Disclaimer: I do not own naruto or similarly referenced franchises mentioned in this story

Location: Konoha general hospital, Prisoner's ward

Th previous 12 hours had been… for lack of a better word that the man could find, a total and complete nightmare for the third hokage. Hiruzen sarutobi, for all his strengths and jutsu, years as the god of shinobi, had never felt as weak or as a helpless as he did right now, staring at the medical reports of the only two surviving members of the horrifying events earlier that evening, that were in need of medical attention. Those that could be healed with a few medical jutsu had been given paid medical leave and confined to an S class secret, as well as rewarded individually with two massive paydays for discovering and dealing with both the 'traitor' of the leaf and one of his student's ex labs… one that he had thought to be abandoned and emptied.

A foolish notion that had cost the man so much.. 5 fine shinobi and their nin hounds, Their clan Matriarch in critical condition with an injury that would likely keep her from ever going onto the field again for fear of seizures or worse, the scroll of secrets in a large state of damage from claw marks and blood stains… and then the boy himself. His eyes flickered over to the blonde in the bed beside him. Such a peaceful expression that came only from the dead, yet… the rising and falling of his chest spoke otherwise. The man had to wonder if he should thank or curse the fox, for living with tonight would no doubt be the true price his grandson would have to pay if given the chance to even walk again… with his arm elevated in a cast beside him, a blood pack replacing that which had been lost and the signs and scars of emergency surgery; the boy was more bandage than skin at the current point in time.

He knew, the boy was no traitor, but with him unconscious from that damned transformation and bleeding from the nose; he was nowhere capable of telling his trained guard to stand down as they did exactly what he trained them to do. He could not even punish them in truth, for they had done their duty to the letter in defending him and trying to apprehend the scroll from any and ALL possible threats… even one such as naruto. As he exhaled a stress filled breath, damning the nurse in his mind that had forbidden him from smoking in the ward; the kage could do naught but just stare at the boy.

The creature had done…such horrible damage to the blonde. Veins as black as ink, pulsed with some unknown infection that refused to be drawn out even by his best medic-nin, and where the flesh had healed over due to the boy's burden was now mangled and scarred, deformed in a way… with obvious bite marks that looked closer to that of a wild beast from the forest of death, instead of something remotely humanoid. The boy's eye, bandaged with infection that had set in from the wounds Tsume had caused to him… the kage had not the heart to acknowledge that the boy would likely lose it to the infection if not the kyuubi's chakra.

Knocking on the door drew his attention, his aged gaze on the door as it opened without his order and in walked the boy's favorite teacher… bloodied. Injured. Favoring his left leg, and remorseful... dropping a headband on the bed of the blonde, just missing the boy's good leg. "What is the meaning of this Chunin Umino?". The teacher stared down at the boy, his gaze… somehow getting heavier. "Nothing tonight stood right with me sir. Not naruto's actions, not the fact he had stole from you, nor the cheerful look he had when he…incapacitated you on your office's security footage. I decided to go In the same direction he would have if not driven to the sewers and I found Chunin… I found Mizuki there. Ranting and raving about a 'stupid brat who couldn't follow orders right'…".

The old man nodded, already gathering the pieces as he sighed and sat back. Moments of silence passed before he reached over to turn the headband around, a gouge…and blood stain marked on it. Mizuki's ID number etched from the metal. "…I understand iruka. Is he-"

"In custody sir. I apprehended the traitor after he engaged in combat with me and he is currently In the care of Konoha's Snake mistress… he has already confessed to his crime's and naruto's true involvement". The unspoken truth of the matter lay heavy in the air, as the grandfather of Konoha laid his head back against the chair he sat upon, with a gaze that spoke of only regret… Iruka soon followed, blood still dripping from one leg as he sat down against the sterile floor, back against the wall. The two sat in silence for a while… only for the silence to be shattered by the clacking of a cane; a bandaged individual stepping through the door. His eyes laid upon his best…once best friend, and the chunin…and the boy, in the room. "…Hiruzen, We must speak. In private".

