A/N; Yes! I finally finished! A little short, but pertinent. Actually, I finished the other day, but wanted to sit on this one until I was certain of my decision. You can thank Plums, Mafia king, Nuk destruction, and Oldmastersaru, for making me think a little bit more before tossing this next one out. Hats off to tavairussanchez for guessing at this chapter's motif. I'll give Van der Ay credit for the minor change to the story format, though it was prompted by the confusion I'm sure many of you felt reading different POVs. And BBwulf, you just fired me up to get pounding out this next chapter, thanks!

Day Five

Naruto woke up and knew it was too early, which a glance to the clock confirmed. The bed was much more comfortable than the old, beaten mattress he'd requisitioned from an alley.

'A comfortable prison,' he thought, relaxing his body. 'I need a plan.'

He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them in front of his seal's Iron bars.

"Kyuubi." He called out. Echoes were his only reply.

Hesitantly, he took a step out towards the bars. He leaned forward a bit, squinting to see inside. The inside of the cage was thick blackness and he thought for a moment about reaching inside. Then thought better of it and backed away, water splashing around his knees.

"Was the water always this high?" He muttered.

He spared another glace into the Kyuubi's cage, and remembered what Yamato had said the previous night. He felt slightly amiss without the Kyuubi to speak to. He, at least, knew where the Kyuubi stood and was on his side, to a point. It was then that it really sunk in.

'I'm on my own in this, and for better or worse the Kyuubi is my only confidant.'

He thought about the day to come and pondered what he'd do today. For the next however many days. How many days had it been since he'd left the academy? Could he even still say he was 13? His body was 13 but he'd experienced so much more.

"Or have I?" he whispered.

Was he living his own life or what he thought he was supposed to live? All he'd done was train. He wanted to be Hokage, but that was a means to an end. He thought he could become a weapon for his Hokage, but this is where his ambition got him. He wanted to be acknowledged by the villagers, but who were they to set his self-worth. He needed more time to think. He could have years to think, to discover what life he wanted to live. He would live today, and he would see the villagers for who they were, beyond their fears.

"I have to train my body and my seals. I will never be a prisoner again."

He opened his eyes, in his bed once more, and glanced at the clock.

"Less than a minute. That's good to know." He said nodding to himself.

He turned on the light and grabbed some paper. He wrote for the next few hours until he started to smell food. He rolled the paper up and got ready for the day.

Next was the most awkward breakfast he'd ever experienced. Yamato made eggs and toast which were passable, but it was finished in completed silence. Nothing but monotonous and rhythmic chewing of food, punctuated by the rare scrape of a utensil.

"Thank you." Naruto said and he got up to wash his dish.

Yamato got up soon after and put his dish, along with the dishes he'd used to cook the meal, into the sink.

"No, thank you. Wash those up and meet me out side."

Naruto sighed and grabbed the pan to begin washing.

After finishing he walked outside to see a ring of wooden posts and Yamato sitting with his eyes closed, back to the morning sun.

Naruto walked into the center of the ring, and looked at Yamato, shielding his eyes from the glare.

'Bet he did that on purpose.' Scowling as he thought.

"Whenever you're ready, pull on the Kyuubi's chakra as slow as possible and see how much you can take before you start to lose control. If you feel like you need help, look to me and I'll force the chakra back."

Naruto nodded to Yamato and closed his eyes. He felt the sun's warmth on his face, the wind rustling his hair and the song of the forest in his ears. He felt his chakra in him and started to feel for the fox.

'Kyuubi', He thought.

And an enormous mass inside of him began to stir.

'You ready for your yard time? Slowly, this time, and you'll get a full day to roam. I just need to figure out how much I can take without losing control or making my clones unable to make it the whole day."

A trickling of chakra started to flow into him and he immediately felt like he was going to burst at the seams. He began to mold the chakra into the imaginary shells for his shadows. He could feel them, faintly taking shape around him. He thought back to the number he'd guessed would be appropriate and tried to envision the drawing he'd made. 1500 dots on his page, would give him just over 4 years to think and train. Once he could feel all of them, some drifting in and out of his peripheral. He began to pitch off the Kyuubi's chakra and share his own. The drain was immediate and he found his body pulling some of the Kyuubi's chakra.

"Almost enough for the day". He thought, attempting to stay calm.

His thoughts began to turn dark with anger, but he quickly thought back to how he felt this morning. The calm contemplation he'd felt and the Kyuubi's chakra began to mix throughout the shadows and himself.

He reached for the Kyuubi's mind, 'Kage Kyuubi', and a presence other than his own began to solidify into the clone next to him. He froze the chakra, pinching the countless connection between him and his clones, and opened his eyes.

Shadows where everywhere and they all stood facing him looking calm and ready. Nodding to himself in satisfaction, he pulled out his scroll. He began tearing off pieces and handing strips of paper to his shadows. His knees felt weak, threatening to fail him with small dips, and his hands were trembling, until one of the shadows gently took the scroll out of his hands. He started to walk away and was soon helped to a seat outside of the circle by another two shadows.

Yamato stood in awe. He was expecting five to ten shadows, but this was frightening. 'Should I stop them? Would they just return to him? Could he handle all of that chakra? There's no way I'm going to be able to keep tabs on all of these clones. I have to speak to the Hokage.'

Yamato walked over to the boy and kneeled in front of him.

"Are you ok?"

Naruto looked up panting slightly, one eye half lidded and sweat running down his face. "I'll be fine. Any idea how many I made?"

Yamato frowned, "I suspect you made close to 1500, but I didn't count. I need to head out now. Make sure they don't cause any trouble or we'll have to limit the number you make."

Yamato made to leave and then stopped, "Good work Naruto, and please make sure they're henged, and the fox mask is out if you didn't know. We can't let the civilians make the connection between your little spar with the ANBU and your shadows." A swirl of leaves later and he was gone.

