The vortex spun faster, climbing higher and growing denser. A breeze sprang up, blowing in towards the whirlwhind of crimson fire with steadily increasing force until the surrounding ninja needed to brace their heels in the dirt and lean back to prevent themselves from being carried forward. Dirt, leaves, and assorted detritus were sucked in, feeding the flames. Furnace heat poured out, growing hotter and hotter until the dirt underfoot began to fuse into glass.

None of the onlookers would ever be able to estimate how long it was before the vortex slowed, the wind died, and the chakra flames flickered out.

"Much better," the Fox said, smiling a needle-fanged smile as he surveyed his work.

Shino eyed the creature carefully. It had said that it was going to be an ally, but they had no reason to believe that. He called his swarm to him, draping them around his body and instructing them to crawl in and out so that he could examine their sensory data in near-real time. It was 360-degree vision, but only in snapshots. Not as good as the Byakugan but still plenty good for this. He also pushed large groups of his swarm out to the left and right, staying low to hide in the grass. It would not do for his entire colony to be taken out with one attack.

Hinata gaped. Naruto's face was mostly the same and his body was the same height, but nearly everything else was different. Red whiskers had drawn themselves across his cheeks, his teeth were long and pointed, and his eyes glowed with dancing Hellfire...all six of them. There were three pairs, spaced evenly around his head, giving him a clear 360 degree view; the hair bent up and out from around them so as not to get in the way. His shoulders, chest, and legs were half again as thick as they had been, the difference being purely corded muscle; it made him nearly square and left him looking like a troll. He was covered in a luxuriant pelt of reddish fur from the chin down, which was extremely evident as his clothes had vanished. The fur was thicker at his groin, but the Byakugan showed her the truth; his 'man parts', as the girls in the Academy had gigglingly called them, were drawn up into the body. They were surrounded by new muscles and other systems that she didn't recognize, but it was pretty clear that they were extensible.

That was the least of the internal changes. His hands and feet now sprouted two-inch retractile claws of gleaming, razor-sharp crystal that emerged from between the knuckles. The structures of his eyes, nose, ears, and tongue were enormously different—she couldn't even recognize most of what she was seeing, because it existed in no other human or animal she'd ever seen. His lungs, heart, and liver were larger, the extra space gained by shrinking the stomach and digestive tract. His motor neurons had been replaced with thin white fibers. There were four times more nerves in his skin as in a normal human's. His muscles were denser, laced with filaments of something that wasn't normal flesh but also wasn't chakra. Underneath his hypodermis were...deposits? nodules?...of tiny grey pellets, almost too small for her to see. What they were or did, she had no idea, but they were tied into his circulatory system. More of the grey material wrapped around his bones in a lacework scaffolding.

Naruto's body crouched and leaped, rocketing into the sky. It piked, twisted, spun...and landed in a perfect one-legged releve, arms and opposite leg extended like a dancer. It twirled in a series of ballet turns, kicking high and tumbling before handspringing back to the other ninja. Every move was perfect, smooth, and almost too fast to see.

"Everything seems to be working properly," the Fox said. "Shall we go?" When the others stared, too stunned to move, the ancient demon who was puppeteering the transformed body of their friend sighed. "Innocent civilians?" he said. "Burning? Dying, in desperate need of rescue? Chop chop, we need to go. Hideo, lead on." He waved absently behind himself, sending a blast of frozen wind to blow aside the nearest section of the towering firestorm and fill the resulting space with a tunnel of red chakra ten feet wide and eight feet high.

"...," said Hideo. He stared for a moment longer, then shook himself and started off for the chakra tunnel, clearly forcing himself to seem resolute.

He was about to set foot in the tunnel when the Fox caught him by the sleeve. "Your pardon," it said. "I nearly forgot, walking on my chakra would be unpleasant for you. A moment, please." He gestured again and the red chakra pulled back from the ground, exposing the blackened and still smoking earth beneath. Another gesture coated the ground in ice, which promptly turned to a gush of steam. More ice was applied, again and again, until it stuck and built up into a layer an inch thick.

