered away from sight. His sudden departure uprooting ink-heavy parchment and ink-empty pens.
In the center of the Haunted Forest, the copse of trees within the Bubble that boasted gargantuan and twisted trees, Naruto appeared in a cloud of kicked up air and dust. His face was blank, yet it did little to conceal the tensing of his muscles that gave away his anxiety.
He looked ahead and saw he was just on the edge of the Bubble, a key part of his plan. Dark blue irises swiveled over to the roots of the trees around him.
'This should provide a good anchor.' The self-assurance did little to alleviate the heaviness building in his stomach.
'It's not like I can do this again if I fail.'
With a deep breath he began to focus. His virtual mind flew to the oscillating flow of blue chakra within his core, its mechanical nature a far cry from the churning and chaotic wisps that eluded his control when he was younger. But he ignored the chakra and only moved further mentally, seeking something even deeper within his body.
Red energy whipped into his mind, electrifying his carefully maintained senses. The pulsing nerves running down his neck felt a toxic fire, nearly bringing him to his knees. But the real distress he realized was the sudden lack of clarity he had, nearly forcing him to wipe his hands with the plan.
'No! I can't stop now. I just have to keep going.' His face twisted in effort and his teeth began to grind against one another.
More red invaded Naruto's senses, real and mental. The bubbling chakra of the Kyuubi no Yoko had begun to crawl across his body, quickly taking the shape of something fox-like in nature. But he didn't, or more appropriately, couldn't stop.
'More- More- Moremoremore!' Lines on his face darkened to coarse black and his hair flew up with a shock of crimson energy. His eyes shifted into crimson orbs dangerously close to the Kyuubi's. Prickling at his hands stole his attention as he saw claws rip from his fingertips.
Two tails of crimson chakra grew from his cloak and the haze in his mind intensified. His thoughts couldn't capture anything tangible. Plans, escape, the Leaf village, thoughts and concepts normally ingrained leaked from his mind as if they had never existed, only to be replaced with a swell of rage and malice. He could only futilely hold onto one word- more.
Three, four, five tails, and then nothing.
He was back in the industrial hallway. Oily black hovered over the edge of his senses. Yellow lights hung precariously on the ceiling. It was a sight that he had not seen in a long time. He had wished it was a little longer.
The dimly lit hallway guided him to his destination, the walls around him almost pushing him forward. He took a few steps, carefully placing each foot upon the soaked floor. Metal bars of a cage drifted into his sight. His eyes widened and he flew back in a stumbled leap.
"I never even noticed how close I was…" Naruto breathed.
"Of course you didn't. It's not like you're in your right mind at the moment." The voice had a mocking tilt to its words, and it was easy to place.
Naruto shifted his body to keep the revealed doppelganger in sight, not saying anything as he pondered his next few actions.
"Silent treatment, huh? It's not like I don't know what your plan is. Pretty crazy if you ask me, and maybe if you ask the Kyuubi." The words held a slight threat in them. Naruto's plan would fail immediately upon discovery by the Kyuubi.
"You won't tell it." Naruto's words came out strong in contrast with what he felt.
The doppelganger jumped from where it was in the corner, the shadows sliding off to reveal it crouching close to the cage. Too close.
"I wonder how you can say that so confidently." Its eyes were amused now, and it placed a hand on the steel bar near it.
"Because despite our differences, you're clearly something "of" me. You feed from the Kyuubi's chakra and hate, growing your malice and influence, but you share one thing with me. What started it all." Naruto's words echoed into the chamber, but the Kyuubi did not seem to want to show itself.
"Hatred for the Kyuubi, huh. Despite that piece of shit wooden board being fake, I guess I liked it too. And the Kyuubi is the primary suspect. But, hmm...I wonder. If I really am a part of you, why do you insist on destroying me? You know what will happen if you succeed." The doppelganger stopped smiling, its face and eyes deathly serious.
A morose smile slowly formed on Naruto's face. He looked down into the palm of his hand.
"You're right. It's crazy to destroy a part of yourself. But it's too late for me. You're too strong, only getting stronger as the seal holding the Kyuubi loosens. At this point, if I were to give up, you would become me." Naruto looked up suddenly. Time was winding down, he needed to start.
A column of water grew from the ground, wrapping around his legs. The cyclone of water pushed him up, slowly lifting him towards the center of the gate where a paper seal was placed. The curling black ink of fuinjutsu was evident: Open or Close.
