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The chakra heat is rising in Naruto’s belly. The red haze has begun to smear across his vision. Every word of Sasuke’s is hitting him with the impact of an exploding tag – and in an instant the chakra heat explodes and the red haze solidifies – get back, Sakura’s voice screaming past him, get back get back get—
Time stops for a while. Then it starts again, as it generally does.
Naruto opens his eyes to a peaceful village marketplace.
Coloured canopies flutter in a warm breeze. Villagers bustle back and forth in a hum of busy conversation, and the smell of hot spiced meat rises up to mix with the smell of the lush greenery spilling over at the well-stocked florists’ stall. There’s no sign of Sasuke. There’s no sign of Sakura either, or Kakashi, or any of Orochimaru’s snakes. Nor is there any sign of the perilous cliff face that Naruto’s sandals had been chakra-sealed against just a moment ago, or the electric sizzle of Sasuke’s lightning, let alone anything that looks even a little like Hidden Sound.
He’s standing at a weapons stall. The elderly woman sitting behind it is whetting the blade of a gleaming new kunai. His wallet is in his hand, ready and open.
First things first: he closes his wallet. The old woman’s gaze flicks up to him. “Hey,” says Naruto, “uh – you know where I am, granny? I think I got kinda lost. Kinda really lost.”
She gives him the name of a town he’s never heard of. “If it’s hot springs or salted fish dumplings you want, you’re in the right place. If it’s anything else you want, you’re probably lost, kiddo.”
There’s a fountain in the middle of the market square, with a swooping stone bird spilling water from its beak. Naruto pushes his way through the crowds and sits down on its low damp brim. Lost time means only one thing, and he drops his head into his hands and thinks, hard: Are you there, kyuubi?
I’m here, but I’m Kyuubei.
That’s not the resonant demonic growl Naruto’s used to hearing. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and thinks even harder still, and after a moment the busy noise of the market begins to fade away – a deep red begins to rise up, and then a firelight orange, and the vast, gleaming bars of the kyuubi’s cage shimmer out from the darkness deep within his mind.
Behind the bars, though, there’s nothing: only an endless black. The infernal, blazing glow of the kyuubi’s chakra is gone. Naruto sprints nearer and skids to a halt far below the cage’s colossal lock: the chains are whole, the padlock unbroken. “Kyuubi!” he yells, whirling about as panic explodes through him. “Kyuubi, you bastard! Get the hell back here! I don’t care where you’ve gone, you dumbass – you’re inside me, you can’t hide for long!”
“Excuse me,” says a voice directly at his elbow. “Is there a bathroom inside you, or should I try to hold on?”
Naruto whirls around. In the red-black cavern of his mindscape, there’s another person – what appears to be another person. The person is slight, and smaller than him; the person wears a white coat, black eyepatch, and expression of grave seriousness. “What?” says Naruto blankly. “I mean – what the hell?”
“I didn’t know I was going to be inside you,” the stranger explains. “I would have gone beforehand, if I knew. But I do need to go.”
“Who the hell are you?” says Naruto. His voice is rising. He can’t feel any chakra signal except his own. “And where’s the kyuubi? And how did you get inside my head? And what the hell is going on?!”
“I’m Kyuubei,” says the stranger. “But not the Kyuubei. I’m just a Kyuubei. Although I’m the only Kyuubei I know, so perhaps I am the Kyuubei. I don’t mind if you want to call me that. Regarding the toilet situation—”
“There’s no toilet inside my mind!”
The stranger’s head bows in understanding. “I’ll hold on for as long as I can, then. A samurai must be master of all forms of endurance.”
Naruto shakes his head hard a few times, in an attempt to clear it, but the stranger is still there when the world stops spinning. “Listen, no offence, but are you with the bad guys? Or, like – evil? Or anything like that? Cos if you are, you should just tell me. And then we can have a fight or whatever, and I’ll kick your ass, and I can hurry up and get back to Sakura-chan and everyone. All right?”