"There we are," the Fox said. "Much better. It'll be a bit slick, so you'll probably want to treewalk. Don't touch the walls; touching the walls would be bad."

"What do you mean, 'bad'?" Anko said carefully.

The Fox raised Naruto's eyebrows. "Oh gods, oh gods, the burning poisonous agony?" he said.

"Right. Important safety tip, thanks," Anko said. "Don't touch the walls, anyone."

Hideo hesitated for a moment, then started off down the tunnel. The Fox walked alongside him, Anko immediately behind him with Hinata and Shino following. The tunnel extended in front of them as they walked, a constantly-moving wall of red that slid steadily forward, pushing fire aside and leaving a path of ice behind. It sealed itself behind them so that they walked in a moving half-cylinder bubble.

"I must say, this is quite pleasant," the Fox said casually. "It's been a while since I was out...well, except for that unpleasantness with Konoha, but that was only an hour or two. Hardly worth talking about." He glanced back at Anko. "Speaking of Konoha, you really should do something about that place, my dear. It's becoming exactly the sort of cesspool that my brethren and I prefer to destroy. You really should talk to the Kages about unsealing at least one of us permanently; without us around to clean the pool, your less savory elements are starting to metastasize."

"What do you mean?" Anko asked cautiously.

The Fox stopped walking and turned to Anko, fanged mouth hanging open in shock. "What do you mean what do I mean?" he demanded. "Have you ludicrously idiotic monkeys forgotten what we are? What, do you think we're just random animals, blundering around the landscape and destroying things because we're evil?"

Anko hesitated.

"Well...," she said.

"Argh!" the Fox said, clutching his head. "You stupid, stupid...monkeys! How can you possibly be this stupid?! Don't you keep records?! When have you heard of me destroying a farm, or a hot spring? Gods-damned never, that's when! I destroy places that are sunk into depravity and evil! The kinds of places that spawn murderers and sadists! I don't kill simple, harmless folk who just want to mind their own business! That's why Kaguya summoned me—the Ten Tails me—from the Beyond in the first place, was so that I could stop her sons from abusing their power! And now you're telling me that you think we're just evil monsters?! How can you be...just...I hope...ARRRRGGGGH!"

"Tunnel! Tunnel! Mind the tunnel!" Anko yelped, crouching down so as not to touch the roof of the tunnel that was steadily shrinking as the Fox's distraction made him lose control of it.

"What? Oh, yes," the Fox said, waving his hand to re-enlarge the tunnel. He took a deep breath and let it out, clearly making an effort to let go of his anger. "Fine. So, in addition to having the lifespan of mayflies you people also have the attention span of mayflies. Well, it's the world we live in. Come on, let's go rescue your lemmings." He turned and stomped deeper into the fire, each blow of his feet making a small crater in the earth. The others trailed along carefully.

o-o-o-o

"They were reported to be in that building," Hideo said carefully, pointing towards a squat rowhouse. The building was stone, and there were iron shutters over the door and all the windows. The shutters were glowing red-hot, but it was possible that the flames hadn't reached inside the building yet.

"Right," the Fox said. "Come on, let's get this done." He stalked over to the door, retracted all but one of the claws on his right hand, and used that claw—and a lot of physical effort—to carve a neat rectangle through the metal. The rectange tipped forward onto him and he caught it by the edges, a soft grunt being the only sign that the inch-thick slab of iron he was holding weighed more than a piece of kindling. Hinata winced at the scent of burning flesh as Naruto's hands sizzled, but the Fox didn't seem bothered.

"Right. All of you, inside," the creature said. He widened the bubble that was holding the flames back and stepped aside so that they could file past and into the dark interior. Once everyone was inside he sidled around the door, backed through the hole, and replaced the cut-out piece. An intense arc of red chakra spot-welded a few inches of the iron on every side, holding the iron in place. Smoke and heat boiled in around the edges, but the actual flame stayed outside.