He had tried before to close it, hoping to strengthen the seal. But it was to no avail. The seal itself resisted greatly. At best he could temporarily suppress the Kyuubi's chakra, but the fuinjutsu was loose and getting looser. He didn't have the knowledge to do much beyond that.
From the fundamentals in the academy, at the least ones he could barely remember, he knew of seals; specifically the ones that made exploding tags. Fuinjutsu was essentially a written language of chakra. Iruka had described it as a ninja's way of engineering complicated jutsu. It was beyond most ninja, including him. The only bits of knowledge he could claim however, told him that exploding tags were very similar to the seal holding the gate closed. To "open" an exploding tag was to start the fuse for the explosion. He could extrapolate this concept to the gate seal.
If he were to open the seal on the gate, Naruto knew it would unleash the Kyuubi.
With practiced movements, his five fingers lit up with blue fire. Like exploding notes, to manipulate a fuinjutsu you needed pure chakra. He did not understand what Iruka meant back then of course, but time revealed quite a few things.
His eyes drifted to the right of the seal and a crimson orb in darkness froze his movements.
"This foolish idea again. You cannot close the seal on your own, especially as you released so much of my chakra before attempting it." Its voice was slow and methodical, as if it was thinking furiously and delivering the words as an afterthought.
"You are correct. Closing the seal is impossible. In fact, I plan on opening this cage for you." Naruto's eyes closed in reflex as the Kyuubi roared.
"What game are you playing now!? Releasing me means death, and your death does not release me from this prison as this accursed place you've found yourself in has already shown! Has your brain rotted from time!?" Bubbles of crimson clashed against the groaning cage walls and bars as the Kyuubi let loose its anger and frustration.
"If I were outside this...place, then yes, I would die. Instantaneously. Mostly because my body couldn't handle such a large and integral amount of chakra leaving at once. But I have already planted the seeds. I gathered more than five tails of your chakra before I entered here, and in response my mind has brought me to this representation of the seal." His words were resolute and focused despite his fingers shaking as he cast off the paper seal on the gate. Behind the paper was a gate mechanism, representative of the seal's lock. Bright blue fingertips tips latched onto the swirling black fuinjutsu on his stomach.
"Foolish! Jinchuriki who are separated from their Bijuu will always die. It matters not if it is instantly or but a few seconds. You have condemned yourself to unnecessary suffering." The Bijuu fell back into the darkness following its words, convinced that Naruto had made a mistake.
The Jinchuriki took a deep breath, as if he were exhaling all the anxiety within him.
His eyes sharpened into sapphires and he rotated his glowing blue hand.
The gong and sound of metal gears meshing together reverberated throughout the chamber. Waves of water were pushed from the unlocked cage gates in a torrent of power just beyond the darkness. And then silence.
"This is going to hurt," muttered Naruto, the understatement all the more prevalent as a roar of epic proportions nearly collapsed his ears.
Crimson chakra flew in a pressure wave, smashing the metal walls and the water beneath Naruto's feet. The leaves and branches that made up his clothes flew erratically with the wind. Covering his eyes, Naruto could only feel the impending doom about to be unleashed.
Naruto exploded to the left, sacrificing his right side to take the brunt of long, jagged claws. The impact sent him into a tumble of energy, a large gap in his chest wheezing out blood. He watched in shock as his own blood and failing enhancement chakra intertwined in a shimmering chaos of light.
The blue of his eyes went dark as his head toppled into the murky water and his body ragdolled across the chamber. Ludicrous amounts of momentum carried him what felt like miles, up became down and the world turned into vapor. Finally, the chaos ended in pure agony as his back met metal. Compressed bones snapped against cracked metal, and the sliver of chakra pressurizing his body as enhancement collapsed in on itself, leaving him barely conscious. His mind drifted much like his body as it fell slowly into the stagnant, black water.
'It can't end like this. Move!' Naruto's thoughts felt slow, as if they had to move through the water surrounding him.
He felt something yank him up painfully by his blood-stained yellow hair.
It was only when he opened his eyes to look at what was holding him did he realize his eyes were closed. Water dripped down from his body as he looked into the red pupils of his doppelganger.
"Stupid. What did you expect? That it would let you escape the seal so easily? When you opened that gate-" The doppelganger's finger flicked backwards to somewhere he couldn't make out "-this place became just as much the Kyuubi no Yoko's as it was yours. Escaping is probably impossible with its chakra bearing down."
