"Ah come on! Where's the fun in that?" Naruto urges me to spar him. This is not what my vacation is supposed to be about.
"Say hypothetically I do accept. Where would we spar?"
"Uh… on the deck?" Naruto offers.
...
"Okay so I'm going to point this out right now." I pin him in an intense look. "If you and I ever fight it's going to get messy. We'd trash everything around us with impunity. If we sparred on the ship there wouldn't be a ship left once we're done. We'll be luck if there's any driftwood left."
"Maybe once we get to the Land of Snow?" He offers another option.
"You're on a mission stupid. You shouldn't be sparring anyone." Seriously was this his whole goal of coming up here? To get me to spar him?
"You're on a mission too!" He accuses me. "Don't blame just me!"
"Okay, one: no I'm not. I owe Shikamaru so I'm returning a favor. Two: this was all your idea. You don't get to share blame with me because I can't be blamed for your ideas. If you're really that bored summon a Toad to play with or something."
"What?" Naruto reels back in shock. "I would never abuse the Toads like that!"
"I summon a Spider for conversation all the time. It's not abuse, it's forming a good relationship with your Summons. I bet they'd love to hang out with you. You just have to find the right one. Preferably one that isn't as big as the ship."
"Really? You summon the same spider all the time?"
"Yep." I easily confirm. "We're friends. Sometimes we just hang out and give each other shit while other times he's someone for me to shout my problems at. Hell he's the main reason I know about other Spiders too. I ask him 'hey, I need someone that can do this' and he points me at someone who can."
I don't say this enough, but Shirokumo you're freaking awesome.
"That's a great idea!" Naruto shouts out. Kid has way too much energy. "I should totally summon a Toad to talk to!" Then he wilts. "But they'd hate the cold. I don't want them to suffer."
But you are totally fine with making me suffer? Asshole.
"It's not just the Spider that I talk to." I confide in him. Frankly he's the only one who might begin to understand what it is like to have another voice in your head. "The Jiongu and I talk a lot too."
"You do? I thought you didn't like talking with it." He asks tentatively. He knows it's a sensitive subject for me.
"Nah, we're cool now." I assure him. "Honestly I just had to adjust to a new voice in my head and learn what it's like. Sure it encourages me to be more bloodthirsty but sometimes it won't shut up about meaningless things."
~Aw, Host you do care!~
Yeah yeah shut up for now. I'm trying to get him to talk to Kurama.
~How is it that you can be so nice one moment then mean the next?~
"It's not the same as mine." Naruto rests a hand on his seal. "Mine is pure anger and hate and wants to escape. Yours chooses to work with you."
"True mine did immediately choose to work with me, that did make it easier to get along with." I swivel my head to look at him. "But who said yours is pure anger and hate? Who said yours won't work with you given enough time?"
"Alvarcus you haven't felt it." Naruto drops the act of a bubbly always friendly person. "It's destruction incarnate. Whenever we meet all that he feels like is fury and malice."
"How can you be sure that isn't a byproduct of his own experiences? Naruto he's sentient. He can think for himself. He has wants, he has feelings, he has emotions. Most importantly he's not an it, he has a name."
"Yeah, the Kyuubi." Naruto supplies what he thinks is his name.
"No, that's a title. It's what he is, not who he is. It's the equivalent of calling you Human. Do you really think a being that transcends our short lifespans doesn't have a name?"
"He has a name?" Naruto softly asks himself. "Do you know what it is?"
I open my mouth then freeze.
The manifestation of pure fury of the likes of which I've never experienced explodes out of Naruto. Naruto changes, his whole body doesn't physically change but the way he carries himself does. It's feral like a beast. His hair casts a dark shadow over his eyes and his whisker marks thicken. His nails elongated into claws and his once bright blue eyes have become a pair of searing hot coals. The sheer presence that he's manifesting is staggering, the basic prospect of breathing becomes an impossible challenge.
I've never felt power on this scale.