Knowing iruka needed the rest, the aged Kage nodded before standing and leaving the room to the private hallway outside, only to be lead to an empty room further down the hall by his fellow elder. When the door clicked shut behind him, Danzo was quick to turn with.. worry..? in his gaze. "Another of your student's labs hiruzen?! When are we going to stop suffering for your mistake with that madman?". Of course the worry was never for him, oh no, the man was as cut-throat as they came… the kind of person hiruzen needed right now, not that he would ever truly admit it. "Yes, it seemed to contain the first generation cursed seal subjects… we don't know what these things are capable of, only that what we saw down there was the last living subject. The bodies within were torn to shreds, rotting, seemingly eaten by…whatever that was. The notes were… bloodied. Ruined. Nothing could be recovered, so I Sent the cleanup squads to burn it all…"

Danzo nodded, he would have done the same himself after all. But his eye, heavy with thought, flickered to the door to the room they had been in seconds before; where the…. Issue, lay. "and him? Hiruzen; if our weapon is infected or part of this, then we must-". "NO… no.. no I believe this was simply a… matter of foul luck. A dive into one of the survivor's mind showed us that the creature was focused on naruto and focused on him due to the open wounds on the boy's body. It is the current running theory that the boy's healing factor was keeping his blood far more potent than it should have been once leaving his body, causing whatever hunger that creature possessed to go out of control…"

The aged man's eyes also turned to gaze at the door to naruto's room; a heavy frown marring his expression with worry and pained concern. "What has me worried is his wounds are not healing. They healed over, but the… infection, of whatever that thing left in him is not leaving him. it's almost like his body is healing around our attempts to get rid of it and… Danzo.". the old warhawk looked on as his friend stared back, fatigue and age in his gaze. "I need you to keep this quiet. For the sake of the village, we cannot let them know that our vessel is on death's door… For once, I need you to do as you are told. Whatever this infection is, is changing the boy on a biological level". The raised eyebrow he received in kind; drew a sigh from the kage as he motioned for danzo to sit. Upon doing so…

"The boy's chakra pathways are being eaten away, and the seal has already degraded by 20 percent".

Danzo immediately stood, eye open in shock. It was only Hiruzen's gesture that stopped the man from shouting, eye locked on the hand that motioned for him to stop before staring expectantly at his Kage. "Jiraiya has already assured me that the seal is repairing itself as by Minato's design but the damage has been done. He reckons close to 2…3 tails of the fox's chakra has entered into naruto's own and its eaten away his tenketsu and pathways like acid to a strip of raw meat… it is currently lying dormant in his muscular structure and brain, and is seemingly the reason the infection has not died out and has not progressed, both fueling it with cells to consume while keeping it back with walls of those cells. We do not know what this is going to lead to, so the boy will be kept in a medicinal coma until we believe he can be awakened safely-", any further words from the man were cut off as a scream of fear came from the room behind them, naruto's room.

In they ran, only to see the same boy they spoke about standing on his bed with his ruined body… and an arm wrapped around the neck of the nurse that had been in the process of replacing his blood pack, open eye empty of emotion and tinted red with black veins…all too familiar to the two men, spreading out across his body. As the nurse struggled to breathe, a Shakey iruka pulling himself out of a cracked indentation in the wall, danzo acted quickly to subdue the boy while hiruzen retrieved the nurse; a neck strike knocking the boy back to unconsciousness as he stared down at the blonde… watching the black veins retreat back to the mangled scar on his shoulder.

The two stood in silence, iruka coming to stand beside his commander…

"I want this room locked down for the night. No one in, no one out… not even the nurses. Understood?".

No one questioned his order.

?

