KIDS! BRINGING ABOUT THE ARMAGEDDON CAN BE DANGEROUS! PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT IT IN YOUR OWN HOME!
-- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move."
--Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Never juggle loose Swiss army knives.
-Unknown

***

Sasuke must have found Sakura. Or had been startled by the fight, and called his team via cell phone. They had had a team waiting on the outskirts, Naruto had been aware...he didn't know the fight had carried that far...Of course distance didn't mean so much when a demon was trying to kill you, and vice versa.

Sasuke must have alerted them when he had found Sakura, after Gaara had gone after him. Shit. Shit shit shit. This was not turning out good.

Sasuke had found Sakura.

//Oh shit.//

Naruto didn't dare try to reach out for his mind at this distance, not when he had bigger things to worry about. He desperately wanted to know what Sasuke was thinking; hell, what if Sasuke thought he had done it? ...What would he do? He was unpredictable enough; dark enough...jeez this was--

||Here||

Colors differed around the clearing, some close, several meters away, and others farther. Some were strong, bright, easy to see, and others were an unobtrusive shade of grade, easy to overlook and hard to pin down. There were a lot of them though, roughly fifteen that he could pick up, and he vaguely felt more to the south. Too damn many.

He was worn out, Gaara was worn out and injured, and this was not in the plans. This was not planned. Work it. Make it work.

Quietly, he leaned down and whispered in Gaara's ear.

***

Shinobi crowded on the outskirts, careful, silent, and watchful.

The fight had been fantastic--violent and far too, too powerful. Nothing should be that powerful as it was. It was bright and showy, impossible to miss, at the rate of chakra they were putting out...were they even done yet???

Naruto sniffed. Fear.

Fear turns to anger. Anger turns to hate. Hate...

...turns to predictability.

Naruto spoke quietly into Gaara's ear. What he said couldn't be heard, wouldn't be known, it could have been any combination of threats or predictions or warnings or pleas. It could have been anything; Naruto spoke so softly, so intimately close to him.

After some time, there was flicker of energy deep in Gaara.

Naruto leaned up, loomed over him and looked down, pausing as if in thought. In the dead brown-gray trees, devoid of leaves and offering only slight cover, and behind the boulders and gorse heather that offered more cover, shinobi crouched down and tensed in their minds and loosed their muscles and weapons.

This was the killing the blow. Get ready. Attack when the other falls. Get ready.

Lean forward...wait for it...

::BLIND!::

Screams broke out, high screeches and strangled moans, men and women voices broke out as an incandescent brightness flared in front of their pupils, fried their retinas in boiling fat. It was just an illusion, but the kind of illusion that could injure.

Those that had felt it but hadn't got the full force fell back, cringed, winced, and struggled to get back to their feet. Those that hadn't felt it at all looked around wildly, trying to place what had happened, who had been struck and where, was it time to attack? Did they attack? Was it safe?

Explosions of shuriken broke out; immediate fire was returned, places abandoned and repositioned.

Gaara tasted blood.

Naruto ran.

***

The gray-brown trees, dead around, rushing by so fast they were like streams of color, of light and wind and smell.

Naruto got out of the center, out of the confused fray, and circled around slowly, brushing against the minds to know who was there and who wasn't, what the plan was, how many he needed to kill. Then he darted back into it all, speeding and eating up the ground.

This was simple. Nine Tails touched him. Kill them all.

Violence broke out more.

Doppelganger effect, fan out and kill the far ones. Gaara will take care of the close ones by habit.

***

Naruto gave a scream of something strange, high and metallic, and faltered in his land rushing jet, nearly losing his grip on the ground and slipping into the shadows and branches of a tree, greasy pain oiling his leg.

"Slow down, you'll hurt yourself."

Inwardly, Naruto raged and swore, Nine Tails hissing and angry and too damn close to the surface...Dammit Gaara! Naruto's pace in his fox form was phenomenal, unbeatable, and damn well hard to follow. How the hell had the man kept up? And at his age!

Hatake Kakashi blinked in a bored fashion looking up at him from his place on the ground, his hands loose at his sides, hair in usual disarray, looking as stoned and relaxed as only a moody hentai called Kakashi could. And knowing his teacher, armed to the teeth.

Kakashi took a leisurely step forward.

Naruto slid back, ears pricked, eyes slitted, and stayed in the shadows to hide his form and eyes and the blood coating his body. He sniffed the air motionlessly.

There were doppelgangers about, the one in front of him was, but where was the real one? He was tentative about scanning for his mind, for his location; it was a good technique, but how would the Copy Cat take it?

Naruto slipped away. He could feel Kakashi close, following him, tried to trace his mind for thoughts. He was only slightly glad his teacher was in his -serious- state of mind and not his -hentai- state of mind.

//...can't see...energy...it's him...there...smell? What...he knows...how does he know...//

//...he's running from...beat up Gaara...why...Naruto?...//

Against better judgment, Naruto cut the connection smoothly, blocking out the voice first solidly before allowing himself to seep out his Kakashi's upper consciousness. He didn't want to hear that. So he wouldn't. Sasuke had been bad enough, with all his expectations. He wasn't going to take it from Kakashi too if he didn't have to. He vanished without seeming to; so that the Kakashi clone was still watching the shadow clone, each giving off enough signature energy to fully imitate the originals.

Naruto's eyes slid to the shadowed underside of a tree limb as he crept. There wasn't anything there. Just the gnarled shadow. So that had to be Kakashi...waiting there...

His leg was burning up, hurting and throbbing like anything. The knife had to be poisoned, to cause such pain. The pain nearly consumed him; Nine Tails was raging, his chakra fluctuating like mad inside his circulatory system. But poison...had never affected him this deeply.

His teacher was right there. His enemy was right there. He didn't know Naruto was there, could see him, was too busy manipulating his shadows and spies to divert 100% of his attention to the spot where Naruto was crouched, because that's what he would have needed to see Naruto's outline.

Glancing at it, Kakashi's mind was bent in funny directions, soft and hard in different places. He had the ability to shift from killer to father in an easy smooth motion that had nothing to do with insanity. Somewhere in his line of work, Kakashi had found a way to thrive, to appear nearly normal to people who weren't looking too hard, to be normal inside his own head.

He wore masks on top of masks, personality on top of personality. And strangely enough, he wasn't insane, although he leant towards eccentric when events allowed and he needed to vent that pressure. His mind was workable fluid maze of reactions. Because of that labyrinth, he was slightly difficult to manipulate, to get him to respond the right way to the right reaction.

And he was right there. Not defenseless, but not hard to hit either. Naruto had the element of surprise.

Without turning his head, Kakashi's left eye met Naruto's.

Neither moved.

There was a cold thrumming beneath his chin, next to his neck, an absence of matter and space and power, a dark cold metallic scientific emptiness that vibrated underneath his chin. If medical death had solid form, this was it. If technological frigidity had a taste, this was it.

So. That's what it had been. That knife in his leg was the same as the knife at his throat.

Iron to bind the fey.

||Human trick||

Kakashi had really done his homework for once. Naruto idly wondered if everyone else had iron knives on them too, like the one he had at his neck. A doppelganger could kill, and the one standing behind him certainly could as well, especially with Kakashi directing it from so close.

Naruto bit back the cool anger, the sinking feeling, and mouthed the word, "Go," to Kakashi in warning, not wanting to speak, and not daring to try and use jutsu with the Copy Cat Sharingan watching him so close. It was too risky. Besides--

He did not want to fight Kakashi anyway. He could if he had to. He did not want to. It was too risky that Kakashi would remember too much, would copy and learn too much, and that wasn't something Naruto was willing to risk. He didn't want to kill him. He didn't want to show his real strength, not yet. Not yet.

Naruto's face gave nothing away.

He pushed backwards hard, knocking into the clone, keeping the knife as far from him as he could while the doppelganger stabbed at his chest only to hit a rock instead. Naruto was gone.

Naruto ran off again close to the ground amid the shadows and jetsam, then roared shrilly when pain exploded in his thigh where another iron knife had caught him, this time tripping and crashing into trees and along the dirt, fumbling for a steady safe place, whimpering in his throat while salt pricked at his eyes...

It was just a knife! It wasn't anything outstanding, and sure Gaara had beaten him up, but damn it all he should be able to run faster! Even if it was iron, it shouldn't hurt him so damn much! It hadn't hurt him this much when he was a kid, hadn't meant anything at all to him when he was a kid!

Kakashi stepped into view again.

"Stop running. This is far enough," came the flat command.

Naruto growled from the shadow he had managed to tumble into and create.

"You've got to stop this."

This time, Naruto's face gave him away. His eyes looked behind Kakashi.

Kakashi turned around, but too late.

An arm of sand cannoned through him, through the illusion, and headed straight on towards Naruto who disappeared.

Gaara...

Gaara had...

Events replayed themselves in Naruto's mind in a split second, rolling and running and strained through the sieve of logic.

...Gaara hadn't been aiming for Kakashi.

Gaara had been aiming for him!

//Bastard!//

Green eyes swiveled to meet his still alive and running and still bloody angry...! He'd been beating to a bloody raggedy pulp and he...What was wrong with this kid!

//Many things.//

Naruto snarled.

The hell with him.

***

Naruto snarled at him, and his energy vanished, going west. Running away. Circling back to the fortress to protect it from anyone getting inside and prevent information from getting out.

Good. The idiot always did learn things too late. Too soft and caring, but viciously cunning and powerful when he wanted to be. Which was nearly never, but it was enough for now. Naruto could be so very powerful--but he still held some of himself back, after all this time.

Gaara mentally sneered.

Weakling.

They could easily slaughter this bunch here, this bunch attempting to kill them, easily. The fact that they were injured and hurt was a minor consideration. They had lost a lot of chakra, but not so much that it was impossible. No. Naruto just didn't want to fight. Not them. Not him. He would fight Gaara, would kill Gaara, but he wouldn't fight these ninja, not unless he had thought about it beforehand. Not in cold blood. Never in cold blood. Naruto couldn't do it.

Naruto was an idiot.

He wanted and then he didn't want, and in the end Naruto never knew what it was he really wanted. He always chased after the wrong thing, and was always disappointed when he got it.

Fighter's instinct sounded a hundred different warning bells and klaxons, all of which Gaara ignored. They were circling around him now, because he seemed more injured than Naruto and he was easier to see, to find. They always went after the weak ones, didn't they?

Doesn't matter.

Slowly, Gaara gathered and concentrated all his energy that he had in reserve, all the firepower that he had held back. He had had energy for two more lethal attacks. He gathered that energy now, the energy he hadn't used. His fingers touched the ground, stirred, felt the dirt run over them and under his nails, felt the sand press back against his palms.

The energy pulsed, brilliant crimson red slashed with pale golden streaks like the early morning sand dunes, pulsed and grew and Gaara--

Let it explode.

