Chapter 4

Five years ago

I surfaced in the surprisingly deep plunge pool at the bottom of the waterfall. Climbing out onto relatively dry land, I laid down for a few minutes to catch my breath. Surprisingly, screaming as you fall a thousand feet is harder than it looks. I stood up, shaking off as much water as I could, before walking towards the town.

As I walked into the town, I got some pretty strange looks. But honestly, how would you react if you saw someone who was practically dressed in rags, sopping wet, and covered in scrapes and bruises from walking through a forest for a week and a half? Precisely. Not very well at all.

Gravitating towards the inn in my search for food, I almost stumbled over a small child. I apologized to them, before continuing on my way. A music store caught my eye during my quest, but the need for food called louder than curiosity.

Five minutes later, I was sitting down, eating a wonderful meal of steak and ale pie with mashed potatoes and peas. Just as I began tearing in to the pie, the child I had met before came up to me, and tugged on my… well, for simplicity's sake we'll call it a sleeve, but it was really just another rag. Anyway, they came up and tugged on my sleeve, and I looked down at them. I spoke in a voice hoarse from misuse.

"Yes?"

/Once you are finished, sir, my master would like to talk to you./

"Of course."

It wasn't until the boy had left that I realized he had spoken into my mind. When I did notice, I almost choked on my pie, but I recovered quickly and bolted the rest of my food. Leaving some payment on the bar, I left to locate the kid.

One week ago

With a gasp, I wrenched myself out of the flashback. So many things… I thought I had remembered everything that had already happened, but apparently not. I gazed at the still-sleeping boy in the bed I had made for him. I reached out towards him, still curious as to why he hadn't woken up. I laid my hand against his forehead, before pushing my consciousness into the boy.

Inside Naruto's mind.

I stood inside a corridor, with two doors in it, one on each wall; the first, dark, ominous, and forbidding; the second, bright, cheery, and welcoming. Preferring to see the good before the bad, I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Undeterred, I just picked the lock and walked in. What I saw on the other side was an extreme surprise.

Forests stretched in every direction, with huge trees and insanely large blades of grass. The trees were almost so tall as to lose the tops in the distance, and the grass must have been three times my height. Most astonishing of all, though, was a figure that I had not seen for years, looking just as they had when I last saw them.

"Kurama? Is that really you?"

"WHO ARE YOU, MORTAL, AND WHY DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?"

Obviously, somebody had gotten a superiority complex in the past three hundred years.

"I'm hurt that you don't recognize me, Kurama. I played games with you almost every day when we were young. Have you forgotten your good friend Xi?"

"WH-WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"How could you forget your good friend Xi, Kurama? It may have been a while since we evolved and I disappeared, but we were still such great friends."

"I– I– I DON'T BELIEVE IT! IT REALLY IS YOU!"

"Yes, it really is me. So, can you make me bigger or you smaller so that your voice doesn't sound so loud?"

(AN: I just couldn't stand writing in all caps anymore…)

There was a sudden sense of distortion in the soul room, before I was correctly proportioned to everything. I shook my head a little to clear it, before talking to my old friend.

"So, what on earth are you doing inside this child?"

"It was a misunderstanding. People thought I was a demon, and used some ability to hold me inside their bodies and use my power at will. Almost like those dreadful contraptions from so long ago, but worse. I never got out, and the one time I did, I was put under a strong hypnosis and forced to attack the village this boy lives in."

"I see. I'll go check on him now, then. He was attacked by a mob two weeks ago and hasn't woken up yet. I assume his healing speed is due largely to you?"

"Yes, I do what I can."

"Alright, now to see the boy. Umm… where's the door?"

"Right behind you," was my old friend's chuckled reply.

I turned and left Kurama's soul room, before crossing the hallway to the dark doorway. To think that a mere child had had such a life to make their soul room look like this just from the outside… it was positively horrifying.

Two weeks ago

"Tenzo, report."

"All teams sent to retrieve the boy have been incapacitated and returned to the main gate of Training Ground 44."

A soft sigh escaped the lips of the Sandaime Hokage. "Fine. All teams still remaining are to be withdrawn from the search and reassigned to normal duty."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Permission granted."

"Sir, I believe you're hiding something about the target. I don't mean Naruto, but that man that is protecting him. With all due respect, sir, if we are to eventually resume searches, it would be best if the teams sent to search knew everything we can about the target so that we may prepare."

Another soft sigh. "I can't tell you now, but in due time you will know more about him. All I can tell you is that the village has encountered him before, yet later."

"I don't understand, sir."

"You will, eventually. Dismissed."

Without another word, Tenzo disappeared from the office. Hiruzen buried his head in his hands, with a mutter of, "I'm getting too old for this."

Back in Naruto's mind, one week ago

As I opened the door, I was hit with a blast of cold air and rain, but I pushed forward through it to locate the boy's consciousness.

I found myself surrounded by a hurricane over a barren landscape in the boy's soul room, but it didn't seem to work like a normal storm. It seemed to be pushing everything away from the center, instead of spinning around it. I forged onwards through the increasing winds towards where I assumed the boy would be.

Finally, I pushed through a veritable wall of wind to fall into the eye of the storm. I stood up; looking at the small oasis of peace, I was again astounded by what there was.

A fortress rose up into the sky directly in the middle of the storm, and it was shut up tighter than… something shut up really tight. It had such a dark vibe to it that I truly wondered if this was where the boy's subconscious lived… but if it was, I wondered what horrors had happened to him to cause it. I stepped up to the main gate, and as I approached, it opened. Then, I entered the fortress of the boy's mind.