The question provokes several long, silent minutes of what appears to be soul-searching. It appears to be extremely intense soul-searching. It appears to be such intense soul-searching that Naruto manages to restrain his urge to impatiently interrupt it solely from respect for its profound intensity; and, at last, the stranger concludes: “No.”
“No what?”
“I’m... not evil.”
“You hesitated!” cries Naruto, and jabs an accusing finger. “You hesitated, I heard you! Why did you hesitate?”
In the gloom of the kyuubi’s prison, it’s hard to be sure; but it looks very much as though the stranger has begun to blush. “It’s too shameful. I can’t tell you.”
“Tell me,” begins Naruto, his chest puffing out in impressive threat, “or I’m gonna—”
“But your story has won me over,” continues the stranger, whose blush is definitely deepening. “I... remembered I need to buy a present for Shinpachi-kun’s birthday next week.”
It’s silent in the kyuubi’s prison: no wind, no bird calls, no distant rushing water. Naruto’s speechlessness lasts only an instant, but that’s already an instant longer than he’s ever usually speechless for.
“You remembered that in the middle of a sentence?” he says, bewildered – and, “What does that have to do with anything?” he says, more bewildered still – and, “Who the hell is Shinpachi?” cries Naruto: but he’s already past the limits of his bewilderment, and he flings out his arms and declares, “Listen, unless you’re one of the bad guys then I don’t care about any of that stuff! I’ll fight if you wanna fight, but I got other things to be getting on with right now – I think I lost the kyuubi somehow, which is kinda the end of the world, and I got some really important things to—”
“Your battle,” says Kyuubei.
“Yeah!” says Naruto, startled for only a moment before he rebounds, twice as enthusiastic. “Yeah, my battle! Did you see it?”
“I was going to fight it for you,” explains Kyuubei, “but you have no sword. You can’t fight with no sword. So I was on my way to purchase one; and yet just as my journey seemed about to reach its conclusion, I found myself trapped back in here.”
“You – wait,” says Naruto, “wait wait wait, hang on a minute. It was you who took me to the market?”
“I couldn’t find a swordsmith,” says Kyuubei. “I was also unfamiliar with the currency I found inside your toad. I also thought it was bad taste to keep money inside a toad. I’m sorry.”
“Inside – hey! It’s not a toad, it’s a frog! And it’s not a frog, it’s a purse! I’d never keep money inside a real frog,” says Naruto indignantly, “it’s rude, and you’d get slime all over your money.”
“A... purse,” echoes Kyuubei, and frowns in serious thought. “Then that explains the money.” The frown of serious thought begins to deepen. “And why it was made of felt. The clues all fit together. What’s your name?”
“Naruto,” says Naruto, “and listen, are you sure you’re not a demon?”
“Not to the best of my knowledge,” says Kyuubei gravely.
Naruto wrinkles his nose, unconvinced, and presses on. “Because generally the only time anyone starts taking over my body, it’s this one moody old demon that lives inside me – so it’s kind of weird you’re doing it too. I mean, it’s okay if you’re a demon,” he adds hastily, earnestly, “you can tell me if you are – I promise I’m not gonna be mad at you. But I’m just saying, y’know – if you’re a demon—”
Something sharp slams against his leg. Not where he can see it, but where he can feel it: against his real leg, outside his mind and sitting on the fountain in the market square – and the kyuubi’s prison switches instantly with the sunny day and the bustling crowds and the vegetable cart that’s already wheeled on beyond its brief collision. The sudden pain has shocked him back into his body.
Or – the sudden pain has shocked someone back into his body, anyway. The frog – the frog purse – has been crammed hastily into Naruto’s kunai pouch. Kyuubei digs it carefully out and heads back to the weapons stall, once more on the hunt for a sword befitting a temporarily displaced samurai.
+++
“Pause it for me, Kyuu-chan,” says Tae, getting up from before the television, “I’m just going to get a glass of water. Would you like one?”
No answer comes. Behind her, the house explodes into flame.