For hours now he had floated. He had watched. He had…observed really. His body hurt, his screaming having given way to silence from torn vocal cords and his eyes dry from tears shed in this void… this…sewer, he lay in. the water, so cold, stung at his skin and his broken body; the pains he had felt lingering only starting to fade a few minutes ago… he had been watching, gazing as the pipes above him were…dissolved, eaten away as a fleshy substance began to cover them and consume them; only for the red pipes to grow too.. becoming fleshy in their own rights, but more..lively, than this rotting necrotic flesh he saw first. He watched, the two fighting and battling each other; red standing stalwart as the rotting flesh ate and ate at It with no give and no take… and it hurt… oh god it hurt…

"Naruto…"

"Wake…up…"

Blue eye, the left one darkened by pain, slowly began to open as he struggled to lift his head. In doing so, he stared…stared at the gates he had seen when entering this place. The iron bars and paper tag that had stood before were crumbled, ruined, instead replaced by a fleshy wall of tendrils and sinew…and in the center of it, that…fox… nine tails, strung up as this fleshy substance ate away at it. Seemingly hanging from the fox, unconscious as it was, held asleep by the rotting tendrils that ate away at it only for parts of it to heal back moments later. In the center of the tunnel, half dissolved and held in some form of crucifixion by the flesh… yellow eyes, pale skin, and a smirking expression that spoke of madness..

"so… kukuku… The boy lives after all… Do you know, who I am child…?".

The shake of naruto's head was slow, a groan escaping him as some of the…flesh, came down to lift him up and place him on his knees before the stranger, his voice seeming double layered, strange in a way.

"I am… Your creator. Your maker… MY creature, bestowed upon you a gift… my cursed seal, power beyond power…and this, prison, took me in. my soul, my chakra… and all of the nature chakra it syphoned off. Oh, this place… it reeks with the touch of death; something I have strived to avoid for all my life and yet… look at it…it is sustaining, it is exactly what I needed… you will come to see it boy, the power this beast commands shall be OURS to command… through my gift, to you, it shall become… MINE¬".

Tendrils of flesh shot forth, stabbing into the boy as the man within the fox laughed and cackled with a mad joy. They tore at him, piercing his flesh as weak cries of pain left him… only for the laughter to stop, screams of pain to come from the madman instead as the tendrils were consumed by crimson flame; black veins spreading across the boy. A different voice, one without sound but words all the same filling the air… one he knew came from the beast, and not the man. It told him to fight, to struggle, to remove the parasite. This man saw to consume him? no… HE WOULD CONSUME THEM!

Engulfed in scarlet flame, claws and black veins growing from him, the boy leapt like a beast possessed into the air and down onto the hanging man. Yellow eyes widened in rage, a cry of hate filled words going unheard by the pulsing of blood and infection filled heartbeats pounding in the boy's ears as he brought his hands down and gouged out those yellow eyes… the tunnel shook with the man's pained and rage filled voice, but the nails of the blonde dug deeper until they scraped the back of the parasite's skull. With black veins as ink upon the skin, and a pulsing scarlet eye, the boy RIPPED the skull in two.. leaving him to fall as the dangling remains of the man hung in halves; somehow still alive as the red flesh consumed it…

"S..savage…Beast…"

Naruto… did not care. He knew he should have but he did not care… this parasite, the pain that disappeared as it was consumed; neither were welcome here…he could not question how he knew such a thing, only that he did. The pain had dulled his mind to a point of no longer questioning, at least for now…as his eyes rose, meeting with the now awake and RAGE filled crimson orbs of the fox above; he watched as it too was consumed into the shadows behind those fleshy bars and tendrils of sinew.

He knew it would not be the last time he saw the beast.

But he did not know why… darkness, encroached on the boy, feeling his pain return…along with the feeling, of a soft, warm, bed…

A welcome change from cold sewer water.

….

