fanfic trashcan

Tags:	naruto
Current Music:	Groove FM
Subject:	meep meep meeeeeep meeeeeeeeeeep!
Time:	02:31 pm
Current Mood:	curious

Fandom: Naruto
Warnings: Hmm, PG maybe
Note: Post-244.

...It was the end. He just couldn't take it anymore. Naruto fell to his knees, numbed by the horror. What had he become?

The whole city was burning down; the searing flames ate their way through everything at an unprecedented speed. The tall buildings were nearly completely covered in dark patches of smooth, unnatural material gleaming in the flame's light, and the weird organisms protruding from any of the larger lumps - spawns of demonic plantlife, something hardly ever seen on this plane. The plants shot their oily, highly flammable slime around the ground level and high in the air, as if drawing simple joy from the carnage and destruction they caused. Everyone, every single soul in the city was dead. Thousands of burned bodies littered around dead in their homes, jobs, on the streets, everywhere. Half the buildings had collapsed and the rest were spending their very last upright moments, creaking under the inferno of demolishing pressure engulfing everything it could reach out to.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. Not like this at all.

The history of the Hidden Leaf village was a recording filled with tales of warfare and rebuilding, the same actions repeating in steady cycles of no more than two to three years between the peaking battles. The three largest disturbances of this uneasily balanced wave movement were of course the Great Shinobi Wars - the first of which had ended in the founding of the Hidden Leaf village. The two following greater conflicts were each preceded by a longer stretch of quiet and peaceful prosperity - or as peaceful as it could ever become in an active shinobi village. The concept of cooperation and peaceful relations still appeared alien to the shinobi ranks of all countries, and were seen as a necessary evil to achieve goals in another end.

The signs had all been in plain sight for anyone to see. There had been hardly any notable disputes since the third war ended with the sealing of the demon fox, Kyuubi, and because of that, many falsely regarded it as an earned perioid of peace after the endless battles and destruction that was practically synonymous with the name of the Hidden Leaf village. The smaller 'peacetime skirmishes' and the shallow, rapidly formed and broken inter-village alliances never went back on their hectic course as they had after the first and second of the wars. The Chuunin Selection exams, which traditionally had openly flaunted the powers and skills of the different villages, were now largely turned into private affairs that outsiders weren't allowed to witness. Diplomatic relations between all of the opposing alliances of the last war had been nearly completely cut off, and stayed so even after the war was long over. Something had changed in the shinobi world.

When the dust had settled down, the Sound and Sand nins had been stopped, and the 3rd Hokage had died defending the village, it was clear that this something had made an appearance at the Leaf village. Every history recording of the 4th Great Shinobi War mentions this incident at the Hidden Leaf as the single greatest catalyst - or the straw that broke the camel's back - leading the shinobi villages down the road to destruction for the fourth time. Though, truthfully spoken, it was the legacy of the Third Shinobi War playing itself out. The abrupt finish of the war, paling in front of the god-like effort of sealing the legendary demon fox, left most of the shinobi world with a bitter taste in the mouths. From what the opposing villages could figure, the Leaf had gained an unprecendented weapon from the demon, and if they could utilize even a portion of its powers...

It was as if everyone sensed the looming danger hanging over their necks, and wanted to get the first critical strike in at any cost. Orochimaru had unknowingly started the Fourth Great Shinobi War in pursuing his personal goals - something that he would still live to both enjoy and regret greatly before it was all over.

The first years of the Fourth War were filled with confusion, anticipation, and an endless strings of carefully planned small operations in the vicinities of each country's borders. The smaller villages buffered the power of the greater shinobi countries, which also meant that they were the first primary stage for any large-scale war breaking out. Agents and small specialized task forces were the main means of war for this period of time.

Two years after the battle at Leaf, the Hidden Grass village was first to mobilize their main force outside their borders. Depending on the perspective used, one could say it was either an act of desperation or repressive, pre-emptive use of military resources to stop an invading force - to save their village before it was crushed down. The exact interests of the Hidden Rain in this - and their alliances that they were ready to hold on to - were unclear and mixed up with too many variables. Hidden Grass, regarded as more sympathetic towards the Hidden Stone, and Hidden Rain, regarded as more sympathetic towards the Hidden Leaf, both had old, unmaintained highways ensuring quick access between the Fire Country and the Stone Country, which had turned into mortal enemies since the start of the Third Great Shinobi War. When determining where the first major battles of the war would take place, all eyes turned automatically to the two countries sandwiched between these sworn enemies. The Hidden Waterfall shared some border with both of them, but was - for now - out of the way and considered unimportant.