Tae fills her glass, and takes a sip, and fills it again before she returns with it to the front room. Occupying the place on the sofa which had just a moment ago been occupied by Kyuubei is now instead a blazing, roiling inferno of what isn’t actually fire, though at first glance it had certainly looked like it: but it lets out no heat, and nothing else is burning. At its heart is the shape of something vast and inhuman, doubled over and hunched beneath the ceiling.
“I am freed,” says the monstrosity, in a voice that shudders through Tae’s bones much the same way as Kagura’s footsteps tend to shudder through the city the moment she smells pork chops. A large golden eye rolls down to find her, set far back from a fox’s long muzzle. “Did you free me, woman?”
“Is that any way to speak to your host?” asks Tae, her tone reproving. “I’m Otae-sama to you; and who are you to me?”
“I am the kyuubi,” declares the kyuubi, in an attitude that suggests it very much expects Tae to be awed by the discovery. “The kyuubi, the feared kyuubi! Wrath of the Leaf, nightmare of millions, enemy of all! I am Kurama, and I am freed, and the world will quake before me!”
“Kurama-san, then,” says Tae, and looks all the way up to meet the creature’s golden eyes. “Would you mind telling me what you did with Kyuu-chan, Kurama-san?”
“I care not for such matters,” says Kurama, as the flames that aren’t flames lick and roil impressively across its blazing golden fur. “I have been chained for decades with no promise of release, and my revenge will be mighty.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” says Tae, gracious as can be, “and I promise, I’ll let you on your way as soon as I have an answer.” She considers, and amends: “Well – that’s not true. I’ll let you on your way just as soon as I have Kyuu-chan back safe and sound in my front room.”
“I have terror to wreak, woman. Step aside before you find it wrought on you.”
Tae sets her glass down on the table, which leaves her hands free. They curl into fists. “I could say the same to you, Kurama-san,” she says politely, and doesn’t move aside.
Kurama blinks. Its eyelashes are remarkably long for an infernal fox monstrosity. “You would challenge me, human? In combat? You seek to challenge me?”
“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be a challenge,” says Tae.
+++
Late that night, when Naruto’s doing his best to stop gazing mournfully out the window at the bright scattering of distant stars and start sleeping instead, he hears an echo of a question about Sasuke.
He shuts his eyes and opens them again in the warm firelight of the kyuubi’s empty prison.
“You think about him a lot,” explains Kyuubei, sitting against the charred-red wall. “And talk about him a lot. And look at that photograph of him a lot. Who is he?”
Naruto heaves a tremendous, doleful sigh. “My best friend,” he says, woeful as can be, and deposits himself with a thump at Kyuubei’s side.
“I see,” says Kyuubei, in the quiet, thoughtful tone of a hospital medic deliberating over a diagnosis. “Best friends. Yes, I see. Possibly... best friends since childhood, Naruto-kun?”
“You got it,” says Naruto, and heaves an even more tremendously doleful sigh.
“I see,” says Kyuubei again, far more gravely than before. “Then there’s no need to say more. I suspected as much. Does he know how you feel, Naruto-kun?”
“He doesn’t care how I feel,” Naruto says glumly. “He knows how I feel, but he doesn’t care. I mean—” his voice abruptly rises, as the thought of Sasuke strikes its inevitable spark and the fire of his passion bursts into roaring, blazing life, “he says he doesn’t care – but he does, he does! I know he does – he’s just an asshole, so he says it to make me get mad, and then I do get mad! I always get mad! Because he’s precious to me!”
Kyuubei nods, and says nothing – but there’s nothing that needs to be said. The atmosphere of silent understanding is unmistakeable.
“I trained for years,” says Naruto passionately, “away from everyone I loved, working as hard as I could, just to be as strong as him, to be stronger than him, so I could save him and protect him and fight for him—”
“A reliable tactic,” says Kyuubei, sombrely approving.
Time passes in the empty chamber. Firelight flickers, the shadows stretch and warp. “I’d do anything for him,” Naruto says, heartfelt. The worst of the tears have passed; he swipes his sleeve beneath his nose and takes a shuddering, cleansing breath. He feels calmer now, somehow. “I’d go anywhere for him. I’d die for him. I’d give up my arms for him. My legs. My eyes. My chakra. My—”
Kyuubei says, “Have you considered marriage, Naruto-kun?”
