“He’s late.” Sakura sounded disbelieving, though perhaps not quite as disbelieving as she had been yesterday, or the day before that. The three of them had been waiting on one of the simple wooden bridges spanning the river running through Konoha since six in the morning, having had to crawl from their beds only half-conscious to make it in time. Two hours later, their teacher still had not arrived.

“It’s gotta be a test of some kind,” Naruto said at last. “Someone like him is not gonna stop testing us just because we became genin. He could be watching with his Sharingan even now, waiting to send us back to the academy if we fail.” He looked around nervously, though in truth it was not his teacher who made him anxious. He wanted nothing more than to discuss everything that had happened with Sakura, to talk about the daemon and his parents and the hidden enemy behind it all, but the Fourth Hokage’s words kept repeating themselves in his head: The most important skill for any ninja to possess is the ability to remain hidden. You must not reveal any secrets you uncover without thinking twice and then twice again, or it will be your friends who pay the price for your mistake.

Sasuke shrugged. “Or he just doesn’t care. He’s a jōnin – he probably has better things to do than train mere genin.” He was leaning against the railing with both hands in his pockets, putting on an apathetic air, but the tightening in his muscles showed that the situation was getting to him as well. For the briefest moment Naruto wondered what Sasuke would have to say about it all – whether he would approve of his plan to talk to the Kyūbi or call it madness – but he quickly dismissed the treasonous line of thought.

“He’s the one who insisted on meeting this early,” Sakura replied with exasperation. Over the past few days, the shine that had appeared in her bright green eyes upon hearing her team announced had been slowly waning. “He can’t have forgotten: You don’t become a jōnin if you’re that careless. You just don’t!”

Naruto silently agreed. After that whole speech Kakashi had given on what it meant to be a ninja and how important it was to be prepared, there was no way their teacher was not doing this on purpose. The only question was what he was waiting for them to do. This is why I hate tests, he reflected once again.

“I think I got it,” he said at last. “The whole point of the last test was to see if we’d make an actual effort, right? I bet he’s doing the same thing now. Like, instead of waiting here we could be training by ourselves. Actually, I guess we should be doing that either way, so it makes sense he’d be waiting to see if we’d realize that.” He nodded to himself in satisfaction, though a lingering note of confusion remained.

“Hmph. If he wanted us to train by ourselves, he could’ve just told us.” Sasuke’s irritation was plainly visible now, as he turned to face Naruto. “What sort of training did you have in mind?”

Before Naruto could reply, their teacher appeared on top of the railing without making the slightest sound. He waved his hand in a half-hearted gesture, as though he was too lazy even to complete that small movement. “Hey kids. I hope you didn’t have to wait too long, I was just-”

“There you are!” Naruto pointed an accusing finger at the man. “Don’t bother making up another stupid excuse for being late, Kakashi-sensei. We figured out your test!”

Kakashi’s one visible eye widened in mock-surprise. “You have?”

“Yeah, it was to see if we’d start training by ourselves, wasn’t it?” The niggling uncertainty was growing stronger by the second, but Naruto was not about to back down now. “Admit it, we passed your test!”

The jōnin threw up his hands. “Who knows? I suppose it does sound like the sort of thing I would do, doesn’t it? Anyway, if you’re interested in training then I have some exercises in mind that should provide the three of you with a nice, light workout…”

-o-

By the time Naruto stepped through the door to his apartment, the preparations were nearly complete. Jiraiya was putting the finishing touches to a sprawling sealing array upon a parchment that covered the entire floor of the living space, while Jiraiya’s shadow clone carefully double-checked everything he did. An expressionless man stood in a corner and watched silently, standing so still he might as well have been carved of wood. He seemed eerily familiar somehow, though Naruto had never seen his face before.

Jiraiya’s clone looked up. “Hey kiddo, you’re just in time. This here is, ah, Tenzo. He’s a friend of Kakashi, and he’s got a special technique that can drain the chakra of even the Nine-tails should it get loose. They’re here to help in case anything goes wrong.”