The building was an apartment complex; a long hallway lead back perpendicular to the street, doors coming off on each side. A set of stairs led up to the second floor and another set went down into the basement.

"OY! COME ON OUT!" the Fox shouted. "This is the Nine-Tailed Fox! I'm here to rescue you!" He turned to Anko and winked. "Sorry, couldn't resist."

Anko pursed her lips but said only, "I think that now we may need to put some effort into looking for them."

"Hello?!" Hideo called. "This is Jonin Fukui Hideo! Please come out! I guarantee your safety, but we need to get you out of here!"

They waited in the rising heat and smoke for a dozen seconds before the Fox got impatient. "Bah! Fine. We'll do it the hard way," he said. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" A dozen Fox-Narutos appeared, one in front of each door along the hallway. A dozen more appeared on the staircase up, and yet more on the staircase down. Moving in perfect synchronization, the ones on the stairs charged upwards and downwards, while the ones in the hall launched kicks that blasted the heavy security doors right off their hinges, then marched in.

Moments later they emerged; three of them were dragging struggling people. A six-year-old girl, an elderly woman, and a panicked young boy of perhaps twelve. From inside the apartment, various bits of random household objects and invective were being hurled in a steady stream at the clone who carried the six-year-old.

"I've got two more in there," the clone said to his 'brothers', nodding back into the room. "Mother, baby. They're annoying."

"We're on it," said another clone. Half a dozen of them stormed through the door.

The three clones with prisoners marched back to their progenitor where he stood beside Hideo, Team Anko. "Here you go, boss," the first one said, waving his free hand towards the young girl who struggled frantically against the grip of his other hand.

"Let her go!" Anko shouted. "You're choking her!"

Clone-Fox looked at her in puzzlement, not moving his hand from where it covered the girl's nose and mouth. "Yeah, so?" he said. "She tried to bite me. Would have killed her if she'd gotten any of my chakra in her mouth, so I figured I should protect her. Besides, she'll be a lot easier to transport once she's unconscious."

"Give her to me," Anko demanded, stepping forward and reaching for the child. The clone studied her sardonically for a moment, then shrugged and handed the girl over. She practically flung herself into Anko's arms and clung to the jonin like a limpet, whimpering in fear. Anko turned away, stroking the girl's back comfortingly but still keeping one eye over her shoulder at the Fox.

One of the Fox clones came pounding down the stairs. "Hey Boss," it said. "Fire's made it into the second floor, part of the ceiling collapsed about halfway down the hall. You want us to go through it, or just figure the monkeys are all briquettes by now?"

Fox-Prime turned to Hinata. "What do you say, vixen? Anything alive up there?"

"Yes, Fox-sama," Hinata said diffidently. "There is a family in the second-to-last apartment on the left side, hiding in the bathtub. In addition, there is a dog in the last apartment on the right, locked in the bedroom."

"Hey now!" the clone said. "We agreed to rescue the citizens, nobody said anything about dogs!"

Fox-Prime started to respond, then glanced at Hideo. "Technically he led us to it," he said with a shrug.

The clone sighed. "Right-o," it said. "A dozen firey burning painful deaths to rescue a stupid animal, its family, and a dog. Coming right up." He turned and trotted up the stairs again.

Hinata watched as the upstairs clones conferred for a few moments. They talked animatedly, occasionally gesturing to the pile of flaming rubble that blocked the corridor. They came to a decision and turned as one, trooping down the stairs to the ground floor.

"Where are the people?" Anko demanded.

"Keep your panties on...well, go put some panties on, I suppose," one of the clones said. "We'll have them out in a minute, we just didn't think we could blast through the rubble without bringing the floor down."

They tromped off down the corridor and into the rooms under the ones that Hinata had indicated. Once they were all in position they raised Doton: Earth Walls under the bathroom and bedroom as supports, then smashed through the floors of the adjoining rooms and jumped up.