Naruto rubs the heel of his hand across his eyes and peers earnestly to his side. “Marriage?” he says.
“When you have a best friend,” says Kyuubei seriously, “who you love more than the world or anything in it, and who you’ve loved ever since your childhood – and when you’ve already been through an off-screen training arc for them, and already committed to sacrificing parts of your body for them, and already taken to telling friends and strangers alike of your intention to dedicate your life to them... then in my experience, Naruto-kun, marriage is usually the way forward.”
Naruto thinks hard. “Marriage... it’s a precious bond, isn’t it?”
“The most precious of all, Naruto-kun.”
It’s a sombre confirmation, and in its wake a silence descends.
“I’m not, like... I mean, I’ve thought about it,” begins Naruto, at last. “I’m not gonna say I never thought about it before, but I never – I dunno. I guess I never thought about it seriously, y’know?”
“I do,” says Kyuubei gravely.
Encouraged, Naruto gains volume. “Like I’d only think about where we’d have it, and stuff. The wedding, I mean. And what kind of food we’d have at the dinner afterwards. Y’know? And what I’d say in my vows. That kind of stuff. And if that asshole’d cry when I said my vows and if we’d have to take a break or whatever cos he was too embarrassed about having emotions in public so he’d get mad about it, and wanna fight me, so we’d have to have a fight and come back to carry on once he got it out his system. Just that kinda thing. And if I’d cry – but sometimes I cry when I just think about it, so I probably would, y’know... And what we’d give each other for anniversary presents and stuff. So I never thought about it much,” says Naruto, with a reasonable little shrug. “Just the basics.”
“Just the kind of thing anyone would think about,” says Kyuubei, “when daydreaming of their childhood best friend during long years of lonely separation.”
“Right!” says Naruto. “Right, exactly! And when I asked old Granny Tsunade about it she said it wouldn’t work, anyway, unless I could get that idiot bastard to actually agree to it, and be there for the ceremony and sign the paperwork and whatever, so I couldn’t just, like – marry him long-distance, and force him to come home like that. Even if I was like, ninety-nine percent sure he’d wanna marry me back if he could. If he wasn’t skulking around with a load of snakes up his sleeves thinking about revenge.”
“Your Granny Tsunade-san advised you well,” says Kyuubei, head bowed. “Marriage where both parties desire marriage is the only form of marriage I would recommend. The other sort doesn’t end well for anyone.”
Naruto nods, for once feeling oddly thoughtful. “I mean,” he says, as an afterthought, “it’s Sasuke who’s thinking of revenge. Not the snakes up his sleeves.”
“I see,” says Kyuubei.
Naruto nods again. He’s feeling oddly content too, which rarely happens when he thinks of Sasuke; more often he feels like he’s slammed a fistful of whirling, storming rasengan directly into his own chest when he thinks of Sasuke, so all in all it’s a welcome change. “Though I bet he’s trained the snakes into thinking of revenge too,” he adds, a moment later. “That’d be just like him. That asshole. That asshole! ...Next time I see him, I’m gonna propose so hard he won’t even know what hit him. And then I’ll hit him so hard he won’t even know what hit him, and then I’ll drag him back to Hidden Leaf and marry him. You better believe it!” he announces, and thumps a fist against his heart.
“Then I’ll believe it,” says Kyuubei seriously.
“And you’ll be invited to the wedding,” continues Naruto. He’s feeling energised enough now to scramble up onto his knees, explaining himself at ever louder and more excitable volume. “I mean, you’ll be at the wedding anyway, since you’re inside my head, and obviously I’m gonna be at the wedding since it’ll be my wedding – but I mean, like. Even if you weren’t inside my head, y’know? I’d invite you to the wedding even if the kyuubi’s seal broke and you got released into the real world.”
“This isn’t the real world,” says Kyuubei, quietly self-assured. “The real world has a smoother animation style, and fewer recap episodes. And people use their arms when they run.”