The wooden man bowed slightly before Naruto, which was an odd experience. That could only mean he knew about his father, Naruto concluded, which meant he must be at least a jōnin in rank – or one of Jiraiya’s drinking buddies, he supposed. “Uhm, nice to meet you, I guess. Wait, dad, did you just say…”

A familiar silver-haired man stepped out of the shadows and sauntered up to him. “Heya.”

“Oh heck, I only just got rid of you!” Naruto groaned. “What’re you doing here, Kakashi-sensei?”

The man, Tenzo, turned to face Kakashi. “Still using the same old approach to teaching recruits, captain?”

“Not really; he’s just the type that likes to complain a lot,” said Kakashi, who apparently thought nothing of the rigorous training regimen he had been putting Team Seven through. “Naruto, I’m here because my Sharingan is one of the only means capable of casting a genjutsu powerful enough to control the Kyūbi. I’ll also be using it to watch and listen in on everything that happens while you’re talking to the Nine-tails, and I’ll stop the process if anything goes wrong. Unless, of course, you’re no longer up for this?”

Naruto shook his head. In any other situation he would have objected to someone invading his mind, but in this case he was grateful for it. As for whether he was up for it… he would be lying if he said he felt confident about the whole ordeal, but he had already made his decision while he was more calm and collected, and there was no good reason to change his mind now just because he had cold feet. Although now that it was actually happening, he could not help but resent his past self a little for making the decision while knowing full well that he would not have to actually do any of it himself.

Jiraiya finished up the last part of his sealing array, and nodded in satisfaction. “Everything’s set up. I designed this seal together with the Third, and it should stop any of the Kyūbi’s chakra from leaving the circle – though it’s not as if it could do much harm to the Village without a host body to control it, anyway. If you’re ready, just sit down in the centre, and we’ll take care of everything else.”

Naruto watched the array of seals wearily. Somehow seeing all of their preparations put in place was only making him more nervous, which made little sense – if the others had not been taking this seriously, that would be far more reason to worry. And yet, he still could not shake this feeling…

“Uhm, shouldn’t I be using a shadow clone for this? You know, just in case?”

Jiraiya snorted. “I don’t think so, kiddo. The Nine-tails is a being of pure chakra. Splitting yerself in two would just give it another body to try and escape from. Not that we’d let it, mind you.”

Naruto nodded. He had been expecting that answer, but it was good to know that the others had thought of it as well. He stepped onto the parchment and gingerly sat down in the central circle, taking care to stay well away from the edges. The wooden man stretched out his arm in Naruto’s direction, as though reaching out to him, while Kakashi seated himself opposite Naruto. Between the seals and Kakashi’s Sharingan, the chakra-draining technique from Tenzo and Jiraiya himself they had four separate layers of security against the Kyūbi coming out. The only remaining risk that Naruto could think of was if the Kyūbi somehow convinced him to let it out. So, what should I be doing to stop that from happening?

Naruto’s mind flashed back to a time before the Academy exams, when he had desperately tried to study in the forest, and very briefly met a strange boy clad in green. He swallowed thickly. “Hey… dad?”

Jiraiya looked up. “Yeah?”

“I… I promise you I won’t ever let the Kyūbi out. I mean, not unless you tell me I should, or something.”

His godfather gave him a long, searching look. “I already know that, kiddo.”

Naruto shivered. Somehow, just hearing him say those words infused the promise with power, like the distinct sensation of a ninja technique taking hold. No, he would not be going back on his word.

“Don’t worry,” Kakashi said. “If there was any chance of this going wrong, we wouldn’t let you go through with it. We’re just making certain.” He lifted the forehead protector that covered his left eye, revealing his crimson Sharingan, and stared him in the eye. It looked exactly like Sasuke’s, except that Kakashi’s eye had three black swirls surrounding the pupil instead of one. And it might have been Naruto’s imagination, but in the dim light of the apartment, he swore he could see it glow ever so faintly.