Naruto fell onto his knees and coughed roughly into his hand, spitting out the blood that filled his throat.
"You-! Why are you helping…?" The rasp came out painfully.
"Don't know. But that's enough talking, it's here."
Red chakra swirled out of the darkness as the Kyuubi no Yoko appeared, a pair of its claws stained red with Naruto's blood. The air became heavy with bloodlust and chakra.
"That look of pain on your face, Naruto, it was something satisfying for once. It does not matter whether you work with your darker self, you will experience more of that pain before your death."
Naruto was pulled violently back by his doppelganger as one of the Kyuubi's tails whipped across the spot they were just in, bisecting the floor and water. Waves of water flew from the impact zone, accosting the sides of the prison.
"Get up 'ya idiot. It's no time to be this weak from a little pain." The grating voice brought a little life to Naruto as annoyance seeped in.
He slowly leaned off his darker self's shoulder, shakily standing up. A sharp pain in his chest nearly dropped him again but he persisted.
"Shut up. I didn't think it would be able to stop me from escaping the seal with just its presence. I'll have to lure it out for this to work." They both blurred out of sight as the Kyuubi roared a blast of pressure and energy across the chamber, nearly being crushed under the enormous force.
Reappearing several dozens of feet away, Naruto and his look-alike found themselves on the chamber ceiling suspended from their feet, looking down at the Kyuubi in its entirety.
Raising his hand, Naruto flung hundreds of near invisible swathes of chakra strings in the direction of the Kyuubi. Glaring blue energy cut into the fiery red chakra of the Bijuu, collapsing to blue particles immediately from the corrosive effect it had.
"Tch. Its chakra is inherently corruptive. The Kyuubi's hatred and malice extends beyond just affecting your inner personality Naruto, the chakra it has can vaporize anything it touches. I wouldn't get too close," whispered his darker half.
Not paying any attention to the doppelganger's words, Naruto brought both his hands together, biting back a yelp from the jostle it gave to his injury. The strings working on it were slowly sewing the wound shut internally, but they wouldn't do anything for the pain.
Chakra strings began to coat his interlocking hands, each of the strings wrapped around them and rotating in a rhythm of energy as he focused more and more chakra. A shimmering glow of chakra began to light up the chamber as tremendous amounts of chakra condensed in the form of strings spun furiously around Naruto's hands.
"Whoa. Got quite a lot of rotation and energy there. Did you make a new technique when I wasn't looking?" The doppelganger seemed strangely unhappy at its own slightly sarcastic words, as if offended that he never used it in any of their battles.
"This attack is a bit above both of us. It was designed solely for the Kyuubi with its chakra in mind. So don't feel too bad," Naruto shot back.
Letting the chakra magnetizing his feet to the ceiling circulate back into his body, Naruto dropped down just above the monster below, barely holding onto the dense energy in his hands. His body flew down, only a few seconds away from impact.
The world slowed down as Naruto fell directly in front of the Kyuubi, its eyes making contact with his own. His interlocked fingers stayed together as they spread out into open hands.
"Rinkai-ten!" His fingers exploded away from one another and the vibrating strings that were temporarily held cracked off, pushing each of his hands to the side as if enclosing something invisible. The strings fused into a brilliant streak of blue that hurtled through the air separating Naruto and the Kyuubi. Instantly a crack of pressurized air reverberated from the ninja as the sound barrier broke. The Kyuubi's eyes widened for a millisecond before it moved and nine tails hung over it to act as a shield.
'It's fast!' Naruto's thoughts barely processed before the streak of blue struck the crimson tails and the world exploded.
Energy and steam hung in the air as Naruto flew across the water, barely keeping his balance as lights swam in and out of his vision.
"Don't feel like doing that again." Groaned Naruto. He fell to the right as his doppelganger landed near him, barely catching him.
"That attack was quite dangerous ya'know. Condensing your already small chakra strings using rotation. If it touched you anywhere, I think even the Bubble would take time to bring you back." The red eyed Naruto look-alike shook its head. Now wasn't the time for distractions and small talk. It threw Naruto over its shoulder, ignoring his groan, and watched as dozens of its own strings carried him off to somewhere slightly less fatal.
"You. I do not understand why you insist on helping your mortal enemy!" The voice of the Kyuubi was as sudden as it was ferocious, Naruto's attack seemingly doing no damage.