But Naruto hardly hears it. A thought has struck, as unexpected and astonishing as lightning on a clear day, and he bursts out in excitement: “Hey, hey, you think if I broke the kyuubi’s seal, it’d let you out? I mean, if the kyuubi was still here that’d be the apocalypse, basically – but the kyuubi isn’t here, and since you’re a Kyuubei, not the kyuubi—”
In his excitement, he’s seized hold of Kyuubei’s shoulder.
He sees the fist cocked; but after that, he’s not conscious for long enough to regret it.
+++
The front door slides open. From her bedroom, Tae calls, “Did you have a good day, Shin-chan?”
“Gin-san accidentally sold a kidney to an illegal organ trafficker,” Shinpachi calls back, with the rustle of grocery bags setting down. “But we managed to find him before the operation started, though it was close; you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find surgeon’s uniforms in this city, ane-ue, and we almost gave the game away when Kagura-chan confused a bowl of dog food for a spleen... Anyway, that’s why I’m home so late: I had to stay with them until his anaesthetic started wearing off. At least Kagura-chan should have a good night’s sleep, with Gin-san still so dozy—”
At this point, Shinpachi’s words skid off course and turn into a shriek.
But Shinpachi’s words often turn into a shriek, so Tae doesn’t worry about it. She checks her hair one last time in her mirror, and gets to her feet; on her way out of her bedroom, she picks up her second-nicest scarf and winds it on.
The shrieking is coming from the kitchen. The bloody, flickering glow illuminating the house gets brighter as Tae follows the shrieking to its source.
“Ane-ue!” Shinpachi has his bokutō drawn, braced in a fighting stance. He’s glowering up at the burning, infernal vision with furious bravery. “Stay back, ane-ue! I’ll protect you!”
At the stove, the billowing flames of Kurama’s fur flare impressively outwards. Firelight judders eerily across the kitchen walls. “Invite my wrath and invite your doom, four-eyes! I possess power far beyond your worthless human understanding!”
Shinpachi’s glasses are blazing with the reflection of raging flame. “So what if I’m human?” he cries passionately. “So what? When I fight for what I love, I possess a power beyond your understanding – and that’s the power of humans! That’s our power, and you could never understand—”
“Oh, believe you me, kid, I’ve heard all that crap before, and it pissed me off just as much then as it’s pissing me off now! Now you drop that twig, get down on your knees this instant, and show Otae-sama the respect she’s due, or I’ll boil you in your shell like the shrimp you are—”
Tae raps sharply on the kitchen table. “Kurama-san!”
The chaotic, leaping madness of its flames dies down a little. “But—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she says sternly. “What did we discuss about the terms of your stay?”
“But this weedy little nobody—”
“—is my brother, Kurama-san. And you’ll treat him with the same respect you treat me. Or perhaps slightly less,” amends Tae, “as I am the one in charge here, after all – but you’ll treat him with respect, Kurama-san. Or there will be consequences.”
Shinpachi hasn’t lowered his bokutō. He’s staring between the two of them with a look of rapidly increasing horror, his head turning left to right to left to right again quickly enough that it doesn’t seem unlikely he’ll give himself motion sickness before long. “What,” he begins, and falters, and tries again. “What is – this? Ane-ue? What’s this? What’s happening?”
“This is Kurama-san,” says Tae. “As I understand it, Kurama-san is an immortal demon possessing power beyond measure who seeks only to destroy, devour, and avenge, but it’s very kindly agreed to hold off on wreaking any vengeance while it’s a guest in our house. Which is where it’s staying until Kyuu-chan comes back. There seems to have been a little confusion, you see, interdimensionally speaking; but Kurama-san assures me it’s working on it.”
“It’s demon stuff,” agrees Kurama. With the tip of one of its nine luxurious blazing tails, it lifts the handle of the pan atop the stove. “Should I add the pork yet, Otae-sama?”
Tae joins it at the stove and critically inspects the blackened crust. “Give it another half an hour, I’d say.”
“I don’t understand,” Shinpachi tells the ceiling plaintively. “I don’t understand anything that’s happening.”