Moments later, four clones were coming down the hall, each with a rescuee in his arms. The dog was thrashing frantically and yelping in terror until the clone flicked it in the head, at which point it went still, shivering and whining quietly.

"Here," the first of the clones said. "Rescued. Now what?"

"Uhh...," Hideo said. "We should, uh, probably check some of the other buildings, I guess? Hinata-san, can you see anyone else?"

"Yes, Hideo-san," she said. "There is a family trapped in the basement of the building across the street."

Fox-Prime sighed. "Onwards, I suppose. Let's go find the rest of your stupid fleshbags who weren't smart enough to run away from a fire."

o-o-o-o

They spent four full hours combing the city, finding occasional survivors. The Fox clones would smash through walls, soak everything in water and ice jutsu, and use wind jutsu to clear away smoke, then bring out the trapped Sound citizens. Team Anko was left with nothing to do except keep the rescuees calm and inside the protective bubble, which the Fox obligingly pushed outwards as more and more people were brought in. They needed to make two separate trips to the edge of the firestorm in order to drop people off once the group got too large; the Fox grumbled and sighed the entire time, muttering under his breath about 'idiotic meatsacks' and a large number of uses of the word 'monkey'. Still, he did his part.

Once Hideo and Hinata finally granted that they'd rescued everyone they could, the group emerged for the last time from the fire.

"Well, that was fun," the Fox said, stretching and twisting. "Sadly, I agreed I could only stay out to play until the rescue was finished, so it's time I head back now. Ta ta!" He waved goodbye, and Naruto's body collapsed like a house of cards. Anko barely managed to catch him before he hit the ground. She lay him down gently on the grass and knelt over him looking worried.

"Naruto-kun?" Hinata asked fearfully, touching Naruto gently on the shoulder. "Naruto-kun, please wake up."

Naruto's eyes rolled behind closed eyelids and then slowly drifted open...only to immediately slam shut again. He slapped his hands over his ears and curled into a ball, sobbing.

"Naruto, what's wrong?" Anko demanded.

Naruto was sobbing in clearly evident agony. "Too bright, too hot, too loud, too sharp, ow ow ow ow!" he moaned, his voice barely a whisper. "Please make it stop, please!"

Anko lay a hand on his forehead and Naruto's body slumped as he dropped into unconsciousness like a stone.

"What just happened?" she asked.

"The external changes to Naruto-kun's body are minor compared to what the Fox did to his insides," Hinata said, quickly filling the team in on the changes. "It would appear that his senses are enormously sharper than they used to be. It's like when you took me into that club, sensei, only more so."

"Speaking of sharper," Shino said. He turned Naruto's head slightly, showing where, when he had covered his ears, the claws had stabbed through flesh before skidding off the gray-encased bone underneath, tearing three furrows along each side of his head. The furrows were slowly healing closed as they watched, but the damage would have left anyone else in the hospital for weeks and resulting in permanent scarring.

Anko sighed. "Lovely. This just gets better and better. I can't wait to see what other little little landmines the Fox has left for us."

"What has Naruto-san done now?" Orochimaru demanded from behind them. Hinata yelped, not having seen him approach.

"Nothing," Anko said truculently. "He's just exhausted. We'll be taking him back to our quarters now."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow at her, looking very obviously at the enormous changes in Naruto's body, but he finally shrugged. "Very well," he said. "I have more to do here in any case. I'll discuss this with you later." He turned and shunshined away.

o-o-o-o

Naruto drifted back to consciousness slowly. The room was dark and comfortingly quiet and he was lying on a tatami with nothing touching him aside from his clothes. He turned his head to find Hinata, Shino, and Anko sitting seiza a few feet away, studying him quietly.

"Don't try to move or speak just yet," Anko said quietly. "This is a genjutsu; I'm using it to keep your senses dialed down so they don't overwhelm you again. Hinata and Shino are in it with us. How are you feeling?"