Or so he would have thought. The pain that wracked his body upon awakening was… awful. Chained down to the bed he laid on, he barely had the room to grab his shoulder with a restrained hiss of pain. His body felt as If it was on fire, as if it was ablaze with his own boiling blood. Nothing felt right, and this pain was only lessened by the sudden prick to the side of his neck and the cooling sensation that followed. With a sigh, he laid back down against the bed…slowly turning his head to look at the one face he wanted to see, a weak smile on his lips.

"old man.."

His grandfather looked on with an unmistakable look of relief at seeing the boy awake, lone blue eye looking at him in joy at being…well. Alive for one. But also not in a prison cell. The stinging of tears being shed came from the eye as he looked up at his grandfather, his bottom lip quivering slightly. "I'm sorry jiji, M-mizuki mad-" the gesture to stop drew his attention, the kage taking a long drag from his pipe, nurses be damned, before exhaling a mouthful of smoke.

"I know naruto-kun… I know. He's been apprehended and you've been cleared of the crime of treason and theft. That however, does not leave you without… consequence, to your actions last night… look at your arm naruto". The boy's gaze turned to his arm, the one that had been bitten by that thing, only to widen as he saw it was…healed? Almost perfectly. And it looked stronger too. The remains of a cast around it as he slowly flexed the limb in question. the next thing he felt was a tap to his stomach, the old man tapping it with his cane… when he looked down, he saw a tattoo he had never noticed before, A spiral with 8 symmetrical lines of symbols that reminded him of the standard issue storage tags… only the spiral looked cracked, and faded, with three tomoe over it instead.

"That, my boy, was the seal placed upon you at birth to hold back a threat to this village by my successor… The fourth Hokage. A seal empowered by the Shinigami itself. A seal that last night… Cracked, When your heartbeat stopped". Naruto's eye shot up to look at the third with fear and shock, processing information by the mile a minute.

"I… Died…?"

The third nodded, glad and thankful that that was the part that naruto had latched onto. "while rare, it isn't impossible, naruto. some shinobi experience wounds so painful or so violent that they lead to the heart stopping, like you did… That creature had dealt to you a wound so severe that you were pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital, only for it to restart itself as that seal on your stomach degraded and the… being, within, was able to flood your body with its chakra. Chakra that your body used to heal itself at an accelerated rate".

The bright grin on the boy's face, was quickly diminished by the look of his grandfather… staring… at him. "what's wrong jiji? Isn't this a good thing!? I'm alive! I can go back to the academy and become a shinobi and i… What…what's with that look old man?". The mention of the academy had drawn a look of sadness to the aged kage, his hand rubbing his face before he sat back on the chair behind him… playing with his pipe.

"The being inside you naruto… is the nine tailed demon fox". Memories of his… dream came to the forefront, what he thought was a fever nightmare starting to seem painfully..real. "it was sealed inside you as a newborn babe… as a being made of chakra cannot be truly killed or driven away as it is… unending. Unyielding. It can only be stopped by imprisoning, in a vessel such as an urn or pot or…in this case, with its power… in a human child, who's chakra coils are not fully developed and can grow to accustom the strain of the power. This child, was you".

The blonde laid his head back against the pillow of his bed, eye unblinking in shock. He was… a vessel. A vessel for the very thing that had nearly destroyed his village 13 years ago. "is that why.."

"why the villagers hate you. yes. But I'm afraid that everything I have just told you…is no longer true".

Naruto's head turned fast enough to worry the kage that he had snapped his neck, his loud cry of 'what' causing the anbu outside to look inwards with alertness. Hiruzen dismissed their worry with a wave of his hand, pulling up a piece of paper from beside him and handing it to the blond. "Read. I don't think I have the heart to tell you what it says".

Tentatively taking the paper, The young Uzumaki began to scan it's contents… heart dropping with every word.

Name: Naruto – Uzumaki

Age:13

Rank: Academy student

Kyuubi jinchurki seal and chakra status report – Supervised by Jiraiya the toad sage and Hiashi Hyuuga.