The lack of resources to build up decisive strike forces meant, that the attack at Hidden Rain wasn't a single fight with a winner and loser that one could point out, but instead had been pushing back and forth for several months, occasionally spreading out to either Stone Country's side or Fire Country's side...

"Shitty squirt," snarled the rumbling voice in his head. "Do you want the power or not?"

Naruto grimaced in disgust; he hated the fox demon's guts more than ever. Jiraiya's reasoning about the whole deal had still made sense to him: 'It's a permanent characteristic of yours - a tool for survival. You have to be able to summon and control its power at will.' He was firmly stuck in his life-long predicament. Just crying about it would amount to less than nothing in terms of progress.

Despite his inner turmoil, he stood outwardly serene on a high branch deep inside the forests of Southern Fire Country, hands forming ninjutsu seals on his front. His chakra pool had been completely emptied, but the tap that would flood him with blazing crimson power was somewhere out of his reach. Plunging further into the memories of his fight in the Wave Country, to each of the four times he released Kyubi in the Chuunin selection exam, and especially to his fight against Sasuke, he found something oddly distorted in those memories. It wasn't just him watching them anymore, and it creeped him out good.

During his training with Jiraiya he had managed to push flickers of red chakra out - sweating profusely from the pure effort. It had never been as difficult, awkward, and painful to channel any chakra for him, whether his own or not. Gathering from the fox's biting comments whenever he tried to reach for the other power, he supposedly was making it hard on himself 'out of sheer stupidity'. Naruto remembered how it hadn't saved Sasuke from going to the Sound, how it hadn't measured up to a single seal done by the Orochimaru freak. The demon had replied with observations on his personal inability to make use of its precious gifts, something it had run by him time and again over the months they'd spent training.

Naruto had to admit that, somewhere under all the scathing, bitter comments, the fur-brain did actually have a point to make. Did he want the demonic chakra, or not? He couldn't quite shake off the feeling that it was somehow wrong to use it.

The less emotion he put into it, the stronger he could feel... things seeping from the fox's chakra. Intense feelings, like being drowned in something as thick as butter. It was-- primitive rage. Naked, conspious, and overwhelming bloodlust. It was freedom on a much deeper level than he had ever imagined possible -- even in his old nightmares dealing with total surrendering to the demon. A complete break from everything that defined Uzumaki Naruto of the Hidden Leaf village. It was all waiting for him just around the corner, ready to lash at him if he went that one step too far.

Naruto rather felt like he was standing back at the canyon edge again. He'd learned to summon Gamabunta by confronting the fox, but at what price did he use the power?

"Jump, squirt," came the growl.

Could he do it? Could he accept the demon in him, and still remain who he was? Ero-Sennin had told him to look for it, and that they wouldn't proceed in his training until he had learned some control.

"If you want to reach beyond the skies, you start from the bottom of the deepest pit."

The power to surpass the Hokage...

He hated the fox, but he jumped off the rocky ledge, and fell a long, long way downwards.

Naruto woke up with a kickstart when a bucketful of cold water splashed on him.

"Oy!" he yelped angrily as he jumped up from the ground. "What the hell was that for?!"

Jiraiya considered him with an even stare, holding the empty bucket in his hands.

"You were sleeping during training."

"I was not!"

"What were you snoring on the ground then for?"

"Err..."

"Forget it. I felt the chakra," said Jiraiya with a change in his demeanor. He discarded the bucket away towards the small campsite they were staying at. "How did you work it out?"

"Eh?" Naruto tried to shake the water off without much luck. Luckily it was a hot summer day out. He stopped his futile efforts sighing, and asked curiously, "Work what out?"

"Work out whatever you were doing here," said Jiraiya glancing around the opening, as if it was obvious that he had been working something out.

"And what's this about?" he further asked with a small frown, poking Naruto's left forearm.

The black T-shirt didn't cover Naruto's arms as well as his orange jumpsuit would have done, and staring at the marks appalled he wished he'd elected to wear the other clothes with more fabric to cover him up. Something clicked in his mind, as a memory of falling down the endless abyss of blood-red walls took him over. The words of the demon echoed in his ears, spoken with a feral, snarling voice, "As I'm bound to your body, your soul is now bound to me."

He was screwed.

"It's the Ninetails, isn't it?" Jiraiya easily asked the question he didn't want to think about.

Naruto nodded distractedly and plopped down sitting against a tree. He gathered his arms around his knees and hugged them.

"Are you all right?"

Was he all right?

"How the hell would I be alright!" snapped Naruto at him.

"Your eyes are slightly wild..." said Jiraiya, crossing his hands.

