Chapter 9: Out with the Old

'No Naruto you can't burn the village down to the ground...er okay technically I could help you do that but I won't.'

In the rank run down ruins of the Uzumaki compound a rather unique instance of role reversal was occurring with the primary actors in our tale. Unlike in most cases an ancient source of unmitigated darkness is acting to restrain its "master" from going too far instead of encouraging him.

As remarkably odd as that may seem though it was true.

Too much nonsense and too many lies had been revealed one after another. The result being that the boy that was once the village's punching bag had finally found the limit to his tolerance of the villager's BS.

'WHY THE HELL NOT?!' the boy mentally roared taking a step toward the book. His eyes seeming to begin to tint to a darker more malevolent shade only to suddenly snap back to normal as he was struck with a pulse of a malevolent aura from his book encased companion.

'BREATHE KID! Calm yourself down before you end up doing something you regret.'

Still seething but not beyond listening Naruto took a deep breath and let it out before awaiting the book's response.

'The fact is Naruto that doing as you desire is not in your best interest. Not now in any event. You have no place to go beyond the walls of this place and even if you did you don't have the strength to face what challenges you might find out there. Not to mention we don't have a way to actually to get anywhere anyhow'

'Can't you just ask those Elder god guys to give us a lift or something?'

'What do you think the gods are running an inter-dimensional taxi service or something?'

'No but they want me as their servant right? So why don't we just ask them to take me some place better? I mean I don't think I'm going to be able to train much in this place anyway, so why not have them take us a place where I can'

'That's...a surprisingly good idea. You know what, screw it I'm go run it by them. Good thing I set up the wards on this place.'

'Really? Neat! So what exactly do you have to…?'

But Xy was already acting. With one whispered incantation another remote viewing spell was cast. Upon finding that nobody was around the building Xy once more began an incantation...one far different than the first…

'Ia! Ia! Mgepog'drn r'luhhor hup ph' yar, mgepog'drn r'luhhor hup ph' soth Y' Xy l' uln ymg'! mggoka'ai ya uln ng ahe ya!'

It was a strange guttural sounding language, one that seemed to rattle his bones like a rattle snakes rattle. One that had far too many consonants and odd sounds to be one made by the minds of man. Just as the last syllable was uttered a kind of rumbling seemed to fill the air before with a flash he vanished.

In a moment he found himself once more floating in a familiar place. The pocket dimension he had visited earlier to find some rather confused entities floating before them.'

'Xy? What are you doing back so soon?'

'Yeah the kid wanted me to ask you something. He was wondering if you might be able to give us a lift out of this crap-hole of a village we found ourselves in and maybe take us to someplace better?

'Firstly no we are not a taxi service...'

'Funny you should mention that...'

'Don't interrupt! Secondly no, the child needs to remain in place for the time being. We are using up far too much energy keeping things stable to waste energy on such a mundane task. If you need someplace better to do any training then I suggest you put that overgrown brain of yours towards something other than patting your own ego and figure it out for yourself and thirdly….what prompted this whole line of questioning anyway…?'

'Well it's like this...'

And so he set about explaining recent circumstances and how things had changed, an explanation that only lead to yet more confusion on the part of the draconic energy being before Xy.

'And all this happened in the course of hours?'

'What? No! Several days, weren't you paying attention?!'

'No I was, but...wait. Xy are you running by local time or on dimensional standard time?'

'Dimensional…?' Xy began only to trail off as a look of dawning comprehension came over the drawn features of the book.

'You really were in that hole in the ground for a while. Your sense of time has gotten all screwed up. Xy did you forget that the universe you are in currently runs at 30 times faster than the normal dimensional standard speed?'

'...wait so when you said we needed to make a decision about working for you within a year…?'

'We meant a year outside Naruto's reality. Not a year within it. It will take that long for us to stabilize things out here.'

'Well, hehe that's embarrassing. Still that does leave the issue of how to fix what's going with Naruto?'