"Of course, Warden." Naruto said quietly to himself. He laid back and decided to take a nap.

"Someone wake me up in a couple hours."

An hour later he was jolted into another life.

Shadow

He was in a crowd of shadows. Shuffling towards the original to get an assignment for the day, until the original was carried away by two other shadows. He looked around, but couldn't get a beat on the number of other shadows.

'Maybe there won't be enough assignments for me to have one.'

After several minutes he reached the clone handing out assignments. He reached out for a piece of paper and was instead told to go work on seals. He frowned for a moment, about to ask whether he meant Kage or written, but noticed he lacked to materials for written seals. He shuffled out of the crowd and headed in a random direction into the forest. After a couple of minutes he stopped.

'Here seems good enough.' He thought.

He looked over to a tree and imagined the silencing seal, before he shivered at the thought. Then a smile broke so wide across his face he thought he'd explode. He struggled to picture the explosion seal in his mind, eyebrows dipping in concentration. It was much more intricate than the other seals and required a great deal of chakra.

'Maybe I could just make a tiny explosion, like a pop, just to make sure that it worked.'

Nodded and muttered, "kage." He smiled at the intricate seal on the tree, and then start laughing. The laughter grew until tears came streaming down his face.

"This is going to be so awesome."

Forty minutes later, he was siphoning another failure from the tree. He ran forward and kicked the tree.

"Shit."

'Why can't I make it explode?' He thought with no small amount of frustration.

'Maybe I'm not picturing it correctly. I could go run and take a look at what it's supposed to look like, or maybe I'm just wasting my time. I'm almost out of chakra anyways.' His eyebrows came together in thought, and he looked up at the sun.

'It's been way too short a time for me to have run out of chakra.'

And that's when he felt it. There was a small connection to him and his chakra was slowly being drained. He felt for the direction and leaped into the trees to investigate.

'Maybe I should try to stop it? Though, if I did it might tip them off. Greedy bastard probably didn't use his chakra sparingly. I'm going to give him a piece of my mind.'

When he felt he was getting closer, he started moving as quietly as possible. He rounded the trunk of a tree and stepped out on a branch, to look into a clearing. Between the leaves, he saw it. The blood red demonic fox mask that had haunted his nightmares.

"No…"he all but whispered. Inching forward, despair welling up inside him, he saw a large seal surrounding the traitorous clone.

'A barrier seal?'

The shadow's mask snapped into place, eye holes drilling into him, and the pull on his chakra became a raging stream. He tried to pinch it off, but it was too late. He felt his chakra shell crumble under the will of the shadow, and his last memory was of the demonic fox mask.

Original

Naruto was on his feet running, head dizzy from getting up so quickly. His steps were uneven at first until he had released his weights and was pouring everything he had into a dead sprint through the forest. Bushes and small braches were lashing out at him as he breathed heavily. He reached out across his connection to see of any other shadows were in the area, and was surprised that so few had stayed close by. He reached out with his will and demanded that they come to his aid, pulsing small bits of his chakra to those that were closest. He could feel a few begin to close in on an intercept path. He consciously kept his reaches for chakra away from the Kyuubi's reserves, though the panic he felt was making it difficult. He made for a particularly large leap and…

Shadow

He was walking up to get his assignment, wondering about the Fox and what he'd do. 'Maybe I should just follow him. Ehhh, I'm sure someone's already thought of that. I'll just stick to whatever I'm assigned to do.'

Finally it was time he received his assignment.

"Quiet meditation." He shadow said, before, "Next."

Obviously he'd dealt with the shadow's that received this assignment and knew that dismissal was the best option.

He made to argue, but stopped himself.

'I guess someone has to do it.'

He started dragging his feet and walked aimlessly through the forest until he come across a small pond surrounded by a few willows. Dragonflies zipped around the water's surface and the faint sound of crickets and a few frogs finally found him, as he roused from his inner monologue. The reflection of the light purple flower like leaves of the willow upon the pond was beautiful. He glazed into the pond, his eyes taken towards the edge by a water skimmer. He broke away from its bobbing like dance and sat down.

'This is actually pretty nice. He closed his eyes and felt at peace. He'd never really meditated and, for a moment, wondered what he was supposed to do. He thought back to the book that he'd read about shinobi practices and remembered the passage on mediation. It had seemed like a waste of time, given that there was no one way to meditate beyond letting your mind become focused, so the techniques were vague in his mind. He found a comfortable position, after shifting around for a couple minutes. He then became uncommonly itchy and wondered if he wasn't always this itchy, and was just too occupied with life to notice. Finally a warm calm came over him and he sat listening to the denizens of the pond.

What felt like hours later, he was jolted by pulses of chakra through his connection to the original. He could feel the panic in the original's energy and the urge to meet him. He was soon leaping through the trees in an attempt to catch him, feeling the original's position changing quickly. Suddenly his chakra was rushing out of him and a demonic mask was in front of him. He tried to avoid the person, but they dropped beneath him and grabbed his foot. His momentum was carried in an arc downward and slammed into a tree branch.

Original

Vertigo struck as his position changed abruptly and he missed the branch in front of him. His thigh hit the branch his foot had missed and he briefly felt a sense of relief that he'd only hit his thigh, when his tumble brought his back clean across a branch. A cracking sound was painfully clear, and what he thought was most likely the bottom of a foot struck the back of his head. Unparalleled pain gripped him, before his legs grew numb. He crumpled onto the forest floor and there, he remained.

A/N; Hope you enjoyed! And if you're wondering about how the clone is still around, I don't explain everything. It will eventually come up, but for now I leave you to your own thoughts. Thanks again for taking the time to read my story.