Miles away, Naruto felt it. Was knocked off his feet by it, and didn't doubt the efficiency of it. Mostly raw energy mixed in with the earth's own potential; resulting in something that looked and acted like a bomb, if bombs could be made of sand. It was--typical Gaara style--overkill. But from the sudden dead silence and smaller shocked stillness, it had apparently done the job.

But there were still things moving there. Moving towards Gaara.

Naruto looked back for a long time.

His leg ached. Burned.

Then he headed forward, ears and nose pricked for Sasuke.

***

Heavy breathing bounced over the stones; sounding like the owners throat had been put through a blender on puree and later forgotten. The rhythm was slow, hypnotic and Sasuke had to admit that it was very hard to tell if the prisoner was dead or alive, and much harder to tell if he was asleep or awake.

Yet since the prisoner had never been careless or known to sleep, much less make things simple by dying.

Small burns, cuts, and bandages covered his body; some of them were from Gaara's fight with the Leaf shinobi upon capture, as most of Naruto's inflictions had already healed and sucked up the last of his reserve energy. Some of the other one's were from his first and only escape attempt, and the rest had been added through time.

Now that a face had been put with the attacks, the sheer amount of ninja killed by Gaara was stunning. All precautions were taken.

Wrapped around his wrists and ankles iron manacles inscribed with writing anchored him to the floor, keeping him from even lifting his limbs. Around his neck sat a set of Buddhist prayer beads, with slivers of silver and iron in between them, touching his bare skin. Pieces of leaves and wood were bound around one arm against his bare skin.

Further, he was enclosed in the center of a concrete room with thick iron bars going through the roof to floor with a small door three feet high and strong iron lock. A circle of salt that simmered with energy and prayers surrounded the whole arrangement.

There wasn't a speck of dirt or sand inside the room anywhere, and everyone who came in was required to take off their shoes and most of their clothing to keep sand from collecting and getting inside.

Two ninja stood guard in either far corner of the room, in the shadows, and the door to the room itself was a thick rusty arrangement that could only be locked and unlocked from the outside. There were no windows, the walls were thick, and a single candle placed near but out of reach of Gaara gave illumination.

All of Gaara's weapons had been removed, and most of his clothes as well.

Every Anbu, active and retired member that could be spared was called in, all senior proficient ninja and monk was gathered to guard the demon creature Shukaku of the Sands. It was through the large gathering of monks that the demon's weakness for iron and inability to cross salt properly prepared was discovered.

The sand demon child was not healing as quickly as he should have been, his energy was deploringly low, and he didn't seem able to move any of the iron off the floor and wouldn't touch it willingly. Even cut and burned, his muscles gleamed in the candlelight, but he barely moved.

He wouldn't even talk, Sasuke thought irritably, about anything, he wouldn't even curse or look at anything. If not for his ragged and ugly breathing, he could easily be dead. Yet a scarce 30 or so hours ago he had killed strangled one guard through the bars, and killed the other with the other's weapon. That was before the salt circle and iron manacles. Now he didn't move at all.

"We hear your demon king is moving back up north. He's moving very quickly," came a cool, soothing voice, like well water over fried nerves. The heavy, hypnotic breathing continued without change.

"That was some days ago. Nearly five, I believe."

Sasuke allowed an uncomfortably long pause to follow for the information to sink in. It was close, but five days was stretching the truth. But since the guards were changed irregularly, as was mealtimes he usually didn't touch, there was no way for Gaara to tell time save by the candle length. In fact it had only been three and half very busy days. But in this cell, with the delirium and blackouts and pain, it may have well have been a month.

"You're wasting your time."

Gaara's expression didn't change.

"This is what he does, this is how he acts." Sasuke's voice was still cool, nearly sympathetic. Reasonable, detached. Cold blue sophistication. It was like a light at the end of the tunnel. The iron, the burn, the gritty scratchy feel was everywhere. It was damnably cold and he was burned all over. Sasuke's voice came again.

"You know what'll happen..."

Gaara continued to breathe hoarsely, his head bowed. Not even his neck muscles twitched. He really looked dead. Sasuke walked forward silently, and crouched down on the rim of the salt circle.

"He's not coming back, Gaara...He didn't come back for the other. He won't come back for you either, not after what happened." Sasuke's voice was coolly upset, yet it wasn't directed at Gaara; that was obvious. He wasn't offering pity or sympathy, but allowing room for thought, for movement.

"It was one final tick, one final joke...That's all this is to him...Don't think on what we have to offer, think on what you have to gain."

//What? That wasn't what they were supposed to say...//

"Think instead of what you have to lose, what you have left. What he's left you with."

//...ooh, clever one. Very nice.//

"What do you still have...that he hasn't taken yet."

Sasuke's voice was hypnotic, seductive. Refreshingly, calmingly dead serious and simple after Naruto's double-talk and volatile banter. It was nearly imperceptible, but Gaara's breathing was getting rhythm, and getting shorter and a little softer. Sasuke's voice was always objective, always cool, always--in tune.

Not angry, cold, contemptuously arrogant like the first ones had been, the ones he had later tried to kill, the ones that burned him more, the ones that hurt him and played with his mind. Sleeping with Naruto--sleeping for Naruto had weakened Gaara's mental barriers, made them easier to open. And it had hurt. It had hurt a lot. But they took nothing from him, he was certain of that.

Sasuke allowed the silence to grow, to flourish, until the silence inside Gaara's head became unbearable. The two ninja in the corners fought the urge to move, to shift. It was too still. Gaara wasn't even breathing anymore. The candle flickered.

Gaara inhaled deep, and a slow grin played softly on his lips. Achingly, by degrees, he lifted his head until he was looking into Sasuke's eyes, and Sasuke was looking into his. The candle cast shadows over their faces like markings. It was the first time Gaara realized it was Sasuke speaking to him; he hadn't recognized the voice for the tone in it, so gentle.

Slowly, he beckoned with his fingers, his hand trapped to the floor.

Silently, one pale hand gripped the bars, and Sasuke's face came to rest next to it, his expression neither open and innocent nor suspicious and fearful. His face was as implacable as before, a living mask mounted in ivory and topped with obsidian shards. Gently, easing his way around the burns, Gaara leaned forward, unable to move his hands or feet.

The circle of iron was small, and their faces were no more than some inches apart.

"He must...have tasted good...for you...to miss him...so much..."

Gaara's voice was terrible, broken and ragged, repulsive and dry. His breathing swelled now, from the simple effort of saying one sentence.

A phantom shadow of emotion passed through Sasuke's eyes; it was gone before Gaara could be certain it was there. Yet Sasuke's silence confirmed it, as did the small part and close in his lips. Neither bothered to identify "him". They both knew.

// When did Gaara...It wasn't real...It wasn't...//

Gaara stayed frozen, not a muscle shifting. The light reflected off his eyes like glass.

After a while, Sasuke spoke, very quietly.

"I go after what hurts me, and hurt it, so it can't do it again...It's the only way," Sasuke answered, his voice still calm and collected, still refreshingly cool and pliable. "You did the same, once. Yet now you do nothing. For how long, Gaara? For how long?"

Gaara said nothing, only stared that strange unblinking stare he had even though both eyes were bruised and tired. Searching, waiting...His defiance seemed all the sharper for his vulnerability somehow, to Sasuke's eyes. Silently, he eased back and let himself fall into his old position, head down and fingers stiff.

Sasuke closed his mouth quickly and his face hardened. He had almost spoken out. He had almost killed him. But he wouldn't play Gaara's games. Not now, not ever. He drew back and stood, before turning and walking out of the door, locking it from the outside.

He had almost killed him. He still wasn't--completely sure what had happened to Sakura. He simply knew that he had been attacked, that something fast and powerful had happened, and had gotten away from him quickly. Deep in his stomach, Sasuke had been terrified. Yet too intrigued not to follow.

So when he had set out to follow them, to watch them and had alerted the team that trouble was on the way, he had forgotten about Sakura deliberately. For one, following the huge ball of violent energy was more important than finding her to tell her what was happening, because she had to have been blind not to see what was happening. For another, he wanted to leave her behind, because he didn't want her near the danger.

But she had never reported back. It was possible that she had been injured in the fight, but they hadn't found a trace of her. Teams were watching the fortress, or trying to. The landscape kept seeming to shift together and apart. It was an optical illusion, but it was also too strange to be unnatural. Nar--

...That couldn't have been real.

But how could have Gaara had known, if it wasn't?

That--event, had been on Sasuke's mind often, true. But he had put it down as unimportant, in the grand scheme of things. It was, after all, just a dream. Just a dream. Just another crazy wet dream. About Naruto. And him. Naruto and Sasuke. Together. Intimately.

...pleasurably.

...That was impossible. It couldn't have been real. It just...

...another crazy wet dream. That was all it could have been. Just a dream.

Sasuke didn't know where Sakura was. He only hoped that if she was caught, that her keepers would be smart enough not to hurt her. But Sakura was clever, and sharp. She would get out. She always got out of trouble.

He didn't look back.

***

The news came in on flat-footed feet.

Gaara was captured. Naruto was on everyone's lips. War had been informally declared. Gaara was alive. The two delegates that Naruto had sent to the village had been heavily questioned, truth jutsus to make them tell more. They hadn't started on torture yet, but they probably would soon.

One of the delegates was dead. Apparently hung herself.

Gaara was probably going to die.

No one knew that Sakura was dead, though they suspected and she had been declared missin-nin. Nearly the same thing as dead. Would have nearly the same results.

//Well Gaara, it looks like you got the cat, but you're not eating the salamander. Too many against you for that.//

Things were near impossible now; too many variables, too many possibilities. All his careful work down the drain just because--

Naruto bit the thought off.

Don't take it lying down. Don't take it all...But if you can't fight back or run away, take it standing up, not lying down.

Naruto nodded enough to tell his spies they were dismissed, his face blank, before clasping his hands together, stretching high up until his vertebrae sounded with the satisfactory 'shc-lick' pop.

He was nearly fully healed, the limp from his leg gone, and his chakra returning at a slow and steady rate. Gaara had only just been captured, and already his people were planning ways to kill him, to take his power. The wounds where Kakashi had hit him with the iron were not healing quickly. They had started to fester unnaturally; both of them on the same leg. They would probably leave a scar if they ever did heal.

It was the first physical scar Naruto would have in all his life.

//...too bad I can't get pictures of where they hang your corpse out to dry.//

***

Gaara was, by Nature, paranoid.

As a child, Gaara had been afraid of the dark.

He had seen monsters in the closet, in the shadow of the coat rack and under the table as all children had. But, unlike the other children with the courage to face down the darkness, whenever Gaara scrapped himself together to challenge it--

--It winked at him. Grinned fangs.