It swept the lingering steam from the center of the prison, its claws moving in a red blur through the air. The doppelganger barked out a laugh, forcing itself to grin at the terrifying presence.
"Mortal enemy? What do you think this is? A game? If anything can be called that, it's you!" Razor sharp strings flew in time with its words as the doppelganger leapt in the direction of the broken bars nearby. Chakra strings soared into the chakra of the Kyuubi, the ends rotating furiously with condensed energy.
"Enough!" The strings collapsed and fell apart, the residual chakra from the powerful attack exploding away from the Kyuubi. The Kyuubi slowly moved forward, but the effects of Naruto's attack had been finally revealed with its decision not to use its tails.
The doppelganger's teeth shined in the dark, realizing its gamble had paid off.
"Well, well, well… Would you look at that, that guy's attack hurt you, the great Bijuu!"
The Kyuubi's tails hung behind it as usual, yet they moved haphazardly, a contrast to the beginning of the fight when the nine tails glided with the finesse of human fingers. Crimson chakra floated off the tails, as if multiple holes with leaks of chakra in the Kyuubi's flesh were made.
'It seems as if the Rinkai-ten is a lot more subtle in its effects than I thought. It sliced down the chakra of the Kyuubi, specifically the chakra in its tails. Like a sword versus a hammer. The sword's sharp edge focuses more energy into a smaller spot, making it more effective. Now imagining the same with chakra, throw a wave of chakra and you can easily defend against it, but focus all that energy into a sharp pinpoint and you've got something dangerous. Now focus more energy into points much smaller than a sword's edge and small enough to slip past the Kyuubi's outer chakra, and you can literally cut the Kyuubi where it can't defend.' The thoughts furiously ran through the doppelganger's head, and despite itself, it was impressed with Naruto.
'To hurt something like that, you-no, we've grown…'
Broken gate pieces rose up from the water beside the red-eyed copy of Naruto, chakra strings wrapped tightly around each of the metal. It launched the strings in different directions, floating them around the entire chamber. It looked towards where it had carried off Naruto. He was more rested now apparently, as he was quietly watching the battle near the back of the chamber.
'Just watch Naruto, I have a trick or two up my sleeves as well.'
With a wave of its hand the dozens of string with metals attached to them had begun to rotate around the chamber. Each of which was dangerously close to hitting each other.
The Kyuubi glanced around, confused at what the dark half of Naruto had in mind. Regardless, it slowly lifted its tails to eye-level, a few more seconds and the damage done by the annoyance would disappear. A loud ringing disrupted its thoughts and made it refocus on the metal pieces rotating through the air. They were much faster now, a gleam of reflecting light the only indicator of where they were in the air.
Another loud ringing echoed into the chamber, revealing two gleams of metal had just glanced off one another. Sparks of red lit up the dark for a few seconds before disappearing into the water below. Another ring, another impact. The frequency at which the metal glanced off each other was getting larger. Sparks were occurring so frequently now that it barely stayed dark.
"Your parlor trick is a bit disappoint-"
The ringing increased dramatically as more gleams of metal glanced off one another, each adding to a stream of sparks until all the pieces of metal had begun to glow with heat.
'That heat… It seems as if the copy will attempt to use it as an attack. Pointless. No amount of heat could damage my chakra.'
Unnoticed by the Kyuubi the water that had covered the chamber's floor had begun to shift to the back of the chamber. The water itself being drained into a makeshift hole in the wall near the old seal.
The pieces of metal clashing against one another now were glowing brilliantly, casting the chamber in an orange light.
"Now!" The scream echoed from the lungs of the doppelganger and in a wide arc the pieces swung past the Kyuubi to enter the hole in the wall behind it.
Water enclosed. Temperatures reaching thousands of degrees. A slight hiss of scalding air and water was the only hint before the Kyuubi exploded down the chamber as kilotons of energy in the form of vaporized air smashed against its cloak.
The doppelganger glanced up, capturing Naruto's eyes before the wave of destructive steam took him into its grasp as it did the Kyuubi's.
Naruto awoke with a gasp. He looked around, but his movements were sluggish as if he was missing something. Red blocked out his vision as he finally realized.
'That guy! He really did it. The Kyuubi is free from its prison."
Naruto dove towards the shadows of a certain large tree. He only had a bit of time before the Kyuubi oriented itself to the world beyond after so many years in captivity.