After the events of subject 1, one Naruto Uzumaki; Awakening in the midst of a medicinal coma and attacking a nurse in the middle of exchanging his blood Transfusion bag; it has been requested that I, Doctor [REDACTED], perform an examination of the boy with overseeing superiors Jiraiya of the toads and Lord Hyuuga to examine the seal and subject's chakra system respectively, and I to examine the reaction of these changes on the boy's own health and biological makeup. And what I have come to find In doing so is… Something I hope the Yamanaka remove from my mind upon submitting this report.

Through extensive cross referencing of the notes left behind by lord Fourth Provided by Jiraiya at lord third's Behest, it is my firm belief that the corrosive nature of the Nine tail's chakra left in Subject Uzumaki's system has resulted in a full scale burnout of the subject's Internal chakra system and external Tenketsu as previously theorized by my coworkers. It is also my theory however that the foreign Presence of enzymes and Corrosive genetic structure of the corpse of Subject 2, now identified as one Kenji Unnamed, has somehow; I hesitate to come up with a theory as to how, mixed with the blood of the boy and the foreign chakra it carried has also entered the seal. What we now know to be the cursed seal that Mitirashi Anko herself is afflicted with, has appeared on top of the Reaper death seal and filled what parts of it were previously damaged in the boy's momentary death. The lock it has formed has prevented the Fox's chakra from returning and instead it has saturated and soaked the very cells of the boy; almost akin to a cancer. It does not seem to be damaging the boy but it is causing a heavy repopulation of cells that can be called mutated. The issue comes in what the lock has instead sealed behind it… What we know now to be Tainted nature chakra; has flooded the seal and it is the theory of myself and my supervisors that the act of this new seal is slowly dripfeeding the nature chakra back to naruto… while taking it in and corrupting it from his surroundings simultaneously. While this would normally be a medical marvel; the issue comes in the fact it is tainted by the effects of the seal.

Previous reports have shown that those with a mark of the snake have experienced homicidal, Violent tendencies and manic, Borderline psychotic bouts of rage. With this new seal being fed by Uzumaki's own chakra, in turn drawing in tainted nature chakra, which will feed the rampant Tailed beast chakra, Which will then only help sustain Naruto's body to create his own chakra… the seal has essentially formed an endless loop, to which there is no way to end it without shutting off his chakra with seals… which would summarily kill him due to the lack of a network to carry and guide his chakra; something the summerly named "Cursed reaper" seal and tailed beast chakra are working together to do, symbiotically. It is inevitable that the boy will soon face these bouts of rage; and will come to face a choice… imprisonment until needed for war; or a life of struggle to contain these negative urges of anger, Hate, Lust, Envy and similar.

I do not envy the boy.

Even as naruto read the paper, his hands began to shake. Fear and anger in kind flooding him, before his head turned to the old man sitting beside him; lone blue eye now twisted in red…and to the surprise of the elder, the second's bandage burning away in the few strands of scarlet chakra to reveal a second crimson iris. One word escaping the boy's lips… "why.."

Why indeed. Why did he not tell the lad. Why did he hide the boy's… condition? As a sacrifice… simple. He was foolish. Now the boy sat before him, dream stolen from him, unable to cast jutsu as the young boy dreamt to do… and cursed, with an affliction arguable worse than what he possessed before. The man sighed… it was at times like this that he hated this job… he stood. He turned. And he walked… drawing the boy into shaking arms, with a sigh of regret on the air… even as the boy shook, he just held him.

"I have no words of apology vast enough to explain just how Sorry I am… How much I hate my own powerlessness to help you now, my boy. But I promise you this. I will not see you a weapon to be taken out at times of war. I will not see you, a Tool… You are Naruto Uzumaki… Citizen of the hidden leaf… Not the fox… not a monster… But my grandson. And we will find a way out of this darkness, Together"

…The hospital shook with the sobs of a broken boy that morning.

With a forgotten headband laying on the floor by their feet.