Naruto considered that. "Okay," he said in a whisper. When the sound brought no pain he tried again a little louder. "Okay," he said. He looked down at himself, relieved to find his body was back to normal. "What happened?"

"You let the Fox have your body, and it changed it," Anko said in the the professionally calm and detached tone of a ninja delivering a field report about an ambush that wiped out her entire team.

"Oh," Naruto said, thinking. "Yeah, I agreed to that. It said it was going to improve my senses and my survivability, but I didn't expect it to be quite this much."

"Right now I'm using this genjutsu to dampen your senses and force your body to look the way it used to," Anko said. "Which is really hard. The transformed version of you is apparently your default form, because it keeps trying to reinstate itself. The only reason I can do it is because your mind still has a residual self-image of your old body. In a moment I'm going to put you back in your new form and then slack off the genjutsu enough that you're able to move in the outside world," Anko said. "I want you to sit up very slowly, all right? Nothing else, just sit up."

Naruto nodded, moving nothing except his head.

Anko stood up and backed away, waving Shino and Hinata into the hall behind her. "Okay," she said. Naruto faded back into his new squat, troll-like body. "Sit up, nice and slow."

Naruto pushed himself up, moving as clumsily as a newborn. "Seems okay," he said. "Nothing hurts, anyway, although I feel weird...heavy, I guess, like I'm in a half-strength paralysis jutsu. Are you doing that?"

Anko shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm only doing the sensory dampening."

"Huh," Naruto said. "I guess this is what other people mean when they say they're exhausted. Weird." With a grunt he pushed himself to his feet and sent himself rocketing back to slam into the wall. The wall dented as though it had been hit with a hammer and Naruto fell face-down on the floor.

Naruto shook his head dizzily and rolled to his hands and knees. Moving carefully, he got himself upright and stood, swaying. He took a step and staggered, stumbling spastically around the room. He clutched onto one of the support poles against the wall; the four-inch oak beam shattered in his grip and he once again tumbled to the floor.

"What's goin' on?" he slurred, shock and surprise robbing him of clear speech.

"All right, I've dampened your motor control," Anko said. "You can move normally in the genjutsu, but your body won't respond in the real world."

Naruto came to his feet with his accustomed grace and stretched. "Thanks," he said. "So, I don't get it, what happened?"

"The Fox severely modified your body, Naruto-kun," Hinata said. "Your muscles have all been enhanced, your proportions have changed, and I think you are denser than you were. Your brain is still expecting the way your body used to be, so it doesn't react properly." She gestured at the long furrows Naruto's claws had plowed in the floor and walls. "Also, your claws are highly dangerous. They appear to be retractile, though."

Naruto looked as though he'd been stabbed. "But...if I can't move properly, I can't fight," he said. "How am I supposed to be a ninja?"

Anko bit her lip. "That's...an interesting question. We'll just have to work on it, I guess."

Naruto growled, then winced as his fangs accidentally punched through his lips. "Ow! Damn that Fox! I'm gonna go talk to him!"

He lay down, closed his eyes, and sent himself plunging down into his mindscape.

o-o-o-o

Naruto appeared on the pedestal inside the room where he had always spoken to the Fox, furious words already on his tongue.

The ancient demon wasn't there.

He looked around nervously, then took a steadying breath. This was his mindscape; wherever the Fox went, Naruto could find him. He pulled a ball of light out of thin air and tossed it towards the wall.

"Find Kurama," he said. The ball twitched excitedly and zoomed off through the wall. Naruto hurled himself after it, smashing right through the stonework in the process.

The scene shifted and he found himself in Training Ground Seven back in Konoha; it had always been his favorite place to train, and it was comforting to see it again. He had only a moment to look around, though, as the ball jangled scoldingly at him and zipped off.

He raced after it, following it through endless woods for apparent hours to the mountain where Anko had drugged the team. Atop the mountain Kurama lay, curled up in a sunbeam in the center of a field.