Gaara had screamed, high and thin, fear closing his throat and choking on his own spit, his heart near exploding in his chest, a four year old seizure. White star-spots appeared before his eyes and he lost feeling. Blood and stomach acid poured out of his mouth. He fainted.

It never touched him, could never physically hurt him--but then it hadn't needed to. It could see him, he could see it, and it could follow him anywhere. Maybe it couldn't touch him, and maybe it could. Maybe it was just biding its time. Waiting for him to turn his back, waiting for him to come to fight, to walk into it, into its mouth and then--

Then it would hurt him. It would hurt him in ways he couldn't dream of, ways he didn't know! He didn't know. He didn't know how. And everything he imagined...never came close, to how it would hurt him. It would be more. It would always be more.

It would take all the pain and suffering and all the darkness and silence it would take the damned silence and multiply it sevenfold and shove it down and down into him until he wasn't anymore!

Until he wasn't Gaara. Until he was just the pain.

He was alone. He was always alone, wherever he went. He walked in a silent dark void; blind, deaf, and numb, with only the fanged smile and laughing malicious darkness in his head.

He was always alone.

It would hurt him. It would never stop hurting him. It never stopped laughing. Smiling at him, this thing in the shadows of the table legs.

Yashamura couldn't chase it away; she couldn't see it, didn't believe in it. Didn't believe him. Gaara was unstable, fragile, and very, very powerful. Stress was a part of his foundation; it was simply her job to keep him from tipping over.

The sand couldn't touch it.

He had no protection from it, this thing that lurked in the darkness. He had no reprieve. It didn't matter if he started screaming in the middle of the room when the light stopped, or if he sat very still, or closed his eyes and pretended he wasn't there, the sand cocooned protectively around him.

Gaara stopped sleeping.

Terror in the night.

Bump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

There was no sanctuary. There was no reprieve. There was fear. Mind numbing heart stopping fear, saliva and sweat oozing from every pore of his body fear, shaking harder than a drug abuser on withdrawal fear. Shaking so hard there was physical pain, arthritic damage. Panic attacks. Heart attacks. Seizure attacks.

There was darkness eternal, unshakable. Unbeatable, untouchable.

There was hatred. There was hatred always, but hatred made him feel alive. Hatred was something scalding and violent, bright red angry energy.

Hatred cleansed him, hatred replaced.

The frozen stillness, dead darkness.

Grinning fangs silent.

Gaara welcomed hatred. He feared the darkness. He ignored the shame, the guilt.

He wasn't supposed to be alive like this; he wasn't supposed to be. Not like this. He was unnatural. There was no place for him anywhere he went. He didn't belong. There was nothing he could do about it, nowhere he could go. Endure. That was it. Endure, and watch life from the icy glass house he lived in. Don't live. Just watch. Don't live. Stuck in limbo, drifting, not here or there, drifting without an anchor on the sea. Stuck in limbo. Don't belong anywhere.

But all of that was small beside the fear.

Besides the dark.

Then Naruto came into his life.

Again.

The first time had been a shock: contemptible, amusing, then terrifying and finally a revelation.

Naruto was the key. Naruto was a secret. Naruto was his light twin. Suddenly, Gaara was not alone in the day. Naruto was there. Not friends, never friends, but he was still there.

//Not alone? Please? Not alone...not anymore. I can't...kill me, please? Not alone?//

Naruto was there. Naruto hated him.

The candle flickered.

The shadows danced; laughed at him and spit at him.

Naruto was going to let him die.

The darkness was going to come back to him. And this time it wasn't going to go away.

Gaara's muscles twitched. Pain gripped him.

***

Naruto leaned against the railings and stared out across the dead woods.

Despite the obvious facts, the fortress-castle was not created by him, nor belonged to him. In fact, he hadn't even known of it until Nine Tails had whispered it to him in dreams, where it was and how to get there, of what was inside. What was inside was a lot of dust, a lot of stone, a lot and even more darkness, and hidden away a lot of gold. A damn lot of gold, jewels, and antique weapons all stored away underground behind thick stone. Treasure that could easily be turned into willing employees, plumbing, and information.

Nine Tails had been here, in her early days as a fox spirit, stealing treasure from the Western lords, and was later caught and hurt for it. She later destroyed the people who had hurt her.

Nine Tails had a very simple outlook on life: Take what you need, destroy what can hurt you. Run. Keep living. Above all else, keep living.

It was through Nine Tails' guidance and instincts that had led Naruto almost magically to power and influence, had kept him from being killed in battle and petty attempts of assassination.

She was burning darkly for blood always, yet had found strange, intoxicating human pleasure in making the victims suffer first. That was discovered in her time trapped in Naruto, watching him work and how he made others suffer, embarrassed by his pranks, feeling him hurt without a wound on his skin. She learned patience, a strange quality in a demon.

Cunning, strength, and savagery--but patience was something strange to her. Something very new. And very rewarding.

She wanted her keepers, her trappers, the village people killed now! ...But for pleasure, for indulgence, she had learned to wait. She wanted Gaara dead, because he had hurt her, hurt her through Naruto.

It was one of the rare times the two souls had conflicted.

The merger between the two was nearly complete; at first there had been a clear distinction between what was Naruto thoughts and what were her thoughts, but during the time spent on his own--alone--away from the village, the two voices and blended and nearly combined. It was getting harder to tell where Naruto began and Nine Tails ended.

Nine Tails instinct would have killed Gaara there, and could not understand any of Naruto's pleads and reasoning even though she tried. Naruto had felt her try. He had felt her cold confusion, felt it mirror his own, but just as she instinctively wanted to kill Gaara, Naruto instinctively wanted to save him. And neither really could explain it out.

||Why||

Naruto smiled softly, sadly.

"Because I need him."

Although, by rights, Gaara should die. He had hurt Naruto like neither had ever really planned. If Gaara died, Naruto honestly wouldn't mind too much.

||Not anymore Have what needed No trust||

Naruto grinned widely, shielding nothing, allowing the darkness and light and love and fear to pass openly before her eyes. He could never lie to her. It was harder than lying to himself.

She rarely shared personal things, her memories; she kept them locked up and Naruto rarely knew exactly how she felt. Her knowledge was shared and mixed with his often, but never too clearly, always in unexpected bursts of epiphany. Naruto was under the vague impression that she was forgetting her past. She was slowly...not dying, but fading certainly, inside of him. Slowly, but it was happening. Slowly, her knowledge and life was being added to his.

Earlier, he had an idea of her emotions, yes, but not in the exact terms she could read him. He knew she had felt his occasional fear about her, about her mind and powers.

Nine Tails resented being in a human body, and Naruto resented being hated in her place.

She had known exactly what he thought of her before she had allowed the merger to commence. Naruto had known exactly what she thought of him.

Yet she had never hurt him. Never cursed him. Never hated him, though once she used to resent his body being her cage. She still did. Yet it had been understood that she didn't blame Naruto for creating her shell. She had never hated the human child that the Hokage had imprisoned her in.

She hated the Hokage.

As Nine Tails had whispered to him softly, while he was crying in the dark after leaving the village, alone and deathly afraid not of what lurked in the shadows, but what lurked in his mind, that this was the way things were. Naruto was a part of her now. And she was a part of Naruto. Both lived at the same time. Both felt the same hunger, pain, urges, desires. The more complex feelings Nine Tails didn't feel and rarely understood, such as sadism and obsession, but they shared the physical.

She could never be free of Naruto. Naruto could never be free of her. She couldn't dominate his soul, his mind, not completely. Not forever. She couldn't kill him. And later, she hadn't wanted to. That wasn't understood, but it was definite thing. He was the closest thing to a kit that she would ever have.

Naruto wouldn't kill her, he couldn't kill her, not the voice inside his head, not the power that flowed through him and kept him alive.

He hadn't known about her for the majority of his adolescent life, yet he could always sense there was something else there, someone else inside his head in the same way people sense spirits or ghosts or angels. Yet Naruto's had been right there in his head. Naruto's spirit was definitely real.

"He never really could be trusted darling."

||Not attacked before--afraid Angry now, not controllable||

Yes, that was probably right. Gaara had allowed things to flow, things had been flowing pretty smoothly, and then he had the nerve to openly attack Sakura and Sasuke and Naruto himself, and hadn't even bothered to hide what had happened. And then the idiot had to let himself be captured! If he came back...Gaara was a sore loser; he wouldn't forget. First time was all the warning he ever gave.

||Why bother||

Nine Tail's voice was confused, unsure. Not concerned, distant, but vaguely interested. Naruto started to form an answer, stopped, and leaned his mouth against his fists propped on his elbows, and answered honestly.

"I don't know."

He could feel Nine Tails wondering at that, trying to look at it and take it apart like a trick, like an illusion, but it was an honest answer. He didn't know. He had no idea why, but he had to get Gaara out of there.

Gaara was still vaguely useful, a powerful if loose cannon that could be directed in the right direction. Whether or not he was worth the effort was another matter. And he had killed Sakura. He--

Naruto felt...bad, about that. Bad, but what really hurt was that he only felt slight grief. He had killed Sakura, but it hadn't been Naruto's Sakura. Not the little girl dressed up in pink. It had been an older woman, mature. Naruto hadn't seen her in so long, in some seven odd years. He had remembered her, of course. But when she had been there, he didn't dare even go near her. It had hurt to look at her.

Naruto felt shame, guilt, for not feeling enough grief. It was irrational. But it was true.

And, irrationally again, Naruto knew Gaara deserved it, he knew Gaara had betrayed him and finally gone too far with his bloodlust and be of no further use to him anymore. He knew Gaara still had the power to take his empire apart. He knew Gaara knew him well, too well, and the cold-blooded killer would use every advantage against him.

And yet the memory kept coming back, of them of them on the ground, his hand on Gaara's neck, for once physically smaller than Naruto in his half-fox form, pressing small hopeless kisses along his stunned cheek, never on his mouth, never on his neck. Never meeting his eyes after that...of them hiding together...of leaving him there, while he, Naruto, ran.

...

What the hell was that? It didn't make any sense. It didn't...

Damn it Gaara.

What the hell was that?

Naruto acted the fool, but then he acted many things. In the end he was just Naruto.

"I need him."

||Why||

Demanding an answer now. No running, no excuses--they weren't even an option.

Naruto took a deep breath, opened his mind, and plunged in. Thoughts ran through his head that Nine Tails could read as well. He didn't try to stop her.

//Because I need someone to talk to. Because I need someone who's human. Because I need someone who reminds me *I'm* still human. Because I want a friend. Because I began to like him. Because I've betrayed too many already. Because I like him. Because I don't want to lose him.//

Nine Tails was quiet. Naruto closed his eyes and swam deeper.

//Because they shouldn't have a right to hurt him. Because he was trying to save me in the end. Because they shouldn't hurt anyone anymore. Because he's a demon like me. Because he's alone like me. Be--//

Naruto's thoughts took a dangerous dive.