Naruto took a long, deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready. I think.”

Jiraiya’s shadow clone stepped forward, and raised Naruto’s shirt until his stomach became visible. A seal had appeared on his skin, an intricate swirling pattern that he had never seen before. Then a blue glow appeared around each of Jiraiya’s fingers, and he drove his hand into Naruto’s belly and twisted...

-o-

Naruto plunged into darkness.

“…for in the Village there had appeared a mighty daemon fox, a monstrous mass of pure chakra and malevolence that lashed out at all living things without reason or purpose. A monster from storybooks used to frighten children, come into this world and set upon them for their sins…”

And then the darkness gave way to something else.

-o-

The first thing Naruto noticed was that he was standing in a pool of cool liquid, and the second was the smell of sulphur on the air. Though there was no source of light anywhere to be seen, he could still sense everything around him – as though he were looking with something other than his eyes, and needed no light. He was standing in a massive empty corridor that stretched on forever, and when he looked up he saw that the ceiling was lined with lead piping, like the basement of some monolithic facility.

The liquid was water, he thought, though in the absence of light he could not tell its colour.

He looked up again, and found that there was a titanic gate in front of him, looming out of the darkness where only the empty corridor had stretched before. Thick iron bars went all the way to the ceiling, extending a hundred meters or more before ending in a stone arch. Arcane runes were carved all along the frame of the great gate, and in the centre of it all there was a lock that could not be opened by mere keys: A metal spiral covered in incomprehensible seals.

“Ah… excuse me?” he called out. “Is… is anyone there? H-hello?”

-Hello? Hello? Hello?-

His voice echoed throughout the chamber, traveling past the non-light and into the darkness behind the bars, reflecting off the walls on the other side before coming back to him. As his words died away, at first nothing seemed to happen, but then there was a sound like a single drop of water falling into a vast lake. Soon after there came ripples, small at first but then greater and greater – concentric circles in the liquid pushing past the bars of the gate and edging ever closer towards Naruto’s feet.

Just as Naruto was about to decide that this had all been a mistake and he should leave right now, a light arose in the centre of the darkness. Two crimson eyes appeared, with vertical slits like the pupils of a nocturnal animal, burning with such brightness that their image was seared into his eyes. There came a voice then, rumbling like the low roar of an inferno, full of heat and chaos and all the buried power of a dormant volcano. It was how Naruto imagined Fire would sound, if Fire had been given a voice.

“Who goes there, to wake me from my slumber? Who brings the pitter-patter of little feet within the hallways of my mind? Come closer, little one – come hither, so that I may lay my gaze upon you, and see with mine own eyes who would knock upon my door.”

Unbidden, Naruto’s feet took him closer to the gates, and it took him a conscious effort to realize what he was doing and stop himself. By then he was almost close enough to touch the forbidding iron bars, and he had to remind himself that there was no threat – that the Kyūbi could not touch him, that he was being observed even now, and that it was impossible to release the beast even if he wanted to. Still his whole body trembled, shaking like a leaf caught in a forest fire, fearful of the flames yet able to do nothing but pray for a strong wind to carry it far, far away.

“Ahhhhhh…. the Fourth Hokage’s legacy. I was wondering when you would come. Welcome, child, to my humble domain.”

“D-domain?” Naruto stared into the great crimson eyes, their shape seeming to flicker like flames.

“Look around you, little one. Where do you think you are? All that you see before you is but a fraction of my true realm, a mere sliver of infinity. All Tailed Ones exist within their own dimension: Mine is the elemental plane of Fire, and you present yourself at the gates for entry, as is only fitting.”

Naruto shot an uncertain glance around the area. “There’s, ah… quite a lot of water for a plane of fire. And, uhm… this being my subconscious seems a lot more likely, than there being other dimensions we can travel to. I – I think you just don’t wanna admit that you’re imprisoned here.”