"Hey!" Naruto said. "What did you do to me?!"

Kurama opened one eye and saw Naruto. He lazily opened the other, yawned, then stretched all four legs and rolled onto his belly so he could look evenly at Naruto.

"It's all right," he said. "No thanks needed. I do good work, I know."

"Good work?!" Naruto said. "Good work?! I can't move without falling down and breaking stuff! I stabbed myself without meaning to! I crushed the wall post without meaning to! How am I supposed to ninja like this?!"

Kurama raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, are you complaining that I gave you enhanced strength, speed, and senses? The fullerene shell will take a while to grow in, but once it does you'll be able to take pretty much any hit. Combine that with the kage bunshin and the henge and you can turn into essentially invulnerable armor for your friends." He cocked his head in thought. "Oh, that reminds me—you'll need to eat a lot of carbon for the next few months. I mean, a lot. Try to get five or six pounds down every day. You can just eat charcoal or whatever—don't worry, I fixed your gut so it will handle it."

"That's not—! I don't—! Argh!" Naruto said. "You weren't supposed to do this! How does it boost my survivability if my own senses make me helpless?!"

"What are you talking about?" Kurama asked in confusion.

"My. Senses. Make. Me. Helpless!" Naruto said. "Everything is too loud, too bright, too rough!"

"Well, tune it out!" Kurama snapped. "Honestly, what a whiner. I mean, I even took the time to put sensory nerves in the fur so that you can feel things through it, the least you can do is be appreciative!" He shrugged. "I mean yes, I tried to figure out how to have optic nerves in each of the hairs, but your tiny little mammal brain didn't have the bandwidth, so I had to restrict it to pressure sensors." He shook his head in disgust. "Even that was a stretch, so I made it only one in two hundred hairs. For the love of everything, how do you people manage with such tiny little sensory channels? It's awful!"

"What do you mean, tune it out?" Naruto asked.

"What do you mean, what do I mean? Tune it out!" Kurama said, exasperated. "Just don't pay attention to it when it's too much. How hard can it be?"

"I don't know how!" Naruto shot back.

Kurama covered his eyes with one giant paw for a moment. "Look," he said. "It's not hard. You tuned out hundreds of hours of school lectures when you were in the Academy—you were off in your head, thinking about something else and not aware of what was going on around you. Just do that, only less so."

Some of the wind went out of Naruto's sails, but he summoned up his outrage and continued. "Well, what about the moving?" he said. "I can't be a ninja if I can't even stand up!"

"Oh, stop whining," Kurama said. "So you need a little practice to get acclimated, boo hoo. 'Oh, Kurama! I'm so clumsy now that you made me superhuman! Fix it, Kurama! Waaaah!' Go on, get out of here. I was having a lovely nap." He curled up again and closed his eyes.

"But I can't be like this!" Naruto said. "We were supposed to be escaping right now! And I can't go because I can't even stand up!"

"Pah," Kurama said, not opening his eyes. "Once you get acclimated to my improvements you'll be able to plow through anything in your way. Now, shoo."

"But what if the Snake comes after us?" Naruto demanded. "I couldn't plow through him! And right now I can't even plow through a stalk of grass! I can't protect the others like this!"

"Napping," Kurama said, scooting around a bit to put his back to Naruto.

Naruto ran up and kicked the immense Fox in the side. One of the tails flicked back, knocking him into the air. The Fox rolled onto his back, using all nine tails to bat Naruto into the sky again and again.

"You know—"thwap—"it's really—"thwap—"not polite—"thwap—"to kick people." Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaa!" screamed Naruto.

"What was that?" Kurama asked politely, continuing to juggle Naruto with blows of one tail after another. "I'm afraid I couldn't understand you over the screaming. Did you say 'I sincerely apologize, Kurama, I understand that physical violence is not an appropriate way to express my anger with a friend'?"

"Yes! Yeeees! Thaaaat's what I I saaaid! Aaaagh!" Naruto screamed, his voice Dopplering in and out as Kurama repeatedly swatted him hundreds of feet into the air.