//Because he's what I could have been. He's what I can become. Alone, cold, afraid of everyone and always hating myself, hating life. Because as long as he's there to do it I know what *not* to do...I can still be me. If he's not there, if I don't have a measure, I could become Gaara. I don't want to be Gaara. I can't let him win. I can't let him go so easily.//

//I need him to fall for me. I need him to be there at the bottom of hell. If I fall, if I ever fall and stop being human, stop being Naruto completely, he'll be waiting for me there at the bottom. I need someone to be waiting for me, even if it is in hell.//

//I hate being alone...//

//It doesn't matter if he hates me. It doesn't matter if he likes me. We're two of a kind. We're the only ones *of* our kind. I need him. I need him to keep me from truly being all alone. From really being one of a kind. I don't want to be one of a kind. I need someone there with me. Gaara has to stay here with me.//

Naruto laughed quick in his throat, and kept his eyes closed. "Selfish, isn't it."

Nine Tails was still. He couldn't feel how she felt about his admission. What her reaction was. He could feel his own though. Guilt. He felt a little guilty, he felt very alone, cold, but also a little bitter, and a little angry. But she could feel it too. So hopefully, she wouldn't take offense.

||Sasuke||

"What about Sasuke? He's pissed beyond all heaven at me...Geez, they all are, now that they know who I am."

||Not important Sasuke Could be Gaara||

Naruto's eyes snapped open. Several things ran through Naruto's mind. He wasn't even able to identify them; they came as quick at light and invisible as air.

"No he couldn't," Naruto said quickly. "That'd be terrible. He couldn't be Gaara in a million years..."

Could he?

//Sasuke?//

...No, no he couldn't. Despite the anger and hatred in him, the jealousy and fear, despite the fact that Sasuke had all right ingredients to be real bastard beyond bastards, Naruto believed that at the core he was a decent kind of guy. Sasuke could forget that decency at times, but it was still there, buried. Naruto honestly wasn't sure if Gaara had any decency in him at all. He had some innocence in him, but then nearly everybody Naruto knew had some innocence in them somewhere about something. Even Nine Tails.

And if Sasuke ever did take the plunge, really go insane and dark, then he could quite possibly...be worse than Gaara.

Be much, much worse than Gaara.

Gaara had needs, few and vague though they were, but Gaara still had needs and weaknesses. Naruto knew Sasuke well enough to know that once he got an objective in his head, he would enthusiastically stab himself in the heart if he thought it would help him.

Sasuke was far too obsessive, too fanatical, when something finally caught his interest. Naruto had watched him chase Itachi. His ambition made him blind, even to his own pain and death, dead to the people around him, and gave him a will that was inhumanely unstoppable. Gaara was nearly the same, but he couldn't afford to be that blind. His demon would consume him totally if he ever did, and Gaara would die. Only Shukaku would be left.

Nine Tails knew all this, felt it go through their joined minds at the same time. It was always a slight surprise that even without the seal, she hadn't tried to consume him. Perhaps because she was slightly more stable than Shukaku. Perhaps because she was smarter, or simply lazier. Perhaps because Naruto was doing what she wanted.

Mostly because the merger between Nine Tails and Naruto was becoming so fine-tuned they couldn't tell each other apart anymore; their personalities were dissolving into one another by the hour.

||Be your Gaara||

Naruto frowned.

"What do you mean?"

||Not one of a kind Sasuke is full human more human than Gaara He will stop loneliness You like him Easier to control Too weak to hurt Gaara will Closer||

Naruto puzzled. And then felt a sort of embarrassed pink horror. And gulped. And thought how oddly Nine Tails sometimes thought like a mom. A homicidal vicious mom, but a mom nonetheless.

Since Sasuke was physically, mentally, weaker, he made a better companion than Gaara. Okay. Thank you. It's a bit more complex than that, but he wasn't sure how exactly, so he couldn't explain.

And then there was the type of companion she was hinting...A companion better than Gaara. A companion closer than Gaara. But she didn't really mean...she didn't...And the worst part was that what Naruto was terribly embarrassed about was what she meant, because he knew--beyond a doubt--they were thinking the exact same thing.

He could play with Sasuke's mind. He could play with Sasuke...He could play with a lot more than just Sasuke's mind...

"That's all that was, there was nothing more, so no, I couldn't!" he said a little hysterically, grinning and fearful.

Nine Tails was puzzled. He could taste her puzzled-ness.

||You like him Want him Hunger for him||

Naruto gulped and blushed and shook his head franticly, even though there was no one to see it. However he couldn't bring himself to argue. He couldn't think of a decent argument. He didn't even want to think of the issue. Gaara was Gaara. Gaara did Gaara's job. Sasuke would not be doing Gaara's job, and that wasn't even what she was really thinking and like hell how could he even--Sasuke hated him! Sasuke did. And while Gaara could be a friend...Sasuke...No. No, no way.

||Why run Why fear Strong||

Oh geez, how do explain the relationship of fear and love to a creature that mates only for reproduction, and seems to love nothing. Not even itself. She liked Naruto well enough, more through mutual necessity, but she didn't love him. Didn't really seem to love anything. Oh shit. What to do, what to do...

||Why||

"No! Because! No, it's not the same, he's Sasuke and Gaara's Gaara and I'm me, and I am sooo not bringing, not, not, um..." Naruto was slightly breathless, and his voice girlishly high.

||Chased him last time Enjoyed him last time||

"That's not the point!" Naruto wailed.

||You wanted more Take it You have never denied yourself Unhappy Stop Leave Gaara Hurts you Take Sasuke||

He didn't want Gaara the way he wanted Sasuke. He wouldn't be able to have Sasuke close to him without...without...

Without really screwing something up.

"Darling I can't do that. I won't do that. I mean, it's just that...Sasuke would hate me more. And um," Naruto closed his eyes and plunged on.

"He won't...give me everything I want. And I can't stop half-way with something like this, and I will want more than I can take. If I, if I, if I do like you're saying Sasuke--Sasuke could really hurt me. Not, physically, not really. Not mentally, probably, either, but...But he could hurt me. Like...Like the villagers did. And I don't think I--No. I'm sorry. I'd..."

Naruto trailed off and wandered around the balcony quickly before returning to his spot.

"I'd love to. I would. If I thought he'd let me,"

||Make him let||

"There's no way to do that!" Naruto grinned madly, and scrubbed his eyes with his palms. "There's no sure way to do that. I can't...I can't..." Naruto looked away, to the railing, studying the little shifts in the stone and the layers of rainwater residue on top.

"I'm sorry. I want to. But I can't."

Nine Tails tried to absorb this.

Everything made sense. Naruto was fighting himself, which she couldn't understand. He wanted it, but he didn't want it. He could do it, he wanted to do it, but he wasn't going to try. There was some fear involved, but it was shadowy, unfocused. It was a paradox. An emotional paradox. Naruto had a better answer, she could vaguely make it out, but even though it was more sophisticated and a little clearer, it still didn't make any sense. She tried a card.

||I like Sasuke||

She disliked Sasuke, actually. He made her uneasy; made the dark energy in Naruto's gut bobble and light, made his stomach uneasy just by glancing at him sideways. But she felt the same magnetic pull, the same deadly attraction to his flame. The frown eased away from Naruto's face instantly, as did the worry anxiety and confusion in his mind. Naruto smiled.

"I like him too...I just wished he liked me."

//But he won't now. Not after this. Not after everything. And especially not after what comes next.//

||Get Sasuke Bring him here||

"Planning something, are you?" Naruto joked slyly.

It was sweet to watch her try to manipulate human emotions. Energy, space, and mental illusions and attacks were a piece of cake for her. She just couldn't figure out the human heart.

||Want him here Me What you do with Gaara you do with Gaara Want Sasuke||

Naruto raised his eyebrows, surprised. She had yielded. Or maybe not really yielded so much as made a compromise. He didn't think she could compromise. And she wanted Sasuke. Why did she want Sasuke?

"All right darling. I'll see what I can do, all right?"

||Like Sasuke Want Sasuke Gaara your problem||

Naruto grinned softly.

***

Gaara's breathing was getting worse. He wasn't healing fast enough, and his wounds were infected, bruises and markings turning a dark plum and black color, pale where the pus grew. He wasn't cared for partly because no one wanted to or saw prudence doing so, and partly because he would have killed anyone who tried to touch him.

The bolt on the outside door slid open, and something that looked incredibly like Sasuke stepped into the room. He stood in between the two guards for roughly 10 seconds, before walking forward to stand right outside the salt-circle. His eyes raked over the salt on the floor, over the air above it. Silently, he sniffed the air.

He let the silence stretch for some time while he studied the tableau in front of him.

Something shifted.

"Don't you ever get tired of waiting for the impossible?"

"You know how shinobi work, even demonic ones. If you fall behind, you stay behind. If anyone one does come, it's to kill you."

"Makes everything rather simple."

"Simplicity is the foundation for perplexity."

"I've been doing some thinking, since you've been here. I've decided something."

"I don't want you dead. But 'want' and 'is' are two very different things. No one can save a demon."

"The only one you can rely on...is yourself. Gaara. Who loves only himself. Only Gaara can save Gaara."

Sasuke seemed to melt backwards and appear between the guards without motion, his back to Gaara. Again, he stood there silently not moving, just waiting. Again, something shifted--but this time it didn't move back.

His fingers lightly touched the right guard on his neck, who seemed to slump. His fingers touched left guard on his sleeved arm. The shinobi moved slightly, and stepped forward a little.

"But I can still show you the door."

Nearly staggering, the shinobi moved forward clumsily, his bare feet mussing up the salt on the floor, and digging a key out of his pocket to slide it into the iron lock. The door swung open.

Gaara tackled him, snagged his knife blood flying, and turned his eyes to Sasuke.

A few seconds later, Gaara's face was smashed into the floor, Sasuke kneeling on him and pinning his arms to his back. Gaara heard a hiss, then winced as the prayer bead necklace was ripped from his neck. He started to get up, but fell down again as fingers pressed against his temple and he fell asleep.

Sasuke grinned brightly.

The standing shinobi crawled forward when Sasuke stared at him, fumbled in his pockets slowly and produced a key, taking off Gaara's manacles from his arms and left leg.

The smile slipped from Sasuke's as he stood and again touched the guard on the neck. This one collapsed to the floor.

He hefted Gaara's body over his shoulder, walked out, and slid the bolt locked on the door.

***

We should have killed him when we had the chance.
--Konoha ninja, Naruto vol.1

Loooosers!! Wanna-be's! You don't have what it takes to do something this low! I rule, and you drool!
--Naruto, Naruto vol.1

But when you're falling off the cliff, it's too late to wonder if there might have been a better way up the mountain...
-Night Watch, Terry Prattchet

***

Naruto knelt on the floor, one knee propping up one elbow, hands folded into the familiar standard jutsu symbol in front of him. He closed his eyes.