Hundreds of chakra strings, each glowing incandescently with dense power, flew from his left hand through the boundary of the Bubble on his left, the Kyuubi only a few feet to his right. Sensing the strings on the opposite end of the Bubble he maneuvered them around dozens of the gargantuan trunks of the trees just on the edge of the Bubble.
With the slightest of movements he pulled each string back through the boundary, reattaching them to his right hand. The pulley system was finally formed. A explosive roar behind him broke his concentration.
"Awake already?" The taunting in his voice did not seem intelligent considering the situation.
"You filthy humans, always rushing to experience pain after pain!" The time for talk was done for the Kyuubi apparently, as it did not hesitate to leap in Naruto's direction. The Bijuu's claws gleamed in the daylight of the Bubble, glancing against the blond child before its world disappeared, to be replaced with an eerily similar, but truly different perspective. Thick cords of chakra smashed against its torso before its vision changed back to the familiar area it had first appeared in.
"You've fallen between the boundaries of the Bubble. Now to keep you there." Naruto shot the strings from both his hands, the left ones to the right and the right ones to the left. They looped around a copse of tree trunks before reattaching themselves to his fingertips.
The Kyuubi was encircled. Its body was held in a pulley system from both ends, in which its body was tightly wound with chakra strings.
"These are nothing!" The Kyuubi shook the entire earth beneath their feet with a shock of chakra. Crimson chakra tore trenches across the Bubble, uprooting entire trees and swarming the air with cyclones of energy. Barely holding on to the ground with chakra, Naruto spun dozens more chakra strings directly from his back, each stronger than the last, and weaved them into the ground. They wrapped around the roots and foundations of the forest, giving him a measure of hold.
His muscles strained with chakra enhancement as he slowly stepped back. The pulley system tightening from both ends at the distance he was making. And in response the Kyuubi became even more trapped with little room between it and the Bubble's boundary. It abruptly disappeared, a flicker of its image all that was left before it reappeared again from the other end of the Bubble.
The realization came to the Kyuubi's eyes as its pupils sharpened.
It did not bother with talking, its body began to thrash with an ungodly energy. Its cloak of chakra inflicting malice and hatred over Naruto's very state of mind.
"Argh!" The scream tore from his throat despite his efforts. Haziness and liquid fell from his eyes. Tears he thought. The world became noise, too much to discern. The malice and hatred became stronger.
'So close…' His thoughts chugged on. One step, two steps. The Kyuubi flickered again before reappearing.
A ball of purple and black chakra surged from the monster's mouth.
'When did it do that?' The ball instantaneously moved, a speed that Naruto thought was possible only in dreams. His left arm ceased to exist and the earth behind him turned to dust as the ball of chaos penetrated deep with the Earth.
The resulting explosion lit up everything around it. Bright fire burned into Naruto's corneas only disappearing a second later, leaving him with hazy pain and exhaustion. He could feel that everything behind him was gone. The explosion may have even destroyed the clan house. But it wasn't too late.
Chakra strings that were once attached to his vaporized left hand slowly arrayed themselves to his torso. He glanced back and his mouth fell open.
The hole expanded all the way till the end of the boundary. A crater of gargantuan size and terrifying evidence of power. It was more than humbling.
Hatred and malice careened into Naruto again before he could relax. Stiffening immediately he jumped down the side of the hole, swinging with his right hand anchored to the trapping strings.
He hit the side of the hole hard as a sudden tension forced him back in the direction of the Kyuubi. The jagged rocks cut deep into his face causing streams of blood to drip down his jaw.
'I can't stop now.' Biting his lip hard Naruto gasped as chakra left his back again. The strings flew towards the bottom of the hole, hooking to the side and near the bottom.
"Agh!" Blood spat out of his mouth, staining the white teeth with blood. His missing arm had begun to throb with a horrific pain. But if he could just finish this, it would be over.
He barely caught his face from smashing into the wall with his right arm, crushing the bedrock and drawing grooves with his bloody nails. The arm was slowly forced up, despite his resistance, taking him with it as it was dragged harshly into the rockface and up the hole wall. The chakra at his back tightened with tension, barely resisting the awesome strength of what surely was the Kyuubi.
"No way you bastard. I-" The image of a lookalike and red eyes flickered through his mind, "-We tried too-"
The rock beneath his feet shattered, a beautiful clarity filling him with energy as he dug his feet into the rock for a foothold, "-damn hard to lose now!"