“Kurama-san’s making your dinner,” says Tae. “Pork cutlets with egg and rhubarb, and we prepared mochi together too, for afterwards – oh, they’re still in the oven, Kurama-san! Don’t forget!”
“It’s on the list, Otae-sama,” says Kurama importantly, and with another of its billowing tails it taps the barely legible to-do list pinned above the sink. “Take em out and dust em with the coconut stuff, that’s on the list too. I got it all under control, just how you want it.”
Tae looks up, and up, and up, and deigns to grace Kurama with a smile. It puffs out its blazing golden chest in flustered pride and nearly knocks the entire fridge over. “Well, that’s that, then. And I’m off to work for the evening, Shin-chan, so you two can get to know each other while I’m gone.”
In an instant Shinpachi’s sheathed his bokutō and turned for the door. “I’m sleeping at Gin-san’s tonight, ane-ue—”
“You’re not,” says Tae, her fist curled in his collar, and she yanks him firmly back into the room. “I’m sorry, Shin-chan, but someone has to be here with Kurama-san. Who’s going to enforce the terms of its house arrest otherwise?”
Kurama rolls its golden eyes, and makes a tremendous noise that sounds rather like it’s blown a raspberry. “No need to bother with that crap, Otae-sama – you want me here, I’m staying here. Whatever the hell you want,” it says ardently. “You want any villages razed, I’ll do it. You want any enemies of your clan ripped into bloody scraps and incinerated, I’ll do it. You wanna talk to that noisy Uzumaki chick they planted in my head, I’ll goddamn let you. Any weird shit you want, you hear me?”
Tae affects an expression of suitable modesty. “It’s very generous of you to offer, Kurama-san—”
“It is not!” wails Shinpachi.
“—but I’m afraid the fact that you’re an immortal demon the size of my house who displaced my best friend from this universe makes it rather difficult for me to trust your word,” says Tae, and the roaring inferno of Kurama’s flames seems to wilt a little in understanding. “I really am sorry about this, Shin-chan. I’d stay home myself, if I could – I promise you, I’d far rather be home with Kurama-san than selling my valuable time to sweaty drunkards who couldn’t get their puny dicks wet even if they dropped their shorts in the middle of the public swimming baths—”
“All right! All right, I get it! I’ll do it, I’ll do it.” Shinpachi takes a deep breath and looks up at Kurama. “I, ah – I’m Shimura Shinpachi. It’s nice to, to...” His determined expression is getting glassier. “Nice to, um—”
“No, it’s not,” says Kurama.
“No, it’s not,” agrees Shinpachi with relief. “Do you want to watch a film, Kurama-san?”
Kurama’s tails sway back and forth in deliberation. The firelight shadows flicker crazily across the walls. “If it’s got explosions,” it says at last. “And mass destruction. And screams of the innocent driven forth before an inferno that scourges the earth.”
“Perfect,” says Tae, “that’s Kagura-chan’s favourite genre, too; we’ve got plenty of DVDs just for when she sleeps over. I’ll see you in the morning, you two.”
Conversation keeps going after she’s left, Kurama’s voice rumbling through the floorboards as Tae slips her sandals on. “I met a lot of tough chicks in my time, but your sister’s something else, four-eyes. Some – thing – else,” it says, drawing the words out with relish. “A girl who’s not afraid to suckerpunch a demon in its gorgeous muzzle. That’s what I like. What I, ah – like, you know what I mean?”
“No,” says Shinpachi flatly.
A speculative silence. “You got any idea if she’s into—”
“No,” says Shinpachi, flatter still.
“Listen, four-eyes, I’m just saying, if you wanna put in a good word for—”
“No!” The bellow is so deafening that Shinpachi successfully drowns out even Kurama’s unearthly rumble. “No! No! No! There is more to me than my glasses, and more to me than my sister, and I am sick and tired of being considered an accessory to both! Sick and tired of it! Sick – and – tired! My name is Shinpachi, you overgrown fox-fur scarf, and you’d damn well better listen to—!”
Tae slides the front door closed behind her and, satisfied, leaves them to it. Considering the circumstances, all seems well.