Some things got easier with time, but then again some things didn't.

The atmosphere around him was still, solemn. Naruto seemed to be praying or in some severe meditation, he was concentrating so hard. The air was still, dark, and there was the faint impression that he wasn't really there. The imagery seemed foggy, uncertain, like a dream--trying to be in a hundred places at once.

First time was the hardest. Everything after that was a matter of logic.

Thumping pumping...electrical impulses...see what you believe...

The air was a mesh of live wire electricity, slight small static too fine to be picked up with mechanical equipment, far too fine. But there were other ways to skin a cat. And mechanical equipment wouldn't be able to infiltrate the mesh, wouldn't be able to get inside it...wouldn't be able to make dance. Make it knot.

Sensitivity and power. A formidable combination with little middle ground. Pain.

Make it work. It doesn't work. Make it work, it has to work. Failure if it doesn't work, death if it doesn't work, game over, do not pass go, do not collect, no memory no honor no satisfaction. You don't deserve to be. Make it work. Failure. Make it work. Make it work.

...In. Good. Running through it...there's so many, so very many, can it really be done with so many?...running through it...There.

//In the core.//

It's too wide. There's too much of it. Too much diversity, to widely spread, too many voices, too many minds. Can't Borrow them all, can't knot them all...

...So don't.

Knot the mesh.

It's all interconnected, it's all community. It's a society, a dependent group of minds working together. Take the mass; knot it. Chain reaction.

Eyes.

***

Eyes were on him.

Four sets, two people, calling silently for help, uneasy and angry, the same familiar hate as familiar as his old set of aviation goggles he had carried around his neck everywhere until he got his hitae headband. The goggles made him think he was flying away, far, far away from this place and this world.

Nobody could see him cry with his goggles covering his eyes*.

They had been his defense and escape. Then the ninja status had replaced them.

He had let go of his defense and escape in exchange for the promise of strength and respect shinobi status offered. The promise had fallen through.

Childhood memories.

They were armed, and they thought they recognized the kid, felt mild apprehension and attentiveness, but it was all sort of overlapped by subtle reluctance and incredulousness. Had they looked to see what was between his palms, they would have been surprised to see blood. Naruto was reckless, but at this stage he hadn't wanted to take too many chances.

It was a vaguely good thing that he had never been real close to this Hokage, this Tsunade-sama. She was kind to him while he knew her, as it happened, but then so were many people who had hurt him. Like Mizuki-sensei. Like the other teachers, the other children, so long...

Apathy was its own crime.

By not doing anything, it was easy to kill so many. Passive, peaceful, blind apathy that didn't make anyone worried or stand out in any way. It was so easy to be hurt simply because people didn't care enough to force others to stop.

Forcing people to stop would have been a break of their civil rights, and a crime of throwing the demon boy's laundry out into the alley or laughing at him or beating him up was just--childish pranks. Born stupidity. Forcing them to stop wouldn't actually make them acknowledge Naruto's existence as a human being; it would only make them sullen. Make him a bigger target.

People need to learn life by themselves, because no one can force them to be decent people. Otherwise you're just another tyrant, another bully. They would learn. They would learn. He could prove them wrong. He was strong, and he was a good person. He could prove them wrong.

But then...

Why should he?

What right did they have to see the real him?

What had they done, to earn his tolerance?

Why should he have to be patient if he was the good guy and they were the bullies?

Why did he always have to turn the other cheek?

How come he could never lose his temper?

...Because he was Naruto? Because of Nine Tails' power?

But if he had Nine Tails' power, had the demon's chakra and cunning and malicious nature intertwined with his...

If he was going to do the time...

...Why not do the crime?

Why not make them pay?

Why?

For Iruka's sake? Because Iruka-sensei didn't want him to? For Sakura's sake? Sasuke's? Simply because they were idiots, because they were bullies who hadn't been raised to know any better?

...no one had raised him to know any better either. Had they? No, they hadn't...

He didn't want to hurt Iruka, nor Sasuke. He didn't want to hurt Kakashi either, or pervert-sennin, and he had tried to twist events and minds so that they were as far away as possible. He knew where Iruka was now, had isolated him from the group and the knot, made sure he wouldn't be hurt personally. Pervert-sennin was far away on a mission, Sasuke was out cold far off in the woods in his people's care, and Kakashi...

Well, he would deal with Kakashi carefully when the time came to it. He couldn't get him to leave the village like Pervert-sennin, and he was afraid to fight him. He doubted he could trick him, and doubted he could really win without killing him.

The villagers had always hated the demon, feared it. But Naruto had seen the real enemy, and had hated that deeply instead.

Apathy.

Apathy was the enemy. That was the crime. Nine Tails hadn't cared about the villagers when she had first attacked. She had just wanted them dead. The villagers hadn't cared about Naruto while he was growing up. They had just wanted him dead. They hadn't cared.

Nobody cared. People got hurt. Nobody cared.

Nobody I knew. Why should I care?

Naruto cared. That was part of his problem.

He was sentimental, and he treasured his possessions too deeply, with all his heart because he had so much to give. Because he had no one to love for so long, he gave all his heart to his dream desperately. And his dream had been hurt. His dream had been killed. He had watched it being torn apart, thrown in the shit, and had been laughed at for even having it. For even mourning it.

Naruto would never be normal. Naruto would never be accepted. Naruto was cursed until the day he died and longer, and nothing he did, nothing he ever did, could ever make him stop being what he was. It was because of what he was that they hated him. It didn't matter how he acted, what he did really. It was because of what he was. Not because he was Naruto. Because he wasn't human. Not Naruto. Not human.

And there was nothing on earth that could make him stop being what he was.

Naruto gave all his heart to anger, to this new dream of equality, of final justice and Darwin nature, and let that flow through him.

Nobody cared. People died. He died. Nobody cared.

So Naruto was going to make them care. Naruto was going to fight the apathy, the way he and Nine Tails both wanted. He was going to make them care about him and see him, even if they only cared because they hated him, because they envied his power, wondered at it. But they would care. He would make them care. And then he would make them die.

But the two shinobi watching him from up above on the rooftop, Chunnin level, didn't know that. They only knew that Nine Tails had left her mark, and the demon fight that had been reported back rumored of huge chakra and extravagant, deadly attacks. They only knew that demons were dangerous, and rare, and not quite the fairy tale creatures most people thought them to be.

But an unarmed teenager kneeling--apparently praying or meditating--in a central alley did not fit with the imagery.

Still, they were ninja. They were trained to see through deceit; they had seen too many comrades killed by harmless men on their knees. Usually on their knees. Sometimes they were lying on their back when wind speared through the skull.

They stayed on guard.

"Intruder. Corner of Hayashi,..."

***

Naruto grew up. They were probably all worrying why the Ramen Boy had suddenly gone psycho, where had old familiar baka gone.

Naruto grew up. And that was the problem with growing up. It made you colder, made you meaner. You weren't as innocent as you once were, and you were selfish because no one would tell you couldn't be.

No, wait, that was wrong.

You were selfish because people expected you to be. Because it was a dog eat dog world. It was in the Rules. And Naruto had learned that. He had really learned that.

Foxy had the sharpest teeth like you never seen.

//Watch out teacher; I've grown up big and strong.//

***

See the knot.

Here we are now.

It's in place. He's in place. I'm in place.

He's gone. I'm ready.

Let it rip.

Flash.

***

See the knot.

See it glitter, this knot of paper-thin silver threads, each one a multicolored mind moving and thinking, webbed out over the village. Minds aren't separate things, not in a community this small. Thoughts tend to leak over into each other by association. No one truly owns his or her own mind.

They share them, on a very small impersonal scale, mix and match ideas. They carry each other around in their head, wondering what to get them for birthdays, what they had meant when they said that, how she had gotten his phone number--that sort of thing. Picturing their daughters in their minds. Wondering what their dads were doing right now. Hoping their friends would let them borrow some lunch.

See the knot.

Now they were all thinking a little harder about each other, because they are made to. A little stronger. A little more often.

See the knot.

That's their minds. That's their minds thinking. And since their thinking more, it's easier to see, easier to touch. Easier to mold.

Now.

See the knot.

Take the knot.

Rip it apart.

***

There should have been screams.

There really should have been some screams, Naruto couldn't help thinking. After all that preparation, after all that careful, meticulous work, so very delicate and nearly impossible work. After all that damage he knew he had done, all the death he knew had been caused just now. There should have been screams or explosions or fireworks or something. Sirens at least.

It was all rather quiet.

Roughly more than half of the village had just suffered immediate brain failure, and most of the rest had experienced immediate cardiac arrest. Like tumors growing in their brains, something had suddenly caused the gray matter to go splat! Most of them probably had no idea it had happened or that they had even died. But they had. They were dead. There was a big silence in Naruto's head, in his ears, where their voices had spoken static. How many? Three hundred? A thousand? More? How many died in a single attack?

Who cared?

Naruto opened his eyes.

He hit the ground.

Buried into his jacket, three kunai vibrated with impact.

His eyes darted up, and he skittered backwards and to the side, seeking cover against the wall before getting out of there.

Of course, his attack only worked if one didn't know how to guard one's mind against foreign agents. Only worked if one couldn't tell that something was off with their head, that someone else was inside it. Only worked with one really trusted their intuition, trusted themselves.

People like that are a small number. But in a shinobi village, it was a large number compared to the whole.

Naruto pulled two kunai out, standing and sliding into the shadows, while a copy silently slipped though a window at blinking speeds.

He was hit in his shoulder before he threw them, fell hard to the ground and disappeared in a poof of smoke, a smoking log in the middle of it, thunking to the concrete flooring. A few seconds later the illusion broke, and Naruto again lay limply on the ground, eyes closed.

::Let him go now!::

He continued to lie on the ground, eyes closed as if dead, and his shoulder bleeding slightly. He hadn't dared dodge the attack even slightly; it would have ruined the illusion. Since when would a substitute doppelganger care about getting hit? Naruto waited.

There. A slow increase of energy to the southeast. Naruto sent it a little mental nudge, just enough to tell Gaara he was near, and that he was watching him.

The energy exploded.

It was frantic and high and feverish. If that didn't get everyone's attention, he didn't know what would. The sky over the south became hazy with dust, turning the sun a gritty color. You would have to be blind not to feel that chakra, dark and panicky and hurt, and all the angrier because of it.

Gaara might live through it, but it was just possible he would not. His wounds had been horrible, and the amount and rate of energy he was expending right now would take him out easy if he wasn't careful.

But it would be enough for a distraction.

And Gaara had some protection--provided he didn't do anything stupid like kill them on accident. Knowing Gaara as Naruto did, he just might do that...

Time for the real work to begin.

Naruto sent his mind out, skimmed around, and found that most of his doppelgangers had been discovered and taken care of. So here was the real work. Here was the real challenge.