Chakra attached to his back glowed as a bloody Naruto pumped as much of it as he could put out, condensing so much that he was sure it would kill him.
A disturbing roar echoed out into the air and sounds of screeching pierced his ears. But he did not stop. Unbridled tears spilled from eyes, such was the horror he could hear happening above him, hidden away.
The air coiled and dark crimson chakra struck the top of the Bubble, tinting the entirety of it red. And the horrified screeching continued.
The memories were coming back to him now. His experiment with the wooden bridge and its explosive conclusion. The beginning and end of the wood merged at a single point, defying the laws of physics and order. And, like all things that defy nature, it was brutally put down. The wood had vaporized at the ends, leaving nothing, not even ash.
He had always thought it was just an exceedingly powerful explosion, enough to remove all traces of what it had destroyed. Yet the more he thought about, the more he remembered the utter lack of evidence generally associated with an explosion, the more he began to think of it less as an explosion and more as a purge. A purge fueled by the force of nature itself. One not even the Kyuubi could resist.
The sounds were dying off now. He looked up. The sky has returned to its original color, blue as it always was.
He could feel the lack of tension on the strings attached to him. Was it really over? Did he win?
Biting down hard, Naruto walked up the side, barely keeping himself from slipping on the blood dripping down his body and staining everything he touched.
'One more step now.'
He fell forward onto the grass, not enough energy to even look at where the Kyuubi once was.
'Just look damn it.' His head slowly moved up and an eye peered over to the Bubble's boundary. Nothing. Absolutely nothing was there anymore.
"Heh. Ha. Ha-HA!" The laugh came out suddenly, echoing into the air around him. He let his head fall back into the grass.
"Ha-ha. It's over damn it."
Tears began to stream down the sides of Naruto's eyes, despite the laughter escaping him.
'I really feel like crying right now.' Sobs escaped him, but he didn't care. He was finally free of the monster that was within him. But unbidden, his doppelganger came to mind.
'My copy, I wonder where it is- I wonder where he is now… '
4 Years Later
Clack. Clack. Clack. Naruto stopped for a few seconds, admiring the craftsmanship of his latest pair of footwear.
The wooden geta sandals did not tend to comfort his feet, but their durability and longevity were miles better compared to the grass moccasins he fashioned sometime ago.
A sigh escaped him as he continued on to his home, the clacking of wood resonating in the silent air.
It was some time later that Naruto sat atop his house, the scene of still trees in the backdrop of his latest efforts to learn the mysteries of Chakra.
"OK. spiritual emphasis at about 65%. Now to get something like that… I think maybe I would best follow the Ram seal up with a Snake, or do a Boar then Ram."
Scratching his chin, he scribbled something on the table drawn on the parchment laid in front of him.
"That will give me the balance of energies I want, but I also need to affect the remote chakra so I should follow up with another Tiger."
The scratching of parchment filled the air as he devised his newest combination, a first in Naruto's application of a theory regarding chakra.
Time had delivered Naruto hints over the years, eventually leading him to discover a key component in manipulating chakra. In its simplest terms, there were two sides of chakra, the realistic, grounded side, and the side that almost seemed like magic. He called them Physical and Spiritual Energy, respectively. He had pondered the idea ages ago, but it was not until feeling a subtle difference in the three basic jutsu that the idea really took root. A general undertone to the Henge and Bunshin jutsu was a feeling of pressure, as if he had undergone swimming in a deep lake and his head had experienced a slight compression. The feeling did not seem to be replicated as much when using the Kawarimi.
The idea had been that this feeling of pressure may explain the differences in the actual effects of the jutsu. The Henge and Bunshin may be jutsu just like the Kawarimi, but they were both almost magical in function, taking into account mental images he conjured in the middle of using hand seals. The Kawarimi on the other hand was overwhelmingly physical in its functions; chakra physically grasping something remotely before pulling him in much the same way. He understood that both relied on powers beyond those found in everyday life, but there was a distinct imaginative quality to something like the Henge and Bunshin.
And so the terms came to be. Spiritual Energy, imagination given form. Physical Energy, form given animation.
This theory had begun to take more shape as he had found a viable pattern that explained the differences between jutsu. Just like chakra, jutsu themselves had two sides: The hand seals that actually launched or initiated a jutsu, and the underlying balancing of spiritual and physical energies that emerged as hand seals were combined.