There was a long exhalation, like the sound of a great bonfire being fanned by a sharp wind. The burning crimson eyes seemed to regard him narrowly. “The ninjas of the Leaf have not neglected their sterling art of diplomacy, I see. What is your purpose here, child? Have you come to supplicate yourself before me? Pay your tributes in a timely fashion, and you will not find me an unkind master.”

“Ah, no,” said Naruto. It took him a moment before he recalled the reason he came to this place. “I thought – I was hoping you could tell me, well first of all: Is it really true that you were created by the Sage of Six paths? Do you know what he was like, and about the secrets of ninjutsu that were lost? And also, I wanna know everything that happened to his civilisation that got us to this point.” He and Jiraiya had discussed at length what he should ask the daemon first, and decided that knowledge of their origins might be less urgent, but perhaps ultimately more crucial than even learning who the Enemy truly was.

“How refreshingly enlightened; those that seek me out usually ask only to borrow from my infinite chakra like the simpleminded brutes they are – but I see you are a different sort. Very well then, I accept your offer: All the lost lore of the legendary Sage of Six Paths, the true cause behind the collapse of his civilisation, and all other knowledge I acquired since then in exchange for my freedom.”

“Hold on,” Naruto said hurriedly. “I didn’t say that. I mean, first of all I’d have to make sure you really know all that and you’re not just making stuff up. And also, uhm, you kinda killed a lot of people, so I can’t let you go just like that…” Naruto flinched as the great crimson eyes bored into him, seeming to push him to his knees with the sheer weight of their condemnation alone.

“You dare lay blame on me for that? I was controlled with genjutsu, as you perfectly well know! For the past thousand years, from the very day I was born your kind has sought to wield me as a tool, to use my power for the sake of their selfish and petty desires… Even your beloved Hokage were no different, sealing me into their loved ones and forcing me to choose between death and a life of slavery!”

“I- I didn’t… I didn’t mean…” Naruto had never even thought about the situation from the Kyūbi’s point of view, looking only for ways to use him to his advantage. “I just meant… even if you’re not responsible for any of that stuff, you’re still the most powerful daemon in the world, it’s just common sense that-”

“And what is a daemon, I ask you? Only another word for a spirit that will not bend to your will! Small wonder the frogs and the snakes are all domesticated, with us as an example of what would become of them should they ever refuse you! Your kind forces us to do your ill deeds so you may wash your hands of guilt, and for your moral convenience you define us as evil and call it common sense!”

“But I didn’t do any of that,” Naruto protested. “That was all done by, by my dad, and the First Hokage, and a bunch of other people I never even met. I didn’t even know I was your host until a few weeks ago!”

“How very convenient – your predecessors spare you all moral guilt through the simple act of keeping you ignorant, yet you still enjoy every advantage that resulted from their crime. You play your part by declining to think about what was done, assuming the guise of innocence until it is time to commit your own crimes for your children before you die. And if every next generation does the same, none of you need bear any blame for your sins during your lives. Truly, when it comes to absconding moral culpability, your species’ ingenuity is unlimited!”

Naruto swallowed thickly – the temperature of the air and water seemed to be rising at an alarming rate. “Well I wouldn’t do something like that, not even if I thought I was about to die! But I really can’t release you: Even if I had the power, the others would never let me go through with it.” Kakashi was watching him even now, he remembered faintly. He wondered what his teacher must be thinking about all this.

“Is that your true motivation? Then swear a binding oath here and now that you will do your utmost to rectify this injustice, and together we will find a way to secure my release. I will even reward you for your service with all the knowledge and power I possess. But if you refuse, then declare yourself a villain here and now and spare me the hypocrisy!”

“I can’t,” Naruto whispered, and he had to look at his feet to avoid those accusing crimson eyes. If for no other reason than that Kakashi-sensei would pull me out immediately, if I started saying something like that. “I already promised my dad I wouldn’t release you without his permission, and he’d never agree to something like that. But, I swear I won’t forget about this just because it’s convenient! Even if I can’t free you, maybe… maybe we can agree to something else?”