The knot was destroyed, exploded, gone. The remaining threads on peripheral vision weren't bright or obvious enough to tie together and yank in one pull, but they were active and observant enough that he could send them little messages easily, little messages that they would think they were seeing themselves.

He could pick at their control, make them see all of the sleeping cold people around at their feet, make them feel their responses to it. He didn't let them ignore anything. He picked at their control, at the cold professionalism, picked and picked at it until he created a crack wide enough to wiggle through. He made them see all as they were supposed to, made them feel it like they were already fighting not to. He was just helping their instincts push open the door.

Some of them fled. They were caught.

Bring on the haze.

They could feel the chakra, the ancient evil energy, malicious and potent and hateful, south in the forest, south in the village. They knew it would come for them, for entrapping it. The older ones remembered Nine Tails, what hell it had been fighting that demon and losing, fighting that demon until finally Hokage had trapped it in that child. They remembered the fear, and the pain. The people who died. They remembered the fire.

Dark indigo gray blue misty haze, like the haze over the sun, like the haze in their minds, so heavy and bulky it was hard to move with it inside their skulls. Brains were such useless things, didn't do anything right. The darkness lived inside your head. The darkness didn't live in the closet or in blue eyes, the darkness lived inside your own *head*.

Loud, maniac laughter filled their ears, bone marrow chilling and so selfish. A man screamed suddenly in shock as his body rebelled against him, his arm snapping so far back it broke the bone. The muscles didn't obey, the body seemed to go into seizures or arrests, flailing so hard that the bones broke and arteries bursts so people actually drowned in their own blood! In their own fluids!

Naruto cracked up and laughed like mad! He was near doubling over, leaning against the wall as the laughter and strain took him, laughing and laughing so damn hard!

Hearts began to pump even quicker, urged on by the adrenalin and hormones that they were making themselves! They wanted to find him so hard, so very badly that they were stopping their own blessed hearts with the effort! They were giving themselves heart attacks! All by themselves! It was so funny!!!

All Naruto really had to do was push them a little. Break down the composure, the little flimsy toy wall of control they built up.

They had suffered so many losses in so little time. They had lost men. They still weren't sure what they were fighting! Two whole ninja tribes wiped out! They couldn't see right, couldn't walk right--a whole lot of them couldn't even breathe.

The pride of Konohakagure, leveled because everyone was so afraid to go into his or her own minds. Terrified to have somebody else in there, looking at all their dirty little secrets, throwing them and plastering them in their faces.

Look who raped their girlfriend when she wouldn't say yes. Look who cheated on the test even though they weren't supposed to. Look who rigged the test, because he didn't want his rival to get too far a head of him. Because he was jealous.

::Look at your dead mom, killed because you weren't there to protect her. Because you were selfish. Look how pale she looks, how bloated. Disgusting, looks like something out of the freezer. Look at the little kid you killed, assassinated, because it was your job, because he was born into the wrong family. Was your reputation worth the kid's life? Does that money taste good in your mouth?::

::Was it worth his life?::

::Is it worth yours?::

::Look at all the ones you left behind. All the ones you failed. You failed them, failed your village, because you weren't good enough. Weren't skilled enough. Because you cared more about yourself than you did about them. Because they had good hearts, so they had to die. You lived. What's that make you, buddy? What's that make you?::

::You bastard. Hear them scream. Hear them call. Retrieve their bodies, see their slack mouths and cold skin, and don't you dare cry for them. You don't deserve to. You worthless piece of shit. You don't deserve to at all.::

::They died. You survived.::

::You bastard. You should have died with them.::

::Look at their eyes. Remember when they were alive? How you laughed together, pushed each other around just to feel skin against skin. Just to know you weren't alone? That you were alive? Look at their eyes. See their dead eyes looking back at you. See the dead looking at you, see the dead *seeing* you. Feels good, doesn't it? Taste their still blood, their cold sweat. Eat them up. They were stronger than you, that's how they could die while you lived. You need their strength, to become better. Take their strength, eat their strength, eat their flesh. Become strong. Become better.::

::Become better. That's all that matters now, you worthless piece of shit. Become better, if you dare. Eat them, if you've got the stomach for it. If you've got the courage for it. You don't have it, do you? You're still so damn weak, despicably weak. You don't deserve to live. You don't deserve to live while they died. You contaminate everyone you touch with your weakness. You're killing your children, the children of the future. You bastard. You're killing the future with all your stupidity, all your incompetence.::

::You weak bastard. Look what you've done. Look how many you've killed. Look how many have died, while *you* lived.::

::Here's your chance, sonny-Jim. Here's your chance, honey. Do the right thing. Do the brave thing. Join them. You don't deserve to live; you never did. You let them die, you let them *down*! You failed. The weak don't live. Do the right thing. Take the knife. Do the right thing. Take the knife and do the goddamned right thing for once, you motherfucker. Do the right thing. The only right thing, you've ever done in your whole life.::

::Do the last thing you'll ever do in your life. Do the right thing. Do the last right thing.::

::Do it. Do it now.::

Wild golden savage laughter pealed through the streets, stampeded through the houses with their closed windows where the secrets were kept, tore through the souls and commercial avenues. Tore through it all and more, this wild golden vicious laughter. Tore through it all.

::Do it now!::

Dust and sand covered the sun, slowly turned the noon day to summer's twilight. Darkness falls.

This was so EASY!!!

Slowly, Naruto began to change. His body became taller, longer, and more muscled while still incredibly flexible. The world around him began to change, the colors becoming uniform like really bad color television that still looks like black-and-white TV, but everything was also clearer. He could look into shadows and see everything down to microscopic detail. His hearing tuned to his own heartbeat, the wind rushing wildly to the north, and his sense of smell was outrageous. As was his teeth. And his claws.

Naruto concentrated on the buildings on the other side of the street from his spot in the alley. He jerked one hand swiftly to the side, then grinned loudly when both sides of the street suddenly caught fire!

Not 'caught fire' as in smoke started trickling out, but 'caught fire' as in the glass flew out and shattered, that pieces of stucco and wood exploded outwards due to the pressure, the heat enough to set skin aflame without even touching it. Caught fire as in brilliant inflammable gasoline and natural gas raining down harder than hailstones that exploded in your face and took your head off! Caught fire as in caught fire! Not caught fire as in caught smoke.

Fire whipped around his shoulders, down his fingers. Naruto closed his eyes and swung one arm backward. He was gratified to hear the subsequent fwuuuumm, and laughed madly, screeching high in throat.

::I'm ba~ack::

Now.

//It's time for those screams//

***

An irregular vibration, a confused feeling of panic woke Iruka up. He was lying on stone, inside somewhere because he could smell the smoke heavy from the fireplace, and the back of his head and his guts ached. His head felt sluggish, heavy, like he had been drugged.

By degrees, he sat up, and managed to get an idea of where he was. He was not, he noticed inside. And the fire was not coming from the fireplace. Sluggishly, his brain tried to process the information his eyes were sending it into a logical picture.

//...no. This is a nightmare...I've to be dreaming...this can't...//

The smoke kept on getting into his nose even though he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, nails digging into his arm to make the pain wake him up. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening.

"Actually, it can."

The sound was a twisted grin of pig-iron. Perverse satisfaction oozing and dripping flaunted anger. Sounded like it was laughing. Red-black laughter.

Iruka didn't turn around. Didn't move or take his eyes from the sight in front of him. No. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. No.

::Should I fight?::

He couldn't fight. He couldn't even turn around. He couldn't even speak.

//...daddy...no...no...//

Iruka began to shake his head slowly side to side, slowly concentrating on waking up. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be happening.

Naruto winced involuntarily. His mind hurt so much. Naruto swallowed. This wasn't what he had wanted. Damn. His smirk slid back into place easily after a thought. Quietly, Naruto invaded the other's mind.

By degrees, then.

When Iruka opened his eyes again, he didn't see the village he loved on fire. He didn't smell smoke on the air when he inhaled deeply, only the faint smell of grass and wood. He didn't feel the cold roughness of the stone of the Hokage monument cliff top. He wasn't on a rock at all. He was sitting on some moss, nice thick light green moss some distance away from a smooth lake, with slender beige trees all around.

Slowly, his heartbeat began to slow down from the panic-attack state it had been in, pumping at roaring rushing speeds in his ear so fast that it had frightened him, to hear his heart going so fast. He was sure he was going to have a heart attack. The adrenalin was still heavy in his system, and Iruka wiped sweat from his forehead, looked at it glisten in the lazy afternoon sunshine on his sweaty palm. He was alive. He was alive. God he had been so sure that--

He had been a kid again. He had been a kid again struggling and fighting while his father and mother died fighting a demon.

God.

Oh god.

It was...It was just a dream. Still a dream. He was still dreaming. This place...this place had to be a dream. It didn't feel like he was dreaming, but if he wasn't--

He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming.

Oh god.

He was alive. His village wasn't being hurt. He was dreaming. He was dreaming.

Oh god.

"...What kind of sick dream is this!"

"My kind," said a voice behind him. Iruka's eyes widened. He knew that voice. Sasuke had reported back, and as a former teacher and close associate, Iruka had been questioned closely. Very closely, and thoroughly, as had Kakashi. But he hadn't...

Even though they told him, he hadn't believed it. It didn't--

"It does work. It works if you see it through. But it does work."

Now that wasn't his voice. Not his student's voice. This voice was deeper, older, and completely alien to him. But Iruka was running out of choices. He couldn't turn his head around to look because his body was paralyzed, couldn't stand up or twist around. It was like trying to walk through a wall.

But he could still move his eyes around, could still touch the moss and tear it out of the ground. Could shuffle his legs. He just couldn't turn around.

"What's going on?"

There was no answer. Iruka tried to call out, tried to speak his name. He couldn't say his name, not even a little bit. He couldn't say his name at all. Couldn't think it. After a while, the voice spoke again--off to his right, Iruka noticed--but didn't answer his question or come into vision.

"I've been what people wanted for the longest time."

"I've been that damn fox Naruto. I've been hated since before I knew life, for crimes I didn't commit, hated without knowing why. Without even knowing why, Iruka-sensei."

"Don't you dare call me that," Iruka cut in angrily, the minute he had heard that name spoken.

He still couldn't turn around. He tried to speak--ask what was going on, why wouldn't he let Iruka see him, what was he afraid of--and found again that he couldn't speak. The voice behind him continued smoothly like he hadn't spoken.

"You hated me too, for a time, but I can almost forgive that. Pay back the favor, so to speak. But the truth is, Iruka-san, that I can't forgive everyone else. I guess I'm just not that compassionate! I guess maybe I am a cold-blooded murderer, a real demon among demons, and the villagers...you especially Iruka-sensei, really don't deserve that. You really don't deserve me. You're a nice guy, I should know...and you really don't deserve to have a guy like me around. I'd probably never be a good ninja..."