'THAT is on you...but if I could give my own proverbial two cents….the bonds of love do tend to act as a rather soothing balm to pain. Perhaps there's someone in the village he could lean on?'

'Problem is the kid doesn't exactly feel like he has anybody at this moment. I mean I'm there...but he knows it's cause of our contract...'

'Well look around. I can't believe that out of a whole village there isn't one person he could come to care about and when you find them it might just be enough to keep him from burning the place down. Now as fascinating as this all is and all I have to get back to holding reality together.'

'Yah, yah, fuck you too you old codger. I'll see you again in a decade or three. LOCAL TIME.'

And before the god could retort to the uppity book prisoner he was gone.

From where he was sitting by the dinning room table Naruto leapt up as he saw the flash that marked the return of his erstwhile partner in crime. Eagerly he ran over to the book to question him.

'Well, what did they say?'

'Firstly that apparently my sense of time is screwed up and we don't have to get to fixing things in the dimension for quite a while...and secondly and most importantly they refused your request.'

'Why!?'

'They said they are not about to waste energy getting you out of here and if we wanted to leave it was on us, and seeing as I'm low on power still from my long hibernation I'm not going to be transporting us anywhere too far either. Hell I almost got stuck between dimensions just now.'

Naruto's response to Xy's comment was to punch the nearest wall, its aged construction quickly becoming evident when his fist nearly managed to punch a hole in it despite his young age.

'Look I know you are upset and all kid but I should remind you that we probably aren't supposed to be in here'

'But!'

'Yes I know its your clan's compound and all but people don't exactly tend to build a wall when they want to let someone into a place. We should get back before anyone notices we snuck in here! Oh and you should probably throw up a henge so nobody notices your new changes. It wouldn't serve our interests to draw attention to ourselves after all'

Conceding to Xy's superior logic Naruto quite reluctantly agreed to his request and so after throwing up a basic henge the two once more proceeded through the tunnel back to the village proper.

It took some time but after an hour or so they finally made their way back to Naruto's run down apartment without incident. Xy tried to engage the boy in conversation but once more he had fallen into a funk. A fact which unfortunately was causing him to lash out at others such as the girl he had formerly considered his elder sister. She had come by less than an hour afterwards with a concerned look on her face one which had quickly flashed to relief as she saw Naruto, his form henged to disguise the recent changes to his body, then to hurt as she saw the look he shot her. Naruto had barely listened to her, the fact she must have not have known about the fox caused him to tersely respond to her concerned questioning of why he hadn't been around lately with a "fine, you can go now. Oh by the way I don't plan on visiting you or your shop ever again." before slamming the door in her face.

The next day yielded much the same results and Xy was beginning to wonder if he'd need to give the kid another forcible bath when an unexpected distraction decided to rear it's head in the form of a knocking at the door.

*knock *knock

'I swear if that's Ayame again...' thought Naruto whilst Xy slid into his hiding spot on the bookshelf.

His concerns however were unfounded, instead what greeted him when he opened the door was one of the masked Anbu.

"Uzumaki-san, the Hokage requests your attendance in his office at once."

'Do as he says kid, I'll watch what's going on remotely' whispered the voice of Xy and so Naruto acquiesced.

One nausea inducing shunshin (at least for Naruto) later and both of them were at the reception area to the office. The secretary quickly admitted them, after sending Naruto a dirty look, and they quickly entered.

Unfortunately whatever hopes Naruto had for a quick in and out of the office was immediately dashed when a strange glow suddenly flashed from what he later learned were hidden seals on the bookshelves in the room. In a sudden poof of smoke his henge vanished and he was met with the gobsmacked face of the Hokage...at least till the Anbu accompanying him tackled him to the ground.

"Get the hell off me you prick!" he screamed only to have the side of his face pushed even more firmly into the carpet.