“Such as what? All the secrets of the Sage of Six paths in exchange for a bigger cage? Perhaps a game of Go to pass the time while I sit here alone in the dark? For all the power you have over me, I still have my pride to consider… you have nothing to offer me that is worth such a prize except my freedom!”

Naruto floundered for words, but found none. He was becoming painfully aware of just how weak a position the Kyūbi was really in – how little his vast destructive ability actually mattered. In a world of ninjas who were capable of supernatural feats, where the most important skill to have was the ability to remain hidden, the most powerful daemon in the world really had no power at all.

He felt wretched for even thinking it, but there was still something he needed from the fox, and he had to at least try to bargain for it: “If there’s nothing else you care about, then how about a common enemy? What about the one who controlled you twelve years ago, who made you attack the Village and kill all those innocent people – the person the Fourth Hokage called the one who hides in darkness?”

There was a moment of silence, and Naruto wondered if perhaps he should repeat himself, when suddenly there was a sound of kindling being lit, like a bonfire set alight, like a massive forest fire blazing into life all in one instant. Naruto fell backwards into the liquid as a blast of heat scorched his flesh, and even as he cried out in pain the water scalded him further. A massive inferno arose before him, rising up to consume the darkness behind the bars in a roaring blaze of red and orange, and Naruto’s heart missed a beat as he realized he wasn’t standing before a cage, it was a furnace…

“That man! He who would dare turn me into his pet and discard me at his leisure, with those cursed eyes and chakra more sinister than my own… Release me from this prison, child, and I will freely aid you against him. I will rend his body asunder and burn him, scatter his ashes to the winds and devour his very essence! This I swear upon the aspect of Fire itself!”

Naruto pushed himself back up on his scalded arms, trying vainly to calm the beating of his heart, and wondered if having a stroke in this place could kill him after all. “So… you’re saying his real identity is Uchiha Madara? Are you sure? Did you see him yourself, did he talk to you, or are you just guessing?”

There was another pause, in which the crimson eyes reappeared within the sea of flames to stare at him. “Do not think yourself so clever, kit… as a rule, clever little children tend to live short and tragic lives. I do not know what manner of tales you were told, but mere genin cannot defeat the likes of Uchiha Madara, if that is indeed who he is. If you ever were to face that man, I will lend you all my chakra and my knowledge as well, but it may do no more than allow you to run and hide as children should, when faced with a true monster. And now, I think it is well past your bed time, little one… You may leave.”

“Hold on, you can’t tell me to leave,” Naruto protested. “This is my subconscious.”

In response, the fire flickered and intensified – white hot flames appearing like a row of jagged teeth deep within the crimson inferno, forming the image of a vulpine grin. The flames grew brighter and brighter, until the entire world was nothing but eye-searing white light, followed once again by darkness.

-o-

Naruto was back in his apartment, sitting on the floor in the middle of Jiraiya’s sealing array. “What? What did..? Did he just..?”

“The Kyūbi chakra was reaching dangerous levels,” Kakashi explained. He was holding one hand over his left eye, and there was a tired expression on what little could be seen of his face, as though he had not slept for many days in a row. “I had no choice but to supress the Kyūbi’s chakra and pull you out.”

Jiraiya was watching Naruto carefully, while the wooden man sat silently in his corner. “What happened? What did you talk about in there? Did you get the answers you needed?”

Naruto exchanged a look with his teacher, and then turned back to his godfather. “He… he wasn’t…” He found himself at loss for words. How was he to explain? What were you to say, when a thousand year old being of living fire petitioned you for help? He knew that they would never agree to letting the Nine-tails go, no matter told them, not least because Naruto himself did not think it was a smart thing to do. It was hard to be convincing, when the very notion you defended sounded mad in your own ears.

“It was different than expected,” Kakashi said at last, and Naruto had to agree that this at least was true.