Iruka stared straight in front of him. He didn't think this was dream anymore. He couldn't move still, and if he concentrated hard he could...nearly imagine the smell of smoke. Nearly.

"So I've decided that I'm going to repay my gratitude to the people of this village, who took care of my upbringing, my development--my childhood memories, as it were, by becoming exactly what they want. By becoming exactly what they desire. By finally granting them that long awaited wish they've held so close to their hearts."

Pause.

Naruto grinned widely to himself; a thin stentorian growl edged his voice.

"And I present it to you now."

Iruka's face stayed stiff. He could smell the smoke now, easily. He could still see the lake in front of him, but he couldn't smell the water. The wind on his face didn't make the water ripple or branches rattle. He could still see the moss under his legs, but felt cold hardness under his hands.

"I am the Demon Fox creature Nine Tails. I am Naruto Uzumaki, the Forbidden Child. I am the Demon King of the Northern Land. I am...the worst plague upon the earth like that which has never been seen before."

Naruto smiled widely.

"And only a few select like yourself will survive my wrath."

Naruto stood and shifted his stance, looking every inch the proud father to absolutely no one at all save himself, and stated:

"As I speak, the village town--and all her libraries and storages and hospitals--is up in flame, and the survivors are being hunted down now. And so far...no one's come to stop me. I think I'm a little disappointed."

Iruka felt eyes burning into the back of his neck, felt the frigid condescension with a touch of perverse sadistic enjoyment misting out rotten green from behind, the alien feelings pricking his skin like real things.

"Not everyone can be a forgiving idealist like you," Naruto said coldly. "I know I won't do it. I don't get anything from it. Just pain. Pain and stupidity, and I want more than that. I can get more than that."

Naruto smiled sweet as gently warmed honey on fresh baked bread, smooth as butter on a balmy summer's day. You could hear that smile in his voice.

"I will get more than that."

Iruka looked out of the corner of his eye, and could see while whatever he focused on was indeed the brilliant green moss and pale tree trunk; his peripheral vision only saw shades of gray. The voice behind him came again.

"I think Gaara-san finally ran out of energy. He's always real fun when he's angry."

Iruka seemed to fall back asleep.

***

Loooosers!! Wanna-be's! You don't have what it takes to do something this low! I rule, and you drool!
--Naruto, Naruto vol.1

Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand.
-Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

"Can you imagine if they let someone like that become a shinobi?"
-- Naruto vol.?

***

Iruka found himself literally flying through the trees, not even feeling a bouncing or falling motion as he was dragged through them with the leaves lashing at his body and ascended a huge tree that from the very tips of it, where the branches were no more than a few inches thick and would barely support his weight.

He was dropped on his empty stomach on one such branch.

And for one of the few times in his career as a Gennin and Chunnin, he felt a wave of vertigo they were so damn high. There could have been a small army directly beneath them and he wouldn't have known it, he wouldn't be able to make it out they were so bloody high.

He struggled and wavered, careful of the branch's strength and his own weight and by the fact that if he fell now things would become undeniably interesting. Then he glanced quickly to his right.

A second figure, slightly bigger than he, was crouched on an even thinner branch than his, yet seemed absolutely confident of himself, at ease with his surroundings, and seemed to radiate power.

He wasn't sure it was Naruto. Because, he was somewhat surer, that Naruto did not have pointed ears a foot long.

The mouth of the creature was slightly open, not because he was breathing hard but mostly because he was thinking on what to say. White pointed teeth that clicked together nicely appeared in the gap between his lips. Three long lines leaning towards horizontal emblazoned on either cheek reaching from nearly his nose to the edge of his face. Light blond hair fell over his face and eyes and down his back, and his eyes themselves were a murky red, bordering on purple.

He was barely dressed, with only ragged thin shorts barely covering the essentials, showing hard muscles like river stones plated over a rangy flexible body with fingers that were long and slightly curled, with a very talon-ish feel to them. There was something wrong with his feet, Iruka noticed. There seemed to be two ankles...

Kakashi hadn't mentioned this. Kakashi hadn't seen this. Only Gaara had really ever gotten a good look at Naruto's half-fox form, and this was it. If he didn't want people to see him in it, they wouldn't. A fox's skill of camouflage, brilliant red in a green forest. Absolute invisibility if he wanted it.

Iruka looked terrified.

The voice was smooth, old, and just a little solemn.

"I'm still me. I can still talk."

Iruka's eyes went wide, then narrowed as his body coiled from its shaky spot on the branch. The fear and shock left him, icy cool anger flooding now through his system.

"I'm sure you'll be sorry to hear this, Iruka-san, but if this had happened twice," Naruto waved in the direction of the village, a sponge of smoke hovering above it, "I'd do it all the same way again."

The expression on the face didn't change, didn't move at all for anything. Only the lips and assorted muscles moved to form rough cold words, but its eyes just seemed to bore into Iruka's head...

Naruto wished--for nothing. It was done. And nothing could change how Iruka was now looking at him. That Look. From Iruka.

The maniac, perverse giddiness and ecstasy were gradually fading from the forefront, but he could tell he would be grinning mad for days after this. He knew, beyond a doubt, that he had done the right thing. The constant heavy fear and sorrow that he had carried like an iron yoke on his neck was finally gone, and he only felt maniac glee and obscene conceited satisfaction. But it was fading as Iruka Looked at him.

Iruka had always been a bucket of cold water on Naruto's fun. That hadn't changed.

It was done, and Naruto wished for nothing now. At first it had been surprise on Iruka's face, then shock, and now that he knew him, knew he was Naruto...His voice was worse, like a stake through the heart.

"Then you are the demon fox. You were all the time. A demon."

That voice, cold academic, unyielding--hurt so bad. There wasn't even anger or hate in it, just calculated loathing. Naruto had hoped it wouldn't have come to this, that maybe there'd be some way to pull Iruka along even by magic...On Kakashi or Sasuke it wouldn't have hurt so bad, that voice, that manner, because it was expected; coldness was an element of who they were. On Iruka...

Naruto's face betrayed nothing. His eyes were flat, cold.

"There's no honor attached to being what you are. No glory, no dreams," those things that meant something once to Naruto, that were once his whole focus in life. Not anymore though. Not in this Naruto, not anymore. Iruka sounded mildly surprised.

"You really were, all this time. Demons always have enemies. They have no friends."

Naruto snapped.

His eyes had been wavering before, tingling a little, but he had ignored it, as well as the cold sweat and blush on his neck. Now the color in his eyes shifted to deep red, a growl founded his voice. His expression didn't change much, but his upper lip pulled higher than necessary to show exactly how long his teeth were. His voice was nearly tangible, nearly hitting Iruka's ears with physical form.

"Like hell they do! What would you know, you've never been one, you've never felt it! What the hell were you expecting, a miracle, a saint!"

//Child//

Naruto paused when the thought hit, and burned again when he realized it had been deliberately sent. He'd finally been figured out too late.

Iruka was more preoccupied with getting himself settled on the branch than with the creature beside him, deliberately turning his head away from him while he sat down.

Again, Naruto's expression didn't change, but he spoke.

"Demons hate each other, they kill anything they touch. But guess what, that's our job. Our function. Born to be hated, born to kill, born to hate. We killed each other, yeah, but the real fuckin' kicker is that we never sacrificed each! We never killed each other and called it morality! Called it necessity! We saw what we were, always saw what we were doing, never tried to--rub some polish on it and call it all right! Demons never did a damn thing to humans that you didn't do to yourself!"

Naruto turned his head to spit. His movements still flowed like wind and liquid steel, still left echoes of power and grace with every turn of his head and twist of his muscle and lips. It didn't matter what Iruka thought now. It just mattered that he Knew.

"If you were really so afraid of me when the fox was sealed inside, you should have killed me when you had the chance or taught me what you wanted me to know. You just threw me out there and expected me to land on my feet. Hypocrites. Cowards. Too afraid to bite the bullet and too afraid to raise the ax."

Iruka snorted again, unimpressed.

"Idiot that wasn't fear. That was mercy. You wouldn't recognize it."

Naruto laughed out loud for the first time in this form ever, the sound coming out like a bark, loudly, honestly, the raw anger dripping from him in one easy movement of relaxation to reform into something stronger.

"No, that was fear. I know more about mercy than you'd ever imagine. Too much...You just didn't want to choose, afraid of looking bad. So I chose for you. That makes me look bad. I guess that makes me the bad guy, and whoop da dee, so I am."

Iruka looked sharply at him for the second time, angry, noticed something, and felt the granted world fall out from under him.

He'd taken comfort, as Sasuke had, that it was Nine Tails speaking, walking, manipulating Naruto to its will. It was too probable, too likely. But that voice, even enclosed in the silken cold steel harmonics, that voice still angry and guilty, on the edge of breaking into tears or screams--that face turned down and away with that angry resentful smile twisted on his lips, that pure sorrow lost deep in his eyes...claret purple eyes...

...How many times had he seen that in his classroom, slouched over the desk from his spot in front. How many times on the empty playground? How many times in his empty apartment? The face was young then, hair short, the eyes were blue, but it was still the same damn face.

They--they other children--had teased him, Iruka remembered. Teased him hard, a little too hard for any child, but they were only children themselves, so they could hardly be faulted...They knew Naruto had no parents. No one would defend him. He was the perfect target. And had been, right up to when he graduated to Chuunin level. The perfect target.

--Naruto found someone to defend him, someone with fangs and claws--

How many times?

"Naruto," Iruka whispered softly without meaning.

Naruto whipped his head around to glare at him, lips raised in a closed ready snarl and all set to deal out more, but Iruka noticed...the belligerent part of his mouth, the small angry, significant bit of fear and despair in his eyes...It was Naruto. It was Naruto through and through.

Iruka was gripping the branch with both hands, mouth a little open, and looked exactly how he felt.

Naruto stood his ground as long as he could, before closing his mouth and quickly looking away. His face was set in a resolute scowl, somehow still impassive and cold, convinced that the world was out to get him. His chest hurt. And his eyes were smarting again.

And Iruka wouldn't stop looking at him.

"What?" Naruto finally snapped off, not daring to turn his head, but still feeling Iruka's eyes on him. It had been bad enough with the man staring at him like he was some monster from the Crypt Keeper, gawking at his ears and eyes, but it was a thousand times better than the one he was getting now.

Iruka was quiet a while before answering.

"Why--couldn't you have proven them wrong?"

Naruto's eyes widened momentarily then dimmed as he looked inside himself. He knew what Iruka was referring to, knew who 'they' were.

Hokage.

Them.

Naruto's voice was still hard, but cooler and a little bit more--quiet, than before. Not guilty, not regretful, a simple stating of old dead facts that still had enough poison left in them to be treated carefully.