"It's your fault for never looking after me!"

Jiraiya raised an eyebrow at him.

"We've been through this many times already..."

"Was it that hard to see me just through this?" asked Naruto much more quietly, blanching inside. He turned to look away into the forest, pondering exactly what kind of training involved sending him alone against a demon that could wipe out a village with just one of its nine tails. And what had it meant by his soul being bound to it, anyways? He didn't feel any different...

"Naruto," prompted Jiraiya with a firm tone.

He turned to look at the Legendary Sennin, standing tall in front of him. It was just sometimes, but Naruto figured the old pervert was actually capable of looking knowledgeable every now and then. It was just that he needed ten hours of pervercy for a single hour of normal behavior. He further reasoned out that Jiraiya wasted most of these rare hours while asleep.

Seeing he had gained the full attention of his disciple, Jiraiya said, "You have some serious misconceptions about this training, and life in general."

Naruto frowned his eyebrows.

"Eh?" he asked, not really sure what to make of it.

"Stop whining. These are things that no one can help you with," said Jiraiya, observing him carefully.

Naruto was bedazed. He definitely had not expected a response like this.

"What the... What the hell do you know!" he yelled back. What right did the old bastard have to talk to him like that? Besides, he had more pressing matters to think about, like whether he had just become a demon incarnate. "Then, was it all right for me to get taken over by the fox!?"

Jiraiya's eyes flared. Gritting his teeth, he explained to his wayward student, "There's always a danger in everything we do or leave undone. Deal with it."

Naruto couldn't really see where this was coming from at all. There was no reason for the old pervert to be angry at him. It was clearly the other way around, if anything! He toyed with the idea of Jiraiya wanting him to succumb to the demon, but scrapped that when he realized that he would have done that back when they first met. Or - Naruto looked up in alarm - was it that Jiraiya had turned coat on him only now?

"Your don't look like you understood anything," said Jiraiya amusedly, and shook his head slightly.

"Listen," he continued with a lecturing tone, "if you think that you can survive in the world of shinobi with that mindset, you are seriously mistaken!"

Naruto looked at Jiraiya like he had grown a second head all of a sudden. The Sennin stared him down.

"In other words... If you had fallen to the Ninetails and died, then you wouldn't have been worth the time and effort."

Jiraiya kept a small pause to let the words sink in before continuing, "I'm not worried about the demon breaking out, since the Fourth's seal was excellent work. I should know."

Naruto just stared back, letting go of his legs and crossing his hands, but not saying anything.

"On the other hand, now that something did happen, you have the added experience of dealing with the demon on your own," he supplied calmly.

Naruto grit his teeth in turn, very unsure if the cruelty was that warranted.

"We've been on this-- holiday trip for months now, for only one reason," said Jiraiya with an even more serious tone, "That's because you don't even want to handle the demon."

That did hit home. Naruto looked down in contemplation; he had been skirting around the very same subject every time the fox came out to give his input on various matters lately. The familiarity with which the demon appeared in his thoughts was the most disorienting part of it - it felt as normal as eating food or breathing. He had been with the fox since his birth and gained more important experiences with it during his ninja career. He realized that their link had progressed every time he had released the demonic chakra, and that he had slowly become afraid of how normal and natural it felt in all of its sick weirdness.

Naruto had to grudgingly admit to himself that the old pervert had made a kind of point too, probably by accident. He was about to voice his dissatisfaction towards his situation, when Jiraiya abruptly continued on his lecture, "You train so that you can function in the worst of situations. I had full trust in you pulling through this without dying - and you preserved, even bringing back a seal of sorts, it seems."

Naruto gripped his left forearm tightly against his body. He looked down at it; there were some kind of black and red lines running wildly in zig-zagging shapes between his elbow and wrist. He felt that they were there to stay, now burned into his skin permanently. It was another mark of the demon he now had on his body, without ever asking for even one.

"So, will you let me examine it now, or do we need to continue the lecture?" asked Jiraiya stretching his neck and shoulders. "Gah, that seriousness-thing always makes my neck so damn stiff afterwards."

"You're overreacting," said Jiraiya sternly. He held Naruto's left arm tightly in his hand, effectively stopping Naruto from pulling away to whatever corner he wanted to go and sulk in. "This seal isn't that complicated at all. When you concentrate enough chakra on your left arm, the Kyuubi's power starts to push out from your main seal. What's the big deal?"

Naruto looked towards the ground with a sad face and tried in vain to pry his arm off once more. He made a small sigh, gathering his wandering thoughts into solving the problem he had at hand: What was the big deal?

He didn't like the idea of the demon gaining any possession of him.

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