He had found that the core of balancing spiritual and physical energies for all three basic jutsu could be at the Ram seal; forming a focal point in which hand seals succeeding or preceding it influenced the balance of energy. And since the Kawarimi was not explicitly imaginative in its functions, it would also explain why it did not use a Ram seal- rather it would not be slanted towards any single type of energy, making the jutsu have close to an equal balance of energies.
In all, it meant that to design a new jutsu, he had to not only take into consideration the basic seals that outlined the mechanics, he had to order the hand seals in a way that gave him the proper balance of energy suitable for the jutsu. A daunting task to say the least. But he had a start. If he could modify one of his three jutsu in a way that proved his theory, he could begin the arduous task of designing a jutsu from scratch.
"I'll go through the normal seals for Bunshin, and then add a Ram, followed by a Snake and finally a Tiger." Naruto jumped from his perch onto the ground in front of the house.
There were no signs of battle here. No crater. No charred dirt or even scuffed grass. It was disorienting, as the Bubble always seemed to be, but there was a disturbing element in how easily the Bubble defied reality even in the face of the Kyuubi's ultimate powers.
Parchment littered the grounds, however. Some pieces had fled away in the years, finding their way outside despite his careful organization of things. After the removal of the Kyuubi and his abrupt revival after losing so much blood, he had seen the results of the energy blast the Bijuu launched.
The clan house had been incinerated and brought back by the Bubble. But without all the work he had put into writing pages atop of pages of ideas. As a result, the four years were spent doing much of what had come before the battle, and perhaps even before the discovery of the Kyuubi: Coming up with new ideas for escape.
He had a few ideas in the works but this was his most promising. Closing his eyes, Naruto grasped the chakra within him, the hum of power reverberating ever so slightly. A rushing feeling filled his veins, the familiar sensation diluted to a comforting one with time and control. It was unnecessary for him to intentionally manipulate his chakra when using hand seals, especially as the hand seal chakra was focused unconsciously. However, it had been years since his chakra had reached a point where his active manipulation of chakra through his hand seals was more efficient than the unconscious circulation, saving him chakra and stamina.
Without the Kyuubi within him, despite how much he hated to admit it, he was weakened significantly. The once stream of powerful, churning Bijuu chakra that melded into his chakra had bolstered his reserves a little too much. It had been obvious that the seal that governed his relationship with the Kyuubi was complex enough to affect him deeply, long after it was gone. His chakra system had not been damaged, or the Bubble would have reversed it. But it did change in such a way that that drawing it out always felt fundamentally flawed, a missing piece always out of reach.
The feeling had faded with time and his control of chakra began to flourish once again, though he could not help but think how much more powerful he would have been with the Kyuubi within him.
Blinking his thoughts free, he began. Naruto's fingers struck together at blinding speeds.
'Ram. Snake. Tiger. Ram. Snake. Tiger.'
An explosion of smoke heralded itself at a point to the right of him, the area he had focused his jutsu on.
As the smoke slowly cleared he could see the old face of the Third Hokage, his body hunched and his eyes shadowed by a familiar hat.
Hope swelled within him. Slowly he reached his out to the image, his hand shaking slightly.
His fingers warped the image of the Third, distorting it before collapsing the Henged Bunshin, a jutsu of his very own.
"Yes!" Joy filled the air of the Bubble as Naruto yelled out.
'This is it. Squandering and failing every step of the way and I've finally found the beginning. The beginning of escape.'
"Watch me! I'm coming everyone!" And so it went, that Naruto Uzumaki found his footing in the spiral to despair.
700 Years Later
"Here...I'm returning this." He had been holding it for a while now.
Sasuke looked down, his hand shook as he reached out to take the scratched headband from Naruto's hand.
"I'll keep this until… we really settle things between us." Naruto looked into his eyes in reply, a smile coming to his face that mirrored the one on Sasuke's. And then Sasuke left as he usually did.
"Hmm, I think it's time to go back now." Naruto took off in the direction of the village. The end of the 4th Shinobi War did not come without casualties, and as the Hero of the war he would need to be with the people so that morale doesn't spiral downwards. He hoped he could catch Kakas-
His foot stopped moving. Nothing moved, like he was frozen in place.
'What is this!? Kurama, what's going on?' No reply met his frantic thoughts and fear crept in.