"Because--they wouldn't have let me. Ever. Majority rules. Even...if I earned the title, I'd still be Naruto the bastard. I was when I left, and I was Jounin."

How do you say you're sorry for crimes you didn't commit? Crimes they have no right to pin on you? For a childhood you didn't create, only tried to avert and failed? For the lives of the dead who deserved it? For the lives of the dead who didn't?

"I never want to see you again."

That was Iruka. Naruto had been expecting it, wanting him to say the words simply to end the suspense and end the relationship; a final clean severing of all ties and now Naruto only nodded silently, unseen. His control finally broke a small crack in the defenses when he heard them, those words, and a single thin line of water trickled out his left eye. His face was still cold and impassive, the tiny trickle the only break in the seam.

Iruka was watching him from the corner of his eye.

It was easy to hate a demon, roaring and fearsome, clearly unnatural. It was easy to hate a faceless gangster who killed for wealth. It was hard to hate his student, who was crying silently, stoically, beside him.

His finger grazed Naruto's cheek, and wiped up the water. Naruto didn't move, but he blinked quickly, too quickly, his eyes spastically flicked to Iruka's face to the woods below.

Iruka swore in his mind, not at Naruto, but at the look in Naruto's eyes. That combination of old despair and childish hope that would forever be linked in his mind to a late night ramen shop...but children could only be allowed so far.

He didn't--he was still a teacher. Still. Had students. And when the fire came it hadn't been selective. Naruto. Hadn't been selective.

Naruto said nothing, tried hard to do nothing except not cry anymore or fall down when Iruka took his hand away, farther away now than ever. He couldn't stop his throat from swallowing, so he didn't, and he couldn't stop a second trickle of tears coming out of the corner of his eye. One never knew how many contours and dips were in the facial structure until one really, really paid attention to them.

"You were spared."

Naruto had a million and one comebacks for that, all itching for that one question to come zooming out of his mouth in all their scathingly logical glory.

//Spared from what? Spared for what? Spared to be thrown to the wolves, spared death because a decoy, a target, a scapegoat was needed? Spared the knife because I was more useful alive?//

There were reasons for what he did. What he destroyed.

//Because they deserved it. Because I could. Because the world isn't fair. Because I wanted to.//

His voice was broken. He didn't say anything. Iruka was having verbal problems too.

"You were--the first son...Of the 4th Hokage..."

Dangerously sharp stillness.

"We couldn't--They wouldn't..."

Iruka was a million miles away, listening to an old man in the past. If he had any idea of what he had unleashed, on what new fire he had just sparked, he gave no sign of it.

"You were meant...to be a hero."

The wind was silent, and still, even at this high altitude. There wasn't even the scent of smoke, only the faint sharp smell of green wood. Just the cold bitter wind riffling through the hair.

***

He'd...he'd always...

He was so young then. So damn...young.

...So that was logic.

Mercy. Ha. Yes.

But what...

What changed, now?

really

......Why?

...

They had known. Everything. And they...let him loose.

His--on, face etched on the cliff...

No.

He'd done that to--

Your own--

His own--

Fuck this.

...

Fuck this shit!

***

"Naruto the bastard," Naruto said quietly, standing up, energy rising up along his stance and breath and bones in its subtle uncanny quiet way.

"Naruto the Bastard, now and forever."

Because it's too late to turn back now.

Fire blossomed up and out, spreading out rapidly like wild rich vines and weeds throughout the forest fence, exploding the trees and bark and catching on dry and damp wood alike tearing it all apart burning with a hell fire of the scorned spawn of the hero.

It wasn't just a brilliant scorching flame it had weight and force, tangible as any hammer or bullet and it fired up to the heavens in anger in challenge in insult to all the gods and deities who watched what men did and didn't do anything!

It traveled faster than wind, before the wind, on the wind and in the wind, not branching out from a single central point but from everywhere and around creating a cage that moved inside to itself like liquid mercury given real power burning hatred spearing and cauterizing flesh and wood and leaf and all the goddamned leaf shit there was lying around and everywhere.

Why the hell didn't anyone do something about it except they wouldn't because they couldn't, because the foxy demon was back baby, the foxy boy was back in black and ready for action and you're all gonna fry up something awful until life nor green nor scrabbling human mortal filth ever touches this land again!

||Human mortal||

||Keeper||

||Defiler||

Never ever feel or know this world the way foxy could, could never see nor feel themselves like foxy can how weak and petty you are, how lacking in honor or strength, so fragile that nothing is ever won without sacrifice or bloodshed or loss how pathetic how utterly contemptible they are.

Iruka fell off in shock when Naruto suddenly stood and his body erupted in flame, his sandaled feet catching onto the tree trunk by luck right before he felt explosions he didn't, couldn't, hear, some distance away. The bark beneath his sandals exploded outward, throwing him into the air again.

Shrapnel and burning stakes propelled by inflammable and reactive chemicals and vast amounts of really enraged chakra sped through the forest in all directions.

This fire had form, moved not upwards or dependent on fuel, clinging and trapped on wood, but as a living water snake with sentience and structure ramming straight through the ancient living trees and licking its flame and biting down on the ants that scurried and threw little sticks and stones at it and through it with real teeth of hydrogen gas and force which was all the solidity it really needed, jetting and zooming into moldable fall apart pieces that dodged the attacks and ate the defense and just ate it all up and all and all and all...

||So give me more I long for more give me more...||

Running fleet-footed through the trees and along the wind and on the air run the ninja, the shadow walkers, the keepers, running away, away, away...so much like rabbits.

They looked like rabbits, dark and soft with flesh that still yielded so easily, so deliciously scrumptiously easy to the teeth, with faces that could still be torn to ribbons with a flick of the claw and they made noises, such noises, noises just like rabbits in heat or in birth or on pain of death a sort of strangled scream they don't expect anyone will hear and know won't save them but still they scream the little rabbits.

Still their bones crunch so nicely between the teeth while they try to cut and fight back, like potato chips with crisply fried pockets of blood to chomp and squish out, blood that hasn't been tasted this way in such a long time, blood still remembered from so long ago so hot and warm and thickly smoothly down the throat with a bitter little bite in it the taste of human blood.

And here comes one to fight the fox, to kill the fox, ah, again they come to kill the demon and who is their envoy this time my darling, who have they sent to keep the fox demon this time?

Ah. Him. Remembered is his scent his touch his voice...the lazy one that sleeps and kills even in his dreams, the perverted old one...his weakness is arrogance, thin strip of arrogance and sentiment and he must, surely he must...

//...have nightmares locked away there in his brain of his daughter ah his daughter I see I do see how devastatingly unfortunate to bring that to the fore...//

||How slow he is, how foolish do these humans learn nothing?||

//...do it baby do it just like that just like that again//

No of course not baby how could they, they could never know what it's like to be the demon child to live in a real hell to survive the fox's nightmares the demon boy's world and they don't know how Foxy survived how Foxy came out oh so much stronger than all their pampered brats and Foxy'll show 'em just what Foxy can do to their precious little people...

Doppelgangers child's play got that down sensei but Foxy's got down things you never seen before things you've never done before and here's a new toy for you to play with that'll break your spine and boil your brain to a chewy sticky goo inside your skull because Foxy can't let you live sensei, not when they sent you to keep Foxy just over again just after Foxy found his wings.

Foxy's in the wings of the phoenix, in the wings of reincarnation and god it feels so good just to feel it all rush up bubbling up...

//from my stomach and roiling in my ribcage flowing out of my skin and fingers and god I feel so hard, so unbelievably turned on and sexy and powerful so beautiful baby that I think I'm gonna choke on it but I'd never do something that stupid not when I feel this, not when everything's so sharp and clear and if I pull this my power just--swallows everything up...//

//Ohhh... Fuck, here he is again. Yeah, that's right I can walk on two legs and four didn't you know can't you feel my power surging towards you, you really thought I'd be so stupid as to let you escape, the woods are no good by themselves I need the humans dead too I need you dead too so copy this now, Copy Cat! Why don't you COPY THIS NOW!!//

Blue green foxfire.

Blue green flame forcibly ripped it's way through the bodies, always going for the stomach and neck. Real, natural orange red fire followed in its wake, burning brightly on the bark and gastric juices and skin and dry leaf.

Blue-green light flickered through the treetops, leaving fingerprints of scorched wood or stone where it touched something other than the air. The air itself, under a thick sharp layer of wood smoke, smelled strangely of tin.

Water killed the red-orange fire, as did the dirt and wind. The blue-green light hid itself in the wood, entering the branches with only a burn mark to show its passage and dashed down on whoever walked near it, elements of mist and water avoided by hiding in the earth, wood, or air.

It flickered and struck like lightening hidden in the gleam of light, dancing on fox feet and bird wings and slithering rushing and curling around the trees like a snake in all its serpentine sensual seduction. It raced and tore through whatever it found, played and killed with subtle sly asphyxiation and hard-core up front showdowns. A doppelganger of flame and shadow with a fox's body and boy's laugh was even created to give people a clearer idea of what they were to fight.

So funny, so funny...these little humans and their games. Who's winning now, Copy Cat? Who's winning now?

People fought on, and ran.

Where the fox roamed, the fox itself, a creature easily as long as a truck and taller, with white blond fur and ruby eyes roamed madness stayed rooted in the air. The fox didn't need to stay too long, just long enough to touch a single mind with some passing thought or open some hidden door forgotten in the consciousness, a closet for all the twisted perverted and vile ideas and let it all come piling through the eyes and drowning the soul. Come crashing through the mind with the force of a tsunami.

Once one ninja showed signs of madness, once the tension and fear and disbelief really caught up...the jostling in the skin, the jostling of the weapons...Everything added up.

And the fox moved on, often unseen and never touched.

People fought on, and ran further.

There was nothing to run back to. The ninja village had been burned down, was still burning. They could always build another one. But now they had to stay alive. But there were other villages in the forest. Villages not made up of shinobi.

Foxy sniffed the air.

Foxy tasted bitter rum on the wind.

Foxy grinned.

//Let's play, Demon Hunter. Let's play little games in the dark, my Demon Hunter, my dark darling angel...//

Foxy licked his teeth.

***

*Naruto does do this in Issue 1 of the manga. He cries with his goggles on so no one can see the tears fall.

Bastard: Someone (male only?) without a legal father.

A/N: In reality, the Konoha villagers would have probably been able to defend, but I didn't want to create complications. I'm not saying they're wimps, just that it wouldn't have worked for them to win. Was that angry enough? Hope it made sense. Naruto vol.1 finally made it here, hence quotes. Tried to make the merger between Nine Tails and Naruto seem complete. The Gaara-Sasuke-cage scene was really Naruto posing in as Sasuke, not Sasuke himself.

First time was the hardest. Everything after that was a matter of logic.==Lyric taken from a Sting song.

Borrow==Pratchett idea. How witches control animals.

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