"You will not tell him my name!" That is not Naruto's voice. It's too deep, too harsh. Too menacing. Too pained.
Just as quickly as the oppressive aura around Naruto formed it vanishes and Naruto falls to a knee panting.
I quickly spring out of my hammock and rush to his side.
"Naruto!" I grasp him by the shoulders. "Naruto look at me! Show me your eyes!"
He stays still, only massive breaths shake his form. There's no response, there's no other movement.
I reach into my coat and pull out a tag. It's a very specific tag, it's not even one that I made myself. It's one for study that Orochimaru crafted and gifted to me, it's a bijuu chakra suppression tag.
"I fucked up." I apologize to him. "I'm sorry. I should have seen this happening."
I hold the tag tighter in preparation to place it on him.
Then his hand swats at the one I have on his shoulder. "Not your fault."
"Naruto?" I hopefully ask. Yet it is too soon to put the tag away. "Your eyes. Let me see them."
"The hell are you on about?" He huffs out between breaths and looks at me weirdly.
Blue. They're blue.
"Naruto!" I throw my arms around him in a hug. "It's you. I'm so glad it's you. I thought I caused him to escape."
"He's not getting out that easily." Naruto brags with false bravado. His entire body is trembling. He's way more terrified than I am. "I've never felt him like that."
"I'm sorry. It's my fault. I'm so sorry. That should have never happened." I fucked up. I majorly fucked up. I caused Kurama to manifest for an instant. I didn't even know that was possible.
"It's not your fault, you didn't know he'd do that." Naruto assures me.
"How'd he get past the seal?" I ask. "Even if it was just for an instant he's found a weakness. He's going to exploit it from now on."
"I don't think he's going to do that." Naruto shares as we break the hug. "Jiraiya told me that the seal is meant to suppress him, and he's a mass of anger and hate. That's what the seal focuses on suppressing. But what he just felt wasn't anger or hate, it was fear. I really doubt that something as prideful as the Kyuubi will resort to being afraid to escape."
"Either way have Jiraiya look at the seal as soon as you can." I demand.
"No shit I'm doing that!"
"NARUTO!" Kakashi appears in the crow's nest with his own sealing tag. "HANG ON DON'T GIVE IN TO - oh."
"Uh… hey?" Naruto weakly waves at Kakashi. "False alarm. I'm good."
"You sure?" Kakashi asks in confusion. "I felt that. Hell Shikamaru felt that and he has no knack for sensing at all."
"Yep. Totally fine." Naruto says as we both stand up. "Sorry about that."
"Okay… then?" Kakashi slowly pockets the seal. "I'll just… go now? How am I supposed to explain this to everyone?"
"Shit." Naruto's eyes widen in a new type of fear. "How are we going to do that?"
"If you don't want them to know yet you can always blame it on me." I offer.
"Alvarcus I won't-"
"Hear me out first Naruto." I cut him off from outright dismissing my idea. "I'm relatively unknown and I've been trained by Orochimaru. So naturally I've got one hell of a killing intent. After all why wouldn't Orochimaru train me to have one of the most oppressive and scary killing intents ever? Plus with all the stuff I've done it's not even that ridiculous of an idea, my killing intent is actually scary already. Just not that scary."
"That won't work." Kakashi cuts in. "It wasn't killing intent that we felt, it was hate."
"Then Naruto called the Spiders lame and I proved him wrong by summoning one that felt like that." I offer another solution. "No one knows the true extent of my Summons, hell even I don't. It's not that far of a stretch."
"It's plausible." Kakashi says after thinking it over for a few seconds. "Doubly if I back it up. After all I did rush out here and saw it before it left."
"Okay." Naruto agrees to my impromptu plan. "We'll go with that. Alvarcus summoned a big scary spider."
"When you say it like that is sounds super lame."
...
A/N:
If we hit 500 Power Stones by the end of this week, I'll drop an extra chapter as a thank-you!
Thanks for the support! ;)
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