"I thought so," Kurama said, rolling onto his side and letting Naruto plummet to the ground screaming. Seemingly inches above the earth, a vulpine tail snapped out, caught him, and spilled him unceremoniously to the grass.

Naruto sat still for several minutes, chest heaving as he panted in reaction. Kurama, on the other hand, settled down comfortably; his breathing started to even out into the deep, slow patterns of sleep.

"Kurama, please," Naruto said, once he had his breath back.

"Mrmph," Kurama said, shifting around.

"Kurama. Please."

The mountainous creature sighed like an avalanche and rolled over.

"Look," he said. "I can do a lot of things. Destroy evil cities, make a good stab at ripping mountains apart, rebuild people with superconductor nerves, fullerene muscle reinforcement, and six extra types of cone cells in their eyes. But there are some things I can't do, and one of those things is to magically imbue your puny brain with enlightenment."

"What are you talking about?" Naruto said.

"Case in point," Kurama said. "I'm saying that I can't magically make you be accustomed to your new body, you'll need to practice. Go out, do some forms, run a bit. Jump. Punch things—maybe find some Sound-nin and pound on them. Well, probably more like through them until you learn to manage the new muscles. Still. Go on, go practice."

"Kurama! We're in the middle of an enemy village!" Naruto said. "My team's been attacked twice already, if it happens again I won't be able to defend them! Please, help me!"

Kurama growled under his breath. "I said I can't..." He paused and cocked his head in thought, then shook it. "Like I said, I can't magically give you knowledge," he said. "I'm sorry, you'll just have to practice."

"You thought of something there," Naruto said. "What was it?"

"Nothing," Kurama said. "It was just a thought, but a bad one. It wouldn't solve the problem."

"No, please, tell me," Naruto said. "What?"

Kurama hesitated, then shrugged. "Well, I can run the body no problem. Doesn't help you, though. I was thinking that I could put it through its paces while you watched and maybe that would help, but it wouldn't. You can see out through the window, but it doesn't have a kinesthetic hookup, so you wouldn't get the feedback you need."

"But I could put the hookup in, right" Naruto said eagerly. "You mentioned it once before...dummy with strings, yeah?"

"No good," Kurama said. "That's the whole problem, you don't have a functional kinesthetic sense anymore to connect. Bit of a chicken and egg, right? We can't rebuild your kinesthetic sense without setting up the connections, but you can't set up the connections without the kinesthetic sense that we're trying to rebuild."

"Well, you have a kinewhatsis sense, right?" Naruto said. "Why can't you hook it up?"

"Not my mindscape," Kurama said. "I can do minor resculpts inside it, but making a connection from the outside to the inside is something only you can do." He fell silent, thinking. After a moment he shook his head. "If there's a way to make this work I'm not seeing it," he said. "I wish you'd hooked it up back when I first asked, it would have avoided all this." He sighed. "Well, I can understand why you didn't trust me, I suppose. Anyway...I have a feeling like there's something I'm missing, but I can't figure out what it is. I'll keep thinking on it; maybe we can work something out. In the meantime, the best I can suggest is to go practice. If anything really bad happens, just call me and I'll run the body for you while we deal with it."

Naruto nodded in relief. "Right," he said. "Thank you, that makes me feel a lot better." He turned, looking back the way he'd come.

"Yes, you can leave from here as easily as from the room," Kurama said in amusement.

Naruto flashed him a grin. "Right, thanks." He crouched down and jumped upwards, arms extended before him as he tunneled into the sky.

"You're welcome!" Kurama shouted after him. "And don't forget to eat your carbon!"

Author's Footnote: Interesting thing; if you check Kurama's entry on the Naruto wiki, you'll see the following: "Over the centuries, Kurama has gained a reputation as an age-old natural disaster, appearing suddenly out of nowhere to attack areas that have been breeding grounds for the darkest aspects of human nature."

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