"Calm down." Naruto's eyes swiveled to the side to see… himself. He was young. What he would look like if he was eleven or twelve. His clothes, a long dark cloak over a simple shirt and pants, were made out of a strange material, the texture similar to bark. The strangest of all, however, was his face. It was undeniably his face with the same blue eyes and the three marks on each cheek, but there was nothing else there. No amusement, anger, fear, interest... there was nothing in those eyes and the stillness of his face filled his stomach with lead.
The young copy moved forward and brought his hand up to Naruto's head.
"You don't know what's going on of course. But this is business as usual, I think we're on our 200th trial." The words were nonsense of course, the boy was probably an enemy ninja with a strange obsession for him. And disturbing elements aside he needed to unfreeze himself fast.
"Stop struggling. Your power is remotely controlled at all times, you see. It adds to the smoothness of the plot. If we let you have full power all the time, well, it just wouldn't be as exciting would it?"
Stop struggling? He never struggled more in his life.
The young boy put his hand down abruptly and sat down on a nearby rock, and for the first time he could see something on the face, his own face. Weariness. Lines appeared and he thought he might have been mistaken putting the age of the copy at eleven or twelve, or the Henge was deeply flawed.
"I'm sorry, you know. I'll be frank. You're just a clone, put into this elaborate story-line with a bunch of other clones. The boss, the original, well he went sort of-" The boy twirled his fingers around his head. The young copy's boss was crazy? Of course he was, and this guy was probably just as crazy. Clones? Elaborate story-line? Where the hell was Kurama?
"It started a few hundred years ago, the boss had put in so much effort, you know? He created thousands of jutsu, each one closer to freeing him from the Bubble. But he never got it. He never was able to escape, no matter how many clones he created to help him out, no matter how many years past and how many things he discovered about chakra." A loud sigh escaped the copy, or was it a clone now? Impossible.
"Eventually, he just snapped. Ordered all his clones to start changing the landscape. You see, despite the fact that he couldn't escape, the boss became impossibly powerful. He could even expand space itself, making the jail he was trapped in a thousand times larger." That sounded like Kaguya. Just when the war ended there was another powerful guy like that…
The young copy of Naruto picked up a small rock near him, weighing it for a few seconds before chucking it into the air.
"Elemental jutsu were mastered long ago so we easily shaped the mountains, the lakes, and everything in between. We created Konoha, made up a few other villages with their own designs since we didn't know what it was like on the outside. We even put in different people, all clones with their memories changed to play along with this fucking farce of a life. Clones like me, the ones in charge of management, kept most of our memories from when we were first created, though we don't know about anything specific before popping into existence."
Naruto just looked at him.
"I wouldn't believe me either. But unfortunately, it's true. This life was supposed to be set up so the boss would be able to "escape" in a way. The first time he tried living as the Naruto in the elaborate hoax things just failed multiple times, his power alienated people and he couldn't help but see them as fakes. He refused to remove his own memories and eventually just created a clone to live out a life in his own stead as he watched. You."
The copy suddenly stood up. He raised his hand to Naruto's face, and a tint of blue light grew from the palm.
Words failed to form in Naruto's mind.
'Was this real? This couldn't be. It just couldn't goddammit.'
"But like all things, the show ended. And so the boss ordered it to happen again by wiping out everyone's memory, including yours. He usually liked it when we spiced things up. Adding a character here and there, removing one, changing history… You know, things that would make the story more interesting. This story-line ended quite nicely with minimal deaths, and I feel bad about doing this so I thought I would just explain it to you."
Naruto closed his eyes. Everything was a lie. A horrible, disturbing lie. But it was a lie that never ended. He wouldn't disappear and maybe, he could find a way out of this. Tears threatened to escape but even that failed him as the paralysis held.
"Maybe the boss will change his mind eventually and try to escape, but in the meantime, the show must go on." The copy smiled slightly before he began.
The last thing Naruto heard was a sound of breaking glass before nothingness consumed him.
Author's Note:
Hey, it's been a while. Not as long as it's been for Naruto! I thought of putting a summary at the top of the last chapter since it's been a long time but I thought it wouldn't matter seeing as how I do go over a few things that happened last time in this chapter. About the ending, people might hate it but this was one of the two endings I had for the story and the one I really wanted to see published. The second ending involved Naruto breaking out which would have gone on for a few more chapters and wouldn't be the standard OP Naruto that followed canon for the sake of it. Might post it if I ever get around to cleaning it up. Though I am focusing on a few more stories involving One Piece and Naruto so look out for that.
Thanks for reading!