"Who are you and what were you doing in Naruto's house?" Asked the Hokage tersely but before he could get a response something unexpected happened. Anger surged through Naruto at having been tackled and before he could stop it some new found instinct yanked at his chakra reserves. There was a yellowish glow from Naruto's back and without warning a chain shot out and impacted with the man's lower jaw hurling him back and off the boy. Fortunately for the man the chain's tip had been blunt rather than the usual sharp one or he might have ended up dead with a metal spike rammed in his brain.

Quickly recovering Naruto stood back up and brushed himself off.

"Jiji stop! It is me! Just look at my whisker marks! A-ah we met in the forest and shared a meal together! You regularly henge yourself to buy more of those little orange books that makes the women in the markets mad at their husbands and you use that crystal ball to...

"Urgh! That's enough Naruto! I believe you are who say you are!" the embarrassed older man said desperately waving him off before he spilled info that might get him pummeled by every female patron at the Konoha hot-springs."

"Ahem. Now Naruto as you can probably guess I have more than a few questions after that little performance. More than I intended to ask going into this, but at least my initial questions are somewhat answered. Is what I just saw the reason you've been acting so oddly lately?"

Instead of the response the older man expected though he was greeted with something else.

"No. Well a little but it's more than that."

"Oh?"

"Yes, more specifically it also has to do with the 6,000 ton fuzzball that was apparently shoved into me at birth." said the boy while smiling a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

This was something he intended to get out of the way as soon as possible, a sentiment that Xy had told him after they had left the compound might actually be a good idea to get out into the open as it made for a decent excuse as to why Naruto was acting a bit off as well as explain away his...changes.

At this response all the blood seemed to flee from the Hokage's face turning it ashen.

"N-naruto, how...?!

"It came out after some asshole kids chased me into that fenced off part of the forest...by the way you should do something about that hole in the fence before something nasty sneaks out of it. Basically I nearly died and found out about the fuzzball...oh and now I got red hair and these neat chains all of a sudden." said Naruto repeating the story Xy had come out with for him.

It wasn't a lie...not quite, more like a heavily abridged version of the truth, which is probably why the Hokage didn't question it which left Naruto internally smirking.

"I see..." said the Hokage rather awkwardly. "So that's why you suddenly started acting so different."

"Yah it's kind of hard not too once you find out that everyone you knew has been lying to you the whole time." a statement which caused a pained wince to emerge on the older man's features. "So, when exactly were you planning on telling me?"

"*exhale* I had hoped to wait until at least you were out of the academy"

"Why?"

"I had to be sure I could trust you to keep it quiet and I thought the academy might instill into you the value of keeping a secret by then given it's importance, though honestly I'm starting to wonder if that was a smart idea given what I'm hearing is going on in that place." the Hokage said shifting some paperwork around his desk for a moment Naruto thought he saw a symbol of a fan in the corner of the paper but it was quickly covered by yet more paperwork.

"So I'm guessing this is why I'm treated like crap 9/10 times a day. How many people know about this?"

"Everyone save the children of your age and up to 3 years older. Believe me Naruto I never intended it to get out but somebody ran their mouth and it just sort of got out of hand. The only reason the kids your age don't know is because I threatened their parents with the death penalty if they did."

"Well no offense old man but it was just a touch too little too late. Even if they didn't know why their parents acted that way towards me it was enough that they saw it happening and so I still ended up getting treated badly by them. Anything else your hiding from me?" said Naruto the question heavy with an accusatory weight.

'Yes' thought the Hokage but despite his desire to say it, despite the fact he knew full well what this would probably mean for his relationship with the boy he couldn't bring himself to say it.

The silence was all the boy needed to hear. He turned on his heel to leave. For an instant the now recovered Anbu who he had smacked with his chain moved to stop him but the Hokage waved him off. Despite the light streaming in from the window the room seemed to darken with the boy's leaving.

A/N Another short one but I figured it had been long enough. In other news I am now doing youtube readings. Just look up "the fire vampires" weird wild and wonderful ep 1. to find my reading over at youtube.